WISCONSIN
Hudson Star-Observer
By Randy Hanson
Tom O’Connell has requested a meeting with Pope Francis during the pontiff’s visit to the United States later this month.
The Hudson funeral home owner would like to talk to the pope about his son Daniel, who was murdered in 2002 by a parish priest thought to be trying to conceal his sexual abuse of young boys.
It is widely believed that Daniel O’Connell was preparing to confront Father Ryan Erickson about the abuse when the priest came to O’Connell Family Funeral Home and gunned down the 39-year-old funeral director and 22-year-old student intern James Ellison.
Erickson hung himself in December 2004 at the Hurley church he was then serving. Hudson police detectives had interviewed him earlier and identified him as a suspect in the murders.
“I am asking for myself and my family to have an audience with your Holiness. I realize there are hundreds of others who would like to meet you and all have very great need,” the elder O’Connell wrote in his letter to the pope, dated Feb. 1, 2015.
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