Dale Fushek

Dale Fushek (born 1952) is the leader of the Praise and Worship Center in Chandler, Arizona and the former Vicar General of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix. In 2005 he was charged with 10 criminal misdemeanor counts related to alleged sexual contact with teens and young adults. By February 2010, the charges were adjusted to four counts contributing to the delinquency of a minor and one count of indecent exposure. On April 15, 2010, Fushek agreed to a plea bargain offered by the Maricopa County Attorney's Office in which he pled guilty to one of the charges. The four other charges were dropped and he was fined $250, in addition to being sentenced to 364 days of probation.

On December 15, 2008, the Diocese of Phoenix announced that Fushek had been excommunicated by Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted for establishing the Praise and Worship Center, a community outside the Catholic Church, in defiance of the bishop's order for him to cease ministry.

Fushek was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1952. His family moved to Phoenix, Arizona in the 1960s. After graduating from Phoenix Central High School in 1970, he attended St. John's Seminary in California. In 1978 he was ordained a priest in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix. In 1984 he received his Master of theology/liturgy from the University of Notre Dame.

As a young priest, Fushek was assigned to St. Jerome's Parish in Phoenix. There he began to work toward bringing children and especially teens back into the ministry and founded Active Christian Teens (ACT). ACT sought to expand the ministry to teens and young adults.

In 1983 Fushek was transferred to St. Timothy's Catholic Parish in Mesa, Arizona. There, he was one of three founders of Life Teen, a program similar to ACT at St. Jerome's. The program Fushek developed for teens proved extremely popular and numerous other parishes and dioceses began to develop Life Teen programs of their own. Fushek is no longer involved in Life Teen as of his resignation in 2005.

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