ABUSE TRACKER

CALIFORNIA
New York Daily News

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2014

LAKE FOREST, Calif. — A year after his son’s suicide, popular evangelical pastor Rick Warren is taking on a new mental health ministry inspired by his personal tragedy.

Warren, founder of Saddleback Church and a best-selling author, will team with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange and the National Alliance on Mental Illness to host a daylong event next month focused on helping church leaders reach parishioners who are struggling with mental illness.

The Gathering on Mental Health and the Church grew out of private conversations Warren had with the local Catholic bishop, Bishop Kevin Vann, after his son’s death and his own writings in his journal as he processed his grief. Matthew Warren, 27, committed suicide last April after struggling with severe depression and suicidal thoughts for years.

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CALIFORNIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, Feb. 28, 2014

For more info: Joelle Casteix 949 322 7434, jcasteix@gmail.com,
David Clohessy 314 566 9790 cell, SNAPclohessy@aol.com

Victims praise Rick Warren/OC bishop event
Daylong seminar to address mental health issues
Education is an important first step, group says
SNAP: “But firing wrong-doers as important as therapy”

A national support group for victims of child sexual abuse is applauding an upcoming church-sponsored mental health seminar, saying it’s a good first step in helping victims and others heal from the pains of mental illness.

Leaders of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPNetwork.org), are calling the partnership between Saddleback Church founder Rick Warren and the Catholic Diocese of Orange, CA, “movement in the right direction” to help victims of child sexual abuse and anyone who is suffering with mental illness.

[New York Daily News]

The seminar, which will be held at the Saddleback Church campus in south Orange County, will feature speakers and small group seminars which will educate ministers and the public on how to compassionately and effectively help those suffering from mental illness.

SNAP leaders say that events like this should be accompanied by decisive action to help those who are suffering due to child sex abuse and cover-ups in Orange County institutions.

“There are three ways we can help victims of mental illness: compassion, intervention, and action,” said Joelle Casteix of Newport Beach, SNAP Volunteer Western Regional Director. “But without action—without punishing wrongdoers and those who covered up for them—victims of child sexual abuse who suffer from mental illness are only more isolated, shamed and vulnerable.”

Casteix hopes that church officials in the area will publicly invite abuse victims to attend the event.

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UNITED STATES
Poets & Lunatics: The Power of the Pen on the Journey of Faith

February 28, 2014 By Wendy Murray

I recently watched a Frontline documentary titled “Secrets of the Vatican” highlighting the daunting challenges facing Pope Francis. His predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, resigned from the office a year ago today (Feb. 28, 2013) under a cloud of corruption and the stench of unresolved rampant sex-abuse cases. The documentary highlights the challenge Pope Francis faces in the unspoken mandate to clean up the Church, most notably the shameful sordid legacy of covering up of rampant sex abuse over many decades that has destroyed lives.

The problem of abuse and cronyism is not exclusive to Catholicism. Evangelical Boz Tchividjian asserts unequivocally that sex abuse among evangelical clergy is ‘worse’ than that within the Catholic church. Tchividijian – a former child-abuse victim; child-abuse prosecutor; founder and executive director of GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment); law professor; author and — it’s worth noting — Billy Graham’s grandson; speaks and writes extensively on issues related to sex abuse within the evangelical faith community. “Christian mission field is a ‘magnet’ for sexual abusers,” he says. “The Protestant culture is defined by independence”– the implication being that this independence, when it comes to confronting pathologies in ministry, sets the table for little if any accountability.

A report published by the Baptist General Convention of Texas (2000) noted “the incidence of sexual abuse by clergy has reached ‘horrific proportions.’” Studies revealed that 40 percent had acknowledged “sexually inappropriate behavior.”

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Thomas Reese | Feb. 26, 2014 Faith and Justice

Pope Francis has placed reform of the Vatican as a top priority of his papacy. Whether or not he will succeed remains to be seen.

There are at least three things necessary to successfully reform an institution: changing its culture, appointing key people who support the reform, and putting in place structures, policies, and procedures to concretize the reform.

Changing the culture of an institution is probably the most difficult and the most important. It is not enough to send out memos mandating new policies or to move boxes around in the organizational chart. The attitudes and values of the people in an institution make it what it is, especially if those values are not just talked about but incarnated at the top.

From his first minutes in office, Pope Francis has been trying to change the culture of the institutional church. He has talked about leadership as being for service rather than for status, power, or prestige. He has been critical of clericalism and careerism. He realizes that reform requires a conversion of hearts and minds. And he has not just talked, he has walked the walk. He has modeled what it means to be a good bishop, a good priest, a good Christian.

Second, reform requires putting people who support change into key positions. Francis began this by appointing as secretary of state Pietro Parolin, a highly competent Vatican professional who supports the pope’s vision and agenda.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

February 28, 2014

Stephen Cauchi and Barney Schwartz

A respected rabbi who was stood down from Melbourne’s Yeshivah College over allegations that he raped a student in the 1970s has had charges against him dropped.

Rabbi Avrohom Glick, 67, was then deputy principal and later principal of the College. He was head of religious studies when he was stood down last December.

Rabbi Glick, of Balaclava, was arrested and interviewed in December and released pending further inquiries.

Yeshivah College principal Yehoshua Smukler said at the time that although “Rabbi Glick is a highly respected staff member and community figure”, he would be immediately stood down.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Mary Carolan

A Catholic Bishop has won a High Court court halting three actions for damages brought against him in a representative capacity by a man, his sister and another woman who previously settled Northern Ireland court actions for stg £25,000 each over sexual abuse by paedophile priest Fr Brendan Smyth.

President of the High Court, Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns, today granted an application by Bishop of Kilmore, Dr Leo O’Reilly, for orders halting, on grounds of the previous settlements, the actions brought against him in his representative capacity as Bishop of the Kilmore diocese.

The cases by the three were also brought against Cardinal Sean Brady, who is being sued in his personal capacity arising from his role as part-time secretary to former Bishop of Kilmore, Francis McKiernan, during a church investigation in 1975 into complaints about Smyth.

Cardinal Brady had not made any similar application to that of Bishop O’Reilly and the proceedings against him remain in being.

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CANADA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, Feb. 28, 2014

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

Ottawa parish responded quickly to victims’ request for help
Fundraiser for convicted archbishop cancelled or postponed
He was brought to trial last year, accused of molesting 11 year old twin boys
SNAP: “We fear concert is merely postponed, so we hope the other groups we contacted will also step up to the plate”
“Public support for proven molesters is wrong because it deters victims of other child sex crimes from speaking up,” victims say

A victims’ group is grateful that an Ottawa Orthodox parish responded swiftly to their plea for assistance. The church cancelled a fundraiser to benefit an archbishop who was convicted last month of molesting an altar boy, and assured the group that they would never allow it to take place in their facility. However, the event organizers appear undeterred by this set-back.

Leaders of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, were upset about a planned March 5th event to raise money for Archbishop Seraphim Storheim, who was found guilty last month of abusing one of the twins. Storheim is the former head of the Archdiocese of Canada of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). He is suspended by the OCA while he awaits church discipline for his crimes.

Yesterday, SNAP wrote four church institutions connected with the event. The group said the event “hurt at least one child sex abuse victim and deterred other child sex abuse victims from speaking up.” Later during the day, the website promoting the event posted that “The chamber music concert on March 5 at Woodroffe United Church is cancelled due to the change of schedule.”

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TENNESSEE
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, Feb. 28, 2014

Statement by Susan Vance of Knoxville, leader of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 865-927-2923, vancefamily1@comcast.net )

Yesterday, when confronted by a TV reporter, Nashville Catholic officials admitted receiving a report of child sex crimes by a priest that they had kept secret for years. Shame on them.

[Fox 17]

The alleged child molesting cleric is Fr. Gansmann who also spent time in Illinois and Minnesota. Last week, for the first time, Catholic officials in the Twin Cities disclosed, because of a court order, child sex abuse allegations against Fr. Gansmann.

For years, Catholic bishops have pledged to be “open” about clergy sex cases. These two belated disclosures – in St. Paul and in Nashville – show that this pledge is rarely kept.

Those hurt by Fr. Gansmann — in Minnesota and Tennessee – are getting older. Many of them have likely told no one or few people about their pain. Their suffering would be lessened if Catholic officials would “come clean” about these clergy sex crimes and aggressively seek out, and help, these victims. Instead, however, bishops continue their self serving secrecy, letting those trapped in silence, shame, and self blame continue in pain. Again, shame on them.

Roughly 30 US bishops have, under pressure, posted on their websites the names, photos and work histories of child molesting clerics. This is the least Catholic officials can do to protect kids. None of Tennessee’s bishops have done this. Now would be a perfect time for Nashville’s bishop to do this.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Berliner Zeitung

[Summary: Some wounds never heal. So it is with the abuse case involving the Catholic Church in Potsdam and Tegel. An old case of abuse must be reopened because the victim has decided to put on some pressure. A parish priest accused to sexual abuse had been rehabilitated although the church knew he had forced a boy into a sexual act.]

Von Julia Haak

Die katholische Kirche hat einen Priester rehabilitiert, obwohl bekannt war, dass er einen Jungen sexuell missbraucht hatte. Nur weil das Opfer sich wehrt, wird der Fall nun neu untersucht.

Manche Wunden heilen nie. Wenn sie nach Jahren wieder aufbrechen, kommt es für Beteiligte oft überraschend. So ist es auch in einem Missbrauchsfall, der die katholischen Kirchengemeinden Peter und Paul in Potsdam und Herz Jesu in Tegel betrifft. In der katholischen Kirche muss jetzt ein alter Fall neu aufgerollt werden, weil das Opfer plötzlich Druck macht. Ein des sexuellen Missbrauchs beschuldigter Gemeindepfarrer war rehabilitiert worden, obwohl der Kirchenleitung bekannt war, dass er tatsächlich einen Jungen zu einer sexuellen Handlung genötigt hatte.

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SOUTH CAROLINA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, Feb. 28, 2014

For more information contact Barbara Dorris, SNAP Outreach Director (314) 862-7688 home, (314)503-0003 cell, SNAPdorris@gmail.com, and David Clohessy, SNAP Executive Director (314) 566-9790 cell, SNAPclohessy@aol.com

Victims prod Bob Jones University
“Don’t wait for report, act now,” they say
Group wants school to post predators’ names
SNAP: Thirty Catholic bishops have done this
“It’s the least the school can do to protect others,” victims say

A support group for clergy sex abuse victims is asking Bob Jones University officials to post on their website the names of “proven, admitted or credibly accused sex offenders who have worked at or attended the school.”

Last week, university officials announced that a report on campus sex crimes would proceed. But their earlier decision to stop the report has led some to question school administrators’ sincerity.

[Religion News Service]

The university’s top staff should be doing everything they can to prevent sexual assault, help victims and expose predators, say leaders of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

“Top university staff should take clear steps now to expose the wrongdoers and protect the vulnerable,” said Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, SNAP Outreach Director. “They should not passively sit back and wait for a report to be finalized while offenders walk free and might hurt others, especially offenders who might now be imprisoned had administrators acted more responsibly.”

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

UPDATED 28 FEBRUARY 2014

A Catholic Bishop has won a High Court court halting three actions for damages brought against him in a representative capacity by a man, his sister and another woman who previously settled Northern Ireland court actions for Stg £25,000 each over being sexually abused over years as children by paedophile priest Fr Brendan Smyth.

The President of the High Court, Mr Justice Nichoals Kearns, today granted an application by the Bishop of Kilmore, Dr Leo O’Reilly, for orders halting, on grounds of the previous NI settlements, the actions brought against him in his representative capacity as Bishop of the Kilmore diocese.

The cases by the three were also brought against Cardinal Sean Brady, who is being sued in his personal capacity arising from his role as part-time secretary to former Bishop of Kilmore, Francis McKiernan, during a church investigation in 1975 into complaints about Smyth.

Cardinal Brady had not made any similar application to that of Bishop O’Reilly and the proceedings against him remain in being.

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MINNESOTA
National Survivor Advocates Coalition

Kristine Ward

One way to sometimes stop people from doing wrong is to punish them for doing wrong. History, psychology and common sense all suggest this approach often works.

But tragically, Catholic officials virtually never use this approach when shocking revelations of clergy sex abuse and cover-up surface.

It’s an approach that St. Paul-Minneapolis Catholic officials might consider as they try to save themselves and their archdiocese from a rapidly expanding scandal that has put dozens of accused clerics in the news over the last few months and several other church staff who reportedly kept quiet about or hid their alleged sexual misbehavior.

When we say “Catholic officials,” we are largely referring to Auxiliary Bishop Lee Piché, who is now in charge of the Twin Cities archdiocese. Archbishop John Nienstedt has stepped aside while an allegation of child sexual abuse against him is investigated.

When it comes to wrongdoers who merit punishment, the St. Paul-Minneapolis church hierarchy has lots of choices.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

February 28, 2014

Adam Cooper
Reporter for The Age

A former Catholic priest on the sex offenders registry has avoided a jail term despite admitting he breached a court order by umpiring junior cricket matches.

Paul Chris Pavlou, 54, stood in 11 under-15 matches between 2010 and 2012 for the Victorian Sub-District Cricket Association in what was a breach of his obligations as a convicted sex offender, in that he was paid to work with children.

Pavlou also had a previous conviction for failing to comply with conditions of the registry, to which he was added for his 2009 conviction for performing an indecent act with a child under 15 and knowingly possessing child pornography.

At one point in Pavlou’s plea hearing on Friday, County Court judge Paul Lacava asked of defence counsel Sam Stafford: “How many chances does a sex offender have to get before he receives a term of imprisonment?”

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UNITED KINGDOM
Derby Telegraph

By Martin Naylor

A FORMER Mackworth schoolgirl said paedophile priest Francis Cullen burst into tears when her mother confronted him about his abuse more than 50 years ago.

The woman claims her mother was then visited by “a senior member of the Catholic Church” and told the matter would be dealt with – but Cullen remained at Christ the King Church in Mackworth until 1978.

The woman, who does not wish to be identified, has come forward following Cullen’s court appearance in Derby on Monday.

At that hearing, the 85-year-old admitted abusing children over a 35-year period.

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IRELAND
Irish Mirror

A priest has been arrested after he allegedly used parishioners’ money to fund a lifestyle of luxury.

Detectives nabbed him following a six-month investigation into the Dublin-based cleric.

It came amid complaints he stole cash by making false claims for mass stipends over a 13-year-period.

It is also alleged that the priest, who is in his 50s, lodged claims under the names of other priests who were unaware of the scam.

Under cannon law, a priest can only claim stipends for one mass per day.

It is also alleged the cleric used the money to fund a luxurious lifestyle and enjoyed stays in luxurious hotels, as well as expensive jewellery.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

A priest who was jailed for sexually abusing children has had his application for release from prison on compassionate grounds rejected.

Canon Gordon Rideout, from Polegate, East Sussex, was jailed for 10 years in May for 36 separate sex offences.

The priest, in his 70s, abused 16 children between 1962 and 1973, in Hampshire and Sussex.

BBC South East learned he was recently released from prison to attend hospital on a temporary licence.

‘Utter disgust’

He later returned to jail. The Ministry of Justice said the nature of his hospital treatment was confidential.

One of his victims said she felt anguish at Rideout’s “obvious ploy to manipulate the system” with his application.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

TOM BRADY, SECURITY EDITOR – UPDATED 28 FEBRUARY 2014

A PRIEST has been arrested by gardai investigating the theft of more than €500,000 from his religious order.

It follows a six-month investigation by a team of detectives into complaints of theft, which allegedly took place over a 13-year period.

The cash was allegedly taken from the order by making false claims for Mass stipends.

Under canon law, a priest is entitled to receive one stipend from the diocese or the order from collections made during the celebration of Mass.

Additional stipends cannot be claimed if the priest celebrates multiple Masses on one day.

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NEW YORK
Seasons of Grace

February 24, 2014 By Kathy Schiffer

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, in his blog Gospel in the Digital Age, warned New Yorkers this week that they may soon be seeing his name cast in an unfavorable light in the media. The Archdiocese of St. Louis, where he served as auxiliary bishop for a year in 2001-2002, has just been ordered by a court to release documents regarding clergy abuse cases.

Before you get too excited about that, though, let me assure you that the Cardinal assures us he’s been forthright and has done nothing wrong.

On February 18, just before departing for the Consistory in Rome, Cardinal Dolan published a letter to Catholics in the Archdiocese of New York explaining the situation. He wrote:

“…you know how I always try to alert you to any potentially negative publicity about the Church, or about me. Well, there could be some. My home archdiocese of St. Louis just complied with a court order to release the documents regarding cases there of sexual abuse of minors. (Cardinal Egan already did that here a decade ago, sharing all of the information we had on abusive priests with proper district attorneys, something we continue to do today.)

Anyway, since I was an auxiliary bishop in St. Louis for a year (2001-02), and vicar for priests for nine of those twelve months, I would anticipate that my name will again be highlighted in the press. I sure have nothing to hide, and am very much at peace with law enforcements officials reviewing the files. In fact, we already released all the documentation to them a dozen years ago!

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UNITED STATES
These Stone Walls

Editor’s Note: This is Part Two of a guest post by Ryan A. MacDonald. Part One was “The Trial of Father MacRae: A Conspiracy of Fraud.”

“I don’t share your belief in Father MacRae’s innocence. I just don’t believe a judge and jury would sentence a priest to life in prison with anything less than clear and compelling evidence.”

The above quote was the reply of a prominent American Catholic writer when I challenged him to take a closer look at the trial and imprisonment of Father Gordon MacRae. There is nothing to be gained by publishing the writer’s name. I still hope he might accept my challenge to study this matter with more depth than the New Hampshire news media and priests of the Diocese of Manchester have given it. I have asked the writer to show me the evidence he feels so certain must exist. He is wrong about this. There is simply no factual evidence to support this conviction.

But for some, the absence of evidence is evidence of evidence. That Catholic writer’s presumption about evenhanded justice and due process reflects the naiveté of the innocent and just. I once shared such naiveté, but I have since learned that ignorance is not bliss. I know too much about this case to cling to any delusions that everyone in prison must be guilty, or that a Catholic priest, while actually innocent, could not be railroaded into prison based on false witness.

So does The Wall Street Journal’s Dorothy Rabinowitz, one of the most just and courageous journalists I know. She has a talent for enabling readers to place themselves in the shoes of the falsely accused, and it’s a terrifying place to be. A recent article, “On Woody Allen and Echoes of the Past” (WSJ.com, February 9, 2014), had that same effect. It isn’t long, but it’s compelling and powerful.

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MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio

[with audio]

Madeleine Baran St. Paul, Minn. Feb 25, 2014

The mother of the boys abused by the Rev. Curtis Wehmeyer no longer ends her days with a silent prayer. Memories and flashbacks surface too easily in those quiet moments. Instead, she plays solitaire on her cell phone until sleep.

It’s been nearly two years since she learned that two of her sons were abused by Wehmeyer and that one of the boys, in turn, sexually abused his 5-year-old twin sisters. Last year, a third son told her that he, too, had been abused by the priest. One of the boys, she also learned, abused an additional sibling. In all, six of her nine children have been sexually abused either by Wehmeyer or each other, she said.

Wehmeyer pleaded guilty in 2012 to sexually abusing two of the boys, ages 12 and 14, and possessing child pornography.

The family’s life is now a blur of therapy appointments and psychiatric hospitalizations. It is, the mother said, “a war zone.” She once hoped that some of her sons would become priests. Now she hopes that none commit suicide.

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UNITED STATES
WKCR

Artist: Marci Hamilton
Title: God vs. the Gavel
Album: WCKR Late City Edition
Length: 29:35 minutes (33.86 MB)
Format: MP3 Stereo 44kHz 160Kbps (CBR)
Date Broadcast: Thu, 27 Feb 2014

Tune in to this Thursday’s Late City Edition for a conversation with Marci Hamilton, expert in constitutional and First Amendment law, and author of God vs. the Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law. Professor Hamilton discusses what happens when religious liberty and the law come into conflict, especially when First Amendment protection permits and even fosters oppression and abuse.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Kansas City Star

February 27
BY DARRYL W. LEVINGS AND MATT CAMPBELL
The Kansas City Star

Bishop Raymond James Boland, the beloved missionary priest who followed so many of his fellow Irish to the New World, eventually coming to a Kansas City suffering from the almost biblical flood of ’93, died Thursday in Cork in the old country.

Boland served as the fifth bishop and spiritual leader of the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph until he retired on May 24, 2005.

“I just felt, in some misguided fervor of my youth, that I wanted to be another St. Patrick or something,” he would reminisce about his emigration.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Thomas C. Fox | Feb. 27, 2014 NCR Today

As part of the Feb. 25th PBS Frontline documentary, “Secrets of the Vatican,” the producer asked me to write an essay assessing the chances Pope Francis can succeed in his agenda to reform the church. This is what I wrote:

Can Pope Francis restore his church’s shattered credibility? Tend the wounds of millions of disaffected Catholics, pillared by decades of clerical sex abuse and cover-up? Can he bury a church authority structure modeled after kings and their courts?

These are tall orders for a 77-year-old bishop who moved to Rome just one year ago to find himself suddenly heading a church of 1.2 billion followers.

Change does not come easily in the Catholic Church, yet I for one am more than modestly optimistic Francis will succeed in ways few have yet to imagine. Consider these points:

One: He was elected by his fellow cardinals with a solid mandate for reform, starting with a Vatican bureaucracy that is widely perceived as inept and out of touch. He has appointed a council of eight cardinals from around the world to move this task forward. A roof leaks from the top down. Francis has wisely started his reform at the top.

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ALASKA
KTUU

Matthew F Smith, Digital Producer, msmith@ktuu.com

ANCHORAGE –
A man charged with sexually abusing a 6-year-old girl in a Mountain View church bathroom last month has been indicted on one count of sexual abuse of a minor.

David Chiklak, 29, was detained in the church parking lot by members of the congregation after police say he brought the girl into the men’s bathroom. Police say a woman in the women’s bathroom heard the girl crying and discovered Chiklak standing over the victim with his belt unbuckled.

Chiklak has arrested at the church and has remained in custody since his arrest, a statement from the District Attorney’s office declared. He was

The girl was interviewed by investigators and confirmed the sexual abuse, according to charging documents.

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ALASKA
KFQD

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) – A grand jury has indicted a man suspected of sexually assaulting a 6-year-old girl at a church in northeast Anchorage. Prosecutors say the grand jury indicted 29-year-old David Chiklak on one count of felony sexual abuse of a minor. Chiklak was arrested Jan. 27. A woman told police she was in a bathroom with a girl at the church and heard someone call the child out. The woman a short time later heard the girl crying in the men’s bathroom. Police say the woman entered the men’s bathroom and saw a man with his belt unbuckled standing over the girl. Parishioners detained Chiklak in the parking lot. Police arrested Chiklak and said he was not a member of the church but had attended a service with others.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2014

By Ralph Cipriano
for Bigtrial.net

His troubles with “Father Andy” began when his mother confided to the priest that her son might be gay.

The alleged victim, now 26, testified in court today that when he was a 10-year-old altar boy, the priest brought him to his room in a church rectory, and sexually assaulted him.

Then, after the alleged attack, the victim testified the priest would repeatedly tell him on the playground that homosexuality was a sin, and so was masturbation.

How did that make him feel, the prosecutor asked?

“Horrible,” the young man testified. “As a homosexual, if it’s a sin, it means I’m going to hell.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Daily News

DANA DIFILIPPO & MENSAH M. DEAN, DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS DIFILID@PHILLYNEWS.COM, 215-854-5934
POSTED: Friday, February 28, 2014

THE LATEST young man to accuse a Philadelphia Catholic priest of molesting him as an altar boy told a jury yesterday that the experience so badly shocked, embarrassed and debilitated him that he turned to drugs, alcohol and multiple suicide attempts before reaching his teens.

The slim man, dressed in a white shirt, black tie and slacks, emotionally spoke of being 10 years old in 1997 when the Rev. Andrew McCormick invited him to the priest’s rectory bedroom at St. John Cantius Church in Bridesburg.

McCormick undressed them both, fondled the boy, straddled his chest and tried to force his penis into his mouth, the man said on the first day of McCormick’s trial in Common Pleas Court.

“I was in shock. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me,” said the man, 26, whose identity the Daily News is not revealing.

After he refused to allow McCormick to fully insert his penis into his mouth, “he told me to get out,” testified the man, who said he recalled that the priest never fully took off his plaid boxer shorts.

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MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio

Madeleine Baran St. Paul, Minn. Feb 27, 2014

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has submitted under seal in Ramsey County District Court the names of priests accused of child sexual abuse since 2004, according to victims’ attorneys.

Ramsey County Judge John Van de North had ordered the archdiocese to provide the names by Feb. 18. The archdiocese fought the order, arguing it would cause “irreparable harm to the Archdiocese and its clergy,” but failed to convince Van de North to change it.

The latest disclosure comes as part of a lawsuit filed by a man who says he was sexually abused by the Rev. Thomas Adamson in 1976 and 1977. Last year, in the same lawsuit, Van de North ordered the archdiocese to release the names of “credibly accused” priests on an older list.

The submission of post-2004 names marks the latest development in an increasingly aggressive legal battle over the archdiocese’s handling of clergy sexual abuse cases.

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CALIFORNIA
Oakdale Leader

By Richard Paloma
Staff Reporter rpaloma@oakdaleleader.com 209 847-3021 ext 8136
POSTED February 27, 2014

The arrest by Ceres Police Department of Oakdale Bethel Assembly of God youth minister Tyler Bliss on suspicion of possessing child pornography last week marks the third time in less than six months that a person in a position of trust has been arrested for a sexual offense involving children in the City of Oakdale.

Last September former Boy Scout troop leader Paul Birmingham was arrested by the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department for engaging in sexual acts with a minor after a month-long investigation into an inappropriate relationship he had with a 15-year-old boy over a five-year period. Detectives say the victim told them the first encounter happened when the boy was 13.

Birmingham was the owner of Print-Rite Printing on Hi Tech Parkway in the city.

A few weeks later in September, Oakdale Police arrested Cloverland Elementary School substitute teacher Bryan Thies for lewd acts with a child and child molestation.

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FRANCE
Yahoo! News

Lons-le-Saunier (France) (AFP) – A French court on Thursday acquitted a 69-year-old priest charged with raping a devout and vulnerable parishioner.

Daniel Lagnien, 69, was accused of taking advantage of a 39-year-old woman described as psychologically frail with no sexual experience, in a case with the potential to inflict further damage on the reputation of the Roman Catholic clergy after years of sexual scandals.

The prosecution had alleged that Lagnien made advances to the 39-year-old virgin during a 2010 pilgrimage to a shrine in the French Alps.

Several days later, she went to the priest’s home in Moirans-en-Montagne, Jura seeking an explanation of his behaviour.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS Philly

By Tony Hanson

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — There’s emotional, tearful testimony as a 26-year-old man tells a Philadelphia jury he was sexually assaulted by a parish priest when he was a 10-year-old altar boy at St. John Cantius in Bridesburg in 1997.

The alleged victim says Father Andrew McCormick recruited him to be an altar boy and then sexually assaulted him after an evening mass. Later he says the priest emotionally abused him, made him feel terrible, that he was going to hell for who he was, a homosexual, and he says he considered and tried suicide multiple times the next year.

He says he finally came forward in 2011 to face the memories and scrutiny so this does not happen to another little boy.

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TENNESSEE
Fox 17

John Dunn

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — There are new worries that a Catholic priest may have sexually abused children during his time in Nashville. The allegations against Father Kenneth Gansmann have just been exposed.

St. Vincent De Paul is a small Catholic church in North Nashville, and during the 1960’s it was led by Father Kenneth Gansmann.

The Franciscan priest not only led the predominantly African-American parish, but he also oversaw St. Vincent’s elementary school. Just last week church leaders in Minnesota revealed that credible claims of sexual abuse were made against Gansmann while he was in that state in the 1950’s.

FOX 17 News started asking questions, and we learned that allegations have also been made against Gansmann here in Nashville. “About three and a half decades after he died, we got an allegation that he may have abused a student at St. Vincent’s during the late 1960’s,” says Rick Musacchio with the Diocese of Nashville.

Mike Coode, who is a survivor of church sex abuse, says it is especially disturbing knowing that Gansmann spent so much time around hundreds of children. “It would not surprise me in the least, in fact it would surprise me if he didn’t abuse kids here,” says Mike Coode. Coode is one of several survivors urging the Nashville diocese to acknowlege what happened and seek out other possible victims.

The Diocese of Nashville is now encouraging anyone to come forward, and offering support to anyone who may have been molested or abused. “The diocese wants any victims of past abuse to come forward no matter how long ago that might have happened,” says Musacchio.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic Register

Written by David Gibson, Religion News Service
Thursday, 27 February 2014

VATICAN CITY – In another strongly worded message to the Catholic hierarchy, Pope Francis told the Vatican body that vets nominees for bishops that they need to find him better candidates to send to dioceses around the world.

“To choose such ministers we all need to raise our sights, to move to a higher level,” Francis told the Congregation for Bishops, the critical department of the Roman Curia that acts as a clearinghouse for bishop nominees, Feb. 27. “We can’t do anything less, and we can’t be content with the bare minimum.”

On consecutive days last weekend, Francis delivered stern warnings to 19 new cardinals he appointed to join about 150 others in the College of Cardinals: On Feb. 22, he told them to avoid “rivalry, jealousy, factions,” and at a Mass in the Vatican the next day, he said they must reject “habits and ways of acting typical of a court: intrigue, gossip, cliques, favouritism and preferences.”

Francis also has repeatedly called on clerics to live simply and humbly, and in his address to the cardinals and staff who make up the Congregation for Bishops, Francis said that self-denial and sacrifice are written into the bishop’s DNA.

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FRANCE
L’Express

Le père Daniel Lagnien qui comparaît depuis mercredi pour viol et agressions sexuelles à l’encontre d’une paroissienne, a été acquitté par la cour d’assises du Jura.

Le parquet avait requis jeudi cinq ans de prison, dont trois avec sursis, à l’encontre d’un prêtre jugé devant les assises du Jura pour viol d’une paroissienne particulièrement vulnérable. Il a finalement été acquitté dans la soirée par la cour d’assises du Jura.

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FRANCE
Expatica

A French court on Thursday acquitted a 69-year-old priest charged with raping a devout and vulnerable parishioner.

Daniel Lagnien was accused of taking advantage of the woman described as psychologically frail with no sexual experience, in a case with the potential to inflict further damage on the reputation of the Roman Catholic clergy after years of sexual scandals.

The prosecution had alleged that Lagnien made advances to the 39-year-old virgin during a 2010 pilgrimage to a shrine in the French Alps.

Several days later, she went to the priest’s home in Moirans-en-Montagne, Jura seeking an explanation of his behaviour.

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NEDERLAND
Trouw

[Summary: The sexual abuse scandal so far has cost the Dutch dioceses more than 8 million euros. However, most of the money was not spend on compensation to the victims but includes the investigation that the Wim Deetman commission did on abuse in the Catholic Church in the Netherlands. The victims have received more than 3 million in compensation according to statements from the seven dioceses. A total of 5.4 million euros was spend on the investigation and handling of complaints from victims. The Utrecht diocese has paid out the most with 2 million euros.]

Het seksueel-misbruikschandaal heeft de Nederlandse bisdommen tot nu toe meer dan 8 miljoen euro gekost. De zeven aartsbisdommen zijn echter niet het meeste geld kwijt aan schadevergoedingen voor de misbruikslachtoffers, maar aan onder meer het onderzoek dat de commissie-Deetman deed naar het misbruik in de Rooms-Katholieke kerk in Nederland.

De misbruikslachtoffers hebben tot nu toe ruim 3 miljoen euro schadevergoeding gekregen, blijkt uit jaarrekeningen van de bisdommen. Met 5,4 miljoen euro betaalden de bisdommen bijna twee keer zoveel voor het onderzoek van oud-Tweede Kamervoorzitter Wim Deetman en de behandeling van de klachten van de slachtoffers. Het tv-programma Brandpunt Reporter bericht daar donderdag over. Het bisdom Utrecht moest het diepst in de buidel tasten: een bedrag van 2 miljoen euro kwam voor zijn rekening.

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MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

By Emily Gurnon
egurnon@pioneerpress.com
POSTED: 02/27/2014

Attorneys for a plaintiff in a clergy sexual abuse case will take the testimony of Archbishop John Nienstedt and former top deputy Rev. Kevin McDonough on March 19 and 20, attorney Jeff Anderson announced Thursday.

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis had objected to the depositions, asking Ramsey County District Judge John Van de North to stop them. But Van de North ruled Feb. 16 that the depositions should go forward.

The judge also refused to stay his order that the archdiocese and the Diocese of Winona submit names of priests accused of sexual abuse since 2004.

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SCOTLAND
The Tablet

27 February 2014 by Christopher Lamb and Brian Morton

Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien is facing the possibility of further disciplinary action being taken against him by the Holy See.

Today his successor as Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, Leo Cushley, was due to arrive in Rome for a five-day visit where he is expected to discuss the issue

Cardinal O’Brien stepped down just over a year ago after allegations of sexual misconduct were made against him by five men, four of them priests. Last May the Vatican ordered him to spend time in prayer and penance outside of Scotland and Archbishop Cushley has said publicly that he should not return.

According to his spokesman, Archbishop Cushley has “listened to the parties concerned and will transmit any information provided to him to the Holy See”, adding that he will “assist in any way he can in order to help bring a just and equitable conclusion to the matter for all involved.”

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MINNESOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, Feb. 27

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

Two top St. Paul archdiocesan officials will supposedly be deposed next month about clergy sex crimes and cover ups, but we doubt that will actually happen.

[SFGate]

A dozen Catholic bishops – and two Catholic religious orders – have sought bankruptcy protection at the 11th hour to prevent depositions like these from taking place. And some Catholic officials (Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law and, more recently, Australia’s Cardinal George Pell) have been promoted to Rome, in part we believe, to avoid facing tough questions about child sex abuse and cover up cases. Other Catholic officials (like Fr. John Urell of the Orange County diocese) have claimed illness and gone away or been sent away to church “treatment centers” to prevent or delay depositions like this.

We’d love to be proven wrong. But we strongly fear neither Twin Cities officials – Archbishop John Nienstedt and Fr. Kevin McDonough – will actually be deposed.

And we again ask a puzzling question that Twin Cities law enforcement personnel should publicly answer: How is it that civil attorneys get to question Nienstedt and McDonough but police and prosecutors don’t? This makes us question again why law enforcement officials aren’t being more assertive with these obviously reckless, deceptive, callous and self-serving Catholic bureaucrats.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

Kristina Keneally

At one level, I always felt a bit of sympathy for Cardinal George Pell. He’s a product of a particular time and culture in the Catholic Church. I can’t imagine he was overjoyed as Bishop of Sydney to have me, a theologically-trained Catholic feminist Premier on his hands.

In the lead up to World Youth Day, the Cardinal and I were preparing to do a media event. I had advised him that I would open the press conference, and then throw to him. He said, “Minister, what would you like me to say?”

I replied, “Your Eminence, I’ve been waiting my whole life for a Cardinal to ask me that question.”

He looked at me blankly. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand. What do you want me to say?”

Some people swear the Cardinal has a great sense of humour. I suspect those people are men. In my interactions with him, I never saw evidence of it. …

Then, of course, there is the scandal of the sexual abuse of children.

As a mother and a Catholic, I am horrified by the abuse inflicted by Catholic priests and teachers on children in their care. I am further angered by an institution that failed to take these reports seriously and, in some cases, simply moved predators on to unsuspecting new parishes.

Some people have tried to implicate the Cardinal in these actions. Let me be clear. I make no accusation against Cardinal Pell when it comes to the sexual abuse crisis, except this one: that he has not responded well as a pastor, and that he lacks evident compassion and humility in the face of story after story of failure in the Catholic Church to deal with the sexual abuse of children.

Unfortunately, his public statements indicate an inclination to protect the institution rather than the vulnerable.

To be fair to our Ballarat-born Melbournian Cardinal, I don’t think he ever quite understood the egalitarian, pragmatic nature of Sydney or the lay of the media landscape here. Whereas Francis and John Paul II are natural media performers, Pell seemed to struggle to use the media to its best effect.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Fermanagh Herald

A FERMANAGH priest convicted of sexually assaulting three young sisters has had some of his convictions overturned.

New evidence was produced at the Appeals Court in Belfast regarding the conviction of Father Eugene Lewis of the White Fathers Order and three sisters from County Fermanagh.

The case ran for four weeks in 2011, following which Father Lewis was convicted of eleven charges of indecent assault. However, after the charges were appealed, the Court upheld eight of the charges but ruled that three others were unsafe.

The Court of Appeal considered the matters and handed down a ruling which was published by the Court Service of Northern Ireland this week.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

JOSEPH A. SLOBODZIAN, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
POSTED: Thursday, February 27, 2014

The sex assault trial of the Rev. Andrew McCormick opened Thursday with the prosecutor saying the evidence will show that the Catholic priest targeted, groomed and assaulted a 10-year-old altar boy in his room in the rectory of a Northeast Philadelphia parish.

“No 41-year-old man has the right to touch a child,” Assistant District Attorney Kristen Kemp told the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court jury in her opening statement.

Kemp said the alleged victim will testify about how McCormick asked him to become an altar boy in 1997 at St. John Cantius parish in Bridesburg.

“In a strong, hard-core Catholic neighborhood, this was a huge honor,” Kemp said.

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CANADA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, February 27, 2014

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

Victims seek help from church and university
A fundraiser is set for convicted archbishop
He was accused of molesting 11 year old twin boys
Group wants officials to denounce the event
SNAP: “Public support for proven molesters is wrong”
“It deters victims of other child sex crimes from speaking up,” they say

Sex abuse victims are criticizing a fundraiser for an archbishop convicted of child sexual abuse. The group is also urging leaders of five institutions to cancel the event or discourage attendance at it.

Members of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, are upset about a March 5th fundraiser to benefit Archbishop Seraphim Storheim, who was found guilty last month of child sexual abuse. Storheim is the former head of the Archdiocese of Canada of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). He has been suspended by the OCA while he awaits church discipline.

SNAP believes the event “hurts at least one child sex abuse victim and deters other child sex abuse victims from speaking up.” The fundraiser will be held at the Woodroffe United Church in Ottawa. The Woodroffe parish belongs to the United Church of Canada.

Performing at the concert will be the Illinois Wesleyan Piano Quartet. According to the concert flyer, all members of the ensemble are professors at Illinois Wesleyan University (IWU) in the United States.

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MINNESOTA
SFGate

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Deposition dates have been set for top officials in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis in a lawsuit filed by a former altar boy who says he was abused in the 1970s.

Archbishop John Nienstedt will be deposed March 19 and the Rev. Kevin McDonough, a former vicar general of the archdiocese, will testify March 20. A Ramsey County judge recently rejected the archdiocese’s attempt to block the depositions of Nienstedt, McDonough and Father John Brown. The plaintiff’s attorney, Jeff Anderson, said Thursday Brown’s deposition has not been scheduled because the priest is ill.

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UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on February 27, 2014

Crozier priest Father Jerry Funcheon, who is the subject of the first lawsuit filed under Hawaii’s civil window, is back in the news – this time because Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis church officials “forgot” to put him on a website that lists abusive clerics. Church documents show that Funcheon may have abused up to 50 boys.

NBC Minneapolis affiliate KARE posted this story yesterday, which chronicles much of Funcheon’s past, including the cover up of his actions by men like Fr. Kevin McDonough, the embattled former Vicar General of the Archdiocese. McDonough has been implicated in the cover up of numerous cases of abuse in Minnesota. He is also the brother of White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough.

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CROATIA
West

by Nicola Dotto – 02.27.2014

An ecclesiastical court in Croatia has, for the first time, passed a guilty verdict on a priest accused of sexually abusing children. After years of investigation and hearing the direct testimonies of the victims, Don Nedjeljko Ivanov, of the diocese of Zara, was convicted of paedophilia dating back to the 1980s and ’90s. The sentence means he will lose his position in the Church and he will be forced to leave the parish. However, the fact that the crime took place more than 15 years ago means the priest will avoid being prosecuted by the civil justice system. However, this is a landmark first in the centuries-long history of the church in Zagreb.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Daily Journal

By MARYCLAIRE DALE Associated Press
First Posted: February 27, 2014

PHILADELPHIA — Prosecutors in Philadelphia say a Roman Catholic priest assaulted a 10-year-old after the boy’s mother met with the priest about her son’s sexuality.

The account Thursday comes as the latest priest-abuse trial in Philadelphia gets under way.

Prosecutors say the accuser’s mother had sought help from the Rev. Andrew McCormick over concerns her son was gay.

They say McCormick then targeted the boy, and sexually assaulted him at his northeast Philadelphia rectory in 1997.

Defense lawyer William Brennan asks jurors why no one else has accused McCormick of molestation despite his 30-year church career.

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NEDERLAND
DUIC

[document]

[Summary:The sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church has cost the Utrecht archdiocese more than 2 million euros.]

Het seksueel misbruikschandaal binnen de Katholieke kerk heeft het Aartsbisdom Utrecht meer dan 2 miljoen euro gekost. Hiermee heeft het Utrechtse bisdom het meest betaald van alle Nederlandse bisdommen. Dit meldt het KRO programma Brandpunt Reporter.

Van de twee miljoen euro die Utrecht moest betalen, ging meer dan 830.000 euro naar de compensatie van slachtoffers. Meer dan 470.000 ging naar de kosten van Commissie Deetman, die het seksueel misbruik onderzoekt. Aan het meldpunt wordt meer dan 700.000 euro betaald. In totaal hebben de bisdommen meer dan 8,5 miljoen betaald aan de de slachtoffers, Commissie Deetman en het meldpunt misbruik.

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BRASIL
Surgiu

[Summary: The Paraiba prosecution will interrogte adolescents who had sex with Father Adriano Jose, pastor of Jacarau on the north coast of the state. The prosecutor said sexual orgies occurred inside the rectory and at motels. The Paraiba archdiocese confirmed the priest has been suspended from performing priestly duties.]

O Ministério Público da Paraíba (MPPB), através da Promotoria de Jacaraú, vai interrogar nesta quarta-feira (26), adolescentes que tiveram relações sexuais com o padre Adriano José, pároco de Jacaraú, no Litoral Norte do Estado. De acordo com o promotor Marinho Mendes, as orgias sexuais, que ocorriam dentro da casa paroquial e motéis, eram regadas à bebidas alcoólicas. A Arquidiocese da Paraíba confirmou que ele está suspenso de ordem, ou seja, impedido de realizar missas. O padre Jaildo Souto também teve às ordens suspensas suspeito de abuso sexual.

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UNITED STATES
Harvard Gazette

February 26, 2014

By Christina Pazzanese, Harvard Staff Writer

In keeping with Pope Francis’ growing reputation as an egalitarian-minded maverick, the Vatican announced Monday that he will begin revamping the Holy See’s financial operations by creating a new ministry, called the Secretariat of the Economy, that will have broad authority and report directly to him.

The agency is expected to bring order and transparency to the notoriously secretive Vatican Bank, which critics charge operates like an offshore tax haven for organized crime and money launderers and is now mired in a string of corruption scandals. Last month, a senior cleric serving as a top Vatican accountant was charged criminally for trying to smuggle €20 million from Switzerland into Italy through the private, unregulated bank, which is formally known as the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR).

Headed by Australian Cardinal George Pell, a longtime reform advocate, the new ministry will be advised by a 15-person council that includes eight prelates and, for the first time in church history, seven lay financial experts. An auditor appointed by the pope will have the power to review all financial records.

Vatican watchers say the pope’s move is the most dramatic structural overhaul of the church bureaucracy in 25 years, with some calling it unprecedented for its swift and substantive nature in addressing an issue that has dogged the church for decades.

Gregg Fields, M.P.A. ’95, is a veteran business journalist and currently a research fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. Fields, who is studying the threat that institutional corruption poses to the U.S. economy and how the cozy affinity between Washington, D.C., and Wall Street has undermined the effectiveness of financial industry regulations, spoke with the Gazette about the significance of the Vatican’s reforms and the challenges that Pope Francis faces in trying to restructure and bring transparency to an entrenched financial institution.

GAZETTE: How significant are the actions the pope took this week, and more broadly, what he’s done since last August, such as hiring a Washington, D.C.-based company to conduct a forensic review of the bank’s finances?

FIELDS: Two things I found very interesting this week. One, I do think that the creation of this authority is very significant because it’s going to totally rework the way the Vatican handles its assets, the way the Vatican looks at things like due diligence and review. I think it was the pope who said it’s going to be less Vatican-centric in terms of the way it operates. So I think that’s very significant. The other thing I found interesting about the statement, frankly, was what wasn’t in it. Unless I have missed something, what was not in it is any mention of the IOR, the Vatican Bank. And we know last week, the pope was briefed about the bank. We don’t know what he was told, but we do know that last year he said, “Maybe the bank doesn’t have a future.” I suspect, just as a journalist looking at what’s not there, this is a way of changing the IOR’s role in a way that diminishes it, and could be a prelude to getting rid of it.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, February 27, 2014

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

New lawsuit in Chicago accuses a Christian commune of covering up “rampant” child sexual abuse.

[DNA Info]

Once again we see the same repeat pattern in the Uptown Jesus People USA’s behavior that we have seen over and over throughout our nation and the world. A situation exists where there is a hierarchy of power, and a central belief system that promotes control over people and their daily lives. From this unhealthy environment, comes unhealthy behaviors, including sexual abuse. This appears to be just another case.

The part that concerns us the most at SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the response that we see constantly by those in power. Those that were and are in a position of power have a responsibility to prevent, or at the very least to respond to, abuse of any kind as quickly as possible. Here we see the typical pattern that occurs when a victim comes forward. There is denial first and foremost, then they point out the statute of limitations, and refer inquiries to their lawyers.

What should be glaringly apparent is that there is no reaching out to the victims, no cry for other possible victims to come forward, and no investigation in joint effort with civil authorities, to make sure the crisis is promptly addressed, victims treated and/or compensated, preventing future abuse and cover ups, and punishing those responsible.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Catholic New World

The Archdiocese understands the concerns and questions surrounding the recent release of documents related to 30 Archdiocesan priests who have been accused of abusing minors at various times during the last half century. Because of the recent conflicting and inaccurate media reports regarding the document release, the archdiocese wants to provide some additional, factual background information.

1992 and 2002 reforms

FACT …

In September 1992, after appointing a special commission to assess how sexual misconduct was being handled by the archdiocese, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin announced new policies regarding clerical sexual misconduct and established the archdiocese’s independent Review Board and the assistance ministry — one of the first in the nation.
The Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People (Dallas Charter) was promulgated by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in June 2002
In October 2002, Cardinal George led a delegation to Rome to secure approval of the Dallas Charter and the zero tolerance policy, which states no priest with even one substantiated allegation of sexual abuse can serve in ministry.

Archdiocese of Chicago Today

FACT …

No priest with even one substantiated allegation of sexual abuse of a minor serves in ministry in the Archdiocese of Chicago today.
The Archdiocese of Chicago is in full compliance with the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.
When an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor by a cleric is received by the archdiocese, the allegation is immediately reported to civil authorities. The priest involved can be asked to step aside while the allegation is further investigated.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
NBC 10

Opening statements are set to start Thursday in the Philadelphia trial of a priest arrested after his accuser followed child sex-assault trials involving Penn State and the Roman Catholic church.

The accuser, a former altar boy, says he was sexually assaulted after Mass in 1997 by the Rev. Andrew McCormick.

McCormick was suspended from the Philadelphia archdiocese over a less serious allegation when he was arrested in 2012.

The 57-year-old priest’s lawyer says the charges — including sexual assault, child endangerment and indecent exposure — stem from one encounter with a lone accuser.

Philadelphia prosecutors have been investigating priest-abuse reports in Philadelphia for a decade, and have gained several sex-abuse convictions.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

A paedophile priest wanted for a string of sexual assaults had his arrest warrant withdrawn more than a decade ago because the courts thought he would never be found, it has emerged.

Francis Cullen, 85, spent more than 20 years on the run in Tenerife before he was extradited last year.

A warrant had been issued for his arrest after he skipped bail in 1991 but it was withdrawn in 2000,

Police said the decision was a matter for the courts.

Cullen admitted abusing five boys and two girls, aged six to 16, connected to churches in Mackworth and Buxton in Derbyshire and Hyson Green in Nottingham, in offences dating back to 1957.

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

MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio

[with audio]

Madeleine Baran St. Paul, Minn. Feb 25, 2014

Feb 26, 2014

Documents released Tuesday by the St. Paul police department in a closed investigation show that the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis knew in 2004 that a priest had searched online for sexual images of children.

The police file of the investigation into alleged child pornography on the computer of the Rev. Jon Shelley includes a 2004 report from a private forensic examiner who reviewed the images on Shelley’s computer. It found that Shelley had searched the Internet for the terms “free naked boy pictures,” “blond boys sucking pics” and “preteen.” The examiner wrote the report for the archdiocese’s private investigator, who gave it to the chancery in 2004, according to the police file.

The archdiocese kept Shelley in ministry despite the report’s finding.

A spokesman for archdiocese declined to comment on why Shelley remained in ministry after church leaders learned he looked for pornographic images of minors. Shelley’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

MPR News reported in October of last year that top church officials debated for months in internal memos whether the images from Shelley’s computer could be considered child pornography and concluded that they didn’t need to call police.

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

TENNESSEE
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, Feb. 27, 2014

For more information: David Clohessy of St. Louis, SNAP Director (314) 566-9790 cell, SNAPclohessy@aol.com

Pedophile priest worked in Nashville
He was publicly exposed last week for first time
Sex abuse victims seek help from Tennessee bishop
Group blasts “bare minimum” approach by Catholic officials

A credibly accused predator priest who was exposed for the first time last week worked for years as a pastor in Tennessee. And a support group for clergy sex abuse victims is urging Nashville’s Catholic bishop to “aggressively seek out others who may have seen, suspected or suffered his crimes.”

[Minnesota Public Radio]

Because of a court order, St. Paul Minnesota church officials revealed that Fr. Kenneth Gansmann was removed from active ministry because of allegations that he molested a child. Fr. Gansmann, who is now deceased, also worked in three Illinois dioceses: Springfield, Joliet and Chicago.

Leaders of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, are asking Bishop David R. Choby to use his vast resources to seek out any others who may have seen, suspect, or suffered abuse. Bishop Choby should visit every parish were Gansmann worked and beg victims or witnesses to come forward.

Gansmann worked in Nashville at St. Vincent De Paul from 1961 until his death in 1974.

“He had access to hundreds of children every year. It is never too late to report abuse,” said

David Clohessy of St. Louis, SNAP’s director. “We hope those who are suffering in silence will find the courage to speak up. And we hope Nashville’s bishop will gently but firmly prod them to do so.”

“It’s hard for some to understand this, but many times, victims stay silent unless someone in authority – a prosecutor, a bishop, or even a parent – begs them to step forward and get help,” said Susan Vance of Knoxville, another SNAP leader. “Fr. Gansmann’s victims are likely getting up in age. They were kids in an age when kids were often to be ‘seen, not heard,’ So it’s likely they’re still carrying this horrible burden alone. Catholic officials can and should gently but firmly prod them to break their silence and start healing.”

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

MISSISSIPPI
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, Feb. 27, 2014

For more information: Amy Smith, SNAP Dallas Leader (281)748-4050, spacecitysnap@gmail.com and David Clohessy, SNAP Executive Director (314) 566-9790 cell, SNAPclohessy@aol.com

Victims applaud abuse seminar
But they urge use of “outside experts”
Church protected predator just two years ago
Aggressive outreach to find victims, witnesses vital to child safety
Convicted minister may have more victims, they fear

A support group for child sex abuse victims is applauding a Mississippi Baptist church—that just recently protected and embraced a now-convicted child predator—for holding an abuse awareness and prevention seminar. But the group wants church officials to do “aggressive outreach” to encourage victims to report to police and to add at least one “outside” secular expert to the panel.

Officials at Morrison Heights Baptist Church are planning a sex abuse awareness training conference with a goal “to equip church leaders with the skills and resources they need to keep children safe.” The conference focuses on reporting crimes, creating a safe environment, and a victim’s story of abuse and recovery.

“Outside” secular experts are essential if this seminar is to be successful at creating a safer environment for children. “Secular experts have no bias when it comes to helping institutions and officials adopt child and victim friendly policies. They are able to put the needs of children before the reputations of institutions,” said David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP.

[Baptist Children’s Village]

But SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org), wants church leaders to go a step further by aggressively seeking out more victims and witnesses of abuse. In 2011, a former music minister at the church, John Langworthy, admitted from the pulpit that he had molested kids in two states. A Dallas news investigation showed that accusations against Langworthy date back to 1989, when Prestonwood Baptist Church leaders quietly investigated the allegations and fired him but failed to report him to the police, allowing him to move back to MS where he continued to work with kids as a minister and public school choir teacher for the next 22 years.

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

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Express-News

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Opening statements are set to start Thursday in the Philadelphia trial of a priest arrested after his accuser followed child sex-assault trials involving Penn State and the Roman Catholic church.

The accuser says he was sexually assaulted after Mass in 1997 by the Rev. Andrew McCormick.

McCormick was suspended from the Philadelphia archdiocese over a less serious allegation when he was arrested in 2012.

The 57-year-old priest’s lawyer says the charges stem from one encounter with a lone accuser.

Philadelphia prosecutors have been investigating priest-abuse reports in Philadelphia for a decade, and have gained several sex-abuse convictions.

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CANADA
Sylvia’s Site

Posted on February 27, 2014 by Sylvia

The six-day preliminary hearing of Father Linus Bastien is scheduled to start at 10 am this morning (Thursday, 27 February) in Windsor, Ontario.

The hearing is open to the public. Anyone can attend and sit in court for the entire proceedings. There will as always in Canada be a publication ban on all testimony and evidence – that means that while there may be media in attendance there will be no media coverage of the testimony. There can be coverage of such things as the number of people in attendance, and Father Bastien’s demeanor and dress.

The hearing is a little like a mini trial in which the judge determines if he/she believes there is sufficient evidence to go to trial. The Crown will present evidence to prove that there is, while defence will try to prove that there is not.

Keep the complainants and their families in your prayers. The complainants will probably be called to testify and will be grilled by Bastien’s lawyer, a Patrick Ducharme. I know nothing of Mr. Ducharme but have been told that he is a man of some repute in the Windsor area and a high-profile criminal lawyer.

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher

One of Australia’s most prominent Catholic leaders, Archbishop Frank Little, covered up complaints about a priest’s child-sex crimes, a Melbourne court was told. Despite knowing about Father Wilfred Baker’s crimes, Archbishop Little allowed Baker to be transferred to a new parish, thereby enabling this priest to commit more child-sex crimes.

Broken Rites first heard about Father Baker after Broken Rites launched its Australia-wide telephone hotline in late 1993. Broken Rites advised these callers that victims should contact the Victoria Police sexual offences and child abuse unit. As a result, detectives eventually charged Baker with child-sex crimes.

In the Melbourne County Court on 8 June 1999, Father Wilfred James Baker (then aged 62) was sentenced to four years’ jail, with parole after two years.

What the judge said

In a pre-sentence hearing on 7 June 1999, Judge Russell Lewis told the court that, at the Gladstone Park parish (in Melbourne’s north-west) in 1978, a family complained to the church that Father Billy Baker was misbehaving towards their young son. The judge said Melbourne’s Archbishop Frank Little was made aware of the complaint. Despite this (said the judge) Baker was then transferred from the Gladstone parish to Eltham (in Melbourne’s north-east).

“He continued with his criminality [at Eltham]”, the judge said.

The judge added: “In the past, there have been paedophile priests who have been moved around with the full knowledge of the hierarchy.”

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

AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 27 February 2014)

Father Wilfred James Baker, a retired priest from the Melbourne Catholic archdiocese, who was jailed in 1999 for crimes against boys, was scheduled to face the Melbourne County Court in 2014 (case number CR-13-01856) on additional charges regarding more boys. However, Baker died on 15 February 2014, meaning that this court case will be cancelled.

News of the death was kept secret for 12 days. Finally, a death notice appeared on the Melbourne Herald Sun website on February 27:

BAKER. Wilfred. Died peacefully at Ashwood Feb. 15, 2014, aged 77. A Private Funeral Service was held on Feb. 20, 2014.

Questions

Broken Rites would like to see answers to these questions:

1. Following his convictions in 1999 for child-sex crimes, did the Catholic Church authorities officially revoke Wilfred Baker’s ordination as a priest? That is (to use the church’s language), was he laicised? The answer apparently, is “No” (according to other Melbourne priests who have spoken to Broken Rites).

2. Where was the funeral service conducted? And conducted by whom?

3. Was Father Baker buried with his fellow deceased priests in the church’s special vault for priests at the Melbourne General Cemetery? If so, why was he given this honour?

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

PHILDELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial

By Ralph Cipriano
for Bigtrial.net

Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Gwendolyn N. Bright today swore in a panel of 12 jurors and 4 alternates. Then, the judge gave the jury a cold case to solve, namely whether a Catholic priest had sexually assaulted a former altar boy some 16 years ago.

The cold case comes with a media spotlight. “This is what’s called a publicity or media case,” Judge Bright warned the just-picked panel of 12 women and 4 men.

The judge informed the jury that it was one of the most “important and solemn duties of citizenship” for them to sit as jurors who will decide the fate of Father Andrew McCormick. The 57-year-old priest is accused of sexually assaulting a former 10-year-old altar boy during the 1997-98 school year at St. John Cantius Church in Northeast Philadelphia.

McCormick was arrested on July 26, 2012, after the victim in the case came forward some 14 years after the alleged crime. The victim told the district attorney’s office he was motivated by the trial of Msgr. William J. Lynn. Lynn, the former secretary for clergy for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, was convicted on June 22, 2012 of one count of endangering the welfare of a child, another former 10-year-old altar boy known as “Billy Doe.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail

Orthodox Jew jailed for sexually assaulting girl makes audacious attempt to be released early so he can attend his son’s Bar Mitzvah

By BEN ENDLEY

An Orthodox Jew who sexually abused a schoolgirl has failed in his bid to be released early to attend his young son’s Bar Mitzvah.

Menachem Mendel Levy, 41, is currently serving a three-year jail term after being convicted of two sex assaults in June 2013.

His victim, now in her 20s, was aged between 14 and 15 years old when the attacks took place.

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article 3

By Eric Bates | February 27, 2014

The U.N. Report

Recently, the United Nations demanded that the Vatican fire all clergy members who are known or suspected to be child abusers and turn them over to the police. The Vatican’s reputation has been shattered after an extensive report prepared by the U.N. was released that detailed the protection of pedophile priests at the expense of their victims.

The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child also demanded that the Vatican give up its files on suspected abuse of thousands of children.

According to the U.N. report, no Catholic bishop has ever been sanctioned for sheltering an abusive priest, but the Vatican’s ambassador to the U.N. repudiated that allegation. He also later pointed out that during his last two years as Pope, Benedict XVI defrocked close to 400 priests for raping and molesting children. Benedict’s most recent defrocking binge resulted in more than twice the defrockings that had been ordered during the two years that preceded the explosion of sexual abuse allegations.

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

AUSTRALIA
The Australian

TESS LIVINGSTONE THE AUSTRALIAN FEBRUARY 28, 2014

ANTHONY Fisher was in a Pontifical Council for Life meeting in Rome on Monday when his mobile beeped. “Sydneyensis est sede vacante,” the message said.

He knew it meant his friend and mentor, George Pell, had been promoted to the Vatican and, correctly, he guessed the job. “He’s exactly the right man,” Bishop Fisher said yesterday after returning to Parramatta.

Bishop Fisher, 53, has headed Australia’s fifth-largest diocese for four years. It is also Australia’s most Catholic region, almost one in three belonging to the church.

He is a frontrunner to step up to the role of Archbishop of Sydney, where he grew up and served as an auxiliary bishop. But, within the church, those who know about such matters don’t talk and those who talk don’t know. He’s not talking. But he says those who dedicate their lives to Christ as priests should be prepared to go where the church asks them. He’s keeping a low profile and would not allow a fresh photograph.

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AUSTRALIA
Change.org

Petition by
Aletha Blayse
Brisbane, Australia

Dear General André Cox, Salvation Army World Head:

I’m disgusted by what I learned in the news in recent weeks about the Salvation Army’s treatment of children in its ‘care’ in Australia.

I’m shocked that the Salvation Army recently awarded a ‘Silver Star’ award to John McIver.

I’m shocked to learn how victims who first spoke out about abuses in Salvation Army institutions were ignored by your organisation, and sometimes even called liars.

I am appalled to learn that Lewis Blayse told your organisation of abuses at Alkira in the 1990s but that I’ve only just learned about them just now.

I don’t believe the slick spin put out by the Salvation Army that everything is all better now – I can make up my own mind, and I’m not impressed.

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

AUSTRALIA
SBS

Source AAP

Churches, the Salvation Army and authorities have known for 40 years about the abuse coming to light at a royal commission, a prominent Sydney reverend says.

“They all knew,” Wayside Chapel’s Reverend Bill Crews told AAP. “There’s no institution or organisation, whether it’s the church or the government or NGOs, who can claim they didn’t know.”

But they were more concerned about “protecting the good name of the institution” than the abused children.

Between 1971 and 1983, Rev Crews ran a crisis centre in Kings Cross, where many street kids came for help.

That’s where he first met Mary Hooker.

She was raped and beaten as a 13-year-old girl while living at a state-run home in 1972, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard on Thursday.

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MINNESOTA
KARE

[with video]

DOCUMENT: 1992 memo on Father Funcheon

Julie Nelson, Anchor and Steve Eckert, Investigative Producer KARE 11

ST. PAUL, Minn. – He liked to be called “Father Jerry”.

By his own account, Gerald Funcheon of the Catholic Order of the Holy Cross – the Croisers – started abusing young boys in the 1970’s here in the Twin Cities.

“I suspect, and I don’t remember, it would have been at it St. Odilia’s,” he testified in a 2012 deposition.

“The guy was a wolf,” according to David Bidney, one of kids who says he was abused starting when he was just 10. “They hurt me bad. And they hurt a lot of kids bad.”

In addition to St. Odilia’s in Shoreview, Father Jerry served in parishes and schools in Anoka, Onamia, and St. Cloud plus other assignments literally from coast-to-coast.

Just last week, Father Funcheon’s name was added to the local Archdiocese’s official list of abusive priests.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

PATRICK CARUANA
February 27, 2014

Prosecutors have dropped child sex charges against a convicted Victorian pedophile priest who died last month.

Michael Glennon was serving a 14-year sentence for the abuse of 15 children between 1974 and 1991, mostly at youth camps at a rural property.

He died aged 69 on New Year’s Day at the Hopkins Correctional Centre in Ararat.

It can now be revealed that Glennon was facing five charges of indecent assault against a boy between 1977 and 1978.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Nottingham Post

THE Ministry of Justice has no record of which judge or magistrate decided to call off the search for on-the-run Nottingham paedophile priest Francis Cullen.

HM Courts and Tribunals, which is governed by the department, said a search warrant was withdrawn nine years after Cullen went missing because it was believed he could not realistically be found.

A spokesman said “a judge or a magistrate” would have signed a document calling off the warrant after the priest skipped bail in 1991.

But records at Nottingham Magistrates’ Court do not show who was sitting on the day it was signed.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Dennis Coday | Feb. 27, 2014 NCR Today

2014

In January, Cardinal Francis George prepared Chicago Catholics for a release of documents detailing the archdiocese’s mishandling of clergy accused of sexually abusing minors. An archdiocesan statement described the documents as “upsetting” and “painful to read.” The decisions church officials made decades ago “are now difficult to justify” but were based on “the prevailing knowledge at the time,” it said.

George’s letter specifically addressed the case Daniel McCormack, a priest that the cardinal would eventually defrock, but whom he allowed to stay in ministry — against the advice of his review board — for months after allegations against McCormack surfaced. George only removed him after McCormack’s second arrest in 2006.

“The response, in retrospect, was not always adequate to all the facts, but a mistake is not a cover up,” George wrote.

2013

Last fall, as details emerged about how the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese mishandled cases of clergy sexually abusing of minors, Archbishop John Nienstedt acknowledged mistakes: “Our policies and procedures may not have been uniformly followed.”

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

NCR Editorial Staff | Feb. 27, 2014

EDITORIAL
The U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child issued a report in early February that chastised the Vatican for substandard policies that fall short in protecting children, specifically from sexual abuse.

The condemnation came from a committee of 18 independent experts who monitor the implementation of the 1989 U.N. treaty — ratified by the Holy See in 1990 — related to child protection and children’s rights. Among the committee’s chief criticisms are that the Vatican “has not acknowledged the extent of the crimes committed,” that its systems and procedures are shrouded in secrecy that shields the abusers and denies justice to victims, and that the church’s global network has been used to hide perpetrators and obstruct investigations.

Critics have faulted the U.N. report for not keeping its focus on the sexual abuse of minors and instead also criticizing Vatican policies (we would call them teachings) on abortion, birth control, homosexuality and even corporal punishment. Bringing up these issues — which the committee may not have been able to avoid because of its wider mandate — made the report too easy to dismiss by the very people it should have roused to action. It also focused too much on the historical record and ignored some recent progress the Vatican has made. Because of this, the report comes off as dated, giving critics more ammunition to dismiss it. A more politically savvy report could have had greater impact. Commentators even on the NCR website called the report poorly done, sloppily executed and an opportunity squandered.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholics4Change

FEBRUARY 27, 2014 BY SUSAN MATTHEWS

One of our site members, “Catholic Mom,” noticed that Father John Roebuck’s name still appeared on the archdiocesan clergy list this morning with his contact information changed to “care of the clergy office.” The list details the assignments and affiliations of priests with full faculties (currently in ministry). The names of those with restricted faculties are removed from the list. Roebuck is the former parochial vicar from St. Stanislaus parish in Lansdale who has been charged with indecent assault without consent. He has admitted to touching a man’s genitals at a YMCA. Read article here.

Kathy Kane confirmed with the archdiocesan spokesperson, that Roebuck’s faculties have indeed been restricted and that the clergy list would be changed this afternoon. It was changed all right. He contact information now lists him as back at St. Stanislaus Parish.

Some priests use the the clergy list as a resource to be sure that a priest visiting their school or parish is in good standing. It’s invaluable in the current climate and should be carefully maintained. Not sure if this was a clerical error or something else. We will follow up tomorrow.

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UNITED STATES
TheMediaReport

How do you get the attention of America’s newspaper of record?

First, find a handful of others to form a group declaring yourself opposed to sex abuse in the Catholic Church. Second, put together a third-rate website (even if it is not even online) announcing your intention to solve the now largely nonexistent problem of sex abuse. Finally, phone the New York Times National Religion Correspondent Laurie Goodstein to obtain all the free public relations you want.

So appears the strategy of a fringe group of dissident priests, nuns, and other left-wing zealots called Catholic Whistleblowers, which Goodstein proudly promoted on the Times’ front page just last year.

The premise of the group is simple but inane: the diabolical hierarchy of the Church is still covering up widespread abuse of minors by priests, and it is up to these select and valiant malcontents to blow the lid off the cover-up.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

A sentencing hearing begins today for a notorious Hunter Valley Catholic priest who has admitted to sexually abusing 18 boys.

It is his second conviction for multiple child sex offences.

John Sidney Denham is already in prison for child sexual abuse, as Sydney’s District Court hears submissions on his sentencing for additional crimes.

The former Maitland-Newcastle priest is serving 13 years in jail for sexually abusing 39 boys.

In July last year, Denham pleaded guilty to 25 new charges dating back to the 1970s, including indecent assault and buggery.

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MEXICO
El Siglo

[Summary: The film “Perfect Obedience” is about the life of Catholic priest Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legion of Christ.]

Desde sus inicios como actor de cine, Juan Manuel Bernal ha cumplido a cabalidad uno de sus propósitos: mostrar al público, a través historias ficcionadas en pantalla grande, los problemas que afligen e incomodan a la sociedad.

Ahora, con la cinta “Obediencia perfecta”, ópera prima de Luis Urquiza inspirada en los casos de abuso sexual cometidos por el fallecido sacerdote católico Marcial Maciel, el histrión espera provocar en el público una reflexión sobre los temas que tienden a minimizarse y, al mismo tiempo, a considerarse intocables.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Irish Times

Dan Keenan

Thu, Feb 27, 2014

A witness at the North’s Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry has told how he “had enough of the torture” from a named nun at a Derry boys’ home run by the Sisters of Nazareth.

However, he also insisted many people did their best for those at St Joseph’s, Termonbacca, and this was why he wrote a letter to the Derry Journal in 2004 praising those who “helped light up our lives”.

Struggling with his emotions, the anonymous witness told the inquiry’s senior counsel Christine Smith he could take no more beatings with an electric flex from a named nun and physically confronted her.

“I just couldn’t take it any more, I was beaten so severely with that flex,” he said.

‘Put up resistance’

“I put up resistance, stopped her, disarmed her, restrained her, let her break free. She came back at me with a dustpan brush.”

He continued: “At the end of it, she came at me with a pair of scissors, I was able to disarm her and restrain her. I told her, ‘you are not going to beat me again – ever’. She realised she could not get the better of me. I never got beaten again.”

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FLORIDA
News-Press

Suspect was arrested on Jan. 29

Written by
Marisa Kendall

A week has passed since Robert Little was arrested on accusations of molesting a Catholic school student, but he continues to reside next to the school in a building owned by the church.

Little, 74, was arrested Jan. 29 on a charge of lewd or lascivious behavior on a victim 12-16 years old. Investigators said Little made the victim expose himself, and touched him, while the victim was visiting Little’s condo on Fort Myers Beach, according to a Lee County Sheriff’s Office report. Little told deputies the victim was a student at the now-defunct Father Anglim Academy for mentally challenged children, according to the report.

Little was released from Lee County Jail on Saturday, on a bond of $10,000. He is to have no contact with the victim or other children, according to court documents. His arraignment is scheduled for March 3.

After his release, Little returned to his unit in Villa Francisco, a senior living home owned by the Diocese of Venice. The church is considering whether it can and will remove Little from the home — it’s a complicated decision because the home is run independently of the church, said Billy Atwell, spokesman for the Diocese of Venice.

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FLORIDA
Fox 4

[with video]

By Sara Belsole

FORT MYERS, Fla. – Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, demonstrating outside St. Francis Xavier Church in Fort Myers.

“Church officials can and should do more,” says Barbara Blaine, President of SNAP.

Blaine says they have concerns about how the Diocese of Venice responded when Eucharistic Minister Robert Little was arrested for molesting a young boy he met at church.

“The way the diocese dealt with this was reckless and that it placed children at risk.” Blaine says.

Little was no longer volunteering at Saint Francis Xavier when he admitted to police he touched the boy inappropriately, but was living at the diocese-owned Villa Francisco, just blocks from the church.

The Diocese didn’t ask Little to leave until a week after his arrest and after a local attorney, who represents another boy who claims Little molested him, voiced his concerns to Fox 4.

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AUSTRALIA
Real Clear Religion

By Samuel Gregg

It’s a long way from growing up in your father’s pub in the Australian regional city of Ballarat to becoming someone who answers directly to the Successor of Saint Peter in Rome. That, however, is the path that’s been followed by Pope Francis’s inaugural appointment as Prefect of what’s being officially called the “Secretariat for the Economy.”

A tall, somewhat imposing figure with a lifetime of intellectual achievement, pastoral work, and a forceful engagement in the public square behind him, Cardinal George Pell doesn’t fit most people’s image of a financial administrator. The 72 year-old ecclesiastic has, however, been asked to undertake a major role in fixing what has become a major source of scandal for the Catholic Church in recent years.

It may well turn out to be the greatest challenge of his priestly life.

You don’t need to watch the Godfather Part III to know that the Catholic Church has struggled for several decades to address some real problems in the management of the Holy See’s finances. Just looking at an organizational chart of the various units involved in some way in administering the Holy See’s resources is enough to make even devout Catholics think that maybe Dan Brown’s novels are onto something.

What’s often called “the Vatican Bank” — it’s more formal title is the Istituto per le Opere di Religione (IOR) — is just one of several institutions that the Holy See has created over the years to manage various resources. In many ways, a far more important structure is the lesser-known “Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See” (APSA), which, as it stated under its governing document, serves “to administer the properties owned by the Holy See in order to provide the funds necessary for the Roman Curia to function.”

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DEUTSCHLAND
Stadtzeitung

[The Augsburg district court has issued an order of punishment against a forme rpriest at the parish community of Thurheim. It is alleged he was in possession of child pornography. The priest has been since 2005 a priest of the Augsburg diocese.]

Das Amtsgericht Augsburg hat gegen den früheren Pater der Pfarreiengemeinschaft Thürheim einen Strafbefehl wegen Besitz von kinder- und jugendpornografischem Bildmaterial erlassen. Der Geistliche stand seit 2005 im Dienst des Bistums Augsburg.

Strafbefehl gegen den früheren Pfarrer der Pfarreiengemeinschaft Thürheim: Pater Thomas Schilling muss wegen Besitz von kinder- und jugendpornografischem Bildmaterial eine Geldstrafe von 90 Tagessätzen zahlen. Das teilte Roland Fink, Sprecher am Amtsgericht für Strafsachen, auf Nachfrage unserer Zeitung mit.

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SOUTH CAROLINA
The New York Times

By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
FEB. 25, 2014

An investigation into Bob Jones University’s handling of sexual abuse complaints will be allowed to resume, the university and investigators said on Tuesday, after the school endured two weeks of criticism for cutting off the inquiry, without explanation, as it neared completion.

After Bob Jones, a fundamentalist Christian college in Greenville, S.C., suspended the investigation in late January, people who said they had been abused and had been interviewed by the investigators went public with their stories, some for the first time. Some common themes were that when university students sought counseling, officials at Bob Jones called them liars or sinners, and told them not to report abuse to the police because turning in a member of their religious community — especially a parent or pastor — would harm Jesus and the church.

Most of the accounts involved abuse that occurred when the students were children. But some people did say they were abused as students at the university or its affiliated grade school, Bob Jones Academy.

The university has not explained why it terminated its contract with the group it had commissioned to conduct the investigation, Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment, or Grace. Stephen Jones, the university president and a great-grandson of the founder, acknowledged this month that it had not told Grace of any of its concerns before halting the investigation.

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AUSTRALIA
Courier-Mail

[with video]

PAUL HEGERTY THE COURIER-MAIL FEBRUARY 27, 2014

IN MY business there is a saying: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” The tragic stories uncovered by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse suggest a change to the saying. Culture devours child protection policy for breakfast, lunch and tea.

Culture is what a group accepts as normal. If a group doesn’t talk about child safety then in its culture it is normal to ignore child safety. If an organisation values other things above child safety then, culturally, it will minimise its seriousness. Policies and procedures, especially if they are from head office, will have minimal impact.

Archbishop Mark Coleridge spoke forcefully in The Courier-Mail yesterday about failures within the Catholic Church and a new path forward. He is concerned that assumptions the Church has learned in the past 20 years are rendered false by recent failings, especially in Catholic Education, which is meant to lead the way.

But an archbishop cannot change things by himself. Bishops already have policies and procedures but the strategy-devouring culture can chew and spit them out.

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CHICAGO (IL)
DNA Info

By Adeshina Emmanuel on February 26, 2014

UPTOWN — A documentary scheduled for release Friday — and a lawsuit filed recently in Cook County Circuit Court — accuse Uptown Christian commune Jesus People USA of hiding “rampant” sexual abuse of children at the commune decades ago.

“No Place To Call Home” is a documentary by former Jesus People member Jaime Prater that alleges he and dozens of former members were abused as children while living in the commune between 1974 and 1998.

The movie was initially scheduled for a July release. Prater said he prolonged the process to gather more interviews with alleged victims of abuse.

“This baby of mine has been gestating for five years, and so I’m nervous and anxious and excited,” said Prater, 37, who now lives in Indiana. The film project, which began in 2009, received donations through Kickstarter and will be released online, he said.

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AUSTRALIA
The Chronicle

OPINION: On the Catholic Church Insurance web page about how to make a claim is the advice, “Report theft (or attempted theft), malicious damage, and loss of personal valuables to the police.”

The Catholic Church also has procedures to report child sexual abuse allegations to police. My experience is that church officers comply with the insurance advice for material things.

But in Toowoomba we have seen the tragic results of failure to comply with the church’s procedures for child abuse. This highlights the cultural issues that Bishop Bill Morris and others raise.

It is one thing to identify cultural issues but people often wonder what to do about them. In my line of work we find experienced and intelligent people struggle to overcome culture.

So what is the culture we are talking about here? Culture is simply what people think is normal. People conform to what is normal. People don’t turn up to the workshop in their swimmers or to the beach in their boots and overalls.

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NETHERLANDS
Dutch News

Thursday 27 February 2014

The sexual abuse scandal has so far cost the Dutch Catholic church over €8m in research costs and compensation payments to victims.

Most of the money has gone on the massive research project led by Wim Deetman into the scale of the problem.

The report, published in 2011, concluded at least 800 Roman Catholic priests and monks were involved in abusing children in their care between 1945 and 1985.

In total, €3m has been paid in compensation to victims, according to the Church’s annual accounts and quoted by news agency ANP. It is the first time the church has published its annual accounts and the figures cover 2012, ANP says.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE McCARTHY Feb. 27, 2014

A HUNTER man who was raped by paedophile priest John Denham was not in court yesterday for the process that will confirm Denham dies in jail.

‘‘I don’t want to see him ever again,’’ the man, 49, said.

‘‘The police asked me to write a victim’s impact statement, but even that’s beyond me. I hope the next time I hear about him will be when they let me know he’s passed away.’’

A pre-sentence hearing in Sydney yesterday was adjourned to May on an application from Denham’s lawyer. The former priest, who was defrocked by the Catholic Church in 2011 – 11 years after he was first convicted of sexually abusing a boy – pleaded guilty in August last year to 25 child sex charges involving 18 boys at Singleton, Wingham and St Pius X School, Adamstown, in the 1970s, and accepted another 23 indecent assault charges had occurred.

The 25 offences, including buggery, forced oral sex and indecent assault, were committed against boys aged 11, 12 and 13.

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MINNESOTA
dotCommonweal

February 26, 2014

Grant Gallicho

In early December a judge ordered the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis to release its list of priests credibly accused of sexual abuse. Plaintiffs’ attorneys received the names in a 2009 lawsuit, but the court sealed the list. The archdiocese long fought its release, but reversed course after Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) reported that for years bishops had failed to inform police about a priest who had admitted to molesting boys. Archbishop John Nienstedt made the list public on December 5. It included the names of thirty-three men. But last week MPR reported that the actual number of accused priests was seventy. “Some of the…men remain in ministry,” according to MPR. “Others are long dead.” They worked in nearly every parish in the archdiocese.

(The same judge also ordered the archdiocese to release the names of all priests accused of abuse–not just those “credibly accused”–by February 18. The archdiocese appealed the order on that date, and has until February 26 to provide answers to a judge’s questions.)

The archdiocese disputes MPR’s account. In a statement released the day after MPR published its report online, the archdiocese claimed that “the twenty-eight clergy members identified by MPR have not been publicly disclosed by the archdiocese because they do not, to date, constitute substantiated claims of sexual abuse of a minor.” The statement continued: “At least sixteen of the twenty-eight clergy members identified by MPR were the subject of false, meritless or unsubstantiated accusations against them.”

What about the other twelve? “Over ten” of them, the archdiocese claims, “are not from our archdiocese and the allegations against them concern alleged conduct that occurred outside of this archdiocese.” Still, they worked in the Twin Cities. According to the statement, such priests “are subject to the authority of other orders and dioceses and…the archdiocese does not have sufficient information or even jurisdiction to determine whether those foreign claims are credible or have been substantiated.”

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PENNSYLVANIA
Montgomery Media

Published: Wednesday, February 26, 2014

By Eric Devlin
edevlin@montgomerynews.com

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia has found a former priest, who previously served in Maple Glen, unsuitable for ministry, following allegations of sexual misconduct.

In an official Feb. 23 statement released by the Archdiocese, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap. has found the Rev. John P. Paul, a former priest at St. Alphonsus Church in Maple Glen, unsuitable for ministry, following a substantiated allegation that he sexually abused a 17-year-old minor over 40 years ago.

Paul was placed on administrative leave, according to a Dec. 15 statement, following allegations that he had sexually abused minors more than 30 years ago. Originally, the allegations stated that Paul abused minors during his time in the seminary more than 40 years ago.

Paul resigned as pastor of Our Lady of Calvary Parish, Philadelphia, Nov. 6, where he had been serving since 2000, according to the Archdiocese.

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MINNESOTA
The Freethinker (UK)

Priest’s paedophilia classified as a ‘disability’ and he now gets generous church and state hand-outs

BY BARRY DUKE – FEBRUARY 26, 2014

AFTER the Rev Gil Gustafson was convicted of child sex abuse 30 years ago, the Archdiocese of St Paul and Minneapolis decided to ensure his financial security for decades to come.

The priest was fined $40 and sentenced to 10 years probation and six months in jail. He served four-and-a-half months. The abuse destroyed the life of his victim, Brian Gerrity, who died of drug abuse and AIDS at the age of 28.

According to this report, the church continued Gustafson’s priestly salary and health insurance, covered his living expenses and psychological treatment and paid for his education and training. It also gave him jobs in the chancery, helped him establish his own consulting business and steered clients his way.

In July 2006, Gustafson was declared “disabled” based on his paedophilia, the church said. This allowed him to collect disability payments on top of his earnings as a leadership consultant.

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PUERTO RICO
El Nuevo Dia

[Summary: In a dramatic twist the Dioceses of San Juan and Arecibo have recently reported cases of sexual abuse by priests contrary to what their procedure has been in the past. ]

Por Limarys Suárez Torres / lsuarez1@elnuevodia.com

En un giro drástico, la Iglesia Católica, específicamente las Diócesis de San Juan y Arecibo, denunciaron recientemente a las autoridades casos de abuso sexual perpetrados por sacerdotes, contrario a lo que había sido su postura de mantener estos escándalos dentro del cerrado ámbito eclesiástico.

Ayer el arzobispo de San Juan, Roberto González Nieves, reveló que existen otros cinco casos de abuso sexual de menores cometidos por curas en la zona metropolitana por lo cual decidió entregar al Departamento de Justicia toda la información relacionada a estos casos.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Irish Tmes

Dan Keenan

Wed, Feb 26, 2014

A witness to the Historical Institutional Abuse inquiry has broken down as she recalled a conversation she had with another person who had been in care the day before he took his own life.

The witness, who wishes to remain anonymous, was taken into care at various times in the 1970s at St Joseph’s home at Termonbacca in Derry, run by the Poor Sisters of Nazareth.

She cried openly as she told Senior Counsel to the inquiry Christine Smith QC that the man whom she knew from her time at the home told her he had been raped after he had been transferred to another care home in Kircubben, Co Down.

“He came to see me the day before he hung himself,” she told the inquiry.

Recovering her composure she went on: “[HE] told me the day before he committed suicide that he had been anally raped in Rubane House.”

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Berger’s Beat

February 26, 2014 9:57 am | Author: berger

A PBS “Frontline” segment last night focused on the forces that led to Pope Benedict’s shocking resignation last year and the challenges facing his successor, Pope Francis, including the abuse crisis. It featured attorney Jeff Anderson and Wisconsin SNAP leaders questioning why then-Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan suddenly moved $57 million into a cemetery fund, effectively reducing to $4 million the church funds available to compensate clergy sex abuse victims. The show can be viewed at http:/www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/secrets-of-the-vatican/.

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ROME
National Catholic Register

by EDWARD PENTIN 02/26/2014

ROME — The papal delegate to the Legion of Christ ended a three-year period of reform Tuesday, declaring the congregation “reconciled with themselves, with their history, with the world and the Church.”

Closing the Legion’s Extraordinary General Chapter, Cardinal Velasio De Paolis said the congregation had “looked inside themselves with a new and purified glance” and examined their current situation “in order to single out potential traces of pollution left by the founder of the Legion in their identity and action, in their legislation and way of working.”

He added that in “renewing their vocations, their self-giving to Christ and to one another, they have been freed of the burden that weighed on their backs. They have gone out of themselves and have found their place within the whole Regnum Christi movement.”

In 2010, Benedict XVI appointed the Italian cardinal to help oversee reform of the congregation, after a Vatican investigation revealed widespread corruption and abuse by its founder, Father Marcial Maciel.

On Feb. 6, the Legionaries of Christ released a statement that condemned the actions of their founder, apologized to his victims and set a new course for the congregation’s future.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — In a letter to an Italian journalist, retired Pope Benedict XVI said questions about the validity of his resignation are “absurd.”

“There is absolutely no doubt regarding the validity of my renunciation of the Petrine ministry,” the retired pope wrote in a letter to Andrea Tornielli, a Vatican correspondent for the newspaper La Stampa and the website Vatican Insider.

Tornielli said he wrote to the retired pope Feb. 14 after reading articles questioning the canonical validity of his announcement Feb. 11, 2013, that he was stepping down.

In the letter, Pope Benedict described as “simply absurd” doubts about how he had formulated his announcement to cardinals gathered for a meeting about canonization causes.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic News Service

[Secrets of the Vatican]

By John Mulderig
Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) — The historic resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and the headline-grabbing start of his successor’s ministry are certainly events worthy of close and careful analysis.

Unfortunately, “Secrets of the Vatican,” a PBS documentary purporting to provide just such an examination, turns out to be, in large part, both sloppy and one-sided.

A “Frontline” presentation, Antony Thomas’ film premieres Tuesday, Feb. 25, 10-11:30 p.m. EST (check local listings).

Thomas identifies three primary causes for Pope Benedict’s retirement, all of them scandalous: the plague of clergy sexual abuse, financial shenanigans at the Institute for the Works of Religion, aka the Vatican Bank, and the damaging release of secret documents that has come to be known as “Vatileaks.” It’s Thomas’ treatment of clergy sexual abuse that suffers the most from factual lapses — and that also displays the most bias.

An early indication that scrupulous attention to detail is not on the agenda here — and that an appealing Pope Francis is to be implicitly contrasted with his unacceptable predecessor — comes with the statement that the current pontiff was elected after “one of the shortest conclaves ever.” Yet the 2005 gathering of cardinals that selected Pope Benedict was just as brief; in fact, it ended about an hour sooner.

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OREGON
National Catholic Reporter

Dan Morris-Young | Feb. 26, 2014

Editor’s note: This is Part 3 of a five-part series on the dispute between a pastor and his bishop in St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Bend, Ore. Removed from his post last October, Fr. James Radloff filed an appeal, but his request was denied by the Vatican, as the Congregation for Clergy sided with Baker, Ore., Bishop Liam Cary. The Jan. 31 decision allows Cary to keep secret the reason for the ouster and permits a continued bar on Radloff’s public ministry. Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Baker, Ore. Bishop Liam Cary’s emphasis on the vow of obedience in his May 7, 2013 open letter to St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Bend, Ore. is viewed by many as a key to Fr. James Radloff’s removal as pastor.

Petitions were circulated asking the bishop to back down on plans to transfer popular Spanish-speaking priest Fr. Juan Carlos Chiarinoti, a native Argentinian. In the letter, Cary admonished parishioners and Radloff for the petition effort. He called it “out of place” and said it “thrust into public view matters that must be dealt with in private and whetted the appetite for an explanation that could not be forthcoming.”

Cary also directly rebuked Radloff: “In launching this movement to pressure me to do what he wanted, your pastor made a very serious error of judgment. He actively recruited you to stand with him against your bishop. … On the day of his ordination, a priest places his hands between those of the bishop and publicly promises ‘respect and obedience’ to him and his successors. … To build up the unity of the Church, priests must be willing to walk the way of obedience; and a bishop must be able to count on his priests to be true to their promise.”

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MINNESOTA
Seattle PI

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — A newly released police file shows a Minnesota priest remained in ministry even after church leaders learned he had searched online for sexual images of children.

St. Paul police released documents Tuesday in the case of the Rev. Jonathan Shelley, who was investigated for possible child porn possession. The case was closed last month without charges after prosecutors said they found no evidence of a crime.

The file includes a 2004 report on Shelley’s hard drive by a private forensic examiner. The examiner’s report to an investigator hired by the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis said he found search terms including “free naked boys” and “blond boys sucking pics.”

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DEUTSCHLAND
Der Westen

Alkoholsucht, berufliches Aus, Scheidungen: Drei Männer erzählen, wie Pädophile ihr Leben zerstörten. Mit den Taten abfinden können sie sich nicht. Nun hoffen sie, dass die Verjährungsfrist für sexuellen Missbrauch fällt – damit sie ihre Täter auch noch nach 30 Jahren juristisch belangen können.

Ein Bundestagsabgeordneter, der bei einem internationalen Kinderpornoring Nacktfilme von Knaben bestellt haben soll: Als Markus Elstner von der Affäre Sebastian Edathy hörte, kam sofort seine eigene Geschichte wieder hoch. Die des zwölfjährigen Messdieners, der auserwählt war, beim charismatischen Kaplan an den Wochenenden zu übernachten. Was wie eine Auszeichnung wirkte, fügte dem heute 47-jährigen Bottroper schweren Schaden zu.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

POSTED BY DAVID CLOHESSY ON FEBRUARY 26, 2014

Our first SNAP member who played in the NFL and to publicly speak out about his childhood trauma, Roy Simmons, has passed away, and our hearts go out to his family during this difficult and painful time.

Over the past decade, Roy joined us several times in several states (Massachusetts, Ohio and elsewhere) pushing to eliminate and extend the biggest legal roadblock to protecting kids – the archaic, arbitrary and predator-friendly statutes of limitations. He also bravely spoke at several SNAP events. (In fact, if you look at the photo accompanying Roy’s obituary in the New York Times, you can see photos of other SNAP members in the background.)

Roy found it both embarrassing and painful to speak publicly about his childhood abuse, even after so many years have passed since it happened. But he spoke up anyway. He said “it isn’t easy, but I can endure this if it will help another child. It hurts so much and I don’t want anyone else to endure this. Kids should not have to suffer like I did.”

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