LOWELL (MA)
Lowell Sun
By Grant Welker, gwelker@lowellsun.com
UPDATED: 08/26/2013
LOWELL — When officers watched as a black Chevrolet Equinox passed through known prostitution spots in the city more than a dozen times since late November, it wasn’t just another john they were seeing.
It was allegedly someone among the highest-ranking officials in the Archdiocese of Boston, the fourth-largest in the Roman Catholic Church in America.
Monsignor Arthur Coyle, a priest for 36 years, was honored in December with the title of “prelate of honor” by the head of the archdiocese, Cardinal Sean O’Malley and then-Pope Benedict XVI. Coyle has served as a trustee for two Boston area Catholic high schools, including Lowell Catholic, as well as a high-school chaplain and a college director of campus ministry.
Coyle, 62, has been held in high regard by the church, but his future with the archdiocese of 1.8 million Catholics is now in doubt after he was arrested Aug. 4, and charged with offering a prostitute money for oral sex while parked in his car in a cemetery off Boston Road in Lowell.
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