BALTIMORE (MD)
Baltimore Sun
By Brian Witte
The Associated Press
Originally published December 22, 2004, 4:16 PM EST
Pope John Paul II has defrocked a priest accused of sexually abusing a parishioner who shot the Baltimore cleric years later as publicity mounted over the child abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church, The Associated Press has learned.
The pope decided in October to dismiss Maurice Blackwell "from the clerical state," and the Archdiocese of Baltimore received the official documents earlier this month from the Vatican, archdiocese spokesman Sean Caine said today.
Blackwell, 58, is scheduled to go on trial Jan. 3 on four counts of child sexual abuse against Dontee Stokes. The alleged abuse began in 1989 and ended in 1992 -- a decade before the Baltimore barber shot Blackwell in front of the priest's home. Blackwell has denied sexually abusing Stokes, who was a teenager at the time.
Blackwell's trial has been postponed five times, and the archdiocese received word from Rome just before one of his previously scheduled trial dates. Caine said the archdiocese decided then not to make a public statement about Blackwell's defrocking out of consideration for how it could affect potential jurors.