Polarizing Yakima Religious Figure Robert Fontana Plots New Path
By Jane Gargas
Some will say, emphatically, “good riddance.” Others will lament his leaving. But all will acknowledge his imprint here. Robert Fontana, who has been a leading advocate for major reforms in the Catholic Church, recently moved away from Yakima. Fontana and his wife, Lori, are relocating to Seattle, where he will train as a marriage and family therapist at Seattle University, and she will substitute teach. “We love Yakima. I grieve leaving our friends, the sunshine and the rural life. This is where we raised our children, but I have no future here, and it’s time to move on,” Robert Fontana explains. Fontana has been a controversial figure in Yakima for nearly a decade. He founded the local chapter of Voice of the Faithful, a group calling for change in the Catholic Church. He’s been outspokenly critical of how the Catholic Diocese of Yakima handled some cases of alleged clergy sex abuse. He’s marched outside diocesan headquarters and worked closely with Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) from other cities. Some of that activity occurred while he was a diocese employee. In short, he’s been a thorn in many people’s sides. “If crucifying and stoning were still legal, Robert would have been stoned to death by now,” says Steve Menard, a local business owner who traveled to New Orleans in 2005 with Fontana to help re-locate people displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Church officials have, indeed, found him difficult and demanding. “There was only one way to look at these things, and it was Mr. Fontana’s way,” according to Monsignor Robert Siler, diocese chief of staff. “I think a lot of people got weary. He probably could have made more progress if he’d been less strident.” At one time, Fontana, 56, was a quiet figure, devoted to his church; he has a master’s degree in theology and a doctorate in ministry. A father of six — come June all will have graduated from college — he worked as a lay minister for 25 years and as director of evangelization for the Yakima Diocese for 14 years. He was in charge of adult education programs, teaching Scripture, human development and Catholic ritual. He also taught young people and deacons, or men intending to become priests. But then came 2002. And Fontana was never quiet again. That was the year clergy sexual abuse exploded as a national scandal with revelations of Catholic priests preying on children in Boston. Fontana describes his initial reaction to the scandal as tepid. He had followed cases his brother Anthony, an attorney in Louisiana, had filed for people alleging they had been abused by priests as children. But Fontana considered it an isolated problem. “I kept thinking the bishops would do the right thing. Then I hit a low; I looked in the mirror and realized I was part of the problem because I refused to get involved. But never again. I decided either I quit the ministry or demand the truth from the inside. “ Within a few years of speaking out against how the diocese was handling reports of clergy abuse, Fontana would lose his job, lose a lawsuit, lose friends and alienate many fellow parishioners. He recalls at Mass one day, when it came time to share the kiss of peace, several people in the pew around him refused to shake his hand. “We were really shunned, and that was gut-wrenching,” Lori Fontana says. She says they received nasty letters, and vulgar messages were left on their answering machine, which their children inadvertently heard. Robert Fontana began treading on dangerous territory in 2004 after a local priest came under criminal investigation for having photos of nude boys on his computer. About a dozen photos of boys, elementary-school age to teens, all naked, were turned over to police by the diocese. The priest was never charged with a crime and eventually, after completing a rehabilitation program, he resumed work in the diocese in an administrative post, but not as a parish priest. After the photographs were found, rumors swirled around the diocese, and a local television station reported that the FBI was investigating a priest for child pornography. Fontana wanted answers. But the diocese wouldn’t identify the priest. At the time, Lori Fontana was working at St. Joseph-Marquette School as a religious educator, where one of her duties was to arrange for priests to hear children’s confessions. She became alarmed, thinking the priest being investigated by the FBI might be one of those who met one-on-one with children. So she and her husband expressed their concerns to school officials, who agreed that no child should be left alone with any priest until they knew which priest was the target of the probe. That landed Robert Fontana squarely in trouble with then Bishop Carlos Sevilla. The bishop sent him a letter of reprimand for interfering with diocesan authority. However, Fontana kept pressing. “Once the diocese knows a priest has a proclivity toward child sex, it’s no longer their prerogative to place that priest with my child or anybody’s child without telling us. It’s the parents’ call, not the diocese’s.” Yet, other Catholics think Fontana went too far and was verging on a witch hunt. Holy Family parishioner Herman Fischer characterizes Fontana’s push to publicize the names of accused priests as just plain wrong. “He’s (Fontana) done no good. People got upset when he accused priests. A lot of times there was no proof that anything had happened.” Fischer also thinks Fontana focused too much on the church and made no attempt to examine abuse in other institutions, such as schools. “He hurt the church,” Fischer maintains. Lori Fontana doesn’t see it that way. When it became clear that Robert might lose his job, she remembers that they both went to see a physician because they felt depressed and were losing weight. Then Lori Fontana says her “Mama Bear” instincts kicked in. “I said to Robert, ‘We can’t back down. This isn’t right.’” Troubled by what he perceived as debilitating silence from the diocese in the case of alleged pornography, Robert Fontana began investigating cases himself, pressing for answers on how sexual accusations were being handled in the diocese. Several weeks after his reprimand, he received a second one from the bishop for criticizing church policies. By December 2004, most of his duties had been removed. Realizing he had reached a dead end at work, he resigned in 2005. Later that year, he filed a lawsuit against the diocese, arguing he had been forced out. The diocese emphatically said it never retaliated against Fontana. Ultimately, the court ruled it didn’t have jurisdiction over a church matter and dismissed the case. Those losses didn’t dissuade him from continuing to speak out, pursuing cases he thought were being mishandled by the diocese. Some saw that as sheer stubbornness. Russ Mazzola, who heads up the Diocesan Lay Advisory Board, which investigates any allegations of sexual misconduct in the church, says, “I like Robert, but it was difficult for him to let things go. At times he’d present facts to us, we’d investigate and things couldn’t be substantiated. But he wasn’t satisfied with the decisions we reached.” So why would someone jeopardize his livelihood and reputation to hammer away at an issue that seemed overblown to many? Simple, Fontana says. Because he loves his church. People have to defend what’s just, no matter what, he believes. “Look at the priests of integrity who stood up to the Nazis,” he says. Noting that he doesn’t agree with everything Fontana does, Menard argues that Catholics need Fontana’s prodding. “Otherwise, we sit in the pew with our heads in the sand,” he says, “I don’t know anyone who stands on principle like he does.” But for many Catholics, Fontana had irrevocably burned bridges. One of the ways he supported himself after his resignation was providing music at local weddings. He played guitar, while he and Lori sang. However, he says one prospective bride had to renege on her agreement, saying she was told she couldn’t be married in one of the local parishes if he did the music. Siler says he has no knowledge of that incident but “the Diocese of Yakima was not obsessed with ruining Robert’s life.” Fontana concentrated on organizing retreats for couples and teens and, for a time, was allowed to conduct retreats for Catholics in the Seattle Archdiocese but not here. Siler explains that when Fontana filed his lawsuit against the diocese, Sevilla felt he shouldn’t use church property for his retreats or youth meetings. Although he lived here 22 years, Fontana is not a local product. Born and raised in Louisiana, one of seven boys, he might still be in bayou country if it weren’t for the intriguing young woman he met while both attended Louisiana State University. She — Lori — was originally from Seattle, so a few years after they married in 1978, they moved to the Northwest. In Seattle, Robert worked as a youth minister, including serving teens in detention. He and Lori formed Catholic Life Ministries Northwest, an educational outreach organization, in 1990 as a part-time mission to bolster faith among families. A year later they moved to Yakima for his new job with the diocese. The Fontanas also organized Camp St. Francis, leading youngsters and adults on annual volunteer weekends to perform community service projects for elderly and needy people in the Valley. In his role as a Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) volunteer, Fontana was contacted by people who said they had been molested by Catholic clerics. Kim Alarid was one. She told Fontana she had been sexually abused repeatedly here as a child by a Jesuit priest, now deceased, who has been the subject of several abuse lawsuits. According to Alarid’s mother, Carma Salazar, her daughter had never told the story before, even to her. Salazar credits Fontana with helping her daughter immensely through the tough aftermath. “If we called him, he was here in 10 minutes. He has such a big heart; I don’t know how I would have survived without him.“ Alarid contracted systemic scleroderma, an autoimmune disease that destroys tissue, and died in 2008 when she was 40. “Robert saw her through her victimization, her illness and her death. Robert and Lori are some of the kindest and most generous people I’ve met in my life.” But Siler takes exception to the local VOTF, because its website recommends victims contact the police, a lawyer or SNAP before contacting the church. Michelle Duerre, who alleges she was abused by three priests while a student at St. Joseph-Marquette School in the 1970s, says she didn’t call the church hot line because she didn’t feel she would get the support she needed. A resident of King County, she first contacted a SNAP chapter there and was then referred to the Yakima VOTF. While declining to discuss details of her alleged abuse because she has a lawsuit pending against the Yakima Diocese in Superior Court, Duerre says, “Robert and Lori gave me the support I needed to move forward in my life. Someday I want to help others come forward and be a staunch advocate for victims.“ She characterizes Fontana as a true Christian. “He’s compassionate and a great listener and in the end all he wants is for people to forgive and move forward. He’s never been a hate monger; he’s all about forgiveness.” Last year Lori and Robert made a religious pilgrimage, walking 300 miles from France to Spain on the sacred El Camino de Santiago route, stopping every night for Mass. “It was beautiful being together and building our faith in God and strengthening our marriage,” he says. Reflecting on his time in Yakima, Fontana says he regrets that he couldn’t keep a dialogue open with the diocese. Siler counters that they tried: “Bishop (Joseph) Tyson made a great effort to talk with him and offer a pathway for reconciliation. Robert chose not to accept.” But since Fontana says he wouldn’t stop openly criticizing how sex abuse issues were handled, that rendered any further dialogue moot. After he finishes studies at Seattle University, Fontana plans to teach marriage-strengthening programs, both faith-based and secular, in Seattle. “I’d like to enrich marriages and minimize divorce.” Robert and Lori Fontana recently wrote a self-published book about marriage, called “Hidden Treasures,” and will conduct a book signing in Yakima when it’s released later this fall. Lori Fontana looks back on the couple’s experiences challenging the diocese and says, “I still would do the same thing. I’m at peace with it.” Her husband agrees. “The good thing about the dispute is I stepped back and learned to live with integrity and still be an advocate for what I know to be beautiful and good in this church. It’s a good struggle.” In Salazar’s view, there should never be another struggle ahead for Robert Fontana. “His place in heaven will be much bigger than anyone else’s,” she believes. Others aren’t convinced. Fischer says, “I don’t believe he did anything for the community.” But Siler says, “I wish him well.” Contact: jgargas@yakimaherald.com
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