The Catholic priest accused in a lawsuit of abusing two girls in Minnesota five years ago said Tuesday he was innocent and prepared to return to the United States to face any charges, according to media reports.
"It is a lie -- it is totally a lie," the Rev. Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul told CNN. He told The New York Times on that was unaware of a criminal case against him until he was contacted Monday by reporters.
Jeyapal, who served in the Catholic Diocese of Crookston, Minn., in 2004 and 2005, was back in his native India in 2007 when he was charged in absentia with sexually assaulting a teenage girl in Minnoseta, the Associated Press reports.
On Monday, the AP reported that Jeyapaul had no intention of returning to the United States to answer the charges. His bishop said Jeyapaul handles paperwork for schools in the diocese office and does not work with children.
"We cannot simply throw out the priest, so he is just staying in the bishop's house, and he is helping me with the appointment of teachers," said the Rev. A. Almaraj, bishop of the Diocese of Ootacamund in southern India. "He says he is innocent, and these are only allegations. ... I don't know what else to do."
The Vatican said that officials there thought Jeyapaul should be removed from the priesthood and that they cooperated with efforts to extradite him to the U.S. — even providing authorities with his exact location in India.
But they said the bishop in India refused to remove him and instead sentenced the priest to a year in a monastery after holding his own church trial.