The retired Catholic priest who's become a focal point in the Boston Archdiocese's sexual abuse scandal gave no indication that he had been a clergyman when he applied to be a volunteer with the San Diego Police Department.
The Rev. Paul R. Shanley listed his occupation as "retired" and his former position as "hotel director" on a November 1999 document that was released yesterday by the police.
Shanley was dismissed April 3 as a volunteer with the Retired Senior Volunteer Patrol after police learned of the child-molestation accusations involving the 71-year-old priest. A spokesman said at the time that he did not think police here knew he had been a priest.
The paperwork released yesterday, which included part of his application, supports the picture of a man who had shed his past life by the time he retired to San Diego. The manager of the Hillcrest apartment where Shanley had lived with another man for about five years also said she had no idea he had been in the clergy.
Shanley listed his skills as computer knowledge and counseling in drug and alcohol abuse, suicide and mental health. He also said he was "impressed by the efficiency and professionalism of SDPD."
There was no mention of the years he spent in parish work or as a street priest to youth on the East Coast, and no mention of assisting at a church in San Bernardino's diocese in the early 1990s.
His reference to being a hotel director may have come from a stint in 1995 when he was acting director of a Catholic guest house for students and clergy members in New York City.
Police have said that they received no complaints about Shanley's work in the RSVP unit, whose duties range from assisting with traffic control to helping gather evidence at crime scenes. According to one daily journal from last year, Shanley spent his volunteer tour of duty checking on elderly people, banks and homes where the occupants were on vacation.
The accusations against Shanley come as revelations of sexual abuse by priests, many of them involving minors, have spread across the country -- capturing headlines and the attention of Pope John Paul II. The pope has summoned the eight U.S. cardinals in charge of archdioceses to the Vatican next week to address the issue.
Boston church documents made public earlier this month show that several boys accused Shanley of sexually molesting them over his 30 years as a priest -- yet the archdiocese continued to transfer him to other assignments.
Shanley hasn't been seen at his apartment for several weeks, and he has not responded to repeated requests for interviews.
According to The Boston Herald, Shanley may have gone to Thailand, joined by a longtime friend and fellow Boston-area priest, John J. White. White and Shanley reportedly owned a gay-oriented resort together in Palm Springs in the 1990s.
