Ex-Danvers priest is defrocked
former priest at St. Mary of the Annunciation Church in Danvers has voluntarily been removed from the clerical state, the Archdiocese of Boston announced yesterday.
William M. Walsh, 65, now a former reverend, is barred from working in any capacity as a priest except for giving last rites to the dying, officials announced in a press release.
Walsh was assigned to St. Mary of the Annunciation from 1997 until 2004, when he was placed on a leave of absence amid allegations he had sexually abused a child in the early 1970s, a time when he was assigned to Blessed Sacrament Church in Jamaica Plain.