Disabled Texas nun booted from monastery for sexting with priest — but denies breaking vow of chastity
She put a mister before her sisters.
A disabled Texas nun was booted from her monastery for breaking her vow of chastity, but while she admits sexting with a priest, she maintains they were never physically intimate.
Rev. Mother Superior Teresa Agnes Gerlach, 43, — who uses a wheelchair and feeding tube — allegedly broke her vow of chastity at the monastery she ran in Arlington, Fort Worth Catholic Diocese lawyers alleged at a court hearing Tuesday.
“I made a horrible, horrible mistake,” Gerlach said in a recording played in court, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
“I was not in my right mind,” she told Fort Worth Bishop Michael Olson as he pressed her about the fling. “Even a nun can fall.”
Gerlach was ousted from the Carmelite Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity on June. 1 after an investigation found she’d had a fling with Father Bernard Marie of Montana.
The boss nun is now suing the bishop and the diocese of Fort Worth for $1 million, accusing Olson of invading her privacy, seizing her electronics and defaming her.
She says church leaders overstepped by claiming she broke her vow as she had never been physically intimate with the priest, and they had read too much into a statement she had made about her period being late one month.
Gerlach also said she’s no twisted sister — insisting she had fallen in love with the priest and suffered from seizures that caused a lapse in her judgment.
In audio played in court, Gerlach admitted to getting frisky over the phone and via video chat, but said she had never met the man in question in person, according to the Fort Worth paper.
“Bishop, I need to tell you something. I don’t know how to explain this, but this did not happen in person. At all. It was all over the phone,” she confessed.
“I promise you, Bishop. At the time, I was having seizures, and I was really in a very difficult position. and I think my brain just got really messed up,” she said.
Gerlach also claims she had just undergone a surgical procedure and was heavily medicated when Olson interrogated her and made the recording, according to an affidavit.
Olson also said the investigation uncovered photos, shot by a janitor, allegedly revealing marijuana products being used inside the monastery — although there is no evidence Gerlach had been using them.
A judge called the hearing to determine whether the Catholic sex scandal will stay in civil court or be left to the Vatican, already conducting its own investigation, according to the Dallas Morning News.
During her conversation with Olson, Gerlach also reluctantly gave up the name of her priestly paramour as Father Bernard Marie.
Marie, who is also known as Father Philip Johnson, was “granted leave” from the Diocese of Raleigh in North Carolina and later joined the Transalpine Redemptorist Monastery in Montana in 2022, church leaders told the Star-Telegram.
Johnson is “not currently exercising” public ministry, the Diocese of Raleigh said Wednesday.
“[His] priestly faculties were restricted…as a precautionary measure until more clarity regarding his status can be ascertained,” the statement said.
District Court Judge Don Cosby said he did not expect to make a decision this week on whether the case will stay in civil court.
Meanwhile, a prominent Fort Worth socialite, whose family donated the land the monastery land to the nuns, claims the church is really after the property
“This is nothing but a ploy to get rid of Mother Teresa and close the monastery,” Sheila Johnson told the Fort Worth Business Press. “He wants the property.”
The 72-acre monastery was paid for by Johnson’s mother, a well-known Texas philanthropist, Johnson said, challenging the bishop.
