rockin'robin
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(April 1) -- The story of the Rev. Gerald Fitzgerald, a pioneering priest whose name surfaced this week as one of the first clergymen to repeatedly warn the Vatican about pedophile priests, started off as heroically as a Bing Crosby movie.
The Boston-born Fitzgerald drove from Massachusetts to a deserted, picturesque canyon in New Mexico where he founded the Roman Catholic Church's first order for wayward priests in 1947, three years after Crosby starred as a young, idealistic priest in "Going My Way."
But in the end, things did not go the way Fitzgerald had planned for his Jemez Springs order, called the Servants of the Paraclete. He had envisioned a place for the healing and renewal of priests with alcohol problems and other emotional issues easily identifiable in the 1940s. He never expected that many of the priests who would come to his new retreat would be pedophiles.
In an especially ironic twist, Fitzgerald's prescient warnings about pedophile priests came true in what happened to his own order after he was forced out in a power struggle around 1965. The battle revolved in part around his belief that pedophile priests were incurable. He suggested they be housed on an island for treatment.
Fitzgerald wrote a follow-up letter to Pope Paul VI in 1963 after he went to Rome to warn the pontiff that pedophile priests were dangerous and should be removed from the ministry.
The letter is among documentation used in litigation by lawyers for California clergy abuse victims. It has been analyzed this week as questions surrounding how much the Vatican knew about child sex abuse and how much it may have helped cover it up increase.
The Paracletes eventually became known as "Club Ped," or as one lawyer termed it, "a dumping ground for toxic ecclesiastical waste."
The sordid reputation developed as the order turned into a cushy temporary retreat for pedophile priests who enjoyed healthy food and mineral baths before they were returned to the outside world to resume parish work.
Even worse, some of the sex-offender priests being treated at the order were allowed to work on weekends in local parishes, where they molested more children.
Among the many notorious pedophile priests sent to Jemez Springs, often more than one time, was the Rev. David Holley, now serving 275 years for molesting boys, and the Rev. James Porter, who was believed to have molested at least 131 victims and who died in 2006 while serving a 20-year prison sentence.
Fitzgerald, who died in 1969, never expected to deal with the serious issues presented by the pedophile priests who began arriving at the Jemez Springs order in the late 1940s, said the Rev. Liam Hoare, vicar general of the Servants of the Paraclete. He runs what is left of the order in the United States, a small retreat for troubled priests in Dittmer, Mo.
"They came on Greyhound buses, by trains, often sent by bishops who never told the Paracletes what their real problems were," Hoare said in a telephone interview with AOL News. "Back in the '40s nobody talked about this. You can't look at it through 2010 lenses."
Fitzgerald became so alarmed by the gravity of pedophiliac priests' disorders that he wrote letters for years to U.S. bishops and met with Pope Paul VI in Rome warning that such priests were "devils" and should be defrocked.
"These men, Your Excellency, are devils and the wrath of God is upon them and if I were a bishop I would tremble when I failed to report them to Rome for involuntary layization," Fitzgerald wrote in a 1957 letter to an unnamed archbishop.
Nor did he want them at his retreat, Hoare said. Fitzgerald even tried to buy a Caribbean island where they could be treated in isolation without fear they could harm children.
"It is for this class of rattlesnake I have always wished the island retreat -- but even an island is too good for these vipers of whom the Gentle Master said it were better they had not been born -- this is an indirect way of saying damned, is it not?" Fitzgerald wrote in the same letter.
Hoare said Fitzgerald was tormented by a problem he never saw coming. According to the history of the order, Fitzgerald, a former diocesan priest and military chaplain, got the inspiration to create the Paraclete order on a "bitterly cold" night during the Great Depression when someone who appeared to be a beggar knocked on the back door of his rectory.
Fitzgerald gave him some food and warm clothing, and as the figure walked back out into the dark night, he turned around and said he had also been a priest once. From that point on, Fitzgerald wanted to help troubled priests.
"Father Gerald was a really personable guy with a great Irish sense of humor," said Hoare. "He was in the business of the salvation of souls. He was part of the solution. He wanted to help priests. Instead he -- and all of us -- became casualties of the clerical sex abuse crisis."
The New Mexico center closed in 1995 after being inundated with lawsuits stemming in large part from pedophile priests staying there who molested children when they were allowed to work in local parishes on the weekend. A branch of the order near Gloucestershire, England, closed around 1998.
Rev. Gerald Fitzgerald Founded Order to Help Troubled Priests but Couldn't Curb Abuse - AOL News
The Boston-born Fitzgerald drove from Massachusetts to a deserted, picturesque canyon in New Mexico where he founded the Roman Catholic Church's first order for wayward priests in 1947, three years after Crosby starred as a young, idealistic priest in "Going My Way."
But in the end, things did not go the way Fitzgerald had planned for his Jemez Springs order, called the Servants of the Paraclete. He had envisioned a place for the healing and renewal of priests with alcohol problems and other emotional issues easily identifiable in the 1940s. He never expected that many of the priests who would come to his new retreat would be pedophiles.
In an especially ironic twist, Fitzgerald's prescient warnings about pedophile priests came true in what happened to his own order after he was forced out in a power struggle around 1965. The battle revolved in part around his belief that pedophile priests were incurable. He suggested they be housed on an island for treatment.
Fitzgerald wrote a follow-up letter to Pope Paul VI in 1963 after he went to Rome to warn the pontiff that pedophile priests were dangerous and should be removed from the ministry.
The letter is among documentation used in litigation by lawyers for California clergy abuse victims. It has been analyzed this week as questions surrounding how much the Vatican knew about child sex abuse and how much it may have helped cover it up increase.
The Paracletes eventually became known as "Club Ped," or as one lawyer termed it, "a dumping ground for toxic ecclesiastical waste."
The sordid reputation developed as the order turned into a cushy temporary retreat for pedophile priests who enjoyed healthy food and mineral baths before they were returned to the outside world to resume parish work.
Even worse, some of the sex-offender priests being treated at the order were allowed to work on weekends in local parishes, where they molested more children.
Among the many notorious pedophile priests sent to Jemez Springs, often more than one time, was the Rev. David Holley, now serving 275 years for molesting boys, and the Rev. James Porter, who was believed to have molested at least 131 victims and who died in 2006 while serving a 20-year prison sentence.
Fitzgerald, who died in 1969, never expected to deal with the serious issues presented by the pedophile priests who began arriving at the Jemez Springs order in the late 1940s, said the Rev. Liam Hoare, vicar general of the Servants of the Paraclete. He runs what is left of the order in the United States, a small retreat for troubled priests in Dittmer, Mo.
"They came on Greyhound buses, by trains, often sent by bishops who never told the Paracletes what their real problems were," Hoare said in a telephone interview with AOL News. "Back in the '40s nobody talked about this. You can't look at it through 2010 lenses."
Fitzgerald became so alarmed by the gravity of pedophiliac priests' disorders that he wrote letters for years to U.S. bishops and met with Pope Paul VI in Rome warning that such priests were "devils" and should be defrocked.
"These men, Your Excellency, are devils and the wrath of God is upon them and if I were a bishop I would tremble when I failed to report them to Rome for involuntary layization," Fitzgerald wrote in a 1957 letter to an unnamed archbishop.
Nor did he want them at his retreat, Hoare said. Fitzgerald even tried to buy a Caribbean island where they could be treated in isolation without fear they could harm children.
"It is for this class of rattlesnake I have always wished the island retreat -- but even an island is too good for these vipers of whom the Gentle Master said it were better they had not been born -- this is an indirect way of saying damned, is it not?" Fitzgerald wrote in the same letter.
Hoare said Fitzgerald was tormented by a problem he never saw coming. According to the history of the order, Fitzgerald, a former diocesan priest and military chaplain, got the inspiration to create the Paraclete order on a "bitterly cold" night during the Great Depression when someone who appeared to be a beggar knocked on the back door of his rectory.
Fitzgerald gave him some food and warm clothing, and as the figure walked back out into the dark night, he turned around and said he had also been a priest once. From that point on, Fitzgerald wanted to help troubled priests.
"Father Gerald was a really personable guy with a great Irish sense of humor," said Hoare. "He was in the business of the salvation of souls. He was part of the solution. He wanted to help priests. Instead he -- and all of us -- became casualties of the clerical sex abuse crisis."
The New Mexico center closed in 1995 after being inundated with lawsuits stemming in large part from pedophile priests staying there who molested children when they were allowed to work in local parishes on the weekend. A branch of the order near Gloucestershire, England, closed around 1998.
Rev. Gerald Fitzgerald Founded Order to Help Troubled Priests but Couldn't Curb Abuse - AOL News
