ABUSE TRACKER

DEUTSCHLAND
Aktuell

[Summary: Jesuit Father Klaus Mertes said bishops who were involved in cover-ups of abuse should lose their office or resign. He specifically called out Gerhard Ludwig Mueller who now heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. As bishop of Regensburg, Mueller cover-ups abuse cases, Mertes said. Instead of losing his position, Mueller continued to climb in the hierarchy and continues as if nothing happened, Mertes said. The priest said Vatican is still unwilling to control the abuse problem in depth. Father Mertes was rector at Canisius College, Berlin, when he went public to say abuse had happened at the school.]

“Bischöfe, die an Vertuschungen beteiligt waren, sollten ihr Amt verlieren oder zurücktreten”, sagte Mertes, der 2010 den Missbrauchsskandal in der katholischen Kirche öffentlich gemacht hatte, dem “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger” (Freitagsausgabe). Konkret nannte er den Präfekten der römischen Glaubenskongregation und designierten deutschen Kardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller. Als Bischof von Regensburg habe Müller “an höchster Stelle vertuscht und vernebelt”.

Statt sein Amt zu verlieren, klettere er “mir nichts, dir nichts auf der römischen Karriereleiter nach oben”, kritisierte Mertes. Er halte es vor allem für die Opfer für unerträglich, dass Müller “einfach weiter macht, als wäre nichts gewesen”. Das Bistum Regensburg hatte in Müllers Amtszeit einen Priester trotz einer Vorstrafe wegen Kindesmissbrauchs erneut in einer Gemeinde eingesetzt. Dort verging sich der Geistliche erneut an Kindern.

Den Vatikan sieht Mertes anders als die katholische Kirche in Deutschland erst am Anfang einer gründlichen Aufarbeitung der Ursachen für sexuellen Missbrauch. Es fehle in Rom “immer noch an der Bereitschaft, sich dem Problem in seiner ganzen Tiefe zu stellen”. Das Kernproblem sei die Unabhängigkeit der Aufklärung und der Aufklärer: Der Vatikan müsse sich “in den fraglichen Fällen einer externen Prüfung stellen, also unabhängigen Ermittlern und Gutachtern”.

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

IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Dan Buckley

“He is tackling the structures of the Church and that is exactly what needs to be done,” Fr Flannery said yesterday, in advance of an address at the Kinsale Peace Project in Cork last night.

While Fr Flannery said it was too early to say whether Pope Francis would prove the most radical reformer of the modern Church, he was going about things the right way.

“He has been criticised for not making headway on issues like married priests and the ordination of women, but I think he is right. He is moving to change the Church’s structures, starting with the Vatican Bank, and I think he is right in doing that.

“While changes made by Pope John XXIII and Vatican II made great strides, they did not tackle the structures which meant that when the bishops went home after the Council, the power structures within the Vatican reasserted themselves. Pope Francis is very politically astute and knows that in order to secure real and lasting reform you have to change the structures.” …

“He also faces opposition outside the Vatican. There is, for instance, a strong traditionalist movement emerging in the United States and it has enormous money behind it and are determined to oppose him. So Pope Francis has his work cut out. He is 78, but appears to be very clear-sighted and sure of what he wants.”

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

VATICAN CITY
Columbia Daily Tribune

By NICOLE WINFIELD The Associated Press
Saturday, February 8, 2014

VATICAN CITY — New surveys commissioned by the Vatican show the vast majority of Catholics in Germany and Switzerland reject church teaching on contraception, sexual morality, gay unions and divorce, findings remarkable both in their similarity and in the fact they were even publicized.

The Vatican took the unusual step of commissioning the surveys ahead of a major meeting of bishops that Pope Francis has called for October to discuss family issues. The poll was sent last year to every national conference of bishops with a request to share it widely among Catholic institutions, parishes and individuals.

This week, German and Swiss bishops reported the results: The church’s core teachings on sexual morals, birth control, homosexuality, marriage and divorce were rejected as unrealistic and outdated by the vast majority of Catholics, who nevertheless said they were active in parish life and considered their faith vitally important.

Also surprising was the eagerness with which the bishops publicized the results. The German bishops’ conference released them simultaneously in German, Italian and English on their website, and the Swiss held a news conference.

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CALIFORNIA
The Record

By Kevin Parrish
Record Staff Writer
February 08, 2014

SACRAMENTO – A retired bankruptcy judge from Reno has been appointed mediator in the Chapter 11 reorganization case of the Catholic Diocese of Stockton.

Gregg W. Zive, 68, is expected to convene mediation sessions between diocese attorneys and those representing creditors within 30 days. He retired from the federal bench in 2011 but serves when needed.

Zive was appointed by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher M. Klein, who is overseeing both the diocese’s bankruptcy and the Chapter 9 bankruptcy of the city of Stockton.

Read all about it

Court filings in the Chapter 11 bankruptcy case of the Catholic Diocese of Stockton can be viewed on the website of the Sacramento law firm of Felderstein, Fitzgerald, Willoughby & Pascuzzi. Here’s how:

Last month, Stockton’s became the 10th diocese in the United States for file for bankruptcy protection. It took the dramatic legal step because of the financial drain from continuing court settlements stemming from sex-abuse lawsuits. Over the past two decades, the diocese has spent $32 million in legal fees and settlements.

Zive, past president of the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges, helped mediate the bankruptcy cases of the Diocese of Spokane, Wash., and the city of San Bernardino.

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UNITED STATES
Truth-Out

BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Now that the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has delivered its report condemning the Vatican for aiding, abetting & covering up the Church’s sexual abuse scandal, WWPFD (What Will Pope Francis Do)?

Since Pope Francis (formerly Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina) took dominion over the Holy See, there has been much speculation about which direction he might move the Catholic Church; how he was going to modernize and make the Church more accessible to more people.

Liberals have lauded him for his comments about income inequality and his openness and apparent willingness to usher in a new way of going about the business of being Pope. Some conservatives, however, have scorned him for his economic pronouncements, while maintaining that he isn’t focusing enough on such culture war issues as birth control, homosexuality, and abortion.

With so many difficult issues to deal with, he has recently been handed a golden opportunity to deal with one of the most vexing of those issues: Child sexual abuse by Catholic priests, and its aiding and abetting and subsequent cover-up by Catholic Church officials.

The most prudent move for Pope Francis to make in this regard is to accept the recommendations of the report by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child and, at the same time, open up the Vatican archives.

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ITALIA
Lettera 43

[Summary: What has the pope done against abuses by the clergy? Nothing. Francesco Zanaardi was molested by a priest when he was 11. The church does not denounced the abusers but relocated them.]

di Giovanna Faggionato

Chissà se durante la funzione liturgica, quando la litania del Confiteor si alza fino alle volte vaticane, i cardinali mettono l’accento sull’ultima parola: «Confesso a Dio padre e voi fratelli che ho molto peccato in pensieri, parole, opere e omissioni».

E di omissioni, secondo il rapporto del Comitato Onu sui diritti dei bambini presentato il 5 febbraio a Ginevra, il Vaticano ne ha compiute molte: «Non ha riconosciuto la portata dei crimini commessi, non ha adottato le misure necessarie per affrontare i casi di abusi sessuali su minori e per proteggere i bambini». Ha invece usato «politiche e pratiche» che hanno permesso la prosecuzione delle violenze e favorito l’impunità degli autori.

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AUSTRALIA
UCANews

[On the manner of proceeding in cases of the crime of solicitation (1922) via BishopAccounability.org]

[Crimen Sollicitationis (1962) – via BishopAccountability.org]

Kieran Tapsell, Sydney
International
February 6, 2014

It comes as little or no surprise that the Vatican has been accused of covering up cases of priests committing child sex abuse. What may be more surprising is the fact that, since 1922, secrecy and cover-up have been official Vatican policy, instigated by nothing less than papal decree.

There was hardly a news source in the world this week that did not give headline coverage to the UN’s scathing condemnation of the Vatican’s testimony on child abuse to its Committee on the Rights of the Child. The condemnation came in the UN’s official response, released on February 5, to the Holy See’s submission. The language was unstintingly blunt.

“The Holy See has not acknowledged the extent of the crimes committed, has not taken the necessary measures to address cases of child sexual abuse and to protect children, and has adopted policies and practices that have led to the continuation of the abuse by and the impunity of the perpetrators,” was one of its most damning sentences.

The UN is, of course, an organization that normally deals in diplomatic niceties. But here it effectively endorsed vociferous victim groups such as SNAP (Survivors Network Of Those Abused By Priests), as well as the massed ranks of Church-baiters, and accused the Vatican of a cover-up.

The fact is, though, that this cover-up has not been caused by underhand dealings or the incompetence of bishops – although it cannot be denied that, in some cases, they too have played a part. It is the direct result of papal decrees issued since the time of Pius XI in 1922.

Since the 4th century to varying degrees, clergy had the legal right not to be tried in the civil courts for their crimes but to be tried in the Church’s own canonical courts. That right had virtually disappeared by the 19th century. Secrecy under the papal decrees created a de facto privilege of clergy that had the same effect. If the State courts did not know about these crimes, there would be no State trials and the matter could be treated as a canonical crime in the Church courts.

Relatively speaking, this was something of an innovation. For not far short of a millennium, canon law used to decree that after degradatio – the Church equivalent of a dishonourable discharge – priests found guilty of child sex abuse were to be handed over to the civil authorities for further punishment.

Decrees to this effect were issued by Pope Innocent III (1198), Pope St Pius V (1566 and 1568), the Fourth and Fifth Lateran Councils (1215 and 1514) and the Council of Trent (1551).

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Christian Post

BY MICHAEL GRYBOSKI, CHRISTIAN POST REPORTER
February 7, 2014

Names of over 100 priests and employees of a Missouri archdiocese that have credible accusations of sexual abuse against them have been released to a person suing the institution.

In response to an order from the Missouri Supreme Court, the Archdiocese of St. Louis turned over the list of individuals and complaints Wednesday to the plaintiff of a lawsuit leveled against them. The move came as the state’s highest court denied a writ by the archdiocese to keep the records private for the sake of all involved, according to a statement.

“The archdiocese had litigated to protect the privacy rights of all involved, including victims who had no connection to current litigation and who had come forth confidentially regarding their reported allegation,” reads the statement in part.

“We appreciate the concern given this case throughout the appellate process, and although we share the disappointment of the many innocent individuals who will be affected by it, the Archdiocese of St. Louis will comply with the court order entered by the Missouri Supreme Court.”

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UNITED STATES
dotCommonweal

February 7, 2014

Grant Gallicho

On Wednesday, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child published a report strongly criticizing the Vatican for its handling of the sexual-abuse crisis. It hasn’t gone over very well. John Allen argued that it might actually hurt the reform movement within the Catholic Church. Austen Ivereigh called the committee a “kangaroo court.” (While I don’t agree with everything Ivereigh has to say about the report–for example, he claims the Holy See has been a “catalyst” on abuse reform “at least since 2001”–he’s catalogued its many mistakes.) Michael Sean Winters declared, “To hell with the UN.” Mark Silk criticized the report for treating the Holy See as it would any other state, calling it “worse than idiotic. It’s counterproductive.”

Apart from that significant error, the report foolishly wades into doctrinal waters, suggesting the Vatican revise its teachings on abortion and contraception. The committee urges the Holy See to provide “family planning, reproductive health, as well as adequate counselling and social support, to prevent unplanned pregnancies.” At one point the UN committee asks Rome to remove from Catholic-school textbooks “all gender stereotyping which may limit the development of the talents and abilities of boys and girls and undermine their educational and life opportunities.” At another it complains that the Code of Canon Law refers to chldren born out of wedlock as “illegitimate.” The report says that in canon law instances of sexual abuse ought to be “considered as crimes and not as ‘delicts,'” seemingly ignorant of the fact that “delict” means crime. (The committee’s work is so sloppy that it doesn’t even seem to know where to cut off a quote: That part of the report reads, “Child sexual abuse, when addressed, has been dealt with as ‘grave delicts against the moral’ through confidential proceedings…”)

Even when the committee bumps up against a good idea, it seems uninterested in context. For example, it asks Rome to establish “clear rules, mechanisms and procedures for the mandatory reporting of all suspected cases of child sexual abuse and exploitation to law enforcement authorities,” but fails to note that the world’s law-enforcement authorities are not all made in image and likeness of North America’s and Europe’s. That’s why some diocese–in Africa, for example–haven’t implemented mandatory-reporting rules. Shouldn’t a UN committee show some awareness of that?

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

The former Vatican Secretary of State, Tarcisio Bertone, has commented on the Vatileaks scandal saying there may still be some documents that are about to come out

ANDREA TORNIELLI
VATICAN CITY

“I hope the Vatileaks scandal is now a closed the book although there may still be some documents that are being held, ready to be thrown out there,” said the former Vatican Secretary of State, Tarcisio Bertone in a statement to Italian news channel TgCom24. In his interview with journalist Fabio Marchese Ragona, the cardinal said that the “the whole Vatileaks affair represented a time of great suffering, a period of suffering that went on too long for the Pope and his closest collaborators.

Particularly because of the lack of love shown towards the Church, a sentiment that was reflected in all Vatileaks-related actions and documents that should have been kept confidential in order to allow the Church to internally discuss and put right certain attitudes.”

“But I must say that this incredibly difficult moment inspired a powerful current, a high voltage power line I would say, of closeness and solidarity towards the Pope and the Holy See.” Speaking about the possibility of other documents being brought to light, Bertone said: “I believe that the times, climate and relationship network have changed significantly. I see that there is great trust within the Church.”

In the interview, the former Vatican Secretary of State announced the publication of “a booklet on faith and sport” and revealed his intention to write his memoirs: “I have a very archive, so I am in a position to review and look over on these past years with objective documentation on the facts and provide another reading of events that may be useful in setting the record straight on certain off-the-mark interpretations.”

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SCOTLAND
Scottish Catholic Observer

Fr John Keenan, 49, parish priest at St Patrick’s Church, Anderson, and chaplain at Glasgow University, has been chosen as the next Bishop of Paisley. He will become Scotland’s youngest bishop in Scotland following his Episcopal Ordination on March 19.

Pope Francis’ selection was announced this morning.

“While nervous at my appointment, I have been very uplifted at the congratulations and good wishes I have received so far which have given more confidence,” Bishop-Elect Keenan (above) said. “Everyone I speak to says Paisley is a wonderful diocese with good priests and people full of faith. I am looking forward to being with my brother priests, many of whom I already know really well, and getting to know the people and the parishes of the diocese. I hope just to settle in and listen a lot.”

“At the same time I leave Glasgow with a heavy heart. I have loved my priesthood there from the very beginning and know I have family and many friends who will continue supporting me.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By WOODY ALLEN
FEB. 7, 2014

Last Sunday, Nicholas Kristof wrote a column about Dylan Farrow, the adopted daughter of Woody Allen and Mia Farrow. Mr. Allen has written the following response to the column and Dylan’s account.

TWENTY-ONE years ago, when I first heard Mia Farrow had accused me of child molestation, I found the idea so ludicrous I didn’t give it a second thought. We were involved in a terribly acrimonious breakup, with great enmity between us and a custody battle slowly gathering energy. The self-serving transparency of her malevolence seemed so obvious I didn’t even hire a lawyer to defend myself. It was my show business attorney who told me she was bringing the accusation to the police and I would need a criminal lawyer.

I naïvely thought the accusation would be dismissed out of hand because of course, I hadn’t molested Dylan and any rational person would see the ploy for what it was. Common sense would prevail. After all, I was a 56-year-old man who had never before (or after) been accused of child molestation. I had been going out with Mia for 12 years and never in that time did she ever suggest to me anything resembling misconduct. Now, suddenly, when I had driven up to her house in Connecticut one afternoon to visit the kids for a few hours, when I would be on my raging adversary’s home turf, with half a dozen people present, when I was in the blissful early stages of a happy new relationship with the woman I’d go on to marry — that I would pick this moment in time to embark on a career as a child molester should seem to the most skeptical mind highly unlikely. The sheer illogic of such a crazy scenario seemed to me dispositive.

Notwithstanding, Mia insisted that I had abused Dylan and took her immediately to a doctor to be examined. Dylan told the doctor she had not been molested. Mia then took Dylan out for ice cream, and when she came back with her the child had changed her story. The police began their investigation; a possible indictment hung in the balance. I very willingly took a lie-detector test and of course passed because I had nothing to hide. I asked Mia to take one and she wouldn’t. Last week a woman named Stacey Nelkin, whom I had dated many years ago, came forward to the press to tell them that when Mia and I first had our custody battle 21 years ago, Mia had wanted her to testify that she had been underage when I was dating her, despite the fact this was untrue. Stacey refused. I include this anecdote so we all know what kind of character we are dealing with here. One can imagine in learning this why she wouldn’t take a lie-detector test.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

08 FEBRUARY 2014

* The recent report issued by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has said what many within and beyond Ireland have long felt: that the Vatican protected the perpetrators of child abuse at the expense of the victims.

Weighing up the evidence from across Europe and elsewhere, this conclusion was inevitable. On the heels of the Strasbourg ruling in the O’Keeffe v Ireland case, reflective of the Ryan, Murphy and Clones inquiries into clerical child abuse in Ireland, there are now substantive findings that the Catholic Church, like other religious organisations, perpetuated a code of silence to preserve the reputation of the church and the clergy.

This need not be interpreted as anti-Vatican clergy-bashing but an opportunity for the church to make good on its promises to co-operate with secular authorities on behalf of children.

The underlying issues are too important for the church to now play the part of victim. By removing all paedophiles from its ranks and reporting them to law-enforcement agencies, it helps ensure existing and future school children can be educated and trained in a safe environment.

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BOSTON (MA)
Vatican Radio

(Vatican Radio) Cardinal Seán O’Malley of Boston has added his voice to those speaking out about the recent report on child protection by a United Nations committee.

In a blog post, Cardinal O’Malley said, “I was surprised to read the accounts of the report issued this week by U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, because I would have thought that the competency of this commission is to examine the policies and practices of their member nations, of which includes the Holy See.”

Had the commission focused on that mandate, the Cardinal said “they would have been able to make what I would consider a valuable contribution, because the Holy See needs to model policies for child protection for the rest of the dioceses in the world.”

Instead, he said, “they extrapolated to the life of the Church, which is not their competency, and interjected many of their own ideological preferences. They also appear to have not taken into account the hard work that has been done in many parts of the world. It is very easy to get the headlines when you criticize the church, however, I do not think the commission’s report has been either fair or particularly helpful.”

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

[with video]

From Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on “Duck Dynasty” to Vatican Enablers Attacking U.N. Report: Protection of Heterosexual Male Power and Privilege as Nexus

William D. Lindsey

Here’s what fascinates me in this Media Matters video in which Gretchen Carlson of Fox News interviews Rabbi Shmuley Boteach and Wendy Griffith about “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson and his anti-gay comments:

Boteach says, “We have to stop making religion in America about bashing gays,” and no one appears to object.

But when he goes on to say, “See, the problem in America is that we overlook all the heterosexual guys who are raping women one in five,” all hell breaks loose.

The problem with religion in America today is clearly both about bashing gays and about protecting heterosexual male power and privilege. The two are intrinsically connected.

But when people go there–to the underlying objective of the gay bashing, which is the screening of heterosexual male power and privilege from all analysis or critique–hell breaks loose. And isn’t that fascinating to note?

In her book Out of the Depths: Women’s Experience of Evil and Salvation, trans. and intro. Ann Patrick Ware (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), Catholic feminist theologian (and nun) Ivone Gebara states,

Institutionalized violence against women is not just one specific act of violence but a social arrangement, a cultural construct geared to degrade one pole of humanity and exalt the other (81).

And she also notes,

In one sense, patriarchy is a societal form of male narcissism (a love of anything that is like me), manifest in every cultural, political, and religious institution. Thus it is easier for men to fight for any other cause of social justice than for the cause of equal rights for women (141).

I think neither of these observations is beside the point as we think about why we’re not permitted to observe that gay bashing is deeply rooted in systems that enforce heterosexual male power and privilege–since the ultimate objective of those systems is to keep the feminine (as in women and males seen as feminized) under total subjection to the masculine.

It is hardly beside the point, is it, that the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, about whose recent report media enablers of the Vatican are now going ballistic, is chaired by a woman–Kirsten Sandberg? Read the heated rhetoric of Catholic Vatican enablers about how “gender ideology” drives the U.N. Committee’s work, and about the “ignorance,” “gross misunderstanding,” and “arrogance” that inform this work, and, if your eyes are open even a tiny bit, you’ll realize that you’re reading a thinly disguised screed about uppity women.

And what they must not be allowed to say. Not to men. Not to an institution headed by men, which protects heterosexual male power and privilege.

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UNITED STATES
Independent Catholic News (UK)

Posted: Saturday, February 8, 2014

NCR assesses Vatican abuse report | Tom Reece SJ, UN committee report on the Rights of the Child, National Catholic Reporter.

Fr Thomas Reese SJ gives a thorough assessment of the UN committee report on the Rights of the Child in his blog published in the National Catholic Reporter on 7 February. Fr Reese writes:

The UN committee report on the Vatican’s role in sexual abuse was a missed opportunity. It could have played an important role in improving the church’s handling of sexual abuse; instead, it was an editorial screed.

Any examination of the sexual abuse crisis needs to do three things: 1) Review the historical facts of sexual abuse and how it was handled by the church; 2) examine current policies and procedures and how they are being enforced; and 3) make recommendations for improvement.

The report by the UN Committee on the Rights of Children, like many other examinations of the crisis, skips the hard work of step two, which means the recommendations in step three are meaningless.

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CANADA
The Tyee

By BOB MACKIN
Published February 7, 2014

Three people who allege John Furlong abused them when they were elementary schoolers 45 years ago combined their lawsuits against the ex-Vancouver Olympics boss into one on Feb. 6 and are now also seeking damages for defamation.

Beverly Mary Abraham and Grace Jessie West originally filed separate B.C. Supreme Court lawsuits July 24, 2013, followed two months later by a male, against Furlong, the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation and Catholic Independent Schools Diocese of Prince George. All three aboriginal plaintiffs said they attended Immaculata Catholic elementary school in Burns Lake, B.C. where Furlong taught physical education in 1969 and 1970. They claimed to be victims of verbal, physical and sexual abuse who continue to suffer.

The new filing alleges Furlong defamed the trio at a Sept. 27, 2012 news conference, in October 2013 interviews on CTV and Dec. 12, 2013 on his website.

None of the allegations has been proven in court and Furlong claims innocence.

“The defendant denies that he sexually molested or physically abused or engaged in any inappropriate conduct,” said Furlong’s Sept. 23, 2013 defence statement.

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UNITED STATES
Renew America

By Matt C. Abbott

In typical pot-calling-the-kettle-black fashion, the morally corrupt, Antichrist-stage-setting United Nations – specifically, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child – has blasted the Holy See for its handling of the clergy abuse scandal. And it has blasted the Church for being, well … Catholic.

I write this as a (practicing) Catholic commentator who has, over the last nine years or so, covered various aspects of the clergy abuse scandal. It hasn’t been pretty, to say the least. My head is definitely not in the sand.

But no, the U.N. is not your friend.

Two respected priests are among a number of Catholic voices speaking out on this latest development.

Father Shenan J. Boquet, president of Human Life International, noted in his weekly reflection (excerpt):

The last century saw the unprecedented growth of governments and ideological systems that suppressed religious truth and human dignity. Yet, in the midst of such turmoil there were some willing to witness for truth and freedom of conscience – even at the cost of their lives. Martyrs give the ultimate witness and force humanity in every age to consider the truth placed before them and the seriousness of the duty to seek the truth. When man’s law is unjust, God’s law still demands our assent. ‘It is necessary to obey God rather than men.’ (Acts 5:29) Sadly we are seeing a new era of martyrs in Africa and the Middle East, as Christians are targeted by Muslim mobs and forced to convert or be killed.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Sun-Times

BY FRANCINE KNOWLES Religion Reporter February 7, 2014

Shake-ups at the Vatican will reverberate this year within the Archdiocese of Chicago, where the next leader will play a major role in helping Pope Francis shape the future direction of the U.S. Catholic church, home to more than 75 million followers.

The stage is set for Francis to make what will be the first major U.S. appointment of his papacy.

And Francis’ choice to lead the third-largest diocese in the country will signal his plans for the U.S. Catholic church, which could be on the verge of significant changes.

“There are very few major appointments coming open in the immediate future in the U.S., [but] Chicago is the most important one,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, senior analyst for the National Catholic Reporter. “It’s a very large archdiocese. It’s one that’s historically played a leadership role in the church, and it’s one where everyone expects the archbishop to eventually become a cardinal.”

As required by church law, George submitted his resignation when he turned 75, just over two years ago. Experts expect Francis to accept it this year.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

Article by: RANDY FURST , Star Tribune Updated: February 8, 2014

Head of a chemical dependency program is charged with having sex with a client who was a sex offender.

A 39-year-old St. Paul woman who directed a chemical treatment program for the Salvation Army in Minneapolis goes on trial Monday in Hennepin County District Court on charges that she repeatedly had sex with a client who is a convicted sex offender.

Amy Andrea Horsfield, who is no longer employed by the Salvation Army, was also involved in intimate relationships with two other men who were under the jurisdiction of the Minnesota Department of Corrections, according to allegations contained in court documents.

Horsfield is charged with two gross misdemeanors — criminal sexual abuse of a vulnerable adult and criminal neglect, each of which carries up to one year behind bars and/or a $3,000 fine.

Horsfield exhibited “a pattern of sexual impropriety, abuse and manipulation against convicted felons,” wrote Minneapolis Assistant City Attorney Lisa Godon.

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MONTANA
Beartooth NBC

[with video]

By Charlie Misra

When he was in the 6th and 7th grade at Saint Anthony’s in Missoula, Michael Charles Allen was the only altar boy for the 6 AM mass.

It was during those years Allen says he was sexually abused.

“I have sleepless nights. Ever since I came forward on it, you know, I don’t sleep well.”
Allen says he was so scarred by it, he didn’t tell anyone until just a couple of years ago. His therapist has a theory as to why he held on for so long.

“They said sometimes when you’re abused and it’s very bad, you usually tend to want to bury it, quickly.”

Allen alleges he was abused 2-3 times per week at Saint Anthony’s School, which is now Loyola Sacred Heart. When he heard about the Diocese of Helena’s proposed $15 million settlement of 362 lawsuits of alleged child sexual abuse, he wasn’t happy.

“I think it’s kind of a slap in the face for the victims. There’s a lot of victims. And i can understand that’s a costly situation for the church. But you know, $44,000 for somebody whose life has been damaged and altered. That’s not very much.”

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UNITED STATES
Boston Herald

The authors of a new United Nations report on the Vatican’s treatment of children and its handling of sexual abuse by priests have allowed their contempt for core church teachings to cloud otherwise meaningful recommendations for how the church can improve. And that is a terrible shame.

In a progress report of sorts released this week the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child ripped the Holy See for its past actions to protect predator priests and for the church’s
 damnable efforts to protect its reputation over victimized children. The committee issued a slew of recommendations to both prevent future abuse and to ensure child victims come first.

One particularly strong recommendation is that the Vatican take action against members of the church hierarchy who themselves victimized children simply by reassigning their abusers to other parishes, where they were free to abuse again. Pope Francis could start right in his own backyard in Rome, where Cardinal Bernard Law now makes his comfortable home.

But given the opportunity to wag their fingers before a global audience the report’s authors simply could not pass up the opportunity, condemning church policies on abortion and contraception and recommending that the Vatican amend canon law to allow both.

Yes, really!

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ITALY
GlobalPost

Agence France-Presse February 7, 2014

The Italian supreme court has ruled the adopted daughter of an Italy-based Congolese nun raped by a priest must be returned to her natural mother, Italian media reported on Friday.

The woman had given the baby up shortly after her birth in 2011 because she wanted to stay with the “Little Sisters of Nazareth” congregation, but that request was turned down and so she asked for her baby back.

The little girl was being adopted by an Italian couple and another court had argued the nun no longer had rights as a mother because she only recognised her parenthood three and a half months after the birth.

The 44-year-old became a nun in 1996 and studied at a pontifical university in Rome, the reports said.

She said she was raped by a priest also from Democratic Republic of Congo in the city of Pesaro in central Italy in 2010 but never revealed his identity.

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AUSTRALIA
Dubbo Photo News

Saturday, 08 February 2014 Written by Natalie Holmes

Dubbo man Paddy* is haunted by the memories of his boarding school days, where he was abused and tortured at the hands of his primary educator. He talked to NATALIE HOLMES about the bitterness and the brutality.

Paddy* was just a kid when he was abused by a staff member at the Catholic college he attended. At first, it seemed like a lovely place, but the dream quickly turned into a nightmare. Now, more than half a century later, those memories still haunt him and Paddy recalls some of the horrors of that time at the hands of someone into whose care his parents had entrusted him.

“I was a skinny little boy all of 13 years old. He was a fully grown man; he must have been a coward to bash up a skinny little boy in this way. There was something wrong with him.”

Paddy recalls his first taste of violence at the hands of his educator.

“One day, I was walking with my hands in my pockets and he came up from behind and punched me in the back of the head. After that, every chance he got he would give me the cane.”

Singled out time after time, Paddy suffered countless bouts of humiliation, raps over the knuckles, hundreds of canings, beatings with a rubber hose, and even sexual assault.

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AUSTRALIA
Dubbo Photo News

Saturday, 08 February 2014 Written by Natalie Holmes

Di Frost was just four years old when abuse started at home. Her nightmare escalated when she was also abused by a member of the Catholic Church. She recently made a statement to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and was brave enough to share her story with NATALIE HOLMES.

Buried in the past

I grew up in Sydney – one of six children. We were a good Catholic family going to church all the time. My parents were involved in the church and, from the outside, we looked like a good, happy, healthy family but that was far from the dysfunction and domestic violence. There were various forms of abuse on each of us – physical, sexual and emotional abuse.

I saw it happen to my brothers and sisters as well as experiencing it myself. My father was undiagnosed bipolar and he could change very quickly from a happy, interactive dad who played with us to someone quite different.

He was a good dad in lots of ways but he would have very dark moods and I learned to read body language quite early on.

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NEW JERSEY
Asbury Park Press

Written by
Peggy Wright
@peggywrightDR

Apologizing and saying he had “no excuse” for his crime, a 39-year-old mentally ill man was sentenced Friday to probation and continued psychiatric treatment and ordered to pay $7,500 restitution for sledgehammering a monument in Mendham dedicated to victims of sexual abuse by priests.

Recognizing that former Mendham resident Gordon Ellis, who now lives in Morristown, has a documented history of mental illness, Assistant Morris County Prosecutor Anthony Scibetta last month had extended a plea offer of probation, restitution and continued treatment to the defendant.

Ellis accepted the deal and the Prosecutor’s Office downgraded an original third-degree charge of criminal mischief to a disorderly persons offense of criminal mischief. State Superior Court Judge Mary Gibbons Whipple, sitting in Morristown, on Friday sentenced Ellis to two years’ probation, continued treatment and $7,500 restitution to cover the damage Ellis caused on Nov. 18, 2011, when he used a sledgehammer to destroy a 400-pound millstone memorial erected outside St. Joseph Church in Mendham.

“I would like to personally apologize to St. Joseph’s and the support group they offer. They do a good thing and I put a black mark against that. I’m sorry and I have no excuse for it,” Ellis told the judge.

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UNITED STATES
Christianity Today

How can non-hierarchical denominations prevent child abuse in churches? | Ed Stetzer

I recently spoke at Liberty University convocation. While there, I had the privilege to sit down with my friend, Boz Tchividjian.

Boz is a prosecutor by background, specifically dealing with child sexual abuse cases. He has recently been engaged in advocacy for the protection of victims—first and foremost that there might not be victims. Second, he advocates that those who are victims might be heard and that the perpetrators might ultimately be prosecuted.

Sadly, this is an ongoing challenge in the life of the church. We are certainly all aware of the scandals within the Catholic Church. But increasingly people are asking questions about the Protestant and the Evangelical world. I’ve blogged on such abuse situations on several occasions—see here, here, and here.

For this reason, I felt that an interview with Boz would be worth our time.

Over the course of the next few weeks I will post parts of my interview with Boz and link them together. I recognize that I have written frequently on the subject of child protection, and this will just add more, but I think the protection of children is worth dwelling on since this blog is read mostly by pastors and church leaders.

Part One of our interview was posted a couple of weeks ago and can be found here, and Part Two can be found here.

Let me encourage you to check out Boz’ brand new Religion News Service blog. Also, be sure to check out this article from CBN, and this article on how churches can endanger children.
Part Two of our interview focused on how the leadership of hierarchical Evangelical denominations and Catholicism could help prevent child abuse. This part of our interview focuses on how non-hierarchical denominations may help prevent such acts.

So what could a non-hierarchichal denomination do? For Evangelical denominations who don’t have enforceable policies brought down from above, how can they tangibly act?

I think a starting place is for the leadership of these denominations to engage in personal dialogue with those of us who have already been directly addressing this issue and who really have a heart’s desire to equip the church in understanding this issue. I think it starts with that almost one-on-one dialogue, helping train and equip these leaders to understand the gravity of the issue.

I think sometimes the issue is not discussed at a national or denominational level by these leaders because they simply don’t fully understand it. These are theologians. I completely understand that these individuals have been called to focus on preaching and other aspects of ministry. They’re not called to be experts on child abuse, and that’s understandable. However, that is not an excuse to be un-teachable on a subject that impacts so many inside and outside the Christian community. So the hope is that they are open to begin a dialogue with those who are the experts in this area and who desire to serve Christ’s church in helping it better understand this issue.

Second, there are things that can come from a leadership level that can greatly influence churches to move in this direction. For example, if leaders are learning from the experts in the field, they will be in a better position to challenge pastors to read at least one recommended book a year that will help them better understand the dynamics of abuse. Anna Salter’s book entitled, Predators , is a very difficult book to read. However, if every pastor read that book I am convinced our churches would be safer because our pastors would have a much greater understanding of the gravity and prevalence of this issue. Recently, I recently wrote a Protecting Children from Abuse in the Church: Steps to Prevent and Respond. This is a short but very informative book that I hope can find its way into every church in this country.

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ALABAMA
AL.com

By Kay Campbell | kcampbell@al.com
on February 07, 2014

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama – How can a congregation survive the arrest of one of its ministers on charges of child sexual abuse? And how can it prevent something like that from happening? Only through rapid response, open communication, humble re-assessment of its child safety policies — and faith, say local experts.

The recent arrest in Muscle Shoals of two ministers has prompted religious leaders and parents across North Alabama to ask those questions.

Join the waiting list for the next free, half-day seminar offered by the National Child Advocacy Center, “Preventing Child Sexual Abuse in Youth-Serving Organizations, at NationalCAC.org or call 256-533-5437. The seminar being offered by the NCAC on Tuesday, Feb. 11, from 8:30 a.m. until noon is full.

Sure, open communication is key, says Pastor Brian Mayfield, lead pastor at The Brook Church in Madison, but that doesn’t mean that he, as a pastor and a parent, doesn’t resent the necessity of initiating that kind of conversation.

“This kind of situation will rip a church apart – or pull it together,” said Mayfield, who dealt with the aftermath of sexual abuse as a pastoral intern when a member of his youth group came forward with allegations of abuse by a former pastor. “In a situation like that, parents have to figure out how to have a conversation that no one should have to have with their children.”

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COLORADO
Daily Camera

By Mitchell Byars, Camera Staff Writer
POSTED: 02/07/2014

Jason Roberson, a youth pastor accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a teenage church member over several years, pleaded not guilty and is set for trial this summer.

Roberson, 35, entered a plea of not guilty to sexual assault on a child by a person in a position of trust and invasion of privacy at his arraignment in Boulder District Court today. He is set to stand trial beginning July 14.

According to police reports, Danielle DesGeorges, 24, went to police in April and told investigators that she and Roberson had an inappropriate relationship that began when she was 15 and continued for seven years.

In an interview with police, officers reported, Roberson admitted to touching the victim inappropriately but said it only occurred after she began attending classes at the University of Colorado.

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NEW JERSEY
The Star-Ledger

By Ben Horowitz/The Star-Ledger
on February 07, 2014

MORRISTOWN — A 39-year-old Mendham man who admitted destroying a Mendham church monument to victims of clergy sexual abuse was sentenced today to two years of probation.

Gordon Ellis pleaded guilty last month to a reduced charge of criminal mischief as a disorderly persons offense, admitting that on Nov. 18, 2011, he used a sledgehammer to wreck the 400-pound millstone memorial outside St. Joseph Church.

Ellis, who has a history of mental illness, will be required to undergo mental health supervision and counseling by Morris County’s probation department and pay $7,500 in restitution to the church, under the sentence announced by Superior Court Judge Mary Gibbons Whipple in Morristown.

“There are no other things in his past that lead us to believe he will do this again,” Whipple said.

Ellis told the court he has “no excuse” for what he did, but he offered no explanation.

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CANADA
Timmins Daily Press

By Jeff Labine, Timmins Daily Press
Friday, February 7, 2014

TIMMINS – Ray Lariviere never thought he would get control of his life back after being sexually assaulted as a child.

The 60 year old told his story of abuse to a crowd of more than 40 people at a fundraising dinner at the Dante Club. The dinner was held to bring more awareness of sexual abuse towards males.

“I’ve come a long way,” Lariviere said. “I have control of my own life. Before I would just give up. That means a lot to me. If I had a problem I would deal with it when I felt like it but I never did. Now when I have a problem I deal with it right away.”

Lariviere explained that when he was 14, a priest sexually assaulted him. His family was Catholic and went to church all the time. He became an alter boy and often went to church early to help out.

That changed when a new priest came to town.

Lariviere said the new priest became friends with the whole parish and even came to his home a few times. The man came over so often that Lariviere started going for car rides with him to get a snack.

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NEW YORK/VERMONT
Troy Record

By Larry Neumeister, The Associated Press
POSTED: 02/07/14

NEW YORK >> A federal appeals court directed a lower court to dismiss the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany from a Vermont sex-abuse lawsuit Friday, saying it did not have enough connection to Vermont to subject it to substantial confidentiality interests at stake in the litigation that would likely force the diocese to divulge sensitive documents about sexual abuse investigations.

The lawsuit was brought by a man who said he was abused by a former priest in Vermont in the late 1980s when the priest transported him from New York to Vermont to sexually abuse him.

Gary Mercure of Troy was sentenced in 2011 to 20 to 25 years in state prison after he was convicted of raping two altar boys in western Massachusetts between 1986 and 1989, while he was a priest in the Diocese of Albany. He was defrocked in 2008. Mercure had denied the allegations and his lawyers said the complainants were coached into making abuse claims.

In ruling, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the Diocese of Albany did not have enough ties to Vermont to subject the diocese to the lawsuit. The appeals panel noted that the diocese operates no office or facility in Vermont and its percentage of contacts with Vermont compared to its activities in New York are trivial.

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NEW YORK/VERMONT
Albany Times Union

By Brendan J. Lyons
Updated 9:38 pm, Friday, February

Albany

The Albany Roman Catholic Diocese will not have to turn over nearly 40 years’ worth of sexual abuse records after a federal appeals court on Friday ordered the dismissal of a lawsuit filed against the diocese in Vermont by a Warren County man who was taken across state lines and raped by an Albany priest.

The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found that a Vermont-based U.S. District Court judge, William K. Sessions III, erred when he ruled the Albany diocese had strong enough business ties to Vermont to be sued in that state, where the victim’s claim was not time-barred under the statute of limitations. The federal lawsuit, filed in Burlington, remains standing against the priest, Gary Mercure, who is in prison for raping two altar boys.

A three-judge panel that issued the decision also noted that had the diocese been forced release decades worth of internal sexual abuse files, that disclosure could not be undone if another court overturned the case on appeal following any trial.

“There is no evidence that this information has previously been disclosed. The cat is still in the bag, and the ensuing litigation will inevitably let it out,” the judges wrote. “Moreover, unlike a run-of-the-mill tort case, this litigation implicates significant confidentiality interests for the diocese, its priests, and (more alarmingly) other victims (and their families) who would likely be subjected to distressing depositions, revisiting pasts that would not otherwise be revisited in a case solely against Mercure.”

The judges compared their decision to dismiss the lawsuit to a 2010 ruling by the same court that barred pretrial disclosure of “confidential reports of undercover New York City police officers protected by the law-enforcement privilege.” They cited wording in the earlier ruling that “once the cat is out of the bag, the right against disclosure cannot later be vindicated.”

The 37-year-old man who filed the lawsuit was raped by Mercure in New York, Vermont and Massachusetts, beginning in the late 1980s when he was an 8-year-old altar boy in Queensbury, according to court records.

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POLAND
Fars News Agency (Iran)

TEHRAN (FNA)- A 25-year-old man identified only as Marcin K filed suit against the Polish Roman Catholic Church, alleging that the church is at least partly responsible for the sexual abuse the man suffered at the hands of a clergyman who is now serving a two-year prison sentence.

It is the first time in Poland that a victim sued not only his attacker but also the church as an institution, RT reported.

Higher-ups in the Polish church apologized to all victims of abuse last year but refused to offer financial compensation.

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UNITED STATES
San Francisco Chronicle

David D’Arcy
Published 3:43 pm, Friday, February 7, 2014

The Pope and Mussolini
The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe
By David I. Kertzer
(Penguin; 549 pages; $32)

As Benito Mussolini consolidated power in the 1930s, forging alliances with Hitler’s Germany and invading Ethiopia in a vainglorious bid for a new Roman Empire, the only consolation for Italians might have been that God was on their side.

This was anything but the case, writes David I. Kertzer, a Brown professor, in his captivating study of the uneasy bond between Pope Pius XI and Il Duce. Each man mistrusted the other, but the reclusive pope feared the march of communism, Protestantism and anything modern. Mussolini’s roots were in strident anticlericalism, yet church support in Catholic Italy was crucial for tightening his grip.

In exchange for fiery anticommunism and crucial backing of Vatican policy goals, Italian Fascism got a pass from a silent church on its political monopoly.

Long before the war with Britain and France started in 1939 (when Pius XI died), democracy in Italy was lost, along with many lives, with far more to come. If politics is about holding one’s nose while interests are served, the stench here is overpowering. You won’t learn about steel production or railroad strikes from Kertzer, but you will learn what men in power did and failed to do.

The story begins in 1922, when Italy was stumbling in the wake of World War I’s devastation. Benito Mussolini, once an anti-Catholic socialist (named for the Church-hating Benito Juarez), leveraged nationalism into mass thuggery and found that he needed the acquiescence of the Catholic Church to get Italians’ approval.

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NEW YORK/VERMONT
Westport News

By LARRY NEUMEISTER, The Associated Press
Updated 7:05 pm, Friday, February 7, 2014

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal appeals court directed a lower court to dismiss the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, N.Y., from a Vermont sex-abuse lawsuit Friday, saying it did not have enough connection to Vermont to subject it to substantial confidentiality interests at stake in the litigation that would likely force the diocese to divulge sensitive documents about sexual abuse investigations.

The lawsuit was brought by a man who said he was abused by a former priest in Vermont in the late 1980s when the priest transported him from New York to Vermont to sexually abuse him.

Gary Mercure of Troy, N.Y., was sentenced in 2011 to 20 to 25 years in state prison after he was convicted of raping two altar boys in western Massachusetts between 1986 and 1989, while he was a priest in the Diocese of Albany. He was defrocked in 2008. Mercure had denied the allegations and his lawyers said the complainants were coached into making abuse claims.

In ruling, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the Diocese of Albany did not have enough ties to Vermont to subject the diocese to the lawsuit. The appeals panel noted that the diocese operates no office or facility in Vermont and its percentage of contacts with Vermont compared to its activities in New York are trivial.

It said the diocese served a total of 78 parishioners who lived in Vermont from 2002 through 2012, when six of the diocese’s more than 100 parishes were located near the Vermont border. The 2nd Circuit said those parishioners constituted 2.2 percent of the six parishes’ combined registered parishioners.

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ALABAMA
AL.com

By Greg Garrison | ggarrison@al.com
on February 07, 2014

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama – Commentators on EWTN Global Catholic Network, headquartered in Irondale, have been responding critically to a United Nations committee report this week on clergy sexual abuse that also urged the church to change its stance on abortion, contraception and homosexuality.

The Vatican, stung by the scolding report, responded today with spokesman Federico Lombardi on Vatican Radio accusing the committee of “grave shortcomings.”

Lombardi spoke about the report issued by an 18-member panel of independent U.N. experts who monitor implementation of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. Their report on Wednesday accused the Vatican of disregarding the welfare of child victims of sexual abuse to protect abusers and the reputation of the church.

The U.N. committee ignored the church’s efforts to address the abuse crisis, as documented to the committee, Lombardi said. Although the Vatican objected to the report, Lombardi said the church is committed to continuing to work for the good of all children.

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UNITED STATES
PBS – Religion & Ethics Newsweekly

[with video]

BOB ABERNETHY, host: In a highly critical new report, a United Nations panel accused the Vatican of systematically putting protection of the Church’s reputation above the welfare of children who were sexually abused by priests. The nonbinding report by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child called on the Vatican to immediately remove all known or suspected abusers and turn them over to civil authorities. It also urged accountability for those who covered up the crimes. In response, Church officials said the report ignored recent measures to address the abuse crisis. They also rejected the panel’s criticism of Church positions on other issues, including abortion, birth control, and homosexuality. Joining me with more on this are Kim Lawton, managing editor of this program, and Father Tom Reese, author, expert on the Vatican, and senior analyst at the National Catholic Reporter. Tom, welcome. Welcome back here.

REV.THOMAS REESE, SJ (Senior Analyst, National Catholic Reporter): Thank you.

ABERNETHY: What did you make of this UN committee’s report?

REESE: Well, it was a missed opportunity. You know, I wish they had acknowledged the fact that the Church has done something. For example, Pope Benedict put in zero tolerance for any abuse. That means any priest involved in abuse is no longer allowed to be in the priesthood. He threw out 400 priests in the last two years of his papacy. I think they should’ve acknowledged that, and then said, “Okay, make sure you keep enforcing these policies that you have in place.”

ABERNETHY: So can it be expected that this committee report, it was only a committee report, will have any impact, will cause the Vatican to do anything it otherwise wouldn’t do?

REESE: Well it’s certainly drawing attention to the problem again, and it does have some good recommendations about, you know, making sure that bishops are accountable, that they fulfill and do the policies that the Vatican has now put in place.

KIM LAWTON: Well, and that’s one of the questions. That’s been a big issue is holding the Church leaders, bishops, archbishops accountable, making them pay consequences for their role in it, and that’s one thing that hasn’t happened. Why hasn’t that happened?

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NEW YORK
WHAM

February 07, 2014
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal appeals court has dismissed the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, N.Y., from a Vermont lawsuit.

The lawsuit was brought by a man who said he was abused by a priest in Vermont in the late 1980s.

A few New York priests have occasionally conducted worship services in Vermont. A judge there said the Albany diocese should be part of the lawsuit.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Friday that was “clearly erroneous.”

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NEW YORK
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, February 7, 2014

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314-566-9790 cell, SNAPclohessy@aol.com )

The Albany diocese will not have to release 40 years of sexual abuse records.

[Albany Times Union]

The victim filed suit in Vermont, which is where the abuse took place. The priest Gary Mercure was based out of the Albany diocese. The statute of limitations is less restrictive in Vermont than in New York and the victim’s attorney showed through business records that the Albany diocese has close ties with Vermont.

Mercure is currently serving a prison sentence in MA for sexually abusing an altar boy there.

We’re sad that Bishop Howard J. Hubbard will not turn over these documents and that he spent precious donations to pay for attorneys to appeal.

Hubbard should have publicly released those documents years ago. For the safety of kids, the healing of victims and the benefit of his flock, he should be transparent and work to help victims

But at the very least, he should stop these costly and hurtful legal maneuvers that contradict his repeated pledges to be sensitive to victims and forthcoming about abuse.

If you saw, suspected or suffered any wrongdoing by clergy – child sex crimes, adult sexual misconduct or cover ups of any sort – we beg you to stop being part of the problem and start becoming part of the solution.

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UNITED STATES
These Stone Walls

Petition for Writ of Habeus Corpus
Memorandum

The National Center for Reason and Justice announces a new federal court appeal filed by Attorney Robert Rosenthal for wrongly convicted priest, Fr Gordon MacRae.

Editor’s Note: The following is a TSW guest post by Ryan A. MacDonald.

I am once again pleased to write about a major step in the effort to free Father Gordon MacRae, a priest of the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire now in his twentieth year of unjust imprisonment. In a memorable quote in “The Trials of Father MacRae” in The Wall Street Journal last May, Pulitzer-prize winning author and columnist, Dorothy Rabinowitz summed up an appeal to state courts to overturn the unjust 1994 sexual assault convictions of this falsely accused priest.

“Those aware of the facts of this case find it hard to imagine that any court today would ignore the perversion of justice it represents.”

That “perversion of justice” continued when New Hampshire state courts rejected this appeal without a hearing on its merits, its new evidence, or its documentation of gross ineffective assistance of counsel in the 1994 MacRae trial. In an upcoming guest post on These Stone Walls, I plan to write in more candid detail of that perversion of justice from documents I have recently obtained in this case.

But first, some hopeful news. The National Center for Reason and Justice, a Boston-based organization that reviews claims of wrongful conviction and now sponsors the appellate defense of Father Gordon MacRae, has announced a new federal court appeal. Attorney Robert Rosenthal, lead counsel for the defense, has written an extensive new habeas corpus petition filed in the United States District Court in Concord, New Hampshire seeking to overturn the conviction of Father MacRae. We urge readers to review this appeal brief published by the NCRJ and here at These Stone Walls.

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CANADA
Canada.com

BY MARK KENNEDY, POSTMEDIA NEWS FEBRUARY 7, 2014

OTTAWA — The federal government was warned in an internal report two years ago of “daunting” risks if it failed to locate archival documents connected to the aboriginal residential schools saga.

Among the dangers: the courts might strip the government of the task of finding all the records; there could be “increased anger” among Canadians about government delays; and many former residential school students might die before learning the full truth behind the scandal.

This week, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government came under fire for dragging its feet on a court-ordered obligation to provide millions of documents from Library and Archives Canada to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that is examining the residential schools scandal.

The records are needed by the commission to learn the truth of the decades-long saga, such as piecing together the role played by the federal government — including former cabinet ministers and senior bureaucrats.

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ILLINOIS
Rockford Register-Star

By Chris Green
Rockford Register Star
Posted Feb. 7, 2014

ROCKFORD – Sexual abuse of minors by members of the clergy peaked in the ’70s, said Timothy Lytton who cited a 2002 study commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Lytton, an Albany Law School professor and author of “Holding Bishops Accountable: How Lawsuits Helped the Catholic Church Confront Clergy Sexual Abuse” said a three-decade onslaught of lawsuits starting in 1984 has implicated countless dioceses across the U.S. and abroad.

“The vast majority of victims who brought claims brought them years later,” he said.

One such person is Kathleen Gibbons, 46, of Rockford. She attended Holy Family Elementary School from 1972 to 1980.

A week ago, Gibbon’s attorney, Rene Hernandez, filed a $5 million lawsuit against Holy Family Catholic Church, the Catholic Diocese of Rockford, and three clergy members: Monsignor Al Harte, Father Bob and Brother Allen. Harte died in 2002. The last names of Bob and Allen and their whereabouts are unknown.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Lancaster Online

Column: A look at an archdiocese altering the way it addresses sexual abuse allegations

Posted: Friday, February 7, 2014

By ELIZABETH EISENSTADT-EVANS | Correspondent

I’ve been writing about sexual abuse among Christians for longer than I care to admit. But I don’t often write about a religious institution’s journey as it moves to reform the way it assesses allegations, holds proven perpetrators accountable and reaches out to help abuse victims.

First, an important caveat (and a point that sadly often gets lost in the turmoil about clergy sex abuse): Aberrant behavior that harms children and young adults isn’t only a problem for faith communities. The National Sexual Violence Center terms it “pervasive” and an “epidemic,” with one in four girls and one in six boys becoming sexual abuse victims (though the organization also says that the rate is declining).

According to statistics compiled by the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, more than one-third of sexual assaults are by family members, close to 60 percent by acquaintances.

But that doesn’t excuse members of ecclesiastical hierarchies from taking responsibilities for the wrongs committed in the name of God. Part of the reason that abuse, frankly, draws more attention (or, paradoxically, is not revealed by the victim so that he or she may get help) is the sheer horror of a crime perpetrated by someone believed to be trustworthy, even sanctified. …

This past decade, however, has seen many dioceses in the United States make substantive changes to the process by which they handle abuse allegations.

Due in part to the impact of two grand jury reports, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia has been a laboratory for concrete change as it sought to follow the directives developed in the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.

The second grand jury report, alleging that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia had left abusive clergy in active ministry, also resulted in criminal charges against three priests and one lay teacher. In addition: “The report recommended that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia overhaul its procedures for assisting victims and for removing from ministry priests accused of molesting minors. The grand jury encouraged victims to report their abuse first to law enforcement.”

What has happened since the second grand jury report in 2011?

As part of its response to the scathing critiques leveled in that document, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia hired two district attorney’s office veterans. Now director of the archdiocesan Office for Child and Youth Protection, Leslie Davila previously served in the DA’s office of victim services. Al Toczydlowski, a former prosecutor from the DA’s office, was tapped to head the new Office of Investigations.

In extending its background check requirements to include anyone, lay or ordained, working with children in a parish or a school, the archdiocese has met and exceeded the state requirements, Davila says.

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PUERTO RICO
Washington Post

By Associated Press, Updated: Friday, February 7

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Prosecutors in Puerto Rico are investigating six priests who face sex abuse allegations and have been expelled by church authorities from a diocese in one of the island’s north coastal towns.

Government prosecutor Yolanda Pitino said Friday that she and other attorneys are interviewing several people who have accused the priests of sodomy, lewd acts and sexual harassment.

She said the Arecibo Diocese has provided prosecutors with information related to the six priests, but that they need more details.

“We are not satisfied with the information that the church gave us,” Pitino said in a phone interview, adding that the diocese has not responded to requests for more information.

The Diocese of Arecibo said in a statement that it is working with authorities and sharing information about the six priests that Bishop Daniel Fernandez expelled starting in 2011.

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UNITED STATES
Slate

Amanda Marcotte

On Wednesday, a U.N. human rights panel released its assessment of the Holy See’s responsibilities in the decadeslong child sex-abuse scandal and offered its recommendations to the Vatican on both how to prevent sex abuse in the future and how to deal responsibly with victims when it happens. The report is scathing in its judgment of the church’s past actions, but what is most startling is how aggressive the panel is in recommending that the church radically change its teachings and culture to prevent more child abuse.

Among the recommendations: “Abolish the discriminatory classification of children born out of wedlock as illegitimate children,” “support efforts at international level for the decriminalization of homosexuality,” “explicitly oppose all corporal punishment in childrearing,” “overcome all the barriers and taboos surrounding adolescent sexuality that hinder their access to sexual and reproductive information,” and “review its position on abortion which places obvious risks on the life and health of pregnant girls.” On that last one, the report mentioned the horrific story of that time the church excommunicated a woman for getting her 9-year-old daughter an abortion after the girl was raped by her stepfather.

The Vatican is not happy about this. On Friday, spokesman Federico Lombardi shot back, accusing the U.N. of being biased against the church. “More attention was devoted to well-known non-governmental organizations that are prejudiced against the Catholic Church and the Holy See than to the positions of the Holy See,” he complained, adding that the panel appears “to go beyond its competences and interfere in the doctrinal and moral positions of the Catholic Church.”

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic Culture

In a sharply worded and detailed response to UN committee’s critical report on the Vatican’s response to sexual abuse, the Vatican’s chief spokesman has said that the committee’s recommendations “seem to go beyond it competencies and to interfere in the very doctrinal and moral positions of the Catholic Church.”

Father Federico Lombardi, the director of the Vatican press office, released a lengthy response to the report by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child on February 7. In his 3-page statement charged that committee had neglected to pay attention to information submitted by the Vatican, relying instead on reports from groups critical of the Church. The Vatican spokesman strongly suggested that the report had been drafted in advance, without waiting for the Vatican’s own report.

Most important, Father Lombardi charged, the UN committee had overstepped its jurisdiction to attack the Church’s moral teaching. He said that “the Committee’s comments in several directions seem to go beyond its powers and to interfere in the very moral and doctrinal positions of the Catholic Church, giving indications involving moral evaluations of contraception, or abortion, or education in families, or the vision of human sexuality, in light of own ideological vision of sexuality itself.”

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GENEVA
ANSA

(ANSA) – Geneva, February 7 – The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child on Friday defended its report on the Vatican’s child-abuse track record after the Holy See said it was biased. The Committee made its recommendations after “objectively examining all relevant information…as it (does) with all state parties,” said Committee head Kirsten Sandberg.

“As stated in its concluding observations, the Committee welcomed the open and constructive dialogue it had with the delegation of the Holy See, which made positive commitments in numerous areas. “In particular, the Committee regards as positive the willingness expressed by the delegation to change attitudes and practices, and looks forward to the adoption of prompt and firm measures for the concrete implementation of its commitments”.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic World Report

February 07, 2014
By Catherine Harmon

After the release of a report from the United Nations’ Committee on the Rights of the Child earlier this week that roundly criticized the Vatican’s response to clerical sex abuse worldwide, the Vatican’s spokesman today issued some “comments and clarifications” about the Holy See’s position on the report.

The head of the Vatican Press Office, Father Federico Lombardi, SJ, reiterated the Vatican’s commitment to the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the Committee on the Rights of the Child was established to implement: “The Holy See, therefore, as the Holy See’s Secretary of State, Archbishop Pietro Parolin has said, continues its efforts to implement the Convention and to maintain an open, constructive and engaged dialogue with the organs contained therein.”

Lombardi continues:

At the same time, one cannot fail to see that the latest recommendations issued by the Committee appear to present – in the opinion of those who have followed well the process that preceded them – grave limitations.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

(Vatican Radio) Please find, below, Vatican Radio’s translation of the full text of Fr Federico Lombardi, SJ’s Note containing some punctualizations on the UN, the Holy See and the Committee on the Rights of the Child.

******************************

After the large number of articles and comments that followed the publication of the recommendations of the audit Committee of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, it seems useful to make a few comments and clarifications.

It is not appropriate to speak of confrontation “between the UN and the Vatican”. The United Nations is a reality that is very important to humanity today.

The Holy See has always provided strong moral support to the United Nations as a meeting place among all the nations, to foster peace in the world and the growth of the community of peoples in harmony, mutual respect and mutual enrichment. Countless documents and addresses of the Holy See at [the UN’s] highest levels and the intense participation of the Holy See’s representatives in the activities of many UN bodies attest to this.

The highest authorities of the UN have ever been aware of the importance of the moral and religious support of the Holy See for the growth of the community of nations: so they invited Popes to visit the organization and direct their words to the General Assembly. In the footsteps of Paul VI, John Paul II (twice) and Benedict XVI have done so. In short, the United Nations, at the highest levels, appreciate and desire the support of the Holy See and positive dialogue with it. So does the Holy See, for the good of the human family. This is the perspective in which the present questions ought to be raised.

International Conventions promoted by the United Nations are one of the ways in which the international community seeks to promote the dynamic of the search for peace and the promotion of the rights of the human person in specific fields. States are free to join. The Holy See/Vatican City State has adhered to those it considers most important in the light of its activities and its mission. (It should be noted that adherence to a Convention entails a commitment to participation, reports, etc. , which require staff and resources – for which reason the Holy See must choose [to adhere to] a limited number of Conventions, commensurate with its possibilities for participation). Among these, in a timely manner, the Holy See joined – among the first in the world – the Convention on the Rights of the Child, in the light of the great work done in this field, in many different forms ( educational, charitable , etc. . ) and for so long, by the Catholic community in the world, and in light of the Magisterium of the Church in this area, inspired by the behavior of Jesus described in the Gospels.

Naturally, the operations of the UN are vast and complex, and like any large organization – and precisely because of its international and as far as possible universal nature – embraces very different persons, positions and voices. It is therefore no wonder that in the vast world of the UN different visions shall encounter and even collide with each other. Therefore, in order that the overall result be positive, a great willingness to be open to dialogue is needed, along with attentive respect for essential rules and procedures, and in preparing activities.

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ROME
National Catholic Reporter

Christa Pongratz-Lippitt | Feb. 7, 2014

“It is fascinating to see how Pope Francis is encouraging, reviving and renewing the church. Our meeting with him was an excellent lesson on how to live the Gospel today,” Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna said after a 90-minute audience with the pope during the Austrian bishops’ “ad limina” visit to the Vatican in the last week of January.

The Austrian bishops took the results of the recent Vatican questionnaire to Rome with them. Responses showed that 95 percent of those who had filled out the questionnaire in Austria were in favor of allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive the sacraments.

The subject of family relationships today and how the church should deal with them played an important role at the Jan. 30 meeting with the pope, Schönborn said. “We cannot speak about people without speaking about families,” Francis said, explaining that was why the subject of the coming Synod of Bishops in October had been altered from bioethics to the family.

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NEW YORK/VERMONT
New York Law Journal

Mark Hamblett, New York Law Journal
February 10, 2014

A plaintiff who alleged he was sexually abused by a priest failed in his bid to bring sexual abuse allegations in Vermont against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany.

Taking the rare step of issuing a writ of mandamus, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said the fact that the diocese holds occasional worship services over the border from New York fell far short of giving a federal court jurisdiction over the case.

The Second Circuit ordered U.S. District Judge William Sessions to dismiss the case of Shovah v. Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, New York, 13-4736-cv, where allegations against the diocese in New York were defeated by the statute of limitations.

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NEW YORK/VERMONT
Albany Times Union

By Brendan J. Lyons
Updated 2:23 pm, Friday, February 7, 2014

The Albany Roman Catholic Diocese has avoided having to turn over nearly 40 years worth of sexual abuse records after a federal appeals court on Friday ordered a Vermont judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a New York man who was taken across state lines and raped by a priest.

The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit indicates that U.S. District Court Judge William K. Sessions III erred when he ruled the Albany diocese had strong enough ties to the state of Vermont to be sued in that state, where the victim’s claim was not time-barred under Vermont’s statute of limitations.

The diocese, on the heels of being ordered by Sessions to turn over abuse files dating to 1975, filed an unusual court action known as a writ of mandamus that asserted the district court’s ruling was so egregious that it warranted an immediate review by the appeals panel. The appellate court, after reviewing the decision, agreed with the diocese.

“The district court’s jurisdictional analysis is clearly erroneous,” states the order issued Friday. “Subjecting the diocese to suit and the resultant foray into sensitive documents — investigations into allegations of sexual abuse by its employees — when the case would be time-barred if brought in New York … constitutes ‘exceptional circumstances’ warranting the ‘extraordinary remedy’ of a writ of mandamus.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Argus

By Anna Roberts, Crime reporter

A former teacher and assistant priest has been charged with assaulting boys.

Christopher Howarth, 66, retired, of Rocks Park Road, Uckfield, is due to appear on bail at Brighton Magistrates’ Court on Thursday, February 20, charged with 24 offences, all allegedly taking place in the Uckfield area.

Howarth, who taught at Uckfield Community Technology College until 2007, was charged today.

He is accused of 12 counts of causing engagement in sexual activity with a boy now aged 19 between 2005 and 2011, two of sexual assault by penetration against the same boy over the same period, nine of sexual assault against a boy now aged 20 between 2004 and 2012 and one of causing the same boy to watch a sexual act.

A Sussex Police statement said: “The charges, authorised by the Crown Prosecution Service, follow an investigation by specialist Sussex Police child protection detectives.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

A priest from East Sussex has been charged with sex offences against two boys.

Christopher Howarth, 66, of Rocks Park Road, Uckfield is accused of 24 offences including sexual assault against the boys, now aged 19 and 20.

The offences are alleged to have taken place between 2004 and 2012. Mr Howarth has been bailed to appear before magistrates in Brighton on 20 February.

Sussex Police there were no allegations of offences against any other person.

A spokesman said the alleged offences took place in the Uckfield area. The charges followed an investigation by child protection detectives.

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UNITED STATES
Religion News Service

Boz Tchividjian | Feb 7, 2014

I recently came across a legal alert from a Christian organization that directs pastors who learn of suspected child abuse to first conduct their own internal investigation “to decide whether the situation requires reporting to the authorities.” Yikes!

As I work with churches and other Christian institutions, I often encounter professing Christians who struggle with whether they should first report suspected child abuse to the civil authorities. As above, they are often directed to report abuse suspicions to leadership who then decide whether or not to involve the authorities. Double yikes!!

A church elder once told me that if he received a disclosure of child sexual abuse, his first response would be to interview the alleged victim. His rationale was that he wanted to “be sure that the allegations are legitimate before reporting to the police and ruining the man’s reputation”. When asked what training he had to conduct a child forensic interview, the man was silent. When asked whether he wanted the responsibility to determine the validity of a very serious felony, he started to shrink back in his chair. I then asked whether he was prepared to violate mandated reporting laws. Fortunately, the elder got my point, changed his opinion, and acknowledged his need to learn more about child sexual abuse. An issue often at the heart of this critical struggle is whether the Church is obligated to subject itself to the laws of man when it believes that it is capable to address the sin “in-house”.

Let’s make sure we all understand one important truth, child sexual abuse is both a sin AND a serious crime. In order to effectively carry out its responsibility of protecting children and punishing perpetrators, all 50 states have laws that mandate certain citizens to report suspected neglect or abuse of children. Violation of mandated reporting laws not only fails to protect children, but also enables the perpetrator to avoid criminal prosecution. Scripture says, For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good (Romans 13:4). This clearly indicates that a central purpose of civil government is to do good. If that is the case, can there be any greater good carried out by civil government than to punish citizens who violate laws designed to protect society’s most vulnerable members? In order to carry out this good, the authorities must be notified of the alleged offense. Governments are incapable of protecting little ones and punishing offenders if its citizens remain silent in the face of such evil.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, February 07, 2014

Statement by Peter Isely of Milwaukee, board member of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 414-429-7259, peterisely@yahoo.com )

Papal spokesman claims UN panel “gave more credence to NGOs” over church officials. This is simply not true.

[Associated Press]

The UN panel gave credence to decades of well documented horrific crimes and cover ups. Catholic officials can’t spin or promise their way out of the crisis. Catholic officials should not be surprised when well educated objective adults judge them on consistent self serving actions, and not on professed intentions to do better in the future.

The Vatican’s belligerence is deeply disappointing. Listening and learning, not ducking and dodging, can help protect children. People should ask themselves “who do I believe an impressive impartial panel of experts with an unblemished track record, or a handful of powerful complicit clerics with an extraordinarily blemished track record?”

Pope Francis should instruct prelates to call off attack dogs and study the full UN panel report and start taking tangible abuse prevention steps. This is the only way the church hierarchy will be able to start safeguarding children and restoring its justifiably tattered reputation.

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UNITED STATES
City of Angels

Kay Ebeling

(First installment of a book to be published here a chapter at a time. Please support this project by clicking the PayPal “Buy Now” button on the left with High $5’s. You are buying readership.)

Faster Than the Speed of Life Chapter 1: First Light

Elgin, Illinois May 2013
I walked all the way to the end of the train then, quick, turned around and walked back. That blew his cover. The guy following me kind of jumped, got a what the f— expression on his face, then recovered and nodded like a polite stranger as I walked past him. But for that brief moment of eye contact I knew, and he knew I knew.

I walked up the hill to my apartment and spent the day laughing in an isolated sense of victory.

See, I had a feeling that because of my blog, they’d put a device somewhere in my apartment that allowed them to read everything on my computer. So as a test, I journalled an elaborate plan involving a Chicago church and Father Horne. I tapped details about it on my keyboard knowing the spooks were reading every bit of it and freaking out, I even emailed myself the journal to “save it in the cloud,” and make sure they’d read it.

Then that Sunday morning at the Elgin Metra station, I blew their cover.

It felt good to out-trick them. “What, did they think I was going to do, throw eggs at a church?” .

Heh heh.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian (UK)

Australian Associated Press
theguardian.com, Friday 7 February 2014

The Salvation Army’s decision to allow a man with a history of abuse to re-enter its ranks was the worst mistake in its history, an inquiry has been told.

The Salvos had already dealt with many allegations of brutal sexual and physical abuse by Lawrence Wilson, a former manager of boys homes in NSW and Queensland, a hearing of the royal commission into child sex abuse heard in Sydney.

Major Peter Farthing, who is co-ordinating the Salvation Army’s response to the commission, said he expected more victims to come forward.

Answering questions about how Wilson, who was dismissed from the army in 1961, applied to re-enter in 1965, Farthing said it had never been policy to check references when hiring staff.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

DAN BOX AND RICK MORTON THE AUSTRALIAN FEBRUARY 08, 2014

AS a young man living in southern Sydney during 1974, Peter Farthing and his family would regularly welcome a boy from the nearby Salvation Army home to lunch on Sunday afternoons. They would share lunch and watch television together. “It was an experience for him to escape the home,” Farthing said.

It was only decades later, as personnel officer for the Salvation Army, that the now Major Farthing began to learn just how much that boy needed to escape.

Over the past fortnight, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has heard that boys at Bexley were raped and beaten until they bled under the sadistic rule of the home’s manager, Captain Lawrence Wilson.

Amid some of the most distressing evidence yet uncovered by the commission, experts believe the current crisis may be unprecedented in the international history of the Salvation Army. Many have also been surprised it is the Salvation Army, a widely trusted charitable organisation, that has been so exposed, rather than one of the established churches widely expected to be the focus of the commission’s work.

Evidence of brutally degrading treatment has been uncovered by the commission at four Salvation Army homes in Queensland and NSW.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Thomas Reese | Feb. 7, 2014 Faith and Justice

The U.N. committee report on the Vatican’s role in sexual abuse was a missed opportunity. It could have played an important role in improving the church’s handling of sexual abuse; instead, it was an editorial screed.

Any examination of the sexual abuse crisis needs to do three things: 1) Review the historical facts of sexual abuse and how it was handled by the church; 2) examine current policies and procedures and how they are being enforced; and 3) make recommendations for improvement.

The report by the U.N. Committee on the Rights of Children, like many other examinations of the crisis, skips the hard work of step two, which means the recommendations in step three are meaningless.

When it comes to the historical record, the church deserves to be raked over the coals. It went through at least three stages of responding to abusive priests, all of which proved to be disastrous.

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ROMA
El Espectador

El sacerdote mexicano Marcial Maciel, fundador de la congregación ultraconservadora Legionarios de Cristo, fue acusado por ocho exmiembros de esa comunidad de haber sido víctimas de abuso sexual cuando eran adolescentes en Italia y España. Entonces Maciel negó las acusaciones de pederastia diciendo que era un complot en su contra. En todos los estrados judiciales donde intentaron llevarlo, sus abogados aseguraron que esto no era cierto.

En medio del escándalo, en 2004, el papa Juan Pablo II le dio su bendición con motivo de su aniversario de ordenación sacerdotal. Según una investigación ordenada por el entonces prefecto de la Congregación para la Doctrina de la Fe, Benedicto XVI, Maciel tenía una doble vida: tuvo al menos cuatro hijos, era pederasta y drogadicto. Incluso lo señalan de haber plagiado el libro “El salterio de mis días”, lectura de cabecera de los Legionarios. Hay excolaboradores que lo han acusado de haber envenenado a su tío abuelo. Pero no solo eso. Las denuncias por abusos llegaron al Vaticano pero el entonces papa Juan Pablo II, gran protector de Maciel, las ignoró y siguió apoyando a Maciel.

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CIUDAD DEL VATICANO
El Nuevo Herald

BY POR NICOLE WINFIELD
ASSOCIATED PRESS

CIUDAD DEL VATICANO — El Vaticano contraatacó al comité de Naciones Unidas que emitió un duro reporte sobre los casos de abuso sexual contra menores cometidos por sacerdotes, acusándolo de excederse en su mandato y desacreditar al organismo internacional.

Agregó que el comité ha adoptado posiciones “prejuiciadas” de grupos de apoyo anticatólicos y ha minimizado el estatus único de la Santa Sede y sus esfuerzos para atender la crisis desatada por los abusos sexuales en años recientes.

El Vaticano también criticó lo que llamó publicidad “absolutamente anómala” que el comité dio a su informe y prometió que más tarde dará una respuesta más extensa.

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Huffington Post

Editor’s note: The following is excerpted from “Can We Save The Catholic Church?” by Hans Küng. Reproduced by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.

The Arab Spring has shaken a whole series of autocratic regimes. With the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and the election of Pope Francis, might something like this be possible in the Catholic Church as well – a ‘Vatican Spring’?

Of course, the system of the Roman Catholic Church is quite different from those prevailing in Tunisia and Egypt, to say nothing of the absolute monarchies like Saudi Arabia. In all these countries, the reforms that have taken place until now are often no more than minor concessions, and even these are often threatened by those who oppose any progressive reforms in the name of tradition. In Saudi Arabia, most of the traditions, in fact, are only two centuries old; the Catholic Church, by contrast, claims to rest on traditions that go back twenty centuries to Jesus Christ himself.

Is this claim true? In reality, throughout its first millennium, the Church got along quite well without the monarchist–absolutist papacy that we now take for granted. It was only in the eleventh century that a ‘revolution from above’, started by Pope Gregory VII and known as the ‘Gregorian Reform’, gave us the three outstanding features that mark the Roman System to this day:

• a centralist–absolutist papacy;
• clericalist juridicism; and,
• obligatory celibacy for the clergy.

Efforts to reform this system by the reforming councils in the fifteenth century, by the Protestant and Catholic reformers of the sixteenth century, by the supporters of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and, most recently, by the champions of a progressive liberal theology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, managed to achieve only partial success. Even the Second Vatican Council, from 1962 to 1965, while addressing many concerns of the reformers and modern critics, was effectively thwarted by the power of the papal Curia and managed to implement only a few of the demanded changes. To this day the Curia – in its current form a creature of the eleventh century – is the chief obstacle to any thorough-going reform of the Catholic Church, to any honest ecumenical reconciliation with the other Christian Churches and the world religions, and to any critical, constructive coming-to-terms with the modern world. To make things worse, supported by the Curia, under the previous two popes, there has been a fatal return to old absolutist attitudes and practices.

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VATICAN CITY
swissinfo

February 7, 2014

ROME (Reuters) – The Vatican sought to defuse tensions with the United Nations on Friday after a damning report which accused the church of covering up child sex abuse by priests.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi adopted a markedly softer tone to Wednesday’s sharp criticism of a report by the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child.

The paper accused the Church of valuing its reputation above the protection of children and demanded the Vatican turn over suspected offenders to civil justice.

The Vatican had originally planned a muted response, according to a person familiar with the matter, but attacked the report’s demands that the church scale back its opposition to abortion, artificial contraception and homosexuality.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The Vatican said it would continue to adhere to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and give an attentive response to the U.N. committee monitoring adherence to the treaty, despite what it views as unfair criticism and suggestions from the committee that would violate church teaching.

The Vatican will follow the procedures foreseen by the treaty “with openness to criticisms that are justified, but it will do so with courage and determination, without timidity,” said Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman.

Father Lombardi issued a statement Feb. 7, two days after the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child insisted the Vatican was not doing enough to prevent clerical sexual abuse of children and even suggested that, for the good of children, the Catholic Church change its teaching on abortion, contraception and homosexuality.

Committee members went “beyond their competence and interfered in the doctrinal and moral positions of the Catholic Church,” the spokesman said, adding that the committee’s suggestions reveal an “ideological vision of sexuality.”

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Derry Journal

Former residents of Nazareth House Children’s Home in Derry will next week start giving evidence to a public inquiry probing allegations of abuse at kids’ care homes.

The Historical Abuse Inquiry, sitting in Banbridge, Co. Down, is investigating abuse claims against children’s residential institutions across the North between 1922 and 1995.

Among the homes under the spotlight are St Joseph’s Boys’ Home, Termonbacca, and Nazareth House Children’s Home, Bishop Street – both runs by the Sisters of Nazareth.

Hearings of the inquiry are to resume on Monday with the first oral testimony from former residents of the Bishop Street kids’ home.

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CANADA
Thompson Citizen

Federal government suing Corporation of Catholic Entities Party to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement for $1.5 million

FEBRUARY 7, 2014

BY JOHN BARKER
EDITOR@THOMPSONCITIZEN.NET

The federal government is suing the Corporation of Catholic Entities Party to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement, created in 2006 to oversee the undertakings of the group of 54 Catholic dioceses and religious congregations under the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, for $1.5 million in contested expenses on funds.

The Catholic entities had sought mediation over the disputed expenses, but the federal government opted to litigate the matter.

The Corporation of Catholic Entities Party to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement reached a $79-million agreement involving Canadian Catholic participation in residential schools almost a decade ago in an out-of-court settlement. The corporation was created in 2006 to oversee the undertakings of the group of 54 Catholic dioceses and religious congregations under the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, as there was no one central Catholic entity, unlike the Anglican, Presbyterian and United Churches, who are also parties to the agreement, to enter into negotiations or reach an agreement with.

The $79-million agreement involved three phases, including a $29-million first phase cash donation on the part of the entities to be provided for healing and reconciliation programs for those impacted by residential schools.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Frankfurter Rundschau

[Summary: Father Klaus Mertes, who revealed abuse at Canisius College, said there are legitimate criticisms in the United National report on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church but he doesn’t believe in mandatory reporting to police. He said some victims groups are also against “automatism.”]

Als Rektor des Canisius-Kollegs hat Pater Klaus Mertes einst den sexuellen Missbrauch an der Schule enthüllt. Den aktuellen UN-Missbrauchsbericht hält er teilweise für naiv, trotzdem enthalte er berechtigte Kritik an der Kirche.

Klaus Mertes ist Jesuit und war elf Jahre lang Rektor an der Berliner Jesuitenschule Canisius-Kolleg. Er war maßgeblich für die Enthüllungen über den sexuellen Missbrauch am Kolleg verantwortlich und setzte sich für die Aufklärung ein. Derzeit leitet er das Kolleg St. Blasien.

Pater Mertes, gehen Sie mit der Kritik der UN an der katholischen Kirche konform?

Nicht jede Kritik ist sachlich und sachdienlich. Zum Beispiel kann ich nur den Kopf schütteln, wenn der UN-Bericht immer noch auf einer zwingenden Meldepflicht von Missbrauchsfällen an die staatliche Justiz herumreitet. Darüber sind wir in der Diskussion längst hinweg. Gerade die Opferschutzverbände warnen vor solch einem Automatismus.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Tagesspiegel

Johannes-Wilhelm Rörig, der Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Fragen des sexuellen Kindesmissbrauchs, sieht Defizite bei Kirche und Staat.

Das UN-Kinderschutzkomitee hat ein hartes Urteil gefällt: Die katholische Kirche gehe mit den Missbrauchsfällen fahrlässig um, wolle sich der weltlichen Justiz entziehen und befördere sogar noch die Fortsetzung des Missbrauchs. Sind die Vorwürfe gerechtfertigt?

Die UN schauen auf die Kirche weltweit. Da kann ich mir kein Urteil bilden. In Deutschland hat die Kirche ernsthafte Anstrengungen unternommen, um die Fälle aufzuarbeiten. Aber es fehlt eine umfassende Aufarbeitung. Die Zusammenarbeit mit dem Kriminologen Christian Pfeiffer scheiterte vor einem Jahr.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

The film, starring Judi Dench and Steve Coogan, tells the true story of Philomena Lee’s search for the son she was forced to put up for adoption through the Seán Ross Abbey mother and baby home in 1952, when she was 19.

Ms Lee, who met Pope Francis on Wednesday, also attended the screening along with her daughter, Jane Libberton, and Coogan, who wrote, produced, and starred in the film.

Susan Lohan, co-founder of the Adoption Rights Alliance, who is also in Rome as part of the Philomena Project, said the Pope’s private secretary, Monsignor Guillermo Karcher, indicated that he did not view the film as anti-Catholic and would recommend it to Pope Francis.

Some critics in the US had hit out at the film as being “90 minutes of organised hate”.

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VATICAN CITY
Hurriyet Daily News (Turkey)

VATICAN CITY – Agence France-Presse

The Vatican on Friday criticised a damning UN report on the Catholic Church’s handling of child sex abuse cases, saying it had “grave limits” and accusing UN committee members of following “prejudiced” views.

“The recommendations published by the committee appear to present… grave limits,” spokesman Federico Lombardi said in a statement on Vatican Radio’s website, defending the efforts made to stamp out abuse.

“More attention was devoted to well-known non-governmental organisations that are prejudiced against the Catholic Church and the Holy See than to the positions of the Holy See,” Lombardi said.

“It makes one think the report was already written or already well advanced before the hearing” of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in Geneva in which delegates last month grilled a Vatican delegation.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic Online

[On the manner of proceeding in cases of the crime of solicitation (1922) via BishopAccounability.org]

[Crimen Sollicitationis (1962) – via BishopAccountability.org]

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) – For most people, why the Church would seemingly cover up the criminal behavior of abusive priests and clergy remains an enduring mystery – and a scandal! It simply makes no sense that the one institution on the planet, with the highest moral authority investment, would do so little to discipline those who abuse children.

For the past century, some priests have largely gone unpunished for their crimes against children, protected by which should be the world’s most trusted institution. Yet since the 1980s and 90s, case after case surfaced that demonstrated the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, meaning its bishops and archbishops, had knowledge of predatory priests, and instead of reporting those priests to the civil authorities, seemed to cover up the crimes and either fire the priests, shuffle them off to seclusion and treatment, or in the worst cases, sent them to other parishes where they continued to abuse children.

Please pray for the victims of abuse in the Church.

Only in rare cases, were the priests actually handed over and prosecuted by the civil authorities. Why was this so?

The answer apparently goes all the way back to Vatican City, and a special decree issued by Pope Pius XI in 1922. That decree reinforced 1,500 years of previous papal decrees upholding what is known as the “privilege of clergy.” The term “privilege” in legal parlance does not refer to special treatment but to a concept within the law of evidence.

Privilege of clergy is a church policy first establish in the fourth century. It holds that the clergy of the Church, when accused of crime, should be disciplined within the Church, rather than by civil institutions.The Church has a Code of Canon Law and a judicial process, including penalties, rules of evidence, and trials established within her – as a part of her internal government as a society in her own right.

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DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Dominican Today

Santo Domingo.- Dominican Republic’s Catholic bishops (CED) on Thursday admitted it modified their photo released to media January 21, which it affirms was taken around five years ago.

It said the photo was updated several times from various changes of the CDE during that period. “That will continue to do be done until we can take a new picture with the presence of all the bishops.”

The original photo had included former Vatican envoy Jozef Wesolowski, whisked out of the country by the Holy See once the scandal broke of his alleged sexual abuse of minors. His image was replaced with that of Santo Domingo auxiliary bishop Francisco José Arnáiz, who was hospitalized for treatment.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

GERARD HENDERSON THE AUSTRALIAN FEBRUARY 08, 2014

PEDOPHILIA is now regarded, in the West at least, as the vilest of crimes. So much so that most pedophiles are regarded as more evil than most murderers. Yet there appears to be a different approach to the perpetrators of such wrongdoing according to whether he (and it is invariably a male) is a believer or a secular type.

The message out of Geneva this week was one of absolute condemnation of the Catholic Church and its leadership in the Vatican. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child delivered a scathing rebuke concerning how the Holy See has handled allegations of sexual abuse by its priests and religious brothers over the years.

The UN panel even went to the extraordinary length of criticising the Catholic Church’s teachings on abortion, contraception and homosexuality.

This is an improper intervention by the UN in an area outside its mandate. Membership of the Catholic Church is voluntary and no one is compelled to follow the teachings of the Pope. Moreover, unlike certain parts of the Islamic faith, there are no penalties for acts of apostasy by Catholics. Indeed, some of the church’s most vocal critics are former or disillusioned Catholics and they are not threatened by death or injury. Child abuse is a crime, obviously. Catholicism’s approach to abortion, contraception and homosexuality is a mere belief, which is shared by some other religions.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

Philomena Lee, the woman who inspired Stephen Frears’ Oscar-nominated film “Philomena”, gave an interview at the end of a press conference in Rome yesterday. When Philomena became a teenage mother, she was sent to a convent and forced to give up her baby son when he was born.

IACOPO SCARAMUZZI
ROME

In a statement given after Wednesday’s General Audience in the Vatican, she said she felt “honoured” and “delighted” to have met Pope Francis. She said she no longer felt bitterness towards the Catholic Church: “After such a long time — Anthony would be 62 this year — so how could I go through a whole of life holding a grudge?” But she confessed that at the start of her ordeal she did feel hurt, sad and angry and added that yesterday’s brief encounter finally liberated her from an entire life of shame. Philomena Lee is an elderly Irish lady. Back in 1952, when she was still just a teenager, she got pregnant out of wedlock. She was sent to a convent as many other teenage mothers were at the time and when her son was born she was forced to give him up. The child was sent to the United States, where Philomena went to search for him 50 years later, accompanied by journalist Martin Sixsmith. Now her story has been made into a film directed by Stephen Frears. “Philomena” has been a box office smash hit and was nominated for an Oscar. The real Philomena told her story and spoke about her meeting with Pope Francis at a press conference held at Hotel Eden in Rome yesterday morning.

“It was a great honour to meet the Pope; he is a special person; he moved me,” Philomena Lee said. Answering journalists’ questions about the film, accompanied by Steve Coogan, the star, co-writer and producer of “Philomena”, Lee said her meeting with the Pope was “very brief”. “The Pope welcomed us and listed to us carefully,” she said.

What did you feel when you met the Pope?

“You were made to feel so bad about having a baby out of wedlock. I’ve carried the guilt inside for 50 years, without telling anybody. The only person who knew about it was my brother. When I met the Pope yesterday I finally felt liberated, I no longer had to feel guilty. I hope and I believe that Pope Francis will stand beside me in my fight to help thousands of mothers and children shed light on the truth regarding their own stories.”

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ROME
Vatican Insider

The General Chapter has elected Eduardo Robles Gil as its new general director. “We are grieved that many victims and other affected persons have waited so long in vain for an apology and an act of reconciliation on the part of Fr. Maciel. Today, we would like to issue that apology”

GIACOMO GALEAZZI
VATICAN CITY

It’s white smoke for the Legion. Fr. Eduardo Robles Gil was has been elected general director of the Legion of Christ, the religious order which the Holy See placed under the administration of an external commissioner following the sex abuse scandals involving its founder Marcial Maciel Degollado.

The Legion held an Extraordinary General Chapter in Rome, chaired by pontifical representative Velasio De Paolis, electing Gil and all other members of the Legion’s central government.

The official communiqué states that “since the Chapter is the highest internal authority that represents the whole Congregation, it seems necessary for us to take a stance regarding the significant events that have occurred in the past nine years.” “With this, we want to define conclusively the posture of our Congregation with respect to the behavior of Fr. Marcial Maciel and his role as founder, in continuity with the decisions of the Holy See and the previous declaration of all the major superiors of the Legion of Christ.”

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UNITED STATES
National Secular Society (UK)

Posted: Fri, 07 Feb 2014 11:08 by David Clohessy

After hearing the UN’s scathing attack on its child abuse record, the Vatican’s counter-attack against its critics is a familiar tactic, argues David Clohessy

Inadvertently, by their comments over the past day, Vatican officials are essentially proving what a UN panel has concluded: that the Catholic hierarchy is not reforming its handling of clergy sex crimes and cover ups.

For decades, when abuse and cover up reports surface, many church officials “shoot the messenger” and divert attention. Vatican staffers are doing that now.

One of them, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, attacks the motives of 21 independent children’s experts who volunteer to serve on a respected United Nations panel, calling them “ideological” and implying they are deceitful (The report, he claims, “appears to have been written before (Vatican) representatives even had a chance to tell their side of the story…”

He also says that “the report in some ways is not up to date” even though the panel met with Vatican officials just last month (and spent hours quizzing both abuse victims and Vatican staffers).

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

[with audio]

(Vatican Radio) The Director of the Press Office of the Holy See, Fr. Federico Lombardi, SJ, has issued a Note to Vatican Radio (of which he is Director-General) regarding the United Nations, the Holy See, and the Committee on the Rights of the Child, in the wake of the Committee’s Concluding Observations on the reviewed Reports of the Holy See (and five member states that are also parties to the convention).

Fr. Lombardi SJ writes, “It is impossible not to see that the final recommendations of the Committee appear to present – according to the judgment of those, who followed closely the process that preceded them – serious limits,” noting in particular the Observations’ conspicuous lack of understanding of the specific nature of the Holy See – a lack he describes as, “particularly grave.”

The most serious issue with the Observations is found in the Committee’s apparent overstepping of its own purview. “The observations of the Committee,” writes Fr. Lombardi, “seem to go beyond its competencies, and to interfere in the very doctrinal and moral positions of the Catholic Church,” specifically regarding abortion, contraception, family education and other related areas.

Fr. Lombardi SJ stresses that, while the Holy See has been subjected to “unjustly harmful” media attention, it is also true and at least equally important to recognize that the Committee itself has received “serious and well-founded” criticism. He goes on to underline that, while the United Nations organization as such is not responsible for the shortcomings of the Committee, public opinion has assigned the organization the brunt of negative fallout from the Committee’s conduct.

The three-page Note also reviews in detail the Holy See’s history of support for the work of the United Nations, as well as the history of the Holy See’s adherence to and participation in the Convention on the Right s of the Child (the Holy See was one of the earliest adherents to the Convention).

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ARGENTINA
Buenos Aires Herald

Nice of Pope Francis to pay tribute to the dead firefighters of Barracas but how much substance lies beneath this gesture and many others since the Buenos Aires archbishop became head of the Catholic Church almost a year ago? Not very much, according to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, which has slammed the Vatican’s inaction over cracking down on pederasts. Nor is the UN committee being unduly impatient — it took Pope Francis fully nine months even to announce the creation of a commission to study sex abuse within the Church (a classic delaying tactic in itself, at least according to Juan Domingo Perón, who famously said: “If you want something to fail, create a commission for it”) with precious little advance since then. The gestures in which the Argentine Jesuit so excels are all which can reasonably be expected in the honeymoon period of any leader but with his first anniversary as pontiff rapidly approaching, Pope Francis should be moving past this stage by now.

Most of the UN committee’s demands can be summed up as placing children first — the core of its mission. This is precisely what the Church fails to do when it refuses to end impunity and the code of silence protecting perpetrators, transferring offenders rather than probing or punishing them in any way — nor has the training of priests been updated to counter abuse since the issue came to light. It is also curious that such a highly centralized institution as the Catholic Church (surely its most salient distinguishing feature when compared with the multiplicity of Protestant denominations and sects) should disclaim any control over its dioceses and parishes around the world — an unsatisfactory response. Even now (since 2010) the Vatican will not go beyond ordering bishops to report abuses when required by law enforcement authorities — there is nothing towards the Church uncovering and reporting these crimes on its own initiative. In the law of the Pope’s native country, covering up a felony is also a crime in itself normally punished by imprisonment of up to 15 years in the most serious cases or at least a fine for minor offences. And yet the Church has no provisions for prosecuting or punishing members of its hierarchy who protect predatory priests.

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UNITED STATES
The Pilot

Sister Mary Ann Walsh

Sexual abuse of a minor is a sin and a crime and no organization can become complacent about addressing it. The Catholic Church has certainly done more than any other international organization to face the problem and it will continue to lead in doing so.

In the United States, the number of cases of sexual abuse of minors by clergy has plummeted. This is in no small part due to the fact that millions of Catholic children have been instructed on safe environments and tens of thousands of adults who work with them in the Church have gone through background checks and safe environment education. In 2012, for example, dioceses and religious institutes conducted background checks on 99 percent of clerics, 97 percent of educators, 95 percent of employees, and 96 percent of volunteers. Every diocese has a victim assistance coordinator who assists those who have been abused and a safe environment coordinator who works to prevent abuse from occurring again.

The Vatican also has shown resolve in addressing the issue. Pope John Paul II changed the age of maturity in Church law so more abuse cases could be prosecuted. Pope Benedict called on every bishops’conference in the world to develop policies. Pope Francis recently announced a commission to strengthen the Church’s handling of sexual abuse.

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VATICAN CITY
Gazzetta del Sud

Vatican City, February 7 – This week’s report by the United Nations Committee for the Rights of the Child shows “grave limits” in a misunderstanding “of the specific nature of the Holy See”, Spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said Friday, accusing the committee of prejudice while insisting relations with the UN as a whole were still sound. On Wednesday the Committee issued a wide-ranging report that excoriated the Vatican for adopting policies that it said allowed sexual abuse of tens of thousands of children by clergymen and demanded immediate action. Lombardi said the Vatican was entitled to be “baffled” by the Geneva-based committee’s failure to understand the makeup of the Church, not just as a religious institution but as a juridical entity. Critics of the report argue it asks too much of the Holy See, which despite being the central government of the international Church is nevertheless incapable of directly overseeing every local parish that caters to the world’s more than one billion Catholics. For instance, it would be impossible, critics add, to track spending on children in Catholic institutions worldwide, or to create an international monitoring body to be made accessible to all children in all the Church’s hundreds of thousands of educational institutions, as the report urges it to do.

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VATICAN CITY
Bloombrg Businessweek

By Andrew Frye
February 07, 2014

The Vatican said it was treated unfairly in a child-sex abuse report issued this week by a United Nations panel, while reiterating it will continue to cooperate with the committee for the protection of minors.

“It is typical, in fact, that these organizations don’t want to recognize how much has been done by the Holy See and the Church in recent years in recognizing errors, renewing laws and developing educational and preventative measures,” Federico Lombardi, the Vatican’s spokesman, said today in a statement. The Holy See “will continue in its commitment to implement the convention and maintain an open and constructive dialogue.”

The Feb. 5 report, published by the Geneva-based UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, accused the Vatican of enabling sex offenders and protecting its reputation rather than victims, which it said numbered in the tens of thousands. The findings also said children entrusted to the Catholic Church’s care were endangered by beatings, sexuality-based discrimination and a culture that stigmatized reproductive education and health.

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VATICAN CITY
Kansas.com

By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press
Published Friday, Feb. 7, 2014

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican struck back Friday at a U.N. human rights committee that issued a scathing report on sex abuse by priests, accusing it of straying beyond its mandate and discrediting the U.N. as a whole by adopting the “prejudiced” positions of anti-Catholic advocacy groups.

The Vatican said the U.N. committee had ignored both the Holy See’s unique status and its efforts to address the abuse crisis in recent years, noting that it had provided this information to the committee in writing and in person. It blasted what it called the “absolutely anomalous” publicity the committee gave its report and promised a full response at a later date.

The Geneva-based committee on Wednesday accused the Vatican of systematically placing its own interests over those of victims by enabling priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children through its own policies and code of silence.

It recommended the Vatican immediately remove any priest suspected or known to have abused children, open its archives on abusers and the bishops who covered up for them, and turn the cases over to law enforcement.

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ALABAMA
WAFF

[with video]

By Diana Crawford

MUSCLE SHOALS, AL (WAFF) –
The entire Highland Park Baptist Church Congregation is struggling to cope with the news about Children’s Pastor Jeffrey Eddie who was charged with multiple counts of sodomy and sex abuse involving children.

Dr. Drew Jamieson, a licensed marriage and family therapist, said if you attend Highland Park Baptist Church it’s vital you find out if your child is a victim of the alleged sexual abuse.

Many kids are afraid or embarrassed to come forward with that information. They think they have done something wrong and fear they will get in trouble.

Dr. Jamieson said parents first need to sit down with their children and ask them questions. Find out what they have heard about the situation, how it makes them feel, and if there was ever a time that something comfortable or inappropriate happened.

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UNITED STATES
PopeCrimes&Vatican Evils.

Paris Arrow

Galileo. Copernicus. Burning Joan of Arc and witches. For 20 centuries the Vatican has been rendering – papal erratic and tyrannical – judgements on men, women and countries. But today that Catholic Tradition was kaput as a secular committee of the United Nations rendered judgement and condemned the Vatican for its hidden bestial sexual crimes against children. According to the UN findings, in the latter-half of the 20th century, “the Holy See adopted policies and practices that led to continued abuse by, and no punishment for, the perpetrators” – priests sexual abusers – against “tens of thousands of children…for decades”! The UN today proves that the 21st century planet is no longer at the mercy of the religious narcissistic Pope’s ostensible dogmatic authority and his fictitious Merlin sorcery of the Eucharist where he and priests cannot clone an ant or a cat and therefore they cannot clone Jesus’ flesh-and-blood either.

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CANADA
Canada.com

BY MARK KENNEDY, POSTMEDIA NEWS FEBRUARY 6, 2014

OTTAWA — The federal government appears to be dragging its feet on a court-ordered obligation to provide millions of documents from Library and Archives Canada to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that is examining the residential schools scandal.

The records are needed by the commission to learn the truth of the decades-long saga, such as piecing together the role played by the federal government — including former cabinet ministers and senior bureaucrats.

Between the 1870s and 1996, about 150,000 aboriginal children were pulled from their homes by the federal government and sent to the church-run schools, where many suffered physical and sexual abuse and at least 4,000 died.

Postmedia News has learned that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government, a full year after being ordered by a court to produce the records to the commission, hasn’t even issued a request for proposal (RFP) for outside firms to bid on a contract to sort through the documents at federal archives so they can be passed along.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

The Salvation Army has confessed that ‘evil people’ perpertrated sex abuse in its homes because of poor regulation and appalling ignorance of the psychological needs of children.

Major Peter Farthing told a hearing of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Friday that homes in the 1960s and ’70s would have lacked written policies and were often run by poorly trained managers.

Over two weeks the commission has heard of horrendous physical and sexual abuse in four homes – the Endeavour Training Farm at Riverview and the Alkira Home for Boys at Indooroopilly, both in Queensland; and in NSW the Bexley home in south Sydney and Gill Memorial Home, Goulburn.

Mr Farthing who is co-ordinating the Salvation Army’s response to the royal commission also said ‘some perpetrators were plain evil people … and the worst offenders were the worst liars’, who were believed over children, employees or lesser ranking officers.

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ROM
SAZ

Sexueller Missbrauch gegen Minderjährige: Legionäre Christi sagen Sorry! “Mehrere Kinder gezeugt”

Die Legionäre Christi verfügen vor allem in Mexiko und Spanien über erheblichen Einfluss. Jetzt rückt Gründer Marcial Maciel in die Schlagzeilen.

Der ultrakonservative Orden Legionäre Christi hat sich in deutlichen Worten für den sexuellen Missbrauch durch ihren verstorbenen Gründer Marcial Maciel entschuldigt. «Wir wollen unser Bedauern über den Missbrauch minderjähriger Seminaristen und die unmoralischen Taten mit erwachsenen Männern und Frauen ausdrücken», hieß es in einer am Donnerstag veröffentlichten Stellungnahme. «Wir verurteilen dies aufs Schärfste.»

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CALIFORNIA
Modesto Bee

BY SUE NOWICKI
snowicki@modbee.com
February 6, 2014

STOCKTON — In an update on its Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, Bishop Stephen Blaire on Tuesday evening released a report saying Nevada bankruptcy Judge Gregg W. Zive has been appointed to act as a mediator between the Stockton Diocese and its major creditors.

Last week, diocesan attorneys filed a schedule of assets and liabilities. Assets totaled $7.2 million, which included real estate estimated at $2 million, and liabilities totaled $11.9 million. That did not include any costs from claims of pending lawsuits alleging clergy abuse.

The diocese also has put all documents relating to the Chapter 11 filing online on their bankruptcy attorney’s website. They can be found at www.ffwplaw.com. Click on “cases” in the left margin; log in with the user email cases@ffwplaw.com and the password “password.” Then click on the link for the Roman Catholic Bishop of Stockton and select the files and documents you want to see.

Those documents show, among other things, the diocese’s top 20 creditors. They include the pastors of several parishes and individuals who helped purchase the diocesan property in downtown Stockton and unknown damages in four pending lawsuits, two by southern California attorney John Manly and two by Sacramento attorney Joseph George.

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UNITED STATES
RH Reality Check

by Angela Bonavoglia
February 6, 2014

In a scathing report released Wednesday on the Holy See’s adherence to the principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, an aggressive United Nations committee knocked the Holy See off the high ground.

Stunning in its frankness and scope, the report began with the unequivocal rejection of the Holy See’s specious claim that while the Vatican City has a hallowed place in the international community (for example, as a non-member permanent observer at the UN), it is utterly impotent over the workings of the millions of institutions worldwide operating in the Catholic Church’s name.

Recognizing that subordinates of Catholic religious orders are, by canon law, “bound by obedience to the Pope,” the committee rejected the Holy See’s claim of impotence. By ratifying the convention, the committee contended, the Holy See committed itself to implementing the convention “not only on the territory of the Vatican City State but also as the supreme power of the Catholic Church through individuals and institutions placed under its authority.”

The report left no doubt about the committee’s lack of faith in the Holy See’s efforts so far to come to terms with the decades-long epidemic of child sex abuse by Catholic clerics worldwide. “The Holy See has not acknowledged the extent of the crimes committed, has not taken the necessary measures to address cases of child sexual abuse and to protect children, and has adopted policies and practices which have led to the continuation of the abuse by and the impunity of the perpetrators,” wrote the committee.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Wall Street Journal

By NICHOLAS G. HAHN III
Feb. 6, 2014

The biting winter in Chicago has been especially cold for the Catholic Church, with the revelation on Jan. 21 of embarrassing church documents describing how the archdiocese handled claims of sexual abuse. Yet a fresh chapter in the archdiocese’s history is waiting to begin as Pope Francis considers who will replace Cardinal Francis George —the current archbishop has been due to retire for more than two years.

The pope’s choice will likely signal how he intends to steer the Catholic Church in America. “I think this is going to be the most important decision by Pope Francis for the U.S. church,” Massimo Faggioli, an assistant professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, told the Associated Press last week.

Mr. Faggioli might be right. Chicago is regarded by many Catholics as America’s premier archdiocese. Its bishops become leaders of the church in the U.S., either in name or through influence. Cardinal Francis George, who has held that position since 1998 and is the former president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (2007-10), has become an intellectual hero for conservatives. One of his most prominent messages has been to decry the mounting dangers to religious freedom in the West. Liberals have often found him wanting, and fondly recall his predecessor, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, as an example of the sort of new leader in Chicago that Pope Francis should select. As so often happens with those trying to interpret Pope Francis, on the left and the right, they see in him a reflection of their own hopes.

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DEUTSCHLAND
RP

[Summary: Jesuit Father Klaus Mertes criticized the UN on handling of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. He said he could only shake his head when the UN experts spoke of a mandatory duty to report cases of abuse to state authorities. He said the UN included in the report other issues that were “thrown into the pot.” He added that the report did contain much legitimate criticism.]

Köln. Jesuitenpater Klaus Mertes hat den UN-Bericht zum Umgang der katholischen Kirche mit sexuellem Missbrauch von Kindern scharf kritisiert. Er könne “nur den Kopf schütteln”, wenn die Experten des UN-Kinderrechtskomitees UNCRC von einer zwingenden Meldepflicht von Missbrauchsfällen an die staatlichen Behörden redeten.

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VATIKAN
Radio Vatikan

[Fr Hans Zollner: The Church is committed to safeguarding children]

Als zusätzlichen „Ansporn“ für die Arbeit des Heiligen Stuhles im Bereich Kinderschutz wertet der Vizerektor der Päpstlichen Universität Gregoriana die Empfehlungen des UN-Kinderrechtskomitees (UNCRC). Das Expertengremium ist in seinem Bericht am Mittwoch mit dem Heiligen Stuhl hart ins Gericht gegangen und hat ihm Mängel im Bereich des Kinderschutzes vorgeworfen. Es war das erste Mal, dass sich der Heilige Stuhl der turnusmäßigen Evaluierung durch das UNCRC stellte. Das wurde auch höchste Zeit, hält Jesuitenpater Hans Zollner im Interview mit Radio Vatikan zunächst fest. Zollner ist mit dem Zentrum für Kinderschutz der Gregoriana, das die päpstliche Uni in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Erzbistum München und Freising und der Klinik für Kinder- und Jugendpsychiatrie der Uni Ulm auf die Beine stellte, seit Jahren in der Präventionsarbeit der katholischen Weltkirche aktiv.

„Ich habe den Eindruck, dass sich der Heilige Stuhl keinen Gefallen damit getan hat, dass er vierzehn Jahre lang nicht die entsprechenden Berichte, die eingefordert wurden, lieferte und sich erst jetzt entschlossen hat, nach Genf zu gehen, um sich dem zu erwartenden Fegefeuer auszusetzen. Das war für die Leute – ich habe mit jemandem gesprochen, der dort präsent war – höchst schwierig und unangenehm. Natürlich mussten da die Vertreter des Heiligen Stuhls alles auf sich nehmen, was sich an Wut, Enttäuschung und auch berechtigtem Ärger über sie ergoss.“

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POLENS
Bote

[Summary: The Polish section of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights said on Thursday it is bringing suit against the Catholic Church as an institution-as-a-whole. A man, who alleged he was abused by a priest, chose civil action after the church rejected a claim for compensation in October. The priest in question was sentenced in 2012 to two years in prison.]

Warschau. – Wie die polnische Sektion der Helsinki-Stiftung für Menschenrechte am Donnerstag mitteilte, verklagt er darüber hinaus auch die katholische Kirche als Institution insgesamt – eine Premiere, wie Adam Bondar von der Helsinki-Stiftung mitteilte.

Der Kläger entschied sich zu der Zivilklage auf Zahlung eines Schmerzensgeldes in Höhe von 200’000 Zloty (fast 58’200 Franken), nachdem die Kirche im vergangenen Oktober einen direkten Anspruch auf Entschädigung zurückwies. Der betreffende Priester war 2012 zu zwei Jahren Haft verurteilt worden.

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VATIKAN
Radio Vatikan

[Summary: The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has commenced an investigation against Chilean Bishop Cristian Contreras regarding allegations of sexual abuse. The bishop himself asked the Vatican to investigate after the allegations were raised. The bishop described the allegations as baseless. The Chilean news portal CIPER reported that in January two priests from Mexico went to Chile to investigate.]

Die Glaubenskongregation hat ein Ermittlungsverfahren gegen den chilenischen Bischof Cristian Contreras eingeleitet. Die vatikanische Behörde überprüft die Anschuldigung des sexuellen Missbrauchs. Der Bischof habe selber beim Vatikan um Ermittlungen gebeten, nachdem Vorwürfe gegen ihn erhoben wurden. Das teilte Bischof Contreras in einer Erklärung seines Bistums San Felipe mit. Der Bischof bezeichnete die Anschuldigungen als haltlos. Zuvor hatte das chilenische Nachrichtenportal CIPER berichtet, im Januar hätten zwei Geistliche aus Mexiko auf Bitten der Glaubenskongregation Missbrauchsvorwürfe gegen Contreras und andere hochrangige Kirchenvertreter vor Ort untersucht.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Katholisch

[Summary: On the day after the UN children’s right committee criticized the Vatican for its handling of child sexual abuse cases, the issue is a hotly debated topic. Prominent Germany Catholics rejected the criticism there was a faint “mea culpa” from Rome.]

Auch am Tag nach den Vorwürfen des UN-Kinderrechtskomitees an der Missbrauchsaufarbeitung des Heiligen Stuhls – und der Kritik des Vatikan an der UN – wird das Thema heiß diskutiert. Während am Donnerstag Prominente deutsche Katholiken die Kritik der UN zurückwiesen, lässt auch der Vatikan den Vorwurf der Untätigkeit nicht unwidersprochen stehen. Es gab aber auch ein leises “mea culpa” aus Rom.

Aus Deutschland meldete sich Alois Glück, der Präsident des Zentralkomitees der deutschen Katholiken (ZdK), zu Wort und sprach von einer konsequenten Kursänderung der Kirche. Allein Papst Benedikt XVI. habe in zwei Jahren knapp an die 400 Priester wegen Missbrauchs aus dem Amt entlassen. In Deutschland und in einer Reihe anderer Länder habe man “ganz klar Konsequenzen gezogen aus dem Fehlverhalten der Vergangenheit”, so Glück im Deutschlandfunk. Bezogen auf die Vergangenheit, seien die Vorwürfe des UN-Komitees “nicht völlig unberechtigt”, räumte er ein. Und: Bei einzelnen nationalen Bischöfskonferenzen gebe es noch ein Ringen um den richtigen Kurs, etwa in Polen , wo der Schutz der Institution Kirche teils noch höher gewichtet werde.

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ALABAMA
WAFF

By Diana Crawford

HUNTSVILLE, AL (WAFF) –
The case of child sexual abuse at a Muscle Shoals church is certainly not the first incident to happen in North Alabama or across the country. There is an entire network of professionals who aim to help victims of child sexual abuse called The Survivor’s Network of those Abused by Priests.

Barbara Dorris, our area’s director of the organization said child abuse in churches is a problem that’s been happening for a very long time in all different denominations.

In fact, the group has a website called Stop Baptist Predators that focuses specifically on child sex abuse within the Baptist Church. One expert said child abuse in churches is nothing new and happens a lot more than we realize, but we are starting to hear about it more because the victims are beginning to feel safer in reporting these crimes.

In the past it was even more difficult for the victims to come forward in a church situation because the predator is a trusted member of the clergy, and the church would often ignore the problem or simply re-locate the pastor in question while doing nothing for the victim.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

Fri, Feb 7, 2014

The Irish Catholic Church’s child-protection watchdog has welcomed this week’s UN Committee on the Rights of the Child report on the Vatican’s handling of clerical child sexual abuse.

In particular, the Maynooth-based National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland (NBSCCCI) welcomed the recommendations on eliminating corporal punishment where children are concerned, and it calls for an internal church inquiry into the religious who ran the Magdalene laundries and to pay compensation to the women in them.

Observations

Last night the board said that “as an organisation we are pleased that a significant number of observations and recommendations [in the UN report] relating to child abuse in the Catholic Church are already in place due to the work of the NBSCCCI and the church.

“To cite a few examples; clear procedures are now in place for reporting to the civil authorities and children’s rights awareness training has been taking place.

“We believe that we have come a long way in recognising the rights of children to protection, but we are acutely conscious that there is no room for complacency.”

It welcomed the UN recommendation that the Vatican “establish a mechanism at a high level with the mandate and capacity to co-ordinate the implementation of children’s rights across all pontifical councils, episcopal conferences” as well as all “that functions under the authority of the Holy See”.

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ROME
LifeSite News

BY HILARY WHITE, ROME CORRESPONDENT
Thu Feb 06, 2014

ROME, February 6, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Italian Catholic commentators have blasted the February 5 report from the UN’s Committee on the Rights of the Child that demanded the Catholic Church change or ignore its teachings on human sexuality and abortion. Writing in the Catholic opinion daily La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, religion expert and sociologist Massimo Introvigne blasted the Committee for issuing “indiscriminate accusations” based on “statistical folklore” from outdated and biased sources.

The report on the Vatican City State’s compliance to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Introvigne wrote, “is evidence of how the tragedy of pedophile priests is used as an excuse and a cudgel to attack the Catholic Church.” It enjoins the Church “‘urgently’ to change its doctrine on homosexuality, abortion and contraception, and to rely upon ‘politically correct’ expert committees even for the interpretation of Sacred Scripture,” he said today.

In the name of protecting children from sexual abuse, the report demands that the Church drop its anthropological understanding of the complementarity of the sexes and its teaching on sexual purity. It “invited” the Church to “review Canon Law” to see what circumstances would “allow” abortion, contraception and the kind of radical “sex education” that normalizes homosexuality.

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