Abuse-case priest will not fight extradition to US

A Catholic priest charged with sexually assaulting a teenage parishioner in Minnesota has said he would willingly leave his native India and try to clear his name in the courts if the United States tried to extradite him.

The Rev Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul, 55, has never faced the criminal charges in the US. The bishop who oversees him has said he overruled a Vatican recommendation that Jeyapaul be removed from the priesthood and applied his own lesser punishment instead.