UPDATED- May 26, 5:25 p.m. EST
BREAKING – Father Pedro Corces has been asked to resign as pastor of the Holy Rose of Lima, according to a testimony from the Archdiocese of St John.
The headmistress, Sister Bernadette Keane, was also replaced by an archdiocese official to commemorate the school year
The announcements came in a letter emailed to parents in St. Rose on Thursday afternoon.
In it, Archbishop Thomas Wenski announced that he had asked Father Pedro Corces to resign as pastor of the Holy Rose of Lima in order to repair the “broken” spirit and unity in the church and its school after a group of parents and a private one Investigators published a briefing containing allegations against Father Corces.
This is evolving and this story is being updated.
Read Archbishop Thomas Wenski’s full statement:
Original story:
A group of concerned parents at St. Rose of Lima School in St John Shores have accused their pastor, Father Pedro Corces, of putting children in “great danger” at school after allegedly hiring a man to take care of it once was arrested for prostitution.
These and many other claims were made in a 129-page “dossier” of information compiled by a group of parents at the school called Christifidelis @ Saint Rose of Lima St John Shores.
The group also paid a private investigator over $ 3,500 to monitor Father Corces and help them initiate a lawsuit against him. After they could no longer afford the investigator’s services, Father Corce’s parents monitored Father Corce independently.
The document was leaked on RISE NEWS on Friday afternoon and it is alleged that Father Corces is in a relationship with a school maintenance worker named Juan Alberto Cardenas.
The group and the private investigator both allege Cardenas was arrested three times, including in 2000 after allegedly offering oral sex to an undercover police officer for $ 15.
The private investigator said he received Cardenas’ date of birth and then compared his mug shots with those on social media and surveillance to make sure they were the same person.
Cardenas was also arrested in 2002 for submitting fake bills and in 2004 for making false insurance claims.
The document also claims that Father Corces often takes expensive vacations, sometimes with Cardenas, and that he often spends the night in Cardenas’ apartment, where he pays his coworker’s cable bill.
This photo taken on March 11, 2016 shows Father Pedro Corces (L) and Alberto Cardenas (R) in the Flamingo Theater Bar, where they saw a show by Cuban signatory Carlos Varela. Photo credit: Christifidelis
According to group spokeswoman Rosa Armesto, Christifidelis is a group of “loyal Catholics”.
Most of them have children in school, and they derived their group’s name from a similar effort by unrelated activists who worked in the Archdiocese of St John in 2005 to uncover what is known as a “gay super culture”.
The original Christifidelis gained national notoriety after Gawker published their results in 2011.
Many of the allegations Christifidelis made against Father Corces are related to his sexuality, and some of the documents can be read as anti-gay.
RISE NEWS decided to report on some of the allegations only after the group’s findings were confirmed with the private investigator involved in the investigation.
background
Father Corces was first examined by some members of the St. Rose Ward after it was announced in January that the nuns, who have run the school since 1981, had been told to leave school. The parents rebelled and demanded answers, but received little clarity.
Continue reading: “SAVE OUR SISTERS”: The nuns at this Catholic school in St John Shores are leaving after 35 years and people are really crazy about it
While some of the nuns publicly supported the archdiocese line that the Pennsylvania Motherhouse had asked them to withdraw from St. Rose because of the dwindling supply of sisters in the United States, they privately told parents that Father Corces had evicted them .
As a result, the parish was divided between the nuns ‘and the pastors’ sides.
Some even feel that Father Corces lied to them about the situation and that he tried to stop parents from talking about it.
“There is undoubtedly a reign of intimidation from Fr. Pedro Corces,” Armesto said in a telephone interview.
The search for answers
Christifidelis took serious steps to build her case on Father Corces.
Some of the information was gathered when a family living next to the rectory allowed cameras to be placed in rooms in their home to monitor activity.
From this and other sources the group found that many people came and went to the rectory at all hours of the night, which raised suspicions about who actually lived there.
“We saw people over there who are not priests,” said the man who owns the house next to the rectory in an interview. He gave his name but asked not to publish it after his wife objected. “A lot of strange things have happened. It doesn’t look right. “
Other neighbors did not want to talk about the situation, but one said he hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary since Father Corces moved there a few years ago.
But according to the family who enabled their home to become a surveillance outpost, things are different.
“We used to have a little community thing for all of us who lived around the lake. We always had a Christmas get-together. But since that guy [Father Corces] came here, things have changed. “
Christifidelis also searched the trash outside the rectory on multiple occasions, where he claimed to find a tax form for a massage business that Cardenas runs.
“The fact that such a form was filled in at the rectory also suggests a closer relationship between Father Pedro and Alberto Cardenas than the chief’s usual subordinate relationship,” Christifidelis wrote in the report. “It also raises the question of whether Father Pedro offers tax or financial advice.”
A senior school official who wanted to remain anonymous due to concerns about possible retaliation said she was frustrated after discovering no contact information for maintenance workers.
She also said it was well known that three of the maintenance workers, including Cardenas, have keys to the rectory, which was not a standard practice prior to the hiring of the new staff.
Surveillance photos allegedly showing Cardenas entering the rectory. Photo credit: Christifidelis
According to Christifidelis, Cardenas was hired as a worker at the school in 2015, about a year and a half after Father Corces fired a “significant part” of the long-term maintenance staff.
The shots came around Christmas 2014 and came as a surprise to many in the community.
There is little information about maintenance staff on the school website.
On the “Employee Pictures 2016” page, four of the maintenance workers are the only people without pictures. Cardenas’s name isn’t even on the side.
Maintenance staff seems to have played a rather reluctant role in the life of the school since Father Corces fired most of them in 2014.
The new crew, including Cardenas, has never appeared in the St. Rose yearbook, for example. This is one of the few moments when a parent can physically see all of the people working around their children.
However, a review of the St. Rose yearbooks from 2008 shows that maintenance staff has always been included in the employee pictures section with the exception of 2015 and 2016.
Armesto, the spokeswoman for Christifidelis, claimed she saw a pre-released version of the 2016 yearbook and contained the names of the maintenance workers without pictures. However, the final published version of the book does not include the names or pictures of the workers.
A group of parents at the school had hoped to hold a rosary hour before 9:00 am Mass on May 22nd to pray for the “welfare of the community.” It was also the 28th anniversary of Father Corces’ ordination.
However, they were not allowed to pray after a priest told them to end any type of demonstration with the archbishop.
When Archdiocese spokeswoman Mary Ross Agosta reached for comment on the phone, she started laughing and said to a reporter from RISE NEWS, “Oh, you again”.
When asked about the content of the Christifidelis Report, Ross Agosta refused to speak about it.
Ross Agosta then said that she had nothing to say and hung up.
RISE NEWS couldn’t speak to Father Corces or Alberto Cardenas.
UPDATE # 1- The Broward Palm Beach New Times reports that the Archdiocese of St John has “initiated” an “investigation in accordance with canon law” into allegations made against Father Corces.
UPDATE # 2- St. Rose school officials sent a letter to the parents’ home Tuesday afternoon announcing that some “lay workers” – presumably some of the maintenance staff – had been taken on administrative leave by Archbishop Wenski pending an ongoing investigation into the allegations.
Here is the text of the full letter sent home to the parents:
“Last week, Archbishop Thomas Wenski was accused of misconduct in the parish of St. Rose of Lima without minors. The archbishop takes the allegations seriously. In accordance with canon law and the policies of the archdiocese, the archbishop immediately opened an ongoing investigation. Father Corces is currently attending a pre-planned retreat. The lay people concerned were put on administrative leave pending the conclusion of the investigation. “
Read the full report.
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