PITTSFIELD (MA)
The Berkshire Eagle
January 13, 2019
By Larry Parnass
The Rev. Richard J. Ahern isn’t on the Springfield diocese’s list of clergy who sexually abused young people. But the priest, who served in Pittsfield, died in 2001 with a stack of allegations against him.
A decade after Ahern ended his ministry in Berkshire County, the priest’s own religious order prohibited him from hearing confessions from children, sent him to weekly therapy sessions and barred him from the diocese that includes Pittsfield and is now overseen by The Most Rev. Mitchell T. Rozanski.
“This means, then, Dick — that you are not to visit the diocese of Springfield at all,” an official with the Stigmatine Fathers and Brothers wrote in a private letter to Ahern in May 1986.
But Ahern’s sexual assaults, further documented in court filings and media accounts, did not lead the Springfield diocese to publish his name as an abusive cleric on its website.
Though Ahern served churches in Pittsfield, Agawam, Feeding Hills and West Springfield, the diocese says that, technically, he wasn’t their priest.
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