Catholic priest charged after police find him 'naked and driving drunk'



Fallen friar: The Reverend Peter Petroske was busted after police say they found him drunk and naked while driving around town

A Catholic priest could head from the pulpit to prison after he was discovered drunk driving and naked, police said.



Reverend Peter Petroske, the 57-year-old ex-pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Dearborn, Michigan was subsequently sacked from his post by the Archdiocese of Detroit, and stowed away on administrative leave.

He was banned from the grounds of the parish, as well as its Roman-Catholic school where he formerly tended to his flock.

Reverend Petroske faces misdemeanor counts of operating while intoxicated and disorderly/obscene conduct from the incident last Thursday.

'The archdiocese takes such matters seriously and is cooperating fully with law enforcement,' said a spokesman, according to The Detroit News.



'This is a difficult time for the parish community, and we ask for prayers for all who are impacted.'

Meanwhile, Mr Petroske's name had already been conspicuously wiped away by Wednesday from Sacred Heart's website, which instead listed the recently-retired Rev. Robert Blondell as its now-pastor.

No mention or explanation of the incident appeared there, MailOnline discovered.

The apparently-addled holy man was born in Frankfurt, Germany, and orphaned at a young age, according to a short autobiography The Detroit News previously found on the Sacred Heart website.

Doing God's work: Petroske, 57, reportedly faces misdemeanor counts of operating while intoxicated and disorderly/obscene conduct stemming from the bizarre incident

After his ordination to the cloth in in 1984, Mr Petroske bounced around several Michigan parishes before signing on with the urban Archdiocese of Detroit.



'Eventually some significant changes took place in my family and my own life,' Mr Petroske reportedly wrote.

'As a result, I applied for incardination into the Archdiocese of Detroit in 1991.'



Mr Petroske added in that bio that: 'After having moved to the Archdiocese, I had taken some graduate courses in clinical counseling and psychology.'