ABUSE TRACKER

UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Joan Chittister | Jul. 3, 2014 From Where I Stand

Watch the TV ads carefully these days. You may not have much interest in the particular product they’re selling at any particular time, but if you listen carefully, you can certainly learn a lot there about ecclesiastical physics. One advert teaches: “A body at rest tends to stay at rest; a body in motion tends to stay in motion.” And another one says: “Every action creates a reaction.” So there you have it. That’s exactly what’s going on in the church right now.

Whole bodies of people are moving forward while the bishops stay at rest. Most important of all, when the hierarchical church finally called for a response from the church at large about something important — marriage, family, relationships — material poured out of every lay group in the country. The data were clear: The laity was eager to respond. They wanted to be part of the conversation. They wanted to give back to the church the fruits of the sacrament the church has bestowed on them.

But not in one area alone or from one group alone.

For instance, the Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland has asked their bishop representatives to present three proposals to the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference with a view to forwarding them to Rome. Their proposals for official consideration include the acceptance of married priests, the ordination of women to the diaconate, and the recall of laicized priests to priestly ministry. …

Here, in our own case, an American-initiated global network of Catholics and Christians, Catholic Church Reform International, in collaboration with more than a hundred church organizations and individuals from 65 countries is calling for all Catholics to have an influential voice in the decision-making of the church.

They are taking the pope seriously. Pope Francis invited the church to prepare for the upcoming extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the family by reporting to their bishops their own responses to the papal survey on the subject.

Catholic Church Reform International, in fact, is urging that all forms of family life be represented and invited to participate in the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the family. They “want a voice in the church.” Their document is clear: “Both knowledge and experience of the challenges faced by families need to be understood before meaningful resolutions can be reached.”

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PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Review

By Renatta Signorini
Thursday, July 3, 2014

A Westmoreland County judge has sentenced a Roman Catholic priest to serve 10 years on probation and to pay back $98,000 stolen from a South Huntingdon parish he previously served.

The Rev. Emil Stephen Payer, 69, of Unity was sentenced Thursday afternoon by Judge Debra Pezze.

Payer was charged with stealing money from the Church of the Seven Dolors near Yukon from October 2008 to August 2011.

Police said he drained funds from parish bank accounts, using the stolen money to pay credit card balances, to travel and to bolster a private tour business he operated.

The probe leading to Payer’s arrest began after parishioners raised concerns about the church’s finances.

Those concerns led the Greensburg Diocese to announce in April 2011 that the church was being audited.

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NEWARK (NJ)
The Record

JULY 3, 2014

BY JEFF GREEN
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD

Bishop Edgar da Cunha, a high-ranking official in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark, has been appointed by Pope Francis to lead the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, church officials announced this morning.

The new bishop, who is 60, served most recently as the top deputy to Newark Archbishop John J. Myers since his appointment in June last year, during fallout from a scandal involving a priest accused of sex abuse in a Wyckoff parish. In Fall River diocese, da Cunha will shepherd 300,000 parishioners in southeastern Massachusetts and Cape Cod.

He will succeed Bishop George W. Coleman, who announced his retirement in February upon turning 75. He is set to be installed on Sept. 24.

“I could never, in my wildest dream, imagine myself standing here as the future Bishop of this diocese,” he said in prepared remarks for an 11 a.m. press conference in Fall River. “Only God’s plan, and God’s will, could make it possible.”

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ALABAMA
Associated Baptist Press

By Bob Allen

An advocate for clergy abuse victims said July 2 that police should investigate whether a Southern Baptist director of missions concealed molestation by the youth minister at a church he previously served as pastor.

Mack Allen Davis, 73, former youth pastor at Lakeside Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., faces 15 charges from three counties in a grand jury indictment handed down after two men came forward alleging Davis molested them 30 years ago.

The Birmingham News reported July 2 that one of the alleged victims claims that Mike McLemore, executive director of the Birmingham Baptist Association since 2007 and pastor of Lakeside Baptist Church from 1983 to 2007, knew about the allegations but swept it under a rug to protect the church’s reputation.

David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said ministers who cover up child sex crimes play just as much of a role in hurting innocent children as the perpetrator.

“We urgently urge law enforcement to investigate these allegations,” said Clohessy, an abuse survivor who testified before the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2002. “We also beg anyone who saw, suspects or suffered cover ups by McLemore to call police right away and help protect other potential victims.”

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OHIO
Merced Sun-Star

The Associated Press
July 3, 2014

TOLEDO, OHIO — A federal court has denied a request from a dying Roman Catholic priest who was convicted of killing a nun in 1980 and hoped to spend his final days in his Ohio hometown.

The Rev. Gerald Robinson’s attorney told the court the priest has been in a Columbus prison hospice unit since the end of May after suffering a heart attack and wants to die in Toledo. They asked the court to release Robinson to the care of relatives.

A U.S. district judge rejected the request Wednesday, concluding his court doesn’t have jurisdiction to grant such compassionate release. He says Robinson isn’t eligible for such relief under federal law and Ohio law on the issue excludes prisoners serving time for murder.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Agency

Vatican City, Jul 3, 2014 / 07:39 am (CNA/EWTN News).- It was announced by the Vatican earlier today that Pope Francis has tapped Bishop Edgar Moreira da Cunha, S.D.V., auxiliary for Newark, N.J., to lead the diocese of Fall River, Mass.

“Today, with a mixture of great joy and sadness, I congratulate Bishop Edgar da Cunha on his appointment as Bishop of Fall River,” Archbishop John J. Myers of Newark said in a July 3 statement.

“I am confident that the priests, religious and laity of the diocese of Fall River will quickly come to appreciate his many gifts as he undertakes his pastoral office among them.”

Bishop Cunha, 60, has served as the auxiliary bishop for the Newark diocese since 2003, and was appointed upon the retirement of Bishop George Coleman, who submitted his resignation after reaching the age limit of 75 in February.

Hailing from Brazil, Bishop Cunha was born in Nova Fatima Aug. 21, 1953. He attended school there and eventually entered the city’s minor seminary of the Vocationist Fathers in Riachão do Jacuípe, where he later joined the Vocationist Fathers, also known as the Society of Divine Vocations.

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MICHIGAN
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, July 03, 2014

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

A former Michigan teacher has been charged with four more child sexual abuse offenses. We hope these additional charges give courage to anyone else who might be suffering in silence and self-blame.

[Daily Tribune]

Kathryn Ronk was first charged last week with child sexual abuse. She allegedly began sexually abusing one of her teenage students last year. We hope this case sheds light on the fact that child sexual abuse is a problem effecting both men and women. Child sex crimes by women are just as hurtful as crimes committed by men. It is often harder for people abused by women to speak up.

We urge Bishop Foley High School officials (where Ronk worked and where the abuse allegedly occurred) to immediately reach out to any other potential victims. They should follow the lead of North Catholic High School in Pittsburgh and send letters home to every family, urging anyone with any information to come forward and report to the police.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, July 03, 2014

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

The Vatican has tapped a cleric from a scandal-ridden archdiocese to be the new Fall River Catholic bishop.

Auxiliary Bishop Edgar Moreira da Cunha has won the promotion, though he comes from the Newark Archdiocese with 42 publicly identified predator priests and a long, shameful history of protecting child molesting clerics over innocent, vulnerable children. That history continues to the present day.

[Fall River diocese]

We know little about da Cunha but this much is clear: he has shown no real courage or compassion in one of the worst archdioceses in the US for clergy sex abuse victims. We see no evidence that he has ever said or done a single thing to break with the self-serving and irresponsible actions of his Newark colleagues, who continue to put kids in harm’s way and maintain secrecy at all costs.

[BishopAccountability.org]

Last year, Moreira da Cunha announced a new policy letting Newark Catholic officials take secretive steps to reduce public attention on predator priests.

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OHIO
Toledo Blade

A federal court judge today denied a Toledo priest’s plea to get out of prison to live out his final days.

U.S. District Court Judge James S. Gwin wrote in his order that the federal court did not have jurisdiction to grant Father Gerald Robinson’s motion for a compassionate release.

The Catholic priest, who is serving 15 years to life in prison for the 1980 murder of a nun, suffered a heart attack last month and has been told he has 30 to 60 days to live.

Judge Gwin said he could not allow Robinson to be released to his brother’s home in Toledo. He said state law allows Ohio’s governor to order that an inmate be released on compassionate grounds, although Robinson was not eligible under state law because it excludes those convicted of murder.

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VATICAN CITY
Bolletino

Vatican City, 3 July 2014 (VIS) – The Holy Father has: …

– appointed Bishop Edgar Moreira da Cunha, S.D.V., auxiliary of the archdiocese of Newark, U.S.A., as bishop of Fall River (area 3,107, population 834,000, Catholics 315,00, priests 224, permanent deacons 81, religious 245), U.S.A. He succeeds Bishop George W. Coleman, whose resignation upon reaching the age limit was accepted by the Holy Father.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian (UK)

Australian Associated Press
theguardian.com, Thursday 3 July 2014

A prominent Catholic lawyer says the child abuse royal commission has set up unreal compensation expectations among victims.

Frank Brennan, who is professor of law at the Australian Catholic University, also says there are many risks in a long-running royal commission.

On Monday in its interim report, the commission said it would need a two-year extension and an extra $104m to finish its job. This would take it to December 2017.

It said a priority would be a compensation scheme for victims.

In an article for the online journal Eureka Street the Jesuit priest describes the commission’s statistics on abuse claims in Catholic church institutions as “frightening and shaming”, and says: “The commission has provided a safe space for victims to come forward and tell their stories.”

But he argues the commission is setting impossible questions for witnesses around compensation.

He says under recent Australian law there are limits to the extent to which an organisation will be vicariously liable for one of its employees sexually abusing a child.

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FALL RIVER (MA)
Roman Catholic Diocese of Fall River

press release
Statement of Newark Archbishop John J. Myers
Statement of Newark Coadjutor Archbishop Bernard A. Hebda
Photo of Bishop da Cunha

Pope Francis has appointed the Most Reverend Edgar Moreira da Cunha, S.D.V., (at right)currently an Auxiliary Bishop of the Newark, N.J. Archdiocese, to become the Eighth Bishop of the Fall River Diocese. He succeeds the Most Reverend George W. Coleman who, in accordance with Church Law, submitted his letter of resignation upon turning 75 years of age on February 1, 2014.

The acceptance of his resignation and the appointment of Bishop da Cunha were announced today (July 3, 2014) in Washington, D. C. by the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Carlo M. Vigano. Bishop da Cunha, 60, will be installed as Bishop of Fall River in the context of a Mass to be celebrated on September 24, at the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption in Fall River. Details of his installation will be announced in forthcoming weeks.

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CITTA DEL VATICANO
Bolletino

Il Santo Padre Francesco ha accettato la rinuncia al governo pastorale della diocesi di Fall River (U.S.A.), presentata da S.E. Mons. George William Coleman, in conformità al can. 401 § 1 del Codice di Diritto Canonico.

Il Papa ha nominato Vescovo di Fall River (U.S.A.) S.E. Mons. Edgar M. da Cunha, S.D.V., finora Vescovo titolare di Ucres ed Ausiliare dell’arcidiocesi di Newark (U.S.A.).

S.E. Mons. Edgar M. da Cunha, S.D.V.

S.E. Mons. Edgar M. da Cunha, S.D.V., è nato il 21 agosto 1953 a Riachão do Jacuípe Bahia, appartenente allora all’arcidiocesi di Feira de Santana (Brasile) ed oggi alla diocesi di Serrinha. Dopo aver frequentato le scuole elementari e secondarie in Brasile, è entrato nella famiglia religiosa dei Padri Vocazionisti, e ha compiuto gli studi filosofici presso l’Università Cattolica di Salvador. Inviato negli Stati Uniti per la formazione teologica presso il Seminario dell’Immaculate Conception dell’arcidiocesi di Newark (New Jersey), vi ha conseguito il Masters of Divinity.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Quad-City Times

CHICAGO (AP) — A federal appeals court says an Illinois man cannot sue the Vatican or Archdiocese of Chicago over allegations of sexual abuse dating back decades.

The U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals released its opinion Wednesday upholding a lower court ruling in the case of Charles Anderson, who claimed he was abused by priests and other church employees in the 1950s and 60s.

Anderson filed his lawsuit in 2011, while he was serving time in Shawnee Correctional Center for armed robbery. He claimed he had been abused by a priest at a Lisle orphanage and later by a priest and other employees at Maryville Academy.

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MINNESOTA
Gay Star News

03 JULY 2014 | BY JOE MORGAN

Archbishop John Nienstedt, who has donated thousands of dollars to anti-gay causes, is being accused of having sex with other priests.

A Minnesota archbishop who donated over half a million against gay marriage is now under investigation for sexual misconduct with other priests.

John Nienstedt, of St Paul and Minneapolis, is accused of ‘sexual impropriety’ with several adult male priests and seminarians.

The archdiocese has confirmed the investigation, which was first reported by Catholic magazine Commonweal.

The 67-year-old archbishop authorized the internal investigation, which he claims is ‘independent’.

‘The allegations do not involve minors or lay members of the faithful, and they do not implicate any kind of illegal or criminal behavior,’ Nienstedt said.

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VATICAN CITY
Rome Reports

[with video]

Pope Francis and his nine cardinal advisers continue working relentlessly on redesigning the Vatican. The select group expanded to include Secretary of State Pietro Parolin. The move merely reflects reality, since Parolin has participated in all meetings, but with a lower profile, given that he was not a full member.

There is only one photograph of their meeting, and a statement from the Vatican explained what three topics the group has talked about so far.

Card. Giuseppe Bertello explained to the Council the governance of the Vatican City State, which he currently presides.

Card. Pietro Parolin also presented a report on the duties and the situation of the Secretariat of State.

Afterward, the nine cardinals and the Pope analyzed “in depth the new structure” of the IOR or Vatican Bank.

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MICHIGAN
Daily Tribune

By Frank DeFrank, frank.defrank@macombdaily.com, @fdefrank on Twitter
POSTED: 07/02/14

A teacher already accused in Oakland County of engaging in sex acts with a student was charged Wednesday with four more offenses for similar behavior with the same boy in Macomb County.

Kathryn Ronk, 28, a resident of Birmingham and a former Spanish teacher at Bishop Foley Catholic High School in Madison Heights, was arraigned on the additional charges in 41A District Court in Shelby Township.

She stood mute to two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, and one count each of child sexual abuse activity and furnishing alcohol to a minor.

The most serious of the offenses carries a maximum penalty of life in prison upon conviction.

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AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

A former Christian Brother has been charged with child sex offences dating back to 1970.

The alleged offences happened during a social event at the Christian Brothers Agricultural School near Tardun.

The boy involved was aged 7 to 8 at the time.

The 77-year-old Broome man has been charged with two counts of indecent dealing with a boy under 14 years.

He is due to appear in the Broome Magistrate’s Court on Monday, July 28

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

July 3, 2014

Liam Ducey
Reporter

A 77-year-old man has been charged over alleged child abuse 30 years ago at a Christian Brothers school in the Mid West.

Between 1970 and 1971, the seven-year-old victim regularly attended a social event at the Christian Brothers Agricultural School near Tardun, police spokeswoman Susan Usher said.

Police allege that, during these events, the boy was indecently assaulted by a Brother at the school.

A 77-year-old Broome man has been charged with two counts of indecently dealing with a boy under 14 years and he is scheduled to appear in Broome Magistrates Court on Monday July 28.

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CALIFORNIA/NEVADA
Manteca Bulletin

By Jason Campbell
Reporter jcampbell@mantecabulletin.com 209-249-3544
POSTED July 3, 2014

The fate of Rob Cox now rests in the hands of the Clark County Grand Jury.

On Wednesday the Las Vegas prosecutor dropped the murder case against the Manteca youth pastor in a technical move that essentially transfers the case from the open courtroom to a sealed, closed session – leaving the decision on whether to move forward with formal charges of murder up to 17 members who could decide as early as Tuesday whether they’ll indict Cox.

A motion by Cox’s attorneys to return the $100,000 cash bail amount that was posted in order to release him from San Joaquin County Jail on the condition that he appear in a Las Vegas courtroom was granted Wednesday afternoon. One of his attorneys, Frank Cofer, said that he would now be heading home.

“Right now he’s getting ready to await the grand jury’s decision,” said Cofer – a partner in the firm of Cofer, Geller and Durham. “We’re confident that he’ll be exonerated of any criminal wrongdoing.”

Cox was arrested last month at The Place of Refuge – where he is an associate pastor that works closely with the youth in the church – on a Clark County murder warrant.

He spent almost a week in the San Joaquin County Jail and was originally set to be extradited to Nevada to answer the charges. Prosecutors allege that Cox punched 55-year-old Link Ellingson in the face after the 6-foot, 8-inch man charged the 18-member group that Cox had been traveling with from Texas back to California – knocking the man to the ground.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Spiked

BARBARA HEWSON
BARRISTER

A series of NHS reports lists claims of abuse by Savile – but how many could be proven?

Just when you thought it was safe to go out, more revelations about Jimmy Savile hit the headlines last week. The UK Department of Health published the results of its investigations into the late Savile’s dealings with the National Health Service, in which it is alleged that he abused children on NHS premises, using hospital visits to gain access to his victims.

The Department of Health issued a press release on 6 December 2012, stating that it was publishing terms of reference for the investigations into ‘the abuse by Jimmy Savile’. The overseer, a former practicing barrister, was quoted as saying: ‘It is important that victims of this abuse can be certain these investigations discover exactly what happened and what went wrong.’ She also claimed to ‘have worked with all the teams to ensure their investigations are following robust procedures that will reassure victims and produce effective results’.

It does seem from these official statements that Savile’s guilt was assumed from the outset. The investigations were not so much an impartial fact-finding exercise, and more an exercise in damage-limitation. That is rather different to the forensic process undertaken in court, where both sides are heard, and evidence is tested in public, before a formal adjudication is made.
Some 28 individual health trusts did conduct investigations into Savile, and two made statements. As time was short, I extracted two from the paper mountain: Leeds and Wythenshawe. They are of interest both for the methodology adopted, and the conclusions drawn.

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ALABAMA
WHNT

JULY 2, 2014, BY CARTER WATKINS

FLORENCE, Ala. (WHNT) – A former Sheffield music minister arrested and charged with sodomizing a young boy in the 1990’s has waived his preliminary hearing in Lauderdale County.

This is the same music minister who faced numerous allegations of sexual misconduct in Sheffield two years ago, but charges were never filed.

In a formal complaint filed in Lauderdale County court, 80-year-old Oliver Brazelle is identified as the man who sexually assaulted a 12-year-old boy 4 times over a three year period.

According to the complaint, the first incident happened inside a hotel room in Georgia on a church trip to Six Flags in 1995.

The victim stated to ABI agents the three incidents that followed happened at Brazelle’s lake home in Lauderdale County from 1996 to 1997.

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ALABAMA
Times Daily

By Tom Smith Senior Staff Writer

FLORENCE — The former music and youth minister of a Sheffield church, charged with molesting a teenage boy, waived his preliminary hearing Wednesday, and his case will proceed to the grand jury.
Oliver Brazelle, 80, 311 Meadow Hill Road, Sheffield, is charged with second-degree sexual abuse and one-count of second-degree sodomy, officials said.

By waiving his preliminary hearing, Brazelle’s case will be place on the docket to be presented at the upcoming August grand jury session, according to court officials.

Agents with the Alabama Bureau of Investigation arrested Brazelle on Jan. 6.

Authorities said Brazelle is accused of sexually abusing a teenage boy who was a member of his youth group at the church. The accusation is that the abuse took place in the mid-1990s and occurred at Brazelle’s Shoals Creek residence on Lauderdale 322 near Happy Hollow.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Kansas City Star

Editorial

A scathing arbitration decision released this week adds to the shame of Bishop Robert Finn’s leadership of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph.

The stunning denunciation hit area Catholics almost six years after the church signed a $10 million settlement with 47 people who said they or a family member were sexually abused by priests.

Yet arbitrator Hollis Hanover, who handled a breach of contract lawsuit filed in 2011 that grew out of the 2008 settlement, concluded that top Catholic officials purposefully did not carry through on some pledges.

Hanover awarded $1.1 million to most of the same plaintiffs in the original lawsuit. He essentially said the church had failed to live up to its promise to take aggressive actions to deal with future sexual abuse of children. Church members once again are faced with paying for the mistakes Finn and others have made.

With that dereliction of duty, Hanover said, the church imposed even more emotional damage on the plaintiffs. They had expected that the problems they suffered would lead to wholesale positive changes by the church. Instead, he wrote, the diocese “had once again sacrificed the welfare of children so that it could ‘save the priesthood’ of a criminal, in this case a pornographer.”

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OKLAHOMA
Newschannel 10

[with video]

Boise City, OK – A group of fundamentalist Mormons is now calling Boise City home and this has some residents concerned about their new neighbors.

Hundreds of Boise City residents gathered Tuesday night to learn about the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints. The organization, known for the practice of polygamy, is not affiliated with the mainstream Mormon church. They broke away from the church more than a hundred years ago when Mormon leaders outlawed polygamy.

Some called the meeting a witch hunt, some called it an informative presentation, but regardless it was a full house of residents looking for answers.

“There’s been a lot of stuff going on in this community that I don’t like,” said Cimarron County Sheriff Leon Apple at the start of the meeting. “It’s dividing the community and I don’t like that. We are one community. We need stick together.”

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WALES
Barry and District News

HAVING been groomed by her uncle – a respected and trusted Jehovah’s Witness church elder – from the age of 12, Karen Morgan hoped that by the time she was 16 and had mustered the courage to confront him that he would be dealt with.

Twelve years later she is only now seeing justice.

By the early 1990s Sewell, of Porthkerry Road, Barry had been grooming her for years. He had forced her to kiss him, plied her with alcohol, got into her bed, rubbed himself against her sexually, touched her inappropriatley and tried to get her to undress in front of him.

The abuse stopped when Sewell had – having been confronted by Karen’s parents and convinced them of his innocence – once again made advances on her and she had cried and demanded he stop.

“If I hadn’t stopped it then,” Karen said, “I think it would have gone on and on and gone further.”

Indeed Sewell did go further with another victim, and was this week convicted of not only the sexual abuse of young girls but also the rape of a woman and fellow churchgoer.

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WALES
Barry and District News

JEHOVAH’S Witness elder Mark Sewell has been jailed for 14 years for rape and seven counts of indecent assault, six of which were against children.

A three week trial at Merthyr Crown Court heard how Sewell, 53, of Porthkerry Road, Barry had used his position of power and influence within the church to sexually abuse women and girls over a 10 year period in the late 1980s and 1990s.

Sewell was found guilty of charges including committing what Judge Richard Twomlow described as a “brief but violent” rape of a female friend and fellow churchgoer at his home after which she became pregnant and miscarried.

Sewell, described in court as a “bully” and a “predator”, had also abused two girls, including his niece Karen Morgen, when she was under the age of 14.

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MARYLAND
Associated Baptist Press

By Bob Allen

Eleven plaintiffs seeking a day in court to prove that leaders of an evangelical church-planting network conspired to cover up sexual abuse of children were dealt a blow June 26, when a Maryland Court of Special Appeals dismissed their case for the second time due to legal technicalities.

Judge Deborah S. Eyler in Annapolis, Md., said an appeal of a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit against leaders of Sovereign Grace Ministries was filed prematurely, before final adjudication of claims by two of the 11 plaintiffs. The plaintiffs say they were sexually abused as children in the 1980s and 1990s but didn’t realize there was a conspiracy until silos of silence around them broke down in 2011.

Judge Sharon Burrell of Maryland’s Montgomery County Circuit Court ruled May 23, 2013, that nine of the 11 alleged victims waited too long after their abuse to sue. In Maryland, claims based on injury caused by sexual abuse of a child that do not meet certain legal criteria must be brought within three years after the victim turns 18.

Burrell said the two youngest plaintiffs, who were 17 and 18 when the lawsuit was filed, could not sue in Maryland because the acts they allege involved defendants in Virginia. She gave them 10 days to file a third amended complaint involving only the defendants under her jurisdiction in Maryland. After that deadline passed, Judge Burrell issued a final order closing the case on Aug. 12, 2013.

For that reason, the appellate judge determined, a notice of appeal filed June 14, 2013, was premature and under Maryland law her court has jurisdiction only “when the appeal is taken from a final judgment or is otherwise permitted by law, and a timely notice of appeal was filed.”

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CHICAGO (IL)
Southtown Star

The Seventh-Day Adventist Church failed to protect at least one Illinois boy from a pastor who sexually assaulted minors, according to a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday.

The negligence suit alleges the church transferred a pastor to the Chicago area from Uruguay in 2000, despite knowledge of previous complaints that the pastor had engaged in improper sexual conduct with minors.

The pastor had opportunities to be alone with minors at several churches, including the Chicago Heights Nuevo Amanecer Hispanic Seventh-Day Adventist Church, as well as churches in Summit, Cicero, Berwyn and Waukegan, the suit alleges.

The boy was sexually abused at the Chicago Heights church and various other church locations from March to July in 2001, according to the suit. He was a minor at the time and is not identified in the suit.

The sexual abuse included “inappropriate touching, fondling of the genitals, oral sex and other indecent acts,” the suit alleges.

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

AUSTRALIA
The Standard

By FIONA HENDERSON, MATTHEW DIXON and ALEX SINNOTT July 3, 2014

THE bishop who led the south-west’s Catholics for 25 years has been stripped of a major honour originally bestowed by his church.

Ballarat’s Australian Catholic University campus has renamed its theatre, replacing the honour formerly awarded to past diocese leader Ronald Mulkearns.

The university has renamed its lecture hall as the Sister of Mercy Theatre after Mulkearns was found to be grossly negligent in dealing with paedophile priests working in south west Victoria.

Mulkearns served as Catholic bishop of the Ballarat diocese- which covers the entire south west – from 1971 to 1997 and is recognised on a number of church plaques across the region.

Sexual abuse survivors spokesman Andrew Collins said the name change had been something the community had been requesting for quite some time.

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MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

By Emily Gurnon
egurnon@pioneerpress.com
POSTED: 07/02/2014

A Twin Cities man has sued the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese, claiming that a priest not previously listed by the church as among known abusers raped him when he was an altar boy at Guardian Angels Church in Hastings.

More often, the Rev. Alphonsus Ferguson would kiss and fondle him in a church vestibule after Mass and pluck a nickel or dime from the collection box as a reward, the now-75-year-old man said in an interview.

The plaintiff, identified in court documents as John Doe 110, claimed that Ferguson would call him into the church rectory in the early 1950s and take him into his bedroom. He then anally raped him, the man said.

The assaults “tore and damaged (the boy’s) rectum so severely that plaintiff now suffers from rectal fissures,” the lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Ramsey County District Court, asserted.

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UNITED STATES
PopeCrimes& Vatican Evils.

Paris Arrow

It’s incredible how cold-blooded priests are when writing about their colleagues in the bestial JP2 Army – John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army. They are just like their patron saint John Paul II, read our article, Cold Blood-ed Pope John Paul II is no saint for children because he said nothing and did nothing to save and protect them for 27 years An example is Fr. Michael Kelly writing from Thailand today July 2, who deceitfully entitled his article Recent cases demonstrate stricter Church stance against abusers as he goes through a list name of bestial pedophile priests currently in the news worldwide (as if they were ice-cream flavors of the month). Notice how the Opus Dei Beast PR Deceits Team is deploying its Vatican Pied Pipers foot soldiers in strategic locations worldwide (they do not leave the deceitful feel-good theology only to John Allen).

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IOWA
WOWT

A priest who used to work in the metro area is now on administrative leave from his current duties in the wake of a sexual abuse allegation.

The Diocese of Des Moines says they believe a report of sexual abuse involving Father Howard Fitzgerald is credible. The allegation dates back decades.

They have notified local law enforcement.

During the investigation Father Fitzgerald was asked to step aside from his parish responsibilities at St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Indianola and Immaculate Conception Parish in St. Marys and at Simpson College.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
Fox 4

[with video]

BY SHANNON O’BRIEN

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The victims of Catholic Church sex scandals gathered Wednesday in front of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph offices to let Bishop Robert Finn know that they will not stop in their quest to keep children safe from sexual abuse by clergy.

In 2008, 47 victims of sexual abuse sued the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph. A 19-point contract was the most important part of the settlement to victims, to keep future children safe.

They say the diocese violated the contract, allowing other children to be victimized, and the diocese must again pay up.

“Nowhere on earth have victims achieved what they have achieved here in Kansas City,” said David Clohessy with SNAP.

A 2008 court settlement for $10 million, and a non-monetary commitment by the diocese in the form of a 19-point contract was issued that victims say will protect other children, if it is followed.

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AUSTRALIA
Courier-Mail

BY ANNETTE BLACKWELL AAP JULY 03, 2014

INSTITUTIONS dealing with child abuse will be paralysed if there is a three and a half year wait for a federal inquiry’s final report, a prominent Catholic lawyer says.

FATHER Frank Brennan, who is professor of law at the Australian Catholic University, says the effects of a two-year extension sought by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse have not been taken into account.

In its interim report on Monday, the commission said it would need a two-year extension until December 2017, and an extra $104 million.

Fr Brennan said on Thursday the Catholic Church, as the main organisation under the commission’s scrutiny, had spent years trying to develop protocols to deal with sexual abuse.

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MINNESOTA
CBS Minnesota

[with video]

Esme Murphy

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – The fallout continues Wednesday over the news that Archbishop John Nienstedt is under investigation for sexual misconduct.

While the archbishop denies the allegations, the Twin Cities Archdiocese says it has hired an outside firm to investigate the claims.

Both parties say the accusations do not involve illegal activity or sex acts with children.

According to a former top Nienstedt aide, the claims involve allegations of sexual misconduct with men.

Outside the Basilica of St. Mary’s noon mass, we found supporters of the archbishop like Joyce Borealino.

“It just makes me so angry that these allegations would even come up,” Borealino said. “The archbishop is a great man.”

And we found critics, like Sharon Link.

“I’m not surprised,” Link said

She says she’s always been troubled by the archbishop’s crusade against gay marriage.

“He just went out of his way to talk about gay priests and … gay everybody,” she said

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MINNESOTA
KARE

[with video]

Trisha Volpe, KARE July 2, 2014

A 75-year-old man is suing the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, claiming a now-deceased priest sexually abused him 60 years ago.

The man, who in the 1950s served as an altar boy at Guardian Angels Church in Hastings, contends in the lawsuit that he was barely 13 when the Rev. Alphonsus Ferguson first assaulted him in the church rectory.

His lawsuit, filed in Ramsey County court today, claims the archdiocese knew Ferguson “posed a risk” to children and “despite clear indications of danger” from a “known pedophile,” took no steps to protect children from him. It seeks unspecified damages and attorney’s fees.

“When it happens to you, through the years, you always look back and say, ‘What did I do to have that happen to me?'” he said. MPR News and KARE 11 are not naming the man, to protect his family’s privacy.

Ferguson, who died in the 1970s, served at Guardian Angels for 15 years, according to his obituary. The church, which merged with St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parish in 1987, was home to at least five other priests against whom allegations of child sexual abuse and other sexual improprieties have been leveled. Three of those men — the Revs. Thomas Stitts, Clarence Vavra and Robert Blumeyer — have been publicly named by the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis as having been “credibly accused.”

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UNITED STATES
Associated Baptist Press

By Bob Allen

A Southern Baptist Convention seminary has broken off its formal relationship with a church-starting network that has become a lightning rod since a former leader admitted under oath that he failed to report child sex abuse to police.

Blogger Todd Wilhelm posted a letter June 29 reportedly circulated by Jeff Purswell, director of theology and training for Sovereign Grace Ministries in Louisville, Ky., reporting “disappointing news” that Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is discontinuing a formal relationship with the Sovereign Grace Pastors College announced in 2012.

“This is a rather complex situation, and I’m unable to share all of the internal factors influencing their decision,” Purswell said, but “suspicions cast upon Sovereign Grace” by an ongoing lawsuit alleging an abuse cover-up and the recent criminal conviction of one of the named perpetrators “appear to have played a role in this suspension.”

Sovereign Grace Ministries announced a new program in November 2012 allowing Pastors College alumni to pursue a master of divinity degree from Southern Seminary without disrupting their church ministry.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
Religion Clause

In 2008, the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City- St. Joseph (MO) entered a settlement agreement in a lawsuit brought by 47 clergy sex abuse victims, paying them $10 million in damages and agreeing to a number of terms to prevent future abuse and aid past victims. The agreement included an arbitration clause. Yesterday’s Kansas City Star reports that in 2011, 44 of the 47 settling plaintiffs filed suit in a Missouri state court seeking to force the Diocese to arbitration for violating the settlement agreement. The charges focused on the Diocese’s delay in reporting to authorities their discovery of hundreds of images of young girls on the computer of priest Shawn Ratigan. (See prior related posting.) In March of this year, an arbitrator issued a report finding that the Diocese had breached five provisions of the settlement agreement, and awarded damages of $650,000, attorneys’ fees of $450,000, $5,820 for unpaid counseling of sex abuse victims. The award was to remain confidential until one of the parties moved to have the court confirm or vacate it. On June 20, the Diocese filed a motion to vacate the award, and it then became public. The Diocese argues that there is nothing in the settlement agreement that authorizes the arbitrator to award additional damages. The arbitrator had said, however, that plaintiffs could have used the breaches as a basis for voiding the settlement agreement and obtaining an even larger award.

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PARAGUAY
Religion Digital

El Papa ordena la intervención de una diócesis paraguaya por denuncias de abusos sexuales

[Translation: Pope Francis has ordered an apostolic visitation into the Paraguay diocese of Ciudad del Este. One possible reason for the visit is the allegations of pedophilia against priest Carlos Urrutigoity.

The pope sent two cardinals who will arrive from Rome and then to to Ciudad del Estate to evaluate all ecclesiastical institutions of the diocese. This was announced today by Eliseo Ariotti, the apostolic nuncio, during a press conference.

He was asked the main purpose of the visit and whether it was because of the pedophilia accusations. The nuncio said the visit is to find out what happened lately but did not specify the reasons.

The visit will be held from July 21 to 26. Appointed to carry out the visitation are Spanish Cardinal Santos Abril y Castello, in charge of the Roman Basilica Santa Maria Maggiore, Uruguayan Cardinal Milton Luis Tróccoli Cebélio, bishop of Montevideo and seminary rector of Interdiocesano Cristo Rey.

Ariotti stressed that Bishop Rogelio Livieres Plano of Ciudad del Este has been notified of the visits and said he had sought such a visit.

What is most striking in the diocese is the case of the Argentine priest, Carlos Urrutigoity, who came to Paraguay after circumventing various allegations of pedophilia and sexual abuse in different countries. Bishop Livieres accepted Urrutigoity into the diocese and even commissioned him for youth ministry. The bishop has repeatedly said the allegations are slanderous and Urrutigoity has been persecuted.

The issue over Urrutigoity revived differences between Asuncion Bishop Pastor Cuguejo and this could be another reason for the visit. Cuquejo suggested an open investigation into the allegations against Urrutigoity and Bishop Livieres responded by saying the Asuncion bishop is homosexual.’ Another issue is allegations of mismanagement of financial resources in the Ciudad del Este diocese which has led to court proceedings.]

El papa Francisco dispuso la realización de una “visita apostólica” a la diócesis de Ciudad del Este, después de que se hayan reflotado las denuncias de pedofilia contra el sacerdote Carlos Urrutigoity, uno de los religiosos que trabajan en la zona.

El Santo Padre enviará dos cardenales quienes desde Roma llegarán a Asunción y luego irán a Ciudad del Este para evaluar todas las instituciones eclesiásticas de dicha diócesis, anunció hoy el nuncio apostólico Eliseo Ariotti, durante una conferencia de prensa.

Al ser consultado si el motivo principal de la visita son las denuncias de pedofilia, dijo: “Es para averiguar no sólo lo que pasó últimamente, sino ver todo lo que está en la casa de Ciudad del Este”. La visita será del 21 al 26 de julio, precisó.

Tras la visita de los religiosos, se redactará una evaluación completa de la situación en la diócesis, que será acercada al papa Francisco, quien finalmente dispondrá de cambios o medidas, de ser necesarios.

Han sido designados el cardenal español Santos Abril y Castelló, encargado de la Basílica romana Santa María la Mayor, y el uruguayo Milton Luis Tróccoli Cebélio, obispo de Montevideo y rector del seminario Interdiocesano Cristo Rey.

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PHILIPPINES
National Catholic Reporter

N.J. Viehland | Jul. 2, 2014 NCR Today

MANILA, PHILIPPINES Pope Francis has appointed Filipino Archbishop Bernardito Cleopas Auza, the Apostolic Nuncio to Haiti, as the Holy See’s Permanent Observer to the United Nations in New York.

The appointment was announced over Vatican Radio on July 1.

The 55-year old Auza will replace Archbishop Francis Chullikatt from India, the first non-Italian to have acted as the Holy See’s Permanent Observer to the U.N. Chullikatt leaves his diplomatic position after the normal four-year stint expected of a Vatican diplomat.

A native of Talibon, Bohol, Auza was consecrated Titular Archbishop of Suacia on May 8, 2008, the same day he was appointed Nuncio to Haiti. He was Apostolic Nuncio to Haiti and also Apostolic Administrator of the capital city Porte-au-Prince after the magnitude 7.0 earthquake in 2010. He is a career diplomat, having worked at various diplomatic posts.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholic News Service

By Lou Baldwin
Catholic News Service

PHILADELPHIA (CNS) — The Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced July 1 that it is selling six nursing homes and one assisted living facility operated by archdiocesan Catholic Health Care Services to a Flushing, New York, health care management company for $145 million.

The company, Center Management Group, owns and operates 15 nursing homes in New York and New Jersey. Under the agreement, the company has pledged to maintain the Catholic character of the nursing homes.

The date for the sale has not been set.

Under terms of the agreement, current nursing home staff members will become employees of Center Management Group at their current rate of pay when the agreement closes. They will receive health benefits under the new company’s health care plans. The management group also has agreed to retain all residents currently living in the facilities.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic Church Reform International

2 July 2014

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE BY

www.CatholicChurchReformIntl.org.
rene.reid@CatholicChurchReformIntl.org.

CCR Int’l is disappointed with the June 27 release of the Vatican’s agenda for next fall’s Synod of Bishops in Rome. In May, CCR Int’l provided each of the bishop delegates with a copy of its recommendations, urging the Synod take a more pastoral approach to issues facing the world’s families – among others, remarriage in the Church after divorce, cohabitation before marriage, and contraception.

“Those who created the agenda,” says Rene Reid, a co-founder of CCR Intl, “didn’t listen too hard to our recommendations.”

For example, CCR Int’l asked the Synod to repeal a key phrase in Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae, which said, “Every marital act must be open to the transmission of life.” CCR Int’l called for an expansive reading of the Church’s teaching on “openness to life,” which for many couples does not necessarily mean “more babies.”

Some parts of the Vatican agenda, called the Instrumentum Laboris, outlined the case for no-change in the Church’s classic teachings. They seemed to say, “If the people only understood what we in our wisdom have been teaching them, they would have no problems.”

Other parts of the agenda seemed to favor Pope Francis’s predilection for a more compassionate approach on moral issues – a kinder, gentler way of mercy, listening to the people and their experiences rather than repeating past prohibitions.

CCR Int’l encourages the Synod’s bishops (many of them from what Francis likes to call the Church’s “periphery”) to follow Francis’s leadership – finding their own voices at the Synod “through dialogue and development” – a possibility mentioned in the Instrumentum Laboris, # 158.

At Vatican II (1962-66), a majority of bishops “from the periphery” found their own voices when they rejected the preliminary agenda prepared by the Roman Curia and proceeded to craft new schemata that led to the Council’s progressive 16 documents.

On the eve of the Synod October 2-3, CCR Int’l will gather in Rome with its own Forum on the Family, a parallel synod open to all that will stand in solidarity with Pope Francis and make one more plea that the Synod listen to those with the lived experience of family life.

Catholic Church Reform Int’l was founded on June 20, 2013. In the past year, it has involved more than a hundred church organizations and a million Catholics in 65 countries in an effort to help the whole Church find its voice.

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ALABAMA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, July 2, 2014

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

An Alabama Baptist pastor is being accused by a victim and a witness for allegedly covering up child sex crimes. We are grateful to these brave individuals and urge police to investigate this matter.

[AL.com]

Rev. Mike McLemore, who is currently the executive director of the Birmingham Baptist Association, allegedly knew about and covered up the crimes of Mack Allen Davis. Davis was the youth pastor at Lakeside Baptist Church while McLemore was the pastor there. McLemore admits he knew about one of the victims, but said “it was a private matter with the family.”

Another Davis victim and Davis’ ex-wife allege that McLemore knew much more and insisted victims remain quiet in return for therapy payments.

We urgently urge law enforcement to investigate these allegations. Those who cover up child sex crimes play just as much of a roll in hurting innocent children. We also beg anyone who saw, suspects or suffered cover ups by McLemore to call police right away and help protect other potential victims.

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MINNESOTA
Hastings Star Gazette

Atttorneys on Wednesday, July 2, filed a civil lawsuit against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis on behalf of a former altar boy, alleging that a longtime priest raped the boy inside the priest’s bedroom at a southeastern Minnesota rectory.

John Doe 110, as he is called in newly filed court papers, was about 10 years old and serving as an altar boy at Guardian Angels Church in Hastings, Minnesota in the early 1950s. Rev. Alphonsus Ferguson lured the boy to meet him inside the rectory, court papers say. Ferguson then took the plaintiff into his bedroom and anally raped the boy, leaving him with permanent injuries, court papers allege.

The victim is now 74 and still lives in Minnesota. Fr. Ferguson passed away in 1973. Ferguson served as pastor of Guardian Angels in Hastings from 1951-65 and as such was employed by and served under the supervision of the archdiocese. Ferguson was a member of the religious order Franciscan Servants of the Sacred Heart, in Omaha, Neb.

“This is a very worrisome case because Fr. Ferguson appears on no Archdiocese lists of perpetrators or sex offender registries. If he were alive, he would still be a priest in a parish and he would have access to more Archdiocese children to abuse,” said Patrick Noaker, John Doe 110’s attorney.

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ALABAMA
WRGA

A 73 year old former youth pastor at Lakeside Baptist Church is now facing sex abuse charges in Cherokee, Jefferson and St. Clair counties after two men stepped forward to say that he molested them some 30 years ago; he served as the youth pastor at Lakeside Baptist in Birmingham in the late 1970’s and throughout the 1980’s when the incidents allegedly occurred.

One of the victims currently resides here in Cherokee County and the other in Birmingham.

Back in early April (2014) – Cherokee County authorities arrested Mack Allen Davis – listed as being from Athens, Alabama, on charges of Attempted Sodomy 2nd Degree and seven counts of Sexual Abuse 2nd Degree. After being released on bond he was arrested again on May 20th on a Jefferson County grand jury indictment.

The indictment charges him with three counts of second degree sexual abuse of a minor between the ages of 12 and 16, with one count of first degree sodomy and with two counts of first degree sexual abuse. The district attorney’s office has confirmed that he also faces a charge in St. Clair County.

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VATICAN CITY
Washington Post

BY JOSEPHINE MCKENNA | RELIGION NEWS SERVICE July 2

VATICAN CITY — The defrocking of a former Vatican ambassador is a “sign of the seriousness” with which Pope Francis and the Vatican are approaching the clergy sexual abuse scandal, according to the Holy See’s representative to United Nations agencies in Geneva.

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi was tasked with defending the Catholic Church’s record when he presented reports to the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child and the U.N. Committee Against Torture in Geneva earlier this year.

During questioning, Tomasi was asked whether the Vatican would agree to extradite Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, a Polish archbishop and papal envoy, to his native Poland after he was recalled from the Dominican Republic last September on claims of sexual abuse.

Wesolowski was defrocked last week, and Tomasi said the former nuncio was being investigated by Vatican prosecutors. Speaking in Rome this week, Tomasi said he hoped other states and institutions would now follow the approach taken by the Holy See in dealing with cases of pedophilia.

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UNITED STATES
Hobby Lobby

By David Corn and Molly Redden | Wed Jul. 2, 2014

For a decade or so, Hobby Lobby and its owners, the Green family, have been generous benefactors of a Christian ministry that until recently was run by Bill Gothard, a controversial religious leader who has long promoted a strict and authoritarian version of Christianity. Gothard, a prominent champion of Christian home-schooling, has decried the evils of dating, rock music, and Cabbage Patch dolls; claimed public education teaches children “how to commit suicide” and undermines spirituality; contended that mental illness is merely “varying degrees of irresponsibility”; and urged wives to “submit to the leadership” of their husbands. Critics of Gothard have associated him with Christian Reconstructionism, an ultrafundamentalist movement that yearns for a theocracy, and accused him of running a cultlike organization. In March, he was pressured to resign from his ministry, the Institute in Basic Life Principles, after being accused by more than 30 women of sexual harassment and molestation—a charge Gothard denies.

The Institute traces it origins to 1964, when Gothard designed a college seminar based on biblical principles to help teenagers. The ministry says it was established “for the purpose of introducing people to the Lord Jesus Christ” and to give individuals, families, businesses, and governments “clear instruction and training on how to find success by following God’s principles found in Scripture.” The group, which operates what it calls “training centers” across the United States and abroad, says more than 2.5 million people have attended its paid events, which have brought in tens of millions of dollars in revenue. Gothard and the Institute have drawn support from conservative politicians, including Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, and former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue. The Duggar family, the stars of the reality show 19 Kids and Counting, have been high-profile advocates of Gothard’s home-schooling curriculum and seminars. (One of Gothard’s alleged victims has called on the Duggars to break with Gothard and the Institute.) Don Venoit, a conservative evangelical who has long been a critic of Gothard, contends that Gothard’s approach to Christian theology emphasizing obedience to authority creates a “culture of fear.” In 1984, Ronald Allen, now a professor of Bible exposition at Dallas Theological Seminary, observed that Gothard’s teachings were “a parody of patriarchalism” and “the basest form of male chauvinism I have ever heard in a Christian context.” He added, “Gothard has lost the biblical balance of the relationship between women and men as equals in relationship. His view is basically anti-woman.”

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Jul. 2, 2014 NCR Today

The group of cardinals advising Pope Francis on reforming the Catholic church’s central bureaucracy has again focused its attention on the church’s sometimes controversial financial practices, ahead of the expected resignation of the head of the so-called Vatican bank.

The Council of Cardinals, a group of prelates appointed by Francis last year as a sort of advisory “kitchen cabinet,” is meeting Tuesday-Friday at the Vatican .

This week’s meeting, the group’s fifth, was anticipated to include discussion on a wide reshaping of the Vatican bureaucracy, known as the Roman Curia. But a press release from the Vatican on Wednesday focused mostly on financial matters and the Bank, an independent institution known formally as the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR).

News reports in recent days have indicated that the bank’s chairman, Ernst von Freyberg, will be leaving as early as next week. Unknown is whether von Freyberg is leaving willingly or has been asked to step down.

The bank, Vatican spokesman Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi said in statement Wednesday, “is in a time of natural and peaceful transition.

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MISSOURI
Berger’s Beat

Kansas City’s Bishop Robert Finn, who hails from our town, has been found guilty by an arbitrator of “breaching” a contract he signed with more than 40 clergy sex abuse victims, says the New York Times. When settling their civil suits in 2008, the victims insisted that Finn pledge to take 19 steps to prevent future abuse. But by mishandling the cases of Fr. Shawn Ratigan and Fr. Michael Tierney, Finn broke his word and must now pay $1.1 million.

BONDAGE PRIEST

July 2, 2014 9:18 am | Author: berger

The statement from the Catholic Bishop of the Springfield, IL Diocese Thomas Paprocki was distributed after all the Masses at St. Aloysius Church in that city. The statement addressed the bizarre behavior of Fr. Thomas Donovan of St. Aloysius Parish, who was devoted to non-sexual self-bondage: “Fr. Donovan had bound himself in handcuffs and called for assistance when he was unable to remove them. The police officers state that he was alone and fully clothed when they arrived at the rectory.” Fr. Donovan explained, “I have been responding to the stresses of priestly ministry.. .” Fr. Donovan is on indefinite leave of absence for professional help.

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MICHIGAN
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, July 02, 2014

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

Archbishop John Nienstedt – now of St. Paul but originally of Detroit – is reportedly being investigated for sexual relationships.

[Commonweal]

We don’t care about Nienstedt’s private behavior, unless it involves sexually harassing underlings or makes him unable or unwilling to expose predators in his archdiocese.

We care deeply about Nienstedt’s public behavior, especially his continuing secrecy, recklessness and callousness about clergy sex crimes and cover ups. We are perhaps most upset that he refuses to order his long-time top aide in charge of child sex cases to be questioned by police.

We believe that most priests don’t or can’t honor their celibacy pledge. So they have sexual secrets. And if you have a sexual secret, you’re less willing to report the sexual secrets of your colleagues and supervisors, especially if those secrets involve criminal behavior

This is perhaps the most disturbing sentence we’ve read about this investigation: “he also stands accused of retaliating against those who refused his advances or otherwise questioned his conduct.”

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WALES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, July 02, 2014

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

A Jehovah’s Witness elder, who last week was found guilty of sexually assaulting two young girls and raping another woman, has been sentenced to 14 years in jail. We are grateful to the brave victims who helped get this dangerous predator locked up.

[Wales Online]

According to the judge, Mark Sewell showed no signs of remorse, “groomed” at least one of his victims, and used his position of power within the Jehovah’s Witness to prey on these girls. We are glad the judge saw the true nature of sexual predators and sentenced him to 14 years.

Because of the brave victims who worked courageously to get Sewell behind bars, other children will be safer. We hope officials within the Jehovah’s Witness will reach out to any other possible victims who might be suffering in silence and self-blame.

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TENNESSEE
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, July 2, 2014

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

Church officials who paid a music teacher who is accused of molesting kids should now take aggressive steps to find and help others who may have seen, suspected or suffered his crimes.

[CBS 3]

It’s not right for Hope Presbyterian officials to sit back now and expect police and prosecutors to do all the work. Church staff must use their pulpit, publications and email lists to seek out anyone with any knowledge of or suspicions about Matthew Williams.

Too often, church officials wash their hands of abuse cases when law enforcement gets involved. But that’s irresponsible. If you hire and pay an adult who ends up assaulting children, you have a duty to help get that adult prosecuted, convicted and jailed.

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MINNESOTA
The Raw Story

By Arturo Garcia
Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Minneapolis-St. Paul Archbishop John Nienstedt, who has publicly blamed the Devil for same-sex marriage, is under investigation for allegedly sexually harassing priests and other men, the Catholic magazine Commonweal reported on Tuesday.

Nienstedt confirmed in a statement that he authorized his local archdiocese to hire an outside law firm, Greene Espel, for an independent probe following multiple allegations of misconduct against him.

“The allegations do not involve minors or lay members of the faithful, and they do not implicate any kind of illegal or criminal behavior,” his statement read. “The allegations involve events alleged to have occurred at least a decade ago, before I began serving in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.”

A former attorney for Nienstedt, Jennifer Haselberger, told Commonweal that she had spoken to members of the firm, and that the allegations also include claims that Nienstedt has retaliated against people who “refused his advances” or raised questions about his alleged behavior both during his service as a priest in the Archdiocese in Detroit and his current position..

“Based on my interview with Greene Espel — as well as conversations with other interviewees — I believe that the investigators have received about ten sworn statements alleging sexual impropriety on the part of the archbishop,” said Haselberger, who resigned from the Minneapolis archdiocese in April 2013.

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MINNESOTA
MinnPost

By Brian Lambert | 07/01/14

At some point someone has to put an end to this … In Commonweal, Grant Gallico reports, “Archbishop John Nienstedt of St. Paul and Minneapolis is being investigated for ‘multiple allegations’ of inappropriate sexual conduct with seminarians, priests, and other men, according to the archbishop’s former top canon lawyer, Jennifer Haselberger. The investigation is being conducted by a law firm hired by the archdiocese. Nienstedt denies the allegations. The investigation was spurred by information the archdiocese received late last year, according to another person with knowledge of the investigation.” MPR has a story on the investigation as well.

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MINNESOTA
Minnesota Lawyer

By: Patrick Thornton July 2, 2014

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis hired the Greene Espel law firm in Minneapolis to investigate accusations made against Archbishop John Nienstedt of inappropriate sexual conduct.
In fact Nienstedt ordered the investigation.

The firm has been working on the investigation since early this year and has interviewed current and former archdiocese employees including Jennifer Haselberger, the former top canon lawyer for the diocese who resigned in 2013 and then blew the whistle on the way the church ignored sexual abuse allegations leveled against current and former priests.

Nienstedt has denied the current allegations that he says do not involve “minors or lay members of the faithful, and they do not implicate any kind of illegal or criminal behavior.” They also date back to a decade before he was installed as archbishop, he said.

Reports say there could be as many as 10 statements of sexual allegations against Nienstedt.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

2 July, 2014
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will hold 12 days of private sessions in Brisbane over the next three weeks.

Royal Commission CEO Philip Reed said all people affected by child sexual abuse while in the care of an Australian institution have the opportunity to tell the Royal Commission of their experiences in a private session.

“Throughout July, more than 45 survivors of child sexual abuse in Queensland will have the opportunity to tell the Royal Commission of their experiences, in a private session with a Commissioner.

“The information provided in private sessions will help the Royal Commission better understand how child sexual abuse in institutions can be prevented.

“So far, the Royal Commission has received more than 2,300 phone calls from people all over Queensland and held more than 1,800 private sessions including 351 in Queensland.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

2 July, 2014
Bendigo residents are invited to learn more about the work of the Royal Commission at a community information forum on Wednesday 23 July.

Royal Commissioner Justice Jennifer Coate will provide an overview of the work of the Royal Commission and answer questions from the community.

Royal Commission CEO Philip Reed said the community forum was open to any members of the public who have an interest in the Royal Commission.

“We particularly encourage people affected by child sexual abuse while in the care of an institution to attend the community forum,” Mr Reed said.

“You will not be required to discuss your personal story at the community forum, it is a chance to find out more about the work of the Royal Commission and how you can be involved.

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MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio

[with audio]

Madeleine Baran St. Paul, Minn. Jul 2, 2014

Archbishop John Nienstedt, who has led his archdiocese’s response to the clergy sexual abuse scandal for nearly a year, confirmed in a statement Tuesday that he ordered a private investigation into unspecified allegations against himself.

Nienstedt said the allegations “do not involve minors or lay members of the faithful, and they do not implicate any kind of illegal or criminal behavior” and “involve events alleged to have occurred at least a decade ago, before I began serving in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.”

He called the claims “absolutely and entirely false.” He didn’t say how much the months-long investigation cost or who paid for it.

An archdiocese lawyer told Ramsey County Attorney John Choi in March that the private investigation involved claims of “sexual conduct with an adult,” according to a spokesperson for the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office. The spokesman said the archdiocese did not provide the name of the adult.

One person interviewed in the investigation — former archdiocese chancellor and whistleblower Jennifer Haselberger — said she was asked about Nienstedt’s interactions with the Rev. Curtis Wehmeyer, a priest who is now in prison for child sexual abuse and possession of child pornography.

MPR News reported in September that Nienstedt knew of Wehmeyer’s sexual interest in younger men but kept him in ministry and did not disclose the information to parish employees. Wehmeyer later admitted to sexually abusing two sons of a parish employee.

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VATICAN CITY
Europe Online

Vatican City (dpa) – The Vatican plans next week to clarify whether its scandal-plagued bank, the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), is going to have a new president, a spokesman indicated Wednesday, reacting to numerous reports of a looming change at the top.

Rumours have been mounting in recent days that German lawyer Ernst von Freyberg, appointed in February last year in one of the last decisions taken by former pope Benedict XVI before his resignation, is going to be replaced.

“The IOR is in a time of natural and peaceful transition and development,” Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said.

“The contribution from president Ernst von Freyberg is deeply appreciated and judged very positively, and further clarifications are possible, or even likely,” after Saturday when a key panel meets, Father Lombardi said.

That panel, the Council for the Economy, is made up of eight cardinals and seven lay experts. Vatican expert John Allen, a reporter for the US daily The Boston Globe, wrote in a report citing unnamed sources that one of the council‘s members, French financier Jean-Baptise de Franssu, is the front runner for the bank‘s top job.

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ALABAMA
AL.com

By Greg Garrison | ggarrison@al.com
on July 02, 2014

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama – The Rev. Mike McLemore, executive director of the Birmingham Baptist Assocation since 2007 and pastor of Lakeside Baptist Church from 1983-2007, knew about and covered up allegations of sexual abuse by the church’s youth minister, according to one of the victims.

McLemore, reached on Tuesday, denied the accusation, although he acknowledged dealing with the situation privately, which included forcing a youth pastor to retire early.

“It was a private matter with the family,” McLemore said. “The family involved had asked me to keep the situation confidential. I advised them what they had the right to do.”

Mack Allen Davis, a former youth pastor at Lakeside Baptist Church from 1977-99, faces sex abuse charges in Jefferson, Cherokee and St. Clair counties after two men stepped forward to say Allen molested them 30 years ago.

Davis, 73, whose last address was in Athens, faces 15 charges from the three counties, according to court records.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 2 July 2014 (VIS) – The Council of Cardinals met on the morning of Tuesday, 1 July at the Domus Sanctae Marthae, as planned. The Pope is participating in all the meetings; today, Wednesday morning, he participated in the entire meeting, as the general Audiences have been suspended. Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin is regularly present at the meetings, and the Holy Father has established that he will participate fully like the other members of the Council, of whom at present there are nine.

On Tuesday and on Wednesday morning three main themes were considered. There was a presentation by Cardinal Bertello of matters relating to the Governorate, and a presentation relating to the Secretariat of State by Cardinal Parolin.

The issue of the structure of the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR) was discussed in depth. The meetings, held in two sessions, were also attended by members of the Supervisory Commission of Cardinals present in Rome, Cardinals Santos Abril y Castelló, Thomas Collins and Jean-Louis Tauran, as well as Pietro Parolin.

With regard to the news and questions circulating in the press in recent days, the Director of the Holy See Press Office made the following declaration:

“The IOR is in a time of natural and peaceful transition. The contribution of Ernst von Freyberg continues to be deeply appreciated and highly valued, and further clarifications are possible, indeed likely, next week after the meeting of the Council for the Economy on Saturday”.

The Director then gave a concise explanation of the agenda of the next meeting of the Council for the Economy, which will focus on the Statutes and programme for future work, and will be informed on developments relating to the IOR and – by the Prefecture for Economic Affairs – on the 2013 budget and the provisional budget for 2014.

The Director also announced that a major press conference is expected to be held next week on various matters, including the IOR, linked to the sphere of competence of the Council and the Secretariat for the Economy.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Victims announce new court filing
They’re part of 40+ who just won $1.1 million
Group also blasts bishop over counseling refusal
Veteran abuse advocate calls arbitrator’s award “historic”

What:
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, victims of clergy sex abuse and their supporters will announce and give copies of their new court filing, which seeks to finalize the $1.1 million that an arbitrator has awarded them. They will also blast Kansas City’s Catholic bishop for continuing to

–deny therapy for victims and/or put unnecessary restrictions on that therapy, and
– wage an “incredibly expensive” legal defense battle, instead of honoring the binding arbitration process.

A nationally known abuse victim and advocate will

–explain why their unprecedented lawsuit and the arbitrator’s historic decision impacts victims across the country, and
urge those victims in other cities and states to consider filing similar suits to force bishops to live up to their child protection promises.

The group will also prod everyone who sees, suspects or suffers clergy sex crimes to keep coming forward and calling police.

When:
Wednesday, July 2, 1:00 p.m.

Where:
Outside the KC Catholic diocesan chancery office/headquarters, 20 W. 9th Street in downtown Kansas City MO

Who:
Four-six individuals who were assaulted as kids by Kansas City priests, including at least one or two who are part of the unusual “breach of contract” lawsuit against KC Catholic officials. Joining them will be a few concerned Catholic lay people and members of a support group called SNAP (the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests)

Why:
In what’s being called an “unprecedented victory for victims” and a “novel approach to abuse prevention,” 40+ KC abuse victims have won in their “breach of contract” lawsuit against Bishop Robert Finn and the KC Catholic diocese. But despite a scathing report and a $1.1 million dollar award, Finn is taking a step that’s also highly unusual: trying to overturn a decision reached in binding arbitration.

[New York Times]

[The Kansas City Star]

In response, the victims have filed an eight page rebuttal to Finn’s request. (They will provide copies of the newly-filed court document at this event.) For the healing of victims and Catholics, the plaintiffs want Finn to drop his challenge, accept the outcome, and “enable everyone involved to move forward.”

And regardless of what happens in the legal arena, victims want Finn to reverse his continuing practice of refusing to pay for some victims’ therapy or making unreasonable demands on that therapy which “deter others in pain from getting professional help,” according to SNAP.

In its 25 year history, SNAP says it’s never seen another “breach of contract” case involving clergy sex abuse victims. The group believes it will inspire other victims to push for non-economic prevention provisions in new settlements. And SNAP hopes it will prod victims who have already settled with such provisions to investigate whether those provisions are being followed. If not, SNAP hopes those victims will file similar lawsuits.

The lead plaintiff in the case, victim Casey Walsh, will not be at the news conference but will be available by phone at 913 238 4150.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

NADJA FLEET THE ADVERTISER JULY 02, 2014

ANGLICAN priests will no longer be bound by the 1000-year-old convention of confidentiality in confessions when they are told of serious crimes, including child abuse.

Church leaders have unanimously backed a historic change that starkly sets Anglican policy against that of the Catholic church, which maintains that “the Seal of Confession is inviolable”, and creates grounds for a major rift between the nation’s two most powerful Christian bodies.

About 250 members of the Anglican Church, including bishops and clergy representatives, voted to amend the 1989 canon on confession at the General Synod in Adelaide on Wednesday.

The Christian convention of strict secrecy of confessions is believed to be more than 1000 years old.

The policy change only becomes active, however, where an individual diocese adopts it.

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IRELAND
Journal

CHILDREN’S MINISTER CHARLIE Flanagan has confirmed that 25,000 files have been handed over from the Sacred Heart Adoption Society to the Cork offices of the Child and Family Agency ‘TUSLA’.

The Sacred Heart Sisters operated three of the country’s largest mother-and-baby homes:

Bessborough in Cork, Castlepollard in Westmeath and Sean Ross Abbey in Tipperary.

Speaking in the Dáil, Flanagan said the figure indicated the scale and breadth of the task facing the Commission of Investigation being set up to examine the country’s mother-and-baby institutions.

He made the comments as his Department confirmed that it had received over 100 submissions from individuals and groups as part of the planned investigation.

Senior officials from eight Government departments briefed Cabinet today on the interim findings of the cross-departmental review being carried out in advance of the formal start of the Commission of Investigation.

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IOWA
World-Herald

POSTED: WEDNESDAY, JULY 2, 2014 1:00 AM
By Michael O’Connor / World-Herald staff writer

The Diocese of Des Moines said it found credible an allegation that a priest who formerly served in western Iowa had sexually abused a minor.

The Rev. Howard Fitzgerald, 62, was put on administrative leave by the diocese while the case is reviewed by the Vatican. The diocese also said it notified local law enforcement.

Anne Marie Cox, spokeswoman for the diocese, said the victim requested anonymity. She said that’s why the diocese is not releasing the gender of the alleged victim, where and when the abuse is alleged to have occurred, or other details. The diocese did say the allegation goes back decades.

Fitzgerald served in several posts in western Iowa, including as a teacher at St. Albert High School in Council Bluffs, starting in 1978; at St. Peter Church in Council Bluffs, starting in 1986; at St. Michael Church in Harlan, starting in 1998; and at Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Church in Glenwood, starting in 2011.

An administrator at St. Albert referred questions to the diocese.

The Rev. Dan Siepker, current pastor of Holy Rosary, said that he wasn’t aware of parishioners raising sexual abuse allegations involving Fitzgerald.

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VATICAN CITY
Irish Independent

The Vatican bank’s chairman is to step down as soon as next week as part of the restructuring of an institution that has been an embarrassment to the Catholic Church for decades, Vatican sources said.

But the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, disagreed over whether Ernst von Freyberg was leaving willingly or whether he was being pushed out over differences within the Vatican about the pace of reform.

Mr von Freyberg’s departure is expected to be announced in connection with the publication, most likely next week, of the new annual report of the bank, officially known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR).

The new statues of the bank are expected to make the chairman’s job a full-time, residential position and, according to one source, Freyberg has decided he wants to return to his family in Germany.

“He is at peace with his decision because it is his decision,” this source said.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic Culture

Pope Francis has appointed Archbishop Bernardito Auza, the apostolic nuncio to Haiti, as the Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations.

Archbishop Auza succeeds Archbishop Francis Chullikatt, who was appointed to the post in 2010 and whose new position was not announced.

Archbishop Auza, 55, was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Talibon (Philippines) in 1985 and has served in various diplomatic positions in Madagascar, Bulgaria, Albania, and the Secretariat of State. Prior to his appointment to Haiti and episcopal ordination in 2008, he served as first counselor to the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

The child sexual abuse royal commission should be given a two-year extension to ‘open the floodgates’ for victims who are growing more confident in telling their stories, a survivor says.

John Hennessey, 78, says he expects the commission, which as part of its interim report said it needs $104 million to conduct more than 3000 individual sessions, will be granted the extension.

‘It’s got to be done,’ Mr Hennessey told AAP.

‘I don’t think any other royal commission has had such an impact on society and it’s blown away a lot of cobwebs.’

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AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

BY PETER TRUTE
July 1, 2014

A pedophile former Marist Brother has directly contradicted evidence given by his one-time superior at the child abuse royal commission.

Convicted pedophile and former Marist Brother Gregory Joseph Sutton appeared before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse on Tuesday, marking the first time an offender – accused or convicted – has faced the inquiry.

Sutton testified that in 1989, after admitting to abusing a schoolboy, he was sent to Canada for treatment by the then-head of the Marist order, Brother Alexis Turton.

He remained in the United States and, when an Australian court issued a warrant for his arrest in 1992, Sutton said he was phoned by Br Turton who told him of the warrant and advised him to stay overseas.

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AUSTRALIA
Champion-Post

July 2, 2014

People living in the Central West who experienced child sexual abuse while in the care of an institution are encouraged to share their story with the Royal Commission.

Royal Commission staff are in the region from today, meeting with local service providers and community organisations who are working with survivors of child sexual abuse in an institution.

Royal Commission CEO Philip Reed said the three day visit was focused on the towns of Orange, Bathurst and Lithgow, with future visits to nearby communities planned.

“This is a national Royal Commission hearing stories of child sexual abuse in institutions from across Australia, including regional communities,” Mr Reed said.

“We encourage anyone living in the Central West region who has experienced child sexual abuse in an institution to make contact with the Royal Commission by phone or email.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Conversation

Michael Salter
Lecturer in Criminology at University of Western Sydney

On Monday, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse released its interim report, detailing for the first time the full scope and comprehensiveness of its inquiry into institutional child sexual abuse in Australia.

In the report, the commissioners list the valuable outcomes of their inquiries to date. This includes holding more than 1600 private sessions and receiving more than 1600 written accounts from survivors of sexual abuse. By the end of May, more than 160 allegations had been referred to police.

By the end of June, 13 public hearings had been held around Australia to examine particular case studies of institutional abuse. Over 1000 people are still waiting to attend a private session, and the commissioners have identified 70 cases of institutional abuse that deserve a public hearing.

The report details the impacts of the royal commission to date, including substantive cultural and policy shifts within institutions with responsibility for children. The commission has also gathered vital and previously unavailable data on the dynamics of institutional abuse as well as commissioning original research in the area. This work will inform child protection policy well into the future.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis held a meeting in the Vatican on Tuesday morning with the Council of Cardinals.

It is the fifth time the Pope and the eight-member Council have met formally since Francis established the so-called “G8” to help him govern the Church and reform the Roman Curia.

The Cardinals who make up the Council are Giuseppe Bertello – President of the Pontifical Commission for the Vatican City State, Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa – Archbishop Emeritus of Santigo de Chile, Oswald Gracias – Archbishop of Bombay, Reinhard Marx – Archbishop of Munich, Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya – Archbishop of Kinshasa, Seán Patrick O’Malley OFM Cap – Archbishop of Boston, George Pell – Archbishop of Sydney and Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga SDB – Archbishop of Tegucigalpa.

They have been appointed with the specific task of advising the Pope on the government of the Universal Church and the revision of the Apostolic Constitution Pastor Bonus on the Roman Curia.

They are scheduled to continue their meetings until Friday, July 4.

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VIRGINIA/TEXAS
Richmond Times-Dispatch

BY LOUIS LLOVIO Richmond Times-Dispatch

Geronimo Aguilar, a disgraced Richmond pastor who could face life in prison in connection with the alleged sexual abuse of two young girls, appeared in a Texas courtroom Friday morning for a hearing on several motions.

During the appearance, a Texas judge scheduled a pre-trial hearing for the first week of August. That hearing could help set the stage for Aguilar’s eventual criminal trial.

Aguilar is the founder and former senior pastor of the Richmond Outreach Center. He was arrested May 21, 2013, on charges that he sexually abused an 11-year-old girl and her 13-year-old sister in the 1990s in Tarrant County, Texas. He resigned in June.

Aguilar has been indicted in two cases — one for each of the sisters — on four counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child under 14, three counts of sexual assault of a child under 17 and five counts of indecency with a child.

The aggravated sexual assault charges are first-degree felonies that carry a maximum term of life in prison. The remaining charges are second-degree felonies with a maximum sentence of 20 years each.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Lorna Siggins

Wed, Jul 2, 2014

The “repression, authoritarianism” and “social impoverishment” of a society which led to the Magdalene laundries is one that “makes one shiver with revulsion”, Sabina Higgins said in Galway last night.

The courage shown by former nun Patricia Burke Brogan in making a “principled stand” against the “dreadful denial of freedom and of human dignity” to the Magdalene laundry women required a “steely strong commitment” to value judgments, Ms Higgins said.

Ms Higgins was marking publication of Ms Burke Brogan’s autobiography, Memoir with Grykes and Turloughs, at the Galway Education Centre.

Ms Burke Brogan’s play, Eclipsed, first staged in 1992 after several rejections, exposed a “complicity and conspiracy of silence”, Ms Higgins recalled.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Sunday World

By Donal MacIntyre

Is the circle closing in on a VIP network of paedophiles and sexual predators in the UK, as links are made between Rolf Harris, Jimmy Savile and Stuart Hall, serial abusers who worked at the heart of the television and entertainment circles for up to 5 decades?

It has now been confirmed that Jimmy Savile had invited Rolf Harris to Broadmoor Hospital for the criminally insane where both men toured the place.

Savile had a flat there and was practically a shadow governor and many assaults and rapes are attributed to him there.

Savile also introduced, Harris, to Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, and other high profile offenders.

Savile and Harris were allowed to watch as female inmates undressed.

I visited the prison as part of a group of nurses in the early 1990’s and I was shocked how the high profile offenders like Myra Hindley and Peter Sutcliffe has complete freedom and were shown off like trophies to naturally curious visitors.

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VATIKAN
Radio Vatikan

Der Präsident der Vatikanbank „Istituto per le Opere di Religione“ (IOR), Ernst von Freyberg, legt möglicherweise in absehbarer Zeit sein Amt nieder. Laut italienischen Medien werde der Rücktritt des Managers zeitgleich mit der Veröffentlichung des nächsten Jahresberichtes der Bank offiziell bekanntgegeben. Das IOR befinde sich in einer Phase des friedlichen Übergangs, wird unter Verweis auf eine namentlich nicht genannte Vatikanquelle berichtet: Von Freybergs Arbeit werde demnach „hoch geschätzt“, weitere Klärungen seien auch vom nächsten Treffen des Wirtschaftsrates für kommende Woche zu erwarten. Von offiziellen Stellen im Vatikan gab es zu einem möglichen Rücktritt bislang keine Stellungnahme.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Delaware County Daily Times

Darby’s St. Francis Country House included in sale of archdiocesan facilities to Center Mangement Group

By Patti Mengers, Delaware County Daily Times

In a continuing effort to reduce the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s financial woes, archdiocesan officials announced Tuesday they have entered into an agreement to sell one assisted living facility and six nursing homes owned by Catholic Health Care Services, including St. Francis Country House in Darby.

Center Management Group, a 15-year-old secular health care management company based in Flushing, N.Y., is expected to purchase the nursing care facilities for $145 million. The net proceeds will be applied to lessen millions of dollars in underfunded liabilities the archdiocese has, including the priests’ pension plan, the lay employees’ retirement plan, the self-insurance reserve and the trust and loan fund .

The sale is expected to be closed by the end of the calendar year, said Kenneth Gavin, communications director for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

“Until the closing occurs the nursing homes will still be run by Catholic Health Care Services,” Gavin said.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel

Retired Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland, who had hoped to return to the Benedictine monastery where he began his religious life more than 70 years ago, will not be going after all.

Weakland, 87, had planned to move from Milwaukee to St. Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pa., by Sept. 1. But the retired prelate told Milwaukee’s Catholic Herald that the archabbot there asked him to postpone those plans indefinitely.

“Personally, I wanted to get back to the monastery and get back to the monastic routine,” Weakland said in a story published on the Herald’s Web site on Tuesday. “It’s always been a part of who I am, but it doesn’t seem as if it will work out.”

Weakland’s impending departure was the subject of a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story on Sunday. He was to be the guest of honor at a July 17 farewell luncheon organized by priests — an event that was drawing criticism from clergy sex abuse survivors who see him as complicit in crimes against them.

The Rev. James Connell, former vice chancellor of the archdiocese and now a victim advocate, sent an open letter to Weakland asking him to cancel the luncheon and take other steps to assuage the concerns of survivors.

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AUSTRALIA
Illawarra Mercury

By PAUL BIBBY July 2, 2014

As police sought to bring a Catholic brother living overseas back to Australia to face 67 charges of child sexual abuse, the Australian head of the Marist Brothers told him to “stay over there and enjoy your new life”, the royal commission has heard.

In testimony before the commission on Tuesday, convicted paedophile Gregory Sutton set out allegations of a blatant and extended cover-up orchestrated by Brother Alexis Turton, head of the Marist Brothers in the late 1980s and early ’90s.

Sutton, who taught at numerous Marist Brothers schools, told the commission that, in August 1989, he was called in for a meeting with then head (or provincial) of the Marist Brothers in Australia, Brother Turton, and told that he was being investigated by police over his abuse of children at a school in Campbelltown.

Within four days of that meeting, Sutton said, he was put on a plane to the US. He then travelled to Canada for an “assessment” and “treatment” for his behaviour, at a Catholic Church institution known as Southdown.

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WALES
Wales Online

Jul 02, 2014 By Ciaran Jones

“Predator” Mark Sewell, 53, showed “not a shred of remorse” for his crimes, said the judge who sent him down.

A depraved Jehovah’s Witness church elder who raped a fellow worshipper and abused vulnerable schoolgirls was today jailed for 14 years.

“Predator” Mark Sewell, 53, showed “not a shred of remorse” for his crimes, said the judge who sent him down.

The disgraced businessman was convicted of eight historic sex charges against four women following a three-week trial at Methyr Tydfil Crown Court.

Former Butlins holiday camp driver Sewell was today locked up for a total of 14 years at the same court.

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier

By FIONA HENDERSON AND MATTHEW DIXON July 2, 2014

THE Australian Catholic University’s Aquinas campus has dumped the Mulkearns name from its lecture theatre.

The university has renamed it the Sisters of Mercy Theatre.

The move to remove the Mulkearns name comes after clergy sexual abuse survivors said last year’s state government inquiry into institutionalised child abuse clearly showed former Ballarat bishop Ronald Mulkearns, after whom the theatre is named, had failed to act on paedophile priests.

“The education wing of ACU’s Ballarat Campus recently underwent a major refurbishment,” ACU’s acting director of marking and external relations Chrissa Favaloro said..

“As part of that process, the university wished to acknowledge the 104 years of education work the Sisters of Mercy had undertaken on the site.”

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DETROIT (MI)
WXYZ

[with video]

(WXYZ) – A Roman Catholic Archbishop with strong ties to Detroit is under investigation.

John Nienstedt was born here and served as a bishop in the area until 2001.

Nienstedt, now the Archbishop in St. Paul and Minneapolis is fighting accusations of inappropriate sexual conduct.

In a statement, he denies any wrongdoing and says it does not involve children.

He also said the allegations date back more than a decade, before he arrived in the twin cities.

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MINNESOTA
Yahoo! News

By AMY FORLITI

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Archbishop John Nienstedt announced Tuesday that the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is investigating him after allegations of inappropriate behavior surfaced several months ago.

In a statement, Nienstedt said he ordered the investigation himself after the claims were made against him. He did not detail the nature of the allegations, but said they are “absolutely and entirely false.” He added that they do not involve minors or lay members and do not suggest anything illegal.

“The Archdiocese investigates all allegations of clergy misconduct,” Nienstedt said. “It would be unfair to ignore these allegations simply because I know them to be false.”

Nienstedt’s statement came after the investigation was first reported online Tuesday by Commonweal, a Catholic publication. Nienstedt told the journal that he’d been accused by a former priest of improperly touching the man’s neck. …

St. Paul Police Department spokesman Howie Padilla said the archdiocese informed police about the internal investigation while authorities were actively investigating other cases involving individuals in the archdiocese. Padilla said all cases have been turned over to prosecutors for review.

Dennis Gerhardstein, a spokesman for the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office, said several cases are still under review. He said prosecutors didn’t receive a case on this particular issue involving Nienstedt.

Nienstedt said the apostolic nuncio, who oversees all bishops in the United States, has been told of the allegations and will be given the results when it is complete.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

Article by: JEAN HOPFENSPERGER and MARY LYNN SMITH , Star Tribune staff writers Updated: July 1, 2014

Nienstedt says the allegations, about sexual misconduct with seminarians and priests, are “absolutely false.”

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis on Tuesday confirmed a monthslong investigation into new sexual misconduct allegations against Archbishop John Nienstedt.

The announcement came after a blog post in the lay Catholic magazine Commonweal reported that the Nienstedt investigation centered on allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct with seminarians, priests and other men.

In a statement Tuesday, Nienstedt said he ordered the examination himself and directed church officials to hire outside investigators. The inquiry by the Greene Espel law firm of Minneapolis is ongoing, and Jennifer Haselberger, the whistleblower who accused the archdiocese of failing to properly handle child sex abuse cases, is among the people who have been interviewed.

“These allegations are absolutely and entirely false,” Nienstedt said in the statement, which added that the allegations did not concern sexual misconduct with minors or criminal behavior. He called the allegations “a personal attack against me due to my unwavering stance on issues consistent with church teaching, such as opposition to so-called same-sex marriage.” …

Questions go back to Detroit

The newest allegations stem from the years Nienstedt spent as a priest in the Archdiocese of Detroit, as bishop of the New Ulm, Minn., Diocese and as coadjutor in the Twin Cities Archdiocese.

Haselberger, the archdiocese’s former canon lawyer who turned whistleblower last year, told Commonweal that she has been interviewed.

Haselberger told the magazine that the lawyers conducting the investigation also asked about Nienstedt’s relationship with Curtis Wehmeyer, a former St. Paul priest with a history of sexual misconduct who was convicted of sexually abusing two boys in 2012.

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AUSTRALIA
Eureka Street

Frank Brennan | 02 July 2014

On Monday, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses of Child Sexual Abuse produced its first interim report to government. The commission has asked the Abbott Government for a two-year extension until December 2017 and an additional $104 million to complete its task.

When Julia Gillard announced the federal royal commission in November 2012, I expressed some reservations about such a wide ranging inquiry, claiming that it would take at least five years, and I did not know that victims or the rest of us could wait that long to learn critical lessons about how institutions might improve their procedures for the protection of children.

Justice McClellan is adamant that the job will take five years if it is to be done properly. The good news is that the victims’ groups seem to think they can wait that long, as anything sooner would be rushed. The bad news is that we will all be waiting another three and a half years for answers about how to restructure institutions ensuring the better protection of children and about how best to provide compensation and ongoing care for victims.

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AUSTRALIA
Eureka Street

Tim Kroenert | 02 July 2014

Calvary begins with a threat. Ensconced in the anonymity of the confessional, a man who has suffered injustice at the hands of the Church informs the priest, Fr James Lavelle (Gleeson), that he plans to kill him. Not because Lavelle has committed any wrong — quite the opposite. He has been singled out because he is ‘a good priest’, to pay the price for the sins of his brethren.

During the week leading up to the deadline set by his would-be killer, Lavelle goes about his pastoral duties within his windswept seaside parish. The ominously titled Calvary traces these earnest ramblings, which are as much a part of a personal pilgrimage — a ‘setting in order of his house’, as suggested by the killer — as a continuation of clerical duty.

He counsels a young man who is angered that he is denied the affections of women. He mediates a domestic violence situation involving affable butcher Jack (O’Dowd), his unfaithful wife Veronica (O’Rourke), and her lover, Simon (De Bankolé), an ill-tempered mechanic from the Ivory Coast. He resists the request of an elderly writer (Walsh) to acquire a gun, for the purposes of self-euthanasia.

He also endures the condescension of wealthy blue-blood Michael (Moran), and the more hostile slights heaped upon him in the local tavern by, among others, snidely atheistic doctor Frank (Gillen). Amidst these other trials he attempts to reconnect with his estranged daughter Fiona (Reilly), who feels that his decision to join the priesthood after the death of her mother was a kind of abandonment.

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THAILAND
UCA News

Fr Michael Kelly, Bangkok International July 2, 2014

It’s been a big week for the clergy and their dealings with the police across the world. In legal matters in countries covering four continents – India, the Dominican Republic, Italy and Australia – clerics are being held to account by police and civil courts.

Two priests in India have been charged with murdering the rector of a seminary in Karnataka, in southwest India; a former papal nuncio to the Dominican Republic has been defrocked by the Vatican for child abuse and will face criminal charges; a bishop in Australia has been charged with sexually abusing an adolescent 45 years ago, and a priest in Sicily has been charged with seeking sexual favors from refugees he was supposed to be helping.

Significantly, the Vatican’s Polish-born former nuncio to the Dominican Republic, Josef Wesolowski, was canonically convicted in record time last Friday. He has two months to lodge an appeal against the conviction but has still to face criminal charges that carry a jail sentence.

And in Australia, where a currently serving bishop has stepped aside after he was charged on Monday with allegedly abusing an adolescent in 1969, another senior cleric will face charges following a detailed inquiry into clerical sexual abuse over many decades in the Diocese of Maitland Newcastle.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

The Catholic Church will establish a special review panel to determine if further action will be taken against two senior Hunter region priests, criticised by an inquiry into Church cover-ups of child abuse.

The Special Commission of Inquiry into child sexual abuse in the Maitland-Newcastle Diocese was scathing of the church’s handling of now dead paedophile priests, Denis McAlinden and James Fletcher.

Commissioner, Margaret Cunneen described evidence given by senior Hunter priests Monsignor Allan Hart and Father William Burston as unimpressive.

Mons Hart was considered for referral to the DPP for criminal charges, but it was found there was insufficient evidence warranting prosecution for failing to report offending by McAlinden to police.

Fr Burston was not considered for criminal charges.

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MARYLAND
Christian Post

BY MORGAN LEE , CHRISTIAN POST REPORTER
July 1, 2014

Maryland’s Court of Special Appeals has dismissed a case which alleged that leaders of Sovereign Grace Ministries had attempted to cover up a sex abuse scandal at the Bethesda-Covenant Life Church.

Last year, a civil lawsuit argued that CGC church leaders, including Mahaney, “conspired and continue to conspire” to “permit sexual deviants to have unfettered access to children for purposes of predation and to obstruct justice by covering up ongoing past predation.” In May 2013, a judge threw out the lawsuit due to the statue of limitations. The defendents’ appealed the decision in early June 2014.

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MINNESOTA
Daily Kos

Homophobic Minnesota Archbishop under investigation for “inappropriate sexual relations” with men

Archbishop John Nienstedt of Minnesota is under investigation into “allegations that he had a series of sexual relationships with priests, seminarians and other men.”

The archdiocese confirmed the investigation, which was first reported by Commonweal, a Catholic magazine based in New York. Nienstedt, 67, said in a separate statement that the allegations “are absolutely and entirely false” and he said he himself authorized the internal investigation, which he called “independent, thorough.” “The allegations do not involve minors or lay members of the faithful, and they do not implicate any kind of illegal or criminal behavior,” Nienstedt said. “The allegations involve events alleged to have occurred at least a decade ago, before I began serving in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.” Commonweal’s story cites Jennifer Haselberger, former top canon lawyer for Nienstedt, as saying she learned of the investigation when she was questioned by attorneys from the firm that the archdiocese hired, Greene Espel.

He went on to claim that a single allegation from a former priest accused him of improperly touching his neck. However, according to the law firm hired to conduct the investigation, they have gathered quite a number of sworn affidavits along with allegations that he threatened retaliation against anyone who dared report his behavior.

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MINNESOTA
Catholic News Agency

St. Paul, Minn., Jul 1, 2014 / 05:43 pm (CNA).- Archbishop John Nienstedt of St. Paul, Minn., has ordered a third party investigation of himself following recent accusations of sexual misconduct, which he denies as being “entirely false.”

Three months ago, Archbishop Nienstedt was cleared of an accusation of touching a male minor’s posterior region during a confirmation photo shoot in 2009. During that investigation, Archbishop Nienstedt removed himself from public ministry but was happy to return after no charges were brought against him.

Late last year, around the time the first case was opened, allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct with seminarians, priests, and other men came to light, prompting a new investigation and a statement released by the archbishop denying the claims.

“These allegations are absolutely and entirely false,” Archbishop Nienstedt said. “Nonetheless, I ordered Bishop Lee Piché to oversee an independent, thorough investigation and that he hire an outside firm unaffiliated with the Archdiocese to conduct the investigation.”

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ILLINOIS
WGEM

QUINCY, Ill. (WGEM) – The priest who called 911 from a church phone in Springfield when he couldn’t get out of handcuffs has been assigned to a Quincy parish.

The Diocese of Springfield confirmed Tuesday that Father Thomas Donovan was recently assigned to serve as parochial vicar at the Church of St. Peter. Donovan was granted a leave of absence last year after a 911 call from Springfield’s St. Aloysias Church surfaced with him claiming he couldn’t get out of handcuffs.

Bishop Thomas John Paprocki says he was advised by a special panel in September that Donovan’s “gradual return to priestly ministry is appropriate.” Donovan was then assigned as chaplain to the Sisters of Saint Francis of the Martyr Saint George.

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NORTH CAROLINA
Charlotte Observer

By Tim Funk
tfunk@charlotteobserver.com
Posted: Tuesday, Jul. 01, 2014

A Superior Court judge in Stanly County dismissed a child sex abuse charge against a Catholic priest Tuesday, saying the Rev. Joseph Kelleher doesn’t have the mental capacity to go to trial.

Kelleher, now 86, is living in a retirement home in High Point and, according to a statement to the court from his doctor there, suffers from dementia and various physical ailments, including heart disease.

A native of Ireland who was part of the Catholic Diocese of Charlotte for decades, Kelleher was arrested in 2010 after a man came forward to accuse the priest of sexually abusing him in 1977, when he was a 14-year-old boy in Albemarle. At that time, Kelleher was pastor at Our Lady of the Annunciation Catholic Church. The alleged incident happened in the church parlor.

Kelleher was charged with one count of taking indecent liberties with a child. His attorney, Charles Brown of Albemarle, said Tuesday that he had pleaded not guilty. But according to court papers filed in 2011 by Kisha Scott, an assistant district attorney in Stanly County, Kelleher, in speaking with police, “admitted to touching the victim’s penis ….”

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UNITED STATES
Mennonite World Review

Jun 30, 2014 by Mennonite Church USA

ELKHART, Ind. — A Mennonite Church USA discernment group addressing sexual abuse by the late theologian John Howard Yoder has reported finding additional evidence of abuse.

After a June 3 meeting in Elk­hart, the group said they found more documentation of Yoder’s abuse of women, including fondling and sexual intercourse. The many women Yoder wronged included students, missionaries and church workers.

The group accessed previously unexamined institutional and personal files, including memos by Yoder.

In some instances, the group reported, women who engaged in sexual encounters were persuaded, at least initially, by Yoder that such behavior was permissible between Christian “brothers” and “sisters.” Many others resisted his unwanted advances, and were perplexed and distressed by his pursuit.

“We are also learning how long it took church leaders to intervene effectively,” the group reported.

An issue of Mennonite Quarterly Review planned for early 2015 will focus on sexual abuse in Mennonite contexts. It will include an article by historian Rachel Waltner Goossen on the topic the group appointed her to research: Mennonite church institutional responses to Yoder’s sexual abuse in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s.

While a four-year accountability process for Yoder began in 1992, doubt lingers about its outcome, since little about it was communicated to the public.

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UNITED STATES
The Mennonite

by Carolyn Holderread Heggen

The decision of Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS), Elkhart, Ind., and Mennonite Church USA to revisit the legacy of our most influential 20th-century Mennonite theologian, John Howard Yoder, has resulted in articles and responses in our church periodicals and elsewhere.

More will surely appear in the months to come. Therefore, I would like to share several concerns. In common usage, “allegations” implies charges that are unsubstantiated and unproven. It is not appropriate to continue to use the term “allegations” in reference to Yoder’s sexual abuse and immoral relations with women.

A church-appointed task force heard eight women’s stories in February 1992, considered the evidence and determined that the charges were valid. I was one of those eight.

After we shared our stories, I went around the circle of church representatives and, calling them each by name, asked, “_____, do you believe us?”

Each responded, “Yes, I believe you.” Subsequently the Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference released a statement that said: “From this work the task force concluded that the reports are true and that Yoder has violated sexual boundaries.”

In the June issue of The Mennonite, the article “The Decision to Disinvite John Howard Yoder to Speak” and the editor’s note that preceded it both refer to “allegations” or to “alleged victims.”

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MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

Archbishop John Nienstedt is being investigated for inappropriate sexual behavior with adult males, according to former archdiocese official Jennifer Haselberger.

The archdiocese confirmed an investigation, saying in written statements that it hired an independent firm to conduct it.

“Upon my direction, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is conducting an internal investigation involving allegations made against me,” Nienstedt wrote Tuesday. “These allegations are absolutely and entirely false.”

They involved alleged events from “at least” a decade ago, before he became head of the Twin Cities archdiocese in 2008, Nienstedt wrote.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

Article by: JEAN HOPFENSPERGER , Star Tribune Updated: July 1, 2014

Nienstedt says allegations of sexual misconduct with seminarians and priests are “absolutely false.”

The Archdiocese of St Paul and Minneapolis announced Tuesday that it is conducting an internal investigation of Archbishop John Nienstedt, following allegations of sexual misconduct.

The announcement came after a blog post was published online in Commonweal magazine, which claimed Nienstedt was being investigated for inappropriate sexual conduct with seminarians, priests and other men. The blog cites church whistleblower Jennifer Haselberger, the archdiocese’s former top canon lawyer, as the source of the information.

The conduct allegedly occurred during Nienstedt’s work in the Archdiocese of Detroit, as Bishop of New Ulm and as coadjudicator in the Twin Cities diocese.

“These allegations are absolutely and entirely false,” Nienstedt said in a written statement. “Nonetheless, I ordered Bishop Lee Piche’ to oversee an independent, thorough investigation and that he hire an outside firm unaffiliated with the Archdiocese to conduct the investigation.’’

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Kansas City Star

BY MARY SANCHEZ
THE KANSAS CITY STAR
07/01/2014

The convicted proof of what led to the latest scandal for the Kansas City diocese languishes in prison today: Shawn Ratigan, sentenced to 50 years for child pornography.

The details of Ratigan’s guilt, the horrendous way the diocese stalled instead of immediately reporting him to authorities, is at play now in an order to pay $1.1 million in a breach of contract suit.

To the public, stories that the Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese is accused of breaking agreed-upon obligations to protect children may sound like old news. Some people might think this is badgering by the diocese’s many critics. It is true that too many people seem to take glee from every negative twist and turn in sexual abuse cases involving Roman Catholic priests.

But this is about the safety of children. And the diocese, as the Ratigan case clearly proved, needed to be reminded again where its loyalties — its legal and moral obligations — must stand.

A 2008 settlement of $10 million to 47 victims and their families was intended to put to rest a large number of civil cases against the diocese for sexual abuse claims against priests. The diocese agreed to the settlement under the current Bishop Robert Finn. It also agreed to a list of non-monetary commitments to change its ways and institute more safeguards for children.

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MINNESOTA
Fox 9

by Bill Keller

ST. PAUL, Minn. (KMSP) –
After months of defending how the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis handled allegations of child sexual abuse by clergy, the archbishop himself is now the focus of an investigation into his behavior with other men.

This is not a criminal investigation, but rather an internal investigation into an accusation Archbishop John Nienstedt has violated his vows of priesthood. Nienstedt is being accused of “multiple allegations” of inappropriate sexual contact with seminarians, priests, and other adult men. The allegations come from the archbishop’s former top canon lawyer-turned-whistleblower Jennifer Haselberger.

“These allegations are absolutely and entirely false,” Nienstedt said in a statement. “Since I would instruct the archdiocese to investigate similar allegations made against any priest, I have ordered the archdiocese to independently investigate the allegations made against me.”

Nienstedt said the allegations involve events alleged to have occurred at least a decade ago, before he began serving in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. Nienstedt became archbishop in 2008, and for the past two years has been under fire for how he has handled allegations of sexual misconduct by clergy.

The apostolic nuncio, who oversees all bishops in the united states, has been informed of the allegations. According to the archdiocese, Nienstedt has no plans to step down during the investigation.

Statement from Archbishop John Nienstedt

“Upon my direction, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is conducting an internal investigation involving allegations made against me. These allegations are absolutely and entirely false. Nonetheless, I ordered Bishop Lee Piché to oversee an independent, thorough investigation and that he hire an outside firm unaffiliated with the Archdiocese to conduct the investigation.

The allegations do not involve minors or lay members of the faithful, and they do not implicate any kind of illegal or criminal behavior. The allegations involve events alleged to have occurred at least a decade ago, before I began serving in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

I have ordered that the investigation be conducted for the benefit of the Archdiocese. The Archdiocese investigates all allegations of clergy misconduct. It would be unfair to ignore these allegations simply because I know them to be false. Since I would instruct the Archdiocese to investigate similar allegations made against any priest, I have ordered the Archdiocese to independently investigate the allegations made against me.

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