Priest says Philly archdiocese told him to stay mum about abuse

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania —

A Roman Catholic priest who told a church official in the early 1980s that a fellow priest was molesting boys said he was told that the Philadelphia Archdiocese's "highest authority" warned that he should keep quiet.

The Rev. James Gigliotti told The Philadelphia Inquirer for Sunday's edition that he received a stern warning after he reported the accusations against the Rev. James J. Brzyski.

"This comes from the highest authority: You're to keep your mouth shut," Gigliotti said an assistant chancellor told him.

Gigliotti is the first priest to say publicly that the archdiocese told him to keep quiet.

"I take full responsibility for this, but those words, 'You're to keep your mouth shut,' made a big impression on me because it came from high authority," said Gigliotti, 57, who now leads a parish in Arlington, Texas.

Gigliotti identified the man who warned him as the Rev. John W. Graf, an assistant chancellor under then-Cardinal John Krol, who died in 1996.

Graf, who now heads a Chester County parish, told the paper that he did not wish to comment on Gigliotti's account "because of the privacy of all the people involved."

After the accusations were made against Brzyski, the archdiocese quickly removed him from his parish. But church officials did not tell parishioners the reason, nor did they report Brzyski to police.

Read the article at www.statesman.com Dated August 6, 2005

Search the web for this article