MIAMI – Another former altar boy says he was sexually abused in the 1970s by the same retired Catholic priest who acknowledged fondling former Rep. Mark Foley when Foley was a teenager, the man’s attorney said Wednesday.
The new allegations against the Rev. Anthony Mercieca were made by a man who lived in North Miami and was an altar boy at St. James Catholic Church, where Mercieca worked, attorney Jeffrey Herman said.
Herman said he planned to file a lawsuit Wednesday against the Archdiocese of Miami. His client, now 40 and identified in the lawsuit only as John Doe No. 26, says Mercieca abused him when he was about 12 years old.
“He had been thinking about it before Foley came forward, and then when Foley came out and the church encouraged other victims to come forward, he decided to come forward,” Herman said.
The man said “all of my nightmares came back” when Mercieca’s picture appeared on the news last week amid Foley’s claims that the priest had molested him. Foley had resigned amid accusations that he sent sexually explicit messages to teenage boys who had worked on Capitol Hill.
Mercieca, 69, now lives on the Maltese island of Gozo in the Mediterranean.
Archdiocese of Miami spokeswoman Mary Ross Agosta, asked about the latest allegations, said: “Any of this type of behavior by Father Mercieca was unknown to the archdiocese, and we had absolutely no information to indicate that the father did or would engage in any type of inappropriate or abusive behavior.”
The Miami Archdiocese barred Mercieca from all church work as it investigates Foley’s claim that the clergyman molested him when Foley was an altar boy at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Lake Worth in 1967.
Mercieca is now retired and does not serve in any parish, but he regularly celebrates Mass and hears confession in the cathedral on Gozo, according to the Archdiocese of Malta.
Mercieca has denied having sex with any underage children.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
