The Rev. George Wilt, a retired Catholic priest accused of fondling a 13-year-old girl in 1961, had his ministry restricted in 2003 for reasons that the diocese says had nothing to do with child sexual abuse.

Diocesan officials would not give the reason. Their statement came as they engaged in a war of news releases with attorneys suing the diocese for an alleged conspiracy to protect priests who sexually abused minors.

Wilt, now 72, retired in May 2003 after 35 years at St. Bernard Church in Mt. Lebanon. He is accused of fondling the girl in the St. Bernard rectory seven years before he was assigned there.

On Tuesday, Wilt's attorney said that the diocesan lay review board had "fully exonerated" Wilt because there was no evidence that he had counseled anyone at St. Bernard in 1961.

Yesterday, Alan Perer, the attorney for Wilt's accuser, produced a May 26 letter from the Rev. Lawrence DiNardo, chief canon lawyer for the diocese, that he says contradicts claims that Wilt was cleared.

The letter said: "While the Review Board accepted your allegation of sexual abuse by a member of the clergy and deemed it credible, the Board was unable to make a convincing determination that Father Wilt was involved in this action. The records of his appointments as well as the sacramental records of the parish indicate that Father Wilt was not assigned to the parish at that time and did not perform any form of sacramental ministry at the parish during the time of the abuse."

"Given the findings, the Review Board recommended and Bishop [Donald] Wuerl has accepted its recommendation that Father Wilt function only in limited supervised ministry."

"This letter was sent to our client, and it does not indicate he was fully exonerated," Perer said.

Diocesan officials responded that Wilt's ministry had already been restricted for unrelated reasons. He is not allowed to live in a rectory, but can help out at parishes, DiNardo said. All DiNardo would say of the reason was that it was unrelated to sexual abuse of a minor.

"If that were the case, by our policies, procedures and past history, he would have had no ministry," DiNardo said.

"The one-strike-you're -out policy has been Bishop Wuerl's policy long before it was the policy of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops."

Diocesan officials would not say if Wilt's 2003 retirement, four years before canon law required it, was related to the restriction on his ministry.

Asked why he didn't tell Wilt's accuser that Wilt was already restricted, DiNardo said he was caught between a rock and a hard place because personnel matters are supposed to be confidential.

"It was an attempt to be somewhat transparent, yet not give out information that people don't have an entitlement to," he said.

The suit acknowledges that Wilt was at Sacred Heart in Shadyside in 1961, but diocesan officials were the ones who informed his accuser of that, said the Rev. Ronald Lengwin, spokesman for the diocese.

When she brought her accusation, he said, she assumed that Wilt was on the staff of St. Bernard in 1961. She then suggested that he might have been visiting St. Bernard to perform a wedding or some other sacrament, but the church registry indicated he had not done so, Lengwin said.

According to Perer, his client approached the diocese in March 2004 in response to a televised appeal he made for victims of clergy abuse to come forward.

The revelation of the May 26 letter came in a press release in which Perer asked for anyone with information about Wilt's presence at St. Bernard in 1961 to contact him.

Diocesan officials responded by accusing Perer of trying his case in the media. An editorial in yesterday's Pittsburgh Catholic accused him of trying to "embarrass the diocese into settling these cases out of court."

A diocesan news release last night called his conspiracy charges "absurd."

"All of this has been conducted with extortion-like demands for money and public relations events that appear to be attempts to unduly influence a potential jury pool," the statement said.