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Cops Find Priest Wandering NAKED IN CATHOLIC ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

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A priest at a Catholic church in a suburb of Chicago has taken a leave of absence after he was spotted waltzing around in the buff inside the affiliated Catholic elementary school next door.

The au naturel cleric is William “Bill” O’Toole of Saint Casimir Church in Hammond, Ind., reports The Times of Northwest Indiana.

O’Toole, 45, went on his birthday-suit ramble around St. Casimir School Sunday, Aug. 9.

The school enrolls students from kindergarten through eighth grade.

A tipster contacted police after having seen a man walking around in the school, wearing only a smile.

A secretary at Saint Casimir let police officers inside the school when they arrived.

“Officers located an adult male in a state of undress inside of the school,” Hammond police spokesman Richard Hoyda told the Times.

“No other persons were involved and, being a Sunday, there were certainly no children present,” a police statement explained. “The secretary was not aware of Father O’Toole’s presence in the building.”

Police allowed O’Toole to get dressed. They chose not to arrest him because they concluded that it is not a crime for a priest to traipse naked around a grade school on a summer Sunday.

Debbie Bosak, a Diocesan spokeswoman, and Barbara O’Block, superintendent of the local Catholic diocese, concurred with the cops’ conclusion.

The property “belongs to the diocese,” Bosak told the Times. The priest walking around a grade school without any clothes “was in charge of that property.”

Bosak predicted that the diocese likely wouldn’t seek any criminal charges.

“It’s a regrettable lack of judgement on his part,” Bosak said.

O’Toole has resigned, at least for the time being, from his role as pastor of St. Casimir as well as from a similar role at All Saints Catholic Church.

He has also apologized.

“He will be on a leave of absence and will be undergoing a psychological evaluation at the direct request of” Bishop Donald J. Hying, who oversees the diocese, according to a church statement.

The diocese — not the police department — has chosen to identify O’Toole publicly.

Lorenza Pastrick, principal of St. Casimir School, had to inform parents about the incident this week as part of the standard fall orientation. She cried as she read a prepared statement to horrified parents.

“You could hear a pin drop in that room,” one parent, Eleanor Torres, told the Times.

“Lots of parents are very angry now,” Torres added. “I’ve got to go home and question my daughter to find out if anything ever happened to her.”

O’Toole was ordained as a priest in 1996. He had been at St. Casimir since 2004.

St. Casimir, a crown prince of the Kingdom of Poland in the 1400s, was noted for justice and chastity. He is the patron saint of Lithuania, Poland and Russia, according to New Advent.

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Tags : catholic
Eric Owens