Priest Acknowledges
Relationship With Foley
By Howard Schneider
and Debbi Wilgoren, Washingtonpost.com from the Web, October 19, 2006
A retired priest from Malta
acknowledged today that he had intimate contact with a youthful Mark Foley that
involved nudity and -- on at least one occasion -- "light touching," but denied
that he and Foley had "sexual intercourse."
The Rev. Anthony Mercieca, in a telephone interview with The Washington Post
from the Maltese island of Gozo, said he was surprised that his long-ago
interaction with Foley had become linked to the scandal that erupted last month
and cost the former congressman his job.
Foley, who served as an altar boy at the Sacred Heart Catholic church in Lake
Worth, Fla., when Mercieca was assigned there in the mid-1960s, resigned from
Congress after reports about sexually intimate electronic messages he had sent
to Congressional pages. Following his resignation, Foley entered alcohol
rehabilitation, said he was gay, and alleged that he had been sexually abused by
a member of the clergy as a youth.
This morning the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, citing confidential sources close to
Foley's family, identified Mercieca as the priest in question. Though
Mercieca confirmed his past ties to Foley to the Herald-Tribune and in the Post
interview, the Post could not confirm that Foley was referring to Mercieca in
his allegations, or whether there may be another priest involved.
Catholic Church officials have encouraged Foley to name the priest who allegedly
abused him, and Foley was expected to turn that information over to law
enforcement authorities yesterday, wire services reported. A statement
issued by the Archdiocese of Miami this morning said church officials believe
the name had been given to the Palm Beach County State's Attorney on Wednesday,
but added that the state's attorneys office had not revealed the information to
the church.
The statement said the archdiocese would publicize the name of the priest once
it receives it, "per our policy relating to the protection of children and
vulnerable adults."
Mercieca told the Post that issues like molestation and sexual harassment are
"in the eye of the beholder," and that Foley -- who was 12 or 13 at the time --
might have interpreted some of their contact "the wrong way."
Mercieca said he is currently 69, meaning he would have been close to 30 at the
time he served in Foley's Florida parish.
During at least one encounter with Foley, "I was a little out of myself,"
Mercieca said, from using tranquilizers as a result of what the Sarasota paper
described as a nervous breakdown. "The whole idea is ... that I did
something that he did not like, but at the time he did not say anything."
Mercieca said that he regarded their trips to skinny dip in Lake Worth, or to
local saunas, as well within the cultural bounds as he understood them in
Brazil, where he said he attended seminary and spent his first years as a
priest.
In Brazil "they skinny dip all the time and no one gets scandalized. It is
part of the culture. It is natural," Mercieca said. "They don't make
an issue out of a skinny dip in the park or a massage."
"It was not what you call intercourse. ... There was no rape or anything. ...
Maybe light touches here or there," said Mercieca.
Mercieca said he could not explain why Foley might be attributing his broader
problems to their contact.
"We had some kind of friendship. I was very friendly with him and his
family," said Mercieca. "Then almost forty years passed without him saying
anything. ... And now because he got caught, he recited these things."
A House ethics panel is investigating how Congressional leaders dealt with
reports about Foley's conduct with pages.
An employee at the civil law firm that is representing Foley said his attorney,
Gerald F. Richman, had no comment on Mercieca at this point. Mercieca said
he did not expect to be sued or prosecuted criminally over his ties to Foley.
For criminal cases, the statute of limitations has expired.
Mark Serrano, a board member with the Survivors Network of Those Abused by
Priests, encouraged a full investigation, including whether he had similar
involvement with other minors, and whether any allegations had been reported to
church officials.
"I can't speak to the culture in Brazil but I can speak to the culture in
America and speak to basic standards of morality. A crime is a crime is a
crime," Serrano said. "Advanced age is no indication that kids are safe
from a perpetrator ... An investigation would be required."
Church officials in Palm Beach said they encourage any potential victims of
sexual abuse by clergy or church personnel to come forward.
Mercieca, who grew up in Malta, said he is retired now, but helps out
occasionally at a cathedral in Gozo, a Mediterranean island and part of Malta
about sixty miles south of Sicily. Mercieca said recent allegations of
sexual abuse by priests had prompted extensive scrutiny of all clergy, and that
he had never been accused or referred for counseling. He said he had no
other friendships similar to the one he had with Foley.
"If anyone had even a shadow of a complaint he was thrown out of the priesthood.
I had been in many parishes and the bishop never found anything. And if he
found [something] he would have taken action," Mercieca said.
Staff Writer Peter Whoriskey contributed to this report from
Miami.
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