Post #101

Excerpt from The New York Times: New York priest defrocked for abusing a seminarian

by Paul Vitello

A once-influential Roman Catholic monsignor who oversaw fund-raising for the Archdiocese of New York, running the annual Alfred E. Smith political dinner during the tenure of Cardinal John J. O’Connor, has been removed from the priesthood after an eight-year church review of sexual abuse accusations against him, the archdiocese announced on Friday.

The monsignor, Charles M. Kavanagh, 73, has denied the charges, which were brought against him by a former student at the former Cathedral Preparatory Seminary in Manhattan. The monsignor contested an archdiocesan review board’s finding of guilt in 2003, then asked the Vatican to authorize a formal trial by a tribunal of priests from another diocese. When that body also found him guilty, he sought an appeal from a second tribunal.

Nineteen priests in the archdiocese have been discharged from the priesthood since 2002, when a sexual abuse scandal shook the church nationwide, but Monsignor Kavanagh is the only one who has pursued the full complement of appeals available to him. He is also one of the highest-ranking local priests to have been caught up in the accusations.

Daniel Donohue, 46, the former seminarian who accused Monsignor Kavanagh of making unwanted advances and touching him inappropriately in the 1980s, said, “I’m glad for the validation of my credibility.” But he criticized the slowness and opacity of the church’s judicial process. “For eight years, I never knew where the process was,” he said by phone from Portland, Ore., where he lives with his wife and four children. “I have classmates who are going through similar processes. I just hope it doesn’t take eight years for them, too.”

Mr. Donohue first took his accusations to the archdiocese and the Manhattan district attorney’s office in 2002. Within months, following initial investigations by both authorities, the archdiocese ordered the monsignor to halt his active ministry. Throughout the process of review, trial and appeal, the archdiocese released no information about the case except to confirm that it was continuing.

Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan, a successor to Cardinal O’Connor, said: “I would like to take this occasion to renew our apologies to all those who have been harmed by the sin and crime of sexual abuse, and in particular to apologize to the gentleman who was the victim in this case.”

Sources include
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/18/nyregion/18priest.html
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/v/paul_vitello/index.html
http://www.archny.org/news-events/news-press-releases/index.cfm?i=18597
http://www.cathedralprepseminary.com/
http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bdolan.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/30/nyregion/ex-seminarian-details-account-of-contact-with-monsignor.html