SAN FRANCISCO (CA0
CBS SF Bay Area
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS/AP) — The San Francisco Archdiocese has removed a priest from ministering in the city after he was removed from his post in Guam over allegations that he molested two boys four decades ago while serving in the archdiocese of Los Angeles, church officials said Friday.
The Rev. John Howard Wadeson was stripped of his duties in the Archdiocese of Agana on Monday after concerns in the community there about his past and he has since left the U.S. territory, the Guam Pacific Daily News reported. Wadeson, whose current whereabouts are unknown, told the paper he was innocent and was leaving to protect his archbishop.
A 2004 report on clergy abuse issued by the Los Angeles archdiocese lists Wadeson as being credibly accused of molesting two people between 1973 and 1977, while he was working as a priest with the Divine Word Missionaries religious order. Wadeson was in the Los Angeles archdiocese between 1972 and 1985 and spent many of those years at Verbum Dei High School, an all-boys Catholic school.
Wadeson’s religious order would have been responsible for dealing with the allegations at the time, said Monica Valencia, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles archdiocese.
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