ABUSE TRACKER

UGANDA
Africa Review

By DAILY MONITOR in Kampala | Wednesday, March 20 2013

The Archbishop of Kampala, Dr Cyprian Kizito Lwanga, has suspended maverick cleric Fr Anthony Musaala, who authored a document criticising Catholic Church colleagues for sexual crimes among others.

Dr Lwanga, in a statement on Tuesday, said Fr Musaala had been suspended for the document, which “damages the good morals of the Catholic believers and faults the church’s teaching”.

According to Dr Lwanga, Fr Musaala admitted to authoring the document, which has been widely circulating on the internet.

“As per now, after the acceptance of Fr Musaala that he authored this document, the law prescribed by the Church in Can. 1369 takes its course. This law states that: “A person is to be punished with a just penalty, who, at a public event or assembly, or in a published writing, or by otherwise using the means of social communication, utters blasphemy, or gravely harms public morals, or rails at or excites hatred of or contempt for religion or the Church,” said the Archbishop.

“This means therefore, that Fr Musaala, because of the publication of his article in the public media, which damages good morals of Catholic believers and further expresses a wrong teaching against the Catholic Church’s teaching and that this stirs up hatred and contempt against the Church, he incurs a Ferendae sententiae penalty as prescribed by Can.1314, Dr Lwanga said in the statement.

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AUSTRALIA
Law Fuel

Geoffrey Robertson QC, the high profile Australian barrister is leading calls for the Vatican to lose its status as a state and to have the former Pope Benedict XVI to be indicted for his alleged cover up of child sex abuse by the Catholic Church.

The calls came at the screening of a documentary in which Robertson appeared when he gave evidence before the UN Committee on Rights of the Child.

The documentary, Silence in the House of God: Mea Maxima Culpa, (See trailer below) was screened at the same time as the new Pope was being elected.

Lawyer’s Weekly:

He argued that the former pope acted negligently in what Robertson estimates to be 100,000 cases of sex abuse by priests since 1981, when Ratzinger became head of the Vatican office known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

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INDIA
The Hindu

Devesh K. Pandey

The pastor arrested on Monday for allegedly raping a minor inmate of his care home at Samaipur Badli in Outer Delhi is suspected to have sexually abused more girls in the past. The accused had been sexually abusing the minor for the past seven years.

The police on Tuesday produced the accused, Abraham Sahoo, before a court that sent him to one-day police custody. “He is being interrogated to ascertain his other suspected involvement,” said a police officer. Abraham, who heads the institution, had been living separately from his wife.

The Child Welfare Committee has directed the police to produce before it all the children staying at the institution. The Committee has also issued a directive to the area Deputy Commissioner of Police to ascertain whether other girls were also sexually assaulted by the accused. The matter regarding child labour and physical abuse was reported to the police last Thursday through Prayas Helpline.

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JOLIET (IL)
WLS

[with video]

[document]

Chuck Goudie

March 19, 2013 (JOLIET, Ill.) (WLS) — The I-Team has learned that a secret archive containing records on priests accused of sexual abuse was covered up for years in the Diocese of Joliet. Also included in the files was information on the suicides of victims who complained, but were ignored.

The archive contains hidden personnel files of priests who, according to the records, allegedly violated their oath of fidelity. Yet the files were concealed by bishops who broke their oath of honesty.

The files contain alleged incidents that spanned more than six decades.

Dave Rudofski is one of the faces of innocence lost in the Diocese of Joliet. In 1982, Rudofski was 8 years old and living in Mokena.

He was an altar boy at St. Mary’s Parish, and says he was molested while giving his first confession to Father James Burnett.

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AUSTRALIA
Eureka Street

Tim Kroenert March 20, 2013

Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God (M). Director: Alex Gibney. 102 minutes

The sexual abuse of children by religious is by its nature an emotional, as well as profoundly ethical, moral, spiritual and criminal issue. Films and documentaries about this subject will therefore necessarily appeal to the emotions of the viewer. This can be to their detriment, if the emotional appeal is emphasized over factual detail.

The 2007 film Deliver Us From Evil fell into this trap; an emotionally harrowing film that leaned heavily on the extensive and graphic testimony of one offending (and only self-interestedly repentant) priest, while failing at times to substantiate some of its more outlandish claims. This is the kind of sensationalism that feeds prejudices and arguably does more to exploit victims than to help them.

Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence In The House of God, by contrast, achieves a balance between its powerful emotional appeal and its integrity as a piece of investigative filmmaking.

It begins with a particular case study, that of Fr Lawrence Murphy, a key supporter and later head of a school for deaf boys in Milwaukee. Director Gibney interviews the now adult victims of Murphy, whose atrocities at the school during the late 1960s and 1970s included using the confessional as a kind of lair in which to abuse boys.

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UNITED STATES
PanARMENIAN

PanARMENIAN.Net – A Roman Catholic activist group said that Pope Francis was slow as head of the Argentine church to act against sexual abuse by clergy and urged him to apologize for what it called church protection for two priests later convicted of sexually assaulting children, AP reported.

A lawyer for some of the victims, meanwhile, said the future pope, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, had not met with or helped victims, and charged that mid-level church officials who covered up the problem haven’t lost their jobs.

The Buenos Aires archbishop’s office didn’t immediately comment on the complaints, which came as Francis was being installed as pope in a Vatican ceremony seen around the world.

The U.S.-based Bishop Accountability group cited the cases of two priests: Father Julio Cesar Grassi, who ran the “Happy Children” foundation and was convicted of pedophilia in 2008, and Father Napoleon Sasso, convicted in 2007 of abusing girls at a soup kitchen in suburban Buenos Aires, where he was assigned after being accused of pedophilia elsewhere.

Grassi is currently free pending appeal, thanks partly to a court filing on his behalf by the Argentine church, which was headed by Bergoglio as archbishop of Buenos Aires. Bergoglio oversaw Argentina’s bishops conference when Sasso was assigned to the soup kitchen at a chapel, said the victims attorney, Ernesto Moreau.

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VATICAN CITY
GlobalPost

With an inaugural homily urging respect for “God’s creation”, Pope Francis on Tuesday subtly pressed a conservative Catholic message while urgent challenges loom for the Church.

The first Latin American pope has been heralded by supporters as a progressive, but scholars say he is unlikely to bend on Church doctrine — and key moral issues were glaringly absent from his speech.

His predecessor Benedict XVI formally resigned because of old age, but some religious watchers say he buckled because of a bitter power struggle within the Church and a poisonous sexual abuse scandal — concerns that Francis will have to address.

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SOUTH AFRICA
Daily Maverick

Pierre de Vos

20 Mar 2013 (South Africa)

The Catholic Church has rightly been criticised for its handling of the widespread sexual abuse of children by priests across the world. In order to protect the “good name” of the church, many abusers were never reported to the police but were sent for “treatment” and counselling before being “redeployed” by the church to other positions. Some of them then went on to abuse other children. Unfortunately, Cardinal Wilfred Napier, who has dealt with such cases in South Africa, seems to be unaware that if he fails to report those priests to the police he is committing a criminal offence and exposing himself to a five-year prison sentence.

In a controversial interview with a BBC radio journalist, Cardinal Napier indicated that when he dealt with cases in which priests have sexually abused children, he followed a protocol developed by the Church itself. He insisted that each case was referred to the Doctrine of the Faith office and the Pope. Cardinal Napier seems to believe that the Church is the victim of unfair publicity. In the interview he complained:

“I really would resent it if someone said to me you mishandled that case. Some of the priests went, according to the wisdom of the time, the best information that we had from psychologists, they went for treatment, came back and have been under – what we call it – personal surveillance and have functioned quite normally ever since. Others left the priesthood, they were laicised, but it depended on each case being handled differently because of the peoples conditions were different.”

Nowhere in the interview does he say that he actually reported any priests who confessed that they sexually abused children to the police. Instead, displaying an admirable understanding and compassion for abusers (an understanding and compassion not displayed towards others involved in consensual and often loving sexual behaviour), he argued that such priests act out of a defect in their own character and that they are not necessarily culpable for what they do.

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

Prosecutor, defense argue points in Teaneck rabbi’s pre-trial hearing on child sex-assault charges

Tuesday March 19, 2013

BY KIBRET MARKOS
STAFF WRITER
The Record

One of the two teenage boys who accused a Teaneck rabbi of molesting him at his home had made false accusations of sexual abuse against his own father, the rabbi’s attorney told a judge in Hackensack on Tuesday.

Bergen County prosecutors, meanwhile, disclosed that Rabbi Uzi Rivlin, who is set for trial next month on child sexual-assault charges, was accused years ago of another sexual assault in New York and later pleaded guilty to public lewdness.

The hearing in state Superior Court offered a glimpse into the complexities of Rivlin’s upcoming trial, in which he is accused of molesting two 13-year-old Israeli boys at his home in 2009 and 2010. Rivlin has maintained his innocence, telling authorities that his accusers were troubled teens and that he did nothing to them.

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WISCONSIN
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel

March 19, 2013

The Diocese of Green Bay has agreed to pay $700,000 to two brothers sexually assaulted by a now-defrocked priest, Father John Patrick Feeney, in the 1970s, the first lawsuit of its kind to go to trial in Wisconsin since such cases were blocked by a state Supreme Court ruling in 1995.

“First and foremost, I would like to say I am truly sorry to Todd Merryfield and Troy Merryfield, as well as their families, for the pain they have endured,” Green Bay Bishop David Ricken said in a statement announcing the settlement Tuesday.

Michael Finnegan, an attorney representing the brothers, called them “extremely courageous.”

“They came forward when they were kids, and again to put Feeney behind bars, and now again in the civil trial,” Finnegan said. “They are truly champions for kids.”

The settlement matches a $700,000 judgment awarded to the brothers by an Outagamie Jury in July. A judge overturned the verdict because of juror misconduct, and both sides were preparing for a new trial in May.

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WISCONSIN
WHBY

Two brothers and the Green Bay Catholic Diocese have a deal in a child sex abuse lawsuit.

Troy and Todd Merryfield sued the diocese for fraud, after they were molested by former priest John Feeney, in 1978. They claim the diocese should have told parishioners at St. Nicholas Church in Freedom, about Feeney’s past sex abuse allegations.

The Merryfield’s will receive $700,000. That’s the same amount a jury awarded in their first trial, but a judge threw out the jury’s decision, after determining that one juror was biased. A second trial was scheduled for May.

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WISCONSIN
San Francisco Chronicle

APPLETON, Wis. (AP) — The Diocese of Green Bay has settled a lawsuit brought by two brothers who accused the diocese of fraud.

Todd and Troy Merryfield alleged the diocese withheld knowledge of a former priest’s prior sexual misconduct. The Rev. John Feeney later was convicted of sexually abusing the brothers in the late 1970s when they were boys.

The Post-Crescent (http://post.cr/139tvni) reports a judge dismissed the lawsuit, based on the agreement.

Bishop David Ricken issued a statement apologizing to the Merryfields and all victims of child sexual abuse.

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WISCONSIN
Press-Gazette

APPLETON — Two brothers who were molested by the Rev. John Feeney in the 1970s have reached a settlement with the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay in a civil case that accused the church of withholding knowledge of Feeney’s prior sexual misconduct.

Outagamie County Judge Nancy Krueger dismissed the case on Monday, based on the agreement reached by the diocese and Todd and Troy Merryfield. No information was immediately available on the terms of the settlement.

Green Bay Bishop David Ricken issued a statement on Tuesday, apologizing to the Merryfields and all victims of child sexual abuse.

“First and foremost, I would like to say I am truly sorry to Todd Merryfield and Troy Merryfield, as well as their families, for the pain they have endured from child sexual abuse and the lawsuits that followed,” Ricken wrote. “I hope and pray that they can experience God’s healing presence within their hearts.”

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ROME
Tucson Sentinel

Posted Mar 18, 2013

Jason Berry
GlobalPost

ROME — The news from Argentina on what Pope Francis did, or didn’t do during the years of the dirty war has shadowed the early days of his papacy, prompting the Vatican to denounce reporting to that effect.

Could it be, on this one, that the Vatican may be right?

How to square the image of a cleric accused by some of assisting fascist generals — the men guilty of kidnappings, torture, abduction of newborns whose mothers were murdered — with the pope of gentle demeanor who blessed a seeing-eye dog as he charmed the media at an audience on Saturday?

At issue are Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s years in the byzantine society of Argentina when it hit moral rock bottom.

His family carried its own nightmare of Italy’s descent into political madness.

“My father escaped from Italy because of fascism,” the pope’s sister, Maria Elena Bergoglio, has told Paolo Mastrolilli of La Stampa / Vatican Insider in Buenos Aires. “Do you think it is possible that my brother could be an accomplice of a military dictatorship? It would have been like betraying his memory.”

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ROME
GlobalPost

Jason Berry

ROME — Under blue skies, Pope Francis at his investiture Mass today at St. Peter’s Square called on international state officials there to be “protectors of one another and of the environment…We must not be afraid of goodness or even tenderness.”

An estimated 200,000 people packed the square and streets surrounding the basilica.

The pope’s sermon, amid the beauty and solemnity of a Latin Mass, spoke specifically to representatives of governments seated aside the altar, from US Vice President Joe Biden to Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe.

“I would ask to all of those who have positions of responsibility in economic, political and social life, and all men and women of goodwill,” he said. “Let us be ‘protectors’ of creation, protectors of God’s plan inscribed in nature…keeping watch over our emotions, over our hearts.”

Yet in the unfolding narrative of a pope calling on the world’s Catholics to focus on the poor and marginalized, Francis was trailed again by news coverage from Argentina that put him in a negative light in his response to clergy sex abuse.

“During most of the 14 years that Bergoglio served as archbishop of Buenos Aires, rights advocates say, he did not take decisive action to protect children or act swiftly when molestation charges surfaced,” wrote Nick Miroff in a piece published yesterday in the Washington Post, “nor did he extend apologies to the victims of abusive priests after their misconduct came to light.”

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ARGENTINA
Centre for Research on Globalization

“Change of Skin”, From Argentina’s “Dirty War” to the Vatican: Pope Francis “Dissociates Himself” from Father Bergoglio

By Horacio Verbitsky
Global Research, March 19, 2013

Pagina 12 (Translated from the Spanish)

Translation of an article from Página 12 of Buenos Aires for March 17, 2013 (Global Research Spanish page)

The first press conference Pope Francis’ spokesman gave was for the purpose of detaching him from Jorge Mario Bergoglio, accused of turning two priests over to the ESMA [Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada]. Since the statements and the documents are incontestable, the method chosen was to discredit those who circulated them, characterizing this newspaper as leftist. The traditions were followed: it is the same thing that Bergoglio said about Jalics and Yorio to those who kidnapped them.

In his first meeting with the press after the election of the Jesuit Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope of the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church, his spokesman, Federico Lombardi, also a Jesuit, dismissed as old calumnies of the anti-clerical Left, spread by a newspaper characterized by defamatory campaigns, the allegations on the performance of the former provincial of the Company of Jesus during the Argentine dictatorship and, especially, the role he played in the disappearance of two priests under him, Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics. Argentine opposition media and politicians at the same time included the article “Un Ersatz,” published in this paper the day after the papal election, among Kirchnerista reactions to Bergoglio’s enthronement. In addition, a sector of the governing party chose to acclaim him as “Argentine and Peronista,” the same slogan with which José Rucci is remembered every September, and to deny the incontestable facts.

The reconciliation

From Germany, where Jalics lives in retirement in a monastery, the German Jesuit provincial said that the priest had been reconciled with Bergoglio. The aged Jalics, now 85 years old, declared on the other hand that he felt reconciled with “those events, which are a closed matter for me.” But he said nevertheless that he would not comment on Bergoglio’s actions in the case. For Catholics, reconciliation is a sacrament. In the words of one of the major Argentine theologians, Carmelo Giaquinta, it consists of “pardoning others from the heart for offenses received,” by which is meant only that Jalics has forgiven the harm they did to him. That says more about him than about Bergoglio. Jalics does not deny the facts, which he recounted in his 1994 book Ejercicios de Meditación:

“Many people who held political convictions on the extreme right looked unfavorably on our presence in the slums. They interpreted the fact that we would live there as support for the guerrilla and they proposed denouncing us as terrorists. We knew which way the wind was blowing and who was responsible for these calumnies. So I went to speak with the person in question and I explained to him that he was playing with our lives. The man promised me that he would let the military know that we were not terrorists. From later statements by an officer and 30 documents I had access to later, we were able to prove without a doubt that this man had not kept his promise but that, on the contrary, he had given a false denunciation to the military.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

By Ralph Cipriano
for Bigtrial.net

On Feb. 9, 2011, Bernard Shero sat down to type a suicide note to his parents.

“Dear Mom and Dad,” he began. “I know the Easter season has become a very sad season for us. We have lost many loved ones during the year. I am truly sorry for making the time of your birthday a time of loss as well but I feel that I do not have much of a choice here, and I think deep in your hearts, you know why.”

On Feb. 9, 2011, Bernard Shero was a 47-year-old ex-Catholic school teacher accused of raping a former sixth-grade student named Billy Doe.

The day he wrote his two-page note to his parents, Shero was a hunted man. Detectives from the district attorney’s office had called Burton Rose, Shero’s lawyer, to ask if Shero was going to turn himself in. The detectives wanted Shero to report to the D.A.’s office at 6 a.m. on Feb. 10, 2011. Or else, the detectives would be driving out to Shero’s apartment armed with an arrest warrant.

Read more at http://www.bigtrial.net/2013/03/if-youre-going-to-write-suicide-note.html#7zhc8uMoR48Rxol1.99

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IRELAND
Bloomberg

By Colm Heatley – Mar 19, 2013

For Irish victims of priestly sexual abuse, Pope Francis needs to disclose what the Vatican knows about the crimes — and fully apologize for them.

“He could start telling the truth about the extent of Vatican knowledge,” Andrew Madden, a computer consultant from Dublin who claims priests molested him when he was an altar boy in the 1980s, said by phone. “If an apology was preceded by that level of honesty, that would be very significant.”

As Francis begins his reign as the 266th pope following his inauguration yesterday, he faces a global wave of disgust and mistrust toward the church amid abuse cases from the U.S. to Latin America. The wounds run deep in Ireland, one of Europe’s most Catholic countries, underscoring the challenge the pope faces to reviving a religion eroded by secularism and shaken by scandal.

Priests engaged in “endemic” molestation of children for decades, according to two reports by the Irish government issued since 2009, with prelates usually more interested in avoiding scandal to the church than exposing offenders and protecting children.

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UNITED STATES
Washington Post

Posted by Melinda Henneberger on March 19, 2013

All sorts of Catholics — the hurt and the whole, the progressive and the traditional — want to believe our eyes and trust all the positive signs and signals out of Rome in the week since Francis was chosen to succeed Benedict: “It’s like falling in love,” one friend said. “God help me,” another agreed.

It’s been a long, bruising decade since the height of the clerical sex abuse scandal here in the U.S. in 2002, and this new pontiff’s message so far, in both words and symbolic gestures, is a welcome one for many of us who chose to stay anyway, denying nothing.

“How I would like a church that is poor and for the poor,” he told reporters, and a little bit of my “wait and see,” posture gave way. “True power is service,” he tweeted Tuesday. “The Pope must serve all people, especially the poor, the weak, the vulnerable.” Amen, of course.

He took the name of Francis of Assisi, he has said, as “the man of poverty, the man of peace, the man who loves and protects creation; these days we do not have a very good relationship with creation, don’t we?” Oh my, and an enviro, too? Don’t fall before all the facts are in, I told myself, but with limited success, I’m afraid, as I read that he had real reform in mind, and had announced that no one in the Curia should feel too safe in his current job. All assignments, he said, were only donec aliter provideatur — “until other provisions are made.”

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

by Thomas Reese | Mar. 19, 2013

In an 2012 interview about celibacy, then-Cardinal Bergoglio notes that in the Eastern churches priests can be married and “They are very good priests.” He says that “It is a matter of discipline, not of faith. It can change.”

He states his support for celibacy in the interview. “I am in favor of maintaining celibacy, with all its pros and cons, because we have ten centuries of good experiences rather than failures,” he explains. “Tradition has weight and validity.”

But what is remarkable is the way he qualifies his statements: “For the moment, I am in favor of maintaining celibacy….” Likewise, when he notes that some organizations are pushing for more discussion about the issue, he says, “For now, the discipline of celibacy stands firm.”

“For the moment,” “For now” are not the kind of qualifications one normally hears when bishops and cardinals discuss celibacy.

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GREEN BAY (WI)
WBAY

The Catholic Diocese of Green Bay says it has reached a settlement with two brothers who were abused by a priest, avoiding a new trial.

Todd and Troy Merryfield had a civil lawsuit against the diocese, saying Church officials were aware of allegations of sexual abuse against Father John Patrick Feeney before he abused the Merryfields as boys in 1978.

The Merryfields won their lawsuit last May and were awarded $700,000, but a new trial was ordered after concerns that a juror had an undisclosed bias. A re-trial was scheduled for this coming May.

The diocese did not disclose the terms of the settlement.

With Tuesday’s announcement, Bishop David Ricken issued the following statement:

First and foremost, I would like to say I am truly sorry to Todd Merryfield and Troy Merryfield, as well as their families, for the pain they have endured from child sexual abuse and the lawsuits that followed. I hope and pray that they can experience God’s healing presence within their hearts.

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SOUTH AFRICA
The New Age

Chris Makhaye

There are mixed feelings on the streets about Durban-based Roman Catholic priest Cardinal Wilfrid Napier’s comment that paedophilia was “an illness and not a criminal act”.

Most of those interviewed differed with Napier and said paedophiles should be tried in a court of law and if convicted, imprisoned.

Ramesh Mahabeer, a Durban businessman, said priests who were found to have committed the crime should be sentenced to long jail terms.

“We rely on priests for spiritual healing. We also rely on them to do God’s work. If they go out and rape and abuse young boys they are committing an unspeakable crime. They should be sent to jail for a long time like common criminals because they are abusing the trust that is placed in them. The community regard them as God’s own representatives,” Mahabeer said.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

by Thomas Reese | Mar. 19, 2013

Pope Francis is on record as supporting zero tolerance for the sexual abuse of minors by priests. In a 2012 interview, then-Cardinal Bergoglio said that a bishop called him for advice on how to deal with it, and “I told him to take away the priests’ licenses, not to allow them to exercise the priesthood any more, and to begin a canonical trial in that diocese’s court.”

He went on to say that he was unconcerned about the impact on the image of the church. “I do not believe in taking positions that uphold a certain corporative spirit in order to avoid damaging the image of the institution.” He was critical of the earlier practice in the United States of moving priests to a different parish. “It is a stupid idea; that way, the priest just takes the problem with him wherever he goes.”

He noted that Pope Benedict supported “Zero tolerance for that crime” and admired “the courage and uprightness of Pope Benedict on the subject.” He says, “we must never turn a blind eye” to abuse. “You cannot be in a position of power and destroy the life of another person.”

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HOLYOKE (MA)
Valley Advocate

By Maureen Turner

In the late 19th century, the Lyman Street area of downtown Holyoke underwent a significant change. Once home to Irish immigrants, who’d arrived in the city in the 1840s to work on its dams and canals, the neighborhood now began to be dominated by Polish immigrants, many of whom came from across the river in Chicopee, said Olivia Mausel, chairwoman of the Holyoke Historical Commission. The newly arrived Poles opened shops and other businesses and built a Catholic church and school.

Over the years, the neighborhood underwent more changes, most notably during the urban renewal period in the 1950s. But a strong Polish influence remains in the area, from businesses like Kay’s Pastry Shop and the Polish Delicatessen to Pulaski and Kosciuszko parks, both named for Polish-born heroes of the American Revolution. In 2011, city officials began looking into creating a Polish Heritage Historic District in the neighborhood to preserve that piece of Holyoke history, an effort that has met with a good deal of support.

At the heart of the proposed district is the former Mater Dolorosa church—fittingly so, given the central role the church has played in Holyoke’s Polish community since it was built at the turn of the 20th century. But more recently, Mater Dolorosa has also been at the heart of an acrimonious dispute between its one-time parishioners and the Diocese of Springfield, which closed the church in 2011. A group of Mater Dolorosa parishioners has been fighting that closure and hopes that the creation of a historic district would protect the building from redevelopment.

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ARGENTINA
WHBF

Posted: Mar 19, 2013

By MICHAEL WARREN
Associated Press
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) – A U.S. group that tracks clergy abuse called on Pope Francis to apologize Tuesday for what it called the Argentine church’s protection of two priests who were eventually convicted of abusing children.

The Bishop Accountability group cites the case of Father Julio Cesar Grassi, who ran the “Happy Children” foundation and was convicted of pedophilia in 2008, and Father Napoleon Sasso, convicted in 2007 of abusing girls at a soup kitchen in suburban Buenos Aires. Sasso had been moved to the kitchen by church authorities after he got into trouble for pedophilia in remote San Juan province.

Jorge Bergoglio, who became Argentina’s cardinal in 2001, wasn’t directly involved in any sex abuse scandals or coverups, but he failed to remove priests accused of sexually abusing their faithful, and refused to meet with the victims, their attorney Ernesto Moreau told The Associated Press.

“Bergoglio has been the strongest man in the Argentine church since the beginning of this century,” Moreau said, and yet “the leadership of the church has never done anything to remove these people from these places, and neither has it done anything to relieve the pain of the victims.”

Now Grassi is free on appeal, thanks in part to the church’s report. Before he was convicted, he thanked Bergoglio for “never abandoning him.”

Bishop Accountability co-director Anne Doyle says this shows Bergoglio was behind the curve in the Catholic church’s global struggle to deal with sex abuse by its priests, which began in 2002 after thousands of cases became public in the United States and around the world.

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ARGENTINA
PolicyMic

Jeff Raines

Unfortunately, we live in a world where tragedy, death, and violence continue to hurt those around us. And when these events happen we are left wondering in what ways could we have done more, what we could have done better, and who we can blame for a lack of greater action. This time the target of blame is Pope Francis I, the 266th pontiff on the Catholic Church, and a man formerly known as Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio from Argentina.

It is unfair to say Bergoglio did not do enough during a military regime so terrible that as many as 30,000 people disappeared or were killed during the “Dirty War.” From 1976-1983, the military junta that controlled Argentina sponsored terrorist activities for fringe military groups in support of the regime. This led to those who openly disagreed with the regime, as well as those suspected of disagreement to be taken from their homes to never been seen again.

During this time period Bergoglio was the head of the Jesuit order in Argentina, and accusations about his actions revolve around events he could not control. The first of these is how the regime stolen the infants to place them in regime-supporting families. In 2010, he testified in a trial about these stolen babies that he only knew about the practices after the country returned to a democratic state. Instances in which Argentines did reach out to him for help about missing relatives he did give them a name of another Bishop that might have more information – but this by no means a contradiction or admission of knowing more of these heinous acts, he was just trying to supply what information he could.

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INDIA
Business Standard

A priest was today handed down 31 years in jail by a fast track court for abducting and raping a minor girl in December last year.

Special Judge Vimlesh Tanwar awarded Sanjay Kherwar alias Shailender Puri 7 years in jail for kidnapping, 10 years for rape, 2 years for criminal intimidation, 2 years for cheating and 10 years under PCSAA, besides imposing a Rs 10,000 fine.

All the sentences would run concurrently.

Puri, who was living in a temple, had raped the Class XI student in Ugala village, prosecution said.

The girl was rescued with the arrest of Puri a few days later and he was booked under relevant sections of IPC and the Protection of Child from Sexual Assault Act (PCSAA).

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Mar. 19, 2013

Rome —
Just in case anybody missed the key line from his homily during Tuesday’s inaugural Mass, Pope Francis later made it his third tweet since taking office: “True power is service. The Pope must serve all people, especially the poor, the weak, the vulnerable.”

The line builds on a consistent theme since Francis’ election, memorably expressed during a meeting with journalists Saturday.

“How I would like a poor church for the poor,” Francis said. It’s a fitting sentiment for a pope who took his name from Francis of Assisi, a saint renowned for his love affair with Lady Poverty.

Now that the new pope has reached the end of his beginning, the focus will shift from style to substance, meaning the hard work of translating his promising start into the nuts and bolts of policy. With regard to fostering a “poor church for the poor,” Francis will face at least four challenges right out of the gate.

1. The myth and reality of Vatican wealth

Given the magnificence of St. Peter’s Basilica and the Apostolic Palace, the Vatican may seem a counterintuitive place to pursue the dream of a poor church. Some may expect the new pope to hold a fire sale in St. Peter’s Square — in a metaphorical sense following his namesake, Francis of Assisi, by stripping the place naked before starting anew.

Such a program is, in truth, easier to applaud than to accomplish.

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UNITED STATES
National Survivor Advocates Coalition

For Immediate Release
3/19/13

Contact: Kristine Ward, Chair, National Survivor Advocates Coalition (NSAC) KristineWard@hotmail.com 937-272-0308

The National Survivor Advocates Coalition (NSAC) appreciates Pope Francis emphasis today on protection.

But the word must become kinetic to solve and eradicate the crisis of sexual abuse in the Church by priests and nuns.

It must have the energy of action behind it to truly protect children and give the survivors the protection of justice.

Given the gravity of this crisis to speak of protection and directly link the word to children in the inaugural homily holds out hope and not to act on these words would border on cruelty not on tenderness.

That means removals and resignations not only of predator priests and nuns but Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops, Curia and Chancery personnel who aided and abetted criminals and obstructed justice favoring the predator over the child. Criminally convicted Bishop Robert Finn of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph must be replaced.

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UNITED STATES
Religion Dispatches

Post by Sarah Posner

The Pew Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life is out with a new poll on American Catholics’ views on the new pope: almost three-quarters of them are “happy” with the choice, Pew reports.

What should the new pope’s priorities be, for American Catholics? According to Pew, a top priority is dealing with the sex abuse scandal:

Seven-in-ten Catholics say that addressing the sex abuse scandal should be “a top priority” for Francis. U.S. Catholics as a whole attach less importance to other possible priorities on the list. But among Catholics who say they attend Mass at least once a week, roughly equal numbers cite “standing up for traditional moral values” (65%) and “addressing the sex abuse scandal” (63%) as top priorities for the new pope. By contrast, among Catholics overall 49% say that standing up for traditional moral values should be “a top priority” for Pope Francis. Roughly four-in-ten Catholics or fewer think that spreading the Catholic faith (39%), addressing the priest shortage (36%) and reforming the Vatican bureaucracy (35%) should be top priorities for the new pope.

This news coincides with an extensive report in the Washington Post on Pope Francis’ reaction (as Archbishop Bergoglio) to the sex abuse scandal in Argentina, which won’t inspire much confidence or optimism about his possible global response to the scandal as pope:

Father Julio Cesar Grassi was a celebrity in the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires. The young, dynamic, ­media-savvy priest networked with wealthy Argentines to fund an array of schools, orphanages and job training programs for poor and abandoned youths, winning praise from Argentine politicians and his superior, Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

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ARGENTINA
Albany Times Union

By MICHAEL WARREN, Associated Press

Updated 11:58 am, Tuesday, March 19, 2013

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Before he became Pope Francis, Argentina’s Catholic leader took the first steps toward granting sainthood status to priests and other Catholics who were murdered in July 1976 as Argentina’s dictatorship was killing thousands of so-called “subversives.”

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, confirmed Tuesday that it was Jorge Bergoglio who approved the beatification cause of Carlos de Dios Murias, a Franciscan priest killed in Argentina’s La Rioja province, where his mission had challenged the interests of powerful local leaders.

A fellow Franciscan priest, a Frenchman named Gabriel Longueville, was found alongside Murias. Both had their eyes gouged out and hands cut off, allegedly after being kidnapped by a military death squad. A Catholic lay worker who collaborated with them, Wenceslao Pedernera, was found beaten to death days later. The diocese of La Rioja province has been working on a sainthood case for all three since 2011.

Lombardi said that as leader of Argentina’s bishops, Bergoglio also approved a sainthood investigation for five Pallotine churchmen killed at St. Patrick’s Church in Buenos Aires. Fathers Alfredo Kelly, Alfredo Leaden and Pedro Dufau and their seminarians Salvador Berbeito and Emilio Barletti were shot to death by a right-wing hit squad. The killers left graffiti saying the deaths were in revenge for a leftist guerrilla bombing of a police station two days earlier that had killed 18 people.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Argus

A former choirboy described a “sexually charged” party which he attended with a priest accused of assaulting him.

The man, who was a teenager in the 1980s, said he felt “singled out” by ex-priest, Father Keith Wilkie Denford, and church organist, Michael Mytton, who are both accused of sexually assaulting him and another boy.

Yesterday the alleged victim told jurors at Hove Crown Court that he worked as a waiter at a “raucous” dinner party organised by Denford, now of Broad Reach Mews, Shoreham, who at the time led the flock at John the Evangelist Church in Burgess Hill.

Previously the court was told that after the party the boy and his friend were given alcohol and Denford got in the bath with one of the youngsters.

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CANADA
CBC News

John Weidlich CBC News

Posted: Mar 19, 2013

Years after a settlement was reached to pay compensation to thousands of former students of Indian Residential Schools, the federal government continues to dispute the fees it should pay to one of the lead lawyers in the case: Regina’s Tony Merchant.

The tussle over fees sought by the Merchant Law Group, some $20 million, was back before the courts in February with a decision published recently to an online legal database.

The decision, by Court of Appeal judge Gary Lane, outlines how federal officials have been trying to get documentation to support Merchant’s request for payment.

Merchant was reluctant to release his files, to protect the lawyer-client relationship.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Breaking News (Ireland)

Coronation Street star Bill Roache today said he was “very sorry” over his controversial comments on the victims of paedophiles which seemed to suggest they were being punished for past sins.

Roache, 80, who has played Ken Barlow in the ITV soap for more than 50 years, had told New Zealand’s One News that the public should not be judgmental but be “totally forgiving” of people who have committed child sex crimes.

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UNITED STATES
Survivirs Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on March 19, 2013

A convicted pedophile priest walks free now in Argentina thanks in part to Pope Francis’ intervention, according to today’s Washington Post.

We call on the new pontiff to:
–immediately put this child molesting cleric at a remote, secure, independent treatment and housing facility so kids will be safer and
–explain why he’s helping a proven predator avoid jail and live across the street from the charity where he assaulted at least three kids.

Today’s Post reports that “church officials, led by Bergolio, commissioned a lengthy private report arguing that Fr. Julio Cesar Grassi was innocent”(after he had been convicted in a criminal trial). And “prosecutors say the document has helped Grassi avoid jail time so far.” He continues to live “across the street from the classroom and dormitories of Happy Children,” the charity where he molested.

“Bergoglio was widely viewed as close to the young priest,” the Post report says.

The new pope has, through his actions, recklessly and callously helped a dangerous man avoid jail and remain around children. If he believes Fr. Grassi is innocent and the prosecutor, judge and Washington Post all have this wrong, Pope Francis owes his flock – in Argentina and worldwide – a serious explanation.

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TEXAS
Associated Baptist Press

By Bob Allen

The pastor of a Texas Baptist megachurch, questioned about the handling of a staff member 24 years ago who was recently convicted of sex crimes in another state, noted in his Sunday sermon March 17 that Jesus didn’t answer his accusers during trials before religious and civil authorities 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem.

Former Southern Baptist Convention President Jack Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, said the people bringing charges against Jesus weren’t really interested in the truth because they had already made up their minds that he was going to be crucified.

“What a testimony to all of us when we are accused,” Graham said, “when you are accused unjustly or falsely or slandered or lied about.”

“It’s always easy to want to strike back and speak the truth,” Graham said. “Peter would tell us later, like Jesus was reviled and forsaken, like a lamb, so should we in the spirit of Jesus never respond to slanders and lies and accusations, but rather in the spirit and the humility of Christ to be silent and let God be the judge.”

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ROM
Publik-Forum

Wird Jorge Mario Bergoglio ein anderer Mensch? Der Argentinier auf dem Papststuhl orientiert sich am heiligen Franz von Assisi. Das ist ein hoher Anspruch. Er ist schwer einzulösen – mit der Vergangenheit im Gepäck

Wer sich als Papst Franziskus nennt, darf nicht herrschen – sofern er es ehrlich meint mit seiner Verehrung des heiligen Franz von Assisi. Das hat der Jesuitenkardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio verstanden, als er sich für einen Namen entschied, den bisher kein Papst zu wählen wagte. Wird doch Franziskus von Assisi (1182-1226) als der »zweite Christus« verehrt; so rein und lauter war sein Leben, so radikal wollte er dem armen und gewaltfreien Jesus von Nazareth entsprechen. Es könnte wie eine Blasphemie erscheinen, wenn diesem zweiten Christus jetzt ein päpstliches Gesicht gegeben wird. In den ersten Tagen seines Pontifikates macht der Papst seinem Namenspatron alle Ehre: Er verzichtet auf prunkvolle Gewänder und die eleganten roten Schuhe; nach dem ersten Sonntagsgottesdienst verabschiedet er sich per Handschlag von den Gläubigen; er segnet – franziskanisch als Freund der Tiere – einen Blindenhund; er lässt sich von den begeisterten Menschen umarmen. Der Papst liebt wie Franziskus die einfache Rede ohne intellektuelle Höhenflüge; er macht Scherze, redet frei, ohne gestanzte Formeln. Dem Volk nahe sein, die Herzen der einfachen Leute gewinnen, das ist sein Ziel. Denn er steht unter Druck. Er muss förmlich und vehement um Sympathie werben und das menschfreundliche Gesicht der römisch-katholischen Kirche zeigen.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Bistum Wurzburg

Professor Dr. Klaus Laubenthal, Ansprechpartner in der Diözese Würzburg für Opfer sexuellen Missbrauchs, legt dritte Jahresbilanz vor – Erneut Abschaffung der Verjährung bei sexuellem Missbrauch von Kindern gefordert

Würzburg (POW) Die Zahl der Vorwürfe wegen sexueller Missbrauchshandlungen und Grenzüberschreitungen ist im zurückliegenden Jahr im Bistum Würzburg erneut zurückgegangen. Insgesamt wurden in der Zeit seit 20. März 2012 an Professor Dr. Klaus Laubenthal, Ansprechpartner in der Diözese Würzburg für Opfer sexuellen Missbrauchs, neun Vorwürfe übermittelt. Im Jahr zuvor waren es insgesamt noch 14 Vorwürfe. „Die Aufarbeitung des Missbrauchsgeschehens halte ich im Bistum Würzburg für vorbildlich“, sagte Laubenthal am Dienstag, 19. März, in Würzburg. Die dritte Jahresbilanz seiner Tätigkeit übermittelte Laubenthal an Bischof Dr. Friedhelm Hofmann und Generalvikar Dr. Karl Hillenbrand.

Im zurückliegenden Jahr kamen die Mitteilungen an Laubenthal aus kirchlichen Kreisen oder von den betroffenen Personen selbst. Drei der neun Anschuldigungen bezogen sich auf Priester aus anderen Bistümern beziehungsweise auf die Tätigkeit Würzburger Diözesanpriester in anderen Diözesen. Ein Vorwurf stellte sich als physische Misshandlung dar. Von den fünf zu prüfenden Vorwürfen waren drei Priester betroffen – einer ist bereits gestorben –, ein Ordensmann sowie ein nebenamtlicher Mesner. Bei dem Vorwurf gegen den Mesner kam es schließlich zu einer strafgerichtlichen Verurteilung.

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UNITED STATES
dotCommonweal

March 19, 2013, 9:37 am

Posted by Michael Peppard

The words kept recycling. Care for others … care for creation … care for others … care for creation…

The homily of Pope Francis at his installation Mass this morning stunned me first into disbelief, then into self-reflection, then into joy and hope. Even if he had not already told us which namesake he chose, today there would be no doubt. This opening homily was St. Francis redivivus!

Building off the image of St. Joseph as a “protector,” through “unfailing presence and utter fidelity, even when he finds it hard to understand,” Pope Francis elaborated the vocation of the protector:

The vocation of being a “protector”, however, is not just something involving us Christians alone; it also has a prior dimension which is simply human, involving everyone. It means protecting all creation, the beauty of the created world, as the Book of Genesis tells us and as Saint Francis of Assisi showed us. It means respecting each of God’s creatures and respecting the environment in which we live. It means protecting people, showing loving concern for each and every person, especially children, the elderly, those in need, who are often the last we think about. It means caring for one another in our families: husbands and wives first protect one another, and then, as parents, they care for their children, and children themselves, in time, protect their parents. It means building sincere friendships in which we protect one another in trust, respect, and goodness. In the end, everything has been entrusted to our protection, and all of us are responsible for it. Be protectors of God’s gifts!

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TEXAS
Stop Baptist Predators

In Texas, we’ve got a saying: “You can put your boots in the oven, but that don’t make ‘em biscuits.”

That’s what I keep wanting to tell officials at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Dallas, as I watch them trying to alter the reality of the clergy sex abuse cover-up scandal that’s engulfing them.

When Chris Tynes’ questions were deleted from Prestonwood’s Facebook page, he scheduled an appointment with one of the church’s ministers. As reported by WFAA News in Dallas, Tynes had “discovered that a former music minister admitted to sexual misconduct with young boys while at Prestonwood Baptist Church more than twenty years ago.”

“Sexual misconduct?” You can see from the get-go the sort of minimizing slant that reporter is going to take. We’re talking about a minister who committed sex crimes against children. Some of his crimes are detailed in this court document; they include the molestation, digital penetration, and oral rape of young boys.

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VATICAN CITY
CNN

Homily of the Holy Father at the Inauguration of his Papal Ministry

19 March 2013

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I thank the Lord that I can celebrate this Holy Mass for the inauguration of my Petrine ministry on the solemnity of Saint Joseph, the spouse of the Virgin Mary and the patron of the universal Church. It is a significant coincidence, and it is also the name-day of my venerable predecessor: we are close to him with our prayers, full of affection and gratitude.

I offer a warm greeting to my brother cardinals and bishops, the priests, deacons, men and women religious, and all the lay faithful. I thank the representatives of the other Churches and ecclesial Communities, as well as the representatives of the Jewish community and the other religious communities, for their presence. My cordial greetings go to the Heads of State and Government, the members of the official Delegations from many countries throughout the world, and the Diplomatic Corps.

In the Gospel we heard that “Joseph did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took Mary as his wife” (Mt 1:24). These words already point to the mission which God entrusts to Joseph: he is to be the custos, the protector. The protector of whom? Of Mary and Jesus; but this protection is then extended to the Church, as Blessed John Paul II pointed out: “Just as Saint Joseph took loving care of Mary and gladly dedicated himself to Jesus Christ’s upbringing, he likewise watches over and protects Christ’s Mystical Body, the Church, of which the Virgin Mary is the exemplar and model” (Redemptoris Custos, 1).

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VATICAN CITY
John Thavis

How does Pope Francis understand “papal power”?

He answered that question today with these words: “lowly, concrete and faithful service.”

At an inaugural Mass rich in traditional symbols of the papal office, attended by hundreds of secular and religious leaders from around the world, Pope Francis told the world that his role would be that of a protector – especially of “the poorest, the weakest, the least important.”

His words confirmed what has already become a new papal style, one that favors the common touch over formal ceremony, and humility over authority.

The pope’s day began with a long ride in an open jeep through St. Peter’s Square. What struck me was that the pontiff, smiling and giving a thumbs-up, seemed to be connecting with individuals in the crowd.

As I watched on a monitor from the ABC News platform, I saw the pope’s jeep suddenly stop. Francis got out of the vehicle, walked over to the barricades and kissed a disabled man. It was a brief moment in a long day, but one that will remain in people’s memory.

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The Global Mail

By Nick Olle
March 19, 2013

On March 13, at a dinner with the cardinals who had just elected him as the new pontiff, Pope Francis quipped, “May God forgive you for what you have done.” When just two days later the Holy See publicly defended the pontiff — against accusations of complicity in human-rights abuses — men of lesser faith might have looked back at the Pope’s joke with suspicion.

No sooner had Pope Francis first appeared on the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica than whispers of his having had a shady past began circulating. As whispers tend to do, they multiplied and the story spread like wildfire around the globe. The Catholic Church has enough problems, people began to say, how could it fail so badly in its background checks?

Where had this story come from?

It dates back more than three decades to Argentina’s so-called “dirty war”; the 1976 to 1983 military dictatorship that killed an estimated 30,000 people. The most serious allegation against Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio (as Pope Francis was known until last week) is that in May 1976 he allowed the junta to abduct two Jesuit priests, Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics. According to Bergoglio’s chief accuser, Argentine journalist Horacio Verbitsky, he withdrew protection from the two men, effectively enabling the junta to kidnap and torture them.

Verbitsky’s claim is based on conversations with Fr Jalics, who was released along with Fr Yorio after five months in captivity. In a statement released by the German Jesuit order where Fr Jalics now works, he said: “Under the assumption that we also had something to do with the guerrillas we were arrested … I cannot comment on the role of Fr Bergoglio in these events.” He added that he was now “reconciled” with the events and wished Pope Francis well.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Mon, Mar 18, 2013

Joanne Hunt

An Irish priest who worked under Pope Francis in Argentina has said allegations that he did not do enough to help victims of the military junta were “unfair”.

The claims relate to 1976 when the then Fr Bergoglio was Jesuit provincial in Argentina and two priests were kidnapped by the military. Released after five months, it is alleged he did not do enough to help free them.

Fr John O’Connor, now parish priest of Shankill, worked in Buenos Aires from 1973 for 31 years. He says the new Pope, his superior at that time, was “wonderful at defending priests”.

Not yet a bishop at the time of the kidnappings, Fr O’Connor said of Fr Bergoglio: “Was there anything he could have done, number one, and what did he actually do? What he could have done is speak out and look for them and according to him, that’s what he did.”

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

How did reportedly 90 out of 115 Cardinals find a Cardinal like Pope Francis to clean up the child sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church? Is he a mountain mover? After all, many, if not most, of these Cardinals actively condoned or passively acquiesced for decades in the Vatican’s worldwide cover-up of predatory priests.

It does not appear, however, that Pope Francis had earlier distinguised himself either as a senior Latin American bishop by condemning Fr. Maciel’s blatant abuses over many years, nor as a Jesuit has he seemingly to date clearly spoken out on the well reported extensive abuse of Native American children by some Jesuits.

The Washington Post has now reported that Pope Francis’ record in Buenos Aires on dealing with priests who abused children disappointlingly does not appear much different than many of his episcopal brethren who have been widely criticized. Please see, “Pope Francis Was Often Quiet On Argentine Sex Abuse Cases as Archbishop”, accessible at:

[Washington Post]

Pope Francis now has a unique, perhaps last, chance to try to redeem his record, and that of so many other Cardinals and Bishops worldwide. Catholics hope and pray he will, but Catholics need to be realistic and not assume Pope Francis will act, unless the Catholic hierarchy continues to be pressed hard by political leaders and government prosecutors to do so.

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IRELAND
Independent Catholic News

Last Friday night’s God Slot on RTÉ radio broadcast an interview with two nuns who had worked in Magdalene homes. This was the first interview of its kind and the nuns granted it on condition of anonymity because they were scared of the backlash that would follow if their names became public. Clerical Whispers writes:

The nuns had main four main points:

The first was that Ireland during the era of the Magdalen homes was extremely poor and this must be taken into account when assessing the place of the laundries in Irish society.

The second was that women who fell outside society’s norms were more harshly treated than men.

The third was that women ended up in the Magdalen homes for a variety of reasons, and the fourth was that the homes are being judged by a very anti-Catholic media.

So, how poor was Ireland in the middle part of the last century?

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TULSA (OK)
Tulsa World

By JERRY WOFFORD World Staff Writer
Published: 3/19/2013

Two of three Victory Christian Center employees who pleaded no contest to a charge of failing to report child abuse will spend time in jail.

Paul Howard Willemstein, Anna Alisa George and Harold Frank Sullivan entered the no-contest pleas on Monday. The three had waived their right to a jury trial last month.

Tulsa County Special Judge Bill Hiddle found each of them guilty of the misdemeanor charge.

Willemstein, 33, and George, 24, both assistant youth pastors at the 17,000-member Tulsa megachurch, were ordered to spend 30 days in jail, with the remainder of their one-year terms suspended. They were led from the courtroom in handcuffs by Tulsa County sheriff’s deputies.

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UNITED STATES
Berger’s Beat

March 18, 2013 Author: Jerry Berger
On the very day that Pope Francis is installed in Rome, a mere four subway stops away from St. Peter’s Square, at Cinema Barberini, the Rome opening of “Mea Maxima Culpa” will be held. It’s a documentary by Alex Gibney about hundreds of deaf boys from a Milwaukee Catholic school who seek justice against Catholic officials for the horrendous abuses they suffered at the hands of the now-deceased Fr. Lawrence Murphy. Gibney, who also did “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” (which was nominated in 2005 for Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature) and “Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzerr” (short-listed in 2011 for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature) is in Rome for the debut and introduced our town’s David Clohessy of SNAP today at a news conference promoting the film.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC

[with audio]

It has been announced that the Australian royal commission into the handling of child sex abuse will hold its first public sitting in early April.

In the following weeks and months survivors of child sexual abuse will begin to tell their stories.

A similar series of inquiries rocked Ireland over the past decade.

To say the least the scope of the Australian commission is huge in comparison, ranging from government agencies, religious organisations and schools to foster care and sports clubs.

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ILLINOIS
Patch

By Karen Chadra

March 18, 2013

The former associate pastor at West Suburban Community Church in Elmhurst was arrested Monday, March 18, and charged with 11 counts of criminal sexual assault and two counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse, according to a press release from Elmhurst police.

Darin L. Evans, 41, of 2481 Short St., Dover, Ohio, turned himself in to Elmhurst Police detectives Monday morning, the release states. He is scheduled to appear in DuPage County Court for a bond hearing on Tuesday, March 19.

Elmhurst Police detectives were notified last month of the abuse, which allegedly occurred between 2004 and 2006.

Jim Lennon, pastor West Suburban Church, 825 N. Van Auken, shocked his congregation Feb. 24 by reading a letter of confession from Evans that described a sexual relationship with an underage girl. As associate pastor of West Suburban, one of Evans’ responsibilities was to oversee the youth ministry, Lennon said.

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ILLINOIS
My Suburban Life

By ED MCMENAMIN – emcmenamin@shawmedia.com
Created: Monday, March 18, 2013

ELMHURST — A former Villa Park man who served as a pastor in Elmhurst is facing 11 counts of criminal sexual assault and two counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse after turning himself in to police.

Elmhurst police charged Darin L. Evans, 41, of Dover, Ohio, on Monday. Evans is a former associate pastor of West Suburban Community Church in Elmhurst.
In February, Elmhurst police detectives were notified of the alleged abuse that occurred between 2004 and 2006.

A senior pastor at the church had read a letter of confession from Evans to the congregation last month, according to media reports. Evans wrote the letter after the alleged victim told church leaders about Evan’s alleged sexual conduct.

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ELMHURST (IL)
The Doings Oak Brook

Updated: March 18, 2013

ELMHURST — A former associate pastor at an Elmhurst church was arrested Monday and charged with criminal sexual assault and abuse.

Darin L. Evans, 41, of Dover, Ohio, was charged Monday with 11 counts of criminal sexual assault and two counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault, Elmhurst police said in a news release.

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ROME/BOSTON (MA)
Chicago Sun-Times

BY MICHAEL SNEED msneed@suntimes.com March 18, 2013

Back to Boston?

Law’s flaw: Sneed hears rumbles that Cardinal Bernard Law, the most vilified American cardinal in the U.S. pedophile priest probe — who has been living in Rome since 2004 — may find himself doing penance publicly in Boston.

◆To wit: Sneed hears whispers that Law, who was forced to resign as archbishop of Boston in 2002 after it was revealed he was engaged in a clerical sexual abuse cover-up — and now lives in a fourth-century basilica in Rome — may be given a new job by a new pope.

◆The new job? Sneed is told Law may become a “vehicle for healing/public atonement” in the priest scandal, which has rocked the foundations of a church now led by Pope Francis.

◆Backshot: The Massachusetts attorney general declined to pursue cover-up charges against Law in 2003 — but Law’s move to the safety of Rome drew international criticism.

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ARGENTINA
Washington Post

Pope Francis was often quiet on Argentine sex abuse cases as archbishop

By Nick Miroff

Updated: Monday, March 18

HURLINGHAM, Argentina — Father Julio Cesar Grassi was a celebrity in the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires. The young, dynamic, media-savvy priest networked with wealthy Argentines to fund an array of schools, orphanages and job training programs for poor and abandoned youths, winning praise from Argentine politicians and his superior, Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

Grassi called his foundation Felices los Niños, “Happy Children.”

Today, Grassi is a convicted sex offender who remains free on a conditional release after being sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2009 for molesting a prepubescent boy in his care.

Yet in the years after Grassi’s conviction, Bergoglio — now Pope Francis — has declined to meet with the victim of the priest’s crimes or the victims of other predations by clergy under his leadership. He did not offer personal apologies or financial restitution, even in cases in which the crimes were denounced by other members of the church and the offending priests were sent to jail.

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ARGENTINA
Alateia

The formation of priests was one of Jorge Bergoglio’s (now Pope Francis) constant concerns when he was Archbishop and Superior in the Society of Jesus. He had a conversation on the subject with Rabbi Abraham Skorka, rector of the Latin American Rabbinical Seminary. This conversation appears in the book Sobre el Cielo y la Tierra (“On the Heavens and the Earth”) published in 2012 by the Sudamericana publishing company.

The following is an excerpt of that dialogue, in which then-Cardinal Bergoglio reveals the secret to living celibacy happily:

Bergoglio: When I was a seminarian, I was dazzled by a girl I met at an uncle’s wedding. I was surprised by her beauty, her intellectual brilliance… and, well, I was bowled over for quite a while. I kept thinking and thinking about her. When I returned to the seminary after the wedding, I could not pray for over a week because when I tried to do so, the girl appeared in my head. I had to rethink what I was doing. I was still free because I was a seminarian, so I could have gone back home and that was it. I had to think about my choice again. I chose again – or let myself be chosen by – the religious path. It would be abnormal for this kind of thing not to happen.

When this happens, one has to get one’s bearings again. It’s a matter of one choosing again or saying, “No, what I’m feeling is very beautiful. I am afraid I won’t be faithful to my commitment later on, so I’m leaving the seminary.” When something like this happens to a seminarian, I help him go in peace to be a good Christian and not a bad priest. In the Western Church to which I belong, priests cannot be married as in the Byzantine, Ukrainian, Russian or Greek Catholic Churches. In those Churches, the priests can be married, but the bishops have to be celibate. They are very good priests. Sometimes I joke with them and tell them that they have wives at home but they did not realize that they also got a mother-in-law as part of the bargain. In Western Catholicism, some organizations are pushing for more discussion about the issue. For now, the discipline of celibacy stands firm. Some say, with a certain pragmatism, that we are losing manpower. If, hypothetically, Western Catholicism were to review the issue of celibacy, I think it would do so for cultural reasons (as in the East), not so much as a universal option.

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BOSTON (MA)
My Fox Boston

Posted: Mar 18, 2013

(FOX25 / MyFoxBoston) Jim Polito, FOX 25 Commentator

As I write this blog, I am kneeling and praying that Cardinal Bernard Law will be banished to a cloistered monastery for the rest of his life. For those of you who don’t know what cloistered means, a cloistered monastery is a humble existence, lots of silence, and no gourmet Italian meals. It’s like being sent to your room by God.

Cardinal Law resigned as Archbishop of Boston in 2002, after being accused of covering up for pedophile priests. Despite the scandal, he returned to the Vatican and was appointed to an honorary position at the Basilica Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. This added insult to injury for victims of clergy abuse.

Cardinal Law has retired, but he still lives in a luxury apartment in the cathedral complex. Last week, Pope Francis visited the cathedral. According to the Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano, Cardinal Law was in the cathedral to watch the Pope pray. But when Pope Francis recognized him, he immediately ordered that Law be removed. He went on to say, “He is not to come to this church anymore.” The Vatican has since denied this report.

I hope the Italian newspaper is correct. Maybe there’s a new approach by Pope Francis and the Vatican to pedophile priests and the church hierarchy who covered for them. Cardinal Bernard Law is just as guilty as any pedophile priest. He may not have touched a child, but he’s done just as much evil. He should spend every day begging for forgiveness, praying for it, and living a monastic existence. Remember Cardinal, when you heard confessions and told people to go kneel in a pew and say 10 Hail Mary’s and an Act of Contrition? Did you accept the sacrament of confession following your resignation?

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UNITED STATES
Catholic Culture

By Phil Lawler | March 18, 2013

The election of Pope Francis produced an explosion of media commentary, and I cannot pretend that I have read more than a small portion of the editorials that appeared immediately after the historic choice of a Pontiff from the New World. But in the past few a few commentaries have struck me as particular worthwhile:

•Mary Anastasia O’Grady, who covers Latin America for the Wall Street Journal, looks Behind the Campaign to Smear the Pope. Alert readers may have noticed that nearly all the stories about the alleged failure of Cardinal Bergoglio to oppose the military dictatorship in Argentina cite a single journalist: Horacio Verbitsky, a former member of the Montoneros guerillas who fought that regime, now a left-wing journalist. More balanced witnesses testify in the Pope’s favor. For example, 1980 Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel says that “there were bishops that were complicit with the dictatorship, but Bergoglio, no.” One opponent of the regime reports that while she was in hiding, she “ate with Bergoglio.” The bitter opponents of the Pope, O’Grady reports, are “those trying to turn Argentina into the next Venezuela.”

•Ross Douthat of the New York Times wonders whether Pope Francis is What the Church Needs Now. The new Pope commands respect for his simplicity, humility, and integrity, Douthat writes. That is particularly important at a time when so many people have ceased to respect the beliefs that the Church teaches. Pope Francis insists that God wants something from us, in contrast to the popular culture that would “dismiss the idea that the divine could possibly want anything for us except for what we already want for ourselves.”

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VATICAN CITY
Spiegel

René Brülhart, 40, has been the director of the Vatican’s Financial Information Authority (FIA) for nearly half a year. The Swiss lawyer and former head of Liechtenstein’s financial intelligence unit is on a mission to clear the Vatican Bank of all suspicions of money laundering and other illegal financial transactions.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Brülhart, are you partly responsible for Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation?

Brülhart: That does not fall within my area of responsibility. Why do you ask?

SPIEGEL: The first resignation of a pope in centuries has sparked widespread speculation. For instance, there is conjecture that the pope had to resign because he pushed for more transparency at the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), commonly known as the Vatican Bank, and strove to clear it of all suspicions of money laundering. That is your job.

Brülhart: Let’s allow conspiracy theories to simply remain conspiracy theories. Only the Holy Father emeritus knows the ultimate reasons for his resignation. It has nothing to do with my work.

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PENNSYLVANIA
CBS 21

Reported by: Kirk Wilson
Email: KirkWilson@cbs21.com
Contributor: Rachel Snody

The first comprehensive overhaul of the state’s child protection laws, since Jerry Sandusky ‘s arrest and conviction, was unveiled on Monday. The sixteen bill package was introduced by a bipartisan group of state senators.

As the Jerry Sandusky saga went from rumor to arrest to conviction, flaws in the state laws became apparent. The General Assembly created a special task force on child protection to address the shortcomings.

The special task force met numerous times across the state last year taking testimony. In November, the group released a report and from those recommendations, came the legislation to implement them.

The proposals would update the definition of child abuse, clarify who must report child abuse, increase penalties for failure to report and establish a three-digit, statewide number for reporting child abuse.

Another provision would provide whistleblower protection, said Senator Bob Mensch. “I think we need to be able to remove these structures that allow someone with knowledge to be able to come forward, and be sure they’re not going to have consequences. You can’t always see the aftermath of child abuse, but when you see it happening such as coach McQueary, he should feel welcome to come forward and be able to report that.”

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NEDERLAND
NRC

door Robert Chesal en Joep Dohmen

Wim Deetman heeft in zijn eindrapport over het kindermisbruik in de Rooms-Katholieke Kerk zijn opdrachtgever, bisschop Ad van Luyn, ontzien. Belastende feiten over de toenmalige hoogste kerkleider in Nederland werden niet vermeld, schrijft NRC Handelsblad vandaag. Andere negatieve informatie is slechts omfloerst weergegeven, met weglating van de naam van Van Luyn.

Van Luyn was tijdens het onderzoek van Deetman voorzitter van de bisschoppenconferentie. Hij zocht, volgens kerkelijke bronnen, persoonlijk Deetman aan om het onderzoek te doen en ondertekende ook de opdracht aan de commissie-Deetman. Deze rondde deze week zijn onderzoeksopdracht af met een tweede, aanvullend rapport over vrouwen en meisjes die mishandeld en misbruikt zijn.

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Patriot-News

By Ivey DeJesus | idejesus@pennlive.com
on March 18, 2013

A bipartisan group of state senators on Monday unveiled a package of legislation that would reform Pennsylvania’s child protection laws.

The 16-bill package would provide a broad sweep of reform, including updating the definition of child abuse, perpetrator and mandatory reporter. The legislation would also update procedures used to report child abuse, including reporting guidelines for medical practitioners and school employees.

The proposed legislation would implement changes recommended by the Pennsylvania Task Force on Child Protection, which was convened in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse case.

Sen. Kim Ward (R-39), said the current laws addressing child abuse had been “in the books for a long time,” and that changing times called for an overhaul to the state law. She said the task force found the current law to be “vague, confusing and focused on perpetrators.”

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on March 18, 2013

We’ve talked a lot since the election of Pope Francis about how he has an enormous duty to protect kids and help prevent future sex abuse. But just because there is a new Pope doesn’t mean we can give church officials who have previously covered up crimes against children any slack.

And that is why, regardless of Francis’ actions, our case at the ICC will proceed.

So far, in the year and a half since we first launched our case, we’ve learned that the crimes and cover ups are indeed current and global, and that victims across the world will step forward, if they believe that somehow their courage will result in greater safety for kids.

Knowing that this is the case, our attention now turns to those who work within the church itself. If some of those within the church who had information could come forward, this case could result in even more victims finding their voice and more crimes being exposed.

Whistleblowers play an important role, and especially with dealing with crimes in powerful institutions like the church. We will not stop seeking these whistleblowers just because Pope Benedict has stepped down. On the contrary, we will push harder for them.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on how two bicoastal newspapers are reporting on Pope Francis and the so-called Dirty War:

No sooner had Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio been elected Pope Francis when the Los Angeles Times started reporting on his alleged “timidity” in fighting Argentina’s dictatorship during the Dirty War, 1976 to 1983. The newspaper also cited the rap that he was “too quiet” during this period. Similarly, the New York Times is saying that the pope is being accused of “knowing about abuses and failing to do enough to stop them.” What is particularly striking about today’s front-page story on this issue—the pope “faces his own entanglement with the Dirty War”—is that it took four journalists in four different nations to work on it.

Anyone who thinks these newspapers want a more vocal Catholic Church would be wrong: it totally depends on the issue.

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TULSA (OK)
Fox 23

Three people accused of failing to report child abuse at Victory Christian Center have court dates on Monday afternoon.

Anna George, Harold Sullivan and Paul Williemstein, all VCC employees, are accused of waiting weeks before reporting they received a complaint against a former employee, Chris Denman, involving an underage girl. In December, Denman pleaded guilty to sex crimes against three girls and was sentenced to 55 years in prison.

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TULSA (OK)
Tulsa World

By JERRY WOFFORD World Staff Writer
Published: 3/18/2013

Three Victory Christian Center employees are due in court Monday afternoon after they waived their right to a jury trial last month.

Paul Howard Willemstein, Anna Alisa George and Harold Frank Sullivan are each charged with one count of failure to report child abuse. They have previously entered pleas of not guilty, but after waving the jury trial could change their plea and face sentencing Monday.

John and Charica Daugherty, son and daughter-in-law of Victory Christian Senior Pastor Sharon Daugherty, were also charged with one count each of failure to report child abuse. They are set for a jury trial sounding docket on May 10.

The maximum penalty for the misdemeanor charge is up to a year in jail.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

Today Bergoglio met with Argentina’s President, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner who stated: “Never in my life has a pope kissed me!”

Vatican Insider staff
Rome

Today, the President of the Argentine Supreme Court of Justice, Ricardi Lorenzetti said that pope Francis “is completely innocent” and was never suspected of being involved in violations of human rights committed during the military dictatorship (1976-83).

“Although some people disagree or claim that he may have done this or that, the fact remains that there is no concrete accusation” against former cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, Lorenzetti said in a radio interview.

The President of the High Court stressed the need to respect the principle of innocence, even in Pope Francis’ case, adding that “this is a man who has never been convicted” of violations during the dictatorship.

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CANADA
Quinte News

A trial date has been set for a former Tyendinaga Township priest accused of sexual assault.

Father Rene Labelle was charged last year, following an alleged incident in the summer of 2004.

Labelle will be in front of a Kingston judge March 27th.

Labelle was the former pastor of Saint Charles Borromeo Church in Read, in the late 80′s and early 90′s and also served as a chaplain in Kingston at Holy Cross Secondary.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Pope Francis will soon meet with the ex-Pope, but not with President Obama who is skipping the papal installation. Is Francis even willing to have the ex-Pope as his next door neighbor at the Vatican and to continue to rely jointly on his closest aide, Georg Ganswein? Is Francis planning to continue the ex-Pope’s anti-contraception insurance crusade to undercut President Obama’s health insurance plan that mainly helps the poor?

As to ex-Pope Ratzinger, it is difficult to see how Francis would be helped by having the ex-Pope living so close. If the ex-Pope stayed at Castel Gondolfo, he would have the same legal immunity claim under the Lateran Treaty and comfortable quarters. Francis could call him or even see him at any time, without the image of the old boss hanging around. For similar reasons, continuing with Georg as a daily assistant to both of them raises related issues.

The obvious split reportedly among Vatican Cardinals about Ratzinger’s evident preferred candidate, Cardinal Scola, suggests strongly that Ratzinger’s presence at the Vatican would be more negative than positive. The secret Vatican dossier reportedly on sexual and financial scandals similarly will likely suggest that Ratzinger’s daily presence would only be a reminder of a saga Francis will be trying hard to get behind him promptly. Two Popes are one too many!

The reported large margin of votes that Francis received at the recent papal election Conclave, compared to Ratzinger’s presumably favored candidate, make clear that Francis does not need Ratzinger holding his hand to establish Francis’ legitimacy and authority.

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CALIFORNIA
Orange County Weekly

By Gustavo Arellano
Mon., Mar. 18 2013

We have long covered the destruction wrought by Eleuterio Ramos, the worst-ever pedophile priest in the history of the Diocese of Orange. But we’ve only occasionally discussed the second-worst: Siegfried Widera, who molested at least nine children and most likely many more.

And now, a horrifying prospect has emerged: Widera and Ramos probably molested together, or at the very least coordinated, because not only did they know of each other, but they were good friends.

I first became aware of this in a comment left on my latest exposé of former Bishop Tod D. Brown, left by an eyewitness who saw this between 1982 and 1984.

“They used to sit with my friends’ grandparents that ran the sausage booth and get drunk,” at St. Justin Martyr in Anaheim, according to the commenter. “Even after Widera ‘was removed’ from St. Justin, he still was there for special events and shit just to rape kids after school. No one stopped Widera from abusing.”

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DEUTSCHLAD
netzwerkB

Suchen weitere Betroffene von Übergriffen im Cecilienstift, Bad Lippspringe (1960-1980)

Auf diesem Wege suchen wir andere ehemalige Heim- und Verschickungskinder, die damals im Cecilienstift in Bad Lippspringe untergebracht waren und dort, wie wir, sexuelle Übergriffe und/oder Gewalt erlebt haben.

Wir, zwei Betroffene (Kirsten, 49, und Bernd, 56), haben durch einen Aufruf im Email-Verteiler von Frau Michaela Huber und dank der Aufmerksamkeit einer Dame vom Frauennotruf Lübeck, vor Kurzem Kontakt miteinander aufnehmen können. Wir empfinden den Austausch über das Erlebte als entlastend und bereichernd.Unsere Email-Adressen / Telefonnummern könnt Ihr über das netzwerkB erfahren unter: info@netzwerkb.org

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DEUTSCHLAND
Jesuiten ICAC

Den folgenden Kommentar von Herrn Wenzel zur Staatsanwaltschaft Bonn möchten wir als neuen Beitrag zur Verfügung stellen. Nach unseren Informationen sind sämtliche Ermittlungen wegen unterschiedlichster Sachverhalte (Besitz/Weitergabe Kinderpornografie, sexueller Missbrauch Schutzbefohlener, Verleumdung, Betrug, …) mit Bezug zum Aloisiuskolleg von ein und derselben Staatsanwältin durchgeführt und dann eingestellt worden oder ohne Ergebnis geblieben.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

The victims of one of Australia’s worst pedophiles – defrocked Catholic priest Gerald Ridsdale – want him to appear before the royal commission into child sexual abuse.

It’s believed Risdale, who was sentenced to a maximum of 25 years, but could be released on parole as early as June, molested at least 40 children over three decades.

The Herald Sun says he is being urged to reveal how the church helped cover up his illegal activities before the royal commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

“If he started to talk about what he knew, the Catholic church house of cards would come tumbling down,” victim Stephen Woods said.

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GERMANY
Telegraph

Pope Francis pledged to fight for the release of a Jesuit priest kidnapped by Argentina’s military junta, according to a letter from 1976 which has been disclosed to a German newspaper.

By Jeevan Vasagar, Berlin
1:34PM GMT 18 Mar 2013

The Vatican has fought back against allegations that the new Pope, while a senior Jesuit priest in Argentina, was complicit in the kidnapping and torture of two colleagues, Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics, during the country’s “Dirty War”.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who was elected the first Latin American pope last Wednesday, is accused of withdrawing the church’s protection from the two men.

It has now emerged that Bergoglio wrote a letter to Father Jalics’ brother, in which he admitted that the two men had disagreements. However, he insisted that he “loved” Fr Jalics.

An extract from the letter said: “I have lobbied the government many times for your brother’s release. So far we have had no success. But I have not lost hope that your brother will soon be released.”

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Editorial
From:Herald Sun
March 18, 2013

ONE of Australia’s worst child predators may become one of the most important witnesses at the royal commission into sex abuse.

According to his victims, Gerald Ridsdale could reveal details of a network of child abusers within the priesthood that did not come out at his trials.

As reported in today’s Herald Sun, Ridsdale was sentenced to a maximum of 25 years, but could be released on parole as early as June.

The now defrocked priest molested at least 40 children over three decades and may be able to provide evidence concerning other predators.

Witnesses have told how Ridsdale, who once shared a house with other priests, including the now Cardinal George Pell, was moved to other parishes when his crimes became known.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Carly Crawford
From:Herald Sun
March 18, 2013

ONE of Australia’s worst paedophiles – Catholic priest Gerald Ridsdale – could be freed in months.

And he is being urged to reveal how the church helped cover up his illegal activities.

The child sex offender, who molested at least 40 children over three decades, is eligible for parole in June.

His victims say he should give evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

“If he started to talk about what he knew, the Catholic Church house of cards would come tumbling down,” victim Stephen Woods said.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by Dennis Coday,Joshua J. McElwee | Mar. 17, 2013

Vatican City —
About 300,000 people enthusiastically greeted Pope Francis for his first Angelus prayer and address Sunday and heard a short reflection on mercy, a theme the new pope had preached on at the Mass he celebrated that morning in the parish church of Vatican City dedicated to St. Anne.

When he appeared at the window of his study in the apostolic palace, he showed again a knack for engaging his audience. He greeted the crowd with a simple, “Buongiorno,” [good day], and the people in the square roared back, “Buongiorno.”

The pope also surprised some observers by mentioning in his address retired German Cardinal Walter Kasper, a theologian and former Vatican official known for his sometimes public disagreements with Pope Benedict XVI. …

About halfway through his Angelus address, Francis mentioned he had been reading a book about mercy by Kasper, a retired prelate who has previously served as secretary and president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

Previous to working in the Vatican, Kasper had received public disapproval from then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1993, when Kasper was serving as bishop of the German diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart.

As head of the Vatican’s powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger expressed his disapproval over a letter Kasper had signed along with other German bishops allowing divorced and remarried Catholics access to the sacraments.

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Catholic Insider

The Boston Herald on Friday ran an article about the excessive pay for Boston Archdiocesan lay execs. Coincidentally, on Saturday, Pope Francis said he wanted to see the church be poor, and for the poor.

At the rate the Boston Archdiocese is paying salaries, giving pay increases to the already overpaid execs and running up debt, we are well on the path to being poor–but for reasons much different than Pope Francis apparently intends.

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Herald

By
Matt Stout / Boston Herald

Nearly one-third of the Archdiocese of Boston’s top execs ranked among the highest paid people in their field, according to a compensation study that prompted church officials to take a hard look at many of their six-figure salaries — and withhold some merit-based raises.

The study, performed by a third-party firm at the archdiocese’s request and released with its 2012 financial report, is the first in the archdiocese’s history, according to church officials, examining how their pay stacks up to nine comparable archdioceses, other Catholic organizations and a mixture of nonprofit and for-profit groups.

It found that five of the 16 lay executives making more than $150,000 are paid above the 75th percentile when compared to those in similar jobs, while six more make between the 50th and 75th percentiles.

The five remaining have “attributes that are unique to our archdiocese,” officials wrote in their financial report, adding that they are “paid comparably” to those with similar levels of responsibility.

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IRELAND
Association of Catholic Priests

St. Patrick’s Parish
Parochial House
Donabate
County Dublin.

Telphone: 01-8436011
Parish Office: 01-8434574
Email: stpatricksrcdonabate@gmail.com
www.donabateparish.ie

11 March 2013.

Dear Father Tony,
We are the members of the Pastoral Council of the parish of Donabate, Portrane and Balheary, Co Dublin, and we write concerning the position in which you find yourself following interventions of the CDF in recent times. We have read your statements in response to these interventions with sadness, disappointment, and bewilderment.

We are sad that a priest who, in the spirit of your Congregation’s Founder, has given almost four decades’ exemplary and tireless service to the Gospel and our Church should have had his ministry terminated in this way.

We are disappointed that the CDF conceives its responsibilities to the Gospel and our Catholic faith as properly discharged through the medium of correspondence of the content and manner of their communications with you. The invocation of law and sanctions, and the peremptory tone of the Congregation’s demands, evoke the ways of a secular boardroom or other such governing entity, and we can only say that we should have expected better from those in authority in an institution whose Founder was Jesus Christ.

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ARGENTINA
Association of Catholic Priests (Ireland)

Paul O’Connor OSA in Ecuador provides a translation of the then Cardinal Bergoglio’s pastoral letter for the Year of Faith, published in Buneos Aires last October. Recognising the whole article may be hard reading for some, he suggests they might slip to the section headed ‘Crossing the Threshold of Faith‘, where Padre Jorje tells what faith means to him.

Pastoral Letter from Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, Octubre de 2012

Dear Brothers and Sisters:

Among the most striking experiences of the last decades is finding doors closed. Little by little increasing insecurity has made us bolt doors, employ means of vigilance, install security cameras and mistrust strangers who call at our door.

None the less in some places there are doors that are still open. The closed door is really a symbol of our today. It is something more than a simple sociological fact; it is an existential reality that is imposing itself as a way of life, a way of confronting reality, others and the future.

The bolted door of my house, the place of my intimate life, my dreams, hopes, sufferings and moments of happiness, is locked against others. And it is not simply a matter of the physical house; it is also the whole area of my life, of my heart. All the time there are fewer who can cross that threshold. The security of reinforced doors protects the insecurity of a life which is becoming more fragile and less open to the riches of the life and the love of others.

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IRELAND
Association of Catholic Priests

Mary Cunningham outlines the CDF’s controlling role in the silencing of Fr Sean Fagan, undermining Archbishop Charles Brown’s recent assertion that such actions are a matter for a religious priest’s superior

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Silencing: The Truth Obscured.

Archbishop Brown stated on RTE’s Drive Time programme (15/03/13), that the while the CDF could become involved in silencing issues, they have no reason to do so because it is a matter for the priest’s immediate superior.

Why then is the procedure carried out as follows?
◦Writings of a priest are denounced, often anonymously, to the CDF.
◦The CDF appoints an anonymous consulter to investigate.
◦The head of the order is commanded to appear before the CDF and renunciation of the accused’s work is demanded.
◦On non-compliance, the superior is ordered to impose sanctions on the accused, ranging from censoring of their work, to threats of the removal of their rights to exercise priestly faculties.

In the particular case of Sean Fagan, a letter signed by the then prefect of the CDF, Cardinal Ratzinger, was sent to the Archbishop Brady in 2004. In it he demanded, after referring to asking for four years, that ‘Your Grace publish a ‘Notification’ on Fr. Fagan’s book ‘Does Morality Change?’.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

The tide was turned by old grudges and the bond with the CL movement

Giacomo Galeazzi
Vatican City

Already on Tuesday it looked as though things could get complicated for the cardinals’ top favourite, Scola. A few moments after the extra omnes and the meditation in the Sistine Chapel, Bergoglio surprisingly and very suddenly obtained the largest number of votes. At the first ballot, however, the votes were too scattered for cardinals to get a truly indicative picture. Still, it was a warning sign to the Archbishop of Milan, who was credited with such chances of victory yesterday, that just minutes from the Proto-Deacon’s announcement, an unfortunate statement by the Secretary General of the Italian Bishops’ Conference (CEI) expressed “the feelings of the entire Italian Church in welcoming the news of the election of Cardinal Angelo Scola as the successor of Peter.”

Scola’s path to the Holy Throne was blocked by the confluence of two alliances and of two distinctly different evaluation systems: the non-European one (South America in particular), on the one hand, planned on bringing the papacy out of the old continent for the first time. On the other hand, there was the Curia group led by the nemesis-allegiance of Bertone and Sodano, who are inexorably hostile to Scola. The reason, according to certain voices in the Holy See, are a series of “ancient envies and rivalries”. Bertone has never forgotten the advice that Scola gave to the Pope during a meeting in Castel Gandolfo during the upheaval over the pardon granted to Holocaust-denier Bishop Williamson: his replacement at the helm of the Secretariat of State. Sodano, on the other hand, found himself on opposing sides from Scola in various power struggles for the control of Catholic institutions. Ruini himself, while esteeming Scola, gave no indications to vote in his favour to the conclavists, like the Australian Pell, who asked to visit him before the Conclave. In short, the 28 Italian voters did not all row in the same direction and so they dashed their chances of installing one of their compatriots to Peter’s Throne 35 years after Luciani.

Not even among the residential Italian archbishops was there a complete consensus for Scola, and therefore the votes that many European voters cast in his favour no longer sufficed. Furthermore, the conclavists near the community of Sant’Egidio (Sepe, for example) could not look kindly upon Scola’s involvement in a movement so different from theirs as the Communion and Liberation (CL) one. In the last few hours there were signs that Scola’s strong candidacy was a giant with clay feet. In other words, everybody recognized his exceptional stature as a Bishop and intellectual, but then, digging a little deeper, beyond the circumstancial phrases, separations and reserves began to crop up. Most of all, the idea of an “overseas flight” became more prevalent, which was undermining the opportunity to fall back on a Italian pontificate, as most of the Church’s growth is in South America, Africa, and Asia. “There cannot always be a shepherd upstream with a flock downstream”, summarized an African cardinal in the congregation.

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UNITED STATES
National Survivor Advocates Coalition

March 18, 2013

We hope Dublin’s Archbishop Diarmuid Martin had some good St. Patrick Day’s inside tracking information stronger than wishful thinking and style changes to back up his Sunday declaration that Pope Francis will “clearly address” the issue of sexual abuse.

Cardinal Bernard Law’s presence at St. Mary Major Basilica during Pope Francis’s first public outing after the conclave is troubling to say the least.

It’s hard to imagine that Law’s baggage wasn’t known to the Argentinian who is now Pope. A Pope, it appears in these early days, for whom style may be a conveyance of substance.

Law’s presence in the Basilica and the new pontiff’s greeting of him was an insult of hippopotamus proportions particularly for one conscious of what appearance can convey.

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UNITED STATES
Whispers in the Loggia

Notice something different there?

(Hint: No Cufflink.)

Normally, a detail of the sort would would be seen as frivolous. In the modern papacy, though, symbolism is substance – and in these first days of a new “Franciscan Rule,” so it seems, the world is eating up every last bit.

On another dress-note, meanwhile, much as the new Pope’s sticking with his black shoes has caused a stir, his reluctance to change too much extends under the white cassock, to boot: the Argentine pontiff’s preferences don’t just make his wearing black pants visible through the garment, but likewise highlight the untucked tails of his white dress-shirt.

In other words, the lack of fuss isn’t just a show for the world. But having declined the Archbishop’s Residence in Buenos Aires for a flat where he did his own cooking, and riding around the city on buses and subways without an entourage, that was fairly well-established.

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VATICAN CITY
John Thavis

Pope Francis’ first few days have already generated an abundance of hope on many fronts, and one of them is ecumenism.

The fact that the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, is attending the pope’s inaugural Mass tomorrow is rightly seen as a milestone in Catholic-Orthodox relations. That hasn’t happened since Catholics and Orthodox split in 1054.

Of course, Pope Francis does not yet have a “record” on relations with other Christian churches. As archbishop of Buenos Aires, however, he dropped some clues.

According to Bishop Gregory Venables, the Anglican bishop of Argentina, then-Cardinal Bergoglio was apparently not enthusiastic about Pope Benedict’s move in 2011 to create a structure in the Catholic Church to welcome disaffected Anglicans.

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SOUTH AFRICA
Inquirer

JOHANNESBURG—A South African cardinal apologized to sex abuse victims on Monday for describing pedophilia as an illness and not a crime in an interview.

“I apologize to victims of child abuse offended by my misstatement of what was and still is my concern about all abused, including abused abuser,” Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier, the Archbishop of Durban, said on Twitter after his interview Saturday to the BBC.

“I believe that every dictionary consulted confirms pedophilia is a medical condition. What is a crime is the sexual abuse of children,” he said.

“Therefore pedophilia must be treated. What must be punished is the crime of sexual abuse of children,” he said.

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SOUTH AFRICA
The Post

March 18 2013
By Mercury Reporters

Durban – The sexual abuse of children was a horrendous crime against children, families, the church and society and needed to be dealt with by the law, South Africa’s cardinal, Wilfrid Napier, 72, said on Sunday night.

In a statement on e.tv news the cardinal, who is the Archbishop of Durban, clarified remarks he made in a BBC Radio 5 Live interview at the weekend.

He had come in for a global hammering for saying paedophilia was a mental disorder and not a crime.

The cardinal said he “at least twice” told the interviewer Stephen Nolan that he was not qualified to explain paedophilia.

“I was afforded no time to explain that the priority of pastoral concern must always be for the victim,” he said on Sunday night.

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UNITED STATES
Why I Am Catholic

March 17, 2013 By Frank Weathers

Sure, Fr. Hans Küng believes in the dubious problem of overpopulation, and that the birth control pill is the best thing since sliced bread, etc. But still, you probably didn’t see this tacit endorsement coming.

For such a conservative group of middle-aged and elderly men, the Princes of the Church do seem to have a few surprises up the sleeves of their vestments. The 115 cardinals sequestered themselves in the Sistine Chapel on Tuesday, and emerged on Wednesday with tidings of a new Pope – and not one very many people expected.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the archbishop of Buenos Aires, was elected Pontiff and rechristened himself Pope Francis, signifying his humility and support for the poor and oppressed. He’s the first Jesuit to be made pope, and the first non-European in twelve hundred years to become heir to St. Peter.

Last week, Michael Enright interviewed the preeminent Catholic theologian, Hans Küng, about the crisis in the Catholic Church and the need for reform and liberalization (click here to read).

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UNITED STATES
CBS News

The following is a script from “American Nuns” which aired on March 17, 2013. Bob Simon is the correspondent. Andrew Metz and Tanya Simon, producers.

When Pope Francis became the leader of the Catholic Church on Wednesday, people around the world were asking: what happens now? Can he restore confidence to a church struggling amid scandal to keeps its flock?

To understand just how troubled the church he’s inheriting is, look no further than the power struggle going on between the Vatican and some of its most popular disciples: American nuns.

The Vatican launched what some Catholics call a “new Inquisition” when it accused the official group that represents most nuns in the United States of undermining the Church.

The crackdown last year on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious has sparked outrage — creating yet another rift between those who want the Church to reform, and those who do not.

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BOSTON (MA)
The Heights

By Jennifer Heine
Heights Staff

Published: Monday, March 18, 2013

Although last month’s McAleese Report detailing the abuses of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundry workhouse system and the government’s subsequent apology stunned and dismayed many at Boston College, especially given the school’s Irish Catholic heritage, it proved particularly meaningful to professor James Smith, who, through extensive research and advocacy on the subject, played a vital role in bringing the scandal to light.

Although the Magdalene Laundries, in operation from the 18th until the 20th century, have today come to be associated with the most infamous Irish examples, they were not specific to Ireland, according to Smith. “There was one here in Boston,” he said. “The laundries were not a specifically Irish institution, or even specifically Catholic.”

“Originally, the mission of these institutions was rehabilitative,” he said. “That mission, certainly in the Irish context, seems to have become skewed. They became incarcerative institutions, in which women were incarcerated and worked for no pay.”

That new mission reflects the perception the entrants into the Magdalene Laundries began to take on. “In the Irish context, these were women who, for a variety of reasons, were deemed problem women,” Smith said. “Historically, they were considered, in quotations, ‘fallen women.’” This term, used in the 18th and 19th centuries as a euphemism for prostitution, lent a sense of shame and sexual degradation to the women who were committed.

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SOUTH AFRICA
Eyewitness News

JOHANNESBURG – The Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) has condemned sexual abuse on all levels, responding to controversial comments by Catholic Archbishop of Durban Wilfrid Napier on paedophilia.

In an interview with BBC Radio 5 on Friday, Napier described paedophilia as a psychological illness and not a criminal condition.

He then said paedophiles that were abused as children do not deserve to be punished because they themselves are “damaged”.

While the conference said it had not yet heard or read a transcript of the interview, and therefore could not react, it released a statement, saying it believes paedophilia is a crime and said perpetrators must face the legal system.

“Paedophilia is de facto a criminal offence and we will comply with the legal requirements when such cases come to our attention. Perpetrators must take responsibility for their actions.”

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ARGENTINA
The New York Times

By SIMON ROMERO and WILLIAM NEUMAN

Published: March 17, 2013

BUENOS AIRES — One Argentine priest is on trial in Tucumán Province on charges of working closely with torturers in a secret jail during the so-called Dirty War, urging prisoners to hand over information. Another priest was accused of taking a newborn from his mother, one of the many baby thefts from female prisoners who were “disappeared” into a system of clandestine prisons.

The Rev. Christian von Wernich, a former police chaplain, was convicted of complicity in the killing of political prisoners.

Another clergy member offered biblical justification for the military’s death flights, according to an account by one of the pilots anguished about dumping drugged prisoners out of aircraft and into the sea.

As he starts his papacy, Francis, until this month Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the archbishop of Buenos Aires, faces his own entanglement with the Dirty War, which unfolded from 1976 to 1983. As the leader of Argentina’s Jesuits for part of that time, he has repeatedly had to dispute claims that he allowed the kidnapping of two priests in his order in 1976, accusations the Vatican is calling a defamation campaign.

Now his election as pope is focusing scrutiny on his role as the most prominent leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Argentina, an institution that remains under withering criticism for its role in failing to publicly resist — and in various instances actively supporting — the military dictatorship during a period when as many as 30,000 people are thought to have been killed or disappeared.

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ROME
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on March 17, 2013

Victims seek church whistleblowers
Their case against Vatican in world court is still pending
Top church officials are accused of “crimes v. humanity”
SNAP: “Current & former Catholic employees MUST speak up”
“Pope can’t fix crisis alone, every one in church needs to act,” victims say

WHAT:
Holding signs and childhood photos at a news conference, a child sex abuse victim and advocate will
—call on current and former Catholic employees to “break their silence” and tell law enforcement officials what they know and suspect regarding child sex crimes and cover ups in the church, and
—discuss an unprecedented and still-pending case in the International Criminal Court against top Vatican officials for “crimes against humanity.”

WHEN:
Monday, March 18 at 11:00 a.m.

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

WHO:
A child sex abuse victim from the US, who is a leader of the US-based international support group SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org). Three of his brothers were also molested by the same priest. One of his brothers went on to become a priest and molest children.

WHY
An international support group for victims of clergy abuse is calling on church officials with knowledge or suspicions of child sex crimes and cover-ups in the church to “break their silence, call outside sources and help protect kids.”

Leaders of SNAP are calling on current or former Italian Catholic employees – particularly who work or have worked in the Vatican – to “share what they know or believe about church corruption and complicity – however old or slight or seemingly insignificant it may seem – with outside sources, especially law enforcement, watchdog NGOs and governmental inquiries.

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AUSTRALIA
J-Wire

March 18, 2013 by J-Wire Staff

The Executive Director of The Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Peter Wertheim and Immediate Past President, Robert Goot, have met with the Chair of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Chair Justice Peter McClellan, briefed Wertheim and Goot about the way the Commission will operate, the resources available to it and time estimates for completing various phases of the Inquiry.

“The Chairman made it clear that religious communities and religious schools will not be the exclusive focus of the Inquiry, but they will necessarily be included in the spread of institutions covered”, Wertheim said.

“Some other key points to emerge from the briefing:
•The first sitting of the Royal Commission is scheduled for 3 April in Sydney.
•There will be both public hearings and private sessions with 1 or 2 Commissioners. 
The private sessions are for people with information who do not want for any reason 
to give evidence at a public hearing.
•Information from private sessions will not be evidence or the foundation for any 
finding. However, such information might result in a referral to the Police or be used to guide further investigations of institutions or individuals. Such institutions or individuals will be notified beforehand of any potentially adverse information against them and will be accorded procedural fairness.
•There will be no findings of abuse per se, only findings about institutional and cultural failures in preventing and dealing with abuse.

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ARGENTINA
The Guardian (UK)

Lizzy Davies in Rome and Jonathan Watts in Buenos Aires
The Guardian, Sunday 17 March 2013

Pope Francis has delivered his first Sunday prayer to a cheering, laughing crowd of about 300,000 people in St Peter’s Square, amid hopes that his down-to-earth style will usher in a change in the Vatican.

But while many in Rome were looking forward, accusers in his native Argentina continued to raise awkward questions about the past and reproduced a document suggesting the Jesuit may have betrayed two of his priests to the murderous military dictatorship in the 1970s.

The sharply different perspectives have dogged the early days of the new leader of the Catholic church, who will be officially installed at an inaugural mass on Tuesday.

His capacity to rouse affection and optimism were in evidence as he mixed cheery greetings with humour and anecdotes at his inaugural Angelus.

Speaking in Italian rather than Latin, he joked with the crowd and ended by saying: “Have a good Sunday and a good lunch!” Pilgrims, many from Latin America, roared their approval. …

However, his critics in Argentina were unwilling to move on so quickly. The pope continues to be haunted by allegations dating back to the dictatorship era, when the Catholic church colluded with the generals to quell what they saw as a Marxist threat.

The Argentinian newspaper Pagina 12 republished old documents on Sunday that suggest Jorge Bergoglio, as the pope was known until last week, was in contact with the military authorities about the insubordination of two of his priests and rumours that they had contact with leftwing guerrilla groups.

Father Orlando Yorio and Father Francisco Jalics were tortured and kept in a concentration camp for nearly six months in 1976, after they refused Bergoglio’s order to leave the slum where they were working. In that era, any priest who focused on the poor districts was under suspicion of collaborating with Marxist groups.

A foreign ministry memo from 1979 seems to suggest Bergoglio had passed on suspicions to the authorities, and connived behind the backs of the priests.

The typed note contains bullet points that explain why Jalics was denied a passport renewal application. He had fled to Germany following his release, and asked Bergoglio’s help to get a travel document.

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ROME
Cardinal Roger Mahony Blogs LA

After Pope Benedict XVI announced his retirement, all of us turned to prayer, and especially, through the Holy Spiri,t to guide us.

With 1.2 billion Catholics world-wide, and being one of 115 to elect the new Pope, I was deeply humbled–and terrified. My prayers to the Holy Spirit began, and were constant.

I know how many millions of fellow Catholics were praying across the world that the Holy Spirit point us to the best one to lead our Church forward.

When we eventually arrived at the Sistine Chapel on March 12, I was still pondering two or three candidates. However, when the first blank ballot was given to us, and when it was time to write down a name, something powerful–and strange–happened.

I picked up my pen to write, and I began. However, my hand was being moved by some greater spiritual force. The name on the ballot just happened. I had not yet narrowed my thinking down to one name; but it was done for me.

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ROME
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Mar. 17, 2013

Rome —
Two days before the conclave opened to elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI on March 12, Cardinal Philippe of Lyon, France, candidly confessed to reporters gathered outside his titular church in Rome that the voters didn’t have their act together.

“There are three, four, maybe a dozen candidates,” Barbarin said, leaving observers with the impression of a crowded field lacking a clear front-runner, and perhaps a long and difficult election ahead.

As things turned out, Barbarin needn’t have worried.

It took the cardinals just five ballots to settle on Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, Argentina, as the next pope, despite the fact that most them said afterwards they hadn’t gone in thinking of him as the obvious choice to be their next boss. Bergoglio had been the runner-up eight years ago, but most cardinals said this time they wanted an “energetic” pope, and a 76-year-old with one lung didn’t seem the most obvious candidate.

Trying to make sense of the result for themselves, cardinals who spoke to NCR on background in the days after the conclave said that what turned this longshot into a consensus candidate was the intersection of three basic forces:

.. • A strong anti-establishment mood, which expressed itself as an informal veto against any Italian candidate and any candidate out of the Roman Curia;
• A desire to elect a pope who could put a face on the burgeoning Catholic footprint in the developing world, which in practice meant the hunt was on for a Latin American;
• A process of elimination inside the conclave that one cardinal described this way: “Not him, not him, and not him, therefore him.”

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VATICAN CITY
Telegraph (UK)

Pope Francis’s sister has revealed that their family fled Italy and emigrated to Argentina in the 1920s in order to escape the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini.

By Nick Squires, Vatican City
8:32PM GMT 17 Mar 2013

Maria Elena Bergoglio hit back at allegations that her brother may have colluded with the military junta in Argentina, saying that their family’s escape from Italy had instilled in him a revulsion for military dictatorships.

Their parents, Mario, a railway worker, and Regina, emigrated from Piedmont in northwestern Italy after Mussolini came to power in 1922.

“I remember my father often saying that the advent of the Fascist regime was the reason why he made up his mind to leave the country,” Mrs Bergoglio, the only surviving sibling of the Pope, told La Stampa newspaper on Sunday.

She said allegations that her brother, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, had turned a blind eye to the brutal rule of Argentina’s military junta in the 1970s and early 1980s were hurtful and false.

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SOUTH AFRICA
Southern African Bishops’ Conference

We have learnt recently of the interview given by Cardinal Wilfred Napier on BBC Radio 5. Regretfully, we have not yet had the opportunity to listen to the interview or to read a transcript. We have not been able to contact the Cardinal. It is therefore not possible to react to that interview.

However the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference is well aware of the devastation caused by sexual and other abuse of minors, both for the victims and their families and condemns all abuse unreservedly. The Conference has, for a number of years, had a protocol in place in which we outline how any allegation of abuse is to be handled. The Conference setup a Professional Conduct Committee which has published protocols for dealing with this scourge. The protocol is in force for all clergy and church workers in the region of the SACBC. For centuries there has been a veil of silence in the world surrounding child abuse and it is only in recent years that the matter is receiving the attention it deserves. Unfortunately there have also been failures on the part of the
Church.

Paedophilia is de facto a criminal offence and we will comply with the legal requirements when such cases come to our attention. Perpetrators must take responsibility for their actions.

Abuse of children is so widespread that there is an urgent need for a growth in knowledge and understanding of what causes an abuser to harm children, particularly when a perpetrator has himself/herself being a victim of abuse. Without such knowledge we will never be able to deal adequately with the matter and we will not be able to give adequate protection to our children.

Archbishop Stephen Brislin
President: Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference
16th March 2013
15h00

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SOUTH AFRICA
The New Age

Itumeleng Mafisa

In the wake of the outrage sparked by a BBC interview in which Cardinal Wilfrid Napier reportedly said “paedophilia is an illness and not a criminal condition”, the Catholic Church in South Africa has condemned sexual and all other forms of abuse of children.

And on the day that newly appointed Pope Francis held his first public mass in Rome, the SA Catholic Bishops Conference’s (SACBC) President Stephen Brislin, admitted there were “failures on the part of the Church” in dealing with sexual abuse cases.

Napier who could not be reached for comment yesterday said on his Twitter account that he was quoted out of context.

“Clearly Stephen Nolan had another agenda when asking to talk about papal election,” the South African cardinal who was part of the conclave that elected the new pope, said.

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