PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
BY JOSEPH A. SLOBODZIAN
Inquirer Staff Writer
A CATHOLIC sister testified Monday that she was fired from her religious-school job in a Pottstown-area parish after questioning why a priest had received porn in the mail.
The priest – the Rev. Edward M. DePaoli – had been arrested on child-pornography charges in 1985 and convicted and sentenced to probation.
But in 1995, Sister Joan Scary – then in her sixth year as director of religious education at St. Gabriel’s parish in Stowe, Montgomery County – was unaware of the details of DePaoli’s past.
What she did know, Scary told a Common Pleas jury, was that DePaoli’s recent assignment at St. Gabriel’s was ambiguous and that St. Gabriel’s pastor, the Rev. James Gormley, warned that if she talked about DePaoli, “I could pack my bags and leave.”
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