Background on the letter, which you can read by clicking below:

The Toledo Catholic Diocese is trying hard to contain the damage done to its image by the latest scandal involving one of its young and charismatic priests,
Father David Nuss, who had an affair with a woman, reportedly after performing her husband's funeral. After Father Nuss reported this "inappropriate relationship" to Bishop Leonard Blair, the bishop went ahead and appointed Fr. Nuss to the position of pastor of St. Rose Parish, an 8,100-member church in the Toledo suburb of Perrysburg that had already been in the headlines because of the controversy involving the Rev. Thomas Leyland (brother of Detroit Tigers manager Jim Leyland). Fr. Leyland wanted to stay on at St. Rose but said the bishop was forcing him into retirement because the priest had publicly criticized the bishop.
So things were already heated up at the parish before the Fr. Nuss affair, no pun intended, made the news. Bishop Blair then sent this letter to his priests, subtly blaming the Fr. Nuss controversy on Fr. Leyland, implying that he leaked the information in a futile attempt to keep his job at St. Rose. Bishop Blair said the priest committed the "sin of detraction."
This is all so sad and so misleading. Fr. Leyland has done nothing wrong! He spoke up for what he believed in, feels he was unjustly punished, and then filed an appeal with the Vatican. But he had nothing to do with the Fr. Nuss affair getting to the media. I knew about this in May but was waiting to speak to the woman with whom the priest had the affair before reporting on it. That never happened. But the woman's friend wrote a letter to the bishop and to SNAP and SNAP then gave a copy of the letter to St. Rose parishioners to alert them so they were aware of the allegations against Fr. Nuss. They then asked the bishop, politely, during their meeting July 2 and the bishop "played dumb" about the allegations, as if he never heard them before.
What a tangled web we weave. Later, the diocese said the bishop could not acknowledge that he was aware of Fr. Nuss' "relationship" because of the seal of confession. Several experts in canon law have since told me that it is a violation of canon law for a bishop to hear confession of a priest, because it would violate their employer-employee relationship. And anther person said the bishop cannot cover something with the seal of confession "retroactively," i.e., he could not claim after the fact that it was a confession, if it were not told to him in that circumstances. And finally, if it were told in confession, it's puzzling that the diocese's publicist would sent out a press release about Fr. Nuss' affair last month to "get the truth out there."
All this is just another sordid mess that has turned some people away from church -- I know that because they have told me so.
Below this is a copy of the bishop's letter in question, written to the diocese's priests regarding Fr. Nuss and the implication that Fr. Leyland committed the "sin of detraction."

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Sylvania, Ohio
August 4, 2007