ABUSE TRACKER

UNITED KINGDOM
Church Times

by Gavin Drake

Posted: 06 Nov 2015

SOCIETY is confronted by a “floodtide of unhealthy, objectifying, sexual pornography”, the Bishop of Chester, Dr Peter Forster, said on Thursday, in a take-note debate in the House of Lords on pornography and its impact.

“Pornography is a very widespread feature of Western society, especially since the advent of the internet age,” he said. “In my ministry, I have come across addiction to pornography as a factor in individual marriage breakdown.

“As a Bishop, I have had two of my clergy prosecuted for downloading child sexual-abuse images, usually called child pornography. Both these priests were given custodial sentences and both are unlikely ever again to exercise the Christian ministry for which they were trained.”

He said that the “sheer volume of cases” of child-sex abuse images meant that “prosecutions are no longer routinely brought”. He quoted a University of Bristol survey, that suggested that 40 per cent of children between the age of 13 and 17 “had suffered sexual coercion of some sort, ranging from rape to being pressurised into unwanted sexual activity, often with elements of physical violence.”

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DEUTSCHLAND
NWZ Online

Der frühere Hildesheimer Bischof soll während seiner Amtszeit einen Jungen sexuell missbraucht haben. Das Bistum halte die Schilderung des Betroffenen für plausibel. Bischof Norbert Trelle ist bestürzt.

HILDESHEIM Der frühere und 1988 verstorbene Hildesheimer Bischof Heinrich Maria Janssen wird des sexuellen Missbrauchs beschuldigt. Ein Mann erhebt den Vorwurf, Ende der 1950er-Jahre bis Anfang der 1960er-Jahre von dem Geistlichen missbraucht worden zu sein, wie das Bistum Hildesheim am Freitag berichtete. Die Diözese halte die Schilderungen für plausibel und habe den Antrag des Mannes auf Anerkennung des Leids an die Deutsche Bischofskonferenz weitergeleitet.

Der amtierende Bischof Norbert Trelle zeigte sich bestürzt. Der Vorgang sei bereits im Frühjahr 2015 an das Bistum Hildesheim herangetragen worden. Der Mann habe den Wunsch geäußert, den Missbrauch strikt vertraulich zu behandeln. Dem sei das Bistum aus Gründen des Opferschutzes zunächst gefolgt. Wegen einer Presse-Anfrage zu den erhobenen Vorwürfen sehe sich das Bistum nun jedoch in der Pflicht, die Öffentlichkeit über die Missbrauchs-Anzeige zu informieren.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Spiegel

Ein deutscher Bischof zählt nach Informationen des SPIEGEL offenbar zu den Missbrauchstätern in der katholischen Kirche: Heinrich Maria Janssen (1907 bis 1988), langjähriger Bischof von Hildesheim, soll sich über Jahre an einem Ministranten vergangen haben.

Das “Büro für Fragen sexuellen Missbrauchs Minderjähriger im kirchlichen Bereich” der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz hat den Missbrauchsvorwurf des ehemaligen Messdieners durch den Bischof geprüft und das Leid anerkannt.

Es bestätigte dem Mann “in Anerkennung des erlittenen Leids” den “erlittenen sexuellen Missbrauch als besonderen Härtefall” und sprach ihm 10.000 Euro als “Anerkennungszahlung” zu.

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GERMANY
ABC News

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BERLIN — Nov 6, 2015

A Roman Catholic diocese in Germany says a man has made a “plausible” claim that he was sexually abused in the late 1950s and early 1960s by its then-bishop, who died in 1988.

The Hildesheim diocese in northern Germany said Friday that the man came forward earlier this year with the claim against the late Bishop Heinrich Maria Janssen. It said the current bishop’s advisors on questions of sexual abuse considered the claim plausible, and that it made a payment to the man in “recognition of his suffering” at the recommendation of the German Bishops’ Conference.

It didn’t specify how much was paid out, but said the man made further financial demands that the diocese rejected.

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NEW YORK
TWC News

[with video]

An online petition asking the Vatican to remove Bishop Robert Cunningham as head of the Syracuse Diocese now has more than 85,000 signatures.

Kevin Braney is one of the creators of the petition. He says a letter was sent to the Vatican requesting a meeting to present the petition in person. The Vatican has not replied to the request.

The petition asks for Cunningham to be removed due to comments made about sex abuse in the church. Creators say he described victims as culpable in a deposition. The Syracuse diocese says that the bishop has repeatedly apologized for the words pulled from his deposition.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

(Vatican Radio) The Secretariat for the Economy released a statement to the press on Friday, regarding certain claims advanced in recent Italian publications, insofar as the management of expenditure by the Prefect of the Secretariat, Cardinal George Pell, and the expenditure incurred by the Secretariat throughout 2014. Please find the full text of the statement in the original English, below.

******************************************************

PRESS STATEMENT FROM A SPOKESPERSON FOR THE SECRETARIAT FOR THE ECONOMY
The recently released books appear to have included false and misleading claims about the management of expenditure by Cardinal Pell and the expenditure incurred by the Secretariat throughout 2014. These matters were addressed in a Statement issued earlier this year which does not appear to have been mentioned by the authors. It is attached for reference.

Key facts about the 500,000 Euro expenditure in 2014 that has been reported include:

1. In the period between March 2014 (when the Secretariat was established) and December 2014, operational costs, including initial set up costs for furniture and computers as well as salaries were incurred.

2. Salaries and related costs accounted for 292,000 Euro.

3. The net costs of air travel by staff of the Secretariat for these 9 months was less than 4000 Euro, considerably less than many other entities.

4. 2500 Euros was spent on acquiring vestments and altar cloths for the Chapel in the Secretariat office so that staff could come together in prayer and for the celebration of Holy Mass.

5. 16000 Euro was spent in travel and accommodation by advisors working on a project for the C9.

6. A Vatican apartment was secured for one senior staff member from abroad on a term contract. It is anticipated this asset will continue to be used by the Secretariat for many years as it provides a less expensive option of accommodating international experts on long term placement than alternatives at one of the Domus’ or in expensive hotels.

7. Consistent with the practice at the time, the Secretariat was not consulted prior to APSA awarding contracts. The Secretariat was not asked to provide specific approval of each cost item prior to making a commitment – these practices have now changed. Expenditure by the Secretariat now requires the explicit approval of the relevant manager before costs can be incurred.

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ROME
Gazzetta del Sud

Rome, November 5 – Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the former Vatican secretary of state, on Thursday rejected allegations contained in a book in the middle of the new Vatican leaked-documents scandal that he paid for renovations to his ‘top-floor’ apartment with money from a foundation linked to a children’s hospital in Rome. The allegations are contained in Avarice by L’Espersso journalist Emiliano Fittipaldi, which is out in Italy on Thursday. In an interview with Corriere della Sera newspaper Bertone described the allegations as “slander”. “It is shameful, I don’t know how to defend myself, it is almost impossible to defend oneself from slander,” he said. Cardinal Bertone insisted that he had paid for the 300,000-euro renovations out of his own pocket even though the apartment belonged to the Vatican governorate.

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VATICAN CITY
America Magazine

Gerard O’Connell | Nov 5 2015

Last weekend, following investigations, the Vatican Gendarmerie arrested a Spanish monsignor, Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, and an Italian public relations expert, Dr. Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui, for their alleged roles in leaking confidential and reserved information regarding Vatican finances and other matters to Italian journalists who have just published two books mainly based on this information.

While Mgr. Vallejo Balda, 54, is still in a Vatican prison, Ms. Chaouqui, 33, is back in her home. She was released after being detained for a day and a half as she had begun to collaborate with the investigators.

The Vatican issued a press communique on November 2 announcing the arrests and said, “Today, the office of the Promoter of Justice, in the persons of Prof. Gian Piero Milano, Promoter of Justice, and Prof. Roberto Zannotti, vice-Promoter of Justice, convalidated the arrest of the above named persons, but provided for the release of Dr. Chaouqui, given that the demands of preventative detention were no longer judged necessary because of her cooperation with the investigations.”

America has now learned that there was another reason – could it be the main one? – for her rapid release. It relates to the fact that she is more than two months pregnant and sources say the Pope did not want her held in prison given this delicate condition. This fact too explains why Chaouqui was actually detained in a convent of women religious inside the Vatican, and not put in a prison cell as happened to Vallejo Balda. He is in the same cell that was occupied by Benedict XVI’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, 3 years ago.

Since her arrest, Chaouqui has engaged one of the most famous lawyers in the country, Giulia Bongiorno, to defend her. After her release, she has protested her total innocence in conversations with journalists, and on Facebook and Twitter she stated: “I am not a mole. I have not betrayed the Pope. I never gave a page to anybody.” She blames Vallejo Balda for dragging her into all this.

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UNITED STATES
Take Action

about the petition

By some estimates, the number of victims of clergy sexual violence is in the hundreds of thousands and on the rise as more survivors come forward and civil authorities begin investigations in Europe, Latin America, Africa, Australia, and Asia. The Vatican’s own experts have said there are 100,000 cases in the U.S. alone. Sexual violence in the Catholic Church is not a historical crisis but an ongoing problem, as is the lack of accountability.

Today, throughout the world, perpetrator priests who are known to church officials continue to hold posts in congregations, schools, orphanages, and elsewhere, unbeknownst to local communities. The church has shown over and over that it cannot police itself. In 2014, the United Nations issued a series of recommendations on what the Vatican must do to fulfill its obligations to human rights treaties and end this epidemic of sexual violence.

Pope Francis has all the authority he needs to move from words to action and stop further abuse. By signing this petition, you’re standing with SNAP, CCR, and many others to demand that Pope Francis take the following concrete steps to address the violence:

* Immediately remove all known and suspected child sexual abusers from assignment, and refer the matter to relevant law enforcement authorities for investigation and prosecution;

* Hand over files containing details of cases of sexual violence to civil authorities for investigation and prosecution of abusers as well as those who concealed their crimes and knowingly placed offenders in contact with children, and demand bishops do the same in their local jurisdictions;

* Encourage and protect church whistle-blowers who have come forward with information about the crisis of sexual violence. So far church officials have intimidated and retaliated against whistle-blowers.

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CHILE
Yahoo! News

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — There has been no cover up by Chile’s Catholic church of the abuses committed by its most infamous pedophile priest, the archbishop of Santiago said on Thursday.

Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati spoke after testifying in a case brought against the church by three victims of the Rev. Fernando Karadima. The Vatican sanctioned Karadima in 2011 to a lifetime of penance and prayer for having abused young boys. A Chilean judge later dismissed a criminal case because the statute of limitations had expired, but she determined the abuse allegations were truthful.

“I answered all the questions and I hope it helps to clarify the stance of the church, which is of love for the truth and understanding for those who have been victims,” Ezzati said after being questioned for two hours at a court hearing in Santiago.

“There has been no cover up by the Church.”

The three victims are demanding a monetary compensation and a public apology.

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UNITED STATES/ROME
The Guardian (UK)

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Rome and Amanda Holpuch in New York
Friday 6 November 2015

When Cardinal Bernard Law was forced under public pressure to resign as archbishop of Boston in 2002, he was considered a pariah within the ranks of the American Catholic church.

In an editorial at the time, the Boston Globe – which had helped bring him down by exposing how the archdiocese had covered up years of sexual abuse by paedophile priests – said that Law had become the “central figure in a scandal of criminal abuse, denial, payoff and coverup that resonates around the world”.

The story behind the Globe’s exposé is the subject of a new film called Spotlight, which stars Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo and is being released in the US on Friday.

The movie is likely to revive questions about the church’s handling of sex abuse – both then and now – and revive memories of a painful period for abuse victims and millions of American Catholics.

But Law is likely to be insulated from any controversy: in the 13 years since his resignation, he has found a haven far from Boston, behind the walls of the Vatican.

At the time of his resignation, the cardinal was being pilloried publicly for having turned a blind eye to sex abuse, and embodying a culture that “reflexively placed the reputation of the church above the pain of victims”.

But for years, he served in an honorific role as the archpriest of the Basilica of the Santa Maria Maggiore until his retirement, at the age of 80, in 2011.

Today, Law enjoys the quiet life that any senior and retired cardinal living in Vatican City would: he is a fixture of the annual 4 July Independence Day party held by the US embassy to the Holy See, and was until recently considered an active and important conservative voice within many of the Vatican offices where he served. …

But for men like David O’Regan, who was abused by a member of the Boston archdiocese in the 1960s and suppressed the experience until the Boston Globe’s investigation made it public in 2002, Law is still a symbol of the church’s legacy of abuse.

“Being caught in [Law’s] lie, that was such a betrayal to me, because my faith meant so much to me,” he said.

Now serving as the New England director of the activist group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, O’Regan said that he was one of about 100 people who attended a Spotlight screening last week, organised by the film’s distributor, Open Road Films. There were several advance screenings of the film for clergy sex abuse survivors and their families and friends.

The anger and sadness O’Regan felt in 2002 was resurrected during the screening, but he said he is thankful for the film.

“I felt validation,” said O’Regan. “When we first came forward to the church, we were not believed, they minimised what happened to us.”

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Herald

James Verniere Friday, November 06, 2015

From “The Front Page” and “His Girl Friday” to “All the President’s Men” and “The Paper,” America has been in love with newspaper movies. This gives “Spotlight,” a film from New Jersey-born director and co-writer Tom McCarthy (“Win Win,” “The Cobbler”) about the Boston Globe’s award-winning investigation into the Catholic church child sexual abuse scandal, both the urgency of front-page headlines and a certain backward, nostalgic air.

Remember newspapers? Weren’t they great?

The action begins in 2001. The New York Times-owned Globe has a new editor from Miami named Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber, nailing the guy’s “Visit to a Small Planet” aura). Not long after unpacking, Baron asks editor Walter “Robby” Robinson (Michael Keaton, stellar), who is supervised by Managing Editor Ben Bradlee Jr. (John Slattery), and Robinson’s “spotlight” team of reporters — Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) and Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James) — to look into why no prosecutions have resulted from church payments to settle sexual abuse cases.

Holy Whitey Bulger, is it possible the Boston church has been able to suppress the truth for decades?

The screenplay by McCarthy and Josh Singer (“Fringe”) gives a shout­out to the Boston Phoenix, which broke the story, but it’s a left-handed compliment. The case involves “sealed documents” the church desperately does not want to come to light and the number of priests who have molested children in the Boston area and what disgraced Bernard Cardinal Law (Len Cariou, “Blue Bloods”) knew and when he knew it.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Eagle-Tribune

Posted: Friday, November 6, 2015

By Mike LaBella mlabella@eagletribune.com

HAVERHILL — A major motion picture about a newspaper investigation into the Catholic priest sexual abuse scandal is showing in theaters, and the character of Ronald Paquin, a former Haverhill and Methuen priest, has a strong presence in the film.

Paquin is free after serving 12 years in prison for raping boys while he was a priest. The Essex District Attorney tried recently to get him committed to a mental hospital, where he would be held after his prison term, but a judge refused.

Boston lawyer Mitchell Garabedian, who has represented more than 100 victims of the scandal and currently represents victims from 13 different countries, recently filed a civil suit against the Archdiocese on behalf of a former Haverhill woman who said she was sexually abused by already convicted Haverhill priest Kelvin Iguabita.

Garabedian said he recently attended a screening of the movie “Spotlight” and found it to be accurate for the most part. Actor Stanley Tucci portrays Garabedian in the movie.

“It’s a powerful film that drives home a message of the evils of clergy sexual abuse,” Garabedian said. “It also addresses the cover up by the church, the power and influence of the Catholic church, and the ability to have the truth revealed. It’s a film that shows how the law, the media, and victims of clergy sexual abuse are combined to overcome the most powerful institution in the world.”

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NEW MEXICO
Albuquerque JournalI

By Olivier Uyttebrouck / Journal Staff Writer
Friday, November 6th, 2015

Legal and professional costs in the Diocese of Gallup bankruptcy case have climbed to more than $3.2 million as the case enters its third year this month and attorneys prepare for a third round of mediation talks.

Meanwhile, a Texas law firm has asked U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David T. Thuma of Albuquerque to allow 15 alleged victims of sexual abuse by priests to file civil lawsuits against the diocese.

All 15 allegedly were abused by priests at churches in Winslow, Ariz., where the diocese posted seven priests identified as having had “credible allegations” of sexual abuse made against them.

They are among 57 alleged sex abuse victims who have filed claims against the Diocese of Gallup in the Chapter 11 reorganization bankruptcy filed by the diocese in November 2013.

Attorneys representing some of the alleged victims have sought Thuma’s permission to bring some of the civil cases to trial in state court. Thuma will consider the requests at a hearing Tuesday.

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MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

By John Lundy
Forum News Service
POSTED: 11/05/2015

DULUTH, Minn. — A priest who was accused of molesting a choirboy during a European tour in 1990 has been exonerated in a third-party investigation, according to the abbot of his monastery.

But an advocate for victims of sexual abuse by priests isn’t satisfied.

“Their third-party investigator was paid to find exactly what they were looking for,” said Verne Wagner, the northern Minnesota director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

“We’ve seen this in many instances, and it is not credible.”

The allegations against the Rev. Timothy Backous, who was placed on leave from positions with Essentia Health and St. Michael’s parish in Duluth in June 2014 after they resurfaced, “were not supported by evidence,” said Abbot John Klassen of St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minn., in a statement released Thursday.

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IRELAND
The Journal

ARCHBISHOP EAMON MARTIN has revealed that in the past year he has come across a number of situations where there were concerns that somebody vulnerable may have been abused by a priest.

Speaking to Eamonn Mallie on Irish TV, the leader of Ireland’s Catholics said, “Every single time that I come across anything now that potentially could be a criminal offence, it may not be a criminal offence, but potentially- we now have a system, we have a dedicated person”.

“With regard to my own life and my own work as archbishop,” Martin continued, “I would say yes, even since last September [2014] there have been a number of cases, not of child abuse, but cases where we’ve been worried that somebody who is vulnerable may have been abused by a priest.

We immediately seek the advice of the civil authorities.

“We have a very close link with the statutory authorities and we refer everything, if we have any suggestion at all that somebody might be at risk or that there might be a danger to a child, it’s referred.

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WORCESTER (MA)
Telegram and Gazette

By David Clohessy

Posted Nov. 6, 2015

Soon, millions across the US will see “Spotlight,” a highly-acclaimed film that shows how dogged Boston Globe reporters, with the help of courageous abuse victims, unearthed horrific clergy sex crimes and cover-ups in the Boston archdiocese and beyond.

In anticipation of the movie, and the distressing picture it paints of complicit Catholic officials, Worcester church staff are disingenuously distancing themselves from both their neighboring diocese and their own indefensible track record of abuse. It’s smart public relations. But it doesn’t correspond with reality.

In a recent Telegram op-ed (Nov. 4), Judge Edward Reynolds claims the local Catholic hierarchy is “protecting children today by implementing nationally accepted protocols.” That’s wishful thinking.

Judge Reynolds and his colleagues should be promoting vigilance instead of complacency. They should take off their rose-colored glasses, look hard at the evidence, and admit that what church spin-doctors pass off as progress is really “smoke and mirrors” designed to mollify the flock, not actually safeguard the vulnerable.

Judge Reynolds was hand-picked by Bishop Robert McManus for an essentially meaningless abuse panel that is primarily “window dressing” mandated by a weak, vague national church policy. Judge Reynolds means well, no doubt. But he’s being fooled and exploited by church officials who continue to put their comfort and careers ahead of kids’ safety.

Here’s the clearest evidence of this. Bishop McManus, Judge Reynolds and their colleagues refuse to take the most simple and effective way to protect kids from child molesting clerics — posting their names, photos and work histories on diocesan and parish websites.

About 30 U.S. bishops have done this. Not Bishop McManus, however. None of those 30 bishops have expressed regret for having taken this easy, quick prevention step. It’s common sense: if a cleric is too dangerous to keep in a parish, then the public should be warned about him.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

A man sexually abused as child by an East Sussex vicar has criticised the Church of England for suggesting there was no cover-up or collusion by clergy.

Bishop of Horsham the Rt Rev Mark Sowerby was speaking after retired clergyman Vickery House, 69, was jailed for six-and-a-half years for carrying out sex offences against a boy and three men in the 1970s and 1980s.

Mr Sowerby said last week he had not yet been provided with evidence proving any cover-up by the church..

Gary Johnson, who now lives in California and has waived his right to anonymity, said the comments were “outmoded, distasteful and only serve to traumatise victims”.

Mr Johnson was among at least 10 victims of convicted paedophile the Rev Roy Cotton, who died in 2006.

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IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

[with video]

By Cate McCurry

PUBLISHED 06/11/2015

The Archbishop of Armagh has revealed that he has reported suspected clerical abuse to the authorities on three or four occasions since becoming the leader of Ireland’s Catholics.

Since Archbishop Eamonn Martin became all-Ireland primate last September, he said there have been three or four occasions when he feared a vulnerable person was being abused by a priest.

The church leader said none were children and none of the cases were taken forward by the authorities.

In a wide-ranging interview with veteran broadcaster Eamonn Mallie, to be shown this Sunday, Dr Martin also said he believes it is possible for a gay man to be a priest – but not a woman.

He added that he has “no problem” with priests who have gay tendencies as long as they remain celibate.

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UNITED STATES
Aleteia

JOHN BURGER NOVEMBER 5, 2015

A well-known Catholic intellectual referred to the year 2002 as the Long Lent—a period in which shame was just heaped upon the Church because of the mishandling of sexual abuse cases by members of the clergy.

Indeed, Father Richard John Neuhaus’s term was appropriate: revelations about the Archdiocese of Boston’s mishandling of abusive priests did not end tidily with a bright Easter Sunday morning. What began as investigative reports by The Boston Globe on Jan. 6, 2002, just seemed to snowball for the rest of the year, with other journalistic inquiries around the country finding similar malpractice in other dioceses. While many Catholic leading lights went on the defensive, viewing the exposés as an attack on the moral authority of the Church, American bishops themselves revamped the policies that should have prevented the mishandling in the first place. The year ended with the resignation of Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law, and it would seem that “Lent” was finally coming to an end.

But for many victims of abuse, the Lent has continued; for some, sadly, it has never gotten past Good Friday.

Spotlight, a major motion picture depicting the Globe’s efforts to expose the Boston Archdiocese’s handling of clergy abuse cases, opens in New York, Los Angeles and Boston on Friday and nationwide later this month. Undoubtedly, it will reopen old wounds and revive old debates. Aleteia wanted to take a measure of one aspect of the abuse scandal: the healing of victims. We contacted several survivors and others involved in recovery and asked them to tell their stories, talk about what has helped them to find healing, and what steps they feel the Church still needs to take.

The uniqueness of each person’s journey is important to bear in mind. We present two stories today, but we by no means wish to imply that they represent a “typical” sexual abuse victim or survivor. These vignettes represent a range of experiences: both were abused by Catholic priests but in different places and different decades. One is male, the other female. Tomorrow, we will present the stories of survivors who speak about the impact sexual abuse has had on the family.

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NEW JERSEY
NJ.com

By Jessica Mazzola | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on November 05, 2015

NEWARK — It was only a walk of about three miles along Broad Street – from Lincoln Park to Washington Park, and back. But, the Thursday morning walk through Newark made a difference for victims of sex abuse, its organizers said.

Fred Marigliano, who recently completed a 270-mile walk from Cape May to Mahwah to bring awareness to childhood sexual abuse, added a city walk to his agenda.

“A number of people from Newark reached out to me, asking why I hadn’t walked through the city,” Marigliano said Thursday.

Marigliano said he was abused by a family priest at age 11. It took him about 50 years to come forward with his story, he said. Marigliano is now a board member of Road to Recovery, Inc., a nonprofit that works to support other victims and their families.

The 68-year-old said he spoke to hundreds of people along the walk, and achieved his goal of spreading awareness about the issue.

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CHILE
El Mostrador

[Ezatti arrives to testify as part of the lawsuit against Fernando Karadima.]

El cardenal Arzobispo de Santiago Ricardo Ezatti concurrió este jueves hasta la oficina del juez Juan Manuel Muñoz quien lleva adelante el proceso por la demanda que presentaron un grupo de víctimas del ex párroco de El Bosque Fernando Karadima.

Los afectados, José Andrés Murillo, James Hamilton y Juan Carlos Cruz piden una indemnización de $450 millones. En este contexto, Ezatti deberá responder un cuestionario de 35 pregunntas.

“El mayor rol de encubridor nosotros sostenemos es realizado por el cardenal Errázuriz, que es quien no atiende las denuncias en su momento. Y con posterioridad más bien lo que uno le reprocha a Ezzati es el tema de haberse olvidado de las víctimas y haberse preocupado más bien de los victimarios”, aseguró el abogado Juan Pablo Hermosilla quien representa a los demandantes, según consigna T13.cl

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Register

BY EDWARD PENTIN 11/05/2015

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis’ choice of Cardinal Godfried Danneels to attend last month’s Ordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family as one of his 45 papal delegates was heavily criticized on account of the Belgian cardinal’s record.

The archbishop emeritus of Mechelen-Brussels advised the king of Belgium to sign an abortion law in 1990, told a victim of clerical sex abuse to keep quiet and refused to forbid pornographic, “educational” materials being used in Belgian Catholic schools. He also once said same-sex “marriage” was a “positive development” and congratulated the Belgian government for passing same-sex “marriage” legislation, although he has sought to distinguish such a union from the Church’s understanding of marriage.

The cardinal, who was pictured standing next to Pope Francis on the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica on the night of the Pope’s election, also admitted in September to being part of what he called the St. Gallen “mafia” club that was opposed to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and campaigned to prevent him being elected in 2005.

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MINNESOTA
The Catholic Spirit

Maria Wiering | November 4, 2015

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and the State of Minnesota will continue meeting outside of court to discuss criminal and civil charges the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office filed against the archdiocese, attorneys for both parties said in an initial hearing Oct. 29 in Ramsey County Court.

Judge Teresa Warner said the archdiocese and state were keeping her apprised of their conversations. She scheduled the next hearing for 9 a.m. Nov. 30 at the Ramsey County Courthouse in St. Paul.

In June, the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office charged the archdiocese with six gross misdemeanors of failing to protect three victims of now laicized priest Curtis Wehmeyer, and contributing to the victims’ delinquency, asserting Wehmeyer provided them drugs and alcohol. The county also filed a civil petition against the archdiocese alleging it failed to protect children and seeking a legal remedy to prevent future victimization.

Although the criminal charges and civil petition are separate cases, attorneys for the archdiocese and the state agreed to address them jointly at the November court appearance. Representing the archdiocese is Joe Dixon, an attorney with the Minneapolis law firm Fredrikson & Byron and a former federal prosecutor.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, Nov. 5, 2015

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

We’re sad that Kansas City’s new bishop chose to basically ignore his diocese’s horrific track record on the biggest crisis his church faces.

[Kansas City Star]

This is not a good sign. Ignoring abuse and cover up won’t prevent abuse and cover up. By making this choice, he’s following the same failed pattern bishops across the world have followed for decades – essentially denying, minimizing, and thus enabling more heinous crimes against children by child molesting clerics.

Bishop James Johnston devoted “just a few minutes of a 20-minute homily to the challenge of healing the diocese,” the KC Star reported. Healing, however, is secondary. Preventing abuse and exposing wrongdoers and deterring cover ups comes first. And there’s much still to be done in this regard.

Again, we appeal to Johnston to take practical, proven steps to safeguard kids from clerics who commit abuse. We appeal to KC Catholic and citizens to insist that he do this.

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MINNESOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, Nov. 5, 2015

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

We fear that Duluth’s bishop will appeal an $8 million jury verdict or use it to justify seeking bankruptcy protection. We hope he’ll do neither. Both are irresponsible.

A Pennsylvania bishop once appealed a jury verdict for an abuse victim for more than a dozen years. Instead of paying the original $1.5 million, the diocese ultimately paid $2.569 million

[BishopAccountability.org]

More recently, an Illinois bishop appealed a $5 million jury verdict for years, and ended up paying $ 6.3 million (because of the interest that had accrued).

[St. Louis Post-Dispatch]

Appeals like this are mean-spirited and often financially dumb. They delay long-deserved healing for everyone involved.

We also fear that Bishop Paul Sirba will also now claim “We must seek Chapter 11 protection.” We hope this doesn’t happen.

Bishops declare bankruptcy for selfish reasons, not financial ones. They want to keep their reputations, not their assets. They want to keep their cover ups covered up. Bankruptcy brings an abrupt halt to disclosures about which clerics committed and concealed child sex crimes.

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor November 5, 2015

In the wake of two new books in Italy detailing charges of Vatican overspending and corruption, the pope’s top financial official has dismissed claims of lavish outlays in his own department, insisting that a half-million euro spent in the first six months were related to legitimate start-up costs.

A statement issued on behalf of Australian Cardinal George Pell, appointed by Pope Francis to run the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy in February 2014, claimed on Thursday that Pell’s department actually is one of the few in the Vatican that proposed spending less money in 2015 than in 2014.

“The recently released books appear to have included false and misleading claims about the management of expenditure by Cardinal Pell and the expenditure incurred by the Secretariat in 2014,” said a statement released by Pell’s office.

“For the avoidance of doubt about the commitment of Cardinal Pell to cost management and control,” the statement said, “the secretariat completed the year well below its 2014 budget and was one of the very few entities to propose a reduction in total expenditure in 2015.”

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MISSOURI
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

ST. LOUIS COUNTY • A new sexual abuse lawsuit has been filed against Chaminade College Preparatory School, over the actions of a now deceased Marianist Brother between 1968 and 1971.

According to the suit, John Woulfe engaged in the abuse while working as a guidance counselor, which is how he met the boy during his junior year of high school.

The suit accuses Woulfe of pulling the boy, identified in the suit as John Doe, out of class for college counseling sessions that turned sexual. It alleges school officials knew of the abuse and failed to stop it, and says that Woulfe had sexually assaulted at least one other boy at Chaminade before Doe.

It is the latest complaint to be filed against the school and more than a half dozen clerics there, according to the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

And it is at least the third lawsuit against Woulfe alleging sexual abuse. The Missouri Supreme Court issued an opinion on a previous lawsuit involving Woulfe and another teacher at Chaminade College Preparatory, the Rev. William Christensen, in 2006. The lawsuit was first filed in 2002 by Michael Powel, a former student at the school.

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MINNSESOTA/ILLINOIS
Peoria Public Radio

By CASS HERRINGTON

A jury in Minnesota has awarded $8.1 million to a victim of sexual abuse by a Catholic priest. The priest previously worked in Peoria.

The unnamed victim claims Father James Vincent Fitzgerald molested him in 1978 while he was an altar boy in the Duluth Diocese.

The Ramsey County jury decided Wednesday that the diocese and a religious order were negligent in their supervision of Fitzgerald.

Catholic directory records shared by BishopAccountability.org show that Fitzgerald was quote “in residence” at an orphanage in Peoria in 1962. The records say the Guardian Angel Home housed 40 children at the time.

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MISSOURI
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, Nov. 5, 2015

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

There have basically been three “waves” of Catholic child sex abuse victims.

First were many who no longer had ties to the church. Their faith had been stolen from them. So they had fewer fears about seeking justice.

Then there were many who were abused in parish settings. They worried about their privacy, since parishes can be somewhat tightly knit. But they came forward anyway.

In recent years, many who were abused in Catholic high schools – even very expensive and prestigious ones – have begun coming forward. These schools are smaller than most parishes and even more tightly knit. They often have active and sometimes influential alumni groups. And the victims hurt at these schools often have conflicted feelings. On one hand, they were obviously and severely injured. On the other hand, however, many remain convinced they got a better education than they might have at another school.

For these reasons and more, it’s often harder for someone who was sexually abused at St. Louis University High or Vianney or St. Mary’s to step forward, protect kids, seek justice and expose clerics who commit

We’re glad this is happening more and more. These schools will be safer as a result.

Two examples:

–In 2005, Brother William C. Mueller’s first victim publicly stepped forward. Now more than 50 of Mueller’s victims have spoken up.

–In 2011, Brother Louis Meinhardt’s first victim publicly stepped forward. Now more than 15 of Meinhardt’s victims have spoken up.

Two months ago, during his US visit, Pope Francis made strong promises. He pledged that “abuse cannot be kept secret any longer,” “all responsible will be held accountable,” and that church officials will provide “careful oversight to ensure that youth are protected.”

The Marianists are thumbing their noses at Francis. They’re doing none of this. It’s time that they start. And where better to start than with Br. Woulfe, a now-deceased cleric who faces multiple accusers and criminal charges in Illinois, in other words, a cleric whose guilt is not really in doubt.

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KANSAS
Roman Catholic Diocese of Salina

The movie, Spotlight, is likely to remind victims of the pain and suffering they have endured at the hands of someone they had every right to trust, a member of the Catholic priesthood. Our hearts ache and our Bishop expresses great sorrow and profound regret for all victims of sexual abuse. We apologize for the grave harm that has been inflicted on all victims throughout the world. Words alone cannot express our sorrow, shame and disappointment. So, it is our prayer and hope that through our actions victims will find the healing they so richly deserve.

The Diocese of Salina has participated in the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People and independent audits for the last 12 years. We ask for your continued help, support and prayers as we: promote healing and reconciliation with victims/survivors of sexual abuse, respond effectively to allegations of sexual abuse, become accountable for our procedures, and protect the faithful in the future.

The Catholic Church strives to put the child in the center of the room when making decisions about children, and she will not be finished with this issue until child sexual abuse is no longer a part of society or our churches.

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NEW YORK
Syracuse.com

By John O’Brien | jobrien@syracuse.com
on November 05, 2015

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Two men who say they’re survivors of child-molesting priests have sent more than 85,000 signatures to the Vatican demanding the resignation of Syracuse’s bishop.

The survivors, Kevin Braney and Charles Bailey, cite Bishop Robert Cunningham’s characterization of victims in 2011 and his refusal to publicize the names of 11 priests against whom the diocese has found credible allegations of abuse.

Braney said he was hoping for 10,000 people to sign the petition they started two months ago on Change.org. As of this week, 85,193 people from across the country had signed, he said.

Cunningham, in a 2011 court deposition, testified that “the boy is culpable” in cases of child-molesting priests, and referred to child victims as “accomplices.” After a story was published in September on Syracuse.com about the deposition, Cunningham said his words gave the wrong impression, and that the victims were never at fault.

“We were hoping for 20,000 to 25,000 at the max,” Bailey said of the petition. “That’s an impressive number — 85,000 people agreeing that the bishop should go.”

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MASSACHUSETTS
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on a lawyer featured in “Spotlight”:

Stanley Tucci plays church-suing attorney Mitchell Garabedian in “Spotlight,” the film that opens tomorrow about the sexual abuse scandal in the Boston Archdiocese. Tucci, who has never met Garabedian, calls him “the unsung hero” of this story. He also says the lawyer “cares about these victims.”

It is too bad Garabedian cares not a whit about priests who have had their reputations ruined by false allegations. For example, in 2006 Garabedian sued Fr. Charles Murphy for inappropriately touching a minor; the girl said the incident occurred 25 years earlier. On the eve of the trial, the woman dropped her suit. In 2010, Garabedian sued Fr. Murphy for allegedly fondling a man 40 years ago. The accuser was deep in debt and his credibility was questioned even by his own family! After a six month probe by the archdiocesan review board, the priest was exonerated.

When Fr. Murphy died in 2011, he was a broken man. Brian McGrory wrote about him in the Boston Globe saying that what Garabedian did was “a disgrace.” After reading the story, I called Garabedian to see if he had any regrets about pressing charges against Fr. Murphy. He went ballistic: He started screaming like a mad man accusing the archdiocese of operating a “kangaroo court.” I asked him to calm down but he would not. Indeed he made sweeping condemnations of all Boston priests.

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WORCESTER (MA)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

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

We’re saddened that a Catholic layman disingenuously defends how Worcester Catholic officials deal with clergy sex crimes and cover ups.

In a newspaper op ed today, Edward Reynolds, claims the church hierarchy is “protecting children today by implementing nationally accepted protocols.” That’s baloney. They’re doing smart public relations. But they aren’t reforming.

[Telegram & Gazette]

Reynolds should be ashamed for promoting complacency instead of vigilance.

He was hand-picked by Bishop Robert McManus for an essentially meaningless abuse panel that is primarily “window dressing” mandated by a weak, vague national church policy. He means well, no doubt. But he’s being fooled and exploited by church officials who continue to put their comfort and careers ahead of kids’ safety.

Here’s the clearest evidence of this. McManus, Reynolds and their colleagues refuse to take the most simple and effective way to protect kids from child molesting clerics – posting their names, photos and work histories on diocesan and parish websites.

About 30 US bishops have done this. Not McManus, however. None of those 30 have expressed regret for having taking this cheap, quick prevention step. It’s common sense: if a cleric is too dangerous to keep in parish, then the public should be warned about him.

Reynolds touts church policies, protocols and procedures. But kids weren’t hurt and crimes weren’t concealed because of inadequate policies, protocols and procedures. They were hurt by deliberate, repeated, selfish decisions by Catholic officials who have never been exposed or punished and are largely still on the job now.

At least 41 Worcester priests assaulted kids. Dozens of their church supervisors and colleagues knew of or suspected these crimes and ignored or hid them. No words on paper, regardless of how impressive they may sound, will change this. Only exposing and punishing those who commit or conceal child sex crimes stops this horror. But McManus and his colleagues continue to keep a tight lid on this cover up, while clerics who perpetuated it are still on the job, often winning promotions and continuing their complicity.

Instead of patting themselves on the back, Worcester church officials should be begging anyone who sees, suspects or suffers clergy sex crimes to call law enforcement. Instead of making self-serving reassurances, they should be warning parents about known predators.

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UNITED STATES
Godreports

October 22, 2012

By Mark Ellis

He saw himself as defective, but he wasn’t sure why. Alcoholism, anger issues, and two failed marriages led him to the brink of suicide. Then at age 35 repressed memories of sex abuse surfaced from the past, which sparked a profound journey of healing and forgiveness.

“I was hoping I was just crazy,” Bill Christman said, when repressed memories first surfaced of his sexual abuse at the hands of a Catholic priest. Bill’s father died when he was only six, and the priest offered to be a father figure to him and his older brother.

Father Wiebler took the boys on fishing trips, swimming at Buffalo Beach on the Mississippi River, and they played pool together in the rectory. “I thought it was wonderful that Father Wiebler offererd to spend time with my sons,” Billy’s mom, Mary, noted. “I felt he would be a good adult role model for Jeff and Billy.

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IDAHO
Southern Poverty Law Center

Bill Morlin
October 30, 2015

A long-haul trucker is under investigation in Idaho and Washington State on suspicion of sexually abusing at least 10 boys, including some while he was affiliated with a hard-core, anti-Semitic church.

Kevin G. Sloniker, 30, was arrested in Menomonie, Wis., and extradited to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where he was booked into the Kootenai County Jail on Oct. 9. Sloniker faces felony charges of rape and lewd conduct involving two underage boys, The Spokesman-Review reported this week.

Authorities say Sloniker, now in jail on a $1 million bond, is suspected of sexually abusing at least eight other boys over the past decade. Some of the alleged abuse occurred when Sloniker took the boys with him while traveling as a long-haul truck driver. He also is under investigation in Spokane County for allegedly sexually abusing and whipping a young boy at his parents’ home in Latah, Wash.

Sloniker became a truck driver after working as a counselor at Immaculate Conception Church in Post Falls, Idaho, which is part of the Society of Saint Pius X, and studying to become a church priest. Church officials have refused comment on the criminal case.

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SPAIN
Yahoo! News

By HERNAN MUNOZ and ALAN CLENDENNING

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — The Polish monsignor who came out as gay and was fired by the Vatican just before a meeting of bishops about outreach to gays, divorcees and more traditional Catholic families says that a “special kind of homophobia” exists among priests, because those who are homosexual are forced to hate themselves.

Krzysztof Charamsa told The Associated Press in an interview that he hopes more priests will come out “to destroy the code of silence in the church.”

“Many priests, many bishops, many persons in Catholic clergy are gay, are homosexual people,” Charamsa said. “With sensitivity of homosexuals. But they must hate themselves.”

Charamsa was a mid-level official in the Vatican’s doctrine office who came out in interviews in Italian and Polish media last month a day before the bishops met, saying he was happy and proud to be a gay priest and in love with his boyfriend.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

A Jersey Anglican Church group has asked the Archbishop of Canterbury to make public a report into protecting young vulnerable people in the church.

In 2008 a woman, known as HG, made a formal complaint about abuse by a Jersey churchwarden.
The inquiry into the handling of the complaint recommended no disciplinary action should be taken against any Jersey Anglican clergy member.

The report has been kept confidential on legal advice.

HG said its publication could cause her harm and threatened legal action.

The renewed calls for it to be made public have been made in a letter from Senator Sir Philip Bailhache, the Lay Chair of the Deanery, to the Most Reverend Justin Welby, who said the matter was “gravely affecting Jersey”.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By A. O. SCOTT
NOV. 5, 2015

“The city flourishes when its great institutions work together,” says the cardinal to the newspaper editor during a friendly chat in the rectory. The city in question is Boston. The cardinal is Bernard F. Law and the editor, newly arrived at The Boston Globe from The Miami Herald, is Martin Baron. He politely dissents from the cardinal’s vision of civic harmony, arguing that the paper should stand alone.

Their conversation, which takes place early in “Spotlight,” sets up the film’s central conflict. Encouraged by Baron, a small group of reporters at The Globe will spend the next eight months (and the next two hours) digging into the role of the Boston archdiocese in covering up the sexual abuse of children by priests. But the image of two prominent men talking quietly behind closed doors — Law is played with orotund charm by Len Cariou, Baron with sphinxlike self-containment by Liev Schreiber — haunts this somber, thrilling movie and crystallizes its major concern, which is the way power operates in the absence of accountability. When institutions convinced of their own greatness work together, what usually happens is that the truth is buried and the innocent suffer. Breaking that pattern of collaboration is not easy. Challenging deeply entrenched, widely respected authority can be very scary.

Directed by Tom McCarthy from a script he wrote with Josh Singer and based closely on recent history, “Spotlight” is a gripping detective story and a superlative newsroom drama, a solid procedural that tries to confront evil without sensationalism. Taking its name from the investigative team that began pursuing the sex-abuse story in 2001, the film focuses on both the human particulars and the larger political contours of the scandal and its uncovering.

We spend most of our time with the Spotlight staff. Their supervising editor, Walter Robinson (known as Robby and played by an extra-flinty Michael Keaton), has a classically blunt, skeptical newsman style, but he’s also part of Boston’s mostly Roman Catholic establishment. He rubs shoulders with an unctuous church P.R. guy (Paul Guilfoyle) and plays golf with a well-connected lawyer (Jamey Sheridan) who handled some of the archdiocese’s unsavory business. The reporters working for Robby — Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) and Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James) — come from Catholic backgrounds, and have their own mixed feelings about what they’re doing.

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MISSOURI
Riverfront Times

Posted By Danny Wicentowski on Thu, Nov 5, 2015

The latest addition to a string of lawsuits filed against Chaminade College Preparatory School accuses a now-deceased Marianist Brother, John Woulfe, of repeatedly molesting a high school student between 1968 and 1971.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in St. Louis County Circuit Court, alleges that Wolfe used his position as a guidance counselor at the exclusive all-boys’ school to schedule closed-door “college counselling” meetings with the victim, identified in the suit only as John Doe. Over the course of several sessions, Woulfe allegedly masturbated and performed oral sex on the student.

Woulfe died in 2005, three years after a different Chaminade alumnus accused him of similar abuses during private meetings in Woulfe’s office. Father Martin Solma, head of the St. Louis-based Marianist Catholic Order, revealed in 2012 that more than a dozen former students have come forward alleging sexual abuse involving Woulfe and other members of the order, including Brother Louis Meinhardt. Last month, Chaminade agreed to pay a $300,000 settlement to a former student who said Meinhardt sexually abused him during a typing tutoring session.

According to the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, at least eight Marianist clergy members have been accused of sexual abuse going back to the 1960s. The Marianists run three St. Louis-area high schools: Chaminade, St. John Vianney and St. Mary’s.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

Australia is one step closer to a national redress scheme for thousands of survivors of sexual abuse in state-run and other institutions.

Victoria and NSW have joined faith-based institutions, including the Catholic Church and the Salvation Army, in backing the recommendation of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse for a national approach to compensating victims.

The urgent need for such a national scheme was emphasised on Thursday by royal commission chairman Peter McClellan.

Justice McClellan told an international conference of sex-abuse treatment experts that extensive research and engagement with abuse survivors had led commissioners to decide “all previous responses (schemes) have been inadequate”.

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MINNESOTA
Noaker Law Firm

(St. Paul, Minnesota—November 05, 2015)—Yet another Minneapolis-area man filed a civil lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America and the St. Paul-based Northern Star Council for alleged sexual abuse committed by his Scout leader.

Click Here for Complaint filed with Ramsey County District Court

Steven Parker was only eleven years old when he says he was first sexually abused by his Scout leader, Andrew Momont. According to court documents, the boy met Momont when he joined Troop 17, which was based out of the Olivet Baptist Church in Robbinsdale. Andrew Momont was the troop’s Assistant Scoutmaster. Andrew Momont’s father, Phillip Momont, was the Troop 17 Scoutmaster.

According to court documents, Parker, now age 59, was sexually abused by Scout Leader Andrew Momont on numerous occasions spanning from approximately 1967-1974.

Tomahawk Scout Camp SignThe abuse took place at “Scouting-related meeting, events, and outings in and around St. Paul, Minnesota” as well as at the Many Point Scout Camp near Ponsford, Minnesota and Tomahawk Boy Scout Camp near Birchwood, Wisconsin.

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NEW YORK
Syracuse.com

Bishop Robert Cunningham took an important step toward reconciling with his flock last week when he agreed to immediately report allegations of sexual abuse against priests or other religious workers to the civil authorities.

But the bishop can go farther by releasing the names of 11 priests in the diocese facing credible accusations of abuse.

First, the good news. Cunningham signed a “memorandum of understanding” with the seven district attorneys who have jurisdiction in the sprawling Catholic diocese of Syracuse. Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick was among them.

The agreement goes beyond the diocese’s 2003 policy on dealing with sexual abuse of children, which was limited to “current cases involving a minor and any clergy member, employee, religious or volunteer.” The new memorandum requires the diocese to report “regardless of the age of the allegation or whether or not the clergy member is active.” Further, the diocese won’t investigate allegations on its own before reporting them to the district attorney, and it will work with DAs to preserve evidence.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Hull Daily Mail

A MAN has told a court how a priest tried to have sex with him in a church while he was at a children’s home.

The man, now in his thirties, told Leeds Crown Court he was young at the time and could not remember the name of the priest at the St William’s home in Market Weighton.

The prosecution claim the alleged offender was former chaplain Anthony McCallen, 69, who is on trial alongside former headmaster James Carragher, 75, and ex-teacher Michael Curran, 62.

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WORCESTER (MA)
Telegram & Gazette

By Edward J. Reynolds

Posted Nov. 4, 2015

When I was asked in 2009 by Bishop Robert J. McManus of the Diocese of Worcester to be a member of the Diocesan Review Committee, I agreed. Committees like this were established by The Catholic bishops of the United States to advise bishops on matters regarding sexual abuse allegations, including whether allegations are credible and how they should be handled, how victims can be helped, codes of conduct, and also monitoring how policies to protect children and young people are being followed.

I agreed to be a member because as a Catholic lay person, parent, grandparent, former trial judge, now practicing attorney, I wanted to know first-hand what was going on and to assist in the local protection efforts for children and young people in the Diocese of Worcester. Now that the movie “Spotlight” will be in theaters soon, I suspect many other people may want to know what is happening today in our diocese.

As a result of my past seven-year membership and the responsibilities connected thereto, I can represent that the Diocese of Worcester has fully adopted and works every day on past issues regarding persons who may have been sexually abused as a minor by a priest, deacon or other church personnel of the diocese. Likewise, I have seen how they are protecting children today by implementing nationally accepted protocols.

The Diocese of Worcester has been operating in compliance with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Charter for Protection of Children. As part of their response to that charter, it established the Office for Healing and Prevention in 2002 to work with victims coming forward seeking assistance. It also broadened its committee of advisers from outside the diocese, called the Diocesan Review Committee, to do the following: hear and assert the credibility of all complaints of sexual abuse of minors made against any diocese personnel; advise the Bishop on a course of action including termination from ministry, or employment or volunteer status, as well as assuring reporting to the District Attorney’s Office; advise the Bishop regarding outreach to alleged victims, treatment for victims and/or family members; and establish and maintain and confirm protocol with all the Diocesan parishes.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Joshua Robertson in Brisbane
Wednesday 4 November 2015

A former Brisbane Grammar junior school headmaster accused of dismissing a student’s complaint about suspected serial paedophile Kevin Lynch says he considered seeking the counsellor’s advice about his own son years later.

Raymond Cross, who the royal commission has heard told an alleged victim in 1977 that he should “not make up stories and that Lynch was a well respected man”, told the inquiry he could not rule out the conversation happening but that it was “most unlikely”.

Cross told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse in Brisbane on Wednesday that when his second son had “settling issues” at Grammar in 1992, he “considered consulting [Lynch] about my son” even though Lynch had since moved to St Paul’s Anglican school.

The commission’s nine-day hearing is probing responses to Lynch’s suspected ritual sexual abuse of more than 60 students under the guise of “relaxation therapy” for more than two decades at both Grammar and St Paul’s.

Cross said while he found the green and red lighting system signalling student access to Lynch’s locked office “quite odd”, he was unaware of any formal record keeping or oversight of Lynch’s contact with students.

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AUSTRALIA
New Matilda

By Ben Eltham on November 5, 2015

As a student at Brisbane Grammar I heard stories of abuse. Then, as now, the school put its prestige and influence above all else, writes Ben Eltham.

The email arrived, out of the blue, several months ago.

It was from the chairman of my old school, Brisbane Grammar School. The subject was “Statement from Brisbane Grammar School regarding the Royal Commission.”

The school has been caught up in the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

“As a valued Old Boy,” the email read, “I wish to inform you of the impending involvement of the School in one of the many Case Studies which are being conducted by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse around Australia.”

“The Royal Commission has now announced a public hearing in Brisbane from 3 November 2015, which will look at educational institutions in Queensland including our own, which relates to abuse by Kevin Lynch, our then student counsellor, in the 1970s and 1980s.”

I wasn’t surprised. When I attended the school in the early 90s, the reign of terror perpetrated by Lynch was still fresh in many memories. Though Lynch had left before I arrived, older boys who had been abused were still at the school. Rumours circulated. “Mr Lynch’s office” was a notorious phrase.

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IRELAND
The Irish Catholic

About 40 women with intellectual disabilities will be paid compensation for their time in Ireland’s Magdalene laundries, following the passage of the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Bill.

Around €18 million has so far been paid in compensation to 500 women who have received sums of up to €100,000 each, but it has not been possible to compensate those incapable of applying for the scheme themselves.

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ROME
Telegraph

By Alice Philipson, Rome 05 Nov 2015

A British aristocrat tried to warn the Vatican it needed to sort out its murky finances years before the full extent of the Holy See’s waste and money mismanagement emerged, a new book has revealed.

Thomas Stonor, the 7th Baron Camoys and a former prominent banker at Barclays, predicted the Vatican’s reputation would be damaged by the corrupt officials handling its money after he worked as an adviser to the Holy See between 1991 and 2006.

His strongly worded memo, sent to Vatican officials in 2004, was revealed in Merchants in the Temple by Gianluigi Nuzzi, an Italian journalist, who lays bare the chaos of the Vatican’s finances in which millions of euros – including donations meant for the poor – are lost in waste and mismanagement.

The book’s publication on Wednesday came just days after the Vatican arrested two suspected moles for allegedly leaking confidential documents to journalists revealing gross financial mismanagement.

In the five-page letter, Baron Stonor wrote that the historic structure of the Holy See’s finances “is not only inappropriate for the 21st century but also dangerous to the resources of the Holy See and potentially to its reputation”.

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ROME
Corriere della Sera

di FIORENZA SARZANINI

ROME Various confidential documents have been stolen but not yet made public, secret papers that recount events in recent years at the IOR, the Vatican bank. Some of the documents have ended up in two books on the Vatican, due to be released tomorrow, while others are being pursued by investigators from the Vatican Gendarmerie, and could lead to new, sensational developments. This is why investigations are now focusing on various computer experts with hacking skills who may have helped Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda and Francesca Chaouqui find and copy the leaked documents. The Vatican gendarmerie has been keeping an eye on them for some time. Further evidence is thought to have been provided by the computer and mobile phone of Monsignor Vallejo Balda. By analysing the contacts of the high-ranking prelate, it was possible to reconstruct his network of relations in recent months. The data stored on his computer and phone may in fact provide confirmation of information gleaned from telephone tapping and other checks carried out since last May. It should also be considered that a few weeks ago Monsignor Vallejo Balda began to suspect he was under investigation, leading him to make moves that ultimately betrayed him. After being summoned to the Vatican, Chaouqui also had the distinct feeling that she had been framed, which is why she decided to cooperate.

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VATICAN CITY
The Tablet (UK)

05 November 2015 by Christopher Lamb in Rome

Sadly, allegations of money mismanagement by the Vatican are nothing new.

For years, many have assumed the Holy See was a) sitting on a lot of money and b) not being transparent with how it was spending it.

What is new, however, is that the Church now has a Pope who is serious about changing this. He has already started with a clean up of the leadership of the Vatican bank and financial structures.

What two new books show – one by Gianluigi Nuzzi, of the original Vati-leaks fame and the other by Emiliano Fitipaldi – is the depth of the problems he faced in 2013 when he became Pope and the continuing challenges.

Among the details the books reveal are:

* In 2011-12 the majority of a large fund, Peter’s Pence, contributed to by Catholics from across the world, worth €378 million, was being used to pay for the Vatican bureaucracy. The Holy See have stressed this fund is used for a variety of causes at the Pope’s discretion.On 29 and 30 there was a theft of documents from the archive of Cosea, a commission that was conducting an overhaul of Vatican administration and finances.

* In 2014 there was a theft of documents from the archive of Cosea, a commission that was conducting an overhaul of Vatican administration and finances.

* A lay postulator for a saint’s cause asked for €40,000 in order to make preliminary investigations

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UNITED KINGDOM
Spectator

Peter Hitchens

The Church of England has produced a lot of good men and women, but very few great ones. It is in its modest, cautious nature that it should be so. Greatness requires a lonely, single-minded strength that does not sit easily with Anglicanism’s gentle compromise.

And I suspect the Church has always been hesitant and embarrassed about the one undeniably great figure it produced in the 20th century. To this day, George Bell, Bishop of Chichester from 1929 to 1958, is an uncomfortable, disturbing person, like a grim obelisk set in a bleak landscape. Many British people still disapprove of his lonely public denunciation of Winston Churchill’s deliberate bombing of German civilians in their homes. Some still defend the bombing and seek to reconcile it with Christian teaching, which is hard. Others simply refuse to believe, against all evidence, that this is what we did. It is often said, though it cannot be proved, that George Bell would have become Archbishop of Canterbury — a post for which he was well qualified — had he kept his mouth shut.

And perhaps this is why he found so few defenders when, 57 years after his death, Bishop Bell was numbered among the transgressors by his old church, and said to have been a paedophilic abuser.

The church itself issued a public statement which correctly referred to the anonymous accusations against the late Bishop Bell as ‘allegations’, but in all other respects treated the claim as if it were a proven fact. Money had been paid in compensation. The current Bishop of Chichester, Dr Martin Warner, was said to have written to ‘the survivor’, apologising. He explained, ‘I am committed to ensuring that the past is handled with honesty and transparency.’ There were ‘expert independent reports’ (which have not been published). None ‘found any reason to doubt the veracity of the claim’.

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MASSACHUSETTS
WBUR

[with audio]

Thu, Nov 05, 2015
by Roy J. Harris Jr.

“Spotlight,” the movie about The Boston Globe’s investigation into a church cover-up of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests, opens in limited release nationwide tomorrow, including in Boston. It may well be, as a headline in Variety declared, that it’s “the film that will make journalism look good again.” That would certainly be a bonus for the nation’s beleaguered news business.

Still, questions remain about whether even such a taut, well-acted, realistic drama about a newspaper exposé from 2002 will draw movie-goers who today are far more likely to tap their news from a cellphone than to read it on the printed page of “Spotlight’s” world. The movie’s most unbelievable element, in fact, may also be its simplest truth: that then-Globe editor Martin Baron, played by Liev Schreiber, sparked such a profoundly powerful reporting effort on his very first day at the Globe, after being hired away from the Miami Herald.

Likely to give it additional appeal, though, is “Spotlight’s” broader, less-heralded angle: a warning about the dangers of uncritically deferring to authority. As Josh Singer, who co-wrote the screenplay with the movie’s director, Tom McCarthy, told me, “The theme of the film is really deference. It’s what makes this story universal.” Indeed, “It’s the same story as with Penn State and with Bill Cosby,” he added, pointing to the difficulties many people have had believing the sexual abuse accusations in those cases.

“Spotlight” is framed to highlight the Globe staff’s own shocking epiphany, as reporters overcame a deferential mindset when they began to penetrate the defenses thrown up by the entrenched Catholic hierarchy. “It’s about not wanting to stick one’s neck out to stop a problem,” Singer said, especially when that problem involves what are generally seen as “good institutions.” He asked, “Who really wants to bring them down?”

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GEORGIA
Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A lawyer for the Georgia statehouse lobbyist accused in a child sex abuse lawsuit said his client “has done absolutely nothing wrong.”

Matthew Stanley claims that Jim E. Collins abused him numerous times over the course of several years, as recently as 2002. Collins was a youth pastor at First Baptist Church of Vidalia. The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in Toombs County.

The suit is one of the first filed since the passage this year of House Bill 17, the Hidden Predator Act. The bill created a two-year window during which victims of past abuse can file civil claims against their alleged abuser, even if the statute of limitations has expired.

Collins’ attorney, Kendall Gross of Metter, said his client “denies any wrongdoing, period.”

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WISCONSIN
Fox 6

[with video]

NOVEMBER 4, 2015, BY BEN HANDELMAN

NEW BERLIN — A ministry with connections to the Duggar family is being sued — and a New Berlin pastor has found himself on the defensive. He and others are accused of covering up years of sexual abuse allegations.

The lawsuit claims Pastor David York hid or ignored serious accusations of sexual misconduct against children — not in New Berlin, but at a ministry in Illinois with a very controversial leader.

Pastor York leads services at Crossroads Community Church on Moorland Road in New Berlin. But it’s his service at another ministry that has him and other facing a possible multi-million dollar lawsuit.

York sits on the board of the Institute for Basic Life Principles — based in Oak Brook, Illinois.

A new lawsuit claims the ministry’s board turned a cold shoulder to years of sexual abuse allegations.

“They have done everything wrong. They’ve chosen to cover it up, hide it,” David Gibbs III, attorney said.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Joanna Menagh

One of eight Perth men charged with sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl has been sentenced to more than 10 years’ jail.

Dawid Volmer, 41, also known as David, pleaded guilty to 12 charges, including giving the girl a stupefying substance so he could abuse her.

The Perth District Court was told Volmer had three sexual meetings with the girl after her father answered an ad he placed online for sexual massages.

Volmer told police as soon as he saw the girl he knew she was underage, even though her father assured him she was over 16.

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AUSTRALIA
The West Australia

[with video]

Tim Clarke
November 5, 2015

A former Christian pastor who admitted abusing a 13 year-old victim who was allegedly “offered” to him by the victim’s father has been jailed for more than ten years.

David Volmer, 41, who was also known as Dawid Volmer, pleaded guilty earlier this year to 12 offences, including indecent dealing with a child, sexual penetration of a child and stupefying with intent to commit an indictable offence.

He will have to serve more than eight years in prison before he is eligible for parole – and had his jail time reduced by two years after promising to give evidence against the girl’s father, who has been charged with sex offences against his daughter.

At a sentencing hearing at WA’s District Court today, Judge Mark Herron was told how Volmer offered sexual massage services on an advert on website Craigslist – which the girl’s father responded to.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

By Angie Raphael
November 5, 2015

A pastor and father-of-two who raped a girl as she lay naked and blindfolded on a bed has been jailed for more than 10 years in what a Perth judge has described as depraved and degrading offending.

Dawid Volmer, 41, had advertised sexual massages on Craigslist, initially meeting the girl and her father when she was aged 12, although her dad insisted she was 16.

Despite “knowing in his heart” that she was underage, Volmer met them three times at a city hotel and at the father’s home where he molested and raped the girl while her dad sat in the same room.

The girl cried after the first sexual incident and was chastised by her father, with a year passing before the second encounter, the West Australian District Court heard on Thursday.

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AUSTRALIA
Perth Now

A PERTH pastor leading a “sexual double life” has been jailed for 10-and-a-half years for the “degrading” sexual abuse of a 13-year-old girl, which included raping her while she was blindfolded, naked and drugged.

Married father-of-two, Dawid Volmer, better known as David Volmer, was one of eight men police charged over the alleged pedophile ring that abused the young girl.

Shocking details of Volmer’s role and the alleged involvement of the victim’s own father in exploiting her emerged when the disgraced evangelical Christian preacher was sentenced in the Perth District Court on Thursday afternoon.

Volmer, 41, pleaded guilty to 12 charges — indecently dealing with a child, sexual penetration of a child and stupefying in order to commit an indictable offence — over the course of three sexual encounters with the girl.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston.com

A no-spoilers guide to understanding the new film.

By Eric Levenson @ejleven and Bryanna Cappadona @brycappa
Boston.com Staff | 11.05.15

The new film Spotlight, out Friday, works at a rapid pace, speeding along with The Boston Globe reporters through their investigation into Boston’s Catholic Church. The movie throws out a number of names quickly — “Geoghan.” “Porter.” “Law.” — so it can be a bit hard to follow in all its details.

Here’s a guide to the basics of the story that will help you understand what the heck’s going on.

Why is the movie called Spotlight?

The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team is an award-winning ensemble of investigative reporters who take many months to largely research, prospect, and uncover large-scale stories. By that very nature, their stories usually pertain to fraud or corruption or abuse. Spotlight is also “the oldest continuously operating newspaper investigative unit in the United States,” according to the Globe .

Spotlight is noted for exposing child molestations at the hands of many priests in Massachusetts, as well as the intentional coverup within the Catholic Church in 2002—coverage that earned them the Pulitzer’s public service medal in 2003.

What you might not know is that Spotlight, under the leadership of Gerard O’Neill, exposed Whitey Bulger as an FBI informant in 1988. O’Neill and fellow Spotlighter Dick Lehr went on to co-author the ever-popular book about Bulger, Black Mass. (Sound familiar?)

As for their most recent work, Spotlight delved into concurrent surgeries at area hospitals in October.

OK, I remember the basics of the sexual abuse scandal. Was the Spotlight team the first to investigate that?

The core of the team’s reporting and interviewing took place in late 2001, and the Globe published their first story on the case in January 2002.

They weren’t the only outlet on the story. An article in March of 2001 in the alt-weekly Boston Phoenix detailed similar accusations against Father John Geoghan, who eventually faced accusations of abusing over 130 children. Written by Kristen Lombardi, that story quoted assault survivors who accused Cardinal Bernard Law, the Archbishop of Boston, of ignoring previous warnings. The piece laid out a compelling case that Law knew about the allegations against Geoghan.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Telegram & Gazette

By Richard Duckett
Telegram & Gazette Staff

Posted Nov. 4, 2015

Although the movie “Spotlight” doesn’t officially open in Boston until Friday, Phil Saviano has already seen it four times.

The first occasion was a private screening for victims of child molestation by Roman Catholic priests who are depicted in the film. The movie dramatizes the Boston Globe “Spotlight” team investigation into abuse in the Catholic Church that won the newspaper a Pulitzer Prize in 2003. Mr. Saviano, who grew up in East Douglas, is played by actor Neal Huff.

“Each time I saw it I had a stronger emotional reaction,” Mr. Saviano said. At the red carpet Boston premiere last week, “There were tears running down my cheeks. I was hoping most people wouldn’t see me,” he said. By the same token, “There’s a lot going on in the film, a lot of detail. I was very pleased.”

Mr. Saviano was molested by the late Rev. David A. Holley of St. Denis parish in East Douglas over the course of months in 1964 and 1965 when Mr. Saviano was 11 and 12 years old. Now 63 and living in Roslindale, Mr. Saviano is a founder of the New England chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

In 2001, he met with reporters of the Spotlight team and was “a key reason why the team decided to delve into this scandal in the first place,” said David Clohessy, national director of SNAP.

“They knew of two priests,” Mr. Saviano recalled. “I went in with a list of 13 from Boston and 14 from Worcester (Catholic dioceses).”

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MINNESOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2015

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

We applaud a Minnesota jury for awarding $8.1 million to a victim of a predator priest. This verdict will protect kids and deter cover ups of child sex crimes.

[KARE]

Victims often stay silent, assuming no one will believe them, help them, or take serious action. Today’s verdict shows that this assumption is no longer true. We hope the wisdom of this jury and the courage of this victim will prod others who are victims of sexual violence to come forward, seek justice, prevent crimes and expose those who commit and conceal heinous abuse against children.

This is a warning to bishops who pretend they’re powerless over religious order clerics working in their dioceses. The jury said that Duluth’s bishop is responsible for most of the harm done by this predator priest, even though the priest’s paycheck was signed by a legally separate entity, the Oblates.

The bottom line is that every bishop is responsible for the safety of every Catholic kid from every Catholic pedophile, whether the offender is a Jesuit, a Marianist, an Oblate or whatever. Hair-splitting may work for bishops as a public relations strategy. It works less well as a legal defense strategy.

The pedophile priest in this case, Fr. J. Vincent Fitzgerald, worked in Missouri, Illinois, Texas, South Dakota and Minnesota. BishopAccountability.org

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MINNESOTA
Northlands News Center

By Dan Branovan

November 4, 2015

St. Paul, MN (NNCNOW.com) – A child sex abuse case against the Diocese of Duluth has garnered an $8.1 million verdict against them in a Ramsey County court room.

Father J. Vincent Fitzgerald was accused of sexually abusing William Weis several times in 1978 at St. Catherine’s Church in Squaw Lake, Minnesota which is part of the Duluth Diocese.

This is the first case under the Minnesota Child Victim Act to go forward.

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MINNESOTA
CBS Minnesota

ST. PAUL, Minn. (WCCO) — A Ramsey County jury awarded $8.1 million Wednesday to a man who was sexually abused by a priest with the Diocese of Duluth decades ago.

According to a statement from Jeff Anderson & Associates, the plaintiff’s attorney, Father J. Vincent Fitzgerald sexually abused William Weis in 1978 at St. Catherine’s Church in Squaw Lake, Minnesota for a period of two weeks.

The two met at St. Thomas More Church in Lake Lillian, Minnesota, but Fitzgerald was working as an Oblate priest with the Diocese of Duluth at the time. After they met, Fitzgerald brought Weis to St. Catherine’s, where the molestation continued.

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MINNESOTA
Seattle PI

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — A Ramsey County jury has awarded more than $8 million to a man who says he was molested by a priest in northern Minnesota when he was a boy.

Fifty-two-year-old William Weis (weyes) alleged he was sexually abused by the Rev. James Fitzgerald at St. Catherine’s parish in Squaw Lake in 1978. The lawsuit centered on whether the Diocese of Duluth was negligent in how it supervised Fitzgerald, who died in 2009.

The Associated Press normally does not identify possible victims of sex crimes, but his attorney says Weis agreed to the use of his name.

Minnesota Public Radio News (http://bit.ly/1Opgmh1 ) reports the jury found the diocese was 60 percent at fault. Fitzgerald’s order, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, was found to be 40 percent at fault.

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MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio

Jon Collins Nov 4, 2015

The Minnesota Historical Society has made an offer to buy the Hayden Center in St. Paul from the bankrupt Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, according to documents filed in United States Bankruptcy Court on Wednesday.

The court documents show that the Historical Society has agreed to purchase the property at Kellogg Boulevard West for $4.5 million. An assessment of the property in the summer of 2013 by the real estate company handling the sale for the archdiocese put the property’s value at between $5 million and $7 million, according to the court filing by the attorney for the archdiocese.

“The Archdiocese believes that the sale of the Hayden Center will allow the Archdiocese to operate more efficiently by having all of its staff in one location,” according to court documents filed Wednesday. “The sale of the Hayden Center will also save the Archdiocese money in operating costs, daily maintenance and long-term maintenance.”

The sale is subject to a higher offer from another party during an auction. The archdiocese asked the court to schedule a hearing to consider final approval during the week of Jan. 4. In a statement, the archdiocese said that it expected the property closing to occur between late January and late February.

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ITALY
Gazzetta del Sud

Rome, November 4 – The Vatican Bank, or Institute for Religious Works (IOR), operated in Italy without authorization for 40 years, Rome prosecutors said Wednesday. The city prosecutor is about to notify ex-IOR general manager Paolo Cipriani and his former deputy Massimo Tulli that a probe into alleged wrongdoing at the Vatican bank has ended, a possible prelude to their indictment. Cipriani and Tulli were indicted in a separate case a year ago on money laundering charges after a probe that in 2010 led to the freezing of 23 million euros over two cash transfers involving IOR that were deemed suspicious. That trial is ongoing. On Wednesday, investigators said IOR acted as a bank without central bank authorization until 2011, when the Bank of Italy told credit institutions to consider it a non-EU bank.

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VATICAN CITY
Gazzetta del Sud

Rome, November 4 – The Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See (APSA) held assets worth 998 million euros in 2013, including an investment portfolio worth over 475 million eurps, according to figures contained in a new book on the Vatican’s financial affairs to be published Thursday. Unlike the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR) – commonly known as the Vatican Bank – APSA’s budget “is not part of the public domain”, L’Espresso news magazine journalist Emiliano Fittipaldi points out in his new book Avarice, one of two books at the centre of a new Vatican document-leaking scandal dubbed Vatileaks 2. Fittipaldi claims APSA acts like a credit institution and cites budget entries detailing loans to banks to the tune of 162.7 million euros, 24.5 million dollars, 8 million pounds, 4.5 million Swiss francs and 29.2 million yen.

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

By Inés San Martín
Vatican correspondent November 4, 2015

ROME — An Italian journalist who allegedly received confidential documents from two members of a now-expired papal study commission on Vatican finances has described the arrest of those figures by Vatican gendarmes as “abnormal,” claiming it’s an effort to obscure the content of his revelations.

It was “an attempt [from the Vatican] to divert attention from the actual issues covered on my book, that are based on documents,” Gianluigi Nuzzi, author of a new book revealing financial abuses in the Vatican, said Wednesday in a Rome news conference.

On Monday, the Vatican announced that Spanish Monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda and Italian lay woman Francesca Chaouqui had been interrogated and then placed under arrest on suspicion of having leaked secret material to Nuzzi, author of Via Crucis (in English, “Merchants in the Temple.”)

Both Vallejo and Chaouqui were members of a commission, known by its Italian acronym COSEA, established in the summer of 2013 by Pope Francis to lay the groundwork for his efforts at financial reform in the Vatican.

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VATICAN CITY
CNBC

[with video]

Reuters

Vatican financial investigators suspect a department of the Holy See which oversees real estate and investments was used in the past for possible money laundering, insider trading and market manipulation, according to a report seen by Reuters.

The information in the confidential document, which covers the period from 2000 to 2011, has been passed on to Italian and Swiss investigators for their checks because some activity tied to the accounts allegedly took place in these countries, a senior Vatican source said.

While most of the media focus of the Vatican’s murky finances has for decades centred on its official bank, the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), a department called the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See (APSA), acted as its own financial powerhouse.

APSA, a sort of general accounting office, manages the Vatican’s real estate holdings in Rome and elsewhere in Italy, pays salaries of Vatican employees, and acts as a purchasing office and human resources department.

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VATICAN CITY
The Guardian (UK)

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Rome
Wednesday 4 November 2015

The Vatican acknowledged on Wednesday that a series of explosive allegations at the heart of two new exposés into the inner workings of Vatican finances had to be “studied and interpreted with care” but insisted that Pope Francis was already well aware of the problems.

The Holy See also confirmed it was investigating an Italian banker who may have been involved in questionable transactions involving the Vatican office that handles its vast real estate holdings.

In an effort to address looming questions about church finances, it also released a separate statement saying that a new board of directors heading a foundation connected to Bambino Gesù, a paediatric hospital in Rome, had held its first meeting on Wednesday.

The hospital was at the centre of several allegations in the two books published this week, Merchants in the Temple by Gianluigi Nuzzi and Avarice by Emiliano Fittipaldi. The Vatican said the new board was committed to transparency and had “turned a page” on its past.

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VATICAN CITY
Independent (UK)

Michael Day Rome @michael2day

Vatican investigators have accused the shadowy organisation known as the Pope’s merchant bank of money laundering, insider trading and market manipulation, it has emerged.

Details of the alleged crimes committed by the institution, the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See (APSA), said to have been between 2000 and 2011, have been passed to authorities in Italy and Switzerland. Investigators say the illicit activity involved bank accounts held in these countries.

Pope Francis sanctioned the probe into APSA as part of his drive to clean up the Vatican after decades of financial sleaze. The Vatican Bank, the Institute for Religious Works (IoR), has often figured in previous scandals. Italian prosecutors involved in a long-running investigation claimed that the IoR had operated in Italy without authorisation for 40 years.

But concerns have also centred on APSA, which as well as paying the Vatican’s salaries looks after its property, financial and share holdings. The 33-page report by the Vatican Financial Information Authority focuses on a “portfolio” worth more than €2m (£1.5m) sent to Switzerland shortly before the Vatican introduced new laws against money laundering.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Legacy

VASATURO Rev. Anthony J. Age 83, of Medfield, formerly of Boston, June 22, 2013, beloved son of the late Peter P. and Raffaela “Ruth” (DeMichele) Vasaturo. Loving brother of Peter P. Vasaturo and his wife Margaret of Medfield and Marie A. White and her husband James of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Also survived by several nephews and nieces. A Mass of Christian Burial will be concelebrated Friday, June 28th at 10:00AM at St. Edward the Confessor Church, 133 Spring St., Rt 27., Medfield. Burial will follow at Vine Lake Cemetery, Medfield.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on an article posted yesterday by Crux:

Margery Eagan has a long history of ripping the Catholic Church, but her latest salvo shows how utterly unhinged she has become. Her article, “The Church’s Sexual Abuse Crisis is Not Over,” is posted on Crux, a website that reports on Catholic news.

Eagan is delighted that the movie “Spotlight,” which opens Friday, will keep the scandal in the news. [For my analysis of this issue, click here.] She lobs many bombs, her biggest being, “This crisis is not over. Children are not yet safe.”

Her evidence? She offers one anecdote from the U.S. and a few from other countries. That’s it. That’s all she has. Never does she deal with the fact that in the last 10 years exactly 8.4 credible accusations were made against an average of 40,000 priests in any given year.

If this is evidence of a crisis, what would Eagan call it when over 100 Orthodox Jewish rabbis from one New York City borough—Brooklyn—have been brought up on child rape charges in recent years? What would she call it when public school teachers and coaches are regularly being arrested for molesting minors? To top it off, the rabbis instruct their people not to report these crimes to the police—they have their own courts! And molesting teachers are routinely assigned to administrative tasks for years before finally being dismissed; many keep their pensions.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

By Chao Xiong Star Tribune NOVEMBER 4, 2015

A Ramsey County jury decided Wednesday that the Diocese of Duluth and a Catholic order of priests negligently supervised a predatory priest, leading to the sexual assault of a 15-year-old altar boy more than three decades ago.

The verdict, rendered after less than a day of deliberations, is the first for a trial under the Child Victims Act. The 2013 law has allowed older claims of child sex abuse previously barred by statutes of limitations to be aired in court.

Jurors began deliberating shortly after 4 p.m. Tuesday, and returned their verdicts about 2 p.m. Wednesday.

The jury of three women and three men found that the diocese was 60 percent responsible and the Oblates of Mary Immaculate were 40 percent responsible for the negligent supervision of the Rev. James Vincent Fitzgerald. They found that that was a “direct cause” of his sexual abuse of a plaintiff named Doe 30.

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MINNESOTA
KARE

DULUTH, Minn. – In a historic move, a Ramsey County jury returned an $8.1 million verdict in a case of alleged sexual abuse by priests from the Diocese of Duluth.

The case is the first to be tried under the Minnesota Child Victims Act, a 2013 law that lifts the statutes of limitation for victims to file suit in decades-old abuse.

Fifty-two-year-old Bill Weis filed a lawsuit in 2014 claiming he was sexually abused for two weeks in the 1970s by Father J. Vincent Fitzgerald, a now-deceased priest from the Diocese of Duluth. The abuse happened at St. Catherine’s Church in Squaw Lake, Minn. — a parish of the Diocese.

The jury found the Diocese 60 percent at fault, while the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, the religious order to which Fitzgerald belonged, was 40 percent at fault. The $8 million verdict was awarded for Weis’ pain, suffering, loss of earnings and medical suffering.

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MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio

A Ramsey County jury Wednesday awarded more than $8 million to a survivor of clergy sex abuse in the first lawsuit to go to trial under Minnesota’s Child Victims Act. That law opened a three-year window to file claims for older incidents of abuse.

The 52-year-old plaintiff, identified as Doe 30, alleged he had been sexually abused by the Rev. James Vincent Fitzgerald at St. Catherine’s parish in Squaw Lake, Minn., in the late 1970s. The case centered on whether the Diocese of Duluth was negligent in how it supervised Fitzgerald, who died in 2009.

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MINNESOTA
Duluth News Tribune

By Tom Olsen

A St. Paul jury has ordered the Diocese of Duluth and the Oblates of Mary Immaculate to pay more than $8 million in damages to a man who said he was sexually abused by a priest in the 1970s.

The verdict was handed down Wednesday in Ramsey County District Court in a trial that lasted more than two weeks. It was believed to be the first case filed under the Minnesota Child Victims Act to go to trial.

The plaintiff, known in court documents as Doe 30, filed the suit in February 2014, claiming he was sexually abused by Father J. Vincent Fitzgerald in the 1970s.

Jurors found that the diocese was 60 percent at fault and the Oblates —the religious order to which Fitzgerald belonged — 40 percent at fault.

Fitzgerald at the time was assigned to St. Catherine’s Church in Squaw Lake, Minn., within the Duluth diocese. The suit states that he spent 12 weeks at a pastoral education program in Willmar, Minn., in 1976 and asked the alleged victim to return to Squaw Lake with him.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
The Jewish Week

Some Jewish women in Washington, D.C., who felt violated by the revelations a year ago that a prominent Orthodox rabbi had secretly videotaping undressed women in his synagogue’s mikveh, have taken a step to symbolically take possession of their own congregation’s mikveh, according to the Washington Jewish Week.

About five dozen members of Ohev Shalom – The National Synagogue, last week dedicated a Van Gogh-like mural that features images of water, moons, dancing women and the words of Isaiah [12:3] that “Joyfully shall you draw water from the fountains of redemption.”

The artwork, spearheaded by local artrist Rena Fruchter, was designed “to put the pieces back together” after Rabbi Barry Freundel, longtime spiritual leader of Kesher Israel, pleaded guilty to voyeurism and was sentenced in May to six years in prison.

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ILLINOIS
DNA Info

By Linze Rice | November 4, 2015

WEST RIDGE — The taboo of child sexual abuse spans cultures across the world, but some Orthodox Jewish leaders say it’s particularly difficult for victims of abuse to speak up and seek justice in their tight-knit community.

On Sunday, Nov. 8, some of those leaders will come together in West Ridge to lead a panel discussion on the topic at Congregation Ezras Israel, 7001 N. California Ave., in an event organized by the Decalogue Society of Lawyers.

“The greatest nightmare of any parent, family or community is harm caused to our children,” said Mitchell Goldberg, second vice president of the lawyer society and chair of the event. “It is important for all of us to unite in protecting our most valuable and vulnerable population, our children, from those who would abuse them — including within our own communities. Ignoring the danger is not an option.”

Goldberg thanked the panelists and local Jewish groups, as well as the Cook County State’s Attorney and Chicago Police Department, for their work in “educating the broader Jewish community about the dangers of Child Sexual Abuse and the tools and services available to help victims and their families.”

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UNITED STATES
Los Angeles Daily News

By Bob Strauss, Los Angeles Daily News
POSTED: 11/04/15

A story about a great job of journalism has been turned into a movie that may be the most journalistically scrupulous ever made.

“Spotlight” recounts the Boston Globe’s eponymous investigative reporting team’s Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the local Catholic Archdiocese’s cover-up of what turned out to be a systemic pedophile priest scandal. The resulting 2002 series of some 600 articles revealed that more than 70 priests had been protected by the church, and triggered revelations of similar abuse by priests in 105 American cities and 102 dioceses throughout the world.

Director Tom McCarthy (“The Station Agent,” “The Visitor”) and his co-writer Josh Singer (“The Fifth Estate,” TV’s “The West Wing”) spent months in Boston doing detailed research to create a screenplay and subsequent movie that feels infused with authentic detail about the investigation.

The movie’s Spotlight team is played by Michael Keaton as editor Walter Robinson, Rachel McAdams and Mark Ruffalo as reporters Sacha Pfeiffer and Michael Rezendes, and Brian d’Arcy James as researcher Matt Carroll. Liev Schreiber is the Globe’s new executive editor Marty Baron, who came from the Miami Herald and on his first day in the newsroom requested Spotlight dig into the story of a single Boston priest, which grew into the much bigger effort.

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MINNESOTA
Jeff Anderson & Associates

News Release

November 4, 2015

Diocese of Duluth Negligent in Supervising Predator Priest

(St. Paul, MN) – A Ramsey County jury handed down an $8.1 million verdict against the Diocese of Duluth today in a sexual abuse case involving Father J. Vincent Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald sexually abused Plaintiff William Weis in 1978 at St. Catherine’s Church in Squaw Lake, MN, a parish in the Diocese of Duluth.

The jury attributed 60% fault to the Diocese of Duluth and 40% to the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a religious order based in St. Paul, MN. Father Fitzgerald was an Oblate priest working in the Diocese of Duluth when he sexually abused Weis. Weis met Fitzgerald at St. Thomas More Church in Lake Lillian, MN, and Fitzgerald subsequently brought Weis to St. Catherine’s in the Diocese of Duluth where he molested him for a period of two weeks.

“It’s an important day for all clergy abuse survivors,” said Attorney Jeff Anderson. “This verdict sends a message and a wake-up call to all communities and organizations, near and far, that the most important thing is the safety of our children. Today, a truth was revealed and justice was served.”

Contact Jeff Anderson: Office/651.227.9990 Cell/612.817.8665
Contact Mike Finnegan: Office/651.227.9990 Cell/612.205.5531

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CALIFORNIA
San Diego 6

The Well-Armored Child Author Joelle Casteix on how to protect your children from sexual child abuse.

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UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

posted by Joelle Casteix on November 3, 2015

The next time someone tells you that “Pope Francis is different” when it comes to child sexual abuse, invite that person to think about this:

If you steal a few Vatican documents and expose corruption, you WILL go to Vatican jail.
From today’s LA Times

The books, both by Italian journalists, are based on leaks from the Vatican and follow the arrests over the weekend of a Spanish priest and an Italian public relations consultant suspected of supplying the authors with stolen documents.

Father Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, 54, remains in jail at the Vatican, but consultant Francesca Chaouqui, 33, was released after her arrest by Vatican police.

BUT – If you sexually abuse children or cover up abuse, you will NOT go to the Vatican hoosegow. But the Vatican will put aside money to “accelerate things.”

From The New York Times, June 10, 2015

Father Lombardi said the tribunal would also examine some of the abuse cases perpetrated by clergy members that were “still pending” at the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith. “They are still very numerous and have accumulated,” he said. The tribunal will “accelerate” matters, he said, noting that money had been set aside to bolster the new section.

If Francis truly wanted to punish child sex abusers or their enablers, he would. But he won’t.

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ROME
Politico

By SILVIA MARCHETTI 11/4/15

The Holy See is about to be rocked by a second “Vatileaks” scandal.

The publication of two books Thursday — “Via Crucis” by Gianluigi Nuzzi and “Avarizia” by Emiliano Fittipaldi — promises to expose new evidence of fraud and misdoings in the Oltretevere, as Romans call St. Peter’s kingdom beyond the Tiber River.

The books appear to be linked to this week’s arrests by Vatican police of Spanish clergyman Monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, secretary of a special commission set up by Pope Francis to examine the Vatican’s finances — known by its acronym COSEA — and Francesca Chaouqui, an Italian PR woman who was dubbed the “social media guru”of the Holy See.

They are suspected of leaking to journalists classified Vatican documents, including recordings of private conversations of the Pope, spiritual leader of the world’s one billion Roman Catholics, and information about Vatican finances.

Chaouqui, who collaborated with investigators, has been released, while the cleric remains in custody. Both face up to eight years in jail.

“Via Crucis” was written by a reporter who was involved in the first “Vatileaks” scandal in 2012 that cast a shadow over the papacy of Joseph Ratzinger, who as Pope Benedict took the historically unprecedented step of resigning in 2013.

In his book, Nuzzi highlights the internal fight being waged by Benedict’s Argentine successor Francis, who was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, against excessive Church spending.

“Expenditures are out of control … there are traps. If we can’t keep under control the money, which is visible, then how can we look after the souls of the faithful, which are invisible?” he quotes Bergoglio as saying in a moment of private distress.

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ROME
Huffington Post

Sébastien Maillard
Vatican Correspondant for La Croix, Rome

“Following Francis” is a monthly blog on the latest happenings of Pope Francis. It is prepared exclusively for The WorldPost by Sébastien Maillard, Vatican correspondent for La Croix, Rome.

ROME — On Oct. 14, Pope Francis started his weekly catechesis in St. Peter’s Square with an unusual declaration: “I would like, before beginning the catechesis, on behalf of the Church, to ask for your forgiveness for the scandals that have happened in recent times both in Rome and in the Vatican.”

He did not specify what he was referring to. But, in fact, these past weeks have been jeopardized by scandals of all kinds, as never witnessed since the beginning of his pontificate in March 2013.

The latest and biggest scandal yet is called “Vatileaks 2.” On Nov. 5, two books will be published by Italian investigative journalists: “Merchants in the Temple” and “Avarice.” Both publications focus on mismanagement of and resistance to the pope’s financial reforms in the Holy See. Before the books reached the bookshelves, a high-ranking monsignor and a laywoman were arrested by the Vatican on suspicion of leaking internal information, including secret recordings of meetings, to the books’ authors. One of them, Gianluigi Nuzzi, led the first “Vatileaks” affair under Pope Benedict XVI in 2012.

The laywoman suspected by the Vatican to have leaked the documents, Francesca Chaouqui, denies her involvement: “I put the Pope before all else.”

She and the monsignor had been appointed by Pope Francis in July 2013 on a committee set up to reform the financial structures of the Roman Curia. Throughout his book, Gianluigi Nuzzi claims to side with the pope and the lay experts who assist him in cleaning up the financial mess in the Vatican’s management.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on disparate treatment of priests:

The media are pushing “Spotlight,” the movie that opens on Friday about the Boston Globe team that exposed priestly sexual abuse in the Boston Archdiocese prior to 2002. But there is little interest in this issue when non-Catholics are implicated in such crimes. As recent cases show, many courts around the nation evince disparate treatment as well.

When he was first arrested, Rabbi Gabriel Bodenheimer was charged with three felony counts of a first-degree criminal sexual act and one count of first-degree sex abuse for alleged oral and anal sex with a 5-year-old child; he was looking at 25 years in prison. On Monday he was told that he would not serve a single day in prison: he was put on probation for three years. This story was not only ignored by the big media outlets, it received no coverage in the New York Times, even though the child rape took place in a New York City suburb.

In May 2014, Michael Travis, an assistant softball coach at a Nebraska high school was arrested for sexually assaulting two softball players; two more alleged victims came forward in December. This past August he cut a deal with prosecutors: he pleaded guilty to simple assault and was told he would not have to register as a sex offender or spend a day in jail. It received little media coverage.

Last June, Terrence Boone Johnson, a track coach from Utah was arrested for forcible sexual abuse of a teenage girl; it was a second-degree felony. A few weeks ago his one-year jail sentence was suspended and he was put on probation. The media were generally disinterested.

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UNITED STATES
America Magazine

Nov 4 2015 – 9:08am | Maurice Timothy Reidy

‘Spotlight’ revisits the investigation of sexual abuse.

In a revealing moment in Spotlight, the expertly crafted new film about the Boston Globe’s investigation into the clerical sexual abuse scandal, the lawyer Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci) offers a damning analysis of the unfolding crisis. “Mark my words, Mr. Rezendes,” he tells Globe reporter Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo). “If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one.”

Much will be written about “Spotlight” in the months to come. It is already being talked about as a formidable contender for Best Picture of the year. It is also sure to start new debates about what policies led to the widespread abuse of children by priests in Boston and around the world. Some people may feel Tom McCarthy, the writer and director, does not capture every nuance of this tragic and complicated story. But these questions should not distract from his great achievement: “Spotlight” is, at once, a detective story, a love letter to journalism and a sensitive exploration of the ravages of sexual abuse upon an entire community. Catholics who have lived with this scandal for decades will again be scalded by its horrors. And this Catholic, at least, emerged from the film wondering why it took so long to do something about it.

The village at the heart of “Spotlight” is, of course, Boston, the big city that still feels like a small town, ruled for decades by Irish Catholics. McCarthy immerses the viewer in the heart of Catholic Boston, from the palatial residence of Cardinal Bernard Law to the Catholic Charities dinners that sustain the church’s many charitable works. The Globe lives in the shadow of this world, with many editors and writers who still call themselves Catholic in one way or another.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service

By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service
11.4.2015

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Financial wrongdoing at the Vatican, leaked documents and arrests by the Vatican police may make it seem like 2012 all over again, but the situation — while serious — is not the breach of papal privacy that the earlier “VatiLeaks” scandal was.

Gianluigi Nuzzi, the Italian journalist who published documents stolen from Pope Benedict XVI’s private office by his butler, has a new book out based on more leaked documents. “Merchants in the Temple: Inside Pope Francis’s Secret Battle Against Corruption in the Vatican,” was scheduled for release in English Nov. 5.

Another book, Emiliano Fittipaldi’s “Avarizia” (“Greed”), also is focused on Vatican finances and was scheduled for publication the same day in Italian.

Nuzzi’s book is based largely on confidential documents given to and reports written by members of a temporary commission Pope Francis established in July 2013 — less than four months after his election — to clean up the Vatican’s financial chaos, control costs and eliminate the possibilities for misusing funds. In addition, Nuzzi has what he claims are recordings of Pope Francis discussing the lack of fiscal responsibility and transparency at the Vatican, but he does not claim to have private papal documents like he did in 2012.

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor November 4, 2015

At first blush, the release of two keenly anticipated books promising bombshell revelations about Vatican financial scandals would seem to represent something of a “Casablanca” moment. That is, they seem likely to elicit pro forma professions of shock over things which, for the most part, everyone already knew.

For instance, Gianluigi Nuzzi’s book “Via Crucis” (in English, “Merchants in the Temple”) describes how cardinals live in elegant and spacious quarters, often at zero cost, and that in general Vatican-owned apartments often bring in substantially below-market rents because residents have been cut sweetheart deals.

Meanwhile, Emiliano Fittipaldi’s book “Avarizia” details how commercial operations inside the Vatican walls – a gas station, pharmacy, tobacco shop, and supermarket – generate tens of millions of euro in income by selling products at discounted prices due to tax exemptions.

In theory, those services are reserved to Vatican personnel, but Fittipaldi uses reports from the Government of the Vatican City State to prove that the numbers tell a different story.

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VATICAN CITY
Fox News

AP

VATICAN CITY – The Vatican spokesman has sought to play down a pair of books recounting financial malfeasance and greed within the Vatican, saying many of the disclosures were already known.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi also emphasized Wednesday that the illegally leaked documents that provided information for the books were the result of “data and information put in motion by the Holy Father himself” as part of efforts his efforts to reform the Vatican bureaucracy and finances.

Lombardi said in comments for Vatican Radio that the publication of “a large bulk of information” that referred to events that by now were “outdated” created an impression of “a permanent reign of confusion, of non-transparency and even the pursuit of individual interests” that runs counter to Pope Francis’ efforts to reform the Vatican.

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IDAHO
CDA Press

Posted: Tuesday, November 3, 2015

DAVID COLE/Staff Writer

COEUR d’ALENE — The Southern Poverty Law Center said the Immaculate Conception Church in Post Falls is part of a breakaway and anti-Semitic sect of Catholic church called the Society of Saint Pius X.

The Immaculate Conception Church, at 614 E. Fifth Ave., was where alleged child rapist Kevin G. Sloniker served as a youth camp counselor. Sloniker, 30, of Coeur d’Alene, is a long-haul truck driver, and some of the alleged abuse took place when boys traveled with him.
Court documents said Sloniker met and befriended some boys through the youth camps.
Bill Morlin, a renowned investigative reporter based in Spokane, wrote in a blog post on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website on Oct. 30 that said Sloniker was “affiliated with a hard-core, anti-Semitic church.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center, headquartered in Montgomery, Ala., is dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry. One of its founders, Morris Dees, successfully battled the Aryan Nations.

The Society of Saint Pius X, or SSPX, “was formed in a 1970 breakaway from the Roman Catholic Church over reforms instituted when the Second Vatican Council condemned ‘all hatreds, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism leveled at any time or from any source against the Jews,'” Morlin wrote. “SSPX leaders contend the reforms were the result of a ‘Masonic plot backed by the Jews.’

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MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

By Nick Woltman
nwoltman@pioneerpress.com
POSTED: 11/04/2015

The Minnesota Historical Society has agreed to purchase the Msgr. Ambrose Hayden Center from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis for $4.5 million.

The historical society plans to use the 60,000-square-foot building, which is across the street from the Minnesota History Center on Kellogg Boulevard, for offices, meeting space and storage, the organization said Wednesday in a news release.

The building’s 129-space parking lot was a major selling point — the History Center’s parking lot overflowed at 52 separate events during the past year.

“We see the purchase of this property as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” historical society Director Steve Elliott said in the news release. “The unique location next to the History Center and near the James J. Hill House will help us address parking, space and storage issues.”

The purchase agreement includes a 12-month lease-back provision that will allow the archdiocese to continue to use to building while the historical society finalizes its move-in plans.

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VATICAAN
KerkNet

BRUSSEL (KerkNet/I.Media) – Italiaanse kranten berichten in het vooruitzicht van de publicatie van de boeken van de journalisten Gianluigi Nuzzi en Emiliano Fittipaldi (het boek ‘Hebzucht’) uitvoerig over mogelijk financieel wanbeheer, zowel bij de Heilige Stoel als in Vaticaanstad. Beiden zouden hun boek zonder medeweten van elkaar geschreven hebben. Vandaag woensdag stelt Gianluigi Nuzzi, die eerder al aan de basis lag van ‘Vatileaks’, zijn nieuwe boek ‘Via Crucis’ (Kruisweg) voor. Sleutelfiguur in de hele zaak is de Spaanse Opus Dei-priester Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, die aan het hoofd stond van de commissie die door paus Franciscus belast was met de financiële hervormingen en die besloot een reeks documenten openbaar te maken toen hij aan de kant werd geschoven. De persdienst van het Vaticaan reageerde maandag al erg afwijzend op de publicaties, omdat die slechts een tendentieus en onvolledig beeld geven van het financiële beheer tot aan de hervorming van paus Franciscus. Vandaag zei pater Lombardi, de verantwoordelijke van de persdienst van het Vaticaan, dat de meeste informatie in de boeken door de hervorming van paus Franciscus al lang achterhaald is.

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VATICAAN
KerkNet (Belgie)

BRUSSEL (KerkNet/Rai/Aggi) – De Italiaanse journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, die ook al aan de basis lag van ‘Vatileaks I’, stelt met enige overdrijving dat paus Franciscus, die in bescheiden vertrekken van 50 vierkante meter in het gastenhuis van Santa Marta leeft, de enige is die echt wil veranderen. Meerdere hooggeplaatste prelaten wonen in appartementen van 400 tot 500 vierkante meter en weigeren die kost wat kost te verlaten. Nuzzi geeft in zijn nieuwe boek onder meer een overzicht van de ruimte van de appartementen van deze prelaten en huurgelden, tot 10.000 euro per maand, in de buurt van de Spaanse Trappen in Rome. Hij getuigt ook over spionage (ook van de paus), intriges en initiatieven om in het bijzonder ook de paus in diskrediet te brengen.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE McCARTHY Nov. 4, 2015

MAITLAND Newcastle Catholic Bishop Bill Wright has strongly backed Federal Government involvement in a national redress scheme for victims of child sexual abuse in institutions.

‘‘It is a great national concern that we get this right, for the sake of all who were abused as children in Australian institutions,’’ Bishop Wright said on Wednesday after a Turnbull Government undertaking to carefully consider the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse recommendation for a national scheme.

The NSW Government and the federal opposition have already backed the scheme, where institutions in which abuse occurred would provide billions of dollars to support and compensate victims.

‘‘The involvement of the federal government, however, would be to ensure that victims receive fair and equal treatment, regardless of which state jurisdiction they live in or which institution was responsible when the abuse occurred,’’ Bishop Wright said.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

November 5, 2015

Nick Toscano

Australia’s landmark child sex abuse inquiry has provided for the first time a profile of the most commonly reported instances of abuse from private interviews with thousands of survivors.

In a speech on Thursday, chairman of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Justice Peter McClellan, will outline a statistical overview of the disturbing experiences of almost 2800 sex abuse victims collected so far.

The commission’s analysis reveals the average age of abuse was 10 for males, and nine for females, while the most common decade in which abuse occurred was the 1960s (28 per cent) closely followed by the 1970s (23 per cent).

It also found that just under half of the reported abuse occurred in out-of-home care, including orphanages, children’s homes and foster care.

About 60 per cent of institutions where abuse occurred were faith-based organisations and 23 per cent were government-run.

Half of the abuse involved penetration and about two-thirds fondling. On average, child abuse spanned a period of 2.8 years.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 4 November 2015 (VIS) – The following is the full text of the response given by Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J., director of the Holy See Press Office, to questions from journalists regarding the investigations currently underway in Vatican City.

“The Office of the Promoter of Justice of Vatican City State Tribunal, following a report from the Financial Intelligence Authority, initiated investigations in February 2015 regarding operations of the purchase and sale of bonds and transactions attributable to Gianpietro Nattino.

The same Office has requested the collaboration of the Italian and Swiss judicial authorities by letters rogatory sent via diplomatic channels on 7 August 2015”.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 4 November 2015 (VIS) – The new executive board of the Foundation for the Holy See “Bambino Gesu” Paediatric Hospital met this morning for the first time following the appointment of the new executives by Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin. During the meeting, held in Rome, the board approved the new statutes of the “completely renovated” foundation, which aim “to guarantee transparency, solidarity and innovation”, according to the president Mariella Enoc.

There are seven new counsellors: the president Enoc, Pietro Brunetti, Ferruccio De Bortoli, Maria Bianca Farina, Caterina Sansone, Anna Maria Tarantola and Antonio Zanardi Landi.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 4 November 2015 (VIS) – The following are reflections by Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J., director of the Holy See Press Office, regarding a new chapter in discussions on the economic matters of the Holy See.

“As is known, a significant part of what has been published is the result of the disclosure of reserved information and documents, and therefore of an illicit activity that must therefore be prosecuted forthwith by the competent Vatican authorities. But this is not what we now wish to speak about, given that it is already the object of much attention.

Now, instead, we are interested in considering the content of the disclosures. It can be said that it consists mostly of information that is already known, although often less widely and with less detail, but above all it must be noted that the documentation published relates mostly to an significant effort to gather data and information, initiated by the Holy Father himself in order to carry out a study and reflection on the reform and improvement of the administrative situation of Vatican City State and the Holy See.

The COSEA (Commission for Reference on the Organisation of the Economic-Administrative Structure of the Holy See), from whose archive the majority of the published information originates, was instituted by the Pope for the purpose on 18 July 2013 and then dissolved after the fulfilment of its task.

This is not, therefore, information obtained against the will of the Pope or of the heads of the various institutions, but generally information obtained or provided with the collaboration of these same institutions, for a common positive purpose.

Naturally, a great deal of information of this type must be studied, understood and interpreted with care, equilibrium and attention. Often the same data can give rise to different readings.

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