Wanted to blog this because I’d blogged about this case before, even though this article is more than a week old now. A priest who was connected in a way to the murder of a Cape Cod man is now being sued by his diocese for embezzlement.
Fr. Bernard Kelly first came to public notoriety when it was revealed he had hired an ex-con, Paul Nolin, who’d done time for molesting children (and who was released from the criminal mental institution by another priest/therapist, a friend of Kelly’s, who subsequently allowed Nolin to live in his home.) Nolin was later convicted of the 2003 murder of Jonathan Wessner, which prosecutors said had something to with spurned homosexual advances by Nolin. There were intimations, but no evidence, of an inappropriate relationship between Kelly and Nolin and Nolin and his priest/therapist.
Meanwhile, Kelly was removed his parish after an audit by the Fall River, Mass., diocese discovered $1.2 million missing from two parishes he’d served in. Of course, the audit was ordered after Nolin’s employment at Kelly’s parish as a handyman was discovered. Now Kelly is being sued by the diocese and a grand jury indictment is expected soon.
What a tangled web. How often have we seen how financial improprieties and sexual misconduct have gone hand-in-hand (usually along with liturgical misconduct, although I have seen nothing concerning Kelly’s liturgies). Whether it’s the pastor and the secretary/housekeeper/nun or the pastor and a gay lover or what have you, when you discover it, you wait for the other shoe to drop and the embezzlement to be revealed.
After all, when you’re leading a double life and living a lie, what’s a few more lies on top of it all?
