ROME – An elderly priest acknowledged today that he was naked in saunas with Mark Foley decades ago when the former congressman was a boy in Florida, but denied that the two had sex.

The Reverend Anthony Mercieca spoke by telephone from his home on the Maltese island of Gozo. He said a report in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune about their encounters was “exaggerated.”

In Mercieca’s words: “We were friends and trusted each other as brothers and loved each other as brothers.”

His comments came after the Florida newspaper published a story today in which he described several encounters in the 1960s that he said Foley might perceive as sexually inappropriate. Those included massaging the boy in the nude, skinny-dipping together at a secluded lake in Lake Worth and being nude in the same room on overnight trips. [Full Story]

Sarasota Herald-Tribune Executive Editor Mike Connelly said today the story is accurate, including the reference to a night in which Mercieca said he was in a drug-induced stupor due to a nervous breakdown and couldn’t clearly remember what happened.

Mercieca is 69. He now lives in Malta.