The Rev. Joseph Weitensteiner, the former director of the Morning Star Boys’ Ranch, has been reinstated as an active priest after the last sex abuse claims against him were rejected by a retired federal judge hired to rule on the credibility of the cases.

Referred to as Father Joe by a Catholic community that admired his decades of work with troubled boys, Weitensteiner, now 82, has never wavered in his insistence that he didn’t molest boys entrusted to his care at the ranch southeast of Spokane.

But faced with a growing number of people who said they were sexually or physically abused by Weitensteiner or his staff at the boys’ ranch, former Spokane Bishop William Skylstad removed him from ministry in 2006.

The Morning Star allegations were made in 19 lawsuits that paralleled the bankruptcy of the Spokane Catholic Diocese. The Diocese case included more than two dozen clergy, 180 potential victims and ultimately cost more than $50 million to resolve.
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