PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Review
BY BRAD BUMSTED | Saturday, April 23, 2016
HARRISBURG — Sitting through Mass with the Rev. Joseph D. Maurizio Jr. presiding was surreal for Elizabeth Williams.
She felt a chill.
“I just wanted to get up and leave. But I felt I could not,” said Williams, a physician’s assistant.
Her anxiety stemmed from knowing she was about to confront Maurizio with allegations that he had molested boys at a shelter for street kids in Honduras.
Maurizio, a former Roman Catholic priest in Somerset County, visited the shelter on mission trips and provided financial support through a nonprofit. After the Mass on Nov. 11, 2009, Williams, the former president of ProNino USA, and Stephen Beer, a board member of the group that helps Latin American street children, met Maurizio in the rectory of Our Lady Queen of Angels in Central City, Somerset County, and told him boys “were reporting inappropriate sexual harassment or abuse.”
The priest was “quiet and calm,” Williams, 46, recalled. Maurizio “denied it happened and expressed concern about his future,” she said.
They met with former Bishop Joseph Adamec and other officials of the Altoona-Johnstown diocese the next day. Williams later returned to Altoona and met with former Vicar General Michael Servinsky and other diocese officials. She brought videos of boys saying they’d been molested and describing the acts.
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