ABUSE TRACKER

UNITED STATES
Sweeping Zen

By Eshu Martin

Joshu Sasaki Roshi, the founder and Abbot of Rinzai-ji is now 105 years old, and he has engaged in many forms of inappropriate sexual relationship with those who have come to him as students since his arrival here more than 50 years ago. His career of misconduct has run the gamut from frequent and repeated non-consensual groping of female students during interview, to sexually coercive after hours “tea” meetings, to affairs and sexual interference in the marriages and relationships of his students. Many individuals that have confronted Sasaki and Rinzai-ji about this behaviour have been alienated and eventually excommunicated, or have resigned in frustration when nothing changed; or worst of all, have simply fallen silent and capitulated. For decades, Joshu Roshi’s behaviour has been ignored, hushed up, downplayed, justified, and defended by the monks and students that remain loyal to him.

Based on my own experience as a student and monk in Rinzai-ji from 1995-2008 and many conversations during that time and since, it seems to me that virtually every person who has done significant training with him, the Rinzai-ji board of Directors, and most senior members of the Western Zen community at large know about his misconduct. Yet no one to my knowledge has ever publicly spoken out. Certainly, as an organization, Rinzai-ji has never accepted the responsibility of putting a stop to this abuse, and has never taken any kind of remedial action.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Adam Tebbe

By now, most everyone in the Zen Buddhist world has heard the news that Joshu Sasaki purportedly misused his position as a Zen teacher for his own sexual gratifications with many of his female Zen students. It’s not been the best of times for the Zen world, I’m afraid.

According to a report by an independent council of Zen teachers assembled to hear the stories of those affected, these sexual encounters were often initiated “in the formal setting, privacy, and ‘face-to-face’ encounters of the sanzen room.” Sanzen is a ritualized private meeting between a Zen student and Zen teacher. Their report also stated that there were reports of coercion and that Sasaki would at times frame the sexual contact as being a form of Zen teaching, or otherwise beneficial to the student. The council did a terrific job, considering morale and support for such an endeavor sure seemed to be at a low in the Zen community at large. It felt as though we’d arrived at some snapping point for readers who were sick of the coverage. The council, in my opinion, really deserves the thanks of the community. They collectively put in a lot of hours to offer us their report.

I am the editor at the website Sweeping Zen, where this story was first written about (see: Everybody Knows) by one of Sasaki’s former students, Eshu Martin of the Victoria Zen Centre. Eshu’s initial piece was an icebreaker of sorts, a shot across the bow that quickly grabbed the attention of many. Martin alleged a history of abuse and cover-ups involving his former teacher that stemmed his entire career. He received considerable backlash for his piece, accused of being nonspecific in his accusations. And, while it was partially true, readers did not know that at the time there was more information at his disposal which would and could be used if necessary. It was not released instantly because much of it needed to be said by Giko David Rubin, a priest ordained by Joshu Sasaki and his translator of many years (see: Some Reflections on Rinzai-ji). When Giko’s reflections on his experiences at Rinzai-ji and of Sasaki were first published, the mood was rather somber. It remains one of the most detailed and painful articles I’ve ever had to publish in my work at the website.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

VATICAN CITY
Telegraph (United Kingdom)

The Vatican is awash with conspiracy theories about why the Pope is resigning, but Benedict has had the last word

By Peter Stanford

After the initial shock came the speculation. Pope Benedict XVI surprised even his closest advisers on Monday by announcing that he was standing down, but within hours the Vatican was awash, not just with the inevitable talk of who would succeed him, but also with whispers about the “real story” behind the first papal resignation in over 600 years.

Once the curia – or Vatican bureaucracy – started chewing it over, the theories it spat out were quickly flying around what the papal historian John Cornwell has characterised as “a palace of gossipy eunuchs”. And from there it is one short step to finding their way into the Italian press.

Dan Brown couldn’t have made it up. The ecclesiastical earthquake of a pope resigning has been attributed, variously, to Benedict nursing a fatal illness; to a head injury during his trip to Mexico last March that convinced him to abdicate; to being forced out after an acrimonious meeting with a group of senior cardinals two days before he announced his resignation; to his looming disgrace over either dodgy deals done by the Vatican Bank, past cover-ups of paedophile priests, or an “explosive” forthcoming report by a team of cardinals on a tendering scandal; and to a strategy to secure the succession for his favourite.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

VATICAN CITY
Los Angeles Times

By Henry Chu, Los Angeles Times
February 15, 2013

VATICAN CITY — He’s God’s own man, but Italians think he should be theirs too.

Now, after a 35-year hiccup, they have a good shot at making that true again. As the derby begins to replace Pope Benedict XVI, who stunned the world this week by announcing his intention to retire at the end of the month, Italy is aiming to resume the line of homegrown pontiffs who reigned for more than 450 years until John Paul II, a Pole, came along in 1978.

Italians figure high on the list of likely successors to the German-born Benedict and, by a wide margin, form the single largest national bloc — though far from a majority — among the cardinals who will choose the next occupant of St. Peter’s throne.

But chances of a glorious restoration are tempered by strong candidates from other regions, missteps by senior Italians in the Vatican and the reality that the center of gravity of the global church has shifted, perhaps permanently, away from Europe. Many Roman Catholics believe that in the 21st century their leadership would be better off a little less Roman and a lot more catholic.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

VATICAN CITY
Irish Times

PADDY AGNEW, Rome Correspondent

Pope Benedict’s resignation is the most radical move in the Catholic Church in 50 years. Could it open the doors to a wider transformation? Don’t count on it

So, ironically, Benedict XVI, a pope widely perceived as a safe pair of hands and even more conservative than his predecessor, may have provoked the greatest change in the Catholic Church’s modern history. Cautious, timid, stubborn old Benedict, by stepping down from the Seat of Peter, could have initiated a process of radical rethinking not seen since the second Vatican Council, in the 1960s.

The holy father’s resignation is an intrinsically modern act, one that seems more temporal than spiritual, even for a man of deep faith. It makes him look less like the holy father of the universal church and more like the resigning CEO of a multinational company with a staff of 1.3 billion.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

VATICAN CITY
Catholic Culture

By Phil Lawler | February 15, 2013 5

What is the real reason for Pope Benedict’s decision to resign? What’s the story behind the story? Like thousands of others, I have been asking myself those questions since Monday morning. After a week of intensive reporting, and weighing the theories put forward by others, I have reached a conclusion. The real reason is the reason that the Holy Father put forward in his surprise announcement:

After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.

There is no conspiracy to unravel. There is no major medical news that has been hidden from the public. Nevertheless, there still is a story behind the story.

Throughout his pontificate, Benedict XVI has acted slowly but decisively. He has weighed arguments and planned carefully before making major policy decisions, but once he has reached a decision he has been steadfast. He spoke about the possibility of resignation as far back as 2010. His brother testifies that the question has been on his mind for months. Finally Benedict XVI reached the conclusion that he was no longer capable of doing the job that needs to be done—not because of any particular medical emergency, but because of the gradual decline in energy that comes with old age.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

AUSTRALIA
The Australian

AAP
February 17, 2013

CATHOLIC Bishops in NSW have signed a letter urging parishioners and clergy not to bury their heads in the sand ahead of the royal commission into child sexual abuse.

In a publication signed by 15 bishops, including the Archbishop of Sydney Cardinal George Pell, parishoners and clergy are urged to reflect upon the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse.

“We must not put our heads in the sand about any of this, or try to minimise or explain it away,” the letter published on Sunday states.

“The fact is that our Dioceses have all known cases of child abuse.”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
Get Religion

So many details will sound terribly familiar. At the heart of the news story is a powerful religious patriarch, surrounded by disciples who view him with a reverence that helps support an iron-clad climate of silence and secrecy.

In this case, however, the leader is Joshu Sasaki Roshi, one of the most famous Zen Buddhist monks in the world and a teacher who has had a tremendous impact in American elite culture. Now, it is being alleged (and in some cases confirmed) that since the 1960s he has sexually abused many, perhaps 100s, of his followers in Southern California and elsewhere.

Here is a key passage from a report in The Los Angeles Times:

A recent investigation by an independent council of Buddhist leaders has suggested that Roshi, a leading figure in Zen Buddhism in the United States, may have abused hundreds of others for decades. According to the group’s report, that abuse included allegations of molestation and rape, and some of the incidents had been reported to the Rinzai-ji board, which had taken no effective action.

“We see how, knowingly and unknowingly, the community was drawn into an open secret,” the council wrote, adding: “We have reports that those who chose to speak out were silenced, exiled, ridiculed or otherwise punished.” …

The council of Rinzai-ji oshos — senior Zen teachers ordained under Roshi — however, responded with a public statement: “Our hearts were not firm enough, our minds were not clear enough, and our practices were not strong enough so that we might persist until the problem was resolved. We fully acknowledge now, without any reservation, and with the heaviest of hearts, that because of our failure to address our teacher’s sexual misconduct, women and also men have been hurt.”

The allegations had lingered, literally, for decades and were allowed to become, in the words of one figure in the scandal “a tribal secret for 50 years.”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
Boston Globe

By Joan Vennochi
Globe Columnist
February 17, 2013

THE CATHOLIC Church can’t get to a bright, new future until it finally breaks with the ugliness of the past.

One way to make such a break would be to keep Cardinal Roger Mahony from participating in the next election to determine a new pope.

If past is prologue, as Shakespeare wrote, keeping Mahony away from the upcoming conclave seems unlikely. Church leaders, from the pope down, never understood the depth of outrage over the long-running clergy sexual abuse scandal. Apology, not accountability, was supposed to quiet the rebellious.

But the scenario involving Mahony — the retired archbishop of Los Angeles — has its own distinction. Two weeks ago, Mahony was relieved of all public duties by current Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez. What The New York Times called “an extraordinary moment in Catholic Church history” occurred after long-sought documents revealed that Mahony actively worked to protect priests who were abusing children from ­police, rather than protect victims from their abusers.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

CALIFORNIA
The Fresno Bee

By Lewis Griswold – The Fresno Bee

Saturday, Feb. 16, 2013

VISALIA — A bitter family feud between mega-church pastor Bob Grenier and his estranged sons escalated this month with a son’s claim in court papers that his father sexually molested him as a child.

The allegation by Paul Grenier, 31, is in a statement filed in Tulare County Superior Court in support of his brother Alex Grenier, 41, who is being sued for libel by their parents, Bob and Gayle Grenier. Alex was the first to publicly accuse his father of molesting Paul when he wrote about it online in 2011.

Now, Paul has gone public with the accusation, too. His court statement says that twice when he was 5, “I was forced to perform oral sex on Bob.” It also alleges instances of inappropriate touching.

But Paul Grenier has not filed a police report, even though state law allows adults to report alleged sexual abuse that happened when the victim was a minor.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

GERMANY
Washington Post

German journalist says Pope Benedict XVI talked last August of diminishing strength

By Associated Press,
updated: Saturday, February 16

BERLIN — Pope Benedict XVI said last August that his strength was diminishing and “not much more” could be expected from him as pontiff, according to a German journalist who interviewed him for a 2010 book in which Benedict said popes should in some circumstances consider resigning.

Journalist Peter Seewald recalled in an article for German weekly Focus published Saturday asking Benedict during a meeting last August at the pontiff’s summer residence, Castel Gandolfo, what more could be expected of him and his papacy. …

Seewald said Benedict replied: “From me? From me, not much more. I am an old man and my strength is running out. And I think what I have done is enough.”

In Saturday’s article, Seewald recalled asking the pope in August how badly the scandal over leaks of papal documents, in which the pope’s ex-butler was convicted of aggravated theft, had affected him.

It “is not as though I were somehow falling into a kind of desperation or world-weariness — it is simply incomprehensible to me,” Benedict said, according to Seewald.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

CALIFORNIA
Monterey Herald

ROYAL CALKINS
montereyherald.com
Posted: 02/16/2013

Some have written that when Roger M. Mahony became the priest of the farmworkers, allying himself closely with the United Farmworkers Union, it was an act of great courage. This was in the San Joaquin Valley and many of the biggest Catholic contributors there were growers, including many owners of the vineyards where Cesar Chavez began his organizing.

Others maintain that Mahony was largely posturing. They say that while he was sympathetic to the workers, he mainly was angling to accelerate his rise to the top of the church hierarchy.

Either way, it was a risk. Though he cost the church treasury by enraging much of the church’s core membership from Stockton to Bakersfield, he gained the star power that caused many church observers over the years to predict that he might be the first American pope.

Growing up mostly in the valley, I admired Mahony and the handful of priests who openly supported the UFW. Though I later would become seriously disenchanted with the UFW as a union, in those days it was an important and effective social movement. With Mahony’s help, in the church and in Sacramento, Chavez and the UFW were responsible for many overdue reforms in the fields. Banishment of the short-handled hoe, the requirement for toilets, fresh water, shade and rest breaks all were the result of legislation that never would have occurred without Chavez and, to some extent, Mahony. ..

As archbishop of Los Angeles for 25 years, Cardinal Mahony presided over huge regional growth in the church while also presiding over a conspiracy to protect pedophile priests. And he did it not by simply looking the other way. He was a ringleader of a successful effort to hide priests known to have molested many. He thwarted secular efforts to stop the abuse. He turned his back on a multitude of victims.

It took a series of court orders for the public to finally get a look at church records that reveal just how widespread the molestation was and just how hard the church administration fought to evade scrutiny. Officials under Mahony’s direction even shielded repeat offenders from therapists who might be obligated to report them.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
ABC News

By RACHEL ZOLL AP Religion Writer
NEW YORK February 16, 2013 (AP)

Conventional wisdom holds that no one from the United States could be elected pope, that the superpower has more than enough worldly influence without an American in the seat of St. Peter.

But after Pope Benedict XVI’s extraordinary abdication, church analysts are wondering whether old assumptions still apply, including whether the idea of a U.S. pontiff remains off the table. …

Cardinal William Levada, the former San Francisco archbishop, was the first U.S. prelate to lead the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s powerful guardian of doctrine. Cardinal Raymond Burke, the former St. Louis archbishop, is the first American to lead the Vatican supreme court. And Benedict appointed others from the U.S. to handle some of his most pressing concerns, including rebuilding ties with breakaway Catholic traditionalists and overseeing the church’s response to clergy abuse cases worldwide.

But as Christopher Bellitto, a historian at Kean University in New Jersey who studies the papacy, said, “There’s a big difference between letting somebody borrow the car and handing them the keys.”

“The American church,” he said, “comes with a lot of baggage.”

Among the negatives is the clergy sex abuse scandal, which has affected every U.S. diocese and bishop.

The 11 U.S. cardinals expected to vote in the conclave will include Cardinal Roger Mahony, the former Los Angeles archbishop who was recently stripped of public duties by his successor over his record on handling abuse cases. Also attending will be Cardinal Justin Rigali, who stepped down as Philadelphia archbishop after a landmark indictment of priests revealed he had kept several clergy on assignment despite claims they molested children.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

RHODE ISLAND
News 12

Updated: February 16, 2013
By The Associated Press MICHELLE R. SMITH (Associated Press), NICOLE WINFIELD (Associated Press)

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – (AP) — The disgraced Roman Catholic religious order the Legion of Christ bent its own rules for a wealthy elderly woman while it also isolated her from some relatives, according to newly released court documents, and a lawyer says the moves show the order was intent on becoming the beneficiary of her $60 million fortune.

The Legion counters that widow Gabrielle Mee was independent, strong-willed and happy and was never coerced into anything. The fact she led a less-restrictive life than others in its community shows she freely gave them her money, the Legion argues. Mee died in 2008 at age 96. …

Mee’s niece, Mary Lou Dauray, sued the Legion after her aunt died. She said Mee was defrauded by an order whose leaders orchestrated an effort to hide its founder’s misdeeds from her aunt.

A Superior Court judge ruled in September that Dauray did not have standing to sue. But Judge Michael Silverstein took pains in his order to detail the process by which the Legion wooed Mee, bending the rules to let her become a “consecrated” member of its lay movement, giving her privileged access to Maciel and inviting her on special trips to Rome and Mexico.

Among the documents released Friday was a deposition from one of Mee’s friends, Joanne McKosker, who testified how the two had bonded in the 1980s through their deep Catholic faith. She said she would visit after Mee moved into a Legion center in Smithfield, R.I. Around 2001, she asked Mee for a $5,000 donation for an anti-abortion charity. After Mee gave it to her, McKosker was prevented from visiting or calling Mee again.

“Months that went on, my trying to see her,” she said. “I was getting, I was angry because I, I wanted to be still friends with her, you know, and I wanted, I felt she wanted, too.”

The Legion says Mee had her own private phone line in her apartment and it never screened her calls.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

INDIA
Times of India

NAGPUR: A 75-year-old priest was arrested for allegedly sexually abusing two girls aged 5 and 7 on Friday. A group of agitated women from Hazaripahad stormed the Gittikhadan police station on Saturday and demanded stern action against the accused Babulal Dwivedi.

The matter came to fore after one of Dwivedi’s neighbours — the wife of a tailor whose shop is located across the temple — observed him sexually abusing one of the girls on February 8. …

The women initially approached a temple trustee over the issue but he — as the agitated women claim — tried to hush up the episode.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

WASHINGTON
Wenatchee World

By Jefferson Robbins
World staff writer

Saturday, February 16, 2013

YAKIMA — A lawsuit that claimed sexual abuse by a Waterville Catholic priest was dismissed last week for lack of evidence.

The complaint said the plaintiff, called only “S.A.” in the court file, was sexually abused multiple times while a child between 1972 and 1974 by the Rev. Joseph Graaf, then the priest of St. Joseph Catholic Church in Waterville.

But the 2010 suit was dismissed Feb. 6 on the motion of the Diocese of Yakima, the defendant, which successfully argued that there was insufficient evidence to allow the claim to go to trial.

Yakima Superior Court Judge Robert E. Lawrence-Berrey agreed there was no evidence the diocese knew or should have known that Graaff presented a risk of abuse; or that the diocese created circumstances that allowed the claimed abuse to occur.

“Whether the abuse happened or not has never been established either,” diocesan spokesman the Rev. Robert Siler said Friday. “I suppose that would have been something that would have been up to a jury to decide, if there had been enough evidence to proceed to a trial.”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

RHODE ISLAND
Fox Providence

[with video]

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) — Thousands of pages of documents from a lawsuit against a Catholic order have been unsealed, making public new details surrounding alleged sexual misconduct by its founder.

Eyewitness News obtained the legal documents and sat down with attorney Bernard Jackvony, who has been compiling evidence against the Legion of Christ for years to support a $60 million lawsuit filed by the family of a local woman who gave $60 million to the group and wants that money returned.

Gabrielle Mee bequeathed $60 million to the Legion of Christ a few years before her death in 2008, and her family is suing the Legion, arguing that its efforts to cover up that alleged sexual misconduct amounted to fraud.

The order’s founder, the late Rev. Marcial Maciel, was discovered to have fathered three children with two women and allegedly sexually molested seminarians. The newly-unsealed documents indicate that the order’s second-in-command knew of the alleged misconduct but did not either report it or confront Maciel. The Legion finally acknowledged those allegations in 2009, a year after Maciel’s death, and the Vatican took over the order in 2010 after an investigation substantiated those reports.

Jackvony says that the documents, which include thousands of pages of testimony from Legion leadership, show that its leaders covered up Maciel’s misconduct and therefore the order defrauded her out of the money she bequeathed.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

INDIA
Bhaskar

Bhopal: A local court has ordered registration of a case against the Archbishop of Bhopal and two others for allegedly conspiring to make a priest and former spokesperson of the local church mentally unsound by administering drugs.

Judicial Magistrate First Class Alok Mishra ordered the filing of a case against Archbishop Father Leo Cornelio and the other two under IPC Sections 328 (causing hurt by means of poison etc with intent to commit an offence) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) and has asked them to appear on March 1.

The order was given on February 7, a copy of which was received by the complainant on February 14.

Father Cornelio, however, told a news agency that the allegations levelled by Anand Muttangal, an ex-Public Relation Officer (PRO) for the archdiocese, were “baseless”.

“The allegations were totally baseless. Muttangal is levelling these charges as he was removed from the post of PRO following complaints of gross irregularities which were not expected from a priest like him,” he said.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

RHODE ISLAND
Daily Mail (United Kingdom)

Unsealed records show founder of disgraced Catholic order lived double life and fathered three secret children as Vatican ignored allegations of abuse

By Daily Mail Reporter and Associated Press Reporter

Documents released Friday shed light on the inner workings of a secretive and now-disgraced Roman Catholic order called the Legion of Christ.

They include details on how the founder of the organization, the Reverend Marcial Maciel who died in 2008, lived a double life, fathering three children, and was accused of abusing seminarians. The Legion kept this information hidden.

Also revealed are allegations that theorganization solicited money from an elderly widow, eventually persuading her to bequeath it $60 million.

The scandal, which has tarnished the legacy of Pope John Paul II, is cited as an especially egregious example of how the Vatican ignored decades of reports about sexually abusive priests because church leaders put the interests of the institution above those of the victims.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

CALIFORNIA
KTLA

by Elizabeth Espinosa
KTLA 5 Reporter

NORTH HOLLYWOOD (KTLA) – Before Cardinal Roger Mahony heads to Rome to help elect a new pope, he’ll be questioned under oath next Saturday (Feb. 23) about his handling of clergy sex abuse cases.

The kinds of questions Mahony will face: did a visiting priest from Mexico abuse a local North Hollywood parishioner? And did the church — under Mahony’s guidance — stall in notifying police about the alleged abuse?

A judge has cleared the way for the deposition of Mahony to proceed, and has ruled that attorneys will have four hours to question Cardinal Mahony on the subject.

Mahony has been deposed several times since the late 1990′s about issues of alleged sexual abuse within the church.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED KINGDOM
Irish Times

Taoiseach Enda Kenny is in London today for a meeting with women who spent time in Magdalene laundries and subsequently left Ireland.

The meeting is taking place at the Irish Embassy in Grosvenor Place.

A report by former senator Martin McAleese found that some 10,000 women and girls entered Magdalene laundries after 1922 and that more than a quarter of the referrals had been made or facilitated by the State

Mr Kenny was criticised for stopping short of delivering an apology on behalf of the State on the day the report appeared.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

IRELAND
Irish Times

MIRIAM LORD

Amid the noise generated by the publication of the McAleese report on the Magdalene laundries, perhaps the loudest sound of all is the silence emanating from its author.

Martin McAleese, however, had no obligation to stick around after he completed his investigation. None of the authors of the last four reports into abuse – from Ferns through to Cloyne – answered questions either.

We hear the Government would have preferred him to actively engage with the media at the launch, but it was his call and he decided against this.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Modern Popes have surrounded the papacy with historical myths that are drilled into Catholics as children. Pope Benedict XVI just destroyed one of the fundamental myths. Being Pope is just a job and, if he cannot perform, he needs to retire.

What? John Paul II had acute Parkinson’s Disease that disabled him fully for years. What Benedict is saying is that John Paul should have resigned, which is why John Paul’s secretary seems livid that Benedict retired. Of course, as with the priest child abuse and the financial scandals, Benedict did little effectively to address this need for papal performance standards.

If, as Benedict has clearly indicated, a Pope should go if he is unable to perform his duties, should he be removed if he is unwilling to perform or performs badly? Should there be term limits or maximum age limits? Of course, the only logical answer is yes to all of these related questions. But the Vatican is run by power politics, not logic, or even spiritual values for that matter. Some Vatican Cardinal will likely leak soon the real reasons Benedict is retiring.

It is time to change that and restore Catholic leadership to the consensual approach that Jesus and early Catholics followed for over three centuries until Roman Emperors converted the Catholic Bishops, including the Pope, into an imperial bureaucracy dominated by a Vatican clique that dictated top-down to Catholics to fill the clique’s coffers.

It is time for many more Catholic scholars to step-up and start telling uninformed Catholics the full story now, before another Grand Inquisitor is installed by “Ex-Benedict” and Cardinal Sodano. And they need to use the media and Internet now to do so. Enough with the comfortable evasions. It is high time to speak prophetically, and not just pedantically. …

We all have a moral obligation to protect children and signing a petition is a simple, yet potentially effective, way towards meeting that obligation. Please take a minute and sign it at:

[Click here for the petition.]

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

CANADA
The Globe and Mail

ERIC REGULY
The Globe and Mail

Published Saturday, Feb. 16 2013

Italy is the country most closely associated with Catholicism. It is the home of the Vatican and, for two millennia, the heirs of the first pope, St. Peter.

It also has one of the lowest church attendance records in the 1.1-billion-strong Catholic world. Italian churches are becoming echo chambers, with pretty decorations, and Italy isn’t alone. Attendance is plummeting throughout Europe, along with the proportion of citizens who describe themselves as Catholic.

The church’s waning power will not come as a surprise to the Catholics and others who have been shocked by the sexual-abuse scandals and their cover-ups, last year’s “VatiLeaks” incident (when purloined documents alleged Vatican financial corruption), and the church’s unbending stances against gay marriage, contraception and women priests – the sense among many of the formerly faithful that the Vatican is centuries out of date.

So how what can the church do reverse the trend? What can restore the church’s popularity and relevance? These are questions that the College of Cardinals will no doubt consider when they weigh the pros and cons of the leading candidates (among them Quebec Cardinal Marc Ouellet) to replace Pope Benedict XVI, who will become the first pope to resign in six centuries when he leaves the Vatican on Feb. 28.

George Weigel, the American author of the best-selling biography of John Paul II, Witness to Hope , says the church is “dying” in its European heartland. “In that way, Europe is similar to Quebec,” he says in Rome, where he is watching the papal transition. “The church withered away in both places in two generations.”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Feb. 16, 2013

Rome —
Acknowledging that many people, including several cardinals, have questioned the need to wait until March 15 to open the conclave that will elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI, a Vatican spokesperson on Saturday said the date is an “open question.”

The apostolic constitution governing the papal election, Universi dominici gregis, issued under John Paul II in 1996, specifies that the conclave must take place between 15 and 20 days after the beginning of the sede vacante, meaning the end of the previous papacy. Since Benedict’s resignation becomes official on Feb. 28, that would mean a conclave starting somewhere between March 15 and 20.

In previous sessions with the press this week, Vatican spokesperson Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi had left the impression that this provision of the rules was not open to revision.

In a briefing Saturday morning, however, Lombardi acknowledged that the waiting period was crafted with the expectation of a papal death, and is intended to give cardinals time to arrive in Rome. In 2005, 16 days passed between the death of John Paul II and the beginning of the conclave that elected Benedict XVI.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

by Joshua J. McElwee | Feb. 11, 2013

The resignation of Pope Benedict XVI is a “holy shakeup” in the Catholic church, states one of the associations for women who wish to be ordained as Catholic priests.

“The Pope’s resignation is a positive sign that the Spirit is at work renewing the church,” states the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests in a statement.

“We need a top down shakeup and new structures of accountability in the Roman Catholic Church,” states the association, which ordains women outside the formal structures of the church. “Married priests, women priests, are only a few of the necessary steps the Vatican needs to take in a more just and compassionate church that honors the gifts of God in the people of God.”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

DEUTSCHLAND
Evangelisch

Aus Anlass der Frühjahrs-Vollversammlung der katholischen Deutschen Bischofskonferenz in Trier haben Opferverbände und kirchliche Initiativen eine konsequentere Aufklärung des sexuellen Missbrauchs in der katholischen Kirche gefordert.

An den vier Tagen des Bischofstreffens, das am Montag beginnt, mache das “Aktionsprogramm Aufklärung!” mit begleitenden Veranstaltungen auf Versäumnisse aufmerksam, sagte Heiner Buchen, Sprecher der Saarbrücker Initiative gegen sexualisierte Gewalt in der katholischen Kirche dem Evangelischen Pressedienst (epd).

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

LOS ANGELES (CA)
CBS Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Some local Catholics don’t feel Cardinal Roger Mahony should be able to participate in the upcoming papal conclave in Rome.

The organization, Catholics United, tells CBSLA and KNX 1070 Newsradio that they want the cardinal to recuse himself from the closed-door conference slated for next month in Rome in light of his alleged cover-up of a church sex abuse scandal.

“We just think it’s just wrong for him to go. He actually has written a letter saying sorry. And if he’s really sorry, he shouldn’t act like that,” said Andrea Leon-Grossmann, a local member.

Mahony will be among 120 men and women called to participate in the College of Cardinals to help pick the next pope following Pope Benedict XVI’s announcement this week that he will be stepping down as Pontiff on Feb. 28.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

IRELAND
Evening Echo

Saturday, February 16, 2013

THERE is a growing split in the Diocese of Cloyne over the treatment of Fr Tony Flannery the priest who claims he was threatened with excommunication by the Vatican over his liberal views.

Fr Gabriel Burke from Carrigtwohill has called on Fr Flannery to resign because his “Protestant-like beliefs make him no different to Dr Ian Paisley or William McCrea” — the Free Presbyterian minister linked to loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland.

Fr Burke was defending Fr Damien Lynch from the Fermoy parish, after a small number of parishioners walked out of noon Mass in Fermoy last week in protest at his homily criticising Fr Flannery.

Galway based, Fr Flannery had received widespread support from priests across Cork but criticism is now beginning to surface.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

MINNESOTA
YouTube – Minnesota SNAP

From the state capitol – a video presentation about introduction of the Minnesota Child Victims Act.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

CANADA
National Post

Joseph Brean | Feb 15, 2013

With Canadians in charge of the International Space Station and the Bank of England, the prospect one should also sit on St. Peter’s throne as Bishop of Rome and Pope to the world’s Roman Catholics no longer seems so far-fetched.

If early front-runner Marc Cardinal Ouellet does become the first non-European pope since an eighth-century Syrian, his papacy will reflect both the Church’s slow shift away from Europe, and the persistence of Benedict XVI’s dogmatic theology.

Common wisdom holds the former works for Cardinal Ouellet, the latter against him.

At 68, he is neither too old nor too young for the job, and even with all the traditional caveats about the uncertainty of Vatican Kremlinology, his odds — pegged by bookies at 7:2 — look good.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

CANADA
National Post

Robert Fulford | Feb 16, 2013

Catholics of many descriptions, and non-Catholics concerned about the Church’s influence, will be hoping next month that the cardinals elect a pope committed to changing the Church. Whatever their desires, however, they’ll probably be as little satisfied as the people who dreamt that Pope Benedict XVI would produce significant innovation.

A pope can push the Vatican slightly this way or that, but can no longer be expected to effect serious transformation. The bureaucracy is far too encrusted to be budged and for many more years will be kept busy dealing with sexual-abuse cases.

Even so, the Church does greatly alter itself, contrary to widespread opinion. It is not rigid, even when it tries to be. Those who have observed it over the last few decades have seen fundamental, unpredictable developments. They add up to the biggest Catholic reconstruction since the era that began with Martin Luther in the 16th century.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

VATICAN CITY
Daily Mail (United Kingdom)

Was the Pope pushed? An abuse scandal, corruption and the dark intrigue behind Benedict’s shock resignation

By Guy Adams

The room full of people was still in shock at the news of his resignation when Pope Benedict XVI tottered across the marble floor towards a tall, heavy-set man in the red robe and skullcap of a cardinal.

As cameras rolled on Monday in the gilded Sala del Concistoro at the Apostolic Palace in Rome, Benedict grabbed the man by his shoulders, looked deep into his eyes and — struggling to hold back tears — shared a long embrace.

It was a public show of affection to one of the Pope’s most important fratres carissimi or ‘dear brothers’.

It was also a display of respect. For the man was Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who as Dean of the College of Cardinals will organise the coming conclave at the Sistine chapel where 117 cardinals from across the world choose the next pontiff.

Yet in these ancient hallways, things are never entirely as they seem.

Dust may still be settling on Benedict XVI’s unexpected resignation, at the age of 85, but cynical eyes have begun to turn towards his relationship with Sodano the power-broker.

Sodano has lost little time in expressing his ‘sense of loss and almost disbelief’ at Benedict’s decision to quit, telling reporters that Monday’s announcement felt ‘like a lightning bolt in a clear blue sky’. But Vatican insiders smell a rat about those widely reported comments. They point out that, far from being surprised at Benedict’s announcement, Sodano had been told the previous Friday. And far from a ‘sense of loss’, previous form suggests the ambitious cardinal would have been delighted at the news.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

VATICAN CITY
Washington Post

By Anthony Faiola

Published: February 15

VATICAN CITY — Inside a 13th-century monastery in a sleepy village north of Rome, the Rev. Salvatore Palumbo was allegedly serving more than one higher authority. Italian prosecutors say a Ferrari-driving lawyer who defrauded insurance companies used the priest as a frontman, with Palumbo stashing the illicit cash inside the secretive Institute for Works of Religion.

A.k.a. the Vatican Bank.

The arrests over the past six months of Palumbo and the 34-year-old lawyer, Simone Fazzari, highlight one major source of the scandals and power struggles that observers say contributed to Pope Benedict XVI’s historic resignation this week — the murky world of Vatican finances.

With ATMs offering transactions in Latin and a castle-like headquarters protected by spear-toting Swiss Guards, the financial arm of the Vatican has never been a run-of-the-mill bank. But a sense of crisis has been building around it and other Vatican financial dealings. …

Evidence suggests the outgoing pope sought to shed light on the dark Vatican books, but that effort yielded even more controversy. The former president of the Vatican Bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, was forced to resign in May, alleging he was fired for getting “too close to the truth.” Last year, other documents leaked by the pope’s butler and other sources revealed the depth of the internal tug of war over financial transparency, with Vatican reformers pitted against traditionalists who appeared to believe the church should answer only to a higher power.

On Friday, the pope backed a decision by a commission of cardinals to name Ernst von Freyberg to head the Vatican Bank. The German-born lawyer and member of the ancient Knights of Malta was selected, the Vatican said, because of “his vast experience.” However, Italian commentators were quick to question why the choice was not left to the incoming pope.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

A former bishop said to have failed to tell police about a paedophile priest has said there was no cover-up.

Retired priest Robert Coles was jailed on Thursday for sexually abusing three boys aged from 10 to 16.

It was said in court Coles told senior clergy, including former Bishop of Lewes the Rt Rev Wallace Benn, he had abused one of the children but the information was not given to police.

Bishop Benn said there was no ineptitude or cover-up on his part.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

CANADA
Catholic Register

Written by Ron Stang, Catholic Register Special
Friday, 15 February 2013 13:30

WINDSOR, ONT. – On one of the coldest days so far this winter a small group of men walked back and forth on the sidewalk in front of a central Windsor shopping plaza to protest the proliferation of pornography.

The men have been holding their silent anti-pornography protests for almost three years.

About four or five of them gather the first and last Fridays of each month at 5 p.m. for the one-hour picket along one of the city’s busiest streets, Dougall Avenue.

Their picket always takes place at the same location in front of a small shopping plaza where there is a store called Adult Video, which rents pornographic movies.

Their signs read: “Pornography Hurts Children, Pornography Destroys Marriage, Pornography Degrades and Enslaves Men.”

Mike Horoky, a Catholic deacon, started the protest. He said the location was chosen because of its high profile, especially during the rush hour.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

[Kevin Barmasse – Los Angeles archdiocese]

By Victoria Kim and Ashley Powers, Los Angeles Times
February 15, 2013

In 1993, Cardinal Roger Mahony wrote to the Vatican with an urgent problem. One of his priests in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles had been accused of plying teenage boys with alcohol and molesting them, sometimes during prayer.

In less than eight years, Father Kevin Barmasse had, as one church official put it in newly released files, “left a wake of devastation that is hard to comprehend.” Mahony yanked Barmasse out of his parish and wanted to make sure he couldn’t return. But Barmasse appealed to the one body that could overrule Mahony: the Vatican.

“The case has been there for many, many months,” Mahony wrote to one Vatican office tasked with handling priest misconduct. “The lengthy delay has created serious problems for my own credibility as a Diocesan Bishop.”

In the wake of the court-ordered release of 12,000 pages of confidential archdiocese records, Mahony has been criticized for hiding abuse allegations from police and failing to protect parishioners from accused molesters. But the documents suggest that Mahony at times had to press an unresponsive Vatican to get molesting priests out of the church.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

RHODE ISLAND
Vancouver Sun

By Michelle R. Smith And Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press
February 16, 2013

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Newly unsealed documents in a lawsuit brought against the Roman Catholic order Legion of Christ show the group’s former second-in-command testified he discovered the order’s founder, the late Rev. Marcial Maciel, had fathered a daughter in 2006.

However, the Rev. Luis Garza said he never confronted Maciel about his double life and didn’t share the news with the group’s broader membership.

The documents, previously sealed in a lawsuit in Superior Court in Rhode Island, include thousands of pages of testimony from high-ranking leaders at the Legion, its members, and relatives of Rhode Island widow Gabrielle Mee, who bequeathed $60 million to the Legion before her death at age 96 in 2008. …

In a deposition December 2011, Garza says he became suspicious while visiting Maciel in 2006 at a hotel in Jacksonville, Florida, because of two women he saw there. He later learned they were Maciel’s daughter and her mother, a fact he confirmed with both women.

Garza said he obtained the daughter’s birth certificate as proof — listing the father as “Jose Rivas.” Later, it was revealed that Maciel used the “Jose Rivas” pseudonym with his other hidden family, a Mexican woman with whom he had two sons.

Yet Garza said he never asked Maciel about his daughter or discussed it with him, and he didn’t think it was necessary to share the news with the Legion’s membership or its lay movement, Regnum Christi. He said he only told the Legion’s superior and two other priests.

“I didn’t think at the time that the fact that fathering a child would change in any way the way we needed to behave vis-a-vis Father Maciel or the actions that we needed to do,” Garza said in the deposition. “Because we needed to comply with indications of the Holy See and also because there was an issue of privacy and respect for the mother and the daughter.”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

RHODE ISLAND
The New York Times

By SHARON OTTERMAN

Published: February 15, 2013

When Gabrielle D. Mee, a wealthy Rhode Island widow, left her $60 million fortune to a powerful Catholic order called the Legion of Christ in 2008, revelations had already begun to surface that its charismatic founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, had molested under-age seminarians and fathered several children.

But a niece of Mrs. Mee, Mary Lou Dauray, came to believe that her aunt must have been kept in the dark about Father Maciel’s misdeeds, so that her fortune would go to the order. On Friday, thousands of pages of documents in a 2009 lawsuit that Mrs. Dauray filed were released to the public, shedding additional light on how the Legion managed information about its founder and came to control Mrs. Mee’s money.

The documents had been sealed by the court, but several news organizations, including The New York Times, sued to have them released. A Rhode Island judge ruled on Thursday that there was no reason they should not be made public. They had not been fully reviewed by The Times by Friday night.

They include depositions given by top leaders of the Legion, including the Rev. Luis Garza, the current head of the Legion’s North American operations.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
Washington Post

By E.J. Dionne Jr.
Published: February 15

In giving up the papacy, Pope Benedict XVI was brave and bold. He did the unexpected for the good of the Catholic Church. And when it selects a new pope next month, the College of Cardinals should be equally brave and bold. It is time to elect a nun as the next pontiff.

Now, I know this hope of mine is the longest of long shots. I have great faith in the Holy Spirit to move papal conclaves, but I would concede that I may be running ahead of the Spirit on this one. Women, after all, are not yet able to become priests, and it is unlikely that traditionalists in the church will suddenly upend the all-male, celibate priesthood, let alone name a woman as the bishop of Rome.

Nonetheless, handing leadership to a woman — and in particular, to a nun — would vastly strengthen Catholicism, help the church solve some of its immediate problems and inspire many who have left the church to look at it with new eyes.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

OREGON
Portland Tribune

Written by Kara Hansen Murphey|

An Arizona woman has filed a lawsuit against Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Lake Oswego, accusing church leaders of allowing her former youth group leader to sexually abuse her when she was growing up in Lake Oswego.

Cristie Marie Prasnikar, now 34, filed the lawsuit Feb. 14 in U.S. District Court in Portland. It names Ralph “Woody” Veerkamp, the local church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The Review generally doesn’t publish the names of victims of sex crimes but has in this case because Prasnikar chose not to use an alias when filing public pleadings.

Veerkamp was reportedly chairman of a committee overseeing the Great Commission Subcommittee, known by many during the 1990s for its popular youth choir, which involved hundreds of youths from Lakeridge and Lake Oswego High as well as other area schools. In that role, Veerkamp provided educational, spiritual, moral and ethical guidance along with religious instruction to young people, including Prasnikar, according to the lawsuit.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

MINNESOTA
Brainerd Dispatch

Presently, Minnesota law limits lawsuits made against sexual assailants by victims to six years after they turn 18. A bipartisan group of Minnesota lawmakers want to eliminate that time restriction.

Sen. Ron Latz, DFL-St. Louis Park, and House Reps. Steve Simon, (DFL-St. Louis Park), and Sondra Erickson, (R-Princeton), made the announcement with child victim advocates during a press conference Wednesday.

The proposed bill would lift the statute of limitations entirely, which would allow adults who had been abused as children to file lawsuits at any time.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

OREGON
The Oregonian

By Heather Steeves, The Oregonian
on February 15, 2013

A woman who grew up in Lake Oswego filed a $16 million lawsuit in federal court Thursday, accusing her church youth group leader of near-daily sexual abuse that went on for years.

Cristie Marie Prasnikar, 34, who now lives in Arizona, filed in U.S. District Court in Portland against Ralph Woodrow “Woody” Veerkamp, 65, Our Savior’s Lutheran Church of Lake Oswego and Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. She is asking for $300,000 in economic damages, $6 million in non-economic damages and $10 million in punitive damages to set an example.

According to the lawsuit, Prasnikar joined an Our Savior’s youth group for high school students when she was 14 and was assigned to a group led by Veerkamp, an adult church-goer. The church’s Great Commission Subcommittee youth program drew hundreds of junior high school and high school students from the area in the 1990s.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

ROME
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Feb. 16, 2013

Rome

One difficulty in assessing the legacy of Pope Benedict XVI on the sexual abuse crisis is that the people making the assessments tend to know more about one end of the equation than the other. That is, they’re either papal observers struggling to make sense of the scandals, or people on the front lines of the scandals trying to understand the pope.

A rare figure with deep expertise in both is Jesuit Fr. Hans Zollner, the academic vice-rector of the Jesuit-run Gregorian University in Rome and head of its Institute of Psychology.

On the papal side, Zollner was born in the Bavarian city of Regensburg, more or less the hometown of Pope Benedict XVI, and holds degrees in philosophy and theology from the University of Regensburg where the future pope once taught. In Rome, he’s had a front-row seat for the last part of Benedict’s tenure at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the almost eight years of his papacy.

In terms of understanding the dynamics of abuse, Zollner’s credentials are equally impressive. He was licensed as a psychologist and psychotherapist in 2004, and in 2010 and 2011 he served as a member of the scientific working group of the “Round Table on Child Abuse” created by Germany’s federal government.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

CANADA
Winnipeg Free Press

By: Brad Oswald

It’s a historical documentary with current and ongoing implications, and the events of the past week have made it more timely now than when it was made.

The harrowing church-abuse film Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God takes the position that the trail of denials and coverups related to sexual-abuse charges against Catholic priests reaches all the way to the highest office of the Vatican.

The announcement this week that Pope Benedict XVI will resign — the first pope to do so in nearly 600 years — gives added weight to filmmaker Alex Gibney’s (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Taxi to the Dark Side) assertion that the pontiff’s role in the scandal, most notably back when he was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the man directly in charge of dealing with all sex-abuse charges directed at the Catholic church, can no longer be deflected or ignored.

In announcing his resignation, Pope Benedict cited his age and failing health. In interviews this week, Gibney — who is in Britain promoting the U.K. premiere of Mea Maxima Culpa — said he’s convinced the sudden departure must be at least partially related to growing global pressure.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

CAMDEN (NJ)
Courier-Post

Written by
Jim Walsh
Courier-Post Staff

The Diocese of Camden wants to question an Ohio man for two days over his claim he was sexually abused by a priest, then repressed the memory for more than 40 years.

A lawyer for the diocese contends extensive questioning at a pretrial deposition, including asking the man to describe his abuse in detail, is necessary to protect the church’s rights.

But an attorney for the priest’s accuser, Mark Bryson, asserts the request is “excessive and harassing.” He wants a federal judge to limit questioning of his client to seven hours, or a single day. And a group opposed to the Catholic Church’s handling of the sex-abuse issue contends the legal tactic is intended to send “an intimidating signal.”

“I think the church officials and lawyers think that, by making this as tough as they can, they’ll discourage others from coming forward,” said David Clohessy, a spokesman for Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.

Diocesan Spokesman Peter Feuerherd sees it differently.

“This is a 45-year-old claim that should not be rushed,” he said Friday.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

LOS ANGELES (CA)
10 TV

[CALLED to HUMILIATION – Cardinal Mahony]

Friday February 15, 2013

By GILLIAN FLACCUS
The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Cardinal Roger Mahony says he’s been publicly humiliated in recent days by unhappy people who are angry over his handling of the clergy abuse scandal.

The recently retired archbishop of the Los Angeles archdiocese said in a blog update posted Thursday that he understands the depth of their anger and has asked God to bless and forgive them.

Recently released files show that Mahony and other top archdiocese officials maneuvered behind the scenes to shield priests accused of sex abuse to protect the church from scandal.

Mahony has apologized and contends he turned the archdiocese into a leader in terms of safeguarding children.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

INDIA
Times of India

BHOPAL: A trial court has registered a case against officials of the archdiocese of Bhopal, including archbishop for allegedly conspiring to administer poison to prove one of the priest in the diocese as mentally unsound.

Magistrate Alok Mishra ordered to register the case on February 7 and set March 1 as the date for hearing on a complaint against Archbishop Leo Cornelio of Bhopal, his vicar general Father VC Mathew and archdiocese spokesman Father Johnney PJ.

Father Anand Muttungal, former public relations officer for the archdiocese, was allegedly targeted by his superiors after he filed a court case over alleged misappropriation of funds by local church leaders.

“It was a major conspiracy to prove that I am mentally unstable. I have enough evidence to prove their corrupt activities,” said Father Anand.

Archbishop Cornelio, however, claimed that the allegations against him were baseless.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

LOS ANGELES (CA)
The Jerusalem Post

By REUTERS

LAST UPDATED: 02/16/2013

LOS ANGELES – The archbishop of Los Angeles, who stripped his predecessor of duties last month over his handling of priest sex abuse cases, on Friday sent “warm wishes” as the former archbishop headed to Rome to help select a new pope amid the controversy.

Pope Benedict XVI surprised the world’s Catholics on Monday by announcing plans to retire at the end of the month, and Cardinal Roger Mahony, the former archbishop of Los Angeles, declared he would take part in the process to select a successor, a move that angered victims rights groups.

The announcement by Mahony, 76, came less than two weeks after 12,000 pages of church files unsealed under court order showed that he and a top aide, Thomas Curry, worked to send priests accused of abuse out of state to shield them from law enforcement scrutiny in the 1980s.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

IRELAND
Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

A Dublin parish priest has resigned a senior position in the archdiocese in protest against the treatment by the Vatican of Fr Tony Flannery.

Fr Flannery has been silenced by Rome for questioning mandatory celibacy for priests, the Vatican ban on women priests and the harshness of church teaching on homosexuality.

Fr John Hassett has stood down as dean of the Maynooth deanery in Dublin’s Catholic archdiocese “over an issue that is neither specifically my own nor diocesan.

However, justice has no frontiers.” In a posting on the Association of Catholic Priests website, he said: “In this case it is the disrespectful and unjust treatment of Fr Tony Flannery that moves me to this action.”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

ARIZONA
Pokrov

Author: Theodore Kalmoukos
Date Published: 2/14/2013
Publication: The National Herald

FLORENCE, AZ – The parents of Scott Nevins, Ashley and Diane, have retained attorney Stephen M. Murphy of San Francisco to represent them in a possible wrongful death lawsuit against the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (GOA), the Metropolis of San Francisco, and Saint Anthony’s Greek Orthodox Monastery.

Just outside of the St. Anthony’s Monastery in Florence, AZ, the 27 year-old novice (monk) Scott Ioannis Nevins took his life with a gun on the dawn of June 11.

Nevins was a novice for six years at St. Anthony, one of the 21 Monasteries established by Elder Ephraim, the former abbot of the Philotheou Monastery on Mount Athos.

Nevins, from Modesto CA, was a convert to Orthodoxy. He had left the Monastery 15 months ago in the middle of the night in February 2011 and went to Oregon and enrolled in college. He returned the Monastery armed with two guns and a knife on June 11.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

Angela Pownall, The West Australian
Updated February 16, 2013

Former Perth Catholic schoolboys have revealed they were sexually abused by a Christian Brother who taught for 20 years at prestigious WA schools run by the religious order.

Three men have told _The Weekend West _they were molested, and in one case raped, by Brother Daniel Virgil McMahon when they were schoolboys.

A former teacher, who worked with McMahon at Aquinas College, said he complained about his behaviour at the school, yet McMahon continued working with, and abusing, children.

They want the case investigated by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

McMahon also taught at Trinity College, Christian Brothers College, Highgate, and St Patrick’s College in Geraldton before he began counselling children as the order’s vocations director. He moved to Tasmania in 1990, where he was ordained as a priest and lived until his death in May

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED KINGDOM
UK Progressive

by Carl Matthes

“I look forward to traveling to Rome soon to help thank Pope Benedict XVI for his gifted service to the Church, and to participate in the Conclave to elect his successor,” announced Cardinal Roger Mahony, not the real Archbishop of Los Angeles.

The remarkably deft Mahony, who’s obviously been anointed with PR awareness, posted his statement online at 8:38 am, two hours before his successor, The Most Rev. Jose Gomez, could issue his own remarks about the Pope’s abdication. At midday Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Gomez, the real Archbishop of Los Angeles, said, “…the pope’s decision to resign is a beautiful, Christ-like act of humility and love for the church.”

Mahony showed no such deftness or awareness in his multi-year obfuscation investigating possible sex abuse cases among his subordinate priests in America’s largest Catholic archdiocese. And, there is confusion over Mahony even releasing his got-mine-out-before-you-got-yours-out statement. On January 31 Gomez announced he had removed Mahony (in secular terms, “fired him”) from all public duties amid revelations that he plotted to conceal child molestation by priests from law enforcement.

It’s very hard for everyone to accept priests as pedophiles, but it’s obviously much harder for the Archbishop of Los Angeles to effectively silence Mahony.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

LOS ANGELES (CA)
Cardinal Roger Mahony Blogs LA

From our earliest catechism days we learn about the virtue of humility. We study it, we think about it; but we don’t embrace it.

And why? Because humility is all about self-effacing, about seeing ourselves as far more diminished than we had hoped. As a result, few of us set out to embrace humility for Lent or as a pattern for our lives. Most us us accept a few affronts and neglects as humility, and then move on.

But as disciples of Jesus Christ, we are actually called to the fullness of humility: humiliation, and publicly.

Today’s Gospel gives us the stark reality and immediate challenge: “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” {Luke 9:23] Daily means each and every day, not now and then on our faith journeys, and on our terms.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

LOS ANGELES (CA)
National Catholic Reporter

by Joshua J. McElwee | Feb. 15, 2013

Cardinal Roger Mahony, the retired archbishop of Los Angeles who was been publicly disgraced in past weeks over his handling of priests accused of sex abuse in the 1980s, has written that he is “asking for the grace to endure the level of humiliation.”

“Given all of the storms that have surrounded me and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles recently, God’s grace finally helped me to understand,” Mahony writes in a post on his blog last night.

“I am not being called to serve Jesus in humility,” he continues. “Rather, I am being called to something deeper — to be humiliated, disgraced, and rebuffed by many.”

Mahony, who is 76 years of age, is expected to travel to Rome in coming days to attend the meeting of cardinals that will elect the next head of the Roman Catholic church following Pope Benedict’s pending resignation Feb. 28.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

LOS ANGELES (CA)
LA Daily News

City News Service
dailynews.com
Posted: 02/15/2013

[the archbishop’s letter]

LOS ANGELES – Archbishop Jose Gomez was urging Southland Catholics today to pray for Cardinal Roger Mahony, who will soon head for Rome to take part in the selection of a pope to replace Benedict XVI, who will retire at the end of the month.

Gomez also stressed that while Mahony — who has been under fire for oversight of priests accused of molesting children — no longer has administrative duties with the diocese, he remains a bishop in “good standing.”

In a letter sent to all priests in the archdiocese, Gomez noted that Mahony will be the senior American cardinal attending the conclave of the College of Cardinals that will choose the next pope.

“I am confident that Cardinal Mahony’s accomplishments and experience in the areas of immigration, social justice, sacred liturgy and the role of the laity in the church will serve the College of Cardinals well as it works to discern the will of the Holy Spirit in these deliberations that will lead to the election of our new pope,” Gomez wrote.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

LOS ANGELES (CA)
Huffington Post

Religion News Service | By Sarah Parvini

LOS ANGELES (RNS) After the release of damning sex abuse documents that prompted a rare public rebuke from the current archbishop of Los Angeles, retired Cardinal Roger Mahony again finds himself in the spotlight — this time over his upcoming vote in the conclave to elect a new pope.

Despite allegations of hiding sexual abuse by priests and then being sidelined by current Archbishop Jose Gomez, Mahony remains a cardinal, a priest “in good standing” and under age 80 — all enough to make him eligible to be one of just 11 American cardinals to hold a vote in next month’s conclave.

“I look forward to traveling to Rome soon to help thank Pope Benedict XVI for his gifted service to the church, and to participate in the Conclave to elect his successor,” Mahony wrote on his personal blog hours after the pope’s stunning resignation announcement.

Others, however, aren’t so excited.

The left-leaning group Catholics United, which has started an online petition objecting to Mahony’s role, said that the retired cardinal “should reexamine his priorities and stay home.”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

LOS ANGELES (CA)
CBS Los Angeles

[Nicolas Aguilar-Rivera – Los Angeles archdiocese]

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Cardinal Roger Mahony will be deposed this month as part of a clergy abuse lawsuit set for trial in April.

A lawyer for a person who is alleging to have been abused by the Rev. Nicolas Aguilar Rivera said Friday that an agreement has been reached that will allow him to question the cardinal about his handling of the case.

According to the Associated Press, Aguilar Rivera was a visiting Mexican priest in 1987 suspected of molesting 26 children during his nine-month stay.

The AP report says Aguilar Rivera fled to Mexico a year later after parents complained and remains a fugitive with warrants out for his arrest in both the U.S. and Mexico.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
Pope Crimes & Vatican Evils…

Paris Arrow

Updated February 14, 2013

A lawyer who successfully represented 40,000 women who were raped in the war in Bosnia writes that the Pope, Cardinals, Bishops and Vicars can be prosecuted in The Hague in their cover-up of the rape of tens of thousands of children raped by Vatican Catholic pedophile priests. He cites the articles of International Law that apply to the priestly sodomy crimes which fall under crimes against humanity, see news article below.

The reason why Benedict XVI resigned is not health but the Vatican Wealth and it was a papal coup d’état by the Secretary of State Cardinal Bertone, as cardinals call Benedict XVI as “Joe the Rat”, read more below.

The well-paid Vatican Pied Pipers are all out now in full force propagating Vatican hidden agendas in TV, news papers and in the Internet. The foremost Vatican Pied Piper is John L. Allen Jr. but we won’t waste space for his Vatican Deceits here.

The next pope has long been chosen, brainwashed and trained. All speculation out there is utter hypocrisy of Vatican Deceits Media Empire and Vatican pretence of black smoke and white smoke.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

INDIA
Daily Bhaskar

Bhopal: A trial court has registered a case against three officials – Archbishop and two senior priests – of the Archdiocese of Bhopal for allegedly indulging in a conspiracy to administer poisonous substance to a priest.

The case is registered against Archbishop of Bhopal Archdiocese Leo Cornelio, his Vicar General Father Mathew V C and diocesan spokesperson Father Johny PJ after taking cognizance of a complaint filed by former spokesperson of the diocese Father Anand Muttungal.

The priest in his complaint alleged that the top officials of the diocese were annoyed with him for questioning alleged misappropriation of fund from the diocesan society. Besides this, he had also moved the Madhya Pradesh High Court seeking direction to punish those involved in it.

Last week on Thursday, judicial magistrate first class Alok Mishra has order to register a case against the accused. However, the court has posted its next hearing for March 1.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Feb. 15, 2013

Rome –

An appointment intended to nail down Benedict XVI’s legacy as a financial reformer today threatened to stir controversy on another front, as a German lawyer and businessman with ties to a company that makes military warships was named the new president of the Vatican Bank.

The Vatican announced today that Ernst von Freyberg would become the new head of the embattled bank, which in recent months has faced charges of failure to comply with anti-money laundering standards and a lack of regulatory oversight.

In a statement released today, the Vatican hailed the “professional and moral excellence” of the 55-year-old von Freyberg, noting that he not only sits on the boards of multi-billion dollar global firms, but is also a member of the Knights of Malta and organizes pilgrimages to Lourdes on behalf of the Berlin archdiocese.

Yet during a briefing this morning to present the appointment, a journalist asked about his ties to the Hamburg-based Blohm + Voss Group, a shipbuilding and engineering firm where von Freyberg has served as chairman since 2012.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

RHODE ISLAND
KSWT

Posted: Feb 15, 2013

By MICHELLE R. SMITH and NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) – Documents detailing the dubious fundraising practices of a disgraced Roman Catholic religious order called the Legion of Christ were released to the public Friday, showing how the organization took control of an elderly woman’s finances and persuaded her to bequeath it $60 million.

The records include the first-ever depositions of high-ranking Legion officials. They shed light on the inner workings of a secretive congregation placed under Vatican receivership after the Holy See determined that its founder was a spiritual fraud who sexually abused his seminarians and fathered three children with two women.

A Rhode Island Superior Court judge said last year that the documents raised a red flag because a steadfastly spiritual elderly woman transferred millions to “clandestinely dubious religious leaders.” But they had been kept under seal until The Associated Press, The New York Times, the National Catholic Reporter and The Providence Journal intervened, arguing that they were in the public interest.

Pope Benedict XVI took over the Legion in 2010 after a Vatican investigation determined that its founder, the late Rev. Marcial Maciel, had lived a double life. The pope ordered a wholesale reform of the order and named a papal delegate to oversee it.

The Legion scandal is significant because it shows how the Holy See willfully ignored credible allegations of abuse against Maciel for decades, all while holding him up as a model of sainthood for the faithful because he brought in money and vocations to the priesthood. The scandal, which has tarnished the legacy of Pope John Paul II, is the most egregious example of how the Vatican ignored decades of reports about sexually abusive priests because church leaders put the interests of the institution above those of the victims.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

Archbishop Jose H. Gomez on Friday sent our a letter urging the faithful to pray for Cardinal Roger Mahony to help select a new pope and reiterated his message that Mahony remains a priest “in good standing” despite new details emerging about clergy abuse cases.

“Having been promoted to the dignity of Cardinal, Cardinal Mahony has all of the prerogatives and privileges of his standing as a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church,” Gomez wrote.

Gomez announced last month that he had removed Mahony from all public duties amid revelations that he plotted to conceal child molestation by priests from law enforcement.

Gomez wrote in a letter to parishioners last month that newly released priest files were “brutal and painful reading. The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children.”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

Before Cardinal Roger M. Mahony boards a plane for Rome to help elect the next pope, he will be questioned under oath about his handling of clergy sex abuse cases.

A judge cleared the way Friday for a Feb. 23 deposition of the former archbishop of Los Angeles by a lawyer for a man who claims that a visiting Mexican priest molested him three decades ago at his Montecito Heights parish.

In a closed-door meeting, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Emilie H. Elias said Mahony could be questioned for four hours about the priest, Father Nicholas Aguilar Rivera, and 25 other clergymen accused of abuse during the same time period, according to lawyers at the meeting.

Mahony has been deposed repeatedly since the late 1990s about his dealings with accused abusers, but the upcoming deposition will be the first since the release of 12,000 pages of internal church records about the abuse.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
GlobalPost

Kevin Douglas Grant
February 15, 2013

GlobalPost correspondent Jason Berry today published a story explaining the significance of a trove of documents ordered to be released Friday about Father Marcial Maciel, founder of the powerful, ultraconservative Legion of Christ. The documents are expected to illuminate the way in which the Legion handled accusations of rampant child sexual abuse and the siring of several illegitimate children by Maciel over several decades.

Here is a primer on Maciel and his relationships with Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II:

Who was Father Marcial Maciel?

Born in Mexico, the Roman Catholic priest founded the powerful, ultraconservative clerical order Legion of Christ in Mexico City in 1941. Dozens of victims in multiple countries made sexual abuse allegations against Maciel over the course of several decades, dating back to the 1950s.

Though he was suspended in 1956 from his leadership of the Legion by Pope Pius XII after being accused of abusing youths in Mexico, Cardinal Clemente Micara, the Vicar of Rome, reinstated him in 1958 after his predecessor’s death and Maciel enjoyed a long and prosperous career despite the claims of as many as 100 victims.

The Legion publicly apologized for Maciel’s alleged actions in 2009, just months after a new set of allegations emerged, including the fact that Maciel fathered several children during his reign as head of the Legion.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

CANADA
Times of Israel

By Renee Ghert-Zand
February 15, 2013

In the wake of a sexual abuse scandal that has rocked Calgary, leaders of the Canadian city’s Jewish community have moved quickly to distance themselves from a local rabbi’s expression of support for a convicted Jewish psychiatrist with a notorious past.

At issue is a letter from Rabbi Yisroel Miller, the leader of House of Jacob Mikveh Israel, an Orthodox synagogue, which was read aloud during the sentencing hearing for Dr. Aubrey Levin. Levin, who had occupied a prominent position in the University of Calgary‘s psychiatry department, was convicted Jan. 31 of sexually assaulting male patients who had been referred to him for assessment and treatment by the province of Alberta’s criminal justice system.

At the hearing, Levin’s attorney characterized the assaults as “minor” and read aloud a letter submitted by Miller, the psychiatrist’s rabbi at House of Jacob Mikveh Israel. Miller wrote that Levin’s “humble manner and complete lack of arrogance endeared him to everyone,” and pleaded for leniency.

“The bad does not erase all the good,” Miller argued. “I know all the goodness within him still remains. A prison term would be a death sentence for him.”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

VATICAN CITY
The Economist

LOOKING as ever on the bright side, the Vatican’s habitually good-humoured spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, averred: “Before Easter, we’ll have the new pope.” But no amount of breezy optimism, nor any amount of praise for the integrity and achievements of Pope Benedict XVI, can detract from the momentous historical significance of his announcement on February 11th—or from the fact that the conclave to elect his successor will be one of the oddest in the papacy’s two millennia. Benedict is one of only a handful of popes ever to resign (see article), and the first for almost six centuries. Father Lombardi could not say what Benedict’s title would be, nor how Christ’s vicar on earth should be addressed in retirement.

Though stubbornly conservative in many respects, Benedict is also a radical (as displayed in his encyclical of 2005 on the theology of love). But he kept his most radical utterance till the end. Speaking in Latin at a routine event, he said: “After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.” That several of the cardinals present failed to understand must have highlighted for Benedict, an ardent Latinist, how his church has lost touch with its traditions.

By that account, he was giving the papacy a reality check: in the 21st century a vast global organisation is not best entrusted to an octogenarian in failing health. The pope is also a bishop (of Rome); members of the Catholic episcopate normally retire at 75.

If so, the lesson for the 117 cardinal-electors when they meet, probably in mid-March, is to find someone young and vigorous. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, is a feisty 63. Cardinal Peter Erdo, of Budapest, is only 60. Cardinal Odilo Pedro Scherer, who heads the archdiocese of São Paulo, and Cardinal Peter Appiah Turkson, a Ghanaian who runs the Vatican’s development department, are 63 and 64 respectively.

But other interpretations of Benedict’s departure will weigh heavily on the conclave. He was not just tired, but worn out by the conflicts and machinations that have beset the Vatican during his reign. He is to retire to the Mater Ecclesiae convent, founded in 1992 by John Paul II specifically to create a prayerful counterweight to the worldliness of the Roman Curia, the church’s central administration. …

Wolves and weaklings

To his critics Benedict is not a victim, but a weak pope who gave free rein to an ill-prepared and unsuitable secretary of state. The Vatileaks documents cast a bad light on him, too. A report (said to be explosive) by three cardinals on a tendering scandal has yet to be released. The Vatican has also struggled to convince international bodies that its in-house bank is no longer used for money-laundering and tax evasion. The feuds within the Curia will also be central to the selection of Benedict’s successor. Cardinal Bertone will prepare the conclave and be the Vatican’s head of state in the period between February 28th when Benedict steps down and the proclamation of his successor. His arch-rival and predecessor, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, is Dean of the College of Cardinals, which will elect him.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

VATICAN CITY
Reuters

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY | Fri Feb 15, 2013

(Reuters) – Pope Benedict’s decision to live in the Vatican after he resigns will provide him with security and privacy. It will also offer legal protection from any attempt to prosecute him in connection with sexual abuse cases around the world, Church sources and legal experts say.

“His continued presence in the Vatican is necessary, otherwise he might be defenseless. He wouldn’t have his immunity, his prerogatives, his security, if he is anywhere else,” said one Vatican official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“It is absolutely necessary” that he stays in the Vatican, said the source, adding that Benedict should have a “dignified existence” in his remaining years.

Vatican sources said officials had three main considerations in deciding that Benedict should live in a convent in the Vatican after he resigns on February 28.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

RHODE ISLAND
GlobalPost

Jason Berry

Documents released today by a Rhode Island judge provide a new window into the internal workings of the disgraced Legion of Christ, a religious order of priests whose founder was revealed to have sexually abused seminarians and fathered children by at least two women.

The release of the voluminous court records by Superior Court Judge Michael Silverstein came within days of the stunning resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, who ordered an investigation into allegations against Legion founder Fr. Marcial Maciel when Benedict played a powerful prosecutorial role in the Vatican as a cardinal and again in the early years of his papacy.

These documents are expected to shed new light on a scandal Benedict inherited from John Paul II, whose unwavering support of Maciel, even allegations against him were filed in the Vatican in 1998, bolstered Legion fundraising campaigns.

Pope Benedict’s trip to Mexico last year ignited a blaze of negative media coverage due to his failure to meet with sexual victims of the late Father Maciel, who symbolized the global scandal that has cast a shadow on Benedict and his papacy. It remains unclear whether the release of these documents had anything to do with the timing of the pope’s resignation.

The documents first surfaced in a probate case accusing Legion officials of defrauding a wealthy widow, Gabrielle Mee, of tens of millions of dollars. They remained sealed when the suit against the Legion and Bank of America, was dismissed last September by Silverstein. He ruled that Mary Lou Dauray, Mee’s niece, lacked legal standing to bring suit.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

RHODE ISLAND
Fox 29

Posted: Feb 15, 2013

By MICHELLE R. SMITH
Associated Press
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) – Documents related to a disgraced Roman Catholic order called the Legion of Christ were released to the public Friday amid a legal battle over an elderly widow’s bequest of $60 million to the organization.

The Associated Press, The New York Times, the National Catholic Reporter and The Providence Journal sought to unseal the documents. A Superior Court judge agreed but gave the Legion time to ask the Supreme Court to intervene. The Rhode Island Supreme Court on Thursday declined to delay the documents’ release.

Pope Benedict XVI took over the Legion in 2010 after a Vatican investigation determined that its founder, the late Rev. Marcial Maciel, had lived a double life: He sexually molested seminarians and fathered three children by two women. The pope ordered a wholesale reform of the order and named a papal delegate to oversee it.

The will of Gabrielle Mee, who died at age 96 in 2008, is the focus of the lawsuit. Mee’s niece, Mary Lou Dauray, had alleged that Mee was defrauded by the Legion and unduly influenced by its priests into giving away her fortune. Her late husband was a onetime director of Fleet National Bank, which has since been absorbed by Bank of America.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Jonathan Freedland
The Guardian, Friday 15 February 2013

We should not let Benedict XVI go quietly. One hesitates to say so, because he is elderly and frail and, much more importantly, because he is revered by many millions. Outsiders should tread warily, mindful that the papacy is central to Catholics’ faith, even to their very identity. We ought to signal from the start that we mean no attack on Catholics or their beliefs when we say that the departing occupant of that high office has a moral, if not legal, case to answer. But such a case there is.

The heart of the matter is the rape and abuse of children by Catholic priests. The child abuse scandal in the Catholic church has spread to some 65 countries, with victims estimated to be in the many thousands: one survivors’ group has 12,000 members, each with a heartbreaking story to tell. There will be many more victims who have stayed silent. Few would deny that this is the greatest single moral issue confronting the church.

For some, Benedict has proven himself on the right side of this most searching question. They note that he has closed loopholes in canon law, that he has centralised the handling of cases – rather than allowing each diocese to do its own thing – and that he has, above all, apologised on behalf of the church. In 2010, as cases emerged with alarming frequency – not just in the US, where the first major revelations came to light, but in Germany, Switzerland, Holland and elsewhere – the pope sent a message to the Irish victims of abuse: “You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry.” He acknowledged that their dignity had been “violated” and said the guilty men would “answer before God”.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

VATICAN CITY
ABC News

David Wright

ROME — Today it was more than just a routine personnel matter for Pope Benedict XVI to name a new president of the Vatican Bank: German lawyer Ernst von Freyberg. The appointment may well be the last of the pope’s papacy, filling a vacancy created a year ago in the midst of a money laundering investigation.

The job of “God’s Banker” has long been a tricky one. Conspiracy theorists have always been fond of the Vatican Bank. And with good reason.

The Institute for Works of Religion (as it’s officially called) has been linked to plenty of bad guys over the years, including mobsters, Nazis and Freedom Fighters.

“God’s Bank” (as it’s long been known) has been so fraught with scandal that last month, citing concerns about possible money laundering, Italy’s Central Bank stopped all bankcard payments at the Vatican.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

INDIA
Indian Express

Milind Ghatwai : Bhopal, Sat Feb 16 2013

A priest has accused the archbishop of Bhopal of trying to poison him either to make him mentally unstable or to kill him because he threatened to expose an alleged sex scandal and financial irregularities in the archdiocese.

A magisterial court has registered a case against archbishop Leo Cornelio and two other Catholic Church leaders on a private complaint from Fr Anand Muttungal, the former public relations officer of Madhya Pradesh. CJFM Alok Mishra has ordered that Cornelio be produced before him on March 1. The court will weigh evidence before deciding to order a police probe. If convicted, the accused could face up to 10 years in jail.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

A document prepared by theologians painting the portrait of Ratzinger’s successor has gathered two thousand signatures. “Nationality is not important, just as long as he doesn’t fall slave to the Curia”

GIACOMO GALEAZZI
Vatican City

Church reform plan. How should the next Pope be? Theologians have outlined what Benedict XVI’s successor should be like, in a document which has so far been signed by two thousand theologians across the world. Its first signatories were prestigious theologians such as Paul Knitter, Mgr. Calsaldáliga, Hans Küng, Leonardo Boff, Peter Phan and Paul Collins.

The next Pope is being asked to combat the “current stagnation” and counter resistance from sections of the Church hierarchy that are hindering the implementation of the Second Vatican Council. “The papacy’s role needs to be clearly redefined in line with Christ’s intentions. As supreme pastor, unifying figure and the main witness of the faith, the Pope’s contribution to the good of the universal Church is key, theologians write. But his authority should never obscure, diminish or suppress the authentic authority Christ gave directly to all the people of God.”

Furthermore, “bishops are vicars of Christ, not the Pope’s vicars. They have direct responsibility for the people and the dioceses and a shared responsibility along with other bishops and the Pope for the universal community of the Catholic faith.” The bishops’ central synod, the documents reads, “should play a more decisive role in planning and guiding the conservation and growth of faith in our complex world.”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

The 58-year old German lawyer Von Freyberg will only be in Rome three days a week. The nature of his work, as producer of warships, is controversial. Fr. Lombardi denies rumours of internal fighting within the Church

GIACOMO GALEAZZI
Vatican City

The Vatican has hired a new part-time president to head its bank, the IOR. The new president will be in Rome three days a week and in Frankfurt for four days. Details of his salary are being kept secret but what is certain is that he will keep his job outside the Vatican. The man chosen for the job is the German lawyer Von Freyberg (a member of the Order of Malta), who is also president of Blhom-Vhoss Group shipyard in Hamburg. “I don’t know if they make warships or ships in general, what I do know is that Von Freyber organises pilgrimages to Lourdes,” said Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi, who urged the public not to “not to be hasty in criticising him for his line of work – shipbuilding.”

“His appointment – the Vatican spokesman said – was the result of an in-depth research process, led by people who are deeply familiar with the nature and purpose of the Holy See. I don’t think the media should make superficial assessments of the new president, showing a lack of coherence with John XXIII’s Pacem in terris doctrine.” As the Vatican spokesman spoke to journalists, he was handed a note in real time, which contained a clarification: “the company no longer manufactures ships; that se4ction has been sold. Now it only does marine engineering.” Having read the brief note, Fr. Federico Lombardi broke into a liberating smile and commented: “Pacem in terris is safe, all has been resolved.”

But the company’s website still contains information about its work in the design of frigates and armed ships. During his meeting with journalists, the Vatican spokesman gave a detailed description of the selection process that led to the choice of Ettore Gotti Tedeschi’s successor. “The procedure began before last summer, when the Supervisory Council suggested the Vatican hire a manager selection agency to help with the selection process. The agency conducted thorough research into how the IOR works and the kind of qualities a potential candidate would be required to have.” According to Fr. Lombardi, “the agency presented the board with 40 candidates and the board carried out a progressive selection, narrowing the number down to 6 – those it considered to be most suited to the job following a series of interviews with the board. A final list of three candidates was then handed to the Council of Cardinals.”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

In the absence of a clear favourite for the papacy, kingmakers will play a decisive role in influencing the result of the vote. In the 2013 Conclave these figures could be Kasper and Bergoglio

Giorgio Bernardelli
MILAN

As is usually the case when a Conclave is just around the corner, the shortlist of potential successors to the papacy has started doing the rounds. But there is another important role within the assembly of cardinals called to elect the new Pope: that of the so-called kingmakers – in other words those individuals who because of their experience and authority and not their alliances – are more able than others to influence the election result.

The kingmaker’s role is key, particularly when complex circumstances surround the choice of a new Pope, as in the case of Pope Ratzinger’s unprecedented and unexpected resignation. Many in recent days have been comparing the current situation with the second Conclave of 1978 which was convened after the unexpected death of Pope Luciani and led to the appointment of Karol Wojtyla. This was one of the circumstances in which the kingmaker’s precise role filtered out of the Holy See: it is widely recognised that the then Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Franz König – who was 73 at the time – was responsible for putting the Archbishop of Cracow’s name forward. He did so when there was a voting deadlock because a section of the College which were against Giuseppe Siri being appointed were preventing him from reaching the required quorum.

So the question is, if cardinals enter the Sistine Chapel without a clear favourite (as Joseph Ratzinger was eight years ago) who could the kingmaker cardinals of the 2013 Conclave be? This question is even harder to answer than the one about the potential candidates for the papacy. Unlike the other list, it tends to favour figures who are automatically discarded as potential new Popes because they exceed the acceptable age limit.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
Bloomberg

By Ramesh Ponnuru Feb 15, 2013

This week Margaret Carlson and Ramesh Ponnuru are discussing the legacy of Pope Benedict XVI. Margaret’s column started it off, then Ramesh responded, then Margaret did.

Progressive Catholics often portray the pope as a kind of supreme dictator of Catholicism. They resent the pope both for allegedly imposing conservative diktats on such issues as abortion and the ordination of women, and for failing to use his power to clean house.

This is the picture you give us, Margaret, in the opening lines of your latest shot at Benedict XVI: The pope is “close to all powerful”; he can hire and fire whomever he pleases; he is “infallible when he wants to be.”

If I found this this picture of the papacy true to life, I would agree with you that Benedict’s response to the abuse scandals has been grossly and culpably inadequate. But the papacy does not operate like this. It never has.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

VATICAN CITY
Huffington Post

Religion News Service | By Alessandro Speciale Posted: 02/15/2013

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Less than two weeks before he retires, Pope Benedict XVI on Friday (Feb. 15) approved the appointment of a German lawyer and financier as the new head of the scandal-plagued Vatican Bank.

Ernst von Freyberg will take on the role of president of the Istituto per le Opere di Religione, as the bank is formally known, nine months after former president Ettore Gotti Tedeschi was unceremoniously ousted by the bank’s board with a no-confidence vote.

But von Freyberg’s appointment immediately sparked controversy. The lawyer will remain in his current role of chairman of the executive board of German shipyard Blohm + Voss, which was involved in the production of warships under Nazi Germany.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

VATICAN CITY
IOL (South Africa)

Vatican City – The secret conclave to elect a new pope once Pope Benedict XVI has resigned could be held earlier than originally planned to allow the future pontiff to prepare for Easter, sources said Friday.

Benedict steps down on February 28 and the vote for the top job may begin on March 10, sources told Rome-based religious news agency I.Media.

Rules laid down by John Paul II stipulate that between 15 and 20 days must pass after the end of the pontificate before the conclave meets in the Sistine chapel under Michelangelo’s famous ceiling frescoes to elect a new pope.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

VATICAN CITY
The State Journal

By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press
VATICAN CITY (AP) – The Vatican was drawn into a new controversy Friday after acknowledging that its bank’s new president is also chairman of a shipbuilder making warships – a significant conflict for an institution that has long shunned ties to military manufacturing.

The Vatican announced to great fanfare that Pope Benedict XVI had signed off on one of the last major appointments of his papacy, approving Ernst von Freyberg as president of the Vatican’s bank, officially known as the Institute for Religious Works.

The Vatican spokesman was caught off-guard, though, when a journalist noted that the German shipbuilder von Freyberg chairs, Blohm + Voss, is known for its military ship construction.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi demurred and defended the selection. He later issued a statement saying von Freyberg chairs a civilian branch of Blohm + Voss, which repairs and transforms cruise ships and builds yachts – but that the company is currently part of a consortium that is building four frigates for the German navy.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

LOS ANGELES (CA)
The Republic

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 15, 2013

LOS ANGELES — Cardinal Roger Mahony, the former Roman Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles, will be deposed this month for a clergy abuse lawsuit set for trial in April.

A lawyer representing a person claiming abuse by a priest said Friday that an agreement will allow him to question Mahony about his handling of the case on Feb. 23, before the cardinal leaves for Rome to help select a new pope.

Attorney Anthony De Marco says he can also ask questions about up to 25 other priests accused of child molestation.

Recently released files show that Mahony and other archdiocese officials maneuvered behind the scenes to protect the church from scandal.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

CALIFORNIA
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on February 15, 2013

On his blog yesterday, Cardinal Roger Mahony discussed how he has been “called to humiliation.”

Given all of the storms that have surrounded me and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles recently, God’s grace finally helped me to understand: I am not being called to serve Jesus in humility. Rather, I am being called to something deeper–to be humiliated, disgraced, and rebuffed by many.

Then, he has the arrogance to say:

In the past several days, I have experienced many examples of being humiliated. In recent days, I have been confronted in various places by very unhappy people. I could understand the depth of their anger and outrage–at me, at the Church, at about injustices that swirl around us.

Thanks to God’s special grace, I simply stood there, asking God to bless and forgive them. [emphasis mine]

Mahony is a man with no soul.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

NEW YORK
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Dorris on February 15, 2013

A Brooklyn Rabbi has been arrested in a sting operation after propositioning what he thought was a young girl online.

We are grateful to police in New York for apprehending Rabbi Nathan David Rabinowich. Cases like this illustrate just how dangerous a tool the internet can be for a child predator. We urge parents to be vigilant in monitoring who their young children are speaking with online, and to be diligent in reporting any suspected wrongdoing.

We hope that any families who are members of Rabbi Rabinowich’s synagogue will ask their friends and fellow churchgoers if they ever saw, suspected, or suffered crimes at this rabbi’s hands. It is rare for a child predator to only strike once, and we fear that there may be more victims of his suffering in silence. Only with the encouragement of the community, family, and friends will these victims and whistleblowers find the strength to come forward. We urge them to do so now.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
Religion Dispatches

By Mary E. Hunt

The unexpected announcement of the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI is a welcome breath of fresh air. A human being, even a pope, ought to have the option to say enough is enough, I have done what I can do, and now it is time for someone else to take over. I applaud his move and read it as a sign of hope in a dreary ecclesial scene.

Speculation about his health is rampant. As with many elders whose offspring plot to take away the car keys, I suspect there was some backdoor lobbying to make this retirement happen. But I dare to hope that it was at least in part the considered judgment of an octogenarian who saw his predecessor propped up long after his prime and did not want the same for himself.

But before looking for the backstory there’s something in Benedict’s resignation statement that bears noting: “After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.”

Conscience, Benedict reminds us today, is still primary for Catholics. Examination of conscience: that is just the formula millions of us use to explain why we use birth control, enjoy our sexuality in a variety of ways, and see enormous good in other religious traditions. Conscience is the ultimate arbiter, and the Pope relied on his. Good on him, and good on the rest of us. …

What is news this time around is that rank and file Catholics want a new Church, not just a new pope.

We know that change is in the air because we put it there. Progressive Catholics all over the world are creating new forms of church since the old is so thoroughly discredited. No institution can withstand the onslaught of negative publicity that the Vatican earned over clergy sexual abuse and episcopal cover-ups without major changes. No hierarchy however fortified can hold out forever against spirit-filled steps toward equality and justice. This time, just electing a new pope will not do. Nor will closeting away a group of elite electors responsible to no one but themselves cut it for an election process.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
Feminist Studies in Religion

Posted by Mary E. Hunt on Feb 14, 2013

Patriarchy will get unimaginable amounts of free publicity for the next month as the Roman Catholic Church reshuffles the papal deck. Media commentators will fawn over the proceedings triggered by the unexpected resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. Unrivaled displays of kyriarchy will be beamed into our homes as reporters explain piously the ancient rituals of a men’s club cloning its own head. It will be hard to ignore and difficult to make sense of, even though the outcome is clear. When the smoke subsides after the Conclave, there will still be a single man at the helm.

As a media extravaganza full of color and pageantry, the rituals will be hard to beat. The whole package will serve to reinforce the patriarchal patterns of a religious tradition whose billion adherents deserve better, patterns that are alive and well beyond the walls of Rome. No woman will have a voice or a vote in the Conclave. Sisters and consecrated laywomen will care for the elderly pope, but otherwise this is a men’s scene without any questions asked. The explicit—not just implicit, but explicit—message is that men are in charge: men confect the sacred mysteries, men decide whom to elect, men pray, men reflect the divine, men have it all under their control. This carries over into the larger culture as well. It is no wonder violence against women is epidemic.

Sensible feminist friends ask why I worry about such things. I reply that some women’s birth control and abortions are at stake; some young LGBTIQ people will commit suicide because of this crowd. Abuse survivors live with the consequences of acts perpetrated by priests and covered up by these bishops, cardinals, and now popes (plural). Sounds dramatic, but sadly it is true. Moreover, male entitlement in the world, including the violence done to women and girls, is baptized and confirmed by this symbol system. It has the pernicious impact of making the male-only power model seem holy. Ditto for the racist, heterosexist dimensions as well, not to mention the Euro-centrism and moneyed assumptions that underlie the proceedings.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

BBC News

Pope Benedict has led the Catholic Church since 2005, and his papacy has reflected his belief that the Catholic Church should retain its core traditional, conservative values in an era of rapid change.

He rejected calls for a debate on the issue of clerical celibacy, and reaffirmed the ban on Communion for divorced Catholics who remarry. He has also said the Church’s strict positions on abortion, euthanasia and gay partnerships were “not negotiable”.

This outspoken orthodoxy has divided liberals and more traditional Catholics, while the recent leaking of personal documents suggests a lack of control over the machinations of the Vatican.

How has Benedict XVI managed the world’s largest Christian community? We asked six scholars and analysts for their perspective on key areas of the pontificate. …

Sex abuse – David Clohessy

We were never pleased with how Pope Benedict handled the clergy sex abuse and covered up the crisis. That is why we filed suit against him and other Vatican officials in the International Criminal Court.

Since 1981, when he headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Benedict had primary responsibility for dealing with the clergy sex crimes.

His refusal to decisively address the epidemic – and discipline Church officials who protected predator priests – was exacerbated when he became Pope.

The next pontiff must do more to safeguard children.

He should stop issuing apologies and making gestures, and instead demote bishops who continue to conceal heinous crimes.

And he should insist that prelates work with secular authorities to craft and pass stronger child sex laws across the globe.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

As superficial journalists speculate on the next Pope’s nationality with non-stop nonsense, the Roman Holy Empire is falling before their unseeing eyes. The important issue is not who the next pope will be. If the Catholic Church leadership doesn’t restore, pronto, the accountability that Jesus and his early followers demanded, international prosecutors and regulators will do it for them, and soon.

The Pope’s appointment today of a likely well compensated ex-investment banker, also a German lawyer and Knight of Malta, to “clean up” the Vatican Bank is merely the latest example of incompetent tactics in the futile battles among Cardinals taking place daily on the decks of the Vatican’s Titanic. Whomever is elected next Pope will only get to watch the Church sink rapidly, after having taken on dirty water for decades from the obscene child abuse cover-up iceberg. You cannot try to cover-up the rape of hundreds of thousands of children by priests and expect to get away with it forever. Only clueless celibate males sailing on the rudderless Vatican Titanic could fail to understand this.

Pope John XXIII issued in 1962 the main secrecy order on priest child sex abuse. But he also realized that accountabilty had to be restored to save the Church. He took the first step by trying to get the Vatican Cardinals to share power with the worldwide bishops. He died soon therafter and the Vatican Cardinals’ clique rejected power sharing craftily. Since then, they have installed compliant Popes who like the papal prestige and are happy to do the clique’s bidding. But the democratic rule of law has run out of patience with clerical child abusers and Popes no longer have any effective political power, as the re-election of President Obama just proved.The International Sheriff is on his way and the Pope cannot hide with Georgeous Georg in a refurbished convent. His own Cardinals will help nail him, it appears.

But at this point does any of this matter to most Catholics worldwide? While it may seem overly pessimistic to say so soon that the next Pope will likely fail too, it is just being realistic; and yet there is also room for much optimism. The papal resignation is tantamount to an admission of failure and will lead to de-mystification of the papacy quickly. Pope Benedict XVI, soon to again be non-Pontiff, Joseph Ratzinger, and his Vatican clique led by Cardinal Sodano et al., have already set the stage for the next failure. …

We all have a moral obligation to protect children and signing a petition is a simple, yet potentially effective, way towards meeting that obligation. Please take a minute and sign it at:

[Click here for the petition.]

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

LOS ANGELES (CA)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

[Final Addendum to the Report to the People of God – BishopAccountability.org]

Posted by Barbara Dorris on February 14, 2013

Archbishop Gomez is behaving exactly like Cardinal Mahony – posturing as a reforming but acting like an enabler. Once again, parishioners and the public learn about potentially dangerous clerics thanks to outside sources.

Earlier this week the organization Bishop Accountability discovered a document naming two dozen clergy predators who have never been publicly named.

Frankly, Gomez’s explanation defies common sense and archdiocesan history. In almost every instance, LA Catholic officials have disclosed information about predator priests only when forced or pushed to do so by external pressures or sources.

Every day Gomez has hidden – and keeps hiding – information about child molesters is a day child molesters are able to keep molesting.

Gomez took over the LA archdiocese on March 1, 2011. So he’s had 716 days to educate himself and warn others about hundreds of proven, admitted and credibly accused child molesting clerics. Many of those clerics still work and walk free among unsuspecting families, friends and colleagues. On his first day in office, Gomez should have been poring over abuse files. Within weeks, he should have fully and frankly revealed everything that archdiocesan staff knew about these predators.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 15 February 2013 (VIS) – According to a communique published today, the Commission of Cardinals for the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR) has made an appointment, in accordance with the Institute’s statutes, of a new president of the Supervisory Board, Ernst von Freyberg. The other four members of the Supervisory Board will all remain in office.

“This decision is the result of extensive evaluation and a series of interviews that the Commission of Cardinals has conducted, with the constant support of the Supervisory Board. This painstaking and detailed process lasted for some months, making it possible to assess a number of candidates of professional and moral excellence, with assistance from an independent international Agency that is a leader in the selection of top executives.”

“The Holy Father has closely followed the entire selection process leading to the choice of the new President of the Supervisory Board of the IOR, and he has expressed his full consent to the choice made by the Commission of Cardinals.”

Included in the information is Mr. von Freyberg’s curriculum. He was born in Germany in 1958 and from 1978 to 1985 he studied law at the universities of Munich and Bonn. From 1986 to 1987 he attended the Verwaltungshochschule Speyer. In 1988 he earned admission to the Bar at Landgericht, Ulm and passed the second law exam at Oberlandesgericht, Stuttgart. From 1988 to 1991 he worked for TCR Europe Limited (Bemberg Group), Three City Research Inc., and from 1991 to 2012 he founded and served as CEO of Daiwa Corporate Advisory GmbH. From 2012 to the present he has been with Blohm+Voss Group in Hamburg, Germany, serving as its chairman.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

IRELAND
The Telegraph (United Kingdom)

By Brendan O’Neill
Last updated: February 14th, 2013

The publication last week of the Irish government’s McAleese Report on the Magdalene laundries has proved kind of awkward for Catholic-bashers. For if McAleese’s thorough, 1,000-page study is to be believed, then it would appear that those laundries were not as evil and foul as they had been depicted over the past decade. Specifically the image of the laundries promoted by the popular, much-lauded film The Magdalene Sisters – which showed them as places where women were stripped, slapped, sexually abused and more – has been called into question by McAleese. This has led even The Irish Times, which never turns down an opportunity to wring its hands over Catholic wickedness, to say: “There is no escaping the fact that the [McAleese] report jars with popular perceptions.”

In the Irish mind, and in the minds of everyone else who has seen or read one of the many films, plays and books about the Magdalene laundries, these were horrific institutions brimming with violence and overseen by sadistic, pervy nuns. Yet the McAleese Report found not a single incident of sexual abuse by a nun in a Magdalene laundry. Not one. Also, the vast majority of its interviewees said they were never physically punished in the laundries. As one woman said, “It has shocked me to read in papers that we were beat and our heads shaved and that we were badly treated by the nuns… I was not touched by any nun and I never saw anyone touched.” The small number of cases of corporal punishment reported to McAleese consisted of the kind of thing that happened in many normal schools in the 1960s, 70s and 80s: being caned on the legs or rapped on the knuckles. The authors of the McAleese Report, having like the rest of us imbibed the popular image of the Magdalene laundries as nun-run concentration camps, seem to have been taken aback by “the number of women who spoke positively about the nuns”.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

VATICAN CITY
Boston Globe

By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press / February 15, 2013

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI signed off on one of the last major appointments of his papacy Friday, approving a German lawyer and financier to head the Vatican’s embattled bank.

Ernst von Freyberg has solid financial and Catholic credentials as a former investment banker and member of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, an ancient chivalrous order drawn from European nobility.

The appointment ends a nine-month search after the Institute of Religious Works ousted its previous president, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, for incompetence. The ouster came just as the Vatican was submitting its finances to a review by a Council of Europe committee in a bid to join the list of financially transparent countries.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
Washington Post

Posted by Melinda Henneberger on February 14, 2013

John Patrick Shanley’s “Doubt” is a great play — both sturdy and subtle, and as open to interpretation as the title suggests. Set in a Catholic school in the Bronx in 1964, it never quite spells out whether likable, open-minded Father Flynn is as guilty as fusty old Sister Aloysius suspects he is of taking an inappropriate interest in a particularly vulnerable 12-year-old boy, the only black student in the place. And that ambiguity is the power of the piece.

There’s no such shading in Shanley’s New York Times op-ed this week. In it, he voices at the top of his lungs the popular view that Benedict XVI personally implemented the coverup of predator priests. I understand the anger in his column and others like it; if the rape of children doesn’t make us scream, nothing will. Yet it’s so wrong in the particulars that it misses some of the most important lessons of the scandal.

In our all-or-nothing, right-or-left, with-us-or-against-us opinion culture, taking any issue with the way Shanley and others view Benedict will be seen by some as defending the pope — or, worse, as defending the abuse itself, though I’ve been writing about the horror of it for years.

But it’s because we can’t afford to bungle the takeaway that we shouldn’t pin so much of the blame on Benedict. “Pope Benedict XVI quit,” Shanley begins. “Good. He was utterly bereft of charm, tone-deaf and a protector of priests who abused children. He’d been a member of the Hitler Youth. In addition to this woeful résumé, he had no use for women.”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

CANADA
The Province

By Jennifer Saltman, The Province February 15, 2013

Two teens who accused a former Abbotsford Hindu priest of sexual misconduct were nervous about speaking with police, according to the officer who took their statements.

“It was difficult for them to talk to me,” Abbotsford police Const. Mary Boonstra testified Thursday. “There was a lot of fear there.”

Karam Vir is charged with two counts of touching a young person for a sexual purpose and one count of sexual assault. His trial is under way in B.C. Supreme Court in Chilliwack.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

VATICAN CITY
Financial Times

The Vatican has named Ernst von Freyberg, a German lawyer, as the new head of the Vatican bank, filling a position that has remained vacant since its previous president was abruptly dismissed last May.

The appointment of Mr von Freyberg on Friday was confirmed by a commission of five cardinals that oversees the bank and was fully backed by Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican said in a statement.

Filling the vacancy was seen as one of the most important acts to be completed by the pontiff before he renounces the papacy at the end of the month. …

Mr von Freyberg, 55, is a member of the sovereign military order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta. He speaks four languages. “He is a well introduced person in the Church world, in which he is very active,” said Father Lombardi.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

VATICAN CITY
Reuters

VATICAN CITY | Fri Feb 15, 2013

(Reuters) – The Vatican appointed German lawyer Ernst von Freyberg to be the new president of its bank on Friday, filling a post left vacant since May when the previous head was ousted from the scandal-tainted institution.

The appointment was made by a commission of cardinals and approved by Pope Benedict and is likely to be one of his last major decisions before he resigns at the end of the month.

The Vatican has been trying to shed a reputation for a lack of financial transparency at the bank, officially known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), but has been dogged by scandals for decades.

A Vatican statement said Freyberg brought “a vast experience of financial matters and the financial regulatory process.” Born in 1958, he is on the advisory board of temporary employment agency Manpower GmbH (MAN.N) and of asset management firm Flossbach von Storch AG.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

VATICAN CITY
Straits Times

VATICAN CITY (AFP) – The Vatican on Friday named a German financier as the new head of its scandal-hit bank, saying he would help overhaul the secretive institution to comply with anti-money laundering rules.

Ernst von Freyberg replaces Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, who was unceremoniously sacked by the board on May 24 last year a day after the pope’s butler was arrested for leaking hundreds of confidential papers from the Vatican.

Vatican watchers say Mr Gotti Tedeschi’s ousting could have been linked to his drive to make the bank, the Institute for Religious Works, cooperate with an Italian money laundering inquiry but the circumstances remain mysterious.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

VATICAN CITY
Gazzetta del Sud

Rome, February 15 – The Vatican on Friday appointed German lawyer Ernst Freiherr von Freyberg as head of the embattled Vatican Bank, ending intense media speculation over the nomination. Von Freyberg was appointed by the bank’s commission of cardinals with the pope’s ”full consent”, the Vatican said. However Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi denied that Pope Benedict XVI, who on Monday announced his resignation with effect from the end of the month, knew the new bank chief personally. The bank, otherwise known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), has been under the interim leadership of the vice-president Ronaldo Hermann Schmit since former president Ettore Gotti Tedeschi was fired by the supervisory board in May 2012 amid reported disagreements on moves to join a list of financially transparent countries.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

RHODE ISLAND
Catholic Culture

The Rhode Island Supreme Court has declined a request by the Legion of Christ to delay the release of documents related to the $60 million will of Gabrielle Mee.

Calling the public’s right to know “paramount,” a Rhode Island judge last month had ruled in favor of several media outlets that sought the release of documents related to the widow’s contributions to the Legion of Christ.

“There are yards of documents,” said a spokesman for the Legion after the Rhode Island high court’s ruling. “It’s done. They’re public. This ends the debate.”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

SYRACUSE (NY)
Syracuse.com

Reverend James F. Quinn, 80, was called to the Lord on Friday. Born in Syracuse, Father Quinn was a graduate of Our Lady of Angels Seminary at Niagara University and ordained a Catholic priest on May 24, 1958. He was a pastor, associate pastor or priest-in-residence at eleven churches throughout the Syracuse area and in Whitesboro and Munnsville. Father Quinn was the Director of the Office for Vocation for nine years and published vocational promotional materials now being used by 40 dioceses and 12 countries, including South Africa, Ireland and England. The area director of the Catholic Youth Organization for 12 years and the Syracuse area CCD, he also served on the board of directors for the United Fund and the Diocesan Continuing Education Committee.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

AUSTRALIA
Geelong Advertiser

Danny Lannen | February 15th, 2013

GEELONG parish priest Fr Kevin Dillon has told a parliamentary inquiry into institutional abuse the Catholic Church needs to lose its arrogance dealing with victims.

Fr Dillon said at a hearing in Geelong today the church had focused on denial and protection of material assets rather than protection of human assets.

“The church expands its mission without looking at something which is fundamentally tearing at its heart,” Fr Dillon said.

He said processes for dealing with victims had lost credibility and were beyond repair and the church’s response to victims had been inadequate.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.