Abuse Tracker

MARYLAND
WJZ

Reporting
Kai Jackson

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (WJZ) ―

Fifteen years after he was sent to prison for life, a convicted child rapist could be just days from being released. Kai Jackson reports a federal judge is allowing an appeal in the case, but victims say they are ready to fight it.

"I am angry with the courts. I'm angry with this decision because it could potentially allow a violent serial child predator/rapist out on the streets of Baltimore," said Liz Murphy.

Murphy was a student at the Catholic Community Middle School in the 70s when she says a teacher, John Merzbacher, raped her inside a storage closet. Decades later, Murphy and several other former students came forward with the claims and testified against Merzbacher in 1995.

BALTIMORE (MD)
WBAL

[the judge's decision]

BALTIMORE --

A notorious sex offender in the 1970s will be released from prison, a federal judge decided Friday.

John Merzbacher, a former Catholic school teacher, was sentenced on July 21, 1995, to life in prison for the rape of one of his students at the Catholic Community School in south Baltimore in the 1970s.

Merzbacher had argued that his lawyer, Christina Guiterrez, failed him by not telling him about the state's offer of a plea bargain. Guiterrez has since died.

BALTIMORE (MD)
The Baltimore Sun

Dan Rodricks, The Baltimore Sun

6:55 p.m. EDT, July 31, 2010

Had he known that prosecutors were willing to offer him 10 years in prison in return for a guilty plea, convicted rapist and child abuser John Merzbacher would have accepted the deal "most graciously" instead of standing trial and getting the multiple life terms he has been serving since 1995.

That's what Merzbacher claimed a few years ago during a post-conviction hearing in Baltimore to determine whether his defense attorneys had told him about the plea deal. That deal — and a federal judge's conclusion that Merzbacher's lawyers erred in keeping it from him — is central to the latest chapter in one of Maryland's highest-profile child sex abuse cases, involving dozens of victims, male and female, who were students of Merzbacher's at Catholic middle school in the 1970s.

Now, errors by his own attorneys could negate his four life sentences and eventually free Merzbacher, 68, from the Eastern Correctional Institution in Somerset County.

BALTIMORE (MD)
The Baltimore Sun

By Tricia Bishop, The Baltimore Sun

John Joseph Merzbacher, a notorious Baltimore child abuser accused of molesting dozens of students at the Catholic school where he taught, could soon be released from a life sentence, under a federal court order handed down Friday.

Merzbacher, now 68, is a former middle school teacher at the city's Catholic Community School. He was sentenced in 1995 to multiple life terms after a jury found him guilty of raping a preteen Elizabeth Ann Murphy decades earlier. He has already served 15 years.

But his case is now being sent back to state court so he can be offered a 10-year plea deal that was apparently on the table before his trial began, which he claims he was never properly advised of, as law requires.

CHICAGO (IL)
Chicagoist

Frank Douglas, national director of Send the Bishops a Message, a group of "reform-minded Catholics" that want "meaningful action" taken against how the church handles sexual abuse scandals, made an unusual donation of $200 to the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago on Saturday. It wasn't the amount that was unusual as much as how it was given -- all in pennies.

Each of the pennies represented the "estimated 20,000 victims of sexual abuse by clergy in the U.S.," Douglas told the Chicago Tribune. And until the church steps up the accountability on sexual abuse, Douglas wants those pennies to keep coming, adding:

"Money is power. Just put a penny on the collection plate when it goes by. We'll use the power of the purse to send them a message."

CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Breaking News

July 31, 2010

Tuscon native Frank Douglas made a small offering to the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago on Saturday: $200 in pennies.

Douglas and a group of about a dozen fellow Catholic activists this afternoon left the national conference of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, to drop off the boxes of pennies.

The donation, received by a quizzical security guard at the Rush Street Archdiocese offices, was seed money for a fund for the estimated 20,000 victims of sexual abuse by clergy in the U.S., Douglas said.

UNITED STATES
Boyhood Shadows

Genesis
This film of tragedy, heartbreak and hope found its beginnings in a room full of men. These men were moving forward with their lives by looking back on their childhoods – bonded by trauma and now, healing.

In this room at the Monterey County Rape Crisis Center in Monterey, California, they were seeking help through a support group for male survivors of childhood sexual abuse. This group is one of just a handful in California; and only 40 or so groups exist worldwide, according to the group facilitator, Stephen Braveman.

As the men began to heal, they decided they wanted to reach others who had been victimized as boys. The concept for a :30 second Public Service Announcement was born. In a joint effort, members of the group created the script, storyboards and musical score – and the project was ready to go. Funded by anonymous benefactors committed to helping male survivors on a national and global basis, “You Are Not Alone” was filmed and produced by filmmakers, Terri DeBono and Steve Rosen of Mac + Ava Motion Pictures.

UNITED STATES
Queering the Church

July 30, 2010 — terence@queerchurch
One of my earliest memories from primary school religion lessons is that suicide is a grievous sin, one of the worst of all. If that is so, how serious is it to be responsible for another person’s suicide? And how serious is it if that person is a representative of the Catholic Church, or indirectly, the whole impersonal structure of the Church itself?

The Church has by now become accustomed to being sued by survivors of clerical abuse, of boys, girls, and adults alike. It is also now accustomed to paying out large sums, as the result of court judgements, out-of court settlements, or (in some cases) plain hush money, all for abuse.

In Pennsylvania, it is now facing a monetary claim on different grounds, still arising from a case of alleged abuse. Michael Unglo was an abuse victim in the diocese of Pittsburgh, where he was molested for several years by Fr Richard Dorsch, who was later defrocked and imprisoned. After Unglo attempted suicide in 2008, Bishop Zubik promised him that the church would “right the wrong” that had been done to him, and began paying for psychiatric treatment. Earlier this year, he was told that a payment of $75 000 would be his last one. Two months later, he killed himself. (See “Suicide’s family sues Catholic church“, at UPI.com )

PHILIPPINES
Monsters and Critics

Manila - A Filipino Catholic priest was found dead in his room in a seminary in the Philippines, a day after he allegedly went out on a date with a minor, a police report said Saturday.

Father Baltazar Acompanado Junior was found dead with a gunshot wound on his head Wednesday inside his room at the Holy Rosary Preparatory Seminary in San Jose town in Camarines Sur province, 260 kilometres south-east of Manila.

Police investigators said that the victim, who was the rector of the seminary, was found lying in bed, holding a pistol on his right hand in an apparent suicide, the report added.

BELGIE
RKnieuws

ANTWERPEN (RKnieuws.net) - Paus Benedictus XVI verwijst geregeld naar de pedofiliecrisis in de kerk als ‘een zonde’. Velen hebben het daar moeilijk mee. Priester en psychotherapeut Erik Galle begrijpt die wrevel maar zoekt hoe je die visie correct kunt verstaan. Hij schreef onderstaand opiniestuk voor het christelijk weekblad Tertio.

De schandalen van seksueel misbruik in pastorale contacten brengen zowel binnen als buiten de kerk een schokgolf teweeg. Er heerst terechte verontwaardiging en onthutsing. Mensen voelen zich bedrogen. Menigeen, zeker in de media, vindt in de onthullingen het perfecte alibi om definitief met de kerk te kunnen afrekenen. De kerk zelf heeft er weinig woorden voor. Als ze al een antwoord tracht te formuleren, zegt ze dat pedofilie een zonde is. Ze is verbaasd dat dit taalgebruik heel wat mensen ergert. Toch is het wijs die ergernis niet zomaar van tafel te vegen. Ik formuleer enkele kanttekeningen bij het gebruiken van het woord ‘zonde’ als het over pedofilie gaat.

BELGIE
De Standaard

Op 24 juni begonnen de speurders van de federale gerechtelijke politie van Brussel met ‘Operatie Kelk'. Ze vielen in Mechelen binnen in het aartsbisschoppelijk paleis, de Sint-Romboutskathedraal, bij kardinaal Danneels thuis en in Leuven bij de commissie-Adriaenssens. Ze namen alle computers, dossiers en archieven mee.

Aanleiding voor de huiszoekingen zouden verklaringen zijn geweest van Godelieve Halsberghe. Als ex-voorzitter van de commissie die seksueel misbruik in de kerk onderzoekt, zou zij aan de speurders hebben verklaard op de hoogte te zijn van verborgen pedofiliedossiers in de crypte van de kathedraal. Het gerechtelijk onderzoek moest een eventuele doofpotoperatie van de kardinaal blootleggen.

Door het machtsvertoon van de speurders deed Operatie Kelk heel wat stof opwaaien. Het is een van de redenen waarom het parket-generaal van Brussel in actie schoot en de rechtsgeldigheid van de huiszoekingen heeft onderzocht. Dat recht heeft het in elk onderzoek.

BELGIE
HLN

HLN update Het Brusselse parket-generaal heeft de kamer van inbeschuldigingstelling (KI) aangesteld om een uitspraak te doen in het kader van het gerechtelijk onderzoek naar seksueel misbruik in de kerk. De KI moet nu onderzoeken of dat gerechtelijk onderzoek volgens alle wettelijke regels verlopen is. Dat meldt het parket-generaal.

De Brusselse kamer van inbeschuldigingstelling (KI) zal naar alle waarschijnlijkheid de advocaat van het Mechelse aartsbisdom en van kardinaal Danneels niet horen over de eventuele onregelmatigheden die zouden gebeurd zijn bij het gerechtelijk onderzoek naar kindermisbruik binnen de Kerk. Dat heeft de advocaat van het aartsbisdom, Fernand Keuleneer.

Het aartsbisdom noch kardinaal Danneels zijn partij in het gerechtelijk onderzoek van onderzoeksrechter De Troy.

BELGIE
De Standaard

De kamer van inbeschuldigingstelling (KI) hoort op 6 augustus de verschillende partijen die in het strafonderzoek-Danneels betrokken zijn.

Het onderzoek naar seksueel misbruik in de Kerk wordt de komende weken binnen het gerecht uitgevochten. Het parket-generaal van Brussel, dat enkele weken geleden besliste om de onderzoeksdaden van de speurders en de onderzoeksrechter onder de loep te nemen, heeft de kamer van inbeschuldigingstelling 'gevat'.

Dat wil zeggen dat de KI uitspraak zal doen over de geldigheid van het onderzoek. De eerste zitting is gepland op vrijdag 6 augustus. De KI kan aan alle partijen die in het strafonderzoek betrokken zijn vragen om hun standpunt toe te lichten. Het gaat om het parket-generaal van Brussel, de onderzoeksrechter en de advocaat van kardinaal Danneels. Maar of dat gebeurt is niet zeker.

CALIFORNIA
The Fresno Bee

Legal arguments in a civil lawsuit that accuses the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fresno of fraud have been delayed to Sept. 9 in Fresno County Superior Court.

Initially, Judge Adolfo Corona was scheduled to consider the church's request to dismiss the lawsuit next Thursday, but new documents filed by the plaintiff's lawyer, Joseph C. George, prompted the judge to continue the hearing.

Both sides, however, will meet for a case management conference on Aug. 9.

George is using a novel legal strategy -- he is suing for fraud because the deadline to file a sex abuse case has passed.

IRELAND
Herald

Friday July 30 2010

Apparently priests are getting angry. So angry in fact that some are considering forming their own union to give them a public voice and fight for "civil and ecumenical rights".

According to their spokesperson, Fr Brendan Hoban, "we have things to say and we are prepared to say them". Quite.

PROBLEM

Here's the problem, reverend. While the public have a passing interest in your ability to organise yourselves into a pressure group, that is all it is. Passing. What we really want to know is what will be the items on the agenda at your inaugural meeting? The rights of Travellers and asylum seekers? Noble. The possibility of getting the Anglican Communion to rejoin the Roman fold? Ambitious. However, here's what all your faithful really want on this agenda.

Item 1 has to be serial clerical sexual abuse. We want it to stop and we want the shielding and denial to end now. We want the clergy top to bottom, right and left, to atone for its collective sins.

FLORIDA
Herald-Tribune

By Christopher O'Donnell

BRADENTON - Every year, religious leader Gerald Derstine left Christian Retreat in Bradenton to head for Strawberry Lake, an idyllic Christian retreat he founded in Minnesota.

Gerald Derstine, 81, is being sued by a family who say he abused their daughter over a period of two years. Key Documents:Gerald Derstine lawsuit (PDF - 275kb)
The trip reunited him with a local family he had known for 20 years and had served as pastor.

Derstine had a close relationship with the family's 11-year-old girl, whose own father was estranged. She called him "Grandpa Gerald." He told the girl he felt like a father to her.

TENNESSEE
TriCities

[with video]

By Nate Morabito
Published: July 30, 2010

Although a former Greene County priest did not receive any time in jail for sexually abusing a boy more than 30 years ago, his now grown-up victim says the priest's legal battle is not over yet.

Two days ago, former Catholic priest William Casey pleaded guilty to crimes against nature in North Carolina. In return for Casey's guilty plea, a judge sentenced the man to 24 months of supervised probation. However, his victim, Warren Tucker, says jail time will be in Casey's future.

"He won't get so lucky in the other jurisdictions I believe," Tucker said.

Tucker says more than 30 years ago, Casey took him on a trip to North Carolina where he abused the then young boy. Although that North Carolina case is now over, Tucker is still pushing for additional charges in three other parts of the Tri-Cities region.

CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Breaking News

July 30, 2010

A Chicago teen filed a lawsuit today against former Roman Catholic priest Daniel McCormack, a convicted sex offender, alleging that he sexually abused him dozens of times while he was a sixth grader.

McCormack, who was pastor at St. Agatha's Catholic Church in Chicago, repeatedly raped and inappropriately touched the victim between 2001 and 2002, according to the lawsuit filed in Cook County Circuit Court.

The boy, now 19, also named Cardinal Francis George and the Archdiocese of Chicago as defendants, alleging they failed to properly investigate and report McCormack to authorities following reports of inappropriate sexual behavior.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By John Cooney Religion Correspondent

Saturday July 31 2010

A closely-knit rural community in the north-west is in shock after a well-known parish priest was accused of child sex abuse.

The case is the first known complaint to hit the diocese of Killala which covers large sections of Co Mayo and Co Sligo. The elderly priest was suspended from parish duties by his bishop after a formal allegation was made against him.

The Irish Independent understands that the complaint of sexual abuse dates back to an incident in the diocese in the 1970s, and that it is being investigated by gardai and the HSE.

CANADA
The Daily Graphic

By Rev. Bob Ripley QMI Agency

Just when I thought that the Roman Catholic sex abuse scandal was flattened under the weight of gushing Gulf oil and Mel Gibson's rants, last week the Vatican sent a letter to its bishops targeting crimes against the faith.

You know, the rape of children, molestation of the mentally disabled, possession of child pornography and the ordination of women.

I'm not kidding on that last one. More later.

Pope Benedict has begged forgiveness from victims of sexual abuse by priests, "particularly the abuse of the little ones," and promised to do everything possible to protect them.

CONNECTICUT
The Day

Michael R. Strammiello Westerly

Publication: The Day

The Diocese of Norwich objects to the cartoon published July 26 on the editorial page. It appears the cartoon was in response to the new norms announced by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith that addressed women and ordination as well as child-protection policies. Those of us who serve in the Catholic Church do not believe the implied subject of child abuse is ever a subject to make fun of. We in the church, and specifically the diocese, regard this subject seriously.

The Catholic Church has worked relentlessly the past decade on child-safety policy. This includes the awareness campaign that extends a sincere please-call invitation (800-624-7407) to anyone harmed by a church representative. There are posters to this effect in our churches and schools, online posting on norwichdiocese.org and conspicuous postings in the Four County Catholic. Since 2002, the diocese and all dioceses nationwide have had a zero-tolerance policy. A priest or deacon who has admitted to or been found guilty of sexually abusing a minor can no longer engage in public ministry. Other policies include mandatory reporting of allegations of sexual abuse to civil authorities, background and criminal history checks for church employees and volunteers, personal safety education for children and child abuse awareness and prevention education for parents, grandparents, volunteers and employees.

CANADA
The Standard

Posted By GRANT LAFLECHE , STANDARD STAFF

Eganville is a study in contradiction. It's the kind of place where residents leave their cars unattended with the doors unlocked and the windows down without a worry. Farmers who have worked the land for generations know their neighbours like family.

Other residents who live and work there couldn't give you directions if you paid them. A significant number of the town's 1,300 residents -- a population so small the label "town" seems a bit grandiose -- turn over fairly regularly. They leave, only to be replaced by newcomers.

It's a farming community, but one marked by several fallow fields dotted with dandelions.

Traditional faith matters and the silhouettes of the old mainline churches from Catholic to Lutheran dominate the town-scape. Yet some of the churches are marked with unique, angular steeples that reflect more of a jazz architecture vibe than the mood of somber religion.

CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Sun-Times

July 30, 2010

BY LISA DONOVAN Staff Reporter
A 19-year-old man filed a lawsuit today against the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, alleging church officials moved pedophile priest Daniel McCormack from assignment to assignment even after sex abuse allegations surfaced against the now defrocked pastor.

The man, identified in court papers only as John E. Doe, alleges he was abused by McCormack as a 6th grader at St. Agatha's parish rectory on the West Side from 2001 to 2002.

"McCormack, as part of a continuing series of acts, raped, inappropriately sexually touched, rubbed and/or abused the [p]laintiff over eighty ... times, including placing the [p]laintiff's hand on McCormack's penis more than sixty ... times for penile stimulation," the suit alleges.

MISSOURI
Riverfront Times

By Aimee Levitt, Fri., Jul. 30 2010

​No, it's not the Final Exit Network, the assisted suicide group that has been in legal hot water since March of last year when several of its members were busted in a sting in Georgia. This case is much smaller.

Jacob Runge, 22, of St. Peters was acquitted in a Clayton courtroom yesterday of charges of voluntarily manslaughter for providing his friend Alex Harkins with the gun he knew Harkins would use to take his own life. This was the first assisted-suicide case to go to trial in Missouri in 101 years. ...

According to court testimony, Harkins, who was 21 when he died, had attempted suicide before. His troubles started when he was molested by a priest when he was thirteen.

UNITED STATES
Say it, Sister!

by Merrill Miller, Communications Intern

On July 27, the Utah Supreme Court overturned Warren Jeffs' conviction of accomplice to rape. Jeffs, the so-called "prophet" and leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), had been convicted of accomplice to rape when he orchestrated the marriage of 14-year-old Elissa Wall to her first cousin, 19-year-old Allen Steed. Wall was terrified of the marriage and begged Jeffs to cancel it. He refused. He also refused to help her after she was married, when she pleaded with him to release her from her husband, who had been raping and abusing her repeatedly during their marriage. While Jeffs' guilt in this case appears undeniable, the Utah Supreme Court claimed that because the prosecution could not prove that Jeffs intended for Steed to rape Wall, his conviction should be overturned.

This ruling by the Utah Supreme Court gives no justice to Wall, who endured years of brainwashing under Jeffs and then years of abuse under her husband. But the Utah Supreme Court's decision also denies justice to women all over Utah and ultimately all over the country. If the state can say that a man who forced a girl into marriage against her will is not an accomplice to rape, then the state essentially finds it acceptable for men to tell women what to do with their bodies, choices and lives, stripping them of all autonomy. The state of Utah already heavily restricts women's rights in a variety of ways.

DEUTSCHLAND
Eifel Zeitung

Trier. Das Bistum Trier hat am 22. Juli einen neuen Internet-Auftritt eingerichtet, der den Nutzerinnen und Nutzern Informationen im Kampf gegen den sexuellen Missbrauch von Kindern und Jugendlichen zur Verfügung stellen soll. Die Adresse lautet: www.praevention.bistum-trier.de

In einem Schreiben, das an alle Priester, Pastoral- und Gemeindereferenten sowie an weitere Verantwortliche in der Arbeit mit Kindern, Jugendlichen und Familien versandt wurde und auch auf der Internet-Seite veröffentlicht ist, betont der Trierer Bischof Dr. Stephan Ackermann, dass es bei Prävention nicht einfach um Vermeidungsstrategien gehe. Wichtig sei vielmehr „eine neue Kultur des aufeinander Achtens, damit Kinder und Jugendliche in den vielfältigen Lebensräumen, die unsere kirchlichen Angebote und Einrichtungen eröffnen, eine möglichst sichere Umgebung finden, in der sie wachsen können, ohne von sexualisierter Gewalt ausgenutzt zu werden.“

OSTERREICH
Wiener Zeitung

Von Walter Hämmerle

Kohlmaier: Die Kirche ist von tiefem Misstrauen gegen die Welt geprägt.
"Es geht nur noch um die Erhaltung von Strukturen."
Mehr Autonomie nach Beispiel der unierten Ostkirchen?

"Wiener Zeitung": Bei der diesjährigen Missionswoche wollte die katholische Kirche ihre Türen weit aufmachen und dorthin gehen, wo die Menschen sind. Gelingt das der Kirche?

Herbert Kohlmaier: Nur zu einem Teil. Es gibt, das zeigen alle Untersuchungen, das Bedürfnis der Menschen, einen Glauben zu leben. Nur die Doktrinen und Vorschriften der Kirche werden nicht mehr angenommen, das gilt vor allem für die Jugend. Die Kirche wird so, wie sie sich heute darstellt, nicht bestehen bleiben können.

MINNESOTA
DL-Online

By: Don Davis, State Capitol Bureau

ST. PAUL -- A St. Cloud, Minn., girl and her mother sued the founder of Gospel Crusades Wednesday for what the federal lawsuit calls repeated incidents of sexual abuse at a retreat center near Detroit Lakes.

The suit claims Gerald Derstine of Bradenton, Fla., molested the girl during summer camps in 2007, 2008 and 2009 at Gospel Crusades' Strawberry Lake Christian Retreat.

St. Paul attorney Patrick Noaker said the goal of the suit, filed Wednesday in federal court, is two-fold: to make the retreat center safe for children and to get money to fund the St. Cloud girl's treatment.

IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

By John Cooney and Carol Byrne
Friday, 30 July 2010

An Irish Bishop has claimed no complaint of child abuse was made against any priest in his diocese over the past 20 years.

Addressing a group of parish workers and clergy in Killaloe, Bishop Willie Walsh assured Catholics in his west of Ireland diocese that the "church is a very safe place" for children.

"There is no complaint of something that happened after 1990," said Bishop Walsh who has ruled the diocese for the past 16 years.

PHILIPPINES
Inquirer

By Juan Escandor Jr.
Inquirer Southern Luzon
First Posted 21:52:00 07/28/2010

NAGA CITY--A Catholic priest was found dead Wednesday morning in his room at the Holy Rosary Minor Seminary in San Jose, Camarines Sur, about 35 km. from this city, police said.

Police Officer 2 Wig Pramis, police on case, identified the priest as Fr. Baltazar Acompañado, 35.

Pramis told the Inquirer in a telephone interview Wednesday night that the Catholic authorities of the Archdiocese of Caceres asked the police to make the information private so as not to sensationalize the case.

PHILIPPINES
GMA News

The Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) said the rector of a Catholic seminary in Camarines Sur in the Bicol Region was found dead in his room Wednesday.

The CBCP said the police are still determining the cause of the death of Father Baltazar Acompanado Jr., 35, who was found dead with a 38-caliber revolver near his body.

“There is an on-going process of verification as regards the particular circumstance of his demise," Caceres Archbishop Leonardo Legazpi said in an article posted on the CBCP news site.

PHILIPPINES
ABS-CBN

MANILA, Philippines - Police in Camarines Sur province are investigating the death of a priest, who allegedly went on a date with a 15-year-old girl before he was found dead last Wednesday morning.

Senior Superintendent Jonathan Ablang, Camarines Sur provincial police director, said the initial report he received was that Father Baltazar Acompañado Jr. died in his sleep and that that the priest may have committed suicide.

"May hawak-hawak na baril sa kananang kamay si Father Acompañado at may gunshot wound sa ulo, kaya lumalabas nag suicide siya (Father Acompañado has a gunshot wound in the head and he was holding a gun with his right hand, which indicates that he committed suicide)," Ablang said.

IRELAND
The Clare People

Bishop Willie Walsh has claimed no complaint of child abuse was made against any priest in the Diocese of Killlaloe over the past 20 years. Stating that the "church is a very safe place" for children, Bishop Walsh said "there is no complaint of something that happened after 1990. In other words there has been no complaint in relation to an incident that happened within those 20 years".

UNITED STATES
Yahoo! News

By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer

NEW YORK – Anne Rice has had a religious conversion: She's no longer a Christian.

"In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control," the author wrote Wednesday on her Facebook page. "In the name of ... Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen."

Rice, 68, is best known for "Interview With a Vampire" and other gothic novels. Raised as a Catholic, she had rejected the church early in her life but renewed her faith in recent years and in 2008 released the memoir "Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession."

In a telephone interview Thursday, Rice said she had been having doubts for the past two to three years. She was troubled by the child abuse scandals in the church, and the church's defensive reaction, and by the ex-communication of Sister Margaret McBride, a nun and hospital administrator who had approved an abortion for a woman whose life was in danger.

ROME
Chiesa

As the pope's delegate, Archbishop De Paolis has full authority over everything and everyone. For Corcuera, Garza, and the other heads of the congregation founded by Marcial Maciel, the end is in sight. But they're still resisting

by Sandro Magister

ROME, July 30, 2010 – The superiors of the Legionaries of Christ have put on a brave face for the arrival of the pontifical delegate who will oversee the rebuilding of their congregation from the ground up.

But they know that they have lost all authority of their own. The Vatican decree that establishes the delegate's powers states, in fact, that they can be removed at any moment, "ad nutum Sanctae Sedis." And in any case, from now on, all of their decisions will be valid only if they are approved by the delegate, to whom they will have to submit in everything.

The delegate is Archbishop Velasio De Paolis, age 75. Benedict XVI gave him the office on June 16, but the appointment was made public on July 9, because until that date De Paolis himself was busy producing the balance sheet for the Vatican's accounts in 2009, in his capacity as president of the prefecture of economic affairs of the Holy See.

IRELAND
The Irish Catholic

29 Jul 2010
Garry O'Sullivan and Michael Kelly

A new priests' movement is being planned to push for a reformation within Irish Catholicism, The Irish Catholic has learned. The push, which will include a call for the Church to re-evaluate its teaching on sexuality as well as ''an equal place for women in all areas of Church life'' is the brainchild of three prominent priests.

In a statement to The Irish Catholic, the three, Fr Tony Flannery, Fr Brendan Hoban and Fr Sean McDonagh said ''the consensus was that, due to the diversity of opinion among priests, it would be impossible to represent all clergy.

''A more manageable and targeted approach would be to draft a set of aims or guidelines for such an association and monitor the response,'' it said.

UNITED KINGDOM
National Secular Society

The National Secular Society is staging a film season in the days before the Pope arrives in Britain. The films will look at aspects of the Catholic Church which both the Government and the Church itself would prefer were not mentioned during the visit of the “Holy Father”.

We intend this film season as a counter to the propaganda-fest that is being planned by the BBC.

The first film, on Monday September 13 is Sinners – a powerful exploration of the scandal that was the Magdalen asylums. These Church-run institutions were for supposed “fallen women”. Some of the women had done nothing more than flirt openly with boys. Others had become pregnant outside marriage, yet others had become involved in prostitution. Often it was difficult to say why they had been incarcerated in these slave camps – sometimes just because the local priest didn’t like them or they’d been feisty at school.

UNITED KINGDOM
Ekklesia

By staff writers
30 Jul 2010

The chair of the National Catholic Safeguarding Commission (NCSC) has said the Vatican should remove the statute of limitations on the prosecution of priests for child abuse.

William Kilgallon, head of child protection for the Catholic church in England and Wales, added that the time limit was unhelpful and failed to reflect the long-lasting effects of abuse.

Mr Kilgallon said that the Vatican's recent decision to double the time period from 10 years to to 20 was "better than it was", but he would have preferred its abolition.

PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburg Post-Gazette

By Dennis B. Roddy, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The family of a former Etna man said today that he committed suicide earlier this year after the Diocese of Pittsburgh reneged on a promise to continue psychiatric treatment he needed to overcome the trauma of sexual abuse by a priest 25 years ago.

Michael R. Unglo, 39, took his own life May 4 while a patient at at Austen Riggs Hospital in Massachussets.

"He paid the ultimate price for being sexually abused as a child by a priest," said Alan H. Perer, who filed suit on behalf of the Unglo estate. The Diocese said in a statement that it had not reneged on an agreement and that financial support continued up to the time of Mr. Unglo's death.

UNITED STATES
Los Angeles Chronicle

July 30, 2010

REPORT: 25% - 50% of Catholic priests are gay. Group urges them to leave the fold.

An Atheist advocacy group has called upon Roman Catholic priests who are gay to resign from the church and reject the Vatican's repressive teachings on homosexuality--and much else.

This comes following an expose by the Italian weekly news magazine Panorama titled "Good Nights Out For Gay Priests." Investigative journalist Carmelo Abbate who spent time undercover filming and interviewing gay clerics who often flaunted their lifestyle, and even hired male escorts for private parties. Panorama's expose seems to confirm a 2000 study by Father Donald Cozzens whose book, The Changing Face of the Priesthood suggested that as many as 60% of American Catholic priests are gay.

Dr. Ed Buckner, President of American Atheists, said, "In an institution where men and women are treated as equals--as human beings!--double lives (hypocrisy) aren't necessary. These men should choose integrity, honest lives, not continuing support for unsupportable, irrational dogma that misleads millions and expands human suffering rather than easing it."

PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

By Brian Bowling
PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, July 29, 2010

Bishop David Zubik broke a promise to Michael Unglo, a broken promise that led the former Etna resident to commit suicide in May, his brother Sam Unglo said Thursday.

Unglo, as executor of his brother's estate, filed a negligence lawsuit against Zubik and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh. The diocese in March quit paying for therapy Michael Unglo received to help him cope with memories of his sexual abuse by a priest for three years, starting when he was 10 years old, according to the lawsuit.

In their last conversation, Michael Unglo emphasized how much pain he felt and said he couldn't understand why the diocese abandoned him, his brother said.

CANADA
The News

Published on July 29th, 2010

PICTOU – Father Paul Abbass keeps one notion at the forefront of his mind as he deals with the liquidation of assets for the Diocese of Antigonish.

"We're doing this to be reconciled with the victims. If this is not what we're doing then none of this makes sense," said Abbass, the vicar general and director of pastoral services for the diocese. "We are trying to seek reconciliation and justice for the victims. Sadly, the people that had nothing to do with it will suffer, the people in the pews.… Unless I put this in the context of what we're trying to do right there is only pain."

Abbass is deep into the process of the liquidation of diocese assets to meet the court-ordered settlement for the sexual abuse scandal. That amounts to a $15 million settlement along with another $3 million for any other potential related lawsuits.

WISCONSIN
The Daily Page

Esty Dinur on Thursday 07/29/2010

Jim Beyers is a lifelong Catholic and proud of it. He loves his church and what he feels it stands for — "justice and service to others." He's been active in many parish ministries and was the CEO of a Catholic hospital for 13 years.

But there is one thing that Beyers, like some other local Catholics, does not like about his church: its leader, Madison Bishop Robert Morlino.

"I started feeling uncomfortable about Morlino pretty much from day one," says Beyers, a resident of Madison's far southwest side and member of the local chapter of Call to Action, which has crossed swords with the bishop. "He's big on obedience. He doesn't think that laypersons should have any say. Morale is very low among the priests. He's a tyrant with them. Some of them are scared to death of him."

When historians of the Catholic Church look back at the early 21st century, they may identify Madison as an important battleground. The fight here is between laypeople and the church's hierarchy; at stake, arguably, is the soul of the church.

ROME
Zenit

ROME, JULY 29, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The founder of a children's protection organization laments that pedophilia only makes the news when it is linked to priests, which misses the point that it is a worldwide problem.

Father Fortunato Di Noto of the Meter association noted this deficiency in an interview with H2Onews.

Pedophilia is not just a crime but also a money machine, he explained, with an annual yield of €13 billion ($17 billion) and a victim toll of 200,000 abused children, increasingly even babies and toddlers.

And yet, Father Di Noto lamented, much of the press is scandalized only by pedophile priests and not by this phenomenon of enormous proportions.

UNITED STATES
Houston Chronicle

Week before last, the Catholic Church released revisions of its laws governing the procedures for dealing with sexual abuse by priests. It had been a long time coming.

Almost 10 years after a flood of reports of abuse in the United States, Canada and Ireland, news broke in January of numerous cases in Germany, followed by hundreds more from all over Europe.

In April, the bishop of Bruges, in Belgium, abruptly resigned when his years-long molestation of his nephew was about to be revealed, igniting a firestorm of complaints of priest abuse in that country.

Critics, including many Catholics, have long maintained that the church was more concerned with protecting its priests and the bishops who failed to monitor them than with the victims. In case after case, victims were disbelieved, punished or paid off, and priests were often merely transferred and allowed to continue ministering.

UNITED STATES
John Paul II Millstone

Paris Arrow

In the Apostles Creed, it says, “I believe in the Holy Catholic church". In the Nicene Creed (or the longer version) it says, "I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic church” but that word “holy” no longer applies and is no longer true. That "holy" part of these Creeds has proven itself false and a lie of Satan during the last quarter of the 20th century -- during the more than 26 years papacy of John Paul II as he oversaw, condoned and covered-up his John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army. Calling the Catholic Church a “holy place” and priests as “Holy Fathers”will only perpetuate priest-pedophilia. The reverence for priests, the “holy” atmosphere and “holy” prayers within Catholic Churches only suppress innocent children and make them easy preys to the “holy godly” powers of pedophile priests. See Canon Law and John Paul II, the Vatican & Benedict XVI never saved children nor excommunicated pedophile priests during last quarter of 20th Century.

UTAH
Leagle

2010 UT 49

State of Utah, Plaintiff and Appellee,
v.
Warren Steed Jeffs, Defendant and Appellant.
No. 20080408.
Supreme Court of Utah.

Filed July 27, 2010.

This opinion is subject to revision before final publication in the Pacific Reporter.

Mark L. Shurtleff, Att'y Gen., Laura Dupaix, Craig L. Barlow, Asst. Att'ys Gen., Salt Lake City, Brock R. Belnap, Ryan J. Shaum, St. George, for plaintiff.

Walter F. Bugden, Jr., Tara L. Isaacson, Salt Lake City, Richard A. Wright, Las Vegas, NV, for defendant.

PARRISH, Justice:

INTRODUCTION
¶ 1 Defendant Warren Jeffs was convicted of two counts of rape as an accomplice for his role in the compelled marriage of fourteen-year-old Elissa Wall to her nineteen-year-old first cousin, Allen Steed, and the resulting sexual intercourse between them. Jeffs appeals his convictions, arguing a variety of errors in the proceedings before the trial court. While we are unconvinced by the majority of Jeffs' arguments, we conclude that there were serious errors in the instructions given to the jury that deprived Jeffs of the fair trial to which all are entitled under our laws. We therefore reverse the convictions and remand for a new trial.

¶ 2 Recognizing the highly publicized nature of this case, we remind the parties, the trial court, and observers, that the presumption of innocence guaranteed to all by our Constitution demands great care from the courts and those who prosecute on behalf of the people. As this state's court of last resort, we are not at liberty to accept less, nor could we, consistent with our oaths to support, obey, and defend the constitutions of this state and country.

ST. LOUIS (MO)
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis

Dear sisters and brothers in Christ,

Peace, and my greetings to each of you. You are, I am aware, in a time of discernment and are faced with a decision regarding the return of St. Stanislaus to again be a Roman Catholic parish.

Over the past year, since arriving in St. Louis, I have met with the members of the board of directors of St. Stanislaus to find a way in which the parish could be re-established while, at the same time, addressing the fears expressed by many of you over the last seven years that the parish would be closed and its property sold with the proceeds being used for other purposes within the archdiocese.

One of the concerns expressed again and again was that, even if an archbishop made a commitment to keep the parish operating so long as Roman Catholics of Polish heritage wanted to have a parish and were willing to support it, he could not bind his successors.

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

BY TIM TOWNSEND ttownsend@post-dispatch.com

St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson has posted a letter on the archdiocese’s website telling Catholics about the “return of St. Stanislaus to again be a Roman Catholic parish.”

Carlson writes:

Over the past year, since arriving in St. Louis, I have met with the members of the board of directors of St. Stanislaus to find a way in which the parish could be re-established while, at the same time, addressing the fears expressed by many of you over the last seven years that the parish would be closed and its property sold with the proceeds being used for other purposes within the archdiocese.

PITTSBURG (PA)
The Associated Press

By JOE MANDAK (AP)

PITTSBURGH — The estate of a man allegedly abused by a priest in the 1980s is suing the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, alleging he committed suicide this year after the diocese stopped paying for his mental health treatments following two other suicide attempts.

Michael Unglo, 39, formerly of Etna in suburban Pittsburgh, committed suicide in May at a center in Stockbridge, Mass., according to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by The Associated Press. He alleged he was molested in the early 1980s while an altar boy, by a priest who was convicted of molesting another boy and later resigned.

The diocese decided to stop paying for Unglo's treatment even though the diocese continued to pay for the priest's health insurance and paid the priest an unspecified monthly stipend, Alan Perer, attorney for Unglo's estate, said Thursday at a news conference.

BELGIE
RKnieuws

ANTWERPEN (RKnieuws.net) - Het zijn geen makkelijke tijden voor katholieke gelovigen: de kerk ligt internationaal zwaar onder vuur. Maar daarin schuilt ook een kans tot vernieuwing. Dit stelt hoofdredacteur Peter Vande Vyvere (foto) deze week in het christelijk weekblad Tertio.

"De kerk kampt met een golf van misbruikschandalen: in Amerika, Ierland, Nederland,
Duitsland en Oostenrijk. Ons eigenste landje haalt met het aftreden van een bisschop en met een spectaculaire gerechtelijke raid tegen de kerk de wereldpers. In de Verenigde Staten sluit het opperste gerechtshof niet uit dat de paus als werkgever verantwoordelijk kan worden gesteld voor pedofiele priesters. Het Italiaanse gerecht richt zijn pijlen op het financiële beleid van de Vaticaanse Congregatie voor de evangelisatie van de volkeren. En in Groot-Brittannië ligt het nakende pausbezoek voor de zaligverklaring van John Henry Newman onder vuur wegens zijn hoge kostprijs voor de overheid", aldus Vande Vyvere.

BELGIE
De Nieuwe Reporter (Nederland)

Piet Kaashoek
29.7.2010

Reputaties komen te voet en gaan te paard, luidt een oude volkswijsheid. In de media verschenen op 7 juli 2010 berichten dat kardinaal en voormalige aartsbisschop Godfried Danneels van het bisdom Mechelen (België) na tien uur verhoor de burelen van de federale gerechtelijke politie Brussel mocht verlaten. Een verblijf zonder steun van een advocaat. De toon is gezet als het gaat om het imago van deze prelaat: een mogelijke doofpotaffaire rond seksueel misbruik in de Kerk.

Wat het op 7 juli voor deze geestelijke nog erger maakte, was de mededeling dat de speurders wilden weten hoe in de bisschoppelijke dossierkasten foto’s gevonden konden worden van Julie en Mélissa, twee van de slachtoffers van Dutroux. Het beeld van een verdorven pedo-netwerk doemt op, met tentakels in de hoogste bovenwereld.

IERLAND
Kerknieuws (Nederland)

DO 29 jul 2010 | 16.03
In Ierland komt er een hervormingsgezinde vereniging voor priesters. De initiatiefnemers zijn ontevreden over het beleid van de plaatselijke bisschoppen inzake seksueel misbruik. De priesters willen samenwerken met het episcopaat om de transparantie in de kerk te bevorderen en machtsmisbruik te voorkomen. Dit meldt de Ierse krant The Irish Catholic vandaag.

De priesters willen dat de Kerk anders gaat denken over seksualiteit en oecumene. Ook vinden ze dat er meer ruimte moet komen voor het individuele geweten van gelovigen en dat het priesterambt moet worden opengesteld voor vrouwen.

PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

By Margaret Harding
PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, July 29, 2010

A Downtown law firm today filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh after a man who accused a priest of sexually abusing him as a child committed suicide.

The suit accuses Bishop David Zubik and the diocese of negligence because the diocese withdrew financial support for the treatment of Michael Unglo, 39, formerly of Etna, a few months before he killed himself at a Massachusetts treatment center in May.

The firm Swensen, Perer and Kontos filed the suit in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court.

PITTSBURGH (PA)
ThePittsburghChannel

PITTSBURGH -- The estate of a man who claimed he was abused by a priest has announced a lawsuit against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh.

The suit alleges the man committed suicide earlier this year after the diocese stopped paying for his mental health treatments following two other suicide attempts.

According to the lawsuit, 39-year-old Michael Unglo committed suicide May 4 in Massachusetts.

Unglo's family scheduled a news conference for 10:30 a.m. on Thursday at a Pittsburgh law office to discuss the lawsuit against the diocese and Bishop David Zubik.

COLLEGEVILLE (MN)
Fox 9

[with video]

COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. - In 2002, the head of St. John's Abbey told the public monks, who were accused of sexual misconduct, they would live under restrictions. Many thought it was a sort of house arrest, but that was not the case. The FOX 9 Investigators found just how easy it is for a so called restricted monk to leave St. John's and befriend a family, a family that didn't initially know about the monk's restrictions because St. John's had not made his name public.

A nap in a popular park filled with kids, an Eagle Scout ceremony, a cozy picture on the couch. Brother Jim Phillips has worked his way into the lives of a metro area family. A family we are not identifying to protect their privacy.

A man who knows the family well says, “I knew something had to be done. I didn't want these children to be hurt by this man in any way.”

Eric Evander is worried about Brother Phillips’ relationship with a woman in the family because it gives him access to her grandchildren, including a boy with autism. Brother Phillips is among the dozen or so St. John's priests and monks with credible allegations of sexual misconduct.

SANTA BARBARA (CA)
The Santa Barbara News Network

Santa Barbara – 6:32 pm - The San Francisco attorney representing priests in the fight over the release of their personnel files has provided a glimpse into where the case may be headed if they lose the appeal.

Doe 1 vs. the Franciscan Friars, Inc., will be heard in the 2nd District Court of Appeal Friday, July 30, in Los Angeles.

A part of the case involves the now closed, St. Anthony’s Seminary in Santa Barbara.

UNITED STATES
Healing and Spirituality

Dr. Jaime Romo

Rev. Dr. Marie Fortune is the founder and senior researcher of the Faith Trust Institute, which has been an ecumenical leader in working with religious leaders to promote healing from and end child sexual abuse, particularly that which occurs in churches, mosques and temples.

JR: You’ve been in the business of working to end clergy abuse and promote healing for 30 years. What progress do you see among churches when it comes to ending clergy abuse? What areas are frustrating to work with? Why?

MF: The biggest change is that the reality of abuse by clergy in no longer hidden, thanks to the courage and persistence of survivors. The second biggest change is that most judicatories and movements in our faith communities now have some policies in place to respond to complaints from victims.

The most frustrating area I see is that relatively few judicatories have been proactive and motivated by a real concern for the health and safety of their members; those that have realize that this is a long term project requiring ongoing training and vigilance at every level of the faith community. They are motivated by the fundamental values of their faith traditions: promoting justice, healing and expecting accountability for their leaders.

VATICAN CITY
Irish Independent

By Nick Squires in Rome

Thursday July 29 2010

THE Vatican was criticised after taking action against tourists wearing skimpy clothes.

Tourists entering St Peter's Basilica have long been required to dress modestly, but yesterday the Swiss Guards -- the Pope's security force -- appeared to have extended the rules to the entire Vatican City state.

The guards drew aside men in shorts and women with uncovered shoulders and short skirts to tell them that they were not dressed properly. ...

Visitors said that the Roman Catholic Church should have more important things to worry about at a time it was battling scandals over paedophile priests.

"Given all the scandals the church has been involved in, what possible right can it have to be preaching about the morality of sleeveless dresses?" asked one woman in her 70s, identified only as 'Maria'.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

Thursday July 29 2010

In a story headlined 'Pope could be sued after US rejects immunity for Vatican', in the edition of June 29, it was reported that Californian attorneys Manley & Stewart are suing the Archdiocese of Cashel and Emily. We wish to clarify that this case was dismissed in August 2009.

The Catholic Communications Office has also asked us to point out that Oliver O'Grady, who was convicted of child sex abuse while serving as a priest in California, was laicised in 2000.

ISRAEL
Haaretz

By Tamar Rotem
For almost 20 years, one man allegedly sexually abused dozens of children on Moshav Kommemiyut, an ultra-Orthodox community in the northern Negev. Yet no one ever complained - either to the police or to the welfare authorities.

The police have since opened an investigation into the abuses, but the suspect is in the U.S. and refuses to return. Meanwhile, some say community leaders knew of the crimes but did nothing to stop them.

At least one of the victims is suspected of having sexually abused younger children in turn.

The main suspect, Shimshon Walzer, began his alleged career as an abuser 19 years ago, while serving as a teacher at a religious elementary school. Two years later, rumors of his abusive conduct led to him being fired as a teacher. Yet for some reason, he was allowed to retain an office at the school.

VATICAN CITY
Daily India

London, July 29: The ban imposed by the Vatican on tourists wearing skimpy clothing has been deemed as hypocritical, especially with the Catholic Church battling scandals involving paedophile priests.

Visitors have said that instead of dealing with the scandals and decades of cover-ups, the Vatican is wasting its time on mundane things like skimpy clothing.

Swiss Guards, who are the Pope's private army, have been enforcing the new decree at the Vatican City State, a rule that had long been put into place at St Peter's Basilica.

MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

By CHAO XIONG, Star Tribune

Last update: July 28,

The leader of a northern Minnesota Christian retreat center took advantage of his grandfather-like role in a girl's life and inappropriately touched and kissed her, according to the girl's attorneys.

The Rev. Gerald Derstine, 81, pleaded in writing with the girl and her mother to call off authorities who were investigating him in 2009 for the alleged sexual abuse, said the girl's attorney Patrick Noaker. A lawsuit against Derstine and Florida-based Gospel Crusades Inc. and Gospel Crusade Ministerial Fellowship, which he founded, was filed Wednesday in federal court.

The suit asks for a judgment in excess of $75,000.

TEXAS
San Angelo Standard Times

By Matthew Waller
San Angelo Standard Times
Posted July 28, 2010

SAN ANGELO, Texas — Whether or not a retrial happens in Utah for Warren Jeffs, the former leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is far from out of the fire, a legal expert says.

Jeffs was convicted in 2007 on two counts of rape as an accomplice for performing a marriage of then 14-year-old Elisa Wall with Allan G. Steed.

The Utah Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned the decision of the 5th District Court because of what it called faulty jury instructions from the court.

“The mess up in the instructions of the jury was to identify the actor as Jeffs and not Steed,” Texas Tech School of Law professor Dan Benson said.

IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

By John Cooney and Fergus Black
Thursday, 29 July 2010

A plan to form an independent association of Ireland's 6,500 priests will aim to make church leadership more publicly accountable, its three leading movers said last night.

"It is based on reforming the Irish church along the spirit and vision of the church as the people of God," Mayo priest Fr Brendan Hoban told the Irish Independent last night.

"This was the reform policy that was called for by the Second Vatican Council when the world's bishops met in Rome from 1962-65, but it has not been put into practice in Ireland," Fr Hoban added.

PHOENIX (AZ)
Fox 11

[with video]

by Jennifer Thomas
Fox 11

PHOENIX -- Phoenix police arrested a man for allegedly molesting his two daughters and two pastors were arrested for not reporting the abuse to authorities.

According to Phoenix police Detective James Holmes, a 16-year-old girl told a neighbor that her father had been molesting her for several years. The neighbor confronted the man, who reportedly admitted he knew what he did was wrong.

azfamily.com is not releasing the father's name to protect the victims' identities.

IRELAND
Catholic Culture

Distressed by the Irish hierarchy’s response to the abuse scandal, some Irish priests are forming a new association whose aim is to represent the nation’s priests in their dealings with bishops.

“'We priests are perhaps the only group in the country with no representative forum,” said Father Sean McDonagh. “We want to address this.”

“It is a good thing if priests wish to organize themselves in order to voice their opinions and this would be important at this challenging time for clergy and lay Catholics alike,” said a spokesman for the Irish bishops’ conference.

Irish Central

By DANIEL O'CARROLL, IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

The latest document from the Vatican - Normae de Gravioribus Delictis - has caused worldwide outrage after it prescribed automatic excommunication for anyone found to be involved in the ordination of women.

The document provides for greater penalties to those who “attempted” women’s ordination than to clerics who abused children, and has come in for heavy criticism both from womens’ advocacy groups and from loyal Catholics.

The document’s title translates as ‘Norms of the Most Serious Crimes’, was allegedly intended to soften the Church’s growing negative PR image and implement some of the changes which victims’ and survivors’ groups.

AKRON (OH)
Beacon Journal

By Bob Dyer
Beacon Journal columnist

The news is still almost impossible to process.

Father Sam is a crook.

He admitted as much last week in front of God and country.

Cheated on his income-tax returns. Schemed to evade federal laws written to prevent money laundering. Had a secret stash of a million bucks.

And now the Rev. Samuel Ciccolini must wait until October to see exactly how long he will have to sit behind bars with other cons who have taken shortcuts that shortchanged the people around them and society at large.

UNTIED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

by Mary Gail Frawley ODea
Examining the crisis

About 5,000 priests and religious brothers have been identified as credibly accused of sexually violating minors. Most of these men were unavailable to criminal prosecution due to statutes of limitation; some within the statutes are in prison. The rest are dead, have voluntarily left the priesthood, were laicized, are residing in religious communities with more or -- usually -- less appropriate supervision, or wait in limbo for the church to adjudicate their cases.

Since 2002, there are have been strong, recurrent cries to remove all credibly accused priests from the priesthood. In May, the Vatican agreed with its top sexual abuse prosecutor, Msgr. Charles J. Scicluna, declaring that abusive priests must be “amputated” in order to save the church’s body from diseased parts. Once again, Rome dodged the reality that the true scandal always has been ecclesiastical cover-up of sexual abuse. There was no Vatican mention of amputating involved bishops and provincial superiors.

It is understandable that victims and others want to see abusive priests taken from their lives. After all, these priests once tore from childhood and adolescence boys and girls whose pathways to spiritual, psychological, and relational growth were obstructed, often tragically, by the destructive aftermath of sexual violation. But, is removing a perpetrating priest from the priesthood the most healing and the safest move? Both pastoral and protective concerns suggest another option.

UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Statement by David Clohessy, executive director of SNAP, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314-566-9790)

We hope Warren realizes that his courage is protecting kids and exposing a predator. He should feel very proud of himself for finding the strength to speak up and having the wisdom to call police. Children are safer because of Warren’s bravery.

We also hope that others who saw, suspected or suffered Fr. Casey’s crimes and church officials’ complicity will come forward. Kids are best safeguarded when pedophiles like Casey are behind bars, and that will only happen if others with information about wrongdoing follow Warren’s lead and contact law enforcement.

ILLINOIS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Statement by Barbara Blaine, president and founder of SNAP, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (312-399-4747)

Campobello’s victims should feel very proud of themselves for having the strength to speak up, the wisdom to call police, and the persistence to protect kids by exposing this child molesting cleric. Children are safer because of their bravery.

We also hope that others who saw, suspected or suffered Fr. Campobello’s crimes and church officials’ complicity will come forward. Kids are best safeguarded when pedophiles like Campobello are behind bars, and that will only happen if others with information about wrongdoing contact law enforcement.

It’s easy to do nothing. But that’s what child predators count on us doing. It’s crucial that adults who know about Campobello’s crimes honor their civic and moral duty to speak up and stop future abuse.

ILLINOIS
Chicago Daily Herald

By Josh Stockinger | Daily Herald Staff

Former Geneva priest Mark Campobello, who was convicted of molesting two girls, was released from prison Wednesday after serving about 16 months on a parole violation.

State officials said Campobello was released from Logan Correctional Center in Lincoln and put on a train to Chicago. He must list his new address on the Illinois Sex Offender registry within three days.

Campobello, 45, pleaded guilty in 2004 to molesting two girls, ages 14 and 15, at St. Peter Catholic Church in Geneva and Aurora Central Catholic High School in 1999 and 2000, respectively.

TENNESSEE
Knoxville News Sentinel

By Nash Armstrong

A former Knoxville priest pleaded guilty this morning to “crimes against nature” in McDowell County, N.C. — and the head of a national victims group praised the Indiana man who came forward after 30-plus years to report being molested.

Father Bill Casey, 76, will receive a two-year probation period, during which time he will participate in a sex offender program and pay a $500 fine and other court costs, Rutherford and McDowell County District Attorney Bradley Greenway said today.

Casey has served parishes around East Tennessee for 41 years. Catholic officials said in April, when the abuse was first reported and Casey confessed to church investigators, that he would will never publicly perform Mass or even wear a collar again.

WISCONSIN
LaCrosse Tribune

By ANNE JUNGEN / ajungen@lacrossetribune.com | Posted: Wednesday, July 28, 2010

A Diocese of La Crosse priest stood mute today to a possession of child pornography felony charge filed against him during a brief hearing in La Crosse County Circuit Court.

A not-guilty plea was entered on behalf of Patrick Umberger, 59, after he waived his preliminary hearing. The case is set for a status conference in October.

Umberger, priest at St. Patrick's Catholic Parish in Onalaska since 2005, was arrested July 15 when state agents found three sexually graphic pictures of nearly nude children on his computer, according to the complaint.

NORTH CAROLINA
Citizen-Times

Clarke Morrison • July 28, 2010

MARION — A retired Catholic priest pleaded guilty today to molesting a boy while on a trip to Western North Carolina more than 30 years ago.

Bill Casey, 77, received a suspended jail sentence in McDowell County District Court on one count of crime against nature. He also was placed on two years of supervised probation, required to comply with the requirements of a sex offender control program and ordered not to associated with children unless in the company of a responsible adult.

McDowell County deputies arrested Casey in April after Warren Tucker of Jeffersonville, Ind., came forward with allegations that he was sexually abused for five years starting in 1975 when he was a fifth-grader at St. Dominic’s Church in Kingsport, Tenn.

IRELAND
Herald

By Clodagh Sheehy

Wednesday July 28 2010

Priests want to form their own association to give them a public voice and also fight for civil and ecumenical rights.

Members of the clergy around the country are being actively canvassed for their views on the new group.

The move comes at a time when relations between priests and their bishops have become increasingly strained.

ILLINOIS
WREX

ROCKFORD (WREX) - A former priest in the Rockford Diocese is a free man again.

Mark Campobello, 45, was convicted of sexual abuse several years ago in the Chicago suburbs. The victims sued the Rockford Diocese, which settled the case for $2.2 million.

Campobello has been held in a prison in Lincoln on a technical parole violation for about a year. He was released by the Illinois Department of Corrections on Wednesday morning.

UNITED STATES
The Daily Dish

I haven't commented on this dog-bites-man story of the Vatican being crammed to the gills with homosexual priests who have long since abandoned the increasingly frantic anti-gay ideology of Ratzinger. And most of the commentary has rightly focused on the extreme response of the Vatican - defrock them now for consensual adult sex! - compared with the long tolerance of child rape and abuse. But it is worth noting, once again, how utterly hollow the Vatican is on the subject of homosexuality. It is an institution so embedded with homosexuality it makes Broadway look straight. The stories I've heard! The network of gay priests is vast in Rome, and is, in my mind, as unhealthy for those who get away with it - the hypocrisy must hollow out the soul in the end - as for those who impose it. Instead of grappling with this fact, owning it, and seeking to diversify the priesthood by ending the celibacy requirement and men-only anachronism, the Vatican clings on to denial and repression. And as society and the actual church evolves - as both must - the denial and repression must increase in proportion - until the sheer ridiculousness of the whole thing becomes apparent even to the most devout.

NORTH CAROLINA
WBIR

A retired East Tennessee priest accused of repeated sexual abuse of a child decades ago in Tennessee and once in North Carolina pleaded guilty Wednesday to the charge in McDowell County, North Carolina.

The victim, Warren Tucker, came forward with the allegation in April.

In return for his guilty plea Wednesday, Casey was sentenced to three years in prison, but that sentence was suspended to 24 months of supervised probation.

MANCHESTER (NH)
Hillsborough County Superior Court, Northern District, Manchester NH, Docket Number: 10-C-359

July 21, 2010

[See also Man Files Sex Abuse Lawsuit against Manchester Diocese, by Kria Sakakeeny, WMUR, July 22, 2010, with photos and link to video.]

7. John Doe ("John") was born in May 1956. He was raised in a devout Catholic household that regularly participated in the Church. He was an altar boy at St. Brendan's parish, and served mass on a weekly basis during the relevant time period. His family regularly attended mass at St. Brendan's parish. John and his siblings attended Our Lady of Grace Academy, a private Catholic grammar school.

8. Father George St. Jean, o.m.i., was a Catholic priest of the Missionary Oblates of Mary lmmaculate Order ("the Oblates"). During John's youth, St. Jean was assigned by the Oblates to the Shrine of Our Lady of Grace in Colebrook, New Hampshire ("the Oblate Shrine"). Additionally, he regularly worked as a priest at St. Brendan's parish in Colebrook, New Hampshire, a parish owned and operated by the Diocese of Manchester. Through these assignments, St. Jean gained access to young John. He groomed and ingratiated himself with John by virtue of his position as a Roman Catholic priest performing mass at St. Brendan's.

9. Upon information and belief, the Oblates assigned St. Jean as follows:

1958-1959: Novitiate of Our Lady of Grace (Colebrook, NH)
1960-1961: Immaculata Retreat House (Williamantic, CT)
1962-1964: Oblates Retreat House (Hudson, NH)
1965-1972: Novitiate of Our Lady of Grace (Colebrook, NH)
1973-1974: Oblate Center (Natick, MA)
1975-1977: Oblate Fathers Residence (Lowell, MA)

10. Between 1967 and 1968, when John was approximately 11-12 years old, St. Jean sexually abused John on multiple occasions. The abuse generally occurred in an office at the Shrine of Our Lady of Grace. While John was at the Shrine playing basketball or badminton with the other priests and brothers, St. Jean frequently asked John to come inside under the auspices of discussing a common interest in coin and stamp collecting. On these visits, St. Jean would force John to touch his genitals and masturbate him.

11. On more than one occasion, St. Jean told John not to tell anyone about what St. Jean was doing because John would get into trouble if anyone found out what St. Jean was doing to him. John believed him and did not report what St. Jean was doing to him.

IRELAND
Galway News

July 28, 2010
Galway priest Fr Tony Flannery is spearheading efforts to set up a representative association for priests.

The priests say they currently have no platform to express themselves at a time when relations between them and their Bishops are increasingly strained, and crucial debates are taking place.

AUSTRALIA
WA Today

A Catholic priest has told a court he doesn't remember the schoolboys he's accused of indecently assaulting and only once entered a dormitory after lights out.

James Patrick Jennings, 77, is charged with six counts of indecent assault against four boys aged about 12 in the early 1960s, at St Stanislaus Catholic College.

Jennings, then aged his late 20s, was the dean at the school at Bathurst, in regional NSW.

UNITED STATES
Star Tribune

By JENNIFER DOBNER , Associated Press

SALT LAKE CITY - A Utah Supreme Court decision that overturns polygamous church leader Warren Jeffs' 2007 criminal conviction won't automatically make him a free man. Even if Utah doesn't retry him, Texas and federal prosecutors are waiting to move forward with their own cases.

Justices on Tuesday unanimously said Jeffs should get a new trial because state attorneys overreached in their argument that performing the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her 19-year-old cousin amounted to facilitating a rape.

Utah officials now have two weeks to seek a rehearing before the state's high court and then a month to decide if they'll retry the 54-year-old head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on charges of first-degree felony rape as an accomplice.

VEREINIGTE STATEN
Welt (Deutschland)

Warren Jeffs soll eine 14-Jährige verheiratet und zum Sex gezwungen zu haben. Doch ein US-Gericht hob das Urteil gegen den Sektenführer auf.

Das oberste Gericht im US-Staat Utah hat am Dienstag ein früheres Urteil gegen einen Sektenführer aufgehoben und einen neuen Prozess angeordnet. Warren Jeffs war 2007 wegen Beihilfe zur Vergewaltigung von einer Jury schuldig gesprochen und zu einer langjährigen Haftstrafe verurteilt worden. Während des ersten Verfahrens seien „schwere Fehler“ gemacht worden, zitierte die Zeitung „Salt Lake Tribune“ aus der Entscheidung der Richter. Die Geschworenen hätten fehlerhafte Anweisungen erhalten, damit sei ein faires Urteil nicht garantiert gewesen. Die Richter bedauerten die möglichen Auswirkungen ihrer Entscheidung auf das Opfer

VERENIGDE STATEN
BNR (Nederland)

27 juli 2010, 20:52 | ANP
WASHINGTON (ANP) - Een Amerikaanse rechtbank heeft dinsdag een vonnis tegen de gedetineerde polygamist en sekteleider Warren Jeffs vernietigd. De rechters van het hooggerechtshof in de staat Utah gaven de opdracht het proces over te doen wegens ernstige fouten.

Jeffs was in 2007 tot tien jaar veroordeeld, onder meer wegens medeplichtigheid aan verkrachting van een tienermeisje. Tijdens de rechtszaak kregen de juryleden echter verkeerde instructies, waardoor een eerlijk proces niet was gegarandeerd, stelde het hof. De rechters stelden Jeffs daarmee in het gelijk.

BELGIE
Nieuws

[met video]

Professor Peter Adriaenssens wil toch nog een eindverslag maken van de werkzaamheden van de commissie die seksueel misbruik in de kerk onderzocht. Die commissie is ermee gestopt, na de inval door het gerecht in juni.

BELGIE
RKnieuws

BRUSSEL (RKnieuws.net) - Er zijn ernstige aanwijzingen dat de Operatie Kelk onwettig verlopen is. Dat stelt Emmanuel Van Lierde vandaag in het christelijk weekblad Tertio.

“Het bij Operatie Kelk ontplooide machtsvertoon is in België ongezien. Ook de omvang van de inbeslagnames bij het aartsbisdom Mechelen-Brussel is zeer uitzonderlijk. Onderzoeksdaden moeten in verhouding staan tot hun doel: ze moeten proportioneel zijn. Dat doel moet daarenboven een legitiem doel zijn. Fernand Keuleneer, de advocaat van het aartsbisdom en van de kardinaal, formuleerde in een brief aan de procureur-generaal deze, maar ook tal van andere bezwaren. Er werd geen rekening gehouden met het beroepsgeheim, zowel van priesters als van geneesheren. De archieven en computers van het aartsbisdom bevatten documenten die daaronder vallen en die niet zomaar meegenomen mochten worden. Bij de huiszoekingen bij de commissie-Adriaenssens had een vertegenwoordiger van de Orde van geneesheren aanwezig moeten zijn, aangezien het ging om een vertrouwenscentrum en de dossiers van een kinderpsychiater. Zo’n vertegenwoordiger was er niet bij. Verder geniet de correspondentie met de nuntius op de computer van kardinaal Godfried Danneels diplomatieke immuniteit en zijn briefwisseling met de Heilige Stoel staatsimmuniteit”.

TEXAS
The Dallas Morning News

Robert T. Garrett
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott on Tuesday immediately began a new proceeding to extradite Warren Jeffs, a spokesman for Abbott said.

"We are currently working with the Texas governor's office and Utah authorities to bring Warren Jeffs to Texas to stand trial," said the spokesman, Jerry Strickland.

Jeffs was indicted by a Schleicher County grand jury on three sexual offenses, all first-degree felonies, in July 2008. At the time, Abbott said he hoped to extradite Jeffs, then in an Arizona jail awaiting separate charges, to Texas "as quickly as possible."

TEXAS
TIME

By Hilary Hylton / Austin Wednesday, Jul. 28, 2010

Almost four years ago, the lanky, pale-skinned, wide-eyed "prophet" of a polygamist sect stepped out of a red Cadillac Escalade during a routine traffic stop just north of Las Vegas and said, "I am Warren Jeffs." In little time, FBI agents arrived to cuff the man who had shared a slot with Osama bin Laden on the most-wanted list that summer. With that arrest, the then 50-year-old Jeffs took his first step into a four-year legal maze that this week produced yet another surprising twist: the decision by the Utah Supreme Court to throw out the only successful conviction of the self-styled seer.

Jeffs once foretold that he would be in a long fight against dark forces — and he seems to have won a major victory in that war. He has suffered for it: his health debilitated by frequent hunger strikes, his knees cankered with sores from long sessions of prayer, according to prison officials. But the war between the prophet and the law is not over. While Utah prosecutors ponder their next move and consider whether to retry Jeffs, the state of Texas is in hot pursuit.

UNITED STATES
National Catholic Register

by Tim Drake Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Judging from many of the press reports we’ve seen since March, the Holy Father was negligent when it came to the handling of the sexual abuse crisis in the Church. However, the public record shows something completely different. In fact, as Cardinal and prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he did more than anyone previously to prevent the problem.

Matthew Bunson, editor of The Catholic Answer magazine, has recently co-authored the Our Sunday Visitor book “Pope Benedict XVI and the Sexual Abuse Crisis: Working for Reform and Renewal.” He argues that Pope Benedict’s real record is quite different from what the average Catholic in the pews is hearing from most of the news coverage.

“The average Catholic in the pews is confused,” said Bunson. “They’re hearing these accusations, suggestions and implications about the Holy Father – that he was somehow negligent as Archbishop in Munich, that he failed in his duties as head of the CDF, and that as Pope he has done very little to help bring an end to this problem in the Church – and they’re not sure if those accusations are true.”

MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

By PAUL WALSH, Star Tribune

A longtime minister and founder of a Christian retreat in northwestern Minnesota is being accused of sexually assaulting a pre-teen girl whom he counseled.

The sexual-abuse accusations against the Rev. Gerald Derstine will be made in a federal lawsuit to be filed Wednesday by Jeff Anderson, the St. Paul attorney who has rattled the Roman Catholic Church all the way to the Vatican over long-running allegations of clergy abuse.

Anderson's law firm has scheduled a news conference Wednesday afternoon in St. Paul, after the suit is filed in U.S. District Court.

Along with the 81-year-old Derstine, the suit will name as defendants the Florida-based Gospel Crusade Inc., which he founded and chairs, and other entities under his direction.

AUSTRALIA
New South Wales Police Force

Wednesday, 28 Jul 2010

NB: Note change of court to Penrith plus one additional charge.

A man is due to appear in Penrith Local Court today charged with 55 offences.

Police from North Shore Local Area Command arrested the 69-year-old man at a home at Bilpin, in Sydney’s north west, early yesterday.

He was taken to Windsor Police Station where he was charged with 55 historical offences including charges of sexual assault, acts of indecency and indecent assaults.

UTAH
The Arizona Republic

by Dennis Wagner - Jul. 28, 2010
The Arizona Republic

The Utah Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned the rape-as-an-accomplice conviction of Warren Jeffs, the prophet and leader of a polygamist sect based on the Arizona-Utah border, leaving his fate in the legal system uncertain.

In a unanimous decision, justices found that jurors in the case were given improper instructions by Washington County Judge James Shumate before reaching their verdict that Jeffs contributed to the 2001 sexual assault of teenage victim Elissa Wall, then 14, by directing her marriage to an adult cousin.

Jeffs, 54, once was listed among the FBI's most-wanted fugitives and faced criminal

UTAH
National Post (Canada)

James Nelson, Reuters · Wednesday, Jul. 28, 2010

The Utah Supreme Court yesterday tossed out the 2007 sexual abuse conviction of polygamist leader Warren Jeffs and ordered a new trial for forcing a 14-year-old girl to marry her first cousin.

The self-proclaimed prophet of a breakaway Mormon sect was sentenced in November 2007 to 10 years to life in prison for being an accomplice to rape.

But the Utah high court ruled the trial judge had erred in instructing the jury.

UNITED KINGDOM
Inspire Magazine

"We wholeheartedly condemn churches abusing or encouraging the abuse of children, in particular any church that brands children as witches or demon-possessed," the organisations say in a joint statement.

"However, we would like to stress that Monday’s Dispatches focused on a small rogue element of pastors, and the vast majority of African churches in the UK do not subscribe to these practices.

"We are disappointed that Channel 4 made no attempt to contact either the Evangelical Alliance or Churches Together in England for comment during the production of this programme. We are also dismayed that the programme did not feature any Christian representatives, who would have condemned these practices and provided the context that they are not tolerated in the vast majority of African churches.

UNITED STATES
Catholic San Francisco

July 28th, 2010
By Nancy Frazier O’Brien

WASHINGTON (CNS) – The Vatican’s decision to declare the attempted ordination of women a major church crime reflects “the seriousness with which it holds offenses against the sacrament of holy orders” and is not a sign of disrespect toward women, Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl of Washington said July 15.

The archbishop, who chairs the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Doctrine, spoke at a news briefing in the headquarters of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops hours after the Vatican issued new norms for handling priestly sex abuse cases and updated its list of the “more grave crimes” against church law, including for the first time the “attempted sacred ordination of a woman.”

In such an act, the Vatican said, the cleric and the woman involved are automatically excommunicated, and the cleric can also be dismissed from the priesthood. Noting that women hold a variety of church leadership positions in parishes and dioceses, Archbishop Wuerl said, “The church’s gratitude toward women cannot be stated strongly enough.”

IRELAND
RTE News

Moves to establish an Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland have received substantial support from clergy, missionaries and members of religious orders, according to the group which has been taking soundings on the idea.

It has planned a meeting of interested colleagues for mid-September in Portlaoise to decide whether a set of aims can be agreed.

Among the factors that the group says prompted it to act was 'the increasingly strained relationship between priests and their bishops'.

WALES
Western Mail

Jul 28 2010 by Ciaran Jones, Western Mail

CHILD abuse allegations in the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales fell in 2009, according to a new report.

And a senior Catholic priest in Wales said the figures, released in the annual report of the National Catholic Safeguarding Commission, showed the church was dealing robustly with issues of safeguarding young people.

The Catholic church received 41 allegations of abuse relating to 43 alleged abusers and 52 victims in 2009.

LOS ANGELES (CA)
City of Angels

July 27, 2010

[For previous City of Angels analysis of the depositions, see: 1 2 3. See also the full text of the depositions in searchable format. See City of Angels for the text of the important 5/26/10 Hodgman memo on investigating Mahony 1 2 3 with commentary. See also a PDF of the memo.]

Clergy Misconduct Oversight Board only heard hypothetical cases, while touted in the press as advisors to L.A. Archbishop Roger Mahony

Even John Manly seems astounded to hear the name of a lay committee in Los Angeles assigned to oversee sexual "misconduct" of Catholic priests. The news reported that CMOB advised the Archbishop on how to handle pedophile and other priest sex crimes. Manly, representing plaintiff Luis C., asked at the January 25, 2010, deposition of Cardinal Roger Mahony:

*MANLY: There were two boards, SAAB and then another board after 2002, is that right?

A: Correct.

Q: So the SAAB Board and its follow on board is CMORE?

MR. HENNIGAN: CMOB.

MR. MANLY: Okay. I don't know how you put that on the record but fine.

MR. HENNIGAN: C-M-O-B.

MR. MANLY: CMOB. Is that C-MOB? Okay…

Manly (right) released transcripts of depositions of Judge Richard Byrne and Bishop Thomas Curry, as well as the L.A. Archbishop in June 2010, from the case of Luis C vs. Doe 1 et al. In that case, Father Michael Baker had gotten away with pedophilia for so long, he was barely hiding it by the time he met altar boy Luis C, whose charges were recent enough to fall within the statute of limitations and helped put the priest in prison.

Manly did not finish deposing the Cardinal last January 25th:

MR. MANLY: This will conclude Volume I of the deposition of the Cardinal.

MR. HENNIGAN: The final volume.

MR. MANLY: No, I'm not going to agree to conclude the deposition.

MR. HENNIGAN: And I'm not going to agree to continue it.

MR. MANLY: I have a stack of documents here -

MR. HENNIGAN: Then you should have gotten to them. My point, your honor -

MR. MANLY: What is this, Judge? Who does he think he is?

THE COURT: Everybody calm down.

MR. HENNIGAN: We will review the transcript and make a record on the repetitiveness, the dilatory nature of this interrogation. If [the judge decides] that we have got to come back for another day, then we will.

MR. MANLY: That's fine but, Judge, there's a variety of documents I haven't gotten to.

THE COURT: I understand but - it's got to go in at a faster pace… So three hours really ought to be able to -

MR. MANLY: That's absolutely fine with me.

THE COURT: Can you agree to three hours?

MR. HENNIGAN: Avoid making a motion and we'll do it for three hours.

(But then the Luis C. Case was settled, or “dismissed” as it is called legally, on March 25, 2010, two months after the deposition of Mahony was interrupted.)

(Note, quotes in this blog post are copy and pasted directly from transcripts, with excess verbiage removed for sake of story, but no facts or details are changed.)

Cases of Priest Misconduct Went to the Clergy Misconduct Oversight Board As Hypothetical Cases

CMOB Never Heard Names of Priests or any Details of the Crimes.

CMOB never even knew if the crimes were real.

Manly asks Judge Byrne how the CMOB, Clergy Misconduct Oversight Board operated, from deposition on October 29, 2009:

Q: After hearing about all these hypothetical cases, did you see a larger problem that needed to be addressed between 1992 and 2002 with sexual abuse?”

BYRNE: No.

Q: Were you under the impression based on these hypothetical cases that you learned about that there were priests serving in the archdiocese that had previously molested children and were allowed to return to ministry?

BYRNE: I had no idea.

**************
(CofA: WAS HE SLEEPING?)
******************

JUDGE BYRNE: I don't have a recollection about any of these cases.

Q You don't ever remember Monsignor Loomis or Dire or Cox telling you that Father Fred or Father X had sodomized a child?

A No. I don't recall.

Q: Okay. Judge, when they were talking about Father Fred, would they say, "Hypothetically Father Fred had sodomized altar boy Jim” or how did that work?

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY Religious Affairs Correspondent

A MEETING of Catholic priests to consider setting up an association of Irish priests is to take place in Portlaoise on September 15th next.

The initiative follows an informal gathering in Athlone recently of about nine Catholic priests representing those in dioceses, religious orders/ congregations and missionary societies.

A statement yesterday said that at the Athlone meeting those priests present discussed the possibility of encouraging a public voice for Catholic priests in Ireland.

IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Catherine Shanahan

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

MEMBERS of the clergy are being actively canvassed around the country by a group of priests disillusioned at not having a public voice. They are seeking to set up an association to represent their views.

In a statement, the priests said the "debilitating reality" was that priests had no platform to express themselves at a time when relations between priests and bishops were increasingly strained and when "crucial debates" were taking place.

One of the group, Fr Brendan Hoban, parish priest in Ballina, Co Mayo, said they had not sought the approval of superiors over their proposals, formulated following a meeting in Athlone, Co Westmeath, a number of weeks ago.

Australië
FOK (Nederland)

Een Australische buschauffeur wordt ervan verdacht dat hij 54 kinderen seksueel heeft misbruikt. Dat gebeurde, terwijl hij de jongens en meisjes naar de kerk bracht voor jeugdactiviteiten. De 69-jarige man is gearresteerd toen vier slachtoffers uit de school klapten.

De twee mannen en twee vrouwen vertelden de politie dat ze als kind seksueel misbruikt en mishandeld waren. Dat gebeurde in de jaren zeventig, tachtig en negentig. De buschauffeur zou hebben toegeslagen tijdens zijn werk voor de Metropolitan Baptist Church in het noorden van Sydney. Volgens de politie nam de man de kinderen op schoot, terwijl hij de bus bestuurde. Ondertussen betastte en misbruikte hij zijn slachtoffertjes. Dat gebeurde op tripjes naar het strand, naar het zwembad en naar de bioscoop.

NEDERLAND
RKnieuws

ECHT - De Unie NKV (Nederlandse Katholieke Vrouwenbeweging) heeft bezwaar tegen de kwalificatie als ’ernstig delict’ van het wijden van vrouwen. Dit meldt de Konferentie van Nederlandse Religieuzen.

De Unie NKV bekritiseert de onlangs door de Congregatie voor de Geloofsleer aangescherpte kerkelijke rechtsnormen inzake ernstige delicten. De herziene normen voorzien erin dat de ernstigste zaken direct kunnen worden doorverwezen naar de paus, waardoor priesters eerder uit het ambt kunnen worden gezet. Een andere noviteit is dat ook leken voortaan zitting kunnen hebben in kerkelijke tribunalen en als advocaten kunnen optreden. Verder is de verjaringstermijn van de delicten verlengd van 10 jaar tot 20 jaar. Tot de ernstige delicten worden ook gerekend het stiekem opnemen van biechtgesprekken en/of de onthulling daarvan en het wijden van vrouwen tot priester.

De Unie NKV heeft bezwaar tegen het op één lijn stellen van seksueel misbruik met het openstellen van het priesterambt voor vrouwen. In haar persbericht laat de Unie het volgende weten: De Unie NKV juicht het toe dat seksueel misbruik zwaarder wordt gestraft maar volgens haar schieten de aanpassingen tekort als het gaat over aangifte bij justitie en over de sancties op het verzwijgen of anderszins toedekken van strafbare feiten op dit gebied. De kerk moet op alle mogelijke manieren een veilige gemeenschap proberen te zijn, zeker voor kinderen en andere mensen in een kwetsbare positie. Dat zou ook de verplichting tot het doen van aangifte van dergelijke zaken bij justitie moeten inhouden.

UNITED STATES
The Huffington Post

Rory Fitzgerald

They say that God has a sense of humor. Some might be surprised, or even amused, by the idea that Sinéad O'Connor is now a powerful voice for renewal in the scandal-hit Catholic Church.

Although she is often imagined to be hostile to Catholicism, she in fact holds a deep affection for the faith:

"I think the essence of Catholicism is beautiful. . . . What I would love to see is for Catholicism to survive this, so that true Catholicism can shine."

In the early 1990s the stark, ethereal beauty of her voice enchanted the world, catapulting her to fame. But she came crashing down after a 1992 performance on "Saturday Night Live" where, in protest against the Catholic Church's handing of child abuse, she tore up a large photo of Pope John Paul II, and threw the pieces at the camera, telling the audience to "fight the real enemy!"

ROME
Newsweek

In the basement dining room of Le Mani In Pasta, a trattoria in central Rome, a young, glossy-eyed couple stare at each other across a table for two. They smile and blush over a private joke. There is no handholding or kissing, but they are clearly more than friends, even though they are both wearing dark shirts and the telltale white clerical collar.

For residents of Rome, the sight of courting priests is hardly an anomaly. The phenomenon is a well-known secret here, and one that was largely ignored until last weekend, when the Italian weekly magazine Panorama published a shocking exposé called “Le Notti Brave Dei Preti Gay,” or “Good Nights Out for Gay Priests.” Investigative journalist Carmelo Abbate spent 20 days undercover posing as the boyfriend of a man who ran in gay clerical circles, secretly videotaping the sexual escapades of three Rome-based priests. Abbate caught the priests on hidden camera dirty dancing at private parties and engaging in sex acts with male escorts on church property. He also caught them emerging from dark bedrooms in time to celebrate mass. In one postcoital scene, “Father Carlo” parades around seminaked, wearing only his clerical vestments. Abbate’s “date” even had sex with one of the priests to corroborate the story. “This is not about homosexuality,” Abbate, who is not gay, told NEWSWEEK. “This is about private vices and public virtues. This is about serious hypocrisy in the Catholic Church.”

CANADA
CBC News

The Roman Catholic diocese of Antigonish, N.S., has identified which of its properties must be sold and has begun sending letters to individual parishes informing them.

The diocese needs to raise about $15 million for a settlement with victims of sexual abuse by priests.

Parishes in Mulgrave and Georgeville in Antigonish county, Bras d'Or and Lower River Inhabitants in Cape Breton, and the town of Pictou have been notified which of their properties will be sold.

WORCESTER (MA)
Callahan Fay Brothers

Daniel Eggleston Dick, born April 22, 1924, died at the age of 86 on July 26, 2010. Surrounded by family and close friends, he died at home after a long and arduous struggle with myeloblastic leukemia.

[He was a member of Voice of the Faithful and was an outspoken advocate for victims and survivors of clergy sexual abuse.]

IRELAND
U.S. Catholic

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

By Cian Molloy, Catholic News Service

DUBLIN (CNS) -- In the wake of a series of clerical child abuse scandals, the country's newest prelate, Bishop Liam S. MacDaid of Clogher, called on the people of his diocese to join him in "a repentant return to the well of salvation."

Speaking at his consecration at St. Macartan's Cathedral, Monaghan, July 25, Bishop MacDaid said: "Society has forced us in the Irish church to look into the mirror, and what we saw were weakness and failure, victims and abuse. The surgeon's knife has been painful but necessary. A lot of evil and poison has been excised. There comes a time when the surgeon's knife has done what it can, is put away and a regime of rehabilitation for the patient is put in place.

"We have been brought to our knees, but maybe that is no bad thing. It can bring us closer to the core of the mystery," he said.

GERMANY
Washington Post

By Max Chrambach
Reuters
Tuesday, July 27, 2010

BERLIN (Reuters) - The German Jesuit order rejected on Tuesday a call to speed up talks on compensation for victims of abuse by Jesuit priests, and said it would tackle the issue at a meeting involving several organizations in September.

A spokesman for the Roman Catholic order, reacting to the call by the victims' group "Eckiger Tisch" ("Square Table"), said the round table group on abuse set up by the government in March would discuss the compensation question in September.

"I appreciate the impatience of 'Eckiger Tisch'," Jesuit spokesman Thomas Busch said, "But there will be no special arrangement before September with one particular group ... This is about more than one group -- the round table deals with a range of abuse cases."

PENNSYLVANIA
GoErie

Meeting others who were sexually abused by clergy can help victims heal, says a leader of a support group for survivors.

Barbara Dorris, outreach director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, didn't know whether victims of a local Episcopal bishop had contacted her group, but said they would be just as welcomed as the more highly publicized victims of Catholic priests.

At least nine allegations of sexual abuse have been made against the Rev. Donald Davis, bishop of the Erie-based Episcopal Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania from 1974 to 1991. Two weeks after the abuse was made public by the current bishop, Episcopal Church leaders had little more to say.

UNITED KINGDOM
Guardian

Riazat Butt, religious affairs correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 27 July 2010

The head of child protection for the Catholic church in England and Wales has said the Vatican should remove the statute of limitations on prosecution of of priests for child abuse offences.

William Kilgallon, the chair of the National Catholic Safeguarding Commission (NCSC), argued that the time limit was unhelpful and failed to reflect the long-lasting effects of abuse.

He described the Vatican's recent decision to double the time period from 10 years to to 20 as "better than it was", but said he would have preferred its abolition.

UNITED STATES
America Magazine

Posted at: Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Author: Michael O'Loughlin

In many respects, the U.S. Army and the Catholic Church could not be more dissimilar institutions. Both have radically different missions, divergent access to resources, and, seemingly, heterogeneous cultures. Yet in one striking way, the two organizations are quite analogous: both rely on and thrive under strict adherence to hierarchal rule. Despite the best efforts of some, especially during Vatican II, to move the church away from a pyramid model (pope at the top, then bishops, priests, religious, and finally laypeople) toward a flat “people of God” model, the church, for good or bad, remains thoroughly hierarchal, in both theory and in practice. The U.S. Army operates, out of necessity, in the same manner. As a result, recent events involving General Stanley McChrystal offer the church a valuable lesson and possible model to emulate.

McChrystal is regarded a dedicated, skilled, and devoted leader, who understands the intricacies of war and the sensitivities of .U.S presence in Afghanistan. His colleagues and superiors praise him continuously as a fair-minded military man, compelling others toward valiant and courageous service. Yet a couple months ago, McChrystal made an egregious mistake for anyone serving in a hierarchal institution: he upset the chain of command by calling into question the judgment of his superiors, specifically, the president and vice president. In the military, this is a mortal sin, and it cost the general his job.

UNITED KINGDOM
Guardian

Riazat Butt
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 27 July 2010

A Roman Catholic religious order will today appeal a court decision that could see it pay up to £5m to a victim of alleged clerical sexual abuse, the largest compensation claim of its kind in Britain.

The Society of Jesus is attempting to overturn the decision of Mrs Justice Swift, who said there was "entirely compelling" evidence that Patrick Raggett had been the victim of a "sustained course of sexual abuse and assaults" by Father Michael Spencer at Preston Catholic College, Lancashire, between 1969 and 1976.

She accepted Ragget said the claimed abuse had affected his earning potential and put aside the time limit, observing that his delay in bringing forward a claim "was not uncommon in cases of sexual abuse in which the complainant had to suppress his memories".

CALIFORNIA
California Catholic Daily

Priests in the Diocese of San Jose won’t be getting a pay raise for the 2010-2011 fiscal year, and diocesan contributions to their retirement fund will drop by 7.8%, a diocesan memo reveals.

The July 15 memo from diocesan chief financial officer Bob Serventi was addressed to pastors, principals, administrators, bookkeepers and finance councils under the subject heading, “Final Budget Guidelines for FY 2010-11.”

While the memo covered a wide range of positions and expenditures, of most interest was priest compensation, which totals $84,041 a year when all the elements are added together.

ITALY
Guardian (United Kingdom)

John Hooper
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 27 July 2010

Not the least interesting aspect of the exposure of the double life of some gay Catholic priests in Rome is the way it was handled by the Italian media. Panorama, the news magazine that carried out the investigation, tipped off the rest of the press last Thursday afternoon. Italy's biggest news agency, Ansa, carried a brief dispatch on the magazine's exclusive at 5.32 pm. By 7 o'clock it was number six on its "billboard" of the day's top stories.

Yet not a single national newspaper picked up on Panorama's story. It was only the following day – by which time the Rome diocese had responded with a statement berating the magazine for "defaming all priests" – that the Italian press felt able to run "balanced" reports leading with the diocese's advice to gay priests to "come out" – and get out.

Why this reluctance? Some will doubtless argue that the report, accompanied by photographs of half-naked priests, one still wearing his dog collar, was pure smut. I disagree. It went to the heart of the paradox, let us call it, that underlies many of the Catholic church's current problems. While condemning gay sex as disordered and at the same time insisting on celibacy in an age in which heterosexual clerics can no longer get away with the hypocrisy of "housekeepers", the Vatican is gradually creating a predominantly gay priesthood in all but the developing world. The most reliable estimate suggested that up to half of US Catholic priests are homosexual.

UNITED STATES
Healing and Spirituality

Dr. Jaime Romo

The May, 2010 National Geographic magazine has an article about Spirit Lake, in Washington. The caption reads, “Beer cans used to rest at the bottom of Spirit Lake.’ The article mentions how 30 years ago, pre-eruption, trout were 10 inches long; now trout are 20 inches long.

There are many parallels with the devastation of Religious Authority Sexual Abuse and the physical history of Mt. St. Helens. There are certainly parallels in my life experience.

When I backpacked for a week at Spirit Lake the summer before the eruption, my life was that of a carefree college student; I didn’t think of what was under the surface as played in water and forest and hiked around Mt. St. Helen. That was before my own trauma erupted in 2002.

UNITED KINGDOM
London Evening Standard

David Cohen
27.07.10

A While ago, as Teresa Cooper watched the Archbishop of Canterbury delivering a televised address, she began to shake uncontrollably.

“I saw him say that the Catholic Church in Ireland had lost all credibility' because of their attempts to sweep child abuse under the carpet, and I thought that if he was brave enough to be so outspoken about the Catholics, surely he was going to apologise for what happened to me in his Church, too.”

At the time, Teresa, 43, was just days away from meeting the Archbishop's deputies. They would agree to pay her substantial damages for her claims of having been forcibly drugged, abused and sexually assaulted as a teenager in a children's home run by the Church of England in the Eighties.

BROOKSVILLE (FL)
St. Petersburg Times

By Joel Anderson, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Tuesday, July 27, 2010

BROOKSVILLE — A Brooksville man accused of molesting two teenage girls at a Christian retreat center last week is the father of a child involved with a local ministry designed to keep young men on the right path.

David "Tony" Galloway, 43, of 21403 Anderson Road was arrested Friday on charges of battery and sexual assault on a victim over age 12.

The Hernando County Sheriff's Office said Galloway was part of a group volunteering with Shiloh Problem Solvers, a nonprofit program that provides youths with prevention, intervention and diversion services, along with educational services.

AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

A former volunteer bus driver involved in a church youth group has been charged with molesting young Sydney children over three decades.

The man, now aged 69, was arrested at Bilpin, near Windsor in Sydney's north-west, at 8.15am today, police said.

It followed allegations he sexually molested and assaulted young children during the 1970s, '80s and '90s.

AUSTRALIA
The Australian

A CHURCH bus driver sexually molested children as they sat on his lap while he drove them to and from youth group activities, NSW police allege.

The 69-year-old man was arrested this morning at his Bilpin home near Windsor, northwest of Sydney, after four of his alleged victims went to police.

The two men and two women told police the man sexually assaulted and molested them over three decades from the 1970s while he was a bus driver with the Metropolitan Baptist Church in Chatswood and Lane Cove, in Sydney's north.

AUSTRALIA
NEWS.com.au

A MAN who was a volunteer bus driver for a Sydney church youth group has been charged with sexually molesting and assaulting four young children over three decades.

The man, now aged 69, was arrested at Bilpin, near Windsor in Sydney's northwest, at 8.15am (AEST) today, police said.

He was charged with 54 historical counts of sexual assault, acts of indecency and indecent assault that allegedly took place between 1978 and 1992.

NEW YORK
Catholic Culture

July 27, 2010
Singling out The New York Times, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York blasted media coverage of the Vatican’s revised norms for the clerical abuse of minors and other exceptionally serious crimes.

“Because of all the inaccuracies in the recent coverage of the Catholic Church in the New York Times and other publications, appearing in news articles, editorials, and op-eds, I was tempted to try my best to offer corrections to the multitude of errors,” he said in his latest blog posting. “However, I soon realized that this would probably be a full time job.”

“It is a source of consternation as to why, instead of complimenting the Vatican and a reformer like Pope Benedict XVI, for codifying procedures long advocated by critics, such outfits would instead choose to intrude on a matter of internal doctrine, namely the ordination of women.”

AUSTRALIA
New South Wales Police Force

Tuesday, 27 Jul 2010

A former volunteer bus driver involved in a church youth group has been arrested over allegations he sexually molested and assaulted young children during the 70s, 80s and 90s.

Chatswood detectives arrested the man, now aged 69, at Bilpin, near Windsor in Sydney’s west at 8.15am today.

He was taken to Windsor Police Station and has been charged with 54 historical offences including charges of sexual assault, acts of indecency and indecent assaults. He has refused bail and will appear in Windsor Local Court tomorrow.

BONITA SPRINGS (FL)
Naples Daily News

By KELLY FARRELL

BONITA SPRINGS — Multiple accusations caused the removal of Rev. Stan Strycharz from St. Leo Catholic Church in Bonita Springs over the weekend, officials said.

Bishop Frank Dewane announced Strycharz was on administrative leave pending the result of an investigation. Many parishioners want to know why.

“Whatever the reasons for Father Stan’s departure, all parishioners are entitled, no demand, a fair and equitable explanation,” said parishioner Camran Parente.

UNITED STATES
The Huffington Post

Carla Seaquist

In a world much out of joint, to molest a child must remain a crime, an inviolate taboo, an unforgivable sin.

So, where is the Vatican's outrage at the worldwide epidemic of sexual abuse of children perpetrated by its own clergy---a sin of the very first order, given the defenselessness of the victims and the power and trust invested in the molesting men of God?

The world---and the molested---have been waiting, waiting for the Catholic Church's hierarchy to do the right thing in these months of crisis. Sadly, the wait will be longer.

UNITED STATES
EDGE Boston

by Kilian Melloy
Monday Jul 26, 2010

Last week, an Italian publication promised video footage of homosexual priests meeting and mixing with other patrons of gay bars. Now that footage has reached YouTube.

Panorama magazine reported on the gay priests in an article written by reporter Carmelo Abbate, who--together with a gay man--went out looking to expose the "double lives" led by some of the Catholic Church’s clerics.

Abbate and his associate spent two weeks at gay nightspots, during which time they managed to capture video of three priests involved in sexual trysts. Two of the priests caught on video were reportedly Italian; one was French.

The sensational claims made by the magazine included an allegation that one of the three priests not only had sex with the reporter’s "gay accomplice," but that the priest also donned his ceremonial vestments for the encounter, at the request of the reporter’s associate. That encounter, the magazine claimed, was caught on video by a hidden camera

UNITED STATES
John Paul II Millstone

Paris Arrow

In 2000, when the CDF came out with the doctrine or “Declaration” of Domuinus Iesus, authored by its Prefect, Cardinal Ratzinger now Pope Benedict XVI, John Paul II signed and sealed it with his signature re-affirming the famous edict Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus "Outside the Church, there is no salvation”. There were protests from Catholic theologians, Protestants and other Christian churches to Dominus Iesus. But soon the protests died down. The Magisterium of the Vatican won the day again. But today, Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI and the Vatican are facing a louder uproar and protest about priest pedophilia. And this time, the Vatican will not be able to silence us as it did in 2000 with Dominus Iesus. Most of all, this new Code of Canon Law proves that there is salvation outside the church – because it was only outside the church, in the Secular Law of justice that pedophile priests were brought to court and paid some 3 billion dollars of compensation to their victims in the USA.

SANTA BARBARA (CA)
The Santa Barbara News Network

SANTA BARBARA – 8:30 pm – The fight over the public’s access to the personnel files of Santa Barbara Franciscan priests in the sex abuse scandal, returns to court this week.

The case will be heard Friday, July 30, in the 2nd District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles.

It’s been four years since the despicable acts at St. Anthony’s Seminary, from 1964 to 1987, captured the media’s attention.

NEVADA
PRWeb

A Christian Bishop, Monk, and child advocate, whose legal name is Santa Claus, is taking Pope Benedict to task, for what Bishop Santa describes as the Pope's continued moral failure to address urgent children's issues within the Roman Catholic Church.

Incline Village, NV (PRWEB) July 16, 2010

A Christian Bishop, Monk, and child advocate, whose legal name is Santa Claus, is taking Pope Benedict XVI to task, for what Bishop Santa Claus describes as, "the Pope’s continued moral failure to address urgent children's issues within the Roman Catholic Church."

Bishop Santa emphasizes that the Pope's unwillingness to address this international issue in a meaningful and productive manner demonstrates a long-standing and profound moral failure – one shared by many leaders and clergy of other denominations.

In the United States, between 1950 and 2009, the Roman Catholic Church has paid more than $2.6 billion to settle claims of abuse by clergy, has obstructed criminal and civil investigations, and often filed for bankruptcy to avoid making court-ordered payments to survivors of clergy abuse. Santa observes that, “The Roman Catholic Church clearly is more concerned with protecting its clergy and assets than protecting vulnerable children.”

UNITED STATES
AOL News

Larry Knowles

(July 26) -- Talk about piling on -- now even Santa Claus is taking shots at the Catholic Church.

An explanation, of course, is in order. It's not the jolly old elf who lives at the North Pole with toy-crafting elves and flying reindeer. No, Virginia, this is a decidedly more politicized Claus, an ordained bishop from Nevada with the likeness and legal name of his famous doppelganger.

And this Santa Claus is angry. Last week, in a scathing, widely distributed press release, Claus called out the church for its failure to institute sufficient reform in the wake of clergy sex abuse scandals. He also suggested that he may sue the church to force change.

Santa Claus -- his legal name, no middle initial -- of Lake Tahoe, Nev., has a lump of coal for Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church.

"Bishop Santa intends 'to explore and utilize a variety of legal means,'" the statement read in part, "'to hold the Roman Catholic Church, especially the pope and Vatican, accountable for the suffering of many thousands of vulnerable children at the hands of clergy, straight and gay, young and old, celibate or not.'"

NEDERLAND
Hp.Detijd

Door Alex Ringeling | 26 Juli 2010

Het Italiaanse tijdschrift Panorama pakt deze week uit met een coverstory over lokhomo's, priesters en seksfeesten. In dit verhaal, waarin drie priesters in de val van dezelfde lokhomo lopen, weet een geestelijke te melden dat maar liefst 98% van de priesters die hij kent homoneigingen heeft. Hoe is dat in Nederland?

We vroegen de woordvoerder van de RKK Nederland, Pieter Kohnen, die van het Italiaanse artikel overigens niets wist, of er redenen zijn om aan te nemen dat er inderdaad een significant deel van de priesters homoseksuele neigingen heeft.

"Hier is in ons land nooit onderzoek naar geweest omdat priesters sowieso geacht worden celibatair te leven," zo zegt hij, "dus hoe hoog dat aantal is blijft giswerk."

CANADA
London Free Press

By BOB RIPLEY, Special to QMI Agency

Last Updated: July 26, 2010

Just when I thought that the Roman Catholic sex abuse scandal was flattened under the weight of gushing Gulf oil and Mel Gibson's rants, last week the Vatican sent a letter to its bishops targeting crimes against the faith.

You know, the rape of children, molestation of the mentally disabled, possession of child pornography and the ordination of women.

I'm not kidding on that last one. More later.

Pope Benedict has begged forgiveness from victims of sexual abuse by priests, "particularly the abuse of the little ones", and promised to do everything possible to protect them. He has met with abuse victims and said the scandal had shown the need for a purification of the Church.

UNITED STATES
Commonweal

[Crimen Sollicitationis]

Nicholas P. Cafardi

According to Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, in the first century A.D., the Roman emperor Caligula “wrote his laws in a very small character, and hung them upon high pillars, the more effectually to ensnare the people.” Twelve centuries after Caligula, Thomas Aquinas wrote that “promulgation is necessary if a law is to have binding force” (Summa Theologiae). Secret laws—laws never made known to the people who are bound by them—are not effective laws.

To no small degree, the sexual-abuse crisis has been exacerbated because of secret laws. In 1922, the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office published the instruction “On the Method of Proceeding in Cases of Solicitation,” which was approved by Pius XI and signed by Merry del Val, Cardinal Secretary of the Holy Office. The Vatican’s Polyglot Press printed the document, but it was never officially promulgated in a useful way. In fact, the first page of the instruction says it is to be “diligently kept in the secret archives of the [diocesan] curia for internal use, and is not to be published or commented on in any canonical commentary.” While the instruction is addressed to “All Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops, and Other Local Ordinaries, including of the Oriental Rites,” it was evidently not circulated to them. Instead, the text was available by request to bishops who needed to know its contents to deal with such crimes.

Forty years later, in 1962, the Holy Office reissued the instruction with minor changes. Pope John XXIII approved the revised text, and the secretary of the Holy Office, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, signed it. Again, the first page says that the document is to be “diligently kept in the secret archives of the [diocesan] curia for internal use, and is not to be published or commented on in any canonical commentary.” Again, the instruction is addressed to “All Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops, and Other Local Ordinaries, including of the Oriental Rites.” And again, the only bishops who received it were those who contacted the Holy See about the crimes covered by the instruction who were then sent a copy. Although there had been a plan to distribute the document to the bishops attending the Second Vatican Council, that never happened.

UNITED STATES
dotCommonweal

July 26, 2010, 10:21 am Posted by Mollie Wilson O'Reilly

Earlier this month, when the New York Times published a story about the CDF and its jurisdiction over clergy sex-abuse cases, Grant Gallicho asked Nicholas Cafardi, a canon lawyer quoted in the article, to comment on the “news.” Cafardi’s very helpful explanation was posted on our blog.

Now we have published a longer article by Cafardi, “The Scandal of Secrecy: Canon Law & the Sexual-Abuse Crisis.” It explains how “secret” laws complicated and exacerbated the crisis in the church, and dispels some misconceptions about the nature of the secrecy required by Crimen sollicitationis.

ST. LOUIS (MO)
KTVI

FOX2now.com
8:24 AM CDT, July 26, 2010

ST. LOUIS, MO (KTVI - FOX2now.com) - The Archdiocese of St. Louis says it will welcome St. Stanislaus Kostka Church back into the fold if church members agree to get rid of controversial priest Marek Bozek. The Archdiocese says the church will not be allowed back as long as Bozek is with the church.

St. Stanislaus and the Archdiocese parted ways in 2004 in a dispute over control of the parish's finances.

UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Jul. 26, 2010
An NCR Editorial

U.S. women religious, whose leaders meet in Dallas next month, find themselves in a terrible position. On one hand, they can defend their approach to religious life. Through decades of prayer and work together, they have discerned that approach, articulated in their Vatican-approved charters, as God's call. The process has drawn them deeply into social apostolates through which they have become a powerful representation of Catholic life throughout U.S. culture and the wider world.

On the other hand, they can work quietly in attempting to navigate the institutional shoals, placating those among the hierarchy who believe that a 19th-century model of religious life, shuttered up and held in place by an unthinking acquiescence to a male hierarchy — mistakenly referred to by some as obedience — is the salvation of religious life. The option holds the possibility of avoiding a public confrontation and the unpleasant consequences of such a standoff. However, it also holds the likely possibility that religious life in the United States will be re-engineered in secret by the men in the Vatican. It holds the prospect that the soul of a project rooted in and encouraged by the Second Vatican Council would be hollowed out.

The social sciences have a term for the situation of women who feel compelled to be compliant with the men who are bent on demeaning and humiliating them: They call it battered wife syndrome.

EVANSVILLE (IN)
News 24

EVANSVILLE - A civil lawsuit is claiming Evansville's Catholic Diocese tried to cover up a 2007 rape.

According to the lawsuit, the victim was a 23-year-old mentally handicapped woman. She was attending an abstinence youth retreat in Washington, Indiana, at the former St. Mary's School.

The church is denying the claims, and says the sex was consensual.

LOUISIANA
Opelousas Daily World

July 26, 2010

If the Vatican is trying to restore the impression that its moral sense is intact, issuing a document that equates pedophilia with the ordination of women doesn't really do that.

The Catholic church continued to heap insult upon injury when it revealed its long-awaited new rules on clergy sex abuse, rules that the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said signaled a commitment to grasp the nettle with "rigor and transparency."

The church still believes in its own intrinsic holiness despite all evidence to the contrary. It thinks it's making huge concessions on the unstoppable abuse scandal when it's taking baby steps.

CHILE
The New York Times

By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
Published: July 25, 2010

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Sebastián Piñera, Chile’s president, abruptly rejected calls on Sunday from the Roman Catholic Church to pardon dozens of imprisoned military officials convicted of human rights violations during the era known as Chile’s dirty war. ...

Standing up to Chile’s Catholic Church was seen as a bold move, considering the church’s well-acknowledged role in challenging the military dictatorship of General Pinochet and in harboring many human rights victims and people sought by the military.

But the church’s reputation has been tarnished recently by revelations of sexual abuse by priests in Chile

UNITED STATES
GetReligion

Two weeks ago, the Sunday Boston Globe magazine ran an essay — not a news story, I admit — that I have been thinking about ever since. It was called “What I Believe” and it was written by Charles Pierce, a staff writer at the publication.

This long essay covers a lot of territory and it’s possible to criticize it — either positive criticism or negative criticism — in several different ways. Most of all, it is a stunningly American look at the earthquakes that have rocked the Catholic Church in the decades after Vatican II and Woodstock.

The key is that Pierce believes that the Catholic hierarchy’s claims to unique religious authority are gone. Period. Thus, consider these two important passages in the piece, as he explains that the Catholic Church in which he worships is his alone. He has a personal church and, he states clearly, he does not need a personal Savior:

In the church of my youth, with the priests reciting incomprehensible Latin, their backs to the people, walled off by an altar rail and two millenniums’ worth of imperial design, the purple always came out at Advent and at Lent. It was the color of penance, we were told. And so it is, and penitence begins within, in one mind and one soul and in what the nuns used to call an informed conscience. That’s where my Catholicism is now. It is a penitential faith. That’s where you can look for it. It is possible, I have come to realize, that I’ve grown up to become an anti-Catholic Catholic.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

ANALYSIS: The Vatican must no longer be granted immunity from equality legislation, in the name of liberty, equality, and even the Gospel, writes MARY CONDREN

THE VATICAN’S recent Normae de Gravioribus Delictis document prescribes automatic excommunication for anyone involved in the ordination of a woman. In according greater penalties to those who “attempted” women’s ordination than to clerics who abused children, it has further shocked many loyal Irish Catholics, prompting them to inquire about the theological reasons why the Roman Catholic Church objects to women’s ordination.

A Vatican document issued in 1976 set out some of these arguments clearly.

1. That incarnation took place in the male sex and therefore women were excluded from the priesthood

Logically, this means that women should be excluded from baptism as well, since it is an ancient teaching of the church that “whatever has not become incarnate cannot be redeemed”. If the church insists here that “God became man” means God became male, then it cannot simultaneously argue that in liturgical language “man” means both male and female.

ROME
The Irish Times

PADDY AGNEW

ITALIAN NEWS magazine Panorama yesterday defended its current controversial cover story, containing undercover revelations about the highly active gay sex lives of some priests based in and around Rome’s Holy See.

Responding to accusations of scandal-mongering from unnamed church sources, editor Giorgio Mulé said those senior church figures who did not believe the report should be aware that Panorama has the names and addresses of the priest protagonists.

Last Friday, Panorama published a report by undercover reporter Carmelo Abbate detailing a month-long series of gay parties and brief encounters in and around the Holy See, featuring openly gay priests. Abbate claims he was introduced into this particular gay community by a gay friend who invited him to attend a party in the Testaccio area of Rome, a party hosted by a French priest, referred to as Fr “Paul”.

INDIA
Times of India

CHENNAI: The police on Sunday arrested a 53-year-old priest at Ayanavaram on charges of rape and molestation. The arrested, pastor Selvaraj, has been running Faith Assembly Church' on Palani Andavar Koil Street for the past 15 years.

According to the police, Mercy Maria (36) of Ayanavaram, an employee of the church, was allegedly seduced by the priest six years ago and they lived together for a while. Later, Suganthi (41) of Ayanavaram met the pastor to speak about her drunken husband when Selvaraj tried to make sexual advances. Based on their complaints, the Ayanavaram police registered two separate cases and arrested Selvaraj. He was booked under several charges, including cheating, molesting and raping. He will be remanded in judicial custody on Monday after being produced before a magistarte's court in the city.

BONITA SPRINGS (FL)
Naples Daily News

Stan Strycharz, a popular priest at St. Leo Catholic Church in Bonita Springs has been placed on administrative leave, Diocese of Venice officials said Sunday.

Strycharz did not celebrate Mass on Saturday or Sunday. Bishop Frank J. Dewane made the announcement to church-goers at services held over the weekend.

The news prompted many parish members to moan. Dozens stood up and left the church upon hearing Dewane’s announcement at the 11:30 a.m. Sunday Mass. ...

Church-goers were upset about the lack of information about why the decision was made, they said.

“It’s just unacceptable,” Gonzalez said following a return to the 11:30 a.m. Mass without the children.

FLORIDA
WINK

BONITA SPRINGS, Fla. - A Bonita Springs priest has been put on paid administrative leave after concerns about the day-to-day operations of his church.

Father Stan Strycharz was placed on leave Friday from Saint Leo Catholic Church.

A statement from the diocese does not go into detail, but does state the allegations do not involve actions with minors. It goes on to say, "the bishop is very saddened to have to make this decision, and that the goal is to ensure the continued growth of the parish."

WASHINGTON (IN)
Washington Times-Herald

By Nate Smith
Washington Times-Herald

WASHINGTON — A recently-filed civil lawsuit alleges that the Evansville Catholic Diocese, the Catholic Community of Washington and other Catholic officials tried to cover up a 2007 rape at the former St. Mary’s School and advised the victim take a “morning after” drug.

The suit, filed last year but only made known recently to the Times-Herald, alleges church officials tried to convince a 23-year-old and her mother there was not a rape, but consensual sex.

The church, in its response to the suit, has denied the allegations and said the sex at St. Mary’s was consensual and no one suggested the emergency contraceptive. The Catholic Church doctrine says the drug, among other forms of contraception, is against its beliefs.

UNITED STATES
newjerseynewsroom

BY MICHAEL P. RICCARDS
COMMENTARY

When he took over the papacy, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger took the name Benedict — probably after the great World War I peace pope, Benedict XV, and also St. Benedict of Nursia, the famed monk who help Christianize much of Western Europe through his monastic traditions of praying and working. Ratzinger, like his predecessor John Paul II, has a fixation about Europe becoming de-Christianized ("secularized" is the word they insist on), and looking at the declines of Church attendance, Church vocations, and even Catholic impact on public policy, they are probably right. The future of the Catholic Church is clearly in the Third World, despite the influence of the older European hierarchy.

But now Ratzinger, who was ironically one of the most vocal critics of priestly pedophilia during the John Paul II years, is caught up in a very nasty and seemingly endless scandal that is sweeping the Church. It is a source of great embarrassment to the faithful and to the vast majority of priests. It is clear that the hierarchy has let down the Church and most importantly, very many young boys and children by shuffling around degenerates from one parish assignment to another. And it is unfortunate that Ratzinger, once so strong on this terrible issue — when he was Archbishop and later in early dealings with the matter at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — was deficient in the lack of haste and commitment he made in dealing with cases before him. It is clearly a breakdown in Vatican management that rivals the breakdown at the diocesan levels. This is most unfortunate for it was Ratzinger who dealt clearly with the Legionnaires scandal, a group whose "saintly" leader had the ear of the Holy See and John Paul II, and who was involved in God knows what string of unpriestly behavior with his mistresses and children. It was Ratzinger, not John Paul, who publicly denounced the "filth" of pedophilia behavior, and when he was criticized for his public remarks, bluntly observed, "But we are priests." He at least knew the expectations.

CONNECTICUT
The Norwich Bulletin

By RICHARD MEEHAN
For The Norwich Bulletin

Survivors of sexual abuse and victim’s rights groups are outraged at a recent ruling by District Court Judge Janet Bond Arterton dismissing the indictment against Douglas Perlitz, the former Fairfield University graduate who was awaiting trial on multiple counts of sexual improprieties. He was accused of assaulting young people in Haiti.

None of the allegations claim he victimized anyone in Connecticut. The government was attempting to bootstrap its Connecticut prosecution based on his fundraising within the state and other minimal contacts.

The basis of Arterton’s ruling is that Connecticut is not the proper venue for this indictment. To the uninitiated, it appears Arterton’s ruling somehow sets the stage to free a potential predator. That is a gross misreading of the case. Courts can only bring criminal defendants to trial if they have appropriate jurisdiction.

MALTA
Times of Malta

Charles Cirillo, Ħamrun

It should be pointed out to Joe Zammit (The Sunday Times, July 4) that the alleged victims of sexual abuse by priests have always formed part of the Archbishop's flock, even before 2003, when they first made their claims.

The fact that they were brought up by the same priests who allegedly abused them is indeed terrifying. According to press reports, it is only lately that the Curia's Response Team has started to seriously investigate the alleged abuse.

Many of the alleged victims suffered shame and depression and were constantly thinking that justice would never be done. In some cases, when one has a problem with the local Church authorities, one often feels like banging one's head against a wall. I have experienced this for almost five years now.

UNITED KINGDOM
The Independent

By Jonathan Owen

Sunday, 25 July 2010

Children are being branded as witches in churches in the UK, with many suffering abuse from supposed exorcisms in which they are physically restrained and screamed at. But those are the lucky ones.

The very accusation of being a witch can result in children being starved, tortured, beaten, stabbed or even, as in the case of Victoria Climbié, murdered. It is an increasing problem around the country, campaigners say.

Police admit the cases they deal with are the tip of the iceberg, with people reluctant to speak out for fear of being stigmatised.

By RYAN J. FOLEY • The Associated Press • July 25, 2010

MADISON — The Wisconsin Supreme Court last week upheld the sexual abuse conviction of a once-prominent Jesuit priest who insisted he was unfairly prosecuted for acts dating to the 1960s.

In a 7-0 ruling, justices said they were satisfied that Donald McGuire received a fair trial and that "justice has not miscarried for any reason."

McGuire, a former spiritual adviser to Mother Teresa who commanded a worldwide following as a gifted preacher and philosopher, is considered one of the most influential figures convicted in the Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandal. Advocates for childhood victims of clergy sex abuse praised the court's ruling.

Peter Isely, Midwest director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said a ruling in McGuire's favor could have jeopardized the convictions of 20 clergy members who have been found guilty of decades-old sexual abuse in Wisconsin.

ITALY
Digital Journal

[with video]

By ■ Andrew John

Catholic priests in Rome are said to be making nocturnal visits to gay bars, further embarrassing a church enmeshed in one of the biggest sex scandals in ecclesiastical history.

According to Euronews.net, “Alleged homosexual encounters involving three clerics are captured on camera in an undercover report by the conservative Panorama magazine.”

Panorama, which is owned by the Italian prime minister and media magnate Silvio Berlusconi, says the church has reacted by asking gay priests to come out of the closet and then leave the priesthood.

UNITED STATES
Irish Central

Cahir O'Doherty

This week the Italian magazine Panorama ran a cover story expose on a 'scandal' involving two gay Italian priests and one French priest.

Paul, the French priest, is alleged to have 'celebrated Mass in the morning before driving two male escorts he had hired to attend a party the night before to the airport.'

So far, so self-deluded. Closet-cases, like the poor, are always with us.

CANADA
Toronto Star

Sandro Contenta and Jim Rankin
Feature Writers

DUNNVILLE, ONT.—Two months after Bishop James Wingle abruptly resigned and disappeared, word that he had been spotted in Jerusalem swept his St. Catharines diocese.

Parishioners and priests were hungry for news of the missing bishop. But officials temporarily running the Catholic diocese quickly moved to reassert a wall of silence.

On June 4, the Chancery office sent to all priests the weekly bulletin that under Wingle had been known as the “folksy Friday fax.”

“Please keep Bishop Wingle in your prayers,” its first item read. “Please refrain from spreading any rumours about him.”

UNITED STATES
Gawker

[with video]

An Italian magazine owned by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, using a hidden camera, caught three Catholic priests inside a gay nightclub and having sex inside a church building. The Roman Catholic diocese has called on gay priests to come out.

UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Statement by Barbara Blaine, 312 399 4747

Priests who are committing sex crimes against children and bishops who enable and conceal the crimes are leading double lives. They should resign. As long as the Vatican continues to focus on other issues children will not be safe.

AUSTRALIA
Courier Mail

by Kay Dibben From: The Sunday Mail (Qld) July 25, 2010

A PRIEST stood down by his church over allegations that he had sex with a teenage boy has been handed a blue card to work with children by a Queensland tribunal.

The man, now in his 50s, lost his licence to officiate as a priest when he was found unfit to hold Holy Orders, the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal was told during an application hearing last month.

It was alleged that the priest, then a parish curate in his 20s, had sex with a boy aged from 16 to 18 on several occasions, showed him pornographic images and took him to a sex shop.

WISCONSIN
WCCO

MADISON, Wis. (AP) ― A judge is set decide this week whether an Onalaska priest will stand trial in a child pornography case.

The Rev. Patrick Umberger was charged earlier this month with one felony count of possession of child pornography punishable by up to 25 years in prison and $100,000 in fines. A criminal complaint says state agents found photographs of children in sexual positions on Umberger's computer.

Umberger, the pastor at St. Pat's Parish, faces a preliminary hearing in La Crosse County Circuit Court on Wednesday in front of Judge Elliot M. Levine.

VATICAN CITY
The Associated Press

By NICOLE WINFIELD
The Associated Press
Saturday, July 24, 2010

VATICAN CITY -- The pope has granted broad powers to the archbishop he selected to overhaul the Legionaries of Christ following revelations that the order's founder led a double life.

A decree approved by Pope Benedict XVI and published Saturday on the Legionaries' website said Archbishop Velasio De Paolis can override the Legionaries' own constitutions as he goes about reforming the order and purging it of its institutional abuses.

The conservative order once hailed by the Vatican for its orthodoxy and ability to recruit priests fell into disarray starting last year as it admitted that its founder, the Rev. Marciel Maciel, sexually abused seminarians and fathered at least three children.

OREGON
The Oregonian

Nancy Haught, The Oregonian

A Portland woman, ordained in the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement three years ago, says the Vatican announcement earlier this month listing pedophilia and women's ordination as grave offenses is an insult to clerical abuse victims and women seeking ordination.

"The sexual abuse of children is morally reprehensible by any possible standard," says Toni Tortorilla, 63. "The ordination of women has been happening for decades in many denominations." She says pairing the issues in one statement "shows how out of touch with reality the Vatican really is."

On July 15, the Vatican announced revisions in the way it handles clerical sexual abuse. Many Catholics were stunned that the official statement listed attempts to ordain women alongside pedophilia as "grave delicts," along with heresy, apostasy and schism. At a press conference on the same day, a Vatican spokesman explained that sexual abuse and pornography "are more grave delicts" and women's ordination is "grave, but on another level." The same day, Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl, chairman of the U.S. bishops' committee on doctrine, said the Vatican statement referred to "the seriousness with which it holds offenses against the sacrament of holy orders" and was not a sign of disrespect toward women.

VATICAN CITY
Zenit

ROME, JULY 24, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the letter written by Archbishop Velasio De Paolis to the Legionaries of Christ. Benedict XVI appointed the archbishop as his delegate to oversee the renewal of the congregation.

* * *
Rome, July 10, 2010

Dear brothers in the Lord,

With his letter dated June 16, 2010, the Holy Father Benedict XVI named me his “Delegate for the Congregation of the Legionaries of Christ” and entrusted me with the responsibility of governing your institute in his name “during the time that it takes to complete the path of renewal and lead it to the celebration of an extraordinary General Chapter, whose main purpose will be to complete the revision of the Constitutions.” While the Holy Father highlights “the need and urgency of a path of in-depth revision of the Institute’s charism,” he expresses his “desire closely to accompany, sustain, and guide this process.” For the Pope, the Pontifical Delegate is his personal Delegate. As he carries out his task, the Delegate must act in a way that he is “for this Religious Family a concrete sign of my (the Pope’s) closeness and act in my (the Pope’s) name.” In this family—in other words, your congregation—the Pope recognizes the presence of “a great number of Members” who demonstrate “sincere zeal” and “a fervent religious life.” The Pope does not enter into more detail regarding how his Delegate will fulfill his task, but leaves the necessary concrete clarifications for a later decree which will establish “some additional modalities for the fulfillment of this office.” As we await these modalities, we can already start out on our path, sustained by trust and prayer, and the blessing of the Holy Father and of so many good souls who esteem you and appreciate your work in the Church.

VATICAN CITY
Zenit

ROME, JULY 24, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of Benedict XVI's June 16 letter to Archbishop Velasio De Paolis, by which he appoints him the papal delegate to the Legionaries of Christ.

* * *
To our Venerable Brother Velasio De Paolis, CS

Titular Archbishop of Telepte
The recent Apostolic Visitation of the Congregation of the Legionaries of Christ has made clear, besides the sincere zeal and fervent religious life of a great number of the Congregation’s Members, the need and urgency to undertake a path of in-depth revision of the Institute’s charism. Moved by the desire to be close to you, to sustain and guide this journey, I have seen fit to appoint a personal Delegate for this Religious Family, to be both a concrete sign of my closeness and to act in my name.

VATICAN CITY
Zenit

ROME, JULY 24, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the decree by which the Vatican designated the "modalities of fulfillment of the office of papal delegate" for the work of Archbishop Velasio De Paolis. Benedict XVI appointed the archbishop as his delegate to oversee the renewal of the congregation of the Legionaries of Christ.

* * *

DECREE

MODALITIES OF FULFILLMENT
OF THE OFFICE OF PAPAL DELEGATE
FOR THE CONGREGATION OF THE LEGIONARIES OF CHRIST

I. In his letter of June 16, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI:

- appointed His Excellency Archbishop Velasio De Paolis, CS, Titular Archbishop of Telepte and President of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See, as his Delegate for the Congregation of the Legionaries of Christ;

- conferred on him the responsibility of governing this religious institute in his name “for as long as it takes to complete its path of renewal and lead it to the celebration of an extraordinary general chapter, whose main purpose will be to bring to completion the revision of the Constitutions”;

NEW JERSEY
Cliffview Pilot

Asher Lipner

OPINION: An Orthodox couple from Lakewood are very special and heroic people. When they found out that their son was molested by a rabbi, they confronted the rabbi and got him to admit it.

But when the rabbi became defiant and would not go to therapy or agree to leave the synagogue, they went to the police and had him arrested.

The mother has said that more than any act of communal concern or heroism, she did this as a simple Jewish mother for her son. She knew that if the rabbi was allowed to get away with it and nothing to happen to him, her son would forever feel abandoned and unprotected at his time of need.

DEUTSCHLAND
Ostholstein

23. Juli 2010 [ Kein Kommentar ]
Bischof Gerhard Ulrich hat zur Solidarität der Kirche mit den Opfern sexualisierter Gewalt aufgerufen. „Es muss uns bewusst bleiben, welche körperliche und seelische Grausamkeit sexueller Missbrauch ist“, schreibt der Vorsitzende der Nordelbischen Kirchenleitung in einem Brief, der zum Wochenende an alle nordelbischen Gemeinden verschickt wurde.

Die Täter müssten „mit allen rechtlichen Mitteln zur Verantwortung gezogen werden“. Der Bischof nahm in dem Brief vor allem Bezug auf die Vorwürfe sexuellen Missbrauchs in der Kirchengemeinde Ahrensburg. „Die Nordelbische Kirche hat ihren Anteil an Schuld gegenüber den Opfern – und sie trägt daran. Wir haben Verantwortung zu übernehmen und Buße zu tun!“ Zugleich rief er zum Gebet für die Menschen auf, „die in dieser schweren Zeit leiden, bangen und hoffen“.

DEUTCHLAND
Volksfreund

Das Bistum Trier setzt seinen Kampf gegen sexuellen Missbrauch in der Katholischen Kirche fort: Seit gestern gibt es eine Internetseite mit Informationen über das Thema.

Trier. (wie) Der Trierer Bischof Stephan Ackermann hat unmittelbar nachdem die ersten Fälle sexuellen Missbrauchs von katholischen Geistlichen bekannt geworden sind, unmissverständlich klar gemacht, dass er alles tun werde, um die Vorfälle aufzuklären. Es dürfe nichts vertuscht werden, hatte Ackermann bereits im März gesagt. Der Ende Februar von der Bischofskonferenz zum Sonderbeauftragten zur Aufklärung des sexuellen Missbrauchs in der Katholischen Kirche ernannte Oberhirte hat immer betont, dass man zu sehr die Täter geschützt habe. Die Opfer müssten im Mittelpunkt stehen, hat Ackermann immer wieder gesagt.

DEUTSCHLAND
Bistum Trier

Prävention gegen sexuellen Missbrauch - im Bistum Trier

Viele Menschen haben in den ersten Monaten des Jahres 2010 über sexuelle Gewalt sprechen können, die ihnen angetan worden ist. Sie haben damit den Wunsch verbunden, dass aus ihren Erfahrungen Lehren gezogen werden - auch für künftige Prävention und Vorbeugung.

Wir nehmen dies im Bistum Trier sehr ernst. Wir haben dafür zu sorgen, dass Kinder und Jugendliche in unseren Angeboten einen möglichst sicheren Raum finden und sich gesund entwickeln können.

DEUTSCHLAND
Main Post

Bischof Friedhelm Hofmann besetzt Arbeitsstab „Missbrauch“ neu (mp) Der Würzburger Bischof Friedhelm Hofmann hat den Arbeitsstab „Sexueller Missbrauch und körperliche Gewalt“, den es seit 2002 gibt, neu besetzt. Die Frauen und Männer des Gremiums stehen den beiden Ansprechpartnern für Opfer sexuellen Missbrauchs und von körperlicher Gewalt in der Diözese, Professor Klaus Laubenthal und seiner Stellvertreterin Dr. Claudia Gehring, zur Seite und beraten bei Bedarf. Außerdem treffen sie sich zum regelmäßigen Austausch. Dem Arbeitsstab gehören an: Luise Engelhardt und Margarete Frey-Lingscheidt von der Ehe-, Familien- und Lebensberatung Schweinfurt/Haßfurt, Kinderärztin Dr. Christa Kitz, Neurologe Dr. Michael Kropp, der Miltenberger Jugendpfarrer Stefan Michelberger, die Erzieherin Carolin Mühlon aus Leidersbach, der Würzburger Psychologe Dr. Ruthard Ott, die Sozialarbeiterin Ritaschwester Ursula Pieper, Diözesanrichter und Lebensberater Pastoralreferent Klaus Schmalzl, Religionslehrerin Birgit Schmitt-Rybol aus Lohr am Main und Berufsschullehrer Diakon Christoph Wunram aus Waigolshausen.

NEDERLAND
De Telegraaf

AMSTERDAM - Op Ameland was al veel eerder sprake van Duits kindermisbruik. Een destijds 45-jarige pastoor uit de Duitse deelstaat Nordrhein-Westfalen bekende in 2007 zijn seksueel misbruik in de rechtbank van Münster.

Dat schrijft de Leeuwarder Courant.

Het misbruik van de pastoor had enkele jaren daarvoor plaatsgevonden, rond een misviering op het eiland

UNITED STATES
Washington Post

By J. Peter Nixon

Does the Catholic Church have a future? Given the events of the last few months, the question is not impertinent. As Ross Douthat noted in a recent essay in the Atlantic, this was the year when the clerical sexual abuse crisis truly became global, reaching even into the Vatican itself. Douthat observed that "for millions in Europe and America, Catholicism is probably permanently associated with sexual scandal, rather than the gospel of Jesus Christ."

The abuse crisis was a hurricane battering a structure whose foundation had been eroding for years. The decline of sacramental practice in Europe is so obvious as to require no further comment. But smug Americans who think "it can't happen here" should look at the numbers. Rates of mass attendance and sacramental marriage among Catholics in their 20s suggest that Catholics in the West will share a common future.

Most of the solutions offered are unlikely to have much of an impact. The liberal path of greater rapprochement between Church and culture has not proven successful for those denominations that have tried it. But an embittered and joyless defense of orthodoxy -- the kind on display in far too many quarters of the Catholic internet -- repels far more people than it attracts.

IRELAND
Bock the Robber

[with photo]

This is the mass grave in Limerick’s Mount Saint Lawrence cemetery where the victims of the Good Shepherd nuns are buried. Read the names and recognise real people. These women served your parents or your grandparents, handed them their laundry and said Thanks Ma’am. Nobody asked why, or by what authority, these women were imprisoned and enslaved.

Our society — my grandparents, your grandparents, your parents, my parents, were content to let these women slave their lives away in a prison run by nuns, and nobody asked why.

Shame on us.

ILLINOIS
Chicago Sun-Times

BY CAROL MARIN Sun-Times Columnist

I spent an afternoon with six nuns. They are all women of a certain age who look like your grandmother. White hair. Sensible shoes.

These sisters have served the church faithfully for decades. They have advanced academic degrees. And experience running complex things like hospitals and schools.

They are furious.

Not a ranting, raving kind of fury. But a quieter, deeper anger born of betrayal and disrespect. ...

One nun told me that one of the sisters in her order responded recently to her Vatican-sent questioner by saying that among her serious concerns were the continued revelations about priestly pedophilia. No sooner had she given that answer than she realized from the look on her inquisitor's face that she'd just flunked the test.

The interrogation of American nuns, as you may know, will not result in a published report. The Vatican will conclude its chilling probe but will keep its conclusions to itself. A stern way of warning sisters they'd better straighten up and fly right, that someone above them is watching. No, not God. But the boys in Rome who are displeased with their independence and outspokenness. That no doubt includes Cardinal Bernard Law, the obstructor of justice from Boston about whom I have written often. Law lives a fabulous life in Rome, flies first class and remains a member of the College of Cardinals despite his massive role in the church's cover-up of pedophilia in the United States.

ITALY
Times LIVE (South Africa)

An Italian magazine cover story on gay priests with pictures of them cavorting in Rome nightclubs sparked a "troubled" reaction from the Roman Catholic diocese which said it did not condone the behaviour.

“Those who live a ‘double life’, who do not understand what it is to be a Catholic priest, should not become priests,” the diocese said in a statement after the Panorama expose hit the newsstands.

The cover shows a man’s hands adorned with pink fingernail polish and draped with a rosary, folded over a priest’s robe.

IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Saturday, July 24, 2010

THE Italian Catholic Church yesterday told gay priests not to lead a "double life" after a magazine article showed priests frequenting homosexual clubs in Rome and engaging in casual sex.

The Diocese of Rome said no one was forcing homosexual prelates to remain as priests.

It said "we don’t want to hurt them" but their conduct "muddies the reputation of all the others".

CANADA
Toronto Star

By Linda Diebel
National Affairs Writer

They’re dying quickly now, the aged survivors of an Indian residential school system in Canada that yanked tens of thousands of aboriginal children from their families and sent them far away to Christian schools to be stripped of their identity. For more than a hundred years, it was Canada’s official policy: “Take the Indian out of the Indian,” as Sir Duncan Campbell Scott, head of the Indian Affairs department, defined his mandate early in the last century.

Cree elder Gordon Williams, a residential school alumnus, retired Presbyterian minister and adviser to the special commission set up to document what happened to these children, told the Star that between five and 10 survivors are dying every week. He puts the number as high as 5,000 lost since a negotiated $2 billion court-ordered agreement created the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2006.

For them, no truth, no reconciliation.

OREGON
The Oregonian

Nancy Haught, The Oregonian

Every year, Bridget Becker rounds up parents and children from St. Juan Diego Catholic Parish to reflect on boundaries and what to do if someone breaches them. Age-appropriate videos and lesson plans spark discussions about physical, emotional and behavioral lines that no one should cross.

Starkly put, the subject is sexual abuse, and the goal is to prevent it within the parish and the broader Catholic Church. The prompt was a devastating scandal that rattled the American church and the Archdiocese of Portland eight years ago.

Becker's on staff as faith formation director at St. Juan Diego in Northwest Portland, but she's also safe environment coordinator. She organizes and presides over parish training sessions and makes sure employees and volunteers -- anyone older than 18 who expects to help out even once in any parish program or activity -- submit to and pass background checks and renew them every three years. Becker's job requires patience, persistence and painstaking records. And it's one she takes seriously.

ROME
Digital Journal

By Lynn Curwin

Rome - Using hidden cameras, a journalist from Panorama magazine filmed three priests visiting gay nightspots and taking part in homosexual activity.

The article, called Gay Priests' Nights on the Town, describes how the reporter was assisted by a gay accomplice as they worked on the article for the weekly magazine, which is owned by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

The Daily Mail said it detailed how three priests - two Italians and a Frenchman - took part in gay events and had casual sex.

Panorama said that one priest, who they called Carlo, willingly put on his cassock to have sex with the reporter's accomplice, and this was filmed by hidden camera. The reporter and accomplice later attended a Mass celebrated by Carlo.

CONNECTICUT
NBC Connecticut

By BOB CONNORS

A man who claims he was sexually abused by an Episcopal Priest is suing the South Windsor Church where he says the abuse happened nearly 40 years ago.

Robert Gough was a middle school student, when he says Rev. Bruce Jaques lured him into his office and sexually assaulted him. The alleged abuse happened in the late 1970s, according to Gough's attorneys.

The lawsuit claims Jaques told Gough he was conducting research about children and how they change physically. Gough says Jaques touched him, and performed oral sex on him. He claims Jaques tried to lure him into his officer on two other occasions, but Gough turned Jaques away.

ROME
Telegraph (United Kingdom)

By Nick Pisa in Rome
Published: 11:20PM BST 23 Jul 2010

A journalist from Panorama, a conservative weekly news magazine owned by Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, used a hidden camera to film interviews with three gay priests, who introduced the journalist to the gay clubs they apparently frequent, and allowed the journalist to film their sexual encounters with strangers, including one in a church building.

One of the priests, a Frenchman identified only as Paul, celebrated Mass in the morning before driving the two escorts he had hired to attend a party the night before to the airport, Panorama said.

The Catholic Church in Italy, still reeling from the paedophile priest scandal, responded on Friday by ordering homosexual priests who are leading a double life to come out of the closet and leave the priesthood.

ITALIA
la Repubblica

di ORAZIO LA ROCCA

CITTA' DEL VATICANO - Ma non nasce solo da ieri il via alla campagna moralizzatrice del Vicariato di Roma per i preti che svolgono la loro missione pastorale nella diocesi del Papa. Al nuovo altolà lanciato in seguito all'inchiesta choc del settimanale Panorama, il cardinale vicario Agostino Vallini arriva dopo una lunga serie di tappe-richiamo che hanno avuto in Benedetto XVI il padre ispiratore, prima nelle vesti di cardinale prefetto dell'ex Sant'Uffizio, quando nel commento alla Passione del Venerdì Santo del marzo 2005 Joseph Ratzinger sollevò il dramma della pulizia morale nel clero parlando di "sporcizia nella Chiesa".

In seguito, nelle vesti di Pontefice romano, in incontri pubblici e privati e durante pubbliche udienze, Benedetto XVI si è fatto sempre carico della necessità di rinnovare la vita ecclesiale a partire dal comportamento di religiosi e sacerdoti - ma anche di vescovi e cardinali - sia sul piano morale che spirituale. Un tema ripetuto in decine e decine di interventi (omelie, catechesi, discorsi pubblici) e in scomodi documenti redatti negli ultimi mesi in particolare sulla spinta degli scandali dei preti pedofili, ma anche per i comportamenti non proprio limpidi di ecclesiastici e monsignori coinvolti in inchieste giudiziarie per motivi assai poco pastorali. Un interventismo moralizzatore, quello del papa tedesco, che non ha lasciato indifferente nessuno, sia i fautori di una necessaria nuova pulizia nella Chiesa, che i contrari ai richiami papali, giudicati eccessivamente colpevolizzanti per l'intera comunità cattolica. Senza tuttavia dimenticare che non sono pochi quanti, dentro e fuori la Chiesa, accusano i vertici pontifici di essersi mossi in ritardo.

ROME
The Guardian (United Kingdom)

John Hooper in Rome
The Guardian, Saturday 24 July 2010

The Catholic church, already reeling from a string of clerical sex abuse scandals, was last night facing new embarrassment after an Italian magazine published an investigation into what it termed the double life of gay priests in Rome.

Using hidden cameras, the weekly Panorama, owned by Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, captured priests visiting gay clubs and bars and having sex. The Vatican does not condemn homosexuals, but it teaches that gay sex is "intrinsically disordered". In one of his earliest moves, pope Benedict barred actively gay men from studying for the priesthood.

The diocese of Rome lashed out at the prime minister's magazine, saying its aim was "to create scandal [and] defame all priests". But it also urged gay clerics to leave both the closet and the priesthood.

ROME
The Irish Times

PADDY AGNEW in Rome

NOT FOR the first time in recent months, an Italian media source yesterday revealed embarrassing details of a flourishing gay “scene” within the Holy See in Rome.

Carmelo Abbate, an undercover reporter from weekly news magazine Panorama , provides in its latest issue graphic detail of a month-long series of gay parties and brief encounters in and around the Holy See, featuring openly gay priests.

Abbate, who introduced himself into the community thanks to an (unnamed) gay friend, begins his latter-day Decameron with a party in the Testaccio area of Rome.

UNITED STATES
Politics Daily

David Gibson

An Italian magazine that went undercover to report on the sexual hijinks of three gay priests in Rome is causing a major headache for Pope Benedict XVI at a time when his record on dealing with the sexual abuse of children by clerics was already an intractable crisis for the Catholic Church.

But in this case there is actually enough blame to go around so that nobody should be pointing fingers.

First off, there are the journalistic ethics of the tabloid news magazine, Panorama, which published its expose' on Friday. Panorama is owned by Italian prime minister and media magnate Silvio Berlusconi, who has had more than a few ethical and personal troubles of his own.

ASHEVILLE (NC)
Citizen-Times

Mark Barrett • July 23, 2010

ASHEVILLE — Church officials knew about a pattern of “improper sexual activity” by the now-former music minister of St. Eugene Catholic Church before the minister came to Asheville, according to a lawsuit filed against the minister.

Former minister Paul Berrell pleaded guilty in March to a federal charge of production of child pornography.

A minor girl and her parents recently sued Berrell, St. Eugene’s former pastor, John Schneider, and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte. Berrell sexually abused the girl, the lawsuit says.

ROME
Catholic News Agency

Rome, Italy, Jul 23, 2010 / 12:10 pm (CNA).- After an Italian media report exposed sexual activity by gay priests in Rome, the Vicariate of Rome responded quickly by calling on all priests who are leading such "double lives" to come out and leave the priesthood for the good of the Church community.

The Italian weekly magazine Panorama ran a feature story on Friday morning titled, "The wild nights of gay priests." The article tracks three supposed priests, monitoring their behavior in gay nightclubs and soliciting them for sexual encounters by way of male prostitutes hired by the magazine.

The author, Carmelo Abbate, claims to have everything on tape, including the sexual acts and the same priests celebrating Mass. Panorama, considered a socialist magazine, has set up priests before using false requests for the Sacrament of Confession to "poll" what they teach on moral or political issues and then publish the results.

ITALY
NowPublic

by Amy Judd | July 23, 2010

Italian News Magazine Panorama Have Published a Report That They Say Shows Three Priests Attending Gay Nightclubs and Engaging in Casual Sex

Panorama (translated version), have published a report by one of their reporters, Carmelo Abbate, who used a hidden camera to capture three priests engaging in acts that would be considered against their standing in the Catholic Church.

Aided by a 'gay accomplice' Abbate filmed the priests taking part in 'gay events' and having casual sex. In one part the report even details that one of the priests, named 'Carlo' even put his cassock back on to have sex with the 'gay accomplice'. 'Carlo' later gave a mass, which the reporter and his sidekick also attended.

AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

BY JOANNE MCCARTHY
24 Jul, 2010

FORMER Hunter paedophile priest Vince Ryan will be tracked by satellite but will technically be a free man from August 6 after the NSW State Parole Authority granted parole yesterday.

The decision came after Ryan, 72, served a 14-year-and-two-month jail sentence and with the submission of a final psychiatric report that "clarified issues" raised at a hearing in May when he first became eligible for parole.

Ryan, one of the Hunter's most notorious paedophile priests who sexually abused 35 boys, aged six to 14, between 1972 and 1991, will be subject to "very stringent supervision and parole conditions", NSW State Parole Authority director Paul Byrnes said.

AKRON (OH)
Beacon Journal

The Rev. Samuel Ciccolini pleaded guilty Friday in federal court to banking-related and tax charges.

Ciccolini, who founded the Interval Brotherhood Home in Coventry Township and is better known as ''Father Sam,'' appeared before U.S. Judge James Gwin at the Carl B. Stokes U.S. Courthouse in Cleveland.

The judge set the sentencing for Oct. 8.

ROME
AFP

ROME — An Italian magazine cover story on gay priests with pictures of them cavorting in Rome nightclubs prompted a "troubled" Roman Catholic diocese to say Friday they do not belong in the Church.

"Those who live a 'double life', who do not understand what it is to be a Catholic priest, should not become priests," the diocese said in a statement after the Panorama weekly's expose hit the newsstands.

It was "saddened and troubled" by the story, it said.

ROME
The Associated Press

By NICOLE WINFIELD (AP)

ROME — The Catholic Church in Italy, still reeling from the clerical sex abuse scandal, lashed out Friday at gay priests who are leading a double life, urging them to come out of the closet and leave the priesthood.

The Diocese of Rome issued the strongly worded statement after the conservative Panorama newsweekly said in a cover story and accompanying video that it had interviewed three gay priests in Rome and accompanied them to gay clubs and bars and to sexual encounters with strangers, including one in a church building.

One of the priests, a Frenchman identified only as Paul, celebrated Mass in the morning before driving the two escorts he had hired to attend a party the night before to the airport, Panorama said.

UNITED STATES
EDGE Boston

by Kilian Melloy
Friday Jul 23, 2010

Italy, a devoutly Catholic country, has been shocked at reports of Catholic priests being filmed having sex in gay clubs by a magazine reporter, a July 23 article at U.K. newspaper The Daily Mail reported.

The reporter, accompanied by a "gay accomplice," spent two weeks at gay night spots. In the course of that time, he reportedly filmed three priests having sexual encounters. Two of the priests caught on video were reportedly Italian; one was French.

The Daily Mail article noted that in the wake of the pedophile priest scandal, the Catholic Church cracked down on gays, even though the great majority of child molesters identify as heterosexual. The church ordered that American seminaries not accept candidates with "deep seated homosexual tendencies." Church officials have also issued a string of proclamations about gays, saying that they are "disordered," and that they should lead celibate lives. The church has campaigned tirelessly against legal parity for gay and lesbian families. Church officials have also claimed that gay sex is "inherently evil," although the church also holds that gays do not "choose" their sexual orientation.

ROME
The Associated Press

ROME — The Italian church says gay priests must not lead a "double life," expressing pain and anger over a magazine article and video purporting to show priests frequenting gay locales in Rome.

A statement by the Roman Catholic Rome diocese on Friday said no one is forcing homosexual prelates to remain as priests. It said "we don't want to hurt them" but their conduct "muddies the reputation of all the others."

The weekly Panorma magazine said it interviewed several gay priests in Rome and accompanied them to clubs frequented by homosexuals in the capital. It quoted one as saying that 98 percent of the priests he knew were gay.

UKRAINE
Kyiv Post

The Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office has said that at present there is no evidence of MPs being involved in a child sex abuse scandal.

"As of today, the investigation hasn't proved the involvement [of MPs] and, moreover, there is no evidence that can give reasons to open a criminal case against well-known MPs," Deputy Prosecutor General Vitaliy Schotkin said at a press conference on Thursday, July 22. ...

The management of Artek also rebuffed allegations of sexual molestation of children at the children's center.

Moreover, the media reported that a priest of the Uman Eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) was also involved in the child sex abuse scandal.

GERMANY
Earth Times

Berlin - Walter Mixa, 69, the German Catholic bishop who was driven out of office for smacking orphans, discovered Friday that he is not even welcome in a home for retired nuns.

The superannuated sisters are worried the media will stake out their convent in the pretty German hill town of Fuenfstetten when Mixa, a brash conservative fond of the limelight, moves in soon.

Sister Beda Rauch, vicar-provincial of the Order of St Francis, said Friday, "The public interest may disturb our convent life."

UNITED STATES
National Catholic Register

by Edward Pentin
Friday, July 23, 2010

Yet more scandalous revelations for the Church to deal with: the current issue of Italian magazine Panorama is making headlines after it conducted an undercover investigation of suspected practising homosexual priests in Rome.

In a sensationalist cover story which hit the newsstands today entitled “The Wild Nights of Gay Priests”, the article’s author, together with an accomplice who was homosexual, claims to have documented the double lives of a number of priests using a hidden camera.

The Berlusconi-owned weekly doesn’t give precise numbers of Rome priests involved, saying only that there are “numerous cases”, but it claims to have compromising evidence of three priests. In the article, they are given the fictitious names of Paul, Charles and Luke, one French, and two Italian.

UNITED STATES
New York Daily News

BY Sean Alfano
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Friday, July 23rd 2010

Smile, Father, you're on a very candid camera.

An Italian magazine has sparked a priest sex scandal in the country with details claiming some men of the cloth shed their robes at gay clubs.

Using a hidden camera, the journalist and a "gay" accomplice filmed the priests having sex, the Daily Mail reports.

The magazine, which is owned by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, said the investigation was meant to expose priests who live a double-life.

ROME
Catholic News Service

By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service

ROME (CNS) -- In the wake of an undercover video and news report documenting priests in Rome engaged in homosexual acts, the Rome Diocese has called for priests engaged in "unworthy" behavior to leave the priesthood and stop sullying the reputation of the vast majority of honorable ministers.

While the diocese also condemned the article for its overall aim of discrediting the church, it did say it "is committed to rigorously prosecute, according to church norms, any behavior unworthy of priestly life."

On July 23 the Italian weekly newsmagazine, Panorama, published a lengthy dossier detailing the sexual behavior of some priests residing in Rome.

UNITED KINGDOM
Pink Paper

James Sanders

The credibility of the Catholic church was dealt another blow today, after an Italian magazine claimed to have footage of celibate priests having gay sex.

A journalist from Panorama magazine – a publication owned by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi – is claiming to have covertly filmed three priests in a damning exposé.

The Vatican, the seat of the Catholic church, has made no official comment as yet.

UNITED KINGDOM
Pink Paper

James Sanders

The Catholic church has informed gay priests not to lead a "double life" after a magazine owned by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi claimed to have footage of celibate priests having gay sex.

According to PA, the Roman Catholic Rome diocese said no one was forcing homosexual prelates to remain as priests.

It said "we don't want to hurt them" but their conduct "muddies the reputation of all the others."

ITALY
HULIQ

Submitted by KC Kelly Ph.D. on 2010-07-23

A weekly news magazine has released details today, about a gay priest sex scandal that has shocked and appalled the Catholic Church in Italy. The investigation has been called shocking and has many Catholics, as well as others, up in arms. This is not the first sex scandal this year for the Catholic Church. There have been others since January involving pedophile acts perpetrated by Catholic priests.

In this gay priest sex scandal, the occurrence of three priests who were found to have attended gay nightspots in Italy were also filmed having casual sex there. A journalist from Panorama Magazine, which is a publication owned by the Italian Prime Minister and media baron Silvio Berlusconi, used hidden cameras to film the acts. The footage taken of these acts will be revealed shortly, according to the Panorama article.

Panorama Magazine stated, "The investigation as 'deeply disturbing' as it detailed how three priests, two Italians and a Frenchman, happily took part in gay events and had casual sex.".

ITALIA
Panorama

[con le foto ed il video]

Si moltiplicano in queste ore le reazioni all’inchiesta di Panorama sui preti omosessuali, i cui video ci sono stati richiesti anche dalle più importanti emittenti televisive internazionali. Ieri un’anonima fonte vaticana aveva bollato frettolosamente come “semplice scandalismo” le rivelazioni del newsmagazine della Mondadori. Oggi, in base alle nostre risultanze, sarebbe in corso un’indagine della Curia per verificare, accanto alla veridicità dell’inchiesta, chi siano i preti omosessuali di cui ha scritto l’inchiesta. Una posizione più netta è stata invece assunta oggi dal vicariato di Roma, in una nota, che ribadisce - oltre alla condanna dello scoop che vuole “creare scandalo e diffamare tutti i sacerdoti” - quella che è la dottrina della Chiesa sul rapporto tra omosessualità e voti. Se ci sono sacerdoti gay, scrive il Vicariato, ”coerenza vorrebbe che venissero allo scoperto”, perché ”nessuno li costringe a rimanere preti, sfruttandone solo i benefici”.

UNITED STATES
U.S. Catholic

Friday, July 23, 2010
By Bryan Cones

The UK Mail is reporting today that the Italian magazine Panorama, owned by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, is publishing an expose of three gay priests--two Italians and a Frenchman--who are leading double lives in Rome, priests by day and party boys by night, complete with gay nightclubs and casual sex. More great publicity for the priesthood. The Vicar of Rome is so incensed that he has called for gay priests to come out of the closet and leave the priesthood. Oh, brother.

This will add further fuel to the claims those, as the Catholic League's Bill Donohue argued on the Washington Post's On Faith blog, that the church doesn't have a pedophilia problem, it has a homosexuality problem. Setting aside the fact that Donohue is completely missing the point--the sex abuse crisis is finally a governance problem exposed by a terrible crime against children--he does have a point, kind of.

The real problem here is not that there are three priests running wild in gay Rome; there are plenty of priests--straight and gay--who misbehave sexually with other adults. The problem is that only these gay priests are the news, not all the other gay priests who labor faithfully, honoring their commitments along with their straight brothers as best they can. We don't hear their stories because they can't tell them for fear of expulsion. And that isn't right.

IOWA
Radio Iowa

by Pat Curtis on July 23, 2010

The director of a victim rights group is calling on a group of nuns to cancel a choir performance directed by a man who’s accused of sexually abusing a high school student in the 1990s. Steve Thiesen of Hudson is the Iowa director of SNAP – the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. He’s upset that the concert, scheduled for this Sunday afternoon near Dubuque, is set to be directed by Bradley Barrett. A Springfield, Missouri man claimed last year that Barrett repeatedly abused him between 1992 and ‘95 when Barrett was teaching at a school near Springfield.

Thiesen says he’s shocked the Dominican nuns are allowing the concert to happen while Barrett is facing a civil lawsuit. “You end up giving these accused abusers some respectability and they use that to gain the trust of parents which in turn gets them at the children. We don’t understand why they’re taking a risk with this,” Thiesen told Radio Iowa. “I would not invite him until this thing is settled.”

Barrett was working at the University of Northern Iowa before being placed on paid leave and later fired last December. He’s now director of the Cedar Rapids based Chorale Midwest choir. “The man has a right to earn a living…so does a school bus operator, but if that school bus operator has two or three OWIs, why risk him driving a school bus with children?” Thiesen said.

IOWA
Telegraph Herald

An Iowa activist protested outside the Dubuque Archdiocese offices Thursday afternoon against a chorale concert to be held at Sinsinawa Mound, Wis., this weekend.

Steve Theisen, director of the Iowa Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said the Dominican sisters are hosting a concert by the Chorale Midwest choir. The group's director, Bradley T. Barrett, is accused in a civil lawsuit of child sexual abuse. Theisen called it "stunningly careless for Wisconsin nuns and Madison's bishop to let any Catholic group bring Barrett into their diocese."

The Sinsinawa sisters said in a statement, "We understand that the lawsuit against Dr. Barrett is still in process and that our judicial system, rather than the media, will resolve the suit. While we are grateful for the vigilant concern of SNAP, and while we do not see the concert as an occasion of risk for children or minors, we will be especially conscious of our responsibility for the safety of all attending the concert."

UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

by John L Allen Jr on Jul. 23, 2010 All Things Catholic

I happen to be a baseball guy, but fans of any sport will readily recognize two points: One, the pleasure that comes from talking about the game with someone who really knows their stuff; two, the agony of being trapped with a blowhard who doesn't know the infield fly rule from the designated hitter, but who nevertheless feels compelled to broadcast his or her opinions -- why the Yankees' payroll is unjust, why Manny Ramirez is overrated, and so on.

The insufferable part isn't whatever conclusion the person advocates (I can see the case for both of the above, though I demur on each point), but the blend of ignorance and certitude in which they usually come wrapped. In such moments, one yearns for somebody to enforce the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's dictum: "Everybody's entitled to their own opinion, but nobody's entitled to their own facts."

More or less the same observation, in my experience, applies to debates about the Vatican. In recent weeks, the air has been filled with competing opinions on various Vatican matters: Whether or not it was appropriate for the Vatican to treat the sexual abuse of minors and the attempted ordination of women in the same legal document, for example, or whether Pope Benedict XVI's record on handling sex abuse cases while he was at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith passes muster. People who've done their homework can reach very different conclusions on such subjects, and informed perspectives are always worth hearing.

ITALY
Bloomberg

The Vicar of Rome today called on homosexual clergymen in the Catholic Church to “come out” and leave the priesthood.

The Vicar of Rome, one of the most important positions in the Vatican, was responding to a report today in Panorama Magazine that said Catholic priests were conducting a double life, citing secret video footage.

ITALIA
Radio Vaticana

“Creare lo scandalo” e “diffamare tutti i sacerdoti”: è questo, secondo il Vicariato di Roma, l’obiettivo di un lungo articolo pubblicato oggi dal settimanale “Panorama” sul comportamento di alcuni sacerdoti gay. I fatti raccontati, si legge nella nota del Vicariato, “non possono non suscitare dolore e sconcerto nella comunità ecclesiale di Roma, che conosce da vicino i suoi sacerdoti non dalla ‘doppia vita’, ma con una ‘vita sola’, felice e gioiosa, coerente alla vocazione, donata a Dio e a servizio della gente, impegnata a vivere e testimoniare il Vangelo e modello di moralità per tutti”.

ITALIA
Corriere Della Sera

ROMA - Feste e afterhours, solo per preti gay nella Capitale. L'invito viaggia via sms e i locali sono sempre gli stessi. Lo sostiene un esponente di Arcigay: spesso nomi e indirizzi dei locali che ospiterebbero feste private omosex solo per religiosi verrebbero affidati alle chat. Come succede per il meccanismo di convocazione dei rave e per altri raduni esclusivi.

Sarebbero una decina a Roma - stando a quanto dichiara Fabrizio Marrazzo, presidente di Arcigay della Capitale - i preti che frequentano gli ambienti gay della Capitale, e tra loro ci sarebbero sacerdoti di diversi ordine e grado, incluse «persone che con il tempo sono diventate vescovi».

ANONIMATO GARANTITO - «Non è un mistero che ci siano preti e sacerdoti che a Roma frequentano ambienti e locali gay - spiega Marrazzo - ma ovviamente si tratta di feste private. E comunque di certo non condanno tutto questo». Sms e chat garantiscono anonimato ed esclusività.

Di questi locali, i cui nomi si tramandano con un discreto passaparola, qualcuno gravita dalle parti della gay-street, via di San Giovanni in Laterano, altri dalle parti d Testaccio. Come il «69», frequentato ritrovo per feste in tema e solo per gay. E secondo Marrazzo al Gay Village, a Roma, una delle manifestazioni all'aperto più grande d'Italia - con discoteche, un ciclo teatrale, una rassegna di film -, la privacy è d'obbligo anche perchè «quando vengono certo non vestono la tonaca».

ITALIA
Il Messaggero

ROMA (23 luglio) - Se ci sono sacerdoti gay, «coerenza vorrebbe che venissero allo scoperto», perché «nessuno li costringe a rimanere preti, sfruttandone solo i benefici». Lo afferma il vicariato di Roma in una nota diffusa all'indomani delle rivelazioni di Panorama su alcuni preti che condurrebbero una «doppia vita», frequentando nel tempo libero i locali di ritrovo degli omosessuali della capitale.

«Dolore e sconcerto nella comunità ecclesiale di Roma» ha suscitato l'articolo pubblicato da Panorama, ma la comunità «conosce da vicino i suoi sacerdoti», e sa che la stragrande maggioranza rappresenta un «modello di moralità per tutti». È quanto afferma il Vicariato. «La finalità dell'articolo è evidente: creare lo scandalo, diffamare tutti i sacerdoti, sulla base della dichiarazione di uno degli intervistati secondo il quale 'il 98 per cento dei sacerdoti che conosce è omosessualè, screditare la Chiesa; e - per altro verso - fare pressione contro quella parte della Chiesa da loro definita 'intransigente, che si sforza di non guardare la realtà dei preti omosessuali».

ITALY
Daily Mail (United Kingdom)

By Nick Pisa

A gay priest sex scandal has rocked the Catholic Church in Italy today after a weekly news magazine released details of a shock investigation it had carried out.

Using hidden cameras, a journalist from Panorama magazine - owned by Italian Prime Minister and media baron Silvio Berlusconi - filmed three priests as they attended gay nightspots and had casual sex.

Today there was no immediate comment from the Italian Bishops Conference and the Vatican - which has been rocked by a series of sex scandals involving paedophile priests since the start of the year.

SALINAS (CA)
The Californian

A Monterey County prosecutor called back two police officers to clarify their testimony Thursday in a hearing for a Salinas priest accused of sexually assaulting a teen.

Arguments are scheduled at 1:30 p.m. Sept. 16, followed by a ruling from Superior Court Judge Terrance Duncan.

The Rev. Antonio Cortes of St. Mary of the Nativity Church in Salinas, 42, was ordered to stand trial on felony charges of sodomy with a minor and misdemeanor counts of possession of child pornography

UNITED KINGDOM
Guardian

[Crimen document]

Andrew Brown

I have been rereading the infamous Crimen Sollicitationis, the Vatican document from 1922 which laid down policy for cases of sex abuse, and which has been held up as evidence that there was a world-wide organised coverup of paedophilia. It's hardly gripping, which may be why until now I never made it through to the end. But it is worth persevering to Title Five, on crimen pessimum, because that casts the whole story in an entirely different light.

The crimen pessimum that the Vatican defines (the official translation is "the foulest crime") is not just child abuse and bestiality, though these are explicitly mentioned. But it is first defined to cover all forms of gay sex that a priest may have with anyone:

The term crimen pessimum ["the foulest crime"] is here understood to mean any external obscene act, gravely sinful, perpetrated or attempted by a cleric in any way whatsoever with a person of his own sex."

NORTHERN IRELAND
The Irish Times

GERRY MORIARTY Northern Editor

VICTIMS OF alleged Catholic institutional child abuse in Northern Ireland have described a meeting at Stormont Castle yesterday with First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness as “positive and constructive”.

The group of victims are seeking a public inquiry into alleged abuse at former Stormont state-funded but Catholic-run institutions, an apology from Mr Robinson and Mr McGuinness on behalf of the Northern state, and compensation for victims of abuse.

SDLP Assembly member Conall McDevitt, who accompanied four victims to the meeting with Patrick Corrigan of Amnesty, said yesterday’s encounter was the beginning of what would be a detailed process to achieve justice.

NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

In a move that could finally signal a public probe into clerical child abuse in Northern Ireland, the First and Deputy First Ministers have met with a group of victims.

Campaigners — who have called for a public inquiry into the scandal after the Ryan report in the Republic ruled that mistreatment in Catholic and state-run institutions was endemic — said yesterday they were hopeful of progress following their meeting with the ministers in Stormont yesterday.

Margaret McGuckin, who was abused at a Sisters of Nazareth orphanage in Belfast from the age of three, said: “I am pleased with what went on. This is only one day, it is not us going away, it is just one day at a time but we are more hopeful than we were (yesterday) morning,” she said.

INDIA
CathNews

Women Religious have slammed a recent Vatican document equating women’s ordination with sexual abuse of children, calling it “derogatory” and “shocking.”

“I am shocked at this statement. It is painful, absurd and a violation of the dignity of women,” said Sister Mary Scaria of Delhi archdiocese’s commission for justice and peace.

The Vatican on July 15 issued new rules to deal with abusive priests. It said priests who molest the mentally ill or use child pornography are in the same category as pedophile priests.

UNITED KINGDOM
Pink Paper

Chris Housden

The government have proposed legal changes that could stop an arrest warrant being issued against Pope Benedict XVI.

Campaigners had been planning to use international laws to issue the warrant during the Pope’s visit in September, the BBC report. However, a warrant may not be possible now that Justice Secretary Ken Clarke has proposed changes to universal jurisdiction.

Under the law, any individual can be tried in Britain for war crimes, crimes against humanity and torture, even if committed on foreign soil. Clarke’s changes would mean any warrant would have to be consented by Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer, QC.

CALIFORNIA
The Sacramento Bee

Published: Thursday, Jul. 22, 2010
ANAHEIM, Calif. -- An Anaheim pastor has been sentenced to six years in prison for sexually assaulting four girls who attended his church.

Jose Rama Campoverde was sentenced Thursday after he pleaded guilty to one felony count of lewd acts on a child under 14, five felony counts of lewd acts on a child and two misdemeanor counts of child annoyance.

UNITED KINGDOM
Guardian

Riazat Butt, religious affairs correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 22 July 2010

In a move designed to coincide with the pope's visit to Britain in September, London buses are to carry posters calling for the ordination of women.

The initiative, from the UK group Catholic Women's Ordination (CWO), will see buses carrying the slogan "Pope Benedict Ordain Women Now".

According to the weekly Catholic magazine the Tablet, CWO has paid about £10,000 for the posters to appear on 10 buses for a month from August 30.

UNITED STATES
Washington Post

By: Bill Donohue

Anthony Stevens-Arroyo says I am wrong to challenge elite opinion on the subject of priestly sexual abuse. The conventional wisdom maintains there is a pedophilia crisis in the Catholic Church; I maintain it has been a homosexual crisis all along. The evidence is all on my side, though there is a reluctance to let the data drive the conclusion. But that is a function of politics, not scholarship.

Alfred Kinsey was the first to identify a correlation between homosexuality and the sexual abuse of minors. In 1948, he found that 37 percent of all male homosexuals admitted to having sex with children under 17 years old. More recently, in organs such as the Archives of Sexual Behavior, the Journal of Sex Research, the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy and Pediatrics, it has been established that homosexuals are disproportionately represented among child molesters.

Correlation is not causation; it is an association. So to say that there is a correlation between homosexual orientation and the sexual abuse of minors is not to say that being a homosexual makes one a molester. Indeed, as I have said many times, most gay priests are not molesters, but most of the molesters have been gay. In other words, although sexual orientation does not cause sexual abuse, the fact that there is a relationship between homosexuality and the sexual abuse of minors cannot be ignored in dealing with this problem.

UNITED STATES
Catholic News Agency

Washington D.C., Jul 22, 2010 / 06:59 pm (CNA).- Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, spoke out in an article on the Washington Post's website on Thursday, defending his assertion that the widespread perception of a “pedophilia crisis in the Catholic Church” is not supported by data and research. The more significant problem, Donohue argued, is the incidence of homosexuality among priests.

Citing a number of medical journals in the field of human sexuality research, Donohue explained in his submission to the Washington Post's “On Faith” section that “homosexuals are disproportionately represented among child molesters.” Statistically, he said, the evidence for a “link between homosexuality and the sexual abuse of minors” in the general population is “overwhelming.”

This link is borne out in the majority of sex offenses committed by priests, according to Donohue. “As I have said many times, most gay priests are not molesters, but most of the molesters have been gay.”

UNITED STATES
Bombay News (India)

Thursday 22nd July, 2010

Pope Benedict XVI has agreed to defrock a US priest accused of sexually molesting a teenage boy more than 30 years ago.

The Vatican notified the Diocese of Youngstown in Ohio that Thomas Crum had been removed from the priesthood at his own request.

Crum had been removed from active ministry after a former high school student accused him of sexual abuse during the 1970’s.

NORTH CAROLINA
Charlotte Observer

By Tim Funk
tfunk@charlotteobserver.com
Posted: Friday, Jul. 23, 2010

Tears of sadness flowed that Sunday morning in June 1986. After nine years, parishioners at Charlotte's Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic Church were saying goodbye to the Rev. Joseph Kelleher - better known to them as "Father Joe," their pastor.

In the months leading up to this farewell Mass, many members of the church had written angry, frustrated letters to the bishop, protesting the reassignment of this charismatic priest with the Irish brogue to a parish in Asheville.

Kelleher, then 58, had especially endeared himself to the church's youth, many of whom called him their "second father." "He's not just my pastor, he's my best friend," one church employee and youth group alumnus told the Observer that day.

AUSTRALIA
Macarthur Chronicle

IN a heartfelt and candid pastoral letter, Bishop of Wollongong Peter Ingham has admitted the leadership of the Catholic Church failed parishioners in the diocese by its tardiness to address child sexual abuse at the hands of clergy and lay members.

Bishop Ingham’s apology was read or watched on DVD in all churches across the Macarthur region, Southern Highlands, Illawarra and Shoalhaven on July 17. Stepping outside of the shadows of some of the church’s most shameful secrets and cover-ups, Bishop Ingham was unreserved in his regret.

“I offer my sincere apology to those who have suffered abuse at the hands of a member of the cerly or indeed, any person representing the Catholic Church, particularly one who was ministering in the name of the Diocese of Wollongong. You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry,” he said.

OHIO
The Plain Dealer

Michael O'Malley, The Plain Dealer

The Vatican has touched off a firestorm by including the ordination of women to the priesthood in a list of church law offenses as grave as pedophilia.

The pronouncement last week was part of a wider revision of church laws that streamlined the process to discipline priests accused of sexually abusing children. It also listed the ordination of women with offenses such as heresy and schism and re-emphasized that women who become ordained, along with priests or bishops who ordain them, will be excommunicated.

Forbidding women to be ordained is nothing new in the modern church, but reiterating that taboo in a list of revised laws that condemn pedophilia was viewed by some Catholics as an unnecessary slap at women.

MASON CITY (MO)
Globe Gazette

By DEB NICKLAY deb.nicklay@globegazette.com | Posted: Thursday, July 22, 2010

MASON CITY — A victim rights groups is asking the Iowa Choral Directors Association to cancel an appearance by a conductor who is accused of sexually molesting a former student.

Bradley T. Barrett, conductor of Midwest Chorale, an adult choral group from Cedar Rapids, is scheduled to appear as part of the annual directors’ annual convention at North Iowa Area Community College, which begins on Monday.

Barrett has denied all accusations.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests sent a letter to association president Roger Henderson of Grinnell and president-elect Norm Grimm of Newton, asking that Barrett be banned from the performance.

GERMANY
The Wall Street Journal

By VANESSA FUHRMANS
German prosecutors said they dropped an investigation into Germany's top-ranking Catholic bishop after finding no proof that he had knowingly allowed a priest accused of sexually abusing a child in the 1960s to be assigned to a parish some two decades later.

Prosecutors in the southwestern German city of Konstanz launched the probe in early June after an alleged victim of the priest filed a complaint that Robert Zollitsch, archbishop of Freiburg and the head of Germany's Bishops' Conference, abetted the priest's sexual abuse by reassigning him while Archbishop Zollitsch was the archdiocese's personnel chief in the 1980s. After being assigned to the new parish in 1987, the priest allegedly committed sexual abuse again, according to the complaint.

In a statement issued late Wednesday, the prosecutors' office said it found no evidence of wrongdoing by the 71-year-old archbishop. "Since no concrete abuse cases or victims' names have come to light from the priest's second period in Birnau from 1987 to 1992, there are no grounds for holding Dr. Zollitsch criminally responsible," the statement said. Nor could prosecutors conclude that the archbishop acted with knowledge that the priest might commit sexual abuse in his new post, it said.

WARREN (MI)
The Detroit News

Christine Ferretti / The Detroit News
Warren -- Parishioners and colleagues from a Baptist church in Warren filled a courtroom today for a preliminary hearing for their pastor, who is accused of sexually abusing a teenage boy and accosting two other boys.

Warren District Court Judge Matthew P. Sabaugh instead granted an adjournment in the case to allow the attorney for Antioch Baptist Church pastor Christopher Settlemoir more time to review evidence.

Settlemoir's attorney, Stephen Rabaut, took the pastor's case late last month. A new examination date was set for Aug. 17.

UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Jul. 22, 2010
By A.W. Richard Sipe

Many people, including bishops, date and lable the "Crisis in the Catholic Church" to Jan. 6, 2002 when The Boston Globe began publishing its series about sexual abuse of minors by priests and revealing the conspiracy of bishops in covering up crimes. That was the flash point of a worldwide scandal. The crisis it epitomizes is more profound.

The uncontrollable public exposure and sharp focus on clergy sex abuse shocked everyone, but the fact of a church and priesthood in crisis did not come as a surprise to the United States hierarchy. "It is clear that we are in some kind of a crisis of priestly ministry. The nature of the crisis is not at all that clear." Those were the words Daniel Pilarczyk archbishop of Cincinnati directed at his fellow bishops on June 14, 1986. He went on to provide a checklist of possibilities: "Is it a crisis of image? Is it a crisis of numbers? Is it a crisis of celibacy? -- change? -- lay ministries? -- prayer? -- secularism? -- confidence? It is probably all of these and perhaps other things as well. And we have to respond to the crisis."(1)

Already in 1972 sociologist Fr. Andrew Greeley reported to the five bishops and the twelve priest consultants of the Ad Hoc Committee on Priestly Life and Ministry set up by the NCCB. He explained his Sociological Investigation of American Priesthood that he instigated at the request of the bishops. "There appears to be a crisis in vocations to the priesthood." (2) His suggestions for supporting clergy development were presented in juxtaposition with the findings of Father Gene Kennedy and Doctor Victor Heckler who had been commissioned by the bishops to produce a Psychological Investigation of the priesthood in the United States. (3)

UNITED KINGDOM
Guardian

Andrew Brown

Was there a centrally organised cover up of child abuse within the Catholic church? This is one of the main charges against the institution. I don't believe it myself; I think there were disorganised and decentralised efforts to conceal scandal, just as there are in almost any organisation which discovers paedophiles working for it, from Islington Council to the United Nations. It doesn't excuse the efforts that were made, but it doesn't suggest, either, that the Vatican is a uniquely wicked institution.

The main charge against the church in this context is that there was a document – itself secret – which bound bishops to secrecy when dealing with cases of child abuse. It seems clear that very few people knew of the document in question (Crimen Sollicitationis), which dated from 1922. This states that it is the CDF (the Vatican department that enforces orthodoxy) which must deal with the use of the confessional for sexual exploitation and with the abuse of pre-adolescent children, which is described in the document as crimen pessimum, the worst of all crimes.

But the document was never properly issued. Like the planning application to demolish the earth in Hitchikers' Guide to the Galaxy, it never reached most of the bishops who needed to know of it. It was not, for example, reprinted for all the bishops at the Second Vatican Conference. One might think that there was not much use in having a policy of secrecy so secret that not even the bishops bound to secrecy were allowed to know about it.

GHANA
Peace FM

ROMEO CATHOLIC Priest Rev. Father Charles Asamoah who stands accused of hacking his lover over a trivial disagreement on infidelity has been granted bail by an Obuasi Circuit Court, after making his third appearance in court.

Father Asamoah is said to have inflicted multiple knife wounds on 42-year-old Janet Dwamena Agyapomaa, aka Yaa Kwahu, after their secret amorous affair turned sour and now faces the criminal charge of attempted murder in addition to two counts of unlawful harm and threat of death.

The court, presided over by Gilbert Ayisi Addo, did not take the accused priest’s plea but granted him bail in the sum of GH¢10,000 with one surety to be justified. Rev. Asamoah will come back to court on August 5.

WATERBURY (CT)
Waterbury Republican-American

WATERBURY -- A public defender for the Rev. Kevin Gray, a city priest accused of bilking Sacred Heart Parish out of $1.3 million, entered not guilty pleas on Gray's behalf Wednesday in Waterbury Superior Court.

Gray is facing a first-degree larceny charge and is being held on a $750,000 bond. Police say he stole church funds to pay for a lavish lifestyle that included posh hotel stays and male escorts.

IOWA
Des Moines Register

By TOM WITOSKY • twitosky@dmreg.com • July 22, 2010

A victims' rights group is demanding that Iowa school choir directors cancel a performance at their annual convention next week by a Cedar Rapids-based choir whose director has been accused of sexually abusing a high school student nearly 20 years ago.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests said Wednesday that it had asked the Iowa Choir Directors Association to cancel Tuesday's performance by Chorale Midwest, directed by Bradley Barrett.

"You are responsible for the safety and well-being of every member of your association. A simple Google search would have shown that there's a current civil lawsuit, filed just last year, charging that Barrett repeatedly molested this Missouri boy. Given this fact, it's stunningly careless for you to let a man like Barrett into your organization's statewide meeting," a letter to association officials says.

AUSTRALIA
ABC News

A former student from a boarding school in central-west New South Wales has told a court that he knew a teacher was molesting his classmates.

The student has given evidence at the trial of 77-year-old James Patrick Jennings who has been charged with six counts of indecent assault.

Mr Jennings is accused of molesting several young boys while he taught at St Stanislaus in Bathurst during the 1960s.

AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

JUST a few metres from where his younger brother slept, priest James Patrick Jennings indecently assaulted boys in a Catholic boarding school dormitory, a court has been told.

Aged in his 20s at the time of the allegations in the early 1960s, Mr Jennings - the dean of St Stanislaus Catholic College at Bathurst in regional NSW - would allegedly walk among the sleeping boys, aged about 12, and is charged with having sat on the beds of some and fondled them.

Some 50 years later, an elderly Mr Jennings has pleaded not guilty to six counts of indecent assault against four boys at the school.

DUITSLAND
RKnieuws

BERLIJN (RKnieuws.net) - De Duitse Justitie heeft woensdag aangekondigd dat zij een punt zet achter het onderzoek tegen aartsbisschop Robert Zollitsch, de leider van de katholieke Kerk in Duitsland. De aartsbisschop werd verdacht van medeplichtigheid aan seksueel misbruik.

Begin juni opende het parket van Konstanz een onderzoek tegen de aartsbisschop. Dit gebeurde naar aanleiding van een klacht van een man die verklaarde dat hij tussen 1966 en 1968 seksueel misbruikt werd door een monnik van de abdij van Birnau. Volgens de klager had mgr. Zollitsch niet enkel zijn ogen gesloten voor het misbruik maar ging hij later ook akkoord met de heropname van de monnik in de abdij.

Het parket oordeelde nu dat de feiten uit de jaren 1960 verjaard zijn en dat dit ook geldt voor een eventuele medeplichtigheid van de aartsbisschop. Mgr. Zollitsch heeft de aantijgingen steeds ontkend.

ASHEVILLE (NC)
Courthouse News Service

By DAN MCCUE

ASHEVILLE, N.C. (CN) - When a Catholic church's choirmaster was arrested on charges of sexual abuse of a child, his supervising priest abruptly left a parish school board meeting and went to the choirmaster's apartment to destroy evidence of the crimes by deleting files from the man's computer, a girl's parents claim in Buncombe County Court.

The girl and her parents sued the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte, the Rev. John Schneider, and the choirmaster, Paul Lawrence Berrell. They claim that Schneider went to Berrell's apartment for the express purpose of deleting pornographic images of children from Berrell's home computer - some of which he had made himself.

The Doe family claims Berrell, music minister at the Parish of St. Eugene, and music and choral teacher at Asheville Catholic School, is a serial child abuser whom the Catholic Church had moved from one parish to another each time his predations came to light.

CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Catholic News

(POSTED: 7/22/10) Speaking at the monthly Catholic Citizens of Illinois luncheon on July 9, Fr. Paul Check pressed one of the hottest social-climate buttons around -- converting same-sex people to opposite-sexers.

As recently installed national director of Courage, which sponsors 12-step programs in 100-plus U.S. dioceses (not in Chicago) and overseas, he's in the business of helping people make the change, which is vigorously challenged by same-sex activists. ...

Asked about priest molesters, he noted that according to the bishops-authorized John Jay College study, 80 to 90 percent of victims have been adolescent males, which he said demonstrates homosexuality as causative factor. This "ephebophilia," victimizing of adolescents, is in contrast to the more commonly used "pedophilia," which refers to children as victims.

Fr. Check spoke at the Catholic Citizens monthly luncheon at the Union League Club to 45 or so people. He was given his new job as Courage director by his bishop. He succeeds the Courage ministry's founder and long-time director, Fr. John Harvey.

DELAWARE
Leagle

In re: CATHOLIC DIOCESE OF WILMINGTON, INC., Chapter 11, Debtor.
OFFICIAL COMMITTEE OF UNSECURED CREDITORS, Plaintiff,
v.
CATHOLIC DIOCESE OF WILMINGTON, INC., et al., Defendants.
Case No. 09-13560 (CSS), Adv. Proc. No. 09-52866.
United States Bankruptcy Court, D. Delaware.

July 21, 2010.
...

The Court considered the entirety of the evidence presented in the case. Nonetheless, it ruled that the defendants had failed to meet their burden of tracing the funds. The defendants have not identified any evidence presented but overlooked by the Court that might reasonably have altered the result. Thus, the motion for reconsideration must be denied.[ 20 ]

The Court will issue an order.

UNITED STATES
Washington Post

Anthony Stevens-Arroyo

According to Dr. William Donohue of the Catholic League, the Catholic Church does not have a "pedophilia crisis." His opinion is contradicted by numerous court documents, statements of the U.S. Bishops, the Vatican, and Pope Benedict XVI, each of whom have condemned the pattern of covered-up case of clerical pedophilia. So if a pedophilia crisis is clear to these officials and to more than 60 million American Catholics, why does Dr. Bill continuously repeat that there is none?

To be sure, he admits to a problem of sexual abuse among Catholic clergy, but in a advertisement published in the New York Times (March 30, 2010), Donohue argues that ... "all along it's been a homosexual crisis." Citing the exhaustive study out of John Jay College in New York, Donohue notes that "Eighty percent of the victims of priestly abuse are male." The male-with-male character is sufficient to change pedophilia into homosexual relations in Donohue's way of thinking. On CNN (Rick's List, March 31, 2010), Donohue summarized this position in his unenviable style: " ...yes, there's a connection between homosexuality and sexual abuse of minors...They can't keep their hands off the boys, don't you get it?"

Perhaps this makes sense in some universe based on locker-room logic. But counting the frequency of male-with-male relations is not the same as scientific study of homosexual behavior. Since Donohue took his doctorate in the social sciences, he strays beyond his field of competence when defining the motives for sexual abuse. Such analysis properly belong to fields like psychology. You wouldn't want a hair-dresser's definition of a "split end" to be applied to a football coach's plays for a "split end" and social science's terms do not always apply to the behavioral sciences. As noted by Andrew Sullivan, Donohue confuses sexual orientation with sexual abuse. Educated discourse among Catholics deserves more sophistication, I think, and clarity of definitions is a good place to begin.

RHODE ISLAND
Rhode Island Catholic

BY BISHOP THOMAS J. TOBIN
7/22/10

A recent headline in a Catholic website caught my attention: “Trust evaporating – Poll finds clergy trustworthiness slips precipitously.” The poll surveyed attitudes about the clergy in Canada.

According to the survey, 61 percent of Canadians trust church representatives, far below the 97 percent who trust firefighters and the 94 percent who trust nurses. The good news in this poll, if there is any, is that clergy still rank above the pollsters themselves (59 percent), journalists (48 percent) and politicians (just 15 percent). Small comfort it seems.

Although this particular story doesn’t report it, without a doubt, the trustworthiness of clergy in the United States has suffered a similar sharp decline in recent years.

Most of this, of course, is related to the well-documented clergy sexual abuse crisis. And while Catholic priests have received most of the attention, there have been abuses and scandals in just about every church and denomination – evangelicals, mainline Protestants, Jewish, Muslim, and homemade religions to be sure.

UNITED STATES
First Things

Wednesday, July 21, 2010
R.R. Reno

Mercatornet recently posted an interview with Fr. Giovanni Cucci, S.J., who, along with Fr. Hans Zollner, S.J., is the author of ŒChiesa e pedofilia. Una ferita aperta. Un approccio psicologico-pastorale (The Church and Paedophilia. An Open Wound. A Pastoral-Psychological Approach) Milan, Ancora, 2010.

Obviously, the phenomenon of pedophilia is complex. And just as complex are the reasons why the bishops and others in positions of responsibility in the Catholic Church failed to do anything, and even protected those guilty of sexual abuse.

That said, Fr. Gucci makes an important point about the way in which Western culture has celebrated sexual perversions in recent decades.

GUAM
Guam News Watch

Written by John Dela Rosa, Guam News Watch
Thursday, July 22, 2010

GUAM - He called it perfect timing.
Although no one showed up to testify at the public hearing for Bill Number 334, that requires members of the clergy to report allegations of child abuse, Vice Speaker Benjamin J. Cruz found an unlikely ally in the Roman Catholic Church.

Just days after the public hearing, the Vatican released its revised procedures on how priests must deal with child abuse allegations they hear.

Cruz told Guam News Watch, "As a family court judge, I know that the priests believed that they were precluded from reporting to CPS and the police anything that they heard from any of the parishioners. Your timing's perfect. Just this morning the Vatican released its new procedures for dealing with this. That the priests are responsible for complying with civil statute in their jurisdiction."

NEW HAMPSHIRE
WMUR

[with video]

[See also the relevant documents from the Manchester attorney general's audit files: 1 2 3. See also stills from the video including a photograph of St. Jean.]

CONCORD, N.H. --
A second New Hampshire man has come forward to claim that he was sexually abused as a boy by a Colebrook priest.

The 54-year-old man's lawyers said he was an 11-year-old altar boy when the Rev. George St. Jean began repeatedly assaulting him. The man filed the lawsuit anonymously, saying it could cause more psychological harm if people know who he is.

"(The lawsuit) relates to clergy sex crimes committed in the 1960s by a now-deceased priest," said David Clohessy, president of the Survivors' Network of those Abused by Pri