Father Ryan, the Fake Priest: Charges, Sham Abbeys, and Kunz Claims

The man known as “Father Ryan” is Ryan St. Anne Scott, born Randell Dean Stocks in Richland Center, Wisconsin, in 1953, and the Catholic Church says the fake priest label fits: the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops formally declared in 1996 that he “was not and never has been ordained a priest of the Roman Catholic Church.”¹ For roughly three decades he has drifted across the Midwest under names including Father Ryan, Bishop Ryan Scott, and Brother Damien of St. Anne, opening a succession of “Holy Rosary Abbey” operations, collecting money and property from elderly and traditionalist Catholics, and moving on when suspicion caught up. He has a felony conviction in Wisconsin, has faced seven felony counts in Illinois, and carries a $161,000 civil judgment brought by a former nun.

Who He Really Is

Scott was raised Methodist in northern Illinois. He has acknowledged using at least four names over his lifetime, and investigators have documented as many as 21 aliases, among them Ryan Patrich Scott, Randell Dean, Ryan St. Ann, and Scott Golinger.² He more recently has used the surname Gevelinger.

In the late 1980s he spent fewer than four months at a Franciscan monastery in London, Ontario, never took vows, and left without permission while claiming to be a full-fledged Franciscan brother, according to a director of the order who later identified him as a fraud.³

The Ordination Story He Tells

Scott has said he attended St. Ambrose seminary in Davenport, Iowa, from 1974 to 1976. St. Ambrose University officials found no record of his enrollment. Public records showed he was married under his birth name during those years and did not divorce until 1976; seminary rules of the era barred married men from priestly training.⁴

In 1993 he claimed ordination by the “American Catholic Church,” which he described as a traditionalist group independent of Rome, based in Desert Hot Springs, California. The facility no longer exists. He later asserted that a retired Roman Catholic archbishop in Dubuque, Iowa, validated his ordination three years afterward, which he said made him an official Catholic priest. Church officials countered that the archbishop was living in a retirement home and suffering from Alzheimer’s disease at the time, and has since died.⁵ Legal documents Scott said would prove his ordination were allegedly held by a Wisconsin attorney whose law license was later revoked for professional misconduct.⁴

He was also rejected by the traditionalist networks he tried to claim as his own. Dennis Michael McCormack, who operates a traditional chapel in New York, said: “A network and fraternity exists among us, and he is not part of it.”⁴ The Reformed Catholic Church of America excommunicated him in 1995 for “self-centered attitude and un-priestly conduct,” including allowing drugs and alcohol at his monastery.³

Criminal Record

Before fully committing to the priestly persona, Scott held government finance jobs and defrauded his employers. In the early 1990s, while living in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, he served as finance director for the Ho-Chunk Nation. According to his son, Jonathan Brady, “several million dollars” vanished from the tribe’s financial department during his tenure, and the tribe’s financial building was destroyed by fire. The tribe declined to comment publicly on the allegations.⁶

He next became city finance director in Edgerton, Wisconsin, hired in 1992 on the strength of a résumé filled with fabricated degrees. In 1994 he pleaded guilty to felony misconduct in public office for altering a city check from $30.97 to $300.97 and pocketing the difference. He was sentenced to three years of probation.³ He later violated that probation after police in the La Crosse, Wisconsin, area reported he had verbally threatened the local bishop and falsely claimed to be employed by the Diocese of La Crosse. He served 23 days in jail.⁴

In May 2012, prosecutors in Knox County, Illinois, charged Scott with seven felonies: three counts of financial exploitation of an elderly person, three counts of theft, and one count of deceptive practices. Prosecutors alleged he had deceived an elderly woman into giving him control of her home, furniture, and personal belongings under the guise that the assets would support his abbey. He also allegedly tricked her into signing a loan agreement for more than $129,000 for “abbey operations,” then deposited the funds into his personal account. Scott pleaded not guilty.⁷ The Catholic Diocese of Peoria confirmed at the time that Scott was not an ordained priest and that his abbey was not an approved Benedictine community.²

In Armstrong, Missouri, Scott drew a report from a sheriff’s deputy, retired dentist Russ Harrison, alleging he was financially exploiting one of the nuns in his circle, a woman who had reportedly given him $80,000. Charges were filed and later dropped when the victim refused to testify. Scott did plead guilty in 2015 to a federal charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm and was sentenced to five years of probation.⁸ In 2016, using the surname Gevelinger, he filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Harrison and the Howard County Sheriff’s Department in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri.⁹ The parties settled in 2017 for $92,750.

A Repeating Pattern of Sham Abbeys

Scott’s operations followed a consistent shape: arrive in a new community, establish some version of “Holy Rosary Abbey,” attract elderly and traditionalist Catholics drawn to the Latin Mass, accumulate money and property, then leave when trouble caught up.

Darlington, Wisconsin (1990): attempted to launch a ministry.
Rising Sun, Wisconsin (mid-1990s): opened an abbey and pursued a defamation suit against the La Crosse diocese, which was dismissed in 1999.⁵
Pocahontas, Iowa (2000–2003): operated an abbey in a former nursing home and was chased through Iowa courts by creditors; he was evicted in 2012, abandoning a herd of nineteen llamas.³
Powers Lake, North Dakota (2003–2004): administered the Shrine of Our Lady of the Prairies until a dispute over financial control led to litigation still pending in early 2005.⁵
Galesburg, Illinois (mid-2000s–2012): ran another “Holy Rosary Abbey” out of a converted home for the mentally ill, which became the site of the 2012 felony charges.
Armstrong, Missouri: built an octagonal church he called an abbey, attracting a small circle of nuns and followers before the sheriff’s investigation.⁸

In 2002, at the height of the Catholic sex-abuse scandal, Scott turned up at news conferences in Washington, D.C., and Dallas, positioning himself as a voice on the crisis despite having no standing within the Church.⁵

Claims About the Alfred Kunz Murder

Scott has tied himself to the unsolved 1998 murder of Father Alfred Kunz, a Wisconsin priest killed at his parish in Dane. Scott told investigators and reporters that Kunz shared his traditionalist views and that the two had spoken in 1998. By Scott’s account, he had confided in Kunz about alleged gang rapes by priests at St. John’s Cathedral in Milwaukee during the 1970s, and Kunz was “about to go public” with those details when he was killed.¹

Law enforcement was skeptical. A Dane County sheriff’s detective confirmed that Scott had filed a report about the alleged abuse but said “nothing was established that Father Kunz was threatened by the bishop,” as Scott had alleged. The detective also disputed Scott’s claim that he had been invited to conduct a “walk through” of the crime scene, calling it inconsistent with standard procedure. Church officials, police, and victim support groups looked into Scott’s abuse allegations but could not substantiate them; one investigator described his assertions as “preposterous.”⁵

Allegations From His Son

Scott’s son, Jonathan Brady, born John Stocks in 1972, has made striking allegations about his father. Brady has said Scott sold him to an adoptive family for approximately $150,000 to fund business ventures in Los Angeles, basing the figure on a witness account and on the fact that Scott suddenly had enough capital to open three businesses after the adoption. Brady also alleged that Scott faked a death certificate from the Pima County Health Department in Arizona and mailed it to Brady’s biological mother, presumably to conceal the existence of a child that would have undermined Scott’s claims to the celibate priesthood.⁶ Brady acknowledged he did not have definitive proof of the financial transaction.

How the Catholic Church Has Responded

The Church’s formal response has been unusually direct. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops sent a letter to all American bishops on November 6, 1996, stating that Scott was never ordained a Roman Catholic priest.¹ Dioceses in at least four states, including Peoria, La Crosse, Jefferson City, and St. Louis, issued public warnings. The Archdiocese of St. Louis published a list of his known aliases to help parishes identify him.²

For people who received sacraments from Scott, the consequences are real. Church officials have said that ceremonies performed by someone without valid ordination are not recognized, and some individuals have sought to have baptisms, weddings, or funerals re-administered by an authorized priest, as one church source put it, “just to be safe.”⁴

Where Things Stand Now

Property records indicate that Scott, using the surname Gevelinger, lives in Savanna, Illinois, where he continues to present himself as a priest.⁸ A civil judgment of $161,000 remains against him from a lawsuit brought by a former nun over unpaid loans, and he has left a trail of bankruptcies in Illinois and Iowa.³

1
Catholic.org. Father Kunz Murder Investigation and Ryan P. Scott
2
Bishop-Accountability.org. Ryan St. Anne Scott Faces Seven Felonies in Knox County
3
Riverfront Times. Father Ryan and the Haunted Church
4
Chicago Tribune. Some Call Him Priest, Church Calls Him Fake
5
Bishop-Accountability.org. Some Call Him Priest, Church Calls Him Fake
6
Happy Scribe / Smoke Screen: Fake Priest. Episode 2: Coming Home
7
Galesburg Register-Mail. Self-Proclaimed Priest Ryan Scott Faces Charges
8
Riverfront Times. Podcast Traces Life of Lies That Brought Fake Priest to Missouri
9
GovInfo. Gevelinger-Scott et al v. Russell Harrison et al, Case No. 16-4258