Priest Who Once Served Cranberry is Sentenced in Child Porn Case

The Rev. Bartley Sorensen served as an assistant priest at St. Ferdinand’s in the 1970s.

A Catholic priest who served at St. Ferdinand’s Church in Cranberry decades ago has been sentenced to more than eight years in prison after pleading guilty to possessing thousands of pornographic images of children on his computer. U.S. District Judge Alan N. Bloch imposed the sentence Wednesday on the Rev. Bartley Sorensen, who was removed from active ministry and placed on administrative leave shortly after his arrest in December 2011. Once his sentence is complete, Sorensen will be under federal supervision for five years. He also was ordered to pay a $25,000 fine. Sorensen, 63, was assigned to Saint John Fisher Parish in Churchill prior to his arrest. According to the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, he also was first Parochial Vicar at…

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Bishop Zubik Blesses New Home for North Catholic at Groundbreaking

A ceremony was held Saturday at the site for the new school.

As he stood before the crowd gathered for the groundbreaking at the site of what will be the new Cardinal Wuerl North Catholic High School in Cranberry, Bishop David Zubik spoke of his own catholic school days. It was the first day of his junior year and Sister Malcolm, a new teacher with the school, furiously wrote on a tablet, ignoring the boisterous students who greeted each other after a summer apart. When the classroom finally quieted, Sister Malcolm looked up from her desk. She told the students they were not children when they entered her room. Her goal was to turn them into adult men and woman—and ones who knew Jesus. That goal remains the same today at North Catholic High School. “What Sister Malcolm shared with us on that first …

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Groundbreaking Ceremony for New North Catholic High to be Held Saturday

Bishop David Zubik is expected to attend the event.

A small groundbreaking ceremony will be held at 12:30 p.m. Saturday for the new Cardinal Wuerl North Catholic High School in Cranberry. The proposed 179,000 square-foot private school is slated to be located along Route 228 on 65 acres near the township’s border with Seven Fields. Bishop David Zubik is expected to attend the ceremony along with representatives the Diocese of Pittsburgh and North Catholic High School. The high school, which will accommodate as many as 1,000 students, is the largest building project that the Diocese of Pittsburgh has undertaken in recent history. In 2010, the diocese announced plans to close the school’s building in Pittsburgh's Troy Hill and move programs to Cranberry in response to population growth and …

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Developers to Detail Plans for New North Catholic High School

Plans for the high school will be presented at the next Cranberry Planning Commission meeting.

Developers are expected to detail land development plans for the new Cardinal Wuerl North Catholic High School in Cranberry at the township’s next planning commission meeting on Monday. The meeting, which will be open for public comment, will be at 6 p.m. at the Cranberry Township Municipal Center on Rochester Road. During a Monday workshop meeting, planning commission members reviewed a rendering for the proposed 179,000 square-foot private school, which will be located along Route 228 on 65 acres near Cranberry’s border with Seven Fields. Besides the building, the plans depicted a new road to be built in the hopes of easing traffic that the school will add to the roads. The yet unnamed roadway would lead from an intersection with …

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Catholic Priest Charged with Child Pornography Once Served Cranberry

Father Bartley Sorensen was an assistant priest at St. Ferdinand Church in the mid-1970s.

The Rev. Bartley Sorensen, the Catholic priest from St. John Fisher Church in Churchill who now is jailed on charges of possession of child pornography, once served a Cranberry parish as assistant priest. According to the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, Sorensen was first Parochial Vicar at St. Ferdinand Catholic Church in Cranberry from Nov. 1, 1976 to June 29, 1981. He was arrested over the weekend after an employee at St. John Fisher saw him in the church rectory viewing a computer image of a young boy naked from the waist down. On the computer screen were the words "Hottie Boys," KDKA reports. Once they learned of the situation, diocesan employees immediately contacted police, according to a statement from the diocese. Sorensen also …

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Day Tripper

Day Tripper: St. Anthony's Chapel

More than 5,000 first-class relics are at the North Side chapel.

One of Pittsburgh’s biggest treasures is fairly unknown. It's more of a treasure chest with thousands of valuables. St. Anthony’s Chapel on Troy Hill on the north side of Pittsburgh is filled with more than 5,000 religious first-class relics. That's more than any private collection in the world except the Vatican. Sister Margaret Liam Glenane, assistant director at St. Anthony's, is a wealth of information about the small chapel. The Rev. Suitbert G. Mollinger of Belgium founded the chapel, she said. “He studied medicine before he was called to be a priest and was asked to come to the United States," she said. "He served in Erie, Latrobe, Brookville, and Wexford. He came to St. Anthony’s on July 4, 1868.” Glenane said Mollinger personally …

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