BROCKTON (MA)
The Enterprise
By Tim Grace, Enterprise staff writer
BROCKTON — A former Melrose priest who's been accused in a civil suit of raping a teenage girl during the 1970s, was formally stripped of his clerical authority Friday.
Robert D. Fay, a Stoughton native and currently a Brockton real estate broker, was among four priests the Boston Arch Diocese declared to be "no longer in the clerical state."
Fay, 62, Kelvin Iguabita, Bernard Lane and Robert Ward may no longer "function in any capacity as a priest, with the exception of offering absolution to the dying," church officials said in a statement distributed to the media.
Fay could not be reached for comment Friday but denied any wrongdoing when the suit was filed last year.
"It is a witch hunt," he said at the time. "I don't like the name 'witch hunt' but that's what it is."
Fay and the other three former priests have also been cut free of the church's purse strings.
Posted by kshaw at February 11, 2005 10:22 PM