Group says Mark Francis Ford's work history also has several red flags, including entering a program known for treating pedophilia, though he claimed he was there due to problematic spending.
An Indiana man charged with molesting a disabled child while working as a Roman Catholic priest in New Orleans for several years beginning in 2004 should be listed as a credibly accused clergy abuser by various institutions for whom he ministered, says the director of a church accountability organization.
Mark Francis Ford, once a member of the religious order colloquially known as the Vincentians, ministered within the archdiocese of New Orleans as well as the dioceses of Dallas and Gallup, New Mexico, after his ordination in 1992. He is accused of raping a boy whom he met through a program that he helped start in New Orleans named God's Special Children - which serves youths who are disabled - before and after the Vincentians say Ford successfully asked the Vatican to laicize him, or remove him from the priesthood, in 2007.
Word of Ford's arrest in September in Indiana, where he was working for a hunger-relief non-profit, on a warrant obtained by New Orleans police prompted media and BishopAccountability.org director Terry McKiernan to examine his career history.
McKiernan found that Ford, 64, was not listed among active clergy members in the 1994, 1999, 2002 and 2003 editions of the Official Catholic Directory (OCD) - with such disappearances generally correlating "with problems in ministry that are not being managed in a transparent way, and/or periods during which the priest has been sent to a treatment center".
Only the earliest of those interruptions in ministry was explained in the news media. The Dallas Morning News reported in 1997 that Ford had previously entered a program in Albuquerque, New Mexico, administered by the Servants of the Paraclete. The provided reason was a problem with managing money, though that particular program is better known for treating a range of other issues, from substance abuse to pedophilia.
McKiernan said his organization was "skeptical that this was the real reason that Ford was with the Servants of the Paraclete, whose mission in the early 1990s mostly involved priests who had abused children".
"Until documents are released that prove otherwise, we can only conclude that the problems revealed in Ford's recent arrest and in the charges against him are also reflected in his ... earlier disappearances from the OCD," McKiernan said.
Therefore, based on the finding of probable cause linked to the warrant leading to Ford's arrest, McKiernan said it would be "a prudent measure" to add Ford to the lists of credibly accused clergymen previously released by the Vincentians as well as the three dioceses for which he worked.
Those lists were among ones released by more than 200 other US dioceses and religious order chapters as a gesture of transparency amid the worldwide Catholic church's decades-old clergy molestation scandal. They "inform the public, and in particular ... notify survivors that other survivors may have come forward with credible allegations".
"When a bishop or superior confirms the credible status of an allegation, survivors find validation and consolation, and when a priest is still alive, children are protected," McKiernan said. "We call on the three dioceses and his religious order to add Ford to their lists and provide a full accounting of his whereabouts and activities, especially during the years when the OCD was not disclosing that information."
A statement from a spokesperson for the US chapter of the Vincentians to which Ford belonged said individuals went on their institution's list "when an accusation is deemed credible".
A spokesperson for the diocese of Gallup, whose boundaries include a part of Arizona, said it was working on a statement and would provide it to the Guardian once it was ready. Neither the Dallas diocese or the New Orleans archdiocese - which along with its insurers was preparing to pay at least $230m to settle hundreds of clergy sexual abuse claims - responded to requests for comment.
The most complete picture of Ford's whereabouts during his time as a priest are largely contained in a work history that McKiernan compiled and provided to the Guardian - as well as contemporaneous news clippings.
Citing information from the OCD, Ford was first assigned to the Dallas diocese's Holy Trinity church, which was adjacent to a school with nearly 170 students. The school also counted more than 420 students enrolled in its catechesis and other religious programs.
He disappeared from the 1994 OCD before spending 1995-1998 and 2000-2001 at the diocese of Gallup. Ford spent the first of those stretches assigned to both the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the St Jude churches in the Arizona communities of Page and Tuba City. After his 1999 disappearance from the OCD, he was assigned only to the Page church, which reported between 110 and 135 students in its catechesis and other religious programs during his two stretches there.
Ford then vanished from the 2002 and 2003 OCDs before turning up in New Orleans from 2004 to 2006 at the St John the Baptist and the St Joseph churches, respectively in that community’s Central City and Tulane-Gravier neighborhoods.
He is also listed at the St Stephen church in New Orleans’ Touro neighborhood in 2005 and 2006 before his voluntary laicization. Another Vincentian priest assigned to St Stephen at the time, the late James Steinbach, would later land on the order’s credibly accused list.
Media articles, including some quoting Ford, and various online biographical profiles add contours to that portrait. A 1997 profile of Ford in the Dallas Morning News quoted him as saying he was part Navajo, Chiricahua Apache and Zuni - while also acknowledging he spent seven months at a Servants of the Paraclete treatment center in Albuquerque. Ford claimed he needed to go there because he was a "compulsive spender, debtor and money mismanager" who depleted the financial accounts of both the Tuba City and Page churches, as the Gallup Independent newspaper recently reported.
Asked whether it would confirm or deny whether Ford’s spending was the only reason he went to the Servants of the Paraclete, the spokesperson for the Vincentians said the order does not comment on personnel matters.
Ford later claimed in an online biography of him associated with a role at the American Indian Center that he ministered on Navajo and Hopi reservations while in Arizona.
In any event, once in New Orleans, Ford made headlines for having a hand in launching God's Special Children at St Joseph alongside Jay Zainey, a judge, at the city's federal courthouse.
A 2005 article in the local Times-Picayune newspaper recounted how Zainey met Ford while attending mass at St John the Baptist. "In talking to Ford about his son,... who has autism as well as a rare chromosomal abnormality, Zainey said there was no Mass that his wife and their two other children... felt they could attend with [the son] without disturbing other worshippers," the publication wrote.
Ford at the time reportedly told the newspaper that he "recognized the Zaineys’ frustration, often shared by other parents with children with disabilities". After meeting the Zaineys’ son, Ford discerned “a calling to serve those like [him]”.
“I realized that children with disabilities are incredible gifts to the church,” Ford said to the Times-Picayune. He then celebrated the first God's Special Children service in the fall of 2004.
Zainey over the years has earned a reputation as one of the most pious Catholics in Louisiana’s most famous city. At one point, he publicly said it was his idea for New Orleans’ archbishop, Gregory Aymond, to turn to high-ranking executives of the city’s professional football team, the Saints, for help with media messaging concerning the local clergy abuse scandal. He also issued a ruling in favor of a Catholic religious order pushing to strike down a 2021 Louisiana law enabling clergy-abuse survivors to seek damages over decades-old child molestation. Yet the state’s supreme court later upheld the law, in effect negating Zainey’s ruling.
The website for God's Special Children now lists Zainey as the program’s founder, though as of Sunday a message attributed to him expressed gratitude for Ford’s support. Asked whether he would discuss Ford, Zainey declined, saying: “I haven’t seen him in many years.”
Ford’s American Indian Center biography says he became the Louisiana state government’s assistant director of disability affairs in 2006, the year after federal levee failures during Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans.
He attributed being appointed to the job by then governor Kathleen Blanco, saying the Democrat’s administration tasked him with helping people with disabilities access resources and services after Katrina.
Ford’s biography said the late Blanco’s Republican gubernatorial successor, Bobby Jindal, then appointed him to direct Louisiana’s office of Indian affairs, where his job was to assist efforts by the state’s Native tribes to recover from Hurricanes Gustav and Ike in 2008.
He was then reported to have joined the US hunger relief non-profit Feeding America in 2021, with positions in Phoenix and Chicago. And the resident of Portage, Indiana, was listed as a board member of the American Indiana Center , as the Gallup Independent noted .
In November , a man who described meeting him at age 10 in 2004 through God's Special Children reported to New Orleans police that he had been sexually molested by Ford . The accuser - who is now 31 and lives with a degenerative spinal cord condition which occasionally requires him to get around in a wheelchair - underwent a series of forensic interviews before police then obtained a warrant to arrest Ford , said an attorney who represents him , Kristi Schubert .
Schubert also said her client’s family had considered Ford a close friend at one point . The accuser is on the autism spectrum and has been legally determined to be a minor despite reaching the age of majority , leaving him under his mother’s permanent , lifelong guardianship , Schubert said .
Records obtained by the Guardian show New Orleans police obtained a local judge’s permission to arrest Ford on 9 September on charges of first-degree rape , second-degree kidnapping , sexual battery and indecent behavior with a juvenile . Documents give the dates of the offenses as 1 November 2004 to 31 December 2014 , and Ford would be subject to mandatory life imprisonment if eventually convicted as accused .
Authorities then arrested Ford in Portage on 25 September , holding him without bail pending his transfer to New Orleans . Ford waived his right to challenge that transfer at a 1 October court hearing , but he remained in a jail in the Portage area as of Sunday .
Schubert and her client’s family largely declined to comment after Ford’s arrest , saying they didn’t want to interfere with the criminal case against him . But she did share that her client for years had endured nightmares and fits of waking up screaming .
His first night of uninterrupted sleep in recent memory came immediately after he learned Ford had been brought into custody by authorities aiming to hold him accountable , according to Schubert .