By Kathleen Chapman and Michael C. Bender
Palm Beach Post
October 20, 2006
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/pbccentral/content/local_news/epaper/2006/10/20/m1a_FOLEY_MAIN_1020.html
West Palm Beach — The secret that Mark Foley kept for four decades was finally exposed when a priest admitted he went skinny-dipping and sat naked in a sauna with the future congressman.
The Rev. Anthony Mercieca was a priest at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Lake Worth in 1966 and 1967, when Foley was a teenager. Mercieca now lives on Gozo, a Maltese island off the coast of Italy.
A source told The Palm Beach Post on Thursday that Mercieca's name was the one given to the Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office on Wednesday.
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| Mark Foley |
Also Wednesday, Mercieca told The Sarasota Herald-Tribune that he loved Foley like a brother and took the former altar boy for overnight trips and skinny-dips in secluded lakes. He said he massaged Foley in the nude and said that one night, he might have gone too far.
Mercieca backed away from some of his statements Thursday, acknowledging to The Associated Press that he was naked with Foley but saying their relationship was not sexual.
The Archdiocese of Miami released a statement late Thursday saying a church attorney had received a priest's name, but the archdiocese did not confirm it was Mercieca's. The statement said church officials will speak publicly as soon as they get clearance from the Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office, and they encourage other possible victims of the accused priest to come forward.
Foley's civil attorney, Gerald Richman, said he has spoken to Foley only once in the time he has represented him and does not know his reaction to Mercieca's story. Foley has been sequestered in a treatment program since shortly after it was revealed that he sent sexual Internet messages to teenage former congressional pages.
Very few people have spoken with Foley, Richman said.
After Foley's messages were made public, some said privately they thought he might be fabricating the story about being abused by a priest as a way to gain sympathy. But the priest's comments show Foley's story was not a fantasy, Richman said.
"The whole point of it is that it is not made up out of whole cloth. It is a fact," he said. "It is very tragic that it happened, but he is not using it as an excuse."
Jon Ombres of West Palm Beach, an altar boy with Foley at Sacred Heart, said Mercieca was a fun-loving young priest who would take them out for movies at the Carefree Theater in West Palm Beach and another cinema. He remembers Mercieca as tall and thin, with tanned Brazilian skin and crew-cut dark hair.
Mercieca let the boys see movies that were more grown-up, Ombres said. On their outings, the priest asked the boys to call him "Tony" instead of "Father." Ombres said that when he was in sixth and seventh grade, he sometimes felt left out because he was not invited on trips Mercieca would take only with Foley.
Ombres looked up to Mercieca, taking Antonio as his confirmation name in the priest's honor, and said he never suspected anything inappropriate.
"He was special to me. I thought he was a great guy," Ombres said.
Ombres said he actually suspected a different priest of having an inappropriate relationship with Foley.
When he and Foley were in eighth grade at Sacred Heart, Ombres said, another older priest touched Ombres on the leg, then moved up to his thigh and started trying to unzip his fly. Foley was in the room but didn't see what was happening because he was reading a newspaper on the floor, Ombres said.
Upset by what happened, Ombres said he jumped up, said he had to go and took off on his bicycle. Foley came after him and asked what was wrong. Ombres said he told him but that Foley didn't react much.
The next weekend, Ombres went by the priest's apartment and noticed Foley's bike outside. He thought it was odd that Foley would continue to see the priest after what happened. They didn't talk much after that and eventually grew apart, Ombres said.
Ombres said his mother told him to bury what happened with the older priest. "Just get down right off of that," was her expression, he said. He didn't bring it up again.
That priest has since died, Ombres said.
He said he is sorry that Foley also felt he had to keep his abuse a secret.
"I would have hated for anyone to carry that for so long," Ombres said.
Mercieca reportedly also worked at three Broward County churches: St. Henry in Pompano Beach from 1987 to 1993, St. Coleman in Pompano Beach from 1970 to 1973 and St. Ambrose in Deerfield Beach from 1985 to 1987.
At St. Henry, a small complex tucked into an industrial neighborhood near Interstate 95, Louise DiPretroro, the church's bookkeeper, said she had been instructed to refer inquiries about Mercieca to the Archdiocese of Miami.
St. Coleman, on North Federal Highway, is a much larger complex than St. Henry and includes a school with more than 600 students. The Rev. Thomas Foudy, the current pastor, said he arrived after Mercieca left.
He said the parish has had a lot of turnover among its congregants and that anyone who worked at the church more than three decades ago would be retired or dead.
"I never heard any negative remarks on Father Mercieca - rumors or complaints or anything of the sort," he said.
At St. Ambrose, a few miles north on Federal Highway, a large tent held dozens of pumpkins for a Halloween sale. A clerk said no one who would have known Mercieca still works there.
It is not clear whether the priest's story will soften public opinion on Foley.
Bill Brooks, a Palm Beach councilman who was Foley's guidance counselor in his freshman year at Cardinal Newman High, said he hates to see bad things happen to anyone. But the revelation doesn't change his feelings.
"Mark's own words are that he is not using it as an excuse," Brooks said.
Samuel Popkin, a University of California, San Diego, political science professor and an expert in voting behavior, said the admission from the priest will not likely gain the former Republican congressman much public sympathy.
"This is the party that says, 'We don't take sociology as an excuse for bad behavior,' " Popkin said. "So he was abused by a priest. I don't think many people are going to blame that for his sexual orientation or use it to excuse him for what he did with other children."
Thursday's news "doesn't change how he behaved toward pages or the fact that he had to resign in disgrace," National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Alex Burgos said.
• Ex-House clerk testifies in coverup probe, 16A
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