Saturday, June 17, 2006
The former priest pleaded no contest in 2004 to molesting a teen.
STEUBENVILLE (AP) -- An man who served 15 months in prison for molesting a teenager in Wyoming was removed from the priesthood, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Steubenville said.
Anthony Jablonowski, 69, who was released last year from the Wyoming Honor Farm, a minimum-security facility, pleaded no contest in April 2004 to taking indecent liberties with a 17-year-old boy.
Pope Benedict XVI issued a decree April 7 dismissing Jablonowski from the clergy, according to a statement released Friday by the Steubenville diocese. Jablonowski had returned to southeastern Ohio after being released from prison and registered as a sex offender in Washington County.
Jablonowski was serving as a priest in the Steubenville diocese when the allegations surfaced four years ago.
Prosecutors alleged Jablonowski molested the boy in a rectory when he came to seek counseling about being gay in 1982. Jablonowski served at St. Anthony Catholic Church in the southeastern Wyoming town of Guernsey from 1980 to 1988.
His most recent address was in Waterford, Ohio, at a lay religious order he founded more than a decade ago called the Carmelite Missionaries of Mary Immaculate.
Bishop Daniel Conlon had said Jablonowski was not allowed to have any association with the ministry upon his return, but diocese spokesman Monsignor Gerald Calovini said Jablonowski is now free to live there as a lay person.
A message seeking comment from Jablonowski was left at the ministry Saturday.