TALLAHASSEE (FL)
News 4 JAX
June 18, 2018
By Jim Saunders
Pointing to a state religious-freedom law, an appeals court has shielded a priest from testifying about his discussion with a teenage girl during the Catholic sacrament of confession about the girl being sexual abused.
The ruling Friday by a panel of the 5th District Court of Appeal in an Orange County case sided with priest Vincenzo Ronchi, who argued that the Catholic Church bars priests from disclosing any aspects of communications during confession — more formally known as the sacrament of reconciliation — and that disclosure could even lead to excommunication from the church.
Prosecutors subpoenaed Ronchi to testify in the case of Loren Tim Burton, who was charged last year with committing sexual offenses against a minor when she was 7 years old and 13 years old. The alleged victim, prosecutors said, told Ronzi during confession when she was 15 years old that she had been sexually abused.
The criminal investigation began after the alleged victim, at age 17, told her mother about the abuse, the appeals-court ruling said.
Orange County Circuit Judge John Marshall Kest ruled that Ronchi could be questioned about the limited issues of “the existence of the confession, the identity of the penitent (the alleged victim), and that the subject matter involved sexual abuse,” the appeals court ruling said. Kest’s ruling focused, at least in part, on a conversation that Ronchi had with the teen’s mother and a friend of the mother and whether that waived “privilege” that otherwise could keep the priest from being required to testify.
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