ACCUSED PRIEST TO RETURN

Rev. Michael Carroll is the first local priest to get his collar back since the clerical sexual abuse scandal broke on Long Island two years ago.  After a diocesan tribunal and Catholic Church officials in Rome found insufficient evidence that he had sexually abused minors, Bishop William Murphy is returning him to ministry.  He will be living at St. Christopher Church in Baldwin where he had previously resided.  He is assigned to Villa St. Joseph, a convent on the grounds of Mercy Medical Center in Rockville Centre, where he says Mass for the sisters there.  Carroll's case is cited in last year's Suffolk County grand jury report, which detailed individual abuse cases as well as the diocese's treatment of victims and problem priests.  In four pages, the report describes Priest P, who sources say is Carroll, as someone who had left several parishes suddenly and had complaints against him of inappropriate sexual conduct with a teenage boy as well as young men over age 18.

(New York)