ABUSE TRACKER

UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Editorial

The trial and sentencing of Peter Ball, a retired bishop, for sex offences against 18 adolescent boys is an act of justice very long and shamefully delayed. The last of the offences for which he is being punished took place in 1992 and at the time he was merely cautioned. The most shocking aspect of the case is the widespread support he received from the old establishment.

His immediate superior, Eric Kemp, then the bishop of Chichester, wrote in his memoirs that: “The circumstances which led to [Ball’s] early resignation were the work of mischief-makers.”

According to the Crown Prosecution Service, letters and phone calls in favour of this abuser were sent to the police by MPs, JPs, public school headmasters, and an unnamed member of the royal family. Immediately after Ball first accepted a caution, he was lent a cottage that belonged to the Prince of Wales. It was on an estate where Ball lived undisturbed until the case against him was reopened as part of a more general investigation of the rottenness of the Chichester diocese under Kemp.

What were they thinking? In all this extraordinary collection of the great and the bad was there no one who thought that the victims deserved more consideration than the perpetrator of the abuse? One answer is that Ball was widely considered an exceptionally holy man; in fact much of his abuse took place in the context of supposedly spiritual disciplines such as naked cold showering. Excess of charisma and sexual appetite are often closely linked, especially in a religious context. Another may be the confusion which at the time surrounded homosexual attraction. The first of the offences for which Ball has been convicted took place only 10 years after gay sex between consenting adults was legalised and, given the age of the victims, would have been illegal even if they had consented. A misplaced sense of solidarity led some people of liberal inclinations to overlook crimes they should never have tolerated.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Daily Beast

Nico Hines

LONDON — An extraordinary elite-level cover-up that included a member of the royal family, Cabinet ministers and judges conspired to keep a pedophile bishop safe from prosecution and free to continue abusing boys.

Peter Ball, the former bishop of Lewes, was finally convicted Wednesday for decades of sexual crimes against boys and young men that date back into the 1970s.

The accusations first emerged in the early 1990s but detectives investigating the case were bombarded by calls of support for the bishop from Members of Parliament, former school headmasters, judges and a Lord.

Further support from the establishment arrived in the mail, with more than 2,000 letters including references from Cabinet ministers and one member of the Royal family.

The Royal concerned has not been named, but Ball has described Prince Charles as “a loyal friend.”

The future King of England had been at the ceremony when Ball was appointed Bishop of Gloucester, and he allowed him to retire to a wisteria-clad lodge on one of his estates when a first round of sex abuse allegations forced his resignation.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daiy Mail

By HUGO GYE FOR MAILONLINE

A bishop who escaped prosecution for abusing young men when a host of Establishment figures – including a member of the Royal family – defended him is finally behind bars.

Peter Ball’s imprisonment comes as Prince Charles has denied that he is the unidentified Royal who intervened two decades ago to help out the former Bishop of Lewes and Gloucester.

Ball – who once described the heir to the throne as ‘a loyal friend’ – was arrested in 1992 after beating a 17-year-old novice monk and encouraging him to pray naked.

However, the Director of Public Prosecutions decided not to charge him after a number of VIPs including MPs, public school headmasters and the Lord Chief Justice phoned police to stand up for him.

Among 2,000 letters of support sent on behalf of Ball were some from cabinet ministers and one from a Royal, the Old Bailey heard.

When asked if the Royal was Prince Charles, a spokesman for Clarence House said: ‘The Prince of Wales made no intervention in the judicial process on behalf of Peter Ball.’

Ball, now 83, was today jailed for 32 months, two decades after he was let off with a caution for carrying out a string of sex attacks on vulnerable youths.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Church of England

05 October 2015

The Archbishop of Canterbury has today commissioned an independent review of the way the Church of England responded to the case of Peter Ball, the former Bishop of Gloucester.

During a hearing at the Central Criminal Court on September 8th of this year Bishop Peter Ball pleaded guilty to two charges of indecent assault and one charge of misconduct in public office following the work of Sussex police as part of Operation Dunhill.

Operation Dunhill began as a direct result of the safeguarding officer at Lambeth Palace raising concerns about Peter Ball following a church initiated review of files. The approach to the police was a proactive step on the part of the national Church leading to a self-initiated referral via CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre) to Sussex Police in 2012. This led to active co-working between the Church and Sussex Police on a complex enquiry with full information sharing.

Since Peter Ball’s guilty plea questions have been raised about the Church’s handling of this case. As a result the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has today commissioned an independent review of the way the Church responded.

The independent review will examine the Church of England’s cooperation with the police and other statutory agencies and the extent to which it shared information in a timely manner, identifying both good practice and shortcomings alike. It will also assess the extent to which the Church both properly assessed the possible risk that Bishop Ball might pose to others and responded adequately to concerns and representations submitted by survivors.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Church of England

07 October 2015

“It is a matter of deep shame and regret that a Bishop in the Church of England has today been sentenced for a series of offences over 15 years against 18 young men known to him. There are no excuses whatsoever for what took place and the systematic abuse of trust perpetrated by Peter Ball over decades.

We apologise unreservedly to those survivors of Peter Ball’s abuse and pay tribute to their bravery in coming forward and also the long wait for justice that they have endured. We note that there are those whose cases remain on file for whom today will be a difficult day, not least in the light of the courage and persistence that they have demonstrated in pressing for the truth to be revealed. We also remember Neil Todd, whose bravery in 1992 enabled others to come forward but who took his own life before Peter Ball’s conviction or sentencing.

As the Police have noted Peter Ball systematically abused the trust of the victims, many of whom who were aspiring priests, whilst others were simply seeking to explore their spirituality. He also abused the trust placed in him by the Church and others, maintaining a campaign of innocence for decades until his final guilty plea only weeks ago. Since that plea was made processes in the Church have begun to initiate formal internal disciplinary procedures against Peter Ball.

Operation Dunhill began as a direct result of the safeguarding officer at Lambeth Palace raising concerns about Peter Ball following a church initiated review of files. The approach to the police was a proactive step on the part of the national Church leading to a self-initiated referral via CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre) to Sussex Police in 2012. This led to active co-working between Lambeth Palace, the Diocese of Chichester and Sussex Police on a complex enquiry with full information sharing. We pay tribute to those detectives whose work on this case over the past three years has led to this conviction and sentencing.

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UNITED KINGDOM
ITV

[with video]

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey has denied being involved in covering up the sex crimes of a former Bishop.

Peter Ball was jailed for 32 months for a string of sex crimes against young aspiring priests.

The Church of England is also investigating claims that senior clerics helped cover-up the sex crimes after victims claimed that it prevented him from facing justice for decades.

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UNITED KINGDOM
ITV

[with video]

In 1986 ITV screened a documentary about a bishop heralded as one of the most spiritual and loving figures in the Church of England.

His name was Peter Ball.

At the time it was viewed as a fascinating insight into the work of Bishop of Lewes, who was running a retreat for spiritually curious young people, some of them aspiring priests.

I watched it again today.

Nearly 30 years on, it has a chilling quality.

In the opening minute of the programme Peter Ball tells his spellbound young audience, who have signed up to “give a year to Christ”:

VERY FAR from that, as one victim knows only too well.

He wanted to be identified but cannot be because of a court order imposed at the Old Bailey today.

We will call him Peter.

He was a teenager worshipping at a church in Eastbourne when the abuse began.
It lasted over a number of years. It was highly manipulative now I look back. But it was deeply confusing for me as a public schoolboy taught in the 1970s to respect authority and not question things.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Belfast Telegraph

A former Archbishop of Canterbury today denied presiding over a “cover-up” as one of his senior clergymen was jailed for sexually abusing aspiring priests – 22 years after it first came to light.

Lord Carey was head of the Church of England when it emerged that Peter Ball had misused his power over teenagers and young men who had come to his home in Litlington, East Sussex, through a Give A Year For Christ scheme.

While Bishop of Lewes, Ball had hand-picked 18 vulnerable victims to commit acts of “debasement” in the name of religion, such as praying naked at the altar and encouraging them to submit to beatings.

Despite a number of complaints, Ball, who went on to become Bishop of Gloucester, was never charged and even continued to work as a priest in Truro after he accepted a caution for gross indecency in 1993.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

Brittie Perez (Brittmarie Janson Perez) has sent me another excellent essay that I’m delighted to publish today. Readers who have followed this blog will perhaps remember that I’ve previously published other pieces by Brittie — here and here. What follows is Brittie’s latest text, entitled Non Posso Piu:

The Italian phrase, Non posso piu, can be translated in any number of ways. Here it functions as “I can’t put up with it any longer.”

What is that “it” with which I can no longer put up?

The atitudes and behavior of the hierarchy who control the Catholic church.

My protest comprises non-attendance at the church which I attended here in Italy, built by my ancestors and now presided over by a well-meaning, innocent Italian priest. Assigned to the parish only a year ago, the priest presided over the splendid funeral given by the town to my late husband. To be assigned as the sole priest of this litte town had been a step up for him as, due to his lack of liturgical sophistication, the bishop of our diocese had kept close, allowed him to preside only over funerals, and bullied by his fellow priests. Though he will be astonished at my drastic action because he brings me Communion when I am ill, he is not as naive as most think. When I told him I was writing a piece on Kiko Arguello and the Neocathecumenals, he told me that, after attending a Neocathecumenal “mass” at the invitation of a fellow priest, he flatly told his host, “That is a sect.”

After seven decades of church going, what was the drop that finally caused my cup to overflow?

Like thousands of Catholics, my road out of the Church was well paved. In fact, I had taken that route in 1993 when the huge pedophilia scandal in New Mexico erupted leading to the resignation of Archbishop Robert F. Sanchez. However, I won’t go into all the causes of my dissaffection here. Just the fact that I have given this to Bill Lindsey for Bilgrimage should suffice. But as the devil is in the details, I must admit that Pope Francis’ meeting with Kim Davis, with all the Machiavellic machinations it involved, opened wide the EXIT gate.

Paradoxically enough, the last drop was an article in the Italian magazine Jesus, published by the Catholic Paulist press in Rome. In the April 2015 issue, I found an article by Mauro Castagnaro on the case of Chilean Monsignor Juan de la Cruz Barros, appointed bishop of Osorno over the protests of the victims of the sexual abuse by Fernando Karadima, victims who accused Barros of having covered up for Karadima. Details of the case can be found in Jason Berry’s “Chilean cardinals close to pope stained by abuse cover-ups,” published by NCR on 29 April 2014.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, Oct. 7

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

Another Altoona priest has allegedly committed child sex crimes. He’s the 28th Altoona-Johnstown diocesan cleric to be publicly accused of molesting children.

[Daily American]

We hope that every single person who saw, suspected or suffered crimes or misdeeds by Fr. Martin Cingle will find the courage to step forward, get help, expose wrongdoers, protect kids and start healing. We especially appeal to current and former church employees to share what they may know or suspect about this priest with law enforcement.

Bishop Mark Bartchak should get out from behind his desk, ignore his lawyers, and personally visit each site where Fr. Cingle worked, begging victims, witnesses and whistle-blowers to call police and prosecutors.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Anglican Communion News Service

Posted on: October 7, 2015

[ACNS] The Church of England has spoken of its “deep shame and regret” this afternoon [Wednesday] after a former diocesan bishop was sentenced to 36 months in prison after admitting a series of abuse offences against 18 young men.

Peter Ball committed the abuse between 1977 and 1992 when he was Bishop of Lewes in the Diocese of Chichester.

In 1993, a year after being appointed Bishop of Gloucester, Peter Ball stood down from full time ministry after accepting a police caution for the sexual assault of a young man, named Neil Todd, who later committed suicide. A police caution in England and Wales is a non-judicial method of disposing of admitted criminal accusations and is usually reserved for first-time minor offences.

The renewed police investigation against Peter Ball was sparked by concerns raised by the Church of England following an in-house review of all clergy files by independent safeguarding professionals. Last month, after first arguing – unsuccessfully – that he was not fit to stand trial and that a bishop is not the holder of a “public office”, the 83-year-old pleaded guilty to charges of indecent assault and misconduct in public office.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Spectator

Damian Thompson

Pope Francis’s three-week Synod on the Family began on Sunday. Most of the 279 ‘Synod Fathers’ are senior bishops, many of them cardinals. They have no authority to change any aspect of Catholic teaching or pastoral practice. They are discussing the ‘hot button’ issues of communion for the divorced and remarried and the spiritual care of gay Catholics — but, once the meeting is over, power will rest entirely in the hands of the Pope.

Conservative Catholics aren’t happy. Last year, at a preparatory ‘extraordinary’ synod, officials hand-picked by Francis announced in the middle of the proceedings that the Fathers favoured a more relaxed approach to gay relationships and second marriages. Senior cardinals exploded with rage, because most Fathers favoured no such thing. The liberal synod organisers — Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, secretary general of the synod, and Archbishop Bruno Forte, its ‘special secretary’ — were forced to drop their claims. The whole thing was a car crash and obviously their fault.

Yet Francis stuck by them. As a result, once again the synod working papers are stuffed with sociological waffle. Worse, Baldisseri and Forte are sitting on the commission that will draft the final report that goes to the Pope. This time round, however, the conservatives are alert to the dangers. On Monday morning they struck first. …

One decision really bothers them. Why did Francis ask Cardinal Godfried Danneels, a retired Belgian archbishop, to join the assembly? Danneels maintains that the church ‘has never opposed the fact that there should exist a sort of “marriage” between homosexuals’. No other cardinal holds this batty view.

But that’s not the problem. In 2010, a man confided in Danneels that he had been abused by a bishop, Roger Vangheluwe. The cardinal, who didn’t know he was being tape-recorded, told him to shut up until after the bishop retired.

The victim was Bishop Vangheluwe’s nephew. And now the cardinal who tried to cover up the abuse has been invited by the Pope to a synod on the family. Also, very unhelpfully, he has just written a book claiming credit for getting Bergoglio elected. ‘The Danneels thing is the most troubling aspect of the synod,’ says a respected Catholic writer. ‘If the scandal breaks properly, it could blow the whole thing apart.’

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UNITED KINGDOM
Western Gazette

AN elderly woman was sexually assaulted by a priest because she was the “perfect victim”, a court heard.

Roy Catchpole, 69, of Gainsborough, Milborne Port, is charged with three accounts of sexual assault and one of exposure.

His trial began on Tuesday at Bournemouth Crown Court.

The alleged offences took place between August 1, 2013 and June 29, 2014.

Catchpole, who appeared smartly dressed in grey suit jacket and yellow shirt, denies all charges.

In her opening statement, prosecutor Fern Russell explained how the victim, a retired lady who cannot be identified for legal reasons, was the “perfect victim” for Catchpole.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Daily American

By ERIC KIETA erick@dailyamerican.com

A priest who heads churches in Boswell and Davidsville has been placed on leave and is under investigation by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown for an allegation that he sexually abused a minor in 2002.

Diocese spokesman Tony DeGol confirmed Tuesday that the Rev. Martin Cingle, 68, is on leave from All Saints in Boswell and St. Anne in Davidsville. Cingle, however, has not been arrested or charged by police.

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IRELAND
Irish Mirror

BY ALANA FEARON

Ageing priests and a plummeting number of practising Catholics have left the Church facing an unprecedented crisis

Catholic churches may be shut down completely as a chronic lack of priests and falling attendance sees Masses cancelled.

The situation nationwide is already so critical that weekday services have been cancelled and Sunday Masses in many places are only held every second weekend.

Ageing priests, a lack of young seminarians and a plummeting number of practising Catholics have left the Church facing an unprecedented crisis.

The institution in America has dealt with the same turmoil by shutting churches and clustering whole parishes.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 7 October 2015 (VIS) – The Holy Father has appointed:

– Fr. Luy Gonzaga Nguyen Hung Vi as bishop of Kontum (area 25,240, population 1,775,200, Catholics 300,649, priests 169, religious 477), Vietnam. The bishop-elect was born in Ha Noi, Vietnam, in 1952, and was ordained a priest in 1990. He holds a licentiate in liturgy from the Institut Catholique of Paris, France, and has served as parish vicar of Binh Cang in Nha Trang, director of the minor seminary of Kontum in Ho Chi Minh City, and secretary of the episcopal office in Kontum. He is currently pastor of the parish of Phuong Nghia, Kontum. He succeeds Bishop Michael Hoang Duc Oanh, whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same diocese upon reaching the age limit was accepted by the Holy Father.

– Bishop Carmelo Cuttitta, auxiliary of the archdiocese of Palermo, Italy, as bishop of Ragusa (area 1,029, population 221,835, Catholics 213,252, priests 130, permanent deacons 8, religious 276), Italy. He succeeds Bishop Paolo Urso, whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same diocese upon reaching the age limit was accepted by the Holy Father.

– Fr. Peter Huynh Van Hai as bishop of Vinh Long (area 6,772, population 3,976,552, Catholics 199,404, priests 205, religious 775), Vietnam. The bishop-elect was born in 1954 in Ben Tre, Vietnam, and was ordained a priest in 1994. He holds a doctorate in philosophy from the Institut Catholique of Paris, France, and has served as head of vocations for the diocese of Vinh Long. He is currently lecturer in philosophy in the major seminaries of Can Tho and Ho Chi Minh City.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Phyllis Zagano | Oct. 7, 2015 Just Catholic

Early church fathers preferred asceticism but figured out that without marriage and children the church would not last long. They wrote that married households are the basis of Christian community.

Skip ahead several centuries and they are at it again. A room full of celibate men talking about marriage.

Oh, they’ve let a few other folks into the back rows: 17 married couples and some others. They even have three women religious (one each from Malta, Costa Rica, and the U.S.) representing the International Union of Superiors General.

The bottom line: it’s all-male, all the time, and 99.6% clerical. Of the 279 voting members of the Synod of Bishops on the Vocation and Mission of the Family in the Church and the Contemporary World, there is one brother — the superior general of the Little Brothers of Jesus, the lay group inspired by Charles de Foucauld to live simple lives among the people. There are nine other men religious — heads of Benedictine, Dominican, Franciscan, Jesuit and Redemptorist orders and others — and a reasonable number of the synod fathers are religious priests. But, aside from the religious men’s experiences of communal living, the voting members’ family life ended when they left Mom and Dad for the seminary, some at the age of 14.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Herald Scotland

A former bishop who exploited aspiring priests for his own “selfish sexual motives” has been jailed for 32 months – 22 years after the abuse first surfaced.

A member of the Royal family was among a host of Establishment figures who supported the former bishop of Lewes when he avoided charges in 1993.

Last month, after a last ditch attempt to get his case thrown out failed, Peter Ball pleaded guilty to misconduct in a public office and two counts of indecent assault on young men in their teens.

The court heard how Ball had convinced some of his victims to strip naked to pray and even suggested they submit to beatings between 1977 and 1992.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Frankfurter Allgemeine

[A priest named Wolf Dieter W. has been defrocked by Pope Francis. He was accused of abusing minors.]

Limburg/Würzburg/Rom.
Am 26. Juni entzog Papst Franziskus dem 75 Jahren alten Priester Wolfdieter W. alle Rechte und Pflichten, die mit dem Klerikerstand verbunden sind. Der 75-Jährige wurde somit aus dem Stand der Priester entlassen. Anlass für die Entscheidung des Papstes: sexueller Missbrauch von Minderjährigen.

Es war ein Fall aus dem Bistum Limburg, den der Papst handeln ließ. Er liegt lange zurück. Aber der 1940 in Grätz geborene Wolfdieter W. ist wegen sexuellen Missbrauchs schon mehrmals aufgefallen. 1985 gab es anonyme Hinweise in Miltenberg und eine Anzeige wegen möglicher Übergriffe auf Kinder. 1986 gab es ein Strafverfahren vor dem Amtsgericht Obernburg wegen sexuellen Missbrauchs. W. wurde zu einer Geldstrafe verurteilt und legte Berufung ein. Das Verfahren wurde 1987 gegen Geldauflage eingestellt. Noch 1986 trat W. seinen Dienst im Bistum Limburg an. Dort kam es ebenfalls zu Beschuldigungen wegen sexueller Belästigungen. Das Bistum versetzte den Pfarrer vom Westerwald nach Frankfurt in eine Klinik.

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ITALY
The Local

An Italian priest was immediately suspended from his church in the northern city of Trento on Tuesday after defending paedophilia during a live television interview, arguing that “children often seek affection”.

Father Gino Flaim, of the San Giuseppe and Pio X parish, said he “understands paedophilia” but wasn’t so sure about homosexuality.

When asked to explain his comments on the La7 show, L’aria che tira, he said:

“Because I’ve been to lots of schools and I know children. Unfortunately, there are children who seek affection because they don’t get it at home.”

He acknowledged that paedophilia is a sin, but that “like all sins, it has to be accepted”. He believes that homosexuality, on the other hand, is an “illness”.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Catholic Herald

The winner of the prize will be announced on Friday

Pope Francis is among the front runners for the Nobel Peace Prize which will be announced on Friday morning.

Pope Francis is not the only Catholic among the contenders because an Eritrean priest is also a front runner for the prestigous prize.

Fr Mussie Zerai set up a hotline for refugees from his country making the perilous journey to Europe so that they can call the priest when they face difficuly.

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ITALY
The Guardian (UK)

Associated Press in Rome
Wednesday 7 October 2015

The Catholic church in northern Italy’s Trento region has penalised a priest who said paedophilia in the church was caused by children seeking the affection of clergymen, but that homosexuality was an inexplicable sickness.

The Trento archdiocese said in a statement it had removed the Rev Gino Flaim from all pastoral work and forbidden him from preaching, after an interview was aired on the La7 private network on Tuesday evening.

In the comments, Flaim said he had worked in schools and understood children. “Unfortunately, there are children who seek out affection because they don’t get any at home. And it can be that maybe they find some priests. And I understand this,” he said.

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ITALY
Irish Times

Paddy Agnew

A 75-year-old Italian priest, Don Gino Flaim, has been suspended from his functions at the San Pio X church in Trent, northern Italy, after he made comments in which he appeared to “justify” paedophilia.

Speaking to Italian current affairs TV programme, “The Way The Wind Is Blowing”, Don Gino said: “I can understand paedophilia. Homosexuality, I don’t know, I think it’s a sickness. I have worked a lot with schools and I know children.

“Unfortunately, there are children who seek out affection because they do not receive it at home. And maybe if they come across some priest, well maybe he will yield (to temptation). I understand this … It doesn’t surprise me that these type of cases exist because the Church is a community of sinners”.

Don Gino’s words prompted an immediate series of protests from local politicians.
Archbishop of Trent, Luigi Bressan, intervened both to disassociate the archdiocese from Don Gino’s comments and to suspend him from his role of “pastoral collaborator”.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

Retired bishop Peter Ball – who has been jailed for 32 months after admitting abusing 18 young men across 20 years – was a sadistic sexual predator who groomed, controlled and abused his victims, one of whom ended up taking his own life.

Ball, 83, was part of the establishment of the Church of England, considered both powerful and deeply spiritual.

He abused most of his victims while he lived in East Sussex and was serving as Bishop of Lewes – but would go on to carry on the abuse as Bishop of Gloucester.

He admitted the abuse, which started in the 1970s and continued into the 80s and 90s, at the Old Bailey last month.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Premier

Wed 07 Oct 2015
By Aaron James

The former bishop of Lewes and Gloucester Peter Ball has been sentenced to 32 months in prison for abusing young men.

Rt Revd Paul Butler, the lead Bishop on safeguarding on behalf of the Church of England, said after sentencing: “It is a matter of deep shame and regret that a Bishop in the Church of England has today been sentenced for a series of offences over 15 years against 18 young men known to him. There are no excuses whatsoever for what took place and the systematic abuse of trust perpetrated by Peter Ball over decades.

“We apologise unreservedly to those survivors of Peter Ball’s abuse and pay tribute to their bravery in coming forward and also the long wait for justice that they have endured. We note that there are those whose cases remain on file for whom today will be a difficult day, not least in the light of the courage and persistence that they have demonstrated in pressing for the truth to be revealed.

“We also remember Neil Todd, whose bravery in 1992 enabled others to come forward but who took his own life before Peter Ball’s conviction or sentencing.

“As the Police have noted Peter Ball systematically abused the trust of the victims, many of whom who were aspiring priests, whilst others were simply seeking to explore their spirituality. He also abused the trust placed in him by the Church and others, maintaining a campaign of innocence for decades until his final guilty plea only weeks ago. Since that plea was made processes in the Church have begun to initiate formal internal disciplinary procedures against Peter Ball.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

By Nicola Harley 07 Oct 2015

Former bishop of Lewes has been jailed at the Old Bailey for 32 months for abusing his power to exploit young aspiring priests for his own “selfish sexual motive” over 15 years.

A court heard Peter Ball avoided prosecution for sexual abuse in 1993 after the intervention of the royal family.

Ball, 83, was sentenced at the Old Bailey after using religion as a “cloak” to groom aspiring young priests for sex during the 1970s, 80s and 90s.

But he almost escaped justice when his first victim reported allegations and was given a police caution after interventions from establishment figures, the Old Bailey was told on Wednesday.

Prosecutor Bobbie Cheema said the prosecution has investigated the way in which the police and prosecutors dealt with the claims in 1993. He was not prosecuted for two of the three offences he has now admitted at the of the initial investigation.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

7 October, 2015

When it comes to understanding why some institutions fail to identify and report child sexual abuse, research released by the Royal Commission suggests that a new approach that seeks a deeper understanding of why errors occur would be more effective in encouraging safe practices in the future.

The research, ‘Hear no evil, see no evil: understanding failure to identify and report child abuse in institutional contexts’ was conducted by Professor Eileen Munro (London School of Economics and Political Sciences) and Dr Sheila Fish (Social Care Institute for Excellence).

Royal Commission CEO Philip Reed said the research draws on two Royal Commission case studies and offers speculative findings on individual and organisational factors that have contributed to the failure to protect children in a timely and effective way.

The study identifies a number of challenges to creating and maintaining a safe organisation where staff members; are quick to recognise grooming or abuse behavior and trigger a process that investigates concerns and can take appropriate action so that children are protected from harm.

According to the researchers, one such challenge is the nature of child sexual abuse itself.

Perpetrators seek to conceal their activities, children and young people who are abused can be unable or slow to ask for help, and many behavioural indicators of abuse and grooming are ambiguous.

Mr Reed said the report contains useful examples of what organisations can do to make themselves safer places for children.

“According to the research, organisations that achieve a very good safety level share a fundamental belief that mistakes will happen and their goal is to spot them quickly,” he said.

“They encourage an open culture where people can discuss difficult judgements and report mistakes so that the organisation can learn.”

“The research will help the Royal Commission understand how child sexual abuse can be better identified and prevented in the future.”

Key findings:

* Detecting child sexual abuse is a task that many people may do rarely – if ever – at work. Grooming behaviour in particular is often ambiguous, making it difficult for colleagues, who may not be experienced in detecting grooming, to make sense of the behaviour and recognise it as child sexual abuse.

* Organisations that implement systems and processes that provide ways for staff to talk through their judgements and decision making process, and encourage a culture of critical reflection, can help minimise errors of reasoning and cognitive bias.

Read the full report at www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/policy-and-research/published-research

About the researchers:

Professor Eileen Munro CBE, Professor of Social Policy, Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics and Political Sciences. Professor Munro led the independent review of child protection in England.

Dr Sheila Fish, Head of Learning Together / Senior Research Analyst, Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE). Dr Fish leads SCIE’s work on a systems approach to safeguarding reviews.

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AUSTRALIA
news.com.au

A FORMER resident of a Salvation Army children’s home in Perth was beaten, humiliated and sexually abused, a royal commission has heard.

The 57-year-old cannot be identified, but has detailed her treatment at the Hollywood Children’s Village in Nedlands from 1969 to 1972.

She said she had trouble with bed-wetting as a child and as punishment a staff member would rub her face in the wet sheets.

“I was also forced to wear wet underpants on my head with the crotch part over my nose,” she told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Wednesday.

“All the bed-wetters were made to stand in the lounge room so everyone could see us.”

The woman told how she was locked in a boiler room and one day thrown into a slop bin used to hold food for pigs.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail (UK)

AAP

Actor Jack Charles says he was bashed, sexually abused and regarded as “item of interest” during his time in a Salvation Army boys’ home in Melbourne.

Mr Charles has told a royal commission that he was put in the Box Hill home as a “social experiment” as one of the stolen generation who was taken from his mother when he was four months old.

“I certainly think the home whitewashed me,” he said.

“I left Box Hill a devout Methodist and without a sense of my Aboriginality.”

Mr Charles said staff members at Box Hill hit boys in the face with a closed fist for punishment and that he was sexually abused by both staff and other boys.

He said one staff member abused him at least 20 times, possibly more, while certain boys would “regularly have their way with me”.

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UNITED STATES
The Guardian (UK)

Kristina Keneally

Leaking, back-stabbing, corruption, and backroom deals done by faceless men – never mind Australian politics, this is the Catholic church.

Forget the bloodless assassination of Tony Abbott’s political career, the Vatican actually killed Pope John Paul I. At least that’s what lots of people believe. The “smiling pope” served for only 33 days, and the circumstances of his death have given rise to multiple books and many murder theories.

John Paul I came to office in 1978 promising a new style:

[W]arm, compassionate, genuinely happy to be with ordinary people, a man of obvious faith who didn’t wear his piety on his sleeve or take himself too seriously. He pioneered the simplification of the papacy by dropping the royal “we”, declining coronation with the papal tiara and discontinuing use of the … portable throne.

Remind you of anyone?

Depending on which conspiracy theory you want to believe, John Paul I was killed by the conservatives in the church either because he wanted to take the Catholic church in a radically new direction or because he was about to embark on a clean-up of the shadowy and suspect practices at the Vatican Bank.

Remind you of anyone?

Now we have another populist pope and a fresh round of conspiracy theories. Pope Francis is delighting many, wowing the world’s media and renewing interest in the Catholic church with his simplicity, his openness, and his apparent determination to shift the church’s focus away from legalistic obsessions, especially with sex and morality.

Refusing to judge homosexuals, allowing atheists to get into heaven, and speaking to the US Congress without once mentioning abortion: Francis seems to have the conservatives on edge and looking for ways to fight back.

If the conspiracy theories are to be believed, the conservatives struck a blow last week by strategically leaking that the pope had a “secret meeting” during his visit to the US with Kim Davis. The current cause celebre for American conservatives, Davis is a local government bureaucrat in Kentucky and an apparent defender of marriage as traditionally defined between a man and a woman (she’s had four of her own).

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ITALY
International Business Times

By Gianluca Mezzofiore
October 6, 2015

An Italian priest has been suspended from his parish after defending paedophilia on live television and attempting to blame victims for “seeking affection”. Don Gino Flaim, of the San Giuseppe and Pio X parish in the northern Italian town of Trento, claimed on air that he “understands paedophilia” whereas “I’m not sure about homosexuality”.

“Unfortunately there are children who seek affection because they don’t receive it at home and I understand that some priests can give up,” he said on La7 channel. “Paedophilia is a sin, and like all sins has to be accepted, also.” He went on affirming that homosexuality “is a disease”.

The statement comes as Pope Francis opened a synod of Roman Catholic bishops focusing on family issues amid an unprecedented row over the church’s attitudes and dogmas on homosexuality. On 5 October, the Argentine pontiff urged the church to “move forward”, saying it was not “a museum to keep or preserve”.

Days before the key meeting of 300 church leaders, Poland-born Vatican priest Krzysztof Charamsa announced he was in a gay relationship, saying he wanted to challenge the institution’s “backward” attitude to homosexuality.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Philly.com

Pennsylvania’s Superior Court on Tuesday ruled that two men who had sued the Archdiocese of Philadelphia for alleged sex abuse missed their legal deadlines to file.

The decision affirmed a Philadelphia judge’s separate rulings against Francis Finnegan, who alleged he was abused from 1968 to 1979, and Philip Gaughan, who alleged he was abused from 1994 to 1997.

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

WHEN POPE Francis came to the United States, there was talk about a “Francis effect.” Perhaps such an effect will light a fire under state senators who, so far, have failed to take action on a bill that would offer justice and closure to adults who were sexually abused as children.

A bill sponsored by Sens. Joseph Vitale, D-Middlesex, and Nicholas Scutari, D-Union, and co-sponsored by Sen. Loretta Weinberg, D-Teaneck, among others, would do just that. It would remove the statute of limitations on many civil cases of sexual abuse. As it stands now, someone who was abused as a minor has only two years after turning 18 to bring a civil suit.

The proposed bill, which appears to be going nowhere in the Legislature, would make it possible for someone to file a civil suit at any age. While the removal of all restrictions may be hard to sell to legislators, the current two-year time limit is woefully inadequate. If legislators want to get serious about a serious issue — and at the moment they are putting their energies behind a bill unofficially named for Britney Spears — this is the bill that should demand their immediate attention.

For many sexually abused children, there is a long road before closure. Memories are repressed, and often too much time passes from when the abuse occurred to bring criminal charges. And sadly, there are some in our society who see civil suits by victims as a ploy for money rather than a necessary public validation that something horrible was done to them as children.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

Newcastle local court has heard the brief of evidence in the case against a Catholic brother, accused of hundreds of child sex offences, is now more than 9,000 pages long.

Bernard Kevin McGrath was extradited from New Zealand last year to face 252 child sex offences, alleged to have happened in the Lake Macquarie region in the 1970s.

McGrath faced court today via video link, dressed in prison greens and showing no emotion.

The court heard McGrath has recently changed lawyers, with his new solicitor expressing concern about the size of the brief of evidence.

She said she is at a slight disadvantage having only recently taken on the case.

The court heard a trial is likely to last at least six months.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

I really like Captain Michael Skiendzielewski’s comment in response to the article by Kieran Tapsell on the strange disconnect between Pope Francis’s words and actions re: sex abuse that I discussed in a previous posting today. I like it so much that I’m going to share it with you in its entirety:

It becomes more difficult with each passing day here in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia to remain civil and respectful in one’s comments regarding the local RCC leadership, their statements, conduct and decision-making, past and present, relative to the abuse, destruction and devastation visited on child and young adult clergy abuse victims. Deliberate and deceitful obfuscation and hypocrisy……..Chaput asks “what more do they want us to do?”

He’s a learned, mature and educated man and he most assuredly “knows” what must be done to protect our children now and in the future. He also “knows” what must be done in Harrisburg to give past victims a voice, legal access and redress (ALL CHILD VICTIMS here in the Commonwealth of PA, regardless of the venue of the alleged abuse…..public or private, religious or secular, in the home or in the community). It doesn’t work, it doesn’t sell, and it is unconvincing when a man such as Charles Chaput feigns ignorance on what steps needed to be taken to address the protection of ALL of our children.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Sandra Laville
Wednesday 7 October 2015

MPs, a lord chief justice, a member of the royal family and public school headmasters all intervened to stop a bishop being prosecuted for sexual abuse 22 years ago, the Old Bailey has heard.

Former bishop Peter Ball was facing jail on Wednesday after admitting last month the sexual abuse of 18 young men between 1977 and 1992 when he was bishop of Lewes.

He escaped justice when his first victim complained in 1992 after interventions from leading figures in the establishment. Instead of being prosecuted he was given a caution.

Bobbie Cheema QC prosecuting said: “The police report that accompanied the papers sent to the CPS in 1993 after the police had done their work stated they had received telephone calls supportive of Peter Ball “from many dozens of people – including MPs, former public school headmasters JPs and even a lord chief justice”.

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CHILE
Publimetro

[Felipe Berrios on support from the pope to Bishop Barros: “It is a mistake”. Berrios, a Jesuit and founder of Techo referred to the controversial video in which the pope backed Bishop Juan Barros and said those opposing him were “left-handed” and stupid. The pope made a mistake in what he said and offended people in Osorno, Berrios said.]

El sacerdote jesuita y fundador de “Techo”, Felipe Berríos, se refirió al polémico video en el que se ve al Papa respaldando al obispo de Osorno, Juan Barros, diciendo que las críticas hacia él provienen de “zurdos” y “tontos”. Al respecto, dijo que las palabras del Sumo Pontífice son una equivocación.

“Este es un error del Papa. El Papa metió la pata. Este exabrupto ofendió a las personas, especialmente a las de Osorno”, dijo el sacerdote a SoyChile.cl.

Agregó que “este es el primer Papa que improvisa y le salen cosas que nos ha encantado, pero cuando se improvisa, también comete errores. Esto salió hace tiempo y no sé si él pensará lo mismo ahora”.

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UNITED KINGDOM
ITV

An 83 year-old former Bishop of Lewes has said he’s “very, very sorry” ahead of his sentencing for sexual offences against 18 young men.

Peter Ball committed the assaults over the course of 15 years stretching from the 1970s to 1990s.

There have been allegations that senior bishops within the Church of England helped cover up abuse allegations.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Times

Sean O’Neil Chief Reporter

MPs, a senior judge, members of the royal family and public school heads waged a campaign on behalf of an Anglican bishop who was under investigation for sex crimes, the Old Bailey heard today.

Police investigating Peter Ball, the former Bishop of Gloucester, in 1993 said they had received dozens of phone calls expressing support for the suspect.

Lawyers for Ball told the Crown Prosecution Service at the time they had 2,000 letters supporting the bishop including “letters from cabinet ministers and the royal family.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Littlehampton Gazette

Victims of former Bishop of Lewes and Gloucester Peter Ball are suing the Church for hundreds of thousands of pounds after he admitted abusing his position to groom young aspiring priests for his own sexual pleasure.

The ex-bishop will be sentenced at the Old Bailey on Wednesday for misconduct in a public office between 1977 and 1992 and two counts of sexual assault on young men in their late teens.

In all, the charges relate to 18 victims, excluding two counts of indecent assault on a boy of 12 or 13 and a 15-year-old youth which were denied and will lie on file.

Ball, 83, had used religion as a cloak to abuse the young men who had come to his home in Litlington, East Sussex, to religious instruction before he was moved to Gloucester in 1992.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Littlehampton Gazette

The disgraced ex-bishop of Lewes and Gloucester will finally face justice later when he is sentenced for preying on aspiring young priests for his own sexual gratification.

Peter Ball, 83, used religion as a “cloak” to groom his victims when they came to his home in Litlington, East Sussex.

Many were teenagers or in their early 20s at the time they sought out the bishop as aspiring priests or to explore their spirituality through a Give A Year For Christ scheme.

Last month, Ball, who has suffered ill health in recent years, pleaded guilty to misconduct in a public office after a last ditch attempt to get the case thrown out failed.

Between 1977 and 1992 he abused his position in authority “to manipulate and prevail upon others for his own sexual gratification” in relation to 16 young men.

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UNITED STATES
National Secular Society

Posted: Wed, 07 Oct 2015 by Keith Porteous Wood

Any genuine inquiry into the handling of allegations of child sex abuse by Bishop Peter Ball must answer key questions about alleged cover-ups by the Church, police and CPS, argues Keith Porteous Wood

The National Secular Society has been closely monitoring cases of clerical child abuse where religious organisations have systematically evaded and denied secular justice to victims. These cover-ups have enabled perpetrators to escape justice entirely and even reoffend. The perception is widely held that the Catholic Church is the chief offender. But cases are increasingly emerging within the Anglican Church.

Unlike his counterparts at the Vatican, however, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, is to be commended for initiating an independent review into a serious abuse case, involving Ex-Bishop of Lewes Peter Ball.

Already in the public domain, there is prime facie evidence of spectacular abuses of process in the Ball case by the Church, and all arms of the law.

The seriousness of these offences and the long term damage to victims cannot be overstated. Shielding alleged perpetrators compounds their abuse.

There can be a no more bitter example than that of Neal Todd, who was one of Peter Ball’s victims. “[After] church officials pleaded with [Neal Todd’s] family not to go to the police”, Neal (like a significant proportion of other abuse survivors) “attempted suicide because he feared the bishops in Dulwich and Chichester would not act on his claims.” (Press Association 12/3/93). 20 years later Neal killed himself, in the same year that Sussex police opened a new case and more victims came forward.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

By Nicola Harley 07 Oct 2015

A disgraced bishop avoided prosecution for sexual abuse in 1993 after the intervention of the royal family, a Lord Chief Justice and MPs, a court has heard.

Peter Ball, 83, is being sentenced at the Old Bailey after using religion as a “cloak” to groom aspiring young priests for sex during the 1970s, 80s and 90s.

But he almost escaped justice when his first victim reported allegations and was given a police caution after interventions from establishment figures, the Old Bailey was told on Wednesday.

Prosecutor Bobbie Cheema said the prosecution has investigated the way in which the police and prosecutors dealt with the claims in 1993. He was not prosecuted for two of the three offences he has now admitted at the of the initial investigation.

The police report stated that they had received phone calls supportive of Ball “from many dozens of people – including MPs, former public school headmasters, JPs and even a Lord Chief Justice (Lloyd)”.

“In addition it was reported that the defence claimed to have more than 2,000 letters of support… including letters from Cabinet ministers and the Royal family,” said the prosecutor.

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Legal Intelligencer

Gina Passarella, The Legal Intelligencer
October 6, 2015

Failure to realize the full extent of psychological harm from sexual abuse is not enough to toll the statute of limitations, the state Superior Court has ruled in determining a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder years after the abuse stopped does not extend the time to sue.

The Superior Court issued its unpublished decision Tuesday in lawsuits filed by Francis Finnegan and Philip Gaughan against the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and church administration official Monsignor William Lynn. Both Finnegan, 54, and Gaughan, 35, alleged they were abused by priests when they were children and were more recently diagnosed with PTSD.

The court, in an opinion by President Judge Susan Peikes Gantman, said Finnegan and Gaughan knew or should have known the facts of their injuries and were immediately capable of filing suit.

“That appellant Finnegan and appellant Gaughan might not have known the full extent of the psychological harm done until 2011 when they were diagnosed with chronic PTSD, is immaterial,” Gantman said. “The fact remains that they knew what was happening and who was doing it when the abuse occurred and should have instituted their actions within their prescribed statutes of limitations.”

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ILLINOIS
Patch

By LORRAINE SWANSON (Patch Staff)
October 7, 2015

A group representing victims of clergy abuse is taking U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez to task for statements he made praising a Des Plaines priest suspended amid allegations of an “inappropriate relationship” with an adult man.

Kate Bochet, a leader from SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, blasted Gutierrez’s remarks and public support of Rev. Marco Mercado as “insensitive,” which could potentially stifle or intimidate other victims of sexual abuse from coming forward.

Archbishop Blaze J. Cupich removed Mercado from his post rector of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Des Plaines and the priest’s “authority to minister” while the Archdiocese of Chicago conducts an investigation into a relationship that Mercado is said to have had with another adult man. The priest also served as Archbishop Cupich’s delegate to Hispanic ministries.

The Des Plaines priest was the invited guest of Gutierrez to hear Pope Francis’s address to Congress during the pope’s visit to the United States last month. Gutierrez, a Democrat who represents the 4th Congressional District, issued a statement praising the popular Des Plaines priest as an important spiritual and community leader.

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CHILE
Merco Press

Hundreds of protesters in Chile opposing the controversial appointment of a Santiago bishop, accused of being involved in a cover-up of sexual abuse, marched outside St Matthew’s Cathedral in Osorno, a day after supportive comments by Pope Francis were aired on Chilean television.

A local television station on Friday aired a video in which Pope Francis defends the bishop of Osorno, Monsignor Juan Barros, whose opponents allege was involved in a cover-up pertaining to a notorious pedophile priest. In the video, shot in May and broadcast only this week by Chilean TV channel Mega, Francis attacks “leftists,” blaming them for a campaign against Barros’ appointment.

“Don’t let yourselves be led by the noses, by the leftists who have plotted this,” the pope says in the video, speaking to Chilean visitors at the Vatican.

“Osorno is suffering from stupidity, and for not opening its heart to what God says. And for letting itself get carried away by the garbage everybody says,” he added, according to one translation of the video.

The pontiff also noted that the allegations against Barros had been dismissed by a Chilean court. The video was reportedly filmed by an Argentine on an iPad, who remains unidentified thus far.

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LATIN AMERICA
GlobalPost

Will Carless on Oct 7, 2015

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — A recent GlobalPost investigation found that Catholic priests accused of sexually abusing children in the United States and Europe were able to escape accountability by transferring to South America, where they continue to work as priests.

While the abuse crisis has led to more stringent scrutiny of priests in the United States and Europe, in less developed parts of the world, media and law enforcement investigations of priests are relatively rare. Advocates for church sex abuse survivors say problem priests are taking advantage of this by transferring to remote locations in the developing world, to secure impunity and ensure they can continue working for the church.

Among the questions raised by our investigation were:

* How were those priests able to relocate, despite public allegations against them? And,
* To what extent does the Vatican monitor these movements?

According to experts in church law, known as Canon Law, the official process is simple and clear-cut. But as GlobalPost and others have found, the official process isn’t always followed.
Here are three steps to understanding how priest transfers work in the Catholic Church.

1. Relocation depends on whether priests belong to a diocese or a religious order

Every Catholic priest on Earth falls into one of these two categories.

Diocesan priests are geographically organized. They work for an ecclesiastical district known as a diocese, if it’s overseen by a bishop, or an archdiocese (led by an archbishop). They were either “ordained” (given their holy orders) at that specific diocese, or they transferred there and were “incardinated” there (more on this in a minute.)

Religious order priests, in contrast, work for a brotherhood that follows a specific religious philosophy, like the Franciscans or the Dominicans. Franciscans, for example, concentrate on helping the poor.

Religious orders, of which there are hundreds, are often scattered around the globe.

Patrick Wall, a victim’s advocate and former priest who wrote a book on the Catholic sex abuse crisis, estimates that 60 percent of Catholic priests are diocesan and 40 percent belong to religious orders.

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ITALY
Daily Mail (UK)

VATICAN CITY, Oct 7 (Reuters) – Italy’s Roman Catholic Church on Wednesday fired a priest who said he could “understand” how paedophilia by clergy could occur because some children yearned for affection.

The diocese of Trento, in northern Italy, said Father Gino Flaim, 75, was removed from his position at a parish and was banned from preaching.

“Unfortunately there are children who seek affection because they don’t get it at home and then if they find some priest he can even give in (to the temptation). I understand this,” Flaim said in an interview on the private La 7 network on Tuesday.

Asked if the children were in some way responsible, he replied: “In many cases, yes.”

The diocese said in a statement that Flaim’s comments did not reflect the diocese’s position on child sex abuse by clergy and ran counter to “the sentiments of the entire Church community” on the scandal.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Candice Marcus

The South Australian Government was aware of allegations of physical and sexual abuse at a Salvation Army-run boys’ home from as early as the 1940s, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has heard.

The commission is examining four Salvation Army-run children’s homes in South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia.

On the first day of the hearing the commission was given graphic accounts of former residents of the Eden Park Boys’ Home at Wistow in South Australia of the abuse they had endured there.

Current Families SA and Education Department deputy chief executive Etienne Scheepers has given evidence of his review of the Government’s historic knowledge of allegations at the home.

He said there was documentary evidence to show the state government’s Child Welfare and Public Relief Board knew about allegations of physical and sexual abuse at the home in the early 1940s.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

A former police chaplain remains behind bars after being refused bail on child sex charges.

John Patrick Casey was working at a primary school in Sawtell until his arrest in July this year.

The Catholic priest was charged with nine offences relating to the abuse of two brothers in the Lismore Diocese in 1985.

The diocese takes in the area between Tweed Heads and Camden haven, south of Port Macquarie.

The accused priest had also worked as a police chaplain attached to the Mid North Coast Local Area Command.

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NEW MEXICO
Gallup Independent

Published in the Gallup Independent, Gallup, N.M., Oct. 6, 2015

Protests filed on ‘public auction’ by Gallup Diocese

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

ALBUQUERQUE – U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David T. Thuma has ordered attorneys for the Diocese of Gallup into court to explain why the public and media were barred from attending the diocese’s recent property auction.

Thuma issued a notice to show cause Friday and set a hearing date for Oct. 19. However, Thomas D. Walker, the diocese’s Albuquerque bankruptcy attorney, filed an amended notice of hearing Monday, which bumped up the hearing to 1:30 p.m. Wednesday.

In his order, Thuma noted that the Gallup Diocese “may not have conducted a ‘public auction’ as required” by the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure. Attached to Thuma’s order were two letters of complaint from individuals barred from attending the Albuquerque auction Sept. 19. The first letter was written by Meredith Edelman, a doctoral scholar conducting research, and the second letter was from the Gallup Independent.

“These parties claim they were not permitted to observe the New Mexico auction,” Thuma stated. “The Court needs more information about whether the auction was a public auction, who was permitted to observe the auction, and who was excluded. If members of the press and/or public were excluded, the Court would like the Debtors to show cause why the auction sales should not be invalidated. If remedies less harsh than invalidation are available, the Court would like to hear argument related to advisability of such alternative relief.”

Thuma cited an Aloha Airlines case in 2009, in which U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Lloyd King ordered a new auction to be conducted after a reporter and a labor union representative were barred from attending an auction.

According to a Honolulu media report, King said, “The exclusion of a reporter was an outrage. It’s the United States conducting the sale, and you told a reporter no.”

The Diocese of Gallup’s hearings in U.S. Bankruptcy Court are open to the public, as are documents in the case’s court file. The only exceptions to this are confidential documents related to clergy sex abuse survivors who have filed claims in the case.

‘Agent for the court’

In the diocese’s Albuquerque auction, Todd Good, the CEO and president of Accelerated Marketing Group, barred anyone from entering the auction who wasn’t a qualified bidder. Good, along with George H. “Hank” Amos III, CEO and president of Tucson Realty & Trust Co., was hired by the Gallup Diocese to publicize and conduct the property auctions in Phoenix and Albuquerque.

Good and Amos were paid a flat fee of $45,000 by the diocese and allowed to collect a 10 percent buyer’s premium on each sale.

According to sales reports submitted to the court, both auction sales only garnered a fraction of the properties’ assessed or actual values. The total sales for both auctions was reported as $225,066, with the diocese only profiting about $160,660 and Good and Amos collecting about $65,500. Both auction reports also appear to contain a number of errors that diocesan attorneys have not explained or corrected.

Good, who described himself as an “agent for the court,” told the media, “We have discretions how we conduct the sale. We see no advantage to let somebody in the sale that is not a bidder. In other words, it doesn’t benefit the debtors and it doesn’t benefit the creditors, and therefore we only let qualified bidders into the event.”

In her letter to Thuma, Edelman said Good made a similar statement to her before threatening to have her removed from the hotel property where the auction was taking place. Edelman told the judge she believed it would have been beneficial to creditors to allow observers into the auction.

“The creditors in this instance are survivors of child sexual abuse whose abuse was covered up for years,” Edelman said. “They can only benefit from transparency in this process. If members of the public and the press are unable to observe the procedures, this transparency is lacking.”

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

The Salvation Army has been urged to ‘step up’ and ensure the ongoing welfare of boys sexually abused in its care rather than just offer one-off compensation payments.

Graham Rundle says victims like him should be helped with ongoing expenses like dental and medical bills and with accommodation and counselling.

‘The fear of being old with these financial burdens is very real for many victims,’ Mr Rundle has told the Royal Commission into child abuse.

‘They (the Salvation Army) should be made to step up in this way as they are the cause of our problems.’

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

Victims of former bishop Peter Ball are suing the Church for hundreds of thousands of pounds after he admitted abusing his position to groom young aspiring priests for his own sexual pleasure.

The former bishop of Lewes and Gloucester will be sentenced at the Old Bailey tomorrow for misconduct in a public office between 1977 and 1992 and two counts of sexual assault on young men in their late teens.

In all, the charges relate to 18 victims, excluding two counts of indecent assault on a boy of 12 or 13 and a 15-year-old youth which were denied and will lie on file.

Ball, 83, had used religion as a cloak to abuse the young men who had come to his home in Litlington, East Sussex, to religious instruction before he was moved to Gloucester in 1992.

Some 22 years after allegations first surfaced against him, Ball was finally brought to account in court, despite repeated bids to get the case thrown out.

Today, David Greenwood, of Switalskis Solicitors, who represents four of the victims, said that since his guilty plea, legal action had been lodged against the Diocese of Chichester.

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FLORIDA
Ocala.com

By Austin L. Miller
Staff writer
Published: Tuesday, October 6, 2015

FBI agents arrested a former Stuart youth minister Monday on suspicion of sexually abusing at least two girls under his care.

Jeffrey Brian Mobley, 24, was taken for a hearing Monday in federal court, where he was ordered held without bail until a detention hearing and preliminary examination on Oct. 7.

He was picked up in the 11000 block of West State Road 40 in Marion County and is charged with persuading, inducing, or enticing someone under 18 to engage in sexual activity. Mobley, a former youth pastor at The Grace Place Church in Stuart, declined an interview request from the Star-Banner.

If convicted as charged, Mobley could face from 10 years to life in prison, and possibly a lifetime of supervised release, according to a Justice Department news release. He would also have to register as a sexual offender.

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PENNSYLVANIA
PennLive

By Matt Miller | mmiller@pennlive.com
on October 06, 2015

Two men who claim they were sexually abused by Catholic priests decades ago waited too long to sue the Archdiocese of Philadelphia over the alleged assaults, a state court panel ruled Tuesday.

The Superior Court decision backs an earlier ruling by a Philadelphia judge who dismissed the lawsuits filed against the archdiocese by Francis Finnegan of Delaware County and Philip Gaughan of Delaware.

Both men filed their complaints independently in March 2011, and appealed the initial dismissals to the state court last year.

PennLive does not normally name people who allege they were victims of sexual abuse. However, Finnegan and Gaughan told the Associated Press in interviews soon after their suits were filed that they wanted to be named to encourage other victims to come forward.

The Superior Court opinion, written by President Judge Susan Peikes Gantman, notes that Finnegan, now 54, claims he was abused repeatedly from 1968 to 1970. Finnegan claimed in his suit that he suppressed the memories of the abuse until 2007. Those memories then came back to him “in waves,” he claimed and he reported the abuse to the archdiocese’s victim assistance program in 2008.

Finnegan, who was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, refused the archdiocese’s offers of medical and psychological assistance before filing his suit in Philadelphia County Court, Gantman noted.

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NEW JERSEY
WABC

LITTLE FERRY, N.J. (WABC) — A priest accused of pointing a functioning but unloaded musket at an 8-year-old boy in a church’s rectory pleaded not guilty Tuesday, with his lawyer explaining it as a joke spurred by the rivalry between the New York Giants and the Dallas Cowboys.

The Rev. Kevin Carter was arraigned Tuesday on charges of child endangerment and aggravated assault by pointing a firearm.

The priest, who was charged last week and is free on $15,000 cash bail, expressed concern on Monday for any “trauma” that publicity from the case may have caused the boy and his family. But in a statement issued by his lawyer, the 54-year-old priest said he was “confident” he would be vindicated.

The charges against Carter stem from a Sept. 13 incident at St. Margaret of Cortona Roman Catholic Church in Little Ferry.

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NEW JERSEY
NJ.com

By Noah Cohen | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on October 06, 2015

HACKENSACK — A judge on Tuesday entered a not-guilty plea on behalf of the Little Ferry priest accused of pointing a replica Civil War-style gun at an 8-year-old boy, according to a published report.

The Rev. Kevin Carter, 55, who is assigned to St. Margaret of Cortona Church, appeared briefly in Bergen County Central Municipal Court, The Record reported.

Defense attorney Harold Cassidy previously said the incident was a joke and a parishioner who reported the encounter to officials misunderstood what happened, CBSNewYork.com reported.

Carter faces charges of child endangerment and aggravated assault by pointing a firearm, the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office said Friday.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Western Daily Press

The Church of England is right to hold an inquiry into how it handled the sex offence complaints against former bishop Peter Ball.

But it will be of value only if the church is willing to publicly admits its mistakes and then to ensure that any similar complaints made today are investigated thoroughly and that the police are contacted at the earliest possible stage.

In Ball’s case the church seems to have been in a state of denial initially and then only willing to impose the most lenient sanctions possible against Ball. The fact is he is someone who is a serious and perpetual child-abuser.

A man who cunningly used the apparent security of being a senior member of the church to take advantage of young boys to gratify his perverted sexual cravings.

A man who preached goodness but committed sin. A man who without question damaged many lives. A man whose sordid behaviour makes a mockery of the Christian office he held.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Times

Sean O’Neill Chief Reporter
October 5 2015

The role of a former archbishop of Canterbury in an alleged establishment cover-up of sex crimes in the Church of England is to be examined by an independent inquiry, The Times has learnt.

The review will scrutinise what Lord Carey of Clifton knew about secret talks in 1992-93 between the Church of England, police and the crown prosecution service concerning Peter Ball, who was then the bishop of Gloucester.

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ITALY
Gazzetta del Sud

Trento, October 6 – A Catholic priest said Tuesday he can understand being a pedophile but not being gay. “I could understand paedophilia, (but) I don’t know about homosexuality,” Father Gino Flaim, a pastoral collaborator of the San Pio X church in Trento, told an afternoon talk show on La7 TV channel. “I have been to school a lot and I know children,” Flaim said when asked to explain. “Unfortunately some children seek affection because they don’t get it at home. And maybe they find a priest, and he gives in…I can understand that”. Asked whether children cause pedophilia, he answered “to a great extent, yes”. Flaim went on to say he believes being gay is a disease. The fact that homosexuality exists “doesn’t surprise me, because the Church is a community of sinners”. Asked whether he thinks homosexuality is an illness, he said “Yes, I definitely think so”. The Trento archdiocese stripped him of his duties soon after the interview aired. “The Trento Church dissociates itself fully from statements made by an elderly diocesan priest to La7 TV,” the archdiocese said in a statement. “He expressed positions that do not in any way represent the position of the Trento Archdiocese or the feeling of the ecclesiastical community as a whole”.

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

BY PETER J. SAMPSON
STAFF WRITER | THE RECORD

The pastor of a Little Ferry church made a brief court appearance in Hackensack on Tuesday to answer charges that he pointed an unloaded rifle at an eight-year-old boy last month.

The Rev. Kevin Carter appeared before Judge Louis Dinice in Central Municipal Court who entered a not guilty plea on his behalf to charges of endangering the welfare of a child and aggravated assault for allegedly pointing a replica of a Civil War-era rifle at the boy in the rectory of St. Margaret of Cortona Church on Sept. 13.

A contingent of about 50 supporters, many of them law enforcement officers from the Port Authority and the Jersey City police departments, packed the courtroom and later huddled around the priest as he made a statement to reporters expressing concern for the boy and his family.

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NEW JERSEY
Daily Voice

by Mary K. Miraglia 10/06/2015

LITTLE FERRY, N.J. — Accompanied by dozens of supporters — including several law enforcement officers — a Litte Ferry priest was brought before a judge in Hackensack on Tuesday stemming from an incident in which authorities said he pointed a Civil War-era musket at a boy.

Presiding Central Municipal Judge Louis J. Dinice entered a plea of “not guilty” for the Rev. Kevin Carter to aggravated assault and child endangerment charges.

Defense attorney Harold Cassidy acknowledged that he’d advised Carter of St. Margaret of Cortona R.C. Church of his rights and the proceeding was over.

During a news conference outside, Carter issued a brief statement without answering questions.

He said he was concerned for both the boy and a parishioner who he said “misunderstood” an innocent act of horseplay between the priest, who is a New York Giants fan, and the boy, who wore a Dallas Cowboys jersey to Sunday Mass that September morning, hours before both teams played their NFL season openers.

“My reputation won’t be harmed — I’m going to be okay,” Carter said. “I’m concerned that the media coverage could put this boy, who came to the rectory with his family for some good-natured fun, into trauma.

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ITALY
The Daily Beast

Barbie Latza Nadeau

ROME — A gray stone wall on the edge of the northern Italian hamlet of Trento hides a former convent where gay priests say they were once sent to be “cured” of their homosexual tendencies. The institute was set up in 1928 by Father Paolo Venturini to offer residential accommodation for clergy who suffer from any number of maladies from depression and addiction to pedophilic urges. But in the last few decades, according to former priest Mario Bonfante, who defied the Vatican’s urging to go, they also offered “treatment” for homosexuality in an attempt to get gay priests “back on track” through any number of means.

The atmosphere could be extraordinarily sinister. In 1983, an elderly homosexual priest by the name of Armando Bison, who was there for “treatment,” was killed in a bizarre incident during which two men drove a wooden crucifix into his skull.

Of course the environment is more civilized now, but Bonfante says that priests who came out as gay in Italy before Pope Francis was elected in 2013 were sent to the Venturini institute to be treated with a type of multi-faceted “retraining” that mixes psychoanalysis with meditative prayer.

Now, gay priests, like the Polish Monsignor Krysztof Charamsa, whose coming out with his Spanish boyfriend last weekend rattled the Vatican on the eve of its Synod on the Family, are generally just sacked rather than sent away for rehabilitation. Charamsa, who was an aide at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was fired not for being gay, but for betraying his promise of celibacy. He may or may not be defrocked for breaking his vows.

Bonfante’s case was different. He came out in 2012, pre-Francis, and was promptly told to go to the Venturini Institute after he announced that he was a “happy gay priest” on a Facebook posting on National Coming Out Day, October 11.He wasn’t in a relationship and maintained his vows of celibacy, but he was still told to go or to get out. He refused to go for treatment, he told The Daily Beast, which led to his defrocking. “There were two choices: be cured or be laicized,” he says. “I couldn’t deny my true self so I left the church.”

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PENNSYLVANIA
Philly.com

McCOLE
REV. JOHN F., Jan. 21, 2015. Beloved son of the late John F. and Kathleen (nee McGill) McCole. Beloved brother of James B., Donald V. (the late Dorothy), Barbara J. Mahon (Joseph), Patrick J. (Anne) and the late Lawrence; also survived by his sister-in-law Antoinette McCole and 20 nieces and nephews. Rev. Clergy, Religious, relatives and friends are invited to his Concelebrated Funeral Mass with The Most Reverend Timothy C. Senior, The Principal Celebrant Monday 11 A.M. in the Chapel of The St. Francis Center, 1412 Lansdowne Ave., Darby, PA and to his Viewing after 9 A.M. in the Chapel. Int. Our Lady of Grace Cemetery.
Published on Philly.com on Jan. 25, 2015

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Press Association
Tuesday 6 October 2015

Victims of the former bishop Peter Ball are suing the Church of England for hundreds of thousands of pounds after he admitted abusing his position to groom young aspiring priests for sex.

The ex-bishop of Lewes and Gloucester will be sentenced at the Old Bailey on Wednesday for misconduct in a public office between 1977 and 1992 and two counts of sexual assault on young men in their late teens.

In all, the charges relate to 18 victims, excluding two counts of indecent assault on a boy of 12 or 13 and a 15-year-old youth, which were denied and will lie on file.

Ball, 83, abused the young men who had come to his home in Litlington, East Sussex, for religious instruction, before he was moved to Gloucester in 1992.

Twenty-two years after allegations were first made against him, Ball was brought to account in court, despite repeated attempts to get the case thrown out.

David Greenwood, who represents four of the victims, said that since Bell’s guilty plea, legal action had been lodged against the diocese of Chichester.

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UNITED STATES/VATICAN CITY
The Daily Beast

Brandon Ambrosino

The pontiff found his reformer image tarnished when it was announced he met with Kim Davis. The group behind the political coup? The Liberty Counsel.

Around 8 p.m. on September 29, the Liberty Counsel, Kim Davis’s legal representation, tweeted a report from Inside the Vatican that Pope Francis had a secret meeting with their client. Robert Moynihan, the writer who broke the story, had gotten his information exclusively from the Liberty Counsel.

What started out as a rumor about a closed-door meeting quickly evolved into something much bigger—the claim that Pope Francis, for all of his kindness toward LGBT people, was really on the side of the Religious Right.

You can imagine how the secret meeting might have gone, said the Liberty Counsel: Pope Francis embracing a humbled Kim Davis, encouraging her to “stay strong,” and validating her fight against gay marriage. And then mere hours later, with poor, sweet Kim fresh in his memory, telling journalists that government officials—why, just like that Kentucky gal!—have the right to conscientious objection.

But many journalists with connections inside the Vatican, myself included, were having difficulty figuring out exactly what transpired between Francis and Davis because the Liberty Counsel’s story was so incredibly vague. Who, for instance, initiated the meeting—and why?

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UNITED STATES
Newsmax

Outspoken evangelist Christian leader Franklin Graham is chastising a fired gay Catholic priest for criticizing the church as homophobic.

In a Facebook post, the son of the famed preacher Billy Graham staunchly defended the decision to boot the priest, Krzysztof Charamsa, from his job at the Vatican after he came out as gay on the eve of a synod of the world’s bishops to discuss church outreach to gays, divorcees and more traditional Catholic families.

“Firing the gay priest was the right thing for the Catholic Church to do,” writes Graham, who head’s the foundation named after his father and is leader of the global charity, Samaritan’s Purse.

“The priest said in a press conference that his coming out was a ‘difficult and tough decision in the church’s homophobic world.'” Graham adds.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

A Church of England vicar said a former bishop tried to blackmail him into having sex if he was going to allow him to become ordained.

As a teenager, the Reverend Graham Sawyer visited the former Bishop of Lewes, Peter Ball, in the 1970s.

He said Ball tried to take off his clothes and wanted an “act of commitment” if he was to be ordained.

Mr Sawyer said Ball was a “monster” who controlled him with a “cloak of spirituality”.

Ball, 83, formerly Bishop of Gloucester and Bishop of Lewes, last month admitted abusing 18 young men, including Mr Sawyer, in the 1970s, 80s and 90s.

Now of Langport in Somerset, he will be sentenced on Wednesday.

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ESPANA
Opus Dei

[Press release on the Gaztelueta College. Some media have published today reports on alleged abuses a child in school Gaztelueta.]

Algunos medios de comunicación han difundido hoy informaciones sobre presuntos abusos a un menor en el colegio Gaztelueta. Reproducimos a continuación el comunicado que acaba de publicar el colegio

*****
Desearía compartir algunas consideraciones a propósito del reportaje publicado hoy por el diario “El Mundo” sobre presuntos abusos a un menor por parte de un antiguo profesor de nuestro colegio:

1. Si alguno de los hechos descritos en el reportaje se demostrara cierto, merecería una condena total por nuestra parte. Junto a la familia, somos los primeros interesados en que se esclarezca toda la verdad: sin una claridad absoluta sobre los hechos, se pone en riesgo el bien de numerosas personas.

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VATICAN CITY
CNN

By Delia Gallagher, CNN

Rome (CNN) Hundreds of Catholic bishops from around the world are meeting in the Vatican this month, invited by Pope Francis to debate the Catholic Church’s position on “the family.”

At the Vatican these days, talking about “the family” inevitably means talking about sex, including homosexuality.

Pope Francis has been seen as more accepting of gay people than anyone expected, saying soon after his election, “Who am I to judge” homosexuals who seek God.

But the week before the assembly — known as a synod — was marked by a number of controversies involving gay people.

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UNITED STATES
Poynter

by Roy J. Harris Jr.
Published Oct. 6, 2015

After the thunderous applause died down for last week’s preview of “Spotlight,” the new Michael Keaton movie, the real stars took seats in front of the screen. Marty Baron, Walter “Robby” Robinson, Mike Rezendes, Sacha Pfeiffer and Ben Bradlee Jr. — five key figures in the Boston Globe’s 2002 Pulitzer Prize-winning expose into the sexual abuse of young parishioners by Catholic priests.

As good a reaction as they gave the film, attendees at the Investigative Film Festival, hosted by the D.C.-based 100Reporters group, seemed as enthusiastic about hearing from the panelists. Do they believe the movie about their 13-year-old disclosures will inspire the news business during its current financial and technological struggles? (They do.) And will the film go on to win a more universal audience? (Still unclear, although it is earning major Oscar buzz ahead of its November premier.) And just how much literary license was needed to turn the Globe’s shoe-leather and document-based newspaper campaign into the thrilling picture they’d just seen?

The answer to that last question — not much license at all.

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor October 6, 2015

ROME – As the 2015 Synod of Bishops gets underway, two things seem clear. One is that many prelates seem determined to stay positive as much as possible, playing down their differences and trying to shift the discussion away from controversial matters toward areas of potential common ground.

The other is that real tensions over issues, as well as the synod process, may make that goal awfully hard to achieve.

On Monday, the real work of the synod began when the opening speeches finished and the live video feed was turned off, allowing bishops to begin delivering their own brief talks to one another. There was an early round of remarks which, under new rules, had to be kept to no more than three minutes.

(One prelate compared the enforced brevity to sending out a tweet.)

Later in the day, there was an hour of “free discussion,” although there was some grumbling that a few participants used the time to deliver a canned speech, taking advantage of the ability to go on for four minutes rather than three.

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MINNESOTA
Canonical Consultation

10/05/2015

Jennifer Haselberger

Clergy of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis today received this belated notice of staffing changes at the Chancery. As you can see, the announcement was sent to Archdiocesan employees last week.

[document]

Interestingly, in appointing Rip Riordan the legally troubled and criminally charged Archdiocese is both returning to an earlier era and apparently attempting to maintain its connection with the Saint Paul Police Department. Riordan served as the Director of Clergy Services during the McDonough-era (2004 to 2007), when Father Curtis Wehmeyer was running amok at the Church of Saint Joseph. And, while John Vomastek was a former SPPD commander, according to LinkedIn Rip Riordan has been appointed a ‘chaplain’ to the Saint Paul Police.

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MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio

Madeleine Baran Oct 6, 2015

About 150 Catholics gathered in St. Paul Monday to tell Archbishop Bernard Hebda what they’d like to see in a new archbishop of the Twin Cities archdiocese.

The most common qualities included an archbishop who listens, is humble, can heal divisions in the church, or, as one parishioner put it, someone who is “Pope Francis-esque.”

Hebda told the group that Pope Francis would be pleased with the list. “I think it will resonate with him, what you’re saying.”

The gathering at St. Catherine University was the first of several listening sessions scheduled this fall by the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis to seek input on a new leader.

More: Nienstedt resigns | An isolated Nienstedt tried to limit investigation into himself

Few people proposed specific ways to deal with the clergy sex abuse scandal. One person said the new archbishop should be willing to hire a forensic accountant. A woman noted that many of the people who were harmed have not received an apology or compensation from the archdiocese.

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ITALY
Daily Mail (UK)

By SARA MALM FOR MAILONLINE

The Vatican has been sending homosexual priests to be ‘cured’ at a monastery in the Italian Alps, it has emerged.

Priests who come out as gay are removed to the monastery in Trento, northern Italy, by the Vatican to be ‘treated’ alongside drug addicts and paedophiles, Italian press claims.

One former Catholic priest who came out to the Vatican has revealed that he was dismissed from the church after he refused to go to the monastery to ‘rediscover the right path’.

Priests who ‘show inappropriate sexual tendencies’ are sent to the Venturini monastery in Trento for ‘a period of training, personal reflection and enlightenment’, according to Italian press reports quoted in The Independent.

The head of the monastery, Friar Gianluigi Pasto was quoted by the Independent as telling Italian newspapers that the institute was not ‘specifically for gay and paedophile priests’ but did not deny that such ‘treatments’ had taken place in the past.

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ITALY
The Local

The Vatican allegedly sends gay priests to a monastery in northern Italy “to be cured”, Italian media reported.

The Venturini monastery in Trento, which also allegedly houses paeodophile priests, drug addicts and alcoholics, treats those “who show inappropriate sexual tendencies”, Mario Bonfante, a former Catholic priest who revealed he was gay in 2012, told La Repubblica.

“It’s a place where they help you rediscover the right path. They wanted to cure me. I refused to go,” added Bonfante, who was allegedly dismissed by the Church for refusing.

The Vatican declined to comment.

Father Gianluigi Pastò, the 72-year-old priest in charge at Venturini, denied that the monastery catered for the treatment of gay priests, although in an interview with La Repubblica he did allude to the possibility that both gay and paedophile priests had stayed there in the past.

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NEW YORK
New York Post

[video: contains adult content]

This is a clip from one of the kinky “cake crush” sex videos that sank a prominent Greek Orthodox priest.

Father George Passias, 67, was suspended and then resigned last month from St. Spyridon Church in Washington Heights after church leaders confirmed his affair with Ethel Bouzalas, 45, the principal of the parochial school whom he impregnated.

The sex tapes were downloaded off the computer in Passias’ church office and provided anonymously to The Post along with a letter detailing the logistics of their trysts.

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UNITED STATES
Hamilton and Griffin on Rights

Pope Francis’ first-ever US trip is over. From the perspective of survivors, how was it? Troubling, to say the least.

In his first comments on US soil about the Catholic church’s clergy sex abuse and cover up crisis, Francis made virtually no mention of victims, offered no apology and praised US bishops for how they’re handling it. He refused to tell or even ask bishops to do anything more about the scandal than they’re already doing.

Within hours, the Kansas City-based National Catholic Reporter opined that the pope’s “sadly disappointing” message was “a glaring oversight” with just one “oblique” reference to the crisis that “puts him back to square one.”

“At the very least,” wrote NCR editor Dennis Coday, Francis “could have used the words ‘clergy sexual abuse of minors’” and his decision to “praise bishops for the courage they have shown, before acknowledging the pain of the victims, will undoubtedly raise the charges of “he just doesn’t get it.”

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PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Review

By Liz Zemba
Monday, Oct. 5, 2015

The attorney for a Somerset County priest found guilty of having sex with three boys at a Honduran orphanage is seeking a new trial.

The Rev. Joseph D. Maurizio Jr., 70, was found guilty Sept. 22 of three counts of engaging or attempting to engage in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places and one count each of possession of child pornography and money laundering.

Federal prosecutors said Maurizio used a self-run charity based in Johnstown, Humanitarian Interfaith Ministries, to visit the orphanage numerous times between 1999 and 2009, promising candy and cash to boys to watch them shower, have sex or fondle them.

Maurizio had pleaded not guilty and did not testify during the seven-day trial. The former pastor of Our Lady Queen of Angels Church in Central City could be sentenced Feb. 2 to a maximum of 130 years in prison. His attorney on Friday filed a motion seeking a new trial.

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MINNESOTA
KARE

[with video]

Boyd Huppert, KARE October 6, 2015

ANOKA, Minn. – Pauline Cahalan arrived early. The “cradle” Catholic didn’t want to risk not getting a seat.

“I see this as a unique opportunity,” Cahalan said.

On Monday night she joined dozens of other Catholics in the launch of an unprecedented series of listening sessions with the man temporarily at the reigns of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

“I want a seat at the table,” said Cahalan. “The diocese has a trust factor problem as far as I’m concerned.”

The gathering at St. Stephen’s Catholic Church in Anoka, and one earlier in the day at St. Catherine University, kicked off nine listening sessions scheduled over the next month.

Many Catholics have had their faith in the church shaken over clergy sexual abuse, bankruptcy and the resignation of the former archbishop John Nienstedt.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

By Jean Hopfensperger Star Tribune OCTOBER 5, 2015

An often-outspoken group of Twin Cities Catholics packed a conference hall Monday for a rare opportunity to tell church leaders what they think of the archdiocese and what they want in their next archbishop.

With the St. Paul and Minneapolis Archdiocese reeling from a sex abuse scandal, bankruptcy and a theological divide, acting Archbishop Bernard Hebda hosted the first of seven “listening sessions” at St. Catherine University in St. Paul.

It’s an unusual strategy, as archbishop recommendations typically are made by church leaders selected by the Vatican Embassy in Washington, D.C.

It wasn’t a bashful group.

“There’s a lack of trust, both in management and finance,” said Paul Mandell of Inver Grove Heights, one of about 200 people attending. “There’s a frustration with not being heard. There’s morale problems among priests and laity who don’t feel empowered.”

Mary Beth Stein told the archbishop that the sex abuse scandal, clerical coverup and financial woes were among burning issues the next archbishop must address.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

ANDREW DOWDELL THE ADVERTISER OCTOBER 06, 2015

CHILD sex abuse victims at Salvation Army homes were physically beaten or further sexually abused if they reported crimes against them, the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse has heard.

Opening the 33rd public hearing of the national commission in Adelaide, counsel assisting Sophie David SC, said the hearing would examine abuse at four Salvation Army homes in South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia between 1940 and 1980.

Three former residents of Eden Park Boys’ Home in the Adelaide Hills will tell the commission of years of abuse they suffered at the hands of Salvation Army members including Sergeant William John Keith Ellis.

Ms David said Eden Park employees were reported as far back as 1940, when a staff member was jailed for indecent conduct against three boys.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Candice Marcus

A victim of a Salvation Army paedophile has made an impassioned plea for change while giving evidence at an inquiry, asking the organisation to do the right thing by all victims.

Graham Rundle, now 63, was repeatedly raped and sexually abused at the Eden Park Boys’ Home in South Australia as a child in the 1960s.

He has told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse about his experiences and what he wanted to come out of the hearing.

At the end of his evidence, Mr Rundle directed his comments directly at Commissioner Floyd Tidd, the current Territorial Commander of the Salvation Army’s Southern Territory.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

The royal commission into child sexual abuse in Adelaide has heard over 20 perpetrators have been identified at Salvation Army run homes.

Counsel assisting Sophie David says over the two weeks of hearings, survivors will give evidence that child sex abuse was widespread, unchecked and flourished over a long period of time.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will examine four homes operated by the Salvation Army from 1940 to 1980 – Eden Park Boys’ Home in South Australia, Box Hill and Bayswater Boys’ homes in Victoria and a home at Nedlands in Western Australia.

In a detailed opening address, Ms David said 20 perpetrators had been identified at homes run by the Salvation Army.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

AAP

GRAHAM Rundle says it’s hard to remember how many times he was sexually abused during his years at a Salvation Army boys’ home in Adelaide, but it was at least 200.

IT started when he was eight, just two months after he arrived at the Eden Park Boy’s Home in the Adelaide Hills in 1960.

It involved both older boys and staff, but one man was particularly brutal.

Employee William Ellis sexually assaulted Mr Rundle more than 100 times and was eventually jailed for his crimes.

Appearing before the Royal Commission into child sex abuse in Adelaide on Tuesday, Mr Rundle told how Ellis would blame him or blame the devil after his attacks but would never blame himself.

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MICHIGAN
MLive

By John S. Hausman | jhausman@mlive.com
on October 06, 2015

MUSKEGON, MI – Matthew James Vanderkooi is headed to state prison for sexually fondling three little girls, two of them in church.

Muskegon County Circuit Judge Timothy G. Hicks on Monday, Oct. 5, sentenced Vanderkooi, 33, of Laketon Township to three years and 10 months to 15 years in prison for three counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct. VanderKooi also got 110 days in jail, already served, for resisting and obstructing police – running away when police came to arrest him.

Vanderkooi also must submit to lifetime electronic monitoring and must register as a sex offender.

Vanderkooi was arrested June 17. He was charged with sexually touching an 8-year-old girl who was a friend of the family and two young sisters, both under 13 years old.

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FLORIDA
WPTV

[with video]

Monica Magalhaes

STUART, Fla. – Federal authorities arrested a former The Grace Place youth pastor Monday in Ocala on a charge of enticing a minor to engage in a sexual relationship.

Officials say, 24-year-old Jeffrey Brian Mobley, formely of Stuart, was arrested by a Marion County Sheriff around 8:30 a.m. at 11000 W SR 40.

Mobley appeared before a federal judge Monday during a first appearance, according to court records. He was ordered to be held in custody pending a detention hearing and preliminary examination on October 7.

Officials say, in September 2015, a suspicious conduct report was made to the Martin County Sheriff’s Office concerning the youth pastor and a minor who was under his trust and care through a religious based youth program in Stuart.

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UNITED STATES
Western Courier

Bree Bracey

It’s been said that the pope is now a global celebrity. When he recently came to America, millions of U.S. citizens saw him in person or live on television.

 There is a vast religious audience, in addition to increasing numbers of interested secular viewers, who are attracted to the pope’s progressive views. But how progressive are they, really?

 In a meeting I recently attended, discussion turned to opinions about the pope. One student said she doesn’t like how so many people think the pope is “so fantastic” when really the “progressive” things he’s said are just things good people ought to believe — like preaching about tolerance and acceptance. She also made the point that Pope Francis is probably only saying such things to keep the public happy. Another student quickly shut her down and said that, as a “queer Catholic,” these remarks meant a lot for this student’s entire community.

 This conversation got me thinking. I was sure that the pope was a great man. I finally reasoned that, even if he doesn’t necessarily believe the things he says but is saying them to be progressive, at the very least he is calling for the Catholic Church, and its followers to change its ideals. Though to some it may seem that Pope Francis does not mean what he’s saying, at least he’s saying it. Yesterday I read that the Vatican is stripping a priest of his duties after he openly came out as homosexual.

 I remembered the conversation from before and realized maybe it’s all smoke and mirrors. Maybe nothing has truly changed.

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NEW YORK
TWC News

[with video]

By Ryan Whalen
Monday, October 5, 2015

AMHERST, N.Y. — At the beginning of his trip to the United States, Pope Francis took some criticism from victims’ advocates for comments he made praising American bishops on how they’d handled the church’s sexual abuse scandal.

“At least at the beginning of his visit he wasn’t addressing the issue at all,” HoganWillig attorney Diane Tiveron said.

Among those critical of the Pope were Tino Flores and Vanessa DeRosa. Flores claimed to have been abused by a priest starting when he was ten while DeRosa said she was abused by a Catholic School teacher when she was thirteen.

“We are hopeful that the Pope lives up to his word and delivers some relief to people who have been so badly abused,” HoganWillig attorney Steven Cohen said.

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NEW ZEALAND
TVNZ

Ryan Boswell
ONE News Reporter

The media have been prevented from filming or taking photographs of a former Catholic priest accused of rape.

Joseph Hercock, 71, appeared in the Wellington District Court this morning, charged with rape, indecently assaulting girls aged under 16, assault and unlawfully entering a building.

It is claimed the alleged offences took place in the 70s and 80s when Hercock was a chaplain at Sacred Heart College in Lower Hutt.

ONE News applied to the court to film Mr Hercock, arguing it was of public interest given his status in the community.

But the court declined the request, saying “could compromise his right to a fair trial”.

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NEW ZEALAND
Stuff

A former Catholic priest who worked at a Nelson school and Lower Hutt’s Sacred Heart College is to go to trial on sex charges next year.

Nelson man Peter Joseph Hercock, 71, has pleaded not guilty to two charges of rape, five of indecent assault of girls under 16, assault on a child and burglary.

All the charges relate to alleged offending in Lower Hutt, Upper Hutt and Wainuiomata in the 1970s and 1980s, most while he was a chaplain at the single-sex girls’ school.

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FLORIDA
CBS 12

Story by Victoria Price/CBS12

STUART, Fla. (CBS12) — A former youth pastor for ‘The Grace Place’ was arrested by the FBI for ‘use a facility to entice individual under age 18 to engage sexual activity.’

According to federal court documents, while employed as a youth pastor at The Grace Place in Stuart, 24-year-old Jeffrey Brian Mobley had allegedly engaged in sexual intercourse with two minors in the church’s youth program.

The defendant allegedly enticed the minors to engage in sexual activity and exchange sexually explicit images using Twitter and had sex with one of the victim’s at a Stuart motel.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail

By TOM KELLY FOR THE DAILY MAIL

An Anglican investigation into its handling of child abuse allegations against a predatory Bishop was branded a ‘joke’ by former victims yesterday.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, ordered an independent review into how the church examined accusations against former Bishop of Lewes Peter Ball, who will be sentenced tomorrow after admitting a string of offences against teenagers and young men from the 1970s to 1990s.

It is expected to examine the role of one of his predecessors, Lord Carey, who sought assurances from prosecutors in 1993 that there would be no further action against Ball after he received a caution for gross indecency, despite police knowing about more complaints.

Survivors have accused the clergy of a ‘cover up’ over the case, which was finally reopened in 2012 following a review by the Church.

Ball, 83, a friend of Prince Charles, pleaded guilty last month after the Old Bailey heard how he used religion as a ‘cloak’ to prey on teenagers after they came to his home to explore their spirituality.

The Church said its review will examine its co-operation with the police and other professionals, and whether information was shared ‘in a timely manner’.

But Rev Graham Sawyer, who was abused by Ball and now heads the Church Reform Group which campaigns for victims of abuse by the clergy, claimed the Archbishop was belatedly responding to events.

He said: ‘It was not a proactive step to inform the police: they had just been caught out.

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OHIO
10TV

By Glenn McEntyre
Monday October 5, 2015

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Brian Sze was arrested last week in Seattle for crimes that allegedly happened while he was a teacher at Bishop Watterson in Columbus.

The Catholic Diocese of Columbus says it fired Sze for inappropriate communication with a different student.

An email sent to parents of St. Brigid of Kildare students said, “Protocols…were not followed” in Sze’s case. The email obtained by 10TV is signed by Monsignor Joseph Hendricks and St. Brigid Principal Kathy O’Reilly. St. Brigid is a feeder school for Bishop Watterson and Brian Sze taught at both.

Kathy O’Reilly is one of the people who gave a positive reference that allowed Sze to get a job at a private school in Seattle, even after he was fired from his job here in Columbus. In the letter, O’Reilly says she and the Monsignor “had no knowledge of Mr. Sze’s termination for cause” prior to hearing the news of his arrest Wednesday evening.

The letter refers to a meeting Thursday night where Regina Quinn, the Diocesan Safe Environment Director, told parents “There is not a good reason that the protocols….were not followed at the Diocesan level.”

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CHILE
Cooperativa

[Laity of Osorno: The pope has to apologize for his statement in support on Bishop Juan Barros.]

Mario Vargas, vocero de la Organización de Laicos y Laicas, se refirió a las declaraciones del papa Francisco ante la situación del obispo de Osorno, Juan Barros, quien es acusado de ser uno de los encubridores de los abusos sexuales de Fernando Karadima.

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NEW JERSEY
Fox News

By Cristina Corbin
Published October 05, 2015

Football and mass are synonymous with Sundays in New York Giants country, where a priest is in hot water for allegedly pointing a gun at an 8-year-old Cowboys fan – even though witnesses say it was all a joke.

The Rev. Kevin Carter — pastor of St. Margaret of Cortona Church in Little Ferry, N.J. — was arrested Friday and charged with aggravated assault and endangering the welfare of a child for pointing the firearm at the boy. Carter is expected to be arraigned Tuesday on the charges, which one witness called “fallacious.” The move came after the Newark Archdiocese notified Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli on Sept. 28 that a parishioner at the church contacted the archdiocese about alleged incident, which had occurred 12 days prior.

Molinelli said his office launched an investigation which found that on Sept. 13, the boy — who has not been identified publicly — came to church for Sunday services with his family.

“Prior to the mass beginning, Father Kevin Carter asked to see him in one of the rectory rooms,” Molinelli said in a statement. “Once in the room, Father Carter had the victim stand against a wall. He then retrieved a long gun from nearby and pointed it at the child with an indication that he would shoot him.”

“This was witnessed by several individuals that were standing outside of the room,” the statement said.

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MONTANA
Montana Public Radio

[with audio]

By BRIAN KAHN

In 1988, when you were a young Catholic priest, the child sex abuse scandal hit. You urged cooperation, not confrontation, but the church took a different path. Now, you’re a bishop and the scandal explodes in your diocese. What do you do? Bishop George Thomas is the guest on this week’s “Home Ground Radio”.

Decades ago allegations of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests emerged. It was stunning, impossible, and true. Criminal prosecutions and convictions followed. And civil lawsuits seeking compensation for victims. How could this be? It got worse. In some places to church had protected pedophile priests from exposure, thinking it was protecting itself. The lawsuits kept coming and still do, and the church defends itself in court.

Now imagine you are a Roman Catholic priest. A man of deep faith. You see the institution to which you have devoted your adult life shaken to the core. You pursue your ministry and after 23 years of service you are appointed bishop in 1999.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Candice Marcus

A victim of a notorious South Australian paedophile says the child abuse royal commission’s hearings into the Salvation Army over the next fortnight will be an important step in many victims’ journeys.

The Salvation Army’s response to child sexual abuse will again come under scrutiny as hearings return to Adelaide, beginning today.

It is examining the experiences of former child residents of four boys’ homes run by the Salvation Army in South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia between 1940 and 1990.

Allegations of sexual abuse at the Eden Park Boys’ Home in South Australia, the Box Hill Boys’ Home in Victoria, Bayswater Boys’ Home in Victoria and the Hollywood Children’s Village (formerly known as the Salvation Army Boys’ Home) at Nedlands in Western Australia will form the basis of the hearing.

The commission will hear about the Salvation Army’s responses to the allegations and examine its current and past policies, practices and procedures for responding to claims of abuse.

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CHILE
Infogate

Nadie se lo esperaba, pero sí sospechaban –los detractores del obispo de Osorno Juan Barros Madrid- que algo “muy poderoso” sustentaba al cuestionado prelado por sus vínculos con el cura Karadima y este viernes se develó el secreto, mejor dicho lo destapó el canal MEGA.

El mismísimo Papa Francisco respaldó al que fuera obispo castrense de Chile, despejando toda duda sobre su permanencia en Osorno.

Los dichos del jefe de la Iglesia Católica se dieron en el marco de una “audiencia pública” en El Vaticano el pasado 6 de mayo y –al parecer- la grabación dada a conocer habría sido tomada por un “argentino” comenta en El Mercurio de este sábado Jaime Coiro, en esa fecha vocero de la Conferencia Episcopal de Chile, que se encontraba de vacaciones junto a su familia a y –según su relato- él es quien le pregunta al Papa por Osorno.

Ahora bien, la duda que surge es ¿si está información la conocía la –también cuestionada- jerarquía de la Iglesia chilena encabezada por Ricardo Ezzati, es dada a conocer casi cinco meses después?

La transcripción de lo dicho por Francisco ese 6 de mayo señala: “La Iglesia (Osorno) perdió la libertad, dejándose llenar la cabeza por políticos, juzgando a un obispo sin ninguna prueba, después de 2’ aos de ser obispo. Así que piensen con la cabeza. No se dejen llevar, de las narices, de todos los zurdos, que son los que han armado la cosa. Es más: la única objeción que encontré en este obispo fue de sa cre di ta da por la corte judicial. Así que, por favor, no pierdan la serenidad. Osorno sufre sí, por tonta. Porque no abre su corazón a lo que Dios dice, se deja lelvar por las macanas que dice toda esa gente. Soy el primero en juzgar y castigar a alguien que tiene acusaciones de este tipo, pero en este caso (no hay) ninguna prueba; de corazón se los digo”, señala el Papa en el video tomado ese día en la “ciudad santa”.
Ahora bien cuando el Papa afirma que “No abre su corazón a lo que Dios dice” se refiere al dogma que sostiene que Dios habla a través del Papa.

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UNITED STATES
The Mennonite

Written By: Stephanie Krehbiel

In August, together with 10 other Mennonite or formerly Mennonite advocates for survivors of sexual violence, I attended the annual conference of the Survivors Network for Those Abused by Priests. SNAP is a 30-year-old organization formed by Catholic survivors of clergy sexual abuse. It has since branched out to serve survivors whose abuse occurred in different faith traditions.

After two days of conference sessions, our Mennonite SNAP group gathered to compare notes, get to know one another better and plan for the future. We discussed our experiences with church leaders and law enforcement. In that trusted company and the privacy of that room, we shared name after name: of rapists, molesters, harassers, and predators. We also named Mennonite pastors, deacons, administrators and elders who, through complicity or passive silence, helped allow the violence to happen.

One overriding theme of our conversation was the retribution and fallout faced by survivors who come forward with the names of their abusers.

We face a dilemma that has confounded survivors’ advocates for years. We can’t do much of anything to stop sexual violence when perpetrators are allowed to hurt people without accountability. Still, it is hard to counsel survivors to name their perpetrators when the consequences of that action are so routinely vicious. All of us in that room had faced the experience of being attacked—verbally, through threats to our employment and sometimes physically—for naming perpetrators or supporting others who did.

I think of this conversation whenever I read about the efforts of Mennonite Church USA leadership to confront sexual abuse. There are good, competent people working on those initiatives. Still, survivors who want to make the names of their abusers public need more concrete reasons to believe they won’t be shamed or ignored when they name names. What will happen, for instance, when those names create embarrassment for powerful Mennonites?

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