Results tagged “priest”

Police say that a beloved NJ priest was stabbed 32 times by the church's janitor. Jose Feliciano, 64, who was among the group of people who initially found Rev. Ed Hinds' body in the rectory of St. Patricks in Chatham, NJ on Friday, allegedly confessed and was charged with murder.

Yesterday, the beaten and bloodied body of a beloved church pastor was found in the rectory kitchen of St. Patrick's in Chatham, NJ. A friend said of Rev. Edward "Father Ed" Hinds, 61, "He was an exceptional, exceptional ma. He didn’t offend anybody. He didn’t take on issues, he didn’t use the pulpit to take on anything political. A lot of time he’d talk and he’d say, ‘Well where’s God in this?’" Morris County prosecutor Robert Bianchi said, "The fact is that this was a community leader whose arms were wide open to downtrodden. Maybe one of those individuals was involved. That kind of generosity is preyed upon."

An Episcopal pastor on Staten Island is accused of turning the other cheek to a plastic surgeon and paying for the procedures with church money. According to SI Live, Rev. William Blasingame, 66, the now-resigned pastor of St. Paul's Memorial Episcopal Church in Stapleton, is accused of stealing over $80,000 during a three-year period starting in January 2005. Authorities say Blasingame used the money to pay for botox injections and face lifts (see his picture), as well as a club membership, car insurance, fancy clothes, and unspecified drugs. The larceny was discovered after church elders began double-checking church finances and noticed suspicious withdraws from two funds: one that was supposed to cover the maintenance and beautification of the church's grounds, and the other to provide small amounts of cash to parishioners in need. But don't parishioners also need a good-looking pastor? The D.A. doesn't think so; Blasingame's been charged with felonies punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

As reported last week, a woman is suing the Diocese of Brooklyn for $25 million because a Roman Catholic priest at Our Lady of the Snows church allegedly seduced her from the confession booth. The accused priest, Reverend Elvis Elano, has yet to speak publicly, but yesterday parishioners at his former church in Astoria opened up to the Post. And one 80-year-old female churchgoer can probably count on being summoned to testify in Elano's defense: "I don't care whether he's a priest or not, when a woman opens her legs, a man is not going to say no. I don't believe it, but if he did it, more power to him."

Reverend Elvis Elano, a priest formerly posted at Our Lady of the Snows in the Queens, is having a very trying day. After his secret seven-month affair with parishioner Judith Rodrigues-Lytwyn ended earlier this month, his ex has gone public with a lawsuit in Brooklyn Supreme Court, and The Smoking Gun has obtained a cachet of embarrassing photos, emails and documents, like the receipt for his online Viagra purchase.

A chaplain at St. John's University was arraigned yesterday for sending homemade masturbation movies to someone he thought was a 13-year-old boy. It turned out that Father Charles Plock was actually e-mailing a Colorado sheriff the videos in which his face is clearly visible and which appear to have been shot on campus. Plock also serves on the board for Covenant House, the nonprofit organization that shelters runaway teens. One teenage freshman at St. John's called Plock "way too cool to be a priest" while another said to the Daily News, "Father Charlie? No way! He was a pretty all right guy." As he left the Queens courthouse where he appeared yesterday, a crowd heckled Plock shouting "Shame on you!" and "Pedophile!" The $15,000 needed for a bond to have Plock released to psychiatric facility was put up by fellow priests at St. John's.

The Manhattan District Attorney's office announced that the Reverend David Ajemian was arrested on charges of stalking and threatening Conan O'Brien. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston placed Ajemian, a 46-year-old priest in Stoneham, Massachusetts, on leave. The DA's office says that Ajemian had sent letters (some on parish letterhead!) to O'Brien's offices at 30 Rockefeller Plaza and home, contacted his parents, and tried to attend tapings of Late Night with Conan O'Brien. He was...