Priest Accused of US Abuse Won't Fight Extradition

[Soylent Brice]

Catholic priest charged with assaulting 14-year-old girl says he is ready to face US courts

A Roman Catholic priest charged with sexually assaulting a teenage parishioner in Minnesota said Tuesday he would willingly leave his native India and try to clear his name in the courts if the United States tried to extradite him.

Meanwhile, the bishop who oversees the Rev. Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul said he had overruled a Vatican recommendation that the accused priest be removed from the priesthood and applied his own lesser punishment.

"Unless guilt is proved, we cannot take any strong action," said the Most Rev. A. Almaraj of the Diocese of Ootacamund in southern India.

In a separate case, a church official confirmed Tuesday that a priest convicted of fondling a 12-year-old altar girl in New York more than a decade ago had returned home to India where he still served as a priest.

The Rev. Francis X. Nelson was sentenced to four months in prison in 2003 in connection with his role as a visiting priest at a church in Brooklyn. His victim testified that Nelson showed up at her grandmother's apartment uninvited and groped her.

read more: http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=10295533