Rising Above a Scandal

In a year of scandal, few Catholic congregations have been tested as severely as the 5,000 families of St. Edward Church in Dana Point.

Their charismatic pastor was ousted after admitting several affairs with women. Later, the church paid $1.2 million to settle allegations that he impregnated a 16-year-old girl in the early 1980s and paid for her abortion.

There was more: A beloved senior priest was removed amid allegations that he sexually abused a teenage boy two decades ago. A former parish priest admitted having done the same. Still another was accused of molestation.

In the latest devastating disclosure from a buried past, authorities last week arrested a former priest from St. Edward on charges that, in the early 1970s, he sexually abused and impregnated a teenage girl who sang in the church choir.

Some feared this spiritual water torture would cause an exodus to other parishes or even out of the Roman Catholic Church. But many in the parish say they emerged from their trial of faith more committed than ever. They stopped idolizing the men behind the altar, they say, and refocused their adoration on the figure nailed to the cross.

Donations to St. Edward have risen 6% in the past year. The introductory class for prospective converts, held earlier this month, was packed with more than 40 seekers, a record number. The ranks of youth group leaders nearly doubled this year to 41.

The wounded parish has survived and in some ways thrived, thanks to a tight-knit group of congregants who stubbornly kept showing up on Sundays no matter how they felt. They attended venting sessions convened by diocesan officials and privately struggled to reconnect to the roots of their faith. Many parishioners say their healing was aided by an abundance of prayer and grace.

“We were bleeding, and that wound is starting to cover over,” said Suzanne Russell, a 72-year-old grandmother from Dana Point who has attended the church for 10 years. “But we’ll never be the same.”

St. Edward sits on nine hilltop acres overlooking Dana Point Harbor. Large windows behind the altar afford a 180-degree view of a Pacific Ocean dotted with sails. Each Fourth of July, young families picnic on the hilltop at dusk, listen to patriotic music and watch fireworks.

In 1995, Father John Lenihan became only the second head priest in St. Edward’s 34-year history. He was a charismatic Irishman, at ease before crowds though awkward in small groups.

In his first announcement to the congregation, he admitted that he had had an inappropriate relationship with a young woman in the late 1970s. But, he said, that part of his life was behind him.

During the next six years, St. Edward grew from 2,000 families to almost 5,000, fueled by a building boom in south Orange County, a new $6-million church building and Lenihan’s infectious enthusiasm.

The growth was so explosive--in membership, in school enrollment, in ministries--that an $8-million fund-raising campaign was launched in 1999 to double the school’s size, buy several acres of adjacent land and build a community center.

Months before the $4.9-million school expansion was completed, the congregation suffered the first of the shocks that would test its faith.

Three days after the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks, Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez wrote about an Orange County priest, identified only as Father X, who admitted having molested a teenage girl and having had at least four affairs over the years with women. When church officials confronted him, Lenihan acknowledged that he was the priest in question. He was fired by Bishop Tod D. Brown of the Diocese of Orange.

“That initial stab was the worst,” said Donna Couch, director of the convert program at the church for the past 18 years. “When you work with these [priests], you always become their cheerleaders. The dose of reality was difficult.”

The immediate reaction to the news divided the congregation. One group wanted to circulate petitions calling for Brown to keep Lenihan at St. Edward. The priest, they said, had been an excellent pastor and should be forgiven for his mistakes. Another group threatened a petition drive of its own, to prevent Lenihan from returning.

“It was painful and embarrassing and strange and strained,” said Diane Wetherbee, a member of the church for eight years.

Some parishioners, who were taught to hold priests in godlike awe, had a particularly difficult time with the news.

“Priests were put on such a high pedestal,” said Margie Bushaw, a 48-year-old Laguna Niguel resident. “You just looked at them differently. I think that might have been my biggest problem.”

Diocesan officials improvised a plan to help the congregation cope. Brown installed Father Steve Sallot, the respected 48-year-old rector of Mater Dei High School, as interim pastor. For the next nine months, Sallot spent Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays at the church. The rest of the week, while at the high school, he stayed in touch by cell phone with the two newly ordained priests who handled daily operations at St. Edward.

“None of us had been through something like this before,” Sallot said. “We came to realize that it needed to be handled like a crisis in the family, when people went through the whole grieving process.”

A few weeks after the Lenihan news broke, diocesan officials met with about 400 congregants one evening in the parish hall. The audience’s questions--ranging from why the bishop’s response to Lenihan’s misconduct was so harsh to how the Catholic Church as a whole could better protect children--were written on a large dry-erase board and grouped by themes.

The officials talked about the steps the church was taking in response to the scandal, including a “zero-tolerance” policy on sexual misconduct by priests, no matter how long ago it had occurred. But the diocesan officials declined to answer questions about Lenihan’s behavior, saying it was a personnel matter and therefore confidential.

“Some people went away relieved. Some people went away thinking, ‘Who’s going to support our priest?’ ” said Maria Schinderle, the diocesan director of human resources and a St. Edward parishioner for 22 years. “I felt most people thought, ‘OK, we asked questions and they answered us. We might not have liked all the answers, but we got them.’ ”

A Chance to Vent

An evening “listening” session at the parish elementary school, moderated by a nun trained as a counselor, let congregants vent their feelings about the scandal. A mountain retreat for teens also helped the healing process.

“We just kept putting one foot in front of the other,” said Russell, who met with five other women from St. Edward every few weeks. The group studied Scripture, prayed and discussed Catholic issues around a lighted candle in a parishioner’s living room in Dana Point.

“It just was a time of feeling very fragmented and trying to get body and soul back together,” Russell said.

Prayers were added at each church service for victims of sexual abuse and for priests.

When a third-grader at the 675-student St. Edward School suffered a brain aneurysm soon after Lenihan was fired, parents, staff and parishioners rallied around the boy. The divisions within the congregations suddenly seemed unimportant. The child recovered and has returned to school.

“I call it the backhand of grace,” said Sallot. “It helped people draw together for more profound and spiritual reasons and to stop gossiping in the church parking lot.”

But then, new allegations of sexual abuse surfaced with sickening frequency.

In December, a woman from Lenihan’s former parish, St. Norbert Church in Orange, filed suit, contending that he had impregnated her when she was 16 and paid for her abortion in 1982. The Diocese of Orange and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles paid $1.2 million to settle the claim, though Lenihan did not admit the allegations. The Orange County Sheriff’s Department is conducting a criminal investigation.

In March, Father Michael Pecharich, a well-liked former priest at St. Edward who was working in a neighboring parish, resigned under the zero-tolerance policy, because he had previously admitted molesting an adolescent boy 19 years ago.

The following month, Father Denis Lyons, a senior priest at St. Edward, was put on administrative leave just two months short of his retirement after allegations surfaced that he had molested a boy two decades ago. He had previously admitted “inappropriate behavior” with two men at another parish.

In May, the congregation learned disturbing news about yet another priest who had once spoken from their pulpit and heard their confessions. A man filed suit claiming that Father Siegfried Widera had molested him at a Yorba Linda parish in 1985.

The suit contended that church officials in the 1970s allowed Widera to work in Orange County parishes, including St. Edward, even though they knew he had been involved in an earlier molestation case in Milwaukee. A few weeks after the suit was filed, Milwaukee authorities charged Widera with sexually abusing three minors while he was a priest there in the 1970s. Widera disappeared and is considered a fugitive.

Finally, Gerald Plesetz was jailed last Tuesday on charges that he had sexually abused a choir girl for two years beginning in 1972, when she was 14 and he was a priest at St. Edward.

Plesetz was arrested after allegedly confessing to an undercover sheriff’s deputy posing as the daughter born to the teenage parishioner. The daughter, now 27, was put up for adoption as an infant.

Some parishioners took refuge in gallows humor as the allegations stacked up, wondering aloud whether a crop-duster should spray holy water over the church.

Questioning Their Faith

Many experienced a crisis of faith.

Bushaw converted to Catholicism 24 years ago and had rarely missed Sunday Mass, even while on vacation. But her attendance in the past year has been sporadic, and she has flirted with returning to her Protestant roots.

“It’s been a struggle,” she said. “Nothing’s come real easy. Some days I’m hanging by a thread.”

But like so many of the faithful at St. Edward, she decided to stay. In contrast to some Protestant worshipers--especially those in nondenominational mega-churches--Catholics tend to feel loyalty to the church rather than its leaders.

The focus of Catholicism is the sacraments--such as confession and Holy Communion--rather than dynamic personalities in the pulpit.

Bushaw says she feels called to remain a Catholic and fight for reform.

“If people leave, I’m afraid that change won’t take place,” she said.

Joan Bejarano, a St. Edward lay leader who reads the Scripture selection at Sunday Mass, said the relentless drumbeat of bad news forced her to retreat to a neighboring parish for a short time this summer.

“I wanted a breath of fresh air,” she said.

Rummy Rodriguez, a 20-year-old college student from Dana Point, has been attending Mass at St. Edward for the past four years.

The disclosures, however, made Rodriguez think twice about going to confession. He didn’t know whether he could trust the new priests.

“I thought, ‘What’s the point?’ Maybe I shouldn’t be confessing to these people,” Rodriguez said. “But I don’t have to confess to a priest. I can just get on my knees and pray to God.”

He said he wonders sometimes whether any other priests at St. Edward, past or present, “did something that hasn’t come out yet.

“But I can’t do anything about it, so I don’t let it bother me,” he said. “Like I said, I don’t come here for a priest. I come here for God.”

Sallot, a priest for 23 years, said the crisis has changed many of his spiritual disciplines. He’s creating a small chapel in the rectory to accommodate an increased prayer life among the clergy, and redoubling efforts to spend time with his fellow priests at dinner or on nights out. “We can get very isolated, since we basically work alone,” Sallot said.

Shawn Wehan, the parish’s 27-year-old youth minister, said: “We now can focus on true spirituality and relationship with God, and not a bunch of hocus-pocus.”

The soul-searching and intensified prayer have given the parish an added vitality, said Couch.

“I would say before all this happened, a small percentage of the people in the pews knew why they are Catholic,” she said. “Now everyone knows.”

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Shaken Trust

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Five priests accused of molestation have worked at St. Edward Catholic Church in Dana Point. Dates in parentheses show when each priest worked there:

* Gerald Plesetz (1972-74): Arrested last week for alleged sexual abuse of a teenage girl while a priest at St. Edward. Left the priesthood in late ‘70s.

* Siegfried Widera** (1981-84): Molested a boy in 1985 while at a Yorba Linda parish, according to a civil suit filed in May. Convicted of child molestation in the Midwest before being transferred to Orange County in 1976. Also faces nine new felony counts of sexual abuse in Milwaukee. Is on the lam.

* Denis Lyons (1995-2002): Placed on paid administrative leave in April as senior priest at St. Edward, two months shy of retirement, after allegations surfaced that he had molested a teenage boy two decades ago. In 1993, he admitted “inappropriate behavior” with two men while pastor of St. John the Baptist in Costa Mesa.

* Michael Pecharich (1976-79): Resigned in March as pastor of Rancho Santa Margarita parish having previously admitted he molested a boy 19 years ago.

John Lenihan (1995-2001): Removed in September 2001 as pastor of St. Edward after admitting several affairs with women. Since then, two dioceses together have paid $1.2 million to settle claims of sexual misconduct by Lenihan. The former priest is under criminal investigation.

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** Photograph not available