UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org
Summary of Case: Ordained in 1941, Frank Massarella served in parishes of the Cincinnati archdiocese as a member of the Glenmary Home Missioners until 1945. From 1945-1951, with the exception of a year at Our Lady of the Holy Ghost Abbey in Conyers GA, Massarella was a Trappist monk at Gethsemani Abbey in KY, taking the name “Pius.” Thereafter he was a priest of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, working as a hospital chaplain, a high school faculty member, and assisting in a number of parishes. In 1956 Massarella was assigned as resident chaplain to Siena Retirement Home in Dayton, OH. He was on Sick Leave 1958-1959. For the next almost forty years, Massarella resided and ministered at Siena and assisted at St. John’s parish in Tipp City. In 1993 the archdiocese reviewed his personnel file and found that there were complaints that he had inappropriately touched girls in 1952 and in 1953-1954. Massarella admitted to the allegations. He was allowed by Archbishop Pilarczyk to remain in “limited” ministry because, as Pilarzyk said, “it was clear that he no longer posed a threat to anybody.” In 2003, after the U.S. Bishops’ new policy of “zero tolerance” regarding the sexual abuse of minors, Massarella was removed from active ministry. In 2005 the Vatican ruled that he was to live a “life of prayer and penance.”
Massarella died May 3, 2014 at Mercy Siena Woods Nursing Home.
Born: May 16, 1915
Ordained: June 7, 1941
Died: May 3, 2014
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