PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Priest Abuse Trial Blog
Ralph Cipriano
Father James J. Brennan dreamed of becoming a Trappist monk. He thought the monastic life would bring him closer to God as he meditated and prayed in solitude for hours on end.
But after he joined the Trappists in 2000, Father Brennan found the reality of the monastic life was far different then he had imagined. He was getting up at 3 a.m. to feed the chickens on the monks’ organic farm. The priest who used to lead church choirs was reduced to serenading hens to the tune of White Christmas.
“I think too much of me is being wasted on chickens,” he wrote Msgr. William J. Lynn in 2001, asking to come back to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
On Tuesday at the Archdiocese of Philadelphia sex abuse trial, the prosecution had Detective James Dougherty spend several hours reading into the court record more than 60 formerly confidential records from Father Brennan’s personnel files and the archdiocese’s secret archive files.
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