ABUSE TRACKER

UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: Ordained a priest of the Wisconsin Province of the Society of Jesus in 1959, Fr. Ken Walleman taught high school in Milwaukee briefly after ordination, after which he was assigned to St. Francis Mission on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Walleman remained on the Reservation for more than 30 years. In 1997 he was transferred to the Jesuit Community at St. Camillus in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. Walleman was accused in a 2003 lawsuit of having sexually abused a Native American boy at St. Francis Mission in the 1970s. He was known to still be residing in Wauwatosa in May 2014.

Ordained: 1959

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WASHINGTON
Seattle PI

[statement from the archdiocese]

By JOEL CONNELLY Seattlepi.com\ Published: May 6, 2014

SEATTLE — Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain met behind closed doors Tuesday night with parishoners at St. Bridget’s Catholic Church, after the Archdiocese disclosed that its former pastor disobeyed an order not to practice his priestly ministry or appear in public as a priest.

The priest, Rev. Harry Quigg, was removed from active ministry in 2004 by Archbishop Alex Brunett, Sartain’s predecessor, after disclosure of a longstanding sexual relationship with a teen. Quigg had been determined as “not suitable for priestly ministry.”

The Archdiocese of Seattle made known facts of the case to the north end parish, which serves Laurelhurst and other well-to-do Seattle neighborhoods, last Sunday.

It told parishioners Quigg had been having sex with a 17-year-old – gender was not specified – in 1980. “Because the age of majority in 1980 under both canon law and civil law was 16, the (Archdiocese Case Review Board) concluded the conduct did not constitute sexual abuse of a minor,” the statement said.

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SEATTLE (WA)
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle

(SEATTLE) The Archdiocese of Seattle released a statement Friday, May 2 regarding Harold Quigg and announced that it would review its policies for monitoring priests removed from ministry. An archdiocesan review board concluded in 2004 that Quigg, a former pastor and parish priest at several parishes in western Washington, had engaged in sexual misconduct in 1980.

Quigg, who agreed to participate in the archdiocesan Relapse Prevention Program, has been under the supervision of a monitor, but in recent years has not complied with the terms of his ministry restrictions.

The archdiocese’s statement was sent to several parishes notifying them over the weekend of the 2004 Archdiocesan Case Review Board determination regarding Quigg. No further allegations have been brought against Quigg either prior to the finding or since he was removed from ministry.

The information was not made public at the time because of the determination that the sexual contact did not involve a minor.

Quigg, who retired in 2000, was instructed by then-Archbishop Alex J. Brunett at the time of the review board’s recommendation not to present himself publicly as a priest. The archdiocese recently became aware that he had violated his restrictions related to celebration of the sacraments.

“I regret that these violations did not come to my attention earlier,” Archbishop J. Peter Sartain said. “We recognize that the steps taken were insufficient and we are reviewing our current policies to minimize the possibility of such occurrences in the future.”

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WASHINGTON
Seattle Weekly

For 30 years, the man of God molested students he was hired to teach and guide. Over and over he was accused, questioned, transferred, rehabilitated, and accused again. But he never truly paid for his sins.

By Rick Anderson Tue., May 6 2014

Edward Courtney’s cross-country, school-to-school, boy-to-boy journey lasted more than 30 years and scarred the lives of more victims than he could remember. But by the end of it, if it really ever ended, he still could not bring himself to say the words—sexual abuse—that brought him to a meeting with lawyers on an early-April morning in 2009, or to utter the phrase that numerous allegations have come to define as his true devotion—serial molester.

As former Brother Courtney sat in the law offices on Columbia Tower’s 47th floor on that spring day, the Seattle skyline filling the windows outside as he mulled over his answers, the best he could come up with was “wrestling.”

“The wrestling, I think, yes, that would be—I remember a couple of occasions of that,” he said in the office filled with attorneys and a court reporter recording Courtney’s deposition. Maybe there was some accidental rubbing-up-against, Courtney would say. And touching. All those years of encounters in classrooms, hallways, gyms, church, and homes—yes, there could have been “inappropriate touching,” he allowed.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Norwich Evening News

Lauren Rogers
Wednesday, May 7, 2014

No further action is to be taken against a Norfolk priest arrested on suspicion of having indecent images of children.

Father David Jennings, parish priest of St Mary’s Church in Regent Road, Great Yarmouth, was arrested by Norfolk police on January 9.

The Catholic Diocese of East Anglia said there would be no comment on the matter.

A spokesman for Norfolk police said: “Following detailed enquiries, no further action will be taken against a 57-year-old man from Great Yarmouth arrested on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children.”

At the time of Father Jenning’s arrest, a statement issued by the Diocese of East Anglia confirmed the priest had voluntarily withdrawn from “all active ministry” as well as his position as a governor of St Mary’s Primary School in Gorleston, and as a member of the Safeguarding Commission for the Diocese with immediate effect.

“His withdrawal makes no judgement of guilt or innocence but is in accord with the safeguarding procedures of the Catholic Church of England and Wales,” the diocese said.

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UNITED STATES
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

May 6, 2014

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) will meet June 11-13, in New Orleans, for their annual Spring General Assembly. The opening Mass of the June general session will be celebrated by Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky, USCCB president, at the Cathedral-Basilica of St. Louis.

The second day of the general session will include presentations and discussion on two special topics: “Marriage and the Economy” and “the New Evangelization and Poverty.” Other agenda items include:

• A presentation on the upcoming Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family.
• A presentation on the World Meeting of Families by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, OFM Cap., of Philadelphia and Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family.
• A presentation from Catholic Relief Services (CRS) regarding the relief efforts in the Philippines in the wake of last November’s Typhoon Haiyan.
• Debate and vote on the request for renewal of the recognitio granted to the National Directory for the Formation, Ministry and Life of Permanent Deacons.
• Consultation on the cause for canonization of Father Paul Wattson, Servant of God.
• Update and vote on proposal by working group on Faithful Citizenship.
• A presentation on the Annual Progress Report of the bishops’ efforts to protect children and young people from sexual abuse, presented by Francesco Cesareo, Ph.D., chair of the National Review Board.
• Debate and vote on the renewal of the bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty for an additional three year term..
• An update from Archbishop Leonard P. Blair of Hartford, Connecticut, chairman of the USCCB Subcommittee on the Catechism, on the work of the Subcommittee.
• An update from Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of San Francisco, chairman of the USCCB Subcommittee on the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, on the Subcommittee’s efforts.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic San Francisco

May 7th, 2014
By Carol Zimmermann

WASHINGTON – The U.S. bishops, meeting in New Orleans June 11-13, will discuss today’s economy and its impact on marriages and evangelization. They will also review their efforts in preventing sexual abuse of children, strengthening marriage, helping typhoon victims and preparing for upcoming church-sponsored events on family life.

The bishops will hear presentations on “Marriage and the Economy” and “the New Evangelization and Poverty” on the second day of their gathering before they close for executive sessions.

The first day will be filled with reports on upcoming events, including presentations on the Oct. 5-19 extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the family and the World Meeting of Families, set for Sept. 22-27, 2015, in Philadelphia.

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VATICAN CITY
Headlines from the Catholic World

May 7, 2014 By CNA Daily News

Vatican City, May 7, 2014 / 12:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis will meet with United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon May 9, as well as with the Chief Executives Board for Coordination, marking an opportunity for the Pope to encourage reform of the organization.

The board coordinates and directs the U.N., and is comprised of 29 heads of U.N. bodies.

The meeting comes against the backdrop of a tense hearing of a Holy See delegation before the U.N.’s Committee on the Convention against Torture, which the Holy See signed in 2002.

The presentation of the report highlighted once again the tensions between the Holy See and the U.N.’s satellite organizations.

After the May 5 presentation of the initial report, Felice Gaer, a committee member, blamed the “alleged distinction” between Vatican City and the Holy See, a differentiation she said “would create important gaps in the coverage” of the treaty and is a “troubling” bit of legalese.

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AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

AMANDA BANKS, LEGAL AFFAIRS EDITOR The West Australian
May 7, 2014

A Christian Brothers’ leader has told a royal commission hearing in Perth this morning that the order will revisit any compensation payment considered to be unjust by a victim of child abuse.

Brother Julian McDonald, a deputy province leader, told the hearing that the commitment would encompass all 11 men who gave evidence to the commission last week of brutal and repeated abuse at the hands of brothers at four WA orphanages run by the order.

“I will say here and now that any settlement that is regarded by the person settled with as unjust will be revisited,” Brother McDonald told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Questioned by lawyer Mark Cuomo, representing one of the men who gave evidence of abuse, Brother McDonald said selling properties which were still owned by the order – and built by the unpaid child labour of former residents – and using the proceeds to compensate those left damaged by abuse was a “possibility”.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

[with audio]

(Vatican Radio/CNS) The Holy See representative to Geneva, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi has told the UN Committee on the Convention Against Torture (CAT) that the Holy See is making “every effort” to combat the “plague and scourge” of child sexual abuse and “condemns torture, including for those who are tortured and killed before they are born”.

The Archbishop was speaking Tuesday, in a second day of hearings before the Committee which monitors the application of the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, among signatory states. The Holy See signed the international treaty in 2002

Speaking to Vatican Radio at the concluding of the hearing Abp. Tomasi described the experience as “constructive” and added that it allowed the Holy See to make “important clarifications”. During the hearing – which was streamed live on the internet – the Archbishop responded to the Committees’ queries from their reading of the Holy See report, regarding the handling of the scandal of child sexual abuse by clergy and the issue of the Holy See jurisdiction.

He noted: “While the Holy See does not have the competency or the ability to initiate criminal proceedings against crimes that are committed in territories outside Vatican City State, it makes every effort to conduct ecclesiastical proceedings against clerics against whom credible accusations of sexual abuse of minors have been presented. This is done without substitution for or prejudices of other processes that are to be applied by the competent judiciary system in the state in which the accused person resides. Civil law regarding the reporting of the crime to the authorities should always be followed”.

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AUSTRALIA/GENEVA
The Guardian (UK)

Australian Associated Press
theguardian.com, Wednesday 7 May 2014

Survivors of child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy have reacted angrily to a Vatican claim at the UN that the Australian church’s redress scheme is effective.

In Geneva on Tuesday, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, who heads a Vatican delegation appearing before the UN Committee against Torture, referred to the Australian Towards Healing process as an example of the church “responding positively” to victims of abuse, campaigner Nicky Davis said.

Davis, who heads the Australian branch of Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests (SNAP) said Tomasi was answering questions about the the Vatican’s response to victims when he mentioned Towards Healing.

“It was offered as an example of how the church is responding positively and seemed to imply that it would be a model scheme for other countries,” said Davis, who attended the sessions.

She said Australian survivors were astonished to hear the Vatican holding up the “disgraced” Towards Healing process as an example of the Catholic church properly addressing this issue.

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GENEVA
Washington Post

For the first time, the Vatican unveils how it punished thousands of pedophile priests

BY TERRENCE MCCOY
May 7

Weeks ago, the United Nations released one of the greatest international indictments of the Vatican in years. Among the report’s concerns: “ritual beatings of children,” “torture and other cruel or degrading treatment” and sexual abuse and exploitation.

Worse, the report said, the Catholic Church hadn’t just ignored pleas for reform. It had protected pedophile priests. “Well-known child sexual abusers have been transferred from parish to parish or to other countries in an attempt by the church to cover-up such crimes,” the United Nations alleged.

On Tuesday, the Vatican’s ambassador to the United Nations sat at a desk before a U.N. committee in Geneva to address some of those concerns. Over three hours, the gray-haired archbishop unveiled for the first time the punishment the church has meted out to thousands of priests guilty of committing sexual abuse.

In the past decade, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi said the Vatican defrocked 848 priests. It also sanctioned an additional 2,572 clergymen with lesser penalties, including “a life of prayer and penitence.” In all, he reported, the Vatican handled more than 3,400 cases of sexual abuse since 2004. “There is no climate of impunity, but there is a total commitment to clean the house,” he said, adding that many of the cases of sexual abuse were from decades ago.

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PENNSYLVANIA
WTAE

[with video]

PITTSBURGH —Bernard Joseph Hartman is believed to be in his 70s or 80s as he stands trial in Australia for alleged child abuse.

The former North Catholic teacher’s troubles prompted the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh to launch its own investigation and what was discovered is disturbing, according to diocese spokesman the Rev. Ron Lengwin.

This, after the diocese sent a letter to more than 9,000 alumni, asking members to report any alleged abuse by Hartman. One person responded.

“The diocese deeply regrets the harm that was done to anyone,” said Lengwin

He said three of the four additional alleged offenders are deceased.

“You come away with tears,” Lengwin said. “So when you hear this, it’s like, ‘Oh no, not again.'” Lengwin.

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PENNSYLVANIA
CBS Pittsburgh

Lynne Hayes-Freeland

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — The doors to Bishop Donald Wuerl High School are slated to close at the end of this school year, but there is a cloud hanging over the former North Catholic High School.
First, there were allegations of sexual misconduct against a former teacher Bro. Bernard Robert Hartman, a member of the Marianists Order assigned to the school in 1961.

Now, the diocese has alerted some 9,000 former students about new allegations against several other former teachers.

“There were three brothers that were at North Catholic, beginning most of them in the ‘50s and the ‘60s,” said Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese spokesperson Fr. Ron Lengwin.

The letter reads in part: “While my letter of March 28, 2014, did not result in any additional allegations against Bro. Hartman, information concerning three other Marianists who served at North Catholic High School was brought to our attention. Those former staff members are Bro. William Charles Hildebrand, Bro. Francis Meder and Bro. Ralph August Mravintz.”

They are all now deceased, but taught at the school between 1951 and 1964. The diocese is aware of as many as six to seven victims.

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GENEVA
The Voice of Russia

The Vatican has dismissed more than 800 priests for sexual abuse of children in the past decade and paid billions of dollars in compensation, senior Vatican officials told a United Nations panel on Tuesday, NYT reports. The Vatican came under hostile investigation by a United Nations committee on Monday, May 5, over its handling of sex abuse scandals that have surfaced more than a decade ago.

The Holy See had to “show us that, as a party to the convention, you have a system in place to prohibit torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment when it is acquiesced to by anyone under the effective control of the officials of the Holy See and the institutions that operate in the Vatican City state,” Felice Gaer, the US chief rapporteur of the Against Torture Committee, told the Vatican delegation, The Guardian reported.

Signed over a decade ago, the anti-torture treaty reflects the international convention that bans torture as well as cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

The Vatican was accused by the Against Torture Committee of covering up crimes by the clergy and lay personnel falls.

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UNITED STATES
Press TV (Iran)

[with video]

Wed May 7, 2014

Press TV has conducted an interview with Mark Dankof, a Lutheran pastor, in San Antonio, about a UN committee saying that systematic sex abuse by the Catholic clergy could amount to torture.

The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: Looking at that UN report we saw a comment being made about the nature of these – what we could say – actions taken by these priests involved in the scandal. He was saying that these go against Christian beliefs – they are anti-Christian actions and by covering up these actions, the Catholic Church is, in his words, promoting them.

And that brings us to the question of what is the root cause of the problem in the first place?

Dankof: Well I think this whole issue of predominantly homosexual pedophilia has been particularly predominant among Roman Catholic clergymen. I think you have a situation here where this UN Committee on Torture should not be involved in this because if the state and local authorities and the Federal authorities in the United States were doing their job according to our own laws here – and I presume that that applies to many other legal jurisdictions in sovereign nation states around the world even as I speak…

These Catholic clergymen who have been accused of these things – and in many cases are guilty – and these arch bishops who’ve covered up for them and have attempted to [reveal] nothing about this egregious breach of Christian morality and indecency ought to be charged with crimes by state attorney generals in the United States and if necessary by the appropriate Federal officials.

This is where this should be stopped along with Catholic people around the world withholding contributions from the Catholic Church until they are satisfied that something substantive is being done.

I’m very concerned as well about this UN Committee on Torture, which is headed up by a Zionist Jew by the name of Claudio Grossman, who clearly has used this Committee on Torture to engage in a carte blanche assault on traditional Christian morality by insisting that the official position of the Roman Catholic Church on abortion, on euthanasia and on contraception is “the psychological torture of women,” when in fact Mr. Grossman needs to find out something about the number of women in the United States and elsewhere who suffer from post-abortion stress syndrome.

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GENEVA
Huffington Post

JOHN HEILPRIN and NICOLE WINFIELD

GENEVA (AP) — The Vatican revealed Tuesday that over the past decade, it has defrocked 848 priests who raped or molested children and sanctioned another 2,572 with lesser penalties, providing the first ever breakdown of how it handled the more than 3,400 cases of abuse reported to the Holy See since 2004.

The Vatican’s U.N. ambassador in Geneva, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, released the figures during a second day of grilling by a U.N. committee monitoring implementation of the U.N. treaty against torture.

Tomasi insisted that the Holy See was only obliged to abide by the torture treaty inside the tiny Vatican City State, which has a population of only a few hundred people.

But significantly, he didn’t dispute the committee’s contention that sexual violence against children can be considered torture. Legal experts have said that classifying sexual abuse as torture could expose the Catholic Church to a new wave of lawsuits since torture cases in much of the world don’t carry statutes of limitations. …

Nick Cafardi, a U.S. canon lawyer and former chairman of the U.S. bishops’ lay review board that monitored clerical abuse, said the statistics clearly showed a positive evolution in how the church dealt with the abuse problem.

“Given where the church came from — with the pendulum swung squarely to the side of the accused priest whose explanations were almost always believed — this is a move away from that and more toward giving credibility to victims, which is progress,” he said. “Maybe not perfect progress, but progress.”

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UNITED STATES
PopeCrimes & Vatican Evils.

Paris Arrow

May 6 – The Vatican (chiefly Pope Francis) is the worst liar on the planet and everything it (he) does is a pathological lie especially now before the UN Committee Against Torture (CAT).
Today is the second day of UN interrogation on the Vatican. Should the Vatican be found guilty of (sexual) torture, it will face a flood of lawsuits because there is no statute of limitation on torture. So the Vatican is using all its Opus Dei Beast PR stunts in mainstream media to attack the UN and it used Reuters in Voice of America to announce that “Vatican Urges Sex Abuse Critics Not to Stay ‘Fossilized in Past’”

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GENEVA
Irish Times

Paddy Agnew

Wed, May 7, 2014

In what may have been a moment of confusion, the Vatican’s permanent representative at the UN in Geneva yesterday accused the Government of “mishandling” money paid by way of compensation to Magdalene laundries victims.

Appearing before the UN’s Committee Against Torture, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi was asked by US human rights activist Felice Gaer if any compensation had been paid to the former Magdalene nuns, Archbishop Tomasi replied:

“With regard to the Magdalene [victims], we have already answered this question at the Committee for the Rights of the Child [four months ago], but just for your information, you should know that the four religious orders of nuns involved have contributed $440 million to the [Irish] Government to take care of the victims of that situation.

“In part, the Government has mishandled that money and they came back to ask for more money, so some of the orders then said ‘we don’t want to pay any more money because it is not going to be used properly’. That is what I know at this point.”

Archbishop Tomasi may have confused contributions made by a number of religious congregations to the Residential Institutions Redress Scheme (industrial schools for children) with non-existent contributions to a Magdalene compensatory scheme.

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REPUBLICA DOMINICANA
El Jaya

[Summary: Dominican authorities were notified by a prosecutor for the Warsaw, Poland, regional court that two lawyers have been appointed to represent the minors who allegedly were abused by a priest known in the Dominican Republic as Alberto Gil. Gil, who is now under arrest in Poland, allegedly abused the youngsters while working as a priest in the Dominican Republic. He fled the country but faces trial in Poland.]

Santo Domingo.- Las autoridades dominicanas fueron notificadas de que a solicitud de la Fiscalía provincial de Varsovia, el Tribunal Regional de Mokotow, designó dos abogados para representar a igual de número de menores de edad, que supuestamente fueron víctimas de abuso sexual por parte del padre Wesolowski Gil, mejor conocido en el país como el sacerdote Alberto Gil.

Los representantes de las víctimas dominicanas serán los abogados Radoslaw Domalewski y Marta Matgorzata Chmielewska.

El Ministerio Público dominicano, representado por la Procuraduría Fiscal de Santiago, que dirige la magistrada Luisa Liranzo, acusa al padre padre Wesolowski Gil de violar los códigos Penal Dominicano y de Protección de los Derechos Fundamentales de los Niños, Niñas y Adolescentes.

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GENEVA
The Washington Times

By Meredith Somers-The Washington Times Tuesday, May 6, 2014

The Vatican on Tuesday for the first time detailed how it has handled more than 3,400 cases of sexual abuse reported since 2004, vowing to learn from its mistakes and potentially opening itself to more lawsuits by accepting that such abuse could fall under a U.N. treaty on torture.

The Holy See defrocked 848 priests and slapped 2,572 clergy members with lesser sanctions in the last decade, said Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s permanent observer to the U.N.

The revelation came during the second and last day of testimony from the Holy See before the U.N. Committee Against Torture in Geneva, Switzerland, where the Vatican is in the hot seat over how it handled the clergy sex abuse scandal and whether the abuse qualifies as torture.

“The criminalization of sexual abuse of children can be considered torture. This is what you have articulated,” Archbishop Tomasi told the committee. “I am not a lawyer, but I am to assume this application has to be related to the behavior of people in a measure … consistent with the convention.”

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SEATTLE (WA)
My Northwest

BY JOSH KERNS on May 6, 2014

Members of a Seattle church are outraged they’re just learning a priest who had a longtime sexual relationship with a young man was disciplined in 2004. And they’re disturbed he was prohibited from performing baptisms and other sacraments but continued doing so.

The Archdiocese of Seattle sent a letter to members of St. Bridget Parish last Friday, notifying them that the Archdiocesan Case Review Board concluded Harry Quigg had sexual contact with a then-17-year-old in 1980, and continued the relationship for 15 years.

The letter said because both civil and canon law considered the age of majority to be 16-years-old at the time, the panel concluded it did not constitute sexual abuse of a minor.

Then-Archbishop Alexander J. Brunett notified Quigg in person and writing he was no longer allowed to perform any public priestly duties, present himself publicly as a priest, or wear clerical garb.

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CHICAGO (IL)
WTAQ

CHICAGO (WTAQ) – Chicago’s federal appeals court will hear arguments June 2nd on whether the Milwaukee Archdiocese must open its cemetery trust fund to creditors in the church’s bankruptcy case.

The creditors — mainly victims of sex abuse by priests — say the church should open up the $60 million in its cemetery maintenance budget, as part of the settlements the victims are expected to get.

The church says it would violate the freedom of religion clause in the First Amendment, and would go against a 1993 federal religious freedom law.

Bankruptcy Judge Susan Kelley ruled in favor of the creditors, saying there would be no such breach of religious freedom. Milwaukee Federal Judge Rudolph Randa disagreed, and allowed the church to keep its cemetery funds.

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CANADA
Buffalo News

By Melinda Miller | News Staff Reporter
on May 6, 2014

TORONTO – Angels and demons of Vatican politics collide in the powerfully executed mystery that is “The Last Confession.” Told through the eyes of Cardinal Giovanni Benelli, who almost became pope himself, it is the story of the death of Pope John Paul I – sudden, unexplained and never truly investigated.

This spring, when the world has the rare confluence of two living popes and two popes newly sainted, the show now playing at the Royal Alexandra Theatre gains an added layer of relevancy, and even intrigue.

As we watch and start to wonder if John Paul experienced a natural death, or something more sinister, the mind also considers more recent Vatican changes. Why did Benedict really resign, and will a church hierarchy that rejected the first John Paul embrace a similarly humble Francis I?

What makes the play so gripping is that most of the world never really knows what goes on in the rooms around the celestial marbles of St. Peter’s Square. Playwright Roger Crane wants us to find out.

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UNITED STATES
Wall Street Journal

By DAVID B. RIVKIN JR. And LEE A. CASEY
May 5, 2014

The United Nations committee that monitors compliance with the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment is being urged by several influential nongovernmental organizations to condemn the Vatican when the committee meets this week in Geneva. These groups, including the Center for Constitutional Rights, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, and the Center for Reproductive Rights, claim that the Catholic Church’s handling of child-sexual-abuse accusations against priests and the church’s stand on birth control and abortion amount to violations of the Convention Against Torture.

If the U.N. committee were to grant the groups’ request and conclude that the Vatican has violated the Convention Against Torture, this would represent a legally insupportable and perverse interpretation of the treaty, actually weakening its effectiveness. It would also represent a blatant attack on religious freedom.

There is no doubt that for years the Catholic Church failed to deal in a timely and effective way with child sexual abuse by priests. More recently, however, the church has admitted its mistakes and instituted fundamental reforms to root out the problem, which is hardly unique to Catholics. According to the U.N.’s own World Health Organization Fact Sheet No. 150 on child maltreatment, “approximately 20% of women and 5-10% of men report being sexually abused as children.”

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UNITED STATES
Catholic Culture

By Phil Lawler

In the Wall Street Journal, two former officials of the US Justice department make a powerful argument against the claim that the Vatican should be held responsible, under the UN Convention against Torture, for sexual abuse by Catholic priests. David Rivken and Lee Casey see the obvious wisdom in the Vatican’s argument that the Holy See exercises legal control only over the tiny territory of the Vatican City-state, and crimes in other countries are the responsibility of the local governments. But there are other important points to be made.

First, while sexual abuse is reprehensible, it isn’t torture, as that term is ordinarily understood. If the UN expands the definition of torture to encompass other forms of cruelty, it could erode support for the existing pact, which is based on an international accord that this one particular form of behavior—torture—should be stopped.

Critics of the Church charge that sexual abuse by priests was widespread because of Catholic teachings and Vatican policies. But the UN would be setting a bold and dangerous precedent if it claimed that religious beliefs promulgated in one place (in this case the Vatican) were the cause of criminal acts in another.

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GENEVA
Catholic News Service

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Appearing before a U.N. committee monitoring adherence to an international treaty designed to fight torture, a Vatican official insisted that, over the past 10 years, the Catholic Church has “in a systematic, constructive and effective way,” worked to prevent clerical sexual abuse of minors and assist victims.

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Holy See representative to U.N. agencies in Geneva, told the Committee Against Torture May 6 that the sexual abuse of children “is a worldwide plague and scourge” that the Vatican, national bishops’ conferences, religious orders and individual dioceses have worked seriously to eliminate within the Catholic Church.

While the archbishop mentioned “some divergence of opinion” about whether child sexual abuse legitimately falls under the concern of the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, he answered the committee members’ questions about Vatican efforts to investigate allegations against clergy, punish offenders and cooperate with civil authorities.

The Holy See signed the international treaty in 2002 and submitted its first report on adherence to the treaty in 2012. The committee met in Geneva in late April and in May to review the reports of the Holy See and seven other countries. The committee hearings were live-streamed on the Internet.

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GENEVA
Voice of America

Reuters
May 06, 2014

GENEVA — The Vatican told critics of its sexual abuse record on Tuesday that it had developed model child protection policies over the last decade and that its accusers should not stay “fossilised in the past” when attitudes were different.

Addressing the United Nations Committee on Torture, the papal ambassador in Geneva admitted the Roman Catholic Church had in the past protected priests who molested minors but had not done so in years because it understood the issue better.

Archbishop Silforget vio Tomasi was responding to questions from the committee, which grilled him on the Vatican’s record on Monday and called for a permanent investigation system to end what it called a “climate of impunity” within the Church.

Groups representing victims of clerical sexual abuse said after Monday’s hearing that predator priests were still being moved to other parishes, sometimes to other countries, to protect them against possible criminal charges.

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GENEVA
7 News

Geneva (AFP) – The Vatican on Tuesday said it had shown its mettle in the battle against child sex abuse by priests, telling a UN hearing that it was determined to stamp out the scourge.

“Any serious look at the reality around the world on what the Holy See and the local Churches are doing shows clearly and without ambiguity that certainly there is no climate of impunity,” the Holy See’s UN envoy Monsignor Silvano Tomasi said.

Hundreds of abusers have been driven out of Church ranks over the past decade, he said.

“There is a total commitment to clean the house, to change, and above all to work and effect measures that prevent the repetition of abuse. We have crossed a threshold in the evolution of the approach to this problem,” he insisted.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Dennis Coday | May. 6, 2014

The discussion between U.S. women religious and Vatican officials that followed “blunt,” confrontational opening remarks by the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was “frank and open,” says a U.S. archbishop present at the April 30 meeting.

Ultimately, it was “a very helpful meeting,” according to Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain, the Vatican-appointed delegate tasked with reforming the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.

The discussion “took place in very respectful conversation,” Sartain said in a statement released Monday. “Everyone who took part expressed gratitude for both the frankness and breadth of our conversation.”

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Micah J. Murray

You know it somewhere in your mind before your mouth will admit it.

We talked about how it was a cult, joking at first. Outsiders could point and accuse and question, but we knew that it wasn’t what it looked like. “Don’t worry,” we told ourselves. “We know it better than they do.”

I remember saying, more seriously than joking, “If this is brainwashing, it feels good to be brain clean.”

But as I spiraled closer and closer to to the center, the realization began to sink in. The jokes became real. “Cult-like”, sure. I’d call it that. Authoritarian, legalistic, overbearing. But not a real cult.

The worst thing about brainwashing is that you can’t see it for what it is. You never think you’re in a cult when you’re in a cult. Until the day you can’t deny the reality of what you’ve seen, what you lived. Until the day you speak out loud what your mind has known for a while, “I grew up in a cult.”

There’s barely a memory from the first twenty years of my life that isn’t run through by the thread of the cult.

We joined the Advanced Training Institute when I was in first grade. Bill Gothard’s materials were the foundation of my homeschooling curriculum for the next twelve years. The Institute’s books began to fill our shelves; their routine became part of our daily life.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Frankfurter Allgemeine

[Summary: The Limburg diocese has lost 6,290 members in the past year. This was 1,700 more than in 2009. The diocese attributed a large number of the resignations to the sexual abuse scandal by church employees. The diocese, which covers Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate, still has 655,000 Catholics.]

Das Bistum Limburg hat im vergangenen Jahr rund 6290 Mitglieder verloren. Das waren 1700 mehr als 2009, wie die Diözese mitteilte. Bischof Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst wertete einen großen Teil der Austritte als Reaktion auf den Skandal um sexuellen Missbrauch durch Kirchenmitarbeiter.

Nun gelte es, zu reagieren: „Wir wollen Vertrauen neu aufbauen und müssen mit mehr Selbstverständlichkeit über unseren Glauben sprechen“, sagte der Bischof laut der Mitteilung. Dem Bistum Limburg, das sich auf Hessen und Rheinland-Pfalz erstreckt, gehören noch rund 655.000 Katholiken an.

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GENF
Hamburger Abendblatt

Genf. Der Vatikan hat erstmalig eine Statistik zur internen Bestrafung von sexuellem Missbrauch vorgelegt. Demnach wurden seit dem Jahr 2004 insgesamt 848 Priester verstoßen, die der Vergewaltigung und Belästigung von Kindern beschuldigt wurden. Gegen weitere 2572 Priester seien geringere Strafen ausgesprochen worden.

Tomasi vertrat den Standpunkt, dass die Konvention für den Vatikan nur innerhalb der Grenzen des kleinen Kirchenstaates gelte. Er legte dennoch Zahlen darüber vor, wie der Heilige Stuhl weltweit gegen sexuellen Missbrauch durch Kirchenvertreter vorgegangen ist. Und er widersprach auch nicht dem Standpunkt des Komitees, dass sexuelle Gewalt gegen Kinder als Folter betrachtet werden könnte.

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SCHWEIZ
Neue Zurcher Zeitung

[Summary: Abuse occurred at the Fischingen monastery, local in Southern Thurgau. The monastic fortress at one time served as the St. Iddazel orphanage and was one of the largest educational institutions in Switzerland. For some youngsters, the stay was hell.]

Jörg Krummenacher, Fischingen Gestern, 5. Mai 2014

Ein Bericht der Beratungsstelle für Landesgeschichte zeigt auf, dass im Kinderheim und der Sekundarschule St. Iddazell körperliche und sexuelle Gewalt an der Tagesordnung waren. Die staatliche Aufsicht versagte. Die Institutionen entschuldigen sich.

Das Kloster Fischingen liegt idyllisch in der abgeschiedenen Hügellandschaft des südlichen Thurgaus, nahe der Grenze zum Kanton Zürich. Das 1138 gegründete Benediktinerkloster wurde 1848 aufgelöst und 1977 wieder installiert. Dazwischen, von 1879 bis 1976, diente die klösterliche Anlage unter dem Titel «St. Iddazell» als Waisenanstalt, Sekundarschule, Erziehungs- und Kinderheim. Es war eine der grössten Erziehungsanstalten der Schweiz, geführt von Patres und Ordensschwestern: 6500 Kinder und Jugendliche besuchten St. Iddazell in diesen 97 Jahren. Für manche von ihnen wurde der Aufenthalt zur Hölle.

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SCHWEIZ
SRF

[Summary: The Fischingen monastery has confirmed that sexual assaults, beatings and harsh punishments occurred at the monastery.

Das Kloster Fischingen liess Vorwürfe an das ehemalige Kinderheim im Kloster in Bezug auf sexuelle Übergriffe, Schläge, Strafen untersuchen. Der Bericht bestätigt die Vorwürfe nun im Wesentlichen.

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GENF
Kirchen Site

Genf. Zwischen 2004 und 2013 sind beim Vatikan 3.420 “glaubwürdige Beschuldigungen” von Priestern wegen sexuellen Missbrauchs von Minderjährigen eingegangen. In dieser Zeit seien 848 Priester in den Laienstand zurückversetzt worden, sagte Erzbischof Silvano Tomasi, Botschafter des Vatikans bei den Vereinten Nationen in Genf, am Dienstag (06.05.2014). Weitere 2.572 Priester seien mit anderen Strafen belegt worden.

Seit 1950 zahlten Diözesen und Orden laut Tomasi 2,5 Milliarden US-Dollar (1,8 Milliarden Euro) Entschädigungen an Missbrauchsopfer. Zudem erhielten Opfer 78 Millionen Dollar (56 Millionen Euro) für therapeutische Maßnahmen.

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PENNSYLVANIA
WPXI

PITTSBURGH — The Diocese of Pittsburgh recently sent a letter to a large group of North Catholic High School alumni in an effort to continue investigating sexual abuse allegations against a brother.

Dr. Michael Latusek, the acting secretary for Catholic Education/Superintendent for Catholic Schools, said the letter went out on March 28 to students enrolled from 1961-1965, 1979-1984 and 1986-2001.

“My reason for writing was to inform them of an allegation of sexual abuse that has been lodged against Brother Bernard Joseph Hartman, who was assigned to North Catholic during those years,” Latusek said. “I asked the alumni to inform the diocese and/or civil authorities if they were aware of any abuse by Brother Hartman.”

The letter didn’t result in any additional allegations, Latusek said. However, information concerning three other Marianists who served at the former North Catholic High School was brought to the diocese’s attention.

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AUSTRALIA
NEWS.com.au

Christian Brother Parker ‘admitted abuse’ at Bindoon institution, Royal Commission hears

A CHRISTIAN Brother who sexually abused boys in his care in Western Australia admitted his conduct to the order in 1953 but was left to his own devices, an inquiry has heard.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is hearing testimony from the order’s former provincial leader in WA and SA, Brother Anthony Shanahan.

The commission heard a man known as Brother Parker came clean to his superiors about his struggle with the order’s “second vow” of celibacy in 1953.

A 1953 visitation report from Bindoon noted Br Parker as being “still beset by his own inner troubles about which he spoke with complete candour”.

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IRELAND
Journal

EMMA MADIGAN HAS been announced as Ireland’s new ambassador to the Holy See.

Madigan will be the only staff member of the reopened Vatican Embassy after it was closed to save costs in 2011.

The Government announced in January that the embassy would be reopened with the Department of Foreign Affairs repeating today that the new Ambassador will have a particular mandate to ‘follow the activities of the Holy See on the development and human rights front’.

In a statement released this afternoon, the DFA referenced Pope Francis, saying that since his appointment he has “become a leading global advocate for action to address hunger and poverty and for the respect of human rights”

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

Tue, May 6, 2014

Ireland’s new ambassador to the Holy See is Emma Madigan, who had been an assistant chief of protocol at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Her nomination was approved by the cabinet at its meeting today. She succeeds Noel Fahey who retired from the position in summer 2011.

On July 20th 2011, one week after publication of the Cloyne report on clerical child sex abuse in that Catholic diocese, Taoiseach Enda Kenny criticised the Vatican’s handling of the Irish church’s sex abuse crisis in the Dáil, saying: “Far from listening to evidence of humiliation and betrayal with St Benedict’s ‘ear of the heart’… the Vatican’s reaction was to parse and analyse it with the gimlet eye of a canon lawyer.”

On November 3rd 2011 Tánaiste and Minster for Foreign Affairs Eamon Gilmore announced “with the greatest regret and reluctance” that the Government had decided to close Ireland’s embassy to the Holy See.

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UNITED STATES
Washington Post

BY AL KAMEN
May 6

University of Dayton theology professor Miguel Diaz, ambassador to the Holy See from 2009 to November 2012, is leaving the Roman Catholic institution after an investigation last year concluded it was likely that he sexually harassed a married couple who were his colleagues, according to a report Monday by the online news publication InsideHigherEd.com.

The article by reporter Ry Rivard, titled “Unwanted Advances,” said Diaz and his wife, also an academic, were expected to leave Dayton for Loyola University Chicago, a Jesuit institution. Internal university documents obtained by InsideHigherEd.com said the unidentified couple complained in June 2013 that Diaz was “harassing [them] through various requests and references to sexually explicit feelings.”

A letter from the University of Dayton provost to the unidentified couple in July 2013 said the investigation by an outside counsel “concluded that there is reasonable cause to believe, based upon a preponderance of the evidence. . . that Dr. Diaz created a hostile environment by engaging in unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature, particularly after being told to stop.”

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GENEVA
Wall Street Journal

By LIAM MOLONEY
May 6, 2014

ROME—The Vatican said Tuesday it has defrocked hundreds of priests and has punished thousands more for sexual abuses against children over the last decade, as it sought to demonstrate to a United Nations panel its commitment to tackling a scandal that has shaken the church.

In comments to the U.N.’s Committee Against Torture, a Vatican delegation also halted the practice of protecting clerics found to have abused children, such as by transferring them to other parishes, and has granted victims financial compensation for their crimes.

“There’s no climate of impunity [within the Catholic Church], there’s total commitment to clean the house, to work so not have a repetition of abuses,” Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s chief envoy in Geneva, told U.N. panel members in a second day of questioning as part of the group’s process to monitor the Holy See’s implementation of the treaty against torture.

The archbishop for the first time provided a clear year-to-year breakdown of defrocking as a result of sexual crimes against minors. The Holy See laicized a total of 848 priests between 2004 and 2013 for sexual abuses, while 2,572 received other punishments, such as accepting a life of penance and prayers or a ban on public ministries.

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GENEVA
The Globe and Mail (Canada)

JOHN HEILPRIN AND NICOLE WINFIELD
GENEVA — The Associated Press
Published Tuesday, May. 06 2014

The Vatican released comprehensive statistics for the first time Tuesday on how it has disciplined priests accused of raping and molesting children, saying 848 priests have been defrocked and another 2,572 given lesser sanctions over the past decade.

The Vatican’s United Nations ambassador in Geneva, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, revealed the figures during a second day of grilling by a UN committee monitoring implementation of the UN treaty against torture.

Tomasi insisted that the convention applied only inside the tiny Vatican City state. But he nevertheless released statistics about how the Holy See has adjudicated sex abuse cases globally, and significantly, he did not dispute the committee’s contention that sexual violence against children can be considered torture.

Tomasi said that since 2004, more than 3,400 credible cases of abuse had been referred to the Vatican, including 401 cases in 2013 alone. He said that over the last decade, 848 priests had been defrocked, or returned to the lay state by the pope. Another 2,572 were sentenced to a lifetime of penance and prayer or some other lesser sanction, which is often used when the accused priest is elderly or infirm.

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TENNESSEE
WREG

[with video]

May 5, 2014, by Ashley Crockett

(WREG-TV) A former pastor was arrested in Covington, Tenn., Monday for several charges, including sexual assault.

Larry Michael Berkley is charged with first-degree sexual assault, five counts of second-degree sexual assault, three counts of knowingly furnishing alcohol to a minor, three counts of contributing to delinquency of a minor, sexual solicitation, and two counts of loaning pornography to a minor.

He was arrested on a warrant out of Boone, Ark.

In March, former COGIC pastor Michael Bryant pleaded guilty to molesting an underage family member for the past two years and was sentenced to six years in prison as part of a plea deal.

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GINEBRA
RPP

La Santa Sede investigó en los últimos diez años 3.420 casos de sacerdotes que supuestamente habían abusado sexualmente de menores y, de ellos, 884 fueron destituidos y apartados, confirmó este martes el representante permanente del Vaticano ante la ONU en Ginebra, Silvano Tomasi.

Tomasi, que compareció por segundo día ante el Comité de la ONU contra la Tortura, reiteró que si bien la Santa Sede no tiene jurisdicción penal en casos de pederastia del clero cometidos en terceros países, sí que tiene competencia para apartar a los sacerdotes culpables si se comprueba que han cometido el delito.

“La Santa Sede no tiene competencia para juzgar a los pederastas fuera del Estado del Vaticano, pero sí que realiza procedimientos eclesiásticos contra aquellas personas sobre las que pesan abusos a menores”, explicó Tomasi, quien especificó que estas acciones se llevan a cabo “sin perjuicio de las acciones judiciales que se practiquen en los lugares donde resida el acusado”.

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GENF
Mittelbayerische

[Summary: The Vatican has received 3,420 credible allegations of sexual abuse of minors by priests from 2004 to 2013. A total of 848 priests were returned to the lay state and 2,572 received other penalties. This information came from Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, Vatican ambassador, who spoke to the meeting of the UN Committee against Torture on Tuesday. Since 1950 Catholic dioceses and religious orders have paid $2.5 billion U.S. dollars (1.8 billion euros) as in compensation to abuse victims. Additionally, $78 million (56 million euros) were paid to victims for therapy.]

GENF. Beim Vatikan sind in den vergangenen zehn Jahren 3420 „glaubwürdige Beschuldigungen“ von Priestern wegen sexuellen Missbrauchs von Minderjährigen eingegangen. Im Zeitraum von 2004 bis 2013 seien 848 Priester in den Laienstand zurückversetzt und 2572 mit anderen Strafen belegt worden, sagte Vatikanbotschafter Erzbischof Silvano Tomasi bei der Erörterung eines turnusmäßigen Berichts vor dem UN-Antifolterkomitee am Dienstag in Genf.

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ILLINOIS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

for immediate release: Tuesday, May 06, 2014

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

A Chicago Catholic university has hired the most recent U. S. ambassador to the Vatican despite allegations that he “likely” recently sexually harassed a married couple.

[Inside Higher Ed]

He is Miguel H. Diaz, who represented the U.S. at the Vatican from 2009-2012.

We strongly urge Loyola University officials to reverse and explain their reckless decision. We also call on officials at the University of Dayton to admit and disclose Diaz’ wrongdoing, so that others will be protected from his predatory tendencies.

No students and staff at any college should be subjected to sexual harassment. Given the findings of University of Dayton officials, Diaz does not belong on any campus.

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MICHIGAN
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, May 06, 2014

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

A Michigan area priest is being investigated after allegations of inappropriate contact with students. We are glad these brave victims have spoken up.

[WNEM]

Father Ken Coughlin is on administrative leave from Holy Family parish in Grand Blanc after two students came forward with allegations. We hope this gives courage to anyone else who may have suffered at the hands of Coughlin to stand up, speak up, and start healing.

Lansing Bishop Earl Boyea should visit each parish Coughlin worked and beg anyone who may be suffering in silence and self blame to come forward and report to secular authorities.

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ALABAMA
The Raw Story

By David Edwards
Tuesday, May 6, 2014

An Alabama pastor was arrested last week after being accused of taking a 13-year-old girl to a church and raping her.

According to authorities in Jefferson County, the girl’s mother said that Pastor Tyrone Banks, Sr. had offered to watch her daughter while she attended an event on Saturday, April 12.

The girl told her mother that Banks drove her to a church in Hueytown, where he claimed he worked as an associate pastor, WSFA reported.

“He had a key to the church and took the victim inside to the kitchen where he sexually assaulted her,” Chief Deputy Randy Christian explained.

The girl later reported the assault to her mother, who called the police.

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GENEVA
The Raw Story

AFP

A UN anti-torture watchdog on Monday began a two-day grilling of the Vatican over its efforts to stamp out child sex abuse by priests.

The hearing is the Vatican’s first since 2002, when it signed up to an international convention banning torture as well as cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

Victim support groups insist that the rape and molestation of children by the clergy and lay personnel falls under the terms of the convention.

They are hoping that the Vatican will face similarly-scathing criticism as it did in January when it came before a UN children’s rights watchdog.

That panel condemned the Vatican for failing to do enough to stamp out abuse and for allowing systematic cover-ups around the glove, despite pledges to adopt a zero-tolerance approach.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

As Nick Cumming-Bruce reports for the New York Times, Vatican representative to the United Nations Archbishop Silvano Tomasi was grilled yesterday by the U.N. Committee on Torture. The committee is asking searching questions about whether the Vatican’s less than optimal response to the crisis caused by revelations of the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic authority figures represents a violation of the Vatican treaty with the U.N. regarding torture.

Tomasi’s hair-splitting strategy: he claimed that the Vatican’s responsibility vis-a-vis the treaty ends at the boundary lines of the tiny Vatican City state. As Cumming-Bruce notes, last week, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi laid a foundation for the hair-splitting by arguing that ideological pressure groups are seeking to link the Vatican’s (non-)response to the abuse situation with violation of the treaty on torture.

Jerry Slevin responds to Lombardi at his Christian Catholicism blog:

Most international lawyers and tens of thousands of children sexually abused, often brutally by priests, likely see this differently than childless and celibate Jesuits like Fr. Lombardi and Pope Francis. Trained on the texts of the medieval scholastics, these Jesuits are taking “hairsplitting and legalisms” to new heights. It is almost obscene to try to make this distinction. As Fr. Lombardi noted, the treaty covers “… torture AND OTHER cruel … treatment…”

If child rape, facilitated since 1910 by making Catholic children begin at seven years old making confession in a dark box to an unknown priest, is not “cruel treatment”, what is? What is wrong with you, Fr. Lombardi and Pope Francis? We are talking about defenseless kids. Did you exchange your humanity when you took your Jesuit vows?

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AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

AMANDA BANKS LEGAL AFFAIRS EDITOR The West Australian
May 6, 2014

Complaints of sexual and physical abuse against 70 different Christian Brothers across Australia were recorded in the order’s own records between 1919 and 1969, the royal commission in Perth was told this morning.

The commission has also heard evidence that the extent of the harm inflicted on boys by their abuse at the hands of Christian Brothers was first recognised by the order’s leaders in 1954, but no fundamental changes were made in response to the concerns.

Giving evidence for a second day, former Christian Brothers Province leader Anthony Shanahan agreed that the relevant leadership of the order from the 1920s to the 1960s had been aware at the relevant time of complaints of sexual, and in some cases, physical abuse of children.

The records revealed that among the 70 individuals brothers who were subject to complaints, 18 committed repeat offences. A Brother Keenan was the subject of four complaints and a Brother Lambert Wise had five separate allegations against him.

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AUSTRALIA
Christianity Today

By: Truth Justice and Healing Council
Tuesday, 6 May 2014

Work is now underway within the Catholic Church to review the education of people training for the priesthood in Australian Dioceses.

As part of a Vatican initiative the Australian Catholic Bishop’s Conference, through a group of senior seminary directors and other professionals, is looking at current practices regarding child protection training in Australian seminaries and theological colleges.

The CEO of the Truth Justice and Healing Council, Francis Sullivan, met with the group engaged in the review in Sydney recently (23/4/14). He said a detailed study to identify gaps in child protection training for new priests is an important part of the Church’s reforms.

“Priests have an important role to play in ensuring the safety of children in Catholic communities,” Mr Sullivan said.

“Priests need to be able to recognise signs of child abuse, understand how to respond to allegations of abuse and be fully aware of the boundaries in place for all people working with children.

“Ultimately the group will provide advice to the Bishops Conference on current practices in seminaries and theological colleges on the formation of new priests.

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AUSTRALIA
Perth Now

JANET FIFE-YEOMANS NEWS LIMITED MAY 06, 2014

THEY referred to it as having “difficulty with the second vow” — chastity.

The Christian Brothers’ own historian identified 70 brothers around Australia who had complaints made against them mainly of sexually abusing boys between 1919 and 1969, the child sex abuse royal commission has been told.

There were 18 of them who were repeat offenders while one had five separate complaints and another four complaints.

Yet from 1945 the institution’s leadership appeared to have gone soft and not one brother was expelled from the order.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

[with audio]

Evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse reveals the Christian Brothers Catholic order has known for almost a century that boys were being sexually and physically abused in its homes. Historic documents show Christian Brothers were aware of 70 possible offenders across Australia between 1919 and 1969. The order spent more than a million dollars fighting a class action in the 1990s.

Transcript

MARK COLVIN: Damning evidence has revealed that the Christian Brothers knew boys in their care were being physically and sexually abused for almost a century.

Historic documents handed to the Royal Commission into child sexual abuse show the Catholic order was aware of 70 possible offenders across Australia between 1919 and 1969.

In most cases, leaders took no action and the abuse continued for years.

The order apologised in the 1990s, but it still spent more than a million dollars fighting a class action launched by the victims.

Thomas Oriti reports.

THOMAS ORITI: Former residents of Christian Brothers homes in Western Australia have told the Royal Commission they want answers.

JOHN HENNESSEY: They were not there when I needed them. There was no compassion, no Christian values, no gratitude.

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AUSTRALIA
WA Today

A Christian Brother who sexually abused boys in his care in Western Australia admitted his conduct to the order in 1953 but was left to his own devices, an inquiry has heard.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is hearing testimony from the order’s former provincial leader in WA and SA, Brother Anthony Shanahan.

The commission heard a man known as Brother Parker came clean to his superiors about his struggle with the order’s “second vow” of celibacy in 1953.

A 1953 visitation report from Bindoon noted Brother Parker as being “still beset by his own inner troubles about which he spoke with complete candour”.

“The second vow has long been of difficulty for him. No individual is involved … in his own interests his contact with the boys ought to be reduced.”

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GENEVA
WPRO

(ROME) — The Vatican is undergoing tough questioning by a United Nations committee regarding its record on sex abuse by priests in the Catholic church.

The U.N. committee against torture is examining whether the Vatican has breached the international treaty against torture in its handling of sex abuse cases. If so, the Vatican would be open to more lawsuits.

The Vatican is arguing that the treaty it’s signed on to only applies to the 1,000 or so people who live inside Vatican City, and not to church employees and clergy around the world.

Earlier this year another U.N. committee, on the rights of the child, rejected that argument and issued a scathing report of how the Vatican put its own interests ahead of protecting children from molesters and prosecuting abusers.

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GENEVA
DFW Catholic

Geneva, Switzerland, May 6, 2014 / 04:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- All individuals who commit torture and abuse must face prosecution from legitimate government authorities, a Holy See delegation has told a U.N. committee on a global anti-torture convention.

“The Holy See wishes to reiterate that the persons who live in a particular country are under the jurisdiction of the legitimate authorities of that country and are thus subject to the domestic law and the consequences contained therein,” Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, head of the Holy See’s Permanent Observer mission to the United Nations in Geneva, said May 5.

“State authorities are obligated to protect, and when necessary, prosecute persons under their jurisdiction,” the archbishop said, adding that these authorities are responsible for justice regarding “crimes and abuses committed by persons under their jurisdiction.”

The archbishop addressed the U.N.’s Committee on the Convention Against Torture, a convention the Holy See signed in 2002.

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UNITED STATES
Irish Central

Casey Egan @irishcentral May 05,2014

Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley, who is heading the Vatican’s newly formed commission for the protection of minors, has said the church itself must take responsibility for fostering a safe environment for children around the world.

“Many don’t see it as a problem of the universal church,” he said at a press conference following the commission’s inaugural meeting in Vatican City over the weekend.

“In many people’s minds it is an American problem, an Irish problem or a German problem,” he said.

“The church has to face it is everywhere in the world. There is so much denial. The church has to respond to make the church safe for children.”

The plans for a church committee on minors were announced last year by Pope Francis, and its members were confirmed in March.

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MICHIGAN
Daily Reporter

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
First Posted: May 05, 2014

GRAND BLANC, Michigan — The Catholic Diocese of Lansing says a priest at a Flint-area parish and school has been placed on leave as authorities investigate allegations he inappropriately touched two children.

The statement says Holy Family Catholic School, Church of the Holy Family and the diocese are cooperating with the investigation into the Rev. Ken Coughlin. He’s accused of touching two students on their hands and legs.

The diocese says Coughlin denies anything inappropriate happened but will be on administrative leave until the investigation is completed. The Associated Press left a message Monday afternoon for Coughlin.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

Catholic Boy Blues: Indiana Poet Laureate Norbert Krapf Deals with Legacy of Childhood Sexual Abuse by a Catholic Priest

I was a victim-survivor of childhood sexual abuse by a priest, in a German-Catholic community in southern Indiana. That for twenty years after the abuse took place, I could rarely enter a church because of painful associations does not mean that I did not have an active spiritual life during that period. In many ways, the poems I wrote the past 43 years have been a search to find an alternative spiritual life and a new language in which to express my longing for spiritual sustenance (see links below to samples). . . .

No religion can ignore and violate the moral and spiritual values it claims to uphold and survive as a living force. Any religion that functions this way runs the risk of losing vitality and relevance.

Indiana poet laureate (2008-2010) Norbert Krapf speaking to Alpha Omega Arts last year as he received the A&O Prize shortly before his book Catholic Boy Blues: A Poet’s Journal of Healing was published . . . . The book came out last month.

Krapf’s website summarizes the book’s theme as follows:

Catholic Boy Blues is a brutally honest narrative filled with words of biting truth, painting explicit images of the effects of abuse. These words detail Norbert’s lifelong journey and show how abuse affected the various stages of his growth. This verse journal is both timely and newsworthy. It is a compassionate anthem directed to those struggling with their own abuse. It provides clarity to those who have never had to experience the indignity of abuse and affirms that healing and success can be achieved despite adversity. The book will appeal to survivors of abuse and their families and friends; the church and its members, clergy, and hierarchy who have an ongoing interest in the emotional, spiritual, and religious effects of child abuse and its prevention; and caregivers and others interested in knowing how to detect early signs of abuse.

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UNITED STATES
National Survivor Advocates Coalition

For Immediate Release

Dayton, OH
May 3, 2014

We now have a commission that’s met.

That is the only thing that’s happened.

All of those who have protected priest and religious sister perpetrators remain safely in their positions of authority in the Church, except the dead ones. And for that, the Lord, not a Pope, took action.

The commission’s words are lovely: hope, future, accountability, education, best practices – and the ever popular: some where off in the future we are going to do something.

Where’s the beef?

This is more like pheasant under glass – ritzy, protected, and not nourishing for the masses.

We hope the commission enjoyed their three days in Rome, it’s a marvelous city but — no child is safer.

It is interesting to note, that while Cardinal O’Malley, says the commission will be proposing that bishops will be held accountable, notably absent (according to news reports) from the Vatican Congregations/commission/authorities with whom the commission had contact, was the Congregation for Bishops.

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GRAND BLANC (MI)
Church of the Holy Family

May 5, 2014

Dear Holy Family Parishioners and Holy Family School Parents,

As you may already know, Fr. Ken Coughlin has been placed on administrative leave, pending the outcome of an investigation into alleged inappropriate touching of hands and legs of school children at an assembly at the school last week.

This weekend, either Bishop Boyea or Monsignor Steven Raica read the following statement at the end of each Mass (at the two First Communion Masses they did not go into the specifics):

An allegation of inappropriate touching has been made against Father Ken Coughlin. The allegation involves touching of two students on their legs and hands. Father Coughlin denies that anything inappropriate happened. Under Michigan law and Diocese of Lansing policy, the Michigan office of Child Protective Services (CPS) has been notified and an investigation has begun. The school, the parish, and the diocese are fully cooperating with the investigation. Until the investigation has been completed, Father Coughlin will be away from the parish on administrative leave. Please keep all involved in your prayers.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

A new service for survivors of child sexual abuse will be launched today in Dubbo.

The Federal Government has provided 45 million dollars to organisations around Australia to provide support services as part of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual abuse.

Interrelate has the contract to provide counselling services to people in Dubbo, Walgett and Mudgee.

Relationships Australia will offer support in the Orange region.

Interrelate is officially launching its service in Dubbo today.

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GENEVA
Irish Independent

NICK SQUIRES IN ROME – PUBLISHED 06 MAY 2014

The Roman Catholic Church has seen a decline in cases of paedophilia after turning a corner in its efforts to tackle sexual abuse of children by priests, the Vatican said yesterday.

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, its ambassador to the United Nations, told the UN Committee against Torture that the church had made significant progress in the past decade in stamping out the problem.

“There has been a stabilisation, even a decline in cases of paedophilia in the church,” he said. “That shows that measures taken in the last 10 years by the Holy See and local churches are bringing about a positive result.”

The claims came as Vatican officials were brought before the committee in Geneva for the first time since the Holy See signed the UN’s convention against torture in 2002. Just four months ago, the Vatican was castigated for its handling of sex abuse scandals by the UN’s Committee on the Rights of the Child.

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GENEVA
MercoPress

In a two-hour hearing in Geneva, the Committee Against Torture launched a barrage of questions to the Vatican delegation, asking about past policy decisions, the juridical distinction between the Holy See and Vatican City, and information on specific cases.

The Vatican, which will issue its formal answers on Tuesday, said the Church has been “doing its own house cleaning” for 10 years, was determined to protect children and that measures put in place have led to a decline in cases of sexual abuse of children by priests.

George Tugushi, a committee member from Georgia, said a recently formed international commission advising Pope Francis on how to deal with sexual abuse, was a very positive step but not enough.

“The commission may need help to ensure all cases are reported properly and begin to change the climate of impunity but it cannot be considered in our opinion as a substitute for a functioning investigation system,” he told the Vatican delegation headed by Archbishop Silvano Tomasi.

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GENEVA
The Voice of Russia

The UN Committee linked pedophilia among the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church and torture, reports Los Angeles Times. According to the publication, representatives of the committee questioned on Monday for two hours Vatican priests how the church servants consider cases of possible spread of pedophilia among priests.

In recent years, the Holy See has repeatedly been criticized in the world for inadequate response to numerous cases of pedophilia by priests and monks.

Representatives of public organizations directly accused the former Pope Benedict XVI and the Roman Curia prominent representatives in an attempt to silence these crimes and prevent their investigation. According to media reports, the former pontiff in 2011 and 2012 disfrocked nearly 400 priests suspected in pedophilia.

According to the newspaper, the official representatives of the city-state first went before the committee after the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment convention was signed by Vatican in 2002. According to human rights defenders, an investigation may be initiated.

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IRAN
Press TV

[with video]

Press TV has interviewed Eli Joseph James, radio host and political commentator from Chicago, to discuss the covering up of child sexual abuse by priests in the Vatican.

Below is a rush transcript of the interview:

Press TV: Right now, we are seeing criticism of Pope Francis coming from different quarters that he hasn’t taken any concrete action to reverse the policies of the Vatican with regards to child sex abuse. Do you see it that way as well?

James: Yes Absolutely. Ever since Vatican II, which was held in 1963, the Vatican has taken a humanistic approach to Catholicism. It has abandoned Christian morality and has basically protected child molesters and homosexuals within the Catholic Church. The Pope refers to himself as the Vicar of Christ, which means the representative of Christ here on earth. There is no way that Jesus Christ would condone homosexuality for one, and pedophilia for another.

For example, in Romans chapter 1 in verses 26 and 27, the Bible clearly states that it is an abomination for women to use each other sexually and for men to use each other sexually and Paul even says in Romans chapter 1 that such people deserve death.

So why is the Catholic Church promoting anti-Christian morality and why is the Catholic Church promoting corrupts? This is unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable.

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GENEVA
Ria Novosti

MOSCOW, May 6 (RIA Novosti) – The United Nations Torture Committee has called for Catholic priests found to have sexually abused children to face the same legal punishment as for torture, The Los Angeles Times has reported.

The UN Committee insisted that all cases of child sexual abuse fall under the UN Convention Against Torture and should be brought to the committee’s consideration, the paper reported Monday.

That would imply punishment for all clerics who knew about abuse cases but did not report them, and will allow legal investigation into old cases, which the Vatican has said it has dealt with on its own.

The issue was raised by the UN following criticism of the Catholic Church’s mild reaction to multiple pedophilia cases involving its clergy. In 2011 and 2012, some 400 priests were defrocked under the former Pope Benedict XVI.

On Monday, the Vatican appeared for the first time before the UN committee since signing the 2002 Convention Against Torture.

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GENEVA
Ashland Times-Gazette

By JOHN HEILPRIN Associated Press Published: May 6, 2014

GENEVA — A U.N. committee compared the Vatican’s handling of the global priest sex abuse scandal with torture Monday, raising the possibility that its failure to investigate clergy and their superiors could have broader legal implications.

But the Vatican’s top envoy in Geneva, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, claimed that the Holy See was getting its house in order after a decade-long effort to deal with a global priest sex abuse scandal.

“There has been, in several documentable areas, stabilization and even a decline of cases in pedophilia,” he told a committee of experts in charge of the U.N. Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which the Vatican ratified in 2002.

At the Holy See’s first appearance before the committee, experts mainly peppered the Vatican with tough questions to be answered Tuesday. For instance, they asked why the report on its implementation of the treaty was almost a decade late, and why the Vatican believes its responsibility for protecting against torture only applies within tiny Vatican City, a nation of less than 1,000 inhabitants.

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GENEVA
The Daily Beast

Barbie Latza Nadeau

This may come as a huge surprise to many Catholics, but the Holy See is claiming it doesn’t really bear legal responsibility for how they or even their priests behave. Too good to be true? Actually, too horrible to be believed. What the Vatican is claiming this week before a United Nations panel is that, really, the question of priests sexually abusing little kids is a matter for local law enforcement. And, no, the physical pain and mental anguish inflicted on children by pedophile prelates should not be called “torture,” at least as defined by the U.N.

When the Vatican’s U.N. ambassador appeared in front of the U.N.’s Convention Against Torture in Geneva on Monday, the issues were about jurisdiction, not spiritual guidance and the Roman Catholic Church’s moral responsibility for errant clerics. “It should be stressed, particularly in light of much confusion, that the Holy See has no jurisdiction over every member of the Catholic Church,” said Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, who represented the Vatican as a signatory of the convention on torture.

In his opening remarks, released in advance to the press, Tomasi went on to say, “The Holy See wishes to reiterate that the persons who live in a particular country are under the jurisdiction of the legitimate authorities of that country and are thus subject to the domestic law and the consequences contained therein. State authorities are obligated to protect, and when necessary, prosecute persons under their jurisdiction.”

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GENEVA
Press TV (Iran)

Victim groups have demanded that abuse by Catholic clerics be recognized as torture, as Vatican officials are grilled by a UN committee.

The appeal was made by victims and their lawyers on Monday. They argued that even though the Vatican is a signatory to the 1987 UN Convention on Torture, it has violated torture agreements.

“There is a body of national and international law in which rape and sexual abuse has been recognized as a form of torture and cruel and degrading treatment,” said Pam Spees, a lawyer at the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CRC) in New York.

The Vatican faced questioning by a UN committee over the global child sex abuse scandal involving priests. The panel accused the church of ducking responsibility on the issue.

The UN committee is to examine whether the Vatican record on child protection breaches the body’s Convention Against Torture and plans to present its final observations and recommendations on May 23.

Katherine Gallagher, another CRC lawyer, said if the UN committee finds that the abuse amounts to torture and inhuman treatment, it could trigger a large number of abuse lawsuits dating back decades since there are no statute of limitations on torture cases.

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GENEVA
Los Angeles Times

TOM KINGTON

The United Nations on Monday linked the sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests to torture, stepping up its criticism of the Holy See and, according to one activist group, potentially opening the way to a new wave of lawsuits.

Members of a U.N. committee on torture questioned Vatican officials for two hours about the church’s handling of abuse cases, with one member claiming a “climate of impunity” existed within the Vatican.

The hearing marked the Vatican’s first appearance before the committee after it signed in 2002 an international convention banning torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.

One legal expert said the hearing might spark further prosecutions of priests.

“The committee has stated that rape is torture, based on the physical and mental harm it can do, and that may push courts to consider abuse by priests as torture,” said Pam Spees, a lawyer with the U.S. Center for Constitutional Rights.

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GENEVA
Press TV (Iran)

[with video]

A United Nations committee grills the Vatican over the global child sex abuse scandal involving priests.

For the second time this year, in a two-hour hearing in Geneva, Switzerland, on Monday, the UN Committee against Torture launched a barrage of questions to the Vatican delegation, accusing the church of ducking responsibility on the issue.

The committee called for a permanent investigation system to end what it called a “climate of impunity” prevailing in the Vatican for decades.

George Tugushi, a member of the committee from Georgia, questioned the adequacy of measures taken to address the issue of sex abuse by the Vatican, and termed a recent formation of an international commission advising Pope Francis on how to deal with sexual abuse as very positive but not enough.

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TEXAS
KXAN

By Chris Sadeghi

Updated: Monday, May 5, 2014

AUSTIN (KXAN) – In 2011, a jury found Swami Prakashanand Saraswati guilty on 20 counts of indecency with a child. The key testimony came from three victims who detailed how the Hindu leader molested them for years at the Barsana Dham temple in Hays County.

But even after the guilty verdict was returned, a verdict virtually assuring the leader with thousands of devotees would spend years in prison, he was allowed to walk out of the courthouse that day on his own free will.

He has not been seen since.

In an In-depth report, KXAN examines how a man convicted of crimes against children was able to get away even after being found guilty. Hear why the district attorney believes a sizable amount of money may have helped Swami Ji keep his freedom and how U.S. Marshals are zeroing in on his location.

Watch the full story Thursday at 6 p.m.

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GENEVA
NPR

by SCOTT NEUMAN
May 05, 2014

A United Nations committee on Monday grilled a Vatican representative about the priest sex abuse and compared the impact of the scandal to torture.

But Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Holy See’s top envoy in Geneva, said the Vatican leadership had improved its handling of abuse in the decade since the scandal exploded.

“There has been, in several documentable areas, stabilization and even a decline of cases in pedophilia,” he told a committee of experts in charge of the U.N. Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which the Vatican ratified in 2002.

Tomasi also reiterated that the Holy See’s jurisdiction in applying treaties extends only to the Vatican City State, which with fewer than 900 inhabitants in the heart of Rome is the world’s smallest country, The Wall Street Journal reports.

“The Holy See intends to focus exclusively on the Vatican City State,” the archbishop said. “It should be stressed, particularly in light of much confusion, that the Holy See has no jurisdiction … over every member of the Catholic Church.”

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UNITED STATES
Insider Higher Ed

[document – letter from the university provost]

May 5, 2014

By Ry Rivard

A theology professor who is a former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican is moving from one Roman Catholic university to another after an investigation found it likely that he sexually harassed a married couple where he now works.

Miguel H. Díaz, who was President Obama’s representative to the Holy See from 2009 to 2012, was found to have likely engaged in “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature” toward a married couple who were his colleagues at the University of Dayton, according to a confidential letter written by Dayton’s provost.

The married couple – husband and wife professors who teach in the humanities – accused Diaz of making various sexual requests and references to sexually explicit feelings. The suggestion that a Catholic theologian suggested an adulterous encounter involving both another man and another woman and that he made unwelcome requests of fellow academics could be problematic for Diaz, a Catholic theologian, who is a married father of four.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Dennis Coday | May. 5, 2014 NCR Today

The online news source Inside Higher Ed is moving a story this morning that says Miguel H. Diaz, U.S. ambassador to the Vatican from 2009-2012, was investigated for sexual harassment by the University of Dayton, the Marianist university where he has been teaching since leaving government service.

See the story: Unwanted Advances.

Insider Higher Ed reports that a “preponderance of evidence” led investigators to conclude there was “reasonable cause to believe that some of [Díaz’s] conduct constituted sexual harassment that created an intimidating, hostile, or offensive environment,” according to a letter sent to the alleged victims by Dayton’s general counsel.

The university imposed a number of restrictions on Diaz as conditions for his continued employment, according to the report.

Insider Higher Ed quotes from a confidential letter written by Dayton’s provost to the couple who filed a complaint against Diaz.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel May 5, 2014

Oral arguments in a lawsuit involving the Archdiocese of Milwaukee’s cemetery trust funds — and two other related cases — have been scheduled for June 2 before the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The lawsuit was filed as part of the Archdiocese’s bankruptcy.

At issue is whether forcing the archdiocese to tap its $60 million cemetery trust to fund a bankruptcy settlement would violate its free exercise of religion under the First Amendment and the 1993 federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Susan V. Kelley ruled it would not. But U.S. District Judge Rudolph T. Randa overturned that decision. This is an appeal of Randa’s ruling.

Also on June 2, the court will hear oral arguments on:

■ Whether Randa’s purchase of plots in the archdiocese’s cemeteries and the fact that he has numerous relatives buried in them constitute a conflict of interest that would bar him from ruling on issues related to the cemetery trust lawsuit.

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UNITED STATES
The Times-Picayune

By James Varney, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
on May 05, 2014

The widespread sexual abuse of boys by Roman Catholic priests is one of those astounding stories, an injustice so monstrous and rooted in a network so rich and deep it would seem confined to Hollywood screenwriters. It’s all too real, though, and horrible.

The light that has been shone on the church in terms of what it knew and tolerated for decades, along with steps it took to bury accusers and escape judgment for its crimes, has been a good thing. Perhaps the only troubling aspect of it is how much the spotlight has been focused on the United States.

This isn’t an American problem; this is a Roman Catholic Church problem, and Rome and its officers are a global presence.

Nevertheless, if there were one entity singularly unqualified to investigate the Church’s sexual abuse problems it would be the United Nations. Not only because the U.N. is such an intellectually dishonest and government-scrubbing, self-aggrandizing collection of arrogant diplomats, but because when it comes to sex crimes the U.N. itself is a major perpetrator.

Monday in Geneva, the U.N. Committee Against Torture is essentially putting the Vatican in the dock, barely three months after the U.N.’s Committee on the Rights of the Child scored the Roman Catholic Church for its sexual abuse scandal and its handling of the tragic, criminal behavior.

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GENEVA
RH Reality Check

by Erin Matson, Editor at Large, RH Reality Check
May 5, 2014

Vatican officials appeared Monday before the United Nations Committee on Torture to discuss the sexual abuse of children by priests, claiming the Holy See lacks juridical power to combat the problem on an international basis.

“It should be stressed, particularly in light of much confusion, that the Holy See has no jurisdiction,” said Archbishop Silvano Tomasi. “The Holy See intends to focus exclusively on the Vatican City state. State authorities are obligated to protect and when necessary to prosecute persons under their jurisdiction.”

This marked the second time that Tomasi claimed in a UN hearing that the Vatican should be considered separately from the Catholic Church, a contention that if honored would dramatically limit the ability of sexual abuse victims to pursue accountability through international law. The argument was first made in January, and was subsequently rejected by a committee focused on children’s rights. It reached a skeptical audience again Monday, with the chief rapporteur of the committee calling the Vatican’s attempt to narrow the scope of inquiry troubling.

Much is at stake. Many countries have statutes of limitations on the prosecution of criminal sexual assault, but not torture. The Center for Constitutional Rights, which advocates on behalf of victims, claimed in a report submitted to the hearing that the Vatican had refused to cooperate with law enforcement and moved predatory priests from country to country to help them avoid prosecution.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic Culture

By Dr. Jeff Mirus May 05, 2014

Two stories in the news today demonstrate problems with the jurisdiction of the Catholic Church as it is currently understood and implemented. The first concerns attacks on the Vatican by a UN Panel charged with implementing the UN Convention against Torture. The second concerns the rebellion against renewal by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.

It seems that many at the United Nations would like to punish the Vatican for sexual abuse of children by clergy, and the Vatican’s representative for the Holy See at the UN would like to argue that Church personnel are subject to the laws of the nations in which they work. One must ask whether there is any desirable position in this debate.

Even supposing that sexual abuse can legitimately be construed as “torture”, which is at least a strange conflation of language to serve an ideological purpose, it is not clear why a UN Committee is seeking to hold the Vatican responsible. Is the UN going to hold each government responsible for any sexual abuse perpetrated by anyone who holds a government job (which would include, for example, roughly twenty percent of the American public)? Does the UN wish to board the Catholic gravy train by seeking some sort of monetary penalties? Will it seek the same damages from other member states? Considering that most sexual abuse is perpetrated by family members, and that abuse rates are higher in public schools than in the Catholic Church, just what exactly is the point?

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GENEVA
Catholic Voices

The Vatican is readying itself for another battering over abuse from the United Nations — this time from its committee against torture. But the difference is that, when the Holy See goes to Geneva on Monday and Tuesday to present its periodic report and face a grilling from rapporteurs, it will be better prepared than in January. Then radical NGOs convinced the UN committee on children’s rights to ignore the Holy See’s evidence on abuse while challenging church teaching on sexuality and abortion (see CV Comment here and here). They will do the same again this week, but the Vatican has seen it coming.

On that occasion, it was the Committee on the Convention of the Rights of the Child or CRC; this time it is the Committee on the Convention Against Torture (CAT), which was signed by the Holy See in 2002. Just as in January, the Holy See is voluntarily going before the committee — as it is bound to, every four years, just as all other 155 governments who have signed it must — to report on the implementation of the convention. Yet as in January, it will find itself suddenly having to answer questions on abortion and homosexuality which were never considered part of the treaty back in 2002 – – as well as (bizarrely) questions on clerical sex abuse of minors.

Given that CAT defines torture as

Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

it is easy to see why the Holy See was keen to sign the Convention, which seeks to eradicate torture from all situations where force is deployed, including war, public emergency, terrorist acts and violent crime. It is also easy to see how shocked it is to find this same definition driving an ideologically driven attack on the Church over sexual abuse of minors, pro-life legislation, restricting marriage to a man and a woman, and even corporal punishment.

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ROME
National Review

By Kathryn Jean Lopez
May 5, 2014

Rome – Sunday morning, thousands – many of them young families — poured into St. Peter’ Square, having walked through Rome in an annual pro-life march. From a window above, Pope Francis thanked the ecumenical crowd for its commitment to speaking out to protect innocent human life.

Today in Geneva, that United Nations committee on torture I’ve been mentioning (see here and here and here and here) heard testimony arguing that the Catholic Church’s teaching on abortion is psychological torture for women.

Not everyone reading this agrees with the Catholic Church on abortion, but I suspect you may agree with the dangerousness of this New Intolerance, as a report from Catholic Voices USA puts it. (Austen Ivereigh in England has a comprehensive look at what’s going on here.)

The other argument that the committee is hearing is that sexual abuse in the church through the years at the hands of priests — evil, opposite of what the Church teaches — is torture. It’s worth considering, however, what the Holy See (a nation-state), signed onto when it signed the convention against torture:

“For the purposes of this Convention, the term ‘torture’ means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.”

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GENEVA
Expatica

A UN anti-torture watchdog on Monday began a two-day grilling of the Vatican over its efforts to stamp out child sex abuse by priests.

The hearing is the Vatican’s first since 2002, when it signed up to an international convention banning torture as well as cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

Victim support groups insist that the rape and molestation of children by the clergy and lay personnel falls under the terms of the convention.

They are hoping that the Vatican will face similarly-scathing criticism as it did in January when it came before a UN children’s rights watchdog.

That panel condemned the Vatican for failing to do enough to stamp out abuse and for allowing systematic cover-ups around the glove, despite pledges to adopt a zero-tolerance approach.

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GENEVA
National Catholic Register

by Edward Pentin Monday, May 05, 2014 2:55 PM Comments (1)

The Holy See was grilled by the U.N. committee on torture today and, as expected, it came in for some harsh and extrinsic criticism for the Church’s handling of clerical sex abuse cases.

In the two-hour hearing in Geneva, the Committee Against Torture launched a barrage of questions to the Vatican delegation, asking about past policy decisions, the juridical distinction between the Holy See and Vatican City, and information on specific cases, according to Reuters.

But many of the questions went beyond the boundaries of the U.N. Convention against Torture. The Holy See also signed up to the Convention on grounds that it would apply only to the territory of Vatican City, not the wider Church.

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Holy See’s permanent observer to the U.N. in Geneva, said while the Holy See can be a moral force, the “agent of justice” for crimes committed by Catholics was the local state where the crime was committed. “It should be stressed, particularly in light of much confusion, that the Holy See has no jurisdiction … over every member of the Catholic Church,” he said in opening remarks.

But as this committee is heavily influenced by NGOs ideologically opposed to the Church’s teaching, this important caveat was brushed aside by some members of the panel. The committee’s chief rapporteur, Felice Gaer of the United States, told the Vatican delegation that its position “seems to reflect an intention for a significant portion of the actions and omissions of Holy See officials be excluded from consideration by this committee, and this troubles us.”

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MICHIGAN
MLive

By David Harris | dharris5@mlive.com
on May 05, 2014

GRAND BLANC, MI – The attorney representing the priest under investigation of allegations he inappropriately touched the hands and legs of two students says people should not “rush to judgment” based on past cases.

Ken Coughlin, the priest at Holy Family Catholic School in Grand Blanc, is on administrative leave until the investigation is complete, according to a weekend statement from the Diocese of Lansing.

According to a letter from the school written by Father Jonathan Perrotta posted on the schools website, the alleged incident happened last week at a school assembly. Perrotta will serve as temporary administrator while the investigation is completed, the letter said.

There will be a meeting at 7 p.m. Monday, May 5 for parishioners, according to the letter.

Attorney Frank J. Manley is representing Coughlin.

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UNITED STATES
PopeCrimes & Vatican Evils.

Paris Arrow

Background: In January 2014, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child did not buy the religious logic of the Holy See’s delegation, headed by Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s UN ambassador in Geneva, who insisted that “The Holy See country is confined exclusively on the tiny Vatican City State” and therefore the Holy See was not responsible for the horrendous clergy sexual abuses in Catholic churches worldwide. In February 2014, the UN condemned the Vatican for its crimes against children, read more here http://popecrimes.blogspot.ca/2014/02/un-condemns-vatican-for-crimes-against.html

May 5-6 – The United Nations Committee Against Torture (CAT) in Geneva for 2 days is now interrogating the Vatican a.k.a. Holy See for its criminal records of thousands of bestial pedophile priests who sexually abused in the most inhuman and degrading torture hundreds of thousands of Catholic children worldwide.

For the second time, the Vatican is at the UN – to defend its holy religious record on child sexual torture – and again it claims — that when it signed the UN Committee Against Torture (CAT) in 2002 – its legal jurisdiction (responsibility) is limited only to its tiny country of the Vatican City State of 800 people inhabiting an area less than half a square-kilometer in size.

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ILLINOIS
My Suburban Life

Published: Monday, May 5, 2014

By ED MCMENAMIN – emcmenamin@shawmedia.com

Thousands of pages of documents released April 30 by a Chicago law firm detail decades of sexual abuse by DuPage County priests and the protection they allegedly received from the Diocese of Joliet.

The files of 16 priests accused of abuse, long held confidential by the diocese, were obtained and released by Jeff Anderson and Associates to coincide with five new lawsuits filed by the firm against four offenders.

The documents show a pattern of secrecy from Joliet diocese bishops, who regularly failed to remove or report priests accused of child sexual abuse, instead moving them to new parishes where they would often repeat the behavior.

The suits brought by the firm seek an unspecified settlement for damages suffered by victims in the ’60s, ’70s and early ’80s. They also seek a court order that “[stops] practices that imperil children and requires them to come clean and publicly disclose files of all [priests accused of abuse],” Anderson said Thursday.

The recently released files are a portion of 34 sought by the firm, he said.

Diocese spokesman Ed Flavin said that, in accordance with common business practice, the diocese does not release confidential files of employees, and the 16 files turned over to the firm were done so under court order.

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UNITED STATES
American Prospect

By Kathryn Joyce

I. The Calling

In November 2012, Bob Jones University, the longtime flagship institution of fundamentalism, announced it had hired GRACE (short for Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment), an independent group of evangelical lawyers, pastors, and psychologists, to investigate the university’s handling of sexual-abuse and -harassment reports. Bob Jones officials said they were taking the step after watching the pedophilia scandal unfold at Pennsylvania State University the previous year. They vowed to ask forgiveness of any students they may have “underserved.”

In truth, the origins of the investigation were closer to home. In 2011, an abuse scandal from years before had become national news with a 20/20 report. Tina Anderson, a 15-year-old who lived in New Hampshire, was raped and impregnated in 1997 by one of her church’s deacons, then in his late thirties, while she was a babysitter for his family. When Anderson and her mother told their pastor, Bob Jones graduate Chuck Phelps, what had happened, Phelps had Anderson stand before the congregation while he read a confession of her pregnancy. She was then sent to a family in Colorado until the baby was born and given up for adoption. Anderson’s rapist, a registered sex offender, was made to confess as well—but to adultery, not rape—and he remained at the church for years. Phelps, who’d gone on to be president of the fundamentalist Maranatha Baptist Bible College in Wisconsin, maintained close ties to Bob Jones, serving on its board of trustees as well as on its missionary and youth-camp boards.

Students and alumni had already begun to agitate online against the school’s lack of academic and student freedom, as well as its response to reports of sexual abuse. Anderson’s story highlighted what these critics—dismissed by the school as disaffected “detractors”—saw as a pattern in how Bob Jones stigmatized students who reported rape or sexual assault. A senior named Christopher Peterman started a Facebook group and website called Do Right BJU, which aimed to remove Phelps from the board and called for a range of reforms; he organized the first campus protest in the university’s history to raise awareness of sexual abuse. Phelps resigned from the board of trustees in December 2011, just days before the rally. But then a few months later, on the eve of graduating, Peterman was expelled for watching Glee, among other violations.

The story continued to grow. Peterman and alumni groups active on Facebook began to hear from more and more students who claimed they had been poorly treated when they reported sexual abuse to school staff. Over the following months, alumni pressured the university to update its policies and investigate the school’s handling of abuse reports. They urged the university to hire GRACE, which had investigated allegations of sex abuse in two Christian missionary groups. To almost everyone’s surprise, seven months after the 20/20 report aired, Bob Jones announced that it had listened.

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GENEVA
Center for Constitutional Rights

Torture Committee Inquiry Follows Scathing Rebuke by Committee on Rights of the Child

press@ccrjustice.org

May 5, 2014, Geneva – Today, the Vatican was summoned to appear before the United Nations Committee Against Torture to report on its record in preventing, punishing and redressing torture, which necessarily included its record addressing widespread sexual violence within the Catholic Church. Members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and their attorneys from the U.S.-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) were in attendance. In April, CCR, representing SNAP, filed a report with the Committee documenting the long-term harms suffered by survivors of sexual violence by Catholic clergy, and filed a supplemental report thereafter focusing primarily on Latin America. This is the second time in four months that top Catholic officials have been called before the U.N. to account for the Vatican’s human rights record on addressing the ongoing worldwide crisis of sexual violence and cover-ups within the Catholic Church.

“Rape is torture under international law, and for the Vatican to minimize the profound harm caused to so many and claim otherwise is both wrong and cruel. When the Vatican voluntarily ratifies a treaty, it must meet its obligations under that treaty,” said Center for Constitutional Rights Senior Attorney Katherine Gallagher. “For too long, the Vatican has been able to deny and deflect attention from its role in enabling, perpetuating, and covering-up these serious crimes around the globe, but those days of impunity are clearly numbered.”

The Vatican ratified the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in June 2002. This is the first time it has had its compliance with its treaty obligations reviewed by the UN Committee Against Torture. The Vatican was summoned before the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in January 2014 to report on its compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which obliges it to protect children from sexual violence and safeguard their well-being and dignity. It was the first time the Holy See had been called to account for its actions on these issues before an international body. In February 2014, the Committee on the Rights of the Child expressed “grave concern that the Holy See has not acknowledged the extent of the crimes committed…has adopted policies and practices which have led to the continuation of the abuse by and impunity for the perpetrators,” and that “[t]he Holy See has consistently placed the preservation of the reputation of the Church and the protection of the perpetrators above children’s best interests.”

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GENEVA
Wall Street Journal

By Liam Moloney

ROME—The Holy See aimed Monday to limit its responsibility to the tiny Vatican City State for the global clerical scandal as its officials come under questioning by a new United Nations panel—this time one on torture.

Vatican officials said they regretted the abuses of the past, but that measures that the Catholic Church has put in place in recent years show a drop in cases of abuses of minors, an area that has been of particular embarrassment to it and caused many faithful to leave.

Documentation “shows a stabilization or decline in cases of pedophilia…measures put in place in the past 10 years by the Holy See and local [Catholic] churches has shown a positive decline,” Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Holy See’s permanent observer to the U.N., told members of the panel on the Convention against Torture at a session in Geneva.

The U.N. committee is listening to the Holy See representatives Monday and Tuesday as part of monitoring the implementation of the treaty against torture. The Holy See ratified the 1984 convention in 2002.

Monday’s panel questioning focused on determining whether the Vatican’s history of child abuse by priests constitutes a violation of the Convention against Torture.

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GENEVA
Telegraph (UK)

Vatican claims ‘progress’ on child sex abuse at UN Committee against Torture hearing

Vatican officials tell United Nations Committee against Torture they have made progress stamping out paedophilia in Catholic Church

By Nick Squires 05 May 2014

The Catholic Church has seen a decline in cases of paedophilia after turning a corner in its efforts to tackle sex abuse of children by priests, the Vatican said on Monday.

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s ambassador to the United Nations, told the UN Committee against Torture the Church had made significant progress in the last decade in stamping out the problem.

“There has been a stabilisation, even a decline in cases of paedophilia in the Church,” he said. “That shows that measures taken in the last 10 years by the Holy See and local churches are bringing about a positive result.”

The claims came as Vatican officials were hauled in front of the United Nations Committee against Torture in Geneva for the first time since the Holy See signed the UN’s convention against torture in 2002. Just four months earlier the Vatican was castigated for its handling of sex abuse scandals by the UN’s Committee on the Rights of the Child.

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GENEVA
Prensa Latina (Cuba)

Rome, May 5 (Prensa Latina) The Vatican presented today a report to the UN Committee against Torture (CAT) to clarify accusations against priests for abuse of minors.

Silvano Tomasi, representative of the Holy See before the said Committee in Geneva, started the first of two days of analysis of an Initial Periodic Report about the attitude of the Catholic Church in addressing reports of cases of religious leaders involved in such abuses.

The presentation of the document, quoted by Vatican Radio, refers to several legal clarifications about dozens of cases of sexual abuse of minors, discussed last January before the UN Committee on Rights of the Child.

It says that the State of Vatican City is a subdivision of the Holy See and highlights difficulties of the former to exercise its jurisdiction to investigate cases outside that territory, without violating other nations’ sovereignty.

The State of Vatican City, created officially in 1929, ratified CAT in 2002 and, according to the report submitted by Tomasi, it looks for the broadest cooperation in the global fight against violence and torture.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic Register

BY JOSEPHINE MCKENNA, RELIGION NEWS SERVICE
May 5, 2014

VATICAN CITY – The Vatican could face a wave of new sexual abuse claims dating back decades if a United Nations inquiry finds that the Roman Catholic Church has violated an international treaty against torture and inhuman treatment.

The Centre for Constitutional Rights, on behalf of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), said May 5 that victims may look at fresh litigation since torture was not bound by the statute of limitations in many of the 155 countries that have endorsed or ratified the UN Convention against Torture, including the United States.

“For too long, sexual violence and acts of rape by the Catholic Church have been minimized,” said Katherine Gallagher, senior staff attorney at the New York-based CCR, after the UN panel that enforces the torture convention held hearings in Geneva.

“To recognize these acts of torture could assist greatly in the statute of limitations problems that some people have faced. In the U.S., you don’t have a statute of limitations on torture.”

Earlier, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s ambassador to UN agencies in Geneva, sought to limit the Holy See’s legal responsibility for the clerical sex abuse scandal, just three months after the Vatican was severely criticized by another UN panel for failing to protect children at risk.

The Vatican ratified the UN Convention against Torture in 2002.

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MASSACHUSETTS
The Republican

By Ron Chimelis | rchimelis@repub.com
on May 05, 2014

A friend tells me that what this country needs are “30,000 nuns with rulers.”

He believed society is weakened when an accepted moral compass, which may not be specific and need not be limited to one religious viewpoint, disappears entirely. He fears that is happening in America, where views and actions based purely on morality are often derided as naive, outdated or impractical.

Rev. James Scahill might not have had the physical clout of 30,000 nuns with rulers, but to many observers both in and out of the Catholic Church, announcement of his retirement provoked feelings that one distinctly moral individual was leaving the scene.

Not everyone agreed with the methods of Rev. Scahill, who attracted national attention for his outspoken criticism of the way the Catholic Church handled sex abuse allegations among its clergy. People I highly respect told me that even such a well-intentioned public stance risked making every priest a freelancer, able to pursue his own agenda at the cost of a consistent and necessary doctrine.

It’s a fair concern. What he offered, though, was something desperateIy needed at the time – the truth.

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INDIA
Times of India

KOCHI: Parish priest Raju Kokkan who was taken into custody from Tamil Nadu on charges of raping a minor girl was remanded in judicial custody on Monday.

Police brought the accused by road to Thrissur on Monday by 5 am and later produced him at the Irinjalakuda court around 10 am. The court remanded him in judicial custody for 14 days and he was later taken to Viyyur sub-jail.

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GENEVA
Los Angeles Times

By Tom Kington
May 5, 2014

Reporting from Rome—

The United Nations on Monday linked the sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests to torture, stepping up its criticism of the Holy See and, according to one activist group, potentially opening the way to a new wave of lawsuits.

Members of a U.N. committee on torture questioned Vatican officials for two hours about the church’s handling of abuse cases, with one member claiming a “climate of impunity” existed within the Vatican.

The hearing marked the Vatican’s first appearance before the committee after it signed in 2002 an international convention banning torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.

One legal expert said the hearing might spark further prosecutions of priests.

“The committee has stated that rape is torture, based on the physical and mental harm it can do, and that may push courts to consider abuse by priests as torture,” said Pam Spees, a lawyer with the U.S. Center for Constitutional Rights.

“Torture comes with universal jurisdiction,” she said. “States which have signed up to the U.N. convention are obliged to follow up, and there is no statute of limitations and acquiescence in torture is very serious.”

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, May 05, 2014

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

A top Vatican official is deliberately misleading Catholic citizens and a United Nations panel about current clergy sex crimes and cover ups.

[Reuters]

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi claims there has been a decline in the number of cases of clergy sexual violence. But there is no such evidence. Children always have, and likely always will, only be able to report their trauma decades later. So this notion – that the rate of abuse is declining – is at best unknowable and at worst a self-serving spin.

Tomasi also says “The damage has been done.” This contention is part of a long, carefully-crafted church public relations effort to pretend that this crisis is over and that only “clean up” remains. That is as wrong as wrong can be.

We strongly suspect that, across the globe, hundreds or thousands of child molesting clerics are still raping, sodomizing and assaulting boys and girls today.

Consider the case of Fr. Joseph Jiang of St. Louis, Missouri. In 2012, he was arrested for molesting a girl. He escaped prosecution because of a legal technicality. But a civil lawsuit contends that he admitted his guilt to the girl’s parents and left them a $20,000 check. That suit also says that Jiang’s boss, Archbishop Robert Carlson, asked the parents to turn the check over to him. Instead, they gave it to police.

Instead of putting Jiang in a remote treatment center, Carlson let him live just six minutes away from his old parish. And in April of this year, Jiang was arrested again, this time for molesting a boy.

Clerics continue to assault kids and bishops continue with their cover ups.

Tomasi makes two other absurd claims.

He says “the Holy See has no jurisdiction … over every member of the Catholic Church.” No one, of course, disputes this. The Vatican does, however, have power over Catholic employees across the globe, as evidenced by the fact that it defrocks controversial theologians and predator priests. Top church officials, however, refuse to use their power to punish complicit bishops.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

(Vatican Radio) The Holy See’s Permanent Observer to the United Nations will lead a delegation in Geneva Tuesday at a second meeting of the UN Committee on the Convention against Torture (CAT) to which the Holy See acceded in 2002. Archbishop Silvano Tomasi led the Holy See’s delegation in a meeting of the Committee Monday to present a report on the implementation of CAT in Vatican City State – a periodic commitment for each of the Convention’s 155 signatory states.

In remarks to the Committee Monday, Archbishop Tomasi reiterated the Holy See’s conviction that the Convention against Torture is “a valid and suitable instrument for fighting against acts that constitute a serious offence against the dignity of the human person” and that “the teaching of the Catholic Church clearly articulates its opposition to acts of violence and torture.”

The Holy See’s report outlined “significant steps and improvements” made to Vatican City State legislation in compliance with the Convention and which further reinforce the Holy See’s commitment to respecting CAT.

The report mentions in particular, the promulgation of Pope Francis’ July 11, 2013 Apostolic Letter “On the Jurisdiction of Judicial Authorities of Vatican City State in Criminal Matters” which incorporates portions of CAT “practically verbatim” and makes specific reference to the “Crime of Torture” (art. 3, Law N. VIII). Other amendments described in that Letter regard the specific nature of crimes committed within or outside the territory of the State, jurisdiction, extradition and terms of sentencing.

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