ERIE (PA)
BishopAccountability.org
Summary of Case: Robert F. Bower was ordained in 1959 for the Diocese of Erie. He was chaplain at Gannon College and at a monastery for women religious in Erie for several years, followed by many years in campus ministry at Edinboro State College as chaplain, Associate Director and then Director. During 1992-1997 Gannon was Administrator of St. Anthony’s parish in Cambridge Springs.
In March 1999 Bowers was arrested on charges of possession of child pornography. Police were alerted by a computer repair shop employee who discovered them while working on Bower’s computer. The pornography was allegedly downloaded between June 1996 and December 1998, and included images of a man sodomizing a five-year-old boy. Bower was placed on leave by the diocese, sent to counseling, then allowed limited ministry during the investigation. Bishop Trautman said he believed Bower’s explanation that he had received the images accidentally; state police said that Bower admitted to obtaining them. The charges were dropped in 2001 on a technicality. Bower resumed full ministry, including at the Edinboro Newman Center and as a supply priest for the diocese.
In April 2002, after the Erie Times-News published a report about his 1999 arrest, Bower resigned. Per the article, in 1982 a secretary at the Newman Center in Edinboro and two other women went to Bishop Murphy with concerns that Bower was receiving gay pornography in the mail. The former secretary said she was fired two days later. Trautman wrote in a letter to the editor that the women’s claims were “outrageous” and lacked proof. The three filed a defamation lawsuit against the diocese and bishops Trautman and Murphy in May 2003.
Bower’s name was included on the diocese’s April 6, 2018 list of credibly accused priests, lay employees and volunteers. It noted that Bower was ‘forbiddn to function as a priest.’
Ordained: 1959
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