ABUSE TRACKER

PENNSYLVANIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on January 30, 2013

A support group for clergy sex abuse victims is blasting Altoona-Johnstown Bishop Mark Leonard Bartchak over what they call his “continued secrecy and deception” in the case of a credibly accused Catholic cleric.

Leaders of SNAP have discovered that Br. Stephen P. Baker – who is accused of molesting dozens of boys in Ohio and Pennsylvania – has also worked in Michigan and Virginia, a fact that Altoona-Johnstown church officials have kept hidden in recent discussions of Baker’s history.

“Any official with real compassion would want every victim of Baker – no matter where they live or where they were hurt – to get help,” said Judy Jones, SNAP’s Midwest Associate Director. “How can Bartchak justify telling only part of the truth. There’s only one reason he’d keep quiet at this point about other places Baker works: he wants to continue protecting other corrupt Catholic officials and prevent other suffering victims from stepping forward.”

Today, outside the Detroit Archdiocesan headquarters, SNAP members are holding a news conference. They’re calling on the archbishop there to reach out to others who “saw, suspected or suffered” crimes by Baker when he worked at St. Mary’s Prep., Orchard Lake, MI between 1983-1985.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Westfalische Nachrichten

Seit dem letzten Zwischenbericht, den die zuständige Kommission des Bistums Münster 2010 vorlegte, sind nach jüngsten Angaben keine neuen Fälle sexualisierter Gewalt bekannt geworden. 60 Priester (1,5 Prozent von ungefähr 4000 Priestern im gesamten Zeitraum) waren zwischen 1949 und 2010 in Fälle sexueller Gewalt verstrickt.

Bekannt wurde die Zahl von 106 Opfern. In 82 Fällen wurde nach Auskunft von Domkapitular Bernd Köppen eine Entschädigung gezahlt, in den anderen Fällen wurde dies nicht gewünscht. Die überwiegende Zahl der Täter (56) wurde zwischen 1949 und 2001 registriert, 27 der Beschuldigten waren bereits verstorben. Zwischen 2001 und 2010 erhielt die Kommission Kenntnis von vier neuen Beschuldigten. Die Verfahren dauern teilweise an.

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AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

January 31, 2013

Barney Zwartz

Australia now has two inquiries into the sexual abuse of children by clergy. Will they be the circuit-breaker that triggers the changes so many Catholics want or will the church retreat behind a wall of obstruction and concealment?

CARDINAL Bernard Law of Boston was the first, and so far only, archbishop to resign over public revulsion at his handling of child sex abuse by his clergy. Named in hundreds of lawsuits, subject of dramatic public protests, and publicly rejected by 58 of his priests, Law resigned in December 2002.

Pope John Paul II’s response, widely seen as a gesture of blatant contempt for Boston’s faithful, was to appoint Law archpriest of one of Rome’s four great basilicas, Santa Maria Maggiore.

The message to the disgraced cardinal was clear: ”You are one of us, and we will look after you.” To many inside and outside the church, protecting the church and its clerics has always been the Vatican’s priority – and, they say, it still is.

John Paul II also protected and promoted notorious abusers such as Marcial Maciel, founder the of Legionaries of Christ movement. Indeed, the Pope’s first response to the expanding American crisis was to blame a ”hostile” media, and his fallback position was to claim clergy abuse was purely an anglophone issue.

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PHILADELHIA (PA)
Big Trial

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

By Ralph Cipriano
for bigtrial.net

The jury in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia sex abuse case today made the mistake of asking for too much.

First, the jury asked to see defendant Bernard Shero’s suicide note. No objections were voiced to that request by either the prosecution or the defense.

Shero tried to commit suicide in 2011 by taking sleeping pills when detectives from the district attorney’s office came to arrest him. When Shero didn’t answer the door, the cops summoned firefighters to break in, and detectives placed the groggy Catholic school teacher under arrest.

The jury also asked to see Detective Andrew Snyder’s notes. Snyder was the detective from the district attorney’s office who arrested Shero. He was also the detective in 2010 who first interviewed “Billy Doe,” the former 10-year-old altar boy who claimed he was raped by both Shero and Father Charles Engelhardt, the other defendant in the case.

Defense lawyer Burton A. Rose, representing Shero, objected, saying that Snyder’s notes focus on “one aspect of evidence,” presumably the attempted suicide.

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MICHIGAN
The Desert Sun

Troy pastor under embezzlement investigation bought $500,000 Florida condo from his church manager

The charismatic Catholic pastor removed last week from his parish in Troy amid an embezzlement investigation bought a half-million-dollar condo in Florida from his longtime church administrator, the Free Press has learned.

Adding another layer to the case that has shocked and captivated metro Detroit Catholics, the St. Thomas More administrator, Janice Verschuren, is no longer employed by the parish, according to the Archdiocese of Detroit.

The church’s parish council was told on Monday about the departure of Verschuren, who has worked at the parish since 1994, archdiocese spokesman Ned McGrath said Tuesday.

In March 2005, Rev. Edward Belczak, the pastor at the church, purchased the property in Wellington, Fla., for $500,000 from Verschuren, the church’s administrator and facilities manager, and her then-husband, Michael Verschuren, according to public records in Palm Beach County. In 2011, Belczak, 67, transferred the property to a trust in his name, according to documents reviewed by the Free Press.

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IRELAND
RTE News

A former school principal and priest has been remanded in custody after being found guilty of indecently assaulting a boy in Waterford over 30 years ago.

Con Desmond, 77, with an address at Woodlands, Kilrush Road, Ennis, denied 13 charges of indecent assault between 1977 and 1980 at the St Stephen’s De La Salle national school in Waterford city.

Barrister Elaine Morgan, representing Desmond, applied for sentencing to be adjourned until 19 February.

This was granted by Judge Donagh McDonagh to allow for the preparation of character evidence and medical evidence.

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UNITED STATES
Failed Messiah

Chabad’s Rabbi Manis Friedman tries to clarify his position on child sexual abuse in a new video released tonight. But is what Friedman says on this new video clip enough? Is it an apology for the hurt he caused with the video publicized yesterday? Does it explain and correct his offensive remarks in that video? Is it an honest acknowledgement that he was wrong, that he made mistakes, that he hurt victims, and that he’s sorry? In short, is it teshuva, repentance as defined by the Jewish law Friedman is paid to represent?

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UNITED KINGDOM
Mirror

Orthodox Jewish leaders have been protecting child abusers, a TV documentary will claim tonight.

Dispatches found 19 cases where crimes were not reported as the community prefers to deal with it internally.

The show will claim that those who go to authorities face being spat at and driven out of their area.

It will show senior Rabbi Ephraim Padwa order an alleged victim to stay away from the police because the force is “non-Jewish”.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Independent

Tom Peck

Wednesday 30 January 2013

A senior British rabbi has been filmed telling an alleged victim of child sexual abuse not to go to the police.

Rabbi Ephraim Padwa, who is leader of the UK’s Strictly Orthodox Jewish community, told the alleged victim that it was “mesira”, or forbidden, to report a suspected Jewish sex offender to a non-Jewish authority.

His advice, which was secretly recorded as part of a Channel 4’s Dispatches investigation to be shown tonight, will reignite the controversy about the cover-up of child sex abuse by religious groups following global scandals surrounding the Roman Catholic church

Strictly Orthodox Jewish people, known as Charedi, number 40,000 people, around a sixth of the Jewish population in Britain.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

January 30, 2013

Barney Zwartz

Victoria’s clergy sex abuse inquiry is likely to recommend at least six state laws be reformed to hold the Catholic Church to account, including removal of the legal ”shield” it has used to avoid being sued by victims.

Chairwoman Georgie Crozier said the committee already had a good idea of the sort of recommendations it would make. Fairfax Media understands the committee is eager for several laws to be changed this year.

The Victorian inquiry does not need to await the outcome of the royal commission into the sexual abuse of children, set up by the Gillard government and yet to take formal evidence. Ms Crozier said she expected the state inquiry to be of great use to the commission.

Enabling the church to be sued, mandatory reporting of suspected abuse, concealing crimes and extending the statute of limitations for child abuse are all issues that could be dealt with by the Victorian government.

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IOWA
Des Moines Register

Written by
Jeff Eckhoff

An ex-Pella pastor found to have sexually exploited four of his former parishioners now is embroiled in a wide-ranging lawsuit with accusations that include assault, damaged reputations and harassment.

Patrick Edouard, convicted in October of pressuring women for sex after they allegedly sought his counsel, was sued two months later by two of his former victims and their husbands. The women, sisters-in-law Valerie Bandstra and Anne Bandstra, also target the former leaders of Edouard’s church, whom the women accuse of defaming them by publicly dismissing accusations of rape as mere marital infidelity.

“You are not victims,” court papers quote church elder Clarence Hettinga as repeatedly telling the Bandstras. The lawsuit later quotes Hettinga as saying, “Unless he was holding a knife to her throat, it wasn’t rape.”

Edouard, who has always insisted the sex was consensual, in his own court papers accuses the Bandstra families of smearing his reputation by harassing his family with prank pizza orders, throwing a brick through his son’s window, and creating a fake posting on Craigslist that listed his house for sale.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

CONOR KANE

A former religious brother and priest was in custody last night after being found guilty of 13 counts of indecently assaulting a schoolboy over 30 years ago. Con Desmond (77), with an address at Woodlands, Kilrush Road, Ennis, Co Clare, had denied 13 charges of indecently assaulting a boy at the St Stephen’s De La Salle national school in Waterford city, between 1977 and 1980.

After a five-day trial, a jury of seven women and five men returned majority 10-2 guilty verdicts on all 13 charges at Waterford circuit court yesterday.

The complainant, who was aged eight, nine and 10 at the time of the alleged offences, told the trial that Con Desmond – then known as Br Cornelius – abused him a number of times in the principal’s office of the school.

The accused showed no emotion in court as the verdicts were read out, while the victim wept quietly and held hands with his partner and other family members.

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WISCONSIN
SNAP Wisconsin

Statement by Peter Isely, SNAP Midwest Director
CONTACT: 414.429.7259

Only after having been discovered by a victim’s advocacy group, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee has finally confirmed today that they have returned to ministry Fr. John Schreiter after he was removed a second time from a Waukesha parish for allegedly sexually assaulting teenagers (story posted below). Schreiter, who was pastor of a parish in Waukesha, has “retired” and left the state, presumably, to Arizona. He goes as a priest in good standing, according to Listecki, who can continue in Arizona or anywhere else to work, counsel and pray with children and families.

“Why would Archbishop Listecki want to keep secret his decision and belief that Schreiter is innocent?

Perhaps, because as detailed in the SNAP release last week, Listecki appears to have the troubling history of exonerating more priests with sexual assault reports than any bishop in the United States.

A national study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice shows that even the US Bishops have maintained that the number of falsely accused priests is nine percent. In Listecki’s former diocese of La Crosse, and now it seems in his new Archdiocese of Milwaukee, the number of falsely accused priests or mysteriously “unsubstantiated” reports (i.e., “the victim is lying”) is truly miraculous, near 70 percent, or six times the national average. That’s by far the highest clearance rate for priests who may have harmed youngsters in the United States.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel

Jan. 29, 2013

The Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee, which faces more than a dozen civil fraud lawsuits over its handling of clergy sex abuse cases, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January. As the case proceeds, we’ll have updates, analysis, documents and more.

A Waukesha priest accused of sexually abusing a minor three decades ago has been cleared by Archbishop Jerome Listecki of any wrongdoing and returned to ministry earlier this month, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee confirmed this week.

Father John Schreiter had been placed on leave in June, two weeks before he was to retire from St. John Neumann Parish. The allegation had surfaced as part of the archdiocese’s bankruptcy. …

The advocacy group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests criticized the move as secretive and reflective of the policy in La Crosse – where Listecki last served – to side with priests over victims. They point to a 2004 review by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, which found that La Crosse exonerated clergy in 64% of cases from 1950 to 2002, compared with the national average of below 10%.

Topczewski would not say how many cases are pending before the review board. The archdiocese generally does not release information about cases to protect the reputations of priests whose charges are unsubstantiated, according to Topczewski. The exception is when a priest is removed from an active ministry, he said, “because there is no way around it.”

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MINNESOTA
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: McGrath was accused in the early 1990s of having sexually abused two girls, ages 16 and 14, in the late 1960s. The girls worked in the church office and rectory at the Minneapolis parish where McGrath was an assistant priest. McGrath was a priest of the St. Paul and Minneapolis archdiocese through 1994.

Ordained: 1957
Incardinated: St. Paul and Minneapolis

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PORTLAND (OR)
United States Attorney’s Office, District of Oregon

Mail Fraud Scheme Falsely Claimed Child Sex Abuse by Priests 35 Years Ago

Portland, Ore.—A federal grand jury in Portland has returned an indictment against Shamont Sapp, 49, charging him with mail fraud in a five-year scheme involving false claims of child sex abuse by Catholic priests in four dioceses. Sapp, originally from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, is alleged to have used “legal mail” while an inmate of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to file, pursue and litigate the false claims in federal courts from 2005 through 2010. According to the indictment, the false claims caused the dioceses, their representatives, several courts and other entities to expend money, time and other resources to investigate and resolve the claims, which were ultimately denied or dismissed.

The indictment states that the four fraudulent claims sought money damages, and each alleged similar sexual assaults by specified priests when Sapp was a minor in 1978-79. It charges that Sapp had not been sexually assaulted by the priests and, indeed, had not even been present in the dioceses as alleged in his claims.

Fraudulent claims listed in the indictment involved the dioceses of Tucson, Arizona; Covington, Kentucky, and Spokane, Washington, as well as the Archdiocese of Portland, Oregon. In the Covington and Spokane cases, the indictment notes that Sapp falsely alleged sexual assaults by priests in two different cities on the same day, August 18, 1978.

Sapp initially will appear in U.S. District Court in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where the government will seek his removal to Portland to face trial on the indictment.

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OREGON
The Oregonian

By Tom Hallman Jr., The Oregonian
on January 29, 2013

A federal prisoner has been indicted for mail fraud in connection with what authorities describe as a five-year scheme to get money from the Catholic Church by falsely claiming he had been sexually abused by priests when he was a child nearly four decades ago.

Shamont Sapp, 49, finishing up a prison term in Pennsylvania for bank robbery, will appear in U.S District Court in Harrisburg, Pa. and then be sent to Portland to stand trial, said Stephen Peifer, assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Oregon.

“He will make his first court appearance there and then be turned over to Oregon,” Peifer said.

A federal grand jury indictment accuses of Sapp of using the mail while a prisoner to “file, pursue and litigate the false claims in federal courts from 2005 through 2010.”

In his claims, Sapp named priests in Arizona, Kentucky, Oregon and Washington who he said abused him.

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PORTLAND (OR)
KPTV

PORTLAND, OR (KPTV) –
A man accused of making false claims of child sex abuse involving Catholic priests has been charged with mail fraud.

A federal grand jury in Portland returned an indictment against Shamont Sapp, 49, of Pennsylvania, on Tuesday.

He is accused of a five-year scheme involving false claims of abuse in four dioceses. Investigators said he used the U.S. Postal Service while he was a prison inmate to file, pursue and litigate the false claims in federal courts between 2005 and 2010.

Dioceses listed in the indictment are in Tucson, AZ, Covington, KT, Spokane, WA, and Portland.

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OREGON
KGW

by JONATHAN J. COOPER Associated Press

Posted on January 29, 2013

SALEM — Prosecutors say an inmate in a federal prison falsely claimed he was abused as a child by priests in four Catholic dioceses.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Portland said Tuesday that a grand jury has indicted 49-year-old Shamont Sapp on charges of mail fraud.

The indictment alleges that Sapp filed claims in courts over a five-year period alleging abuse by specific priests in the dioceses of Tucson, Ariz.; Covington, Ky.; and Spokane, Wash., as well as the Archdiocese of Portland, Ore.

It says the priests Sapp named didn’t abuse him, and his claims were dismissed or denied.

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OREGON
The Oregonian

By Nancy Haught, The Oregonian
on January 29, 2013

Although he’s known for almost two weeks that he would be the next Archbishop of Portland, Alexander King Sample, 52, has yet to watch his first episode of “Portlandia.”

“Maybe it’s just as well,” he said to a roomful of archdiocesan staff members who were chuckling at his admission.

The bishop of Marquette, Mich., for the past seven years, Sample will succeed Archbishop John G. Vlazny, 75, who plans to retire to Beaverton after his 15 years as leader of Western Oregon’s 400,000 Catholics.

“This is the age of Google,” Sample said in his first news conference and informal staff meeting at the archdiocesan pastoral center. He said he’d used Google maps to turn St. Mary’s Cathedral around on his computer screen and figured out the correct pronunciation of Willamette and Oregon.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

The Associated Press
Updated: 01/29/2013

PHILADELPHIA—A Philadelphia jury has asked for a teacher’s suicide note as they weigh abuse charges against the teacher and a Roman Catholic priest.

The jury is set to return Wednesday for a fifth day of deliberations.

The 24-year-old accuser says he was raped as a child at a northeast Philadelphia parish by the Rev. Charles Engelhardt and sixth-grade teacher Bernard Shero.

In the suicide note, Shero apologizes to his parents for the notoriety of the looming abuse charges. He took sleeping pills before his 2011 arrest, but survived.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Philadelphia Weekly

[Click here for the story.]

Standing on the steps of the Capitol in Harrisburg last week, advocates and legislators announced they’re doubling down on the battle to reform Pennsylvania’s statute of limitations on child sex abuse.

In Pennsylvania, statute of limitation reform bills have been stalled, buried and blocked for many years. Most recently, Rep. Ronald Marsico (R-Dauphin) and Rep. Thomas Caltagirone (D-Berks) bent parliamentary procedures into Cirque de Soleil-worthy formations in order to defeat last year’s bills, ultimately passing watered-down versions that accomplished far less than the original sponsors proposed. The criminal statute of limitations was abolished and the statute was extended 50 years old for civil charges, yes — but the initiative that’s far more important to advocates, and far more controversial, was completely struck from the law as passed: the “window” provision. That’s a temporary window of time, usually one or two years from the date enacted, wherein victims of a crime can file civil charges even though the statute of limitation has run out.

A civil window is vital because raising (or abolishing) the age on a statute of limitation does not allow grandfathering in. It’s confusing, but if a person who was abused as a kid didn’t file charges before the arbitrary statute age of 18, or 23, or 50 years old isn’t suddenly allowed to prosecute when the age limit is upped or abolished. So effectively, raising the age and even now abolishing it entirely only helps the future generation–and criminal windows are unconstitutional.

The champion of the cause is 79-year-old Rep. Louse Bishop (D-Philadelphia), who, in the wake of the Penn State scandal, revealed last fall that her stepfather had raped her starting from when she was 12 years old.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

Joseph A. Slobodzian, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Posted: Tuesday, January 29, 2013

The Philadelphia jury in the child-rape trial of a priest and ex-Catholic schoolteacher continued deliberations today, submitting a series of questions to the judge about the allegations against Bernard Shero.

The Common Pleas Court jury of eight men and four women asked for a rereading of testimony involving the alleged 1999 rape of a sixth-grader who was in Shero’s English class at St. Jerome’s parish school in the Northeast.

In addition to the testimony of the now-24-year-old victim, the jury also asked to hear the testimony of Philadelphia Police Det. Andrew Snyder about his investigation of the incident.

But after reviewing the questions with prosecution and defense lawyers, Judge Ellen Ceisler ruled that the transcripts would be too lengthy. She sent a note back to the jurors saying it was up to them to arrive at a collective memory of the testimony.

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WISCONSIN
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel

Jan. 29, 2013

A Waukesha priest accused of sexually abusing a minor three decades ago has been cleared by Archbishop Jerome Listecki of any wrongdoing and returned to ministry earlier this month, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee confirmed this week.

Father John Schreiter had been placed on leave in June, two weeks before he was to retire from St. John Neumann Parish. The allegation had surfaced as part of the archdiocese’s bankruptcy.

Schreiter denied the allegations.

His case was turned over to the local district attorney’s office, which declined to prosecute, presumably because it was beyond the statute of limitations. However that could not be immediately confirmed. And the archdiocese’s abuse review board, headed by former Lt. Gov. Margaret Farrow, found the allegations to be unsubstantiated, said Jerry Topczewski, Listecki’s chief of staff.

Schreiter, who has moved to Arizona, retired as scheduled in June. Listecki notified him of his reinstatement on Jan. 17, according to an announcement in the St. John Neumann parish bulletin. There was no public announcement by the archdiocese.

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PORTLAND (OR)
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Portland

Date: January 29, 2013

For More Information Contact:
Bud Bunce (503) 233-8373
Director of Communications

Place: Archdiocesan Pastoral Center
2838 E. Burnside Street
Portland, OR. 97214

TIME: 10:00 a.m.

SUBJECT: Press Conference: Appointment of an Archbishop for Western Oregon.

A press conference will be held to introduce the newly appointed Archbishop of Portland in Oregon. The newly appointed Archbishop will be introduced by Archbishop John G. Vlazny, Archbishop Emeritus. Pope Benedict XVI has selected Bishop Alexander K. Sample of the Diocese of Marquette, MI to be the eleventh Archbishop of Portland in Oregon.

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MICHIGAN
Roman Catholic Diocese of Marquette

After spending the past seven years as bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Marquette, the Most Reverend Alexander K. Sample is heading back west. Today (Jan. 29) the Vatican announced that Pope Benedict XVI has appointed him archbishop of Portland in Oregon.

Archbishop-Designate Sample, who was born Nov. 7, 1960 in Kalispell, Montana and graduated from Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas, Nevada in 1978, will be installed as Archbishop of Portland on April 2, 2013. He will succeed Archbishop John Vlazny, who turned 75 years old, the canonical age of retirement for bishops, on Feb. 2, 2012.

In a prepared statement to the Church in the Diocese of Marquette, Archbishop-Designate Sample stated, “Even as there is excitement and joy at taking up this new challenge that God has placed before me, I would be less than honest if I did not say that I will leave the Church in the U.P. with a certain heaviness of heart. I will profoundly miss the people, the clergy and religious of the diocese. I will miss my brother priests in a special way, since I was chosen from among them to be their bishop.

“I have always tried to be obedient to the will of God and to accept whatever the Church asks of me to be God’s will. It is in this spirit that I have said ‘yes’ to the Holy Father’s request for me to serve the Church in a new place in western Oregon. I ask the prayers of all the clergy, religious and faithful of the Diocese of Marquette. They will always be in my heart and prayers. Venerable Frederic Baraga, pray for us!” he wrote.

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OREGON
Catholic World Report

January 29, 2013

By Catherine Harmon

The Vatican announced this morning that Bishop Alexander Sample of Marquette, Michigan will be the new archbishop of Portland, Oregon, succeeding Archbishop John Vlazny. From the Vatican’s statement on the new appointment:

Bishop Sample, previously bishop of Marquette, Michigan, USA, was born in Kalispell, Montana, USA, in 1960, was ordained to the priesthood in 1990, and received episcopal ordination in 2006. In the national bishops’ conference he currently serves on the Subcommittees on Native American Catholics and on the Catechism. He is also vice-postulator for the cause for canonisation of Venerable Frederic Baraga, first bishop of the Diocese of Marquette.

At the time of his episcopal ordination, Bishop Sample was the youngest Catholic bishop in the US, and the first to be born in the 1960s. He also made headlines in 2009 when he asked retired Detroit auxiliary bishop Thomas Gumbleton to not speak within the Diocese of Marquette because of Gumbleton’s dissenting views on homosexuality and women’s ordination.

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PORTLAND (OR)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on January 29, 2013

We’re sad that, once again, the Pope has promoted a bishop who has dealt poorly with pedophile priests and their wounded victims. During his tenure in Marquette, Bishop Sample has done nothing to distinguish himself from the overwhelming majority of Catholic officials who continue to minimize and hide clergy sex crimes.

At least eight Marquette priests have been credibly accused of sexually assaulting kids. We see no evidence that Sample took any real steps to warn families about them or aggressively seek out others who they may have hurt. In each case, as best we can tell, Sample did the absolute bare minimum.

Vlazny, however, has a terrible record in abuse cases.

Just last year, he made extraordinarily deceitful and hurtful remarks about a pedophile priest Fr. Angel Armando Perez and his victim.

He also called the predator “respected and well-liked,” A gratuitous remark that rubs even more salt into the already deep and still fresh wounds of child sex abuse victims. It hurts when a powerful figure publicly praises an arrested, imprisoned and credibly accused child molester. And it’s hurtful and deceptive for Vlazny to call this boy who was assaulted a “young man.” Such deceit is just one of the many ways Catholic officials callously try to minimize the severity of their clerics’ crimes – by misstating the age of their victims.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
AlterNet

January 28, 2013

Confidential letters between Los Angeles Catholic church officials that had been withheld for decades–despite long efforts by victims to obtain them and stonewalling by the Church–were released Monday after becoming part of a civil court case against a priest accused of molesting 26 Los Angeles children in the 1980s.

The notes from then-Archbishop Roger M. Mahony and Monsignor Thomas J. Curry, published by the Los Angeles Times, have provided even more insight as to how sexual- abuse accusations against priests have been covered up for years. The notes detail plans by the two men to keep police from discovering that children were being molested in Los Angeles parishes, with Curry suggesting the predator priestsnot see therapists who could then alert authorities; instead, he wanted to give priests out-of-state assignments to avoid criminal charges. Curry was the chief advisor to the Archbishop on sex-abuse cases at the time.

One priest discussed in the released files was Msgr. Peter Garcia, who tended to abuse undocumented children because he could keep them quiet by threatening to have them deported. He went to a treatment center for pedophile clergy in New Mexico, but left the priesthood in 1989 after returning to Los Angeles and refusing to take medication to contain his sexual urges toward children. Never prosecuted, he died in 2009.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

January 29, 2013

WASHINGTON—Pope Benedict XVI has accepted the resignation of Bishop John G. Vlazny, 75, from the pastoral governance of the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon, and named Bishop Alexander K. Sample of Marquette, Michigan, 52, to succeed him.

The appointment was publicized in Washington, January 29, by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, apostolic nuncio to the United States.

Alexander Sample was born Nov. 7, 1960 in Kalispell, Montana. He studied for the priesthood at the College of St. Thomas (St. John Vianney Seminary) St. Paul, Minnesota, and the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio. He holds bachelor of science and master of science degrees in metallurgical engineering from Michigan Technological University, Houghton, Michigan, and a licentiate in canon law from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome.

He was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Marquette in 1990, and was named chancellor of the diocese in 1996. In 2005, he was named bishop of Marquette.

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PORTLAND (OR)
Catholic Sentinel

Ed Langlois
Staff Writer

The next Archbishop of Portland uses modern social media in the cause of proclaiming Jesus.

Archbishop-Designate Alexander Sample, current head of the Diocese of Marquette, Mich. maintains a Facebook page. And he kicked off the Year of Faith by tweeting throughout a 1,000-mile trip across Michigan’s far northern Upper Peninsula.

Archbishop-Designate Sample — tall and slim at 52 — made an even longer journey this week, appearing for the announcement that he’d been named spiritual leader of the 415,000 Catholics of western Oregon.

The Mass of Installation will be held on Tuesday, April 2.

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Republic

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 29, 2013

EBENSBURG, Pennsylvania — The state attorney general will take over the investigation of a central Pennsylvania priest suspended last year amid allegations of sexual abuse involving children in the 1970s.

Cambria County District Attorney Kelly Callihan says the her office referred the case to state prosecutors because one of her staff attended church in a parish where the Rev. George Koharchik served for several years.

The Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown in August suspended Koharchik, who had been pastor of Saint Catherine of Siena Parish in Mount Union. He also spent a decade at St. Clement Church in Upper Yoder Township, near Johnstown, and eight years at St. Casimir in Johnstown.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

(Vatican Radio) On Tuesday Pope Benedict XVI appointed 52-year-old bishop Alexander K. Sample, Metropolitan Archbishop of Portland Oregon, U.S.A.

He takes over the pastoral leadership of the Archdiocese of nearly 400,000 Catholics from Archbishop John G. Vlazny who has retired.

Bishop Sample was ordained a priest of the diocese on June 1, 1990, at St. Peter Cathedral in Marquette. He served in several parish assignments before moving to Rome, Italy, from 1994-96 to earn a degree in Canon Law. Upon returning to the diocese he held a number of duties in the chancery office. He served as a member of the Marriage Tribunal, as chancellor, as a member of the College of Consultors, as director of the Department of Ministry Personnel Services, as director of the Bishop Baraga Association, diocesan chaplain to the Knights of Columbus, and was involved in many major efforts of the diocese. On January 25, 2006, by the mandate of Pope Benedict XVI, he was ordained bishop of Marquette.

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Catholic Insider

BCI made a mistake in our post last week on the 2012 financial results for the Boston Archdiocese that we need to correct.

We reported that the Catholic Appeal raised $13.6M in the 2012 year, missing their goal ($14M) and raising $100K less than the year before, with a bigger staff than the prior year. Although the 2012 Annual Report showed a contribution of $13.6M from the Catholic Appeal to the Central Fund income, and it is correct they have a bigger staff then the prior year; we were wrong in saying they missed their fundraising goal of $14M.

The timing of the Catholic Appeal fundraising “year” (March to the following January) is different from the fiscal year (July 1 to June 30), so what is reported in the Annual Report for contribution of the Catholic Appeal to operating income never aligns identically with the fundraising cycle. In addition, numbers from the Catholic Appeal are described in any of a variety of ways:

Fundraising pledges: When the archdiocese announces a fundraising goal and then actually releases the result, the fundraising folks count whatever they can and want to in pledges for this year, even if all of the money does not come in right away, and some may not come in at all. For example, there could be a big gift pledged this year while the cash will arrive over subsequent years. There is provision for bad debt. So, the accountants adjust reporting on the books to allow for bad debts and the time value of pledges before they come in. Or the total amount raised by the Catholic Appeal could include pledges made to the Catholic Appeal but designated for use by related entities such as St. Johns Seminary or Catholic TV.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 29 January 2013 (VIS) – Today, the Holy Father appointed Bishop Alexander King Sample as archbishop of the archdiocese of Portland (area 76,937, population 3,296,705, Catholics 412,725, priests 300, permanent deacons 72, religious 653), Oregon, USA. Bishop Sample, previously bishop of Marquette, Michigan, USA, was born in Kalispell, Montana, USA, in 1960, was ordained to the priesthood in 1990, and received episcopal ordination in 2006. In the national bishops’ conference he currently serves on the Subcommittees on Native American Catholics and on the Catechism. He is also vice-postulator for the cause for canonisation of Venerable Frederic Baraga, first bishop of the Diocese of Marquette. He succeeds Archbishop John George Vlazny, whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same archdiocese the Holy Father accepted, upon having reached the age limit.

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IRELAND
Association of Catholic Priests

Brendan’s Hoban writes of the shame and humiliation he felt after attending Tony Flannery’s press conference on 20 January. (First published in the Western People)

When I watched Fr Tony Flannery at his press conference in Dublin, a week last Sunday, telling his side of the story I have to admit that I felt a mixture of emotions: sadness; frustration; anger, regret, sympathy. Returning that evening on the train, as I tried to unpack how I felt, these emotions had coalesced into humiliation and shame.

Here was a man who had given his whole life to the Catholic Church. He entered the Redemptorists at 17; ten years later he was ordained; and between then and his 66th birthday he has preached missions all over Ireland, written articles, published books and served the Church to the best of his ability for almost 40 years. Here he was explaining the stand-off in which he found himself with the Vatican authorities.

A year ago a few extracts from his writings were sent to Rome. As a result he was ‘silenced’, asked to carry out a number of religious exercises and to respond to the charges against him. He did all of that and the cardinal in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), William Levada, commented that his declaration of faith was ‘very fine.’ It seemed as if everyone was happy, Flannery’s declaration would be published and that was that.

It looked as if Flannery would be returned to ministry within a matter of weeks. That was June. By September, Levada had retired and a new head of the CDF, Archbishop Gerhard Muller, added a number of other points to the document, specifically a statement that he accepted that the Catholic Chuch could never ordain women and that he declare his acceptance of all Catholic moral teachings.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Democrat

Kathy Mellott kmellott@tribdem.com

JOHNSTOWN — The criminal investigation into allegations that a priest with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johns­town molested boys while at churches in Cambria County has been turned over to the state Attorney General’s Office.

Cambria County District Attorney Kelly Callihan said her office requested that the state take over the investigation of the Rev. George Koharchik.

“We had a conflict of interest in the DA’s office,” she said. “We referred it to the AG’s office, and they’ve accepted it.”

While Callihan did not provide specifics, she said that a member of the district attorney’s staff had attended one of the Cambria County churches where Koharchik served for a number of years.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE McCARTHY
Jan. 29, 2013

THE second Australian Catholic priest charged with concealing child sex crimes “procured and aided” a Newcastle media executive to indecently assault a young male in the 1980s, police allege.

Father Lewis Fenton, 81, of Eleebana, is alleged to have been an accessory before the fact in the indecent assault of a young male at Nelson Bay between 1982 and 1984 by Francis Andrew Tully.

Tully was employed by the Post group of newspapers, owned by the Newcastle Herald. He worked as a salesman from the Bolton Street building in Newcastle.

Tully, 55 at the time of the offences, was jailed for two years in 1986 after pleading guilty to three child sex charges. He died in the 1990s.

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UNITED STATES
Failed Messiah

Another hasidic untrained and unlicensed therapist/counselor, Chabad’s Rabbi Manis Friedman, claims child sexual abuse does not damage its victims, and that not saying the rabbinic prayer to be said after eating a piece of cake is worse than something – abuse – that happened to you as a child. Victims suffer, he claims, only from the feeling that they are damaged goods. They should realize that we are all damaged goods, abused or not, he claims, and then equates the damage of child sexual abuse with the damage other people experience as children from uncaring teachers or teachers who belittled them. Friedman completely misunderstands (or is unsympathetic to) the deep psychological pain child sexual abuse causes – to the extent that even pre-verbal infants who are sexually abused can have psychological issues throughout their lives from that sexual abuse.

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ISRAEL
The Jerusalem Post

By SAM SOKOL

01/28/2013

High-profile cover-ups of sexual abuse and molestation by communal rabbis and activists have not been limited to England and the US, but take place frequently in Israel, alleged David Morris, director of Magen, a Beit Shemesh-based community child protection organization.

Magen, which works to encourage parents of sexually abused children to file reports with social services and the police, has been banned in some synagogues due to what Morris believes to be “a deepset culture of non-reporting and cover-up.”

The way that many Israeli religious communities prefer to handle such issues, he claims, is instead “dealing with child abuse within the community,” via “parents, professionals and community leaders.”

Morris’s comments come on the heels of an announcement by England’s Channel 4 that the station will be airing an investigative special entitled “Britain’s Hidden Child Abuse” on Wednesday, featuring an audio recording of prominent local Rabbi Ephraim Padwa telling a community member wearing a wire that he should not report being abused to law enforcement.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
TheMediaReport

By his very own admission, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, the former archbishop of Los Angeles, tragically mishandled cases of abusive priests from decades past. As a result, many innocent youth were grievously harmed by criminal clerics. The devastation to victims has truly been immeasurable – a fact which Mahony himself has acknowledged many times.

However, a recent high-profile article in the Los Angeles Times about recently released court documents from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles only tells part of the story about how Cardinal Mahony dealt with abusive clerics during his tenure there.

The Cardinal’s early work to combat abuse

What may surprise most people is that Cardinal Mahony – who, incidentally, was himself falsely accused twice of abuse – has a notable history of trying to take a proactive approach to the problem of clergy abuse.

Mahony became archbishop of Los Angeles in September of 1985, and he was soon addressing the issue of sex abuse. By June 1989, Mahony published the archdiocese’s first formal written policies and guidelines for dealing with abusive clerics. In this respect, he was certainly ahead of many of his peers in the Catholic Church and many other organizations who oversee children.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Youngstown Vindicator

Published: 1/28/13

JOHNSTOWN, PA. — Brother Stephen Baker, the Franciscan friar accused of committing sex offenses against students at Warren John F. Kennedy and Johnstown, Pa., Bishop McCort Catholic high schools, left a suicide note saying: “I’m sorry for what I did to the church.”

The note was found near his body in his room at the St. Bernadine Monastery in Newry, Pa., Saturday morning after Baker stabbed himself in the chest.

Baker was dead at the scene, and his death was ruled a suicide.

Officials also found other letters in sealed envelopes in the room, and those letters are being given to the people whose names are on them, said Patty Ross, Blair County coroner.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

There has been one papal election in three decades. The next Pope could reign for decades. Current voting Cardinals were selected almost entirely either by Benedict XVI or by John Paul II while Benedict served as his key advisor. Benedict, with his Cardinal appointments, increased substantially the overall voting percentage held by Vatican based Cardinals. Significantly, he also eliminated in 2007 the majority vote “deadlock breaking” vote provision that John Paul II had introduced in 1996. This now effectively gives a one-third minority of voting Cardinals a veto over a papal election candidate, enhancing the power of the Vatican Cardinals’ voting bloc. It also helps explain, to me at least, how Benedict got sufficient Cardinals’ votes to be elected Pope in 2005.

Significantly, however, it also gives other minority voting blocs of Cardinals an opportunity to block an election until a candidate is proposed that is acceptable to them. For more explanation, please see my statement, “Is the Pope Panicking Over Sex Scandals, or Political Polls, or Both?” at http://wp.me/P2YEZ3-gg .

It seems evident, and even understandable, that Benedict is preparing for his successor, including with his Cardinal and other appointments, such as the new conservative head of the Vatican’s doctrinal commission and pro-cleric chief canon law prosecutor. Benedict has established with the Catechism and the new Liturgy his personal view of doctrine and ritual as the “law of the land”.

By beatifying John Paul II, Benedict has put a “mystical” aura on their joint program to entrench even deeper the Vatican clique’s dominant control of future doctrine and discipline, most evident currently in the ruthless inquisition of Fr. Tony Flannery and the priests union in Ireland. It seemed unthinkable that the Vatican could sink the Catholic Church’s reputation much lower in Ireland, but the tone-deaf Vatican clique has managed to do so.

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FLORIDA
Miami Herald

BY DANIEL CHANG
dchang@MiamiHerald.com

Judgment day came Monday for the Rev. Neil Doherty, a retired South Florida priest accused by several men of sexually abusing them in their youth, when a Broward judge sentenced Doherty to 15 years in state prison for the repeated sexual assault of a child in the mid- to late-1990s.

Doherty, 69, appeared frail as he stood hunched and shackled before Circuit Judge Kenneth Gillespie, who announced that he had delivered “the maximum sentence I can impose’’ under the terms of a plea bargain that the disgraced Catholic priest accepted earlier this month in Broward Circuit Court.

Doherty did not speak as Gillespie told him he also would have to register as a sex offender.

But Doherty did have to face two of his accusers, who were not the victims in the criminal case but testified in open court about the traumatic sexual abuse that Doherty had visited upon them decades ago.

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WASHINGTON
Federal Way Mirror

By ANDY HOBBS
Federal Way Mirror Editor
January 28, 2013 ·

It happened right under the mother’s nose: a youth minister at church was molesting her 3-year-old daughter.

The youth minister, age 23 at the time, worked well with children and seemed destined for a career in that capacity.

The mother shrugged off rumors about the minister’s past conviction as a sex offender. After all, the church was supposed to be a safe and forgiving place of acceptance, and the youth minister was popular in the church family. He gained the mother’s trust as he helped around the house, played with the girl and mentored her older son.

“He was so good with the kids,” said the mother, a local resident whose name is being withheld to protect her privacy.

A red flag surfaced when she came home one day and noticed the daughter was less excited about her mother’s return and more interested in the minister leaving. She spotted more odd behavior, including the minister’s eagerness to spend time with her daughter. She asked serious questions that led to the revelation of abuse.

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

The Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has named a new director of the office that provides counseling and other services available to clergy sexual abuse survivors, their families, and their parishes. Vivian Soper, who has been regional director for Catholic Charities of Boston since 2003, will direct the Office of Pastoral Support and Outreach, the archdiocese said Monday. “I am humbled and blessed to have the opportunity to be part of this important ministry of the church,” Soper said. As director, Soper will also oversee the Office of Child Advocacy and the Office of Background Screening, a spokesman for the archdiocese said.

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BOSTON (MA)
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston

Braintree, MA (January 28, 2012) – The Archdiocese of Boston announced today that Vivian Soper has been appointed Director of the Office of Pastoral Support and Outreach (OPSO). She succeeds Barbara Thorp, the long-time director of the office, who concluded her service to the Archdiocese in September 2012. Ms. Soper will begin her new role in mid February 2013.

OPSO is dedicated to providing pastoral and outreach services to survivors of clergy sexual abuse and their families as well as parishes and all those impacted.

Most Reverend Robert P. Deeley, J.C.D., Auxiliary Bishop of Boston, Vicar General and Moderator of the Curia said, “We are grateful that Vivian has agreed to lead the Office of Pastoral Support and Outreach in the work of serving survivors of clergy sexual abuse and their families. This important work of helping survivors heal is a commitment of the Church and we are fortunate that we are able to have someone of Vivian’s substantial gifts and background available to oversee this ministry. I also want to express my appreciation to Rev. J. Bryan Hehir, Secretary for Health and Social Services, for conducting a careful search process and for the members of the search committee who treated this responsibility with sincerity and great care for all impacted by sexual

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MISSOURI
Courthouse News Service

By JOE HARRIS

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (CN) – The president of the Missouri State Board of Education, a Baptist pastor, resigned Friday, three days after a woman filed a lurid lawsuit against him, claiming he sexually abused her while she was a child and he was her pastor.

Jane Doe DL sued the Rev. Stanley Arnold Archie and the Christian Fellowship Baptist Church on Tuesday, Jan. 23, in Jackson County Court.

Archie sent a letter of resignation to Gov. Jay Nixon on Friday. Archie had been a member of the board since 2006 and began his term as president this month.

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BOSTON (MA)
The Patriot Ledger

Posted Jan 28, 2013

By Lane Lambert

BRAINTREE —

The Boston Archdiocese has appointed a Weymouth woman to be the new director of the office that provides counseling to survivors of clergy sexual abuse and their families.

Vivian Soper will become director of the Office of Pastoral Support and Outreach in February. She’ll succeed the office’s longtime director Barbara Thorp.

The Archdiocese announced Soper’s appointment Monday afternoon.

Soper has been a Catholic Charities regional director since 2003, and has worked for the agency since 1986.

She’s the sister of Rev. Paul Soper, who’s pastor of St. Albert the Great parish in Weymouth and director of the Archciocese’s pastoral planning commission.

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PENNSYLVANIA
WJAC

By Maria Miller

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. —

6 News uncovered new details Monday in the case against a friar accused of sexually abusing students at Bishop McCort High School in the ’90s.

Brother Stephen Baker was found dead in his room at the St. Bernadine Monastery in Hollidaysburg, Blair County. Investigators ruled it a suicide.

On Monday, 6 News found out the reason why Baker was removed from Bishop McCort in 2000 in the first place. According to the Rev. Patrick Quinn, who’s a member of the Franciscan Order to which Baker belonged, an allegation against Baker surfaced in Minnesota. Once the order got wind of it, friars removed him from Bishop McCort.

Allegations involving McCort students didn’t surface until more than a decade later. In 2011, Bishop Mark Bartchak of the Altoona-Johnstown Catholic Diocese said he immediately alerted authorities. Johnstown police said Monday they were made aware of two cases, but couldn’t take action.

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CANADA
Toronto Star

The Canadian Press

MONCTON, N.B.—A former Supreme Court of Canada judge says his final report on sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests in the Moncton area will be delayed until at least March because more alleged victims have come forward.

Michel Bastarache was hired last year by the archdiocese of Moncton to conduct a reconciliation and compensation process for alleged victims of sexual abuse involving a former priest from Cap-Pele.

The confidential process has since been expanded to hear complaints about any priests from the diocese.

Bastarache said he has already approved payments to about 50 people, ranging from $15,000 to $300,000 each.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Neil Keene
From:The Daily Telegraph
January 29, 2013

A FORMER Catholic priest who allegedly covered up child sex crimes for almost 30 years has appeared in court today for the first time.

Father Lewis Dominic Fenton, 81, appeared only briefly in Newcastle Local Court in NSW this morning after his arrest earlier this month.

Officers from Strike Force Georgiana, set up to investigate allegations of child abuse within the church, allege Fenton concealed from authorities his knowledge of another man’s sexual abuse of a child between 1982 and 1984 in the Hunter Region.

Walking with the aid of a cane and wearing gold crucifixes on his shirt collar, Fenton did not enter pleas to committing an act of indecency, being an accessory before the fact to an offence and unlawfully concealing a felony.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

ABC
Updated January 29, 2013

A retired Hunter Valley Catholic priest has faced Newcastle Local Court for the first time after being charged over the alleged cover-up of child sexual abuse.

Lewis Dominic Fenton was charged on January 4, becoming the second Australian to be charged with a child sex cover-up.

The 81-year-old is accused of concealing two alleged offences committed by another Hunter Valley man against a nine-year-old boy.

The offences are alleged to have occurred between 1982 and 1984 at Nelson Bay and Stockton.

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FLORIDA
Florida Today

FORT LAUDERDALE — A retired Roman Catholic priest accused of sexually abusing dozens of boys for decades was sentenced to 15 years in prison Monday.

Earlier this month, Father Neil Doherty pleaded no contest in a deal that reduced the sex abuse charges from capital felonies to second-degree felonies. He will also have to register as a sex offender.

The plea comes after several more alleged victims came forward and were planning to testify in the case.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial

By Ralph Cipriano
for bigtrial.net

She sealed the pre-trial hearings. She sealed the pre-trial motions.

Today, Judge Ellen Ceisler kept three out of four jury questions a secret, as she invited lawyers on both sides of the case back to her chambers for a couple of private discussions.

Since there’s a continuing gag order in the case, lawyers on both sides are precluded from talking to reporters.

The one jury question read out in public today was why did the older brother of “Billy Doe” not honor a subpoena from the defense, which set off an argument between the prosecutor and a defense lawyer.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE MCCARTHY
Jan. 29, 2013

RETIRED Maitland-Newcastle catholic priest Lew Fenton has appeared in Newcastle local court
as the second Australian Catholic priest charged with concealing the child sex crimes of another person.

Mr Fenton, 81, did not enter a plea to a charge of misprision of a felony – concealing a serious crime -related to events in the mid-1980s.

He was supported in court by a small group of people and did not make a statement outside the court.

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TEXAS
Associated Baptist Press

An advocacy group says Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, should explain why in the 1980s it failed to report a confessed child molester who recently avoided prison in a plea bargain for similar crimes in another state.

By Bob Allen

A mother who says her son was molested more than 20 years ago by a then-staff member at one of the Southern Baptist Convention’s largest churches says the congregation’s leaders need to come clean about what a victims’ advocacy group calls a cover-up of child sexual abuse by clergy.

The anonymous woman said her family endured “indescribable” hurt after learning her son was molested for months by John Langworthy, a staff member at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Dallas from 1984 until 1989.

Langworthy, who went on to serve 22 years as associate pastor of music and ministries at Morrison Heights Baptist Church in Clinton, Miss., recently received a 50-year suspended sentence in Mississippi for molesting multiple boys as young as 6 he met through local churches while a student at Baptist-affiliated Mississippi College from 1980 until 1984

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

Calcagno and Sandri could substitute Nicora and Tauran in the commission which controls the Vatican Bank. Former director Gotti Tedeschi’s dismissal is still being disputed

Andrea Tornielli
Vatican City

Last June, the appointment of a new president of the Vatican Bank (IOR) in September 2012, after the Pope returned from his trip to Lebanon, was said to be a dead cert. The new president will succeed banker Ettore Gotti Tedeschi who was dismissed in a way that had never been seen before in the history of the Holy See. Then the appointment was postponed to the end of the year. Last 10 December, the Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, Carl Andersson – a member of the IOR’s board of lay members and author of the harsh indictment against Gotti Tedeschi, which was deliberately leaked to the press – said it was up to Cardinal Bertone to decide and that the new president would be nominated in January. Now that January is almost over there is word going round that the president will be appointed next month. But probably after the turnover of the Commission of Cardinals that oversees the IOR, which expires on 23 February. The Secretary of State explained that this is a routine change that takes place every five years as in the dicasteries. In this case the turnover could be of crucial importance to the choice of Gotti’s successor.

On 23 February 2008, Benedict XVI renewed the Cardinals’ Commission that oversees the Institute for Works of Religion for another five years, appointing Secretary of State and Camerlengo, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone and Attilio Nicora – who was president of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA) at the time – as its heads. Cardinals who were chosen again included Frenchman Jean-Louis Tauran (President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue), Telesphore Placidus Toppo (Archbishop of Ranchi, in India) and Odilo Pedro Scherer (Archbishop of São Paulo, in Brazil). In September the following year, 2009, cardinals renewed the IOR’s board of lay members which elected Ettore Gotti Tedeschi as the bank’s president. Gotti Tedeschi was called to develop the bank’s objective of transparency and bring it in line with international anti-money laundering laws as requested by the Pope and Cardinal Bertone.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Manchester Evening News

A police sex abuse probe at a top Catholic school has now uncovered more than 50 possible victims and witnesses.

As the sheer scale of the investigation became apparent, the detective leading the enquiry into St Ambrose College in Hale Barns said he was determined to ensure ‘justice is done’.

Police have received a steady stream of former pupils alleging they were sexually abused by teachers from the school since the M.E.N. exclusively revealed the probe last year.

Some ‘old boys’ who have been in touch with officers have alleged they were molested both in the school and at the homes of teachers.

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Tribune-Democrat

JOHNSTOWN — The Franciscan friar who was the subject of an alleged sex scandal at Bishop McCort Catholic High School died from a single knife wound to the chest, an autopsy showed.

Blair Coroner Patricia Ross said Brother Paul Stephen Baker used a knife long enough to puncture his heart, an injury authorities believe quickly killed him Saturday.

He suffered no other injuries, Ross said.

Baker, 62, was living at St. Bernardine Monastary, Hollidaysburg, when a resident found him fatally injured Saturday.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Republic

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 28, 2013

PHILADELPHIA — Jurors in a church-abuse case in Philadelphia have gone home Monday without a verdict, but first asked about a missing trial witness.

The jury wants to know why the accuser’s brother did not testify as planned for the defense.

The accuser, a 24-year-old policeman’s son, says two Roman Catholic priests and his sixth-grade teacher raped him, starting at age 10. He blames the abuse for his descent heroin addiction.

He testified that he first tried drugs at age 11 when his brother took him to a party.

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CALIFORNIA
Channel 3000

Author: William R. Wineke, Special to Channel 3000

Published On: Jan 28 2013

Just keep this in mind before you read further: Retired Los Angeles Archbishop Roger Mahony will be one of the Roman Catholic prelates who chooses the next pope should Pope Benedict XVI die before 2016.

Why is that important? Because, according to documents released during the past couple of weeks, Cardinal Mahony actively conspired with his chief adviser on sexual abuse to hide diocesan priests from criminal prosecution.

The fact that Los Angeles was a hotbed of predator priests is not news. The archdiocese has already committed $616 million – more than a half-billion dollars! – to compensate victims of that abuse. But church officials tried strenuously to keep their records of child abuse secret and, at the least, to have names of church officials dealing with the offending priests blacked out from public view.

Now we know why.

The records show that the cardinal and his chief adviser on sexual abuse, one Monsignor Thomas Curry, were well aware of what their priests were doing and that those activities were illegal.

They didn’t just ignore the abuse; they sent the offending priests for psychiatric treatment at an out-of-state center – but they did make sure that any therapy done was not done in California, where the therapist would be mandated by law to report the crime.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Dorris on January 28, 2013

KC’s Catholic bishop is criticizing the one religious publication that has heroically protected kids, exposed corruption and deterred wrongdoing – the National Catholic Reporter.

No church publication – and few secular ones – has done more than the NCR to make innocent kids and vulnerable adults safer. And few bishops have done more than Bishop Finn to endanger families and deceive parishioners.

Bishop Finn wants to have his cake and eat it too. When forced, he issues, through his public relations staff, a terse and vague apology for enabling Fr. Shawn Ratigan to sexually violate more children. But most of the time, he continues his pathetic quest to deflect attention and blame others – therapists, journalists and even victims – for his own irresponsible, selfish secrecy.

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FLORIDA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Dorris on January 28, 2013

We are glad that Fr. Neil Doherty was given the maximum sentence possible. Kids are always safer when predators are behind bars. Given that Fr. Doherty has been accused in dozens of abuse cases over the past decade, it is clear that kids in Miami are better off now that he is off the street.

While we are glad that Fr. Doherty has been brought to justice, the sad fact remains that top diocesan staff who repeatedly ignored warnings and allegations have escaped punishment. Only when those who enable child sex abuse are punished alongside the abusers will the epidemic begin to wane.

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FLORIDA
Sun Sentinel

By Rafael Olmeda and Tonya Alanez, Sun Sentinel
12:20 p.m. EST, January 28, 2013

A retired priest convicted of molesting a young boy and accused of preying on dozens of others was sentenced Monday to 15 years in Florida State Prison.

Neil Doherty, 69, pleaded no contest earlier this month to criminal charges brought against him on behalf of one victim, a man who grew up across the street from St. Vincent’s Roman Catholic Church in Margate, where Doherty was the pastor. The man accused Doherty of drugging him and having sex with him.

As part of a plea negotiation, Doherty faced a maximum 15-year prison sentence, though he pleaded for leniency through his lawyer, David Bogenschutz, who argued that Doherty’s age and frail condition made him unlikely to offend again.

Broward Circuit Judge Kenneth Gillespie was unmoved, sentencing Doherty to the maximum allowable term.

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FLORIDA
WSOC

The Associated Press

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. —

A retired Roman Catholic priest accused of sexually abusing dozens of boys for decades has been sentenced to 15 years in prison in Fort Lauderdale court.

Father Neil Doherty was sentenced Monday after pleading no contest in a deal that reduced the sex abuse charges from a capital felony to a second-degree felony. He will also have to register as a sex offender.

The plea comes after several other alleged victims came forward and were planning to testify.

Attorneys for the victims say Doherty befriended troubled young boys for years, plied them with drugs and alcohol then sexually abused them.

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CANADA
Winnipeg Free Press

By: The Canadian Press

MONCTON, N.B. – A former judge says his final report on sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests in the Moncton, N.B., area will be delayed until at least March because more alleged victims are coming forward.

Michel Bastarache was hired last year by the Archdiocese of Moncton to conduct a reconciliation and compensation process for alleged victims of sexual abuse involving a former priest from Cap-Pele.

The confidential process has since been expanded to hear complaints about any priests from the diocese.

Bastarache says he has already approved payments to about 50 people, ranging from $15,000 to $300,000 each.

The allegations that have been made have not been proven in a court.

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CALIFORNIA
Daily Breeze

By Tracy Manzer and Dana Bartholomew, Staff Writers
sgvtribune.com
Posted: 01/26/2013

The case files of Father Santiago Tamayo and Father Angel Cruces read like lurid dime-store novels.

Appropriately enough, the tales of how Tamayo, Cruces and five other priests sexually assaulted a 16-year-old girl were fodder for the tabloids in the 1980s, which dubbed it “Snow White and the Seven Priests.”

The tale went public when victim Rita Milla came forward after becoming pregnant at age 19. Milla, a parishioner at St. Philomena church in Carson, told church officials in 1983 she was pressured by Tamayo to have an abortion, and she eventually went to the Philippines to have her daughter.

One of the documents in the newly released files includes a denial by Tamayo that he encouraged an abortion.

Also included is a letter the teen gave to church officials in 1983 but never sent to the priest who she believed fathered the child, Father Valentine Tugade. Tugade’s paternity was finally proven by a DNA test in 2003, but in 2007 Milla’s attorney, Gloria Allred, told reporters they did not know if he was still alive. | Related: Exhibit 50, Page 3

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IRELAND
National Catholic Reporter

by John Cooney | Jan. 28, 2013

Dublin —
An estimated 250 protesters demonstrated Sunday evening in Dublin at a vigil outside the papal nunciature in support of the restoration to ministry of Irish Redemptorist Fr. Tony Flannery.

A letter addressed to the papal nuncio, Archbishop Charles Brown, was handed in by the Irish branch of the We Are Church lay movement.

The protesters were mainly in their 60s or older, and two-thirds of them were women. They carried a banner that read “Dialogue Yes. Silence No.” and sang the 1960s protest song of the civil rights movement, “We Shall Overcome.”

The letter stated that the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had acted unjustly in its treatment of Flannery and should now restore him to his full priestly ministry.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
Los Angeles Times

By Matt Pearce
January 28, 2013

Bishop Robert W. Finn wishes the independent National Catholic Reporter weren’t so independent.

Finn is the bishop of the Roman Catholic diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph in Missouri. The National Catholic Reporter is a 59-year-old not-for-profit newspaper based in Kansas City.

Finn was convicted in September of shielding priests from sexual-abuse allegations — prompting editorials from the newspaper calling for his resignation. Now, Finn, who is on probation, has taken to his own diocese’s journalistic bully pulpit to denounce the paper.

“In the last months I have been deluged with emails and other correspondence from Catholics concerned about the editorial stances of the Reporter: officially condemning church teaching on the ordination of women, insistent undermining of church teaching on artificial contraception and sexual morality in general, lionizing dissident theologies while rejecting established magisterial teaching, and a litany of other issues,” Finn wrote this weekend in his diocese’s newspaper, the Catholic Key.

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FLORIDA
NBC Miami

A South Florida priest accused of molesting several boys was sentenced to 15 years behind bars Monday after pleading no contest to several charges earlier this month.

Neil Doherty, 69, was sentenced to the maximum prison term after pleading no contest to six counts of lewd and lascivious acts upon a child.

The retired priest had been charged with eight counts including sexual battery against the victim, who alleged Doherty drugged and raped him multiple times as a young boy.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Nassauische

Die Bistümer Limburg, Fulda und Mainz haben mehr als 300.000 Euro an Entschädigungen für die Opfer von sexuellem Missbrauch in der katholischen Kirche gezahlt.

Fulda/Limburg/Mainz. Die Bistümer Limburg, Fulda und Mainz haben mehr als 300.000 Euro an Entschädigungen für die Opfer von sexuellem Missbrauch in der katholischen Kirche gezahlt.

In den drei Kirchenbezirken auf hessischem Gebiet seien bislang 64 Anträge auf Entschädigungen gestellt worden, wie eine Umfrage der Nachrichtenagentur dpa ergab.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Main Post

Die Auseinandersetzung um das vorerst gescheiterte Forschungsprojekt zum Missbrauch in der katholischen Kirche nimmt an Schärfe zu.

Der Kriminologe Christian Pfeiffer und die Bischöfe beschuldigen sich gegenseitig, daran schuld zu sein. Dem Würzburger Bischof unterstellte Pfeiffer jetzt in einem Gastbeitrag für diese Zeitung „ein gestörtes Verhältnis zum 8. Gebot“ (Du sollst nicht falsch Zeugnis reden wider deinen Nächsten). Damit reagierte der Forscher auf die Kritik des Bischofs, der Pfeiffer in einem Gastbeitrag heftig attackiert hatte. Darauf antwortete Pressesprecher Bernhard Schweßinger: „Es drängt sich nicht nur im Bistum Würzburg die Frage auf, ob bei Professor Pfeiffer die Grenzen zwischen Dichtung und Wahrheit fließend sind. Das Verhalten zeigt, wie richtig die Feststellung der Bischöfe war, aufgrund des zerstörten Vertrauensverhältnisses die Zusammenarbeit zu beenden.“

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DEUTSCHLAND
Main Post

Christian Pfeiffer, Direktor des Kriminologischen Forschungsinstituts Niedersachsen, wendet sich in einem Gastbeitrag gegen Bischof Friedhelm Hofmann.

Nach dem Lesen des Beitrags von Bischof Hofmann (gemeint ist der Gastbeitrag von Würzburgs Bischof Friedhelm Hofmann am 19. Januar auf der Meinungsseite dieser Zeitung, Anmerkung der Redaktion) habe ich mich gefragt, ob er ein gestörtes Verhältnis zum 8. Gebot hat: „Du sollst nicht falsch Zeugnis reden wider Deinen Nächsten“. So hat er den Vorwurf, ich hätte verbindliche Zusagen nicht eingehalten und wäre nicht in der Lage, zeitnah Informationen zur Vorgehensweise zu liefern, offenkundig frei erfunden. Meine unmittelbaren Kooperationspartner der Bischofskonferenz haben mir das jedenfalls nie vorgehalten und hätten dazu auch keinen Anlass gehabt.

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FLORIDA
CBS Miami

MIAMI (CBSMiami) – A former South Florida Catholic priest who pled no contest earlier this month to charges that he drugged and sexually assaulted a Margate boy in the 1990s will be sentenced on Monday.

During his time with the Archdiocese of Miami Doherty, 69, had served at several South Florida churches, including St. Vincent’s in Margate, St. Anthony in Fort Lauderdale and St. Phillip in Northwest Miami-Dade.

Doherty has a long list of accusers who say he used his position of power to sexually assault them. In several cases, Doherty is accused of slipping drugs into drinks to make boys sleepy and molesting them while they were unconscious.

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AUSTRALIA
Indigenous Times

Descendant of the Palyku people of the Pilbara region of Western Australia, Professor Helen Milroy has been appointed as one of the Commissioners to the Federal Government’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

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IRELAND
Association of Catholic Priests

Response on 13 September 2012 to Document received from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

1. Regarding the Church, Fr. Flannery should add to his article that he believes that Christ instituted the Church with a permanent hierarchical structure. Specifically, Fr. Flannery should state that he accepts the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, as found in Lumen Gentium n. 9-22, that the bishops are the divinely established successors of the apostles who were appointed by Christ; that, aided by the Holy Spirit, they exercise legitimate power to sanctify, teach and govern the People of God; that they constitute one Episcopal college together with the Roman Pontiff; and that in virtue of his office, the Roman Pontiff has full, supreme and universal power over the Church, which he is always free to exercise.

I acknowledge and accept the teaching of the second Vatican Council. I have studied Lumen Gentium and it is clear from the teaching of the Council that the Lord Jesus set the church on its course by preaching the Good News. The Council also accepts the teachings of the First Vatican Council which declares that Jesus Christ, the eternal shepherd, established His holy Church, having sent forth the apostles as he himself had been sent by the Father; and he willed that their successors, namely the bishops, should be shepherds in His Church even to the consummation of the world. The Council also teaches that Jesus placed Peter over the other apostles, and instituted in him a permanent and visible source and foundation of unity of faith and communion. Vatican 2 states that “all this teaching about the institution, the perpetuity, the meaning and reason for the sacred primacy of the Roman Pontiff and of his infallible Magisterium, this Sacred Council again proposes to be firmly believed by all the faithful.” I submit to this teaching in faith.

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UNITED STATES
U.S. Catholic

By Bryan Cones

The New York Times’ Frank Bruni turns the sharp edge of his pen against the Roman Catholic priesthood in today’s column, invoking Garry Wills, whose next book, Why Priests? A Failed Tradition, will no doubt expose, as Wills’ often does, the problematic underbelly of this quintessentially Catholic institution (shared also with the Orthodox and Anglicanism). Bruni doesn’t tackle the theological dimension of priesthood–one assumes that Wills most likely does–but its insularity. Exhibit A: Cardinal Roger Mahony.

The LA archdiocese this week released the personnel files of priests accused of abuse, which time after time shows Mahony’s abject failure to protect innocents or turn over offenders. It wasn’t until 2006 that Mahony started meeting with victims, some 20 years after he started first dealing with cases–and a full four years after the Boston scandal broke. Before those meetings, Mahony claims in a statement released by the archdiocese, he “remained naive myself about the full and lasting impact of these horrible acts”–a statement to which we must add “willfully,” just before naive.

Whether “Catholicism’s Curse”–as Bruni titles his column–is indeed priesthood itself is a question worthy of debate, but the insular system by which priests are made–residential seminaries more or less totally remote from Catholic parishes, families, and their children–is certainly a part of the problem that must be eliminated. Indeed, while I don’t see a direct connection between celibacy and child sexual abuse, I do see a connection between celibacy and the inability to identify and empathize with children and families, and I wonder how different the church’s response to the sex abuse crisis would have been if the priests and bishops responding were themselves fathers of children. For some reason I don’t think it would have taken 20 years for Mahony to grasp the impact of sexual abuse on children if he had a child of his own.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
RealClearReligion

By George Neumayr

“I have a 3 x 5 card for every victim I met with on the altar of my small chapel. I pray for them every single day,” retired Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony said after the court-ordered release of personnel files detailing his elaborate efforts to hide abusers from the police. How comforted the victims must feel knowing their names appear on his 3 x 5 cards. How big of him to entrust the victims of his pedophile-shuffling to the efficacy of his prayers.

Such acts of chutzpah come naturally to the cardinal. At the height of the abuse scandal, even as he retained an army of lawyers and publicists to conceal his own complicity in it, he had the gall to join the media in calling for Boston Cardinal Bernard Law’s resignation. Referring to Law, Cardinal Mahony piously told the press that “he would find it difficult to walk down an aisle in church if he had been guilty of gross negligence.”

Meanwhile, Cardinal Mahony was unleashing his attack dogs on anyone who probed his staggering negligence. Until the media furor of 2001, he had been planning on making a pedophile long known to him and residing in his living quarters, Father Carl Sutphin (with whom he had gone to seminary), associate pastor of the archdiocesan cathedral. “I can’t believe a cardinal keeps a pedophile on staff,” said one of Sutphin’s victims.

Long before Leon Panetta joined the Obama administration as CIA director, he had scented out Cardinal Mahony’s misdeeds. He “has done tremendous damage to his reputation and the archdiocese,” said Panetta after his spell as a member of the National Review Board, a watchdog group formed in the wake of the scandal. Panetta recalled a meeting at which Cardinal Mahony turned up with “more lawyers in the room than I’ve ever seen.”

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UNITED STATES
In the Light of the Law

Edward Peters

Bp. Robert Finn (KC, MO) has a very good column on a local bishop’s responsibility over local media in regard to the promotion and protection of the Catholic Faith. Most folks, however, will likely skim the first part of the essay, and go right for Finn’s critique of the National Catholic Reporter in the second.

In my opinion, Finn was too kind to them.

NCRep has carried on a steady tirade against ecclesiastical authority in general, and against numerous Church teachings in particular, for several decades, but the last few years have seen a shrillness that should discomfort even its dwindling number of friends. Besides my own efforts to reply to them (e.g., July 2010, October 2009, March 2009) Fr. Z’s blog has long served as a clearing house for reasonable, Catholic responses to the NCRep (what a thankless task that is).

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

by Thomas C. Fox | Jan. 27, 2013

Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph Bishop Robert Finn wrote Friday the National Catholic Reporter is undermining church teachings. He cited coverage of women’s ordination, artificial contraception, sexual morality in general, and the “lionizing” of dissident theologies.

His remarks appeared in a column entitled “The Bishop’s Role In Fostering The Mission Of The Catholic Media.” It was posted in the online edition of the official diocesan newspaper, the Catholic Key.

The bishop praised the work of the Key and went on to write:

In a different way, I am sorry to say, my attention has been drawn once again to the National Catholic Reporter, a newspaper with headquarters in this Diocese. I have received letters and other complaints about NCR from the beginning of my time here. In the last months I have been deluged with emails and other correspondence from Catholics concerned about the editorial stances of the Reporter: officially condemning Church teaching on the ordination of women, insistent undermining of Church teaching on artificial contraception and sexual morality in general, lionizing dissident theologies while rejecting established Magisterial teaching, and a litany of other issues.

My predecessor bishops have taken different approaches to the challenge. Bishop Charles Helmsing in October of 1968 issued a condemnation of the National Catholic Reporter and asked the publishers to remove the name “Catholic” from their title – to no avail. From my perspective, NCR’s positions against authentic Church teaching and leadership have not changed trajectory in the intervening decades. …

Finn seems to imply NCR has had bad relations with its local bishops since 1968. This has not been the case. Bishop Helmsing’s successors – Bishop John Sullivan and Bishop Raymond Boland – had cordial relations with NCR. Once Boland came to our Kansas City office and blessed our building as we consulted with him about use of new emerging media technologies. Later Boland spoke at NCR’s 40th anniversary ceremony in Washington, D.C.

In an email former NCR Publisher Sister of Saint Anne Rita Larivee, who was publisher at the time of Finn’s early years as diocesan bishop, remembers having respectful meetings with Finn. She wrote:

I personally visited with him in is office to welcome him to the diocese. We had a fine conversation. But during his first year, he made many significant changes within the diocese that caused many concerns for various groups. Because of these shifts in previous policies, NCR wrote a story about this period of transition – Dennis Cody (now NCR Editor) wrote the story. Again, I visited with Bishop Finn in his office to assure him that this was a story about the changes that had taken place, as NCR does with other diocese, but that it was not an article about him personally. …

After a local judge found Finn guilty last year of failing to report suspected child abuse involving a local priest NCR published an editorial calling on Finn to either resign or be removed from his position. NCR and other local news outlets, including the Kansas City Star provided ongoing coverage of the incident.

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PENNSYLVANIA
GoErie

ASSOCIATED PRESS

PHILADELPHIA — The civil case alleging that a Franciscan friar sexually abused students at a western Pennsylvania high school will go on despite the friar’s suicide over the weekend, attorneys representing some of the accusers said Sunday.

Brother Stephen Baker, 62, was found dead of a self-inflicted knife wound at the St. Bernardine Monastery in Hollidaysburg on Saturday, according to Blair Township police.

He had been named in recent legal settlements involving sexual abuse allegations at a Catholic high school in northeastern Ohio three decades ago, and the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese said it had received allegations of abuse at Bishop McCort High School in Johnstown in the 1990s.

When Baker was the school’s athletic trainer, 20 former students allege that he assaulted or molested students under the guise of providing therapeutic treatment or medical care for treatment of sports injuries, said attorney Michael Parrish, of Johnstown, who represents the accusers.

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CALIFORNIA
Contra Costa Times

Monica Rodriguez, Staff Writer
sbsun.com
Posted: 01/27/2013

Join Los Angeles News Group City Editor Harrison Sheppard and reporters Susan Abram and Tracy Manzer in a live chat Monday at 11 a.m. to discuss this report.

Amid scrutiny of its neighboring diocese’s response to the sexual abuse of children, the Diocese of San Bernardino has been swift to notify authorities of such allegations, a diocese spokesman said.

Others don’t see it that way.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, says the leadership of the diocese is still slow to move when it is notified of sexual abuse allegations.

“We have not seen any real strides,” said Joelle Casteix, the regional director for SNAP.

Since 2002, the diocese has been following the directions spelled out in the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, which the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued that year, said John Andrews, a spokesman for the diocese.

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CALIFORNIA
Press-Telegram

Special Report

Thousands of pages of court documents show how the Archdiocese of Los Angeles for decades knowingly shielded more than a dozen priests suspected of child sex abuse.

A Los Angeles News Group special report offers an in-depth look into how and when the church knew about the abuse and chose instead to move accused priests from parish to parish, even allowing the most abusive to move out of the country.

Church officials in some cases tried to get priests into therapy, but at the same time took steps to keep the horrific accusations from ever surfacing or being reported to authorities. Victims and their families pleaded for justice, only to fall on deaf ears. This report details the depth of secrecy and covert actions taken by top church officials to keep the accusations in the shadows.

In the decades since, archdioceses everywhere have taken steps to recognize and stop such abuse from happening again.

In the meantime, victims feel the weight and still live in the shadow of abuse.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
The New York Times

[Archive of Los Angeles Archdiocesan Documents – BishopAccountability.org]

Editorial

No member of the Roman Catholic hierarchy fought longer and more energetically than Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles to conceal the decades-long scandal involving the rape and intimidation of children by rogue priests. For years, the cardinal withheld seamy church records from parents, victims and the public, brandishing endless litigation and fatuous claims of confidentiality.

The breadth of Cardinal Mahony’s cover-up became shockingly clear last week with the release in court of archdiocese records detailing how he and a top aide concocted cynical strategies to keep police authorities in the dark and habitual offenders beyond the reach of criminal prosecution.

“Sounds good — please proceed!” the cardinal, now retired, instructed in 1987 after the aide, Msgr. Thomas Curry, cautioned against therapy for one confessed predator — lest the therapist feel obliged to tell authorities and scandalize the archdiocese. The two discussed another priest, Msgr. Peter Garcia, who admitted specializing in the rape of Latino immigrant children and threatened at least one boy with deportation if he complained. Cardinal Mahony ordered that he stay out of California after his release from a New Mexico treatment center out of fear that “we might very well have some type of legal action filed in both the criminal and civil sectors.” Monsignor Curry worried that there might be 20 young people able to identify the priest in “first-degree felony” cases.

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CALIFORNIA
Press-Telegram

By Susan Abram, Brian Day, Andrew Edwards and Phillip Zonkel, Staff Writers
dailynews.com
Posted: 01/27/2013

Join Los Angeles News Group City Editor Harrison Sheppard and reporters Susan Abram and Tracy Manzer in a live chat Monday at 11 a.m. to discuss this report.

On the first Sunday after a flood of newly released documents showed how Catholic leaders shielded priests accused of child sex abuse, parishioners at churches across Los Angeles and beyond said they were troubled by the revelations but remained strong in their faith.

At the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles, Archbishop Jose Gomez had been quiet about the issue all week, but spoke out briefly about it during his morning sermon.

“This has been a challenging week for all of us in Los Angeles because of the abuse of many by priests,” Gomez said somberly to the hundreds of parishioners who had filled the sanctuary.

“Today we want to especially pray for anyone who has been hurt by the church. We also want to renew and strengthen our policies on the protection of children within the diocese.”

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Kansas City Star

[The Bishop’s Role in Fostering the Mission of the Catholic Media – The Catholic Key]

By ALAN BAVLEY
The Kansas City Star

The bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph is expressing public frustration with the editorial stances of the National Catholic Reporter, a Kansas City-based independent newspaper that has called for the bishop to resign over his handling of sex scandals in the church.

In a column posted Friday in the online edition of the official diocesan newspaper, Bishop Robert Finn said the National Catholic Reporter was “undermining” church teaching on contraception and the ordination of women, while praising “dissident theologies.” Finn also raised questions about whether the newspaper should call itself “Catholic.”

“I have a responsibility as the local bishop to instruct the Faithful about the problematic nature of this media source which bears the name ‘Catholic,’ ” Finn wrote.

“Bishop Finn clearly feels our voice is not a Catholic voice,” said National Catholic Reporter publisher and former editor Tom Fox. “We are a Catholic publication, but independent of the church structure. That’s one of the keys to our credibility.”

Fox said the National Catholic Reporter is a member of the Catholic Press Association, which is sanctioned by U.S. bishops. The newspaper has consistently won awards for general excellence and investigative reporting.

Its investigative reporting has included coverage of allegations of sex abuse by members of the clergy, an issue the newspaper had been addressing since 1985, Fox said. The issue took on a high profile in the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese in recent years, leading to further coverage.

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UNITED STATES
Current

[with video]

David Clohessy, executive director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, joins John Fugelsang on “Viewpoint” to assess the ongoing sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, including news that the retired archbishop of Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, hid evidence that clergymen were molesting children.

“This is a monarchy, and as much as this scandal has tarnished the Catholic hierarchy, the men at the top of the pyramid still have faced little, if any, consequences for their dreadful wrongdoing,” Clohessy says. “For that reason, their power remains intact, and for that reason, I think, we’ve seen so little change on their part.”

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
dotCommonweal

January 27, 2013

Posted by Paul Moses

Bishop Robert W. Finn has used the occasion of the Feast of St. Francis de Sales, patron saint of journalists, to upbraid Kansas City-based National Catholic Reporter, which is located in his diocese. The critique he published in his diocesan newspaper says not a word about the important service to the church that NCR offered through courageous coverage over nearly three decades of the existence and cover-up of clergy sexual abuse.

This comes as no surprise from Finn, who continues to remain as bishop even after his conviction in September, as NCR put it, of “criminally shielding a priest who was a threat to children.” Bishop Finn is in no position to level accusations against NCR. It’s not surprising that many have called for his resignation; his conviction makes it impossible for him to do his job credibly.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

More than 150 people picketed the residence of the Papal Nuncio in Dublin this afternoon in protest at the Catholic Church’s treatment of well-known Irish missionary Fr Tony Flannery.

Last week Fr Flannery said he had been censored by the Vatican for his views on homosexuality and women priests, and called the Vatican’s systems “unfair and unjust”.

The 800-strong Association of Catholic Priests previously warned that forcing Father Tony Flannery to stop writing for a Redemptorist Order magazine would fuel belief of a disconnect between Irish Catholics and Rome.

Fr Flannery, a founder of the association, had his monthly column with the religious publication ‘Reality’ discontinued on orders from Rome.

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PENNSYLVANIA/OHIO
WKBN

At least two attorneys, representing victims, are planning legal action against the Youngstown and Altoona-Johnstown Catholic Diocese, Bishop McCort High School and others who were in charge of supervising Brother Stephen Baker while he was working with students.

On Sunday afternoon, Boston attorney Mitchell Garabedian, offered this statement:

“Well, unfortunately Brother Baker passed away but I will be pursuing cases on behalf of my clients against the supervisors of Brother Baker while he was sexually molesting children. Brother Baker’s death does sadden many of my clients. It’s a very emotional complicated situation that has now become more emotionally complicated.”

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PENNSYLVANIA
WKBN

Civil cases will proceed despite Brother Stephen Baker’s suicide.

Attorney Michael Parrish Junior of Johnstown, representing some of the former students alleging abuse by Baker, said the cases will move forward.

Baker was found dead at the St. Bernardine Monastery in Hollidaysburg on Saturday. He had been named in legal settlements involving abuse allegations at JFK High School in Warren and allegations have also surfaced of abuse at Bishop McCort High School in Johnstown in the 1990s.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Houston Chronicle

By RON TODT, Associated Press | January 27, 2013

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The civil case alleging that a Franciscan friar sexually abused students at a western Pennsylvania high school will go on despite the friar’s suicide over the weekend, attorneys representing some of the accusers said Sunday.

Brother Stephen Baker, 62, was found dead of a self-inflicted knife wound at the St. Bernardine Monastery in Hollidaysburg on Saturday, according to Blair Township police. He had been named in recent legal settlements involving sexual abuse allegations at a Catholic high school in northeast Ohio three decades ago, and the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese said it had received allegations of abuse at Bishop McCort High School in Johnstown in the 1990s.

When Baker was the school’s athletic trainer, 20 former students allege that he assaulted or molested students under the guise of providing therapeutic treatment or medical care for treatment of sports injuries, said Attorney Michael Parrish of Johnstown, who represents the accusers.

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IRELAND
The Journal

ABOUT 120 PEOPLE have attended a protest outside the residence of the Papal Nuncio to Ireland, in Cabra in Dublin, over the treatment of Fr Tony Flannery.

The liberal Redemptorist priest, who founded the Association of Catholic Priests, has been taken out of ministry while the Vatican investigates his involvement with the group.

The body has been outspoken in its calls for an end to clerical celibacy and the right of priests to marry – as well as seeking an overhaul to church teachings on sexuality and on the method of selection for bishops.

The 66-year-old has been ordered to sign a document confirming his adherence to Church teachings before he will be put back into active ministry – but he has refused to do so, saying this week he would be unable to look at himself in the mirror if he did.

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IRELAND
Association of Catholic Priests

The Association of Catholics in Ireland [ACI] expressed concerns in relation to the Fr. Tony Flannery case via a letter to the Irish Times on Wednesday 23 January. Unfortunately the letter has not been published to date – see text below.

In light of comments from Fr. Tony during the week which clarified the chronology of events and the role of the CDF in the controversy in recent months the ACI deemed it appropriate to address an ‘open letter’ to the Papal Nuncio which is also published below.

Letter to the Irish Times

Dear Sir,

We, the members of the Steering Group of the ‘fledgeling’ Association of Catholics in Ireland [ACI], view with great sadness the impasse which has developed between Fr. Tony Flannery and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [CDF]. In this week of prayer for Christian Unity, when Catholics are encouraged to enter into dialogue with members of other churches, it seems extraordinary that the CDF has refused dialogue with one of our own priests. We have sympathy too for the leaders of the Redemptorists in Ireland and abroad in the dilemma in which they have been placed.

The position of the Irish bishops is not known. Since they have insisted on the right of politicians to follow their consciences in a free vote on the abortion legislation issue, surely consistency and coherence must demand that they champion the right of a priest to follow his conscience? As the present Pope, then Cardinal Ratzinger, wrote: “Over the Pope as the expression of the binding claim of ecclesiastical authority, there still stands one’s own conscience, which must be obeyed over all else, if necessary even against the requirement of ecclesiastical authority.” (Commentary on Section 16 of Vatican II’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World.)

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Daily News

MENSAH M. DEAN, Daily News Staff Writer deanm@phillynews.com, 215-568-8278

Posted: Sunday, January 27, 2013

JURY DELIBERATIONS began Friday afternoon in the trial of a Catholic priest and a former Catholic-schoolteacher who are accused of sexually assaulting the same altar boy in the late 1990s.

The Common Pleas jury got the case after hearing closing arguments from Assistant District Attorney Mark Cipolletti and defense attorney Michael J. McGovern, who represents the Rev. Charles Engelhardt, 66.

Defense attorney Burton Rose, who represents Bernard Shero, 50, gave his closing argument Thursday.

Cipolletti said there was no doubt about the defendants’ guilt and asked the jury to give their accuser justice by convicting them.

The accuser, now 24, testified that beginning at age 10, when he was an altar boy at St. Jerome’s Church in the Northeast, he was sexually assaulted by the two defendants and by defrocked priest Edward Avery, 70, who pleaded guilty last year and is serving 2 1/2 to 5 years in state prison.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

Joseph A. Slobodzian, Inquirer Staff Writer

Posted: Sunday, January 27, 2013

After 81/2 days of testimony and closing arguments that brought the alleged victim to tears, a Philadelphia jury has begun working toward a verdict in the child-rape trial of a Philadelphia Catholic priest and ex-parochial-school teacher.

The Common Pleas Court jury of eight men and four women met for two hours Friday before breaking until Monday.

The Rev. Charles Engelhardt and Bernard Shero are charged in one of the most salacious episodes in the 2011 county investigating grand jury report on child sex-abuse in the Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia: the serial rape of a 10-year-old Northeast boy.

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IRELAND
Galway News

January 27, 2013

The residence of the Papal Nuncio in Dublin is to be picketed today, in protest against the Catholic Church’s treatment of well-known Athenry-based Fr. Tony Flannery.

Last week Fr. Flannery revealed on Galway bay Fm how he had been censored by the Vatican for his views on homosexuality and women priests, and called the Vatican’s systems “unfair and unjust.”

The protest has been organised by the group ‘We Are Church Ireland’.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Tony Flannery is an unlikely heretic. An Irish Redemptorist priest, he is now being threatened with excommunication from his own church.

So who cares? According to some media reports last week, a new survey of Irish public opinion ranks religion last among 119 priorities. But the survey and the reports about it were misleading.

Rome has let Flannery know that his opinions on the priesthood, and on the role of the laity, “are clearly contrary to the defined teaching of the Church” (as Rome sees it). He was stripped of his column in the Redemptorists’ Reality magazine, forbidden to administer the sacraments and now has one last chance to recant before being excluded from the institution to which he has given his life.

Some have linked his predicament to Enda Kenny’s criticism of the Vatican. Flannery’s brother Frank has long been a leading light in Fine Gael. Rome was not happy with the Taoiseach’s criticisms, and it was whispered by some that Fr Flannery had a hand in Kenny’s controversial speech of 2011. When Fr Flannery first heard that whisper, he thought it was a joke. He says: “I had absolutely nothing to do with the speech. I keep well away from politics in my profession.”

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Gerard O’Regan

Saturday January 26 2013

THIS past Christmas Eve, as befits some people who come under the banner of that cringe-inducing phrase ‘a la carte Catholics’, I attended a Gospel Mass in St Francis Xavier’s Church in Dublin’s Gardiner Street.

I had never been there before. But a friend spoke fervently about its gospel choir. “We always go there at Christmas. For some reason the church can be very atmospheric and spiritual at that time of year. But you have to arrive early so as to get a seat. It’s normally packed on Christmas Eve,” he warned.

And so, we arrived in plenty of time, and got a spot near the choir in one of the front pews, when the building was still quite empty. Then slowly and steadily came the soft footfall of people arriving out of the December night. Sure enough, almost without warning, the church was indeed “packed”.

As I looked around at this varied mix of humanity – the young, the old, the married, the single, the healthy, the infirm, the happy, the depressed, the believers and the non-believers – I could not but contemplate the embrace 2,000 years of Roman Catholicism has had on the very soul of Ireland.

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