ABUSE TRACKER

UNITED KINGDOM
Eastbourne Herald

A priest who worked at St Luke’s Church in Stone Cross is being investigated for ‘sexually motivated’ inappropriate behaviour during his time as a nurse.

Stephen Sheridan, who worked at the Stone Cross church as assistant curator, is accused of behaving inappropriately with patients between 2002 and 2010 while working for the NHS in Worthing.

Mr Sheridan was ordained as a priest by the Diocese of Chichester in 2007.

The Diocese of Chichester has provided a report to the nursing watchdog, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), which is leading the investigation into Mr Sheridan’s alleged misconduct.

In 2008 he is accused of behaving ‘inappropriately’ to a ‘vulnerable’ 16-year-old girl and sending her text messages, a birthday card.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC – The Spirit of Things

Sunday 16 June 2013

Patricia Feenan was a ‘cradle Catholic’ with a strong loyalty to the Church.

Learning of her son’s sexual abuse by the parish priest, a family friend, shattered her world and rocked her faith in the Church.

The launch of her book Holy Hell in late 2012, prompted ABC’s Lateline interview with (then) Detective Sergeant Peter Fox, whose allegations into the handling of child sex abuse cases triggered the Royal Inquiry into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Michelle Mulvihill’s family Sunday lunches were regularly attended by a half dozen young priests, so it was no surprise when, as a psychologist, she worked with the Catholic Church’s Toward’s Healing program as a mediator/facilitator.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Regensburg-Digital

Bei seinem ersten Auftritt im Regensburger Presseclub hinterließ Bischof Rudolf Voderholzer einen weitgehend positiven Eindruck. Beim „Thema“ sexueller Missbrauch indes wirkt er engagiert, allerdings auch schlecht informiert. Sein Pressesprecher hat dabei ein ganz eigenes Verständnis von der Wahrheit.

Er wirkt herzlich. Auch bedacht, ruhig und diplomatisch. Trotz klarer Positionen. Als Bischof Rudolf Voderholzer am Donnerstag zum ersten Mal seit seinem Amtsantritt den Regensburger Presseclub besucht, antwortet er lange und ausführlich auf alle Fragen, die ihm gestellt werden (auf dem Podium moderieren Christine Schröpf, Mittelbayerische Zeitung, und Karl Birkenseer, Kirchenspezialist der Passauer Neuen Presse).

Das gilt für den recht lockeren Einstieg zum finanziellen Engagement für Hochwasser-Opfer im Bistum. „Man möchte eigentlich gleich anpacken und mithelfen“, sagt Voderholzer. Oder auch für seine fußballerischen Vorlieben („Der FC Bayern und der Jahn Regensburg müssen sich mein Mitfühlen jetzt teilen.“). Die zum Teil recht speziellen Fragen, die PNP-Redakteur Karl Birkenseer zu Liturgie und Glaube („Wird man in Zukunft nur katholisch sein, wenn man frömmer wird?“ „Worin zeigt sich die eucharistische Frömmigkeit?“) stellt, und die selbst bei manch begeistertem Katholiken im rappelvollen Presseclub – Journalisten sind deutlich in der Minderheit – für Ermüdungserscheinungen sorgen, berühren ein Steckenpferd des Bischofs und sorgen für längere Referate.

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DEUTSCHLAND
taz

Komm zu den Katholiken / da gibt es immer was zu beten”, heißt es im kürzlich vom WDR zensierten Rap “Dunk dem Herrn” der Comedienne Carolin Kebekus. Das – also der suggerierte Reim – ist natürlich grob übertrieben. Aber die Missbrauchsfälle der letzten Jahrzehnte sind weiterhin nicht aufgearbeitet, und auf den weiter zurückliegenden lastet schwer der Mantel des Vergessens.

Und künftig? Künftig hat das Berliner Erzbistum mit dem Franziskaner Josef Schulte eine weitere “Ansprechperson” für Fälle des Verdachts sexuellen Missbrauchs durch kirchliches Personal – quasi als klerikales Pendant zu der Psychologin Sigrid Rogge, die seit 2011 “Missbrauchsbeauftragte” des Erzbistums ist (ein Begriff in leichter semantischer Schieflage, aber daraus muss man nun wirklich keinem einen Strick drehen).

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DEUTSCHLAND
Kolner Stadt-Anzeiger

Bergisch Gladbach.
Medien berichteten am Mittwoch, dass die ehemaligen Heimkinder, die in einem Knabenheim in Bergisch Gladbach-Moitzfeld missbraucht wurden, keine Entschädigung für die Leiden erhalten sollen, die sie in der Diakonie-Einrichtung erdulden mussten. Pfarrer Jürgen Hohlweger, Vorstand der Bergischen Diakonie Aprath, des ehemaligen Betreibers der Einrichtung, stellt dazu klar: “Diese Meldungen sind falsch. Pressevertreter haben hier zwei unterschiedliche Sachen in einen Topf geworfen.”

Am Montag hatte die Evangelische Kirche im Rheinland angekündigt, Opfer von sexueller Gewalt durch Bedienstete der Kirche mit 5000 Euro pro Fall zu entschädigen. Daraufhin rief ein Missbrauchsopfer aus dem Bensberger Heim bei der Diakonie Aprath an und fragte nach, ob er Anspruch auf diese Abfindung habe. Dies wurde von Seiten der Diakonie verneint. Hohlweger: “Daraus wurde abgeleitet, dass wir nicht zahlen wollten. Bei den Fällen in Bensberg handelt es sich aber nicht um Personen, die von Amtsträgern der Kirche missbraucht wurden.”

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DEUTSCHLAND
Atheist Media Blog

Nürnberg: Bewährungsstrafe für Ex-Mesner nach Missbrauch und Vergewaltigung von Kindern

Vor dem Amtsgericht in Nürnberg spielten sich am gestrigen Donnerstag dramatische Szenen ab. Das Gericht verurteilte einen Mesner in Ruhestand wegen sexuellen Missbrauchs und Vergewaltigung von Kindern zu einer zweijährigen Bewährungsstrafe.

Der heute 69-Jährige hat sich an zwei Mädchen, die heute 21 und 22 Jahre alt sind, in der heimischen Gartenlaube, in der Küche, im ehelichen Schlafzimmer sowie in der Sakristei sexuell vergangen. Von den insgesamt sechs Fällen war einer eine Vergewaltigung.

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NEW YORK
UB Reporter

By SUE WUETCHER

Published June 13, 2013

UB law professor Susan Mangold will open the Newman Center’s annual Bridge Lecture Series on June 19 with a legal update on the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal.

The talk by Mangold, co-director of the Family Law Program in the UB Law School, and all remaining talks in the series will take place at 7 p.m. in the Newman Center, 495 Skinnersville Road, across from the Creekside Village apartments on the North Campus.

All talks are free and open to the public.

The aim of the lecture series, now in its 11th year, is to connect the UB family to the surrounding community.

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CALIFORNIA
Modesto Bee

By Sue Nowicki
snowicki@modbee.com

It will be 20 years next month since Oliver O’Grady last served as a priest in the Stockton Diocese. Yet the impact of the notorious pedophile’s 22 years at five parishes remains huge — on his victims and on the diocese’s finances.

To date, more than two dozen of O’Grady’s victims have collected nearly $25 million in damages from the diocese and its insurance providers, including a $1.75 million settlement announced last week. That does not include an additional $500,000 scheduled to be paid over the next several years in one case, and there are two additional O’Grady lawsuits pending.

Compare that with about $7 million awarded for all other clergy abuse lawsuits against six priests and one Catholic brother, including the largest, a $3.75 million award against the Rev. Michael Kelly last year. Two more lawsuits are pending against him.

Sunday, a letter from Bishop Stephen Blaire was read in all of the diocese’s 35 parishes and 14 missions, or small churches, from Lodi to Turlock and from Tracy to Mammoth. It referred to the “evil of sexual abuse” and stated: “The cash reserves from which these payments are made are all but gone. The money that remains for handling these cases is a small fraction of what is needed to face pending lawsuits as well as any new claims.”

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ITALIA
Menti Informatiche

[Google Translate]

[Bing Translator]

Quell’uomo mi parlava di orge, anche con minorenni, all’interno del Vaticano. Del coinvolgimento di altissimi prelati, uno indicato come papabile all’ultimo Conclave. E poi riferiva di casi di corruzione, con denaro pubblico e della Chiesa. Io ho registrato tutto. Ho passato mesi a studiare il caso, ma era troppo delicato, perché c’era di mezzo la vita di ragazzi giovani. Così alla fine ho deciso di non fare denunce pubbliche, di agire con la massima discrezione e di affidare il materiale alla Procura di Savona che ha affrontato con coraggio i casi di molestie ai minori da parte di sacerdoti. Volevo che fossero loro a capire se si trattava di un ricatto o no. Ma la verità andava accertata”. Francesco Zanardi, lei attraverso la sua rete “L’abuso”, da anni si batte contro le violenze sessuali compiute da sacerdoti, come è cominciata questa storia? Erano i giorni del ‘corvo’, dei veleni in Vaticano. Sono stato contattato da un uomo che diceva di essere il manager di una multinazionale. Sosteneva di essere stato coinvolto in un giro di festini e di prostituzione, anche minorile, all’interno del Vaticano. Raccontava di esserne disgustato e di volerne uscire.

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ITALIA
La Stampa

Summary: The Savona prosecutor has acquired audio recordings produced by anti-pedophilia Francesco Zanardi that are believed to contain a description of alleged orgies where some high Roman prelates entertained themselves with men and boys.

SAVONA
C’è un risvolto savonese, se così si può dire, nella vicenda della «lobby gay» che secondo dichiarazioni attribuite a papa Francesco sarebbe attiva in Vaticano. La Procura di Savona ha infatti acquisito alcune registrazioni audio, prodotte dall’attivista antipedofilo Francesco Zanardi, e che conterrebbero la descrizione di presunte orge in cui alti prelati romani si intrattengono con uomini e ragazzi e perfino con minorenni.

Le telefonate registrate tra Zanardi e il manager di una multinazionale con sede a Londra che frequenta il Vaticano e, a suo dire, avrebbe introdotto negli ambienti della Curia romana giovani e giovanissimi per scopi sessuali, sono state ascoltate dal procuratore di Savona Francantonio Granero e, vista l’evidente competenza territoriale della Procura di Roma, trasmessa già da qualche tempo ai magistrati della Capitale.

Ieri sera su questa e altre vicende, compresi i casi savonesi denunciati da tempo, Zanardi è comparso su La7 nella trasmissione Servizio Pubblico di Michele Santoro.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

June 15, 2013

In its first month of private hearings in Sydney, the royal commission into child sexual abuse has referred four matters to police and been warned that child sexual abuse continues in Australian institutions.

The commission has issued formal notices to 10 different religious, educational, recreational and government bodies requiring them to provide it with documents. One such notice yielded 100,000 documents.

With private sessions expanding to Brisbane this week, and later to other cities, the commission plans to shake off its ”bland” legalistic image with promotions on radio and other media to encourage more survivors to come forward, commission chief executive Janette Dines said.

But gathering records will be a ”big problem” because some of the cases it has been told of date back as far as the 1920s, and many institutions had no record-keeping requirements in earlier times, Ms Dines said.

About 5000 people have called or written to the commission since it was announced in November. It has received 2200 phone calls since April.

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UNITED STATES
Washington Post

By David Gibson| Religion News Service

The death of liberal Catholicism has been proclaimed so often in recent decades that few even bother to check to see if the body still has a pulse.

But a fledgling organization of priests believes the obituaries are premature, and as the Association of U.S. Catholic Priests gathers this month to discuss an agenda for church reform, its leaders are pointing to support from the laity as well as inspiration from the top: Pope Francis.

“For me, his papacy so far has been a lifesaver,” said the Rev. Dave Cooper, a priest from Milwaukee who is head of the AUSCP, which will hold its second annual assembly at Seattle University from June 24-27.

Not that Francis is a starry-eyed liberal who is about to ordain women priests or turn the church into a representative democracy. He’s not. Rather, it is the new pope’s repeated exhortations for the church to engage the world, to be humble and open to dialogue, and above all to show people — including Catholics — a welcoming face that has buoyed Cooper and others in the AUSCP.

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CANADA
Global News

WINNIPEG – A Manitoba judge is expected to decide next week whether testimony from two brothers who allege they were sexually abused by an Orthodox priest should be considered jointly.

The brothers have testified they were abused in separate incidents during the summer of 1985, when they were pre-teens and lived and worked with Seraphim Storheim.

The Crown is asking the court to admit the evidence of each brother in the other’s case.

Defence lawyer Jeff Gindin opposes the move, saying it would be prejudicial to use one man’s testimony to try to bolster the other’s allegation.

Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Christopher Mainella has indicated he might decide by next week whether to separate the cases, and the defence says it might then seek to have one of the cases dismissed due to lack of evidence.

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UNITED STATES
The New Civil Rights Movement

Breaking: Crimes Against Humanity Case Against Pope Benedict Rejected By International Court

by DAVID BADASH on JUNE 14, 2013

Pope Benedict XVI will not be formally investigated or charged for crimes against humanity the International Criminal Court at The Hague has just announced. The case, brought against Benedict and several Vatican cardinals by Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), was rejected on grounds of jurisdiction and evidence.

The tribunal, based in The Hague, “told attorneys for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests that ‘there is not a basis at this time to proceed with further analysis,’” an AP article in The Huffington Post states:

“The matters described in your communication do not appear to fall within the jurisdiction of the court,” a court official wrote in a May 31 letter to the Center for Constitutional Rights, the nonprofit legal group that represents the victims. The legal organization released the letter Thursday.

Pam Spees, senior staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, said her group was confident it could collect enough evidence as new abuse victims come forward to press the tribunal to reconsider.

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VATICAN CITY
DFW Catholic

Rome, Italy, Jun 14, 2013 / 12:44 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican is not at all surprised the International Criminal Court rejected a request by an abuse victims’ advocacy group to investigate Benedict XVI for crimes against humanity.

“We have always thought that the Court would answer this way, given the unfounded accusation,” the Holy See’s press office director, Father Federico Lombardi, told CNA June 14.

The court rejected a request from the U.S.-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests to investigate Benedict XVI and certain cardinals for crimes against humanity, according to a May 31 letter from the court.

It stated there is “no basis” for the network’s claims that the abuse was perpetrated by the Vatican.

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AUSTRALIA
lewisblayse.net

Lewis Blayse

The Riverview Home run by the Salvation Army, until its license was revoked by the Queensland Government in 1977, is another of the institutions requiring a second look by the Royal Commission. All records were claimed to have been lost in the 1974 floods. The principal accused abuser, Captain Lawrence Wilson, was acquitted of all charges against him. However, the matter is far from settled in the minds of many.

It was ranked as the worst institution in Queensland by the 1998 Forde Inquiry. It was where many Indigenous “Stolen Generation” children were sent. The 1914 Annual Report of the Chief Protector of Aborigines notes than several boys were sent there (see reference below). The Home was also the destination of many of the “child migrants”.

In 1956, the UK Home Office’s John Ross led a fact-finding committee to investigate Australian child migrant institutions, and found unfavourable conditions and poorly-trained staff in the 26 institutions it visited. The Committee’s confidential report blacklisted five institutions, among them the Salvation Army Riverview Boys’ Home.

On 7 December, 2010, at Old Parliament House, Canberra, in a closed event, the international leader of The Salvation Army, General Shaw Clifton, issued a national apology to former residents of Salvation Army Homes. The author was not invited to this function (nor to the national apology by Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull – too radical!).

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VATICAN CITY
Washington Post

International Criminal Court dismisses abuse claims against the Vatican

By Alessandro Speciale| Religion News Service, Updated: Friday, June 14

VATICAN CITY — A campaign to hold former Pope Benedict XVI responsible for crimes against humanity floundered on Thursday (June 13) as the International Criminal Court in The Hague threw out a case filed by victims of clergy sex abuse.

The case had been presented in September 2011 by SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, and the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, accusing the pope and other senior Vatican officials of failing to stop abusive priests.

According to a SNAP statement, the court’s prosecutor’s office said on May 31 that the file presented against leaders of the Roman Catholic Church does not meet the “preconditions of the court” and thus “do not appear to fall within the (court’s) jurisdiction.”

Court officials could not be reached for comment, but The Associated Press reported that the court letter said it 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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MISSOURI
Berger’s Beat

. . .Three Missouri Catholic employees have made a list of church “whistleblowers” who have reported clergy sex crimes. The list, just posted by BishopAccountability.org, includes Sr. Jean Christensen of Kansas City, former nun Lynette Petruska of St. Louis, who’s now a barrister with Chet Pleban’s law firm and Fr. Joseph Starman of Lincoln County (now deceased). . .

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

s interviews with the Vatican Bank’s president, Ernst Von Freyberg, multiply, general director, Paolo Cipriani, says the Church needs the IOR because without it, it would lack freedom. Meanwhile, the Vatican is choosing to invest money in consultants and advisors

ANDREA TORNIELLI
VATICAN CITY

The Church’s financial independence is not only “essential”, it is “an obligation”, the Vatican Bank (IOR)’s general director Paolo Cipriani said in a surprise comment to Italian newspaper Il Giornale. The interview was part of the IOR’s media strategy, featuring the bank’s new German president, Ernst von Freyberg, as a protagonist on more than one front. After Ettore Gotti Tedeschi’s brutal dismissal, the Vatican hired prestigious global executive search firm Spencer Stuart to select the IOR’s leaders and chose von Freyberg as top man.

Von Freyberg was selected at the last minute, after Benedict XVI had announced his resignation. According to Vatican Radio, three months after he was hired, von Freyberg started holding “a series of interviews with qualified representatives of the international press,” including newspapers and news agencies such as the Financial Times, Le Figaro, Reuters and Associated Press.

Three key messages emerged from the interviews with von Freyberg. Firstly, the President of the IOR has not spoken to the new Pope in person about the bank, despite the fact that he stays at St. Martha’s House when he is in Rome. Secondly, the Vatican Bank’s main problem is not to do with its previous management (the bank’s operations were picked to pieces by the judiciary) or its suspicious accounts. Its real problem is its image and communication. This is why one of the first decisions von Freyberg took was to hire an external company to help with Vatican communications, despite the fact that the Holy See already has a Press Office, a Pontifical Council for Communication, a newspaper, a radio and television broadcaster and as of last year, a communications advisor for the Secretariat of State, the American journalist Greg Burke. CNC – Communications & Network Consulting was chosen as the Vatican’s communications company.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on the decision by the International Criminal Court (ICC) not to investigate or prosecute Pope Benedict XVI:

On September 13, 2011, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) announced that it had asked the ICC to prosecute Pope Benedict XVI, and other high ranking Catholic leaders, for “crimes against humanity.” The next day I wrote a letter to Luis Moreno-Ocampo at The Hague detailing the fraudulent, dishonest, politicized, and anti-Catholic history of SNAP (to read it, click here). Our goal was to subvert their efforts. We won.

The ICC has officially tossed the bogus complaint filed by SNAP and the Center for Constitutional Rights; the latter is a far-left wing group that specializes in defending Muslim terrorists sitting in Guantanamo Bay. The ICC rejected the bid to even investigate the Holy See.

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MISSOURI
Associated Baptist Press

Additional charges alleging sex crimes by Pastor Travis Smith come as the Southern Baptist Convention takes a stronger stand against child abuse.

By Bob Allen

A Southern Baptist pastor in Missouri awaiting trial for alleged sex crimes now faces additional charges filed June 10.

Local media report that the Moniteau County prosecutor filed new charges of statutory rape and statutory sodomy against 42-year-old Travis Smith for alleged incidents in 1998 and 1999 involving a female aged 14 to 15 at the time.

Smith, pastor of First Baptist Church in Stover, Mo., now faces a total of six felony counts ranging from forcible rape to sexual abuse. A preliminary hearing is scheduled Monday, June 17, for the new Class C felony charges, which are punishable by up to seven years in prison.

The new charges coincide with this week’s passage of a Southern Baptist Convention resolution calling on churches to take a firm stand on protecting children from abuse. Early reviews of the statement were mixed.

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MINNESOTA
Minnesota SNAP

Letter to the Editor, intended for publication

Any charges of child sexual abuse are extremely hard and depressing to read about. But in the recent case of Fr. Leo Koppala, there are three crucial ‘silver linings.’

First and foremost, an eleven-year-old girl was so brave and thankfully found the courage to immediately tell a trusted adult what she experienced at the hands of Fr. Koppala. Secondly, the trusted adult was brave and smart enough to contact local law enforcement immediately. And third, the police and prosecutors moved quickly to arrest Fr. Koppala. There is no doubt in my mind that the actions listed above will serve to protect others and prevent further harm.

These actions are very encouraging to me. As a girl that grew up in rural Minnesota. I was repeatedly molested by a Catholic priest, Fr. Joseph Jeyapaul. Sadly, in my situation he managed to flee overseas to his native country of India. But my case and these new charges against Fr. Koppala, show that times are changing and that sometimes, when victims speak up about such heinous crimes, their actions help to protect other children.

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MINNESOTA
Fairmont Sentinel

June 14, 2013

Jodelle Greiner – Sentinel Staff Writer

BLUE EARTH – Father Leo Charles Koppala, 47, of Blue Earth, has been charged with second-degree criminal sexual conduct and will face an initial court appearance 1:30 p.m. Monday.

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. Maximum sentence for the felony charges is 25 years in prison and a $35,000 fine.

Koppala, the priest at Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Blue Earth, is being held in the Faribault County Jail.

Previous news reports have indicated the child is an 11-year-old girl. The statement of probable cause released by Faribault County has the child’s age and name redacted, as well as the name of the adult looking after the child and the location of the incident.

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UNITED STATES
ritualabuseinfo

The Ticking Clock on Child Abuse May 31, 2013 Law and Justice
Marci Hamilton battles the deadline that cheats victims.

By Rebecca Webber

The Cleveland kidnapping case, the Sandusky scandal at Penn State and the revelations from prestigious private schools like New York’s Horace Mann remind us that child sex abuse can happen anywhere.

“Twenty to 25 percent of children are sexually abused,” says Marci Hamilton, a professor at Cardozo School of Law. But it often takes victims years to come to terms with what was done to them. “A survivor needs decades to come forward. They’re trying to deal with so much and they can’t put it all together,” she explains. In the meantime, their abusers are typically targeting other children. “Many perpetrators continue abusing into their elderly years,” she says.

That’s why Hamilton has been on a decade-long crusade to eliminate statute-of-limitation rules on sex abuse crimes. The rules vary by state but typically require the victim to file charges or a lawsuit within a specific time frame, sometimes within as little as one year after the abuse took place or after the victim reaches a certain age (usually between 18 and 21). These limitations, says Hamilton, keep many victims from outing their abusers.

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UNITED STATES
Stop Baptist Predators

Christa Brown

On June 12 at their annual convention in Houston, Southern Baptists passed a resolution reminding church members to report child sex abuse to legal authorities.

Here’s what it says: “RESOLVED, that we remind all Southern Baptists of their legal and moral responsibility to report any child abuse to authorities . . . .”

Thus, Southern Baptists “RESOLVED” to “remind” people to obey the law . . . i.e., to do what they should be doing anyway.

But for Southern Baptists, a reminder to obey the law took a convention with 5000 delegates and heaps of hoopla. And of course, it’s still just talk. It doesn’t actually do anything at all. It sure as heck doesn’t impose any consequences on pastors who choose not to obey reporting laws and who instead keep quiet about sex abuse allegations against their clergy-cronies.

Southern Baptists also “RESOLVED, that we strongly urge Southern Baptist churches to utilize background checks” to screen prospective employees and volunteers. So, again, it took the vote of 5000 delegates to “urge” churches to use this bare-bones minimum of safeguard measures? And it’s still just talk, nothing more.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial

THURSDAY, JUNE 13, 2013

By Ralph Cipriano
for Bigtrial.net

Judge Ellen Ceisler just sent two innocent men to jail.

Even people inside the district attorney’s office know that Father Charles Engelhardt and Bernard Shero are innocent.

It should have never gotten this far. Billy Doe told an unbelievable story about a former altar boy being passed around like a pinata among three rapists. It’s an x-rated fractured fairy tale makes no sense in any of its various versions. Billy Doe should have been laughed out of the D.A.’s office.

Instead, when Billy told his improbable tale, the D.A. and a couple of gullible prosecutors bought it. Whether they were blinded by misguided empathy, political ambition, or hatred of the church, it doesn’t really matter. It was as if they all got high on whatever Billy was peddling.

It was a story with no corroborating witnesses or evidence, just the tales of a drug-addled goofball who had been and out of 23 drug rehabs in the past 10 years and had once bragged to a drug counselor that he was a natural salesman. In court he proved his point; perhaps he’ll switch from selling drugs to selling used cars.

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UNITED STATES
Religion Dispatches

Post by T.F. CHARLTON

A number of developments in the lawsuit against Sovereign Grace Ministries (SGM) have taken place since I first covered it for RD back in early March.

On May 14, a second amendment was filed to the suit:
[The suit] adds three new plaintiffs, making a total of 11. Five plaintiffs are now using their real names, and the rest are pseudonyms. It accuses church leaders of conspiracy, negligence, misrepresentation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

On May 17, however, Maryland Circuit Court Judge Sharon V. Burrell dismissed most of the suit on the grounds of statute of limitations: under state law, civil charges must be brought in many cases of child abuse within three years of the victim turning 18. If Burrell’s ruling stands, only the two remaining plaintiffs who are under 21 (both of whom are from Virginia) will be able to bring suit against SGM.

On May 29, Susan Burke and William O’Neil, lawyers for the plaintiffs, filed a motion for Burrell to reconsider her decision. They plan to appeal if this request is denied. Burke has also stated that “Going forward with a civil lawsuit does not in any way prevent criminal actions—perhaps may even make it more likely.”

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VATICAN CITY
NPR

[with audio]

by SYLVIA POGGIOLI
June 13, 2013

The Roman Catholic Church teaches that homosexual acts are a grave sin. But the existence of active gay prelates in the Vatican bureaucracy known as the Roman Curia has been considered a poorly held secret for centuries.

Robert Mickens, Vatican correspondent for the British Catholic weekly The Tablet, says the normal definition of a lobby as an organized group of people pushing a specific agenda does not apply here.

He prefers to call it a gay subculture.

“Many of these people in the Vatican that are gay and even acting out are extremely conservative,” Mickens says. “These are not people that want to change the church’s teaching on homosexuality — not at all.

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CALIFORNIA
Hollywood Reporter

6/13/2013 by Borys Kit

Participant Media remains on board as co-financier and Tom McCarthy is attached to direct.

DreamWorks is quietly parting ways with the untitled movie project that chronicles the Catholic Church’s decades-long cover-up of its pedophile priests in Massachusetts as uncovered during a

Participant Media, which remains a co-financier, and producers Michael Sugar and Steve Golin of Anonymous Content and Rocklin/Faust’s Nicole Rocklin and Blye Faust are now shopping the project, which has Tom McCarthy attached to direct.

Multiple suitors are already lined up and the prestigious nature of the project will surely lock this up.

The movie project tells of how the Globe’s “Spotlight Team” reporters spent a year interviewing victims and reviewing thousands of pages of documents and discovered years of cover-up by Church leadership. Their reporting eventually led to the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law, who had hidden years of serial abuse by other priests, and opened the floodgates to revelations of molestation and cover-ups worldwide that still reverberate today.

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CALIFORNIA
Variety

JUNE 13, 2013

WB said to be front-runner to land drama

Justin Kroll
@krolljvar

Stuart Oldham
News Editor
@s_oldham

DreamWorks has decided not to go forward with director Tom McCarthy’s untitled feature about the Catholic Church’s cover-up of its pedophile priests in Massachusetts, uncovered by the Boston Globe.

Participant Media is still on board as producers and is shopping the film around town with Warner Bros. as the projected front-runner to land the drama.

Variety reported in October that “Win Win” helmer McCarthy and scribe Josh Singer (“The West Wing”) had been tapped by Anonymous Content and Rocklin/Faust to work on the project, which follows the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists who exposed the scandal.

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CANADA
CBC News

Roderick Janssen, a former church volunteer, was sentenced Thursday to 14 years in prison for a list of offences related to sexual assault and child pornography.

Janssen, 37, had earlier pleaded guilty to 18 charges including possessing and making child pornography and sexually assaulting 10 young boys from 2006 to 2011.

The youngest victim was 6-years-old.

The mother of one victim, who cannot be identified because of a court order, spoke after the sentencing.

“It wasn’t long enough as far as I’m concerned. They definitely need to look at the fact, when you’re piling charges on top of charges and they’re only getting one set time, it shouldn’t be concurrent. It should be individual.”

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CANADA
Calgary Herald

BY DARYL SLADE, CALGARY HERALD JUNE 13, 2013

Calling him an untreated pedophile and a sex offender who is a substantial risk to reoffend, a judge sentenced former church youth counsellor Roderick Kyle Janssen to 14 years in prison Thursday for sexually abusing six young boys.

Provincial court Judge Catherine Skene also declared Janssen a long-term offender and placed him under community supervision for another 10 years after his release. Janssen was given double credit for time already spent in custody, leaving him with nine years and eight months to serve in prison.

“Mr. Janssen suffers from pedophilia and used opportunistic social strategies to gain trust of mothers of the boys,” Skene said in giving her sentence on Thursday.

“He is sexually attracted to boys and he used his friendship and trust through the church to take them on trips, to use hot tubs and go on other outings. Mr. Janssen went to excessive lengths to get close to them.”

Janssen pleaded guilty in November 2011 to 18 charges, including six for sexually abusing the boys, mostly aged six to 13, and a dozen counts related to child pornography.

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UNITED STATES
The Tech

The International Criminal Court in The Hague has decided not to investigate or prosecute the former pope and other leaders of the Roman Catholic Church on allegations of covering up the sexual abuse of children by priests.

Victims of sexual abuse filed a complaint in 2011 asking the court to prosecute Benedict XVI, then the pope, and three other Vatican officials for what they called an international and systemic cover-up of sexual abuse that amounted to “crimes against humanity.”

The court responded in a letter dated May 31 that after analyzing the complaint, it determined that the matters “do not appear to fall within the jurisdiction of the Court.” The letter said that “some of the allegations” fell outside the court’s jurisdiction, which is to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

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AUSTRALIA
lewisblayse.net

Lewis Blayse

The Enoggera Boys Home in Brisbane, which was run by the Anglican Church, is another of the homes deserving of a closer look by the Royal Commission.

Earlier postings have drawn attention to the need for greater scrutiny of Australian volunteers going to South East Asian “orphanages”. The Enoggera Home serves as an example of why this is necessary. Former Queensland police officer, Graham Leonard Noyes, used his position as a volunteer at Enoggera to abuse a boy. Something of the power distance between victim and abuser stands out here.

While full time “carers” have been able to be tracked down for punishment, it is much more difficult to track down volunteers who may go to several institutions for short periods of time. These abusers are afforded a certain degree of anonymity because of poor record-keeping, and the likelihood victims will have a poor memory of them, which interferes with identification. Victims are inhibited from coming forward because their case is not only likely to be disbelieved, as many of the perpetrators were very prominent members of society, but offences are also very difficult to prove.

Many attacks by volunteer visitors and people taking children out for the day on excursions, probably have not been reported for this very reason. The issue of volunteers should be raised at the royal commission, in the context of both historical cases in Australia and current cases in other countries.

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UNITED STATES
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel June 13, 2013 1

The International Criminal Court at The Hague has declined to investigate Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and other Catholic leaders for the church’s handling of the sexual abuse of children, the advocacy group the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests announced on Thursday.

SNAP and the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights accused the Vatican officials of crimes against humanity in a September 2011 complaint. It included three Wisconsin cases, including that of the late Father Lawrence Murphy, who is believed to have molested as many of 200 deaf boys, and the destruction of documents Dioceses of Milwaukee and Green Bay. SNAP’s Midwest director, Peter Isely of Shorewood, was among the victims and advocates who traveled to the Hague in the Netherlands to support the filing and lauch a 12-city tour of Europe to draw attention to the charges.

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UNITED STATES
ABC News

By RACHEL ZOLL AP Religion Writer
NEW YORK June 13, 2013 (AP)

The International Criminal Court has rejected a longshot 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 that “there is not a basis at this time to proceed with further analysis.”

“The matters described in your communication do not appear to fall within the jurisdiction of the court,” a court official wrote in a May 31 letter to the Center for Constitutional Rights, the nonprofit legal group that represents the victims. The legal organization released the letter Thursday.

Jeffrey Lena, the U.S. attorney for the Vatican, had called the 2011 request to the court a “ludicrous publicity stunt.”

“The common thread running through all these cases is the mistaken idea that ‘everything is controlled by Rome,'” Lena said Thursday.

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CANADA
National Catholic Reporter

Isabella R. Moyer | Jun. 13, 2013 NCR Today

News from Winnipeg, my neck of the woods, was highlighted in Dennis Coday’s Morning Briefing on Wednesday. Archbishop Kenneth William (Saraphim) Storheim, Canada’s highest-ranking Orthodox church cleric, is accused of assaulting two young boys more than 25 years ago. His trial is currently underway.

Storheim had been on the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests’ radar for years, according to Melanie Sakoda. She also acknowledged that his trial is possible because Canadian law does not offer him statute of limitations protection.

Fr. George Mulligan is a risk analyst for Praesidium Inc., a Texas company that gives training and assistance in abuse-risk management. He spoke last month at a mandatory workshop for all priests in the archdiocese of Vancouver. According to a report in The B.C. Catholic, Mulligan said, “What the Canadian Church has done from day one is be transparent, respond, enter into conversation, and tell its leadership at every level what was going on.” In this sense, he believes the Canadian bishops did a better job responding to the sexual abuse crisis than their American brothers to the south.

This is small comfort and doesn’t take away the anger at each new headline — and there have been too many headlines for too many years. The sexual abuse of children by clergy and religious first became national news in Canada with the 1988 reports from the Mount Cashel Orphanage in Newfoundland. Reports of other abuses spread like wildfire. Our government and churches have been dealing for decades with the aftermath of the residential school abuses. In 2009, Antigonish Bishop Raymond Lahey made headlines when his laptop was seized at the Ottawa airport and found to be filled with child pornography. Now we have the accusations against Archbishop Storheim.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

POSTED BY DAVID CLOHESSY ON JUNE 13, 2013

Two words of advice to anyone who might feel down about the news about our International Criminal Court complaint: “Chin up.”

This is a bump in the road. It’s far, far, far from the end of the road.

The ICC isn’t like US courts. We can, have and will go back to the ICC, submitting more and more proof, for however long it takes. At any point, the prosecutor can say “Now, we’re opening an investigation.” We are still very confident that, at some point, this will happen.

At the beginning of this historic, uphill struggle, when we filed the case (along with the superb attorneys from the Center for Constitutional Rights), we said over and over again that this would be a long-term effort, that we’d be back time and time again with more and more evidence, that the court couldn’t take action on crimes before 2002, that much of our documentation is designed to show a long-standing pattern of protecting predators and hurting children. . . .

The Associated Press notes that “the odds against the court opening an investigation have been enormous. (The ICC) prosecutor has received more than 9,700 independent proposals for inquiries since 2002, when the court was created as the world’s only permanent war crimes tribunal, and has never opened a formal investigation based solely on such a request.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: June 13, 2013

The International Criminal Court in The Hague has decided not to investigate or prosecute the former pope and other leaders of the Roman Catholic Church on allegations of covering up the sexual abuse of children by priests.

Victims of sexual abuse filed a complaint in 2011 asking the court to prosecute Benedict XVI, then the pope, and three other Vatican officials for what they called an international and systemic cover-up of sexual abuse that amounted to “crimes against humanity.”

The court responded in a letter dated May 31 that after analyzing the complaint, it determined that the matters “do not appear to fall within the jurisdiction of the Court.” The letter said that “some of the allegations” fell outside the court’s jurisdiction, which is to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

In addition, the case did not appear to meet the court’s time limits. For the most part, the court may prosecute only crimes committed after it was constituted in July 2002, and even though the cases submitted by the victims involved more recent allegations, some of the supporting material the victims submitted predated 2002.

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NEW YORK
Vatican Insider

In an interview with “Vatican Insider”, American Vaticanista John Allen weighs in on Pope Francis’ comments about the “gay lobby” in the Vatican

PAOLO MASTROLILLI
NEW YORK

What do you think the Pope meant?

“It’s important to remember that the “gay lobby” phrase came up in the context of the Vatileaks scandal, when the big question was who’s behind it. The theory was that maybe gays were involved, not because they’re gay, but because somebody with a secret to keep could be vulnerable to pressure and blackmail. The concern isn’t really sexual orientation, but whether somebody is working against the pope’s interests.”

How is this lobby functioning inside the Vatican?

“I’m not sure it’s really a “lobby” … I doubt they have meetings or a secret handshake. However, people leading a double life – whether it’s about sex, money or anything else – often feel a natural affinity with one another.”

Is this comment related to the Pope’s effort to reform the Curia, to the sexual abuses, or both?

“It’s related to reform of the Roman Curia, in that Francis wants to make sure decisions are being made for the right reasons and not because of hidden pressures.”

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NEW YORK
Vatican Insider

“Vatican Insider” interviews philosopher Michael Novak, one of America’s top Catholic thinkers

PAOLO MASTROLILLI
NEW YORK

“The U.S. Church has done a great deal to end the sex abuse plague; possibly too much. So I don’t think Pope Francis’ comment about the existence of a gay lobby was in reference to this problem. The key point here is the reform of the Curia. This is probably what his pontificate will be judged on.”

The philosopher Michael Novak is one of America’s most authoritative Catholic scholars and is currently in Italy to attend a celebration for the former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, Mary Ann Glendon. …

In recent days, however, he spoke about internal problems in the Curia, including the existence of a “gay lobby”.

“The reform of the Holy See’s government is undoubtedly the toughest challenge the Pope faces and this is what his pontificate will be judged on. I think Francis wants to eliminate the risk of pressure groups of any kind, standing in the way of his plans.”

How did the U.S. react to his comments, bearing in mind that it is the country that has suffered the most as a result of the sex abuse scandal?

“I don’t think his mention of a gay lobby was in reference to this. The U.S. Church has done a great deal to put an end to the abuse, so much in fact, that some priests have been unfairly accused. We need to be watchful, but the Pope’s message was intended for the Curia.”

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MINNESOTA
KTTC

[with video]

ROCHESTER, Minn. (KTTC) — The Blue Earth priest charged with sexually assaulting a 12-year old girl once also worked in Rochester.

Reverend Leo Koppala was a missionary from India who worked at Resurrection Parish in Rochester before joining the Blue Earth church in 2009. He worked in Rochester for a year.

The 47-year-old priest was serving the Catholic Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Blue Earth.

The Diocese of Winona said in a statement that Koppala has been placed on administrative leave, and will not be allowed to minister in the Winona diocese while the investigation continues.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Post

By Barry Bowen

One of the dirty secrets of Christianity is that there are numerous crooked pastors, priests and church financial secretaries embezzling funds. The International Bulletin of Missionary Research projected that $37 billion would be stolen by Christian religious leaders in 2013 and this fraud will reach $60 billion annually by 2025.

Here are four possible signs that money is being embezzled by religious leaders.

*The pastor or priest lives an extravagant lifestyle.

*The church leader regularly fails to turn in receipts when using the church or ministry credit card.

*The church sends you a receipt for donations and the amount listed doesn’t match your own records of what you have given. (Anonymously given cash offerings will not be tracked.)

*The church suddenly starts showing large unexplained debts.

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VATICAN CITY
Corriere della Sera

Pope Francis looks set to intervene at the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR) before summer. Action is likely to come before 31 July, when IOR will complete its internal investigation of customers’ accounts. At this stage, the question is not so much “if” as “when”. And as rumours mount of an upcoming court order against the Vatican bank’s executives, the pace could quicken rapidly. Some of the facts are well established. The first is that Californian lawyer Jeff Lena, the man who in the past few years has become a key figure and string-puller for IOR reform, broke off relations a couple of months ago with Ernst Von Freyberg, the IOR chairman and ally of managing director Paolo Cipriani. Rumours say Mr Lena, who in the recent struggle to eject former chair Ettore Gotti Tedeschi worked in harness with the IOR board and Mr Cipriani himself, now misses the clashes he had with the Piacenza-based Gotti Tedeschi, who was unceremoniously turfed out just over a year ago.

At the time, Mr Gotti Tedeschi’s finger-pointing at the Vatican Secretariat of State and IOR management’s attempts to water down money-laundering regulations was dismissed as baseless. Demography expert Gotti Tedeschi was said to have been removed because he did not know IOR and failed to defend it, criticisms that circulated, and were in part subscribed, but were also tendentious. After three months in office, Jorge Mario Bergoglio is said to be firmly convinced that IOR taketh from the Church much more than it giveth in terms of image, international credibility and suspicion over the modus operandi of the only institution that reports directly to the Vatican. For weeks, the issue has been bouncing back and forward from the Secretariat of State to the Vatican City Governorate and APSA (Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See), the nerve ends of the Curia’s economic power.

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MISSOURI
Ozarks First

CALIFORNIA, Mo. — Prosecutors file new charges against a Missouri pastor already facing several sex crime accusations.

CBS affiliate KRCG reports the Moniteau County prosecutor filed two more statutory sodomy charges Monday against Travis Smith, 42, from an alleged incident in 1999.

Court documents show charges against Smith were filed on September 28, 2012 for second degree statutory rape and second degree statutory sodomy from incidents dating back to January 2005.

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CALIFORNIA
NBC San Diego

By Steven Luke | Thursday, Jun 13, 2013

A San Diego teacher was fired by Holy Trinity School following a domestic violence incident involving her ex-husband.

Second-grade teacher Carie Charlesworth is out of a job, but not for anything she did in the classroom. Her school district considers her a liability and too unsafe to have around following a domestic violence dispute that happened earlier this year.

A letter sent to Charlesworth said that school officials are concerned about her ex-husband’s “threatening and menacing behavior,” and as a result they “cannot allow” her to continue teaching at the Holy Trinity School.

“They’ve taken away my ability to care for my kids,” said Charlesworth. “It’s not like I can go out and find a teaching job anywhere.”

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CALIFORNIA
Newser

By Evann Gastaldo, Newser Staff
Posted Jun 13, 2013

(NEWSER) – It’s bad enough that Carie Charlesworth is dealing with an abusive ex-husband—but now she’s also out of a job due to the situation. After a “very bad weekend” involving her ex in January, Charlesworth warned the principal at San Diego’s Holy Trinity School to watch out for him. He did indeed show up in the school parking lot, forcing a lockdown. Charlesworth was immediately put on “indefinite leave,” as were her four kids, who attended the school. Despite the fact that her ex is now in jail, three months later she was fired after 14 years with the Diocese of San Diego, NBC San Diego reports.

The termination letter from the diocese notes that, though school officials “feel deeply” for Charlesworth and are praying for her, her ex has a 22-year history of documented violence and has not been deterred by restraining orders. Out of fear that he may cause problems upon his release from prison (which they note could happen as soon as “next fall”), “we simply cannot allow you to return to work [at Holy Trinity] or, unfortunately, at any other school in the diocese,” the letter states, adding that Charlesworth will continue to be paid through Aug. 9

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Michael O’Regan

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said he hopes for a quick Cabinet decision after it discusses the report on redress for the survivors of the Magdalene laundries within the next two weeks.

He said that the report, from retired judge Mr Justice Quirke, had been sent to Minister for Justice Alan Shatter and his views and the report’s recommendations would be considered by the Cabinet before it makes a decision.

“It is only fair to say that after so many years of nothing having been done about this, the Government put in place a structure and process by which a conclusion could be brought to the issue of the Magdalene survivors and the sensitivity, hurt and trauma associated with it.”

Just 3 per cent of homeowners have sought property tax deferral, says Noonan

Heated exchanges as FF Senator accuses Taoiseach of ‘acting the clown’

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

13 JUNE 2013

Hundreds of victims of clerical and Magdalene laundry abuse in Northern Ireland have been left out of a new public inquiry designed to probe past wrongdoing, campaigners said.

Some women had their babies taken off them, were forced to scrub floors or locked in their rooms for hours in institutions for women like single mothers. Other men and women who claim they suffered years of sex abuse at the hands of predatory priests cannot tell their stories or seek redress under existing arrangements established by the Stormont Executive.

The Historical Abuse Inquiry chaired by a retired senior judge is investigating cases involving children in residential institutions in Northern Ireland since 1922.

Amnesty International Northern Ireland director Patrick Corrigan led a delegation to meet with Stormont ministers to press for its expansion.

He said: “Many victims are being left behind and what we delivered to the ministers today was a very clear message to say that there should be no second-class abuse victims in Northern Ireland. All deserve justice, all deserve truth, all deserve the state to respond to them. The state let them down then, it should not let them down again.”

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NORTHERN IRELAND
UTV

Residents of Magdalene Laundries have met with Northern Ireland’s Junior Ministers, to call for a new inquiry into their allegations of abuse.

Neither group is included in the current Historic Institutional Abuse inquiry, which is investigating claims of mistreatment at 35 sites across Northern Ireland.

The campaigners, along with Amnesty International, discussed their calls for a new inquiry with Jonathan Bell and Jennifer McCann.

Michael Connolly is part of the Clerical Abuse NI campaign. As a child, was abused by a priest in Co Fermanagh.

He said: “I would not want to raise the expectations of clerical abuse victims throughout Northern Ireland, but I did take away from that meeting quite a positive response.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For now, Vatican officials will not face criminal charges
ICC prosecutor may reconsider with ‘new facts or information’
SNAP: “We’ll keep bringing forward proof of church complicity”

A prosecutor at the International Criminal Court has determined that, for now, no charges will be filed against top Catholic officials for “crimes against humanity.” But victims of clergy sex abuse say they’ll continue to collect evidence and “build the record” of “ongoing child sex crimes and cover ups” by bishops across the globe and are confident the ICC will eventually investigate and prosecute the church hierarchy.

In September 2011, leaders of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, and CCR, the Center for Constitutional Rights, filed a formal, 71 page complaint –– supported by more than more than 22,000 pages of supporting materials – with the ICC.

The complaint charges four Vatican prelates – Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, former Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano, former Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith head Cardinal William Levada and the now-retired Pope Benedict – with “enabling and concealing sexual violence worldwide.”

In April 2012, in a separate filing, the groups submitted several thousand more pages of documentation to the ICC.

But in a two page letter, dated May 31, the prosecutor’s office says some of the alleged (offenses) do not meet the “preconditions of the court” and thus “do not appear to fall within the (court’s) jurisdiction,” though the office may reconsider this decision in light of “new facts or information.” In the letter, the prosecutor suggests that SNAP also consider approaching courts in individual countries.

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COLORADO
Catholic News Agency

Pueblo, Colo., Jun 13, 2013 / 06:33 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis announced on June 13 that he has accepted the early resignation of Bishop Fernando Isern of Pueblo, Colo., due to poor health and for the good of the local Church.

“In a spirit of prayerful reflection, the bishop recognized that his health may be an obstacle for the growth of the diocese,” a source within the Diocese of Pueblo told CNA.

“He chose to resign in order to entrust his flock to a man with the strength and energy necessary to be an effective shepherd.”

Bishop Isern was the fourth bishop of Pueblo, and has shepherded the diocese since December 2009. He is 54 years old.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Zeit

Machtmissbrauch durch sexualisierte Gewalt ist der monströse Fall, der zwei Themen unübersehbar auf die Tagesordnung der Kirche setzt: Macht und Sexualität. Da es bei sexualisierter Gewalt im Kern um den Missbrauch von Macht geht, kann man sogar zuspitzen: Die Schlüsselfrage ist die nach dem Umgang mit Macht in der Kirche.

Wenn über Macht in der Kirche gesprochen wird, kommt schnell der Hinweis, Kirche habe heute doch gar keine Macht mehr. In den Ohren der Opfer klingt das wie Hohn. Sie haben die missbrauchende und missbrauchte Macht der Kirche kennengelernt. Die geistliche Macht, welche die Kirche innehat, wirkt in die Welt hinein. Sie ist auch Macht. Schließlich geht es der Kirche ja um das Heil der Welt, nicht nur um das Heil der Kirche.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Augsburger Allgemeine

Das Bischöfliche Ordinariat in Augsburg hat den Seelsorger der Pfarreiengemeinschaft in Unterthürheim (Landkreis Dillingen) beurlaubt. Der Grund sind Missbrauchs-Vorwürfe. Von Günther Herdin

Die katholische Kirche hatte in den vergangenen Jahren verschiedene sexuelle Missbrauchsfälle aufzuarbeiten. Auch im Bistum Augsburg. Jetzt könnte ein neuer hinzukommen. Am vergangenen Wochenende wurde Priester Thomas Schilling, der Seelsorger der Pfarreiengemeinschaft in Unterthürheim (Gemeinde Buttenwiesen/Landkreis Dillingen), mit Wirkung zum 8. Juni beurlaubt.
Dem 65-Jährigen wird vorgeworfen, Anfang der 1980er Jahre sexuellen Missbrauch begangen zu haben. Schilling war damals als Ordensmann der Benediktiner auch im Ausland tätig. Das vermeintliche männliche Opfer war nach Aussage der Augsburger Rechtsanwältin Brigitte Ketterle-Faber – sie ist die Beauftragte der Diözese für Fälle sexuellen Missbrauchs – damals noch nicht volljährig und lebt in einem europäischen Nachbarland.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Bergische Landeszeitung

Die ehemaligen Heimkinder von Moitzfeld, die im früheren Knabenheim „Gut an der Linde“ in Moitzfeld missbraucht wurden, sind entsetzt. Sie sollen keine Entschädigung von der Bergischen Diakonie Aprath erhalten. Von Walter K. Schulz

Die ehemaligen Heimkinder von Moitzfeld, die im früheren Knabenheim „Gut an der Linde“ in Moitzfeld missbraucht wurden, sind entsetzt. Sie sollen keine Entschädigung von der Bergischen Diakonie Aprath, die in Moitzfeld Kinderheime unterhielt, erhalten.

Das hat ein Sprecher der Bergischen Diakonie auf Medienanfragen mitgeteilt. Demnach seien die Entschädigungen, die die Evangelische Kirche im Rheinland am Montag angekündigt hat, nur für Opfer sexueller Gewalt gedacht.

Im Knabenheim seien solche Übergriffe aber die Ausnahme gewesen. Die fraglichen Fälle seien schon damals aufgeklärt und geahndet worden, hieß es vom theologischen Vorstand der Bergischen Diakonie in Wülfrath. Am häufigsten seien „Misshandlungen durch unangemessene Erziehungsmethoden“ gewesen.

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OSTERREICH
der Standard

12. Juni 2013, 18:46

Kirche hat bisher freiwillig 12, 2 Millionen Euro an Missbrauchsopfer ausbezahlt, mehrere Prozesse laufen

Graz/Wien – Um Misshandlungs- und sexuelle Missbrauchsfälle innerhalb der katholischen Kirche aufzuarbeiten, wurde vor drei Jahren die Unabhängige Opferschutzkommission (UOK) gegründet. Als deren Leiterin hat Kardinal Christoph Schönborn die frühere Landeshauptfrau der Steiermark, Waltraud Klasnic (ÖVP), eingesetzt. 1422 Personen haben sich gemeldet, 1289 davon erhielten Entschädigungen von 5000 Euro bis 25.000 pro Einzelfall.

Bisher hat die Kommission 12,2 Millionen Euro an finanziellen und 34.000 Stunden an therapeutischen Hilfestellungen zuerkannt. In zwanzig Fällen wurden Schadenersatz und Wiedergutmachung abgelehnt. In 75 Fällen kam die Kommission zur Erkenntnis, dass die Kirche in die behaupteten Verbrechen nicht involviert sei.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 13 June 2013 (VIS) – Today, the Holy Father: …

– accepted the resignation from the pastoral care of the Diocese of Pueblo, Colorado, USA presented by Bishop Fernando Isern, in accordance with canon 401 para. 2 of the Code of Canon Law.

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AUSTRALIA
lewisblayse.net

Lewis Blayse

The Charlton Boy’s Home was operated by the Anglican Church. It comprises one of a continuing series on children’s homes deserving of being revisited by the Royal Commission for a variety of reasons. Affected people should contact an organisation such as Broken Rites or CLAN. (A link to a former resident who has indicated a desire to get in touch with others from the Charlton Home is given below).

Peter Watson, the former Anglican Archbishop of Melbourne, was a regular visitor to the Home at one stage, but appears not to have noticed anything untoward there.

A fund-raising article for the Home in the 1970s mentions that the boys receive “love and acceptance” which helps them “turn away from crime.”

In February of this year, a former worker at the Home, Albert John Abel, was convicted of sexual assault of a boy at the Home. He had pleaded guilty to similar offences in the late 1960s. Nevertheless, Judge Anthony Blackmore stated that Abel “was rehabilitated” and that he had “spent more than 40 years living in the community as a church-going family man.” He got 3 years.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12, 2013

By Ralph Cipriano
for Bigtrial.net

Judge Ellen Ceisler today gave onetime Catholic school teacher Bernard Shero a jail sentence of 8 to 16 years for raping a former altar boy dubbed “Billy Doe.” The judge threw out one charge against Father Charles Engelhardt, a bogus conspiracy rap, as unproven, but still hit the priest with 6 to 12 years in jail for sexually abusing the former altar boy.

The judged handed out the sentences even though a mandatory Commonwealth psychological exam had determined that neither defendant was a sexually violent predator. The judge tacked on five years of probation to each defendant’s jail sentence.

It was a bizarre day in court. The proceedings featured defendant Shero rising in an unsuccessful attempt to debate Assistant District Attorney Enangelia Manos. Billy Doe didn’t show, but his brother finally did, via a letter to the judge read aloud by the prosecutor. [During the trial, the jury had sent a note to the judge inquiring about the whereabouts of Billy’s older brother].

But the low light of the day came when prosecutor Manos began testifying about a decades-old unproven allegation against Father Engelhardt that never made it before the jury, and was not in evidence in the case. That didn’t deter prosecutor Manos from using the sentencing hearing to charge Father Engelhardt with a new crime. The prosecutor shouted out what she claimed the priest had allegedly said decades ago to a male relative, namely, “I want to fuck you up the ass!”

Classy. No wonder the proceedings left several female relatives of both defendants sobbing in court. That came to the attention the court crier, who ordered the sobbing relatives to leave, thereby calling even more attention to the situation.

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AUSTRALIA
The Border Mail

By Jared Lynch June 13, 2013

Serial child rapist Gerald Ridsdale has his bid for freedom delayed indefinitely after more people have come forward with allegations of abuse.

The former Catholic priest, convicted of raping or molesting more than 30 children across three decades, is serving a maximum 13-year jail sentence, which expires in 2019. His earliest possible release date was June 29 this year.

But earlier this month police interviewed the 79-year-old at Ararat Prison in relation to fresh child abuse allegations dating back to the the 1960s and ’70s.

The Adult Parole Board has considered Ridsdale’s parole application, and a board spokesman said it decided it would defer any decision until the police finish its fresh investigation.

“The board has no obligation to consider an offender’s eligibility if their is an investigation pending,” the spokesman said.

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AUSTRALIA
Adelaide Now

Erin Marie
Herald Sun
June 13, 2013

ONE of Australia’s most notorious paedophiles – Catholic priest Gerald Risdale – will not walk free from prison later this month after fresh child abuse claims emerged.

The serial child rapist had applied to be granted parole on June 29 – the earliest possible date – but a Victoria Police probe triggered by new allegations of abuse has indefinitely delayed his release.

In March the Herald Sun revealed Risdale, who is serving a maximum 13-year sentence after he was convicted of raping or molesting 30 children between the 1960s and 1987, could have been released this month despite his jail sentence expiring in 2019.

His application for parole was rejected by the Adult Parole Board earlier this month after more people spoke out on allegations of abuse, causing a new investigation.

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CANADA
EMC News

Posted Jun 13, 2013 By Patricia Leboeuf

EMC news – An Arnprior Catholic priest has pleaded guilty to five counts of sexually molesting young boys in incidents that occurred about 40 years ago.

Father Daniel Miller made the plea during a court appearance in Pembroke on June 3. The retired priest was accompanied by Msgr. Douglas Bridge of the Pembroke Diocese.

The victims, who ranged from 9 to 13 years old, were from the Arnprior, Deep River and Eganville areas.

Court heard that Miller treated the boys with outings to the movies and the Renfrew Fair, bought them gifts such as clothing and treated them to meals at restaurants and fast food outlets.

Most of the indecent incidents, which occurred between 1969 and 1978, happened in Miller’s mother’s home in Renfrew during overnight stays.

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HOUSTON (TX)
kinnon.tv

Today, Messengers (the term used for those sent from their SBC churches) at the Southern Baptist Church Convention gathering in Houston, SBC 2013,

passed a resolution calling on all Southern Baptists to report allegations of child abuse to authorities.

Commenting on this, Christianity Today’s Gleanings blog noted,

The resolution, filed more or less in response to the high-profile lawsuit against Sovereign Grace Ministries (SGM), was amended to ask that “SBC leaders and employees practice the highest level of discernment in affiliating with groups or individuals that possess ‘questionable’ policies and practices in protecting children against sexual abuse,” according to Baptist Press (BP), which live-blogged the morning’s votes. [emphasis added]

As much of a no-brainer as this really should have been, it is rather a strong slap in the face to Southern Baptist Celebrity leaders, Al Mohler and Mark Dever — who less than three weeks ago, along with PCA Celeb, Ligon Duncan were busy strongly supporting their buddy, C.J. Mahaney — SGM controlling stakeholder during the multiple alleged abuse cases at Sovereign Grace Ministries’ churches including the one where Mahaney pastored. Dever going so far as to preach at Mahaney’s fledgling new church plant on June 2nd, 2013 in Louisville, KY — telling the gathered few how wonderful Mahaney is,

“So you all who are here in this church, and particularly if you’re visiting or if you’re sort of new to Sovereign Grace, you have a privilege in having this man as your pastor that you don’t fully grasp, and that’s absolutely fine,” Dever said. “Just thank God for him and enjoy the word of God as he brings it from a life and a heart full of the gospel, and know that I am delighted to be here. It’s a privilege to address you brothers and sisters.” [emphasis added]

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UNITED STATES
Courier-Journal

Posted on June 12, 2013 by Peter Smith

With controversy over a Louisville pastor in the backdrop, Southern Baptist messengers today voted Wednesday to call on their leaders to use the “highest sense of discernment” in affiliating with anyone with “questionable” practices or policies on sexual abuse.

The vote comes in the wake of statements by Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, and others on behalf of pastor C.J. Mahaney of Sovereign Grace Church of Louisville.

The resolution does not mention the controversy explicitly, but its sponsor did in an interview.

Mahaney and others were accused in a recent lawsuit against Sovereign Grace Ministries of allegedly conspiring to cover up sexual abuse in congregations in the denomination, which was based in Maryland until it moved to Louisville last year. Mahaney served as its president until recently and was formerly pastor at the Maryland congregation where some of the claims of cover-up are alleged to have occurred.

A Maryland judge recently dismissed much of the the lawsuit on the grounds that the plaintiffs waited too long to sue. The 11 plaintiffs now have a pending motion for reconsideration.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

The suit claims St. Francis Prep officials had received numerous complaints that assistant football coach Robert Stenger, who also taught social studies, had sexually and physically abused boys by 1985 but was permitted to continue to work closely with students.

BY MICHAEL O’KEEFFE / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

THURSDAY, JUNE 13, 2013

Officials at St. Francis Prep ignored sexual and physical abuse by a longtime assistant football coach, according to a lawsuit filed against the Queens school on behalf of a former teacher and two ex-students in Brooklyn federal court on Wednesday.

The suit claims St. Francis Prep officials had received numerous complaints that assistant football coach Robert Stenger, who also taught social studies, had sexually and physically abused boys by 1985 but was permitted to continue to work closely with students. Plaintiff Mark Evangelista claims Stenger hit him in the face “with great force” without provocation before a history class in 1985.

Evangelista, who says he graduated from St. Francis Prep in 1986, told the Daily News that teachers would joke about how Stenger — who died in 2006 — would leer at freshman football players in the locker room.

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VATICAN CITY
Chiesa

He governs the Church like a superior general of the Jesuits. He listens, but decides on his own. Even a McKinsey man has been called in to study the reform of the curia. Which Francis wants to purify from corruption and from the “gay lobby”

by Sandro Magister

ROME, June 13, 2013 – All that was lacking was a guru from McKinsey to design that reform of the curia which everyone expects from Pope Francis. And here he comes.

His name is Thomas von Mitschke-Collande, he is German and was the manager of the Munich branch of the most famous and mysterious company of managerial consulting in the world.

In matters of the Church, he knows his stuff. Last year he published a book with a title that was hardly reassuring: “Does the Church want to destroy itself? Facts and analyses presented by a business consultant.” The diocese of Berlin turned to him to get its accounts back in order, and the German episcopal conference asked him to draw up a plan to save on costs and personnel.

The idea of putting him to work for the reform of the Roman curia as well came from Reinhard Marx, the archbishop of Munich, one of the eight cardinals called by pope Jorge Mario Bergoglio to act as his advisor.

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VATICAN CITY
The New York Times

By RACHEL DONADIO
Published: June 12, 2013

ROME — For years, perhaps even centuries, it has been an open secret in Rome: That some prelates in the Vatican hierarchy are gay. But the whispers were amplified this week when Pope Francis himself, in a private audience, appears to have acknowledged what he called a “gay lobby” operating inside the Vatican, vying for power and influence.
Related

The remarks — which the Vatican spokesman did not deny and the participants at the private audience confirmed — appeared to be part of an effort by the pope to take on the entrenched interests in the Vatican that many believe were a factor in why the previous pope, Benedict XVI, resigned unexpectedly. They appear to underscore numerous reports in the prelude to the election of the pope, that corruption, blackmail and violation of one of the highest codes of Catholic conduct were part of the intrigue that scandalized the Vatican in recent years.

Francis, who portrays himself as a simple pope of the people, has made it clear that one of his highest priorities is to put the Vatican’s house in order. He has appointed a group of eight cardinals to advise him on how to overhaul the Vatican, and the head of the Vatican Bank has recently given a series of interviews to journalists — an openness unheard of under his predecessors.

“It’s pretty incredible that the pope said these things,” said Sandro Magister, a Vatican expert at the Italian weekly L’Espresso. “I don’t think there’s any doubt on the foundation of the phrases attributed to him. Otherwise they would have denied it.”

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UNITED STATES
Miami Herald

BY ANDRES OPPENHEIMER
AOPPENHEIMER@MIAMIHERALD.COM

As Argentine-born Pope Francis nears his first 100 days in office, there is little question that he has brought about a change in style at the Vatican with his daily gestures of humility. But there are also signs that he may bring about a change in substance.

In recent days, a leak of private comments Francis made to a group of Latin American Catholics has garnered big headlines, the Catholic world, and is giving us the best insight so far into whether — and how — the pope intends to carry out much-needed reforms in the Church.

The leak, published in the website of the left-of-center Chilean Catholic magazine Reflexion y Liberacion, quotes Francis as having told a delegation of the Latin American and Caribbean Confederation of Religious, known by its acronym CLAR, that he is confronting a network of “corruption’’ and a “gay lobby” within the Vatican that are allegedly resisting reforms.

His remarks at a June 6 private audience with CLAR were apparently referring to the Vatican’s financial scandals and cover-ups of sexual abuses by pedophile priests.

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VATICAN CITY
euronews

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Don’t even think of calling Ernst von Freyberg, the president of the Vatican bank, God’s New Banker.

“I don’t appreciate incorrect and silly descriptions,” he said with a smile in his Vatican office, shrugging off a nickname that some have given him since he assumed his post four months ago.

Still, von Freyberg talks like he is on a mission from God: to clean up the murky image of the bank and steer it to total transparency and compliance with international standards on fighting terrorism financing, money laundering and tax evasion.

The European anti-money laundering committee, Moneyval, said in a July report that the bank, formally known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), still had some way to go and von Freyberg said he is taking the challenge very personally.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

If anything positive has come out of Penn State University’s harrowing sex abuse scandal, it is the uptick in government attention to child abuse prevention.

In response to the recommendations of a task force on child protection convened after Jerry Sandusky’s conviction of child molestation last year, a package of six sweeping bills was voted out of the state House Children and Youth Committee on Tuesday. The legislation is likely to reach the House floor this summer. The bills aim to strengthen child abuse law by broadening the definition of abuse, requiring additional background checks for workers interacting with children and mandating more people, such as lawyers and clergy, to report suspected abuse.

If the Senate and House agree, Pennsylvania may see much-needed, far-reaching reform that could go a long way toward preventing and trying child abuse.

Pennsylvania currently lags behind other states in child abuse convictions, but that doesn’t mean the state has a disproportionately low incidence of abuse. Experts believe that Pennsylvania’s unreasonably high threshold for what constitutes child abuse is to blame.

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VATICAN CITY
Macleans

by The Associated Press on Thursday, June 13, 2013

VATICAN CITY – The Vatican put a new coin on sale last week to commemorate its historic papal transition. Too bad overseas collectors won’t be able to buy it for months.

The Associated Press has learned that the Vatican still hasn’t fully resolved an embarrassing shutdown in credit card services, despite announcing four months ago that systems were back up. The impact has been far worse than the Vatican ever let on, costing the Holy See lost sales at a time when Pope Benedict XVI’s shock resignation and Pope Francis’ surprise election laid the groundwork for a bonanza in Vatican-minted papal memorabilia.

It’s all emblematic of the continued troubles plaguing the Holy See’s financial system, rocked by allegations of incompetence and corruption. But the new president of the Vatican bank, while acknowledging the delays and losses stemming from the credit card shutdown, is brushing off the fiasco.

“So sales will be up in the second half of the year,” Ernst von Freyberg told the AP in an interview, laughing.

The truth is, however, that the credit card woes represent yet another headache for the Vatican as it works to improve its reputation internationally through a painful transition to financial transparency in the fight against money laundering.

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ROCKFORD (IL)
WREX

By Katie Nilsson

ROCKFORD (WREX) –
A man, who admitted to sexually abusing at least one teenager, is sentenced.

Terry R. Carlson pleaded guilty to aggravated criminal sexual abuse in March. He was arrested back in 2010 after police say he had sex with a 17 and 15 year old. Carlson was a trustee for and worked at Kishwaukee Baptist Church. Prosecutors say he was an advisor and counselor, plus a bus driver and he even taught Sunday School there. Shortly after Carlson’s arrest, church leaders denied that he worked there, and say the allegations didn’t happen anywhere near church property.

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HAWAII
Hawaii News Now

[with video]

By Tim Sakahara

KAILUA, OAHU (HawaiiNewsNow) –
Having been abused as a young girl by a Catholic priest Joelle Casteix has walked in the victim’s shoes. Now she’s walking neighborhoods to help others.

One door at a time, one flier in a mailbox at a time, Joelle Casteix canvassed the Kailua neighborhood near St. Anthony’s Church.

“I’m here telling people about Father Henry who worked right here at St. Anthony’s,” said Casteix to a neighbor.

“Just down the street here?” the man replied.

“Yes,” responded Casteix.

“Phew. That’s some heavy stuff,” said the unidentified neighbor.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC news

By Nic Rigby
BBC News

A priest at the centre of allegations of sexual and physical abuse at a Catholic orphanage was arrested in 2003, it has been revealed.

Former residents have alleged they were abused by Father John Ryan at St Francis Boys Home in Shefford, near Bedford, in the 1950s and 1960s.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said Fr Ryan was released without charge. He died in 2008.

The CPS said it was trying to find out whether evidence was presented to it.

Bedfordshire Police started a new investigation after a former resident alleged he was sexually abused by Fr Ryan.

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NEW JERSEY
Press of Atlantic City

Posted: Thursday, June 13, 2013

Catholic Church leaders are sparing no expense to try to stop legislation that would make it easier for victims of sexual abuse to seek damages in court – a move that sends a strange message at a time when many Catholics are calling for reform within the church bureaucracy and an honest accounting of past actions.

The New Jersey Catholic Conference has hired the most expensive lobbying group in the state, Princeton Public Affairs Group, to help represent church officials in Trenton. The church takes positions on many issues, but its biggest battle lately has been to stop a bill that would extend the rights of abuse victims to sue.

Sen. Joseph Vitale, D-Middlesex, has been trying for years to get a bill through the Legislature to give abuse victims more time to file civil suits. Currently, suits must be filed within two years after an abuse victim turns 18 or discovers the abuse. Vitale’s bill, which came close to passage before stalling last year, would eliminate the two-year limit.

The church’s opposition to this bill shows it is tone deaf to the rising call for justice for people who were abused as children.

It is natural for large organizations to act to protect themselves, and the Catholic Church has already paid billions of dollars nationally to victims of abuse by priests. But that impulse to protect the organization at all costs is what led to one of the worst aspects of the worldwide child sex-abuse scandal – the fact that some church officials failed to report criminal activity and, instead, transferred sexual predators to new assignments, where they were often still in contact with children.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Daily News

DANA DIFILIPPO, DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER DIFILID@PHILLYNEWS.COM, 215-854-5934
POSTED: Thursday, June 13, 2013

THEY’D BEEN convicted and stood before their judge yesterday for sentencing.

And still, the Rev. Charles Engelhardt and Bernard Shero – a Catholic priest and former parochial- school teacher convicted in January of sexually abusing a 10-year-old altar boy – avowed their innocence.

“I denied even knowing the accuser,” said Engelhardt, 66, remembering his arrest. “Even after he appeared in this courthouse, I have no recollection of him.”

Shero, 50, said he was equally mystified by the student’s claims, and Shero’s mother told Common Pleas Judge Ellen Ceisler that Shero’s thick eyeglasses and awkward appearance made him an easy target for troublemakers.

But Ceisler didn’t buy it.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

JOSEPH A. SLOBODZIAN, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
POSTED: Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Even as they professed their innocence, a Catholic priest and an ex-parochial schoolteacher got long prison terms Wednesday in the serial sexual assault of a 10-year-old altar boy in the late 1990s.

Common Pleas Court Judge Ellen Ceisler exceeded sentencing guidelines in handing out punishment to the Rev. Charles Engelhardt, 66 and Bernard Shero, 50, saying their crimes called for long terms. She sentenced Engelhardt to six to 12 years in prison and Shero to eight to 16.

The sentences stunned the stand-room-only crowd that filled her courtroom.

Engelhardt’s frown grew longer as it became clear that Ceisler would not impose probation – served in a Maryland home for old, ailing priests – as urged by lawyer Michael McGovern.

Shero, who knew he faced a mandatory minimum five-year term, stood in shock, and lawyer Burton A. Rose put a hand on his arm to steady him.

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CANADA
Winnipeg Free Press

By: Aldo Santin

A priest of the Orthodox Church in America told court this morning he kept quiet about allegations another priest had abused two young boys for more than 20 years.

Father Steven Kostoff said the mother of the alleged victims of sexual assault by Seraphim Storheim told him in 1987 that Storheim had wronged her boys two years earlier but he did nothing about her concerns.

“I was quite stunned, quite dumbfounded,” by the allegations, Kostoff said, but added that he decided to stay quiet about the matter.

Storheim is charged with two counts of sexual assault involving two 11-year-old brothers in his home in Winnipeg during the summer of 1985. He pleaded not guilty to the charges when the trial began Monday.

Storheim was the parish priest at Holy Trinity Sobor Orthodox church on Manitoba Avenue at the time. Storheim had befriended the boys’ family while he served at another parish in another community and the boys visited him separately that summer.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Jun. 12, 2013 NCR Today

Pope Francis’ purported remarks to a group of nuns and priests from Latin America that they should not worry if they found themselves under doctrinal scrutiny were confirmed “in a general sense” by the group Tuesday.

The remarks, made during a June 6 meeting with top officials of the Latin American Conference of Religious (CLAR), have led some to speculate that the pope may be downplaying the role of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

They also came just weeks after doctrinal congregation officials said the pope “reaffirmed” the congregation’s controversial takeover of the main representative group of some 57,000 U.S. sisters, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.

During the meeting, Francis seemed to refer to the Vatican’s move against the U.S. sisters while telling the Latin American delegates not to worry should they find themselves the target of a similar investigation.

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AUSTRALIA
CathNews

Mr Francis Sullivan, CEO of the Truth Justice and Council, has supported the call yesterday by the CEO of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Ms Janette Dines, for victims to come forward and tell their stories to Commissioners, the TJH Council said in a media release.

Ms Dines, speaking on national radio yesterday morning, encouraged victims to meet face-to-face in private sessions with Commissioners as they travel around Australia. The Commissioners were in Brisbane yesterday.

Mr Sullivan said it is vital that victims get to tell their stories. “The Royal Commission is an opportunity for victims and survivors of sexual abuse to come forward and be heard in an environment of support and safety,” Mr Sullivan said.

Around the nation some 1,400 people are scheduled to come forward to talk about their experiences in different institutions across Australia.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Raw Story

By Eric W. Dolan
Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Two Catholic officials in Philadelphia were sentenced to prison on Wednesday for sexually abusing a young boy more than a decade ago.

“This prison sentence sends a clear message to sexual assault victims in Philadelphia. If you come forward, you will be heard,” said District Attorney Seth Williams in a statement. “I would also like to compliment the jury for its hard work in carefully sifting through the evidence, and coming up with a just verdict.”

Rev. Charles Engelhardt, a Roman Catholic priest and a former teacher, was sentenced to 6 to 12 years in prison for sexually abusing the young boy.

As the result of a Philadelphia District Attorney’s investigation, the Oblate priest was accused in 2011 of orally sodomizing and molesting the 10-year-old altar boy. The incident occured in 1998 at St. Jerome Parish in Philadelphia.

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NEW JERSEY
Newsworks

June 12, 2013
By Rob Tornoe for NewsWorks

This is commentary from political blogger and cartoonist Rob Tornoe.

Rev. Michael Fugee is a New Jersey priest who was put on trial for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy, and later confessed to fondling the child while he was under his care… twice.

Fugee was convicted, but that conviction was later overturned by an appeals court. Instead of a retrial, Fugee was allowed to sign a binding agreement not to work with or around children. Unsurprisingly, he was arrested last month after it was revealed he attended weekend youth retreats on behalf of St. Mary’s Parish in Colts Neck.

Now, there’s no indication Fugee engaged in this type of behavior this time around, but what if he did? And what if those victims, traumatized by shame and humiliation, weren’t able to muster the strength to come forward for many years?

Well, they’d be out of luck in New Jersey, and the Catholic Church is spending lots of money to keep it that way.

Currently, the statute of limitations for a victim of child-abuse in the state isn’t ten years or even five years. It’s two years. If abuse victims don’t come forward within two years of their 18th birthday, they’re out of luck, which puts us way out of step with neighboring states. In New York, victims have until they turn 23 to file suit. In Pennsylvania and Connecticut, they have until they’re 30. Delaware doesn’t even have a limit.

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HOUSTON (TX)
Baptist Press

HOUSTON (BP) — Baptist Press is live blogging the SBC annual meeting in Houston. Up-to-the-minute updates can be read here, at our Twitter account (Twitter.com/BaptistPress), or Facebook account (Facebook.com/BaptistPress). Want more updates? Follow our SBC annual meeting feed at Twitter.com/SBCMeeting. A schedule of the Wednesday meeting can be found at http://sbcannualmeeting.net/sbc13/program/default.asp. Watch the SBC annual meeting live at http://sbcannualmeeting.net/sbc13/default.asp.

All times Central

Wednesday

4:53 p.m. — The 2013 SBC annual meeting has been gaveled to a close. Next year’s meeting will take place in Baltimore, Md.

4:48 p.m. — Luter thanks Southern Baptists for re-electing him. He leads messengers saying in unison, three times, “Lord send the revival and let it begin with me.”

4:47 p.m. — Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary President Daniel Akin delivered the Convention Sermon, preaching from Romans 15:14-24 and referencing the debate last year over the descriptor “Great Commission Baptists” and the close vote that ensued. Not giving an opinion on the issue, Akin said the real issue is not what Southern Baptists will be called, but if they “will we be Great Commission Baptists”

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HOUSTON (TX)
KMPH

HOUSTON (AP) – The Southern Baptist Convention has passed a resolution calling on all Southern Baptists to report allegations of child abuse to authorities.

The nation’s largest Protestant denomination has resisted implementing some type of database of ministers accused of abuse, saying that all churches are independent and the denomination does not have the authority to order local churches to submit that information.

The denomination, meeting in Houston on Wednesday, voted to amend the resolution to urge denominational leaders to use caution affiliating with groups or individuals with questionable practices to protecting children.

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HOUSTON (TX)
Christianity Today

Melissa Steffan

Within an hour, leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) approved three interesting resolutions today at the denomination’s annual meeting in Houston, Texas.

Just after 10 a.m., convention attendees approved a resolution that calls “on all Southern Baptists to report allegations of child abuse to authorities.” The resolution, filed more or less in response to the high-profile lawsuit against Sovereign Grace Ministries (SGM), was amended to ask that “SBC leaders and employees practice the highest level of discernment in affiliating with groups or individuals that possess ‘questionable’ policies and practices in protecting children against sexual abuse,” according to Baptist Press (BP), which live-blogged the morning’s votes.

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HOUSTON (TX)
The Baptist Standard

June 12, 2013
By BOB ALLEN / ASSOCIATED BAPTIST PRESS

HOUSTON (ABP)—The Southern Baptist Convention stopped short of urging churches to sever ties with the Boy Scouts of America in a resolution condemning the organization’s recent decision to drop its ban on gay Scouts.

The nonbinding resolution at the SBC annual meeting in Houston expresses “continued opposition to and disappointment in the decision of the Boy Scouts of America to change its membership policy” and called for the removal of Scout leaders who pushed for the policy change. …

Reporting sex abuse

In other action, the convention also adopted a resolution calling on church members to be diligent in reporting alleged child sex abuse to legal authorities.

The nonbinding resolution stresses the “legal and moral responsibility to report any accusation of child abuse to authorities in addition to implementing any appropriate church discipline or internal restoration process.”

It calls on Southern Baptists to “cooperate fully with law enforcement officials in exposing and bringing to justice all perpetrators, sexual or otherwise, who criminally harm children placed in our trust.”

Safeguard children

Messengers approved an amendment from the floor by Georgia pastor Peter Lumpkins, who proposed the original resolution behind the committee’s statement encouraging denominational leaders and employees to “utilize the highest sense of discernment in affiliation with groups and/or individuals” that have questionable policies or practices to safeguard children from criminal abuse.

The resolution comes amid recent reports of high-profile Baptist leaders voicing support for a pastor named in a lawsuit alleging a massive abuse cover up, failing to report an admitted child molester to police and refusing to share findings of internal investigations into abuse allegations with police.

“There’s no greater time in the history of evangelicalism, and Southern Baptists particularly, that we need a strong resolution about child abuse,” Lumpkins said. “This resolution speaks strongly to that. However, I think it needs to be stronger.”

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HOUSTON (TX)
CBS News

HOUSTON
The Southern Baptist Convention approved a resolution Wednesday expressing its opposition to and disappointment in the Boy Scouts of America’s new policy allowing gay Scouts.

The resolution was voted on by members at the denomination’s annual meeting in Houston. It also calls on the Boy Scouts to remove executive and board leaders who tried to allow gays as both members and leaders without consulting the many religious groups that sponsor Scout troops. …

In other resolutions introduced Wednesday, the membership passed a resolution calling on all Southern Baptists to report allegations of child abuse to authorities.

The nation’s largest Protestant denomination has resisted implementing some type of database of ministers accused of abuse, saying that all churches are independent and the denomination does not have the authority to order local churches to submit that information.

Members amended the resolution to urge denominational leaders to use caution affiliating with groups or individuals with questionable practices for protecting children.

It is unclear whether the amendment was aimed at any specific person or practice, but it comes after some Southern Baptist leaders expressed support for Sovereign Grace Ministries. That group faces accusations that church officials covered up child sexual abuse.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Newsworks

June 12, 2013
By Aaron Moselle, @awmoselle

A Philadelphia judge Wednesday sentenced a Catholic priest and a former parochial school teacher to prison for the sexual assault of a young boy that took place nearly 15 years ago.

Before a packed courtroom, Common Pleas Court Judge Ellen Ceisler handed Rev. Charles Engelhardt six to 12 years in jail.

Bernard Shero, a former teacher at St. Jerome’s parish school in Northeast Philadelphia, received eight to 16 years behind bars.

Both men addressed Ceisler before being sentenced. Each maintained their innocence.
Engelhardt, 66, choked up at times as he reviewed his four-plus decades of service as a priest and said he had “no recollection” of the victim, who was abused when he was 10 and an altar boy at St. Jerome’s.

“I had no interaction with him that would lead to this accusation,” said Engelhardt.
“I believe that [this injustice] will be righted,” he added.

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CANADA
CBC

An Orthodox priest who testified in a sex-assault case against Kenneth (Seraphim) Storheim, who is now the top Canadian cleric in the Orthodox Church in America, said his moral principles drove him to contact the family of the two alleged victims.

However, it took Rev. Steven Kostoff, who was the family’s parish priest in London, Ont., 21 years to make that call, court was told in Winnipeg on Wednesday.

Storheim has pleaded not guilty to two counts of sexual assault involving two brothers, who at the time were pre-teen members of the church, more than 25 years ago. Neither complainant can be identified under a publication ban.

Storheim was a priest in Winnipeg at the time of the alleged assaults. He had also worked as a parish priest in Alberta, North Carolina, London, Ont., and other areas before becoming an auxiliary bishop in Edmonton in 1987.

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OHIO
Akron Beacon Journal

Published: June 12, 2013

The Rev. Samuel R. Ciccolini is now a retired priest in the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland.

The popular priest from Akron, known as “Father Sam,” requested retirement for health reasons in a letter dated May 10 to Bishop Richard G. Lennon. Lennon granted Ciccolini’s request on May 20, according to Robert Tayek, spokesman for the diocese.

Ciccolini, 70, was released from federal prison in April, after serving a six-month sentence for cheating on his taxes and committing bank fraud in 2003.

Ciccolini could not be reached for comment.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on the sentencing today of Father Charles Engelhardt and Bernard Shero:
When we at the Catholic League first heard that a boy was allegedly raped by three different persons, two of whom were priests, we were immediately suspicious. After all, how many times in American history has anyone been raped three times by three different persons? The more we learned, the more we were convinced that “Billy Doe” was a congenital liar, school dropout, thief, and drug addict, a punk who sought to cash in on the prevailing animus against priests.

Fr. Engelhardt, whom no one has ever proved even met “Billy Doe,” was sentenced to 6 to 12 years in prison; Shero was hit with 8 to 16.

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HOUSTON (TX)
Associated Baptist Press

An amended SBC resolution passed Wednesday calls on denominational leaders and workers to exercise “discernment” about identifying with groups or individuals tainted by lawsuits or arrest involving alleged child abuse.

By Bob Allen

The Southern Baptist Convention adopted a resolution June 12 in Houston calling on church members to be diligent in reporting alleged child sex abuse to legal authorities.

The non-binding resolution reminds of the “legal and moral responsibility to report any accusation of child abuse to authorities in addition to implementing any appropriate church discipline or internal restoration process.”

It calls on Southern Baptists to “cooperate fully with law enforcement officials in exposing and bringing to justice all perpetrators, sexual or otherwise, who criminally harm children placed in our trust.”

Messengers approved an amendment from the floor by Georgia pastor Peter Lumpkins, who proposed the original resolution behind the resolutions committee’s statement to encourage denominational leaders and employees to “utilize the highest sense of discernment in affiliation with groups and/or individuals” that have questionable policies or practices to safeguard children from criminal abuse.

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HOUSTON (TX)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

The Southern Baptist Convection has passed a resolution urging people to report child sex crimes to law enforcement. Big deal.

This is a virtually worthless ‘feel good’ public relations move that basically protects no one. Brave action, not vague resolutions, stops crimes against kids.

Read the full story

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

John L. Allen Jr. | Jun. 12, 2013 NCR Today

Reports that Pope Francis allegedly referred to a “gay lobby” in the Vatican during a private session with Latin American religious have revived interest in a storyline that first erupted in February, following the surprise resignation announcement by Pope Benedict XVI and at the peak of the furor over the Vatican leaks affair.

Back then, Italian news outlets created a sensation by claiming that a commission of three cardinals empaneled by Benedict to investigate the leaks scandal identified a “gay lobby” potentially involved in airing the Vatican’s dirty laundry. The reports also hinted that this lobby may have been behind Benedict’s decision to step down.

Although the Vatican insisted the pope quit for his stated reasons, meaning age and exhaustion, the Italian contretemps nevertheless turbo-charged frustration about how the Vatican was being run and probably contributed to the election of a complete outsider to the papacy with a track record of good governance in just five ballots.

It should be stressed that the reports in the air today are based on leaked notes from the meeting with Francis, and the Vatican has refused to confirm or deny their content, so we don’t actually know what the pope said. Nonetheless, because the “gay lobby” business is back in the headlines, I’ll repeat here what I said in February.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Grand Forks Herald

By MARYCLAIRE DALE Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA
Exceeding sentencing guidelines, a judge on Wednesday handed down prison terms of at least six years to a Roman Catholic priest and a former teacher in a sex-abuse case that brought down a Philadelphia church official.

The Rev. Charles Engelhardt of Wynnewood and Bernard Shero of Levittown maintained their innocence, and the judge threw out the most serious conviction against Engelhardt for lack of evidence.

Still, Engelhardt, a 66-year-old Oblate who had not previously been accused of abusing children, was sentenced to six to 12 years in prison. And Shero, convicted of rape, was sentenced to eight to 16 years.

“I’ve accepted this injustice and I will continue to do so until it is righted, because I believe it will be righted,” said Engelhardt, who has lost 50 pounds since the accusation surfaced in 2009. “I had no interaction with (the accuser) in any way.”

Shero, also speaking in court for the first time, said his visual impairments and awkwardness made him an easy target. He said he never had any problems with his accuser in his sixth-grade class at St. Jerome’s Parish school in the late 1990s. The accuser was not in court but was represented by his parents _ a nurse and policeman who struggled for years with their son’s severe heroin addiction.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CNN

(CNN) — A Philadelphia Catholic priest was sentenced Wednesday to six to 12 years in prison, and a teacher at the same parish was sentenced to eight to 16 years in prison in a case involving the sexual assault of an elementary school student.

The Rev. Charles Engelhardt, who was a priest at St. Jerome Parish in northeast Philadelphia, was convicted in January for the indecent assault of a 10-year-old boy in the late 1990s.

The parochial teacher, Bernard Shero, who authorities said raped the same boy in 2000, was convicted of rape, attempted rape, involuntary deviant sexual intercourse, indecent sexual assault and other charges.

Both men also must serve five years of probation after prison, the judge ordered at Wednesday’s sentencing.

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HOUSTON (TX)
Univision

Activistas aprovecharon la convención de esta iglesia en Houston para pedir sean más abiertos con los reportes de abusos sexuales.

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NUEVA YORK
Vatican Insider

Habla el reportero estadounidense Michael Winters: «El Pontífice quiere anular a los grupos que dividen a la Iglesia. A menudo los homosexuales son los más conservadores»

PAOLO MASTROLILLI
NUEVA YORK

«El mensaje más importante que contienen las palabras del Papa sobre el “lobby gay” tiene que ver con su determinación para reformar la Curia y la Iglesia. No quería lanzarse contra los homosexuales, sino con todos los que se organizan en grupos o corrientes para influir e la vida y en las decisiones del Vaticano».

Michael Sean Winters, periodista y escritor del National Catholic Reporter, sigue esta información con mirada estadounidense, tal vez el país más afectado por los escándalos sexuales que durante los últimos años sacudieron a la Iglesia.

¿Qué le parecieron las palabras de Francisco durante el encuentro con la Confederación Latinoamericana de Religiosos?

Lo primero que me sorprendió fue el lugar y la forma en la que fueron pronunciadas. Una verdadera conversación, en círculo, en donde él se puso en el mismo nivel que el de sus interlocutores para escucharlos. Esto confirma su cercanía y su determinación para escuchar el parecer de todos a la hora de llevar a cabo la reforma.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

The two concerns Chilean website “Reflexión y Liberación” claims Francis expressed in his conversation with Latin American clerics echo the words of his predecessor

ANDREA TORNIELLI
VATICAN CITY

Although it was Pope Francis’ comments on the existence of a gay lobby and corruption in the Vatican and the fact that clerics should not be discouraged when they end up in the cross-hairs of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that attracted the media’s attention, the summary of the conversation which took place between Francis and CLAR’s clerics last 6 June, contains some interesting passages relating to today’s Church. CLAR’s leaders made it clear they had nothing to do with the publication of the text, which is essentially a reconstruction of what was said, based on participants’ recollections.

The two concerns the Pope apparently expressed in his conversation with Latin American clerics are to do with the risk of “Pelagianism” and “pantheist” gnosis. The first was regarding the doctrines of the Irish monk Pelagius, which were contested by St. Augustine and condemned by the Council of Ephesus in 451. According to Pelagian heresy, original sin did not really contaminate human nature and so humans are apparently able to choose the path of goodness and avoid sin without the help of mercy. In recent decades some were averse to a return to Pelagianism because hyperactivism in the Church, trusting in human plans and projects and believing that human action is what makes the Church what it is, ends up nullifies the action of mercy and reduces everything to human ability.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS Philly

By Steve Tawa

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — A Roman Catholic priest and a former Catholic school lay teacher were sentenced today to long prison terms for sexually assaulting a schoolboy a decade and a half ago.

Judge Ellen Ceisler today sentenced Father Charles Engelhardt to 6-12 years in prison, and former lay teacher Bernard Shero to 8-16 years in prison. Both were convicted last January of sexually abusing the same grade-school student.

Defense attorneys for both men immediately popped up in the courtroom to say they would appeal.

Before sentencing, the standing-room-only courtroom heard the defense lawyers argue unsuccessfully for a new trial for their clients.

The prosecutor read a victim impact statement from the key witness in the case, and family members and friends of the defendants said they believed the pair were innocent.

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