ABUSE TRACKER

AUSTRALIA
The Australian

JOHN FERGUSON, VICTORIAN POLITICAL EDITOR From: The Australian June 19, 2013

A VICTORIAN police deputy commissioner and the force have been accused of false and misleading evidence to the state’s child sex abuse inquiry in a withering takedown of their allegations.

An eminent lawyer has accused police and Deputy Commissioner Graham Ashton of “blatant untruths”, a “travesty” of justice, “utterly false” claims and of “malicious nonsense” in evidence obtained by The Australian.

Peter O’Callaghan, QC, independent commissioner in charge of the Catholic Church’s Melbourne-based complaints system, has exposed weaknesses in the police submission and provided evidence that contradicts the most damaging claim by Mr Ashton and the force that the church failed to report a single case of abuse to police.

His comments mark the first significant backlash by a figure involved in the Catholic Church’s response to the abuse scandal, based on what it sees as inaccurate accusations against its attempts to remedy the situation. It also sets the scene for the church – and commissioners – to more vigorously defend itself before the national royal commission into the issue. Mr O’Callaghan’s submission exposes a split at the highest levels of the force about the way the Catholic Church has responded to its sex abuse epidemic.

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MINNESOTA
The Journal

June 19, 2013
By Kevin Sweeney – Journal Editor , The Journal

NEW ULM – A lawsuit against the Diocese of New Ulm has been filed by a man who claims he was sexually abused by a priest, the Rev. Francis Markey, when he was pastor of St. Joseph Parish in Henderson in 1982.

The lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday, takes advantage of a new law easing the state’s statute of limitations for victims of childhood sexual abuse.

Markey, a native of Ireland, died last September in Ireland where he was awaiting trial for the sexual assault of a teenage boy in 1964. He was also named in a 2011 lawsuit brought by a man who claimed he had been abused while Markey was serving in St. Andrew’s Catholic Church in Granite Falls in 1982. The Diocese of New Ulm was also named as a defendant in that suit, which was eventually dismissed.

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MINNESOTA
TribTown

By STEVE KARNOWSKI Associated Press
First Posted: June 18, 2013

MINNEAPOLIS — A man who says he was sexually abused by an Irish priest during his brief stay in Minnesota in 1982 sued the Roman Catholic Diocese of New Ulm on Tuesday, becoming the latest of several plaintiffs to take advantage of a new law easing the state’s statute of limitations for victims of childhood sexual abuse.

Attorney Patrick Noaker filed the lawsuit in Brown County District Court in New Ulm on behalf of a man identified only as John Doe 103. He says he was molested by Francis Markey, a priest who was extradited from Indiana to Ireland in 2010 to face charges of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy there in 1968, but who died at the age of 84 last year before he could go on trial.

John Doe 103 says in the lawsuit that he was about 15 years old and in 10th grade when Markey abused him in 1982 while he served at St. Joseph Parish in Henderson.

The lawsuit accuses the Diocese of New Ulm of negligence, alleging church officials knew Markey had been accused of sexually abusing children elsewhere and knew he had undergone treatment for pedophilia at three separate facilities in his native Ireland, England and New Mexico.

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UNITED STATES
KMPH

[audit report]

By RACHEL ZOLL
AP Religion Writer

NEW YORK (AP) – A Roman Catholic religious order released an unusually candid report Tuesday outlining how its leaders failed for decades to stop sex abuse in its schools and other ministries.

The Capuchin Franciscan Province of St. Joseph, which spans 10 Midwestern states, asked experts in clergy sex abuse to provide a full accounting of abuse by examining all the order’s records. Advocates for victims said it was the broadest attempt at transparency by any part of the American church.

The auditors found the Province of St. Joseph hid abuse from parents and police, kept offenders in ministry long after their misconduct was known and spent far more on defense attorneys than on helping victims. Some friars showed compassion to victims. But they were thwarted when the order and the insurance company that covered settlement to victims allowed lawyers to take a win-at-all-costs strategy in civil lawsuits that was unnecessary and undermined the moral standing of the church, according to the findings.

“For much of the history of the province, we have failed victims,” said the Rev. John Celichowski, the provincial minister, or leader, of the Province of St. Joseph, in a conference call with reporters. “We realize it will take years and many concrete gestures to restore the trust we lost.”

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

[audit report]

Joshua J. McElwee | Jun. 18, 2013

Two former leaders of the lay group set up by the U.S. bishops in 2002 to monitor the church’s sex abuse policies nationwide have said questions remain over how religious orders are being audited for their adherence to those policies.

The comments of the leaders came in interviews with NCR Monday before the release of a wide-ranging audit Tuesday, which concluded that the province of one order acted inadequately in responding to sex abuse allegations over a period of eight decades.

That province, the report concluded, placed the needs of priest-abusers above their lay victims and gave deference to lawyers who “re-victimized” those victims in an attempt to protect the clerics from costly lawsuits.

One of the former leaders of the U.S. bishops’ lay group to monitor sex abuse policies, Judge Michael Merz, said religious orders are not bound by the same rules for abuse reporting as bishops across the country.

While 194 of 195 of U.S. dioceses have agreed to abide by the policies set in place by the bishops in 2002, known as “The Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People,” orders of religious are not bound by that charter, said Merz, a federal district court judge in Ohio who served as the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ National Review Board for clergy sex abuse from 2007 to 2009.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Fox 6

[audit report]

June 18, 2013, by Katie DeLong and Beverly Taylor

MILWAUKEE (WITI) — SNAP — the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests is responding to the voluntary release of an audit by the Midwest Province of Capuchin Franciscans (which includes Wisconsin) — naming 23 of 46 friars alleged to have raped or sexually assaulted children.

According to SNAP, this audit was conducted by a three-member team hired by the Capuchins — including a priest who is a well-known critic of how the church has responded to sexual abuse.
The auditors reviewed files held by the Province, as well as the manner in which the Province responded to incidents and reports of inappropriate sexual behavior and sexual abuse in the past.
In a statement, SNAP says: “The Capuchins are to be commended for this earnest effort to bring transparency to this dark and deceitful corner of their organization and history.”

Peter Isley — a spokesman for SNAP reviewed the findings of the audit the day of its release.
“It has a lot of personal significance. I was sexually assaulted by a Capuchin priest when I was 13 and 14 at their high school boarding seminary which they still operate, St. Lawrence Seminary,” Isley said.
In its statement, SNAP refers to a case involving Fr. Jude Hahn — a recently deceased priest who served as a faculty member at St. Lawrence for three decades, appointed the Freshman dorm supervisor, and co-pastor of Holy Cross, a parish operated by the Capuchins for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.

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VATICAN CITY
The New Yorker

POSTED BY JOAN ACOCELLA

Why did the Roman Catholic cardinals choose, as their Pope, a man who liked to ride the bus and cook his own dinner? Didn’t they guess that such a person might not be a good advertisement of the Church’s magnificence? And when Jorge Mario Bergoglio chose the name Francis, after St. Francis of Assisi, probably the most self-abnegating man ever to direct a religious order—and one whose name, tellingly, had never before been selected by a Pope—didn’t they worry a little bit? They should have. El Mundo says that “several Vaticanists” have commented that “the Pontiff is capable of speaking without restraint on any matter, as delicate as it may be.” Recently, he gave a good example. He spoke about homosexuality in the Vatican.

On June 6th, in a meeting at the Vatican with a group named CLAR (the Latin American and Caribbean Confederation of Religious Men and Women—that is, nuns and priests), he acknowledged that there were serious problems in the Roman Curia. The organization, he said, included many holy people. “But there also is a stream of corruption, there is that as well, it is true…. The ‘gay lobby’ is mentioned, and it is true, it is there…. We need to see what we can do.” Transparency has been a constant theme of Francis’s administration so far. “Open the doors … Open the doors!” he said at the beginning of his address to CLAR. “Don’t be afraid to denounce!” Since when have we heard that from a Pope?

Francis’s remarks were not taped, though at least one person in the small audience was observed to have a notebook. After the meeting, what was said to be a summary of his remarks was leaked to the press, without his consent. This is poor evidence for the accuracy of the document, as representatives of CLAR later pointed out. They said they deeply regretted the leak, since “the singular expressions contained in the text cannot be attributed to the Holy Father with certainty.”

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SWITZERLAND
GlobalPost

Agence France-Presse June 18, 2013

The Catholic Church must be held to account by a UN human rights watchdog for doing too little to halt and expose paedophile priests, victims of abuse by the clergy said Tuesday.

David Clohessy, director of the US-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), said he had few hopes of a massive shake up by Pope Francis, who since being elected in March has made several pronouncements urging action.

“They can trot out all the impressive policies and procedures and promises they want,” Clohessy said ahead of a meeting with the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, which is due to examine the Vatican’s record in coming months.

“We’re dealing with a well-established, longstanding, extraordinarily powerful global monarchy, that really has few or any checks and balances on its power,” he told reporters.

“That’s why we’re increasingly turning to international institutions that we believe have the clout and the reach and indeed the duty to step in,” he added.

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Michael D’Antonio

This week in Geneva, the United Nation’s Committee on the Rights of the Child is hearing closed-door testimony about official Catholicism’s compliance with the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child. One of almost 200 signatories to the convention, the Holy See (the formal name of the Vatican state) is fifteen years late in delivering a report describing whether it has acted to “protect the child from all forms of physical or mental violence” as the convention requires. Victims of sexually abusive priests, their advocates, various American grand juries, Irish government investigators and their counterparts in other countries have turned up ample evidence that it has not.

The decades-long international scandal of sexual abuse and cover-ups by higher church authorities is so familiar that by now it requires little recounting. It’s sufficient to say that thousands of priests have been judged credibly accused by the church itself, which has paid billions of dollars to settle legal claims filed by victims. In America, roughly five hundred clergy have been convicted of crimes against children. In Ireland, the scandal is so great it has ruptured the historically tight bond between the state and the church. In Australia the parliament has begun a broad inquiry into sex crimes committed by Catholic clergy, which Cardinal George Pell of Sydney recently termed “a horrendous widespread mess.”

A global problem, the mess has eluded many efforts to clean it up, in part because of the strange status of the church. Spread across the world, and managed by a top-down hierarchy, it is comprised of thousands of corporate entities, from individual parishes to the Vatican bank. When sued by victims of child abuse, church officials prefer the institution be treated as a local entity, which means that higher authorities and the larger fortune held by various Catholic bureaucracies are protected. However, individual bishops accused of cover-ups, have sometimes found it convenient to point to authorities in distant Rome, shifting the moral burden to them when it seems like priest abusers were allowed, or even helped to evade responsibility for their acts. (In fact, the Vatican generally does have final say over the institutional response to claims against priests.)

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IRELAND
The Journal

[the report]

REDRESS FOR WOMEN of the Magdalene Laundries should be immediately be acted upon, Justice for Magdalenes Research has said.

Justice for Magdalenes Research (JFM), welcomed the publication of the Irish Human Rights Commission (IHRC) Follow-up Report on State Involvement with Magdalen Laundries, which gives a detailed overview of the “systemic human rights failings” on the part of the Irish State in relation to the girls and women of the Magdalene Laundries.

JFM said it echoes the IHRC’s call that the State immediately put in place a system of redress for survivors of the Magdalene Laundries which “should provide for individual financial compensation for the impact of the human rights violations concerned”.

JFM said such a redress fund must be independently monitored, have an appeals process and be placed on a statutory footing with independent statutory powers.

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NEW JERSEY
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: A Newark, NJ priest ordained in 1972, Chabak pastored a number of parishes throughout the archdiocese, and was given the title “Monsignor” in 1995. In 2004 he was placed on administrative leave after an accusation surfaced that he had sexually abused a boy in the 1970s, when the boy was around 15 years-old. The abuse is said to have occurred over a three-year period. Chabak has been retired since 2008.

Ordained: 1972
Retired: 2008

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IRELAND
Irish Times

[the report – Irish Human Rights Commission]

Patsy McGarry

Tue, Jun 18, 2013

The Irish Human Rights Commission (IHRC) has repeated its 2010 call for a statutory inquiry into the Magdalene laundries on the lines of the Murphy commission which investigated the handling of clerical child sex abuse allegations in Dublin’s Catholic archdiocese.

However, it has also insisted that whatever redress scheme may have been recommended to the Government by Mr Justice John Quirke should go ahead immediately. Mr Justice Quirke’s proposals are to be published “shortly”, according to a spokeswoman for the Department of Justice.

Follow-up
In its Follow-up Report on State Involvement with Magdalen Laundries, published today, the commission said “the State failed in its obligations to protect the human rights of girls and women in the laundries”.

It called for “a comprehensive redress scheme that provides individual compensation, restitution and rehabilitation for the women in accordance with the State’s human rights obligations”.

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CANADA
Brandon Sun

By: The Canadian Press
Tuesday, Jun. 18, 2013

WINNIPEG – Two brothers who say they were sexually abused by an Orthodox priest in Winnipeg will have their testimony considered jointly.

The decision was made by Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Christopher Mainella in the trial of Seraphim Storheim.

Storheim’s defence lawyer had argued each brother’s testimony should not be used to bolster the other’s claim.

The judge ruled each brother’s testimony is important in determining whether sexual abuse occurred.
Storheim is accused of sexually assaulting the boys at separate times in the summer of 1985.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Jun. 18, 2013

For eight decades, leaders of a community of Catholic priests and brothers spanning 10 U.S. states acted inadequately in responding to sex abuse allegations and prioritized protecting accused abusers over their victims, concludes an audit released by the group Tuesday.

The report, released by a province of Franciscan priests known as Capuchins, could raise questions of how communities of religious, which are not under direct control of bishops, are handling abuse allegations.

It also addresses themes many critics of the U.S. church’s response to sex abuse have raised since the issue made national headlines in 2002.

The report says that at the heart of the Capuchins’ inadequacy to respond to the abuse was a culture of clericalism that placed the needs of priest-abusers above their lay victims and deference to lawyers who “revictimized” those victims in an attempt to protect the clerics from costly lawsuits.

“It is the opinion of the auditors that the Capuchins’ response to sexual abuse reports was deficient, especially their failures to report abuse to civil authorities and their inadequate pastoral responses to victims,” states the report, which was conducted by the Capuchins’ St. Joseph Province by three auditors over the last year and which examined province records back to 1932.

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UNITED STATES
Fresno Bee

[audit report]

The Associated Press

NEW YORK — A Roman Catholic religious order based in the Midwest is releasing an unusually candid report admitting it failed victims of clergy sex abuse.

The Capuchin Franciscan Province of St. Joseph opened its files going back decades to outside experts. The report released Tuesday found the friars treated many victims with hostility. Until 2004, most of the money the religious order spent on responding to abuse was on defense attorneys, not on help for victims.

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ILLINOIS
WAND

Posted: Jun 18, 2013

WAUKEGAN, Ill. (AP) – The trial has been delayed for a Benedictine monk from Wisconsin charged in Illinois with trying to abduct four girls.

The Daily Herald reports Tuesday (http://bit.ly/11w0yMt) that attorneys pushed 57-year-old Thomas Chmura’s trial to Sept. 25. Chmura is free on $50,000 bond and has pleaded not guilty.

He lived at St. Benedict’s Abbey in Benet Lake, Wis. He was arrested based on a description provided by 1 of the girls.

The judge has restricted Chmura to living with his father in the Chicago suburb of Lansing. Chmura also can’t have contact with anyone under age 17.

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UNITED STATES
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel June 18, 2013

In what’s being touted as a first of its kind voluntary airing of a Catholic religious order’s culpability in the church’s sexual abuse crisis, a branch of the Capuchin Franciscans on Tuesday issued an independent audit recounting its own history of sexual abuse of young people and coverups that spanned decades.

The audit was commissioned by the 10-state St. Joseph Province of the Capuchin Order, which has several ministries in Milwaukee and Wisconsin, last June. It lists 23 current or former friars with confirmed allegations of sexual abuse of minors, many of them occurring in Wisconsin.

Echoing many of the complaints about the broader church’s handling of the global sex abuse crisis, it says that, dating back to the 1930s, the Capuchins:

■ Moved offenders from position to position without divulging their histories or returned them from ministry after treatment where they would re-offend.
■ Rarely reported allegations to civil authorities, even after they were required by law.
■ Routinely placed concerns for their accused friars and their organization over those of victims.
■ Spent vastly more on lawyers than on compensating or caring for victims.
■ May have lost or destroyed documents.
■ And often revictimized survivors, especially those who sued the order or sought compensation, transparency or other forms of accountability; in one case, the order’s attorney threatened to publicly divulge a victim’s sexual orientation if he sued.

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UNITED STATES
Capuchin Franciscan Province of St. Joseph

A little over a year ago, the Province of St. Joseph announced the initiation of an independent audit or review of our provincial files regarding the sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable adults. The audit process has been completed and today we release the auditors’ report. The full report, an executive summary, and a number of other helpful documents, including our provincial policies and procedures, are available by clicking the green “Safe Environment” button at the Capuchin Communications website, http://sjpcommunications.org.

Upon the recommendation of the auditors, and with the support of our Provincial Review Board and Audit Work Group, we have also made the decision to publicly release the names of current, former, and deceased friars who have allegations of sexual abuse of a minor or vulnerable adult that have been confirmed by their own admission, an investigation, or what the auditors have determined to be other sufficient evidence. This is not a decision that we make lightly. It is the product of years of periodic reflection, conversation, deliberation and prayer.

We acknowledge that in today’s environment the public disclosure of even an allegation of abuse can have a negative and perhaps irreparable effect on a friar’s reputation. This is an important consideration (though not the only one) when a friar must be placed on administrative leave pending an investigation. It is even weightier for those who are deceased and will never have the opportunity to defend themselves. A number of the friars on the list below were previously publicly identified, chiefly by prior media reports, court filings or other matters of public record.

The Province’s policies require that a member of the Province who has been found to have sexually abused a minor or vulnerable adult have a Supervision Plan (SP). This plan is reviewed annually by our Provincial Review Board and revised where necessary. As part of the process of developing a friar’s SP, our Office of Pastoral Care and Conciliation (OPCC) also employs the services of professionals to conduct risk assessments.

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UNITED STATES
Capuchin Franciscan Province of St. Joseph in the United States

The Auditors
Mr. Michael Burnett, J.D., Esq.
Fr. Thomas Doyle, J.C.D., C.A.D.C.
Dr. James Freiburger, Psy.D.

Executive Summary
Audit of the Capuchin Franciscan Province of St. Joseph in the United States

The Capuchin Order is a religious order of men in the Roman Catholic Church. It is one ofseveral related orders that follow the example of St. Francis of Assisi. Capuchins profess toemulate St. Francis and to animate their mission, ministries and religious life with the“charism” of St. Francis, meaning St. Francis’ special qualities and virtues and influences thatcharacterized his unique Christian religious expression. Following the example of St. Francis, the Capuchins seek to create a community of equals in which the message of Christ is brought to others, especially poor and marginalized people. They profess to have a particular affinity for and a stewardship of all the creatures and the environment of God’s creation. They minister in hospitals, soup kitchens, schools, parishes and in the mission fields.

The Capuchin Order has various subdivisions called “provinces” throughout the world. The Province of St. Joseph was founded in 1856; but in 1952, the province was split and 188 members left to form a new province consisting of territory in New York and New England.

Since 1952, the St. Joseph Province of the Capuchin Order (the province) has encompassed Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Montana, the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Diocese of Joliet in Illinois, and the Diocese of Fort WayneSouth Bend, the Diocese of Gary and the Diocese of Lafayette in Indiana. The province has also had missions in Nicaragua, Guam, Japan, Australia, Panama and the Middle East.

The members of the province are referred to as “friars.” Some friars are ordained priests, which in the Catholic Church are sometimes referred to as “clerics,” who typically are called “father.”

Some members are not ordained but instead are sometimes referred to as “lay friars” who are typically called “brother.” In recent years, the Capuchin Order worldwide has encouraged its members to refer to themselves as “brother” regardless of whether they are ordained, so as to underscore their equality and Franciscan vocation.

The governance of the province is accomplished through the provincial minister and a Provincial Council. The provincial minister is a “major superior” and the “ordinary,” which means he is the leader of the province. He governs with the assistance of the Provincial Council, with whom he is expected to consult on a variety of matters. In some matters (e.g. issuing canonical warnings to a friar who may be dismissed from the order), the provincial minister cannot act without the consent of a majority of his Provincial Council.

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UNITED STATES
SNAPwisconsin.com

[audit report]

Capuchin report: 46 friars alleged to have assaulted children, 23 named
Abuse “audit” a good and important start, but much more needs to be done, victims say
Order spent “eight times” more on lawyers than compensating victims
But key abuse documents have yet to obtained or were destroyed

Statement by Peter Isely, SNAP Midwest Director (Milwaukee)
CONTACT 414.429.7259

(NB: Isely is a victim/survivor of sexual assault by a Capuchin priest while attending St. Lawrence Seminary boarding high school, see his profile here).

Today, in a first voluntary effort of its kind in the history of the child sex abuse crisis, a Catholic religious order, the Midwest Province of the Capuchin Franciscans, released a voluntary “audit” of their clergy abuse files, naming 23 of 46 friars alleged to have raped or sexually assaulted children.
The list of the 23 “substantiated” offenders has been posted at the Capuchin website this morning. (The list of Capuchin offenders, the audit report, and other documentation can also be found at the SNAPwisconsin.com at this page).

The audit was conducted by a three member team hired by the Capuchins, including Fr. Tom Doyle, a well-known critic of how the church has responded to sexual abuse.

The Capuchins are to be commended for this earnest effort to bring transparency to this dark and deceitful corner of their organization and history.

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SWITZERLAND
Expatica

The Catholic Church must be held to account by a UN human rights watchdog for doing too little to halt and expose paedophile priests, victims of abuse by the clergy said Tuesday.

David Clohessy, director of the US-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), said he had few hopes of a massive shake up by Pope Francis, who since being elected in March has made several pronouncements urging action.

“They can trot out all the impressive policies and procedures and promises they want,” Clohessy said ahead of a meeting with the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, which is due to examine the Vatican’s record in coming months.

“We’re dealing with a well-established, longstanding, extraordinarily powerful global monarchy, that really has few or any checks and balances on its power,” he told reporters.

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

MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

Updated: June 18, 2013

NEW ULM, Minn. — A man who says he was sexually abused by an Irish priest in Minnesota in 1982 is suing the Diocese of New Ulm, taking advantage of a new law easing the state’s statute of limitations for victims of childhood sexual abuse.

Attorney Pat Noacker filed the lawsuit in Brown County on behalf of John Doe 103. It names Francis Markey, who was extradited to Ireland in 2010 to face sexual abuse charges there. He died year before going on trial.

John Doe 103 says in the lawsuit that he was about 15 years old when Markey abused him in 1982 while he served at a parish in Henderson.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Christoph Fleischmann

Klaus Mertes will “Verlorenes Vertrauen” für die Katholische Kirche zurückgewinnen.

Vor zweieinhalb Jahren, ein Jahr nach Aufdeckung der Missbrauchsfälle am Berliner Canisius-Kolleg, gab Klaus Mertes gegenüber dem WDR einen – freilich sehr kurzen – Einblick in die Verfassung seines Ordens und seiner eigenen Gemütslage:

“Da muss noch einiges geklärt werden, für mich auch”, so Mertes damals, “das betrifft ja auch mein Verhältnis zu Mitbrüdern der Generation, von der Sie grad gesprochen haben, also insofern hab ich selbst nochmal ein existenzielles Interesse daran. Ich muss ja nochmal mit den Mitbrüdern, die damals Verantwortung trugen, die für mich auch persönlich was bedeuten, heute nochmal in die Augen blicken und fragen: was hast Du gewusst. Oder vielleicht habe ich auch das Gefühl, dass ich belogen worden bin von einigen.”

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ILLINOIS
Daily Herald

By Lee Filas

The trial of a monk accused of trying to lure teenage girls into his car in Antioch has been pushed back to September.

In the meantime, prosecutor Victor O’Block said Thomas Chmura, 57, has been compliant with court-ordered restrictions while free on $50,000 bond.

“There was a mix-up with pretrial services because they were dialing the wrong number (when trying to reach him),” O’Block said after attorneys pushed the trial pushed back to Sept. 25. “But, it’s been worked out. He has been compliant while out.”

Chmura was freed from jail after Lake County Judge Christopher Stride lowered his bond from $150,000 to $50,000 in May. Stride ordered Chmura to live with his father in Lansing, Ill., remain on 24-hour curfew, and wear an ankle-monitoring device at all times.

A fourth condition of his bail is to not have contact with anyone under the age of 17, which prevented Chmura from returning to St. Benedict’s Abbey in Benet Lake, Wis. The abbey houses children under the age of 17 on the property.

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UNITED STATES
Patrick J. Wall

If you are in California or Washington, make sure that you come and see Michael D’Antonio talk about his new book MORTAL SINS.

The Boston Globe calls the book “perhaps the most comprehensive history of the wrongdoing to date” and the Buffalo News says, “Pulitzer Prize winner Michael D’Antonio’s new book “Mortal Sins” will be the gold standard for unraveling what happened during the Catholic priests’ sex abuse scandal of the last three decades. D’Antonio’s balanced exposition and analysis is the equivalent of a cleansing shower on a disturbing period in church history that will reverberate for 100 years or more.”

I will be on the panel in all of the five cities, and I hope to see you there. All of the events are free and open to the public, so bring a friend and invite everyone you know.

Here is the complete list of dates:

SAN DIEGO, CA- Wednesday, June 26, 2013 at 7 pm Alliant University, Green Hall, Co-sponsored by IVAT, the Institute on Violence Abuse and Trauma at Alliant University, 10455 Pomerado Road, San Diego

FULLERTON, CA – Thursday, June 27, 2013 at 7 pm Fullerton Public Library – Presented as a part of Gustavo’s Awesome Lecture Series — 353 W. Commonwealth Ave., Fullerton

SANTA BARBARA, CA – Friday, June 28 at 7 pm Falkner Gallery, Santa Barbara Public Library, 40 E. Anapamu, Santa Barbara Co-sponsored by Therapy Trust and SB Voice of the Faithful

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Saturday, June 29 at 2:30 pm Mission Cultural Center Theater, 2868 Mission Street, San Francisco

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FLORIDA
Palm Beach Post

By Daphne Duret
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

WEST PALM BEACH — Former Rosarian Academy teacher Stephen Budd faces a life in prison even on the low end of a possible punishment if convicted of sexual battery charges surrounding allegations he traded candy for sex with 9-year-old students, prosecutors said this morning.

Budd was arrested in April at his West Palm Beach apartment, not long after a former student of his at Rosarian Academy School, a private Catholic school in West Palm Beach, told police that during the 2006-07 school year, Budd would give them “Budd bucks,” which she explained was candy in return for sexual acts.

At this morning’s hearing in his case, Assistant State Attorney Jessica Kahn told Circuit Judge Karen Miller that according to sentencing guidelines, the lowest recommended sentence for the 51-year-old if convicted would be life in prison.

Budd, who was not in court this morning and remains at the Palm Beach County Jail, has waived his right to a speedy trial. The next hearing in his case is set for August 23.

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NEW JERSEY
The Jewish Press

Apology Letter to Mrs S.
By: Harry Maryles
Published: June 18th, 2013

I hope the victim and his family can take some solace from this letter, Apology Letter to Mrs S. On June 4th a letter was written by Rabbi Dovid Epstein apologizing profusely for the damage he caused the family of a victim of sex abuse by a Yosef Kolko. Kolko was a ‘Mechanench’ (educator) who confessed to that crime both privately and later publicly during his trial when the evidence for it became overwhelming.

I don’t know who Rabbi Epstein is. But it is clear from his letter that he was part of a move to treat a major Talmid Chacham in Lakewood as a pariah. They accused him of being a Moser (someone who informs secular authorities about the illegal activities a fellow Jew – which is considered a major crime).

I am not going to get into whether Mesirah applies today. There is ample precedent among major Poskim – both past and present – that in a country where there is a fair system of Justice, Mesirah does not apply. I agree with them – as does just about all of the Poskim that I value. But the fact is that there are some Poskim that still feel it does apply in societies like ours. These are the people I am addressing.

The Lakewood community of which Rabbi Epstein is a part – is a community that seems to feel Mesirah applies even here and now. I’m sure that the Talmid Chacham whose child was sexually abused probably believes that too. Or at least feels that one should factor in the possibility that it does. To that extent the father (let’s call him Rabbi S) played by the rules, as one would expect a Talmid Chacham of that stature to do. Rabbi S went to some of Lakewood’s city elders and a Beis Din was convened to examine the facts of the accusation. Apparently they felt that there was enough credible evidence to require Kolko to seek counseling.

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MINNESOTA
Fox 47

BLUE EARTH, Minn. (FOX 47) — A Roman Catholic priest remains behind bars in Blue Earth after an appearance Monday afternoon in which he was advised of his rights.

Father Leo Koppala, 47, is charged with second degree criminal sexual conduct after an alleged fondling incident involving a 12-year-old girl in the basement of one of his parishioners.

Bond has been set at $75,000 for Fr. Koppala, who is a native of India. As of late Monday, he had not posted bail and remained in the Faribault County Jail.

Fr. Koppala has been serving at Saints Peter & Paul Catholic Church in Blue Earth for nearly four years. After arriving in the U.S. from the Diocese of Dellore, India back in October of 2008, he had served in the Resurrection R.C. parish in Rochester until July 31, 2009. After his arrest last week, the Diocese of Winona placed Fr. Koppala on administrative leave pending the resolution of the criminal charge.

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ITALIEN
Tages Anzeiger (Schweiz)

Von Michael Meier. Aktualisiert am 17.06.2013
Im Web tauschen sich schwule Priester hoffnungsvoll und ungeniert aus. Die Fraternitas Venerabilis grenzt sich ausdrücklich von der laizistischen Gay-Kultur ab.

«Hallo, ich bin Priester (35) suche Freundschaft mit schwulen Priestern oder Seminaristen. Ich bin sehr offen», schreibt ein Mann im italienischen Chatroom. Und ein anderer: «Ich bin italienischer Priester (45) und habe eine Vorliebe für schwarze Männer. Ich wäre sehr glücklich, wenn mich ein dunkelhäutiger Priester kontaktieren könnte.»

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ITALIA
Giornalettismo

[Venerabilis]

di Redazione – 18/06/2013 – Tra di loro spuntano anche dei tradizionalisti, come ad esempio un giovane prete Lefebvriano

“Mi chiamo Luca, vengo da Milano e e vorrei conoscere un prete con con il quale iniziare una frequentazione seria”, oppure “Ciao, sono un prete di 35 anni in cerca di amicizia con altri preti e seminaristi gay” e ancora “Sono un prete italiano di 45 anni e ho una predilezione per gli uomini di colore, Mi farebbe molto piacere entrare in contatto con un prete con la pelle scura”. Sono solo alcuni degli annunci pubblicati sul sito “Venerabilis”, che si rivolge a quelle pecorelle con le quali il Vaticano non vorrebbe avere nulla a che fare: i cattolici e i preti gay.

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VILLE DU VATICAN
Le Matin

EGLISE CATHOLIQUE — Les prêtres homosexuels vivent parfois une situation pénible mais il existe un site internet où ils peuvent en parler, parfois de manière ingénue mais pleine d’espoir.

C’est l’histoire d’un site discret qui existe depuis plusieurs années et aurait bien voulu garder son anonymat mais les propos que l’on prête au pape François sur un «lobby gay» l’ont mis sous les feux de la rampe. Venerabilis regroupe en effet les annonces des prêtres homosexuels qui recherchent de la compagnie dans un milieu qui exclut les femmes.

«Bonjour, je suis un prêtre (35), recherche l’amitié de prêtres ou de séminaristes homosexuels. Je suis très ouvert», écrit un homme dans la chatroom en italien. Car le site propose des espaces en cinq langues. Ou encore: «Je suis un prêtre italien (45) avec une préférence pour les hommes noirs. Je serai très heureux si un prêtre à la peau sombre pouvait me contacter.»

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ITALIA
Articolo Tre

-R.P.- 13 giugno 2013- Vittorio Messori, illustre vaticanista, afferma che il problema non è l’omosessualità dei preti, ma il “rischio ricatto”.

E’ statisticamente provato che i seminari, come i conventi, le caserme, attraggono un numero di omosessuali superiore alla media, chi dice addirittura che un terzo dei preti evrebbe questa tendenza. Il fenomeno esiste ed è di notevoli proporzioni, il problema è quello della doppia vita, una doppiezza favorita dall’anonimato, che purtroppo favorisce appunto il ricatto.

Si racconta di un prelato tenuto sotto scacco da un gruppo interessato ad ottenere qualche paragrafafo favorevole ai propri interessi nelle scritture e nei documenti ufficiali della Santa Sede. Per tacere di alcuni giovani laici entrati nelle grazie di monsignori organici alle più alte sfere vaticane,e impegnati in inconfessabili giri di affari e di sesso.

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ITALIA
Affar Italiani

Vaticano/ Lobby gay, le bastonate di Venerabilis: manovra per affondare la Curia. In Liguria il 5% dei preti è omosessuale

di Antonino D’Anna

La homepage di Venerabilis
Continua la telenovela della lobby gay vaticana. Dopo le ammissioni di Papa Francesco sulla sua esistenza, esternate il 6 giugno scorso e pubblicate in seguito su un sito cileno nell’imbarazzo del CLAR (i religiosi e religiose latinoamericani), adesso è il momento delle liste nere. Con nomi e cognomi di personaggi vari ed eventuali, tra promossi/rimossi e non solo, che iniziano ad essere sussurrati più o meno a voce alta.

LE BASTONATE DI VENERABILIS- Ma questo non conta. Conta semmai osservare che l’ondata mediatica suscitata in merito alla lobby gay ha causato varie reazioni, dal divertito all’irritato. I più puntuti, per il momento, sono quelli di Venerabilis. Venerabilis si definisce sul suo sito come “Homosensible Roman Catholic Priests Fraternity” (Fraternità omosensibile di sacerdoti cattolici romani). Niente di ufficiale, ovviamente. Ma di informato, e molto, questo sì. Basta leggere i tweet di @vNEWS, l’account Twitter di Venerabilis, che già il 12 giugno scrive: “Si riparla della ‪#LobbyGay in Vaticano e sembra che a parlarne sia Papa Francesco e fuori del Vaticano non c’è ?”. Poco dopo chiede: “Come mai si vuole tanto parlare di 1 Lobby Gay in Vaticano e non si dice nulla della potentissima Lobby Gay fuori del Vaticano ? PRUDENZA ?”.

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VATICAN CITY
Queerty

[Venerabilis]

Great news for the sexually deviant seeking romantic encounters with God’s army in the Vatican.

According to reports, the world’s most unlikely place to find NSA hookups has become a den of iniquity with the uncovering of “Venerabilis,” a gay hookup site targeted for gay priests looking to get busy in the holiest place on Earth.

Though not explicitly pornographic, the site is said to be run “by a fraternity of Homo-Sensitive Roman Catholic Priests” looking to find “like-minded priests” via chatrooms and “missed connections” posts.
Venerabilis offers chatrooms in five different languages where sleuths have already discovered a number of sexual encounters in progress. From “the cafeteria” to a university bookshop, virtually no meeting place is off limits for members looking to meet face-to-face (or face-to-well…you get it)

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ITALIA
Affar Italiani

Vaticano/ Lobby gay, Venerabilis rincara la dose e attacca Bertone. Viaggio nel forum della “fraternità”: tra chi cerca sesso e chi fede

di Antonino D’Anna

Venerabilis torna all’attacco, e stavolta spara a zero su tutti. Dopo le dure prese di posizione dei giorni scorsi raccontate da Affaritaliani, che hanno visto la “fraternità omosensibile” dire la sua a proposito della lobby gay in Vaticano denunciata da Papa Francesco, ora i fratres aggiustano il tiro. E cominciano a far trapelare altre indiscrezioni (ricordiamo ai lettori che alcuni tra i Venerabilis sarebbero sacerdoti di Curia). E lo fanno attraverso Twitter. Vediamo come.

E BERTONE?- Mattina del 15 giugno, i fratres alzano la voce contro un personaggio molto potente e molto importante: il cardinale Segretario di Stato Tarcisio Bertone: “Come mai nessuna parola sulla Lobby SDB (Società Don Bosco, ossia i salesiani, N.d.R.) del Card Bertone ? Sembra che fa comodo a certi parlare della Curai Romana come di una Lobby Gay !!!”. Poi poco dopo pubblicano una foto tratta da un Gay Pride e si chiedono: “Nessuno sembra essere interessato a parlare di LOBBY GAY fuori il Vaticano – Come mai ? Forse non esiste ?”. La mattina romana, con la sua aria frizzantina, stimola ulteriormente la voglia di indiscrezioni dei fratres. Che lanciano un’accusa pesante.

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MINNESOTA
Fairmont Sentinel

June 18, 2013

Jodelle Greiner , Fairmont Sentinel

BLUE EARTH – Father Leo Charles Koppala will remain in the Faribault County Jail after District Judge Douglas Richards ordered more information on his immigration status and refused to lower his bail during a hearing Monday at Faribault County Law Enforcement Center.

Koppala, who was serving as the priest for Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Blue Earth, has been charged with second-degree criminal sexual conduct. The charges stem from an incident June 7 in which Koppala allegedly engaged in sexual conduct with a child under 13 years of age, with the defendant being more than 36 months older than the child. Charges allege that Koppala, 47, fondled the child while visiting a home where the child was staying.

Koppala, a native of India, was provided an interpreter to translate the questions from English to the dialect he speaks.

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VATICAN CITY
Gay Star News

18 JUNE 2013 | BY JOE MORGAN

Gay Catholic priests looking to meet up for friendship and more now have a place to do it online.

Venerabilis, an unofficial gay dating site targeted for priests and the people who love them, is allegedly based in Vatican City.

According to reports, the site says it is run by a ‘fraternity of homo-sensitive Roman Catholic Priests’ looking to find ‘like-minded priests’ via chatrooms.

The site offers five chat rooms in different languages, and by looking through the backlog there seems to have been plenty of face-to-face hook-ups.

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CANADA
Leader-Post

BY KERRY BENJOE, LEADER-POST JUNE 18, 2013

Five years have passed since the federal government apologized, on behalf of Canada, to all Indian residential school survivors for the abuses they suffered at the schools.

Some survivors believe abuse by the federal government continues, but in a much different form.

Moses Redman, a survivor, waited years for an opportunity to tell his story.

In November, he went through the Independent Assessment Process (IAP) but instead of leaving with a sense of relief, he left feeling angry and frustrated.

The process is part of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. It is a way for a former student, who was abused, to settle out of court. It is the only way a survivor can make a claim, unless he or she has opted out of the settlement agreement. Those who opted out have to go to court.

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AUSTRALIA
Gippsland Times

THE Catholic Bishop of Sale has apologised to victims of child abuse in a statement in the June issue of the church newspaper Catholic Life.

Bishop Christopher Prowse said the criminal activity of abusers filled him with “utter contempt” and described abusers within the church as “Judas’s”.

“Over the years, I have sat with victims and listened to their horrendous testimonies,” he wrote.

“Their experience of abuse as children has sickened me.

“Their bravery and survivor instincts have inspired me.

“Their pain continues.”

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GEORGIA
Actionsnewsjax

ST. MARYS, Ga. — Hiding behind his front door, Deacon Jones Rivers tells Action News he’s been framed, and that police allegations claiming he molested at least a 4-year-old and a 7-year-old are false.

“What they accused me of I didn’t do,” said Rivers. “I can’t prove it because they really set me up good.”

Rivers says the mother of his child is the accuser.

“It’s a woman that I dated and got pregnant,” he said.

The Deacon didn’t want to show his face and according to police there was much more to hide. Inside Rivers’ home, investigators found computer hard drives packed with homemade child pornography. Police also found hundreds of pornographic DVDs, all of which a seven year old victim claims Rivers made him watch.

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NEW YORK
The New York Times

By MICHAEL POWELL
June 17, 2013

Sam Kellner is a man twice shunned and living in a deepening shadow.

Five years ago, this gray-bearded and excitable man with a black velvet yarmulke spoke out about the sexual abuse of his 16-year-old son by a prominent Hasidic cantor. As Mr. Kellner helped investigators with the Brooklyn district attorney’s office search for other young Orthodox victims of this man, the Orthodox establishment grew ever angrier at him. The rabbi at his Hasidic synagogue in Borough Park, Brooklyn, denounced Mr. Kellner as a traitor and forbade parishioners to talk with him on the street. Yeshivas barred his sons. His businesses dried up — he pawned his silverware to meet his bills. And he still fears that he will never find a marriage match for his son.

“I felt murdered and abandoned,” Mr. Kellner said. “I’m ruined.”

This, however, was a prologue to a worse situation. In April 2011, after the district attorney’s office gained a conviction against that cantor, Baruch Lebovits, the prosecutors turned around and obtained an indictment of Mr. Kellner. They said, based on a secret tape and the grand jury testimony of a prominent Satmar supporter of Mr. Lebovits, that he had tried to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars from Mr. Lebovits.

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IRELAND
Irish Human Rights Commission

[the report]

IRISH STATE FAILED TO PROTECT AND VINDICATE THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF WOMEN IN MAGDALEN LAUNDRIES – REDRESS SCHEME MUST REFLECT IMPACT OF HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS EXPERIENCED

Issued : 18 June 2013

The Irish Human Rights Commission (IHRC) today published its Follow-up Report on State Involvement with Magdalene Laundries saying the State failed in its obligation to protect the human rights of girls and women in Magdalen Laundries. The IHRC is calling for a comprehensive redress scheme that provides individual compensation, restitution and rehabilitation for the women in accordance with the State’s human rights obligations. The IHRC also makes a number of recommendations regarding measures needed to ensure similar wrongs are not repeated in the future.

The IHRC Follow-up Report reviews the facts set out in the Report of the Interdepartmental Committee chaired by Senator Martin McAleese and assesses the human rights implications for the State of what occurred in Magdalen Laundries. It also revisits the findings of the IHRC’s 2010 Assessment Report on the Magdalen Laundries in light of the information now available. The IHRC concludes that girls and women placed in Magdalen Laundries did not have their human rights fully respected in relation to equality, liberty, respect for private life, education, and to be free from forced or compulsory labour or servitude.

Speaking at the Launch of the Report, Professor Siobhán Mullally, IHRC Commissioner said:

“The Report of the Interdepartmental Committee (IDC) confirms extensive State involvement in Magdalen Laundries but it falls short of drawing any conclusions on the human rights obligations of the State. To fill that gap, the IHRC has reviewed the findings of the IDC report against a range of human rights standards. We conclude from the evidence available that the human rights of girls and women placed in the Laundries have not been fully respected. The State acted wrongfully in failing to protect these women by not putting in place adequate mechanisms to prevent such violations, and by failing to respond to their allegations over a protracted period. Credible allegations of abuse should always be promptly, thoroughly and independently investigated.”

Professor Mullally continued:

“The IHRC is calling for a comprehensive redress scheme that provides individual compensation for the impact of the human rights violations which occurred to each individual woman who resided in the Laundries. The extent of such violations and their ongoing impact needs to be factored into the determination of individual compensation and ongoing supports in order to go some way to vindicating the rights of these women. Measures should also be put in place to guarantee that these women have restitution in terms of lost wages, pensions and social welfare benefits. Rehabilitation supports including housing, education, health and welfare, and assistance to deal with the psychological effects of the time spent in the Laundries should be made available to them.”

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

ED CARTY – 18 JUNE 2013

Compreshensive compensation is needed for survivors of Magdalene laundries including unpaid wages and pensions and rehab for forced labour, a watchdog has claimed.

The Irish Human Rights Commission (IHRC) said Martin McAleese’s investigation into the institutions fell short as he did not draw any conclusions on the human rights obligations of the State.

The commission called on the Government to stop caring for the intellectually disabled in psychiatric institutions and to allow people who were adopted, either formally or informally, to trace their birth relatives.

Professor Siobhan Mullally, IHRC commissioner, said its follow-up report was filling a gap left by the McAleese inquiry.

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IRELAND
The Journal

THE IRISH HUMAN Rights Commission has said lessons must be learned from the breaches of human rights experienced by girls and women living in Magdalene Laundries during the 20th century.

“The State must never be complacent in the way it treats those at risk of discrimination,” Sinead Lucey, Senior Enquiry and Legal Officer of the IHRC said at the launch of the body’s Follow-up Report on State Involvement with Magdalene Laundries.

The publication outlines in what ways the State failed in its obligations to protect the human rights of its female civilians. It calls for a comprehensive redress scheme to provide survivors with restitution for lost wages, pensions and social welfare benefits; rehabilitation supports including education, health and welfare; monetary compensation; and assistance to deal with the psychological effects of being in the laundries.

The review examines the facts laid out in Martin McAleese’s February 2013 report, assessing the human rights implications for what occurred in the infamous institutions.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Tue, Jun 18, 2013

Comprehensive compensation is needed for survivors of Magdalene laundries including unpaid wages and pensions and rehab for forced labour, a watchdog has claimed.

The Irish Human Rights Commission (IHRC) said Martin McAleese’s investigation into the institutions fell short as he did not draw any conclusions on the human rights obligations of the State.

The commission called on the Government to stop caring for the intellectually disabled in psychiatric institutions and to allow people who were adopted, either formally or informally, to trace their birth relatives.

Professor Siobhan Mullally, IHRC commissioner, said its follow-up report was filling a gap left by the McAleese inquiry.

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IRELAND
RTE News

The Irish Human Rights Commission has called on the Government to establish a comprehensive redress scheme for all former residents of Magdalene Laundries.

The agency wants the scheme because the State failed to protect the human rights of the women.
The IHRC also called on the Government to strengthen protections for people with disabilities living in institutions.

It wants to see an end to the practice of caring for people with intellectual disabilities in psychiatric institutions and to apply lessons learnt from the Magdalene Laundries.

The recommendations are made in a follow-up report on the McAleese Report of last February on State involvement in the Catholic Church-run laundries.

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IRELAND
Laois Nationalist

The Irish Human Rights Commission says the State failed in its obligation to protect the human rights of girls and women in the Magdalene Laundries.

It is calling for a redress scheme that provides individual compensation for every woman that lived there.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Eslarner Zeitung

Leider müssen wir Sie wieder einmal mit der Causa “Diözesan-Kirchenmusikdirektor Georg Friedrich Zimmermann (+ 1984)” befassen, und dies wird – wir bedauern die Angehörigen (vor allem auch vieler Opfer!) – so lange regelmässig wiederkommen, bis die Angelegenheiten um Zimmermann, Zeitler, Schrembs & Co. vollständig aufgeklärt sind. Nicht nur “wenn es hilfreich” ist, muss es einen Abschlussbericht der Diözese geben, sondern es muss ihn deshalb geben, weil gem. unserer bisherigen Recherchen durch das bisherige Verschweigen kirchliche Karrieren zerstört, Leuten nahezu deren Leben genommen wurde während andererseits kirchliche Karrieren, man ist versucht zu schreiben “besonders gefördert” wurden. Wir haben auch immer noch die sog.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Stadt Zeitung

Viele Menschen, die Pfarrer Thomas Schilling nahe stehen, sind über den sexuellen Missbrauchsvorwurf gegen den Geistlichen bestürzt. Schilling ist seit 2007 im Zusamtal tätig.

Von „Bestürzung“ über „ganz schlimme Sache“ bis hin zu „Vorverurteilung“ lauten die Reaktionen auf das Bekanntwerden des Vorwurfs des sexuellen Missbrauchs gegen den Pfarrer der Pfarreiengemeinschaft Thürheim mit den Pfarreien St. Martin (Pfaffenhofen), Maria Hilf (Unterthürheim) und St. Nikolaus (Oberthürheim), Thomas Schilling. Der Geistliche wurde vom Bistum Augsburg von seinem Amt abgerufen beziehungsweise beurlaubt.

Der sexuelle Missbrauch soll sich Anfang der 1980er-Jahre im Ausland zugetragen haben. Pfarrer Thomas Schilling war damals im Orden der Benediktiner tätig. Die Staatsanwaltschaft sei über den Sachverhalt informiert worden, so der Sprecher des Bistums, Nicolas Schnall. Schilling ist seit 2007 im Zusamtal tätig.

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UNITED STATES
Yahoo! Movies

By Jeff Sneider | The Wrap – Sun, Jun 16, 2013

Oscar-nominated actor Matt Damon is being sought to star in Tom McCarthy’s untitled movie about the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning reportage on the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal, numerous individuals close to the project have told TheWrap.

Anonymous Content and Rocklin/Faust are producing the movie with Participant Media, which was planning to co-finance the film with DreamWorks before Steven Spielberg’s studio pulled out of the sure-to-be controversial drama on Thursday.

Producers are now shopping the prestige project around town, with Warner Bros. the leading contender to distribute.

Described as being in the tonal vein of “All the Presidents Men,” the story follows the Catholic Church’s decades-long cover-up of its pedophile priests in Massachusetts.

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VEREINIGTE STAATEN
Movie Pilot

Matt Damon könnte bald für ein neues Filmprojekt in seine Heimatstadt Boston zurückkehren. Zumindest, wenn sich der Tweet von Jeff Sneider (The Wrap) bewahrheitet, der den Schauspieler mit dem neuen Film von Thomas McCarthy (Station Agent, Win Win) in Verbindung bringt. Der bisher namenlose Film beruht auf der Reportage des Boston Globe, welche den Missbrauchsskandal der Katholischen Kirche in Boston aufdeckte. Die Reportage gewann 2003 den Pulitzer-Preis. Ein Jahr ermittelten die Journalisten für ihren Enthüllungsbericht, der am Ende Kardinal Bernard Francis Law zwang, die Leitung des Erzbistums Boston niederzulegen. Ihm wurde vorgeworfen, pädophile Priester, die sich des Missbrauchs an Kindern schuldig gemacht hatten, nicht etwa anzuzeigen, sondern einfach in andere Diözese zu versetzen.

Matt Damon hat noch keinen Vertrag unterschrieben, jedoch soll er schon länger mit dem Projekt in Verbindung stehen. Bereits Anfang April, als IndieWire bekannt gab, dass Thomas McCarthy den Kirchenskandal verfilmen wird, wurde ein hochrangiger Schauspieler mit dem Film in Verbindung gebracht. Bei dem Schauspieler sollte es sich auch vor zwei Monaten schon um Matt Damon handeln. Sollte die Zusammenarbeit klappen, wird Matt Damon den Journalisten Mike Rezendes spielen, der für den Boston Globe den Kirchenskandal aufdeckte. Die Vorbereitung für das Projekt begann bereits vor zwei Jahren, seitdem hat Thomas McCarthy gemeinsam mit Josh Singer das Drehbuch geschrieben. Produziert wird das Drama von DreamWorks. Wann die Dreharbeiten beginnen, steht noch nicht fest.

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AUSTRALIEN
religion@ORF

Drei emeritierte australische Bischöfe fordern mit einer Onlinepetition ein neues allgemeines Konzil, um gegen Kindesmissbrauch in der katholischen Kirche vorzugehen.

Aufklärungskommissionen könnten zwar Ursachen für Pädophiliefälle und Mängel im Umgang damit analysieren, aber nicht die nötigen Reformen für eine wirksame Prävention durchsetzen, begründete der frühere Weihbischof in Sydney Geoffrey Robinson (75) laut deutscher katholischer Nachrichtenagentur KNA seine Initiative. Unterstützt wird Robinson vom emeritierten Weihbischof für Canberra, Patrick Power (71), sowie von dem amtsenthobenen Bischof von Toowoomba, William Morris (69).

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WASHINGTON (DC)
DFW Catholic

Washington D.C., Jun 18, 2013 / 12:04 am (CNA).- A dismissed request that the International Criminal Court investigate U.S. clergy sex abuse as a crime against humanity misunderstands the nature of the Catholic Church, the Vatican’s U.S. lawyer has said.

“It’s no surprise, as the claims against Benedict are based on a fictitious theory of how the Catholic Church works,” said Jeffrey Lena, the Holy See’s attorney in the U.S., told CNA June 17.

“It’s not a monarchical structure. The monarchical structure is a convenient fiction that plaintiffs use in order to tie local problems to the Holy See.”

The International Criminal Court said in a May 31 letter to the Center for Constitutional Rights that there is not presently a basis to proceed with a request for an investigation of former Pope Benedict XVI and other Vatican leaders for crimes against humanity, the Associated Press reports.

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ILLINOIS
Southtown Star

By Janet Lundquist jlundquist@stmedianetwork.com June 17, 2013

Updated: June 18, 2013 2:09AM
A man who claims that a Joliet Diocese priest sexually assaulted him more than 36 times on various religious retreats during the 1970s has filed a lawsuit against the priest and the diocese.

Former priest Lawrence Gibbs supervised the retreats at his cabin in Wonder Lake, Ill., where Daniel Gorski, now of Wheaton, claims Gibbs gave several teenage boys alcohol and pornography and had them play games, swim and perform other activities naked.

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AUSTRALIA
lewisblayse.net

Lewis Blayse

Cardinal George Pell of Australia is having a well-earned three-month holiday in Rome at his palatial digs, Domus Australia. According to his spokesman, Pell will be catching up on some “reading” before going on a “pilgrimage” through Greece, and possibly, Turkey.

Here we see George with his favourite book he will be catching up on.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

I’m reading Dara Horn’s novel The World to Come (NY: W.W. Norton, 2006) right now, and was taken with this passage when I read it last night:

One night when he was still a young man, the headmaster dreamed that he had died, and had arrived in the next world. When it was the headmaster’s turn to appear before the divine throne, the Holy One took him by the hand and brought him to a small door. The door opened, and the headmaster found himself in a luminous room filled with books: shelves and tables loaded with books, manuscripts in high stacks all over the floor. the headmaster looked around the secret library and smiled. He was sure this room was the place that had been reserved for him in paradise. But as he reached to take a volume off the shelf, the divine hand suddenly grabbed his shoulder and held him back. “These are all the books you were supposed to have written,” the Holy One said. “Why didn’t you write them?” (p. 194).

That parable grips me, of course, because it’s written for me: the books I should have written would fill many a room, and I’ll have much to answer for, I know, when I meet the Holy One, because I’ve left those books unwritten. And used my tongue so loosely, unwisely, and unkindly when it could have been telling stories far more important than the louche, lazy words wont to pour freely out of my mouth.

But I’m struck by Dara Horn’s work, too, and I keep returning to it, because she has a strong traditional Jewish sense of the power of stories, of storytelling. She has a strong Jewish sense of the formative role that stories play in creating cultures and grounding the lives of families. …
Which belong to all of us . . . .

As I read Dara Horn, and as I read the news last week that the International Criminal Court in the Hague had declined to take the case filed by survivors of childhood sexual abuse who wanted Vatican officials prosecuted for covering up this abuse, I keep returning to the biblical story of little David and mighty Goliath. I’ve meditated about that story in the past on this blog as I’ve commented on the very difficult fight that survivors of childhood sexual abuse by Catholic authority figures and those of us standing with these survivors face.

So much money, so much institutional power, so many tentacles everywhere in political life, cultural life, educational life throughout the world . . . . It’s not at all easy for those seeking to stand up to such institutional power and speak the truth to it–especially when stories like the one that has played before our eyes in recent days in Newark, New Jersey, just keep right on happening in the Catholic church, demonstrating to us that no power at all appears capable of stopping Catholic officials from continuing to cover up sexual abuse and endanger children’s welfare.

As Jason Walsh predicted back in 2011, the Hague criminal court has declined to hear the case of abuse survivors against the Vatican, because the Hague court y has an exceptionally high bar when it comes to actions like this. And as David Clohessy’s press release for SNAP re: the Hague’s decision notes, the Associated Press has noted all along that the odds against the Hague opening an investigation of the Vatican are “enormous.”

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ITALIA
Repubblica TV

Un’inchiesta della procura di Savona indaga su sospetti abusi avvenuti nella Santa Sede nei confronti di ragazzini. Coinvolti nomi dell’alto prelato. Francesco Zanardi, di Rete ”L’abuso” racconta ai microfoni di Radio Capital le dichiarazioni di un testimone. Intervista di Niccolò Carratelli e Jean Paul Bellotto

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ILLINOIS
Patch

By Joseph Hosey

A Wheaton man is suing the priest he claims “brutally raped” him dozens of times when he was a teenage altar boy.

The lawsuit filed on behalf of 49-year-old Daniel Gorski against former priest Lawrence Gibbs also names the Diocese of Joliet, former Bishop Joseph Imesch and former Auxiliary Bishop Daniel Ryan as defendants. Gorski’s wife, Kandice Gorski, is listed along with her husband as a plaintiff.

The lawsuit said Gorski was an altar boy at Christ the King church in Lombard when Gibbs was a priest there. In 1977, Gorski started making repeated visits to Gibbs’ Wonder Lake cabin to attend religious retreats.

While at the cabin, Gibbs provided the 13-year-old Gorski with alcohol, and after drinking it the teen “perform(ed) activities naked in front of” the priest, the lawsuit said.

Gorski was also “exposed to pornography, fondled and brutally raped by Lawrence Gibbs at his cabin,” the suit said.

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UNITED STATES
Berger’s Beat

June 17, 2013 12:13 pm | Author: Jerry Berger
In January, for the first time ever, a United Nations panel will question Catholic officials on how and whether the Vatican is honoring an international children’s rights treaty. And this week, in Geneva, that panel will hear from two SNAP leaders, including David Clohessy of St. Louis, who argues that the church hierarchy continues to hurt and endanger kids. On Wednesday, Clohessy and SNAP’s Barbara Blaine will meet for three hours with the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child Committee.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic League

Bill Donohue raises questions about media interest in allegations that the U.S. Ambassador to Belgium was involved in sexual crimes:

There has been a rash of stories about U.S. State Department employees taking drugs and cavorting with prostitutes. In addition, the Ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, was accused of soliciting prostitutes and minor children. While all of these alleged crimes are reprehensible, the Catholic League only has interest in the charge that Gutman “routinely ditched his protective security detail in order to solicit sexual favors from both prostitutes and minor children.” (My italics.)

No media outlet was more outraged over minors being molested by priests than the Boston Globe, but it has shown no interest in this story; it has not run a single piece on it. The New York Times ran one story; the Washington Post ran one story, but unlike the Times, it never mentioned “minor children”; the Los Angeles Times, like the Globe, ignored the story altogether.

Most disturbing is CBS News. It deserves credit for breaking the story, but what it did on June 11 was indefensible. Here is what it said: “One specific example mentioned in the [Inspector General’s] memo refers to the 2011 investigations into an ambassador who ‘routinely ditched…his protective security detail,’ and inspectors suspect this was in order to ‘solicit sexual favors from prostitutes.’”

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ROME
Vatican Insider

A torchlight procession is to be held in memory of Vatican teen Emanuela Orlandi who went missing 30 years ago, in an attempt to shed light on her disappearance

GIACOMO GALEAZZI
VATICAN CITY

A procession to break the long silence and cast light on the “coincidences” that remain unexplained. It will begin in St. Apollinare Square and end in St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican. The itinerary chosen for the procession that will take place on 22 June to commemorate the mysterious disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi – the daughter of a Vatican employee – thirty years ago, is a symbolic one. It traces the route the missing girl used to take to get home, a route she never took again, a route Emanuela’s brother, Pietro Orlandi wants to take once more to shed light on the truth, in his search for justice. “We are asking Pope Francis to join us in our moment of prayer in St. Peter’s Square and to hand the tape recordings of the negotiations that went on between the Holy See and the kidnappers, over to the courts,” Pietro Orlandi told Vatican Insider.

Orlandi wants answers to one aspect of the case in particular. Marco Fassoni Accetti was the key witness in the disappearance, who helped find the flute Emanuela allegedly had with her at the time. Accetti’s confessor at the San Giuseppe De Merode College in Rome was Archbishop Pier Luigi Celata, currently the Vice Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church and secretary of Agostino Casaroli (Vatican Secretary of State) at the time of my sister’s disappearance, used to take the calls on a phone line coded 158,” Pietro Orlandi said. On 17 July 1983, a tape was found containing a recording of the Vatican and the kidnappers negotiating a swap: the girl, in exchange for Wojtyla’s attacker, Ali Ağca and the setting up of a direct phone line to the Vatican Secretary of State, Casaroli. A girl could be heard moaning in the background, pleading for help and saying she did not feel well.

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UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: A Jesuit priest of the Missouri Province, ordained in 1950, Campbell has been credibly accused of the sexual abuse of at least 13 people. Five of those who have come forward were former students at St. Louis University High School, where Campbell taught and resided for many years. One of them disclosed that Campbell sexually abused him during counseling sessions, saying that the sexual activity would cure the boy of his insecurities. When allegations against Campbell emerged in 1987, he was barred from contact with children. When additional allegations surfaced the following year, Campbell was removed from public ministry in St. Louis and sent to live at Regis College in Denver. In 1993 he was barred from all public ministry, according to the Jesuits. Campbell died in April 2009.

Ordained: 1950
Died: April 10, 2009

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DEUTSCHLAND
Anwalt Strafverteidiger

Die Staatsanwaltschaft Bonn ermittelte gegen einen Geistlichen wegen sexuellen Missbrauchs von Kindern (§ 176 StGB). Der Beschuldigte soll sich in einem katholischen Kindergarten vor einem dreieinhalbjährigen Mädchen entkleidet haben. Dem Priester wurde die exhibitionistische Handlung vor dem betroffenem Mädchen und einer Erzieherin des Kindergartens vorgeworfen.

Der Beschuldigte, der bereits seit zehn Jahren den Kindergarten betreut, bestritt im Strafverfahren die Vorwürfe. Nachdem die Staatsanwaltschaft weitere Zeugen vernommen hatte, die den Mann entlasteten, stellte sie das Verfahren mangels Tatverdachts ein.

Obwohl es noch nicht zum Strafprozess kam und er somit auch keine Strafe zahlen musste, blieb das Strafverfahren nicht folgenlos für den Mann. Der Priester wurde nämlich vom Erzbistum Köln zwischenzeitlich beurlaubt und musste aus der Dienstwohnung ausziehen. Aufgrund dieser Folgen und der Missachtung der Unschuldsvermutung, bekam der Geistliche schon während des Strafverfahrens große Unterstützung aus seiner Gemeinde.

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CALIFORNIA
The Tablet (UK)

17 June 2013

The Diocese of Stockton, California is considering bankruptcy in the wake of costly settlements stemming from clergy sex abuse cases, and associated legal costs.

“We have paid out over US$15 million in settlements, judgments, and legal affairs,” said Bishop Stephen Blaire. “So we have depleted, virtually depleted, our reserves.”

He added that the diocese has less than a million dollars left in reserves following legal settlements against priests including Fr Oliver O’Grady, who admitted to sexually abusing 25 children.

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AUSTRALIA
The Tablet (UK)

17 June 2013

A senior Adelaide priest named in the Australian Parliament as having sexually abused the former Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion more than 40 years ago is to seek redress from a parliamentary privileges committee.

Mgr Ian Dempsey was named in Parliament by Independent Senator Nick Xenophon in 2011 as one of three clergy who had allegedly abused Bishop John Hepworth. Dempsey vigorously denied allegations.

Mgr Dempsey, a former vicar-general and naval chaplain, told The Tablet he was “very relieved” by a recommendation last week by the South Australian Director of Public Prosecutions that no charges be laid on the basis of Hepworth’s allegations.

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WISCONSIN
NBC 26

GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) — The Catholic Diocese of Green Bay says its investigation has cleared a retired priest of sexual abuse allegations.

The diocese issued a statement Saturday saying an investigator it hired concluded the allegations were unsubstantiated. So Bishop David Ricken has lifted all restrictions on public ministry against the Reverend Justin Werner.

Werner was accused in April of abusing a minor in the 1970s at St. Edward Parish in Mackville, near Appleton. Werner denied the allegation.

Werner is in his 80s and has been a priest more than 50 years, according to a letter to members of St. Bernard Parish in Appleton, where he served as an assistant in recent years.

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PHILIPPINES
ABS-CBN

by Ira Pedrasa, ABS-CBNnews.com
Posted at 06/17/2013

MANILA – Stories of priests having sexual affairs and siring children are no longer new in the Philippines. But where are these reports most common?

According to the “Altar of Secrets: Sex, Politics, and Money in the Philippine Catholic Church”, author and award-winning journalist Aries Rufo said: “Despite their vow of celibacy, or maybe because of it, priests having affairs or siring children is not a new phenomenon in the Philippines. In some dioceses, the problem has become the norm rather than the exception, particularly in Pampanga.”

Citing sources, Rufo said almost one-third of Pampanga’s more than 100 priests had or have illicit relationships.

Instead of shunning the priests and giving them the boot, however, the community there appears to have given them the support, with the number of church-goers even rising to hear them deliver their homilies.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Monday, June 17, 2013

Vatican City, 15 June 2013 (VIS) – In a declaration published this morning, Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J., director of the Press Office of the Holy See, made it known that: “The Commission of Cardinals for oversight of the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), with the approval of the Holy Father, has appointed ‘ad interim’ Msgr. Battista Mario Salvatore Ricca as Prelate of the Institute.”

“In his capacity as prelate, Msgr. Battista Ricca will act as secretary of the meetings of the Cardinals’ Commission and will attend meetings of the Board of Superintendence in accordance with the Institute’s statutes.”

“Msgr. Battista Ricca, who was born in Offlaga in the province of Brescia, Italy, in 1956, is part of the Diplomatic Service, serving in the First Section of the Secretariat of State. He is also Director of the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the Domus Internationalis Paulus VI, the Domus Romana Sacerdotalis, and the Casa San Benedetto.”

“As can be recalled, he succeeds Archbishop Piero Pioppo, currently Apostolic Nuncio to Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea, who held the post from 2006 to 2010.”

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ILLINOIS
Patch

Posted by Charles Menchaca (Editor), June 17, 2013

A West Chicago priest who was sent to prison for criminal sexual assault of a St. Charles teen could be headed back to his native country, according to media reports.

Alejandro Flores, 40, served about 80 percent of his four-year sentence and was released on parole June 6, according to Illinois Department of Corrections records. From there he went to a detention center while officials determine his immigration status, the Associated Press reports. If Flores can’t stay in the U.S., he might be deported back to his native Bolivia.

Flores pled guilty in 2010 for sexually abusing a St. Charles boy from St. Mary’s Church in West Chicago. The 13-year-old boy’s mother contacted police after her boyfriend found the priest and the boy in a “suspicious position” at her home, the Associated Press story said.

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UNITED STATES
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America

Jun 14, 2013

Website is unique religious/nonprofit partnership
Provides resources to help stay safe online, build faith
Guides parents and children with Internet, mobile devices, other technology

NEW YORK – The Internet Ministries Department of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese (GOA) and the Communications Department of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) have launched www.faithandsafety.org, a resource for adults to help children safely navigate the online and mobile worlds. The website and complementary social media channels (http://twitter.com/faithandsafety and http://facebook.com/faithandsafety) address safe use of the Internet, mobile devices, and other technologies, while emphasizing the positive use of technology to support children’s faith.

The initiative, funded in part by a grant from the Catholic Communication Campaign, which receives donations from U.S. Catholics, was launched in recognition of June as being Internet Safety Month.

“Our children look to their parents for wisdom and guidance. However, many parents feel inadequately equipped to help their children traverse the unfamiliar terrain of the digital social world,” said His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios of America, Primate of the Greek Orthodox Church in America. “This joint initiative between our two Churches is a positive step in helping parents equip their children in the digital world. We have a responsibility to the Lord Himself Who said, ‘Let the children come unto Me’ (Matt. 19.14).”

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NEW YORK
Staten Island Advance

By Maura Grunlund/Staten Island Advance
on June 17, 2013

Prior to presiding at a joyous Father’s Day debt-burning ceremony at St. Ann’s R.C. Church in Dongan Hills, Cardinal Timothy Dolan had some bad news for ailing parishes as he acknowledged that church closings are on the table as part of the Archdiocese of New York’s, “Making All Things New,” initiative.

The cardinal’s final decisions are expected to be implemented on Jan. 1, 2015. A letter from the cardinal that was read at weekend masses at parishes throughout Staten Island confirmed what was previously reported in the Advance, that the parishes of St. Joseph’s and St. Mary’s in Rosebank and Immaculate Conception in Stapleton will be headed by one pastor as a prelude to the parish restructuring program.

While the three parishes will operate independently and no mention was made of shuttering any of them, the cardinal indicated that they will be working together to determine their future viability.

The cardinal made it clear in his blog and last week’s Catholic New York that he thinks there are too many parishes and that he wants to trim the $48 million that the archdiocese spends each year to operate its churches and schools. The archdiocese already has shuttered some parish schools — including those at St. Joseph’s, St. Mary’s, and Immaculate Conception — in its move to a regional education system.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

AAP June 17, 2013

ORPHANS who say they were abused as children in Salvation Army homes are demanding compensation from the Christian charity.

A group of about 20 held a silent protest outside the charity’s Sydney headquarters on Monday, urging the Salvos to contribute to a reparations fund to help rebuild victims’ shattered lives.

A spokeswoman for Care Leavers Australia Network (CLAN), the organisation representing alleged victims, said many of the protesters had been terribly abused between the 1920s and 1980s.

“Heinous crimes were committed against them while in the care of the Salvation Army,” Leonie Sheedy told AAP.

“The boys and girls in those homes suffered sexual rape, beating, floggings,” she said.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Claire O’Sullivan
Irish Examiner Reporter

Kathleen Whelan was one of about a dozen former Magdalene laundry survivors who travelled to Cork’s City Hall to meet the Lord Mayor as he signed a book of apologies for the women.

At 17 years of age, Kathleen was sent to the Good Shepherd laundry in New Ross, where she spent eight years washing and ironing clothes without pay.

In 1968, when the New Ross laundry closed, the 25-year-old moved, with the nuns, to the Clifton convalescent home in Montenotte — run by the Good Shepherds.

Nearly 50 years later, she still remains in the care of the nuns. “Clifton was a totally different set up. We get paid for our work and everything,” she said. “That was because the health board had a part of it.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

John P. Martin, Inquirer Staff Writer
POSTED: Monday, June 17, 2013

A pension fund for priests cited as a priority in a $200 million fund-raising campaign by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia has fallen precariously short of money, and church officials want parishes and retired clergy to help cover the shortfall.

In meetings this spring, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput told priests the plan had been underfunded, poorly managed, and was spent on rising health-care costs for clergy, according to three priests who attended or were briefed on the talks. Chaput said the fund needed $90 million to be solvent but had less than $4.5 million, they said.

Clergy living at the archdiocese’s Delaware County retirement villa and other church-owned facilities are expected to contribute 40 percent of their pensions to the archdiocese, the priests said. And parishes’ annual assessments to the pension fund will rise from $6,700 to about $9,300 per priest, they said.

The changes come two years after the archdiocese ended a fund-raising campaign that made shoring up the priests’ pension plan one of its goals.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

The Filipino cardinal stressed this after his book presentation on Friday evening

GIACOMO GALEAZZI
VATICAN CITY

“The Curia is in need of purification and reform. Every Curia needs purification in order to guarantee the truth” Filipino cardinal, Luis Antonio Tagle told journalists Friday night, when asked if Curia reform was necessary.

Cardinal Tagle was born to a Chinese mother, in Manila, where he is now archbishop. He is a parish priest, rector of a seminary, a theology and philosophy professor, a Second Vatican Council scholar and belongs to Giuseppe Alberigo’s Bologna school of thought. When he finished presenting his book, “Easter People: Living Community”, Tagle answered a question about the Vatican bank (IOR): Is reform needed? “Possibly, after all, Ecclesia Semper Reformanda Est,” the cardinal replied.

At the age of thirty, Cardinal Tagle found himself penniless in America. He earned a living working in a library, transporting packages and boxes. His mother (a former employees – as was his father – of Equitable bank) broke down in tears when she found out. But Tagle would not accept any money from his parents or his brother who was living in the U.S. The cardinal makes good use of television and the internet: He appears regularly on Filipino television, giving commentaries on Sunday readings and his catecheses for young people have been published on the web weekly since 1999. The text contains a series of meditations inspired by the modern world on the one hand, but on the other are deeply rooted in the Gospel of the Resurrection. This can only be adequately proclaimed by prophetic and missionary communities that follow the spirit of the New Testament Church and promote hope and solidarity.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

JANET FIFE-YEOMANS THE DAILY TELEGRAPH JUNE 17, 2013

LOOPHOLES in safety checks for people working with children including neighbourhood sporting groups and lifeguards are to be the first target of the royal commission into child sex abuse.

Commission CEO Janette Dines, yesterday said that the commission had decided to make the issue the first topic for public submissions because it had been highlighted as a concern by victims’ and survivors’ groups.

In most states, individuals need to apply for a Working With Children Check but screening checks vary between states and include a police check, criminal history check, relevant employment proceedings and findings from professional disciplinary bodies. It will be the subject of the commission’s first call for public submissions as they continue hearing the stories of victims in private sessions.

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MINNESOTA
Fairbault County Register

June 16, 2013

by Paula Gibbins – Register Staff Writer (pgibbins@faribaultcountyregister.com) , Faribault County Register

The priest at St. Peter & Paul Catholic Church in Blue Earth is facing criminal charges.

Father Leo Charles Koppala was charged with 2nd-degree criminal sexual conduct in Faribault County District Court on Monday, June 10.

The alleged victim was an 11-year-old girl.

The incident allegedly occurred on Friday, June 7.

Koppala was arrested by Blue Earth Police Chief Tom Fletcher on Saturday, June 8 in the early evening.

According to the complaint, Koppala had been invited to the victim’s grandmother’s home for dinner on the evening of Friday, June 7.

At some point during the evening, the grandmother received a phone call. The alleged victim was in the basement watching TV when Koppala came downstairs as well.

The complaint states that the defendant kissed the victim on the cheeks and lips. It also states, “(The victim) said that Koppala put one hand on her lower back and the other hand on her chest.”

Also while downstairs with the victim, the complaint states the defendant, “told (the victim) that when she was done with school, he wanted to come to her house so they could be free together. Koppala told (the victim) that he loved her.”

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AUSTRALIA
lewisblayse.net

Lewis Blayse

The Victorian Parliamentary enquiry, as well as the NSW government enquiry into clerical child sexual abuse, have had a hard time getting answers from bishops, at least in public. The bishops have been able to be a bit “invisible” through the use of several devices.

In the past, churches have used the device of shifting paedophile clergy around as a way of hiding them (see below).

Cardinal Pell has long used the invisibility cloak proffered by sympathetic media outlets, such as CathNews. Here, he is usually cut out of the photograph of him escorting Ridsdale into court (see image above).

The Geelong bishops were able to avoid questions from the Victorian Parliamentary enquiry last month, by hiding behind the cloak of the former bishop. It was, apparently, all his fault, but he could not appear because of age and health excuses. Result: invisibility intact.

Pell, himself, used an even better cloak, as befits his rank. He could repair the flaw in the bishops’ cloaks (see below). He hid behind a dead predecessor, whom he blamed for everything. Result: invisibility inviolable.

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WISCONSIN
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Raquel Rutledge of the Journal Sentinel June 15, 2013

An investigation into alleged abuse by Father Justin Werner, a retired priest, has concluded the accusation was unsubstantiated, the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay announced Saturday.

Werner was accused in April of abusing a minor in the 1970s at St. Edward Parish in Mackville, just north of Appleton. Werner denied the allegation.

According to Saturday’s statement from the diocese:

An independent professional investigator concluded the allegation was unsubstantiated and restrictions on Werner’s ministry have been lifted by Bishop David Ricken.

Werner had been temporarily restricted from performing any public ministry pending the outcome of the investigation.

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WISCONSIN
Green Bay Press-Gazette

The Catholic Diocese of Green Bay said Saturday it has cleared the Rev. Justin Werner in allegations of abuse of a minor at an Outagamie County church in the 1970s.

It said Werner, a retired senior priest, was cleared following an investigation.

“The independent investigator has concluded the allegation against Father Justin Werner is unsubstantiated,” the diocese said in a press release issued Saturday afternoon.

Restrictions on Werner’s ministry have been lifted by Bishop David Ricken.

“At the same time, we as a diocese must be diligent in our due process to ensure the safety of our children and to advocate on behalf of victims/survivors,” the diocese said in the release. “Therefore, the investigation regarding the allegation of abuse from the 1970’s continues.”

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WISCONSIN
Post-Crescent

GREEN BAY — An independent investigator could not verify an allegation that the Rev. Justin N. Werner abused a child at St. Edward Parish in Mackville during the 1970s, according to a statement Saturday from the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay.

Because the allegation could not be substantiated, Bishop David L. Ricken has lifted the temporary restrictions that prevented Werner from performing public ministry.

The investigation into the alleged abuse from the 1970s will continue, but Justine Lodl, director of communications for the diocese, said the investigation no longer will involve Werner.

“There is an allegation, so we need to continue to investigate because the perpetrator hasn’t been found,” Lodl told Post-Crescent Media. “They haven’t been named.”

In April the diocese acknowledged it had received an allegation of abuse of a minor against Werner, a retired priest, and that he was restricted from public ministry pending the outcome of an investigation.

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NEW JERSEY
Asbury Park Press

Written by
Kathleen Hopkins
@Khopkinsapp

LAKEWOOD — The choice before a deeply religious father was one he never wanted to make.

His son had been molested by a fellow Orthodox Jew, and the local rabbis to whom he reported the abuse did nothing to remove the offender from his positions as camp counselor and schoolteacher.

The father had to choose: He could follow Orthodox tradition and allow the local rabbis to continue to handle the matter, or he could go to the police.

The father went to the police. Now the molester, Yosef Kolko, is headed to state prison.

But some in the community saw the father as the offender for involving the secular authorities in an Orthodox matter. He was ostracized from his community in Lakewood, where he was a respected rabbi, Ocean County prosecutors said. He resigned from his job at Lakewood’s prestigious rabbinical college and moved his family to the Midwest.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Claire O’Sullivan
Irish Examiner Reporter

His defence comes after the UN committee that led to its establishment raised serious questions about the inquiry.

Speaking in the Dáil, Mr Shatter brushed off recent complaints from the UN Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) the report was “incomplete” and lacked “many elements of a prompt, independent, and thorough investigation”.

“The Irish Government is satisfied that the McAleese Report is an independent, comprehensive, factual account of these institutions … It also showed that many of preconceptions about these institutions were not supported by the facts,” he said in response to questions from Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald and Independent TD Maureen O’Sullivan.

In a recent letter to Irish UN representative Gerard Corr, the vice-chair of UNCAT was highly critical of the inquiry headed by former senator Martin McAleese.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

JANET FIFE-YEOMANS THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH JUNE 16, 2013

IT was supposed to be a fun birthday surprise, a male stripper for Kimberly Harrington’s 30th birthday.

But the risque yet innocent gesture organised by her friends brought all of Kimberly’s childhood horror flooding back.

Memories of when she was a little girl playing with her toys in the back garden and the next door neighbour would lift her over the fence and take her into the garage for what he said was their “special game”.

She was so young she can’t remember when the sexual assaults began, but she can recall exactly when they stopped – the day her parents moved house when she was just six years old.

Now a mother herself, Kimberly, 30, wants to tell her story because she wants judges who sentence child sex offenders to realise that just because abuse occurred when the victim was still a child, it doesn’t mean you ever forget.

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WISCONSIN
NBC 26

By Cassandra Duvall

GREEN BAY – The Green Bay Catholic Diocese says an investigation into alleged child abuse has been ruled unsubstantial.

On April 20, the Diocese said it received the allegation of abuse against Father Justin N. Werner, a senior (retired) priest. Werner was temporarily restricted from performing any public ministry until an investigation could be completed. The alleged abuse was said to have happened at Saint Edward Parish in Mackville during the 1970’s.

The Diocese said an independent investigator has concluded the allegation against Father Justin Werner is unsubstantiated.

The restrictions of Fr. Werner’s ministry have been lifted by Bishop David L. Ricken.

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GREEN BAY (WI)
Fox 11

Published : Saturday, 15 Jun 2013

GREEN BAY – The Green Bay Catholic Diocese says an allegation of abuse of a minor by a priest has been deemed unsubstantiated.

On April 20th, the diocese said it had received the allegation against Father Justin Werner, a senior (retired) priest.

The abuse, which Fr. Werner denied, was alleged to have happened at St. Edward Parish in Mackville in the 1970s.

Fr. Werner was temporarily restricted from performing any public ministry pending an investigation.

According to a statement from the Diocese Saturday, an independent investigator has concluded the allegation against Fr. Werner is unsubstantiated.

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CALIFORNIA
Mercury News

The Associated Press
Posted: 06/15/2013

STOCKTON, Calif.—The Roman Catholic bishop of Stockton is warning parishioners that his diocese might run out of money before it has paid damages to all of the people who have sued over clergy sex abuse.

The Modesto Bee reported Saturday ( http://bit.ly/13IoGyx) that Bishop Stephen Baire said in a letter read to the 35 parishes he oversees that the diocese might have to file for bankruptcy, but that a decision hasn’t been made.

Baire told The Bee that the main reason the diocese’s finances are in such bad shape is because of the $32 million it and its insurers have so far paid out to settle 34 lawsuits arising from the actions of former priests.

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UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: Rev. Chester “Chet” Gaiter professed vows as a Jesuit brother of the Missouri Province in 1962. He worked as an infirmarian for Jesuit communities in Kansas City and St. Louis before attending divinity school. Gaiter was ordained a priest of the Society of Jesus in 1976. During his priesthood he pastored several parishes. He served also as a campus minister and religion teacher at Cardinal Ritter High School in St. Louis. Gaiter retired in the mid-1990s, reportedly due to problems with memory loss, which led to a diagnosis of early Alzheimer’s disease. In the 2000s two men – who came forward separately – accused Gaiter of having sexually abused them while they were Cardinal Ritter students in the 1980s. One of the men accused three other priests as well, two of whom taught at Cardinal Ritter High, and one of whom the man said began to molest him when he was a third grader in a St. Louis parochial school. This accuser said the priests plied him with alcohol and drugs. Gaiter died in 2010.

Ordained: 1976
Died: Aug. 14, 2010

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Katholisches

(New York/Den Haag/Rom) Zwei amerikanische Organisationen, die laut Eigendefinition „für die Rechte der sexuellen Mißbrauchsopfer durch katholische Priester“ eintreten, haben bekanntlich beim Internationalen Strafgerichtshof in Den Haag ein Dossier hinterlegt, mit dem sie fordern, daß Papst Benedikt XVI., Kardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Kardinal Angelo Sodano und Kardinal William Levada wegen Verbrechen gegen die Menschheit der Prozeß gemacht wird. Sie hätten nämlich Vergewaltigungen und sexuellen Mißbrauch gegen Kinder in der ganzen Welt toleriert und die systematische Verschleierung möglich gemacht. „Eine sehr interessante, unangemessene und zudem utopische Aktion, die endlich die gewaltigen Anstrengungen ans Licht bringt, um jeden Preis den laizistischen Angriff auf die Kirche fortzusetzen“, kommentierte die katholische Seite UCCR.

Die meisten Medienberichte ergriffen Partei für Papst Benedikt XVI., betonten dessen vielfältige Bemühungen und Initiativen Klarheit zu schaffen und dem Mißbrauch Riegel vorzuschieben. Der Vorstoß beim Internationalen Strafgerichtshof könnte sich als Bumerang für antiklerikale Bestrebungen erweisen. Allerdings besteht durch die überzogene, antikirchliche Aktion der beiden amerikanischen Organisationen die Gefahr, vom eigentlichen Übel, dem Phänomen Pädophilie abzulenken, die in der westlichen Welt zunimmt.

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DEN HAAG
Katholisches

(Den Haag) Der Internationaler Strafgerichtshof (IStGH) mit Sitz in Den Haag hat den Antrag abgelehnt, gegen Papst Benedikt XVI. zu ermitteln. Zwei amerikanische Organisationen hatten das katholische Kirchenoberhaupt zur Anzeige gebracht. Sie forderten eine Strafverfolgung wegen angeblicher „Beihilfe“ vatikanischer Behörden beim sexuellen Mißbrauchsskandal der Kirche in den USA. Der Vatikan habe Informationen vertuscht und sei damit mitschuldig und da der Papst der oberste Verantwortliche der Kirche ist, sei gegen ihn zu ermitteln.

Bei den beiden Organisationen handelte es sich um SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests), eine Organisation, die sich als Hilfsorganisation für Mißbrauchsopfer darstellt und CCR (Center for Costitutional Rights), einer linksextremen Vereinigung. Siehe den Bericht: Wer sind die Organisationen, die Papst Benedikt XVI vor den Internationalen Strafgerichtshof zerren wollen?

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DEUTSCHLAND
Frankfurter Allgemeine

Kein Papst „darf in die Fußstapfen seines Vorgängers treten“, sagt der Chef der Glaubenskongregation, Erzbischof Gerhard Ludwig Müller in Rom. Jeder müsse sich treu bleiben; denn theologisch beziehe sich der vom Heiligen Geist jeweils neu berufene Papst direkt auf Petrus, „den Fischer mit Stärken und Schwächen, den Jesus rief, um die Kirche aufzubauen“. Mithin folge Franziskus, früher Erzbischof von Buenos Aires, „nur chronologisch“ auf Benedikt, sagt der ehemalige Bischof von Regensburg, den Franziskus seit seiner eigenen Wahl am 13. März als Chef der wichtigsten Kongregation schon oft empfing. Müller sieht bei Franziskus Neuerungen in der Form, so bei der Kleidung oder bei einer offeneren Sprache wie jetzt über Korruption und eine homosexuelle Seilschaft an seiner Kurie. Gleichzeitig gebe es theologisch aber Kontinuität. Die derzeit in manchen EU-Staaten eingeführte Gleichstellung gleichgeschlechtlicher Partnerschaften verurteilt Müller als „Anschlag auf die Ehe“. Man werde „Homosexuellen nicht gerecht, wenn man die Ehe zwischen Mann und Frau relativiert“.

Als schönes Zeichen theologischer Kontinuität beschreibt der 1947 in Mainz-Finthen geborene Müller die Enzyklika zu Glauben und Verkündigung, die Franziskus bald veröffentlichen werde; „unabhängig, von wem die Einzelteile genau entworfen wurden“, sagt Müller und geht so auf den Text ein, den Papst Benedikt XVI. nach Angaben von Vatikansprecher Federico Lombardi weitgehend abgeschlossen hatte, bevor er am 28. Februar zurücktrat. Einer Bischofssynode sagte Franziskus dieser Tage: „Dies ist eine Enzyklika, die von vier Händen geschrieben wurde, denn Papst Benedikt begann sie und gab sie dann mir. Ein starkes, schönes Dokument, das uns allen helfen wird. Das meiste war seine Arbeit, ich habe sie abgeschlossen.“

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VATICAN CITY
The New York Times

By RACHEL DONADIO
Published: June 15, 2013

ROME — Three months into his papacy, Pope Francis took his first significant step on Saturday toward making changes at the troubled Vatican Bank, naming a trusted prelate to fill a key vacancy in an indication that the pope intends to keep a close watch on the institution.

In a statement, the Vatican said Francis had approved of the nomination of Msgr. Battista Mario Salvatore Ricca as interim prelate of the bank, a top post that allows him access to its inner workings.

The appointment is Francis’s first for the Vatican Bank. The bank’s reluctance to reveal its client list has put it under intense pressure in recent years to meet European norms to prevent money laundering as a condition for using the euro.

Monsignor Ricca, who manages the Vatican residence where the pope has chosen to live as well as others there, will report to a committee of cardinals led by the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, and will be present at all board meetings, the statement said.

In one of his final acts as pope, Benedict XVI in February named Ernst von Freyberg, 54, a German aristocrat and industrialist, as the first non-Italian president of the bank, nine months after his predecessor, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, was ousted in a boardroom coup after intense internal power struggles.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

By Steve Scherer
VATICAN CITY | Sat Jun 15, 2013

(Reuters) – Pope Francis made a key appointment to the Vatican bank on Saturday, part of a clean-up of the institution which has a history of murky financial dealings and is being closely watched by the European money-laundering watchdog.

Francis backed the naming of Monsignor Mario Salvatore Ricca as prelate for the bank, formally known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), a Vatican statement said.

The prelate reports to the commission of cardinals that oversees the bank, attends board meetings and has privileged access to its famously secret financial activities. The job had been vacant since 2011.

Shortly before resigning, Pope Benedict named Ernst von Freyberg, a German lawyer, to be IOR’s new chairman, replacing Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, who was ousted eight months earlier for allegedly neglecting his duties.

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UNITED STATES
Pope Crimes & Vatican Evils…

Updated June 14, 2013

Paris Arrow

Shame on The Hague for refusing to investigate on Benedict XVI and the Vatican’s crimes agains humanity’s children for over HALF A CENTURY OF THE 20TH CENTURY. As we pointed out, Excerpt: “Even the International Criminal Court application about such crimes has been stymied by catholic-run legislators and jurists” . Read more here Vatican Last Tsar Benedict XVI resigns as Vatican Pontiff of Vatican Catholic Church. It’s deceitful to say “Roman Pontiff” of “Roman Catholic Church”http://popecrimes.blogspot.ca/2013/02/vatican-last-tsar-benedict-xvi-resigns_13.html —

But SNAP will persist and continue to give more evidence, see news below. May those judges at The Hague bring the final justice to children victims of the Vatican of the 20th century – once and for all – before Benedict XVI dies.

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VATICAN CITY
DFW Catholic

Vatican City, Jun 15, 2013 / 06:31 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The commission of cardinals that oversees the so-called Vatican bank has filled a key position by naming Monsignor Battista Ricca the secretary for the board and the commission itself.

Vatican press office director Father Federico Lombardi announced the appointment of Msgr. Ricca in a June 15 statement.

“The Supervisory Commission of Cardinals Institute for Works of Religion, with the approval of the Holy Father has appointed Msgr. Battista Mario Salvatore Ricca Prelate of the Institute,” Fr. Lombardi said.

His role will involve serving as the secretary for the meetings of the cardinals’ commission and assisting in meetings of the Board of Superintendents.

Msgr. Ricca currently oversees St. Martha’s House, where Pope Francis has decided to live, as well as several other Vatican houses around Rome.

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UNITED STATES
Toledo Blade

The International Criminal Court has rejected a request by clergy sex abuse victims to investigate former Pope Benedict XVI and Vatican cardinals for possible crimes against humanity.

The tribunal, based in The Hague, told attorneys for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests on May 31 that it did not have jurisdiction over what the survivor’s network claimed.

Attorneys for the victims had argued the global church maintained a “long-standing and pervasive system of sexual violence” despite promises to swiftly oust predators.

The Toledo survivors organization argued that rape, sexual violence and torture are considered crimes against humanity as described in the international treaty that spells out the court’s mandate. The complaint also accuses Benedict and Vatican officials of creating policies that perpetuated the damage, constituting an attack against a civilian population.

But the court wrote in its letter to victims’ attorneys that it can only investigate crimes committed after the tribunal was formed and can only examine “the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole, namely genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.”

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HOLLYWOOD (CA)
We Got This Covered

June 15, 2013

Lauren Humphries-Brooks

Matt Damon likes bringing major social issues to the big screen. He did it most recently with hydrofracking in Promised Land, he tried to do it in Green Zone, and now he’s interested in handling the Catholic Church sex scandal in Tom McCarthy’s new film.

Damon is reportedly the frontrunner to star in McCarthy’s film about the Boston Globe reporters who hunted up and broke the story that Cardinal Bernard Law was moving priests accused of sexual assault into other parishes, effectively covering up the sex scandal. Law was America’s Senior Catholic Prelate, the Archbishop of Boston, and the first high-level official to be accused of covering up child molestation charge within the Church. He resigned as Archbishop in 2002, but not before sixty-five parishes in the Archdiocese had to be closed down.

The scandal that was broken by the Boston Globe had far-reaching consequences for the Catholic Church, and seems like perfect fodder for a social reform film. McCarthy’s film wants to be a sort of All The President’s Men-style drama, which means that it would trace the journalists covering the story, and presumably the attempts at cover-up. McCarthy has been working on the script with Josh Singer (The West Wing) for awhile now. With Matt Damon interested and potentially involved, and DreamWorks already on board, it sounds like the film is moving closer to actual production.

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CALIFORNIA
Monterey County Herald

By VIRGINIA HENNESSEY
Herald Staff Writer
Posted: 06/14/2013

It won’t likely put a dime in his pocket, but the man molested as a teenager by fugitive priest Antonio Cortes won an emotional victory on Friday.

Judge Thomas Wills sanctioned Cortes for failing to appear for the second time in a lawsuit filed by “John Doe,” striking the priest’s original answer that denied the allegations in the case.

The ruling wipes the slate clean, as though Cortes never responded to the lawsuit, and clears the way for the victim to claim a default judgment and damages against the priest, who is believed to be in Mexico.

The plaintiff’s attorney, Chris Lavorato, said he will ask Wills to award his client between $5 million and $10 million within the next 60 days.

Lavorato said he realizes the likelihood his client will see any of the money is nil, but it would hang a judgment over Cortes’ head and help heal a wound in the victim’s heart.

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FLORIDA
marcoislandflorida.com

The former head priest at St. Leo Catholic Church in Bonita Springs has been removed from the priesthood in the wake of two-year-old charges he mismanaged his duties at the parish, fathered a child and disobeyed the bishop.

Stan Strycharz did not appeal the decision made by a three-judge panel of priests not connected with the Diocese of Venice. Bishop Frank Dewane issued a letter to St. Leo parishioners last weekend explaining the outcome of the canonical trial.

“They declared that Mr. Strycharz no longer has the ‘power, office, function, right, privilege, faculty, favor, title or insignia’ of the ministerial priesthood. This means that he is unable to function anywhere as a priest,” Dewane wrote.

Strycharz had the representation of a lawyer chosen by him, according to Dewane’s letter.

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VATICAN CITY
WSAV

Updated: Jun 15, 2013

By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press

VATICAN CITY (AP) – Pope Francis took his first major step in reforming the troubled Vatican bank on Saturday by tapping a trusted prelate to help oversee its management, in a sign he wants to know more about its activities.

Francis signed off on naming Monsignor Battista Mario Salvatore Ricca as interim prelate of the Institute for Religious Works.

It’s a key job that has been left vacant since 2011: The prelate oversees the bank’s activities, attends its board meetings and, critically, has access to all its documentation. The prelate reports to the commission of cardinals who run the bank and is currently headed by the Vatican No. 2. That gives Ricca a virtually direct line to the pope.

Ricca is currently director of the Vatican hotel where Francis lives and other Vatican-owned residential institutes for clergy. They include the Domus Internationalis Paulus VI, the central Rome residence where the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio always stayed on visits to Rome and where he famously paid his bill and bid farewell to the staff the day after he was elected pope.

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