BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News
February 18, 2019
By Jay Tokasz
The parish hall at St. Mary Church in Pavilion is named in honor of the late Rev. Robert P. Conlin, a longtime pastor of the parish.
Wayne Bortle last March alleged that Conlin molested him when he was a teenager. The Buffalo Diocese subsequently acknowledged that Conlin was credibly accused of sexually abusing minors and has offered Bortle a cash award for his abuse claim.
But the parish has kept a large portrait of Conlin hanging prominently on a wall inside its hall, named the “Conlin Parish Center.”
Bortle, who urged the Buffalo Diocese to remove Conlin’s name from the building, wants to know why the parish and the diocese continue to celebrate a man who harmed children.
“What he did, he changed my life. It wasn’t for a week. It wasn’t for a year. It’s forever,” said Bortle, who takes medication daily for a social anxiety disorder.
Mitchell Garabedian, Bortle’s attorney, said the Catholic Church often hesitates to remove the names of clergy from buildings.
“When a priest’s name is public, such as on statues or halls, the Catholic Church tries to downplay the abuse,” said Garabedian.
Garabedian said he encountered the problem in the Archdiocese of Boston, where he represented many clients abused by popular priests. Removing a priest’s name also can be highly divisive in a parish community where some church members refuse to acknowledge that the priest was an abuser, said Garabedian.
“They had all of these people that were loyal followers of Father Conlin. They would be at risk of losing all of those followers,” said Garabedian.
Bortle said he reached out to the current pastor of St. Mary, the Rev. Innocent Diala, after the diocese in November included Conlin on its revised list of priests who had been credibly accused of child sex abuse. That list now stands at 80 priests.
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