BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News
By Jay Tokasz
News Staff Reporter
A Catholic priest abruptly removed from a downtown Buffalo church this past weekend was accused of groping a woman inside the church rectory in 2009, a lawyer for the woman said on Wednesday.
The woman filed a complaint with Buffalo police last June in which she reported she was sexually attacked two years earlier — in the summer of 2009 — by the Rev. Secondo Casarotto in the priest’s residence at St. Anthony of Padua Church on Court Street.
Casarotto, 70, was removed on Saturday from St. Anthony, where he had served as a priest for more than 25 years, and placed on administrative leave.
At the time, diocesan officials provided no further information about the removal.
Casarotto has not been charged with a crime. The woman, a former parishioner in her 30s, hired the Florida-based law firm of Herman, Mermelstein, & Horowitz to investigate the case. She has not filed a lawsuit at this point.
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