Father Jose Nickse
Archdiocese of Miami
Ordained: 1973
Dead: 2002
Assignment History:
- 1982-2002: St. Brendan Catholic Church (Miami, FL)
Summary of Sexual Abuse Allegations against Father Jose Pablo Nickse:
Fr. Jose Pablo Nickse was ordained in 1973. Nickse is originally from Cuba and spent approximately 20 years of his career in Florida where he was a popular priest in Miami's Cuban community.
In 2002, Nickse was placed on leave by the Archdiocese of Miami after a lawsuit claimed he and another priest, Father Ricardo Castellanos, abused a 15-year-old boy in 1982 at St. Brendan Catholic Church in Miami, Florida. Additional complaints and/or lawsuits were filed as well with some of them settling in 2004.
The Archdiocese of Miami has not released Nickse's complete assignment history. Nickse was suspended in June 2002 amid allegations that he sexually abused three people, including two altar boys. According to one lawsuit, in the early 1980s, Nickse invited the boy to play racquetball at his club and after the game took him into the jacuzzi. While in the jacuzzi, “Father Nickse took off his clothes and told [the child] it was a rule to be naked in the jacuzzi,” the lawsuit said. When the boy refused, Nickse wrestled with boy to try to force the boy to strip and fondled him in the process. In another incident detailed in the one of the lawsuit, Nickse allegedly fondled the boy in his car on the way home from a funeral. Nickse's other accusers reported that he took them to fancy restaurants and invited them to spend time in the rectory.
Before the allegations were completely investigated, Nickse died of a heart attack at age 55 on Christmas Eve in 2002 while on vacation in the Bahamas with another accused priest. Father Ricardo Castellanos. In a bilingual mass, the Rev. Rafael Fernandez invoked the story of St. Stephen, martyred after being falsely accused.
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