Two Priests Held Up Inside Parish House

Two priests returning from Christmas dinner were robbed at gunpoint inside the parish house of St. Patrick’s Cathedral Wednesday night, the police said Thursday.

The Rev. Brian Brennan of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the Rev. David Thayer, who was visiting from St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore, were returning to the parish house, on 51st Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues, shortly before midnight when two men followed them into the foyer, threatened them with a handgun and robbed them of $175 in cash, said Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the archdiocese of New York.

Neither priest was wearing clerical garb at the time, said Detective Mark Patterson, a police spokesman, and the robbers may not have realized that the men were priests.

But the news that two priests were robbed on Christmas at the seat of the archdiocese angered Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who discussed the crime with John Cardinal O’Connor Thursday morning.

“There can’t be anything worse than somebody that’s going to attack members of the clergy right in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral,” Giuliani said.