ARIZONA
East Valley Tribune
By Lawn Griffiths, Tribune
May 6, 2006
A co-founder, president and CEO of a Mesa-based international Catholic youth organization resigned Friday, effective May 15.
Phil Baniewicz helped establish the Life Teen program in 1985 at St. Timothy Catholic Community in Mesa.
Under his leadership, the program expanded to almost 950 parishes in 20 countries, involving about 120,000 teens.
Baniewicz did not indicate future plans. “I feel God is leading me and my family to something different after two decades of youth ministry,” he wrote in a news release.
Baniewicz and the Rev. Dale Fushek, also a Life Teen cofounder, remain defendants in a civil lawsuit alleging they and another priest sexually abused a teenager in 1985.