Rectory

Members of the Episcopal Church of the Annunciation spent Palm Sunday at home, at other churches or inside the soot-stained rectory next to the charred shell of the church that had stood on the corner of 12th and Diamond Streets for 105 years. Instead of receiving their palms together on the Sunday before Easter as they have for decades, many parishioners yesterday stared disbelievingly at the remnants of the historic North Philadelphia church, hugging and consoling one another.

Thieves are going to extraordinary lengths to break into city churches - in one case, climbing a six-foot-high fence to steal copper rain spouts; in another, boldly walking into private quarters to take a priest's personal effects. As a result of an alarming string of church burglaries in the past few months, many pastors in South Philadelphia and Center City have moved to install or upgrade security systems in their buildings and on their grounds. And, perhaps equally dismaying to those whose open doors have offered aid and sanctuary, many church officials are becoming more suspicious of strangers.

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.

The Rev. Ladislaus J. Ryczek, pastor of St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church in Conshohocken and a community college instructor, died at St. Mary's rectory on Monday, six days after his 58th birthday. Father Ryczek was ordained May 19, 1962, at the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul in Philadelphia by then-Archbishop John Krol. For two years, until June 1964, he served as parochial vicar of St. Joseph the Worker Church in Fallsington, Bucks County. Then, he entered the educational apostolate and taught at St. Matthew's High School in Conshohocken, now Archbishop Kennedy High School, where his subjects were religion, physics and sociology.

The children returned to the nursery school at All Hallows Episcopal Church yesterday for the first time since the rector was arrested last week on charges relating to the possession and distribution of child pornography. There have been a few changes since the last time the youngsters were there. The locks have been changed. There will not be any outdoor recess in the near future. An off-duty Cheltenham Township police officer will be on the school grounds for at least a week.

As 10-year-old Kate Loveless battles the brain cancer that has robbed her of her sight, the Warwick Township community has come to her aid. A fund-raising beef and beer held at the township fire hall on Feb. 1 was "a huge success," said Bobbie Loftus, one of the organizers. Loftus said almost $15,000 had been raised to help Kate's family pay for medical expenses not covered by insurance and for a Braille machine. That is twice the amount the community raised last year during a similar fund-raising effort, and it is $5,000 more than the goal.

The Westtown Township Zoning Hearing Board has granted the St. Maximilian Kolbe Parish a special exception allowing construction of a parish center and rectory on a 20-acre tract on Route 202 and Pleasant Grove Road. Ronald M. Agulnick, the board's solicitor, said at the Wednesday night meeting that the special exception was required to allow construction of church buildings in a residential zoning district. The order required the Roman Catholic parish to widen a 600-foot section of Pleasant Grove Road from two lanes to three.

A small white trailer is parked near the new St. Elizabeth Catholic Church on Route 100 in Upper Uwchlan. It's a reminder of the years when Msgr. Thomas Mullin and volunteers hauled it down the highway to their makeshift church in a school gymnasium for Sunday Mass. In the trailer were the altar, lectern, 10 large plastic tubs for 700 hymn books, two tables for liturgical items, and assorted odds and ends. The days of traveling to Lionville Middle School for Mass in the gym are over.

The actions of the early-morning intruder epitomized a breed of thieves and vandals that have beset a struggling Camden cathedral and its soup kitchen over the past year. Invading the rectory at about 4 a.m. on Sunday, the brazen man paused to sample some of the Chianti on hand and to watch a little TV. "He drank the wine we usually have with spaghetti," said an incredulous Monsignor Vincent Giammarino, a retired priest who lives at the rectory of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Market Street near 6th. The only priest to have seen the burglar, the Rev. Calogero La Verde, believes the same man broke into the home two hours later, forcing his way through a basement door that had been nailed shut by a Camden patrolman after the first intrusion.

The Rev. Paul F. Maurer, 87, a priest, teacher and organist who lived for more than half a century in one South Philadelphia rectory, died Tuesday of a heart attack at St. Francis Country House, a Darby nursing facility for priests. Father Maurer, pastor emeritus of Epiphany of Our Lord Church, resided in the church rectory at 11th and Jackson Streets for 55 of his 57 years in the priesthood, serving as parish pastor from 1974 to 1988 after teaching for many years at Roman Catholic High School.