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Reverend Gerald Fitzgerald [October 29, 1894 to June 28, 1969] Born in South Framingham Massachusetts to Michael Edward and Mary Elizabeth Brassil Fitzgerald, he was the second of eight sons. He is buried in Jemez, New Mexico on July 4th, with military honors, in Resurrection Cemetery of the Servants of the Paraclete.

Founder of The Congregation of the Servants of the Paraclete in Jemez Springs, New Mexico in 1947. He began his ministry as a priest in the Archdiocese of Boston and later became a member of the Congregation of Holy Cross. While working as a Holy Cross priest, Father Fitzgerald developed a vision of a religious community whose mission would be to serve the needs of other priests and religious persons experiencing difficulties in their lives and ministry. His vision led him to the mountains of New Mexico where he founded the Congregation that ran retreat centers for troubled priests. Reverend Gerald Fitzgerald warned American bishops in forceful letters dating back to 1952 that pedophiles should be removed from the priesthood because they could not be cured. [[1]]

According to the April 3, 2009 New York Times, Father Fitzgerald made a $5,000 down payment on a Caribbean island where he planned to build an isolated retreat to sequester priests who were sexual predators. His letters show he was driven by a desire to save the church from scandal, and to save laypeople from being victimized. He wrote to dozens of bishops, saying that he had learned through experience that most of the abusers were unrepentant, manipulative and dangerous. He called them “vipers.”

His collected letters and his story were reported in April, 2009 by The National Catholic Reporter, an independent weekly. Father Fitzgerald’s papers were unsealed by a judge in New Mexico in 2007 and are now becoming public in litigation, although some letters were public before now, said Helen Zukin, a lawyer with Kiesel, Boucher & Larson, a firm in Los Angeles. The letters were authenticated in depositions with Father Fitzgerald’s successors.