PORTLAND, Ore. — Single and unemployed, Stephanie Collopy asked a Portland judge this month to order her son's father to increase her child support and to add their chronically ill boy to his health insurance plan.
Sitting on the witness stand in a white button-down shirt, gray slacks and blue blazer with a small gold cross on the lapel, Arturo Uribe -- the 12-year-old boy's father -- had an unusual defense: He is a Roman Catholic priest.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Monday July 25, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 2 inches; 78 words Type of Material: Correction
Priest who fathered boy -- An article in Sunday's Section A about a Whittier priest who fathered a child in Oregon in 1993 said that the former archbishop of Portland, William Joseph Levada, is now a cardinal in the Vatican. Levada has not been made a cardinal. He was appointed in May by Pope Benedict XVI as prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and will remain archbishop of San Francisco until Aug. 17.
Uribe, who was a seminarian when he fathered the boy during a consensual affair with Collopy, had taken a vow of poverty and therefore had no money to support his son, he told the court. Now pastor of the 4,000-family St. Mary of the Assumption Roman Catholic Church in Whittier, Uribe had never seen the boy, who was born in 1993.
And as for health insurance, Uribe said his plan -- tailored for priests, nuns and brothers -- didn't provide for children.
Uribe's legal argument worked.
Multnomah County Judge Keith Meisenheimer ruled that Uribe only had to continue his $323-a-month child support, paid by his religious order, the Redemptorists. And while the jurist instructed Uribe, 47, to formally ask his health plan carrier if an exception could be made for his son, the priest wasn't ordered to provide insurance.
Like other women whose children were fathered by Catholic priests, Collopy, 38, could get only limited help from the legal system, which decides child support based on a parent's income. Although dioceses and orders often have considerable wealth, most Catholic priests -- especially those in religious orders -- make little or no money. Their living expenses are paid for by the church.
Canon, or church, law didn't help Collopy either. It is silent on financial support for children fathered by priests. Still, several Catholic scholars said religious orders, such as the Redemptorists, should be guided by higher standards when it comes to providing for children. The Redemptorists are an order of missionaries, priests and brothers whose "special mission," according to its website, is "preaching the word of God to the poor."
Father John J. Coughlin, a professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School and canon law expert, said it was "customary" for religious orders to provide financial support for the children of its members.
