My Friend, the Abusing Bishop

A death in the family is often an occasion of mixed emotions—sadness and gratitude, maybe even a little regret. I felt all that and more when I heard of the death of my former bishop, Anthony J. O’Connell, the first bishop of the Diocese of Knoxville, Tennessee, who welcomed me as a seminarian in 1993 and was a fixture in my life for many years after. He moved to the Diocese of West Palm Beach, Florida in 1998, where his past caught up with him. When news of his abuse of a high school seminarian in the 1970s came to light in 2002, he resigned and spent the rest of his life in a monastery in South Carolina.

When I got the news of my bishop’s resignation, I remember feeling both disbelief and shock. How could the man we called “OC”—my mentor—have been an abuser who admitted to lying naked with and fondling a teenage student multiple times over several years as rector of St. Thomas Seminary, a now-closed high school seminary in Hannibal, Missouri?