by Hilary White
BRIDGEPORT, May 19, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Church officials in the Diocese of Bridgeport, Connecticut told The Associated Press (AP) on Wednesday that one of the diocese’ priests is leaving his parish and ministry amid financial and homosexual scandals. Bridgeport Bishop William E. Lori said he “requested and received” the resignation of the Rev. Michael Jude Fay of St. John Roman Catholic Church.
Bishop Lori told AP that Fay’s “personal suitability for priestly ministry” was being investigated. “A thorough and fair independent investigation of the financial stewardship of St. John Parish by an external auditor will be completed, under the direction of outside counsel.”
In 2002, Fr. Fay was the only priest appointed by Bishop Lori to the diocese’ 11-member Sexual Misconduct Review Board. Bishop Lori wrote at the inception of the board that its “critical” function would be to “ensure constant vigilance and appropriate outreach to victims.”
The board, said Lori, “are ‘looking over my shoulder’ and assisting me in my commitment to act swiftly, decisively, and fairly to allegations of sexual misconduct.”
A private investigator said that he had uncovered evidence that Fay had spent as much as $200,000 on a “lavish lifestyle” with another man including limousine rides, dinners at famous restaurants, cruises and jewellery. The diocese did not mention whether Fr. Fay would also be immediately relieved of his position on the Sexual Misconduct Review Board.
Domenico Bettinelli, editor of Catholic World News noted that the Associated Press seemed singularly uninterested in the fact that Fay was likely engaged in an ongoing homosexual relationship in violation of Church law, and of the fact that homosexual priests are overwhelmingly numerically responsible for the sex abuse scandals.
The John Jay Report, compiled at the request of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, said that 80.9 percent of the sex abuse allegations against US priests involved homosexuals preying on young men and adolescent boys.Â
Last year, Bishop Lori was among the US bishops publicly to distance themselves from a Vatican document calling for an end to allowing openly “gay” men into the priesthood and seminaries. The document, said Lori, “is not, as some have concluded, a response to the sexual abuse crisis in the United States,” although the text of the document clearly stated that its proscriptions are “made more urgent by the current situation.”
Lori was one of four US bishops named by the Vatican in 2002, as part of its joint US-Vatican sexual abuse commission.
In March LifeSiteNews interviewed Dr. David Pence, a faithful Catholic layman who has formed an organization to try to clear up a similar situation in the archdiocese of St. Paul – Minneapolis.
Pence told LifeSiteNews.com in an interview that it is common practice in dioceses where priests are found to be sexual abusers to place those abusive priests in administrative positions so as to ‘keep them out of harms way’. However, says Pence, those positions are often the judicial positions which would deal with priestly sexual abuse.
See related story
New Society of Faithful Catholics Forms to Confront Priestly Sexual Abuse
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/mar/06031311.html