The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s office has dropped criminal charges against Maxi Paulus Ratunuman, a 44-year-old man arrested a month ago in an incident he says was instigated by former Roman Catholic priest Alberto Cutié and his bride, Ruhama Buni Canellis.

But Ratunuman, a native of Indonesia, still faces deportation proceedings. Ratunuman has been kept on an immigration hold at the Metro West Detention Center since June 6, when Biscayne Park police arrested him on charges of trespassing and having an expired driver’s license.

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Alberto Cutié walked away from a picturesque Spanish monastery Friday evening as a married man, attempting to leave behind seven weeks of controversy that turned the former Roman Catholic priest into tabloid fodder and international celebrity.

In an hourlong, private ceremony, Cutié, 40, said “I do” to the woman he has dated for two years, 35-year-old Ruhama Buni Canellis, at the historic St. Bernard de Clairvaux Episcopal Church in North Miami Beach.

The Rt. Rev. Leo Frade, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Southeast Florida, officiated at the wedding which featured a traditional Episcopal Mass and homily.

A handful of private guards and several North Miami Beach police cruisers were on watch at the church gate as about 50 guests, including Episcopal church priests, the couple’s families and friends, were ushered in.

Clad in a white dress, Canellis arrived at 7 p.m. in a black stretch limo with tinted windows. Bridesmaids in dark red dresses sat by her side.
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A man who says he is the ex-boyfriend of Ruhama Buni Canellis, the newlywed wife of former priest Alberto Cutié, is suing the couple and the Biscayne Park Police Department.

In a lawsuit filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court, Maxi Paulus Ratunuman, 44, says Biscayne Park police arrested him without cause on June 6 while he was installing floor tiles in a customer’s house on Griffing Boulevard in Biscayne Park. The reason: Ratunuman, who the lawsuit says lived with Canellis in the Biscayne Park area for three years and helped raise her teenage son, had information “that would bode badly” for her and Cutié, who wanted to get him out of the picture.

County records show that Biscayne Park police Officer Antonio Sanchez, named in the suit along with Officer Raimundo Atesiano, arrested Ratunuman on trespassing charges.

Ratunuman, a native of Indonesia, is being held at the Metro West Detention Center on an immigration hold. He also faces charges of driving with an expired license. He goes to trial July 15.

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Alberto Cutié walked away from a Coral Gables court early Tuesday morning, marriage license in-hand, according to a record posted on Miami-Dade County Clerk of Courts website that lists 35-year-old Ruhama Buni Canellis as the bride.

The couple was legally married by a judge, but sources say they still will have religious ceremony within the next week in an unnamed Episcopal church. The Rt. Rev. Leo Frade, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Southeast Florida, will officiate that wedding.

Not on the church list: Miami’s Trinity Cathedral, the diocese’s flagship church and one that dozens of international reporters flooded after the former Roman Catholic priest and Canellis switched Christian denominations on May 28.

Cutié gave his first sermon as an Episcopalian on May 31 at Church of the Resurrection in Biscayne Park and has started a yearlong process to become an Episcopal priest. In the meantime, he will continue to give sermons and rehabilitate ailing Episcopal churches, including Church of the Holy Comforter in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood.

Cutié left his position at St. Francis de Sales Catholic church in Miami Beach when photographs showing him nuzzling Canellis on a Florida beach — a violation of his vow of celibacy — were published in a celebrity magazine in early May.

BY JAWEED KALEEM

As if the Father Alberto Cutié saga weren’t enough of a telenovela, the priest has offered an only-in-Miami twist.

In an interview taped Friday and aired Tuesday night on Univisión’s Aqui y Ahora, Cutié – whose fate with the Catholic church remained up in the air Wednesday – intimated it may have been Cuban spies who followed him and taped him getting frisky with his lover on a beach in Miami.

“I knew that during some time I was being followed,” Cutié said. ‘I think that being Cuban American, we have that paranoia that perhaps it could be someone from another government, from another place … I had experiences at Radio Paz of seeing strange cars when I would leave work late or arrive early. I would see things and I would say, ‘I wonder who would be following me?””

But that didn’t stop him from his moment of fun in the sun with his girlfriend of more than two years, whom Cutié still has not named directly but who has been identified in media reports as Ruhama Buni Canellis, 35, a divorced mother living in South Beach. Read the full story

A popular Miami priest and media personality said Monday he is thinking about leaving the Roman Catholic Church for a woman he loves after a magazine ran pictures of the couple kissing and hugging.

Rev. Alberto Cutie (KOO’-tee-ay) told the CBS “Early Show” on Monday he supports the church’s stand that priests should be celibate and said he does not want to become the “anti-celibacy priest.”

“I think it’s a debate that’s going on in our society, and now I’ve become kind of a poster boy for it. But I don’t want to be that. I believe that celibacy is good, and that it’s a good commitment to God,” Cutie said.

Cutie was removed last week as head of the Miami archdiocese’s international radio network and as head of his parish after the Spanish-language magazine TVnotas ran photos of Cutie embracing a woman at a bar and at a beach.

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