A former East Bay priest with a long record of sexually abusing children remained in the clergy for years while then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, bucked pleas from the Oakland Diocese to defrock him in the 1980s, according to an Associated Press report citing church documents.

A 1985 letter signed by Ratzinger delayed a decision on the Rev. Stephen Kiesle, citing concerns for “the good of the Universal Church.”

The correspondence, obtained by the AP, is the strongest challenge yet to the Vatican’s insistence that Pope Benedict played no role in blocking the removal of pedophile priests during his years as head of the Catholic Church’s doctrinal watchdog.

The news comes as the Vatican said Friday that Pope Benedict XVI would meet with more abuse victims and that transparency in dealing with abuse allegations is an “urgent requirement” for the church — a sharp turnabout in Rome’s previously defensive response.

On Monday, it also will post on its Web site a guide for the layman on how the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith handles sex abuse allegations.

In the letter, Ratzinger directed Oakland Bishop John Cummins to provide Kiesle “as much paternal care as possible” while awaiting the Vatican ruling, according to a translation of the letter from Latin. That was a way of saying the bishop was responsible for ensuring Kiesle didn’t reoffend, Vatican attorney Jeffrey Lena said.

Lena said there were no known cases of abuse by Kiesle between 1981, when the diocese first recommended he be defrocked, or laicized, and 1987, when Kiesle was removed from the priesthood.

The letter came five years after Kiesle himself requested removal from the priesthood, and the diocese recommended it to the Vatican, following Kiesle’s no-contest plea in 1978 on a misdemeanor charge for tying up and molesting two preteen boys in the rectory of Our Lady of the Rosary Church in Union City.

He was born in Indianapolis but at an early age moved to San Jose, where he attended Sacred Heart Church. He was 13 when he entered St. Joseph’s Seminary in Mountain View, where he was the youngest student. He was one of three 1972 graduates to be ordained in the Oakland Diocese.

Kiesle, now 63 and recently released from prison, lives in the Rossmoor senior community in Walnut Creek and wears a Global Positioning System anklet. He is on parole for a different sex crime against a child.

Numerous accusers have said he abused them as children at Our Lady of the Rosary, Santa Paula (now Our Lady of Guadalupe) in Fremont and Saint Joseph in Pinole, where he served in the mid-1970s, then returned in 1985 to volunteer as a youth minister.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, declined to address the 1985 letter other than to confirm Ratzinger’s signature. “The press office doesn’t believe it is necessary to respond to every single document taken out of context regarding particular legal situations,” he said.

In the letter, Ratzinger says the arguments for removing Kiesle are of “grave significance” but adds that such actions require careful review and more time. Any decision to defrock Kiesle must take into account the “good of the Universal Church” and the “detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke within the community of Christ’s faithful, particularly considering the young age of the petitioner.” Kiesle was 38 at the time.

In his earliest letter to Ratzinger, Cummins warned that returning Kiesle to ministry would cause more of a scandal than stripping him of his priestly powers.

“It is my conviction that there would be no scandal if this petition were granted and that as a matter of fact, given the nature of the case, there might be greater scandal to the community if Father Kiesle were allowed to return to the active ministry,” Cummins wrote in 1982.

California church officials wrote to Ratzinger at least three times to check on the status of Kiesle’s case. At one point, a Vatican official wrote to say the file might have been lost and suggested resubmitting materials. Diocese officials considered writing Ratzinger again after they received his 1985 response to impress upon him that leaving Kiesle in the ministry would harm the church, the Rev. George Mockel wrote in a memo to the Oakland bishop.

“My own reading of this letter is that basically they are going to sit on it until Steve gets quite a bit older,” the memo said. “Despite his young age, the particular and unique circumstances of this case would seem to make it a greater scandal if he were not laicized.”

Mike Brown, spokesman for the Oakland Diocese, said Kiesle was removed from the active ministry in 1978 when the allegations arose from Our Lady of the Rosary. He ultimately was defrocked in February 1987, but for more than a year continued working with children at the Pinole church, according to a complaint letter written in May 1988 by Maurine Behrend, who worked in the diocese’s Office of Youth Ministry.

The Associated Press, staff writer Roman Gokhman and Bay Area News Group correspondent Rob Dennis contributed to this report.