A disgraced priest has been defrocked by the Catholic Church after multiple sex scandals and getting tangled up in a murder.
Anthony Cipolle, 59, was booted out of the priesthood on April 22, and is not allowed to call himself a priest or administer sacraments.
He was fired from being the parochial vicar at St Paul the Apostle Parish in Bangor, Maine, in May 2020 and he hadn’t worked as a priest since December 2018.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland said Cipolle was defrocked by his own request, and he said he wanted to move on with his life.
Cipolle had a long history of scandals and brushes with the law even before he was ordained in November 2017, and added to them almost as soon as he was.
Anthony Cipolle, 59, was defrocked by the Catholic Church after multiple sex scandals and getting tangled up in a murder
He was fired from being the parochial vicar at St Paul the Apostle Parish in Bangor, Maine, in May 2020 and he hadn’t worked as a priest since December 2018
The church fired him after the judge of a murder trial gave him a scathing dressing down for ‘inflaming’ the situation that led to a woman’s death.
Then in 2022, the diocese acknowledged former parishioner Melissa Kearns ‘sexually, emotionally and psychologically abused by Cipolle’.
‘He’s still in a position to exploit vulnerable people and neither the Diocese of Portland or the Holy See ever announced that he was no longer a priest,’ Horowitz Law, which represented the woman, told DailyMail.com
‘Sometimes laicized men continue to wear the collar and answer to ‘Father’ even though they’re not supposed to – and that makes people even more vulnerable.’
Cipolle’s long, meandering path to the priesthood was celebrated as a redemption story when he was ordained in front of his 91-year-old mother Louise, who prayed every day for his soul for decades.
Cipolle had a long history of scandals and brushes with the law even before he was ordained in November 2017, and added to them almost as soon as he was
He grew up in Arlington, Massachusetts, and had a shotgun wedding as a teenager when he got his girlfriend pregnant.
They had a son, Mark, and moved to Chicago where he started a successful plumbing business, but the marriage failed and they got divorced.
Cipolle sold the business and ‘lived like a rock star’ for three years on the proceeds of the sale, admitting ‘I blew all the money’, and became a car salesman.
There he met Reverend John Kilmartin, a regular customer who came in to service his car, and they became close friends – bringing him back to the church.
‘One day, I was at a low point in my life, and I wanted to start over. I wanted God’s forgiveness. But I thought, I can’t even remember all my sins. I don’t qualify for this forgiveness thing,’ he told the Portland Press Herald in 2017.
Cipolle had good reason to feel this way, as he had a rap sheet including drug possession, assault, theft, and insurance fraud charges.
He was also charged in New Hampshire in December 1984 with attempted first-degree murder, but the case was dismissed.
Cipolle’s long, meandering path to the priesthood was celebrated as a redemption story when he was ordained (pictured) in front of his 91-year-old mother Louise, who prayed every day for his soul for decades
Cipolle walks up the center aisle of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Portland on November 18, 2017 after being ordained to the priesthood
Then came Renee Henneberry Clark’s murder on July 11, 2018.
Cipolle testified that he met her in 2004 when she was his counselor when he sought substance abuse treatment, and they reconnected in 2018.
He denied a sexual relationship with her, portraying them as ‘best friends,’ but allegedly told another woman they had sex.
Clark was shot 10 times by her brother-in-law Philip Clark, who was jailed for 43 years in 2019 after a trial that prominently featured Cipolle.
The priest gave evidence of how he helped Clark separate from her husband, including moving possessions from her home that included some tools Philip owned.
This enraged Philip, who lived next door to Clark, and led to a fight between him and Cipolle in the street, where Philip spat at him.
‘I think I spat back at him, and I said, ‘Don’t mistake my collar for weakness.’ So then he punched me, and then I defended myself,’ Cipolle told the court.
Two hours later, Philip got a gun and shot Clark dead.
Renee Henneberry Clark was shot 10 times on July 11, 2018, after an alleged affair with Cipolle
Clark was shot dead by her brother-in-law Philip Clark (pictured), who was jailed for 43 years in 2019 after a trial that prominently featured Cipolle
Philip’s defense lawyers tried to lay the blame for Clark’s murder on Cipolle, arguing she would still be alive if he had calmed down the situation.
‘Instead, he waged war. As the trial evidence made clear, Cipolle beat and kicked Philip while he was on the ground, stunning Philip, bloodying him, and breaking his rib,’ they told the court.
‘When the police arrived, Cipolle, though still a priest, decided that he need not confess.’
Superior Court Justice William Stokes agreed, blasting Cipolle’s actions in an address to the court at the end of the trial.
‘The role of Anthony Cipolle in this tragedy, I don’t think can be overstated,’ he told the court.
‘He certainly did not help the situation at all, at least from my point of view. Cipolle clearly inserted himself into this whole situation.’
Stokes said Cipolle, as a priest, had the ‘opportunity and a moral obligation to defuse this situation.’ But instead ‘he inflamed it.’
Cipolle had already been on a voluntary leave of absence from his parish for almost a year, caring for his mother who was dying from cancer.
Just a day after the verdict, the church launched an investigation into the role Cipolle played in the leadup to Clark’s death, that led to his sacking.
‘During the investigation, it was determined that Cipolle abused his position as a member of the clergy, violated the Diocese of Portland’s Code of Ethics, and attempted to deceive investigators,’ the diocese said in 2020.
Cipolle (third from left) poses for a photo with other priests in the sacristy at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Portland after his ordination
After he was fired, another woman, Melissa Kearns, sued the church claiming Cipolle coerced her into an abusive sexual relationship in 2018.
Kearns claimed he told her his personal interpretation of canon law allowed priests to break the vow of celibacy, and asked her to confess to him naked.
He isolated her from family and friends, and said he was the only one who cared about her, she claimed, and she stayed in with him at the rectory.
Kearns also claimed Cipolle told her he had sex with Clark. Cipolle repeatedly denied sexual relationships with either women.
However, texts seen by the Portland Press Herald between Cipolle and Kearns suggested they were in a sexual relationship.
They included him calling her names like ‘babydoll’ and discussing their sexual encounters.
The affair climaxed with one evening when Cipolle came to her home and refused to leave, despite her repeatedly ordering him out, she claimed.
‘It was like two or three o’clock in the morning. He’s really angry, and he’s yelling at me,’ Kearns told the Press Herald last year.
‘He said, “Nobody cares about you. I’m the only one that cares about you. You should kill yourself.” At that point in time, it was the only thing that made sense.’
Another woman, Melissa Kearns, sued the church claiming Cipolle coerced her into an abusive sexual relationship in 2018 (pictured together)
Kearns claimed he told her his personal interpretation of canon law allowed priests to break the vow of celibacy, and asked her to confess to him naked
Kearns took pills and drank a bottle of bourbon and some bleach, and was saved only when paramedics arrived.
The diocese settled her lawsuit in late 2022 and in an email admitted she was ‘sexually, emotionally and psychologically abused by Cipolle.’
‘During the course of the case, Horowitz Law learned of many concerns raised by Cipolle’s superiors in the Diocese of Portland about his lack of boundaries with parishioners and his qualifications for counseling parishioners – even before he was ordained a priest,’ her lawyers wrote on the firm’s website.
‘Despite prior felony arrests, his widely reported role in the Hennebery Clark murder, and his alleged sexual exploitation of Horowitz Law’s client, Cipolle, age 58, was on staff at Vanderbilt University Medical Center as a resident chaplain in the pastoral education department until at least April 2023.’
Cipolle was only removed from Vanderbilt’s website last April after Kearns went public with her story.
Cipolle isolated her from family and friends, and said he was the only one who cared about her, Kearns claimed, and she stayed in with him at the rectory
The diocese settled Kearns’ lawsuit in late 2022 and in an email admitted she was ‘sexually, emotionally and psychologically abused by Cipolle’
The disgraced priest said he only went so long before asking to be defrocked because he wanted compensation from the church for the loss of housing and health insurance.
‘I gave everything up in my life and laid down on the Cathedral floor to give up my life, to live my life as a priest,’ he said last year.
‘And then the church abandoned me… I don’t want to be left standing with no insurance until I can retool and get another job.’
Whether he eventually received anything from the church is unclear.
Cipolle now lives in Tennessee and goes by the name of Anthony Thomas, according to Horowitz Law.
