A Plea for Married Priests’ Solidarity
Easter Sunday 2007
William J. Manseau
This is intended to be a short introduction of a fellow married priest with whom I have been associated closely since 1973. Sean Walsh and I met at the Mount Manresa Jesuit Retreat House on Long Island on the occasion of the fifth national meeting of an association of Catholic priests, the Society of Priests for Free Ministry. Most of us were married or would soon be and our organization would soon have a new name, the Fellowship of Christian Ministries, now the Federation of Christian Ministries. We felt a call from God to liberate the priesthood from ancient bondages and bring it and the Church it served into greater relevance in the modern world and the lives of ordinary people. Sean Walsh and his wife Emma have never looked back but have kept their hands on the plow opening up new furrows for the Kingdom of God and a married priesthood.
 
They have spent their lives encouraging other married priest families to be faithful to the tasks of the ministry to which they were ordained in the various countries in Latin America, Africa and Europe in which Sean worked first with the Foster Parents Plan and then with the United Nation’s World Food Program. Retired from his United Nations employment, Sean is now an Eastern Catholic Church missionary bishop in Peru. In that capacity he is turning to us his brothers and sisters in CORPUS and FCM to seek help for other married priests who are fighting for their lives against a Peruvian Roman Catholic bishop who is seeking to imprison them and destroy their families.
 
I ask that you read his plea for his brothers with care. We must take a stand somewhere in the Church if the dream of a married priesthood to which we have given our lives and the health of the Church which it promises will become reality. I suggest that may just be the Supreme Court of Peru.
 
 
Dear Friend:
 
I am writing to you as a married priest colleague, a Society of Priests for a Free Ministry/Federation of Christian Ministries member since 1973, and a former FCM Regional VP for the Middle Atlantic States. During much of the time after that, I served overseas first as a Country Director of Foster Parents Plan, and then in various positions with the U.N. World Food Program. I am a former Augustinian priest and, since 1978, have been a bi-ritual priest of the Eastern Catholic Church (founded by St. Thomas in India, 52 A.D.). After retiring from the U.N., Emma and I decided to return to Peru as missionaries, and I have been consecrated as Bishop of the Missionary Diocese of Peru of our Church. We are starting from scratch here.

I became friends with some Peruvian former Roman Catholic priests and seminarians who are now priests and bishops of another church, the Apostolic Catholic Church, Our Lady of Guadalupe. Their Archbishop is Kenneth Maley, from Missouri. Their mother church is the Old Catholic Church.  They are rather dynamic and, since they are so close to Roman Catholic traditions, some of them have been repeatedly denounced and taken to civil and criminal courts in Chiclayo, Peru, some 800 km. north of Lima. One Judge-Prosecutor recommended jail sentences of two years for them, as well as a series of fines they could never pay. They were poor to start with, but have lost income-generating potential because they have been vilified in the local and national press. Their families are suffering some real hardship, emotional duress and even physical attacks on two occasions. The one denouncing them is Chiclayo’s Roman Catholic Bishop Jesús Moliné-Labarta, a Spanish-born leader of the ultra-conservative Opus Dei organization.

The Judge-Prosecutor’s recommendation was overturned by an appeals court in Chiclayo last December. This left Bishop Moliné with one more option—go to Perú’s Supreme Court to have the Appeals Court decision overturned. So, since time and money are no object for him, he is doing so now. These Guadalupe priests and bishops were being defended in Chiclayo by a friendly lawyer, mostly on a pro-bono basis. But he is not authorized to plead cases before the Supreme Court here in Lima. I have helped them contact some highly qualified and ethical lawyers here in Lima, who are authorized to plead cases before the Supreme Court. However, they will not do this for free, although they will give the Guadalupe clergy significantly reduced rates.

Right now, their choices are to either have their case decided in the Supreme Court, without them having legal representation—which would very possibly result in a reversal to the jail sentences and fines—or have legal representation and public relations and press support. The problem is, these things cost money, and neither they nor I have very much money for their legal defense.

These things being so, I am writing to you, as your married priest colleague, to ask you to favorably consider making a donation of any amount for their legal defense. I have arranged for their press support. We need to have early access to a total of US $6,000 for their legal defense. We are hoping that you, as a married priest colleague, might wish to take a lead role in helping us to raise these funds. If the Lord puts it on your heart to help these deserving fellow servants of the Lord, your donation can be sent by mail to their Archbishop in Missouri.


Archbishop Kenneth Maley,
Apostolic Catholic Church, Our Lady of Guadalupe,
112 South Main
Gallatin, MO 64640