NEW JERSEY
National Catholic Reporter

NCR Editorial Staff | Jun. 1, 2013

Five people have resigned in New Jersey in the wake of revelations that a priest who was supposedly on a supervised lifetime ban from ministering to minors was indeed ministering to youth and wasn’t being monitored. Fr. Michael Fugee is out on bail after his arrest for violating terms of an agreement he signed with the local county prosecutor when investigators found that he had been attending youth group events, including an overnight pilgrimage to Canada.

Fugee had confessed to groping a 14-year-old boy, and a jury had convicted him of sexual assault in 2003. That conviction was overturned on a technicality, and Fugee entered into the agreement with the prosecutor to avoid a retrial.

As the local newspaper, The Star-Ledger, revealed all this, Fugee resigned his assignment in the Office of Continuing Education and Ongoing Formation…