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  Sex-Abuse Suit Names 2 Dioceses

By Stephanie Innes
Arizona Daily Star
June 11, 2003

Two Tucson attorneys sued Arizona's two largest Catholic dioceses - Tucson and Phoenix - Tuesday on behalf of a former altar boy who says he was a sexual-abuse victim during the 1960s.

The lawsuit filed in Pima County Superior Court marks the ninth civil action filed against the Catholic Diocese of Tucson since it reached a multimillion-dollar sexual-abuse settlement with 10 men last year.

The newest legal action is one of several pending against the Diocese of Phoenix that names St. Gregory's Catholic Church in Phoenix as a parish where child molesters worked.

St. Gregory's is the church where at least two other accused molesters - the Rev. Floyd Stromberg and the Rev. Harold Graf - once worked.

Officials with the Diocese of Tucson had not yet seen the lawsuit and for that reason said they could not comment.

A spokesperson for the Diocese of Phoenix did not return a phone call about the civil suit Tuesday afternoon.

The offending priest in the lawsuit filed Tuesday was the Rev. Robert A. Gluch, according to attorneys Lynne M. Cadigan and Kim E. Williamson, who have named Gluch as a molester in two other lawsuits.

Gluch, who died of cancer in 1993 at 56, was not one of the four clergy named in the civil actions settled in Tucson last year.

According the the lawsuit filed Tuesday, Gluch molested the altar boy, known in the lawsuit as John Doe, while he worked as a pastor at St. Gregory's in 1964 and 1965.

At that time, St. Gregory's was part of the Diocese of Tucson. The Diocese of Phoenix was created in 1969.

The plaintiff alleges that the molestations occurred over a six- month period in the church sacristy after Mass.

 
 

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