NEW YORK/HAWAII/GUAM
BishopAccountability.org
Summary of Case: Randolph “Randy” Nowak was ordained for the Capuchin order in 1952. He spent over twenty-five years of his early ministry working with high school-aged seminarians at St. Mary’s Seminary in Garrison NY. He appears to have subsequently moved for a brief time to the Capuchin residence in Hawthorne, followed by several years at the Order’s Provincialate in White Plains. He returned to the minor seminary in Garrison for five years beginning in 1975, leaving there for a year in Yonkers, where he resided at Capuchin monastery and parish while working as a hospital and nursing home chaplain.
In 1979 Nowak was transferred to Guam. There he was a parish priest, assisting at many Capuchin parishes and pastoring a few, in Agat, San Isidro and Ordot. He was assigned to Hawaii in 1988, assisting and leading parishes in Ewa Beach, Pahala and Waikane. There is a gap in his assignments 1994-1996, after which he is noted in the Official Catholic Directory to be retired in Hawaii until 2001. The following six years show Nowak to be back in Guam, no longer retired, assisting at an Agat parish and as the “Senior Friar” of the Capuchin Fraternity.
In 2008 a man wrote in a letter to the Capuchin’s New York provincialate that Nowak molested him when the man was a young seminarian in the 1960s at St. Mary’s in Garrison. Nowak, in turn, wrote in an email to his former student, apologizing for “what happened between us.” Nowak’s accuser also said that he told a Capuchin priest in the 1970s about the abuse, but that nothing was done. In 2008 the priest in question said he didn’t “recall such a conversation… .”
According to his Order, Nowak’s faculties were removed in 2004 due to past allegations that “arose elsewhere.” Nowak has been living in retirement since at least 2007 at the St. Fidelis Friary in Agaña Heights. The Capuchins agreed to pay Nowak’s accuser’s fees counseling fees, beginning in 2006.
Born: July 21, 1925
Ordained: September 6, 1952
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