By Patrick B. Craine
WATERBURY, Connecticut, July 7, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A homosexual Connecticut Roman Catholic priest allegedly stole over a million dollars from his parish to pay for various extravagances and illicit activities, including male escorts, report the Waterbury police.
Fr. Kevin Gray, 64, former pastor of Sacred Heart parish in Waterbury, has been charged with first-degree larceny after taking $1.3 million out of parish funds to pay for escorts, hotels, meals out, and clothes.
He carried credit cards for two men on his account – one whom he met at a strip club, the other from an escort service. He paid tuition to Harvard for another man that he met in Central Park.
"Up until this investigation he had an excellent reputation," police Captain Christopher Corbett told Fox News. "The life he was leading in New York City was much different than the life he was leading in Waterbury as a priest. He's certainly an example of someone who was leading a double life."
The priest began taking money when he was transferred to Sacred Heart in 2003. He told police that he “had grown to hate being a priest” and “he felt the church owed it to him.”
The financial discrepancies were reported by the archdiocese on May 27 after Fr. Gray took a medical leave in April and disappeared. He turned himself in to police Tuesday, and was arraigned with bail set at $750,000.
The police affidavit says Fr. Gray told police he is homosexual and that he objects to the Church’s teaching on homosexuality.
In a 2005 instruction, the Vatican prohibited admitting homosexuals into seminaries, and warned that "one must in no way overlook the negative consequences that can derive from the ordination of persons with deep-seated homosexual tendencies.”
The directive has gone unheeded in many dioceses, and has even been directly opposed by some bishops and religious orders. Some commentators have suggested that the instruction was not meant to bar men with homosexual tendencies, but merely those with an immature sexuality.
But Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone reaffirmed the teaching in 2008, in a letter to the world’s bishops, insisting that the ban on admitting men with homosexual tendencies to seminaries applies universally.
Homosexuals Not Permitted in Any Seminaries, Reaffirms Vatican
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/may/08052009.html
Vatican Officially Releases Document on Homosexuality and the Priesthood
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/nov/05112903.html
Extracts From Official Release of Vatican Document on Homosexuality and the Priesthood
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/nov/051129a.html
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