ABUSE TRACKER

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
NBC News

by Alastair Jamieson, Katie Primm and Kasie Hunt

Crowds began to gather at dawn Saturday in Philadelphia as Pope Francis prepared to promote religious freedom in the birthplace of American independence.

The city awoke to eight-foot tall mesh fences, concrete barriers and bike racks lining the streets as airport-style security – including TSA agents – was installed for the pontiff’s visit.
Image: A nun being checked by a TSA agent in Philadelphia early Saturday.
A nun is checked by a TSA agent in Philadelphia Saturday. Elyse Perlmutter-Gumbiner / NBC News

Every few blocks along the Ben Franklin Parkway parade route, white tents have food for sale and official merchandise.

Outside the site of Independence Hall, where the United States Declaration of Independence and Constitution were adopted, crowds began to form at 7 a.m. – but they will have to wait until 4 p.m. to see the pontiff.

The 78-year-old Argentine is expected to hold a rally there with Hispanic and other immigrants on the theme of religious freedom. The event combines two issues about which Francis is most concerned: the plight of immigrants seeking a better life for themselves and their families, and the freedom to practice religion.

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

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Washington Post

By Karen Heller and , Frances Stead Sellers and Joe Heim September 26

PHILADELPHIA — America’s birthplace of liberty has opened its arms for Pope Francis’s weekend visit by closing almost everything.

The 78-year-old pontiff is scheduled to arrive at 9:30 a.m. Saturday at Philadelphia International Airport, the final leg of his first visit to the United States. Over two days, he’ll celebrate two Masses, deliver a speech on religious liberty at Independence Hall, participate in two papal parades, and be serenaded by Aretha Franklin and Andrea Bocelli at a festival to cap the church’s World Meeting of Families, which began Tuesday.

On Saturday morning, with a huge swath of the city closed to traffic, an eerie quiet created a vague post-apocalyptic sense. On normally beeping, bustling Chestnut street the only audible sound was the hum of a cranky air conditioner and the quiet slap of a runner’s feet on the pavement.

Philadelphians who griped over the many inconveniences of hosting Francis have fled the city or settled in to watch the scenes unfolding on their doorsteps from the comfort of their sofas. On Saturday morning, the city’s streets began to swell with a chorus of more positive voices. Popetimism, some are calling it.

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

UNITED STATES
Pope Francis CON-artist & Vicar of Plutocrats

Paris Arrow

Pope Francis is desperate to latch on to the fame of 9/11 because he knows the Vatican Titanic is sunken deep in the ocean of moral bankruptcy as a consequence of the Vatican crimes against humanity’s children during half-the-20th century – committed by the bestial JP2 Army – John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army – in almost all dioceses across the USA. Pope Francis has no business meeting with 9/11 victims’ families – (3,000 victims were attacked by 19 Muslims) – because his first and foremost priority as Roman Pontiff should be spending time with Catholic victims raped by criminal heinous Catholic priests and punishing all evil bishops who aided and abetted them for decades. Francis should be spending time with SNAP, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, who represent 100,000 victims of more than 6,500 pedophile priests in the USA alone. Why is Pope Francis embracing the victims’ families of 19 Muslims attackers but he doesn’t give a damn to victims of his own church – those bestial Catholic JP2 Army – John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army named aptly after the pope who reigned the longest but said nothing and did nothing to save and protect children.

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

TEXAS
Palestine Herald-Press

By Gary E. Lindsley

A Greenville, Texas minister, facing a multi-million dollar lawsuit alleging he sexually abused a teenager while at his former church in the 1990s, has resigned.

Billy Bob Burge, a minister at Grace Community Church, resigned on Thursday, according to Lead Pastor Adam Brind.

Burge is accused of repeatedly sexually abusing John Jeremy Sweet-Gomez when he attended First Baptist Church of Rockwall, Texas as a teenager.

Sweet-Gomez, according to the lawsuit filed against Burge and First Baptist Church of Rockwall by his parents, Carla Sweet and Ed Gomez, committed suicide in January 2015.

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

UNITED STATES
KUOW

By JEANNIE YANDEL & AMINA AL-SADI

Jeannie Yandel talks to Mary Dispenza, author and director of the Northwest branch of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, about Pope Francis’ visit to the United States.

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

UNITED STATES
Valley News

Randall Balmer
For the Valley News
Saturday, September 26, 2015

Pope Francis’ triumphant visit to Cuba and the United States this week calls to mind the visit of John Paul II to America early in his papacy. In 1979, the charismatic new pontiff celebrated a Mass at Living History Farms outside of Des Moines, Iowa, and utterly charmed his audience, estimated at 350,000. “You’ve got a pope,” an Iowa farmer said to his Catholic neighbor, “who really knows how to pope.”

Despite the inevitable parallels between Francis and John Paul — the charisma, the disarming candor, the vigor that contrasted with their predecessors — a more accurate comparison, in my view, is with John XXIII. The cardinals chose both men, John XXIII and Francis, to be caretakers of the papacy. Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, the primate of Venice, was elected to the papacy in 1958 on the 12th ballot and took the name John XXIII. His fellow cardinals figured that this mild-mannered prelate wouldn’t make a lot of waves and, considering his age, 76, they could revisit the matter of church leadership in a few years. …

Francis has a full agenda. Some studies suggest that fully 10 percent of Americans identify themselves as former Catholics, and a shortage of clergy here in the U.S. and around the world raises questions about clerical celibacy, which has been a requirement for only a millennium or so — a relative short duration for an institution that marks time in centuries. Regarding the ordination of women, the pontiff apparently feels blocked by the statements of his immediate predecessors. So far he has said, “That door is closed,” although the Irish Times has reported that Francis was considering the appointment of Mary McAleese, the former president of Ireland who has studied theology at the Gregorian University in Rome, to the College of Cardinals. (There is no gender-specific requirement for cardinal; the appointment is the pope’s alone, and apparently John Paul II once considered naming Mother Teresa to the College.)

The mention of McAleese brings us, finally, to the pope’s most pressing issue: the pedophilia scandal. When McAleese, then the president of Ireland, stopped in Boston during a state visit to the United States in 1998, she was browbeaten for her support for the ordination of women by none other than Bernard Law. The archbishop of Boston, McAleese recounted later, told her that he was “sorry for Catholic Ireland to have you as president.”

Law, however, was even then shielding pedophile priests in his archdiocese, shuffling them from one assignment to another. According to Spotlight, the recently released motion picture on the scandal, 294 priests under Law’s care have been identified as pedophiles. The tally of their victims now tops a thousand, and the archdiocese so far has doled out more than $85 million in settlements.

Law was forced to resign in 2002, whereupon he was named head of Santa Marie Maggiore, one of the most significant basilicas in Rome. He retired from that post in 2011 and, according to WGBH in Boston, lives a very comfortable life within the confines of the Vatican.

In 2012, Robert Finn, the bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph, was found guilty and sentenced to two years’ probation for failing to report one of his pedophile priests to the authorities. The Vatican allowed Bishop Finn to continue in his post until his resignation from the diocese earlier this year. He remains a bishop.

Francis has begun to address the issue. He appointed a 17-member commission early in his papacy and established a Vatican tribunal in June. Still, as the very existence of the tribunal itself suggests, the Vatican clearly prefers to handle matters of sexual abuse internally rather turn them over to secular authorities.

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

NEW YORK
The New Yorker

BY ADAM GOPNIK

New Yorkers personalize everything, and the shutdown of traffic around town this week was put personally on the head of our visitor, Pope Francis. A certain amount of the normal exasperation felt at out-of-towners was directed at the pontiff, as though the Pope were one of those tourists trying to stuff a dollar bill into the Metrocard slot. (God, or somebody, forbid he should try to work the new Rube Goldberg contraption for the crosstown bus.)

Yet given how disruptive he was to normal life, the tone of his visit was astonishingly welcoming, not least because this particular Pope lit up people who aren’t normally crazy about the papacy, while—and this is part of what brought joy to the first group—driving round the bend people who normally are more Catholic than he is. And yet this Pope is no more a “liberal” Pope than he is a secret Muslim Pope—he’s the Pope. His historic role, which he is playing, is to be a very well-dressed critic of the liberal state in all its forms. The trick about this Pope is not that he is a secret liberal but that he is such a thoroughgoing critic of liberalism and its dispensations that his assault takes in parts of our experience parochially described as conservative.

It would, to be sure, be a saintly liberal who didn’t feel a little schadenfreude on hearing the Pope contradict certain shibboleths of the self-described religious right. The very people—including members of the Catholic hierarchy—who, when it comes to women’s rights to make intimate reproductive decisions for themselves, have been most passionately devoted to the idea that one can’t be a “cafeteria Catholic,” picking and choosing doctrine as you like, are now loudly determined to, well, pick and choose among papal doctrines just as they like. Making metaphysical decisions about the status of embryos for women is one thing; being asked to condemn killing criminals and torturing prisoners and poisoning the Earth, these are, apparently, different—moral options on which man must be free to exercise his own conscience as he sees fit.

The pleasure one can’t help but feel is moderated, though, tempered by the truth that the extension of his causes and the reordering of his priorities does not alter Francis’s core beliefs. Nor should it be expected to do so. The Pope is still clearly against women’s reproductive rights, and as yet no friend to their ordination. Nor has he really addressed the sexual-abuse crisis, which has done so much to diminish the Church in America; his remarks on the subject in Washington were, as one survivor of priestly abuse said, in the Washington Post, “bizarre,” more devoted to praising the mostly invisible moral courage of the hierarchy that participated in the coverup than in addressing the evil done to the abused. A leader of SNAP, the victims’ organization, called Francis’s remarks “a slap in the face to all the victims, that we’re going to worry about how the poor bishop feels.” (It is a sign of the special moral exemption the Catholic Church receives that, had any other organization in the world engaged in the same activity, many of its leaders would be in prison.)

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

UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody

Posted on September 26, 2015 by Betty Clermont

Today, Pope Francis heads to Philadelphia to lead the World Meeting of Families. Before leaving for this trip to Cuba and the US, he said, “The family, as God wants it, composed of a man and a woman for the good of the spouses … is deformed by powerful contrary projects.”

The Catechism states that homosexual acts are a “grave depravity.” Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, later Pope Benedict XVI – added in 1997 that even the homosexual “inclination” is “objectively disordered.”

So Pope Francis can change this anytime he wants, but he won’t.

The pope said in February 2015, “Let’s think of the nuclear arms, of the possibility to annihilate in a few instants a very high number of human beings. Let’s think also of genetic manipulation, of the manipulation of life, or of the gender theory that does not recognize the order of creation.”

“The ‘gender theory’ Francis is denigrating is the medically and anthropologically supported concept that gender is a construct imposed by society. It is commonly cited in defense of transgender rights, since it shows gender can vary despite society’s expectations.”

Shortly after he became pope, Jorge Mario Bergoglio said “Who am I to judge” in defense of his appointment of Msgr. Battista Ricca as his watchdog at the Vatican Bank. Ricca had been outed for making a public display of his relationship with another male. The pope was responding to the question: “I would like to know, Holiness, what do you intend to do about this question of Msgr. Ricca and of the news of his private life?” No further questions were allowed.

Nevertheless, in this year alone:

Same-sex marriage “threatens to disfigure God’s plan,” the pope said. “The movement in many countries to accept same-sex marriage is an ‘ideological colonization that we have to be careful about that is trying to destroy the family,’” he continued.

After telling reporters about a public service officer who, in order to receive a loan to build schools, had to include a book on “gender theory” in her curriculum, the pope said: “Clever girl, she said ‘yes.’ And, as a result the goal of the financiers was achieved. This is ideological colonization.” (emphasis mine)

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

NEW YORK
CBS New York

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) — Pope Francis’ whirlwind tour of New York comes to an end this morning when he heads to Kennedy Airport to leave for Philadelphia, the final stop on his first-ever visit to the United States.

A few hundred people were seen waiting at JFK to say goodbye to the pope Friday morning, including a group of nuns holding white roses for the pontiff, CBS2’s Andrea Grymes reported.

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

NEW YORK
News LI

by Nia Hamm

NEW YORK – The historic U.S. visit of Pope Francis has refocused attention on the Catholic Church’s sex-abuse scandal. Although the pontiff has vowed to root out child sex predators from the Church, which has cost billions in legal expenses, victims of clergy sexual abuse want the pope to do more.

In New York, Michael Mack, 58, who says he was abused by a priest when he was 11, hopes to bring more attention to the issue this week. He has written a one-man play, “Conversations with My Molester.”

“I truly believe that his intention is to heal around this process,” Mack said. “And since this play of mine really is all about healing – about my own personal healing journey, but also the journeys that it reflects for so many survivors – that it seemed like the timing was a natural.”

Mack, who began practicing Catholicism again about seven years ago, said reform efforts such as a Truth and Reconciliation Commission would give church sexual-abuse victims a true chance to heal. Mack’s play opened in New York City on Thursday, the same day Pope Francis arrived in the city.

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

NEW YORK
Rome Reports

[with video]

The first stop during the Pope’s visit to New York was St. Patrick’s Cathedral. He presided over Vespers with priests and religious.

He first offered words of affection and closeness for the Muslims who were killed during a tragic stampede in Mecca. More than 700 are believed to have died.

His second message was one of gratitude. He thanked the American Catholics who stood by the Church, despite the sexual abuse scandal that shook the Church in recent years.

POPE FRANCIS

“You suffered greatly in the not distant past by having to bear the shame of some of your brothers who harmed and scandalized the Church in the most vulnerable of her members…I accompany you at this time of pain and difficulty.”

Giving thanks to the religious for their sacrifice, he asked them to not forget strength of their vocation. He told them not to turn off their love for God.

The Pope also wanted to send a more concrete message of support to specific audience: female religious. In 2008, the Vatican began a review of 341 female religious orders after complaints from some North American priests and bishops.

Last December, the Vatican announced the conclusions of the examination: It included a list of suggestions and, overall, was very positive in its message.

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

UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

A man who ran a Sunday school has been jailed for 16 years for historical sexual abuse against girls.

Alan Dawson, 64, of Newcroft Road, Urmston, was convicted of seven counts of indecent assault and one count of rape at Manchester Crown Court.

He was part of the congregation at Mauldeth Road Gospel Hall, Withington.

Police said he abused four girls between the 1960s and the 1980s, who were than aged between 11 and 16.

The abuse took place at Dawson’s home in Didsbury and at the homes of the girls.

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

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Vatican Radio

[with audio]

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis arrives in Philadelphia on Saturday, the final stop on his 10-day pastoral visit to Cuba and the United States. After meeting with Church leaders, visiting a high-security prison and greeting the city’s immigrant community, he’ll take part in a vigil and celebrate a concluding Mass for the 8th World Meeting of Families.

The city of Philadelphia has been preparing for this international gathering for the past three years since the venue was announced at the last World Meeting of Families in Milan in 2012. David O’Reilly is a veteran religion writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer and is travelling on the papal plane throughout the Pope’s visit. Just ahead of the trip, he sat down with Philippa Hitchen to talk about the way preparations for the Meeting has transformed the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

O’Reilly says for the past 10 years the city has had “a cloud over it of the most awful kind” following two grand jury investigations into the sexual abuse crisis. Those investigations revealed not only “extensive abuse of minors but also rather dreadful cover-ups by the leadership” which made “being Catholic in this city a sort of glum, dark thing for a lot of people”.

When Archbishop Chaput arrived in the city, O’Reilly continues, he also discovered all sorts of financial difficulties, including pension debts and a Catholic education system unable to support itself. O’Reilly recalls that the archbishop admitted publically “I’m not very happy to be here” and was unprepared for the announcement three years ago that his city would be the next site for the World Meeting of Families.

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

NEW YORK
National Catholic Register

BY CNA/EWTN NEWS 09/24/2015

NEW YORK CITY — In his first address in New York, Pope Francis lamented the suffering caused by the sexual-abuse scandal in the United States — not only for the trauma inflicted on the Church’s most vulnerable members, but also for the shame it has brought to priests and religious in general.

“I know that, as a presbyterate in the midst of God’s people, you suffered greatly in the not-distant past by having to bear the shame of some of your brothers who harmed and scandalized the Church in the most vulnerable of her members,” he said addressing clergy and religious gathered for Evening Prayer at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City Sept. 24.

“I accompany you at this time of pain and difficulty, and I thank God for your faithful service to his people,” he said, adding they have “come forth from the great tribulation.”

Despite these difficulties, Pope Francis said, “Our vocation is to be lived in joy.”

New York is the second of three cities the Holy Father will stop in during his Sept. 22-27 visit to the United States. In his first leg of his trip, the Holy Father addressed a joint session of Congress and met briefly with President Obama in Washington. While in New York City, Pope Francis will address the United Nations, before heading to Philadelphia for the World Meeting of Families.

During his remarks Thursday evening, the Pope also took a moment to express his “esteem and gratitude” for women religious in America, calling them the “front line” of evangelization. “To you, religious women, sisters and mothers of this people, I wish to say ‘thank you,’ a big thank you, and to tell you that I love you very much,” he said.

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

AUSTRALIA
The Australian

SEPTEMBER 26, 2015

Hedley Thomas
National Chief Correspondent
Brisbane

A child-sex abuse scandal and ensuing cover-up at two elite Brisbane schools that contributed to Australia’s governor-general quit­ting 12 years ago is being re­investigated by the royal commission into child sexual abuse.

Some 100 boys were abused over many years by a counsellor, Kevin “Skippy” Lynch, at Brisbane Grammar and, subsequently, St Paul’s. The wrongdoing was shielded from public scrutiny because leaders in both the Anglican diocese and the schools at the time kept the matters quiet.

The scandal was exposed by investigative reporting in Brisbane in the early 2000s, which showed senior figures including Brisbane’s Anglican Archbishop, Peter Hollingworth, were aware of evidence of the abuse, before Dr Hollingworth was appointed governor-general. He resigned in 2003 over his handling of a series of sex-abuse scandals.

The abuse was not reported or acknowledged by the church or the school until after a former Grammar student suspected of having been one of Lynch’s victims, Nigel Parodi, shot three people in a rampage that ended with the loner’s death in a police shootout in Brisbane.

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

UNITED STATES
Aleteia

ZOE ROMANOWSKY SEPTEMBER 25, 2015

Archbishop William E. Lori was appointed the 16th Archbishop of Baltimore, the premier see of the Church in the United States, by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012. He spoke to Aleteia’s Zoe Romanowsky about the significance of Pope Francis’ visit and what the Holy Father’s message means for bishops and for all of the faithful. …

The pope’s talk to the U.S. bishops yesterday at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in D.C. was quite moving and there was a lot to unpack there. What struck you the most about his message?

Several things. First, as a bishop sitting there, I felt very, very encouraged. He thanked us for our service to the poor and immigrants and there was wonderful encouragement about our Catholic schools. He understood how difficult it’s been to deal with the tragic situation of clergy sexual abuse. In many ways I felt the Holy Father was expressing a great brotherly solidarity with us, as bishops. And I think it was important that he do so because sometimes people like to create a lot of tension between the pope and the bishops. But this was the opposite — fraternal solidarity.

At the same time, I think the Holy Father recognizes that operating in any culture, including our own, involves a lot of challenges, and as he has done in the other places, he encouraged us be pastors, with the deepest respect for our roots, to deal with our problems with creativity and dialogue, trying to understand people who differ with us.

So, there’s a lot to unpack. It was kind of a mini-summary of what the Church has been saying to bishops — very effective and very moving.

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

AUSTRALIA
ABC News

A victim of child sexual abuse says he is hopeful Adelaide’s Archbishop will ultimately be forced to defend a charge of concealing abuse against children.

Philip Wilson, the Archbishop of Adelaide, is the most senior catholic official in the world accused of concealing child sexual abuse.

He pleaded not guilty at Newcastle Local Court yesterday with Wilson’s legal team calling for a permanent stay of proceedings.

The charge relates to when Wilson was an assistant parish priest in East Maitland in the 1970s and worked with paedophile priest James Fletcher.

The magistrate has set a date for a one-day hearing in December to hear the legal argument from both sides, with no witnesses to be called.

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

UNITED STATES
Wall Street Journal

By JOE MORGENSTERN
Sept. 24, 2015

As horror upon horror unfolds in “Prophet’s Prey,” Amy Berg’s shocking documentary about the mad polygamist Warren Jeffs and his followers, one may marvel, in horror, at the elaborate forms that deviancy can take. The half-educated son of a crackpot father who ran a splinter group calling itself the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), Mr. Jeffs took over the church on his father’s death, declared himself a prophet, promoted polygamy that frequently involved underage girls, set up isolated communities throughout the vastness of the Southwest and reigned supreme over thousands of believers as a veritable godhead, All the while, the film contends persuasively, Mr. Jeffs’s rogue church was, fundamentally, a crime syndicate built by and for sexual predators.

Was, and by all accounts in “Prophet’s Prey,” still is—that’s the most shocking part. Mr. Jeffs is in prison for the rest of his life, having been captured in 2006 during a traffic stop near Las Vegas, and convicted, in 2007, of two felony counts of child assault. And some of the child victims were freed by authorities from what amounted to imprisonment and enslavement in FLDS compounds, thanks in large measure to an activist attorney general in Utah. (The Church of Latter-Day Saints renounced the doctrine of polygamy in 1890.)

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

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

SNAP: “Prelates fight secular child safety bills”
Battles are being waged in places Francis visits: PA, DC & NY
“Chaput uses flock’s donations to protect predators,” group says
It begs church-goers: “Donate elsewhere until real change happens”
SNAP: “As Francis talks of ‘protecting families,’ bishops ‘fight them in court’”

What:
Holding signs and childhood photos, after Francis’ mass, clergy sex abuse victims will

–urge the pope to make his bishops, in PA & elsewhere, stop blocking better child safety laws,
–urge lawmakers, in PA and elsewhere, to ignore bishops’ “self-serving” lobbying efforts, and
–urge Catholics to donate elsewhere until their church officials push for, not against, better laws that protect kids, expose predators and punish enablers.

(Such legislative struggles are pending in each place Francis is visiting: Pennsylvania, New York and DC.)

The victims will also urge all victims, witnesses and whistleblowers – in every institution that serves kids – to

–report everything they know, see or suspect to law enforcement,
–seek help from independent sources (not church, school, camp or coaching staff), and
–join the growing movement to end or extend archaic, predator-friendly statutes of limitations.

When:
Saturday, Sept. 26 at 1:30 p.m.

Where:
Outside St. Patrick Church, 242. S. 20th, in center city Philadelphia, PA (where a predator priest worked)

Who:
Three-four members of an international support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org), including a Missouri woman who is the organization’s long time outreach director

Why:
While clergy sex abuse and cover up lawsuits attract considerable media attention, most victims of pedophile priests can’t seek justice in court because bishops exploit archaic, predator-friendly deadlines called “statutes of limitations.” Worse, SNAP says, US bishops are spending “hundreds of thousands of dollars” on “high-priced lobbyists” to block moves to reform these rigid statutes that “give wrongdoers incentives to intimidate victims, threaten witnesses, discredit whistleblowers, destroy evidence and ‘run out the clock’ on child sex crimes and cover ups.”

In PA, a bill has been introduced that would give child sex abuse victims more time to file lawsuits. Catholic officials have fought hard and successfully against measures like this in Harrisburg and in every other state capitol where the issue has been raised, SNAP says.

SNAP wants Pope Francis to forbid such “reckless, callous expenditures” that “save bishops’ reputations but enable abuse and cover up to continue.” The group also wants state lawmakers to pass civil “window” laws that “make it easier for struggling victims to protect others, expose predators, deter cover ups and seek justice.”

(Four states have enacted civil “window” laws. As a result, hundreds of adults who committed and concealed child sex crimes have been exposed, fired, demoted or otherwise punished and dozens of criminal prosecutions have taken place that likely would not have, SNAP maintains. The group says “windows” are “the single quickest, safest and cheapest way to expose predators, safeguard kids and end cover ups of child sexual assaults.”)

Because bishops exploit tight statues of limitations, very few victims are able to “out” their perpetrators in court. That, in turn, helps predators continue molesting children, SNAP charges.

Catholic officials disingenuously claim “window” measures “unfairly target” churches, SNAP says. But they are “neutral” bills that usually include all private non-profits where child sex crimes are most often covered up. Bishops say over time “witnesses die, memories fade and evidence is lost.” SNAP says these factors just make it harder on victims, who face the burden of proof in such cases.

“By opposing these bills, Catholic officials are “putting more kids in harm’s way in all kinds of institutions, secular and religious,” says SNAP director David Clohessy. “And they contradict all the nice-sounding things Francis says about safeguarding the vulnerable and healing the wounded.”

The Hawaii and Minnesota windows are still “open.” The California and Delaware ones have closed. They range from one year (California) to three years (Minnesota).

Sponsors of the SOL window measure in PA include Reps. Mark Rizzo of Berks County (610-921-8921) and Louise Bishop (D-Philadelphia).

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

PENNSYLVANIA
The Morning Call

By Sarah M. Wojcik
Of The Morning Call

Diocese of Allentown, Pius X, priest not liable for sexual abuse of S. Korean student, judge rules
The Diocese of Allentown is not liable for the sexual abuse of a South Korean exchange student inside a private dormitory where she stayed while attending Pius X High School, according to a ruling by Northampton County Judge Michael Koury Jr.

While the attorney representing the diocese praised Koury’s decision, Howard Myerowitz, representing the victim in the sex abuse case, voiced his deep disappointment.

“I have a lot of respect for Judge Koury, but I think he got it wrong. It shouldn’t have gone on,” Myerowitz said of the abuse endured by his client. “This was one of those strange cases where there was a disclosure (of the abuse), but it continued. And that’s what bothers me so much about it.”

The decision, handed down Thursday, exonerates the diocese, Pius X High School, Inc. and a priest identified only as Father Tom Doe, from liability, but the case against the owners of the dormitory and the abuser, Richard Kim, is still poised to move forward.

The victim was 14 when she was repeatedly sexually assaulted by 37-year-old Kim at the now-shuttered ACE Academy in Pen Argyl, where he was working as a tutor. At the time, the teenage girl was attending Pius X High School, which has since closed its doors due to lack of enrollment.

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

UNITED STATES
Truthout

Friday, 25 September 2015

By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed

So this guy in white robes showed up at the Capitol Building in Washington DC on Thursday, and the freak-out was comprehensive. Some 5,000 law enforcement officials were brought to bear in the name of “security” for the visit by Pope Francis, a number that sits in the shade of the 7,000 law enforcement officials prepared for his arrival in New York City. Both towns are effectively shut down; fences up, fences everywhere.

The pope’s speech before a joint session of congress was riveting television. The crowds outside were huge, and hugely enthusiastic. The cameras flashed to various crowd shots, one including Senator Ted Cruz looking like an extra from “Grease,” with Chris Matthews on MSNBC claiming that suddenly-retiring and very weepy House Speaker John Boehner “wanted personal help from the pope” at one notable point. Ponder that a moment.

The only person Francis personally greeted when he entered the chamber was John Kerry. When the pontiff assumed the podium, Speaker Boehner shook his hand and said, “Good luck.” It was not a jocular statement; Boehner delivered it in the tones of a World War I officer ordering a doughboy over the side of a trench and into machine-gun fire.

Pope Francis defended working people and retired people, invoked Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. and Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton, defended religious freedom, intellectual freedom and individual freedoms while denouncing the “simplistic reductionism that sees only good or evil,” defended immigrants and immigration, made a stout argument in favor of the reality of climate change, described the profits made from weapons sales as “money drenched in blood,” and kicked the death penalty square in the ass.

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

UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

Joan Chittister to Pope Francis: “It Is Impossible, Holy Father, to Be Serious about Doing Anything for the Poor and at the Same Time Do Little or Nothing for Women”

Because I do remain a bit muzzy in the head due to my recent tooth issues (and, above all, the difficulty one has in sleeping as she/he deals with pain in the night), I don’t think I can write anything of great substance or length right now. (Lucky you, right?)

But I’ll share a few top-of-head thoughts with you. Much of value is being written in the past several days about what Pope Francis has been saying and doing in the U.S. I can’t give you a comprehensive report of everything that catches my eye.

I do, though, want to zero in on the following section of Tom Roberts’s National Catholic Reporter commentary on the pope’s remarks to U.S. bishops two days ago: Roberts writes that “Francis laid out an insistent call for dialogue – with everyone and in all directions,” as he emphasized:

The dialogue should be with everyone – among bishops, in their presbyterates, with lay persons, families and with society. “I cannot ever tire of encouraging you to dialogue fearlessly,” he said.

I want to zero in not only on this observation, but on the word everyone: Francis encouraged the bishops, according to Roberts, to build within the U.S. Catholic church dialogues that include everyone.

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

CHILE
24 Horas

[Former pastor reveals details on possible negligence by the archbishop in the Fernando Karadima case.The former pastor of La Moneda, Percival Cowley, implicated Ricardo Ezzati and Francisco Javier Errazuriz as being possibly negligent.]

El ex párroco de La Moneda, Percival Cowley, reveló detalles que demostrarían la posible negligencia de Ricardo Ezzati y Francisco Javier Errázuriz sobre el caso Karadima.

Mediante las declaraciones por la demanda de las víctimas de Fernando Karadima -a las cuales tuvo acceso The Clinic- Cowley expresó que la cúpula católica omitió durante un tiempo los antecedentes que podrían haber acelerado la investigación.

Según el religioso, el mismo James Hamilton -víctima del otrora cura de El Bosque- le narró lo sucedido en 2003, por lo que prometió que se lo iba a comunicar el entonces obispo auxiliar de Santiago, Ricardo Ezzti.

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

CANADA
Niagara Falls Review

By Alison Langley, Niagara Falls Review
Friday, September 25, 2015

A lawyer who represented three altar boys who were molested by Donald Grecco says he’s not surprised the defrocked Catholic priest now faces new sex-related charges involving young boys.

“It didn’t surprise me at all,” Rob Talach, of Ledroit Beckett Litigation Lawyers, a London, Ont., law firm, said Friday.

“I sensed there were more (victims). This is a confirmation of where my gut was all along.”

The Haldimand detachment of the Ontario Provincial Police this week arrested 75-year-old Grecco following an investigation into sexual abuse complaints involving two boys dating back almost 40 years.

Police allege the incidents occurred between 1977 and 1982 involving two boys ages 10 and 14 at locations in Niagara Falls, Haldimand County and the United States.

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

CANADA
CTV

A former priest with the Roman Catholic Church faces new accusations of historical sexual assault involving two young boys.

Donald Grecco spent time in jail earlier this decade after being found guilty of sexual assaults involving altar boys in the 1970s and 1980s.

Haldimand County OPP say new allegations against Grecco came to light several months ago, prompting another investigation.

Grecco now faces new charges of gross indecency and indecent assault.

Police say the allegations relate to incidents that occurred between 19777 and 1982, in locations around Haldimand County, Niagara Region and the United States.

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

CANADA
The Square

(MISSISSAUGA, ON) – The OPP have charged a 75 year-old former Catholic priest with several sex offences after conducting an historical sexual assault investigation in the Haldimand County and Niagara Region areas.

Over the past several months police have been investigating a series of sexual assaults which had occurred between 1977 and 1982. They involved a then 10 year-old and 14 year-old boys. The assaults occurred at locations in Niagara Region, Haldimand County, and the United States.

As a result, Donald Grecco, 75, of Peel Region, has been charged with two counts each of Gross Indecency and Indecent Assault on a Male. Grecco will appear in Provincial Court in Cayuga on December 8, at 2:00 pm.

The incidents occurred while Grecco was a priest at St Stephen’s Roman Catholic Church, in Cayuga, at St Kevin’s Roman Catholic Church, in Welland, and at St Thomas More Roman Catholic Church, in Niagara Falls.

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

NEW YORK
Huffington Post

As released by the Vatican.

Mr President,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Thank you for your kind words. Once again, following a tradition by which I feel honored, the Secretary General of the United Nations has invited the Pope to address this distinguished assembly of nations. In my own name, and that of the entire Catholic community, I wish to express to you, Mr Ban Ki-moon, my heartfelt gratitude. I greet the Heads of State and Heads of Government present, as well as the ambassadors, diplomats and political and technical officials accompanying them, the personnel of the United Nations engaged in this 70th Session of the General Assembly, the personnel of the various programs and agencies of the United Nations family, and all those who, in one way or another, take part in this meeting. Through you, I also greet the citizens of all the nations represented in this hall. I thank you, each and all, for your efforts in the service of mankind.

This is the fifth time that a Pope has visited the United Nations. I follow in the footsteps of my predecessors Paul VI, in1965, John Paul II, in 1979 and 1995, and my most recent predecessor, now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, in 2008. All of them expressed their great esteem for the Organization, which they considered the appropriate juridical and political response to this present moment of history, marked by our technical ability to overcome distances and frontiers and, apparently, to overcome all natural limits to the exercise of power. An essential response, inasmuch as technological power, in the hands of nationalistic or falsely universalist ideologies, is capable of perpetrating tremendous atrocities. I can only reiterate the appreciation expressed by my predecessors, in reaffirming the importance which the Catholic Church attaches to this Institution and the hope which she places in its activities.

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

NEW YORK
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, Sept. 25

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

Twice in two days, Pope Francis has made vague and brief references to the on-going abuse and cover up crisis, mentioning the pain of church staff but not the pain of abused children and betrayed parishioners. He refuses to even call the scandal by its name.

[New York Times]

[Kern Golden Empire]

“In his homily before a crowd of priests and nuns,” reported CNN, Francis said “You suffered greatly in the not distant past by having to bear the shame of some of your brothers who harmed and scandalized the Church in the most vulnerable of her members,” and referred to a time of “pain and difficulty.”

Today’s Washington Post reports “At a news conference in New York, the Rev. Federico Lombardi was asked why the pope had spoken twice now — Wednesday to bishops and Thursday to seminarians and religious sisters, among others — about the abuse crisis, but never named it explicitly and focused on encouraging the clergy without speaking first about victims.”

[Washington Post]

And today’s New York Times noted the same troubling pattern – talking about how clergy child sex crimes and cover ups impact other clergy.

[New York Times]

Francis has made similar disturbing comments about the crisis before, claiming last year that “The Catholic Church is perhaps the only public institution to have moved with transparency and accountability” on abuse “Yet the Church is the only one to be attacked

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

NEW YORK
Al Jazeera America

In rare public support group meeting, victims called Francis a ‘tranquilizer’ on issue of Catholic clergy sex abuse

September 25, 2015

by Renee Lewis @Renee5Lewis55

Pope Francis has been warmly welcomed by political leaders and thousands of ordinary people since arriving in New York City, but many survivors of sexual abuse by priests have had a different reaction.

“It’s been very difficult for Pope Francis to be in my backyard,” said Megan, a member of Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP). “There’s still so much hurt.”

She and other survivors spoke to Al Jazeera at a rare public support group meeting in New York City on Tuesday, sharing their anger and frustration about what they say is a lack of substantive action by the Catholic Church to hold the priests who abused them accountable. All of them asked to be identified only by their first names.

For some survivors, the visit has triggered flashbacks. Peter said he was abused by a priest in his seminary boarding school starting from the age of 13. During the “kiss of peace” section of the service, the priest would come down from the altar to hug him, Peter said. When Pope Francis was met by President Barack Obama with a hug when he landed at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on Tuesday, Peter said those memories came flooding back.

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

ST. LOUIS (MO)
Berger’s Beat

“NOT TO BE LOST IN POMP & CIRCUMSTANCE OF POPE FRANCIS’ first visit to Washington is the reality that the Catholic Church he oversees has become one of the largest recipients of federal largesse in America,” reports Kelly Riddell. “The church and related Catholic charities and schools have collected more than $1.6 billion since 2012 in U.S. contracts and grants in a far-reaching relationship that spans from school lunches for grammar school students to contracts across the globe to care for the poor and needy at the expense of Uncle Sam,” a Washington Times review of federal spending records shows.

MEANWHILE, our town’s Barbara Dorris of SNAP is dogging the pontiff, leading support group meetings, leafleting events and news conferences in D.C. and Philly while SNAP prez Barbara Blaine, a SLU alum, does the same in NYC.

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

UNITED STATES
The Free Thinker (UK)

Pope Francis has been accused of grossly misrepresenting the Catholic Church’s reaction to clerical abuse in the US when he addressed hundreds of bishops at the Cathedral of St Matthew the Apostle in downtown Washington on Wednesday.

According to this report, he told the bishops that he was:

Conscious of the courage with which you have faced difficult moments in the recent history of the church in this country without fear of self-criticism and at the cost of mortification and great sacrifice.
He continued:

I realize how much the pain of recent years has weighed upon you, and I have supported your generous commitment to bring healing to victims – in the knowledge that in healing we too are healed – and to work to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated.

John Salveson, a 59-year-old Philadelphia businessman who was abused as a child by a priest, said:

The people he was talking to are the people who moved the pedophiles around to prey on kids. If you gave me 100 years to pick a word to describe the US bishops’ reaction to this crisis, ‘generous’ would never make the list.

Terry McKiernan, who runs BishopAccountability.org, a non-profit group that tracks the abuse scandal, said Francis failed to acknowledge that most dioceses across the country have not disclosed the names of abusers and continue to lobby against reforming statute of limitations laws that shield priests from prosecution for crimes committed many years ago.

It would be a shame if the Pope’s words were taken as encouragement by the bishops to continue that behavior.

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

UNITED STATES
Ms. Magazine

In a statement released Wednesday by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), president Barbara Blaine blasted Pope Francis for his praise of US bishops’ “courage,” accusing the pontiff of doing “little if anything” to meaningfully address the Catholic Church’s decades-long sex abuse crisis.

Pope Francis, in a homily delivered at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, D.C., one of several stops on his first US tour, told the nearly 300 bishops in attendance that he was “conscious of the courage with which you have faced difficulty moments in the recent history of the Church in this country without fear of self-criticism and at the cost of mortification and great sacrifice.”

Blaine, who founded SNAP in 1988 as a self-help organization for victims of clergy sexual abuse, wasted no time in challenging the pope’s characterization of the Church’s disastrous handling of the scandals, noting no clergy have been “defrocked, demoted, disciplined or even publicly denounced” despite the revelation of at least 100,000 victims over the course of 30 years of known abuse.

“What sacrifice?,” questioned Blaine. “What bishop takes fewer vacations, drives a smaller car, does his own laundry or has been passed over for promotion because he’s shielding predators and endangering kids? None.”

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

UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversry

Posted by Joelle Casteix on September 25, 2015

You can listen to our discussion about sex abuse and cover-up, Roger Mahony, and protecting whistle-blowers here.

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

UNITED STATES
National Survivor Advocates Coalition

by Kristine Ward, September 25, 2015

On this day, when Pope Francis will address the United Nations in New York, we present the images of courageous people who have preceded him in dealings with this international body.

See in the faces of leaders in the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) Mary Caplan and Megan Peterson the nobility of rising from the hopelessness that molestation can impose as rigid bondage to the conquering of fear and rising to a summit place knowing that the foundation for the rise is truth. megan peterson

See in the face of Pamela Spees, an attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, the combination of steel determination for justice and the honing of intellect to bring to bear on a world power, one which claims to be a moral guide for the planet, no less than accountability for what has happened and continues to happen to children by men and women in its ranks.

We place these images in our pages today in the hope that we may give strength and comfort to the survivors of sexual abuse who have been so cruelly treated by the pontiff by his choosing to pay tribute to the bishops of the United States in their handling of the sexual abuse crisis and to characterize them as being men of courage. Men, he said, who are selfless in divesting themselves of all unessentials in order to right the wrongs of the scandal.mary caplan

Nothing could be further from the truth.

With his words, the Pope abandoned the survivors to the barrios of inconsequentiality – the very place into which he reaches to lift all others up and to encourage and urge others to follow him.

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

UNITED STATES
Washington Times

By Kelly Riddell – The Washington Times – Thursday, September 24, 2015

Not to be lost in the pomp and circumstance of Pope Francis’ first visit to Washington is the reality that the Catholic Church he oversees has become one of the largest recipients of federal largesse in America.

The Church and related Catholic charities and schools have collected more than $1.6 billion since 2012 in U.S. contracts and grants in a far-reaching relationship that spans from school lunches for grammar school students to contracts across the globe to care for the poor and needy at the expense of Uncle Sam, a Washington Times review of federal spending records shows.

Former Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York once famously noted in 1980 that the government funded 50 percent of Catholic Charities‘ budget, commenting “private institutions really aren’t private anymore.” Today, those estimates remain about the same, according to Leslie Lenkowsky, who served as the chief executive officer of the Corporation for National and Community Service under George W. Bush.

Catholic Charities USA, the largest charitable organization run by the church, receives about 65 percent of its annual budget from state and federal governments, making it an arm of the federal welfare state, said Brian Anderson, a researcher with the Manhattan Institute.

The federal government came to increasingly rely on the church to help it with Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” and the charities “imbued with their new faith in the government’s potential to solve social problems, eagerly accepted government money,” Mr. Anderson wrote in an essay for the Manhattan Institute.

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

UNITED STATES
Daily Kos

Betty Clermont

Today, Pope Francis is leading a multi-religious service at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum.

“Pope Francis’ decision that during the Jubilee Year of Mercy the faithful can receive absolution from priests of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) is the most recent attempt at reconciliation with the priestly society [and] can be seen in the context of a hope for full reconciliation.”

In June 2012, the Simon Wiesenthal Center named SSPX as influential within the French far-right, anti-Semitic party.

In January 2012, it was noted that British fascism posed a “real danger” and “might draw strength from the assiduous networking” of the SSPX. “Further connections are being built among the elite of British fascism, where far-right Catholics associated with the Society of St Pius X are increasingly active.”

When the fascist leader of the SSPX, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, consecrated four bishops without the permission of Pope John Paul II in 1988, the illicit consecration resulted in the excommunication of the five bishops. The excommunications were lifted in 2009 by Benedict XVI amid a media outcry because one of the bishops was a Holocaust-denier.

In Buenos Aires, Catholics, Jews and Protestants hold an annual ceremony in the Metropolitan Cathedral “to mark Kristallnacht, the Nazi-led mob violence in 1938 when about 1,000 Jewish synagogues were burned and thousands of Jews were forced into concentration camps, launching the genocide that killed 6 million Jews.” SSPX members disrupted the Nov. 13, 2013, ceremony by shouting the rosary and the “Our Father” and distributed pamphlets stating, “followers of false gods must be kept out of the sacred temple.” Fr. Christian Bouchacourt, leader of the SSPX in South America, said his organization had the right to feel outraged when rabbis preside over a ceremony in a Catholic cathedral.

Talks between the SSPX and the Vatican resumed in 2014 at the direction of Pope Francis.

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

WASHINGTON (DC)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Statement by Councilmember At-Large David Grosso

Today, at 2:30pm, Councilmember David Grosso (I-At Large) will join victims of sexual abuse at the hands of priests at a rally in front of the Wilson Building. In advance of the rally, Grosso released the following statement:

“In his prayer meeting with U.S. bishops yesterday, Pope Francis spoke of a ‘generous commitment to bring healing’- this stance must extend to those who have suffered sexual abuse. I am calling on the Pope to hold the bishops of the Catholic Church accountable for abuse committed on their watch. It is past time for the Church to support better laws that protect children, expose predators, and punish enablers.

Earlier this year I introduced the ‘Childhood Protection Against Sexual Abuse Amendment Act’ to give child victims of sexual abuse more time to file a civil lawsuit against perpetrators. Our current laws unjustly protect predators, and too often the Church has opposed legal reform. If the Catholic Church is truly committed to healing and forgiveness, then it will support this legislation and efforts to protect children from harm.”

Today, at 2:30pm, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) will rally in support of Grosso’s legislation on the steps of the John A. Wilson Building, 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW. The Childhood Protection Against Sexual Abuse Amendment Act, introduced by Grosso in March 2015, would eliminate the civil statute of limitations for recovery of damages arising out of child sexual abuse claims. Additionally, the bill creates a two-year window for individuals whose claims of child sexual abuse were previously time-barred, enabling victims to begin the long road to recovery. The legislation is currently awaiting a hearing in the D.C. Council’s Committee on the Judiciary.

Councilmember At-Large David Grosso
1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Suite 402
Washington, D.C. 20004
Office: 202-724-8194
http://www.davidgrosso.org/

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

UNITED STATES
Pope Francis CON-artist & Vicar of Plutocrats

Paris Arrow

Below are our rebuttals on the pope’s speech in congress. But first we’d like to point out some related matters. In his speech before 300 bishops yesterday, Pope Francis cold-heartedly ignored and insulted SNAP and thousands of victims of pedophile priests – by praising the bishops — who battled against these victims via expensive lawyers and deprived them of justice. We wrote that, “This time Pope Francis proved how out-of-touch with reality (VA) Vatican Autocracy is in his tiny fake country”. With today’s events at Capitol Hill and canonization of Junipero Serra, we realize that — it isn’t that the Vatican and Pope Francis are out-of-touch with reality – but rather – they can astutely manipulate, tamper, corrupt and distort reality – and they disingenuously make what is evil look good – and what is false appear like truth. Francis made those evil bishops look good as he lauded them for their “courage” and for their “without fear of self-criticism and at the cost of mortification and great sacrifice” – which are all false because they protected bestial predator priests for decades.

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

UNITED STATES
Associated Press

Some survivors of abuse by Catholic priests say the pope should be doing more to confront child abuse within the church. (Sept. 24)

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

TEXAS
Herald Banner

By Gary E. Lindsley

A Greenville minister, facing a multi-million dollar lawsuit alleging he sexually abused a teenager at First Baptist Church of Rockwall in the 1990s, has resigned.

Billy Bob Burge, connect minister at Grace Community Church, resigned on Thursday, according to Lead Pastor Adam Brind.

Burge is accused of repeatedly sexually abusing John Jeremy Sweet-Gomez when he attended the church in Rockwall as a teenager.

Sweet-Gomez, according to the lawsuit filed in Dallas County District Court by his parents, Carla Sweet and Ed Gomez, committed suicide in January 2015.

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

UNITED STATES
CBS News

By ROBERT HENNELLY MONEYWATCH September 25, 2015

Critics of Pope Francis have cast him as anti-capitalist, seizing on his warnings about global warming and the corrosive effects of inequality. But the reality is more complex, as shown by his efforts to turn the scandal-plagued Vatican bank into a more efficient — and profitable — financial institution.

Under Pope Francis’ watch the secretive bank, long linked to money laundering and tax evasion, is for the first time in its 73-year-history complying with international banking standards and other transparency rules, advancing reform efforts started by his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI. Francis upped the ante on the campaign by replacing many of the bank’s top advisers.

The Institute for the Works of Religion, as the bank is officially known, is also seeing its earnings rebound, which some commercial bankers might view as a kind of miracle given the financial industry’s aversion to regulations.

The bank’s profits have gone from $3.9 million in 2013, when the pontiff — born Jorge Mario Bergoglio — was elected Pope to $75.5 million last year. Other standard benchmarks of bank profitability also highlight the Institute’s gains. Both the Vatican bank’s average return on its holdings and its profit margin on interest-bearing assets have climbed since 2012, according to SNL Financial. The bank’s so-called Tier 1 capital ratio — for regulators, the most important measure of a lender’s financial strength — has also risen over that time.

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

UNITED STATES
National Catholic Register

by Edward Pentin 09/24/2015

Further serious concerns are being raised about Cardinal Godfried Danneels, one of the papal delegates chosen to attend the upcoming Ordinary Synod on the Family, after the archbishop emeritus of Brussels confessed this week to being part of a radical “mafia” reformist group opposed to Benedict XVI.

It was also revealed this week that he once wrote a letter to the Belgium government favoring same-sex “marriage” legislation because it ended discrimination against LGBT groups.

The cardinal is already known for having once advised the king of Belgium to sign an abortion law in 1990, for telling a victim of clerical sex abuse to keep quiet, and for refusing to forbid pornographic, “educational” materials being used in Belgian Catholic schools.

He also once said same-sex “marriage” was a “positive development,” although he has sought to distinguish such a union from the Church’s understanding of marriage.

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

UNITED STATES
Religion News Service – Spiritual Politics

Mark Silk | Sep 24, 2015

Church spokesmen and mainstream religion reporters like to make the point that the pope — any pope — hews not to a liberal or conservative line in secular politics, but marches to the distinctively different beat of Catholic social doctrine. And the point is sufficiently true that woe to those who deny it.

But the fact remains that popes, through what they choose to emphasize and how they choose to emphasize it, may offer more aid and comfort to one side of the political divide than the other. And at the end of Pope Francis’ Washington innings my scorecard reads: Liberals 7, Conservatives 2, with innumerable hits and one error.

On the liberal side, I score runs on immigration, climate change, the death penalty, caring for the poor, assuring the common good, ending the culture war, and political over economic decision-making. Conservatives scored on abortion and religious liberty.

Of course, conservatives will argue that they also care about the poor. They just don’t believe in robust government programs to help them. If anyone doubts that Pope Francis was sending anything but that message, I suggest a rereading of his speech Congress. As in: “I would encourage you to keep in mind all those people around us who are trapped in a cycle of poverty. They too need to be given hope. The fight against poverty and hunger must be fought constantly and on many fronts, especially in its causes.”

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

NEW YORK
New York Times

Pope Again Sympathizes With Church Leaders over Abuse Fallout

“I know that, as a presbyterate in the midst of God’s people, you suffered greatly in the not distant past by having to bear the shame of some of your brothers who harmed and scandalized the Church in the most vulnerable of her members… In the words of the Book of Revelation, I know well that you ‘have come forth from the great tribulation.’ I accompany you at this time of pain and difficulty, and I thank God for your faithful service to his people.”

In the remarks he is delivering at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Francis is echoing the remarks he made on the church’s abuse scandals on Wednesday, when he told American bishops that he “supported your generous commitment to bring healing to victims – in the knowledge that in healing we, too, are healed – and to work to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated.” He also praised them for their “courage” and the “great sacrifice” they had made.

Advocates for the victims of sexual abuse by priests have condemned his words. They also questioned why Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, the former archbishop of Los Angeles who was relieved of ministry duties over revelations that he had covered up for abusive priests, was traveling with Francis.

“Once again, he seems to be talking about the pain and embarrassment of the bishops, as opposed to the pain and embarrassment of the victims, who’ve been raped and sodomized,” said Barbara Dorris, the victims outreach director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests. “Well, they created this crisis by protecting predators; children didn’t ask to be raped. So to compare the two things is grossly unjust.”

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

NEW YORK
Washington Post

By Michelle Boorstein September 24

Defending Pope Francis’ comments in the United States on clergy sex abuse, his spokesman Thursday night hinted that the pope will meet with survivors during this visit. U.S. church leaders had said similar things in the months leading up to this visit, but not a concrete way at such a precise time.

At a news conference in New York, the Rev. Federico Lombardi was asked why the pope had spoken twice now — Wednesday to bishops and Thursday to seminarians and religious sisters, among others — about the abuse crisis, but never named it explicitly and focused on encouraging the clergy without speaking first about victims.

“It isn’t totally true what you say. He has spoken of ‘crimes,’ and said the bishops have to engage to avoid these crimes can happen again ..it is an incredible, terrible, terrible thing,” the Italian priest said in slightly broken English. “It may be the trip is not to end now, the pope has already said speaking to bishops, to the priests, maybe he will also have other occasions to approach this problem that was and is very big.”

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

NEW YORK
San Diego Union-Tribune

NEW YORK (AP) — Latest developments in Pope Francis’ visit to the United States. All times local: …

10:20 p.m.

The Vatican spokesman has denied claims by advocates for victims that the pope has given short shrift to their suffering in his remarks on the clergy sex-abuse crisis.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi says Pope Francis has acknowledged victims by referring to children as the most vulnerable members of the church and speaking of child molestation as a crime.

Lombardi also noted Thursday that the pope has three more days of public events in the U.S., suggesting that further comments are ahead.

In two separate speeches, the pope has commended U.S. bishops for their response to victims and said he understood clergy had “suffered greatly” because of the shame from the scandal.

The crisis erupted in 2002 in the Archdiocese of Boston, then spread across the country and overseas.

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

AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

September 25, 2015

Jane Lee
Legal affairs, industrial relations and science correspondent

The states and territories have challenged Commonwealth Attorney-General George Brandis to say whether the Turnbull government will support a $4.01 billion national redress scheme for survivors of child sexual abuse.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse recommended last week, on the day Mr Turnbull ousted Tony Abbott as prime minister, that the federal government set up a scheme for about 60,000 survivors across Australia.

Attorneys-general of all states and territories except the Northern Territory said in a joint letter to Senator Brandis on Friday that the commission had “identified a clear role” for the federal government in the redress scheme, including giving it a deadline of the end of 2015 to announce whether it would establish a national scheme.

While institutions where historic child abuse occurred should bear most of the redress cost, the commission said in its report that federal, state and territory governments should cover any shortfall as “funders of last resort”. It estimated that this would be about $613 million, or 15 per cent of total redress funding

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

NEW YORK
The New York Times

Pope Francis is warning clergy members, nuns and brothers that taking a business-inspired approach to their ministries can dampen their spirit of “generous self-sacrifice.”

The Archdiocese of New York has been going through a reorganization that has resulted in the closing of nearly 40 churches, and some have criticized the closures for being motivated by business rather than pastoral priorities. The pope’s comment will likely be welcomed by those critics.

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

NEW YORK
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Sep. 24, 2015

NEW YORK
A Vatican spokesman has said that Pope Francis may yet have another opportunity during his continuing visit to the U.S. to address the sexual abuse crisis, in what could be a reference to an upcoming but unannounced meeting with abuse survivors.

The pope may “have other occasions to approach this problem,” Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi said at a press conference Thursday evening. Francis’ six-day, three-city trip to the U.S., he said, “is not to an end now.”

Lombardi was responding to an NCR question at the briefing regarding two speeches given by the pope Wednesday in Washington and Thursday in New York.

Both speeches addressed the sexual abuse crisis obliquely, and acknowledged the struggles faced by church officials in handling the issue but not the pain of survivors.

Speaking to some 300 U.S. bishops Wednesday, Francis told them: “I realize how much the pain of recent years has weighed upon you.”

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

NEW YORK
News LI

by Nia Hamm

NEW YORK – The historic U.S. visit of Pope Francis has refocused attention on the Catholic Church’s sex-abuse scandal. Although the pontiff has vowed to root out child sex predators from the Church, which has cost billions in legal expenses, victims of clergy sexual abuse want the pope to do more.

In New York, Michael Mack, 58, who says he was abused by a priest when he was 11, hopes to bring more attention to the issue this week. He has written a one-man play, “Conversations with My Molester.”

“I truly believe that his intention is to heal around this process,” Mack said. “And since this play of mine really is all about healing – about my own personal healing journey, but also the journeys that it reflects for so many survivors – that it seemed like the timing was a natural.”

Mack, who began practicing Catholicism again about seven years ago, said reform efforts such as a Truth and Reconciliation Commission would give church sexual-abuse victims a true chance to heal. Mack’s play opened in New York City on Thursday, the same day Pope Francis arrived in the city.

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

UNITED STATES
International Business Times

By Julia Glum

Bernie McDaid remembers staring at the stained glass the first time his Catholic priest molested him. He said he was about 12 years old, an altar boy standing in the sacristy of St. James’ Church outside of Boston, when the Rev. Joseph E. Birmingham grabbed him, started tickling and then put his hands down McDaid’s pants.

McDaid soon began skipping Mass, hoping to avoid the older man. When Birmingham realized he wasn’t seeing the boy in church, he started organizing beach trips with McDaid and his classmates. McDaid would try to hide in the bushes in front of his house when Birmingham’s gold Plymouth Fury came cruising down the street to pick him up. Once in the car, he and his friends would scramble to jump out at every stop, because if they were left alone, Birmingham would ask whether they’d been masturbating, McDaid said. Sometimes, he’d scream at them.

Since then, more than 30 men have reportedly come forward claiming Birmingham abused them as kids, and the Archdiocese of Boston settled on the grounds of at least one such victim’s claims in 1996. Birmingham died in 1989.

Years later, McDaid — no longer a Catholic — sat next to his mother in Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., watching as Pope Benedict XVI rode around in the popemobile. It was 2008, and McDaid said he had tears in his eyes as Benedict waved to the 46,000 cheering people packed into the stands for Mass. “The crowd treated him like a rock star, and I couldn’t get over that,” McDaid said. “He’s not God. He’s not a rock star.”

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

NEW YORK
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Sep. 24, 2015

NEW YORK
Pope Francis has poignantly thanked U.S. Catholic women religious — until recently the subject of two controversial Vatican investigations — for their work in building and maintaining the church throughout the country.

But the pontiff has also made his second statement in as many days that only obliquely mentions the clergy sexual abuse crisis, and refers to the shame brought upon priests and religious due to the perpetrators but not the pain faced by survivors.

In a prayer service with priests and members of religious orders at St. Patrick’s Cathedral here Thursday evening, Francis said he wanted to express his “esteem and gratitude” to women religious of the United States “in a special way.”…

The pontiff opened his remarks inside the cathedral with an unplanned moment expressing condolences and prayers for the hundreds of people who were killed in a stampede in Mecca Thursday, during part of the traditional pilgrimage for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.

The pope expressed sentiments for our “Muslim brothers and sisters” and said he wished he could greet them under warmer circumstances. He asked those in the church to unite in prayer with him for them. …

Francis had previously spoken obliquely about the sexual abuse crisis in Washington Wednesday during a speech to some 300 U.S. bishops in the Cathedral of St. Matthew.

On that occasion, he told the bishops: “I realize how much the pain of recent years has weighed upon you.”

“I have supported your generous commitment to bring healing to victims — in the knowledge that in healing we too are healed — and to work to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated,” the pope said.

Survivors’ advocates widely criticized those words, saying they insufficiently addressed the scope of the clergy abuse crisis in the U.S. The National Survivor Advocates Coalition even said the pope had “described a fairy tale” of the bishops’ handling of abuse.

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

AUSTRALIA
The Canberra Times

September 25, 2015

Christopher Knaus
Reporter for The Canberra Times.

Catholic community leaders told an alleged ACT child abuse victim to “forgive” her father and removed the religious mentor the girl had worked up the courage to confide in, police say.

The alleged abuser, now 73, was a leading member of a Canberra religious community closely linked to the Catholic Church, and stands accused of abusing a number of girls, including two of his own daughters.

The man, who has not been identified to protect his daughter, appeared in the ACT Magistrates Court on Friday, represented by lawyer Peter Woodhouse, and was committed for trial in the ACT Supreme Court after pleading not guilty to all charges.

Court documents allege the crimes took place in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, but were only brought to light recently as part of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

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

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philly.com

By Andrea Vettori
and Margie Winters

At a time when so many Catholics feel a sense of renewed pride and excitement about their faith because of Pope Francis and his message of acceptance and inclusion, we in Philadelphia are painfully reminded of the arrogance and abuse of power that laid the foundation for the sex-abuse scandal and that continues to afflict this diocese.

Once again, the church attempts to quiet the voices and experiences of the faithful by citing doctrine and creating policy. The most recent example is Archbishop Charles J. Chaput’s “memorandum of understanding” requiring parents of Catholic school children to sign a pledge of loyalty to the Catholic identity of the institution, as defined by the archbishop.

Such a policy is poorly supported by theological and historical realities and ignores the diversity of thought and practice among the faithful. With seeming indifference to the growing loss of moral authority engendered by the legacy of the sexual abuse of children, the archdiocese continues to create an adversarial relationship with its people.

The women and men of this archdiocese strongly lay claim to their Catholic identity and root their lives in its traditions. With pride and spiritual longing, we educate ourselves in our faith, immersed in Scripture and teachings rich in social justice, concern for the poor, and the dignity of the human person, even as we acknowledge the sins committed in our name. We own our baptismal call to be priest and prophet, challenging church teaching when it contradicts our understanding of God and the human person, a right of informed conscience bestowed on us through the catechism.

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

AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

25 September, 2015

The Royal Commission is holding a public hearing in Brisbane commencing on Tuesday, 3 November 2015 at the Brisbane Magistrates Court.

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

1.The experience of former students of Brisbane Grammar School in Spring Hill, Queensland.

2.The experience of former students at St Paul’s School in Bald Hills, Queensland.

3.The response of the Board of Trustees, Headmasters and other members of staff of Brisbane Grammar School to complaints about the behaviour of Kevin Lynch, a former school counsellor at Brisbane Grammar School.

4.The responses of the Anglican Diocese of Brisbane Diocese, the School Council, Headmasters and other members of staff of St Paul’s School to concerns raised, or complaints made, about the behaviour of Kevin Lynch and Gregory Knight, former members of staff at St Paul’s School.

5.The past and current systems, practices, policies and procedures in place at Brisbane Grammar School and St Paul’s School in relation to raising and responding to concerns and complaints about child sexual abuse.

6.The circumstances relating to Gregory Knight’s employment and registration as a teacher in Queensland.

7. Any related matters.

Any person or institution who believes that they have a direct and substantial interest in the scope and purpose of the public hearing is invited to lodge a written application for leave to appear at the public hearing by 16 October 2015.

Applications for leave to appear should be made using the form available on the Royal Commission website.

Leave to appear will generally be granted when an applicant:
a. has been summoned to give evidence
b. is an institution, or is a representative of an institution, that is subject to the inquiry to be undertaken
c. may be the subject of an adverse allegation.

It is not essential for a person who will appear as a witness in a hearing to apply for leave to appear – witnesses may appear and give evidence without applying for leave.

The form should be lodged with the Royal Commission via:
Email: solicitor@childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au or
Mail: GPO Box 5283, Sydney NSW 2001.

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

AUSTRALIA
ABC News

Brisbane Grammar School (BGS) has reiterated its apology to former students who were sexually abused by a school counsellor, as a royal commission announces a public hearing in the city later this year.

The public hearings will provide an important opportunity for those who have suffered pain and hurt to be heard, and we acknowledge their courage in coming forward … It is important we hear these courageous men tell their stories.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse said BGS, also known as Grammar, at Spring Hill, and St Paul’s School, at Bald Hills, would be the focus of public hearings on November 3 at the Brisbane Magistrates Court.

About 70 former students sued BGS in the early 2000s, alleging former school counsellor Kevin Lynch sexually abused them during counselling sessions between 1975 and 1988.

The commission will inquire into the responses of the board of trustees, headmasters and other members and staff at BGS to complaints about the behaviour of Mr Lynch.

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

NEW YORK
WRVO

[with audio]

By TOM MAGNARELLI

Victims of past sexual abuse by Catholic priests in central New York are calling for justice as Pope Francis makes his visit to America. But the victims are limited in what they can do by New York State law.

Victim Kevin Braney started an online petition on Change.org calling for the removal of Bishop Robert Cunningham of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Syracuse for his refusal to release the names of priests with credible allegations of sexual abuse against them.

“It’s not fair for us to stand in front of people and publicly have to describe what’s happened to us and face the shame and scrutiny that comes with it,” Braney said.

Braney and others have more than 1,200 signatures and want to present their petition to Pope Francis as he visits New York City. Braney’s allegations occurred past the statute of limitations in New York state for criminal and civil prosecutions of sex crimes against minors. Currently, the law only allows for a claim to be made up to five years after the victim turns 18.

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

UNITED KINGDOM
Western Daily Press

A senior Church of England clergyman has been charged with eight sexual offences against children.

Peter Keeley-Pannett, 71, a non-stipendiary deacon in the Diocese of Chichester, is accused of making 150 indecent images of children.

He also faces two counts of causing a boy, aged 13 to 15, to watch images of sexual activity, and two charges of causing or inciting a boy, aged 14, to engage in sexual activity.

He is further accused of attempting to cause a boy over 13 to engage in sexual activity.

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

NEW YORK
Grand Island Independent

NEW YORK (AP) — Pope Francis made a rousing show of gratitude for American nuns on Thursday while thanking clergy for persevering through the priest sex abuse scandal, seemingly intent on moving the U.S. church beyond recent crises.

The pope called religious sisters “women of strength” and “fighters” who had a “spirit of courage” as they served at the forefront of the church.

Six months ago, Francis abruptly ended a contentious Vatican overhaul of the leading umbrella group for U.S. nuns that had started under his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI. The Vatican accused the Leadership Conference of Women Religious of straying far from church teaching, which the nuns denied, and overemphasizing social justice over abortion. The sisters received a wave of popular support, including parish vigils, protests outside the Vatican embassy in Washington and a congressional resolution commending the sisters for their service to the country.

“To you, religious women, sisters and mothers of this people, I wish to say thank you, a big thank you and to tell you that I love you very much,” Francis, an Argentine, said in his native Spanish, to applause from worshippers in an evening prayer service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

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

AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By David Marchese

The lawyer acting for a Catholic Archbishop accused of concealing child sexual abuse is calling for a permanent stay of proceedings.

Adelaide’s Archbishop Philip Wilson has previously pleaded not guilty to concealing the serious indictable offence of another person.

The charge relates to when Wilson was an assistant parish priest in East Maitland in the 1970s and worked with paedophile priest James Fletcher.

Wilson’s lawyer Simon Buchen today sought a permanent stay of proceedings.

He also told Newcastle Local Court he would be filing an application seeking a court attendance notice be quashed.

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

AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Catholic Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson moves to stop criminal case over sexual abuse by colleague

AAP

Adelaide’s Catholic Archbishop is attempting to permanently halt criminal proceedings against him for allegedly concealing a colleague’s sexual abuse of a young boy.

Archbishop Philip Wilson was charged in March with concealing information about the 1971 sex assault of a 10-year-old boy by pedophile priest James Fletcher in the NSW town of Maitland.

The 64-year-old, who has pleaded not guilty, applied on Friday for a permanent stay of the proceedings against him when his matter came before Newcastle Local Court.

Both parties are expected to argue the application at a hearing in the local court in December.

Police allege Wilson became aware of the abuse between 2004 and 2006 when both men worked in the Maitland Diocese, in the NSW Hunter region.

They claim he concealed the information.

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

NEW YORK
York Daily Record

By Rick Hampson, USA TODAY

NEW YORK – Pope Francis arrived here amid throngs of cheering, flag-waving fans for a historic visit to the Big Apple.

The pope stepped through the huge, recently renovated bronze doors of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, as a congregation of about 2,500 greeted him with a roar and the choir sang a sacred piece by Mozart written for evening prayer.

Francis walked down the center aisle of the church, sprinkling holy water on those gathered.

The pope entered midtown in his signature Fiat but moved to his Popemobile for the last few blocks down Fifth Avenue to the cathedral, waving to crowds en route. Church Bells chimed; the pope waved; the crowd roared.

In his homily, he avoided political issues and spoke instead to Roman Catholics, particularly the many priests, nuns and brothers in his audience, about spiritual issues.

Speaking in Spanish from a lectern on the high altar of St. Patrick’s, the pope focused on a call for “gratitude and hard work,” which he called “pillars of the spiritual life.”

But he was twice interrupted by loud applause when he praised U.S. nuns, who’d been the subject of a Vatican investigation that Francis closed after taking office in 2013 following the sudden resignation of Benedict XVI.

When he was a powerful member of the Vatican Curia and enforcer of church doctrine, Benedict – then Cardinal Ratzinger – was thought to look askance at American nuns who took liberal political and ecclesiastical stands.

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

WASHINGTON (DC)
WAMU

By: Katie Davis
September 24, 2015

These past three days, we’ve been hearing loud cheers for Pope Francis. But this afternoon, a sharper call was made in Washington — this one for justice.

D.C. Council member David Grosso (I-At Large) joined a rally of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests at the Wilson Building today.

Grosso says he listened to Pope Francis’ message to the Catholic Bishops yesterday. He says he was hoping the pope would hold them accountable for abuse committed in the church, but came away disappointed.

“Basically the pope thanked for efforts, which is not an accurate assessment. They have done everything they can to stop, across the country, a real open conversation around how we heal from this sexual violence,” he says.

Grosso is adamant, and he doesn’t just want an open conversation about the issue. He introduced legislation earlier this year that would eliminate the statute of limitations for the recovery of damages arising out of sexual abuse that occurred when a victim was a minor.

He says that the bill came out of a personal experience.

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

WASHINGTON (DC)
Yahoo! News

Amy Sullivan
September 24, 2015

A seat for Pope Francis’ address to Congress on Thursday was one of the most sought-after tickets in this town’s history, with each member of Congress allowed to bring along just one guest.

But in the packed House chamber, there were three noticeable vacancies right in the front row. Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas — all conservative Catholics — took a pass on the opportunity to hear from the leader of their church.

It’s possible that all three had scheduling conflicts. Perhaps they were finally able to score tickets to “Hamilton” and decided to make a day of it in the Big Apple. The three have skipped the State of the Union in the past (Alito calls it “a childish spectacle”), objecting to the partisan nature of that gathering.

More likely, however, the three justices were simply more discreet than Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., who announced to media this week that he was boycotting the pope’s talk over concerns that the pontiff was acting “like a leftist politician.”

The conspicuous absences were a bit surprising, given that the current Supreme Court is sometimes characterized as the “Catholic court.” Six of the nine justices are Catholic — the other three, John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy and Sonia Sotomayor, were in attendance — and the most conservative members of the court have not been shy about identifying with their church.

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

WASHINGTON (DC)
Institute for Public Policy

September 24, 2015

COLMAN McCARTHY, cmccarthy at starpower.net
A former Washington Post columnist, McCarthy is founder and director of the Center for Teaching Peace in Washington, D.C., and the author of the book I’d Rather Teach Peace. He recently wrote the piece “Francis Needs to go Beyond his Play-it-Safe Verbiage” for the National Catholic Reporter.

McCarthy said today about Pope Francis’ speech before Congress: “I thought it over emphasized meaningless pieties.” While the speech referred to stopping the arms trade, McCarthy noted “it didn’t refer to the militarism of U.S. government itself. It didn’t talk about lowering the military budget. He quoted from [Martin Luther] King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, but not King’s calling the U.S. government ‘the greatest purveyor of violence‘ — as King did. He mentioned Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton, but they too spoke out against U.S. militarism. He should have quoted Dorothy Day and her commitment to pacifism.” See McCarthy’s piece on Dorothy Day in the Washington Post from 1980 just after her death. See also McCarthy’s piece “Rediscovering Thomas Merton.”

BARBARA BLAINE, bblaine at snapnetwork.org, @BarbaraBlaine

Blaine is with Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, which just released the statement “Chicago Abuse Victims Blast New Papal Remarks,” which says that the pope “speaks of some alleged ‘great sacrifice‘ made by bishops because of the abuse and cover up crisis. What sacrifice? What bishop takes fewer vacations, drives a smaller car, does his own laundry or has been passed over for promotion because he’s shielding predators and endangering kids? None.” Blaine said today: “If you’re a woman, you can’t be a priest, if you’re married, you can’t be a priest, but if you’ve raped children, you can still be a priest.” The group has put out 20 steps the pope could take on the child sex abuse scandal.” Blaine appeared in The Real News segment yesterday “The Pope is Dishonest About Zero Tolerance for Child Sex Abuse.”

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

CAMDEN (NJ)
Catholic Star Herald

by Carmela Malerba September 24, 2015

The Office of Child and Youth Protection is announcing CAP (Child Assault Prevention) sessions. CAP is the safe environment training program for adults who have regular contact with minors. Attendance is required in order to comply with the USCCB’s Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People. The policy of the Diocese of Camden is that adults will attend CAP once every five years.

CAP 1 teaches attendees to recognize child abuse and neglect and how to report to the proper authorities. Adults are taught that children have the right to be safe, strong and free. CAP 1 is for new volunteers and employees.

CAP 2 is called CAP’s Bullying Prevention Program and is a workshop addressing bullying awareness and bullying prevention. Cyber-bullying is also presented.

CAP 3 is called Cyber-Empowerment and is a workshop which promotes adults understanding of cyber activity of youth while teaching them realistic ways to help children keep their own rights and guard the rights of others in the cyber-sphere.

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

MASSACHUSETTS
The Catholic Free Press

By Tanya Connor

“It’s been wonderful, absolutely wonderful!”

That’s how Bishop McManus started his account of being with Pope Francis in Washington, D.C., as he spoke with The Catholic Free Press by telephone Thursday morning.

“The excitement in the city of Washington was palpable,” he said.

It started before he got there, as strangers in T.F. Green Airport in Providence asked if he was going to see the pope and requested his prayers, he said. And the stewardess commented, “Oh what a privilege!”

At St. Matthew Cathedral in Washington, Pope Francis gave a beautiful address to the United States bishops, Bishop McManus said. He said as a bishop he found the Holy Father’s words powerful; he assured the bishops he’s walking with them and recommended that they be courageous and welcome immigrants.

“His pastoral zeal really is an example to us bishops and priests,” Bishop McManus said. “It was like a 12-hour retreat, just listening to his message, his emphasis on joy and hope. We get bogged down in the complexities of running a diocese, a parish.”

The pope was a good example for a bishop “to stand with his priests and support them, especially when they need it most,” he said.

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

RHODE ISLAND
Providence Journal

By 
John Hill and Donita Naylor
Journal Staff Writers

Posted Sep. 23, 2015

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Of the hundreds of Rhode Islanders who traveled to the nation’s capital Wednesday to see Pope Francis, among the most interested was Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin.

The bishop, who in addition to watching the events also participated in many of them, said one thing that particularly struck him, besides the enthusiasm of the crowds, was the pope’s stamina.
At the end of the day, he said of the bishops, “we were very tired, and we didn’t do anything.”

Earlier in the day, in an address to the bishops who were in Washington, Francis spoke of the church’s handling of sexual abuse involving priests. His remarks were widely criticized by victim support groups and others as overly sympathetic to the bishops, who are often blamed for hiding reports of abuse for, in some cases, years.

Tobin said he did not think the address to the bishops was meant to be Francis’ only comment on the issue.

“I had to remind myself, this is only his first speech,” he said. “He’s going to be making a number of them. I would tell everyone they should stay tuned. We’re only in the first inning.”

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

WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington City Paper

Posted by Andrew Giambrone on September 24, 2015

Just a couple of hours after Pope Francis served lunch to 300 District homeless people outside of St. Patrick’s Church, a group of sexual-abuse survivors gathered outside of the Wilson Building to urge him to hold the clergy accountable, and to highlight legislation before the D.C. Council that would eliminate the statute of limitations on sex crimes committed against children.

The rally, organized by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), a group with more than 10,000 members, was attended by six survivors who held pictures of themselves taken during the years they had been abused, and who gave candid testimony of their experiences. The survivors said the pope’s visit to the U.S. offers a unique opportunity to remind people that the Catholic Church has resisted confronting the sins of some of its priests, actively protecting them from prosecution and failing to explicitly punish bishops who have tried to cover up any scandal.

“I want to make sure victims know that they’re not alone out there,” says Becky Ianni, SNAP director for the District and Virginia. “And I think it’s really hard when every store you go into, there’s a poster of the pope. And that when the pope speaks out to Congress and to the bishops, [he does so] instead of speaking or reaching out to victims and telling them they’re courageous.”

During his speech to U.S. bishops at St. Matthew’s on Wednesday, Pope Francis remarked that clergymen had shown “courage” through the Church’s child-sex-abuse scandal. “I have supported your generous commitment to bring healing to victims—in the knowledge that in healing, we too are healed—and to work to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated,” he said. The Guardian reports that U.S. dioceses paid $1.7 billion in settlements between 2004 and 2013.

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

NEW YORK
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, Sept. 24, 2015

Statement by Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, Outreach Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 503 0003, bdorris@SNAPnetwork.org)

Yesterday, Pope Francis refused to criticize, even obliquely, even one US Catholic official yesterday for words or deeds that hurt innocent kids or wounded victims.

So today, while he’s in New York, we hope the pope will discipline or at least denounce two Syracuse bishops who have blamed victims of predator priests for their victimization. (This news just came to light last week. )

[Syracuse.com]

In 2011, current Syracuse Bishop Robert Cunningham was asked a clear, simple question, under oath: “did the (abused) boy commit a sin?” He made a clear, simple reply: “The boy is culpable.” He later used the word “accomplice.”

And his predecessor, Bishop James Moynihan, told abuse victim Charles Bailey ‘The age of reason is 7, so if you’re at least 7 you’re culpable for your actions.’

These are inexcusable, irresponsible comments from powerful, smart men. They will deter others who were raped and sodomized from reporting criminals and protecting kids.

Pope Francis should punish these prelates or at least harshly and publicly criticize them so that other bishops might think twice before uttering such callous views in the future.

This warped, self-serving view – that a child is to blame for his or her victimization by a priest – stems from the exalted and ‘superior’ status clerics give themselves. Bishops think this way because they’ve been indoctrinated since childhood to believe that the ordained are ‘above’ the common folk.

Bishops often talk of “the dignity of every person.” But deep down, many of them are convinced that they really are better than the rest of us, which is why many of them almost compulsively blame others when clerics commit crimes.

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

UNITED STATES
Press TV (Iran)

Pope Francis is sidestepping the widespread sexual abuse committed by Christian priests in the US Catholic Church, as he visits the United States for the first time, a writer and activist in Boston says.

The pope’s remarks to US bishops in Washington on Wednesday praising their response to the sex scandal while failing to mention the words sexual abuse is “extremely disappointing for the victims of clergy sex abuse,” said Daniel Patrick Welch.

“The pope is more or less sidestepping what is the biggest issue for American Catholics in the last 50 years; it dwarfs everything else,” Welch told Press TV on Thursday.

“It’s not a scandal of course, it’s a crime, it’s a huge crime and the cover up is also a crime,” he added.

Allegations of sexual abuse by the Christian clergy go back decades, but exploded into a full-blown crisis in 2002 when US media revealed widespread abuse and cover-ups by bishops.

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

UNITED STATES
PBS – Frontline

Pope Francis’ arrival in the United States this week has focused the nation’s attention on the man who two-and-a-half years ago became the spiritual leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics.

Francis inherited a church beset by scandal and many Americans are wondering what comes next. What has Francis done to reform the church? What do some of his early statements on issues like the environment and income inequality mean for the future of the faith? And what impact could his address to Congress on Thursday — the first ever by a pontiff in U.S. history — have on the nation’s political landscape?

For the answer to some of these questions, FRONTLINE spoke recently with John Thavis, the former Rome bureau chief for the Catholic News Service. Thavis is the author of The Vatican Diaries: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Power, Personalities and Politics at the Heart of the Catholic Church, and the recently released follow-up, The Vatican Prophecies: Investigating Supernatural Signs, Apparitions, and Miracles in the Modern Age.

The pope has arrived in the U.S. after only two-and-a-half years at the Vatican. He inherited a long list of problems and set out on a pretty ambitious reform agenda it seems. What have we learned about him so far?

I think we’ve learned first of all that he’s very determined. A lot of popes have been elected and come in with vague ideas of instituting reforms. I think Pope Francis came in with a mandate to institute reforms, and he’s taken it very seriously. And I think to a great degree he’s had a level of success that no previous pope has really enjoyed.

I would say that his greatest accomplishment so far in the area of reform has been bringing transparency and accountability to the Vatican’s financial operation.

In a sense that was the easiest task facing him, because he had the most support for that. Although there was some Vatican resistance, in this day and age it’s kind of hard to resist the idea of transparency in financial operations, and it’s hard to resist the idea that the Vatican bank and other entities should be in line with international guidelines and regulations.

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

AUSTRALIA
The Australian

KATHERINE TOWERS
THE AUSTRALIAN
SEPTEMBER 25, 2015 1

Police will not investigate members of the Adass Israel School board for squirrelling headmistress and serial sex abuser Malka Leifer out of Australia to avoid ­investigators, despite law experts saying it is a clear case of criminal behaviour.

Victorian Supreme Court judge Jack Rush was scathing in a judgment delivered last week on the actions of some members of the board for their role in helping Leifer flee Australia, despite knowing she might have sexually ­abused more than eight female students at the ultra-orthodox school.

Police confirmed yesterday that they had not, or would not, ­investigate those members even though Justice Rush made it clear that board members helped and funded Leifer out of the country to avoid an investigation.

In one of the biggest payouts in Australian history for a sex-abuse case, Justice Rush awarded more than $1.2 million to a former ­student who was abused by Leifer.

Rob Melasecca, a former head of the criminal law section of the Victorian Law Institute and criminal law expert, said yesterday that at “a bare minimum” the actions of individual board members in helping Leifer out of the country in the middle of the night “warranted a serious investigation”.

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

UNITED STATES
National Survivor Advocates Coalition

by Kristine Ward, September 24, 2015

We welcome sexual abuse survivors and their families and all men and women of goodwill to our pages today as a safety spot, a haven, a place to know that you are not alone in the midst of the massive news coverage of the visit of Pope Francis to the United States.

We chose the images of the good people of BishopAccountability.org Terry McKiernan, Anne Barrett Doyle, Suzy Nauman for the images today because of BishopAccountability.org’s relentless, vital, intense, hard work in building the repository of the documents that chronicle this crushing crisis.anne barrett doyle

The truth lives in the documents.

The truth is sacred.

Without the documents, and the depositions, and the testimonies of the survivors, the scandal would remain as bishops and the Vatican intended for it to remain: hidden.

We believe this because it is in legislative bodies across the breadth of this country and in United States territories that Roman Catholic bishops and many of their Church’s adherents have blocked, sucker punched, delayed, watered down and deep sixed statute of limitation reforms for victims of sexual abuse – not only those raped and sodomized by Roman Catholic clergy and religious sisters and religious brothers but any citizen of the United States and its territories who have been so violated.

The largest lobbying group against statute of limitation reform is the band of brothers that Pope Francis calls his own and to whom he addressed these incredulous words yesterday at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC:

I am also conscious of the courage with which you have faced difficult moments in the recent history of the Church in this country without fear of self-criticism and at the cost of mortification and great sacrifice. Nor have you been afraid to divest whatever is unessential in order to regain the authority and trust which is demanded of ministers of Christ and rightly expected by the faithful. I realize how much the pain of recent years has weighed upon you and I have supported your generous commitment to bring healing to victims – in the knowledge that in healing we too are healed – and to work to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated.

This, dear readers of NSAC News and all persons to whom these words reach, is a fairy tale.

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

NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY ADAM EDELMAN NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, September 24, 2015

Timothy Cardinal Dolan on Thursday praised Pope Francis’ speech to his brother Bishops about their handling of the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal as “beautiful.”

“He spoke about the courage, he spoke about the ongoing sorrow, and most importantly he spoke about the fact that we can never drop our vigilance, that we’ve always got to be as vigorous as we now are,” Dolan said on NBC’s “TODAY” about Francis’ approval a day earlier of how the Church has tried to restore order and make peace with victims.

“He is for us bishops what we’re supposed be for our people. He’s the bishop of bishops,” Dolan said. “He spoke to us in a very affirming, yet challenging way, like a father, like sheppard, and that moved me very much.”

On Wednesday, during a speech to Catholic bishops, Francis offered praise for a “generous commitment to bring healing to victims” and for acting “without fear of self-criticism.”

The remarks drew a slew of criticism from an organization that represents abuse victims.

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

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Magazine

By Victor Fiorillo | September 24, 2015

On Wednesday, Pope Francis addressed the United States bishops at the Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle in Washington, D.C., and the subject of the clergy sex abuse scandal came up, though he steered clear of using the words “sexual abuse.”

Pope Francis praised the bishops for their “courage” and “great sacrifice,” and seemed to recognize the bishops themselves and the church as additional victims, saying, “I realize how much the pain of recent years has weighed upon you and I have supported your generous commitment to bring healing to victims – in the knowledge that in healing we, too, are healed – and to work to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated.”

None of this sat very well with Bryn Mawr’s John Salveson, who was sexually abused by a Catholic priest when he was a teenager. These days, Salveson is the co-founder of Radnor executive-search firm Salveson Stetson Group and president of the Foundation to Abolish Child Sexual Abuse. We got him on the phone for his reaction to Pope Francis’ comments.

Were you surprised that Pope Francis addressed clergy sex abuse with the U.S. bishops in the way that he did?

I was very surprised by his comments. Really shocked. Now, I’m a bit of an outlier on this, but I’m not one of those people holding their breath for the pope to do something to make everything better. The object is not to get the Catholic church to be good to people again, to take care of victims, or to do the right thing.

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

UNITED STATES
TWC News

By Erin Clarke
Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Pope Francis is widely viewed as progressive, but advocates say the pontiff needs to do more to stop priest sex abuse in the church. Erin Clarke reports.

(Efforts to reach the Vatican for comment on this story were unsuccessful.)

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

WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

September 24

The following is the prepared text of Pope Francis’s address to a joint meeting of Congress, delivered Thursday in Washington. (Follow our liveblog for the latest)

Mr. Vice-President,

Mr. Speaker,

Honorable Members of Congress,

Dear Friends,

I am most grateful for your invitation to address this Joint Session of Congress in “the land of the free and the home of the brave”. I would like to think that the reason for this is that I too am a son of this great continent, from which we have all received so much and toward which we share a common responsibility.

Each son or daughter of a given country has a mission, a personal and social responsibility. Your own responsibility as members of Congress is to enable this country, by your legislative activity, to grow as a nation. You are the face of its people, their representatives. You are called to defend and preserve the dignity of your fellow citizens in the tireless and demanding pursuit of the common good, for this is the chief aim of all politics. A political society endures when it seeks, as a vocation, to satisfy common needs by stimulating the growth of all its members, especially those in situations of greater vulnerability or risk. Legislative activity is always based on care for the people. To this you have been invited, called and convened by those who elected you.

Yours is a work which makes me reflect in two ways on the figure of Moses. On the one hand, the patriarch and lawgiver of the people of Israel symbolizes the need of peoples to keep alive their sense of unity by means of just legislation. On the other, the figure of Moses leads us directly to God and thus to the transcendent dignity of the human being. Moses provides us with a good synthesis of your work: you are asked to protect, by means of the law, the image and likeness fashioned by God on every human face.

Today I would like not only to address you, but through you the entire people of the United States. Here, together with their representatives, I would like to take this opportunity to dialogue with the many thousands of men and women who strive each day to do an honest day’s work, to bring home their daily bread, to save money and –one step at a time – to build a better life for their families. These are men and women who are not concerned simply with paying their taxes, but in their own quiet way sustain the life of society. They generate solidarity by their actions, and they create organizations which offer a helping hand to those most in need.

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

WASHINGTON (DC)
Today News

Eun Kyung Kim

Pope Francis’s comments on the clergy sexual abuse scandal that has rocked the church for decades, focusing on Catholic leaders rather than victims caught in the crisis, was not a misstep, Cardinal Timothy Dolan said Thursday.

The pope directly addressed the sex scandal during his speech Wednesday to U.S. Bishops in Washington, praising bishops for their “courage” and “generous commitment to bring healing to victims — in the knowledge that in healing we too are healed.”

While the speech drew criticism from advocates who argued it should have focused more on the victims, Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, described the pope’s speech as “beautiful” and said it set the right tone.

“He spoke about the courage, he spoke about the ongoing sorrow and most importantly, he spoke about the fact that we can never drop our vigilance,” said Dolan, the former president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. “We’ve always got to be as vigorous as we are now.”

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

WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on Pope Francis’ first day in the U.S.:

The most significant thing about the pope’s first day in the United States was his unscheduled visit to the Little Sisters of the Poor. By embracing this order of nuns, Pope Francis laid down an unmistakable marker: He rejects efforts by the Obama administration to force Catholic nonprofit organizations to pay for, or even sanction, abortion-inducing drugs in their health care plans.
Earlier in the day, Pope Francis spoke pointedly about the need to protect religious liberty. That he did so in the company of President Obama, at the White House, was critically important. The pope’s commitment to our first freedom was then underscored with his visit to the Little Sisters of the Poor.

I got a chance to meet the pope briefly following the prayer service at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle. It was a moment I will never forget. Whatever Cardinal Donald Wuerl said to him as he introduced me must have struck a chord: the pope broke out into a radiant smile.

Bernadette Brady-Egan, our vice president, was also thrilled to meet the Holy Father.
Of course, not everyone is pleased with the pope. From that preppy school-boy atheist George Will on the right, to the militant atheist Catholic-bashers at the Freedom From Religion Foundation on the left, cheap shots abound. And, of course, the professional victims’ advocates are cashing in on this historic trip. No matter, as we saw at the canonization Mass yesterday, those who love the pope represent the most diverse community on earth. Go Pope Francis!

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

VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 24 September 2015 (VIS) – The Holy Father has:

– accepted the resignation from the pastoral care of the metropolitan archdiocese of Messina-Lipari-Santa Lucia del Mela, Italy, presented by Archbishop Calogero La Piana, S.D.B., in accordance with canon 402 para. 2 of the Code of Canon Laws.

– accepted the resignation from the pastoral care of the diocese of Alba, Italy, presented by Bishop Giacomo Lanzetti, in accordance with canon 402 para. 2 of the Code of Canon Laws.

– accepted the resignation from the pastoral care of the diocese of Goya, Argentina, presented by Bishop Ricardo Oscar Faifer, upon reaching the age limit. He is succeeded by Bishop Adolfo Ramon Canecin, coadjutor of the same diocese.

– appointed Archbishop Luis Gerardo Cabrera Herrera, O.F.M., of Cuenca, Ecuador as archbishop of Guayaquil (area 14,637, population 3,275,192, Catholics 2,783,913, priests 202, permanent deacons 21, religious 607), Ecuador. He succeeds Archbishop Antonio Arregui Yarza, whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same archdiocese upon reaching the age limit was accepted by the Holy Father.

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

WASHINGTON (DC)
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 24 September 2015 (VIS) – The challenges of a nation whose vast resources require not insignificant moral responsibility in a world seeking new equilibria of peace, prosperity and integration, the importance of never again repeating past “crimes” against victims of abuse, the need for dialogue instead of hard and bellicose language, and the defence of the excluded, migrants and the environment were some of the themes that Pope Francis considered yesterday in the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington D.C., during his meeting with the episcopate of the United States. The following are extensive extracts from his address.

“My first word to you is one of thanksgiving to God for the power of the Gospel which has brought about remarkable growth of Christ’s Church in these lands and enabled its generous contribution, past and present, to American society and to the world. … I appreciate the unfailing commitment of the Church in America to the cause of life and that of the family, which is the primary reason for my present visit. I am well aware of the immense efforts you have made to welcome and integrate those immigrants who continue to look to America, like so many others before them, in the hope of enjoying its blessings of freedom and prosperity. I also appreciate the efforts which you are making to fulfil the Church’s mission of education in schools at every level and in the charitable services offered by your numerous institutions. These works are often carried out without appreciation or support, often with heroic sacrifice, out of obedience to a divine mandate which we may not disobey. I am also conscious of the courage with which you have faced difficult moments in the recent history of the Church in this country without fear of self-criticism and at the cost of mortification and great sacrifice. Nor have you been afraid to divest whatever is unessential in order to regain the authority and trust which is demanded of ministers of Christ and rightly expected by the faithful. I realise how much the pain of recent years has weighed upon you and I have supported your generous commitment to bring healing to victims – in the knowledge that in healing we too are healed – and to work to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated.

“I speak to you as the Bishop of Rome, called by God in old age, and from a land which is also American, to watch over the unity of the universal Church and to encourage in charity the journey of all the particular Churches toward ever greater knowledge, faith and love of Christ. … I too know how hard it is to sow the Gospel among people from different worlds, with hearts often hardened by the trials of a lengthy journey. Nor am I unaware of the efforts made over the years to build up the Church amid the prairies, mountains, cities and suburbs of a frequently inhospitable land, where frontiers are always provisional and easy answers do not always work. What does work is the combination of the epic struggle of the pioneers and the homely wisdom and endurance of the settlers”.

“It is not my intention to offer a plan or to devise a strategy. … I have no wish to tell you what to do, because we all know what it is that the Lord asks of us. Instead, I would turn once again to the demanding task – ancient yet never new – of seeking out the paths we need to take and the spirit with which we need to work. … We are bishops of the Church, shepherds appointed by God to feed his flock. Our greatest joy is to be shepherds, and only shepherds, pastors with undivided hearts and selfless devotion. … The heart of our identity is to be sought in constant prayer, in preaching and in shepherding the flock entrusted to our care”.

“Ours must not be just any kind of prayer, but familiar union with Christ, in which we daily encounter His gaze and sense that He is asking us the question: ‘Who is My mother? Who are My brothers?’. One in which we can calmly reply: ‘Lord, here is Your mother, here are Your brothers! I hand them over to You; they are the ones whom You entrusted to me’”.

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

NEW JERSEY
The Record

BY ABBOTT KOLOFF
STAFF WRITER | THE RECORD

Pope Francis’ brief reference Wednesday to clerical sex abuse left advocates for victims wanting him to go further in the coming days, and expressing confusion by what appeared to be the pope’s praise for the way American bishops handled the matter.

The pope, on the first day of his visit to the United States, did not directly address the sex abuse issue but was widely believed to be making a reference to it when he told bishops they have shown “courage” in the face of “difficult moments in the recent history of the church in this country.”

He said he has supported their “generous commitment to bring healing to victims – in the knowledge that in healing we too are healed – and to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated.”

Some victims’ advocates said they expected the pope to make a statement about clerical sex abuse this week, and were hoping he would focus on bishops who covered up crimes. The pope has discussed setting up a tribunal in Rome to punish bishops who are found guilty of negligence in sex abuse cases, a move that would be unprecedented in the church.

Mark Crawford, the director of the New Jersey chapter of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said he was disappointed by the pope’s first words on the subject during his visit and surprised by his use of the term “courage.”

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

MINNESOTA
Canonical Consultation

09/23/2015

Jennifer Haselberger

With Pope Francis scheduled to lead a prayer service at 11:30am ET at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington DC, the American bishops have assembled- including the former Archbishop of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, John Nienstedt.

Of course, there is no reason that Archbishop Nienstedt should not be in attendance. He resigned from his position as leader of the Archdiocese without any admission of guilt, and as we know he claims that his conscience is clear.

However, his presence creates a potential problem for Pope Francis, who must respond to critics who say that he has not done enough to address the issue of sexual abuse by clergy. In addition, for the Holy Father to greet Nienstedt before meeting with victims of sexual abuse by clergy is a bit of a faux pas.

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

WASHINGTON (DC)
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Sep. 23, 2015 NCR Today

WASHINGTON Pope Francis made an unscheduled visit to a U.S. community of Catholic women religious that has been fighting against an Obama administration mandate covering contraceptives in health care plans, the Vatican spokesman said late Wednesday.

The pontiff met with a Washington-area community of the Little Sisters of the Poor, Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi said at a press briefing about the pope’s day in DC Wednesday.

Lombardi did not provide any further details about the visit.

The Little Sisters are one of a few Catholic and other faith-based groups that have been protesting the administration’s mandate, saying it forces them to support contraception and sterilization services that contradict their religious beliefs.

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

NEW YORK
The Jewish Week

Wed, 09/23/2015
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher

Ludwig “Lou” Bravmann, a prime force behind the direction and financial stability of the Riverdale Jewish Center for decades, says that lately he wakes up in the middle of the night “feeling terrible, depressed — I’ve never felt this bad.”

At 90, after more than 45 years of daily prayer attendance and lay leadership at the 600-family Modern Orthodox synagogue, he has resigned from the board of the congregation and is praying on the High Holy Days at a newly formed service a few blocks away.

The service, now known as The Riverdale Minyan and made up of more than 100 families, was created this summer as a response to widespread dissatisfaction among some members of RJC over decisions made in the last three months by the rabbi, Jonathan Rosenblatt, and its lay leadership.

On Rosh HaShanah, making the trek with a wheelchair and walker, Bravmann was one of an estimated 240 adults, almost all RJC congregants, and 40 children, who prayed at an Orthodox service in a room rented in a nearby Reform temple. A similar service was scheduled for Yom Kippur, and efforts are under way to find a more permanent space for the group to use for Shabbat, and perhaps daily, services — a potentially stunning blow to the makeup and sustainability of the RJC, which was founded more than 60 years ago.

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

WASHINGTON (DC)
Erzdioezese Wien

Papst Franziskus hat die mehr als 200 US-amerikanischen Bischöfe aufgerufen, sich der großen Themen der Zukunft der Welt anzunehmen und sich nicht nur auf Binnenkirchliches zu konzentrieren. Die Vereinigten Staaten seien eine Weltmacht und für die Entwicklungen auf der Erde stark verantwortlich. Mit seinen riesigen materiellen, politischen, technologischen und kulturellen Ressourcen stehe das Land in der Pflicht für die ganze Welt, sagte der Papst am Mittwoch, 23. September 2015 vor den Bischöfen in der St. Matthew’s-Kathedrale der Hauptstadt Washington. Die Welt suche nach einem neuen Gleichgewicht des Frieden, des Reichtums und der Integration.

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

WASHINGTON (DC)
Spiegel

Papst Franziskus und US-Präsident Barack Obama haben bei ihrem Treffen in Washington zum gemeinsamen Kampf gegen den Klimawandel aufgerufen. “Angesichts der Dringlichkeit bin ich der Überzeugung, dass der Klimawandel ein Problem ist, das nicht länger einer kommenden Generation überlassen werden darf”, sagte Franziskus in seiner Ansprache bei der Begrüßungszeremonie.

Man habe nicht mehr viel Zeit, den Klimawandel aufzuhalten, sagte Franziskus. Es sei ein “kritischer Moment”, man müsse nun “mit Ernst und Verantwortung erkennen, was für eine Welt wir hinterlassen wollen”.

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

WASHINGTON (DC)
Telegraaf (Nederland)

WASHINGTON –
Paus Franciscus heeft woensdagmiddag tijdens een bijeenkomst met ongeveer driehonderd Amerikaanse bisschoppen gezegd dat seksueel misbruik van minderjarigen door rooms-katholieke geestelijken nooit meer mag voorkomen. Hij sprak in de kathedraal van St.Matthew in de Amerikaanse hoofdstad Washington.

Hij had ook troostende woorden voor zijn gehoor: “Ik weet hoeveel de pijn van de afgelopen jaren op u drukt en ik heb uw inzet om de slachtoffers bij te staan en herhaling van dit soort misdrijven te voorkomen, ondersteund”, aldus de paus in zijn toespraak tot de geestelijken.

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

UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody

Pope Met with Bill Donohue, Nuns Fighting Obamacare. He Insulted Native Americans and Sex Abuse Survivors.

Posted on September 24, 2015 by Betty Clermont

Catholic League president, Bill Donohue, who “demagogically conflates progressive and liberal dissent with hate,” met with Pope Francis yesterday following his prayer service with the US bishops at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle.

Also not shown on his public schedule, the pope visited the Little Sisters of the Poor,
the religious order that is involved in a contentious legal battle with the Obama administration over the order’s refusal to comply with an accommodation to provide contraceptive coverage to its employees …

One, it showed that the pope is behind the bishops in their battle with the Obama administration, support which the pontiff signaled in his talk at the White House earlier that day. [“Pointedly, Francis turned and looked at Obama as he delivered the line” about religious liberty.]

And two, it demonstrated how the pope likes to address contentious topics in a low-key, behind-the-scenes way.

Yesterday, Pope Francis canonized Fr. Junipero Serra, “who has a large degree of responsibility for the death of approximately 100,000 California Indians and the complete extermination of many Native tribes, cultures and languages.”

In his sermon, the pope claimed that Serra “protected and defended Native Americans from mistreatment and abuse.” Jeb Bush was in attendance.

Two days ago, three former US ambassadors to the Vatican appointed by President George W. Bush endorsed Jeb Bush for president. Among them was Mary Ann Glendon who was appointed by Pope Francis to his board of the Vatican bank. Glendon also served on the board of several theocon “think tanks” and is probably most famous for refusing an honor from Notre Dame University because the school awarded President Obama an honorary degree. Glendon is just one of the many plutocrats appointed by this pope to a Vatican position.

“I like Jeb Bush a lot,” the prelate of Wall Street, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, said. “I especially appreciate the priority he gives to education and immigration.”

The most immediate danger from this pope is to children around the world. Yesterday, Pope Francis praised his bishops for their response to the clergy sex abuse crisis. He noted their courage in facing “difficult moments in the recent history of the Church in this country without fear of self-criticism and at the cost of mortification and great sacrifice.”

By failing to commit to any action to protect children, the pope put all prelates on notice that they can continue to leave them exposed to dangerous pedophiles as the pope himself did with his ambassador to the Dominican Republic, Archbishop Josef Wesolowski. The US bishops can continue their lobbying to allow all American child sexual predators to avoid apprehension and prosecution.

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

ST. LOUIS (MO)
CBS St. Louis

Fred Bodimer
September 24, 2015

ST. LOUIS (KMOX) – Local clergy abuse survivors aren’t happy with what they are hearing from Pope Francis so far during his visit to the United States.

In remarks to America’s Bishops, Pope Francis commended what he called their courage in the face of the church’s sexual abuse scandal. Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests’ (SNAP) National Director David Clohessey says that bishops have made no sacrifices.

“He essentially made one oblique reference to the crisis…didn’t apologize,” says SNAP’s National Director David Clohessy. “More importantly, didn’t suggest much less mandate, any reforms at all by the U.S. church hierarchy.”

Clohessy says the Pope is minimizing the crisis and won’t use the word cover-up. He adds instead of praising victims for coming forward, the Pope praises the bishops, which he (Clohessy) says have continued to cause the issue.

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

WASHINGTON (DC)
Breitbart

The Archdiocese of Washington stands accused of rejecting a journalist from BuzzFeed for special press passes to cover Papal events this week in the nation’s Capitol.

BuzzFeed foreign correspondent Lester Feder and his colleagues have been trying since January to get approval to cover the Pope’s events. They were finally told flat out this week that their request had been denied and were told that the decision had been made by the press office of the Archdiocese of Washington. BuzzFeed News believes it is because a spokesman for Cardinal Donald Wuerl does not approve of BuzzFeed’s and specifically Feder’s coverage of LGBT issues.

In a letter sent yesterday to Don Clemmer of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Chieko Noguchi of the Archdiocese of Washington DC, BuzzFeed Washington Bureau Chief John Stanton lays the blame on Archdiocesan spokesperson Noguchi and points to an exchange dating back nearly a year.

Feder had approached Cardinal Wuerl at the Bishops meeting Baltimore last year and asked for a background meeting so he could better understand LGBT issues from the Church’s point of view. Wuerl agreed and asked him to contact his office to schedule a time, at which point, according to the email exchange provided by BuzzFeed to Breitbart News, Feder got the runaround that lasted months.

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

IRELAND
Mirror

BY GARRETH MACNAMEE

A caged paedophile priest who is facing another sex abuse charge may have forced himself on a dozen more victims, police believe.

The serial sex beast, who was recently jailed for the horrific abuse of a child, was brought before the courts last month over an alleged attack on a young boy.

The cleric, a pillar of his community in Ireland before the revelations, paid his victims following his horrific attacks on them.

And now police in the region believe there are at least 12 more victims to come forward.

Sources have told the Irish Mirror the shamed priest will have to spend a lot more time in court in the coming months.

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

NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News NI

By Kevin Sharkey
BBC News NI

The PSNI has received complaints against 500 people in connection with allegations of historical abuse.

They include cases currently being examined by the Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) Inquiry.

This is as well as claims of abuse against some clergy and some other state and church institutions.

The PSNI is currently running two big operations into historical abuse – Operation Charwell and Operation Danzin.

The investigations began five years ago.

They include cases before the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry which is examining claims of abuse at 16 institutions and by Fr Brendan Smyth.

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

UNITED STATES
Pope Francis CON-artist & Vicar of Plutocrats

Paris Arrow

The Vatican Circus is in town with its fattest clown-in-white Pope Francis, the greatest Jesuit Master of Deceits papal farting at idiots Americans Catholics in Washington, DC. Read his itinerary here and what the mainstream media are not telling you http://pope-francis-con-christ.blogspot.ca/2015/09/washington-subversive-guide-to-pope.html

This time Pope Francis proved how out-of-touch with reality (VA) Vatican Autocracy is in his tiny fake country and how Machiavellian he is as the theocratic monarch when he praised bishops who should all be rotting in jail for aiding and abetting more than 6,500 pedophile priests for decades and paying millions of dollars to lawyers to deprive thousands of American victims of justice and fair compensation. Obviously Pope Francis is out-of-touch with reality and he should study and converse with hundreds of victims of the current and latest most unjust diocesan “settlements” in Milwaukee, read 575 victims in Dolan’s former diocese urging Pope Francis to hold him accountable

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

NEW YORK
Road to Recovery

Pope Francis’ comments in Washington, DC today about clergy sexual abuse were offensive toward victim/survivors

Victim/survivors have been re-abused by Pope Francis’ insensitive congratulatory message to the bishops of the United States today in Washington, DC

Victim/survivors will have the opportunity to get together on Thursday outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral to support one another and express disapproval of Pope Francis’ message to the US Bishops about clergy sexual abuse

What
A gathering of victim/survivors of clergy sexual abuse and their supporters in order to express disappointment in Pope Francis’ strange and dangerous address to the bishops of the United States in which he applauded the bishops for handling the clergy sexual abuse scandal with courage. Courageous is the last word the Pope should use to describe the bishops of the United States.

When
Thursday, September 24, 2015 from 5:00 pm until 7:00 pm

Where
On Fifth Avenue between 47th and 48th Streets in Manhattan. The NYPD has set up an area there where groups can gather to demonstrate. We must approach the area from the south only!

Who
Members of Road to Recovery, Inc. who are victim/survivors of clergy sexual, and any other victim/survivors who wish to gather for support, encouragement, and to express disapproval of Pope Francis’ statements to the United States bishops at St. Matthew’s Cathedral on September 23, 2015

Why
Pope Francis, instead of admonishing the bishops of the United States for their mishandling of clergy sexual abuse cases, congratulated them for their courage and applauded them for confronting the scandal. In St. Matthew’s Cathedral today were some of the worst offenders regarding clergy sexual abuse, and many at the Mass at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception should never have been allowed to show their faces. Cardinal Theodore Mc Carrick was in Cuba with the Pope and all over Washington, DC today (and probably tomorrow). He should have been fired years ago. Cardinal Justin Rigali was there today. He was lambasted by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office for mishandling cases of clergy sexual abuse. He should have been fired years ago. And, Cardinal Roger Mahoney was there today after countless numbers of children were abused by clergy on his watch in Los Angeles.

The phone at Road to Recovery has been ringing off the hook since the Pope made his comments today, and the calls have been from victim/survivors who feel as if they have been re-abused all over again by the Church. Victim/survivors will gather together to support and console one another, and stand once again against the evil of child sexual abuse which Pope Francis seemingly has forgotten about.

Contact
Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D., Road to Recovery, Inc., Livingston, NJ 07039 – 862-368-2800

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

UNITED STATES
YouTube

Published on Sep 23, 2015

An artist and sexual abuse victim at the hand of a Catholic priest uses her artwork for survivors and supporters to connect.

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

NEW YORK
Buffalo News

A silent candlelight vigil was held Wednesday evening outside the residence of Bishop Richard J. Malone to support a local man and woman who were abused as children by a priest and a teacher in the Diocese of Buffalo. Bishop Malone was in Washington, D.C., for the visit of Pope Francis.

Antonio “Tino” Flores says he was abused for five years in the 1970s by a now-deceased Franciscan father associated with Bishop Timon High School. Vanessa DeRosa says she was sexually harassed in 2002 and 2003 by a teacher at St. Dominic Savio Middle School in Niagara Falls who later served a prison term for possession of child pornography.

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

CHILE
El Dinamo

[Felipe Berrios leads the list of witnesses to be called in the lawsuit against Fernando Karadima.]

El abogado Juan Pablo Hermosilla elaboró una lista de 23 personas que deberían ser llamadas a testificar en la demanda que las víctimas de Fernando Karadima entablaron contra el Arzobispado de Santiago por eventual encubrimiento de los abusos sexuales cometidos por sacerdotes.

De este modo, el representante de James Hamilton, Juan Carlos Cruz y José Andrés Murillo detalla quienes serán requeridos para exponer sobre los puntos de prueba fijados por el magistrado Juan Manuel Muñoz.

La acción judicial busca una indemnización por perjuicios de 450 millones de pesos y un acto de perdón público por parte del Arzobispado para quienes han sido víctimas de abusos sexuales por parte de religiosos, ya que alegan que la Iglesia insiste en descartar negligencia y encubrimiento en los delitos cometidos por el ex párroco de El Bosque.

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

CHILE
Diario U Chile

[Bishop Juan Barros does not resign despite pressure.]

Fernando Seymour D. | Miércoles 23 de septiembre 2015

A las críticas por su participación y encubrimiento en el caso Karadima, se suman sus persecuciones a los sacerdotes de esa ciudad. Todo ello, amparado por la Conferencia Episcopal, donde varios obispos estarían presionando para evitar la que podría ser la primera de varias renuncias que se sucederían.

A sus 59 años Juan Barros Madrid no está tranquilo. Desde que fuera nombrado por el Vaticano como Obispo de la Diócesis de Osorno, en enero pasado, las críticas y cuestionamientos en su contra no han cesado. Y no solo desde el ámbito laico. También desde el propio clero.

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