ABUSE TRACKER

A digest of links to media coverage of clergy abuse. For recent coverage listed in this blog, read the full article in the newspaper or other media source by clicking “Read original article.” For earlier coverage, click the title to read the original article.

November 4, 2015

‘Vatileaks’ scandal a ‘battle between good and evil’ in the Catholic church

VATICAN CITY
The Guardian (UK)

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Rome
Wednesday 4 November 2015

Chaos, greed, and financial mismanagement. The Vatican has been rocked by yet another scandal, and it is one that has painted the bureaucracy at the heart of the Catholic church as an institution dead-set against Pope Francis’s reform efforts – in large part because some officials have been free to use the church’s coffers as their own personal piggybank.

From stories of cardinals living in luxury apartments and the questionable use of charitable funds to a complete lack of transparency into how tens of millions of euros are spent within important Vatican offices, two books published this week have sought to shine a bright light on the church’s murky finances.

Although the accounts are based on confidential documents – allegedly leaked by two Vatican insiders sincearrested – the authors of the two books, journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, insist they are trying to help the pope in his mission of cleaning up the church. The Vatican has so far refused to comment on the accuracy of the allegations and said the books were the “fruits of a grave betrayal of the trust given by the pope”.

Vatican finances

Early in his papacy, in 2013, Pope Francis was offered a shocking assessment of Vatican finances. A never-before-seen letter to the pope by auditors who were concerned about the management of the Vatican’s vast financial assets described “a complete lack of transparency in the book-keeping … [that] makes it impossible to provide a clear estimate of the actual financial status of the Vatican”. The letter added: “We only know that the data examined show a truly downward trend and we strongly suspect that the Vatican as a whole has a serious structural deficit.”

After sharing the assessment with a meeting of cardinals, the pope issued a 16-minute indictment that was described as harsher than any that had been expressed by a pontiff to an assembled group of cardinals. In the “scathing, even humiliating” dressing-down, the pope told the cardinals present that he would not tolerate improper financial payments. “An official told me, ‘But they come with a bill and we have to pay …’. No, we don’t pay. If something is done without a tender, without authorisation, it doesn’t get paid,” the pope said, according to a transcript in Nuzzi’s book of a secret recording of the meeting.

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

Amnesty welcomes widening of Northern Ireland child abuse inquiry – Mother and Baby Homes to be investigated

NORTHERN IRELAND
Amnesty International

Amnesty International has welcomed an announcement by Northern Ireland’s Historic Institutional Abuse inquiry that it will investigate allegations of abuse at six additional institutions, including a number of Mother and Baby Homes.

Chair of the Inquiry, Sir Anthony Hart, said the Inquiry will investigate Manor House near Lisburn, Millisle Borstal, St Joseph’s Training School for Girls in Middletown, Co Armagh, and three Good Shepherd convents in Derry/Londonderry, Belfast and Newry. It brings the total number of institutions being investigated to 22.

Amnesty has campaigned alongside child abuse victims and women and children from the Mother and Baby Homes for an investigation into allegations of sexual, physical and mental abuse as well as the forced adoption of babies born in the institutions.

Patrick Corrigan, Northern Ireland Programme Director of Amnesty International, said:

“The inclusion of the Mother and Baby Homes and the other children’s institutions in the Abuse Inquiry is very welcome news. Victims of abuse, including those young women and girls who suffered in Mother and Baby Homes, are now a step closer to uncovering publicly the truth of what happened to them and their babies.

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

Latest News

NORTHERN IRELAND
Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry

On Wednesday 4 November 2015, the Chairman of the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry, Sir Anthony Hart, made a statement reviewing the Inquiry’s progress to date and outlining the Inquiry’s plans for the remainder of its work.

In his statement the Chairman provided a final list of the institutions that the Inquiry will be examining through oral hearings. Although it adds some new names to the original list announced in September 2013 he confirmed that this will not change the Inquiry’s timetable and that hearings will still be completed by mid-July 2016 and the report delivered in January 2017.

Under the Inquiry’s Terms of Reference, the report must contain a recommendation on “the requirement or desirability for redress to be provided by the institution and/or the Executive to meet the particular needs of victims”.

From the beginning of the Inquiry, therefore, we have been giving considerable attention to the subject of redress and indeed have asked all those who have given evidence in Banbridge for their views on the matter.

However we realise that those who have given evidence may on reflection have further suggestions or comments and that not all applicants to the Inquiry will have an opportunity to give oral evidence, either because the institution they attended will not be the subject of oral hearings or because they chose to speak to the Acknowledgement Forum only.

We have decided therefore to send a short questionnaire to every applicant to the Inquiry. A copy is also available on the Inquiry’s website and may be downloaded by any applicant. It will only take a few minutes to complete and we hope that every applicant will respond as soon as possible by returning a completed questionnaire. The closing date for the return of questionnaires is Friday 8 January 2016.

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

HIA: Chairman announces a further six institutions to be investigated

NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

A further six institutions are to be investigated by the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry (HIA), its chairman has announced.

Sir Anthony Hart said their inclusion would bring the total number to 22.

He stressed that the inquiry, which has held 157 days of oral hearings, will still complete its work by July 2016.

The HIA was set up in 2013 to investigate child abuse in residential institutions in Northern Ireland over a 73-year period, up to 1995.

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

North abuse inquiry to investigate six more institutions

NORTHERN IRELAND
Irish Times

Gerry Moriarty

Wed, Nov 4, 2015

The North’s Historical Institutional Abuse inquiry is to investigate a further six institutions, bringing the total number to 22, the inquiry chairman Sir Anthony Hart has announced.
The inquiry also wants victims of abuse to be properly compensated, he said.

Sir Anthony, a retired Belfast High Court judge, said despite the additional investigations that the inquiry would complete its work by July next year and submit its report in January 2017. Last year the Northern Executive gave the inquiry an extra year to complete its work.

In drawing up the list of six additional institutions, Sir Anthony said the inquiry had carefully considered information in respect of 54 homes and institutions in relation to which at least one person had made an allegation.

“We recognise that there may be a number of people who will be disappointed that we are not going to hold public hearings into every home or institution against which allegations have been made, but, as we have explained, we are satisfied that to extend the Inquiry for at least another two years at a cost of at least £8 million to the taxpayer would not be justified because it would not add to our understanding of the nature and extent of systemic abuse of children in homes and institutions,” he added.

The inquiry has been running since January last year and Wednesday is its 157th sitting.
The additional institutions to be included are: Manor House, a Church of Ireland children’s home near Lisburn, Co Antrim; Millisle Borstal in Co Down; St Joseph’s Catholic training school for girls at Middletown, Co Armagh; and three Good Shepherd Catholic convents in Derry, Belfast and Newry.

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

Child abuse inquiry ‘will recommend compensation for victims’

NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

An inquiry into historical institutional child abuse in Northern Ireland will recommend that victims are paid compensation for the trauma they endured, its chairman has said.

Retired judge Sir Anthony Hart is leading what is one of the UK’s largest inquiries into physical, sexual and emotional harm to children at homes run by the church, state and voluntary organisations.

The inquiry was formally established in January 2013 by the Northern Ireland Executive to investigate child abuse which occurred in residential institutions over a 73-year period from 1922 to 1995.

While the inquiry’s investigative work is not scheduled to finish until next summer, with a report due to be submitted to Stormont ministers the following year, Sir Anthony said he was already in a position to recommend compensation.

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

Pope: ‘Vatican’s finances are out of control’

ROME
Buenos Aires Herald

ROME — The scale of the challenge facing Pope Francis as he struggles to overhaul the Vatican’s finances will be laid bare today by the publication of confidential documents and private recordings of his meetings.

Two new books, released in Italy and other countries today, will highlight the secrecy, mismanagement and huge wealth at the heart of the scandal-ridden Catholic Church. They depict a Vatican plagued by mismanagement, greed, cronyism and corruption. One of the books even quotes a secretly recorded conversation involving the pontiff.

“Without exaggerating, we can say that a good part of the costs are out of control,” Pope Francis says in the recording, according to Merchants in the Temple, by Gianluigi Nuzzi.

The author writes of irregularities in the funding of causes to declare saints in the Roman Catholic Church, the purported diverting of funds intended for the poor to plug administrative deficits and the lavish lifestyle of some cardinals.

Interestingly, Nuzzi also comments on the resistance to Francis’ desired reforms, saying the Argentine pontiff often encounters “entrenched and tenacious resistance” to his agenda.

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A Sensitive Cast Brings The Powerful ‘Spotlight’ Investigation To Life

BOSTON (MA)
WBUR

WRITTEN BY
Joyce Kulhawik

PUBLISHED
November 4, 2015

The scandal broke on Jan. 6, 2002, the Feast of the Epiphany — and what a revelation.

On that Sunday, The Boston Globe Spotlight team released the first in a series of articles that would earn them a Pulitzer Prize and cast light on a story that had been festering in the dark corners of Catholic parishes around Massachusetts for decades: Priests had been molesting children while church officials knew and did nothing to stop it. In fact, the church hierarchy enabled the offenders to have access to more and more victims by hiding the perpetrators’ crimes and shifting them from parish to parish where they could continue “preying upon” instead of “praying for” the families who relied on them most for spiritual help.

The new film “Spotlight” is a killer exposé, a multifaceted, lucid and deeply potent account of what it took for the Globe’s investigative unit to uncover the sex abuse scandal that would culminate in Cardinal Bernard F. Law’s resignation and rock the very foundations of the Catholic Church. It is also a study in communal blindness, willful and accidental. Most important of all, the film is not only gripping but also steadfastly accurate — and we here in Boston would know.

The film was shot on location and many of the key players are still very much around: Boston Globe reporters Mike Rezendes, Sacha Pfeiffer, Matt Carroll (now at MIT’s Media Lab) and Spotlight editor Walter “Robby” Robinson. Former editor Marty Baron is now at The Washington Post. They must all love their casting here.

Director Tom McCarthy, who co-wrote the screenplay with Josh Singer, worked closely with the key Globe players to keep it honest, and so the movie begins where it should — at ground zero, with the victims, and never loses sight of them.

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Italian PR expert accuses Spanish priest of papal wiretaps

VATICAN CITY
7 News

Vatican City (AFP) – Italian public relations expert Francesca Chaouqui, arrested for allegedly stealing confidential documents from the Vatican, said Wednesday it was her co-accused, a Spanish priest, who secretly recorded the pope’s conversations.

Monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, who was also arrested on the weekend, is currently languishing in a Vatican jail, while Chaouqui was released Monday after cooperating with authorities on a case that has embarrassed the Church.

“It was Balda who recorded Pope Francis, I didn’t know anything about it,” the 33-year-old said in an interview published in La Repubblica on Wednesday in which she distanced herself completely from her former friend.

And she said she was not the only one who knew Vallejo Balda, 54, had been recording the pope without his knowledge.

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Author accusing Vatican of corruption defends book

ROME
CBS – This Morning

NOVEMBER 4, 2015, 7:10 AM|“Merchants in the Temple” author Gianluigi Nuzzi is defending his explosive allegations against the Vatican. His new book accuses powerful members of the church hierarchy of greed and financial mismanagement, saying they are fighting reform efforts by Pope Francis. Elizabeth Palmer reports from Rome, where she sat down with the man behind the charges.

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Pope Francis ‘Determined’ to Press on with Reforms Despite Leaks Scandal

VATICAN CITY
NDTV

VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis is determined to forge ahead with his reform of the Catholic Church despite an embarrassing leak scandal which risks undermining his clean-up bid, according to the pontiff’s chief of staff.

“I have just seen the pope. His words were: onwards with serenity and determination,” Substitute for General Affairs Giovanni Angelo Becciu, whose role is akin to a chief of staff and who sees Francis daily, said Tuesday on Twitter.

Nunzio Galantino, head of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, told TV2000 the pope must be feeling betrayed by an affair which lead to the arrest this weekend of two suspected moles for allegedly leaking confidential documents to journalists revealing gross financial mismanagement at the Vatican, including using charity funds to refurbish cardinals’ homes.

Francis was tasked by his cardinal electors to stamp his authority on the bickering Curia, the Church’s governing body, and clean up the Vatican bank but the fresh leaks looked set to fuel criticisms of his reform programme.

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New bishop for Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph to be installed Wednesday

KANSAS CITY (MO)
KCTV

By Chris Oberholtz, Multimedia Producer
chris.oberholtz@kctv5.com
By Brandon Richard, News Reporter

[with video]

KANSAS CITY, MO (KCTV) –
The Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph gets a new bishop on Wednesday.

Pope Francis appointed Bishop James V. Johnston Jr., 55, as the new leader in September. He had previously been the leader of the Springfield-Cape Girardeau Diocese since 2008.

The selection comes five months after former Bishop Robert Finn resigned after he was found guilty in 2012 of failure to report suspected child sex abuse and was sentenced to two years of probation. He is the highest-ranking church official in the United States to be convicted of not taking action in response to abuse allegations.

An Installation Mass will be held at 2 p.m. There, Johnston will knock three times on the door of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Kansas City where he will be greeted by the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Missouri region, Most Rev. Robert Carlson of St. Louis. …

Some groups, like the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, are concerned about Johnston. They say looking at his record, he has done little for sex abuse victims. They hope it’ll be a different story here.

Those who knew him as the bishop of Springfield-Cape Girardeau say he has demonstrated he is willing to do what it takes to help people.

“He and his two friends were hiking in National Glacier Park and saved a family from plunging over a waterfall. I think just speaks to the kind of person that he is. He has quite courage, and he has great courage when necessary,” said Leslie Eidson, director of communications, media and publications for the diocese in Springfield.

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Man claims he was ‘sexual slave’ for depraved people protected by Church

SPAIN
Christian Today

[en espanol – El Pais]

Ruth Gledhill CHRISTIAN TODAY CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
04 November 2015

“I have been a labor slave and a sexual slave for a group of depraved people, who were protected by Church officials,” an alleged victim of child sex abuse, now aged 36, has written in a letter to the Pope. “In the three years I spent at the mission in Nariokotome, in Kenya, I was treated like a beast of burden. There were around 30 people, and on top of the slave work there was the sexual slavery. They would tell us that an active sexual life is something that God wants, and that He also wants us to go around naked, because that is the way He made us. Help me, Francis. Soothe my broken soul a little. Don’t let other youths endure this hell.”

The distressing testimony of Paulino, a former member of a Barcelona Catholic religious group, The Missionary Community of Saint Paul the Apostle and of Mary (MCSPA), has been published this week by the Spanish newspaper El País.

El País says Paulino’s seven-page letter is significant because it appears to have reached Pope Francis. The Vatican is understood now to be looking into this and other complaints about the group.

Dominick Kimengich, the bishop who issued the licence that allowed MCSPA to operate in Kenya, wrote to El País: “I am aware of several accusations that were put to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and to the Pontifical Council for the Laity, but they seem to involve events that were investigated in 2006.”

The group was founded in Spain by Francisco Andreo, who died of cancer two years ago, and others.

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Sussex school named after disgraced clergyman Bishop Bell may change its name

UNITED KINGDOM
Crawley and Horley Observer

A Sussex school is considering changing its name because the senior clergyman it was named after was revealed as a paedophile who sexually abused a young child.

Eastbourne’s Bishop Bell was named after George Bell, the late bishop of Chichester, who died 57 years ago.

Last month it was revealed the Church of England issued a formal apology for sexual abuse committed by Bell against a young child, whose identity and gender has not been disclosed, in the 1940s and 50s.

The survivor first came forward 20 years ago, but the matter was not investigated or referred to police at the time.

The church settled the claim at the end of September and on Thursday released a letter from the serving bishop of Chichester, Martin Warner, to the survivor expressing “deep sorrow” and apologising for a “devastating betrayal of trust”.

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‘Spotlight’ film educated Catholic actor Brian d’Arcy James

NEW YORK
National Catholic Reporter

Retta Blaney | Nov. 4, 2015

NEW YORK
Like many people, actor Brian d’Arcy James was aware of news coverage of sexual abuse by clergy in the Boston archdiocese 15 years ago, but he didn’t follow it closely. He had no way of knowing those events would one day be part of his life.

“It was on my radar,” he said. “I received information wholesale and processed it as best could.”

It wasn’t until he read the script for “Spotlight,” the new film based on The Boston Globe’s four-member investigative team that pursued and broke the story, that he understood its magnitude. “For me, it was an education in terms of the size and scope, and the ramifications of the reporting,” he said.

He saw the coverage as “a beacon of sorts” coming as it did from a reputable news source. “People who perhaps had not been heard or believed prior to that could say, ‘This is my story.’ ”

James, 47, discussed the film in his dressing room at Broadway’s St. James Theatre, where he is starring in the zany hit musical “Something Rotten!” A practicing Catholic, James said portraying Matt Carroll, one of the Globe reporters, helped him see the cover-up as “an institutional problem with significant and widespread consequences,” but said he still finds spiritual comfort in Catholicism.

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“I was a sexual slave for depraved people protected by bishops”

SPAIN
El Pais

JUAN G. BEDOYA Madrid 4 NOV 2015

“Publish it.” The two words were an entreat (or perhaps an order) made by Pope Francis to the theologian José Manuel Vidal, when the latter handed him a folder containing information about alleged sexual abuses at an organization of religious and lay people created in Barcelona.

The Missionary Community of Saint Paul the Apostle and of Mary, Mother of the Church (MCSPA in its English acronym) has since extended to other countries in Africa and Latin America, where the association carries out significant development work besides its religious outreach.

The founders of MCSPA had already been reprimanded by the Archbishop of Barcelona in 1995.

But now, new testimony in the hands of the pope seems to confirm the existence of widespread sexual abuse within the group.

“I have been a labor slave and a sexual slave for a group of depraved people, who were protected by Church officials,” writes one of the alleged victims, now 36, in his letter to the pope.

“In the three years I spent at the mission in Nariokotome, in Kenya, I was treated like a beast of burden. There were around 30 people, and on top of the slave work there was the sexual slavery. They would tell us that an active sexual life is something that God wants, and that He also wants us to go around naked, because that is the way He made us. Help me, Francis. Soothe my broken soul a little. Don’t let other youths endure this hell.”

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

Spotlight On The Real Story Behind The Film

BOSTON (MA)
WGBH News

[with video]

Last week, we brought you three of the reporters portrayed in the movie ‘Spotlight,’ all part of the Spotlight Team which brought this scandal to light. But there were others, too, without whom those stories might not have been written.

Mitchell Garabedian, the attorney who represented many survivors in this sordid tale.

And Phil Saviano (@PhilipSaviano), a survivor himself and founder of the New England chapter of Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, a group with which he’s still very much involved.

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Victim blasts Grammar School’s culture of ‘covering up’

AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

November 4, 2015

Jorge Branco

A victim of a paedophile at Brisbane Grammar School has accused the serving chairman of the school’s Board of Trustees of repeatedly lying to a royal commission.

He told child sex abuse royal commission hearings in Brisbane of a “culture of covering up anything” that would tarnish the school’s reputation when he was abused in the early ’80s.

The man, known only as BQA, said he and his mother had met with chairman Howard Stack twice roughly a year before fellow victim Nigel Parodi shot three police officers in Chermside.

In the second of those meetings, about the late ’90s, he said Mr Stack was not helpful at all and kept stating his job was to protect the “fabric of the school and the boys who were attending now”.

The witness also accused the police at the time of failing to investigate the “cover-up” of Lynch’s crimes after he committed suicide in 1997, saying “no perp, no case”.

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Child abuse royal commission: Grammar school solicitor under fire

AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

[with audio]

November 4, 2015

Jorge Branco
Journalist

The solicitor representing Brisbane Grammar School has come under fire for questioning a key piece of evidence from a Kevin Lynch sex abuse victim.

A Grammar old boy had told the child abuse royal commission former headmaster Max Howell had walked in on the student naked from the waist down with Lynch in the paedophile’s office.

Walter Sofronoff QC, acting for the school, questioned the victim, known only as BQA, extensively about the incident.

He noted BQA had not previously referred to the incident in correspondence with the school or legal claims dating back at least 15 years and its first mention came in his submission made to the royal commission this week.

Eventually Mr Sofronoff said: “I suggest to you that it didn’t happen”.

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Rabbi Bodenheimer gets sex offender probation

NEW YORK
The Journal News

NEW CITY – Monsey Rabbi Gabriel Bodenheimer has been sentenced to three years probation with sex offender conditions and banned from schools with children under 18 after his conviction for endangering a child.

Bodenheimer, 72, a respected educator for decades, had faced multiple sex abuse counts involving a 7-year-old boy but pleaded guilty to the lesser misdemeanor charge of endangering the welfare of a child. Prosecutors dropped the more serious charges at the behest of the child’s family.

A Rockland grand jury indicted Bodenheimer on Aug. 8, 2014, alleging he abused the boy at the rabbi’s school office between Aug. 1, 2009 and July 31, 2010. The initial charges could have carried a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison.

He refused to plead guilty and denied touching the boy during a telephone call with the child that was being monitored by prosecutors and police.

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Rabbi gets 3 years of sex offender probation

NEW YORK
News 10

NEW CITY, N.Y. (AP) — A suburban New York rabbi convicted of endangering a child has been sentenced to three years of probation with sex offender conditions.

The Journal News reports (http://lohud.us/1QbcsHW ) Rabbi Gabriel Bodenheimer of Monsey was sentenced Monday and banned from schools with children under 18.

A Rockland grand jury indicted Bodenheimer in 2014 of abusing a boy at the rabbi’s school office between 2009 and 2010. The 72-year-old had faced multiple sexual abuse counts involving the 7-year-old boy, but refused to plead guilty and denied touching the boy.

He pleaded guilty to the lesser charge.

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The Lost U.K. Child Abuse Testimonies

UNITED KINGDOM
Newsweek

By Leah McGrath Goodman 11/4/15

Investigators probing thousands of allegations of child sexual abuse in the United Kingdom set up a website this past summer to gather evidence. They invited survivors to share their stories with the independent inquiry through what was promised to be a secure and confidential portal.

Many survivors did so. But somehow nearly three weeks of submissions were mysteriously deleted, “instantly and permanently,” in what a notice on the site in October said was due to “a change in our website address.”

That message caused survivors, support groups and members of the British Parliament to question whether the survivors’ data was being handled with the utmost care, with attention to privacy and security—not to mention why there wasn’t some kind of data backup. The inquiry’s request for people to resubmit their stories was met with skepticism.

“It is a known fact that it takes survivors of child abuse 20, 30, 40 years to recover or to report it,” says abuse survivor Andrew Kershaw. “They have to trust, and unfortunately many of them will never trust, never tell anyone what happened to them, and take it to their grave. So their information being lost has done irreparable damage, has taken away their trust once more. Many won’t come forward again.”

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Explosive New Book: Vatican Sainthood Costs $550K

VATICAN CITY
The Daily Beast

Barbie Latza Nadeau

Secretly bugged priests, missing multimillions, and possible threats to Pope Francis’s life—new allegations deepen the Catholic Church’s VatiLeaks scandal.

VATICAN CITY — There is nothing like a good old Vatican scandal to bring Rome to its knees.

Never mind that the city government is already in complete shambles on the eve of the Vatican’s Holy Jubilee, which could double the many millions of visitors to the Eternal City over the next year. No, instead of finalizing preparations for what should be a feather in the pope’s mitre, the Vatican is bracing itself for the release on Thursday of two books that seek to expose the sinister side of everything from saint-making to the very sanctity of the Holy See.

On Monday, by way of preemptive measure, the Vatican confirmed that laywoman Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui, along with a Spanish monsignor named Lucio Vallejo Balda, had been arrested for allegedly leaking documents to journalists. Both had been on a special commission to advise the pope’s men in charge with reforming the Vatican’s broken financial system, which had, under previous papacies, been accused of money laundering and other unholy financial practices.

The Daily Beast obtained advance copies of both books ahead of their Thursday release, and both seem likely receptacles for the latest chapter of the VatiLeaks scandal, which began when Pope Benedict XVI’s butler was arrested in 2012 for stealing secret documents off his boss’s desk.

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Understanding the latest Vatican scandal: A clash of tradition against reform

VATICAN CITY
National Post (Canada)

Joseph Brean | November 3, 2015

Public admiration for Pope Francis’s expressions of loving tolerance on everything from homosexuality to divorce has helped conceal turmoil in the Vatican, where his push for transparency has set powerful traditionalists at odds with eager reformers. Now, the publication of two books based on leaked and possibly stolen documents, and the arrests of two senior Vatican officials on allegations of leaking the documents, have cast a rare light on the darker corners of the Holy See. The National Post’s Joseph Brean spoke with John L. Allen, Jr., a leading American Vatican watcher and author of papal biographies, about the latest Vatileaks scandal.

Q: What do these new books claim to reveal?

A: What is not clear to me is how much of the scandals documented in these books are genuinely new, versus stuff we already knew about … What we’re getting is maybe additional details. Bear in mind that the primary source material for both books, as we understand it, are documents from the study commission that Pope Francis created back in 2013 to lay the groundwork for the financial reform he’s now engaged in.

Q: Does this threaten the Pope reform agenda?

A: In general, although the Vatican has obviously launched a pre-emptive strike against these books by arresting a couple of people it suspects of being moles, I don’t think that the Vatican or Pope Francis personally has much to fear. If anything, I think it strengthens his hand in making the case for reform. He can point to these books and say, “This is exactly why you need me.”

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U.S. church pays out almost $4 bn in sex abuse cases

UNITED STATES
La Prensa

Washington, Nov 3 (EFE).- The Catholic Church has paid out close to $4 billion in the United States from being sued for the sexual abuse of minors by priests since the 1950s, a higher figure than had been previously estimated.

The report published in the National Catholic Reporter, or NCR, a newspaper for the Catholic community in the United States, raises by some $1 billion the amount of settlements for such cases previously reported in the media.

The document reached the conclusion that the exact accumulated settlements amounted to $3,994,797,060.10, as the result of a three-month review of more than 7,800 articles from the NCR’s own database and that of LexisNexis Academic, as well as from analyzing information from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Figures offered by the NCR are ostensibly higher than the official statistics, due to the fact that there are no uniform reporting standards for Catholic dioceses to disclose their financial records.

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The Catholic Church’s Sins Are Ours

UNITED STATES
New York Times

Frank Bruni

It’s fashionable among some conservatives to rail that there’s insufficient respect for religion in America and that religious people are marginalized, even vilified.

That’s bunk. In more places and instances than not, they get special accommodation and the benefit of the doubt. Because they talk of God, they’re assumed to be good. There’s a reluctance to besmirch them, an unwillingness to cross them.

The new movie “Spotlight,” based on real events, illuminates this brilliantly.

“Spotlight” — which opens in New York, Los Angeles and Boston on Friday and nationwide later this month — chronicles the painstaking manner in which editors and writers at The Boston Globe documented a pattern of child sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests and the concealment of these crimes by Catholic leaders.

Because of the movie’s focus on the digging and dot-connecting that go into investigative reporting, it has invited comparisons to “All the President’s Men.”

But it isn’t about journalism. Or, for that matter, Catholicism.

It’s about the damage done when we genuflect too readily before society’s temples, be they religious or governmental. It’s about the danger of faith that’s truly blind.

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Phillips’s registry hearing continued

ILLINOIS
Daily Ledger

By Hannah Schrodt
Daily Ledger reporter

Posted Nov. 3, 2015

LEWISTOWN

A man convicted of criminal sexual abuse who now faces charges of violating sex offender registry terms received another continuance Monday morning.

Jason Phillips of Glasford was arrested Aug. 6 for being present on the property of a child care facility. The 41-year-old is alleged to have committed this offense, a Class 4 felony, on four separate occasions.

In Fulton County Court Monday, Phillips was scheduled for a new pretrial date of Jan. 4 at 9 a.m.
He was convicted of criminal sexual abuse of a then-minor in 2011.

At the time of his crime, Phillips was a youth pastor and associate pastor at Covenant Community Fellowship Church.

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Lawsuit, filed under new Georgia law, accuses lobbyist of sex abuse

GEORGIA
Atlanta Journal-Constitution

What may be the first lawsuit filed under Georgia’s new child predator law claims that a statehouse lobbyist abused a boy he worked with as a youth leader at a Toombs County church.

Matthew Stanley claims that Jim E. Collins abused him hundreds of time over the course of several years, as recently as 2002. Collins was a youth pastor at First Baptist Church of Vidalia.

“Jim used his position of authority in my local church to perpetrate his abuse for most of my adolescent years,” Stanley said at a news conference Monday at his lawyer’s Atlanta office.

The advocacy group Voice Today, which works to end child sexual abuse, said Stanley’s lawsuit is believed to be the first 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.

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Saint Peter Damian, “Gomorrah”, and Today’s Moral Crisis

UNITED STATES
Catholic World Report

Pope Benedict XVI, in his September 9, 2009 general audience, noted that the Benedictine monk, cardinal, and Doctor of the Church, St. Peter Damian (1007-72), was “one of the most significant figures of the 11th century … a monk, a lover of solitude and at the same time a fearless man of the Church, committed personally to the task of reform, initiated by the Popes of the time.” St. Peter Damian was born into a poor family (and was orphaned a young age), demonstrated remarkable intellectual skills as a teenager, and by the age of twenty five was a renowned teacher. He then renounced the secular life and became a monk, and eventually became prior of the hermitage at Fonte Avellana.

Between 1049 and 1054, he composed the powerful book Liber Gomorrhianus, or “Book of Gomorrah”, addressing it to the new pope, Leo IX, who himself would eventually be canonized. Pope St. Leo IX praised St. Peter Damian’s work and the monk became a key reformer, addressing widespread excesses and grave sins.

Thomam Books and Media has now published a rigorous and careful translation of The Book of Gomorrah, praised by scholars as “highly readable”, “clear and well-articulated”, and “excellent and accurate”. Carl E. Olson, editor of Catholic World Report, recently corresponded with the translator, Matthew Cullinan Hoffman, who is a graduate student at Holy Apostles College and Seminary and a regular contributor to a number of Catholic periodicals, including CWR.

CWR: What is The Book of Gomorrah and why did St. Peter Damian write it?

Matthew Cullinan Hoffman: The Book of Gomorrah is letter written to Pope St. Leo IX around the year 1049 in response to an epidemic of sodomy among the priests of Italy, which Peter Damian feared would bring down the wrath of God upon the Church. This plague of sexual perversion was part of a larger crisis of moral laxity in the priesthood, including widespread sexual incontinency and illicit marriages, the simoniacal purchasing of clerical ordination, and the prevalence of a worldly and carnal mentality among the clergy. The laity were outraged by such behavior and were even beginning to rebel against the Church hierarchy in some places, such as Florence and Milan.

The Book of Gomorrah is an eloquent and impassioned denunciation of the vice of sodomy, describing in harrowing detail the devastating spiritual and psychological effects on those who practice it. Damian holds that sodomy is the worst of all sins because it does the greatest harm to the soul, and argues very persuasively that no priest who is habituated to such behavior should be permitted to continue in the priesthood. However, the work is not only a condemnation of evil, but also an outpouring of grief for those who have fallen into such immorality, urging them to “rise from the dead” and return to Christ, and promising them forgiveness and even spiritual glory if they repent and do penance. So the work expresses very profoundly both the justice and the mercy of God. …

CWR: Does The Book of Gomorrah address the sexual abuse of minors as well?

Hoffman: Indeed it connects this epidemic of sodomy with the abuse of “penitential sons” by confessors. It also approvingly quotes an ecclesiastical law that requires any cleric caught in an act of sexual abuse of a boy or adolescent to be publicly humiliated, bound in iron chains, required to fast on barley bread for months while imprisoned in a monastic cell, and then placed permanently in the custody of two other monks to prevent any further harm to children. Damian’s canon provides a stark contrast with the lax attitude that so many modern prelates have shown regarding the sexual abuse of minors, which has caused so much damage to souls and to the Church’s reputation in recent decades.

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El Papa nombra a Pedro María Laxague nuevo obispo de Zárate-Campana

ARGENTINA
Noticias Religiosas

Tras la renuncia de Óscar Domingo Sarlinga como obispo de Zárate-Campana, el Papa Francisco ha decidido nombrar a monseñor Pedro María Laxague como nuevo obispo de la Diócesis.

Y es que, tal y como ha confirmado el propio Vaticano y el nuncio apostólico en Buenos Aires, Emil Paul Tscherrig, el reemplazo de Sarlinga será finalmente Laxague, hasta ahora obispo titular de Castra Saveriana y auxiliar de la arquidiócesis de Bahía Blanca.

A sus 63 años, Pedro María Laxague es ingeniero civil en la Universidad Nacional del Sur de Bahía Blanca y fue ordenado el 15 de julio de 1989 en la parroquia Santa Rosa de Lima, de Coronel Pringles, por monseñor Jorge Mayer, arzobispo de Bahía Blanca.

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Envuelto en un escándalo, renuncia el obispo de Zárate-Campana

ARGENTINA
Clarin

Sergio Rubin

Envuelto en denuncias de malversación de fondos, lavado de dinero, abuso de poder y comportamientos inapropiados, presentará su renuncia al Papa el obispo de la diócesis de Zárate-Campana, monseñor Oscar Sarlinga.

Además, Sarlinga apareció involucrado, junto al entonces jefe de Gabinete, Sergio Massa, en una supuesta maniobra para desplazar al cardenal Jorge Bergoglio del arzobispado de Buenos Aires y ocupar su lugar.

Se trata de la segunda vez que un obispo de esa diócesis del Gran Buenos Aires renuncia sumido en un escándalo, ya que a comienzos de 2000 lo había hecho monseñor Rafael Rey, ex titular de Cáritas.

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Presionado por el Vaticano, renunció a su cargo el obispo Oscar Sarlinga

ARGENTINA
El Dia de Escobar

Presionado por el Vaticano a raíz de múltiples sospechas sobre su conducción eclesiástica, este domingo 1º renunció a su cargo el obispo de la Diócesis Zárate-Campana, Oscar Sarlinga.

“Juntamente con las instancias de la Santa Sede hemos elegido el día de la peregrinación del pueblo de Dios para decirles que es la última misa que celebro con la comunidad diocesana”. De esta manera y contra su voluntad, el monseñor Oscar Sarlinga (52) comunicó a los fieles en la Basílica de Luján su abdicación al cargo que detentaba desde el 18 de febrero de 2006 por designación del entonces Papa Benedicto XVI, no sin mayores problemas.

Su tarea pastoral de nueve años al frente de la diócesis estuvo signada por escándalos económico-financieros (entre ellos, la compra de un semi-piso en el barrio porteño de Recoleta), supuestos maltratos a sacerdotes y laicos y situaciones flagrantes no sólo en la curia sino también en parroquias como la de San Antonio de Areco, en donde los feligreses han denunciado en reiteradas oportunidades al prelado por estar conviviendo con una mujer que sería su esposa y la presunta hija de ambos.

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Former Francis rival steps down

ARGENTINA
Buenos Aires Herald

In a surprise announcement, first made over weekend to a congregation in side Luján Cathedral, Oscar Sarlinga, the Bishop of Zárate-Campana in Buenos Aires province, has revealed he is resigning his post amid an internal Church investigation into embezzlement, corruption and “abuse of power” within the clergy.

Sarlinga, who has a long history of confrontations with Pope Francis, was appointed to his post by Pope Benedict.

“For several months, together with the chance of being available for my mission as Bishop of Zárate-Campana, I asked Pope Francis for a special time of leave, for me to devote time to prayer,” Sarlinga said, without suggesting specific reasons as to why he had decided to step down.

“I have to say in all fairness that in the subsequent dialogue with the Holy Father he has expressed his understanding and has accepted my request. It will be made effective in the coming days,” he added.

While Sarlinga declined to comment on what had prompted his resignation, the ecclesiastical investigation into allegations of malpractice in the Zárate-Campana parish, including money laundering and abuse within the clergy, was likely a central factor in determining his decision.

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Retired Alexandria-Cornwall priest Denis Vaillancourt’s charge: sexual assault

CANADA
Standard-Freeholder

By Greg Peerenboom, Cornwall Standard-Freeholder
Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Sexual assault is the charge behind the arrest of a retired Alexandria-Cornwall Diocese priest, say SDG Ontario Provincial Police.

The diocese revealed Friday that Denis Vaillancourt, 70, had been arrested and charged under the Criminal Code of Canada on Oct. 29. The diocese did not identify the charge or provide any information about the circumstances leading to Vaillancourt’s arrest.

The OPP identified the charge Tuesday, saying it comes out of an incident involving an adult male at a South Glengarry home in September. The OPP investigation began when it received a report of the incident on Oct. 18.

Vaillancourt now lives in Lasalle, Que. He has been released to appear in Alexandria court on Nov. 18.

He had served the diocese in a number of capacities, including as parish priest of Eglise Sacre-Coeur in Alexandria.

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Church allowed abuse by priest for years

MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe

Aware of Geoghan record, archdiocese still shuttled him from parish to parish

JANUARY 06, 2002

This article was prepared by the Globe Spotlight Team: reporters Matt Carroll, Sacha Pfeiffer, and Michael Rezendes; and editor Walter V. Robinson. It was written by Rezendes.

Since the mid-1990s, more than 130 people have come forward with horrific childhood tales about how former priest John J. Geoghan allegedly fondled or raped them during a three-decade spree through a half-dozen Greater Boston parishes.

Almost always, his victims were grammar school boys. One was just 4 years old.

Then came last July’s disclosure that Cardinal Bernard F. Law knew about Geoghan’s problems in 1984, Law’s first year in Boston, yet approved his transfer to St. Julia’s parish in Weston. Wilson D. Rogers Jr., the cardinal’s attorney, defended the move last summer, saying the archdiocese had medical assurances that each Geoghan reassignment was “appropriate and safe.”

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Read the first Globe Spotlight article that helped expose the Catholic Church scandal in 2002

MASSACHUSETTS
Boston.com

By Ashli Molina @MolinaAshli
Boston.com Staff | 11.03.15

The film Spotlight will be released November 6. And so we’re bringing back the first story about the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal that was published by The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team in 2002.

For three decades, the Catholic Church was negligent of former priest John J. Geoghan’s compulsive sexual abuse of children, The Boston Globe reported.

More than 130 of Geoghan’s victims had come forward with vivid accounts about how they had been groped or abused (up until the date the report was published).

Since the 1980s, the archdiocese’s top officials had enough evidence of Geoghan’s predatory behavior. But the Church still shifted Geoghan from parish to parish. Geoghan continued working with altar boys and youth groups at each reassignment—one of his victims was as young as 4 years old.

Evidence over the years, which the Globe Spotlight team gathered, included a letter from the aunt of seven boys who had been raped by Geoghan, several suspicions from within the parishes, a record of abuse that dates back to the 1960s, and a letter from Bishop John M. D’Arcy directly to Cardinal Bernard F. Law expressing D’Arcy’s concern about Geoghan. Geoghan even admitted to molesting four boys in 1995.

Read the full story here.

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November 3, 2015

IL–Accused prominent pastor is arraigned

CHICAGO (IL)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Accused prominent pastor is arraigned
As recently as last year, he reportedly assaulted girl
SNAP: “High profile minister is still on the job in a church now!”
He’s been in leadership posts with national Baptist organization

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos outside an arraignment hearing for an accused, prominent predatory pastor, clergy sex abuse victims will

— praise the brave teen who reported wrongdoing and denounce those who allow the accused to remain in ministry, and
— beg “anyone who may have seen, suspected or suffered” the minister’s crimes to call police immediately.

WHEN
Wednesday, 11/4 @ 9:00 am (Hearing is at 9:00 am. We will speak out just following the hearing.)

WHERE
Outside Cook County Court, 2600 South California Ave. (Room 101) at 26th and California

WHO
Two-three members of a support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, including a Chicago woman who is the organization’s founder and long-time president

WHY
A prominent South Side pastor who’s had leadership positions with the National Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest and oldest African-American religious organization, the Biblical Exposition Conference and WHW Ministries is being arraigned for alleged child sex crimes he admitted committing as recently as last year.

He is Rev. George W. Waddles, Sr. and despite his admission and arrest, he remains in the pulpit today.

At least two other church members have reported that Waddles also attacked them.

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Former missionary denounces religious order over ‘sexual slavery’

SPAIN
The Irish Times

Guy Hedgecoe in Madrid

Wed, Nov 4, 2015

A former missionary has denounced the Catholic religious order he belonged to for overseeing a system of “sexual slavery” in Kenya and he has taken his case to the Vatican.

He claims the Missionary Community of Saint Paul the Apostle (MCSPA), founded in Spain in the 1990s, subjected members of its staff and locals to sexual and labour abuse, El País newspaper has reported.

“I have been the slave and sexual slave of a group of depraved individuals who were covered up by the hierarchy of the [Catholic] Church,” the 36-year-old man, who calls himself “Paulino”, told Pope Francis in a letter outlining his alleged abuse over a three-year period in Kenya.

“They told us that an active sex life is what God wants us to have and that he also wants us to be naked because he created us naked. Help me, Francis. Give my broken soul some relief. Don’t let other youngsters go through this hell.”

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Brisbane Grammar counsellor ritually abused students, royal commission told

AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Joshua Robertson
Tuesday 3 November 2015

A counsellor at a prestigious Queensland private school ritually hypnotised students before masturbating them, slapping them in the face and putting acupuncture needles in one child’s genitals, the royal commission into institutional responses to child sex abuse has heard.

The scores of alleged victims of Kevin Lynch at Brisbane Grammar school included a boy who was sexually abused in a grief counselling session given after learning his father had committed suicide.

The commission hearing in Brisbane is examining the response to abuse claims against Lynch from the 1970s to the 1990s at Grammar and later St Paul’s Anglican school, and another former St Paul’s teacher, Gregory Robert Knight in the 1980s.

Also to come under scrutiny is former South Australian education minister Don Hopgood, who was a member of the same musical group in Adelaide as Knight when he gave him a glowing personal reference on parliamentary letterhead despite allegedly knowing a departmental inquiry found Knight engaged in “disgraceful” conduct with school students.

The royal commission also heard that Hopgood ordered that the South Australian education department rescind its dismissal of Knight and accept his resignation, which enabled him to get jobs in Queensland schools. Knight lost his job at St Paul’s over abuse allegations but then taught in the Northern Territory, where he was eventually jailed over indecent dealing with a student.

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Child abuse royal commission: Father ‘told principal’ about sexual abuse of son at Brisbane Grammar School

AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Louisa Rebgetz and Leonie Mellor

The father of a former Brisbane Grammar School (BGS) student has told a child sexual abuse inquiry that he informed the school principal in 1981 that his son had been sexually abused.

During hearings in Brisbane yesterday, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard how former counsellor Kevin John Lynch abused students at the school during counselling sessions in his office.

Lynch worked at BGS in Spring Hill and at St Paul’s School in Bald Hills from the 1970s to the 1990s.

He killed himself in 1997 after being charged with abusing a student at St Paul’s, having moved there after Grammar.

At today’s hearing, the father of a BGS ex-student said he had a meeting that lasted about five minutes with then school principal, Max Howell, after hearing Lynch had touch his son inappropriately.

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Child abuse royal commission: Parents drove 400km to meet headmaster

AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

November 4, 2015

Jorge Branco
Journalist

A parent who complained to former Brisbane Grammar School headmaster Max Howell his son had been interfered with says he never heard from the school again.

The boy’s father, a retired doctor of 41 years, told the child abuse royal commission in Brisbane he received a panicked phone call from his son in the winter of 1981 saying: “Kevin Lynch is a poofter. He put his hands down my trousers and fiddled with my penis”.

The man, BQH, cleared his schedule for the following day and made a four-hour drive to Brisbane with wife BQI to meet with Mr Howell.

The former headmaster denied until his dying day he was told about the abuse but the father testified it was inconceivable he could have made the trip without telling him.

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TX–Big, controversial Dallas church sells its building

TEXAS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, Nov. 3

Statement by Amy Smith, Co-leader of DFW SNAP (watchkeepamy@gmail.com, 281-748-4050)

The high-profile Prestonwood Church of Dallas is selling its ostentatious building.

[Baptist News]

We hope officials at Prestonwood Church are humbled by this sale of their edifice. We suspect that the church would be in better financial shape now had its staff acted responsibly and compassionately and honestly with child sex abuse reports, especially those involving John Langworthy.

We also hope that other church officials are deterred from concealing child sex crimes when they consider what’s happened at Prestonwood.

Finally, we hope that every single person at Prestonwood, including former staff and members, will do the right thing and call police with any information or suspicions they may have about child sex crimes or cover ups at the church. It’s never too late to do the right thing. And we never know what action we take might spare one more child a life of trauma and devastation.

And we are deeply grateful for victims of child sex crimes at Prestonwood for their courage in speaking up, protecting others and exposing wrongdoing. They are heroes.

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NEW from TheMediaReport.com****** Sins of the Press: The Untold Story of The Boston Globe’s Reporting on Sex Abuse in the Catholic Church

UNITED STATES
TheMediaReport

David Pierre

This is the book that Hollywood and the Boston Globe do not want you to read.

On the eve of the Hollywood release of the new movie Spotlight – starring Hollywood heavyweights Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo – which purports to dramatize the Boston Globe’s 2002 Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting on sex abuse and the Catholic Church, SINS OF THE PRESS sets the record straight on the Globe’s reporting, its unabashed history of animus toward the Catholic Church, and its past indifference to sex abuse.

Thoroughly researched and meticulously documented, SINS OF THE PRESS exposes:

* How the Globe’s reporting was only the culmination of a relentless, decades-long campaign against the Catholic Church for ideological reasons;

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Vatican’s bill for sainthood is €750,000, corruption book reveals

VATICNA CITY
The Times (UK)

Tom Kington Rome

Securing sainthood is a commercial process that can cost up to €750,000 in fees paid to a Vatican department that refuses to account for its spending.

That is one of the revelations contained in Merchants in the Temple, a new book to be published tomorrow lifting the lid on financial skulduggery and corruption in the Vatican.
It includes tales of double-dealing priests, misused donations, millions of euros in goods that vanish from Vatican shops and a mysterious break-in and theft of documents.

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Pope Francis Is Hunting Down the Vatican’s Shady Bankers

UNITED STATES
Esquire

BY CHARLES P. PIERCE

Ross Cardinal Douthat, primate of the Archdiocese of Dorkylvania, may still be creased because Papa Francesco is determined not to give him the authoritarian church of his dreams, but allowing divorced Catholics to return to the sacraments is small beer compared to what the pope has been doing about the Vatican’s chronically corrupt—and bizarrely non-doctrinal—banking practices. There’s an explosion coming very soon.

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. One of its two divisions also manages the Vatican’s financial and stock portfolio.

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Church denies negligence in abuse lawsuit

GEORGIA
Baptist News

By Bob Allen

A Southern Baptist church in Georgia denied allegations of negligence in a lawsuit alleging child sexual abuse by a former church volunteer later named as youth pastor.

A civil lawsuit filed in Toombs County Superior Court alleges sexual abuse between 1996 and 2002 of youth at First Baptist Church of Vidalia.

Filed under Georgia’s new Hidden Predator Act, a law passed in 2015 opening a window of opportunity for victims to sue for injury that otherwise would be considered beyond the statute of limitations for litigation, the lawsuit alleges that church leaders were “grossly negligent in hiring, retaining and/or permitting” the alleged perpetrator to serve as a volunteer and youth pastor while “failing to put in place appropriate protocols” to protect children from sexual abuse.

The lawsuit names up to 50 “John Doe” leaders at First Baptist Church to be named upon learning their names in an amended complaint.

Attorney Barbara Marschalk released a statement on behalf of the church labeling allegations against the congregation as “completely unsubstantiated.”

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Remaining a Catholic in the face of tragedy

MASSACHUSETTS
Crux

By Margery Eagan
On Spirituality columnist November 3, 2015

How can you spend your workdays chronicling thousands of cases of Catholic priestly sexual abuse — and still remain a Catholic?

Before the release of “Spotlight,” the movie detailing the massive abuse cover-up in Boston, I asked that of Anne Barrett Doyle and Terry McKiernan. They’re co-directors of BishopAccountability.org, which documents that abuse from an office in Waltham, Massachusetts practically overrun by floor-to-ceiling files and more than 100,000 pages of Church records, court documents, media reports, letters from mothers of victims, victims themselves, and even abusers detailing their crimes.

Doyle and McKiernan have done this work full-time for more than a decade now. Yet both not only remain Catholic, they say their faith has increased.

Here’s how Doyle and McKiernan explained that a few days back in their Waltham repository.

“Everything good in my life has come from Catholicism. I’ve never been more Catholic than I am now. It’s never been more vivid and important to me to pray every day,” said Doyle, a mother of four married 35 years now. She talked about the shared family rituals — the Masses, baptisms, weddings, Easters — with her kids, father, siblings (all 9 of them) and her Jesuit-schooled husband.

But mostly she talked about her mother, her “hero,” who had a passion for trying to change the Church. She wrote letters to bishops “as a loyal critic,” Doyle said.

“That’s exactly how I feel about our work. We’re loyal critics. I really do feel I’m doing this for justice for survivors, but also for the Church. It’s absolutely crucial that the Church fully owns up to this heinous and deliberate enabling.

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Former Louisville priest indicted on child porn charges

KENTUCKY
WAVE

By Laurel Mallory

LOUISVILLE, KY (WAVE) – The priest at the center of a child pornography case has been indicted by a grand jury.

Stephen Pohl, former pastor of St. Margaret Mary parish in Louisville, was charged with violating federal child exploitation laws on Nov. 3 in United States District Court.

The indictment accuses Pohl, 57, of knowingly viewing child porn on the internet between Jan. and Aug. 2015.

A parent whose child attends St. Margaret Mary complained the student was uncomfortable when Pohl asked him/her to pose for a picture. Pohl was immediately investigated by the FBI and Louisville Metro Police Department’s Crimes Against Children Unit.

He then resigned from St. Margaret Mary and was arrested in Florida a short time later.

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MEDIA RELEASE – NOVEMBER 3, 2015

NEW JERSEY
Road to Recovery

FRED MARIGLIANO TO WALK THROUGH THE LARGEST CITY IN NEW JERSEY, NEWARK, TO COMPLETE HIS 270 MILE WALK ACROSS NEW JERSEY

FRED MARIGLIANO TO CONTINUE TO RAISE AWARENESS ABOUT THE EFFECTS OF CHILDHOOD SEXUAL ABUSE AND PROMOTE CHANGES IN THE LAWS OF NEW JERSEY (STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS – SOL) THAT DEAL WITH CHILDHOOD SEXUAL ABUSE

WHAT
Fred Marigliano will complete his “Walk Across New Jersey” (from Cape May Point Lighthouse to Mahwah) by walking through New Jersey’s largest city, Newark.

WHEN
Thursday, November 5, 2015 at 9:00 am

WHERE
Fred Marigliano and his supporters will assemble at Lincoln Park in Newark, NJ (toward the south end of Newark on Broad Street – not far from Newark City Hall) and walk to Washington Park, Newark, a distance of approximately one and a half miles

WHO
Fred Marigliano, a victim/survivor of clergy sexual abuse in Plainfield, New Jersey; a member of the Board of Directors of Road to Recovery, Inc., a non-profit charity based in New Jersey that assists victims of sexual abuse and their families; a member of SNAP, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests; and an affiliate of the organization known as Male Survivor; Marigliano family members, and supporters from various organizations in Newark, NJ and other parts of the metropolitan area

WHY
Fred Marigliano has committed himself to supporting victim/survivors of sexual abuse by supporting them, helping them heal, and advocating for changes in the laws in the State of New Jersey regarding the SOL (Statute of Limitations) dealing with childhood sexual abuse. He will complete his 270 mile walk across the State of New Jersey by saving the largest city in New Jersey – Newark – for last. He will be joined by local and state political leaders, City of Newark employees and leaders, fellow victim/survivors and supporters by walking from Lincoln Park to Washington Park in the City of Newark.

CONTACTS
Fred Marigliano, Green Brook, New Jersey – 732-421-0033
Robert M. Hoatson, Road to Recovery, Inc., Livingston, NJ – 862-368-2800

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The Church’s sexual abuse crisis is not over

MASSACHUSETTS
Crux

By Margery Eagan
On Spirituality columnist November 3, 2015

I watched the movie “Spotlight,” detailing Boston’s sex abuse crisis, in a theater filled with Boston Globe reporters I’ve known for years and survivors who understand too well the crimes the Catholic hierarchy enabled.

All the doubts and shame came flooding back.

Why would anyone belong to such a corrupt church, one that put itself before the protection of teenagers and children, most of them from troubled, struggling, even poor families?

Of course, that “anyone” would be me. I belong to such a church. It’s the Catholic Church. And I was grateful leaving the theater last week that nobody stopped me and demanded to know why. At that point, I would have been hard-pressed to explain.

Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley, who heads up the pope’s anti-abuse commission, released a statement on “Spotlight” making it seem as if the crisis is all over now and that bishops and cardinals are doing all they can.

Yet that’s not true.

Just two years ago, to give but one example, we learned that top archdiocesan leaders in St. Paul and Minneapolis had known for nearly a decade about a child-abusing priest in close contact with children. They kept it secret and acted only after that priest abused the sons, ages 12 and 14, of a parish worker.

GlobalPost just reported about abuser priests who’ve left the United States for Central America and become active priests again, saying Mass, hearing confessions, close to parish children. The watchdog group BishopAccountability.org, which documents and posts on both domestic and international abuse cases, easily located several accused priests still in ministry in Argentina, Pope Francis’ home country. More than 15 victims have accused one of those priests in just the past two years.

Meanwhile, the pope and his cardinals wrapped up the Vatican synod on the family — the family — barely mentioning abuse. How is that possible? Apparently they overlooked their continued enabling of criminals while some actually issued judgmental statements about gays and the divorced and remarried. I guess this is their “logic:” Priests accused of molestation by multiple victims are still okay to say Mass, distribute and receive the Eucharist, but the divorced and remarried aren’t fit to receive it.

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Former priest indicted on federal child exploitation charges

KENTUCKY
WLKY

LOUISVILLE, Ky. —A former pastor of a Louisville parish was indicted on federal child exploitation charges.

According to Tuesday’s indictment, Stephen Pohl accessed and viewed images of child pornography online between January and August of this year.

He was arrested in Florida in August after law enforcement searched his parish office and the rectory at Saint Margaret Mary as well as his home.

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Fraud, greed and corruption — new books depict skulduggery in the Vatican

VATICAN CITY
Los Angeles Times

Tom Kington

Financial skulduggery, avaricious priests and suspected corruption at the Vatican are detailed in two books out this week, suggesting that Pope Francis faces an uphill struggle as he weeds out sleaze at the Holy See.

The books, both published 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, while consultant Francesca Chaouqui, 33, was released after her arrest by Vatican police.

On Tuesday, she blamed Vallejo Balda for the leaks, telling the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera: “He did everything; I tried to stop him.”

Both were appointed by Pope Francis in 2013 to a committee set up to ferret out financial waste and wrongdoing at the Vatican. One of the books, “Merchants in the Temple” by Gianluigi Nuzzi, reveals how Francis cajoled cardinals to clean up. …

In “Merchants in the Temple,” Nuzzi reveals how the finance committee found $1.75 million worth of stock listed in the inventories of Vatican shops that did not exist, suggesting it had been purloined or invented.

He claims that only 20% of Peter’s Pence — the charitable contributions made to the church by Catholics around the world — are used to help the poor, with much of the remainder paying costs at the Holy See.

The book claims that the Vatican’s real estate holdings are valued at about $3 billion, seven times the value they are given in the Vatican’s accounts. Some 5,000 properties that are rented out, mostly in Rome, yield miniscule rents and sometimes are rented for free, prompting suggestions they are given as favors to friends.

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Vatican’s Financial Troubles Run Deep, According to New Book

VATICAN CITY
The New York Times

By GAIA PIANIGIANI
NOV. 3, 2015

ROME — Pope John Paul I, who died in 1978, still holds more than 110,000 euros, or about $120,000, in a Vatican bank account. The Vatican pension fund is running an €800-million deficit. The Vatican’s real estate holdings total €2.7 billion, seven times more than what is listed on its balance sheets. And the Vatican’s governing body had agreed to push Philip Morris cigarettes, for a fee.

If they are to be believed, those are some of the revelations set to be published in a new book by Gianluigi Nuzzi, “Merchants in the Temple.” The sources of the claims are not revealed in the book, an advance copy of which was provided by the publisher to The New York Times, and the claims are impossible to verify.

But the Vatican has apparently taken the leaks of internal documents seriously enough to arrest two people who had worked on a special commission set up by Pope Francis to overhaul the Roman Catholic Church’s deeply troubled financial management.

The arrests over the weekend came just days before the publication on Thursday of Mr. Nuzzi’s book and that of another book, “Avarice,” by an Italian reporter, Emiliano Fittipaldi, who also claims to reveal widespread misuse of Vatican finances.

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Vatican leaks reveal spying on the Pope, charity money refurbished cardinals’ houses

VATICAN CITY
Times LIVE

AFP

Ella IDE | 03 November, 2015

The pope’s private conversations allegedly wiretapped by a racy social climber and a Spanish prelate – the latest scandal to hit the Vatican has unearthed claims of theft, debauchery and betrayal within the Catholic Church.

Leaked documents set to be published in two books on Wednesday purportedly reveal how charity money was allegedly spent on refurbishing the houses of powerful cardinals, while claiming the murky Vatican bank continues to shelter suspected criminals.

PR expert Francesca Chaouqui and Monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, arrested at the weekend for allegedly stealing and leaking classified documents, risk up to eight years in prison if the case gets to court.

While Vallejo Balda languishes in jail, Chaouqui, 33, was released after assuring investigators of her cooperation in a case which has thrown light on Pope Francis’s struggles to clean up a centuries-old institution unwilling to give up its privileges.

“I am totally innocent and I’ll prove it,” La Stampa daily quoted the dark-haired woman dubbed a “sex bomb” by Italian media as saying, adding that Vallejo Balda “did everything, I tried to stop him”

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Vatican inspectors suspect key office was used for money laundering

VATICAN CITY
Reuters

[with video]

VATICAN CITY | BY PHILIP PULLELLA

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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Don’t put priests on a pedestal

UNITED STATES
U.S. Catholic

By Father Donald Cozzens

Finally there appears an issue that our divided church can agree on. Catholics of all stripes—conservatives and liberals and in-betweens—are declaring a pox on clericalism. From Pope Francis to the back pew widow, from seminary rectors to lay ecclesial ministers, we agree that clericalism is crippling the pastoral mission of the church.

At the same time it is strengthening the secularists’ claim that Catholic clergy are nothing more than papal agents bent on enforcing rigid moral controls that smother our human instinct for pleasure and freedom. So let’s end clericalism in the church.

Yes, of course, let’s end clericalism. It’s just plain right to heed the growing consensus that clericalism must go. But something tells me, “not so fast.”

This cancer crippling the Catholic world—from local communities to Vatican offices—is so deeply embedded in our past and present church fabric that we need a careful presurgery examination. So pull on your surgical gloves and join me in the pre-op room.

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Un boliviano denuncia que fue esclavo laboral y sexual de sacerdotes durante cinco años

ESPANA
Entorno Inteligente

[A Bolivian said he was a slave to labor and sexual abuse by priests for five years. He was abused by Spanish priests during a mission in Kenya. The priests were with the Missionary Community of Saint Paul the Apostle and Mary Mother of the Church. The situation has been compared to the scandal of Father Maciel and the Legonaries of Christ.]

Un boliviano denuncia que fue esclavo laboral y sexual de sacerdotes durante cinco años / La Razon / Un boliviano denunció que durante cinco años fue víctima de abusos sexuales por parte de curas españoles durante una misión en Kenia, cuando formaba parte de la Comunidad Misionera de San Pablo Apóstol y de María Madre de la Iglesia (MCSPA, por sus siglas en inglés).

El caso, que ha sido comparado con el escándalo del padre Maciel , el fundador de los Legionarios de Cristo que fue cubierto por años por jerarcas de la Iglesia Católica, fue revelado por el teólogo José Manuel Vidal con el aval del papa Francisco.

Según publicó este martes Vidal en el medio Religión Digital, del cual es además su director, el 15 de septiembre, tras conocer los antecedentes del caso que involucra al boliviano, el Papa le pidió su urgente publicación. “Me lo dijo dos veces seguidas, con indignación en la mirada”, describe.

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‘It’s a joke’: Author of ‘Great is the Truth’ decries New York’s weak statute of limitations, which allowed Horace Mann to cover up sexual abuse

NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY MICHAEL O’KEEFFE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, November 3, 2015

There are plenty of bad guys in Amos Kamil’s powerful and disturbing new book on the Horace Mann sexual-abuse scandal, “Great is the Truth.”

There are the coaches, teachers and administrators accused of raping and assaulting scores of students for three decades, men such as baseball coach/headmaster Inky Clark, football coach Mark Wright and swimming coach Stanley Kops. There are also the officials at the prestigious Riverdale prep school who allegedly ignored and covered up complaints of abuse, leaders such as former headmaster Eileen Mullady and ex-Board of Trustees chairman Michael Hess, the powerhouse New York attorney and a close associate of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Then there are the unnamed villains: The New York legislators and policy makers who have refused to reform the stingy statute of limitations that makes it almost impossible for adult survivors of abuse to pursue criminal charges and civil litigation in the Empire State against sexual predators and the institutions that protect them.

“It’s a joke,” says Kamil, the playwright, investigative journalist and 1982 Horace Mann graduate whose 2012 New York Times Magazine article shoved Horace Mann’s sex-abuse scandal into the public spotlight. “It’s an arcane law that needs to change. The fact that New York does not have the political will to change this is sickening. Where is Gov. Cuomo on this?”

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Pursuit of power at heart of Vati-leaks II

VATICAN CITY
The Tablet (UK)

03 November 2015 by Christopher Lamb in Rome

Any shake-up of a system is going to face opposition. So it is with Pope Francis and his reforms of the Vatican.

After part one of the Vati-leaks saga: when Paolo Gabriele, Benedict XVI’s butler, released private documents from inside the papal apartment detailing corruption.

Now we have part two.

Two individuals have been arrested and questioned by Vatican police in relation to the leaking of private documents. Both had been key members of a commission overhauling Vatican finances and administration (COSEA) in the early part of Francis papacy. But neither had been given positions in the new economic structures that the Pope then established.

The first is Francesca Chaouqui, a 33 year-old financial PR expert. She is a controversial figure who claimed former Holy See Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone was “corrupt” and posted racy photos of her and her husband on Facebook. She co-operated with Holy See police inquiries and has now been released.

The second is Mgr Lucio Ángel Vallejo Balda, a Spanish priest associated with Opus Dei (not, it should be stressed, a priest of the personal prelature) who is being detained in a Vatican prison cell. Opus Dei priests are often trusted for their financial and administrative skills and the prelature issued a statement saying they were “shocked and saddened” by the arrest.

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Vatican hit by new claims of financial mismanagement and lavish spending

ROME
The Guardian (UK)

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Rome
Tuesday 3 November 2015

Ever since his election as spiritual head of the Roman Catholic church in 2013, Pope Francis has always said he wants a church for the poor.

But two controversial new books describe a Vatican awash with cash that is woefully mismanaged, where senior officials pour church funds into their already-lavish apartments, and where even the office that researches candidates for sainthood has had its bank accounts frozen out of concerns about financial impropriety.

According to Gianluigi Nuzzi’s Merchants in the Temple, due to be published on Thursday, one high-ranking Vatican official, Monsignor Giuseppe Sciacca, was so keen on improving his apartment that he took it upon himself to knock down a wall separating his flat from his elderly neighbour’s. When the elderly priest returned from hospital, where he had been very ill, he found his things had been packed in boxes.

“As soon as he opened the door he realised something was wrong: his apartment had been modified, and was missing one room, but he was too old to fight back and seek justice,” Nuzzi wrote. The priest died a short time later. Sciacca was demoted a few months into Pope Francis’s tenure, with a new position at a tribunal that handles legal and administrative cases.

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Georgia GOP consultant forced boys to perform sex acts in church ‘more than a hundred times’: lawsuit

GEORGIA
The Raw Story

DAVID EDWARDS
03 NOV 2015

A Republican political consultant from Georgia was sued this week for allegedly forcing boys to perform sex acts and videotaping it.

WSAV reported that attorneys for Matt Stanley filed a lawsuit against Jim Collins for abuse that occurred between from 1996 and 2002 while attending First Baptist Church Vidalia, where Collins was a youth volunteer.

Collins is accused of instructing boys to perform “individual sexual acts, both privately and in a group setting.” The lawsuit alleges that he recorded the boys performing the acts at least once while at church. The “highly inappropriate, sexualized physical contact with many of the boys” continued while Collins was chaperoning out-of-town trips, the lawsuit says.

Stanley said that he was abused “more than a hundred times” from the age of 11 until he was 18 years old.

At a press conference on Monday, attorney Jameson Carroll praised Stanley for coming forward to file the lawsuit.

“Matt could have sued under a pseudonym, he could have sued and asked this case be filed under seal but he didn’t, and I think it’s very brave,” Carroll noted.

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Sex abuse claims have cost the US Catholic Church almost $4 billion

UNITED STATES
Christian Today

Carey Lodge CHRISTIAN TODAY JOURNALIST 03 November 2015

Sex abuse scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church in the US have cost the institution almost $4 billion over six decades, the National Catholic Register (NCR) has found.

An extensive investigation revealed that the Church paid out at least $3,994,797,060 between 1950 and August 2015; almost $1bn more than previously estimated.

Changing methods of collecting and recording data, confidentiality restrictions and incomplete information mean that the figure is not final, and the NCR says it is “almost certainly a low estimate”.

Scores of allegations of sex abuse by clergy have been made against the Catholic Church in recent years, and the Vatican admitted in 2014 that it had defrocked almost 850 priests in the past decade as a result.

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Will Vatican arrests backfire?

VATICAN CITY
KESQ

By Candida Moss

(CNN) –
On Monday, news broke that the Vatican is pursuing legal action against Spanish priest Monsignor Vallejo Balda and PR expert Francesca Chaouqui for a “serious betrayal of trust.” According to news reports, the two former members of a papal commission established to reform church finances were arrested for allegedly leaking confidential documents to the authors of forthcoming books on the Vatican.

The arrests are reminiscent of the “Vatileaks” scandal that plagued Pope Benedict XVI three years ago, which many feel contributed to his resignation. As with the Vatileaks scandal, this week’s news concerns economic corruption and fiscal irresponsibility in the church, although the full impact of the alleged leaks will be learned only when the tell-all books are released. And, as with the Vatileaks scandal, the most visible response by the church has been to silence its whisteblowers and control the public relations fallout.

Certainly the Vatican has the legal and ethical high ground here: It says that documents were stolen from it and leaked to the press. This kind of thing is a criminal offense, punishable by a prison term up to eight years and a fine of 5000 euros (about $5,500). Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi was clear that this was not an inside job intended to strengthen the Pope’s position, but rather that the alleged leaking of these documents undermines the work of the church by creating “confusion.”

But none of that matters.

The reputation of the Vatican succeeds or fails on the transparency issue. We can see this merely by looking at responses to various events in Francis’ papacy. His enormous and almost unprecedented popularity has been built not only on his emphasis on the poor and the marginalized, his extension of mercy to all and his charismatic personality, but also on the air of openness and sincerity that surrounds his person.

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Vatican scandal heats up with revelations of greed, intrigue

VATICAN CITY
Philly.com

NICOLE WINFIELD, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
POSTED: Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Two new books are deepening a Vatican scandal with tales of mismanagement and greed, such as sainthood causes that can cost a half-million dollars and one monsignor allegedly breaking down the wall of his next-door neighbor – a sick, elderly priest – to expand his already palatial apartment.

Pope Francis has made a top priority the reform of the Vatican bureaucracy known as the Curia, a hive of intrigue and gossip, and appointed a commission of eight experts in 2013 to gather information and make recommendations after an earlier expose helped drive his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, to a historic resignation.

The leaks in the new books are seen as part of a bitter internal struggle between the reformers and the old guard. This week, the Vatican arrested two former members of the commission in an investigation into stolen documents.

A new book by Gianluigi Nuzzi, a journalist whose revelations have driven the scandal, makes some startling allegations, including the charge that Vatican “postulators” – the officials who promote sainthood causes – bring in hundreds of thousands of euros in donations for their causes but are subject to no oversight as to how the money is spent.

In his book “Merchants in the Temple,” obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press two days ahead of publication, Nuzzi estimates the average price tag for a beatification cause at around 500,000 euros ($550,000), saying some have gone as high as 750,000. Causes of saintly candidates who don’t inspire rich donors, meanwhile, can languish.

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REV. NICHOLAS J. SPAGNOLO

MASSACHUSETTS
Legacy

SPAGNOLO, Rev. Nicholas J. Of Lexington, Dec. 25, 2013. Son of the late Erasmo Spagnolo and Anna (Mirabile) Spagnolo. Uncle of Maryann Fiore of Pheonix, AZ. Brother of the late Pierina Fiore and Frank Spagnolo. Funeral from the Douglass Funeral Home, 51 Worthen Rd. Lexington Monday Dec. 30 at 9am followed by a Mass of Christian burial at St. Brigid Church, Lexington at 10am. Reception to follow in Parish hall.

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Trucker kicked out of seminary for self-circumcision admits to molesting 9 boys at anti-Semitic church: police

IDAHO
The Raw Story

TRAVIS GETTYS
28 OCT 2015

A church youth camp counselor and failed seminary student admitted to molesting at least nine boys over the past decade, police said.

Kevin Sloniker, an Idaho long-haul trucker, has been charged with rape and lewd conduct involving two underage boys and is a suspect in the sexual abuse of at least eight other boys, reported the Idaho Statesman.

The 30-year-old Sloniker met some of the boys when he served as a youth camp counselor at Immaculate Conception Church in Post Falls, according to court documents.

Police said Sloniker admitted to fondling nine boys, having oral sex with some of them and raping one boy, and officers said the former seminary student wanted help with his “addiction” to sexually abusing young boys.

He abused some of the boys at his parents’ home in Latah, Washington, and Sloniker molested the others when he took them on the road around the western U.S., investigators said.

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Vatican Tapes Reveal Pope’s Struggle to Clean Up Finances

VATICAN CITY
Bloomberg

John Follain

November 3, 2015

The scale of the challenge facing Pope Francis as he struggles to overhaul Vatican finances will be set out this week by the publication of confidential documents and clandestine recordings of his meetings.

Two books out in Italy and other countries on Thursday will highlight secrecy, mismanagement and huge wealth at the heart of the Catholic Church. On the eve of publication, the Vatican arrested a senior Church official and a public relations consultant in an investigation into the alleged leak of confidential documents. One book quotes an unauthorized recording of Pope Francis protesting to officials about Vatican finances.

“Without exaggerating, we can say that a good part of the costs are out of control,” Pope Francis said in the recording, according to the book Merchants in the Temple, by Gianluigi Nuzzi. The Vatican declined to comment on the books.

The Argentine Francis said he wanted “a poor Church for the poor” on his election in March 2013 and has stamped his humble style on the papacy, but as he pushed for more openness and transparency in Vatican financial and economic agencies he’s faced resistance from the Rome bureaucracy.

“The revelations are more embarrassing for the Church than for Pope Francis,” Emiliano Fittipaldi, author of the book Avarice, said in a phone interview. “There’s a great difference between the pope’s words, and his will to change things, and the Church which is still very rich and often works for itself rather than for others.”

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‘Spying’ on the pope: Vatican leaks reveal dirty dealings

VATICAN CITY
New Vision (Uganda)

VATICAN CITY – The pope’s private conversations allegedly wiretapped by a racy social climber and a Spanish prelate — the latest scandal to hit the Vatican has unearthed claims of theft, debauchery and betrayal within the Catholic Church.

Leaked documents set to be published in two books on Wednesday purportedly reveal how charity money was allegedly spent on refurbishing the houses of powerful cardinals, while claiming the murky Vatican bank continues to shelter suspected criminals.

PR expert Francesca Chaouqui and Monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, arrested at the weekend for allegedly stealing and leaking classified documents, risk up to eight years in prison if the case gets to court.

While Vallejo Balda languishes in jail, Chaouqui, 33, was released after assuring investigators of her cooperation in a case which has thrown light on Pope Francis’s struggles to clean up a centuries-old institution unwilling to give up its privileges.

“I am totally innocent and I’ll prove it,” La Stampa daily quoted the dark-haired woman dubbed a “sex bomb” by Italian media as saying, adding that Vallejo Balda “did everything, I tried to stop him”.

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MO–Victims beg new KC bishop to take “tangible prevention steps”

MISSOURI
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, Nov. 3

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

Tomorrow, Kansas City gets a new Catholic bishop. He’ll seem “kinder and gentler” than his predecessor but won’t be any better at protecting kids, healing victims, or deterring or exposing cover ups.

We’d love to be proven wrong about this. If ever there were a Catholic diocese in need of a truly courageous and innovative leader in children’s safety, it’s Kansas City.

We urge parents, police, prosecutors, parishioners and the public to keep an open mind but be skeptical about Bishop James Johnston when it comes to children’s safety.

He is no friend of kids or victims. His record on clergy sex crimes and cover ups is disappointing. Pope Francis has made another poor choice.

–Weeks ago, we urged Johnston to reach out to anyone who may have been hurt in Springfield by two predator priest, Fr. Michael Charland and Fr. Thomas Meyer, who’d recently been “outed” as predators in another state, but who had worked or spent time in Johnston’s Springfield diocese.

(As best we can tell, Johnston ignored our request.)

[SNAP]

–Four years ago, we urged Johnston to reach out to anyone who may have been hurt in his diocese by Missouri’s most notorious serial predator priest, Fr. Thomas J. O’Brien, who faces more than two dozen civil lawsuits accusing him of molesting kids. Most of them have been settled. O’Brien has sometimes committed these crimes in concert with other clerics. He has been forbidden to present himself as a priest. And recently, he was sued again.

(As best we can tell, Johnston ignored our request and did not reply to our letter.)

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Babu Owino: I’ll give Pope Francis list of “badly behaved” priests

KENYA
Citizen Digital

By Elainer Mogoa, Citizen Digital
Published on 3 November 2015

Pope Francis is coming to Kenya on the 25th of November, and Students Organisation of Nairobi University (SONU) Chairman Babu Owino has got a bombshell revelation for him.

According to screenshot doing rounds on social media, Babu Owino plans to present a list of “badly behaved” priests to the Pontiff.

A screenshot of a WhatsApp conversation, allegedly between the SONU Chair and a pastor, details a conversation where Owino states that he will hand over a list of “31 Catholic bishops, fathers, and pastors who are having sex with University ladies, in the name of God”.

The man of the cloth chatting with Owino claims that religious leaders are unhappy with the student politician for his threat, and he offers to give him hush money. When asked to name his price, the Owino says that “he does not want money, but he is doing God’s work”.

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Babu Owino CONFIRMS He Will Give Pope Francis A List Of 31 Catholic Bishops, Fathers And Pastors Having Sex With University Girls

KENYA
Ghafla

Written by Martin Oduor
Created: 03 November 2015

Controversial SoNU Chairman Babu Owino is planning to tell on rogue Catholic Bishops and Fathers sleeping with varsity girls left right and center, when the Pope comes.

The countdown for Pope Francis’ arrival is on, only about three weeks are left till the Leader of the Catholic Church sets foot on Kenyan soil.

While Catholic faithful are all excited about Pope Francis’ visit to Kenya, a section of Catholic Bishops and Fathers are having running stomach because of one Babu Owino.

A leaked Whatsapp conversation between the SoNU chairman and anonymous man of cloth reveals shocking details.

Apparently Babu has a list of 31 Catholic Bishops and Fathers who have been having sex with university girls and which he intends to give the Pope.

The unknown clergy was negotiating with Babu to buy him off at a price but the vibrant students’ leader seemed to have made up his mind about exposing the men of god with loose zip.

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Other Pontifical Acts

VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 3 November 2015 (VIS) – The Holy Father has appointed:

– Bishop Pedro Maria Laxague, auxiliary of Bahia Blanca, Argentina, as bishop of Zarate-Campana (area 5,924, population 728,000, Catholics 660,000, priests 88, permanent deacons 13, religious 178), Argentina. He succeeds Bishop Oscar Domingo Sarlinga, whose resignation in accordance with canon 401 para. 2 of the Code of Canon Law was accepted by the Holy Father.

– appointed Fr. Carlos Azpiroz Costa, O.P., as coadjutor archbishop of Bahia Blanca (area 82,625, population 757,000, Catholics 647,000, priests 83, permanent deacons 18, religious 202), Argentina. Fr. Azpiroz Costa, O.P., was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1956, gave his religious vows in 1984 and was ordained a priest in 1987. He holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of the North “Santo Tomas de Aquino” (UNSTA) in the Argentine Dominican province, a bachelor’s degree in theology from the Pontifical Argentine Catholic University, and a doctorate in canon law from the University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum), Rome. He has served in a number of roles within his order, most notably as Master General, and as a lecturer at the University FASTA of Mar del Plata, Argentina. He is currently superior of the Dominican community of Mar del Plata.

On Saturday, 31 October, the Holy Father:

– appointed Fr. Abel Szocska, O.S.B.M., as apostolic administrator sede vacante of the eparchy of Nyiregyhaza, Hungary, for Catholis of Byzantine rite, without episcopal rank. Fr. Szocska was born in Vinohradiu, Nagyszolos, Ukraine in 1972, gave his religious vows in 2001 and was ordained a priest in the same year. He is currently provincial superior of the Basilian Fathers in Hungary, pastor of the parish of Mariapocs, and protosyncellus of the eparchy of Miskolc.

– gave his assent to the canonical election by the Synod of Bishops of the Maronite Church of Fr. Joseph Tobji as archbishop of Aleppo of the Maronites, Syria. The bishop-elect was born in 1971 and was ordained a priest in 1996. He holds a licentiate in canon law from the Pontifical Urbanian University and has served as chaplain and parish priest, and as promoter of justice and defender of the bond in a number of ecclesiastical tribunals. He is currently secretary of the Assembly of Catholic Bishops.

– accepted the resignation from the office of auxiliary of the diocese of Elblag, Poland, presented by Bishop Jozef Wysocki upon reaching the age limit.

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Priests call for open discussion on the need for equality of Women in all aspects of Church life, including Ministry.

IRELAND
Association of Catholic Priests

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Gal. 3, 28)

In the Catholic Church women, despite being equal to men by virtue of their Baptism, are excluded from all positions of decision making, and from ordained ministry. In 1994 Pope John Paul II declared that the exclusion of women from priesthood could not even be discussed in the Church. Pope Benedict reaffirmed, and even strengthened this teaching by insisting that it was definitive and that all Catholics were required to give assent to this view. Pope Francis has said that Pope John Paul II had reflected at length on this matter, had declared that women could never be priests and that, therefore, no further discussion on the ordination of women to ministry is possible. In reality, Pope John Paul II did not encourage or facilitate debate on the ordination of women to priesthood or diaconate before he made his decision. Furthermore, there was virtually no discussion on the complex cultural factors that excluded women from leadership roles in many societies until recently.

We, the undersigned, believe that this situation is very damaging, that it alienates both women and men from the church because they are scandalised by the unwillingness of Church leaders to open the debate on the role of women in our church. This alienation will continue and accelerate.

We are aware that there are many women who are deeply hurt and saddened by this teaching. We also believe that the example given by the Church in discriminating against women encourages and reinforces abuse and violence against women in many cultures and societies. It is also necessary to remember that women form the bulk of the congregation at Sunday Mass and have been more active in the life of the local churches than many men, mirroring the fidelity of the women who followed Jesus to the end, to his death on Calvary. The command of Jesus “Go, teach all nations” was addressed to all his followers, and by failing to accept the full equality of women, the church is not fulfilling this commission.

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MEDIA RELEASE – NOVEMBER 2, 2015

NEW YORK
Road to Recovery

Leaders of the Salesian Priests and Brothers have settled previous childhood sexual abuse claims against serial pedophiles Fr. Joseph Maffei, SDB, and Br. George Sheehan, SDB, but refuse to help two victims who were sexually abused in Indiana and New Hampshire by reasonably settling their claims and allowing them to gain a degree of closure

What
A press conference and demonstration alerting the media and general public about the refusal of the Salesian Priests and Brothers, based in New Rochelle, New York, to help two sexual abuse victims of two members of the Salesians of Don Bosco religious order, Fr. Joseph Maffei, SDB, and Br. George Sheehan, SDB.

When
Tuesday, November 3, 2015 from 11:00 am until 12:30 pm

Where
On the public sidewalk outside the headquarters of the Salesians of Don Bosco religious order, 148 Main Street, New Rochelle, New York 10801 – 914-636-4225

Who
Members of Road to Recovery, Inc., a non-profit charity based in New Jersey that assists victims of sexual abuse and their families, including its co-founder and President, Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D.

Why
The Salesian Priests and Brothers of Don Bosco, based in New Rochelle, New York, refuse to verify the sexual abuse claims of two men who were sexually abused in two states by two Salesians and help them heal. They have told the men to “take a hike.” One of the men was sexually abused as a minor child by Fr. Joseph Maffei, SDB, at St. Dominic Savio Juniorate in Cedar Lake, Indiana. The other man was sexually abused as a minor child at Camp Don Bosco near East Barrington, New Hampshire, when he was a camper and Br. George Sheehan, SDB was a staff member and/or an administrator there. Demonstrators will call on the Salesians of Don Bosco to acknowledge and verify the claims of the two victims, settle their claims, and help them heal.

Contacts
Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D., Road to Recovery, Inc., Livingston, NJ – 862-368-2800
Attorney Mitchell Garabedian, Boston, MA – 617-523-6250

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Obituary: Father William J. Scanlan, 66

MASSACHUSETTS
The Pilot

05/10/13

Father William J. Scanlan passed away April 26, at Marian Manor in South Boston. He was 66 years old.

Father Scanlan was born in Dorchester on June 5, 1946, the son of the late William F. and Kathleen V. (Carnes) Scanlan. He was raised in Dedham and graduated from Boston College High School. He attended St. John’s Seminary and was ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop Humberto S. Medeiros on May 20, 1972.

Father Scanlan’s first assignment following ordination was to Our Lady of Mercy Church in Belmont from 1972 to 1975. He was then assigned as associate pastor of St. Timothy’s Church in Norwood where he served from 1975 to 1983.

From 1983 to 1994 he served in a served in a series of special assignments including specialized ministry to youth at Pilgrim Center in Braintree; assistant chaplain at Long Island Hospital in Quincy; chaplain at Southeast Correctional Center in Bridgewater; and co-founding a transitional program called Home for Now, Inc. During much of that time he was in residence at St. Monica Church in South Boston.

On Jan. 28, 1994, Father Scanlan was made pastor of St. James Church in Stoughton, where he served until 1997, when complications from a heart condition made it necessary for him to take health leave. In 1998, after a time of recuperation, he returned to active ministry with the Archdiocese of the Military Services, serving as a Veteran’s Administration hospital chaplain assigned to the Palo Alto Heath Care System in Palo Alto, Calif.

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“He sido un esclavo sexual de depravados encubiertos por obispos”

ESPANA
El Pais

[Theologian Jose Manuel Vidal gave Pope Francis a dossier on alleged sexual abuse within an organization of clergy and laity that started in Barcelona, Spain, in the last century and now extends into several countries. It is the Missionary Community of Saint Paul the Apostle and Mary Mother of the Church with an English acronym of MCSPA.]

“Publíquelo”. Es la súplica (quizás, una orden) de Francisco al teólogo José Manuel Vidal cuando entregó al Papa un dosier sobre supuestos abusos sexuales en una organización de eclesiásticos y laicos urdida en Barcelona el siglo pasado y extendida ahora por varios países. Se trata de la Comunidad Misionera de San Pablo Apóstol y de María Madre de la Iglesia (MCSPA, en sus siglas en inglés), que, aparte de su faceta religiosa, realiza importantes obras de cooperación y desarrollo en África y Latinoamérica. Los fundadores ya fueron castigados por el Arzobispado de Barcelona en 1995.

“He sido esclavo laboral y sexual de un grupo de depravados, encubierto por jerarcas de la Iglesia. En los tres años que estuve en la misión de Nariokotome, en Kenia, me trataron como una bestia de carga. Éramos unas 30 personas y a la esclavitud laboral se añadía la esclavitud sexual. Nos decían que la vida sexual activa es algo que Dios quiere y que también quiere que vayamos desnudos porque desnudos nos creó. Ayúdeme, Francisco. Ponga un poco de alivio en mi alma rota. No permita que otros muchachos sigan pasando por este infierno”, escribe al Papa una de las supuestas víctimas, que ahora tiene 36 años. No es la única denuncia ante el Vaticano contra la MCSPA, pero tiene la virtud de estar en manos del Papa, con seguridad. Otras dos, con confesiones igualmente estremecedoras de un chico y una chica, parecen haberse perdido por el camino.

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Judge denies Freeport man a new trial in defamation case

MAINE
Bangor Daily News

By Judy Harrison, BDN Staff
Posted Nov. 02, 2015

PORTLAND, Maine — A federal judge has denied a Freeport man a new trial and refused to reduce a $14.5 million judgment against him, but he did drop an $8,000 fine for contempt.

U.S. District Court Judge John Woodcock on Friday also granted a motion to force Paul Kendrick, 66, to pay pre- and post-conviction interest on the damages granted by a jury in July after a 13-day defamation trial in federal court in Portland.

On Saturday, Haitian authorities reportedly had issued an arrest warrant for Michael Geilenfeld, a former Catholic brother who, along with an affiliated nonprofit, Hearts with Haiti, successfully sued Kendrick for defamation.

Police in Port-au-Prince were searching for Geilenfeld as part of an investigation into new allegations of child sex abuse, according to the Associated Press.

As of 6 p.m. Monday, no media outlets had reported that Geilenfeld had been located and arrested.

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Catholic Diocese of Wilmington found in compliance of audit

DELAWARE
Delaware Public Media

By ANNE HOFFMAN

Since 2004, all Catholic Dioceses have undergone yearly audits to prevent child sex abuse. After what it calls an extensive audit this year, The Catholic Diocese of Wilmington says it has been has been found in compliance with a set of rules created by church leadership in 2002 called the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.

Robert Krebs, a spokesman for the Wilmington Diocese, says the auditors are from an independent, outside organization called Stonebridge Business Partners.

“They’re going throughout the United States and making sure that not just the letter of this charter for the protection of children and young people, but the spirit of the charter is followed as well,” he said.

He adds this year’s audit was particularly rigorous and involved several on site interviews.

“We did have two auditors come on site. They reviewed documents, they interviewed members of our staff here at the diocese and parish staff and volunteers.”

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“Muy grave” mensaje del Papa al perdonar a Legionarios: Athié en CNN

MEXICO
Aristegui Noticias

[Alberto Athie said the plenary indulgence for the Legionaries of Christ sends a serious message from the pope. He siad it was handled in the same way as in the days of Martin Luther to use papal power to pardon the criminals of the time.]

“Es muy grave y muy peligroso para toda la humanidad que haya este tipo de incentivas de tipo religioso, en donde las personas quedan eximidas ya de cualquier responsabilidad”, dijo.

La indulgencia plenaria que concedió el Papa Francisco los Legionarios de Cristo “está siendo manejada como en tiempos de Lutero, es lo mismo. Es el uso de una potestad papal para conceder el perdón a malhechores y a ladrones del tiempo de Lutero, que después de haber cometido muchos delitos y estaban a punto de ser detenidos, acudían a la gracia papal, compraban las indulgencias para obtener el perdón y quedar eximidos de responsabilidad y ganarse el cielo”, aseveró el ex sacerdote Alberto Athié.

“Por eso a Lutero se le paraban los pelos como teólogo de su tiempo para decir: ¿dónde estamos? En una Iglesia que se jacta de tener el poder de hacer ese tipo de perdones en la historia del tiempo, sin responsabilidad de los que cometen esos delitos y además la posibilidad de irse al cielo… la analogía no está tan lejana en el tiempo”, comentó en entrevista para Aristegui CNN.

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Vatican City PD: How one of the world’s smallest states doles out justice

VATICAN CITY
Independent (UK)

Adam Taylor

Technically, Vatican City is an independent sovereign state. However, it’s far from an ordinary one. A walled enclave in the Italian capital of Rome, the Vatican occupies just 110 acres – a geographical size that makes it the smallest state in the world. Last year, it’s population was estimated to be 842. And this tiny state happens to be the geographical center of the Roman Catholic Church, one of the oldest religious institutions in the world and the largest denomination of the Christian faith, with more than 1.25 billion members worldwide.

So, in a state as unusual as this, how is criminal justice handled?

That’s a pertinent question this week, after the Vatican announced on Monday that it had arrested two members of a papal reform commission on suspicion of leaking classified information. The arrest of Spanish priest Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda and Italian public relations executive Francesca Chaouqui appeared to be linked to the release of two upcoming books that threatened to contain revelations about alleged fraud and mismanagement in the Catholic church.

The investigation into Balda and Chaouqui is being handled by the Gendarmerie Corps of the Vatican City. These uniformed officers essentially act as the Vatican’s police forces, with their roots in an organization created by Pope Pius VII after the dissolution of the Napoleonic empire in 1816. These days, they work closely with their Italian counterparts under the 85-year-old Lateran Treaty. There are currently about 130 members of the corps: According to the Vatican’s website, candidates for the job have to be unmarried Catholic men between the age of 21 and 25 with a high school diploma and a height of at least 5 feet 8.

The Vatican’s Gendarmerie Corps do not guard the Pope. That duty falls upon the Pontifical Swiss Guard, who act as the Pope’s personal bodyguards and the security service for the Holy See, the political entity of the Catholic Church that is technically distinct from the Vatican City. Otherwise, they care for most of the security, law enforcement and firefighting coordination within the city state – a more taxing duty than you might expect. Despite the Vatican’s small size, it has a remarkably high rate of crimes per capita.

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New books allege mismanagement, excess at the Vatican

VATICAN CITY
Washington Post

By Anthony Faiola and Stefano Pitrelli November 3

The Vatican faced fresh accusations of mismanagement, excess and resistance to change as details from two new books emerged Tuesday, a day after the Holy See announced the arrest of two insiders on suspicion of leaking internal information.

The allegations in the books suggest a mix of formidable forces confront Pope Francis as he seeks to reform a Vatican bureaucracy long shrouded in secrecy and charged for years with being inefficient and lacking in transparency.

The Washington Post obtained an early copy of “Avarice: Documents Revealing Wealth, Scandals and Secrets of Francis’ Church” by Italian journalist Emiliano Fittipaldi of L’Espresso, which delves into the details of suspect accounts in the Vatican Bank, big spending by cardinals and the alleged diversion of funds earmarked for hospitals.

In one incident, Fittipaldi outlines a 23,800 euro ($26,400) helicopter ride in 2012 by former Vatican secretary of state Tarcisio Bertone who was pushed aside by Francis. He also documents how a religious foundation paid to refurbish Bertone’s home.

He also cites continuing problems at the Vatican bank, which became the subject of a massive clean up effort that started under Benedict XVI and kicked into high gear under Francis.

“The Vatican Bank hasn’t been cleaned up like we thought,” Fittipaldi, a journalist at L’Espresso, said in an interview with The Washington Post. The Italian magazine he works for has been responsible for some of the biggest leaks on the Vatican this year, including an early draft of a papal encyclical on the environment in June. ”There are [bank accounts] of Italian entrepreneurs under investigation by Italian authorities still hiding inside.”

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Bishop Luffa School in Chichester to rename Bell House

UNITED KINGDOM
Chichester Observer

Bishop Luffa School in Chichester has announced it will be renaming Bell House.

This follows the news on October 22 that the former Bishop of Chichester George Bell abused a young child in the 1940s and 1950s.

In a letter to parents on the first day back after half term (November 2), the school announced it would change the name of the house named after the former bishop.

Headteacher Mr Nick Taunt said his school was ‘shocked and saddened’ to hear of the abuse.

Mr Taunt said in his letter to parents: “Many of you will have heard that Bishop Martin recently issued a formal apology following the settlement of a legal civil claim regarding child abuse against the Right Reverend George Bell, who was Bishop of Chichester from 1929-58.

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Vatican scandal heats up with book exposing waste, resistance to pope

VATICAN CITY
CTV (Canada)

Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press
Published Tuesday, November 3, 2015

The Vatican’s new leaks scandal intensified Tuesday as a book detailed the mismanagement and internal resistance that has been thwarting Pope Francis’ financial reform efforts.

Citing confidential documents, it exposed millions of euros in potential lost rental revenue, the scandal of the Vatican’s saint-making machine, greedy monsignors and a professional-style break-in at the Vatican.

“Merchants in the Temple,” by Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, is due out Thursday but an advance copy was obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press. Its publication, and that of a second book, come days after the Vatican arrested two members of Francis’ financial reform commission in an investigation into stolen documents.

The Vatican on Monday described the books as “fruit of a grave betrayal of the trust given by the pope, and, as far as the authors go, of an operation to take advantage of a gravely illicit act of handing over confidential documentation.” …

Nuzzi’s book focuses on the work of the commission and the resistance it encountered in getting information out of Vatican departments that have long enjoyed near-complete autonomy in budgeting, hiring and spending.

“Holy Father, … There is a complete absence of transparency in the bookkeeping both of the Holy See and the Governorate,” five international auditors wrote Francis in June 2013, according to Nuzzi’s book. “Costs are out of control.”

Citing emails, minutes of meetings, recorded private conversations and memos, the book paints a picture of a Vatican bureaucracy entrenched in a culture of mismanagement, waste and secrecy.

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Vidalia Man Accused in Third Hidden Predator Lawsuit

GEORGIA
WSAV

[with video]

By Andrew Davis

The third lawsuit under Georgia’s Hidden Predator act has been filed.

Once again it includes allegations of sexual abuse of a man connected to our area. This time in Vidalia.

“Individuals who violate and sexually abuse children should be put on notice that we survivors are breaking our silence and rising up with courage to fight for justice.” explained Angela Williams, an abuser survivor and founder of Voice Today.

One of those survivors is named Matt Stanley.

Stanley filed a civil lawsuit in Toombs County Court claiming from 1996 to 2002 he was the victim of repeated abuse by a former youth volunteer at First Baptist Church Vidalia.

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Sex abuse civil case filed against former church volunteer in Vidalia

GEORGIA
WTOC

[with video]

By Dal Cannady

VIDALIA, GA (WTOC) –
Lawyers for a former Vidalia teen announced a civil suit Monday against a former church volunteer accused of molestation.

Attorneys for Matt Stanley announced a lawsuit against Jim Collins, a political consultant who volunteered with youth at Firs t Baptist Church Vidalia from the mid 1990’s to late 2000’s.

An attorney for the church issued a statement that FBC was made aware of the accusations years later.

The church claims they assisted the accuser and cooperated with police when those accusations came to light. They also said Collins was banned from any contact with teens at the church and banned from church property even though no formal charges were ever filed against him.

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Child abuse royal commission: Former Brisbane Grammar School counsellor hypnotised, sexually abused boys during sessions, inquiry hears

AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Leonie Mellor and Louisa Rebgetz

A former school counsellor often hypnotised then sexually abused boys during counselling sessions at Brisbane Grammar School, the royal commission into child sexual abuse has heard.

Two prestigious private schools in south-east Queensland, the Brisbane Grammar School (BGS) at Spring Hill and St Paul’s School at Bald Hills, are the focus of public hearings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Brisbane.

The nine-day hearing is focusing on the actions of former school counsellor Kevin John Lynch at Brisbane Grammar School from the 1970s to 1990s, as well as the abuse by a teacher at St Paul’s, Gregory Knight.

An ex-student at Brisbane Grammar School – called BQK – said he was systematically hypnotised and then physically and sexually abused by Lynch, who said it would improve his behaviour and performance.

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Child abuse probe to hear of complaints to headmasters

AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

[with video]

November 3, 2015

Jorge Branco
Journalist

Victims repeatedly told headmasters at two prestigious Brisbane private schools at the centre of historic sex abuse scandals they were abused by paedophile staffers, a royal commission has heard.

In his opening address to two weeks of hearings in Brisbane, counsel assisting David Lloyd on Tuesday laid out a long list of evidence expected to come from several former students and parents at St Paul’s School and Brisbane Grammar School.

Among the most damning claims, the royal commission is expected to hear former St Paul’s school headmaster Gilbert Case was told of concerns regarding now-convicted paedophile Gregory Robert Knight’s conduct with boys before hiring him in 1981.

The inquiry heard even after Mr Case decided to accept Knight’s resignation in 1984 after repeated complaints of sexual abuse, he wrote a glowing reference for Knight’s application to teach in the Northern Territory.

Knight was subsequently convicted of child sexual abuse in both Queensland and the Northern Territory. He had already been forced to resign over complaints of sexual abuse at a South Australian school before coming to Queensland but it appeared that information wasn’t shared with Queensland authorities.

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Child sex abuse inquiry: Former Brisbane Grammar School students to detail years of abuse

AUSTRALIA
The Courier-Mail

MATTHEW KILLORAN, DAVID MURRAY THE COURIER-MAIL NOVEMBER 03, 2015

A MOTHER whose son was sexually abused by Kevin Lynch at Brisbane Grammar has given emotional testimony of the damage inflicted.

The witness, whose son gave evidence immediately prior to her testimony, said she had sent her four children to “what we thought were the best private schools in Brisbane”.

“What did we get for our money? We got the worst anyone could possibly imagine,” she said, describing her son’s addiction to alcohol and drugs and how she was officially his carer.

Using the pseudonym BQR, she stopped repeatedly to try to compose herself as she told how her son’s development had been damaged and he would never reach his potential.

“Because he was sexually abused instead of being cared for he has not been able to have a profession, a wife or children,” she said.

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Former G-G expected to be called before royal commission into sexual abuse

AUSTRALIA
SBS

[with video]

Over the next two weeks, 31 witnesses including former Governor-General and former Archbishop of Brisbane Peter Hollingworth, will give evidence about alleged abuse at Brisbane Boys Grammar and St Paul’s College.

By Stefan Armbruster
3 NOV 2015

Graphic evidence of sexual abuse of boys at two prestigious Brisbane schools and repeated failure to report matters to Queensland police has been heard by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse.

Over the next two weeks, 31 witnesses including former Governor-General and former Archbishop of Brisbane Peter Hollingworth, will give evidence about alleged abuse at Brisbane Boys Grammar and St Paul’s College.

Two former employees of the schools – Kevin John Lynch and Gregory Robert Knight – are the focus of the Royal Commission.

The extent of abuse at Brisbane Grammar was revealed after former student Nigel Parodi, allegedly abused, by Lynch shot three Queensland police officers, two in the face, in an inner-Brisbane suburb in 2000.

All three officers survived but after Parodi committed suicide, dozens of former Grammar students approached the school alleging they too had been abused by Lynch.

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Listening Sessions continue in Minneapolis-St. Paul

MINNESOTA
National Catholic Reporter

Elizabeth A. Elliott | Nov. 2, 2015 NCR Today

Listening sessions, called by Archbishop Bernard Hebda, interim administrator of the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese, continue to provide the opportunity for the local church to say what qualities they want in the new archbishop.

Lay activists here say they hope the sessions can become a model for ongoing lay input.

Hebda is coadjutor archbishop of Newark, N.J., and is acting as administrator of the Twin Cities archdiocese until a permanent replacement is named. Archbishop John C. Nienstedt and Auxiliary Bishop Lee A. Piche resigned in June as the archdiocese became more deeply embroiled in a scandal around failing to protect children from sexual abuse and as Nienstedt himself faced allegations of sexual improprieties with adult men.

Catholic Coalition for Church Reform (CCCR) of Minnesota, the reform coalition that pursued the idea of lay collaboration with Hebda, is thankful Hebda’s efforts to lead the Archdiocese of the St. Paul-Minneapolis selection of a new archbishop. CCCR plans to send a letter to Hebda thanking him.

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How to report child abuse in Pa.

PENNSYLVANIA
Catholic Philly

Anyone may report suspected child abuse to ChildLine, the 24-hour statewide system operated by the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare, at 1-800-932-0313. Any conduct that could be considered a crime may also be reported to a local police department.

One wishing to report sexual abuse or other misconduct by a priest, deacon, employee or volunteer of the Philadelphia Archdiocese may call the archdiocesan Office of Investigations at 1-888-930-9010. Callers will be asked to provide their name, date of birth, current address and phone number, name of the accused, dates and location of the abuse or misconduct, and a brief description of the facts.

The archdiocese is required by law to report suspected child abuse to the Department of Public Welfare’s ChildLine. In addition, it is archdiocesan policy to report immediately to law enforcement any conduct that could constitute a crime.

After one’s report is taken, a Victim Assistance Coordinator in the archdiocesan Office for Child and Youth Protection’s Victim will follow up to discuss what support and services are available. If after making the complaint one wishes to speak immediately with a Victim Assistance Coordinator, the connection will be made.

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Legal update: the complexities of abuse

UNITED KINGDOM
Lexology

United Kingdom October 30 2015

Kennedys Law LLP

Few areas of personal injury law give rise to more controversy, sensitivities, publicity and sense of public outcry than child abuse.

While most of the publicity relates to criminal enquiries, this is an area where criminal and civil law intertwine and insurance plays a major role. These claims often involve allegations dating back decades and complex issues of liability, causation and quantum.

Degree of control

Over the last few years, the doctrine of vicarious liability has been widened, capturing more situations akin to employment.

Attempts to limit its scope arose in A v The Trustees of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society and others [2015]. The defendant argued that Jehovah’s Witnesses were distinctive because they were not full-time clergymen, had a secular life as well as being members of the congregation, and were not fully integrated or controlled in their conduct.

In applying the two-stage test laid down by the Supreme Court in Catholic Child Welfare Society [2012], the court held that being a Jehovah’s Witness was a way of life, applying a strict moral code with oversight given by a judicial committee. There was also a hierarchical structure and a level of control over their behaviour. This was arguably more controlling than the relationship between an employer and employee.

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November 2, 2015

ROBINSON, Rev. Fr. Barry

AUSTRALIA/UNITED STATES
Herald Sun Tributes

ROBINSON. Rev. Fr. Barry. Passed away peacefully on Oct. 10, 2014, aged 73 years. Loved brother of John, Denis (dec. ), Geoff (dec. ), Paul, Kathlyn, Margot, Christine, Bernard and Helen. Always treasured and remembered
Obituaries
Published in Herald Sun on 13/10/2014

Supporting Notices

ROBINSON. Reverend Barry. Ordained a priest at St Patrick’s Cathedral, East Melbourne, on May 23, 1970. He was appointed Assistant Priest at the parishes of Hastings (1970), Airport West (1970 – 1973), Burwood (1974), Dandenong North (1976). He served with the Columban Mission Society in Santiago, Chile (1979 – 1985), becoming Parish Priest of St John’s East Melbourne in 1992, followed by Priest in Residence at Williamstown in 1996 until 2004. He died at Good Shepherd Aged Care, Abbotsford on Oct. 10, 2014, aged 73. May he rest in Peace. Priests’ Retirement Foundation “Caring for those who cared”.

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EXCLUSIVE: ‘I had nothing left to lose.’ True story of the pedophile priest’s victim who inspired new movie Spotlight with his battle to expose the Church’s sex abuse cover-up

MASSACHUSETTS
Daily Mail (UK)

By MARTIN GOULD IN BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

It’s the story you won’t see on the big screen when Oscar front-runner Spotlight hits theaters this week: how the biggest sex scandal to hit the Roman Catholic Church might never have been exposed if it wasn’t for one man contracting AIDS.

It wasn’t that Phil Saviano had caught the disease from an abusive priest, but rather that he thought he had only weeks to live so decided to forgo a five figure payout from the church that would have forced him to keep silent.

Instead Saviano’s tenacity provided the essential evidence that led to The Boston Globe’s team of investigative reporters breaking the story that the church had deliberately covered up the fact that dozens — later learned to be hundreds — of children had been molested.

‘If I hadn’t had AIDS, I would have been at the top of my career in public relations and coming out as having been sexually assaulted as a child would have been very difficult for me,’ Saviano told Daily Mail Online in an exclusive interview.

‘AIDS freed me up to do something I would not have done otherwise.’

Saviano, now 63, is a minor but key player in the movie — which is being compared to the 1976 Watergate classic All the President’s Men for the way it shows intrepid journalists breaking a major story.

Spotlight is already tipped to run off with the top Oscar. Tom O’Neil, editor of the awards prediction website Gold Derby has installed it as 13/2 favorite for the honor ahead of such blockbusters as Steve Jobs, The Danish Girl and Bridge of Spies.

‘It’s a very powerful movie,’ O’Neil told Daily Mail Online. ‘It has an “ick” factor because of the subject matter which is a little scary, but that’s what makes it such a brave film.
‘It really resonates with the audience because it seems fair, it doesn’t go out to crucify the Catholic Church.’

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Penn Panel Reflects on the 2005 Philadelphia Grand Jury Report on Child Sex Abuse in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia

PENNSYLVANIA
University of Pennsylvania

Media Contact:Amanda Mott | ammott@upenn.edu | 215-898-1422
November 2, 2015

Marking the 10-year anniversary of the largest of three grand jury reports, a panel hosted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society reflected on the “Ramifications of the Philadelphia Grand Jury Report on Child Sex Abuse in the Archdiocese: Lessons Learned and Lessons Spurned” was held on Oct. 28.

When word that Pope Francis would visit Philadelphia this fall reached students in John J. DiIulio Jr.’s Religion and Public Policy class last spring, there was excitement. The announcement focused the students’ attention on the Catholic Church, and the idea for the panel on the Philadelphia grand jury reports on child sex abuse in the Philadelphia Archdiocese grew from there.

DiIulio, the faculty director of PRRUCS and the Frederic Fox Leadership Professor of Politics, Religion and Civil Society in the School of Arts & Sciences, moderated the panel of four; Lynne Abraham, former district attorney of Philadelphia, who issued the 2005 report; the Rev. William Byron, professor of business and society at Saint Joseph’s University; Marci Hamilton, Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University and a PRRUCS Resident Senior Fellow; and Maureen S. Rush, vice president for public safety and superintendent, Penn Police Department.

Speaking to an audience of students, family members of victims, victim advocates and others, DiIulio began the 80-minute discussion summarizing the three reports.

Beginning with the 2003 Philadelphia grand jury report that outlined evidence of 120 priests and hundreds of victims, the 2005 version showed more evidence of abuse. It also showed that Philadelphia Archdiocese officials, including Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua, had excused and enabled the abuse and had been involved in a cover-up. A grand jury report in 2011 found that, while the church was slightly more willing to work with authorities, there was little evidence of any change and abusers remained on duty.

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Pope Francis is Done Punishing This Mexican Order With a Sordid Reputation

ROME
VICE News

By David Agren

November 2, 2015

Pope Francis has granted an “indulgence” to a controversial religious congregation famous for its millionaire members and notorious for the sexual crimes committed by its founder. The decision has prompted experts to suggest the pontiff is coming under pressure from conservatives as he advances a reformist agenda that puts a priority on serving the poor and attracting lapsed Catholics back to the church, at the same time as he has promised to address sexual crimes involving priests.

Bernardo Barranco, an academic and columnist who writes often on the Mexican Catholic Church, told VICE News that the indulgence for the Legionaries of Christ was “contradictory” to the rest of the Pope’s message.

“I think that this is a reformist Pope who wants to have a different kind of relationship with contemporary society, but there are ultraconservatives who are pressuring for him not to go in that direction,” Barranco said. “To understand [the indulgence] I think we have to look at the tensions and power struggles within the Vatican.”

The Pope granted the indulgence — a removal of punishment due for forgiven sins that is not technically a pardon — on October 28. Such decisions are commonly made in advance of important anniversaries, such as the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Legionaries of Christ in January. Pope Francis has also announced a jubilee year of mercy in 2016, which includes indulgences for Catholics carrying out “acts of mercy” and also permission for priests to absolve women confessing to having had abortions.

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Did Anti-Francis Cabal Plant a Sexy Spy in the Vatican?

VATICAN CITY
The Daily Beast

Barbie Latza Nadeau

A steamy babe who once posed topless now at the center of the latest Vatican intrigue has many telling the pope, ‘I told you so.’

VATICAN CITY — For many inside the Vatican, Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui was trouble from the start. The willowy 32-year-old brunette raised eyebrows almost immediately in 2013 when, at 30, she was handpicked by Pope Francis as the only laywoman on an eight-member advisory panel called the Commission for Reference on the Organization of the Economic-Administrative Structure of the Holy See.

On Monday, the Vatican confirmed that Chaouqui, along with a Spanish monsignor named Lucio Vallejo Balda, who was the secretary of COSEA, had been arrested for leaking documents to journalists.

Sound familiar? It should. In 2012, Pope Benedict’s butler Paolo Gabriele was arrested for just the same crime, and the butler was charged with leaking to just the same journalist, Gianluigi Nuzzi, who has a new book coming out this week.

His previous book, His Holiness, is widely believed to be the last straw that led to the eventual resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. God (and likely Chaouqui) only knows what his new book, called Via Crucis in Italian and Merchants in the Temple in English, will reveal when it hits bookstores Thursday. Nuzzi tells The Daily Beast that Chaouqui did not collaborate on this, or any, of his books. But he told us the same thing about the butler, too.

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Cops still quiet on priest whom diocese says involved in criminal matter

CANADA
Seaway News

CORNWALL, Ontario – Provincial police are still keeping mum on what appears to be a criminal matter involving a local priest that the diocese has admitted to.

On Oct. 29 the OPP, apparently, charged Fr. Denis Vaillancourt, 69, a retired priest of the Diocese of Alexandria-Cornwall, in relation to events involving an adult male that allegedly took place several weeks ago, the diocese said in a media release issued late Friday.

OPP Const. Tylor Copeland said Monday the service is still not in a position to discuss the matter, as the investigating officers have not yet returned to work.

“We weren’t updated, so we’re looking into it,” said Copeland, who added some kind of release from the OPP is expected Tuesday.

The diocese, for its part, said it would not comment beyond its media release but suggested it is addressing the incident.

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COMUNICATO STAMPA DEL 2 NOVEMBRE 2015: “SORPRESA E DOLORE”

ROMA
Opus Dei

Diversi mezzi di comunicazione hanno chiesto a questo ufficio un commento a proposito delle notizie sull’arresto di Mons. Lucio Ángel Vallejo Balda. Manifestiamo sorpresa e dolore per queste notizie.

L’Opus Dei non dispone di alcuna informazione sul caso. Se l’accusa si dimostrasse confermata, sarebbe particolarmente doloroso per il danno arrecato alla Chiesa.

Mons. Vallejo appartiene alla “Società Sacerdotale della Santa Croce”, associazione di presbiteri intrinsecamente unita all’Opus Dei, che non ha il diritto di intervenire nel ministero pastorale né nel lavoro che i suoi soci svolgono nelle loro diocesi o nella Santa Sede. La missione dell’associazione è l’accompagnamento spirituale dei suoi membri.

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Vatican arrests priest and laywoman in latest probe of leak of confidential documents

VATICAN CITY
Star Tribune

By FRANCES D’EMILIO Associated Press NOVEMBER 2, 2015

VATICAN CITY — A Spanish priest and an Italian laywoman who had served on a financial reform commission set up by Pope Francis have been arrested in the probe into yet another leak of confidential information and documents, the Vatican said Monday.

A statement from the Holy See’s press office said that Vatican prosecutors on Monday upheld the arrests of the two, who had been interrogated over the weekend.

It identified the woman as Francesca Chaouqui and the priest as Monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda. He is still a Vatican employee. Both of them had served on a now-defunct commission that had been set up by Pope Francis in 2013 as part of his drive to reform the Holy See’s finances.

A Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, said Vallejo Balda is being held in a jail cell in Vatican City. Chaouqui was allowed to go free because she cooperated in the probe, the Vatican said.

Chaouqui “has furnished the maximum cooperation and deposited documents in support of what she declared,” her lawyer, Giulia Bongiorno was quoted as saying by the Italian news agency ANSA. Noting that her client was already back home, Bongiorno added “she is sure she will very rapidly clarify her position.”

Bongiorno, who successfully won acquittal for Amanda Knox’s co-defendant in an internationally watched murder trial, is one of Italy’s top criminal lawyers. She didn’t immediately answer phone calls seeking further comment.

Chaouqui, on her LinkedIn profile, describes herself as a communications expert who was the only woman, the only under-55-year-old and the only Italian woman on the pontifical commission.

Opus Dei, the conservative Catholic religious movement, expressed “surprise and pain” over Vallejo Balda’s arrest. It described him in a statement as belonging to a priestly society linked to Opus Dei, and added it had no information on the case.

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