New York City, N.Y., Jul 5, 2019 / 10:52 pm (CNA).- A New York priest who told a prospective seminarian to lie to Church officials about his sexuality has been removed from active ministry after allegations of coercive sexual misconduct.
“I write to share some unpleasant and somber news concerning Father John Duffell, your just retired parish administrator,” Cardinal Timothy Dolan wrote in a July 1 letter to parishioners of New York’s Blessed Sacrament Parish.
“Father Duffell has been directed not to publicly exercise his priestly ministry due to an allegation from the past that he abused his position of authority in a violation of his promise of celibacy.”
“The allegation was made first to the District Attorney, and then brought to our attention. This allegation involves an adult; it does not involve a minor. It is important that the archdiocese take such allegations seriously,” Dolan wrote.
A source close to the priest told CNA that the allegation involved serial misconduct over a period of years.
Dolan’s letter said that as the matter is being investigated, “Father Duffell’s rights under canon (church) law are being protected, and he had the opportunity to defend himself during a penal process that the archdiocese initiated. He also has the presumption of innocence of the allegation. He and his advocate had the opportunity to review all of the evidence and respond to it.”
The cardinal’s letter did not indicate what the next steps will be in the penal process initiated against the priest.
Duffell, 75, was ordained in May, 1969, by Cardinal Terrence Cooke. He has served mostly at parishes in Manhattan and Yonkers.
At a 2011 conference at Fordham University, Duffell told a participant to lie to Church authorities about his same-sex attraction in order to be accepted for seminary formation.
You’re not broken, the system is broken, and therefore you deal with it as a broken system; you lie,” Duffel said of the participant’s sexuality.
The priest has faced criticism for some activities of the “gay fellowship” at his parish.
In 2017, the parish “gay fellowship” partnered with the Born This Way Foundation, an “LGBT-rights” group founded by entertainer Lady Gaga, to hold a fundraising dance at the church hall.
Duffell was pictured in an Instagram photo with Lady Gaga in 2016.
Last month, the parish’s “gay fellowship” sponsored as a fundraiser a staged reading of the “Love! Valour! Compassion!” a Terrence McNally play about a group of eight gay men spending three weekends together at an upstate New York vacation home. The event was billed as an observation of the 1969 Stonewall riots, considered to be a landmark event within the “LGBT rights” movement.
After the 2002 passage of U.S. Church norms designed to address clergy sexual abuse – most especially the “Dallas Charter” – Duffell was among the most outspoken clerical critics of the Church’s policy.
The priest was a co-founder of Voices of the Ordained, a group of New York-area priests who raised concerns about the Charter.
“Ordained ministers of the gospel are a group very much at risk at the moment. Given the norms approved in Dallas, anyone can make any kind of accusation against us and we’re dead meat,” Duffell told the Washington Post in 2002.
In May 2002, Duffell criticized the initial suspension of Charles M. Kavanagh, an eventually laicized priest who was removed from ministry that month for allegations that he sexually abused a high school seminarian in the 1970s.
“You almost hope the punishment could be leveled after the facts were determined,” Duffell told the New York Times.
“According to the cardinal, this is the policy that has to be in effect because this is what the people want. I wonder if that’s really true. Isn’t somebody innocent until proven guilty?”
The priest was a technical adviser for 2000 film “Keeping the Faith,” about a priest and a rabbi in love with the same woman, a childhood friend.
Though Dolan’s July 1 letter referred to Duffell as retired, the priest was reappointed as Blessed Sacrament’s administrator for a one-year period in October 2018.
Duffell is listed as the parish pastor on the website of Blessed Sacrament Parish and in the parish’s July 7 bulletin. He was appointed administrator of the parish in 2014, according to archdiocesan records.
Dolan noted that retired auxiliary Bishop Gerald Walsh would serve as the parish administrator until a new pastor could be appointed.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
““Ordained ministers of the gospel are a group very much at risk at the moment. Given the norms approved in Dallas, anyone can make any kind of accusation against us and we’re dead meat,” Duffell told the Washington Post in 2002.”
Maybe so; but the problem wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the ministers of the Gospel whose behavior was such as to make some attempt to address the situation necessary.
“Cardinal Terrence Cooke”
When did the way of saying a cardinal’s name change from “Terrence Cardinal Cooke” to “Cardinal Terrence Cooke?”
This man baptized all three of our children and officiated at our daughter’s wedding he comforted my mother when my father died and my sister when her husband died and buried all my grandparents and both my parents —- he was always available to help my family , often at great inconvenience and this is only my personal interaction with Father Duffell. You apparently can’t recognize a real priest from high atop your throne. You should be ashamed.
That he did those things for your family is admirable.
If he did the things that are listed in this article, however, he did evil, and led others into evil, and supported evil. That does not seem to me to be “a real priest,” and nobody should be ashamed for pointing it out.