Fr. Patrick J. Mendola
Director of counseling and guidance at St. Francis High School in Athol Springs NY 1976-1980; founder and executive director 1981-1990 of a program for troubled youth, the Franciscan Center, in Buffalo; pastor of St. Philip Benizi Parish in Jonesboro GA 1991-1995. Mendola also was a counselor Mercy High School in Buffalo and chaplain for the Baker Homes in Lackawanna NY. Died in Berkeley CA, where he had pursued a masters degree at the Graduate Theological Union, on 5/18/1995, at age 47. Accused in a lawsuit filed in 8/2019 of sexually abusing a 7-year-old boy, along with Revs. Aurelian Brzezniak and James Smyka, at St. Francis High School in the Buffalo diocese in 1977. Per the suit, a relative of the boy was a teacher at St. Francis and his family spent the night there. The accuser claimed the abuse occurred during the night, when his parents were asleep in another room, in front of a group of priests in a shower room, and that it continued until he was age 8.
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