Vatican accepts resignation of Palm Beach bishop

Associated Press Writer

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- Pope John Paul II on Wednesday accepted the resignation of a Roman Catholic bishop who admitted molesting a teen-ager at a Missouri seminary more than 25 years ago.

Bishop Anthony J. O'Connell, 63, of the Diocese of Palm Beach, announced his resignation last Friday after he admitted to the allegations first published by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The former student, Christopher Dixon, now 40, said they touched inappropriately in bed after he sought counseling from O'Connell in the late 1970s. O'Connell was rector at the time.

On Wednesday, the Vatican's daily bulletin said the pope accepted the resignation.

"It's a sad day for the diocese," said diocese spokesman Sam Barbaro. "Bishop O'Connell was much loved by the people and admired. But we must obey the Vatican's determination on this."

"We pray for Bishop O'Connell and we pray for the victims in this terrible tragedy," he added.

The Rev. Seamus Murtagh was named by the Vatican to oversee the diocese until a successor is selected by the pope, Barbaro said. Murtagh had served as vicar general under O'Connell.

O'Connell was installed in 1999 to replace Bishop J. Keith Symons, who was the first U.S. bishop to resign because of sexual involvement with boys.

Parish priests around the five-county diocese said they would work to begin the healing process.

"I think in the long run the church and parishioners and everyone are going to be better served. But it's just painful and a heck of a way to have to get to that stage," said the Rev. John McMahon, pastor of St. Joan of Arc in Boca Raton. "People are hurt and that's the sad thing about the whole process."

At St. Ann Catholic Church in downtown West Palm Beach, about 30 parishioners said a prayer for O'Connell at noon Mass. Afterward, several said his departure meant they could move on.

"This will bring peace and closure for the victims and some sense that the church is moving in the right direction to heal them," said Maureen Ackerman, 48, of Palm Beach Gardens. "In the long run you'll see positive changes coming out of it."

The Rev. Dumarsais Pierre-Louis said several concerned parishioners have called him and about a dozen people in the 650-family parish attended a Sunday meeting with Murtagh, the pastor at St. Ann.

"He consoled them and assured them that the church is working hard for kids to be safe," he said. "People were angry, that's normal. Most of the people have been supportive. They understand that the priests, not all of them are holy people."

The diocese planned to hold a special healing Mass Wednesday evening.

The Palm Beach case came amid a major sex abuse scandal in the Boston archdiocese, where a former priest, John Geoghan, has been accused by 130 people of molesting them during his decades as a clergyman.

All three bishops in the Palm Beach diocese's 18-year history are involved in scandal. The founding bishop is being sued for keeping quiet in Boston's church-sex case.

The Rev. Thomas V. Daily, who founded the diocese in 1984, has been named in 48 lawsuits as a church official who kept silent despite mounting evidence that Geoghan couldn't control his pedophilia.

Daily served as the vicar general in the Boston archdiocese for eight years.

"This problem is more pervasive than most people know or would like to acknowledge," said David Clohessy, national director of Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests. "The greater moral culpability lies not with the molester but with the church leader who covers up."

In a deposition for the civil suits against Geoghan and the archdiocese, Daily was asked why he hadn't done more when a woman in 1980 accused the priest of abusing seven boys in her extended family.

"I am not a policeman; I am a shepherd," Daily, 75, who is now bishop of the Diocese of Brooklyn, said in a January deposition.

Geoghan is serving a 9- to 10-year prison sentence for groping a 10-year-old boy, and faces another criminal trial. Two child rape charges against him were dropped last week after a judge ruled the statute of limitations had expired.

Under a settlement reached Monday night, the Archdiocese of Boston will pay between $15 million to $30 million to 86 people who claim they were victims of sexual molestation by Geoghan.