ABUSE TRACKER

ROME
The New Yorker

OCTOBER 16, 2015

BY ALEXANDER STILLE

The honeymoon for Pope Francis is over—at least in Rome. The first two weeks of the Synod on the Family have been characterized by open rebellion, corridor intrigue, leaked documents, accusations of lack of transparency, and sharp divisions among the bishops and cardinals. In the first real crisis of his papacy, Francis finds himself in the position of enjoying a rare degree of popularity among the public but facing an unusual degree of dissent within an institution generally so respectful of hierarchy.

There was some inkling of this during the Pope’s triumphant visit to the U.S. “If a conclave were to be held today, Francis would be lucky to get ten votes,” a Vatican source told me at the time. “He gets an A-plus on public relations, but an F on all the rest.” This statement was certainly an exaggeration, but it reflected genuine unease within the Roman curia. An obvious sign of trouble came when the papal nuncio in Washington arranged for the pope to meet Kim Davis, the Kentucky state employee who refused to grant (or to delegate others to grant) marriage licenses to gay couples. The move—by a monsignor who is no stranger to Vatican intrigue and power politics—embarrassed the Pope and scored a couple of points for Church conservatives on the eve of the synod.

Traditionalists in the Church were alarmed by some of the developments at the first session of the Synod, held last fall. Progressive cardinals and bishops—drawing on the work of the German theologian Walter Kasper—pushed an agenda that included the possibility of allowing divorced Catholics who had remarried to take communion, and a more open attitude toward both homosexuals and couples who lived together without marrying. They reintroduced the concept of “graduality,” so that unmarried, previously divorced, and gay couples, by demonstrating love and fidelity toward one another, could be seen as moving toward the gospel rather than simply “living in sin.” As the German cardinal Reinhard Marx put it, “Take the case of two homosexuals who have been living together for thirty-five years and taking care of each other, even in the last phases of their lives… How can I say that this has no value?”

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VATICAN CITY
HeraldNet

Associated Press
Published: Sunday, October 18, 2015

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis called Saturday for a Catholic Church that is far more decentralized, where the laity play a greater role, bishops conferences take care of certain problems and even the papacy is rethought.

Francis issued the call during a ceremony Saturday to mark the 50th anniversary of the institution of the Synod of Bishops, a consultative body formed during the Second Vatican Council that was intended precisely to encourage more collegiality in the running of the church by inviting bishops to offer their advice to Rome.

Over the past five decades, the synod has been little more than a talk-fest. But Francis has sought to re-energize it, and the contentious meeting under way at the Vatican, in which conservative and progressive bishops are squaring off over ministering to families, has been the result.

Francis noted that he launched the family synod process two years ago by sending out a questionnaire to Catholic families around the world asking for their input — a strong sign that ordinary lay Catholics have an important role to play in the governance of the church and spreading the faith.

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VATICAN CITY
America Magazine

Gerard O’Connell | Oct 17 2015

“The synod journey culminates in listening to the Bishop of Rome, (who is) called to speak authoritatively as ‘the Pastor and Teacher of all Christians,'” Pope Francis stated on October 17, on the eve of the final week of the synod on the family.

In a keynote talk of the utmost importance delivered at the celebration for the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the synod of bishops, Francis spoke about “synodality in the church,” the synod’s place within this, the relation between the synod and the Successor of Peter, and reminded the synod fathers that he has the last word.

He emphasized the need to give new life to structures of synodality in the local churches worldwide, and confirmed his intention to promote greater “decentralization” in the Catholic Church and to bring about “a conversion of the papacy.”

Pope Francis began by recalling that ever since he became Bishop of Rome, “I wanted to give value to the Synod, which constitutes one of the most precious inheritances of the last council gathering.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
Spectator

Damian Thompson

Pope Francis yesterday gave an address to the profoundly divided Synod on the Family in which he confirmed his plans to decentralise the Catholic Church – giving local bishops’ conferences more freedom to work out their own solutions to the problems of divorce and homosexuality.

This is the nightmare of conservative Catholic cardinals, including – unsurprisingly – those in the Vatican. They thought they had a sufficient majority in the synod to stop the lifting of the ban on divorced and remarried Catholics receiving communion, or any softening on the Church’s attitude to gay couples.

But in yesterday’s keynote speech, delivered as the synod enters its last week, Francis told them that the decentralisation will be imposed from above.

While deliberately referring to himself as ‘Bishop of Rome’, to underline his solidarity with local bishops everywhere (as opposed to the Roman Curia – i.e., ‘the Vatican’), he invoked the power of the Supreme Pontiff to overrule mere cardinals. ‘The synod journey culminates in listening to the Bishop of Rome, called to speak authoritatively as the Pastor and Teacher of all Christians,’ he said. This is more authoritarian language than I can remember Benedict XVI using as pope. It means: I call the shots. In the end, you listen to me, not the other way around.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Westdeutsche Zeitung

Von Peter Korall

Bekommen die Opfer aus Südafrika jetzt eine Entschädigung? Das Bistum zeigt sich zurückhaltend.

Willich. Es hat Jahre gedauert, bis die Straftaten des aus Willich stammenden Pfarrers Georg K. vor Gericht landeten. Im Februar wurde er wegen sexuellen Missbrauchs zu sechs Jahren Haft verurteilt. Sein Verteidiger hatte Revision beim Bundesgerichtshof eingelegt. Die ist jetzt nach Informationen der WZ gescheitert. Was bedeutet: Strafrechtlich ist das Verfahren beendet.

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NEW YORK
New York Post

By Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein
October 18, 2015

He’s also a heretic: The kinky Greek Orthodox priest allegedly asked his mistress to abort their baby.

Ethel Bouzalas told Bishop Andonios Paropoulos, the chancellor of the Greek Orthodox church in the United States, that her lover wanted her to get an abortion, according to an interview with the bishop in The National Herald, a Greek-American daily.

But Andonios said Father George Passias denied he made the abortion request and said he wasn’t sure if the unborn child was his.

Abortion is against the teachings of the Greek Orthodox Church.

The affair between Bouzalas, the former principal of the St. Spyridon Parochial School in Washington Heights, and Passias, the church pastor, rocked the Greek Orthodox world when it was revealed last month by The Post.

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ROME
Crux

By Michael O’Loughlin
National reporter October 17, 2015

As 270 Catholic bishops from around the world debate issues related to the family inside the Vatican’s Synod Hall from Oct. 4-25, activists, advocacy groups, and ordinary people with a cause to promote or a question to raise have descended on Rome to be active on the sidelines of the event, representing views across the spectrum. Crux is offering periodic snapshots of this “synod outside the synod,” profiling people and their causes.

ROME — Christian Weisner grew up in Germany in a Catholic family that was profoundly shaped by the Second Vatican Council. In Pope Francis, he sees an opportunity for that historic moment in the Church to be fully realized.

“In many ways, Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict, who was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith 23 years before he became pope, really worked against the Council,” he said. Francis, in contrast, is bringing “the ideas, the principles of the Council, back to Rome, back to our Church.”

It’s that feeling of possibility, Weisner said, that brought him from his home outside Munich to Rome to observe the Synod of Bishops as it deliberates issues important the international movement he helps lead, We Are Church.

The group was formed in the wake of a sexual abuse scandal involving the late Austrian Cardinal Hans Hermann Groër, who was accused in 1995 of molesting several seminarians. Today, We Are Church says it has members in 20 countries. It promotes admitting women to the priesthood, allowing priests to marry, and upending the Church’s hierarchical structure.

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MINNESOTA
Duluth News Tribune

By Tom Olsen on Oct 17, 2015

The Diocese of Duluth is slated to go before a jury Monday to face child sexual abuse claims in a potential landmark case.

Barring a late settlement or other legal action, the lawsuit would become the first to go to trial under the Minnesota Child Victims Act, a 2013 law that opened a window for victims of decades-old abuse to file suit in cases that otherwise would be barred by statutes of limitation.

The trial, which could last up to two weeks, is set to begin Monday morning before Judge John Guthmann in Ramsey County District Court in St. Paul.

The Catholic diocese is facing negligence claims made by an unidentified man known in court papers only as Doe 30. The alleged victim filed suit in February 2014, claiming he was sexually abused by Father J. Vincent Fitzgerald in the 1970s.

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WEST VIRGINIA
Bluefield Daily Telegraph

Sunday, October 18, 2015

Samantha Perry

BLUEFIELD — Did a pastor’s disclosure to police about reported sexual acts by a church elder on young boys violate the priest-penitent privilege, or was he simply following the state’s mandatory reporting law?

That is the question being argued in pre-trial motions filed in the Timothy Probert case.

Probert, 57, of Mercer County, is facing 50 charges related to alleged sexual abuse of children stemming from his time spent as a volunteer at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Bluefield and for the Working to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect (WE CAN) program.

In a pre-trial motion filed in the case, Probert’s counsel is seeking to have the charges dismissed on the basis that his pastor, Jonathan Rockness, violated the priest-penitent privilege when he told a West Virginia State Police investigator about disclosures involving Probert’s actions with young boys.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

Pope Francis called on Saturday for “healthy decentralization” of power in the Roman Catholic Church, including changes in the papacy and greater decision-making authority for local bishops.

Francis made his comments at a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Synod of Bishops, a worldwide gathering that occasionally advises the pope on a host of issues.

Over the years, many bishops have complained that the synod, which meets at the Vatican every few years, has become a weak and ineffective rubber-stamping body.

The Argentine pope said the type of collegiality – the papal governing of the Church in collaboration with bishops – envisaged by the reforming 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council still had not been achieved.

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UNITED STATES
Crisis Magazine

AUSTIN RUSE

Kim Davis is an innocent victim both of cowardice of churchmen and the smug eagerness of certain priests to put her in her place.

First, a few largely uncontested facts: it was Vatican personnel who invited Davis to meet the pope in Washington DC. Neither Kim Davis nor anyone connected to her requested the meeting.

What’s more, Kim Davis met privately with the pope. Whether you call it an audience or an encounter or any other thing, it took place in private. To put an even finer point on it, she was not on a rope line to shake his passing hand, neither was she in a line of people to meet him one by one.

Lastly, while Vatican personnel wanted the meeting to be private, Davis was told at the meeting, the secrecy of the meeting was to last only until the pope left the country.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

Ross Douthat

THE Vatican always seems to have the secrets and intrigues of a Renaissance court — which, in a way, is what it still remains. The ostentatious humility of Pope Francis, his scoldings of high-ranking prelates, have changed this not at all; if anything, the pontiff’s ambitions have encouraged plotters and counterplotters to work with greater vigor.

And right now the chief plotter is the pope himself.

Francis’s purpose is simple: He favors the proposal, put forward by the church’s liberal cardinals, that would allow divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion without having their first marriage declared null.

Thanks to the pope’s tacit support, this proposal became a central controversy in last year’s synod on the family and the larger follow-up, ongoing in Rome right now..

But if his purpose is clear, his path is decidedly murky. Procedurally, the pope’s powers are near-absolute: If Francis decided tomorrow to endorse communion for the remarried, there is no Catholic Supreme Court that could strike his ruling down.

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ILLINOIS
Chicago Sun-Times

WRITTEN BY TINA SFONDELES POSTED: 10/17/2015

Four years ago, James Richter – a childhood clergy sexual abuse survivor — couldn’t look at the faces of those who sat in the pews of Holy Family Parish for a Mass promoting healing for victims of sexual abuse.

On Saturday, he rose his head high — looking into the faces of those sitting in those pews – and spoke about the great hope and faith that has returned to his life.

“It’s very, very nice to see your faces. I wasn’t able to say that four years ago when I went to my first Mass because the tears of shame and abuse, of loneliness, of sorrow, of isolation, they would have prevented me from seeing your face,” Richter said.

Richter joined about five other survivors in the Archdiocese of Chicago service aimed at promoting recovery for survivors and for their families, as well as calling on the Catholic community and society to protect children.

“Who are we gathered today? We are laity, priests, deacons, young and old, men and women.

We are victims, survivors, friends, caregivers. We are counselors and assistants. We are the church. We are the children of God,” said the Rev. Ronald Hicks, Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Chicago.

Both Richter and Mike Hoffman, another survivor, are part of the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Healing Garden Committee. The garden, next to Holy Family church is a place where survivors can go to look for a safe place to cope.

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OHIO
YouTube

Helen tells her story of her son’s childhood sexual abuse by two religious brothers in the Steubenville diocese and the experiences her family has endured in the aftermath and with the Diocese officials.

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VATICAN CITY
The Weekly Standard

BY JONATHAN V. LAST

Everyone talks about “chaos” in Congress just because Republicans haven’t chosen a new speaker of the House. If you want to see real chaos, look at Rome, where Pope Francis’s synod on the family has been a shambling disaster since the moment it started.

Check that—the meltdown started before the synod convened. The day before Francis kicked off the assembly, Monsignor Krzysztof Charamsa made quite a stir. Charamsa is not just a normal priest, but a member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—the division of the Church tasked with keeping track of doctrine and orthodoxy. (You may remember them from such films as The Inquisition!)

Anyway, Charamsa, it turns out, is gay. And not just theoretically gay, but practically so, having taken a gay lover. (Or rather, a “partner,” per news accounts.) This might sound like a small doctrinal problem for a fellow whose portfolio is overseeing doctrine, since the Church teaches that (1) homosexual acts are not rightly ordered; (2) sex outside of marriage is sinful; and (3) priests make a vow of celibacy. So Charamsa was 0-for-3.

But even that wasn’t the big problem. On October 3, Charamsa was removed from his post not because he was a priest engaged in an adulterous, homosexual affair in contradiction to his vows. No, Charamsa was removed because he was planning to lead a demonstration with a group of gay activists outside the Vatican as the synod convened in order to protest the Church’s “homophobia”—his word—and advocate that the synod recognize beautiful, healthy relationships like his. After all, as the Holy Father has said on the subject, “Who am I to judge?”

This may sound like an inauspicious start to Pope Francis’s great synod on the family. It might even sound as though certain factions have viewed the synod as a chance to re-write the Church’s teachings about the nature of marriage, family, and sexuality. But don’t worry, it’s much worse than that.

Two weeks after Charamsa was sacked, the pope’s supporters—the very ones who want to change Church doctrine—started leaking to the press that l’affaire Charamsa had been a conservative scheme to weaken Francis. Leonardo Boff, a theologian close to the pope, claimed that Charamsa’s protest was “a trap set by those on the right of the church who oppose the pope. . . . Because he didn’t do it in a simple way. But in a provocative way in order to create problems for the Synod and for Francis.”

Now that’s chaos.

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NEW YORK
Philipstown.info

October 17, 2015
Author will detail strategies for parents

Joelle Casteix will share age-specific strategies from her newly published book, The Well-Armored Child: A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Sexual Abuse, when she speaks at the Howland Public Library in Beacon at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 20.

Casteix, herself a survivor of abuse, is the volunteer western regional director for the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests and conducts training sessions for families, churches and community groups on how to protect children from predators.

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MARYLAND
Fox 8

[with video]

BY JEN STEER

BALTIMORE- A Cleveland-area rabbi will serve prison time after pleading guilty to sex offenses.

Frederick Martin Karp, the spiritual living director at the Menorah Park Center for Senior Living in Beachwood, was arrested earlier this year at JFK Airport in New York following a criminal investigation. Investigators said he molested a child in Maryland from 2009 to 2014.

According to the Baltimore County Circuit Court, Karp pleaded guilty to sexual abuse of a minor on Thursday.

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MARYLAND
Reuters

An Ohio rabbi has been sentenced to 22 years in prison after pleading guilty in Maryland to sexually abusing an underage girl, court documents showed.

Rabbi Frederick Karp, 51, of Beachwood, Ohio, was sentenced by a Baltimore County Circuit Court judge on Thursday. His sentence includes five years of supervised probation after release.

Karp pleaded guilty to sexual abuse of a minor and a third-degree sex offense, court filings showed. He was arrested in New York in January.

Baltimore County prosecutor Lisa Dever told the Cleveland Jewish News that the plea included charges from Cleveland based on events that allegedly occurred at Karp’s home. She said the three victims lived in Baltimore County at the time of the events.

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REPUBLICA DOMINICANA
El Nuevo Dia

AP

SANTO DOMINGO — El gobierno de Polonia notificó a las autoridades dominicanas sobre el inminente envío de indemnizaciones económicas para los seis monaguillos que fueron víctimas de abuso sexual por parte del sacerdote polaco Wojciech Gil, informó el viernes la Procuraduría general.

La institución dijo en un comunicado que recibió la información a través del departamento de Cooperación Jurídica Internacional de la fiscalía de Varsovia. Se abstuvo de precisar los detalles del pago de las indemnizaciones.

Luisa Liranzo, fiscal de la ciudad de Santiago y quien estuvo a cargo del proceso contra Gil en el país, indicó citada por la Procuraduría que se reunió con los representantes de las víctimas para informales sobre las indemnizaciones.

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AUSTRALIA
The Daily Examiner

A FORMER bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Grafton has been removed from holy orders on the recommendation of an independent Professional Standards Board.

Keith Slater had been Bishop of Grafton for 10 years until his resignation in May, 2013.

The deposition means Mr Slater no longer holds any ordained position, role or status within the Anglican Church of Australia and returns to being a lay member of the church.

The recommendation follows a hearing by the Board, headed by former Supreme Court judge, the Hon. Mr Moreton Rolfe QC.

The hearing related to the diocesan response to allegations of abuse at the North Coast Children’s Home in Lismore during the period 1940-1980 and claims for compensation.

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DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Dominican Today

Santiago.- Polish judicial authorities on Friday notified Dominican Republic´s Justice Ministry on the monetary compensation from the conviction of Wojciech Gil (Padre Alberto), whose sexual abuse victims hail from the highland town of Juncalito (central).

The local authorities were notified through a statement from the International Legal Cooperation Dept of Warsaw Province Office of the Prosecutor.

Once notified Santiago Judicial District prosecutor Luisa Liranzo met with the victims’ representatives to discuss the details of how to receive their compensation.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Christian Today

Czarina Ong 17 October 2015

Ronald Paquin was freed from jail after two medical specialists determined he does not currently meet the legal criteria for sexual dangerousness, despite his history, officials said.

Boston archbishop Cardinal Sean O’Malley has expressed dismay at the report that Ronald Paquin, a 72-year-old former Massachusetts priest who was convicted of raping a 12-year-old child, has been released from prison.

“We are disappointed in today’s ruling, particularly with concern for Ronald Paquin’s victims and all others who have experienced the reprehensible crime of the sexual abuse of minors,” he said.

O’Malley urged Paquin’s victims to come forward so that new cases could be filed for him to remain locked up in jail.

Paquin was sentenced to 12 to 15 years in prison, and he completed his sentence in May, officials said.

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UNITED STATES
Religion News Service – Rhymes with Religion

Boz Tchividjian | Oct 16, 2015

In the past years, we have heard many faith-based institutions announce the launching of independent investigations to address issues of past sexual abuse that have publicly surfaced. Whether it’s academic institutions, mission organizations, churches, or denominations, the term “independent investigation” has become almost fashionable.

When an organization is confronted with public allegations of child sexual abuse within their ranks, it finds itself under a bright spotlight as the watching world waits to see how it will respond.

All too often, the overriding institutional concern has very little to do with caring for the victims, but everything to do with protecting its reputation by doing everything it can to shut off the spotlight. This is often accomplished by announcing that the institution will launch an “independent” investigation. The organization proceeds to hire a private investigative group or law firm to investigate the matter with the hope that this process will calm everyone down and eventually turn off the spotlight. Because the motivation for this process can be based upon institutional self-preservation, many investigations labeled as “independent” are nothing more than “internal” investigations in disguise. An internal investigation allows the institution being investigated to stay in the driver’s seat, while an independent investigation requires that they get into the backseat with everyone else.

Institutions faced with this critical decision have to decide what is the ultimate aim of such an investigation. While an internal investigation offers an institution the opportunity for self-protection, an independent investigation offer an institution something far more profound. It offers the institution an opportunity to understand where it failed in order to demonstrate authentic repentance to those who have been hurt, and to make the necessary changes so that the same offenses are never repeated.

It is up to the watching public to make sure that these institutions are not misleading victims, witnesses, and other interested parties regarding the true nature of the investigation. Disguising an internal investigation as independent ultimately exploits and hurts abuse survivors who are told they are engaging in a particular type of process only to learn when it’s too late that they have unwittingly participated in something that will be used to protect the institution.

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MISSISSIPPI
Roman Catholic Diocese of Jackson

Posted on September 21, 2015 by Maureen Smith

Fr. Paul Madden began work with the Catholic Diocese of Jackson in 1970. Beginning in January 1984, Fr. Paul Madden began his assignment with the St. James Society, an international organization of diocesan missionary priests who volunteer their priestly lives to serve in Peru and Ecuador.

The Diocese became aware in December 1993 that Madden had abused a minor in the 1970s.

The Diocese informed the Society of St. James of the abuse. In February 2002, Fr. Madden resigned from the Society of St. James and began working in the Diocese of Chimpote, Peru.

The Diocese of Jackson informed the Bishop of Chimpote, Peru of the reported abuse. In July 2002, pursuant to the mandates of the “Dallas Charter” and the Diocese of Jackson’s of Jackson’s Protection of Children policies, the Diocese suspended the faculties of Fr. Paul Madden.

After the suspension, Fr. Madden sought incardination from the Bishop of Chimpote Diocese. In response to the Chimpote’s inquiries, the Diocese of Jackson again informed the Bishop of Chimpote of the abuse, as well as actions taken by the Diocese of Jackson, namely the suspension of his faculties.

A copy of the Dallas Charter in Spanish was sent to the Bishop of Chimpote. In April of 2004 the Bishop of Chimbote incardinated Paul Madden into the Diocese of Chimpote.

Other than the report of December 1993, the Diocese of Jackson has not received any additional complaints about Fr. Madden.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Star

By Jeremy Culley / Published 16th October 2015

Roberto Calvi was initially thought to have committed suicide after he was found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge On June 18, 1982.

Private investigators and journalists have claimed there was more to Calvi’s death than meets the eye.

It is alleged that he was profiting from vast sums of money being laundered by the Mafia and the Vatican.

The Vatican ran the only unregulated bank in the world. It is claimed this meant money in it could be invested, and the profits would not be subject to tax laws because Italian regulators could not see it.

The theory being put forward by Channel 5 show Murder at the Vatican – Conspiracy, which airs on Friday at 8pm, is that the Vatican needed Calvi to siphon Mafia money from its bank to a network of global companies so it would be free of Mafia association.

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MARYLAND
Cleveland Jewish News

Posted: Friday, October 16, 2015

ED WITTENBERG | STAFF REPORTER
ewittenberg@cjn.org

Rabbi Ephraim (Frederick) Karp was sentenced to 22 years in prison, and five years of supervised probation upon his release, after pleading guilty to sexual abuse of a minor and a third-degree sex offense Oct. 15 in Baltimore County Circuit Court.

Baltimore County Circuit Court Judge Robert E. Cahill Jr. sentenced Karp to 35 years, with all but 22 suspended.

Karp, 51, is former director of spiritual living at Menorah Park Center for Senior Living in Beachwood.

Baltimore County Prosecutor Lisa Dever, chief of the sex offense and child abuse division in the Baltimore County State’s Attorney’s Office, said the state was asking for a 35-year sentence for Karp, with all but five to be served in prison.

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ROME
International Movement We Are Church

To date more than 50 international Catholic organisations have signed an ‘Appeal to the Synodal Bishops’ due to meet in Rome in October 2015 to address major issues related to Catholic family life.

In a spirit of dialogue as urged by Pope Francis and motivated by the Spirit of God all of these organisations are calling on the bishops to listen attentively to what they are saying so as to make our Church a more compassionate family.

The outcomes from this Synod will have a critical bearing of the relevance of Catholicism to the needs of our time.

The Appeal outlines the fundamental problems experienced by Catholic families throughout the world:

The social and economic problems of the family should be widely discussed by the Synod, particularly those affecting the most vulnerable, children and women.

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NEW MEXICO
Gallup Independent

Published in the Gallup Independent, Gallup, N.M., Oct. 14, 2015

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

ALBUQUERQUE — When U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David T. Thuma made his decision not to invalidate the Diocese of Gallup’s property auction in Albuquerque after the public and media were barred from attending, Thuma said he based his decision partly on the written declarations of the auctioneer and one of the diocesan attorneys.

But were those declarations true?

On Oct. 6, the evening before Thuma held a hearing for diocesan attorneys to explain why the public and media were excluded, auctioneer Todd Good, the CEO and president of Accelerated Marketing Group, submitted a five page declaration to the court, signed under the penalty of perjury, stating that it was, and had been, Good’s custom and practice not to admit non-bidders to his property auctions in the past 33 years.

“This is because non-bidders do not increase bid prices,” Good stated in his declaration. “Rather, they have the potential to distract legitimate potential buyers, disrupt the auction, or chill bidding.”

Susan Boswell, the lead bankruptcy attorney for the Diocese of Gallup, also filed a written declaration under the penalty of perjury in support of Good’s actions.

“He informed me that this was his usual policy and procedure for the numerous court-ordered and bankruptcy auctions he had conducted in the past,” Boswell wrote of Good.

Public event

However, Arizona media reports about the Diocese of Tucson’s property auction challenge Good and Boswell’s statements to the court. In 2005, Boswell was also the lead bankruptcy attorney for the Tucson Diocese. As with the Diocese of Gallup bankruptcy case, Good was hired along with George H. “Hank” Amos III, CEO and president of Tucson Realty & Trust Co., to publicize and conduct a property auction for the Diocese of Tucson.

According to Tucson media reports, non-bidders, such as the press, were welcomed into the diocese auction.

A KOLD News 13 television news report, which is still posted online, was aired the day of the auction, May 21, 2005. The news story includes a photo of Good conducting the auction at his podium, which features a sign with Good’s company logo. The news report also includes quotes from three bidders the television reporter interviewed at the auction.

The next day the Arizona Daily Star featured a Sunday front page story about the event, complete with a news photograph focused on one man with his hand raised up to make a bid, sitting among rows of bidders. Reporter Carol Ann Alaimo, who confirmed in an email that she attended the auction, described in her article a festive scene with “merry strains of fiddle music and frenzied shouts of bidders.”

Alaimo also kept a running tally of the winning bids during the auction.

“An unofficial tally compiled by the Arizona Daily Star shows Saturday’s winning bids totaled at least $2.4 million,” she wrote. “That does not include a trio of sealed bids that could raise another million or more.”

Stephanie Innes was the Tucson newspaper’s religion reporter in 2005.

“We did not have a problem getting a reporter or photographer into the auction and it was clear from the start that this was a public event,” Innes said in an email Oct. 8. “I remember that we didn’t have to go to any particular extra effort to get in either, I worked with the diocese spokesman and he was fine with us going.”

First Amendment concerns

A third media report from Phoenix indicates Good allowed the press to attend a property auction in Mesa, Arizona. In an online news article dated March 17, 2008, a reporter for the Arizona Republic covered a property auction that attracted more than 400 people interested in bidding on 14 condominiums.

The article features a news photo of a family from Mesa sitting among rows of potential buyers, waiting for the auction to begin. In addition to interviewing three property buyers, the reporter also interviewed Good at the conclusion of the auction.

Contrary to these media reports, diocesan attorney Lori Winkelman reiterated Good’s declaration statements in comments she made to Thuma in court Oct. 7. Winkelman told the judge it was Good’s “customary practice” to never allow any non-bidder into his auctions.

“And it is his customary practice,” Winkelman said. “Mr. Good has been doing this over 30 years, he’s conducted thousands of sales. It is his practice to only admit qualified bidders. The reason for that is not nefarious or selective in anyway, it is simply that the goal is to maximize the recovery, and having anybody there who is not there to participate in the sale could potentially harm the recovery.”

Based on the media reports from Tucson and Phoenix, the Gallup Independent has written a letter of complaint to Thuma about the truthfulness of Good’s statements in his declaration. Although contacted by email Tuesday, Good, Boswell and Winkelman did not respond to requests for comment.

Susan Boe, executive director of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, has been following media reports about the Diocese of Gallup’s property auction.

“Although the Gallup Diocese is not a public body, its bankruptcy is a matter of public concern, and all proceedings, including auctions, need to be conducted before the public,” Boe said in an email Tuesday. “The exclusion of the press from the auction raises significant First Amendment concerns, especially when journalists reportedly were allowed to attend earlier auction sales conducted by the same auctioneer and law firm. Secrecy always raises questions about fairness and insider dealing.”

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MALTA
Malta Independent

A 44-year-old priest today was charged with defiling three boys, participating in sexual acts with minors and being in possession of child pornography.

Fr Donald Bellizzi, who is the airport chaplain, denied the charges and was remanded in custody

The priest, who lives in a Rabat convent, was arraigned before Magistrate Josette Demicoli. The court heard how he allegedly defiled the children between 2010 and 2013. The alleged victims are now between 18 and 19 years old.

Inspector Joseph Busuttil said the children were entrusted in his care and attended a vocation group. Five boys attended the group but only three made complaints about him.

Lawyer Giannella de Marco, appearing for the accused, said Fr Bellizzi was strongly contesting the charges being brought against him. Dr de Marco made a request for bail but the prosecution objected, arguing about the vulnerability of the witnesses. The alleged victims, they said, all lived in the vicinity of Rabat and there were other witnesses who were priests living at the same convent.

Dr de Marco said her client was prepared to move out of the convent to live with his parents in Gzira until the case was heard. The prosecution however objected, saying that until last week Fr Bellizzi was speaking to the family of one of the youths. The prosecution said the priest had sent a number of text messages to the mother asking why they had suddenly stopped speaking to him. His sister had also sent similar messages.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

16 October

On Friday 16 October 2015 Peter McKelvie resigned from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse’s Victims’ and Survivors Consultative Panel.

Statement from Peter McKelvie
I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that it would not be appropriate for me to continue in my role as a member of the Victims and Survivors Consultative Panel VSCP on the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA). I have today been advised that I am likely to be required as a witness in the Inquiry’s investigations, and that the Inquiry may need to examine my work in pursuing allegations of CSA. In those circumstances it would not be right for me to continue to act in a consultative capacity, providing advice to the Chair and the Inquiry Panel.

Statement from Hon. Lowell Goddard DNZM
I have accepted Peter McKelvie’s resignation as a member of the Victims and Survivors Consultative Panel (VSCP) on the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. I recognise and thank him for his contribution as part of the VSCP. I would also like to take this opportunity to stress that allegations concerning child sexual abuse related to Westminster are only one component of the Inquiry’s work. As I said in my opening statement the Inquiry’s terms of reference go far broader than this and encompass all institutions within England and Wales. This important work continues.

Statement from the Victims’ and Survivors’ Consultative Panel (VSCP)
Peter McKelvie has offered his resignation as a member of the VSCP based on his likely inclusion as a witness in the investigative work of the inquiry. We wish to express our gratitude to Peter for his enormous contribution to the work of our group and for his commitment over the last 30 years to protecting vulnerable children and victims.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

Ex-child protection officer Peter McKelvie has resigned as an advisor to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), the inquiry says.

Mr McKelvie said he left after being told he may be required as a witness during the inquiry’s investigations.

His information had led to Labour MP Tom Watson raising concerns over whether a minister had links to a past paedophile ring.

It was later reported that the police had found no evidence for such a claim.

The IICSA inquiry, sparked by claims of paedophiles operating in Westminster in the 1980s, will investigate whether “state and non-state institutions have failed in their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse and exploitation” in England and Wales.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Channel 4

Former child protection officer Peter McKelvie has resigned from his role as an adviser to the Goddard child abuse inquiry.

Mr McKelvie is seen as a key figure in the events leading up to the launch of the controversial police investigation into allegations of a Westminster paedophile ring.

He claimed last year that at least 20 prominent paedophiles, including former MPs and government ministers, abused children for “decades”.

In 2012, he contacted Labour MP Tom Watson, now deputy leader of the party, with his concerns. Mr Watson subsequently told the Commons that the police should investigate “clear intelligence suggesting a powerful paedophile network linked to parliament and No. 10”.

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UNITED KINGDOM
International Business Times

By Ewan Palmer
October 16, 2015

Peter McKelvie, a former child protection officer who acted as a “whistle-blower” to Labour MP Tom Watson when he first put forward allegations of a paedophile ring linked to Westminster, has resigned from the troubled inquiry into child abuse over after “conflict of interest” concerns.

Labour’s deputy leader Watson made the explosive allegations in the House of Commons in 2012 which claimed evidence had been seized in the 1990s containing “clear intelligence of a widespread paedophile ring” whose members had “links to a senior aide of a former prime minister”.

However, it recently emerged following an investigation by BBC’s Panorama the Met Police dropped the case just two months after Watson made the claims as there was “no evidence of offending linked to [the minister] held within the files”.

Watson’s allegations were based on information fed to him by McKelvie who had a “long experience of working in social work and child protection”. Despite being told the minister in question was cleared of the claims in 2012, McKelvie wrote to the prime minister to give his reasons for contacting Watson in 2012, and also to Lord Goddard, head of the abuse inquiry, to describe his appointment to government as “utter contempt for the survivors of child sexual abuse”.

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier-Mail

DAVID MURRAY THE COURIER-MAIL OCTOBER 17, 2015

IN MAY, 2000, three police officers were shot in a pre-dawn ambush at Chermside in Brisbane’s north. Miraculously, the officers survived. But the aftermath would change hundreds more lives when it emerged the gunman, Nigel Parodi, had gone off the rails after being sexually abused as a student at elite private school Brisbane Grammar.

Parodi’s abuser was the school’s revered former counsellor, Kevin Lynch, and it soon emerged scores of other boys had fallen victim at Grammar and his subsequent workplace, St Paul’s School at Bald Hills.

Fifteen years later, another damaged man lashed out last week over events connected to the same two schools, again with deadly consequences. On this occasion the weapon used was not a rifle. It was a blog.

For some time a former unionist and talented Brisbane writer, Brenden Sheehan, had written a controversial blog under the pseudonym, Archie Butterfly. His prolific, take-no-prisoners posts gave his often scathing take on politics, sport and current affairs. But on Tuesday, October 6, Sheehan used the blog to publish a searing personal story of being drugged and sexually abused when he was a teenager.

His post followed a public announcement by The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that it would next month hold hearings into the abuse of children at Brisbane Grammar and St Paul’s from the 1970s to 1990s.

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UNITED STATES
America Magazine

October 26, 2015 Issue
James Martin, S.J.

I try not to write too often about working with the media because it can sound like “Look at me, I’m on TV.” It is also a threat to humility, an occupational hazard for anyone who has ever appeared in print or on television. Nonetheless, part of our ministry at America is helping the so-called secular media. In the words of John Courtney Murray, S.J. (or Pedro Arrupe, S.J, or Daniel Lord, S.J., or St. Ignatius Loyola, depending on your “sourcing”), one way to understand the work of Jesuits and our colleagues is that we help explain the church to the world and the world to the church.

During Pope Francis’ visit to the United States last month, then, many of us at America spent time assisting the secular media. For me, it was a great grace to follow the pope from Washington to New York to Philadelphia, and I also had a delightful time working with the mainstream media—mainly ABC News.

At the same time, in every city I heard comments from fellow Catholics that reminded me that not everyone thinks as positively as I do about the media. So I thought I’d share with you, based on 15 years’ experience, reflections on the most common complaints.

The media is anti-Catholic. Now, I have occasionally run into journalists in print, online, on the radio and on television (as well as editors of newspapers, magazines and websites, and producers of news programs) who have an antipathy to our church. Nonetheless, the vast majority do not and simply want to get the story right. And when it comes to religion reporters, I can say categorically that I’ve never met a single one who is anti-Catholic. By contrast, as a result of years of reporting, religion reporters have encountered so many inspiring bishops, priests, brothers, sisters and lay Catholics that they usually have an abiding affection for the church. Indeed, non-Catholic religion reporters may know more about the Catholic Church than the average Catholic. For they have met sisters who work in the slums, priests who spend long hours in the confessional, brothers who teach patiently in classrooms and committed lay leaders dedicated to helping others.

Also, it’s important to distinguish between attacks on the church and critiques of it. When The Boston Globe ran its extensive series of articles on the sexual abuse crisis in the early 2000s, for example, Cardinal Bernard Law, then archbishop of Boston, said he “called down the power of God on the Boston media…particularly The Globe.” But although The National Catholic Reporter ran a remarkable series of articles on abuse in the 1990s, and some of the pieces that ran in The Globe were unfair, their coverage overall was not only fair; but it is in large part because of The Globe that the church in the United States was forced to confront the abuse crisis. The church both deserved criticism and benefited by it.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

OCTOBER 17, 2015

Dan Box
Crime Reporter
Sydney

At least seven former pupils of a Catholic boarding school in northern NSW have killed themselves amid allegations of sexual abuse by staff that have led to one former teacher being convicted this month, while another will face court next week.

The school’s former discipline master, Richard O’Connor, was sentenced to 10 years in jail for a series of often brutal sexual ­assaults during the late 1970s and 80s, including on one boy who was raped, then caned while lying on the bed. Another former teacher at St John’s College, James Sampson Doran, will face Lismore District Court on Wednesday after being charged with about 40 offences, including sexual and indecent assaults on 10 former pupils of the school.

Mr Doran later became principal of a Catholic boarding school in Abergowrie, in far north Queensland, where many of the pupils came from remote Aboriginal communities across the state. While in that role, he employed a former pupil from St John’s College, who was himself subsequently charged with sexual abuse.

At the time both teachers were working at St John’s College, in Woodlawn near Lismore, northern NSW, it was run by the Marist Fathers Catholic order and provided boarding places to several hundred high-school boys from rural communities.

Seven former pupils who were taught there during the period O’Connor was offending have since committed suicide, with friends, family and police linking at least three of these deaths ­directly to his abuse.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Thomas Reese | Oct. 15, 2015

VATICAN CITY
The synod on the family has created a lot of interest in the church and spilled a lot of ink (or electrons) in the media, but there are five reasons that it was doomed to fail before the bishops even gathered in Rome Oct. 4. Perhaps Pope Francis can perform a miracle and save it, but the odds are against him.

First, the topic of the synod, “the family,” is too broad.

The family touches everything and is touched by everything. Anything bad in the world affects families, and any problems in families affect the societies in which they live.

Social and economic factors impact families: unemployment, housing, war, terrorism, climate change, interreligious differences, consumerism, social media, education, and on and on. Every problem in the world has an impact on families, from addictions to political corruption.

Scores of moral issues surround the family, everything from the sexual act itself to fidelity, abortion, contraception, surrogate mothers, homosexuality, divorce, gender equality, child abuse, spousal violence, and so on.

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LATIN AMERICA
GlobalPost

Will Carless on Oct 16, 2015

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — One month ago, GlobalPost published a lengthy investigation into Catholic clergy who have been accused of sexual abuse in the United States or Europe, yet continue to work as priests in remote South American dioceses.

Two of the priests have been suspended from their posts since our reporting. Another appears to have moved to a different country, and an admitted child molester continues to work at a church in Peru. A fifth priest we investigated had already left the church for personal reasons when GlobalPost caught up with him.

We still haven’t received any response from either the Vatican or Cardinal Sean O’Malley, who heads up the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

Here’s our one-month update on the status of the fugitive fathers featured in our report:

Jan Van Dael, in Fortaleza, Brazil
Status: Suspended

According to the Diocese of Fortaleza’s website, Belgian priest Jan Van Dael was suspended shortly after GlobalPost started asking questions about him on a reporting trip to Fortaleza earlier this year.

Miguel Brandao, the archdiocese’s pastoral secretary, confirmed in a phone interview that Van Dael has had his faculties removed and may no longer celebrate mass at local churches.
“He can attend church, just like any Catholic, but he cannot celebrate mass or participate in any way as a priest,” Brandao said. “He does not have any parish here in Fortaleza.”

Federico Fernandez Baeza, in Cartagena, Colombia
Status: Suspended

Colombian priest Federico Fernandez Baeza was working at a university in Cartagena when GlobalPost attempted to confront and film him earlier this year. Fernandez avoided our cameras, but we did speak with various university officials and filmed interviews with students in front of the university.

After GlobalPost revealed Fernandez’s past to university officials, the university immediately suspended him, said Hector Eduardo Lugo, the most senior Franciscan official in Colombia.

“We ordered him to leave the university,” Lugo said in a phone interview. “We didn’t know about his past. We weren’t his superiors at the time he returned to Colombia.”

Lugo said Fernandez is also currently being investigated internally by church lawyers in Colombia, who will, in turn, send a report to the Vatican. For the time being, Fernandez is being housed in a treatment facility for sick priests outside the city of Medellin, Lugo said.

GlobalPost called Fernandez at the treatment center. When a reporter introduced himself, the priest hung up the phone.

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ROME
Commonweal

Robert Mickens
October 14, 201

It has been known for quite some time that a number of cardinals and bishops, both in Rome and abroad, are—to put it mildly—uncomfortable with the way Pope Francis’s pontificate is unfolding.

Well, this week it all spilled out into the open when it was unveiled that several cardinals—including three top Vatican officials (Cardinals Pell, Müller and Sarah)—wrote a letter to the Pope that basically criticized the way he is running the Synod of Bishops.

One should be magnanimous and give these birds credit for being honest with the Pope and telling him their concerns. (They were not happy that the public found out, which is another story.) But one should also be aware that, at least some of these prelates, are active ringleaders of an opposition to Francis.

As the Vatican II-minded theologian, Enzo Bianchi, noted this week in the Rome daily, La Repubblica, they have at times waged a fierce battle.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

A former bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Grafton has been stripped of any standing within the church over his handling of allegations of abuse at the North Coast Children’s Home.

Keith Slater was Bishop of Grafton for 10 years until his resignation in May of 2013.

He quit the post after admitting he put the finances of the church ahead of the interests of 40 victims.

They were men and women who had been sexually, physically and or psychologically abused at the North Coast Children’s Home in Lismore between the 1940s and the 1980s.

A compensation battle was settled in 2007 for 38 of the victims.

They received varying amounts ranging from $5,000 to $20,000 after a drawn-out process which some described as traumatic.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

October 16, 2015

Michael Koziol
Journalist

Pope Francis is dealing with a Rats in the Ranks-style mutiny aboard the good ship Vatican. The right faction, led in this case by Australia’s penny-counting Cardinal George Pell, is rebelling against a perceived shift to the liberal left during a three-week meeting of theologians in Rome.

The Synod of Bishops, which is to determine the church’s policy and rhetoric on familial matters, is particularly vexed about whether to grant Communion to divorced Catholics who have remarried.

Punishing divorcees might be considered something of a breach of taste in some circles, but for conservative Catholics it is an article of faith. And like a disgruntled backbench, the cardinals weren’t content to sit around and watch history pass them by. So they reached for the oldest trick in the book – a polite but firm ultimatum to their leader, duly leaked to the media.

Veteran Vatican-watcher Sandro Magister reported that 13 cardinals had signed the letter to Pope Francis, including Pell, who delivered it. A version of the text, which may not have been the final composition, was published by the Italian magazine L’espresso, revealing that the disaffected group felt the synod lacked “openness and genuine collegiality”.

“A number of fathers feel the new process seems designed to facilitate predetermined results on important disputed questions,” they wrote. The fathers did not fail to note the “collapse of liberal Protestant churches” that had jettisoned too many hard-core Christian beliefs.

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VATICAN CITY
Religion News Service

David Gibson | October 16, 2015

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Ever since a Vatican summit last year opened a debate making the church more open to those whose lives may not mirror the Catholic ideal, conservative foes have waged an intense campaign to block any reforms from being adopted at a follow-up meeting that Pope Francis convened this month.

Yet as the three-week meeting, called a synod, has progressed, the enthusiasm of the traditionalists may be overwhelming their tactical judgment, and by overplaying their hand they may have weakened what was once considered a strong position.

The most public, and embarrassing, episode came this week with the leak of a private letter to the pope from 13 conservative cardinals.

In the letter, the senior churchmen complained that Francis had set up this meeting of 270 bishops from around the world in a way that would favor reformers who want, for example, to adopt a new approach to gays and lesbians or find a way that divorced and remarried Catholics could receive Communion.

Several cardinals quickly denied signing the letter, and others said the letter they signed was a bit different from the leaked version, though they did not say how.

That sent synod delegates and Vatican-watching media into a frenzy of speculation, until it was reported that there were in fact 13 signers, only some of them were different from those originally claimed.

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ITALIA
la Repubblica

[Priest Don Mauro Inzoli has been accused of abusing five minors and has sought a plea bargain.]

di MATTEO PUCCIARELLI

Aveva chiesto il patteggiamento, ma il gip non l’ha formalizzato: per don Mauro Inzoli nei prossimi giorni verrà fissata l’udienza preliminare che dovrà decidere sul suo rinvio a giudizio. Le accuse erano note e sono gravissime: l’ex numero uno di Comunione e Liberazione in Lombardia avrebbe abusato sessualmente di cinque minori tra il 2004 e il 2008, in tutto otto episodi contestati; mentre altri quindici sono caduti in prescrizione. Rischia 12 anni di reclusione.

Don Inzoli all’epoca dei fatti era rettore del liceo linguistico Shakespeare di Crema, parroco della Santissima Trinità della stessa cittadina nonché presidente del Banco Alimentare. Proprio grazie a questi ruoli che lo rendevano un “idolo meritevole di venerazione” (ha raccontato uno dei giovani) don Inzoli avrebbe avuto la capacità di assoggettare i minori.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail

By RICHARD SPILLETT

Information provided by victims to the independent child abuse inquiry has been deleted, it emerged today.

The inquiry admitted that, due to a change in its website address, any submissions through an online form between September 14 and October 2 was ‘instantly and permanently deleted’ before it reached staff.

The information erased in the blunder had been given to the ‘share your experience’ section of the website.

The website was set up for victims and survivors wanting to share their experiences with officials working on the probe.

Those who provided details between the two dates have now been asked to resubmit their information.

The inquiry apologised for the incident and stressed that no material was at risk of disclosure.

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NEW YORK
New York Times

By BENJAMIN MUELLER
OCT. 16, 2015

The founder and longtime pastor at Word of Life Christian Church shamed congregants from the pulpit, dredging up old sins and recounting them at Sunday services in humiliating detail, a former member said.

He demanded they redo the floors and fix the plumbing in his living quarters, day after day for hours, until they felt numb from sleep deprivation. Members who raised questions were put on church discipline and forbidden to speak to others.

And the founder, Jerry Irwin, taught hate, using racial slurs during sermons, according to the former member, Chadwick Handville.

In the aftermath of the brutal beating at Word of Life Christian Church in central New York that left one teenage congregant dead and his younger brother seriously injured this week, investigators have been trying to understand how that violent episode may have grown out of what some described as a church culture of secrecy and isolation.

Mr. Handville, who defected from the church in 2000 after a decade of praying and working there and who now lives in Phoenix, offered the first detailed public account since the teenager’s death of what happened behind the church’s locked gates and thick row of hedges.

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NEW YORK
Observer-Dispatch

By Philip A. Vanno Posted Oct. 15, 2015

For the past 15 years, Chadwick M. Handville has done everything he could to forget the time he spent as a member, worship leader and trustee at the Word of Life Christian Church in Chadwicks.

But despite his best efforts, which have included everything from seeking spiritual healing to moving clear across the country to Phoenix, the 46-year-old has not been able to escape the damage that 10 years of living in a “Hollywood nightmare” has wrought on his life.

“It was horrible,” said Handville, who has divorced his wife — whom he met at the Church — and lost touch with his stepchildren since leaving the church in June 2000. “There was constant manipulation, intimidation, fear and lies. And seeing what has happened now all over the news, it’s bringing it all back to the surface.”

Tragedy struck the church this week with the death of 19-year-old Lucas Leonard and the beating of his 17-year-old brother Christopher Leonard. The boys’ parents, Bruce and Deborah Leonard of Clayville, have been charged with manslaughter in Lucas’ death.

Four other members of the church — Joseph Irwin, 26, of Chadwicks; David Morey, 26, and Linda Morey, 54, both of Utica; and the Leonards’ daughter Sarah Ferguson, 33, also of Clayville — are charged with felony second-degree assault in what officials have labeled as a counseling session that went terribly wrong.

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NEW YORK
Seattle Times

By Rick Rojas
BENJAMIN MUELLER
The New York Times

CLAYVILLE, N.Y. — The pastor of a secretive church in central New York was holding a meeting to address concerns that a young congregant wanted to defect when other church members began to beat him in an attack that eventually stretched over 10 hours, a prosecutor said Thursday.

The congregant, Lucas Leonard, 19, later died, and his younger brother, Christopher Leonard, 17, remained hospitalized Thursday with serious injuries inflicted during the beating, which, authorities said, started after Sunday services and lasted until early Monday. The brothers’ parents were charged with manslaughter in the death. Four other adults, including the victims’ half-sister, are charged with assault in the younger brother’s beating.

A police spokesman said counseling sessions like the one that preceded Lucas Leonard’s death were routine at Word of Life Church in New Hartford and were meant to deal with questions about adherents’ spiritual standing. The spokesman said investigators had no indication the sessions had led to beatings before.

Defense lawyers for the brothers’ parents, Bruce Leonard, 65, and Deborah Leonard, 59, offered a different account of the meeting, describing it as a family gathering to discuss the brothers’ behavior toward relatives and church members. A lawyer for Deborah Leonard, Devin Garramone, said, “It had something to do with the boys maybe touching some of the other children in the church.”

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CHILE
24 Horas

[The Supreme Court of Chile has approved a request that the Vatican be asked to turn over information on the canonical investigation of priest Fernando Karadima.]

Por Marian Basso

Este jueves mediante un escrito redactado por el ministro de fuero subrogante Mauricio Silva que lleva el juicio civil en contra del arzobispado se solicitó al Vaticano la entrega de antecedentes relativos a la indagatoria realizada en 2011 a Fernando Karadima por abusos sexuales.

La petición inicial de estos informes fue realizada el pasado 1 de octubre por la defensa del arzobispado liderada por Nicolás Luco. En el escrito, el abogado indica que esta información es relevante para el punto cinco de la demanda que refiere a la “actitud del arzobispado de Santiago al tomar noticia de las efectuadas por los demandantes ante los abusos de que fueron objeto”.

La Corte Suprema deberá solicitar estos antecedentes a través de un exhorto internacional a la Santa Sede. El abogado de las víctimas de Karadima, Juan Pablo Hermosilla, se mostró conforme con la petición del arzobispado.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

Child sex abuse victims have been asked to resubmit information to an inquiry after it was accidentally deleted.

Online forms were deleted due to a “change in our website address”, the Goddard Inquiry into historical abuse said on its website.

Forms submitted to the inquiry’s “share you experience” page from 14 September to 2 October had been lost, it said.

It apologised for “any inconvenience or distress”, but said no information was “at risk of disclosure”.

The statement does not indicate how many submissions were deleted – or whether the number is known by inquiry staff.

The inquiry, sparked by claims of paedophiles operating in Westminster in the 1980s, will investigate whether “state and non-state institutions have failed in their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse and exploitation” in England and Wales.

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UNITED STATES
Stetson University Today

October 14, 2015

No one wanted to think about it.

Tasked with the job of prosecuting perpetrators of the unthinkable, Basyle “Boz” Tchividjian BA ’90 watched his peers do what they could to avoid handling cases of child sexual abuse.

But as a young assistant state attorney handling a variety of criminal cases, Tchividjian couldn’t ignore the horror of those that violated children. When he volunteered to aggressively prosecute all of the 7th Judicial Circuit’s child sex abuse cases, the state attorney approved and established a sex-crimes unit that handled hundreds of cases, a third of them involving children.
It was the start of a lifelong passion for fighting child sexual abuse.

“As I was prosecuting, you really see the cases up close,” says Tchividjian. “You see the victims, the families, the devastation, but you also deal with the offenders. You see common characteristics and behaviors, and get a comprehensive picture of this offense.”

The issue remained heavy on his heart as he went into private practice in 2001. “What do I do with all of this information that I learned in the trenches?” Tchividjian asked himself.

It wasn’t until a Wisconsin newspaper reporter called his law office that his calling became clear.

According to the reporter, five years earlier a Milwaukee father had reported to his church pastor that his young daughter was sexually abused by another congregation member. The pastor invited the father to meet with the offender, who cried, asked for forgiveness, and confessed gratefulness that he had been caught. Convinced of his repentance, the pastor asked the father to forgive the offender and not report the matter to police. The father agreed.

By the time the journalist contacted Tchividjian, the offender had since abused at least six more children in the church since the original incident. That was the moment Boz decided to educate Christians on how to protect its youngest members from such abuse.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston.com

[with video]

By Allison Pohle @AllisonPohle Video by Ryan Breslin
Boston.com Staff | 10.15.15

Nancy Shilts looked beyond the open doors of St. Frances X Cabrini Church Wednesday afternoon during her vigil shift. Dark clouds hung in the sky, but she couldn’t stop searching for what she called a “sign from heaven,” that something good was going to happen.

It never came.

When she left the Scituate church that night, the sky was still dark. She had just heard the news that she and the other parishioners of the church had lost their appeal. The state appeals court ruled that the parishioners of St. Frances X. Cabrini Church were trespassing, and would need to leave.

They haven’t.

About 100 parishioners—known as the “Friends of St. Frances X. Cabrini”—have kept a 24-7 vigil inside their beloved church for nearly 11 years. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston decided to shutter the church in 2004 as part of its reorganization plan, but the group had other ideas. They’ve made sure at least one member of the church is inside at all times to prevent the archdiocese from closing it. …

St. Frances X Cabrini was one of many churches the archdiocese decided to close in 2004. Carmody said this was directly tied to the clergy sexual abuse scandal, when scores of Catholics left the church and the parishes didn’t have enough funds to keep the doors open.

Carmody said two priests accused of sexual abuse have ties to the church. Thomas Forry was defrocked, and she said another unnamed priest left the church and reached a settlement with the victim’s family.

“The archdiocese will have you believe this is a separate issue, but it really isn’t,” Rogers said.

“The closing of the church is in a lineage of reactions. We here want to make sure there are no more victims and that churches are not sold off to repay the cost of sexual abuse. You don’t get to abuse children and then steal our church to pay for your sins.”

The clergy sexual abuse scandal is directly tied to the devotion the parishioners have for their church, he said.

“We ask: When does the pain stop?” Rogers said. “The pain the families have gone through is only exacerbated by the fact that you want to tear down this church. That’s where our inner anger comes from. That’s why we’re still here.”

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MASSACHUSETTS
WCVB

SCITUATE, Mass. —Scituate parishioners who have kept their closed church open for years are vowing to continue their fight after their appeal was denied.

Margy O’Brien, 85, is trespassing. She doesn’t mince words speaking about how she feels about the archdiocese.

“Dismayed, disrespected but by golly, we are going to fight this,” she said.

Parishioners of St Frances X. Cabrini have stayed in the church 24/7. Vigils have held off the closure of the church for 11 years — that’s more than 4,000 days of defiance.

The group was dealt a legal blow Wednesday when the Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled that they are trespassers and that the Boston Archdiocese may order them to leave.

The group said the church sex abuse crisis motivates them to keep fighting.

“I wonder if (Cardinal Sean) O’Malley knows how many priests assigned to St. Frances were abusers?” attorney Mary Elizabeth Carmody said.

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MASSACHUSETTS
CBS Boston

SCITUATE (CBS/AP) – A group of the parishioners who have held a vigil at their closed church for more than a decade is asking for mercy from Cardinal Sean O’Malley.

The Massachusetts Appeals Court affirmed a judge’s ruling Wednesday that parishioners at St. Frances X. Cabrini Church in Scituate are trespassing on property owned by the Archdiocese of Boston.

The archdiocese shut down the church in 2004 as part of a reorganization effort to pay financial settlements in the priest sex abuse crisis. The parishioners have fought the closing by occupying it for 24 hours a day for the last 11 years.

Legally they can continue their fight with a petition that must be filed in the next two weeks.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Reuters

SCITUATE, MASS. | BY SCOTT MALONE

Parishioners who have occupied their Massachusetts church for 11 years to prevent the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston from closing it vowed on Thursday to continue their vigil despite a ruling by the state’s top court that they are trespassing.

A group of parishioners of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Church in Scituate said they would keep up their 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week vigil, the last and longest-running of a half dozen mounted by Boston-area parishes targeted for closure early in the Church’s sexual abuse crisis.

“We’re disappointed,” said Jon Rogers, a leader of the vigil, in response to Wednesday’s decision by Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court that the group has no legal standing to remain in the brick building constructed in the 1960s.

“There’s a lot of anger in this room,” he said, standing in front of a stained-glass window in the church with about a dozen fellow parishioners, most in their 60s and 70s. “There’s still a lot of commitment here.”

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MASSACHUSETTS
WGBH

[with audio]

By CRAIG LEMOULT

Parishioners at a shuttered Catholic church in Scituate say they will continue their 11 year vigil there, despite an Appeals Court ruling this week that said they’re trespassing.

The parishioners leading the vigil to keep open St. Francis Cabrini were undaunted by this week’s ruling. They say they plan to file for a rehearing with the Appeals Court, as well as filing a petition the state Supreme Judicial Court. And if those don’t go their way, they say they’re willing to bring their case to federal courts. The Archdiocese of Boston announced plans to close St. Francis in 2004 because of declining attendance, too few priests, and financial problems compounded by settlements from the clergy sex-abuse scandal.In a press conference, members of the parish said it’s wrong to close their church to pay for those settlements. In a statement, the Archdiocese asked the parishioners to respect the court’s decision and conclude the vigil.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Wicked Local Scituate

By Ruth Thompson
rthompson@wickedlocal.com

Posted Oct. 15, 2015

SCITUATE

The Friends of St. Frances X. Cabrini, Inc. are reaching out to Cardinal Sean O’Malley for mercy after the state Appeals Court upheld a ruling stating parishioners are trespassing.

“Pope Francis has introduced the year of mercy,” said Maryellen Rogers, a spokesperson for the Friends along with her husband, Jon. “Mercy is very dear to the Pope. We ask Cardinal O’Malley for mercy. This church is very important. The people of this community have dedicated their hearts and souls.”

On Oct. 14 a ruling by the Norfolk Superior Court was upheld by the state appeals court stating the Friends, who have been holding vigil at the Hood Street property since 2004 when the Archdiocese of Boston closed the church as part of its reorganization plan, were trespassing.

Maryellen called the Oct. 14 decision “heartbreaking.”

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe

By Laura Crimaldi and Andy Rosen GLOBE STAFF OCTOBER 15, 2015

SCITUATE — A group of Roman Catholic parishioners called on Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley Thursday to reverse plans to close the church where they’ve held a vigil for nearly 11 years.

The statements from members of Friends of St. Frances X. Cabrini came at a news conference a day after the Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled that they are trespassers and the Boston Archdiocese, as the owner of the property, has the right to order them to leave.

The group, which members say numbers around 100, is still considering its legal options. An attorney said members could seek further review by the appeals court or ask the Supreme Judicial Court to hear an appeal.

The group also called on O’Malley, the leader of the Roman Catholic church in Boston, to visit the church and reconsider the closure.

“We’re disappointed. I can say there’s a lot of anger in this room,” vigil leader Jon Rogers said Thursday. “Everyone believes that this is self-centered. Indeed it is not.”

Members of the vigil say O’Malley has not spoken to them about the clergy sex abuse scandal, which they say affected their parish.

“You don’t get to abuse children and then steal our church to pay for your sins,” Rogers said Thursday.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

The Anglican Diocese of Newcastle has revealed a now dead priest, who once worked across the Hunter region, was a paedophile.

Bishop Greg Thompson released a statement overnight saying the Diocesan Professional Standards Office had verified information the late Hunter Valley reverend Michael Cooper had engaged in sexual abuse of children.

Before he died in 2007, he worked in the parishes of East Maitland, Telarah/Rutherford, Mount Vincent/Weston, Cessnock/Wollombi, Hamilton and Waratah.

Bishop Thompson said, as well as the abuse, Cooper supplied alcohol and prohibited drugs to minors.

A private meeting was held in Rutherford overnight where parishioners were informed of the revelation.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Sky News

By Tom Parmenter, Sky News Correspondent

The Goddard Inquiry into historical child sexual abuse has apologised after information provided by survivors was destroyed before it was even looked at.

A website glitch was blamed for the error, which was described as “unacceptable” by campaigners and people who had been abused.

The inquiry, which is only just getting under way, is led by New Zealand judge Lowell Goddard and will examine institutional failings over child sexual abuse over many decades.

A statement on the Goddard Inquiry website said: “Due to a change in our website address to www.iicsa.org.uk on 14 September, any information submitted to the inquiry between 14 September and 2 October through the online form on the ‘share your experience’ page of our website was instantly and permanently deleted before it reached our engagement team.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

15 October

Due to a change in our website address to www.iicsa.org.uk on 14 September, any information submitted to the Inquiry between 14 September and 2 October through the online form on the “Share your experience” page of our website, was instantly and permanently deleted before it reached our engagement team.

We are very sorry for any inconvenience or distress this will cause and would like to reassure you that no information was put at risk of disclosure or unauthorised access. Due to the security measures on our website, your information cannot be found or viewed by anyone else as it was immediately and permanently destroyed.

We would like to apologise again to anyone who submitted details to the Inquiry during this time and to ask you to please resubmit your information through the online form. Alternatively you can call the Inquiry helpline on 0800 917 1000 to submit your information over the phone, or email our team at contact@iicsa.org.uk.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Rajeev Syal
Thursday 15 October 2015

Information provided by alleged child abuse victims to the overarching inquiry set up by Theresa May has been deleted due to a blunder, it has emerged.

Submissions sent through an online form to the inquiry between 14 September and 2 October were “instantly and permanently deleted” on Thursday before it reached staff.

The information had been sent to the “share your experience” section of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse (IICSA) website, set up for victims and survivors wanting to share their experiences with officials working on the probe.

Those who provided details between the two dates have now been asked to resubmit their information. The inquiry apologised for the incident and stressed that no material was at risk of disclosure.

The inquiry – set up last July following claims of a high-level cover-up of abuse – has been beset by delays following the resignation of two previous chairwomen, Lady Butler-Sloss and and Fiona Woolf.

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ROME
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor October 15, 2015

ROME — Crux owes Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier of Durban, South Africa, an apology. Although it’s coming later than it should, this piece is intended to deliver it.

Although it largely got lost amid a bigger controversy this week over a letter signed by several cardinals objecting to elements of the process at the 2015 Synod of Bishops, a smaller row broke out Tuesday over a Crux piece published the day before in which Napier was quoted as saying he shared concerns over a drafting committee for the synod’s final document, “challenging Pope Francis’ right to choose them.”

The interview was conducted by my Crux colleague, Inés San Martín, on Monday, who recorded it on her smartphone and then transcribed it. I listened to the recording and confirmed the transcript. What both of us heard was the following:

“One of the concerns was, and this I really would share, is the choice of the people that are drawing up the document, challenging Pope Francis’ right to choose them. If we’re going to get a fair expression of what the synod is about, what the Church in Africa really would like to see happening, we wouldn’t like to see the same kind of people on that committee that were there the last time, that caused us the grief that we had.”

At about 9 a.m. Tuesday, Napier called San Martín to say he had not challenged the pope’s right to make the appointments. Since that part of the recording was a bit unclear, we removed the line from the story.

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ROME
Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

Thu, Oct 15, 2015

Dublin abuse survivor Marie Collins has said she is satisfied that attempts by Chilean Catholic Church leaders to prevent another survivor becoming a member of the Vatican’s commission for the protection of minors was not a factor in him not being appointed. The commission met at the Vatican last week.

It emerged from leaked emails published in the Chilean media last month that Archbishop of Santiago Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati Andrello and his predecessor Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz Osso attempted to block survivor Juan Carlos Cruz from being appointed to the commission. The church in Chile confirmed the emails were authentic.

Mr Cruz, an active child protection campaigner in Chile, had accused Cardinal Errazuriz of covering up the crimes of the priest who abused him. The cardinal, one of Pope Francis’s nine-member Council of Cardinals, acknowledged in court that he failed to act on abuse allegations against the relevant priest because he believed them to be untrue.

Ms Collins had proposed Mr Cruz for membership of the Vatican Commission but he was not appointed. When the leaked emails between the two cardinals were published in Chile’s El Mostrador newspaper she said she was personally “disgusted at the attitude displayed by these leaders in the church to the pontifical commission and to a survivor of abuse”. …

Disappointment

On a separate matter she repeated her disappointment in Pope Francis after it emerged he had defended his appointment of another Chilean bishop accused of covering-up child abuse involving the same priest who abused Mr Cruz.

Mr Cruz alleged Bishop Juan Barros, appointed by the pope to the diocese of Osorno in Chile last March, had actually witnessed abuse by the priest.

In a video filmed in St Peter’s Square last May, the pope defended the appointment when asked by Chilean pilgrims.

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ROME
National Post

Alice Philipson, The Telegraph | October 15, 2015

Conservatives within the Catholic Church are trying to lay “poisoned bait” for Pope Francis, it has been claimed, just days after he faced a rebellion from Vatican cardinals opposed to his more liberal stance.

With the Pope mid-way through a family summit dogged by scandal and rumours of plotting, Italian newspapers reported on schemes to destabilise Francis. Nello Scavo, a journalist at Avvenire, a daily linked to the Church, told La Repubblica there was a concerted move to “weaken the character and the strength of Pope Francis.”

“There is an ideological battle, it is true,” said Scavo, the author of a new book entitled The Enemies of Francis. “There have also been some inside the curia who have tried to lay poisoned bait for Francis.”

He cited the example of Krzysztof Charamsa, a senior Vatican official and Polish priest, who came out publicly as gay just a day before the summit began, criticising what he called “institutionalised homophobia in the Church.”

Charamsa also claimed that a majority of priests were gay, after which he was sacked.

Leonardo Boff, a theologian who has close ties with the Pope, told Oggi magazine it was “a trap set by those on the Right of the Church who oppose the Pope.”

“Because he [Charamsa] didn’t do it in a simple way,” he added. “But in a provocative way in order to create problems for the Synod and for Francis.”

On Monday the three-week debate — tackling issues such as homosexuality and divorce — was thrown into chaos as a rebellious letter to Pope Francis signed by 13 cardinals was leaked to Italy’s L’Espresso magazine.

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VATICAN CITY
BBC News

By David Willey
BBC News, Rome

At the midway point of one of the most significant Vatican meetings since the Second Vatican Council half a century ago uncertainty reigns among the nearly 300 participants – most of them celibate male clerics – about what it will or can accomplish.

Pope Francis is being challenged by some powerful cardinals holding key posts inside the Vatican who fear for their careers, as a smaller group of clerics who support his reforms are pushing for change.

The Pope has been warning darkly against unspecified “conspiracies” and “scandals” by lobbies who are playing a new role in Church politics. The existence of a so called “gay lobby” inside the Vatican has been confirmed by the outing of a gay priest who decided to go public on the eve of the opening of the Synod, causing shock and embarrassment to the organisers.

Pope Francis is the first Pope ever to utter the word “gay” in public.

Hitherto, a deep taboo has prevailed on the subject of homosexuality and homophobia. Pope Francis is recommending a more merciful and less judgmental attitude towards gays who want to remain inside the church.

One synod participant, the Archbishop of Brisbane in Australia, Mark Coleridge, has been blogging throughout the conference giving a refreshingly candid view of the discussions.

He has complained, however, about “lack of focus” and a tendency towards “Church-speak”, which he admits “may seem wondrous to us, but communicates little or nothing to most people”.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic Culture

Sando Magister, the Italian journalist who became a focus of attention at the Synod of Bishops after publishing a letter from 13 cardinals to Pope Francis, has pointed out that the existence of that letter had already been reported.

Andrea Tornielli of La Stampa had reported on the cardinals’ letter to the Pontiff on October 8, and provided an accurate summary of the letter’s contents Magister observes. Tornielli’s report briefly appeared on the Vatican Insider web site, but then was removed; a print version was published by La Stampa.

Magister published a text of the letter– later revealed to contain some inaccuracies– on October 12.

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UNITED STATES
Religion Dispatches

BY PATRICIA MILLER OCTOBER 14, 2015

While most reactions to the 13 conservative cardinals who sent a letter to Pope Francis complaining that the outcome of the family synod was rigged in favor of progressives focused on the intrigue over the letter’s content and (supposed) signers, another significant element has flown largely under the radar.

Rather than highlight doctrine, tradition, or more direct social harms, the dissenters couched their concerns in terms of the effect of any reforms of marriage practice on the church, warning that it risked going the way of shrinking liberal Protestant denominations if it abandoned “key elements of Christian belief and practice in the name of pastoral adaptation.”

This is a long-standing contention of conservatives, as voiced most famously by Ross Douthat, who offers as proof the Episcopal Church, which aggressively adopted a host of progressive reforms to stay relevant, “[y]et instead of attracting a younger, more open-minded demographic with these changes, the Episcopal Church’s dying has proceeded apace.”

It’s true that the Episcopal Church did go in a progressive direction, from being the first Christian church to approve the use of birth control in 1930, to consecrating women priests, to electing the first openly-gay bishop. And it’s also true that the church has seen a rapid decline in the US, but there’s no proof of cause-and-effect here. Some note that the culprit many be a “sharp decline in the birth rate among those descended from the British Isles or Northern Europe,” as well as the paucity of Episcopalians among the many immigrant groups who populate the U.S. The demographic picture for the Catholic Church wouldn’t look nearly as rosy if it weren’t for the fact that Hispanic immigrants to the U.S. are overwhelmingly Catholic.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 15 October 2015 (VIS) – The Holy Father has:

– appointed Rev. Luis Albeiro Maldonado Monsalve as bishop of Mocoa – Sibundoy (area 25,282, population 347,510, Catholics 300,200, priests 81, permanent deacons 4, religious 98), Colombia. The bishop-elect was born in Fredonia, Colombia in 1958 and ordained a priest in 1986. He holds a licentiate in spiritual theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, and has served as formator and spiritual director of the major seminary, professor and chaplain at the Pontifical Bolivarian University, parish priest and administrator of a priestly society. He is currently episcopal vicar of the diocese of Medellin, Colombia.

– appointed Bishop Titus Joseph Mdoe, auxiliary of the archdiocese of Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania, as bishop of Mtwara (area 7,780, population 884,000, Catholics 75,800, priests 41, religious 306), Tanzania. He succeeds Bishop Gabriel Mmole, whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same diocese upon reaching the age limit was accepted by the Holy Father.

– appointed Fr. Edgardo Cedeno Munoz, S.V.D., as bishop of Penonome (area 4,927, population 259,000, Catholics 210, 337, priests 25, religious 34), Panama. The bishop-elect was born in Panama City, Panama in 1960, took his religious vows in 1988 and was ordained a priest in 1989. He has served in a number of roles within his order including provincial superior, formator, provincial bursar, as well as chaplain and parish priest. He is currently pastor of the parish of the “Virgen de la Medalla Milagrosa” in Panama City.

– appointed Fr. George Desmond Tambala, O.C.D., as bishop of Zomba (area 3,232, population 822,450, Catholics 232,976, priests 42, religious 81), Malawi. The bishop-elect was born in Zomba, Malawi in 1968, gave his religious vows in 1991 and was ordained a priest in 1996. He holds a licentiate in theology, has served in a number of roles within his order, and has been a seminary professor and president of the Association of Superiors Major in Malawi. He is currently definitor general of the Carmelites.

– accepted the resignation from the office of auxiliary of Spis, Slovakia, presented by Bishop Andrej Imrich in accordance with canons 411 and 402 para. 2 of the Code of Canon Law.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Oct. 15, 2015

VATICAN CITY
The group of German speaking prelates attending the worldwide meeting of Catholic bishops on family — which includes a rather diverse range of what might be called progressive and conservative voices — has called on the gathering to recognize that church doctrine has developed over time.

The group has also said the church’s understanding of Jesus’ mission on Earth means that there cannot always be one universal principle that applies to all concrete situations.

Writing in their report on the discussions taking place in their small group for the ongoing Oct. 4-25 Synod of Bishops, the German bishops say: “It … became clear to us that we are too static and not biographical-historical in many debates and observations.”

“The Church’s doctrine of marriage was developed and deepened in history,” they write.

The group explains how the church’s understanding of marriage has developed over time — first emphasizing monogamy of marriage, then “the personal dignity of the spouses” before coming to understand the family as the “house church.”

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ROME
Premier

Thu 15 Oct 2015
By Hannah Tooley

A Vatican expert says that some leading Catholics and right-wingers are uniting against Pope Francis.

A new book, The Enemies of Francis, has claimed a number of high-profile figures, such as former US Vice President Dick Cheney, have joined together to oppose what they see as the Pope’s liberal stance on issues from the environment to gay marriage.

The author, Nello Scavo, says that a range of powerful forces see the Pope as a threat due to his out spoken stance on everything from the arms trade to his role in the thawing of relations between the USA and Cuba.

He said: “This was one of the key breaking points. Both the political right and conservative Catholics were angered by it.”

It goes onto detail how some political interests have been actively plotting to undermine the Pope and says that “poised bait” has been set out for the Holy Father.

Those listed as against Francis include the Catholic lobbying group The Knights of Columbus.

Additionally Cardinal Timothy Dolan, The Archbishop of New York, is thought to be one of 13 Cardinals who has signed a letter claiming the current Synod on the family has been hijacked by liberal groups.

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ROME
Christian Today

Ruth Gledhill CHRISTIAN TODAY CONTRIBUTING EDITOR 15 October 2015

The Catholic Church moved closer to a split over homosexuality and marriage after divorce today after traditionalists called for a walk out by “faithful” bishops at the Synod on the Family in Rome.

The Twitter hashtag #synodwalkout quickly began trending after the conservative blog One Peter Five set up a change.org petition calling on the conservative cardinals and archbishops to stage a walkout. Within hours of being posted early this morning, the petition gained more than 1,600 signatures.

Observers in Rome and on social media began talking of “chaos”, and headlines such as “showdown in Rome” began to appear on well-informed conservative websites.

One Peter Five reports: “As the evidence mounts that the Synod’s outcome has been pre-determined, I have joined a number of other concerned Catholics in writing an open letter. In it, we request that those Synod fathers who are faithful to Christ’s teachings, if they continue to be thwarted in their efforts, walk out of the Synod before it is over rather than allow their participation be interpreted as support.”

The conservative blogger adds: “Even at this late hour, we must try to protect the faith.”

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NEW YORK
Queens Courier

BY ASSEMBLYWOMAN MARGARET MARKEY

We were all excited about the momentous visit of Pope Francis, but disappointed that overall, so little attention has been paid to the scourge of childhood sexual abuse — one of the most urgent topics of concern among so many New York Catholics.

The fight to address this issue in many states is directed at reform of archaic statute of limitations (SOLs) that restrict the time for victims to come forward and expose abusers and the organizations that hid or protected them. New York currently ranks among the very worst states in all of America for how it deals with victims — right at the bottom of all 50 states along with Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Indiana.

If a New York victim of child sex abuse doesn’t come forward within five years after their 18th birthday, they forever lose the opportunity to bring charges. Since research shows that many if not most abuse survivors do not come to grips with what happened to them until well into adulthood, if ever, that means that most victims never get justice and pedophiles remain free to abuse new generations of children.

My Child Victims Act of New York (A.2872A/S.63A) would completely eliminate the civil statute of limitations for child sex abuse in the future and get justice for older victims. Even though the measure has passed the Assembly four times, it has never come to the floor of the state Senate and the most vocal opponent of this reform is the New York Catholic Conference of Bishops.

I was encouraged by the strong message of the Holy Father to his Pontifical Commission earlier this year that there was no place in the ministry for abusers and his call for reconciliation and healing for past victims. He has backed up those views by creating a Vatican tribunal to hold bishops accountable for cover-ups and failure to prevent abuse.

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MINNESOTA
Canonical Consultation

10/14/20150

Jennifer Haselberger

On Monday, the Pioneer Press announced the 2015 winner of the Rowan Award, which is bestowed yearly by the Saint Paul Police Foundation in recognition of exceptional service in policing. The winner, Officer Jon Sherwood, is a twenty-nine year veteran assigned to the city’s East Side. What caught my eye, however, was the report of who was also nominated: Sergeant Eric Skog who, as the Pioneer Press notes, ‘who was assigned full-time to investigate sex abuse within the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’.

I am sure that those victims who reported their abuse to Sgt. Skog would willingly second his nomination for this award. When a victim contacted me to share his or her experience of abuse I never hesitated to suggest that they contact Sgt. Skog, and I heard time and time again of his patience and kindness once contact was established. More than one person reported that he was willing to listen to them and offer suggestions even if their abuse was outside of the SPPD jurisdiction or couldn’t be investigated for other reasons. This was important to many victims/ survivors because that openness was exactly what had been missing when they attempted to report their abuse to the Church.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Reuters

By Scott Malone October 15, 2015

Massachusetts’ top court on Wednesday ruled that parishioners who have staged a decade-long vigil aimed at stopping the closure of their Roman Catholic church are trespassing in violation of state laws.

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Church is the last of a half-dozen Boston-area churches that parishioners occupied in opposition to a 2004 decision by the Archdiocese of Boston to close some 70 churches, as the clergy sex abuse scandal began to take a heavy toll on church finances.

A group of parishioners has occupied the 30-acre (12- hectare) property in waterfront Scituate, south of Boston, 24 hours a day, seven days a week since that time.

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on Wednesday upheld a June ruling by a state judge that found the parishioners were violating state laws and ordered an end to their long occupation.

“While we acknowledge the defendants’ heartfelt beliefs that they are entitled to remain on the premises as an exercise of their freedom of religion, the judge’s conclusion that the defendants are trespassers is supported by the evidence.”

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MASSACHUSETTS
Yahoo! News

BOSTON (Reuters) – Parishioners who have occupied their Massachusetts church for 11 years in an effort to prevent the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston from shuttering it are due to speak Thursday on a ruling by the state’s top court that they are trespassing.

Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court on Wednesday upheld the ruling of a lower court earlier this year that found that parishioners of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini did not have the right to continue to occupy the church and told them to end their vigil.

The Archdiocese of Boston asked the parishioners to abide by the court’s ruling and end their occupation of the church, the last of a half-dozen parishes that were occupied after church officials in 2004 announced plans to close some 70 parishes as the clergy sex abuse scandal began to take a heavy toll on church finances.

A group of parishioners has occupied the 30-acre (12-hectare) property in waterfront Scituate, south of Boston, continuously since that time. Representatives for the group said on Wednesday they were still evaluating their options, which they would discuss with reporters on Thursday.

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CANADA
CTV

The Canadian Press
Published Thursday, October 15, 2015

HALDIMAN COUNTY, Ont. – Police have charged a former Catholic priest with a historical sexual assault investigation in southern Ontario.

Ontario Provincial police say they have been investigating an alleged sexual assault in 1975 involving a boy who was 13 years old at the time.

They say the alleged incident occurred while the accused was a priest at St. Stephen’s Roman Catholic Church in Cayuga, St. Kevin’s Roman Catholic Church in Welland and St. Thomas More Roman Catholic Church in Niagara Falls.

Donald Grecco, 75, of Peel Region is charged with one count of gross indecency and one count of indecent assault on a male.

Grecco was also charged three weeks ago with two charges of gross indecency and two charges of indecent assault on a male in alleged incidents that occurred between 1977 and 1982 involving two boys who were 10 and 14 years old at the time.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Candice Marcus

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has wrapped up in Adelaide after hearing harrowing accounts of abuse and cruelty at Salvation Army run children’s homes.

One of the men at the centre of the Salvation Army’s response is territorial commander Floyd Tidd, who sat through the seven-day hearing.

He spoke to reporter Candice Marcus on the final day of the hearing.

Q. Commissioner Tidd thanks for your time. You’ve delivered a comprehensive apology at the royal commission to the survivors, what is the Salvation Army’s message to the survivors?

The message to survivors is one of an unconditional apology, as I’ve listened again this week to the evidence and testimony given by survivors I’ve been deeply moved and deeply distressed.

These were children, they were all blameless and they suffered under the care of the Salvation Army and so I offer to each and every one of them, personally and also as the leader of the Salvation Army, an unreserved apology.

They should not have experienced that which was their reality.

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ROME
Chiesa

It is an article by Andrea Tornielli, the vaticanista friendliest with and closest to Bergoglio. It came out four days before the publication of the letter. To expose it and accuse the authors of conspiring against the pope

by Sandro Magister

ROME, October 15, 2015 – Since the letter of the thirteen cardinals to the pope became public knowledge, the Vatican authorities, through Fr. Federico Lombardi, have not passed up an opportunity to censure its publication and, more or less indirectly, its contents and authors.

The latest instance came yesterday, in the daily press conference accompanying the work of the synod, when the director of the Vatican press office took aim for the umpteenth time at “the fateful letter that has received much more attention than it deserves.”

But in that case it is right that the backstory of the publication of the letter from the thirteen cardinals should also be made known. A backstory that is absolutely not to be ignored, after which it became obligatory – for the sake of accurate information – to verify the real state of affairs, the contents of the letter and who had signed it.

The following post says it all.

It came out yesterday only in Italian on the blog “Settimo cielo.” And it appears again here translated into English, French, and Spanish. So that everybody gets it.

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CALIFORNIA
Santa Maria Sun

BY DAVID MINSKY

The criminal case against Shane Villalpando concluded in 2013, but now officials at St. Joseph High School—Villalpando’s former high school—are the targets of a lawsuit surrounding the former student’s behavior at the time.

Filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court in November 2014, the lawsuit alleges that administrators at the high school failed to report Villalpando’s “sexually deviant behavior and dangerous propensities” leading up to the alleged rape of a female St. Joseph student that occurred in June 2011.

Villalpando was convicted of three felony counts of unlawful sex with a minor in July 2013. The jury at the time couldn’t decide whether he was guilty of rape, but he nonetheless served a year in jail, and was required to register as a sex offender during the five-year term of probation he also received.

St. Joseph’s former dean of students John Walker, former principal Joseph Myers, current Principal Joanne Poloni, and the Rev. Ed Jalbert are listed as defendants in the current lawsuit. The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles is listed as the principal defendant because St. Joseph falls under the purview of the Catholic Church.

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BELGIUM
Catholic Herald (UK)

by Jon Anderson
posted Thursday, 15 Oct 2015

Its Church is dogged by empty pews, scandals and a hierarchy beguiled by the latest social trends. Soon it could become little more than a heritage agency for ancient churches

Belgium is one of those countries that show in stark detail the problems facing the Catholic Church in the developed world. Like Ireland or Quebec, it is an example of a once intensely Catholic society where the faith has very rapidly collapsed. The same symptoms as elsewhere – empty churches, scandals, infighting, a hierarchy that passively goes along with current social trends – are as obvious in Belgium as anywhere else in Europe.

Yet the Belgian Church is still influential internationally. Cardinal Godfried Danneels, the retired primate of Belgium, is among the senior clerics appointed personally by Pope Francis to participate in the ongoing family synod. That is an interesting move, as Cardinal Danneels is much more radical on sexual issues than even the German bishops.

The 83-year-old is one of the Church’s great survivors, having been appointed an archbishop in 1979 and a cardinal in 1983. An ebullient character and formidable networker, his position on the Church’s extreme liberal fringe has not prevented him being a pillar of the College of Cardinals, to the point where commentators were naming him as a possible papal candidate in 2005. He has also been enjoying a very active retirement, so it would have been a surprise if he hadn’t been at the synod.

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NEW YORK
Observer-Dispatch

By Alissa Scott

Posted Oct. 14, 2015

They call it a counseling session. And it takes place in what usually is a sacred space — the sanctuary of a church.

Members of the Word of Life Christian Church conducted one of these sessions Sunday night for brothers Lucas and Christopher Leonard.

This one turned deadly.

“It was explained to us that a counseling session is when a pastor sits down with a member of the church to discuss their spiritual state,” New Hartford Police Chief Michael Inserra said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon. “Both brothers were continuously subjected to physical punishment over several hours in hopes that each would confess their prior sins and ask for forgiveness.”

During that session, at least six members of the church — two of them the brothers’ parents — beat the teens for hours, police said. It ended in the death of 19-year-old Lucas and in serious injuries to Christopher, 17.

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ROME
The Irish Catholic

by Cathal Barry
October 15, 2015

The leader of the Church in Ireland has said it would be a “mistake” for the Synod of Bishops to overlook the “shattering” effects of clerical child sex abuse on families.

Archbishop Eamon Martin criticised the synod’s working document which he claimed had “failed to recognise the awful shattering of family life that can be caused by abuse”.

The Archbishop of Armagh made his remarks to The Irish Catholic from Rome following his own personal intervention at the Synod on the Family which focused primarily on the issue of sexual abuse and domestic violence.

Archbishop Eamon admitted that his “very deliberate intervention” had “undoubtedly been influenced” by the experience of the Church in Ireland.

“The Church in Ireland has become very painfully aware of the impact of abuse in what I call our family of families which is the Church and through that we have become very aware of the horrific reality of abuse.

– See more at: http://www.irishcatholic.ie/article/%E2%80%98mistake%E2%80%99-overlook-abuse-%E2%80%93-primate#sthash.0LOR7ebl.dpuf

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

OCTOBER 14, 2015

BY ABBOTT KOLOFF AND MONSY ALVARADO
THE RECORD

Archbishop John J. Myers on Wednesday defended a letter he recently sent to priests, saying it was misinterpreted, while even conservatives said they found it confusing, and some North Jersey Catholics said it led them to feel more alienated from their church.

In the letter, Myers called on Catholics to refrain from receiving Holy Communion if they are in a marriage that is not recognized by the church or if they publicly oppose any of the church’s teachings. He also said all Catholics should avoid events that “endorse or support” people or groups that reject or ignore those teachings.

Myers, the leader of the Archdiocese of Newark, issued the letter quietly to pastors after signing it on Sept. 22. That was the day Pope Francis arrived in Cuba on his way to the United States, where the pontiff expanded on a message of inclusiveness that has been the hallmark of his papacy. The letter was made public Wednesday as 270 bishops from around the world met at the Vatican to discuss ways to adapt church teachings in a changing world, including such issues as whether to welcome gays and lesbians or allow remarried couples who have not been granted annulments to receive sacraments.

As even some conservatives called into question its timing, Myers said through a spokesman that the letter had been “taken wildly out of context by many — some viewing it as a challenge or a ‘setting of the agenda.’Ÿ”

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UNITED STATES
Esquire

​BY CHARLES P. PIERCE

Now, we’ve got the real thing brewing over at the Vatican. Somewhere in the crypts of Rome, poisoners, stranglers, libertines, students of Machiavelli, and other long-dead clerical errors from the good old days are feeling smiles crack the dessicated bones of their faces. This is old-school Catholic treachery. Grappa for the house, and see what the Borgias in the back room will have!​

In the letter, the senior churchmen said that if the reformers succeeded in changing the church’s approach to modern families it could send the Catholic Church down the path of Protestant denominations that abandoned “key elements of Christian belief and practice in the name of pastoral adaptation.”… In recent months, and with growing intensity since the synod opened, conservatives have accused reformers of “rigging” the synod and of engaging in skullduggery and various media “manipulations” to achieve changes—charges the letter from the cardinals seemed to support. “A number of fathers feel the new process seems designed to facilitate predetermined results on important disputed questions,” says the letter, which was reportedly given to Francis on Oct. 5, the second day of the synod, by Australian Cardinal George Pell, a top curial official and vocal opponent of reforms. The letter reprises complaints that many bishops here have made: that the working document that is the basis of the discussions is flawed, that the bishops are trying to debate too many critical issues in too short a time, and that the group of 10 bishops picked by Francis to write a final summary report is skewed to the progressive side and instead should have been elected by the entire group.

Obviously, ‘Fi were in the Chair of Peter, at least the Vatican officials who signed this document would soon find themselves reassigned to various Arctic parishes. This is not that kind of pope and, frankly, as a longtime supporter of collegiality in the governance of the Church, I can’t criticize the pack o’ scoundrels who signed this thing too critically on principle. But it is lovely to watch the people scream who’ve rigged every synod since John Paul II was elected. And they are an interesting bunch. To the surprise of absolutely nobody, many of them have track records on the worldwide scandal of clergy sexual abuse that are less than stellar. The apparent ringleader, Pell from Australia, has the stench of the scandal clinging to him to this day.

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CANADA
Hamilton Spectator

A disgraced former Roman Catholic priest, jailed in 2010 for sexually abusing three altar boys, now faces sex charges involving three other victims.

Ontario Provincial Police in Haldimand County have charged Donald Grecco, 75, of Peel Region, with gross indecency and indecent assault on a male after another victim came forward to report sex assaults which occurred in Niagara Region in 1975 when the victim was about 13 years old.

Grecco will face the latest charges on Tuesday, Dec. 8 in provincial court in Cayuga.

Over the past several months, police have been investigating a series of sexual assaults which had occurred between 1975 to 1982 involving young males. The assaults occurred at locations in Niagara Region, Haldimand County and the United States.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC NI

By Vincent Kearney
BBC News NI Home Affairs Correspondent

Paddy Monaghan was sent from a children’s home in Northern Ireland to Australia in the 1940s.
As a boy, he was told all his relatives were dead. Now, after more than 40 years of searching, he has found them – alive and well in County Fermanagh.

Paddy Monaghan’s face breaks into a wide grin when I ask how it feels to have found his family after more than 40 years of searching.

“It feels great. I’ve always longed to be able to have somebody with my blood in them. I didn’t think it was ever going to happen,” he said.

I first met Paddy in Perth, Australia, while working for BBC Northern Ireland’s Spotlight programme . …

He had visited Ireland, but the Sisters of Nazareth repeatedly told him he had been an orphan and that they could find no records of his mother.

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CANADA
Daily Courier

HALDIMAN COUNTY, Ont. – Police have charged a former Catholic priest with a historical sexual assault investigation in southern Ontario.

Ontario Provincial police say they have been investigating an alleged sexual assault in 1975 involving a boy who was 13 years old at the time.

They say the alleged incident occurred while the accused was a priest at St. Stephen’s Roman Catholic Church in Cayuga, St. Kevin’s Roman Catholic Church in Welland and St. Thomas More Roman Catholic Church in Niagara Falls.

Donald Grecco, 75, of Peel Region is charged with one count of gross indecency and one count of indecent assault on a male.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, Oct. 14

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

A Florida bishop is putting a credibly accused abusive cleric back in a parish. We are deeply worried about the safety of the priest’s colleagues, neighbors and flock.

[Naples Daily News]

Diocese of Venice Bishop Frank Dewane is acting recklessly and callously. If he insists on putting Fr. Leo Riley back on the job, we would hope it would be in prison ministry or a desk job, not in a parish. We’re disturbed that Dewane is putting Fr. Riley back St. Peter the Apostle Catholic Church on Rattlesnake Hammock Road in Naples.

Dewane also claims Fr. Riley took a lie detector test. We challenge him to make those test results public. If he doesn’t, we can’t put much validity in this claim.

Our hearts ache for Jeff Buchheit and anyone else who has been hurt by Fr. Riley. We beg anyone who may have seen, suspected or suffered wrongdoing or crimes by this priest to call police, expose wrongdoers, protect kids and start healing.

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Massimo Faggioli
Professor of History of Christianity, University of St. Thomas

The letter sent to Pope Francis by a group of cardinals on Monday, October 12 should be seen for what it is. It is not a question of the substance or method of the work of the Synod, but an attack on the legitimacy of the direction Pope Francis is taking the Church, and therefore an attack on the Pope himself.

Published (in circumstances yet to be clarified) by Sandro Magister, L’Espresso magazine’s Vatican reporter, the letter was signed by about a dozen high-level Church officials from around the world. At the moment, the list of the actual names of the signatories is fluctuating: The list published Monday night (EST) by America, a Catholic weekly magazine published by Jesuits in the United States, reports the following names: Caffarra (Archbishop of Bologna), Collins (Archbishop of Toronto), DiNardo (Archbishop of Houston), Dolan (Archbishop of New York), Eijk (Archbishop of Utrecht), Müller (Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith), Napier (Archbishop of Durban, South Africa), Njue (Archbishop of Nairobi, Kenya), Pell (Prefect of the Vatican Secretariat for the Economy), Rivera Carrera (Archbishop of Mexico City), Sarah (Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship), Sgreccia (President Emeritus of the Pontifical Academy for Life) and Urosa Savino (Archbishop of Caracas, Venezuela).

However, it is possible that there are different versions of the same letter, other signatories, or even (possibly) other officials whose names were signed without their knowledge (four cardinals, Erdö, Scola, Piacenza and Vignt-Trois, denied signing yesterday.)

This is the boldest and most visible move in the ecclesiastical establishment’s conflict with Pope Francis. Since March 2013, there has been a sense of mounting resistance to the pontificate, with the Synod of Bishops being the focal point. The fact that the letter was sent to the Pope on October 5, the first day of the Synod, is proof that it was an initiative coordinated well before the commencement of the assembly in Rome (and it is this initiative that Francis referred to in his speech about the “hermeneutic of conspiracy” on October 6 in the Synod Hall). It is also clear that while Francis was visiting America, certain American bishops –when they were not busy embracing the Pope– were preparing an attack on Francis that they would never have dreamed of launching against Pope John Paul II or Pope Benedict XVI.

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UNITED STATES
Pacific Sun

by David Templeton

“It’s an American tragedy, plain and simple.”

On opening night of the Mill Valley Film Festival, director Tom McCarthy peers, spotlight-blinded, into the audience at the crammed-to-the-limit Cinéarts Sequoia theater, in Mill Valley. The audience has just watched a special advance screening of McCarthy’s Spotlight, a riveting, expertly crafted drama about The Boston Globe reporters who cracked the case in 2001, shining a different kind of spotlight onto the Catholic Church’s now infamous cover-up of 70 Boston priests accused, in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, of serial child molestation and other abuses.

The film features bravura performances by Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, Stanley Tucci and Billy Crudup. With Spotlight, McCarthy—who premiered his critically acclaimed The Station Agent at the festival in 2003—beautifully rebounds from the mega-disaster of last year’s The Cobbler, an Adam Sandler comedy so badly calibrated it made people wonder why McCarthy wanted anything to do with it.

Judging from the audience’s emotional, thunderous reception to Spotlight, all is clearly forgiven, and over the course of a quick, 10-minute conversation after the film, it’s clear that the film will be sparking similar conversations all over the country when it is released to the public in mid-November.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY CORKY SIEMASZKO

Members of a secretive upstate New York church determined to get two brothers to “confess their sins” beat one of the teenagers to death and badly brutalized the other, police said Wednesday.

And among those now charged with killing Lucas Leonard, 19, and injuring his 17-year-old brother Christopher, during a “counseling session” at the Word of Life Church, are his parents and a sister, they said.

“During the counseling session, the session turned physical,” said Chief Michael Inserra of the New Hartford, N.Y., police.

Over the course of several hours, the brothers were ordered to “confess to prior sins and ask for forgiveness,” the chief said. “We have not determined what this punishment was for.”

But, said Inserra, “we know there were fists and feet involved” in the punishment.

Inserra spoke a day after the victim’s parents, Bruce and Deborah Leonard, were charged with first-degree manslaughter and police revealed that their sons had been brutally beaten on their genitals, abdomens, backs and thighs.

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NEW YORK
WSYR

NEW HARTFORD (WSYR-TV)

New Hartford Police offered new details about their investigation into the beating death of one boy and the serious injury of another at the Word of Life Church building in Chadwicks on Wednesday.

Police say 19-year-old Lucas Leonard and 17-year-old Christopher Leonard were both severely beaten “over the course of hours” in the church sanctuary.

The teens’ parents, 65-year-old Bruce Leonard and 59-year-old Deborah Leonard, have been charged with manslaughter in connection with Lucas’ death.

Their sister, Sarah Ferguson, has been charged with assault.

Three other members of the Word of Life Church have also been charged with assault, including David and Linda Morey, and Joseph Irwin.

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NEW YORK
Las Vegas Review-Journal

Reuters

The parents of a New York teenager were charged on Tuesday with his beating death inside an upstate church, and four church members were accused of assaulting the couple’s younger son, police said.

Lucas Leonard, 19, died of blunt force trauma to his body after being attacked inside the Word of Life Church in New Hartford, New York, about 50 miles (80 kms) east of Syracuse, authorities said.

A joint investigation by the New Hartford police and the New York State Police determined that a second victim, Leonard’s 17-year-old brother had also been assaulted. He was in serious condition at a local hospital, a press release said.

“Several church members were interviewed throughout the day and night, and several children were secured from the church and turned over to Oneida County Child Protective Services,” it said. Police have not released a motive for the attack.

A woman who lives near the church, Julie Howard, told local broadcaster WKTV “there’s always been weird things going on.” She said this included visits by the police and what she described as the breeding of dogs in the building.

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NEW YORK
CBS News

[with video]

NEW HARTFORD, N.Y. — Brutal beatings that left one teenager dead and his brother seriously injured Monday at a New York church were part of what members considered a “counseling session,” according to police.

New Hartford Police Chief Michael Inserra said Wednesday that both Lucas and Christopher Leonard were subjected to hours of physical punishment at the Word of Life Church “in hopes that each would confess to prior sins and ask for forgiveness.”

Inserra says investigators are still looking into what the supposed sins were. He said there’s no indication, at this point, that the issue was sexual assault.

Nineteen-year-old Lucas Leonard died. Seventeen-year-old Christopher is hospitalized in serious condition.

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VATICAN CITY
New York Times

By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO

OCT. 14, 2015

VATICAN CITY — Amid a three-week conference of hundreds of bishops on family issues, Pope Francis issued an unusual and unexpected public apology on Wednesday for scandals that have bedeviled the church.

“I would like to ask for forgiveness in the name of the church for the scandals that have happened in this last period both in Rome and at the Vatican,” the pope told assembled faithful as he opened his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square.

“I ask for your forgiveness,” he said humbly.

The pope did not say which scandals he was referring to, but even just in recent days, there has been no shortage of headline-grabbing news to distract from the Synod of Bishops, which is in the middle of a divisive, three-week discussion of issues like the church’s approach to gays and to divorced Catholics who remarry without obtaining an annulment.

Last week, in a step seemingly timed to the synod, a Vatican official publicly announced he was gay, while issuing a denunciation of homophobia within the church. He was dismissed.

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VATICAN CITY
The Journal (Ireland)

POPE FRANCIS HAS offered a surprise public apology from the Catholic Church for a series of scandals which have shaken the city of Rome and the Vatican, from gay sex to drug use.

The Vatican has been the focus of several controversies including the coming out of a gay priest and the leaking of a controversial letter, while reports have emerged in Rome of drug-popping priests frequenting male prostitutes.

“I want, in the name of the Church, to ask forgiveness for the scandals which have recently hit Rome and the Vatican. I ask you for forgiveness,” Francis said at the start of his weekly general audience on Saint Peter’s Square.

“It is inevitable that scandals happen, but ‘Woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!’” he said, quoting a passage from the Bible.

Vatican expert Joshua McElwee, writing in the National Catholic Reporter, described it as an “extraordinary step”.

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MALTA
Deutsche Welle

A Catholic priest in the largely Catholic country was officially accused on Wednesday of sexually abusing three teenage boys between 2010 and 2013.

The 44-year-old, Donald Bellizzi, the current chaplain of the airport chapel, pleaded not guilty to the charges. The court rejected his lawyer’s request for bail.

Bellizzi is accused of sexually abusing three boys who attended a group encouraging them to join the priesthood. The boys, who were minors at the time, are now between the ages of 18 and 19 years old, German news agency dpa reported.

The Maltese Church Safegaurding Commission confirmed the case in an online statement, saying they immediately passed the complaint on to police. In the past, the Catholic Chuch had sought to deal with such issues internally without law enforcement.

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FLORIDA
Naples Daily News

Ryan Mills
Oct 14, 2015

NAPLES, Fla. – An East Naples priest who was cleared of wrongdoing in a sexual abuse investigation and reinstated during the summer has returned to his church following a leave of absence.

Rev. Leo Riley, 59, returned to St. Peter the Apostle Catholic Church on Rattlesnake Hammock Road and has been celebrating mass there since Oct. 1, said Susan Laielli, a spokeswoman for the Diocese of Venice.

Riley received a standing ovation from the parish upon his return, said Pat Campagne, a member of St. Peter.

“He’s back and we all got hugs from him,” she said. “He’s a wonderful priest. And he has a great, great way of delivering a homily. We feel blessed to have him.”

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Business Journal

David Harris
Associate editor, Digital
Boston Business Journal

A Massachusetts Appeals Court sided with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese on Wednesday, ruling against former parishioners of a Scituate church who have maintained an around-the-clock vigil in the church ever since it was supposed to close in 2004.

The judge’s decision reaffirms an earlier judgement against the parishioners from St. Frances X. Cabrini Church in Scituate, which was scheduled to close 11 years ago. The defendants in the case are former parishioners of the church who have maintained an around-the-clock, seven-days-per-week vigil.

In February 2015, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Boston notified the parishioners that they must end their vigil and leave the church or face legal action. The parishioners refused to leave and the Archdiocese instituted this action for declaratory and injunctive relief. Following a bench trial before a judge in the Superior Court, a judge declared those parishioners “to be trespassers and permanently enjoining them from entering on church property,” according to court documents.

The parishioners argued that the judge in the original ruling made several “erroneous pretrial rulings, including denying their motion to dismiss and declining their demand for a jury trial.” They also “further contend that facts found by the judge in support of the trespass claim were clearly erroneous.”

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

INTRODUCTION

Pope Francis had to backtrack after he outraged the victims of pedophile clerics by speaking sympathetically, during his trip to the United States, about how the scandal had affected bishops and priests. Then, last week, a video was broadcast showing him calling the residents of a Chilean town “dumb” for protesting a bishop who has been accused of being complicit in the crimes one abusive priest.

Is Pope Francis taking the scandal seriously enough? Has he properly addressed problems of thousands of victims of priestly abuse and the concerted efforts of church officials to cover up?

DEBATERS

WILLIAM DAILEY
The Rev. William Dailey, C.S.C., is the Thomas More fellow of the Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame, and a lecturer at Notre Dame Law School.

KATHERINE GALLAGHER
Katherine Gallagher is a senior attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, where she has represented the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. She is on Twitter.

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