DENVER (CO)
Rocky Mountain News
By Jean Torkelson, Rocky Mountain News
July 27, 2005
A Denver-based province of Catholic priests has agreed to continue child support for a 12-year-old boy fathered by one of its own.
"We want to do more than the letter of the law to provide for the needs of this boy," said the Rev. Thomas Picton, leader of the province of Redemptorist priests based in Denver. The province has jurisdiction over 31 states.
Since the mid-1990s, the Redemptorist Province has been quietly paying support for a son born of a consensual relationship between a man who is now a priest, the Rev. Arturo Uribe, and a woman he met in Oregon before he became a priest, according to a story in the Los Angeles Times.
However, it was only on Sunday, when the story broke, that Uribe's parish of more than 1,200 families in Whittier, Calif., learned of the situation.
Picton said the newspaper account of the child-support proceeding, held earlier this month in an Oregon court, was unexpected. Uribe, who had already left for a previously scheduled trip to his native Mexico, composed a statement that was read at Sunday's Masses.