MARYLAND
Leon J. Podles
Note: Mr. Podles sent this letter in December but has yet to receive and answer. The YouTube link cited in the letter is no longer operational. Mr. Podles is author of Sacrilege and writes a blog called Leon J. Podles: Dialogue.
December 2015
Most Rev. William E. Lori, Archbishop of Baltimore
The Catholic Center
320 Cathedral St.
Baltimore, MD 21201
Dear Archbishop Lori,
While the Church has made progress in dealing with sexual abuse and other irregularities, I think that the situation of a recently-reinstated priest in the archdiocese, Dominic Cieri, needs scrutiny.
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For some reason he came up in conversation and I googled him to see what had happened to him. I discovered that had had been reinstated as a priest and was in the chaplaincy at St. Joseph’s hospital. He also has public web sites, and on his You Tube site (https://www.youtube.com/user/241Doow/feed)
he lists many sexually-explicit channels to which he subscribes, including this one:
BoyonBoyLoving. A selection of clips with boy on boy loving.
In his autobiographical blog he discusses his homosexuality, and among the You Tube channels he subscribes to are ones such as:
Cute Males Studio: In Between Men – Episode 5 – Muscles and Manbags by PIANETAGAY
MANTASTICMALES2011.This is a gay channel, featuring videos with homosexual or hot guy content. Slide vids, fan vids, gay themed music vids, short films and excerpts with a similar theme.
The reason he had left the archdiocese was financial irregularity. The Baltimore Sun (July 7, 2007) reported:
“The Rev. Domenic L. Cieri, who led St. Bernadette Catholic Church in Severn for nearly 15 years, received salary and Mass stipends above the scales approved by the archdiocese, according to an audit conducted in October. Archdiocese spokesman Sean Caine said Cieri also received a housing allowance to live in northern Baltimore County, although his parish has a rectory.
For the fiscal year that ended last June, Cieri earned nearly $48,000 a year, about 70 percent more than the $28,122 that the archdiocese says he was to earn as a pastor ordained for 25 years.
In addition, Cieri received $6,300 in Mass stipends. Priests have the choice of receiving Mass stipends for individual Masses or a lump sum of $2,000, an amount set by the archdiocese, Caine said.
“He was also reimbursed nearly $36,000 for rectory expenses, though Caine said the priest did not live in the rectory attached to the church but rather at a house in Baldwin, in northern Baltimore County. And he received more than $14,000 as a housing allowance, which Caine said is not normally given to priests assigned to churches with rectories.”
Cieri had been and is still living with the Rev. Larry Johnson in a $458,000 house in Baldwin, far across the metropolitan area from St Bernadette’s.
I question the prudence of assigning a priest to a situation in which he has access to vulnerable people, including boys and adolescent males, when he has publicly demonstrated his sexual interest in young males and has also demonstrated financial manipulation and a disregard for archdiocesan polices.
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