ABUSE TRACKER

LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

A former priest and suspected child molester left employment with the Los Angeles Archdiocese to work for the L.A. Unified School District, officials confirmed Sunday.

The former clergyman, Joseph Pina, did not work with children in his school district job, said L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy. He added that, as a result of the disclosures, Pina would no longer be employed by the nation’s second-largest school system.

Over the weekend, Deasy was unable to pull together Pina’s full employment history, but said the district already was looking into the matter of Pina’s hiring.

“I find it troubling,” he said of the disclosures about Pina. “And I also want to understand what knowledge that we had of any background problems when hiring him, and I don’t yet know that.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Washington Post

Letter from Archbishop Gomez on priest sex abuse read at churches across Los Angeles on Sunday

By Associated Press

Updated: Sunday, February 3

LOS ANGELES — Roman Catholic parishioners in Los Angeles heard a letter from Archbishop Jose Gomez in which he described newly released files on clergy sex abuse as “terribly sad and evil.”

The archbishop’s words were read by church leaders at Sunday masses across the city, the Los Angeles Times reported (http://lat.ms/YuH4rb). The letter was made public late last week.

Gomez said the church needs to acknowledge the “terrible failure” of its handling of abuse cases.

At St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in North Hollywood, parishioner Eric Nielsen praised Gomez for addressing the issue.

“I take my hat off to the archbishop,” said Nielsen, 52. “He got on the ball and did what needed to be done.”

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INDIANA
Roman Catholic Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend

The Diocese of Fort Wayne – South Bend is saddened to announce the death of Bishop Emeritus John Michael D’Arcy.

Bishop D’Arcy died in the late morning hours of February 3rd, 2013. Bishop D’Arcy was at home at the time of his death, surrounded by loved ones.

He passed on the 56th anniversary of his first Mass as an ordained priest.

Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades along with the diocese, asks for and offers prayers for Bishop D’Arcy, his family, loved ones and friends as together we grieve the loss of our beloved Bishop D’Arcy.

Funeral arrangements are pending at this time.

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INDIANA
The Elkhart Truth

FORT WAYNE – The Most Rev. John M. D’Arcy, bishop emeritus of the Diocese of Fort Wayne – South Bend, died in the late morning Sunday, Feb. 3.

An announcement from the diocese said that D’Arcy died at his home surrounded by loved ones on the 56th anniversary of his first Mass as an ordained priest.

“We mourn the death of a good shepherd after the heart of Christ, a bishop who loved the Lord and his people with all his heart,” Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades said in a release. “I thank the faithful of our diocese for the many prayers offered for Bishop D’Arcy in his final days.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
La Opinion

POR: Jennifer Farrar / Associated Press 02/03/2013

Está bien documentado en los registros que el reverendo Richard Henry tenía un problema. Ya en marzo de 1988, el entonces arzobispo Roger Mahony había sido advertido en un informe confidencial, que el comportamiento del sacerdote en torno a los muchachos jóvenes – abrazos largos, frotando la nariz, etcétera, era inquietante para los que lo presenciaban.

Monjas y sacerdotes confirman un mismo patrón: “Ninguna de las personas con las que hablamos lo acusó de nada ilegal, pero todos temían que otros adultos viendo esto lo harían”, concluye la nota en el archivo.

En octubre de ese mismo año se le ordenó a Henry a través de una carta que le envió el entonces monseñor Thomas, de “no estar a solas con menores de edad”. Los documentos empezaron a disminuir a mediados de 1989. En agosto de 1991, se le notifica a Mahony que Henry está bajo investigación por abuso de menores.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Spiegel

Der Chef der Glaubenskongregation des Vatikans, Gerhard Ludwig Müller, erntet heftige Kritik für seine Äußerung über eine vermeintliche “Pogromstimmung” gegen die Kirche. Politiker finden sie geschmacklos, auch der oberste Vertreter der katholischen Laien widerspricht entschieden.

Hamburg – Der Chef der Glaubenskongregation im Vatikan, Gerhard Ludwig Müller, stößt mit seinen jüngsten Äußerungen zur Lage der Kirche auf Widerspruch beim Kirchenvolk. Auch Politiker kritisierten Müller scharf.

Der Präsident des Zentralkomitees der deutschen Katholiken (ZdK), Alois Glück, sagte: “Wir müssen uns in der Kirche damit auseinandersetzen, warum wir mit der christlichen Botschaft immer weniger Menschen erreichen. Das kann sicher nicht nur an den Menschen liegen.” Das ZdK ist mit rund 230 Mitgliedern das oberste Gremium der Laien in der katholischen Kirche.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Die Welt

Von Matthias Kamann

Vielleicht sollte Gott wieder einmal auf den Berg Sinai hinunterfahren und ein elftes Gebot nachliefern: “Du sollst dich nicht zurechnen einer verfolgten Minderheit, wenn du nicht verfolgt wirst.” Bedarf jedenfalls gäbe es für eine solche Anweisung.

Denn derzeit neigen Radikalisierer jedweder Couleur dazu, sich mit ihren steilen Thesen wichtig zu machen, indem sie behaupten, man dürfe heute überhaupt gar nichts mehr sagen und werde sofort unterdrückt.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
KABC

Q McCray

LOS ANGELES (KABC) — The sex abuse scandal surrounding Catholic priests was addressed at all Roman Catholic churches in Los Angeles on Sunday.

A letter from Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez, which was made public Thursday, was read during services at all L.A. churches. In the letter, Gomez expressed his sadness and disappointment about the scandal and the sex abuse files released this past week.

“These files document abuses that happened decades ago. But that does not make them less serious,” Gomez says in the letter. “I find these files to be 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. The priests involved had the duty to be their spiritual fathers and they failed.”

In the letter, the archbishop announced that retired Cardinal Roger Mahony no longer had any administrative or public duties.

More than 12,000 pages of documents concerning 124 priests were released on Thursday, and another 14 cases were released earlier.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

At Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral downtown, Msgr. Kevin Kostelnik asked parishioners Sunday “to pray fervently” for the victims of the clergy child abuse scandal and lamented that “these are tough days.”

Like other church leaders, Kostelnik read a Jan. 31 letter from Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez about tens of thousands of pages of previously secret personnel files posted on the church’s website last week of 122 priests accused of molesting children. Some of the files lay out in Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Curry’s own words how the church hierarchy plotted to keep law enforcement from learning that children had been molested at the hands of priests.

“The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil,” Gomez wrote in the letter. “There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children.”

After reading the letter, Kostelnik urged parishioners to continue to reflect on the archbishop’s words and to pray for the victims.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
La Jornada

Los Angeles. La arquidiócesis de Los Angeles anunció hoy que removió de todos sus cargos al cardenal Roger Mahony por su papel en los escándalos de sacerdotes pederastas.

El arzobispo José Gómez anunció la medida luego que el jueves una jueza de la corte superior de Los Angeles ordenó hacer públicas las más de 30 mil páginas de expedientes de 122 sacerdotes acusados de abuso sexual a menores.

En los reportes se identificó que la actuación de Mahony estuvo marcada durante décadas por brindar protección y evitar que salieran a la luz pública acciones reprobables de los sacerdotes de la Iglesia católica.

Muchos de los sacerdotes en lugar de ser sancionados sólo eran transferidos a otras parroquias, en donde continuaron con sus actos de abuso y acoso sexual a menores.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
La Opinion

POR: Jorge Morales Almada / jorge.morales@laopinion.com | 02/02/2013

“Esta semana el padre Ted Llanos dejó la parroquia de Santa Lucía y renunció a su oficina pastoral. El Padre tiene problemas en su vida con los que tiene que lidiar y el Cardenal le está ofreciendo tiempo y oportunidad para hacerlo”.

Es el mensaje que el 25 de septiembre de 1994 la Arquidiócesis de Los Ángeles ordenó colocar en la Iglesia Católica de San Lucía, en Long Beach, donde el padre Theodore Llanos era párroco.

Lo que no advertía el anuncio, es que el padre Llanos estaba siendo acusado por uno de sus monaguillos de abuso sexual y que el ofrecimiento del Cardenal era prácticamente esconderlo en una clínica psiquiátrica y dinero para subsistir mientras encontrara trabajo al terminar un tratamiento de rehabilitación.

La historia del padre Llanos se expone en uno de los 122 expedientes de sacerdotes pederastas que el jueves reveló la Arquidiócesis de Los Ángeles.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
La Opinion

POR: Virginia Gaglianone / virginia.gaglianone@laopinion.com | 01/22/2013

Víctimas de abuso sexual se reunieron hoy frente a la Catedral Nuestra Señora de Los Ángeles para pedir justicia por los crímenes cometidos por curas y religiosos pedófilos.

El tiempo no siempre lo borra todo. El dolor de aquellos que fueron abusados sexualmente desde pequeños nunca se olvida. Así lo aseguraron las víctimas de abuso sexual que hoy se reunieron frente a la Catedral Nuestra Señora de Los Ángeles para pedir justicia por los crímenes cometidos por curas y religiosos pedófilos.

“Todavía puedo sentir las manos del cura en mi cuello, su aliento, su cuerpo contra el mío, sus palabras. Hay que ponerse en los zapatos del niño a quien están violando. El sufrimiento nunca se olvida”, aseguro Manny Vega, quien después de 36 años de ser abusado por un cura, no ha logrado borrar esas imágenes de su mente.

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INDIA
Hindustan Times

A 15-year-old girl who went missing on October 13 was allegedly abducted by his brother-in-law, who is a priest of a dera near Dhanori of Patiala.

The accused Lakhbir Singh, 28, of Dhanori village near Samrala had allegedly not only abducted his sister-in-law on the pretext of marriage, but also confined her for at least four months and raped her. The accused is married and has a child.

When the accused denied solemnising marriage with her, she managed to escape from his clutches on Saturday and filed a complaint at the Dehlon police station. The police arrested the accused immediately after registering an FIR against him as he had come to Dehlon chasing the victim.

The police produced the accused in the court of duty magistrate on Sunday, which sent him to one-day police remand.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
CBS Los Angeles

[with video]

[Joseph Pina – Los Angeles archdiocese]

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — A former priest allegedly named in the Los Angeles Archdiocese Catholic church sex abuse scandal may be employed by the Los Angeles Unified School District, CBS2 has learned.

In documents released by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles last week, CBS2′s Louisa Hodge reports that 129 pages outline Joseph D. Piña’s alleged sexual abuse of a young girl years ago.

After the alleged abuse came to light, Hodge reports that Piña was sent to a psychiatrist for evaluation in which he told one therapist he saw his sexual relationship as a “boyfriend-girlfriend relationship.”

Following that psychological evaluation, the therapist concluded, “I do not believe Father Piña is capable of proceeding with business as usual. He remains a serious risk for acting out.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
NBC Southern California

By Sharon Bernstein

Sunday, Feb 3, 2013

Worshippers coming to Mass in Catholic churches throughout the Archdiocese of Los Angeles on Sunday are hearing extraordinary words of apology for decades of child sexual abuse.

At every church, priests are reading a letter from Archbishop José H. Gomez that denounces the abuse as “evil” and apologized for both the molestation and for the church’s failure to expunge pedophile priests from its ranks.

More: Read Archbishop Gomez’ letter

“There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children,” Gomez wrote in the letter, which was originally released Jan. 31. “The priests involved had the duty to be their spiritual fathers and they failed.”

The letter that priests are reading is the same one in which Gomez late Thursday announced that he had removed his predecessor, retired Cardinal Roger Mahony, from all administrative and public duties. Gomez also relieved Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Curry from his position as Regional Bishop of Santa Barbara.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

Speaking to parishioners gathered at Catholic churches across the city, church leaders on Sunday read a letter from Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez made public last week regarding the mishandling of the clergy child abuse scandal and expressed their own concerns.

“We have been reminded about sin in our church. … The important thing for us to remember is that there are victims in this,” said Monsignor Robert J. Gallagher of St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in North Hollywood. Gallagher thanked the roughly 100 parishioners for their prayers in what he called one of the darkest periods in his 40 years with the church.

St. Borromeo is the home of retired Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, who is at the center of the controversy. Mahony was not present during the 7:30 a.m. service.

After the service, Gallagher said he was pleased that Mahony had met with more than 90 child sex abuse victims to ask for forgiveness for himself and the church. He said he recently had dinner with Mahony, who told him that he was meeting with another victim Monday.

In a church bulletin, Gallagher wrote a letter to parishioners expanding on his feelings about the child abuse scandal: “The real victims are those who were robbed of their childhood, whether by a priest or some other trusted adult. They are the ones who deserve our prayers, our apologies, and any other gesture that will invite them to be restored to the conviction of God’s love for them.”

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Pope Benedict XVI for the first time publicly shamed a voting Cardinal, Mahony of Los Angeles. The Pope’s pawn, Archbishop Gomez, publicly referred to Mahony’s child abuse cover-up conduct as “evil”. This unprecedented and selective public papal condemnation, in my view as an experienced retired lawyer, significantly increases the risk for Mahony that he will yet still be criminally prosecuted, possibly for obstruction of justice or perjury. Prosecutors now have a papal blessing to go after Mahony. Yet the Pope has also just permitted Ireland’s voting Cardinal Brady to exit gracefully, without papal condemnation. Brady was reportedly involved in priest abuse cover-ups at least as “evil” as Mahony. Why the different treatment for two Cardinals?

The likeliest explanation is current papal election politics. Conservative Cardinals in the Vatican clique, including American ones like Burke, Law and Stafford, and their right-wing U.S. Republican contributors, have for years targeted Mahony, often an ally of U.S. Democratic political leaders, as an obstacle to the Vatican clique’s efforts to maintain Vatican domination of the Catholic Church worldwide, through groups like Opus Dei that Gomez and convicted criminal Bishop Finn are members of. Brady, on the other hand, supports domination by the Vatican clique, as evidenced by his acquiescence in the current unchallenged attack on one of Brady’s most popular priests, Fr. Tony Flannery, by the Pope’s new German Inquisitor. Flannery’s brother is a top ally to Prime Minister Enda Kenny, who has strongly opposed papal domination in Ireland.

The signal is clear. The Vatican is prepared, it appears, to use selectively the criminal prosecution risks inherent in the worldwide abuse scandal to intimidate voting Cardinals who oppose the current Vatican clique’s candidate to be next Pope. Since most Cardinals likely have been involved in some cover-up activity, this election blackmail is a significant threat. It also is a compelling reason for Cardinals to call now for a worldwide conference as explained at: http://wp.me/P2YEZ3-gW .

Children in the USA cannot be used as leverage in a papal election. The Pope and local political leaders and prosecutors have repeatedly failed to curtail effectively priest sexual abuse of children. The President has the clout needed to curtail this abuse and he must now step-up and use it. A petition has been opened for signatures asking President Obama to set up a national investigation commission into the sexual abuse of children by priests, rabbis, ministers and other religious leaders. Already many have begun to sign it, including abuse survivors and their supporters. Please take 30 seconds to sign it no matter where in the world you live. This is a worldwide epidemic. Just click on the below link at:

[Click here for the petition.]

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CALIFORNIA
The Record

By Michael Fitzgerald
Record Columnist

February 03, 2013

In my time, I have met killers, swindlers, perverts, corrupt politicians and all manner of toads. How ironic I met one of the worst on an altar.

I was a Catholic student and altar boy who served high Mass in Annunciation Cathedral with then-Bishop Roger Mahony. Oh, the majesty! The spiritual authority!

Mahony, retired head of the Diocese of Los Angeles, was stripped of any administrative and public church duties last week. Newly released Catholic sex abuse files show His Excellency covered for molesters and lied like a rug.

Mahony was bishop of Stockton from 1980 to 1985. Years during which omnivorous hyenas such as Father Oliver O’Grady were using Stockton diocese children for sex toys.

When foot-dragging lay authorities finally investigated O’Grady, wide-eyed Mahony said he had no idea O’Grady was a pedophile – though the diocese had a sub secreto confidential personnel file on him as thick as a phone book.

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CALIFORNIA
Patch

Joseph Pina
Donal O’Connor
Wallace Daley
Joseph Ryan
Joseph Sharpe
Sean Cronin

Six priests named in personnel files finally released by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles — after years of battle in the courts — served some time in Lynwood or South Gate.

By Mirna Alfonso

Joseph Pina was a 38-year-old priest when he met a 13-year-old girl at a Los Angeles Archdiocesan parish.

He began a “relationship” with her when she was 16 and became sexual with her when she was 17.

At the age of 19, in 1992, the woman broke off the so-called relationship and Pina went to his superiors, hurt that she had been harsh with him.

Under the vicarship of Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and then-Msgr. Thomas J. Curry — both of whom were disgraced this week — Pina saw counselors, participated in a residential Catholic treatment program, took 12-step sex addiction programs but by 1998, he was in the sex offenders unit of a hospital in Torrance.

There, he was diagnosed with “psychosexual disorder with addictive and exploitive features,” his file indicates.

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CALIFORNIA
The Bakersfield Californian

BY JOHN ARTHUR Californian Executive Editor jarthur@bakersfield.com

FATHER STEVE PETERSON called to complain about the front-page treatment given Friday to the article about retired Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony being silenced by his bishop. He felt the story was being blown out of proportion.

ANOTHER READER wrote, in response to stories in last Sunday’s paper: Is the Bakersfield Californian anti-Catholic? Are they fair and balanced? By showcasing the negative i.e. Cardinal Mahony (again) on the front page, then so called Monsignor Meth on the third page of Sunday’s paper makes me wonder if this is a concerted effort to harm the church.

Cardinal Mahoney should make news, but how much, and how often? Do we have scoundrels in the church? Indeed we do, and if they operate outside of the law then they should face full justice, but the church has 1.2 billion people with over 400,000 priests… all or most do their best to feed, clothe, and tend to the sick worldwide.

Now, back to the scoundrels…should this surprise us? Bad priests…Monsignor Meth? Ponder this: Jesus chose twelve Apostles and one was Judas. Please balance this act!

Jon Ariey
Bakersfield

ARTHUR: We certainly don’t have an anti-Catholic bias; I don’t have time to recount all our stories about the many wonderful things the Catholic Church does in Kern County, often by some of the most outstanding leaders in our community.

However the sex-abuse scandal has rocked the worldwide church, and retired Cardinal Mahony was part of a coverup to hide these actions from the law. His own documents, released by the church after years of requests from victims of pedophilia, confirm this.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

Editorial

Only now is the full scope of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ culpability in the sex abuse scandal being confirmed.

February 3, 2013

Not only did the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles fail to protect children from pedophile priests, but its leaders, including Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, subsequently sought to protect its reputation by covering up cases of sexual abuse and shielding priests from the arrest and prosecution they deserved. The archdiocese then spent more than a decade fighting to keep that coverup from being revealed in court.

What is most horrible about the facts in the paragraph above is that they come as a surprise to almost no one. The archdiocese’s malfeasance has been alleged for a long time, but only now is the full scope of its culpability in the sex abuse scandal being confirmed. On Thursday, Archbishop Jose Gomez, under court order, released tens of thousands of pages of confidential personnel files of 122 priests accused or convicted of molesting children. Calling the behavior described in the records “terribly sad and evil,” Gomez also relieved Mahony of his public duties, which apparently means little more than canceling his confirmation schedule. Mahony will remain a “bishop in good standing in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles,” Gomez said Friday, “with full rights to celebrate the holy sacraments of the church and to minister to the faithful without restriction.”

Gomez’s actions and apologies aren’t enough, not given the fierce legal battle the church has waged over the last decade to protect itself. The release of the files last week with priests’ names unredacted marked the end of an effort that began years earlier when the church advanced a frivolous argument to protect communication between a priest and his bishop as privileged and protected by the 1st Amendment. Fortunately, lower courts rejected that argument and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to entertain it.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
KCET

by Jennifer London
on February 2, 2013

[L.A. Archdiocese File on Joseph Pina]

[Cardinal Mahony’s Response to Archbishop José Gómez]

Joseph D. Pina was a Catholic priest for 26 years in Southern California until he left the church after repeated admissions of a sexual relationship with a minor. “Socal Connected” has learned Pina later went to work at Los Angeles Unified School District.

According to recently released church documents, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles was aware as early as 2009 that Pina was working for LAUSD, despite his extensive record of sexual misconduct as a Catholic Priest. It’s unclear if church leaders informed the district of Pina’s past.

Pina, whose last assignment was at St. Emydius Church in Lynwood, Calif., resigned from the priesthood in March 1998. A review of the LAUSD website shows Pina has worked as a community organizer for the school district as early as February 2002.

In an email to “SoCal Connected,” LAUSD’s director of communications, Thomas Waldman, confirmed former priest Joseph Pina is “the same Joseph Pina” who has been working at the district. Waldman did not have employment dates or Pina’s current employment status. As a community organizer at LAUSD, he organized and attended dozens of community outreach events throughout the city.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Leon J. Podles: Dialogue

The decades of lies and cover-ups that Cardinal Mahoney participated in are finally ending.

One important fact has been overlooked. Roger Mahoney was a licensed social worker and was legally bound to report sexual abuse.

To avoid having to do that, he surrendered his license in 1980. He knew he would be covering-up sexual abuse and tried to escape the legal consequences.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Leon J. Podles: Dialogue

February 2nd, 2013

On rare occasions the clerical vetting system fails and a Christian becomes a bishop or even a pope.

A Catholic Christian knows the gravity of sin and the necessity of repentance, which includes doing penance to expiate sin.

If Archbishop Gomez were a Christian, he would first privately and then publicly address Cardinal Mahony in terms such as these:

My dear brother, I fear for your salvation and I do not want to see you burn forever in the fires of hell, alienated from God, condemned by the voices of the abused children whose bodies and souls you allowed to be ruined.

You must immediately and publicly repent.

Send your cardinal’s hat back to the pope. Resign your priesthood. It is better to enter into life a layman than to be cast with a cardinal’s robes into Gehenna.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Myrtle Beach Online

By HECTOR BECERRA, ASHLEY POWERS AND VICTORIA KIM – Los Angeles Times

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — When he took office in 1985, Roger M. Mahony set about modernizing the operations of the Los Angeles Archdiocese. He brought in computers and put women in top jobs.

He then appointed an Irish-born academic to a brand-new cabinet position: Vicar for Clergy, a human resources director of sorts for priests, brothers and nuns. Msgr. Thomas J. Curry would shape the way the nation’s largest archdiocese responded to claims that its priests had molested and raped children.

In his five years in the role, Curry was a staunch defender of the church and its clergymen. And as revealed in secret church records made public this week, he chose again and again to conceal clerics’ crimes from police and put priests’ welfare ahead of helping victims.

On Thursday, as his former boss was publicly rebuked, the 70-year-old regional bishop in Santa Barbara stepped down, part of an unprecedented reaction by the Catholic Church to the clergy child abuse scandal. It was a stunning fall for a man who had acted as a right hand for one of the most powerful U.S. Catholic prelates.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Leon J. Podles: Dialogue

I once asked a patristics scholar how Jerome, the translator of the Bible into Latin, ever got canonized. He was a nasty, cruel man. The scholar replied that in those days Saint meant “someone important in the Church.” And not only in those days.

John Paul grievously mishandled the cases of sexual abuse in the Church. Priests and at least one cardinal (Schoenborn) pleaded with him to do something, and he refused. Children committed suicide because of abuse that John Paul’s failures and willful blindness allowed to continue. And now he is Blessed John Paul and soon will be Saint John Paul.

Why?

Poland.

Poland is the last Catholic country in Europe and what John Paul did to help bring down Communism eclipses for the Poles everything else he did or failed to do.

Little will happen to Cardinal Mahony.

Why?

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
China Daily

LOS ANGELES – Anyone who rapes teenage boys and girls is a crime, but when priests had sex with teenagers, archbishops tried to cover them up to avoid punishment. That has happened in churches in Los Angeles and other US cities.

In 2007, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles paid at least $660 million to settle sex abuse charges, and then joined a torturous legal defense of a privilege to conceal its part in that history.

Last week, in response to a court order, the archdiocese released internal records documenting the actions church officials took, or failed to take, when priests were accused of abuse.

Those documents revealed that in the 1980s, then-Archbishop Roger Mahony and his top aide, Thomas Curry, who is now a bishop, maneuvered to shield priests from prosecution, kept parishioners in the dark and failed to call police about sex crimes against minors.

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NEW JERSEY
The Star-Ledger

By Mark Mueller/The Star-Ledger
on February 03, 2013

A Roman Catholic priest who confessed to groping a teenage boy 12 years ago has been named to a prestigious post in the Archdiocese of Newark, drawing furious criticism from advocates for victims of clergy sex abuse.

The Rev. Michael Fugee, who is barred from unsupervised contact with children under a binding agreement with law enforcement officials, has been appointed co-director of the Office of Continuing Education and Ongoing Formation of Priests, the archdiocese recently announced in its newspaper, the Catholic Advocate.

For several years, Fugee also has been director of the Office of the Propagation of the Faith, a fundraising position to support missionary work.

The new appointment, effective late last year, shows “breathtaking arrogance” and “an alarming disdain for common sense” by Archbishop John J. Myers, said Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, a watchdog group that tracks abuse allegations against priests across the nation.

“On the scale of actions by Catholic officials in the last 10 years, it’s somewhere between alarming and outrageous,” Barrett Doyle said. “No reasonable person would give a prestigious assignment to a priest deemed by law enforcement to be a danger to children. I hope Newark Catholics call him to account.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

Joseph A. Slobodzian, Inquirer Staff Writer

Posted: Sunday, February 3, 2013

The criminal case resulting from the serial sexual assault of a 10-year-old Northeast Philadelphia altar boy may well have ended with Wednesday’s guilty verdicts against a priest and a former Catholic-school teacher.

But the convictions of the Rev. Charles Engelhardt and Bernard Shero have also opened the door for a civil lawsuit with the potential to reach beyond the two defendants into the hierarchy of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

The lawsuit by the former St. Jerome’s altar boy dubbed “Billy Doe” was filed in July 2011 in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court. It has been dormant while charges against Engelhardt and Shero were unresolved.

Lawyers for the now-24-year-old Billy say they are preparing to reactivate the case and expand the number of church officials being sued.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” lawyer Paul Lauricella told reporters after Wednesday’s

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CALIFORNIA
KPCC

Susanne Whatley with Tony Pierce | February 2nd, 2013

Thursday the Los Angeles Archdiocese released the personnel files of Catholic priests accused of child moletation. LA Archbishop Jose Gomez described the files “brutal and painful” reading and called the behavior described in the files “terribly sad and evil.” Gomez announced that he was relieving Retired Cardinal Roger Mahony of his public and administrative duties and said he’d accepted the resignation of Monsignor Thomas Curry.

Father Thomas Doyle, a lawyer who investigated charges of sexual abuse in the ’80s told “Take Two” co-host Alex Cohen on Friday that “these priests have marauded victims for ages, they have been protected at an incredible cost to the faithful by the archdiocese. The only thing I think that could come close to any semblence of redemption is if the Archbishop doesn’t worry about how he will appear in the media but goes to meet the victims privately in their homes on their turf and listen to what they have to say.”

The stories within the files, Fr. Doyle said, are “worse than nightmare novels. But they’re real. They’re deadly real. And what’s so pathetic is that you have this horrendous reality of what was done to these men and women over decades by priests who were protected and moved around by Archbishops, by cardinals – by Mahoney and his predecessor and his whole crew.”

KPCC’s Susanne Whatley spoke to LA Archdocese lead attorney J. Michael Hennigan Friday during “All Things Considered” about the controversial files.

KPCC: Some of these victims are pushing the archdiocese to continue to investigate the problem of child abuse by clergy. What does the archdiocese intend to do going forward?

Hennigan: In the past ten years the Archdiocese of Los Angeles has taken magnificent strides in terms of dealing with this issue with respect to every single claim of abuse. They have five retired FBI agents who investigate every matter. They fingerprint every person who deals with children in the archdiocese. Every single person who has supervisory responsibility for children receives training about how to deal with childhood sexual abuse. And every child in the archdiocese who is in any school or otherwise gets training every year, age appropriate, about how to detect it, how to talk about it, and what to do about it.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
LA Daily News

By Doug McIntyre, Columnist
dailynews.com
Posted: 02/02/2013

The headline is a grabber – “Mahony Relieved of Duties.”

On the surface it looks like Archbishop Jose H. Gomez has finally put the Archdiocese of Los Angeles on the road to righteousness by censoring his predecessor, Cardinal Roger Mahony.

But when you scratch the headline’s surface, you only find more surface.

Sadly, Archbishop Gomez’s condemnation of his predecessor is right out of his predecessor’s playbook; Do the minimum while pretending to do the maximum.

Granted, a public rebuke of a cardinal by a prelate of a lower rank is exceptionally rare. But equally rare is the depth and breadth of Mahony’s complicity in a conspiracy to obstruct justice.

While it’s historically significant the church has finally taken official action against the holy man who helped cover up child rape and other crimes against children, it’s important to remember this action comes only after the archdiocese had exhausted every other legal option.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

By Steve Lopez
February 2, 2013

Do we have a little spat going on now at the Archdiocese of Los Angeles?

Archbishop Jose Gomez and Cardinal Roger M. Mahony seemed to be going at each other in recent days over the molestation scandal that just won’t die, thanks to Mahony’s years-long efforts to keep all the dirty little secrets under wraps.

On Wednesday, Bishop Gomez issued a rebuke, announcing that Mahony was being relieved of public duties now that the priest personnel records have been made public. And by the way, I’m not clear as to why it took Gomez two years to look into the files he describes as making “brutal and painful reading,” for their descriptions of behavior that was “terribly sad and evil.”

But even as Mahony was being kicked aside by Gomez, church spokesman Tod Tamberg was eagerly telling us Mahony is still “a priest in good standing” who can celebrate Mass and even, as a cardinal, vote for pope.

A priest in good standing? What in the world do you have to do to fall out of favor?

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CALIFORNIA
Contra Costa Times

By Barbara Jones, Staff Writer
dailynews.com
Posted: 02/02/2013

A letter from Archbishop Jose Gomez expressing his anguish about newly released sex-abuse files will be read during Mass on Sunday to Roman Catholics around Los Angeles, who will also hear pleas for donations to the region’s poorest parishes.

At St. Bartholomew’s Church in Long Beach, Monsignor Bernard Leheny plans to interject his own request – that parishioners put aside their anger at clergy implicated in the ongoing scandal and focus instead on living the tenets of their faith.

“The hurt has been resurrected by the bad publicity and the mistakes that were made,” Leheny said. “I worry that will hurt the poor parishes if people hold back (on donations).

“But the church has made tremendous progress in the protection of children. All the people who deal with children – not just the clergy, but lay ministers – have taken training sessions so they can be aware.

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CONNECTICUT
Greenwich Time

Michael P. Mayko

Updated 6:03 pm, Saturday, February 2, 2013

HARTFORD — He was the man who would “hold down the fort” for the drug operation while “Monsignor Meth” was vacationing in London.

He was also a guy who worked in a sex and leather fetish shop.

And on Jan. 2, the day before the Bridgeport Diocese’s former Monsignor Kenneth Wallin was to leave on the two-week vacation, the suspended Roman Catholic priest took one of his best customers to the apartment across the hall and introduced him to Kenneth “Lyme” Devries.

Wallin even told the customer he was paying the rent on Devries’ apartment.

The customer, however, was an undercover cop, according to court documents and arrest affidavits. The next day, his friends would show up at both Wallin’s and Devries’ apartments on Waterbury’s Golden Hill Street not as unsavory customers, but arresting officers.

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UNITED STATES
The Garden of Roses: Stories of Abuse and Healing

Virginia Jones

A friend of mine, who I will call Emily, lost her job when she was in her fifties. It is hard to a job when you are a fifty plus year old woman. Emily struggled with despair and hopelessness. Her friend recommended that she visit a psychic she knew, suggesting the psychic might be able to give her some insight and comfort. The friend gave her reason why. She had gone to see the psychic herself. She was sexually abused by her father, but she had not disclosed this fact in public. The psychic instructed her sit with her in stillness and quiet while she meditated. After a while the psychic began speaking.

She said, “I see your father. He is in hell. He has hurt many people. I see him sitting in a chair. He is surrounded by mirrors. In every mirror he sees the pain he caused in other people.”

So personnel files were made public and it was revealed that Cardinal Mahoney tried strenuously to silence abuse victims and keep abusive priests in ministry. Why am I not surprised? Probably if personnel files for accused abusers across the country and the world were released, we’d see a similar pattern and many cardinals, archbishops and bishops would be relieved of their remaining duties.

Doubtless many people would like to see Roger Mahoney go to prison, but prison is expensive. I’d rather spend the money on therapy and drug and alcohol treatment for survivors of abuse. I think the better solution would be to surround Roger Mahoney with real life mirrors of the abuse he facilitated.

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CALIFORNIA
San Bernardino Sun

Posted: 02/02/2013

The horror, the sordidness of the awful abuse of children by figures of spiritual authority is not much assuaged by current Archbishop Jose Gomez relieving Cardinal Mahony of “all public duties” after mounting evidence showed he shielded pedophile priests from law enforcement.

So Mahony won’t be overseeing the Sacrament of Confirmation at Our Lady of the Angels anytime soon. But he is not only still a priest who can perform Mass – he is still one of the 120 cardinals who form the leadership of a church with more than 1.1 billion adherents worldwide, in a line going back to St. Peter.

Given what we now know about Mahony’s active efforts to protect known and suspected sexual abusers in clerical collars, this removal of him from public life is not only not enough – it’s no punishment at all.

And this crime deserves punishment. That was made clear by the heartbreaking letters that were made public last week.

Go to any one of over 100 of them posted last week at la-archdiocese.org. The very first one in this alphabetical order was written by a anonymous parishioner molested as a child at a Colorado Roman Catholic Church summer camp by the Rev. Leonard Abercrombie, who later worked in Los Angeles.

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GERMANY
Vatican Insider

The Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith launches an attack from the columns of German daily “Die Welt”: North America and Europe are involved in a “concerted campaign” to discredit the Catholic Church

Alessandro Alviani
Berlin

The Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Mgr. Gerhard Ludwig Müller, has launched a biting attack of the mood toward the Catholic Church in the U.S. and Europe, comparing it to an anti-Jewish “pogrom” in German weekly Die Welt. “The campaigns which are specifically targeted at discrediting the Catholic Church in the U.S. and Europe have led to clerics in some sectors being publicly insulted in a vulgar way,” the former bishop of Regensburg said. “An artificially instigated anger is building, occasionally echoing the sentiment of the pogroms against Jews in Europe,” he added. Attacks against the Church are launched on many blogs and on television. The instruments adopted in these attacks “recall the struggles of totalitarian ideologies against Christianity.”

In his interview with Die Welt, the cardinal also criticises the process of dialogue that is currently underway between bishops and lay people in dioceses across Germany. The fact that there is dialogue is a positive thing but essential questions must be dealt with instead of “dredging up the same problems every time.” The problems Müller was referring to are for example, the requests by the laity for the priesthood to be opened up to women: this “is not possible,” not because women are worth less than men, but because “it is in the nature of the Sacrament of Order for Christ to be represented within it as husband in relation to wife.”

The rejection of same-sex unions is just as clear-cut: “It is impossible for the Catholic Church to accept a relationship between people of the same sex, as such relations cannot in any way be considered equivalent to marriage,” Müller stated. He also shut the door on the potential abolition of celibacy: “Priestly celibacy corresponds to the example and word of Jesus and has found unique expression through the spiritual experience of the Latin Church.” There is no sign, he added, of the Church wanting to change this, starting with certain mistaken ideas, as if practicing one’ sexuality in or outside marriage were a natural necessity.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Seth H. Langson

It is evident why the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles fought for years against the release of their once-confidential “personnel” files. Approximately twelve thousand (12,000) pages were posted Thursday night to the Archdiocese’s website. Of course you cannot just click on to the files to read them. First you have to go the a page where the Archdiocese defends itself.

They “boast” that there were only 12,000 pages of secret documents and not the 30,000 that had previously reported by some news organizations. You can read the files here: http://clergyfiles.la-archdiocese.org/listing.html.

Both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times have excellent articles, which of course, were written before they had time to study all of the files released. The documents they studied showed that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles leadership had taken affirmative action to protect priests who were sex abusers and to see that they were not prosecuted.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Mike Hunter · February 02, 2013

Call me a hopeless optimist, but I think the developments in LA put more pressure on the Vatican to take action against Bishop Finn in Kansas City.

Don’t misunderstand me: Mahony’s so-called ‘restrictions’ and Curry’s so-called ‘resignation’ are ineffectual symbolism and hollow gestures. Both retain their titles (Cardinal and Bishop, respectively). Both have ever-so-slightly lighter workloads. Both keep their salaries, health insurance, dental coverage, car allowances, and all the rest.

Both will be a little bit less visible. (That, however, may be advantageous for them, given how horrifically they’ve treated hundreds of victims and hundreds of thousands of Catholics.)

Still, something has been done in LA. In contrast, nothing has been done in KC.

One can argue “Mahony and Curry have been deceptive for much longer than Finn.” True, but Finn’s deception – in the Fr. Shawn Ratigan case and others – is far more recent.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Saturday, February 02, 2013

By Michael Clifford

TONY Flannery must have committed some terrible crimes. He is a Redemptorist priest of nearly 50 years standing, who says he is being threatened with ex-communication from the church he has served all his adult life.

Ex-communication is generally reserved for the most grievous of crimes. There are men who have murdered with the most callous intent, yet remain within the fold. There are men who have abused children and managed to avoid being cast out into the spiritual wilderness where the ex-communicated go mad. Yes, indeed, only those sinners who are deigned to be irredeemable, or display a level of evil which suggests they might be possessed, are ejected from the institution’s loving fold.

What grievous crime has this Flannery man committed against his fellow human beings, or even Jesus Christ, through the good offices in the Vatican? Flannery’s crime is to raise questions for discussion within the fold. He has, over the years, asked whether the church’s teachings on contraception are realistic. He has wondered aloud whether there will ever be a position for women priests within the church. On occasion, he has referenced the rather harsh view the Vatican takes towards homosexuality these days.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
LA Observed

By Kevin Roderick | February 2, 2013

The two top editors of the Los Angeles Times sent the staff a memo on Friday afternoon giving kudos to the team that scurried to cover Thursday’s late-breaking release of sexual abuse files by the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Reporter Harriet Ryan is their star of the story.

Subject: FW: Message from Davan Maharaj and Marc Duvoisin

To the staff:

Harriet Ryan was celebrating her birthday with her husband and daughter at a Mexican cantina on Fourth Street last night when her smart phone buzzed with a news alert:

The Los Angeles archdiocese, way ahead of schedule, had just made public a huge trove of long-secret files on priest abuse of children.

And Archbishop Jose Gomez, expressing disgust at the “evil” conduct described in the files, had stripped his predecessor, Cardinal Roger Mahony, of all public duties with the church.

Harriet did what any working mother would do while enjoying a rare night out with her family: She left the restaurant and headed straight for the newsroom.

There, she found Victoria Kim in a controlled frenzy of reporting, putting out calls and downloading the just-released files. Over the next few hours, Harriet and Vic, with help from a band of devoted colleagues, pulled together a remarkably complete, authoritative and flowing account of this latest astonishing turn in the church molestation scandal.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on February 2, 2013

Think of it this way:

Mahony’s punishment is tantamount to Archbishop Gomez taking away Mahony’s key to the Executive Washroom. Now this “prince of the church” has to use the public restroom like the rest of us mere (moral and ethical) peasants.

But hopefully, the damage to Mahony’s credibility will be permanent. In fact, I think he would look quite dashing in jailhouse orange.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on February 2, 2013

It looks as if the LA Archdiocese (in their rush to dump more than 12,000 pages of files after 5 years of legal haggling) has published the contact info for many of their accused clerics.

Did they mean to do this?

Redactions have been an issue for the Archdiocese, who is now getting pounded for redacting the names of low-level priests who covered up abuse. They also “FORGOT” to redact the names of a number of victims. I won’t tell you where those are, out of respect for those victims.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Arquidiócesis de Los Ángeles

Las preguntas de los fieles y algunos miembros de los medios de comunicación indican que sería útil que yo aclarara la situación del Cardenal Roger Mahony y del Obispo Thomas Curry.

El Cardenal Mahony, como arzobispo emérito, y el obispo Curry, como obispo auxiliar, siguen siendo obispos con facultades en la Arquidiócesis de Los Ángeles, con plenos derechos para celebrar los Sacramentos de la Iglesia y servir a los fieles sin restricción.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles

Questions from the faithful and some members of the news media indicate that it would be helpful for me to clarify the status of Cardinal Roger Mahony and Bishop Thomas Curry.

Cardinal Mahony, as Archbishop Emeritus, and Bishop Curry, as Auxiliary Bishop, remain bishops in good standing in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, with full rights to celebrate the Holy Sacraments of the Church and to minister to the faithful without restriction.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Vatican Insider

[What Archbishop Gomez said.]

[What Cardinal Mahony said.]

After his shocking removal, Cardinal Roger Mahony accuses his successor, Jose Gomez, and asks “Why now?”

Alessandro Speciale
Vatican City

A day after he was controversially stripped of all public duties, the former Archbishop of Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger Mahony, has responded to his successor Mgr. José H. Gomez, who decided on the cardinal’s removal last Thursday, in light of the umpteenth case of child molestation in the U.S. Catholic Church.

Gomez’s decision to remove Mahony, who was Archbishop of Los Angeles between 1985 and 2011, has very few precedents in as far as cardinals’ dismissals go. One case that comes to mind is that of the Cardinal of Vienna, Hermann Groer who was accused of child molestation. The Opus Dei prelate has ordered for the cardinal to be stripped of all public duties following the release of confidential church files, containing documents that show how Mahony and other leaders of the nation’s largest Catholic diocese tried to protect as many as 124 priests accused of molesting children, over a long period of time.

Gomez’s move was accompanied by a letter to faithful, in which he admits: “I find these files to be brutal and painful reading.” “The behaviour described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children. The priests involved had the duty to be their spiritual fathers and they failed.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Wall Street Journal

By JENNIFER LEVITZ

The thicket of personnel files released Thursday night by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles showed that several of its priests accused of sexual abuse were sent to New Mexico in the mid-1980s for psychological treatment.

The Servants of Paraclete treatment center in Jemez Springs, N.M., about 60 miles north of Albuquerque, served clergy who had problems such as alcoholism, emotional disorders, or, increasingly from the 1970s on, priests who had been accused of sexual abuse, said Thomas Plante, a psychology professor at Santa Clara University in California who researches sex-offending clergy.

Priests would stay for months in the New Mexico mountain retreat undergoing psychological evaluations and spiritual counseling at the center, known as Foundation House and run by the Servants of Paraclete, according to the personnel file of Michael Baker, a priest who was treated there. The Servants of Paraclete, a Missouri-based religious order founded in 1947, treats Roman Catholic priests who are “facing particular challenges in their vocations and lives,” according to the order’s website.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Diary of a Wimpy Catholic

February 2, 2013 By Max Lindenman

In the summer of 1945, following a three-week trial, a jury convicted Maréchal Philippe Pétain of treason and sentenced him to death. The verdict excited controversy. Though, in four years as France’s chief of state, he had created a generally repressive regime and collaborated with Hitler, there was plenty to be said in Pétain’s favor. During the First World War, he had led French forces in resisting the Germans at Verdun. In the war that followed, he justified seeking peace with Germany with a kind of patriotic realism. The duty of the government, Pétain argued, was not to flee to England, but “to remain in the country, or it could not longer be regarded as the government.”

In Cardinal Roger Mahony’s record as Los Angeles archbishop, it’s possible to see a broadly comparable mixture of good and evil, prescience and stupidity. On the credit side, Mahony presided over the archdiocese in the years when it doubled in size, becoming the largest in the nation. He blazed a trail in reaching out to Latinos, and he did it in a spirit of charity — Rocco Palmo has called the relationship a “love story.”

But Mahony’s record on curbing priestly sex abuse is abysmal. As memos exchanged by the future cardinal and Msgr. Thomas Curry reveal, Mahony effectively shielded three abusive priests from civil authorities. Each of the three priests faced multiple allegations from victims as young as 12. Mahony recognized that some of those allegations amounted to first-degree felonies. Yet when Curry’s plans to keep them out of the courts (and out of the papers) showed an ingenuity that verged on cunning, Mahony approved. After Fr. Michael Baker admitted privately to abusing young boys, Mahony wrote of Curry’s advice, that the information be concealed from psychiatrists, “sounds good — please proceed!”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
National Catholic Reporter

by NCR Editorial Staff | Feb. 2, 2013

To those familiar with the protocols of the Catholic hierarchy, the news was stunning. The archbishop of Los Angeles publicly rebuked his predecessor, a cardinal, for his failures in dealing with the priest sex abuse scandal.

The action by Archbishop Jose Gomez, relieving Cardinal Roger Mahony of “any administrative or public duties,” was remarkable on two levels.

First, it broke with the unspoken but nearly ironclad rule of the culture of Catholic hierarchy that bishops do not publicly criticize other bishops. That courtesy extended even to the most egregious examples of ecclesial malfeasance – the deliberate and persistent hiding of criminal activities by priests. No one to this point had uttered a word against a predecessor, not in New York or Connecticut, not in Philadelphia or Milwaukee, not in Seattle or Santa Fe. There were “mistakes made,” they would say, and offer vacuous apologies. For whatever reasons yet unknown, Gomez broke the code.

Second, the language Gomez used was blunt and unqualified. The behavior he found in the files, he said, was “evil.” The acts themselves and the handling of these matters, as the files revealed, showed more than mistakes made, they showed a “terrible failure.”

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

You must step-up now, President Obama, as leaders in Australia, Ireland and elsewhere have. Enough of the “We must protect kids” sound bites. Many from around the world are seeking your help and signing the petition linked below. There is a national crisis and it is your duty to address it effectively and promptly.

A foreign nation, Vatican City, with its clerical “army” has invaded the USA. Many of its “troops”, rogue priests, have sexually assaulted over 100,000 children in the USA by its own experts’ estimates. Its “commanders”, in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, Kansas City, New York, Chicago, Milwaukee, Manchester, St. Louis, Bridgeport, Baltimore, Washington, DC and many other U.S. cities, have reportedly covered up “crimes against humanity” and overwhelmed local defenses by dominating local political leaders and prosecutors.

The casualties, innocent child victims of sexual assaults, are left on the clerical battlefield for underfunded government agencies to try to assist at taxpayer expense. Its commanders, including Cardinals Mahony, Law, Rigali, Dolan, O’Malley, Wuerl and George, and Bishops Gomez, Bransfield, Finn, Lori, Murphy, Listecki and Chaput, clearly have gotten, and still get, their orders straight from Rome.

This week’s firing of Cardinal Mahony by his junior officer, Archbishop Gomez, obviously at the Pope’s direction, just confirms this. Gomez’ gratuitous negative remarks clearly help to undercut Mahony’s legal defense, in my judgment as an experienced lawyer. Mahony is clearly being singled out by the Vatican’s Opus Dei-types likely for his earlier slights to Mother Angelica and the EWTN clique and similar traditionalist forces. The imminent battle among voting Cardinals over papal succession has just begun in Los Angeles. Are other voting Cardinals paying attention? Which of them will get picked off next? Please see my relevant remarks at http://wp.me/P2YEZ3-gW . …

[Click here for the petition.]

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

More disturbing stories of priests’ molestations of children — and questionable actions by church leaders — emerged in 12,000 pages of once-confidential personnel files.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles posted the documents on its website Thursday night, an hour after a Los Angeles judge ended 5-1/2 years of legal wrangling over the release of the files with an order compelling the church to make the documents public within three weeks.

Victims, their lawyers, reporters and other members of the public spent hours Friday poring through records that stretched back to the 1940s and provided details about the scope of abuse in church ranks never before seen.

The archdiocese of Los Angeles learned in the late 1970s that one of its priests had sexually assaulted a 16-year-old boy so violently that he was left bleeding and “in a state of shock.” The priest said he was too drunk to remember what happened and officials took no further action.

But two decades later, word reached Cardinal Roger M. Mahony that the same priest was molesting again and improperly performing the sacrament of confession on his victim. The archdiocese sprang to action: It dispatched investigators, interviewed a raft of witnesses and discussed the harshest of all church penalties — not for the abuse but for the violation of church law.

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UNITED STATES
The Legal Examiner

Posted by Joe Saunders
February 02, 2013

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles protected priest child molesters from police by moving them out of state at the direction of Cardinal Mahony for decades. Over twelve thousand pages of documents released as a result of civil lawsuits document Cardinal Mahoney’s efforts to mislead law enforcement and parents who suspected that children were being abused and raped.

California has laws that require mental health therapists to report child abuse to authorities. Cardinal Mahony knew that and moved priests suspected of abuse to other states for treatment so that the priests were not at risk of prosecution.

I have seen this same tactic used in Florida and in many other states. For example, the Salesian Order of Catholic priests moved Father Terry O’Donnell from the Tampa campus of Mary Help of Christians School in 2003 in the middle of the school year after the Hillsborough Sheriffs Department began an investigation of O’Donnell based upon reports by parents and students.

The Sheriffs Office discontinued the investigation because Father Terry O’Donnell had been moved out of State and was unavailable for an interview. Another priest at Mary Help of Christians School in Tampa told investigators from the sheriffs office that there was no reason not to believe the reports of abuse by the students. Nevertheless, administrators of the Salesian Order moved Father Terry out ot state to avoid prosection by Florida law enforcement. Don Bosco, the founder of the Salesian Order of priests would never have condoned the criminal behavior of the administrators of Mary Help of Christians.

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CALIFORNIA
KTLA

[with video]

by Christina Pascucci
KTLA 5 Reporter

NORTH HOLLYWOOD (KTLA) – In the wake of revelations that Cardinal Roger Mahony protected priests accused of sex crimes, a group of alleged abuse victims and their families are gathering to demand more action.

A mass is planned for 5 p.m. Saturday (Feb. 2) at St. Charles Catholic Church in North Hollywood, when families’ grievances and calls for action will be heard.

Some of the victims’ families are asking for prosecution of Cardinal Mahony.

“I think he should go to jail,” the father of one alleged victim told KTLA News. “He knew what was going on.”

On Thursday (Jan. 31), Mahony was stripped of his public duties by Catholic Archbishop Jose Gomez. The move was unprecedented in the history of the American Catholic Church.

The action came following the release of court documents which revealed that Cardinal Mahony covered up allegations of extensive sex abuse of young children in the 1980′s.

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IRELAND
Association of Catholic Priests

We want to join the ACP in support of Father Tony Flannery in the hope that his many years of dedicated faithful priestly ministry might be respected in the discussion with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

We are concerned about similar penalties imposed upon American priests such as Fr. Roy Bourgeois and Fr. Bill Brennan, S.J. Not all of our members may agree with the statements of these priests, but they deserve to be treated more compassionately by Vatican officials. The fact that their penalties are more severe than those imposed upon bishops and priests involved in the recent paedophilia scandals certainly raises questions of fairness and justice.

We stand in solidarity with our brother priests in the sense of “Presbyterium Ordinis” from Vatican II and “Pastores Dabo Vobis” from Blessed Pope John Paul II, and we assure them of our prayerful support and remembrance in our Masses.

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IRELAND
Association of Catholic Priests

ACP Meeting with Archbishop Diarmuid Martin and members of the Dublin Diocesan Council of Priests

Tuesday 29 January 2013, 2.30 – 4.15pm

Attendance:
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, Gareth Byrne (chair of Council), Séamus Ahearne OSA, Peter O’Reilly, Ciaran McDermott (members of Council).
Brendan Hoban, PJ Madden, Tim Murphy, Arthur O’Neill, Gerry O’Hanlon SJ, Pádraig McCarthy (members of ACP).
Séamus Ahearne and Peter O’Reilly are also members of ACP.
Apologies from Auxiliary Bishops Éamonn Walsh and Ray Field.

The context of the meeting:
The ACP sought a meeting with the Episcopal Conference; the Conference proposed that a better way would be for meetings with the Councils of Priests in each diocese.

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin welcomed all, and welcomed the opportunity for listening, with respect for difference, out of a shared love for the Church.

Gareth Byrne chaired the meeting, which opened with prayer.
The prepared agenda:
1. Vocations
2. Procedures for dealing with allegations against priests.
3. Impending new translation of Lectionary.
4. Pastoral implications of the current economic situation.
5. Role of priests in appointment of bishops.
6. Renewal of the Church in the Year of Faith.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Zeit

Die Katholische Kirche von L.A. hat in einem einmaligen Vorgang Tausende Dokumente über sexuellen Missbrauch veröffentlicht. Sie belegen das Ausmaß der Vertuschung.

Die katholische Kirche von Los Angeles hat Tausende Akten über mutmaßlichen sexuellen Missbrauch durch Priester der Erzdiözese im Internet veröffentlicht. Die Dokumente belegen, wie die Diözese über Jahre ihre Priester vor den Anschuldigungen schützte und strafrechtliche Ermittlungen zu verhindern suchte.

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BAKERSFIELD (CA)
Bakersfield Now

[with video]

By Jose Gaspar, Eyewitness News
Published: Feb 1, 2013

BAKERSFIELD, Calif.—George Santillan was just 10 years old at the time when he says, a priest at St. John’s Catholic Church in Wasco began to molest him and his younger brother, Howard.

“He would take me in the back and do all kinds of things,” said George Santillan. “I was really confused, I didn’t know what I should do,” said the now retired Santillan.

In a lawsuit filed by the Santillan brothers against the Diocese of Fresno, the brothers claim the alleged abuse was at the hands of Father Anthony Hardegen and lasted between 1959 and 1973.

A judge in Los Angeles recently ordered the Los Angeles Archdiocese to release thousands of pages of files related to sex abuse cases in which children were allegedly molested by numerous priests. The files are a disturbing read and reveal that church leaders, including Cardinal Roger Mahoney never reported suspected cases to police.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Sun-Times

A woman is suing the Chicago Archdiocese for at least $300,000, claiming a priest who performed services at a west suburban church “coerced” her into a sexual relationship.

The plaintiff, listed as Jane Doe, was a member of the St. Francis Xavier Parish in west suburban LaGrange when the priest “coerced” her into sexual acts in 2003, according to the lawsuit filed Friday in Cook County Circuit Court.

The suit claims the plaintiff and the priest, who is also a licensed clinical psychologist, had a close relationship that included counseling for her depression.

The plaintiff alleges the priest took advantage of her “emotional dependence” and engaged in an ongoing sexual relationship with her.

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INDIA
Zee News

Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala): The CBI special court here on Saturday ordered a re-investigation into the 2004 Kaviyoor sex scandal case allegedly involving politicians.

The case related to the suicide of a five-member family of a temple priest following the alleged sexual abuse of a teenage girl member of the family.

Judge P S T Moosath ordered the CBI to probe the alleged role of politicians while allowing a petition filed by Unnikrishnan Namboothri, paternal uncle of the 15-year old victim.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
The Journal (Ireland)

RETIRED ROMAN CATHOLIC Cardinal Roger Mahony has defended his tattered legacy in a sharply worded letter to his successor, one day after Archbishop Jose Gomez stripped him of his administrative duties and bowed to a court order to release thousands of pages of confidential files on sexually abusive priests.

In a letter posted on his personal blog, Mahony challenged Gomez for publicly shaming him and said he developed policies to safeguard children after taking over in 1985, despite being unequipped to deal with the molester priests he inherited.

Mahony had apologised two weeks ago after another release of similar files showed he and other top aides worked behind the scenes to protect the church from the growing scandal, keep offending clerics out of state and prevent public disclosure of sex crimes committed by priests.

Gomez was well aware when he took over in 2011 of the steps Mahony had taken to develop better clergy sex abuse policies and never questioned his leadership until Thursday, Mahony wrote.

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UNITED STATES
Pope Crimes & Vatican Evils…

Paris Arrow

Americans need not pay millions of dollars for one idle Catholic ambassador to attend one pompous Pope’s Mass on Christmas…and for the rest of the year, he sits in the lap of luxury in his villa in Rome and eats Italian pasta with his idle Catholic embassy staff. The USA should follow the lead of Ireland who shut down its Vatican embassy in Rome last year, read here , Ireland leads nations to close Vatican Embassy…beginning the end of the Holy See! Vatican Bank cannot buy souls of SECULAR government officials

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UNITED STATES
Pope Crimes & Vatican Evils…

Updated February 1, 2013

Paris Arrow

Judge Elias’ final ruling on Thursday ordered all secret LA Archdiocese files to be released by February 22. In his letter of defeat, Archbishop Gomez relieved Cardinal Emeritus Mahony of “public duties” (relieve? he’s retired, for Christ’s sake!) And the media is prancing to Vatican Pied Piper Gomez’ tune, except for the LA Times and the Associated Press.

The world must never forget that Cardinal Mahony fought for five years to keep these LA files secret… and that Archbishop Gomez tried to keep them secret up until last Wednesday, January 30, 2013. That’s only 48 hours ago.

Cardinal Mahony is not-above-the-law and he should be prosecuted immediately before he flees the country at the invite of Benedict XVI – just like his criminal pal, Cardinal Bernard Law who fled to Rome at the invite of John Paul II,

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TULSA (OK)
Huffington Post

TULSA, Okla. — A judge has entered a not-guilty plea on behalf of a former janitor charged with making a lewd proposal to a 14-year-old girl at a megachurch in Tulsa.

Israel Castillo said nothing during his arraignment Friday morning. A judge entered the plea on his behalf and scheduled an Aug. 19 trial date.

Castillo claims he did not know the girl was underage when he allegedly sent explicit Facebook messages to her. Prosecutors say Castillo had known the girl for at least two years and met her in person.

If convicted, Castillo could face 20 years in prison.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
ABC 2

[with video]

BALTIMORE (WMAR) –

The principal of Mount Saint Joseph High School has resigned after admitting to inappropriate communication with a student.

According to the school, Principal Barry Fitzpatrick’s resignation was accepted Monday. “Mount Saint Joseph High School requires our faculty and administrator to have only appropriate communications with our students,” said President George Andrews in a statement.

The school recently discovered communications from Fitzpatrick that he acknowledged were inappropriate.

Assistant Principal David Norton the Director of Studies will serve as Acting Principal.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
WBAL

Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Ashley Michelle Williams and WBAL-TV

School officials say a principal of a Baltimore high school has resigned.

School officials of Mount Saint Joseph High School issued a statement Wednesday informing parents that Principal Barry Fitzpatrick had resigned after admitting to having inappropriate communications with a student.

Statement from Mount Saint Joseph President George Andrews Regarding The Resignation of Former Principal Barry Fitzpatrick:

“Yesterday afternoon, I accepted former Principal Barry Fitzpatrick’s resignation, Mount Saint Joseph High School requires our faculty and administration to have only appropriate communication from our students. We recently discovered communications from Mr. Fitzpatrick that he acknowledged were inappropriate, and we accepted his resignation. As required by law, we have reported these communications to the proper authorities.

Assistant Principal David Norton, our Director of Studies, will serve as Acting Principal.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
Daily Mail (United Kingdom)

Principal of all-boys Catholic school forced out after ‘inappropriate’ communication with students

A principal of an all-boys Catholic high school has resigned after school officials discovered ‘inappropriate’ communication between him and at least one of his students.

Barry Fitzpatrick, who has served as principal of Mount St. Joseph High School in Baltimore for the past 18 years, is now under police investigation after this week’s startling discovery.

In a letter to students’ parents on Wednesday the school announced they had accepted his resignation on Tuesday and had contacted the ‘proper authorities.’

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BALTIMORE (MD)
Patch

By Sean Welsh

January 30, 2013

UPDATED (1:55 p.m.)—The principal at a Baltimore City private high school has resigned amid allegations of inappropriate communications with students.

According to Mount St. Joseph’s website, Barry Fitzpatrick has stepped down from his post at the West Baltimore all-boys school.

The following message, from Mount St. Joseph President George Andrews, was posted on the school’s website Wednesday.

Yesterday afternoon, I accepted former Principal Barry Fitzpatrick’s resignation. Mount Saint Joseph High School requires our faculty and administrators to have only appropriate communications with our students. We recently discovered communications from Mr. Fitzpatrick that he acknowledged were inappropriate, and we accepted his resignation. As required by law, we have reported these communications to the proper authorities.

Assistant Principal David Norton, our Director of Studies, will serve as Acting Principal.

Our students mean everything to us. That was immediately clear to me the day I first arrived at the Mount in 1987. As such, we have the highest expectations for our faculty and administrators. And when these standards are not met, we have a responsibility to our boys and their families to take action.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
The Baltimore Sun

By Ian Duncan, The Baltimore Sun
8:04 p.m. EST, January 30, 2013

Barry Fitzpatrick, the principal of Mount St. Joseph High School, resigned Tuesday after officials there discovered “inappropriate” communications with students, the school said in a letter to parents.

The school did not detail the content or the type of communications but said the “proper authorities” had been notified, school president George E. Andrews Jr. wrote in the letter obtained by The Baltimore Sun.

Baltimore police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said he could neither confirm nor deny an investigation.

Fitzpatrick could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday.

Mount St. Joseph, a private all-boys school known for its athletics, has had a turbulent couple of years. In December 2011, its longtime president, Brother James Kelly, died of prostate cancer.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
The American Conservative

By Rod Dreher • February 1, 2013

A reader sends in this posting today from the personal weblog of Cardinal Roger Mahony, in which the retired archbishop of Los Angeles responds to current Archbishop Jose Gomez’s removing him from public duties (though Mahony will still be allowed to celebrate public mass). You will recall that Gomez took his action after church files became public this week, revealing that Mahony and his second in command conspired to hide child-molesting priests from law enforcement. From Mahony’s blog:

Nothing in my own background or education equipped me to deal with this grave problem. In two years [1962—1964] spent in graduate school earning a Master’s Degree in Social Work, no textbook and no lecture ever referred to the sexual abuse of children. While there was some information dealing with child neglect, sexual abuse was never discussed.

Shortly after I was installed on September 5, 1985 I took steps to create an Office of the Vicar for the Clergy so that all our efforts in helping our priests could be located in one place. In the summer of 1986 I invited an attorney-friend from Stockton to address our priests during our annual retreat at St. John’s Seminary on the topic of the sexual abuse of minors. Towards the end of 1986 work began with the Council of Priests to develop policies and procedures to guide all of us in dealing with allegations of sexual misconduct. Those underwent much review across the Archdiocese, and were adopted in 1989.

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CALIFORNIA
KEYT

[with video]

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. –
A major shakeup in the Los Angeles Archdiocese of the Catholic Church includes the regional bishop of Santa Barbara.

The church released roughly 12,000 pages of personnel files of priests accused of sex abuse crimes against children, including personnel files of more than 100 clergy members accused of protecting those priests.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Emilie Elias made clear that the names of the hierarchy members cannot be blacked out. The judge gave the church a February 22nd deadline, however, the church released the files Thursday.

Within hours, Archbishop Jose Gomez stripped retired Cardinal Roger Mahony of all public and administrative duties. Mahony’s former top aide, Thomas Curry, stepped down as Bishop of Santa Barbara.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
KPCC

Lisa Brenner and Gillian Flaccus/AP | February 1st, 2013

UPDATE 3:40 p.m. The public rebuke of retired Cardinal Roger Mahony for failing to take swift action against abusive priests adds tarnish to a career already overshadowed by the church sex abuse scandal but does little to change his role in the larger church.

Mahony can still act as a priest, keep his rank as cardinal and remain on a critical Vatican panel that elects the next pope.

While Archbishop Jose Gomez’s decision to strip Mahony of his administrative and public duties was unprecedented in the American Roman Catholic Church, it was another attempt by the church to accept responsibility for the abuse scandal that has engulfed it.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Voice of the Faithful

February 1, 2013

NEWTON, Mass. – Voice of the Faithful® sees some slight, long overdue justice in the recent removal of retired Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony from public ministry for abetting clergy sexual abuse, a first in the decades-long scandal. Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez announced Mahony’s censure in a letter Jan. 31 in which he stated that, effective immediately, Mahony “would no longer have any administrative or public duties.”

Gomez also stated in his letter that he had accepted the resignation of Santa Barbara Bishop Thomas J. Curry, who as a monsignor under Mahony had discussed with him how to hide molestation of children by priests from parishioners, police and the public.

VOTF has long stressed that Church discipline of hierarchy involved in the clergy sexual scandal is absolutely necessary to show that the Church will not tolerate child sex abuse. Holding bishops accountable also is a crucial step towards renewal and healing. Although Gomez’s action appears little more than a slap on the wrist for Mahony, the move, which is likely unprecedented in Church history, does signal a move in the right direction.

But more is needed. “All secret files must be released,” said Mark Mullaney, VOTF president, “and made public before we gain closure on this deplorable piece of our Catholic fabric, which not only was stained repeatedly by abusive priests, but also—and worse—was covered up by a complicit hierarchy.”

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BELLEVILLE (IL)
News-Democrat

By GEORGE PAWLACZYK — News-Democrat

BELLEVILLE — Raymond Kownacki, whose history of years of sexually abusing children was brought out in testimony during a 2008 civil trial that ended with a $5 million judgment against the Diocese of Belleville, has been booted from the priesthood by Pope Benedict XVI.

According to a Jan. 25 “Official Statement” from Belleville Bishop Edward K. Braxton, Benedict’s decree “means that Mr. Kownacki is no longer a member of the clerical state and has been dispensed ‘pro bono Ecclesiae,’ — for the good of the church.”

Diocese spokesman the Rev. John Myler could not be reached for comment. Braxton does not comment to local media.

Kownacki, 78, who resides in a nursing home in St. Louis County, is the second priest from the diocese to be removed from the priesthood following allegations of sexual abuse of minors. In 2007, Benedict removed Robert J. Vonnahmen, a former priest who was alleged by a diocesan review panel to have abused boys at a church-run camp in the 1970s.

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POLEN
Presseurop

„Tausende von Polen wurden vermutlich von pädophilen Priestern missbraucht“, schreibt Ekke Overbeck, ein niederländischer Korrespondent in Polen, in seinem Buch „Lękajcie się“ (dt: Fürchtet euch“) ed. Czarna Owca 2013.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Morgenweb

Samstag, 02.02.2013

Speyer/Mainz/Trier. Die Bistümer Mainz, Speyer und Trier haben mehrere Hunderttausend Euro an die Opfer sexuellen Missbrauchs in der katholischen Kirche gezahlt. Insgesamt sind in den drei Bistümern bislang 648 000 Euro ausgeschüttet worden, wie eine Umfrage der Nachrichtenagentur dpa ergab. Das Bistum Limburg, das sich ebenfalls über Teile von Rheinland-Pfalz erstreckt, zahlte nach eigenen Angaben 91 000 Euro.

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VATIKAN
Deutschlandfunk

Katholische Kirche beklagt “feindseliges” Weltbild

Erst der Missbrauchsskandal, jetzt die “Pille danach”: Der Chef der Glaubenskongregation im Vatikan, Gerhard Ludwig Müller, hat eine aufkommende “Pogromstimmung” gegen die katholische Kirche kritisiert. Der Humanistische Verband Deutschlands kritisierte die Äußerung als Tatsachenverdrehung auf Kosten der Opfer.

Nachdem die Aufarbeitung des jahrzehntelangen sexuellen Missbrauchs von Minderjährigen durch katholische Geistliche auf Eis gelegt wurde, streitet die katholische Kirche in Deutschland nun über die “Pille danach” an Vergewaltigungsopfer. Der Kölner Erzbischof, Kardinal Joachim Meisner, bezeichnete die Verabreichung des Medikaments als vertretbar. Einige der 435 deutschen Krankenhäuser in katholischer Trägerschaft wollen ihm folgen.

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DEUTSCHLAND
explizit

explizit.net hat bei Professor Dr. Christian Pfeiffer vom Kriminologischen Forschungsinstitut Niedersachsen e.V. zu den Einwänden gegen sein Forschungsprojekt nachgefragt. Im Kommentar zur Aufkündigung der Zusammenarbeit durch die Deutsch Bischofskonferenz waren kritische Stimmen gegen Forschungsansatz und bisherige Forschungsarbeit zu Wort gekommen. Im Folgenden gibt Prof. Pfeiffer Antworten zur Durchführbarkeit, der forschungsethischen Frage und früheren Forschungsprojekten.

Hier die Antworten von Professor Pfeiffer auf vier Fragen:

explizit.net: War es beabsichtigt, dass Opfer, die aus den Personalakten erkennbar werden, für eine Befragung angeschrieben werden sollten? Wie ist das ethisch zu verantworten, Menschen, die evtl. traumatisiert sind, noch einmal mit den Vorfällen, die auch Jahre zurückliegen, zu konfrontieren?

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DEUTSCHLAND
WDR

Sexueller Missbrauch in der römisch-katholischen Kirche

Seit Mitte der 90er Jahre hat das Thema sexueller Missbrauch durch Priester, Ordensleute und angestellte Erzieher weltweit große Aufmerksamkeit erlangt. Bis dahin war es ein Tabuthema. Viele Opfer fühlten sich dadurch ermutigt, ihre traumatischen Erlebnisse öffentlich zu machen. Die meisten von ihnen wurden in katholisch geführten Kinderheimen missbraucht. Die Verantwortlichen schafften es, ihren Opfern glaubhaft einzutrichtern, sie seien böse und schlecht. Deshalb fühlten sich die Kinder schuldig, auch am Missbrauch. Weil es keine Bezugspersonen gab, konnten sich die Kinder niemanden anvertrauen. Sie mussten die Geschehnisse alleine verarbeiten, was vielen nur durch Verdrängung gelang.

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NEBRASKA
The Independent

Associated Press

A former minister already sentenced for sexual assault in Iowa has been given a 30-year sentence in Nebraska.

Fifty-seven-year-old Efrain Umana had pleaded no contest and was convicted of sexually assaulting a minor in Omaha. Court records say he was sentenced on Thursday.

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MINNESOTA
WKBN

by: Adam Ferrise – Online News Manager

A Minnesota man who was awarded a $50,000 settlement in 2005 from the Third Order Regular Franciscans after he told religious officials in St. Paul, Minn., that he was abused by Brother Stephen Baker said Friday he experienced anger and relief when he heard Baker committed suicide Saturday by stabbing himself in the heart.

Douglas Larson, 49, of St. Cloud, Minn., said Friday in a phone interview that he felt he found closure when Baker committed suicide. Victims of sexual abuse are normally unnamed, but Larson said his name should be used because he has nothing to hide and did nothing wrong.

“This is a chapter in my book that is closed,” said Larson, who is battling diminishing eyesight that forced him to retire from his structural drafting career. “He can’t do anything to me or anybody else.”

St. Paul, Minn. attorney Jeff Andersen, a clergy sexual abuse expert civil litigator who said he’s won clergy sex abuse cases in nine states, including for Larson against Baker, confirmed the settlement.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

By Chris Kilpatrick
Saturday, 2 February 2013

Devastated victims of clerical abuse have called for a public inquiry into clerical abuse to be expedited after a priest walked free from court despite being convicted of sexually abusing a teenage girl.

Terrence Rafferty, the former adminstrator of Newry Cathedral and parish priest of Donaghmore, Co Down, escaped a custodial sentence at Craigavon Crown Court on Thursday.

The 50-year-old, with an address at Chestnut Grove in Newry, was sentenced to 100 hours’ community service having previously pleaded guilty to four counts of indecent assault.

The priest was also given a three-year probation order and banned from working with children or vulnerable adults for 10 years.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Boston Globe

[Click here for the files – Los Angeles Archdiocese]

By Jennifer Medina and Laurie Goodstein
| New York Times
February 02, 2013

LOS ANGELES — The church files are filled with outrage, pain, and confusion. There are handwritten notes from distraught mothers, accounts of furious phone calls from brothers, and perplexed inquiries from police following up on allegations of priests sexually abusing children.

Over four decades, particularly under Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, parishioners in the nation’s largest Roman Catholic archdiocese repeatedly tried to alert church authorities about abusive priests in their midst, trusting that the church would respond appropriately.

But the internal personnel files on 124 priests released by the archdiocese under court order on Thursday reveal a very different response: how church officials initially disbelieved them and grew increasingly alarmed over the years, only as multiple victims of the same priest came forward and reported similar experiences. Even then, in some cases, priests were shuttled out of state or out of the country to avoid criminal investigations.

A sampling of the 12,000 pages suggests that Mahony and other top church officials dealt with the accusations of abuse regularly and intimately throughout the last several decades.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

February 2, 2013

As Cardinal Roger M. Mahony defended his handling of the priest abuse scandal on Friday, some activists said Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez’s decision to relieve him of all public duties doesn’t go far enough.

Mahony posted the letter, addressed to Gomez, on his blog Friday afternoon. In the letter, he outlined the steps his administration had taken to address the priest abuse scandal and to create policies to prevent further such abuse.

Addressing Gomez, Mahony wrote: “When you were formally received as our archbishop on May 26, 2010, you began to become aware of all that had been done here over the years for the protection of children and youth. You became our official archbishop on March 1, 2011, and you were personally involved with the compliance audit of 2012 — again, in which we were deemed to be in full compliance.

DOCUMENT: Read Mahony’s letter …

[Updated at 3:17 p.m.: Gomez issued another statement Friday afternoon: It read: “Questions from the faithful and some members of the news media indicate that it would be helpful for me to clarify the status of Cardinal Roger Mahony and Bishop Thomas Curry.

Cardinal Mahony, as Archbishop Emeritus, and Bishop Curry, as Auxiliary Bishop, remain bishops in good standing in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, with full rights to celebrate the Holy Sacraments of the Church and to minister to the faithful without restriction.”]

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
The Irish Sun

By JOHN BRESLIN

AN Irish bishop has quit after being accused of protecting evil priests who molested children.

Top cleric Thomas Curry, of Cavan, resigned from his post in Santa Barbara, California, on foot of thousands of files detailing horrific abuse of kids.

Curry, 70, could face criminal charges as prosecutors in Los Angeles confirmed they are reviewing the documents. His former boss Cardinal Roger Mahony, 76, was sacked and stripped of all public and administrative duties.

Both churchmen are accused of sending pervert priests out of state to avoid police scrutiny.

Mahony and Curry also tried to keep clerics sent away to a Church-run paedophile treatment centre from revealing their deeds to private therapists. The counsellors would have been obligated to report the alleged crimes to the police

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Wall Street Journal

By ALEXANDRA BERZON

In 1992, Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony ordered immediate administrative leave for a priest who was accused of molesting a boy in 1976, but officials supported the priest for years and apparently didn’t report the case to authorities, despite being told that the priest had confessed to sexual relations with boys, according to documents released Thursday night by the archdiocese.

The priest had been interviewed by church officials and initially denied the allegations, but officials wrote to Cardinal Mahony that they believed the accuser’s story.

“Administrative leave at once is indicated in this case—complainant’s allegations are too serious,” Cardinal Mahony wrote in December 1992. The priest, John Dawson, was sent to a series of treatment centers and later admitted to sexual relations with boys, according to treatment providers. Cardinal Mahony later said he would never be allowed back into ministry.

Mr. Dawson, who has been removed from the priesthood, lives in Albuquerque, but couldn’t be reached at two numbers listed as his in church documents, or at two other numbers.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
U.S. Catholic.

By Scott Alessi

When the Archdiocese of Los Angeles was required by a court of law to hand over internal documents related to past cases of sexual abuse by priests, it was pretty clear why the archdiocese never wanted them to see the light of day. The documents show that the archdiocese, and specifically now retired archbishop Cardinal Roger Mahony, deliberately covered up the sexual abuse of children and sheltered priests who were guilty of abusing children from legal action.

Sadly, with all we’ve learned about how the church for years hid these atrocious crimes, that part wasn’t surprising. But this part is: Current Archbishop Jose Gomez issued a public statement that Cardinal Mahony, his predecessor, would be removed from all involvement in archdiocesan administration and would no longer be active in public ministry. Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Curry, who also was implicated in past cover ups of abuse while working under Mahony, has tendered his resignation from archdiocesan administration as well. (In another surprise, Mahony has issued a public response that attempts to save face by indicating how he cleaned up the archdiocese’s handling of abuse cases in more recent years.)

It is worth reading Gomez’s statement, and I think he deserves to be commended for taking this stance. It is rare to see bishops condemn one of their own, and taking public action against Mahony is a bold move that shows Gomez isn’t taking the matter lightly. It is a positive and necessary step for a church that has a long way to go to repair its reputation on this issue and to prove that the sins of the past will never be repeated.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

By Victoria Kim, Ashley Powers and Harriet Ryan, Los Angeles Times
February 1, 2013

The archdiocese of Los Angeles learned in the late 1970s that one of its priests had sexually assaulted a 16-year-old boy so violently that he was left bleeding and “in a state of shock.” The priest said he was too drunk to remember what happened and officials took no further action.

But two decades later, word reached Cardinal Roger M. Mahony that the same priest was molesting again and improperly performing the sacrament of confession on his victim. The archdiocese sprang to action: It dispatched investigators, interviewed a raft of witnesses and discussed the harshest of all church penalties—not for the abuse but for the violation of church law.

“Given the seriousness of this abuse of the sacrament of penance … it is your responsibility to formally declare the existence of the excommunication and then refer the matter to Rome,” one cleric told Mahony in a memo.

The case of Father Jose Ugarte is one of several instances detailed in newly released records in which archdiocese officials displayed outrage over a priest’s ecclesiastical missteps while doing little for the victims of his sexual abuse.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
KPCC

Los Angeles

Vanessa Romo and Evelyn Larrubia | February 1st, 2013

Reaction was fast and fierce to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ release of files relating to its handling of allegations of abuse against 127 priests. The release was part of a settlement five years ago of a class action civil case regarding sexual abuse by clergy.

A victim’s group held a press conference Friday outside the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, calling for further investigation. Lawyers representing alleged victims of abuse decried the manner in which the files were released. Twitter feeds lit up. And Catholics struggled with the revelations that church leaders tried to hide abuse from law enforcement authorities.

“It doesn’t decrease my faith. As a matter of fact, it shows me God’s mercy and love,” said one woman as she walked into mass at St. Charles Borromeo Church in North Hollywood. “These are men, they have harmed a lot of children but they need prayer. More prayer than anyone.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
KTVN

By MICHAEL R. BLOOD and CHRISTINA HOAG
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (AP) – The Archdiocese of Los Angeles released 12,000 pages of personnel files on sexually abusive priests that Archbishop Jose Gomez described as “brutal and painful reading.” While many of the names of the abusers and accusations against them were known, the files reveal previously undisclosed details of how the church transferred priests out of state, sent them to therapists who wouldn’t report crimes and suppressed information from reaching the public. Lawyers for the archdiocese and priests who objected to the records being released did not return phone calls or an email seeking comment. Among the revelations in the trove of documents:

A WARNING NOT HEEDED

It’s well documented in the records that the Rev. Richard Henry had a problem. As far back as March 1988, then-Archbishop Roger Mahony was warned in a confidential memo that the priest’s behavior around young boys – long embraces, rubbing noses, leading them to the privacy of his room – was unsettling to those who witnessed it. Nuns and priests confirmed a pattern: “None of the people we talked to accused him of anything illegal, but all of them feared that other adults seeing this would do so,” the memo concluded. In October that year, Henry was ordered in a letter from a superior, then-Monsignor Thomas Curry, to “not be alone with minors.” The documents taper off in mid-1989. In August 1991, Mahony is notified that Henry is under investigation for child molestation. A detective asks for a list of altar boys at the church but Father Timothy Dyer tells Mahony in a memo, “I have declined to have anyone give him such a list.” Henry served prison time for abusing several boys.

STAY AWAY

The church records show the archdiocese maneuvered behind the scenes to avoid a possible lawsuit against a priest over abuse allegations in Los Angeles. In 2007, five former altar boys from Tucson, Ariz., were awarded $1.5 million each as part of the archdiocese’s $660 million clergy-abuse settlement. The five said they were abused by the Rev. Kevin Barmasse, who was sent to Arizona during the 1980s after he’d been accused of child molestation in Los Angeles. The records show Monsignor Thomas Curry told Mahony in a Nov. 10, 1989, confidential memo that “the young boy involved is now about eighteen, so Kevin should certainly not return for another two years by which time the period for filing law suits will have passed.” Later that month, Mahony advised Barmasse to stay away from Los Angeles. “Your presence in this area … would greatly increase the possibility of a suit against you,” Mahony wrote. Barmasse was never criminally prosecuted.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
LA Observed

By Kevin Roderick | February 1, 2013

There are a couple of things that I think will be remembered about the open letter to Archbishop Jose Gomez that Cardinal Roger Mahony posted today on his personal blog. Neither will help Mahony regain his reputation, I suspect. Mahony bills his blog entry as a reply to Gomez’s statement yesterday expressing remorse for the sexual abuse that occured in the Los Angeles Archdiocese and stripping Mahony of any further public or administrative duties. In his entry, Mahony calls out the archbiship for not saying something sooner:

When you were formally received as our Archbishop on May 26, 2010, you began to become aware of all that had been done here over the years for the protection of children and youth. You became our official Archbishop on March 1, 2011 and you were personally involved with the Compliance Audit of 2012—again, in which we were deemed to be in full compliance.

Not once over these past years did you ever raise any questions about our policies, practices, or procedures in dealing with the problem of clergy sexual misconduct involving minors.

That certainly doesn’t sound very contrite. The National Catholic Reporter notes the unusual nature of this thinly veiled, and unnecessary, swipe at Gomez. “Typically seen as shying away from public criticisms of their peers, Catholic bishops rarely issue public responses to one another’s actions,” the NCR wrote today.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Irish Times

Cardinal Roger Mahony, who retired less than two years ago as the leader of America’s largest Catholic archdiocese, has been removed from all public duties by his successor, Archbishop José Gomez, as the church complies with a court order to release thousands of pages of internal documents that show how the cardinal shielded priests who sexually abused children.

The documents, released as part of a record $660 million settlement in 2007 with the victims of abuse, are the strongest evidence so far that top officials for years purposely tried to conceal abuse from law enforcement officials.

The files, which go from the 1940s to the present, are the latest in a series of revelations that suggest that the church continued to manoeuvre against law enforcement officials even after the extent of the abuse crisis emerged.

Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Curry, who was the vicar for clergy and one of the cardinal’s deputies and adviser on sexual abuse, also stepped down as Bishop of Santa Barbara.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
LA Weekly

By Dennis Romero
Fri., Feb. 1 2013

A day after retired Cardinal and L.A. Archbishop Emeritus Roger Mahony was stripped of his official church duties by his successor, José Gomez, Mahony fired off a letter to the current archbishop defending his actions in the L.A. Archdiocese sex-abuse scandal.

Documents released by the church as part of a 2007 global settlement over abuse allegations indicate that Mahony went along with a plan to transfer accused priests out of state to keep them away from authorities:

Today Mahony said his actions were “standard across the country for all Arch/Dioceses” and that Gomez never before questioned his record:

Not once over these past years did you ever raise any questions about our policies, practices, or procedures in dealing with the problem of clergy sexual misconduct involving minors.
I have stated time and time again that I made mistakes, especially in the mid-1980s. I apologized for those mistakes, and committed myself to make certain that the Archdiocese was safe for everyone.

Unfortunately, I cannot return now to the 1980s and reverse actions and decisions made then. But when I retired as the active Archbishop, I handed over to you an Archdiocese that was second to none in protecting children and youth.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
AFP

LOS ANGELES — A US Catholic cardinal stripped of his duties said Friday he didn’t know how to handle sex abuse claims, as he had not learned about it at college — drawing withering criticism from victims.

Retired Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony wrote on his blog that he was not taught about child sexual abuse, a day after was relieved of all administrative and public duties” by the current archbishop of LA.

On Thursday the LA archdiocese also released files on more than 100 clerics, as required under a 2007 lawsuit deal over alleged sex abuse.

“Nothing in my own background or education equipped me to deal with this grave problem,” Mahony wrote, in an open letter to LA Archbishop Jose Gomez, who succeeded Mahony in 2011.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
DFW Catholic

Los Angeles, Calif., Feb 1, 2013 / 05:22 pm (CNA).- Archbishop José Gomez’s decision to relieve Cardinal Roger Mahony and Bishop Thomas Curry of their duties in the L.A. archdiocese is being welcomed as “the best possible thing he could have done.”

“The archbishop has in one stroke, opened up the doors and let in the sunlight,” historian and author Charles Coulombe told CNA Feb. 1. “It is an enormously difficult task he has taken on…it would have been the case no matter what he did.”

“However, he handled it brilliantly, wisely, pastorally, truthfully, honestly, openly,” he reflected. “Very, very different than what we’re used to here in Los Angeles.”

“I can’t overemphasize how grateful I am that the Holy Father gave us this man.”

On Jan. 31, Archbishop Gomez announced that with the release of personnel files of priests accused decades ago of sexual abuse, his predecessor, the retired Cardinal Mahony, and his one-time vicar for clergy, Bishop Curry, would no longer have official duties in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
God Discussion

By Al Stefanelli
On February 1, 2013

On 22 January 2013, The God Discussion reported on retired Cardinal Roger Mahony being implicated in his role for how the church handled these cases over a period of decades.

Confidential files reveal that Mahoney was troubled by the abuse, but there were also significant delays in cases, as well as willful ignorance to information he received in psychological reports that pointed to additional victims.

In one the issues regarding the Cardinal, Mahoney made personal notes in 1991 on the file of priest named Reverend Lynn Caffoe, who was suspected of sequestering young boys in his room, recording their crotches on videotape, then running up charges for phone sex while the boy was in his presence.

In a letter Mahoney wrote to Pope Benedict XVI, who at the time was the Vatical Cardinal, he said of Caffoe,

“He is a fugitive from justice. A check of the Social Security index discloses no report of his demise, so presumably he is alive somewhere.”

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IRELAND
Irish Times

JOANNE HUNT

Legal proceedings have begun against an Irish missionary priest alleged to have abused an African student at a Spiritan-run school in Sierra Leone.

Elvis Kuteh alleges the priest abused him in the late 1970s when he was a pupil of a school run by the Holy Ghost Fathers, now the Spiritans.

Mr Kuteh, who is in his 40s, now lives in the UK. His solicitor, Michael E Hanahoe and Co, has 12 months in which to serve the summons on the defendant.

If the case proceeds, this will be the first time an African will have abuse allegations against an Irish missionary priest heard in Ireland.

Abuse campaigner Mark Vincent Healy, who is supporting Mr Kuteh’s case, said the case was being brought under the Brussels Convention.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
KABC

[with video]

Carlos Granda

LOS ANGELES (KABC) — Cardinal Roger Mahony is speaking out after being stripped of all public duties, while victims are speaking out about the release of the clergy abuse files.

On Thursday, Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez said in a statement that Mahony no longer had any administrative or public duties. Mahony said in a letter posted on his blog, “Nothing in my own background or education equipped me to deal with this grave problem.”

Documents released two weeks ago showed that in the 1980s, Mahony and others tried to hide some of the sexual abuse cases.

“While there was some information dealing with child neglect, sexual abuse was never discussed,” Mahony said. “Unfortunately, I cannot return now to the 1980s and reverse actions and decisions made then. But when I retired as the active Archbishop, I handed over to you an Archdiocese that was second to none in protecting children and youth.”

Esther Miller was 16 when she says Father Michael Nocita first sexually abused her. She says she attempted suicide the following year.

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UNITED STATES
San Francisco Chronicle

David Wiegand

Published 4:35 pm, Friday, February 1, 2013

Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God: Documentary. 9 p.m. Monday HBO.

What did the Vatican know and when did it know it?

That’s the first question posed in Oscar winner Alex Gibney’s new documentary, “Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God,” airing Monday on HBO. The second question is when did the church start covering it up?

While we have become aware of multiple cases of priests molesting children in recent years, the church received its first abuse complaint against a Spanish priest in the fourth century. In more recent times, Gibney contends, the Vatican knew about pedophilic priests for decades and engaged in a campaign to sweep the matter under the rug.

What was once seen as primarily an American issue is now viewed, sadly, as universal. Ever since the Boston Globe reported extensively in 2002 on the magnitude of the problem and the church’s elaborate and highly effective campaign to cover it up, we have been given a steady stream of reminders in the media of what the church is doing to defend itself, how much it is costing the church to settle various legal cases and, most of all, how many lives have been affected.

Gibney gets to the big picture, but his real focus is what sets “Mea Culpa” apart from other films about pedophile priests: A group of men who, as deaf students at St. John’s School in Milwaukee, were routinely molested by a deceptively genial priest named the Rev. Lawrence Murphy in the 1950s and ’60s. It is estimated that he molested more than 200 children at the school before persistent complaints by the former students prompted the church to do what it did too often with pedophile priests: move them away in the hope the complaints would stop.

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CALIFORNIA
Pasadena Star-News

THE horror, the sordidness of the awful abuse of children by figures of spiritual authority is not much assuaged by current Archbishop Jose Gomez relieving Cardinal Mahony of “all public duties” after mounting evidence showed he shielded pedophile priests from law enforcement.

So Mahony won’t be overseeing the Sacrament of Confirmation at Our Lady of the Angels anytime soon. But he is not only still a priest who can perform Mass – he is still one of the 120 cardinals who form the leadership of a church with more than 1.1 billion adherents worldwide, in a line going back to St. Peter.

Given what we now know about Mahony’s active efforts to protect known and suspected sexual abusers in clerical collars, this removal of him from public life is not only not enough – it’s no punishment at all.

And this crime deserves punishment. That was made clear by the heartbreaking letters that were made public last week.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony responded Friday to Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez’s decision to relieve him of all public duties over his mishandling of clergy sex abuse of children, saying he did all he could to protect children.

Mahony posted the letter, addressed to Gomez, on his blog Friday afternoon. In the letter, he outlined the steps his administration had taken to address the priest abuse scandal and to create policies to prevent further such abuse.

Addressing Gomez, Mahony wrote: “When you were formally received as our archbishop on May 26, 2010, you began to become aware of all that had been done here over the years for the protection of children and youth. You became our official archbishop on March 1, 2011 and you were personally involved with the compliance audit of 2012 — again, in which we were deemed to be in full compliance.

DOCUMENT: Read Mahony’s letter

“Not once over these past years did you ever raise any questions about our policies, practices, or procedures in dealing with the problem of clergy sexual misconduct involving minors,” Mahony added.

Mahony also reminded Gomez: “I have stated time and time again that I made mistakes, especially in the mid-1980s. I apologized for those mistakes, and committed myself to make certain that the archdiocese was safe for everyone.

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