Catholic Priest

In the Church that Joe Built The Church that Joe Paterno Built, a once prominent house of worship, is in a sad state of disrepair. Its bishop has been defrocked, its priest has died, and a once-trusted deacon will live out his remaining days in a jail cell ("Sandusky found guilty," Saturday). Others await their fate, and no part of the church has been left unblemished. In the Church that Joe Built, its bell is silent, its floors and pews have been scrubbed and then scrubbed again, yet the stench lingers still.

The Rev. David Ousley was baptized a Methodist in 1951, was ordained a priest of the Episcopal Church in 1979, and left it in 1999 for the Anglican Church in America. And on Saturday, this 61-year-old married father of three will make one more ecclesiastical leap: he will be ordained a priest of the Roman Catholic Church in a 11 a.m. Mass at Holy Cross Church in Mount Airy. He is "swimming the Tiber," as Anglicans call conversion to Catholicism — a reference to the river that runs through Rome — but the white-bearded Ousley will not emerge from his swim on some strange and foreign shore.

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.