Lawyers claim the Diocese of Trenton, New Jersey, should not be held liable for sexual abuse allegedly committed by a priest because he wasn’t officially ‘on duty” when he molested a teenage boy.

Chris Naples claimed Rev. Terence McAlinden, who once headed the diocese’s youth group, sexually abused him during church-sponsored trips to Delaware in the 1980s.

But diocese lawyers told the Delaware Supreme Court that McAlinden was not officially on duty when the abuse took place.

‘You can determine a priest is not on duty when he is molesting a child, for example,” the attorney argued. ‘A priest abusing a child is absolutely contrary to the pursuit of his master’s business, to the work of a diocese.”

That statement left Naples reeling, he told The (Newark) Star-Ledger.

‘Any hope I had that the church was concerned about me as a victim or about the conduct of its priests was totally gone,” Naples said. ‘They were washing their hands of it. I was shattered. I just couldn’t believe that was one of their arguments.”

Delaware courts ruled Naples did not have jurisdiction to sue the diocese in that state because he couldn’t prove the trips were church sanctioned, but he did win a $3 million judgment […]