Walsh said that Father Raymond Cotter and Father James Gardiner would both be “restricted from presiding at any public celebration of Mass effective immediately.” Both will be permitted to celebrate Mass privately, the bishop said, and both can “respond to requests for limited priestly ministry” including reconciliation and anointing of the sick.
The bishop further relieved Gardiner of his assignment as sacramental minister at St. Anthony of Padua Parish in Mackinaw City. Cotter “continues to be a retired priest with no assignment in the Diocese of Gaylord,” the diocese said.
Additionally, Father Donald Geyman “will undergo an assessment,” the diocese said; the priest will continue his current assignment as pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Traverse City pending the outcome of the investigation.
In the attorney general’s report, Cotter was alleged to have “engaged in sexual intercourse with an adult woman” in 1992, resulting in the birth of a child. Gardiner was alleged to have engaged in “unwanted sexual touching” on an adult male in the mid-1990s.
Geyman, meanwhile, was alleged in the report to have inappropriately touched an adult woman’s thigh at a conference in 2012 and to have sent inappropriate text messages to another woman.
In his statement this week, Walsh said he was “fully aware of the weight of the decisions made for each of these three priests, their families, those whom they have served, those who were affected by their moral failings, and the Church at large.”
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