Statement regarding Fr Joseph S Skelton Jr

The Communications Department has been asked to pass along the following information from Msgr. Timothy Hogan, Director of the Office for Clergy and Consecrated Life, and Msgr. G. Michael Bugarin, the Archbishop’s Delegate for Clergy Discipline.

It has come to the attention of the Archdiocese of Detroit that Fr. Joseph S. Skelton, Jr., a former seminarian for the Archdiocese of Detroit, is currently in the Detroit area. In the late 1980s, Joseph Skelton was dismissed from St. John Provincial Seminary and subsequently prosecuted by Wayne County civil authorities for child sexual abuse. In 2008, he was named in a lawsuit filed in Washington D.C. alleging child sexual abuse committed in the mid-80s by “Brother Joseph Skelton.” Although unaware he was ever in the District, that case was eventually settled by the Washington archdiocese for $125,000. In 2001, he was ordained a priest in the Philippines. While Fr. Skelton is currently in possession of a celebret from the Bishop of Tagbilaran, he will not be granted any priestly faculties here and, as such, is prohibited from exercising any public ecclesiastical ministry in the Archdiocese of Detroit.

Please remember that all priests from outside the Archdiocese of Detroit who present themselves for ministry here, even to concelebrate at a liturgy, must be in possession of a current Letter of Good Standing from their bishop or religious superior. The Letter of Good Standing is to be sent to Msgr. Hogan’s office. Only upon the issuance of priestly faculties will a visiting priest be permitted to exercise public ecclesiastical ministry here.