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	Archdiocese of Miami Names Foley Priest, Bars Him from Practicing By Brian Skoloff The Florida Times-Union October 20, 2006 http://www.jacksonville.com/apnews/stories/102006/D8KSFUB81.shtml West Palm Beach, Fla. - The Archdiocese of Miami said Friday it has barred the Rev. Anthony Mercieca from all church work as it investigates a claim by former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley that the clergyman abused him as a teenager. Mercieca is now retired in Malta and a diocese there has opened an investigation after he said this week he fondled Foley when the Florida Republican was a boy. "The Archdiocese of Miami is distressed by the revelations disclosed by Father Mercieca regarding former Representative Mark Foley. Such behavior is morally reprehensible, canonically criminal and inexcusable. The events described are totally contrary to the ministry of a priest," the statement read. The church also said there have been no other allegations of abuse against Mercieca reported to the Archdiocese of Miami. "An apology is due to Mr. Foley for the hurt he has experienced," the statement read. "While it was long in coming, with God's merciful grace this painful revelation can be the beginning of reconciliation and an instrument of redemption and healing for Mr. Foley." The archdiocese also urged any other potential victims to come forward. The archdiocese did not immediately respond to several telephone calls seeking further comment. In interviews in the past two days, Mercieca, 69, who lives on the Maltese island of Gozo, has given different details about his encounters with Foley four decades ago. On Wednesday, he told the Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune by telephone that he massaged the boy in the nude, was naked in the same room on overnight trips with him and had gone skinny dipping with him. On Thursday, he told The Associated Press that he was naked in a sauna with Foley. Also Thursday, he told WPTV of West Palm Beach, Fla., that he touched Foley "once, maybe." In all of the interviews, he denied having sexual intercourse with Foley. "It's not something you call, I mean, rape or penetration or anything like that, you know," he told the TV station in a telephone interview. "It was just fondling." Foley, 52, resigned from Congress last month after the release of his sexually explicit computer messages to young male pages. After Foley's resignation from Congress, his lawyer said that Foley was an alcoholic, gay and had been molested as a boy by a "clergyman." Foley's civil lawyer, Gerald Richman, said the alleged abuser was a Catholic priest whose name he shared with Florida state prosecutors. A spokesman for the state attorney's office in West Palm Beach, Mike Edmondson, said law enforcement action is over, unless other alleged victims come forward, because Foley's attorneys have said that the politician doesn't want to prosecute. Also, the statute of limitations has expired in Foley's case. A statement from the diocese of Gozo said that its bishop, Mario Grech, contacted the Archdiocese of Miami on Thursday evening seeking further information about the case. The statement, issued late Thursday, said the diocese had learnt of the case for the first time in the international press. "In the 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." The Maltese Church instituted the team in 1999 to deal with any sexual abuse allegations. Charles Buttigieg, a spokesman for the archdiocese of Malta, the main island of the archipelago south of Sicily, said Friday he was not aware of any other complaints involving Mercieca. Buttigieg said the archdiocese's response team has yet to meet on this matter, as Mercieca's case was just being referred to it. Mercieca, a Maltese citizen, is retired and does not serve in any parish on the island, the Rev. Anthony Refalo, the Gozo diocese spokesman, told the AP. However, Mercieca regularly celebrates Mass and hears confession in the cathedral, one of two main churches on the island. The U.S.-based group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests urged the Maltese bishop to immediately "move the cleric to a secure facility where he will not have access to children." "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 are reformed and the common good is safeguarded," the statement said. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune published an interview with Mercieca on Thursday in which the priest described several encounters that he said Foley might perceive as sexually inappropriate. Among the activities described by Mercieca in the newspaper were massaging the boy in the nude, skinny-dipping together at a secluded lake in Lake Worth, Fla., and being nude in the same room on overnight trips while he was a priest and Foley was a parishioner. Mercieca later told The Associated Press in Rome by phone that the report was "exaggerated." "We were friends and trusted each other as brothers and loved each other as brothers," Mercieca said in the AP interview. Asked if their association was sexual, the priest replied: "It wasn't." Mercieca told the AP that he and Foley would go into saunas naked when he was a priest in Florida and Foley was a parishioner, but he said that "everybody does that." Sarasota Herald-Tribune Executive Editor Mike Connelly said Thursday the story is accurate, including the reference to a night in which Mercieca said he was in a drug-induced stupor due to a nervous breakdown and couldn't clearly remember what happened. "The reporter talked to the priest four times yesterday and carefully reviewed his account, especially of the one night," Connelly said. "The story accurately reports what the priest said." Mercieca had worked at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Lake Worth in 1967, according to church records. Foley would have been 13 at the time.
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