Mercieca was a priest at Sacred Heart in 1966 and 1967, diocese records show. Foley was then 12 and 13 years old.

Mercieca later worked at seven parishes in Miami-Dade and Broward counties before retiring around 2003. Records indicate he is 69 years old. He has never before been publicly accused of sexual abuse.

Foley, 52, identified Mercieca as his abuser in an e-mail message sent from his attorneys to the Palm Beach County state attorney's office on Wednesday afternoon, according to a source familiar with the case. Prosecutors then notified the Archdiocese of Miami and the Diocese of Palm Beach on Thursday.

The church would not confirm Thursday that Foley identified Mercieca as the priest who molested him. The archdiocese is seeking permission from prosecutors before revealing the name.

''Once we have official confirmation of the name and permission from the state attorney, the archdiocese will inform the public immediately,'' said Mary Ross Agosta, a spokeswoman for the archdiocese.

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Foley resigned from Congress last month over revelations that he sent sexually explicit computer messages to several teenage boys working as congressional pages. Foley has since checked himself into a rehabilitation clinic for alcoholism.

An attorney for Foley had earlier said the ex-congressman was abused by a ''clergyman'' when he was 13 to 15 years old.

Mercieca was first identified Thursday by The Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Mercieca told the newspaper he went skinny-dipping with Foley, and had massaged Foley while the boy was nude. The priest also suggested there may have been a more intimate encounter one night while he was taking tranquilizers.

On Thursday, in interviews with The Associated Press and other news organizations, Mercieca appeared to back away from the earlier comments, describing their relationship as something closer to ``brothers.''

Mercieca said he and Foley went on overnight trips together to New York and Washington, D.C., and remembered being a dinner guest of Foley's parents.

Mercieca did admit to ''just fondling'' Foley in an interview with WPTV of West Palm Beach.

''Once, maybe, I touched him or so,'' Mercieca told the television station. ``It's not something you call, I mean, rape or penetration.''

NOTHING SUGGESTIVE

Another altar boy from that era, Jon Ombres, said that Foley and Mercieca had a special bond -- but nothing suggesting sexual abuse.

''It completely blew me over,'' Ombres told The Miami Herald. Mercieca ``was a guy I talked about for years as one of the good guys.''

Ombres, 52, said he and Foley were close friends when both were in eighth grade, and they often spent time together with Mercieca. The boys learned how to drive Mercieca's VW bug.

'He wanted us to call him Tony because he was embarrassed about the attention he would get if we called him `Father, Father,' '' Ombres said.

Mercieca remained in South Florida for more than 30 years after leaving Lake Worth's Sacred Heart. According to diocese records, he worked at St. Clare in North Palm Beach; San Isidro, St. Coleman and St. Henry in Pompano Beach; Sacred Heart in Homestead; St. James in North Miami; and St. Ambrose in Deerfield Beach.

In 1994, Mercieca moved to Blessed Trinity Catholic Church in Virginia Gardens, where he worked for about 10 years.

Pio Tei, former principal at Blessed Trinity's school, said he was ''totally stunned'' to learn Thursday that the shy priest he knew played a role in the Foley scandal.

''I never received any complaints about him,'' Tei told The Miami Herald Thursday. ``He was a very shy, very reserved priest who had little contact with the children, except at Mass, where he would be at the altar and the kids would be in the pews.

''He would come to school staff meetings and sit in the back,'' recalled Tei, who retired in 2003. ``His attitude was that he was there because he had to be, because his boss wanted him to be there.''

NO CRIMINAL CASE

Though Foley has named his accuser for prosecutors, he has not filed a formal criminal complaint. At the moment, Palm Beach prosecutors are not planning to pursue a criminal case.

''If the victim doesn't want to pursue the case, that ends it,'' said Mike Edmondson, a spokesman for the Palm Beach state attorney's office.

Even if Foley did press charges, prosecutors would likely be stymied by state statute of limitations laws in effect in the late 1960s.

Since 1947, Florida legislators have ensured that the statute of limitations -- the amount of time allowed to pass between the crime and the prosecution -- does not expire on sexual assault cases involving children younger than 12.

If the victim is 12 or older, but younger than 18, the statute of limitations is generally four years.

Foley's lawyers first said he was 13 to 15 years old at the time of the alleged abuse.

Before the 1970s, Florida law provided for only prosecutions of defendants implicated in sexual assaults of minor girls -- not boys. The law was later changed to include cases involving underage male victims.

Miami Herald staff writers Luisa Yanez and Jennifer Mooney Piedra and researcher Monika Z. Leal contributed to this report.