Bishop Returns Self-bondage Priest to Ministry in Alton

By Tim Townsend
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
September 13, 2013

http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/bishop-returns-self-bondage-priest-to-ministry-in-alton/article_fbd9177d-9430-5009-ab15-6f9fd52ae85e.html

A Roman Catholic bishop in Springfield, Ill. has returned the Rev. Thomas Donovan to ministry in Alton after an internal investigation into what the priest's own clinical therapist had diagnosed as "non-sexual self-bondage."

Bishop Thomas Paprocki said in a statement Thursday that Donovan would be a chaplain to the Sisters of St. Francis of the Martyr St. George, and would move to the nuns' provincial house in Alton on Sunday.

Last November, Donovan called 911 from the rectory of St. Aloysius Catholic Church in Springfield, where he was pastor, and told dispatchers he had placed himself in handcuffs and needed police help to free himself.

When police arrived, they found the priest wearing an orange jumpsuit and “a leather bondage-type mask with a bar in his mouth,” according to the police report.

ttownsend@post-dispatch.com 314-340-82211