On February 18, 1916, a Catholic priest was executed by the state of New York at the Sing Sing prison -- the only priest in America to receive the death penalty for a crime. The New York Daily News today did a look back at the story from a century ago.
Father Hans Schmidt was convicted of murder, following an affair he had with a woman. Before he killed her, he also paid for their baby to be aborted.
What was especially interesting was this passage from today's article:
"...Schmidt, a 1907 Bavarian emigre, was a square peg who refused to conform to Catholicism's meticulously rounded holes. He altered the church's ritual prayers to suit his eccentricities, and his ceremonies often were a mess of scriptural error."
No further comment is needed.
