A Catholic priest who was removed from ministry at St. Patrick’s Church two years ago following allegations that he molested a 17-year-old boy has been cleared of any wrongdoing by the Vatican.<\/p>\n
The Rev. Christopher Pliauplis, 59, who was in charge of the religious education program for the Richmond parish, has been reassigned to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and will begin work there July 1, according to his attorney, Mario Gallucci.<\/p>\n
“I was never more satisfied with a decision,” Gallucci said. “No way did he do what he was accused of.”<\/p>\n
The decision by the Congregation of the Faith, the Vatican office that has jurisdiction over allegations against priests, ends two years of uncertainty Father Pliauplis, who insisted in 2006 that he was innocent. He declined to speak to the Advance yesterday.<\/p>\n
The case began in January 2006 when the teen, one of several high school students who taught classes in the religious ed program, alleged that Father Pliauplis touched him inappropriately as they passed each other in a school hallway.<\/p>\n
The archdiocese interviewed the boy and the priest and removed Father Pliauplis from ministry in March 2006. An archdiocesan review board in June of that year recommended that he not be returned to ministry, and that he no longer be permitted to represent himself as a priest.<\/p>\n
“They railroaded him,” Gallucci said. “Kids are coming forward and saying falsehoods. The archdiocese is not listening to priests, they’re just letting them go.”<\/p>\n
Father Pliauplis retained a canon lawyer — one trained in the laws of the Catholic church — and the attorney took the case to Rome, Gallucci said.<\/p>\n
“Based on the evidence, and justice, they found this didn’t happen,” Gallucci said of the Vatican examiners.<\/p>\n
Gallucci didn’t know how the priest has been supporting himself for the last two years, but described his client as “ecstatic” now.<\/p>\n
“He’s a great guy and a great priest,” he said.<\/p>\n
Attempts to reach the attorney who represented the teen and his family in 2006 were unsuccessful. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
That’s the sentiment expressed below about a priest who was falsely accused of sexual misconduct — and has finally been cleared. I couldn’t agree more. I know this priest. He traveled with us to Italy on pilgrimage in 2004. I served mass with him in the catacombs, at the house of the Holy Family in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,12,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-world","category-ripped-from-the-headlines","category-vocations"],"yoast_head":"\n
"He's a great guy and a great priest" - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/06\/hes-a-great-guy-and-a-great-priest.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""He's a great guy and a great priest" - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"That’s the sentiment expressed below about a priest who was falsely accused of sexual misconduct — and has finally been cleared. I couldn’t agree more. I know this priest. He traveled with us to Italy on pilgrimage in 2004. 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Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}