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	Archdiocese to Investigate Foley Priest By Daniela Deane Washington Post [Florida] October 20, 2006 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/20/AR2006102000545_pf.html The Archdiocese of Miami announced Friday it is opening an investigation into the conduct of a retired priest who has admitted fondling former Congressman Mark Foley as a boy in Florida, calling the alleged abuse "morally reprehensible, canonically criminal and inexcusable." The archdiocese issued a statement apologizing to Foley "for the hurt he has experienced" and said the investigation could result in Church sanctions against the 69-year-old priest, who is now retired and living on the Mediterranean island of Gozo off Malta. The announcement came one day after the Gozo diocese said it too had opened an investigation into the conduct of the Rev. Anthony Mercieca. The Miami archbishop has withdrawn the priest's faculties, the statement from the Miami church said. In interviews with several media outlets over the past two days, Mercieca said he had intimate contact with Foley when he was assigned to the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Lake Worth, Fla. in the mid-1960s. The 52-year-old Foley, a Florida Republican, who would have been 12 or 13 years old at the time, served as an altar boy at the church. Mercieca worked as a priest in the Miami area from the mid-1960s until he retired in 2002. Foley recently resigned from Congress after reports surfaced about sexually intimate electronic messages he had sent to teenage congressional pages. After his resignation, Foley entered alcohol rehabilitation, said he was gay and alleged that he had been sexually abused by a member of the clergy as a youth. "The Archdiocese of Miami is distressed by the revelations disclosed by Father Mercieca regarding former Rep. Mark Foley," the statement said. "The events described are totally contrary to the ministry of a priest." The statement said the archdiocese had not received any other allegations of abuse involving the priest. It asked anyone "who has been a victim of inappropriate behavior or abuse by Father Mercieca to please notify us." Mercieca told the Washington Post Thursday that he was surprised that his four decades-old interaction with Foley had become linked to the scandal that erupted last month and cost the congressman his job. A statement issued late Thursday from the diocese of Gozo, a small island dotted with vacation villas and second homes south of Italy, said that its bishop, Mario Grech, contacted the Archdiocese of Miami seeking further information about the case. It said the diocese had only just learned of the case from the international media. "In light of all this . . . Bishop Grech will instruct the Response Team to investigate these allegations, according to the policies established by the Maltese Ecclesiastical Province with regards to cases of sexual abuse in pastoral activity," the statement said. "Grech will pass all information he receives pertaining to this case to the response team as he has done in similar cases." "Bishop Grech, conscious of the gravity of pedophilia, reiterates that he will cooperate with those responsible for investigating such cases so that justice is done to the victims, the perpetrators reformed and the common good is safeguarded," it said. In the various interviews, Mercieca admitted fondling Foley, going skinny dipping with him and massaging him in the nude, but denied the two ever engaged in sexual intercourse. Church officials had encouraged Foley to name the priest who allegedly abused him, and Foley turned that information over to law enforcement authorities yesterday. The Archdiocese of Miami said Friday Mercieca had been identified by the Palm Beach State Attorney's office as Foley's alleged abuser. Mercieca told The Washington Post that issues such as molestation and sexual harassment are "in the eye of the beholder" and that Foley might have interpreted some of their contact in the "wrong way." Mercieca said he could not explain why Foley might be attributing his broader problems to their contact. "We had some kind of friendship. I was very friendly with him and his family," Mercieca said. "Then almost 40 years passed without him saying anything... And now because he got caught, he recited these things."
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