SEDAMSVILLE, Ohio — A religious community for ex-inmates set to open later this year in Sedamsville could place potentially violent offenders or sex offenders in a house with a Catholic priest or monk.
The Serenelli Project has been working for more than three years to bring a monastic prison reentry program to one of the city’s smallest and most neglected neighborhoods. Project leaders are planning a grand opening for their first house in June.
“The spiritual purpose of the community is the atonement for sins. The worst sins that you can imagine. The ones that you see on the news that make you cringe and that are very uncomfortable,” said Serenelli Project executive director Marty Arlinghaus, who is also the director of prison ministry for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati.
The project is named after an Italian farmer, Alessandro Serenelli, who stabbed an 11-year-old girl to death after he tried to rape her in 1902. The Vatican later named the child, Maria Goretti, a saint after she appeared in a vision to her killer while he was in prison, forgiving him and transforming his life.
After his release, Serenelli is believed to have lived at a monastery as a lay brother answering the door and working as a gardener. It's a story that Arlinghaus wants to replicate in Sedamsville.
“A traditional halfway house is completely transitional … what we’re going for is permanence and stability,” Arlinghaus said. “We want them invested in truly living in this neighborhood and not just trying to pass through it.”
This monastic model of prison reentry may be the first of its kind in the nation, Arlinghaus said.
But it isn’t without critics.
“If I lived in that community, I would most certainly be voicing my concerns, if only to ensure the public’s safety,” said Rebecca Surendorff, co-chair of Ohioans for Child Protection. “If (the Archdiocese of Cincinnati) cannot monitor what is happening in their own seminary, then how are they going to adequately monitor a village they hope to create of former offenders?”
Surendorff is referring to the February arrest of former seminarian Broderick Witt on child pornography charges. He used the IP address of the Mount St. Mary's Seminary in Cincinnati to repeatedly upload videos of naked children being sexually abused, according to police and court records.
The Serenelli Project is its own nonprofit, a separate entity from the Archdiocese of Cincinnati.
“The archbishop has oversight in terms of us being a Catholic ministry. Other than that, we operate as a 501c3 with our own governance. We have our own board, our own volunteer corps, and our own staff,” Arlinghaus said. “The archdiocese doesn’t fund anything, it’s all our own donors.”
But the reentry program has many ties to the archdiocese.
Serenelli leaders have been seeking donations at some West Side Catholic churches. One local priest serves on the project’s board of directors. And Archbishop Dennis Schnurr blessed the new chapel inside the Serenelli Project’s first home at a ceremony last year.
To Surendorff, that blessing by Schnurr, “has put very much a stamp of approval on this endeavor.”
A spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati declined to comment.
“Our community is expecting in the near term the release of Father Geoff Drew who was convicted of nine counts of child rape. Could he possibly be a future resident of this community?” Surendorff asked. “Would minors be given access to this space? … Who is going to be monitoring all of this?”
Drew, a former Cincinnati priest who pleaded guilty in 2021 to raping a 10-year-old altar boy, is set to be released from prison in August 2026, according to state records.
No one has been chosen yet to live in the Serenelli Project’s first house, Arlinghaus said.
Applicants must be practicing Catholics who are “willing to live a monastic life — which is prayer and work all day, every day,” and undergo a rigid screening, application and interview process, Arlinghaus said.
He will not exclude violent or sex offenders from the program, he said.
“Our Lord came not to save only some, or to save the righteous, he came to save sinners. We’re here for anyone who wants to live that life of repentance and to follow Jesus,” Arlinghaus said. “We don’t discriminate from someone just for their crime.”
Arlinghaus said he is actively looking for someone to live in the house with two former inmates. He’s called several monasteries and religious orders but so far has not found anyone.
When asked if a local practicing priest would be considered, Arlinghaus said, “No we’re not looking for anyone from the archdiocese.”
“There’s only two rooms for two residents, so it’s a house of three,” Arlinghaus said. “After that, we’ll see where the Lord takes us whether he gives us another property or we just turn that little community into something beautiful right there until such a time when we get something else.”
The key to expanding the Serenelli Project lies one street away on Steiner Avenue, where a former Catholic Church has been abandoned for decades. Arlinghaus hopes to buy Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church and rectory, restoring both buildings while teaching trade skills to former inmates.
But that dream is stalled.
In 2022 The Port acquired 62 parcels in Sedamsville after the former owner John Klosterman was jailed for property code violations and a receiver took control.
The Port has so far declined to sell the historic church and rectory to the Serenelli Project, and other interested parties who offered to buy them, according to a spokesperson.
“The church and rectory are important parcels to the neighborhood, so we will be very deliberate in our planning,” Port spokesperson Tom Millikin said. “At this time, we are in the early strategic planning stage for this portfolio, which includes evaluating results of a Sedamsville housing study fielded by the city and its partner, Homebase.”
Built by German immigrants in the 1800s, Sedamsville is the birthplace of baseball legend Pete Rose. The neighborhood has been diminished over time by floods, highway improvements and bad landlords.
“The neighborhood has seen very little investment in the last 50 years and now needs a strategy to reimagine its land use and take advantage of the amount of property being held by the Port,” according to the Sedamsville housing study done by Urban Partners in Philadelphia.
The study highlighted several future options for the church and rectory including a community athletics center, wedding venue, entrepreneurial hub, or ballroom catering and events center.
But many here want Sedamsville residents to prosper from the neighborhood's revitalization, instead of out-of-town investors and visitors.
“It’s important to me that the church and the rectory go to someone or some organization, that is going to help benefit the people in the community,” said Herb Kohls, manager of Firehouse Nursery and secretary of the Sedamsville Civic Association. “I don’t want it just to collect revenue, I want it to benefit the community.”
Many Sedamsville residents support the Serenelli Project because its leaders have been so involved in the community and regularly attend civic association meetings.
“If the Serenelli Project does get the church, I think that I would be happy,” said Kohls, who also admitted to having concerns about the potential criminal backgrounds of program participants. “The hesitation is — what does that look like? I wish that I could say everything is going to work out great for the Serenelli Project … but we just don’t know yet.”
Sedamsville Civic Association president Cindy Bastin and vice-president Dawn Sheaf, both said they want The Port to sell the church to the Serenelli Project so it can be reopened to the community.
“We’re going to be doing letter writing to (city) council. We do not want an event center here. This is not the neighborhood for that,” Bastin said. “We’ve already got the drugs and we’ve already got the homeless people, we don’t need more drinking and carrying on down here.”
WCPO asked Bastin and Sheaf if they had concerns about former inmates joining the Serenelli Project who may have histories that include violence and sex crimes.
“That’s something we discussed with Marty. He said he will not bring child molesters or sex offenders into this neighborhood. He’s already said no to that,” Sheaf said. “It makes me feel better when I have two teenage daughters that would like to take walks in the neighborhood.”
But Arlinghaus told WCPO that he would consider all types of offenders. The Serenelli Project’s website states that it is “a community for atonement for the worst sins, for the worst sinners.”
“I’ll reiterate what I said to you and what I said to them. It’s not the crime that determines whether someone can enter the Serenelli Project. We discern the person,” Arlinghaus said. “Hopefully you’d be able to see someone and not say — ‘Oh that’s a sex offender and I know what he did in the past.’ Instead, they can say, ‘Look at what a good neighbor he is … and he’s living this simple peaceful life with this community.’”
This worried Surendorff, who questioned how these types of former criminals would be monitored.
“Priests in all likelihood will not have the professional background in rehabilitation work,” Surendorff said. “And because they are clerics, here in Ohio we have murky mandated reporting requirements (for suspected child abuse and neglect) around them.”
She said she would feel better about the program if it only housed nonviolent offenders.
“We wouldn’t want anyone harmed because of inexperience or failure to mandate report or not recognize the significance of what is occurring under their own roof,” Surendorff said.
But Sheaf said she already lives near a traditional halfway house, and expects the Serenelli Project to be very different and much better.
"I live where there is a halfway house ... These people are not monitored 24-7," Sheaf said. "With Serenelli, they’re bringing them in but they’re going to be monitored 24-7. They’re not just going to be left to do what their free will is around the neighborhood."
In addition to work and prayer, Serenelli residents will attend the Catholic in Recovery program and the Bridges to Life restorative justice course, Arlinghaus said.
“We’re going to be hiring more staff before the end of the year so that we have requisite staff to be able to run our house plus all of the other networks that we have with psychological services, with drug addiction recovery services. The programs that we run are going to be mandatory for our residents to participate in.”
In addition to its first house, which is nearly finished with renovation, the Serenelli Project owns three nearby parcels where they want to create community gardens, a farmer’s market and possibly a small café.
“We voted as a unit that we would back Marty on whatever he wanted to do,” Bastin said. “He’s been open and honest about what he wants to do here in the community. And I believe in giving people second chances … every person that I’ve met from that organization has been outstanding.”
A Port spokesperson said they are in the very early stages of evaluating the housing study and will be working with the Sedamsville Civic Association, Homebase and the city’s Department of Community and Economic Development.
“No decisions have been made about the church, rectory, or any of the other parcels in the Sedamsville portfolio because it’s too premature,” Millikin said. “And, no decision will be made without broad and multiple rounds of input from the various stakeholder groups.”
Meanwhile, Arlinghaus plans to move forward with the Serenelli Project even if it can’t purchase the abandoned church.
“So church or no church, Serenelli is here. We’ve got the one house and if all we ever have is three people live here, and live a beautiful, holy life that brings other people to experience that, then we’re perfectly fine with that,” Arlinghaus said.
But Surendorff still has deep concerns.
“The public perception of naming this after a child murderer in and of itself is problematic,” Surendorff said.
