A ‘Period Dignity Officer’ Seemed Like a Good Idea. Until a Man Was Named. Here’s What Happened
Sister Mary Ann Walsh is not your average nun. She’s an associate professor at Fordham University who wrote a book on social justice and sexual violence in the church. She’s also an avid cyclist. Walsh, 51, and her husband have four kids. They live in a house in the suburbs just outside of New York City, where she is an associate professor.
And Walsh is quite active in social justice work. She served as the director of campus ministry at Fordham from 2009 to 2017 and was involved in the group “Not in Our Streets,” which helped bring attention to the issue of sexual assault on city streets. She also had the privilege of leading the first-ever Catholic service and vigil in Central Park after the alleged sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl by a soccer coach.
After the assault, the New York Times published a series of articles about Catholic response to the crime. The Times’ piece, “A Sexual Assault Victim in Central Park, and the Catholic Church,” described the attack as “the most prominent crisis in the Roman Catholic archdiocese in America.” The Times went on to report that the archdiocese was in an uproar and that a priest who allegedly raped the plaintiff was not removed from ministry until an internal investigation was completed.
But in October 2018, a man named Anthony Bologna filed a lawsuit against Walsh, claiming she had violated his rights. Bologna claimed that two and a half years prior to his death, he “had engaged in a sexual relationship” with Walsh. The lawsuit claimed that Walsh and the archdiocese retaliated against him by removing him from the priesthood and allegedly telling his family that he committed suicide because he was gay.
In her defense, Walsh told NBC News that there was no relationship between Bologna and the church. “That’s not what happened,” she said. “I really believe that he was suicidal.
