Abuse Tracker

MARYLAND
Examiner

Filed under: BALTIMORE , Jaime Malarkey , Statute of Limitations

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - Facing staunch opposition from the Catholic Church, Del. Eric Bromwell withdrew a bill this week that would have suspended time limits for sex-abuse victims to file lawsuits against their alleged molesters.

Under existing law, civil suits for child sex-abuse claims must be filed by the victim’s 25th birthday. Bromwell’s bill — which was co-sponsored by five other lawmakers — would have opened 2009 to lawsuits, regardless of the victim’s age. After 2009, the statute of limitations would extend until the victim’s 50th birthday.

Bromwell initially proposed the bill to help victims who are often not ready to come forward until decades after their abuse. He said Wednesday he would give “serious consideration” to sponsoring it during the next General Assembly session. It is the second year in a row that the bill died.

UNITED KINGDOM
This is Lancashire

By Terry Morgan

A PRIEST accused of abusing young boys in Bury has been cleared of all charges.

John McCollough was found "not guilty" this afternoon (Friday Feb 29) at Bolton Crown Court of 11 indecent assaults and one act of gross indecency against a child.

The jury of seven men and five women was out from 10.30am to 3.45pm today, and returned not guilty verdicts.

Mr McCollough told the Bury Times: "I am extremely relieved. At the end of the film US Marshal, Wesley Snipes was asked the same question "how do you feel?", and his response was "righteous"."

UNITED KINGDOM
Chester Evening Leader

A priest has been cleared of the sexual abuse of two boys in Bury.

Father John McCollough, 63, had been accused of preying on the youngsters while a minister at Holy Trinity Church in the 1990s.

But after a two week trial at Bolton Crown Court he was found not guilty of 11 counts of indecent assault and one charge of gross indecency.

Both youngsters, now adults, claimed he had abused them by touching them sexually on numerous occassions.

In the Vineyard

Carolyn Disco, VOTF NH

Many obituaries for Legion of Christ founder Father Marcial Maciel, who died January 30, 2008, noted the sexual abuse charges against the priest by eight former seminarians in the 1940s and 1950s; his restriction to a life of penance by Pope Benedict XVI in 2006; and the suspension of the canonical case against him due to age. None went into much detail about the survivors, whose stories deserve recognition on the occasion of Maciel’s passing.

The church never adjudicated the sexual molestation charges, leaving those survivors in limbo. Who are they? They include a Mexico City university professor with a doctorate from Harvard; a faculty member at the US Defense Languages Institute in Monterey, CA; a retired priest in Madrid; a professor of psychology and sociology in Westchester County, New York; and also in Mexico, a lawyer, rancher, former university president, and private school professor.

All wanted to forget what happened and get on with their lives after leaving the Legion. It took many decades of chance encounters for them to find each other, gradually share their abuse histories, and only as Maciel continued gallingly to reap high praise from Pope John Paul II did they finally galvanize and file a canon law case in Rome. None wanted money; they only wanted justice, racked as they were by horrific memories, and fear for other victims after them. How many might there be? To date, John Allen, the veteran journalist at the National Catholic Reporter, reports Vatican sources cite “more than 20 but less than 100” victims.

MONTGOMERY COUNTY (NY)
Press & Sun-Bulletin

By Eric Reinagel
ereinagel@pressconnects.com
Press & Sun-Bulletin

A former Vestal priest posted bail Thursday at Montgomery County Jail after being charged with inappropriate sexual conduct with at least four children ages 5 to 11.

The Rev. John W. Broderick, 47, of Nicholville, was charged with three counts of sexual abuse in the first degree, one count of sexual abuse in the second degree, both felonies, and four counts of endangering the welfare of a child, misdemeanor, according to State Police Investigator Paul Cituk.

The charged stem from a complaint that State Police received from a Montgomery County family. The parents called Broderick their “spiritual advisor” and stated that Broderick befriended the family, according to Cituk. Cituk said over the course of several month in 2007 Broderick inappropriately had sexual contact with at least four family members at the family’s home.

ILLINOIS
Catholic Explorer

ROMEOVILLE—Mary Breslin, editor and general manager of the Catholic Explorer since June 1, 1998, announced Feb. 22 that she will retire from the leadership position at the diocesan newspaper. ...

In 2001, when news of the sexual abuse scandal in the church first surfaced, on the recommendation of the Explorer Advisory Board, Breslin established an editorial policy of transparency, establishing and encouraging an environment of credibility in the diocese.

UNITED STATES
City of Angels

By Kay Ebeling
At age 10 Tom Economus was traveling companion for a pedophile priest, doing scams at fundraisers by day and getting alcohol and raped by night. Then as a young adult Tom sought counseling and his therapist, another priest, stripped down to his underwear and begged Tom for help with his own sex identity crisis. Still spiritually passionate, Tom entered a seminary where he got hit on for sex right and left. He dropped out, sank into drugs and alcohol, made it to rehab, became ordained with the Independent Catholic Church and in 1992 was named director of Linkup, one of the first organizations for survivors of Catholic priest sex crimes.

An email came in to City of Angels Blog yesterday: “Tom Economus’ Birthday Tomorrow: An unusual birthday.. An unusual man. A fierce warrior for our cause. Must never be forgotten by us!!"

JAY NELSON: “I still miss Tom's sense of humor, his fearlessness. He would wear his Roman collar to meetings with Bernardin just to drive the hierarchy crazy.”

NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY ERIN EINHORN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Friday, February 29th 2008, 4:00 AM

The principal forced out of Cardinal Hayes High School for "inappropriate images" on his computer was removed from another Catholic school earlier in his career for mishandling funds.

Christopher Keogan also hired a teacher at Hayes last September knowing he had been charged with a felony for stealing from his ex-girlfriend, a soldier serving in Iraq.

Keogan admitted both improprieties in an interview with the Daily News.

He said he was caught mishandling money at Newark's Essex Catholic High School in 1989.

AUSTRALIA
Courier Mail

Alison Sandy
February 29, 2008 11:00pm

BRISBANE'S Holy Trinity Anglican Church has been dubbed the "Unholy Trinity" after it has been revealed a pedophile, an alleged pedophile and a practising priest with his own seedy past are leading its Sunday services.

Following revelations in The Courier-Mail this week that convicted pedophile priest Robert Sharwood, who was released from jail only three months ago, has been allowed to sing in the choir with children, it has now been discovered that Canon Barry Greaves, who will stand trial on child sex charges in August, participates in bible readings.

Their role in the Fortitude Valley church has been approved by the Parish Council, headed by rector Trevor Bulled, who was convicted of indecent behaviour in a public toilet almost 20 years ago.

LOWELL (MA)
The Pilot

By Christine Williams
Posted: 2/29/2008 BRIGHTON -- The Apostolic Signature, the Catholic Church’s supreme court, has rejected an appeal of the suppression of St. Jeanne d’Arc Parish in Lowell, the Archdiocese of Boston confirmed Feb. 27.

In 2006, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy denied the appeals of St. Jeanne and about a dozen other former parishes that were closed in the process of archdiocesan reconfiguration. Representatives from 10 other parishes still have pending appeals to the Apostolic Signature, said Kathleen Heck, special assistant to the moderator of the curia.

Heck said the archdiocese received the St. Jeanne ruling in Latin and the translation to English was completed Feb. 26.

WORCESTER (MA)
Telegram & Gazette

By Gary V. Murray TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
gmurray@telegram.com

WORCESTER— A psychiatrist testified yesterday that he found the Rev. John Szantyr mentally competent to stand trial on child sexual assault charges in an evaluation conducted last summer.

A hearing got under way yesterday in Central District Court to determine whether Rev. Szantyr, a 76-year-old retired priest now living in Waterbury, Conn., is competent to stand trial on charges of sexually assaulting two altar boys more than 20 years ago in Worcester. The assaults allegedly occurred in the 1980s, when Rev. Szantyr was assigned to Our Lady of Czestochowa Parish on Ward Street. The charges were lodged in 2003.

In September 2006, Judge Dennis J. Brennan, since retired, found Rev. Szantyr mentally incompetent to stand trial based on an evaluation done at that time by Dr. John Murphy, a neurologist.

OAKLAND (CA)
California Catholic Daily

Following three-year investigation, Oakland bishop reinstates priest once accused of molesting minor

Bishop Allen Vigneron, heeding the recommendations of a Diocese of Oakland review panel, has reinstated to active ministry a priest once accused of molesting a minor.

“I think it is a disgrace, an utter disgrace,” Joey Piscitelli, Northern California director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, told the Feb. 26 San Jose Mercury News, referring to Vigneron’s decision.

Piscitelli opined that "it's because of a shortage of priests" that dioceses reinstate priests like Franciscan Father Chris Berbena, who will shortly resume ministry at St. John Vianney parish in Walnut Creek. Berbena was parochial vicar there until 2004, when the diocese put him on a leave of absence.

MARYLAND
Examiner

Filed under: BALTIMORE , Marci A. Hamilton , BA Opinion

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - Under pressure from the Catholic Church, Maryland lawmakers shelved legislation to identify predators among us. With HB858, Maryland was part of a national movement to eliminate statutes of limitations for childhood sexual abuse. This bill offered the hope of a “window” to allow claims previously barred.

Our legal system favors predators over the protection of children. By the time victims are capable of coming forward, the law lets predators escape through the statute of limitations — again and again.

Those predators now live and work near — often with — our children, but we do not know who they are because we keep the courthouse locked against victims.

NEW YORK
New York Post

By DAN MANGAN
KEOGAN

February 29, 2008 -- A Bronx Catholic HS principal who resigned last week amid allegations of inappropriate photos on his work computer used $10,000 from a charity set up to aid the academy to buy furniture for his own apartment, The Post has learned.

Christopher Keogan, the ousted principal of Cardinal Hayes HS, was given the money at about the same time that he was moving out of his residence on the school campus, several sources said.

Keogan was listed as a director of the nonprofit charitable foundation the Cardinal and Gold Fund Inc. at the time the group is said to have authorized the payout.

JEFFERSON CITY (MO)
Belleville News Democrat

By ALAN SCHER ZAGIER
Associated Press Writer

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. --A former Catholic school student in suburban St. Louis should have quickly realized that a Marianist brother's back-room "experiments" on the boy were a form of sexual abuse, an attorney for the religious order argued Thursday before the Missouri Supreme Court.

Robert Visnaw, a former student at St. John Vianney High School in Kirkwood, sued William Mueller in 2006, more than two decades after the alleged abuse occurred.

Visnaw argued that he didn't remember any sexual acts until a year before filing suit. The religious order countered that Mueller's alleged behavior - which reportedly included blindfolding Visnaw and stripping the teen to his underwear while holding a knife to his throat - were clearly sexual in nature.

HARTFORD (CT)
Hartford Courant

By DAVE ALTIMARI | Courant Staff Writer
February 29, 2008

A rare civil trial involving a priest and a former altar boy began playing out in a Hartford courtroom Thursday, with signs that the case could provide explosive details about how the Catholic church has dealt with sex-abuse allegations.

F. Glenn Sutherland claims that the Rev. Stephen C. Foley molested him in the 1970s while he was an altar boy at a Bloomfield church and that the Archdiocese of Hartford did nothing about it.

Foley, who also served as state police and fire chaplain, has been sued by 11 men who say he molested them when they were children. All but Sutherland and one other have settled, with the archdiocese paying hundreds of thousands of dollars.

KENTUCKY
The Courier-Journal

By Peter Smith
psmith@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal

The Kentucky House approved a bill yesterday that would strengthen penalties for sexual abusers and those who fail to report them to authorities.

The vote on House Bill 211 -- which now goes to the Senate -- was 96-0.

Passage came after the bill's sponsor told colleagues of the decades of turmoil his late father had suffered after being molested as a boy by a Roman Catholic priest in 1930.

"A tragedy occurred that night," said Rep. Jim Wayne, D-Louisville. "In his 70s, he told his family about this tragedy and how upsetting it was and how really it impaired his relation to God as well as to his church."

ALASKA
Anchorage Daily News

By LISA DEMER
ldemer@adn.com | ldemer@adn.com

Published: February 29th, 2008 12:27 AM
Last Modified: February 29th, 2008 01:01 AM

The Russian Orthodox Church in Alaska is in turmoil. Priests from around the state are seeking removal of the top official here, Bishop Nikolai Soraich. They say he is hurting the church and ruling by intimidation.

"The clergy and probably a large percentage of the laity in the church have reached the point where they believe they can no longer serve with or under Bishop Nikolai Soraich," said the Rev. Michael Oleksa, archpriest at St. Alexis in Anchorage and the best-known Orthodox pastor in Alaska. ...

Some of the discord arises from a May 2007 situation in Kodiak involving allegations against the second-ranking church official in Alaska, Chancellor Archimandrite Isidore, of drunken sexual misconduct. The accuser, Paul Sidebottom, a teacher at St. Herman's seminary, has filed a sexual harassment complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. According to The Associated Press, the complaint alleges he was fired by the chancellor and bishop after complaining to Metropolitan Herman.

Bishop Nikolai said an investigation by the church's New York headquarters has already found the allegations unsubstantiated.

AUSTRALIA
The Age

An Anglican Church board will hear evidence on Saturday which could lead to a priest jailed over child sex offences being stripped of his orders.

Robert Francis Sharwood, 62, of Brisbane, was jailed for 12 months in November 2006 after being found guilty of sexually abusing a 13-year-old boy in Brisbane more than 30 years ago.

Sharwood was released from jail in November last year, attracting calls by child protection advocates for him to be immediately stripped of his holy orders.

JEFFERSON CITY (MO)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

By Virginia Young
POST-DISPATCHJEFFERSON CITY BUREAU CHIEF
02/29/2008

JEFFERSON CITY — Robert Visnaw says he never forgot the secret psychology "experiments" conducted by Brother William "Bill" Mueller when Visnaw was a senior at Vianney High School in Kirkwood.

Visnaw alleges in court documents that in one incident in 1985, Mueller told him to strip down to his underwear, blindfolded him, held a knife to his throat and made him hyperventilate to the point of unconsciousness.

What Visnaw didn't remember for many years was the sexual abuse that went along with the experiments, he says. That memory surfaced in 2005, he says, when he read a Post-Dispatch article recounting other allegations against Mueller.

RICHMOND (CA)
San Jose Mercury News

By Scott Marshall
STAFF WRITER

Article Launched: 02/28/2008 08:41:18 PM PST

RICHMOND -- A woman came forward Thursday and alleged that she was sexually abused by a Catholic clergyman at Salesian High School in the 1960s, during visits to the school with her family and also at her home.

It was the second public allegation against the former clergyman, John Vas, now 86 and living in Florida, who formerly was a band instructor at the private school and a brother in the Salesian order.

Since the 1950s, when Salesian was a seminary, six clergymen there have been accused of abuse. Another three who once worked there were accused after they left the campus.

MACON (MO)
Macon Chronicle

Published: Thursday, February 28, 2008 11:16 AM CST

Christopher C. Sprinkel, 32, formerly of Shelbina was sentenced in Macon County Circuit Court yesterday in front of Judge Hadley E. Grimm. Sprinkel was sentenced to eight years, execution of sentence suspended, but was placed on five years probation for felony child molestation.

He was found guilty of child molestation in the first degree charge at a trial on Jan. 3 and 4 at the Macon County Courthouse on a change of venue from Shelby County. A jury found Sprinkel guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of having sexual contact with a child under the age of 14 on or about Jan. 9, 2006.

Sprinkel, formerly served as youth minister at the United Methodist Church of Shelbina according to a February 2006 article from the Shelbina Weekly newspaper.

PORTLAND (OR)
The Oregonian

2/28/2008, 12:39 p.m. PST

By WILLIAM McCALL The Associated Press

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — An attorney for victims of alleged sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests is challenging an Archdiocese of Portland request to appoint a federal judge to decide whether to release church documents on the priests.

The archdiocese settled about 175 lawsuits last April for $50 million to end the first bankruptcy in the nation filed by a Catholic diocese.

As part of the settlement, the archdiocese agreed to release documents that victim advocates say will show church leaders knew more about the abuse than they have acknowledged.

KENTUCKY
The Courier-Journal

By Peter Smith
psmith@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal

The Kentucky House voted 96-0 today to approve a bill that would toughen penalties on sexual abusers and those who fail to report them to authorities.

The bill — which now goes to the Senate — passed after its sponsor told colleagues of the decades of turmoil his late father had suffered after being molested as a boy by a Roman Catholic priest in 1930.

“A tragedy occurred that night,” said Rep. Jim Wayne, D-Louisville. “In his 70s, he told his family about this tragedy and how upsetting it was and how really it impaired his relation to God as well as to his church.”

SCITUATE (MA)
The Patriot Ledger

By Kaitlin Keane
The Patriot Ledger
Posted Feb 28, 2008 @ 12:22 PM

SCITUATE — Their churches were closed by the Boston Archdiocese more than three years ago, but parishioners believe the churches and their assets should belong to them.

More than 60 parishioners from St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Church in Scituate and St. Jeremiah Church in Framingham packed a courtroom at the state appeals court in Boston Wednesday as lawyers again argued that church assets should belong to parishioners, not the archdiocese.

In January 2007, a Superior Court judge dismissed the lawsuit filed by parishioners against Cardinal Sean O’Malley. Parishioners appealed the decision.

BUFFALO (NY)
WNED

Chris Caya
BUFFALO (2008-02-28) For the second time in just a few months, Church officials in Rome have agreed with Bishop Edward Kmiec's decision to merge St. Adalbert and St. John Kanty.

The Vatican's highest canonical court notified the Diocese earlier this week that it has upheld a December ruling by the Congregation for the Clergy and the Court has rejected the latest appeal made by some parishoners of St. Adalbert.

Diocesan Spokesman Kevin Keenan says now it's up to the parishes to set a timetable for moving forward.

MASSACHUSETTS
Wicked Local

By Jessica M. Smith, Staff Writer
Thu Feb 28, 2008, 11:21 AM EST

Allston-Brighton - A former Brighton man who alleges that he was abused by three St. Columbkille’s priests won an intermediate judicial victory in Superior Court.

The victim, who spent his childhood in Brighton, told the court that he was sexually abused by two priests in the rectory of St. Columbkille’s Parish and by a third priest outside Brighton.

The accused clergy, named as defendants in court documents, are Father Eugene Sullivan and Father Edward T. Kelly. Sullivan and Kelly were seeking a summary judgment, which is when a judge decides the case before it goes to trial.

JACKSONVILLE (FL)
Fox 30

[video]

Don Simpkins says he counseled former Pastor Gilyard years ago, but eventually turned him in.

UNITED KINGDOM
Whitby Gazette

By Staff Copy
A LOCAL vicar fighting for reinstatement after he was removed from office for having an affair with a married woman will have his appeal heard next month.

Reverend David King was banned from practising for four years following a Church of England disciplinary tribunal held in November last year – the first Church of England disciplinary tribunal of its kind.

The Chancery Court of York will sit at Leeds Combined Court Centre on Monday 10 March to hear the appeal by Rev King.

NEW YORK
WTEN

Posted: Feb 28, 2008 08:23 AM EST

A Roman Catholic priest is in jail this morning, facing several felony sex abuse charges. Father John Broderick, who is in the Montgomery County Jail, is accused of having inappropriate contact with at least four children, all of them in the same family.

Police say the alleged abuse took place over the course of several months last year. The victims' parents tell investigators that Broderick was a trusted friend.

NEWS10's Demetra Ganias has more on the relationship between Broderick and his alleged victims.

MASSENA (NY)
Watertown Daily Times

By CHRIS GARIFO
TIMES STAFF WRITER
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2008
MASSENA — A Roman Catholic priest has been arrested here on several felony counts of having sexual contact with children, state police in Montgomery County said.

John W. Broderick, 47, Nicholville, was arrested Monday on three counts of first-degree sexual abuse, one count of second-degree sexual abuse and four counts of endangering the welfare of a child. The sexual abuse charges are all felonies and the endangering of a child charges are misdemeanors.

Broderick was arraigned in the town of Palatine Court and was sent to the Montgomery County Jail, Fultonville, where bail was set at $50,000 cash or $100,000 bond.

State police made the arrest on a complaint from a Montgomery County family. The victims' father said Broderick befriended his family and had become its spiritual adviser, state police said.

NEW YORK
New York Post

By DAN MANGAN

February 28, 2008 -- The former principal of a prestigious Catholic high school who resigned amid allegations of inappropriate images on his work computer was allowed to stay on the job for nearly five months after a priest wrote the New York Archdiocese accusing him of serious misconduct, The Post has learned.

"It's just another stall tactic," said the Rev. Robert Hoatson of the slow response by the archdiocese to his Oct. 5, 2007, letter to Cardinal Hayes HS principal Christopher Keogan.

He claimed copies of the note were sent to the archdiocese, the Bronx school's superintendent and president, and prosecutors.

"The church wants to minimize its damage, and they continue to cover up and coddle these people until something more dramatic comes up and then they have to make a move," Hoatson said.

NEW YORK
The New York Times

By CARA BUCKLEY
Published: February 28, 2008
The principal at a prominent Catholic boys’ high school in the Bronx was ousted late last week after photos of nude men were discovered on his computer, a law enforcement official confirmed on Wednesday.

No criminal charges were filed against the principal, Christopher Keogan of Cardinal Hayes High School, because the photos were of adults.

The dismissal, reported in The New York Post on Wednesday, deeply shook morale at the school, which prides itself on upholding strict codes of discipline and ethics, and sees its mission as plucking boys from struggling city neighborhoods and shaping them into ambitious young men. Among the school’s alumni, who refer to themselves as “Hayes Men,” are Regis Philbin, Martin Scorsese and the novelist Don DeLillo. George Carlin, the comedian, lasted three semesters at Cardinal Hayes before getting kicked out.

GENEVA (IL)
City of Angels

(This came to City of Angels Blog email, signed by “Integrity”)

One time the Geneva Police came into Saint Peter Church during Mass because a man in his late 60's was stalking a woman going to mass. This is not the first time this man has stalked and harassed women going to mass or attending mass at St. Peter. Another time someone locked the bathroom doors at St. Peter during mass. Later that day it was posted on CTL: hope the people who were at mass and needed to use the washroom wet their pants.

Monsignor Jarmoluk was seen at the Fall '07 St. Peter Barn Sale leading fake "CTL NYC" camera men around the grounds. Monsignor Jarmoluk was conducting interviews with unsuspecting parishioners (adults, children, teens). The so-called CTL camera crews (who knows who these men really are) filmed the interviews. As far as we know these children and teens were interviewed and filmed without their parents’ knowledge or consent.

NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY ERIN EINHORN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Thursday, February 28th 2008

The Bronx Catholic school principal forced to resign over alleged "inappropriate images" on his computer has been accused by former staffers of other improprieties.

Two ex-faculty members and a priest familiar with the school have accused former Cardinal Hayes High School Principal Christopher Keogan in letters and affidavits of theft, an affair with a male subordinate and of faking transcripts to help that man get into college.

In an exclusive interview with the Daily News yesterday, Keogan denied all the allegations and said he is the victim of a smear campaign by disgruntled employees and others carrying out a "vendetta" against him.

MONTGOMERY COUNTY (NY)
Capital News 9

[with video]

Updated: 02/27/2008 09:35 PM
By: Web Staff
MONTGOMERY COUNTY, N.Y. -- A local priest is facing sex abuse charges after accusations he had inappropriate contact with several members of a family, who considered him their spiritual advisor.

Parents of the victims, who range from five to eleven years old, said John Broderick, 47, of Nicholville abused the children over the course of several months.

SCRANTON (PA)
The Citizens Voice

[with letter]

After the rejection of several requests to speak with Bishop Joseph F. Martino and other Diocese of Scranton officials, King’s College professor, the Rev. Patrick J. Sullivan, C.S.C., Ph.D., is speaking out against the bishop’s rejection of the teachers union.

“The Church has already suffered from too many losses and scandals. May we not add more pain and shame,” Sullivan wrote in a letter directed to Martino, sent to Times-Shamrock Newspapers on Tuesday.

AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

February 28, 2008

A former Anglican priest convicted of indecently assaulting a 13-year-old boy has lost his appeal to the High Court.

Raymond Frederick Ayles was sentenced to four years' jail after pleading guilty to two of six counts of indecent assault but not guilty to the four other counts and two counts of buggery.

The charges date back to 1971, and took place between then and 1973, when Ayles was a priest at Para Hills in Adelaide and the victim was from a family of his parishioners.

KITSAP COUNTY (WA)
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

By CLAUDIA ROWE
P-I REPORTER

A pastor described by police as charismatic and controlling pleaded guilty Wednesday to numerous counts of child rape and molestation involving five young girls in Kitsap County.

Robbin Leeroy Harper, 60, leader of a fringe religious group called The Church, faces more than 26 years in prison, though prosecutors and his own lawyer have agreed to recommend a 23-year term when Harper is sentenced April 9.

"We're happy with this," said Brenda, the mother of one victim, who asked that her last name not be published in order to shield her daughter's identity. "Everybody is relieved. My daughter is happy about it, too."

CANADA
Standard Freeholder

A city lawyer who felt he was treated unfairly at the Cornwall Public Inquiry last November has turned down an opportunity to return to the stand.

Sean Adams had been seeking another chance to answer questions about his involvement in a $32,000 settlement between an alleged sexual abuse victim and the Alexandria-Cornwall Roman Catholic Diocese.

In December, Gordon Cameron, one of Adams' attorneys, filed a motion with the commission that stated questions posed by lead counsel Peter Engelmann had done "irreparable harm" to his client's reputation.

NEW YORK
WSYR

[with statement from the Diocese of Syracuse]

Fonda, New York (AP) - An upstate New York Roman Catholic priest is facing several counts of felony sex abuse and endangering the welfare of a child.

State police say Father John Broderick engaged in inappropriate sexual contact with at least four children in a Montgomery County family over the course of several months in 2007. The children range in age from 5 to 11. The victims' parent told investigators Broderick befriended his family and was considered their spiritual adviser.

Broderick left the area sometime in May and was associated with the Holy Name of Jesus Academy in Massena. He was arrested Monday without incident.

MASSENA (NY)
News 10 Now

[with video]

02/27/2008 09:38 PM
By: Web Staff
MASSENA N.Y. -- A priest is arrested in Massena on sex abuse charges after accusations he had inappropriate contact with the children of a Montgomery County family.

Police said John Broderick of Nichoville in northern New York, had sexual contact with the children over the course of several months. The victims range in age from five to eleven-years-old.

Broderick was arrested at the Holy Name of Jesus Academy in Massena.

PALATINE (NY)
WNYT

[with video]

PALATINE - A priest is accused of sexually abusing at least four children in a Montgomery County family. Father John Broderick now faces felony charges. According to the attorney representing the family of the children, Father John Broderick was treated like a family member until the mother of the children became suspicious.

State police say Broderick had inappropriate sexual contact with at the four siblings who ranged in age from five to 11. The charges range from sexual abuse to endangering the welfare of a child. State Police say Broderick was the spiritual advisor to the mother of the children who they say Broderick abused. That is confirmed by the attorney who now represents the family. He says at first other family members became suspicious of Broderick's behavior but it wasn't until the mother became suspicious, that police were asked to investigate.

UNITED KINGDOM
This is Lancashire

By Staff Reporter

A PRIEST has rejected claims he abused two young boys at a vicarage in Bury and on trips to London.

John McCollough gave evidence at Bolton Crown Court on Monday, accused of 11 indecent assaults and one act of gross indecency against a child.

It is alleged he performed sex acts with the young boys, touched them inappropriately and tried to kiss them while McCollough was an Anglican rector at Christ of King with Holy Trinity Church in Spring Street, Bury, during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

NEW YORK
Albany Times Union

By DAVID FILKINS, Staff writer

First published: Thursday, February 28, 2008

PALENTINE -- A priest accused of molesting at least four children in a Montgomery County family he had befriended has been charged with four felonies, State Police said.

The Rev. John W. Broderick, 47, of Nicholville, was considered the family's "spiritual adviser" when the alleged abuse occurred over several months last year, according to State Police. The children's ages range from 5 to 11.

State Police said Broderick is assigned to the Syracuse Diocese of the Catholic Church, though he was suspended earlier this year. It wasn't clear why.

MONTGOMERY COUNTY (NY)
Daily Gazette

By Steven Cook
Gazette Reporter

MONTGOMERY COUNTY — A Catholic priest acting as a Montgomery County family’s spiritual adviser has been arrested, accused of sexually abusing the family’s four children, state police said Wednesday.

John W. Broderick, 47, of Nicholville, St. Lawrence County, is accused of having inappropriate sexual contact with the children, ages 5 to 11, over several months last year.

State police in Fonda began investigating after receiving a complaint from a Montgomery County family. The parent told police Broderick befriended the family and became their spiritual adviser.

SYRACUSE (NY)
The Post-Standard

Posted by Renée K. Gadoua February 27, 2008 8:25PM

Syracuse, NY -- A priest of the Syracuse Diocese has been charged with felony sex abuse and endangering the welfare of a child in Montgomery County.

The Rev. John W. Broderick, 47, was suspended from ministry early this year for incidents unrelated to sexual abuse, said Danielle Cummings, assistant chancellor and diocesan spokeswoman. She said she could not discuss specifics, but confirmed that Broderick was disciplined for "lack of pastoral judgment."

Cummings said she and diocesan officials learned today about Broderick's arrest on Monday.

State police in Fonda say Broderick engaged in inappropriate sexual contact last year with at least four children, ages 5 to 11. The victims' family told investigators Broderick was considered their spiritual adviser.

MASSACHUSETTS
The Patriot Ledger

MASSACHUSETTS — It shouldn’t have to take a legislative act to warn teachers they cannot use their positions to engage students, even if they are over the age of consent, in a sexual relationship.

But apparently it does. The Legislature held a hearing Tuesday on a bill that would criminalize sexual relations between teachers and students younger than 18. ...

If it sounds familiar, one only has to go back to the clergy sex abuse scandal and see many of the young victims had emotional upheaval in their lives and the priests who were supposed to be the shepherds became wolves.

The bill should be expanded to include anyone in a position of authority – coaches, counselors, administrators – who has contact on a regular basis with a teen. The measure should also cover any type of sexual contact, not just intercourse.

PORTLAND (OR)
Catholic Sentinel

A federal bankruptcy judge in Portland will hold a hearing next month to decide if hundreds more Archdiocese of Portland documents pertaining to clergy sex abuse should be unveiled for public view.

The archdiocese last June released scores of decades-old private letters, formal depositions and memos. The documents, posted on the Internet, show that church officials at the highest levels often knew about abusive priests, but operated under the standards of the times and attempted to handle matters internally.

Lawyers for accusers have been negotiating for more documents to be released, but a key attorney, Kelly Clark, left the talks, despite archdiocesan officials’ belief that the process was working. Erin Olson, a Portland attorney representing accusers, refused to enter negotiations. She has asked Bankruptcy Judge Elizabeth Perris to unseal many of the same documents that were being considered in the talks. Perris has set a hearing for March 13. The archdiocese has asked that Perris appoint U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan to decide the question, delay action until mediation and arbitration are complete, or take no action.

PALATINE (NY)
Albany Times Union

By DAVID FILKINS, Staff writer

Last updated: 4:08 p.m., Wednesday, February 27, 2008

PALENTINE -- A priest accused of molesting at least four children in a Montgomery County family he had befriended has been charged with four felonies, State Police said.

The Rev. John W. Broderick, 47, of Nicholville, was considered the family's "spiritual advisor" when the alleged abuse occurred over several months last year, according to State Police. The children's ages range from 5 to 11 years old.

State Police said Broderick is assigned to the Syracuse Diocese of the Catholic Church, though his faculties were suspended earlier this year. It wasn't clear why.

MASSACHUSETTS
Metro

BOSTON. The clergy sex abuse scandal may not make daily headlines anymore, but the need to protect children from pedophiles is something that will not be pushed to the background. Victims and advocates converged on the State House yesterday, pushing for stricter child protection laws.

The Joint Committee on the Judiciary yesterday held a hearing on more than a dozen proposed bills concerning child sex abuse and sex offenders. Among them was comprehensive legislation drafted in the wake of the Catholic church abuse scandal — which prompted scores of victims to come forward over the past decade.

“This bill is about helping children. ... It’s about prevention. It’s about deterrence,” said Mitchell Garabedian, an attorney who has represented more than 100 victims in suits against the Catholic church.

SOUTH KITSAP (WA)
Kitsap Sun

By Josh Farley
Originally published 09:30 a.m., February 27, 2008

A plea deal has been struck between Kitsap County Prosecutors and Robbin L. Harper, a former South Kitsap pastor accused of the sexual abuse of at least 10 girls during the time he was head of The Church in South Colby.

Prosecutors and Harper's attorney, Tom Weaver, will both recommend to Judge Karlynn Haberly that Harper be sentenced to 279 months incarceration — about 23 and 1/4 years — when he is sentenced April 9 in Kitsap County Superior Court.

Harper, 60, was charged Nov. 1 by prosecutors with eight felonies that emerged from accusations of molestation or rape by five women or girls, all members of the South Kitsap church Harper is said to have established.

PALATINE (NY)
Daily Gazette

PALATINE — A priest now living in the Massena area has been charged with having sexual contact with four young members of one Montgomery County family.

State police investigators in Fonda say Rev. John W. Broderick, 47, of Nicolville, just south of Massena, befriended a family and served as a spiritual advisor while living in the area in 2007. But over several months, investigators said, Broderick had sexual contact with four members of the family, ranging in age from 5 to 11.

Investigators said Broderick left the area in May 2007 and was found by state police at the Holy Name of Jesus Academy in Massena, where he was arrested. Broderick was assigned to the Syracuse Diocese at the time of the alleged abuse, investigators said, though he was not assigned to a specific church or school. Investigators said his official faculties were suspended earlier this year.

BUFFALO (NY)
Business First

The Diocese of Buffalo said Wednesday that a Vatican office has upheld the decision of Bishop Edward Kmiec to merge St. John Kanty and St. Adalbert parishes located in the City of Buffalo.

In a decree written on Feb. 13, 2008, and delivered to diocesan officials on Feb. 25, the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican's highest canonical court, upheld an earlier Vatican ruling, stating "The recourse presented has been rejected."

MARYLAND
Baltimore Messenger

02/27/08
by Bryan P. Sears

The General Assembly is considering legislation to extend the statute of limitations on filing sexual abuse lawsuits.

But the bill, sponsored by Del. Eric Bromwell, is drawing opposition from the head of Calvert Hall College high school in Towson.

Bromwell wants to give people alleging sexual abuse more time to file lawsuits.

BALTIMORE (MD)
WJZ

BALTIMORE (WJZ) ―
There's anger from members of one Baltimore Catholic church. Their priest was removed after he was accused of sexually abusing a teenager.

Denise Koch reports months later, these parishioners say they're being kept in the dark and they're demanding answers.

"You know, the light shines on this candle but certainly we're not getting any light from our council or our church," said Giovanna Blatterman.

There's outrage from members of Saint Leo's Roman Catholic Church over the abrupt departure of their beloved priest Father Mike Salerno.

UNITED STATES
City of Angels

By Kay Ebeling
"A more clear question for ‘Anonymous:’ how has the PRIESTHOOD where all of this filth thrived been changed? How has the training and recruitment of priests changed? What has the LA Archdiocese changed in priests' lives to ensure your priests aren't wacko sickos who only come to the church because they know that there, in the seminaries and confessionals, they can get away with all these sex crimes and NO ONE WILL STOP THEM?

“How has the archdiocese addressed that problem, the real problem that exists in the Catholic church and the Catholic church alone, because of its sick preoccupation with sexuality in the first place. Phew.”

The above quote is my response to a person called “Anonymous” who jumps in to the comments section here at City of Angels Blog after almost every post. He/she copy and pastes articles from The Tidings and archdiocese press releases to show what a great job Roger Mahony and the bishops have done handling perpetrator priests. The more he posts, the more I see the holes in the church’s claims.

UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

Police have agreed to re-examine allegations of child abuse made against a former Roman Catholic priest.

West Midlands Police is reviewing the case after admitting it failed to investigate when a complaint was made about Father James Robinson in 2003.

Father Robinson, who denies the claims, worked in Sutton Coldfield, Cradley Heath and Newcastle-under-Lyme, but moved to California in 1985.

UNITED KINGDOM
icCoventry

Feb 27 2008

By Emma Stone, Crime Reporter

A FORMER Coventry priest faces extradition from California, 25 years after allegedly abusing altar boys.

Fr James Robinson was assistant parish priest at St Elizabeth's, Eld Road, Foleshill, Coventry, during the early 1980s.

At least two men in the city claim they were sexually abused as boys by him and have been given compensation by the archdiocese of about £25,000 apiece.

UNITED STATES
Duluth News Tribune

Kristine Ward, Duluth News Tribune
Published Wednesday, February 27, 2008
To heal the wounded and protect the vulnerable.” That is the mission of a sometimes controversial, mainly volunteer-led support group called SNAP, or the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. I have known of, supported, and followed SNAP’s work for years.

Sometimes SNAP gets criticized for helping to expose credibly accused child molesters who haven’t been formally sued, suspended or charged. I understand such criticism. Sometimes SNAP gets blasted for helping to expose alleged sexual predators whose cases — whether criminal, civil or canonical — haven’t yet been finally resolved. That’s somewhat understandable.

But I’ve never seen SNAP get attacked for shedding light on the whereabouts or activities of convicted child-molesting clergymen, especially when those men used religious titles and positions to hurt children and still have religious titles and positions. Not until the News Tribune’s Feb. 13 editorial, “Little gained by exposing abusers on sex offender list.”

EBENSBURG (PA)
PennLive

by The Associated Press Wednesday February 27, 2008, 7:46 AM
EBENSBURG -- A state prison inmate pleaded guilty to extorting money from a chaplain accused of having sex with him at the prison.

William Victor, 37, was sentenced to two years of probation after pleading guilty to theft by extortion on Monday in Cambria County Court. The sentence will begin after he completes a term of more than 42 years for sexually assaulting a woman at gunpoint and trying to rob the woman and her husband at a resort in the Poconos.

Prosecutors said Victor extorted $7,600 from the Rev. Gerard M. Connolly, a Franciscan priest who was a chaplain at the State Correctional Institution-Cresson. Connolly, 66, of Altoona, faces trial on 12 counts of institutional sex assault and five counts of taking contraband alcohol into prison.

AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Mark Buttler

February 28, 2008 12:00am
A MELBOURNE priest did not report a child sex abuse confession by a parishioner who went on to strike again.

But clergymen are not subject to mandatory reporting laws and the priest will not be charged.

The case has stirred debate over the role of the church in handling confessions by lawbreakers.

The allegations came to light when a Croydon man recently went to a police station and told officers he had sexually assaulted his daughter, believed to be aged four.

MINNESOTA
Duluth News Tribune

Published Friday, February 22, 2008

I applaud the good work of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, a group better known as SNAP. The organization has done much good in exposing clergy sexual abuse, secrecy and cover-up by authorities in the church and in demanding policies and practices to guard against abuse and cover-up. The group also does a great service in assisting the victims of clergy sexual abuse with financial settlements, counseling and healing. I have been involved with the good work of SNAP.

The Feb. 12 story, “Group criticizes involvement of convicted child molesters in state Episcopal diocese,” reported that two priests convicted of the sexual abuse of minors have been involved in the Episcopal diocese. One of them, a former Episcopal priest, led a workshop at a retreat house in Collegeville, Minn. The other, a former Catholic priest, served on a diocesan council. It was important to note that no children or young adults were involved in either the workshop or the council. Neither man is a clergy person any longer. Both have been deposed, or removed from the clerical state.

LOCKPORT (NY)
Lockport Union-Sun & Journal

Staff Reports
Lockport Union-Sun & Journal

The Rev. Daniel A. Young, who has served as pastor of St. Joseph’s and St. Anthony’s parishes, has been appointed temporary administrator of the new All Saints Parish at St. Patrick’s.

St. Joe’s, St. Anthony’s and St. Patrick’s merged into All Saints, at the site of St. Patrick’s on Church Street. St. Mary’s was to be the fourth parish to combine into All Saints. However, St. Mary’s is appealing the Diocese of Buffalo decision to close the church on Saxton Street.

The Rev. Francis Schimscheiner has been serving as pastor of St. Patrick’s.

“Priests will have applied for that position,” said Kevin Keenan, director of the diocese Office of Communications. “The Priests Personnel Board will make the decision, and it will be announced at a later date. Father Young will run the parish.”

NEW YORK
New York Post

By DAN MANGAN

February 27, 2008 -- The principal of one of the city's premier Catholic high schools was forced to resign over the weekend after inappropriate images were found on his computer at the Bronx school, The Post has learned.

Christopher Keogan's abrupt departure from the all-boys Cardinal Hayes HS, where he had worked for 18 years, caught teachers and students by surprise, and led to a firestorm of rumors as school officials refused to tell them yesterday why the Catholic brother quit.

"[He] is no longer the principal, and that's all I'm going to say at this point," said Joseph Zwilling, spokesman for the New York Archdiocese.

UNITED STATES
PR-inside

Business Wire 2008

2008-02-27 14:24:38 -

- The Bohle Company Kelly Taylor, 310-785-0515, ext. 207 kelly@bohle.com

A new book, Inside the World of Warren Jeffs, by author Dr. Carole A. Western, takes the reader inside Short Creek, two nearby communities in Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., where the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) leader ruled until his arrest and conviction in the fall of 2007 as an accomplice in the rape of a 14-year-old girl.

Western details the experiences of several young women enslaved in Short Creek and lets them tell in their own words how they were coerced into virtual servitude and forced into unwanted pregnancies by the "husbands" they were ordered to marry.

KINGMAN (AZ)
The Associated Press

By AMANDA LEE MYERS

KINGMAN, Ariz. (AP) — Polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs was handed over to Arizona authorities Tuesday to face sex charges stemming from the arranged marriages of two teenage girls to older relatives.

He already has been convicted in Utah in connection with one of those cases, involving a 14-year-old girl.

Deputies from the Mohave County Sheriff's Office took custody of Jeffs from Utah officials, sheriff's spokeswoman Trish Carter said. He was booked into the county jail, where he will be kept separate from other inmates, said sheriff's department Capt. Greg Smith.

CONNECTICUT
Hartford Courant

Susan Campbell
February 27, 2008

My mother married her second husband against the wishes of just about everyone, including her three children. Love might be blind, but a child sees all.

Things got so bad at home that I broke the code. I went outside the family for help, stepped up to my fourth-grade teacher's desk and told her that my stepfather was hurting me.

She looked confused, so I said it again, as loudly as I dared, considering that the kids in the front row could hear, and then know. ...

Some of the sad victims of George Reardon, too, tried to tell someone that the respected St. Francis Hospital endocrinologist was hurting them. Maybe they spoke as inexpertly as I, but you can forgive us because children are not supposed to know how to deal with sexual abuse. When it happens — and it does — it's up to a caring adult to step in.

NEW JERSEY
Home News Tribune

STAFF WRITER
A Middlesex County grand jury has declined to indict a Roman Catholic priest who had been accused of sexual misconduct, according to the Diocese of Metuchen.

In a brief written statement released late today, the diocese said Bishop Paul G. Bootkoski had been informed of the finding.

A male employee of the diocese had initiated the accusation against the Rev. Edgardo D. Abano, 51, pastor of a church in Piscataway. The diocese informed law enforcement authorities of the complaint.

Abano has been pastor of St. Frances Cabrini R.C. Church since 1992. He was arrested on the charge in October 2007.

MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe

[Ruling by Apostolic Signatura Latin (PDF) | English (Word)]
[Brief submitted by parishioners Latin (Word) | English (Word) ]

By Michael Paulson
Globe Staff / February 27, 2008
In a decree that is dimming the hopes of Catholics who have challenged the closings of parishes in the Archdiocese of Boston, the Vatican's highest tribunal has refused an appeal brought by parishioners whose church in Lowell was closed by Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley four years ago.

Parishioners fighting the closings said they would continue their effort in the Vatican and in civil courts in Boston. But they acknowledged that the ruling, issued in Latin, dismisses their arguments that O'Malley violated canon laws by closing the church, and instead expresses support for O'Malley's argument that he needed to close parishes for the good of the archdiocese.

Although the ruling applies only to St. Jeanne d'Arc in Lowell, the advocates for Catholics fighting parish closings view the ruling as a likely indicator of how the Vatican will rule on other challenges brought in response to O'Malley's 2004 decision to close scores of parishes. Parishioners from 10 of those closed parishes have appealed their closings to the Vatican tribunal, called the Apostolic Signatura. Five closed parishes have been occupied by protesters for as long as 40 months.

CANADA
Standard Freeholder

The Cornwall Public Inquiry needs to hear from the psychologist who diagnosed a former Cornwall cop as medically unfit to take the stand, an attorney representing a citizens' group argued Tuesday.

Frank Horn, a lawyer for the Coalition for Action, said that Heidi Sebalj's involvement with at least four alleged abuse victims makes her a "very important witness" for the inquiry to hear.

The coalition is made up of people concerned that institutions like the city police might have covered up historical allegations of sexual abuse in the Cornwall area.

"By her not being here, all we have to go on is documents. And we can't question documents," Horn told the Standard-Freeholder yesterday.

CANADA
Standard Freeholder

In the coming weeks, the 1993 investigation by Cornwall police into allegations made by David Silmser of sexual abuse will be coming under close scrutiny at the Cornwall Public Inquiry.

On Monday, it was revealed that the officer who conducted the investigation, Heidi Sebalj, is medically unable to take the stand at the inquiry.

Yesterday, the commission received an 18-page document that outlines how Sebalj handled a nine-month investigation that ended with no charges being laid against the two alleged abusers, Rev. Charles MacDonald and probation officer Ken Seguin.

OAKLAND (CA)
San Jose Mercury News

By Barbara Grady
STAFF WRITER

OAKLAND -- The Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland is reinstating a priest once accused of sexual misconduct with a minor after an investigation found the allegation could not be substantiated, the diocese said.

The Rev. Chris Berbena will return to St. John Vianney Roman Catholic Church in Walnut Creek where he had been in ministry as a parochial vicar before the diocese removed him in 2004. That year, his name appeared on a list of priests accused of sexual misconduct in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. The list, posted on the Archdiocese Web site, cited him as accused of a single incident in 1980.

But the Oakland Diocese Review Board began an investigation and could not find any evidence an incident had occurred. It returned Berbena to ministry, only to again remove him in 2006 when he became part of a settlement reached by the Franciscan Order and plaintiffs alleging misconduct by 10 Franciscan priests in the Los Angeles area.

EBENSBURG (PA)
The Tribune-Democrat

By SANDRA K. REABUCK
The Tribune-Democrat

EBENSBURG — A state inmate pleaded guilty Monday to extorting hush money from a chaplain who reportedly had sex with him at the State Correctional Institution-Cresson.

William Victor, 37, who is now at SCI-Huntingdon, was sentenced immediately by Judge Gerard Long to two years’ probation, to be served after Victor is released from state prison.

Victor is serving 423/4 to 861/2 years in state prison for sexually assaulting a woman at gunpoint and trying to rob her and her husband at a Pocono Mountain resort.

SALEM (MA)
The Salem News

By Chris Cassidy
Staff writer

SALEM — To attract film producers and directors to Salem for the week, the city is rolling out the red carpet.

Literally.

A Hollywood-style red runway will guide guests tomorrow night into CinemaSalem, where more than two dozen independent films and documentaries will be screened over seven days. ...

To attract filmmakers, Salem resident Joe Cultrera invited some of the producers and directors he met two years ago while traveling the country showing his documentary "Hand of God," about the sexual abuse of his older brother by a Salem priest.

"I've been amazed at what's been put together in a short amount of time doing this," Cultrera said.

BALTIMORE (MD)
Baltimore Sun

By Michael Hill | Sun reporter
February 27, 2008

Several dozen members of St. Leo's Catholic parish gathered in front of the Little Italy church last night, hoping to find out answers about the fate of the Rev. Michael Salerno, the priest ousted last fall after an allegation of sexual abuse, but were barred from entering a meeting of the parish council.

They gathered because an e-mail circulated among the parishioners saying the Rev. Peter Sticco, head of the Pallottine Fathers, the order that runs the church, would be at the meeting called to discuss the parish's finances. But one of the church's pastors, identified as the Rev. Louis Rojas, refused to allow anyone not on the council to enter the rectory.

"Shame!" several of those on the street shouted as the door closed.

BALTIMORE (MD)
WJZ

BALTIMORE (AP) ―
Members of a Baltimore Catholic parish hope to learn more about a priest who's been relieved of his duties in the wake of sexual abuse allegations.

Reverend Mike Salerno, of Saint Leo's Parish in Little Italy, was removed after allegations surfaced that he abused a teenage boy in Brooklyn, N.Y. in the 1970s.

Church members have posted fliers for the 6:45 p.m. meeting at the church's hall asking whether Salerno will return to St. Leo's.

AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Jakarta correspondent Geoff Thompson

A former Catholic priest from South Australia has been arrested near Jakarta and may be extradited to Australia to face child sex charges dating back to the 1970s.

Indonesian police arrested the 66-year-old man after a request from Australia.

He was once a Catholic priest in the Port Pirie area of South Australia but for the past 12 years he has been living in Indonesia running a garment business and working as an English teacher.

A week ago, he was arrested by Indonesian police in Depok, just south of Jakarta, following an extradition request from Australia.

JACKSONVILLE (FL)
First Coast News

By Jeannie Blaylock
First Coast News

JACKSONVILLE, FL -- Jane Doe #3 is her protected name in the civil suit. She alleges Trinity Baptist Church in Jacksonville knew former pastor Bob Gray was an alleged child molester and did not protect her as a child.

Now Jane Doe #3 will get her day in court in civil action.

Today a judge set the trial date the week of October 13th.

UNITED STATES
Scotsman

By Richard Luscombe
IT'S A religious awakening in a land where Bible thumpers have held sway for centuries and Christian evangelicals have dominated White House politics for almost a decade.

Americans are turning away from the Church at a rate never seen before, according to the surprising results of a major study of the country's religious landscape. And many of those who remain are switching between faiths as freely as flicking television channels. ...

The Catholic Church, riven by recent sex-abuse scandals that have cost it millions of dollars in compensation, fared even worse.

Of the one in three who said they were brought up as Catholics, fewer than one in four is still practising today. It means 10 per cent of Americans are former Catholics.

ILLINOIS
Southtown Star

February 24, 2008
By Steve Metsch, Staff Writer
It happens in most Christian churches on any given Sunday. Call it the weekly envelope, free-will offering, donation - chances are a collection plate will be passed your way during a worship service. You place an envelope or spare change in and off it goes. But how do you know it goes where it should?

In the Southland, pastors at two churches recently were asked to step down amid allegations of missing money.

Investigations are ongoing at All Nations Community Church in Homewood and at Infant Jesus of Prague Catholic Church in Flossmoor.

MINNESOTA
Star News

Tuesday, 26 February 2008
A former Hassan Township and Rogers priest has been found guilty of third-degree sexual conduct.

On Tuesday, Feb. 12 inside a Hennepin County District Court room, John Bussmann was found guilty of using his position to have sex with vulnerable female parishioners.

The main issue surrounding the case was whether the involved women were seeking religious or spiritual advice, aid or comfort at the time.

PORTLAND (OR)
OPB News

By Pete Springer

Portland, OR February 25, 2008 4:18 p.m.

Negotiations to release documents related to the Portland Archdiocese clergy sex abuse cases have broken down and will likely end up in mediation next month. Pete Springer reports.

Attorney Kelly Clark is representing more than a hundred abuse victims. He says nearly a year after reaching a legal settlement with the Archdiocese of Portland, very few documents have actually been released.

Clark says the release of the documents was key to settling the sex abuse lawsuits.

UNITED STATES
Cincinnati Enquirer

BY ERIC GORSKI | THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AND JOHN JOHNSTON

The U.S. religious marketplace is extremely volatile, with nearly half of American adults leaving the faith tradition of their upbringing to either switch allegiances or abandon religious affiliation altogether, a new survey finds.

The study released Monday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life is unusual for it scope, relying on interviews with more than 35,000 adults to document a diverse and dynamic U.S. religious population. ...

The Roman Catholic Church has lost more members than any faith tradition because of affiliation swapping, the survey found. While nearly one in three Americans were raised Catholic, fewer than one in four say they're Catholic today. That means roughly 10 percent of all Americans are ex-Catholics.

Reasons for leaving vary. Janet Steele of Springfield Township cites the priest sex abuse scandal and the church's teachings on birth control among the reasons she's no longer Catholic. Her family joined Forest Chapel United Methodist Church in Forest Park, where she is now lay leader.

AUSTRALIA
Adelaide Now

February 26, 2008 02:25am
AN Australian man, believed to be a former South Australian priest, has been arrested in Bali for pedophile offences on nine boys.

The man, 66, was arrested in the West Jakarta suburb of Depok on February 20 and is being held at the police station in South Jakarta.

Depok police said last night that Australian authorities, who requested his arrest, had told them he was suspected of offences against nine Australian boys aged 12 to 17 years between 1979 and 1994.

UNITED STATES
Voice of the Faithful

This links to official results of the recent national election of officers for Voice of the Faithful.

LOUISIANA
The Shreveport Times

February 26, 2008

By John Andrew Prime
jprime@gannett.com

One of three men arrested last week at a local adult video store was a Benedictine monk from south Louisiana, The Times has learned.

Michael Kavanagh, 62, who gave Shreveport police an address on River Road in "Lake Benedict" when he was booked on an obscenity charge late Wednesday, is Father Aelred Kavanagh, then a member of the faculty at St. Joseph's Abbey and Seminary in St. Tammany Parish. The Benedictine abbey and the seminary are on River Road near Covington.

"Father Aelred Kavanaugh, O.S.B., whose lay name is Michael Kavanaugh, has resigned from his position on the faculty of Saint Joseph Seminary College," abbey Director of Development Vanessa Crouere told The Times in response to e-mail and phone queries.

PENNSYLVANIA
The Tribune-Democrat

By SUSAN EVANS
The Tribune-Democrat

The Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown has been struggling with church closings since 1994, when a plan was drafted to deal with a declining population and fewer priests.

During the past seven years, 25 parishes in the eight-county diocese have closed.

The cutback specifics in Greater Johnstown:

– In 1994, the diocese closed Sacred Heart and St. John the Baptist in Central City, Somerset County, and merged them to become Our Lady Queen of Angels. Also, Holy Child in Windber closed and merged into SS. Cyril and Methodius.

JOHNSTOWN (PA)
The Tribune-Democrat

By SUSAN EVANS
The Tribune-Democrat

Four of the five Roman Catholic churches in Johnstown’s historic Cambria City section will close next year, and the last remaining Catholic school in the neighborhood is shutting in June.

The announcement of the closings, made by Bishop Joseph Adamec late Monday after word leaked during the weekend, rocked the neighborhood best known for its annual church-based ethnic festival.

Which one of the five churches will survive has not been decided and will depend on an engineering study to evaluate each structure, said Adamec, leader of the eight-county Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By John Cooney
Tuesday February 26 2008

A priest has told how compulsory celibacy was part of his personal journey away from the Catholic "church of his youth" towards the Anglican ministry.

The Very Reverend Dermot Dunne also spoke of his concerns over the Catholic Church's teaching against birth control, on not allowing divorce to couples in broken marriages, as well as its refusal to admit women to the priesthood.

He was speaking in Dublin yesterday at the announcement of his appointment as Dean of the Church of Ireland's Christ Church cathedral.

UNITED KINGDOM
Manchester Evening News

Andy Russell
26/ 2/2008

A PRIEST accused of child abuse has denied sexually molesting two boys, saying he just wanted to help them `to be happy'.

Former Church of England rector John McCullough, 63, who later became a Roman Catholic priest, admitted one of the boys had regularly stayed at his vicarage in Bury.

Mr McCullough also admitted sharing a twin bed hotel room on a pilgrimage to Lourdes with the boy, who cannot be identified for legal reasons.

AUSTRALIA
Canberra Times

Victor Violante

Marist College was told as early as the 1970s that Brother Kostka Chute was molesting young students, but he was allowed to teach for a further 15 years, according to a civil claim seeking compensation for one of his alleged victims.

Also, dozens more claims will be lodged against the Marist Brothers organisation relating to alleged sexual offences by Kostka and two other former teachers at the Canberra school one, a former brother who taught in the 1970s, and the other Paul Lyons, who committed suicide in 2000 after he was charged with molesting a Daramalan College student in the 1990s.

Porters Lawyers partner Jason Parkinson, who is representing "dozens" of alleged victims in civil claims against the Marist Brothers organisation, told The Canberra Times yesterday that two further civil claims relating to alleged child molesting offences by Kostka will be lodged today.

WEST VIRGINIA
WTAP

[with video]

Steve Benyo appeared before Judge Robert Waters Monday to make a motion to have the alleged abuse victim's psychological records released in the trial.

Judge Waters denied Benyo's request. The case heads to trial on Tuesday.

This all stems from an incident where police say former church pastor Jeffrey Nolte and Benyo had an improper sexual relationship with the boy at Sand Hill United Methodist Church in Boaz.

HARTFORD (CT)
Hartford Courant

February 26, 2008

With excruciating hindsight, it is now clear that the state Department of Public Health should have trusted the victims rather than the forensic experts who said, two decades ago, that Dr. George Reardon was not a pedophile.

The Courant reported on Sunday that a psychologist and psychiatrist from the Institute of Living in Hartford concluded in 1988 and again in 1991, after examinations spanning weeks, that the doctor could safely continue practicing medicine even though victims kept coming forward. Dr. Reardon was stopped two years later when one of the Institute's experts, given additional evidence, changed his mind and testified against him.

The discovery last year of a huge cache of child pornography hidden in the former home of the late doctor appears to validate claims that he fondled and filmed children in suggestive poses for decades. The experts now look so wrong.

CANADA
Standard Freeholder

Posted By Trevor Pritchard

The former city cop who handled the allegations of a number of sexual abuse victims, including David Silmser, will not be taking the stand at the Cornwall Public Inquiry.

Inquiry commissioner Normand Glaude excused Heidi Sebalj from testifying after receiving a psychologist's report Monday on her mental and physical well-being.

"You'd have to know Heidi at the present time. She's just not capable," said Sebalj's husband, Peter Huffrey, who delivered the report.

WISCONSIN
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By JENNIFER L.W. FINK

Posted: Feb. 25, 2008
My son was a student at St. Mary's/St. Andrew's Catholic School in LeRoy about four years ago when Father Franklyn Becker moved in next door.

Buy a link hereBecker, a former archdiocesan priest who has been accused of sexual abuse of children, quietly moved into the rectory, an unassuming brick home just feet from the school. The defrocked priest was within spitting distance of a school full of children ages 2 to 8.

It was only after parents found out through the grapevine and complained that a letter was sent home. The letter urged parents to have compassion, to practice Christian charity and to remember that people are innocent until proven guilty.

KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Kansas City Star

By JOE LAMBE
The Kansas City Star
Two new John Doe lawsuits filed Monday allege that Kansas City priests sexually abused children decades ago.

For the first time, accusations are raised against James Lawbaugh, who left the priesthood 39 years ago. A lawsuit contends he molested a 10-year-old Baptist boy at St. Vincent’s Church at 31st Street and Flora Avenue in 1968.

That boy, now 50, says the abuse happened in a short-lived Catholic program for inner-city youths during and after the riots that followed Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.

Reached by phone Monday at his Florida home, Lawbaugh denied the allegations.

OAKLAND (CA)
KTVU

OAKLAND -- A priest accused of sexual misconduct with a minor is being reinstated after the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland ruled the allegation could not be substantiated.

Father Chris Berbena began working for the Diocese of Oakland in 1997 and was removed twice since February 2004 after his name popped up on a list of alleged sexual abusers posted on the Archdiocese of Los Angeles Web site, where Berbena once worked, according to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland.

He was reinstated within the month in 2004 because an investigation by the diocese could not turn up the name of the accuser or details of the alleged incident of sexual abuse, according to the Diocese of Oakland.

OAKLAND (CA)
CBS 5

[with video]

OAKLAND (BCN) ― A priest accused of sexual misconduct with a minor is being reinstated after the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland ruled the allegation could not be substantiated.

Father Chris Berbena began working for the Diocese of Oakland in 1997 and was removed twice since February 2004 after his name popped up on a list of alleged sexual abusers posted on the Archdiocese of Los Angeles Web site, where Berbena once worked, according to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland.

He was reinstated within the month in 2004 because an investigation by the diocese could not turn up the name of the accuser or details of the alleged incident of sexual abuse, according to the Diocese of Oakland.

CANADA
The Chronicle Herald

By JANE SIMS The Canadian Press
Thu. Feb 14 - 6:13 AM

LONDON, Ont. — The trial for a teacher accused of bizarre abuse at a defunct Baptist school began this week amid allegations of students standing at attention for hours on end, having facial hair plucked with pliers and a greeting that involved fondling the breasts of parishioners.

Royden Wood, a church pastor and teacher at the school, has pleaded not guilty to 10 assault charges, two sexual assault charges and one charge of sexual interference.

A man who is now 35 years old testified Tuesday about the alleged abuse he suffered as a boy at the alternative school which ran out of the basement of the Ambassador Baptist Church from about 1985 to 1987.

UNITED STATES
The Christian Science Monitor

By Jane Lampman | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the February 26, 2008 edition

Reporter Jane Lampman talks about the results of a new survey on religion in America.A panoramic snapshot of American religious life in 2008 reveals an extraordinary dynamism that is reshaping the country's major traditions in historic ways.

Almost half of Americans have moved to a different religious denomination from that in which they were raised, and 28 percent have switched to a different major tradition or to no religion (i.e., from Roman Catholic to Protestant, Jewish to unaffiliated). ...

Perhaps the big surprise, though, relates to Roman Catholicism, which experienced the greatest net loss. While 31.4 percent of adults say they were raised Catholic, today only 23.9 percent identify as Catholic, a net loss of 7.5 percent.

"The Catholic numbers are eye-popping," says Dr. Lugo. "One out of every 10 people you meet on the street is a former Catholic." ...

"Scandals and conflicts lead some to distance themselves even though they still hold Christian beliefs," says Darren Sherkat, a sociologist at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, who has studied the unaffiliated. "A perhaps growing percentage are disaffiliated because they don't hold Christian beliefs."

UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

Police have agreed to re-examine allegations of child abuse made against a former Roman Catholic priest.

West Midlands Police is reviewing the case after admitting it failed to investigate when a complaint was made about Father James Robinson in 2003.

Father Robinson, who denies the claims, worked in Sutton Coldfield, Cradley Heath and Newcastle-under-Lyme, but moved to California in 1985.

MINNESOTA
MinnPost

By Paula Ruddy
Monday, Feb. 25, 2008
How many victims of sexual abuse in childhood are competent by the age of 24 to know how damaging the abuse has been to their lives? Yet in Minnesota, child victims of sex abusers currently have to file suit in civil court to cover the costs of injuries within six years after they "knew or had reason to know" that the injury was caused by the sexual abuse, according to Minnesota Statutes, Section 541.073 Subd.2(a).

The Minnesota Supreme Court has held that a child can't know or have reason to know that he or she has been injured by sexual abuse until the age of 18. But unless another disability is proven, the court's decision is read to give victims six years after the age of 18 to sue for damages. In most cases, by the age of 24 the person's right to sue is foreclosed. This statute applies not only to suits against an abuser but it also applies in Subd.3(2) to suits against a person who caused the injury by "negligently permitting sexual abuse against the victim to occur." The employer who was negligent in hiring an abuser and placing children in harm's way is protected by this statute, too.

CALIFORNIA
San Francisco Chronicle

Monday, February 25, 2008

(02-25) 11:59 PST SACRAMENTO, (AP) --

Irene Hunt, the common-law wife of a self-styled religious leader, has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for transporting her 7-year-old son to have sex with an adult.

Hunt's common-law husband, 60-year-old Allen Harrod of Sacramento, was found guilty earlier this month of transporting minors for sexual activity.

He was accused of engaging in ritualistic sex acts with children from two families for more than a decade as part of a religion he claimed to have started. One of his followers, 48-year-old Michael Labrecque, also was previously convicted.

UNITED KINGDOM
Fleetwood Weekly News

A priest has dismissed allegations he sexually abused a boy in his care, when he was a minister in Greater Manchester, while visiting the house of a judge.

Father John McCollough, 63, denies claims he preyed on youngsters, while he was the minister at Holy Trinity Church in Bury, in the 1990s.

One alleged victim, a heroin addict since the age of 14, claimed to have been attacked while on trips to Lourdes and London with the priest.

Giving evidence from the witness box at Bolton Crown Court, McCollough agreed the two had stayed with Deborah Champion, a barrister, from Putney, London, on one visit in May 1990.

CAMEROON
allAfrica

The Post (Buea)

25 February 2008
Posted to the web 25 February 2008

Kini Nsom, Leocadia Bongben & Edith Wirdze

The Parish Priest of the St Joseph's Anglophone Parish in Mvog-Ada Yaounde, Mgr Joseph Befe Ateba, has been accused of mismanaging harvest thanksgiving funds.

The accusations are contained in a petition some Christians wrote to the Yaounde Archbishop, Mgr Victor Tonye Bakot, recently.The mismanagement allegations that have since been making rounds in the parish rated as the richest in the country, indict the priest for living an extravagant life.

GREENWICH (CT)
Episcopal Life

By Lisa B. Hamilton, February 25, 2008

[Episcopal News Service] The former music director of Christ Church, Greenwich, Connecticut was sentenced February 22 to 5 1/2 years in prison for possessing child pornography, according to reports.

Robert F. Tate, 66, is also required to pay a $50,000 fine and continue treatment for sexually deviant behavior. Once he is released from prison, Tate will be under supervision, requiring him to register as a sex offender, have his Internet usage monitored, and barred from spending time with children under the age of 18 unless accompanied by a responsible adult aware of his conviction. Tate is not expected to appeal.

Tate, who was music director at the church for 34 years, has admitted to possessing child pornography, having sex with boys in Thailand, the Philippines and Costa Rica and having sex with boy prostitutes from New York in his church apartment. He maintains he never assaulted members of the church's choirs, but knowingly hired two pedophiles to work in the choir.

OREGON
The Register-Guard

By Bill Bishop
The Register-Guard

Published: February 25, 2008 10:19AM

Negotiations to unveil court documents about the role of church leaders in the Archdiocese of Portland’s priest sex abuse scandal have broken down and the issue is headed back to court next month.

Release of the documents was a key to settling lawsuits last April enabling the archdiocese to pay 175 claims by sex abuse victims and to continue operations without selling local parish or school properties.

The Portland archdiocese in 2004 became the first Catholic organization to file for bankruptcy protection on the eve of trials in multimillion-dollar lawsuits over child sexual abuse by priests.

CANADA
CBC

The commissioner of a public inquiry into sexual abuse in eastern Ontario was to decide Monday whether to throw out certain evidence the commission has heard and limit future evidence after a ruling by the Ontario Court of Appeal.

Justice Normand Glaude was to respond to a ruling issued Jan. 18 by a three-member panel of judges that narrows the mandate of the Cornwall Public Inquiry.

For two years, the inquiry has been looking into the response by the justice system and other public authorities to dozens of allegations of sexual abuse against members of the community in Cornwall and surrounding areas over decades, starting in the 1950s.

CHICAGO (IL)
WBBM

CHICAGO (WBBM) - The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests handed out hundreds of flyers Sunday morning in front of Holy Name Cathedral.

WBBM’s Jennifer O’Neill reports.

They were asking parishioners to join them to trying to keep vulnerable kids protected from predator priests.

SNAP President Barbara Blaine says two Chicago Jesuit priests who have been accused of sexual misconduct are not being monitored.

Father Donald McGuire was officially defrocked on Friday, following a conviction stemming from sexual misconduct in the 1960s.

UNITED STATES
Philadelphia Inquirer

Sarah Tofte
is a U.S. researcher for Human Rights Watch

State lawmakers will need to decide whether to comply with the federal Adam Walsh Act on sex offenders or lose federal money for law enforcement. The choice for states is to dramatically increase their registration and community-notification requirements for convicted sex offenders by 2009 or lose significant federal law enforcement grant money.

It doesn't seem like a difficult choice. Who wouldn't want to support laws targeting convicted sex offenders and be paid for it? Yet legislatures from Arizona to Illinois to Rhode Island are leaning against implementing the law. Because once you get past the painful emotions and look hard at the problem of child sexual abuse, it turns out that sex-offender registration and community-notification laws might not actually prevent sexual violence.

Sex-offender laws are based on two popular myths about child abuse: that children have most to fear from strangers, and that sex offenders will repeat their crimes. In fact, more than 90 percent of child sexual abuse is committed by someone the child knows. And authoritative studies show that three out of four sex offenders do not re-offend within 15 years of release from prison. In fact, 87 percent of sex crimes are committed by people with no previous sex-offense convictions.

CANADA
Globe and Mail

KATHERINE O'NEILL

February 25, 2008 at 4:42 AM EST

EDMONTON — It's a scorecard ranking unspeakable acts.

From sodomy to severe beatings causing disfigurement to persistent fondling - the list is graphic and disturbingly thorough.

It's all part of a complicated compensation system that a court-ordered independent program is now using to settle serious sexual- and physical-abuse claims by former residential-school students.

The majority are aboriginal. All were either children or teenagers when they were assaulted, often by the adults paid and trusted to look after or teach them.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By John Cooney
Monday February 25 2008

The appointment of a former Catholic priest as the Anglican Dean of Dublin's Christ Church cathedral is an example how the obligatory rule of celibacy of the Roman priesthood is losing clergy to the more liberal Church of Ireland.

After his marriage to his wife Celia, and his resignation as a priest of the Catholic diocese of Cork and Ross, Dean Dermot Dunne has been ministering as an Anglican rector in the diocese of Ferns, Remarkably, Dean Dunne discovered that three of his 11 colleagues had also left the ranks of the Catholic clergy.

A number of nuns and Catholic laity have also found a spiritual haven in becoming members of the Church of Ireland.

GREENWICH (CT)
The Advocate

By Hoa Nguyen
Staff Writer

Published February 25 2008

GREENWICH - Officials at Christ Church Greenwich are searching through old employment files to find any trace of two pedophiles said to have assaulted choirboys when they worked at the church three decades ago.

The records have so far yielded no information on the two men, Tim Carpenter, a senior warden at the church, said yesterday.

"Nobody knows what the deal is," he said. "This was a rude awakening for us."

CANADA
Northumberland Today

She's continuing her journey with God in a new church that will accept her as the shepherd of its flock.

Marie Evans Bouclin, an ordained priest with the Roman Catholic Women Priests organization, was inducted into Christ the Servant Catholic Church in Cold Springs Sunday. ...

She heard about women who were being sexually abused by priests.

"I felt a call to minister to these women," she said.

MISSISSIPPI
WLOX

[with video]

For almost a year , they've met on the steps of their hurricane battered church every Sunday morning, hoping for an answer to their prayers. But the only answer they received recently, came in the form of a letter from Bishop Thomas Rodi, implying that Pope Benedict himself wants them to end their disagreement with the church.

"There was 3 scriptural passages, and his urgent request that we drop the lawsuit," says Parishioner Frank Schmidt.

The lawsuit, brought by parishioner Frank Schmidt along with 155 others, came as an appeal of the Diocese's decision to merge St. Pauls with Our Lady of Lourdes and build a new church away from the beach.

MILWAUKEE (WI)
WUMW

[with audio]

The Catholic Church in Milwaukee is facing a long and tough road. That’s because of settlements stemming from sexual abuse cover-ups and new legislation that could open the church up to more litigation. WUWM’s LaToya Dennis visited a local parish to find out what churchgoers think about the state of Catholicism in Milwaukee given the controversy.

The sentiment was the same from most members of Saint Martin de Porres on Milwaukee’s north side. The fallout from years of sexual abuse on the part of some priests, covered up by the Milwaukee Archdiocese, hasn’t waivered their faith, at least not for long. JC McClendon is a longtime church member.

“I was an alter boy. I went to a Catholic school my entire life and the priest had a big part of my life. It was kind of devastating at first, but when you think about it, it’s a personal thing. It doesn’t have anything to do with my Catholicism or my belief in the lord. Man is not perfect,” McClendon says.

PENNSYLVANIA
Philadelphia Inquirer

By David Clohessy
Three decades after he was first reported as a child molester, David Sicoli, a Philadelphia Catholic priest, was finally defrocked last week by the Vatican. The move has renewed debate over what should be done with the dozens of sexually abusive priests, ex-priests, nuns and seminarians who have been deemed guilty of child-sex crimes by civil or church authorities. They are walking free - often among unsuspecting neighbors - largely because of Pennsylvania's archaic child-molestation laws.

State laws often require that child victims of sexual abuse take legal action quickly, usually by the time they turn 20 or 21. That restrictive deadline gives predators (and those who employ or shield predators) strong incentives to intimidate victims, deceive parents, threaten witnesses and destroy evidence, to help "run out the clock" and escape detection and prosecution. Such laws also deny victims the necessary time to learn how severely they have been hurt, and to gather the strength and courage it takes to report horrific and embarrassing crimes by powerful adults.

Pennsylvania lawmakers are considering a measure that would temporarily suspend the statute of limitations, giving more child-sex-abuse victims a chance to expose their predators in court. Despite vehement opposition from the state's Catholic bishops, I hope that measure soon passes.

CANADA
Edmonton Sun

Mon, February 25, 2008

By ANDREW HANON

For years, Joe Courtoreille refused to go into St. Albert.

"I just couldn't come through on that road," he says. "Too many bad memories. I'd always have to go around."

Just thinking about the nine years he spent "imprisoned" at St. Albert's Indian Residential School used to anger Courtoreille.

"It was awful," he says, "just like jail."

CHICAGO (IL)
ABC 7

A Jesuit priest convicted of molesting Chicago-area students in the 1960's has been removed from the priesthood.

Donald McGuire was officially defrocked Friday, according to the Chicago order of the Society of Jesus.

On top of his 2006 molestation convictions, McGuire has also been accused in cases involving other children between the 1960s to 2002.

Sunday, the activist group Survivor Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said not enough is being done to deter priests from abusing children.

SCOTLAND
The Courier

By David Clegg
THE CATHOLIC Church in Dundee has been rocked once more after it emerged a priest who retired on health grounds is running a pub in Spain with a divorcee.

Father Eugene O’Sullivan, former parish priest of St Francis in Tullideph Road, confessed to a Sunday tabloid that he was also living with 41-year-old Fiona Aitken from Forfar—but denied they were having a sexual relationship.

The 61-year-old said he was in the process of leaving the priesthood and refused to rule out the possibility he would marry in the future.

AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

February 25, 2008 - 11:05AM

An Anglican Church tribunal this week will hear evidence which could lead to a priest jailed for child sex being stripped of his orders.

Robert Francis Sharwood, 62, of Brisbane, was jailed for 12 months in November 2006 after being found guilty of sexually abusing a 13-year-old boy in Brisbane more than 30 years ago.

Sharwood was released from jail in November last year, attracting calls by child protection advocates for him to be immediately stripped of his holy orders.

CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Sun-Times

February 24, 2008
BY MONIFA THOMAS Staff Reporter/mjthomas@suntimes.com
A once-prominent Jesuit priest convicted of molesting two boys in the 1960s was officially defrocked Friday.

The Rev. Donald J. McGuire has been permanently expelled from his religious order and removed from all clerical duties, according to a statement from the Chicago Province of the Society of Jesus.

The Rev. Edward Schmidt, head of the Chicago Jesuits, said the order is "outraged and saddened that any abuse ever took place."

UNITED STATES
Renew America

Matt C. Abbott
February 24, 2008

Over the last couple of years, I've received e-mails asking about the status of Father James Haley, the priest whose story is detailed in this 2004 Washington Times article, and whom I've quoted in previous columns.

In late November 2007, I e-mailed Father Haley to ask how he's doing and if there's been any new development(s) in his case, which had essentially placed him in canonical limbo. I also e-mailed him earlier this month about another matter.

Father Haley responded on Feb. 19, 2008 (slightly edited):

"I wanted to acknowledge these two emails, but I have nothing to say at this point in time. Well, other than I have heard nothing, absolutely nothing from the Church since Wednesday Nov. 30, 2005 at 12:37 p.m. Please keep me on your radar — 'it' will be the big blip that suddenly appears after so many warnings. And thanks for your work on this vital issue."

PHILIPPINES
ABS-CBN

By CHARLIE LAGASCA
The Philippine Star

BAMBANG, Nueva Vizcaya – After almost six months, police and social welfare officials filed a case of unjust vexation before the provincial prosecutor’s office against a Catholic priest who reportedly bit a guest relations officer (GRO) on the lips while he was drunk inside a videoke bar here in July last year.

The case, docketed as I.S. No. 5356-B-2008, was transmitted last Feb. 20 by Chief Inspector Joseph de la Cruz, this town’s police chief, and Myrna Pinaroc, municipal social welfare officer, against Fr. Elmer Saludares, parish priest of Saint Anne Parish in Barangay Malasin in neighboring Dupax del Norte town.

Saludares was accused of biting the lips of Genalyn Abella while at the Estrella’s Videoke Bar in San Antonio on July 17 last year.

CONNECTICUT
Newsday

NEW LONDON, Conn. - A 49-year-old woman has sued the Norwich Diosese of the Roman Catholic Church, alleging she was the victim of years of sexual assaults at the hands of a priest in Groton.

The woman says the Rev. James Curry began the assaults at St. Mary's Church in 1966 when she was 8-years old during private counseling sessions. The lawsuit alleges that Curry sexually assaulted the girl in the church sacristy and rectory, in the church center and in his car.

The abuse continued on a regular basis for the next eight years and involved hundreds of sexual assaults, according to the woman's attorneys.

SHERIDAN (NY)
The Observer

By SHIRLEY WEST

2/24/2008 - OBSERVER Staff Writer

SHERIDAN — St. John Bosco Roman Catholic Church held its final Mass on Saturday afternoon to an overflowing crowd of dedicated, and slightly heartsick, parishioners.

The lovely stone-faced church left its doors wide open during the Mass, welcoming any who would wish to say goodbye to what was to many “a home away from home.”

CONNECTICUT
Hartford Courant

By HILARY WALDMAN And DANIEL P. JONES | Courant Staff Writers
February 24, 2008

During the same stretch of time that Dr. George Reardon was allegedly fondling youngsters in his office at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford, a psychologist across town at the Institute of Living reached this conclusion:

"Dr. Reardon is not a pedophile."

Sparked by complaints, the state Department of Public Health — which has the authority to lodge formal charges against doctors and initiate disciplinary hearings — had asked the prestigious institute to examine Reardon to determine whether he was a child molester.

SCOTLAND
Sunday Mail

Feb 24 2008 By Charles Lavery

A PRIEST who left his Scottish parish on health grounds is running an Irish bar in Spain with his secret partner.

Father Eugene O'Sullivan, 61, hopes to wed Fiona Aitken, 41, who he met as a young bride when he conducted her wedding in 1985.

O'Sullivan's former parishioners will be stunned by the truth about where their priest has gone. They thought he was terminally ill and planning to spend his remaining time in Ireland.

COLORADO
Colorado Springs Gazette

Save the children. We must save them from the Catholic Church and its predatory pedophile priests. If we care about kids, we’ll support House Bill 1011. That’s what the bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Gwyn Green, D-Golden, wants us to believe. The law would be a gift to predatory plaintiff’s lawyers who are getting rich by emptying the coffers of the Catholic Church.

The law would open a two-year window in which plaintiffs could sue private organizations for allegations of past sexual misdeeds of their employees. It would hold private organizations (read: the Catholic Church) accountable for the actions of the accused “even though the perpetrator of the offense is deceased or incapacitated.”

A dead priest is completely incapable of putting on a defense. He’s equally useless for paying damages a judge or jury might award. Under the proposed law, therefore, those who failed to properly manage long-dead allegedly predatory priests would be held liable.

SCOTLAND
Sunday Mail

Feb 24 2008

A MONSIGNOR sacked over an 18-year affair with a parishioner is battling to stay in his grace-and-favour home.

We revealed that Joseph Creegan was sacked by Bishop Vincent Logan over "irrefutable proof" that he had an affair with a married woman.

But last week Creegan sparked a row with the bishop that could go all the way to the Vatican.

Creegan was sacked after the spurned woman at the centre of the affair confessed all to Bishop Logan.

MAINE
Sun Journal

By Daniel Hartill, Staff Writer
Sunday, February 24, 2008

LEWISTON - The number of Catholic priests in the city will shrink again.

Lewiston parishioners were told Saturday that Monsignor Marc B. Caron and two parochial vicars will lead services at the city's five churches: Holy Family, Holy Cross, St. Patrick's, St. Joseph's and the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul. Four priests currently share the duties.

In addition, a single priest will soon be responsible for churches in Lisbon and Sabattus and a mission in Greene.

The announcement came in the form of a letter distributed to parishioners Saturday and signed by Bishop Richard Malone, the leader of Maine's Catholic church.

AUSTRALIA
Courier Mail

Tanya Chilcott and Alison Sandy
February 24, 2008 11:00pm

A CONVICTED pedophile priest is being allowed to sing in a choir with children at one of Brisbane's most distinguished Anglican churches.

Robert Francis Sharwood, who was released from jail three years ago after serving a year for sexually abusing a 13-year-old boy, sang in the third row of the Holy Trinity Church choir in Fortitude Valley yesterday.

A 14-year-old and 16-year-old girl sang in the front, while infants and children, including young boys, were present in the congregation.

HELENA (MT)
Billings Gazette

HELENA - Toni Cavanagh Johnson, Ph.D., a leading authority on children with sexual behavior problems, will speak in Helena on March 7-8 at the Best Western Great Northern Hotel. The event, which is open to the public, is presented by Intermountain. The registration fee is $150; to register, go to www.intermountain.org.

The conference will be beneficial for juvenile justice workers, health care professionals, social workers, child care workers and church leaders in understanding normal vs. problematic sexual behavior in children.

GREENWICH (CT)
The Advocate

By Martin B. Cassidy
Staff Writer

Published February 24 2008

Jack Bausman heard Robert Tate, former Christ Church Greenwich choir director, confess Thursday to viewing child pornography and committing decades of sexual abuse of minors. But Bausman said he still has questions about Tate's admission that he had hired two pedophiles who preyed on choir boys.

At his sentencing Thursday, Tate, 66, apologized for knowingly hiring the two unidentified men and called himself "a coward" for firing the men but not turning them into police when they molested boys in the choir.

Bausman, a Christ Church parishioner who has known Tate for 34 years, said he had hoped for the benefit of parishioners that authorities would identify the men and say when they had worked at the church.

INDIA
Don Bosco India

Hyderabad, Feb. 23. Bosco Psychological Services, New Delhi Province, celebrated its 10 years of service to the Province and the Church with a well attended 3 day workshop on Sexuality, Celibacy and Boundary Violations: Understanding and Helping the Victim and the Offender. The programme started on 18th February morning and ended on 20th evening. The resource persons were Dr. Tony Robinson, clinical psychologist and CEO and Dr. Gerardine Taylor, Clinical Director, of Encompass Australasia. Encompass is a residential treatment centre in Sydney, Australia for professionals, clergy, religious men and women who are struggling with sexual issues.

GROTON (CT)
The Day

Groton — One day in 1966, 8-year-old “Mary Doe” went to confession at St. Mary's Church where the Rev. James Curry told her that she should later speak to him in private.

Doe, who helped her mother clean the church and rectory, went to several private counseling sessions with the 42-year-old priest. During those sessions, Curry prayed with the girl while massaging her shoulders, stroking her hair and kissing her forehead. He told her she was special and to “trust in the Lord.”

Those details come from a lawsuit filed against the Diocese of Norwich last week in New London Superior Court. During the third or fourth such session, according to the suit, Curry had the girl drink the sacramental wine used at Mass before they engaged in oral sex, and he raped her. That pattern continued on a regular basis for the next eight years and involved hundreds of sexual assaults, according to attorneys for the now 49-year-old woman.

GROTON (CT)
The Day

By JOE WOJTAS
Day Staff Writer

Groton — The lawsuit newly filed by “Mary Doe” is not the first time the late James Curry, formerly a priest in the Norwich diocese, has been accused of raping a young girl.

In 1981 a Groton woman who had worked as Curry's housekeeper filed a criminal complaint against Curry with the town police. In it she alleged the priest had raped her 11-year-old daughter on various occasions in 1980 and 1981.

Curry resigned from the church that fall, while denying the allegations. Diocesan spokesman Michael Strammiello said Friday that records show the Norwich diocese removed Curry from his ministry.

ILLINOIS
City of Angels

By Kay Ebeling
One priest ranted in daily Mass sermons against “those who go to the media.” The monsignor visited choir practice and called them sons and daughters of Satan. Their sin? When they found out Father Mark Campobello who taught at their high school was an ephebophile with a predilection for eighth grade girls, they wanted to help the victims. Then the Rockford Diocese refused to cooperate with the local DA and a few church members spoke to the media. St. Peter’s parish responded by attacking the crime victims and anyone brave enough to be a victims’ advocate.

Campobello was released from prison in Illinois last week, after serving four years of an eight year sentence, and he now lives in Crystal Lake where he’s registered as a sex offender, but the damages his crimes caused at St. Peter’s parish are probably permanent.

“There’s people in the pews snapping pictures of us,” Frank Bochte said. A website obviously connected to the parish then prints the stalker photos. You can also listen to voice mail messages Bochte and his wife Kate left with St. Peter's parish priests with one click at the CTL-NYC website, so much for confidentiality. In the forum section at CTL, someone slyly identified a Campobello victim by stating her father’s job title. A “film crew” from CTL points cameras in advocates’ faces -- with press badges at the last SNAP meeting in New York last year. They claim to be making a documentary. . . .

UNITED STATES
Washington Post

By Joe Feuerherd
Sunday, February 24, 2008; Page B05

Like most Maryland Democrats, I voted for Sen. Barack Obama in the recent Potomac Primary. By doing so, according to the leaders of my church, I put my soul at risk. That's right, says the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops -- tap the touch screen for a pro-abortion-rights candidate, and you're probably punching your ticket to Hell.

For a church that "thinks in centuries," things sure are moving quickly. Back in 2004, as Washington correspondent for the independent National Catholic Reporter, I covered what Comedy Central's Jon Stewart dubbed the "wafer wars." A handful of conservative bishops warned Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry, a pro-abortion rights Catholic, that they would deny him Communion should he attempt to receive the church's most sacred sacrament. ...

This fire-and-brimstone approach to the ballot box is the long-term bequest of a conservative pope, John Paul II, enacted by a U.S. hierarchy appointed during his 27-year tenure and now by his successor, Pope Benedict XVI. John Paul's key criterion in choosing the men who lead the United States' 194 dioceses was their vocal support for church teachings that have been rejected in whole (birth control) or in part (women's ordination and abortion) by many Catholics in the pews and the broader American culture. John Paul gave little weight to management or pastoral experience, as evidenced by the bishops' handling of the clergy sex-abuse crisis.

LINDA VISTA (CA)
Union-Tribune

By Mike Freeman
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

February 23, 2008

The Irvine Co. has purchased the University of San Diego High School site in Linda Vista from the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego for $50 million.

The Newport Beach-based real estate giant plans to build 533 apartments at the former private Catholic school site, which closed in 2005 when the diocese opened Cathedral Catholic High in Carmel Valley.

Known as “Uni,” the high school site was the most high profile of the church-owned properties involved in the diocese's bankruptcy filing last year. Proceeds from the sale will go toward paying the $198 million settlement the diocese reached in September with victims of sexual abuse by clergy members.

NEW YORK
WBNG

[with video]

By Gabe Osterhout

Dozens of Catholic Churches are close to a deadline to decide their future.

The Syracuse Diocese picked parishes to merge or link.

Their plans are due next month.

Our Lady of Angels Church in the Town of Union was built in the 1960s, as an offshoot to Christ the King Church.

Now the two parishes will again be one.

SPRINGFIELD (MA)
CBS 3

[with video]

By Matt DeLucia
More than 35 years after the death of 13 year-old Danny Croteau, a Springfield altar boy, documents that have never been seen before by the public have finally been released.

Croteau's family sees this latest development as a big victory, while the Hampden County District Attorney's office fought hard to keep the documents from the public eye.

It was just last month when a Hampden County Superior Court Judge ordered the District Attorney's office to turn over dozens of pages of witness statements related to the murder. This week, those documents became public for the first time in over three decades. Documents the Croteaus say will help them form an independent investigation.

VIRGINIA
The Free Lance-Star

Date published: 2/23/2008

FORMER Louisa County priest Rodney Rodis rendered unto both God and Caesar. He rendered perfidy and criminal offense. On Thursday Caesar, at any rate, rendered back.

In Richmond, federal Judge Richard Williams sentenced Rodis, a shepherd who took the sheep for a fleecing, to 63 months in prison--a term exceeding the customary guidelines, exceeding even what prosecutors sought--minus the nine months Rodis has sat in jail. Judge Williams gave the crooked cleric the maximum, the jurist said, specifically because in his role as parish priest Rodis "abuse[d] a sacred trust."

That abuse was calculated, long-lasting, and severe. Rodis is slammer-bound technically because in 2002 he stole almost $600,000 from the two Catholic churches he "served" much as a wolf serves itself mutton--Immaculate Conception and St. Jude. But he actually swiped perhaps a million dollars or more over four years, both sending the money back to his native Philippines to acquire land and, more remarkably, financing a Spotsylvania County household that included a wife and kids. That Louisa and Spotsylvania counties fall under different Catholic dioceses facilitated the charade.

CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

By Karoun Demirjian | Tribune reporter
February 23, 2008

A Jesuit priest convicted of molesting students at a Chicago-area Catholic school in the 1960s was officially defrocked Friday.

Donald J. McGuire has been permanently removed from all clerical functions, said a statement from Rev. Edward Schmidt, the head of the Chicago order of the Society of Jesus to which McGuire belonged.

"We are outraged and saddened that any abuse ever took place," Schmidt said. "[McGuire] has terribly abused the trust [the victims], and we, put in him. And the church, by the action taken today, has demonstrated that same belief."

ENDWELL (NY)
Press & Sun-Bulletin

By William Moyer
Press & Sun-Bulletin

Not that parishioners didn't see it coming, but the long-time priests at two Catholic parishes in Endwell have announced their retirements, which has triggered a diocesan-mandated formal process to merge the churches into a single parish.

The Rev. Thomas F. Hobbes, at Christ the King, and the Rev. John D. Roock, at Our Lady of Angels, informed parishioners that they will retire in July or August, depending on a still-to-be-determined and diocesan-approved timetable for merging the two parishes.

"Anything else would have been wishful thinking; it would have kept (Christ the King) open for a while, but people knew what was in the works," Hobbes said about the timing of the two priests' retirements. "People want some roots and to know what parish is going to be there for their children."

FREELAND (PA)
Standard Speaker

Saturday, 23 February 2008
By TOM RAGAN
Staff Writer
The Roman Catholic Community of Freeland knew for months that four of its long-standing churches would be reduced to one.

They now know which one is likely to survive.

About 200 parishioners attended a Friday night meeting to hear the Rev. John Melnick announce that he would recommend St. Ann’s Church on Centre Street serve the parish and be renamed Immaculate Conception Church.

Under the recommendation, the other three churches – St. Casimir’s, St. John’s and St. Anthony’s – would be closed.

SPRINGFIELD (MA)
The Republican

Saturday, February 23, 2008By BUFFY SPENCERbspencer@repub.com
SPRINGFIELD - Investigators have worked persistently during the past 35 years to find the killer of altar boy Daniel Croteau, but have been thwarted at every turn by a lack of physical evidence to link a suspect to the crime, Hampden County District Attorney William M. Bennett said. ...

In the documents released this week, one witness told police in 2004 she had seen a boy in a yellow rain coat lying beneath the bridge where Croteau's body was found. A priest was standing over him, she said.

Her statement recounts the encounters with then-Bishop Christopher J. Weldon and then-District Attorney Ryan.

The witness told police that Weldon threatened to excommunicate her father, and that Ryan told her there was no evidence to support her claim. Ryan, according to the woman's statement, said he could arrest her for filing a false report if she pursued her claims.

Yesterday, Mark E. Dupont, spokesman for the Springfield diocese, said, "Diocesan legal counsel has reviewed the witness statement which alleges involvement by the late Bishop Christopher J. Weldon. There are a number of notable discrepancies in this witness' statement relative to dates and circumstances which call into question its overall reliability."

"We maintain complete confidence that the office of the district attorney and state police would have pursued this matter had it been deemed credible," Dupont said.

PUEBLO (CO)
The Pueblo Chieftain

Marvin Read

The announcement this week that the Pueblo Catholic Diocese is shuttering two parishes - St. Patrick and Our Lady of the Assumption - is disappointing to the members of those congregations but no surprise.

The closures represent locally the latest in a string of events that are changing the face of Roman Catholicism and that will, at some point, force church officials at every level to reconsider how to run that billion-member monolith. ...

The pedophile scandal of the last decade was seen by many as a coup de grace as more priests disappeared from the ranks, exposed for their abuse, defrocked and some jailed. Their bishops and other church officials were demeaned for their complicity and ineffectiveness in dealing with pervert priests. Dioceses were drained financially - some to the point of bankruptcy - to pay victims and their attorneys for abuse and sins of the past. The clergy, the episcopacy and the institution lost even more prestige than money.

SPRINGFIELD (MA)
Examiner

Feb 22, 2008 3:57 PM (15 hrs ago) By STEPHANIE REITZ, AP
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (Map, News) - Newly released documents related to the 1972 murder of a 13-year-old altar boy include dozens of pages of witness statements and police reports, but have left his aging parents still hoping for the information that could bring their son's killer to trial.

"Somebody out there knows something, and hopefully they will finally tell. That's what we've been desperately hoping for," said Bernice Croteau, 71, whose son, Danny, was killed more than three decades ago. "We've been waiting such a long time."

Danny's body was found on the banks of the Chicopee River on April 15, 1972, after someone fatally bludgeoned him. Police think a bloody rock left at the scene may have been the murder weapon.

CANADA
Calgary Sun

By KEVIN MARTIN, SUN MEDIA

Psychological testing has been ordered for a Calgary man who sexually abused his developmentally delayed adult daughter.

Provincial court Judge Terry Semenuk yesterday asked that a report be prepared after the 60-year-old man entered a guilty plea to sexual assault. ...

The assaults came to light after the woman disclosed the abuse to her pastor.

MAINE
Kennebec Journal

When do good men stop being good men? At what point should good people examine the dark side of inaction? Both the Bible and the incarcerated make it clear how disgusting sexual abuse against children is, but inexplicably the Catholic Church continues to act as if this horror is mostly just an embarrassment to be worked around.

Bishop Richard Malone's recent decision allowing former priest Paul Coughlin to resume duties, three years after resigning for covering up sex abuse charges against a church volunteer, is another example. The volunteer who Coughlin allowed to reside in the church rectory went to the Maine State Prison, having been convicted of the pedophilia Father Coughlin tried to hide. Not surprisingly, Coughlin himself was found to have had "inappropriate physical contact" with a minor at his church years earlier.

If an administrator allowed this to happen in a local school, public outrage would demand the expulsion of the perpetrator and administrator. Why then should Bishop Malone not be expelled for his apparent lack of good judgment?

LOUISVILLE (KY)
The Courier-Journal

By Peter Smith
psmith@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal

It was challenging enough to recruit young men for the Roman Catholic priesthood at a time when few were heeding such a call.

But the Rev. Ronald Knott's job with the Archdiocese of Louisville became nearly impossible when the crisis of sexual abuse by clergy and others in the church hit its peak in 2002 and 2003.

The crisis also threw Knott into the lowest point of his career, a depression he said many priests experienced then. But it got him thinking deeply about how many priests are overworked, isolated from each other and their parishioners and -- in the case of new priests -- poorly prepared for the realities of life as a pastor.

IRELAND
One in Four

The Irish Times

The Court of Criminal Appeal has dismissed an appeal by a man against his conviction for falsely accusing a priest of child sexual abuse.

Paul Anderson (34), Crumlin Park, Crumlin, formerly of Fatima Mansions and Iveagh Trust Flats, New Bride Street, Dublin, was convicted last June after a 17-day trial of making the false claim. He was jailed for four years by Judge Patricia Ryan at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

FALL RIVER (MA)
Wicked Local

By Grant Welker
Fri Feb 22, 2008, 05:20 PM EST

Fall River - A national group for people abused by priests has asked Diocese of Fall River Bishop George W. Coleman to visit former parishes of Father Maurice T. Lebel, who was suspended in December for allegedly molesting a minor during his time in the diocese.

The diocese says it has already taken steps recommended by the group, Survivors Network of those Abused By Priests, but SNAP’s national director thinks the diocese hasn’t done enough.

The response from the diocese was “hardly a sincere, passionate plea for victims to step forward and get help, or for witnesses to call police,” said national director David Clohessy Friday. “If the bishop found out that a priest was performing gay marriages, the response would be very different.”

SNAP asked Coleman in the e-mail letter to ask any victims or those with knowledge of abuses to come forward. Lebel worked in the Diocese of Fall River for 13 years and began at the Diocese of Portland, Maine, in 1991.

PROVIDENCE (RI)
The Rhode Island Catholic

Posted Feb. 21, 2008

PROVIDENCE — Former diocesan priest Rev. Philip A. Magaldi, the target of three separate allegations of sexual misconduct in Rhode Island, recently confessed to officials in the Diocese of Fort Worth that he is HIV Positive.

In 1998, 2002 & 2007, the Diocese of Providence received allegations of sexual misconduct relative to the priest, who had left nine years prior to the first allegation, as he had requested a transfer to the Diocese of Ft. Worth, Texas. He returned to Rhode Island in 1992 to serve time in prison after pleading guilty to embezzlement charges at a North Providence parish. Following release, he returned to Texas.

At the time the complaints against him were made known to the Diocese of Providence, the Office of Education and Compliance investigated the allegations and then shared the findings with officials in the Diocese of Ft. Worth.

CINCINNATI (OH)
The Catholic Telegraph

ARCHDIOCESE — Father Raymond Larger, who in 2005 was found by a judge to be not guilty of criminal charges that he sexually abused a minor, has been reinstated as an active priest following a review of his case by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Father Larger, 56, will be given an assignment for priestly ministry at the Cathedral of St. Peter in Chains in Cincinnati and will work at the chancery of the archdiocese, according to a statement released by the archdiocese on Feb. 14.

"We are grateful to the Holy See for their interest in this matter, and we believe they have handled it thoughtfully and with justice," said Archbishop Daniel E. Pilarczyk. "I believe in Father Larger’s innocence and am thankful that the clearing of his name makes possible his return to a ministerial role."

SPRINGFIELD (MA)
The Republican

By BUFFY SPENCER
bspencer@repub.com

SPRINGFIELD - Hampden County District Attorney William M. Bennett said this morning that all of the investigators who worked to try to find the killer of 13-year-old Daniel Croteau over the past 35 years have wanted to hold someone accountable for the young boy's death.

"We tried every DNA test you can think of," Bennett said at a press conference at his office. "Every time we go down a particular path we come up empty."

Bennett held the press conference in response to media inquiries that arose from the release this week of documents, many of which dealt with the Croteau investigation, in response to a judge's ruling in a civil case.

WISCONSIN
WISN

For years, WISN 12 News has reported stories of sexual abuse of children by clergy members, but 12 News reporter Nick Bohr has a different story to report -- the story of the journey of a teenage boy victimized by a Wisconsin priest and the remarkable thing he's doing that's helped him to heal.

Bohr traveled to California to bring the story to life.

The victim was hesitant to tell his story, not because of the nature of what happened to him, but because he didn't want to draw attention to himself for what he's chosen to do with a massive financial settlement he's received.

It was an ideal childhood, growing up in San Diego just a few blocks from the beach. But for then 15-year-old Nick Jordan, his idyllic childhood crashed to an end in of all places in a place where he had every right to feel the most secure -- his church.

"When someone is raped by a priest, they're raped body and soul. And that's the situation," Jordan said.

WILLINGTON (CT)
Journal Inquirer

By: Kym Soper, Journal Inquirer
02/20/2008

Officials from the Norwich Diocese deny that the former pastor of St. Jude Roman Catholic Church in Willington has been either suspended or granted a leave of absence for disobeying Bishop Michael Cote's transfer orders.

What the Rev. Thomas Sennik is, according to diocesan officials, is a "priest in transition."

Sennik told worshippers at Mass on Sunday, Feb. 10, that Cote had suspended him for refusing to take on a larger and more demanding parish, St. Maurice Church in Bolton. Sennik said he refused because it would leave him little time to care for his aging invalid mother and chronically ill sister.

BOLTON (CT)
Journal Inquirer

By:Kym Soper, Journal Inquirer
02/16/2008

BOLTON - The congregation at St. Maurice Roman Catholic Church is reeling this week over a staffing decision by Norwich Diocese Bishop Michael Cote that has left it, for now, without a permanent pastor.

The congregation's plight is the direct result of the reassignment and apparent subsequent suspension of the Rev. Thomas Sennik, who until earlier this week was pastor at St. Jude's in Willington for the last 16 years.

Parishioners say Sennik refused Cote's order to move from the smaller Willington church to head up the much larger Bolton parish, as it would leave him little time to care for his invalid mother and chronically ill sister. He is now living in Middletown taking care of the two women full time.

WILLINGTON (CT)
Journal Inquirer

By: Kym Soper, Journal Inquirer
02/13/2008

The longtime pastor of St. Jude Catholic Church in Willington has been suspended for refusing to take on a more demanding parish that would leave him little time to care for his aging, invalid mother and chronically ill sister.

Parishioners learned Sunday that the Rev. Thomas Sennik was suspended - without pay, pension, or health care - for refusing Norwich Diocese Bishop Michael Cote's order to go to St. Maurice Church in Bolton.

The congregation also learned from Cote in a letter read during Sunday's Mass that their church would share a pastor - be "yoked" in church parlance - with St. Philip the Apostle in Ashford until a permanent decision is made about the parish.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

Friday February 22 2008

A former priest in the diocese of Kerry who pleaded guilty to 53 counts of sexual assault has been given a four-year prison sentence. John Brosnan carried out the offences against five members of the same family, aged between nine and 16, on dates between 1965 and 1973. The court heard that the family are sincere people who did not want to upset the Church.

In previous evidence, Detective Garda John Evans told the court that Mr Brosnan began abusing the children when they were about nine years of age and continued with the abuse until they were in their mid-teens.

The court heard John Brosnan showed one of the victims pornographic images and that the victims had suffered profound psychological effects from the abuse.

COLLEGEVILLE (MN)
Pioneer Press

BY DAVID HANNERS
Pioneer Press
Article Last Updated: 02/21/2008 11:30:56 PM CST

A group representing victims of clergy sex abuse is raising new concerns about the scheduled appearance of a defrocked minister — and registered sex offender — at an Episcopal retreat in Collegeville this weekend.

It is the second year the group, Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests, has complained about a visit by Lynn Charles Bauman, who lives in Texas.

Bauman, 65, and his brother, Ward Bauman, are leading a four-day seminar on dreams that began Thursday at the Episcopal House of Prayer, which Ward Bauman runs.

Lynn Bauman is on 10 years' probation for a 1999 Texas conviction for molesting an 8-year-old boy on a religious retreat. He resigned from the priesthood and pleaded guilty, but in a letter he wrote to friends after he was charged, he said the accusations stemmed from "a serious misunderstanding," according to news reports at the time.

CANADA
Standard Freeholder

When Holly Desimone spent a week in 1996 testifying against the man who raped her, nothing was off limits.

She was asked detailed questions about her medical and sexual history. She recalled facing a defence attorney so aggressive that he practically had his finger "up (her) nose."

The court learned how her boyfriend left her after she came forward with the allegations.

And if she could survive that, said Desimone, then former city cop Perry Dunlop should find the Cornwall Public Inquiry a breeze.

NASHVILLE (TN)
Ethics Daily

Bob Allen
02-22-08
A self-help group for victims of clergy sexual abuse is asking the head of a Southern Baptist seminary to apologize for calling their organization "evil-doers." The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests also requested a face-to-face meeting with Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.

Patterson's comments, reported last week in a Nashville newspaper and EthicsDaily.com, were from personal e-mails with an abuse survivor who turned them over to SNAP, which last month sent a letter asking Southwestern trustees to investigate Patterson's handling two decades ago of allegations of sexual abuse by a former protégé now facing a criminal lewdness charge.

Patterson characterized SNAP as "evil-doers" lacking integrity and "just as reprehensible as sex criminals."

MANCHESTER (NH)
New Hampshire Union Leader

By GARRY RAYNO
New Hampshire Union Leader Staff

MANCHESTER – A former Catholic priest has sued the Diocese of Manchester, Bishop John McCormack and the Rev. Edward Arsenault, claiming he was improperly dismissed after alerting the church to a pornography collection he discovered in a rectory.

The Rev. Thomas Coover claims the church covered up the information, falsely had him committed to the State Hospital, forced him to leave the priesthood and had him fired from a job he had obtained with the state.

Filed in July in Hillsborough County Superior Court North, the suit also claims Coover learned of "highly sensitive information relating to defendant Bishop McCormack and Father Paul Shanley of Boston."

RICHMOND (VA)
The Free Lance-Star

BY ELLEN BILTZ

The former Catholic priest who embezzled money from two Louisa County churches will spend five years in prison.

Despite recommendations for less time from Rodney Rodis' defense attorney, as well as from federal prosecutors, Judge Richard L. Williams sentenced the 51-year-old to 63 months in prison, with credit for time served.

He was also ordered to pay about $590,000 to the Catholic diocese of Virginia.

RICHMOND (VA)
The Associated Press

By ZINIE CHEN SAMPSON

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A retired Roman Catholic priest was sentenced to 63 months in prison for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from his parishioners, money he used in part to support his secret family.

Rodney Rodis, 51, pleaded guilty to mail fraud and money laundering in October in the theft of more than $600,000 in donations from St. Jude Church and Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Louisa County between 2002 and 2006.

U.S. District Judge Richard Williams on Thursday issued the maximum punishment under federal sentencing guidelines and gave Rodis credit for time already served.

PENNSYLVANIA
The Republican & Herald

This is an open letter to the Catholics attending Mass in Saint Clair:

Since September 2007, and particular Survey Sunday, the most talked about topic among Catholics in the Diocese of Allentown is the restructuring of parishes.

The Diocesan Pastoral Council of the recently held synod of the Allentown Diocese set up guidelines or criteria for parish restructuring. This included the closing, merging or consolidating of churches and reducing the number of priests by assigning one priest to one parish and administrating to 2,400 souls. Also taken into consideration would be financial status, location, condition of the buildings, size, accessibility for the disabled, parking, etc.

Looking at the number of parishes in Schuylkill and Carbon counties, it appears these counties will feel the brunt of restructuring.

PENNSYLVANIA
The Republican & Herald

In hindsight, his remarks seem prophetic.

For the 88th anniversary celebration of Lithuanian Independence Day in February 2006, the Rev. James C. Bechtel, then pastor of St. George Roman Catholic Church, Shenandoah, spoke about the upcoming second synod of the Allentown Catholic Diocese and the need to adjust to whatever changes will occur as a result of it.

Is it possible he could have known then what was coming?

Maybe everyone should have known.

Part of the synod involved the restructuring of churches and parishes in light of a declining population, declining vocations and declining finances. Translation: Parishes will be consolidated and churches will close in a process that is now at hand.

UNITED KINGDOM
Manchester Evening News

Paul Britton
22/ 2/2008

A SECOND man has told a jury how he was repeatedly sexually abused as a young boy by a priest.

The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told a court John McCollough, 63, sexually abused him on a number of occasions at the vicarage of Christ The King With Holy Trinity Church in Bury.

McCollough was minister there, where Catholics and Protestants worshipped, between 1985 and 1995.

The man said he was abused by him from the age of eight or nine to 11.

CANADA
Northern Life

Date Published | Feb. 21, 2008

The case of Father Bernard Cloutier, 66, of North Bay, who is facing allegations of sexual impropriety, returned to Sudbury court Wednesday afternoon.

Cloutier has been charged with five counts of indecent assault on a male and five counts of gross indecency, involving three victims. The incidents are alleged to have taken place between 1979 and 1983 while Cloutier was a parish priest in Chelmsford, and later in Espanola.

He turned himself into police, in the company of legal counsel, two weeks ago after being contacted by an investigating officer with the Greater Sudbury Police Service that charges had been laid against him.

SPRINGFIELD (MA)
Boston Herald

By Associated Press
Friday, February 22, 2008

SPRINGFIELD - The Hampden district attorney’s office has released 115 pages of documents related to the 1972 unsolved slaying of 13-year-old altar boy Danny Croteau.

The documents include witness statements from family, friends and strangers, and even an astrologer’s offer of help.

The files were ordered released by a Superior Court judge in a civil dispute between the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield and its insurance carriers.

The documents include an interview with Croteau’s parents describing the boy’s demeanor after an overnight stay with their priest, Richard Lavigne.

SPRINGFIELD (MA)
The Republican

By STEPHANIE BARRY
sbarry@repub.com

SPRINGFIELD - About a week before Daniel Croteau's lifeless body was recovered under a bridge in 1972, he returned home listless and nauseous from an overnight visit with his parish priest.

According to a statement his mother gave to police that year, the 13-year-old had left his house, smartly dressed, one night in April.

"He wore his knit shirt, tie, and herringbone jacket with a fur collar. He said that he was going to go someplace with Father Lavigne," the statement by Bernice Croteau, taken on Aug. 7, 1972, reads. "That was the last we heard of him that evening until we received a call from Father (Richard) Lavigne, it was around 11:30 p.m. ... and the father asked me if (Danny) could stay over that night."

The statement was among 115 pages of documents released by the Hampden County district attorney's office this week after a judge ordered the files unsealed. The documents include an overture to investigators from an astrologer, witness statements recounting dream visions and dying wishes, a jailhouse interview with a convicted priest from California, and wrenching accounts of Daniel Croteau's allegedly volatile relationship with Lavigne.

BUFFALO (NY)
The Business Journal

Four Buffalo churches built in the late 1800s and early 1900s but closed in the past year by the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo are being put up for sale.

The churches have been listed with McGuire Development Co. The future of the buildings will be up to the individual buyers.

"We're certainly open to talking to people about creative re-uses," said Steve Roth, Diocese property manager.

IDAHO
Idaho Press-Tribune

and The Associated Press

BOISE — A man has filed a $5 million lawsuit against the Boy Scouts and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, contending they didn’t do enough to stop a Scout troop leader from sexually abusing children.

Scout and church officials said the organizations take such allegations seriously and will investigate the claims even though they happened decades ago. But an LDS church spokesman criticized the plaintiff’s attorney for going to the media before taking the claims to church.

The plaintiff in the suit, only identified as “Tom Doe” in the legal documents, is a 53-year-old man who was born and raised in Nampa, according to his attorney, famed sex abuse claims attorney Kelly Clark.

GREENWICH (CT)
Hartford Courant

Associated Press
February 22, 2008

BRIDGEPORT — - A former music director at a prominent Greenwich church was sentenced Thursday to 5 1/2 years in federal prison for possessing child pornography.

Robert Tate, 66, must also pay a $50,000 fine, register as a sex offender and participate in sex-offender treatment.

Tate pleaded guilty in January 2007 to possessing child pornography and then spent several weeks at long-term treatment centers for sexually deviant behavior.

Friday, February 22, 2008

PETER ZUCKERMAN The Oregonian Staff

The Boy Scouts of America and the Mormon church face another lawsuit for alleged child sexual abuse.

The $5.1 million case filed Thursday by a Portland man alleges that Larren Arnold, a Boy Scout and Mormon youth leader, abused him as a Scout in Idaho and Oregon between 1967 and 1970.

Arnold, now 72, was convicted in Bannock County, Idaho, in 1985 of felony child abuse in an unrelated case.

GREENWICH (CT)
Greenwich Post

By Ken Borsuk, Staff Reporter

Robert Tate, former musical director of Christ Church, has been sentenced to five and a half years in prison after pleading guilty to possessing child pornography.

In addition to the 66 months in prison, Mr. Tate, who is 66-years-old, will have to pay a $50,000 fine and be under supervised release for the rest of his life. Once he is released from prison, he will have to register as a sex offender wherever he works or lives, have monitored Internet usage and be barred from spending any time alone with children under the age of 18 unless there is a “responsible adult” present who is aware of his conviction, among other conditions imposed by Senior United States District Judge Alan Nevas.

Mr. Tate had faced a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. He pleaded guilty to the charge in January 2007 after being arrested in November 2006.

NAMPA (ID)
KTRV

Nampa, Idaho -- A former Nampa teenager is suing The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints and the Boy Scouts for 5-million dollars, claiming he was sexually abused.

The man who's now 54-years-old, says it happened decades ago.

Why is the lawsuit being filed now?

The Idaho and Oregon statute of limitations allows it.

FALL RIVER (MA)
The Sun Chronicle

BY GLORIA LaBOUNTY SUN CHRONICLE STAFF
Friday, February 22, 2008 12:43 AM EST

FALL RIVER - A national support group for sexual abuse victims is alleging the Fall River Diocese has not done enough to inform the public about allegations against a Maine priest who once served in the Fall River and Attleboro areas, but diocesan officials say they already have done everything the group is now demanding.

SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said this week in a letter to Bishop George Coleman that more should be done to find other possible victims of the Rev. Maurice Lebel, who has been accused by one person of abuse in Massachusetts in the early 1980s.

That was when Lebel was a counselor with the Fall River and Attleboro offices of Catholic Social Services.

PENNSYLVANIA
The Republican & Herald

BY KENT JACKSON
TIMES • shamrock writer
kent.jackson@standardspeaker.com

02/21/2008

McADOO — Catholics in Schuylkill County have signed a petition and a letter aimed at keeping open churches that the Allentown Diocese expects to close later this year.

In a countywide petition, a group of church members asked Bishop Edward Cullen to request transfers of priests to Schuylkill from around the world.

A separate letter, signed by parishioners in the McAdoo area, asked Monsignor Edward Zemanik, local pastor, for more openness in the process of deciding where they will worship. They found out at Masses on Jan. 6 that five of the six churches in McAdoo, Kelayres and Tresckow might close.

RICHMOND (VA)
WDBJ

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- A former Roman Catholic priest was sentenced to 63 months in prison for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from two rural Virginia parishes.

Rodney Rodis pleaded guilty to mail fraud and money laundering in October in the theft of more than $600,000 in donations from St. Jude Church and Church of the Immaculate Conception in Louisa County between 2002 and 2006.

U.S. District Judge Richard Williams on Thursday also ordered Rodis to repay the Roman Catholic Diocese of Richmond more than $591,000.

VIRGINIA
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Former Louisa County priest Rodney L. Rodis was sentenced today to 63 months in prison, a tougher sentence than even prosecutors had requested.

He was also ordered by U.S. District Judge Richard L. Williams to pay $591,484 in restitution to the Catholic Diocese of Richmond.

He pleaded guilty last October to one count each of fraud and money laundering. He faced a maximum of 20 years in prison for each charge.

MARYLAND
The Jeffersonian

02/21/08
by Bryan P. Sears

A bill that would extend the statute of limitations on sexual abuse lawsuits is drawing opposition from the head of Calvert Hall College high school.

Del. Eric Bromwell, a Democrat, is sponsoring a bill that would give people alleging sexual abuse more time for filing lawsuits.

Opposing the bill is Brother Benedict Oliver, the president of Calvert Hall, which has not been immune to the allegations of child sexual abuse that have hit the Catholic Church nationwide. ...

Oliver has e-mailed several former and current Calvert Hall students about the bill. He did not return a call from a reporter seeking comment.

About a month ago, Oliver and a lobbyist for the Archdiocese of Baltimore met with Bromwell and asked him not to sponsor the bill, the delegate said.

UNITED STATES
City of Angels

By Kay Ebeling

“No decent human being should ever lose his or her initial revulsion at the accounts of children being offered up to predators again and again, over decades. It is not a ‘problem’ - it is debased behavior that should not be known to man.”

Marci Hamilton put into words what I’ve been trying to say for months in the quote above from "How to Solve the Appalling Problem of Child Sex Abuse: Why Catholic Priest Andrew Greeley Is Very Wrong to Suggest Church Self-Policing Is the Answer," posted on FindLaw today and immediately linked by Kathy Shaw in Abuse Tracker. In the article, Hamilton takes off on the Greeley piece with an argument against “self policing,” but in the quote above she points out the emptiness of Greeley’s referring to decades of organized crime in the Catholic Church as a “problem.”

The Catholic hierarchy must be spending millions in public relations to create this spin, that sex crimes by five thousand priests on God knows how many children, just in the last 60 years alone, is a “problem.”

NASHVILLE (TN)
Nashville Scene

by Elizabeth Ulrich

When I settled into my seat at Tuesday's meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention work group—convened to discuss its study on the feasibility of a database to warn churches of known sexual predators among SBC clergy—I figured most of the members had read last week's cover story. And those who hadn't certainly had an opportunity to do so when the chairman of the committee gave the crew a good 15 minutes to read it in the middle of the meeting. The sideways glares that followed were an indication of the hellfire and condemnation to soon come the way of this reporter.

For the entirety of this post, you won't read any direct quotes. And you certainly won't find any of the indirect quotes attributed to SBC officials. When it comes to reporting on meetings of the executive committee, those are just the rules. We can't report exactly what was said by whom. But you can check out the entire roster of the SBC executive committee and guess. A handful of these folks are a part of the work group that met Tuesday.

But it's just as well that we can't report on this meeting in the way we're accustomed to because there wasn't much news to report anyway.

ORANGE COUNTY (CA)
Orange County Weekly

Posted by Gustavo Arellano in Ex Cathedra
February 21, 2008 1:00 PM

It's been a rough half-year for Peter Callahan of the Tustin law firm Callahan, McCune & Willis, mostly because of his big mouth. The head lawyer for the Catholic Diocese of Orange sex-abuse scandal unwittingly revealed in September the sealed amount Bishop Tod D. Brown gave to a statutory rapist, barked at a sex-abuse survivor during a press conference, and did enough other wackiness to earn the title of one of our Scariest People late last year.

Through it all, diocesan apologists said nothing. But with Callahan's latest actions, perhaps they'll finally ask Brown to dump the guy--unless Orange County's 1.3 million Catholics like getting ripped off.

On February 15, Callahan filed a motion of opposition in Monterey County Superior Court regarding the continued fight he's waging against the law firm of Manly and Stewart. The Newport Beach attorneys want Brown to reveal the names of priests he investigated for sexual molestation while serving in the Monterey diocese during the 1980s; Callahan doesn't want that to happen and is asking the presiding judge to lay sanctions on Manly and Stewart for continuing to "harass" Brown. The amount: $11,916, what Callahan says is the amount he's billing Brown for work on this case.

MARYLAND
The Catholic Review

By George P. Matysek Jr.
The Catholic Review

ANNAPOLIS – Although he said he understands concerns raised by the Catholic Church that House Bill 858 could devastate parishes, schools and church outreach ministries, one of the cosponsors of a state bill lifting the statute of limitations on child sex abuse civil cases still favors it because he is a “believer in victims’ rights,” he said.

In a Feb. 18 interview with The Catholic Review, Del. Steven DeBoy of Baltimore County said the measure is needed because it isn’t right to put a time frame on when abuse victims can step forward to receive cash settlements.

Current law allows abuse victims to pursue civil lawsuits until age 25. The proposed law would effectively lift the statute of limitations, creating a one-year window during which individuals claiming to be sexually abused as children could file civil suits against the perpetrator and private institutions such as dioceses, parishes and schools regardless of how long ago the alleged abuse occurred.

PUEBLO (CO)
The Pueblo Chieftain

By MARVIN READ
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN
Two of the churches that constitute the three-parish complex known as the Historic Southside Community are scheduled to close shop after services on March 30, the Sunday following Easter.

That means that approximately 226 households belonging to St. Patrick Church, 226 Michigan St., and about another 240 family units who pray at Our Lady of the Assumption Church, 900 E. Routt Ave., will have to worship at St. Mary Help of Christians Church, 307 E. Mesa Ave., or at other churches of their choosing.

Members of the parishes were notified at Masses last weekend of the Pueblo diocese's decision to close the churches. A press release was e-mailed to The Pueblo Chieftain on Tuesday morning over the signature of Barbara Duff, who is in charge of the diocese's business and finance office.

NEW YORK
Daily Gazette

By Jill Bryce
Gazette Reporter

AMSTERDAM — With a shortage of priests and dwindling attendance at Masses, Bishop Howard J. Hubbard of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany has not ruled out church closings, but parishioners will have to wait until January 2009, when he announces which churches will close or be consolidated.

Diocesan spokesman Ken Goldfarb said on Tuesday that Hubbard will receive recommendations from parishes in June. After that, a panel will convene to review the recommendations and Hubbard is expected to announce closures at the start of 2009.

It’s part of the diocese’s two-year restructuring initiative “Called to Be Church” that was first announced in June 2006 to address declining Mass attendance, a shortage of priests and changing demographics within the diocese.

NEW JERSEY
The Daily Journal

By TIM ZATZARINY Jr.
Staff Writer
tzatzariny@thedailyjournal.com

VINELAND -- Several church parishes in Cumberland County may eventually merge as the Diocese of Camden wrestles with a shortage of priests and changing demographics.

By April, Bishop Joseph Galante will make the decision on which parishes will merge based in part on recommendations from deaneries with representatives from each parish throughout the diocese.

If the bishop accepts the recommendations, the landscape of Catholic churches in the county could change drastically.

UNITED KINGDOM
Evening Courier

A MAN has been acquitted of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl.

Ian Sykes, 63, of Savile Row, Savile Park, Halifax, had denied touching the girl's breasts at his home on June 3 last year.

He was found not guilty and discharged at Bradford Crown Court.

Mr Sykes had been a Scout leader at Holy Trinity Church, Swires Road, Halifax, for more than 30 years where he was also a former church warden.

AUSTRALIA
Geelong Advertiser

Daniel Breen

22Feb08

CHILD sex abuse allegations have forced Father John Haines to quit as chaplain at St Joseph's College.

The Meredith parish priest had already tendered his resignation to Melbourne's Catholic Archbishop Denis Hart but it was yesterday revealed he had also resigned from his post at the all-boys college.

St Joseph's, which has more than 1300 students, prepared a statement about Fr Haines' departure on Monday but waited until it was contacted by the Geelong Advertiser yesterday to release it.

Colac police charged Fr Haines with possession of child pornography, transmitting child pornography, procuring a child for child pornography and attempting to procure a child for child pornography.

SCOTLAND
Evening Telegraph

The Bishop of Dunkeld today said he is “convinced” a senior Dundee priest had engaged in a relationship with a married woman (writes Graham Huband and Graeme Strachan).

Bishop Vincent Logan was responding to a public attack from his former right hand man, Monsignor Joe Creegan. The retired priest has accused him of a “gross breach of natural justice” by suspending him without carrying out a full and proper inquiry.

The move came after the Diocese of Dunkeld issued a statement on January 27 saying the bishop had acted after being presented with “specific and irrefutable evidence” of Mgr Creegan’s misconduct.

IRELAND
Kilkenny Advertiser

Prosecutors in the US have dropped charges against a Catholic priest from Kilkenny and a second Irish priest who were accused of pilfering church funds in Florida.

It had been alleged Fr John Skehan, a retired priest originally from Johnstown county Kilkenny, and Offaly priest Fr Francis Guinan had misappropriated hundreds of thousands of dollars from the church of St Vincent Ferrer, Delray in Palm Beach, Florida.

Last week state prosecutors made a decision to drop the charges against the two Irish priests, but not without a warning that the state attorney intended to refile the charges against Fr Skehan once prosecutors were prepared to try him, possibly in May or June this year.

FORT WORTH (TX)
Fort Worth Star-Telegram

At the urging of a sex-abuse victims group known as SNAP, the Fort Worth Roman Catholic Diocese will send an e-mail to former students at Nolan Catholic High School concerning allegations about a priest who worked there from 1983 until 1990. Out of an abundance of caution, an e-mail will be sent in the next couple of days about the Rev. Daniel A. Triulzi, said diocese spokesman Pat Svacina. Triulzi, a priest of the Marianist order, was removed from St. Mark Catholic Church in Denton in 2005 after an Indiana man filed a lawsuit against him alleging sexual abuse in another state.

FindLaw

By MARCI HAMILTON

Thursday, Feb. 21, 2008

Last week, the Chicago Sun Times published an Op Ed by sociologist, novelist, and Roman Catholic Church priest Andrew Greeley, entitled "Celibacy Isn't Cause of Sex Abuse." Greeley is right on that point, but he is also extremely misguided about the scourge of child sex abuse in this country, as I will explain.

Greeley states in his Op Ed, "I contend that the problem will be solved only when priests assume full responsibility for self-policing. The current response of many a priest is to wash their hands of the crimes and blame the bishops…."

These sentences, written by an important public intellectual within the Church who has been critical of the hierarchy's handling of abuse, deserve very close analysis.

SCOTLAND
The Courier

By Graham Huband
AN UNHOLY row threatened to divide the Catholic church in Dundee last night after a suspended senior priest launched a stinging attack on his bishop.

Monsignor Joseph Creegan was effectively sacked by Bishop Vincent Logan last month after allegations in a national Sunday newspaper that he had been having an affair with a Fife divorcee and had conducted an 18-year relationship with a married woman.

An official statement released by the Diocese of Dunkeld on January 27 said the bishop had acted after receiving “specific and irrefutable evidence” of Mgr Creegan’s misconduct.

TEXAS
The Dallas Morning News

From staff reports

The Catholic order known as the Marianists has settled a lawsuit alleging sex abuse by one of its St. Louis priests who also worked in Fort Worth and Denton.

The Rev. Daniel Triulzi was accused of abusing a student at a Missouri prep school in the 1990s. The case was settled last year for an undisclosed amount.

Plaintiff's attorney Ken Chackes said Wednesday that the victim only recently agreed to publicity about the settlement.

VIRGINIA
Richmond Times-Dispatch

By FRANK GREEN
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
In a handwritten letter, Joyce S. Rodis pleads for mercy for her husband, who will be sentenced in Richmond today for fraud and money laundering.

"Rodney is a very good parent to his children. He adores them. The girls miss him and need him so much. We all want to be together as a family again," she wrote in the Jan. 18 letter to the court.

She does not mention that until last year, her devoted husband, Rodney L. Rodis, was a Catholic priest.

BRAZIL
AGI

(AGI) - Madrid, 21 Feb - Brazilian priests have spoken directly to Pope Benedict XVI to ask him for a revision of the canonical law obliging celibacy for those carrying out priestly functions. The decision appeared in the final document of the 12th National Meeting of Priests, which ended on Tuesday in the Itaici monastery in the Indaiatuba municipality (in the state of Sao Paulo). Therequest will be sent to the Holy Congregation for the Clergy under the direction of Claudio Hummes, former archbishop of Sao Paulo and previously one of the potential candidates for the role of pope in the conclave in which the German Cardial Joseph Ratzinger was elected.

WISCONSIN
Green Bay Press-Gazette

By Andy Nelesen
anelesen@greenbaypressgazette.com

Documents made public in a Delaware civil lawsuit showed a Norbertine priest known to have assaulted children was relocated to the St. Norbert Abbey in the mid-1980s.

The documents — provided by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests — included letters and notes about the Rev. Edward Smith, who in 2007 was held liable for sexually assaulting now-39-year-old Ken Whitwell 240 times over a three-year period in the 1980s.

Some of the assaults occurred during a visit to the St. Norbert Abbey in De Pere in 1984, according to testimony in the federal case.

MAINE
Morning Sentinel

This week, the new Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, did an increasingly rare thing: He apologized, without caveat or qualification.

Rudd publicly declared to the nation's Aborigines: "We apologise for laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians." ...

Contrast Rudd's frank apology with the less-than-satisfying one given recently by Maine's Bishop Richard Malone.

Earlier this month, reports emerged that Malone gave permission for the Rev. Paul Coughlin, 73, to act as a fill-in priest at parishes in certain communities around the state, despite the fact that Coughlin resigned as a priest in 2004 at Malone's request.

DE PERE (WI)
WCCO

DE PERE, Wis. (AP) The director of a support group for people abused by priests called on St. Norbert Abbey officials on Wednesday to explain why a suspected child molester was apparently allowed to transfer to their ministry in the mid-1980s.

Officials with the De Pere ministry had to know the background of Rev. Edward Smith, said Peter Isely, the Midwest director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

''Father Smith was known and confirmed to be a child sex molester,'' Isely said. ''They deliberately and knowingly transferred him to Green Bay in 1986.''

CANADA
The Canadian Press

TORONTO - After steadfastly condemning a public inquiry largely of his own making, Perry Dunlop presented himself Wednesday as a proud but emotionally fragile man without the heart to face a roomful of lawyers probing allegations of systemic sexual abuse in eastern Ontario.

It was 1993 when Dunlop, a former police officer, first made his explosive allegations of a pedophile ring operating in the city of Cornwall, Ont., south of Ottawa. Police investigations have since failed to uncover any evidence to support his claims.

Dunlop, now convicted of contempt of court, faces the prospect of six months in jail for his steadfast refusal to testify at a public inquiry now probing how authorities in the community responded to the allegations he first made some 15 years ago.

CANADA
Winnipeg Free Press

By Alexandra Paul

The Grand Chief of 30 of the most remote northern First Nations in Canada is asking the Queen to do what no Prime Minister will: Apologize to aboriginal people for Indian residential schools.

Northern Manitoba Grand Chief Sydney Garrioch’s letter asks the Queen to say “Sorry” since none of the country’s prime ministers will.

A copy of the Feb. 21 letter was sent to the Free Press.

KENTUCKY
The Courier-Journal

By Peter Smith
psmith@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal

FRANKFORT, Ky. -- A bill strengthening penalties for sexual abusers and those who fail to report them passed the House Judiciary Committee unanimously yesterday.

The vote came after committee members listened in somber quiet to the gripping testimony of abuse victims and their advocates.

House Bill 211 now goes to the full House and could be voted on within the next week, said its lead sponsor, Rep. Jim Wayne, D-Louisville.

CANADA
Standard Freeholder

Perry Dunlop will spend two more weeks behind bars while a Toronto court decides his punishment for not testifying at the Cornwall Public Inquiry.

The Ontario Divisional Court refrained from sentencing the former city cop Wednesday and remanded him back into custody.

That means Dunlop, who was arrested at his Duncan, B.C. home over the weekend, will not learn his fate until March 5.

FALL RIVER (MA)
Standard-Times

By Steve Urbon
Standard-Times senior correspondent
February 21, 2008 6:00 AM
FALL RIVER — The Diocese of Fall River has a brief answer for critics who are demanding that it step up efforts to find possible victims of a pedophile priest: Everything on your list has already been done.

SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, sent Bishop George Coleman a letter this week declaring that, "in the past few weeks, your staff has pretended to be powerless, blamed the victim and done virtually nothing to reach out to possible victims of and witnesses to alleged sex crimes" committed by the Rev. Maurice Lebel.

Lebel was removed from duty in December in Maine after a complaint of sexual abuse of a minor.

CZECH REPUBLIC
Prague Daily Monitor

By ČTK / Published 21 February 2008

Plzen, West Bohemia, Feb 20 (CTK) - The Plzen-mesto district court Wednesday sentenced Czech priest Zbynek Schneider to the 2-year suspended sentence for dissemination of child pornography, sexual abuse of underage girls and harming their morals.

The former educator in the Plzen Salesian Youth Centre could have been sentenced up to eight years in prison.

The court ruled that Schneider, 39, was guilty of dissemination of pornography and other criminal acts. He was ordered compulsory sexological treatment and banned his profession for ten years.

AUSTRALIA
ABC News

One of the victims of a former priest who sexually abused students at Burnie's Marist College in the 1960s and '70s says he's glad his abuser has finally been brought to justice.

72-year-old Roger Michael Bellemore has been sentenced to four years imprisonment, with a two-year non-parole period.

Bellemore sexually abused three male students when he was a teacher, priest and football coach at Marist.

ST. LOUIS (MO)
Belleville News Democrat

Associated Press

ST. LOUIS --A Roman Catholic religious order based in St. Louis has settled with a man over claims he was abused a decade ago by a priest at his private school in the 1990s.

The Rev. Daniel Triulzi, who was on staff at Chaminade College Preparatory School in St. Louis County at the time, is not serving as a priest or in a capacity that would put him near young people, said Brother Stephen Glodek, provincial for the Marianist Province of the U.S.

He is living in St. Louis in a Marianist community which is not near a school or day-care center, he said.

UNITED STATES
Ethics Daily

Bob Allen
02-20-08
The Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention isn't yet ready to respond to a motion referred from last year's convention calling for a feasibility study of a denomination-wide database of clergy sex offenders, a work group studying the proposal said Tuesday.

Stephen Wilson, chairman of the bylaws work group, told EthicsDaily.com the Executive Committee will respond at a meeting June 9, on the eve of this year's Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Indianapolis, to Oklahoma pastor Wade Burleson's motion about the feasibility of a database of "Southern Baptist clergy and staff who have been credibly accused of, personally confessed to, or legally been convicted of sexual harassment or abuse."

Wilson, vice president of academic affairs at Mid-Continent University in Mayfield, Ky., said a potential database is only one component of response to the problem of sexual abuse by Baptist clergy, and that developing resources and helping churches will be an ongoing concern for the Executive Committee. "I want it to be ongoing," Wilson said. "It has to be."

VIRGINIA
The Free Lance-Star

Date published: 2/20/2008

The former Catholic priest who pleaded guilty last year to wiring money embezzled from two Louisa County churches could serve up to 40 years in prison on two federal convictions.

But at Rodney Rodis’ sentencing tomorrow, federal prosecutors are expected to recommend 51 months.

Rodis, 51, pleaded guilty to one count each of mail fraud and money laundering in a plea agreement last October.

ST. LOUIS (MO)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

By Cheryl Wittenauer
ASSOCIATED PRESS
02/20/2008

ST. LOUIS -- A Roman Catholic religious order based in St. Louis has settled with a man over claims he was abused a decade ago by a priest at his private school in the 1990s.

The Rev. Daniel Triulzi, who was on staff at Chaminade College Preparatory School in St. Louis County at the time, is not serving as a priest or in a capacity that would put him near young people, said Diane Guerra, spokeswoman for the religious order, the Marianists.

He is living in St. Louis in a community of Marianist brothers, she said.

KENTUCKY
Kentucky.com

By ROGER ALFORD
Associated Press Writer

FRANKFORT, Ky. --A measure that would hold teachers, priests and others in positions of authority more accountable for child sexual abuse has cleared its first legislative hurdle.

The House Judiciary Committee approved legislation on Wednesday, sending it to the full House for consideration.

Louisville Democratic state Rep. Jim Wayne said the measure is crucial if Kentucky children are to be protected from sexual abuse.

CANADA
Ottawa Citizen

CanWest News Service
Published: Wednesday, February 20, 2008
TORONTO - A Divisional Court hearing to determine whether Perry Dunlop, a former police officer who has steadfastly refused to testify at a Cornwall sex-abuse inquiry, is guilty of contempt of court has been delayed for two weeks.

The 43-year-old, who was arrested on Sunday in Duncan, B.C., on a Canada-wide warrant, will remain in custody until his next court appearance.

An Ontario judge issued the warrant for Dunlop's arrest after he disobeyed a court order to appear before a public inquiry into sexual-abuse allegations that he helped to investigate as a police officer in the 1990s.

ILLINOIS
Rockford Register Star

Feb 20, 2008 @ 02:50 PM

By Geri Nikolai
RRSTAR.COM
ROCKFORD -
Mark Campobello, the former Catholic priest who was in prison for four years for sexual abuse of two teenage girls, has been living in McHenry County since he was paroled last week.

Campobello, 43, was required to register on the state’s sex offender list and listed an address in Crystal Lake. His residence was approved by corrections authorities before he was released.

Campobello was ordained in the Rockford diocese in 1991 and served at Holy Family and St. Peter parishes and St. James in Belvidere. He was arrested while in Belvidere for sexual assaults that occurred in 1999 and 2000 when he was at a parish and Catholic high school in Geneva and Aurora.

MINNESOTA
Star News

Wednesday, 20 February 2008
A former Hassan Township and Rogers priest has been found guilty of third-degree sexual conduct.

On Tuesday, Feb. 12 inside a Hennepin County District Court room, John Bussmann was found guilty of using his position to have sex with vulnerable female parishioners.

The main issue surrounding the case was whether the involved women were seeking religious or spiritual advice, aid or comfort at the time.

KENTUCKY
The Courier-Journal

By Peter Smith
psmith@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal

FRANKFORT, Ky. — A bill strengthening penalties for sexual abusers and those who fail to report them passed the House Judiciary Committee unanimously this afternoon.

The vote came after committee members listened in somber quiet to the gripping testimony of abuse victims and their advocates.

The bill now goes to the full House and could be voted on within the next week, said its lead sponsor, Rep. Jim Wayne, D-Louisville.

UNITED STATES
Leon J. Podles

A Case Study of Sexual Abuse
by Leon J. Podles

Philip Magaldi broke several commandments in serious ways: by stealing from his parish, by abusing teenage boys, and by bearing false witness in an attempted murder trial. Like other priests, he was protected from the consequences of his actions. He claimed he pled guilty to theft only to protect his bishop from insinuations. His narcissism and sense of immunity led him to fondle a boy in front of a bishop. Only after a long career of abuse was he suspended, and he is now dying of AIDS.

View the complete case study at this Web site.

AUSTRALIA
Geelong Advertiser

Daniel Breen

21Feb08

MEREDITH Catholic priest John Haines has quit his post after police charged him over a series of alleged indecent acts with children.

Police raided Fr Haines' home last Friday, seizing images of children before taking him in for questioning at Colac police station.

The 61-year-old was later charged with possession of child pornography, transmitting child pornography, procuring a child for child pornography and attempting to procure a child for child pornography.

He was also charged with two counts of indecent assault with a child under 16 and one count of indecent assault.

PHILIPPINES
Sun.Star

THE House of Representatives is considering the idea of revoking all the tax privileges of the Catholic Church and all religious institutions that engage in politics following the call of the Catholic Bishop's Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) for a "new brand of people power."

"In other countries like America, I am informed that once the church enters the political arena, they are stripped of their tax privileges but here in the Philippines, this is not the case. I do not know of any precedent here. Maybe it's worth studying by our political scientists," said House Speaker Prospero Nograles.

The church and all the institutions under its auspices such as schools and broadcast stations are all free of taxes.

CONNECTICUT
The New York Times

Published: February 20, 2008
NEW HAVEN (AP) — A former music director at a prominent Greenwich church who was convicted of possessing child pornography hired a pedophile and failed to tell the authorities when that man sexually assaulted a choirboy, prosecutors disclosed on Tuesday.

The music director, Robert F. Tate, faces 9 to 11 years in prison under federal guidelines when he is sentenced on Thursday, prosecutors said in court papers.

Mr. Tate, 65, was choir director for 34 years at Christ Church, an Episcopal church, and he created a music program that gained an international reputation. Former President George H. W. Bush attended the church while growing up, and funeral services for his parents were held there.

HAMMONTON (NJ)
Daily Journal

By BEN MERITT
Staff Writer

HAMMONTON -- An assistant wrestling coach at St. Joseph High School was dismissed from his duties following an investigation of allegations of inappropriate behavior toward students on the school wrestling team.

Joseph Mauro, who also teaches math, was terminated from his positions Feb. 7, following an investigation by the school, according to Andrew Walton, a spokesman with the Diocese of Camden.

School principal Lynn Domenico addressed the situation in a Feb. 7 letter to parents of students at the school.

"While this has been difficult for everyone involved, the action was necessary given the standards of conduct expected of our school faculty and the mutual respect we have for each other in our school community," Domenico said in her letter.

FREEHOLD (NJ)
The Times

Wednesday, February 20, 2008
BY LINDA STEIN
FREEHOLD -- A former principal of Catholic high schools in Hamilton and Burlington County was sentenced to five years in prison Friday for stealing $414,848 from Holy Cross High School in Delran.

Joseph Lemme, 50, of Wall Township, claimed in his defense that he had been sexually abused repeatedly while studying as a seminary student at three Catholic institutions, and that a court dismissal of his claims of abuse drove him to embezzle from Holy Cross, where he was working at the time.

Lemme alleged that the sexual abuse continued from his early teens until after high school graduation.

He had pleaded guilty to two theft charges in December for stealing $415,848 from Holy Cross, according to the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office. Lemme must also repay the money, Superior Court Judge Francis P. DeStefano ordered.

WISCONSIN
Spero News

By Matt C. Abbott

On March 4, it will be ten years since the murder of Father Alfred Kunz. The case remains unsolved.

Jacek Cianciara remembers Father Kunz fondly.

"It is because of Father Kunz that I came back to the Catholic Church, after many years of wandering in the 'wilderness' of our secular world," wrote Mr. Cianciara, who also related the following anecdotes. ...

'On Tuesday, March 3, 1998, he was dropped off at his parish by a fellow priest. On the morning of March 4, the first Wednesday in Lent, a young teacher found Father's body on the floor in the school wing of St. Michaels.

'Father Kunz was a friend of the late renowned theologian Father John Hardon, S.J., the late Father Charles Fiore, and the late Catholic author Malachi Martin.'

NEW HAMPSHIRE
Renew America

Matt C. Abbott
February 20, 2008

REVEREND THOMAS COOVER vs. ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOP OF MANCHESER d/b/a DIOCESE OF MANCHESTER; BISHOP JOHN B. McCORMACK; and, REVEREND EDWARD J. ARSENAULT.

MINNESOTA
Minneapolis Star Tribune

By ROCHELLE OLSON, Star Tribune

Last update: February 20, 2008 - 12:44 AM

In his second sex-abuse trial, former priest John Bussmann was acquitted Tuesday on one count and found guilty on a second alleging that he used his position to have sex with vulnerable female parishioners.

A Hennepin County District Court jury took barely two hours to reach a verdict after about a week of testimony.

In 2005, Bussmann was found guilty of two counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct while he was a priest at St. Martin's Catholic Church in Rogers and St. Walburga Church in nearby Hassan Township. The state Supreme Court set aside those convictions in November and ordered a new trial. The court took issue with extensive evidence introduced at the first trial regarding the Roman Catholic Church's doctrine on the power of priests over parishioners.

MINNESOTA
Winona Daily News

By Carol Dunn | Reads Landing, Minn.

Well, what a mess.

A single Catholic school teacher signed a contract to be a moral example. She had sex. She got pregnant. She didn’t abort the child. Her bosses requested her resignation. She went to the media.

The teacher told her story using that New Testament term “forgiveness.” The principal and priest — part of a well-sued organization—made no comment.

Critics noted the church declaring “No abortions!” tripped over itself again.

The teacher broke contract: Protecting life and telling truth don’t trump “the big nasty.”

The bosses had no choice. The Winona Diocese requires this contract to insure children good moral examples.

What a pile of hypocrisy!

A priest is arrested for soliciting gay prostitutes; he’s moved to a new parish and school. A teacher has extra-marital sex; she must resign. For the priest, the official Diocesan spin is, “We must forgive.”

PHILIPPINES
Inquirer

By Maila Ager
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 15:31:00 02/20/2008

MANILA, Philippines -- House Speaker Prospero Nograles on Wednesday said he wants a study on the possible revocation of the tax privileges of religious institutions that engage in politics.

Nograles’ notion came after the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), Jaro Archbishop Angel Lagdameo, called for a “new brand of people power” as the administration continues to be besieged by charges of corruption, the latest being the national broadband network (NBN) deal scandal.

“In other countries like America, I am informed that once the church enters the political arena, they are stripped of their tax privileges,” Nograles said in a text message Wednesday. “But here in the Philippines, this is not the case. I do not know of any precedent here. Maybe it’s worth studying by our political scientists.”

VIRGINIA
Richmond Times-Dispatch

A former Louisa County priest is to be sentenced today in Richmond federal court for fraud and money-laundering convictions.

Rodney L. Rodis, 51, is alleged to have stolen $515,000 in donations from two churches in Louisa.

Parishioners also knew nothing about his secret life as a family man 50 miles away in Fredericksburg.

Rodis entered guilty pleas last October to one count of fraud and one of money laundering. He has admitted stealing at least $400,000 since 2002. The money was used to support his family and some was wired to a bank in his native Philippines where relatives used it to purchase real estate.

NEW YORK
The Buffalo News

By Jay Tokasz NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Updated: 02/20/08 7:21 AM

Despite a minuscule chance of success, parishioners of St. Mary Catholic Church in Lockport and St. Adalbert in Buffalo have filed formal appeals to keep their churches open — and members of at least three other area parishes are seriously considering the tactic.

If history is any guide, the appealing Catholics are facing extremely long odds.

“Pretty close to zero,” Charles Wilson said of the success rate of parish closure appeals.

PENNSYLVANIA
Bucks County Courier Times

By BEN FINLEY
Bucks County Courier Times

When David Sicoli was a priest at Bristol Township's Immaculate Conception BVM church, he allegedly would take boys to his Shore house, get them drunk and molest them.

Sicoli was eventually transferred to another parish in the early 1980s. But as late as 2001, fellow priests were warning the Philadelphia archdiocese about Sicoli's unhealthy relationship with boys.

Sicoli is now a defrocked priest accused of abusing 11 children. And he still reportedly owns property at the Jersey Shore — located across from a playground, tennis courts and softball fields.

JERUSALEM
Religious Intelligence

By: George Conger.

THE FORMER Bishop in Jerusalem has denied accusations of fraud and theft brought by his successor. In a Feb 6 statement the Rt Rev Riah Abu al-Assal disputed the financial misconduct charges leveled by the Rt Rev Suheil Dawani, hitting back with his own charges of conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy.

In a Jan 29 statement given to The Church of England Newspaper Bishop Dawani alleged that shortly before Bishop Riah’s retirement in 2007, Bishop Riah transferred the assets of the diocesan school to a charitable trust.

“Members of the charity include Bishop Riah's wife and nephew. Through this charity, Bishop Riah, is collecting the tuition from the students and is not depositing the monies in the school's official bank account, whilst, all the employees at the school are official Diocesan institution employees and receive their salaries from the Diocese,” he said.

The issue was brought to a head, Bishop Suheil said, when Bishop Riah refused to vacate the diocese’s Nazareth offices, claiming they were his own property.

AUSTRALIA
Geelong Advertiser

Daniel Breen

20Feb08

MEREDITH Catholic priest John Haines has been charged over a series of alleged indecent acts with children.

Police raided Fr Haines' home last Friday, seizing images of children before taking him in for questioning at Colac police station.

He was later charged with possession of child pornography, transmitting child pornography, procuring a child for child pornography, attempting to procure a child for child pornography, two counts of indecent assault with a child under 16 and one count of indecent assault.

Fr Haines led the St Joseph's Catholic parish, which takes in Meredith and surrounding areas including Winchelsea, Bannockburn, Lethbridge, Inverleigh and Anakie, for 12 years.

CANADA
Ottawa Citizen

Kelly Egan, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Perry Dunlop can come down off his cross anytime now. Excessive martyrdom is a tedious spectacle.

Mr. Dunlop, 43, was arrested in B.C. on Sunday on a Canada-wide warrant that was issued for his refusal to testify before a provincial inquiry into a sexual abuse scandal in Cornwall.

The atmosphere, in the words of one reporter, was "almost circus-like." Almost? When was the last time an hour-long support rally was organized, culminating in a plea to police to arrest the guest of honour?

MISSOURI
KOAM

The southwest Missouri church pastor facing child sex abuse charges appeared in a McDonald County courtroom Tuesday.

Raymond Lambert pleaded not guilty to charges refiled in the county: four counts of child molestation, three counts of statutory sodomy, and one count of sexual abuse.

Lambert is pastor of Grand Valley Independent Baptist Church.

ST. LOUIS (MO)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

By Deb Peterson
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
02/20/2008

SNAP: David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is challenging the Rev. Robert Osborne's representation of himself following the Kirkwood slayings. Osborne, the former president of Vianney High School in Kirkwood, came out from behind the police tape to talk with reporters following the shooting. He identified himself as a chaplain for the Kirkwood Police Department. Detective Mike Bales of the Kirkwood police, who is also the department's Public Information Officer, said Tuesday that "he (Osborne) is not the chaplain." Osborne disagrees. He says he has been a chaplain for the department for most of the past 40 years and even has an identification card to that effect issued by the Police Department on Oct. 19, 1999, and signed by Chief Jack Plummer. "If they've revoked it, I don't know about it," Osborne said Tuesday. Osborne left Vianney after he was accused by a teen of sexual abuse. The civil case was settled out of court and St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert P. McCulloch, saying "there was no evidence at all of criminal conduct," declined to file charges. Osborne is listed on a website for St. Peter Catholic Church in Kirkwood as a "visiting priest." Clohessy said SNAP is contacting each media outlet to ask for a correction about Osborne's identification as a police chaplain. Osborne insisted that Chief Plummer could clarify his status with the department. The chief could not be reached Tuesday night.

CALIFORNIA
Orange County Weekly

Posted by Gustavo Arellano in Ex Cathedra
February 19, 2008 3:45 PM

I didn't think it would happen, but it finally did: the back-and-forth between Catholic sex-abuse survivor advocates and a bunch of idiots posted yesterday is now the most-commented story in Navel Gazing history, beating Scott Moxley's news of Carona's indictment. Congrats, wackies!

In better news, we finally have an entrant in our Mater Dei High School apologist contest: the anonymous commentator who calls himself "Annoyed" sent the Weekly a copy of angry letters he (she?) sent to Diocese of Orange Bishop Tod D. Brown and Mater Dei officials regarding the sex-abuse scandal.

MARYLAND
Baltimore Jewish Times

Barbara Pash
Associate Editor

A bill to extend the statute of limitations in civil suits related to child sexual abuse is being considered in the Maryland General Assembly. The bill was introduced by Del. Eric Bromwell (D-8h), of Baltimore County. It is based on a similar bill that was unsuccessfully introduced last year by Sen. James Brochin (D-42nd), also of Baltimore County.

“The two bills are slightly different in wording,” Mr. Bromwell said of his HB 858 and Mr. Brochin’s 2007 SB 575, “but the intent is the same.”

HB 858 would increase the statute of limitations within which a victim may bring a civil claim from the current seven years after turning age 18 to 32 years after age 18. In order to qualify, the victim must provide a certificate of merit from an attorney and a psychiatrist or psychologist.

UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

By MARLENE SWEENEY

I recently left Sunday Mass shaking my head. Walking to the car I found myself ranting to my 23-year-old daughter. “Until we teach and encourage women to advocate for themselves, life in our church will not change.” She looked at me somewhat startled.

We had just sat through a talk for Catholic Schools Week. The speaker (a woman) had made references to “the good sisters” of days past who, she reminded us, had once ruled our schools with a firm hand and a wooden ruler when necessary. The speaker’s reference to “good sisters” was anything but good. The perpetuation of an old stereotype of women religious instilling fear in children and subjecting them to cruel and harsh punishment needs to be laid to rest. My adult daughter had no idea what the speaker was referring to when she mentioned “the look” (apparently a religious woman’s ability to radically change another’s behavior by gazing in their direction).

“Isn’t it time we give it up?” I found myself mumbling. Have you ever heard a speaker at church make light of a priest’s unbecoming behavior toward children? Of course not.

UNITED KINGDOM
Manchester Evening News

Paul Britton
19/ 2/2008

A MAN who was allegedly abused by a priest he regarded as a `grandfather figure' launched an verbal attack on him as they came face-to-face for the first time in 15 years.

The alleged victim was giving evidence at the trial of John McCollough, 63, a former Church of England rector who later became a Catholic priest.

He broke down in tears as he took the oath before the jury and then launched two emotional outbursts at Bolton Crown Court, shouting at McCollough: "God help you in the afterlife."

UNITED KINGDOM
Fleetwood Today

A witness giving evidence against a Bury priest accused of sexually abusing him more than 15 years ago has attacked him during emotional evidence, saying: "God help you in the afterlife".

John McCollough, 63, who now lives in Leigh-on-Sea, near Southend, is charged with indecently assaulting two parishioners during his time as minister at the Holy Trinity Church in Bury.

His first alleged victim, a 29-year-old man who cannot be named for legal reasons, has made two emotional outbursts at Bolton Crown Court.

WILKES-BARRE (PA)
Times Leader

Edward Lewis

WILKES-BARRE - A former secretary at St. Aloysius Elementary School in South Wilkes-Barre surrendered on charges she stole more than $49,000 from the school.

Michele A. Hivish, 50, of Maple Lane, Wilkes-Barre, was charged with theft and forgery. She surrendered on the charges at District Judge William Amesbury's office in Wilkes-Barre at about 11:20 a.m.

Wilkes-Barre police accused Hivish of forging the name of former school leaders on checks that she cashed. She is also accused with stealing money from two scholarship accounts.

ST. LOUIS (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

By JEANNETTE COOPERMAN
St. Louis

Two years ago, when Fr. Marek Bozek left his diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau, Mo., to follow his heart and conscience to a Polish parish in St. Louis, he says he didn’t expect his kindly Springfield bishop, John Leibrecht, to suspend him. Nor did he expect that he would soon be cast by Catholic hopefuls as David to Archbishop Raymond Burke’s Goliath on a national stage. All he wanted, he says, was to provide the sacraments for a group of proud Catholic Poles, whose parish he believed had been unjustly suppressed.

In an unusual arrangement dating back 200 years, St. Stanislaus Kostka, a large inner-city church near St. Louis’ downtown, controlled its own property and assets, estimated when Bozek arrived in December 2005 at about $9 million. Burke, St. Louis archbishop, said the parish’s governance structure as a nonprofit group run by a lay board was outside church law, which calls for a bishop to have ultimate authority over parishes. When St. Stanislaus refused to comply, Burke pulled out the parish’s priests. By the time Bozek arrived, St. Stanislaus had been without a priest for two years.

Bozek, then 29 and a native of Poland, hoped to remain in St. Louis just long enough to effect a compromise, perhaps a year or two. Leibrecht urged Bozek not to go. Bozek went anyway, in violation of his priestly vow of obedience to his bishop, and was immediately suspended. Leibrecht says Bozek was warned. Bozek felt he had to go. He found it outrageous that, as he saw it, people would be denied sacraments in a worldly struggle over money.

UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

An alleged child abuse victim broke down as he gave evidence against a priest accused of a series of abuse charges against schoolboys.

John McCollough, 63, of Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, is charged with eight counts of indecent assault and four of gross indecency with children.

The incidents allegedly took place during his time as minister at the Holy Trinity Church in Bury, Gtr Manchester.

The 29-year-old man was giving evidence at Bolton Crown Court.

GERMANY
AHN

Vittorio Hernandez - AHN News Writer
Freiburg, Germany (AHN) - He is barely one week on the job as president of the German Episcopal Conference, but Freiburg Archbishop Robert Zollitsch is stirring controversy with his statements about priestly celibacy. Zollitsch said celibacy is a gift, but is not essential to the priesthood.

In an interview with Der Spiegel, Zollitsch said dissolution of the celibacy tradition will be a revolutionary move on the part of the Catholic church.

His statements drew a reply from Regensburg Bishop Gerhard-Ludwig Muller. In a press statement, Muller reminded Zollitsch, "All of the specifics of being a priest and the corresponding rules of celibacy could not be expanded upon, as a theological context would require, in a quick interview."

Muller pointed to the Second Vatican Council as his main argument for celibacy, that being unmarried "is and will remain the policy of the Catholic Church."

UNITED KINGDOM
This is Lancashire

BY TERRY MORGAN.

ONE of two victims of child abuse, allegedly committed by a former Bury priest, broke down in tears in court as he accused the man of wrecking his life.

The reformed heroin addict, who is now aged 29, was just a primary school pupil when he claimed to have suffered at the hands of Father John McCollough. He came face-to-face with his alleged abuser for the first time today (Tuesday) as he entered the dock to give evidence.

In an emotionally charged opening of a Crown Court trial, the male, who cannot be named, shouted at McCollough: "Why? Why? You don't know what you have done to me. You don't know what I have lost. And you just stand there and look at me like that!"

MARYLAND
Catholic League

February 19, 2008

Maryland lawmaker Eric Bromwell has introduced legislation that would suspend the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse cases for almost two years. It would allow alleged victims to sue the predator and the organization where the abuser worked. The bill, however, does not apply to public institutions, which are subject to less punitive measures.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue spoke against the proposed legislation today:

“Unlike some lawmakers in other states who have sought to penalize private [read: Catholic] schools while giving public schools a pass, Delegate Bromwell appears to have benign motives. But he is wrong on the issue nonetheless. It is simply intolerable to allow one set of penalties for private institutions and another for public institutions. If protecting students is the goal, then justice demands that all institutions be treated equally. It is mind-boggling to think that a young person who was previously abused by a public school teacher should be afforded less justice than a neighbor who was molested by a Catholic school teacher.

MASSACHUSETTS
The Patriot Ledger

By DON CONKEY
The Patriot Ledger

A former South Shore priest has pleaded guilty to indecent assault and battery on a person under 14, among other charges, according to the Norfolk District Attorney’s office.

John Keane, 69, now a Florida resident, was sentenced to serve 30 days in jail on Jan. 24 in Norfolk Superior Court, said David Traub, spokesman for Norfolk County District Attorney William Keating.

Traub said that Keane pleaded guilty to all charges, which included indecent assault and battery on a person under 14 and three counts of assault and battery.

CANADA
The Mid-North Monitor

Posted By Rosalind Raby

A Roman Catholic priest who has already been charged with sexual assault is facing 10 new charges of sexual impropriety filed by the Greater Sudbury Police Service.

Father Bernard Cloutier, 66, was charged earlier this month with five counts of indecent assault and five counts of gross indecency against three male teenaged victims.

The crimes are alleged to have occurred in the 1970s while Cloutier was at Paroisse St. Joseph in Chelmsford and later, at St. Louis de France Church in Espanola.

Staff Sgt Sheilah Weber of the Sudbury police said Cloutier turned himself into police Tuesday, February 5, accompanied by his lawyer, after being notified he was facing more charges.

MARYLAND
Towson Times

02/19/08
by Bryan P. Sears

A bill that would extend the statute of limitations on sexual abuse lawsuits is drawing opposition from the head of Calvert Hall College high school.

Del. Eric Bromwell, a Democrat, is sponsoring a bill that would give people alleging sexual abuse more time for filing lawsuits.

Opposing the bill is Brother Benedict Oliver, the president of Calvert Hall, which has not been immune to the allegations of child sexual abuse that have hit the Catholic Church nationwide.

Bromwell, who graduated from Calvert Hall in 1994, said people who are abused “should be able to seek justice.”

NEW JERSEY
Philadelphia Inquirer

By Sam Wood and Troy Graham
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

The theft of $415,000 of student funds by the former principal of a Roman Catholic high school in South Jersey was called "indefensible" this morning by spokeswoman for the Diocese of Trenton.

Joseph Lemme, 51, said he embezzled the money from Holy Cross High School in Burlington County partly to get back at the church for sexual abuse he endured as a teenager at a New York State seminary.

An attorney for Joseph Lemme raised the alleged abuse in a plea for leniency at Lemme's sentencing in Superior Court last week.

"None of this has ever had anything to do with the Diocese of Trenton or any of its parishes or schools," said Rayanne Bennett, the spokeswoman for the diocese.

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

That it took three decades before a Philadelphia priest first accused of sexually abusing boys was finally defrocked explains why so many have lost faith in the Roman Catholic Church's ability to police itself.

The move to defrock David Sicoli comes as too little too late for at least 11 minors he allegedly abused from 1977 to 2002, according to a grand jury report.

Sicoli's case further underscores the need for the state to pass a law that would allow victims to sue abusers after the statute of limitations has passed.

California and Delaware have passed laws that provide a "window" of up to two years to file civil suits regardless of when the assaults occurred.

UNITED KINGDOM
Evening Leader

A Catholic priest charged with a series of child abuse offences against schoolboys in Bury is going on trial.

John McCollough, 61, of Lymington Avenue, Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, is charged with eight counts of indecent assault and four of gross indecency with children during the 1980s and 1990s.

The offences are alleged to have taken place while McCollough was an Anglican rector at Christ the King with Holy Trinity Church in Spring Street, Bury.

The alleged attacks spanned a six-year period while he was rector at the church.

GERMANY
Deutche Welle

Having just taken office, the new head of the German Catholic Church, Robert Zollitsch has already caused controversy. His peers have frowned over his suggestion that clerical celibacy is not "theologically necessary."

In an interview with the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, 69-year-old archbishop of Freiburg, Robert Zollitsch, who is now head of the German Catholic Church, said that celibacy and the unmarried lives of priests were a "gift," but not essential.

Furthermore, he said it would be a "revolution" if the celibacy tradition within the Catholic Church were dissolved.

Upon this week's publication of the interview, Regensburg's bishop, Gerhard-Ludwig Müller, said in a prompt press release: "All of the specifics of being a priest and the corresponding rules of celibacy could not be expanded upon, as a theological context would require, in a quick interview."

BRAZIL
Catholic News Agency

Brasilia, Feb 18, 2008 / 02:33 pm (CNA).- The prefect for the Congregation for the Clergy, Cardinal Claudio Hummes, said pedophilia is one of the gravest problems of sexual misconduct, but he asserted that the media exaggerated the number of priests involved in such cases, which in reality involved less than 1% of the clergy.

Speaking to some 450 participants at the 12th National Priests Meeting, the cardinal noted that worldwide the clergy numbers 406,000 priests, with 18,000 in Brazil.

Later on during his remarks, he called on priests to provide ministry to the divorced and then remarried, noting that their situation prevents them from receiving the Eucharist.

DELHI (NY)
The Daily Star

By Patricia Breakey
Delhi News Bureau

The director of a century-old boys camp in Delhi said there was no indication a former choir director had an interest in child pornography.

Charles L. Burks, 28, formerly of Slingerlands, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Thomas J. McAvoy in federal court in Albany last week on his guilty plea to a charge of receipt of child pornography.

James Adams, Lake Delaware Boys Camp director, said Monday that Burks was well-known in the choir world and came highly recommended to the camp. ...

The camp runs for five weeks each summer, with 85 to 95 boys spending five weeks in a highly structured, military based program. The camp also has a religious component and is affiliated with the Episcopal Church.

AUSTRALIA
Village Voice

Nick Clark

A Lane Cove resident and former Marist College priest in Tasmania was found guilty in the Supreme Court in Launceston last week of sex offences - two years after first being convicted.

Tasmania's Mercury newspaper reported that Roger Michael Bellemore, 72, of Lane Cove, was found guilty of three counts of maintaining a sexual relationship with young boys in the early 1970s.

He was a priest at Marist College in Tasmania's Burnie and committed a series of sexual assaults against boys aged between 11 and 13 years.