Article Title
Priest Who Was Still Saying Mass After Abuse Settlements Is Suspended
Link to Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/23/nyregion/father-donald-timone-suspended.html
Source: New York Times
Author(s): Sharon Otterman
Date: December 23, 2018
Synopsis of / Excerpts from the Article
The Archdiocese of New York has suspended a priest who had continued his clerical duties despite two settlements paid for allegations of sexual abuse of teenage boys.
The Rev. Donald G. Timone, 84, is the subject of an internal investigation by the archdiocese, but had continued to celebrate Mass in New York and California, more than a year and a half after an archdiocesan compensation program paid settlements to the two men, as detailed last week by The New York Times. [See the entry in this chronology for 2018-12-20.]
A spokesman for the archdiocese, Joseph Zwilling, said on Friday that the archdiocese would no longer allow Father Timone to remain in ministry while it weighed permanently removing him.
Those settlements did not trigger Father Timone’s removal from the ministry despite the archdiocese’s “zero-tolerance” policy on child sexual abuse, Mr. Zwilling said, because the compensation program functioned separately from the archdiocese’s own internal process for substantiating abuse allegations.
“It’s reprehensible that Cardinal Dolan allowed this priest to minister for years to sexually vulnerable minors,” said Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, which tracks clergy abuse. “The cardinal put other children at risk. And it raises the question: How many other accused priests is he concealing?”
Lidy Connolly, the vice president of administration at John Paul the Great Catholic University in California, where Father Timone has been working as a chaplain, spiritual adviser and teacher, said that the Archdiocese of New York had informed the university on Wednesday that Father Timone’s letter of good standing — a required credential for a priest — had been revoked. He was no longer working there, she said.