Newly ordained Sheridan Wyoming priest, Fr Robert Spaulding, has started his new ministry just two years after being convicted of a drunk driving accident that killed two fellow seminarians. "I can see easily how [people] could say, 'Wait a minute. This guy has done these things, how can he help us make moral decisions in our lives?'" Spaulding, 31, a former music ministry assistant at St Mary Parish in Buffalo Grove, told the Daily Herald.
But Fr Spaulding says his mistake, and the forgiveness and support shown to him as he came to grips with it, will make him a more compassionate priest.
Spaulding was drunk when he crashed a car into a tree and killed two men while a seminarian at University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein in 2005. The men who died, Jared Cheek, 23, and Matthew Molnar, 28, were fellow seminarians.
Authorities said he had a 0.13 percent blood-alcohol level and was driving 43 to 70 mph on a seminary campus road in Mundelein, which has a 25 mph limit, when he lost control and hit the tree.
He received a sentence of 30 months probation and community service after pleading guilty to two counts of reckless homicide and aggravated driving under the influence of alcohol in May 2006, about eight months after the crash.
He avoided prison largely because of the forgiveness shown by the victims' families.
"I don't think it's an overstatement to say that everything that has happened to me after the crash is a pure gift," said Fr Spaulding, whose ordination Monday in Laramie, Wyo., was attended by about 620 guests.
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