Priest Acknowledges Intimate Contact With Foley - washingtonpost.com

Priest Acknowledges Intimate Contact With Foley - washingtonpost.com: "Priest Acknowledges Intimate Contact With Foley

By Howard Schneider and Debbi Wilgoren
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 19, 2006; 2:00 PM

A retired priest from Malta acknowledged today that he had intimate contact with a youthful Mark Foley that involved nudity and -- on at least one occasion -- 'light touching,' but denied that he and Foley had 'sexual intercourse.'

The Rev. Anthony Mercieca, in a telephone interview with The Washington Post from the Maltese island of Gozo, said he was surprised that his long-ago interaction with Foley had become linked to the scandal that erupted last month and cost the former congressman his job .

Foley, who served as an altar boy at the Sacred Heart Catholic church in Lake Worth, Fla., when Mercieca was assigned there in the mid-1960s, resigned from Congress after reports about sexually intimate electronic messages he had sent to Congressional pages. Following his resignation, Foley entered alcohol rehabilitation, said he was gay, and alleged that he had been sexually abused by a member of the clergy as a youth."