PENNSYLVANIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests
For immediate release: Tuesday, June 3, 2014
Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314 566 9790, SNAPclohessy@aol.com )
A lengthy and troubling new investigative report on a former Scranton priest, accused repeatedly of child sexual abuse and adult sexual misconduct, shows that he is still around young people now, plus being second-in-command of a Catholic diocese in Paraguay. Bishops in dioceses where this predator priest worked – Switzerland, Argentina, Scranton, and Winona – must do more to stop him from hurting others.
The cleric, Fr. Carlos Urrutigoity, now “leads a starry-eyed cadre of young male seminarians,” according to the Global Post, despite a $400,000 settlement with at least one victim and “warnings from the bishop of Scranton, where in 2002 Urrutigoity was accused of molesting a teenage boy and sleeping with and touching other young men.”
The long article says that Fr. Urrutigoity “is a man who’s been described by bishops from Switzerland to Pennsylvania as ‘dangerous,’ ‘abnormal,’ and ‘a serious threat to young people.’”
We call on Scranton Bishop Joseph Bambera to take more steps to protect vulnerable parishioners from Fr. Urrutigoity by:
–publicly disclosing the letter he alleged wrote recently to the Vatican about the priest,
–visiting every parish or church facility in Pennsylvania where he worked, urging victims, witnesses and whistleblowers to call the police, and
–write again to his colleague, the Paraguay bishop, and beg him to suspend the priest.
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