New Orleans archdiocese plans on removing priest’s name from chapel as his Texas sexual abuse trial looms

Plans are under way for the Roman Catholic archdiocese of New Orleans to remove a priest’s name from a chapel he helped build outside the city as a criminal trial looms in Texas for the clergyman on criminal charges that he sexually abused three spiritually vulnerable female congregants there, the Guardian has learned. Anthony Odiong had reportedly raised $600,000 to build and then open Our Lady of Guadalupe Healing Chapel in Luling, Louisiana, in 2020, while he was the pastor at an adjacent church, years before authorities criminally charged him in Texas, where he had also previously ministered. His name has since appeared on various inscriptions outside the chapel and on the structure itself even as the criminal case against him has progressed toward trial. But multiple people informed of the matter recently said that those inscriptions are in line to come down. If carried out, that seemingly would comply with a broader agreement that the US’s second-oldest Catholic archdiocese struck to settle a bankruptcy protection case it filed amid the financial fallout of the global church’s long-developing clerical abuse scandal. A non-monetary provision of that settlement called for the removal of “all plaques, pictures, statues or other public recognition” of clergy abusers from New Orleans archdiocese properties. …