To many boys in many parishes, serving at the altar has become a “girl thing.” There’s no better time to encourage boys to change their thinking than the Jan. 31 feast of St. John Bosco ...

For a long time James Walsh knew what he wanted to do most. He wanted to be an altar boy, and wear a long cassock, and move about near the altar of St. Michael's Church, in Newark, N. J., ...

The boy was 11 and full of religion, curiosity and hormones. The pastor was 46 and running St. Matthias in Lanham. The pastor gave the altar boy a cushy job in the rectory, answering the phones at … ...

He was abused for years by the family priest - more than 100 times, he charged. But the former altar boy and his family never called police. They never filed a lawsuit or even consulted with a ...

"Father Dowd told him he had to remove his clothes to put the altar boy cassock on. As he was doing that Father Dowd fondled him," Hutchins said. The man says the assault stopped when someone ...

It occurred mainly because I was the dumbest kid to ever become an altar boy. ... Our parish priest came out and started talking to us about the Mass and cassocks and surplices and responsibility.

Altar boys’ cassocks. (iStock) By Bo Smolka. Twelve-year-old Katie spills out of the car, all 4-foot-7 of her, and walks to the side entrance of the imposing Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in ...

"I wanted to become an altar boy because you got out of some school to go rehearse, ... "You're there at 4:30 a.m. You're running down the street, pitch black night, you got your cassock behind you.