ABUSE TRACKER

AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail (UK)

Teachers at one of Australia’s most prestigious schools ‘forced students to watch sickening paedophile porn films’

By FRANK COLETTA FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA and AAP

Claims that a teacher at one of Australia’s most prestigious schools forced students to watch paedophile pornography, have surfaced at a royal commission into child sex abuse.

Two teachers, who were convicted of sexually assaulting boys at the prestigious Knox Grammar School in Sydney, have been called to give evidence at the national hearing.

And there would be evidence of abuse by a further three teachers who were never charged, it was revealed.

The royal commission into child sexual abuse will hear from Craig Treloar, who was sentenced to four and a half years in jail, with two years non-parole, in 2009 for indecent assault.

It will also hear from Damien Vance, who was convicted of one act of indecency on a boy under 16 and released on a good behaviour bond.

In his opening statement on Monday, counsel for the commission David Lloyd said five teachers at Knox in Wahroonga on Sydney’s north shore were convicted of sex offences against students.

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UNITED STATES
Express Tribune

By Ahson Saeed Hasan

For years we’ve made fun of the Catholic priests fondling with young ones. Their ghastly and heinous acts of insensitivity disgust our spirits and we all abhor such practices. I once stopped by and spoke to John Wojnowski, himself a victim, on Massachusetts Avenue, Washington DC, who has been protesting for years, trying to bring the world’s attention to the abusive ways of the clergy.

He told me his appalling story of how a priest abused him during his childhood and how difficult it was for him to get over the traumatic event, something that scarred him psychologically for his entire life.

Fast forward to now, the year 2015, we have a 75-year-old Muslim cleric, Mohammad Abdullah Saleem, running the Institute of Islamic Education (IIE) in the small mid-Western town of Elgin, just outside of Chicago. He was arrested on February 17 on charges of felony and criminal sexual abuse but was let go on a $250,000 bail. Saleem obviously denies the charges.

Saleem, Indian by origin, belongs to a generation of immigrants who came to the US back in the 70s and 80s and settled here based on their religious skills. He established the IIE in 1989 and that was actually the time he started to hobnob with young females at the institute, students as well as employees. What one learns from those who are aware of such incidents is that the cleric got away scot-free because the community came to his rescue and mediated a settlement whenever he behaved erratically.

Saleem is a habitual offender. So far, along with the 23-year-old girl who came out of the shadows and reported her abuse by the mullah, there are at least three more women who claim to have been sexually molested by him. It is expected that more people will come forward.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

By Annette Blackwell
February 23, 2015

The autocratic style of a headmaster nicknamed “Snake” by boarders at Knox Grammar School made it possible for teachers to take advantage of and prey on students, an inquiry has heard.

A man using the pseudonym ARY said the governance style of Ian Paterson, headmaster at Knox for 30 years, made students fearful of reporting sex abuse by teachers.

ARY boarded at the school from Year 7 in 1974 and was there for four years. He was indecently assaulted by science teacher Roger James when he was 14.

James was convicted and given a suspended sentence.

ARY and other former students told the sex abuse royal commission on Monday there was a culture of cover-up at the prestigious Wahroonga school.

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AUSTRALIA
Gippsland Times

SANO Taskforce detectives arrested an 87-year-old Sale man on Thursday following an investigation into historical sexual assault allegations at St Patrick’s College in Sale.

The man was interviewed and released pending further enquiries.

Investigators have received what they say are a number of complaints from former male students who attended the Catholic school during the 1970s and 1980s, when St Patrick’s operated as a boarding school.

The male students were aged between 11 and 15 at the time of the alleged incidents.

Detectives would like to speak to victims or witnesses who have information relating to sexual abuse at the college during the 1970s and 1980s.

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AUSTRALIA
Gippsland Times

GIPPSLAND’S new Catholic bishop will assume his role at what is a tough time for the church in the region.

More than 1200 Catholics will flock to celebrate the ordination of Bishop-elect Pat O’Regan on Thursday, who looks forward to getting back to basics with his Christian message.

“I’d like to make the Christian message believable and credible, because we’ve taken a few body blows recently,” Fr O’Regan said.

“Because some bad things have happened, I’d like to get back to the basics of Christianity and that’s the love of God, love of neighbour.

“It’s not just about being in a holy huddle in a church; it’s being a part of the world.”

Fr O’Regan has arrived in the region at a time when allegations of sexual abuse against students at St Patrick’s Catholic College in the 1970s and 1980s now Catholic College Sale are being investigated by police.

Fr O’Regan said the church was praying for those affected and would co-operate with all inquiries.

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UNITED STATES
Canonical Consultation

02/22/2015

Jennifer Haselberger

For those of you who are looking for the registration information for the webinars, the information is as follows.

The Rights of the Faithful in the Catholic Parish

An interactive seminar for Catholics wanting to understand more about their role in the Catholic parish. Topics will include the rights of parishioners in regard to strategic planning, processes for challenging planning decisions, financial governance of the parish, and other topics as requested.

Wednesday, February 25 at 7pm, or Thursday, March 12 at 7pm.
Please register for the date and time that works best for you.
https://attendee.gototraining.com/rt/7638419793056098305

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the training.

Brought to you by GoToTraining (R)
Online Training Made Easy TM
Citrix Online | 7414 Hollister Avenue | Goleta, CA 93117

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February 23, 2015

AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

Rachel Browne
Social Affairs Reporter

Eight teachers at the prestigious Knox Grammar School abused young students over a 30-year period and yet the school did not notify police, a royal commission has heard.

Day one of a public hearing into the school contained fresh allegations against three staff. Five other staff members have already been convicted over sexual offences involving students.

The commission will also hear evidence that a number of files of students who made complaints of abuse may have been deliberately destroyed.

In his opening address to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, counsel assisting the commission David Lloyd said the school did not report allegations to the police for decades.

“The abuse was perpetrated by these teachers between approximately 1970 and the year 2003,” he said.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Nicole Chettle

Elite Sydney boys’ school Knox Grammar has apologised for failing to protect its students from sexual abuse by teachers.

The Royal Commission into the Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is looking into complaints of inappropriate conduct by teachers at the school between 1970 and 2003.

Five former teachers have been convicted on a range of charges including sexual and indecent assault.

Geoffrey Watson SC, acting for Knox Grammar, told the hearing the Uniting Church-run school in Sydney’s north failed to protect students.

“The school humbly and sincerely apologises for its failure,” he said.

“It apologises to all of those students who are damaged by these events.

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AUSTRALIA
Haaretz

A senior Chabad rabbi was delisted as an emissary from the New York-based organization as the fallout continues from Australia’s Royal Commission into the child sex abuse scandal.

Rabbi Yosef Feldman, the former director of Sydney’s Yeshivah Center, which houses the headquarters of Chabad there, was dismissed last week after his controversial comments to the Royal Commission, including his suggestion that pedophiles who had not committed sex crimes for two decades should be treated with leniency.

Feldman, a son of Chabad’s chief rabbi in Sydney, sparked a storm of protest among Orthodox rabbis and mainstream Jewish leaders. He consequently resigned his post as director of the Yeshiva Center on February 11.

His dismissal came as Rabbi Avrohom Glick, who had resigned from all posts at Yeshivah College in Melbourne, where he was principal during the time of the abuse in the 1980s and 1990s, also tendered his resignation from the spiritual committee of the Yeshivah Center.

Victims were furious that he had clung to this post, which he had described as “his calling” during the hearings at the Royal Commission.

The resignations come in the wake of the two-week hearing into the child sex abuse scandals at Chabad headquarters in Sydney and Melbourne.

A third rabbi, Shlomo Kluwgant, resigned as president of the Organization of Rabbis of Australasia, after it was revealed at the hearing he had sent a text message describing Zephaniah Waks, one of the whistleblowers, as a “lunatic” who was “killing us.” His son, Manny Waks, the only Jewish victim in Australia to go public, is still demanding more resignations.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph

Abuse at the north shore presbyterian school, which one student described as a ‘paedophile ring’ went on for 33 years, the Royal Commission heard today.

JANET FIFE-YEOMANS THE DAILY TELEGRAPH FEBRUARY 23, 2015

STUDENTS at the prestigious Knox Grammar School were given alcohol and cigarettes before a number of house masters showed them sickening pornographic videos depicting paedophiles and bestiality, it has been revealed at the child sex abuse royal commission.

One former student, who was in a sexual relationship with a resident housemaster for three years, described the school as “a paedophile ring”.

One teacher, who allegedly wore a balaclava while sneaking under a boy’s bed one night to abuse him, will be among the witnesses giving evidence.

The abuse at the north shore presbyterian school went on for 33 years from 1970 to 2003 but the school has been accused of covering it up and destroying internal reports, including files of students who made complaints, which went missing.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

FEBRUARY 23, 2015

Ean Higgins
Reporter
Sydney

KNOX Grammar School did not inform police of a single incident of child sexual abuse perpetrated by five teachers over period of 33 years, a royal commission has heard.

Council assisting the commission, David Lloyd, said in the opening of the inquiry into Knox, an elite Sydney private boy’s school associated with the Uniting Church, that the five convicted teachers had collectively abused a number of boys, and among the penalties issued was a jail term.

“There will be particular emphasis during this public hearing on the question of what information was known by the employees of Knox and members of the Knox Council about the abuse by the teachers, and when that information was known,” Mr Lloyd told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Sydney.

He outlined a litany of episodes of sexual abuse by the teachers, in graphic terms.

The abuse included teachers touching and fondling students’ genitals, discussion of oral sex, and taking photos of boys during sexual acts.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

Two teachers who were convicted of sexually assaulting boys at the prestigious Knox Grammar School in Sydney will give evidence at a national hearing.

The royal commission into child sexual abuse will hear from Craig Treloar, who was sentenced to four and a half years in jail, with two years non-parole, in 2009 for indecent assault.

It will also hear from Damien Vance, who was convicted of one act of indecency on a boy under 16 and released on a good behaviour bond.

In his opening statement on Monday, counsel for the commission David Lloyd said five teachers at Knox in Wahroonga on Sydney’s north shore were convicted of sex offences against students.

There would be evidence of abuse by a further three teachers who were never charged, he said.

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UNITED STATES
TheMediaReport

David Pierre

***TheMediaReport.com SPECIAL REPORT*** Who Am I To Judge? In 1992, Boston Globe Touted Therapy Treatments for Sex Offenders, Then Excoriated the Church Years Later For Actually Using Them

When the Boston Globe excoriated the Archdiocese of Boston in 2002 for relying on therapists to treat abusive priests from the 1950s to the 1990s, the paper somehow apparently forgot that in 1992 the Globe itself was enthusiastically trumpeting the psychological treatment of sex offenders as “highly effective” and “dramatic.”

In a front-page article on June 18, 1992, the Globe opened:

“A new generation of treatment programs for sex offenders is proving highly effective, dramatically reducing the percentage of cases in which offenders repeat sex crimes, research shows.

“Recidivism rates declined from 9 percent for untreated offenders to 5 percent for those who underwent the new treatment in one study, and from 38 percent to 6 percent in another.

“While there is no complete ‘cure’ for sex offenders, the new findings indicate that many of them can learn to manage their aberrant sexual impulses without committing new crimes. The promising new treatments focus on helping these offenders control the complex cauldron of social inadequacies, distorted thinking, and deviant sex fantasies that prompt them to rape women, molest children or exhibit themselves in public.”

By this very article the Globe confirms that the Church’s then-practice of sending abusive priests off to treatment was not just some diabolical attempt to deflect responsibility and cover-up wrongdoing, but a genuine attempt to treat aberrant priests that was being widely promoted by secular experts in the field.

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AUSTRALIA
International Business Times

By Sounak Mukhopadhyay

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse said on Thursday that there would be a wide ranging public hearing into how the exclusive Sydney private school had responded to inappropriate conduct by teachers towards students from 1970 to 2012.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the hearings will include the experience of sexual abuse of former students at the school, the regulatory system governing the school’s response to allegations of child sexual abuse by its employees and the response of the Uniting Church and the school to concerns about inappropriate conduct. The Royal Commission will also investigate the systems, policies and procedures in place at the school since 1970, by which sexual abuse concerns were raised and responded to.

Former students as well as the school will give evidence from Feb. 23 about how the abuse could have gone unnoticed for such a long period. One of the cases of abuse was overlooked for over 20 years. The Royal Commission will hold a public hearing before the case study into Knox Grammar. The public hearing will be held at the Yeshivah Colleges in Melbourne and in Bondi, in Sydney’s east. While the Royal Commission’s investigation is expected to end up in criminal proceedings, Knox Grammar has admitted that it never dismissed its responsibility.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Kolnische Rundschau

[Cardinal Rainer Woelki has defended the actions of the Archdiocese of Cologne in the case of abuse allegations against priest Winfried Jansen. He said the archdiocese checked everything carefully.]

Kardinal Rainer Woelki hat das Vorgehen des Erzbistums Köln im Fall der Missbrauchsvorwürfe gegen den Erftstädter Geistlichen verteidigt. Dem „Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger“ sagte Woelki, das Bistum habe alles sorgfältig geprüft.

KÖLN –
Im Fall des wegen Missbrauchsvorwürfen vom Dienst beurlaubten Pfarrers Winfried Jansen hat Kardinal Rainer Woelki das Vorgehen des Erzbistums Köln gegen den Erftstädter Geistlichen verteidigt. „Wir haben sehr sorgfältig und in Ruhe geprüft“, sagte der Erzbischof dem „Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger“. Woelki verwies darauf, dass sich nach dem Bekanntwerden erster Vorwürfe Anfang Februar inzwischen weitere Betroffene gemeldet hätten und Jansen mittlerweile einsehe, „dass er sich ihnen gegenüber damals – ich formuliere das in aller Zurückhaltung – nicht korrekt verhalten hat“.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Huffington Post

Jonathan Romain Become a fan
Rabbi and writer

What has been happening in Sydney and Melbourne is doubly shocking. First, there have been revelations over a rabbi who abused children at a yeshivah, Jewish learning seminary over many years, which was then followed by a cover-up when allegations surfaced.

Second, it is a wake-up call to Jewish communities in the UK to be vigilant about a problem from which, until now, we thought we were immune. It was all too easy to think that paedophile ministers were rife in the Church of England and the Catholics, but not really an issue for us.

Almost as disturbing as the crimes are the cover-up by others in the hierarchy, across all faiths, who certainly regard the offender with disapproval but are motivated by fear that if one person is exposed, then that will tarnish the rest of the group – be it the church, synagogue or mosque. In fact, the opposite is true: colluding with a perpetrator is what really tarnishes the group at large, while it also denies justice to the victim, which should have been the prime concern.

What causes such warped responses? Is it the naivety of hoping they could handle the problem and so there was no need to bring in outside authorities; or is it the nervousness of thinking that if one crack was exposed in the faith-group, then the entire edifice would collapse; or is it the hubris of reckoning that on balance the faith-group do more good than evil and so should be excused any failings; or is it that they felt under attack already, battling so many secular enemies, that they could not afford to show any weak spots, especially clerical failings?

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CALIFORNIA
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on February 22, 2015

I am currently reading SPLIT: A CHILD, A PRIEST AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH by my friend Mary Dispenza.

Abuse memoirs are usually a tough read, but Mary discusses her life with grace and respect—very similar to the way she lives her life.

While I am not done with the book, something struck me at the very beginning of her narrative. From the book (emphasis mine):

Not more than a week passed before I got to the circle of other women at Therapy and Renewal Associates (TARA) for the Archdiocese of Seattle—and there I spun some more, listening for the first time to stories of other women within the Catholic Church who had been abused by priests. Many of their stories were like mine, except I was the only woman who had been abused as a child.

I was floored.

I don’t have an answer or an analysis. Just questions.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

An inquiry into child sexual abuse at one of Australia’s most exclusive schools for boys opens in Sydney on Monday.

The public hearing will examine the response of the Uniting Church and Knox Grammar School in Wahroonga, NSW between 1970 and 2012 to concerns raised about inappropriate conduct by a number of teachers towards students at the school.

The expensive private school, whose old boys include judges, politicians such as the late Gough Whitlam and actors Hugh Jackman and Hugo Weaving, faced adverse publicity in 2009 when four teachers pleaded guilty to abusing students.

The royal commission will look closely the school’s regulatory system as it emerged in the 2009 proceedings that some teachers were allowed to teach for decades after complaints.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Nagpur Today

Hindus are urging His Holiness Pope Francis to discipline a Northern Ireland Catholic priest who reportedly linked yoga to Satan.

Father Reverend Roland Colhoun, a priest at Waterside Parish of Roman Catholic Diocese of Derry in Northern Ireland, as reported by Derry Journal, “warned parishioners against taking part in yoga” while saying mass in Drumsurn recently. “Yoga is certainly a risk. There’s the spiritual health risk”, Journal quoted him.

UK’s The Independent quoted him as saying “Yoga leads to Satan” and that he fears it could lead to “The Kingdom of Darkness”. “It’s a slippery slope from yoga to Satan”, RT channel said quoting him.

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NETHERLANDS
Dutch News

An elderly rabbi wanted in Israel on sexual abuse charges is to appeal to the Supreme Court against his extradition, news agency ANP says on Friday. Last week, a lower court ruled Eliezer Berland (77) could be sent back to Israel to stand trial.

He was arrested at Schiphol airport in September 2014, The claims against the rabbi first emerged in 2012 and since then he has managed to keep out of Israel’s hands, spending time in the US, Switzerland, Morocco, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

The extradition hearing was delayed at the end of last year after Berland’s lawyer said most of the offences he has been charged with relate to events which occurred in parts of Israel beyond the borders recognised by the Netherlands.

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NETHERLANDS
NL Times

by Hanna Daych

Alleged “sex pest” Rabbi Eliezer Berland is appealing to the Netherlands Supreme Court in an effort to avoid his imminent extradition to Israel, his lawyer Louis de Leon told ANP on Friday.

The 77-year-old is facing several criminal charges, among them rape and enslavement. He is wanted in Israel where the religious leader is accused of participating in the crimes.

The court in Haarlem ruled last week that Berland should be extradited at the behest of the Public Prosecutor (OM). However, the Rabbi’s extradition could also potentially be blocked by Minister of Security and Justice Ivo Opstelten.

Opstelten has not publicly commented on the matter.

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AUSTRALIA
Times of Israel

A senior Chabad rabbi is delisted as an emissary from the New York-based organization as the fallout continues from Australia’s Royal Commission into the child sex abuse scandal.

Rabbi Yosef Feldman, a former director of Sydney’s Yeshivah Center, which houses the headquarters of Chabad there, was delisted last week after his controversial comments to the Royal Commission, including his suggestion that pedophiles who had not committed sex crimes for two decades should be treated with leniency.

Feldman, a son of Chabad’s chief rabbi in Sydney, sparked a storm of protest by Orthodox rabbis and mainstream Jewish leaders.

His delisting came as Rabbi Avrohom Glick, who had resigned from all posts at Yeshivah College in Melbourne, where he was principal during the time of the abuse in the 1980s and 1990s, also tendered his resignation from the spiritual committee of the Yeshivah Center.

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MINNESOTA
Jeff Anderson & Associates

(St. Paul, MN) – Correction by Jeff Anderson & Associates, P.A. concerning Father Marvin Klaers.

Information was reported in the Cannon Falls Beacon which is inaccurate regarding the number of people we know about who have accused Father Klaers. Our office represents one survivor who has provided a notice of claim to the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis concerning an allegation of sexual abuse as a minor. We represent no other survivors of abuse by Fr. Klaers. We also have not received telephone calls regarding sexual abuse of minors by Fr. Klaers.

Contact: Jeff Anderson: Office/651.927.7872 Cell/612.817.8665
Mike Finnegan: Office/651.927.7872 Cell/612.205-5531

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VATICAN CITY
Fox News

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis is getting away from the Vatican for a few days and taking his advisers along, to work, as he put it, on “correcting the many defects we all have.”

Francis told tens of thousands of Romans, tourists and pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square that later Sunday he and top aides were starting a spiritual renewal retreat. Until Friday morning, they will spend time listening to reflections, meditating and praying in Ariccia, a Rome suburb.

He didn’t list the “defects.” But in the nearly two years since becoming pontiff, Francis has put Vatican prelates on guard against careerism, arrogance, hypocrisy, corruption and being too judgmental instead of merciful.

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AUSTRALIA
J-Wire

February 22, 2015 by J-Wire News Service

The New Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia is hitting the road with interim president Sydney-based Rabbi Selwyn Franklin preparing for visits to Melbourne and Perth.

Rabbi Franklin has announced that all positions in NORA are vacant following the resignation of former president Rabbi Meir Kluwgant in the wake of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

A Membership committee under Rabbi Franklin’s chairmanship would be constituted to formalize criteria for membership in NORA. Chaverim are invited to apply for membership in NORA.

To effect the establishment of NORA which replaces the now defunct ORA [Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia, a steering committee has been created consisting of Rabbis Selwyn Franklin [Sydney], Chaim Ingram [Sydney] , Paul Lewin [Sydney], Daniel Rabin [Melbourne] and Marcus Solomon [Perth]. The name NORA itself is a temporary measure and the new organisation will be renamed by its incoming executive.

Invitations have been extended to a limited number of other Rabbis to become members of the steering committee.

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UNITED STATES
Failed Messiah

After Massive Chabad Child Sex Abuse Scandal, Can Chabad Really Change For The Better? Many Members Of The Australian Orthodox Community Don’t Think It Can

Can Chabad leadership really change its ways? That is the question that troubles many people now. “They need to be more consultative with other rabbis, lay leaders and women,” Rabbi Kennard, principal at Burwood’s Mt Scopus Memorial College, told Fairfax Media this week. He said the controversial rabbinical council gave Chabad-affiliated rabbis disproportionate influence. But an unnamed Chabad community member whined that it “wasn’t fair” the entire Chabad community was being blamed for the mistakes of a few – even though much of that Chabad community participated in the harassment and shunning of abuse victims and advocates and did nothing whatsoever to support the victims or punish their rabbis who enabled the child sex abuse.

The Age reports:

…one Orthodox Melbourne rabbi said he and his colleagues were “tainted by failure”. Rabbi Ian Goodhardt, of Blake Street’s modern Orthodox synagogue in Caulfield, told congregation members some rabbis “were growing increasingly disillusioned with the conduct of their colleagues” and the lack of credible rabbinic leadership.

Tensions among rabbis are clearly mounting, following a two-week hearing that examined how yeshivah centres in Melbourne and Sydney, which belong to the worldwide ultra-Orthodox Chabad stream of Judaism, handled horrific cases of abuse in their midst.

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ZIMBABWE
New Zimbabwe

by Maynard Manyowa

THERE is, arguably, no contemporary figure that has unified opinion, and attracted universal condemnation like Robert Martin Gumbura the leader of extremist Christian fellowship, End Time Message.

About a year ago Robert Gumbura was arrested and hauled before the courts, accused of raping two women married to the same man. The circumstances were that, the women’s husband who lives in South Africa had sent money for them through the church leader, and when they went to collect it, he insisted on seeing them separately. He subsequently raped them.

Gumbura quickly adopted the title of the ‘Rapist Pastor’. This was just the start of his problems. The beleaguered clergyman would soon make more headlines, as one woman after the other began to approach the police with reports of alleged rape at his hands.

At one point the women who were accusing him of forcibly tapping the cupcake reached a staggering 40. In fact, the number of women who have claimed rape, including those who have not pressed charges has since been reported to be over a 100. Wow!

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

A tough week for Pope Francis, no? First, Francis’ initial Secretary of State, disgraced Cardinal Bertone, tried to lay his luxurious apartment on the approval of the pope. Then the Bishop of Bling arrived at the Vatican, while the Cardinal Archbishop of Cologne “found” almost $4 billion at home and Cardinal Pell “found” almost $1.5 billion in some Vatican “cookie jar”, it seems.

Then respected Jesuit political scientist and Vatican expert, Tom Reese, bravely declared that Francis and his Council of Cardinals do not know what they are doing on hierarchical management reforms, assuming they were trying to be serious and not just stalling. And now a “mere woman”, the most powerful of the world’s “Adam’s Ribs” ( a favored Francis term), and 14 of her advisers, showed up today (2/21/15) likely to press the pope on his misguided international political meddling, it appears. This, as the pope seems to be almost publicly calling for a new crusade against the Middle East terror group, ISIS (the Islamic State).

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in the middle of her Ukraine, Greek, internal Muslim and other major crises, had an unusually long talk privately with Pope Francis at the Vatican. The talks reportedly (in polite diplomatic jargon) focused on international crises, including the conflict in eastern Ukraine, women’s rights and equality, world health issues in developing countries, etc.

Merkel told journalists that the conflict in eastern Ukraine was at the center of discussion. Francis had given Merkel’s nemesis, Russian President Putin, a big prestige boost some months ago, shortly before the Ukraine invasion, with a well publicized, gratuitous and unwise Vatican welcome.

Of course, the $7 billion annual German governmental subsidies to Catholic Church bishops, and the continued stonewalling of German (and Vatican) Catholic Church officials on holding bishops accountable for child abuse scandals, could never have been far below the surface, no? Germany has a large Catholic population. Merkel, the daughter of a Lutheran minister, is also head of the Christian Democratic Union, which has a strong Catholic component. By contrast, less than 1% of Russians are Catholic and Russia does not generally subsidize the Catholic Church. Pope Pius XII made his subsidy deal in 1933 with Hitler, not Stalin.

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HAWII
Maui News

February 21, 2015 – Harry Eagar

GOD’S BANKERS: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican, by Gerald Posner. 732 pages, illustrated. Simon & Schuster, $32

“God’s Bankers,” though lengthy is only a history of Vatican money and power in modern times, starting with Napoleon’s conquest of Rome.

The Vatican didn’t even have a bank until about 1930, when it needed one to manage an indemnity it collected from the Fascist government. In fact, until well into the 20th century, Roman Catholic doctrine condemned the charging of interest for loans, and the Vatican didn’t produce even pro forma budgets until after the Great War.

Which is not to say that great amounts of money didn’t flow through the Vatican, but they were managed like a the policy bets at a corner candy store. And I mean that in every sense.

Pius XI selected a skilled, prudent, unscrupulous layman, Bernardino Nogara, to manage the windfall, and he generated excellent returns, helped by using Vatican intelligence for insider trading and aided by a side business in helping Italians cheat on their taxes.

When war came, the Vatican Bank (formally the Institute for Works of Religion) did even better by helping the Nazis and Fascists rob and murder Jews and other non-Catholics. Gerald Posner’s heavily-annotated volume is more about power than money, and his chapters 7 and 8 are the best short summation I know for the actions and inactions of Pope Pius XII and most of the Curia in furthering the Holocaust. (The professional Roman Catholic defenders will squeal at this review — and are already squealing at Posner — but there is no longer any real controversy about the Church’s pro-Nazi role.)

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MICHIGAN
WOOD

MUSKEGON, Mich. (WOOD) — A Muskegon County man accused of sexually assaulting boys three decades ago has pleaded guilty to a separate marijuana charge.

Monday, Randall Doctor pleaded guilty as charged without a plea agreement to manufacturing marijuana and felony firearms. Sentencing is set for April 17.

Two victims allege Doctor, now 60, sexually assaulted several boys in the 1970s and 1980s when he was the leader of the Cadets program at the Fifth Reformed Church. He has not been charged because the alleged abuse happened when Michigan had a statue of limitations on first-degree criminal sexual conduct against a child.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Berger’s Beat

February 21, 2015

McKendree University President James M. Dennis is drawing criticism from SNAP for allowing our town’s Fr. Maurice Nutt to speak on campus. For those with short memories, in 2001, Nutt resigned as city police commissioner after being sued for allegedly sexually harassing three officers offering them to view adult and child porn with one of them. The former “St. Rock” pastor now heads Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University in New Orleans. (Nutt has a doctorate in preaching but not in spelling on his website. The word “university” is misspelled.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

As Pope Francis approaches his second papal anniversary, he has finally shown his plan. He has shown at least enough to indicate why his plan will fail. Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Francis poses with soccer stars endlessly and “globetrots” aimlessly, while the Vatican sinks.

A prominent and informed Jesuit has already, in effect, declared that the Pope, and the Council of Cardinals the pope picked and leads, do not know what they are doing !!!

Indeed, Pope Francis’ latest desperate distraction, to try to salvage his doomed plan, appears to be to drum up support for a new “Christian crusade” against the ISIS terrorists. Unfortunately for the dangerous plans of the pope and his likely latest US culture warrior, Jeb Bush, ISIS’ days as a serious Western threat appear to be already numbered, even without a new crusade. ISIS should be well contained by the time Hillary Clinton defeats Jeb and his brother’s old war prone foreign policy team in next year’s US presidential elections — bad news for the Vatican and its billionaire donors, as discussed here, “The cracks in Islamic State’s business plan are starting to show” at,

[Reuters]

Catholics will now need to stop wishful thinking. They need to press their governments to clean up the Vatican promptly. Catholic Church leaders, we now know for sure, will never do so unless compelled to do so by outside democratic forces.

The pope’s plan has been fairly simple: Protect at all costs Church leaders and wealth, not by making Church leaders accountable and law abiding, but mainly by shoring up alliances with major world political and financial players. The plan sought:

* To protect cardinals and bishops from governmental investigators and criminal prosecutors
* To protect Church leaders’ assets from excessive corruption and from lawyers for priest sex abuse survivors
* To protect unaccountable bishops’ local monopolies over their dioceses and the local Catholic faithful
* To protect bishops’ key salesmen — their captive celibate priests who collect top Church leaders’ money and who depend on bishops’ to survive
* To create an illusion, through public imagery and misleading promises, that the Vatican is changing its immoral ways, as well as its warped teachings that are designed mainly to preserve and protect the Church leaders’ power and wealth.

The pope’s plan has failed already. Child abuse and financial scandal revelations keep generating more bad press and intrusive investigations faster than the pope’s spinners can find more babies for him to kiss.

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UNITED STATES
GlobalPost

Jason Berry

Leading voices around the world try to push the Catholic Church further toward justice.

The Vatican’s protection of bishops complicit in recycling clergy sex abusers is a front-burner issue for Alberto Athié, one of Mexico’s most respected public figures.

Last July, when Pope Francis met with abuse survivors in Rome, Athié posted an open letter asking the pope to dismiss Mexico City Cardinal Norberto Rivera for his defense over many years of the long-accused pedophile and founder of the Legion of Christ religious order Father Marcial Maciel.

Athié’s manifesto, signed by 128 abuse survivors, lawyers and supportive groups, called for reforms in the way church leadership handles abuse cases — and the loophole that gives bishops full discretion and has kept Pope Francis from making significant progress in his efforts to create a “zero tolerance” policy.

“They know that such behavior existed within the institution, and the [internal] mechanism is precisely what prolonged the abuse,” Athié told GroundTruth in an email this week. “The damage caused by bishops, cardinals and the Holy See for years of protecting abusers must be confronted.”

Athié argues that Rivera bears responsibility beyond the Maciel case, which stained the tenures of Pope John Paul II and his successor Pope Benedict.

“Cardinal Norberto Rivera,” Athié recently told a prominent journalist, Carmen Aristegui, “has systematically hidden pederasts and more so, deceived the victims.” …

Father Bruce Teague of the Springfield, Mass. diocese, was abused as a boy by a pastor in Dorchester. After dealing with his trauma over many years he forged ties with other survivors, speaking out against bishops. As a priest, he stood at the grave of his perpetrator, offering forgiveness.

Teague is prominent in the small society of church whistleblowers.

“A priest would get up in the morning, go down and say Mass, molest a child, come up and have breakfast. How could that be? I still can’t understand it at all, but that’s what happened, over and over again.”

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MISSOURI
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Saturday, Feb. 21

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

On Monday, Gary P. Wolken, a serial child predator and defrocked Catholic priest, will walk free from a prison in Bonne Terre Missouri. In his 40s, he’s charismatic, charming, well-educated and well-spoken, so he’ll have plenty of chances to molest again.

That’s why we urge St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson to do a bit more, for once, about a predator priest. We urge him to:

–start this weekend personally visiting every parish where Wolken worked,
–beg victims, witnesses and whistleblowers to call police,
–make this plea in church bulletins and websites (including the archdiocesan website),
–use the archdiocesan newspaper to also prod people with information and suspicions about Wolken to call law enforcement, and
–hold a news conference to warn parents, parishioners and the public about Wolken, stressing that he might face more charges – and be kept away from more kids – if everyone who saw, suspected or suffered his crimes speaks up.

We ask Carlson to do this kind of outreach for one simple reason: it’s effective. Pleas to victims to “speak up” help bring forward others who are suffering in silence, shame and self-blame. They help police and prosecutors pursue predators. And they’re what Carlson should do to restore faith in the Catholic hierarchy and safeguard the Catholic flock.

(We believe it’s disingenuous and dangerous for bishops to recruit, educate, ordain, hire, train, supervise, transfer and shield predator priests, but then defrock them when their crimes hit the headlines and do nothing else to protect the vulnerable from them.)

Wolken “admitted exposing himself to a boy, inappropriately touching him, and having oral sex with him over a three-year period, beginning when the child was 5,” according to the Associated Press. The crimes took place in Ballwin as Wolken baby-sat him from August 1997 to July 2000.

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NEW YORK
Road to Recovery

This Wednesday evening, February 25, 2015 from 7:30 PM – 9:00 PM, the Hofstra University (900 Fulton Avenue, Hempstead, NY 11550 on Long Island) Irish Studies Program will present the one-person, award-winning play, “Magdalen,” at the Spiegel Theater, South Campus, California Avenue (with parking adjacent to the theater building). Admission is free but space is limited.

Written and performed by Erin Layton, “Magdalen” is inspired by the true stories of the women and girls who passed through as unpaid, slave laborers in one of Ireland’s many Magdalen Laundries in the mid-twentieth century.

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NEDERLAND
Breda Vandaag

Freek de Swart18 februari 2015

BREDA – Onlangs kwam pater Jan van D. weer in het nieuws dankzij een uitzending van Brandpunt. De pater wordt als sinds de jaren 70 beschuldigd van seksueel misbruik. Niet alleen in België, maar ook in Brazilië waar hij een weeshuis runt. De pater is lid van de congregatie Priesters van het Heilig hart van Jezus dat bestuurd wordt vanuit Breda. Deze erkent dat er veel verhalen de ronde gaan over Jan, maar weigert hem te laten vallen. “Een ouder die zijn kind verkeerd ziet gaan, laat toch ook pas op het laatste moment los?”

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ITALIA
Ravenna and Dintorni

[He was parish priest in the seaside town from 2001 to 2014 then the arrest. Now under house arrest in a rehabilitation center in Umbria. He admitted the relationship with the children entrusted by their families. The survey started from Facebook.]

È stato parroco nella località costierà dal 2001 al 2014 poi l’arresto. Oggi ai domiciliari in una struttura riabilitativa in Umbria. Ha ammesso i rapporti con i ragazzi affidati dalle famiglie. L’indagine partita da Facebook

A metà marzo le porte del tribunale di Ravenna si apriranno per don Giovanni Desio, il 53enne originario di Milano e parroco di Casalborsetti per tredici anni fino allo scorso aprile quando venne arrestato dalla polizia: davanti al giudice per l’udienza preliminare comincerà il processo con l’accusa di violenza sessuale su quattro minorenni. Il prete ha ammesso di aver avuto rapporti con loro, ragazzi che frequentavano la parrocchia anche provenendo da altre zone di Italia in occasione di periodi di vacanza con le famiglie sul litorale.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

The Vatican Pension Fund says there is no risk of a possible “default” as analysts suggested on the basis of some interviews held with finance super-minister Pell

VATICAN INSIDER STAFF
ROME

“We feel safe as far as pensions are concerned.” These were the words used by the Holy See spokesman, Fr. Federico Lombardi to sum up a detailed statement issued by the Vatican Pensions Fund, which claims there is no risk of a possible “default” as suggested by analysts on the basis of some (misinterpreted) interviews given by the Vatican’s super-minister of finance, Cardinal George Pell, who told the Catholic Herald: “Apart from the pension fund, which needs to be strengthened for the demands on it in 15 or 20 years, the Holy See is paying its way, while possessing substantial assets and investments.”

In its statement the Fund revealed that “since for some months, and amplified by press reports, alarming data has been circulating regarding the situation of the Vatican Pensions Fund and on the sustainability of honouring the commitments undertaken towards present and future subscribers, the Managing Board of the Fund and the College of Auditors consider it opportune to officially communicate the actuarial situation, assets and income of the aforementioned Fund, as it appears in the actuarial Technical Financial Statements drawn up by the actuary and the Financial Statements regularly approved by the Secretary of State.”

“With regard to the actuarial aspect,” the statement reads, “there is a substantial balance between available resources and commitments to current and future employees, due also to interventions (approved by the Secretary of State following proposals by the Managing Board) both in terms of contributions (increase of rates throughout the years up to the current rate of 26% on the total of taxable income) and in relation to performance (increase of two years of working life, raising the age of retirement to 67 for laypersons and 72 for clergy and persons religious. The working Statements also show, throughout the years, the solidity of the assets and financial structure of the Fund itself. The funding ratio of the Pensions Fund is 95%.”

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VATICAN CITY
The StarPhoenix

BY NICOLE WINFIELD, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FEBRUARY 21, 2015

The Vatican’s pension fund insisted Friday that it’s in decent financial health, issuing its first public accounting to try to dispel what it called “alarmist information” about a shortfall circulating in the media.

The Vatican’s financial czar, Cardinal George Pell, has raised concern about the fund’s long-term health in recent newspaper interviews, saying it is sufficiently funded for the next 10 to 15 years but needs to be strengthened for future generations.

In a statement, the fund managers said they had taken many steps already to address future commitments, including raising the retirement age and pension contributions, and that the fund was expected to top 500 million euros ($712 million) by the end of 2015 after having started out with the equivalent of five million euros ($7.12 million) in 1993.

Pell was tasked last year by Pope Francis to put the Vatican’s finances in order after years of mismanagement, waste and scandal. But questions have swirled about the scope of his power amid resistance from the Vatican legal office to his proposals for sweeping oversight.

He also raised eyebrows by boasting in an essay that he had “discovered” hundreds of millions of euros that didn’t appear on the Vatican’s balance sheets.

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

FEBRUARY 21, 2015

THE ARCHDIOCESE of Newark is playing down the significance of removing “archbishop” from the annual fundraising appeal. An archdiocesan spokesman told The Record the appeal is “not so much identified with one individual.” Well, it is. And that was the problem.

Archbishop John Myers will reach the mandatory retirement age of 75 next year. He will retire well. Very well. Into a more than 7,000-square-foot mansion in Hunterdon County. The existing 4,500-square-foot home wasn’t big enough for the archbishop, so the archdiocese is spending $500,000 to expand it. The lavish retirement digs have not sat well with parishioners. Last year’s appeal, despite an improved economy, took in $200,000 less than the year before.

Despite calls by many to sell the home, Myers has not. His stance is in direct conflict with the one taken by Pope Francis, who has shunned the lavish trappings of the papacy, choosing to live in simple accommodations. Francis has rebuked bishops who live like kings and princes. The pope has placed a coadjutor archbishop in Newark, Bernard Hebda, who is expected to succeed Myers after the archbishop retires.

The archdiocese has long said Hebda’s presence in Newark has nothing to do with Myers’ poor handling of a priest who violated an agreement made with the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office to stay away from minors; that Myers just asked Rome for help and got it. But Hebda is a sign that the doings in Newark were not going unnoticed by the Vatican. Rebranding the annual appeal may help fundraising, but it is unlikely that donors are unaware who the archbishop of Newark is regardless of whether the word “archbishop” is on the appeal literature.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Information Nigeria

A priest who went on the run after sexually assaulting a woman has been jailed for eight months.

Father Hilary Ogom Nwadei, 58, pleaded guilty to handling the woman’s bosoms and exposing himself while staying at St Mary’s Priory in Leyland.

Nwadei, from the Diocese of Issele-Uku, Delta State, Nigeria, began staying at the Priory in September 2013 while he studied a doctorate in law at the University of Central Lancashire, and also preached to the congregation.

During that time he complained of loneliness and befriended his victim who he regularly confided in and often hugged during these exchanges.

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ALABAMA
Lagniappe

By: JASON JOHNSON

Lawyers for St. Pius X Catholic School said the year-old sexual misconduct allegations stirred up recently have “opened up a can of worms” and are ultimately unrelated to the four bullying lawsuits that led to them being made more public.

Mark Redditt, one of the school’s attorneys, made those statements during a hearing in Judge Ben Brooks’ courtroom this morning, resulting in a 101-day extension that will allow the plaintiffs to conduct additional depositions.

Rev. Johnny Savoie, a pastor at St. Pius X Catholic School, was accused of sexual misconduct in early 2014, though no charges were ever filed.

Mobile’s Archdiocese made headlines earlier this week after court documents showed its attorneys made a significant attempt in another St. Pius case to prevent the depositions of several individuals thought to have knowledge of an alleged case of sexual misconduct between the school’s pastor, Johnny S. Savoie, and a 16-year-old boy.

The plaintiffs have attempted to confirm whether St. Pius officials or their attorneys reached out to law enforcement when the allegations of seuxal misconduct first surfaced.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS Philly

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – With about seven months to go before Pope Francis arrives in Philadelphia for the World Meeting of Families, the Archdiocese confirmed its fundraising is on track to its $45 million goal.

They say that to date, $30 million dollars in cash and in-kind donations have been pledged in anticipation of the Papal visit in late September.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia says the current pledges put the fundraising effort at 67 percent toward the estimated budget and fundraising goal.

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput says, “Wonderful generosity and great enthusiasm for the World Meeting of Families and Pope Francis have defined our initial fundraising efforts. From those supporting this event, we have often heard about the fundamental importance of the family in strengthening our communities at-large, and regardless of faith, all have expressed a desire to support the institution of the family, which is the cornerstone of our society. There is also great excitement about the visit by Pope Francis and how his presence in Philadelphia next September will bring people of all faiths together in conversation, service and ultimately, love.”

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MINNESOTA
Cannon Falls Beacon

[(St. Paul, MN) – Correction by Jeff Anderson & Associates, P.A. concerning Father Marvin Klaers.

Information was reported in the Cannon Falls Beacon which is inaccurate regarding the number of people we know about who have accused Father Klaers. Our office represents one survivor who has provided a notice of claim to the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis concerning an allegation of sexual abuse as a minor. We represent no other survivors of abuse by Fr. Klaers. We also have not received telephone calls regarding sexual abuse of minors by Fr. Klaers.]

by Mike Dalton

Fr. Marvin Klaers, who served Catholic parishes in Hampton, Miesville and New Trier, was among 17 men named on a new list of alleged abusers released recently.

Klaers was ordained in 1950, and served as an associate pastor in New Ulm and Shakopee before coming to St. Mathias in Hampton in 1965. He spent time in St. Paul before serving St. Joseph in Miesville and St. Mary’s in New Trier from 1975 until his retirement in October, 2002. He continued to serve area parishes following his retirement.

A letter distributed at St. Joseph Sunday to parishioners stated that there is an allegation of abuse from 35 to 37 years ago against Klaers, who was serving St. Mary’s in New Trier at the time. However, an attorney at Jeff Anderson and Associates said there are currently two claims against Klaers, and several phone calls claiming sexual abuse of minors by Klaers have recently been received.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
UTV

A former priest convicted of child sexual abuse has been formally dismissed from the Catholic Church by the Pope.

In a statement Bishop Noel Treanor said that James Donaghy is not permitted to function as a priest under any circumstance, in public or private.

Donaghy stepped down from his duties in March 2004.

He was originally from Lady Wallace Drive in Lisburn, and served as a priest in the west Belfast parish of Corpus Christi in Ballymurphy.

He was convicted of a string of sex abuse charges following two trials in 2011 and 2013 and is serving a 10 year jail sentence.

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NEW JERSEY
The Star-Ledger

By Star-Ledger Editorial Board
on February 20, 2015

Archbishop John Myers is clinging to his office despite the passionate opposition he inspired by his lavish spending of church funds on his retirement home.

This year, though, the diocese is apparently feeling some shame, and has removed his name from the annual fund-raising drive. It’s no longer the Archbishop’s Annual Appeal; it’s been renamed Sharing God’s Blessing Appeal.

From a strictly business standpoint, this makes great sense. Last year 22,000 parishioners signed a petition objecting to Myers money grab, and many of them protested by refusing to donate.

Who can blame them? Myers’ thirst for luxury can only be described as bizarre. His retirement home had five bedrooms, a three-car garage, and elevator and a large swimming pool.

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NEW JERSEY
Press-Telegram

By Sean Carlin, Associated Press
POSTED: 02/19/15

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — A co-defendant told undercover FBI agents looking for a divorce that a fellow rabbi on trial for allegedly torturing men into granting divorces was a “hired hand.”

Mendel Epstein is accused of using a kidnap team to force Jewish men to divorce their wives. His attorney, Robert Stahl, disputes the charges and says Epstein is a “champion of women’s rights.”

On Thursday, prosecutors played recordings made by FBI agents posing as a brother and sister trying to obtain a divorce from the sister’s husband.

The other rabbi is heard saying that Epstein could be a “hired hand” to help them. Epstein speaks with the agents later that day and agrees to meet them.

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NEW JERSEY
The Journal News

TRENTON, N.J. – When two undercover agents called posing as a brother and sister looking to obtain a divorce from the sister’s unwilling husband, a Monsey rabbi told them that New Jersey Rabbi Mendel Epstein was a “hired hand” who could be “very helpful” to them.

Epstein “is a hired hand,” Rabbi Martin “Mordechai” Wolmark is heard telling the agents in 2013. “Mendel Epstein’s not a bad guy, he’s a good guy. … He’ll be very helpful.”

Prosecutors played those recordings on Thursday, the second day of trial for Epstein and his three co-defendants: son David Epstein, Jay Goldstein and Binyamin Stimler.

Mendel Epstein is accused of employing a kidnap team to force unwilling Jewish husbands to divorce their wives. The defendants face charges including conspiracy to commit kidnapping and attempted kidnapping stemming from a staged kidnapping in 2013 and three other forced divorces.

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NEW JERSEY
New York Daily News

BY REUVEN BLAU NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, February 19, 2015

The Prodfather was referred to as a “special” rabbi who worked as a “hired hand” to help Jewish women obtain their religious divorces, a recording revealed Thursday.

The remark was made during a conversation between Rabbi Martin Wolmark, 56, and an undercover agent posing as a Jewish woman in desperate need of help to convince her husband to give her a religious divorce called a get.

Wolmark told her the woman the potential beatdown procedure could be “very costly” and that she needed the assistance of Rabbi Mendel Epstein. The woman was charged $60,000, according to prosecutors.

“You need special rabbis who are going to take this thing and see it through to the end,” Wolmark, 56, said in the call played in federal court in New Jersey.

“It’s a process,” he added, noting a Jewish court would first have to authorize the group of rabbis to take action.

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NEW JERSEY
CBS New York

TRENTON, N.J. (CBSNewYork/AP) – Lakewood Rabbi Mendel Epstein is known for helping Orthodox Jewish couples through divorces, but federal prosecutors say he, his son and two other rabbis went too far.

Mendel Epstein is accused of employing a kidnap team to force unwilling Jewish husbands to divorce their wives. The defendants face charges including conspiracy to commit kidnapping and attempted kidnapping stemming from a staged kidnapping in 2013 and three other forced divorces.

When two undercover agents called posing as a brother and sister looking to obtain a divorce from the sister’s unwilling husband, a New York rabbi told them that Mendel Epstein was a “hired hand” who could be “very helpful” to them.

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NEW JERSEY
The Jewish Daily Forward

(Reuters) — An undercover FBI agent testified on Thursday in a case involving three Orthodox Jewish rabbis in New Jersey accused of kidnapping and beating husbands to force them to grant divorces under Jewish law to their wives.

Special Agent Jessica Weisman, who went by the name Rachel Marconi during the operation, said she weaved a complicated back story designed to provide a plausible excuse to the rabbis to explain why she knew no one from the close-knit Orthodox community in Lakewood, New Jersey.

She told them of a husband in Argentina and provided them with fake wedding photos and counterfeit marriage contracts.

The three rabbis – Mendel Epstein, Binyamin Stimler and Jay Goldstein – and Epstein’s son David are accused of kidnapping or trying to kidnap men and torturing them with beatings and stun guns until they agreed to divorce their wives. Prosecutors say the events took place between 2009 and 2013.

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UNITED STATES
The Jewish Daily Forward

By Jay Michaelson
Published February 20, 2015

Now that Rabbi Barry Freundel has pleaded guilty to peeping at 52 women while they went to the mikveh — prosecutors say he spied on 100 more women, but outside the statute of limitations — we finally can take off the qualifiers and accept that he is guilty. And that means we can begin some much-needed, and largely absent, soul-searching.

One hopes that it is only the delay in legally establishing

Freundel’s guilt that has caused some of his most ardent supporters (prior to the scandal) to remain so uncharacteristically silent.

There are, I think, two categories of such people: those with institutional positions, and those who considered Freundel their teacher and friend.

Among those in the former category are the Orthodox rabbinic umbrella organization the Rabbinical Council of America, and those in leadership positions at Kesher Israel. Here, the discourse is like that of other scandals: who knew what, when; what could have been done differently; what policies are being changed.

Because these are familiar dynamics, and because others have written about them already, they are of secondary interest to me. Soon after the allegations surfaced, the RCA provided a (hopefully exhaustive) account of complaints it had received about Freundel. If that account is complete, it doesn’t amount to much.

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MASSACHUSETTS
The Pilot

This week I have been in Rome for meetings leading up to the Consistory for the creation of new cardinals tomorrow, Valentine’s Day. As I mentioned in my last post, from last Friday to Sunday we held our first plenary session of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors. The commission now consists of 17 members from nations all over the world. They all are very competent, dedicated, and passionate people. It was a very productive meeting and there were a number of different ideas set forth by the group. I am so pleased to have this larger and more diverse group, which I know is going to enrich our work. I was very pleased with the spirit of the different commission members and very grateful for their commitment. On Sunday (2/8), the commission members celebrated Mass together at the Church of St. Stephen of the Abyssinians within the Vatican. It is the church of the Ethiopian Catholics (the same rite as the Ethiopians and Eritreans who gather every Sunday at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston) and is just behind the Pontifical Ethiopian College. The church has been used by the Ethiopians for about the past 500 years, though the history of the building itself goes back nearly 1,500 years.

Various meetings in Rome

Thursday (2/12), along with many of the new cardinals, I was invited for dinner at the British Embassy to the Holy See. There were a number of different bishops there from nations in the British Commonwealth as well as the representative of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Following our meetings of the commission, we entered into several days of meetings of the group of cardinals advising the Holy Father on reform of the Roman Curia. As always, the Holy Father was with us throughout our meetings, except for Wednesday during the General Audience. We are still working on several recommendations for the reform of the Curia, as well as on a number of other issues that the Holy Father has brought before us.

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OKLAHOMA
Tulsa World

Oklahoma City Archbishop removes secretly married priest from church leadership

By CARLA HINTON The Oklahoman

OKLAHOMA CITY – A beloved Roman Catholic priest who secretly married has been removed from his post as administrator of a prominent downtown church, The Oklahoman has learned.

Friday, Diane Clay, spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, said Archbishop Paul S. Coakley removed the Rev. Dan Letourneau as administrator of St. Joseph Old Cathedral, 307 NW 4, for a personal matter that does not involve any illegal activity.

In a statement to The Oklahoman, Coakley said he learned about Letourneau’s marriage after removing him from his post.

“After I removed Father Dan Letourneau from his assignment at St. Joseph Old Cathedral on Tuesday, it came to my attention that he had recently entered into a civil marriage,” Coakley said.

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MAINE
Bangor Daily News

By Seth Koenig, BDN Staff
Posted Feb. 20, 2015

PORTLAND, Maine — A federal judge ordered a Freeport man accused of defaming a former Catholic priest to pay his opponents’ legal fees as punishment for defying a court order.

U.S. District Court Judge John Woodcock on Friday found Paul Kendrick in contempt of court for releasing confidential information gathered in the discovery process of a lawsuit against him.

As punishment, Woodcock ordered Kendrick to pay for the work the opposing attorneys did in reaction to that release of confidential information. But the judge stopped short of granting the plaintiffs a default judgment in the case, a sanction sought by the plaintiffs and one that would have effectively found Kendrick guilty of the greater defamation claim before ever reaching trial.

Former Catholic brother Michael Geilenfeld and a nonprofit in which he’s involved are suing Kendrick for defamation — Kendrick publicly accused the former priest of sexually abusing children — as Geilenfeld faces potential criminal sex abuse charges in Haiti.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

About the celebrated Mennonite theologian (and serial sexual abuser of women* who were his students or had sought his pastoral counseling), Mennonite pastor and poet Hillary Kobernick thinks we’re asking the wrong question. As she notes, even after the history of Yoder’s predatory activities over many years is becoming clear, Kobernick continues to encounter people asking how we can use his work and honor him as an advocate for peace — sanitizing the story of the life from which this work proceeds, as it were.

Kobernick reports that she recently met a student who told her he was drawn to Anabaptist Mennonite Theological Seminary, where Yoder once taught, by Yoder’s legacy. The student asked Kobernick how we can continue to use Yoder’s work, then suggested his own answer to that question:

Yoder was brilliant. He’s such an articulate thinker and he lays such an important foundation for Mennonites. I think we can still redeem his work and use it to represent our church.

Kobernick’s powerful reply:

I asked him if he was, as he seemed to be, a straight white male with no history of sexual abuse. He said he was. Then I got angry, and with less grace than I wished I had. “That is not your question,” I said. “You do not get to decide how we use Yoder’s scholarship. You don’t get to answer anything. Your job, right now, is to sit down and listen to the women who were abused. Women who are in their 60’s and 70’s now who have spent 40 years keeping their mouths shut. They took the brunt of the pain. They suffered for us, among us, so we could maintain our rosy-eyed ignorance about the man himself. Why don’t you bring this question to them, and let them answer it in their own good time? It might take years, but it’s not your job to answer.”

As she concludes, what’s at stake in this discussion isn’t really the question of John Howard Yoder per se. What’s at stake is recognizing that an entire sorry system of men who control things, dispose of other human beings as human garbage, allocate power so that they themselves predictably have it and no one else does, stands behind a Yoder and his predatory behavior. That system is called patriarchy, and as Kobernick notes, it’s “about men in power who think they are untouchable and so they can touch whatever they want.”

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GERMANY
Idaho Statesman

LIMBURG, GERMANY — The diocese of Limburg in western Germany announced Friday that it would open the controversial $34 million residence of former bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst for public events.

The controversial complex of buildings that make up the lavish bishop’s palace would be “demystified and demythologized” by the move, the diocese said Friday in a statement.

Bishop Tebartz-van Elst, dubbed the “bling bishop” for his extravagant lifestyle, was reprimanded by Pope Francis and removed from his position before being given a new role in the Vatican.

Tebartz-van Elst had drawn heavy criticism from many quarters for the multimillion dollar renovation of the palace that came to light in a report commissioned by the German Catholic Church.

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CALIFORNIA
Huffington Post

By Carol Kuruvilla

Posted: 02/20/2015

Catholic students in San Francisco are speaking out against their archbishop — and they chose one of the holiest days on the church’s calendar to do so.

On Ash Wednesday, hundreds of students and parents, some with ashes still streaked across their foreheads, gathered outside Saint Mary’s Cathedral to protest morality clauses for Catholic school teachers promoted by San Francisco’s Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, ABC News’ local affiliate reported.

Hannah Regan, a 14-year-old student at Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory, was one of the many who sang and recited prayers outside the church. She’s been in the city’s Catholic school system for about 10 years and loves the community she’s grown up with. But on Wednesday, she came out with a challenge, holding up a sign that read, “Teach Love, Teach Justice, Teach Acceptance.”

The hashtag #TeachAcceptance has become a rallying cry, she said.

“The message we’re trying to get across is that we support all of our teachers, no matter their gender, sexuality, religion or race,” Hannah told The Huffington Post via a phone call. “The majority of students are very concerned about our teachers and all we want to do is show our love and support.”

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IRELAND
Justice for Magdalenes

* JFMR Death, Institutionalisation & Duration of Stay: A critique of Chapter 16 of the Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen Laundries and related issues
* Appendix 1
* Appendix 2

Justice for Magdalenes Research (JFMR) has published the first in a series of critiques of the Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen Laundries (IDC Report). Published to coincide with the second anniversary of the State apology, JFMR’s critique discusses issues around death, the institutionalisation of former Magdalene women, as well as JFMR’s research on Magdalene graves and duration of stay.

Instead of answering questions on the serious issues surrounding deaths in Magdalene Laundries, Chapter 16 of the IDC Report gives exclusive attention to the religious orders’ version of events and completely ignores survivor testimony, as well as substantial submissions from JFM raising concerns about the funeral and burial practices in Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries.

To-date, JFMR has recorded the details of 1,663 women who died in Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries, almost twice the figure cited in the IDC Report. JFMR’s data accounts for the number of women who died in the Magdalene institutions between 1835 and 2014. The IDC Report on the other hand does not count the deaths of women who died in the laundries before 1922 and those who continued to live institutionalised lives in the charge of the religious orders.

For the period covered by the IDC Report (1922 until the closure of each laundry), JFMR has recorded 768 deaths, while the IDC states that 879 women died during this time. The reasons for this discrepancy are complex and are discussed in Section 1.5 of the critique. …

Key findings

 To-date, JFMR has recorded the details of 1,663 women who died in Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries, almost twice the figure cited in the IDC Report. JFMR’s data accounts for the number of women who died in the Magdalene institutions between 1835 and 2014. The IDC Report on the other hand does not count the deaths of women who died in the laundries before 1922 and those who continued to live institutionalised lives in the charge of the religious orders.

 For the period covered by the IDC Report (1922 until the closure of each laundry), JFMR has recorded 768 deaths, while the IDC states that 879 women died during this time. The reasons for this
discrepancy are complex and are discussed in Section 1.5 of the critique.

 The IDC Report omits public cemeteries that are used by the religious orders after the closure of the laundries and thus the IDC missed an opportunity to provide assistance to the family and friends of deceased Magdalene women who would like to visit the graves of their loved ones.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

Just 33 out of 187 Magdalene women listed on the headstone for High Park laundry in Glasnevin Cemetery are actually buried at that location, a study claims.

The revelation is contained in the first of series of critiques of the McAleese report planned by Justice For Magdalenes Research (JFMR).

Running to some 66 pages, the report discusses issues around death, institutionalisation of former Magdalene women and research on Magdalene graves and duration of stay.

It reveals that, for 131 women who died in the High Park laundry in Dublin, no trace of their whereabouts can be found in the cemetery’s archives. Of these 131 women, 54 died between 1922 and 1991 when High Park closed — the period covered by the McAleese report.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

Pope Francis dismisses convicted Lisburn paedophile priest James Martin Donaghy from priesthood

20 FEBRUARY 2015

Pope Francis has dismissed a convicted paedophile priest from County Antrim from the priesthood.

James Martin Donaghy, originally from Lady Wallace Drive, Lisburn is currently serving a 10-year-old jail sentence for abusing three victims following a trial in 2011.

Donaghy was convicted in 2013 of indecently assaulting a boy and was given two more years in jail to run concurrently.

He stepped down from duties in 2004 and has not worked as a priest since – but now he has been banned from ministry.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

EDITOR’S VIEWPOINT – 20 FEBRUARY 2015

Taken at face value, the testimony of Richard Kerr on abuse at Kincora Boys’ Home in east Belfast in the 1970s is explosive and compelling. He claims he was abused both there and in London by what appears to have been an organised paedophile ring. And he says he has evidence of MI5 involvement.

His story is tragic. As a teenager he was taken into care after his family life collapsed. His eventual arrival at Kincora led to a life of degradation, including abuse by numerous men and later working as a male prostitute.

One can only guess at the impact this had on his self-worth, as he self-harmed and also tried to commit suicide.

His story adds to the mounting tide of evidence of what went on in that notorious home. It also reinforces the widely held belief that previous investigations which saw three members of staff jailed for abusing 11 boys in their care was far from the complete picture. It has long been suspected that people in senior positions in the intelligence services and in civic society helped cover up the full extent of the abuse.

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier-Mail

BRITTANY VONOW THE COURIER-MAIL FEBRUARY 21, 2015

A BRISBANE Catholic boys’ school has apologised “un­reservedly” to students who suffered sexual assaults during the school’s history.

St Laurence’s College principal Ian McDonald made the apology last Friday during a candlelight mass, and it was published yesterday in the school newsletter.

“We apologise unreservedly to any boys who experienced abuse of any kind during their schooling,” he told the school.

“We apologise for the behaviour and practices of some staff who inflicted profound distress and suffering on boys and their families.

“To the boys, their families, then and now, and their descendants, we say sorry.”

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Poor Pope Francis! First, a Salesian priest, Cardinal Bertone, tries to lay his lavish apartment excesses on the pope. Now, Jesuit Fr. Thomas Reese, the world’s leading expert on Vatican organizational structure with a UC Berkeley Ph.D. in political science, piles on. Reese is the author of the highly regarded, “Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church” discussed at Amazon Link:

[Amazon]

Reese has now sharply and boldly criticized the pope’s inadequate efforts to reform the Vatican’s hierarchical structure. Please see Reese’s, “Pope Francis’ reform of the Roman Curia is moving too slowly” here,

[National Catholic Reporter]

Predictably, Jesuit Reese’s bias is towards a clerical structural reform, which will also fail in my view. For a relevant discussion of what Pope Francis needs to include in his vision of the Petrine ministry if he wants to save the Catholic Church. please see my remarks, “The Crisis Pope Francis Faces” here, [Christian Catholicism]

Jesuit educated Fr. Hans Kung, whom Pope Francis has honored recently with replies, etc., and whose former assistant, Cardinal Walter Kasper, reportedly is the pope’s theologian of choice, has complimented me on these reform remarks of mine. These remarks, unlike my usual ad hoc advocacy remarks which Hans Kung has never endorsed, are my considered and best effort to point Pope Francis to an efficacious path to required reforms.

Reese makes some perceptive and pertinent observations, including (in italics): “As Pope Francis approaches the second anniversary of his election as pope, progress on reforming the Vatican Curia is moving too slowly. It should be moving faster.” _ “The greatest progress has been made in – –
reforming the finances of the Vatican, which has mainly focused on where the money is, … ” _ “In theory, this is the easiest part of Vatican reform. Financial reform is neither rocket science nor theology; it is simply good management practices developed by businesses, governments, and nonprofits to provide transparency and accountability. It requires clear procedures, training of employees, and proper supervision.”

_ “Reforming the Roman Curia, the part of the Vatican that helps the pope in his Petrine ministry, is more difficult.”
_ “Reforming the Roman Curia requires a theological vision for the Petrine ministry, a sense of what the church needs today, and a practical understanding of how to organize people to implement it.”
_ “First, what is the theological vision of the Petrine ministry? Is the pope an infallible, absolute monarch in whom all wisdom resides or is he first among equals who acts collegially with the college of bishops?”
_ “That it took the council of cardinals two years to come up with this reshuffling of boxes on the organizational chart simply shows that they really don’t know what they are doing. It should have taken two months to develop this plan, not two years. At this pace, Pope Francis will be dead before real reform hits the Curia.” _ “A conspiracy theorist would say that getting the council of cardinals to focus on this reorganization was a way of distracting them from any real reform in the Curia. Let the cardinals talk about the councils. Keep them away from the congregations. ”

Meanwhile, Pope Francis must still be reeling from Salesian Bertone’s latest charade. Cardinal Tercisio Bertone, in effect, has ignobly pointed the finger of blame, for some of his main misdeeds, at his former longtime boss, ex-Pope Benedict, as well as at the former Vatican Bank directors, and even at Pope Francis, for whom he worked for seven months.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 20 February 2015 (VIS) – The following is the full text of the communique issued today by the Managing Board and the College of Auditors of the Vatican Pension Fund:

“Since for some months, and amplified by press reports, alarming data has been circulating regarding the situation of the Vatican Pensions Fund and on the sustainability of honouring the commitments undertaken towards present and future subscribers, the Managing Board of the Fund and the College of Auditors consider it opportune to officially communicate the actuarial situation, assets and income of the aforementioned Fund, as it appears in the actuarial Technical Financial Statements drawn up by the actuary and the Financial Statements regularly approved by the Secretary of State.

With regard to the actuarial aspect, there is a substantial balance between available resources and commitments to current and future employees, due also to interventions (approved by the Secretary of State following proposals by the Managing Board) both in terms of contributions (increase of rates throughout the years up to the current rate of 26% on the total of taxable income) and in relation to performance (increase of two years of working life, raising the age of retirement to 67 for laypersons and 72 for clergy and persons religious.

The Statements also show, throughout the years, the solidity of the assets and financial structure of the Fund itself. The funding ratio of the Pensions Fund is 0.95%. From a strictly income-based perspective, the economic and financial situation of the institution records a gradual increase of financial and real estate resources both in terms of capital resources which, from 1993 to 2013 increased on average from € 22,256,196 per year, and in terms of the upward trend in net profit, which during the last 6 years has passed from € 23,583,882 to € 26,866,657, sums sufficient to cover the current costs of pensions.

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ROME
The Tablet (UK)

20 February 2015 by Hannah Roberts in Rome

The former Vatican Secretary of State has claimed that he was victimised because he was trying to bring about reforms on abuse and transparency.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone was ousted in 2013 amid claims that he had failed to prevent the ethical and financial scandals that marked the eight-year reign of Pope Emeritus Benedict.

The Italian, now 80, was criticised for his mishandling of the abuse crisis after he suggested gay sexuality was to blame for the Church’s child abuse scandals.

And last year he was placed under investigation in connection with a sum of €15 million that was paid from Vatican bank accounts to a television production company.

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ALASKA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, February 19, 2015

Statement by Melanie Sakoda of Moraga CA,Orthodox Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 925-708-6175, melanie.sakoda@gmail.com )

Allegations of abuse at an Orthodox school in Kodiak are finally being investigated by church officials. However, a victims’ group is concerned that the untrained investigator looking into these charges will re-traumatize survivors.

Former students of St. Innocent’s Academy have accused the head of school, Father Paisius DeLucia, of physical and mental abuse. Bishop Daniil Trendofilov Nikolov has been charges with looking into those allegations by the Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox Diocese of the USA, Canada and Australia.

However, members of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by priests, are worried because the bishop is so grossly insensitive that he is very likely to hurt victims a second time.

According to a website dedicated to following the crisis at the Kodiak school Nikolov has been interviewing some of the men and women who have accused DeLucia of abuse.

https://academyabuse.info/

However, to the victims’ group it is quite obvious that the bishop has absolutely no training in how to deal with abuse survivors, and no innate sensitivity.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

February 21, 2015

Rachel Kleinman, Jane Lee

As Melbourne’s Jewish congregations gather in synagogues for Saturday’s Sabbath, many feel shattered and shamed by the grim truths exposed during hearings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse.

And one Orthodox Melbourne rabbi said he and his colleagues were “tainted by failure”. Rabbi Ian Goodhart, of Blake Street’s modern Orthodox synagogue in Caulfield, told congregation members this week that a number of rabbis “were growing increasingly disillusioned with the conduct of their colleagues” and the lack of credible rabbinic leadership.

Tensions between rabbis are clearly mounting, following a two-week hearing that examined how Yeshivah centres in Melbourne and Sydney, which belong to the worldwide ultra-Orthodox Chabad stream of Judaism, handled horrific cases of abuse in their midst.

In a joint statement posted on Facebook on Thursday, Rabbi Goodhart and fellow Orthodox rabbi James Kennard threatened to form a breakaway leadership group. They called for immediate reform to the Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia and Victoria’s rabbinical council and increased accountability.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Thomas Reese | Feb. 20, 2015 Faith and Justice

As Pope Francis approaches the second anniversary of his election as pope, progress on reforming the Vatican Curia is moving too slowly. It should be moving faster.

The college of cardinals met in consistory on Feb. 12-13 to review the progress made so far and to discuss future reforms. The cardinals heard from the nine-member Council of Cardinals, which has been spearheading the reforms for Pope Francis.

The greatest progress has been made in reforming the finances of the Vatican, which has mainly focused on where the money is — the Vatican bank, the Vatican City State, the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA), and the Congregation for Evangelization of Peoples. A new Secretariat for the Economy was also created to supervise Vatican finances.

Reforming Vatican finances is a priority for Pope Francis who listened to the complaints about financial scandals from the cardinals at the time of his election.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

A convicted paedophile priest from County Antrim has been dismissed from the priesthood by Pope Francis.

James Martin Donaghy, originally from Lady Wallace Drive, Lisburn, is serving a 10-year jail sentence for abusing three victims, following a 2011 trial.

In 2013, he admitted indecently assaulting a boy and was given two more years in jail, to run concurrently.

Donaghy stepped down from his duties in 2004 and has not worked as a priest since, but is now banned from ministry.

The Bishop of Down and Connor Noel Treanor said that his diocese had been informed of the Pope’s decision by the Vatican’s Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.

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VATICAN CITY
GlobalPost

Jason Berry

Francis doesn’t actually have the power to fix the crisis. Bishops do.

As clergy child abuse scandals jolt the church, Pope Francis has defrocked predatory bishops from Peru and Poland after secret Vatican proceedings. He also intervened on a victim’s behalf in Spain, which emboldened prosecutors to indict a priest who was part of an alleged ring of clergy abusers in the Grenada diocese, according to press reports.

“A zero tolerance approach must be adopted,” Francis told reporters on an airline press conference from Tel Aviv to Rome last May, a sentiment he has backed with action in the intervening months.

But the 17-member papal advisory commission on the abuse crisis faces a glaring loophole over bishops who have sheltered predators — a loophole that creates a tripwire to Pope Francis’s stated goal.

“There’s no place in ministry for those who abuse minors,” Francis wrote in a Feb. 5 letter to the world’s bishops. “Everything must be done to rid the Church of the scourge of the sexual abuse of minors and to open pathways of reconciliation and healing for those who were abused.”

Francis entreated the bishops to see that instructions from a 2011 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) letter are “fully implemented.”

But the 2011 CDF “Circular Letter” to bishops on protocols for abusive clerics has policies that have already failed. The 2011 document, signed by then-CDF prefect Cardinal William Levada and his undersecretary Archbishop Luis F. Ladaria, tells bishops to follow civil and canon law “as thoroughly as possible.”

“The return of a cleric to public ministry is excluded if such ministry is a danger for minors or a cause of scandal,” the document reads. It is the bishop who decides if danger or scandal exists.

“In fact, this is what bishops have always done,” BishopAccountability co-director Anne Barrett-Doyle told GroundTruth. “The CDF sees a bishop as judge and jury. He can forgive a guilty priest if he wants to after some clinic stay, and put him back in the saddle. That’s what the American bishops did for decades until it blew up on them.”

The history of the crisis in Ireland, North America and Australia is one of bishops who risked reassigning known predators who then found fresh victims. In reaction to the explosive media coverage of 2002, the American bishops adopted new norms, or guidelines. …

Depth charges from the Philippines

A new BishopAccountability report, “Sexual Misconduct among Priests in the Philippines,” dissects the CDF 2011 policy on the heels of Francis’s remarkable trip to the islands.

“We have identified 12 cases of allegedly abusive priests that raise immediate concerns about child safety,” Barrett-Doyle and co-director Terry McKiernan said in a letter with the report to a new member of the Pontifical Commission on the Protection of Minors, Filipino psychotherapist Gabriel Dy-Liacco.

“At least half of these [dozen] priests are still active in Philippine parishes, and none appears to have been laicized,” they wrote.

The Boston-based researchers identify two priests as repeat offenders from America, noting that the Philippines bishops’ conference knew about their backgrounds.

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MINNESOTA
Canonical Consultation

[Inside the Seminary – Commonweal]

02/19/2015

Jennifer Haselberger

The current issue of Commonweal Magazine features a number of articles on the priesthood. Among them is a report by a former seminarian of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis who writes of the inadequate (and frankly bizarre) formation that was provided at the Archdiocese’s minor seminary, Saint John Vianney, on the topic of human sexuality.

For instance, the seminarian, Paul Blashcko writes of his experience during the period from 2008-2010:

‘I recall the day when the first-year seminarians, or “new men” as we were called, gathered in the seminary’s spacious basement to attend a workshop on sexual ethics titled “Freedom and Victory.” The workshop was run by a psychologist from something called the Theology of the Body Training and Healing Center, together with a blind priest who, we were told during his introduction, had witnessed at least one eucharistic miracle and had had extensive experience with exorcisms. The breakout sessions had titles like “Masturbation: Is it Healthy? Is it Holy?” (you can guess the answer to both questions); and at various points throughout the workshop we were invited to approach the microphone and share stories of sexual pain and healing—“if you feel called by the spirit to do so”—with the sixty or so priests and other seminarians in the room.

The whole thing felt more than a little strange to me, and for the most part I kept my head down, pretending to take notes in the workbook that had been provided. The strangeness culminated with a workshop session devoted to reenacting the “spiritual warfare” that goes on when a young man watches pornography. Each of us was given a nametag with the name of a demon on it. These demons, we were told, were the principalities most closely associated with sexual temptation. We were then gathered around the chosen man and told to hiss and curse at him, trying to entice him to “watch pornography” and “masturbate.” Afterwards, the priest came around with a coffee tin, collecting the nametags—he had to burn them, he told us, while reciting prayers of exorcism. Demonic influence wasn’t something to take lightly.’

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Cardinal Tercisio Bertone, in effect, has ignobly pointed the finger of blame, for some of his main misdeeds, at his former longtime boss, ex-Pope Benedict, as well as at the former Vatican Bank directors, and even at Pope Francis, for whom he worked for seven months. Hardly “Omertà”, no? At the same time, Bertone subtly has taken credit, as mostly his and Benedict initiatives, for several positive Francis’ actions, including on Cuba/USA relations.

In his recent “softball interview” in the Huffington Post , Bertone offered a truly pathetic example of “bureaucratic buck passing” and “revisionist history.”

Bertone’s interview version of Vatican Bank scandals differs considerably from the remarkably revealing expose (1/8/15) of Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, the Vatican Bank’s ex-head, under the Catholic Herald banner headline, “HOW I WAS BETRAYED BY THE VATICAN” here, [Catholic Herald] , discussed further in my “Ex-Bank Head Presses Pope, ex-Pope & Cardinal Bertone” here,

[Christian Catholicism]

Bertone had spent almost two decades, often with considerable authority as the evidently “management adverse” ex-Pope’s top aide. This included the period when ex-pope Ratzinger was in charge as Cardinal of seemingly covering up some priest child abuse scandals, such as the Milwaukee priest who reportedly sexually abused over two hundred deaf boys, as well as the Fr. Marciel Maciel scandals after Cardinal Sodano reportedly weighed in.

Bertone confirms that he knew Benedict XVI was planning to quit “at least seven months” in advance of his mid-February 2013 public resignation announcement. This means Bertone learned about the pope’s planned departure about the time the International Criminal Court prosecutor indicated she was giving the ex-Pope and Cardinals Bertone, Sodano and Levada a free pass on filing “crimes against humanity” charges related to the priest child abuse scandal, at least in the short term. That seems plausible enough. At 85 years of age, the ex-pope’s short term was long term as well !

Bertone reportedly indicated that he told Benedict: “Holy Father, you must bestow upon us the third volume on Jesus of Nazareth and the encyclical on faith, before you sign things over to Pope Francis.”

Of course, Francis was only selected AFTER Benedict left. Or was he selected earlier? By whom? Very interesting !

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CALIFORNIA
SFGate

By Nanette Asimov

Published 9:55 pm, Thursday, February 19, 2015

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone fired back Thursday at state lawmakers who characterized as intolerant and possibly illegal his effort to have teachers at four Catholic high schools sign a labor contract declaring their opposition to same-sex unions, abortion and contraception.

“Would you hire a campaign manager who advocates policies contrary to those that you stand for, and who shows disrespect toward you and the Democratic Party in general?” Cordileone wrote the eight Democratic lawmakers from San Francisco, Marin, Sonoma and San Mateo counties.

“My point,” Cordileone said, is that “I respect your right to employ or not employ whomever you wish to advance your mission. I simply ask the same respect from you.”

In their letter, the lawmakers said the archbishop’s plan to include the morality clauses in the 2015-2016 faculty handbook and recast the collective bargaining agreement “sends an alarming message of intolerance to youth” who attend Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory and Archbishop Riordan in San Francisco, Junipero Serra in San Mateo and Marin Catholic in Kentfield.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Lancaster Evening Post

A priest who went on the run after sexually assaulting a woman has been jailed for eight months.

Father Hilary Ogom Nwadei, 58, pleaded guilty to fondling the woman’s breasts and exposing himself while staying at St Mary’s Priory in Leyland.

Nwadei, from the Diocese of Issele-Uku, Delta State, Nigeria, began staying at the Priory in September 2013 while he studied a doctorate in law at the University of Central Lancashire, and also preached to the congregation.

During that time he complained of loneliness and befriended his victim who he regularly confided in and often hugged during these exchanges.

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IRELAND
Yahoo! News

The Journal

New child protection guidelines for the Catholic Church in Ireland will include a section on priests who have been accused of abuse.

The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church (NBSCCCI) confirmed to TheJournal.ie that guidelines about the duty of care to an accused priest will be included, with a draft due to be submitted for a period of consultation next month.

Sean McDonagh of the Association of Catholic Priests said this was a welcome move in the case of wrongly accused priests in the Church.

He said there is a difficult balancing act when it comes to abuse allegations, between duty of care to the child and fairness to the priest involved.

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ILLINOIS
Alj Jazeera America

Former employee of school founded by Mohammad Abdullah Saleem details alleged abuse to Al Jazeera America

February 19, 2015

Following the arrest earlier this week of a prominent Illinois imam accused of sexual abuse, one of his alleged victims is speaking out about the ordeal she says was suffered at the hands of Mohammad Abdullah Saleem.

In an interview with Al Jazeera, the alleged victim told of how she was at first honored to meet the respected imam, but ended up “terrified” to be in his presence.

Saleem, 75, founder of a school called Institute of Islamic Education in the Chicago suburb of Elgin, was charged Tuesday with felony criminal sexual abuse. Saleem’s attorney Thomas Glasgow has said that his client “categorically denies” the allegations.

Prosecutors allege that Saleem abused a young woman in her 20s in a series of escalating incidents that took place in the months after she began working as an administrative assistant the school in September of 2013. A civil lawsuit has also been filed, accusing the imam of abusing three others — all minors — alongside the administrative assistant.

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ILLINOIS
ABC News

Associated Press

In a Feb. 17 story about a lawsuit accusing the head of the Institute of Islamic Education in Elgin, Illinois, of sexual abuse, The Associated Press, based on information from the plaintiffs’ law firm, erroneously referred to an umbrella group, the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago, as the Council of Islamic Organizations in Greater America. Based on the same source, the AP also erroneously reported that the Elgin institute is a member of the umbrella group, when it is not.

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

FEBRUARY 19, 2015
BY JEFF GREEN
STAFF WRITER | THE RECORD

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark has launched its primary fundraising drive with a new name this year, striking “archbishop” from the title in a change widely seen as a reaction to parishioner protests directed at Archbishop John J. Myers last year.

The renamed Sharing God’s Blessings Appeal launched this month and follows a year in which parishioners were angered by revelations that the archdiocese was spending $500,000 to expand Myers’ 4,500-square-foot retirement house in rural Hunterdon County. Some churchgoers withheld donations from fundraising campaigns in protest, and the archdiocese confirmed that contributions dipped last year compared with the year before.

Jim Goodness, an archdiocese spokesman, denied that parishioner dissatisfaction with spending on the house played a role in renaming the fundraiser, saying it was motivated by a desire to inform the faithful about the many programs funded by the appeal, including schools and Catholic Charities.

The appeal, which attempts to raise $10 million each year, is operating simultaneously with a separate $90 million capital fundraising effort to fund programs into the future, as well as to address some immediate needs.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

SHANNON DEERY HERALD SUN FEBRUARY 21, 2015

MELBOURNE’s Yeshivah Centre is one of the biggest Jewish organisations in the southern hemisphere.

So when the royal commission into child sexual abuse blew open its strict code of silence, it sent shock waves around the Jewish world.

Now mainstream Jews are desperately trying to distance themselves from the ultra-orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch movement that runs Yeshivah.

Chabad, perhaps more than most, has strictly observed the code of silence since post-war migrants established Yeshivah here in the 1940s.

Known as mesirah it explicitly prohibits Jews from informing on each other to civil authorities.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
BBC News

A prominent US rabbi has pleaded guilty to 52 counts of voyeurism after secretly filming women in his congregation’s ritual baths.

Barry Freundel, 63, may have recorded as many as 150 women in the changing area at his orthodox synagogue in Washington DC.

The women were disrobing for the ritual Jewish bath, known as a mikvah.

He has confessed to recording at least 52 nude or partially nude women. Prosecutors say he should be jailed.

They say the actual number of women filmed is likely to have been much higher.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
The Daily Beast

Ben Jacobs

At one of the most influential synagogues in Washington, a rabbi secretly taped dozens of women as they undressed for a ritual bath. Now he’s on trial, and his victims are speaking.

Converting to Judaism is a long, difficult process but for hundreds of would-be converts Rabbi Bernard “Barry” Freundel helped ease the path. Freundel was a leading rabbi who presided over Kesher Israel, one of the most influential synagogues in Washington, D.C. with congregants like Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and former Senator Joe Lieberman. He helped draft conversion policies followed by rabbis across the United States. But Freundel wasn’t just ministering to many of those he converted. He was victimizing them too.

On Thursday, Freundel pled guilty to 52 misdemeanor counts of voyeurism in D.C. Superior Court for videotaping young women when they were about to complete the conversion process by immersing themselves in a Jewish ritual bath known as a mikvah. Court documents describe how Freundel victimized well over a hundred women by using different video cameras hidden in an adjacent bathroom to tape women from multiple angles as they showered and undressed before the ceremony. One camera had even been hidden inside a clock radio. Each individual count of voyeurism carries a possible sentence of up to a year in jail. As a result, the 63-year-old rabbi could face imprisonment for the rest of his life.

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AUSTRALIA
SBS

AAP

The head of the Catholic Church’s military diocese has pleaded not guilty to five additional child sex offences from more than 40 years ago.

Bishop Max Leroy Davis, 68, appeared briefly in Perth Magistrates Court on Friday where his lawyer Seamus Rafferty entered the pleas.

Davis has been charged with four counts each of indecently dealing with a boy under the age of 14 and committing indecent practices between males in public.

The offences against two complainants are alleged to have happened in 1969 when he was teaching at St Benedict’s College in New Norcia, northeast of Perth.

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Legal Intelligencer

Lawrence “Skip” Persick, The Legal Intelligencer
February 20, 2015

Child abuse investigations in Pennsylvania are governed by something called the Child Protective Services Law (CPSL). Over the last two years, in the wake of the Penn State and Catholic Church sex-abuse scandals, there has been a push in the state legislature to significantly overhaul the CPSL and close some loopholes and ambiguities. The last and most sweeping of these changes, actually 23 pieces of new legislation, took effect Dec. 31, 2014. Educators are the group of professionals that are most largely affected by these changes.

Although there are several significant changes to the way child abuse is reported and investigated in Pennsylvania, the most significant change affecting educators is that the “chain of command” reporting procedure for child abuse is no longer acceptable. In fact, this is something that went from an accepted practice to a third-degree felony if the underlying abuse rises to the level of a felony.

These changes are best illustrated through the Penn State example. An assistant football coach at Penn State University saw Jerry Sandusky sexually abusing a boy in the shower of the football locker room. He reported that to the head coach, who supposedly reported it to the athletic director, who supposedly reported it to the head of campus security and to the university president. As we now know, the matter was never properly investigated and no one caught up with Sandusky until years later. Under the old version of the CPSL, neither the assistant coach nor the head coach had a mandatory duty to do anything for two reasons. First, only certain school employees were subject to the old CPSL’s mandatory reporting requirements and, second, the definition of “school” did not include colleges and universities.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Star

by Chris Burn
chris.burn@thestar.co.uk
Published on the 20 February 2015

Hundreds of people are expected to attend a special church service for the victims of child grooming in Rotherham.

Local churches have arranged a service on Tuesday, February 24, at Rotherham Minster at 7pm to pray for the future of Rotherham and those who have been directly affected by child sexual exploitation.

Among those due to attend are Bishop of Sheffield Steven Croft and South Yorkshire police and crime commissioner Alan Billings.

It follows a similar service being held in Rotherham last September in the wake of the publication of the Jay report, which revealed at least 1,400 children in the town had been victims of sexual exploitation over a 16-year period.

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UNITED STATES
Commonweal

Paul Blaschko February 17, 2015

Any college-aged man entering a Catholic seminary during the ongoing crisis of the priestly sexual-abuse scandals does so with a certain amount of self-consciousness. Alongside predictable questions raised by the decision to embrace a life of celibacy, the seminarian faces widespread doubt about whether the church is capable of providing the formation necessary to produce well-adjusted, sexually healthy priests. Some critics of the church see sexual abuse as the natural result of celibacy, which they regard as a psychologically unnatural way of life. On this view, there is nothing mysterious about the church’s failure to provide adequate sexual formation, since the very attempt to form sexually normal celibate men poses an impossible task. The only solution to the problem of priestly sexual abuse would be to drop mandatory celibacy.

[This article is part of a larger package of stories on the priesthood. Read all of them here.]

But this view is simplistic. For one thing, most sexual abuse is committed by non-celibates, a lot of it within families. For another, the percentage of celibate clergy who abuse tends to mirror the percentage among their non-celibate counterparts in other faiths, as well as among secular professionals. And even if the alleged psychological abnormality of celibacy explains why a particular priest commits abuse, it does nothing to explain the equally or more troubling fact that large numbers of non-abusing priests and bishops have been willing to ignore, or in many cases cover up, the actions of those who did. The critique of celibacy alone cannot explain why priests systematically shirked their moral duty to report such crimes, or why bishops chose to assign and reassign serial child molesters to unsuspecting parishes. It does not account for the systemic nature of the church’s failed response to the abuse of children, and this is at least partly what makes these scandals so heinous.

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ALABAMA
WSFA

MOBILE, AL (WALA) – The Archdiocese of Mobile is attempting to block subpoenas related to sexual abuse allegations, according to court documents. Reverend Johnny Savoie at St. Pius X Catholic School is being sued by four parents for allegedly failing to protect their children from claimed bullying problems.

During that lawsuit, attorneys found a statement by Father Savoie to his parish that an Archdiocese investigation found there was no evidence supporting previous claims of sexual abuse allegations involving a minor.

FOX10 wanted to find out what the archdiocese had to say about it – but so far, they refuse to comment, and their attorneys have also been putting up quite the fight in court.

It all started when four parents of former students at Saint Pius X in Mobile filed suit against Father Johnny Savoie, the school’s head administrator. They claimed he didn’t stop their children from being bullied, despite repeated requests for help.

“Multiple occasions (I) went in to the principal’s office and was told it would be taken care of, to go ahead and go to work,” said Kristen Rosson, one of the parents filing suit in the case.

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ALABAMA
AL.com

By Brendan Kirby | bkirby@al.com
on February 19, 2015

A national support group for sexual abuse victims said Thursday that a Mobile priest accused of an inappropriate sexual relationship with a teenager a decade ago should be suspended.

The allegation has surfaced in connection with an unrelated lawsuit accusing St. Pius X School of failing to protect students from severe bullying. The Rev. Johnny Savoie is the pastor of the church and oversees the school’s administrators.

Barbara Dorris, outreach director of Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, criticized Archbishop Thomas Rodi’s handling of the sexual-abuse allegation.

“Alabama’s highest ranking Catholic official is breaking the national church abuse policy and breaking the trust of parents, parishioners and the public by recklessly, callously and secretly mishandling child sex charges against one of his priests.”

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph

ALISON BALDING MT DRUITT-ST MARYS STANDARD FEBRUARY 20, 2015

FORMER St Marys parish priest Richard St John Cattell has been sentenced to two years and six months jail for child sex offences.

The 74-year-old faced Penrith District Court today charged with two counts of sexual assault and indecent assault to a child aged under 16.

The offences were committed against an altar boy, 12, during the 1980s while he served at Our Lady of the Rosary parish at St Marys.

Judge Jennifer English sentenced Cattell to one year and six months for the sexual assault charges and two years and six months for the indecent assault charge to be served concurrently.

He will be eligible for supervised parole on August 19, 2016.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

SHANNON DEERY HERALD SUN FEBRUARY 20, 2015

A RABBI blamed for not stopping the sexual abuse of at least 10 students who were molested under his watch has stood down from his roles with the Yeshivah Centre.

Senior Chabad figure Abraham Glick last night confirmed he had resigned from four leadership positions within the troubled Yeshivah community.

It followed mounting pressure sparked by his evidence at the child abuse royal commission last week that probed Yeshivah’s handling of sex abuse allegations.

Rabbi Glick, who was the principal of Yeshivah College between 1986 and 2007, is the third high-profile rabbi to stand down in the wake of public hearings.

He said he formally resigned from all leadership positions including as the head of Yeshivah Centre’s spiritual leadership, Vaad Ruchni.

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CHILE
The Republic

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 19, 2015

SANTIAGO, Chile — A group of Chilean priests on Thursday demanded the resignation of a bishop, accusing him of covering up for a prominent priest who sexually abused altar boys.

The priests and deacons in the southern city of Osorno made their request to Ivo Scapalo, the papal nuncio in Chile. They said newly appointed bishop Juan Barros Madrid covered up for the Rev. Fernando Karadima.

Victims have said Karadima began abusing them at his residence at the Sacred Heart of Jesus church in Santiago about 20 years ago, when they were between 14 and 17 years old.

The Vatican sanctioned Karadima by ordering him to a life of “penitence and prayer” in 2011. A Chilean judge later dismissed a criminal case because the statute of limitations had expired, but she determined the abuse allegations were truthful.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic Herald (UK)

Cardinal also defends ‘lavish’ 80th birthday dinner, saying there were no truffles

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, former Vatican Secretary of State, has said he knew Benedict XVI was planning to resign “at least seven months” in advance – and that it was “not at all easy” to keep it a secret.

The cardinal made the revelation in a candid interview in which he offered a staunch defence of his record and his lifestyle – much criticised in the Italian press – since stepping down.

Asked if he was surprised by Benedict XVI’s resignation, the cardinal said: “I had guessed it, but put it out my thoughts. I knew long in advance, at least seven months before. And I had many doubts. We debated the topic at length after it seemed already decided. I told him: Holy Father, you must bestow upon us the third volume on Jesus of Nazareth and the encyclical of faith, before you sign things over to Pope Francis.”

The cardinal added that it was “not at all easy to keep this secret. The pope meditated and reflected deeply with God about this choice.”

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SOUTH DAKOTA
SDPB

[with audio]

By CHARLES MICHAEL RAY

Those who say they suffered childhood sexual abuse by clergy will have to comply with 2010 statute of limitations after a narrow vote by a state legislative committee.

In 2010, with the backing of church lobbyists, state lawmakers approved a new statute of limitations restricting some types of civil litigation in childhood sex abuse cases. Proponents testified that alleged abuse in Catholic Indian Boarding Schools happened so long ago few of the accused are alive to defend themselves.

Opponents to that law argue the new statute of limitations was applied retroactively by the courts resulting in the dismissal of several ongoing childhood sex abuse lawsuits—further damaging the victims who are still alive today.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

February 20, 2015

Desmond O’Grady

A spectre is haunting the corridors of the Vatican: has Cardinal George Pell gained too much power?

Pope Francis appointed Cardinal Pell to head a new office set up to ensure greater transparency in Vatican finances following a series of scandals. It was asked to prepare its statutes and proposed control of all Vatican economic affairs after years in which the various departments had a measure of financial independence.

But recently, the head of the Vatican Council for Legislative Texts, Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, has questioned Cardinal Pell’s proposed reforms, with other critics of the former archbishop of Sydney viewing his actions as grandstanding.

Cardinal Coccopalmerio’s criticism carries weight, as his department assesses the statutes of Vatican offices, including Cardinal Pell’s Secretariat for the Economy.

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ALABAMA
Fox 10

By Kati Weis, FOX10 News Reporter

MOBILE, AL (WALA) – The Archdiocese of Mobile is attempting to block subpoenas related to sexual abuse allegations, according to court documents.

Reverend Johnny Savoie at St. Pius X Catholic School is being sued by four parents for allegedly failing to protect their children from claimed bullying problems.

During that lawsuit, attorneys found a statement by Father Savoie to his parish that an Archdiocese investigation found there was no evidence supporting previous claims of sexual abuse allegations involving a minor.

FOX10 wanted to find out what the archdiocese had to say about it – but so far, they refuse to comment, and their attorneys have also been putting up quite the fight in court.

It all started when four parents of former students at Saint Pius X in Mobile filed suit against Father Johnny Savoie, the school’s head administrator. They claimed he didn’t stop their children from being bullied, despite repeated requests for help.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Courthouse News Service

By DAN MCCUE

(CN) – A prominent Washington D.C. rabbi pleaded guilty on Thursday to 52 counts of videotaping naked women as they prepared for a ritual bath, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced.

Rabbi Barry Freundel was arrested on October 14, 2014, on charges he videotaped six women while was the spiritual leader at the orthodox Kesher Israel Congregation, in Washington’s upscale Georgetown neighborhood.

According to prosecutors, the 63-year-old rabbi was seen entering the synagogue’s large changing area and shower room two days earlier and placing a digital clock radio on a countertop facing the private bath.

A short time later, an unidentified individual associated with the mikvah, a ritual cleansing bath, discovered the clock contained a hidden recording device and turned it over to the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department.

After an initial investigation, the department executed search warrants to seek evidence at Freundel’s home and office at Towson University, and computer forensic exam revealed the rabbi had taped scores of women on 25 different dates between March 4, 2012 and Sept. 19, 2014.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

By Lauren Markoe | Religion News Service February 19

WASHINGTON — The Georgetown rabbi charged with videotaping naked women as they used his synagogue’s ritual bath pleaded guilty Thursday (Feb. 19) to 52 counts of voyeurism.

The counts correspond to the 52 women who prosecutors said had been spied on by Freundel with a hidden camera during the three years for which the statute of limitations applies.

The rabbi’s sentencing hearing in D.C. Superior Court is scheduled for May 15.

“As we seek to move forward and heal as a community, we await the judge’s decision on sentencing,” the board of Kesher Israel, where Freundel had been rabbi for 25 years, said in a statement after his plea. “The scope and duration of these horrible crimes are still hard to completely comprehend.”

Freundel’s arrest in October rocked Washington’s Jewish community, where he enjoyed a reputation as a respected scholar and an advocate for converts. His former synagogue, Kesher Israel, is a Washington landmark attended by Washington luminaries such as Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and former Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn.

Observant Jews use a ritual bath, called a mikvah, for conversions and sometimes before the High Holy Days or Sabbath. But it is most often used by married Jewish women, seven days after the end of the menstrual period, to mark a transition to a state of purity, where conception is more likely.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
McClatchy DC

BY GREG GORDON
McClatchy Washington Bureau
February 19, 2015

WASHINGTON — An orthodox rabbi in the nation’s capital pleaded guilty Thursday to secretly videotaping 52 women, mainly congregants at the temple he led, as they removed their clothing to step into a Jewish ritual bath.

Rabbi Bernard Freundel admitted to 52 counts of misdemeanor voyeurism charges for invading the women’s privacy between March 4, 2012 and last Sept. 19. Prosecutors said in papers filed in Superior Court for the District of Columbia, however, that the evidence shows his behavior dates to 2009 and that he also surreptitiously recorded another 100 women who were undressed or partially clothed.

Voyeurism carries a three-year statute of limitations, so it was too late to prosecute him for most of the secret videotaping. Even though the charges are misdemeanors, Freundel faces a maximum sentence of 52 years in prison.

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UNITED STATES
Waiting for Godot to Leave

Kevin O’Brien

Here Ross Douthat writes the best piece I’ve yet read on Fifty Shades of Grey. He points out that sexual anarchy, like political anarchy, devolves not so much into chaos, but into a world where the strong prey upon the weak. He writes …

This is the sexual revolution of Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt and Joe Francis and roughly 98 percent of the online pornography consumed by young men. It’s the revolution that’s been better for fraternity brothers than their female guests, better for the rich than the poor, better for the beautiful than the plain, better for liberated adults than fatherless children … and so on down a long, depressing list.

This is because lust (as opposed to sex in general – sex is a good thing, but lust is a desire for sex without any resrtaint) is all about power. Lust is not about physical pleasure, it’s about physical, emotional and psychological control.

Which brings me to a real Nutt case.

After my wife and I were received into the Catholic Church, back in 2000, our parish priest suggested that we prepare for Confirmation by attending RCIA, the “Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults”. Foolishly I agreed.

It was nine months long and a total joke. It was run by a liberal nun in a pants suit and her cadre of parish supporters, and it made sure that absolutely nothing Catholic was taught to any of us. It was a shocking wake up call that the Church so lovingly described by Chesterton and Belloc had taken quite a few steps backward.

One of the things Sister Liz (that was her name, God rest her rebellious soul) made us do was go to a Mass at “the Rock” church on the near North Side. The only difference between what went on in RCIA at our parish and what was going on at the Rock church was, while the latter made me just as miserable, it didn’t last nine months, but only for about two or three hours.

That’s right. The Mass went at least that long, because the pastor, a certain Fr. Nutt, a charismatic preacher, was working the crowd for all the “amens” he could get, and took about a thirty minute recess for “the sign of peace” in the middle of the Liturgy of the Eucharist. The “sign of peace” became a party with high fives and shouts of laughter and Fr. Nutt traveling all over the nave, visiting every single parishioner and yukking it up. While the consecrated host sat patiently on the altar.

In my opinion, he was clearly and obviously an egomaniac. Had I still been an atheist, and had Fr. Nutt been given a TV show where he was shouting at people and “faith healing” them, I would have chalked him up as just another brash and shallow phony, like the televangeslits of my youth who so turned me off to the Christian Faith.

Not long after that, Fr. Nutt disappeared in one of the first sex scandals to hit the archdiocese of St. Louis. (See details below).

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ALABAMA
AL.com

By Brendan Kirby | bkirby@al.com
on February 19, 2015

The Archdiocese of Mobile investigated and cleared a priest in late 2013 after receiving an allegation that he had sex with a teenager nearly a decade earlier, but it is unclear whether church leaders reported it to authorities.

The allegation has surfaced as part of a lawsuit accusing the school overseen by the priest, the Rev. Johnny Savoie, of failing to prevent severe bullying. It is one of four bullying lawsuits pending against St. Pius X School and its administrators, including Savoie.

The sexual abuse allegation is not directly related to the bullying case, but lawyers for the plaintiff have gone to court to force the priest to provide more details an internal investigation conducted by the church.

Savoie, who is pastor of St. Pius X Catholic Church in Mobile and supervises the principal of its school, acknowledged the allegation to his congregation in February of last year.

Read Rev. Savoie’s testimony here

“I wish to share a very serious matter with you,” he told parishioners, according to a statement offered by the defense in the bullying case. “An accusation has been made against me that approximately nine years ago I was involved in an inappropriate sexual conduct with a 16-year-old. The accusation was reported to the Archdiocese and then communicated to me. I adamantly deny the accusation.

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