PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Joseph A. Slobodzian
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
A Catholic sister and religious educator told a Philadelphia jury today that she was summarily fired from her job at a Pottstown-area parish after questioning adult literature received by a priest recently assigned to the parish.
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 Court jury, was that DePaoli’s 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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