Louisiana church remembers abuse victims after reversal over prayers for convicted priest

A Louisiana Catholic church that solicited prayers for a former pastor recently sentenced to life imprisonment for criminal clerical sexual assault, then backed off having offended his victims, is asking its community to pray for survivors of clergy abuse. The shift took place in an updated 7 June parochial bulletin published by St Anthony of Padua church in the New Orleans suburb of Luling, Louisiana , where priest Anthony Odiong was pastor from 2015 to late 2023. A state criminal court jury in Waco, Texas, where Odiong previously ministered, convicted him on 29 May of first- and second-degree sexual assault. Those jurors sentenced him to life in prison on 2 June, having determined that he illegally exploited his spiritual authority as a clergyman to pursue a years-long sexual relationship with a congregant identified in court proceeding as Mary Doe – and that he separately compelled a victim given the pseudonym Jane Doe to yield to intercourse with another man to which she did not consent. The charges brought against Odiong by lifelong Catholics received corroboration from numerous other devout women who reported similar experiences after meeting Odiong in his role as a priest, including at St Anthony of Padua, where he worked after his time in Waco but prior to his prosecution. …