August 13, 2005

Monsignor & Missus lying low

NEW YORK
New York Daily News

By BARBARA ROSS
and CORKY SIEMASZKO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

The beauty and the Priest went underground yesterday and tried to ride out the storm over their alleged affair.

Accused adulteress Laura DeFilippo was at her dad's pad in the Bronx. And a day after he resigned as rector of St. Patrick's Cathedral, her alleged lover, Msgr. Eugene Clark, was lying low in the parish rectory.

"He's not available," the receptionist said.

The Archdiocese of New York drew a veil over the priest and his reputed paramour, who deny any affair even though they were videotaped checking into a Hamptons motel.

Spokesman Joseph Zwilling would not answer how long the 79-year-old priest would be allowed to live at the Madison Ave. rectory. Nor would he elaborate on the church probe of the alleged affair.

"I said yesterday that we're going to get to the bottom of this and I'm not commenting beyond that," Zwilling said.

As for whether DeFilippo, a 46-year-old mother of two, would be allowed to keep her job as Clark's secretary, Zwilling said, "I don't comment on the status of the lay employees in the 413 parishes of the archdiocese."

Posted by kshaw at August 13, 2005 07:26 AM