FT. LAUDERDALE Parents of students who attend a Fort Lauderdale Catholic high school are up in arms that a former priest, who retired from his job at the school as a guidance counselor amid questions about his alleged involvement in past sex-abuse incidents, has been hired back at the school.
A Roman Catholic priest from the Diocese of Belleville has been "dismissed from the clerical state," or defrocked, by Pope Benedict XVI, Bishop Edward Braxton announced Monday.The priest, the Rev. Robert Vonnahmen, is the first to be forced out of the priesthood by the Vatican in the diocese's 120-year history.Vonnahmen was removed from his position as pastor of St. Joseph Church in Elizabethtown, Ill., in 1993 after he was accused of sexually abusing minors in the 1980s. A diocesan review board found him unfit for ministry.
Friday, April 27, 2007ST. ALBANS — A priest whose sex case was to go to trial next month has requested a change-of-plea hearing. The Rev. Stephen J. Nichols, 47, pleaded not guilty last September to allegations that he fondled a naked 18-year-old. He is charged with lewd and lascivious conduct, the only current Vermont priest facing a felony charge. 
A 77-year-old Carmelite priest from Joliet pleaded guilty Thursday to sexually molesting two brothers in the 1990s when they were young teenagers under his spiritual guidance.In a deal with Will County prosecutors, Rev. Louis Rogge is expected to spend 30 days in jail and serve 4 years of probation. The priest, who has a prior child-abuse conviction and was removed from the ministry in 2002, must register as a sex offender. ["Removed" from ministry, but not defrocked, still under the protection and support of the Catholic church. Rogge was a theology instructor at Loyola University Chicago. In 1984, he became an administrator at the Carmelite Institute in Rome, where he served until 1992.]
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