ABUSE TRACKER

ROME
dotCommonweal

March 9, 2013

Posted by Margaret O’Brien Steinfels

The coverage of Archbishop Timothy Dolan in the Times over the last week is far better than he usually gets. Saturday’s love letter from Michael Paulson in Rome is quite amazing (even featuring Dolan with the kiss-a-baby photo). Just in case, he doesn’t get the big job in Rome, there is a mayoral election coming up in NYC. Wonder how he’d do? The Times would almost certainly not endorse him for that job, but probably the Post and the Daily News would.

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ROME
CNN

By Chris Cuomo and Eric Marrapodi, CNN

Rome (CNN) – Crowds lined the walls and spilled out the front door of the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Monte Mario on Sunday to catch a glimpse of the gregarious American Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York, who smiled broadly as he came into the church, stopping to wave to photographers and kiss a baby whose parents were holding him up.

Dolan has made the short lists of some Vatican watchers as a likely choice to be elected as the next pope by the College of Cardinals, a designation called “papabili” in Italian.

A local officiant began the service by saying it was great to have Dolan at the church close to Easter.

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ROME
Religion News Service

David Gibson | Mar 10, 2013

ROME (RNS) If ordinary Romans still had in a say in selecting their bishop – also known as the pope – the way they did in the early centuries of the church, then Cardinal Timothy Dolan might already be pontiff.

On Sunday the archbishop of New York continued to charm the citizens of the Eternal City (and many in the media, who probably seem him as more papabile than his fellow cardinals do) as he celebrated mass at the parish of Our Lady of Guadalupe in a middle-class Roman neighborhood.

“What a great crowd – let’s take two collections!” Dolan quipped, deploying his workman-like Italian in an unabashedly American accent, and drawing laughs and applause throughout the liturgy.

Two days before they go into the conclave to begin voting for a new pope, Dolan and many of the other 115 cardinal-electors meeting here took a pause from their pre-election deliberations to visit what are called their titular churches, or parishes that they are given ceremonial title to when they are given a red hat.

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SOUTH CAROLINA
WMBF

By WMBF News Staff

HORRY COUNTY, SC (WMBF) – A catholic priest who once served in Myrtle Beach faces an allegation of sexual misconduct of a minor, according to a news release from The Diocese of Charleston on Sunday afternoon.

The reported allegation indicated the misconduct took place more than 15 years ago when Father Hayden Vaverek was a pastor at Our Lady of Lourdes in Greenwood, SC. The diocese says no parishioners of that parish were involved in the reported allegations.

Father Vaverek served at several parishes and schools in South Carolina including Myrtle Beach, Garden City, Greenwood, Greenville, Simpsonville, Anderson, McCormick, Moncks Corner, Bonneau and Hilton Head Island.

Law enforcement authorities have been notified of the allegations, according to diocesan officials. Father Vaverek has been placed on administrative leave and his priestly faculties withdrawn.

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SLOWENIEN
Stimme Russlands

Sloweniens Katholische Kirche zahlt ein Entschädigungsgeld in Höhe von knapp 80.000 Euro dem Opfer des Priesters, der der Pädophilie bezichtigt wird und am Vorabend der Urteilsverkündung verstorben ist.

Insgesamt wurde der Priester Karl Jošt, der in einer der Pfarreien der Erzdiözese Maribor diente, knapp 16 Mal wegen sexuellen Missbrauchs der Mädchen unter 15 Jahren, denen er die Religion unterrichtete, angeklagt. Der Fall wurde wegen Todes des Angeklagten geschlossen, aber ein der Opfer verlangt in einem separaten Gerichtsverfahren von der Kirche für den moralischen Schaden nach dem Entschädigungsgeld.

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ROM
Katholisches

(Rom) Das in Österreich umgangssprachliche gebrauchte Wort Schmäh, trifft die Sache am besten. Im Ausdruck Schmäh hat sich das mittelhochdeutsche Wort smaehe erhalten und meint Beschimpfung und verächtliche Behandlung. Um eine solche verächtliche Behandlung handelte es sich bei der Meldung vom „schmutzigen“ oder „dreckigen Dutzend“. Jener Liste mit den Namen von zwölf Kardinälen, die „Freunde der Pädophilen“ seien, weil sie angeblich pädophile Priester gedeckt oder nicht rechtzeitig entfernt hätten.

Die Liste wurde von der amerikanischen Vereinigung SNAP verbreitet. SNAP steht für Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (Netz der Überlebenden, die von Priestern mißbraucht wurden). Veröffentlicht wurde sie kurz vor Beginn des Konklave und enthält – siehe da – den Großteil jener, die in den Medien, ob zu recht oder zu unrecht, als „Papabili“ genannt werden. Hinter der Aktion verbirgt sich blankes Profitdenken.

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CHILE
Terra

El Arzobispo de Santiago, Ricardo Ezzati, se refirió a los casos de abuso sexual que se le imputan al sacerdote Fernando Karadima. “Me criticaron por visitarlo, pero es mi deber acompañar a los que sufren”, sostuvo.A lo anterior, agregó: “Cómo no van a doler los casos que hemos tenido de problemas que tocan a los muchachos, a los niños situaciones como esa duelen muchísimo. El dolor más grande que he tenido en dos años son estos casos, sobre todo por las personas que han sido ofendidas. Siento vergüenza por ello, pero también siento que he actuado como debía actuar”, sostuvo.

Del mismo modo, se refirió a las críticas que recibió por parte de diversos sectores por reunirse con Karadima, a lo que el prelado respondió: “Lo visité en vísperas de navidad. Como pastor, yo tengo que visitar a todos los que sufren. Voy a la cárcel, a los hospitales. No por visitar a una persona quiere decir que apoye lo que ha hecho”.

“Él se declara inocente”

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IRELAND
RTE News

The Department of Justice said it has received around 1,000 calls about the fund which is to be set up for former residents of Magdalene laundries.

Mr Justice John Quirke, who is carrying out a review to devise recommendations on payments and support, has been meeting Magdalene Survivor representative groups this week.

He met the Magdalene Survivors Together group, and the UK-based Irish Womens Survivors Support Network, to discuss the fund.

The Government is asking the four religious orders concerned to make what it calls an appropriate contribution to the fund, and the Department said contact is ongoing with the Orders about the issue.

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AUSTRALIA
Mudgee Guardian

By Barney Zwartz
March 11, 2013,

Cardinal George Pell, tainted by sex abuse scandals, has no chance of becoming the 266th pope after Australian critics campaigned to publicise allegations that have long dogged him to Italian media and voting cardinals, according to Australian commentator Paul Collins.

Following traditionalist guardians quick to report Australian infractions to Rome, progressive Catholics have lobbied overseas journalists and cardinals to make sure they are aware of the 2002 inquiry into allegations the Sydney Archbishop molested a 12-year-old boy several times in 1961.

Retired Supreme Court judge A. J. Southwell was ”not satisfied the complaint was established” but said he was impressed by the testimony of both the complainant and the cardinal.

”The judge never cleared Pell and that has rendered Pell irrelevant. He has no chance,” Dr Collins, a former priest, said.

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UNITED STATES
Daily Caller

On Sunday’s broadcast of “Face the Nation” on CBS, the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan explained why the next pope might just be an American.

“Look, it is a divine and yet profoundly human institution, the Vatican,” Noonan said. “Sally [Quinn], you quote Jesus Christ well, but remember, he said to Saint Peter, before he was called Saint Peter, ‘On this rock I will build my church,’ and he said ‘even the fires of hell will not prevail against it.’ Sometimes the cardinals get a little frustrating because they act like, ‘Oh, good, it doesn’t matter what we do. It will always continue.’ I don’t think that’s probably the correct message to have been taken out of that, but the church has been around for a long time. It will be around for a long time.”

As for who will lead the Catholic Church, Noonan said the possibility of an American pope has been elevated, since Europeans no longer view the United States as a superpower.

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VATICAN CITY
Deseret News

Associated Press
Published: Sunday, March 10 2013

VATICAN CITY — Cardinals from around the world gather this week in a conclave to elect a new pope following the stunning resignation of Benedict XVI. In the secretive world of the Vatican, there is no way to know who is in the running, and history has yielded plenty of surprises. Yet several names have come up time repeatedly as strong contenders for the job. Here is a look at who they are:

CARDINAL ANGELO SCOLA: Scola is seen as Italy’s best chance at reclaiming the papacy, following back-to-back pontiffs from outside the country that had a lock on the job for centuries. He’s also one of the top names among all of the papal contenders. Scola, 71, has commanded both the pulpits of Milan’s Duomo as archbishop and Venice’s St. Mark’s Cathedral as patriarch, two extremely prestigious church positions that together gave the world five popes during the 20th century. Scola was widely viewed as a papal contender when Benedict was elected eight years ago. His promotion to Milan, Italy’s largest and most influential diocese, has been seen as a tipping point in making him one of the leading papal candidates. He is known as a doctrinal conservative who is also at ease quoting Jack Kerouac and Cormac McCarthy.

CARDINAL ODILO SCHERER: Scherer is known for prolific tweeting, appearances on Brazil’s most popular late-night talk show and squeezing into the subway for morning commutes. Brazil’s best hope to supply the next pontiff is increasingly being touted as one of the top overall contenders for the job. At the relatively young age of 63, he enthusiastically embraces all new methods for reaching believers, while staying true to a conservative line of Roman Catholic doctrine and hardline positions on social issues such as rejection of same-sex marriage. Scherer joined Twitter in 2011 and in his second tweet said: “If Jesus preached the gospel today, he would also use print media, radio, TV, the Internet and Twitter. Give Him a chance!” Scherer became the Sao Paulo archbishop in 2007 and was named a cardinal later the same year.

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VATICAN CITY
Christian Post

By Anugrah Kumar, Christian Post Contributor

March 10, 2013

With the Vatican’s announcement that the Roman Catholic Church will begin voting for the new leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics Tuesday, it is expected that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s successor will be elected by Friday.

There’s “no reason to believe it will take long” to elect the new pope, Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Fredrico Lombardi, told reporters Saturday, the day after the Vatican said in a release the Conclave will begin on Tuesday, March 12.

The last six popes were all elected within four days, and the election of Benedict in 2005 took less than 24 hours.

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VATICAN CITY
NECN

Mar 10, 2013

Editors,

The cardinals have set Tuesday as the start date for the conclave to select a new pope. The first vote is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, following a morning Mass. Here are the AP’s multiformat plans for the days leading up to the first vote.

Sunday, March 10

Spot coverage: Cardinals hold Mass in their titular churches in Rome. All formats covering.

Tour of Sistine Chapel for photo.

— CROWD CONTROL — What are the crowd control challenges for the conclave? We speak with the Rome deputy mayor in charge of logistics. All formats covering. Text by Fran D’Emilio.

— VATICAN-CARDINALS — A series profiling the men who could be pope. Text thumbnails of the profiles with photos.

Cardinals who have been featured in the Vatican-Cardinal “papabili” series: Filipino Antonio Tagle, Sri Lankan Malcolm Ranjith, Italian Angelo Scola, Canadian Marc Ouellet, Honduran Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga, American Timothy Dolan, Argentinians Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Leonardo Sandri, Austrian Christoph Schoenborn, Ghanian Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson, Hungarian Peter Erdo, Brazilian Odilo Scherer, Italian Gianfranco Ravasi .

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ROME
NBC News

By Alastair Jamieson, Keir Simmons and Yuka Tachibana, NBC News

ROME — An American cardinal in Rome hinted Sunday hinted at the difficulty of deciding who should be the next pope, saying the papal conclave was a time when “the will of God is not entirely clear.”

Chicago’s archbishop, Cardinal Francis George, asked for “help and prayers” as he and 114 other cardinals prepared to enter the papal conclave to elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI.

“I ask you for your prayer to help the Holy Spirit to be present among us to open our hearts and our minds to what is the will of God for his people throughout the world,” he told reporters after saying mass at the local church assigned to him during his stay in Rome.

He added: “This is a momentous occasion, when perhaps the will of God isn’t entirely clear to many of us.”

Vatican observers say the choice is wider than it has been in modern memory, with no emerging consensus on who should be the next leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics.

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DEUTSCHLAND
LN Online

Von Susanne Peyronnet

Scharbeutz. „Wer nichts tut und wegschaut, ist mit schuldig an diesem Verbrechen.“ Norbert Denef aus Scharbeutz gibt nicht auf. Er ist Sprecher von Netzwerk-B, dem größten Zusammenschluss von deutschen Missbrauchsopfern. Das Wegschauen wirft er der Politik und dem „Runden Tisch Sexueller Kindesmissbrauch“ vor, der im Februar nach drei Jahren die Arbeit einstellte. Nach Denefs Ansicht hat der nichts gebracht. „Der Runde Tisch hat nur drei Jahre Zeit vertan, mehr ist nicht geschehen.“ Die Opfer seien nichts als Marionetten gewesen, die „verdrängende Arroganz“ derer am Runden Tisch sei der Größe des Verbrechens nicht gerecht geworden.

„Ich renne überall gegen Wände“, beschreibt Denef seine Situation. Von den 64 000 Unterschriften, die er im vergangenen November an den SPD-Landesvorsitzenden Ralf Stegner übergab, hat er nie wieder etwas gehört. „64 000 Unterschriften kann man doch nicht unter den Tisch fallen lassen.“ Die Unterzeichner sprechen sich dafür aus, die Verjährungsfristen für sexualisierte Gewalt aufzuheben.

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UNITED STATES
Pope Crimes & Vatican Evils…

Paris Arrow

Updated March 8, 2013 International Women’s Day http://www.internationalwomensday.com/

Today is International Women’s Day and there should have been a women’s march in St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican – to protest the zero tolerance for women – by the all-male mysogynist Papal Conclave at the gay infested Vatican Titanic.

SNAP list “Dirty Dozen” worst papal candidates, see news updates below. SNAP says Cardinals who are members of the Vatican Curia (not Roman Curia) must not be elected pope.

The picture says a thousand words – Canada’s TV priest Thomas Rosica sits besides Vatican spokeperson Lombardi – which proves the Vatican has prepared and chosen Cardinal Ouellet as its leading papal horse, see news and photo updates below.

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TEXAS
KHOU

[with video]

by Drew Karedes / KHOU 11 News

HOUSTON — A well-known Catholic teacher at St. Thomas High School has resigned after allegations of misconduct. Father Jack Hanna was been with the all-boys school since 1981.

The school would not answer questions on camera, nor would they elaborate on the nature of the allegations.

St. Thomas says Rev. Hanna has entered a therapeutic center for priests. A spokesperson released a brief statement to KHOU 11 News.

“He has acknowledged that he behaved inappropriately and will be receiving extensive residential treatment at the facility. He has expressed deep regret for any harm caused by his behavior,” the statement said in part.

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TEXAS
Sylvia’s Site

From: St. Thomas High School [mailto:alumni@sths.org]
Sent: Friday, March 08, 2013 7:58 AM
To:
Subject: Important Message from Frs. Storey and Fulton

Dear Alumni,
Approximately three weeks ago, you were informed that an allegation of misconduct was made by an adult against Father Jack Hanna. Immediately upon receipt of the allegation, Father Hanna agreed to undergo an assessment at a therapeutic center for priests. He has acknowledged that he behaved inappropriately and will be receiving extensive residential treatment at the facility. He has expressed deep regret for any harm caused by his behavior and believes it is best that he resign his position at St. Thomas High School so that he may focus on his treatment.
We wish to express our sincere appreciation to you for your concern for Father Hanna and ask you to please keep him in your prayers during this difficult time.
Yours in Christ,
Fr. Kevin Storey, C.S.B.
Fr. Patrick Fulton, C.S.B.

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TEXAS
Sylvia’s Site

A Basilian priest in Houston, Texas, Father Jack Hanna, has been suspended following an allegation of “misconduct.”

The following email was sent to alumni of St. Thomas High School in Houston Texas:

February 11, 2013

Dear Alumni,
This weekend, the Basilian Fathers were contacted by the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston and informed that there is an allegation of misconduct against Fr. Jack Hanna, C.S.B.. The allegation involves an adult who is neither a student nor an employee at St. Thomas High School. At the direction of the Superior-General of the Basilian Fathers, while this matter is under investigation, Fr. Hanna will not be engaged in teaching or any priestly ministry. Please keep the St. Thomas community in your prayers during this time, Yours in Christ, Fr. Kevin Storey, C.S.B

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TEXAS
Houston Chronicle

By Allan Turner | March 8, 2013

The Rev. Jack Hanna, a Spanish and art history teacher at Houston’s Catholic St. Thomas High School, has resigned and entered treatment at a therapeutic center for priests, school officials said on Friday.

In a statement issued by the Rev. Kevin Storey, school president, and the Rev. Patrick Fulton, principal, the school said Hanna had been accused of unspecified misconduct. School officials said the complainant was an adult.

Hanna, a 1962 graduate of the school, operated by the Congregation of St. Basil, taught introductory and advanced placement Spanish classes and art history. He had been a member of the faculty since 1981.

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SOUTH CAROLINA
Gwd Today

Brian King
News Editor

A former priest at Our Lady of Lourdes in Greenwood has been placed on administrative leave after allegations of sexual misconduct were made to the Diocese of Charleston.

According to officials with the Diocese of Charleston, Father Hayden Vavarek has been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of an investigation. The alleged misconduct took place at Our Lady of Lourdes about 15 years ago.

Officials with the Greenwood County Sheriff’s Office say that a criminal investigation has not yet begun, as the victims are located out of state.

Vavarek served at various parishes in the upstate, including Greenville, Anderson and Simpsonville.

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SOUTH CAROLINA
Fox Carolina

Posted: Mar 10, 2013

By Derek Dellinger

GREENVILLE, SC (FOX Carolina) –
A Catholic priest with some deep ties to the Upstate is in administrative leave following allegations of sexual misconduct.

Father Hayden Vaverek had “his priestly faculties withdrawn,” according to the Diocese of Charleston.

FOX Carolina obtained a letter sent from St. Joseph’s Catholic School to parents regarding the allegations. The letter said the allegations of sexual misconduct involve a minor and date back more than 15 years. The misconduct allegedly occurred while Vaverek was pastor at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in Greenwood, but “no parishioners of that parish were involved in the reported allegation,” the diocese said. The school said Vaverek had previously served on the Board of Trustees at St. Joseph’s Catholic School in Greenville.

Vaverek also served at several parishes across the Upstate, including Simpsonville, Anderson and Greenwood.

In 2011, he began working for the Catholic Near East Welfare Association based in New York City.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Stadt Zeitung

In der Diözese Augsburg wurden in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten 148 Kinder und Jugendliche missbraucht, 99 von ihnen sexuell. Das geht aus dem Arbeitsbericht hervor, den der scheidende Missbrauchsbeauftragte Otto Kocherscheidt nun vorgelegt hat.

Der ehemalige Richter hatte sein Amt im März 2010 angetreten. Damals ging eine Flut von Hinweisen ein. Das habe zunächst den Eindruck vermittelt, körperliche Gewalt und sexueller Missbrauch seien in kirchlichen Einrichtungen eine systembedingte Begleiterscheinung. Tatsächlich aber handle es sich „um eine erschreckende Zahl von Einzelfällen, die teilweise Jahrzehnte unentdeckt geblieben sind“, resümiert Kocherscheidt.

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MEXIKO
Neopresse

Von Emilio Godoy

Mexiko-Stadt, 6. März (IPS) – Während sich 117 katholische Kardinäle auf das Konklave zur Wahl eines neuen Papstes vorbereiten, sorgen die Fälle von Pädophilie innerhalb der Kirche weiterhin weltweit für Empörung. Opfer und Menschenrechtsaktivisten dringen darauf, dass kirchliche Würdenträger, die direkt oder indirekt an sexuellem Missbrauch beteiligt waren, nicht über den Nachfolger des am 28. Februar zurückgetretenen Benedikt XVI. abstimmen dürfen.

Mindestens fünf Kardinäle, die der Pädophilie beschuldigte Priester schützten, stehen unter dem Druck der Öffentlichkeit. Einer von ihnen ist Norberto Rivas aus Mexiko. “Damit die Kirche ihre moralische Statur wiedererlangen und zu dem werden kann, was sie einmal war, muss der neue Papst von Menschen gewählt werden, die sich moralisch einwandfrei verhalten”, sagte der mexikanische Aktivist Joaquín Aguilar, der in Mexiko das Netzwerk von Missbrauchsopfern von Priestern (SNAP) leitet.

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JERSEY
Daily Echo

A senior Church of England clergyman has been suspended over allegations that a complaint of abuse made by a vulnerable female parishioner was not taken seriously by him.

Dean of Jersey, the Very Rev Robert Key, has had his commission withdrawn by the Bishop of Winchester following a critical independent report into the 2008 complaint by the woman of abusive behaviour by a churchwarden in Jersey.

The report, commissioned by the Diocese of Winchester’s Safeguarding Panel, raised concerns that the dean did not take the complaint seriously.

He also showed a perceived lack of neutrality, offered poor communication and failed to act in relation to the parishioner.

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JERSEY
BBC News

The Anglican Dean of Jersey has been suspended over concerns about his handling of a parishioner’s complaint.

The Bishop of Winchester earlier withdrew the commission of the Very Reverend Robert Key following the publication of a diocesan report.

The Safeguarding Panel found there were failures in the implementation of policies in relation to a complaint by a vulnerable adult parishioner in 2008.

The complaint concerned the alleged abusive behaviour of a churchwarden.

A statement from the diocese said the bishop, the Right Reverend Tim Dakin, would begin an investigation to examine “an apparent failure to take the complaint seriously, a perceived lack of neutrality, poor communication and lack of action”.

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JERSEY
BBC News

The Archbishop of Canterbury apologised to a woman whose complaint of abuse was apparently not taken seriously enough.

Justin Welby said: “I wish to add my own personal apologies to the young woman who was so badly let down.”

Anglican Dean of Jersey, the Very Reverend Bob Key, was suspended over concerns about his handling of the complaint.

The Bishop of Winchester, Tim Dakin, withdrew Mr Key’s commission following the publication of a diocesan report.

The Safeguarding Panel found there were failures in the implementation of policies in relation to a complaint by a vulnerable adult parishioner in 2008.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Anglican Diocese of Winchester

Introduction

I have been asked by the Safeguarding Panel for the Diocese of Winchester to look into the response of the Diocese to a complaint made by a vulnerable adult against a church warden in a parish on Jersey.

I have been requested to consider the written documentation and audio recordings supplied, and to interview all those who I consider appropriate to enable me to fulfil my remit. I have had some difficulty in achieving access to Officers of the Church of England on Jersey and in significant cases met with an entire lack of available records. Assessing the reasons for this comes within my brief.

The purpose of the review is not to revisit the allegation of abuse which was put to the police in November 2008 and found to have insufficient evidence to proceed, but to consider how the Diocesan Safeguarding Procedures, and any separate Jersey complaint procedures, responded both at the time of receiving the complaint and the repercussions that followed it.
Terms of Reference

1) To consider the way the complaint was initially addressed both from:
a) The complainant’s position,
b) The following of Diocesan Safeguarding Procedures,
c) The following of Jersey complaint’s procedures where appropriate.
July 2008 – November 2008
2) To consider how the subsequent allegations of failure by Officers of the Church and Diocesan Staff to resolve the issue were handled.
December 2008 – October 2010 Jersey
October 2010 – July 2011 Mainland
3) To explore what communication and behaviours appear to have helped or exacerbated the problem with a view to making recommendations for dealing with similar complaints in the future.
I will look at the communication and recording at each of these three stages.

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JERSEY
Anglican Diocese of Winchester

Independent Review of a Safeguarding Complaint for the Diocese of Winchester (PDF)

A statement from the Diocese of Winchester

THE BISHOP OF WINCHESTER has today withdrawn the commission of the Dean of Jersey, the Very Reverend Robert Key, effectively suspending him. The Dean of Jersey’s suspension follows the publication today of an Independent Report (see below), commissioned by the Diocese of Winchester’s Safeguarding Panel. This has found that there were a number of failures in the implementation of policies, in relation to a safeguarding complaint in 2008.

The report raises concerns that the Dean of Jersey did not comply with key safeguarding procedures in dealing with the complaints of a vulnerable adult parishioner, who had made a complaint about abusive behaviour by a Churchwarden in Jersey.

Following the announcement of the suspension, the Bishop will now begin an investigation into the conduct of the case by the Dean of Jersey and other matters raised by the report. The report describes a number of areas where proper practice was not followed including an apparent failure to take the complaint seriously, a perceived lack of neutrality, poor communication and lack of action.

The Right Reverend Tim Dakin, Bishop of Winchester, who is responsible for the Church of England in the Channel Islands said, “Firstly I want to give my unreserved apologies to the complainant for her treatment. Protecting the vulnerable is at the heart of the Church of England’s mission. With that comes a duty to ensure those in need are properly looked after. It is vital that robust safeguarding policies are in place and, above all, that they are properly implemented.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Archbishop of Canterbury

9th March 2013

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has supported the response of the Bishop of Winchester to yesterday’s (8 March) publication of an independent report into a safeguarding complaint in Jersey from 2008.

The report raises concerns that the Dean of Jersey did not comply with key safeguarding procedures in dealing with the complaints of a vulnerable adult parishioner, who had made a complaint about abusive behaviour by a Churchwarden.

Following the publication of the report, the Bishop of Winchester announced he was withdrawing the commission of the Dean of Jersey, effectively suspending him, and he has begun an investigation into the conduct of the case by the Dean and other matters raised by the report.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said:

“The Bishop of Winchester’s swift, decisive and wholly necessary actions following his receipt of this report are to be commended. I too wish to add my own personal apologies to the young woman who was so badly let down by those she had turned to for help and I wholeheartedly support the investigation that the Bishop has launched. He must receive full cooperation from all involved.

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JERSEY
Daily Mail

Archbishop of Canterbury offers personal apology to victim abused by cleric who was ‘badly let down’ by church investigation

By Anna Edwards

The Archbishop of Canterbury has apologised after the Church of England did not take her allegations of abuse seriously and ‘badly let her down’.

The new Archbishop, Justin Welby, made a personal apology as a senior Church of England cleric was suspended.

The Bishop of Winchester Tim Dakin suspended the Dean of Jersey, the Very Rev Robert Key, yesterday following a critical independent report into the 2008 complaint by the woman of abusive behaviour by a churchwarden in Jersey.

The report, commissioned by the Diocese of Winchester’s Safeguarding Panel, raised concerns that the dean did not take the complaint seriously.

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JERSEY
Channel Online

[with video]

The leader of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has offered his personal apologies to the woman whose complaints of abuse by a Jersey church warden were judged to have not been properly handled by the Dean.

On Friday the Bishop of Winchester suspended the Very Reverend Bob Key and announced an immediate investigation into his conduct. The Rt Rev Tim Dakin is due to visit Jersey tomorrow (Monday).

An independent report concluded Mr Key had failed to properly investigate the allegations made by the woman – described as a 26-year-old vulnerable adult.

Jersey comes under the Diocese of Winchester which has clear safeguarding procedures on what to do when allegations of abuse are made against a church worker. The report found that the procedures had not been followed.

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ROME
The Daily Beast

by Christopher Dickey
Mar 10, 2013

Archbishop Donald Wuerl fought for justice on behalf of the Church’s sex-abuse victims long before the Vatican did. Christopher Dickey on the odds he’ll be chosen.

Each of the cardinals now in Rome to elect the new pope has long had a church assigned him where he says mass when he’s in the Eternal City. But when Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, D.C., was made a cardinal in 2010, Pope Benedict XVI gave him a church of singular importance: San Pietro in Vincoli (Saint Peter in Chains). …

Wuerl first came to national attention after Pope John Paul II named him bishop of Pittsburgh in 1988, right in the middle of the first waves of horrific revelations about predatory priests and the shameful way their crimes were covered up by the church hierarchy. His predecessor had just banned three priests in his diocese from public ministry. Another, a former high school principal, was still serving as a diocesan administrator, and after psychiatric treatment Wuerl made him a hospital chaplain.

But a few weeks after that decision Wuerl met with the devout, deeply disillusioned, and increasingly litigious family of one victim. They invited Wuerl to dinner and, according to a lengthy and laudatory report in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2003, when Wuerl left that table his views of the issue had changed. Before, his actions had been closely aligned Church policies, which were basically a CYA masquerading as piety. Now Wuerl told his staff it had to get its priorities straight: the first concern was the injured party, the second was for the person’s family, the third – and only the third – was the potential harm to the church and its reputation. He’s on the record declaring zero tolerance for priests accused of sexual abuse 14 years before that became official policy.

But the accusations just kept coming, until it got hard to distinguish between coverups, counter-charges, and good-faith efforts to set the clergy on a more righteous – and legally defensible — path. In 1993 Wuerl fought to have a priest accused of molesting a young teenager banned from public ministry. But the Vatican reinstated him. Wuerl appealed and fought for two more years before, finally, reluctantly, Rome agreed with the ban.

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ITALY
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

ITALY- Italian clergy sex victim detained

Posted by David Clohessy

Here are three documents about the Francesco Zanardi case.

(Zanardi has many more.)

One is reportedly a 2003 letter from then-Bishop Calcagno to then-Cardinal Ratzinger asking what to do about Fr. Giraudo because of his alleged sexual abuses of Savona children.

Two others are reportedly documents written by Savona church officials about Fr. Giraudo’s personal history, and reportedly includes this sentence: “Nulla è trapelato sui giornali e non ci sono denunce in corso,” essentially meaning “so far nothing of this case came out in the newspapers and none of the abused have pressed charges.”

For more info on the case, please see our EVENTS section.

Click below to find the three documents about the Francesco Zanardi case:

Click here

Click here

Click here

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ROME
John Thavis

If it were up to Maria Cherubino, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston would emerge from the coming conclave as the next pope.

“He’s a spiritual figure, he’s fairly young and energetic, and he seems sure of himself. All that is important, because I think the church needs a great guide in this particular moment,” she said after attending Mass celebrated by Cardinal O’Malley in the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome.

A few pews away, Elisabetta Porco gave a similar endorsement.

“There was just something about him I immediately liked when I saw him. Maybe being a friar is part of it, but I have the feeling he would be a different kind of pope,” she said.

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VATICAN CITY
Sky News

As Roman Catholic cardinals prepare a secret conclave in the Vatican to choose a new pope, the only woman seen taking part in the preparations has been the seamstress sewing the ceremonial tablecloths.

The most important decision in the life of the Church is being taken with one half of the Catholic community either looking on or playing an auxiliary role as the male hierarchy deliberates.

‘Not hearing the opinions of half of the world is like a slap in the face,’ said Janice Sevre-Duszynska, who was excommunicated by the Vatican after her unofficial ordination as a female priest.

The American said the idea that only men should decide on the next Pope who will rule over both men and women was ‘a mockery’.

Sevre-Duszynska was quickly detained by police for demonstrating at the Vatican in her ceremonial robes, with police saying they wanted to check that she had the ‘right to wear those vestments’.

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VATICAN CITY
Boston Globe

By Lisa Wangsness
| Globe Staff
March 10, 2013

ROME — Masculine authority has been on vivid display at the Vatican during the last week, as the princes of the Roman Catholic Church gather to elect a replacement for Pope Benedict XVI.

The world has watched the all-male college of cardinals lining up to say goodbye to the retiring Benedict, sweeping past hordes of television cameras to enter the cardinals’ pre-conclave discussions, and gathering in the Basilica of St. Peter to pray for the church.

Three men, all priests, serve as the multilingual media team at the Vatican’s daily press conferences. At briefings last week, they showed clips of conclave preparations under way — men marring the seal in the papal garden with rakes and hoes to signify the papal vacancy, men hauling the cast-iron stove for ballot burning into the Sistine Chapel.

A reporter, noting that one video clip showed a woman appearing to sew a tablecloth for the event, asked if there were any other women involved in the conclave. A Vatican spokesman replied: “There could be other women involved in the whole preparation of the conclave, in serving the fathers working with” the cardinals at their Vatican hotel.

It is against this backdrop that some leading cardinals, including Boston’s Sean P. O’Malley, have expressed a desire to open new leadership opportunities for women in the Roman Catholic Church, saying the matter will be an important concern for the next pope. There is a sense among some prelates that some movement on the gender front is essential; less evident are what steps could win the approval of the pope who will be elected in the days ahead.

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VATICAN CITY
Philly.com

Nicole Winfield, Associated Press

Posted: Sunday, March 10, 2013

VATICAN CITY – The preliminaries over, Catholic cardinals are ready to get down to the real business of choosing a pope. And even without a front-runner, there are indications they will go into the conclave Tuesday with a good idea of their top picks.

Then it will be just a matter of agreeing on one man to lead the church and tackle its many problems.

The conclave date was set Friday during a vote by the College of Cardinals, who have been meeting all week to discuss the church’s problems and priorities, and the qualities the successor to Pope Benedict XVI must possess.

That said, there doesn’t appear to be a front-runner, and the last week of deliberations has exposed sharp divisions among cardinals about some of the pressing problems facing the church, including governance within the Holy See itself.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the pre-conclave meetings had given the cardinals a chance to discuss the “profile, characteristics, qualities, and talents” a future pope must have.

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ROME
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Mar. 10, 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.

Heading into the 2013 conclave, there’s a small set of candidates destined to get a serious look from the outset, such as Cardinals Angelo Scola of Milan, Marc Ouellet of Canada, and Odilo Pedro Scherer of Brazil. The buzz around those names ensures that most cardinals are thinking about them right now, three days before the balloting actually begins.

One could probably add two American names to that list, at least as measured by public clamor: Cardinals Sean O’Malley of Boston and Timothy Dolan of New York.

Then there’s a wider range of figures who may not have strong support in the early rounds of voting, but who could come into play if none of the initial candidates seem to have sufficient support to get across that magic two-thirds threshold, meaning 77 votes out of the 115 cardinal electors.

In that second cluster waiting in the wings, there’s an Asian possibility who hasn’t yet received much attention, but who could strike some cardinals as an attractive fallback solution: Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Bombay (Mumbai) in India.

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FLORIDA
TCPalm

I hope Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley is elected pope, and not just because he once was the bishop of the Palm Beach diocese, which includes the Treasure Coast.

O’Malley, now the archbishop of Boston, is just what the Catholic Church needs at this time. He’s a good listener and a good communicator. He dealt effectively with messes left by sexually abusive priests. He cares about people.

He’s theologically orthodox, preaching against abortion. That should please conservatives.

He also has an open mind and seems in tune with the Second Vatican Council, convened 50 years ago by Pope John XXIII to engage the church with the modern world. That should please progressives.

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SOUTH CAROLINA
Patch

By Hal Millard

Father Hayden Vaverek, a former priest and administrator of St. Mary Magdalene Catholic Church in Simpsonville, has been accused of alleged sexual misconduct, according to a news report.

Vaguely mentioning an unnamed and uncited report, WYFF said that Vaverek allegedly engaged in unspecified sexual misconduct dating back more than 15 years while he was pastor at Our Lady of Lourdes in Greenwood.

The Diocese of Charleston reportedly placed Vaverek on administrative leave. Meanwhile, potential victims of the priest’s alleged misconduct are encouraged to contact local authorities, the report said.

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SOUTH CAROLINA
WYFF

GREENVILLE, S.C. —

A priest with ties to the upstate is accused of sexual misconduct dating back more than 15 years.

The report claims the alleged misconduct of Father Hayden Vaverek occurred while he was pastor at Our Lady of Lourdes in Greenwood.

Throughout his time in the upstate, Father Vaverek spent time at several parishes in Simpsonville, Greenville, and Anderson.

Per the Diocese of Charleston’s policy, Father Vaverek was placed on administrative leave.

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CANADA
Global News

ALLISON LAMPERT, Montreal Gazette : Sunday, March 10, 2013

MONTREAL — On a chilly winter day in 2010, France Bédard led a picket demanding Cardinal Marc Ouellet’s resignation for not seriously addressing victims’ claims of abuse by Quebec clerics.

Today, she’d like to see him elected pope.

As founder of the Quebec Association of Victims of Priests, Bédard is to announce on Sunday the group’s support for Cardinal Ouellet becoming pontiff, during a protest against abuses by the Catholic Church held outside the Clercs de Saint-Viateur offices in Outremont.

Contrary to other groups that have “blacklisted” hometown born Ouellet, 68, the association believes his election as the first Canadian pontiff would thrust the stories of abuse recounted by its 3,500 members into the international spotlight, with reporters already descending on the Cardinal’s tiny hometown of La Motte.

“We are not being facetious, we are all for his election as pope,” Carlo Tarini, the association’s spokesperson told The Gazette. “What we hope they (journalists) will note is the No. 1 problem with the Catholic Church, which is the problem of pedophile priests. We want them to hear our claim that Quebec is a paradise for pedophile priests and how we knocked at (Ouellet’s) door in the past.

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ROME
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

ITALY- Francesco Zanardi case

Posted by David Clohessy

Italian clergy sex victim detained
He joins SNAP at news conference
Man tried to give petitions to Vatican
But police held him Friday for two hours
He accuses voting cardinal of hiding predators
Prelate is urged to stay away from papal conclave
SNAP: “Such intimidation & harassment is common”
Group says Vatican should launch simple complaint mechanism

WHAT:
Holding signs and childhood photos at a news conference, an Italian clergy sex abuse victim will
–discuss being detained by police on Friday while trying to deliver petitions to the Vatican,
-explain why he thinks an Italian cardinal is complicit and should skip the conclave.

SNAP will
–praise the alleged victim and express solidarity with him,
— urge church officials to stop intimidating and harassing victims, and
— publicly push for the creation of a simple Vatican complaint mechanism

WHEN:
TODAY, —–Sunday, March 10 at 3:00 pm

WHERE:
Orange Hotel, 86 Via Crescenzio 00193, Roma +39.06.6868969

WHO:
An Italian man, Francesco Zanardi (ufficiostampe@francescozanardi.eu) who was abused as a child in the 1980s by a now-convicted Italian priest (and speaks some English). Joining him are two leaders of the US-based international support group SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org).

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FLORIDA
Tampa Tribune

By MICHELLE BEARDEN| The Tampa Tribune
Published: March 10, 2013

If Geri Callaghan had any input on the selection of the next pope — of course, she doesn’t — this lifelong Catholic could come up with a quick wish list.

“Someone who will openly address the sex-abuse scandal. It’s a stain on our church and it hasn’t been dealt with in the way it should,” she says. “We need a man of God with no hidden agenda. And let’s address all this wealth at the Vatican. So many parishes are struggling, yet you got all this money in Rome. We put our popes in robes and we treat them like kings. That’s just not right.”

Callaghan, 74, a member of Christ the King Catholic Church in Tampa, is unwavering in her faith. Her Catholicism defines her life and means everything to her.

But with the historic resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, she and many of the faithful are using this lame-duck period to talk about some of the church’s pressing needs and the type of man who could best address them.

According to a just-released poll by the Pew Research Center, Callaghan’s views are reflective of 34 percent of American Catholics, who consider the sex-abuse scandal the most important problem facing the church today. When asked about the church’s most important contribution, 27 percent agreed it is serving those in need through works such as helping the poor, feeding the hungry and healing the sick.

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UNITED STATES
Voice from the Desert

Long before accusing cardinals of complicity in the clergy abuse scandal became common fare, artist, writer, and survivor advocate Vinnie Nauheimer painted “Cardinal Sins” one of four completed paintings in a collection that is called “Stations of the Abused.”

This oil painting on canvas depicts a cardinal with three heads, which represent hear, see and speak no evil. The doves holding the vestments up represent the Holy Spirit who has made the abuse public and the two children represent all the children who have suffered at the hands of the clergy. Mr. Nauheimer would like his painting or a huge likeness of it hung up in the Sistine Chapel or personally handed to all the cardinals gathered to elect the new pope.

Artist, Vinnie Nauheimer, says that the vast beauty of the Sistine Chapel is not conducive to remembering the atrocities committed upon the bodies of Catholic Children around the world. They need a powerful visual message reminding them of their moral obligations and not the pomp and circumstance of the past. This painting drives home the culpability of the College of Cardinals. They are guilty by either acts of commission for their part in the clergy abuse cover-up or for acts of omission by keeping silent about the egregious sins they, to their disgrace, kept silent about.

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SCOTLAND
Herald Scotland

THE Catholic Church in Scotland is facing further turmoil amid reports bishops knew of 20 allegations of child-sex abuse by priests between 1985 and 1995.

Academic Alan Draper was appointed to advise the Church on sexual abuse and how to respond to it in the mid-1990s.

He asked the country’s eight bishops at the time to reveal how much they knew and reports claim responding letters referring to 20 accusations have surfaced.

Mr Draper is understood to have called for independent experts to investigate further, but the bishops disagreed.

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UNITED STATES
Pope Crimes & Vatican Evils…

Paris Arrow

Updated March 8, 2013 International Women’s Day

Hypocrite Mahony calls on Christians to “forgive”

Los Angeles Cardinal Mahony who’s now in Rome for the Papal Conclave is enjoying the final moments of the last fading glory of the Vatican Titanic sinking deep in the ocean of moral bankruptcy. In a medieval church he was assigned to say Mass, he dressed in the regalia of a Prince of the Church, and he called on Christians “to embrace forgiveness”. But “Forgiveness” is the Vatican tool of Injustice – and Mahony uses it well as a strategy to segue attention away – from the Vatican Titanic attacked by multiple icebergs made by its own crimes against humanity’s children – to other world problems as gangs, hate crimes and war.

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UTAH
Daily Herald

A former lay minister in southern Utah has been sentenced to up to 15 years in prison on child sexual abuse charges.

Fifth District Judge Wallace Lee imposed the sentence Friday on 65-year-old Kris Lounsbury, who earlier pleaded guilty in the abuse of four young female relatives.

Members of his church congregation were among those who spoke on his behalf at the sentencing hearing in St. George. Lounsbury founded the Living Word Christian Fellowship.

Lounsbury apologized and asked for forgiveness from the victims. He said he prays for them almost every day and “aches inside” when he thinks about the hurt he caused them.

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UNITED STATES
KMAS

George Doyle/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) — As the cardinal electors contemplate the merits of their peer group, from which one will likely be named pope, U.S. Catholics said sex abuse is the biggest problem facing the church, according to a new survey.

The survey, from the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, found that 34 percent of U.S. Catholics believe sexual abuse is the most pressing problem. However 17 percent of those surveyed said they didn’t know the most important problem or they declined to offer an opinion.

No other answers elicited more than 10 percent of a response.

Credibility was named as the biggest problem by 9 percent of respondents, while an outdated church and a loss of followers garnered 7 percent each.

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UNITED STATES
Times-Standard

Tim Martin/for the Times-Standard
times-standard.com
Posted: 03/10/2013

I’m sure you heard the news. Pope Benedict XVI recently broke with 600 years of tradition and threw in the towel. His resignation, along with blackmail allegations against the Vatican, sexual abuse cover-ups, and advocating for homophobia, has hit the titanic church like an iceberg and is slowly pulling it to the bottom.

The Roman Catholic Church has long had delusions of adequacy. Lately, it’s become clear just how deep and wide the chasm is between Catholicism and the modern world.

When Pope Benedict retired, he left behind a wave of ill-ease and a slew of unresolved crises. Among them are 4,450 priests accused of sexual abuse in the U.S. between 1950 and 2002 — according to a 2004 draft survey for the U.S. Conference of Bishops — that remain oddly unrepentant for their behavior, a clergy that is totally oblivious to the plight of women, and an institution that has little if any relevance to the human race in the 21st century.

It amazes me that Pope Benedict was considered “The Holy Father” during his time as spiritual leader of the church. Especially since he ordered all files on sexual abuse sent to his office, and knew more about the movement of child predators between parishes than anyone. Instead of retiring, Benedict should have resigned over his inability to address the widespread abuse perpetrated by church priests around the world, and the subsequent cover-ups. It would have been the Christian thing to do.

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MAINE
WCSH

[with video]

Danielle Waugh

PORTLAND, Maine (NEWS CENTER) — Parishioners in Portland Diocese observed a Day of Prayer and Penance for victims of sexual abuse, a tradition started eleven years ago by Bishop Richard Malone.

“It’s important for Bishop Malone becuase he wanted to constantly be reminded of the fact that we’re always asking for forgiveness, and also always affirming our safe guards that have been put in place,” said Dave Guthro, Communications Director for the Diocese of Portland.

Monsignor Andrew Dubois celebrated mass at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception Wednesday.

Asking for forgiveness and healing, he said the church’s work continues to prevent more cases of abuse.

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HAWAII
Star-Advertiser

By Pat Gee

The Diocese of Hono­lulu remains tight-lipped on recent lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by Catholic clergy and teachers in Hawaii, but its general response to nationwide scandals that surfaced in the past 10 years has been to acknowledge that violations have occurred, and to offer support to the victims.

The diocese plans to continue to publish an ad that it ran last April in newspapers and parish bulletins statewide, said Patrick Downes, diocese spokes­man and editor of the Hawaii Catholic Herald.

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UNITED STATES
Tribune-Review

By Bill Zlatos

Published: Saturday, March 9, 2013

As the College of Cardinals prepares to elect a new pope, Roman Catholics view the child sexual abuse scandal as the greatest problem facing the church, a recent survey found.

A Pew Research Center survey conducted Feb. 28 to March 3 found that 34 percent of Catholic respondents named sexual abuse as the most important issue. That’s nearly four times the second-most common response, a lack of credibility or trust, cited by 9 percent of surveyed Catholics.

“Just to know a priest would take advantage of a child is frightening,” Heather Bierer, 34, of West View said while on her way to noon Mass last week at St. Mary of Mercy Church, Downtown. Like the many Catholics surveyed nationally, she cited the sex abuse scandal as the church’s most pressing problem.

Members of other faiths probably would have named it, too, said the Rev. Ronald Lengwin, spokesman for the Diocese of Pittsburgh.

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ROME
Herald Scotland

Sunday 10 March 2013

It seemed like business as usual at the Vatican yesterday as Rome firefighters fitted a chimney on the top of the Sistine Chapel for the puff of white smoke which will herald the election of a new pontiff by the conclave.

However, it will be clerical sexual abuse, financial scandal and homosexuality that top the agenda for the 115 cardinals as they reflect on the role of the Roman Catholic Church in the modern world under Michelangelo’s towering depiction of the Last Judgement.

An American activist group has ensured that sexual abuse remains a lead issue by publishing a list of 12 cardinals it says should not be considered for election, claiming they had a poor record in handling cases of priestly paedophilia, or had been negligent in oversight. There is no allegation any of the 12 cardinals were involved in any criminal acts themselves.

The blacklist, published by Survivors Network For Those Abused By Priests, included several candidates thought to have a real chance of lifting the pope’s white “zucchetto” hat.

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SCOTLAND
Herald Scotland

VICTIMS OF ABUSE SPEAK OUT AGAINST ‘BRICK WALL’. BY JUDITH DUFFY

Sunday 10 March 2013

A VETERAN campaigner for abuse victims has questioned the contrast between the swift action taken by the Catholic Church over Cardinal O’Brien’s resignation and the length of time taken to deal with allegations of sexual and physical abuse made by members of the public against priests.

Frank Docherty, a founder member of In Care Abuse Survivors (INCAS), said the church had been forced to get rid of O’Brien swiftly because he had created an “embarrassment” that the hierarchy couldn’t cover up.

Docherty, who suffered physical abuse as a child in an orphanage run by nuns, said the contrast between how allegations of O’Brien behaving inappropriately with adult men were dealt with in comparison to allegations of criminal abuse against minors showed the church wanted to both “minimise” the issue of offences against children, and sweep clerical scandals such as O’Brien’s under the carpet as quickly as possible.

His comments come after another alleged abuse victim, known only as Chris, told how his life was “ruined” after being abused by a priest in the 1990s from the age of around nine or 10.

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SCOTLAND
Herald Scotland

Sunday 10 March 2013

CARDINAL O’Brien may be long gone from public life, following the scandal surrounding his “inappropriate behaviour” with a number of priests – but if the Catholic Church thought his speedy departure, accelerated by the Vatican, would close the door on clerical scandals, then the hierarchy was wrong.

As we report today, victims who were abused by church figures as children are asking why it took just days to get rid of O’Brien, yet decades after crimes were committed against them, no action has been taken. O’Brien is guilty of being a hypocrite – he castigated homosexuals and denounced gay marriage, yet he was drawn to men himself. However, he committed no crime. He carried out no act of evil.

In contrast, the Catholic Church in Scotland has known for years about the scandal of child abuse happening under the noses of the hierarchy. Back in 2000 this newspaper ran a series of disturbing investigations into institutionalised child abuse. One report centered on a priest who carried out a series of sexual assaults and rapes against an eight-year-old boy in Lanarkshire being allowed to continue working unsupervised with children within the Catholic Church in Scotland.

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UNITED STATES
Standing on My Head

March 9, 2013 By Fr. Dwight Longenecker

A reader asked for the sources for a couple of my statements in a post recently about celibacy and sex abuse. Namely the assertion that most abuse is perpetrated by married men not single men–therefore marriage for Catholic priests will not solve the sex abuse problem.

The reader also questioned my assertion that most of the cases of sex abuse by priests were carried out by homosexuals, and that marriage was unlikely to solve their problem also.

I should therefore point out that just because 80% of the priestly sex abuse cases were homosexual in nature does not imply that homosexuals are necessarily more likely to be child sex abusers than heterosexuals, or that homosexuality necessarily makes a man more likely to sexually abuse children. My point was simply that marriage would not be the answer for pedophiles who were also homosexuals.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

MOST people don’t understand the impact of sexual abuse.

They rattle off words like ‘rape’ and ‘molestation’ but they don’t really understand it. If they did, they’d do something about it.

My husband, John, and I have four boys, Daniel, Luke, Dominic and Bernard. We raised them on a 25-acre property 40 minutes from Newcastle, NSW, and led a happy life with a strong Catholic faith.

The boys were 11, 10, seven and three when Father James Fletcher arrived in our parish.

He didn’t seem very smart and his homilies were shallow, but he took an interest in the children and we were pleased to have a priest who learnt their names and asked them about cricket and school.

Father Fletcher visited our family a lot and we were very active in his church. John did his accounts and I did everything from sewing the buttons onto his black shirts to taking communion to the elderly.

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ROME
National Catholic Reporter

by Thomas Reese | Mar. 9, 2013

As has been well reported by Joshua McElwee and John Allen, there are currently no frontrunners in the papal election. This could easily change in the next few days before the conclave starts, but it is surprising granted that it has been almost three weeks since Pope Emeritus Benedict announced his resignation. One would think that at least a couple of frontrunners would have surfaced by now.

Prior to the last conclave, everyone recognized Ratzinger was the front runner on the day the conclave began. The same was true for Paul VI and Pius XII. And although John Paul’s election was a surprise, there still were front runners prior to the conclave: Cardinals Giovanni Benelli and Giuseppe Siri. When they deadlocked, the conclave looked for someone outside of Italy.

Why no front runner? Here are four hypotheses.
1. The cardinals need more time to get to know each other. Remember, 24 of the cardinals were appointed last year. That is one-fifth of the electors. While the curial cardinals and the more senior cardinals may know most of the cardinals, the newer cardinals are still matching faces to bios. The cardinals from outside Rome also know little about each other. This was the argument of those who did not want to rush into the conclave. Why hurry? This is the most important thing the cardinals will ever do in their lives.

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VATICAN CITY
Religion News Service

David Gibson | Mar 9, 2013

He even has coffee with him:

Almost every day I greet our new Pope, maybe have a cappuccino with him.

Trouble is, I don’t know which one of these Cardinals will actually be elected in the coming week. But it is one of them.

Okay, kind of a tease, Your Eminence. But he goes on to make a poignant point:

One of my brother Cardinals came to Rome with his suitcase, and with an open airline ticket to return home. But one of them isn’t going home. He will move into the special apartments designed as the residence for the Pope.

Smart money says it won’t be Cardinal Mahony. Smart money won’t say who they think it will be. Everything is as wide open as anyone can recall, yet at the same time few think the conclave will, or can, go on for more than a couple of days.

Have the cardinals reached a secret consensus? If they are they are keeping it well hidden.

Here are a couple of articles that give an idea of the dynamics:
•John Thavis parses the various parties, and the dynamics of getting to 77 votes — the two-thirds threshold needed for election.
•Fr. Tom Reese explains why there is no frontrunner.

The assumption now is that the Italian and curial party will stand firm with 40-50 votes that can block any election.

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VATICAN CITY
BBC News

Gavin Hewitt

St Peter’s Square has become a kind of Coliseum. On every vantage point are the TV tents waiting for the games to begin.

Even non-Catholic countries cannot resist “lo spettacolo”, the secret ritual of choosing a new Pope. Meanwhile – based on very little – the betting agencies run their books on who will be the winner. …

Leaked dossier
The sex abuse scandal often overshadowed Benedict XVI’s papacy
The abuse scandal remains corrosive. The question is not just: “why were the allegations not investigated more rigorously?” The more disturbing question is: “why was there so much abuse?”

One figure caught my eye. An internal report in Germany implicated over 60 priests in more than 500 cases of sexual abuse. Across the world hundreds of priests must have faced or must be facing allegations. It raises questions of whether celibacy in the priesthood is working.

The chief prosecutor of sex abuse in the Church, Monsignor Charles Sicura, said: “This disease [abuse] affects all places and all society, but unfortunately our sin makes the news. Why does the sin of a priest create more fuss?” The reason is because the priesthood lays claim to trust and to a religious calling.

From leaks and interviews it is clear some cardinals want a more rigorous cleaning up of the abuse scandal.

Some have called for a frank discussion of a dossier which examined the leak of papers by the Pope’s butler.

There are all manner of allegations of improper behaviour by a group of priests within the Curia and of blackmail. There is tension inside the heart of the bureaucracy with some cardinals reportedly questioning how they can chose a new pope without knowing the truth behind the dossier.

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ROME
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Mar. 9, 2013

Rome

If the readers of Italy’s paper of record, Corriere della Sera, had any say in the matter, the choice for the next pope would be clear: Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston.

Corriere today asked eight contributors, including their own Vatican beat writers as well as noted Vatican-watchers, to name their top three picks to be the next pope. O’Malley was mentioned by five of those eight experts, putting him in a tie with Odilo Pedro Scherer of Brazil, and just one mention ahead of Angelo Scola of Milan.

Two other Americans, Timothy Dolan of New York and Donald Wuerl of Washington, got one mention apiece.

Where O’Malley really separated himself from the pack was in an on-line readers’ poll on the Corriere web site. There O’Malley drew 36.7 percent of the vote, as of roughly 6:30 this evening Rome time. The Boston prelate far outpaced Scola with 17.9 percent and Luis Antonio Tagle of the Philippines with 14.3 percent.

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VATICAN CITY
Los Angeles Times

By Henry Chu, Los Angeles Times
March 9, 2013

VATICAN CITY — With the terrifying grandeur of Michelangelo’s “Judgment Day” looming over them, senior leaders of the Roman Catholic Church will begin casting their ballots inside the Sistine Chapel on Tuesday to elect a successor to Benedict XVI, the first pope to resign in nearly 600 years.

No one campaigns for the papacy, at least overtly; the surest way for a candidate to disqualify himself for the job is to let it be known that he wants it.

But various names crop up repeatedly in discreet conversations as the 115 prelates eligible to vote try to figure out who among them is best placed to lead a historic but troubled institution that claims the allegiance of 1.2 billion people.

Whoever emerges from the conclave as the 266th pontiff will inherit a global church that is continuing to grow in far-off continents but waning in the Vatican’s backyard; under challenge by other religions, notably Islam and evangelical Protestantism; unable to shake off a damaging scandal over clerical sexual abuse; and in the grip of a management crisis.

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PHILIPPINES
GMA News

March 10, 2013

When it comes to presence on social networks, Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle may have a huge advantage over other prospective cardinals who may succeed Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.

Tagle, 55, is the most active cardinal on Facebook, Discovery News cited a social media analysis by the Italian start-up Decisyon.

“Tagle, regarded as ‘The Asian Karol Wojtyła,’ boasts 123,000 ‘Likes.’ Decisyon established that since Jan. 1, his page has accounted for 52 percent of cardinals’s social-media use, producing more than 57,000 posts, comments and shares,” Discovery News said.

As of 8 a.m. Sunday, Tagle’s Facebook page has 126,177 likes, with 4,628 talking about it.

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VATICAN CITY
The New York Times

By RACHEL DONADIO and ANDREW HIGGINS

Published: March 9, 2013

VATICAN CITY — Negotiations over the Vatican’s adherence to international banking standards were reaching a delicate point. During a lunch, a European official later recalled, discussion turned to the need for more openness from an institution steeped in centuries of secrecy.

A Vatican representative at the meal, annoyed by the requests for more information, shouted, “How can you ask us such questions?”

The clash came amid mounting pressure on the Vatican to clean up its bank — for decades the subject of dark intrigue and linked to one mysterious death — as part of a push by the European Union to apply common rules to all the countries and micro-states like Vatican City and Monaco that use the euro.

Those pressures continued until the very last days of Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy and remain a critical issue for the cardinals now meeting to elect a new pope. As the conclave begins Tuesday, the specter of financial scandal presents a special challenge for Benedict’s successor, who must modernize the Roman Catholic Church’s finances or risk the Vatican’s access to the global banking system, undermining its moral authority and its financial stability.

Ahead of the conclave, the cardinals were briefed on the Vatican’s finances and have been debating whether a member of the Vatican hierarchy or an outsider would be better at imposing order after a papacy bedeviled by crises of governance. The battle lines are hazy, but the fight over the Vatican’s finances pits different factions inside the Vatican against one another, some seeking greater transparency and others who want to preserve the institution’s tradition of secrecy.

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AUSTRALIA
Catholica

by Brian Coyne , LINDEN, NSW, Sunday, March 10, 2013, 11:15 (1 hours, 12 minutes ago) @ gemstones

Thanks for the link to Jerry Slevin’s article. He offers sensible ideas BUT THE REALITY IS THAT NONE OF THEM WILL BE LISTENING TO JERRY SLEVIN (any more than they are likely to be listening to any of you or me). The fundamental problem is that they honestly do not think any wisdom is capable of coming from below them. They sincerely do believe that they alone are “guided by the Holy Spirit or the Almighty” and there is no way that culture will be changed.

Andrea Tornielli in Vatican Insider/La Stampa [LINK] has an article on the Archbishop of Milan, Angelo Scola, coming back into contention and, interestingly enough his odds with Paddy Power have shortened to now be the front runner. I now think the most likely outcome is that Scola will emerge as the next Pope in the coming week. He’s not the candidate I would vote for but I think that is the most likely outcome. God help the Catholic Church though. The election of Scola virtually guarantees “more of the same” that has reduced Catholicism to this sad spectacle it has now become. The future will be further decline into irrelevance as any significant force in society.

The fundamental systemic problem…

The more I mull on this whole problem “what is wrong with Catholicism/why has it run off the rails so badly?” the more I come to the conclusion that at the heart of the problem is there are two fundamentally incompatible cultures in Catholicism today centred around the question of “Where does truth reside?”

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VATICAN CITY
The Independent (UK)

VATICAN CITY

Sunday 10 March 2013

Firefighters installed a special top on the Sistine Chapel chimney yesterday, ready for the signal to the world that a new pope has been elected, as the Vatican took measures to end Benedict XVI’s pontificate.

While construction workers prepared the interior of the frescoed Sistine Chapel for Tuesday’s start of the conclave, officials elsewhere in the Apostolic Palace destroyed Benedict’s fisherman’s ring and the personal seals and stamps for official papers. The act, coupled with Benedict’s public resignation and pledge of obedience to the future pope, is designed to signal a definitive end of his papacy so there is no doubt in the church that a new pope is in charge.

The developments all point toward the momentous decision to confront the Catholic church: Tuesday’s start of the conclave to elect a new pope to lead the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics and try to solve the problems facing the church.

The Vatican outlined the timeline for the balloting, and confirmed that the bells of St Peter’s Basilica will ring once a pope has been elected. But Vatican officials also acknowledged that there is some uncertainty about the whole endeavour, given the difficulties in discerning the colour of smoke that will snake out of the Sistine chimney – black if no pope has been elected, white when a victor has emerged. A Vatican spokesman, the Rev Federico Lombardi, laughed off concerns, saying that some “suspense” was all part of the beauty of the process.

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VATICAN CITY
Times News

By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press

Published March 9th, 2013

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican sought Saturday to quash speculation that divisions among cardinals could drag out the conclave to elect the new pope, while preparations for the vote plowed ahead with firefighters installing the Sistine Chapel chimney that will tell the world when a decision has been reached.

But the specter of an inconclusive first few rounds of secret balloting remained high, with no clear front-runner heading into Tuesday’s papal election and a long list of cardinals still angling to discuss the church’s problems ahead of the vote.

“You don’t have your mind absolutely made up” going into the conclave, U.S. Cardinal Justin Rigali, who participated in the 2005 conclave that elected Benedict XVI, told The Associated Press this week. “You have your impressions.”

The Vatican spokesman, however, took pains to stress the “vast,” near-unanimous decision by the 115 cardinal electors to set Tuesday as the conclave start date and noted that no conclave over the past century has dragged on for more than five days.

“I think it’s a process that can be carried out in a few days without much difficulty,” spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi told reporters.

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ROME
The Observer (UK)

John Hooper in Rome
The Observer, Saturday 9 March 2013

It is known throughout the Vatican as the Relatio (Narration). It is contained in two stiff, unmarked red folders and runs to around 300 pages. Lying in a safe in the papal apartments of the Apostolic Palace overlooking St Peter’s Square, it will be at the forefront of the minds of the 115 cardinals who on Tuesday are to file into the Sistine chapel to start the conclave that elects the next pope.

In the Relatio are the findings of three cardinal-detectives, appointed last year by ex-pope Benedict XVI to investigate the leaking of documents from his study. The cardinals, headed by a Spanish member of the Opus Dei fellowship, Cardinal Julián Herranz, discovered the main source of the leaks – the pope’s butler, Paolo Gabriele.

But they found a great deal else – and some of it is reportedly extremely compromising. According to one unconfirmed report, they stumbled on a gay sex ring in the Vatican, some of whose members had been blackmailed.

Already dismayed by the blunders that marred Benedict’s papacy, many of the cardinals in Rome to elect his successor are seething with resentment towards the Roman Curia, the intensely secretive and predominantly Italian bureaucracy that administers the Catholic church.

“The anti-curial – and anti-Italian – feeling is almost palpable,” said a source close to their deliberations.

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CALIFORNIA
Santa Cruz Sentinel

By Sentinel Editorial Board

Posted: 03/09/2013

The voting begins Tuesday.

That’s when the cardinals in the Roman Catholic Church will file into the Sistine Chapel and begin secret balloting to select a new pope.

It will be an opportunity to finally end decades, if not centuries, of secrecy.

Writing about a religious organization is a dicey matter. But the church has been badly shaken, damaged, by many years of reports regarding sexual abuse by priests, bishops and, most recently, a cardinal.

And so the church stands upon a precipice. On one side are the scandals and abuses committed under its watch. On the other is the faith and devotion of hundreds of millions of people. And there is a Dante-esque divide between them that can only be bridged by repentance and renewal. Repentance is a taking of responsibility, without casting blame on others, for personal, or in this case corporate, misdeeds — followed by a changing of the mind, a resolve to be guided on a new, moral and spiritual, path.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

The “fumata” could be expected around 12:00pm or around 7:00pm. Monday the last General Congregation will be held

ALESSANDRO SPECIALE
Rome

It is not true that the College of Cardinals is split in half: in fact, according to the Vatican spokesman father Federico Lombardi, yesterday the Cardinals voted with a very large majority (“approximately ten to one”) to open the Conclave that will elect the successor of Pope Benedict XVI next Tuesday.

During his usual briefing at the Vatican, the Vatican spokesman joked with reporters: “I’m sorry that we are approaching the end of this period of daily meetings”, and he immediately refuted the rumours of divisions and fractures among the Cardinals who will enter the Conclave next week.

Lombardi explained that during yesterday afternoon’s General Congregation (the eighth since the beginning of the sede vacante), the Dean of the Sacred College Cardinal Angelo Sodano immediately began the process of voting on the Conclave’s beginning date. And already at the first vote there was an overwhelming majority in favour of Tuesday the 12th, stressed the spokesman.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

Africa presents four credible names as ideal candidates to the papacy

Giacomo Galeazzi
Vatican City

The Ghanaian Turkson, the Guinean Sarah, the South African Napier, and the Congolese Monsengwo Pasinya. The African continent presents four credible names. However, in the conclave, Africa can count more on the quality of “papabili” candidates than on the quantity of voters (just 11 compared to 60 from Europe and 33 from the Americas). “Sarah’s profile is one that is ideal for the Papacy: it combines pastoral experience at home and internationally in the Curia”, says Father Bernardo Cervellera, Director of AsiaNews, the agency of the Pontifical Institute for foreign missions. Sarah has been Bishop in Africa, prisoner of war and now is head of the dicastery at the Vatican. He took the place of Etchegeray as “the man of the impossible papal missions” in the diplomatic and humanitarian fields from Lebanon to Southeast Asia. He is also held in high esteem by Obama and has chances as an “outsider”.

In short, a “black Wojtyla” who is able to unite foreigners, the Curia and the White House just as the spiritual father of Solidarnosc did in 1978. Two years ago, at the Rimini Meeting, he won everybody over with his communicative ability and charisma. Certain sectors of the ecclesiastical hierarchy have reservations about the “young” Church of the dark continent; it is feared that the Cardinals may be surrounded by ethnic clans and unclear situations.

Joseph Ratzinger didn’t think so when, as Cardinal in 2004, he told a German tv: “We are ready for a black Pope”. And during his travels, he defined Africa as the “spiritual lung of the world”. In short: a viable hypothesis. Moreover, the election of a black Pope wouldn’t be a unique event (at least according to tradition). In fact, Gelasius I, Pope from 492 to 496, was a “romanus natus” (roman citizen).

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

Reforms and relations with bishops, the issues of the Congregations

Andrea Tornielli
Vatican City

Collegiality and the reform of the Curia. It had never happened before that so many Cardinals were asking for a change of direction in the management of the Vatican curial “machine” and were taking on the issue of the organization of dicasteries, their coordination, and their connection with the Episcopal Conferences. This means that the new Pope, whoever he may be, will hardly be able to ignore these signals, which are a consequence of the not-so-positive recent experiences in relations between Rome and the episcopacies.

The discussion about this has been frank but brotherly. In recent days, several important cardinals have tackled the issue without beating around the bush by asking about the Vatileaks dossier and talking about the need for a change of course in the management of the Curia and of the Secretariat of State. Responses to first request were not exhaustive, because Pope Benedict ruled that the “Relatio” prepared by Cardinals Herranz, Tomko and De Giorgi will be delivered to his successor.

But the three investigators have provided some information to Cardinals looking to shed light on the issue during face-to-face talks. With regards to the Curia, both before and after the presentation of some proposals by Cardinal Coccopalmerio, other Cardinals said they believe that there could be no futher delays to the reform that Benedict XVI said (as an aside during the Ash Wednesday ceremony) he regretted he had failed to implement.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Some have said the Conclave needs to pick a Pope with a MBA degree. As someone who took courses at the Harvard Business School while getting my Harvard Law degree in 1968, the Pope doesn’t need a MBA degree. He can hire all the MBAs he needs. The new Pope needs authenticity and courage and a 21st Century Church management structure, instead of the present 16th Century petty Italian monarchical structure. The new structure, of course, really requires the Conclave to fix a date now for a general council to restructure the Church horizontally, as Cardinal Kaspar wisely has called for.

Even the Person the Popes claim to be Vicar for, Jesus Christ, reportedly thought he needed a horizontal structure in tiny Galilee, and He was Divine, and not just occasionally “infallible”. He also consulted and/or interacted with all, from the poor, the disabled, even sinners, to children, Samaritans and even Roman centurions. His followers listened to and responded to their fellow Christians. When was the last time a Pope chatted with any of the homeless who sleep nightly in the entrance ways of the souvenir shops on the Vatican’s fringes? Meanwhile, the Shadow Pope has commandeered a ten bedroom convent to house his books!

This Conclave will be the Cardinals’ last chance to take the initiative. After the massive media coverage of Vatican scandals, as well as the scandals of Cardinals’ O’Brien, Mahony, et al., the pressure on political leaders worldwide is building on them rapidly to clean up the Vatican’s mess if the Cardinals fail to adopt a concrete plan to do so now, which really necessitates calling for a council on a date certain at the Conclave.

Money may not be the root of all evil, but it seems to be at the heart of many Vatican scandals. This should not be surprising given the Vatican’s long history as an unaccountable and self-perpetuating monarchical clique. For the entire adult life of the current Vatican clique and their carefully selected Cardinals, they could assume comfortably they answered to no earthly power and were financially self sufficient. Not any more, whether they realize that or not!

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VATICAN CITY
Worldcrunch

Is Italy ready to take back the papacy after being shut out by the Polish John Paul II and Germany’s Benedict XVI? This truck driver’s son is the Italians’ best hope.

By Andrea Tornielli
LA STAMPA/Worldcrunch

VATICAN CITY – For four days the cardinals met in a spacious meeting hall for open discussions in six separate sessions of the pre-conclave General Congregation. But it is in the private one-on-one conversations where the strongest “papabili” have begun to emerge ahead of Tuesday afternoon’s opening of the conclave to choose a successor to Pope Benedict XVI.

Among the most likely candidates, there is growing support converging around the name of Cardinal Angelo Scola, 71, the Archbishop of Milan.

Firmly on the list of the possible candidates for pope since Benedict announced his surprise resignation last month, Scola could receive early votes from cardinals from the United States, Europe, and notably his native Italy, which still counts by far the biggest single voting bloc at 28 voting-aging “princes of the Church.”

Moreover, his Oasis Foundation, a Church-run initiative to open dialogue with the Muslim world, has helped Scola to establish relationships with leaders in the Eastern Rite Churches, for example with the influential Lebanese Patriarch of Antioch Bechara Rahi.

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VATICAN CITY
Macomb Daily

By RACHEL ZOLL
AP Religion Writer

VATICAN CITY (AP) — A pastor in Ontario wondered about behind-the-scenes politicking ahead of the conclave to elect the next pope. He could have read news reports or listened to briefings by the Vatican spokesman. Instead, he asked a cardinal. Less than an hour later, the response arrived.

“What I see is a real desire to know, and so evaluate, the papabili against criteria of qualities demanded by situations,” wrote Cardinal Wilfrid Napier of Durban, South Africa, using the term “papabili” for cardinals seen as papal contenders.

The exchange occurred on Twitter, one of many online interactions that have made this papal succession unlike any other for Roman Catholics and observers of the church. While the election starting Tuesday will remain strictly secret, social media is providing a direct link to the events surrounding the succession, creating a virtual conclave that involves lay people in everything from voting to prayer.

“I think it’s fabulous for the church,” said Brother Martin Browne, a Benedictine monk in County Limerick, Ireland, who is following Vatican analysts and reporters on Twitter instead of watching general news coverage. “I think more people understand what’s going on now because there’s greater access to good information.”

No one will be posting updates from inside the Sistine Chapel. The Vatican will activate electronic jamming devices so no one can listen in or report out. “You obviously can’t have cardinals inside the conclave tweeting `Uh-oh, trending right now: new young cardinal from wherever,”’ said Greg Burke, a Vatican communications adviser.

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ROME
NBC News

By Tracy Connor, Staff Writer, NBC News

It’s been 35 years since an Italian pope has ruled the Catholic Church, and some Vatican watchers believe the conclave that starts Tuesday could be the first to elect a pontiff from outside Europe.

While the Italians control a quarter of the votes, recent scandals suggest that they might be too beset by deep divisions to unite early around one candidate from their home turf.

The church’s influence in Europe is on the wane, and its biggest area of growth is in sub-Saharan Africa, leading some to suggest that it might be time to look beyond the traditional countries for a pope with global appeal.

“The Catholic Church has moved far beyond the notion that any one nationality has a peculiar aptitude for the Office of Peter,” said NBC News Vatican analyst George Weigel, author of “Evangelical Catholicism.”

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NEW JERSEY
CBS New York

MENDHAM, N.J. (CBSNewYork) — Police in the Morris County, N.J., borough of Mendham said they likely have some solid leads on whoever damaged a church monument dedicated to child sexual abuse victims.

As WCBS 880’s Levon Putney reported, the monument already has been destroyed once, and now the replacement has been damaged too.

Patrick Kelly is one of the child sexual abuse victims of the former priest at St. Joseph’s Church in Mendham. He said the vandalism was not completely unexpected.

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KENYA
Nation

By REV DR SAHAYA G SELVAM selvamsdb@gmail.com
Posted Sunday, March 10 2013

Your Holiness,

I am not a theologian, nor a church historian. I am a Catholic priest with some academic background and much pastoral experience with the younger generation. I have had the privilege of living and serving the people of God in four countries across three continents.

Having lived four years in Northern Europe, I have seen the situation of the church there, witnessed the struggle between the church and the larger society, and heard the political rhetoric among the followers of Christ.

However, I wonder; as the leader of the universal church would it not be more meaningful for Your Holiness to focus on the “joys and hopes” that the universal church promises, rather than get bogged down by the problems of the church in Europe and North America?

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SCOTLAND
STV

A leading Scottish solicitor believes a change to the law making it easier for sexual abuse victims to claim compensation could be considered in light of fresh allegations against the Catholic Church.

Cameron Fyfe is acting on behalf of six clients who claim they were abused by priests, two of whom came forward in the weeks since Cardinal Keith O’Brien resigned after admitting sexual misconduct.

It follows reports that bishops in the Scottish Catholic Church knew of 20 allegations of child sex abuse between 1985 and 1995.

Mr Fyfe said: “I’m acting for six clients who allege they were abused by priests, some in the 1980s, some in the 1990s. One we have raised a court action over in the Court of Session and one we’re just about to raise a court action over. The other four we’re currently investigating.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 9 March 2013 (VIS) – The chimney on the roof of the Sistine Chapel, which will emit the smoke to indicate the election (white smoke) or non-election (black smoke) of a pope, was installed this morning, three days before the Conclave is scheduled to begin. That, however, is not the only change taking place in the chapel. Vatican Television is recording the preparations and those images are then distributed to all media outlets that request it for broadcasting around the world.

Work began on Tuesday, 5 March, at 1:00pm when restorers, electricians, mechanics, carpenters, seamstresses, assemblers, electronic technicians and other labourers from various areas of competence suddenly replaced the hundreds of tourists who visit the Sistine Chapel every day. “The Chapel is closed to the public. We are preparing for the Conclave,” employees respond to the questions asked by perplexed visitors who are trying to finish their tour of the Vatican Museums with a glimpse of Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam”.

Journalists are already in the know. The Director of the Holy See Press Office, Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J., has been holding daily press conferences, giving a general overview of the proceedings of the General Congregations and explaining the images of the preparations that are being carried out around Vatican City. From within the Sistine Chapel we see scaffolding around the stoves that will burn the ballots to erect the stove pipe that releases the smoke from the roof of the chapel, shorter tubing for the scaffolding that will elevate the floor and create a uniform area to work on, lengths of cloth and the seamstresses sowing them together to create table covers…

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 9 March 2013 (VIS) – “The first order of business of the eighth General Congregation, which met yesterday evening and in which 145 cardinals participated, was to vote on the date to begin the Conclave. Cardinal Dean Angelo Sodano, expressing the wishes of all and after having consulted with the Cardinal Carmelengo Tarcisio Bertone, S.D.B., regarding the preparations at the Domus Sanctae Marthae, proposed the date of Tuesday, 12 March. The overwhelming majority immediately voted in agreement,” reported Fr. Federico Lombardi, director of the Holy See Press Office. “There was no difference of opinion between the cardinals and the percentage of votes in favour of to those against was around 10 to one. Moreover,” Fr. Lombardi added, “the full complement of Cardinal electors was already reached and it was no longer considered necessary to wait further, as they already had time to reflect on their decision.”

Fifteen cardinals intervened during the course of the Congregation and two newly arrived cardinals were sworn in, neither of which is a Cardinal elector: Cardinal Miguel Obando Bravo, S.D.B., archbishop emeritus of Managua, Nicaragua, and Cardinal Gaudencio Borbon Rosales, archbishop emeritus of Manila, Philippines.

During the ninth General Congregation that met this morning, the cardinals spoke about moving into the Domus Sanctae Marthae, which will be their residence for the duration of the Conclave. “It was agreed by majority that the move will take place on Tuesday morning, beginning from 7:00am, that is, the same day that the Conclave begins. A “Pro eligendo Romano Pontifice” Mass will be celebrated by the Cardinal Dean at 10:00am that morning in St. Peter’s Square. Rooms were also assigned, by lot.”

“This morning 17 cardinals intervened, speaking on the same general themes that have been previously reported, including: expectations regarding the new Pope, activities of the Holy See and its Dicasteries, and improving the Curia. In total, there have been 133 interventions in the General Congregations and, keeping in mind those scheduled for Monday, that number will probably reach 150.”

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VATICAN CITY
CBC News

News that German industrialist Ernst von Freyberg will take over as the new head of a financial body called the Institute for Works of Religion made a splash recently in the world’s media.

Under normal circumstances, the attention might seem misplaced. After all, the Institute for Works of Religion, known by its Italian acronym IOR, is a relatively small financial body with just 33,000 accounts and only $7.6 billion in assets — less than some Canadian credit unions.

But the IOR is no ordinary financial institution. It is better known by its unofficial name — the Vatican Bank.

Von Freyberg’s appointment to the top job came as the beleaguered institution struggles to regain credibility after decades of financial scandals that have seen the secretive institution being probed more than once for alleged money-laundering and other questionable financial matters.

Most recently, it has been trying to address findings that its banking standards — especially in the transparency department — aren’t up to the job.

Bitter infighting

So bitter has been the infighting that internal critics say they have been shuffled out in a bid to silence them and shield the bank’s inner workings from prying eyes.

Von Freyberg’s appointment fills the void left by the ousting of the bank’s previous head, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi. The bank’s board of directors fired him last year for failure to carry out “the primary functions of his office,” according to a Vatican statement.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

By
PATRICK COUNIHAN,
IrishCentral Staff Writer

Published Saturday, March 9, 2013

A radio documentary has heard two Magdalene Laundry nuns defend the actions of the religious orders who ran the infamous institutions.

The Irish Times reports that two nuns involved in running Magdalene laundries have hit back at criticisms of the four congregations which operated the 10 such laundries in Ireland up to 1996.

The unnamed sisters spoke to the RTE radio programme The God Slot.

Sister B said: “All of the shame of the era is being dumped on the religious orders.”

When asked if an apology might be appropriate after the recent McAleese report on the laundries, Sister A responded: “Apologise for what?”

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MISSOURI
Daily Journal

By MARIA SUDEKUM Associated Press
First Posted: March 09, 2013

KANSAS CITY, Missouri — A newspaper known for unflinching coverage of the Catholic church scandal was rebuked by a bishop in its own backyard after calling for his ouster in a battle that illustrates tensions between U.S. bishops and groups that call themselves Catholic but aren’t sanctioned by the church.

The National Catholic Reporter, an independent Kansas City, Missouri-based weekly, called for Bishop Robert Finn’s removal or resignation in September, after he was convicted of failing to report suspected child abuse.

Finn, leader of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, later wrote in an editorial in his own diocesan newspaper that parishioner anger is growing over the NCR’s challenges to Catholic orthodoxy on topics ranging from the ordination of women to contraception.

In the last several years, church leaders have been trying to shore up the religious identity and mission of organizations that call themselves Catholic, including trying to bar groups from saying they have ties with the church if bishops believe the organizations stray from church teaching. Conflict over the issue intensified in the 2008 presidential election, when some Catholic advocacy groups backed Barack Obama despite his support for abortion rights.

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CALIFORNIA
LA Daily News

By Tim Rutten
dailynews.com
Posted: 03/07/2013

Cardinal Roger Mahony Sede vacante — “the seat is empty.” Thus the Roman Catholic Church, the world’s largest religious denomination, describes those interregna in which the throne of Peter, the West’s oldest monarchial institution, sits unoccupied, and there is no pope.

During this period, the church with its 1.2 billion members is governed by a daily meeting of the 207-member College of Cardinals, presided over by its carmerlengo, or chamberlain, the 78-year-old Italian Tarcisio Bertone. A close aid to pope emeritus Benedict XVI, he has said that any attempt to compel bishops to report pedophilic priests to civil authorities affronts “liberty of conscience” and that the church’s global abuse crisis stems from an “infiltration of homosexuals” into the priesthood.

Sometime in the next few days, the last of the 115 cardinal electors — only those under 80 can vote for the next pontiff — will arrive in Rome, and the college will decide on when to open the next papal conclave, probably by Monday. When it begins and despite all the controversy attendant upon his participation, there will be a number of reasons to welcome the presence of Los Angeles’ emeritus archbishop, Cardinal Roger Mahony, who did the right thing when he put aside demands that he not attend the conclave.

Thousands of pages of internal archdiocesan documents recently released as the final step in the 2007 legal settlement the Los Angeles church reached with more than 600 victims of clerical abuse
demonstrate once again that Mahony was sometimes malfeasant and frequently tragically mistaken in the way he dealt with priest-molesters in the 1980s and early 1990s. However, it’s long been known that these cases were hideously botched. After all, the archdiocese paid a $660 million cash settlement to the victims — the largest in the history of this wretched scandal — and Mahony has repeatedly and publicly apologized for his conduct, met often in person with those injured and, most important, implemented a set of child protection policies regarded as a national model of rigor.

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CALIFORNIA
The California Report

Reporter: Steven Cuevas

It’s not so easy for Father Willy Raymond to stay on top of what’s going in Rome.
He gave up cable news for Lent.

“I decided to fast from watching CNN, MSNBC and Fox News,” Raymond says in his Hollywood office where he runs a Catholic-based media company called Family Theatre Productions. But he’s not entirely unplugged. There’s still the radio and the Internet.

“There’s something really interesting right now,” he says, as he calls up a website on the computer. “Just go to Adoptacardinal.org and they will give you the name of a Cardinal elector and you can pray for that person.”

The communion of faith and technology might be something for a new pope to embrace. So says Sister Patricia Rayburn, who hopes the next pontiff will also be more enlightened about the role of women in the church.

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ROME
Canberra Times

March 10, 2013

Barney Zwartz
Religion editor, The Age

After a week of general meetings, the world’s Catholic cardinals have settled on Tuesday, March 12, to start the meeting to select a new Pope.

At their second meeting of the day on Friday the assembled 115 cardinals who are under 80, plus dozens more ineligible to join the conclave because they are over 80, voted to go into seclusion from Tuesday.

Compared with the conclave of 2005, there have been public tensions and disagreements with non-Italian and non-Curia (Vatican bureaucracy) cardinals resisting pressure to move quickly and demands for answers to questions about Vatican scandals such as last year’s ”Vatileaks” crisis and the Vatican bank. The cardinals are also believed to want time to get to know each other and to have their staff research potential candidates before the conclave makes outside communication impossible.

The Italian and curial cardinals reportedly have been pressing for an early conclave. This would increase their influence as newer or more remote cardinals who do not know each other well would have less time to agree on the main challenges facing the church.

For first-world cardinals, these include the flight from faith by younger Catholics, loss of confidence in the church, the clergy sex abuse crisis and how to handle such controversial social issues as the place of women, homosexuality, gay marriage, abortion, divorce and remarriage, and the decline in priests.

For cardinals from the developing world, social justice, poverty, environmental issues and relations with Islam and other faiths take centre stage. For both groups, the government of the church and reform of the Curia have risen sharply up the agenda.

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VATICAN CITY
Los Angeles Times

By Henry Chu
March 9, 2013

VATICAN CITY – The chimney is up, the tourists are out and the cardinals are on deck.
Final preparations were underway Saturday in Michelangelo’s splendid Sistine Chapel for the conclave of prelates who will elect a new pope to head the Roman Catholic Church.

Journalists were given a look inside the famed chapel where the red-hatted cardinals, the “princes” of the church, will begin their secret proceedings Tuesday to try to settle on a new leader from within their ranks.

At the back of the frescoed interior sat the pair of stoves that will be the 115 cardinals’ only form of communication with the outside world. Ballots will be burned in one stove and special coloring chemicals in the other, their fumes mixing in a combined duct to create black smoke to signal an inconclusive vote and white puffs to show a new pope has been elected.

The chimney – a simple, skinny copper pipe – was installed by firefighters Saturday morning. It runs up the wall and out one of the chapel’s windows. The tiny smokestack on the roof is visible to tourists and pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square.

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VATICAN CITY
GlobalPost

Agence France-Presse
March 9, 2013

The Vatican on Saturday outlined the timetable for a conclave in the Sistine Chapel starting next week for a new leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics after Benedict XVI’s resignation.

Here are the precise times for the papal election beginning on Tuesday:

— From 0600 GMT on Tuesday: The 115 “cardinal electors” move into the St Martha’s House residence inside the Vatican walls where they will eat and sleep cut off from the outside world for the duration of the conclave.

— 0900 GMT: Cardinals take part in a special “Pro Eligendo Romano Pontifice” (“For the Election of the Roman Pontiff”) mass in St Peter’s Basilica.

— 1445 GMT: Cardinals either walk or take a minibus in strict isolation through the Vatican gardens from St Martha’s House to the Apostolic Palace.

— 1530 GMT: Cardinals hold a procession through the Apostolic Palace from the Pauline Chapel to the Sistine Chapel as they chant the Litany of Saints.

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ROME
Cardinal Roger Mahony Blogs LA

Every day the Cardinals gather for our General Congregation meetings, and there are delightful breaks, coffee, and fraternity.

Almost every day I greet our new Pope, maybe have a cappuccino with him.

Trouble is, I don’t know which one of these Cardinals will actually be elected in the coming week. But it is one of them.

One of my brother Cardinals came to Rome with his suitcase, and with an open airline ticket to return home. But one of them isn’t going home. He will move into the special apartments designed as the residence for the Pope.

Once one of the Cardinals receives at least 77 votes, he will be asked by the senior Cardinal if he accepts the election to serve as the next Pope. Presuming he responds “yes,” he will then be asked, “By what name do you wish to be called?”

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ROME
Malta Independent

Saturday, 09 March 2013
by Laura Burke, Associated Press

Often cast as the social conscience of the church, Ghana’s Cardinal Peter Turkson is viewed by many as the top African contender for pope.

The 64-year-old head of the Vatican’s peace and justice office was widely credited with helping to avert violence following contested Ghanaian elections. He has aggressively fought African poverty, while disappointing many by hewing to the church’s conservative line on condom use amid Africa’s AIDS epidemic.

Turkson’s reputation as a man of peace took a hit recently when he showed a virulently anti-Islamic video, a move now seen as hurting his papal prospects. Observers say those prospects sank further when he broke a taboo against public jockeying for the papacy — telling The Associated Press the day after Benedict XVI’s resignation announcement that he’s up for the job “if it’s the will of God.”

Speculation about the possibility of a pope from the developing world has swirled for years as the church’s growth has moved south. In Africa, between 1978 and 2007, the number of Catholics grew from 55 million to 146 million. Latin America counts 40 percent of the world’s Catholics. In contrast, Catholic communities in Europe are in decline.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Enterprise

By Joann Fitzpatrick
For The Patriot Ledger

Posted Mar 09, 2013

COMMENTARY —

Traditionally the election of a new pope gives the Roman Catholic hierarchy a chance to remind the world of one of its great religions and of how much influence the Vatican has.

Until fairly recently, the gathering of cardinals, the procession of red hats into St. Peter’s Basilica, crowds waiting for the puff of white smoke to indicate that a new leader has been chosen – all the attendant rituals and the secrecy of the process made for great theater. A sense of the mystique of the church pervaded.

Not this time. A measure of inscrutability is present in all religions and helps sustain them and their followers in the modern world. But events in recent years have stripped the Vatican of the mystery cloak that sheltered it so securely.

We always knew there was intrigue; it’s been the stuff of lore and literature for centuries. Now we know of financial scandal and, most alarming, of the persistent and worldwide cover-up of sexual abuse by priests.

What happens at the Vatican no longer stays at the Vatican, and what happens in the conclave to select a new pope is of far less interest than it used to be, even among the faithful. The men who run the church may use Twitter, but their outlook remains rooted in another time. They refuse to acknowledge that their efforts to keep Catholics tightly controlled have failed. Most Catholics practice their faith as they know and feel it, distanced emotionally and theologically from the Vatican managers who are so removed from the lives of their followers. These men rail against contraception as though they don’t know that the vast majority of Catholics in developed countries turn a deaf ear. Italy has one of Europe’s lowest birth rates, and it’s not because of the Mediterranean diet.

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ITALIA
Il Secolo XIX

[con video]

Savona – «Chiediamo che il cardinale Domenico Calcagno non partecipi al conclave»: la petizione è stata lanciata online, nella giornata di ieri, dalla Rete L’abuso – noi vittime di preti pedofili coordinata da Francesco Zanardi, grande accusatore dell’omertà nei confronti della pedofilia della diocesi savonese, dove Monsignor Calcagno è stato vescovo sino al 2007.

Nel 2003, in una missiva inviata all’allora prefetto della Congregazione per la dottrina della fede Joseph Ratzinger, Calcagno chiedeva consigli sul comportamento da tenere con Don Nello Giraudo, il sacerdote pedofilo condannato nel 2012 a un anno di carcere patteggiato per l’ultimo dei numerosi abusi, risalente al 2005 e unico tra i numerosi non caduto in prescrizione.

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ITALIA
Avvenire

Pedofilia, devastante piaga nazionale. Sono decine di migliaia gli orchi: insegnanti, allenatori, liberi professionisti. E preti: una percentuale numericamente minima rispetto ai 21mila pedofili accertati e soprattutto ai 40mila sacerdoti che tutti i giorni vivono con passione la loro vocazione, ma che dà scandalo proprio perché il crimine proviene da chi più di tutti deve proteggere gli inermi. La Chiesa oggi reagisce con energia, spesso più severamente della giustizia civile (ad esempio quando per i giudici il reato è ormai prescritto ma il colpevole viene dimesso dallo stato clericale).

Per questo la trasmissione delle “Iene” di domenica sera, che ha riproposto la storia già molto nota di Nello Giraudo (prete della provincia di Savona, ridotto anni fa allo stato laicale per le orribili azioni commesse) sembra voler a tutti i costi camminare con la testa voltata all’indietro e non vedere ciò che da anni accade.

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CANADA
Montreal Gazette

By JAN RAVENSBERGEN, THE GAZETTE March 8, 2013

MONTREAL — A Roman Catholic priest in Sorel-Tracy who was reportedly active for many years in a splinter arm of the scouting movement will remain behind bars until his next court appearance on Monday.

Father Daniel Moreau was charged Thursday with possession and distribution of child pornography.

Believed to be in his mid-50s, the priest was arrested at the Saint-Gabriel-Lalemant church on de Roi St., near Lalement St. in Sorel-Tracy, about 100 kilometres northeast of Montreal. The TVA network said neighbours looked on in stupefaction as the parish priest was taken away in handcuffs and placed in a patrol car — then driven away by police.

The Sûreté du Québec was acting on a request from a police force outside the province, Sgt. Daniel Thibaudeau of the SQ said.

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ITALIA
Il Secolo XIX

Savona – La Chiesa savonese ha annunciato l’immediata apertura di un procedimento di diritto canonico nei confronti del prete del seminario accusato da un ex seminarista di violenza sessuale su minore. È stato lo stesso vescovo Vittorio Lupi, in pellegrinaggio in Terra Santa, a dettare la strada da seguire dopo l’intervista choc rilasciata al Secolo XIX dal savonese violentato dal prete e dopo il deposito di ieri in diocesi di una lettera della stessa vittima.

La svolta è arrivata nel tardo pomeriggio di ieri al termine di consultazioni telefoniche tra il vescovo Lupi e l’ordinario diocesano don Antonio Ferri al quale è stato dato mandato di prendere in carico la situazione per arrivare ad una soluzione della vicenda. Sul caso dell’ex seminarista abusato e degli abusi su almeno un altro compagno di camerata, la procura non ha ancora deciso il da farsi.

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ROME
Washington Post

By Ashley McGuire,
Published: March 8

This morning as I stepped out of a café in Rome, I was greeted by a smiling man offering me a sprig of mimosa flowers.

Today is the Festa della Donna, or Women’s Day in Italy, and the mimosa is the flower traditionally given to women on this day.

I found it perfectly appropriate that I began a week long trip in Rome for the upcoming papal conclave on Woman’s Day. With the Catholic Church at the forefront of international news given recent events, many are using the opportunity to frame the Vatican and the Catholic Church more broadly as a place that excludes women. The next pope will be a man elected by 115 men, therefore women must have no role in the life of the faith, the logic goes.

I returned to my home for the next week, a friend’s apartment, with two cappuccinos in hand. My friend, a woman, is studying to be a canon lawyer, an ecclesiastical role that entails tremendous authority in adjudicating church matters.

When we couldn’t figure out the credentialing process, she called a friend who is a Vatican journalist, or a Vaticanista as they are known around here. But she was too busy carting around journalists and cardinals.

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VATICAN CITY
National Post (Canada)

Kristopher Morrison | 13/03/08

It is impossible to calculate the wealth of the Roman Catholic Church. In truth, the church itself likely could not answer that question, even if it wished to.

Its investments and spending are kept secret. Its real estate and art have not been properly evaluated, since the church would never sell them.

There is no doubt, however, that between the church’s priceless art, land, gold and investments across the globe, it is one of the wealthiest institutions on Earth.

Since 313 A.D., when Catholicism became the official religion of the Roman Empire, its power has been in near-constant growth.

The church was able to acquire land, most notably the Papal States surrounding Rome, convert pagan temples and claim relics for itself. Over 300 years, it became one of Europe’s largest landowners.

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