PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Review
By Paul Peirce
Friday, Sept. 11, 2015
A Honduran man told a federal jury Friday that he was molested by a Somerset County Catholic priest six years ago when he lived in an orphanage in Honduras. He said he also saw the priest having sex with another teenage orphan in a church at the mission later in the day.
The man, now 22, testified on the second day of the Rev. Joseph Maurizio’s sex trial in U.S. District Court in Johnstown. His testimony about both incidents was corroborated by a second Honduran who lived at the mission in 2009 when Maurizio visited.
Prosecutors allege that Maurizio used money from a foundation he established while pastor of Our Lady Queen of Angels Church in Central City, Somerset County, to benefit the ProNino orphanage in Honduras. They allege he traveled there to molest and have sex with homeless boys who lived in the orphanage from 2003 to 2009.
The alleged victim, who was 16 years old, testified Maurizio specifically asked the orphanage administrators in March 2009 that he and two other orphans accompany him on a drive to a warehouse where food and clothing donated by the priest’s self-run Humanitarian Interfaith Ministries were stored. They were going to take the goods back to the mission.
“Every March he would come down (from Pennsylvania) and bring gifts and chocolates,” the man testified under questioning from U.S. Justice Department attorney Amy E. Larson.
As they were loading goods from the warehouse into a truck, the man said, he and Maurizio were alone inside the facility and the priest grabbed his genitals.
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