Syracuse diocese puts priest on leave amid new sex abuse allegations

By Geoff Herbert
Post Standard
November 20, 2019

https://bit.ly/2qlPUks

In this 1997 file photo, Father Paul Angelicchio poses outside the Holy Family Church in Syracuse.

A Central New York priest has been placed on administrative leave amid new sex abuse allegations in a lawsuit.

The Utica Observer-Dispatch reports Rev. Paul Angelicchio, a pastor at St. John the Baptist Church and Transfiguration Church in Rome, has been accused of child sexual abuse between 1980 and 1981 in a new civil lawsuit. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Syracuse announced this week that Angelicchio is taking a voluntary leave while the church investigates the allegations.

Additional details of the allegations have not been disclosed, but the diocese notified the district attorney in Onondaga County, where the abuse allegedly took place.

According to NewsChannel 9 WSYR, the unidentified accuser is seeking monetary damages relating to the alleged abuse.

Angelicchio was previously accused of child sexual abuse in 2016, but Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick said his office found no proof, evidence or corroborating witness to back up the allegation. Angelicchio was similarly placed on administrative leave during the investigation.

Before coming to Rome in 2011, Angelicchio was pastor of Our Lady of Pompei/St. Peter Church in Syracuse for eight years and served as pastor of Holy Family Church in Syracuse. He also was a parish priest at Our Lady of Lourdes Church on Valley Drive in Syracuse during the 1980s.

From 1977 to 1999, he also served as police chaplain for the city of Syracuse.

Angelicchio was also named in a lawsuit earlier this year filed by Kevin Braney, who was an altar boy at St. Ann’s Church in Manlius. Braney said three priests raped and molested him over two years beginning in 1988, and filed his suit after the Child Victims Act, passed in New York in January, lifted restrictions on civil suits against their child sex abusers and institutions.