A California priest was convicted Monday of sexually assaulting a seminarian. After his conviction, Fr. Juan Garcia Castillo will be listed on California’s sex offender registry, and could face up to six months of incarceration.
During a week-long trial, the San Diego seminarian assaulted by Castillo testified that the priest approached him Feb. 4 in a restaurant bathroom and groped his genitals twice.
The assault followed a night in which Castillo took two seminarians to a bar and restaurant after an event at St. Patrick’s Parish in Carlsbad, where the priest served as parochial vicar. The seminarian said they had several drinks, and that Castillo encouraged him to drink to excess.
The seminarian testified that he went to the bathroom sick after midnight, and that Castillo approach him from behind and groped him.
In September, a spokesman for the Diocese of San Diego told CNA that the diocese had not publicly commented on the allegations because “we need to see what happens to the criminal case because the issue of consent is so important and if it’s not clear, we wait for that to get made clear.”
A jury decided Dec. 17 that Castillo’s contact constituted misdemeanor sexual battery. He is expected to be sentenced within a month.
Castillo, who is also known as Juan Gabriel Castillo, is a member of the Congregation of Jesus and Mary, a religious community of priests also known as the Eudists. The priest, 35, was born in Honduras, and in 2011 was ordained a priest at St. Patrick’s Parish by Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa.
In a statement released Monday afternoon, Bishop Robert W. McElroy of San Diego said that “upon reviewing the facts regarding the allegation of sexual assault against Father Castillo, the diocese of San Diego removed him from ministry in the diocese immediately and permanently.”
Full story at Catholic News Agency.
Is this part of Bp. McElroy’s See?
This event in San Diego is only the beginning. Take a look at this article where it is reported that 45 states are looking into criminal conduct by Church personnel — lay, religious and clerical:
https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/45-states-consider-criminal-probe-into-catholic-church
My!!! My!!! A Gay Priest from Hondorus…
I was told that it was all Gossip…
Bishop McElroy took swift action in suspending the Priest…
Wonder what the Eudists will do to the Criminaly Convicted Sex Offender?
Take a look at the promotion of “same-sex attraction” under the guise of political correctness under the supposed “watchful eye” of Bishop McElroy:
https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/nuns-push-lesbianism-at-all-girls-school
Note well, that the school’s leadership has been entrusted to two senior members of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet-Los Angeles Province. It was religious sisters from the same community and province of that order who are accused of stealing from a Catholic school in Torrance California.
Get your heads out of the sand everyone! The Church, founded by Jesus Himself, is on a knife edge of falling into apostasy!
No The Church is Jesus Christ these are Judas do not judge Jesus who is cleaning up “My Church “ by these Judas’ who are a product of over 90 years of Communist homosexual atheist and Masonic penetration begin by Joseph Stalin in 1927. Read up on Bella Dodd a US communist party member who personally recruited over a thousand rogue seminarians in the USA herself
Read Matt: 16: “Upon this Rock I will build MY Church.”
He could face up to 6 months yet it is a life sentence for the ones the “priest” abused. I know because a priest started abusing my little brother at 8 years of age and it went on for several years. To make a long and sad story short, my brother died of AIDS due to drug use by needles to try and kill the painful memories, not counting the times he tried to kill himself. The priest wasn’t caught until 2002. I kept up with him trying to make sure he was no longer serving anywhere and this year I saw that he died. May God have mercy on his soul and on me for being relieved about it. Now he knows the full impact he had on my brother and the other boys he molested.
Fr. Juan Garcia Castillo did not have access to church-members’ tithes to use as pay-off money.
In contrast, Bishop Robert Brom had direct access to $198 million to pay off accusers.
Is one better than the other?
And why did Bishop Robert McElroy install Aaron Bianco as administrator of Saint John the Evangelist Church in San Diego? Why, when Aaron Bianco is a homosexual who is openly “married” to his homosexual “partner’ whose last name is Bianco? And now the story about on churchmilitant.com about Our Lady of Peace Academy (an all-girls high school) in San Diego pushing the LGBTQ agenda. What is going on in the diocese of San Diego?!!! Bishop McElroy needs to be removed asap! Stop tithing to heretical bishps!!!
Bishop McElroy had this wish list in 2015 published in the UT and Cal Catholic What is happening is the fulfillment of his wishes from his power as bishop. Archbishop Vigano claims that he was told by his superiors in the Vatican to give San Diego to Bishop McElroy who is fulfilling the wishes of some in power there. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/lifestyle/sdut-bishop-has-long-christmas-wish-list-for-diocese-2015dec23-story.html
I wonder, too, if Bishop Mc Elroy is aware that under Shariah Law (Muslim Law) a man can have up to four wives and as many concubines as he wants. Also, a Muslim man can marry a woman for a night, use her, and divorce her the next morning. Ain’t that sweet????? That is not to say that all Muslim men do that, but it is lawful for them to do it under Shariah. Parts of England are under Shariah now. The ones who end up concubines and one night stands are usually non Islamic women. When diversity is just a code word for moral relativism, count me out.
“Castillo took two seminarians to a bar and restaurant after an event at St. Patrick’s Parish in Carlsbad.”
So, when we tithe, our money is being used by priests to buy drinks at bars?
…“we need to see what happens to the criminal case because the issue of consent is so important and if it’s not clear, we wait for that to get made clear.”
Oh, so if it’s consensual it’s okay?
Nope. It’s still immoral and in that case a priest should be laicized and a seminarian kicked out.
I guess that’s why the perpetrator gets them drunk, so they can appear to give consent. I bet there’s a “how to” book somewhere.
“…we need to see what happens to the criminal case because the issue of consent is so important and if it’s not clear, we wait for that to get made clear.”
This lawerly, worldly attitude is exactly the problem. What if there WAS consent?! What then?!! I guess it’d be OK in that case, ’cause, well, he only plays the pervert with the willing!!
Yeah, with apologies to good priests, the priesthood is in a LOT of trouble under an episcopate heavily populated by effetes and unbelieving bureaucrats.
Finally, a place to vent my spleen! I have been incandescent with anger since Bishop McElroy’s arrival in San Diego on the social justice train. He has the nerve to call devout Catholics “corrosive and repugnant” for their views on the LGBT issue. Also, at one of his “reaching out” meetings, he stated that any clergy sexual abuse is merely an abuse of power – rather than adding that it’s more importantly the monstrous violation of one’s physical person.