LANSING, Michigan — Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel says prosecutors have brought sexual abuse charges against five Catholic priests as part of her office’s investigation into clergy abuse.
Nessel said Friday that the priests served in dioceses in Detroit, Lansing and Kalamazoo, and that they’ve been charged with various counts of criminal sexual conduct. She says four of them have been arrested in Arizona, California, Florida and Michigan, and that the fifth awaits extradition from India.
A sixth priest faces an administrative complaint and has had his counseling license suspended by the state.
Nessel is among more than a dozen attorneys general investigating or reviewing clergy abuse following a shocking Pennsylvania grand jury report last year detailing seven decades of child sex abuse by more than 300 predator priests.
She has asked the state’s seven dioceses to suspend their own internal review processes until her office’s probe is complete.
Meanwhile, the Detroit News and The Flint Journal report that prosecutors charged 80-year-old Father Vincent DeLorenzo on Thursday with six counts of both first- and second-degree criminal sexual conduct.
The Diocese of Lansing says eight people have accused DeLorenzo of sexual abuse and that he’s being defrocked.
Court records list DeLorenzo as a Lantana, Florida, resident, but The Associated Press couldn’t find a listed phone number for him in that area and wasn’t able to reach him for comment.
He served several Michigan churches and resigned from Holy Redeemer in Burton in 2002. He wasn’t charged at that time.
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