Police Probing Holy Cross Founders’ Past
The founder of Holy Cross Academy – where a nun was recently murdered – once operated a ramshackle monastery in Palm Beach County that was abruptly closed by church officials, records show.
Miami-Dade homicide detectives plan to visit the now-defunct Monastery of the Three Holy Hierarchs to try to learn more about Father Abbot Gregory Wendt, sources close to the investigation said.
Wendt is now the head of Holy Cross. A novice monk allegedly stabbed Sister Michelle Lewis to death there last month.
The murder suspect, 18-year-old Mykhaylo Kofel, has told detectives Wendt and another priest molested him on occasion since he came from the Ukraine four years ago for monastic training.
Both Wendt and Father Damian Gibault have adamantly denied the accusations through their attorneys.
But investigators want to know more about their pasts – including Wendt’s small monastery west of Lantana.
In the early 1980s, Wendt and a handful of his monks raised goats and tended bees on the secluded 43-acre property owned by Holy Apostles Byzantine Catholic Church. The monks were described as seminarians by church trustee William Magella, and ”European fellas” by church member George Brodi.
The collection of decrepit trailers where they lived at the back of the property grew so filthy that it caused a rift with Holy Apostles parishioners, a church history book says.
”The parish had developed a strong aversion to any relationship with the monastery and refused to go on to the property, due mainly to a lack of sanitary facilities, maintained and paved roads, and the general shabbiness and deterioration of the [place],” the book, written by church officials, says.
It concludes: ”Father Wendt was the only monk who was left, and his health was deteriorating rapidly, and in October he was relieved of his duties.”
Those involved with the church at the time remember being gathered and told by church officials that Wendt’s monastery was being closed.
”The reason they gave was that Father Wendt and the others, due to illness, were unable to continue with the property,” recalled Brodi, 79. ”They weren’t exactly open with what their problems were, but we could tell there was something troubling them.”
Church officials did not return calls for comment. Holy Apostles still has a church, shrine and recreation center on the property and its parish consists of a number of Ukrainian, Hungarian and Slavic members.
Wendt’s monastery officially closed in 1981, state records show. At that time, Gibault was attending nearby St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary in Boynton Beach, but left in 1981 without being ordained, according to seminary officials.
A year later, the pair started another Byzantine Catholic monastery in a house in southwest Dade. And then in the mid-1980s, they founded Holy Cross at 12425 Sunset Dr.
Detectives’ interest in Wendt and Gibault comes as prosecutors questioned three Ukrainian novice monks Tuesday about whether they were ever sexually abused at Holy Cross.
Lawyers for the students tried to block the subpoenas, but a judge ordered them earlier Tuesday to cooperate with the murder investigation.
What the aspiring monks told prosecutors was not known.
But at a hearing earlier in the day, Assistant State Attorney Gail Levine told Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Manuel Crespo that she needed to question the monastic candidates about ”explosive information” Kofel gave detectives.
Levine also blasted lawyers retained by the academy’s insurance company, accusing them in open court of thwarting her attempts to investigate the murder – and Kofel’s claims of sexual abuse – by blocking access to school personnel.