Priest

A Catholic priest who last year told Sunday school children that Santa Claus was dead has been reassigned, officials of a Roman Catholic diocese said. They said Monday they did not know where he is now. Parents said young children left in tears after Father Romano Ferraro told a group in December, 1986, that St. Nicholas, the 4th-Century bishop, was dead and so was Santa Claus.

A Roman Catholic priest told parishioners they should not take Holy Communion if they voted for Barack Obama because the Democrat supports abortion, and supporting him "constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil." The Rev. Jay Scott Newman said in a letter distributed Sunday at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville that they were putting their souls at risk.

A church member allegedly fired a gun at a priest during Mass, but the bullet bounced off the clergyman's shoe and injured no one. Several people in attendance at St. Jude's Church in Eddystone tackled the suspect. Police said Joseph George Barder, 31, was charged with attempted murder. Father Craig Gonzales said Barder was a member of the church and attended Mass sporadically.

For the past four years the parishioners of St. Philip's Church in Upper Stratton, a suburb of Swindon, a railway town 80 miles west of London, have been ministered to by the Rev. Philip Stone. On Sunday, their services will be conducted by the Rev. Carol Stone. At the age of 46, their vicar has had a sex-change operation--or "gender re-assignment," as described in the church's news release--and is at last the woman she always wanted to be.

An attorney for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles on Thursday denied a claim that he attended a 1986 meeting at which a priest told Cardinal Roger M. Mahony that he had sexually abused minors. The attorney, John P. McNicholas, said in a letter faxed to The Times that he has never met the former priest, Michael Stephen Baker, and never been in the same room with him.

A Roman Catholic priest convicted of molesting a 13-year-old girl more than 20 years ago was sentenced Friday to seven years in prison. Inactive priest Don Kimball also must register as a sex offender for molesting the girl. At the same trial, he was found not guilty of raping a 14-year-old girl in Santa Rosa in 1977. Kimball was convicted in Sonoma County Superior Court of two counts of lewd conduct with the girl and sentenced to seven years on each count, to run concurrently.

As horrifying as it is to note, the timing of the HBO documentary "Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God," which premieres Monday night, could not have been better if divine intervention were involved. Last week, the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles released documents chronicling how Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and other church officials managed to thwart investigations into the sexual abuse of hundreds of local children to protect the accused priests. To which this film by Oscar winner Alex Gibney essentially says, "If you think that's bad, watch this.

More than 1,600 mourners paid their last respects Tuesday to a priest who was stabbed to death last week in the rectory of his church. "We gather in sorrow and we gather in hope," Cardinal James Hickey, archbishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Washington, said at the funeral of Monsignor Thomas M. Wells. Wells, 56, was found in the bedroom of his home adjacent to Mother Seton Catholic Church in Germantown, Md., a Washington suburb. Police have said he was beaten and stabbed to death.

A black priest who wants to form a separate black Catholic church said he has been forbidden to celebrate Mass or other church rites and fired from his job as Washington archdiocesan evangelist. Father George Stallings said he received notice in letters from Cardinal James Hickey of the District of Columbia Archdiocese. Stallings has not received any communication directly from the Vatican, said an associate who asked not to be identified. Charging the church with ignoring the "spiritual and cultural needs" of black parishioners, Stallings last week announced plans to form a new black congregation.

A Roman Catholic priest who worked as a chaplain at a women's federal prison pleaded guilty in Fort Worth to sexual abuse for having sex with two inmates. Vincent Inametti, 48, faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $500,000 fine for two counts of sexual abuse of a ward. He remains free on bond. Authorities received a complaint this year that he was having sex with an inmate at Federal Medical Center Carswell.