NEW YORK
The New York Times
By DANIEL J. WAKIN
ardinal Edward M. Egan has suspended a Westchester pastor who has been accused of sexually abusing a minor at least 20 years ago, the Archdiocese of New York said yesterday.
The priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Inzeo of St. Anthony of Padua Church in West Harrison, N.Y., is the first to be suspended in the archdiocese since last summer, when the nationwide sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church was more intense.
An archdiocesan official told parishioners at Sunday Mass that Father Inzeo, their pastor of eight years, had been barred from the ministry.
The action was taken about a week after someone called the archdiocese and said a male relative — a minor at the time — had been sexually abused by Father Inzeo, said the spokesman for the archdiocese, Joseph Zwilling.
The abuse was alleged to have taken place during the priest’s first assignment, at the Church of the Sacred Heart in Newburgh, in Orange County. Father Inzeo served there for five years after his ordination in 1978. He also had assignments at two other Westchester parishes, the Church of the Resurrection in Rye and St. Francis of Assisi in Mount Kisco.
