The diocese of
Gozo said it was opening an investigation after a Roman
Catholic priest on the Maltese island said he fondled Mark
Foley and was naked in saunas with the former U.S.
congressman when he was a boy in Florida. A statement
from the diocese of Gozo, a small Mediterranean island
off Malta, said that its bishop, Mario Grech, contacted the
Archdiocese of Miami on Thursday evening seeking further
information about the case. The statement, issued late
Thursday, said the diocese had learned of the case for
the first time in the international press.
''In the light of all this ... Bishop Grech will
instruct the response team to investigate these
allegations according to the policies established by
the Maltese Ecclesiastical Province with regards to cases
of sexual abuse in pastoral activity,'' the statement said.
''Grech will pass all information he receives
pertaining to this case to the response team as he has
done in similar cases.''
The Maltese Church instituted the team in 1999
to deal with any sexual abuse allegations.
The statement said the team would present the
bishop with a report, and that Grech promised to
cooperate. It did not say whether Mercieca was still
serving as a priest on Gozo, where he regularly hears
confession and celebrates Mass in the cathedral, one
of two main churches on the Mediterranean island. It
also did not say whether it would investigate anything
other than Mercieca's recent statements about Foley.
Gozo, 60 miles south of Sicily, has a population
of about 32,000 and is one of Malta's three inhabited
islands, filled with vacation homes and holiday resorts.
''Bishop Grech, conscious of the gravity of
pedophilia, reiterates that he will cooperate with
those responsible for investigating such cases so that
justice is done to the victims, the perpetrators are
reformed, and the common good is safeguarded,'' the
statement said.
The Reverend Anthony Mercieca, 69, acknowledged
on Thursday that he fondled Foley decades ago when
Foley was a boy in Florida, according to a report by
CNN. "Once maybe I touched him or so, but didn't, it
wasn't--because it's not something you call, I mean,
rape or penetration or anything like that, you know.
We were just fondling," Mercieca, 69, said in a phone
interview with CNN affiliate WPTV from his home on
Gozo.
Mercieca earlier
told the Associated Press that a Florida newspaper
"exaggerated" the inappropriateness of his and Foley's
relationship.
"He seemed to
like it, you know? So it was sort of more like a
spontaneous thing," Mercieca told WPTV, a West Palm Beach,
Fla., station, rejecting Foley's allegations of sexual
abuse. "See, 'abuse,' it's a bad word, you know,
because abuse, you abuse someone against his will. But
it involved just spontaneousness, you know?"
Mercieca went on
to say that he and the teen Foley were friends,
"almost like brothers," and they went on trips together to
the beach, rodeo, and arcade, according to CNN. They
also went out of town together to New York and
Washington, D.C., where they visited museums. "I would
say that if I offended him, I am sorry, but to remember the
good time we had together, you know?" Mercieca said. "And
how really we enjoyed each other's company. And to let
bygones be bygones. Don't keep dwelling on this thing,
you know?"
Mercieca worked
at Sacred Heart Church in Lake Worth, Fla., in the mid
1960s, which is about the time Foley alleged the abuse
occurred, a source told CNN. Foley, 52, has said
through attorney David Roth that he was molested by a
priest when he was between the ages of 13 and 15, which
would have been between 1967 and 1969. Foley was an altar
boy at Sacred Heart, CNN has confirmed.
The allegation
came after Foley resigned on September 29 as details of
his sexually explicit instant messages to teen congressional
pages became public. Roth also told reporters at the
time that Foley had entered a rehabilitation facility
for alcoholism and that he was gay.
In an interview
with the Herald-Tribune in Sarasota, Fla.,
Mercieca recalled massaging Foley while the teen was
naked, skinny-dipping with Foley at a secluded lake in Lake
Worth, and being naked in the same room with him on
overnight trips. (The Advocate; AP contributed to
this report)
