Gay Priest Commits $1.3m Sin, by Joe Mollica and Dan Mangan, New York Post, July 7, 2010

Gay Priest Commits "$1.3m Sin"

By Joe Mollica and Dan Mangan
New York Post
July 7, 2010

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/gay_priest_commits_sin_eBwNIJe1LREIpLjCSsG4cM

A Catholic priest stole $1.3 million from his Waterbury, Conn., parish to finance a gay old time in New York, authorities charged yesterday.

The Rev. Kevin Gray allegedly blew the money he looted from his financially struggling parish over seven years on male escorts, rooms at hotels, including the Waldorf, designer clothes, trendy restaurants and tuition for several young studs.

Gray, 64, regularly shacked up in an Upper East Side apartment that he rented for a 35-year-old man, court documents charge.

The priest not only paid for the apartment, but also the Harvard tuition for his male friend, authorities said.

COLLARED: The Rev. Kevin Gray is arraigned yesterday on charges of looting big bucks from parishioners.

Gray told that man for years he was a Catholic Charities lawyer and was suffering from colon cancer -- both of which he later admitted were lies, cops said.

He "was leading a double life," said Waterbury Police Capt. Christopher Corbett. "People are shocked by this news . . . He was a well-respected priest."

Gray was ordered held in lieu of $750,000 bond yesterday after appearing in Waterbury Superior Court. His alleged scam was exposed by a recent Hartford Archdiocese financial review of his Sacred Heart Parish, whose overwhelmingly Hispanic congregation he had led since 2003.

Church officials notified cops, whose arrest warrant for Gray tells a tawdry tale of his lust for men and the Big Apple high life.

From 2003 until this past March, that warrant said, Gray charged more than $205,000 to restaurants, including Tavern on the Green, L'Absinthe, Brunelli and Giovanni.

He dropped more than a $130,000 on hotels, often on the same days he was hiring escorts, Corbett said.

And Gray allegedly spent more than $80,000 on expensive clothes.

The priest's pricey tastes were partially subsidized by $221,000 a cellphone company paid to install a transmitter in his church's steeple, the court papers charge. He allegedly hid the windfall from his archdiocesan bosses, who had banned such deals.

In a June 10 interview with Waterbury cops in the York Avenue apartment he was renting, Gray said "he had grown to hate being a priest and was upset with the archdiocese for the assignments they had given him over the years," the warrant said.

He was particularly angry about being transferred in 2001 to New Hartford while his mom was dying in New Haven, and said he began stealing from Sacred Heart in 2003 "because he felt that the church owed it to him," the warrant said.

"Mr. Gray stated that he would order male escorts from Campus Escorts in New York," the warrant said. "Mr. Gray stated that he is gay and has a problem with the church's position on homosexuality."

Gray has been suspended from acting publicly as a priest.

The Ten Commandments

The Rev. Kevin Gray allegedly stole money his poor parishioners in Waterbury, Conn., donated to the collection plate each Sunday over seven years to fund his homosexual lifestyle in New York City, violating his priestly vow of celibacy and fidelity to Jesus Christ.

VIOLATED:

III. Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.

VI. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

VII. Thou shalt not steal.

VIII. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

IX. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.

X. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s property.

NOT VIOLATED:

I. I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods before me.

II. Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain.

IV. Honor thy father and mother.

V. Thou shalt not kill.