BOSTON (MA)
TheBostonChannel.com
POSTED: 4:24 pm EDT June 9, 2005
UPDATED: 4:47 pm EDT June 9, 2005
BOSTON -- The Vatican has defrocked six priests from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston who were accused of sexually abusing children, the archdiocese announced Thursday.
The defrocked men are John Connell, Denis Conte, Peter Frost, John Hanlon, Richard Matte and Paul David White.
The men may no longer act as priests, except to offer absolution to the dying. They are no longer part of the archdiocese, and are cut off from any financial support from the archdiocese, the archdiocese said in a statement.
Connell was accused in a civil lawsuit of molesting a 12-year-old boy while spending a week with him in Sarasota, Fla., hotel during the mid-1970s. In 1994, the archdiocese removed him as chaplain at St. John's Preparatory School in Danvers after he was accused of sexual misconduct.
The archdiocese removed Conte from ministry in 1994 after a lawyer representing a 26-year-old man alleged Conte had sexually abused him between 1979 and 1982, when the man was 11 or 12.
Posted by kshaw at June 9, 2005 04:49 PM