John Joseph Nevins

John Joseph Nevins (January 19, 1932 – August 26, 2014) was an American prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Miami in Florida from 1979 to 1984 and as the first bishop of the new Diocese of Venice in Florida from 1984 until 2007.

Biography

Early life John Nevins was born on January 19, 1932, in New Rochelle, New York.

Priesthood Nevins was ordained a priest at the National Shire of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. for the Archdiocese of Miami by Bishop John Michael McNamara on June 6, 1959 when he was 27 years old. In November 2005, a St. Petersburg, Florida, man filed a lawsuit against Nevins and the diocese, claiming that he was sexually abused as a minor by Reverend George E. Brennan, a diocesan priest. The plaintiff claimed to have been sodomized in 1984 four times at Incarnation Catholic Church in Sarasota, Florida. The suit claimed that Nevins had covered up the alleged crime.

Retirement and death Pope Benedict XVI accepted Nevin's resignation as bishop of Venice in Florida on January 19, 2007. John Nevins died in Venice on August 26, 2014. The Bishop Nevins Academy in Sarasota, Florida, was named after him.

Viewpoints

Gambling Nevins opposed efforts in 1994 to amend the Florida State Constitution to allow casinos and riverboat gambling, concerned about the potential side effects on people who gambled.

Abortion In a 1992 pastoral letter, "Reverence for God and the Human Person," Nevins condemned abortion rights for women Although Americans "live in a pluralistic society," he said, there are not two standards of morality -- there is only one."