Priest

After more than three weeks of negotiations, the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania has persuaded a priest charged with possession and distribution of child pornography to resign. The Rev. Robert K. Orr, rector of All Hallows Episcopal Church, on Tuesday accepted a severance package consisting of eight months' salary, benefits and housing allowance, his attorney, John Elbert, said yesterday. Under the terms of the agreement, Father Orr may live at the rectory next to the church's nursery school until June 14. The last day the school will be in session is June 12. An off-duty Cheltenham Township police officer will be posted at the school until then, said school director Courtney Sjostrom.

On Monday, Dec. 7, I was physically assaulted by a member of the Sheriff's Department while standing outside Courtroom 296, where a typical First-Monday- of-the-Month Property Sale was going on. The only difficulty was that I and about 200 other people were unable to get in. There was no more room in the courtroom, even though what was going on inside was advertised as a public sale. Many people's properties were being taken away, and they did not even have an opportunity to be there at the final demise.

It should have been a song-filled Christmas celebration, with children and bright lights and a live nativity scene. Instead, members of a Northeast Philadelphia church spent last night mourning the death of an elderly parish priest, struck and killed by a car on his way to lead the Christmas festivities. Police said the Rev. Stanislaus A. Kowal, 78, was walking east across Dunks Ferry Road near Dunlap Street toward St. Anselm's Roman Catholic Church at 6:54 p.m. when a southbound, souped-up 1967 Chevrolet Malibu, driven by John J. Donahue, 21, hit him. The impact threw Kowal 74 feet, police said.

The Rev. Lawrence Martin Jenco, free at last from 563 days of captivity in Lebanon and a whirlwind week of confidential meetings with the Pope and the President, returned to the people of his home town yesterday. The white-bearded priest, born 51 years ago in this city of 78,000, was greeted by the sounds of tolling church bells and thousands of friends, family members and well-wishers who stood along a motorcade route and waited in line to enter a gilded, refurbished Rialto Theatre where he spoke.

The Rev. Nelson Perez, the Philadelphia priest savoring his first day in the homeland of his parents, was in a generous mood as he strolled the streets of Havana. Before he had left for Cuba, a fellow priest handed him $50 to give "to whoever inspires you. " Near his hotel Wednesday, Perez said: "I caught the eye of an elderly lady behind a gate . . . She was in a wheelchair, and one leg was amputated. She kept calling out and waving. She asked for some money for food. " Perez decided this was the moment, and forked over a rosary and the cash in the communist nation where priests are rare and most workers earn the equivalent of $10 or $20 a month.

The 78-year-old parish priest was on his way to Christmas festivities at his Northeast Philadelphia church when a souped-up car snuffed out his life shortly before 7 p.m. last Dec. 18. The Rev. Stanislaus A. Kowal was struck and killed while crossing Dunks Ferry Road near Dunlap Street. He was going to St. Anselm's Catholic Church to celebrate a novena mass. Yesterday, Municipal Judge Louis J. Presenza convicted the driver of the auto, John J. Donahue, 21, of Elnora Road near Lester, of homicide by vehicle and involuntary manslaughter.

The Rev. Dennis J. Comey, 91, a plain-talking Jesuit priest who for a quarter-century served as a peacemaker in many of Philadelphia's stormiest labor disputes, died yesterday at Mercy Catholic Medical Center, Fitzgerald Division. During the 1950s, Father Comey became known nationally as the "waterfront priest" for the role he played in settling labor disputes involving the dockworkers and longshoremen in Philadelphia and other cities along the East Coast. In 1943 he founded the Institute of Industrial Relations at what is now St. Joseph's University.

The formal inauguration today of Richard D. Breslin as Drexel University's 10th president marks the end of what one university official called "a painful chapter" of "discord and scandal" that led to "a leadership crisis . . . unprecedented in American higher education. " Breslin, 51, is a former Roman Catholic priest whose "unimpeachable character" and "moral convictions" were important considerations in the decision to appoint him last September, the official said. Breslin succeeds Drexel trustee Harold M. Myers, who served as interim president after William S. Gaither was driven from office in October 1987 amid charges he had sexually harassed female staff members.

Karen Carr did not fear for her own life as the agitated 16-year-old boy flashed his hunting knife at everyone in the room that Saturday night. Her fear was for the troubled boy, a student at the Devereux School, who was threatening to slit his own throat because he could not live with the tricks his brain was playing on him. Two and a half hours later - after cajoling, comforting and pleading by Carr and the Rev. Peter Quinn, a priest who...

Although he has been retired from parish work as a Roman Catholic priest since 1970 and is now confined to a wheelchair, the Rev. Richard Farrant can draw strength from the knowledge that a dream he turned into reality so many years ago continues to serve the people of the Northeast. The Men of St. Matthew bowling league, which Father Farrant established while at the Mayfair parish in the 1960s, is nearing the end of its 27th season. But the league still maintains the ideals of its founder.