May 14, 2005

Former pastor on leave amid sex allegation

TYLER (TX)
News-Journal

By JIMMY ISAAC

Saturday, May 14, 2005

A former St. Matthew's Catholic Church pastor has been placed on administrative leave as church leaders investigate eight-year old allegations of sexual impropriety, the Diocese of Tyler announced Friday.

In 2002, Monsignor John Flynn retired from St. Matthew's in Longview, at the request of Bishop Alvaro Corrado of the Tyler Diocese, following allegations from a San Antonio woman made in October 1997.

Flynn has most recently provided ongoing ministry to the community of Holy Spirit Church at Holly Lake in Wood County.

"Monsignor Flynn is to refrain from all priestly ministry and has no faculties from the diocese," said a statement released by Corrada.

"There is nothing to suggest that there are any recent victims, or any victims in the diocese."

Flynn stepped down as pastor of St. Matthew's Church in San Antonio in 1997 after an unidentified woman accused him of unspecified sexual misconduct with her more than 20 years before. Reports in the San Antonio Express-News describe the woman alternately as an adolescent or teenager at the time of the original misconduct. Flynn spent several months under evaluation at a treatment center in Maryland after he left the San Antonio church.

Posted by kshaw at May 14, 2005 08:49 AM