ABUSE TRACKER

VATICAN CITY
RTE News

Cardinals who enter the Conclave to vote on a new pope are forbidden to tweet on threat of excommunication, according to one of the last edicts Pope Benedict signed before his resignation.

Most of the 117 Cardinals who are eligible to vote for a new pope are not on Twitter, but the the ranks do include at least nine active tweeters.

In the unlikely event that the Cardinals disobey the order, the Santa Marta residence where the cardinals will be staying has an electromagnetic shield that will reportedly block any signals.

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VATICAN CITY
Daily Herald

Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn is a soft-spoken conservative who is ready to listen to those espousing reform. That profile that could appeal to fellow cardinals looking to elect a pontiff with widest-possible appeal to the world’s 1 billion Catholics.

His nationality may be his biggest disadvantage: Electors may be reluctant to choose another German speaker as a successor to Benedict XVI.

A man of low tolerance for the child abuse scandals roiling the church, Schoenborn himself was elevated to the its upper echelons of the Catholic hierarchy after his predecessor resigned 18 years ago over accusations that he was a pedophile.
___

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the Roman Catholic Church prepares to elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI, The Associated Press is profiling key cardinals seen as “papabili” _ contenders to the throne. 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. But these are the names that have come up time and again in speculation. Today: Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn.
___

Multilingual and respected by Jews, Muslims and Orthodox Christians, Benedict XVI’s friend and former pupil was one of the cardinal electors in the 2005 papal conclave that chose the German as head of the Catholic church. A scholar who is at home in the pulpit, Schoenborn also is well connected in the Vatican _ and appears willing to make it his home, if reluctantly.

Asked if he would like to succeed Benedict on news of the pontiff’s plan to step down, he said: “my heart is in Vienna, my heart is in Austria _ but naturally with the whole Church as well.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Ian Jack
The Guardian, Friday 1 March 2013

When we were boys and girls, did we have any idea what priests got up to? Perhaps some Catholic children did, when they came across those now identified as bad apples, but for the rest of us they remained rarely seen, black-clad figures who (we were told) exercised a severe power over their congregations. Old films showed them as shrewd and humorous characters played by the likes of Bing Crosby and Spencer Tracy, and though as Protestant or at least non-Catholic children we never swallowed that sunny version, they appeared sinister to us only in the most general way. I remember a moment of teenage speculation when, looking at the drawn curtains of a priest’s house one winter’s night, one of us wondered about the female housekeeper’s role. A dozen years later, post-midnight in the lounge of a grand Dublin hotel, I saw a group of bibulous priests getting pie-eyed in what one of Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s accusers would call a “late-night drinking session”. To anyone raised with the purse-lipped notion that men of God should always be sober, this was a memorable scene, and for quite a few years after, maybe even until the advent of Father Ted, it represented my idea of “inappropriate behaviour” in the priesthood. That the same priests might end up undressing one another would then have been a preposterous suggestion.

We knew so very little. The clerical uniform successfully erased the individual inside it, so that instead of seeing a 25-year-old man of amiable intention and uncertain sexuality – quiet Pat Flannery, say, from the next street – we saw a member of a secret society with a lineage that went all the way back to the Spanish Inquisition. But then, we were on the outside. As a family of non-believers, we rarely saw the inside of the village kirk, but we knew the minister and the Bible he read from. The Catholic church – “the chapel”, we called it – was a different matter. It had wooden sides and a corrugated iron roof and lay on the outskirts of the next village, where it had been built for migrant Irish workers at the beginning of the last century. On Sundays, our Catholic neighbours would put on their best clothes and walk over the hill to reach the hut’s Latin ceremonies, which, when we occasionally heard them as passers-by, seemed to us superstitious and foreign.

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IRELAND
Paddy Power Blog

By Michael Kelly | Editor of the Irish Catholic newspaper
@MichaelKellyIC

Trying to predict who the next Pope will be is a notoriously tricky business. In the early 1990s as Pope John Paul II’s health declined, the renowned Vatican-watcher Peter Hebblethwaite wrote a book entitled The Next Pope. In the book he predicted John Paul’s imminent demise and speculated on who would succeed the Polish Pontiff. Unfortunately for him, Hebblethwaite died in 1994 causing wags in Rome to speculate that the Pope – who reigned for another 11 years – was working on a book to be titled The Next Peter Hebblethwaite!

Candidates for the Papacy tend to keep their desire for the job secret. When mentioned as ‘Papabile’ (a potential Pope) it is considered poor form not to dismiss one’s own chances. This may be due in part to the Italian proverb that “he who enters the conclave as a Pope always comes out as a cardinal”.

So, with the above-mentioned health warning in mind, who are the front-runners to replace Benedict XVI in Catholicism’s top job? Geography will be crucial. In 2005, many observers thought the cardinals would look to the developing world; instead, they opted to stick with Europe and elect Joseph Ratzinger. Indications are that they will look farther afield this time around.

1. Cardinal Angelo Scola, Italy (71) — 3/1

The Italians are pinning most of their hopes on Scola, he is one of the few Papabile that have an active presence on Twitter, almost a prerequisite now since Benedict took to the social networking site late last year. He is considered conservative and close to Italian politicians. He was hand-picked by Pope John Paul II to lead an institute in Rome leading the Church’s opposition to divorce, contraception, homosexuality and abortion. He worked as an adviser to Pope Benedict in his previous role in the Doctrine watchdog and is likely to lead the conservative charge in the conclave. He is a former Patriarch of Venice and now Archbishop of Milan – two dioceses that remarkably have produced five of the eight Popes who reigned during the 20th Century. That’s quite the record.

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UNITED STATES
Talk Radio News Service

By LUKE VARGAS

UNITED NATIONS (TRNS) – The legal team representing thousands of individuals abused by Catholic priests has published a new report in response to comments made by the Vatican to the United Nations last year.

The latest report by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on behalf of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) comes on the heels of an appeal to the International Court of Justice earlier this month to take the Vatican to trial over its alleged complicity in cases of child sexual abuse worldwide.

According to CCR estimates, up to 100,000 individuals have been the victims of sexual violence by clergy between 1981 and 2005.

With the retirement of Pope Benedict XVI now underway, and the selection of a new pontiff in the coming weeks, the issue of criminal behavior by the Catholic clergy is poised to dog the church for years to come.

According to the CCR report, the Vatican overlooked its gravest abuses when it provided a 2011 report assessing its compliance with the U.N.’s Convention of the Rights of the Child human rights treaty.

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UNITED STATES
The Patriot News

By Ivey DeJesus | idejesus@pennlive.com
on February 12, 2013

Benedict XVI may be nearing the end of his papacy, but survivors of clergy sexual abuse say he still has plenty of time to ensure predator priests are brought to justice and ensure children are protected.

“It may sound naive, but we haven’t yet given up on this one. He does have 15 or 16 days in office,” said David Clohessy, director of the the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests.”

Benedict on Monday stunned the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics with his announcement that he would resign his at the end of the month. The frail 85-year-old pontiff cited poor health as reason for his decision.

In the wake of his announcement, victims advocates like Clohessy — as well as experts on the Catholic Church — have criticized the German-born pope for failing to do what he once promised: to have the church do “all in its power” to bring predator priests to justice and protect children.

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VATICAN CITY
CBS News

[with video]

The Catholic Church of the United States is now on “thank God, the right track” in the wake of the scandal surrounding decades of child sexual abuse by priests and senior clergy’s moves to hide it from public view, Cardinal Timothy Dolan tells CBS News.

Speaking to CBS News correspondent Allen Pizzey at the Vatican, where he and all other cardinals have been summoned to elect a new pontiff following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday, Dolan acknowledged the “torture the Catholics went through in the United States.”

He told Pizzey the Church in the U.S. had learned from its mistakes in handling the abusive priests and tackled the problem during the last decade. “We didn’t do it right back then, but now I think we are.”

Dolan conceded that the global Church, however was still feeling the aftershocks as the “tsunami” of allegations of abuse was still hitting clergy in other nations.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Conservative Home

By Roger Scruton.

Our society has not come to terms with the sexual revolution, and one proof of this is the extent to which people seem now free to accuse each other of sexual misdemeanours and ‘inappropriate’ advances, without knowing or caring whether these constitute a crime. This matter is of great concern to conservatives who, for all their reticence in the matter, are well aware that sexual life ought not to be a free for all, and that conventions, manners and a certain distance between the sexes are fundamental to both individual happiness and social peace. Like other modern people, however, they stumble through this dangerous territory without the light of religious principle to guide them, and leaning, when it is necessary to lean, on an entirely makeshift philosophy. Indeed, it seems to me that the absence of a robust view of sex is one reason for the ideological weakness of the Conservative Party. The hesitation over family values, the sudden and unexplained enthusiasm for gay marriage, the easy toleration of ‘non-discrimination’ laws that marginalise the old morality – all these are ways of papering over an enormous hole in the conservative vision, and one that simply did not exist when the founding fathers of conservatism wrote in the 18th century. …

Even worse, it seems to me, is the case of Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who is accused of entirely unspecific acts that occurred during his younger days. None of his accusers suggests that anything the Cardinal did amounts to a crime in law. Perhaps they are such virtuous people that they have never got drunk and attempted to kiss the attractive person sitting next to them. Indeed, one hopes that, being priests, they have behaved in the exemplary way that Cardinal O’Brien may not have been able always to live up to. But what a fuss, and with what consequences, not only for the Cardinal himself, but for the Church to which the primary loyalty of his accusers is owed!

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UTAH
Deseret News

By Emiley Morgan, Deseret News

Published: Friday, March 1 2013

CENTERVILLE — A Centerville man who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing one child and exposing himself to another was sentenced to jail and probation Friday.

Timothy William Bothell, 43, pleaded guilty to attempted aggravated sexual abuse of a child, a first-degree felony; and lewdness involving a child, a class A misdemeanor, in December. Friday, 2nd District Judge Glen Dawson ordered the man to spend two consecutive years in jail followed by five years probation during which time the man is to have no contact with his victims or any other children under the age of 18 without court approval.

Dawson sentenced the man to three years to life in prison but suspended the jail time. He said he would also consider giving Bothell work release after he serves one year in jail. He is to report to the Davis County Jail March 8.

Bothell came to police attention after being confronted by his wife and admitting that he had inappropriate sexual contact with at least one child of a family friend. Bothell later contacted Child Protective Services, which then involved police.

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UTAH
The Salt Lake Tribune

By Kimball Bennion
The Salt Lake Tribune

First Published Mar 01 2013

Bountiful • A 43-year-old Centerville man who is a former LDS Church employee was sentenced Friday to two years in jail for sexually abusing one child and showing his genitals to a second child last year.

Timothy William Bothell was charged in 2nd District Court with two counts of first-degree felony aggravated sexual abuse of a child stemming from incidents at a home between Dec. 1, 2011, and Aug. 9. He was also charged with four counts of lewdness involving a child, a class A misdemeanor.

Bothell pleaded guilty in December to one count of first-degree felony attempted aggravated sexual abuse of a child and one count of lewdness involving a child.

The felony count carries a potential prison term of up to life, and the lewdness count is punishable by up to a year in jail.

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UTAH
Standard-Examiner

By Loretta Park
Standard-Examiner staff

Fri, 03/01/2013

BOUNTIFUL — A former employee of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was sentenced to jail instead of prison on Friday on charges of child sex abuse.

Timothy Bothell, 43, of Centerville, pleaded guilty in December to one count of attempted aggravated sexual abuse of a child, a first-degree felony; and one count of lewdness involving a child, a class A misdemeanor. He was originally charged with two first-degree felony counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child and four counts of Class A misdemeanor charges of lewdness involving a child.

The plea deal was made so the girls, sisters ages 11 and 13 at the time of the abuse, would not have to testify, attorneys said.

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DELAWARE
The Star Democrat

WILMINGTON, DEL. – In the next few weeks, the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington will begin a three-year capital campaign to raise funds for pensions, diocesan ministries and current and future parish needs.

The campaign, titled “Sustaining Hope for the Future,” is designed to meet the needs created by the diocesan bankruptcy settlement that was finalized in September 2011 and paid $77.4 million to survivors of clergy sexual abuse to settle their claims against the dioceses and 29 parishes. The settlement drained diocesan reserves and requires the diocese to reinforce its lay employees’ pension plan with a $10 million infusion by the end of 2017.

Catholic school teachers, parish secretaries, Catholic Charities staff, cemetery workers, parish maintenance staff and others will have their pensions secured by the “Sustaining Hope for the Future” campaign. The campaign will also help retired priests who have dedicated their lives to the spiritual needs of their parishioners to have health insurance coverage and a dignified retirement. A percentage of the funds will be used by parishes to meet their various needs.

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IRELAND
Global Dispatch

Just two hours after Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation, Irish bookmaker Paddy Power was out with their odds and within 48 hours, they saw more than $200,000 in bets.

More than 20,000 people have bet hundreds of thousands of dollars on the papal change and international bookmakers expect that dollar figure to quickly move into the millions.

It’s illegal to place bets on the pope in the United States, even in Nevada, because it’s considered an election.

Plenty of foreign bookmakers, however, are capitalizing on what they say could be the biggest moneymaker ever outside of sporting events.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Spy Ghana

An openly gay former Dominican friar insisted today that homosèxuality is the ‘ticking time bomb in the Catholic Church’ and that homosèxual men are ‘massively over-represented’ within the Church.

Mark Dowd, who is now a journalist, said research for his 2001 Channel 4 documentary Queer and Catholic suggested that at least half of people attracted into seminaries in the priesthood are gay.

His comments came as the former leader of Roman Catholics in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, said the scandal-hit Catholic Church must undergo renewal and reform.

Mr Dowd told CNN: ‘When you have this culture of secrecy and guilt and repression, you have conditions which foster the potential for blackmail and for manipulation.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Saturday, March 02, 2013

A priest has accused RTÉ of imbalance and inappropriateness after he became embroiled in a blazing radio row on sex abuse in the Catholic Church on the day Pope Benedict XVI resigned

By Caroline O’Doherty

Fr Joe McDonald says RTÉ should have taken a decision to “lay off the Church scandals” on the day and he wants the makers of the Late Debate programme to respond to his criticisms.

The Thursday edition of the late night RTÉ 1 current affairs show became increasingly heated after Fr McDonald, of St Matthew’s Parish, Ballyfermot, and senator Ronan Mullen complained they were not being allowed raise the positive points of Pope Benedict’s reign.

They questioned the right of journalist and former rape crisis counsellor Susan McKay to be on the panel as she was a declared atheist, and they took issue with abuse survivor and long-time campaigner, Marie Collins’ view that the Church’s leaders still failed to grasp the severity of the problem.

Ms Collins, a devout Catholic who exposed the failings of Cardinal Desmond Connell on the abuse scandal, tweeted afterwards she was “shattered” by the encounter.

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CANADA
Huffington Post

By Andy Blatchford, The Canadian Press

MONTREAL – Word that a Canadian cardinal is a presumed contender to succeed Pope Benedict XVI has been met with a mixed response in his own Quebec backyard.

Advocates for victims of sexual abuse by priests and even some members of the clergy aren’t quite in Marc Cardinal Ouellet’s cheering section.

While the idea of a global icon emerging from here has stirred the local imagination, that excitement is tempered by the fact that Ouellet’s once-religious home province has become intensely secular and even anti-clerical.

Rev. Raymond Gravel suggested Tuesday that for the Roman Catholic church to stem its decline in Quebec, and elsewhere in the world, it should avoid making another theologian or university professor its next pontiff. Ouellet is both — a theologian and a longtime professor.

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UNITED STATES
America Magazine

March 4, 2013
From CNS, Staff and other sources

Irish bookmakers have ranked Cardinal Angelo Scola of Italy, Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana and Cardinal Marc Ouellet of Canada as favorites among the papabili (literally “pope-ables”). Has Cardinal Turkson already blown his chances by saying that he would be happy to take the job? Is New York’s Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan out of the running because he is, well, an American? Such are the speculations of “papabili watching” as the conclave that will elect the new pope approaches in March.

If you would prefer to let your reason, rather than an Irish bookie, be your guide, here are some short bios of the leading candidates for the job.

Cardinal Angelo Scola (Italian, born Nov. 7, 1941). Archbishop of Milan since 2011, Cardinal Scola, a respected theologian, was patriarch of Venice, where he earned a reputation as an energetic pastor, raising the church’s profile in the civil arena. He was created a cardinal in 2003. In 2004 he started Oasis, an international foundation that serves as a forum for dialogue and a bridge of support for Catholics in the Middle East.

The son of a socialist truck driver, Cardinal Scola took to his assignment in Venice with relish, visiting local communities in an effort to help restore the parish as a spiritual and social meeting ground. Cardinal Scola has argued that if the church wants to reach people where they live, it has to move out of the sacristy and into all sectors of civil society. “As Christians,” he said, “that means we must have the courage to show our face, to say what freedom really is…and to propose to civil society an ideal of the good life.”

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MARYLAND
Patch

By Nick Gestido

The deacon of a local church has been arrested and charged with possession of child pornography, according to a news release from the Baltimore County Police Department.

William Steven Albaugh, of the unit block of Treadway Court in Perry Hall, was arrested at his home at 7:45 a.m. March 1, police said in the news release.

Albaugh is the deacon of St. Joseph’s Fullerton church on Belair Road, the release states.

He was charged with one count of possession of child pornography and released from the Baltimore County Detention Center in lieu of $75,000 bond, according to police.

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MARYLAND
The Baltimore Sun

By Jessica Anderson, The Baltimore Sun
7:17 p.m. EST, March 1, 2013

A longtime deacon at a Fullerton church was charged Friday with possessing “numerous files of child pornography,” Baltimore County police said.

William Steven Albaugh, 67, a deacon at St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church on Belair Road, was arrested at his Nottingham home at 7:45 a.m. Police had searched Albaugh’s Treadway Court home and said they found images of children on his Verizon Online account and on thumb drives.

Police do not believe that children at St. Joseph’s were victims.

Albaugh declined to comment when reached by phone Friday.

He told police he has viewed child pornography since the 1970s, when he would go to adult bookstores in Baltimore, according to charging documents. Albaugh told police he saved the images to his computer but said he would never harm a child, the documents say.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

•EXCLUSIVE by JORDAN BAKER
•From:The Sunday Telegraph
•February 17, 2013

THE new Pope must save the Catholic Church from waning influence amid the evils of modern society – and may well be an Italian – says Cardinal George Pell, one of the 117 men who will elect a new pontiff next month.

In an exclusive interview, Cardinal Pell said the vote was “enormously important for the Church”.

“If we go under, we surrender to the tides that are breaking up families, decreasing the birth rate, the challenges of alcoholism and drugs and pornography. If we collapse or we wobble disastrously, it won’t be for the good of the western world at all,” he said.

Cardinal Pell will fly to Rome on Friday, where he will meet other cardinals before being secluded inside the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel to choose a replacement for the retiring Pope Benedict.

There are factions – Cardinal Pell describes it as “different schools of thought” – and this will be evident in the discussions among cardinals, although he says the lobbying has not yet begun.

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SCOTLAND
Daily Mail

Drunken parties at the seminary, crushes on young ‘pups’ and a gay mafia accused of bringing down Britain’s top Catholic

By Guy Adams

Almost invariably, it was late at night by the time the parties started. After dinner and prayers, the residents of St Andrew’s College would gather around candlelit tables in the refectory or head upstairs to the billiard room to talk, drink and laugh into the wee hours.

The tight-knit group, mostly in their early 20s, had been drawn to the 19th-century baronial mansion near the village of Drygrange, a stone’s throw from the River Tweed, on the Scottish borders, by a calling. They wanted to devote their lives to serving God as priests in the Catholic Church.

St Andrew’s was a seminary 30 miles south-east of Edinburgh, where at any time several dozen young men were being prepared for the priesthood. They spent their days studying, praying, meditating, debating theology and learning how to run a parish.

In their six years at the secluded institution, the future priests made lifelong friendships and formed intimate cliques.

They even shared a common language: dinner was ‘rat pie’, communal bathrooms were ‘jakes’ and younger colleagues ‘pups’. On religious holidays, copious amounts of beer and wine (but never spirits) were served from lunchtime onwards. The raucous parties that ensued, bringing merriment to every tower and turret of the redbrick building, were known as ‘ragers’.

Sometimes, as with many an event involving too much alcohol, a ‘rager’ would end badly. And it’s one such occasion, said to have occurred at St Andrew’s 33 years ago, that this week brought scandal to the highest echelons of the Catholic Church.

On Monday, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, 74-year-old Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh and Britain’s most senior cleric, shocked the nation’s five million Catholics by announcing his sudden resignation.

The news came 24 hours after a Sunday newspaper revealed that three priests and a former priest have filed an official complaint accusing him of various counts of ‘inappropriate’ behaviour, stretching back more than three decades. Perhaps the most colourful alleged incident occurred at St Andrew’s in the spring of 1980.

A 20-year-old, who had joined the seminary two years earlier, claims that O’Brien, then 42, made a drunken attempt to seduce him.

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CANADA
Ottawa Citizen

OTTAWA — An elderly Ottawa priest and former school board trustee is facing new sex abuse charges.

Jacques Faucher, 76, stood with his hands in his pockets as he appeared on video from the courthouse cells accused of new allegations of sexually abusing three men between 1969 and 1974.

Faucher was first arrested in February on sex allegations and released. He was arrested again Thursday.

Court documents show he is now facing a dozen charges, including six counts each of gross indecency and indecent assault on a male on four alleged victims.

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FLORIDA
Herald-Tribune

By J. David McSwane

Published: Friday, March 1, 2013

SARASOTA – A Catholic priest could face up to life in prison after a jury found him guilty Friday of eight counts of illegal sexual activity with a teenage boy.

William C. Wert, now 56, had a recurring sexual relationship with a 14-year-old Nokomis boy in which the two exchanged explicit text messages that became key pieces of evidence for the prosecution.

“What was interesting of course was that we had the text message back-and-forth which showed kind of the context of the relationship,” said Assistant State Attorney Dawn Buff, who prosecuted the case before Circuit Court Judge Frederick Mercurio.

“You see how he’s wooing him and how he’s engaging this child in a relationship.”

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BRAZIL
Business Ghana

Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation is an act of desperation in the face of the “moral disaster” that has swamped the Roman Catholic Church and the “internal intrigues” in the Roman curia, Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff told dpa in an interview.

According to Boff, a leading exponent of Liberation Theology, which holds that the church should be closer to the poor, Benedict XVI is to leave to his successor a negative legacy. The outgoing pontiff has been “a pope with no charisma who was unable to lead the Church.”

“He resigned out of desperation, because he could no longer control the Roman curia and bear the moral disaster of pedophilia and of cardinals’ internal intrigues,” said Boff, a former Franciscan friar.

Boff met Joseph Ratzinger before he became Pope Benedict XVI in the 1960s as they both enjoyed discussing theological issues with each other in Germany.

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MISSISSIPPI
Associated Baptist Press

By Bob Allen

The Mississippi Board of Pharmacy recently revoked the license of a convicted child molester who had worked at a drug store in Clinton, Miss., since resigning as music minister at a prominent Southern Baptist Church in 2011.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests reported the regulatory board accepted the voluntary revocation of John Langworthy’s pharmacy license during a public meeting Feb. 21. An agency official did not respond to a reporter’s e-mail seeking confirmation, but in recent days Langworthy’s record no longer appears in a search of a license-verification database on the Mississippi Board of Pharmacy website.

Langworthy, 50, served 22 years at Morrison Heights Baptist Church in Clinton, Miss., before resigning as associate pastor of music and ministries. After his resignation from the church, Langworthy confessed to the congregation Aug. 7, 2011, his sin of having “sexual indiscretions with younger males” while serving churches in Mississippi and Texas in the 1980s.

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ROME
CBS Chicago

CHICAGO (CBS) — One day after Pope Benedict resigned, the Vatican is in a state of flux, with no clear indication who among a dozen or more possible contenders might be elected a successor.

On Friday, life went on, people strolled through St. Peter’s Square, they lined up to buy commemorative sede vacante stamps and even got engaged.

CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports, Francis Cardinal George has four or five names in mind.

New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan said he hasn’t narrowed it down that much, saying his list “might be a little longer. Cardinal George knows the cardinals a little better than I do.”

“While nobody would campaign and nobody’s jockeying, there would be some honest conversation, saying, ‘What’s your read on this guy,’ ” Dolan said.

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UNITED STATES
Global Post

The Catholic priest and lawyer offers counsel to US nuns battling the Vatican as well as church leaders grappling with the sex abuse crisis.

Dan Ward is by any measure a complex man. The lawyer-priest righteously helps nuns on property matters and how to deal with a Vatican investigation.

A canonist and civil lawyer, he has also done extensive defense work for clergy sex offenders and their communities. He refused interview requests.

“It’s a little like a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality — doing good for the nuns, while helping bishops or religious superiors deal with their sex offenders,” said Pat Wall, who was a young protégé to Ward at St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota in the early 1980s.

Back then, Father Ward was advising religious communities in the early wave of abuse litigation. He told Wall “to get any case settled before it’s filed. You do not want to get involved in the civil discovery process.”

Ward, who leads the legal team of the Resource Center for Religious Institutes (RCRI), has ended up opposite his former student, Wall, in several civil cases. Ward’s work for nuns, says Wall, has been secondary to “his biggest role in the last 25 years — as a consultant lawyer to various monasteries, dioceses and churches in defending them in cases of sexual abuse. Ward has functioned on every single level on the defense side.”

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

MARYLAND
WJZ

NOTTINGHAM, Md. (WJZ) — A church deacon has been charged with possession of child pornography.

William Steven Albaugh, 67, was arrested at his home Friday morning. Albaugh is the deacon at St. Joseph Catholic Church Fullerton in Nottingham, near White Marsh.

Albaugh is charged with one count of possession of child pornography. He was released on $75,000 bond.

Detectives began the investigation last month when Verizon Online notified the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that one of its subscribers had stored images of child pornography on the online “cloud” storage system.

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

MARYLAND
CT Post

FULLERTON, Md. (AP) — A Maryland church deacon has been charged with possession of child pornography.

William Steven Albaugh was arrested at his Fullerton home Friday morning.

Baltimore County police say the 67-year-old Albaugh stored images of child pornography on thumb drives and on his Verizon Online account.

Albaugh is the deacon of St. Joseph Catholic Church in Nottingham. The Archdiocese of Baltimore says Albaugh has been suspended from all public ministries. Police say there’s no indication any children at St. Joseph were victims.

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MARYLAND
WBAL

Friday, March 01, 2013
Phil Yacuboski

Police in Baltimore County have arrested a 67-year-old Fullerton man and charged with him with having child pornography.

William Steven Albaugh, of the unit block of Treadway Court, was arrested Friday morning just before 8 o’clock. Albaugh is the deacon of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in 8400-block of Belair Road in Nottingham.

He’s charged with one count of possession of child pornography and was released on $75,000 bond.

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MARYLAND
WMAR

NOTTINGHAM, Md. (WMAR) –

Baltimore County Police have arrested and charged a deacon with possession of child pornography.

William Steven Albaugh, 66, was a deacon at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Nottingham. Albaugh was arrested at his home in the unit block of Treadway Court at about 7:45 a.m.

Albaugh is charged with one count of possession of child pornography and was released on a $75,000 bond.

Detectives began to investigate the deacon last month when Verizon Online notified the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that one of their subscribers had stored images on the online ‘cloud’ storage system.

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

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

Virginia Jones

Friday, March 1, 2013

I saw the blurb on Abuse Tracker from Bill Donohue about an opinion piece in the New York Times criticizing the author, Paul Elie, as another Catholic malcontent.

My first thought was, We are all Gods hands on this earth. Maybe the malcontents are actually God speaking to Church leadership and telling them they need to shape up.

My second reactions is that sometimes we don’t recognize the help God sends to us.

I am reminded of the story of a man who was stranded during a flood. Before he was stranded, a policeman came to his door and told him to evacuate.

The man said, “God will take care of me.”

The flood waters rose to his doorstep and then into his house.

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MARYLAND
NBC Washington

A 67-year-old Fullerton, Md. man – who also serves as a church deacon – has been charged with possession of child pornography, Baltimore County police said.

William Steven Albaugh of Treadway Court was arrested at his home at about 7:45 a.m. and charged with one count of possession of child pornography. He was released on $75,000 bond.

Police said detectives were alerted by Verizon Online, who told the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that one of its subscribers had stored images of child pornography on Verizon’s online cloud storage system.

Police said a further investigation found that Albaugh saved images of child pornography on his Verizon Online account as well as on thumb drives.

Albaugh is the deacon of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Nottingham, Md., police said. There is no evidence that children at the church were victims.

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FIJI
The Fiji Times

Repeka Nasiko
Saturday, March 02, 2013

A CATHOLIC priest accused of rape and multiple allegations of sex related crimes was yesterday placed in police custody for his own safety.

The Magistrates Court in Tavua was told that Father Nemesio Kolikoli, 50, should be held in protective custody as tension was high in Vatukoula, where he served as parish priest.

State prosecutors told Magistrate Samuela Qica the clergy would be harmed if he was released back into the community because of the tension created by his alleged acts.

Father Kolikoli was charged with one count of rape and three counts of indecent assault following a complaint lodged by a 21-year-old on February 24.

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ROME
Voice of America

Reuters

March 01, 2013

ROME — Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana is not “running” for pope but he clearly has supporters who think enough of him that they have plastered posters with his picture around Rome.

“Vote Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson at the conclave!,” was written in bold on posters above a photograph of the cardinal, a favorite among bookmakers to succeed Benedict, who on Thursday became the first pope in six centuries to resign.

The posters were plastered over banners that had been used for candidates in Italian elections earlier this week.

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CANADA
CBC News

Ottawa police have laid six additional counts of gross indecency and indecent assault against a retired Roman Catholic priest already facing charges related to the alleged sexual assault of a boy in the early 1970s.

Jacques Faucher of Gatineau, Que., was charged and appeared in court via video on Friday to face the additional charges.

Faucher, 76, was already facing one count each of gross indecency and indecent assault on a male in relation to incidents alleged to have occurred in Ottawa between 1971 and 1973. The complainant in that instance was seven years old in 1971, police said.

The new charges come after police asked anyone with information about the incident or other incidents to contact them.

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CANADA
CFRA

Alison Sandor and Sarah Anderson
Friday, March 1, 2013

A 76-year-old retired priest charged with sex crimes against children is now facing additional charges.

Ottawa Police have charged Jacques Faucher with six accounts of gross indecency and indecent assault.

Faucher, was already charged with one count each of gross indecency and indecent assault in allegations of sexual abuse that date back to the early 1970’s.

In November, Ottawa police began investigating a series of alleged incidents involving a retired priest and a seven-year-old boy. The incidents allegedly occurred in Ottawa between 1971 and 1973.

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CANADA
CBC News

Ottawa police have laid six additional counts of gross indecency and indecent assault against a retired Roman Catholic priest already facing charges related to the alleged sexual assault of a boy in the early 1970s.

Jacques Faucher of Gatineau, Que., was charged and appeared in court via video on Friday to face the additional charges.

Faucher, 76, was already facing one count each of gross indecency and indecent assault on a male in relation to incidents alleged to have occurred in Ottawa between 1971 and 1973. The complainant in that instance was seven years old in 1971, police said.

The new charges come after police asked anyone with information about the incident or other incidents to contact them.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

The media nonsense has already gotten out of hand, especially on TV. Uninformed pundits, aided by opportunistic so-called “experts”, are already reporting the Vatican power struggles as if it were the Papal Kentucky Derby. The important matter is not the horserace; it is the Vatican structure. If that is not addressed by the Cardinals seriously now, the Pope who makes the “Winner’s Circle” will surely rule as a Papal Loser. It is just common sense.

Within a short period recently, (1) the ex-Pope, Joseph Ratzinger, left all the Cardinals his “final” marching signals, (2) his oldest colleague, Hans Kung, gave his informative assessment and a final warning , (3) a senior German diplomat, solely on a personal basis and not in any official capacity, indicated perceptively that the deteriorating situation in the Catholic Church was adversely affecting desirable cooperation among Christian denominations and benefiting indirectly some militant Islamic factions, and (4) a major human rights group filed a comprehensive report with the well regarded UN Committee on the Rights of the Child on the Vatican’s worldwide cover-up of priest rape of children supporting the Committee’s pending summons to the Vatican to account shortly. The Vatican is subject by international treaty to the Committee’s juridiction and has for over a decade failed to comply fully with its treaty oligations

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MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio

by Jessica Mador, Minnesota Public Radio
February 28, 2013

ST. PAUL, Minn. — A bill that would eliminate the statute of limitations for childhood victims of sexual abuse to sue their abusers got its first hearing Thursday.

The Minnesota Child Victims Act would eliminate the requirement that victims file civil suits within six years of becoming an adult. Supporters of the measure say it can take decades for people who were sexually abused as children to come forward.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the bill on a vote of 5-3, and sent it to the full Senate. The House Civil Law Committee will take up the bill next Wednesday.

Grace Keliher from the Minnesota School Boards Association said the association supports strengthening penalties against abusers. But the proposal as it is written would make it difficult for school districts to defend against claims of past abuse in cases where detailed records may not have been kept, she said.

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UNITED STATES
Rockland County Times

Posted March 1st, 2013

BY DIANE DIMOND

I don’t pretend to know why Pope Benedict XVI became the first pope to resign in almost 600 years. But I’m going to bet it had something to do with the constant drumbeat of scandal that marked his eight-year reign.

Before he became pope, he was Joseph Ratzinger, a German cardinal. You may not know, however, that he had long been in charge of the Vatican office to which all reports about sexually misbehaving priests were directed. In other words, for years, every single complaint about sexual abuse by a priest crossed the desk of Cardinal Ratzinger.

Agreed, he was just one man within the vast Vatican framework. But he was at the top. He was the man within the organization who was in a position to know about every accusation and what action (if any) had been taken to learn the truth about allegations of sexual abuse.

The information about priests with multiple complaints against them was at Ratzinger’s fingertips. He could easily have looked up information about all those priests who had been transferred from parish to parish — and the children who claimed they, too, had been abused.

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VATICAN CITY
Rome Reports

[with video]

March 1, 2013. (Romereports.com) In his first hours as Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI was very serene and calm. After saying farewell from his balcony, he had dinner, prayed and took a walk. According to the Vatican’s spokesman, he also slept quite well.

“I spoke with Benedict XVI’s secretary over the phone, and he told me the Pope was very calm, relaxed and had slept very well. He told me this with a very friendly tone of voice, which gives me the impression that it has been a time of peace for him,” said father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican’s spokesman.

With the Pope’s resignations all heads of Vatican Departments temporarily lose their posts.
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who is also the so called chamberlain is responsible for the management and day to day affairs of the Holy See until a new Pope is elected.

Through a letter, all nunciatures have been officially informed about Benedict XVI’s resignation. His Papal apartment was sealed as was the elevator that leads to it.
Also, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Dean of the Cardinals, sent an official letter to every cardinal summoning them to Rome, as soon as possible to elect the next Pope.

The next meeting will be held on Monday March 4th at 9: 30 a.m.

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WILMINGTON (DE)
The Dialog

By Joseph Ryan
Dialog editor

Bishop Malooly has approved a three-year capital campaign called “Sustaining Hope for the Future” to address the current and future financial needs of the Diocese of Wilmington.

The campaign, to begin during the next few weeks, will focus on four areas — reinforcing the diocesan lay employees’ pension plan that is under a court directive to be funded with an additional $10 million by the end of 2017, securing priests’ retirement fund, strengthening diocesan ministries and sustaining current and future parish needs.

“I need to get the diocese back on an even keel and out of debt,” Bishop Malooly said Feb. 25 in announcing the campaign.

The major fundraising project was spurred by the diocesan bankruptcy settlement in February 2011 (finalized in September 2011) in which the diocese paid $77.4 million to settle 150 claims of survivors of sexual abuse by priests, as well as honoring claims of pensioners and other creditors.

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WILMINGTON (DE)
The Republic

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 01, 2013

DOVER, Delaware — The Catholic Diocese of Wilmington is embarking on a major fundraising campaign, 18 months after emerging from bankruptcy.

The diocese on Friday announced a three-year campaign to raise funds for pensions, ministries and parish needs.

Officials said the campaign is designed to meet the needs created by a $77 million bankruptcy settlement with survivors of sexual abuse by pedophile priests. The diocese said the settlement drained its reserves and requires it to add $10 million to its lay employees’ pension plan by the end of 2017.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Mar. 1, 2013 All Things Catholic

Now that the papacy of Benedict XVI is over and the sede vacante has begun, the period before the white smoke rises over the Sistine Chapel will be filled with commentary and speculation about the looming conclave, much of it based on time-honored conventional wisdom about how these things work.

Here are three common bromides you’re likely to hear over and over again in coming days:

“He who enters as pope exits as a cardinal.” The idea is that too much attention before the fact can hurt more than it helps, and that the actual results of conclaves are always a surprise compared to what people had expected.

“You follow a fat pope with a thin one.” The gist is that after a particular style has had its day for a while, cardinals will be in the mood for something different, so they’ll elect a pope who contrasts with the previous one.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Birmingham Mail

Maureen Messent

Were I a simpleton believing shock headlines and doom-laden news bulletins, I’d get the idea the Roman Catholic Church ‘is in crisis’ and has been shattered by the resignation of Cardinal Keith O’Brien.

That isn’t the case. What we are seeing here is an epidemic of selective media indignation.

Indeed, this is an excuse for wheeling out the old adage of events turning out all for the best.

The church isn’t in crisis, simply realising that great change has been forced on it.

Had the Pope not been resigning, it is likely that the cumbrous and slow-moving Vatican would not have moved against O’Brien for months.

Then, after his retirement, a few months would have elapsed, at which stage, out of the blue, the Vatican, with O’Brien now safely retired, would have told us that accusations of inappropriate behaviour had been made against him.

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NEW ZEALAND
New Zealand Herald

Yesterday was Pope Benedict’s last day in office, but the words customarily used to announce that we have a new Pope, “Habemus Papam”, are likely to be a long time in coming. For much has changed in a short space of time.

The forced resignation this week of Cardinal Keith O’Brien as Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh demonstrates the intensity of the events through which the Catholic Church is passing. The College of Cardinals that will shortly assemble to make the choice has a difficult task.

One characteristic of the papacy that will be hard to maintain is the dogma of papal infallibility. The Vatican Council of 1870 defined it in the following terms: the Pope is “possessed of infallibility” when “he defines … a doctrine concerning faith and morals to be held by the whole Church”. Once the Pope has spoken, the Vatican Council agreed, his definitions “are irreformable of themselves”.

But the resignation of the Pope, an unprecedented act in modern times, makes the notion of infallibility look distinctly odd. Does it mean that Pope Benedict was possessed of infallibility yesterday but not now since he has begun his retirement? No wonder the Church delayed many centuries before clothing the idea in legal form.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Gay Star News

01 March 2013 | By Joe Morgan

Another priest has accused Cardinal Keith O’Brien of initiating ‘inappropriate behavior’.

It is the fifth such allegation to be made public against the former leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, after O’Brien resigned on Monday (25 February).

The complaint is said to have given other men confidence to come forward with allegations against the cardinal, the Times (£) reports.

The priest wrote directly to Rome late last year because he felt he could not trust the church hierarchy in Scotland to handle the matter.

His allegation was taken seriously, and O’Brien was allowed to resign a month earlier than he had already planned.

Other allegations of ‘acts’, made by three other priests and a former priest was revealed six days ago by The Observer newspaper, and date back over 33 years.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By PAUL ELIE

Published: February 28, 2013

The conventional wisdom has it that Benedict’s resignation sharply reduced the aura of the papal office, showed a tender realism about old age, and made clear that even ancient Catholic practices could be changed. That is all true, but the event’s significance is more visceral than that. It has caught the mood of the church, especially in North America.

Resignation: that’s what American Catholics are feeling about our faith. We are resigned to the fact that so much in the Roman Catholic Church is broken and won’t be fixed anytime soon.

So if the pope can resign, we can, too. We should give up Catholicism en masse, if only for a time.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic League

Bill Donohue speaks to the latest New York Times hit on the Church:

Counting both blogs and op-ed articles, today’s op-ed piece by Paul Elie is the 11th condemnatory article on the Catholic Church to have been published by the New York Times in the past 19 days.

As with so many Catholic malcontents, Elie’s parochialism allows him to think that his unhappiness is shared by everyone. “Resignation,” he says, is “what American Catholics are feeling about our faith.” He should speak for himself—most of us do not share his Commonweal affliction.

Elie has long been predicting that the Church is teetering. Two decades ago he was lamenting the fate of pro-abortion Catholic women, arguing that their voice needs to be heard. In 1994, after maintaining that the laity were in “deep dissent” over such issues, he appeared positively dazed over the success of a best-selling book by Pope John Paul II.

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DEUTSCHLAND
BR

[Video]

Der Skandal um sexuellen Missbrauch in Einrichtungen der katholischen Kirche ist mittlerweile drei Jahre alt. Was ist aus den hehren Aufklärungszielen der bayerischen Kirche geworden?

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OSTERREICH
HPD

WIEN. (hpd) Das vielfach beschworene katholische Österreich präsentiert sich heute als besonders kulturkatholisch. Gleichzeitig hat es vor wenigen Tagen eine herbe Niederlage eingesteckt, die das Land gar nicht mehr so katholisch aussehen lassen wie es manche gerne hätten. Eine angesehene katholische Einrichtung wurde vom Nationalrat vor die Tür gesetzt.

Um 20 Uhr wird die katholische Kirche bis in den letzten bewohnten Winkels des Landes ihre Präsenz zeigen. Oder besser hören lassen. Alle Kirchenglocken werden läuten, wenn die letzte Minute der Amtszeit Joseph Ratzingers im Vatikan verstrichen ist. Sogar die Pummerin, die außer an hohen Feiertagen nur bei außergewöhnlichen, im Regelfall tragischen, Ereignissen zum Einsatz kommt. Wenn ein Bundespräsident zu Grabe getragen wird, etwa.

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BRASILIEN
Merkur (Deutschland)

Der Missbrauchsfall soll sich in Niteroi in der Nähe von Rio de Janeiro zugetragen haben. Der Priester ist vorerst suspendiert.

Eine 19-jährige Frau wirft dem Geistlichen nach Polizeiangaben vor, sie seit ihrem 13. Lebensjahr missbraucht zu haben. Vergangenes Jahr habe sie nach eigenen Angaben gemeinsam mit einer 15-jährigen Freundin auf Video festgehalten, wie der Priester mit beiden Geschlechtsverkehr gehabt habe. Dieser soll zudem die damals siebenjährige Schwester der Frau vor drei Jahren unsittlich berührt haben.

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OSTERREICH
Betroffenen Gagen Kirchenprivilegien

(Wien, 28.2.13, PUR) “Wir weinen Papst Ratzinger sicher keine Träne nach. Er war die Zentral-Figur der Vertuschung von sexuellem Missbrauch“, sagt Sepp Rothwangl von der Plattform Betroffener kirchlicher Gewalt. Insbesondere in seiner langjährigen Funktion als Chef der vatikanischen Glaubenskongregation hat Ratzinger die weltweite Vertuschung der Missbrauchsfälle organisiert. U.a. mit einem Schreiben 2001, in dem er unter Androhung der schwersten Strafe, die die kath. Kirche aussprechen kann, angeordnet hat, dass alle Unterlagen zu Missbrauchsfällen nach Rom zu senden sind. Somit sind weltweit kaum Unterlagen zu diesen Fällen in den örtlichen Diözesen mehr vorhanden und die Täter können daher kaum rechtlich verfolgt werden. “Ratzinger ist eine Schande für die Kirche“, so Rothwangl weiter. “Und es ist eine Schande für die Politik weltweit, die diesen Papst so lange akzeptiert und respektiert hat, anstatt ihn für seine Vertuschung zur Verantwortung zu ziehen.“

Will Ratzinger durch Einbunkern im Vatikan einer Bestrafung entgehen?
Aus diesem Grund ist gegen Ratzinger beim Internationalen Strafgerichtshof (ICC) ein Verfahren anhängig, das von der weltweit aktiven Betroffenen-Organisation SNAP 2011 unter österreichischer Beteiligung eingebracht wurde. “Sein Rücktritt vereinfacht die Ermittlungen, da nun seine Immunität als Staatsoberhaupt aufgehoben ist“, erklärt SNAP-Chefin Barbara Blaine. Sepp Rothwangl ergänzt: “Herr Ratzinger soll jetzt Anstand zeigen und sich vor dem ICC verantworten und sich nicht im Vatikan einbunkern um der Strafverfolgung beim ICC und in den USA zu entgehen. Und Kardinal Schönborn soll jetzt gleich seinen Aufenthalt im Vatikan nutzen um die österr Missbrauchs- Geheimdokumente ausheben zu lassen und diese den Betroffenen sowie der heimischen Justiz zu übergeben.“

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 1 March 2013 (VIS) – The director of the Holy See Press Office, Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J., related some information regarding the Sede Vacante and the first hours of Benedict XVI after having left the pontificate in a press conference this afternoon.

Fr. Lombardi spoke this morning with Benedict XVI’s personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Ganswein, prefect of the Papal Household, who told him that, yesterday, His Holiness, who was very calm and serene, had watched several news programs and expressed his appreciation for the work of the journalists as well as for the participation of those who had assisted in his departure from the Vatican and his arrival at Castel Gandolfo. After a brief walk through the Apostolic Palace he went to bed and slept very well.

Today, as always, His Holiness celebrated Mass at 7:00am and then prayed the Liturgy of the Hours. In the afternoon he has another walk planned at 4:00pm, through the gardens of the Castel Gandolfo Apostolic Palace, to pray the rosary. Benedict XVI brought with him various books on theology, history, and spirituality. At the moment he is reading from a book by the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar.

Yesterday at 8:00, Archbishop Giovanni Angelo Becciu, substitute of the Secretariat of State sent a letter to all the diplomatic representatives to the Holy See informing them that, during the period of the Sede Vacante, all matters will be dealt with by the substitute and by the dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Angelo Sodano.

Moreover, this morning, the papal apartments in St. John Lateran were sealed.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Mar. 1, 2013

Rome —
We now know that the first meeting of the General Congregation, which brings together all the cardinals during the run-up to the conclave, is set for 9:30 a.m. Monday in Rome. In a break with practice from the last time around, the cardinals will also go back into the General Congregation on Monday afternoon.

The sessions will be held in the Vatican’s synod hall, where meetings of synods of bishops take place. Among other things, it’s among the few Vatican venues properly equipped to provide simultaneous translation.

(Another is the Vatican Press Office, but it’s probably unlikely the cardinals would choose to do the heavy lifting in full public view.)

As a reminder, all the cardinals are eligible to participate in the General Congregation meetings, not just the 115 under 80 who will actually cast ballots in the conclave. At the moment, there are a total of 207 cardinals, after the death Thursday of French Cardinal Jean Marcel Honoré at 92. Not all 207, however, will participate in the General Congregations; we’ll know Monday how many actually showed up.

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UNITED STATES
National Survivor Advocates Coalition

Editorial

We have a simple question for the Vatican today: why is it briefing the news media on what Pope Emeritus Benedict did after 8 PM last night and what he’s going to do today?

The Vatican has felt some compuction to let the world know that the Pope Emeritus watched television, slept, said a rosary – and brought a heavy tome of a theology book with him from his previous palace.

The Benedict XVI papacy is over – and the Pope Emeritus said he was withdrawing.

The Vatican should leave it where the Pope Emeritus left it right before he turned from the window of the Castle Gandolfo balcony and slipped from view –“Thank you and good night.”

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IRELAND
RTE News

The victims of a former Christian Brother, who indecently assaulted them when they were schoolboys in the 1980s, have said the trial was all about being believed.

The three men, now in their late 30s and early 40s, welcomed Edward Bryan’s conviction and the five-year prison sentence imposed on him at Cork Circuit Criminal Court today.

Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin said the 59-year-old, with an address at Martinvilla, Athboy Road, Trim in Co Meath, had not shown a shred of remorse, which the judge found alarming.

It was the third time the former Christian Brother at the North Monastery School in Cork City had stood trial on the indecent assault charges.

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IRELAND
TV 3

A former Christian Brother who indecently assaulted three boys at the North Monastery school in Cork has been sentenced to five years in prison.

Edward Bryan was found guilty on eight charges of indecent assault in the 1980s. The 59-year-old former principal and basketball coach abused the boys during one-on-one training sessions in the school gym.

The victims now in their 30s gave emotional evidence in court this morning – they said Bryan “zeroed in on them and preyed on them.”

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

A former Christian brother has been sentenced to five years in jail after he was found guilty of indecently assaulting three boys at the North Monastery School in Cork in the 1980s.

Passing sentence the judge said Br Edward Bryan had not shown a shred of remorse.

Last week a jury at Cork Circuit Criminal Court found him guilty on seven counts of indecently assaulting the three boys between 1984 and 1990.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

BARRY ROCHE, Southern Correspondent

A former Christian Brother had shown not a shred of remorse for his victims, a judge today as he jailed the man for five years for indecently assaulting three boys in the North Monastery Secondary School in Cork in the 1980s.

Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin noted Edward Bryan (59) formerly Br Bryan, of Martinvilla, Athboy Road, Trim, Co Meath had been convicted following the most careful, prolongued and exhaustive consideration of the evidence by a jury at Cork Circuit Criminal Court.

He said there were several aggravating factors to the case including the fact that there were multiple victims, that the victims were all young boys at the time while he was an adult and a teacher in a position of trust and the fact that the abuse went on over a prolonged period.

Bryan, who became deputy director of Oberstown juvenile detention centre after he left the Christian Brothers, was convicted of one count in June 2012, retried in October 2012 only for the trial to collapse and then convicted of seven more counts following another second retrial.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Ralph Riegel– 01 March 2013

A FORMER Christian Brother was jailed for five years today for putting three boys through “hell” in a five year campaign of sexual abuse.

Edward Bryan (59) was jailed as Judge Sean O’Donnabhain warned Cork Circuit Criminal Court that the former cleric hadn’t shown one shred of remorse for what he had put the boys through in the 1980s.

Bryan of Athboy Road, Trim, Co Meath had vehemently denied indecently assaulting the boys at the North Monastery secondary school in Cork in the late 1980s.

Mr Bryan denied a total of 11 counts which related to various dates between 1987 and 1990.
– See more at: http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/courts/former-christian-brother-jailed-for-five-years-for-sexual-abuse-of-three-boys-29103615.html#sthash.d9DYFjZz.dpuf

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PENNSYLVANIA
Catholics4Change

March 1, 2013 by Susan Matthews

ONE CALL TO SAVE CHILDREN FROM SEXUAL ABUSE– please call PA Rep. Ron Marsico TODAY and tell him to place House Bills 237 and 238 on the agenda for the March 12 Judiciary Committee! CALL 717-652-3721.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 1 March 2013 (VIS) – Today, the first day of the Sede Vacante, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals, has begun to summon the cardinals to the first of the General Congregations, as provided for by the Apostolic Constitution “Universi Dominici Gregis”.

This first General Congregation will take place on Monday, 4 March, at 9:30am in the Synod of Bishops Hall. A second General Congregation is also scheduled for 5:00pm in the same place.

Following is the text of the letter:

“As prescribed in the Apostolic Constitution “Universi Dominici Gregis” of 22 February 1996 at No. 19, analogous to the case of the death of the Supreme Pontiff, I have the duty to officially communicate to Your Eminence the news of the vacancy of the Apostolic See from the renunciation presented by Pope Benedict XVI effective from yesterday evening, 28 February, at 8:00pm in Rome.”

“On communicating this to you I fulfil my duty of summoning Your Eminence to the first of the General Congregations of the College of Cardinals, to be held on Monday, 4 March, at 9:30am in the Synod of Bishops Room in the Paul VI Hall.”

“The General Congregations will then continue normally until the complete number of Cardinal electors is gathered and the College of Cardinals decides the date for those Cardinal electors to enter into Conclave on the basis of what the recent Motu Proprio of 22 February established regarding modifications in the norms relating to the election of the Roman Pontiff.”

“On my part, I am pleased to take this opportunity to send you my fraternal greetings.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial

Friday, March 1, 2013

By Ralph Cipriano
For Bigtrial.net

In July 2012, Michael J. McGovern was preparing for the upcoming trial of his client, Father Charles Engelhardt, on charges that he had raped a former 10-year-old altar boy.

The phone rang. A high-ranking official at the district attorney’s office was on the line, wanting to know why McGovern was refusing to even discuss a plea deal on a case scheduled to go to trial in early September 2012.

I’ve got a problem, McGovern recalled saying. My client’s been a priest since 1967. If he even pleads no contest to a misdemeanor, such as corrupting the morals of a minor, and just gets probation, he can’t be a priest anymore. And that’s the only thing that matters to him. He also happens to be completely innocent.

The response he got surprised him, McGovern said. The high-ranking official on the other end of the line said, well there’s a split opinion over here [in the district attorney’s office] about whether the complainant is credible.

“He’s incredible,” McGovern recalled telling the official about the former altar boy identified in the 2011 grand jury report as “Billy Doe.” “He’s a lying sack of shit.”

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UNITED STATES
Fox News Radio

[with audio]

While many will be paying close attention to the selection of the next Pope, there may be no group here in the U.S. more interested in what happens than victims of priest sex abuse.

FOX News Radio’s Jessica Rosenthal reports in our ongoing series:

Victims of priest sex abuse in California say ideally the next Pope…

(Miller) “Whoever it’s going to be must continue to expose child molesting clerics and more importantly cooperate with law enforcement.”

But Esther Miller who was abused by a priest in the ’70′s doesn’t believe that’ll happen. Neither does abuse victim Joelle Casteix…

(Casteix) “These continued scandals in their eyes do not show a need for the protection of children, but instead a need to cover up the wrongdoings of the past and the present.”

She points to the long fought legal battle, years after the church settled abuse claims here in LA, that finally resulted in the release of court documents. They showed how Cardinal Roger Mahony covered up abuse by transferring and moving priests around.

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IRELAND
Highland Radio

01 Mar 2013

A man who was sexually abused at school by a Catholic priest in 1976 has told a court that his parents felt powerless but responsible for sending him into a lion’s den.

76 year old Patrick McCabe, who is a subject of the Murphy Report, pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting the then 13 year old boy in a car in Kildare.

The court heard former priest Patrick McCabe molested the 13 year old boy on a visit to his school in January 1976 when he introduced himself as a friend of the family.

When interviewed by Gardai in California in 2007 prior to his extradition the 76 year old said the young teenager was handsome and had matched up with his ‘fetish’.

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MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

Minnesota is an outlier, compared with other states, when it comes to giving victims of child sexual abuse only until they reach age 24 — six years after becoming an adult — to file a civil lawsuit.

But under a proposal before the Legislature, they could file a lawsuit at any time, no matter how long ago the abuse occurred. Under the Minnesota Child Victims Act, Minnesota would remain an outlier — but 180 degrees the other way, as the only state to give victims the right to pursue civil lawsuits without a time restriction.

Measures seeking to give victims more time to bring civil suits have gone before state lawmakers repeatedly since a Supreme Court ruling in 1996 interpreted the six-year time limit.

Thoughtful people on both sides make compelling points about the proposal. They deserve attention from lawmakers and citizens who want to do right by victims and yet consider what’s at stake for institutions that include churches, schools or youth organizations.

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VATICAN CITY
Worldcrunch

By Andrea Tornielli
LA STAMPA/Worldcrunch

VATICAN CITY – One of the cardinals getting ready to enter the upcoming conclave knows that he himself is not papabile — that is, his is not one of the names being considered as a possible next pope.

Perhaps for this reason he has taken the time to lay out to La Stampa, in a letter written with an old-fashioned silver fountain pen, what he believes is the ideal profile for the successor to Pope Benedict XVI. Other cardinals have spoken to us in confidence, and a few have even spoken in public, about the man they will be seeking when the conclave begins later this month. While an ideal picture begins to come into focus, so too does the challenge of finding one man to meet all the requirements.

“What we want in a new pope is someone who isn’t too old and has good physical stamina, which is what Benedict XVI indicated to us in his own statement of resignation,” wrote the anonymous Cardinal. “That he is not too young has been repeated by many of my fellow cardinals so that we avoid another reign of 30 years. (a reference to John Paul II’s 27-year reign) That we need a pontiff able to reform the Curia (Vatican government) is something many think; that the faithful expect a shepherd pope who is able to bring forth a positive message is something we all know.

This time, age and physical strength are likely to weigh in. Just like they were important in the second conclave in 1978 after the sudden death of Pope John Paul I, when the cardinals chose a 58-year-old cardinal as his successor: Karol Wojtyla. As he announced that he would be stepping down, Benedict XVI said: “In today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary.”

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by Joshua J. McElwee | Mar. 1, 2013

Rome —
While the Vatican confirmed Friday that the members of the college of cardinals will begin meeting Monday following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, it remains unclear when they will enter the secret meeting where they will elect the pope’s successor.

Speaking during a press conference, Basilian Fr. Thomas Rosica, who was providing English translation during the event, warned “not to expect the date of the conclave on Monday.”

Before setting the date, Rosica said, the cardinals need to determine “the rhythm of the sessions.”

“In the course of next week will be able to announce the beginning date of the conclave,” Rosica said.

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SCOTLAND
Daily Record

Joan Burnie

NO doubt by resigning, Cardinal O’Brien has done the right thing, at least by his church.

And, anyway, it had zilch to do with those unfortunate allegations over the weekend.

Nothing whatsoever. Just a happy, or possibly, unhappy coincidence.

As if we ever thought anything else.

But whether the Catholic Church – and indeed throughout his time in office, the Cardinal has done itself any favours with its strident obsession with sex and peripheral issues, such as gay marriage, is debatable.

I’m not religious but I have long thought that if the hierarchy had concentrated more on matters of social injustice instead of a downright unhealthy, if publicity-generating, interest in what consenting adults do with each other in private, they might be more respected.

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Irish Central

Editorial

Published Friday, March 1, 2013

The intrigue around the papal conclave reached new heights this week when Irish-born Cardinal Keith O’Brien of Scotland abruptly resigned after allegations of inappropriate behavior made by four priests against him surfaced.

The priests apparently were determined that O’Brien would not vote at the conclave, and made representations to the British-based papal nuncio even though the incidents occurred 30 years ago in some cases.

The Pope acted with alacrity and essentially forced O’Brien to reign.

Still unanswered is whether Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles will vote in the conclave, as his refusal to prosecute pedophile priests in his archdiocese led to horrific consequences.

There are also simmering questions about Irish Cardinal Sean Brady, who covered up the dreadful Father Brendan Smyth scandals, and even about Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, who was examined by lawyers last week on events in Milwaukee when he was archbishop there.

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FIJI
FBC News

Fri Mar 01, 2013

A priest has appeared before a packed Tavua Magistrates Court this afternoon on sex-related charges.

Tavua Police Prosecution Office told FBC News, Father Nemesio Kolikoli appeared before Magistrate Samuela Qica.

Father Kolikoli is charged with one count of Rape and a count of Indecent Assault.

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SCOTLAND
Scotsman

Published on Friday 1 March 2013

THE Vatican knew of allegations against Cardinal Keith O’Brien five months ago, it was claimed today.

Reports said a priest lodged a complaint in October about “inappropriate behaviour” by the former Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh in 2001.

The priest is said to have written directly to Rome because he did not think he could trust the church hierarchy in Scotland to handle the matter.

His claim is said to have been taken seriously and led to the Vatican contacting Cardinal O’Brien and a “deal” being brokered by Cardinal Marc Ouellet of Montreal for the departure of the leader of Scotland’s Catholics.

Cardinal O’Brien quit as archbishop on Monday following revelations at the weekend about allegations from three other priests and one former priest of inappropriate behaviour dating back to the 1980s. The cardinal contests the allegations.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Pink News

by Scott Roberts
1 March 2013

It has emerged that a fifth claim of “inappropriate behaviour” towards a male priest has been made against Cardinal Keith O’Brien.

The 74-year-old, who denied the first set of allegations last weekend, resigned as leader of the Scottish Catholic Church on Monday.

He was due to retire this month but the resignation was brought forward.

The allegations surfaced last Saturday one day after Cardinal O’Brien told the BBC that male priests within the Catholic Church should be able to marry female partners.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

Barney Zwartz
Religion editor, The Age

The great baroque builder Bernini produced many masterpieces in Rome, but none exceeds the twin colonnades that sweep from St Peter’s Basilica around most of St Peter’s Square, designed to be a pair of great arms in a gesture of embrace to the world.

Today half of one of the arms has an ugly grey cover protecting restoration work, making it look wounded and weakened. As a metaphor for the Catholic Church, this too is apt. The church has just entered the interregnum, as the period between popes is called, with many leaders and commentators saying it is in crisis, making the choice of the next Pope, the 266th, more vital than usual.

Benedict XVI himself spoke of the ”turbulent waters and rough winds” he experienced during his papacy in his final public address on Wednesday, and was unusually trenchant in other recent speeches, excoriating the divisions that ”disfigure” the church. Before his election he denounced ”filth in the church”, an apparent reference to clergy sex abuse.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Australian Times

By Thomas Jones on 28 February, 2013

He will still wear the white robes, still be addressed as ‘Your Holiness’ and still live in the Vatican city-State, with a view of the dome of St Peter’s Basilica. But when his retirement becomes official later today Pope Benedict XVI will lose one important entitlement.

As Head of State, Pope Benedict has absolute immunity from legal action. When he becomes ‘Emeritus Pope’ that immunity will wither away, leaving him open to potential legal action.

UK-based Australian human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson predicts “that some victims of priests whom he (Pope Benedict) has refused to defrock, and who have gone on to commit crimes against those victims, may seek to sue him for damages for negligence.”

Mr Robertson made the comments in relation to Pope Benedict’s response to cases of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

March 2, 2013

Jane Lee

MANY Christian Brothers still refuse to believe convicted paedophile Robert Best is guilty, a brother has told a state inquiry.

The disgraced Catholic brother was convicted in 2011 and jailed for 14 years and nine months for sex crimes against 11 boys at schools in Ballarat, Box Hill and Geelong.

Best was ordered to serve 11 years and three months in jail before he would be eligible for parole.

Brother Barry Coldrey told the parliamentary inquiry into the handling of child abuse that he was not a spokesman for any religion. But he said he believed that a culture of denial still pervaded the Christian Brothers order in Australia. ”Even at this minute there are many brothers who refuse to believe Robert Best is guilty despite overwhelming evidence,” he said.

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VATICAN CITY
Chiesa

by Sandro Magister

ROME, March 1, 2012 – The chair of Peter is empty. Joseph Ratzinger has left it with a clean break, and has left the future governance of the Church to a successor who is unknown to him, just as he is still unknown to the very cardinals who will elect him.

One cannot recall, in the last century, a previous conclave so much in the dark and so vulnerable to external and internal pressure.

But today it is the “fourth power,” that of the media, that is granting no truce to the cardinals called to conclave.

One of them has already fallen, the Scottish Keith Michael Patrick O’Brien. In one of his last acts as pope Benedict XVI expedited his resignation as archbishop of Edinburg, and he himself has announced that he will not go to Rome for the election of the new pontiff.

Another is former archbishop of Los Angeles Roger Mahony, censured by his own successor, José Horacio Gómez.

A third is former archbishop of Brussels Godfried Danneels.

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VATICAN CITY
NPR

[with audio]

by Sylvia Poggioli

February 28, 2013

Today is the last day of the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI. Just two weeks ago, the German-born pope stunned the world by announcing he would be the first pope to resign in 600 years. After eight years on the throne of St. Peter, Benedict leaves behind a church in crisis.

Since the announcement, bulletins issued by the Vatican have ranged from the lofty — how Benedict will retire to a life dedicated to prayer and study — to the mundane, such as the details of packing the pope’s personal belongings and what he’ll leave behind.

In a sign that even the Vatican was totally unprepared for the resignation, it took two weeks to decide Benedict’s new title and what he would wear.

And while the cardinals publicly praise Benedict for his courageous act, privately many are reassessing his legacy. …

David Clohessy, executive director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused By Priests (SNAP), says Benedict has been credited for meeting with and apologizing to victims, and issuing new guidelines on handling cases, but he has not sanctioned one bishop for covering up abuse cases.

“Pope Benedict came into office knowing more about abuse than any other Catholic official on the planet, and I think many victims and many Catholics had some real hope that he would clean house, and he clearly didn’t,” Clohessy says.

The sex abuse cloud will hang over the conclave to elect the new pope. As will a confidential report on last year’s embarrassing leaks of private papers that revealed corruption and turf battles within the Vatican. Benedict has left the report for his successor’s eyes only, but many cardinals are already asking to be briefed on its contents.

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ROME
The Daily Beast

Jul 27, 2010

For residents of Rome, the sight of courting priests is hardly an anomaly. But a recent exposé is rocking the Catholic Church.

In the basement dining room of Le Mani In Pasta, a trattoria in central Rome, a young, glossy-eyed couple stare at each other across a table for two. They smile and blush over a private joke. There is no handholding or kissing, but they are clearly more than friends, even though they are both wearing dark shirts and the telltale white clerical collar.

For residents of Rome, the sight of courting priests is hardly an anomaly. The phenomenon is a well-known secret here, and one that was largely ignored until last weekend, when the Italian weekly magazine Panorama published a shocking exposé called “Le Notti Brave Dei Preti Gay,” or “Good Nights Out for Gay Priests.” Investigative journalist Carmelo Abbate spent 20 days undercover posing as the boyfriend of a man who ran in gay clerical circles, secretly videotaping the sexual escapades of three Rome-based priests. Abbate caught the priests on hidden camera dirty dancing at private parties and engaging in sex acts with male escorts on church property. He also caught them emerging from dark bedrooms in time to celebrate mass. In one postcoital scene, “Father Carlo” parades around seminaked, wearing only his clerical vestments. Abbate’s “date” even had sex with one of the priests to corroborate the story. “This is not about homosexuality,” Abbate, who is not gay, told NEWSWEEK. “This is about private vices and public virtues. This is about serious hypocrisy in the Catholic Church.”

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VIRGINIA
WAVY

Rachel West

CHESAPEAKE, Va. (WAVY) – A Chesapeake pastor is facing a felony charge, accused of internet crimes involving a child.

Kelly O’Sullivan with the Chesapeake Police Department told WAVY.com the Chesapeake Police Internet Crimes Against Children unit began an investigation into Haden Conrad of the 1200 block of Orville Avenue.

Thursday, officers served several search warrants at both his home and place of business in the 1200 block of Chesapeake Avenue, O’Sullivan added. Police took a computer from each location.

Conrad, 32, was charged with computer solicitation of a child under 15, a class 5 felony.

Friends and neighbors told WAVY.com Conrad is married with two foster children, who were taken away from the couple.

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VIRGINIA
Daily Press

By Tyra M. Vaughn 757-247-7870

CHESAPEAKE—

A 32-year-old Chesapeake man was arrested and charged Wednesday with soliciting a child using computer, police said.

Haden Conrad, of the 1200 block of Orville Avenue, was charged with computer solicitation of a child under the age of 15, said Kelly O’Sullivan, a Chesapeake police spokeswoman, in a news release. As of Thursday morning, Conrad remained in custody at the Chesapeake City Jail.

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VIRGINIA
WTKR

[with video]

Chesapeake, VA. – Chesapeake police have arrested a pastor and former police chaplain for computer solicitation of a child, officials tell NewsChannel 3.

According to Chesapeake Officer Kelly O’Sullivan, the Chesapeake Police Internet Crimes Against Children unit conducted an investigation involving 32-year-old Haden Conrad, of the 1200 block of Orville Avenue.

One of the places investigators searched was a church on Chesapeake Avenue.

The website for ‘Chesapeake Avenue United Methodist Church’ lists Haden Conrad as its pastor. He’s been there since 2011.

Until yesterday, Conrad was a Chaplain for the Chesapeake Police Department.

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CANADA
National Post

Chris Purdy, Canadian Press

EDMONTON — Former Stephen Harper strategist Tom Flanagan has been widely and swiftly condemned for suggesting that people shouldn’t be jailed for looking at child pornography.

The remarks will end the distinguished career of the University of Calgary political science professor on a sour note as the university announced his resignation.

“Comments made by Tom Flanagan in Lethbridge yesterday absolutely do not represent the views of the University of Calgary. In the university’s view, child pornography is not a victimless crime,” University of Calgary president Elizabeth Cannon said in a statement.

She said Flanagan was already on leave and would remain so until his retirement on June 30, 2013. Flanagan had submitted his retirement papers in January but the university had not announced it.

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CHILE
Cooperativa

El arzobispo de Santiago, Ricardo Ezzati, respaldó a su antecesor, el cardenal Francisco Javier Errázuriz, tras las críticas realizadas por el The New York Times por haber fallado en el combate contra los casos de abusos sexuales cometidos por religiosos.

La publicación incluyó a Errázuriz entre los cardenales que dirimirán al próximo Papa, pese a su actuación en el caso Karadima, donde presuntamente desatendió las denuncias de las víctimas.

“Lo que yo le puedo decir es que el juicio al padre Fernando Karadima ha sido posible en la Congregación Para la Doctrina de la Fe gracias a que se han entregado los documentos”, dijo Ezzati a 24 Horas.

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CHILE
El Observatodo

Por Andrés Miranda

Hace un par de días el periódico estadounidense, The New York Times puso al cardenal chileno, Francisco Javier Errázuriz como uno de los cuestionados para el Cónclave debido al encubrimiento que habría incurrido al no recibir a las victimas de los abusos sexuales del sacerdote Fernando Karadima.

El periodista, Juan Carlos Cruz fue uno de los primeros en denunciar a Karadima y es uno de los principales críticos del Cardenal Errázuriz, que ya está en Roma para participar en el Cónclave para la elección del próximo Papa. Cruz, conversó con El Observatodo, y manifestó su esperanza en este proceso, eso sí, cuestionó al igual que The New York Times la participación del purpurado chileno en el proceso eleccionario del sucesor de Benedicto XVI.

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CHILE
info Catolica

(Cooperativa) Mons Ezzati aseguró que «el juicio al padre Fernando Karadima ha sido posible en la Congregación Para la Doctrina de la Fe gracias a que se han entregado los documentos».

El arzobispo de Santiago, S.E.R. Ricardo Ezzati añadió que respeta «la postura de cada persona, pero que no sólo basta con lanzar una denuncia, las denuncias tienen que ser probadas».

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VATICAN CITY
Stuff

He quotes Amy Winehouse and, unlike Benedict XVI, actually taps out his tweets himself.

Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi is an erudite scholar with a modern touch – and that is seen by some as just the combination the Catholic Church needs to revive a church beset by scandal and a shrinking flock.

Benedict’s culture minister at the Vatican, Ravasi consistently makes the short lists of closely watched candidates to be the next pope.

He is one of the favorites among Catholics who long to see a return to the tradition of Italian popes.

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UNITED STATES
San Francisco Chronicle

Flavia Krause-Jackson, Bloomberg News

Friday, March 1, 2013

March 1 (Bloomberg) — Pope Benedict XVI’s life began in a picturesque Bavarian hamlet near Adolf Hitler’s birthplace. He will see out his days at a small Vatican monastery called “The Mother of the Church.”

Joseph Ratzinger, who at age 5 told his father he wanted to be a cardinal, will leave a mixed legacy after becoming the first Roman Catholic pontiff in 600 years to relinquish power, religious scholars from Rome to the U.S. said. The pope left the Vatican by helicopter for the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo. His pontificate came to an end at 8 p.m. in Rome yesterday, when his Swiss guards were replaced by Vatican police at the palace and the Holy See’s flag was lowered.

While celebrated for theological tracts including books on the life of Jesus Christ, Benedict’s leadership of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics was also scarred by scandals involving priestly child abuse and leaked papal documents. His parting gift to the next pontiff is a secret file on the case called “Vatileaks,” which Italian media say divulges a network of sex and graft in the church. The reports “don’t correspond to reality,” according to the Holy See.

“He leaves a church in crisis in various ways: from internal governance, to low morale, the sexual abuse, the loss of young people, all the older ones that have left, the evangelicals encroaching and secularists all over,” said historian R. Scott Appleby, director of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Editorial

A PUFF of white smoke emerging from the chimney above the Sistine Chapel will announce the election of a new pope.

But it might also signal surrender. Better a cannon shot to declare a war within the ranks of the Catholic Church that can be won only by a warrior pope.

The successor to Benedict XVI must be a fiercer pope to remind its clergy they once followed a fiercer God.

While the church is slow to accept more modern challenges of homosexuality, abortion, even contraception, it is sexual abuse, particularly the abuse of children, that should bring down a wrath instead of a whimper.

Pope Benedict recognised this abuse as an “evil” but did not lead his bishops to strike it down. In his private safe, under lock and key, waiting for his successor to make a judgment, is a dossier said to contain even more startling and profane revelations than have been levelled at some of the most senior figures in the church.

What is already known of the church’s cover-ups requires more than a confession and more than a penance in restoring what has been taken from the lives of its victims. It demands a purge of those the church has protected by keeping secret their sins.

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VATICAN CITY
CNN

[with video]

By Laura Smith-Spark and Hada Messia, CNN
updated 7:10 AM EST, Fri March 1, 2013

Rome (CNN) — With the dust still settling from Benedict XVI’s historic resignation as pope, the focus in Rome turns to the future Friday as Roman Catholic cardinals prepare to meet to discuss a timetable for picking the new pontiff.

A letter issued by the dean of the College of Cardinals on Friday calls the cardinals to come together Monday morning for the first in a series of meetings, known as general congregations.

There will be a second session Monday afternoon, according to the letter from Cardinal Angelo Sodano.

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VATICAN CITY
CNN

[with video]

The events that will lead to the election of a new pope are starting to take shape.

The Catholic Church’s cardinals will start general congregations – meetings that precede a conclave to elect a new pope – on Monday at 9:30 a.m. at the Vatican (3:30 a.m. ET), with a second session set for later that day, according to a letter issued Friday by the dean of the College of Cardinals.

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CANADA
CBC News

Loreen Pindera CBC News

A Roman Catholic scholar visiting Montreal from Australia is laying her bets on Quebec’s Cardinal Marc Ouellet to succeed Benedict XVI as pope.

Tracey Rowland, the author of a book on Pope Benedict’s theological writing and Dean of Melbourne’s John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family, said Ouellet’s breadth of experience makes him an ideal candidate to replace the retired pope.

Early in his priesthood, Ouellet spent several years working in Colombia and among his six languages, he speaks fluent Spanish — apparently with a Colombian accent.

Rowland said that experience in the developing world, combined with Ouellet’s status as a Canadian — not to mention, a French Canadian — put him ahead of any cardinal from the U.S.

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CANADA
CBC News

A provocative cardinal hailing from Quebec could be the next leader of the Roman Catholic Church after pope emeritus Benedict XVI officially stepped down Thursday.

Considered by some to be a favourite for the position, Cardinal Marc Ouellet is one of three Canadians who will participate in a conclave to select the next pope.

The Le Motte, Que., native’s current role at the Vatican has him overseeing the appointment of bishops. He is also an active member of several Roman Catholic commissions and committees.

But Ouellet’s rise through the church’s ranks has not been without controversy. In 2010, his comment that abortion was a “moral crime,” even in the case of rape, drew heavy criticism.

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CANADA
National Post

Tristin Hopper | Mar 1, 2013

Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the Canadian considered a contender for the papacy, was instrumental in brokering the recent resignation of U.K. Cardinal Keith O’Brien, according to Britain’s The Times.

Cardinal O’Brien, the U.K.’s highest-ranking clergyman, stepped down on Monday after first one priest — and then four others — stepped forward to accuse him of making sexual advances. In a statement, Cardinal O’Brien said he would skip the upcoming conclave to select a new pope, saying that he did not want to attract undue media attention while in Rome.

According to a Thursday report in The Times, one of the priests took his complaint directly to the Vatican fearing that it would not be taken seriously by Scottish officials.

“His allegation was taken seriously … and in a deal brokered by Cardinal Marc Ouellet of Montreal, Cardinal O’Brien resigned,” it reads.

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UNITED STATES
Washington Post

By Michelle Boorstein

Friday, March 1

The last time a pope was picked, Ann Hagan Webb was one of the best-known faces of the demand for church reform. After surviving sexual abuse for years by her childhood priest, the Massachusetts therapist’s life in the mid-2000s was consumed by rallying at parishes around New England and tracking priest court cases.

Today, as cardinals gather in Rome to select the next pope, the 60-year-old catches updates on the news — and feels ambivalent even about that. “I shouldn’t watch, but I do.”

Webb now limits her activism to working with clients — some Catholic, some not — who suffered child sexual abuse. Her choice is emblematic of a community of survivors who have largely given up on changing the church.

“I went from trying to change the church to accepting the fact that they won’t [change], and anyone that’s still in the church has blinders on,” she said this week. “At this point, my opinion is they are corrupt to the core and there’s not a single cardinal we can find who would be a good pope because there’s no such animal.” …

Terry McKiernan, head of the largest research database on clergy and abuse, said of the survivor community: “For a lot of people, it’s not a community anymore…. I think a lot of people who were involved in the early days, they’ve run out of steam.”

Survivors who are confronting the topic now face a very different culture than even a decade ago, when victims were accused of lying and scandals in other places such as Penn State and the Boy Scouts hadn’t surfaced. Fixing religious institutions isn’t as central to a society that has less faith in them.

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NEDERLAND
Volkskrant

Een erkend slachtoffer van seksueel misbruik stapt naar de rechter om de kerk aan te klagen voor zware mishandeling. De 59-jarige man wil ook erkenning en compensatie krijgen voor het fysiek geweld dat hem als tiener jarenlang is aangedaan door meerdere priesters op een Limburgs internaat. .

‘Ik ben één keer oraal verkracht, maar kreeg bijna dagelijks klappen en trappen. Ik ben vijf keer letterlijk het ziekenhuis in geslagen. Maar over de mishandeling geeft de congregatie niet thuis’, zegt hij in een interview met de Volkskrant.

Getuigenverhoor
Het is voor het eerst dat een misbruikslachtoffer een rechtszaak begint over mishandeling. Zijn advocaat Martin de Witte heeft een verzoek tot een voorlopig getuigenverhoor voor de Bredase rechtbank gedaan, dat op 11 maart wordt behandeld. Als de rechtbank het verzoek inwilligt, zal onder anderen ook Wim Deetman als getuige worden opgeroepen. Deetman was voorzitter van de onderzoekscommissie die seksueel misbruik in de katholieke kerk onderzocht.

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NEDERLAND
KNR

‘S-HERTOGENBOSCH – Naar aanleiding van uitspraken van de voorzitter van de Klachtencommissie, mr. Wiel Stevens, over klagers wier klacht bij gebrek aan steunbewijs ongegrond verklaard wordt, is aan de KNR een aantal vragen voorgelegd. Eén van deze vragen luidde of de KNR deze slachtoffers ‘in de kou’ laat staan. Ons antwoord bleek in de media niet goed overgekomen te zijn, vandaar dat we het hier nog eens willen herhalen en toelichten.

De KNR laat geen mensen in de kou staan. Dat is de reden waarom hogere oversten vanaf het begin gezegd hebben, met de bisschoppen, dat verjaring niet telt. Waar slachtoffers bij de burgerlijke rechter nul op het request zouden ontvangen, krijgen bij de procedures van de Klachtencommissie alle klachten, hoe oud of verjaard ook, een kans. En waar slachtoffers bij de burgerlijke rechters een hoge bewijslast opgelegd zouden krijgen, is deze bij de procedures voor de Klachtencommissies teruggebracht tot het aannemelijk maken van de klacht. Het kan desondanks zijn dat klachten in de ogen van de Klachtencommissie niet aannemelijk zijn – om welke reden dan ook. Het idee dat er werkelijke slachtoffers zijn van seksueel misbruik wier klacht ongegrond wordt verklaard, is in de ogen van de KNR onverdraaglijk. Juist daarom is de Klachtencommissie de opdracht gegeven de lat van de aannemelijkheid zo laag mogelijk te leggen.

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