Priest admits he, Foley were naked

ROME – A priest acknowledged Thursday that he was naked in saunas and went skinny-dipping with Mark Foley decades ago when the former congressman was a boy in Florida, but denied that the two had sex.

The Rev. Anthony Mercieca, 69, speaking from his home on the Maltese island of Gozo, made his comments after the Sarasota Herald-Tribune published an interview in which he described several encounters that he said Foley might perceive as sexually inappropriate. Mercieca said the Florida newspaper report was “exaggerated.”

“We were friends and trusted each other as brothers and loved each other as brothers,” Mercieca told the Associated Press in Rome. Asked if their association was sexual, the priest replied: “It wasn’t.”

Among the activities described by Mercieca in the newspaper were massaging the boy in the nude, skinny-dipping together at a secluded lake in Lake Worth, Fla., and being nude in the same room on overnight trips while he was a priest and Foley was a parishioner.

Sarasota Herald-Tribune Executive Editor Mike Connelly said Thursday the story is accurate, including the reference to a night in which Mercieca said he was in a drug-induced stupor because of a nervous breakdown and couldn’t clearly remember what happened.

“The reporter talked to the priest four times yesterday and carefully reviewed his account, especially of the one night,” Connelly said.

Foley, a 52-year-old Florida Republican, resigned from Congress last month after his sexually explicit e-mails to young male pages surfaced.

His lawyer said shortly afterward that Foley was an alcoholic, gay and had been molested as a boy by a “clergyman.”