YORK (PA)
York Daily Record
August 22, 2018
By Candy Woodall
The Rev. Francis Bach had several warning signs in his past, but that didn’t stop a diocese from assigning him to multiple churches in central Pennsylvania.
In 1967, he was “relieved of his duties” with a young adult ministry in Harrisburg.
That was a few years after he served at St. Patrick Catholic Church in York, a city of about 45,000 residents 80 miles west of Philadelphia where a man in 2016 said Bach abused him as an altar boy in 1960 when Bach was a seminarian.
Ten years later, Bach had more blemishes on his employment history. He’s one of several examples in central Pennsylvania of the diocese shuffling predator priests, called “passing the trash,” according to a state grand jury report released last week on priest sex abuse.
The Harrisburg Diocese, which covers 15 counties in southcentral Pennsylvania, knew that Bach broke his priestly celibacy vows in the mid-1970s: “Inappropriate behavior with adult at seminary.” Diocese officials moved him a month later.
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