NEW JERSEY
The Star-Ledger
[RELATED DOCUMENTS
• Read the Rev. Michael Fugee’s agreement with the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office
• Read the Rev. Michael Fugee’s confession to police
• Read Archbishop John J. Myers’ February letter to priests about the Rev. Michael Fugee]
By Mark Mueller/The Star-Ledger
on May 05, 2013
At Holy Family Church in Nutley, the Rev. Michael Fugee was a familiar face.
He sometimes said Mass. He visited his close friend, the Rev. Paul Bochicchio. And he gave occasional talks to the parish youth group on the Bible’s meaning.
“One thing I can tell you is that his greatest fans are teenagers,” said Bochicchio, a monsignor and Holy Family’s pastor.
Bochicchio makes no secret of Fugee’s interactions with young people. Indeed, there was nothing furtive about it. Photos on Facebook show the two priests celebrating Mass together and joining in a prayer circle with teens on an annual pilgrimage to a Canadian shrine.
A week after The Star-Ledger disclosed that Fugee had violated a lifetime ban on ministry to children by working with a Monmouth County youth group, what’s become clear is that the purported supervision of the priest by the Archdiocese of Newark amounted to little or no supervision at all.
Fugee, who admitted to police in 2001 that he fondled a teenage boy, went where he wanted to go, whether it was to youth retreats outside the archdiocese or to give talks to the teens at Holy Family in Nutley. If officials in the archdiocese were watching, no one raised a flag.
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