Priest

THREE GENERATIONS of admirers showed up last month for the Bread and Roses Community Fund's tribute to the Rev. David Gracie. Gracie couldn't make it. He was terminally ill. Funeral Mass is today at the Church of Advocate in North Philadelphia. During the turbulent '70s and '80s, Gracie's name was in the headlines frequently - in the forefront of the struggles for peace and civil rights, against poverty and police brutality. The Episcopal priest took his battles to the streets of Philadelphia, often espousing unpopular causes and challenging the establishment.

The Rev. Francis Fittipaldi, 70, of Saint Thomas Monastery at Villanova University, died Friday at Bryn Mawr Hospital. The seventh of nine children, Father Fittipaldi was born in Philadelphia and was a member of Saint Rita Parish on Broad Street. In 1939, he became a postulant at the Augustinian Academy in Staten Island, N.Y. He professed his simple vows in 1944 and solemn vows in 1947. He graduated from Villanova College, now Villanova University, in 1948 with a degree in philosophy.

WILMINGTON - A priest has pleaded guilty to felony theft after being charged with embezzling more than $350,000 from two parishes of the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington. The Rev. Cornelius Breslin, 59, entered the plea Wednesday in New Castle County Superior Court. Breslin pleaded guilty to one count of felony theft over $100,000. He is to be sentenced Sept. 23.

An 82-year-old Roman Catholic priest who left his North Philadelphia rectory to holler at a teen-ager breaking into cars was in serious condition last night after the youth punched and kicked him to the ground, police said. Cops collared a 15-year-old suspect an hour after the 4:30 p.m. attack. He was jailed. The priest, the Rev. Joseph Burton, was at Hahnemann University Hospital in serious condition with multiple injuries. Police said the priest, who lives at the rectory of St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church, 5th Street and Girard Avenue, saw the teen breaking into cars parked in the church lot. He went out to confront the youth, police said, but the thieving tough set upon the priest and beat him. After knocking Burton to the ground with his fists and feet, police said the youth went through the priest's pockets and fled.

As Philadelphia police yesterday continued to investigate Thursday's hit-and-run death of an 81-year-old, partially blind Roman Catholic priest, the District Attorney's Office was contemplating charges against the woman suspected of driving the car that hit him. The Rev. Edward Joseph Donahue, a retired Redemptorist priest, was crossing Franklin Street near Girard Avenue in North Philadelphia at 3:45 p.m. when a car going south on Franklin struck...

Sometime or another, tinkering must give way to unveiling. For Marc Priest, a senior righthander at Central, the time was yesterday (nothing outlandish there) and the occasion was a Public League baseball quarterfinal (say what?!). Although he never had thrown a knuckle curve in competition, Priest used one early and often in pitching the Lancers to a 6-2 victory over visiting Northeast. "I'd been having trouble with my regular curveball lately," Priest said. "I stayed after practice (Wednesday)

In Mass Appeal, a priest who desires only to be popular and keep his parishioners content clashes with a seminarian who wants to challenge his fellow Catholics to do good and think deeply about their faith. You can probably guess which character in Bill C. Davis' play is changed by the confrontation. It is obvious from the beginning of this well-written play that the personable, political Father Tim Farley, who avoids controversy at all cost, will be transformed by his encounter with the earnest, honest, spiritual Mark Dolson.

A Roman Catholic priest said a sheriff's deputy threw him to the ground and hit his head against a marble wall during an "unprovoked attack" yesterday while he was leading a peaceful demonstration inside a City Hall corridor. Father Steve Perzan said the incident occurred while he was leading chants of "Stop the Sheriff's Sale" with a group of about 200 people, who were prevented from attending the monthly tax sales because the City Hall room was crowded. "It was an unprovoked attack," said Perzan, 42, a priest at St. Charles Borromeo Roman Catholic Church, 20th and Christian streets, South Philadelphia.

With hands clasped in front of him, John J. Donahue listened to a 20-minute lecture from Municipal Judge Louis J. Presenza on his seeming remorselessness before being sentenced yesterday to five years' probation for killing a priest with his car. Citing testimony from Donahue's mother and a psychotherapist describing the plump, 21-year-old, part-time miniature-golf attendant as cold and uncommunicative, Presenza ordered Donahue to seek therapy as...

A Roman Catholic priest who had been undergoing drug therapy was arrested earlier this week for allegedly buying three vials of cocaine from a drug dealer, police said. The Rev. Gerard Marable, 33, who had been enrolled in a drug program at Our Lady of Lourdes parish in Glassboro, N.J., since September, was arrested Tuesday, said the pastor, the Rev. William Buchler. Undercover detectives observed Marable buying three vials of a pinkish, chunky substance at 3 p.m. at 15th and Wallace streets in North Philadelphia, police said.

HACKENSACK, N.J. - A judge on Tuesday ordered a New Jersey priest held while a grand jury considers whether he violated a legal agreement to stay away from children. The Rev. Michael Fugee, who recently resigned from the Archdiocese of Newark, flouted a 2003 order he reached with the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office that allowed him to return to ministry after being convicted on charges that he fondled a boy, authorities said. The major stipulation of the agreement was that Fugee be barred from having unsupervised contact with minors or a job that required him to oversee or minister to children under 18. Despite that, Fugee became a fixture at a youth group in Colts Neck, hearing confession from minors and attending overnight retreats.

  Driving through rural North Jersey in 1970, Walter C. Miller came upon an old country building with a sign reading, "Prayer meeting every Wednesday night," which it just so happened to be. Religiosity and curiosity drew him in to what was the retreat house of a Catholic priest recently back from 12 years of contemplative life in Europe. After a fervid meeting, the priest asked Mr. Miller if he wished to be "baptized in the Spirit. " "How much does that cost?" he asked.

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput has permanently removed three more parish priests from public ministry over allegations of sexual abuse or misconduct around minors, including one whose accuser killed himself in 2009, allegedly after church officials first declared his claim unsubstantiated. That priest, the Rev. Joseph J. Gallagher, has been deemed "unsuitable for ministry due to violations" of church standards, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia said Sunday. A second priest, the Rev. Mark Gaspar, was removed for the same reason, officials said.

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput has permanently removed three more parish priests from public ministry over claims of sexual abuse or misconduct around minors, including one whose accuser killed himself in 2009, allegedly after church officials first declared his claim unsubstantiated. That priest, the Rev. Joseph J. Gallagher, has been deemed "unsuitable for ministry due to violations" of church standards, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced Sunday. A second priest, the Rev. Mark Gaspar, was removed for the same reason, officials said.

THERE WILL be no more masses, no nervous couples to wed or babies to baptize, and no more white collars against a simple black suit for three Archdiocese of Philadelphia priests implicated in sexual-abuse scandals. In a statement released Sunday, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput said the Rev. Joseph J. Gallagher, 78, and the Rev. Mark S. Gaspar, 43, will have no further public ministry in the Archdiocese "due to substantiated violations of The Standards of Ministerial Behaviors and Boundaries.

A husband and wife from central Pennsylvania filed suit in Bucks County Court on Wednesday, claiming that the woman was abused by a priest from the Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa in Doylestown, and that the Philadelphia Archdiocese, the shrine, and its priests, the Pauline Fathers, allowed the priest to flee to Poland after she reported the incident. The suit claims the Rev. Marek Lacki befriended the couple - parents of eight children - at a weekend retreat in March 2012, then encouraged the wife to visit the shrine for private counseling.

Marie Lynch and her husband, Jay, live in Media in a 4,500-square-foot, center-hall Colonial, complete with portico, butterfly staircase, a kitchen designed for Italian cooking and Irish entertaining, and a master-bedroom closet with enough floor space to open a 7-Eleven. But they might still be living in their much-smaller Colonial in West Whiteland, Chester County, if an 18-wheeler hadn't demolished the car her son Stephen was riding in on the Ohio Turnpike one Friday night 17 years ago. He died then and there.

BERLIN - A Jesuit priest who was kidnapped by the Argentine military junta in the 1970s said Wednesday that he and a fellow cleric weren't denounced by the future Pope Francis, then leader of Argentina's Jesuits. The Rev. Francisco Jalics, a Hungarian native who now lives in a German monastery, said in a statement that he was following up on comments about the case last week because he had received a lot of questions and "some commentaries imply the opposite of what I meant. " He did not elaborate.

When people in power want to project modesty and austerity and show us their down-to-earth sides, they start by making style changes. Whether men roll up their shirtsleeves, or women swap a blazer for a cardigan, politicians will tell you those subtle differences can win over a new audience. The Vatican got that memo. We'll never know for sure why the 115 cardinals in last week's papal conclave settled on Argentinian Jesuit Jorge Cardinal Bergoglio to assume the title of pope.