A Christian But No Saint, by Calum Macdonald and Martyn McLaughlin, The Herald [Scotland], May 5, 2007

A Christian ... But No Saint

By Calum Macdonald and Martyn McLaughlin
The Herald [Scotland]
May 5, 2007

http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.1379329.0.0.php

He is, to put it mildly, no saint. Father Gerry Nugent became a bad stereotype of the wayward parish priest during the six weeks of the Angelika Kluk murder trial: an avowedly sexual being who admitted in court to being an alcoholic and was described as a "Jekyll and Hyde" by the dead woman's sister.

It has also emerged that the Archdiocese of Glasgow had previously received a complaint about the priest's behaviour. In 1993, the Archdiocese received an anonymous letter which was followed up by an anonymous phone call from a woman claiming that she had been sexually assaulted by Fr Nugent.

The caller, who was told to report the alleged incident to police, would not meet officials.

The late Cardinal Winning confronted Fr Nugent, who admitted to a consensual sexual encounter. After psychological tests he was given treatment and counselling for alcohol dependency.

His past has come back to haunt him and the problems show no signs of abating. Fr Nugent is due to appear in court on Tuesday for sentencing after being found in contempt of court during the trial.

And yet, his work at St Patrick's, whatever the horrible fate of Ms Kluk, was about Christian outreach, and he has a track record of tackling religious sectarianism which far predates moves by leading church figures.

Gerry Nugent was born in Dublin two years before the end of the Second World War. His family moved to Glasgow when he was nine and he lived in a tenement on Firhill Road in Maryhill.

He attended St Charles RC Primary on Kelvinside Gardens and as a teenager he began training for the priesthood, studying theology at Kilmahew House in Cardross, used as a temporary home for St Peter's Seminary.

On ordination, his first church was St Michael's in the Bellsmyre housing estate in Dumbarton. Due to Irish immigration, Dumbarton has one of the largest per capita Catholic populations of any town in Scotland. Sectarianism was for many years endemic in the town and relations between the Catholic and Protestant populations were poor.

However, Fr Nugent and the minister from the Church of Scotland church in Bellsmyre, St Andrew's, made the first ever move to break down barriers between the communities around 1967, when they organised dances for Catholic and Protestant teenagers.

Father Gerry was like a breath of fresh air, young and handsome

The priest and the minister also initiated a tradition, continued to this day, in which once a year the congregation from one of the churches goes on a procession to the other where they worship together.

One dance-goer from the 1960s remembers: "Father Gerry was like a breath of fresh air, he was young and handsome and very popular, not like daunting and intimidating like the old priests before him. Michael Mair, the kirk minister, was also young and had long hair, he was a bit of a hippy, but the two of them were good friends and very idealistic.

"Ecumenism was unheard of in Dumbarton before that pair. They brought the young people, the teenagers of Bellsmyre, together socially, which never happened before. We went to separate schools and kept to our own, but Father Gerry and Michael Mair slowly started changing that."

At St Patrick's in Glasgow, Fr Nugent's doors were always open. He saw himself as a priest who gave sanctuary to those who needed it most. His chapel house, a modern family-sized home behind his church, accommodated a procession of needy tenants, from failed asylum seekers to students.

Nobody, even in the Glasgow Catholic archdiocese, knew who was staying with him. "It was basically an unlicensed hostel," one source told The Herald. Most hostels require some kind of licence, but places of worship are exempt from such laws.

Only four days after Angelika Kluk went missing, and the day before her body was found, reporters lined up outside St Patrick's to interview the priest.

At the time Fr Nugent was still speaking of Tobin in glowing terms, describing him as a "fantastic" help and "very pleasant". But the missing persons inquiry was three days old and the strain was showing on the priest. He chain-smoked and disappeared for a quick drink between interviews.

He had found himself in a similar situation the week before when the press descended on his church asking for access and interviews. The story on that occasion was two Pakistani Christians trying to avoid deportation by taking sanctuary in the church. Fr Nugent vowed to protect them, and was given the full backing of the archbishop in his endeavours.

This time, the circumstances were different: a young woman who lived at the church was missing; the last man to see her alive, a homeless odd-job man whose background no-one knew anything about, had also disappeared, the day after the woman.

The week before, Fr Nugent's open-door policy at St Patrick's appeared to have the blessing of his superiors in the church, but now he found himself on the back foot defending it. "I've been here for eight years and have accommodated perhaps 20-odd people in that time, some just for a night or two, some for longer," he said.

At the time, he said that it was part of his vocation to welcome others. "The Christian ethic is: I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me," he said.

"It's about God opening his arms to all of his children and we should try to be the same."

He added: "I've been formed and shaped by the communities in which I have been a priest, places such as Possilpark and Ruchill and Riddrie, Bellsmyre in Dumbarton."

All of this, though, is on the credit side. On the other hand, it is impossible to ignore the evidence from court. Fr Nugent claimed he had sex with Ms Kluk, saying: "The sexual intimacy happened about three or four times. I knew it was wrong, I knew I was doing wrong I felt guilty and I felt ashamed and disgusted with myself." His confession was later branded "outrageous and untrue" by Aneta Kluk.

Fr Nugent also confessed to a sexual relationship with church musician Sarah Howie, 45, but almost immediately back-tracked and when the mother-of-two was questioned later in the trial, her denial of any physical contact was blistering.

Frank Nugent, 64, a cousin of the priest, lives in Omagh, County Tyrone. He said: "Whatever anyone else says about Gerry, I think the world of him. He's a real gentleman and he's served the church well. He's always been my right-hand man and my brother. We're all very upset about this. It's tearing us apart."