ABUSE TRACKER

AUSTRALIA
The Age

February 24, 2013

Nick McKenzie, Richard Baker

THE Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne has removed a leading Australian priest who sexually preyed on a disabled and vulnerable woman.

In an embarrassing backflip, the Melbourne Archdiocese has removed Father Tom Knowles from one of the nation’s busiest churches just weeks after reinstating him.

The move comes after revelations in Fairfax Media last month that a confidential church inquiry had found he had an improper sexual relationship with disabled woman Jennifer Herrick over a 14-year period in New South Wales.

As a result of this inquiry, Father Knowles was put on administrative leave for 16 months but was returned to active ministry in January this year.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 23 February 2013 (VIS) – The freedom of the College of Cardinals, which, by law, is responsible for providing for the election of the Roman Pontiff, has always been strongly defended by the Holy See as the guarantee of a choice based solely on deliberations directed toward the good of the Church.

Over the course of the centuries, Cardinals have had to face many forms of pressures, exerted upon individual electors or upon the College of Cardinals itself, that sought to influence their decisions, following a political or worldly logic.

If in the past the so-called powers, i.e., States, sought to influence the election of the Pope, today there is an attempt to do this through public opinion, which is often based on judgements that do not capture the typically spiritual aspect of this moment that the Church is living.

It is deplorable that, as we draw closer to the moment that the Conclave will begin and the Cardinal electors will be held—in conscience and before God—to freely express their choice, there is a widespread distribution of often unverified, unverifiable, or even completely false news stories that cause serious damage to persons and institutions.

Never before as at this moment are Catholics focusing on what is essential: praying for Pope Benedict, praying that the Holy Spirit might enlighten the College of Cardinals, and praying for the future Pope, confident that the future of the barque of Peter is in God’s hands.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Feb. 23, 2013

On Thursday, a major Italian newspaper carried a sensation report alleging that a secret Vatican document commissioned in the wake of last year’s leaks scandal had identified a shadowy “gay lobby” within the institution, suggesting that its influence might have been in the background of Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to resign.

In the immediate wake of the report, Vatican spokespersons basically said “no comment,” stressing that they couldn’t confirm or deny the contents of a report that was supposed to be eyes-only for Benedict XVI.

Today, however, the Vatican’s Secretariat of State lashed out in general terms against media coverage in the run-up to the conclave that it described as “unverified, unverifiable or completely false news stories, that cause serious damage to persons and institutions.”

The complete text of today’s statement, issued in both Italian and English, is below.

* * *
Communiqué of the Secretariat of State

The freedom of the College of Cardinals, which is responsible for providing, under the law for the election of the Roman Pontiff, has always been strongly defended by the Holy See, as a guarantee of a choice that was based on evaluations addressed solely for the good of the Church.

Through the course of the centuries, Cardinals have had to face many forms of pressures exerted upon individual electors or on the College of Cardinals. Such pressures had as their goal to condition the decisions, following a political or worldly logic.

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CITTA DEL VATICANO
La Repubblica

Il portavoce della Santa Sede Lombardi critica i mezzi di comunicazione. Parla di “maldicenza” e di “calunnia” e di “pressioni inaccettabili per condizionare l’esercizio del dovere di voto da parte dell’uno o dell’altro membro del Collegio dei cardinali”

“Pregherò per l’Italia”. Con queste parole il Papa si è rivolto al presidente della Repubblica Giorgio Napolitano nell’incontro, di circa venti minuti, che si è tenuto oggi in Vaticano. Un incontro segnato da forte commozione quello con il capo dello Stato, accompagnato dalla moglie Clio, che coincide in una giornata intensa in Vaticano. La Segreteria di Stato della Santa Sede ha pubblicato un comunicato in cui si deplora il tentativo di condizionare i cardinali, in vista del Conclave, con la diffusione di “notizie spesso non verificate, o non verificabili, o addirittura false, anche con grave danno di persone e istituzioni”. Un chiaro riferimento a quanto scritto sugli intrighi nelle alte sfere del Vaticano.

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VATICAN CITY
WHBF

VATICAN CITY (AP) – The Vatican has lashed out at the media for what it says are a series of defamatory and false media reports before the conclave to elect Pope Benedict XVI’s successor, saying they’re an attempt to influence the election.

The Vatican secretariat of state said in a statement Saturday the Catholic Church has for centuries insisted on the independence of cardinals to elect their pope. Now, it said, “the weight of public opinion is in play.”

It deplored that cardinals have been exposed to “a diffusion of news that is often unverified, unverifiable and actually false, with serious damage to people and institutions.”

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VATICAN CITY
ABC News

[with video]

By SPIEGEL Staff

Feb. 23, 2013

With Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation drawing closer, the struggle for power in the Vatican has gotten underway in earnest. The church badly needs to reform itself, but with Ratzinger lurking in the shadows, will it be able to?

Naked and goaded viciously by hornets and wasps, his blood sucked by loathsome worms. Such was the fate of a pope in Dante’s “Divine Comedy” who “by his cowardice made the great refusal.”

Benedict XVI, in short, knew what could happen to one who rebelled against a centuries-old tradition in a church in which suffering is far from foreign. But he also knew that it wasn’t just a matter of his own suffering — it was a matter of the exhaustion, weakness and sickness of the church at large.

The pope from Bavaria has given up. Nevertheless, when he announced his resignation last Monday, hastily and almost casually mumbling the words as if he were saying a rosary, as if he were returning the keys to a rental car rather than the keys to St. Peter, there was still a sense of how deeply his move has shaken the Catholic empire.

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VATICAN CITY
France 24

The Vatican on Saturday criticised Italian media of ‘misinformation’ concerning reports of blackmail and corruption within the upper echelons of the Vatican, just days before Pope Benoit XVI gets ready to step down.

The Vatican on Saturday condemned Italian media reports of intrigue, corruption and blackmail among senior prelates, saying these were meant to pressure cardinals ahead of their vote to elect Pope Benedict XVI’s successor.

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi dismissed as “gossip, disinformation and sometimes calumny” the reports, which are linked to an investigation by a committee of cardinals last year over a series of damaging leaks of confidential papal documents.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

With the papal election just around the corner, international media underline the “loneliness of the short distance Pope”

Vatican Insider staff
Rome

The international press is chokablok with speculations on a secret Vatileaks dossier that is so “explosive” it led to Benedict XVI’s resignation and on the shadow of the various scandals which is hanging over the upcoming Conclave. Just a few days after the Pope began his Lenten retreat the media is talking about “the loneliness of the short distance Pope”.

British newspaper The Guardian published an article titled “Papal resignation linked to inquiry into ‘Vatican gay officials’, says paper”, saying that although the Vatican’s spokesman has not confirmed the document, “a potentially explosive report has linked the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI to the discovery of a network of gay prelates in the Vatican.” The dossier’s role in the Vatileaks scandal is also mentioned by the Irish Times, while The Daily Telegraph published an article with the title: “Vatican conclave tainted by scandal before it even begins”. The article underlines how the Vatileaks scandal has now affected Cardinal Timothy Dolan who was called for questioning over his handling of the sex abuse in Milwaukee. The newspaper then points out that Dolan joins the list of cardinals whose reputations have been clouded but will still be voting in the Conclave. The others are Mahony, Rigali, Danneels and Brady. “If they banned all the cardinals who have mismanaged sex abuse or have been involved in other unsavoury business, they’d end up holding the conclave in a broom cupboard,” a Vatican analyst told The Daily Telegraph. Meanwhile, Reuters published a special report on “The loneliness of the short distance pope”, quoting anonymous Vatican sources who paint a picture “is of a serious intellectual who let himself become isolated in the Vatican, ill at ease with the day-to-day running of the Church.”

In France, Le Monde focused on the rumours going round about an internal dossier on the Vatileaks case, in an article titled “Fresh rumours on the reasons for the Pope’s resignation”. Le Point published an article titled “The Vatican prepares for an unusual cohabitation”, discussing the fact that Benedict XVI “will remain inside the walls of the small State, not far from his successor and his previous duties” after he resigns. “Benedict XVI will let his successor deal with the Lefebvrian issue”, Liberation declares in the title of one of its articles. Germany’s Die Welt newspaper wrote about the tweeting ban during the Conclave, in an article titled “Which little bird will tell during the papal election?”, which claims “speculations are increasing regarding the possibility of someone violating the code of pontifical secrecy, revealing who the next Pope will be.” “Ratzinger has secularised the papacy” is the title Zeit gave to one of its articles which claims the Pope “restored the sacred structure of the Church in reason terms.”

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MINNESOTA
Mankato Free Press

By Robb Murray Free Press Staff Writer

— John Thavis, a Mankato-born journalist who spent 20 years covering the Vatican for the Catholic News Service, was visiting Rome recently when the biggest papal news in recent years broke.

Thavis was in Rome to touch base with the sources he used for his new behind-the scenes book, “The Vatican Diaries,” when Pope Benedict stunned the religious world by announcing he’d was resigning — and the first pope to do so in 400 years.

No one outside the pope’s inner circle knew this news was coming.

But Thavis said he suspected this was coming.

“I had thought for more than a year that the pope might resign,” he said. “He had said, in certain circumstances, it’s your duty to resign.”

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

In this week’s editorial, Fr. Federico Lombardi, sj, speaks of the external challenges and pressures put on the Church since the resignation of Pope Benedict and leading up to the upcoming conclave. Fr. Lombardi is the director of the Press Office of the Holy See. Read Vatican Radio’s English translation below.

The journey of the Church in these last weeks of Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificate and up until the election of the new Pope — passing through the sede vacante and the conclave — is very demanding, given the newness of the situation. We do not — and we rejoice — have to carry the pain of the death of a much-loved Pope, but we have not been spared another test: that of the multiplication of the pressures and considerations that are foreign to the spirit with which the Church would like to live this period of waiting and preparation.

There is no lack, in fact, of those who seek to profit from the moment of surprise and disorientation of the spiritually naive to sow confusion and to discredit the Church and its governance, making recourse to old tools, such as gossip, misinformation and sometimes slander, or exercising unacceptable pressures to condition the exercise of the voting duty on the part of one or another member of the College of Cardinals, who they consider to be objectionable for one reason or another.

In the majority of cases, those who present themselves as judges, making heavy moral judgments, do not, in truth, have any authority to do so. Those who consider money, sex and power before all else and are used to reading diverse realities from these perspectives, are unable to see anything else, even in the Church, because they are unable to gaze toward the heights or descend to the depths in order to grasp the spiritual dimensions and reasons of existence. This results in a description of the Church and of many of its members that is profoundly unjust.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
CNN

By Wayne Drash, CNN

(CNN) – Told by two families that a visiting priest was suspected of molesting their children in 1988, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles did not immediately notify police. Instead, Cardinal Roger Mahony’s right-hand man alerted the priest – a heads-up that allowed him to flee the country for Mexico.

He remained in the priesthood there for another 21 years, allegedly continuing to molest. He has denied the accusations and remains a fugitive.

Newly released church documents show the behind-the-scenes machinations of top officials within the Los Angeles archdiocese making decisions on how to deal with pedophile priests, hindering police investigations and saying, in private, something completely different than what they said in public.

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IRELAND
The Irish Sun

By ANN MOONEY

A PRIEST and former headmaster who abused a boy for eight years has been caged.

Fr Vincent Mercer, 66, was previously convicted of indecently assaulting boys between 1970 and 1977.

He received a three-year suspended sentence at Naas Circuit Criminal Court in 2005.

Yesterday, having pleaded guilty at Cork Circuit Criminal Court to 15 sample counts of sexually assaulting the boy on dates between 1986 and 1994, he was sentenced to three years in jail.

But he will only serve half — with 18 months suspended.

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UNITED STATES
Irish Examiner

Saturday, February 23, 2013

The American cardinal who was accused of turning a blind eye to the crimes of Irish paedophile priest Oliver O’Grady will today be questioned about a Mexican priest believed to have molested 26 children.

By Stephen Rogers and Nicole Winfield

Cardinal Roger Mahony, the former Archbishop of Los Angeles, hit the headlines here when it was claimed he transferred O’Grady from diocese to diocese to mask his abuse of children.

O’Grady would eventually serve seven years in a US prison before returning to Ireland. He was sentenced to three years in prison last year when he was caught with a large haul of child pornography.

Now Cardinal Mahony is in the headlines once more. Last month, a Los Angeles court ordered hundreds of files detailing the activities of priests accused of sex abuse. The files show the cardinal and other top archdiocese officials manoeuvred behind the scenes to shield accused priests and protect the Church from a growing scandal while keeping parishioners in the dark.

Today, as part of a clerical abuse case, he will be questioned under oath about a Mexican priest, Rev Nicolas Aguilar Rivera, who visited his diocese in the late 1980s. He will be asked how he managed the Mexican priest during a nine-month stay during which the alleged abuse of 26 children took place. The Mexican priest, now defrocked, is still on the run.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Niall O’Connor– 23 February 2013

A MAN has told how an abusive priest, who was also a family friend, robbed him of his childhood.

Fr Vincent Mercer (66), of Black Abbott, Kilkenny, had caused him “mental pain and torture” and a “living nightmare” which had lasted over 20 years, the victim told Cork Circuit Criminal Court.

“As a young child I was very happy but sadly in 1986 at the tender age of 11 my life changed,” he said.

“I was robbed of my childhood – I was abused by a very close family friend, by a Dominican priest Fr Vincent Mercer.

“For over 20 years I have suffered mental pain and torture that Fr Mercer imposed upon me.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
NBC News

[with video]

By Tracy Connor, Staff Writer, NBC News

Los Angeles’ retired Cardinal Roger Mahony, who was rebuked last month for his handling of the sex-abuse crisis, suggests he was “scapegoated” in a blog post ahead of two important dates: his Saturday deposition in a lawsuit alleging that the church hierarchy protected a priest accused of molesting children and his trip to Rome to help pick the next pope.

The high-profile “prince of the church” is at the center of an outcry over several scandal-tainted cardinals being allowed to help choose who will succeed Pope Benedict XVI at next month’s conclave at the Vatican.

Ireland’s Sean Brady, Belgium’s Godfried Danneels and Philadelphia’s Justin Rigali have all been pilloried in the Italian press over allegations they failed to protect children from pedophiles — but it’s Mahony who has drawn the most ire.

A group called Catholics United started a petition against his attendance at the conclave. And an Italian consumer group requested Rome prosecutors open a criminal investigation into Mahony if he travels to the Vatican, the news agency ANSA reported Friday.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
ABC News

Feb 23, 2013

By David Wright

Cardinal Roger Mahony is clearly excited about his trip to Rome.

On the eve of the cardinal’s sworn deposition in a lawsuit over a priest accused of molesting 26 boys in his archdiocese in 1987, Mahony sent this, his 13th tweet, to his 979 followers:

@CardinalMahony Just a few short hours before my departure for Rome. Will be tweeting often from Rome, except during the actual Conclave itself. Prayers!

The cardinal doesn’t mention that before he boards the plane he’ll have to give a 4 hour deposition in the case of Father Nicolas Aguilar-Rivera, who fled to Mexico shortly after a top Mahony aid warned the cardinal the pedophile priest was likely to be arrested.

Mahony’s successor Archbishop Jose Gomez publicly rebuked the cardinal for his mishandling of this and dozens of other cases.

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GERMANY
Spiegel

By Peter Wensierski

Progressive Catholic theologian Hans Küng, whose authority to teach Catholic theology was rescinded by the Vatican in 1979, spoke to SPIEGEL about the challenges facing the next pope and the need for reform of the Catholic Church.

SPIEGEL: What will change now that Pope Benedict XVI has resigned?

Hans Küng: There is now a realization that a pope should step down when the time has come. Joseph Ratzinger made it very clear that he could no longer fulfill his duties. His predecessor felt he had to turn his death into a show. Fortunately, Benedict chose another way, in order to demonstrate that when a pope is no longer capable of doing his job, he should give it up. This is exactly how the office should be approached. In John Paul II’s final years, we weren’t led by a pope so much as by a curia, which governed the Church in his place.

SPIEGEL: Who would you like to see lead your Church as pope?

Hans Küng: A pope who is not intellectually stuck in the Middle Ages, one who does not represent mediaeval theology, liturgy and religious order. I would like to see a pope who is open first to suggestions for reform and secondly, to the modern age. We need a pope who not only preaches freedom of the Church around the world but also supports, with his words and deeds, freedom and human rights within the Church — of theologians, women and all Catholics who want to speak the truth about the state of the Church and are calling for change.

SPIEGEL: Who is your ideal candidate for the office of pope?

Hans Küng: If I were to name anyone, he would most certainly not get elected. But background should not play a role. The best man for the job should be elected. There are no more candidates who belonged to the Second Vatican Council. In the running are candidates who are middle of the road and toe the Vatican line. Is there anyone who won’t simply continue on the same path? Is there anyone who understands the depth of the Church’s crisis and can see a way out? If we elect a leader who continues on the same path, the Church’s crisis will become almost intractable.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

LISTEN UP, PLEASE, ALL VOTING CARDINALS!

Truth always seems so absent at the Vatican. Joseph Ratzinger leaves the papacy for his extensively refurbished convent as he arrived in Rome over thirty years before–up to his eyeballs in lies. The latest is the leaked claim he, and his constant companion, Georgeous Georg, whom the Pope just boosted suddenly into an Archbishopric, were just “shockingly informed” that a gay clique live on their tiny campus. Is it any surprise the bold butler seemed to distrust Georg? Next the Pope will be “shocked” when he learns some in the clique speak German as well as Italian. Really, your Holiness, you can find a better way to duck the dark truths rapidly being unveiled. The Gospels tell us the Apostles were often weak men. But few of them seem as bad as some of their purported successors. Who knows, though, Jesus was talking to someone when he demanded children be protected?

This last ditch effort by Benedict to blame his Vatican’s endless sins on gay persons is, at least, consistent for with his opportunistic career pattern and his early Third Reich formation. He arrived at the Vatican after helping feed his old “friend”, Hans Kung, to John Paul II’s inquisitorial lions in 1980. Fr. Hans Kung was too smart and intrepid, though, for both of these shameful and ambitious hierarchs whose constant concern for clerical child abusers is being sickenly disclosed on an almost daily basis. Typically gracious and candid, Fr. Kung spoke of his former university colleague, Joseph Ratzinger, this week as reported here at:

[Spiegel]

The seemingly unending and substantially unaddressed Vatican scandals of child abuse cover-ups, sexual blackmail, financial corruption and managerial incompetence have reached a tipping point making resignation the only option apparently. Shortly, on March 1, Cardinals reportedly will be told secretly what is in the confidential report of the three octogenerian Cardinal survivors of Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and Franco. They have seen it all before, no doubt.

The next Pope will surely be bogged down for years in ongoing worldwide governmental investigations, civil litigation and criminal prosecutions of the Church’s hierarchy that are now beginning to mushroom. These challenges are already burdened by the overall dark legacy left by ex-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and his Polish predecessor, so concisely summarized by Dominican priest, Matthew Fox, a student of key theologian, M.-D. Chenu, who theologically guided Joseph Ratzinger and Karol Wotyla at Vatican II, accessible here:

[Huffington Post]

Here’s what well-advised Cardinals who want to survive can and should do, in my view as an experienced international lawyer and lifelong Catholic.

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NEDERLAND
NOS

Het schandaal rond het grootschalig kindermisbruik kost de Rooms-Katholieke Kerk in Nederland bijna 30 miljoen euro. Dat meldt NRC Handelsblad op basis van eigen onderzoek.

Van de 30 miljoen is 19,2 miljoen euro smartegeld voor de slachtoffers. De kosten van het klachtenmeldpunt en de commissie-Deetman, die de Kerk zelf moet betalen, bedragen 10,5 miljoen euro.

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VATICAN CITY
CNN – YouTube

Published on Feb 22, 2013

Who has temporarily taken over at the Vatican until a new pope is named? CNN’s Brian Todd reports.

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VATICAN CITY
AFP

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican on Saturday condemned Italian media reports of intrigue, corruption and blackmail among senior prelates, saying these could be a form of pressure to sway voting in next month’s conclave to elect Pope Benedict XVI’s successor.

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi dismissed as “gossip, disinformation and sometimes calumny” the reports, which are linked to an investigation by a committee of cardinals last year over a series of damaging leaks of confidential papal documents.

In a statement on Vatican radio’s website, Lombardi also referred to the upcoming conclave saying there was “unacceptable pressure to condition the vote of one or other member of the college of cardinals, who might be disliked for one reason or another”.

“There are people who are trying to take advantage of this moment of surprise and disorientation of weak spirits to sow confusion and discredit the Church and its government,” Lombardi said.

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VATICAN CITY
BBC News

The Vatican’s chief spokesperson has criticised the media for reporting “misinformation” about the Church.

Father Federico Lombardi said some were trying to profit from a time of disorientation in the Catholic Church to spread “gossip” and “slander”.

Father Lombardi made the comments in an editorial on the Vatican radio website.

Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation, the first by a pope in nearly 600 years, takes effect on Thursday. His decision surprised many within the Church.

There have been recent articles in the Italian and international media suggesting intrigue and corruption in the Church.

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CANADA
AlterNet

February 21, 2013 |

Pope Benedict’s legacy will be forever tied to it. Penn State’s lawyers are offering legal settlements over it. Adults who knew perpetrators for years still struggle with it. And now new research suggests that some people are born with brains ‘wired’ for sexual attraction to children—or pedophilia—a propensity that’s further shaped by life experiences and often cannot be controlled.

“Whatever the chain of events is, the chain begins before birth,” said James M. Cantor, a University of Toronto professor of psychiatry whose research team has made a series of startling correlations finding that pedophiles are likely to share physical attributes, such as slightly lower IQs, shorter body height, left-handedness and less brain tissue.

“There is no way to explain the findings that we get for pedophelia without mentioning or without including biology,” he recently told Canada’s Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers. “It is inescapable at this point. We cannot rule out psycho-social influences, but we cannot have a complete theory that cannot explain these non-obvious but but exquisitely important biological findings.”

Cantor’s findings have become big news not just because pedophilia is seen as one of the worst crimes—and its scandals and cover-ups don’t seem to end, whether in the Roman Catholic church or football-protecting universities. The idea that moral—and immoral—behavior has a basis in biology is the latest twist in the age-old debate of whether nature or nurture drives human action. For much of the 20 th century, psychologists looked more to the nurture side of the equation. But 21 st century science, with brain-scan imaging and computing power to analyze big data, are suggesting that both factors—one’s genes and one’s upbringing—shape human sexuality.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail

Former evangelical church minister is jailed for 15 years after subjecting family to shocking sexual abuse

By Paul Milligan

A former evangelical church minister who subjected his family to long term cruelty and sex abuse was jailed for 15 years today by a judge who called him ‘bullying and tyrannical.’

The 40-year-old had been convicted earlier this month of raping his wife and stepdaughter and being cruel to both his stepchildren between 1995 and 2010.

At one stage, early on in the man’s relationship with the mother and two children, social services were involved with the family – but did not detect what was going on.

Jailing the man at Gloucester Crown Court today Judge Jamie Tabor QC said that by the time the man married his wife he had already developed into ‘a controlling husband and stepfather.’

Judge Tabor said the man had behaved in a tyrannical manner to the wife and her son and daughter, who were very young when the relationship started in 1995.

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WASHINGTON
Q13

SEATTLE — Former Seattle church minister and singer Timothy Dampier was sentenced Friday to 22 years in prison for molesting and raping nearly a dozen boys between 1997-2011.

Standing before a courtroom full of his victims and their families, Dampier told them he was remorseful for his crimes.

Dampier met his victims working as a minister and musician at several local churches and Seattle-area youth organizations. Dampier had been employed by the Bellevue Boys and Girls Club when the allegations came to light.

“It makes me so mad he would use the church to grab and take advantage of kids, taking them into your private space; it makes me sick,” said Kia Pierce, the sister of one victim.

Pierce’s brother, Kenny McCraney, told his pastor, the Rev. R.L. Manaway, about the abuse, but Manaway didn’t report it to police. It wasn’t until McCraney told the leader of another church that the investigation started.

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WEST VIRGINIA
WOWK

[with video]

By April Kaull, Anchor

A substitute teacher and pastor in Mason County is charged with two counts of sexual abuse.

James Paul Hadinger, 44, of Gallipolis Ferry, was arrested on Thursday, Feb. 21. He was charged with two counts of sexual abuse by a parent, guardian, custodian or person in a position of trust to a child.

Hadinger is accused of sexually abusing an underage girl from an area junior and senior high school. According to police, Hadinger took the victim to an abandoned building late one night earlier in the month, where the alleged abuse happened.

Hadinger was also a preacher at Faith Gospel Church in Gallipolis Ferry, and led several youth groups at the church.

According to the Mason County Sheriff’s Department, Hadinger confessed to the alleged incident.

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CALIFORNIA
The New York Times

By JENNIFER MEDINA and LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Published: February 22, 2013

ANAHEIM, Calif. — For decades, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony was the convener and the star of the nation’s largest annual gathering of Roman Catholics, which opened here on Thursday.

This year, though, Cardinal Mahony was nowhere to be seen at the gathering, the Religious Education Congress. His workshop on immigration was canceled. The cardinal was relieved of his public duties last month by his successor after the release of 12,000 pages of internal church files revealing how Cardinal Mahony protected priests accused of sexually abusing minors.

In a rare breach of the deference American bishops usually grant one another, the current archbishop of Los Angeles, José H. Gomez, said he found the documents “brutal and painful” reading. Cardinal Mahony soon shot back, posting a bitter open letter to Archbishop Gomez on his blog.

With Cardinal Mahony set to fly to Rome next week to elect a new pope, the prelates’ duel in the country’s largest archdiocese has set off shock waves in the church. Catholics in Los Angeles are re-evaluating the cardinal’s legacy, and newspapers in Italy are running articles asking whether the disgraced cardinal should attend the papal conclave.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on February 22, 2013

Because if you can’t take a five-time credibly accused priest predator off of your website, how do we know you can follow child safety guidelines?

This weekend in Anaheim, more than 40,000 people are descending on the Convention Center for the Los Angeles Archdiocese RECongress, billed as “the largest annual gathering of its kind in the world.” The three-day conference, which started in the 1920s as a one-day gathering, has exploded into a three-day Catholic tent revival with entertainment, speakers, masses, events and teen dances. You can read the history for yourself here.

The problem? A founding organizer—who is prominently honored all over the website—is a predator. Leland Boyer is not just any priest perpetrator, he’s one of the priests whose file was a part of the LA Archdiocese “Document Dump” earlier this month.

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CANADA
National Post

Alan Dershowitz, Special to National Post | Feb 22, 2013

Among those being considered to succeed Pope Benedict XVI is a notorious anti-Semite, Cardinal Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras. His name has appeared on various media short lists and his photograph was featured, along with other possible candidates, on the front page of the Miami Herald. He was also under consideration the last time around, and his Latin American heritage is considered a plus this time. He is very charismatic and popular in his home country and was recently invited to speak to Latino Catholics in the United States.

To put it most simply, Rodriguez Maradiaga is an out and out Jew-hater. He has said that “the Jews” are to blame for the scandal surrounding the sexual misconduct of priests toward young parishioners. The Jews? How did Rodriguez Maradiaga ever come up with this hare-brained idea? Here is his “logic”: He begins by asserting that the Vatican is anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian (as he says it should be). It follows, therefore, that “the Jews” had to get even with the Catholic Church, while at the same time deflecting attention away from Israeli injustices against the Palestinians. The Jews managed to do this by arranging for the media—which he says they control—to give disproportionate attention on the Vatican sex scandal.

Listen to Rodriguez Maradiaga’s own words:

“It certainly makes me think that in a moment in which all the attention of the mass media was focused on the Middle East, all the many injustices done against the Palestinian people, the print media and the TV in the United States became obsessed with sexual scandals that happened 40 years ago, 30 years ago. Why? I think it’s also for these motives: What is the church that has received Arafat the most times and has most often confirmed the necessity of the creation of a Palestinian state? What is the church that does not accept that Jerusalem should be the indivisible capital of the State of Israel, but that it should be the capital of the three great monotheistic religions?”

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UNITED STATES
National Review

By Kathryn Jean Lopez

February 22, 2013

This week, before his departure for Rome for the last day of the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI and the subsequent conclave, New York’s Timothy Cardinal Dolan spoke under oath about his previous assignment in Milwaukee.

While the media has been a blessing in the shameful story of abuse in the Church in the United States in the 20th century, the coverage of the deposition this week has been disappointing.

Cardinal Dolan, who began met with victims of abuse immediately after his appointment to Milwaukee, doesn’t deserve to be lumped in with anyone who has made excuses for sins and crimes of the past. And yet the narrative this week insinuates that the current president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is “dogged” by questions about his concern for children, suggesting implication in hundreds of cases, which is simply not so.

In fact, though the testimony is under seal, lawyer Jeffrey Anderson preemptively announced to the New York Times that “the deposition of Cardinal Dolan is necessary to show that there’s been a longstanding pattern and practice to keep secrets and keep the survivors from knowing that there had been a fraud committed.”

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RHODE ISLAND
News 12

Updated: February 22, 2013
By The Associated Press MICHELLE R. SMITH

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – (AP) — A former priest for the disgraced Roman Catholic religious order the Legion of Christ said in sworn testimony that he witnessed financial improprieties at the order’s operation in Rome, including the founder’s use of large amounts of cash without any accounting, and said he believed the order’s founder and then-second-in-command gave gifts to people at the Vatican to curry favor with them.

A spokesman for the Legion said the testimony concerned things that happened years ago, and that the order’s accounting practices are now stricter.

Father Stephen Fichter, who left the Legion in 2000 and is now a parish priest in New Jersey, gave the testimony in a deposition in November 2011 as part of a lawsuit brought by the niece of an elderly Rhode Island widow, Gabrielle Mee. Mee bequeathed $60 million to the Legion before she died in 2008. The deposition was included in thousands of pages released last week after The Associated Press and other news organizations fought to unseal the court records in the case.

Fichter and others have discussed similar allegations in the past about practices by the Legion, a conservative order taken over by the Vatican in 2010 after a church investigation determined that its founder, the late Rev. Marcial Maciel, lived a double life: He sexually molested seminarians and fathered three children. But the documents released in the Rhode Island lawsuit contain the first sworn testimony to publicly emerge about the allegations from Legion priests, including from the Rev. Luis Garza, the Legion’s former No. 2 official, who is currently in charge of its North American operations.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The JC

By Jonathan Kalmus, February 22, 2013

A Salford Jewish man accused of sexual assault against children is suspected of breaching his bail conditions to avoid his upcoming trial.

Greater Manchester Police have confirmed that Todros Grynhaus, 47, from Higher Broughton, has failed to answer strict bail conditions he was placed under following being charged with historic sexual abuse in December.

At a magistrate’s preliminary hearing in January, Mr Grynhaus pleaded not guilty to six counts of indecent assault and one count of sexual assault against three minors, who were all under 15 at the time.

Mr Gynhaus was ordered to surrender his passport for fear he might flee before his trial, expected to take place later this year. But a previous condition to report to a Salford police station every Wednesday was relaxed to allow him to visit his family in London.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Failed Messiah

Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

Rabbi Todros Gryhaus – previously known as T.G. in reporting on this blog – jumped bail and fled Great Britain, allegedly with the help of a wealthy member of Britain’s haredi community.

The Jewish Chronicle is reporting that police have issued an alert for Grynhaus.

Multiple credible British sources told FailedMessiah.com that the 48-year-old rabbi had fled the country by using a passport of another hasid given to him by the wealthy member of Britain’s haredi community and is believed to be in Israel.

In December, Grynhaus, of the Salford area of Manchester, was charged with six counts of indecent assault and one count of sexual assault against three minors, all under 15. He pleaded not guilty.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic Culture

By Phil Lawler February 22, 2013

Is there a network of homosexual clerics working within the Vatican? Undoubtedly, Yes. Was the discovery of that network a major factor motivating Pope Benedict to resign? Undoubtedly, No.

Rome is abuzz with reports about a story that appeared in two Italian publications, La Repubblica and Panorama, alleging that in a confidential report to Pope Benedict on the “Vatileaks” scandal, three cardinals said that one faction within the Vatican bureaucracy was “united by sexual orientation” and could be subject to blackmail. The story—which has quickly spread around the globe—goes on to speculate that the cardinals’ report, submitted in December, shocked the Pope and prompted him to resign.

Nonsense.

Before we analyze the reports, let’s pause for a moment and notice how little hard evidence has been presented. All of the hundreds of speculative reports now circulating in the mass media are based on two Italian news stories. Those stories, in turn, rely on the reporters’ assertions, unsupported and unconfirmed, about the contents of the “Vatileaks” report. For all we know those assertions could be completely groundless. Even if they are (more or less) accurate, they could be highly exaggerated. The allusion to a homosexual network might have occupied just a few paragraphs in a voluminous final report. We don’t know.

Is it probable that in there investigation of the “Vatileaks” scandal, the three cardinals found evidence of homosexual activity among officials of the Roman Curia? Absolutely! As the veteran American Vatican-watcher John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter put it, “frankly it would be a little surprising if they hadn’t.”

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UNITED STATES
Berger’s Beat

February 22, 2013 | Author: Jerry Berger
In a report last night on the Milwaukee archdiocesan bankruptcy, CNN’s Ted Rowland questioned whether New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan improperly moved $74 million to a fund for individual parishes there (to “shelter” it, according to one internal church memo). Months ago, lawyers for 570 alleged victims of Wisconsin predator priests leveled similar charges, accusing Dolan of illegally moving $55 million into a cemetery maintenance fund when he headed the archdiocese from 2002-2009. Rowland interviewed a now-retired archdiocesan vice chancellor, Fr. Jim Connell, who said the church needs action from the very top to come clean. The Cardinal, a Ballwin native, refused to be interviewed for the piece. And on Wednesday, Dolan was deposed in a civil abuse suit as he prepares to head to Rome to help elect the next pope.

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AUSTRALIA
Catholica

by James, Australia, Saturday, February 23, 2013

Everyone is familiar with the story of the struggle between Henry II of England and Thomas a’Becket in England that ended with a’Becket’s murder in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. Ken Follet’s novel, the Pillars of the Earth is narrated around this central event.

The disagreements between a’Becket and Henry were over a number of things, but the most significant was that Henry thought that clergymen who committed murder, robbed or stole, or sexually assaulted children should be dealt with by the secular courts.

At this time, there was a widespread practice called “privilege of clergy” whereby the ecclesiastical courts had exclusive jurisdiction over clergy. A’Becket wanted to preserve this right, and so the conflict. Henry, in a moment of exasperation, famously said, “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest”, and someone took the hint and despatched the Archbishop of Canterbury with a sword blow to the head that spilled his brains on the floor of Canterbury Cathedral.

There is a similar struggle going on between the Church and the State over this very same thing, and it will soon be played out in the Australian Royal Commission on the sex abuse of children. There is also a bishop involved, Geoffrey Robinson, who, this time, is on the side of the secular State. He has become for the Church a “meddlesome priest”, but in this day and age it is highly unlikely that he will meet a similar sticky end.

One of the problems that the Church has had to deal with in its long history was that of priests soliciting sex in the Confessional. Various Council’s and Popes made declarations to deal with it, but the main document was Benedict XIV’s Sacramentum Poenitentiae (1741). Because the seal of confession was involved in any investigation of such a canonical crime, Pius IX in 1866 imposed absolute secrecy on the proceedings in an instruction issued by the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Feb. 22, 2013

I’ve received numerous requests to comment on the sensational story in an Italian newspaper Thursday suggesting the existence of a shadowy “gay lobby” in the Vatican, linking it to the prospect of blackmail and suggesting that such dark forces may have factored into Benedict XVI’s decision to resign.

For what it’s worth, I’ll lay out my initial reaction here.

First of all, the paper that carried the story, La Repubblica, is not a scandal sheet. It’s the largest circulation daily in the country, with a center-left editorial stance. It’s sometimes critical of the church, but it’s not the National Enquirer.

What makes the piece slightly hard to evaluate is that it was written by a journalist named Concita De Gregorio, who’s not among La Repubblica’s usual stable of Vatican writers. (Sometimes Italian papers will let somebody else author stories likely to ruffle feathers in the Vatican so their regular beat reporters don’t have to face the fallout.)

As a rule of thumb, one should usually take unsourced speculation with a grain of salt, especially in the Italian papers. As I’m fond of saying, God love ’em, Italians have never seen a conspiracy theory they’re not prepared to believe.

In terms of the story’s specifics, I don’t know whether it’s accurate that a commission of three cardinals created by Benedict XVI to investigate the Vatican leaks affair, composed of Cardinals Julian Herranz Casado, Jozef Tomko and Salvatore De Giorgi, actually considered possible networks inside the Vatican based on sexual preference, but frankly, it would be a little surprising if they hadn’t.

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VATICAN CITY
PolicyMic

Sylvia Camaj

An article in the Guardian reported on Friday that a controversial report carried by the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica links Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation to the existence of blackmail and a gay lobby in the Vatican.

The pope’s spokesperson has declined to confirm or deny the report, a public relations tactic that could imply that the Vatican has something to hide: is the Vatican trying to cover up homosexuality within the institution? Is the pope himself, perhaps, gay? By the nature of the blackmail, these speculations are not impossibilities.

La Repubblica said that the day the pope made the decision to resign — December 17 — was also the day he received a report compiled by three cardinals in charge of looking into the “Vatileaks” incident (a scandal that first came to light late last January, involving leaked Vatican documents allegedly exposing internal corruption).

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UNITED STATES
Esquire

By Charles P. Pierce
at 3:40PM

Now it gets interesting.

According to La Repubblica, the dossier comprising “two volumes of almost 300 pages – bound in red” had been consigned to a safe in the papal apartments and would be delivered to the pope’s successor upon his election. The newspaper said the cardinals described a number of factions, including one whose members were “united by sexual orientation”. In an apparent quotation from the report, La Repubblica said some Vatican officials had been subject to “external influence” from laymen with whom they had links of a “worldly nature”. The paper said this was a clear reference to blackmail. It quoted a source “very close to those who wrote [the cardinal’s report]” as saying: “Everything revolves around the non-observance of the sixth and seventh commandments.”

There are a number of things to keep in mind here. The Vatican has been riven by factions for as long as there as been a Vatican. The Church has been riven by factions for as long as there has been a Church. (It started with Judas Iscariot, if you want to be literal.) As Garry Wills pointed out a few years ago, James Madison formulated his theory of why factions are dangerous to democratic self-government at least in part by his deep reading into the institutional history of Christianity, and thus are the old princely popes at least partly responsible for the argument famously made by Jemmy in Federalist 10.

Also, La Repubblica is not a scandal sheet, regardless of what you’re likely to be hearing from members of the Clan Of The Red Beanie over the next few days. The Italian press is famous for journalistic, ah, entrepreneurship, but this newspaper notably has not been a big part of that culture. And, even if it were, the material apparently was shopped around elsewhere in the respectable Italian media as well.

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VATICAN CITY
CNews (Canada)

By Dario THUBURN, AFP

VATICAN CITY – With just days to go before Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation, the Vatican is battling rumours that his decision was triggered by an explosive report on intrigue in its hallowed corridors of power.

The secret report compiled by a committee of three cardinals for the pope’s eyes only was the result of a broad inquiry into leaks of secret Vatican papers last year — a scandal known as “Vatileaks”.

The cardinals questioned dozens of Vatican officials and presented the pope with their final report in December 2012, just before Benedict pardoned his former butler Paolo Gabriele who had been jailed for leaking the papal memos.

The Panorama news weekly and the Repubblica daily said on Thursday that the cardinals’ report contained allegations of corruption and of blackmail attempts against gay Vatican clergymen, as well as favouritism based on gay relationships.

The Vatican has declined to comment on these two reports, with spokesman Federico Lombardi saying they were “conjectures, fictions and opinions.”

In an interview with El Pais, one of the investigating cardinals, Julian Herranz, said the scandal was “a bubble” that had been “inflated”.

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UNITED STATES
Sancte Pater

These Stone Walls by Father Gordon MacRae is a finalist in About.com’s Readers Choice for Best Catholic Blog. In justice, it should win… but there might be hell to pay.

By Ryan A. MacDonald

(A Ram in the Thicket) How did such a thing happen? The Catholicism page of the media site, About.com provides an annual forum for readers to select the very best in Catholic media – everything from best Catholic book, newspaper, and television/radio, to best Catholic blog and other electronic media. This year, someone in the Catholic online world nominated These Stone Walls, the blog of imprisoned priest, Father Gordon MacRae for the category of Best Catholic Blog in an enormous field of worthy candidates. These Stone Walls became a Finalist, and that this writing, it has shot up to second place in a short list of five of the best Catholic blogs selected by readers of About.com. Readers may register a vote, once per day if they wish, at the Best Catholic Blog ballot right here.

Though of course dwarfed by the coming Conclave to elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI, the story of this honor bestowed upon an imprisoned priest and his writings is an important Catholic news story. For over a decade, accused Catholic priests have been vilified and bludgeoned without mercy in both the secular and Catholic media. Organizations such as SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, and VOTF, the Voice of the Faithful, have risen up seemingly for the sole purpose of denouncing the Church’s disciplines withing the priesthood and priests themselves when they are accused of claims that usually date back 30, 40, or 50 years. There is rarely any evidence beyond the word of someone who stands to gain a windfall settlement just for making the claim.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Friday 22 February 2013

Britain’s most senior Catholic has suggested Catholic priests should be able to marry and have children, saying the demand for celibacy was not of “divine origin”.

In one of the most significant breaks with Catholic orthodoxy, Cardinal Keith O’Brien said many priests found it “very difficult to cope” with the celibate life and suggested lifting that ban could soon happen in the wider church.

The cardinal suggested that the next pope could review the marriage ban for priests. Marriage is allowed in some cases within the church already. The English Catholic church has accepted married former Anglican priests, under a policy introduced in 2011 by the present pope, Benedict XVI.

O’Brien, who has been the focus of bitter controversy over his staunch opposition to gay marriage and gay adoption, will be the only Catholic from the UK involved in the conclave in the Vatican next month to choose Benedict’s successor.

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CANADA
The Globe and Mail

Gerald Caplan
Special to The Globe and Mail

Published Friday, Feb. 22 2013

For the many who wish the Catholic Church ill, including numerous Catholics, Cardinal Marc Ouellet of Quebec would be a welcome choice as the next Pope. It was priests like Mr. Ouellet who helped estrange the faithful in once-Catholic Quebec and there is little reason to think he would not make the same contribution to the church universal.

As Quebec church historian and priest Benoit Lacroix puts it, Cardinal Ouellet represents “a very, very conservative current of Catholicism,” just as John Paul II and Benedict XVI have done. And Ouellet makes no bones about it. On women’s equality, birth control, divorce, ordaining women clergy and married priests, he is a proud relic. On abortion, he takes an extreme position, opposing it even in cases of rape. His statements implying that a rape victim who gets an abortion is a murderer earned him harsh condemnation in Quebec. He considers gay marriage “a big crisis…. We don’t know what it means to be human anymore.” Someone should tell him it means love triumphing over cruel dogma.

And on the greatest crisis of the Church since its ambiguous relationship with Nazi Germany, Cardinal Ouellet – like so many of his peers – has put the antiquated institutions of the Church ahead of its shattered victims. On the issue of sexual abuse by priests, he has been silent.

The Quebec president of l’Association des victims de pretres, France Bedard, says she was violated by a Quebec priest. She has requested a meeting with Cardinal Ouellet; he has never responded, she says. She accuses him of being “responsible for the silence, the indifference, the inaction of the Catholic Church in Quebec when it comes to sexual-abuse victims.”

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UNITED STATES
The Reporter

By Thomas J. Reese, Special to The Washington Post
mercurynews.com
Posted: 02/22/2013

Pope Benedict XVI reads his message during the Angelus noon prayer he celebrated from the window of his studio overlooking St. Peter’s square at the Vatican. ((AP/Alessandra Tarantino))Next month, 117 cardinals from across the globe will gather inside the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, invoke the Holy Spirit and elect a pope to replace Benedict XVI, who’s resigning at the end of this month. Behind closed doors, cut off from the outside world, they will choose a leader who will have an impact on not only the Catholic Church but the entire planet. Let’s look at some of the misconceptions about how the cardinals will select the latest successor to Saint Peter.

Pope Benedict resigned so he could pick his successor

In Washington, we tend to be suspicious of the explanations politicians give for anything, but in the case of the pope’s resignation, the explanation — his deteriorating health — appears to be accurate. Benedict recognizes that he is no longer up to the job, and he should be honored for giving up power and position for the good of the church. He is moving out of Rome after he steps down to avoid the appearance of trying to influence the election. “He will not interfere in any way,” a Vatican spokesman said the day after the announcement.

So how will the cardinals decide?

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Michael Sigman

Accusations that one of the most powerful American Zen Buddhist figures of the past half-century has sexually harassed, groped and bullied hundreds of female students have unleashed outrage in the Buddhist community.

The allegations against 105-year-old Joshu Sasaki Roshi — contained in an investigative report from a group of respected Buddhist leaders — have also produced a troubling counter-narrative: that Roshi has done so much good for his students that his abusive behavior is just a “flaw.” One mucky muck monk, who claims to have known of Sasaki’s serial misconduct for more than 20 years, told the New York Times, “It’s like when you marry somebody and you get their strengths and wonderful qualities as well as their weaknesses.”

As Seth Meyers likes to say on SNL’s Weekend Update, “Really?”

Sasaki’s teachings have been central to the lives of thousands of budding Buddhists at his three American Zen centers and have reached many thousands more at affiliated locations around the world.

Among the women who say that Roshi has profoundly enhanced their lives is a friend who was appalled by his groping, yet recognizes what she calls his immense capacity for compassion as well as his compulsive behavior. His teachings inspired her but so did his actions, which seriously impacted her marriage. Today she wonders how he can be an enlightened religious leader while stubbornly continuing to abuse female students.

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UNITED KINGDOM
International Business Times

By Dominic Gover
February 22, 2013

A Jewish rabbi in Manchester who is facing child sex abuse charges has gone on the run, sparking a police alert.

Rabbi Todros Gryhaus is wanted by police investigating claims of sexual abuse in the Jewish community in Manchester.

He was charged with indecent assault and sexual assault against children in December. More than one child was affected, said police.

They put out alert when it was discovered that Gryhaus, 48, had disappeared from his Salford home, thereby breaching his bail conditions.

IBTimes UK contacted the small business run by the rabbi and was told his whereabouts were unknown.

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VATICAN CITY
Global Post

Analysis: Five men who could become head of the global Catholic Church.

Jason Berry

Pope Benedict’s resignation has galvanized interest in cardinals who until now have been distant figures to most Catholics, and some of the leading candidates are being analyzed by the world’s media and Vatican watchers as potential popes.

Or, as they have come to be known in Italian, papabile.

And we want to offer some observations on five of the more papabile Cardinals from different corners of the world.

But first, you need to know how they get elected. The process begins with a highly secretive and complex gathering called a conclave that will bring cardinals from around the world to the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel next month to elect a successor.

That is expected to begin at some point after the pope’s official resignation takes effect on Feb. 28 and Vatican observers believe it is quite possible that a pope will be elected before Easter Sunday, March 30. Balancing the issues of a global church, while steering a course of reconciliation to broaden “the big tent” of Catholicism, will be a major task of the next pope and one certainly on the minds of the cardinals who will elect him.

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UNITED STATES
Religion News Service

David Gibson | Feb 21, 2013

(RNS) Will the conclave electing a new pope next month have an “Obama moment” and pick someone from Africa or Latin America or Asia for the first time in modern history?

The public seems enamored of the idea of a non-European pope, and even many cardinals — whose votes are the only ones that count — are openly pushing the idea of a “pope of color” to follow Benedict XVI, a German theologian.

“I think in a way the church is always and has forever been ready for a non-European pope,” Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana told reporters after Benedict announced that he was resigning at the end of February.

The appeal of a non-European pope is understandable as it seems to reflect the hope that the church at the top of the pyramid would finally reflect the demographic reality of the faith on the ground, since the growing majority of Catholics live in the Southern Hemisphere.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on February 22, 2013

Watch out for papal candidates to start posturing on abuse. On the eve of the last conclave, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger made one brief mention, in a highly publicized talk, of “filth” in the church.

To us, it smacked of posturing. Here’s a guy with more knowledge about clergy sex crimes and cover ups than any other Catholic official on the planet. Here’s a guy with more power over clergy sex crimes and cover ups than any other Catholic official on the planet save one – his boss, the pope.

But for decades, at best, he does little. And at worst, he’s part of the cover up.

But as a papal election looms, he purports to show – via one short, vague phrase – that he cares about the crisis.

Sure enough, Cardinal Ratzinger’s strategy worked. Within days, he became Pope Benedict.

That lesson cannot have been lost on other papal hopefuls. In the days ahead, we predict some of them will make similar public remarks to reassure their colleagues that they are media savvy enough to realize they must address – at least verbally – the church’s greatest crisis.

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IRELAND
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Dorris on February 22, 2013

We are glad that the religious orders who ran the horrible Magdalene laundries will be made to contribute to the redress for victims.

Just because the state was culpable in the victimization of the people who were forced to live there does not mean religious groups should escape culpability.

We also disagree with church officials’ attempts to distance themselves from the Bethany Home survivors. While Archbishop of Dublin Dr. Michael Jackson may argue that the home was “not a home under Church of Ireland governance,” there is no doubt that Catholic orders played a significant part in its running and should be made to answer to the victims there.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

Richard Baker, Nick McKenzie February 21, 2013

The Jewish community’s emergency medical response group, Hatzolah, has revealed young children have attempted suicide as a result of being sexually abused.

The acknowledgement of child sexual abuse as an ”ongoing crisis facing our community” in a letter written by a senior Hatzolah official on Tuesday comes amid revelations of a police investigation into alleged criminal offences at Sydney’s Yeshiva Centre in the 1970s and ’80s.

In a letter endorsing the establishment of Jewish sexual abuse support group Tzedek, Hatzolah’s Melbourne operations manager, Danny Elbaum, wrote of his observations ”first hand of the devastating impact of child sexual abuse”.

”On many occasions our emergency responders have been called to assist Jewish patients (including young ones) who have self-harmed or attempted suicide, and upon further inquiry it has become clear the underlying cause for these desperate acts has been due to the patient’s experience of child sexual abuse.”

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

The cardinal’s decision to pull out of the Conclave for health reasons has been confirmed by missionary news agency “AsiaNews”

Vatican Insider staff
Rome

“There will be 116 and not 117 cardinal electors, as first expected from the official list of those who will choose the future Pope, after Benedict XVI steps down at 8 pm on 28 February next. The 78 year-old Indonesian Cardinal Julius Riyadi Darmaatmadja, Archbishop Emeritus of Jakarta, has told AsiaNews that he will not be present – by “free and personal” choice – because of severe health problems.”

“Speaking over the phone from the Jesuit Emmaus House, a retirement home for elderly priests and prelates in Ungaran city, central Java, the prelate emphasizes the “progressive deterioration” of his condition, since he left the archdiocese in the capital two years ago, on having reached retirement age.

““It s mostly my eyesight,” he tells AsiaNews quietly but firmly, pointing out that the problem would impose a “serious obstacle” to work within the Conclave, where assistants are not allowed during the election. The inability to read texts and documents is also an obstacle too such a great task which requires serenity and autonomy.”

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

The three-man commission of inquiry into the Vatileaks scandal is to divulge the contents of their report – which has so far been bound by pontifical secrecy – during the general congregations on the next Pope’s election

GIACOMO GALEAZZI
Vatican City

The cardinals who will elect the new Pope in the forthcoming Conclave are to be given further information on the Vatileaks scandal. At the beginning of next week, before he leaves for Castel Gandolfo on Thursday afternoon, Benedict XVI will meet with the three eighty-year old cardinals (Julian Herranz, Josef Tomko and Salvatore De Giorgi) who were put in charge of gathering information on the Vatican confidential document leak. The Pope will apparently authorise them to divulge the contents of their report – which has remained confidential under the code of papal secrecy – to cardinals during the general congregations on 1 March.

So cardinal electors will finally get the low down – directly from the Pope’s Vatileaks commissioners – on the real and official story behind the theft of the confidential documents from Ratzinger’s apartment and on the situation which led to legal action being taken against poison pen letter writer, Paolo Gabriele. The Vatileaks dossier contains information about the power struggles and conflicts that went on among the Church hierarchies, but it does not – the Holy See wished to stress – condemn any scandals or sex-abuse related blackmail. Cardinal electors will therefore go into the Conclave knowing the real version of the Vatileaks story, after months of assumptions, resentment and suspicions.

Perhaps it was this report that Benedict XVI had in mind when he appeared at the window of his private study on 11 October and mentioned John XXIII’s extraordinary speech to the Moon in which the late Pope sent a caress out to children before putting a dampener on the enthusiasm expressed by the young people from Catholic Action by mentioning the problems faced by the Church. “On this day fifty years ago – Benedict XVI said – I was in the square looking up at this window where the Good Pope, Blessed John XXIII, appeared and addressed us with unforgettable words, words full of poetry and goodness, words from the heart. We were happy, full of enthusiasm. The great Ecumenical Council had begun and we were certain that a new springtime for the Church was in the offing; a new Pentecost with a new and powerful presence of the liberating grace of the Gospel. Today too we are happy. We have joy in our hearts but, I would say, it is perhaps a more sober and humble joy. He then added: “Over these fifty years we have learned and experienced how original sin exists and is translated, ever and anew, into individual sins which can also become structures of sin. We have seen how weeds are also always present in the field of the Lord. We have seen how Peter’s net also beings in bad fish. We have seen how human fragility is also present in the Church, how the ship of the Church is also sailing against a counter wind and is threatened by storms; and at times we have thought that the Lord is sleeping and has forgotten us.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Telegraph

Britain’s most senior Roman Catholic has stunned the church by arguing that the new Pope should allow priests to marry and have children.

By Simon Johnson
5:11PM GMT 22 Feb 2013

Cardinal Keith O’Brien said it was clear many priests struggled to cope with celibacy, and should be able to have families if they wish.

The cardinal, who will part of the conclave that will choose the next Pope, said that some basic beliefs like opposition to abortion and euthanasia were of “divine origin” and could never be accepted.

However, he argued that the new Pope could consider whether the Roman Catholic Church should change its stance on other issues.

“For example the celibacy of the clergy, whether priests should marry – Jesus didn’t say that,” he told BBC Scotland.

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GERMANY
Vatican Insider

Vatican Insider interviews the President of the Pontifical Academy for Life. He defends the German Catholic Church saying: Catholic hospitals have been handing out contraceptive pills to rape victims for 50 years

Alesandro Speciale
Vatican City

The German bishops’ breakthrough decision on emergency contraception for rape victims has sparked heated debates and controversies in Germany and abroad.

It all began with the case of a girl who was raped and denied the morning-after pill in two Catholic hospitals in Cologne. The city’s archbishop, Cardinal Joachim Meisner, was asked to intervene and after much reflection and various consultations he agreed that the morning-after pill should be made available to victims of rape. German bishops supported his decision this week.

The President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Mgr. Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, spoke to Vatican Insider about this at the end of the Academy’s plenary assembly.

Monsignor, what are we really talking about here?

German bishops have decided to back their colleague, Cardinal Meisner (archbishop of Cologne, Ed.), in introducing a law that would be implemented in Catholic hospitals in his diocese. It is an exemplary law which reiterates what the Catholic Church has been proposing for the past 50 years – but a law that has been misinterpreted.

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VATICAN CITY
The Daily Beast

by Barbie Latza Nadeau
Feb 22, 2013

Of all the rumors floating around about just why Pope Benedict XVI is hanging up his camauro, one has taken on a life of its own. According to several well-placed vaticanisti–or Vatican experts–in Rome, Benedict is resigning after being handed a secret red-covered dossier that included details about a network of gay priests who work inside the Vatican, but who play in secular Rome. The priests, it seems, are allegedly being blackmailed by a network of male prostitutes who worked at a sauna in Rome’s Quarto Miglio district, a health spa in the city center, and a private residence once entrusted to a prominent archbishop. The evidence reportedly includes compromising photos and videos of the prelates–sometimes caught on film in drag, and, in some cases, caught ‘in the act’.

Revelations about the alleged network are the basis of a 300-page report supposedly delivered to Benedict on December 17 by Cardinals Julian Herranz, Joseph Tomko and Salvatore De Giorgi. According to the press reports, it was on that day that Benedict XVI decided once and for all to retire, after toying with the idea for months. He reportedly closed the dossier and locked it away in the pontifical apartment safe to be handed to his successor to deal with. According to reports originally printed by La Repubblica newspaper and the newsweekly Panorama (and followed up across the gamut of the Italian media), the crimes the cardinals uncovered involved breaking the commandments “Thou shalt not steal” and “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” the latter of which has been used in Vatican-speak to also refer also to homosexual relations instead of the traditional reference to infidelity.

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UNITED STATES
Washington Post

By Sally Quinn
Friday, February 22

The first time I visited the Vatican as an adult I was in my 20s. I was so excited. My boyfriend and I dressed up as if it were Easter Sunday. He wore a coat and tie. I wore a long sleeved black dress with pearls and little ballet flats. We were turned away. It seems my skirt was a half inch too short. I was crushed. I felt ashamed and humiliated. I certainly had not set out to offend anyone, much less God.

The last time I visited was five years ago, after the child sexual abuse scandal. Not long before, I had spent a weekend at Williamsburg, and I remember thinking that perhaps one day the Vatican would be like that same historic village. There would be actors dressed as priests and nuns and one actor playing the pope in flowing robes waving from the balcony, remembering an institution as it once existed.

But standing there in Rome, I thought about the reality of children being molested and priests who had committed those crimes being protected and excused by the Vatican, the complaints years earlier about my half inch too short skirt seemed pathetic in comparison.

Next week, Pope Benedict will step down, becoming the first pope to retire in nearly 700 years. The official explanation is that he has become too frail to perform his duties. I think there is more to it than that. I think that he either doesn’t want to or can’t deal with all that has gone rotten around him. Let somebody else do the dirty work.

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VATIKAN
der Standard (Osterreich)

Möglicher Grund für Papst-Rücktritt: Kardinäle sollen sich erpressbar gemacht haben

Rom – Der Rücktritt von Papst Benedikt XVI., der für Ende Februar angekündigt ist, könnte laut Medienberichten mit einem geheimen Schwulen-Netzwerk im Vatikan zu tun haben. Die italienische Zeitung La Repubblica schrieb, Kardinäle in dem Netzwerk seien wegen ihrer ” sexuellen Orientierung” durch Laien erpressbar gewesen. Die Zeitung bezieht sich auf einen 300-seitigen Geheimbericht zur sogenannten Vatileaks-Affäre, den drei Kardinäle am 17. Dezember dem Papst vorlegten.

Einer von ihnen, Kardinal Julián Herranz aus Spanien, habe gegenüber Benedikt XVI. bereits am 9. Oktober das Wort “Homosexualität” geäußert. Vatikansprecher Federico Lombardi teilte mit, dass es derzeit weder ” Dementis noch Kommentare noch Bestätigungen” gebe.

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UNITED STATES
National Survivor Advocates Coalition

February 22, 2013

The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child issues a report recently that NSAC believes should not be overlooked.

The Church is quick to hum the tune that it’s the leader in reform where sexual abuse is concerned and the singing is aimed at pushing the inquirer past the blunt facts that few clerics or nuns have been prosecuted for sexual abuse and the hierarchs that covered up the criminal activity aiding and abetting its continuing are not sitting in jail cells.

The UN Report takes aim at the United States at the national level for going light on the investigation and criminal prosecution of clerics for sexual abuse. The report is a result of a five year review.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Wochen Spiegel

…die Erklärungen der Frühjahrs-Vollversammlung der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz zu den Themen “Pille danach” , “Frauen in der Kirche” und “Aufarbeitung von Missbrauchsfällen” bleiben bei näherem Hinsehen “wachsweich” und erfüllen gerade einmal die Mindestanforderungen der auch aus den eigenen Reihen kommenden Kritiker. Weiß Gott – nach viertägiger Tagung in Trier – kein Ruhmesblatt für die knapp 70-köpfige Altherrenriege, aber immerhin ein kleiner Hoffnungsschimmer am Horizont der deutschen Katholiken, die im Gesamtkonstrukt der Weltkirche immer mehr an Bedeutung verlieren. Der Vorsitzende der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz, der Freiburger Erzbischof Dr. Robert Zollitsch, stellte den Pressebericht zum Abschluss der Frühjahrs-Vollversammlung der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz in Trier am Donnerstagnachmittag vor.

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DEUTSCHLAND
SWR

[video – SWR]

Noch nie haben deutsche Bischöfe so viel Kritik einstecken müssen wie derzeit. Viele Menschen verlassen die Kirche. Und viele Gläubige, die bleiben, wehren sich offen gegen die Allmacht der Amtskirche.

Schon beim Auftakt der Trierer Frühjahrsversammlung der Bischöfe protestierten Missbrauchsopfer und forderten lückenlose Aufklärung. Missbrauch sei der tiefste Verrat in der Kirchengeschichte, sagen sie. Bis Donnerstag wollen sich die Bischöfe den aktuellen Fragen und Streitthemen stellen.

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CITTA DEL VATICANO
la Repubblica

“IN questi 50 anni abbiamo imparato ed esperito che il peccato originale esiste, si traduce sempre in peccati personali che possono divenire strutture del peccato.

Abbiamo visto che nel campo del Signore c’è sempre la zizzania. Che nella rete di Pietro si trovano i pesci cattivi”.

Benedetto XVI, 11 ottobre 2012, 50esimo anniversario dall’apertura del Concilio Vaticano II La zizzania. I pesci cattivi. Le “strutture del peccato”. È giovedì 11 ottobre, Santa Maria Desolata. È il giorno in cui la Chiesa fa memoria di papa Giovanni XXIII, cinquant’anni dal principio del Concilio.

Benedetto XVI si affaccia al balcone e ai ragazzi dell’Azione cattolica raccolti in piazza dice così: «Cinquant’anni fa ero come voi in questa piazza, con gli occhi rivolti verso l’alto a guardare e ascoltare le parole piene di poesia e di bontà del Papa. Eravamo, allora, felici. Pieni di entusiasmo, eravamo sicuri che doveva venire una nuova primavera della Chiesa». Breve pausa. Eravamo felici, al passato. «Oggi la gioia è più sobria, è umile.

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UNITED STATES
CNN

[with video]

By Ted Rowlands and Kathleen Johnston, CNN

(CNN)–He’s the top Roman Catholic figure in the United States, the head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and one of the princes of the church who will decide on a new pope.

But Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, is now under fire for how his old archdiocese in Milwaukee shifted money as it faced lawsuits by victims of sexual abuse by priests in Wisconsin.

Dolan sat for a deposition with lawyers for some of the victims on Wednesday, the New York archdiocese confirmed. He was Milwaukee’s archbishop from 2002 to 2009, a period in which the archdiocese moved $55 million into a fund for cemetery maintenance and as much as $74 million to a fund for individual parishes.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
National Catholic Reporter

by Marie Rohde | Feb. 22, 2013

Milwaukee —
A handful of the sexual abuse survivors who filed claims against the Milwaukee archdiocese in federal bankruptcy court will go to trial as test cases to determine how many of the 574 who say they were assaulted are eligible for damages. To date, lawyers for the archdiocese have challenged more than 400 of the claims, saying they should be dismissed.

The decision came in a hearing that was the latest development in the 25-month bankruptcy case and occurred as the archdiocese warned it would run out of money to fully fund its operations by April.

In addition to the dispute over which victims would be eligible for damages, the church has become embroiled in an argument with lawyers for the claimants who say the church is hiding millions of dollars from the court.

In relation to the bankruptcy, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, the former archbishop of Milwaukee, underwent a three-hour deposition Wednesday in New York. A judge could decide as early as April 4 a request made by lawyers for the claimants that his testimony be made public as well as earlier depositions of retired Archbishop Rembert Weakland and Auxiliary Bishop Richard Sklba.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Friday, February 22, 2013

Cardinal Seán Brady is the latest in a line of cardinals across the world facing criticism from clerical sex abuse victims for being allowed to vote for the next Pope.

By Claire O’Sullivan
Irish Examiner Reporter

However, Cardinal Brady, who played a role in the cover up of abuse, is refusing to bow to his critics, and his office last night said he will attend and vote in the forthcoming conclave to elect the 266th pope.

Christine Buckley of the Aislinn Centre, a support and education group for survivors of industrial abuse, said she did not think the All-Ireland primate would “dare present himself” for the conclave.

“I think it’s appalling that he thinks it’s OK to go over there, somebody who forced young people to take of vow of silence and allowed a paedophile to continue in a community knowing what he had done,” she said.

Last night, a spokesperson re-iterated Cardinal Brady’s deep sorrow to those who were abused, and their families and to “all people who feel rightly outraged and let down by the Catholic Church’s failure of moral leadership and accountability”.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

BARRY ROCHE, Southern Correspondent

A Dominican priest has been sentenced to three years in jail with the final 18 months suspended after he admitted subjecting a young boy to eight years of sexual abuse at various locations in Munster around 20 years ago.

Fr Vincent Mercer (66), c/o the Black Abbey in Kilkenny, pleaded guilty to 39 counts of sexually assaulting the boy at locations in Cork and Limerick and other unknown locations on various dates between January 1st 1986 and February 22nd 1994.

Today at Cork Circuit Criminal Court, Garda Caroline Keogh told how the abuse took place when Mercer, who is out of ministry but remains a member of the Dominican Order, was attached to St Mary’s Church on Pope’s quay in Cork city.

The victim’s parents trusted Mercer to the extent that he would have been a weekly visitor to their home and the abuse happened when Mercer took the boy in his car to prayer meetings as well as on overnight stays at religious centres.

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VATICAN CITY
Bloomberg Businessweek

By Jeffrey Donovan on February 22, 2013

Pope Benedict XVI transferred a senior Holy See official after his name appeared in Italian media reports about a secret Vatican dossier on the leaking of papal documents.

Monsignor Ettore Balestrero, who as an undersecretary of the Vatican’s Foreign Ministry had played a key role in efforts to improve Vatican financial transparency, was named ambassador to Colombia, the Holy See press office said today.

Balestrero had been mentioned in the reports by Panorama magazine and la Repubblica daily, which said the pope decided to resign in December after receiving a dossier allegedly detailing a network of sex and corruption inside the Vatican. The reports cited unidentifed people close to the three cardinals who compiled the document, which was the result of an internal probe into last year’s leaks case that led to the arrest and later pardon of the pope’s personal butler.

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi, who’s indicated the pope may meet with the cardinals who compiled the document before leaving office Feb. 28, has declined to comment on the Italian media reports.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

Britain’s most senior Roman Catholic has said he believes priests should be able to marry if they wish to do so.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien said it was clear many priests struggled to cope with celibacy, and should be able to marry and have children.

The cardinal will part of the conclave that will choose the next Pope.

He spoke of his surprise at the resignation of Benedict XVI, and said he was open to the new Pope coming from outside of Europe.

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NORTH CAROLINA
Winston-Salem Journal

Cameron Steele/Charlotte Observer

A former youth pastor at a Huntersville church was convicted of child sex crimes by a Mecklenburg County jury Thursday.

Thaddeus Stephen MacMoran, 27, was found guilty for a statutory sex offense against a person either 13, 14 or 15 years old, a crime against nature and four counts of taking indecent liberties with a child.

MacMoran was a student ministry volunteer with the Lake Forest Church teen ministry. But a spokesperson for Lake Forest Church said the crimes occurred at another church, before MacMoran became a volunteer at Lake Forest.

The jury convicted MacMoran after a three-day trial, and Superior Court Judge Forrest D. Bridges sentenced him to serve between 222 and 276 months in prison.

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IRELAND
Build

A 66-year-old Dominican priest and former headmaster has been jailed for three years for the sexual assault of a boy.

Fr Vincent Mercer pleaded guilty at Cork Circuit Criminal Court to 15 sample counts of sexually assaulting the boy on various dates between 1986 and 1994.

The boy was aged 11 when the abuse started.

The priest is out of ministry but remains a member of the Dominican Order and was the former headmaster of Newbridge College in Co Kildare.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Feb. 22, 2013 All Things Catholic

If we start the count in 1295, when Pope Boniface VIII first required cardinals to elect a pope in a sealed room, the looming 2013 edition will be the 75th conclave in the history of the Catholic church. At one level, therefore, it’s possible to say that we’ve seen this show before, most recently eight years ago.

In many ways, the 2013 conclave will seem identical to those that have gone before: the same procession into the Sistine Chapel, the same black and white smoke, the same “Habemus Papam” moment when the new pope has been chosen. (Trivia point: By tradition, the announcement is made by the Proto-Deacon, meaning the senior cardinal in the order of deacons, who this time around is French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran. He should be the guy who steps out onto the balcony to deliver the news — unless, of course, he’s elected himself.)

Despite the echoes of the past, there are several unique features about this conclave that alter the politics and, perhaps, suggest a longer and more difficult process. Herewith, the top 10 differences about the 2013 edition of the papal election. …

6. The scandal effect

The child sex abuse crisis was already set in cement as a defining issue for Americans by 2005, but it didn’t really erupt in Europe until 2010. In the meantime, the Vatican has also been hit with a number of other embarrassing episodes, such as the Vatileaks scandal and persistent allegations of financial corruption.

In that context, a larger share of cardinals this time around is likely to be concerned that the new pope be perceived to have “clean hands.”

In practice, this may produce a sort of burden, rather than benefit, of the doubt for any candidate publicly linked to some sort of scandal. In the hothouse atmosphere of the pre-conclave period, some cardinals are likely to feel they don’t have the time to separate truth from falsehood and may conclude that the safest thing to do is to steer clear of anyone who seems even potentially tainted.

As one cardinal put it to me the other day with regard to a prominent fellow cardinal who’s been identified in the Italian press with allegedly shady financial deals, “I don’t know what actually happened, but right now it seems like too big a risk.”

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IRELAND
Irish Times

BARRY ROCHE, Southern Correspondent

The treatment of women in the Magdalene Laundries was a reflection of the brutalisation of Irish society which had been tolerated for decades and is something about which Irish people should be “rightly ashamed,” singer Bob Geldof has said.

Geldof said the letters on the controversy published in The Irish Times were “eloquent and dignified” but said there should be no surprise about what was happening in the laundries as he believed it was well known throughout Irish society.

“The Taoiseach, Enda Kenny has apologised – but what has he to apologise for – it was our families, our parents who allowed children go into those laundries knowing full well what awaited them in there at the hands of the nuns,” he said.

“And the laundries are just another manifestation of the brutalisation of Irish society where kids were beaten and abused by Christian Brothers – it was dreadful, dreadful, dreadful but we all knew it was happening and what did we do?,” he asked.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

21 February 2013

TAOISEACH Enda Kenny took care not to blame the Catholic Church for the “national shame” of the Magdalene Laundries – in marked contrast to the hard-hitting approach of Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore.

He only mentioned the Catholic Church once in his much-praised Dail speech, whereas Mr Gilmore managed to fit in six fairly damning references.

The Labour leader spoke about how the State “bowed” to the Catholic Church and “colluded” with it and how the moment of justice for the Magdalene women began with rolling back the “dominance” of one church.

In what was very much a “good cop, bad cop” routine, Mr Kenny outlined details of the compensation scheme for the survivors – and Mr Gilmore issued the demand for a contribution from the four religious congregations who ran the Magdalene Laundries.

A government source said that the speeches of both men had been discussed beforehand and were written to complement each other. And the Cabinet was also briefed about the intention of Mr Gilmore to call for a contribution from the religious orders.

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IRELAND
RTE News

Minister for Justice Alan Shatter is contacting the religious orders who owned the Magdalene laundries in relation to the funding of the redress scheme.

The Department of Justice and Equality has also clarified that former industrial school residents who also spent time in laundries are not excluded from applying to the fund.

On whether a cap will be applied to payouts, the Department said it would await John Quirke’s report before making a decision.

The Magdalene Survivors Together group met the Minister for Justice to discuss the terms of reference for the Magdalene redress fund.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

JOE HUMPHREYS

BACKGROUND: The exclusion of Bethany Home residents from the Magdalene laundries redress scheme has prompted allegations of double standards and religious bias.

The Protestant-run residence for unmarried mothers and their children operated between 1921 and 1972, initially in Blackhall Place, Dublin, and later Rathgar. About 20 former residents are known to the Bethany Home Survivors group, which stresses that the financial implications of their inclusion would be relatively small.

But the Department of Justice is concerned about the precedent it would set.

According to some estimates, in excess of 10 times as many women and children would have gone through Catholic-run mother-and-baby homes, which have been excluded so far from any official inquiry.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY and MARY MINIHAN

Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin Eamonn Walsh said yesterday that helping women who had been in the Magdalene laundries was “a matter for all parties involved”.

He was responding to media queries as to whether the four religious congregations which ran the 10 laundries should help fund compensation and services for the women.

“Everybody who held responsibility [where the laundries were concerned] should step up to the line,” he said.

It was “up to everybody to be responsible”, he said, and that “the religious won’t be found wanting”.

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IRELAND
BBC News

By Shane Harrison
BBC NI Dublin correspondent

The Irish government’s decision to apologise to the women who worked in the Magdalene Laundries – workhouses run by nuns – has prompted members of the Bethany Home Survivors Group group to say they also want justice.

Magdalene laundries were places for what were described as “fallen women”.

They were workhouses to where the Irish authorities sent Catholic girls and women considered “troubled” to do unpaid manual work.

The last one closed in 1996.

Bethany Home was a Protestant place for “fallen women” and unmarried mothers. It closed in the 1960s.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Michael Brennan and Ralph Riegel– 22 February 2013

MAGDALENE survivors are seeking up to €200,000 each from the soon-to-be established state compensation fund.

This would include a payment of €20,000 for each year that a woman worked without wages in a Magdalene Laundry – and a lump-sum payment of €50,000 each for psychological damage.

The maximum amount paid to any woman would be capped at €200,000, regardless of how many years she had worked in the laundry.

The Magdalene Survivors Together (MST) group presented its proposals to Justice Minister Alan Shatter and Junior Minister for Mental Health Kathleen Lynch during a 45-minute meeting with them in Dublin.

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IRELAND
RTE News

Minister of State Kathleen Lynch said the Government will meet the four religious orders involved in the Magdalene Laundries to discuss how to manage the redress scheme for survivors.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, the minister said the Government may put a proposal to the groups in relation to funding the scheme.

She said the co-operation of the religious orders will be necessary, not least because Judge John Quirke will need access to the records of survivors to verify claims.

Minister Lynch said were it not for the co-operation of the orders up to now, the State would not have the McAleese report that prompted the Taoiseach’s apology.

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IRELAND
Association of Catholic Priests

More than 250 priests attended a meeting of the Association of Catholic Priests in Athlone on Wednesday February 20th 2013. The meeting opened with a prayer asking God for guidance, wisdom and support so those who were taking part in the meeting would engage in meaningful discussions which would help them in their ministry to build up the body of Christ. We prayed for Pope Benedict XVI, that God will grant him good health and peace in mind and body. We prayed for those who are tasked with electing the next Pope, that the wellbeing of the Catholic Church be foremost in their minds as the cast their vote.

After the prayer, Brendan Hoban outlined the work of the ACP during the past few months. We expressed our unhappiness with the present procedures for stepping down priests against whom allegations of sex abuse have been made. We argued that in their present form, the current procedures compromise the basic constitutional rights of the priest.

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WASHINGTON
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on February 22, 2013

We are disturbed by the report of a Baptist pastor in Washington attempting to solicit a girl he knew to be a teenager for prostitution. This is horrible on several levels.

To abuse a child is bad enough, but to pay for the opportunity to abuse a child speaks of a depravity that is deeply rooted. We are grateful to police in Everett for apprehending Rev. John Lawlor, and we urge them to seek out others who he may have abused. We also call on church officials at First Baptist Church in Everett to aggressively seek out those within their congregation who may have been hurt by Rev. Lawlor.

According to court documents, Lawlor moved to Washington from Idaho only a year ago. We suspect it’s possible that he may have hurt kids while he was there as well, so anyone with knowledge as to his previous parishes should seek out victims there, and urge victims and witnesses to come forward to police.

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IRELAND
RTE News

A Dominican priest and former headmaster has been sentenced to three years in prison for the sexual assault of a boy over an eight year period.

Fr Vincent Mercer, 66, pleaded guilty at Cork Circuit Criminal Court to 15 sample counts of sexually assaulting the boy on various dates between 1986 and 1994.

The priest is out of ministry but remains a member of the Dominican Order and was the former headmaster of Newbridge College in Co Kildare.

The victim was aged between 11 and 17 at the time and the abuse happened when Mercer resided at St Mary’s Dominican Church at Pope’s Quay in Cork.

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ROME
Gazzetta del Sud

Rome, February 22 – Catholic members of Italian consumer association Codacons on Friday submitted a request to prosecutors to open a sex-abuse investigation into Cardinal Roger Mahony if he comes to Rome for the conclave to elect a new pope next month, but also asked Benedict XVI to prevent him from attending at all. “We maintain there are sufficient grounds to put him under investigation as soon as he enters our country,” said a statement from the group. Mahony, the retired archbishop of Los Angeles, must answer questions under oath Saturday about a visiting Mexican priest who in 1987 is believed to have molested 26 children.

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FRANCE
RTL

Un rabbin parisien soupçonné d’avoir étouffé une affaire d’agression sexuelle dans son collège

INFORMATION RTL. Un rabbin, directeur d’une école juive orthodoxe de Paris, a été mis en examen jeudi par un juge d’instruction parisien pour “non dénonciation d’atteintes sexuelles sur mineurs de moins de 15 ans”. Il avait été alerté par des parents d’élèves au sujet d’attouchements commis par un surveillant sur de jeunes garçons. Mais il aurait tenté de les convaincre de ne pas porter plainte.

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FRANCE
Le Parisien

A Paris, un rabbin de 55 ans a été mis en examen jeudi pour «non dénonciation d’atteintes sexuelles sur mineurs de moins de 15 ans.» Selon RTL qui révèle l’information, ce rabbin, directeur d’une école juive orthodoxe, avait été alerté par des parents d’élèves dont les enfants auraient subi des attouchements commis par un surveillant.

L’affaire a commencé l’été dernier à l’école pour garçons Beth-Hanna dans le XXe arrondissement, lorsqu’un couple de parents raconte au directeur que leur fils aurait été agressé sexuellement par un des surveillants de l’établissement. Puis d’autres jeunes enfants racontent les mêmes scènes avec la même personne. Sauf que le rabbin, membre de la communauté Loubavitch, ne veut rien entendre. Il ne dénonce pas les faits à la police et tente de convaincre les familles de se taire également, alors que certaines veulent porter plainte.

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FRANCE
Failed Messiah

Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

A 55-year-old Chabad rabbi, Binyamin M., was indicted in Paris yesterday for “non-reporting of sexual abuse of minors under the age of 15-year-old,” a French newspaper, The Parisien, and a French radio station, RTL, reported this morning.

Media reports say the rabbi is a principal at Chabad’s Bais Chana school in Paris, and that he also teaches math there.

But the victims appear to be boys and the rabbi appears to be the principal of Chabad’s boy’s school located at 18 Passage des S. Simoniens – Rabbi Binyomin Mergui – and a Paris source familiar with Mergui and the school confirms that Mergui is, indeed, “Rabbi Binyamin M.”

Mergui was told by parents over the summer that their children were allegedly molested by a trusted school supervisor. A school supervisor holds a position similar to a teacher’s aide in the US. He watches the children during recess, accompanies them on field trips, and makes sure all the children are where they are supposed to be at any given time.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

By
JAMES O’SHEA,
IrishCentral Staff Writer

Published Friday, February 22, 2013

Ireland’s Cardinal Sean Brady is the latest to come under pressure to quit the upcoming papal conclave because of the alleged cover up of pedophile priest activities.

As pressure mounted on LA cardinal Roger Mahony and New York prelate Cardinal Timothy Dolan was deposed over his actions when Archbishop of Milwaukee, Brady came under renewed scrutiny

He has admitted that he did nothing to stop monster pedophile Father Brendan Smyth even though he was aware of his activities when he sat on a secret church inquiry in 1975 into Smyth who abused hundreds of children in Ireland and the U.S.

During that inquiry Brady learnt from two victims that Smyth had abused them. He was also given the names of other boys that Smyth abused.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Ralph Riegel– 22 February 2013

CARDINAL Sean Brady has confirmed that he will attend the Papal conclave to elect Pope Benedict XVI’s successor, despite calls from Irish abuse victims for him to stay away.

The Primate of All Ireland has been named by Italian media among several cardinals worldwide whose positions have been rocked by abuse scandals.

Christine Buckley, who was abused as a child in a church-run institution, said Cardinal Brady should not attend the Vatican conclave next month as “a personal gesture towards victims”.

“I have passed that request on to the cardinal, as well as to Archbishop Diarmuid Martin and the Irish Bishops’ Conference,” she told the Irish Independent.

“Given how the issue of abuse was handled by Cardinal Brady and these other cardinals, they should not represent their churches in Rome in the selection of a new pope.”

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CALIFORNIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on February 22, 2013

We’re gradually seeing more and more suits like this across the country (most recently in Florida and Missouri). It’s disturbing to see more proof that Catholic officials continue to act recklessly, secretively and callously in sex cases.

Catholic officials often brag about all their abuse policies and panels and procedures. But what matters is how one acts, not what one says. As long as those at the top of the Catholic hierarchy show by their deeds that they remain committed to concealing child sex crimes, nothing in the church will change and kids will continue to be at risk.

We wish Mr. Cerbone well. No matter how his suit turns out, he will know, for the rest of his life, that he’s done the brave and right thing.

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IRELAND
Herald

Ralph Riegel– 22 February 2013

AN IRISH abuse survivor has said she is “disappointed but not surprised” at the refusal of Cardinal Sean Brady to stay away from next month’s papal conclave.

Christine Buckley, founder of Dublin’s Aislinn Centre, had publicly urged Cardinal Brady not to attend the Vatican vote to decide Pope Benedict XVI’s successor as a gesture towards Irish abuse victims.

She lodged the formal request with Cardinal Brady, the Archbishop of Dublin Dr Diarmuid Martin and the Irish Bishops’ Conference.

But Cardinal Brady has now confirmed he will attend the Papal conclave as planned.

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VATICAN CITY
Malta Today

Karl Stagno-Navarra

47 year-old Mgr Antonie Camilleri has been appointed by Pope Benedict XVI to the third highest ranking post in the Vatican, making him under-secretary to the Holy-See’s relations with States.

A law graduate in 1988, Mgr. Camilleri was ordained into priesthood in 1991 and has been part of the Vatican’s diplomatic service since 1999.

He replaces Mgr. Ettore Balestrero, who has been controversially appointed as Nuncio to Colombia, following reports about his close relations with Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone, and his liaisons with the beleaguered Vatican bank IOR.

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VATICAN CITY
Canberra Times

ROME: Pope Benedict resigned after an internal investigation informed him about a web of blackmail, corruption and gay sex in the Vatican, Italian media have reported.

Three cardinals were asked by Benedict to verify allegations of financial impropriety, cronyism and corruption exposed in the so-called VatiLeaks affair.

The inquiry was led by a three-man panel, headed by a Spanish cardinal, Juliá´n Herranz. Cardinal Salvatore De Giorgi, former archbishop of Palermo, and Slovak cardinal Jozef Tomko, assisted him.

On December 17, 2012, they handed the pontiff two red-leather bound volumes, almost 300 pages long, containing ”an exact map of the mischief and the bad fish” inside the Holy See, La Repubblica reported.

”It was on that day, with those papers on his desk, that Benedict XVI took the decision he had mulled over for so long,” said the centre-left newspaper. It said its article was the first of a series.

Panorama, a conservative weekly, did not speculate about the motives behind Benedict’s resignation, but its story about the contents of the confidential report was broadly similar.

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VATICAN CITY
New York Magazine

By Joe Coscarelli

The Italian newspaper La Repubblica isn’t buying that a pope resigned for the first time in more than 600 years simply because he wasn’t feeling so spry anymore. Instead, a new report points to a juicy-sounding secret dossier (“two volumes of almost 300 pages — bound in red”) involving a faction in the Vatican “united by sexual orientation,” according to the Guardian. Those officials were supposedly subject to “external influence” from outsiders with whom they connected in a “worldly nature.” A.k.a. blackmail.

The information is thought to stem from an investigation into the “Vatileaks” scandal, in which Pope Benedict XVI’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, was arrested for stealing and leaking gossipy Vatican documents. The pope reportedly received the information on December 17, the day he decided to step down. According to a La Repubblica source, “Everything revolves around the non-observance of the sixth and seventh commandments,” or “Thou shalt not steal” and “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Haaretz notes that the Italian paper in question has a history of exposing homosexual happenings in the Vatican.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Tess Livingstone
From:The Australian
February 23, 2013

AUSTRALIA’S Cardinal George Pell yesterday called on the Vatican press office to respond “in some constructive way” to reports of an internal investigation by three senior cardinals that told Pope Benedict XVI about an insidious web of blackmail, corruption and homosexual sex inside the Vatican.

Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper linked Benedict’s resignation with a top secret 300-page dossier prepared by Spanish Cardinal Julian Herranz, Slovak Cardinal Jozef Tomko and Italian Cardinal Salvatore De Giorgi into the “Vatileaks” affair, which saw the Pope’s former butler, Paolo Gabriele, arrested and jailed for stealing and leaking papal documents.

None of the three cardinals will take part in the conclave because they are over 80 years of age, but they are expected to brief those voting about their findings.

According to La Repubblica, the report was “an exact map of the mischief and the bad fish” inside the Holy See, with the cardinals finding that one faction of Vatican officials, “united by sexual orientation”, had been subject to “external influence” from laymen with whom they had links of a “worldly nature”, which the paper said was a reference to blackmail.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 22 February 2013 (VIS) – Today, the Holy Father: …

– appointed Msgr. Ettore Balestrero as apostolic nuncio to Colombia, at the same time elevating him to the dignity of archbishop and assigning him the titular see of Vittoriana. The archbishop-elect, previously under-secretary for the Holy See’s Relations with States, was born in Genoa, Italy in 1966 and was ordained a priest in 1993. On entering the diplomatic service of the Holy See in 1996, he has served as a papal legate in Korea, Mongolia, Holland, and in the section of Relations with States of the Secretariat of State.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
City Watch

Written by John MacMurray

RELIGION POWER POLITICS – Try this for a scenario: when Cardinal Roger Mahony leaves for Rome to elect the new Pope, he may not be coming back. Consider: the current Pope, Benedict XVI, recently announced his resignation, literally giving two weeks’ notice to leave a job that normally lasts a lifetime. He is the first Pope to resign since 1415. Advanced age was given as the reason, but the timing is interesting, coming as several very large Church scandals are breaking. These involve the Vatican Bank, again, and increasing numbers of reported sex abuse cases in Europe and the United States.

Cardinal Mahony, who retired as head of the Los Angeles Archdiocese in 2011, was recently stripped of his remaining administrative duties for the Archdiocese by his successor, Archbishop Jose Gomez. After reviewing the recently-opened and recently-published Church files detailing sex crimes by Cardinal Mahony’s priests against children, Gomez said he ”was disgusted by what was in the files”.

Cardinal Mahony, however, will be one of the 117 Cardinals meeting in Rome to elect the new Pope; he was also one of the Cardinals who elected Benedict XVI.

And remember that Vatican City is a sovereign city-state. So, he is safe from any prosecution or legal action if the Church wishes to help him.

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VATICAN CITY
ABC News

By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press
VATICAN CITY February 21, 2013 (AP)

In one of his last appointments, the pope on Friday transferred a top official from the Vatican’s secretariat of state to Colombia amid swirling media speculation about the contents of a confidential report into the Vatican’s leaks scandal.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, stressed the transfer of Monsignor Ettore Balestrero had been months in the works, was an important promotion and had nothing to do with what the Vatican considers baseless reporting.

Balestrero was named undersecretary of the Vatican’s Foreign Ministry in 2009 and, among other tasks, has been a lead player in the Holy See’s efforts to get on the “white list” of financially transparent countries. Pope Benedict XVI, who steps down Feb. 28, named him ambassador, or nunzio, to Colombia.

Italian newspapers for days have been rife with unsourced reports about the contents of the dossier, presented to Benedict in December, that three cardinals prepared after investigating the origins of the leaks. The scandal erupted last year after papers taken from the pope’s desk were published in a blockbuster book. The pope’s butler was convicted in October of aggravated theft, and later pardoned.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Feb. 22, 2013

Rome —
John Allen is offering a profile each day of one of the most frequently touted papabili, or men who could be pope. The old saying in Rome is that he who enters a conclave as pope exits as a cardinal, meaning there’s no guarantee one of these men actually will be chosen. They are, however, the leading names drawing buzz in Rome these days, ensuring they will be in the spotlight as the conclave draws near. The profiles of these men also suggest the issues and the qualities other cardinals see as desirable heading into the election.

One could make a pretty strong argument that nobody’s chances of becoming the next pope benefit more from Benedict XVI’s resignation than those of Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of Manila in the Philippines.

Under ordinary circumstances, Tagle’s youth would be seen as an almost insuperable bar to election. At 55, he’s three years younger than John Paul II was when he was elected in 1978, so a vote for Tagle would be tantamount to a vote for another long papacy, perhaps as much as 30 years.

Tagle actually looks even younger. The story goes that in the mid-1990s, when then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger introduced Tagle to Pope John Paul II as a new member of the Vatican’s International Theological Commission, Ratzinger jokingly assured the pope that the youthful-seeming Filipino had, in fact, received his first Communion.

Especially with a figure many cardinals regard as something of an unknown, a choice for such a young pope would strike them as an awfully big risk.

Now that the precedent has been set that a pope can resign, however, the calculus is different. Tagle could give the church 10 or 15 years, then step aside — a thought that may well induce some cardinals to look past his age to other qualities.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

WHEN Sydney journalist Geraldine Willesee sat down to practise internet searches on a rainy afternoon she never thought she would expose the priest who molested her and the following 49-year cover-up by the Catholic Church.

But those few clicks on the internet would eventually lead to the suspension of Father Brian Gerard Harris and expose files likely to be highly pertinent to the impending royal commission into child abuse.

Willesee was a naive 14-year-old girl in Osborne Park in Perth when Fr Harris began to groom her.

The daughter of prominent Labor Senator Don Willesee, she endured a difficult time during her schooling, prompting the priest to single her out.

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AUSTRALIA
Canberra Times

February 23, 2013

I was abused, writes Geraldine Willesee, by a young Catholic priest whose sins were hidden.

The anguish in the letter, written in 1963, can still be felt across the years. It is from the late Perth parish priest Cyril Stinson to his then Archbishop, Redmond Prendiville. In it Stinson pleads with the archbishop to deal with his curate who he warns could ”go to prison” for his dealings with a minor. I was the minor.

This ”smoking gun” document, hidden for 50 years, has been released by the Catholic Archbishop of Perth thanks to the royal commission into religious child sex abuse, which requires the handing over of ”confidential” documents by the church.

Current and previous Perth archbishops had refused to release the document which reveals the activities of a known paedophile priest – Brian Harris, who died last May.

Tim Costelloe, the current archbishop, and Barry Hickey, former archbishop praised him in a glowing obituary.

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