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	Former R.I. Priest Tests Positive for HIV Worcester Man Who Died of AIDS Allegedly Was a Victim of Sexual Abuse By Shaun Sutner Telegram & Gazette February 16, 2008 http://www.telegram.com/article/20080216/NEWS/802160343/1008/NEWS02 A former priest accused of sexually abusing boys in Rhode Island and Texas, including a former Worcester resident who died in 2000, has tested positive for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, Catholic diocese officials in Forth Worth, Texas, have acknowledged. Thomas A. Marks, the alleged Worcester victim of the Rev. Philip A. Magaldi, was 42 when he died at his parents' home in Fall River. The cause was non-Hodgkin lymphoma, according to the death certificate. Phil Saviano, a founder of the New England chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests who met Mr. Marks shortly before his death, said the Texas diocese officials' admission that Rev. Magaldi, 71, has the virus appears to contradict the church's longstanding denials that the former priest ever abused anyone. Church leaders in Texas said Thursday they were alerting victims and parishes in the Providence diocese, where the priest served from 1960 to 1990, and in the Fort Worth area, where he was posted from 1990 to 1999. He was removed as a priest in 1999 amid claims of sexual misconduct in Providence. He served prison time in 1992 after pleading guilty to embezzling about $123,000 from a Rhode Island parish. Church officials said Rev. Magaldi does not have AIDS, and that he has been HIV-positive since at least 2003, a claim that Mr. Saviano said he thought could be unfounded. "I've been HIV-positive since 1984, and I'm healthy now," Mr. Saviano, who grew up in East Douglas and lives in Boston, said. "Who knows how long Magaldi has been positive? "I find it interesting that the diocese is not only admitting or revealing that Magaldi is HIV-positive but is tracking down all the victims, who for all these years they denied existed," Mr. Saviano added. Mr. Marks' parents, Stanley Marks and Susan Levine, could not be located for comment yesterday. Two lawsuits Mr. Marks filed in Boston federal court in the 1990s charging the priest with abusing him over six years in Worcester beginning when he was 12, were dismissed on the grounds that the defendants, including the Providence Diocese, were never served notice of the actions. The suits were based on repressed memories that Mr. Marks said he had from his childhood. At the time, Rev. Magaldi said in an interview with the Telegram & Gazette that he never saw or met Mr. Marks, who had a police record for drugs and armed robbery in Worcester. "I was never in that God-forsaken city except to buy collars at R.J. Toomey," he told a reporter here in 2000, referring to the former clergy apparel store on Plantation Street. Tahira Khan Merritt, a Dallas lawyer and clergy sex abuse activist, maintained that the diocese succeeded in avoiding the suits by exploiting technicalities. "It's pretty bad what they did to Marks," Ms. Merritt said yesterday. "They convinced Marks that his case would not prevail on (statute of) limitations." Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer of the body's lymphatic system, is the most common of all lymphomas affecting people with HIV, according to medical information on the Gay Men's Health Crisis Web site. Contact Shaun Sutner by e-mail at ssutner@telegram.com.
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