Thursday, August 14, 2014

So Did Anthony Morello Ever Get A Background Check?

The problem of Robert William Bowman's apparent lack of a background check leads me to the question of his predecessor at All Saints Fountain Valley. This is what we know about the late Anthony Morello:
  • His ordination was recognized by The Episcopal Church because he had attended seminary in the Philippines and was ordained in the Philippine Independent Church, which is in communion with other churches in the Anglican Communion, including The Episcopal Church. However, Morello and an associate, James Barlow, were by Barlow's account the only non-Filipinos ever ordained in the PIC.
  • He served for three or four years as Vicar of St Luke's Episcopal mission in Fontana, CA, but was removed for unknown reasons by Episcopal Bishop Borsch. He then went to the then-Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin. I'm told that there were unusual restrictions in his letters dimissory.
  • Morello became Vicar of St Dunstan's mission in Modesto, CA. While there, he divorced his wife and married another woman whose children he had been counseling, an ethical violation. He later divorced that wife and remarried his first wife. The scandal of his ethical violation caused dissent in the parish that, by his account, resulted in the closure of the mission.
  • Morello was then, either informally or by revocation of his license to preach, told by then Episcopal Bishop of San Joaquin John-David Schofield to leave the diocese. I've been told that the only reason Morello wasn't deposed as a priest was that his health was poor, and when he left San Joaquin, it was felt that he was near death. (Morello was morbidly obese and had to carry an oxygen tank with him in a cart. He was so fat, I'm told, that he could not fit in the St Mary of the Angels pulpit.)
  • Morello claimed an apparently non-existent PhD.
  • In spite of this record, Morello apparently ingratiated himself with Daren Williams, Rector at the time of All Saints Fountain Valley as well as Bishop of the ACA Diocese of the West, and was hired as an assistant about 2010, at a time when Williams's behavior had reportedly become erratic. On Williams's involuntary retirement, Morello become Rector of the parish.
The ethical violation, the disciplinary or personnel issues in two Episcopal dioceses, and claiming an academic degree that he did not earn would normally disqualify a candidate for nearly any job, and certainly a priest. A source in the ACA Diocese of the Northeast told me, "Within this Diocese of the Northeast, we have a comprehensive policy that mirrors that of the Roman Catholic Dioceses around the nation. Other ACA Dioceses, choose their own policy[.]"

As we've seen, the policy of many Catholic dioceses is to do a criminal background check and check all references. Apparently that is not the policy of the ACA Diocese of the West. What is the policy on references in the ACA Diocese of the West? Does anyone know how to contact Bishop Owen Williams to learn this policy?