Archdiocese tells pastor at heart of lawsuit to resign

The Archdiocese of New York ordered a prominent monsignor to resign as pastor of an Upper East Side parish in Manhattan after it discovered evidence that he may have misappropriated hundreds of thousands of dollars in parish funds, a spokesman said yesterday.

The archdiocese began investigating the priest, Msgr. John G. Woolsey, after receiving a complaint about him last fall, said the spokesman, Joseph Zwilling. The family friend of an elderly parishioner accused Monsignor Woolsey of wheedling nearly a half-million dollars from the parishioner before she died and of dipping into donations she had made to the parish.

Once the investigation started, “It got deeper and deeper,” Mr. Zwilling said.