Catholic church had been alerted to Texas priest’s sexual predation for years – but dawdled before acting

Church officials had extended the temporary term of Anthony Odiong, recently convicted of sexual assault, even after women came forward with allegations of abuse

Key takeaways from the Guardian’s inquiry into the church’s handling of a predatory priest

I nternal Catholic church files obtained by the Guardian reveal that clergy leaders wanted to quadruple what was supposed to be a temporary, three-year role as pastor at a suburban New Orleans church for a priest who had nearly a half-dozen women accusing him of sexual misconduct or unwanted advances while ministering to them.

Anthony Odiong was supposed to be at the St Anthony of Padua church in Luling, Louisiana, from 2015 to 2018 when – toward the end of that time frame – his supervisors extended his stint by three years despite a series of misconduct complaints, including one that ultimately sent him to prison for life in June.

By 2021, his superiors moved to prolong his stint another six years, until 2027 – despite having spoken to a woman who had come forward to accuse Odiong of an abusive, years-long sexual relationship. She was at least the fifth female congregant who had claimed enduring misconduct by Odiong after meeting him in his capacity as a priest.

“You have served … with fidelity and dedication,” New Orleans’ archbishop at the time, Gregory Aymond , wrote to Odiong while affording him that six-year extension. “Thank you for … the faithful way in which you continue to carry out the ministry of Jesus Christ today.”

Despite Catholic priests’ promise of sexual celibacy, Odiong subsequently fathered a child with a sixth woman whom he met through his clerical work. Only after all that did civil law enforcement – not church – authorities in Waco, Texas, where Odiong also previously ministered, finally hold him to account by convicting him of criminal clergy sexual abuse.

That shocking chain of events is laid out in more than 200 pages of in-house church documents reviewed by the Guardian after a Waco jury found him guilty of first- and second-degree sexual assault on 29 May. That same jury sentenced him to life imprisonment four days later.

As a whole, the documents divulge that Catholic church leaders for a region including Waco had received a significant number of misconduct complaints against Odiong while he was still in the middle of working there from 2006 to 2012.

Those Austin, Texas, diocese officials then confidentially notified their counterparts in New Orleans about the complaints in September 2018, three years after he began working under church leaders in that area.

Church officials in New Orleans not only went on to leave Odiong in place among their ranks for more than five years. They also represented to their colleagues in locales where Odiong traveled domestically and internationally during his ministry that he was “a person of good moral character and reputation”.

Odiong was only removed by the New Orleans officials in connection with the various complaints against him when he also made comments from his pulpit dehumanizing LGBTQ+ people – mere months before his arrest by the Texas authorities who would later convict him.

The documents afford the public its most complete look yet at exactly what church officials knew about Odiong – and when.

Furthermore, the records raise serious questions about whether officials whose church has spent years navigating clergy abuse scandals worldwide did all they could to safeguard those whom Odiong encountered through his work.

It is clear from the paper trail that Odiong’s supervisors waited years to prohibit him from continuing his ministry – and alert community members that they did so – under anti-clergy abuse policies long in effect because his accusers were not minors.

And it is plain to see that church officials did not believe the women met their criteria for vulnerable adults, which strictly speaking would involve their having severe intellectual, developmental or psychological disabilities.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the Austin diocese said it denies having “concealed information”, as victims contend the organization did. The spokesperson alluded to how the Austin diocese provided a letter to the New Orleans archdiocese about Odiong – and then publicly addressed the matter after the second of the organizations proclaimed it had suspended the priest from ministry.

“The diocese sincerely regrets that an ordained priest working in the diocese caused harm to the victims,” the Austin spokesperson also said.

A separate statement from the New Orleans archdiocese noted Aymond retired in February. The organization said had the previous “archdiocesan leadership … known of the extent and predatory pattern of Odiong’s behaviors, certainly different actions would have been taken”.

It added: “We are disgusted by Odiong’s behavior revealed during his trial, and what he was convicted of is reprehensible. We are sorry for the suffering these women and their families experienced, and our prayers are with those who have been hurt by his actions.”

The Guardian has reached out to Catholic church leaders in Odiong’s native Nigeria for comment.

‘You look hot’

Odiong spent the first 13 years of his career as a priest in Nigeria, where he was ordained within the Catholic diocese of Uyo in 1993.

In 2006, while Aymond was in a previous role as bishop of Austin, Odiong gained an assignment to serve as the associate pastor of St Mary’s Church of the Assumption in West, Texas, outside Waco.

The naturalized US citizen added a part-time role at the St Peter Catholic student center, which ministers to Waco’s Baylor University, in 2007, according to a curriculum vitae included in the records obtained by the Guardian. By 2008, that role at St Peter had become a full-time one alongside his post in West.

By all accounts, Odiong won over his Texas congregants with a charismatic persona and stated affection for the Virgin Mary.

But no more than two years into his full-time presence at Baylor, clear signs of concern began to emerge.

A woman told Austin’s diocese in 2010 that Odiong “bit her ear while he was giving her a hug on a sofa” at St Peter, where she worked, church officials there would later report. She also accused Odiong of having “hugged her by lifting her up by her bottom” and holding her there for a protracted amount of time.

“Odiong admitted hugging her in such a way” when confronted about it, but insisted that he did not mean for the embrace “to be offensive”, according to Austin officials.

He claimed to not remember biting her ear – or that the woman voiced “any complaint to him”, those officials also wrote.

In 2011, a student at St Peter came forward and accused Odiong of having spoken to her in “suggestive ways (eg, ‘you’re hot, you look pretty’)” and having “hugged her with long and inappropriate embraces that made her feel uncomfortable”, Austin diocesan officials would later report.

They reported that she also described how Odiong “placed his hand on her knee and thigh when in a private conversation with her”. But they were also sure to note that Odiong denied the allegations and “did not remember saying such things to her”.

The complaint that preceded the end of Odiong’s stints at St Mary’s and St Peter came that same year. A teenage boy had told officials that he had caught his mother, who was a Baylor employee, and Odiong – their priest – having sex in her bedroom after a family party.

It ultimately emerged at Odiong’s criminal trial that the boy later retracted his complaint because he feared his mother could be fired from her job over a Baylor policy requiring employees to conduct themselves in a manner that was consistent with Christian values. And the boy was keenly aware that his mother had primary custody of him and his six siblings after a tumultuous divorce from his father.

The documents reviewed by the Guardian showed the Austin diocese concluded that the boy’s complaint was “false” after his retraction. Nonetheless, the diocese’s vicar general, essentially its second-in-command, determined Odiong’s actions in the matter had been “highly imprudent”, the documents said.

The documents explained that then vicar general Michael Sis – who has been the bishop of San Angelo, Texas, since 2013 – arrived at that determination because Odiong had been “alone with the young man’s mother in her home, late at night, in a room with a small sofa and a bed, after a party had concluded”.

At least that is how then Austin bishop Joe Vásquez, now the archbishop of Houston, would eventually characterize Sis’s thought process in a missive to Aymond years later, after the latter had become the Catholic church’s prelate in New Orleans.

Austin church officials say Odiong left their diocese in 2012. His CV establishes that he was then outside the US for three years.

The CV lists Odiong spending that period pursuing a doctorate degree in dogmatic theology at the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas, or the Angelicum, in the center of Rome, less than three miles from the Catholic church’s global headquarters at the Vatican.

‘Look forward to reconnecting’

Aymond was in his fifth year as New Orleans’ archbishop when he received an email from Odiong in October 2014.

Odiong requested that Aymond appoint him as the “pastor of a small [church]” and allow him to teach a class in theology at Notre Dame Seminary, the New Orleans college which trains Catholic priests. In the meantime, Odiong would complete “research work” for his dogmatic theology doctorate degree, he wrote.

“I am pleased to respond affirmatively to your request to serve in the archdiocese of New Orleans for a term of three years” beginning in the second half of 2018, Aymond replied in a message that mentioned he and Odiong had recently visited.

“I remember, with great fondness, our work together in Austin and I look forward to reconnecting with you.”

Before he could formally welcome Odiong to a second US diocese, though, Aymond told the priest to get a letter from his “local bishop” confirming he was in “good standing” and had permission to minister in New Orleans.

Records demonstrate that Odiong then obtained a letter from the bishop in Uyo, Nigeria, John Ebebe Ayah, declaring him to be “in good standing with the church”. Odiong, Ayah wrote, had “permission to take up pastoral assignment” from Aymond.

“I want to personally thank you for accepting him in your archdiocese,” Ayah wrote to Aymond, who assigned Odiong to Luling’s St Anthony of Padua to succeed a pastor grappling with health problems. “I pray the good Lord Jesus Christ continues to strengthen you in serving his people.”