YORK (PA)
York Daily Record
December 13, 2018
By Candy Woodall
In 2014, Harrisburg Bishop Ronald Gainer decided prayer and penance was the best punishment for a priest who had confessed to sexually abusing multiple children.
Gainer wrote a letter to the Vatican and told the pope he believed the harm done by the Rev. Joseph Pease was being sufficiently repaired.
Pease was 83 at the time and living with dementia, and Gainer believed he couldn’t defend himself in the church’s disciplinary process.
The bishop asked the Vatican to allow Pease to “live out his remaining years in prayer and penance, without adding further anxiety or suffering to his situation, and without risking public knowledge of his crimes.”
Gainer has now changed his mind.
A week after the York Daily Record published a report showing Pease is the only priest among 72 accused in the Harrisburg diocese who is still on the church’s payroll, the bishop is now seeking laicization for Pease.
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