W HAVEN, Conn. - A Roman Catholic priest in Connecticut has been arrested on charges he stole $1.3 million in church money over seven years to use for male escorts, expensive clothing, and luxury hotels and restaurants.

Waterbury police say the 64-year-old Rev. Kevin J. Gray was charged Tuesday with first-degree larceny. Gray is the former pastor at Sacred Heart/Sagrado Corazon Parish in Waterbury.


The Hartford Archdiocese last month asked police to investigate after it discovered during a financial review that he might have taken more than a million dollars for personal use.

Gray was Sacred Heart's pastor from January 2003 until April 15, when he was granted a medical leave. He was later suspended.

Telephone messages were left at Sacred Heart and the office of Gray's public defender.

Now that's bad..

When a priest is the only one with access to the church's financials and there is no financial committee, what would you expect from a priest with demons?  The Catholics have a lot of house cleaning to do, but then don't most religious orders. The sad thing is, they won't do much or anything even if the LE comes down hard on this priest. If and when he's released, he'll get replaced and sent to some place to be a menace there or so is the history of the Catholic Church.

Dear Misty:
They really should let priest get married so that they wouldn't have the propensity to exhibit aberrant sexual behaviors. After all they were men first before they were agents of god. It is unnatural to believe men can abstain from sex for the better part of their lives when they make that commitment. Especially a young man as well. Think about it there are hardly no men entering the priesthood because the laws and bylaws are that stringent. If we permitted marriage in the Church especially the catholic church a lot of this behavior would cease.

...and it took *7 years* for this to come to light? Seems somebody needs new financial review protocols before they hash over whether to have priests marry or not!

I grew up Baptist, but we had good family friends, devote Catholics, they had a unique opinion on Priests. Their Diocese had a high percentage of gay Priests. They thought that gay men went into priesthood to avoid the draft and Vietnam. This guys age makes you wonder about that theory.

To my dear sweet Stephanie:
I was talking about marrying women because it is unnatural for a man to live with the demands that a priest currently has since he is a man first. He has certainly tendencies as you would know all too well that are an innate part of his personality.  If he was able to maintain a heterosexual relationship that would help deter if not totally avert the behavior that is transpiring in the church of late. Whether it be a man or a woman they should not be coerced or expected to live asexual lives. However when you put them in this situation with everything that goes on around them, these are the transgressions that one can expect from a man whether he is a priest or not.

He's obviously attracted to men. If he had spent the money on female escorts I'd agree with you completely. He chose men.

Let's just assume he's gay since he spent a shit load of the church's money on men. If he's attracted to men, IMHO he wouldn't be happy sexually married to a woman.

I do feel it's unrealistic to think priest can't be good priest and be married.

xoxo,

Steph

be glad it wasn't young boys

I put it here because of the huge amount of money involved and also the length of time....7 years before he was caught.  He just happened to be a priest too for MALE escorts.  But as it has already been pointed out...he is a man. Thus my reasoning why I put it here.

Doesn't it "blow" your mind that is was $1 million OVER 7 years????

most of us were gettin it free from the alter boys!

Dear Misty:
Just curious, I was wondering was it a paper trail that got him caught. I am wondering did he pay with checks or did he have an ATM card where he had direct access to the cash although he embezzled that much?  With respect to it blowing my mind, we all know that the catholic church always has had more money than god. The new question that you should be asking is what is the oversight procedure in the church and who is on the vestry? However when you went to see doubt several years ago, you can tell that goes on with Ms. Streep's character and the interaction that she had with Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Henceforth one of the items that you have too realize is what is the culture there and the fact that the priest is all knowing. Henceforth there are no checks and balances in this hierarchy. Also the Archbishop is slow to react and the priest is merely sent to another parish instead of being defrocked. Thus it is a culture and a subculture there where the nuns or anyone else within the church must defer to him and can't call him on anything because of the bylaws of the church and the hierarchical structure that has been in place for centuries.   Thus considering everything we know about how it is ran it wouldn't and it shouldn't blow your mind. Misty remember when you where fairly young how Sam Giancana used to send a local priest to Rome to make his contribution to the church? So with just the mob money alone it was bizarre then.

And they also appear to be dying from AIDS a lot more than the general population.

From the linked article:

Hundreds of Roman Catholic priests across the United States have died of AIDS-related illnesses, and hundreds more are living with HIV, the virus that causes the disease.

The actual number of AIDS deaths is difficult to determine. But it appears priests are dying of AIDS at a rate at least four times that of the general U.S. population, according to estimates from medical experts and priests and an analysis of health statistics by The Kansas City Star.

In Missouri and Kansas alone, at least 16 priests and two religious-order brothers have died of AIDS since early 1987.

The deaths are of such concern to the church that most dioceses and religious orders now require applicants for the priesthood to take an HIV-antibody test before their ordination.

Instead of requiring all priests to be celibate; instead require them to be gay.

There are likely a lot more gay men than celibate men out there; which enlarges the pool.

Meanwhile, the whole celibacy thing was originally imposed to prevent division of church assets through inheritance.

Two biological males can't mate and make babies.

So, what the hey, allow them to marry too.

Sure, they'll run into some problems with a few phrases in the Bible. But they can always update a few things.

Problem solved.