Catholic Priest

A Catholic priest was awaiting arraignment last night at the Police Administration Building following his arrest earlier yesterday in North Philadelphia's notorious Fairhill drug zone on a possession-of-cocaine charge. The Rev. Nicholas J. Martino, 41, was a passenger inside a 1997 Ford Crown Victoria parked at Hancock and Cambria Streets at 2:08 a.m. when police officers took notice of the vehicle and the two men sitting in it, authorities said. Father Martino had been "released" from his priestly duties two weeks ago because of an ongoing substance-abuse problem, said archdiocesan spokeswoman Cathy Matusiak.

The Rev. Joseph Turner, 73, a Catholic priest who grew up in Philadelphia orphanages, then helped smuggle orphans out of Vietnam during the fall of Saigon, died Monday of cancer at the Philadelphia Veterans Administration Hospital. Father Joe, who belonged to the Society of the Divine Savior, a missionary order of priests, lived in Northeast Philadelphia. He was an Army chaplain stationed in Hawaii when Saigon fell in April 1975. He had served two tours of duty in Vietnam, in 1968 and 1970, and had found American homes for 12 orphans during that time.

One of the most cherished ideas among faithful Catholics is that when a man is ordained a priest, he remains a priest forever. Forever is a long, long time. But what if said priest gives up his priesthood and gets married? Or what if he just doesn't want to be a priest any longer? Is there no way out? A man or woman can give up almost any other profession in life. But once a priest, always a priest. A lawyer can be disbarred, a doctor can have his license revoked, a cop can turn in his badge - but no matter what he does or says, a Catholic priest remains a priest.

IN THE April 23 issue of the Daily News, there was a small blurb of a story about the Lutheran Church paying $37 million in a sexual assault lawsuit. The perpetrator was a Lutheran minister who was sentenced to a long prison term. The victims were small boys, making the minister a pedophile. This story appeared on Page 77. Had the minister been a Catholic priest, the story would have made the front page. The media claims that it does not bash the Catholic Church. Get real! Frank Flicker Philadelphia

After years of listening hard to rock music - and puzzling over evil influences that might rot a child's mind or turn him from God - the Rev. Don Kimball has a simple message for parents: Don't worry. There has "always been the cry that rock is destroying our youth, but less than 1 percent of popular rock is blatantly satanic," the Catholic priest said before meeting with a Yardley group of 75 last weekend. A radio host in Santa Rosa, Calif., Father Kimball told the group at St. Ignatius Church, "I play everything.

The Rev. Francis P. O'Reilly, 81, pastor emeritus of St. John the Evangelist Church in Morrisville and known as "the blacksmith priest" for his skill with wrought iron, died Thursday at Fitzgerald Mercy Hospital. Father O'Reilly spent more than 50 years in the priesthood as a teacher, pastor and radio and television-show host. But the priest, who grew up on a dairy farm in Feasterville and learned iron-work from his blacksmith father, was better known for the candlesticks, boot scrapers, picture frames and other wrought-iron objects he produced.

The Rev. Francis R. Duffy confesses that at one time he was "the outstandingly worst practitioner in the world. Nothing I did worked. " What Duffy practiced - or at least tried to - was hypnosis. And he's right. Everything he did was wrong. Why, he wasn't even hypnotizable. So Duffy chucked the whole stupor bit and went back to playing the saxophone. But then along came Loretta, a little girl he happened to meet on a beach in South Jersey in the summer of '61. Today, Father Francis Raymond Duffy, director of St. Joseph's House for Homeless Industrious Boys in Holmesburg, is hypnotic history.

A 35-year-old Delaware man filed a lawsuit yesterday alleging that a priest who was a Catholic school principal sexually abused him weekly for nine years when he was a schoolboy in Wilmington. The now retired priest, the Rev. James W. O'Neill, was reassigned from Salesianum High School to Archbishop Wood High School in Warminster soon after the first allegation was lodged in 1985. O'Neill has not been accused of any improprieties at Archbishop Wood, where he was principal from 1986 to 1991.

A Baptist deacon and a Catholic priest were indicted by a Burlington County grand jury Thursday on separate charges that they molested adolescent girls. Daniel Eaves, 34, a Baptist deacon, is accused of sexually assaulting eight girls between the ages of 3 and 14 at his home and while chaperoning a youth group of Victory Baptist Church in Springfield, said Assistant Prosecutor Gregg Shivers. Eaves listed his address as McGuire Air Force Base, but it could not be determined yesterday whether he was in the military.

I have been a Catholic priest for years, and, like most people I know, I have been changed by my experiences over the years. Growing up Catholic in a small town in Louisiana, I and others did not ask why the black members of our church had to sit in the last five pews during Mass, or why our schools were segregated. Nor did we, needless to say, ask why women could not be priests. The military was my ticket out of Louisiana. I volunteered for duty in Vietnam, which became a turning point in my life.

In parishes around the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, both joy and uncertainty greeted the news Friday that three priests among the more than two dozen accused of wrongful behavior with children would soon be returning to ministry, while five would not. "Yay!" shouted 17-year-old Emily Ferry when she learned that Archbishop Charles J. Chaput had reinstated the Rev. Michael Chapman, former pastor of Ascension of Our Lord parish in Kensington. "I'm excited," she said. "He was a fine, nice guy. " "I'm happy he's back," said her brother, Hugh, 21. Both had been altar servers at Ascension.

I have been a Catholic priest for years, and, like most people I know, I have been changed by my experiences over the years. Growing up Catholic in a small town in Louisiana, I and others did not ask why the black members of our church had to sit in the last five pews during Mass, or why our schools were segregated. Nor did we, needless to say, ask why women could not be priests. The military was my ticket out of Louisiana. I volunteered for duty in Vietnam, which became a turning point in my life.

A CATHOLIC sister testified Monday that she was fired from her religious-school job in a Pottstown-area parish after questioning why a priest had received porn in the mail. The priest - the Rev. Edward M. DePaoli - had been arrested on child-pornography charges in 1985 and convicted and sentenced to probation. But in 1995, Sister Joan Scary - then in her sixth year as director of religious education at St. Gabriel's parish in Stowe, Montgomery County - was unaware of the details of DePaoli's past.

Sister Joan Scary said she got one clear instruction when the Rev. Edward M. DePaoli arrived at St. Gabriel Catholic Church in September 1995: Don't ask questions. Though she had been director of religious education at the Pottstown-area church since 1989, Scary told a Philadelphia jury Monday that St. Gabriel's pastor, the Rev. James Gormley, warned her that if she talked about DePaoli, "I could pack my bags and leave. " But Scary testified that she remembered that DePaoli had been arrested for something 10 years earlier and kept trying to find out what.

Sister Joan Scary said she got one clear instruction when the Rev. Edward M. DePaoli arrived at St. Gabriel Catholic Church in September 1995: Don't ask questions. Though she had been director of religious education at the Pottstown-area church since 1989, Scary told a Philadelphia jury Monday that St. Gabriel's pastor, the Rev. James Gormley, warned her that if she talked about DePaoli, "I could pack my bags and leave. " But Scary testified that she remembered that DePaoli had been arrested for something 10 years earlier and kept trying to find out what.

SMETHPORT, PA. - A suspended Catholic priest will spend two years on probation - and his bishop already has said that the priest's felony conviction will keep him out of active ministry - for his inappropriate relationship with a 15-year-old northwestern Pennsylvania boy. The Rev. Samuel Slocum, 60, was sentenced Monday in McKean County, where he was convicted last month of concealment of the whereabouts of a child, the Bradford Era ...

TOLEDO, OHIO - A Roman Catholic priest convicted of killing a nun inside an Ohio hospital chapel a day before Easter in 1980 won't get a new trial. A judge ruled yesterday that police reports discovered after the priest's trial contained no new information that would have changed the outcome. It has been more than five years since jurors convicted the Rev. Gerald Robinson of stabbing and strangling Sister Margaret Ann Pahl at Mercy Hospital, in Toledo, where both worked.

  Four current and former Catholic priests are headed to trial after a judge ruled Friday there was sufficient evidence of sex abuse, conspiracy, and child endangement for the case against them to proceed. In a two-hour session punctuated by angry outbursts from some of the lawyers, as well as from the bench, Common Pleas Court Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes turned down defense requests for a preliminary hearing at which the defendants could have confronted their accusers in open court.

THESE ABUSE allegations rear their ugly heads every so often, and here is it again. Five priests, and one defrocked. Something is wrong with the Catholic Church - a divorced woman can't remarry in her church, but the neighborhood priest can molest your children and get away with it. Every priest who molests should be thrown in prison, but you people know me - I'm for the death penalty, and I don't care if it's a priest or layman, these crimes...

Back when tweeting was for the birds and message boards were, well, boards, Brian Roberts got the words out, short and sweet. He's the guy behind the pithy pronouncements, aphorisms, and witticisms on the signature sign of the Mr. Roberts Lumber Center & Volney G. Bennett Lumber Co. What he calls the "marquee" has been an icon at the store on Clements Bridge Road in Barrington since 1980. It's modeled on a sign that graced the company's century-old former location in South Camden.