This week a friend of mine who happened to be in the seminary when I was in the seminary for a second time sent me a link to a story about one of the priests who was on the formation board at that time.  Steve Mari,nucci, age 71, is now off the job in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. He has denied the accusation of molestation. Since a priest can retire at the age of 70 I am assuming he is retired and just helping out at a parish.  This priest was involved in causing considerable havoc in the lives of many seminarians, mine included. He was deceitful. He was incompetent. He was petty. He was just an all around jerk to have to deal with.

My reply to the e-mail I received was; He is innocent until proven guilty.  That said he was in a position to judge those men seeking ordination…WOW!  My next thought was that if he is truly innocent but acted in the same ways in a parish that he acted at the seminary then he pissed-off a lot of people.

I did have one recurring fantasy about this priest, one that I am not proud of, it consisted of a policeman coming to me telling me that he had been murdered. My response, (less than Christian), was, ‘Good!’ There  would be a myriad of suspects because of the things he was guilty of while at the seminary…all the people he was responsible for hurting, for all of the vocations his behavior harmed.

Is it beyond the realm of possibility that he is guilty of molestation? No, it is not.  But what he is definitely guilty of was being an awful priest and an awful example for the men at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary back in the 90’s..