Former Orange Bishop Tod D. Brown Vouched for a Pedo-priest Who Went on to Molest Kids in Salinas

By Gustavo Arellano
Orange County Weekly
March 29, 2013

http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2013/03/gerald_funcheon.php

Funcheon

Wow, the pathetic legacy of former Diocese of Orange Bishop Tod D. Brown just keeps getting pathetic-er and pathetic-er-er. The Weekly has obtained a copy of a letter that His Excellency wrote back when he was merely His Stupidity, when Brownie was a Reverend Monsignor at the Diocese of Monterey during the mid-1980s. It concerns one Gerald Funcheon, a guy who was looking for a job after getting driven out of Hawaii after parents complained he told boys he wanted to get naked with them. Before Hawaii, Funcheon had been pushed out of other parishes after similar complaints--and this was the man Brownie would vouch for?

You know it!

Funcheon is currently facing lawsuits by students who suffered at his grubby hands at Palma High School in Salinas, a school where the pedo-priest has already admitted to molesting boys. In a June 11, 1984 letter obtained by the Weekly, Brown--then the chancellor for the Monterey diocese--wrote to Funcheon's Crosier superiors that he would extend faculties (allow him to minister in another parish, in Catholic-speak) so he could be a chaplain at Palma. "Your evaluation of his ministry," Brown wrote, "is very encouraging."

HA! Documents at the time had already shown Funcheon's superiors were moving him from place to place, always one step ahead of angry parents. Heckuva job, Brownie!