ABUSE TRACKER

UNITED KINGDOM
This is Lancashire

A FORMER vicar aged 91 has been jailed for three years for sexually abusing a boy in vicarages in Bolton and Atherton.

Frank Baldwick was sentenced today after previously being convicted by a jury of nine men and three women at Bolton Crown Court.

They took just 90 minutes, in August, to return guilty verdicts on the two counts of indecent assault.

The offences — which date from the late 1970s when Baldwick was the Church of England vicar of St Michael’s Great Lever, and then of St Anne’s Hindsford, Atherton — were committed against a boy aged between 11 and 13 at the time.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Oct. 20, 2015

VATICAN CITY
One of the 13 cardinals said to have signed a letter to Pope Francis sharply criticizing the ongoing Synod of Bishops has said he no longer has concerns about the gathering and is even optimistic about its outcome.

South African Cardinal Wilfrid Napier told reporters at a briefing Tuesday that Francis’ response to the letter — addressing the entire bishops’ gathering on its second day of work Oct. 6 — “made a huge difference … in the scale of confidence and of trust” in the pope and the synod process.

After hearing the pontiff that day, Napier said he felt “that the concerns had registered, they were being taken care of and therefore, from there on, everyone was going to work at the synod with all they’ve got.”

“I think that’s what I’ve experienced and that has been why I feel that this synod takes up where that first week of the last one had left off, when we were all optimistic and looking forward to really looking together on the issues as a team,” said the cardinal, referring to an earlier synod held in 2014.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

[with audio]

(Vatican Radio) The Synod of Bishops on the family winds up its small language group work on Tuesday, with participants discussing further changes they’d like to see reflected in the concluding document.

Over the past two weeks the Church leaders have been seeking to resolve tensions between two different visions of family life and ministry, one focused more on the traditional teaching of the Church and the other searching for new ways of engaging with people living in relationships outside of that Church teaching.

Maria Harries is one of the 30 women attending the Synod as an auditor or specialist in different areas of family life. She chairs the Catholic Social Services in Australia and works with survivors of clerical sex abuse as a member of the Australian Catholic bishops’ Truth, Justice and Healing Council. She talked to Philippa Hitchen about her appeal to Synod fathers to broaden their vision of family life and to acknowledge the healing that still needs to take place for families devastated by the impact of sexual abuse…

Maria speaks first about the importance of listening to and engaging with different cultures, as she has learn through her own experience with Australia’s Aboriginal people. She explains how they have a very different family model which is not nuclear but rather a kinship or broader family system where a child can have many mothers or fathers…

She also talks about the lasting damage done by sexual abuse to both survivors’ families and the wider communities of the Church where people learn of crimes committed in their parish or religious organisation.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, October 2015 (VIS) – The role of the woman in the family, in society and in the Church, cultural differences, concerns regarding ethics in medicine, the situation of persecuted Christian families and the testimonies of those engaged in family catechesis were main themes of the interventions by auditors in the Synod Hall during the general congregations of Thursday 15 and Friday 16 October, published today.

The national president of the Catholic Women Organisation in Nigeria, Agnes Offiong Erogunaye, reminded the Synod Fathers that African women are known for taking care of their families with or without the contributions of their spouses, and the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria indicates the strength and role of “a typical woman and mother determined to keep her family together in the face of helplessness and calamity”. She added, “From my experience with women in this difficult moment, I can boldly say that although the man is the head of the family, the woman is however the heart of the family, and when the heart stops beating the family dies because the foundation is shaken and the stability destroyed. In Nigeria, Catholic women are not just homebuilders. They are a strong force to be reckoned with when it comes to spirituality and economy, and growth in the Church”.

Sister Maureen Kelleher from the United States of America quoted the paragraph in the Instrumentum laboris that states, “The Church must instil in families a sense of ‘we’ in which no member is forgotten. Everyone ought to be encouraged to develop their skills and accomplish their personal plan of life in service of the Kingdom of God”. She called upon the Church, “my family”, to “live up to the challenge to instil in our family the Church a sense of ‘we’, to encourage each person – male or female – to develop their skills to serve the Kingdom of God”. She added, “I ask our Church leaders to recognise how many women who feel called to be in service of the Kingdom of God but cannot find a place in our Church. Gifted though some may be, they cannot bring their talents to the tables of decision making and pastoral planning. They must go elsewhere to be of service in building the Kingdom of God. In 1974, at the Synod on Evangelisation, one of our sisters, Margaret Mary, was one of two nuns appointed from the Union of Superiors General. Today, forty years later, we are three”.

“The Church needs to listen to women … as only in reciprocal listening does true discernment function”, emphasised Lucetta Scaraffia, professor of Modern History at the University of Rome. “Women are great experts in the family: leaving abstract theories behind, we can turn in particular to women to understand what must be done, and how we can lay the foundations for a new family open to respect for all its members, no longer based on the exploitation on the capacity for sacrifice of the woman, but instead ensuring emotional nourishment and solidarity for all. Instead, both in the text and in the contributions very little is said about women, about us. As if mothers, daughters, grandmothers, wives – the heart of families – were not a part of the Church, of the Church who encompasses the world, who thinks, who decides. As if it were possible to continue, even in relation to the family, pretending that women do not exist. As if it were possible to continue to forget the new outlook, the previously unheard-of and revolutionary relationship that Jesus had with women”.

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INDIA
UCA News

ucanews.com reporter, Bhopal
India
October 20, 2015

A Catholic bishop has sought the intervention of Indian president Pranab Mukherjee to look into a case in Chhattisgarh state where a priest was accused of allegedly raping a fourth-grade student.

Bishop Patras Minj of Ambikapur wrote to Mukherjee pleading for him to initiate a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigations into the sex charges leveled against Father Joseph Dhanaswami.

The state police are “working under pressure from extremist groups and political parties,” Bishop Minj said in his Oct. 17 letter. Chhattisgarh state in central India is run by the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

Father Dhanaswami, principal of Jyoti Mission High School of Ambikapur Diocese in Chhattisgarh state, along with hostel warden Samaritan Sister Christ Maria and a maid were arrested Sept. 11 following a complaint by the mother of a fourth-grade student.

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ITALIA
LiveSicilia

L’ex direttore della Caritas è accusato di concussione e violenza sessuale.

TRAPANI – La condanna a 10 anni dell’ex direttore della Caritas di Trapani, don Sergio Librizzi, è stata chiesta oggi al giudice Cavasino che presiede il processo che si svolge col rito abbreviato. Librizzi fu arrestato nel giugno dell’anno scorso dagli agenti della sezione di pg della Forestale, con le accuse di concussione e violenza sessuale: avrebbe preteso prestazioni sessuali da alcuni richiedenti asilo politico in cambio del proprio aiuto all’interno della commissione prefettizia della quale faceva parte.

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ITALY
The Local

Prosecutors in Sicily are seeking a 10-year prison term for a priest who allegedly extorted sex from asylum seekers in return for helping them to obtain residency permits.

Father Sergio Librizzi, who was arrested in June last year on aggravated sexual assault charges, allegedly preyed on asylum seekers staying at centres in the Trapani area, LiveSicilia reported.

He had been working on a committee which handled asylum claims when the alleged assaults took place. At the time of his arrest, investigators found a box containing some €10,000, which is thought to have been used as “offerings” to entice asylum seekers.

A former director at the Trapani branch of the Catholic charity, Caritas, Librizzi is also being probed in connection with separate charges related to the management of the centres, Ansa reported.

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MISSOURI
Riverfront Times

Posted By Sarah Fenske on Tue, Oct 20, 2015

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis was sued Friday over sex abuse allegedly suffered by a young boy who attended school at the Church of the Immocolata in Richmond Heights.

The suit, filed by a pair of anonymous parents on behalf of their son, alleges that Fr. Leroy Valentine began abusing the boy when he was eleven — eventually sodomizing him in the rectory. The abuse allegedly continued for four years, from 1977 to 1981.

Valentine was a priest within the Archdiocese from 1977 to 2002, when he was removed from active duty, according to the lawsuit. But, the suit alleges, “although his church privileges were permanently removed in 2002, he was never laicized” — that is, officially defrocked.

In 2013, Archbishop Robert Carlson found allegations of sexual abuse against Valentine, then 71, to be substantiated.

The suit was filed by attorney Kenneth Chackes of Chackes, Carlson and Gorovsky, who frequently handles such chases against the Archdiocese.

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MINNESOTA
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: Raymond Cossette was ordained a priest of the Duluth diocese in 1955. He ministered in parishes and was involved in high schools as an instructor, athletic director, chaplain and principal. He was also Diocesan Superintendent of Schools for a time in the 1960s, and served on the Diocesan Tribunal. For twenty years he was chaplain at Brainerd State School and Hospital. His assignments took him from Hibbing to Duluth, Biwabik, Brainerd and Hillman. He retired in 1995 and is last known to have been living in Brainerd. Cossette’s name was included on a list released by the diocese in December 2013 of clergy who had been credibly accused of sexual abuse of young persons while serving in diocese. His status at the time was “re-investigation initiated.”

Born: December 24, 1929
Ordained: 1955
Retired: 1995

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

20 October, 2015

The Royal Commission will hold the second part of the public hearing regarding Catholic Church authorities in Ballarat at the County Court of Victoria, Melbourne.

This hearing will be co-ordinated with the public hearing regarding the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne and evidence from witnesses common to each hearing will be received. It is anticipated that the hearing regarding Catholic Church authorities in Ballarat will commence around 7 December 2015 depending on the progress of the hearing into the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne.

The scope and purpose of the second part of this public hearing is to inquire into:

1. The response of the Catholic Diocese of Ballarat and of other Catholic Church authorities in Ballarat to allegations of child sexual abuse against clergy or religious.

2. The response of Victoria Police to allegations of child sexual abuse against clergy or religious which took place within the Catholic Diocese of Ballarat.

3. Any related matters.

Cardinal Pell is expected to give evidence during the last week of the hearing.

Any person or institution who believes that they have a direct and substantial interest in the scope and purpose of the public hearing is invited to lodge a written application for leave to appear at the public hearing by 12 November 2015.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

20 October, 2015

The Royal Commission will hold a public hearing to inquire into the response of the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne to allegations of child sexual abuse. The public hearing will commence on 24 November 2015 in Melbourne at the County Court of Victoria.

This hearing will be co-ordinated with the continuation of the hearing regarding Catholic Church authorities in Ballarat and evidence from witnesses common to each hearing will be received.

The scope and purpose of the public hearing in relation to the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne is to inquire into:

1. The response of relevant authorities within or associated with the Archdiocese of Melbourne to allegations of child sexual abuse against Catholic clergy associated with the Holy Family Parish, Doveton, and the Holy Family Primary School, Doveton.

2. The response of the Archdiocese of Melbourne to allegations of child sexual abuse against other Catholic clergy, including Fr Wilfred Baker; Fr David Daniel; Fr Nazareno Fasciale; Fr Desmond Gannon; Fr Paul Pavlou; and Fr Ronald Pickering.

3. Any related matters.

Any person or institution who believes that they have a direct and substantial interest in the scope and purpose of the public hearing is invited to lodge a written application for leave to appear at the public hearing by 5 November 2015.

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AUSTRALIA
news.com.au

AAP

LIBERAL senator Bill Heffernan claims he has a police list which names 28 prominent people, including a former prime minister, as suspected paedophiles.

Senator Heffernan didn’t name any names but called on Attorney-General George Brandis to expand the child abuse royal commission so that it includes the legal fraternity.

He told a Senate estimates hearing in Canberra today he had provided the commission with documents, one naming the alleged paedophiles including “a whole lot of prominent people.”
Senator Heffernan is a vociferous campaigner against paedophiles, but his information hasn’t always been right.

In 2002 he used parliamentary privilege to falsely accuse a judge of using commonwealth cars to procure young men for sex. He said there was sadly a compromise at the highest levels.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

OCTOBER 20, 2015

Sarah Martin
Political reporter
Canberra

A Liberal senator has told a parliamentary inquiry that a list of 28 “prominent” pedophiles, which allegedly includes a former Australian prime minister and members of the judiciary, should be investigated by the royal commission into child sexual abuse.

NSW senator Bill Heffernan said he had been advised that the list of names, which he claims was uncovered during the Wood Royal Commission into the NSW Police Force and given to him by a police officer, was outside the scope of the commission’s inquiry.

Speaking under the protection of parliamentary privilege in a Senate estimates hearing this afternoon, Senator Heffernan asked Attorney General George Brandis to consider pursuing the “institution of the law” through the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

He said “disturbing” documents he had given to the commission chief executive Phillip Reed included a list of 28 alleged paedophiles, which he claimed had not been investigated by the Wood Royal Commission because of concern it may tarnish the reputation of the judiciary.

“We have in Australia sadly a compromise at the highest of levels. There is a former prime minister on this list and it is a police document.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE McCARTHY Oct. 20, 2015

NEWCASTLE priest Campbell Brown was found dead in his home on Sunday as the Anglican Church prepared for a hearing into child sexual abuse allegations against him from the 1960s.

Reverend Brown, 80, died only hours after attending a service at Newcastle’s Christ Church Cathedral where people were asked to say a prayer for survivors of child sexual abuse and to stand with those who had been abused.

He died two days after former Grafton Bishop Keith Slater was defrocked for failing to act when allegations against Reverend Brown and fellow Newcastle clergyman Allan Kitchingman were raised with the Anglican Church in 2005.

Reverend Brown died two years after the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard evidence that he had ‘‘made an implied admission of guilt’’ about sexually assaulting a boy at Lismore’s North Coast Children’s Home in the early 1960s.

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AUSTRALIA
The Morning Bulletin

Chris Calcino | 20th Oct 2015

AN ANGLICAN priest suspected of sexual offences against children in northern NSW has been found dead in his home.

Reverend Campbell Brown was awaiting and internal church professional standards hearing when his body was discovered in his Hunter Valley home on Sunday.

The 80-year-old was accused during the 2013 Royal Commission into child sexual abuse of making an “implied admission of guilt” that he had sexually assaulted a young boy at the North Coast Children’s Home in Lismore about five decades earlier.

His death came two days after former Grafton Bishop Keith Slater was removed from holy orders for failing to report claims of Rev Brown and another priest’s alleged crimes to police.

The former bishop was stood-down by the same standards board that was due to look into Rev Brown’s alleged admission.

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SCOTLAND
Herald Scotlan

A leading social worker and an expert on child abuse have been appointed to Scotland’s public inquiry into the historical abuse of children in care.

Panel members Glenn Houston and Professor Michael Lamb will help chair Susan O’Brien QC with the work of the inquiry, which formally began at the start of the month.

Mr Houston is the chief executive of Northern Ireland’s independent health and social care regulator, the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority, and has more than 30 years’ experience working in the field.

Mr Lamb is a professor of psychology at the University of Cambridge and headed a research unit at the US National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Washington DC for 17 years.

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IDAHO
KBOI

EAGLE, Idaho (KBOI) — A married couple from Eagle, who worked as house parents at a local Christian church ranch, have pleaded guilty to sexually abusing children, according to Idaho court records.

Michael P. Magill and his wife, Jennifer, pleaded guilty to sexual abuse of a minor 16 or 17 and sexual abuse of a minor under the age of 16.

An investigation into the couple began back in August after detectives were notified of abuse from a family member from one of the victims. Police then interviewed the girls, searched the Christian Children’s Church Ranch in Eagle, and then arrested the couple the following day.

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MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

By Elizabeth Mohr
emohr@pioneerpress.com
POSTED: 10/19/2015

Jury selection began Monday in a clergy sex abuse lawsuit against the Diocese of Duluth, marking what attorneys say is the first such a case to go to trial under Minnesota’s Child Victims Act.

The Child Victims Act, enacted by the Legislature in 2013, suspended the statute of limitations for victims of child sex abuse who wished to sue, even if the abuse took place decades ago. The previous law prevented legal action after victims reached age 24. The new law allows such claims to be brought until May 2016.

Until now, many claims brought under the law have been settled before trial, or rolled into the bankruptcy case of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, or dismissed for other reasons.

In the case filed by “Doe 30,” the Diocese of Duluth denies the allegations — that it was aware that the Rev. James Vincent Fitzgerald had been previously accused and that it failed to adequately supervise him.

Initially, the lawsuit, filed in February 2014, also named as defendants the Diocese of New Ulm and Oblates of Mary Immaculate. The Oblates order settled with the plaintiff, and a judge dismissed claims against the New Ulm diocese.

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AUSTRALIA
NT News

AAP

THE Catholic Church’s handling of two decades of abuse by pedophile priests in a Melbourne parish will be the focus of a royal commission hearing featuring Cardinal George Pell.

CARDINAL Pell, now the Vatican’s finance chief, will give evidence to the commission’s public hearing into the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne’s response to child abuse as well as its continuing inquiry into widespread abuse by clergy in the Ballarat diocese.

The month-long hearings will begin on November 24 in Melbourne and Cardinal Pell is expected to give evidence during the sitting’s final week, which will be from December 14 to 18, the royal commission said on Tuesday.

The former Melbourne and Sydney archbishop and Ballarat priest has already appeared twice before the child abuse royal commission on other issues.

Cardinal Pell came under fire following claims again aired during the first stage of the Ballarat hearing in May that he tried to bribe one abuse victim to keep quiet, ignored complaints and was complicit in moving Australia’s worst pedophile priest, Gerald Francis Ridsdale, to a different parish. Cardinal Pell has repeatedly denied the claims.

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MINNESOTA
Northlands News Center

[with video]

By Nick Minock

October 19, 2015

St. Paul, MN (NNCNOW.COM) — One of the several lawsuits filed in connection with sexual abuse in the Catholic Church began Monday morning in St. Paul.

The lawsuit, that is filed by Jeff Anderson and Associates, involves the Diocese of Duluth.
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The lawsuit claims that Father J. Vincent Fitzgerald abused a teenage altar boy in 1978.

The lawsuit claims the now deceased priest molested the boy “on a daily basis.”

The priest was working at St. Catherine’s Church at the time under the Diocese of Duluth.

The lawsuit is set to go to trial.

“Victims of sexual abuse who come forward to tell their stories do a public service,” the Diocese of Duluth said in a statement. “They help society seek justice. They help all of us, including the church, to do a better job of preventing sexual abuse.”

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

By Chao Xiong Star Tribune OCTOBER 19, 2015

A judge ordered the Diocese of Duluth on Monday to produce more priest files as it prepared to defend itself in a civil trial involving alleged clergy sex abuse.

The diocese failed to abide by a January court order to turn over all documents about alleged abuse it possessed before 1978, Ramsey County District Court Judge John Guthmann said Monday.

“I do not think this was in bad faith,” the judge said, “but it needs to be rectified.”

Guthmann also sanctioned the diocese $1,250 for failing to turn over all of the necessary documents to attorneys Jeff Anderson, Mike Finnegan and Elin Lindstrom. The three attorneys are representing a former altar boy, named Doe 30 in the case, who is suing the diocese.

The case is significant because it is the first lawsuit under the Minnesota Child Victims Act to go to trial. That 2013 law has allowed older claims of child sex abuse previously barred by statutes of limitations to have their day in court.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Newsweek

By Felicity Capon 10/19/15

Child sex abuse survivors in Britain have called for an immediate investigation into revelations that testimonies they had given to an inquiry into the abuse was “instantly and permanently deleted” due to a technical error.

A statement posted on the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse’s website last week, explained that due to a change in the website address, information that had been submitted through the “share your experience” page between 14 September and 2 October was deleted before it reached the investigation’s engagement team.

The inquiry was set up last July, prompted by claims from politicians and campaigners that paedophiles operated in Westminster during the 1980s. Its intention, as stated on its website, is to investigate whether “state and non-state institutions have failed in their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse and exploitation” in England and Wales. The site also says it “will support victims and survivors to share their experience of sexual abuse.” The inquiry’s panel is led by New Zealand judge, Lowell Goddard.

Addressing the recent loss of the testimonies, a message on the inquiry’s site reads, “We are very sorry for any inconvenience or distress this will cause and would like to reassure you that no information was put at risk of disclosure or unauthorised access. Due to the security measures on our website, your information cannot be found or viewed by anyone else as it was immediately and permanently destroyed.”

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MINNESOTA
Northlands New Center

[with video]

Duluth, MN (NNCNOW.com) — The ongoing news of the child sex abuse lawsuits against the Diocese of Duluth, has awakened some very troubling and painful memories for some.

For almost 70 years a Northland man has kept his silence about abuse he says he and his brothers suffered at the hands of priests at St. James Orphanage in Duluth.

Gene was just nine years old when he his two older brothers had to move into the orphanage just off Woodland Avenue.

Now as he ages, and faces a debilitating disease, Gene Saumer decided it was time to speak out.

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MINNESOTA
Northland News Center

Duluth, MN (NNCNOW.com) – Statement of Father James Bissonette, vicar general

“Victims of sexual abuse who come forward to tell their stories do a public service. They help society seek justice. They help all of us, including the church, to do a better job of preventing sexual abuse. They may find it helpful in their own healing. They give us a chance to tell them we’re sorry and that we want to help them. And importantly they let other people who have been sexually abused know that they’re not alone, that it’s OK to come forward and that it’s not their fault. So we are grateful to people who come forward, and we continue to ask anyone who has been hurt in this way to do so. We offer them our deepest apologies and sympathy, and we offer to support them in any way we can, as we continue our efforts to make our parishes, schools and other facilities the safest places they can possibly be for children and young people.”

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NEW MEXICO
KRQE

By Chelo Rivera
Published: October 19, 2015

ALBUQUERQUE (AP) – A judge says he is getting frustrated as a New Mexico diocese nears its second year in bankruptcy court.

The Gallup Independent reports that U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David T. Thuma said during a Thursday court hearing that he’s not pleased the Diocese of Gallup’s case is still going on.

He agreed to the diocese’s request to postpone its final hearing, originally scheduled for next month. He scheduled a status conference in its place.

Thuma hasn’t yet ruled on a request from Phoenix attorney Robert E. Pastor, who represents 18 people who say they were sexually abused by the diocese’s clergy.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Road to Recovery

Archbishop Emeritus of Hartford, CT, and former Bishop of Fall River, MA, Daniel A. Cronin to be deposed on October 21, 2015, as part of a Massachusetts Superior Court Civil Complaint alleging negligent supervision by two clergy sexual abuse victims of Msgr. Maurice Souza of the Diocese of Fall River, MA

Fall River, MA priest Msgr. Maurice Souza sexually abused minor children in CT, MA and numerous other states over the course of years

What
A press conference announcing that Archbishop Emeritus of Hartford, CT, and former Bishop of Fall River, MA, Daniel A. Cronin will be deposed on Wednesday, October 21, 2015 by attorneys for two men who have alleged that they were sexually abused by a Fall River, MA diocesan priest, Msgr. Maurice Souza, and that Msgr. Souza was negligently supervised by former Fall River Bishop Daniel A. Cronin. According to the Civil Complaint, the two plaintiffs are represented by Attorney Mitchell Garabedian of Boston, MA.

When
Tuesday, October 20, 2015 at 11:00 am

Where
On the public sidewalk in front of the headquarters of the Diocese of Fall River, MA near 423 Highland Avenue, Fall River, MA 02720 – 508-675-1311

Who
Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D., President of Road to Recovery, Inc., a non-profit charity that assists victims of sexual abuse and their families, and advocate for the plaintiffs in this case

Why
In June, 2015, a Civil Complaint was filed in Middlesex (MA) Superior Court on behalf of two Massachusetts men who allege that they were sexually abused in CT, MA, and numerous other states over the course of years by Msgr. Maurice Souza, a now deceased priest of the Diocese of Fall River, MA. The two plaintiffs allege that between approximately 1977 and 1986, when they were altar boys at St. Anthony’s Parish in East Falmouth, MA on Cape Cod, Msgr. Maurice Souza sexually abused them as minor children. The two plaintiffs allege that they were approximately 9-17 years of age when they were sexually abused by Msgr. Maurice Souza. The bishop of the Fall River, MA, Diocese from approximately 1970 until 1991 was Daniel A. Cronin who was the supervisor of Fall River diocesan priest Msgr. Maurice Souza when he was assigned to St. Anthony’s Parish in East Falmouth, MA. The two victims were taken as minor children to Connecticut, Massachusetts, and several other states to attend athletic and other events. Archbishop Emeritus of Hartford, CT, Daniel A. Cronin, when he was Bishop of the Diocese of Fall River, MA, is accused of negligent hiring, retention, direction, and supervision, among other things. Attorneys for the plaintiffs will depose Archbishop Emeritus of Hartford, CT, and former Diocese of Fall River Bishop Daniel A. Cronin on Wednesday, October 21, 2015.

Contacts
Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D., Road to Recovery, Inc., Livingston, NJ – 862-368-2800

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MINNESOTA
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: Leonard Colston was ordained for the Duluth MN diocese in 1980, at age 54. He served in parishes in Brainerd, Floodweed, Meadowlands and Elmer MN before transferring in 1984 to the New Ulm MN diocese where he worked in Nicollet, Hutchinson, Ortonville and Olivia parishes. Per Duluth diocesan officials, Colston resigned September 6, 1986. His whereabouts after that are unclear. He died November 4, 2004. Colston’s name was included on the Duluth diocese’s December 2013 list of clergy who had been credibly accused of sexual abuse of young persons while serving in the diocese.

Born: October 10, 1936
Ordained: 1980
Died: November 4, 2004

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ROME
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Oct. 19, 2015

ROME
The discussions at the ongoing Synod of Bishops have shown a clear difference in mindsets between the prelates considering issues of family life and ordinary Catholics looking to the gathering in hopes for changes in church pastoral practice, one of the non-voting participants in the event has said.

U.S. Sacred Heart of Mary Sr. Maureen Kelleher — who is taking part in the Oct. 4-25 synod as one of 32 women serving in non-voting roles alongside the 270 prelate-members — said there is a clear cultural divide between bishops’ and laypersons’ points of view.

“There’s such a culture here and a common background,” said Kelleher, speaking in an NCR interview. “These men have all pretty much studied together through formation and onward — [and] are very steeped in the magisterium and the canons and the different papal documents that have come out and have formed them.”

“And they’re very, very — well, they’re in pain I think to deal with the pastoral situation and reaching for particularly the remarried after divorce in a way that would be accompanying them … and yet being faithful to their understanding of Jesus’ sentences on divorce and its consequences,” she continued.

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ROME
Religion News Service

David Gibson | October 19, 2015

ROME (RNS) The eight American bishops taking part in a Vatican summit on family life stay at a huge seminary built high on a hill overlooking St. Peter’s Basilica and the rest of the Eternal City.

It’s a lovely place with spacious apartments for each bishop and any amenity they might need.

But for all that, it may be getting a tad uncomfortable.

In the latest installment of an increasingly sharp exchange conducted via the media, Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput on Monday (Oct. 19) rejected what he took as a swipe at him by Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl, also a member of the U.S. delegation at this gathering of global bishops.

Chaput, who hosted Francis for the final two days of the papal visit to the U.S. last month, didn’t like what he saw as Wuerl’s attempt to lump him in with the conservative opposition to the pope at the gathering, called a synod.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

A retired priest accused of indecent assault told a court he spent 40 years “in denial” of his homosexual feelings.

Vickery House, 69, of West Sussex also said he had a sexual relationship with a man while at theological college.

Mr House, of Brighton Road, Handcross kept the relationship secret and married his childhood sweetheart.

At the Old Bailey, the retired Church of England priest denies eight charges of indecent assault against six males aged 15 to 34, between 1970 and 1986.

The court heard that Mr House, who has been married for 47 years and has two children, was aged 18 when he had his first sexual encounter with a male.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

A suspected paedophile Anglican priest has been found dead in his Hunter home while awaiting a hearing into child sex abuse allegations.

Reverend Campbell Brown was accused of abuse at the North Coast Children’s Home dating back more than 50 years.

Evidence of the abuse was recently heard by the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse.

It is understood Brown was awaiting a Diocesan Professional Standards hearing but was found dead in his Hunter home on Sunday.

Newcastle Anglican Bishop Greg Thompson has sent a letter to Members of the Synod saying “the burdens people carry can lead to awful consequences”.

He says people should be mindful of those who bear great struggles of mind and spirit and how important it is to share the burden with others.

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UNITED STATES
Religion Dispatches

BY PATRICIA MILLER OCTOBER 19, 2015

t’s official—with Ross Douthat’s conspiracy-drenched Sunday column, the idea that the synod is somehow a “plot to change Catholicism” has leapt from the far-right Catholic fringe to the conservative Catholic mainstream.

Conservatives have been pushing the idea for months that the synod isn’t just a meeting of bishops to discuss how the church’s teachings on the family can be made more relevant for Catholics, but a Machiavellian plot by Pope Francis and his allies to change church doctrine. As evidence, as per Douthat, they offer the fact that Francis has changed the synod procedures to allow for actual discussion about issues like the pastoral treatment of divorced and remarried Catholics or gay Catholics:

The documents guiding the synod have been written with that in mind. The pope has made appointments to the synod’s ranks with that goal in mind. … The churchmen charged with writing the final synod report have been selected with that goal in mind.

As Douthat himself notes, with the “ranks of Catholic bishops includ[ing] so many Benedict XVI and John Paul II-appointed conservatives,” it would have been fundamentally pointless to hold a purely “democratic” synod in which the majority of the existing bishops drafted the synod document and controlled the discussion and final report.

The result would have been a synod like any of the other synods over the past 35 years: the bishops would assemble and give their pre-written “interventions” affirming current church policy, agree that current church policy was awesome, eat some fabulous meals in Rome, and then go home. (And for the record, conservatives have argued for years that the church isn’t a democracy.)

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VATICAN CITY
Tidewater Review

By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press
October 19, 2015

VATICAN CITY—
It’s now quite certain that Pope Francis’ big summit on family issues won’t endorse any changes to church doctrine on the church’s teaching about homosexuality or whether civilly remarried Catholics can receive Communion.

And yet, it seems, everything has changed.

From the crucial role African bishops have played in the debate, to calls to remove “intrinsically disordered” from the church’s language on gays, to the freedom bishops now enjoy to speak their minds on once-taboo issues, Francis’ synod on the family has at the very least shaken up the church for years to come.

And if Francis has his way, there’s more ahead.

Francis delivered a sleeper bombshell of a speech over the weekend kicking off the final week of the synod in which he called for nothing less than a revolution in the concept of the Catholic Church itself. He said it’s not a top-down organization with the pope in charge but rather an inverted pyramid where the summit — the pope — is underneath and in service to the “holy faithful people of God” who are its base.

He called for a “healthy decentralization” of authority on certain problems from Rome to local bishops’ conferences, and said the papacy itself should be rethought, with the pope guiding the church but really just one bishop among many, one Catholic among many.

“It’s a very delicate moment, where you realize that the relationship between the church and the world is at stake,” the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a Jesuit close to Francis, said as the synod entered its third and crucial week.

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NEW MEXICO
Gallup Independent

Published in the Gallup Independent, Gallup, N.M., Oct. 16, 2015

At the beginning of the Diocese of Gallup’s Chapter 11 case, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David T. Thuma said he was going to keep the proceedings as transparent as possible. And up until recently, Thuma has kept his word.

However, the public should be aware that much of what transpires in a bankruptcy case actually happens during behind-the-scenes negotiations between attorneys for the different parties. The public and the media are shut out of those deals and will remain forever in the dark once the case concludes.

In a flagrant violation of Thuma’s desire to keep the case as transparent as possible, the public and the media were recently shut out of the Diocese of Gallup’s property auctions. As a result, the public does not know how well attended — or how poorly attended — the auctions were. The public does not know if the bidding on diocesan property was vigorous — or weak. The public does not know the identities of the successful bidders.

During the Hearing on the Order to Show Cause, Thuma admitted he intended the auctions to be open to the public — in the sense that the non-bidding public and media could attend and observe. And though we have found Thuma to be a thoughtful and fair-minded judge up until this point, he made the following extremely illogical statement: “There’s no question in my mind that if the press had come to me before the auction and said, ‘Can I attend, I won’t disrupt, I just want to observe,’ I would clearly have let them do that. And I’m sorry that didn’t happen.”

How would a member of the media even think to contact the judge to ask permission to attend an auction that had appeared to be advertised as open to the public? And how would a member of the public, such as the doctoral student doing research, know to contact the judge in advance to ask permission to attend an auction that appeared to be open to the public? Perhaps Thuma thinks the media and the public should have the ability to read minds or foretell the future?

Or perhaps Thuma should have just stuck to his principles and sanctioned the Diocese of Gallup and the auctioneer in some meaningful way.

We understand Thuma was between a rock and a hard place. Thuma said if he could invalidate the most recent auction with little or no expense and order a new auction, he would. However, he noted that a second auction might result in even lower bid prices, which Thuma described as “kind of imponderable.”

We find the bargain basement sales prices of the first auctions kind of imponderable, which is why we raised the issue of the extremely lackluster marketing campaign that cost the Gallup Diocese $45,000.

And what were the results of that marketing campaign? Diocesan attorneys proudly pointed out one positive news article in one Tucson newspaper — unfortunately, the diocese wasn’t selling any property anywhere near Tucson.

Where is the evidence of real marketing efforts in the communities actually near the property for sale: Arizona communities like Winslow, Holbrook, Show Low, Snowflake, St. Johns and Springerville, and New Mexico communities like Gallup, Farmington, Taos, Rio Rancho, Albuquerque, Belen, Los Lunas, Las Cruces and Deming?

The Diocese of Gallup got taken for a ride, as did Judge Thuma. But we have to hand it to Todd Good, the owner of a California real estate marketing company that conducted the property auctions. Like all slick salesmen, Good has the ability to peddle some very dubious things to buyers who apparently think they are getting the real deal.

In the case of the Gallup Diocese officials, they shelled out $45,000 for a dubious marketing campaign. In the case of Thuma, he bought Good’s very dubious explanation about why he barred the public and the media from the Albuquerque auction. In a written statement that Good signed under the penalty of perjury, he pledged to the judge that it was his “custom and practice” not to admit non-bidders to his auctions. He pledged it was his “standard procedure” during 33 years of conducting auctions.

Well, contrary to Good’s sworn declaration, media reports out of Tucson in 2005 and Phoenix in 2008 don’t back up Good’s story. According to those reports, at least two newspapers and one television station have been allowed to send journalists into Good’s auctions.

Thuma needs to keep in mind the Diocese of Gallup landed in his bankruptcy courtroom because of decades of secrecy surrounding the sexual abuse of children. Thuma’s gentle rebuke to diocesan officials just supports their pattern of secrecy and their determination to keep the public unaware, ill-informed and in the dark.

In the future, Judge Thuma needs to stick to his promise of transparency, he needs to stick to his principles, and he needs to stop buying dubious deals peddled by snake oil salesmen.

In this space only does the opinion of the opinion of the Gallup Independent Editorial Board appear.

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UNITED STATES/CANADA
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: A priest of the Missionaries of the Holy Family ordained in 1973, Chateauvert worked in parishes and a hospital in Los Angeles CA archdiocese, Ottowa Canada, and in the dioceses of Springfield IL and Duluth MN. In December 1992 he was arrested on suspicion of the sexual abuse over a three-year period of two Duluth MN teenage boys. He was convicted and sentenced to six months in jail. Chateauvert died March 3, 1999. His name was included on the Duluth diocese’s list released in December 2013 of clergy who had been credibly accused of the sexual abuse of young persons while serving in the diocese.

Born: May 25, 1919
Ordained: September 25, 1973
Died: March 3, 1999

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UNITED STATES
Watch Keep

[with videos]

via Crime Watch Daily

Sammy Nuckolls, a man of God, preyed on his parishioners in the sickest of ways. As cops would uncover, the pastor’s own home was exposed as a sex trap.

Peeping preacher’s prison sentence stands

Prosecutor Steven Jubera suggested Nuckolls’ aims were not altruistic but driven by the same “narcissistic tendencies” that got him in trouble in the first place.

“House arrest is really not going to prevent him from doing what he did in his own home in the first place,” Jubera said.

Chatham said he was pleased to hear that Nuckolls is doing good work and adjusting well to prison. “Perhaps that is your calling,” he said.

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UNITED STATES
Baptist News

By Bob Allen

Incriminating video that three years ago helped land a former Southern Baptist evangelist in prison for video voyeurism aired on national television Oct. 15.

Thursday’s installment of Crime Watch Daily, a syndicated investigative news magazine series that debuted in the United States and Canada on Sept. 14, opened with the story of Sammy Nuckolls, a once-popular speaker at youth events including LifeWay Christian Resources’ FUGE summer camps. He is now serving 10 years in prison for planting hidden cameras to spy on women in a bathroom at his home in Olive Branch, Miss.

The broadcast, shown in two parts, includes clips shown at his sentencing hearing in September 2012 of Nuckolls setting up spy cameras to capture video of female houseguests as they got undressed to shower. Victims testified to feeling shame and violation of trust with descriptions including “video rape.”

“From the first time that I ever entered their home, that was his objective of our friendship,” Ashley Fisher, one of a few of Nuckolls’ victims who has spoken publicly about the crimes, told Crime Watch Daily.

Her husband, Adam Fisher, a youth pastor and worship leader who once looked up to Nuckolls as a role model and mentor, said he had to put their friendship aside when confronted with the revelation that they and other couples like them were being manipulated and abused.

“Looking back, I see there were a lot of different red flags I could have noticed but just kind of threw to the side, because he was a traveling evangelist,” Fisher admitted. “I mean, you can trust those guys.”

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ROME
dotCommonweal

Grant Gallicho
October 19, 2015

ROME—Hoping to see a resolution to the most neuralgic issues being debated at the Synod of the Family by the time it ends next weekend? Don’t hold your breath. That’s the message that came through during today’s briefing at the Holy See Press Office. While “there is confidence” among the synod fathers that “something can emerge from this process of fermentation,” according to Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane, Australia, there is no consensus on questions related to Communion for the divorced and remarried, homosexuality, and others living in “irregular relationships.”

That makes it highly unlikely that the final summary document, which synod fathers will vote on—paragraph by paragraph—later this week, will include definitive language on any of the contested issues. That doesn’t mean Pope Francis won’t step in at some point—my money is on a post-synodal study commission—and it certainly doesn’t mean that these three weeks of discernment have been a waste. To the contrary, as Francis made clear in his remarks commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the synod on Saturday, the synodality established by this meeting of bishops is a preview of what he wants to see from the whole church. “A synodal church is a listening church, aware that listening is more than hearing.” He continued: “It is a reciprocal listening in which each one has something to learn.”

Synoding is hard work—this has been a constant refrain of all the synod fathers who have appeared at the press conferences. And who could doubt it? It’s not unusual for participants to put in twelve-hour days. Coleridge spoke of a sense of “weariness” among the synod fathers. “I have a strong sense that we wonder how we’re going to get through to Sunday morning [when the synod concludes]—how we’re going to write a final document.”

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ROME
The Salt Lake Tribune

By ROSIE SCAMMELL Religion News Service

Vatican City • Bishops participating in the Vatican’s synod on the family have admitted that they don’t know much about sex — and that they need the help of laypeople to fully understand marital intimacy.

Laypeople play an important part in the discussions at their synod on the family, the Rev. Thomas Rosica, English-language assistant to the Vatican press office, said Friday.

“At the heart of the synod is human sexuality. And oftentimes it’s muted and we don’t know how to talk about it, because most of us in the room are male celibates,” he said, citing comments of unnamed bishops.

Fourteen married couples and other laypeople have been brought in to fill in the gaps in the churchmen’s knowledge, advising the 270 bishops as they discuss family issues.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican’s chief spokesman, cited bishops who said it is essential to grasp “the importance of sexuality in spouses’ lives.”

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UNITED STATES
Hamilton and Griffin on Rights

The Synod on the Family is now beginning its third and final week at the Vatican – does it matter?

Most reporting has focused on 13 dissident prelates, including Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York and Archbishop Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, who complained in a leaked letter to Pope Francis that the synod procedures seemed “designed to facilitate predetermined results” on the issue of “Communion for the divorced and civilly remarried” – the “Plot to Change Catholicism,” Ross Douthat calls it at the Times.

Meanwhile, judging from the reports of small groups and the interventions (three-minute speeches to the plenary), participants have mostly been toiling on amendments (so-called modi) to make the synodal work plan sing. This would seem to be a lost cause.

Churchspeak and a Phrase Unspoken

In all the synod’s waffly churchspeak, as Australian Archbishop Mark Coleridge calls it, one phrase remains unspoken – the sexual abuse of children by clergy.

Why is this?

Billions of dollars have been spent on the problem in the United States, where more than 6,427 clerics are accused of sexually assaulting more than 17,259 victims. Government inquiries are being conducted in Australia and Northern Ireland, and in the Republic of Ireland, church attendance has plunged in the wake of the Ryan, Murphy, and Cloyne reports. The installation of a tainted Chilean bishop caused a near-riot, and serious questions have been raised about the Pope’s own performance in Argentina. Francis has removed three U.S. bishops for criminal mismanagement of abuse cases (1, 2&3), and he has named a Pontifical Commission to advise him on the whole mess.

Yet the many thousands of damaged and destroyed families behind those headlines merit no attention whatsoever at the 14th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops: The Vocation and Mission of the Family in the Church and the Contemporary World.

The one honorable exception is Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh, Primate of All Ireland, who said in his little-noticed intervention, “We know only too well the horrific impact of sins and crimes of abuse in the Church family: the betrayal of trust, the violation of dignity, the shame – both public and private, the anger and alienation, the wound that never seems to heal.”

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ROME
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor October 19, 2015

ROME – Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously said that war is the “continuation of politics by other means.” In similar fashion, one could say that a mounting debate at the 2015 Synod of Bishops on the family over decentralization is the continuation of arguments over the “Kasper proposal” under another guise.

Named for German Cardinal Walter Kasper, the proposal would allow some divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to return to Communion. It generated both strong support and strong opposition at the synod last year, and although it’s really only coming into focus this week, those divisions appear to run through the current summit as well.

This year’s synod, which ends Sunday, is entering the home stretch, with bishops scheduled to take up the most contentious issues, including the Kasper proposal.

Perhaps despairing of finding consensus, some bishops have suggested allowing the question to be resolved at the level of national bishops’ conferences or local bishops.

That position may have gotten a boost over the weekend from a talk by Pope Francis on Saturday at an event commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Synod of Bishops, in which he called for greater reflection on “intermediate types of collegiality” — basically, code for decentralization.

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SCOTLAND
Scottish Legal News

Two panel members have been appointed to Scotland’s Historic Child Abuse Inquiry by Education Secretary Angela Constance today.

Glenn Houston and Professor Michael Lamb will undertake the work of the inquiry, alongside the chair, Susan O’Brien QC.

Mr Houston is chief executive of the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority of Northern Ireland and Professor Lamb is a professor of psychology and Fellow at Sidney Sussex College, the University of Cambridge.

The inquiry formally began on October 1, 2015 with Ms O’Brien calling for those who believe they have information to share with the Inquiry to make initial contact with the Inquiry team.

Ms Constance said: “Following the launch of the Inquiry, the naming of its counsel and the launch of the Inquiry website at the start of this month, I am pleased to be able to announce the appointment of two panel members to support the chair.

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SCOTLAND
The Extra

A leading social worker and an expert on child abuse have been appointed to Scotland’s public inquiry into the historical abuse of children in care.

Panel members Glenn Houston and Professor Michael Lamb will help chair Susan O’Brien QC with the work of the inquiry, which formally began at the start of the month.

Mr Houston is the chief executive of Northern Ireland’s independent health and social care regulator, the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority, and has more than 30 years’ experience working in the field.

Mr Lamb is a professor of psychology at the University of Cambridge and headed a research unit at the US National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Washington DC for 17 years.

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CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles Times

Joelle Casteix

When I was between the ages of 15 and 17, I was sexually abused by one of my high school teachers in Orange County. By the time the abuse ended, I was pregnant and had a sexually transmitted disease.

It took me years to understand the extent of my abuse and recover enough to come forward, but by that time, the criminal and civil statutes of limitations had expired. Even though I had evidence that my choir director had sexually assaulted me, there was nothing I could do to stop him from targeting other vulnerable teens.

California has abysmally complicated sex crime statutes. Child victims abused before Jan. 1, 2015, have until age 28 to file criminal charges and 26 to use the civil courts (with some exceptions for those who meet a high burden of proof). Minors abused after that date (or who didn’t hit the time limit by that date) have until 40 to file criminal charges and 26 for civil charges, again with exceptions.

For adult sexual assault victims, there is no limit for aggravated sexual assault — that is, when the assailant uses a weapon or there are multiple assailants. For “normal” sexual assault, adult victims usually have 10 years to file criminal charges, unless there is DNA evidence, which can give victims more time. The limit for sexual assault civil cases is two years from the date of the occurrence.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 17 October 2015 (VIS) – The Holy Father has appointed:

– Msgr. Francesco Manenti as bishop of Senigallia, (area 580, population 130,012, Catholics 121,260, priests 86, permanent deacons 11, religious 110), Italy. The bishop-elect was born in Sergnano, Italy in 1963 and was ordained a priest in 1975. He holds a licentiate in theology from the theological faculty of northern Italy in Milan, and has served in a number of pastoral roles in the diocese of Crema, including parish vicar at the Cathedral, chaplain, spiritual director of the episcopal seminary, teacher at the “Dante Alighieri” diocesan school, head of the diocesan centre for spirituality and diocesan director of the family office. He is currently vicar general of the diocese of Crema, parish priest, lecturer in theology and member of the Commission for the permanent formation of the clergy. He succeeds Bishop Giuseppe Orlandoni, whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same diocese upon reaching the age limit was accepted by the Holy Father.

– Msgr. José Melitón Chávez as bishop of Añatuya (area 68,000, population 155,800, Catholics 138,000, priests 43, religious 110), Argentina. The bishop-elect was born in Romera Pozo in Argentina in 1957, and was ordained a priest in 1985. He has served in various roles in the archdiocese of Tucumán, including parish vicar, pastor, vicar forane, formator, vice rector and rector of the major seminary of Tucumán, assessor for Catholic Action, vicar general, episcopal vicar for soliarity and member of the pastoral council and college of consultors. He is currently pastor of the El Salvador parish.

– Msgr. José Luis Henao Cadavid as bishop of Libano – Honda (area 3,477, population 257,049, Catholics 238,710, priests 48, religious 83), Colombia. The bishop-elect was born in Andes, Colombia in 1954 and was ordained a priest in 1979. He holds a licentiate in canon law from the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome, and has served in a number of roles, including parish vicar, pastor, rector of the minor seminary, defender of the bond, judge in the ecclesiastical tribunal of Medellin, diocesan delegate for social and lay pastoral ministry, diocesan vicar for pastoral ministry and pastor of the Cathedral. He is currently pastor of the “Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes” parish in Andes.

– Cardinal Nicolás de Jesús López Rodríguez, archbishop of Santo Domingo, as his special envoy to the celebration of the fifth centenary of the city of Cumana, Venezuela, origin of the evangelisation of South America, scheduled for 27 November 2015.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

(Vatican Radio) The Synod of Bishops on the family moves into its third and final week on Monday with participants meeting in small language groups to discuss further changes they’d like to see in the concluding document.

Over the first two weeks the Church leaders have been seeking to resolve tensions between two different visions of family life and ministry, one focused more on the traditional teaching of the Church and the other searching for new ways of engaging with people in relationships or situations that do not conform to Catholic doctrine.

To find out about how the Church leaders are hoping to reconcile these two visions, Philippa Hitchen spoke to the bishop of Northampton in central England, Peter Doyle…..

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NEW JERSEY
The Tidings

By Kevin J. Jones

October 17, 2015 – Catholic News Agency

A memo from the Archbishop of Newark to his priests on the reception of the Eucharist aimed to provide guidance amid the challenges of modern life, but was “taken wildly out of context” in media reports.

James Goodness, the Newark archdiocese’s communications director, told CNA Oct. 15 that the memo is about principles, not rules or particular law. He said these principles aim to call on priests to “walk with the people” in their situations and “to cherish and welcome them to participate as they can, according to the faith.”

“This direction is very much in line with the thinking and actions of Pope Francis,” Goodness said.

He added that the Pope is “reminding priests today that Church teaching will not change, but that we are all called to help people to understand the teaching, resolve differences, and bring about conversion.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
Independent Catholic News

Monday, October 19, 2015

The latest edition of the ‘Church’s Book of Statistics’ was released to coincide with World Mission Sunday yesterday. The book details members of the Church, church structures, healthcare, welfare and education. Increases or decreases, emerging from comparison with last year’s figures, are marked increase + or decrease – in brackets.

World population

To 31 December 2013 the world population was 7.093.798.000 with an increase of 70.421.000 compared with the previous year. Population growth was registered on every continent above all in Asia and Africa followed by America ; Europe and Oceania.

Catholics

On the same date Catholics in the world numbered 1.253.926,000 with an overall increase of 25,305,000 more than the previous year. The increase affects all continents especially America and Africa followed by Asia ; Europe and Oceania.

The world percentage of Catholics increased by 0.09 %, settling at 17.68%. By continent: increases were registered in Africa, America, Asia, Europe. A slight decrease was shown in Oceania.

Persons and Catholics per priest

This year the number of persons per priest in the world increased by 180 units, average 13.752. The distribution by continent: increase in America; Europe and Oceania; decrease in Africa; Asia.

The number of Catholics per priest in the world increased by 54 units, average 3.019. There are increases in America; Europe and Oceania; decrease in Asia and Africa.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Ralph Riegel

PUBLISHED
19/10/2015

The priest at the centre of the Cloyne Report is pursuing a challenge under canonical law to his dismissal from the clergy.

The priest, referred to in the Cloyne Report as ‘Fr Ronat’ and ‘Fr B’, has vowed to clear his name with a full legal challenge to Rome.

The Irish Independent understands that a central element of the challenge will be the church’s decision to issue an apology and offer compensation to those who had levelled allegations against him while the disciplinary process was still ongoing.

The cleric’s legal team has argued that this stance was taken despite the fact that the cleric was acquitted in two criminal trials. He has consistently protested his innocence.

The dismissal of ‘Fr Ronat’ from the clerical state was recommended by an Irish canonical court almost two years ago. This was ratified by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, one of Rome’s highest clerical courts, despite an appeal from Fr Ronat.

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MARYLAND
Haaretz

A Cleveland-area rabbi will serve 22 years in prison after pleading guilty to sexual abuse of a minor.

Rabbi Frederick (Ephraim) Karp, 51, was sentenced Thursday in Baltimore County Circuit Court in Maryland, the home county of the victims, all females. He had been scheduled to go on trial later this month.

Karp, the former director of spiritual living at Menorah Park Center for Senior Living in Beachwood, Ohio, was sentenced to 35 years, with 13 years suspended, plus five years of supervised probation after he is released, the Cleveland Jewish News reported.

The abuse reportedly took place when family friends visited the Karp’s suburban Cleveland home, and also when he visited the family, over a five-year period that ended last December. The victims lived in Baltimore County at the time of the incidents. Two of the three were under the age of 18.
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/jewish-world-news/1.681146

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NEW YORK
The Flemingsburg Gazette

Brittany Kelley | 19 October 2015

Bruce Leonard, 65, and his wife, Deborah Leonard, 59, were in court a few feet from Irwin on Friday. Four other members of the church, including the victim’s sister, are being charged with assault for their roles in the deadly attack.

“I anticipate, when we go to the grand jury, we will ask the grand jury to consider these charges and other charges against these individuals and other individuals”, McNamara stated. David and Linda Morey were recently released on $50,000 bond a piece.

A witness at a probable cause hearing told a judge the counseling session lasted 14 hours, beginning Sunday night and ending Monday morning. Details emerged in court of the cult-like Word of Life Christian Church in New Hartford, N.Y., which adheres to fundamentalist principles and a literal interpretation of the Bible, and supposedly fostered an increasingly violent environment spearheaded by its preacher, based on witness accounts.

“The victim expressed a desire to leave the church and this is what may have initiated the session”.

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WEST VIRGINIA
The Exponent Telegram

Associated Press

BLUEFIELD, W.Va. (AP) — An attorney for a church volunteer in Bluefield accused of sexually molesting children is arguing that the pastor of the church violated his priest-penitent privilege when he brought his concerns about the volunteer to police.

The Bluefield Daily-Telegraph (http://bit.ly/1M0oqUP ) reports that the attorney argues in pre-trial motions that the charges against Timothy Probert of Mercer County should be dismissed.

The state counters that the pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church was following the state’s mandatory reporting law.

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UNITED STATES
PopeCrimes& Vatican Evils.

Paris Arrow

In his America article, “The Media Ministry”, Jesuit priest James Martin (we do not call priests “Father” because of many reason, more on that later) (intentionally?) omits the Los Angeles Times regarding the “sexual abuse crisis” (he does not mention “priests and clergy” or who committed the abuse). Martin wrote, “Boston Globe ran its extensive series of articles on the sexual abuse crisis in the early 2000s…The National Catholic Reporter ran a remarkable series of articles on abuse in the 1990s….” James Martin knows his colleagues the Jesuits contemporary history very well – and he knows that it was the Los Angeles Times and NOT the Boston Globe or NCR — who were the first investigative reporters on clergy sexual abuse.

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MINNESOTA
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: Kirby Blanchard was ordained for the Duluth diocese in 1953. He was an assistant at the Cathedral in Duluth for 12 years, then pastored parishes in Garrison, Deerwood, Deer River, Cohasset, Nisswa, Pequot Lakes, Pine River, and Duluth until 1976. He was a hospital chaplain in Duluth from 1976 until his retirement in 1993. Blanchard was removed from active ministry in December 1995. He died August 11, 2006. Blanchard’s name was included on a list released by the Duluth diocese in December 2013 of priests who had been credibly accused of sexual abuse of young persons while serving in the diocese.

Born: November 16, 1928
Ordained: May 30, 1953
Died: August 11, 2006

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Nick McLaren

The victim in an alleged Wollongong historic child abuse case has repeatedly rejected claims in court he made up the allegations.

The alleged abuse involved former priest Father Patrick Kervin at Holy Spirit College in Bellambi.

The student was aged 15 when the alleged abuse occurred in the 1980s.

Now aged in his 40’s, the student who cannot be named, told the court Kervin called him to his office to console him as his mother was ill.

He described how Kervin put his hand on his knee then slid his hand up his leg, touching his genitals as he leaned in to kiss him.

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ROME
American Magazine

Gerard O’Connell | Oct 18 2015

Cardinal Donald Wuerl has flatly denied the allegations by some of his fellow cardinals and bishops that the fathers attending the synod are “somehow” being manipulated by the pope and the synod structure that Francis approved. He wonders whether the underlying reason why they are suggesting or saying such things is because “they just don’t like this pope,” and find the church that he is calling for “somewhat threatening.”

In this interview with America on Oct. 18, the cardinal archbishop of Washington charged that a number of his brother cardinals and bishops have their own position and think that some questions now on the synod agenda should not even be discussed. He said some of these people “are speaking, sometimes surreptitiously, sometimes half-way implying, then backing off and then twisting around” and in this way they have “tainted” the synod process in the public eye with their groundless allegations of manipulation, and so cast a cloud over its outcome.

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UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: Louis Brouillard was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Guam in 1948, where he worked in parishes and schools until 1981. There are several gaps in his work history during those years, including a sick leave 1966-68. In 1981 Brouillard was transferred as an extern priest to Diocese of Duluth, MN. He was Temporary Administrator of St. Joseph’s in Beroun for a year, then Pastor of both St. Mary’s in Keewatin and St. Anne’s in Kelly Lake until 1985. Bouillard was removed from active ministry in November 1985. His whereabouts 1985-1987 are unclear. He retired in 1987 to Pine City, MN, with another sick leave 1988-89. Brouillard’s name was included on a list released by the Duluth diocese in December 2013 of priests who had been credibly accused of sexual abuse of young persons while serving in the diocese.

Born: July 27, 1921
Ordained: December 17, 1948

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ROME
Boston Herald

Sunday, October 18, 2015

By: Brian Dowling

Pope Francis has put Vatican insiders on notice in a speech to bishops, envisioning a church that draws its power from the people instead of a stodgy, disconnected hierarchy — a move to shift the church’s center of gravity that experts say brings it back to its roots.

“The centralization of all authority in Rome is in fact a modern idea, and basically Pope Francis wants to move us back to a pattern that was more typical of the early church,” said Thomas H. Groome, a professor and director of Boston College’s Church of the 21st Century Center.

Pope Francis told bishops yesterday at a Vatican synod on family issues that “walking together” as a church of lay people, bishops and a pope “is an easy concept to put into words, but not so easy to put into practice.”

But having a church that gives everyone a say would be a great example to the world that “often hands over the destiny of entire populations into the greedy hands of restricted groups of the powerful,” Francis said.

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ROME
The New Yorker

OCTOBER 16, 2015

BY ALEXANDER STILLE

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

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

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

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VATICAN CITY
HeraldNet

Associated Press
Published: Sunday, October 18, 2015

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

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

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

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

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VATICAN CITY
America Magazine

Gerard O’Connell | Oct 17 2015

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

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

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

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

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UNITED KINGDOM
Spectator

Damian Thompson

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

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

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

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

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DEUTSCHLAND
Westdeutsche Zeitung

Von Peter Korall

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

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

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NEW YORK
New York Post

By Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein
October 18, 2015

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

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

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

Abortion is against the teachings of the Greek Orthodox Church.

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

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ROME
Crux

By Michael O’Loughlin
National reporter October 17, 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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MINNESOTA
Duluth News Tribune

By Tom Olsen on Oct 17, 2015

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

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

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

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

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WEST VIRGINIA
Bluefield Daily Telegraph

Sunday, October 18, 2015

Samantha Perry

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

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

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

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

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

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

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

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

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

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UNITED STATES
Crisis Magazine

AUSTIN RUSE

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

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

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

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

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

Ross Douthat

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

And right now the chief plotter is the pope himself.

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

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

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

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ILLINOIS
Chicago Sun-Times

WRITTEN BY TINA SFONDELES POSTED: 10/17/2015

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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OHIO
YouTube

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

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VATICAN CITY
The Weekly Standard

BY JONATHAN V. LAST

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now that’s chaos.

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NEW YORK
Philipstown.info

October 17, 2015
Author will detail strategies for parents

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

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

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MARYLAND
Fox 8

[with video]

BY JEN STEER

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

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

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

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MARYLAND
Reuters

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

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

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

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

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REPUBLICA DOMINICANA
El Nuevo Dia

AP

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

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

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

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AUSTRALIA
The Daily Examiner

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

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

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

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

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

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DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Dominican Today

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

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

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

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MASSACHUSETTS
Christian Today

Czarina Ong 17 October 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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UNITED STATES
Religion News Service – Rhymes with Religion

Boz Tchividjian | Oct 16, 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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MISSISSIPPI
Roman Catholic Diocese of Jackson

Posted on September 21, 2015 by Maureen Smith

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Star

By Jeremy Culley / Published 16th October 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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MARYLAND
Cleveland Jewish News

Posted: Friday, October 16, 2015

ED WITTENBERG | STAFF REPORTER
ewittenberg@cjn.org

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

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

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

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

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ROME
International Movement We Are Church

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

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

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

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

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

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NEW MEXICO
Gallup Independent

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

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

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

But were those declarations true?

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

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

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

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

Public event

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First Amendment concerns

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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MALTA
Malta Independent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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UNITED KINGDOM
Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

16 October

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

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

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

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

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

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

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

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

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

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

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UNITED KINGDOM
Channel 4

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

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

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

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

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UNITED KINGDOM
International Business Times

By Ewan Palmer
October 16, 2015

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

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

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

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

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier-Mail

DAVID MURRAY THE COURIER-MAIL OCTOBER 17, 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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UNITED STATES
America Magazine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

OCTOBER 17, 2015

Dan Box
Crime Reporter
Sydney

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

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

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

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

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

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Thomas Reese | Oct. 15, 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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LATIN AMERICA
GlobalPost

Will Carless on Oct 16, 2015

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

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

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

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

Jan Van Dael, in Fortaleza, Brazil
Status: Suspended

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

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

Federico Fernandez Baeza, in Cartagena, Colombia
Status: Suspended

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

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

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

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

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

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ROME
Commonweal

Robert Mickens
October 14, 201

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

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

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

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

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

October 16, 2015

Michael Koziol
Journalist

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

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

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

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

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

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VATICAN CITY
Religion News Service

David Gibson | October 16, 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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

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