In February , however, his church became enmeshed in controversy when Bishop Fulton Sheen announced the diocese would donate the parish property for use as low-income housing.
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Parishioners howled in protest and priests mounted a rare open challenge to their bishop. Vogt left the church in and ended his career at St.
He retired in This accusation was not publicly announced at the time, and it is not known what action, if any, the diocese took in He, too, said Vogt had abused him some 30 years earlier when at St. Finally, in August of that year, diocesan officials acknowledged to a Democrat and Chronicle reporter that the and May allegations against Vogt were credible. One of them said many other boys — perhaps as many as — had fallen victim to Vogt at the northeast Rochester church and school.
Vogt was then 90 years old, in poor health and with faulty memory, and diocesan officials said he could neither confirm the accusations nor debunk them. Friends and former parishioners had no such problem; several wrote letters to the editor defending Vogt as a virtuous man. Joseph Vogt, was then pastor. In fact, they rented a home from the brothers, and later purchased it. In , the court papers allege, the plaintiff was five years old when Francis Vogt, who was pastor at St.
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They accused the late priest of engaging sexual misconduct with a year-old altar boy in , at times during outings to a swimming pool; with another year-old boy in , and with a third boy over a four-year period beginning in That boy was eight years old when Vobt first abused him, his lawsuit said. Another lawsuit filed on Aug. Anne in Palmyra. Ronald Frederick, a Rochester native who was ordained in , was assigned over a period of 25 years to nine churches or parishes in the Rochester diocese. In , during his assignment in Cayuga County, Frederick fell ill and went on medical leave.
He died in without returning to active service. But in , a young man had filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court that accused Frederick of sexually abusing him.
It also accused the diocese of negligently hiring Frederick without investigating whether he had "a propensity to engage in unlawful sexual contact with young boys or possessed other similar proclivities. The lawsuit alleged that the plaintiff and his grandmother traveled with Frederick to Niagara Falls in February The legal complaint did not say how the family knew Frederick, who was assigned to St. Mary Church in Canandaigua at the time. Frederick allegedly "induced plaintiff to sleep in the same bed with him, during the course of which Frederick sexually abused plaintiff.
It is not known how the diocese reacted. Frederick died not long after the lawsuit was resolved. In May , the Democrat and Chronicle pressed Bishop Matthew Clark to explain why several priests who had been accused of sexually abusing minors were still wearing clerical collars. It was a time of controversy, just months after the Boston Globe had scandalized the nation by exposing a church cover-up of pedophile priests. Clark, noting the "swirl of publicity," responded by placing three priests from their parish churches and placing them on leave.
All that has been reported publicly is that he was accused of abusing one or more teenage boys between and Simon was assigned to four churches in three counties during that time period. Some reports said those complainants came forward again in The diocese made a show of turning over its records of abuse by Simon and the other two priests, though no action was taken because the statute of limitations had run out. Clark also apologized profusely in May , saying it had never occurred to him to review the files that would have disclosed accusations against Simon and the other two priests.
The accusations had arisen before Clark replaced Joseph L. Clark also said it would have been "offensive, in my mind, to review the work of my predecessor without cause. Simon was removed from the ministry in but remains an ordained priest. He was instructed to lead a life of prayer and penance.
Accused anew: Lawyer calls on Catholic church to release 'secret' records. Hogan retired in , having spent most of his career in small-town churches like those in Interlaken, Waverly and Marion. The accusation came when a local woman and her lawyer stood on the steps of Sacred Heart Cathedral, the same church where Hogan had begun his pastoral career so many decades earlier.
The woman said that Hogan had sexually assaulted and abused her in and , when he was pastor of St. Gregory Church in Marion, Wayne County. She was 15 to 16 years old at the time. William D. Lum, who grew up in Rochester, was ordained in He was an activist for peace in the early s and was engaged in the community on many topics over the years.
But in April he was led in handcuffs into a courtroom, charged with sexually abusing a year-old boy while the priest served at Our Lady of Mercy Church in Greece. The boy said Lum had forced him to engage in sexual acts. His parishioners in Greece said they were shocked, and they defended him as a good priest. Many said people were judging him prematurely. He was given a conditional discharge, meaning the charge would removed from his record if he got in no further legal trouble.
The victim, later identified as Paul Hearty, filed suit against Lum and the diocese. Because the case was filed in state Supreme Court in Onondaga County, it proceeded without being noticed in Rochester. For that reason, Lum disappeared from the public eye. It later emerged he had gone to Canada for a time, and then served as a judge on a diocesan tribunal that makes decisions regarding marriages, annulments and remarriages. Suddenly, in early , Lum was back in the public eye.
First, an appeals court ruling on the civil case drew attention to the allegations against him. Amid that climate, diocesan officials decided to dismiss Lum from his post on the tribunal. In a disturbing footnote, Hearty was arrested in for possession of child pornography and again in for the same offense. A native of Auburn, Gormley was ordained there in He cycled through churches in Rochester, Corning, Watkins Glen, and two Wayne County communities over the next eight years. In he was assigned to a secular mission in Schuyler County when he left the post for a leave of absence.
He remained a priest for two more years but did not serve in a church. In , Gormley gave up the priesthood and married. He lived in the Elmira area, worked in business and taught in schools and as an adjunct professor at Elmira College.
Rev. John Joseph Steger
But in , Gormley and one of his victims had a chance encounter on a rural road in Texas, 1, miles from Elmira. And in June , amid a nationwide flurry of recrimination over sexual abuse by priests, Hayes took his story to the Elmira Star-Gazette. The stories laid out that Hayes, an altar boy who grew up to be assistant district attorney in Schuyler County, was sexually abused at least twice by Gormley, who was a family friend.
Hayes told Kingsley he had been haunted his entire life by the abuse he endured. The settlement didn't assuage him. In , Hayes still blamed Gormley for the abuse and also blamed the church hierarchy, which he said had shown "callous indifference" to the plight of abuse victims. Higher-ups told him to pray over it and allowed him to be ordained a priest.
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Gormley further confessed that he engaged in sexual abuse of minors at his first posting, Holy Redeemer Church in Rochester. Realizing he was troubled, the diocese transferred Gormley from Rochester to Corning, where he voluntarily underwent psychiatric counselling to control his impulses. Gormley finally walked away from the priesthood in , and was married not long after. His wife encouraged him to enter in-patient treatment for his sexual compulsion, which he said he'd finally been able to control.
The diocese has not released any public accounting of Gormley's admitted sexual abuse of minors while posted in Rochester. Mary on the Lake in Watkins Glen. The letter enraged the plaintiff, who had never told his family of his victimization, according to the lawsuit. Over the course of 45 years, the Rev. Robert Gaudio was assigned to eight churches in Monroe and Wayne counties. He was pastor at three of them, including St. Christopher in Chili, where he began in His stay there ended abruptly in February when he was pulled from St. Parishioners at St. The abusive acts allegedly occurred while Gaudio was assigned to St.
Andrew Church in northeast Rochester. Gaudio vehemently denied the accusation, according to a statement released by the diocese. Then it progressed. I felt it was wrong. I finally resisted him, which was hard to do.