Thursday, June 9, 2011

Maryland Province To Conduct An Investigation

Fr. Louis Bonacci, S.J.
For the second time in six months, Jesuit authorities in Maryland are investigating allegations that a priest with ties to Scranton may have s@xually abused a minor. The Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus received information last month that the Rev. Louis A. Bonacci, S.J., may have inappropriately touched a minor in a family home between 1978 and 1982. During that time frame, Father Bonacci was serving as the assistant director of campus ministry at Loyola College in Baltimore. Father Bonacci served in the Scranton area, holding positions as a campus minister and adjunct professor of theology at the University of Scranton from 2003 to 2004and an adjunct professor at Misericordia University in Dallas in 2004. Starting in 2006, he served as the coordinator of spiritual direction for priests and deacons for the Diocese of Scranton, according to a statement released by the diocese.
Link (here) to read the full article at Citizens Voice

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4 comments:

TonyD said...

I just spent about an hour exploring the Misericordia University web site. In some ways, their school is a role model: "…within six months of graduation, students will have a position in the career of their choice or be enrolled in graduate school, or the college will provide a paid internship in the student’s field of study." And that is commendable.

I didn't see any indication that they were trying to find any former students who may have been molested by Fr.Bonacci (he taught there for a year).

We have become inured to corporate callousness. We expect the marketing message to be more important than the students. I would like to see the Sisters of Mercy be a better role model.

June 10, 2011 at 3:18 AM
Maria said...

Praying for Priests
(Biography: Father Gerald Fitzgerald)
by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.

"Unworthy priests are more than a source of scandal to the faithful. They renew the mockery of the Mystical Christ today, even as the Roman soldiers mocked the physical Christ during His Passion on Holy Thursday night.

Those poor soldiers, all they thought was that Jesus was a poor dreamer, a poor seer and perhaps, a half-wit, a poor victim of the mob who was given to them that they might have some fun according to their ideas of fun. As cruel men sometimes cast a poor little rabbit to the hounds after they have caught it, or a poor little mouse to the cat to be played with, they did not know that this was the King of Kings.

But, when I or another priest of God do anything unworthy, I step up to Him and bow my knee in mockery, and make the world laugh. The world who hates Christ and does not believe. They smile and say, "There is your priest for you." I set the crown back hard and deep into the Sacred Seat of Divine Wisdom. Oh, this is a mystery of suffering that is especially continued through time.
How Christ suffers in being mocked in the person of His priest!

It is too late for a priest to make a decision, would to God it was not, it is too late for a priest to turn back and be something else. (J-4, p. 38).
But they cannot be anything else. They are ordained forever. And even if they try to forget, the world never forgets. It knows, as by supernatural instinct, what a priest should be and if he shows himself unfaithful, the whole Church suffers by the counterwitness he gives to everyone who enters his life.

It follows, then, that the sins of priests are particularly offensive to God.

There is a passage in the Psalms that applies especially to sin in a priest. The Psalmist says I was wounded in the house of a friend.
If ever there is a place that should be the house of a friend, it should be the soul of a priest. It should be a house that is given over as a true friend gives over his home when a friend comes to him; so before all else a priest's soul belongs to Christ. It should be the house of his friend. And there the wounds that He receives by the sins of a priest all represent a special depth of anguish; they have a special poignancy to Our Lord because He loves so much. (D-127).

June 11, 2011 at 1:29 AM
Mater Dei said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
April 27, 2012 at 11:25 AM
Mater Dei said...

What's the story line now? It's been almost a year and what? This guy is/was a MODEL priest in Scranton (and everywhere else). The two 30-year old accusations are what? Inappropriate touching could be a pat on the lower back. Was there anything to substantiate these allegations, or was a great priest simply blown-away by accusations that could never have been proven in the first place?

April 27, 2012 at 11:27 AM

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