ABUSE TRACKER

UNITED KINGDOM
Eastbourne Herald

Published on Wednesday 5 September 2012

THE ORGANISATION which runs churches across Eastbourne and was heavily criticised in a new report, has said it will do all it can to change.

The Diocese of Chichester was described as dysfunctional, arrogantly in denial, its history of safeguarding young children had fallen woefully short and a place where priests were able to officiate without up-to-date CRB checks.

The report was penned after intervention by the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams.

It also followed the arrests of retired Canon Gordon Rideout from Polegate who now faces more than 30 charges of sex abuse and priest Robert Coles from Upperton Road who is also facing allegations of sexually abusing young children.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Barry Duggan

Wednesday September 05 2012

THE Diocese of Limerick received 45 separate complaints of child abuse concerning 26 priests from 1975 to the present.

State authorities including the gardai were notified of all complaints, but not a single criminal conviction was recorded.

Some complaints refer back to the 1940s and the last date of alleged abuse took place in 1994.

When the complaints were made in relation to the 26 priests, 14 were already dead.

Of the 12 priests that were investigated – despite the fact that all were cleared of any criminal wrongdoing – the Diocese took the decision to remove five elderly priests from their ministry.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Ralph Riegel

Wednesday September 05 2012

THREE Irish priests who retired to a Cork diocese from overseas were found to have been convicted of child abuse in another country, according to a report by Catholic Church’s own watchdog.

The revelation came as the Bishop of Cork and Ross, Dr John Buckley, said that priests feel “very demoralised” by the clerical abuse controversies that have rocked the Irish church over recent years.

Dr Buckley’s comments came at the National Board for Safeguarding Children (NBSC) published their review of child protection practices in the diocese.

The report found that the Diocese of Cork & Ross now boasts one of Ireland’s best child protection regimes – and was found to have fully or partially complied with all 46 safety criteria.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Louise Hogan

Wednesday September 05 2012

Eighteen allegations of sexual abuse have been made against 10 priests in the Catholic Diocese of Kildare and Leighlin over the past 37-years, a report revealed today.

The review by the church’s child safety watchdog, the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church (NBSCCC), issued 12 recommendations to make child safety structures “more robust”.

The report stated it was “regrettable” that not all of the suggestions about actions to improve child safeguarding outlined in a report in July 2006 had not been followed up by the time of the review.

Monsignor Brendan Byrne, Diocesan administrator, said work was underway on fulfilling the recommendations as soon as possible including the appointment of a lay person as a designated person on the child safeguarding team.

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IRELAND
98 FM

The latest reports from the National Board for Safeguarding Children have been released, dealing with over 300 allegations of abuse against 146 priests and members of various religious congregations.

The four dioceses reviewed are Cork and Ross, Limerick, Clonfert and Kildare and Leighlin. The three religious orders are the Dominicans, the Spiritans and the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart.

The damning report says that while good practices were observed in places, there were too many examples of a blind eye being turned to abuse.

An audit in the parish of Kildare and Leighlin found that 18 allegations of sexual abuse were made against 10 priests from the diocese since 1975. Only one of those was convicted.

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IRELAND
Galway News

September 5, 2012
The report states that this was a significant shortcoming that had a knock on effect in safeguarding structures and practices in the diocese.

The National Board for safeguarding children is now recommending the safeguarding policy and procedures be finalised as a matter of urgency.

It’s also recommending that Bishop John Kirby divest himself of the responsibility for dealing with allegations alone, by ensuring all new allegations are referred to designated persons.

There were three priests incardinated into the diocese of Clonfert against whom allegations have been made since 1975.

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IRELAND
Newstalk

CLONFERT

The Bishop of Clonfert in Galway has apologised for moving two priests who sexually abused children to different diocese.

John Kirby says while he did notify civil authorities at the time he profoundly regrets moving the priests concerned to different parishes thereby placing others at serious risk.

Both of the changes took place in the early to mid-1990s.

He says he ‘utterly condemns’ the actions of the priests concerned.

The Bishop says this was “a grave mistake” on his part and that he would operate very differently now and will continue to do so in future.

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IRELAND
RTE News

Seven reports reviewing child protection practices in a number of Ireland’s Catholic dioceses and religious orders have been published.

The audits have found a higher incidence of abuse allegations against members of religious congregations than against priests in a number of dioceses that have been audited.

Reports on the audits say full compliance with child protection guidelines is still some way off.

The audits were conducted by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in four dioceses and, for the first time, three religious congregations.

They deal with more than 330 allegations of abuse against 146 priests and members of those congregations.

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IRELAND
Breaking News

An audit of child safeguarding practices at the diocese of Cork and Ross has found that 26 priests had allegations of abuse made against them between 1975 and 2011.

Three priests against whom allegations were made remain in ministry, while seven have retired.

The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church raised concerns about priests retiring into the geographical area of the diocese of Cork and Ross from dioceses in Britain.

The board said that information on the status of these priests was not as forthcoming as it should have been from their home dioceses, which resulted in a lack of awareness of potential risk to children.

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IRELAND
The Southern Star

BISHOP of Cork and Ross, John Buckley, has offered his apologies ‘to all who have suffered as the result of abuse by Church personnel’ following a review by the Church’s child protection watchdog, the National Board for Safeguarding Children.

‘No apology, no gesture of repentance or sorrow can ever make up for the suffering caused to children and their families’, said Bishop Buckley, who prayed ‘that the Lord’s healing power will give them peace.’

‘Every single victim has been offered access to counselling support and therapy offered by the diocese. They were let down by people who professed the Gospel of Jesus Christ. There is no place in the Church for those who would harm the young.’

The purpose of the review was to confirm that the diocese manages all complaints in accordance with the guidelines issued by the National Board, said Bishop Buckley. The diocese of Cork and Ross was one of four dioceses and three religious congregations to be the subject of reviews.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Bishop Donal Buckley has been told to ensure that the diocese of Cork and Ross reviews and, if necessary, revises its safeguarding children policy document.

The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church (NBSCCC) audit found that the advice was written in 2009, two years before the Diocesan Child Protection Committee had sight of two important national documents, Children First, and the HSE Child Protection and Welfare Practice Handbook.

Another issue it flagged up was that the diocese does not set out timeframes for resolving child abuse complaints.

The audit stated that allegations have been made against 26 priests in the diocese since 1975, and eight of the clerics have died.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Allegations have been made against 26 priests in the diocese of Limerick, 14 of whom have since died, an audit has found.

Eight priests who faced allegations are out of ministry or left the priesthood, but no clerics have been convicted of an offence since 1975.

Some 34 complaints of child abuse were received by gardaí and 41 by health authorities, the report said.

Overall, Limerick was found to have met 44 of the 48 criteria for safeguarding children in the church.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

ALISON HEALY in Co Carlow

Some 18 allegations of sexual abuse were made against 10 priests in the diocese of Kildare and Leighlin between 1975 and May of this year, according to a report published by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church.

The diocese covers 56 parishes in Co Carlow and parts of Kildare, Laois, Offaly, Kilkenny, Wicklow and Wexford.

Two of the priests against whom allegations were made are still living. One of those, Fr Peter Cribben, was convicted of the abuse of a 14-year-old boy in March 2009.

The second priest was not subject to a criminal charge. Monsignor Brendan Bryrne, diocesan administrator, said both were “completely out of ministry” and receiving diocesan supervision.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Telephone numbers and websites of support services

HSE national counselling service

Information line for adults who have experienced childhood abuse or neglect

Freephone: 1800-235234 (Mon to Fri, 9am-5.30pm) hse-ncs.ie

Connect – National Adults Counselling Service

Freephone: 1800-477477 (Northern Ireland or UK: 0800-47747777) Wednesday-Sunday: 6-10pm; connectcounselling.ie

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IRELAND
Irish Times

FIONA GARTLAND

Allegations of sexual abuse were made against 27 Dominican friars since 1975, a report published this morning has said.

The Review of Safeguarding Practice in the Irish Province of Dominican Friars, carried out by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland found 52 allegations had been reported to gardaí and the Health Service Executive.

Two friars have been convicted of offences against children since 1975.

Some 12 of the 27 friars against whom allegations were made were still alive at the time to the review.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

PATSY MCGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

A review of child safeguarding practices in the Holy Ghost congregation has found that 142 abuse allegations had been made against 47 Spiritan or Holy Ghost priests since January 1st 1975.

Eight of the priests are still alive, with three out of ministry.

Three Spiritan priests have been convicted of abuse in the courts.

The review found that that Spiritan case files made for “very sad reading”, with evidence that there were serial abusers who worked in school communities in Ireland who “went undetected and unchecked giving them unmonitored access to children during the 1960s, 70s and 80s.”

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IRELAND
Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

The Bishop of Clonfert has apologised for moving two priests from one parish to another in the 1990s after they abused children.

Dr John Kirby said he had a lack of understanding about the sinister and recidivist nature of the child abuser and the lifelong damage that the destructive behaviour has on victims.

“Most of all – whilst I did notify the civil authorities at the time of these complaints – I profoundly regret and apologise for moving the priests concerned to different parishes, thereby placing others at serious risk,” he said.

Dr Kirby said the decision to transfer the abusive priests in the early to mid-90s was a grave mistake.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Bishop Donal Buckley has been told to ensure that the diocese of Cork and Ross reviews and, if necessary, revises its safeguarding children policy document.

The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church (NBSCCC) audit found that the advice was written in 2009, two years before the Diocesan Child Protection Committee had sight of two important national documents, Children First, and the HSE Child Protection and Welfare Practice Handbook.

Another issue it flagged up was that the diocese does not set out timeframes for resolving child abuse complaints.

The audit stated that allegations have been made against 26 priests in the diocese since 1975, and eight of the clerics have died.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Ralph Riegel

Wednesday September 05 2012

THREE Irish priests who retired to a Cork diocese from overseas were found to have been convicted of child abuse in another country, according to a report by Catholic Church’s own watchdog.

The revelation came as the Bishop of Cork and Ross, Dr John Buckley, said that priests feel “very demoralised” by the clerical abuse controversies that have rocked the Irish church over recent years.

Dr Buckley’s comments came at the National Board for Safeguarding Children (NBSC) published their review of child protection practices in the diocese.

The report found that the Diocese of Cork & Ross now boasts one of Ireland’s best child protection regimes – and was found to have fully or partially complied with all 46 safety criteria.

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IRELAND
The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland

See Safeguarding reviews of the Dioceses of Clonfert, Limerick,Cork & Ross,Kildare & Leighlin and the congregations of the male Dominicans, Spiritans & MSC’s

Diocese of Clonfert
Diocese of Limerick
Diocese of Cork & Ross
Diocese of Kildare & Leighlin
Male Dominican
Spiritans
Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSC)

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IRELAND
The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland

Conclusions
1. It is difficult to express adequately the failure of this Society to effectively protect vulnerable children. Their actions indicate a disregard for the suffering of victims and a misunderstanding of the nature of the problem within the Society.

2. As a result of the abuse that should have been prevented, it is reasonable to speculate that a great deal of suffering has occurred. In the assessment of the NBSCCCI it could have been prevented but those who should have taken action to prevent it either chose not to do so or were effectively blocked from doing so by a wall of secrecy which did not permit child protection information to be shared. This worked very much in the favour of those who had caused harm to children and wanted to continue to prey upon them.

3. People who were aware that abuse had been admitted to saw no need to report that fact to the Garda Síochána. The internal communication that took place with the Superior General in Rome, we are told, was verbal in nature and not recorded. Although it seems extraordinary that such serious matters should be dealt with in such an informal way, this must be seen as yet another example of the lack of understanding that existed in this Society and that what they were dealing with actually mattered very much.

4. Two basic principles underpin the current Church safeguarding policies in force in the Catholic Church in Ireland today. They are that children should be protected from harm and those that cause harm to them or allow it to happen, should be held accountable for their actions. The investigation of the child protection practice in this religious community is an excellent example of why those principles are now in place in the Church in Ireland, and why they must be adhered to by everyone within the Church without exception.

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IRELAND
The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland

Recommendation 1: The Designated Person develops posters and leaflets as suggested within the NBSCCCI training manual for display in all houses of Spiritan ministries, highlighting current information on policies, procedures, reporting information, along with a list of who to contact within the Spiritan Congregation, An Garda Síochána and HSE, if there is a safeguarding concern.

Recommendation 2: The Provincial Leadership Team must extend an invitation to people to come forward who have not yet disclosed their abuse (using approaches which may include notices on the website and public notices and where there is identifying information, letters through, for example, An Garda Síochána, solicitors or other relevant third parties). These complainants should be offered counselling and support.

Recommendation 3: The Designated Person must record all contacts relating to the management of cases and contact with survivors, irrespective of whether the respondent is alive or deceased. This should also include contact with the families of survivors.

The files are stored in a fireproof strong cabinet, in the Provincial’s office. Access to the records is by the designated person and two other members of the Provincial Leadership Team. In discussion with the advisory panel, which was re-constituted in July 2011, they have been given access to the records, following the signing of a Data Processing Deed and agreements around confidentiality. It must be noted that the congregation did not have an advisory panel for many years and the fact that this has now changed is to be commended. Prior to the fieldwork, a Provincial Chapter took place and a new Provincial Leadership Team was appointed. The new team should familiarise themselves with the content of the files to ensure continuity of decision making and management of risk.

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IRELAND
The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland

To improve communication in this area, NBSCCCI recommends:

Recommendation 1: That in order to communicate more openly, there should be a safeguarding icon on the Dominican website, with information relating to the policy and procedures and guidance on how to make a complaint.

Recommendation 2: That posters located in all Dominican properties need to be refreshed with current information on policies, procedures, reporting information, along with a list of who to contact within the Dominican Order, An Garda Síochána and HSE, if there is a safeguarding concern.

Recommendation 4: The designated person must ensure that all new files contain a narrative account of action and copies of all correspondence, criminal prosecutions, civil actions and other relevant documentation.

Recommendation 5: In the four 4 cases of men out of ministry, the designated person should seek to set up a master file with a chronology of events from the first reported allegation to current day. This file should detail all complainants and responses made to them by the order, investigations undertaken by the civil authorities, enquiries/assessments undertaken by the order, risk management plans and reviews of these as well as any advice obtained whilst managing the case.

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IRELAND
The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church

Recommendation 1:

That when the Kildare and Leighlin Diocesan Child Protection Committee’s current review of the Diocesan Safeguarding Children Policy and Procedures is completed, Monsignor Byrne will ensure that they are consistent with Children First, 2011, and with the HSE guidance document, Child Protection and Welfare Practice Handbook, 2011.

In his Introduction to the August 2009 document, the then Bishop stated that the Diocese of Kildare and Leighlin is committed to “working in partnership with the civil authorities to ensure that all aspects of child welfare are managed promptly, professionally and justly”. He underlined the principle that the diocese and the diocesan community have an obligation “to create and sustain a culture of safety”. He also undertook on behalf of the diocese to ensure that the document would be reviewed and revised regularly and would always be “‘a work in progress’“. This policy and procedures document is available on the website of the Kildare and Leighlin Diocese, www.kandle.ie/safeguarding.

The quality and clarity of the information and guidance contained in the Diocese of Kildare and Leighlin Safeguarding Children Policy and Procedures and on its dedicated website page is commended.

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IRELAND
The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church

Recommendation 1:

Bishop Buckley needs to ensure that the Cork and Ross Diocesan Child Protection Committee reviews and if necessary revises, the current Safeguarding Children in the Diocese of Cork and Ross to satisfy himself that they are consistent with Children First, 2011 and with the HSE guidance document, Child Protection and Welfare Practice Handbook, 2011.

The production of the revised policy and procedures document was one of the outcomes of a full diocesan review of safeguarding initiated by Bishop Buckley in 2011. The following elements or functions were included as part of this internal review process:

The engagement of an external consultant to plan and facilitate the process A diocesan consultation process A review of all safeguarding publications A review of training A review and refreshing of the membership of the Diocesan Advisory Panel A review of the work of the diocesan Relapse Prevention Group A review of the deployment and work of Local Parish Representatives

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IRELAND
The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland

Recommendation 1

 The Administrator and the Director of Safeguarding should consult with NBSCCCI to ensure that the redrafted policy and procedures adhere to national guidelines.
 The Administrator and the Director of Safeguarding must ensure that awareness-raising of the diocesan policy and procedures takes place, and that implementation of the redrafted procedures is audited on an annual basis.

The review team met two diocesan priests, one directly involved in safeguarding and one a parish priest with responsibilities within his parish for safeguarding children. They both stated their continued commitment to ensuring the safety of children in the Church, but felt that the scandals of the last few years, the loss of their bishop and constant negative media attention contributed to their lack of confidence in working with children. They feel that the appointment of a lay safeguarding director has helped give them an assurance that the policies, procedures and systems in the diocese are effective, but that it will take

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IRELAND
The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church

Recommendation 1.
 Bishop Kirby must ensure the finalisation of the Clonfert Diocese Safeguarding Policy and Procedures as a matter of urgency. A reader-friendly summary version should accompany the full procedures.
 Bishop Kirby, with assistance from his committee, priests of the diocese and those with communications skills in the diocese, should launch, distribute and ensure the implementation of the policy and procedures.
 As Clonfert is within the metropolitan Area of the Tuam Archdiocese, Bishop Kirby should consider seeking the support of safeguarding personnel of that Archdiocese in completing this essential work in the shortest possible time.

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IRELAND
Breaking News

05/09/2012

Allegations of abuse were made against 18 priests of the Diocese of Limerick between 1975 and March of this year, a news report has revealed.

The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland report said that 34 claims were reported to gardaí, while 41 were brought to the attention of health boards.

None of the priests in the Diocese have been convicted of having committed an offence against a child, since 1975.

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IRELAND
Gorey Guardian

Wednesday September 05 2012

The Bishop of Clonfert has apologised for moving two priests from one parish to another in the 1990s after they abused children.

John Kirby said he had a lack of understanding about the sinister and recidivist nature of the child abuser and the lifelong damage that the destructive behaviour has on victims.

“Most of all – whilst I did notify the civil authorities at the time of these complaints – I profoundly regret and apologise for moving the priests concerned to different parishes, thereby placing others at serious risk,” he said.

Bishop Kirby said the decision to transfer the abusive priests in the early to mid-90s was a grave mistake.

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UNITED STATES
Seasons of Grace

September 4, 2012 By Kathy Schiffer

Thank you, Father Groeschel. Through the years, your steadfast teaching has kept us on a steady course in our Christian walk. By your humility and your love, you have taught us how to embrace Christ in the people we meet along life’s journey. Through your wise counsel, you have helped us to grow in understanding of the Catholic faith. May God bless you for your faithful service, and may He comfort you as you seek to do His will in the seclusion of monastic life.

This is a sad day for people who have listened spellbound to the no-frills message of a great man of God, Father Benedict Groeschel. Today Father Groeschel, age 79, has stepped down as host of EWTN’s “Sunday Night Prime” television show.

You probably know why: The Internet has been a-flurry with news of his recent inflammatory comment regarding children who have been abused by Catholic priests. In an interview which was published August 27 in the National Catholic Register, Father Groeschel opined, “Suppose you have a man having a nervous breakdown, and a youngster comes after him. A lot of the cases, the youngster—14, 16, 18—is the seducer.”

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ROME
Corriere della Sera

ROMA – Il suo ruolo nello Ior e lo scontro con la segreteria di Stato vaticana sulla normativa antiriciclaggio. Le paure per la propria incolumità. Ma soprattutto i suoi rapporti di amicizia e di affari con l’amministratore delegato di Finmeccanica Giuseppe Orsi che gli confidò di aver affidato «consulenze false» alla moglie di Vittorio Grilli, l’attuale ministro dell’Economia, e di aver così «risolto alcuni problemi» della signora. Sono le clamorose rivelazioni contenute nei verbali del banchiere Ettore Gotti Tedeschi che confermano l’ampia collaborazione dell’ex presidente dell’Istituto opere religiose con i magistrati di Roma e Napoli. E svelano quali siano i nuovi filoni d’inchiesta aperti dopo le sue dichiarazioni.Il 5 giugno scorso il banchiere ha subito una perquisizione ordinata dai magistrati napoletani Vincenzo Piscitelli e Henry John Woodcock che indagavano proprio sulla natura del legame con il manager al vertice di Finmeccanica.

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ITALY
Reuters

MILAN, Sept 5 | Wed Sep 5, 2012

(Reuters) – Finmeccanica head Giuseppe Orsi denied press reports on Wednesday that he had ordered faked consultancy services from the wife of Vittorio Grilli, who is currently Economy Minister.

“I have never in my life ordered consultancy services from the wife of Professor Grilli, neither as Chief Executive of Finmeccanica nor in the past as CEO of AgustaWestland,” Orsi said in an emailed statement in response to media reports.

A report in the Il Corriere della Sera alleged that wiretaps by prosecutors indicated that the former head of Vatican bank IOR Ettore Gotti Tedeschi had said that Orsi had told him he had contracted for “false consultancy services” from Grilli’s wife.

The newspaper said Gotti Tedeschi’s comments were contained in the minutes of judicial inquiries.

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CONNECTICUT
Patch

By Paul Petrone

At his court date Tuesday, it was revealed Fr. Dennis Carey is a patient at St. John Vianney Center in Downington, PA, “a faith-centered community that specializes in the treatment of behavioral health issues that are unique to Catholic clergy,” according to the center’s website.

Carey was formerly the head pastor of Waterford’s St. Paul in Chains Rectory until he was arrested in July when police found 338 files of child pornography on computers he owned inside the Roman Catholic Church. Carey had his third court appearance Tuesday, where his case was continued until October 15.

At the appearance, Judge Susan B. Handy confirmed that Carey is a patient at the center, although she said he would be discharged soon to live either with his sister in Westchester, NY, or his parents, who live near Boston. Carey met $100,000 bail in July and was released on several conditions, including mandates to not to interact with children, to avoid the Internet and to not possess any pornography.

The center, according to its website, is a member facility of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and offers a “multi-disciplinary, research-based approach to the behavioral health issues of Catholic religious and priests.”

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WASHINGTON
The Columbian

By Laura McVicker
Columbian Staff Reporter

A former Bible camp counselor was sentenced Tuesday to 35 years in prison for sexually abusing two children he knew through church.

Michael Scott Norris’ sentencing in Clark County Superior Court has been a long time coming. The Vancouver man, 46, was jailed in August 2006 on the sex abuse allegations, but his case remained in limbo for years over an evidence dispute.

In addition, Clark County prosecutors had to wait until federal prosecutors completed their child pornography case this spring against Norris.

On Tuesday, Judge John Wulle imposed the maximum sentence for Norris, noting how disturbing the case has been. “The cruelty you have shown these children … just boggles the mind,” Wulle said.

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IOWA
Nonpareil

Posted: Wednesday, September 5, 2012

By Mike Brownlee
mbrownlee@nonpareilonline.com

A former church volunteer faces up to 30 years in prison over allegations of sexual abuse committed 14 years ago in Council Bluffs.

Bobby E. Smith, 68, of El Dorado Springs, Mo., faces three counts of third-degree sexual abuse and one count of indecent contact with a child. He’s accused of sexually abusing a 12-year-old boy in Council Bluffs during the summer of 1998, according to the Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Office.

Assistant County Attorney Dan McGinn said Smith met the boy through First Baptist Church in Harlan, where Smith was a volunteer. After the boy was unable to come on a church-sponsored fishing trip, Smith offered to take the boy on a separate, non-church sponsored fishing trip.

The pair went to Lake Anita in Cass County and after the trip traveled to Council Bluffs, where Smith told the boy they’d go shopping. While in route Smith allegedly fondled the victim. Once in the city Smith booked a room at a local hotel.

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NEW YORK
Patch

By Bob Marrone

Even within the free speech venue that is WVOX, some subjects require special handling, if you will. Religion, race and the subject of Israel, when not articulated carefully, can bring a lot of negative feedback and result in suspension or even the loss of one’s job.

Yes, speech in such matters is free; the consequences, however, can be very costly.

Nonetheless, I have charted a course on the radio of criticizing the Catholic Church’s problems with respect to sexual abuse and what I believe to be, at minimum, the contributing factor of celibacy. As I prepared to return to the air from my break, I began to wonder if I didn’t have a little of Joe Paterno in me.

The local papers noted the fall from grace of Iona College’s former president Brother James Liguori; the recent arrest of the former leader of the Salesians, Reverend Richard McCormick, on rape charges; and the comments of Father Benedict Groeschel, also of Westchester, that it is young people who seduce clerics into child abuse. Indeed, maybe I—we—have grown too tolerant and too respectful of the church to acknowledge this problem, even as it has manifested itself right here in Westchester.

At times, when I have introduced this subject on the air, I have been met with the accurate, though irrelevant, feedback that I am picking on the church and that the issue of child abuse exists in proportion throughout society and in other religious organizations. I buy that it exists all over society and I have written about it here. But I no more accept the notion of proportionality than I do the argument from my liberal friends that there is just as much crime in suburban areas as there is in the inner city. Both are either polite notions of political correctness or undue deference to the status of religion.

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ILLINOIS
KZIM

A Southern Illinois pastor charged with having a sexual relationship with a minor will get a new fitness hearing! 74-year-old Billy Vandergraph of Alto Pass was arrested in July 2010. He is charged with predatory criminal sexual assault of a child and two charges of aggravated criminal sexual abuse. Police contend he committed two sexual acts with a 4-year-old girl between January and May 2010. Vandergraph underwent a treatment plan and the judge ruled in April 2011, he is fit to stand trial.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

By Joseph A. Slobodzian
Inquirer Staff Writer

Tuesday’s scheduled start of jury selection in the trial of a former Philadelphia priest and a Catholic schoolteacher on charges they sexually abused a 10-year-old altar boy was postponed after deaths in the extended family of a defense attorney.

Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina set a status hearing Friday but announced that her trial schedule made it impossible for her to continue presiding.

Sarmina, one of nine judges assigned to handle only homicide trials, had been specially designated in 2011 to preside over the trials of four priests and one teacher charged after the Philadelphia grand jury report about the sexual abuse of minors by some priests in Philadelphia and efforts by archdiocesan officials to cover up the abuse.

Sarmina handled the three-month trial, which ended in June with the conviction of Msgr. William J. Lynn, the first church official charged for his supervisory role in dealing with priests accused of sexually abusing children.

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UNITED STATES
Friendly Atheist

September 2, 2012 By Hemant Mehta

Rev. Thomas P. Doyle, O.P. is not a popular guy within the Catholic Church. Mostly because he has this nasty habit of calling them out on their shit.

In the video below, he speaks with host Allison Hope Weiner on the online show Media Mayhem about “Abuse, Cover-Up and the Catholic Church“:

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MAINE
WABI

[with video]

by Carolyn Callahan – September 4th 2012

Alfred – A pastor who works in Biddeford has been charged by State Police with possessing child pornography.

Police arrested Pastor James Napier, 60, at his home in Alfred on Saturday.

He is the pastor associated with New Beginnings Christian Mission, which, according to police, ministers to the poor and homeless in downtown Biddeford.

Police say they found more than 100 images of child porn on Napier’s computer. Police say the children depicted in the pornography appear to be under the age of 12. ” There is no indication that any of the images found on his computer were from Maine,” said Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman, Steve McCausland, via a press release.

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MAINE
Bangor Daily News

By Ryan McLaughlin, BDN Staff

Posted Sept. 04, 2012

BIDDEFORD, Maine — A York County pastor who works with homeless children is facing child pornography charges, according to police.

James Napier, 60, was picked up by police at his Alfred home by members of the State Police Computer Crimes Unit, according to a news release from Public Safety Spokesman Stephen McCausland.

Napier, the pastor associated with the New Beginnings Christian Mission in Biddeford, was charged with possession of sexually explicit material after a search of his computer turned up more than 100 child porn images, McCausland said in the statement.

The New Beginnings Christian Mission ministers to poor and homeless people in downtown Biddeford.

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MAINE
The Portland Press Herald

By Eric Russell erussell@pressherald.com
Staff Writer

BIDDEFORD — A local pastor who ministers to the homeless in downtown Biddeford has been charged with possession of child pornography.

James Napier, 60, was arrested Saturday at his home in Alfred by Maine State Police after detectives searched the residence and found more than 100 pictures on his computer of children, some under the age of 12, engaged in sexual activity.

Members of the state police computer crimes unit received a tip that led them to search Napier’s home, according to spokesman Stephen McCausland.

Napier is the pastor of New Beginnings Christian Mission, which ministers to the poor and homeless in Biddeford.

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MAINE
Sun Chronicle

Posted: Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Kate Irish Collins kcollins@keepmecurrent.com

ALFRED – A pastor from Alfred who works with the poor and homeless in downtown Biddeford is barred from having contact with anyone under the age of 18 and from using the Internet after being arrested this past weekend and being charged with possessing images of child porn, according to Steve McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.

James Napier, 60, who is associated with the New Beginnings Christian Mission in Biddeford, was arrested at his home in Alfred after the State Police Computer Crimes Unit received a tip on Aug. 31 about the more than 100 sexually explicit images later found on his home computer, McCausland said.

Napier was taken to the York County Jail in Alfred following his arrest on Sept. 1, but has since been freed on bail. His first court appearance is set for Oct. 23 at the Springvale District Court.

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MAINE
NECN

[with video]

(NECN) – A pastor who works with homeless people in downtown Biddeford, Maine has been charged by State Police with possessing child pornography.

Pastor James Napier, 60, was arrested at his home Saturday in Alfred, Maine by members of the State Police Computer Crimes Unit.

He was charged with possession of sexually explicit material. The charge is a felony because the children in the images appear to be under the age of 12.

Napier is the pastor associated with New Beginnings Christian Mission, which ministers to the poor and homeless in Biddeford.

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MAINE
WLBZ

[with video]

Written by
Caroline Cornish

BIDDEFORD, Maine (NEWS CENTER) — A pastor known for his work with the homeless in Biddeford has been arrested on charges he possessed child pornography. 60-year old Jim Napier was the director of New Beginnings Christian Mission in downtown Biddeford. State Police say Napier had more than 100 images of child porn on his computer at home. None of the photographs appear to have been taken locally, but the children do appear to be under the age of 12.

Police say the investigation started when they received a tip about Napier last Friday. He was arrested Saturday.

Pastor Barry Judd, the President of New Beginning’s board, said Napier called him to say what happened Saturday night. Judd would not say what Napier told him, only that Napier resigned his post and has lost his ordination with the Mission’s non-denominational church.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

The founder of an advocacy group for victims of child abuse says she was ecstatic when she heard a Hunter priest had been charged with concealing a sex offender.

“Bravehearts” staff are in the region presenting their education show as part of National Child Protection week.

In an Australian first last week, police charged 74-year-old Father Tom Brennan with failing to report child sex offences committed by a defrocked priest in the 1970s.

“Bravehearts” Executive Director, Hetty Johnston says the charges are a significant step forward which she is hoping will have far reaching implications.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Melanie Sakoda on September 04, 2012

We are grateful that Bishop Matthias Moriak has addressed the rumors about him that have been swirling in Orthodox circles. The bishop of Chicago and the Midwest confirmed yesterday that he has been placed on a paid leave of absence while he is investigated by the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) for “inappropriate” behavior with a woman.

While we are grateful that the OCA appears to be handling the matter in accord with their sexual abuse policy, the group still appears reluctant to be transparent and open about such allegations. To date, no information about the charges or the investigation has appeared on the website of the OCA. The Church should be using every outlet available to them to publicize the allegations and to ask those with information to come forward.

Let’s hope that every person who can shed light on these allegations will find the courage and strength to speak up so that the truth can be known. If anyone has been the victim of a crime, or witnessed or suspected criminal behavior, they should report to the police before going to church authorities.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Dorris on September 04, 2012

We are glad that federal prosecutors are taking the child porn charges against Fr. Bartley Sorensen seriously. Children are always safer when predators are behind bars, and lengthy prison sentences teach predators that their actions are not without serious repercussions.

It is disingenuous to say that there is no evidence that Fr. Sorensen ever hurt a child, because due to the very nature of child porn, abuse must occur for this obscene material to be created in the first place. The possession and consumption of this type of pornography encourages its creation, and, by extension, the abuse of children worldwide. We hope that the judge sees through this hollow defense and will keep kids safe in the Pittsburgh area for years to come.

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LOMBARD (IL)
My Suburban Life

By Sarah Small, ssmall@mysuburbanlife.com
Suburban Life Publications

Posted Sep 04, 2012 @ 01:56 PM

Lombard, IL —

Prior to the October meeting of the Montini Catholic High School Board of Directors, the executive committee will meet to discuss Rev. James Nowak’s position on the board, said James Segredo, president of the school.

Last week, Nowak was placed on temporary administrative leave after allegations were made that he sexually abused a minor more than 25 years ago.

Since the Board of Directors was formed at Montini Catholic in the mid 1990s, Nowak has served in an advisory capacity, said Segredo.

As an advisory member, he does not have an official vote.

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IOWA
U.S. Catholic

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

By Barb Arland-Fye
Catholic News Service

DAVENPORT, Iowa (CNS) — Two different standards for determining credibility of clergy sexual abuse claims compelled a bankruptcy judge to order the names of three deceased priests to be posted on the Diocese of Davenport website.

Diocesan leaders believe the 40-year-old accusations against the three priests are not substantiated by clear and convincing evidence. Davenport Bishop Martin J. Amos decided Sept. 4 not to appeal the judge’s decision. However, the list will include an explanation that accusations against the three priests were not substantiated by clear and convincing evidence.

“The names had already been made public in the press and the judge told us to post the names, so we will comply,” Bishop Amos said. “We will also provide our rationale for the conclusion we reached about the accusations.”

Kathleen Bowman, the Iowa woman who made the accusations, received a settlement from the bankruptcy court’s special arbitrator based on her claims. She said she was abused as a young child by the three priests: Fathers John Bonn, Michael Broderick and William Dawson, and she identified them by name in articles published in the Quad-City Times this summer.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Chichester Observer

Published on Tuesday 4 September 2012

Dr Martin Warner, newly appointed Bishop of Chichester responded to the damning report on child abuse within the Chichester Diocese by saying there was much to learn from past mistakes, and hopes that the diocese will now enter a new era.

Dr Warner said: “We have much to learn from all that has happened and must be humble in doing so, accepting our failures, responding with honesty and penitence, and demonstrating proper and appropriate engagement with those who are the victims of criminal and sub-Christian behaviour.

“But the future of the diocese cannot be determined by the failures of the past. Review and vigilance will be required of us at all times in the matter of safety and welfare for those who are young and vulnerable.

“We are determined that this is a diocese in which the vulnerable will feel safe and will be safe. A new era has begun.”

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UNITED STATES
Catholic News Agency

Irondale, Ala., Sep 4, 2012 / 10:42 am (CNA).- Franciscan friar Father Benedict Groeschel has stepped down as host of EWTN’s Sunday Night Prime television show following his apology for making comments about the sexual abuse of minors.

“Father Benedict has led a life of tremendous compassion and service to others and his spiritual insights have been a great gift to the EWTN family for many years. We are profoundly grateful to him and assure him of our prayers,” Michael P. Warsaw, president and CEO of EWTN Global Catholic Network, said Sept. 3.

“At the same time, we ask our EWTN family to pray for all those who have been affected by this painful situation and in particular those who have been victims of sexual abuse.”

Fr. Groeschel decided to step down from the program after consulting with EWTN and with his religious community, the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, Warsaw said.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Catholic Sentinel

Catholic News Service

The Milwaukee archdiocese will close or consolidate 103 of its 203 parishes through 2020.

Church officials pointed to three principal factors during the next decade:

•The number of priest retirements will exceed ordinations, resulting in a projected 40 percent reduction in the number of priests serving in parish ministry.

•The costs of operating parishes and funding ministries are escalating rapidly and parishes can gain economies of scale by collaborating with other parishes.

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UNITED STATES
The League of Ordinary Gentlemen

by Kyle Cupp on September 4, 2012

As you’ve probably heard by now, an iconic priest named Father Benedict Groeschel depicted clerics involved in sexual abuse as the victims of seductive youngsters in a now-removed interview with the National Catholic Register. Both he and his religious order apologized for the comments, explaining that he did not intend to blame victims and that his mind and way of expressing himself are not as a clear as they used to be, and acknowledging that the remarks were untrue, insensitive, inappropriate, and hurtful. I’m familiar but not well acquainted with Father Groeschel’s work, but from what I gather, the words were out of character for him.

When I first read about this interview, I remembered that I had a book on the shelf by Father Groeschel, on the sex abuse scandal of all things. I’d never read From Scandal to Hope, which was published in 2002, but with his name in the news I picked it up and read most of it, while skimming a few sections here and there. Nowhere in the book did he blame the victims, I’m happy to report, but nor is the work about the victims. Instead, Father Groeschel charted a path for reform in the context of the abuse scandal, admitting that his course would lead to a Catholic ghetto, which he said would offer protection and be a cause of great identity. “One man’s ghetto is another man’s hometown,” he wrote.

In From Scandal to Hope, Father Groeschel complained a lot about the media feeding frenzy (warning Catholics to be loyal and not join in), which he labeled the work of Satan (along with the sins of abusive priests), and he devoted an entire chapter to how his church is being persecuted by its cultural enemies. He blamed the abuse scandal on mistakes, serious and egregious errors, negligence, bad psychology, and the “gay scene” in seminaries, while tracing the scandal’s root causes to relativism, skepticism, and dissent. “Today’s mistakes are not about misbehaving clerics,” he wrote. “That’s over. Today’s mistakes in the Church are about the continuing appointment of people who openly dissent from Church teaching.”

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ITALY
National Catholic Reporter

by John L Allen Jr on Sep. 04, 2012 NCR Today

Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini died in Varese, northern Italy, on Aug. 31 at the age of 85. Two weeks earlier, on Aug. 8, Martini gave a final interview to his fellow Jesuit Fr. George Sporschill, with whom Martini had collaborated on a book titled Nocturnal Conversations in Jerusalem, and an Italian friend named Federica Radice Fossati Confalonieri. Radice has told Italian media outlets that Martini read and approved the text of the interview, intending it as a sort of “spiritual testament” to be published after his death.

The following is an NCR translation of the interview published in Italian by the newspaper Corriere della Sera.

How do you see the situation of the church?

The church is tired, in the Europe of well-being and in America. Our culture has become old, our churches and our religious houses are big and empty, the bureaucratic apparatus of the church grows, our rites and our dress are pompous. Do these things, however, express what we are today? … Well-being weighs on us. We find ourselves like the rich young man who went away sad when Jesus called him to be his disciple. I know that we can’t let everything go easily. At least, however, we can seek people who are free and closest to their neighbor, like Archbishop Romero and the Jesuit martyrs of El Salvador. Where are the heroes among us who can inspire us? By no means do we have to limit them by the boundaries of the institution.

Who can help the church today?

Father Karl Rahner often used the image of the embers hidden under the ash. I see in the church today so much ash under the embers that often I’m hit with a sense of impotence. How can we liberate the embers from the ash, to reinvigorate the fires of love? For the first thing, we have to seek out these embers. Where are the individuals full of generosity, like the Good Samaritan? Who have faith like the Roman centurion? Who are enthusiastic like John the Baptist? Who dare the new, like Paul? Who are faithful like Mary Magdalene? I advise the Pope and the bishops to seek out twelve people outside the lines for administrative positions, people who are close to the poorest, who are surrounded by young people, and who try new things. We need to be with people who burn in such a way that the Spirit can spread itself everywhere

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VATICAN CITY
The Telegraph (United Kingdom)

At least 20 people were involved in stealing and leaking compromising documents from the Vatican, the Pope’s butler has claimed.

By Nick Squires, Rome
4:10PM BST 04 Sep 2012

Paolo Gabriele, who has been charged with aggravated theft and is likely to face a Vatican trial next month, told an Italian television programme that there were “at least 20 people” involved in the scandal.

The assertion contradicts the Vatican’s repeated insistence that the plot was small-scale and confined only to Mr Gabriele and a second person who has been charged with complicity, a Vatican computer expert named Claudio Sciarpelletti.

“The Pope wants to clean up (the Vatican) but is encountering difficulties,” Mr Gabriele, 46, told La7 television.

He said he had collaborated with more than 20 other people “who, like me, want to contribute to transparency.”

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UNITED STATES
Americans United for Separation of Church and State

September 2012
Perspective
By Barry Lynn

Most summers, Americans United is happy to welcome three law clerks from three different law schools to join our legal staff for a few months and learn a little about what it’s like to work at an advocacy group.

Summer 2012 was no exception, and this year I had the opportunity to work personally on projects with each of them. I had been asked to be on a panel at the “Take Back The American Dream” conference organized by former Obama staff member Van Jones, give the keynote address at the annual convention of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and do a workshop for Save Our Schools, a grassroots public education group. …

On to the next speech. I tapped Ben Birney to assist with my keynote address to SNAP. I wanted to make the point that the Catholic hierarchy’s demands to be exempt from otherwise applicable laws often goes too far, especially in areas dealing with child abuse reporting statutes, laws dealing with statutes of limitations for sexual assault and even job discrimination.

This can be heady stuff. It required Ben to research the institution’s efforts to have civil courts use canon law – official doctrinal stands of the church – instead of standard legal principles to decide cases (a path only a few courts have taken so far).

We constructed that speech to begin with references to the recent flap over birth control and, after laying some groundwork there, segued into the issues of most direct importance to this audience of abuse survivors and their families. The reception there was good as well, and I had plenty of interesting discussions afterward.

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Michael D’Antonio

In an interview that would appall any mature adult, a Catholic friar named Benedict Groeschel has explained that many of the priests guilty of sexually abusing minors are themselves victims of adolescents who “seduce” them. The 78-year-old Groeschel went on to question the criminalization of sex between these men and boys, and to argue that priest offenders “should not go to jail because their intention was not committing a crime.”

Although it’s hard to fathom that after 30 years of scandal any churchman would still be so confused about the criminality of adult priests committing sex acts with juveniles, we should also be grateful that Groeschel gives us the chance to review the Church’s problem with sex and power.

As long ago as 1970, psychiatrists Conrad Baars and Anna Terruwe warned about the sexual and emotional immaturity of celibate Catholic clergy, bringing their studies directly to authorities in Rome and to the American bishops. When the U.S. hierarchs then asked Eugene Kennedy and Victor Heckler to investigate, they found that too many priests “do not relate deeply or closely to other people” and use the institution and their status as “cover-ups for psychological inadequacy.” Their report described them as men whose “growth had been arrested” and who “function at a pre-adolescent or adolescent level of psychosexual growth.”

Coming, as it did, in an era of openness, the work of these experts could have prompted serious efforts to address the developmental problems of priests. Instead the Church turned away from the issue under Pope John Paul II. Given one last chance by the groundbreaking research of former priest Richard Sipe, who reported rampant sexual confusion among priests in a 1990, the authorities closed their eyes again. What followed were abuse scandals around the world, the incarceration of nearly 500 American priests, billions of dollars in settlements paid to victims and the collapse of public respect for the Church.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
New York Daily News

By Victoria Cavaliere / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

The trial of a former priest and a parochial school teacher accused of molesting the same young boy was abruptly postponed Tuesday after a death in the family of a defense attorney.

A new trial date for Father Charles Engelhardt, 65, and ex-teacher Bernard Shero, 49, will be decided on Friday and the case will be turned over to a new judge because of scheduling conflicts.

The delay was likely to frustrate both the prosecution and the alleged victim, identified only as “Billy Doe.” Billy was allegedly repeatedly molested and raped by Shero, Engelhardt, and a third priest beginning in 1998 — one of the most disturbing complaints of child sex abuse to come out of the Philadelphia Archdiocese.

This was the second time the trial of Shero and Engelhardt had been delayed. The two men have pleaded not guilty.

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UNITED STATES
The Buddhist Channel

The Buddhist Channel, July 22, 2012

Zen Studies Society’s controversial land deal with Nature Conservancy

New York, USA — This week, Gallup, Inc., a US, research-based performance-management consulting company issued a report entitled “U.S. Confidence in Organized Religion at Low Point.” It appears that confidence in “Organized Religion” in America has been is steady decline since the early 1970’s.

While the Gallup report deals primarily with “Christian” denominations, Catholic and Protestant, there is ample evidence that even relatively new, and somewhat obscure, organized religious traditions in America are also being questioned by adherents.

In America, everybody’s got to pay the rent, and the Zen Studies Society , a Zen Buddhist organization based in New York, with its two multi-million dollar centers, is no different. Upkeep is required if the two centers — Dai BosatsuZen monastery set on a 1,400-acre tract in the town of Hardenburgh, N.Y., and New York Zendo Sho Bo Ji, a converted carriage house on East 67th Street in Manhattan — are to survive.

But the Zen Studies Society has been feeling the crunch of late not just because of hard economic times but also because of a variety of scandals centering on the former abbot, Eido Tai Shimano – a man who, over a period of 46 years, stands credibly accused of a variety of depredations, including lying, character assassination, sexual misconduct and financial improprieties.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Newsworks

September 4, 2012
By Associated Press

A former altar boy is slated to return to court to testify in a second priest-abuse trial in Philadelphia.

The 24-year-old says he was raped as a boy by two parish priests and his sixth-grade teacher. He’s spent much of his later life addicted to drugs, but his lawyer says he’s recovering.

Update, 10 a.m. The trial has been postponed after a lawyer in the Philadelphia case had a death in the family. The Rev. Charles Engelhardt and Bernard Shero are due back in court Friday to get a new trial date.

The other person accused, defrocked priest Edward Avery, is in prison after pleading guilty to sexual assault.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS Philly

By Tony Hanson

PHILADELPHIA (CBS)- The second part of the landmark clergy abuse case was scheduled to begin today with the trial of two men, a priest and a lay teacher, charged with sexually assaulting the same young boy when he was in 5th and 6th grade. But, the trial has been delayed indefinitely, because one of the defense attorneys suffered a death in the family and will be unavailable for several days.

The case will be assigned to a new judge and may be delayed by weeks or even months.

Father Charles Engelhardt, 65, is charged with sexually assaulting the then-fifth-grade student in the church sacristy at St. Jerome’s in the Northeast.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

By Joseph A. Slobodzian
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

The trial of a former Philadelphia priest and a Catholic schoolteacher on charges they sexually abused a 10-year-old altar boy in 1998 and 1999 was abruptly postponed this morning because of deaths in the family of a defense attorney.

The Philadelphia Common Pleas Court room was set up for jury selection when Judge M. Teresa Sarmina announced the delay because of deaths in the family of Michael J. McGovern.

Court officials said that over the past several days, a sister-in-law died in Florida and McGovern’s uncle died in Philadelphia.

Sarmina set a status hearing for Friday but said the case would be transferred to a different judge because she has back-to-back homicide trials scheduled through the rest of the year.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CNN

By Sarah Hoye, CNN

updated 9:33 AM EDT, Tue September 4, 2012

Philadelphia (CNN) — A judge has postponed the trial of a Philadelphia Catholic priest and a parochial school teacher, both accused of raping the same altar boy in separate incidents.

The trial, scheduled to start Tuesday, was postponed due to a family emergency for a defense attorney. A new trial date could be set by the end of the week.

The Rev. Charles Engelhardt, who was a priest at St. Jerome Parish in northeast Philadelphia, and Bernard Shero, a teacher at the parish’s school, have been charged with rape, indecent sexual assault and other criminal charges in the alleged assaults that occurred more than a decade ago.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
WPVI

Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA (AP) – September 4, 2012 (WPVI) — The Philadelphia rape trial of a Roman Catholic priest and a former Catholic school teacher has been postponed after a lawyer in the case had a death in the family.

The Rev. Charles Engelhardt and Bernard Shero are due back in court Friday to get a new trial date.

Their case has been severed from the high-profile trial earlier this year of a church official charged over his handling of abuse complaints. The Rev. William Lynn is appealing his landmark child-endangerment conviction while starting a three- to six-year prison term.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Tuesday, September 04, 2012

By Rich Lord, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A suspended Catholic priest should serve eight to 10 years in prison for receiving and possessing child pornography, federal prosecutors wrote in a court filing Sunday.

Bartley Sorensen, 63, was caught viewing a pornographic image by an employee at Saint John Fisher Parish in Churchill a month after he was transferred there from Saint Anne Parish in Castle Shannon. He pleaded guilty in May, and is set to be sentenced Sept. 13.

Mr. Sorensen “searched for and acquired images of children being sexually abused for at least 10 years,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig W. Haller wrote in a sentencing memorandum. “Regardless of whether Mr. Sorensen ever commits another crime, he should be sentenced to a serious prison term for the serious child exploitation crime he has already committed and the corresponding harm he has already caused his victims.”

Mr. Haller said that federal sentencing guidelines suggest an term of 97 to 121 months, calling that “a reasonable sentence.”

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

The Pope’s butler speaks

Giacomo Galeazzi
Vatican City

He describes himself as a benefactor of the Catholic Church and refers to the “centrality” of the Holy Spirit to explain his actions. Last night, L’Infedele, a political talk show on Italian television channel LA7, broadcast a comprehensive interview with Paolo Gabriele, the Pope’s former butler who was arrested in May, on charges of stealing confidential documents from Benedict XVI’s apartment. Part of the interview had already been broadcast on LA7 without, however, revealing Gabriele’s identity. The former butler has provided a description of the individual that made the publication of the documents possible: there are at least twenty or so people involved, none of whom have any ties with powerful figures but who “share their leader’s [that is, the Pope’s] desire for purity.”

“It is an act of anger, because there is a sort of code of silence that is preventing facts from being brought to light, not because of power struggle but because of fear. In our country, one can carry out a massacre and leave undisturbed and 24 hours later, no one can talk about what happened,” Gabriele said, referring to the Estermann case. “Or a little a girl disappears for 30 years and there is no one who can give any information about what happened,” the former butler added, alluding to the Emanuela Orlandi case. The popular Pope Ratzinger Blog comments: “To think that it has been years that in our own small way we have been saying that the Pope wants to clean house but is finding it difficult, or rather, there is someone who is constantly trying to put obstacles in his way in the Curia and in the various dioceses.”

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

On the weekend, a reader, Boltingmadonna, posted an extremely valuable response to my posting about Fr. Groeschel and his statement (for which he later apologized) that pubescent youths seduce priests who are then accused of abusing minors. As Boltingmadonna predicts at the end of her comment, Catholic blog sites are now seeing an avalanche of comments defending Groeschel. I myself am receiving emailed defenses of Groeschel and outraged denunciations of anyone who dares to question the wisdom of an elderly priest with a degree in psychology who has had such a high profile in American Catholicism through his EWTN program.

Because I think it’s critically important that American Catholics keep looking in the mirror and asking ourselves how we’ve become the kind of people, many of us, who are willing to defend a statement by a powerful priest that the abuse crisis boils down to teens seducing priests, I want to highlight Boltingmadonna’s comments in a stand-alone posting. They’re superb, and they deserve attention. She writes:

I keep trying to comment on this, and then giving up and walking away because it’s so disturbing that I fear I won’t be coherent. We used to have friends who knew Groeschel and thought he was a real saint. (And I’m not calling him “Father” Groeschel because he isn’t my father, and it is no longer my policy to let the Church dictate my honorifics.) I took their opinion at face value. And then I started listening to his talks. Holy moly, what a load of misinformation and bad faith. What a demonstration of good intentions swamped by the number of lies swallowed and spewed. This is what happens when people enslave themselves to the institution and destroy their own integrity in the process.

Then I learned that Groeschel was one of the counselors to whom rapist priests were sent for “evaluation.” He was responsible for sending a good number of abusers back into the population, where most if not all of them abused again. He was one of the pet “experts” who told the bishops these men were redeemable, one of the “experts” at whom they now point their fingers to direct blame away from themselves. Of course he told them what they wanted to hear! He was paid to do exactly that.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
New York Daily News

By Victoria Cavaliere / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

A former priest and a parochial school teacher stand trial in Philadelphia on Tuesday, facing charges of molesting a 10-year-old boy in separate incidents more than a decade ago.

The victim, identified by prosecutors as “Billy Doe,” was allegedly repeatedly molested and raped by two priests and a teacher beginning in 1998, in one of the most disturbing complaints of child sex abuse to come out of the Philadelphia Archdiocese.

Now, one of those priests, Father Charles Engelhardt, 65, and ex-teacher Bernard Shero, 49, will be tried on multiple counts of rape and indecent sexual assault for the 1998-1999 attacks on Billy, a fifth-grader who was passed among his abusers, prosecutors allege.

The two men have pleaded not guilty.

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INDIA
DNA

Published: Tuesday, Sep 4, 2012, 8:00 IST
By Manish K Pathak

The Amboli police on Saturday arrested a father who had allegedly been sexually abusing his 17-year-old daughter for the past few months.

The arrested accused has been identified as Shantaram Gaikwad, 48, a resident of Amboli and a priest at a temple in Andheri (W).

According to the police, the victim, in her complaint, stated that her father had been touching her inappropriately over the past few months. Initially, she did not tell anyone as her Gaikwad had asked her to keep mum about it, threatening her with dire consequences.

“Then, around ten days ago, the mother walked in on them and saw what was going on. The girl then told her mother everything, after which the two of them came to the police station to lodge a complaint against Gaikwad. Gaikwad, however, pleaded with his wife and daughter and said that he would not do such a thing again,” said a police officer.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS Philly

By Tony Hanson

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – The second part of the landmark clergy abuse case is scheduled to begin today with the trial of two men, a priest and a lay teacher, charged with sexually assaulting the same young boy when he was in 5th and 6th grade. Jury selection is scheduled for today.

Father Charles Engelhardt, 65, is charged with sexually assaulting the then-fifth-grade student in the church sacristy at St. Jerome’s in the Northeast.

District Attorney Seth Williams detailed the allegations when the charges were filed early last year.

“He was in the sacristy and as many young men — including myself was a young guy — as an altar boy, he has wine and the priest not looking and he took a couple of sips, priest comes in and instead of saying ‘stop that, don’t do that,’ the priest told him to drink more. And then locked the doors to the sacristy, showed him pornography and then began his abuse.”

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UNITED STATES
TheMediaReport

Dave Pierre

Colorado Springs Gazette editor Wayne Laugesen has penned a must-read editorial in which he takes aim at the nation’s selective outrage over child sex abuse.

While the public and law enforcement have rightfully expressed outrage at sex abuse committed by those in the Catholic Church and Penn State, leading abortion provider Planned Parenthood is getting a complete pass from the media, Laugesen claims.

Laugesen then points out how a number of recent stings conducted by pro-life groups Life Dynamics and Live Action have flat-out busted Planned Parenthood actively covering up child rape. And unlike the crimes by the Catholic Church that occurred decades ago, these are atrocities that are happening today.

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BELGIUM
The Tablet (United Kingdom)

James Roberts
31 August 2012, 9:00

On the night of 28 August, Michelle Martin left her Brussels prison cell to serve the remaining 14 years of her 30-year sentence in a convent of the Poor Clare Sisters in Malonne, near the city of Namur. She had been granted conditional early release after serving 16 years in jail as the accomplice of her ex-husband, Marc Dutroux, who kidnapped and raped six girls, and murdered four of them, during the 1990s.

Martin was arrested in 1996, and finally convicted in 2004, of complicity in the starving to death of Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo. She failed to tell the police, who had arrested Dutroux on another offence, that the two eight-year-old girls were being held in a basement dungeon in their house.

Marc and Michelle had been jailed in the 1980s for kidnapping and raping five young girls, but they were freed early on good behaviour. This allowed them to continue not only abducting and raping girls, but to start torturing them to death. …

In her new home in the Clarisse convent, Martin’s protection, by dozens of full-time police officers, will cost £95,000 a month, more than 30 times the cost of keeping her incarcerated. She will also be entitled to claim more than £400 a month in social security payments.In their life of prayer, the nuns have no doubt heard the endless screams and tortured pleading of the little victims of their new guest.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CNN

By Sarah Hoye, CNN

updated 6:17 AM EDT, Tue September 4, 2012

Philadelphia (CNN) — The child sexual abuse trial of a Philadelphia Catholic priest and a parochial school teacher, both accused of raping the same altar boy in separate incidents, begins Tuesday.

The Rev. Charles Engelhardt, who was a priest at St. Jerome Parish in northeast Philadelphia, and Bernard Shero, a teacher at the parish’s school, have been charged with rape, indecent sexual assault and other criminal charges in the alleged assaults that occurred more than a decade ago.

The accuser, dubbed “Billy” in a 2011 Philadelphia grand jury report, will be the key witness against the men, both of whom have pleaded not guilty to the charges.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Ekklesia

By staff writers

3 Sep 2012

The Anglican Bishop of Chichester says he is “profoundly ashamed” that the Church in his area has failed to protect children from abuse.

The Rt Rev Dr Martin Warner, who has been in post since May 2012, admitted that the term “apology” was “too light a word” and that the diocese needed to face up to “our shame”.

Both Dr Warner and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, have said they will do “everything in their power” to ensure that such abuse never happens again.

An interim report for the enquiry into the operation of the diocesan child protection policies in the Diocese of Chichester was published last week.

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AUSTRALIA
Vatican Insider

Fr. Tom Brennan has been accused of failing to report serious cases of abuse against youngsters committed by former priest John Denham

Vatican Insider staff
Rome

The former vicar-general of a Catholic diocese in NSW, in Australia, has been arrested on charges of concealing complaints made against another priest for committing acts of paedophilia. Fr. Tom Brennan (74) has been charged with failing to report the alleged indecent assault of two children committed by the former priest John Denham.

The offences were allegedly committed towards the end of the 70s, in a school in Newcastle, north of Sydney, where Fr. Denham was a teacher and Fr. Brennan the principle.

Sergeant Kristi Faber, detective in a task force that deals with cases of paedophilia in religious institutions, accused Brennan of eight counts of sexual abuse against an eight-year-old boy, in a church, between 1984 and 1985. Brennan also faces two charges of common assault for failing to report the reported indecent assault.

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VATICAN CITY
Gazzetta del Sud

(ANSA) – Vatican City, September 3 – Pope Benedict XVI is facing difficulties cleaning up affairs in the Vatican, says the man accused of stealing secret papal documents to leak to the press. In an interview with television channel LA7 to be broadcast Monday night, former butler Paolo Gabriele says that neither he nor the pope are alone in wanting Vatican City improved. “The Pope wants to clean up, but is having difficulties,” Gabriele, who has been charged with aggravated theft, said. There are at least 20 people “who, like me, want to contribute to transparency,” said Gabriele. The Vatican has denied suggestions that a further 20 people are under investigation in the case known as Vatileaks. An initial probe has already led to the indictment of Gabriele and of IT expert Claudio Sciarpelletti for aiding and abetting. The second phase of investigations has still not been formally opened but sources have said that at least 20 more people are suspected of having played a role in leaking the confidential papers, which included letters to the Pope and Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone from the Holy See’s ambassador in Washington, Carlo Maria Vigano, who was deputy governor of the Vatican City at the time they were written.

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INDIA
Indian Express

Debabrata Mohanty : Bhubaneswar, Tue Sep 04 2012

It is one of the most renowned and biggest temples of Orissa. Since last week, however, the Jagannath Temple of Puri has acquired another distinction. On August 29, one of its sevaks and a member of the temple managing committee was held for planning and carrying out the murder of a fellow panel member over property.

If Krushna Pratihari now finds himself bars, the murdered priest, Taluccha Bhagaban Mohapatra, was as well known for activities outside the holy sphere. Police records show around a dozen cases against him as well as conviction on a murder charge. Mohapatra was also the local municipality councillor of the ruling Biju Janata Dal.

However, Mohapatra was not the only Jagannath Temple “sevak (servitor)” to figure in police records, accessed by The Indian Express. At least 60-odd sevaks are named in the records for 2011 and 2012, charge-sheeted in criminal cases ranging from theft, extortion, murder, criminal intimidation and molestation to wrongful restraint.

“We have just checked cases of Singhadwar and Puri town police stations. If we take into account the cases of the last five years of all the police stations in and around Puri, the numbers will run into several hundreds. Most of them are essentially goons who terrorise people,” said a home department official. Currently, the temple has over 5,500 sevaks.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic Culture

CWN – September 03, 2012

The Italian journalist at the center of the “Vatileaks” scandal has declined to identify any of his sources, aside from Paolo Gabriele. But he said that no cardinal furnished him with confidential documents.

Gianluigi Nuzzi, whose book Sua Santita contained a large number of leaked documents, pointed out in an interview that no one has questioned the authenticity of those documents. In an earlier statement he had claimed that he received some papers “from those who wrote them.” That claim seemed to point to ranking Vatican officials, but now Nuzzi has denied that any of his sources are cardinals.

Nuzzi said that he would not identify anyone who provided him with confidential material, and would speaker of Paolo Gabriele, the Pope’s former valet, only because Gabriele has acknowledged that he took papal correspondence to the copied and delivered to the press.

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UNITED STATES
Care2

by Steve Williams
September 3, 2012

Fresh from giving the leading prayer at the Republican National Convention, Cardinal Timothy Dolan will also be giving the closing prayer at the Democratic National Convention. Given Dolan’s record though, which includes staunch anti-women’s choice positions and allegations that he paid off sexual abusers in the clergy, should he really be on the bill at all? …

So why is this guy speaking at the Democratic National Convention? Some have praised the Democratic party for offering this olive branch as a smart move to undercut the Republican Party’s claim to the Catholic base. However, it seems all those who have had positive things to say about Dolan’s DNC prayer have overlooked Dolan’s actions as archbishop of Milwaukee.

It emerged earlier this year during bankruptcy proceedings against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee that there was record of Dolan authorizing payments of as much as $20,000 to sexually abusive priests so that they would leave the priesthood, instead of actually reporting the offenders to the police.

Said the The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) in a statement at the time: ”We know, incontrovertibly, that while Dolan was claiming to heal the Milwaukee Church of the sexual abuse scandal he was instead running a shadow operation to pay off priests who had raped, sexually assaulted or abused children so that they could quietly take this money and disappear into the community unprosecuted, undetected, and unrepentant.”

This “laicization” or “defrocking” as it is known, is (staggeringly) not uncommon in the Catholic church. Reports suggest the ex-clergy were also given $1,250 in monthly pension benefits and health insurance until they were able to land a job, this in addition to the $20,000 severance.

Dolan initially denied that he made such payments, saying the claims were “false, preposterous and unjust,” and then when proof was offered, Dolan simply would not comment.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Ealing Gazette

Sep 3 2012 By Steve Bax

A FORMER priest who was questioned by police over an alleged sexual assault in Ealing has gone on the run.

Ex-Roman Catholic priest Lawrence Soper, 68, was arrested in September 2010 on suspicion of historical sexual assault relating to his time at St Benedict’s School, Ealing.

The allegation was made by a man who is now in his 40s a couple of months earlier.

Officers from the Metropolitan Police Child Abuse Investigation Team investigated and Soper was arrested and later bailed to return to a west London police station in March 2011, but he failed to appear.

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HAWAII
Honolulu Star-Advertiser via The Worthy Adversary

POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Sep 02, 2012 StarAdvertiser.com

A letter outlines church efforts to help alleged victims and ensure safety

By Pat Gee

Bishop Larry Silva of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Honolulu is assuring parishioners that their leaders have done and are doing everything possible to assure clergy sexual abuse never happens again.

In a letter dated Aug. 24, Silva responded to allegations by former students of Damien Memorial School and St. Anthony Church in Kailua that they were sexually abused by clergy in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. It can be read in full on the diocese’s “e-NewsLetter” at www.catholichawaii.org.

Claims have been filed in a New York bankruptcy court against the North American branch of the Congregation of Christian Brothers and in Hawaii against the diocese and other defendants, according to a Star-Advertiser story Aug. 24.

Under a new law that went into effect in April — which circumvents the lapsing of the statute of limitations on abuse that may have occurred decades ago — victims have until 2014 to file suit.

“This is a matter of great pain and shame to all of us Catholics, especially our wonderful priests

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HAWAII
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on September 3, 2012

Here’s a sad, sad story from today’s Honolulu Star Advertiser. Honolulu’s Bishop Clarence Silva blames victims for not coming forward to him, his predecessors for covering things up, enemies of the church who “capitalize on this very real problem,” proponents of gay marriage, pro-life advocates, and just about everyone else.

Really? Since when do the gay marriage and pro-life movements have ANYTHING to do with child sex abuse and cover up?

My modest proposal? Name the perps, open the files, disclose allegations, turn ALL evidence over to the cops and quit blaming victims. That’s pretty easy, right?

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

[Cardinal Burke: anti-canonical priestly culture devastated Church after Vatican II – Catholic Culture]

by Thomas C. Fox on Sep. 03, 2012 NCR Today

Cardinal Raymond Burke has reportedly expressed his profound sorrow that “the failure of knowledge and application of the canon law … contributed significantly to the scandal of the sexual abuse of minors by the clergy in some parts of the world.”

His remarks, as far as they go, reveal a serious misunderstanding of the deeper nature of the clergy sex abuse crisis. Not to face its larger and, in the eyes of many, more troubling dimension, is to make it all the more unlikely we will ever get beyond it.

What makes the cardinal’s seemingly inadequate analysis all the more shocking is that he holds a critical position of authority within our church. As head of our church’s highest court, the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, any inability – or unwillingness – to face, examine and respond to the scandal, now over a quarter century old, only adds to the crisis and feeds an already widespread pessimism that our church leaders are not up to the task.

Is it personality or structure? Is it the makeup of the leadership or the way that leadership carries out (or fails to carry out) its duties?

What is especially bothersome about Burke’s inadequate analysis of the abuse scandal is it comes after decades of news coverage and studies, civil and ecclesial, which suggest far larger institutional challenges than wayward priests who have failed to live by canon law.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Seattle PI

MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press

Updated 7:33 a.m., Monday, September 3, 2012

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The former altar boy’s story was jarring, even amid scores of priest-abuse complaints in Philadelphia.

A policeman’s son, he told authorities in 2009 that he had been raped by three adults — two parish priests and his sixth-grade teacher — during grade school. He’d gone on to a troubled life marked by drug arrests, dropping out of high school and nearly two dozen stints in rehab.

Prosecutors believed his abuse claims. They used his story to help build a landmark conspiracy case against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, and dubbed him “Billy” in their 2011 grand jury report.

Now the troubled young man’s credibility will be on the line when two of the men he’s accused go on trial.

“There’s going to be some rough times in cross-examination. There always are,” said Philadelphia lawyer Slade McLaughlin, who represents the 24-year-old in a civil lawsuit against the church. “(But) he’s ready to rock and roll.”

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ITALY
The Irish Times

PADDY AGNEW in Rome

THOUSANDS OF people are expected to attend the funeral today in Milan of the Jesuit Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, one of Italy’s best known and most respected Catholic thinkers. Over the last two days more than 100,000 people filed past his body, which was lying in state in Milan cathedral.

The former archbishop of Milan, who died on Friday at the age of 85, was probably best known outside Italy as the eternal pope in waiting, given that for many years during the papacy of John Paul II he was regularly tipped as his successor.

Martini was a towering figure of the Catholic Church, someone who could conduct a dialogue with believers and non-believers alike and who was never afraid to discuss publicly such controversial church issues as clerical sex abuse, clerical celibacy, homosexuality and the use of condoms in the fight against Aids. …

In his last interview, conducted in early August but published last weekend by Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Martini left us with some typically provocative thoughts.

“The church is 200 years out of date. Why does it not rouse itself? Or are we afraid? . . . In the wealthy West the church is tired,” he said.

“The church must admit its errors and go down the path of radical change, starting with the pope and bishops. The paedophile scandals oblige us to undergo a process of change.”

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CANADA
Kentucky Lake Times

When a Kitchener (Ontario, Canada) man inadvertently discovered his teenage daughter’s diary in his basement, he was shocked to see it contained the name of a former elder at the family’s Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The name Claude Martin was written in bold text, the Kitchener man told a judge yesterday at Martin’s trial for sexually assaulting that girl and another girl who attended Martin’s Jehovah’s Witnesses sect.

Martin, 76, allegedly touched the man’s daughter with his hand between January, 2001 and December, 2002. He allegedly touched the other girl with his penis between January, 1988 and December, 1989.

The man’s daughter testified that Martin touched her buttocks with his hand and put his finger on her vagina during a Saturday morning door-to-door sales visit to a home.

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UNITED STATES
The New Civil Rights Movement

by David Badash on August 31, 2012

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, issued a statement yesterday defending Father Benedict Groeschel, who earlier this week blamed child victims of pedophile priests for their rapes. Calling Groeschel’s service “heroic,” and his record “impressive,” Donohue claims Father Groeschel merely “hypothesized how a young person (14, 16 or 18, as he put it) could conceivably take advantage of a priest who was having a nervous breakdown.” Groeschel told the National Catholic Register that in a “lot of the cases, the youngster — 14, 16, 18 — is the seducer.”

Donohue calls Groeschel’s record of screening applicants to the priesthood “impressive,” yet, as The New Civil Rights Movement posited yesterday, perhaps someone in the past 40 years should have realized that the gatekeeper was a sympathizer to rapists of children? Did no one ever examine Groeschel’s batting average?

The Catholic Church has been plagued with thousands of pedophile priests, enabled by Catholic leadership up to and including Pope Benedict XVI, (certainly in his previously role,) and men like Donohue, who attack groups like SNAP and demean and discredit those victims who speak out.

Speaking of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abuse By Priests — whom Dolan has called a “phony victims’ group” — David Clohessy, SNAP’s Executive Director, writes of the Groeschel issue that “the real issue isn’t that Groeschel makes such hurtful, stupid and Todd Akin-like remarks.(Many Catholic officials have thought and said much the same. We suspect many still do right now.)”

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UNITED STATES
Waiting for Godot to Leave

Todd Akin issued a very heart-felt and simple apology for his statement of a few weeks back. In an interview, he had asserted regarding conception and rape, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down”, which angered folks for two reasons

Did Akin imply with the phrase “legitimate rape” that some rapes are not legitimate? Was he implying that statutory rape, for example, is not “legitimate rape”?

Was he implying that if a woman conceives during a rape that somehow that rape was not “legitimate”?

And now just this week Fr. Benedict Groeschel has stumbled into the subject in a similar manner, by saying that sometimes a vulnerable adult can be “seduced” by a minor as young as age 14.

Fr. Groeschel’s comment raised a firestorm of protest, and Fr. Groeschel quickly issued his own simple and sincere apology and retraction.

But both the Akin case and the Fr. Groeschel case have something in common – the implication that statutory rape is anything other than rape plain and simple. As a Facebook friend commented to me, “It is a legal fiction that statutory rape and sodomy are always non-consensual.”

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PHILIPPINES
Philippine Daily Inquirer

By Niña Calleja
Philippine Daily Inquirer
6:50 am | Monday, September 3rd, 2012

MANILA, Philippines—An organization of the Catholic laity in the cities of Parañaque, Las Piñas, and Muntinlupa have called on their diocesan bishop to account for more than P3 million in church funds intended to aid calamity victims and present them documentation of how the funds were distributed.

Representatives of the lay people in 51 different parishes of the Diocese of Parañaque alleged in a recent forum that almost half of the donations did not reach its intended beneficiaries — the victims of tropical storm “Ondoy,” Haiti earthquake, typhoon “Sendong,” and a fire in Muntinlupa City.

In their quest for answers, the outspoken lay people formed an organization, which they called Lay Initiative for Transparency and Accountability (Laity).

Dr. Erwin Carabeo, a parishioner in Parañaque City and one of group’s convenors, said Bishop Jesse Mercado has not responded to their June 20 letter asking for a fund accounting.

In the letter, the group said it has received reports that Bishop Mercado diverted a portion of the aid money to time and dollar deposits and Central Bank-issued special deposit accounts at the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI).

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Alan Howe
From:Herald Sun
September 03, 2012

THIS Baillieu Government means business.

It wants answers. Now.

Two weeks ago it announced an investigation in to whether there really were big cats in the bush.

Sightings of the deadly predators have been reported for decades.

But they haven’t killed anyone. I’m not sure anyone really cares whether they are out there or not.

Meanwhile, the Government has its sights set on trapping another lethal predator – the elusive paedophile clergy, a menacing beast also regularly sighted across Victoria.

The difference is these animals have killed Victorians. Plenty of them.

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KENYA
Catholic Culture

Lamenting a clerical culture dismissive of canon law in the decades following the Second Vatican Council, Cardinal Raymond Burke addressed a Kenyan canon law convention on August 28 about “the essential service of canon law in the work of the new evangelization.”

“After I began my studies of Canon Law in September of 1980, I soon learned how much the Church’s discipline was disdained by her priests, in general,” he recounted. “Institutes of the Church’s law, which, in her wisdom, she had developed down the Christian centuries, were set aside without consideration of their organic relationship to the life of the Church or of the chaos which would necessarily result from their neglect or abandonment.”

“The ‘hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture,’ which has tried to hijack the renewal mandated by the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, is marked by a pervasively antinomian culture, epitomized by the Paris student riots of 1968, and has had a particularly devastating effect on the Church’s discipline,” he continued. “It is profoundly sad to note, for instance, how the failure of knowledge and application of the canon law, which was indeed still in force, contributed significantly to the scandal of the sexual abuse of minors by the clergy in our some parts of the world.”

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

by Thomas C. Fox on Sep. 02, 2012 NCR Today

Cardinal Raymond Burke, addressing a Kenyan canon law convention Aug. 28, linked the clergy sex abuse scandal with a failure by priests to respect canon law.

Burke, Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican’s highest court, said: “It is profoundly sad to note, for instance, how the failure of knowledge and application of the canon law, which was indeed still in force, contributed significantly to the scandal of the sexual abuse of minors by the clergy in our some parts of the world.”

Burke’s remarks appeared on the CatholicCulture.org website.

“The years of a lack of knowledge of the Church’s discipline and even of a presumption that such discipline was no longer fitting to the nature of the Church indeed reaped gravely harmful fruits in the Church,” Burke said. Going on to say:

For example, I think of the pervasive violation of the liturgical law of the Church, of the revolution in catechesis which often rendered the teaching of the faith vacuous and confused, if not erroneous; of the breakdown of the discipline of priestly formation and priestly life, of the abandonment of the essential elements of religious life and the devastating loss of fundamental direction in many congregations of religious Sisters, Brothers and priests; of the loss of the identity of charitable, educational and healthcare institutions bearing the name of Catholic; and the failure of respect for the nature of marriage and the time-proven process for judging claims of nullity of marriage in ecclesiastical tribunals.

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UNITED STATES
Daily Times

The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church have had a lot on their plates in the last decade, dealing with accusations of clerical sexual abuse of minors and now, with criminal convictions of some priests.

Officials in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in particular have been through much with two Philadelphia grand jury reports on clerical sexual abuse resulting in the conviction of defrocked priest Edward Avery and Monsignor William Lynn — Avery for sexual abuse of a minor, Lynn for allowing Avery to have continued access to children after becoming aware of repeated abuse allegations against him.

Lynn has the dubious distinction of being the highest ranking Roman Catholic official in the United States convicted of child endangerment for essentially protecting a pedophile to avoid church scandal.

Archdiocesan officials will continue to deal with repercussions from sex abuse of children under their watch when, on Tuesday, the trial begins for the Rev. Charles Englehardt, a member of the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, and former Catholic school lay teacher Bernard Shero, who are both accused of assaulting the same Philadelphia altar boy Avery pleaded guilty to assaulting.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

[interim report]

The Bishop of Chichester has said he is “profoundly ashamed” the Sussex church failed to protect children from abuse.

Dr Martin Warner, who has led the diocese since May, said apology was “too light a word” and the organisation needed to register “our shame”.

He said it needed to do everything in its power to stop it happening again.

His comments came after a report found a “profoundly negative culture” within the Diocese of Chichester led to two decades of child protection failures.

The inquiry by the Archbishop of Canterbury’s office said “fresh and disturbing” aspects of the way abuse claims were handled keep surfacing.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Dan Box
September 03, 2012

THE Catholic Church has received at least 1500 complaints of abuse by priests across Australia, about a third of which are thought to relate to alleged child abuse.

The number, revealed in separate statements made this year by the archbishops of Sydney and Melbourne, is almost certainly an underestimate, as the church says it is unable to provide an accurate national figure.

About two-thirds of these complaints were made in NSW, under the Towards Healing program established in 1996, with most of the rest made under its Victorian equivalent, the Melbourne Response.

Many of those who have been through these processes, however, describe being “re-traumatised” or “re-abused” by the experience.

One victim of pedophile abuse by a priest criticised a lack of independence, saying complainants were “reintroduced to the same environment they experienced in childhood”.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Vancouver Sun

By The Associated Press
September 2, 2012

LONDON – British police say they have issued a European arrest warrant for a fugitive Catholic priest who is wanted for questioning over an allegation of sexual assault.

Scotland Yard said Sunday that it had obtained the warrant for Father Laurence Soper, who was arrested in 2010 over accusations of child abuse several decades ago while teaching at a Roman Catholic school in west London.

Soper was questioned in 2010 and released on bail. He had been due to return to a police station in March for further questioning, but he failed to appear.

The cleric taught at St. Benedict’s School, which a judge-led inquiry found last year had been the scene of at least 20 incidents of sexual misconduct over 40 years.

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UNITED KINGDOM
London 24

Sarah Shaffi Sunday, September 2, 2012

Police have obtained a European Arrest Warrant for a former Roman Catholic priest accused of past sex offences at an Ealing school.

In June 2010 a man now in his 40s made a historical allegation of sexual assault relating to his time at St Benedict’s School. …

Police have tried to trace him without success said Scotland Yard, and a European Arrest Warrant for his arrest has now been obtained.

It is believed he may be in Italy. Officers are asking people who know of his whereabouts to call them on 0208 246 1901 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 55111.

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ITALY
Los Angeles Times

By Michael McGough

The day after conservative Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York closed the Republican National Convention with a benediction, another prominent Catholic prelate, Italian Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, died.

In a parallel universe often dreamed of by liberal Catholics, it was Martini, a Jesuit scripture scholar, who was elected pope in 2005 instead of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, his conservative colleague. If Martini had been elected — and reports of how many votes he received in the secret conclave varied wildly — Dolan might have remained in Milwaukee.

Secular journalists tend to exaggerate the differences between liberal and conservative Catholic bishops. If Martini had been elected pope, there wouldn’t have been a relaxation of the church’s teaching against abortion or the ordination of women as priests. (If Rome were to ordain women, it would drive Eastern-rite Catholics into the hands of the Orthodox churches, which would then have bragging rights as the only tradition that preserved the all-male clergy supposedly ordained by Jesus.)

Martini wasn’t a raving liberal. But he was a less cloistered and less (in Catholic jargon) “triumphalist” figure than Ratzinger. Had he been elected pope, bishops in the U.S. church today might resemble the moderately liberal prelates appointed during the reign of Pope Paul VI more than the conservatives advanced by John Paul II and Benedict XVI. And while Benedict has brought back the Tridentine Latin Mass, Martini reportedly refused to celebrate the old rite in Milan, believing that the post-Vatican II vernacular liturgy was more nourishing of faith.

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Religion News Service | By Amanda Greene

WILMINGTON, N.C. (RNS) While burning through their savings looking for jobs, Gerry Murphy and Andrea Kanelopoulos-Murphy and their two young children were invited by a local businessman to stay in his condo this summer until they found a position.

With 10 percent unemployment in this corner of North Carolina, their story could be a common one. But the couple believe their unique marriage sometimes makes it harder to find the right workplace.

After three years in the priesthood serving a Catholic parish in Oakland, Calif., Murphy, an Irish-born Catholic, felt a tug in his heart. He wanted a family, but his vows of celibacy prevented that.

“I got ordained at 37 in 2001, and I had been in a couple of relationships before that, so the whole celibacy issue was a question for me — even on the day of my ordination,” he said.

Murphy didn’t want to betray his personal integrity — or his vows — by taking a mistress. “I know lots of people right now who are priests and in relationships — gay and straight,” he added.

The subject of married priests in the Catholic Church has been controversial for hundreds of years. That controversy returned this year after an auxiliary bishop in Los Angeles admitted he had fathered two children — about the same time the Vatican released guidelines for accepting married priests from Episcopal churches in the Catholic priesthood.

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