MOBILE (AL)
WKRG-TV, CBS-42 [Mobile AL]
November 21, 2023
By Thomas Boni
Disgraced Catholic priest Alex Crow has married a young woman he met at McGill-Toolen Catholic High School and flew to Italy with, according to a public record that WKRG News 5 has obtained.
Alexander Matthew Carter Crow, 30, has married the 18-year-old Mobile woman, according to an Alabama Marriage Certificate from the Judge of Probate’s office. (WKRG News 5 has decided not to include his wife’s name in our reporting.)
Crow and the woman signed the notarized marriage certificate on Nov. 17, 2023, and the probate court received it on Monday, according to the document.
The marriage license seems to counter Crow’s own words about his intentions.
When Crow and his then-girlfriend left the country, he wrote a letter to the Archdiocese of Mobile saying he would never return to America.
In July, the Archdiocese of Mobile, the church’s regional administrative division, formally punished Crow for that action along with other accusations.
“Fr. Alex Crow abandoned his assignment in the Archdiocese,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “His behavior is totally unbecoming of a priest. He has been informed by the archbishop that he may no longer exercise ministry as a priest, nor to tell people he is a priest, nor to dress as a priest.”
The news of Crow’s marriage took the archdiocese by surprise.
“Until today, we were not aware that they had become civilly married,” a spokesperson said.
Crow was ordained a priest in 2021. He was assigned to Corpus Christi Parish.
Crow was a spiritual leader at McGill-Toolen High School at the same time the girl was studying there, according to past WKRG News 5 reports.
According to a Facebook post from McGill-Toolen, Crow visited Theology classes and heard confessions from September through December 2021.
Initially, Crow was accused of grooming the 2023 McGill-Toolen graduate.
Earlier this month, the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office announced that they closed the case on Crow. So did Mobile County District Attorney Keith Blackwood, who said his office interviewed 30 witnesses and reviewed thousands of pages of documents.
Despite the case being closed, Sheriff Paul Burch maintained that he believes Crow groomed the teen at a young age leading up to the couple’s departure.
“Once a predator, always a predator,” Burch said about Crow at the time.
“Why else would you start something if you didn’t intend there would be a physical relationship in the end?”