Fr. Philip A. Magaldi

Magaldi was ordained for the Diocese of Providence in 1960. He left Providence in 1988 after claims of financial mismanagement. He was accepted into the Diocese of Ft. Worth by Bishop Delaney in 1990. In 1992 he pleaded guilty to embezzlement in Rhode Island, then returned to ministry in Ft. Worth after eight months in a halfway house. In 1997 a young man alleged told the Ft. Worth Diocese that Magaldi would pay him to give him enemas.  Magaldi was still active until 1999, after an allegation that he raped a boy and paid the boy to give him enemas in the 1970s, while Magaldi was assigned in Rhode Island. The accuser filed suit in 1998; it was dropped when he died in 10/2000. Magaldi was removed briefly from ministry by Fr. Worth in 1999, was reinstated, then removed permanently in 2001. He was HIV positive. Laicization was requested. He died in 8/2008. Another claim settled 8/21/2012 in Ft. Worth.  In 2017 a man claimed in a lawsuit that Magaldi sexually abused him in RI beginning when he was about age 7 in 1965. Included 7/1/2019 on the Providence diocese’s list of credibly accused. A lawsuit filed in 9/2019 claimed abuse of a boy, ages 12-17, in the late 1970s-early 1980s, while Magaldi was pastor of St. Anthony’s in Providence. The suit was dismissed, the judge ruling that church leadership cannot be labeled “perpetrators.” The RI Supreme Court affirmed the ruling in 6/2023. The plaintiff also filed suit NY in 10/2020 claiming Magaldi sexually abused him during a trip to NYC in 1983; the suit was dismissed. Included in the 2/4/2026 RI Attorney General’s Report, which notes that Magaldi has been accused of the sexual abuse of nine boys. His modus operandi is said to have involved targeting vulnerable, at-risk boys, lavishing them with gifts and money and threatening them. His known victims were as young as age 7 through early adulthood, and the sexual abuse included rape.