Saints Preserve

ROME -- An elderly priest acknowledged Thursday that he was naked in saunas 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, 72, speaking by telephone from his home on the Maltese island of Gozo, said a report in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune about their encounters was "exaggerated."
"We were friends and trusted each other as brothers and loved each other as brothers," Mercieca said. Asked if their relationship was sexual in nature, the priest replied: "It wasn't."

Foley "seems to have interpreted certain things as inappropriate. … I don't know what I did to him," the priest said. "I wonder why 40 years later he brought this up?" (AP)

UPDATE: Or isn't he denying it? (WP)

Related: Priest: I taught MAF54 everything he knows (Wonkette)