Retired New Orleans priest pleads guilty to kidnapping and raping boy in 1970s

Lawrence Hecker, 93, is set to receive a life sentence after admitting to attacking boy in church bell tower

Shortly before a jury was supposed to be chosen for his trial on criminal charges of kidnapping and raping a boy in the mid-1970s, the self-acknowledged serial child molester and retired Roman Catholic priest Lawrence Hecker pleaded guilty on Tuesday morning.

The 93-year-old is scheduled to receive a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment on 18 December in New Orleans's state criminal courthouse, where it has been rare for a Catholic clergyman to be charged - much less convicted - in connection with the church's decades-old clerical molestation scandal.