BishopAccountability.org
	Priest's Trial in Death of Nun Will Include Talk of Rituals, Cults Case Likely to Include Talk of Cults, Rituals By James Ewinger Cleveland Plain Dealer [Toledo OH] April 12, 2006 http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf? /base/news/1144831242135580.xml&coll=2 Toledo — There are no little murders. But Gerald Robinson is about to go on trial in Toledo for one that is unusually large, judging by the interest. He is a Roman Catholic priest. The victim, Sister Margaret Ann Pahl, was a nun, and the slaying occurred more than 20 years ago, in the chapel of a hospital where they worked. The crime is anchored to Easter Sunday - the most sacred, defining day in Christendom. It occurred on Holy Saturday 1980, the day before Easter and what would have been the nun's 72nd birthday. Robinson's murder trial begins Monday, the day after Easter 2006, when a Lucas County Common Pleas judge begins empaneling a jury under the glare of national - and quite possibly international - media attention. And why wouldn't the media descend? There are intimations of a ritual killing, satanic cults, organized sexual abuse and an institutional cover-up. Someone strangled and stabbed Pahl at least 30 times - the wounds defining an inverted cross. Some of her clothes were pulled off, suggesting a sexual assault. The allegations of dark rituals have aroused interest, and antagonism as well. "That's just a ... smokescreen," said Dave Davison, a retired Toledo police officer who was the first to see the body. It is one of the few points of agreement between Davison and retired Deputy Chief Ray Vetter, who was in charge of detectives at the time. Davison accuses the heavily Roman Catholic Police Department of colluding with the diocese. Robinson was a suspect from the beginning - probably the only other point on which the two former cops agree. "This officer [Davison], he's come up with an awful lot of outlandish stuff," Vetter said in a telephone interview. He agreed there were no signs of any ritual and that Robinson emerged as the main suspect. The suspect list narrowed down to Robinson "because we didn't have anyone else," and because of his close association with the dead nun. Deception by the priest also heightened suspicion. But the case was weak, Vetter said, and officials didn't want to go to trial and risk an acquittal that would bar any later prosecution. The evidence - and the allegations about rituals - would surface only a few years ago, when one woman pressed complaints about her own sexual abuse onto a diocese that many think did not want to hear, believe or act on them. She identified Robinson as one of her abusers, when she was a child, and her claims ran to satanic rituals that involved at least one other Toledo-area priest. Note that word "ritual," because it is a refrain in this case, sounded by many voices. Another Toledo woman and her husband filed suit last year against the Toledo diocese, alleging the same kind of abuse and satanic rites. Catherine Hoolahan is a lawyer representing about two dozen people, half with lawsuits against the diocese and the rest pressing their claims through a mediation process. Hoolahan had doubts about the satanic and ritual abuse until three people with no connection were saying roughly the same things. Two were her clients, and both linked Robinson to ritualized abuse. One must also consider the esteem in which the church itself is held. Toledo, like Cleveland, is a complex industrial city on Lake Erie, built up by the sweat of immigrants, and the capital of big business. The Toledo diocese covers 19 counties and has more than 300,000 in the faith. Catholic means universal, and in urban America like nowhere else in the world, the Church of Rome earned the universal status. It was the warm, welcoming hand that sheltered and guided hundreds of thousands of largely European immigrants toward full citizenship. The church did this with an all-encompassing system that included schools and hospitals, many run by orders of nuns. One of these was Mercy Hospital in Toledo, run by the Sisters of Mercy - which included Sister Margaret Ann Pahl. Toledo had a robust Catholic community in 1980, so much so that it could assign not one but two full-time chaplains to Mercy. One was the Rev. Gerald Robinson, ordained in 1964. The nuns have since closed that hospital, but run seven others in northwest Ohio. Robinson, too, continued to thrive, until 2004, when he was arrested and charged. Bishop Blair visited him in jail and placed him on leave from the priesthood then. The rest of his story awaits the authorship of 12 jurors. To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: jewinger@plaind.com, 216-999-3905
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.