'Horrible and shameful' Portlaoise Parish Priest reacts to Cemetery Mass violence

Portlaoise Parish Priest has condemned violence that marred the Laois county town’s annual Cemetery Mass which was attended by thousands of local people.

Msgr John Byrne also called for leadership from within the Travelling community to bring an end to such violence that in the Laois case, involved a running brawl in which Portlaoise gardaí have confirmed knives were used, causing injuries on Sunday afternoon, May 31.

While he said there will be a need for reflection and consultation with the gardaí and Laois County Council in the wake of what happened, he said he would hate to see the violence causing the cancellation of the annual Mass in future years because of its importance to many in the community.

Speaking hours after the incident, Msgr Byrne said that while what happened only lasted a few minutes, he described the violence as “horrible and shameful”.

He confirmed that he attempted to quell the violence from the altar once he became aware of the fracas during the Mass attended by young and old. 

He said he told those in attendance that everyone is welcome to honour their departed in peace and goodwill. 

However, he said he appealed to those fighting that their actions were “absolutely disgraceful and out of order”.

He said their actions were a “dishonour to all the faithful departed”. 

Pleading with them to stop, he said he told “those who had come with violence in mind were not welcome”.

Msgr Byrne commended Laois gardaí for getting the situation under control so quickly.

He said he understood that violence involving Travellers had become a pattern at Cemetery Masses. 

He believed that leadership is needed in the Travelling Community to acknowledge what happens to prevent further flare-ups in Laois or elsewhere.

“I am always disappointed that they don’t come out and acknowledge that there is a real problem… this is indefensible,” he said.

Msgr Byrne said he knows many Travellers who are “sterling people” but that what happened in Portlaoise “must be acknowledged” by their community.

He also commented on what is one of the biggest public religious gatherings in Laois annually.

“I would absolutely hate to think that 5,000 people who gather in good faith to honour their own departed could not do so because of 30 or 40 individuals. We have to look at other solutions first,” he said.

While he acknowledged there would have to be “reflection” that would involve the relevant authorities, he said he would “hate to have to abandon something that is appreciated by so many”.

Portlaoise Gardaí said a policing plan was in place as gardaí had intelligence that an incident was possible. 

There was a large presence of local uniformed gardaí on the scene, backed by the Garda Public Order Unit. 

They confirmed that several people were injured and that knives were used in the row. Some of those involved were also arrested.

Gardaí appealed to anyone who was at the Mass and who may have video footage of the violence to provide it to Portlaoise Garda Station to help with what is an ongoing investigation.

The Irish priest behind the scenes of the Vatican’s work on artificial intelligence

The Vatican’s response to artificial intelligence (AI) began a decade ago in the private library of a religious order in central Rome, where a group of top Silicon Valley executives gathered with senior Catholic officials below shelves lined with antique books spanning centuries of Christian thought.

The issues raised culminated this week with the publication of a landmark encyclical by Pope Leo XIV that summoned the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics to work towards the ethical governance of a technology with a disruptive potential akin to the industrial revolution.

The meeting grew out of an informal encounter at a Bay Area conference in 2016, when a group of Silicon Valley executives including the LinkedIn co-founder and early Open AI investor Reid Hoffman approached a French priest, Éric Salobir, and asked how they could contact the Vatican.

“They wanted to alert us to something that was coming,” remembers Bishop Paul Tighe, an Irish senior Vatican official who was present at that first gathering in Rome.

“We had some very senior people, and it became very clear that this was genuinely taking off, and they were surprised at the rate of development,” Tighe remembers.

“That’s the thing that struck me at the time – the pace at which it was developing, and also the range of areas where it would be relevant ... You realise that this wasn’t just going to have an impact in the narrow area of AI, but was going to be transformative.”

The tech executives were interested in involving faith traditions in general, not the Catholic Church exclusively. But conveniently, Catholicism had a “corporate headquarters” that they could approach.

That meeting in the Dominican library was the first of what would come to be known as the Minerva Dialogues, annual closed-door meetings between the Vatican and Silicon Valley named after the adjoining church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, built in the 13th century on the ruins of a Roman temple.

It’s a site that is heavy with history of the church’s relationship with science and technological development. Somewhere within the complex in 1633, church inquisitors forced the father of modern astronomy, Galileo Galilei, to renounce his belief that the sun rather than the Earth was at the centre of the universe, following his trial for heresy.

Those attending the Minerva Dialogues quickly came to see AI as a technological development that offered huge promise to humanity, but also something that carried profound risks.

“I remember being at a session where they were showing the potential benefits of AI in terms of diagnostics, in terms of individualised treatment plans,” Tighe says.

“But then it struck me at the time: yes, but if we don’t fix the equality of our healthcare systems, this is going to be great for some, and really just make more pronounced the inequalities,” he continues.

“We gradually came to the realisation that AI has this extraordinary ability to magnify both what is best about humanity, and also our far less good tendencies.”

Held each year since that first meeting in 2016, the discussions brought together figures such as former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt and chief technology officer at Microsoft Kevin Scott with senior Vatican officials, Catholic theologians and philosophers.

Tighe – mostly due to his native English, he says – ended up becoming a key interlocutor and co-ordinator between the Vatican and Silicon Valley in the process.

It was a strange, unexpected kind of return for the Meath-born prelate, who grew up partly in Sligo, where his father worked for IDA Ireland at a time when the agency began looking towards Silicon Valley as a potential source of investment into Ireland.

“It was funny, some of the names, even the name of Silicon Valley itself and some of the companies, I’ve been familiar with from home,” he recalls.

Tighe is a former teacher who worked in communications under then archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin. He was called to the Vatican in 2007 at a time when the Holy See was digitalising its public outreach and was involved in setting up the papal Twitter account.

Since 2022, he has been the secretary – second in command – of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, the Vatican equivalent of a ministry.

Over the years, his incongruous presence has been noted by media reporting from tech conferences such as the Web Summit and South by Southwest.

His work involved frequent travel between the Vatican and Silicon Valley, where a parallel process to the Minerva Dialogues was taking place at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, part of a Jesuit university in Santa Clara, California, and home to a research group on the ethics of AI.

“I met Fr Brendan McGuire, who was a parish priest in that area, an Irish priest who had worked in technology,” recalls Tighe. McGuire “had many parishioners who were working in the Silicon Valley companies, who were anxious to harmonise their work and their faith,” he remembers.

The issue soon came to the attention of the man at the top.

“Pope Francis, I remember he called me in for a meeting about 2018,” Tighe says. “He said he’d had a visit from a number of business people who had told him that the church needed to begin to have a more kind of deliberate reflection on AI. He wasn’t a technologist, you know, but he said, ‘Look, try and develop these contacts and keep in touch’. And then, gradually, he began to speak about it.”

The turning point came with the launch of the AI text generator ChatGPT in 2022, when the topic of artificial intelligence became a primary focus of the world’s attention.

“I greatly value this ongoing dialogue,” Pope Francis told participants of the Minerva Dialogues in a meeting in 2023, expressing hopes for “a serious and inclusive global discussion on the responsible use of these technologies”.

In an address to a G7 meeting in Italy a year later, the pope described AI as having the potential to make great advances for humanity but also to worsen injustice, describing the algorithms behind the systems as “neither objective nor neutral”.

A few months later, Tighe’s Dicastery for Culture and Education published a joint document with the Vatican’s doctrinal department, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Antiqua et Nova laid out, in 117 clauses, the culmination of the Vatican’s reflection on AI, its implications, and the ethical concerns it posed in various areas: employment, healthcare, education, misinformation, privacy, surveillance, the environment and warfare.

It stressed that there was no equivalence between human intelligence and its “imitation”, artificial intelligence. “No AI application can genuinely experience empathy,” it read. “AI’s advanced features give it sophisticated abilities to perform tasks, but not the ability to think.”

Within the first hours of the election of the new pope just over a year ago, it was already evident to close observers that artificial intelligence would be a key concern to his papacy. The clue was his choice of name: Leo.

The last pope named Leo was a giant in the modern history of the Catholic Church, remembered for shepherding it through a time of epochal change and for authoring what would come to be known as the church’s “social doctrine”.

The crucial text was Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum novarum, which addressed the plight of the class of urban poor created by the industrial revolution.

It defended the right of workers to form trade unions, but also spoke in support of private property, a middle way between unfettered capitalism and then-rising radical socialism that became influential far beyond Catholicism.

The current pope, Leo, symbolically signed his first encyclical on the 135th anniversary of Rerum novarum, and began it by saying he wished to “add my own voice” to the tradition it began.

Its launch this week was highly unusual, featuring addresses by a panel of speakers including the co-founder of AI company Anthropic, Christopher Olah. It was a first for the pope himself to make an address, lending the work additional prominence.

The encyclical describes AI as a development that is still evolving – “any statement regarding AI risks becoming quickly outdated”, it notes – but that clearly marks an “epochal change”.

It flags the risk of the “social calamity” of mass unemployment, worsened economic inequality if the technologies are kept in the hands of the few, the potential for discrimination in algorithms, and AI weaponry that could lower “the moral threshold of conflict”.

But the encyclical urges readers not to become fatalistically resigned, but to realise their own potential. “No one is without responsibility. We all have our own areas for action,” it reads.

A primary aim appears to be to boost momentum for some kind of binding international agreement – probably through the United Nations, which is name-checked in the document – and legislation to ensure the ethical governance of AI and to ensure that the technology is harnessed for the good of humanity.

The serious challenges in the way of such an agreement are also flagged in the document, which has a section called “the crisis of multilateralism” and states that the era of postwar co-operation has given way to “a disorderly and conflict-ridden multipolarism with a prevailing sense of mistrust”.

For Tighe, the church can point the way, but others have to walk the path.

“The church can say, ‘Look, this is what humanity should be aspiring to’. We can’t on our own bring that about,” says Tighe. “It is an encouragement for people who are working for that to feel empowered.”

Arlington catholic priest on leave after allegation of sexual misconduct with minors

A priest serving as rector at the Cathedral of Saint Thomas More in Virginia has been placed on administrative leave while an allegation of sexual misconduct with minors is investigated.

The Catholic Diocese of Arlington identified the priest as The Very Reverend Patrick L. Posey.

According to the diocese, the alleged incidents happened between 1992 and 1993 outside the Diocese of Arlington.

The diocese said Posey denies the accusation and that no determination has been made regarding the allegation.

Officials said the allegation was promptly reported to law enforcement in accordance with diocesan policy.

“The diocese is fully cooperating with law enforcement and will continue to do so,” officials said in a statement.

Posey’s current assignment was rector at the Cathedral of Saint Thomas More in Arlington.

The Reverend Nicholas Barnes has been appointed as parochial administrator at the cathedral, the diocese said.

Anyone with information specifically related to the allegation should contact law enforcement.

Officials also encouraged anyone who knows of misconduct or abuse involving any cleric or diocesan employee to notify civil authorities and contact the diocesan Victim Assistance Coordinator at 703-841-2530.

Priest on trial for sexual assault in Texas had child with Louisiana congregant, prosecutors say

Texas prosecutors on Thursday established that a Roman Catholic priest being tried there on charges that he illegally exploited his status as a cleric to pursue sex with three spiritually vulnerable congregants had a child with a separate congregant in approximately 2023 – while working outside New Orleans.

Meanwhile, the whereabouts of one of those three women was unknown on Thursday ahead of her expected appearance on the witness stand, forcing prosecutors to dismiss charges in the case that were associated with her.

That left Anthony Odiong, 57, faced with one charge of sexual assault in the first degree and two such counts in the second degree involving two women. He could receive life imprisonment if convicted of first-degree sexual assault.

Those explosive developments unfolded on the third day of Odiong’s trial at a state courthouse in Waco, Texas, where he worked before being transferred to Luling, Louisiana.

While building the case being tried against Odiong, then Waco police department employee Melissa Beseda traveled to the metro New Orleans area to obtain a DNA sample from a girl whose mother investigators had probable cause to believe had been in a sexual relationship with Odiong – while he provided spiritual direction to her in his role as a clergyman in Luling.

The woman, assigned the pseudonym Presley Jones, also provided a DNA sample – and one was obtained from Odiong, 57. 

Under direct examination from the McLennan county first assistant district attorney Ryan Calvert, Beseda testified that the testing of those samples determined that Odiong was the father of Jones’s daughter, who as of Thursday was about three years old.

Odiong is not charged in connection with a crime against Jones, whose existence had already been reported in the media – but who was revealed for the first time on Thursday to have met the priest while he ministered in New Orleans in recent years.

Nonetheless, authorities maintain that the daughter of Jones and Odiong is living, breathing proof of his pattern of pursuing sex with female parishioners whom he met through his clerical work, which in Texas is considered felony assault.

Monitors in the courtroom of Judge Thomas West showed a picture of Odiong holding his daughter next to her mother as Calvert questioned Beseda. 

Odiong was in a white priestly vestment that matched the color of the outfits worn by the mother and infant daughter. 

All three stood inside a church in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie – a relatively short drive from Luling – where records reviewed by the Guardian show the girl was baptized into the Catholic faith.

‘Felt like my life was over’

Also on Thursday, the woman who initiated the criminal case pending against Odiong publicly told her story for the first time. 

She told jurors how she was working at Waco’s Baylor University and going through a tumultuous divorce with the father of her seven children when she met Odiong on campus in about 2008.

Odiong was a priest at a Catholic church where Baylor employees and students attended, and he approached her while she was crying there over her circumstances one day, said the woman, who chose the pseudonym Mary Doe. 

He hugged her, invited her into his office to talk about what was distressing her and successfully suggested that she enter into what is known as spiritual direction with him after she detailed the end of her abusive marriage – and her primary custody of seven children under the age of 12 at the time, the woman said.

In the ensuing few weeks, she said, Odiong kissed her on her mouth and fondled her while dropping her off at her house and in various places around the church. She said they eventually had sexual intercourse, mostly at her home while her children were visiting their father – and continued to do so for years.

He assuaged her feelings of guilt that she communicated to him by telling her that the conduct was natural and that their connection was “spiritual”, she explained. As their physical relationship escalated, she testified, he purportedly joked, “Oh baby – if you don’t slow things down, we’re going to fuck.”

The woman recounted how their sexual relationship ended when her son, about 14 at the time, caught them in the act in her bedroom after a small house party in 2011. 

Echoing testimony from her son on Wednesday, she said her boy ran to the house of a Baylor administrator who lived nearby and reported what he saw.

It “felt like my life was over” at that point, the woman told Calvert, the first assistant district attorney. “It just kept getting worse every single time.”

She said that her son’s report quickly made its way to Catholic church officials supervising Odiong, and they arranged to speak to her son, she said. 

But after her ex-husband threatened her custody of their children and she was admonished that she might lose her job if she embarrassed Baylor, her son lied to church officials that he possibly misunderstood what he saw with Odiong and his mother.

Eventually, the woman said, she remarried. She said she read an investigative news story published by the Guardian in February 2024 about a group of women who accused Odiong of sexual coercion, unwanted touching and abusive financial control in his capacity as a priest, including in Texas.

The story ran after the archdiocese of New Orleans in December 2023 announced that – years after learning about the complaints – it had removed Odiong from his ministry at Luling’s St Anthony of Padua. 

He had been pastor there since 2015, after previously spending several years in and around Waco as well as studying overseas in Rome.

The Guardian piece noted that Texas considers such conduct by a religious clergyman in particular a felony sexual assault. 

She said she initially believed the Guardian article was about her and that her story had somehow been leaked. 

She then realized that was implausible, deduced the story was about other women and – at her husband’s encouragement – went to Waco police with a copy of the article to report Odiong.

The woman said she had no expectation that investigators would move on her complaint. Yet going to the police “felt like the tiniest bit of justice [I] would get even if no one except [my husband] knew about it”.

In reality, her report prompted an investigation that culminated in the identification of two more women Odiong was alleged to have assaulted by exploiting his clerical status. That resulted in criminal charges against him and the trial in Waco.

One of those two additional women – whom the Guardian had previously interviewed in its coverage of the defendant – testified on Wednesday afternoon that she had also submitted to spiritual direction from Odiong while in the throes of an abusive, ultimately failed marriage with a Baylor instructor. 

Having chosen the pseudonym Jane Doe, she said Odiong eventually kissed her against her will. 

And she said he compelled her to allow her then husband to engage in a form of sexual intercourse which she found uncomfortably painful as a last-ditch effort to save their marriage – and to then convey details about the encounter to Odiong.

Prosecutors now maintain that qualifies as assault by Odiong.

On cross-examination, Odiong’s attorney, Gerald Villarrial, asked her if she began spiritual direction with his client because of problems with another priest. She said no. 

Villarial also had her acknowledge that she kept in touch with Odiong for several years after their son walked in on them,before her reporting him to Waco police.

Whereabouts unknown

Beside Jane and Mary Doe, the third woman with whom Odiong was charged in connection was expected to testify. 

But before court started on Thursday, Calvert said the woman had fled her home with her cellphone, and it was not clear where she was.

Calvert said the woman was in an “extremely emotional and fragile” state as the trial had progressed and at one point nearly collapsed. 

He said prosecutors had decided against issuing what would effectively be a warrant for her arrest to secure her appearance in court, citing her “extremely tenuous” condition, and would continue the case without involving her charges.

Odiong has pleaded not guilty to all counts against him.

He has also argued that prosecutors charged him past a deadline for which they could legally do so. 

But prosecutors charged Odiong under a law which eliminates such statutes of limitation from consideration if there is probable cause to suspect an alleged sex offender had at least five victims.

Calvert on Thursday suggested that Waco police had identified at least four such victims other than the ones Odiong was charged with assaulting. 

Three were from the New Orleans area, Calvert said. A fourth had since resided in Pennsylvania and Ohio, the state where she met Odiong at Steubenville’s Franciscan University at some point.

The Guardian is not naming the women because the outlet generally does not identify people who are alleged to be victims of sexual assault.

The jury heard from one of those three women from the New Orleans area on Thursday. She described how he approached her in Luling while she grieved over her father’s grave site, grappled with medical issues that he learned about from her relative, and invited her to speak with him when she needed.

He later complimented her devout faith and beauty, kissed her and groped her occasionally, and made it clear he desired her, regardless of her being married, she testified. 

But, despite staying in touch until at least shortly before his criminal charges, they never had intercourse, according to that witness, who mentioned that her medical issues affected her ability to be physically intimate.

Prosecutors rested their case after eliciting expert testimony from Scripps Research Institute neuroscientist Hermina Nedelescu, who has studied the effects of clergy abuse on the brain. 

Nedelescu, who is a clergy sexual abuse survivor herself, testified that it is common for victims of such a crime to have formed a potent dependence on their perpetrators that causes them to stay in touch with them for years after the offense.

The trial was adjourned until Friday morning, and officials said it was possible closing arguments could be later in the day.

Villarial said after court on Thursday that Odiong did not intend to testify in his own defense.

Odiong was ordained into the Catholic priesthood in 1993 in his native Nigeria.

The naturalized US citizen transferred to a region encompassing Waco in 2006 under the watch of the then Austin, Texas, bishop, Gregory Aymond. 

Odiong later arrived in Luling several years after Aymond had become the archbishop of New Orleans, though he continued fostering a presence in the Waco area.

No later than 2019, church officials in Austin said they suspended Odiong from ever being able to act as a priest in that area over allegations of misconduct with multiple women. 

Austin officials did not publicly announce that move but said they notified their New Orleans counterparts, though Aymond waited a minimum of four years to similarly suspend Odiong from ministering there.

Aymond retired as New Orleans’ archbishop in February, a couple of months after the city’s archdiocese and its insurers agreed to pay $305m to abuse survivors to settle a bankruptcy protection case that the organization filed amid the financial fallout of the global church’s decades-old clerical molestation scandal. 

His successor is James Checchio, the former bishop of Metuchen, New Jersey.

"Reims, the Legendary Epic": Saint Joan of Arc disappears from the name of her festival

The traditional Joan of Arc Festivals in Reims, France, dedicated for decades to commemorating Saint Joan of Arc, are being held this weekend under a new communication strategy that has drawn criticism from those who denounce a progressive dilution of Christian references in French public space. 

Although the saint remains present in the events and historical reenactments, since 2025 the city has been promoting the event mainly under the name “Reims, the Legendary Epic.”

The change may seem merely terminological, but it affects the very heart of celebrations born to remember one of the most important figures in French history and spirituality. 

For generations, speaking of the Joan of Arc Festivals meant speaking of Joan of Arc. Today, however, her name appears less and less in the event’s main communication.

The saint who led the king to Reims

The relationship between Joan of Arc and Reims is inseparable. It was in this city that the mission the saint claimed to have received from Saint Michael, Saint Catherine, and Saint Margaret culminated: to lead the Dauphin Charles to his coronation to restore the legitimacy of the Kingdom of France.

After the liberation of Orléans, Joan accompanied the future Charles VII to Reims Cathedral, where on 17 July 1429 he was solemnly crowned king. 

That episode not only changed the course of the Hundred Years’ War but also made Reims one of the fundamental settings of the Joan of Arc epic.

For decades, the celebrations organized in the city expressly recalled this event through processions, medieval reenactments, historical parades, and acts dedicated to the memory of the Maid of Orléans.

From the Joan of Arc Festivals to a more neutral brand

Municipal authorities maintain that there is no intention to erase the figure of Joan of Arc and argue that the new name seeks to broaden the focus of the celebrations to include other elements of Reims’s historical heritage, especially those linked to the royal coronations.

However, the change in language has not gone unnoticed. 

The phrase “Reims, the Legendary Epic” pushes into the background a reference that for decades immediately identified the very reason for the festival.

Replacing a name directly associated with Saint Joan of Arc with a broader, more abstract formula reflects a growing trend in Western Europe: preserving historical and cultural elements while softening the religious references that gave rise to them and aligning them with the prevailing political narrative.

A saint at the heart of French identity

Joan of Arc is not merely a historical figure. Canonized by Benedict XV in 1920, she was proclaimed secondary patroness of France by the Holy See two years later.

Six centuries after her martyrdom, she remains one of the country’s most venerated saints and a figure closely tied to French national identity. 

Her witness of faith, her fidelity to the mission she said she had received from God, and her decisive role in the history of France continue to inspire admiration far beyond the religious sphere.

Now the real question is not whether Joan of Arc is still present in the festivities. 

What is at stake is the place she occupies in the very identity of a celebration born to remember her mission and her legacy.

Priest accuser hopes Texas conviction will keep him from victimizing others

The first woman to publicly accuse a Roman Catholic priest who was convicted by a Texas jury on Friday of repeated adult, criminal clergy sexual abuse has said she “can only hope he is kept from continuing to use faith as his net, his snare and a tool to manipulate current and future victims”.

“I’m grateful to the jury for listening to the evidence and seeing the truth” about the convicted clergyman, Anthony Odiong, said the woman in a statement on Saturday, referred to in court proceedings by the pseudonym Hadassah Doe.

The woman added that it was “heartbreaking” to learn of the testimony that led to Odiong’s conviction after a four-day trial on first- and second-degree sexual assault charges in Waco, Texas, in connection with two women given the pseudonyms Mary Doe and Jane Doe. 

She alluded to how church officials, including in south-east Louisiana – where the clergyman most recently ministered – “could have prevented a lot of suffering and pain” if they “would have listened” to her attempts to report him years earlier.

As Hadassah Doe eventually recounted to the Guardian and reporting partner WWL Louisiana, she met Odiong in the spring of 2007 while he studied for a theological master’s degree from Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio. 

She described how he positioned himself as her spiritual counselor and initiated a years-long physical relationship during which he persuaded her to perform sexual acts on him during the sacrament of confession, at private masses in her home and in at least one motel room – claiming she could ensure salvation by doing so.

She also accused him of stealing money from her, and if she ever refused him, he would disparage her as crazy.

Doe said she mostly cut Odiong off in late 2018, when he had transferred from clerical roles in and around Waco, Texas, to serving as pastor of the St Anthony of Padua church in the New Orleans suburb of Luling, Louisiana.

In 2019, according to call logs and audio recordings, Doe contacted the New Orleans archdiocese’s telephone number for abuse claimants to report Odiong. The sheriff’s office that patrols Luling said that the woman also spoke with one of its detectives about Odiong.

The investigator concluded that Doe was reporting what sounded like a personal relationship not outlawed in Louisiana. Neither the authorities nor the church in that state took action against Odiong.

Hadassah Doe and her civil attorney, Kristi Schubert, shared those events with the public through the Guardian and WWL in December 2023, after the New Orleans archdiocese announced – without elaborating – that it had suspended Odiong over clerical misconduct with multiple women.

An attorney who represented Odiong at the time met Doe’s story with a statement aggressively dismissing it as “categorically … false”. The statement also called the accusations “outlandish … and unworthy of belief”.

Odiong himself published a social media post calling Doe “a mentally unstable woman” while accusing the Guardian of pursuing a “false, salacious, one-sided smear campaign” against him.

Nonetheless, another woman who met Odiong in Waco in 2010 and would eventually be referred to as Jane Doe in court proceedings subsequently noticed Hadassah’s account. 

Jane Doe contacted the Guardian and vouched for Hadassah’s story as credible, saying she also had an abusive experience while Odiong ostensibly counseled her over marital problems she was enduring.

She told the outlet that Odiong – among other behaviors – successfully directed her to submit to a form of intercourse, which she found painfully uncomfortable, to save her marriage, which ultimately failed.

Furthermore, she revealed that Catholic church officials in charge of Waco-area clergymen had informed her that they banned Odiong no later than 2019 from ministering in and around there over misconduct allegations. Those officials said to her that they simultaneously and privately notified their New Orleans counterparts to that decision.

Jane Doe’s story then was seen by another woman whom authorities would come to refer to by the pseudonym of Mary Doe. Mary Doe brought a copy of the Guardian’s reporting on Jane and Hadassah Doe to Waco police and told them Odiong had fostered a years-long sexual relationship with her.

Mary Doe told then detective Bradley DeLange that the relationship started in 2008 after he began providing her with spiritual direction amid the fallout of a tumultuous divorce that left her with primary custody of seven children. 

It effectively didn’t end until after a family party in 2011, when her son walked in on them having sex and told a neighbor what he had seen. 

The neighbor, it would later emerge in court, reported Odiong to local church officials – but his career continued virtually unimpeded.

Texas law considers what Mary Doe reported to be felony sexual assault. The ensuing investigation led authorities to Jane Doe. They also secured cooperation from enough Odiong accusers meeting the legal standard of probable cause that they could charge him in connection with first- and second-degree sexual assault of Mary and Joe Doe.

They each testified at a four-day trial beginning on Tuesday at a courthouse in downtown Waco. Prosecutors Ryan Calvert and Liz Buice also established that Odiong had fathered a child in 2023 with a congregant to whom he provided religious counseling after meeting her in Luling.

Calvert at one point seemingly addressed insinuations that Odiong’s accusers may have unduly conspired to take him down, by asking Mary Doe whether she knew Hadassah Doe and others who had spoken to authorities about him. Mary Doe said she did not know them.

The eight women and four men on the jury took only about two hours to find Odiong guilty of the charges against him. That left Odiong facing up to life imprisonment during a sentencing phase scheduled to begin on Monday.

Provided to the Guardian by Schubert a day after the verdict, Hadassah Doe’s statement said the prosecution was respectively “superb” and “succinct” in its strategy and case presentation. She said she would spend the coming days waiting to learn Odiong’s sentence.

Hadassah Doe separately awaited the outcome of a pending claim for Odiong-related damages that she filed as part of a bankruptcy protection case that the New Orleans archdiocese filed in 2020 as it grappled with the ongoing aftermath of the worldwide Catholic church’s decades-old clergy molestation scandal.

The archdiocese and its insurers in December agreed to pay $305m to hundreds of abuse survivors to settle the bankruptcy, though payouts as of Saturday were not expected to begin until the fall.

In her bankruptcy claim, made under oath, Hadassah Doe summarized what her life had been like since Odiong entered and then departed it.

“The abuse has completely ruined my life and self-confidence,” she wrote. “I have repeated nightmares [of] Fr Odiong abusing me.”