ABUSE TRACKER

MASSACHUSETTS
Salem News

IPSWICH — The Rev. Richard McCormick, a priest found guilty of five counts of child rape earlier this month, has been sentenced to serve eight to 10 years in prison followed by 10 years of probation.

Richard McCormick, 73, of New Rochelle, N.Y., a retired priest who ran a summer camp for disadvantaged Catholic youths in the early 1980s, was found guilty by a Lawrence Superior Court jury earlier this month.

“When he prays, he should not pray to his god, he should pray to a beautiful, innocent, charming little five-year-old boy,” said the now-44-year-old victim, who was 11 and 12 when he was abused. That boy, the victim’s own son, is “the only reason Richard McCormick still wakes up every morning.”

Prosecutor Kate MacDougall asked for a 12- to 15-year prison sentence, saying McCormick stole the victim’s faith and altered the entire course of his life.

McCormick’s attorney, Stephen Neyman, called the retired priest a “broken man” and urged the judge to sentence him to no more than two years, potentially to be spent at the Missouri facility where McCormick lived before trial.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe

By Laura Crimaldi
GLOBE STAFF NOVEMBER 26, 2014

LAWRENCE — A Roman Catholic priest was sentenced Wednesday to eight to 10 years in prison for raping a boy multiple times between 1981 and 1982 in Ipswich.

The Rev. Richard J. McCormick, 73, learned his punishment after hearing from the 44-year-old victim, who was between 10 and 12 years old when he was raped at a summer camp at the Salesian Brothers’ Sacred Heart retreat center in Ipswich.

Speaking in Essex County Superior Court, the man said he lost his faith because of McCormick and that being in a church or seeing a priest provokes feelings of anxiety and rage.

“Does he even remember me?” the man asked. “I don’t have to ask that today because I know the answer as he sits there in his chair denying even being at the camp. … But I do remember him. I remember him every day of my life. Not a day goes by when there isn’t some sort of trigger that brings back all those memories.”

As he spoke, the man referenced a trophy displayed in front of him. He said McCormick gave him the trophy and that it is the only one he saved from childhood. At times, he said, he thought he wanted to use the trophy “to jam it in Mr. Richard McCormick’s chest.”

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SPAIN
Zee News

A second man has filed a complaint accusing a group of Catholic priests in Spain of sexual abuse in a case Pope Francis has said has caused him “great pain”, a judicial source said Wednesday.

Police on Monday arrested three Catholic priests and a religion teacher in the southern city of Granada after a 24-year-old man accused them of molesting him and other children.

Pope Francis said Tuesday he had personally ordered an investigation into a case after the unidentified man sent a letter to the pope telling him of how he had been molested when he was an altar boy.

“I read it. I called the person and I told him, `Go to the bishop tomorrow,` and then I wrote to the bishop and told him to start an investigation,” Francis said in response to a question by a Spanish reporter on his plane from Strasbourg, France, where he had addressed the European Parliament.

“How have I received this news? With great pain, very great pain, but the truth is the truth and we should not hide it.”

A second man presented a formal complaint against the priests and religion teacher at a duty court in Granada on Monday, a judicial source told AFP.

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MISSOURI
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, November 26

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

A group of Missouri nuns is praising a convicted bishop. Unwittingly, they’re making the church less safe and healthy, by contributing to a climate in which victims are reluctant to report child sex crimes.

All adults, but especially those in the Catholic Church, have two choices: They can make it harder or easier to expose predators. But when clearly complicit church officials are praised, more victims, witnesses and whistleblowers give up and stay silent, fearing that those who conceal abuse will often be believed and supported while those who disclose abuse will be disbelieved and vilified.

We urge these nuns to act more compassionately and responsibly in the future.

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UNITED STATES
GetReligion

Boston Globe story on Vatican prosecutor’s alleged failure to report abuse leaves unanswered questions

Dawn Eden

The Boston Globe ran a story over the weekend alleging that the Vatican’s top prosecutor on sex-abuse cases failed to report an abusive priest to civil authorities when he was a high-ranking official in the Jesuits’ Chicago Province.

Given the legwork that reporter Michael Rezendes put into culling the sources for the story, the piece is well worth your time, but it leaves some unanswered questions. There’s a lot of smoke here, to be sure, but it leaves me with the feeling that the Globe could have gone to greater length to locate the source and extent of the fire.

Here’s the lede, the wording of which suggests some delicate legal vetting:

A prominent American Jesuit recently named by Pope Francis to prosecute priests accused of sexually abusing minors under church law was himself one of several Catholic officials who allowed a notorious abusive priest to remain in ministry for years after learning of his long history of sexual abuses, legal documents show.

The Rev. Robert J. Geisinger, named in September as the Vatican’s “promoter of justice,’’ was the second-highest-ranking official among the Chicago Jesuits in the 1990s when leaders were facing multiple abuse complaints against the Rev. Donald J. McGuire, a globe-trotting priest with many influential supporters, including Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

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SPAIN
El Pais

A second former altar boy has filed a formal complaint against an alleged pedophile priest ring from Granada.

The man, who helped officiate Mass when he was aged between seven and 14, is the person mentioned in the letter sent to Pope Francis by another alleged abuse victim.

In the letter the first victim wrote: “Dear Holy Father: they also abused a friend of mine.” Now, the friend has apparently stepped forward to support the claim.

“They really insisted on telling me and teaching me that if I didn’t live with them and went where they told me to go, I would have to leave the group as I would no longer be following the doctrine of God,” says the second alleged victim of the Romanones group, whose name derives from its alleged ringleader, Román Martínez. “They would start telling me about sin.”

“All of this has been dramatic, it has marked my life,” he adds. “I would feel their erections touching me, and they would tell me not to be afraid. Sometimes I saw them kissing each other on the lips when they met, and I thought that this was not natural.”

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Berger’s Beat

CHILD MOLESTER BACK IN TOWN
Former teacher David Kramer, who pled guilty to two counts of child molestation in St. Louis county in 2008 and was sentenced to a seven-year prison term, has been released and is now living on South Grand. He had taught in U. City and in Australia.

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MINNESOTA
KDUZ

(MNN/Pine City, MN) — A self-proclaimed pastor on the run following allegations of sexual abuse is now on the U.S. Marshals Service’s 15 Most Wanted Fugitive List.

The agency says Victor Arden Barnard is wanted by the Pine County Sheriff’s Office on 59 felony counts of sexual assault.

He is accused of abusing young girls while he was acting as their pastor.

A reward of 25-thousand dollars is being offered for information that leads to his arrest. Barnard has been missing since he was charged in April.

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MISSISSIPPI
Sun Herald

The Associated Press
November 26, 2014

JACKSON, MISS. — The state Court of Appeals has upheld the 2013 conviction of a Mississippi pastor for sexual battery of a child.

Larry Gene Singleton, now 72, was convicted in Tate County on two counts of fondling and one count of sexual battery. He is serving a 30-year sentence.

Singleton, the former pastor of Bay Springs Baptist Church in Abbeville, was arrested in December of 2013 after sheriff’s investigators received a complaint from the victim, who accused Singleton of forcing him to have sex.

Authorities say the sexual abuse allegedly began when the victim was 11 years old and continued for several years.

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AUSTRALIA/UNITED STATES
J-Wire

November 26, 2014 by J-Wire Staff

An American teacher who sexually abused children at a Melbourne Jewish school has been deported to the United States following his release from prison.

54-yr-old David Kramer was sentenced to 18 months in prison for sexually abusing four boys at Melbourne’s Yeshivah College. He pleaded guilty to the charges.

Manny Waks, the founder of Tzedek, an advocacy group for sexually abused children, said: “Now that Kramer has concluded his sentence and released into the broader community, it’s critical that we’re informed of his whereabouts so that we can ensure the safety of our children. Kramer has a shocking track-record of sexually abusing many children in more than one country. While he has sat in jail in both the US and Australia for crimes committed there, I’m aware of allegations that he has also abused children in Israel. It’s also widely known within the Yeshivah community that there are additional alleged victims. For various reasons victims do not come forward, and this is their choice which must be respected.

I have already notified some of my networks in both of these countries and will continue to work with them and others until we can ascertain that he does not pose a risk to children to the extent that this is possible.

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GUAM
Marianas Variety

WEDNESDAY, 26 NOV 2014

BY JASMINE STOLE | VARIETY NEWS STAFF

REV. Adrian Cristobal, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Agana, has denied that Archbishop Anthony Apuron met with Pope Francis last Friday at the Vatican about an accused pedophile.

The International Catholic Press Agency, based in Switzerland, reported that Apuron met with the pope and is “blamed for covering an accused pedophile.”

Cristobal said Apuron made the appointment to speak with the pope and was granted an audience with him. “The archbishop was very pleased with the meeting,” Adrian said, adding that Pope Francis was supportive and encouraging, and that the meeting was positive. “The archbishop was not summoned to the Vatican,” he stressed.

The content of the meeting has not yet been relayed to Cristobal, but it is expected that when Apuron returns to Guam, the archbishop will brief him about the meeting.

“The meeting of the pope and archbishop was not regarding the accused pedophile. That is totally inaccurate,” Cristobal said.

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MINNESOTA
Canonical Consultation

Jennifer Haselberger

Earlier today, the National Catholic Reporter posted a series of amusing tweets about Archbishop Nienstedt’s use of the word ‘trouble’ in his column introducing last week’s disastrous financial report for the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis.

Specifically, NCR picked up on the Archbishop’s unfortunate decision to place the word in quotation marks, a grammatical device generally used to indicate irony. This choice leaves the reader wondering if the Archbishop truly understands how serious the situation is, or if he instead views the present state of the Archdiocese as really no problem at all.

It would appear that at least one person on the staff of the NCR (reporter Brian Roewe) is both an astute reader and a fan of The Music Man, and he playfully suggested a tweet riffing on the song ‘Ya Got Trouble’ to introduce his article on the financial report: ‘Trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with B and that stands for…bankruptcy?’. You can read his article here: http://ncronline.org/news/accountability/finance-report-shows-trouble-twin-cities.

I am not sure how far the NCR intended to take the comparison between the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis and the plot of The Music Man, or perhaps between the Archbishop and Harold Hill. Unlike the con artist Harold, who is the ‘Music Man’ of the book, play, and movie, Nienstedt does have a legitimate talent for music. However, some would argue, especially as we wait for the release of the investigation into his conduct by Green Espel, that Nienstedt is a man who entered town under false pretenses, as did Harold Hill. And, like Harold, Nienstedt also did his share of fear-mongering, attempting to sell a solution which the people of this Archdiocese, like the victims of Hill’s scams, will never see materialize. Take it one step further and you can see the similarity between Nienstedt’s refusal to resign and Harold’s decision not to skip town.

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NEW MEXICO
Gallup Independent

Published in the Gallup Independent Nov. 17, 2014

Part two of a three-part series

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Independent correspondent
religion@gallupindependent.com

ZUNI — Not much is clear about the circumstances surrounding the sudden departure of the Rev. Ravi Kiran from St. Anthony’s Mission in the Pueblo of Zuni.

One thing, however, is very clear. Kiran left a mostly Native American congregation very deeply divided, with parishioners on both sides feeling hurt and upset.

For those parishioners who continue to attend Mass at St. Anthony’s, most are either supporters of Kiran or they are simply Catholics trying to stay neutral while they wait for answers from their church leaders.

For those who do not support Kiran, they have expressed their displeasure with their feet — about a dozen left the Zuni parish and now attend St. Patrick’s Catholic Mission in Vanderwagen, another church under the leadership of a priest from India. Most of those who left were not merely warming the pews each Sunday. They were active church volunteers who helped with religious education programs and served as Eucharistic ministers, lectors, and ushers.

And while many individuals on both sides have talked to the media about their concerns, few have been willing to be quoted publicly.

Close friendship

However, two members of one prominent Zuni family were willing to speak out in support of their former parish priest. Siblings Claire and Ken Seowtewa, children of the late Zuni mural­ist Alex Seowtewa, became friends with Kiran and believe he was a good parish priest.

During Mass at St. Anthony’s Nov. 2, Claire Seowtewa spoke up during the service and offered a prayer for Kiran’s return to St. Anthony’s.

In a telephone interview later that evening, Seowtewa said that during Kiran’s time in Zuni, he became a frequent visitor to her parents’ home, and he often ate dinner with her family. Kiran and her father became very good friends, she said.

“They got really close,” she said. “It was just a good relationship that had blossomed.”

Seowtewa said her family was happy with the renovations Kiran had made around St. Anthony’s Mission.

Although the murals Alex Seowtewa painted on the walls of the Old Zuni Mission brought him fame and brought countless visitors to the pueblo, Claire Seowtewa said her father did not have a good relationship with recent Franciscan Friars.

It was through her father’s friendship with Kiran, she said, that her father attended — for the first time in years — Midnight Mass last Christmas at St. Anthony’s.

Kiran went on to officiate at Alex Seowtewa’s funeral Mass at the Old Zuni Mission.

“I was so heartbroken to hear he had left,” Seowtewa said of Kiran’s sudden departure, adding she viewed Kiran as a part of her family.

Displeasure and frustration

A week after his sister’s interview, Ken Seowtewa and his wife attended Mass at St. Anthony’s.

At the end of the service, while the Rev. Kevin Finnegan, the diocesan chancellor, was still offering his promises to provide future answers to parishioners, the couple left the church.

Clearly frustrated, Seowtewa blamed Kiran’s problems at St. Anthony’s on the “small group” in the parish who had disagreements with Kiran. Seowtewa also expressed displeasure with the wording of the Diocese of Gallup’s announcement about Kiran’s departure and frustration that the announcement didn’t answer his questions.

“He’s not here to defend himself,” Seowtewa said of Kiran.

Naming off important family milestones of church baptisms and marriages, Seowtewa said his family has had a close association with the Catholic Church in the Pueblo of Zuni for five generations.

Seowtewa, also an artist, said he spent years working alongside his father on the murals in the Old Zuni Mission.

“Dad wouldn’t have agreed with this,” he said.

Seowtewa, quoting something that his father used to say frequently, said, “I don’t have anything against God, it’s just the messengers he sends.”

“I love the fact that Father Ravi appreciated our culture, our heritage,” Seowtewa said as he walked away. “I love Fr. Ravi.”

Tomorrow: More unanswered questions

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NEW MEXICO
Gallup Independent

Published in the Gallup Independent, Nov. 18, 2014

Part three of a three-part series

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Independent correspondent
religion@gallupindependent.com

ZUNI — In addition to allegations about the Rev. Ravi Kiran’s possible misuse of funds at St. Anthony’s Indian Mission, Kiran’s abrupt departure last month has raised a number of other unanswered questions.

They are questions that the Diocese of Gallup, the Pueblo of Zuni and Kiran have declined to answer.

Kiran, aka Ravi Kiran Dasari or Ravikiran Dasari, came from India to the Diocese of Gallup in the spring of 2009. In August 2012, Bishop James S. Wall assigned Kiran, his former superintendent of Catholic schools, to St. Anthony’s, a mission parish and school on the Pueblo of Zuni. Franciscan Friars had managed St. Anthony’s for nearly 90 years, before withdrawing from the mission in 2011.

Kiran’s renovation of the mission’s historical buildings has stirred controversy on the pueblo. During his two years at St. Anthony’s, Kiran oversaw numerous renovation projects to the buildings and mission grounds. Parishioners, almost all who have declined to speak publicly, are divided on Kiran’s actions.

Kiran’s supporters, who are pleased with the renovations, have said the upgrades were necessary because the mission was in disrepair. Kiran’s critics believe the renovations happened too quickly and were carried out with too little input from Zuni parishioners.

They also question how much the renovations cost.

One particularly divisive renovation project was the one on Kiran’s home. Kiran’s critics believe the rectory’s renovation was overdone to the point of excessive luxury, particularly since the mission is located on a Native American reservation with a high poverty rate.

Neither diocesan officials nor Kiran answered questions about the renovations.

Unauthorized renovations?

And then there is the question of diocesan and tribal authorization. The diocese’s “Finance Directives and Finance Council Norms for Parishes and Organizations in the Diocese of Gallup” is a 2009 document that is posted on the Internet. According to that finance policy, “Any single expenditure, other than recurring monthly bills, that is greater than 10 percent of the annual Sunday collections must have written diocesan approval before the funds are committed.”

According to a financial report compiled after the end of fiscal year 2012, the annual Sunday collection amounts at St. Anthony’s were $16,346.55 for the fiscal year 2010, $15,239.47 for 2011, and $15,403.20 for 2012. Based on a small sampling of 14 church bulletins from 2007 to 2014, the weekly collection amounts under Kiran seemed to have declined in 2013 and 2014.

Therefore, using the highest figure of $16,346, Kiran would have needed approval from Gallup diocesan officials to spend more than $1,635 on any one parish project.

In addition, the diocese’s finance policy states the parish must have written approval from the bishop before any major repairs or new construction is begun, monthly reports must be sent to the diocese during the planning, fundraising, and implementation phases of the project, and all construction projects over $10,000 must include the “Catholic Mutual Addendum to Construction Contract” and must be forwarded to the diocese for review before signing.

It is unknown if Kiran followed these financial requirements and received the proper approval from the bishop because neither diocesan officials nor Kiran would answer any questions about the subject.

It is also unknown if Kiran received authorization from Pueblo of Zuni officials for the renovation projects – or if such tribal authorization was needed — because Zuni Gov. Arlen P. Quetawki Sr. also did not respond to media questions.

2013 allegation

Finally, there are lingering questions about an allegation that was made against Kiran last year.

In the spring of 2013, an adolescent girl in Zuni reportedly made an allegation that Kiran touched her inappropriately. The Diocese of Gallup did not make that allegation public, but it did temporarily suspend Kiran for several months while a law enforcement investigation was conducted. However, during that time, Kiran was allowed to travel on fundraising mission appeals trips to Ohio and Pennsylvania.

A 2013 media inquiry to the FBI, U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Pueblo of Zuni was answered by the Zuni governor. In letter dated Nov. 7, 2013, Quetawki stated: “The Zuni Police Department received a complaint, conducted a thorough investigation, determined that there is no substance to the allegations, and closed the investigation. We were assisted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the FBI in conducting the investigation.”

Officials with the Diocese of Gallup and the Pueblo of Zuni were asked earlier this month if that allegation against Kiran was still considered to have no substance. Neither set of officials responded.

In a related issue, diocesan officials and Kiran also did not answer questions about reports that Kiran did not advertise information pertaining to the diocese’s bankruptcy case as he was required.

According to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court order of April 11, all Gallup parishes were required to advertise information about the diocese’s bar date deadline for confidential claims regarding allegations of clergy sex abuse. Kiran reportedly did not post or publish that court ordered information at St. Anthony Indian Mission.

In addition, the diocese also did not respond to questions about whether Kiran had ever submitted to a criminal background check in India or the United States before being allowed to work in the Gallup Diocese. A question about whether foreign priests are required to submit to criminal background checks before working in the Gallup Diocese also was not answered.

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NEW MEXICO
Gallup Independent

Published in the Gallup Independent Nov. 15, 2014

Part one of a two-part series*

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Independent correspondent
religion@gallupindependent.com

ZUNI — When the Rev. Ravi Kiran, a visiting Catholic priest from India, abruptly left his mission assignment in the Pueblo of Zuni on Oct. 9, he left behind a number of allegations and unanswered questions.

But thus far, officials with the Diocese of Gallup, the Zuni tribe and federal law enforcement officials have declined to answer any questions about their possible investigations into the sudden departure of Kiran, aka Ravi Kiran Dasari or Ravikiran Dasari. Some of the allegations against Kiran involve the possible misuse of money donated to St. Anthony’s Indian Mission for the benefit of tribal parishioners and mission students.

The Rev. Kevin Finnegan, the chancellor and vicar general for the Diocese of Gallup, told parishioners during a recent Mass at St. Anthony’s that the Gallup Diocese was conducting an investigation, and he promised answers in the future.

Gov. Arlen P. Quetawki Sr. of the Pueblo of Zuni has not responded to media questions, so it is unknown if the tribe is doing its own investigation.

And federal officials aren’t much more forthcoming.

“Under DOJ policy we (the U.S. Attorney’s Office and FBI) can neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation into the matters you raise,” Elizabeth M. Martinez, public affairs officer for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, said in an email Monday.

Kirin, who the diocese claims is back in India, was contacted through email and asked to explain his departure.

“I appreciate your reaching out to hear my side of the story,” Kiran said in an email Monday. “I am thankful to note that there are lot of people spoke in support of me. It personally pains me to see the division of the community where I served. Please forward the questions and I will see if I am able to respond.”

Kiran was sent an extensive list of questions, similar to the questions submitted to the diocese, but he did not respond with answers.

Financial issues

Allegations against Kiran, based on interviews with Kiran’s supporters and detractors, include the following financial issues. Both diocesan officials and Kiran were asked to address these issues, but neither did so.

■ St. Anthony’s Indian Mission reportedly has two primary sources of revenue, both of which were set up by the Franciscan Friars who oversaw the mission for nearly 90 years. The first is a financial investment portfolio, and the second is income generated from charitable donations through the mission’s development office. An old portfolio review, published for the St. Anthony Indian School for the third quarter of 2003 by UBS Financial Services, Inc., showed the portfolio had $1,018,785 in its stock account ($34,558 in cash and equivalents and $984,229 in equity) and $856,250 in its bond account. Assets of St. Anthony’s parish were not included in the report.

Questions about the current amount of money in mission accounts and amounts during recent years were not answered. Questions about whether a recent audit by the diocese revealed if Kiran had or had not used any mission funds for personal items, services or travel also were not answered.

■ Kiran’s supporters say he kept them informed about the mission’s finances. His detractors claim Kiran only released one financial report — when he first arrived at St. Anthony’s in 2012 — and that report was actually compiled by Sister Jean Glach, O.P. and the mission’s development office upon the departure of the Franciscan Friars in 2011. Throughout the summer of 2014, church bulletins state Kiran would be releasing a “Financial report for 2013-2014,” which he reportedly never released.

■ Weekly collections under Kiran may have dropped since the departure of the Franciscans.
Collection figures from 14 church bulletins, randomly obtained from 2007 to 2014, indicate a drop. Two bulletins from 2007 show $451 and $379 collected weekly, $488 in a 2010 bulletin, $508 in 2011, $199 and $410 in 2013, and eight bulletins in 2014 show a low of $146 to a high of $259 in weekly collections.

■ Kiran reportedly drove a Mercedes-Benz, a vehicle that he apparently took with him. It is unknown if a friend gave Kiran the vehicle as his supporters believe, if Kiran purchased the vehicle with his own money, or if the vehicle was purchased with mission funds.

Again, neither Kiran nor officials with the Diocese of Gallup responded to any of these issues.

Editor’s Note: In Monday’s Independent, members of one Zuni family express support of their former priest, and remaining questions surrounding Kiran are discussed.
*Correction: Part one of a three-part series

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NEW MEXICO
Gallup Independent

Published in the Gallup Independent Nov. 10, 2014

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Independent correspondent
religion@gallupindependent.com

ZUNI — The Diocese of Gallup has now provided parishioners at St. Anthony’s Mission with a copy of a letter about their former priest who diocesan officials say “abandoned his assignment” on the Pueblo of Zuni last month.

In addition, the diocesan chancellor is promising answers.

According to parishioners, the Rev. Ravi Kiran, aka Ravi Kiran Dasari or Ravikiran Dasari, a native of India, abruptly left the mission on Oct. 9. Since his departure, diocesan officials have audited the mission’s financial accounts amidst allegations that Kiran may have misused mission funds.

Bishop James S. Wall has refused to answer media questions about Kiran or the allegations. Instead, on Friday, Susan G. Boswell, his lead bankruptcy attorney, released a short announcement the bishop had sent to be read to parishioners in late October. That announcement was published Saturday.

The Rev. Kevin Finnegan, the chancellor for the diocese, initially read the letter to parishioners on Oct. 26. On Sunday, Finnegan returned to St. Anthony’s and distributed copies of the announcement, which stated Kiran returned to India without notifying the diocese or requesting permission for a leave of absence.

“His actions were found to be unprovoked and a surprise to everyone,” the statement said.

Finnegan told parishioners the Gallup Diocese was investigating Kiran’s departure and promised them eventual answers.

“But when I find out, you’ll find out,” Finnegan said.

Questions about Kiran’s tenure at St. Anthony’s Mission have been submitted to Zuni Gov. Arlen Quetawki Sr. Questions about the allegations have been submitted to the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office. Questions emailed to Kiran’s religious superior of the Missionary Society of Heralds of Good News in India have not been answered.

In addition, Kiran’s email address was obtained on Sunday, and he was invited to explain his abrupt departure.

Kiran does have many loyal supporters in his former parish at St. Anthony’s. However, during interviews after Mass on Sunday, only two supporters agreed to provide their names and speak on the record on his behalf. Their comments will be featured in an article later in the week.

— Individuals who would like to give their name and offer their comments on the record are invited to contact reporter Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola at 505-870-0745 or religion@gallupindependent.com.

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ESPANA
La Nacion

[A second former altar boy has filed a complaint against the alleged religious pedophile clan in Granada.]

GRANADA.- Un segundo ex monaguillo ha presentado una denuncia contra el clan de supuestos religiosos pederastas de Granada. El hombre, que asistió a misa desde los 7 a los 14 años, era al que se refería el primer denunciante cuando decía que temía por otras posibles víctimas del grupo de Los Romanones. “Hacían mucho hincapié en decirme y darme lecciones de que si no hacía vida con ellos y no iba a los sitios que me decían tenía que dejar el grupo ya que no estaba con la doctrina de Dios”, relata esta supuesta segunda víctima. Entonces “comenzaban a hablarme del pecado”. “Todo esto ha sido dramático, me ha marcado la vida”, añade. Sobre los abusos en sí, describe: “Sentía sus erecciones rozarme y me decían que no tuviera miedo. En contadas ocasiones les veía darse besos en la boca cuando se veían, y pensé que no era natural”.

Este testimonio refuerza el caso, sobre todo ante la falta de otras pruebas. Los tres sacerdotes y el seglar (un profesor de Religión) detenidos el lunes en Granada por supuestos abusos sexuales a un menor estaban reunidos en un chalé de la localidad de Pinos Genil, propiedad del supuesto cabecilla del clan, Román Martínez, cuando llegaron los agentes. Estos tenían la orden de arrestarles, registrar la casa y conducirles primero a comisaría y después ante el juez, lo que previsiblemente se producirá hoy. Sabían que su detención era inminente y estaban acompañados de otras cuatro personas ajenas al caso. La policía registró la casa y, entre otros documentos, se llevó dos ordenadores, sábanas y libretas. Al abrir los pecés, los agentes descubrieron que habían sido borrados todos los datos. Los agentes se llevaron también el disco duro de ambas computadoras porque existen medios técnicos que permiten extraer toda su información aunque haya sido eliminada.

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ESPANA
La Vanguardia

[One of the alleged victims of priests in Granada gave an exclusive interview to a Spanish television program.l

[con video]

Barcelona. (Redacción).- “Esto comenzó como un niño normal que acude a la iglesia para prepararse la catequesis”. Así comienza el relato Manuel, el joven víctima de los abusos sexuales cometidos por los sacerdotes de Granada que saltaron a la luz pública hace unos días. El programa de Cuatro, La otra red, ofreció ayer en exclusiva una entrevista con este joven que explicó en televisión la dureza de su experiencia.

El muchacho confesaba estar un poco alterado ante su intervención: “Estoy un poco nervioso e intranquilo por la situación que tenemos y la inseguridad que conlleva esta situación”. Manuel aseguró que tiene miedo a posibles represalias por haberse atrevido a denunciar, pero que espera que se haga justicia y que los agresores “paguen por lo que han hecho”.

El entrevistado fue víctima del cura Román y reconoce que era él quien “dirigía todo y obligaba a los demás a que hiciesen lo que él quería”. Los abusos vinieron tras establecerse una estrecha relación de confianza con los sacerdotes, a quienes Manuel veía como parte de la familia. Aunque asegura que no le prohibían estar con sus amigos, el hombre reconoce que le influenciaron para que cada vez estuviera más cerca de su grupo de la iglesia.

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ESPANA
ABC

A las 8,35 horas de este miércoles llegaban dos coches de la Policía Nacional al Juzgado de Instrucción nº 4 de Granada, con sede en el complejo administrativo de La Caleta. En uno de los vehículos, un furgón policial, iba el primero de los arrestados el lunes por su presunta relación con los abusos sexuales cometidos contra un menor durante una década –tres sacerdotes y un profesor de Religión-.

Se desconoce la identidad de este primer declarante que, como los otros tres detenidos, ha pasado su segunda noche en el calabozo de la Jefatura de Policía de Andalucía Oriental tras declarar en presencia de su respectivo abogado ante los agentes que dirigen la investigación de estos hechos.

Durante todo el día está prevista la declaración de los cuatro arrestados que a través de uno de los abogados que los asiste, Javier Muriel, ya han expuesto algunos argumentos de su defensa ante los hechos de los que se les acusa.

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ESPANA
swissinfo

[MADRID (Reuters) – A Spanish court received a second complaint for alleged sexual abuse of minors by priests, judicial sources said on Wednesday. This is a case in which the Pope Francis has personally ordered an investigation.]

26 DE NOVIEMBRE DE 2014

MADRID (Reuters) – Un juzgado español recibió una segunda denuncia por presuntos abusos sexuales a menores por parte de sacerdotes, informaron el miércoles fuentes judiciales, en un caso en el que el Papa Francisco ha ordenado personalmente una investigación.

Esta denuncia se presenta después de que tres sacerdotes católicos y un seglar fueran arrestados el lunes en la ciudad española de Granada, dentro de un caso que se destapó luego que un joven escribiera una carta al Pontífice contándole cómo habían abusado de él cuando era un monaguillo menor de edad.

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AUSTRALIA
SBS

Source: AAP
26 NOV 2014

The UN Committee against Torture is this week expected to address the powers of Australia’s child abuse royal commission, with implications for Australian-Vatican relations.

The committee will discuss its review into Australia’s adherence to the convention against torture in Geneva on Friday.

Abuse survivors campaigner Nicky Davis says she hopes the UN delivers a firm ultimatum.

“I hope the UN CAT very clearly puts the Australian government on notice that anything less than serious, widespread reform to ensure that in future these crimes are properly investigated, offenders are held responsible, re-offending is prevented, and survivors helped to recover, will be totally unacceptable,” she said.

Ms Davis, the head of Survivors Network for People Abused by Priests (SNAP) says the issue being addressed by the UN is “a political and legal system, that values the impunity of powerful predators far above the recovery of survivors or the safety of children”.

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Lindsay says that at age 13, she was chosen by alleged cult leader Victor Barnard to be one of his 10 “maidens” and she was expected to perform wifely duties for him, which included cooking, cleaning and having sex with him. For the next 10 years, Lindsay claims she was sexually abused by Barnard, who is now a fugitive currently facing 59 felony charges including criminal sexual conduct — and she blames her father, Carmen, for turning her over to this man. Carmen says he had no idea what his daughter was going through, because Barnard had such a mental hold on him. Lindsay finally confronts her father on Dr. Phil’s stage.

“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t count the cost of realizing that I take my full accountability and responsibility for what had taken place,” Carmen says. “I did not give a blessing or an OK.”

“You didn’t do your job as a father,” Lindsay says. “You abandoned me. You left me there for years. You saw me humiliated and kicked out of meetings in front of the whole church. I don’t understand why you keep saying you didn’t know what happened.”

Dr. Phil doesn’t think Carmen is taking full responsibility for his actions. “You cannot tell me that you became so blind that you let someone distort the scripture so badly that it made sense to you to turn your 13-year-old child over to this creep,” he says.

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MINNESOTA
KSTP

The U.S. Marshals Service has added a self-professed minister accused of sexually abusing young girls in rural Minnesota to its 15 Most Wanted Fugitives list.

Fifty-three-year-old Victor Barnard is charged with 59 counts of criminal sexual conduct involving two members of a “Maidens Group” within a church he led called the River Road Fellowship.

The U.S. Marshals joined the search for Barnard after he was charged with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

In 2000, Barnard set up what he called the “Shepherd’s Camp” on land where girls and young women lived as part of his “Maidens Group.”

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MONTANA
Missoula News

By Ted McDermott

It sounds like a lot: $16.4 million. That’s the amount the Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena has now proposed to pay those who filed suit over childhood sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of clergy and lay workers in western Montana. For those who have been involved in the long process of trying to redress the diocese’s wrongs and provide compensation for its victims, however, the planned payout isn’t enough to provide justice.

According to Bryan Smith, a lawyer representing 95 of the 362 claimants involved in a class-action lawsuit against the diocese, “The monetary amount certainly is not what we had hoped for, but the reality is that this diocese did not have the assets that a lot of other dioceses throughout the nation have to be able to fund a settlement.”

The diocese is so low on funds, in fact, that only $2 million of the settlement will come directly from its coffers. According to a bankruptcy reorganization plan the diocese filed on Nov. 17, various insurance carriers will provide the balance of the settlement money. The court will appoint a retired judge to decide how payments are broken down, based on the severity of the abuse and the effect of the abuse on victims’ lives, among other factors. The plan guarantees a minimum payment of $2,500.

In addition to the financial settlement, the diocese will make a number of non-monetary commitments designed to offer apology and prevent future abuse. While those commitments haven’t been finalized, Dan Fasy, another lawyer representing abuse survivors, anticipates they will be similar to those outlined in a 2011 settlement with Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus. The Jesuits agreed to publish the names of abusers online, send letters of apology to victims and adopt a “whistle blower policy” for reports of abuse, among other measures.

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

David Adams
Psychologist, and Co-Founder and Co-Director of Emerge, an abuser education program and national training center on domestic violence

Bill Cosby is an endearing and brilliant American icon, and apparently a caring husband and father. Does that mean he is not capable of being an alleged predatory rapist? Perhaps the most widely held myth about sexual or domestic abusers is that they are easy to spot. Some are easily detectable because they exhibit leering, angry and boorish behavior toward friends, neighbors, co-workers. Those are the ones who get caught. But in my experience having worked with thousands of abusers, only about one quarter of abusive men fit this stereotype. But here lies the problem: 25 percent is a substantial subgroup, meaning there are plenty of those guys walking around. As a result, our preconceptions about what abusers look like and sound like keeps being reinforced.

The problem is that most abusers do not fit this profile. Most do not get in trouble for their angry or controlling behavior because no one besides their victims sees it. In fact, many abusers are more likable than their victims. This is because domestic violence impacts victims more than it does perpetrators. As a result, victims of abuse often seem less friendly, more distrusting of others, and more angry and malcontented than their abusers. In contrast, neighbors and co-workers of undetected abusers often describe them as friendly, helpful and charming. In my research of intimate partner homicides, I found that this disparity even extends to these cases. Often neighbors of the killer comment that “he didn’t seem like that type of guy.” They often cite his helpfulness around the neighborhood: he was the one who was mowing everyone’s yard and coaching the children’s soccer team. Meanwhile, the victim was often see as more distant and less friendly. One result of these misconceptions is that victims of abuse become more isolated over time and are less likely to turn to neighbors for help. As one victim put it, “Everyone thought the world of him. Nobody was going to believe me.” The same misconceptions extend to workplaces where abusers are often popular with their co-workers and are viewed by their bosses as valuable and productive employees. Until his arrest for domestic violence, Ray Rice was certainly seen as a productive employee.

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MAINE
WCSH

BANGOR, Maine (NEWS CENTER) — A former Greek Orthodox priest was indicted on additional charges Tuesday.

Fifty-two-year-old Adam Metropolous was indicted on four counts of sexual abuse of a minor, possession of sexually explicit material, and violation of privacy by a Penobscot County grand jury.

Deputy District Attorney Michael Roberts said the sexual abuse charges are based on one young boy. The violation of privacy goes back to the original charge after a young woman staying in the Metropolous home told police the priest was videotaping her in the shower. Police said the young woman took the camera and left Metropolous’s home with her father. Her father went to police to report the incident.

Shortly after his initial arrest in September during an interview with Bangor detectives Metropolous admitted to inappropriately touching two boys and filming two women staying in his home.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Western Mass. Politics & Insight

SPRINGFIELD—Pulling into the parking lot of St Anthony’s Church and its connected Ceders Banquet hall, even in the dark of night, a ghastly void hangs in the background. The 2011 tornado that ripped through affluent East Forest Park neighborhood did not lay waste to any of the immediate vicinity. Yet, the once treed backdrop, something many of the city’s leafier neighborhoods have, is gone, a fitting reminder as allies of the nearby Cathedral High rallied to save and return the school to its home at Surrey Road last Thursday.

However, as some have observed it is not the tornado that truly posed the biggest existential threat to the city’s only Catholic high school. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield’s new bishop, Mitchell Rozanski, has put the brakes on rebuilding the school, prompting fears the Diocese will reverse its earlier promises. A coalition of alumni, parents of students past and present and stakeholders in the East Forest Park area, led in part by several of the city and region’s leading political figures.

Ron Chimelis rightly noted that declining enrollment has been a consistent problem at Cathedral and the tornado simply laid that bare. Both declining enrollment and the diocese’s inability or unwillingness to finance to school were a bigger threat to Cathedral than—ironically—any act of God.

That does not excuse the Diocese’s 180 on the subject. Rozanski may be unfamiliar with the Springfield Diocese’s perhaps less than ideal level of trust it enjoys with its flock, particularly as it pertains to non-religious matters. While Catholics everywhere may have fled or split with the church on issues, in the Springfield Diocese, a decided lack of communication and outreach on the secular and administrative matters have rankled Catholics here even more.

That lack of trust has in the past prompted action from political leaders, many with deep ties to Catholic education. When the Diocese closed Our Lady of Hope, the historical mother church of the city’s Irish population, and announced the same for Indian Orchard’s Immaculate Conception, supporters of the parishes turned to City Hall to erect historic preservation districts around the buildings.

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ESPANA
El Economista

[Two of the four men arrested for alleged sexual abuse of at least one child in Granada today maintained their innocence in statements made to the national police. They are Francisco Javier CM, and Sergi QM, a religion professor. The other detainees are Father Roman (RMVC) which gave his name to the group as “Los Romanones” and priest Manuel MM.]

Granada, 24 nov (EFE).- Dos de los cuatro detenidos por supuestos abusos sexuales cometidos contra al menos un menor en Granada han mantenido hoy su inocencia ante la Policía Nacional, que les ha tomado declaración en el marco de la investigación abierta, según han informado a Efe fuentes del caso.

Se trata de Francisco Javier C.M., uno de los tres curas arrestados, y de Sergio Q.M., el profesor de religión acusado junto a los sacerdotes en esta causa sobre presuntos abusos sexuales.
Los otros dos detenidos son el padre Román (R.M.V.C.), que daría nombre al conocido en ámbitos eclesiásticos como el grupo de “Los Romanones”, y el también sacerdote Manuel M.M.

Leer más: Dos de los acusados de abusos sexuales mantienen su inocencia ante la Policía – elEconomista.es http://www.eleconomista.es/legislacion/noticias/6275362/11/14/Dos-de-los-acusados-de-abusos-sexuales-mantienen-su-inocencia-ante-la-Policia.html#Kku8KvBChw34mg2S

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ESPANA
La Tercera

El Papa Francisco dijo el martes que ordenó personalmente una investigación sobre un caso de abuso sexual a un menor por sacerdotes en España porque sentía que la iglesia no debía ocultar la verdad.

Tres sacerdotes católicos y un laico fueron arrestados el Granada el lunes. El caso surgió cuando un hombre escribió al Papa diciéndole de cómo había sido abusado cuando era monaguillo.

“La leí (la carta). Llamé a la persona y le dije ‘ve a ver al obispo mañana’ y luego escribí al obispo y le dije que comenzara una investigación”, dijo el Papa Francisco al responder una pregunta de un periodista español en su avión desde Estrasburgo, en Francia, donde se dirigía al Parlamento Europeo.

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MINNESOTA
The Column

by Andy Birkey November 25, 2014

The political arm of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, as well as the Minnesota Family Council and the Minnesota Child Protection League, have ramped up efforts to oppose a policy aimed at increasing inclusion for transgender high school students.

The policy, currently being drafted by the Minnesota State High School League, would create a framework for schools that have transgender students participating in high school sports and other extra-curricular activities. Conservative Christian groups oppose the policy which they view as an extension of LGBT rights, and because they don’t believe people can be transgender.

That’s a point the Minnesota Catholic Conference sought to make in an email alert to Catholics last week.

“The Policy will potentially cause more harm to the very students it purports to help because it enables a false understanding of gender that does not promote physical or psychological well-being,” the group wrote.

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VATICAN CITY
ABC News

VATICAN CITY — Nov 25, 2014

By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press

The head of the Jesuits in the United States defended the Vatican’s new sex crimes prosecutor Tuesday, saying he had virtually no role in the order’s handling of a notorious pedophile now serving a 25-year prison sentence.

The Rev. Timothy Kesicki, president of the U.S. Jesuit Conference, spoke to The Associated Press after The Boston Globe reported that the prosecutor, the Rev. Robert Geisinger, failed to report the abuser to police when he was the second highest-ranking official in the Jesuits’ Chicago province in the 1990s.

Kesicki said Geisinger only worked for the Chicago province for about 14 weeks, from late December 1994 through March 1995, and never again. He was brought in as a temporary executive assistant to the acting provincial while the regular provincial was in Rome for a big Jesuit meeting. Geisinger had no governing authority and was tasked mainly with maintaining correspondence for his boss, said Kesicki.

After his brief stint in the province, Geisinger worked for the Chicago archdiocese and in 2001 moved to Rome to become the top canon lawyer for the Jesuits worldwide.

Court documents show that while in Rome, in 2002, Geisinger advised the Chicago Jesuits about disciplining the priest, the Rev. Donald McGuire. But the province only moved to dismiss McGuire after he was convicted in criminal court in 2006. Geisinger processed the paperwork and McGuire was defrocked within two months, the Vatican said.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

Article by: PAUL WALSH , Star Tribune Updated: November 25, 2014

The insurers say that the policies don’t apply because the abuse incidents are not “accidents.”

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has hit a major roadblock in its pledge to pay damages to victims of clergy sex abuse: Its insurance companies are refusing to cover the costs.

Now the archdiocese is going to federal court to ask a judge to set standards for the eight insurance companies to start meeting the terms of the “substantial” amount of insurance it bought “to cover the type of injuries” suffered by the clergy abuse claimants.

The lawsuit Monday by the Roman Catholic archdiocese involves at least 20 victims’ suits against the archdiocese and other “notices of claim” that have been filed since Minnesota enacted the “Child Victims Act” last year, which allowed older child abuse cases to be heard in civil court. The act also gave victims three years to sue.

In letters to the archdiocese, insurers explain that the policies do not apply because the abuse incidents are not “accidents” and “occurrences” but acts that caused harm that were expected or intended. An archdiocese attorney added that monetary limits on how much a policy covers also were in dispute.

“So far, we have not been able to reach a global resolution with all the insurance companies,” Archbishop John Nienstedt said in a statement issued Tuesday. Nienstedt said he hopes the legal action “will encourage the insurance companies … to help us achieve an equitable settlement for victims/survivors of clergy sexual abuse.”

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MINNESOTA
CBS Minnesota

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis said Tuesday it is suing some 20 insurance companies to try to force them to cover its liabilities for clergy sex abuse claims.

The complaint, filed Monday in federal court, says the carriers provided liability coverage to the archdiocese going back to the late 1940s through 1986, but have not agreed yet to contribute toward a broad settlement that it’s now trying to reach in over two dozen lawsuits and numerous other claims filed by people who say they were sexually abused by priests.

The suit asks the court to order the carriers to cover the claims and the archdiocese’s legal fees.

“So far, we have not been able to reach a global resolution with all the insurance companies,” Archbishop John Nienstedt said in a statement. “To that end, I approved the filing of a federal lawsuit in hopes the move will encourage the insurance companies to join with us in working together to help us achieve an equitable settlement for victims/survivors of clergy sexual abuse.”

Lauren Lonergan, an attorney for the archdiocese, said she would not go as far as saying the insurance companies are refusing to pay. But she said there are “a lot of complicated coverage issues” on which they haven’t agreed.

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MISSOURI
LifeSite

Hundreds of thousands of Americans know and love what would otherwise be an unknown band of traditional Benedictine nuns living in rural Missouri. Thanks to their glorious singing, which has topped the music charts time and time again, the contemplative Benedictines of Mary are famous. Their ‘Lent at Ephesus’ album spent 20 weeks at the top of the Classical Album chart this year.

These contemplative nuns are today speaking out in defense of their bishop, Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph, MO, currently the number one target of the liberal media in America and unwilling to be defended by brother clergy in the country.

“Our Bishop is a man who inspires faith, holiness, and a great zeal for the things of God,” said Mother Cecilia, the young vibrant prioress for the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles in an exclusive interview with LifeSiteNews.com.

After praying that someone’s voice would be heard in his defense, Mother Cecilia embraced this unexpected opportunity to speak out on behalf of Bishop Finn, who has been singled out over several years for censuring in the Church’s sex abuse scandal, even leading to a Vatican investigation.

“It breaks my heart that so many people only know about him what they hear from the blaring voices of the media and news outlets which have carried a prejudice against him from the beginning,” Mother Cecilia said. “Our community was shown the tenderness of Holy Mother Church through Bishop Finn.”

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ROME
Lancaster Online

Associated Press

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis says he personally called a Spaniard who said he was sexually abused by a priest and urged him to report it to the diocese.

Three priests and a layman were arrested Monday in connection with the case in the southern city of Granada.

Francis, speaking to reporters while returning home from Strasbourg on Tuesday, says he received a letter from the alleged victim and then phoned him, telling him to go to the Granada diocese in person to report the abuse that took place about 10 years ago. Francis says he wrote to the bishop and urged him to launch an investigation.

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OREGON
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, Nov. 25

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

A once-fired, twice-charged alleged child molester now gets to keep working for at least six more months around kids at a school, thanks to Portland Archbishop Alexander Sample.

And the principal who knew of the alleged molester’s past but warned no one about him gets to keep his job and suffer no consequences, thanks to Archbishop Sample.

This is stunningly irresponsible and callous behavior by Oregon’s highest-ranking Catholic official.

[The Oregonian]

Archbishop Sample must step in and overrule Central Catholic’s board which is

–recklessly keeping Patrick Jay Wallace around kids for six or seven more months, and

–refusing to fire or even discipline the school’s president John Harrington who knew about the allegations against Wallace but apparently kept silent.

First, Wallace isn’t being hired again next year because of credible accusations that he molested at least one girl. So why keep him in a school around kids even one more day? Why take such risks? Whatever became of Semple’s pledge to protect kids and the US bishops’ allegedly binding national police of “zero tolerance?”

Second, Harrington fired Wallace once due to credible child sex abuse allegations, back in 1997. When he came aboard at Central Catholic, Harrington learned that Wallace was coaching there. Yet he evidently said and did nothing to make sure others knew about Wallace. What a dreadfully irresponsible thing to do.

Third, this is not a school matter. It’s an archdiocesan matter. According to church law, custom and practice, Sample is responsible for the safety and well-bring of every Catholic in the Portland archdiocese. And Central Catholic is a Portland archdiocesan school. Students and staff there have been put in harm’s way on Sample’s watch. And they’re continuing to be put in harm’s way with Sample’s approval. How can he be so callous and reckless? He should be ashamed and his flock should be outraged.

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MAINE
WABI

Posted Tuesday, November 25th, 2014

By Catherine Pegram

A Bangor priest accused of sex crimes involving children and possessing child pornography was indicted by a Penobscot County grand jury Wednesday.

52-year-old Adam Metropoulos is charged with four counts of sexual abuse of a minor, possession of sexually explicit materials and violation of privacy.

He was suspended from his duties at St. George Greek Orthodox Church in Bangor after his arrest in September.

Police say a woman staying at his home told them Metropoulous used a hidden camera to record her in the shower.

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MAINE
Bangor Daily News

Suspended Bangor Greek Orthodox priest indicted for sexually abusing minors, possession of child pornography

By Judy Harrison, BDN Staff
Posted Nov. 25, 2014

BANGOR, Maine — The former priest at St. George Greek Orthodox Church was indicted Tuesday by the Penobscot County grand jury on four counts of sexual abuse of a minor, one count each of possession of sexually explicit materials and violation of privacy.

Adam Metropoulos, 52, of Bangor was arrested Sept. 15 for allegedly possessing child pornography and for surreptitiously photographing a woman taking a shower in his bathroom.

A subsequent investigation led the Penobscot County district attorney’s office to seek charges alleging the sexual abuse of minors.

Metropoulos is expected to be arraigned Dec. 3 at the Penobscot Judicial Center.

The number of victims was not available immediately after the grand jury handed up indictments.

The grand jury, which usually convenes on the fourth Wednesday of the month, met Tuesday due to the Thanksgiving holiday.

Metropoulos remained Tuesday at the Penobscot County Jail unable to post bail of $50,000 cash or $100,000 surety.

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SPAIN
El Pais

PABLO ORDAZ 25 NOV 2014

Pope Francis was not expected to take questions that were not related to his speech in Strasbourg on Tuesday, when he appeared before the European Parliament to talk about economic and social issues. But on the return flight to Rome, he accepted a question from journalists about an ongoing investigation in Granada, Spain involving an alleged ring of pedophile priests, who have been accused of sexual abuse.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio confirmed to reporters that he had personally received a letter from an alleged victim, now aged 24, in which the young man claimed to have been subjected to continuous abuse when he was a minor. The pope also said he had set the investigation into the allegations in motion.

“I received the letter,” the pope explained. “I read it, I called up the person, and I said to him, ‘Go and see the bishop tomorrow.’ I wrote to the bishop so that the job would get started, so that he would carry out an investigation.”

Bergoglio, who committed to putting an end to abuse in the Catholic Church as soon as he became pope, admitted that the subject was causing him a lot of concern. “How am I dealing with this? With great pain, huge pain,” he continued. “But the truth is the truth, and we mustn’t hide it.”

The Granada case took another step forward after an alleged witness to the sexual abuses against minors filed a new complaint in court on Monday. The investigating judge will have to decide whether to include this complaint in the overall case.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

November 26, 2014

Rachel Kleinman

Rabbi Meir Shlomo Kluwgant is a portly and genial man, whose wiry beard travels in several unexpected directions. A true Melburnian, he loves his coffee (short black) and is a staunch Carlton supporter.

For the past 25 years, his working life has revolved around the Jewish Care headquarters on St Kilda Road in Melbourne, where he has tended to the spiritual needs of palliative care patients comforted families and held religious services for residents and staff.

As president of the Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia, Kluwgant, 46, is currently Australia’s most senior rabbi. Like all rabbis, his training revolved around learning halachah (Jewish law). When rabbis are ordained, they are essentially qualified as legal scholars – to decide and interpret the law for their community.

For those that take up congregational roles (there are about 70 congregations in Victoria), this training leaves them woefully under-prepared for dealing with sensitive issues such as family violence, family tensions over offspring marrying outside the faith and, most recently, explosive revelations of institutional child sexual abuse within Australian Jewish communities.

“Most modern communities look to their rabbi for pastoral support – counselling, advice, religious inspiration – and a range of social supports,” says Kluwgant. Did his rabbinic studies prepare him for that? “Absolutely not.”

Kluwgant is among 27 Victorian rabbis who, over the past three years, have completed four days training organised by the community-led Jewish Taskforce Against Family Violence.

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OHIO
Ecumenical News

Henri Rose Cimatu|
Monday, November 24 2014

For pastors who abuse children the day of reckoning can arrive even if they think they have got away with their crimes.

A pastor from New Albany, Ohio has been found guilty of sodomizing a 14-year old church member in 2010.

Isrom Johnson, pastor at Prince of Peace Missionary Baptist Church, faced three counts of third degree sodomy, each carrying a one to five year sentence.

The jury recommended Judge Audra Eckerle sentence Johnson to 15 years, The Courier-Journal reported on October 30 .

The victim, now 18, testified that he waited two years to tell anyone that his pastor abused him because of fear that doing so would jeopardize the relationship of his family with the church.
His mother was a deaconess, his sister was part of the worship team, and his grandmother was a church usher.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

The first member of the De La Salle religious order to give evidence to the Historical Institutional Abuse inquiry has denied abusing boys in his care.

The brother, known at the inquiry as BR10, taught at Rubane House boys home, County Down, in the 1970s and 1980s.

Several former residents accused him of physically abusing them at the home.

Earlier, the inquiry took evidence from a lay worker at Rubane, who also denied abuse and claimed the boys pulled knives on each other in the home.

‘Dumping ground’

He said the incident happened after a De La Salle brother was removed amid sex abuse allegations.

The lay staff member worked at Rubane more than 30 years ago and has been accused of assaulting a number of boys, which he denies.

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CANADA
CBC News

Former students at residential schools in Labrador and northern Newfoundland will have to wait until September for a class action trial to start.

Plaintiffs had wanted to launch the case last week, but it ran into procedural delays.

Justice Robert Stack, in a written decision, said he needed to accommodate both the wishes of plaintiffs to move forward with the case as well as third parties, who told the court they need at least six months to be ready for a trial.

“I order that the trial commence as expeditiously as possible,” Stack wrote.

“The time [for preparation] can be lessened through co-operation among the parties coupled with forceful direction by me.”

Stack has set a date of Sept. 28 for the start of the trial, and has asked lawyers to meet with him in the next two weeks to discuss how deadlines will be met.

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Reuters

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (Reuters) – Pope Francis said on Tuesday he had personally ordered an investigation into a case of sexual abuse of a minor by priests in Spain because he felt the church should not hide the truth.

Three Spanish Catholic priests and a lay person were arrested in Granada on Monday. The case emerged after a man wrote to the pope telling him of how he had been molested when he was an altar boy.

“I read it. I called the person and I told him ‘go to the bishop tomorrow’ and then I wrote to the bishop and told him to start an investigation,” Francis said in response to a question by a Spanish reporter on his plane from Strasbourg, France, where he had addressed the European Parliament.

“I received this news with great pain, very great pain, but the truth is the truth and we should not hide it.”

It was not clear when the man had written to the pope, who was elected in March 2013. Investigations into the case in the southern province of Granada started “some time ago”, Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz told reporters, without giving further details.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

DAVID O’REILLY, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
LAST UPDATED: Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Next year’s World Meeting of Families here, capped by Pope Francis’ visit to the city, could mean “a rebirth of the archdiocese,” Philadelphia Archbishop Charles J. Chaput said Monday.

Chaput told a news conference that he could not shake off the gloom even when Pope Benedict XVI informed him last year that his battered archdiocese would host the 2015 World Meeting.

Dogged by clergy sex abuse scandals for more than a decade, the 1.4 million-member archdiocese has also been obliged to close dozens of parishes and schools in recent years because of financial stresses.

“We were in difficult situations in terms of morale and finances,” he recalled, and as archbishop here for less than two years, the news from Benedict had made him “nervous” and “not very enthusiastic.”

But his fears that the archdiocese could not muster the resources to host the World Meeting are gone, Chaput said. In fact, he is “really enthusiastic” about hosting the crowds and the pope himself.

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TENNESSEE
Christian Today

Published 25 November 2014 | Carey Lodge

Despite allegations of rape and sexual assault, US actor Bill Cosby remains on the bill to speak at a Christian event next week.

He is to give an address at Freed-Hardeman University near Jackson, Tennessee on December 5. A Memphis advocacy group for victims of sexual assault is threatening to protest if it goes ahead.

Leader of the local chapter of SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests), David Brown, said: “If he does show up on December 5 to the auditorium, I’ll be out there protesting, and I won’t be alone.”

Brown sent a letter to the university in which he insisted that if Cosby is kept as the keynote speaker at the annual benefit dinner, “your fine university will hurt so many, and you will never know the harm that you have done.”

“I got a letter back saying, ‘Oh, we are glad you got healed from your problem; however, we are still going to go forward,'” Brown told wreg.com.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Road to Recovery

Media Release – November 25, 2014

Salesian priest and former leader of the Salesian Fathers and Brothers, Richard McCormick, sexually abused many innocent minor children in the United States and one innocent minor child in Rome, Italy

Clergy sexual abuse victims from Massachusetts will speak after the sentencing of Fr. Richard McCormick to support the victims of Fr. McCormick and highlight the fact that clergy sexual abuse in Massachusetts and elsewhere is continuing

What: A press conference supporting the courageous victim of Fr. Richard McCormick whose pursuit of justice led to the guilty verdict on five counts of sexual abuse of a minor, and highlighting the cases of sexual abuse against other minor children by Catholic priests, deacons, nuns, and religious brothers.

When: Wednesday, November 26, 2014, immediately following the 9:00 a.m. sentencing of Fr. Richard M Cormick.

Where: On the public sidewalk outside the Essex County, MA Superior Courthouse at 43 Appleton Way, Lawrence, MA

Who: Bassam Haddad, a victim of clergy sexual abuse in Lawrence, MA; , Al Bruce, a victim of sexual abuse by a Carmelite brother who was based at the North Shore Mall in Peabody, MA; Dr. Robert M. Hoatson, co-founder and President, Road to Recovery, Inc. and advocate for victim/survivors throughout the world.

Why: It is welcome news for clergy sexual abuse victims of Fr. Richard Mc Cormick that he will most likely spend many years in a Massachusetts prison, and this case sheds light on so many other cases of clergy sexual abuse in Massachusetts and elsewhere. The sentencing of Fr. Richard McCormick will hopefully give many other clergy sexual abuse victims the courage to report their own abuse and begin the healing process. Two men from Massachusetts who were sexually abused by clergy will thank Fr. Richard McCormick’s sexual abuse victim for his courage and perseverance, and they will speak about their own attempts to hold their abusers accountable.

Bassam Haddad was a minor child at St. Joseph’s Melkite Greek Catholic Church in Lawrence, MA, when he was sexually abused by serial pedophile Fr. Ross S. Frey. Fr. Ross Frey was allowed to flee to Lebanon where he recently died. Bassam Haddad is attempting to heal from the effects of sexual abuse.

Al Bruce was a high school student and football player at a Carmelite Fathers and Brothers high school in California when he was sexually abused by serial pedophile Br. Damien Chong, O. Carm., who died recently after being assigned to the Carmelite priory in Peabody, MA near the Catholic Chapel and Shrine at the North Shore Mall in Peabody. Al Bruce is trying to heal from the effects of sexual abuse.

Contact: Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D., 862-368-2800

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MINNESOTA
CBS Minnesota

[with video]

November 24, 2014

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – A Twin Cities Catholic priest is blaming the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis for a drop in Sunday contributions.

Father Mike Sullivan of St. Joseph the Worker in Maple Grove recently sent a letter to his parishioners telling them the Archdiocese has repeatedly failed to protect children and vulnerable adults.

“We live on donations. Everybody is granted a one-time mistake, but you can’t keep repeating the same mistake over and over again,” said Sullivan.

And he isn’t just saying it; he’s putting pen to paper.

In a letter to church members, he pointed a finger at the Archdiocese over its handling of child abuse cases in the past.

“They have failed to act responsibly,” the letter reads. “I pray that you have done a much better job of protecting your children, because as an organization we have failed.”

Sullivan mailed the letter without consulting the Archdiocese.

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OREGON
The Oregonian

By Billy Gates | bgates@oregonian.com
on November 24, 2014

Central Catholic president John Harrington said that current freshman football coach Patrick Jay Wallace, who was fired from a David Douglas coaching job 17 years ago due to sexual misconduct allegations, will not coach next season or “in any subsequent years.”

The full statement, dated Nov. 24 and issued by Harrington, reads:

“In light of the information that has come to the attention of Central Catholic High School regarding freshman football coach Jay Wallace, the school actively investigated the situation and has concluded that it is in the best interests of the school and its students not to offer Mr. Wallace a coaching position for the 2015 school year, or in subsequent years.”

Harrington also said in an email to The Oregonian that Wallace, known as Jay Wallace, has never been on the teaching staff at Central Catholic, and only coaches at the freshman level.

He had coached high school football prior to coming to Central Catholic in 2006, and cleared a background check by the school before taking the position, Harrington said.

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AUSTRALIA
news.com.au

Ex-police commissioner tells inquiry Hutchins headmaster confessed to sex abuse offences

A 44-year mystery surrounding the sudden disappearance of a prominent private school headmaster has been solved during sensational evidence before a Royal Commission in Hobart.

Former Tasmania Police Commissioner Richard McCreadie told a hearing of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse he was about to charge Hutchins headmaster David Lawrence with child sex offences.

Mr McCreadie revealed Lawrence, and Hutchins music teacher Ronald Thomas both confessed to sexually abusing a student, but fled the country before they could be charged.

He said he was a young detective constable in the sexual crimes unit in 1970 when he spoke to a young man who came forward saying Lawrence had abused him and subsequently attempted to hand him off to another pedophile.

Mr McCreadie said he went to the school and spoke to Lawrence about the allegation.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

NOVEMBER 25, 2014

Matthew Denholm
Tasmania Correspondent
Hobart

TWO paedophile senior teachers at an elite Hobart boys’ school fled the country after being informed they would be arrested, a Royal Commission has heard.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse earlier today heard evidence from former Tasmanian police commissioner Richard McCreadie that in 1970 the headmaster and music teacher at Hutchins School both confessed to child abuse.

However, Mr Creadie said that when he returned to the school to arrange for the two to be arrested — a week or two after the confessions — he discovered they had both fled the country.

The retired police chief said no extraditions were sought and that many in the police force at the time believed dealing with “hardened criminals” was more important than pursuing pedophiles.

“We accepted that they had left the country,” he told the commission, which has heard evidence that up to eight teachers at the prestigious Anglican school during the 1960s were pedophiles.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

November 25, 2014

Rachel Kleinman

The Melbourne Orthodox Jewish school at the centre of a child sexual abuse scandal will become the focus of a royal commission hearing early next year.

Fairfax Media has learned that Yeshivah College’s handling of the scandal, including an alleged cover-up, will be probed in a hearing scheduled for up to two-weeks in Melbourne in February.

Further painful revelations about the cases of historical abuse at Yeshivah are likely and senior members of the Jewish orthodox community will be called to give evidence, as will victims of sexual abuse.

In 2013, David Kramer, a former teacher at Yeshivah College, Melbourne, was jailed after pleading guilty to molesting four students between 1989 and 1992. Fairfax Media has also learned that Kramer was deported from Australia on September 29. Kramer holds both US and Israeli passports – it is not known which country he was deported to.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Rose Bolger and Sam Ikin

The headmaster of a prestigious Hobart boys school said the school was ‘”misguided” for not taking an opportunity to apologise to a victim of sexual abuse, a royal commission has heard.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has been investigating how the Hutchins School and the Anglican Church dealt with sexual abuse claims dating back to the 1960s.

A former student, who was allegedly sexually assaulted by the school’s headmaster David Lawrence in the 60s, had been requesting an apology from the school for 20 years.

The school’s current headmaster, Warwick Dean, finally issued the apology to the former student last month.

Mr Dean told the hearings he now believed the claim made by the student, referred to as AOA, that he was sexually abused by former headmaster David Lawrence in the 1960s.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

A teacher and headmaster admitted to sexually abusing a student at a Hobart boys’ school but both left Australia before they were to be arrested, a royal commission has heard.

Former Tasmania police commissioner Richard McCreadie was a sex crime detective in Hobart in 1970 when a boy aged about 16 came to his police station to make a report against staff at The Hutchins School.

During a later interview, then-principal David Ralph Lawrence and music teacher Ronald Thomas admitted they had molested him, Mr McCreadie said.

Both men gave confessional statements and were to be arrested at a later time.

But when officers returned to the school to arrest them, Lawrence had left for the United Kingdom and Thomas for South Africa.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

Article by: CHAO XIONG , Star Tribune Updated: November 24, 2014

Former altar boy sued dioceses, order over priest’s alleged abuse.

Some church documents disclosed in a lawsuit alleging clergy sex abuse will remain confidential, a judge says.

The decision by Ramsey County District Judge John Guthmann, filed Friday, isn’t unusual in civil cases. But it illustrates the challenges to attorneys representing clients who allege they were abused by clergy.

Guthmann’s decision applies to a suit filed by “Doe 30” against the New Ulm and Duluth dioceses and the Oblates of Mary Immaculate religious order.

Doe 30, a former altar boy, alleges that the Rev. James Vincent Fitzgerald sexually abused him in 1976 when he was 13. Fitzgerald, who is dead, was employed by the three defendants named in the suit.

“While this case is in litigation, the substantial interests of the parties must be balanced against and placed in context with the interests of the general public,” Guthmann wrote in his decision. “The court also has an obligation to limit or prevent case-specific pretrial publicity that serves no purpose other than to influence potential jurors.”

Attorneys representing the Oblates and the two dioceses argued at a hearing earlier this month that Doe 30’s attorneys shouldn’t be allowed to publish key church documents or provide them to the media.

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GUAM
Pacific News Center

Written by Janela Carrera

SNAP Western Regional Director Joelle Casteix issues apology to John Toves regarding her comment that sex abuse allegations were “only rumors.”

Guam – In the latest development on the sex abuse allegations involving the Archbishop, SNAP has issued an apology to John Toves who accused Archbishop Anthony Apuron of molesting his relative. SNAP had initially called the allegations only rumors.

It’s the first time sex abuse allegations were ever made public against Archbishop Anthony Apuron and Toves says it’s a secret he’s held on to for nearly three decades. But Toves had had enough, which is why he’s decided that he’ll make the accusations on behalf of his relative instead.

Last week, Toves accused the Archbishop of molesting his relative back in the early 80s. At the time, he told PNC, Apuron was not yet an Archbishop, he was a rector. Toves says his relative was so traumatized by what happened that at one point he even attempted suicide.

Toves even says that while it’s the first time these allegations were made public, it’s no big secret. He says many seminarians will back his claim and that his relative even confided in another priest at the time.

But his allegations quickly unraveled as SNAP, or the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests seemed to counter Toves’ claims, calling allegations “only rumors.” SNAP Western Regional Director Joelle Casteix did note in her interview with PNC last week that she considered them rumors but only because no alleged victim of the Archbishop has ever come forward.

Nevertheless, Casteix issued an apology to Toves saying she did not mean to suggest that Toves himself was spreading rumors.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

On the fifth anniversary of publication of Murphy report – Archbishop Diarmuid Martin reflects

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin

Tue, Nov 25, 2014

The fifth anniversary of the publication of the Murphy Report on the management, by both Church and State organisations, of allegations of the sexual abuse of children by priests working in the Archdiocese of Dublin, brings back to me the horror of the revelations that the report contains.

Inevitably, my first reaction is to remember and recognise the horrible abuse that children experienced, which has left them with wounds and hurts in their lives which still remain today. The second reaction is to note how their hurt was in many cases made worse by the inadequacies of the responses of Church leaders and of the HSE and Garda Síochána.

Looking back over these past five years, and over the years examined by the Murphy Commission, my thoughts have curiously been dominated in these days by one group, rarely mentioned, but who are real heroes of the abuse scandals: the mothers and fathers of children who had been abused who turned to the Church authorities, not with a reaction of hostility but simply with a passionate concern to ensure that no other child would have to endure what their child did.

They did not come with legal knowhow or with psychiatric expertise or with any intention to damage the Church. They simply wanted to tell what had happened to their child and tried to put into words how deep the wound was. In some cases the story they had to tell ended in the tragedy of someone taking their own life.

Their evidence made it abundantly clear that the effects of sexual abuse of children were truly devastating. These parents came forward with great courage, very often without any other support than that of their own hurt and their own conscience. Very often, at the time they came forward, abuse was still taking place. The simple language of these mothers and fathers ought to have been enough to touch hearts and change policy.

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ESPANA
Diario de Navarra

Tres sacerdotes y un seglar fueron detenidos este lunes por la Policía en el marco de la investigación sobre supuestos abusos sexuales cometidos en Granada contra, al menos, un menor, dirigida por el Juzgado de Instrucción 4 de esta ciudad andaluza, que prevé tomarles declaración en las próximas horas.

Los tres curas arrestados son el padre Román (R.M.V.C.), que daría nombre al conocido en ámbitos eclesiásticos como el grupo de ‘Los Romanones’; Francisco Javier C.M.; y Manuel M.M.; además del seglar Sergio Q.M., profesor de Religión muy cercano a los tres anteriores, según informaron fuentes de la investigación.

Los detenidos pasaron la mañana en los calabozos de la Jefatura Superior de Policía de Andalucía Oriental de Granada, situada en la calle Palmita, y por la tarde fueron trasladados para un registro policial en un domicilio de Pinos Genil, donde permanecieron durante cerca de dos horas.

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ESPANA
20 Minutos

[Sexual abuse in the Spanish Church at least ten cases in the last two years]

No hay estadística oficial. La detención en Granada de tres sacerdotes y un seglar por supuestos abusos sexuales a menores en la parroquia de San Juan María Vianney es un caso más en un recuento que nadie parece llevar. “Parece que la Conferencia Episcopal y los Defensores del Menor no tienen mucho interés en analizar y en hacer un seguimiento a un grave problema en el seno de la Iglesia: los casos de abusos que salpican a sus religiosos”, señala Carlos Sánchez Mato, portavoz del colectivo Iglesia sin Abusos. Sánchez Mato señala que el caso de Granada es un caso excepcional: una víctima pidiendo ayuda al papa en el Vaticano ante la desidia y falta de interés que encontró en la jerarquía eclesiástica en España. “La Iglesia sigue intentando resolver estos problemas de manera interna en lugar de acudir a la Justicia”, señala a 20minutos.

Carlos Sánchez, por ejemplo, denunció hace una década a un cura de Aluche, un barrio de Madrid. Rafael Sanz Nieto fue condenado en 2006 a dos años de cárcel por abusos sexuales a menores. Además, el Arzobispado de Madrid tuvo que pagar 30.000 euros como responsable civil subsidiario. Sánchez Mato era entonces catequista de la parroquia donde se produjeron los abusos, su denuncia provocó que fuera expulsado de la parroquia. Es cierto que los casos conocidos son, de momento, pocos. La única estadística fiable la lleva el obispo canadiense Charles J. Scicluna, que en octubre de 2012 fue nombrado Promotor de Justicia de la Congregación para la Doctrina de la Fe, una especie de fiscal que investiga todos los delitos sexuales que puedan cometer los 440.000 religiosos de todo el mundo.

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ESPANA
Cadena Ser

ANA TERRADILLOS MADRID 24/11/2014

La Iglesia está colaborando con la policía y la justicia intentando localizar a testigos que puedan aportar detalles a la investigación sobre presuntos abusos sexuales cometidos por sacerdotes de la Archidiócesis de Granada. No está siendo fácil para la policía localizar a estos testigos y es la Iglesia la que está aportando nombres de personas que pudieron haber coincido con la presunta trama de sacerdotes implicados en los presuntos abusos sexuales a menores.

Se han investigado a alrededor de veinte testigos aunque según fuentes policiales cercanas a este caso solo la mitad han dado detalles sólidos y valiosos para seguir ampliando la investigación.

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ESPANA
El Periodico

MAYKA NAVARRO / GRANADA

LUNES, 24 DE NOVIEMBRE DEL 2014

La Policía Nacional ha detenido esta mañana a tres sacerdotes y un seglar acusados de los presuntos abusos y agresiones sexuales sufridas por al menos dos adolescentes cuando hacía funciones de monaguillos en una parroquia del barrio de Zaidín de Granada. Los arrestos se han producido por orden del titular del juzgado número 4 de Granada, Antonio Moreno Marín.

Fuentes al corriente de la investigación han asegurado a EL PERIÓDICO DE CATALUNYA que los arrestados son el sacerdote Román Martínez, al que se considera responsable del grupo de curas investigados y que se conocían en círculos eclesiásticos como el clan de los Romanones. Los otros dos detenidos son Manuel Morales y Francisco Javier Montes. Además hay un seglar, profesor de Religión, que también ha sido detenido.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

A former lay teacher at a Catholic boys’ home has told an inquiry that he had no knowledge of any physical or sexual abuse at the home.

The HIA inquiry was set up in 2013 to investigate child abuse in residential institutions in Northern Ireland over a 73-year period, up to 1995.

The retired teacher had a key role at Rubane House in the Ards peninsula before it closed in the mid 1980s.

He said it would be unlikely widespread abuse would have gone unnoticed.

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SPAIN
Los Angeles Times

By LAUREN FRAYER

Three Catholic priests and a teacher were arrested Monday in southern Spain’s Granada region, suspected of child sex abuse in a scandal that has shaken this traditionally Catholic country.

The arrested priests were among 10 clergymen the Catholic Church suspended from duty last week, after learning of abuse allegations. All four men were taken to national police headquarters, where they were to be held for 72 hours, and face a judge, according to police and Spain’s interior minister. No charges had yet been filed.

Monday’s arrests were the latest development in a sex abuse scandal that in recent weeks has rocked Spain, which has seen far fewer priestly abuse allegations than in the United States.

It began when a 24-year-old teacher from Granada wrote a five-page letter to Pope Francis, describing how several local priests sexually abused him as a child, when he was an altar boy in the Granada parish of Juan Maria de Vianneimeno. The alleged victim, identified only as “Daniel,” wrote that pedophile priests gradually persuaded him to leave his family and live in a parish rectory, where they repeatedly abused him.

He told Spanish media last week that he received a phone call in response to his letter from the pontiff, apologizing for the abuse and promising to investigate. The Vatican would neither confirm nor deny the phone call.

The Catholic Church then suspended 10 priests and two lay people who worked or volunteered in Granada dioceses.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Robert Mickens | Nov. 24, 2014 A Roman Observer

ROME
The blueprint for a major reorganization of the Roman Curia is ready. And Pope Francis on Monday called together all the current heads of the Vatican’s major offices (the nine congregations, three tribunals, 12 pontifical councils and several other bureaus) to explain the plan, get their reactions and hear their suggestions.

But if reports on the reform scheme are correct, the pope has already decided that several of the councils established after the Second Vatican Council will be merged into major congregations. Specifically, these are the various offices dealing with the laity and others focusing on human development and social justice.

According to the Spanish news site Religión Digital, the pope wants to simplify and reduce the number of Vatican offices and establish a “council of ministers.” An article over the weekend said this council would be made up of the heads of 12 congregations: nine that already exist and three more that will be newly created (laity, justice and communications).

But Francis does not want merely to streamline the Vatican’s bureaucracy and make it more efficient; he also wants to instill a new mentality based on service, synodality, better collaboration and interoffice communication, and respect for local bishops. He’s also hoping to drive a stake through the heart of careerism and eliminate what he’s defined as the “cancer” of clericalism.

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TEXAS
Houston Press

By Angelica Leicht Mon., Nov. 24 2014

The family of a child who was abused by an employee at Catholic Charities has filed a lawsuit claiming that the charity has a long, troubling history of covering up sexual assault cases.

The family of the victim filed the lawsuit last week, naming Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston and Carlos Valera, a former program coordinator at the charity who is now serving a 7 year jail sentence for child sexual assault, as defendants.

The lawsuit claims the organization has shown “willful disregard for the well-being of others” and has covered up abuse at the charity for nearly a decade.

According to the family, Valera began abusing the 11-year-old boy in 2007, after they sought help from Catholic Charities following their immigration from Cuba.

During a November 2007 visit, Valera approached the young child in the lobby of the charity and offered him candy to lure him to his office. While in Valera’s office, the man allegedly grabbed the child’s wrists, forcing him to touch his genitals.

On a subsequent visit, Valera again offered the young boy candy to lure him to his office, where he forced the child to sit on his lap, and sexually assaulted him, according to the lawsuit. Valera allegedly told the boy his family would not receive assistance from Catholic Charities if he told them about the abuse.

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OREGON
Willamette Week

On Nov. 19, WW reported that Patrick Jay Wallace, the freshman football coach at Central Catholic High School, had previously been fired from David Douglas High by John Harrington who was then the principal at David Douglas and is now president of Central Catholic.

Harrington fired Wallace from David Douglas after a 16-year-old girl who played on a softball team Wallace coached accused him of sexual assault during a 1997 tournament in Idaho. Charges were filed against Wallace but later dropped.

Late Friday, Central Catholic, issued the following statement to The Oregonian, in response to the daily’s questions about WW’s story.

Central Catholic High School Administration is actively investigating a disturbing report by Willamette Week newspaper, in its November 19, 2014 edition. The report describes sexual misconduct allegedly committed seventeen years ago by Central’s current freshman football coach while he formerly was employed by the David Douglas School District as a girls’ softball coach in 1997. The coach, identified in the Willamette Week article as Patrick Jay Wallace, is not currently, nor has he ever been, a member of the full time academic teaching staff at Central Catholic.

In 1997, then-David Douglas High School Principal, John Harrington, investigated the allegations of Mr. Wallace’s misconduct toward a minor female member of a softball team associated with David Douglas. Mr. Harrington concluded that the circumstances surrounding the allegations warranted Mr. Wallace’s termination as girls’ softball coach, and the David Douglas School District terminated Mr. Wallace’s employment. Mr. Harrington also referred the allegations to criminal law enforcement officials, and as the Willamette Week article notes, criminal charges were filed against Mr. Wallace but subsequently were dismissed.

In following years Mr. Wallace obtained other high school coaching positions. From 2006 through 2010, after Mr. Wallace passed an initial background check, he served as a volunteer assistant football coach at Central Catholic. Since 2011, he has served as a paid, part-time, assistant football coach at Central Catholic.

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RHODE ISLAND
Catholic League

[Timeline: Sex-abuse cases involving Rhode Island priests]

Bill Donohue comments on the way priests are treated by some media outlets in Rhode Island:

In December 2012, the Diocese of Providence learned of accusations against Father Barry Meehan; he was accused of sexually molesting adolescents. The police were immediately contacted. In January 2013, he was suspended and removed from ministry; the diocese is awaiting a decision from the Vatican to permanently remove him. Last Friday, he was arrested and indicted. Had he been a clergy member of another religion, the media would have recorded the arrest and moved on. But Meehan is a priest, and that matters greatly to the Providence Journal and NBC 10.

The Providence Journal got so excited that it published a timeline of all sexual abuse cases involving Rhode Island priests since 1972. NBC 10 got so jacked up that it summoned its I-Team: it scoured public records looking for more dirt (it actually began its investigation last year).

We could find no evidence that the Providence Journal has ever provided its readers with a timeline of sexual abuse cases involving ministers, rabbis, or public school teachers. Nor do we know of an NBC 10 I-Team report on this subject. Yet they don’t lack for material.

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MINNESOTA
National Catholic Reproter

Brian Roewe | Nov. 24, 2014

Financial records for the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese released Thursday revealed a $9 million deficit in operating activities for the 2014 fiscal year in addition to uncertainty about how high the costs of its sexual abuse scandal will ultimately rise — or where it might lead.
For its archbishop, the situation pared down to a single word: “trouble.”

“Our local Church and our Chancery Corporation, in particular, have known significant ‘trouble’ during the past year,” Archbishop John Nienstedt said in a column Thursday for the archdiocesan newspaper, one he began by quoting Jesus (Matthew 6:34), who reminds his followers to focus on today’s troubles rather than to look ahead to tomorrow. “That ‘trouble’ continues today with the disheartening financial information published in this issue of The Catholic Spirit.” …

Charles Zech, director of the Center for the Study of Church Management at Villanova University, said of the financial picture, “The numbers speak for themselves.”

“This is bleak,” he told NCR. “There’s nothing encouraging in the entire report. If I was a parishioner of St. Paul-Minneapolis, I’d find this very discouraging.”

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UNITED STATES
WBUR – Cognoscenti

In the age of DNA, why are there still statutes of limitations in sexual assault cases? In an era that venerates transparency, why are confidentiality agreements still allowed to shield perpetrators and silence their victims?

Those questions occur in response to recently revived allegations of serial rape against Bill Cosby, the comedic patriarch of the long-running television show that bears his name.

I do not know whether Cosby is guilty of the charges engulfing him. Neither do those who would convict him based on the number of accusers and the similarities in their accounts. Neither do those who, conflating the man with his TV persona, would reflexively exonerate Cliff Huxtable as incapable of such crimes.

There is a reason we have a criminal justice system, after all.

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SPAIN
BBC News

Police in Spain have arrested three priests and one layman on suspicion of child sex abuse, according to the country’s interior minister.

Jorge Fernandez Diaz said the arrests took place in the southern city of Granada, but gave no further details.

The Archdiocese of Granada suspended several priests last week after a man wrote to Pope Francis saying he was abused when he was an altar boy.

The Catholic Church has been rocked by the scandal of sexual abuse by priests.

Media reports said the latest inquiry was personally ordered by the Pope, who also telephoned the man directly to apologise on behalf of the church.

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UNITED STATES
The American Conservative

By ROD DREHER • November 24, 2014

Pope Francis this past September named an American Jesuit, Fr. Robert Geisinger, formerly the head of the Chicago Jesuits, to be the Vatican’s top prosecutor for serious crimes, including child sexual abuse. The Boston Globe reported this weekend that Fr. Geisinger had extensive knowledge for years about a serial sexual abuser within the Jesuit order, a Fr. Donald McGuire (who is now in prison), but went along with the Jesuits’ keeping the abuser in ministry. One of the chief critics of Geisinger is my friend Phil Lawler, editor emeritus of Catholic World Report, who, with his wife Leila, had a personal connection to the McGuire scandal. From the Globe:

Catholic author Lawler said Geisinger’s apparent failure to recommend stronger action in the McGuire case before the proceedings to expel him from the priesthood raises questions about his fitness to prosecute sexually abusive priests.

“What I want to see in this role is someone who will plow through the institutional resistance to prosecution,” he said. “Somebody could make the case that Geisinger was only being a loyal adviser to those in positions of greater responsibility, but the case that you cannot make is that he was aggressive.”

Lawler and his wife, Leila, housed one of McGuire’s victims during the 1999-2000 school year when the victim was an eighth-grader at the Trivium School, a small Catholic school in Lancaster. Both complained about McGuire’s behavior during his visits with the boy, but neither the school nor the Chicago Province took action to stop him.

“The boy was not abused while he was here but he was abused after he left us, after we had communicated our fears to [McGuire’s] Jesuit superiors,’’ Lawler said in a 2012 Globe interview. “That makes me livid.”

Years later, the Lawlers’ boarder notified law enforcement authorities about multiple incidents of abuse by McGuire during trips to other states and other countries, which led to federal charges of traveling in interstate and foreign commerce for the purpose of engaging in a sexual act with a person under 18 — and led to McGuire’s 2008 criminal conviction.

Got that? The fact that McGuire is in jail today is not because of anything the Jesuits — including Fr. Geisinger — did, but because one of the victims called the cops on him.

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OSTERREICH
Pressetext

[Sexual violence against children in the Church (Part 1)]

Wien (pts006/24.11.2014/10:00) – Sissi Kammerlander vom Verein VICTIMS MISSION klärt in einer mehrteiligen Serie über sexuelle Missbrauchsfälle in Österreich auf. Dieser erste Teil handelt von Jürgen.

“Mit dem Argument, Jürgen müsse für seine unbefriedigende sportliche Leistung (…) ‘bestraft’ werden, verübte Pater P. regelmäßig orale Penetration an ihm. Die Übergriffe fanden in der Dusche, nach dem Sportunterricht sowie auch im Schlafraum der Kinder statt. Pater P. penetrierte Jürgen jedes Mal oral, bis er schließlich in seinen Rachen und die Mundhöhle ejakulierte.” Dies ist ein Zitat aus dem Klagsentwurf wegen Schadenersatz-Ansprüchen gegen den Deutschen Orden der Salesianer als seinerzeitigem Internatsbetreiber.

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ESPANA
20 Minutos

Tres sacerdotes y un profesor de religión han sido detenidos en Granada en el marco de una investigación judicial sobre abusos sexuales a menores. La denuncia partió de un joven profesor, que contó al papa Francisco en una carta su calvario en el pasado, y apunta directamente al llamado clan de los Romanones, formado por una docena de personas, entre religiosos y seglares. Esta es la sucesión de los hechos:

Una carta al papa Francisco

Un joven de 24 años de Granada, profesor y supernumerario del Opus Dei, escribió al papa Francisco hace unos meses para contarle, después de varios años de guardar silencio, que había sufrido en el pasado abusos sexuales por parte de varios sacerdotes. El pontífice leyó su carta y lo llamó el pasado agosto para pedirle “perdón”; hubo incluso una segunda llamada. Tras este apoyo explícito del Vaticano, el joven, que ya no vive en Granada, acudió en octubre a la Fiscalía Superior de Andalucía.

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UNITED STATES
The Raw Story

TOM BOGGIONI
24 NOV 2014

An American Jesuit appointed by Pope Francis to oversee the prosecution of priests accused of sexually abusing minors allowed a Chicago priest to remain in the ministry for years after learning of his history of sexual abuse towards young teenage men, reports The Boston Globe.

The Rev. Robert J. Geisinger, selected by the Pope in September to be the Vatican’s “promoter of justice,’’ was the second-in-command among Chicago Jesuits in the 1990s when allegations of sexual abuse complaints were levied against the Rev. Donald J. McGuire.

McGuire was convicted in 2006 by a Wisconsin jury of molesting two boys who reported him to civil authorities. He was also convicted on federal charges in 2008 and is serving a 25-year prison sentence.

In September 2013, Jesuit officials in Chicago paid $19.6 million to settle a civil lawsuit brought by six men who claim they were molested by a former priest.

According to court documents, the Jesuits failed to notify police or take effective steps to prevent McGuire from molesting minors.

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SPAIN
CNN

By Al Goodman, CNN

Madrid (CNN) — It might all have remained a dark secret, if a young man who was an alleged victim of sexual abuse hadn’t written a letter to the Vatican. And then gotten a surprise phone call from Pope Francis, according to a Spanish digital newspaper.

On Monday, Spanish police arrested three Catholic priests and a religion teacher on suspicion of abusing a minor, Spain’s interior minister announced.

A court statement from Granada confirmed the arrests of four people “for a case of sexual abuse,” and said it would hear initial charges before a judge within three days. The investigation is under seal.
The arrests came a day after the Archbishop of Granada and other clerics took the unusual step of prostrating themselves in the cathedral during Sunday Mass, “asking forgiveness for the sins of Church, for all of the scandals that have, or might have, occurred among us,” the Granada Archdiocese website reported.

The archbishop usually does that once a year, on Good Friday, but he lay on the floor of the cathedral Sunday due to the seriousness of the allegations, a Granada Archdiocese spokeswoman said. The archbishop earlier had removed an unspecified number of priests from their duties, pending an investigation, she said.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic Culture

The American Jesuit priest who was recently appointed as the Vatican’s top prosecutor in sex-abuse cases was involved in the handling of complaints against a notorious abusive priest, the Boston Globe has revealed.

In September, Pope Francis appointed Father Robert Geisinger, a canon lawyer who had been procurator general of the Society of Jesus, as the promoter of justice at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In that post he has primary responsibility for making the case for disciplinary action against priests charged with sexual abuse.

The Globe found, however, that Father Geisinger had advised Jesuit superiors regarding the handling of Donald McGuire, who escaped disciplinary action for years before finally being convicted on multiple criminal charges for molesting young men. McGuire, once a respected lecturer and retreat master, was dismissed from the Jesuit order in 2007 and laicized in 2008; he his now serving a 25-year prison term.

Using court documents, the Globe demonstrated that Father Geisinger was aware of complaints against McGuire as early as 1995. And continued to provide advice on handling the troubled priest through 2002. During that time, Jesuit superiors failed to inform police or alert potential victims, although many complaints had been lodged against McGuire and the priest had repeatedly violated orders to stay away from adolescent boys.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Written by
Gaynor Dumat-ol Daleno
Pacific Daily News

A former Guam seminarian has forwarded a written allegation he’s made against Archbishop Anthony Apuron to Vatican officials.

John C. Toves, a Guamanian who lives in California, sent a letter to the Archdiocese of Agana on Nov. 21. It notes that a courtesy copy of the letter also was sent to the Vatican.

In it, Toves alleged that a former co-seminarian and relative, who went to school with him at a minor seminary in Guam between 1980 to 1983, was sexually molested by Apuron.

Apuron couldn’t be reached for comment yesterday, through messages left with Archdiocese of Agana officials.

Meeting with pope

Apuron had a meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Nov. 21, but the reason for the meeting was unclear.

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SPAIN
International Business Times

By Dominic Gover
November 24, 2014

Three priests and a religious studies teacher have been arrested over child sex abuse claims in Spain.

The men were held by police in Granada over historical allegations which prompted Pope Francis to order the men to apologise when they emerged.

Spain’s national police held a 61-year-old priest named as Roman, as well as fellow clerics Manuel Morales and Francisco Javier Montes and the teacher, who has not been named.

The spread of sex abuse allegations to Spain has led the Archbishop of Granada, Francisco Javier Martínez, to prostrate himself before the cathedral altar to beg forgiveness during mass.

The accused priests were reportedly former members of a church brotherhood called ‘Hermanos Focolares’ before they were expelled. Reports said they were being detained in solidarity confinement on Monday [24 November].

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ESPANHA
R7

A polícia da Espanha prendeu nesta segunda-feira (24) três sacerdotes e um professor de Religião envolvidos em um suposto caso de abuso sexual de um menor ocorrido em Granada (no sul do país) e pelo qual o próprio papa Francisco chegou a se interessar.

A ação policial tem sua origem na denúncia que um jovem de 24 anos fez a um tribunal local em outubro por supostos abusos que ocorreram quando ele era adolescente e que se prolongaram por vários anos.

Identificado apenas como Daniel, ele escreveu ao papa para contar o caso e em agosto recebeu uma resposta de Francisco perguntando por sua situação e pedindo perdão em nome da Igreja.

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UNITED STATES
Washington Post

By Abby Ohlheiser November 24

An American priest who was appointed by the Vatican to prosecute sex-abuse cases previously played a role in the church’s failure to remove one of the most infamous abusive priests from the ministry, according to an investigation by the Boston Globe.

Rev. Robert Geisinger, a Jesuit canon lawyer, was named the Vatican’s “promoter of justice” for U.S. abuse cases in September, a position roughly analogous to chief prosecutor. But back in the 1990′s, Geisinger was the second-highest ranking official among Chicago Jesuits just before sex abuse accusations against the now-defrocked Jesuit priest Donald McGuire became public. McGuire is currently serving a 25-year sentence in federal prison.

Court documents surfaced by the Globe indicate that Geisinger was personally aware of multiple complaints against McGuire as early as 1995 — and that he provided advice on disciplinary matters pertaining to the priest as late as August 2002. In 2003, a former student at Loyola Academy filed a lawsuit accusing McGuire of molesting him repeatedly in 1968 and 1969.

Although the Jesuits initially claimed that the 2003 lawsuit was the first they’d heard of accusations against the priest, evidence eventually indicated that the Chicago Jesuits knew about and concealed McGuire’s crimes for decades.

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DOMINICA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Sunday, Nov. 23

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

Dominica’s Catholic bishop must do more about a now-defrocked predator priest.

We’re glad that Fr. Reginald LaFleur has been defrocked. That, however, doesn’t “cure” him. He remains a risk to kids. And Bishop Gabriel Malzaire knows this.

So Malzaire must use his vast resources – pulpit announcements, parish bulletins and diocesan website – to urge others who saw, suspected or suffered Fr. LaFleur’s crimes to call police and prosecutors so that other kids are spared horrific trauma. Kids are safer when child molesters are jailed. Malzaire can help put this one there. But only if he shows real courage and compassion and aggressively prods others with information or suspicions about LaFleur to call law enforcement.

Catholic bishops recruit, educate, ordain, supervise, shield and transfer child molesting clerics. Then, often bishops kick them out when they’re caught. But that’s not enough. Bishops should go further and actively help law enforcement find evidence to convict these child molesters. That is the civic and moral duty of every Catholic employee – current and former – in Dominica. And Malzaire should lead by example. He should go to every place where LaFleur worked and beg victims, witnesses and whistleblowers to contact police and prosecutors now about LaFleur.

Finally, Malziare should apologize to clergy sex abuse victims for his insensitive remarks about LaFleur’s defrocking. The bishop apparently spoke only of the hurt he and the church suffered because of this priest’s crimes, ignoring the far greater pain of the priest’s victims and their families.

“This is one of the most difficult things that I have ever had to do in my life as a bishop and priest,” he said, calling it “excruciating.” “We know how much universally the church has been hurt in matters of that sort,” he said.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, Nov. 24

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

Yesterday, we called on Pope Francis to rescind his promotion of the new church child sex abuse “prosecutor.” We hope the pontiff will do this.

But if not, we hope Francis or the head of the Jesuit order will at least suspend Fr. Robert Geisinger and hire independent experts to investigate how many other alleged child sex crimes Geisinger may have hidden or may still be hiding. We strongly suspect that there are many more “skeletons” in Geisinger’s closet.

Catholic officials claim they want to “restore trust” in their leadership. Yet time and time again, they continue to promote clerics who endanger kids, keep secrets and protect predators.

Some say Geisinger “failed” to report credible abuse allegations to police. This is not accurate.

Geisinger REFUSED to report credible abuse allegations. And he did so for years. And he refuses, even now, to address these disturbing disclosures, while Francis helps him climb the clerical career ladder.

Geisinger deliberately, repeatedly and selfishly chose to put his needs, career and comfort ahead of the safety of children.

The word “failure” implies a good faith effort that went awry, like a batter swinging at but missing a pitch or a joke that doesn’t elicit laughs. What Geisinger did is much more sinister than “failure.” He intentionally hid credible reports of sexual violence against kids.

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Spanje
NOS (Nederland)

In de Spaanse stad Granada zijn drie priesters en een docent religie opgepakt die worden verdacht van seksueel misbruik van minderjarigen. Een man van 24 zegt dat hij jarenlang door de priesters is misbruikt.

Die man deed afgelopen zomer aangifte. Ook schreef hij een brief aan paus Franciscus, waarin hij vertelde wat hem is overkomen. Een aantal priesters werd toen al tijdelijk geschorst.

Tot zijn eigen verbazing werd de man daarna door de paus gebeld, schrijft de krant El Pais. Franciscus vroeg hem namens de kerk om vergeving en bood zijn excuses aan voor “deze vreselijke daden”.

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ESPANA
Clarin

Juan Carlos Algañaraz

El escándalo que conmueve a España de los curas pedófilos de Granada que actuaban como una secta para abusar sexualmente de menores durante años, y que fue denunciado a la policía y el poder judicial españoles, ha crecido hoy cuando el juez ordenó arrestar a cuatro personas: tres sacerdotes y un laico. Otros siete curas y algún seglar están también bajo investigación.

Los religiosos tienen una gran responsabilidad en los hechos, entre ellos el padre Román, de 61 años, líder de los pedófilos que conformaban un grupo poderoso llamado “los Romanones” en alusión al cura que acaba de ser arrestado.

También han sido arrestados los sacerdotes Manuel Morales y Francisco Javier Montes. El cuarto arrestado es un seglar pero cómplice de “los Romanones”.

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ESPANA
La Informaacion

El Arzobispado de Granada reitera su apoyo a las víctimas y tolerancia cero ante los abusos

Granada, 24 nov (EFE).- El Arzobispado de Granada ha reiterado hoy su colaboración con la Justicia y su ayuda a las víctimas en el caso de supuestos abusos sexuales por el que hoy han sido detenidos tres sacerdotes y un seglar y ha recordado que mantiene su posición de “tolerancia cero” con estas prácticas y con quienes las cometan.

Granada, 24 nov (EFE).- El Arzobispado de Granada ha reiterado hoy su colaboración con la Justicia y su ayuda a las víctimas en el caso de supuestos abusos sexuales por el que hoy han sido detenidos tres sacerdotes y un seglar y ha recordado que mantiene su posición de “tolerancia cero” con estas prácticas y con quienes las cometan.

El Arzobispado de Granada, según las fuentes consultadas por Efe, ha eludido valorar de momento los arrestos practicados esta mañana y se ha remitido al comunicado de prensa enviado el pasado lunes cuando se conocieron públicamente los presuntos abusos sexuales cometidos por sacerdotes contra al menos un menor.

Según las fuentes, este asunto continúa su curso judicial y el Arzobispado mantiene al respecto su total colaboración en la investigación de los hechos denunciados.

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ESPANA
Minuto Uno

La acción policial tiene su origen en la denuncia que un joven de 24 años interpuso en octubre pasado en un juzgado de Granada por supuestos abusos sexuales que ocurrieron cuando era adolescente y que se prolongaron varios años.

El joven, identificado como Daniel, escribió al Sumo Pontífice para contarle el caso y en agosto recibió una llamada de Francisco para preguntarle por su situación y pedirle perdón en nombre de la Iglesia.

En la denuncia presentada en octubre el joven incluyó el nombre de nueve sacerdotes y de dos seglares, de los que tres curas son presentados como supuestos autores materiales de los abusos y el resto como encubridores o conocedores de los hechos.

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SPAIN
El Pais

VALME CORTÉS Granada 24 NOV 2014

A Granada judge investigating a complaint filed against 10 local priests and two laypeople for pedophilia has ordered the first arrests in the case.

Three priests, all believed to be members of the ultraconservative group known as Los Romanones, and a layperson were detained on Monday and taken to National Police headquarters.

Among them are Father Román V, the alleged head of the group; Francisco J. M., who took over from Román at the helm in recent years; and Manuel M.

The Archbishop of Granada has already removed the priests accused of abuse from their duties. The inquiry was triggered by a letter that an alleged victim sent to Pope Francis, who personally telephoned the young man and ordered an internal investigation into the allegations.

The victim, who is now 24 and a teacher, allegedly suffered the abuse when he was an altar boy in the Granada parish of Juan María de Vianneimeno.

According to his account, Román convinced him little by little to leave his family: “Following his advice, I left my parents’ home when I was 17 and I went to live in the parish house with R. and two laypeople.” According to religion news site Religión Digital, one of these laypeople, known only by the initials S. Q., could be the fourth person arrested.

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SPAIN
The Local

Updated: police on Monday arrested three priests and a teacher in Spain’s Granada region as part of ongoing investigations into alleged child sexual abuse — the latest development in a case which has rocked Spain.

A judge overseeing the investigations ordered the arrests of the four men over allegations they had sexually abused at least one minor — a case that came to light after the alleged victim, now 24, wrote to Pope Francis outlining the abuse he had supposedly suffered several years earlier.

The pope reportedly called the victim on several occasions offering support and asking for forgiveness on behalf of the Catholic Church.

A total of ten priests and two laypeople are now being investigated by a Granada-based judge over their possible involvement in the paedophile ring. To date, no one has been charged with any offence.

Among those arrested on Monday — a group originally reported by some Spanish media outlets to comprise four priests — was the alleged leader of the group which is known as Los Romanones, according to Spain’s El Mundo newspaper.

Announcing the arrests, Spain’s Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz highlighted the tough stance the Catholic Church had taken against sexual abuse in recent times.

“I don’t believe anyone can doubt that John Paul II, Benedict XVI and, now, Pope Francis are being incredibly aggressive in their bid to eradicate this type of behaviour from the heart of the church,” the minister said.

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SPAIN
Reuters

Nov 24 (Reuters) – Three Spanish Catholic priests and a lay person were arrested on Monday, a police source said, in a child sexual abuse case whose victim Pope Francis has reportedly telephoned to offer the Church’s apology.

Investigations into the case in the southern province of Granada started “some time ago,” Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz told reporters, confirming four arrests, but he could not give further details because the issue is sub judice.

Granada Archbishop of Granada Francisco Javier Martinez last week removed several priests from their duties after a man wrote to Pope Francis saying he was abused when he was an altar boy.

The Argentine-born pope personally called the man in August to apologise on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church, according to the Spanish religion news website Religion Digital.

The website said the four suspects belonged to an unofficial arch-conservative group of priests and lay Catholics in Granada. The interior ministry statement did not identify them.

On Sunday, the archbishop and six priests prostrated themselves in front of the altar in Granada’s cathedral to seek pardon for sexual abuse in the Church.

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SPAIN
The Olive Press

THREE Granada priests involved in claims of paedophilia were arrested on Monday and more are under investigation after a possible victim wrote to Pope Francis.

The priests in question are the supposed leader of the group, Father Roman V; Francisco J. M., who has been taking over leadership from Roman in recent years; and Manuel M.

A fourth person believed to be a layperson has also been arrested.

Investigations are focused on a parish in the city’s Zaidin neighbourhood. There, the priests reportedly convinced young boys that sex with them would not be a sin, say sources quoted by El Pais.

It has been alleged that the group of 10 priests and two lay people lured youngsters in as altar boys or assistants and later took them to luxury apartments or a house in Granada owned by the group, where they were subjected to brutal abuse.

A source who had been close to the group said: “They are a group of friends who are something like a family, and are very supportive of one another.

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ESPANA
Noticieros

{Spanish police on Monday arrested three priests and a lay person, who is a religion professor, in connection with allegations of sexual abuse in Granada.]

MADRID, España, nov. 24, 2014.- La Policía española detuvo este lunes a tres sacerdotes y a un laico en relación con un supuesto caso de abusos sexuales a un menor ocurrido en Granada y por el que el propio papa Francisco ha llegado a interesarse.

El laico es un profesor de Religión muy próximo a los tres curas detenidos, según fuentes de la investigación.

La acción policial tiene su origen en la denuncia que un joven de 24 años interpuso en octubre pasado en un juzgado de Granada por supuestos abusos sexuales que ocurrieron cuando era adolescente y que se prolongaron varios años.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

(Vatican Radio) The Holy Father has named an Auxiliary Bishop of Milwaukee, Donald J. Hying as the new Bishop of Gary, USA. He succeeds Bishop Dale J. Melczek, whose resignation Pope Francis accepted upon having the age limit.

On Monday the Holy Father also named Fr Victor Hlolo Phalana, currently Vicar General of the Archdiocese of the Archdiocese of Pretoria, as the Bishop of Klerksdorp, South Africa.

Biography of Bishop Daniel Hying

Bishop Hying is a native of West Allis, Wisconsin. Born to Albert and Catherine Hying (both deceased) on August 18, 1963, he is the youngest of six sons. After attending St. Aloysius and Immaculate Heart of Mary grade schools, he graduated from Brookfield Central High School and Marquette University. He earned his Masters of Divinity from Saint Francis de Sales Seminary, and is currently pursuing a Doctor of Ministry degree from the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary.

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GUAM
KUAM

by Jolene Toves

Guam – Archbishop Anthony Apuron met with Pope Francis at the Vatican. According to the Vatican Information Service, the archbishop had an audience with the Pope on Friday, November 21.

Archdiocese of Agana spokesperson Father Adrian Cristobal told KUAMn News, “I don’t know what the details are of the meeting the archbishop is still off island perhaps when he gets back we will get more details overall I cans say is that the archbishop is very happy with the meeting it was a very positive meeting the archbishop was very impressed with the humility of the pope.”

According to Father Adrian, Archbishop Apuron was not summoned by the pope. He added that Pope Francis was supportive and encouraging to Apuron. Father Adrian says he expects Archbishop Apuron to return to Guam in early December.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail

I forgive him, says wife of the vicar who cheated on her with a churchgoer: Priest sacked after he exchanged hundreds of lurid texts with member of congregation

By JAMES TOZER FOR THE DAILY MAIL

A married priest has been sacked after he was caught having an affair with a member of his congregation.

The Rev Stephen Vincent, 40, exchanged hundreds of lurid text messages with the woman, who was also married.

He admitted they had sex in an alleyway and on another occasion, after she texted, ‘Come and get me’.

When he called at her house she answered the door wearing only a silk dressing gown and knickers.

But she accused him of rape and he was arrested. When police dropped their inquiry, the woman, known only as X, complained to Church of England authorities.

Mr Vincent was barred from the priesthood and his family face eviction from their home.

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BRAZIL
Folha

CRISTINA CAMARGO
COLLABORATION FOR FOLHA

After being officially excommunicated by the Vatican, former Brazilian priest Roberto Francisco Daniel, 49, recorded a video in which he “talks” to Pope Francis and questions the punishment ordered by the Catholic Church.

He was excommunicated in April 2013 by the Diocese of Bauru (329 kilometers from São Paulo city) and still awaited confirmation of his punishment by the Holy See, which occurred on November 15, 2014.

Father Beto, as he is known, was punished after recording videos in which he defended same-sex marriage and second marriages for the divorced – he also questioned church dogmas.

In the video recorded after the Vatican’s decision, he asks what he did wrong and questions the punishment.

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MINNESOTA
Austin Daily Herald

By Trey Mewes

He was a gifted theologian, a man who was expected to become a leader. He was a passionate priest who volunteered in the community, helped the Boy Scouts and was a chaplain for the National Guard.

He preyed upon high school-aged boys and sexually assaulted several Austin teens during his time in the community. He allegedly plied elementary students with drugs and alcohol. He was forced to leave the Catholic Church after he molested another man.

He was a complicated sexual predator, and his victims throughout southeast Minnesota include several people in Austin. His name was Father Jack Krough.

“He was a very smart perpetrator,” Attorney Patrick Wall said. “There was never any physical violence that he ever used. It was all coercion.”

Portrait of a wayward priest

The community at large didn’t know Krough was accused of sexual assault until the Diocese of Winona released his name last December as one of 14 priests who were credibly accused of sexual abuse.

Krough’s name wasn’t a surprise to Wall and other attorneys at Anderson Advocates, a law firm specializing in church sexual abuse cases. Anderson Advocates knew about Krough back in 2003, a year after Krough was dismissed from his duties in the church.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Nov. 24, 2014 NCR Today

ROME Pope Francis is moving ahead with plans to reform the Catholic church’s central governance structures, meeting Monday with the heads of each of the Vatican’s various departments to discuss pending changes.

While the Vatican released little information about the meeting, spokesman Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi said in a short briefing Monday that it was held “regarding the reform of the curia,” the Vatican term for its offices and departments.

The meeting, Lombardi said, took about three hours, with the pope and the department heads discussing various proposals for reform. The department heads, said the priest, “spoke and gave their observations” to planned reforms.

News of Monday’s meeting has triggered speculation of just how wide-ranging Francis’ reform of the Vatican curia might be. Some analysts have speculated the pope might be dissolving certain congregations or councils, or raising the importance of others.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Australian Associated Press
Sunday 23 November 2014

The former principal of an elite Tasmanian boys’ school has blamed the Hobart Mercury for the school’s failure to apologise to an alleged victim of sexual assault.

William Toppin told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse the Hutchins school board was worried about how the newspaper would report the event if the man, known as AOA for legal reasons, went public.

Toppin was principal at the school for a decade from 1997 and was not directly involved with the board’s investigation of the claim, which dated back to 1964, against then-headmaster David Ralph Lawrence.

But he was at board meetings when the issue was discussed and on Monday gave his version of events.

“The board, the parents, were very concerned” at the way the Mercury chose to report on “times when Hutchins has not lived up to” what the school “tries to live up to”, Toppin said.

He denied the school was worried about having its reputation damaged. It was worried the Mercury, which “never lets fact interfere with a good story”, would report the matter inaccurately.

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CANADA
Irish Times

Jennifer Hough

Mon, Nov 24, 2014

Indigenous peoples in Canada comprise First Nations people, Inuit and Métis. They account for 4.3 per cent of the national population – 1,400,685 people – and live on reserves across Canada from British Columbia to Nova Scotia.

Traditionally, First Nations people had unlimited access to large expanses of Canadian land, which was sparsely populated.

From the late 18th century onwards, European colonists forced these nomadic hunters and trappers onto tracts of land – reserves – and encouraged aboriginals to assimilate into their culture.

Chief Paddy Peters (left) at a meeting with the Pikangikum working group. Photo: Jennifer HoughCanadian youth pushed to despair in poverty-stricken indigenous community
These efforts eventually resulted in forced integration, through a residential school system that removed more than 150,000 aboriginal children, sometimes as young as six, from their homes, and placed them in Christian-run boarding schools.

There they were subjected to extreme cultural suppression, emotional deprivation and physical, and at times, sexual abuse.

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SCOTLAND
Herald Scotland

Gerry Braiden
Senior reporter

Monday 24 November 2014

SCOTLAND’S newest ­Catholic bishop will take up his new post after almost of a year of being embroiled in an ongoing row involving a controversial fellow cleric.

Pope Francis appointed Father William Nolan as Bishop of Galloway on Saturday.

Father Nolan is currently parish priest of Our Lady of Lourdes, East Kilbride and Vicar General of the Diocese of Motherwell, effectively its number two.

But Father Nolan has also been a key player in the fallout surrounding Father Matthew Despard, suspended last year after publishing allegations of homosexual bullying within the Church in the wake of the Cardinal O’Brien sex scandal.

Father Nolan had been charged with taking over his colleagues parish in Blantyre, South Lanarkshire, and has been called to give evidence in a case to remove Father Despard from the parish house.

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