In Attempt To Discredit Fired Father Jim St. George Details Of Past Criminal Convictions Unearthed

The Philadelphia Daily News reports that in 1992, Father Jim St. George, the openly gay independent Catholic priest recently fired from a part-time teaching position at Chestnut Hill College, was operating a fifth-generation family funeral home in Erie, Pennsylvania and pleaded no contest to three federal felony counts of mail fraud on charges he had misused money from prepaid funeral accounts. St. George reportedly served a 10-month sentence in the federal prison in Morgantown, West Virginia, and said that he also fulfilled a court order to pay more than $90,000 in restitution fees. In 1997, he told a funeral-industry trade publication, Death Care Business Advisor: "I paid for my mistake both financially and with a portion of my life. I'm not proud of what happened, but I'm also not ashamed of it anymore either. I would love to go back in history and correct it, but I can't." Following his prison time, St. George ran a discount-coffin company out of Erie for several years and later earned a master's of divinity degree from Washington, D.C.'s Howard University in 2003. In 2006, he was ordained a priest by the Old Catholic Apostolic Church of the Americas, which is not affiliated with the Vatican and which welcomes gay and female clergy. Last month, shortly after an attorney e-mailed Chestnut Hill College officials and Cardinal Justin Rigali calling St. George - who's been in a relationship with another man for 15 years - "a heretic," the school terminated its teaching contract with him. George Bochetto, the attorney for St. George said that someone is trying to smear his client by circulating information about a 19-year-old felony conviction."It's sad that certain people out there would try to dredge up things from 20 years ago, when someone was a youngster and in a difficult family situation, to try to destroy a person who for the last 20 years has been but a godsend to his parishioners, to those around him and to his students."