Michael J. Bransfield was just a couple of years into his tenure as West Virginia’s bishop in 2007 when one of his former students called a church sexual abuse hotline. Decades earlier, at a Catholic high school, Bransfield had repeatedly summoned him from class, escorted him to a private ...
WHEELING — The Most Rev. Mark Brennan, bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, announced his plan Tuesday to seek $792,638 in restitution from former bishop Michael Bransfield. In addition, the diocese is reducing Bransfield’s monthly compensation package from $6,200 ...
Read Bishop Brennan's Letter to the Faithful on Michael Bransfield's penance here WHEELING -- Bishop Mark Brennan has outlined a nine-step process that would see former Bishop Michael Bransfield making amends for the damage Bransfield did while leading the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston. In ...
Roman Catholics in West Virginia may well be wondering whether there was any end to Michael Bransfield’s perfidy — and that clearly is the right word —while he was in power as bishop of their diocese. Revelations about Bransfield’s misdeeds continue to spill out. The most recent, a story we reprinted from The Washington Post, details how he set up a slush fund using money siphoned away from Wheeling Hospital, which is owned by the diocese. In 2014, Bransfield latched onto a self-insurance entity created by the hospital, according to an investigation by the church. He ...
The idea came to West Virginia Bishop Michael Bransfield while he was in Rome visiting an old friend, a powerful cardinal at the Vatican. Bransfield thought the cleric’s apartment was barren and lacked a comfortable room for watching television. After Bransfield returned to West Virginia, ...
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Police in the nation’s capital are investigating an allegation by a 16-year-old girl that Michael Bransfield, former bishop of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, touched her inappropriately during a 2012 visit to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate ...
