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

Catholic clergy leaders wanted to add nearly a decade to a priest’s temporary role as pastor at a suburban New Orleans church despite knowing several women had accused him of sexual misconduct or unwanted advances while ministering to them, the Guardian can report.

But Anthony Odiong did not make it to the end of an extension that was supposed to last until 2027. A jury in Waco, Texas, another community where Odiong worked, convicted him of criminal clergy sexual assault of two women, leading him to a sentence of life imprisonment in early June.

Files detailing precisely how Catholic church leaders in New Orleans and the Texas capital of Austin – whose purview includes Waco – managed Odiong prior to his criminal conviction remained an elusive secret throughout the years-long case.

But the Guardian managed to obtain those files and learned how church leaders in Austin fielded the first known complaint against Odiong in 2011, a full 12 years before he went on to have a child with one of the women to whom he ministered – despite Catholic priests’ vow of sexual celibacy.

The outlet can now report that those Austin officials waited until 2018 to notify their counterparts in New Orleans, where Odiong had later gone on to minister, of that initial complaint. They also notified New Orleans of three other complaints that came in after the first.

Odiong in 2018 was nearing the end of what initially was supposed to be a three-year stint as pastor of St Anthony of Padua church in the New Orleans suburb of Luling, Louisiana. Yet he soon received permission to continue at St Anthony until 2021, getting that authorization from New Orleans’ archbishop at the time, Gregory Aymond, and John Ayah, the bishop of the Uyo, Nigeria, diocese, where Odiong was previously ordained into the Catholic priesthood.

A fifth woman came forward in 2019 to Aymond’s archdiocese and alleged that Odiong initiated a years-long, multistate sexual relationship with her after meeting him in 2007 at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, where he had studied amid his tenure in Texas.

None of that impeded Odiong from being notified by Aymond in 2021 that he was welcome to remain in his role at St Anthony for at least another six years.

“You have served … with fidelity and dedication,” Aymond wrote to Odiong at the time. “Thank you for … the faithful way in which you continue to carry out the ministry of Jesus Christ today.”

Here are three other key takeaways of the Guardian’s investigation.