The Catholic church
on Friday said it would pay nearly a million dollars to a man allegedly
sexually abused at age 16 by a priest, who then tried to cover it up
and hire a hit man to kill the victim.
Archbishop Garcia-Siller said that the
Archdiocese of San Antonio would pay the man, who is now 19, $946,000 to
settle his lawsuit against the church.
"This
is a very sad thing and very painful for me, for the church, for the
family," said Garcia-Siller, who was just appointed San Antonio
Archbishop in November.
Former
priest John Fiala is charged with plying the unidentified boy in his
parish in rural southwest Texas with booze and giving him a car in an
attempt to 'groom' the boy for sexual abuse in 2007 and 2008, according
to court documents.
He allegedly
sexually abused the boy on several occasions on church property,
frequently threatening to kill the youngster if he told anybody about
the abuse, and once pointing a gun at the teen, the documents say.
Fiala
was first arrested on a charge of sexual assault of a child in Kansas
last September, but was released on bond.
He was arrested again in
November on charges that he offered an undercover Texas Ranger $5,000 to
kill the teenager.
He has not yet been tried on the criminal charges.
Father
Martin Leopold, who investigated the case after local officials
reported concerns about Fiala, said that after his ordination into the
priesthood in Nebraska, Fiala moved to Texas with a clean
recommendation.
This was even though a teenager in the Archdiocese of
Omaha, Nebraska had complained of Fiala making a sexual advance in 2002,
three years before he moved to Texas.
Fiala
served as a priest at Society of our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity
church in the small town of Rocksprings, which is west of San Antonio
not far from the Mexican border.
Neighbors said Fiala organized a youth
baseball league, and reached out to troubled teens including the boy he
allegedly abused.
SIC: Reuters/INT'L