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From: Shahryar
From: Shahryar
The world needs saving from men of the clothBy Usha Nellore Examiner Columnist | 12/4/08 11:24 PM Ted Haggard, disgraced pastor, is back as a Christian businessman. At the Open Bible Fellowship, in Morrison, Ill., a 350-member church, Haggard hawked insurance to the gullible. He told listeners his past peccadilloes should be attributed to sexual abuse suffered in second grade. Supposedly three pastors were assigned to restore him. I bet they did not expect to see him emerge as an insurance agent. If you remember, he was once president of the 30 million-strong National Association of Evangelicals. He resigned in disgrace from this position after news of his sexual liaison with another man and his involvement with illicit drugs hit the media. No matter how rotten, he seems to have no expiration date. Locally we have the mother of all scandals involving the Catholic Church. Father Fernando Cristancho of St. Ignatius Church in Forest Hill, it is said, convinced a platonic friend, Dalia Fernandez, to travel with him to his native Colombia and become a surrogate mother for children conceived by in vitro fertilization using his sperm and donor ova from another woman. Six years ago three children were born of this immaculate union, and Father Cristancho, in a "Ripley's Believe It Or Not!" maneuver, kept his bundles of joy secret from the church for several years. Surrogate mother Dalia Fernandez accused Father Cristancho of sexually molesting the two boys among her three children; Father Cristancho denied these allegations; the Department of Social Services intervened and removed the children from the care of the disgraced priest; Circuit Judge Emory Plitt Jr. of Harford County gave custody of the children to Dalia Fernandez; members of SNAP, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, marched against the Archdiocese of Baltimore for its lack of transparency about this sordid affair; and the archdiocese defended itself by saying that Father Cristancho was long ago suspended for refusing to accept a transfer to another parish and the matter has been resolved appropriately. ... deleted |
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