Rumors shadowed charismatic priest through the decades

The whispers have swirled around him for decades.

They followed him as he traveled the Northwest and roamed the grand old aisles of Seattle's Immaculate Conception Church, shouting "Amen!" to rapt parishioners, followed him as he rose to prominence as a new breed of Catholic priest with a heart for the poor and a way with the rich.

In his 18 years as pastor at Immaculate, from 1978 to 1996, and as a chaplain for the Seattle Police Department, Father John Michael Cornelius counted among his friends some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the city.

Through their support, he drove new cars and lived in a big house along Lake Washington. He gained national media attention for adopting or taking in 13 "throw-away" children. Oprah invited him on her show (he declined). Here was a priest, it seemed, who practiced what he preached and did so with style.

But the whispers persisted, and mounted, and in a surge last month, they came together to form a powerful public accusation: Cornelius was also a sexual predator.

In a few short weeks, and in unison with accusations all over the country of long-ago abuse by Catholic priests, at least a dozen men have filed complaints with the Archdiocese of Seattle alleging that Cornelius molested them in the 1970s and 1980s. Cornelius, currently serving in an Everett parish, has been on administrative leave since the first of those accusations surfaced in early April. He has denied the allegations, and in late April he hired an attorney.

On Friday, an outside panel of six experts, convened by the archdiocese, began reviewing the complaints.

The strength in the accusations comes not from their variety but their similarity — different men of different stations living in different cities telling roughly the same story: Father John befriended them, softened them with food, lavished them with gifts, and when the opportunity arose, molested them. In some cases, the abuse allegedly went on for years.

So, if the allegations are to be believed, was the man they called Father John a predator in priest's clothing? Or was he, as some alleged victims and friends now think, a sincerely religious man with an uncontrollable compulsion, a "good man who was," as former Seattle police officer and longtime acquaintance Chuck Pillon says, "trapped in evil?"

He filled the pews

At 6 feet 1 inch tall and well over 300 pounds, Cornelius gives the impression of being able to fill a room by his sheer physical presence. He dwarfed furniture, as when he stuffed himself in his office chair, which could barely contain him.

His larger-than-life presence also emanated from a personality as big as his body. He was outgoing, gregarious, immediately intimate with anyone he encountered. "Charismatic" is the word that came up consistently in talking with dozens of his friends, associates and parishioners.

"I felt I was important to him," says Millie Russell, 74, an administrator at the University of Washington and parishioner at Immaculate Conception since the 1930s. "Whenever I saw him, he'd drop everything and say, 'There's Millie! I'm so glad to see you!' "

As parish priest, he turned the services at Immaculate into marathon events with the energy of a gospel revival. He drew people in. News accounts at the time say membership at the church grew from some 100 families to over 300 families during the early part of his tenure.

Among those who came to attend Immaculate were then-Seattle Police Chief Patrick Fitzsimons, community leader Larry Gossett and Marguerite Casey, a member of the Seattle family that founded United Parcel Service. Among his friends were political leaders Norm Rice and Mike Lowry, and Lenny Wilkens of the NBA. Even the famous civil-rights activist Rosa Parks called on Cornelius when she came to town.

People around the region were drawn to the dynamic young priest who was, for the first time in years, filling pews at the crumbling old church in the heart of Seattle's Central Area. The city's black Catholic community, which numbered 3,000 to 4,000 in the mid-1970s, had never seen the likes of him before.

Raised in North Philadelphia

It is generally known that he came from the East Coast, but he mostly kept quiet about his past. He revealed himself only in morsels and, often, only when asked.

That's a reflection of Cornelius' selflessness, said a friend of 20 years, Hugh Gerrard, among those who do not believe the accusations against Cornelius. "For him, it was always about other people."

A partial picture emerges from public records, old news clips and dozens of interviews with friends and former parishioners who recalled tidbits of conversations with him.

The records show a man who, over the years, reported different ages and different names. For years, he has reported his birth date as July 11, 1951, which today would make him 50.

School records in Philadelphia show he was born on July 11, 1941, making him 10 years older than the age on his driver's license. The archdiocese lists his birth year as 1945, and Mount Angel Seminary in Oregon, which he attended, lists it as 1946.

Cornelius may not have known his real birthday. That was the impression he gave to Patrick Hoch, 46, who at one time was close to Cornelius and today is one of his accusers. "He told me he did not know how old he was for sure, I remember that," Hoch said.

The older birth date might also explain his deteriorating health over the past 10 years. He suffers from obesity and high blood pressure. He battled prostate cancer and had tumors removed from his lungs. As he gave homilies, he sweated profusely, breathed heavily and would often need to sit. He took several sabbaticals for health reasons.

Cornelius has also used different names. At various times over the past three decades, he went by the last names McKenna and Cornelius-Cook, both of which came from families to whom he was close. He used the middle name MacPitre for a time, also derived from a family friend. These were informal changes; he never legally changed his name from John Michael Cornelius.

Cornelius never knew his biological parents. He told numerous people that his mother and father died in a car accident when he was an infant. The young Cornelius was adopted and raised by an aunt, Sallie Cornelius, and her husband Clifton Cornelius, in a North Philadelphia neighborhood known as Germantown.

Clifton Cornelius died in 1986 at the age of 92. He was a longtime deacon at Grace Baptist Church in Germantown, where the Cornelius family, including John, worshipped for decades. It was likely there that John Cornelius learned the Baptist-revival style of sermonizing that would mark his services.

Sallie Cornelius, 88, now lives in a nursing home in New Jersey and is reportedly in poor health. John Cornelius grew up with two sisters, one of whom has passed away. The surviving sister lives on the East Coast.

Cornelius attended two Catholic high schools in North Philadelphia, eventually graduating from Cardinal Dougherty High School in 1959.

Records research and interviews unearthed no information about Cornelius for almost 10 years after his graduation.

He would make his first known appearance in the West in late 1968, at the Diocese of Boise City in Idaho. The bishop at the time, the Most Rev. Sylvester Treinen, reportedly met Cornelius on a trip back East and persuaded him to join the Boise diocese as a seminary student. Treinen died in 1996.

The first whispers

The civil-rights movement was reaching its height at the time of Treinen's recruiting trip in the 1960s. The Catholic Church, caught up in the wave sweeping over America, was intent on recruiting blacks into the priesthood.

Sponsored by the Boise diocese, which did not have its own school, Cornelius began his clerical studies at Mount Angel Seminary, about an hour southeast of Portland.

During his three years as a student there, he befriended two families, one of which would eventually accuse him of sexual impropriety, and the other, which would defend him.

Steve McKenna, a high-school student at Mount Angel, was so enamored of Cornelius that he brought his new friend home to Idaho Falls, Idaho, during holidays and breaks. Cornelius became very close to McKenna's parents, especially his mother, Lorraine.

The McKenna family informally adopted Cornelius, and Cornelius began going by the name John McKenna. He would refer to the McKennas as his family, and Lorraine as his mother.

The loyalty remains to this day: "He's the kindest, gentlest person in the world," says Steve McKenna, now 47. "I still consider him my brother."

Cornelius got close with another family, the Hochs of Ontario, Ore. Greg Hoch also was a high-school student at Mount Angel when he began taking Cornelius to his family's home. Hoch had a 12-year-old brother named Patrick.

Patrick Hoch, now 46, told the Seattle Archdiocese last month that on one visit in 1968, Cornelius began wrestling with him in a downstairs bedroom, eventually pinning him down on his stomach and molesting him. It was a traumatic incident that haunted the younger Hoch for years, he said. He remained silent about it and later said he felt as if he were "harboring a criminal."

But whispers had begun to spread on the Mount Angel campus, and Greg Hoch caught wind of them. Cornelius had done the wrestling bit with him too, and although Greg did not sense anything sexual about the encounter, he thought it odd that a grown man would wrestle and tickle another grown man.

Cornelius left Mount Angel in 1971. According to some accounts, the departure was abrupt.

Some of Cornelius' behaviors "raised eyebrows," says Greg Hoch, now in his 50s and living in Spokane. "People said that he was asked to leave."

When Greg asked Father Andrew Baumgartner about the rumors, the priest told him he should ask Cornelius himself. Baumgartner, now in Jerome, Idaho, was asked recently about Cornelius, and he replied that "we did have some concerns about him."

Baumgartner would not elaborate.

Immaculate Conception years

Cornelius moved to the Seattle Archdiocese in 1971 and finished his clerical studies at the now defunct St. Thomas Seminary in Kenmore.

He was ordained in 1975, and about this time it appears he reverted to the name Cornelius. He served minor roles at two small parishes — St. Therese Church and St. Mary's Church — before being named parish priest at Immaculate Conception, the poorest and oldest Catholic church in the region.

Cornelius became the first African-American pastor in the Seattle Archdiocese.

The congregation was racially diverse, mainly inner-city blacks, Filipinos and whites. Some parishioners say there had been a push to get a black priest and, says Denny Duffell, parish administrator at the time, Cornelius was given the pastorate "well ahead of time," considering Cornelius' relative youth and inexperience.

"Father Cornelius' arrival at Immaculate was electrifying," says Duffell, now a deacon at St. Bridget. The young priest injected new vitality and style into the parish.

Instead of standing behind a pulpit during services, Cornelius would roam the aisles with a wireless microphone, a huge figure in black robes and African-style vestments. One former parishioner recalls:

"His vestments were gold and blue and green, and they would wave as he walked, and his hands would go all over the place. He never used notes, and he would talk and call our names out, like, 'Bob, can you relate to me? Sister Mary, do you hear me? Hallelujah!' "

His 11 a.m. service would go for two hours, sometimes longer. Parishioners would leave exhausted but spiritually satiated and hungry for more.

Cornelius infused the church with a distinctly black persona, and the number of black families swelled. He added a gospel choir. He brought in African artworks and African-style crucifixes. He devoted an entire wall to pictures of black bishops. He had the statues of Jesus and Mary, at the front of the sanctuary, painted dark brown.

Outside Immaculate Conception's sanctuary, he became known as a champion for social justice and civil rights and was credited for all manner of good works for the needy. Cornelius opened the doors of his church to homeless men and supported food drives and health checkups for the poor.

For most of the 1980s and early 1990s, he served as a volunteer chaplain for Seattle police, often as the bearer of bad news and prayers of consolation.

When a 38-year-old officer named Jon Mattox killed himself in November 1990, Cornelius was at the home of John and Marilyn Mattox within 30 minutes.

"He came in," recalls Marilyn Mattox, the officer's mother. "He was with three other officers, and he offered to say a prayer. We all joined hands, and he said a prayer for us. I was in shock, but I remember him as a supportive presence."

A big house on the water

Nothing brought more attention to Cornelius than his official or informal adoption of some 13 black teenagers, starting in the early 1980s. He got the idea, according to friend and mentor Walt Hubbard, from another black priest, Father George Clements of Chicago, who was among the first-ever priests to adopt children.

"I love kids," Cornelius told The Seattle Times in 1982.

He was an adoption advocate and pushed for a Seattle branch of "One Church, One Child," a national program that encourages church families to adopt black children.

Youth ministry had been an emphasis for Cornelius, and he encouraged young people, most of them boys, to use church facilities as a second home and hangout. The rectory was always stocked with chips and doughnuts and all sorts of goodies.

"The rectory became a lively place, pretty hectic for the parish offices downstairs," recalls Duffell, the parish administrator at the time.

While young people drifted in and out of his home for years, Cornelius' first official adoption was of a young man named Lewis who had lived in 13 previous foster homes on the East Coast. The other teens he would adopt or take in, 11 of them boys, were of similar backgrounds. "These were crack babies whose parents had deserted them," says Gerrard, the family friend. "These were kids who had no chance in life, and Father John took them in."

The news media ran with the story of this young black priest adopting throw-away children, and financial support came pouring in to Cornelius. The more support he got, the more kids he was able to adopt.

Enrique Cerna, a reporter with KING-TV news at the time, recalls doing a segment on Cornelius and then receiving a call from a woman who wanted to talk to the priest. Based on stories Cornelius told friends, that woman was Marguerite Casey of the Seattle family that founded United Parcel Service.

Casey became one of several wealthy benefactors of Cornelius and his expanding brood. Casey, reportedly with the help of NBA coach Lenny Wilkens, arranged for Cornelius to live in a three-story, five-bedroom home along Lake Washington for $1 a year. Casey died in the late 1980s.

In addition, several parishioners had made him beneficiary of their life-insurance policies, and he also had one supporter who was associated with a local car dealership.

The young priest always drove late-model cars: a Fiat Spyder 124 convertible, a Mustang, and then a Monte Carlo.

Some parishioners grumbled about Cornelius' lifestyle in light of the poor state of his parish plant, but Cornelius had a strong grip on the affections of his parishioners. They allowed him his eccentricities.

"He was profoundly loved," says Joan McGuire, a longtime parishioner and current pastoral coordinator.

Cornelius in turn was generous with gifts to his friends. Some of his presents to young men, however — he offered one his Fiat, and gave another his Mustang — raised suspicions.

At the same time that Cornelius was growing in community esteem, another aspect of his life — if allegations are to be believed — was taking place in the shadows.

The Kennedy High crowd

In the first years after his ordination, while still serving at St. Mary's, Cornelius met and became close with a parishioner named Errol Graves. Graves had three sons, all of whom would become altar boys and would at one time refer to the priest as "Uncle John." Two have accused Cornelius of sex abuse, one of them claiming a long-term sexual relationship with the priest.

According to the brothers, and friends who also became alleged victims, Cornelius was so taken with the Graves boys that he began showing up at their Catholic school, Kennedy High, in Burien in the mid-1970s.

Both boys were involved in football, and Cornelius struck up a friendship with the coaches, eventually becoming an unofficial cleric for the team. Many of the players would spend their off-hours hanging out with "FJ," as they called him, often spending nights at the rectory.

"I remember the first time I met him," says one man, now 42 and living in Chicago, who was on the team. "I'd never seen a black priest," he says. "He was cool, hip, one of the guys. A man of the cloth who talked sports, drove a cool car, liked fast food. He liked hanging out with us, joking around with us. Me coming from a broken home, this black priest ... lets me drive his car, offers his rectory to eat and sleep whenever I needed a place to hang out.

"Man, he was like a god to me."

The first known complaint surfaced many years later, in 1989, when Duffell, who had moved on to St. Bridget, heard third-hand of a sex allegation against Cornelius. The alleged victim was a Kennedy graduate named Rick Barquet, and the alleged abuse had taken place in the 1970s.

Duffell contacted the archdiocese about the accusation. Seattle police and the state's Child Protective Services investigated the incident and cleared Cornelius.

The second known complaint came in 1996 when an Idaho man told the archdiocese that Cornelius had molested him when he was a high-school student and Cornelius was in seminary.

The archdiocese again looked into it, and this time, removed Cornelius from his post and placed him in an Everett parish, also called Immaculate Conception, as an assistant priest with limited duties. Cornelius was to undergo counseling and be closely monitored.

All of this was done quietly. There have been conflicting reports on whether the Everett parish knew of Cornelius' status as a priest under close watch. Parishioners at Seattle's Immaculate Conception were given the impression that he was removed and demoted for health reasons.

Cornelius has been with the Everett parish since 1997.

Last month, with the wave of accusations of long-ago abuse by Catholic priests rippling across the country, the whispers against Cornelius began to find a unified voice.

The first one to come forward, on April 8, was the Chicago man, a former television correspondent who does not want his name revealed. Two days later, Barquet, 38, now a Kent bus driver, accused Cornelius. Then the Graves brothers came forward, followed by Patrick Hoch.

So far, the archdiocese says at least 12 men have alleged sexual abuse by Cornelius in the 1970s and 80s. The alleged victims say many more have not come forward.

The men tell of the same pattern: Cornelius would befriend them, feed and lavish them with gifts and perks — lend them money or pay their tuition or let them drive his cars — gain their confidence, and then he would initiate wrestling and pin the boys on their stomachs as he molested them.

One of the Graves brothers says he had a sexual relationship with Cornelius all through high school and continued even after he returned from a four-year stint in the Army.

"It happened so many times I can't even count how many times," the man, now 41, says. "It got to a point when I would borrow money from him, and this is what I would have to do to not pay him back."

Cornelius gave the Mustang to the young man when he graduated from Kennedy in 1979. The priest reportedly offered his Fiat to the man now living in Chicago. He declined, saying later that he "realized what that was all about."

Many years after Cornelius' alleged assault against the Chicago man, the priest would track him down in various cities and call him long distance, the man said. "Why don't I hear from you anymore?" he would ask, as if nothing had ever happened.

"It seemed totally normal to him," the man says. "He didn't appear on the outside that it was anything that he struggled with. It was like no different than a smoker lighting up a smoke."

The Chicago man and Barquet say they did not realize it at the time because they were too young and naïve, but now they are convinced that Cornelius was a sexual predator.

Because of the growing number of accusers and the consistency of their stories, many at Immaculate Conception in Seattle have begun to believe the accusations. After all, most of the accusers were parishioners themselves.

The most awful question

Some have privately broached the awful question of whether Cornelius might have abused his own children. Most of the children did not respond to interview requests.

Lewis Cornelius, however, publicly defended his father when the accusations first arose, saying Cornelius was "a great dad who showed me there is love."

Lewis said there was never any hint of abuse in the home.

Gerrard, the family friend, said he was very close to Cornelius' children and would have known if any abuse went on. Gerrard also points out that all of Cornelius' children have gone on to become "upright citizens."

John Cornelius has made no public statements except to deny the allegations through the archdiocese. He has turned down requests for interviews. He has reportedly spent time in the Oakland area, where he has close friends.

Father Dennis Robb, priest at Immaculate Conception in Everett, said that Cornelius "was very hurt, very depressed" about the accusations. Gerrard, who says he has been in recent contact with Cornelius, says the priest "doesn't understand what motivations are behind these accusations."

Many of Cornelius' friends and parishioners interviewed for this story expressed great sadness over the situation. Chuck Pillon called it tragic. Millie Russell said it broke her heart. Even one of the alleged victims expressed sympathy for Cornelius.

At a recent service in Seattle's Immaculate Conception, during the reading of prayers, these two were offered one after the other:

"That those who have been robbed of innocence and joy by the abuse of others may find healing in all who care for them. We pray to the Lord.

"For Father John Cornelius in this time of confusion and uncertainty that he might experience healing in his hour of need. We pray to the Lord."

Alex Tizon: 206-464-2216 or atizon@seattletimes.com.

Staff reporters Janet I. Tu and Ray Rivera and news researcher Miyoko Wolf contributed to this report.