NEW ORLEANS (LA)
GulfLive.com
December 8, 2023
By Emily Topping
Under murky circumstances, a Louisiana Catholic priest has been abruptly removed from his position by the Archdiocese of New Orleans. Church officials have filed a police report against the Rev. Anthony Odiong, according to nola.com, though authorities declined to give further details.
“These concerns do not include the abuse of minors nor to our knowledge involve anyone in this (church),” reads a statement from archdiocese officials to The Guardian.
In 2019, a woman who viewed Odiong as a “spiritual adviser” came forward to allege years of financial and sexual abuse at his hand. According to the Guardian, Odiong is accused of forcing the woman to perform sexual acts — threatening to “place a curse on her head” if she refused — and stealing thousands of dollars from her.
Call logs reviewed by the Guardian confirm that the woman spoke with New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Michael Aymond about the allegations.
Still, it wasn’t until mid-November of this year that Odiong announced that he would be leaving the church in January and heading to Florida. The priest told his congregation that he vehemently disagreed with Pope Francis’ attempts to welcome the LGBTQ+ community into Catholicism, and he planned to build his own chapel.
“Now the gays have taken over the church. The LGBTQY, whatever you call them, have a stranglehold on the church now,” he said in a Nov. 26 sermon, available on YouTube. “We’re going to begin to bless all kinds of monkeys and animals and chimpanzees, and priests who will not do it will be persecuted.”
After the live-streamed Mass, archdiocese officials moved his exit date from January to effective immediately.
Odiong’s recent remarks and the allegations against him are only the latest in a string of scandals for the Catholic Church in New Orleans.
Investigations by the Guardian found that Aymond repeatedly disregarded recommendations from his advisers to label certain clerics as “credibly suspected molesters.”
Among the church’s known abusers is 92-year-old Lawrence Hecker, who admitted to church officials to molesting children in 1999 but wasn’t arrested until 2023. In a shocking on-camera interview with WWL-TV, Hecker twice answered “yes” when asked if he remembered committing “overt sexual acts with children.”
Most recently, in July, a former Louisiana priest was sentenced to 25 years in prison after admitting to drugging and sexually abusing men he met in New Orleans from 2019 to 2021.
The New Orleans Archdiocese filed for bankruptcy in 2020, while facing nearly 40 pending sex abuse lawsuits. In a public statement, Aymond wrote: “I humbly ask too for prayers for me as we together ask the Holy Spirit to guide this process to a just conclusion. God is faithful and will lead us in this challenging time.”