NEW JERSEY
The Republic
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 21, 2013
ORADELL, New Jersey — The pastor of a northern New Jersey church is stepping down amid parishioners’ complaints that a priest accused of molesting a teenage boy was allowed to temporarily live in the church rectory.
The Star-Ledger (http://bit.ly/15zjv3v) reports the pastor, the Rev. Thomas Iwanowski, will leave the St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church in Oradell on July 31.
The departure comes amid complaints about the Rev. Robert Chabak, who was removed from ministry in 2004. That came after church officials determined there was evidence to support allegations he molested a teenage boy in the 1970s.
The statute of limitations had expired and Chabak was not criminally charged. Chabak wasn’t removed from the priesthood altogether but was stripped of his priestly faculties, meaning he can’t wear a collar or represent himself as a priest.
The 66-year-old Chabak has lived in Toms River in recent years. But when his home was damaged by Superstorm Sandy, archdiocese officials allowed him to live at St. Joseph “out of a sense of compassion.”
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