WHERE ARE THESE PRIESTS AND WHY ARE WE PAYING THEM?

By Tim Rohr

In a recent post titled I'LL BE READY FOR THAT, I questioned who is the "Priest in Guam 'dumped' here after sex scandal..." as reported by Troy Torres in Kandit News. 

Troy's story was a take off on a story that had appeared in the New York Times and had alleged that a number of priests who had been credibly accused or convicted of sex with minors elsewhere had been "dumped" on Pacific islands in the 1990's including an "itinerant" priest who "still serves" in Guam.

I noted in my post that the words "itinerant priest" usually refer to priests in the Neocatechumenal Way but that I could not think of a "neo" priest who was "dumped" here in the 1990's and is "still serving" in Guam. 

The only priest who comes close to matching that description is Fr. John Wadeson. 

Wadeson was (or is) a "neo" priest and he arrived in Guam sometime in the early 2000's after Redemptoris Mater Seminary was established in Yona. An archdiocesan document of diocesan priests and how they get paid shows Wadeson on the payroll in 2005. 

On a personal note, Wadeson always seemed alright to me and I never had any issues with him. I even - for several months - refused to post anything negative about him after others started sending me information about his name being on a list of credibly accused priests in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

However, after a clergy meeting with the then-Apostolic Nuncio, Archbishop Martin Krebs, on July 15, 2014, Wadeson sent out an email attacking this blog and inferring that I was in cahoots with Satan. So I decided to open the flood gates on his record of clergy sex abuse in LA and it became news pretty quick. 

One week later, on July 22, 2014, then-Archbishop Apuron removed Wadeson from public ministry even though Apuron had stated that the LA allegations against Wadeson were "never substantiated."

If that was the case, Apuron had a duty to make that known when he incardinated Wadeson at least ten years earlier and put him on our payroll. But when it came to "neo" business, Apuron was never calling the shots. He was being told/ordered what to do by the real bosses.

In hindsight, ten years later and with Apuron outed and ousted, we can see why he got rid of Wadeson so quickly. This was 2 years before Apuron's accusers came forward (2016), but it was also after Apuron had been publicly accused by John Toves. Apuron knew what Toves was after and he (Apuron) was hot to make it look like he was tough on clergy sex abuse. So he threw Wadeson under the bus. 

Note: There are over 100 posts about Wadeson. Type "Wadeson" into the search box at the top of the blog and read away.

Two days after being removed from ministry, Wadeson left (fled) Guam, surfaced in San Francisco, and has never been back. The last we heard from him was a nasty letter to the PDN about me on July 25, 2014. 

At first I thought that the NY Times guy got it wrong. Wadeson has not "served...in Guam" since 2014. However, the author can be forgiven for thinking Wadeson is still here because even though Wadeson has been gone for ten years, and appeared to be in active ministry for some time in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, he's still on our payroll. 

The link is to the clergy directory of the Archdiocese of Agana which lists Fr. John Wadeson as "Priest retired - off island." No kidding, he's been off-island for ten years and has been on our payroll all that time.

According to a trusted source, the monthly stipend for diocesan clergy is $1800 per month and about $1500 a month for retired priests. I don't know how long Wadeson has been "retired," but even if he has been retired all these ten years, we have paid a priest who ran away ten years ago $180,000 ($1500 x 12 months x 10 years). 

And we're still paying him!

Meanwhile, we have priests who are not retired but are "off-island" for no reason known to us. From the Clergy Directory:

1. Akinyemi, Rev. Fr. Julius, Leave of Absence
2. Asproni, Rev. Fr. Francesco, Priest off-island
3. Camacho, Rev. Fr. Luis, Priest off-island
4. Oliveira, Rev. Fr. Edivaldo, Priest off-island
5. Quitugua, JCD, Msgr. David C., Priest off-island
6. Stoia, Rev. Fr. Aurelius, Priest off-island

Six priests at $1800 per month = $10,800 per month x 12 months = $129,600 per year. And who knows for how many years!

They're all "neos" by the way, and I believe 5 of them were formed at our local RMS, which means we paid tens of thousands of dollars for their formation as well as tens of thousands of dollars for them to BE GONE.

Also, we know that some of these priests are active elsewhere which means they are probably "double-dipping." Not a bad gig. 

I know the new archbishop is busy getting his bearings, but, as I've already said elsewhere, given all that Catholics in this archdiocese have had to suffer these last several years and the selling off of many properties that were given to the Church by the families of those same Catholics, it is time for ACCOUNTABILITY...on EVERYTHING.

So where are these priests and why are we paying them?