Misconduct charge directed against priest

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Staff writer

GALLUP — Officials with the Diocese of Gallup have put one of their longtime priests on administrative leave after Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted discovered information in the priest’s personnel file alleging misconduct involving juvenile victims in Winslow, Ariz., nearly 26 years ago.

The discovery has also reportedly caused Olmsted to order a review of the diocese’s more than 400 current and old personnel files.

The Rev. John Boland was removed from his ministry at Immaculate Conception parish in Cuba this weekend, said Lee Lamb, the communications director for the diocese. The Rev. Matthew A. Keller and Deacon Timoteo Lujan, the chancellor of the diocese, broke the news to parishioners on Sunday during services at Immaculate Conception and Santo Nino La Jara.

According to Lamb, information about the alleged incident was discovered by Olmsted, the current apostolic administrator for the Gallup Diocese, while reviewing Boland’s file in preparation for transferring Boland to another parish. The alleged incident occurred in Winslow while Boland was assigned to the Madre de Dios parish.

Lamb said Boland’s file contained information about Boland’s Feb. 26, 1983, arrest by Winslow Police that indicates Boland was charged with three misdemeanor counts of providing alcohol to minors and one Class 3 felony count of performing a lewd act with a child under 15. Lamb said the file indicates the minors were several young boys. It also indicates Boland was released to the supervision of Gallup’s former Bishop Jerome J. Hastrich, who is now deceased.

Lamb said the file’s information does not clearly indicate the legal outcome of the charges because court documents are absent. “That’s information the diocese should have had on record, but we don’t,” Lamb said.

Lamb said the Diocese of Gallup’s Sexual Abuse Review Board will conduct an investigation into the case. Boland is now barred from celebrating the sacraments or conducting any public ministry as a Catholic priest during the investigation, Lamb said, and he is currently staying in Gallup and receiving psychological counseling. Rev. Timothy Cervantes is the new administrator of the Cuba parish, he added.

Olmsted has now ordered a review of the Diocese of Gallup’s more than 400 current and old personnel files, Lamb said.

However, information previously released by chancery officials in recent years suggests these allegations about Boland should have come to light in 2002, 2004, or 2005.

Although Lamb talked extensively with the Independent on Wednesday afternoon, the following issues came up later in the evening through a review of the Independent’s files, and evening messages left for Lamb were not immediately returned.

In 2002, the Diocese of Gallup instituted criminal background checks for all diocesan personnel as part of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ response to the sexual abuse crisis that dominated church and media attention during much of that year. It would seem Boland’s reported arrest in 1983 would have surfaced in a 2002 criminal background check.

In late June 2004, the Gallup Independent posed a number of questions about clergy sex abuse to Chancellor Lujan. On July 1, 2004, Lujan included this e-mailed response to a question about a possible review of the files of each priest who has served in the diocese since 1952:

“No, we have no staff for such a project,” Lujan wrote. “We do the best we can. However, that having been said, recently, Emerine Glowienka (our part time, volunteer archivist) has completed a process of making a list of every priest that has ever served in the Diocese of Gallup. She has looked through each of the files of all these men and placed that data in each of them in chronological order. It is an impressive effort. Dr. Glowienka is sufficiently aware that had she found anything referring to what she would quaintly refer to as ‘irregularities’ she would immediately bring it to my attention. She knows that I keep a separate file on both victims and priests with allegations made against them.”

“This is in the archive,” Lujan concluded. “I have personally been through the files twice of every priest-deacon, sister, brother that is currently (or recently since 2000) in ministry in this diocese. I am relatively confident that we have a competent handle on the matter.”

If Olmsted was able to locate information about Boland’s alleged misconduct so easily in Boland’s file, it’s unclear why that information escaped the attention of Lujan in 2004.

And finally, in May 2005, Joe Baca, a representative of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, met with former Bishop Donald E. Pelotte and presented him with a list of 18 names of priests who had been associated with the diocese and were thought by SNAP to be possible abusers.

The Gallup Independent was given a similar list, and Boland’s name was on it. Baca also told the newspaper that an alleged incident involving Boland and Winslow Police occurred in 1983, but he wasn’t able to provide the exact date, any victims’ names, or specific details of the incident.