ABUSE TRACKER

ROME
Reuters

By Philip Pullella December 20, 2014

A branch of the Franciscan religious order that runs churches and convents in 110 countries says fraud by some of its monks has plunged it into grave financial difficulty.

The Italian news magazine Panorama reported in its latest edition that tens of millions of euros of funds from the Order of Friars Minor (OFM) had been invested in offshore shell companies.

Brother Michael Perry, head of the OFM, said an internal investigation had uncovered “a number of questionable financial activities that were conducted by friars entrusted with the care of the patrimony of the order”.

In a letter posted on the OFM website on Wednesday, Perry said the order was in “grave, and I underscore grave, financial difficulty, with a significant burden of debt”.

The letter, addressed to all friars, said the order’s general treasurer had resigned but gave no details.

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NEW YORK
The Atlantic

Nearly 50 years ago, a penniless monk arrived in Manhattan, where he began to build an unrivaled community of followers—and a reputation for sexual abuse. The ongoing accusations against him expose a dark corner of the Buddhist tradition.

Mark Oppenheimer
DECEMBER 18, 2014

I. “That was the beginning of the sangha”

Eido Shimano, a Zen Buddhist monk from Japan, arrived at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport on December 31, 1964, New Year’s Eve. He was 32 years old, and although he had just spent four years in Hawaii, part of the time as a university student, his English was poor. Besides his clothes, he brought with him only a small statue of the Buddha and a keisaku, the wooden stick a Zen teacher uses to thwack students whose posture sags during meditation. Before flying east, he had been offered temporary lodging by a couple who lived on Central Park West. Not long after he arrived—the very next day, according to some versions of the story—he began to build his sangha, his Zen community. He did this, at first, by walking the streets of New York. The followers just came.

“It was the middle of the 1960s, full of energy,” Shimano recalled when we met for lunch last year. “And all I did was simply walk Manhattan from top to the bottom. And in my Buddhist robe. And many people came. ‘What are you doing? Where are you going?’ So I said, ‘I am from Japan and doing zazen practice’”—Zen meditation. It was a kind of Buddhism, he told the curious New Yorkers. Now and again, somebody asked to tag along. Yes, Shimano told them. Of course. Before long, he had a small space to host meditation sessions, and all were invited. “Little by little, every single day, I walked entire Manhattan,” Shimano told me in his still-fractured English. “And every single day I picked up two or three people who were curious. And that was the beginning of the sangha.”

Within weeks, Shimano had an enthusiastic sangha of perhaps several dozen novices, who met daily for zazen. They rotated from one follower’s apartment to the next, learning to sit and meditate. One day a Canadian woman in her 60s, who had been sitting with Shimano every day, said she was returning to Canada, and she handed him an envelope. “I opened it, and there was a check for $10,000!” Shimano said. He used that money to rent a five-room apartment at 81st Street and West End Avenue. Very soon thereafter—this is still early 1965—a friend told him that he might try to affiliate his growing organization with the Zen Studies Society, which had been founded by D. T. Suzuki, the Columbia University instructor whose English-language books had helped popularize Buddhism in the United States. Suzuki had returned to Japan, and his society was now moribund. Shimano went to see the society’s lawyer, George Yamaoka. “I said to George, ‘I came here about the ZSS,’ and he said, ‘Would you like to join?’ ‘Yes!’ I just signed. And then he immediately resigned, and I became the only ZSS!”

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VATICAN CITY
Headlines from the Catholic World

Rome, Italy, Dec 19, 2014 / 03:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- “To communicate is to unify” is the first of the “Ten Words of Communication” that Fr. Federico Lombardi, director of the Holy See press office, described in a lecture given Nov. 24 at the Pontifical Salesian University in Rome.

Fr. Federico Lombardi was given an ‘honoris causa’ degree in social communication from the university, and in the lecture he held at ceremony he traced with passion the 25 years he has spent working in the Church’s communications, summing up all the teaching he had learned in Ten Commandments, which he called ‘Ten Messages.”

“There are people who think that conflict must be fed in order to make communication more dynamic. Let me stress that I am radically against this view; I hate and refuse this kind of communication. And this truly comes from my heart,” Fr. Lombardi said.

The first message is “communicating to unify,” and it is built on the background of the personal experience of Fr. Lombardi, who was appointed director of Vatican Radio in 1991, “on the day when the first bombs of the First Gulf War were lobbed.” …

Fr. Lombardi then spoke about his experience as director of the Holy See press office, and of how much his work had been tried, especially in the cases of the clergy sex abuse scandal and of Vatican finances.

On the side of sex abuse scandal, Fr. Lombardi reminded that “Benedict XVI had spoken several times about the path of purification of the Church regarding these horrible signs of the presence of evil within herself.”

“Being on the frontline as a communicator permits and requires one to be involved in a very deep way in this path, and to take part in it trying to pay with your own personal suffering a little contribution to the huge price the Church has to pay off it,” Fr. Lombardi confessed.

And he stressed that the Seventh Message is “being ready, in solidarity with the community of the Church, to pay the often painful price of growing up in truth.”

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INDIANA
WLKY

SEYMOUR, Ind. —A southern Indiana pastor accused of making sexual advances on a 27-year-old man near a lake is charged with battery.

Gaylard Williams, 59, is the pastor at the Praise Cathedral Church of God in Seymour.

On Tuesday morning, he appeared at the Jackson County Superior Court.

According to court documents, the victim told police that on Friday, Williams approached his vehicle that was parked at Cypress Lake.

He said that when he rolled down his window, Williams grabbed and squeezed his genitals, and then requested that he perform oral sex.

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INDIANA
The Raw Story

TRAVIS GETTYS
19 DEC 2014

A southern Indiana minister who preaches against homosexuality was accused of soliciting gay sex at a park.

Gaylard Williams, pastor of Praise Cathedral Church of God in Seymour, was charged with battery after a man said he grabbed his genitals last week at Cypress Lake.

A man parked at the lake Dec. 12 said the 59-year-old Williams asked him to roll down his vehicle window, then reached in and squeezed his genitals and offered to perform oral sex.

The man told the pastor he was “barking up the wrong tree” and acted like he was reaching for a gun.

He said Williams fled, but he wrote down his license plate number and called police.

Officers said Williams had gay adult material in his vehicle when they stopped him later.

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ALABAMA
WAFF

COLBERT COUNTY, AL (WAFF) –

A former Sheffield church leader facing sex abuse charges is scheduled to go to trial next month.

The Alabama Bureau of Investigation arrested Oliver Brazelle back in January.

He was working as the minister of music at First United Methodist Church when an investigation by the church found inappropriate behavior between Brazelle and three male victims.

Church leaders turned over their findings to police, who charged Brazelle with sodomy and sexual abuse.

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SOUTH CAROLINA
Aljazeera

December 19, 2014 4:45PM ET
by Claire Gordon @clairedon Google+

The blistering report on how Bob Jones University has handled sexual abuse reports is still warm off the presses and some victims are already skeptical that the university is willing to acknowledge the seriousness of what it exposed. They say BJU’s response reeks of damage control.

In its two-year independent investigation, the nonprofit Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment found that sex abuse victims on the Greenville, South Carolina, campus were often urged to find the sin behind their rapes, pushed to repent for any pleasure they might have experienced during their assaults, and encouraged to reach out to their abusers and express forgiveness or ask forgiveness from them. The university’s counselors were unlicensed and had no formal training in psychology.

Some students, the GRACE report found, were punished for reporting their abuse. Almost half said they were advised not to go the police. The 301-page dossier also paints a campus culture where sex abuse victims were made to feel like “damaged goods.” In the past year, America Tonight has interviewed five former Bob Jones students who reported their abuse to school officials and all say they have yet to recover from how BJU treated them.
Thumbnail image for Report: Bob Jones University shamed victims of sexual assault
Report: Bob Jones University shamed victims of sexual assault

For decades, Bob Jones University, a self-described fundamentalist Christian college, has urged sexual abuse victims not to go to the police and counseled them to repent for the blame it said they share, according to an extensive independent investigation published last week.

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CALIFORNIA
Highland Community News

On Monday, Dec. 15, 2014, at approximately 1 p.m., deputies from the Victorville Sheriff’s Station began investigating a report of unlawful sexual intercourse with a boy, now 17. The reporting party, the victim’s father, called the station to report that his son disclosed he had a year long sexual relationship with Joseph Kealoha, 26, a volunteer group leader at the High Desert Church in Victorville. Kealoha’s role was to mentor and assist adolescents in small study groups.

The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department’s Specialized Investigations Division, Crimes against Children Detail took over the investigation. Upon further investigation, detectives learned that the victim met Kealoha while attending High Desert Church, specifically during a youth beach trip in August of 2013. Shortly after meeting, Kealoha began a dating relationship with the minor which ultimately led to sex acts. According to statements provided by the victim, these acts occurred monthly throughout the duration of the relationship, which came to an end in September 2014.

In addition to Kealoha’s volunteer position at the High Desert Church, he is also employed as an instructional aid at Morgan Kincaid Preperatory School, as well as a program leader at Bradach Elementary School’s “Think Together” program, both schools being part of the Adelanto School District. Kealoha was subsequently relieved of his duties at the church and the schools.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Telegram & Gazette

By Samantha Allen TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

WORCESTER — Hours after President Barack Obama said Sony Pictures “made a mistake” by shelving “Interview,” Worcester-area filmmakers and movie lovers weighed in on the company’s decision to abandon releasing the film.

Andrea Ajemian, a filmmaker who has set several of her films in Worcester County and who is a Worcester native, said the decision by Sony to pull the film was “mind-blowing.” …

Worcester-based filmmaker George “Skip” Shea, along with Ms. Ajemeian, said he would like to see “The Interview” released online.

“In a lot of ways, Sony’s hands were tied because it appears the cinemas refused to show it and if they’re pulling distributions, then (the film’s producers) don’t have much leverage,” he said.

Mr. Shea noted that as a survivor of sexual abuse allegedly by priests, he has aired films with subject matter critical of the Roman Catholic Church. He’s now in production with his current film that also touches on the topic, titled “Trinity,” and says Sony’s call now sets a dangerous precedent.

“It’s very sad to me that regardless of the merit of the art (of ‘The Interview’) this has happened,” he said. “How often are we going to cave to this stuff?”

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CHICAGO (IL)
ABC 7

Friday, December 19, 2014

CHICAGO (WLS) — The ABC7 I-Team reports that the sex abuse investigation of a popular North Side priest has been closed and no charges will be filed.

Since April, Fr. Michael O’Connell of St. Alphonsus Church in Lakeview has been under investigation for allegedly abusing a boy while serving at a different church. O’Connell has always maintained his innocence.

The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests says it is disappointed and wants O’Connell suspended.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

KATHRYN POWLEY HERALD SUN DECEMBER 20, 2014

AN education official who worked at a UK council slammed for not protecting children from a plague of sexual exploitation has been sidelined from her Victorian job.

Dr Sonia Sharp has been serving as Victoria’s deputy secretary of early childhood and school education but has been moved to the Department of Health and Human Services while her recruitment is reviewed.

Education Minister James Merlino has previously said Dr Sharp should never have been hired – but now he is in government, he has stopped short of firing her.

From 2005-08 Dr Sharp was director of children’s services at Rotherham Borough Council, where an estimated 1400 children – some as young as 11 – were sexually exploited between 1997 and 2013.

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CALIFORNIA
Mercury News

Bay City News Service

POSTED: 12/19/2014

DALY CITY – A Daly City pastor at a church in San Francisco will face trial for one count of child molestation, a San Mateo superior court judge ruled Thursday.

Venije Singkoh, 70, pleaded not guilty to three counts of child molestation, said San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe. San Mateo Superior Court Judge Donald Ayoob ruled today that Singkoh would face only one count at trial.

Wagstaffe said the judge determined that two less serious allegations involving the pastor kissing young girls at the church on the cheek and one kiss on the lips didn’t fall under “lewd intent.”

Prosecutors said Singkoh is a pastor at the Indonesian Pentecostal Foursquare Church in San Francisco. On Feb. 7, a 9-year-old girl told her parents he molested her on multiple occasions over the past year by placing her on his lap and kissing her inappropriately.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

At his Christian Catholicism site, Jerry Slevin argues that Pope Francis is making “a huge papal mistake” and “exhibiting his papal fallibility” by passing over Father Thomas Doyle, one of the leading authorities on the Catholic abuse crisis, as Francis adds new members to his commisison on abuse. Jerry points to Tom Doyle’s extensive qualifications to serve the church on this papal commission:

Fr. Doyle is a Dominican priest with a doctorate in canon law and five separate master’s degrees. He sacrificed a rising career under Cardinal Laghi at the USA’s Vatican Embassy to become an outspoken advocate for Catholic Church priest sexual abuse victims. Since 1984, when he first became involved with the issue of sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy while serving at the Embassy, he has become an expert in the canonical and pastoral dimensions of this problem—working directly with victims, their families, accused priests, bishops, and other high-ranking Church officials.

Doyle has interviewed over 2,000 victims of clerical sexual abuse in the USA alone, and has been the only priest to testify in court in over 200 cases as to the legal liability of the Church. He has developed policies and procedures for dealing with cases of sexual abuse by the clergy for dioceses and religious orders in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

As an expert in this area, Doyle has delivered lectures and seminars for clergy and lay groups throughout the U.S. In 1989 he appeared as an expert witness before the legislature of Pennsylvania concerning that State’s child protective legislation. As an Air Force major stationed in Germany, and who also served as a military chaplain in Iraq, he holds 16 military awards and decorations for distinguished service.

Doyle currently serves as a consultant/court expert in clerical abuse cases throughout the U.S., Canada, Ireland, Israel and the United Kingdom. The Voice of the Faithful honored Doyle with their first Priest of Integrity Award in 2002. In recognition of his advocacy work for the victims of clerical sexual abuse, he has also received the Cavallo Award for Moral Courage (1992) and the Isaac Hecker Award from the Paulist Fathers (2003). In June of 2003 Doyle was also issued an official commendation from the Dominican Fathers for his “prophetic work in drawing attention to clergy sexual abuse and for advocating the rights of victims and abusers.”

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UNITED STATES
GlobalPost

Jason Berry

Trailed by bitter controversy, a six-year investigation of American nuns ended Tuesday with the release of a Vatican report that praised the religious sisters “for all that they contribute to the church’s evangelizing mission.”

The document released by Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life – a major Vatican office – drew on dozens of interviews in convents and religious houses which disproved allegations that caused Cardinal Franc Rodé, as prefect of the congregation in 2008, to order an investigation into “a certain secular mentality … and perhaps also a certain ‘feminist’ spirit,” as Rodé told Vatican Radio at the time.

One of the more conservative cardinals in the Vatican, Rodé was not at the Tuesday press conference at which his successor, Brazilian Cardinal João Braz de Aviz, struck a tone of harmony with the nuns.

Within the politics of the Roman Curia, Braz de Abriz has also emerged as an ally of Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), the American organization representing superiors of 80 percent of the orders of religious sisters. A separate Vatican office, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, had imposed an overseer, Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain, the vet the group’s speakers and publications.

“The Vatican realized they messed up this situation and they are trying to mend fences,” Sister Christine Schenk of Cleveland told The GroundTruth Project. …

As the investigation Rodé launched made news, Vatican officials saw the blowback in media coverage which cast the nuns, working on the margins with the poor, confronting cold male bureaucrats in Rome.

Rodé was an unstinting supporter of Father Marcial Maciel, a notorious pedophile and founder of the Legion of Christ, an order enmeshed in lawsuits in America for duplicitous fundraising. …

Cardinal Rodé, in an interview with this writer in his Vatican apartment two years ago, said that the call to investigate had come from Cardinal Bernard Law, who resigned as Boston archbishop in 2002 amid the abuse crisis, and soon found redemption in Rome as pastor of a great basilica. The other prelate behind the call, said Rodé, was Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore.

In 2003, Lori approved a $21 million abuse victims settlement involving several priests. Voice of the Faithful criticized him for allowing an accused monsignor to stay in his parish until he resigned, facing 2011 sex harassment allegations from a female church worker.

That double standard in leadership – bishops stained by scandal in the abuse cases, accusing nuns of bad faith – may be at its eclipse.

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ROME
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

ROME (AP) — The main Franciscan religious order in the Roman Catholic Church is in a financial crisis because of alleged wrongdoing from within and outside its ranks.

The head of the Order of Friars Minor said in a statement from Rome that questionable financial activities by some friars and outsiders have caused a grave situation that threatens the financial stability of the religious order.

The Rev. Michael Perry says the order’s financial oversight was either too weak or was compromised.

The general treasurer in the order’s administrative offices has resigned. The order has notified church and civil authorities and is reviewing its finances going back to 2003. Perry revealed the crisis in a statement posted Wednesday on the order’s website.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Business Journal

Rich Kirchen
Senior Reporter-
Milwaukee Business Journal

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee has reached a $2.3 million settlement with insurers in the archdiocese bankruptcy case, and half of that amount would go to a proposed settlement of allegations of clergy sexual abuse.

The latest settlement would bring to $5.15 million the total amount available to people who have sought compensation. The new settlement figure was included in a motion filed Wednesday and is subject to approval by U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Susan Kelley in Milwaukee.

“Our relentless pursuit of insurance carriers has brought $10 million into the (reorganization) plan,” archdiocese spokesman Jerry Topczewski told the Milwaukee Business Journal Friday.

Lloyd’s of London previously agreed to pay $8 million to the archdiocese with $4 million of that planned as payments to clergy abuse victims and $4 million to pay the administrative costs of the case. The new development involves a settlement with OneBeacon Insurance Co. and Stonewall Insurance Co.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel Dec. 19, 2014

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee has reached an agreement with its insurance companies for an additional $2.3 million, bringing to $10.3 million the amount its insurers will pay to help the archdiocese emerge from its nearly 4-year-old bankruptcy.

Under the terms of a motion filed in the bankruptcy this week, half of the $10.3 million would go to pay administrative costs — primarily legal fees that have now topped $16 million. Half would go into a trust for 128 of the bankruptcy’s creditors, men and women who were sexually abused by diocesan priests as children.

The settlement brings the amount available to those survivors to $5.15 million, from $4 million in the archdiocese’s original plan of reorganization.

Victims and their attorneys blasted the settlement as inadequate, and said they would object to the plan in court.

“All the insurance settlements here shut survivors out of the process and are taking money from survivors and putting it in the pockets of the bankruptcy attorneys,” said Michael Finnegan, whose St. Paul, Minn., firm represents most of the 575 men and women who have filed claims in the bankruptcy alleging they were molested by priests and others connected to the church.

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KENTUCKY
The Courier-Journal

Matthew Glowicki, The Courier-Journal December 19, 2014

A judge has denied the request of convicted child molester Rev. James Schook to be released from prison after serving six months of a 15-year sentence.

Schook, 67, was found guilty in April of molesting a 13-year-old alter boy in the 1970s. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison on three counts of sodomy and one count of indecent and immoral practices.

Jefferson Circuit Court Judge Mitch Perry denied the motion for shock probation ahead of a hearing scheduled for Friday.

“The Defendant shall remain in custody to serve out his sentence in accordance with the law,” Perry wrote in the order denying Schook’s request.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
National Catholic Reporter

Marie Rohde | Dec. 19, 2014

The Milwaukee archdiocese has asked a bankruptcy judge to approve a settlement with three insurance companies, a move that would more than double the $4 million the archdiocese has offered the survivors of clergy sexual abuse.

The archdiocese and the insurance companies — London Market, OneBeacon, and Stonewall — have been negotiating for more than four years and entered into mediation several times. According to the proposed agreement, the insurance companies will buy back policies for a total of $10.3 million. Half of the money will go to a fund for victims, and the other half will go toward legal fees that now amount to more than $18 million, some of which has already been paid.

The settlement agreement will not be finalized until approved by the bankruptcy judge, Susan V. Kelley, and is likely to be opposed by survivors who have filed claims, according to a lawyer and a survivor representative. Kelley could approve the agreement without the go-ahead, but it is unlikely, as no other diocesan or religious order bankruptcies have proceeded in the face of such opposition.

Jerry Topczewski, a spokesman for the Milwaukee archdiocese, said in a statement: “Because of the archdiocese’s relentless pursuit of a settlement with insurance carriers, it has brought more than $10 million into the plan of reorganization which benefits abuse survivors and it brings us another step closer to a resolution of the Chapter 11 proceeding.”

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ROME
Rorate Caeli

From the letter of the Franciscan Minister General, Brother Michael Perry, OFM:

In an effort to live as children of the light, the General Definitorium and I wish to bring to light a grave situation in which the General Curia of the Order now finds itself. The matter involves our financial stability and the patrimony of the Order. While our first concern has and remains verifying the nature, extent, and impact of what has occurred, we also recognize the significant role that external actors, people who are not members of the Order, have played in creating this grave situation.

In September 2014, the General Definitorium initiated a series of steps in order to conduct an internal inquiry into the financial dealings of the Office of the General Treasurer. A sub-commission within the General Definitorium was created to serve as an advisory group. Together we charted a course to collect reliable information, identify potential concerns, and examine all available documents in order to reach well-informed decisions about how best to proceed to guarantee the financial soundness of the Order in a manner consistent with our Franciscan values and way of life. We immediately sought advice from a highly regarded group of lawyers who continue to work for the Order. Competent ecclesiastical authorities also were informed of our concerns and have been updated on a regular basis. In addition, Provincials and Custodes in a number of the Franciscan Conferences also were provided with a brief, albeit incomplete, explanation of our situation and were requested to demonstrate their solidarity with the General Curia through prayer and in other significant ways. I regret that not all Provincials and Custodes were contacted. I ask of all Provincials and Custodes your understanding and for a financial contribution to help address the current situation, which involves also the repayment of significant debts. …

Right, “without the full knowledge” — of those who should have full knowledge… It is just so nice that the predecessor of the current Minister General for ten years (!), current Abp. José (“Call me Pepe”) Rodríguez Carballo, was made Secretary and the personal man of the Pope in the Congregation for Religious. The same man who has been a key player in the ongoing dismantling of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate.

Quite a promising start for the Year of Consecrated Life!

(Note: both in Italy and in many other places, large orders such as the Friars Minor also receive massive amounts of public funds, both through tax breaks and direct government contributions to their educational, healthcare, and charitable activities. Will authorities in Italy and elsewhere act accordingly considering the shady financial dealings of the past? As with the ongoing abuse scandal, will the intervention of Caesar be necessary to bring justice to this situation?)

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ROME
Catholic Herald (UK)

by Madeleine Teahan posted Friday, 19 Dec 2014

The Franciscans is facing a “grave situation” following an internal investigation into the state of its financial affairs.

In a letter to the order, first reported by Rorate Caeli , Brother Michael A Perry, Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor (OFM), said: “I wish to bring to light a grave situation in which the General Curia of the Order now finds itself. The matter involves our financial stability and the patrimony of the Order. While our first concern has and remains verifying the nature, extent, and impact of what has occurred, we also recognise the significant role that external actors, people who are not members of the Order, have played in creating this grave situation.”

Brother Perry said that one of the key findings of the investigation involves a “number of questionable financial activities that were conducted by friars entrusted with the care of the patrimony of the Order without the full knowledge or consent of the former and current General Definitorium.”

He continued by saying that as a result of this finding the order had involved the civil authorities. He said: “Because of the scope and magnitude of these activities, they have placed the financial stability of the General Curia at grave risk. These questionable activities also involve people who are not Franciscan but who appear to have played a central role. For these reasons, the General Definitorium, working in unanimity, has decided to call upon assistance from civil authorities to take up this matter.”

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service

By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Ineffective budgetary oversight and “questionable” financial activities have plunged the Order of Friars Minor into significant debt and an extremely serious financial situation, its minister general said.

Following an internal investigation into the order’s finances, U.S. Franciscan Father Michael Perry, the superior, announced to all members of the order that its general curia “finds itself in grave, and I underscore ‘grave,’ financial difficulty, with a significant burden of debt.”

He attributed the situation to unapproved financial activity by some friars as well as non-Franciscans and said the curia had retained lawyers and contacted civil authorities.

The announcement was published as an open letter on the order’s website Dec. 17. The announcement included a plea to Franciscan superiors around the world for “your understanding and for a financial contribution to help address the current situation, which involves also the repayment of significant debts.”

An investigation begun in September discovered that “the systems of financial oversight and control for the management of the patrimony of the order were either too weak or were compromised, thus limiting their effectiveness to guarantee responsible, transparent management,” Father Perry wrote.

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ROME
Deutsche Welle

The Order of Friars Minor (OFM), the Catholic Church’s most prominent brotherhood of Franciscan friars, has said dubious dealings have led the OFM into serious financial trouble. An investigation is underway.

In an open letter posted on the OFM website Brother Michael Perry, head of the OFM, revealed that the results of an internal investigation showed the order was in serious financial difficulty and deeply in debt. Shady dealings by some friars with fiduciary responsibilities had put the order’s finances at risk.

The Italian news magazine Panorama reported in its latest edition, under the headline “Franciscans at the cusp of bankruptcy” (Francescani sull’orlo della bancarotta), that tens of millions of euros of the OFM’s funds had been invested in offshore shell companies. Some of the money apparently went missing in connection with the purchase and renovation of a hotel in central Rome.

Perry’s letter, addressed to all the Order’s friars, said the order’s general treasurer, Giancarlo Lati, had resigned, but gave no details.

Perry’s letter identified “three important elements” as having emerged from the OFM’s internal investigation into the order’s finances.

“First, the General Curia finds itself in grave, and I underscore ‘grave’ financial difficulty, with a significant burden of debt,” Brother Perry wrote.

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ROME
The Guardian (UK)

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Rome
Friday 19 December 2014

The Franciscan order of monks has announced it is in grave financial difficulty after the discovery of a massive fraud.

An internal investigation begun four months ago has found that some monks who ran the Franciscans’ endowment engaged in “questionable financial activities” that have emptied the 800-year-old order’s coffers.

The Franciscans are a community within the Catholic church who follow St Francis of Assisi, who was known for advocating a life of poverty.

The order’s financial woes were disclosed in a rare open letter published this week by American monk, Michael Perry, the Franciscans’ minister general.

He painted a desperate picture of an order whose viability is in doubt and facing a “significant burden of debt” as a result of the deception. He also cast blame outside the church. “These questionable activities also involve people who are not Franciscan but who appear to have played a central role,” he said in the letter.

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ROME
Telegraph (UK)

By Nick Squires, Rome
19 Dec 2014

It was founded 800 years ago by St Francis of Assisi, whose name was taken by the current Pope, but the Franciscan order of friars has found itself mired in a financial scandal allegedly involving fraud and embezzlement of tens of millions of euros.

A branch of the Roman Catholic order had invested some of its money in offshore shell companies based in Switzerland, which had in turn been involved in arms and drugs trafficking, Italian media reported.

A three-month-long internal investigation has found extensive financial irregularities at the heart of the Rome-based order, which has around 14,000 members worldwide and owns churches and convents in more than 100 countries.

Michael Perry, the American head of the Order of Friars Minor, took the unusual step of writing an open letter to friars and monks to inform them that the historic order now finds itself in a “grave situation”, with millions of euros believed to be missing from its accounts.

He said the General Curia, the governing body of the order, “finds itself in grave, and I underscore ‘grave’, financial difficulty, with a significant burden of debt.”

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ROMA
Panorama

Ignazio Ingrao

Lo scandalo è scoppiato nel mese di ottobre e anche il Papa lo è venuto a sapere: la procura svizzera avrebbe sequestrato alcuni depositi della congregazione dei frati minori francescani, per decine di milioni di euro, perché investiti in società finite sotto inchiesta per traffici illeciti, si parla addirittura di armi e droga. Gli investimenti risalgono al periodo in cui era superiore dei frati minori José Rodriguez Carballo, oggi segretario della Congregazione per i religiosi. Sotto accusa l’ex economo generale, padre Giancarlo Lati, che è stato fatto dimettere, e alcuni consulenti. Il sequestro dei fondi, gli interessi passivi da pagare e la perdita di una parte del patrimonio per investimenti spericolati, hanno messo in ginocchio i frati tanto da costringere il nuovo ministro generale, padre Michael Perry a recarsi negli Stati Uniti e in altre province a chiedere una colletta per aiutare la Curia generalizia.

I frati hanno tentato per settimane di tenere segreto questo scandalo. Finché Panorama lo ha scoperto e ha chiesto ufficialmente a mons. Carballo, padre Perry e al nuovo economico, padre Silvio de la Fuente di commentare queste informazioni. Da tutti è arrivato un secco “no comment”, forse nella speranza che nulla ancora sarebbe trapelato all’esterno. Una volta appreso che sul numero di Panorama in edicola sarebbe stata diffusa la notizia, il ministro generale è stato costretto a riconoscere ufficialmente l’accaduto, con una lettera pubblica che è un’ammissione ufficiale del dissesto ma non può essere presa ad esempio di trasparenza. O quanto meno è un esempio di trasparenza “obbligata” dall’esterno.

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VATICAN CITY
Huffington Post

Religion News Service | By Josephine McKenna
Posted: 12/19/2014

VATICAN CITY (RNS) One of the largest Franciscan religious orders, founded on the humble teachings of St. Francis of Assisi more than 800 years ago, announced it is on the brink of bankruptcy after admitting some of its monks embezzled funds from its accounts.

The Italian news magazine Panorama on Friday (Dec. 19) reported that tens of millions of dollars were missing from the Order of Friars Minor and had been invested in offshore companies.

Panorama also claimed Swiss prosecutors had seized Franciscan accounts in Switzerland because the account holders had allegedly invested in illegal operations that could include arms and drug trafficking.

Brother Michael Perry, the American head of the order, said an internal inquiry was begun in September and revealed “a number of questionable financial activities that were conducted by friars entrusted with the care of the patrimony of the order.”

In a letter posted on the order’s website, Perry said the order was in “grave, and I underscore grave, financial difficulty, with a significant burden of debt.”

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

1. Pope Francis likes to quip about women as Adam’s ribs. a demeaning allusion to the Genesis myth about Eve’s origin. Two modern “Adam’s ribs”, more like Joan of Arc types, and some American Sisters, are striking back at the “Argentinian Adam”. There is some overdue justice here, as Pope Francis often seems to treat women still mostly as moronic breeding machines. Ironically, then, that it is courageous women like the brave whistle blowing canon lawyer and former Minneapolis Archdiocesan chancellor, Jennifer Haselberger, and Minnesota Public Radio’s (MPR) tenacious reporter, Madeleine Baran, that are functioning as modern Joan of Arc’s to lance the papal veil, or the Wizard of Oz’s curtain, pick your metaphor.

2. For Haselberger’s extraordinary affidavit that she recently refers to in new comments ”after my affidavit was released in July of 2014 “, please click on this link to read it — you will be stunned! This affidavit is one of the most searing single statements ever by a Catholic Church insider and canon lawyer, alleging a widespread cover-up of clergy sex misconduct in the Archdiocese of St. Paul/Minneapolis. She has made the most detailed claims yet, as a former insider no less, accusing archbishops and their top staff of lying to the public and of ignoring the U.S. bishops’ pledge to have no tolerance of priests who abuse.

3. And Madeleine Baran and her MPR team were just praised lavishly by Columbia University’s School of Journalism for MPR’s exhaustive coverage of the Minneapolis scandal that has earned them the very prestigious duPont Award with the following description:

4. MPR News: “Betrayed by Silence”

A heartbreaking, exhaustive investigation of sexual abuse and cover up in the Twin Cities Catholic Church

MPR News’ yearlong investigation exposed how leaders of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis continued to cover up abuse of children by priests, despite decades of assurances that the Catholic Church was safe. Reporters found that bishops provided secret payments to pedophiles, hid the names of abusers, failed to notify police of alleged sex crimes and didn’t warn parishioners of priests’ sexual misconduct. The report included everything from interactive databases of allegations against priests and where they served, and a display of internal church documents, to police records, court records, and victim settlement documents all showing extensive cover ups. MPR’s reporting has led to numerous actions to protect the public such as the opening of a criminal investigation of the archdiocese itself, resignations, forced retirements, leaves of absences, firings, and the release of names of abusive priests. The investigative team overcame the challenges rife in reporting this type of story: understanding the church’s complex structure and legal system; verifying old events and claims; the lack of documents available digitally; and the insular, private world of the priesthood.

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AUSTRALIA
Illawarra Mercury

By ANGELA THOMPSON Dec. 19, 2014

Wollongong Catholic Bishop Peter Ingham erred by not making public the reasons behind the 2008 defrocking of priest John Gerard Nestor, the Royal Commission into Child Sex Abuse has found.

In a damning set of nine findings handed down on Friday, the royal commission takes aim at the Catholic Church and some of its officials for not making notes of potentially incriminating internal meetings with Nestor, and for the five years it took for an internal appeal process to run its course.

The royal commission further found the decision by some clergy to have Nestor publicly participate in church services “undermined” the efforts of other priests to protect children.

Nestor was convicted of aggravated indecent assault in 1997, and acquitted seven months later.

He denied the central allegation in the case against him, that he slept on the same mattress as a 15-year-old altar boy.

He was defrocked by decree of the Pope in 2008, after further allegations surfaced and after long periods on administrative leave.

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POLSKA
Polski Radio

Śledztwo w sprawie podejrzanego o pedofilię Józefa Wesołowskiego zawieszone. Taką decyzję podjęła Prokuratura Okręgowa w Warszawie.

Powodem jest utrudniona współpraca ze śledczymi z Dominikany. Polski hierarcha pełnił tam funkcję nuncjusza apostolskiego. – Strona dominikańska nie odpowiedziała na wnioski polskiej prokuratury o pomoc prawną, nie mamy informacji kiedy zostaną one zrealizowane – wyjaśnia w rozmowie z Informacyjną Agencją Radiową Przemysław Nowak, rzecznik Prokuratury Okręgowej w Warszawie.
Dodał, że decyzja jedynie zawiesza bieg postępowania i nie rozstrzyga o jego istocie.

Od września – przez dwa miesiące – Józef Wesołowski przebywał w areszcie domowym w Watykanie. Na początku grudnia areszt się skończył i były nuncjusz może swobodnie poruszać się za Spiżową Bramą.

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POLAND
The News

19.12.2014

Poland’s public prosecutor suspended an investigation into statutory rape charges against Roman Catholic Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, the former papal nuncio to the Dominican Republic.

Blaming lack of cooperation from the law enforcement authorities in the Dominican Republic, where the alleged sex abuse of minors took place, the Warsaw prosecutors announced suspension of the investigation on Friday.

„The Dominican side failed to respond to the requests from the Polish prosecutors for legal help and we have no information when they will be met,” a spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office told Polish Radio.

The archbishop, who allegedly abused dozens of children during his spell as the nuncio, or the papal ambassador to the Dominican Republic, is currently under home arrest in the Vatican.

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UNITED STATES
Religion News Service – Rhymes with Religion

Boz Tchividjian | Dec 19, 2014

As we arrive on the doorstep of another Christmas and 2014 comes to a close, I have spent some time thinking about these past twelve months and what I have witnessed as many faith communities finally begin to understand and address the many difficult issues related to child sexual abuse. Each step forward brings a new set of challenges that I believe give us much to look forward to in 2015.
Here are just a very few examples:

A conservative Protestant denomination adopted one of the strongest public statements on child protection by any religious denomination or community. Passing the statement was only the beginning. The challenge forward will be whether these words will actually propel faith communities to action in transforming their understanding and approach to child sexual abuse. Much to look forward to in 2015.

A powerful documentary brought to light allegations of systematic abuse and neglect of children inside a large and well-known Christian community. Making this amazing film was only the beginning. The challenge forward will be whether faith communities will embrace these brave voices as agents of change in creating cultures that better protect little ones and have no tolerance for those who hurt them. Much to look forward to in 2015.

A well-known fundamentalist institution requested an independent Christian organization to investigate its responses to sexual abuse disclosures made by students. Not only did this school voluntarily initiate this investigation, but also it agreed for the results to be made public. By voluntarily engaging in this independent and transparent process, this institution has set an historical and Gospel-centered precedent for Christendom and the watching world. Inviting the investigation and publicizing its results is only the beginning. The challenge forward for this institution and every other community that professes to follow Jesus will be to learn how to better love and comfort the afflicted, while implementing changes that value, protect, and serve the vulnerable. Much to look forward to in 2015.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

Some brief excerpts of responses to the Vatican report on American women religious that have struck me as well worth reading:

Joan Chittister maintains that the lingering questions about why this witch hunt took place and what role women are to have in the church point to the following conclusion:

These are the questions that will make real both the concern of the universal church for the development of women religious and for the development of the male church itself.

Christine Schenck reminds us of some telling details about what Rome immediately demanded of American nuns when the investigation was sprung on them:

At first, each community was required to submit detailed financial reports of assets, liabilities and cash flow along with lists of all the properties they owned. Rome also wanted to know each sister’s age, her address, and her ministry. (This is especially puzzling since the Vatican seems to have had difficulty keeping track of whole orders of sisters, let alone individuals. Some communities were completely overlooked in mailings about the apostolic visitation.)

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UNITED KINGDOM
Catholic Herald

by William Oddie posted Friday, 19 Dec 2014

It’s just as bad in the Church of England, and worse in society at large

“Last month”, according to The Independent newspaper on Tuesday, “the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said he dealt with issues of child sex abuse on a daily basis (my emphasis) and he anticipated that more ‘bad stories’ would emerge. He said: ‘I would love to say there weren’t, but I expect there are.’ He told the BBC that it was ‘becoming clearer and clearer that for many, many years things were not dealt with as they should [have been]’.”

Well, he has one consolation: the issue will not be clouded and confused, as it has been in the Catholic Church for years, by the non-issue of the marital status of the clergy involved. Most of them are married. This particular story had homed in on the now former Bishop of Gloucester (married, with four daughters) who had resigned suddenly after he was “placed at the centre of” a police inquiry over allegations of indecent assault on a child more than 30 years ago. The bishop had stepped down after nearly a decade as bishop on Friday citing “personal reasons”; these turned out to be that in the parish in south London where he was a curate in 1976, he is alleged to have been involved in “indecent assault on a child said to have occurred between 1980 and 1981”.

Next to THAT story, I place another, from Australia, where a report by something called the Truth, Justice and Healing Council (groan) has found (as in the Church of England) that “some Church institutions and their leaders turned a blind eye to what was going on for years”. Unlike the Church of England, however, the “Council” gave a possible reason for its clergy’s aberrant behaviour: they weren’t simply doing something inherently bad and sinful (and for which there is NO CONCEIVABLE EXCUSE): they were under a particular pressure. Guess what?

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ILLINOIS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, Dec. 19 2014

Statement by Barbara Blaine of Chicago, president of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 312 399 4747, SNAPblaine@gmail.com )

No child sex charges are going to be filed against Fr. Michael W. O’Connell, who is still on the job today in a parish despite allegations by two men that he sexually abused them as children. We’re disappointed in this decision and urge Archbishop Blase Cupich to honor his pledges to keep kids safe by suspending O’Connell.

We’re deeply saddened that Cupich, who talks such a good game about abuse, is recklessly keeping O’Connell around vulnerable families. We were equally saddened – but less surprised – that then-Cardinal Francis George did the same – for months – despite the two accusers and a pending criminal investigation into the allegations.

In a disturbing violation of church abuse policy, both George and Cupich let O’Connell claim to “self-monitor” by voluntarily keeping himself away from children in his parish.

Two weeks ago, we asked Cupich to:

1) immediately suspend O’Connell from his post at St. Alphonsus parish,

2) discipline all archdiocesan staff who have let him stay in the parish,

3) attend a “town hall meeting” we are holding about the troubling situation, and

4) personally visit St. Alphonsus and beg anyone who may have information that might prove or disprove crimes or misdeeds by Fr. O’Connell to call police.

Today, for the safety of children, we renew those requests.

This week, on Tuesday, we were told by the Executive Director of Cook County Department of Corrections, Cara Smith, that the investigation by the sheriff’s police department into the allegations against Fr. O’Connell is closed unless new information is brought forward. We understand that most child predators, especially clergy child predators, are tough to prosecute, in part because they are very shrewd, cunning, well-educated and well-spoken. We also understand that the bar for criminal prosecution is quite high.

But this decision doesn’t mean that Fr. O’Connell is innocent. Nor does it mean that Cupich should continue to gamble with the safety of children.

Here’s more background information about this troubling situation:

Fr. O’Connell was temporarily suspended in December 2013 after the archdiocese received an allegation of sexual misconduct involving a boy at Our Lady of the Woods in Orland Park years earlier. In April of this year, Cardinal George reinstated Fr. O’Connell even though the Cook County Sheriff’s Department had not closed the criminal case.

Weeks later, new allegations surfaced involving alleged abuse of different boy in the 1990s and police began investigating. Throughout this, however, archdiocesan officials kept Fr. O’Connell on the job.

This is precisely the kind of reckless behavior that Catholic officials have engaged in for decades, with disastrous results. It’s precisely the kind of irresponsible decision-making that Catholic officials have pledged for years would no longer happen.

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ROME
Ordo Fratrum Minorum

My dear brothers, may the Lord give you peace!

In his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul writes: For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light, for light produces every kind of goodness and righteousness and truth. Try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the fruitless works of darkness; rather expose them, for it is shameful even to mention the things done by them in secret; but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light. “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light” (Eph. 5, 8-15).

In an effort to live as children of the light, the General Definitorium and I wish to bring to light a grave situation in which the General Curia of the Order now finds itself. The matter involves our financial stability and the patrimony of the Order. While our first concern has and remains verifying the nature, extent, and impact of what has occurred, we also recognize the significant role that external actors, people who are not members of the Order, have played in creating this grave situation.

In September 2014, the General Definitorium initiated a series of steps in order to conduct an internal inquiry into the financial dealings of the Office of the General Treasurer. A sub-commission within the General Definitorium was created to serve as an advisory group. Together we charted a course to collect reliable information, identify potential concerns, and examine all available documents in order to reach well-informed decisions about how best to proceed to guarantee the financial soundness of the Order in a manner consistent with our Franciscan values and way of life. We immediately sought advice from a highly regarded group of lawyers who continue to work for the Order. Competent ecclesiastical authorities also were informed of our concerns and have been updated on a regular basis. In addition, Provincials and Custodes in a number of the Franciscan Conferences also were provided with a brief, albeit incomplete, explanation of our situation and were requested to demonstrate their solidarity with the General Curia through prayer and in other significant ways. I regret that not all Provincials and Custodes were contacted. I ask of all Provincials and Custodes your understanding and for a financial contribution to help address the current situation, which involves also the repayment of significant debts.

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ROME
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Dec. 19, 2014

ROME
The leader of the main group of the world’s Franciscans has written members of his order around the world informing them that their financial stability is at “grave risk” because of “questionable financial activities” undertaken by staffers of the order’s Roman administrative offices.

Because of the questionable activities the order’s general treasurer has resigned and ecclesiastical and civil authorities have been called upon for help, writes Franciscan Fr. Michael Perry, the minister general of the order.

“The General Curia finds itself in grave, and I underscore ‘grave’ financial difficulty, with a significant burden of debt,” Perry, head of the Order of Friars Minor writes in a posting on the order’s website.

“The systems of financial oversight and control for the management of the patrimony of the Order were either too weak or were compromised, thus limiting their effectiveness to guarantee responsible, transparent management,” he continues.

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Rick Morton
Social Affairs Reporter
Sydney

Dan Box
Crime Reporter
Sydney

HILLSONG Church founder Brian Houston should be referred to police for investigation after he failed to report child sexual abuse carried out by his father, the royal commission’s senior counsel has found.

Simeon Beckett, counsel assisting the Royal Commission into ­Institutional ­Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, also found Brian Houston — who was national president of the Pentecostal church umbrella organisation ­Assemblies of God when he heard about the abuse — had a “conflict of interest” and never told police about his father Frank Houston’s abuse of a boy from the age of seven in 1970. He first found out about the abuse in 1999.

His submission says that Frank Houston admitted the abuse to his son and this confession could have been used to secure a conviction had Brian Houston ­informed police. “As that information may relate to contravention of a law … it is submitted it is appropriate to refer Pastor Brian Houston’s conduct to the NSW Police Commissioner,” it says.

The commission heard evidence that Frank Houston abused several children in Australia and New Zealand in the 1960s and 70s while at the Assemblies of God, ­before Hillsong existed.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

19 December, 2014

In 2014, we conducted 17 public hearings, held over 1,700 private sessions, and further progressed our work in research and policy. We also received 9,883 calls to the call centre, more than 5,000 emails and letters, and served 796 notices to produce.

The Royal Commission call centre will be remain open during the holiday season, with the exception of the public holidays, and can be contacted on 1800 099 340 Monday – Friday between 8am – 8pm AEDT.

Public holiday dates
Thursday 25 December 2014
Friday 26 December 2014
Thursday 1 December 2014

We recognise that the holiday season can be a difficult time and encourage those who need support to call Lifeline on 13 11 14. A list of the support services available in your state or territory can also be found at our website on the Support Services page.

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KENTUCKY
WLKY

LOUISVILLE, Ky. —A judge denied shock probation for a Louisville priest who sexually abused a teenage boy in the 1970s.

James Schook was convicted of sodomy and indecent or immoral practice with another.

He’s served about seven months of his 15-year sentence.

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UNITED STATES
Room with a Pew

Paul Fericano

“But the prettiest sight to see is the holly that will be on your own front door.”
–Perry Como

In December of 1965, I left Saint Anthony’s Seminary in Santa Barbara on Christmas break and took the long train ride home to San Francisco. Keeping to myself, I spent most of the trip staring out the window and watching the scenery speed past me like a silent movie. The whole time I kept wondering: how could I explain to my parents what had been happening to me at school? For the first three months of my freshman year I had been emotionally and sexually abused by a Franciscan priest who served as the school’s prefect of discipline and used medical treatment as a ruse. I had no name for what I was experiencing. But inside I knew something was wrong. As I lay in bed each night in the dormitory listening to the other boys sleep, I slowly felt myself slipping into despair and depression.

As I rode the train north I was oblivious to the family crisis that was waiting for me on the other end. My parents had separated two months before and would eventually divorce six months later. But the news of their separation was purposely kept from me at the insistence of my offender who told my mother it could discourage my vocation. He advised her that it was best to tell me when I returned home for Christmas vacation.

Stepping off the train at the Southern Pacific terminal in San Francisco, I expected to be met by both my parents but was greeted only by my mother. It’s not hard to recall the joy I felt when I saw her. For the first time in months I felt safe. She was a tiny woman, barely five feet tall, and it seemed as though I towered over her now. My mind and my heart were compressed into one, enormous embrace that wrapped my arms around her small body, seven months pregnant. Her smile was big but her eyes were red and I could tell she had been crying long before I got there.

I hadn’t been away from home so long that I couldn’t recognize the unhappiness in my mother’s face.

When I asked where my father was she told me straight out that he had left. Then she led me to a coffee shop where we sat and talked for an hour and, without revealing too many details, made it clear who the guilty party was. My first reactions were shock and dismay. But as I listened to her story, which for many years would be the only version her children would hear, I realized that my mother had not only lost a husband of twenty-one years but also a childhood friend.

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AUSTRALIA
The JC

December 18, 2014

The JC’s Australian correspondent has won a prestigious journalism prize for a documentary on child sexual abuse inside the Chabad headquarters in Melbourne.

Dan Goldberg produced Code of Silence, which last week won the Walkley Award for Best Documentary in 2014. The Walkley Awards are the highest journalistic award in Australia.

Code of Silence, screened on ABC in September, follows the journey of Manny Waks after he went public with allegations that he was abused as a student at Yeshivah College. It also follows the parallel story of his father, Zephaniah, who backs his son but finds himself ostracised from his community.

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MINNESOTA
Canonical Consultation

12/18/2014

Jennifer Haselberger

Tim Healy and the Catholic Services Appeal Foundation made another effort this week to convince stakeholders (meaning priests and donors) that the foundation is a separate entity deserving of their (and our) support.

I have already written about why I won’t be contributing to the CSA this year, and I have also provided some reasons for why I don’t think the word ‘separate’ (meaning to remove or severe from) applies to the foundation in the way that the Archdiocese wants us to believe it does. I wasn’t planning to comment on the latest email sent to clergy, but the claim that they have ‘worked tirelessly’ seems to beg a response, as does the article that appeared yesterday in The Catholic Spirit.

This is the email to which I am referring:

[document]

I find it interesting that both The Catholic Spirit article and the email to priests claim that the 2014 campaign exceeded its fundraising goal in pledges. Pledges are different than actual money contributed, and I think we would all be far more interested to see the latter amount rather than the former- especially given that both the article and the email refer to the Foundation being unable to meet campaign expenses.

I also chuckle when I read about the ‘tireless’ efforts to create a separate foundation. Tim Healy, who, as I have already mentioned, is the brother-in-law of Bishop Cozzens, offers the following in support of his claim: the Foundation has a separate bank account, an ‘independent board’ (chaired by the brother-in-law of the bishop), separate employees, and its own database (where did they get my address then? I didn’t give it to them.). What he does not mention is that this ‘independent’ foundation is operated out of the Hayden Center (the pastoral building of the Archdiocesan Central Corporation). In other words, the tireless work did not include moving from the old offices, or getting new phone numbers, etc, but instead they continued to use the same ones as they did before they were a ‘separate’ foundation. Some of you may remember that at one time the Catholic Community Foundation rented space in the Hayden Center, but they moved years ago when it was determined that remaining on Archdiocesan property called into question the independence of the CCF.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
SNAPnetwork.org

Statement by Peter Isely, SNAP Midwest Director
CONTACT: 414.429.7259

It’s the season for giving and no one has found a way, as the saying goes, to make sure “to give back to yourself first” than the lawyers of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee who filed today a proposed $10 million settlement with insurers (one of them aptly named “Stonewall”) in the longest and most victim bashing bankruptcy in church history. Of the $10 million, lawyers made sure half of that amount will go to themselves, with total legal and court fees now topping over $18 million and no end in sight. I suppose we can safely conclude that after almost four years where justice for victims has not been pursued much in court, we can always have confidence the billable hours will be.

The archdiocese describes the deal in commercial terms as a “tremendous value”. But for whom? And what values are being extolled? Gospel values?

Most importantly, what of the 575 victims of childhood rape, sexual assault and abuse by dozens of Catholic clergy who filed cases into bankruptcy court? If Judge Susan V. Kelley approves the new settlement, $5 million will be added to an already proposed $4 million making available a total of $9 million in victim restitution. That’s about $15,000 thousand per victim and, if you figure about a dozen lawyers working in earnest, more or less, that’s about $1.2 million per lawyer. But, again, the fees are still rising.

This is why local survivor and clergy leaders and advocates last month wrote a detailed letter to Pope Francis asking for an investigation of the archdiocesan bankruptcy debacle. No one except lawyers are really being served by this proposal. And whatever one thinks of Pope Francis, this settlement is clearly in complete opposition and even defiance of his repeated call for justice for victims of priest abuse, fair compensation (if necessary through the civil courts) for those harmed, and an insistence that Cardinals, bishops and archbishops must stop evading accountability and responsibility for the consequences of these crimes.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
WUSA

[with video]

Debra Alfarone, WUSA

December 18, 2014

WASHINGTON (WUSA9) — More women are coming forward and accusing Georgetown Rabbi Barry Freundel of possibly videotaping them as they disrobed for a Jewish ritual bath called a mikvah.

Freundel was a religious leader at Kesher Israel Congregation in Georgetown until shortly after D.C. police arrested him and charged him with six counts of voyeurism in October.

Now, three women are part of a civil lawsuit stemming from those videotape allegations. One of the alleged victims part of the lawsuit, Emma Shulevitz, says she was converting to Judaism in 2012, and Freundel asked her to take a ‘practice’ mikvah,

“I feel so hurt, I feel so disappointed, and I feel like finally there’s some understanding of what happened,” Shulevitz said.

Shulevitz says after she saw that the 62-year-old religious leader was arrested, she remembered something that struck her as odd.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
NBC Washington

[with video]

The latest woman to join a class action lawsuit against Georgetown University, Kesher Israel synagogue, the National Capital Mikvah and an Orthodox rabbi accused of secretly recording women during ritual baths described the suffering she’s gone through since learning about a hidden camera that may have captured her naked.

Emma Shulevitz, who is 39 weeks pregnant and due any day, said when she went to the Mikvah to convert to Judaism in 2012, rabbi Barry Freundel told her not to put anything in front of a clock radio when she disrobed, News4’s Chris Gordon reported. She said she has suffered greatly since learning it
“I feel betrayed,” she said. “I feel duped. I feel taken advantage of. Unfortunately this is a very, very sad situation.”

Freundel was charged with six counts of voyeurism after Shulevitz reported her fears that she had been caught on camera and went public. He was accused of recording at least several women at a ritual bath next to Kesher Israel in Georgetown, where he was the rabbi.

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UNITED STATES
The Jewish Daily Forward

By JTA
Published December 18, 2014.

A lawsuit arising out of allegations of voyeurism at a Washington D.C. ritual bath added the Rabbinical Council of America as a defendant.

The lawsuit, filed earlier this month by a third-year student at Georgetown University’s law school, initially named as defendants Rabbi Barry Freundel’s Washington synagogue, Kesher Israel, the adjacent mikvah and her own law school for allowing Freundel’s alleged misdeeds to go unchecked.

At a press conference on Thursday, the law firm representing her — Silverman, Thompson, Slutkin and White — added the RCA as a defendant and added two additional plaintiffs in a class action, WJLA, the local ABC affiliate, reported.

Calls to the law firm were unanswered, and Rabbi Mark Dratch, the RCA’s executive vice president, said the organization had not yet been officially notified of the suit.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

BY ALAN ERWIN – 19 DECEMBER 2014

Child abuse victims have been unfairly denied legal representation at a major inquiry into alleged historical offences at care homes, the High Court has heard.

A judge was also told they should be provided with a team of barristers and solicitors to ensure equality with those accused of inflicting sexual and physical assaults.

Judicial review proceedings have been brought by a woman who claims she was abused by a “high-profile public figure”.

She is challenging a decision by Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry (HIA) chairman Sir Anthony Hart to refuse her application for funding for legal representation at public expense.

Lawyers acting for the woman in the High Court challenge want his decision quashed, claiming it is unlawful and will give an unfair advantage to alleged perpetrators.

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UNITED STATES
Religion Dispatches

BY MARY E. HUNT DECEMBER 18, 2014

The other shoe dropped on December 16, 2014 at a press conference announcing the “final report” on at least one phase of the long-simmering Vatican struggle with U.S. Catholic sisters.

It was not a red Prada slipper, and the devil is still in the details.

Despite herculean efforts to make nice, the 12-page report and its presentation reinforce the Roman Catholic Church’s patriarchal power paradigm. And although many have hailed the report as a sign of the Vatican’s warming toward women, I am not convinced.

Six Years of Scrutiny

The first shoe dropped in 2008 when Cardinal Franc Rodé announced an Apostolic Visitation of active women’s religious communities. The goal of the inquiry—akin to a grand jury— was “to look into the quality of life of apostolic Congregations of women religious in the United States.”

The benign-sounding rhetoric was, to those in the know, an unmistakable signal of disapproval of how women religious were living increasingly self- and community-directed lives.

The Visitation was in no way experienced by the subjects or meant by the perpetrators “to convey the caring support of the Church in respectful, ‘sister-to-sister’ dialogue, as modeled in the Gospel account of the Visitation of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth” as one “eyebrow-raising paragraph” in the report asserted—this revisionist history is pure fantasy.

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GUAM
KUAM

by Jolene Toves

Guam – The Catholic Church will be welcoming a visit from three archbishops in January.

As the local Catholic church celebrates its jubilee year as a diocese they also welcome a pastoral visit from the secretary of the Vatican Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, Archbishop Savio Hon Tai-Fai. Father Adrian Cristobal is chancellor for the Archdiocese of Hagatna and told KUAM News, “We are very happy and are very happy to welcome this pastoral visit a pastoral visit is exactly what it is like what Archbishop [Anthony] Apuron is actually doing right now he is going to the parishes he’s visiting the people visiting the sick celebrating masses visiting the groups this is a pastoral visit done by the congregation.”

Archbishop Savio will be accompanied by Reverend Father Tadeusz Nowak, and Archbishop Martin Krebs. You may recall Archbishop Krebs is the Vatican’s ambassador or apostolic delegate to the Pacific Islands and was recently on Guam during which time he met with local clergy. After that meeting Father Adrian said Krebs had instructed them to build bridges with the local clergy with an open dialogue and reconciliation. He said, “They’ll be visiting members of the clergy and the religious and member of the different groups and we believe it is a very fruitful visit we’re looking forward to it and we believe it will help build a communion between the church and Guam and the Holy Father,” he said.

While Father Adrian says this is the pope’s way of extending blessings to the church, Jungle Watch blogger Tim Rohr spoke candidly about what he believes is the reason for the pastoral visit. He said, “I realize that the chancery is probably trying to as a precursor to a possible papal visit but in my opinion the person that is coming is the wrong person because if it was a papal visit they would be sending the secretary of the state or somebody from that particular office and so I really think it is an investigation.”

While Rohr believes there is something going on and that the visit is so they can “see for themselves”. Father Adrian Admantly says there will be no investigation or report, noting, “No in our communications with Vatican they have specifically said it was a pastoral visit to the archdiocese.”

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GUAM
Pacific News Center

Written by Janela Carrera

Guam – Newly formed group Concerned Catholics of Guam may have just received its first warning from the Archdiocese of Agana as the group’s treasurer, Deacon Steve Martinez has just confirmed that Archbishop Anthony Apuron has censured him.

PNC Contacted Deacon Steve Martinez today who confirmed for us that Archbishop Anthony Apuron has just censured him and suspended him as a Deacon. The move comes just a week after the newly formed organization Concerned Catholics of Guam held a press conference announcing that they plan to investigate the Archdiocese of Agana. Deacon Martinez tells PNC that the Archbishop ordered him on Wednesday to resign as the group’s treasurer and member or face censureship.

Deacon Martinez says the Archbishop gave him a deadline of 4 pm Thursday afternoon, but he tells PNC that he asked Archbishop Apuron for reconsideration. That was not granted, Deacon Martinez says. The punishment is severe enough that Deacon Martinez says he had to cancel performing a wedding tomorrow because he’s been suspended from his duties.

The deacon received the notice ordering him to resign from CCOG in writing, telling PNC that it was signed by Archbishop Apuron and Chancellor Father Adrian Cristobal.

However, when PNC contacted Father Adrian, he told us that he was not aware of any censureship against Deacon Martinez.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

Allegations of child sexual abuse against a former Hobart school teacher, previously thought to be dead, will not be considered by a royal commission.

Ronald Thomas, 77, was accused at a commission hearing in November of abusing boys while a teacher at exclusive Hobart school Hutchins in the 1960s.

At the time the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was told Thomas had left Australia and later died.

However, in early December it was reported he was alive and living in New Zealand.

On Thursday the Hutchins hearing resumed and counsel assisting, Angus Stewart SC, said Tasmanian police intend investigating the allegations against Thomas.

‘In order to avoid any risk of prejudicing that investigation this public hearing will not inquire any further into the allegations against Mr Thomas and moreover commissioners will not be asked to make any finding in relation to any allegations against Mr Thomas.’

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AUSTRALIA
Perth Now

Christian Brothers knew of sexual abuse at WA boys’ homes for four decades: Royal Commission report

EMILY MOULTON PERTHNOW
DECEMBER 19, 2014

FOR more than four decades the Christian Brothers’ Provincial Council knew of rampant sexual abuse at its WA boys homes, a major inquiry report has found.

The leaders of the Catholic order also failed to prevent further abuse from occurring at the WA institutions despite being aware of allegations.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse today handed down its findings into the allegations of widespread sexual and physical abuse at Castledare Junior Orphanage, St Vincent’s Orphanage Clontarf, St Mary’s Agricultural School Tardun and the Bindoon Farm School.

The report found that from 1919 to the 1960s, the Christian Brothers’ Provincial Council knew of sexual abuse allegations against some of its Brothers in institutions run by the Christian Brothers around Australia.

It also found that from 1947 to 1968, leaders of the Catholic order failed to manage the four institutions to prevent further sexual, physical and emotional abuse of children living there.

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AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

Amanda Banks, Legal Affairs Editor
December 19, 2014

Christian Brothers’ leaders knew of allegations of sexual abuse of children at four WA orphanages and failed to manage the homes to prevent the systemic ill-treatment for decades, a royal commission has found.

A report released today has found the Christian Brothers failed in their obligation to provide for and educate the orphans, with inspections by visiting supervisors from the order over the decades paying more attention to financial and religious matters than the welfare of the children.

The report by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has also found State authorities played a limited role in the care of the boys, which contributed to their isolation and limited options for disclosing their abuse.

The findings in the case study of the four homes come after a public hearing in Perth in April which laid bare harrowing details of sexual, physical and emotional abuse, neglect and unpaid child labour at the Bindoon, Clontarf, Castledare and Tardun orphanages.

Eleven former residents of the homes told the two-week hearing of their stories of abuse, including being groomed as “sex pets”, sadistically beaten, raped, neglected in appalling living conditions and disbelieved or ignored when they reported their treatment.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

December 19, 201

Aleisha Orr
Reporter, WA Today

Leaders of the Christian Brothers order failed to prevent sexual abuse of children living in four of its West Australian institutions, a report has found.

The report, compiled by the Royal Commission, found that in every decade between 1919 and the 1960s, the relevant Christian Brothers Provincial Council knew of allegations of sexual abuse around Australia – but that sexual abuse of children was viewed as, and referred to as, a ‘moral lapse’ or ‘weakness’.

Part of the commision’s report, Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, looks in to abuse that took place at Castledare Junior Orphanage, St Vincent’s Orphanage Clontarf, St Mary’s Agricultural School Tardun and Bindoon Farm School.

The report comes after a hearing in Perth earlier this year, where eleven men gave evidence and made allegations of sexual abuse against 16 named Brothers and told of physical and emotional abuse.

Realeased on Friday, the report found “the leadership of the Christian Brothers during the period 1947 to 1968 failed to manage each of the institutions, so as to prevent the sexual abuse of children living in those institutions”.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Courtney Bembridge

An inquiry into child sexual abuse at four Christian Brothers institutions in Western Australia has found that the organisation was aware of abuse allegations for decades – and the damage it could cause – but did not stop it.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse examined abuse at Christian Brothers institutions in Bindoon, Tardun and Perth between 1947 and 1968 and found management failed to prevent the sexual abuse of children living at the schools.

Some of the victims were as young as seven when they were sexually and physically abused by brothers and older boys.

Eleven of the schools’ former residents gave evidence at hearings in Perth throughout April and May.

The men recounted stories of painful abuse and psychological damage they have suffered as a result, which led to depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and alcoholism.

Sixteen brothers were named as perpetrators of sexual abuse, but only four were ever charged and of those, only one was jailed.

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MALTA/AUSTRALIA
Malta Today

Matthew Vella 19 December 2014

An inquiry into child sexual abuse at four Christian Brothers institutions in Western Australia – to whom Maltese child migrants were entrusted to in a bid to build themselves a new life – has found that the organisation was aware of abuse allegations for decades, and the damage it could cause, but did not stop it.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse examined abuse at Christian Brothers institutions in Bindoon, Tardun and Perth between 1947 and 1968 and found management failed to prevent the sexual abuse of children living at the schools.

Some of the victims were as young as seven when they were sexually and physically abused by brothers and older boys.

Eleven of the schools’ former residents gave evidence at hearings in Perth throughout April and May.

The men recounted stories of painful abuse and psychological damage they have suffered as a result, which led to depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and alcoholism.

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OKLAHOMA
Altus Times

The former pastor of the Elm & Hudson Church of Christ, Tom Bailey of Altus, was arrested Tuesday, Dec. 16 on a complaint of Child Sexual Abuse. (see the full story on the Altus Times website, altustimes.com) He has since been released from the Jackson County Jail on a $100,000 bond.

The Interim Minister for the Elm & Hudson Church of Christ, Daniel Ingram, provided the following statement from the church Elders about the reports, Bailey, and their church:

“In the past few days, Elm & Hudson Church of Christ has been mentioned in several media reports, and we felt it would be helpful to provide some insight into how our congregation has been impacted. On November 30, Tom Bailey resigned as our minister, effective immediately. As you might expect, he gave us very little information about the circumstances or reasons for his resignation, but our church leadership acted swiftly in accepting the resignation and doing their best to minister to those involved. Since that time, the charges now being reported in the media have come to light, and we remain deeply saddened by this situation. While none of these allegations relate to our church or to Tom’s role at our church, we have members of our family that are hurting and struggling. We ask the community to pray for Tom, his family, and all who are affected during this difficult time, especially the female victim who has been mentioned in the articles.

Here at Elm & Hudson, we are a broken people reaching out to a Savior who makes us whole. We are earnestly seeking to pour out God’s love on those most affected by this situation, and our sincere hope is that we will draw even closer as a family during this process. Elm & Hudson has been a loving family and an important part of the Altus community for over 100 years. We have always done our best to accomplish God’s purpose here on earth, and through His power, His love, His grace, and His mercy, we will continue to do amazing things here in our community for many more years to come.

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OKLAHOMA
KSWO

By Derek Hendy, Internet Content Director

ALTUS, Okla._A former Altus pastor, charged with child sexual abuse, appeared in court for the first time Thursday.

Tommy Lynn Bailey is accused of sexually abusing a young girl over a period or seven years. The victim says the abuse started when she was 14 years old and lasted until this past September. Thursday, a judge ordered that Bailey is not to contact the victim himself or through anyone else. He cannot be in the presence of minors without adult supervision either.

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TEXAS
Valley Central

by Elizabeth Espinosa

A local pastor is speaking out about a former employee who is facing sexual abuse charges.

Pastor Antonio Madrigal with Centro Cristiano Restauracion Familiar in Palmview is reaching out about former employee Jesus Bustos.

Bustos helped with choir classes and even held individual sessions.

Bustos was let go four months ago after Pastor Madrigal said allegations surfaced from one family claiming Bustos was making late calls to an underage girl.

Right now, Palmview police have charged Bustos with indecency with a child by sexual contact, and he is behind bars at the Hidalgo County Jail.

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WASHINGTON
NBC Chicago

By Phil Rogers

In documents filed in a Spokane court, new Chicago Archbishop Blaise Cupich denies the assertions of a former deputy that he wanted to “sling mud at his former diocesan law firm” to “see what sticks”, in an effort to recover millions of dollars in fees.

The filing further illustrates the continued acrimony in a case which shocked many in the Spokane community, as Cupich led the Diocese in a split with its longtime lawyers.

Cupich is suing his former law firm, Paine Hamblen, accusing them of malpractice in a bankruptcy case stemming from millions of dollars in sexual abuse claims. In a deposition given earlier this year, Father Steven Dublinski, the former Vicar General of the Diocese, said Cupich told him he was “throwing mud at Paine-Hamblen to see if any mud sticks.”

After that, Dublinski said he made the decision that he could no longer serve as Cupich’s Vicar General.

“Vicar General should be able to support and represent this Bishop,” he said. “So I offered my resignation.”

In a sworn declaration given here in Chicago earlier this month, Cupich stated “at no time did I say we were filing the case as a way to throw mud at this law firm, or besmirch their reputation. It was always a matter of trying to let them know we were serious, and hoping that some aspect of our case would get their attention, and stick with someone in the firm who could provide some common sense.”

At issue was a provision of the bankruptcy settlement, isolating a $1 million fund for payment of future claims. Cupich argued that outstanding claims would exceed that million dollars, and put over 20 Church properties in jeopardy of foreclosure. Paine Hamblen counters that the future claims have totaled almost exactly what had been anticipated.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Liam Heylin

A 71-year-old priest who continued to say Mass within his religious community after serving three years for sexually abusing schoolboys was sentenced to another three years yesterday for more abuse that dates back more than 30 years.

Judge Donagh McDonagh imposed a total sentence of five years imprisonment on Tadgh Ó Dálaigh of Woodview, Mount Merrion Avenue, Blackrock, Dublin. The last two years of the sentence was suspended.

Judge McDonagh noted from reports prepared for the sentencing hearing at Cork Circuit Criminal court that Ó Dálaigh’s ministry as a priest was confined to celebrating Mass within the community house of his religious order, the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, in Dublin.

The judge also acknowledged that Ó Dálaigh had taken active responsibility in managing his risk and adhering to a management plan in this regard which effectively monitored his every moment.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

REPORT OF CASE STUDY NO. 11: Congregation of Christian Brothers in Western Australia response to child sexual abuse at Castledare Junior Orphanage, St Vincent’s Orphanage Clontarf, St Mary’s Agricultural School Tardun and Bindoon Farm School

Executive summary

The Christian Brothers is a Catholic religious organisation.

The organisation is divided into areas known as provinces. Until 1953 there was one Australia wide province of the Christian Brothers. This was divided into two in 1953. In 1957 there was a further ivision into four provinces.

Each province was supervised by a Provincial Council. This supervision took the form of annual visits to communities by a member of the Provincial Council. A visitor would stay with the community for a number of days and would speak to and observe the Brothers in the community as well as others who were in contact with the community. The visiting member would then write a ‘visitation report’.

One of the four provinces that existed in Australia in 1957 was the Holy Spirit Province, based in Perth, which covered Western Australia and South Australia. The Holy Spirit Province was responsible for the four children’s homes in Western Australia:

 Castledare Junior Orphanage
 St Vincent’s Orphanage Clontarf
 St Mary’s Agricultural School Tardun
 Bindoon Farm School.

The four children’s homes operated from the late 1920s and closed down between the 1960s and 1980s.

The conditions at each home were basic. The food was often of a poor quality. The boys were given clothing but no shoes or underwear. The boys were involved in building work – for example, constructing a railway – and they also did landscaping and farm work.

 Finding 1: In taking children into care, the Christian Brothers were obligated to provide for them and educate them. This was not done properly in all cases. Many of the children did not have any real education and instead were put to physical labour.

 Finding 2: The visitation reports focused on the community of the Brothers and the finances and religious observance of each Brother, not on the welfare of the children. We agree with Brother Anthony Shanahan, a former Provincial of the Holy Spirit Province, that, although the Western Australian Child Welfare Department conducted inspections, the department had significantly less responsibility for the children than those within the institutions who were caring for the children on a daily basis.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

[the report]

Royal Commission releases findings on the responses of the Christian Brothers in Western Australia and the Catholic Diocese of Wollongong to child sexual abuse

19 December, 2014

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has published two reports; ‘Report of Case Study 11: Congregation of Christian Brothers in Western Australia response to child sexual abuse at Castledare Junior Orphanage, St Vincent’s Orphanage Clontarf, St Mary’s Agricultural School Tardun and Bindoon Farm School’ and ‘Report of Case Study 14: The response of the Catholic Diocese of Wollongong to allegations of child sexual abuse, and related criminal proceedings, against John Gerard Nestor, a priest of the Diocese’.

Report of Case Study 11

This report examines the responses of the Congregation of Christian Brothers in Western Australia to child sexual abuse at Castledare Junior Orphanage, St Vincent’s Orphanage Clontarf, St Mary’s Agricultural School Tardun and Bindoon Farm School.

The four institutions operated from the late 1920s and closed down between the 1960s and 1980s.

During the hearing in Perth earlier this year, eleven men gave evidence and made allegations of sexual abuse against 16 named Brothers. The sexual abuse occurred in dormitories, in Brothers’ rooms, during movie screenings and in the grounds. It also involved Brothers watching boys naked in the showers. Most of the boys did not report the abuse; one of those who did was physically beaten.

The report found that from 1919 to the 1960s, the relevant Christian Brothers’ Provincial Council knew of allegations of sexual abuse against some Brothers in institutions run by the Christian Brothers around Australia.

The report also found that from 1947 to 1968, leaders of the Christian Brothers failed to manage each of the four institutions so as to prevent the sexual abuse of children living there.

The case study also inquired into the conduct and settlement of the class against brought against the Christian Brothers.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

REPORT OF CASE STUDY NO. 14: The response of the Catholic Diocese of Wollongong to allegations of child sexual abuse, and related criminal proceedings, against John Gerard Nestor, a priest of the Diocese.

Executive summary

This case study explored the ways that canon law procedures are used to prevent priests from exercising their priestly ministry and ultimately have them dismissed from the priesthood. It highlighted the complexity of those procedures.

It also illustrated significant changes in the response of the Holy See in Rome to child sexual abuse claims. During the period covered by the facts of this case study – 1996 to 2009 – there was confusion in both the Holy See and the wider Catholic Church about who has jurisdiction over allegations of child sexual abuse by clergy in the Curia of the Holy See.

In the early 1990s rumours started to spread and complaints were made about Nestor’s conduct with boys. We heard evidence that in 1993 Bishop William Murray (deceased) asked Father Brian Lucas to interview Nestor. Father Lucas conducted this interview in his capacity as a member of the Catholic Church’s NSW Special Issues Resource Group. Father Lucas told us that, in keeping with his usual practice, he did not take notes during or after this interview.

 Finding 1: When Father Brian Lucas interviewed a cleric or religious about allegations of child sexual abuse before a formal Church process had commenced against that person, Father Lucas should have made a contemporaneous record of the details of what was said in the interview.

 Finding 2: Failing to make and keep such a record had the consequence that:

1. the interviewer and the cleric or religious may be unable to recall what was said in the interview and what conclusions were arrived at if they were subsequently called upon to do so

2. written records that might otherwise have been available for use in a subsequent investigation, prosecution or other penal process are not available.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

[the report]

A senior Catholic cleric failed to note a key conversation with a paedophile priest which ensured a criminal admission was not recorded, a child abuse inquiry has found.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse today released its findings into allegations that the priest, John Gerard Nestor assaulted, children in Wollongong in the 1990s.

The commission found that the senior cleric at the Catholic Diocese of Wollongong, Father Brian Lucas, ensured there was no written record of admissions of criminal conduct and that this was done in order to protect the priest and the church.

There were rumours of Nestor’s attacks on children from the 1990s and the Vatican authorities put children at risk by taking more than five years to finally agree on Nestor’s removal from ministry in 2008, according to the commission report.

An outcome of Father Lucas’ practice was to ensure that there was no written record of any admissions of criminal conduct in order to protect the priest and the Church.
Royal commission report

The report stated: “During the 1990s, rumours spread about camps that he (Nestor) ran where boys were swimming naked, showering in the open and where Nestor had conversations with boys about the size of their genitalia.”

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

1. Pope Francis is evidently a “hands on” Jesuit pope. He appears to expect obedience and loyalty from all, as Cardinal Burke seems to have recently learned painfully. But Francis, now in his 79th year, is only one man and an old one at that. He needs assistance from “independent doers”, not just “loyal followers”. Very disappointingly, he has now bypassed Fr. Thomas Doyle, O.P., as described more below, the world’s top expert on the Catholic priest child abuse scandal. Fr. Doyle has been omitted from Francis’ endlessly evolving but rarely meeting “cherry picked” anti-abuse commission panel. This is despite Doyle’s public request for inclusion and their shared and significant history with Cardinal Pio Laghi decades ago.

2. This, in my view, will likely turn out to be a huge papal mistake. Pope Francis should have known by now that, in order to clean up the continuing child abuse mess and to regain worldwide Catholics’ rapidly diminishing trust, he urgently needs commission members who have clearly proven to be BOTH professionally experienced AND independently courageous, like Tom Doyle has. He is a rare combination in my view after decades practicing as an international lawyer.

3. Francis’ overlooking of Doyle sends a very bad signal about Pope Francis’ real intentions with the long delayed commission. The commission is now scheduled to meet together for an “all hands” organizational meeting in February, likely to be orchestrated by Fr. Robert Oliver, the commission’s chief of staff and the Vatican’s former top prosecutor. Oliver reportedly initially learned the ropes on the priest child abuse scandal under Boston’s infamous Cardinal Law, hardly a positive reference. Law, like Oliver, is in Rome, while the purported commission head, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, is in Boston and likes to communicate with the Vatican by fax!

4. In 2006, the Boston Globe reported that O’Malley indicated that administrative management is not his forte. Bishop Accountability has reported well on O’Malley’s and Oliver’s earlier shortcomings on addressing some suspected Boston priest abusers. This slow moving commission certainly made O’Malley’s limited management skills quite evident. Oliver and O’Malley will be assisted in the US by the sole US member, a former New Zealander who has worked for O’Malley in three dioceses. She also stood up for O’Malley in the same 2006 Boston Globe article about O’Malley’s poor handling of the termination of an alleged sexual harassing hospital executive.

5. So there you appear to have it. Pope Francis’ key team to clean up the scandal, at least in Boston, in the place where it first exploded a dozen years ago, is a old Boston team, perhaps with even occasional whispered advice from Cardinal Law in Rome. Amazing, just amazing! Is Pope Francis really serious?

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CALIFORNIA
Jewish Journal

by Jared Sichel

A federal judge ruled last week that Chabad of California intentionally misused $272,495 in Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grants it received in 2009 and must pay $844,985 in penalties, a portion of which will go to whistleblowers who brought the suit against Chabad.

Chabad of California’s head, Rabbi Boruch Shlomo Cunin, applied for the funds in 2008 as part of a national program to boost surveillance systems at religious institutions. He convinced two other local Chabad institutions — Chabad of Marina Del Rey and the Yeshiva Ohr Elchonon high school — to also apply for the grants and allow Chabad of California to carry out the logistics of managing the funds and contracting with a security firm.

But according to a ruling by Judge Morrison England, Cunin never established procedures for the money, and he also did not create a separate bank account to segregate and track the federal funds. The judge also ruled that Chabad did not use the funds for their intended purposes, and instead used the money for “regular operating expenses, including employee payroll, building repairs, mortgages, and utility expenses.”

Chabad of California’s attorney, Mark Hathaway, said that his clients were “very surprised” that England granted the Justice Department’s motion for summary judgment — the court ruled that the case didn’t warrant a trial because the facts against Chabad of California weren’t in question.

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KENTUCKY
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, Dec. 18

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

We are grateful that a Louisville predator priest won’t get shock probation. Keeping him behind bars is the best way to protect kids.

[WDRB]

Time and time again, we’ve seen people claim they’ll oversee child molesters if they’re freed. But these predators are shrewd, manipulative and relentless. Why take chances with the safety of children?

Fr. James Schook needs to stay locked up. We appreciate that Judge Mitch Perry understands this. We hope that others who were assaulted by Fr. Schook find some comfort in this just ruling.

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KENTUCKY
WDRB

[with video]

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — A Louisville priest convicted of sexually abusing a teenage boy will not be granted shock probation.

Rev. James Schook asked for shock probation in November — only six months into his 15-year sentence. A hearing had been set for Dec. 19 to hear Schook’s request, but Judge Mitch Perry denied the request one day before the hearing.

In April, a jury convicted Schook of three counts of sodomy and one count of indecent and immoral behavior with an individual and recommended the 15-year sentence, which the judge upheld.

In requesting shock probation, David Lambertus, Schook’s attorney, told Judge Perry that Schook has the support of family members and friends who have offered to care for him and “make sure he abides by the rules of shock probation.”

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Berger’s Beat

December 18, 2014 | Author: berger

Three priests have written to Pope Francis seeking an investigation into the Milwaukee archdiocesan bankruptcy. One of their concerns, a controversial move by then-Archbishop Tim Dolan to put $57 million into a cemetery trust fund he admitted “was to provide improved protection of these funds from “any legal claim and liability.” The intent of the bankruptcy proceeding for church officials “to exhaust silence and slander victims as well as to serve as a warning to others,” the letter asserts

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WASHINGTON (DC)
The Republic

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 18, 2014

WASHINGTON — Two women have joined a lawsuit saying they were sexually exploited by a rabbi accused of secretly videotaping women in a Jewish ritual bath.

The civil lawsuit was filed in early December in D.C. Superior Court and seeks class action status. On Thursday, two women joined the lawsuit, which was originally filed on behalf of a Georgetown University law student.

The rabbi the women say they were exploited by, Barry Freundel, was arrested in October and is charged with voyeurism for allegedly placing a hidden camera in the shower area of a ritual bath, called a mikvah.

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UNITED STATES
WJLA

By Joce Sterman December 18, 2014

WASHINGTON (WJLA) – A class-action lawsuit related to voyeurism against Georgetown rabbi Barry Freundel has named the Rabbinical Council of America as a defendant and named two specific victims as plaintiffs.

Freundel is accused of secretly videotaping women in a changing area near a ceremonial bath, called a mikvah, at Kesher Israel synagogue in Washington.

One of the newly named victims claims Freundel made her do a “practice dunk” in the Mikvah, a Jewish ceremonial bath used in conversion ceremonies, ahead of her own conversion. The new complaint also indicated that Freundel encouraged students from Towson University, where he was an associate professor, to make “field trips” to Kesher Israel.

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UNITED STATES
Failed Messiah

Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

The lawsuit against alleged mikvah voyeur Rabbi Barry Freundel has been expanded, ABC 7’s Joce Sterman reported.

At a press conference today, a new amended complaint was released that says students from Towson University were encouraged by Freundel to “go on field trips” to use the mikvah in which Freundel allegedly had a hidden camera set up to video record.

Two new plaintiffs were added to the suit, one of whom claims that Freundel made her do “practice dunks” as part of her conversion process. The other new plaintiff was one of Freundel’s students at Towson.

And, along with Freundel’s former synagogue Kesher Israel and the Capital Mikvah he controlled, the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), which previously investigated Freundel for other alleged misbehavior with female conversion candidates but took no action against him and did not warn the public, has been added to the lawsuit as a defendant.

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WASHINGTON
Yakima Herald-Republic

AP

SPOKANE, Wash. — The Catholic Diocese of Spokane can take its legal malpractice claim to trial against a law firm that handled its 2007 bankruptcy over priest sex abuse claims, a federal bankruptcy judge ruled.

The decision on Wednesday means former Spokane bishop Blase Cupich, who now serves as archbishop of Chicago, will likely have to testify in February about his decision to seek $3.6 million in legal fees from the Paine Hamblen law firm.

“I have every reasonable expectation that he will testify,” said Robert Gould, who is representing the diocese in the bankruptcy proceedings, The Spokesman-Review reported.

Cupich contends that Paine Hamblen lawyers underestimated how many victims would come forward with sex abuse claims after the bankruptcy was first resolved.

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ARIZONA
ascentral

EJ Montini, columnist | azcentral.com

There’s a very good pope in the Vatican these days and that has helped us to forget about the very bad priests that have operated in some Roman Catholic churches.

Including here.

This week the Catholic Diocese of Gallup, N.M., released what it called an updated list of priests who it claims were “credibly accused” of sexually abusing minors. At least 17 of them worked in Arizona.

This was a big story once. We’ve moved on. The same can’t be said for the victims.

And while the release of this information is a good thing, and may help other victims who choose to come forward, how could it have possibly taken so long? And how many other dioceses within the church are still holding out?

Back in April of 2002, over 12 years ago, I wrote a column that began:

“I called the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix to ask if the Bishop Thomas J. O’Brien had given police a list of all clergy members, past and present, who have been accused of sexual misconduct. I expected the answer to be yes.

“After all, last Sunday The Arizona Republic printed an article by Bishop O’Brien in which he discussed at length the problem of sexual abuse by priests. Among other things, the bishop said, ‘Make no mistake: Such misconduct with minors is deplorable. We cannot condone it; we must condemn it. Such misconduct with minors is a betrayal of trust of the highest order.’

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Wall Street Journal

By TOM CORRIGAN
Dec. 18, 2014

After years of negotiations, a settlement has been reached with insurance carriers that would furnish the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee, which is at the center of the longest running and most contentious diocesan bankruptcy to date, with $10.3 million to settle allegations of sexual abuse.

The settlement, if approved by a bankruptcy judge, could provide hundreds of individuals who claim they were sexually abused by the archdiocese’s clergy with substantially more compensation than is currently being offered by the archdiocese.

According to court papers, the archdiocese’s insurance carriers initially refused to cover liabilities stemming from sexual abuse. But, four years of negotiations and four mediations sessions have finally brokered a deal.

“It’s another step forward in bring this case to resolution,” said Jerry Topczewski, a spokesman for the archdiocese.

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Jan. 4, 2011, has offered $4 million to compensate about 125 of the more than 500 people who have sought compensation. The plan also provides another $500,000 to provide lifetime therapy, but abuse victims and their lawyers say that is not enough.

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UNITED STATES
America Magazine

Mary Ann Walsh | Dec 18 2014

Maybe Mother Clare Millea benefited from the low expectations that come with an impossible task. Whatever the case, the nun who heads the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus pulled off the apostolic visitation of all active nuns in the United States with a sense of aplomb and fairness. Kudos came from many places, including media that stood ready to pounce if anything seemed unfair.

So why did Mother Clare succeed despite predictions she would flame out?

Could it be that her success came because she is first of all a woman? I don’t wish to sound stereotypical but I think the answer lies in the fact that, as the final report said, she opted for a “sister-to-sister” dialogue. She didn’t go into the discussion with her mind made up. She sought information, not victory. This was no power trip to prove who was in charge.

She consulted many people, both women and men, and people likely to agree with her philosophically and those expected to disagree. It came as no surprise that orders being investigated were not open to paying for it. Thus she took on the arduous task of finding funders and did so, though many people, including church officials, were not throwing money at her. As a woman, she figured out how to do the study on the cheap. No need to have meetings at top-of-the-line hotels when a religious house might be found. The point was to meet, not to party. Word soon spread that the investigation seemed fair.

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ARIZONA/NEW MEXICO
KTAR

BY HOLLIDAY MOORE, | December 18, 2014

PHOENIX — A survivor of sexual abuse is calling leaders at the Catholic diocese in Gallup, New Mexico, cowards.

The ire comes one day after the diocese released more than 30 new names of suspected predators within the church. More than half on the list worked in Arizona between 1951 and 2013.

In a public letter, Bishop James Wall of the Gallup Diocese wrote, “In my ongoing commitment to protection of children and to further my goal of transparency within this Diocese, we have determined that there are additional priests against whom there have been credible allegations of child abuse.”

Despite the apparent openness, Joelle Casteix with Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests said, “This smells bad!”

Having advocated for more than a decade against priest abuse, Casteix, who lives in Southern California, said the open letter is more a calculated attempt to avoid further civil suits before the diocese bankruptcy case closed.

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IRELAND
RTE News

A 71-year-old priest who continued to say mass within his religious community after serving three years for sexually assaulting schoolboys, was sentenced to another three years for abuse dating back over 30 years.

Tadgh O’Dalaigh of Woodview, Mount Merrion Avenue, Blackrock, Dublin, received a five year sentenced at Cork Circuit Criminal Court today, with the final two years suspended.

A jury last July found him guilty of indecently assaulting a schoolboy in March or April 1979 in the sick bay of Coláiste an Chroí Naofa, Carraig na bhFear, in Co Cork.

O’Dalaigh had pleaded not guilty to this charge.

Earlier, he had pleaded guilty to five charges of indecently or sexually assaulting another schoolboy.

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REPUBLICA DOMINICANA
El Diario

Por: Jorge Viera
PUBLICADO: DEC, 14, 2014

“Me quiero suicidar, nadie en el pueblo me habla” , me dijo Juan, víctima de abuso sexual en la República Dominicana.

Juan (que no es su nombre real) vive en un pueblo llamado Juncalito, provincia de Santiago. Tan rural que para llegar ahí hay que hacerlo manejando por horas por una carretera de piedras y barro.
En ese alejado pueblo se estableció Wojciech Waldemar Gil, conocido en el país como el padre Alberto Gil. Este polaco decía que era como el elegido de Dios ante sus fieles. Juan y su familia entre ellos.

Tenía ocho años cuando el Padre Gil lo invitó a ser parte de la iglesia como monaguillo.

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DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Dominican Today

New York.- “He abused and raped me for six years, forced me to wear women’s undergarments and threatened to kill me,” revealed in dramatic and revealing confessions to a local TV station, one of the many abused boys, sodomized and violated by Polish former priest Wojciech Waldermar Gil (Padre Alberto) in the town of Juncalito, in Dominican Republic’s highlands.

The boy identified only as “Juan” in the interview on Univision, said he tried to take his own life several times, after the abuse, which many believe senior Dominican Catholic prelates sought to cover up.

The defrocked priest being held in his native Poland on similar charges is also accused of abusing at least seven boys who belonged to the parish at Juncalito, many of whom were altar boys just like “Juan.”

The victim said many of the abused have refused to speak about their alleged ordeal. “I do not know how many times, but he abused me for six years.”

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VATIKAN
Katholisch

Vatikan | 17.12.2014 – Vatikanstadt

Papst Franziskus hat neun weitere Mitglieder für die vatikanische Kinderschutzkommission ernannt. Er berief unter anderem ein weiteres Opfer sexuellen Missbrauchs in das Gremium, wie aus der Vatikanmitteilung vom Mittwoch hervorgeht. Der Brite Peter Saunders ist Gründer einer Vereinigung von Betroffenen. Er gehörte zu jenen Missbrauchsopfern, die der Papst im Juli im Vatikan traf. Saunders ist neben der Irin Marie Collins das zweite Missbrauchsopfer in der Kommission.

Franziskus berief zudem Fachleute aus Südafrika, Sambia und den Philippinen in das im März gegründete Gremium. Die Erweiterung auf jetzt 17 Mitglieder diene dazu, die Kontinente mit ihren unterschiedlichen Kulturen und Situationen abzubilden, so der Vatikan.

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VATIKAN
Katholische-Informiert

Peter Saunders ist Gründer einer Vereinigung von Betroffenen und gehörte zu den Missbrauchsopfern, die der Papst im Juli im Vatikan getroffen hatte.

Vatikanstadt, kath.net/KAP, 17. Dezember 2014

Papst Franziskus hat neun weitere Mitglieder für die vatikanische Kinderschutzkommission ernannt. Er berief unter anderem ein weiteres Opfer sexuellen Missbrauchs in das Gremium, wie aus der vatikanischen Mitteilung vom Mittwoch hervorgeht. Der Brite Peter Saunders ist Gründer einer Vereinigung von Betroffenen. Er gehörte zu den Missbrauchsopfern, die der Papst im Juli im Vatikan getroffen hatte. Saunders ist neben der Irin Marie Collins das zweite Missbrauchsopfer in der Kommission.

Franziskus berief zudem Fachleute aus Südafrika, Sambia und den Philippinen in das im März gegründete Gremium. Die Erweiterung auf jetzt 17 Mitglieder diene dazu, die Kontinente mit ihren unterschiedlichen Kulturen und Situationen abzubilden, so der Vatikan.

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UNITED STATES
Religion News Service – Spiritual Politics

Mark Silk | Dec 18, 2014

Today’s lesson concerns charging reporters with smuggling opinions into news stories. Exhibit A comes by way of the redoubtable Mollie Z. Hemingway, formerly of GetReligion and now senior editor at The Federalist. Still on the lookout for distortions by the liberal MSM, she took umbrage at the following paragraph from the AP story on the Vatican report on nuns a couple of days ago:

The [Vatican] probes also prompted an outpouring of support from rank-and-file American Catholics who viewed the investigations as a crackdown by a misogynistic, all-male Vatican hierarchy against the underpaid, underappreciated women who do the lion’s share of work running Catholic hospitals, schools and services for the poor.

Mollie tweeted; The American Conservative’s Rod Dreher replied (and it went on from there).

[screen shot]

For the record, it’s worth noting that there was indeed an outpouring of support for the nuns, as indicated by the May, 2012 RNS story that began, “Catholics around the U.S. are coming together for prayer vigils as a show of support for America’s nuns, whom the Vatican accuses of having ‘serious doctrinal problems.’” And it was Rome’s chief doctrine guy, Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, who invoked the M-word against critics of his investigation when he told Osservatore Romano in September, “Above all we have to clarify that we are not misogynists, we don’t want to gobble up a woman a day!” And the Vatican report itself makes mention of the nuns’ work in education, health care, and social services.

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AUSTRALIA/NEW ZEALAND
The Australian

DECEMBER 19, 2014

TWO Tasmanian detectives have arrived in New Zealand to interview an alleged pedophile teacher, who authorities had long believed was dead.

The officers are seeking to question Ronald Thomas over ­allegations — made in evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse — that he abused two boys at Hobart’s elite Hutchins School. The allegations — relating to the 1960s when, the school now admits, a number of staff were pedophiles — have been publicly denied by the 77-year-old former English and music teacher.

Mr Thomas was named by the royal commission because it — and his alleged victims — believed him to be dead. Earlier this month, The Australian found Mr Thomas alive and enjoying his retirement in dairy country on New Zealand’s north island, after more than 40 years teaching across the Tasman.

Tasmania Police Assistant Commissioner Donna Adams yesterday announced a formal investigation into the allegations against Mr Thomas had been launched. “Police have spoken to the two former students who gave evidence to the royal commission (and) the men have indicated they would like the matters looked into by police,” Ms Adams said. “As a result, Tasmania Police have sent two detectives to interview Mr Thomas in New Zealand. Once the police investigation is concluded, a report will be provided to the DPP for review.”

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OHIO
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, Dec. 18

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 )

Seven clerics with a Cincinnati-based Catholic group are accused of sexually abusing children in New Mexico, according to new court documents and the Gallup Independent newspaper. (Full article is below.) We call on the head of the group, Fr. Page Polk (pagepolk@franciscan.org, frankjasper@franciscan.org), to fully disclose their long-secret records about clergy sex crimes and cover ups.

The religious order, called the Franciscans, is located at 1615 Vine St. and 5000 Colerain (513-542-1082, 513-542-7999) in Cincinnati. For four decades, it has sent priests to the small Gallup diocese.

Five of the accused clerics are believed to be publicly named as alleged perpetrators for the first time: Ephrem Beltramea (listed as Ephraim Beltremea), Eugene Botello, Crispin Butz, Finnian Connolly and Clementin (listed as Clemetine) Wottle.

Besides making public their records about predators, we also urge the Franciscans to

—reveal every church facility where these seven accused clerics worked –in every state – and
—aggressively seek out anyone who may have seen, suspected or suffered crimes by them.

Fr. Mark Soehner handles abuse cases for the Franciscans. He is at 513-721-4700, extension 3214.

We also urge anyone with information or suspicions about Franciscsan clerics who may have committed or concealed child sex crimes to call police and prosecutors right away.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Louise Roseingrave

Thu, Dec 18, 2014

A retired priest has been jailed for three years for sexually and indecently assaulting two teenage boys while teaching at a Cork boarding school.

Fr Tadhg O’Dalaigh received a five year sentence with two years suspended for the sexual and indecent assault of two boys aged 14 and 16 in the 1970’s and early 1980’s.

Last month, Fr O’Dalaigh, a member of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart was convicted of sexually assaulting a pupil at Coláiste An Chroí Naofa, Carrignavar, Co Cork, on an unknown date between March 1st and April 30th, 1979. The State alleged the incident took place in the school’s sick bay.

He was found unanimously guilty by a jury of 10 men and two women.

Fr O’Dalaigh (71) had previously pleaded guilty to five counts of indecent assault of another boy at the school between September 1st, 1982, and April 1st, 1983.

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MINNESOTA
The Catholic Spirit

This spring, an external agency will conduct an onsite audit of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’ safe environment policies and procedures to determine compliance with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.

In November, StoneBridge Business Partners of Rochester, N.Y., confirmed that the archdiocese met the data collection requirements for the 2013-2014 audit period.

The spring audit will include interviewing archdiocesan leaders responsible for each article of the Charter, checking source documentation for safe environment activities, and potentially conducting parish and school audits, according to Tim O’Malley, the archdiocese’s director of ministerial standards and safe environment.

The USCCB’s audit is conducted annually, with an onsite audit done every third year. For the 2013-2014 audit, the archdiocese submitted to StoneBridge for review data regarding alleged victims, accused clerics, adult and child safe environment training, background checks and information on how the data is collected and compiled.

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NEW ZEALAND
New Zealand Herald

Kurt Bayer

A decision by the New Zealand Government to extradite a former Catholic brother to Australia to face child-sex abuse charges has been backed by a High Court judge.

In a decision out today, Justice Cameron Mander has concluded that former Justice Minister Judith Collins made no error in deciding to extradite Bernard Kevin McGrath, 66, to stand trial on 250 charges of sexual offending.

An application to review the decision has been declined.

After several hearings at district and high court jurisdictions, it was left up to Ms Collins earlier this year to make a final decision on whether McGrath be extradited to Australia.

In August, after “careful consideration”, Ms Collins issued an order for his surrender across the Tasman.

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AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

AAP

A former Catholic brother has another round in his fight against an extradition from New Zealand to Australia to face 250 historical child sex charges.

Bernard Kevin McGrath, 66, was in court earlier this month seeking a judicial review of former NZ justice minister Judith Collins’ decision to extradite him.

But on Wednesday, Justice Cameron Mander in the High Court at Christchurch found Ms Collins hadn’t made any reviewable mistakes in her decision that McGrath be surrendered to Australia and declined the review.

McGrath had argued there had been breaches of suppression orders by Whale Oil blogger Cameron Slater that could have lead to bias given the friendly relationship between Mr Slater and Ms Collins.

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NEW ZEALAND
Record

A High Court judge today backed a decision by the New Zealand Government to extradite a former Catholic brother to Australia to face 250 charges of child-sex abuse charges.

Australia requested the extradition of Bernard Kevin McGrath, 66, in November 2012 alleging that he raped, molested and abused dozens of young boys at one of Australia’s most prominent Catholic religious orders – the St John of God Brothers between 1977 and 1986. According to court evidence the institution which specialized in accommodating boys, many of whom had intellectual disabilities, had an entrenched culture of sexual abuse.

Originally from New Zealand, McGrath joined the St John of God Brothers (SJOG) in the 1960s at the age of 18. He trained at the order’s headquarters in Sydney and spent most of his working life SJOG institutions both in Australia and New Zealand. In 1991 in New Zealand two social workers contacted the police after reports from boys that he had sexually molested them and he was tried and sentenced to three years jail. In 1995, after McGrath completed his New Zealand jail term, police took him back to Sydney, where he pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 1997 to nine months jail for offenses against another boy.

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SPAIN
The Local

The parents of ‘nuns’ with a Spanish sect hit whose leader has been hit with sexual abuse charges have called on the Pope to help convince the young women to leave the order.

The women are followers of The Voice of the Serviam, whose leader, Feliciano Miguel Rosendo da Silva and his right-hand woman, self-proclaimed ‘nun’ Marta Paz Alonso, were detained on December 11th on charges that included sexual abuse, money laundering and crimes against moral integrity.

The sect was previously called the Mandate and Order of Saint Michael Archangel, with Roseado da Silva changing its name when he was expelled from the Roman Catholic diocese of Tui in Galicia for “inappropriate behaviour”.

The sect had around 400 members at its peak, its choir singing for Pope Beneict XVI when he visited Madrid in 2011, but most of them left the group when Roseado Da Silva was expelled from Tui and moved to Madrid.

Roseado Da Silva’s arrest came a day after former members of the sect spoke out about the alleged sexual, physical and psychological abuse by the two leaders.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

A few short takes on yesterday’s report on American nuns by the Vatican Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life:

1. The report itself: I’ve read it, so you won’t have to (you’re welcome). As various media statements are saying, it’s generally positive, though the praise is interlarded with some critical statements that reflect the well-seeded rumors of wealthy, powerful U.S. Catholics who got the ball rolling on Vatican investigtion of American nuns, when the nuns dared to claim influence in the U.S. public square equal to that of the bishops, as the latter did everything but stand on their heads in the past several election cycles to convince Catholics that voting Democratic would be sinful.

As you assess the positive aspects of the report, keep in mind that the investigation of the Leadership Conference of Religious Women by the congregation on consecrated life is only half of a two-pronged investigation. The other is being carried out by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by the arch-conservative Cardinal Müller, a crony of the emeritus pope Benedict. That investigation report is expected to be far less positive than the one released yesterday was.

On the carping side, here’s a statement that stood out for me as I read the report yesterday:

A review of the Constitutions and other directives of apostolic religious institutes generally revealed that institutes have written guidelines for the reception of the sacraments and sound spiritual practices. This Congregation asks the members of each institute to evaluate their actual practice of liturgical and common prayer. We ask them to discern what measures need to be taken to further foster the sisters’ intimate relationship with Christ and a healthy communal spirituality based on the Church’s sacramental life and sacred Scripture.

This statement stood out for a variety of reasons. In the first place, the report begins by acknowledging that religious women led the way after Vatican II in reflecting on the charisms of their various religious institutes, and in seeking to return to their founding charisms and live those charisms effectively in the church of the late 20th century. What the report didn’t say but might well have said is that religious women set a standard in this regard that male religious communities and male clerics might have done well to emulate — but which male communities and clerics often actively refused to emulate. Because they have imagined women have nothing to teach them, and that Catholic truth resides exclusively among them as Catholic men of God. . . .

2. David Gibson thinks, however, that at least one effect of this report is that it demonstrates the following:

The church’s conservative echo chamber is broken.

I hope he’s correct about that. But I have my doubts. Wealthy right-wing U.S. Catholics have had disproportionate influence in the Vatican for quite some time now. They’re the ones driving the investigation of American nuns, since they want to silence nuns’s voices as the U.S. bishops anoint the Republican party as God’s chosen party for Catholics. And I’m not entirely sure their influence is waning, though it does appear that Pope Francis is willing to listen to more voices than these voices — and if that’s the case, then it bodes well for the future of the church, it seems to me. If he chooses to act on some of what he hears from people outside the right-wing echo chamber, that is . . . .

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NEW YORK
Road to Recovery

MEDIA RELEASE
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2014

SISTERS OF ST. URSULA REFUSE TO HELP FORMER MEMBER WHO WAS SEXUALLY ABUSED BY NOTRE DAME NUN PRINCIPAL

What
A demonstration and leafleting outside a Catholic girls’ high school Christmas concert and celebration

Where
On the public sidewalk outside Notre Dame School at 327 West 13th Street, NY, NY 10014

When
Thursday, December 18, 2014 from 5:00 until 6:30 PM

Who
Cecilia Springer, an 84 year-old alumna of Notre Dame School, Class of 1948, who was approximately 14 years of age and a sophomore at Notre Dame School when the Principal of the school sexually abused her; Dr. Robert M. Hoatson, co-founder and President of Road to Recovery, Inc., a non-profit charity that assists sexual abuse victims and their families; and other supporters.

Why
Cecilia Springer became a Sister of Saint Ursula following graduation from college even after she was sexually abused by a nun (Sr. Mary Andrew) at Notre Dame School. She left the Sisters of Saint Ursula many years later after it became unbearable for her to remain in a religious order of women which tolerated her sexual abuse of children at her alma mater, Notre Dame School. Cecilia Springer’s religious name was Sister Mary Grace. After being interviewed by representatives of the school and religious order, the Sisters of Saint Ursula and Notre Dame School refused to offer her any assistance that will allow her to live a decent life as a senior citizen. Cecilia Springer and her supporters will call on Notre Dame School and the Sisters of Saint Ursula to do the right thing by acknowledging that Cecilia Springer is, indeed, a sexual abuse victim of Sister Mary Andrew, apologizing for what happened to her, and assisting her to live a life that is more free of worry and directed toward healing.

Contacts
Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D., Road to Recovery, Inc. – 862-368-2800
Attorney Mitchell Garabedian, Boston, MA – 617-523-6250

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CANADA
CNW

AFN Welcomes Court Decision to Extend Deadline for Indian Residential Schools Personal Credits for Education Program

OTTAWA, December 17, 2014 /CNW/ – Assembly of First Nations (AFN) National Chief Perry Bellegarde is pleased with today’s court decision to extend the deadlines for the Indian residential schools personal credits for education program, and wants to see existing administrative concerns addressed quickly so that residential schools survivors can more easily access the program.

“I’m pleased that all parties to the Settlement Agreement have agreed to extend the deadlines and that residential schools survivors will now have additional time to apply to the personal credits program,” said AFN National Chief Perry Bellegarde. “The Assembly of First Nations has pressed for this extension in response to the serious administrative concerns expressed by survivors and family members across the country. The extension does not solve all the challenges of the program, but it will allow us more time to continue to offer support to survivors interested in using the credits for education programs and services.”

New deadline dates will be determined once the court order is signed by all parties, but today’s court ruling will allow for a two month extension from the date of the court order to submit the personal credits acknowledgement form and a five month extension from the date of court order to submit the personal credits redemption forms. All education programs and services must be concluded by August 31, 2015.

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CANADA
CNW

OTTAWA, Dec 17, 2014 /CNW/ – Bernard Valcourt, Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, today welcomed the decision of the Supreme Court of British Columbia to grant Canada’s request for an extension to the deadlines to apply for, redeem, and use Personal Credits. Parties to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement requested the deadline extension in order to give Common Experience Payment recipients and their family members the best opportunity to access Personal Credits to support education opportunities.

The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement provides that Common Experience Payment (CEP) recipients may apply for Personal Credits. Personal Credits have no cash value and can be shared with up to two family members. They are redeemable for either personal or group educational services provided by approved educational entities and groups. Personal Credits have a maximum individual redemption value of $3,000.

New deadline dates will be determined once the court order is signed by all parties, but today’s court decision allows for a two month extension from the date of the court order to submit an application for Personal Credits. It will also allow for a five month extension from the date of the court order for Education Entities and Groups to submit redemption forms for payment. August 31, 2015, is the new deadline for CEP recipients, or their family members, to complete courses or programs for which Personal Credits are used.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Irish Times

Susan McKay

Thu, Dec 18, 2014

One night in late 2011, after the announcement by the Northern Executive that the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry (HIAI) was to be set up, Jon McCourt walked onto Derry’s Peace Bridge and struggled with the urge to throw himself into the river Foyle.

It wasn’t that he was opposed to the inquiry. Having spent 10 years of his childhood in one of the institutions to be investigated, McCourt is one of those who had campaigned for years for this. He had been in Stormont for the announcement, and had felt elation and pride as he stood with other survivors on the grand steps in front of the television cameras and welcomed it. But on the journey back across the Glenshane Pass to Derry the ghosts had come. “In my head I began to see all the people I knew who had taken their own lives,” he told me. “Out of about 40, more than a dozen had died. One hung himself. Another drank a bottle of anti-freeze. One threw himself off a bridge in Donegal. Someone walked out into the traffic in London.

Lives of addiction

A few died young after lives of addiction to alcohol and anti-depressants. My own sister died in her 50s from cancer – there was a proliferation of cancers.”

McCourt did not see these people as adults. “I saw them as the children I knew when we were all five or six-years-old.” He has no doubt about the reason for their difficult lives and tragic early deaths: “It was the inability to deal with the trauma.”

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KENTUCKY
WHAS

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WHAS11) – Father Ronald Domhoff is back on the job at St. Peter the Apostle Parish.

His return comes after spending almost three months on administrative leave.

Father Domhoff was accused of sexual abuse by a then teenager, dating back to the 1980’s.

Louisville Metro Police said Wednesday they were not able to proceed with the case because of the Kentucky Statute of Limitations.

The Commonwealth Attorney’s office reviewed the case and said the applicable charges would have been a misdemeanor.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Register

NEWS ANALYSIS: Archbishop Stephan Burger of Freiburg im Breisgau said the changes will be made in the interest of maintaining the Church’s ‘credibility’ in the eyes of the general public.

by EDWARD PENTIN 12/15/2014

VATICAN CITY — Despite a postponed vote last month, a German prelate has said he is confident the country’s bishops will change Church rules to allow employment of remarried divorcees and men and women living in same-sex relationships, despite growing opposition to the move.

Archbishop Stephan Burger of Freiburg im Breisgau said the German bishops’ conference “will revise” the ecclesiastical labor laws (Kirchliches Arbeitsrecht), according to a Dec. 9 interview with the German news website Morgenweb. He said the changes will be made in the interests of maintaining the Church’s “credibility” in the eyes of the general public.

According to Church sources in Germany who ask to remain anonymous, the bishops were to vote unanimously in favor of change on Nov. 24, but they decided to postpone the decision until April, after a federal court ruling supported the Church’s current laws that forbid employing staff whose lifestyles run contrary to Church teaching.

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