In the Toledo, Ohio, the Toledo Blade continues to cover the trial of Fr. Gerald Robinson for the 1980 murder of a nun, Sister Margaret Ann Pahl. Today a Chicago Roman Catholic priest testified that circumstances suggest the killing was a ritualistic murder. Rev. Jeffrey Grob, on the witness stand, pointed out that the murder occurred on Holy Saturday, part of the holiest weekend of the church year. The murder took place in a sacristy where the Holy Eucharist--the presence of God-- is kept between Good Friday and Easter; an altar cloth was used to cover the nun's body, thereby transforming her into an "altar of sacrifice"; and stab wounds over the victim's heart were made in the shape of an inverted cross, a symbol of Satanic worship. Such details, he said, individually may not indicate a ritualistic murder, but in sum represent "a reversal of things sacred that aren't random acts." (See prior postings on the trial 1, 2 .)
In 1980, Father Robinson told the police that another man had admitted to the murder during confession; but then Robinson changed his story. Normally a priest would be excommunicated for revealing anything that was said in a confession, but this has not happened in Robinson's case. Rev. Grob testified, in response to a question, that a church court in deciding whether to excommunicate might take mitigating circumstances into account, such as Father Robinson being under stress because of the police interrogation.
