UNITED STATES
Irish Post
June 7, 2017, By Gerard Donaghy
NETFLIX’S latest documentary series, The Keepers, examines the case of Sister Catherine ‘Cathy’ Cesnik, a nun who was murdered after disappearing in Baltimore on November 7, 1969.
Her body was found on January 3, 1970 having suffered a skull fracture from a blow to the head.
The show examines whether there is a link between her murder and allegations of abuse at a school she taught, Archbishop Keough High School.
Here, we look at Fr Joseph Maskell, the chaplain of Keough who was the subject of an unsuccessful 1994 lawsuit accusing him of rape, during which one of the plaintiffs alleged he showed her Sr Cathy’s body as a warning not to speak to anyone else about the abuse.
He came from an Irish family
Maskell’s father Joseph was born in Limerick and emigrated with his parents, Daniel and Hanna, to New York in 1898, before settling in Baltimore, an area popular with Irish immigrants.
In The Keepers, investigative journalist Tom Nugent says: “Maskell was an Irish priest right out of the traditional working-class Irish-American community.”
While other kids were playing football or baseball, the young Maskell was saying Mass for his friends.
“From 15 years old he was a priest in training,” says Nugent.
The reporter adds that Maskell’s mother would dress him in Mass vestments and would separate the white wafers out of pack of coloured candy for him to use as Communion wafers.
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