ABUSE TRACKER

CANADA
CBC News

A southern Ontario Catholic priest accused of embezzling more than $150,000 to fund his lavish lifestyle defended himself for a second day in Windsor Superior court Wednesday.

Rev. Robert Couture, formerly of Ste. Anne Parish in Tecumseh told a jury he broke church policy by asking couples to donate money when marrying them, but he maintained he did not pocket church funds.

During cross examination the Crown presented a letter between Couture and a bishop, which indicates parishioners were being charged double for wedding services with $100 going to the church and another $100 to the priest.

Couture, 52, was charged with theft over $5,000 nearly two years ago after a provincial police investigation of the church’s accounts revealed at least $169,000 in irregularities. The Crown claims Couture stole cash in several ways, including taking portions from collection plates and charging fees to funeral homes.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

AAP

The Catholic Church knew it had child abuse “time bombs” ticking away in a number of Australian dioceses, an inquiry has heard.

A special issues committee meeting at the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference in 1992 noted: “It was agreed that there are serious time bombs ticking away in a number of dioceses at the present time.”

That was the case in a number of dioceses, former Melbourne archdiocese vicar-general Bishop Peter Connors, who chaired the committee, told the child abuse royal commission.

It also included Melbourne’s Doveton parish, where a succession of pedophile priests were sent.

“There would certainly be other dioceses where that problem, of time bombs ticking away, existed,” Bishop Connors said.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

December 3, 2015

Beau Donelly

The Catholic Church described paedophile priests working in parishes across Australia as ticking “time bombs”, damning minutes from a high-level meeting of top church officials reveals.

Minutes tendered to the child abuse royal commission from a 1992 special issues committee meeting at the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference said it was agreed there were “serious ‘time bombs’ ticking away in a number of dioceses” at the time.

The former second-in-charge of the Melbourne Archdiocese, Bishop Peter Connors, who chaired the committee, testified on Thursday that the reference applied not only to churches in Melbourne but also in other dioceses.

“The reference to time bombs can only be understood as a reference to dioceses where there were priests operating who had had serious allegations against them, or the church had accepted were sexual offenders,” senior counsel assisting the commission, Gail Furness, SC, said.

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UNITED STATES
CBS News

[with video]

Oscar buzz is strong for “Spotlight,” the movie that shares the true story of the Boston Globe investigative team uncovering the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal.

“I think the movie is incredibly authentic, and I think it captures the substance and spirit of what we did just incredibly well. So I’m very pleased with it,” said reporter Michael Rezendes Wednesday on “CBS This Morning.” Rezendes was part of the team that won a Pulitzer Prize for the coverage.

Mark Ruffalo, the two-time Academy Awards nominee who plays Rezendes in the film, said he felt it was the right time to tell the story again.

“It had a particular reach at the time when the Boston Globe told the story, but we could take it a little bit further into the culture by making a movie out of it,” Ruffalo said. “And it just felt so honest, and it left out the salacious part of the story and went directly to the investigation. So you’re allowed to enter this world and look at this very hard story in a dispassionate way, so by the end of it, you get a real, moral certitude about where you end up.”

Ruffalo shadowed Rezendes, finding out that “a great reporter dedicates his life to his work.”

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TENNESSEE
The Raw Story

DAVID EDWARDS
01 DEC 2015

A family filed a lawsuit this week against a church in Brentwood, Tennessee for allegedly covering up the rape of their 3-year-old child.

The lawsuit, which was obtained by WTVF, indicates that the family left their 3-year-old-boy in the care of the church’s Children’s Ministry on the Sunday of August 24, 2014.

When the boy said that he did not want to go back to church the next week, the family discovered that a teenage volunteer had raped the child in one of the church’s bathrooms.

The family explained in the lawsuit that they confronted church leaders, who initially claimed that the child was lying about the incident.

The church later “urged the [family] not to pursue criminal charges against the perpetrator,” the lawsuit stated.

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CANADA
CBC News

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission will present its final report into the history and legacy of Canada’s residential school system on Dec. 15 in Ottawa.

The commission’s summary report released in June made 94 recommendations, including changes in policies and programs. Its chair, Justice Murray Sinclair, called Canada’s treatment of aboriginal children a “cultural genocide” on communities.

Sinclair, as well as commissioners Marie Wilson and Chief Wilton Littlechild, will present the final report, which will include details on the thousands of children who never returned home from residential schools.

As part of its mandate, the commission was tasked with doing specific research into the history of children who died or went missing while in the care of school officials.

At least 3,200 students never returned home — in a third of those cases, their names were not recorded and in half their cause of death was not recorded, according to Wilson.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

An audit of 20 religious congregations by the Catholic Church child protection watchdog has found allegations of sexual abuse are now being reported promptly in almost all cases to the relevant authorities .

The latest traunch of reviews, published on Wednesday, looked at congregations including The Legionaries of Christ, The Oblates of Mary Immaculate and The Mercy Sisters, which continue to have substantial public ministry with children. The remaining 17 congregations are elderly and have had little or no contact with children. No allegations of sexual abuse had been levelled against them.

Teresa Devlin, chief executive of the Catholic Church’s Maynooth based National Board for Safeguarding Children, said the latest reports showed the safeguarding of children had now become “a reflex” and a “first consideration” with religious congregations.

“Reporting to the civil authorities is prompt, case files are recorded correctly and risk is properly assessed,” she said. What was “most heartening” she said, was that “child safeguarding is an ingrained component of the religious life and child related activities” of religious congregations reviewed, she said. “It has become a reflex and their first consideration, ” she added.

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ROME
ANSA

(ANSA) – Rome, December 2 – Interior Minister Angelino Alfano has said that the rules of international law will apply in the case of three Vatican officials put on trial for allegedly leaking confidential papal documents to two journalists who are also being tried in the Vatican.

“We have the Italian penal code and the Vatican has its own judicial system,” Alfano said in response to questions from journalists on the Vatileaks trial. “In these circumstances the rules of international law will apply.” “If found guilty, we will give more thought to the matter,” he added.

“But we’re not in that phase yet.” Five people are currently on trial in the Vatican for allegedly leaking confidential documents. The trial of Immacolata Chaouqui, a public relations expert, investigative journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, Monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda and his former assistant Nicola Maio opened last Monday.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

AAP

An inquiry’s heard a woman’s conversion to Catholicism involved having sex with her priest, who threatened that she couldn’t get married otherwise.

The child abuse royal commission heard paedophile priest Father Peter Searson agreed to coach the 18-year-old to her baptism in 1974 so she could marry her Catholic fiance.

It heard Searson, then a chaplain at the Villa Maria Society for the Blind, started touching her during the lessons before it escalated to sex.

The woman and her husband complained to then Melbourne Archbishop Frank Little in 1975 and reported being raped to police in 1997.

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ITALY
Bloomberg Business

Sergio Di Pasquale
December 2, 2015

Italy’s finance police obtained documents from Banca Finnat Euramerica SpA in Rome on Wednesday as part of a Vatican probe into alleged market manipulation and money-laundering, according to a police official familiar with the investigation.

The police were acting at the request of Vatican authorities, said the official, who asked not to be identified because of internal policy. Italian news agency Ansa first reported the news earlier today.

A Vatican spokesman had no comment, while a representative of the Rome-based bank didn’t have an immediate comment.

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IRELAND
RTE News

The Catholic Church’s child protection watchdog has found that 53 allegations of child abuse against 44 members of three religious orders have resulted in no convictions.

The finding was made in audits by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church (NBSCCC) of accusations against Sisters of Mercy, the Oblates and Legionaries of Christ.

The review focused on the handling of allegations since 1975, but some of the cases stretched back as far as 1941.

The Sisters of Mercy was criticised by the Ryan Commission for overuse of corporal punishment and neglect in residential institutions while “some very serious incidents of sexual abuse were perpetrated by lay staff in some schools”.

Today’s review found that since 1975, 31 allegations of child abuse have been made to the Sisters of Mercy against 17 nuns.

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PHILIPPINES
The Philippine Star

By Evelyn Macairan (The Philippine Star) | Updated December 3, 2015

MANILA, Philippines – Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo yesterday dared Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte to tell all on the sexual abuse he claims to have suffered at the hands of priests when he was a young student.

Pabillo, once the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines-Public Affairs Committee chairman, said the 70-year-old mayor should “immediately tell what happened.”

“This is what Pope Francis had said, that people should come out so the matter can be investigated,” Pabillo said.

He said that if Duterte, who has joined the May 2016 presidential race, feels that he was abused then he should say it. If he was abused, even if he has not yet filed a complaint about it, he should have said something a long time ago.

“This happened to him a long time ago, yet he kept it to himself,” said Pabillo.

The bishop said he pities Duterte because he has been carrying this burden for a long time and he has not said anything about it.

Pabillo added that priests, just like others, are not perfect.

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PHILIPPINES
Sun.Star

Wednesday, December 02, 2015
By BEN O. TESIORNA
KARINA V. CANEDO

PRESIDENTIAL candidate and Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte has described the Roman Catholic religion as “not so sacred, after all,” after he dropped a bombshell against the Church after being criticized for “cursing” Pope Francis in his speech Monday.

On Tuesday evening, Duterte revealed on national television news program that he was sexually abused by a priest when he was in high school.

“I can’t tell you the names. Kaming lahat dumaan kami,” Duterte said, saying he and his classmates were sexually abused by a priest during his younger years.

Duterte spent years of high school at Ateneo de Davao but graduated at another Catholic-run school Holy Cross of Digos High School.

He made the revelation after Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) president Archbishop Socrates Villegas wrote a strongly worded statement against Duterte.

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ROME
ANSA

(ANSA) – Rome, December 2 – The home of Vatileaks 2 defendant Francesca Chaouqui and her husband Corrado Lanino was raided Tuesday because of suspected illicit access to computers in connection with a Terni probe into suspected irregularities in the sale of a castle at Narni, judicial sources said Wednesday. Lanino, a computer expert, is suspected of helping his wife access files with the help of another man, former Italian premier’s office staffer, Mario Benotti, whose premises were not searched, the sources said.

Rome prosecutors on Monday placed Chaouqui and Lanino under investigation for suspected irregularities in the sale of San Girolamo castle.

In another development this week, Rome prosecutors placed Silvio Berluscon’s brother Paolo under investigation for suspected embezzlement in the Terni probe. Chaouqui allegedly promised the younger Berlusconi to act on judicial requests to the Vatican regarding Silvio Berlusconi’s purported accounts at the Vatican Bank – a suggestion the Berlusconis have denied.

Chaouqui, a public relations expert, is currently on trial in the Vatican along with four others for allegedly leaking confidential documents.

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ITALY
Telegraph (UK)

By Nick Squires, Rome 02 Dec 2015

A Vatican scandal over leaked documents that has uncovered a murky web of sex, espionage and computer hacking has taken a new twist, with the alleged involvement of the family of Silvio Berlusconi.

Three Vatican officials are on trial for allegedly leaking confidential papal documents to two Italian investigative journalists, revealing subterfuge, waste and mismanagement at the heart of the Holy See.

One of the Vatican employees, a public relations executive named Francesca Chaouqui, is now accused of threatening Paolo Berlusconi, Silvio Berlusconi’s brother.

Paolo, the younger brother of the former prime minister, is the editor of Il Giornale, a Right-wing daily newspaper.

Mrs Chaouqui allegedly ordered him to rein in one of his journalists, who had written unflattering articles about her after she was appointed to a commission, set up by Pope Francis, to review the Vatican’s tangled finances.

She allegedly warned Paolo Berlusconi that unless he acted, she would put pressure Vatican authorities to investigate secret accounts allegedly held by the Berlusconi family at the Vatican bank.

The Berlusconi brothers denied that they had ever held accounts at the Vatican bank, formally known as the Institute for Works of Religion.

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ROM
Aargauer Zeitung

Rom: Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui soll nicht nur vatikanische Geheimnisse verraten, sondern auch die Gebrüder Silvio und Paolo Berlusconi erpresst haben. Für den Kirchenstaat wird die Affäre zur immer grösseren PR-Katastrophe. von Dominik Straub, Rom

Der Prozess wegen Geheimnisverrats vor dem vatikanischen Gericht ist vorerst vertagt worden; das hindert die beiden Hauptangeklagten aber nicht, in der Öffentlichkeit ausgiebig dreckige Wäsche zu waschen.

So behauptet der spanische Monsignore Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda in einem «Memorandum», das auf wundersame Weise den Weg aus seiner vatikanischen Zelle zur Römer Zeitung «La Repubblica» gefunden hat, dass seine mutmassliche Komplizin Francesca Immacolata (die Unbefleckte) Chaouqui regelmässige Teilnehmerin an Silvio Berlusconis Partys gewesen sei.

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ITALY
The Australian

TOM KINGTON
THE TIMES
DECEMBER 3, 2015

The Italian woman on trial at the Vatican for leaking embarrassing details of sleaze at the Holy See has claimed the scandal is nothing compared with what she plans to reveal next.

PR expert Francesca Chaouqui said two books filled with tales of Vatican corruption and greed that she allegedly helped to supply information for contained only “15 per cent” of what she knew. She added that in eight months she would be freed from the secrecy clause in her Vatican contract. “Gay lobby? It’s worse than that,” she said, giving no more ­details.

Ms Chaouqui, 33, risks being jailed for eight years if she is convicted by a Vatican court of leaking sensitive information collected by a committee that was formed in 2013 by the Pope to root out corruption at the Vatican.

Also on trial is Father Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, a Spanish priest and fellow committee member, as well as two authors who turned committee documents into best-selling books.

The Pope said on Tuesday that it had been a mistake to hire Ms Chaouqui and Father Vallejo Balda, but joked: “Thank God ­Lucrezia Borgia is no longer around!” a reference to the daughter of a 15th-century pope who ­reputedly poisoned her enemies.

“I am no Lucrezia Borgia — I have never poisoned anyone,” Ms Chaouqui said yesterday, adding she was three months pregnant.

While Ms Chaouqui blames the leaking of committee ­documents on Father Vallejo Balda, she and her husband, who is an IT specialist, are said in a separate case to be under investigation by Italian magistrates for hacking.

She said she was suing Father Vallejo Balda for claiming that she had bullied him into releasing the documents and that she had ­seduced him at a convention in Florence.

“How is that possible? He shared a room with his 85-year-old mother, whom he adores,” she said. “He is either subservient to women or hates them.”

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

EDITORIAL

In Florence, Italy, last month, Pope Francis addressed the Italian church and gave a bracing, 50-minute exhortation on how integral change is to a healthy life of the church.

“Before the problems of the church, it is not useful to search for solutions in conservatism or fundamentalism, in the restoration of obsolete conduct and forms that no longer have the capacity of being significant culturally,” he told the gathered clerics and laypeople.

At another point, he said, “Christian doctrine is not a closed system incapable of generating questions, doubts, interrogatives — but is alive, knows being unsettled, enlivened. It has a face that is not rigid, it has a body that moves and grows, it has a soft flesh: It is called Jesus Christ.”

It was one more item in a persistent litany of invitations that Francis has offered the entire church — but most specifically his bishops — to a freedom that presumes a willingness to wrestle both with the demands of the law and human realities that expose the law as inadequate to many circumstances at hand.

Less than a week later, the U.S. bishops gathered in Baltimore (Page 1), and it seems the invitation was overlooked by many, perhaps ignored, and even, among some, feared and rejected. During three days of deliberations, the leaders of the American church considered priorities and plans for the future and a political document intended to guide Catholic voters.

What the American church received for the effort was a stale offering of old documents, largely ineffective in their previous iterations and sounding today, in parts, embarrassingly tone-deaf to current realities.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 2 December 2015 (VIS) – The Holy Father has:

– appointed Msgr. Rodolfo Luis Weber, prelate of Cristalandia, Brazil, as metropolitan archbishop of Passo Fundo (area 12,000, population 550,000, Catholics 436,000, priests 142, religious 543), Brazil.

– accepted the resignation from the pastoral care of the diocese of Santo Amaro, Brazil, presented by Bishop Fernando Antonio Figueiredo, O.F.M., upon reaching the age limit. He succeeded by Bishop Giuseppe Negri, P.I.M.E., coadjutor of the same diocese.

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IRELAND
Newstalk

Jack Quann

The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland (NBSCCCI) says child safety in the church is now its “first consideration”.

The NBSCCCI has published a set of 20 reviews which they say “reinforces” progress made.

Full reviews were carried out on the Legionaries of Christ, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate and The Mercy Sisters – as all three continue to have contact with children.

The other 17 orders and congregations had a more limited review carried out, as they have little or no contact with children and no allegations of sexual abuse levelled against them.

“All 20 reviews showed good safeguarding practice, prompt reporting of allegations to the civil authorities and to managing risk”, the NBSCCCI says.

“What we are seeing here are a series of good habits having been created,” said Teresa Devlin, CEO of the NBSCCCI.

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ITALY
International Business Times

By Jess McHugh

Acting on a tip from the FBI, Italian authorities arrested four people in Italy and Kosovo Tuesday who were suspected of planning an attack on Pope Francis, the Local reported. The seat of the Roman Catholic Church is the Vatican, situated just outside of Rome, where security has been high since the Islamic terror organization known as the Islamic State group, ISIS or Daesh, threatened attacks on the Italian capital.

All four people arrested by police during raids are from Kosovo, a region inside Serbia in southeastern Europe where international recognition remains disputed. The four people stand accused of participation in a terror ring with specific intent to target the pope.

“The [alleged] terrorist team propagated the ideology of jihad through social networks,” police said, as reported by the Local. The group allegedly claimed on social media that Francis would be “the last pope.”

The Italian government has conducted raids and added additional police to patrol the streets in Rome, after a series of coordinated terror attacks on Paris Nov. 13 left 130 dead and hundreds more wounded.

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DEUTSCHLAND
NDR

[The Hildesheim diocese is facing serous allegations. A young woman said she was sexually harassed at age 11 by Father R. She reported this to the diocese in 2010. The case was handed over to the public prosecutor only in November and by the grandparents and not the church. In addition, it is alleged the diocese did not cooperate with the authorities and attempted to conceal that the priest previously been accused to abuse at Canisius College in Berlin.]

Das Hildesheimer Bistum sieht sich schwerwiegenden Vorwürfen ausgesetzt. Eine junge Frau gibt an, im Alter von elf Jahren von dem Pater R. sexuell bedrängt worden zu sein. Das hatte sie nach eigenen Aussagen 2010 dem Bistum mitgeteilt. Die Übergabe an die Staatsanwaltschaft erfolgte allerdings erst im November des Jahres durch die Großeltern – und nicht durch die Kirche. Ferner arbeitete das Bistum nicht mit den Behörden zusammen und verschwieg, dass der beschuldigte Geistliche sich bereits am Canisius-Kolleg an Kindern vergangen haben soll.

Die Opferinitiative “Eckiger Tisch” fordert nun den Rücktritt des mit dem Fall befassten Hildesheimer Bischofs Norbert Trelle. Dieser trat vor die Presse und befand, der Vorwurf einer Verschleppung und Vereitelung sei ungeheuerlich.

Der NDR Kultur Redakteur Florian Breitmeier findet die Vorgehensweise der Verantwortlichen im Bistum Hildesheim im aktuellen Missbrauchsfall bedenklich.

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BOSTON (MA)
Die Welt

2002 stießen Journalisten in Boston auf Erschütterndes: 80 Priester hatten sich, teils über Jahrzehnte, an ihren Schutzbefohlenen vergangen. Der Beginn des Missbrauchsskandals der katholischen Kirche. Von Alexander Görlach

Wenn man durch Bostons Straßen schlendert, fallen einem die vielen Kirchtürme auf, die der Stadt einen großen Teil ihrer europäischen Anmutung geben. Die Omnipräsenz der sakralen Architektur spiegelt die Bedeutung der katholischen Kirche in der Ostküstenmetropole wieder. Diese Türme sind nun die trutzigen und unheimlichen Statisten in “Spotlight”, ein Dokumentarspielfilm, der den Missbrauchsskandal in der katholischen Erzdiözese von Boston zum Thema hat.

Vor knapp 15 Jahren stießen Journalisten des “Boston Globe (Link: https://www.bostonglobe.com/) ” auf ein Nest aus sexueller Gewalt und Vertuschung: Geistliche, die sich an Kindern vergingen, und eine Öffentlichkeit, die weggeschaut hat. Spotlight, Suchscheinwerfer, ist der Name der Reportergruppe beim “Boston Globe” und der Titel des Films. Mit dem Streifen nun sind das Leid der Betroffenen und ihrer Familien zurück im Lichtkegel.

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PHILIPPINES
Bangkok Post

MANILA – Catholic bishops in the Philippines lashed out Tuesday at a presidential candidate popularly known as “Dirty Harry”, after he made a rambling and obscenity-filled speech cursing the pope.

Rodrigo Duterte, whose hardline anti-crime reputation has seen him compared with Clint Eastwood’s no-nonsense enforcer, sparked the ire of the influential Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, which questioned if he deserved to be president.

“When a revered and loved and admired man like Pope Francis is cursed by a political candidate and the audience laughs, I can only bow my head and grieve in great shame,” said a statement, issued by the group’s president, Archbishop Socrates Villegas.

The comments are a rare personal criticism of a presidential candidate from senior church leaders in the largely-Roman Catholic nation.

Duterte, the longtime mayor of the southern city of Davao, declared his intention on Monday to run for president in the 2016 election, referencing a January visit to Manila by Pope Francis, whom he blamed for a massive traffic jam.

“Pope, you son of a whore, why don’t you go home,” he said, to the guffaws of a crowd of supporters.

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VATICAN CITY
The Times (UK)

Tom Kington Rome
December 2 2015

The Italian woman on trial at the Vatican for leaking embarrassing details of sleaze at the Holy See has claimed that the scandal is nothing compared with what she plans to reveal next.

Francesca Chaouqui, a PR expert, said that two books filled with tales of Vatican corruption and greed that she allegedly helped to supply contained only “15 per cent” of what she knew.

She added that in eight months’ time she would be freed from the secrecy clause in her Vatican contract.

“Gay lobby? It’s worse than that,” she said, giving no more details.

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ROME
IBN Live

AFP

Rome: A Vatican leaks scandal that was already rich in claims of sex, scheming and spying has widened to embroil Silvio Berlusconi and add allegations of blackmail and computer hacking to the mix.

Former prime minister Berlusconi denied late Tuesday that he had had any contact with Francesca Chaouqui, an ex-PR consultant to the Vatican who is one of five people, including two journalists, on trial over the leaking of classified Holy See documents.

Berlusconi issued the denial after it emerged that his brother Paolo, a newspaper publisher, had been named in an Italian investigation into Chaouqui and her husband Corrado Lanino which is separate from but related to the Vatican case.

Prosecutors suspect that Chaouqui attempted to pressure Paolo Berlusconi into sacking the newspaper Il Giornale’s Vatican correspondent Fabio Marchesi Ragona by threatening to expose Silvio for supposedly holding a secret account at the Vatican bank.

Silvio Berlusconi’s lawyer Niccolo Ghedini said his client was never informed of such a threat.
“Besides, it would have been impossible to make any ‘demands’ since there is no possible link between President Berlusconi and Vatican affairs or the Vatican bank,” he said.

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DEUTSCHLAND
MOZ

[Church rejects blame in abuse scandal cover-up.]

Hildesheim (DPA) In den 70er und 80er Jahren soll ein Priester mindestens 100 Kinder am Berliner Canisius-Kolleg sexuell missbraucht haben. 2010 berichtete ein Mädchen dem Bistum Hildesheim, dass der Mann auch sie sexuell bedrängt habe. Doch zunächst passierte nichts.

Das Bistum Hildesheim hat Vertuschungsvorwürfe im Skandal um sexuellen Missbrauch in der katholischen Kirche vehement zurückgewiesen. Der 2010 von einer 14-Jährigen erhobene Missbrauchsvorwurf gegen einen Pfarrer sei keinesfalls zu spät an die Staatsanwaltschaft weitergegeben worden, sagte Bischof Norbert Trelle am Dienstag in Hildesheim.

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ITALY
The Local

A Vatican leaks scandal that was already rich in claims of sex, scheming and spying has widened to embroil Silvio Berlusconi and add allegations of blackmail and computer hacking to the mix.

Former prime minister Berlusconi denied late on Tuesday that he had had any contact with Francesca Chaouqui, an ex-PR consultant to the Vatican who is one of five people, including two journalists, on trial over the leaking of classified Holy See documents.

Berlusconi issued the denial after it emerged that his brother Paolo, a newspaper publisher, had been named in an Italian investigation into Chaouqui and her husband Corrado Lanino which is separate from but related to the Vatican case.

Prosecutors suspect that Chaouqui attempted to pressure Paolo Berlusconi into sacking the newspaper Il Giornale’s Vatican correspondent Fabio Marchesi Ragona by threatening to expose Silvio for supposedly holding a secret account at the Vatican bank.

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MISSOURI
St. Joseph News-Press

By Jena Sauber St. Joseph News-Press

A healing prayer service at St. Mary’s Catholic Church will look to address issues of sexual abuse and work toward healing, according to the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph.

The Dec. 6 service will be led by Bishop James Johnston and is part of a series of services in the area.

“There has always been a desire to do more outreach to try and help victims come back to the church, or at least see the church being empathetic and sorrowful,” said Kathleen Chastain of the Office of Child and Youth Protection with the Diocese of Kansas City St. Joseph. “… We are trying to provide coverage throughout our geographical region and parishes where there has been a great deal of hurt.”

It will be the fifth of the services in the diocese since they began in August. The service will include prayer and symbolic candle lighting, said the Rev. Chuck Tobin of St. Mary’s. The Office of Child and Youth Protection, priests and licensed counselors also will be at the service to provide assistance as requested.

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ROME
CathNews

As Pope Francis tours Africa he is bound to point out that one of the major scourges afflicting people across the continent, alongside disease, poverty and war, is corruption. And if he knows what he is talking about, as he surely does, he will be aware that an energetic free press is an invaluable ally in combating this pernicious blight.

Yet the Holy See is in the process of prosecuting representatives of the free press for publishing leaked documents which expose corruption within the Vatican itself. How does the Pope escape a charge of double standards, which his enemies are sure to lay?

He is entitled to say, as all governments which are leaked against in the media would argue, that trust is an essential requirement in any organisation, and trust is undermined when journalists publish leaked documents.

But that understandable irritation which all governments experience from time to time has to be set against the far more fundamental principle of freedom of the press. That is why, in any nation where the rule of law is respected, press freedom is guaranteed. And that is the freedom not just to publish stories the powers-that-be approve of, but far more fundamentally, the freedom to publish stories they do not.

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IRELAND
BBC News

A former priest has been found guilty of indecently assaulting a secondary school student in the 1980s in the Republic of Ireland.

Henry Moloney worked at the time as a choirmaster and music teacher at Rockwell College, near Cashel, County Tipperary.

The 77-year-old, of Kimmage Manor, Dublin, was found guilty of seven counts of indecent assault on the schoolboy.

He had denied the charges.

The victim had told Clonmel Circuit Court how the abuse began near the start of a school year after Moloney asked him to join the choir.

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IRELAND
RTE News

A former priest has been found guilty of indecently assaulting a secondary school student in the 1980s while working as a choirmaster and music teacher.

Henry Moloney, 77, with an address at Kimmage Manor in Dublin was found guilty at Clonmel Circuit Court last night of seven counts of indecent assault, all of which took place within one school year in the 1980s at Rockwell College outside Cashel.

He will be sentenced on 15 December, following the preparation of a victim impact report, and has been remanded on bail.

An eighth charge, that he indecently assaulted the boy in an area near the boy’s home during a St Stephen’s Day visit during that year, was withdrawn from the jury by Judge Thomas Teehan.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

A Melbourne priest who married a pregnant woman also fathered a second child after being moved to another state, an inquiry has heard.

Former Melbourne archbishop Frank Little tried to convince the married woman to give the baby up for adoption, the child abuse royal commission has heard.

His former second-in-charge Bishop Peter Connors said he was angry with the way the archbishop handled the case and organised for financial assistance for the woman over many years.

The unnamed priest was moved from one side of the Melbourne archdiocese to the other after telling Archbishop Little he got the woman pregnant.

When it came close to the woman’s due date, the priest told the archbishop ‘my position’s becoming intolerable’, because of the pressure put on him by the woman, the inquiry heard.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

Melbourne’s Catholic leaders completely failed to deal with pedophile priests as they tried to protect the church, the archdiocese’s former second-in-charge admits.

Former vicar-general Bishop Peter Connors says he has no excuse for why he failed to protect children from Fr Wilfred Baker, who abused 21 children between 1960 and 1985.

‘There was a complete failure of the archbishop and his advisers to deal with these issues,’ Bishop Connors told the child abuse royal commission.

Commission chair Justice Peter McClellan said the failings were often said to be motivated by a desire to protect the church.

Bishop Connors agreed it was a fundamentally damning allegation of the church.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

December 2, 2015

Beau Donelly
Reporter

A former senior Catholic church official has admitted that he had no excuse for failing to escalate complaints about predator priests.

Bishop Peter Connors, who worked as secretary to archbishop of Melbourne Frank Little from 1974 to 1976, and vicar-general of the Melbourne archdiocese from 1976 to 1987, told the child abuse royal commission the former archbishop had failed to respond to complaints against clergy as late as the 1990s, despite being aware of allegations against priests decades earlier.

He agreed with Archbishop Denis Hart’s assessment earlier this week that a “paralysis” plagued Archbishop Little’s office.

On Monday, the commission heard that children were in danger of being targeted by paedophile priests for decades because of the Melbourne archdiocese’s failure to respond to complaints.
“There was a complete failure of the Archbishop and his advisors to deal with these issues,” Bishop Connors told the royal commission on Wednesday.

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PHILIPPINES
The Standard

December 02, 2015

by Sara Susanne D. Fabunan and John Paolo Bencito

CATHOLIC Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines president Socrates Villegas expressed his disgust Tuesday over PDP-Laban standard bearer Rodrigo Duterte for cursing Pope Francis in a speech Monday, and denounced his adultery, killing and vulgarity as forms of corruption.

While Duterte supporters sought to do damage control, the Davao City mayor shot back at the Catholic Church, saying he was abused as a child by a Catholic priest when he was studying at the Jesuit-run Ateneo de Davao University.

“I was abused by one of you when I was young,” Duterte said, addressing himself to Church leaders who criticized him. “Priests are also corrupt.”

When pressed for details about his abuse, Duterte blurted: “The priest was holding my penis, where else?”

He said his revelations would “destroy the church and the present status of so many priests.”

“I will tell you the names of the prominent persons who were my batch mates [in the Ateneo.] All of us were victims of sexual abuses committed against minors at that time, including me. And I will tell you my story.”

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PHILIPPINES
Rappler

Pia Ranada

MANILA, Philippines – After being slammed by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) for cursing Pope Francis, Rodrigo Duterte said he would withdraw if the body asks, but would challenge bishops to a debate about the Catholic church’s “sordid history.”

“You priests, you bishops, you condemn me. And you suggest that I withdraw and I will withdraw, but then I will start to open my mouth. There are so many secrets that children are hiding. This religion is not so sacred,” he told reporters during an ambush interview on Tuesday, December 1.

The Church, he said, should not be quick to judge him because the institution is also not spotless.

“Bakit yung mga pari na may kaso, may asawa, may anak, bakit hanggang ngayon hindi niyo ma-criticize ang sarili niyo?” he said, visibly distressed. (How come the priests with cases, those who are married, with children, how come you can’t criticize yourselves?)

Abused by a priest?

He even hinted that he himself endured abuse in the hands of a priest during his high school years at the Ateneo de Davao.

“Kami sa Ateneo noon (We in Ateneo before), and I will tell you the abuses committed against the minors, including me, and I will tell you my story.”

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PHILIPPINES
The Philippine Star

By Evelyn Macairan and Eva Visperas (The Philippine Star) | Updated December 2, 2015

MANILA, Philippines – He’s a womanizer who is worse than a dictator and does not deserve to lead the country, Catholic bishops said yesterday after Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte cursed Pope Francis in public.

The newly proclaimed presidential candidate apologized yesterday and denied cursing the pontiff.

“Is this the leadership by example that Mayor Duterte excites in us? Is this the leadership by example that makes a public official deserving of the title ‘honorable’?” Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) president and Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas said in a statement yesterday.

“We have so many leaders in office and many more aspiring to sit in office but are they examples of good citizenship? If the leaders we choose are to be leaders for national progress they must be visionaries and exemplary,” he added.

Former CBCP president retired Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz also warned the public that Duterte is “dangerous and worse than a dictator whom we knew once led our country.”

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PHILIPPINES
CNN

By Khristian Ibarrola and JC Ansis, CNN Philippines
Wed, December 2, 2015

Metro Manila (CNN Philippines) — Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas on Tuesday (December 1) criticized Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte for supposedly cursing Pope Francis. Duterte hit back, threatening to expose alleged sexual abuse committed by members of the Church.

Duterte, a 2016 presidential aspirant, hinted that he was sexually abused by priests during his years at Ateneo de Davao High School, and said he would expose everything if the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) continued to urge him to withdraw his candidacy.

“Kaming nasa Ateneo noon, and I will tell you the abuses committed against the minors at that time… including me,” he said.

[Translation: “When we were at Ateneo before, and I will tell you the abuses committed against the minors at that time… including me.”]

Duterte made controversial comments during his speech on Monday about the traffic jam caused by the papal visit early this year.

Villegas reacted to this, saying: “When a revered and loved and admired man like Pope Francis is cursed by a political candidate and the audience laugh, I can only bow my head and grieve in great shame.”

“Is this the leadership by example that Mayor Duterte excites in us?” he asked in his official statement.

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PHILIPPINES
ABS-CBN

Doris Bigornia, ABS-CBN News
Posted at 12/02/15

MANILA – The Jesuits congregation is encouraging Davao City Mayor and presidential aspirant Rodrigo Duterte to come out and talk to them about the alleged abuse perpetrated by priests against minors in Ateneo de Davao.

Fr. Nono Alfonso, spokesperson of the Jesuits, said information to be given by Duterte will be handled properly and in utmost confidentiality.

He added that the allegations of abuse against minors will be investigated. He said abuse of the clergy has no place in the congregation in line with the mandate coming from Pope Francis himself.

The priest said he does not deny the fact that there were some abuses that happened in the past that did not come out in public after victims and their families kept quiet for fear of public humiliation.

However, he also noted that the cases of abuse done by priests are not that many and are rarely recorded because the victims chose not to have them recorded.

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PHILIPPINES
UCA News

Joe Torres, Manila
Philippines
December 2, 2015

At least two Catholic bishops urged a Philippine presidential candidate to speak up about his allegation that he is a victim of sex abuse by priests.

“I’m begging the good mayor on bended knees to please go to the civil court, and there file a case against these priests,” said retired Archbishop Oscar Cruz of Lingayen-Dagupan.

Davao Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, a 2016 presidential aspirant, claimed that he was sexually abused by priests during his years at the Ateneo de Davao, a Jesuit-run school.

“I will tell you the abuses committed against the minors at that time … including me,” Duterte told reporters, after Catholic bishops criticized him for cursing Pope Francis in a Nov. 30 speech.

The mayor said he would expose everything if the Catholic bishops continue to criticize his candidacy.

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UNITED STATES
IrishCentral

Niall O’Dowd @niallodowd

I was blown away by the new movie “Spotlight,” which focuses on how the Boston Globe investigative team uncovered the massive pedophile scandal within the Boston Archdiocese and how Cardinal Bernard Law led the cover-up.

The newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize for its investigation, and it was deserved recognition for uncovering a scandal that rocked the church to its foundation and identified Law as one of the most corrupt clerics in history.

Eventually the Globe’s reporting discovered 247 priests and brothers accused of abuse and over 1,000 survivors of that abuse, some as young as four or five at the time they were abused.

The investigation linked Law directly to the cover-up, after which he was spirited out of Boston by the Vatican and given a prestigious job there, probably just before he was going to be arrested.

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IRELAND
National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church

(Wednesday December 2nd 2015)

20 Reports Completed by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church and Published. Penultimate Tranche Shows Progress Continuing

With only one further tranche of reviews to be completed and published it is clear that Safeguarding practice within the Church has improved and this set of 20 reviews reinforces that.

Full reviews were carried out on, The Legionaries of Christ, The Oblates of Mary Immaculate and The Mercy Sisters as all three continue to have substantial public ministry with children. The other 17 orders and congregations had a more limited review carried out as they have little or no contact with children and no allegations of sexual abuse levelled against them. All 20 reviews showed good safeguarding practice, prompt reporting of allegations to the civil authorities and to managing risk.

“What we are seeing here are a series of good habits having been created,” said Teresa Devlin, CEO, NBSCCCI (National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland). “Reporting to the civil authorities is prompt, case files are recorded correctly and risk is properly assessed. But what is most heartening here is that child safeguarding is an engrained component of the religious life and child related activities of these Orders and Congregations. It has become a reflex and their first consideration. ”

In carrying out the full reviews of the three orders it was found that 53 allegations had been made against 44 priests, brothers or sisters between 1941 and 2009. None of them had resulted in a conviction. The 3 Orders have good liaison with the civil authority agencies who regularly advise on the management of risk and significant improvements in reporting allegations to the civil authority agencies have been noted, with no outstanding cases requiring reporting action by the Orders/Congregations.

The 17 smaller reviews included a large number of female Congregations, who are increasing in age profile, but declining in numbers along with one male order with no allegations and limited ministry with children. Among the female orders there was one allegation of emotional abuse, which has been appropriately dealt with. And those members of the orders and congregations who minister outside these congregation follow the policy and procedures of the diocese or service in which they work.

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IRELAND
National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church

20 Reports completed by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church and published penultimate tranche shows progress continuing. With only one further tranche of reviews to be completed and published it is clear that Safeguarding practice within the Church has improved and this set of 20 reviews reinforces that.

See Review reports of congregations reviewed;

Legionaries of Christ

Mercy Sisters ( Four Provinces)

Oblates

Benedictine Monks Rostrevor

Daughters of the Sacred Heart

Dominican Nuns of St. Catherine of Siena

La Sainte Union

Little Sisters of the Assumption

Little Sisters of the Poor

Marie Madeleine Postel Missionary

Sister Servants of the Holy Spirit

Our Lady of the Cenacle

Redemptoristine Nuns – Order of the Most Holy Redeemer

Religious of Jesus and Mary

Salesian Sisters

Sisters of Perpetual Adoration

Sisters of St Clare

Sisters of the Holy Family of Emile Rodat

St Joseph of Annecy Sisters

Ursulines of the Irish Union

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Sarah Mac Donald
PUBLISHED
02/12/2015

The latest tranche of audits from the Catholic Church’s safeguarding watchdog has examined 53 allegations made against 44 priests, brothers or sisters across 20 religious orders.

The allegations examined by the National Board for Safeguarding in the Catholic Church over the period between 1941 and 2009 and resulted in no criminal convictions.

The focus of the three in-depth audits were the Legionnaires of Christ, the Sisters of Mercy and the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

Another 17 orders and congregations which have limited ministry with children and have not received allegations of child sexual abuse against their members were also examined. There was one allegation of emotional abuse, which the reviewers found had been appropriately dealt with.
The review of current practice shows considerable improvement in responding to allegations and to responding to those who come forward according to the NBSCCCI.

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OHIO
Cleveland.com

By Cory Shaffer | cleveland.com
on December 01, 2015

CLEVELAND, Ohio — A former Cleveland pastor accused of sexually abusing four children in his parish rejected a plea deal Tuesday that would have put him in prison for nearly three decades.

Ubaldo Ocasio, 52, chose instead to fight multiple charges of rape, kidnapping, gross sexual imposition and sexual battery that could send him to prison for 205 years to life if convicted on all counts.

“He’s maintaining his innocence,” Ocasio’s attorney, Jaye Schlachet, told cleveland.com after the hearing.

His trial is scheduled to begin Tuesday afternoon.

Ocasio is accused of raping and abusing the girls, who were between the ages of 9 and 16 while he was the pastor at a small church on Clark Avenue.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Huffington Post

Dr. Anne Hendershott
Professor, Franciscan University of Steubenville

While the moral panic of Salem’s witches may be over, an equally pernicious panic continues to haunt Massachusetts — that of the pedophile priest embedded in a complicit Catholic Church determined to protect him. This narrative recently resurfaced in the Boston suburb of Revere, where a male janitor at the Immaculate Conception elementary school used a bathroom that had long been used by adults as well as students — and a student saw the janitor using the urinal. When the parent of that student complained that her child had seen the janitor in the bathroom, the hysteria began. And, although the police and Suffolk prosecutors quickly cleared the janitor of criminal wrongdoing, the Immaculate Conception School’s parish priest was removed by Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the Archbishop of Boston, and the school’s principal and second grade teacher were forced to resign.

The lawsuits have already begun. Recently, Alison Kelly, the former principal of Immaculate Conception School, filed a million dollar lawsuit against the Archdiocese. According to the Boston Globe, Kelly claims the church forced her to resign in January even though she had immediately reported the parent’s complaints to the pastor in charge of the school. Alleging that her firing was a “cold, calculated attempt by the Church to do some face-saving at the expense of innocent people,” Kelly’s attorney told reporters that the Archdiocese did not bother with a full investigation into the recent episode because “it served their own aims to appear to be taking quick and decisive action against its employees.” An attorney for the fired teacher plans to file her own lawsuit within the next weeks.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Danny Morgan

A senior Catholic Bishop has admitted he and other leaders of the Archdiocese of Melbourne had not properly addressed child sexual abuse complaints because they wanted to protect the church’s reputation.

Appearing before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Bishop Peter Connors also conceded senior clergy have considered whether they may be guilty of concealing a crime.

As a former Vicar-General of the Melbourne Archdiocese, Bishop Connors was aware of multiple cases of priests abusing children dating back to 1978.

He told the commission he should have done more to convince former Archbishop Frank Little to remove the priests.

It was put to the Bishop that church leaders were motivated by a desire to protect the church from scandal.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Australian Associated Press
Tuesday 1 December 2015

Police wrongly decided a Melbourne priest had committed no crime when he indecently assaulted a 10-year-old girl during confession, an inquiry has heard.

Victoria police Assistant Commissioner Stephen Fontana said he disagreed with the 1990 conclusion there were “nil offences disclosed”.

“I’m of the view that there certainly was an indecent assault that was committed and it should have proceeded further,” he told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse.

Julie Stewart has told the inquiry Doveton parish priest Fr Peter Searson indecently assaulted her during confession in 1985.

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MAINE
Portland Press Herald

Maine reporters heard the accounts of survivors too, and more may speak out in reaction to the film.

BY GREG KESICH

‘Spotlight” is a movie about journalism. If you haven’t seen it, you should.

It tells the true story of how a team of editors and reporters at the Boston Globe connected “isolated incidents” of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests into a 2002 series of stories that exposed an institution more concerned with protecting its reputation than it was in protecting children.

The movie shows reporters who run down leads and pore over documents. Editors have vision and guts. Stories get banged out on deadline, presses roll and the world changes.

It had to be a movie about journalism because movies are stories and stories have an ending.

It’s not that way for the survivors of child sex abuse, who can spend their whole lives trying to get back what had been stolen from them. The rest of us may get smarter and vow not to make the same mistakes, but their pain is forever.

So that’s why, I guess, when the credits filled the screen at the end of the movie, I found myself sobbing.

Back in 2002 and 2003, a big part of my life was interviewing survivors of sexual abuse by priests in Maine.

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AUSTRALIA
International Business Times

By Debleena Sarkar on December 02 2015

On Wednesday, Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Stephen Fontana held that the police had wrongly concluded in 1990 that a Melbourne priest had made no sexual offence against a 10-year-old girl inside a confessional. The investigation into Doveton parish priest Peter Searson was declared “nil offences disclosed” after he was accused of indecently assaulting a minor.

“I’m of the view that there certainly was an indecent assault that was committed and it should have proceeded further,” Fontana told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse.

Julie Stewart told the inquiry that she was indecently assaulted by the priest in 1985. According to the police report in 1990, “All Searson has done is sit the child on his knee and get the child to kiss him on the cheek. Stewart stated that when she sat on his knee he dragged her up and on to his lap where she felt his erect penis rubbing on her back.”

Fontana told the commission on Wednesday that provided the evidence that was already available at that point of time, it was but quite feasible for police to at least conclude that there was some level of indecency committed.

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AUSTRALIA
The Tablet (UK)

02 December 2015
by Mark Brolly

Archbishop Denis Hart of Melbourne (pictured) has acknowledged that there was “a paralysis” and “a complete failure of process” in dealing with sexual abuse allegations under one of his predecessors, Archbishop Sir Frank Little.

But he has excused his immediate predecessor, Cardinal George Pell, who governed the Melbourne church from 1996-2001 before his transfer to Sydney.

Archbishop Hart gave evidence over two days to Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse about the Church’s handling of child sexual abuse allegations against six priests, particularly the late Fr Peter Searson, parish priest of Holy Family in Doveton, a working class suburb of Melbourne with a majority immigrant population, in the 1980s and 90s.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Wednesday, December 02, 2015

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

Underage girls, pregnant as a result of rape, ended up in Cork’s Bessborough Mother and Baby Home into the 1980s. The ages are revealed in maternity registers kept by the order which ran the home and released under Freedom of Information.

In 1968, a 12-year-old girl was transferred from Bessborough to St Finbarr’s Hospital in Cork, where her child was stillborn in January, as a result of “ante-partum haemorrhage”.

Maternity Record Book 40 lists a girl of 14 whose child was stillborn in 1982. The record simply states that the child “premature 33wks, gasped and died”.

In another case from 1963, a 13-year-old “private patient” gave birth to a stillborn boy. The cause of death was listed as: “Baby very poor at birth, cerebral haemorrhage”.

The Irish Examiner put a series of questions to the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary on the subject of children in its care that were pregnant as a result of rape. These included whether or not the cases had been reported by the order to the gardaí and/or relevant authorities at the time.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Wednesday, December 02, 2015

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

Children as young as 12, pregnant as a result of rape, were in Bessborough Mother and Baby Home into the 1980s.

Details from maternity registers, released under freedom of information, reveal between 1954 and 1987, young girls were pregnant in the institution.

The youngest child in the registers dates from 1968. The girl is listed as being just 12 and had been transferred from Bessborough to St Finbarr’s Hospital in Cork, where her child had been stillborn in January 1968, as a result of “ante-partum haemorrhage”.

However, the presence of children in Bessborough pregnant as a result of rape continued into the 1980s. For example, Maternity Record Book 40 lists a girl of 14 whose child was stillborn in 1982. The record simply states the child “premature 33wks, gasped and died”.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Wednesday, December 02, 2015

Conor Kane

A former priest who wrote to the Pope asking to be laicised because of his history of “abusing young boys” has been found guilty of indecently assaulting a secondary school student in the 1980s while the priest worked as a choirmaster and music teacher.

Henry Moloney, aged 77, of Kimmage Manor, Dublin, was found guilty last night, on the unanimous verdicts of a jury, of seven counts of indecent assault, all of which took place within one school year in the 1980s.

He will be sentenced on December 15, following the preparation of a victim impact report, and has been remanded on bail.

Moloney had pleaded not guilty to all charges.

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MINNESOTA
Duluth News Tribune

By Tom Olsen Today

A judge has denied a motion to dismiss the felony charges against a Hibbing priest accused of sexually abusing underage girls, setting the stage for the case to go to trial.

In an order filed Monday, 6th Judicial District Judge David Ackerson concluded that a jury should decide whether or not Brian Michael Lederer is guilty of seven sexual assault and child pornography charges.

“Considering all of the evidence in the light most favorable to the state’s position, the state has presented sufficient evidence to support a determination of probable cause to proceed to trial against the Defendant on all Counts,” Ackerson wrote in his five-page order.

With the filing of the order, not-guilty pleas were entered on Lederer’s behalf to all charges.

Lederer, 30, had challenged the sufficiency of evidence, which was based largely on the accounts of four girls who reported inappropriate touching by Lederer, who worked at Blessed Sacrament Parish and the Assumption Catholic School.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

AAP

Police wrongly decided a Melbourne priest who indecently assaulted a girl during confession had not committed an offence, an inquiry has heard.

Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Stephen Fontana said the 1990 investigation concluded there were “nil offences disclosed”.

“Quite clearly there was an indecency around it and to suggest that there was none, they suggested it wasn’t a sex offence, I disagreed with. I think the whole circumstance was surrounded with indecency,” Mr Fontana told the child abuse royal commission.

“I just didn’t agree with the original assessment that there was no offence.”

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INDIA
The Asian Age

A 52-year-old priest has been booked for allegedly sexually assaulting a minor boy on the premises of Christ the King church in Shivaji Nagar.

The accused has been identified as Fr Johnson Lawrence, who holds the post of a priest-in-charge at the church. On November 27, the 13-year-old victim accompanied by his parents attended the church proceedings in the evening.

After the mass ended, the boy, who was talking with his friends, stayed back on the church premises and did not leave along with his parents.

The police said after friends left the premises, the boy decided to sit on pews in the church for some time before leaving for his house, which located in the same area.

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MICHIGAN
The Detroit News

Candice Williams, The Detroit News December 1, 2015

Detroit — A priest who pleaded guilty to mail fraud in connection with stealing $573,000 from St. Thomas More Parish in Troy was sentenced Tuesday to 27 months in prison.

The sentence for Rev. Ed Belczak, handed down by U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Tarnow, was below sentencing guidelines and federal prosecutors’ request.

Before the sentencing, Belczak, 70, said he accepted full responsibility for his actions at St. Thomas More Parish where he was pastor for nearly 30 years.

“I was selfish,” he told the judge. “I stole money that did not belong to me.”

Belczak said he has dealt with depression and thoughts of suicide. As part of his sentence, Tarnow ordered him to undergo mental health counseling.

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UNITED STATES
TheMediaReport

David Pierre

Fabricated episodes. Character defamation. Devious storytelling. This is the definitive review of the new Hollywood movie Spotlight, which purports to chronicle the Boston Globe’s 2001-2002 investigation of the Catholic Church sex abuse story.

The heavily hyped Hollywood production – starring A-list actors Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo – professes to dramatize the paper’s pursuit of the troubling crimes committed by abusive priests in the Archdiocese of Boston.

However, after thoroughly studying the film, TheMediaReport.com’s Dave Pierre reports:

“Spotlight claims to be ‘based on actual events,’ but it does not bode well when the very first scene of the film is a complete fabrication.

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UNITED STATES
Chicago Now

In the New Testament, Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd. And he knows his sheep and his sheep know him. Like good sheep, they respond to the sound of his voice. They feel totally comfortable around him. More to the point, they feel safe and secure with him. He is their protector. His very presence gives them the assurance that everything is OK. This is the nature of the relationship between a shepherd and his flock.

Cardinal Bernard Law. Chicago Police Superintendent Gerald McCarthy. President Richard Nixon.

Each of these men, in their own way, were shepherds. Each of them rose to positions of great power and authority. But along with the power and authority came great responsibility. Their duty was, not unlike that of the Good Shepherd, to protect their “flock”, to make sure that each of the sheep entrusted to their care was safe and secure. Each of those men failed to live up to their responsibility. As a result, the people left in their protective custody, ended up experiencing fear, anxiety, tension, stress and betrayal.

Who can doubt we live in stressful times? There are threats both foreign and domestic, internal and external. If these threats are allowed to go unchecked, the very fabric of our society can come unraveled. That’s why any egregious shortcoming on the part of those appointed to act as our protectors is so traumatic. The failure of our leaders, whether religious or secular, represents and fundamental violation of the trust we placed in them.

What makes this betrayal so devastating is that, for the most part, the men I mentioned really didn’t do anything much themselves. No one has accused Cardinal Law of child abuse, for instance. Superintendent McCarthy didn’t shoot anyone, justified or otherwise. Richard Nixon didn’t break into the Watergate Apartment Complex. But each of them placed the defense of the reputation of an institution above their responsibility to those they were obligated to defend.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

December 2, 2015

Beau Donelly

A paedophile priest who forced a young girl against his erect penis and made her kiss him inside a confessional had committed no offences, according to Victoria Police at the time.

Assistant Commissioner Stephen Fontana said he was surprised police closed an investigation into Doveton parish priest Peter Searson in 1990 after a victim reported being indecently assaulted by him.

Police concluded there were “nil offences disclosed” after interviewing victim Julie Stewart, then aged 15.

“All Searson has done is sit the child on his knee and get the child to kiss him on the cheek,” the police report said. “Stewart stated that when she sat on his knee he dragged her up and onto his lap where she felt his erect penis rubbing on her back.”

Mr Fontana told the child abuse royal commission on Wednesday that on the evidence available at the time police should have concluded that at least an indecent assault had been committed.

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AUSTRALIA
The Mercury

PATRICK BILLINGS
Mercury

THE victim of a Tasmanian paedophile priest is urging other victims to report to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse ahead of a Hobart hearing next month.

The commission will hold a public hearing in Hobart into the Church of England Boys’ Society and the Anglican ­Dioceses of Tasmania, Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane.

The commission wants to hear from people who have information relevant to the hearing, including allegations involving Louis Daniels, Garth Hawkins, Robert Brandenberg, Simon Jacobs and John Elliott, against whom legal action has already been taken.

One of Hawkins’s victims, Steven Fisher was ­recently interviewed by the commission’s investigators.

He was ­as a teen abused for two years in what he describes as an interstate paedophile ring.

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MASSCHUSETTS
Harvard Law Today

By LEWIS RICE, December 1, 2015

The movie “Spotlight” focuses on the dogged pursuit by Boston Globe reporters to expose the Catholic Church’s cover-up of the sexual abuse of children by Boston priests. But there is much more to the story, as evidenced by a wide-ranging panel discussion of the movie last week at Harvard Law School that touched on legal issues, secrets and shame, and even a potential lawsuit against the filmmakers.

Sponsored by the Harvard Law School Library and the Dean of Students Office, the panel featured Josh Singer ’01, who co-wrote the screenplay with director Tom McCarthy; Mitchell Garabedian, who represented dozens of plaintiffs in suits against the church (and was depicted by Stanley Tucci in a prominent role in the movie); and HLS professors Jeannie Suk ’02 and Lawrence Lessig, with Professor Jonathan Zittrain ’95 moderating. In the audience were Ben Bradlee Jr. and Michael Rezendes, journalists from the Globe who were also depicted in the film, and who participated in the discussion.

Singer, whose previous credits include the television series “The West Wing” and the movie “The Fifth Estate,” described the process of creating “Spotlight,” which he began writing in 2012, and the copious research involved, including interviews with victims and Globe reporters. “We wanted to present reporting and the newsroom in a way that really hadn’t been done in many years, as accurately as possible,” he said. “We were pretty extreme in terms of hard work in trying to get the story right.”

After several clips from the movie were shown to the audience in Wasserstein Hall, Garabedian spoke of his interactions with the victims and how the cases helped validate their stories and heal some of the pain they continued to live with in adulthood. Before the victims spoke out and the Globe coverage galvanized attention around the issue, he said, “It was the worst-kept secret in Boston that these priests were molesting children. Everybody seemed to know but no one seemed to do anything about it.”

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MICHIGAN
Detroit Free Press

Patricia Montemurri, Detroit Free Press December 1, 2015

The Rev. Edward Belczak was sentenced Tuesday to 27 months in prison for stealing $573,000 from the St. Thomas More Catholic Church in Troy, where he had served as pastor for almost 30 years.

U.S. District Judge Arthur Tarnow handed down the sentence.

Belczak made a lengthy plea to the judge for mercy, citing scripture and also revealing that he had suicidal thoughts because of the public humiliation.

“I have stained the reputation of being a priest,” said Belczak.

Belczak, 70, pleaded guilty Sept. 1 to one count of mail fraud in connection with the embezzlement and is paying $573,000 in restitution. Prosecutors had asked for a 37-month prison sentence. But Belczak’s supporters had sent dozens of letters to the judge asking for leniency for the charismatic priest, whose popularity had contributed to growing St. Thomas into one of the largest, most prosperous parishes in the Archdiocese of Detroit. Belczak’s attorney, Jerome Sabbota, had asked that the priest be granted probation or home detention.

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IRELAND
National Catholic Reporter

Sarah Mac Donald | Dec. 1, 2015

The Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland is to write to the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops expressing its 1,000 members’ “grave disquiet” over the current selection process for bishops in the Irish church.

A resolution was carried unanimously at the association’s annual meeting in Athlone Nov. 24 which criticized the “lack of any credible process of consultation” with priests and people in recent years and the Vatican’s “preference for candidates drawn from a particular mindset.”

Over 100 members of the ACP who attended the meeting backed the statement which said the choice of candidates is “out of sync with the realities of life in Ireland today” and with the openness of Pope Francis to change and reform in the church.

The priests also expressed frustration with the “apparently haphazard policy of appointments to distant dioceses that pays little regard to the traditions and heritage of a diocese.” This policy has been operated by the church in the U.S. but has only really been implemented in the Irish church under the present papal nuncio, Archbishop Charles Brown.

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ISRAEL
Haaretz

Alona Ferber Dec 01, 2015

More than 1,000 ultra-Orthodox and Orthodox Jews from around the world gathered in Jerusalem this week to tackle some of their communities’ darkest taboos: sexual abuse and domestic violence. 

The three-day event they are attending, which began Monday, is the second annual conference on the subject spearheaded by the Israeli nonprofit Tahel, the Crisis Center for Religious Women and Children. Headlined “Shedding Light on the Darkness of Abuse,” the gathering offers five hands-on training tracks, including one specially tailored to rabbis and people who work at yeshivas.

That track – “Building Safe Synagogues and Yeshivas” – features sessions about high-profile abuse cases, defining offenders, abuse in marriage and other key subjects.

Tahel has organized pilot programs on these subjects in ultra-Orthodox and other institutions in Israel, Johannesburg, Sydney, Melbourne and London, director Debbie Gross told Haaretz. The idea is for this week’s trainees to implement what they learn back home, too.

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UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on December 1, 2015

I learned a valuable lesson from The Well-Armored Child. It doesn’t matter how important your message is if no one knows about it. So that’s why starting December 13, I will be giving away the Kindle version of THE POWER OF RESPONSIBILITY.

For the first week after its debut, you can read the book for nuthin’. And don’t worry, you don’t need to own a Kindle to read Kindle books—due to the global domination, er., I mean … universal nature of Amazon, you can read Kindle books anywhere.

Your computer and your tablet are Kindle readers. Even your smartphone can become an ebook reader …

if you are into reading books on a microscopic scale. You can also download copies for friends, neighbors, and people who need a strong push out of the trap of victimhood.

I learned that happiness and escaping victimhood (which for me was being a victim of sex abuse in the Catholic Church) boils down to six simple and easy decisions. And it’s only 58 pages.

Easy peasey.

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PHILIPPINES
Philippine Daily Inquirer

By: Jeannette I. Andrade, Tina G. Santos
@inquirerdotnet

Archbishop Socrates Villegas didn’t think Mayor Rodrigo Duterte’s expletive against Pope Francis was funny.

“When a revered and loved and admired man like Pope Francis is cursed by a political candidate and the audience laugh, I can only bow my head and grieve in great shame. My countrymen have gone to the dregs,” said the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP).

In an interview with reporters on Tuesday, Duterte warned the prelates against continuing tirades against him.

“I will destroy the Church and the present status of so many priests and what they are doing,” he said. “You priests, bishops, you condemn me and suggest I withdraw, but then I will start to open my mouth. There are so many secrets that we kept as children. Do not force (me to speak) because this religion is not so sacred.”

Victim

He said he was among the victims of child abuse by priests.

“If they want, they can start it and I’ll tell everything. From my years in Ateneo [de Davao] until we grew up, and it will make them sad, very sad,” he said. “They have secrets, I have secrets.” He stressed his comment on the Pope was “inadvertence.”

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher, article updated 24 November 2015

Since 1993, Broken Rites has been doing research about how Melbourne’s Catholic bishops harboured a number of sexually-abusive priests. In the mid-1990s, Broken Rites began exposing these priests. Now some of these priests, from the Broken Rites list, are being investigated by Australia’s national child-abuse Royal Commission during a four-weeks public hearing in Melbourne in November-December 2015. This article will point you to the original Broken Rites research about each of these priests.

Here are some of the names from the Broken Rites list (to read a Broken Rites article on each priest, you can click on any of the following names).

* Fr Peter Searson. For many years, the Melbourne church hierarchy knew that Searson was committing sexual offences against children in parish schools but it managed to protect him from police prosecution. Obstinately the church kept him in the ministry but eventually the hierarchy was forced to put Searson on “administrative leave” to protect the public image of the church.

* Fr Wilfred (Bill) Baker. Baker worked in parishes around Melbourne — and he committed sexual crimes against children while his superiors and colleagues looked the other way.

* Fr Nazareno Fasciale (pronounced Fah-SHAH-lay). Church leaders, including George Pell, participated in a glowing tribute to this priest, who was one of the worst paedophiles in the Melbourne diocese. In 1996, when Broken Rites exposed this (and other) church cover-ups, George Pell’s diocese went into damage control, hiring a public relations firm to announce the “Melbourne Response” (a forerunner of the church’s “Towards Healing” strategy).

* Fr Kevin O’Donnell. During O’Donnell’s life of crime, his superiors and colleagues looked the other way. In his final years, he even received public praise from one of his superiors, Bishop George Pell.

* Fr Ronald Pickering. The Melbourne church authorities protected Pickering for many years while he committed crimes against children in his parishes. Eventually he fled from Australia, evading justice. The Melbourne archdiocese then began sending retirement payments to Pickering at his new address in England but they didn’t give this address to the police.

* Fr David Daniel. The church authorities kept ignoring complaints about the crimes of this priest, but eventually some of these victims spoke to Victoria Police detectives — and the police then charged Father Daniel, thus ending the church’s cover-up.

* Fr Desmond Gannon. This is another example of how the church authorities protected a criminal priest for many years until some of his victims eventually spoke to Victoria Police detectives.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart admits he should have done more to protect children from a paedophile priest who hit an altar boy.

A complaint that Fr Peter Searson hit the boy around the head following mass went to Archbishop Hart, then the Melbourne archdiocese vicar-general, in October 1996.

He told Searson not to go near altar servers and referred the complaint to the Melbourne Response independent commissioner, who a few days later began to handle sex abuse complaints in the archdiocese.

Child abuse royal commission chair Justice Peter McClellan said having reviewed Searson’s file, Archbishop Hart would have realised it was not only altar servers who were in danger.

– See more at: http://www.skynews.com.au/news/national/2015/12/02/archbishop-admits–i-should-have-done-more.html#sthash.AlhyPe5q.dpuf

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ROME
The Guardian

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Rome

Tuesday 1 December 2015

Italy is facing a diplomatic collision with the Vatican over the church’s prosecution of two Italian journalists in a case that has been broadly condemned by press freedom groups.

A media watchdog that chronicles acts of intimidation against Italian journalists said Italy would have the legal right to reject any attempt by the Vatican to seek the extradition of the two journalists – Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi – if the pair are found guilty by a Vatican court of publishing classified and leaked documents.

The trial of the journalists and three former Vatican officials – who have been charged with leaking the documents – will continue next week after being adjourned on Monday. The journalists technically face up to eight years in jail if they are convicted.

“Italy very easily should and could refuse any extradition request because we have an article in our penal code that says such a request can be refused if the alleged ‘crime’ the person has been charged with is itself against the paramount principles of Italian law,” said Alberto Spampinato, a journalist and founder of the NGO Ossigeno per l’Informazione (Oxygen for information).

Another expert, Professor Giulio Illuminati of LUISS in Rome, said there was no legal framework for the Vatican to seek the journalists’ extradition because the Vatican does not have an extradition agreement with Italy. Illuminati also noted that Italy could question the fairness of the trial since the Vatican is not a signatory to the European convention on human rights.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Kirchen Zeitung

[Bishop Norbert Trelle has rejected the accusation that the Diocese of Hildesheim sought to thwart prosecutorial investigations in the case of sexual abuse of a young girl. He said the accusation is outrageious.]

Mit Nachdruck hat Bischof Norbert Trelle den Vorwurf zurückgewiesen, das Bistum Hildesheim habe staatsanwaltliche Untersuchungen im Falle des sexuellen Missbrauchs eines jungen Mädchens vereiteln wollen. Dieser Vorwurf sei ungeheuerlich, jeder Fall werde akribisch geprüft, sagte Trelle auf einer Pressekonferenz am Dienstag.

Am Montagabend hatte die ARD in der Reportage „Richter Gottes – die geheimen Prozesse der Kirche“ dem Bistum vorgeworfen, 2010 einen angezeigten Missbrauchsvorwurf zu spät an die Staatsanwaltschaft gegeben zu haben. Dabei ging es um den Geistlichen Peter Riedel, der im Zusammenhang mit den Missbräuchen im Canisus-Kolleg bundesweit für Schlagzeilen gesorgt hatte. In Hildesheim hatte er unter anderem den sozialen Mittagstisch in der Gemeinde Guter Hirt aufgebaut.

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DEUTSCHLAND
HNA

Göttingen/Hildesheim. Das katholische Bistum Hildesheim hat Vorwürfe zurückgewiesen, 2010 einen Missbrauchsvorwurf zu spät an die Staatsanwaltschaft weitergegeben zu haben. In einem WDR-Fernsehbericht von Montagabend waren diese Vorwürfe erhoben worden.

Konkret geht es um den vor fünf Jahren bekanntgewordenen Fall des heute 74 Jahre alten Jesuitenpaters Peter R., der auch als einer der Haupttäter am Berliner Canisius-Kolleg jahrelang sexuelle Übergriffe an Schülern vorgenommen haben soll.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Bistum Hildesheim

[The Diocese of Hildesheim is committed to the full investigation of the allegations in the Father R., who is accused of abuse]

Das Bistum Hildesheim setzt sich für die vollständige Aufklärung der Vorwürfe im Fall Pater R. ein. „Wir würden es begrüßen, wenn angesichts der jüngsten Entwicklung die Staatsanwaltschaft die Ermittlungen wieder aufnehmen würde“, sagt Bischof Norbert Trelle.

In der WDR-Reportage „Richter Gottes – Die geheimen Prozesse der Kirche“ wurde dem Bistum Hildesheim vorgeworfen, 2010 einen angezeigten Missbrauchsvorwurf zu spät an die Staatsanwaltschaft weitergegeben zu haben.

„Angesichts des tatsächlichen Ablaufs der Geschehnisse sind die Vorwürfe in keiner Weise haltbar“, erklärt der stellvertretende Generalvikar Weihbischof Heinz-Günter Bongartz. Nachdem die Erziehungsberechtigten im Namen des Opfers im November 2010 eindeutige Vorwürfe erhoben hatten, hat das Bistum unmittelbar die Missbrauchsanzeige zur Ermittlung an die Staatsanwaltschaft abgegeben. Das im März 2010 stattgefundene Gespräch in Begleitung der Lehrerin der 14-Jährigen hatte keine eindeutigen Hinweise auf sexuellen Missbrauch ergeben. Da sich das Mädchen gegenüber dem Missbrauchsbeauftragten aber eher verschlossen zeigte, wurde es ermutigt, mit Personen seines Vertrauens zu sprechen. „Damit wollten wir einen Anstoß geben und helfen, dass sich das Mädchen gegebenenfalls öffnen kann. Ein solches Vorgehen wird von vielen Opferverbänden ausdrücklich empfohlen“, erklärt der Weihbischof.

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UNITED STATES
The Concordian

Posted by: Elijah Bukreev

The Oscar race kicks off with Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight, an awards front-runner par excellence

Before a problem can be fixed, it must first be brought to light, which can be a painful process.

Sexual abuse of children by a number of Catholic priests was ongoing for decades, and it was only in 2001 that members of The Boston Globe’s investigative unit, the Spotlight Team, took on the Catholic Church to challenge a system that effectively covered up sex crimes and allowed sexual predators to walk free.

This investigation is the focus of Spotlight, a new film drama by Tom McCarthy which shares stories of abuse survivors while paying tribute to the journalists who fought hard to let these voices be heard.

The appointment of a new editor, Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber), signals a change at the paper. Baron is an outsider—a Jewish man from Miami in a predominantly Catholic city—which gives him a broader perspective. He sees a problem and decides to use any available resources to tackle it, even if it means suing the Catholic Church.

What starts with a single case of sexual abuse by a priest in Boston becomes an investigation into an actual epidemic, as numbers of perpetrators—and survivors—grow into the hundreds, and it becomes clear that lawyers and high-ranking clergy members were involved in a cover-up.

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UNITED STATES
WBUR

Tue, Dec 01, 2015
by Rich Barlow

For Catholics, “Spotlight” landed in theaters this holiday season like the proverbial coal in the Christmas stocking. Watching the recounting of The Boston Globe’s clergy pedophile investigation resurrected old feelings in this practicing Catholic. I seethed again at the men who committed these crimes and covered them up. (Full disclosure: In my past life, I was the Globe’s freelance religion columnist, and my wife until recently worked as a reporter for the paper.)

Yet the film is actually a Christmas gift. We Catholics bear special responsibility for pondering the lessons of the scandal, and special entitlement: Those were Catholic kids molested by priestly perverts. Some Catholics are drawing lessons from the movie that are obvious, even banal — appreciation for our free press and justice system, the need for “more, not less, holiness in the priesthood.” (I’m unaware of anyone calling for less holy priests.) I believe there’s a more fundamental and valuable wisdom to be gleaned from the movie. Catholics, split between theological traditionalists and liberals, must understand that, at least on this one, the liberals were right.

I don’t mean that traditionalists who support church teachings on priestly celibacy, non-ordination of women, and the sinfulness of homosexuality and artificial contraception are wrong (though I believe they are). It’s more uncomfortable for the traditionalists than that: Their very premise in upholding those teachings is flawed. The premise is that, when one has doubts about a moral pronouncement by the church, the hierarchy should get the benefit of the doubt. It shouldn’t.

The premise itself rests on two observations. First, this church above all others is hierarchical, with a disciplined, military-style chain of command; obedience should be part of a Catholic’s calling. Second, the church has been in the business of philosophical and ethical reflection for two millennia, producing some of history’s most formidable minds (Paul, Augustine, Aquinas), and this should count for something. And does, for those of us who, when weighing moral questions, include the church among the references we consult.

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ROME
ANSA

(ANSA) – Vatican, City, November 30 – Rome prosecutors have placed Vatileaks 2 defendant Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui and her husband Corrado Lanino under investigation for suspected irregularities in the sale of San Girolamo castle near the town of Narni, judicial sources said Monday. Chaouqui, a public relations expert, is currently on trial in the Vatican along with four others for allegedly leaking confidential documents. Chaouqui and her co-defendants, investigative journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, Monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda and his former assistant Nicola Maio, all attended Monday’s hearing.

Chaouqui, Balda and Maio are charged with leaking the confidential material and Nuzzi and Fittipaldi with using it in two recently published books – one titled Avarice, the other Merchants in the Temple – documenting Vatican waste and mismanagement and lavish spending by clergymen.

Balda, who is jailed in a Vatican prison, reportedly alleged in a written statement that he and Chaouqui were lovers and that he feared she may be a secret service agent.

“I don’t understand anything,” Chaouqui said on Monday.

“There’s no evidence against me”.

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ITALY
Vatican Insider

Four people have been arrested in anti-terrorism blitz in Italy and Kosovo. They had been promoting the jihadist ideology. Searches have been made in Brescia, Vicenza and Perugia

VATICAN INSIDER STAFF
ROME

“Remember that there will not be another pope after this one, this is the last”. The Kosovo citizens arrested today are said to have published threatening messages against the Pope. The incident emerged in the press conference held by investigators in the Italian city of Brescia. Investigators identified Imishiti Samet as being the point of reference. He was arrested in Kosovo and thought to be affiliated to Islamic State.

Investigations were launched after the group “Me ose, pa tu, Hilafeti eshte rikthy” was identified on Facebook. – which Imishiti Samet. Samet was a member of the group, which he used to spread propaganda to internauts in the Balkans and residents in Italy.

Samet’s Italian base was in an apartment in Chiari in the province of Brescia. The man’s brother, Imishiti Ismail was found here this morning and expelled.

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PHILIPPINES
Coconuts Manila

On Tue night, Dec 1, Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte — in a report on GMA News’ 24 Oras — revealed that a priest sexually abused him when he was a boy.

“Duterte, 70, made the allegation amid the flak that he had been receiving from members of the clergy for his use of an expletive when he discussed “traffic hell” during Pope Francis’ visit to the Philippines,” reports GMA News Online.

Duterte stated, “[Kami] sa Ateneo noon (We were at the Ateneo then) and I will tell you the abuses committed against the minors at that time including me and I will tell you my story. Kaming lahat dumaan kami (We all went through it).”

The report noted: “The PDP-Laban presidential candidate also reacted to Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines president Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas’ remarks on Duterte’s use of bad words.”

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VATICAN CITY
Irish Times

Paddy Agnew in Rome

Asked about the ongoing “Vatileaks 2” trial in the Vatican, Pope Francis on Monday joked that he was glad that 15th century femme fatale Lucrezia Borgia “is not around anymore”.

The pope was speaking during his customary post-visit press conference on the papal plane on the way back from a highly successful six-day trip to Africa during which he visited Kenya, Uganda and the Central African Republic.

Inevitably the most difficult questions faced by Pope Francis did not concern Africa but the so-called Vatileaks 2 trial in which five people stand accused of having stolen confidential Holy See documents.

In recent days the trial has made headlines because of revelations about the intimate relations between the two major defendants, Spanish monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda and Vatican lay consultant Francesca Chaoqui, who both served on COSEA, a short -term Vatican economic reform commission which operated in 2013 and 2014.

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TENNESSEE
Tennessean

Collin Czarnecki, cczarnecki@tennessean.com December 1, 2015

A local family has filed a lawsuit against a Brentwood church after their 3-year-old was sexually assaulted by a church volunteer.

According to a lawsuit filed Monday, the family’s 3-year-old son was raped by a male teenage volunteer in a bathroom of Fellowship Bible Church of Williamson County during church on August 24, 2014. The teenager pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual battery.

The family left their son at the Children’s Ministry while worshiping, but they weren’t aware of the sexual assault until the following weekend.

According to the lawsuit, the church allegedly urged the family to not pursue charges and asked them to attend another church campus.

It further states that the church “sought to hide the truth about the perpetrator pedophile and about the rape of (the 3-year-old) from other families.”

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TENNESSEE
News Channel 5

[with video]

BRENTWOOD, Tenn. – A local family has filed a lawsuit to hold a Williamson County church accountable after their 3-year-old was sexually assaulted at the church.

According to the lawsuit filed Monday, a teenage volunteer at Fellowship Bible Church of Williamson County raped the child in a church bathroom on August 24, 2014.

The family of the 3-year-old had been members of the church for 12 years. They were baptized and married at the church and saw the church as a second home.

On the day the sexual assault took place, the parents dropped off their two children at the Children’s Ministry for it’s care, but while there, the 3-year-old was taken into a bathroom by a teenage volunteer and sexually assaulted, but the family didn’t find out about the situation until the next weekend.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Spiked

LUKE GITTOS
LAW EDITOR

This huge inquiry into child abuse has nothing to do with truth.

Last week, more details were announced about the UK’s Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (aka the Goddard Inquiry). Justice Lowell Goddard, a member of the judiciary of New Zealand who was appointed chair of the inquiry in 2014, announced what the ‘first 12 investigations’ of the inquiry would focus on.

These initial investigations will cover, among other things, the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches and the local councils of Nottinghamshire, Rochdale and Lambeth. Goddard indicated that these investigations represented the ‘first phase’ of the inquiry’s work and were ‘by no means the total of the work we intend to conduct’. In fact, Goddard has indicated in the past that the remit of the inquiry will include both public and private institutions throughout the UK, with some investigations looking back over ‘many decades’. While Goddard herself gave assurances that the inquiry would conclude within five years, many think this is unrealistic — they estimate that it could take as long as 10 years.

The Goddard Inquiry was announced by home secretary Theresa May in 2014, in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal. It aims to expose institutions’ past failures and make recommendations for how to improve child-protection mechanisms in the present. Of course, Goddard is going to have to work hard to surpass the litany of child-protection measures that have been introduced in recent decades. CRB (now DBS) checks and a vast array of powers enabling the criminal courts to disbar people from working with children are just some features of the contemporary framework of anti-abuse law.

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ITALY
ANSA

(ANSA) – Rome, December 1 – Silvio Berluscon’s brother Paolo is under investigation by Rome prosecutors for suspected embezzlement in a Terni probe involving Vatileaks 2 defendant Francesca Chaouqui and her husband Corrado Lanino in connection with the sale of San Girolamo castle at Narni, judicial sources said Tuesday. According to Corriere della Sera, Chaouqui allegedly promised the younger Berlusconi to act on judicial requests to the Vatican regarding Silvio Berlusconi. Chaouqui is among five defendants in the Vatileaks 2 trial in the Vatican.

Earlier Tuesday a lawyer acting for Silvio Berlusconi denied newspaper reports that Chaouqui had contacted the former premier or Paolo in relation to the case.

“Premier Berlusconi has never had any contact with Francesca Chaouqui, or indications from anyone, of requests made by her,” Niccolò Ghedini said in a statement. “Besides, it would have been impossible to make demands since there is no possible link between Premier Berlusconi and ‘Vatican affairs’ or the Vatican bank,” he continued. In regards to Paolo Berlusconi, Ghedini acknowledged that he had met Chaouqui “occasionally” in social situations, but said the reports of contacts in relation to Vatileaks 2 were “unfounded”. Chaouqui, a PR expert, is on trial alongside investigative journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, Monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda and his former assistant Nicola Maio for allegedly leaking confidential Holy See documents.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 1 December 2015 (VIS) – The Holy Father has:

– accepted the resignation from the pastoral care of the diocese of Nueve de Julio, Argentina, presented by Bishop Martin de Elizalde, O.S.B., upon reaching the age limit. He is succeeded by Bishop Ariel Edgardo Torrado Mosconi, currently coadjutor of the same diocese.

– appointed Fr. J. Victor Alejandro Aguilar Ledesma and Fr. Herculano Medina Garfias as auxiliaries of the archdiocese of Morelia (area 18,000, population 2,612,300, Catholics 2,455,618, priests 565, religious 1,268), Mexico.

Bishop-elect Aguilar Ledesma was born in San Guillermo, Mexico in 1965 and was ordained a priest in 1989. He holds a licentiate in family pastoral ministry from the Pontifical Lateran University and has served in a number of pastoral roles, including parish vicar, chaplain of the Clarissian Sisters and diocesan coordinator of family pastoral ministry. He is currently parish priest, episcopal vicar, member of the college of consultors and professor at the major seminary of Morelia.

Bishop-elect Medina Garfias was born in Rincon de Cedenos, Mexico in 1967, and was ordained a priest in 1996. He holds a licentiate in social doctrine of the Church from the Padre Alberto Hurtado University in Santiago, Chile. He has served in a number of roles, including spiritual director and professor in the archdiocesan seminary and chaplain of various religious communities. He is currently bursar of the major seminary of Morelia.

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VATICAN CITY
Irish Times

Pope Francis, galvanised by a scandal over Vatican finances, has ordered the most powerful bodies in the city-state to launch an unprecedented audit of its wealth and crack down on runaway spending.

At the suggestion of his economic chief, Cardinal George Pell, Francis has set up a “Working-Party for the Economic Future” which brings together the Secretariat of State, or prime minister’s office, the Vatican Bank and other agencies. Francis has told the panel “to address the financial challenges and identify how more resources can be devoted to the many good works of the Church, especially supporting the poor and vulnerable,” Danny Casey, director of Pell’s office at the Secretariat for the Economy, said in an interview.

The pope’s initiatives come as five people stand trial in the Vatican over the leak of confidential documents in two books published last month that described corruption, mismanagement and wasteful spending by church officials. Those on trial deny wrongdoing. Francis, 78, has pushed for more openness and transparency in Vatican financial and economic agencies but he has faced resistance from the Rome bureaucracy.

Seek corruption

On the flight back to Rome on Monday after a visit to Africa, Francis told reporters that the so-called Vatileaks II scandal was an indication of the mess that he’s trying to sort out. The trial of two former Vatican employees alongside the books’ authors highlighted Church efforts “to seek out corruption, the things which aren’t right,” he said, according to a transcript provided by the Vatican. The working group, which held its first meeting last week, will study measures to cut costs and raise revenue as part of a long-term financial plan. “This will include comparing actual expenditure against budgets at a consolidated level, which is a new initiative,” Casey said.

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VATICAN CITY
International Business Times

By Lydia Tomkiw

Pope Francis has ordered an audit of the Catholic Church’s wealth in what is being described as an “unprecedented” look into wealth and high spending, Bloomberg reported Tuesday. A “Working-Party for the Economic Future” was established with the Secretariat of State, the Vatican’s Bank and other agencies to examine corruption and mismanagement.

The panel will “address the financial challenges and identify how more resources can be devoted to the many good works of the Church, especially supporting the poor and vulnerable,” said Danny Casey, a representative from the Secretariat for the Economy.

With advice from his economic chief Cardinal George Pell, the Pope established the working group. The audit comes at moment when five people are on trial for leaking documents about wasteful spending within the church in what has been dubbed the Vatileaks scandal. The three Vatican insiders and two Italian journalists on trial could face prison terms of up to eight years, AFP reported. All five people in the highly criticized trials have been charged with releasing documents “concerning the fundamental interests of the Vatican State.”

Speaking with reporters on a flight after his recent visits to Kenya, Uganda and the Central African Republic, Pope Francis said “an error was made” with the appointment of some Vatican employees, a press statement from the Vatican said. He also said he was not surprised by the leaked information because he was aware of corruption within the church.

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ROME
The Australian

TOM KINGTON
THE TIMES
DECEMBER 2, 2015

A Spanish priest and a PR woman who are on trial for leaking Vatican secrets are engaged in a war of words amid accusations of seduction, sex and spying for the Italian secret services.

Francesca Chaouqui, a PR ­expert who was asked by the Pope to join a committee to monitor Vatican sleaze, said she was suing Father Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, her former fellow committee member, after he reportedly claimed she pushed him into ­having sex and boasted that she was a spy.

“Everything he has stated is false and I have sued him for ­defamation,” Ms Chaouqui said. “I doubt Father Vallejo Balda would have slept with me because he does not go for women.”

Ms Chaouqui, Father Vallejo Balda and his former assistant, Nicola Maio, face up to eight years in prison if they are convicted by a Vatican court. They are ­accused of leaking information about Vatican waste and mismanagement to two Italian investigative journalists. Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, who published the leaks, are also on trial. A hearing was adjourned for a week yesterday after Ms Chaouqui, 33, appointed a new lawyer.

The Italian newspaper La ­Repubblica published a statement from Father Vallejo Balda, 54, yesterday in which he claimed Ms Chaouqui pressured him into handing confidential documents to the journalists and that she made sexual advances.

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ITALY
Il Fatto Quotidiano

[An Italian prelate thinks the current pope should die.]l

Monsignor Luigi Negri, intercettato il 28 ottobre scorso sul Frecciarossa partito da Roma-Termini, si è sfogato con il suo collaboratore dopo l’assegnazione di due diocesi per anni in mano a Comunione e liberazione a due preti di strada: “E’ uno scandalo. Decisione avvenuta nel disprezzo delle regole. Speriamo che la Madonna faccia il miracolo”. Raggiunto dal direttore della Nuova Ferrara non smentisce: “Qualcuno ha la registrazione?”

di Loris Mazzetti | 25 novembre 2015

“Speriamo che con Bergoglio la Madonna faccia il miracolo come aveva fatto con l’altro”. Il riferimento a papa Luciani è appena velato. La frase è dell’arcivescovo di Ferrara, Luigi Negri, alto prelato in profondo disaccordo con Francesco e punto di riferimento di Comunione e Liberazione.

Negri, allievo di don Giussani, è anche noto per aver contestato la magistratura quando incriminò Berlusconi per il caso Ruby. A chi allora gli fece notare che gran parte del mondo cattolico era indignato sulla vicenda delle Olgettine, rispose: “L’indignazione non è un atteggiamento cattolico”.

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ITALY
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor December 1, 2015

“Rebranding” is all the rage today in corporate communications, and one question gurus on the subject often find themselves pondering is the following: When you get a hot new CEO who succeeds in creating an appealing narrative, what happens to older stereotypes and prejudices about the brand?

If Pope Francis is any indication, what sometimes happens is that those stereotypes are re-tasked, to use another bit of corporate jargon, to support a new storyline of internal opposition to the boss.

This comes to mind in light of a controversy that’s broken out in Italy centering on Archbishop Luigi Negri of Ferrara-Comacchio, generally seen as a leader of the conservative wing of the Italian Church.

Last Wednesday, the Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano ran a front-page story based on what it described as eyewitness accounts of a conversation Negri was alleged to have had a month ago aboard a train to Rome with his priest-secretary.

In it, the 74-year-old prelate supposedly said he hopes the Madonna will work a miracle and cause Pope Francis to die, referring to the example of Pope John Paul I, who died after just 33 days. Allegedly, Negri also had some nasty things to say about recent bishops’ appointments by Francis in the Italian dioceses of Bologna and Palermo. (In both cases, the pontiff tapped men seen as center-left.)

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FRANCE
Pakistan Today

A Catholic priest will be sent to court after admitting he stole more than 700,000 Euros ($741,000) collected from churchgoers and buyers of holy candles over a quarter of a century, the French public prosecutor’s office said on Tuesday.

René Heuillet, 80, admitted pocketing proceeds of regular church collections between 1987 and retirement in early 2013, plus 100,000 Euros from votive candle sales, said a statement from the prosecutor’s office in Foix, in southwestern France.

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ITALY
ANSA

(ANSA) – Rome, December 1 – A lawyer acting for Silvio Berlusconi on Tuesday denied newspaper reports that Francesca Chaouqui, one of the five defendants in the so-called Vatileaks 2 trial, had contacted the former premier or his brother Paolo in relation to the case.

“President Berlusconi has never had any contact with Francesca Chaouqui, or indications from anyone, of requests made by her,” Niccolò Ghedini said in a statement. “Besides, it would have been impossible to make demands since there is no possible link between President Berlusconi and ‘Vatican affairs’ or the Vatican bank,” he continued.

In regards to Paolo Berlusconi, Ghedini acknowledged that he had met Chaouqui “occasionally” in social situations, but said the reports of contacts in relation to Vatileaks 2 were “unfounded”.

Chaouqui, a PR expert, is on trial alongside investigative journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, Monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda and his former assistant Nicola Maio for allegedly leaking confidential Holy See documents.

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VATICAN CITY
Bloomberg Business

December 1, 2015

John Follain

Pope Francis, galvanized by a scandal over Vatican finances, has ordered the most powerful bodies in the city-state to launch an unprecedented audit of its wealth and crack down on runaway spending.

At the suggestion of his economic chief, Cardinal George Pell, Francis has set up a “Working-Party for the Economic Future” which brings together the Secretariat of State, or prime minister’s office, the Vatican Bank and other agencies.

Francis has told the panel “to address the financial challenges and identify how more resources can be devoted to the many good works of the Church, especially supporting the poor and vulnerable,” Danny Casey, director of Pell’s office at the Secretariat for the Economy, said in an interview.

The pope’s initiatives come as five people stand trial in the Vatican over the leak of confidential documents in two books published last month that described corruption, mismanagement and wasteful spending by church officials. Those on trial deny wrongdoing.

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EL SALVADOR
Latin Correspondent

by Eana Maniebo | 1st December 2015

El Salvador’s Roman Catholic Church revealed that it suspended another priest for sexual abuse after a preliminary investigation.

The Archbishop of San Salvador Jose Luis Escobar announced on Sunday that Juan Francisco Galvez, a parish priest in the town of Rosario de Mora, was relieved of ecclesiastical duties after the conclusion of a preliminary investigation carried out in October 2015. Escobar said that Galvez victimized several people, but declined to give details on the victims’ identities.

Galvez denied the charges.

“I invite all those who have experienced sexual abuse from priests to come forward and directly approach me, Bishop Gregorio Chavez, or Monsignor Rafael Urrutia,” Escobar said.

He also reiterated the Catholic church’s zero tolerance towards sexual abuse.

Galvez’ case comes less than a week after the announcement of a high-profile priest’s suspension on charges of rape.

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MINNESOTA
Canonical Consultation

11/30/2015

Jennifer Haselberger

Recently, parishioners and others interested in the fate of St Peter Claver Catholic School, located in what used to be St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood, received some interesting news (see newsletter below; n.b. the newsletter is dated Fall 2014, but the content clearly indicates that it was issued in the Fall of 2015). The longtime pastor of the parish, Father Kevin McDonough, has apparently ceded operational control of the school with Father Charles Lachowitzer, formerly the Vicar General of Archbishop John Nienstedt, taking over as ‘canonical administrator’. Father McDonough, who has been heavily implicated in the sexual abuse scandal rocking the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, remains as pastor of St. Peter Claver parish and, presumably, Incarnation/Sagrado Corazon in Minneapolis.

If this news has you scratching your head, you are not alone. Since Father McDonough remains pastor (and therefore is the legal representative and decision maker for both the parish and school), Father Lachowitzer’s position as ‘canonical administrator’ is at best the result of a gentleman’s agreement and at worst a legal fiction. Moreover, while Lachowitzer certainly has experience with school administration, that experience is hardly without blemish. His last stint overseeing a Catholic school was at Faithful Shepherd in Eagan, where he supervised a mixed gender K-8 program along with the now-restricted Father Joseph Gallatin.

Still, you can’t fault the Archdiocese for taking steps to ensure that St. Peter Claver School is no longer subject to the creative administrative practices of Father McDonough. I have alluded in earlier posts to some of the more….interesting…means that the school has used to remain afloat, and the newsletter hints at others. And, there is certain irony to the fact that an administrator has been imposed upon Father McDonough, as that particular technique for dealing with a difficult situation was created by him as a means to deal with problem priests who he nonetheless felt should be permitted to serve in parishes (e.g. Father John Bussmann at the parishes that became Mary, Queen of Peace).

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Times-Tribune

BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Published: December 1, 2015

Iran’s imprisonment of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian for espionage is a farce, the sort of thing that the West has come to expect from Tehran in the corrupt theocracy’s perpetual quest for leverage.

But, unfortunately, persecution of journalists is not confined to the Middle East.

The Vatican has decided to prosecute two Italian journalists, Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, for their books on mismanagement of Vatican finances, internal resistance to Pope Francis’s reforms and other disclosures.

Since the reporters are Italian and the Vatican is a separate state within Italy, the reporters easily could have evaded arrest simply by staying outside the Vatican’s territory. They responded to the arrest summons to further expose Vatican corruption, even though each could face up to eight years in prison. The Vaticans’ conduct has been condemned by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Also facing trial are a Spanish monsignor and two Vatican staffers who allegedly leaked information to reporters. The case was supposed to begin Monday but was delayed to Dec. 7.

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites Australia researcher.

This Broken Rites article demonstrates how three Catholic Church leaders in Australia — Archbishop Francis Little, Archbishop George Pell and Archbishop Denis Hart — allowed a Melbourne priest (Father Barry Robinson) to continue ministering after he admitted having sex with a 16-year-old boy.

According to documents filed in a United States court, Father Robinson has admitted having sex with the boy on three occasions on church premises during a visit to the Boston diocese in the United States. Father Robinson left the United States in April 1994 before U.S. civil authorities could queston him about the matter.

Church leaders managed to keep the Boston matter a secret for the next ten years. The silence was broken in January 2004, when a U.S. legal firm instigated civil action against the Boston diocese on behalf of victims of Boston clergy. The legal firm had obtained discovery of church documents, which the firm filed in court, relating to the Boston diocese’s handling of clergy sexual abuse. Among the church documents (filed in court) was some material relating to Fr Barry Robinson. The church documents regarding Robinson were reported in an article in the Boston Globe newspaper on 14 January 2004.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

December 1, 2015

Beau Donelly
Reporter

Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart has admitted the Catholic Church buried complaints against clergy accused of sexually abusing children and misled parishioners by allowing paedophile priests to resign for health reasons.

On Tuesday the child abuse royal commission turned its focus to paedophile priests including Nazareno Fasciale, who retired four decades after allegations of child sex abuse against him were first referred to senior church officials.

Archbishop Hart agreed the church suppressed complaints to protect its reputation and that the response by senior officials in the Fasciale case was “totally unacceptable”.

Fasciale went overseas on extended leave after a 1954 complaint that he molested two sisters, and a 1960 complaint that he indecently assaulted a third girl.

He returned to Australia and became parish priest at Yarraville in 1973, but was sent for treatment by then Archbishop James Knox after concerns were raised about his conduct with young boys.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Register

BY EDWARD PENTIN 11/30/2015

VATICAN CITY — The world’s largest intergovernmental security organization, Italian media associations and members of the Italian legal profession have criticized a Vatican court for indicting two Italian journalists for publishing leaked confidential Vatican documents.

The Vatican is standing firm by its decision, and its lawyers insist it is not trampling on rights to freedom of speech.

But questions are being raised about consistency in the Vatican’s approach, as some other recent breaches in confidentiality among those in senior positions appear to have taken place in recent years with impunity.

Last Monday, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe called on the Vatican to withdraw criminal charges against two journalists, Emiliano Fittipaldi and Gianluigi Nuzzi, after they published the confidential information in two new books. “Journalists must be free to report on issues of public interest and to protect their confidential sources,” said Dunja Mijatovic, said the OSCE’s media freedom representative.

The Vienna-based organization, whose 57 member states include the Holy See, was formed during the Cold War to monitor conflicts, election observation and media rights.

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