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Priest, wrongly accused of stealing £1-m from church, is found dead

Priest, wrongly accused of stealing £1-m from church, is found dead

Last updated on: July 13, 2020 at 2:42 pm by Barry Duke

Priest, wrongly accused of stealing £1-m from church, is found dead 2020-07-13T14:42:36+02:00 Barry Duke

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BACK in 2015, a lawsuit was launched against New York priest Rev Peter Miqueli that alleged he’d stolen nearly $1 million to pay a male prostitute for kinky S& M sex and buy a house in Ocean County. This led to a flurry of lurid headlines and photos linking him with a rent boy named Keith Crist.

Image via Towleroad

Now it’s being reported that Miqueli, 57, who resigned in 2015 as pastor of St Frances de Chantal parish in Throggs Neck, was found dead at his home last week.

Two years after the lawsuit was launched by 14 St Francis parishioners, an investigation by the church found no evidence of him having stolen that amount, and no action was taken by the police.

The investigation, however, did find that his church improperly doled out more than $22,000 in reimbursements to Miqueli from parish accounts. The ex-priest was ordered to return the funds.

In a letter that was disseminated to parishioners, the Most Rev Gerald Walsh, vicar for clergy, said that, while $22,000 is a “significant sum,” it is a “far cry” from the $1 million Miqueli was accused of looting.

When the lawsuit was lodged with the Supreme Court in Manhattan, Daniel Leddy, writing for SiLive.com, ripped into the plaintiffs, saying they had sought to “inflict maximum damage” on Miqueli by drafting their complaint in the most lurid language possible.

It alleged, among other things, that weekly bondage “sessions” between Miqueli Crist cost roughly $1,000.

Miqueli used his position of trust and confidence as a pastor, as a man of God, to misappropriate and divert hundreds of thousands of dollars and donations funds from parishioners.

It said that the money was used to:

Fund Father Miqueli’s illegal and perverted lifestyle.

The Manhattan tabloids got the ball rolling: “Priest paid his male ‘sex-master’ from collection plate”, said The New York Post, headlining a story which, among other lurid details, repeated the lawsuit’s claim that Father Miqueli was forced to drink his “master’s” urine.

Said Leddy:

True or false, it’s a despicable assertion, aimed squarely at the media, that serves no legitimate legal purpose. They’re proud of themselves too. In fact, as soon as the sensational media coverage began, a website entitled ‘Free St. Frances de Chantal from Fr. Peter Miqueli’ started listing links to the stories, and encouraging people to ‘enjoy’ reading them.

The same website also declared – and this is really off-the-wall crazy – that Father Miqueli, Cardinal Dolan, and the Archdiocese of New York ‘made this into the media circus that is (sic) has become.’

He added:

What the plaintiffs have done here would be shameful enough if the allegations they’ve made were true. But there are several reasons to be highly suspicious of their lawsuit. For example, if, as they claim, Father Miqueli stole over $1 million from two parishes, why haven’t they produced documentation establishing it?

Whether there is any merit whatsoever to the plaintiffs’ claims remains to be seen. What is clear, however, is that they’ve supplied hard-core anti-Catholics with more ammunition to undermine the Church. And that is truly disgraceful.

As I can find no updates regarding the lawsuit, I guess it was kicked into the long grass.

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