ABUSE TRACKER

AUSTRALIA
Queensland Times

Stuart Cumming 7th Mar 2014

FORMER Toowoomba Catholic school principal Terence Hayes’ job is in jeopardy as his bosses await findings from the Royal Commission into sex abuse.

Mr Hayes last month told the commission he had not referred information to police about teacher Gerard Vincent Byrnes, who raped and assaulted 13 children at a Toowoomba Catholic primary school.

A spokesman for Catholic Education in the Archdiocese of Brisbane yesterday confirmed Hayes was on leave from his position as a Year 7 teacher at St Eugene Catholic College in Burpengary.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philly.com

ARCHBISHOP Charles J. Chaput this morning will announce who will travel to the Vatican with him, Gov. Corbett and Mayor Nutter to help plan an event in Philadelphia.

Kenneth A. Gavin, director of communications for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, said the timing of the trip also would be detailed at a news conference at 10:45 a.m. in Center City.

Corbett and Nutter will be with Chaput at the news conference, Gavin said last night.

The trip is part of the planning for the 8th World Meeting of Families, to be hosted by the Archdiocese in September 2015. Corbett and Nutter were named honorary co-chairmen last year.
The news conference will be streamed live on the Archdiocese website, www.archphila.org, and on www.worldmeeting2015.org.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

MENSAH M. DEAN, DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER DEANM@PHILLYNEWS.COM, 215-568-8278
POSTED: Friday, March 7, 2014

THE PHILADELPHIA Catholic priest on trial for allegedly molesting an altar boy in 1997 was suspended from ministry in 2011 after he twice gave deceptive answers during polygraph tests when asked about touching children’s genitals, a prosecutor said yesterday.

The revelation about the Rev. Andrew McCormick, 57, was made in court by Assistant District Attorney Kristen Kemp. It was made following the closing arguments by defense lawyer William J. Brennan and after the jury had been escorted from the room.

Kemp told Common Pleas Judge Gwendolyn N. Bright of the tests administered by the Archdiocese because Brennan had told the jury during his closing that McCormick’s suspension from his church duties had nothing to do with child-molestation allegations.

Once the jurors returned to the courtroom, Bright instructed them to disregard Brennan’s assertion regarding the circumstances of McCormick’s suspension. She did not mention the polygraph tests, which were not entered as evidence during the two-week trial.

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NEW YORK
Journal News

Erik Shilling 10:18 p.m. EST March 6, 2014

A former religion teacher at Archbishop Stepinac High School has pleaded guilty to the second-degree rape of a 14-year-old student in June.

Amanda Iles’ admission came after she reached a plea agreement with prosecutors that will see her spend up to six months in the Westchester County jail, in addition to nearly 10 years of probation. Iles, 28, will also have to register as a sex offender.

She will be sentenced May 27 after pleading guilty to the felony on Tuesday in Westchester County Court in White Plains.

Iles surrendered to police in November after she was accused of sexual encounters with the boy on several occasions over four days at her 118 Grand Blvd. home in Eastchester, just days after the end of the school year.

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NEW YORK
The Republic

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 07, 2014

WHITE PLAINS, New York — A former religion teacher at a Catholic high school in suburban New York has pleaded guilty to having sexual encounters with a 14-year-old male student.

Amanda Iles entered the plea Tuesday after reaching an agreement with prosecutors.

According to the Journal News (http://lohud.us/1hSC6jc ), she must spend six months in the Westchester County jail and register as a sex offender. She also faces nearly 10 years of probation.

She was a teacher at Archbishop Stepinac High School.

Iles surrendered to police in November. Prosecutors say the incidents happened at her Eastchester home between June and July.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE McCARTHY March 7, 2014

A WOMAN taking ground-breaking legal action against the Catholic Church after a 14-year sexual relationship with a priest hopes it opens the doors for other women struggling after secret relationships with clergy.

Jennifer Herrick, 60, was 19, sexually naive and had a severe physical disability when Father Tom Knowles, then 27, suddenly grabbed her in her parents’ home and kissed her after a church event. She was 22 when he initiated sex.

He ended the relationship in 1989 when she was 35 and he was 42, allegedly telling her ‘‘I’m surprised you hung on as long as you did’’, she said in a statement of claim filed in the NSW Supreme Court last July.

Ms Herrick, of the Central Coast, lodged the breach of trust claim after her complaint to the priest’s order, the Blessed Sacrament Fathers, in 2011 resulted in Father Knowles being stood down for 16 months and a Church probe that confirmed the long-standing sexual relationship.

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PUERTO RICO
Noticias 24/7

El exsacerdote Edwin Antonio Viera, deberá comparecer el jueves al Tribunal de Arecibo para enfrentar acusaciones por supuestos actos lascivos contra un menor, ocurridos en el 2009, mientras que el vicario de la Diócesis de Arecibo acudirá ante la Unidad de Delitos Sexuales del Cuerpo de Investigaciones Criminales (CIC) de Vega Baja, para cooperar en relación a otro caso de abuso sexual contra un menor.

Según trascendió el juez Manuel Oriola, será el que atenderá el caso.
El secretario de Justicia, César Miranda convocó una conferencia de prensa para las 12:00 del mediodía en la sede de esa agencia, para ofrecer detalles sobre casos de pederastia.

Por otro lado, el abogado de la Diócesis de Arecibo, Frank Torres Viada dijo en entrevista radial (NotiUno) que “para la Diócesis de Arecibo, son buenas noticias que el Departamento de Justicia haya podido conducir una investigación adecuada que culmine en la radicación de cargos de presuntos implicados en casos de abuso sexual en caso de menores”.

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PUERTO RICO
El Nuevo Herald

[Defrocked priest in Puerto Rico charged with lewd acts amid widespread probe]

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Un clérigo apartado del sacerdocio en Puerto Rico fue acusado de actos lascivos en un caso que según los fiscales fue contra un monaguillo de 13 años.

El encausamiento el jueves de Edwin Mercado Viera ocurre en medio de una investigación penal sobre numerosas acusaciones de abuso sexual de menores en al menos cuatro diócesis en la isla caribeña.

La fiscalía acusa a Mercado, de 53 años, de manosear al niño en el 2007.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Agency

Vatican City, Mar 6, 2014 / 08:06 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Recent appointments are beginning to show a pattern of how Pope Francis’ reform of the Roman Curia will be carried out, with a seemingly diminished role for the Secretariat of State.

For the first time, the president of the cardinals’ commission overseeing the Institute of Religious Works, or Vatican bank, is not chaired by the Secretary of State.

On March 4, the cardinals’ commission of the Institute for Religious appointed Cardinal Santos Abril y Castello, archpriest of the Basilica of St. Mary Major and a former nuncio, as its president.

According to the Institute’s constitutions, the cardinals elect their president. However, Pope Francis reportedly voiced his preference that the new president of the board not be the Secretary of State, but rather his longtime friend Cardinal Abril y Castello, who was apostolic nuncio to Argentina from 2000 to 20003.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Aktuell

[Not every conversation with a pastor is subject to confidentiality, according to Hamburg-Lubeck Bishop Kirsten Fehrs. She has called for more open discussion of sexual abuse in the church.]

Nicht jedes Gespräch mit einem Pfarrer unterliegt der Schweigepflicht. Die dürfe nicht verletzt werden, aber bei Missbrauchsfällen müsse gehandelt werden, sagte die Hamburg-Lübecker Bischöfin Kirsten Fehrs.

Die Hamburg-Lübecker Bischöfin Kirsten Fehrs will angesichts von Missbrauchs-Fällen in der Kirche die Schweigepflicht von Seelsorgern verstärkt zum Thema machen. “Wir müssen uns auch mit den Dilemmata der seelsorgerlichen Schweigepflicht befassen”, sagte die evangelische Theologin am Samstag auf der Nordkirchen-Synode in Lübeck-Travemünde.

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NEDERLAND
Katholiek

Het tv-programma Brandpunt Reporter berekende dat het misbruikschandaal de bisdommen 8,5 miljoen kost. Volgens berekeningen van Katholiek.nl loopt de teller verder op tot boven de 16 miljoen euro. En misschien wel tot 27 miljoen.

Het seksueel misbruik in de rooms-katholieke kerk kost de bisdommen 8,5 miljoen euro. Dat bericht het televisieprogramma KRO’s Brandpunt Reporter vanavond. Van alle bedragen gaat het merendeel (64%) naar de commissie Deetman en het meldpunt misbruik. Iets meer dan 3 miljoen euro (36%) hebben de bisdommen uitgekeerd aan slachtoffers.

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DEUTSCHLAND
WZ

[Summary: The court case involving German pastor Georg K. has been postponed. Germany wants to extradite him from South Africa on sexual abuse charges. The legal process has been going on for years now.]

Willich/Kreis Viersen. Erneut ist das Verfahren gegen den aus Willich stammenden Pfarrer Georg K. vertagt worden. Der Geistliche muss sich in Brits bei Johannesburg verantworten, weil er sich Jungen genähert haben soll. Der Prozess läuft seit Jahren, genau so lange kommt er nicht von der Stelle. Das ist die schlechte Nachricht.

In Südafrika werden zwei Fälle bearbeitet

Die gute: Die Angelegenheit scheint sich tatsächlich dem Ende zuzuneigen. Bereits beim nächsten Termin am 3. April soll geprüft werden, wie mit dem deutschen Auslieferungsgesuch verfahren wird. Das hat die Staatsanwaltschaft am Donnerstag erklärt.

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ROM
Kipa

[Summary: Pope Francis has defended the priests of Rome against unjust accusations. He publicly declared his attachment to the city’s clergy.]

Rom, 6.3.14 (Kipa) Papst Franziskus hat die Priester Roms gegen ungerechte Beschuldigungen verteidigt. Er erkläre öffentlich seine Verbundenheit mit dem Klerus der Stadt, denn die Verleumdungen gegen einige von ihnen hätten letztlich die ganze Priesterschaft belastet, sagte er am Donnerstag, 6. März, bei der Fastenaudienz für die Geistlichen seiner Bischofsstadt. Namen und Hintergründe nannte Franziskus nicht.

Jedoch bezog er sich offensichtlich auf den suspendierten Geistlichen Patrizio Poggi, der neun Priester beschuldigt hatte, regelmässig in einem männlichen Prostituiertenring zu verkehren. Die Aussagen hatten sich als falsch erwiesen, und Poggi, der bereits zu fünf Jahren Haft wegen Pädophilie verurteilt worden war, wurde im vergangenen Juni wegen Falschaussage erneut inhaftiert.

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UNITED STATES
World Magazine

By JAMIE DEAN
Issue: “Inside the wire,” March 22, 2014
Posted March 7, 2014

Officials at Bob Jones University (BJU) in Greenville, S.C., announced on Feb. 25 they had reached an agreement with the Christian organization GRACE to complete an investigation into BJU’s response to reports of sexual abuse.

The Christian university asked GRACE (an acronym for Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment) in November 2012 to conduct an independent investigation into complaints concerning BJU’s response to students who reported they had been sexually abused at some point in their lives.

After a year of conducting confidential surveys and interviews, GRACE announced BJU terminated the agreement on Jan. 27. The school’s initial letter to GRACE didn’t indicate clear reasons for terminating the project, but BJU officials later said they had grown concerned about how GRACE was conducting the effort.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial

THURSDAY, MARCH 6, 2014

By Ralph Cipriano
for Bigtrial.net

William J. Brennan, defense lawyer for Father Andrew McCormick, referred to his client’s Roman
Catholic priest’s collar as “the elephant in the room.”

In his closing argument, Brennan reminded the jury of 9 women and 3 men that they were picked to hear this case because they said they could be impartial about the subject of a Roman Catholic priest accused of sexually abusing a child.

Brennan reminded jurors that “Father Andy” didn’t have to take the witness stand. He conceded his client is “a bit of an awkward guy.” Father Andy turned “beet red” on the witness stand, Brennan admitted; the priest looked like “a deer in the headlights.” But Brennan was hoping that jurors remembered what Father Andy had told them, that he wasn’t a child molester.

In her closing argument, Assistant District Attorney Kristen Kemp turned Father Andy’s Roman collar into a weapon to be used against him. She reminded the jury about how arrogant the priest had been with a mother who was upset that Father Andy was planning to take her son to Poland for a week, without consulting her first.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

A Selection of Responses to Pope Francis’s Anniversary Remarks about the Abuse Crisis: Pope “Reading from a Script That Should Have Been Abandoned Years Ago”

A selection of responses to Pope Francis’s anniversary remarks about the abuse crisis and the Catholic church:

Father Tom Doyle, National Catholic Reporter:

In his interview with Corriere della Sera Wednesday, Francis sounds like he is reading from a script that should have been abandoned years ago: “The Catholic church is maybe the only public institution to have moved with transparency and responsibility … No one else has done more. Yet the church is the only one to be attacked.” Unfortunately Holy Father, the Catholic church has not moved with transparency and responsibility. It has done just the opposite. Whoever prepared the pope’s briefing papers on the sex abuse issue ought to be fired.

Mollie Wilson O’Reilly, Commonweal:

Francis is not the first defender of the church to speak as though it’s obvious that sexual abuse is rampant in any organization you can name, and we just don’t hear about it because the media hates the Church. There have been revelations of abuse and cover-up in other institutions: scouting, private schools, Hasidic communities. But it isn’t just distorted perspective that makes the church’s sex-abuse problems stand out: it’s the scale of the abuse and the mishandled response, the persistence of the problem, and the lack of transparency and responsibility that has made the church’s scandal such a mainstay in the media for so long. Then, too, there’s the fact that the church is a church, which ups the conscience-shocking factor. And it’s a church with a very strong, very visible authority structure, so when leaders commit crimes — or fail to admit mistakes — it reflects badly on everyone and everything.

Terence McKiernan, Bishop Accountability:

By the end of the Pope’s remarks, the Church itself has become the victim: “No one else has done more. Yet the Church is the only one to be attacked.” It is astonishing, at this late date, that Pope Francis would recycle such tired and defensive rhetoric, apparently blaming the survivors and the journalists who have informed us about these crimes. What little transparency and accountability the Church has shown, has been compelled by survivors, journalists, advocates, and activists. Pope Francis, who is famous for his humility, should have acknowledged this crucial contribution.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Post

BY TYLER O’NEIL, CP REPORTER
March 6, 2014

WASHINGTON – Experts denounced the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child’s recent report in which it suggested the Catholic Church alter its positions on fornication, contraception, homosexuality, and abortion. The report, they said, is an attack on the Catholic Church and an overreach of U.N. power.

While the committee’s report emphasized the Catholic Church’s clerical sexual abuse scandals, it also called on the Vatican state to alter its positions on other, unconnected moral issues. The Geneva report criticized the Vatican’s opposition to contraception, homosexuality, and abortion in cases of child rape and incest.

Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), called the panel’s report “a dagger to the heart of motherhood,” and denounced it as an overreach of U.N. power. “A treaty-monitoring organization has told a religion to change its teaching on fundamental issues,” Ruse declared at a Family Research Council panel on Wednesday.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic Culture

Three panelists from the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute and the Family Research Council have strongly criticized the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child’s recent report on the Vatican’s response to the child sex-abuse scandal, the Christian Post reported.

The committee called on the Holy See to reconsider its teaching on abortion, make “sexual and reproductive health” part of the curriculum of all Catholic schools.

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UNITED STATES
International Business Times

By Athena Yenko | March 7, 2014

Through a poll conducted with phone interviews of 1,340 Americans from Feb 14 to 23, Pew Research Center found that Pope Francis is “immensely popular among American Catholics,” but not inspiring enough to increase the number of Catholics to attend Mass or do volunteer work.

“There has been no measurable rise in the percentage of Americans who identify as Catholic. Nor has there been a statistically significant change in how often Catholics say they go to Mass,” the survey said.

Forty per cent of those interviewed said they were now praying more often; 26 per cent said they were more excited about their faiths because of the pope but the frequency of making a confession or volunteering for church has not improved.

On the other hand, 42 per cent of those interviewed said they occasionally attend mass, while 18 per cent admitted never going to church.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Bucks County Courier Times

Posted: Thursday, March 6, 2014
By Jo Ciavaglia Staff writer

A former Morrisville church pastor is accused of repeatedly molesting and sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl, who originally reported the crimes to police in 1992.

Bristol Township reopened the investigation last October after receiving an investigation referral from the Bucks County District Attorney’s office involving the sexual assault allegations, which allegedly took place between 1989 and 1992, according to court records.

Bristol Township police Lt. Terry Hughes said Thursday that he could not comment on why charges were not filed in 1992 but he said the information would come out at trial.

A detective interviewed the now 34-year-old woman who alleged that she was sexually assaulted and raped by Bristol Township resident Scott Sechrist, a former pastor at a Baptist church in Morrisville. The girl’s family and Sechrist’s family had become friends through the church, police said. Police did not know the name of the church.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Independent Catholic News

There is a rare chance to hear writer Dawn Eden when she comes to speak at Newman House in Gower Street this Friday, 7 March at 7pm.

Dawn is the author of ‘My Peace I give you – Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints’ and also ‘The Thrill of the Chaste – finding fulfilment while keeping your clothes on’.

An ex-rock journalist, she is a convert from Judaism and someone for whom sex abuse (from a janitor in a synagogue and from her mother’s friends) was a reality from which she recovered. She is passionate about our need to find healing in Christ and through his saints and she is very keen to encourage the Church to reach out and get wiser about how to help victims.

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ROME
Anchorage Daily News

BY MATTHEW SCHOFIELD
McClatchy Foreign Staff
March 6, 2014

ROME — Seated in one of the thousands of stacking chairs packed between the enfolding arms of St. Peter’s Square, pointed at a small stage on the steps of one of the world’s most recognizable places of worship, Texan Bob Boillet uses the word everybody seems to be using when talking about the head of his church, Pope Francis.

The word? “Hope.” It’s a big word for many Roman Catholics these days. There’s hope for inclusion, for acceptance and mostly for forgiveness.

“He talks about a more open-armed church. I like that,” the 48-year-old San Antonio resident said. “Actual change won’t be easy, especially when that change is about some dearly held beliefs. But he talks about a more open, more accepting church, and that gives me hope.”

It’ll be a year ago next Thursday when a puff of white smoke from the Sistine Chapel announced that the Roman Catholic Church had a new head. The choice was a 76-year-old Argentine cardinal named Jorge Mario Bergoglio. He arrived to find a church that many thought was out of touch with the modern world.

His church was struggling most visibly with a child sex abuse crisis, but there were other problems, such as how to deal with the modern realities of marriage, divorce and contraception. The Vatican bank had been shunned by most of Europe’s central bankers. There were reports of homosexual orgies that involved members of the Vatican’s government, fueled by a series of leaks of secret Vatican reports.

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AUSTRALIA
SBS

AAP

Cardinal George Pell will take the stand during a public child sex abuse hearing in Sydney to explain his handling of an abuse complaint.

The man who will control the Vatican’s purse strings, Cardinal George Pell cut his financial teeth by bean counting when it came to compensating Australian victims of Catholic Church child sex abuse.

That’s the harsh hypothesis the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will test at a public hearing opening in Sydney on Monday.

It is looking at the response of the Catholic Church to the complaint of child sexual abuse made by John Ellis.

Ellis famously started civil action in 2004 against the church and Dr Pell over abuse he suffered as an altar boy at the hands of priest Aidan Duggan in the Sydney parish of Bass Hill from 1974 to 1979.

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UNITED STATES
Washington Square News

Posted on March 7, 2014 | by Nina Golshan

It has been almost one full year since Pope Francis was elected to take Pope Benedict XVI’s place in the Vatican. He has been hailed by both the Catholic community and its critics for his openness to bringing much needed reform to the outdated ethos of the church. His forthcoming attitude has alleviated some concerns about how the Vatican can reconcile its beliefs with those of its more youthful and liberal followers. However, for all of his efforts to reconnect, Francis has failed to truly address the patterns of sexual abuse and exploitation by clerics supported by the Vatican.

In a recent interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Francis made comments defending the church’s response to reports of sexual abuse, claiming that it is “the only public institution to have acted with transparency and responsibility. No other has done more. And, the church is the only one to be attacked.” It is true that the church has been under scrutiny for quite some time — last month, a UN committee issued a report criticizing the Church’s policies on a range of issues, calling for the removal of any known sexual abusers and release of records of sexual assault allegations against clerics.

It is also true that he has publicly acknowledged the problem, and in December he created a committee to evaluate methods to protect sexually abused children and more effectively screen men seeking to become priests for sexual deviance. This committee, however, is strictly advisory, and there is almost no information available regarding how it has gone about measuring the breadth of the problem. The “transparency” Francis speaks of does not exist.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

JOSEPH A. SLOBODZIAN, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
LAST UPDATED: Friday, March 7, 2014

A Philadelphia jury is to resume deliberations Friday in the case against the Rev. Andrew McCormick, a Catholic priest charged with sexually assaulting a 10-year-old altar boy at a Bridesburg parish in 1997.

The jury of nine women and three men spent three hours Thursday reviewing the evidence before going home.

McCormick, 57, is charged with sexual assault, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, indecent assault, child endangerment, and corruption of a minor.

Earlier Thursday, the jury – and a packed courtroom – heard emotional closings by defense lawyer William J. Brennan Jr. and Assistant District Attorney Kristen Kemp.

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ILLINOIS
Patch

Posted by Shannon Antinori (Editor) , March 06, 2014

A former clergyman who worked in Joliet was included on a list of priests who have been credibly accused of child sexual abuse, according to a victim advocacy group.

Last month, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis released list of credibly accused priests, including Fr. Kenneth Gansmann, who was pastor of a Minnesota church from 1949 to 1959.

According to the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), Gansmann worked at the St. John the Baptist Friary in Joliet from 1945 to 1948. Back then, the church was still part of the Archdiocese of Chicago, according to Diocese of Joliet Director of Communications Edward Flavin.

“Kenneth Gansmann was not a diocesan priest in Joliet,” Flavin told Patch. “Our diocese was erected in 1949.” A spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Chicago also said it did not have any records on Gansmann, saying he was a member of the order of Franciscan friars.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
MARCH 7, 2014

In his latest interview, Pope Francis did not mince words in declaring that “women must have a greater presence in the decision-making areas of the church.” What this means precisely remains to be seen, but the pope wisely took care to stress that women must be allowed to be a force for reform in the Roman Catholic Church. He said in an extensive interview on Wednesday with an Italian newspaper that a “theological deepening” of women’s role is under discussion, with a cardinal assigned to “working in this direction with many women experts in different areas.”

As usual, his words offered hope that there would be a new direction for the hidebound Vatican bureaucracy. Chauvinism clearly seemed at work in the continuing investigation ordered by Rome into the organizations of American nuns, many of which were mainstays in charitable church missions when local dioceses were brought low by the priest sexual abuse scandals. In the interview, the pope defended the church’s handling of the pedophilia scandal, contending it moved with “transparency and responsibility.” This was far from true in the United States, where too many in the hierarchy conspired to cover up crimes and keep secular authorities in the dark. One can only wonder how different this scourge might have been had women actually held decision-making positions.

On other subjects, he offered a fresher outlook, saying that while there was no change in the ban on artificial contraception, greater pastoral care was needed to take into account “people’s situations, and that which it is possible for people to do.” In the words of The National Catholic Reporter, the pope was “walking a bit of a tightrope.”

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

AND so to one of my favourite Catholic stories, on the eve of another confronting royal commission public hearing into the church that will feature evidence from soon-to-leave-these-shores Cardinal George Pell.

This is the story about the Pope, the former Marist Brothers school student, and the 300 metres of red carpet.

The former Marist student is a friend of mine. We run together. Whenever we’re especially tired, or it’s raining, or it seems like our destination is too far away to bear thinking about, I ask him to tell me the story about the carpet, and suddenly we’re smiling again.

It started back in July 2008, a week before Pope Benedict XVI was due in Sydney for World Youth Day festivities, with a phone call to the former Marist student from a mate. The mate was plumbing-in thousands of port-a-loos at Randwick racecourse for the church event.

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UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: Marshall R. Larriviere was ordained a priest of the Lafayette, Louisiana diocese in 1963. He served in the diocese until around 1980, mainly as director of the Deaf Apostolate. From there he worked as a Navy chaplain based in California, Rhode Island, Florida, several Virginia locations and Washington state. He retired in 1994 and has been living in the Venice, Florida diocese since at least 2003. In 2003 Larriviere was accused of having sexually abused two girls in the 1960s in Abbeville, Louisiana. One of his accusers said the priest forced her to perform oral sex on him when she was 8 years-old, and raped her when she was 13. Larriviere’s accusers received settlements from the diocese in 2008.

Ordained: 1963
Retired: 1994

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
NBC 10

A jury has deliberated for two hours without reaching a verdict in the latest Roman Catholic priest-abuse case in Philadelphia.

The Rev. Andrew McCormick has testified that he never abused a 10-year-old altar boy in 1997.

The 57-year-old McCormick has been suspended from ministry since 2011 over other allegations involving pornography and his relationships with children.

The defense witnesses include former altar boys who say they traveled to Poland with McCormick and were not molested.

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TENNESSEE
WMC

[with video]

By Nick Kenney

MEMPHIS, TN –
(WMC-TV) – A COGIC pastor was sentenced to six years in prison on sexual battery charges on Thursday.

Michael Bryant, the former pastor of Hour of Restoration COGIC, admitted to inappropriately touching and exposing himself to a 16-year-old over the past two years.

“It was a lustful situation that basically overwhelmed me,” Bryant testified during Wednesday’s hearing. “Never happened to me before.”

Bryant pleaded guilty to the charges. He asked Criminal Court Judge Mark Ward to spare him prison time.

“I was embarrassed. I felt bad. I really didn’t feel right preaching every Sunday knowing what I was doing,” said Bryant. “I want probation so I can go out and get help and be able to work at the same time. I want to live. I want to live.”

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TENNESSEE
WREG

[with video]

March 6, 2014, by Jessica Gertler and George Brown

(Memphis) A now-former COGIC pastor told his story for the first time when he pleaded guilty to molesting an underage family member for the past two years.

Thursday, Michael Bryant was sentenced to six years in prison as part of a plea deal.

He had hoped to get probation instead so he could get psychological help and work.

“I take full responsibility with everything that has happened, and I regret that it happened,” said Bryant.

Bryant said he’s sorry for fondling a 16-year-old family member as many as two times a month for two years.

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TENNESSEE
Commercial Appeal

By Samantha Bryson
Posted March 6, 2014

A COGIC pastor who admitted to sexually abusing a teenage family member for two years was denied a suspended sentence by a Shelby County judge Thursday and will have to serve the six-year sentence handed down in February.

Michael Bryant, 48, pleaded guilty to sexual battery by an authority figure following his Dec. 12 arrest. He was the pastor of Hour of Restoration Church of God in Christ.

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UNITED STATES
Pope Francis the CON Christ.

Who’s the liar: Pope Francis or UN? Vatican secret thousands/files covered-up by Bishops versus UN open/thorough investigators. Francis Pinocchio nose getting bigger

Updated March 7, 2014

Paris Arrow

Who is more credible: Pope Francis or the UN?

Who would you rather believe? Pope Francis and the Vatican/Holy See – or – the United Nations and its secular dedicated members of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child?

Pope Francis should have starred in the new movie, Son of God, because he is the “official” Vicar of Jesus Christ. With Rolling Stone and multi-magazines covers under his belt, Pope Francis should have also won the Oscars for Best Actor because he is a natural professional performer – the greatest Jesuit pretender and impostor of Jesus Christ. His fellow Jesuit, Thomas Reese, even boast of “The Francis Effect: Pope Francis is the most talked about person in the world. He has been on the cover of almost every magazine, he makes the news almost every week, and he is a Twitter and Facebook sensation. He drew huge crowds in Rio de Janeiro and continues to draw large crowds in Rome”. Obviously, the Jesuit measure for Christ and salvation is – fame and fiction.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
SNAP Wisconsin

Statement by Peter Isely, SNAP Midwest Director
CONTACT: 414.429.7259

In a plan that could have been pulled from the archives of the old Soviet Union, Archbishop Jerome Listecki has filed in federal bankruptcy court a proposed church operated mental health “treatment fund” in lieu of providing financial restitution to hundreds of victims of childhood sexual assault by clergy in the Milwaukee Archdiocese.

Listecki had earlier stated that his treatment fund would total $500,000. With 575 victims filed into court this breaks down to about $900.00 of treatment costs per rape and abuse victim. But the new fund would only cover about 120 victims.

Last month, Listecki proposed a reorganization plan that averages about $6,000 per victim who filed a case in the bankruptcy. Average per victim settlements in all other church bankruptcies across the US are $400,000. The archdiocese has paid $12 million dollars in costs to bankruptcy lawyers since filing three years ago.

Accessing the fund according to Listecki’s plan would require the approval of the archdiocese who would then control all future mental health treatment as well. Victims would be required to surrender confidential therapy treatment records and notes. The archdiocese would also determine the length of treatment (which they have placed at 26 therapy sessions), approve clinical methods, and reserve the right of termination.

And if that’s not enough control ceded to the archdiocese over the lives and mental health care of the victims of their pedophile priests, the archdiocese, after the approval of the plan, could change any provision of it at will, without court approval or oversight.

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PUERTO RICO
El Nuevo Dia

Por Limarys Suárez Torres / lsuarez1@elnuevodia.com

Tras escuchar las argumentaciones del fiscal de distrito de Arecibo y de la defensa del exsacerdote Edwin Mercado Viera, el juez superior Manuel Orriola encontró causa para arresto contra el excura por actos lascivos en contra un menor de edad.

Cerca de las 10:15 a.m. el juez Orriola, que preside la sala 401 del Tribunal de Arecibo, inició la vista de Regla 6 contra el excura y allí recibió prueba documental presentada por el fiscal de distrito Wilson González Antongiorgi y prueba exculpatoria de la defensa.

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PUERTO RICO
El Nuevo Dia

[Summary: About 15 or 17 priests are being investigated for possible acts of pedophilia by state and federal authorities. Charges have been made against former priest Edwin A. Viera and against the evangelical pastor Pedro Santiago Marrero. Justice Secretary R. Cesar Miranda Rodriguez called on potential victims to seek justice regardless of the statute of limitations.]

Entre 15 y 17 sacerdotes católicos son investigados al presente como posibles implicados en actos de pederastia en medio de la pesquisa que realizan en conjunto las autoridades estatales y federales sobre el escándalo de abuso sexual en la iglesia.

El secretario de Justicia, César R. Miranda Rodríguez, y el fiscal general José Capó, informaron que esta mañana presentaron cargos contra el exsacerdote, Edwin A. Mercado Viera, y contra el pastor evangélico, Pedro Santiago Marrero, y confirmaron que se han reunido con las autoridades federales para evaluar si los religiosos investigados incurrieron en delitos bajo dicha jurisdicción.

Miranda hizo un llamado a posibles víctimas a acudir a la justicia, específicamente dentro de las diócesis investigadas de San Juan, Caguas, Mayagüez y Arecibo, no importa si piensan que ya el delito prescribió.

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PUERTO RICO
The Republic

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 06, 2014

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — A defrocked priest in Puerto Rico has been charged with lewd acts in a case that prosecutors say involved a 13-year-old altar boy.

The charges filed Thursday against Edwin Mercado Viera come amid a criminal investigation into numerous allegations of sexual abuse involving at least four dioceses in the U.S. territory.

Prosecutors accuse 53-year-old Mercado of fondling the teenage boy in 2007.

Mercado did not enter a formal plea, but defense attorney Cesar Cerezo said Mercado did not commit any crimes and rejects the charges against him.

Mercado is the first of six defrocked priests from the Diocese of Arecibo to face criminal charges.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Seattle PI

By MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press
Updated 1:10 pm, Thursday, March 6, 2014

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A Philadelphia priest huddled and prayed with three Polish-order nuns in a courthouse hallway Thursday as he awaited a jury’s verdict in his child sex abuse trial.

The Rev. Andrew McCormick testified this week that he never molested a former altar boy whose mother had sought his counsel thinking her 10-year-old son was gay.

“If this guy’s a child molester, why is there only one victim?” defense lawyer William J. Brennan asked in closing arguments Thursday.

McCormick, though, has been suspended from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia since 2011 over other complaints, including allegations he was too close to another altar boy and ignored orders to steer clear of him. On the stand he also conceded he ignored church reprimands to keep children out of his private living quarters.

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RHODE ISLAND
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, March 06, 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)

We are grateful that a lawsuit against the scandal-ridden Catholic Legion of Christ will move ahead.

[TribTown]

In thousands of cases involving sexual or financial misdeeds, church officials have successfully exploited their status as religious figures to evade justice. That injustice and special treatment must end if more adults and children are to be protected from predatory priests, whether motivated by sheer greed or sexual compulsions.

If Legion officials stole nothing and misled no one, they shouldn’t fear this lawsuit. We strongly suspect, however, that this is not the case. And we hope that anyone who saw, suspected or suffered any misconduct by any Legion official will come forward and expose wrongdoing.

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CHILE
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, March 6, 2014

Statement by Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, Outreach Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314 862 7688 home, 314 503 0003 cell, SNAPdorris@gmail.com )

SNAP applauds the courage of survivors Juan Carlos Cruz, James Hamilton and Andrés Murillo who rejected the proposed settlement from the Archbishop of Santiago, Chile.

[La Tercera]

We find it disappointing that church officials would suggest that the victims would agree to a statement where all responsibility was denied, both in the cover up of the sexual abuse by Fr Fernando Karadima and the negligent way the archdiocese handled the situation for decades.

These brave victims have spoken up not only to seek justice and healing for themselves, but also to protect children everywhere. There can be no safety for children in the future without a complete and honest acknowledgment of the past.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Catholic officials hastily cry “media bias” at many stories about clergy sex crimes and cover ups.

So how do they explain the fact that the Pope has just made his most extensive comments yet on the abuse crisis – widely perceived to be negative comments – but no articles about it apparently appeared in the print editions of the New York Times, Washington Post or Los Angeles Times?

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RHODE ISLAND
TribTown

By MICHELLE R. SMITH Associated Press
First Posted: March 06, 2014

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island — A federal judge in Rhode Island has agreed to let a lawsuit move forward against the Roman Catholic religious order the Legion of Christ, turning down an attempt by the disgraced order to end the lawsuit brought over a late Yale University professor’s $1 million bequest.

U.S. District Judge Ronald Lagueux signed an order last week to adopt a magistrate judge’s recommendation that the lawsuit be allowed to proceed. The decision does not address the merits of Paul Chu’s claims, only whether he has standing to sue.

It’s the second lawsuit making its way through the courts in Rhode Island that raises questions about how the Legion secured large donation from elderly supporters. The other is in state court and involves around $60 million left by a wealthy widow. It was dismissed because the judge found the woman’s niece did not have standing to sue, but a state Supreme Court appeal is pending.

In the federal lawsuit, Chu, the son of retired mechanical engineering professor James Boa-Teh Chu, says his father was wrongly coerced, defrauded and deceived into signing over $1 million to $2 million to the Legion before he died in 2009. He says his father, who lived in East Providence, Rhode Island, was led to believe the Legion’s founder, the late Rev. Marcial Maciel, was a saint, even as the Vatican was investigating serious sexual abuse allegations about him.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on how the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), and BishopAccountability.org, are reacting to Pope Francis as he nears his first anniversary, which is one week from today:

Almost everyone loves Pope Francis, but not among his admirers are SNAP and BishopAccountability.org, two of the most hate-filled activist outlets in the nation.

SNAP condemns the pope for doing “nothing—literally nothing—that protects a single child, exposes a single predator or prevents a single cover up.” Not a single example, anywhere in the world, was cited, of the pope’s alleged delinquency.

Terence McKiernan of BishopAccountability.org condemns the pope for his “tired and defensive rhetoric,” saying the pope’s rigorous, and wholly justified, account of the Catholic Church’s reaction to sexual abuse is “breathtaking.” He cites one bishop, Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph, “who was convicted in 2012 of failing to report suspected child abuse,” as an example of the pope’s alleged intransigence.

What McKiernan did not tell the Associated Press is that the case did not involve child sexual abuse: no child was ever abused, or touched, by a disturbed priest, Shawn Ratigan. Nor did the case involve child porn: it involved crotch-shot pictures of children (one showed a girl’s genitals, determined by the police to be of a “non-sexual” nature).

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UNITED KINGDOM
Independent Catholic News

By: Dan Bergin
Posted: Thursday, March 6, 2014

A priest based in London has admitted downloading more than 5,000 images of child abuse from the internet. Timothy Gardner, 41, is facing jail after he pleaded guilty at Southwark Crown Court on Monday to 10 counts of downloading the images. The collection was discovered when police searched his home at St Dominic’s Priory in Haverstock Hill and seized computers in August, after receiving information from the public.

Gardner taught RE at Maria Fidelis Catholic School in Euston for six years from 2006 to 2012. Headteacher Helen Gill said she was “shocked and saddened” by the revelations, but said none of the allegations related to his time at the school. “Since learning of the charges I have written to parents to provide this reassurance and we will, of course, provide necessary support to pupils and parents if required,” she added.

Gardner’s barrister, Louise Sweet, told the court he was of previous good character but said reports were needed regarding an alcohol problem.

Camden council said Gardner had undergone a full CRB check and there were no doubts about his behaviour during his time at the school, nor was there any suggestion that the images related to people from Camden.

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NEW YORK
The Jewish Week

03/06/14
Staff Report

A rabbi identified as a teacher at an unnamed girl’s seminary on Brooklyn has been charged with distributing child pronography via the Internet, a federal offense.

Samuel Waldman, 52, was arrested Wednesday at his Kensington, Brooklyn home by agents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations unit, according to Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, who announced the arrest and will prosecute the case.

Rabbi Waldman appeared Wednesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge James L. Cott in Manhattan federal court and was released on $10,0000 bond. He faces one count of transporting or distributing child pornography, which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison and a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

“Samuel Waldman’s position of trust in the community, as both a rabbi and a teacher, makes his alleged distribution of child pornography all the more disturbing,” said Bharara in a statement. “As we have said repeatedly, we have zero tolerance for the exploitation of children and we will prosecute and punish those who engage in this conduct.”

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NEW YORK
New York Post

By Aaron Feis
March 6, 2014

A Brooklyn rabbi has been busted for allegedly distributing child pornography to undercover federal agents online, prosecutors announced Wednesday.

Samuel Waldman, 52, used a file-sharing program last November to send three illicit videos to a computer run by Homeland Security agents as part of a sting operation, authorities said.

One sick video showed girls engaging in sex acts with adult men, according to the criminal complaint. They appeared to range in age from 4 to 11.

Waldman, who also teaches at a girl’s seminary, was busted Wednesday morning at his Kensington home and charged with distribution of child pornography, prosecutors said. The rabbi copped to possessing kiddie porn, including the videos he sent to feds, according to the criminal complaint.

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NEW YORK
News 12

BROOKLYN – A Brooklyn rabbi and teacher at a girls seminary has been arrested for alleged distribution of child pornography.

According to prosecutors, 52-year-old Samuel Waldman, of Kensington, is accused of distributing the illegal material over the Internet by enabling others to download videos that show minors engaged in sexual acts.

News 12 was first to speak with Waldman following the arrest. He said the accusations are false and hurtful.

Authorities say they established a connection to Waldman’s computer back in November, and were able to download several videos that he allegedly made available through file sharing software, which include clips of children as young as 4 years old.

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NEW YORK
Tablet

By Stephanie Butnick
March 6, 2014

Samuel Waldman, a 52-year-old Brooklyn-based rabbi who teaches at a girls seminary, has been arrested on the charge of distributing child pornography, the AP reports.

A criminal complaint in federal court in Manhattan charged Waldman with distributing child pornography over the Internet in November by enabling others to download multiple videos depicting children in sexual acts, including girls ages 4 to 11.

Waldman was charged with one count of transporting or distributing child pornography. If convicted, he could face up to 20 years in prison.

According to the Forward, Waldman admitted to obtaining and viewing child pornography, including disturbing videos of young girls being raped.

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NEW YORK
My Fox New York

Posted: Mar 06, 2014

NEW YORK (AP) – A Brooklyn rabbi and teacher at a girls’ seminary has been arrested on a child pornography distribution charge.

Prosecutors announced the arrest Wednesday of 52-year-old Samuel Waldman at his Brooklyn residence.

A criminal complaint in federal court in Manhattan charged Waldman with distributing child pornography over the Internet in November by enabling others to download multiple videos depicting children in sexual acts, including girls ages 4 to 11.

Waldman was charged with one count of transporting or distributing child pornography. If convicted, he could face up to 20 years in prison.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Thomas P. Doyle | Mar. 6, 2014 Examining the Crisis

Pope Francis has astounded, thrilled, encouraged — and disappointed people from the moment he walked out onto the balcony of St. Peter’s attired in a white cassock and not in the layers of pontifical finery as has been customary for newly elected popes.

He has said and done much in his first year that has given encouragement to those hoping the institutional church will finally start to look and act like the Body of Christ. But everything he has done is muted by the reality that as far as the church’s most profound problem and greatest challenge is concerned, he has done almost nothing.

His comments about clerical sex abuse reported March 5 in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera make it clear that he is using the same tired and irrelevant playbook the bishops have worn out over the past few years.

The worldwide scourge of sexual violation and abuse by clergy of all ranks, publicly revealed since the mid-1980s, is a blight on the face of the church that makes the other problems pale by comparison. Money laundering and the related financial scandals are certainly sensational and scandalous but they are nothing compared to the lying, manipulation and harsh response to victims that have marked the sexual abuse issue since it first became public knowledge.

A year has passed and Pope Francis’ moves have been minimal. He made sex abuse a crime in the Vatican City State, a move so meaningless it is almost comical. He has not made a major or even a minor pronouncement about the problem and he has done little about bishops who have enabled perpetrators. In July of last year a bishop accused of violating minors was quickly laicized (Auxiliary Bishop Gabino Miranda of Ayacucho, Peru), a sound move for sure, but what of the bishops who have continued to harbor criminal abusers and punish innocent victims by encouraging brutal tactics in the civil courts?

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CALIFORNIA
The Raw Story

By David Ferguson
Thursday, March 6, 2014

The arrival of a new conservative Catholic bishop in the diocese of Berkeley, California has meant that a popular, gay, progressive priest has been ousted from his job. The East Bay Express reported that neither the clergy nor the parishioners at Newman Hall Holy Spirit Parish in Berkeley were given any say in the matter.

On Sunday, Feb. 16, said the Express, Father Bernard Campbell delivered a sermon on anger, sadness and bitterness. He then made the abrupt announcement that he and openly gay priest Father Bill Edens would be leaving Newman Hall on the orders of newly installed bishop Michael Barber.

Barber reportedly dismissed Campbell and one other priest and has announced that worship at Newman Hall will be taking on a “major redirection,” a phrase parishioners find ominous.

Campbell and Ednes are favorites among members of Newman Hall. Edens is open about his gay orientation, although he, like all Catholic priests, purports to maintain a celibate lifestyle.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, March 6, 2014

Statement by Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, Outreach Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314 862 7688 home, 314 503 0003 cell, SNAPdorris@gmail.com )

In a little-noticed talk with some Italian priests yesterday, Pope Francis offered tender words for clerics he calls “falsely accused” of abuse (according to Gazzetta del Sud). But those sympathetic words are apparently left out (and replaced by ellipses) in the official version of his talk in four summaries or official versions of the speech that are accessible from the Vatican’s website. (See below.)

We’ve already voiced our disappointment and concern about the content of his comments:

[SNAP]

But having learned – from a staffer at BishopAccountability.org – about apparent Vatican efforts to hide the pontiff’s comments, we are even more troubled.

We can’t help but wonder what other potentially controversial remarks this pontiff may have made – on all kinds of topics – that may have been scrubbed from official Vatican outlets.

It’s depressing that Pope Francis thinks about abuse the same way many Catholic officials do. It’s more depressing if Pope Francis – or his backers – act about abuse the same way many Catholic officials do – by being deceptive. …

BACKGROUND / ANALYSIS

Here is the summary of his talk on the Vatican Radio website. It has no mention of his “falsely accused” remarks:

[news.va]

Here’s a slightly longer summary, on the website of the Vatican Information Service. No mention here:

[news.va]

Here’s another version, accessible via the Press Bulletin tab on the Vatican website. No mention of falsely accused priests:

[Vatican web site]

Here is the longest available version of his speech on the Vatican website:

[news.va]

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UNITED STATES
TheMediaReport

It is an ugly American bigotry as old as the hills.

Know-Nothingism was a widespread bias against Catholicism in this country, stemming from the suspicion that Catholics were not sufficiently patriotic or trustworthy, as they were controlled by the Pope and a secret Vatican cabal.

Now courtesy of your tax dollars, Know-Nothingism has made a 21st century comeback on PBS’s flagship Frontline investigative program.

Last week, in a documentary entitled “Secrets of the Vatican,” Frontline managed a remarkable feat: to haul out every old anti-Catholic canard that would make a Klansman beam. It was a 90-minute orgy of bigotry indulging every stereotype about the Church: criminal cover-ups, monetary corruption, gay clergy, and, of course, the ever-favorite and never-ending sex abuse storyline.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

NCR Editorial Staff | Mar. 6, 2014

The editors of NCR offer this open letter to Pope Francis:

Dear Pope Francis,

Warmest greetings from the heartland of the United States.

We, like so many others, are taken with your very human and pastoral approach to life’s difficult issues, with your deep compassion that you don’t hesitate to demonstrate and with your insistent exhortation to move out of our comfortable churches and go encounter the rest of humanity, especially those on the margins.

You have become an inspiring and challenging example of genuine humility and authority.

Support independent Catholic journalism. Subscribe to NCR.
You must feel that the entire world is tugging at your sleeve with endless expectations. So it is only out of a sense of extreme urgency that we seek to intrude on your busy schedule and raise the issue of the sex abuse crisis. In a recent response to an inquiry, you acknowledged that the abuse is awful because it leaves “profound wounds.”

Then, you added: “The statistics of the phenomenon of violence against children are staggering, but show clearly that the vast majority of abuse happens in the family setting and neighborhood.

“The Catholic church is maybe the only public institution to have moved with transparency and responsibility. No one else has done more. Yet the church is the only one to be attacked.”

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, March 6, 2014

Statement by Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, Outreach Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314 862 7688 home, 314 503 0003 cell, SNAPdorris@gmail.com )

A newspaper in southern Italy reports that Pope Francis told a group of priests he considers “falsely accused” that he “shares their pain.”

[Gazzetta del Sud]

If true, the pontiff is now rubbing even more salt into the wounds of suffering victims and betrayed Catholics. Hundreds of thousands of children have been sexually violated by clergy. A tiny fraction of clergy have been “falsely accused.” A number of Catholic officials have made this clear.

“Fewer than two percent of sexual abuse allegations against the Catholic church appear to be false,” according to BishopAccountability.org

[BishopAccountability.org]

The Pope should have made this clear. He should do so now. Until he does, he is again moving backwards on abuse and making the crisis worse by mischaracterizing and minimizing it.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

POSTED BY BARBARA DORRIS ON MARCH 06, 2014

The Associated Press’ Rome bureau reports that Pope Francis is now “using the defensive rhetoric of the Vatican from a decade ago.”

[NPR]

Like “no one’s done more” on abuse than the church. And only the church is “attacked” over child sex crimes.

With the pope recycling old, discredited myths about the abuse crisis, what’s next? Will he trot out these silly but hurtful claims too:

–Pope Benedict’s 2010 claim that the crisis is “petty gossip.”

[The Guardian]

–Pope Benedict’s 2002 claim that “In the United States, there is constant news on this topic, but less than 1% of priests are guilty of acts of this type.”

[Zenit]

(The truth: “The U.S. bishops have reported receiving allegations of abuse by 6,275 priests in 1950-2011, or 5.7% of the 109,694 U.S. priests active since 1950,” according to BishopAccountability.org)

–Cardinal Edward Egan 2012 gems like “I don’t think we did anything wrong” and “I’m very proud of how this thing was handled” and “I believe the sex abuse thing was incredibly good” and “There really wasn’t much . . . hidden” and “I do think it’s time to get off this subject.”

[Connecticut Magazine]

–The now-retired Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland’s claim that “some adolescent sex abuse victims were ‘not so innocent’ and were sexually active, streetwise and aggressive.”

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PHILIPPINES
Philippine Daily Inquirer

By Daxim L. Lucas
Philippine Daily Inquirer
4:25 am | Wednesday, March 5th, 2014

(First of a series)

A deal between San Miguel Corp. (SMC) and healing priest Fr. Fernando Suarez to build a “mega-shrine” to Mother Mary with a statue that would be taller than the 30-meter-high Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro has collapsed, the Inquirer has learned.

SMC’s concerns about the management of the project and financial issues involving the priest’s Mary Mother of the Poor (MMP) Foundation derailed what on paper was supposed to be a one-of-a-kind project rivaling some of Christendom’s grandest religious sanctuaries.

Suarez is on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and cannot be reached for comment.

The agreement for the donation of SMC’s 33-hectare property in Alfonso, Cavite, was reached four years ago. The shrine was to be called “The Healing Center of the Blessed Virgin Mary at MonteMaria.” From all indications, however, this plan will no longer push through, or at least not on the same site.

SMC and the MMP are set to announce this week that they will dissolve their agreement on the donation located in SMC’s 125-hectare property.

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CANADA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, March 6, 2014

For more info: Melanie Jula Sakoda 925-708-6175 cell, melanie.sakoda@gmail.com, Cappy Larson cappy@rlarson.com, David Clohessy 314-566-9790 cell, SNAPclohessy@aol.com

Victims blast Ottawa bishop
He professes “neutrality” in clergy sex case
But group says that “helps criminals & hurts kids”
They want diocese-wide ban on backing predators

A support group for clergy sex abuse victims is blasting an Ottawa bishop for claiming to be neutral in a dispute over a fundraising event for a convicted archbishop.

Last week members of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, wrote to the leader of the Archdiocese of Canada of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), asking him to denounce a proposed March 5th fundraiser in Ottawa for Archbishop Seraphim Storheim. The group also asked the bishop to order church employees and to urge parishioners to refrain from publicly supporting Storheim. The archbishop was convicted in January of sexually abusing an 11 year old altar boy.

[SNAP]

In an email to SNAP on March 04, 2014, Bishop Irenee Rochon (613-223-7780, bishopirenee@archdiocese.ca), the bishop of Québec City, refused to help. He wrote, “This painful affair is still before the courts and until the process is complete, the Church will continue its position of neutrality. … The Church has not engaged in any fundraising activities, but it cannot condemn the activities of parishioners while the matter is still before the courts.”

(The complete text of the email is pasted below.)

Rochon was appointed as the administrator of the Archdiocese of Canada after Storheim’s arrest in November, 2010, on charges of abusing 11 year old twin boys.

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

THURSDAY, MARCH 6, 2014

BY JEFF GREEN
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD

TEANECK – Outraged over a pricey expansion of the Newark archbishop’s retirement home, a coordinated group of churchgoers is writing letters of protest to the pope and withdrawing financial support for an important archdiocese annual fundraiser.

In perhaps the most vocal and organized response to date, parishioners at the Church of St. Anastasia in Teaneck formed a 10-member committee to oppose the use of $500,000 in archdiocese funds for an add-on to Archbishop John J. Myers’ home on a sprawling estate in Hunterdon County. The 3,000 square-foot addition will include an indoor exercise pool, three fireplaces and a fifth bedroom.

The founder of the committee, Dr. Raul Caceres, 72, a plastic surgeon who has started charities in Peru and Bolivia, said he has collected more than 100 letters from parishioners angered by the expense. If the group doesn’t get answers from Myers about why a 3,000-square-foot extension to his home is necessary, he said the committee will hand-deliver the letters to the Vatican.

“We’re not going to just be outraged. We have to do something,” Caceres said in an interview Wednesday.

The committee is encouraging parishioners to withhold contributions to the archbishop’s annual appeal, which collects funds to support schools, Catholic Charities, youth and campus ministries and other programs. The archdiocese has stressed that contributions to the annual appeal are not funding the retirement home expansion, but Caceres said the upscale living quarters has called into question Myers’ financial stewardship.

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AUSTRALIA
Chronicle

Chris Calcino 6th Mar 2014

THE child sex abuse scandal at a Toowoomba Catholic school may have claimed another scalp.

It is believed former student protection officer Catherine Long has been stood down on full pay pending the results of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Ms Long, who is still employed by the school at the centre of the 2007 scandal, made headlines when she admitted she had no idea what “grooming” was.

Her ignorance came despite the fact she was the school’s child protection contact.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

Information sessions are being held across Western Australia for people interested in testifying at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse.

The royal commission is due to hold its first Western Australian public hearings in April.

Hearings may then be scheduled for regional centres later in the year.

Relationships Australia, which has been funded by the Federal Government to provide support and counselling to people who give evidence, is visiting Broome, Northam and Hedland in coming weeks.

Geraldton, Albany and Kalgoorlie are scheduled for later in the year.

Royal commission support service manager Charmaine Kennedy says it is an open invitation and attending does not mean people will then have to testify.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Derry Journal

A confidential forum established as part of the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry will stop accepting applications at the end of April.

The Acknowledgement Forum has thus far interviewed 308 people who say they suffered childhood abuse or neglect in one of the Northern Ireland institutions covered by the Inquiry’s terms of reference between 1922 and 1995.

Speaking this morning, the Chairman of the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry, Sir Anthony Hart announced April 30 at 5pm as the closing date for applications to the Forum.

“It is necessary to bring the Acknowledgment Forum application process to a close to facilitate the Forum informing the work of the Statutory Inquiry.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

The inquiry examining abuse claims in NI’s children’s homes and juvenile justice institutions has announced a closing date of 30 April for anyone wanting to speak in private to the inquiry.

The Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry (HIA) was set up to investigate allegations dating from 1922 to 1995.

It is investigating claims of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, as well as childhood neglect.

It began hearing evidence in January.

The closing date of 30 April at 17:00 BST for anyone wishing to speak to the forum was announced by the inquiry’s chairman, Sir Anthony Hart, at Banbridge Courthouse on Thursday.

In announcing the closing date, the Sir Anthony said: “It is necessary to bring the acknowledgment forum application process to a close to facilitate the forum informing the work of the statutory inquiry.

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UNITED STATES
Washington Post

Pope Francis is making more Catholics excited about faith, but actions slow to follow

By Michelle Boorstein, Published: March 5

In the year since he was elected, Pope Francis has become the most talked-about person on the Web. Millions are riveted by his words, and, to many, his very name signifies humanity and compassion in a world rife with divisions.

Still, he appears not to have had much impact on the number of Americans attending Mass, converting to Catholicism, giving to Catholic charities and other conventional measures, according to interviews with a wide range of U.S. church leaders, experts and other Catholics as well as early data released Thursday by the Pew Research Center.

It’s not clear that “there has been a so-called ‘Francis effect,’ a discernible change in the way American Catholics approach their faith,” according to the report.

And yet, his effect is undeniably everywhere.

Forty percent of U.S. Catholics polled by Pew say they’ve been praying more often in the past year, 21 percent say they’re reading the Bible “and other religious materials” more often and 26 percent say they’ve become “more excited” about their faith. Majorities say they haven’t changed their behaviors.

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UNITED STATES
dotCommonweal

Mollie Wilson O’Reilly March 5, 2014

If there’s an area in which Pope Francis has been a disappointment, it’s in responding to the sex-abuse crisis. In most ways he strikes me as a hierarch who is unusually aware of how the Church is perceived by the broader world, and he has done a lot indirectly to repair the damage to the church’s credibility that resulted from the sex-abuse scandal. But he has said and done little about the scandal itself, despite his refreshing frankness on so many other issues. And now that he has spoken about the issue, in the interview just published in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, his take is not exactly encouraging.

Here’s the relevant excerpt, as reported in Vatican Insider’s account:

Speaking about the horrific abuse of children by priests, Francis said “the cases of abuse are terrible because they leave very deep wounds”. Benedict XVI “was very courageous and opened a road, and the Church has done a lot on this route, perhaps more than all others”, he stated. He noted that the statistics reveal the tremendous violence against children, but also that the vast majority of abuse takes place in the milieu of the family and those close to them. The Church is the only public institution to have moved “with transparency and responsibility”, he said; no one else has done as much as it, “but the Church is the only one to be attacked”.

Oh brother.

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher (article posted 5 March 2014)

Until 1994, Father Richard Cattell was a senior Catholic priest in western Sydney. A boy told Cattell about having been sexually assaulted by a Catholic lay teacher, but (according to police evidence in court) Father Cattell then committed a similar crime on this boy. This 1994 court case, researched by Broken Rites, demonstrates that church victims should report sexual crimes to the civil authorities — not to the offending organisation, the church.

Richard St John Cattell was ordained as a Catholic priest on 18 July 1964 for the Sydney diocese. He was in the same graduating group as another New South Wales priest, Vincent Kiss, of the Wagga Wagga diocese. (Vincent Kiss was eventually jailed.)

Broken Rites has ascertained that some of Cattell’s early parishes in the Sydney diocese (this might not be a complete list) were: Concord West and Lakemba in the 1960s; and Liverpool and Windsor in the 1970s.

A church website has stated that, from 1982 to 1991, Cattell was the parish priest in charge of the “Our Lady of the Rosary” parish in the outer-western Sydney suburb of St Marys, near Penrith. The “Our Lady of the Rosary Parish” includes the suburbs of Claremont Meadows, Colyton, Oxley Park, St Mary’s and Werrington.

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher (article posted 6 March 2014)

A senior priest at a prominent Australian Catholic school has admitted accessing and possessing child pornography.

Father Stanislaus John Hogan, 69, who has long been associated with Saint Ignatius College in Adelaide (plus prominent Catholic schools in Sydney and Melbourne), appeared in the Adelaide Magistrates Court on 6 March 2014.

He pleaded guilty to one count of using a carriage service to access child pornography and one aggravated count of possessing child pornography.

The offences happened at Athelstone (the Adelaide suburb where the St Ignatius College is located) between April 2012 and August 2013.

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IRELAND
Association of Catholic Priests

At the invitation of Theresa Devlin, a meeting took place on 5 March between three members of the NBSCCC and two members of the Leadership Team of the ACP, Sean McDonagh and Tony Flannery.

The following items were raised by the ACP members:

1. Audits of dioceses and Religious Communities. We stressed that this put the members of the NBSCCC in a very powerful position, since, because of the publicity each tranche of audits receives, they amount to a public rating of the bishop or superior. And the content of the audit can have major impact on the lives of individual priests. We attempted to impress on them the seriousness of their role, and encouraged them to act with compassion.

2. We raised the difficulties around historical allegations, and the fact that many older priests are excluded from ministry because of a mistake or mistakes they made in their earlier life, and where there was no pattern of re-offending. We questioned the justice of this, and the witness it gives from a Church, one of whose core teachings is mercy and forgiveness.

3. We brought up once again the reality of false allegations, as we are experiencing them in our work with the ACP.

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VATICAN CITY
Gazzetta del Sud

(Updates previous) Vatican City, March 6 – Pope Francis told a group of Rome priests Thursday that he “shared the pain” of priests suffering “unjust wounds” caused by allegations against some of them. “Lots of people have been injured, by material problems, by scandals, including in the Church,” the pope said during a meeting with priests inside the Vatican. He was referring to an incident in March 2013 when former priest Patrizio Poggi was convicted and sent to prison for five years for pedophilia, and also denounced other priests, saying they were involved in a child prostitution ring. Police later said his claims were unfounded and Poggi was charged with aggravated slander. According to police, his accusations were driven by “resentment tied to personal reasons”. The pope said the case hurt many in the Church. “I shared the pain of some of you, of the entire priesthood, for the accusations made against a group of you,” Francis told the meeting.

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VATIKAN
Spiegel

Rom – Die sexuellen Übergriffe auf Kinder seien “furchtbar, weil sie sehr tiefe Wunden hinterlassen”, sagte Papst Franziskus der italienischen Zeitung “Corriere della Sera”. Eine Verfehlung der katholischen Kirche bei der Aufklärung des Missbrauchsskandals sieht er aber nicht. Im Gegenteil: “Die katholische Kirche ist vielleicht die einzige öffentliche Institution, die sich mit Transparenz und Verantwortung bewegt hat. Kein anderer hat mehr getan. Und doch ist die Kirche die einzige, die angegriffen wird”, sagte er.

Die Statistiken zeigten, dass sich “die große Mehrheit” der Missbrauchsfälle in der Familie und der Nachbarschaft ereigne, sagte Franziskus. Er lobte seinen Vorgänger Benedikt XVI, der sehr mutig gewesen sei und habe einen guten Weg eingeschlagen habe.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Spiegel

[Summary: The Catholic Church has their next big scandal. George Hupfauer, national chairman of the Catholic Worker movement, has admitted to visiting web sites that contain child pornography. Hupfauer announced his resignation and retirement on Wednesday.]

Köln – Nach Ermittlungen der Staatsanwaltschaft wegen des Verdachts auf Besitz von Kinderpornografie ist der Chef der Katholischen Arbeitnehmer-Bewegung (KAB), Georg Hupfauer, zurückgetreten. Er habe seinen Rücktritt bereits am Mittwoch erklärt, teilte die Sozialorganisation auf ihrer Internetseite mit. Hintergrund sei ein Ermittlungsverfahren der Staatsanwaltschaft Aachen gegen den langjährigen Bundesvorsitzenden. Mit Bestürzung und Fassungslosigkeit habe der KAB-Führungskreis aus der Presse von den Vorwürfen erfahren.

Der Sprecher der Staatsanwaltschaft Aachen, Jost Schützeberg, sagte auf Anfrage, nach einer Strafanzeige sei im März 2013 ein Ermittlungsverfahren gegen Hupfauer eingeleitet worden. Bei den anschließenden Durchsuchungen im Mai wurden demnach Festplatten und USB-Sticks sichergestellt, deren Auswertung noch andauere. Es bestehe jedoch kein Zusammenhang zu der Operation kanadischer Behörden, in deren Verlauf der Name des damaligen SPD-Bundestagsabgeordneten Sebastian Edathy aufgetaucht sei, sagte Schützeberg. Zuvor hatte die “Bild”-Zeitung über den Verdacht gegen Hupfauer berichtet.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Frankfurter Allgemeine

Von REINER BURGER, DÜSSELDORF

Gegen den Bundesvorsitzenden der Katholischen Arbeitnehmer-Bewegung (KAB), Georg Hupfauer, wird wegen des Verdachts auf Besitz von Kinderpornografie ermittelt. Der 59 Jahre alte Hupfauer legte am Mittwochabend alle seine Ämter mit sofortiger Wirkung nieder und gab zu, im Internet auf Seiten mit kinderpornografischem Inhalt gesurft zu haben. Die Zeitung „Kölner Express“ zitierte ihn mit den Worten: „Was soll ich ‘rumeiern wie andere? Ich räume ein, dass ich über Jahre hinweg im Internet frei zugängliche, pornographische Seiten querbeet besucht habe. Darunter hat sich auch Kinderpornographie befunden.“

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UNITED STATES
New York Times

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
MARCH 6, 2014

One year into the era of Pope Francis, a new poll has found that a broad majority of American Catholics say he represents a major change in direction for the church, and a change for the better. But his popularity has not inspired more Americans to attend Mass, go to confession or identify as Catholic — a finding that suggests that so far, the much-vaunted “Francis effect” is influencing attitudes, but not behavior.

Francis is more popular among American Catholics than Pope Benedict XVI was in February of last year, when he suddenly resigned, according to the poll, which is to be released Thursday by the Pew Research Center. But Francis has not reached the sky-high ratings that Pope John Paul II commanded at the height of his papacy in the 1990s, when he was credited with helping to bring down the Communist government in his native Poland.

Francis, who draws giddy teenagers to his Wednesday audiences and generates Twitter traffic with every public remark, has clearly invigorated the church. But the poll finds that Francis has raised expectations of significant change, even though he has alluded that he may not alter the church’s positions on thorny doctrinal issues.

Nearly six in 10 American Catholics in the poll said they expected the church would definitely or probably lift its prohibition on birth control by the year 2050, while half said the church would allow priests to marry. Four in 10 said it would ordain women as priests, and more than two-thirds said it would recognize same-sex marriages by 2050. Large majorities of American Catholics said they wanted the church to change on the first three matters, and half wanted the church to recognize same-sex marriages.

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UNITED STATES
Pew Research Religion & Public Life Project

Views of the Pope After His First Year

One year into his pontificate, Pope Francis remains immensely popular among American Catholics and is widely seen as a force for positive change within the Roman Catholic Church. More than eight-in-ten U.S. Catholics say they have a favorable view of the pontiff, including half who view him very favorably. The percentage of Catholics who view Francis “very favorably” now rivals the number who felt equally positive about Pope John Paul II in the 1980s and 1990s, though Francis’ overall favorability rating remains a few points shy of that of the long-serving Polish pope.

Seven-in-ten U.S. Catholics also now say Francis represents a major change in direction for the church, a sentiment shared by 56% of non-Catholics. And nearly everyone who says Francis represents a major change sees this as a change for the better.

But despite the pope’s popularity and the widespread perception that he is a change for the better, it is less clear whether there has been a so-called “Francis effect,” a discernible change in the way American Catholics approach their faith. There has been no measurable rise in the percentage of Americans who identify as Catholic. Nor has there been a statistically significant change in how often Catholics say they go to Mass. And the survey finds no evidence that larger numbers of Catholics are either going to confession or volunteering in their churches or communities.

But there are other indications of somewhat more intense religiosity among Catholics. About a quarter of Catholics (26%) say they have become “more excited” about their Catholic faith over the past year (outnumbering the one-in-ten who have become less excited). Four-in-ten Catholics say they have been praying more often in the past 12 months (compared with 8% who say they have been praying less often). And somewhat more Catholics say they have been reading the Bible and other religious texts more frequently (21%) than say they have been doing so less frequently (14%). None of these questions about religious practices were explicitly tied in the survey to Francis’ papacy; the questions dealing with attitudes toward Francis came elsewhere in the questionnaire.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Thomas Reese | Mar. 6, 2014 Faith and Justice

Pope Francis is the most talked about person in the world. He has been on the cover of almost every magazine, he makes the news almost every week, and he is a Twitter and Facebook sensation. He drew huge crowds in Rio de Janeiro and continues to draw large crowds in Rome.

But what impact is he actually having on the life of the church? In an attempt to answer that question, the Pew Research Center Religion & Public Life surveyed Americans’ views of Pope Francis in February.

People overwhelming like the pope. Eighty-five percent of Catholics and 60 percent of non-Catholics view the pope favorably, numbers that would make politicians green with envy. Among Catholics, Pope Francis’ ratings are up there with those of Pope John Paul II, who had favorable ratings between 91 and 93 percent in 1987, 1990, and 1996.

The favorable ratings are across generations, with the youngest cohort (18-39 years) just slightly less enthusiastic than the oldest cohort (60-plus). One would have expected exactly the opposite, with the more liberal young people more favorable to Francis than their conservative elders. Those who attend church weekly are also more favorable (89 percent) toward Francis than those who attend less often (84 percent). Again, we might have expected the opposite. Perhaps the young and those attending church less are simply paying less attention to Francis.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Lucy Hughes-Hallett
The Guardian, Thursday 6 March 2014

In 1938, Pope Pius XI addressed a group of visitors to the Vatican. There were some people, he said, who argued that the state should be all-powerful – “totalitarian”. Such an idea, he went on, was absurd, not because individual liberty was too precious to be surrendered, but because “if there is a totalitarian regime – in fact and by right – it is the regime of the church, because man belongs totally to the church”.

As David Kertzer demonstrates repeatedly in this nuanced book, to be critical of fascism in Italy in the 30s was not necessarily to be liberal or a lover of democracy. And to be antisemitic was not to be unchristian. The Pope told Mussolini that the church had long seen the need to “rein in the children of Israel” and to take “protective measures against their evil-doing”. The Vatican and the fascist regime had many differences, but this they had in common.

Kertzer announces that the Catholic church is generally portrayed as the courageous opponent of fascism, but this is an exaggeration. There is a counter-tradition, John Cornwell’s fine book, Hitler’s Pope, on Pius XII (who succeeded Pius XI in 1939) exposed the Vatican’s culpable passivity in the face of the wartime persecution of Italian Jews. But Kertzer describes something more fundamental than a church leader’s strategic decision to protect his own flock rather than to speak up in defence of others. His argument, presented not as polemic but as gripping storytelling, is that much of fascist ideology was inspired by Catholic tradition – the authoritarianism, the intolerance of opposition and the profound suspicion of the Jews.

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UNITED STATES
New Tang Dynasty Television

WASHINGTON, March 06, 2014 (AFP) –

A year after being chosen Pope Francis is very popular with American Catholics though his handling of the pedophile priests’ scandal left many underwhelmed, a new study found.

More than eight in 10 surveyed in the Pew Research Center study of 1,821 adults 18 or older — fully 85 percent — had a favorable opinion of the pope a year after his elevation, it found.

Francis, born in Argentina, is the first pope born in the Americas, and the first from Latin America.

While a strong majority approves of Francis’ work on behalf of the poor and disenfranchised, the new pope earned lower marks for his handling of the sex abuse crisis, the study found.

“Fifty-four percent of Catholics giving him an excellent or good rating for his handling of the issue. One year ago, 70% of US Catholics said that addressing the sex abuse scandal should be ‘a top priority’ for the new pope, far more than said the same about standing up for traditional moral values, spreading the Catholic faith or other issues,” the study stressed.

Francis has defended the Catholic Church’s record on tackling the sexual abuse of children by priests, saying “no one else has done more” to root out pedophilia.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Father Stanislaus John Hogan pleads guilty to accessing and possessing child pornography

A SENIOR priest who worked at one of the state’s most prominent Catholic schools has admitted accessing and possessing child pornography.

Father Stanislaus John Hogan, 69, who has long been associated with Saint Ignatius College at Athelstone, appeared in the Adelaide Magistrates Court today.

He pleaded guilty to one count of using a carriage service to access child pornography and one aggravated count of possessing child pornography.

The offences happened at Athelstone between April 2012 and August 2013.

A St Ignatius school magazine — dated winter 2013 — lists Hogan as the school’s rector.

Hogan’s identity was suppressed under state law until now, but that order has automatically lapsed with his plea.

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UNITED STATES
National Survivor Advocates Coalition

Kristine Ward

Pope Francis waited as long as he could – especially when courage was not the option he would choose.

From the beginning he kept his distance, even when pushed by the phantom commission of one of the Council of Eight Cardinals, Sean O’Malley — especially when the survivors were not the ones around whom he would circle the wagons.

He waited as long as he could to address sexual abuse – especially since his personality and style reviews have been boffo.

But he must be given this, he does have a sense of timing.

At the one year mark, he knew the string had run out.

It was just a matter of how to do it.

He chose to walk into his declaration of how the largest crisis in the Roman Catholic Church in 500 years will be handled in his papacy through the lead of a reporter’s question – and he was smart enough to let the reporter shape the backdrop against which he spoke.
Here is the excerpt from the English translation of the interview Pope Francis gave to the Italian daily Corriere della Sera:

Question: The scandals that rocked the life of the Church are fortunately in the past. A public appeal was made to you, on the delicate theme of the abuse of minors, published by (the Italian newspaper) Il Foglio and signed by Besancon and Scruton, among others, that you would raise your voice and make it heard against the fanaticisms and the bad conscience of the secularized world that hardly respects infancy.

Answer: I want to say two things. The cases of abuses are terrible because they leave extremely deep wounds. Benedict XVI was very courageous and he cleared a path. The Church has done so much on this path. Perhaps more than anyone. The statistics on the phenomenon of the violence against children are shocking, but they also show clearly that the great majority of abuses take place in the family environment and around it. The Catholic Church is perhaps the only public institution to have acted with transparency and responsibility. No other has done

Like it or not, and in this space we do not like it, he is clear: he has chosen clerics over children.

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TEXAS
Valley Central

by Ashly Custer

After Ricardo Rodriguez’s victory against longtime incumbent, Rene Guerra, in the Hidalgo County race for District Attorney, Irene Garza’s family speaks out.

“We talked about making a change, Mr. Guerra has done what he’s done for 32 years and the 34 years that he’ll be there, but we have things we want to implement,” Ricardo Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez said he is looking to strengthen the public integrity division, create strong relationship with law enforcement, and help those with mental health problems.

Many supporters like Irene Garza’s cousin, Dr. Linda De La Vina, couldn’t agree more.

She said even though Rodriguez has made no promises to prosecute the Garza case, De La Vina is excited to have a new D.A.

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NEW JERSEY
The New Civil Rights Movement

by CASEY MICHEL on MARCH 5, 2014

While Pope Francis calls on clergy worldwide to forgo “living like princes,” it appears at least one American archbishop has decided to ignore the Vatican’s dictates. Archbishop John Myers, leading the congregation of Newark, New Jersey, has decided to add $500,000 renovations to his weekend home, which he plans on moving into full-time upon retirement in two years. The home is already valued at $800,000, according to property records, but the archbishop has apparently determined that the worth and stretch — it sits at 4500-square-feet on a sprawling, 8.2-acre plot — don’t suit all of his needs for pastoring.

The Newark Star-Ledger helped bring the archbishop’s cushy needs to light last month, breaking the story that the archbishop is set to expand his already sweeping home by another 66 percent over the coming months. And the price tag they’ve discovered — half a million dollars, set to come from property sales and donations — doesn’t even cover furnishing or landscaping.

Of course, it would be one thing if this renovation were set to create, say, low-income schooling rooms, or homeless services, or even additional rooms for worship. Unfortunately, Myers determined his archdiocese must have been sufficiently stocked with low-income services, because he’s opted to instead stock the new expansion with amenities solely for his enjoyment:

The addition will house a large first-floor study and a smaller, attached library. A bedroom and sitting room — matching the footprint of the first-floor layout — are planned for the second floor. The third floor will house a 28-foot by 28-foot gallery with sweeping views of the property. Plans call for a fireplace on each level.

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NEW YORK
Failed Messiah

Hasidic child sex abuse whistleblower Samuel Kellner may – finally – see the specious criminal charges against him dropped on Friday. But even if that happens, is that enough? Or should Brooklyn DA Ken Thompson investigate and prosecute the people who allegedly set up Kellner and tried to have him wrongly convicted?

Hasidic child sex abuse whistleblower Samuel Kellner may – finally – see the specious criminal charges against him dropped on Friday.

Prosecutors working for the previous DA, Charles J. Hynes, tried to drop the case before this but were overruled by Hynes and Michael Vecchione, Hynes’ Rackets Bureau chief who, along with Hynes, just happens to be a close friend of Arthur Aidala, the attorney for an accused hasidic pedophile, Rabbi Baruch Lebovits, whose family – and Aidala and another Lebovits attorney, Alan Dershowitz – are allegedly behind what many say are the false accusations against Kellner.

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UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org

By Terence McKiernan

As the first anniversary of his election approaches, the interview of Pope Francis in Corriere della Sera and La Nacion helps us understand the Pope’s long silence and inaction regarding the sexual abuse of children in the Catholic church. It is not that he has been slowly preparing a major initiative; it is that he doesn’t get it. In the interview, Francis does not offer an apology to the hundreds of thousands of children abused by priests and religious – he doesn’t even express sorrow. Instead, he is triumphalist about clergy abuse of children and silent about the complicity of bishops and major superiors: “The Catholic Church is perhaps the only public institution to have moved with transparency and accountability.” The chutzpah of this self-assessment is breathtaking, coming as it does immediately after Francis refused to provide data to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and refused to extradite Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski.

By the end of the Pope’s remarks, the Church itself has become the victim: “No one else has done more. Yet the Church is the only one to be attacked.” It is astonishing, at this late date, that Pope Francis would recycle such tired and defensive rhetoric, apparently blaming the survivors and the journalists who have informed us about these crimes. What little transparency and accountability the Church has shown, has been compelled by survivors, journalists, advocates, and activists. Pope Francis, who is famous for his humility, should have acknowledged this crucial contribution.

This interview is not a good sign. One year into his photogenic papacy, we are still waiting for Pope Francis to take action regarding the sexual abuse of children by priests and members of religious orders. Sexual abuse is acknowledged to be the gravest crisis the Catholic church has faced since the Reformation, but it is not even mentioned by Francis in his lengthy Evangelii Gaudium. Yet the sexual abuse of children by clergy is a serious impediment to the evangelization that Francis seeks.

Pope Francis has met with drug addicts, immigrants, prisoners, and the physically disadvantaged. But he has not met with clergy sexual abuse survivors, who have been directly harmed by the Pope’s brother priests and by his brother bishops. The victims of sexual abuse should be the Pope’s first priority, because the Church’s responsibility to them is immediate and her ability to remedy the harm is greatest. “The thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds,” Pope Francis said in his interview with Antonio Spadaro, S.J., editor-in-chief of La Civiltà Cattolica. Pope Francis has this ability already but he has yet to extend it to the church’s own wounded.

Pope Francis is a master of the humble expression, and in those terms, it is time for him to “fish or cut bait.” We urge him to take the following steps, using the energy of his first anniversary to correct his feckless response to abuse in the past year. Children worldwide, both Catholic and non-Catholic, have been put at risk by his inaction.

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ROME
New York Times

By JIM YARDLEY
MARCH 5, 2014

ROME — Declaring his frustrations with being portrayed as a superman or a star, Pope Francis used an interview to depict himself as a normal person who laughs, cries and misses his ailing sister, while defending the Roman Catholic Church’s handling of the clerical sexual-abuse scandal and reiterating his belief that women should play a larger role in church decision making.

Ahead of the first anniversary of his election to the papacy later this month, Francis spoke with two Italian and Argentine newspapers this week about his personal life, and also discussed issues like the family, civil unions, the Vatican’s relationship with China and the role of his retired predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI.

Francis’ latest statements did not break new ground or signal any new positions, but he did offer his most public defense of the church’s handling of the clerical pedophilia scandal, even as victims’ advocacy groups continue to criticize the Vatican’s response as inadequate. Last month, a United Nations panel sharply criticized the Vatican and called on church officials to rid the priesthood of all abusers and hold accountable any bishops who covered up crimes.

Vatican officials strongly criticized the United Nations report as outdated and ideologically biased in how it went beyond the issue of pedophilia to challenge church doctrine on issues such as abortion. Francis has established a special Vatican commission to address the sexual-abuse crises, and in the interview, he acknowledged the horror of pedophilia, saying, “The cases of abuse are terrible because they leave very profound wounds.” …

Terence McKiernan, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, a victim’s advocacy group, criticized Francis’ remarks as insensitive and “triumphalist.” He said the pope should have apologized to victims rather than praise the church’s response.

“The chutzpah of this self-assessment is breathtaking,” Mr. McKiernan said in a statement.

Francis has now granted a handful of interviews to Italian newspapers, and analysts say he has skillfully used them to invite discussion of delicate social issues such as same-sex marriage, atheism, divorce or contraception, even as he usually remains unspecific about what concrete changes he endorses.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

Today, Corriere della Sera (Milan) and La Nación (Buenos Aires) published an interview in which Pope Francis reflects on his first year as pope. Joshua McElwee reports on the interview for National Catholic Reporter. As he notes, Francis defends Paul VI’s ban on artificial contraception, while stating that this ban needs to be applied pastorally; and he states that on the issue of sexual abuse of children, the Catholic church “has done so much. Perhaps most of all.”

For Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), Barbara Dorris responds to the claims about sex abuse:

We are deeply disheartened by Pope Francis’ remarks on the church’s horrific, on-going sexual abuse scandal. His comments reflect an archaic, defensive mindset that will not make kids safer.
For a year, we’ve been saying that while Pope Francis is making progress on church finances and governance, he’s done nothing – literally nothing – that protects a single child, exposes a single predator or prevents a single cover up. Now we know why.
It’s because this pope – who talks of change in much of the church – is apparently satisfied with the status quo on clergy sex abuse and cover ups. (Months ago, he did, in fact, tell Vatican officials who deal with abuse cases to “keep doing what you’re doing.”)
His central claim – that no one has “done more” on abuse than the Catholic church – is disingenuous.
No one has done more to clean up the Gulf of Mexico than British Petroleum. That’s because BP caused the devastating damage itself. It’s more than a little disingenuous.
It would be far more accurate to say that no one has done more to deny, minimize and hide child sex crimes than the church.*

As Jerry Slevin has repeatedly and persuasively maintained, on the issue of child abuse, it appears Francis doesn’t get it–and doesn’t intend to get it. Jerry insists that lay Catholics need to press church officials–but, above all, secular ones–on this issue, and to do so as strongly as possible.

I agree. And it goes without saying that I agree wholeheartedly with Barbara Dorris’s assessment of Francis’s remarks about the church’s response to child abuse as deeply disheartening and as reflecting “an archaic, defensive mindset that will not make kids safer.”

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AUSTRALIA
SBS

AAP

An Adelaide Catholic priest has pleaded guilty to accessing and possessing child pornography.

Father Stanislaus Hogan, 69, of Sevenhill, appeared in the Adelaide magistrates court on Thursday.

He pleaded guilty to an aggravated count of possessing child pornography and to a count of using a carriage service to access child pornography at Athelstone between April 20 and June 10 2012.

Hogan will be arraigned in the District Court on April 7.

Saint Ignatius’ College in Adelaide later confirmed that Father Stan Hogan was a former member of its staff.

In a statement, it said neither charge was connected with anyone within the college, including past or present students.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Bolton News

A ROMAN Catholic priest has been suspended while an accusation he had a secret affair with a vulnerable parishioner is investigated.

Father Stephen Cooper is alleged to have admitted having a two-year affair with Kathleen Lardner before she took a fatal overdose 10 years ago.

Her son Matthew Higgenson contacted the Archdiocese of Liverpool earlier this year following an email allegedly sent to him by Father Cooper, aged 58, in which he confesses to the affair.

Father Cooper was working at St Richard’s RC Church in Atherton at the time and conducted Miss Lardener’s funeral.

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MINNESOTA
WCCO

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – A judge has denied the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’ appeal in a clergy sexual abuse case.

The decision Wednesday clears the way for attorneys representing an alleged victim to interview.

The interviews are scheduled for next month.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By court reporter James Hancock

A Jesuit priest and teacher at Saint Ignatius College in Adelaide has admitted to child pornography offences.

Father Stan Hogan, 69, has pleaded guilty to accessing child pornography and an aggravated count of possessing child pornography.

The offences happened between April-June 2012 and last August at suburban Athelstone.

Hogan was suspended from the college after his arrest last August.

A publication by the Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide said Hogan was ordained in 1976 and also taught at schools in Victoria and New South Wales.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Berger’s Beat

March 5, 2014 5:19 pm | Author: berger

A Missouri Lawyers Weekly headline proclaims: “Archdiocese shows Greensfelder the door,” replacing its long-time lawyers in sex cases with Gerard Carmody of Clayton and a Colorado-based firm. . .If you believe the Associated Press’ Rome bureau, Kansas City Bishop Robert Finn has replaced St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson. The error came in a story today about Pope Francis’ latest comments about sexual abuse. “Three months after the Vatican announced a commission of experts to study best practices on protecting children, no action has been taken, no members appointed, no statute outlining the commission’s scope approved,” reports the AP. “Francis hasn’t met with any victims, hasn’t moved to oust a bishop convicted of failing to report a problem priest, and on Wednesday insisted that the church has been unfairly attacked on abuse using the defensive rhetoric of the Vatican from a decade ago.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5, 2014

By Ralph Cipriano
for Bigtrial.net

It’s the tighty-whitie defense.

When the prosecution presented its case against “Father Andy” McCormick, the alleged victim testified that the priest wore “blue plaid boxers” under his black priestly cossack. The alleged victim said he got a good look at those boxers 17 years ago when Father Andy allegedly attacked the victim, then a 10-year-old altar boy, in the priest’s bedroom in the rectory at St. John Cantius Church in Bridesburg.

Today, the defense called two witnesses who testified that Father Andy always wore white briefs.

First, Father Andy’s 87-year-old mother told the jury that she’s been buying the priest’s underwear for decades, and she always bought white briefs.

Then the longtime maintenance man at the church, Mark Pasternak, testified that for years he had seen the woman who did the priests’ laundry lay out the underwear on a table in the church basement. Pasternak told the jury that Father Andy, as well as every other priest at St. John Cantius, wore “tighty-whities.”

But on a day when Father Andy testified in his own defense, he was upstaged by what longtime maintenance man Pasternak had to say out in the hallway to reporters. The jury never heard a word of it.
“I sent a priest to jail,” Pasternak said out in the hallway. So he wouldn’t hesitate to send Father Andy to jail, he said, if he knew he was guilty.

“If a kid’s molested, I don’t care who you are, you’re going to jail,” Pasternak said.

There’s a reason why Pasternak looked familiar today to reporters covering Father Andy’s trial. The longtime maintenance man at St. John Cantius was Juror No. 5 in the 13-week trial of Msgr. William J. Lynn. Pasternak was one of the jurors who convicted Lynn on June 22, 2012 of one count of endangering the welfare of a child.

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UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on March 5, 2014

One of the chapters of my upcoming book deals with what I call Institutional Rot, that is, why “good” people do and say bad things in the name of the institution and how children are caught in the crossfire. For an institutional culture to have this kind of crisis, the direction—or I should say, misdirection—has to come from the top.

For the sake of comparison, let’s look at a hypothetical:

Auto Company X is the leading automaker in the United States. For more than 100 years, Company X’s cars have been a part of American’s lives and a well-loved and trusted brand. But civil lawsuits filed by victims have unearthed the fact that Company X has knowingly been making and selling defective cars that veer off the road and kill people.

Hundreds of victims sue the company. In the process of the litigation, it’s discovered that many of the corporate officers knew about the defects and did nothing. Instead of being fired, the executives are allowed to keep their jobs.

The news gets worse and worse. In some areas of the country, anywhere from one in ten to one in 20 cars were killing people. While many of the cars were taken off the road, the company refuses to disclose how many cars still on the road have the potential to kill. In some cases, Company X took their emblems off of certain killer cars and now claims that they are no longer responsible for what those cars do.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

Article by: JEAN HOPFENSPERGER , Star Tribune Updated: March 5, 2014

Archbishop John Nienstedt must testify under oath about the Archdiocese of St. Paul- Minneapolis’ response to child sex abuse charges against local priests, the state appeals court affirmed Wednesday.

The Minnesota Court of Appeals refused to consider an appeal by the archdiocese and the Diocese of Winona, which were court-ordered in February to make Nienstedt and former vicar general Kevin McDonough testify under oath about abuse complaints.

The action came in response to a lawsuit filed earlier this year by an alleged victim of former priest Tom Adamson. Ramsey District Judge John Van de North had ruled that Nienstedt and McDonough must provide sworn testimony on that case, as well as others.

It was the first time a Minnesota archbishop had been ordered to testify under oath about more than one abuser, the victim’s attorneys said, allowing for questions about multiple cases over time.

Church officials had argued that Van de North overstepped his authority in ordering the depositions, and in ordering the disclosure of the names of priests accused of sexual misconduct since 2004, regardless of whether the accusation was deemed “credible” by the church.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Daily News

MENSAH M. DEAN, DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER DEANM@PHILLYNEWS.COM, 215-568-8278
LAST UPDATED: Wednesday, March 5, 2014

His face turning red, the Rev. Andrew McCormick Wednesday turned toward the nine women and three men who will decide his fate and blurted out: “I want the jury to know that I never molested. I want to convince you of that.”

Moments later, when asked by defense attorney William J. Brennan if he had ever molested any of the estimated 700 altar boys he came in contact with over 14 years at a Bridesburg church, McCormick, 57, was succinct: “Never,” he simply said, bringing his attorney’s brief questioning to a sudden conclusion.

Thursday morning, the Common Pleas Court jury will hear closing arguments from Brennan and Assistant District Attorney Kristen Kemp. The jurors will then begin deliberating after receiving legal instructions from Judge Gwendolyn N. Bright.

McCormick, who rejected a guilty-plea offer from Kemp’s office, is being tried for involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, sexual assault, child endangerment, indecent exposure and related counts for allegedly attempting to force a 10-year-old altar boy to perform oral sex on him in 1997.

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NEW YORK
The Jewish Week

03/05/14
Hella Winston
Special Correspondent

While it would seem a good bet that Sam Kellner’s dizzying, three-year legal odyssey may finally come to an end this week with a dismissal of his criminal case, the chasidic abuse whistleblower is not holding his breath. It’s easy to understand why. The way things have been going, there probably isn’t a bookie in Vegas who would take any action on that wager.

“The former trial prosecutors twice wanted to dismiss my case and were overruled. And now we have a new [Brooklyn] district attorney in office [Kenneth Thompson], and he is taking almost six weeks to review it. And so I am still an indicted person. How do you like it?” Kellner, 52, asks matter of factly, before tallying up how many judges, prosecutors and district attorneys have presided over his case — four, five and two respectively, with a new judge expected this week. (At a hearing scheduled for Friday, prosecutors are expected to let the judge know whether they are moving to dismiss the case or will take it to trial.)

“I must be a very dangerous guy,” he adds, his sense of the absurd fully intact.

Dangerous, indeed. In 2011, a year after helping the district attorney convict a serial chasidic child molester named Baruch Lebovits, whose alleged victims include Kellner’s own son, Kellner found himself under arrest. He was charged with having several years earlier paid one young man to falsely testify in a grand jury that he was abused by Lebovits, and with sending emissaries to attempt to extort the Lebovits family for hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for a promise he could persuade the witnesses against him to drop their charges.

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UNITED STATES
The American Conservative

By ROD DREHER • March 5, 2014

You may have heard that the influential Christian pastor Bill Gothard has been placed on leave by the organization he heads pending an investigation into sex abuse charges against him — a scandal that, if the allegations prove true, stretches back decades, and involves cover-ups. A reader who is a graduate of Bob Jones University, and who is upset over that school’s alleged history of covering up sex abuse within its community, sent this link to a piece exploring the role BJU professors played in masterminding an alleged Gothard cover-up. Excerpt:

In 1980, two BJU officials (only one is named, a Rev. Van Gelderen) were summoned by Gothard to help him downplay a scandal that was about to overwhelm his multi-million dollar ministry. You can read more about that scandal on Recovering Grace, but suffice to say that the two BJU men were used by Gothard in his attempt to hush up accusations of sexual harassment against Gothard’s brother. Gothard asked the two BJU officials to help convince the IBYC board not to send a letter to supporters admitting the scandal and apologizing, and they obliged. Their plot failed, however, and when the board overruled Gothard and the BJU staffers and demanded that the sexual harassment be dealt with, Van Galderen reportedly reversed his stance and regretted coming at all. This incident is a fascinating parallel to BJU’s current PR troubles, as the school clearly still clings to a strategy of withholding potentially damaging information until the story has already exploded in the media.

Most damaging in this narrative, though, is a remark Van Gelderen made to the IBYC board when trying to dissuade them from properly handling sexual abuse:

They explained that “this kind of thing had happened also at [Bob Jones] University and this is how they have always handled it there.”

This ominous declaration can only mean one thing: in the 1980s, BJU already had a firm process in place for dealing with cases of sexual harassment and scandal within its administration. Whatever else that process might entail, it’s clear from Van Gelderen’s testimony here that covering up information and keeping supporters in the dark was key.

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UNITED STATES
Patrick J. Wall

Pope Francis missed an opportunity to not repeat his predecessors’ failures on the crimes of clerical sexual abuse of minors.

Last month the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child sharply denounced the Vatican’s failure since 2001 to report data to the United Nations on sexual abuse by priests.

“The Holy See has consistently placed the preservation of the reputation of the Church and the protection of the perpetrators above children’s best interests…”

“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.”

In response to this harsh critique, the Holy See thought it prudent to correct the UN’s “lack of understanding,” justify its policies, claim the Vatican is “a reality different” than other countries, and complain of moral intervention into “doctrinal positions of the Catholic Church.” This response only served to underscore the Committee’s findings on the Holy See’s conduct- the Vatican places its reputation over concerns for survivors of sexual abuse by priests.

Today Pope Francis again dodged, weaved and wobbled on criticisms of the Vatican’s handling of child sexual abuse and went so far as to defend the Church’s record. In an interview with Corriere della Sera, the Holy Father spoke in defense of the Vatican’s actions in dealing with child sexual abuse, saying “no one has done more” to address the issue. “The Catholic Church is perhaps the only public institution to have acted with transparency and responsibility… Yet the Church is the only one to have been attacked.”

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Irish Times

Dan Keenan

Wed, Mar 5, 2014

A boy was physically punished so often by a nun in a Derry care home he ran away three times.

This incident triggered intense attention by social services, the Historical Institutional Abuse inquiry heard.

The witness, who cannot be named, said the nun at the centre of his allegations “throttled” him on one occasion and repeatedly punished and humiliated him in front of others and he had to get away.

“I couldn’t get on with her because she just hated the ground I walked on, she beat me at every opportunity,” he alleged.

“She put me down, she denigrated me in front of everybody. I ran away from the place three times. On one occasion she actually throttled me and left marks on my neck. I ran away to my mother and my mother took me to the doctor and then across the Border. I think there was a notice put in the paper about me missing.”

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MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio

Madeleine Baran St. Paul, Minn. Mar 5, 2014

The Minnesota Court of Appeals has cleared the way for attorneys representing an alleged victim of clergy sexual abuse to interview Archbishop John Nienstedt.

In a three-page order issued Wednesday, Chief Judge Edward Cleary denied requests by the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and the Diocese of Winona to block depositions of Nienstedt and former vicar general Kevin McDonough.

Victims’ attorney Jeff Anderson has scheduled Nienstedt’s deposition for April 2 and McDonough’s deposition for April 16. He had scheduled the depositions for March but postponed them because of the appeal.

“We’re glad that we can move this thing forward, and that they saw this as the judge did,” Anderson said.

A spokesman for the archdiocese did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Court of Appeals’ decision came in a lawsuit brought by a man who claims he was sexually abused as a child by the Rev. Thomas Adamson in 1976 and 1977.

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