Texas judge’s ruling that woman can have abortion leaves hospitals liable to prosecution

A view of Baltimore’s Basilica nestled amid the city’s famed row houses. / Public domain

CNA Staff, Oct 16, 2023 / 17:40 pm (CNA).

The Archdiocese of Baltimore and the Benedictine order have removed a decadeslong pastor from public ministry and suspended his priestly faculties after he confirmed to a local media outlet that years ago he entered a confidential $200,000 settlement to quiet allegations of male adult sexual assault and financial fraud.

“I just wanted to keep him quiet, to be rid of him, because he was just stirring up trouble,” Father Paschal Morlino, OSB, told The Baltimore Banner in its October report. “My conscience is clear; it’s all stuff that he made up.”

The archdiocese said in a statement Sunday that after being made aware of the report, it immediately began an investigation and decided within 24 hours, along with the Benedictine order, to remove Morlino as pastor and suspend his priestly faculties.

Morlino, who was the pastor for more than 30 years at St. Benedict Church in Baltimore, has since returned to his religious community, Saint Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. 

A lawyer for the archabbey declined to comment on Monday. CNA reached out to the American-Cassinese Congregation, which oversees the archabbey, for comment but did not hear back by time of publication.

CNA also reached out to the Diocese of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, where the archabbey is located, but a spokesman said that Morlino is not a diocesan priest and therefore does not have any faculties in the diocese.

The Archdiocese of Baltimore said in its statement that both the archdiocese and the Benedictines “intend to conduct further investigation.”

The allegations

Kathy Durm-St. Amant, a former parishioner from Morlino’s Baltimore church, told The Baltimore Banner that a friend once confided in her that many years prior he had taken a cruise with Morlino in which the priest sexually assaulted him.

”He said he went on that cruise, he was in bed. He woke up with Paschal on top of him,” Durm-St. Amant said.

That man worked for Morlino, now 85, carrying out different duties for the pastor’s church such as fundraising, cooking, and cleaning, the outlet reported.

She encouraged her friend, whom the outlet did not name, to contact a lawyer. 

That friend died in 2020, but after his death, Durm-St. Amant discovered negotiation letters between attorneys relating to the incident, the outlet reported. The letters were provided to the outlet.

One of the letters, dated Jan. 24, 2018, was from the man’s attorney Joanne Suder. 

That letter demanded $375,000 in exchange for forgoing a lawsuit, but it also accused Morlino of forging the man’s signature on bank records, the outlet reported.

“You stole all of his cash from checks telling him his expenses exceeded the balances of his checks,” Suder wrote.

In that letter, the man’s attorney also accused the priest of raping the man on the cruise in September 2000. Additionally, the letter accuses Morlino of “multiple rapes” in the years following the cruise, according to the outlet.

“His physician has opined that your sexual, physical, emotional, and fraudulent behavior has caused him such injuries that he may never recover,” Suder wrote, referring to her client.

Suder declined to comment to CNA on Monday.

A letter from Morlino’s attorney, Salvatore Anello III, responded to Suder’s demands saying, “Although Father Paschal is indeed not a rich person, in conjunction with his family and friends, he has managed to raise $25,000 to try and settle this matter.” 

“There would have to be a release and total confidentiality agreement. As you can see whatever we do here, we are in an untenable position since the mere accusation, whether it be true or not, and it is not true, can end his ministry at St. Benedict’s,” the letter said.

Both parties settled for $200,000 in February 2018, documents show. The pastor confirmed the deal to the outlet.

Anello could not be reached by CNA for comment by time of publication.

Durm-St. Amant, the man’s friend, told the outlet that she notified the Archdiocese of Baltimore of the sexual assault allegations in August 2018 and added that she then met with Monsignor James Hannon, then-director of the division of clergy personnel, and Jerri Burkhardt, director of the office of child and youth protection.

But she said she felt ignored. 

“What did he say? They’re going to meet with [Morlino] and counsel him?” the woman told the outlet about Hannon. “Not, ‘We’re going to shut him down.’ Not, ‘We’re going to take him out of service.’ That he needs counseling.”

In that August 2018 complaint to the archdiocese, Durm-St. Amant also alleged that Morlino had sexually assaulted a different man on a separate cruise. That man had died prior to the complaint being brought. 

The archdiocese told the outlet that Morlino denied the assault and the church could not corroborate the allegation because the man had died.

In the archdiocese’s statement Sunday, it said that in 2018 an individual brought a complaint against Morlino but that it related to sexual harassment — not sexual assault — of an adult man who had died by the time of the complaint, and therefore could not be corroborated.

CNA reached out to the archdiocese for comment on Monday but did not receive a response. 

Denying the allegations

Morlino denies all the allegations made against him. 

He told The Baltimore Banner that he did in fact go on a cruise with the man, Durm-St. Amant’s friend, along with three other friends, but had no sexual contact with him or in the following years.

Morlino also denies the fraud allegations. He told the outlet that there was an agreement that the man’s paychecks would be deposited into a church account that would cover his health care costs.

“I took care of his medical insurance; that was the deal,” the priest said. “He didn’t have any money; he played on my sympathy.”

The outlet also reported that Morlino paid the tax debt on the man’s home. But eventually, their relationship ended when the priest dismissed the man from his duties at the church. 

Morlino said he was stunned when the accusations came. 

A new administrator is being chosen to run St. Benedict Church in Baltimore, according to the archdiocese.

Anyone with information about sexual misconduct by any representative of the Church is encouraged to to contact the Baltimore Archdiocese by calling the Ethics line at 1-888-572-8026 or by visiting the archdiocese’s website.

[…]

New Haven, Conn., Jan 3, 2019 / 09:09 am (CNA).- Catholics can be good US citizens and honest public servants, the head of the Knights of Columbus wrote Thursday in a message to members of the Catholic charitable organization.

“There have been times in our country’s past when uninformed or prejudiced people questions whether Catholics could be good citizens or honest public servants,” Supreme Knight Carl Anderson wrote in the letter.

“Sadly, it seems that in some quarters, this prejudice remains.”

Anderson’s Jan. 3 letter was occasioned by two senators objecting last month to a federal judicial nominee’s membership in the Knights.

Senators Mazie Hirono (D-HI) and Kamala Harris (D-CA) asked whether his membership in the Knights of Columbus would prevent Brian C. Buescher from hearing cases “fairly and impartially.” Buescher is an Omaha-based lawyer nominated to sit on the US District Court for the District of Nebraska.

The Supreme Knight noted that Buescher’s “fitness for the federal bench” was questioned by Hirono and Harris “precisely because our Order holds firm to the Church’s teachings on the sanctity of life and marriage.”

Anderson said, “Such attacks on the basis of our Catholic faith are hardly new. The Knights of Columbus was formed amid a period of anti-Catholic bigotry.”

From the founding of the Knights of Columbus until the presidential election of John F. Kennedy, “many still held that Catholics were unfit for public office,” he added.

The Knights of Columbus has always adhered to Catholic teaching, Anderson said, adding that “our primary motivation” is Christ’s commandment “that we love God completely and our neighbor as ourselves.”

It is this commandment of love that compels the Knights’ charitable work, he noted.

“This love also motivates us to stand with the Church on the important issues of life and marriage, precisely because the Church’s teaching reflects and is based on that love. We stand with our Church because we believe that what our faith teaches is consistent with reason, is timeless and transcends the changing sentiments of any particular time or place.”

The Supreme Knight also noted that in his letter to the Knights’ 2013 convention, Pope Francis had asked that the organization “bear witness to the authentic nature of marriage and the family, the sanctity and inviolable dignity of human life, and the beauty and truth of human sexuality.”

Anderson pointed out the no religious test clause of Article VI of the US Constitution, and the free exercise clause of the Constitution’s First Amendment, saying, “any suggestion that the Order’s adherence to the beliefs of the Catholic Church makes a Brother Knight unfit for public office blatantly violates those constitutional guarantees.”

“Let us continue to express our love of God and neighbor by helping those in need and by standing with our Church, regardless of the popularity of doing so,” Anderson exhorted.

“Let us also remember that, from our founding, we have embodied the truth that a good Catholic is a good citizen who shows civility and dignity even in the face of prejudice.”

Buescher was nominated to serve on the U.S. District Court Nov. 3. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Buescher’s nomination Nov. 28, sending him written questions Dec. 5.

Hirono had asked Buescher if he would end his membership with the Knights of Columbus if confirmed, so as “to avoid any appearance of bias,” saying the organization “has taken a number of extreme positions.”

And Harris described the Knights as “an all-male society”, and asked if Buescher was aware that the Knights of Columbus “opposed a woman’s right to choose” and were against “marriage equality” when he joined.

Harris raised a statement from Anderson saying abortion constituted “the killing of the innocent on a massive scale” and asked Buescher if he agreed with Anderson.

Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) noted the nominee’s previously outspoken opposition to abortion and asked, “why should a litigant in your courtroom expect to get a fair hearing from an impartial judge in a case involving abortion rights?”

Buescher ran in the Republican primary for Nebraska attorney general in 2014. During that campaign he described himself as “avidly pro-life” and said opposition to abortion was part of his “moral fabric.”

In his responses to the questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee, Buescher said if confirmed as a federal judge, he would follow established rules regarding conflicts of interest, and that he would not seek to advance personal opinions, but would make rulings in accord with the judicial precedents established by the US Supreme Court.

Anderson is not the only voice to raise objections to the senators’ line of questions.

A Jan. 2 Wall Street Journal editorial said that the senators’ “argument against Mr. Buescher fits a distressing pattern. No longer is it necessary to engage the political merits of a position, or—in the case of a judicial nominee—demonstrate he’d use personal views to override the law. Today it is enough to label a nominee’s religion or associations “extreme” and use that to try to banish him from public life.”

The editorial noted another recent instance in which a Catholic faced questions about her faith, mentioning the 2017 confirmation hearing for federal Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett, in which Sen. Dianne Feinstein told Barrett “the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern.” That comment sparked a groundswell of support for Barrett’s nomination.

Last month, a Washington, D.C. chapter of the Knights of Columbus invited Harris and Hirono to join in their charitable activities, including a February Polar Plunge raising money for the Special Olympics. Neither senator has responded to that invitation.

The Knights of Columbus is active in 17 countries. In 2017, some 2 million members carried out more than 75 million hours of volunteer work and raised more than $185 million for charitable purposes.

[…]

At least 33 Catholics were killed Dec. 4 when a bus fell into a river in Kitui County, Kenya. / Courtesy Photo

Nairobi, Kenya, Dec 6, 2021 / 03:48 am (CNA).
At least 33 people, including children, were killed Saturday on their way to a wedding,… […]