This episode is the first of four featuring the very bad Catholic priest I call “Father X” who served at St. Matthew’s Church in Indian Orchard in the mid-1980s. Yesterday I googled him and discovered the former “holy man” died about a month ago at the age of 84.
Spoiler alert: in “Father X, part 3 and part 4” you’ll hear a secretly recorded conversation between me and the now-dead priest. After tracking him down to his bed-bug infested subsidized housing and feeding him 100 proof bourbon, I get him to confess his sins… and reveal the dark secret that tormented his family for decades.
His short obituary, though, tells a much different version of his life. “After receiving his degree from divinity school, he was a parish priest from 1967 to 2006 and served in the Springfield, MA area. Following his retirement, he moved to [redacted] and made many good friends.”
I’m redacting his name and death location, for the time being, because I don’t want his family to have to deal with his crimes publicly. However, he didn’t “retire” from the ministry, he was removed from the priesthood because church officials realized they could no longer cover up his crimes. This dirtbag had been molesting boys since the 1970s and church officials knew it.
