NEW ORLEANS (LA)
The Guardian [London, England]
August 19, 2024
By Ramon Antonio Vargas
[Photo above: Lisa Friloux disputed with New Orleans police after officers wrote in a report that her encounter with Enderle was a ‘date’. Photograph: Courtesy of Lisa Friloux]
Police called Lisa Friloux’s complaint against Gilbert Enderle ‘unfounded’. After a Guardian investigation, they’re now examining whether the clergyman committed battery
A woman says she was left feeling brushed aside by Roman Catholic church officials and police in New Orleans after she alleged to both that she fought off an attempted sexual assault this past spring by an elderly priest, who initially appeared to have been spared a criminal investigation and then was sent by his superiors to a midwest retirement home – all with the public kept in the dark.
But after Lisa Friloux told the Guardian about her struggles with pursuing a complaint against Gilbert Enderle, and the outlet asked New Orleans police for comment on her account, the agency said it had opened a separate follow-up investigation into the clergyman. That investigation, which was examining whether he committed battery rather than sexual assault, remained pending as of Thursday, police said.
Friloux, 63, said her experience with Enderle – who now claims to be so stricken with dementia that he does not even remember her – reinforced conceptions that key figures in the church continue to fall short of living up to its promises of transparency in cases of alleged sexual misconduct.
After decades of being mired in an ongoing clerical molestation and cover-up scandal, the global Catholic church now clearly defines as abusers priests and deacons who sexually prey on children and adults with developmental disabilities. But the church, with rare exceptions, has generally been less willing to apply the label of abuser to priests or deacons who pursue sexual contact with people to whom they minister or over whom they hold a spiritual authority.
Some US states have forced the issue, including Texas, which has a law criminalizing sexual activity between clergymen and adults who emotionally depend on them. That law mirrors others which similarly outlaw sexual relationships between teachers and students of age, as well as corrections officers and incarcerated adults, given the imbalance of power at play.
Notably, in July, that Texas law was used by police in Waco to file criminal charges against a priest who was accused by several women of sexually abusive conduct while working in that state as well as in south-east Louisiana – within the boundaries of the archdiocese of New Orleans.
Louisiana does not have a law like the one in Texas. But Friloux, a registered nurse, hopes her story prompts state legislators to consider passing such a law – especially after she said police at first seemingly tried to dismiss her complaint against Enderle in late March as an “awkward” date and then relied on that characterization to deem the sexual aspect of her allegations as unfounded.
She also wishes the Catholic church will one day install leaders who take complaints like hers more seriously, beginning with Enderle’s religious order as well as the New Orleans archdiocese, the latter of which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2020 as it wrangled with the financial fallout of the worldwide church’s entrenched clergy abuse crisis.
After Friloux first came forward to the archdiocese in March, officials wrote to her that her “concern” over Enderle had prompted him to be “reassigned” to an assisted living facility in Missouri where he would be cared for and monitored by the Redemptorist order of which he is a member. But the community at large was not given notice of the reasons behind Enderle’s transfer in the way the church’s own policies would have required if it regarded him as a possible clergy abuser, potentially with more victims who have yet to come forth.
Parishioners at the church where Enderle worked instead were provided with a bulletin in April titled “Thank you Fr Gil!” informing them that – for no stated reason – he was taking his trademark “smile and … kind heart” to a new home.
Friloux said she was offended at the bulletin’s lighthearted tone and that it reminded her of a pattern seen at the height of the Catholic clergy abuse scandal, when the church would furtively move those accused of misconduct from one place to the other.
Furthermore, just days before that bulletin, Louisiana state police had served a search warrant on the archdiocese as part of an investigation into whether the organization once ran a sex trafficking ring responsible for widespread sexual abuse of children that dated back decades – before then seeking to systemically conceal it all.
“We need a clean slate across the board,” Friloux said. “We need an overhaul.”
Neither the archdiocese of New Orleans nor the Redemptorist order immediately responded to requests for comment about Enderle.
An earlier accusation
Enderle, who is about 88, was ordained a priest in December 1962. A church-published biography explains how the native of San Antonio, Texas, earned a doctorate in historical theology while also teaching for more than 30 years across the US and in Nigeria. He later worked as a biographer, author and editor for a historical institute based at the Redemptorists’ worldwide headquarters in Rome from 2005 to 2013.
And then, with the permission of the city’s archdiocese, he was eventually stationed at New Orleans’s Saint Alphonsus church, whose distinctive, two-century-old Italianate architecture landed it on the US’s national list of historical landmarks.
At Saint Alphonsus, Enderle took charge of promoting efforts to secure sainthood for Francis Xavier Seelos, a fellow Redemptorist priest who ministered to people with yellow fever in New Orleans during the 1860s before he himself was fatally infected with the disease.
Enderle was in that role in 2019 when he gave a crucifix from a shrine in honor of Seelos – housed at an adjacent Catholic church – to a congregant who then took the cross to a local family with an ill newborn.
The baby had nearly died during birth and was thought to have suffered substantial neurological damage. The parishioner prayed for the child’s health while placing the crucifix on the boy’s body. The next day, the baby began a recovery to full health which culminated without any of the feared neurological damage, leaving Enderle and other devotees of Seelos to ponder whether they had witnessed a miracle supporting the late Redemptorist’s cause of being canonized, according to viral news media stories that outlined the sequence of events.
But there was more to Enderle than his publicized achievements and devotion to Seelos. In 2002, when the global Catholic clergy molestation and cover-up scandal hit a boiling pitch in the archdiocese of Boston, a man reported to New Orleans church officials that he had been molested as a child by Enderle more than 20 years earlier.
Enderle, at the time of the allegation, was the principal of a Redemptorist high school, about 40 miles (64km) north of New Orleans, where the accuser was a student.
Confidential church records obtained by the Guardian through reporting on the archdiocese’s bankruptcy show it forwarded the accusations – along with some made against six other priests – to law enforcement authorities with jurisdiction over the region that included the high school in question. None of those priests were prosecuted, and Enderle was among three from that group who were omitted from a published list of about 80 clergymen whom the archdiocese of New Orleans considers to be credibly accused.
Little is known about that allegation against Enderle, which if not substantiated has not been proved false either. The records said Enderle “totally and completely” denied the claims at the time they were made, but to what extent he was investigated beyond that remains unclear. Lately, an attorney who represented Enderle after the accusation dismissed the allegation as “a bunch of shit”, not elaborating but citing the results of a private investigation into the claimant.
That accuser has since died. And the lawyer who represented the 2002 claimant against Enderle told the Guardian that she did not remember the case. All Friloux knows is that she had no idea about that earlier chapter in Enderle’s otherwise unimpeded career when she met him in 2015.
‘He would not let go’
Friloux first met Enderle while they both attended a picnic hosted by a church where he would also spend time near her home town of Pass Christian, Mississippi, about 65 miles (104km) from New Orleans.
She remembers being impressed while listening to Enderle talk about his time in Rome and Africa. In turn, he was interested in a nutritional supplement that she was distributing that day, and they made arrangements to continue their dialogue.
That then led to more conversations as well as walks in the park or at the beach alongside Mississippi’s gulf coast. Friloux described mostly talking about their lives, the pair’s mutual Catholic faith and his admiration of the beloved Redemptorist figure affectionately known to many as the Blessed Father Seelos.
But, as Enderle grew more comfortable with her in what she interpreted to be their friendship, he would increasingly veer into territory that she found strange.
One time it was his suddenly grabbing her hand. Another time it was Enderle’s begging Friloux to see her caesarean section scar. A particularly off-putting episode involved him visiting her at her home and trying to pull her down into a bed with him – until he became startled by a tall floor lamp that he knocked over, which provided her the opportunity to pull away.
Friloux said she told Enderle she had started to become uncomfortable with his behavior, which in retrospect she regarded as grooming. But she wasn’t ready to give up on their friendship and cut him out of her life, wondering if at least some of his conduct was possibly no more than a collection of “senior” moments.
Yet she realized she would not be able to carry on as she had with him on Sunday 17 March 2024. That day, they had made plans for her to pick him up from his rectory in New Orleans to go see a biographical film about the saint and late Catholic missionary Francesca Cabrini at the theater. And when she arrived, she asked to use his bathroom because her bladder was full from the hour-long drive.
Friloux said Enderle was waiting for her at the bathroom door when she emerged. She recalled him embracing her in an “unrelenting bear hug” from which she could not free herself. She said he then tried to kiss her, took her hands into his, held on tightly – and then pressed himself against her as he talked about how fascinated he was with her body.
“I couldn’t move,” Friloux said. “He would not let go.”
She said she never stopped resisting and in the end managed to physically rebuff Enderle, loosening his grip enough for her to slip away from his grasp. Friloux said she gathered her keys and phone, began walking to her car and told Enderle he needed to respect personal boundaries.
She remembered announcing her intention to go to the movie by herself if necessary while Enderle followed her and with an agitated tone said to her: “We can visit here.”
But she left alone. And a week later, she reported Enderle to New Orleans police.
‘Thank you for your concern’
An initial, single-sentence summary of Friloux’s complaint against Enderle was distributed to local media as part of a daily log of major criminal offenses shortly after its filing. “Victim was sexually assaulted by suspect,” it said.
However, a more complete police report written later described Friloux’s complaint quite differently. The report said she went “on a date with an acquaintance who hugged her for a long period that felt awkward and made her uncomfortable – but … nothing sexual occurred”.
“This investigation is classified as unfounded due to no sexual offense occurring,” the police report said.
Friloux disputed telling police that her encounter with Enderle was either a date or simply awkward.
“I argued with the police officer when he used the word ‘date’,” Friloux said. “I said it was not a date.”
Friloux said she realized what she reported fell short of a rape. But she was curious whether police had a basis to investigate a lesser yet still serious charge such as battery or assault.
She said she suspected “police have priorities” which her case simply did not meet.
“They are here to mop up blood,” Friloux said. “They did not see this as something … that needed their emergency attention.”
Police on Thursday issued a statement to the Guardian which said investigators had only determined “a sexual assault did not take place”. But the statement assured that police had initiated “a separate simple battery investigation” in connection with Friloux’s allegations.
The statement said investigators could not comment further because Friloux’s case was “active and ongoing”.
Hours later, Friloux said she spoke with another New Orleans police officer, and she detailed her allegations against Enderle once more. She told the officer she would eagerly anticipate hearing from him again.
Meanwhile, Friloux said she called the New Orleans archdiocese’s director of clergy, relayed what had happened with Enderle and shared her belief that – in addition to everything else – he needed a psychiatric evaluation, along with other medical care.
The New Orleans clergy director, Pat Williams, wrote to Friloux on 29 April 2024 saying Enderle had been transferred to the St Clement Redemptorist mission community and assisted living home in Liguori, Missouri, near Saint Louis. “He will be under the direct care and monitor of the Redemptorists,” Williams said to Friloux. “Thank you for the concern you have expressed … and for making us aware of his situation. You will be in my continued prayers.”
The bulletin announcing Enderle’s departure to the community at Saint Alphonsus had come out eight days earlier. Beside providing a brief recap of his professional accomplishments and his advocacy for Seelos, the bulletin mentioned how he would often be seen “tinkering in his woodshed”, praying with the sick and jovially cutting some of his colleagues’ hair, too. It made no mention of what Friloux had reported to the archdiocese – or that he had even been sent off to the Saint Louis area.
Additionally, Saint Alphonsus’ website listed Enderle as a priest in residence until as recently as 10 July.
As has been seen with other Catholic clergymen faced with allegations of sexually abusive misconduct, Enderle told the Guardian that he was battling illness and had no idea who Friloux was. He said he had no plans of returning to New Orleans. Also, he repeatedly said he was well into his 80s, asked multiple times to be reminded with whom he was conversing and what the topic was, and ultimately declared: “I didn’t assault anybody … I never assaulted anyone.”
Friloux said she has some personal reservations about whether Enderle’s dementia is as severe as he now claims. She also said she is unbothered at Enderle’s claims of not remembering her. Friloux said she has phone records that corroborate how long they knew each other and a long list of people – from the mayor of her city to Redemptorist office assistants – who can confirm her acquaintance with Enderle.
She recounted the way she would often introduce him to people who had not yet met him: “This is Father Gil Enderle. He’s a Redemptorist.”
Friloux finally scoffed at the memory, saying: “Well, guess who needs redemption now?”