MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe
By Lisa Wangsness
Globe Staff
September 09, 2012
The Rev. James J. Foley Jr.’s fall from grace came swiftly. In 1999, while on temporary assignment in New Mexico, he was ordered to return home to Boston right away: A former parishioner had accused him of sexual abuse. Within days, Foley was removed from public ministry, then placed on leave.
Thirteen years later, he is a practicing attorney in the secular world — and still on the church’s payroll, having earned about $400,000, plus full health benefits, while his case has languished in the church’s internal legal system.
Foley, now 60, has survived in a kind of purgatorial state for years. The church has not yet decided whether to dismiss him.
Casting himself as an innocent victim of the church’s zero-tolerance policy on sexual abuse, he has fought removal from ministry relentlessly.
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