Mercieca denies allegations by a former alter boy who says he was also molested by priest as a teen
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| Father Anthony Mercieca as a young man |
ROME The lawyer for a Catholic priest who acknowledged fondling Mark Foley when the former congressman was a teenager said Oct. 27 there were no grounds for legal action against the clergyman, and he denied allegations by a second man claiming the priest molested him.
“Father Anthony Mercieca believes that nothing that happened between him and Mark Foley, some 40 years ago, could provide solid grounds for legal action against him,” lawyer Alfred Grech said in an e-mail from his office in Malta to The Associated Press in Rome.
“He therefore considers the aggressive and unfavorable exposure as being unfair and unjustified.”
Foley, a 52-year-old Florida Republican, resigned from Congress last month after the release of his sexually explicit computer messages to teenage male interns. His lawyer later said that Foley was an alcoholic, gay and had been molested as a boy by a “clergyman.”
Mercieca, who is retired and lives on the Maltese island of Gozo, was quoted by media in Florida as saying that he fondled Foley and was nude with him on several occasions while serving in a parish in the U.S. in the 1960s. In a phone interview with the AP last week, he insisted that his association with the boy “wasn’t sexual.”
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| Former Florida Congressman Mark Foley |
The Maltese Church has opened a probe into the case. In Florida, the Archdiocese of Miami has confirmed that Mercieca is the person Foley said abused him as a teen, and has barred the priest from all church work as it investigates Foley’s claim.
Earlier this week, another former altar boy in Florida came forward and said he was sexually abused by Mercieca in the 1970s. The man’s lawyer, Jeffrey Herman, said his client had been an altar boy at St. James Catholic Church, where Mercieca worked.
The priest, speaking through his lawyer, denied the allegation, “and describes it at best as a figment of the imagination and at worst a malicious fabrication,” the statement said.
Herman sued the Archdiocese of Miami on behalf of his client on Oct. 25, seeking more than $10 million in damages. His client, now 40 and identified in the lawsuit as John Doe No. 26, says Mercieca abused him when he was about 12.
The Archdiocese of Miami has said it had no idea at the time that Mercieca might have been abusing altar boys.
Mercieca, who is a native of Gozo, does not serve in any parish but until last week he regularly celebrated Mass and heard confession in the island’s cathedral.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition, November 3, 2006.