BOSTON, March 18 (UPI) -- The Vatican has dismissed eight Boston-area clerics accused of sexually abusing children, but all are retired or left active ministry years ago.
Among the eight was the former vice chancellor of the archdiocese, Monsignor Frederick J. Ryan, who had been accused in 2002 of repeatedly molesting two students in the early 1980s from Catholic Memorial High School, the Boston Globe reported Saturday.
Also dismissed were: 74-year-old Anthony L. Buchette, formerly of St. Kevin Church in Dorchester; 61-year-old Paul J. Finegan, formerly of St. Bernadette Parish in Randolph; 66-year-old Thomas P. Forry, formerly of several parishes; Robert H. Morrisette, formerly of Assumption Parish in Bellingham; Ernest E. Tourigney, formerly of Immaculate Conception Parish in Weymouth; 68-year-old Patrick J. Tague, who ran a halfway house for teenagers in Hyde Park; and Joseph Crowley, a deacon who served at Children's Hospital in Boston.
Although the clerics had left active ministry years ago, each had continued to draw financial support from the archdiocese. Those payments will now stop, said Kelly Lynch, an archdiocesan spokeswoman.
