By Jamie Holmes
WPTV [Florida]
October 21, 2006
http://www.wptv.com/News/102106_PriestAbustInvestigators.cfm
The photograph of a young Father Anthony Merceica was how Mark Foley would have seen the priest when he claims he was sexually abused.
Abuse though is not how Father Anthony Merceica remembers their friendship.
"For some people it's molestation. Maybe for other kids it's fun, you know? At the time you see it in this sense," the priest told Newschannel 5 by phone Thursday.
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Since our interview Merceica has gone into isolation at his home on Malta.
This as his former employer for the last forty years, the Archdiocese of Miami, begins an investigation into exactly what happened between Merceica and Foley.
"Father Mercieca's status right is that he is a priest without faculties, which means he has no permission to perform publicly as a priest. He cannot celebrate mass, he cannot minister to the sick, he cannot administer any sacraments, he cannot wear any clerical garb, which means he cannot wear his clerical collar," says Archdiocese of Miami spokesperson Mary Ross Agosta.
The Archdiocese believes the matter is isolated, but there are those who have investigated cases like this before, that wonder.
"If Mercieca is behaving this way in his first U.S. appointment, we have to ask ourselves was he doing the same thing in other parishes," asks Terry McKiernan with Bishop-Accountability.org.
His group has investigated the backgrounds of thousands of priests accused of sexual misconduct.
McKiernan says there are questions surrounding Merceica's record which should raise eyebrows.
Why for instance was the priest moved so frequently, hitting eight different churches, and yet never promoted?
"When a priest goes to the bottom and stays there, it sometimes indicates there's a problem," he says.
What is most telling to McKiernan though is the Catholic directory, a kind of phone book used by the church to chronicle every priest in every parish.
Merceica's name is missing from the back of the directory in the late 1960's. His time at St. Clares in North Palm Beach for instance, was largely unknown until we told you on Thursday.
McKiernan says hidden names are always suspect.
"That kind of game played with the Catholic directory we see all the time with abuse priests. I've got to wonder if this behavior wasn't known when he was brought into Sacred Heart."
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