BOSTON (AP) — A Roman Catholic priest from Massachusetts will return to public ministry after charges that he sexually assaulted a child more than two decades ago were dropped.
In 2022, Monsignor Francis Strahan was indicted on forcible child rape and indecent assault and battery charges. Strahan was accused of assaulting an altar boy when he was a priest at St. Bridget Parish in Framingham, a Boston suburb, on two occasions from 2004 until 2008 when the boy was between the ages of 11 and 13.
But over the weekend, the Archdiocese of Boston said Strahan, a senior priest who retired, had been cleared of civil and canonical allegations and would return to public ministry. Criminal charges were dropped in 2023, and the Archdiocese said it had completed its canonical investigation, which found that the allegations “did not have a semblance of truth, and therefore unsubstantiated.”
“We recognize the significant impact this has had on Msgr. Strahan, his loved ones, his parishioners and many priests,” the Archdiocese of Boston said in a statement. “Allegations of abuse are often complex matters that take time and require the investigative bodies to be thorough and fair to all parties involved. It is during this process that allegations are weighed against the facts derived through investigation by secular law enforcement and by Archdiocesan investigators in keeping with canon law.”
But Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, the main group in the U.S. for survivors of clergy sexual abuse, argued Strahan “should be permanently removed from the ministry" over the abuse case.
“Although the victim ultimately chose not to testify in 2023 due to the toll it would take on his physical and mental health, this decision in no way undermines the credibility or significance of the detailed reports he made to law enforcement,” the group said in a statement. “The Archdiocese of Boston has provided no substantiating evidence for its claim that the allegations ‘did not have a semblance of truth’.”
Strahan will not be assigned to a specific parish and is no longer pastor at St. Bridget. But he will be able to officiate funerals and weddings.
At the time of the charges, his lawyer, Thomas Hoopes, said his client was not guilty. “This is a gross injustice for a man who has devoted his life to serving people and his parish.”
Hoopes could not be reached for comment on Monday.
Strahan was placed on administrative leave in October 2019 when the archdiocese learned of the allegations. After the charges were announced, the archdiocese said he would remain on administrative leave and unable to perform any public ministry pending the case's outcome. He resigned as pastor of St. Bridget, a position he had held since 1983.
In 2002, the clergy abuse scandal was sparked by a series of stories in The Boston Globe that revealed that Cardinal Bernard Law, the disgraced former archbishop of Boston, and his predecessors had transferred child-molesting priests from parish to parish without alerting parents or police. Law, who died in 2017, resigned as archbishop in 2002.
Within months, Catholics around the country demanded to know whether their bishops had done the same. And the scandal quickly spread overseas, to Ireland, Belgium, Chile, Australia and beyond.
The scandal was later chronicled in the Oscar-winning film “Spotlight.”
Michael Casey, The Associated Press
