Father W. Jeffrey Paulish was found with a boy wearing no pants, in a car on the campus of the Penn State University on Thursday. Police said they found the 56-year-old priest and the boy while responding to a call of a suspicious vehicle.
Paulish initially told police he was working in his homily at school when he found the boy, who said was in emotional distress and needed advice. Police said he later admitted that he met the teen through the "casual encounters" on Craigslist.
Paulish said he asked the boy several times if he was 18-years-old.
"I recognize how upsetting this is for me personally and for many others," Scranton Bishop Joseph Bambera said in a statement posted on the Internet. "Upon being notified of this incident, the priest was immediately removed from his mission and his power to exercise his priestly ministry was suspended," the statement read.
Diocesan officials are asking anyone who may have been sexually abused by Paulish to contact local police.
Paulish was charged with one felony count of involuntary deviant sexual intercourse and unlawful contact with a minor. He was also charged with three misdemeanor charges including indecent contact with a minor, indecent exposure and corruption of a minor. He was held in the Lackawanna County Jail in lieu $50,000 bail.
