John Schmitz
Ordained: 1957
John Schmitz arrived in the Diocese of San Bernardino in 1983 following treatment with the Servants of the Paraclete. He was sent to the Paracletes in 1982 after it became known that he was having a relationship with an adult woman. After a brief stint at Our Lady of the Rosary Cathedral in San Bernardino, CA, Schmitz returned to Iowa in 1985. He died in 1991. In 2005, a woman filed a lawsuit alleging that Schmitz raped her in Dubuque, IA, when she was 12 years old in 1959. This lawsuit alleged that the woman’s family complained to the diocese at the time of the assault. Another woman had made similar allegations in a lawsuit filed in 2004.
