SAN JOSE (CA)
Mercury News
February 20, 2019
By John Woolfolk
When the Diocese of Oakland this week named 45 priests accused of sexually abusing children, the list mostly acknowledged clergymen already notorious through dozens of legal cases and news reports over the years.
But five priests the diocese named Monday had never before been publicly linked to the child sex abuse scandal rocking the Roman Catholic church. And what little the diocese has revealed about them suggests they served for years afterward before being removed from ministry.
“What is extreme, and noteworthy, is that the Diocese of Oakland did not release the names of these predators beforehand,” said Joey Piscitelli, who was abused by another priest on the list, the Rev. Stephen Whelan, for which he sued and won a $600,000 jury award in 2006. “They released names in 2004 and 2008, and did not mention these abusers.”
Diocese of Oakland Chancellor Steve Wilcox, who handles abuse complaints, and spokeswoman Helen Osman declined to comment or provide further information about the five newly identified priests beyond what they stated publicly and released earlier this week.
The diocese’s list, a bid to restore parishioners’ trust during a week when the Vatican is holding a summit on sex abuse, says nothing about what those five priests allegedly did to end up on its list of “credibly accused” priests.
Four of the five — Thomas Duong Binh-Minh, Hilary Cooper, Patrick Finnegan and Daniel McLeod — were priests of the Oakland diocese.
Those four ministered, committed their alleged offenses and ultimately were removed from ministry under Oakland’s first two bishops: Floyd Begin, who ran the diocese from its founding in 1962 to 1977, and John Cummins, who served until 2003.
The diocese identified a fifth listed clergyman, Virendra Coutts, only as a priest or deacon of the Salesians of Don Bosco, an international religious organization within the Catholic church, founded in India in 1928 to serve impoverished youth.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.