NEW JERSEY
NJ.com
[letter from Bishop Bootkoski]
By Mark Mueller | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on November 13, 2015
Msgr. Raymond Cole, the former pastor of St. Joseph Church in Hillsborough, has been cleared of sexually abusing a minor in the 1970s.
A Roman Catholic priest accused of sexually abusing a child in the 1970s has been found not guilty by a church tribunal, clearing the way for his return to ministry after a two-year suspension, Metuchen Bishop Paul Bootkoski announced Friday.
Msgr. Raymond L. Cole, 72, was removed as pastor of St. Joseph Church in Hillsborough in October 2013, when the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office alerted the diocese to the sexual abuse claim.
At the time, Bootkoski said canon law required a priest’s suspension when an allegation had been “deemed to have a semblance of truth.” The claim dates to the late 1970s, when Cole served as an associate pastor at St. Mary Parish in South Amboy.
In a letter to parishioners of the Hillsborough church, Bootkoski wrote that the tribunal, composed of three priests from outside the Diocese of Metuchen, cleared Cole after conducting a church trial. The priests are expert in canon law and experienced in the church’s judicial process, the bishop wrote.
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