ABUSE TRACKER

FLORIDA
WPTV

[with video]

Brian Entin

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – Stephen Budd’s victims say they can finally move on with their lives knowing he will spend the rest of his life behind bars.

“Mr. Budd no longer has control over me. I can now have control over myself and my future,” one of the victims told the judge after the guilty verdict was read.

The two victims are just weeks away from college and spent the past week testifying about the child molestation they endured in the fourth grade.

They testified Budd molested them under his desk in the Rosarian Academy classroom.

“I believe because I wasn’t able to protect myself or the other victim in the fourth grade, I need to protect others now,” one of the victim’s said.

Prosecutors left the courtroom relieved that Budd was sentenced to three consecutive life terms.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

THE catalogue of horrors uncovered about institution after institution entrusted with the care of our most vulnerable infants, children, young girls, and women is so disturbing that it is hard to know how to react to another series of shocking revelations.

Our first, almost understandable, instinct might be to look away, but that would be another betrayal of those vulnerable, abandoned people made victims by a relentless and cruel system, a system run in the main by Catholic religious orders but endorsed by the State and operated in the full, unquestioning knowledge of this society.

Today’s details from a 2012 internal HSE report that an adoption agency — Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in Cork — may have forged death records so children could “be brokered in clandestine adoption arrangements” suggests procedures that would be described as child trafficking today, arrangements that would mean extended jail terms for the organisers and recipients — vendors and purchasers — if they were charged and convicted.

That the report describes infant death rates that were “wholly epidemic” and a “cause for serious consternation” again raises all sorts of questions about how families and society abandoned their daughters and unseen grandchildren to a fate so terrible that it is almost beyond our emotional or psychological ability to comprehend.

Were the people who worked in these institutions evil, deeply ignorant, or just brainwashed? Was the society that did not care enough to impose even light-touch regulation on these appalling establishments so in thrall to the moral diktats of a now discredited theocracy that it dared not intervene? It is hard to imagine our forefathers so supine, so vengeful and cold, so terribly indifferent but the evidence points almost irrefutably in that direction.

The report describes a “cold and lonely environment… characterised by harrowing social, emotional, and physical isolation and institutionalisation” and it is hard not to think that this was not a deliberate act of punishment inflicted by the Catholic version of the Taliban’s infamous moral police.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

Concerns that up to 1,000 children may have been “trafficked” to the US from the Tuam mother and baby home in “a scandal that dwarfs other, more recent issues with the Church and State” were raised by the HSE in 2012.

The warning is contained in an internal note of a teleconference in October 2012 with then assistant director of Children and Family Service Phil Garland and then head of the Medical Intelligence Unit Davida De La Harpe.

It ends with a recommendation that the then health minister be informed with a view to a state inquiry being launched. This was almost two years before revelations of a mass grave at the home forced the Government into launching a state inquiry into all mother and baby homes.

The note relays the concerns raised by the principal social worker for adoption in HSE West who had found “a large archive of photographs, documentation and correspondence relating to children sent for adoption to the USA” and “documentation in relation to discharges and admissions to psychiatric institutions in the Western area”.

It notes there were letters from the Tuam mother and baby home to parents asking for money for the upkeep of their children and notes that the duration of stay for children may have been prolonged by the order for financial reasons.

It also uncovered letters to parents asking for money for the upkeep of some children that had already been discharged or had died. The social worker, “working in her own time and on her own dollar”, had compiled a list of “up to 1,000 names”, but said it was “not clear yet whether all of these relate to the ongoing examination of the Magdalene system, or whether they relate to the adoption of children by parents, possibly in the USA”.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

Adoption rights campaigners have said “serious questions” need to be answered as to why concerns raised by the HSE about Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in 2012 were not acted upon at the time.

A number of adoption groups, human rights bodies, and politicians were reacting to the report, which expressed concerns that death records may have been falsified so children could be “brokered in clandestine adoption arrangements” at home and abroad.

It also revealed that, between 1934 and 1953, a total of 478 children are listed as having died in the institution.

Independent TD Clare Daly said “serious questions” needed to be answered about why the concerns raised by the HSE in 2012 were not acted upon then.

“This horrendous report absolutely vindicates adoption rights campaigners who have consistently called for illegal adoption practises to be fully investigated,” said Ms Daly.

Independent senator and former Children’s Rights Alliance chief executive Jillian van Turnhout questioned why the children’s minister and the Oireachtas were not informed of the report when an inquiry was announced on the issue last year.

“I believe this should have been in the public domain before now,” she said. “We should have known of the existence of this report. We continually show we have not learned any lessons on this issue.”

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

The State has said it was horrified by the revelations about the 796 babies buried at Tuam. However, HSE reports into Tuam and Bessborough mother and baby homes had been prepared for the Government two years previously, writes Conall Ó Fátharta

The latest revelations about the Tuam and Bessborough mother and baby homes raise a number of serious questions as to why a State inquiry into the issue was not launched three years ago.

Material obtained by the Irish Examiner shows that the HSE examined both Tuam and Bessborough as part of the Magdalene laundries inquiry in 2012.

What it uncovered was so shocking that senior HSE figures recommended that the minister be immediately informed so that “a fully fledged, fully resourced forensic investigation and State inquiry” could be launched.

However, it would be almost another two years before an inquiry was announced, on foot of the revelations of historian Catherine Corless.

The HSE material directly addresses infant deaths, and records that the nuns had been soliciting money from parents of children that had been discharged or died. Most shocking of all, concern is expressed that almost 1,000 children may have been trafficked from Tuam for adoption, “possibly in the USA”, noting that “this may prove to be a scandal that dwarfs other, more recent issues with the Church and State”.

A separate report on Bessborough, written in 2012, spoke of “staggering” numbers of children listed as having died at the institution. The author of the report says infant mortality at Bessborough between 1934 and 1953 is “a cause for serious consternation”. Curiously, no deaths were recorded after 1953 but 478 children died in this 19-year period — which works out as one child every fortnight for almost two decades.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
National Catholic Reporter

Matthew Gambino Catholic News Service | Jun. 2, 2015

PHILADELPHIA
Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the head of the Pontifical Council for the Family and lead Vatican organizer of September’s World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia, is under investigation by Italian prosecutors for alleged embezzlement.

Published reports in European media outlets say the investigation stems from 2011 when the archbishop led the diocese of Terni in Italy, and diocesan funds may have been used improperly in a scheme to purchase then resell at a profit a 14th-century Italian castle.

A diocesan financial officer at the time was also the head of an Italian firm that purchased the property, which today remains undeveloped.

Prosecutors named the archbishop as one of the people being investigated. No charges have been filed.

In a statement May 28, Paglia said he has not done anything illegal. “Obviously, I remain at the disposition of the investigating authorities, trusting completely in earthly justice.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

June 3, 2015

Steve Butcher

An alleged child sex offender named Neville George Pell has denied he is related to Cardinal George Pell after a Melbourne court heard he told investigating police they were linked.

In a sworn statement tendered to Melbourne Magistrates Court, a detective said when a colleague asked Mr Pell in February last year if he was related to “George Pell” he replied: “Yes, f—ing hypocrite.”

But after being committed on Wednesday to stand trial on eight charges, Mr Pell, 69, told Fairfax Media outside court he was not related to Cardinal Pell, but had “always referred to George as cousin George because he’s a Pell”.

He pleaded not guilty to the charges, which included two of rape and two of taking part in acts of sexual penetration with a child under 16.

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UNITED STATES
Washington Post

By Sarah Kaplan June 3

Cardinal George Pell left Sydney two years ago to great fanfare. The longtime Archbishop of Sydney and lauded “defender of the faith down under” had just been appointed chief of the Vatican’s finances — sometimes described as the second most powerful position in Rome. It is the highest an Australian has ever ascended in the Church.

But Pell couldn’t leave behind the child sex abuse scandal that had rocked his hometown, or the hushed accusations that he had a part in it. Those accusations have grown louder and much more public since last month, when an Australian commission began hearings into a notorious pedophilia ring just down the road from where Pell once served as parish priest.

Amid fervent coverage in the Australian press, an accusation that his handling of the issue was “sociopathic” and testimony that Pell ignored warnings about his abusive colleagues and attempted to bribe one victim to stop him from speaking out, Pell has now hired lawyers to fight off attacks from the decades-old scandal he can’t quite shake.

The issue came to a head this Sunday, when Peter Saunders, a British survivor of sexual abuse by a priest who had been specially appointed by Pope Francis to serve on the Vatican’s Commission for the Protection of Minors, said that Pell should be removed from his position.

“He has a catalog of denigrating people, of acting with callousness, cold-heartedness, almost sociopathic, I would go as far as to say, this lack of care,” Saunders told the Australian television program 60 Minutes. “… I think it’s critical that he is moved aside — that he is sent back to Australia and that the Pope takes the strongest action against him.”

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CANADA
Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops

[en francais]

Statement by Archbishop Miller of Vancouver on the closing ceremonies of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

The closing ceremonies of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are taking place in Ottawa from May 31 to June 3. The Most Reverend J. Michael Miller, C.S.B., Archbishop of Vancouver, has issued a statement to recall the commitment of the Archdiocese of Vancouver to reconciliation, justice and dialogue with First Nations. In addition to the statement, the Archdiocese of Vancouver is also participating in a number of events marking the end of the Truth and Reconciliation process: Rennie Nahanee, the Archdiocese of Vancouver’s coordinator of First Nations ministry, is taking part in the official closing ceremonies in Ottawa; the Catholic schools in the Archdiocese created “Heart Garden” remembrance projects for residential school children who died, with pupils writing messages on paper hearts to plant in school gardens; and the Archdiocese will take part in an ecumenical service at 10:30 a.m., on June 2, at St. Andrews-Wesley United Church, Vancouver. Mr. Nahanee is also the Chair of the Canadian Catholic Aboriginal Council, which advises the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Link to the Statement

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CANADA
Times Colonist

Ceremonies in Ottawa today wrap up five years of work by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but it’s not the end of the process, just the beginning. And where that process goes depends on actions, not mere words, by Canadians and their governments.

Pressure must be maintained on the federal government, in particular, to ensure the commission’s recommendations are heeded.

The commission, born in part from lawsuits on Vancouver Island, was formed to examine and bring to public consciousness the darkest chapter in Canadian history, when official policy set out to erase aboriginal cultures and languages, to “kill the Indian in the child.” For more than 100 years, First Nations, Inuit and Métis children were removed from their families and sent to government-funded, church-run residential schools, some of them hundreds of kilometres from their homes.

The schools were established, as noted by the commission, “with the purpose to eliminate parental involvement in the spiritual, cultural and intellectual development of aboriginal children.”

The first day of school is often portrayed as a happy moment, but for thousands of aboriginal children, it was terrifying. They were forcibly taken from their families and thrust into a bleak, unfamiliar world, kept like prisoners in residential schools until they were teenagers. Many knew no language but their own, and they were punished, often harshly, if they spoke their own tongue.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail

AAP

Australia’s Catholic archbishops have backed Cardinal George Pell as a man of integrity.

The archbishops of Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Hobart and Canberra-Goulburn said they know Cardinal Pell well and while his style can be robust and direct, underneath he has a big heart for people.

“He is a man of integrity who is committed to the truth and to helping others, particularly those who have been hurt or who are struggling,” the joint statement said on Thursday.

Cardinal Pell was one of the first bishops in the world to put in place a comprehensive church response to investigate allegations of sex abuse by Catholic clergy and to provide survivors with redress and counselling, the statement said.

“He has responded to criticisms that have been made of his handling of these matters over the years, acknowledged mistakes frankly, and apologised for them.”

Cardinal Pell has repeatedly rejected claims he tried to bribe one victim to keep quiet, ignored complaints and was involved in moving Australia’s worst pedophile priest, Gerald Ridsdale, to a different parish.

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CANADA
Anglican Communion News Service

[Anglican Journal] Acknowledging that their apologies for harms done at Indian residential schools “are not enough,” Anglican, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic and United church leaders on June 2 welcomed the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which they say will offer direction to their “continuing commitment to reconciliation” with Indigenous peoples.

“It is clear that Indian Residential Schools, in policy and in practice, were an assault on Indigenous families, culture, language and spiritual traditions, and that great harm was done,” said a joint response read, on behalf of the churches, by Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada.

While noting the “good intent and care of many who worked” as staff in these federally funded, church-run schools, the churches admitted that “those harmed were children, vulnerable, far from their families and communities,” and that “the sexual, physical, and emotional abuse they suffered is well-documented.”

The response was made after the TRC released its final report that offered 94 “Calls to Action” on issues around Aboriginal spirituality, education, health, missing residential schools children, justice and language, among others.

The churches—all signatories to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement—responded to some of the TRC’s recommendations that were directly addressed to them. “We are committed to respect Indigenous spiritual traditions in their own right,” they said, a promise that was met with loud applause.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By William Rollo

The Catholic Church has outlined a series of new measures to handle allegations of child abuse in central Queensland.

The Rockhampton diocese has been under scrutiny over its response to systemic child abuse at St Joseph’s Orphanage at Neerkol, near Rockhampton, up until the 1970s.

The church has established a hotline for abuse victims in central Queensland, will run regular listening sessions for victims, and a new response coordinator will handle any allegations of abuse in the diocese.

Rockhampton Bishop Michael McCarthy hoped the measures made it easier for victims to come forward.

“While I’m waiting for the royal commission to hand down its recommendations, I think it’s important that we continue to forge ahead and make sure our church is safe for our children,” he said.

Allan Alloway suffered horrific sexual and physical abuse as a resident at the Neerkol orphanage.

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CANADA
Calgary Sun

Native residential schools report a welcome first step but overcoming racism still a big hurdle, say Alberta survivors

BY BILL KAUFMANN, CALGARY SUN

Alberta survivors of Native residential schools say a report on healing that system’s damage is a welcome first step.

But while awareness of the often abusive schools promoted by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report should help, Rita Nedved, who attended St. Mary’s Residential School near Cardston, said overcoming racism remains a big hurdle.

“It’s going to take both communities working together for that racism to go away, to be accepted for who we are — it’s going to be a long journey,” said Nedved, 72.

She added she knows the report has sparked a backlash against Aboriginals.

“But we’re the ones who carry the pain, we’re the ones who suffered.”

The woman said she was taken from her adoptive family on the Blood Reserve and attended the school operated by the Catholic church for 10 years, where she suffered sexual abuse.

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CHICAGO (IL)
WLS

[with video]

By Chuck Goudie and Ann Pistone
Tuesday, June 02, 2015

CHICAGO (WLS) — The ABC7 I-Team looked into claims by nearly 100 alleged victims of sexual abuse in metro Chicago that the archdiocese and some of its schools are keeping dangerous secrets.

The case involves claims of sexual and physical abuse by priests and teachers at three local Catholic high schools. The three high schools have been a part of a Roman Catholic order called the Irish Christian Brothers. Hundreds of men and women accused members of the North American order of sexual abuse.

The order has agreed to pay settlements totaling $16.5 million, but the 100 claimants from the Chicago area are angry because they say the schools they attended as children are keeping important information from the public.

“I can see his face. I can see what happened to me, I can picture the events as clear was if it were yesterday,” said John Ruzic, an alleged victim who attended Brother Rice High School.

At least a dozen brothers and priests who taught at Brother Rice and Leo High Schools in Chicago and St. Laurence High School in Burbank have multiple sexual abuse claims against them, according to this bankruptcy filing by the North American branch of the Irish Christian Brothers.

“When you are a kid, you run frightened, scared and confused. Everything in your world crushes because you don’t know who you are,” Ruzic said.

Ruzic said the pain of his experience at Brother Rice High School forced him to move from Chicago to Las Vegas, never to return.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

TESSA AKERMAN

The Archbishops of Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Hobart and Canberra-Goulbourn have issued a joint statement in support of Cardinal George Pell.

The Archbishops, as well as the Bishop of Broken Bay Peter Comensoli and Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney Bishop Terence Brady have stated Cardinal Pell is “a man of integrity,” who is committed to the truth.

Cardinal Pell has come under fire following the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse hearing in Ballarat last month.

The inquiry was told Cardinal Pell tried to bribe a victim of pedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale to keep quiet and dismissed another abuse victim’s complaint as ridiculous

Abuse survivor Timothy Green told the royal commission he spoke to then Father Pell in 1974 about Christian Brother Edward Dowlan touching boys at St Patrick’s College in Ballarat.

“Father Pell said ‘don’t be ridiculous’ and walked out.”

BISHOPS’ STATEMENT

David Ridsdale, the nephew of Australia’s worst pedophile priest, said that after he told Cardinal Pell in 1993 about the abuse at his uncle’s hands, the Cardinal, a family friend, asked him in a phone call; “I want to know what it will take to keep you quiet.”

The Royal Commission also heard Cardinal Pell was present at a Ballarat diocesan consultors meeting which approved Rdisdale’s transfer from the western Victorian parish of Mortlake where he had offended against children.

The seven Archbishops and Bishops say they know Cardinal Pell well from working with him and that he is committed to the truth and to helping others, particularly those who have been hurt or who are struggling.

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CANADA
Yahoo! News

Al Jazeera

Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its final report accusing the government of committing “cultural genocide” against indigenous survivors of the government’s brutal residential school system .

It was a damning indictment of Canada’s role in forcing some 154,000 Aboriginal children into those schools between 1874 and 1996.

They were separated from family, culture and their Aboriginal identity, and suffered physical and sexual abuse. It is estimated 6,000 children died while in these schools.

Andrew Wesley, a Cree native from Fort Albany, Ontario was one of the children who attended residential schools. At 69, he remembers his childhood and the schools that he said were meant “to take the Indian out the child”, and to assimilate them into Canada’s “white” mainstream.

Wesley said the root cause of the violence within Aboriginal communities today – domestic abuse, physical and sexual violence, even murder – was caused by the violent history in those schools and the large number of indigenous children abused there.

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CANADA
The Globe and Mail

KATHRYN BLAZE CARLSON
The Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Jun. 02 2015

All but one of the girls Velma Jackson knew from her days in an Indian residential school are dead. Some of the Blue Quills students died on the streets, some died working in the sex trade, some died from alcohol-fuelled accidents.

This is what Ms. Jackson told the federal Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which on Tuesday released a landmark report that documents the horrific treatment of native children at the church-run institutions, where physical, emotional and sexual abuse was rampant.

The 388-page report of the commission, headed by Justice Murray Sinclair, drew a connection between the social ills borne out of the residential-school system and the murders and disappearances of indigenous women that plague the community today.

“More research is needed, but the available information suggests a devastating link between the large numbers of murdered and missing Aboriginal women and the many harmful background factors in their lives,” the report says, pointing to poverty, domestic violence and the overrepresentation of natives in the child-welfare system. “The complex interplay of factors – many of which are part of the legacy of residential schools – needs to be examined, as does the lack of success of police forces in solving these crimes against Aboriginal women.”

Among the report’s 94 recommendations is for Ottawa to launch a national inquiry to investigate the violence and its relationship to the “inter-generational legacy of residential schools.” The call comes a year after the RCMP revealed that at least 1,181 native women and girls were killed or went missing between 1980 and 2012.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Review

By Chuck Biedka
Tuesday, June 2, 2015

A Lower Burrell man is charged with forcing a teenager to have sex with him.

Daniel Allen Jack, 31, of Toledo Drive, faces rape and seven other charges including sexual assault by an employee of a nonprofit organization.

State police allege Jack met the girl, then 16, at the Amplify Church in Plum, where Jack was serving as a youth group leader and, later, as a youth pastor. He was fired from that position when the allegations against him came to light.

Jack also was a technology employee at Kiski Area School District. Officials there said none of the alleged activity happened at the school or during a school event. Jack is on administrative leave without pay from the school district.

At a special school board hearing Wednesday night, Jack could be fired, said Superintendent John Meighan. The girl was not a student at Kiski.

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PENNSYLVANIA
WTAE

[with video]

LOWER BURRELL, Pa. —A Plum youth pastor is charged with raping an underage girl he met at Amplify Church and then continuing their relationship.

According to the criminal complaint, the girl, 16, met Daniel Jack, 31, when they spent time together at church functions and fundraising for a trip through the church.

Jack had no comment as he left his arraignment with Judge Cheryl Yakopec in Allegheny Township Tuesday after posting bail, but his lawyer, Robert Mielnicki, spoke to Pittsburgh’s Action News 4.

“Mr. Jack was surprised what the accusations were when he read the complaint for the first time today,” Mielnicki said.

During January, the girl says, Jack began texting her often and it made her uncomfortable because he was attempting to get closer to her outside of church activities. The girl says Jack, who is married, set up a Google account for both of them to email using fake names. He also allegedly bought her a second cellphone and downloaded an app to the phone called “Hangout.”

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CANADA
Toronto Star

By: Bruce Campion-Smith Ottawa Bureau, Published on Tue Jun 02 2015

The release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report brought hundreds of residential school survivors to Ottawa, each with their own emotional tale of how that time had affected their life. The Star spoke to a few of them about their time in the residential schools, what the work of commission has meant and how it felt to gather with fellow survivors.

Shishigo Gijig, 61, of Toronto
Attended residential schools in Thunder Bay and Fort Albany, Ont.

“We experienced real bad trauma up there . . . the first part of my life I ended up covering all my pain and hurt with the consumption of alcohol . . . . Then I started going to healing ceremonies, I started learning about myself being a native person and that’s when my life changed.”
Lawrence Houle: “You can see the happiness here today.”
Lawrence Houle: “You can see the happiness here today.”

Lawrence Houle, 76, of Winnipeg
Attended residential school in Manitoba

“When I come to this place, it makes me feel energized. You can see the happiness here today. It’s so powerful. It’s overwhelming to some people because they didn’t know what happiness is . . . most of the time they cried all their lives because of the psychological hurt, the emotional, physical hurt.”
Delores Charles: “These same things are passed down so I took my children out of my community to break that cycle . . .”

Delores Charles, 62, of Georgina Island
Attended Indian day school on Georgina Island

“The alcohol got a hold of a lot of our people. These same things are passed down so I took my children out of my community to break that cycle . . . . We have to make changes and we have to start with ourselves first and our families.”

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CANADA
Toronto Star

By: Steve Bonspiel

Published on Tue Jun 02 2015

As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission wraps up its five-year mandate this week in Ottawa, I am both proud of the heroes who testified and disappointed in a country that is failing them all over again.
The commission attempted to give some form of healing to those who suffered the most in residential schools, but in a few important ways it fell short.

TRC Justice Murray Sinclair pointed to 2008’s residential school apology in the House of Commons as hollow words. He was right.

With unconstitutional bills like Bill C-51 (the anti-terror bill), land claims moving at a snail’s pace, and many of our communities without proper infrastructure, sewage and running water, Native people have all but given up on healing with Stephen Harper as leader.

And then there was the commission itself. Many who attended the events (myself included) came away with mixed emotions. There was sadness, of course, but also quite a bit of anger that wasn’t only directed toward the priests and nuns who routinely sexually, physically and mentally abused the children.

I came away from it angry at the process.

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CANADA
Ottawa Citizen

JASON FEKETE, OTTAWA CITIZEN

The Vatican’s embassy in Ottawa says the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s demands for the Pope to come to Canada to apologize for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in residential schools abuse will be sent to the Pontiff and will be a “high priority.”

However, the Catholic Archbishop of Ottawa, who apologized earlier this week for the abuse at residential schools that were run by the Roman Catholic Church, said calls for the Pope to deliver an apology in Canada is “quite an extraordinary thing to demand.”

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission looking into the decades of abuse of aboriginal children at residential schools across Canada released a damning report Tuesday that includes 94 recommendations, including one that stretches all the way to the Vatican.

The commission is calling for Pope Francis to visit Canada within a year and apologize to survivors, their families and communities “for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in the spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children in Catholic-run residential schools.”

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CANADA
Metro

OTTAWA – Some quotes about the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on native residential schools:

“The residential school experience is one of the darkest, most troubling chapters in our collective history.” — Justice Murray Sinclair, the commission chairman, in his final remarks on the report.

—
onal and mental abuse.” — Sinclair.

—

“We have described for you a mountain. We have shown you the path to the top. We call upon you to do the climbing.” — Sinclair.

—

“We must be mindful that a process that will be as long and complicated as the reconciliation of seven generations of inequity will require stewardship, study and ongoing attention.” — commissioner Marie Wilson.

—

“To my fellow survivors here in the room, those watching elsewhere, and those who could not join us today, I cannot give enough thanks to you. Thank you for your courage and bravery throughout this whole journey.” — commissioner Chief Wilton Littlechild.

—

“So, there was a lot of tears. That train I want to call that train of tears.” — survivor Larry Beardy, quoted in the report, telling of a rail journey from his home in Churchill, Man., to an Anglican residential school in Dauphin, Man.

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CANADA
Government of Ontario

June 2, 2015

Office of the Premier

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne released the following statement in response to the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report summary:

“I would like to thank The Honourable Justice Murray Sinclair and the entire Truth and Reconciliation Commission for assembling what will be Canada’s most comprehensive report on the atrocities committed at residential schools. I would especially like to thank the Survivors who shared their experiences and who have shone a light into one of the darkest chapters of our country’s history.

The Commission has offered us an opportunity to renew our relationship with Aboriginal partners, and challenged us to renew our commitment to live together on this land based on principles of trust, mutual respect and shared benefits. Working with our First Nations, Métis and Inuit partners, it is a challenge the province of Ontario is grateful to accept. Our government will carefully review the report summary and its recommendations, and we look forward to reviewing the final report in its entirety.

Today, I want to reaffirm the Province of Ontario’s commitment to reconciliation, to supporting Survivors and to continuing to build trust with Aboriginal partners.

For reconciliation to succeed, we must also renew our commitment to educating Ontarians on the role that treaties and the residential school legacy play in Canada’s past, present and future. That is why we have worked with Aboriginal and other partners in revising our curriculum to include greater requirements for students to learn about the residential school experience, and will continue to do so from a perspective that honours Survivors, encourages critical thinking, and teaches an understanding of both the short and long-term consequences of residential schools.

Ontario is also working with Aboriginal partners to make everyone in the province aware of our rights and responsibilities as treaty people. This includes the work we have done to distribute treaty maps to every publicly funded school in Ontario, our support for the Anishinabek Nation in developing the “We Are All Treaty People” Teacher’s Kit, and our work to make the “Walk-A-Mile Film Project” available in schools and libraries across the province.

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SCOTLAND
Scotsman

CHRIS MARSHALL
Wednesday 03 June 2015

SURVIVORS of historical child abuse say Scotland’s churches have been “let off the hook” by a national public inquiry set up to investigate the issue.

The inquiry, which is set to get under way later this year, will look at allegations of abuse relating to children in residential care, including independent boarding schools.

But it will not examine allegations where the child was living with its family or an adoptive family, or where the child was attending a “faith-based organisations on a day-to-day basis”.

Survivors are due to meet their legal advisers amid concerns the inquiry will exclude those abused by members of the clergy, but not residing in an institution at the time.

The Scottish Government said the inquiry had to have a “clear remit” if it was to conclude in the four-year time period.

Alan Draper, a spokesman for In Care Abuse Survivors (Incas), said: “We have some major concerns about how the inquiry is going to work in practice. I think they have let the churches off the hook again and that is worrying. What we wanted was any organisation that had a duty of care to be included, and that would have included churches and the Scout organisation. A priest in a parish who abused ten children is not included.”

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FLORIDA
Sun Sentinel

By Marc Freeman
Sun Sentinel

She had the courage two years ago to finally tell West Palm Beach police about the horror of being molested in class by her fourth-grade teacher.

She had the courage last week to testify in court about the abuses she and a classmate suffered as 9-year-olds under the desk of that teacher, Stephen Jerome Budd.

And Tuesday, she had the courage to talk about her pain — and positive outlook — minutes after a jury convicted Budd of five sex crimes, and just before the 53-year-old former Rosarian Academy educator was sentenced to three consecutive life terms in state prison.

So while the now-18-year-old victim has dealt with obsessive-compulsive and eating disorders because of her trauma, she also spoke of the positives in her life.

“I have realized the inner strength in me I never thought I had, the strength I wish I would have had in the fourth grade,” the recent high school graduate told Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Karen Miller. “I now have the comfort of knowing I saved other potential victims of Mr. Budd.”

“When I am up at night or unable to sleep or awoken by nightmares of him, these are the things I am able to think of,” the young woman continued, as Budd, with his head down, sat nearby at a table with his attorney. “Mr. Budd no longer has control over me. I can now have control over myself and my future.”

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FLORIDA
WPTV

[with video]

Brian Entin

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – After deliberating all morning a jury reached a verdict Tuesday in the case of a former Rosarian Academy Elementary School teacher accused of child molestation.

The jury found Stephen Budd guilty on all counts of molesting two Rosarian Academy students when they were in the fourth grade.

A short time later he was sentenced to life in prison and classified as a sexual predator.

The girls, now in their late teens, testified during the trial about the sexual abuse that happened in the classroom.

Prosecutors told the jury Monday afternoon that there was no reason the girls would make up the stories.

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FLORIDA
Palm Beach Post

UPDATE: Stephen Budd has been found guilty as charged of capital sexual battery and molestation. Budd has been sentenced to prison to serve three consecutive life sentences on the first three charges and 15 years on the final two charges.

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FLORIDA
New Times

BY CHRIS JOSEPH

TUESDAY, JUNE 2, 2015

Stephen Budd, the former Rosarian Academy Elementary School teacher accused of child molestation, has been found guilty on all counts on Tuesday.

Budd, 53, has been sentenced to serve three consecutive life sentences, and another 15 years.

In 2003, Budd was arrested as he was leaving his West Palm Beach apartment after two fourth grade girls came forward and told police that Budd had given then candy in exchange for sexual favors. The acts occurred in 2006 when Budd was the girls’ fourth grade homeroom teacher at Rosarian Academy. The girls, who are teens now, were both 9-years-old at the time.

According to investigators, Budd had given the victims what he deemed as “Budd Bucks,” which was payment in candy, in exchange for the sexual acts. At the time of his arrest, police said that the exchange with the girls had begun at the beginning of the school year and had gone on as a daily routine.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

VATICAN CITY | BY PHILIP PULLELLA

A Vatican commission on sex abuse distanced itself on Tuesday from criticisms lodged by one of its members against an Australian cardinal but urged Church leaders to move swiftly to achieve justice for victims.

Commission member Peter Saunders of Britain said two days ago on Australian television that Cardinal George Pell should be dismissed over allegations he failed to take action to protect children years ago.

Pell, now in charge of reforming the Vatican’s economic departments, has called Saunders’s comments “false”, “misleading” and “outrageous”, and said he would consult legal advisers.

Tuesday’s statement by the 17-member Vatican commission, which is advising the pope on how to root out sex abuse in the Church, said it “has no jurisdiction to comment on individual cases or inquiries”.

In the television program, Saunders said Pell should be “moved aside” and sent back to Australia to address a government inquiry on sexual abuse, which confirmed on Monday that it would ask Pell to testify.

Pell has said he supports the work of the Australian inquiry, where he has appeared twice, and that he is willing to assist in its work.

The Vatican commission said it was “essential that those in positions of authority in the Church respond promptly, transparently and with the clear intent of enabling justice to be achieved”.

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CANADA
Toronto Star

Vitaline Elsie Jenner is a Survivor who didn’t go quietly. When they came to tear her from her family at Fort Chipewayan in Alberta, she fought to stay with all the fury a terrified child could muster.
Mama, Mama, kâya nakasin! she called out in Cree, the only language she knew. Mom, Mom, don’t leave me!

But like 150,000 other aboriginal children she soon found herself in a notorious residential school — “a world dominated by fear, loneliness, and lack of affection,” as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission put it in its searing summary report into one of Canada’s darkest, most shameful eras, made public on Tuesday.

It was a world in which children were beaten for speaking Cree and other First Nations, Métis and Inuit languages, as Christian teachers tried to “civilize” their young charges. “They took my language. They took it right out of my mouth,” says Rose Dorothy Charlie. “I never spoke it again.” Some children, forcibly uprooted into an alien culture, were known only by numbers. Gilles Petiquay recalls being 95, then 4, then 56. The schooling they received was substandard. All too often the growing children were hungry; milk and meat were luxuries.

“There was no love, there was no feelings, it was just supervisory,” says Jack Anawak, one of 80,000 living survivors. “We would cry like little puppies or dogs, right into the night, until we go to sleep; longing for our families,” says Betsy Annahatak.

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CANADA
CBC News

By Haydn Watters, CBC News

Prime Minister Stephen Harper spent much of Tuesday’s question period defending his government’s work on aboriginal affairs as the opposition challenged him on the results of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s findings.

But Harper wouldn’t commit to any of the 94 recommendations outlined in the summary report, released Tuesday morning.

Members from the NDP, including Opposition Leader Tom Mulcair, questioned Harper repeatedly as to whether the government would fully adopt the United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, which the commissioners called the “framework for reconciliation.”

The prime minister answered by reiterating his party’s stance on the declaration.

“Canada is one of the very few countries in the world where aboriginal and treaty rights are recognized and that’s one of the reasons why the government accepts the UN declaration as an aspirational document,” he told the Commons.

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UNITED STATES
The Jewish Week

Laura Gold
Special To The Jewish Week

Recently, prominent Washington, D.C. Rabbi Barry Freundel received a 6 1/2-year prison sentence for spying on women immersing in the mikveh, the ritual bath. And just last week, The New York Times published an expose on Riverdale Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt’s longstanding habit of bringing teenage boys and young men whom he was mentoring to sit with him naked in a sauna.

With every new rabbinical scandal, after the initial shock and concern and denominational finger-pointing, people tend to breathe a sigh of relief and feel reassured that whatever flaws their rabbi may have, at least he or she isn’t an out-and-out sociopath. The rabbis who make headlines for abusive criminal behavior tell us more about the entwining of psychopathology with power than about the rabbinate, per se.

Still, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that all ITAL rabbis are vulnerable to the possibility of misusing their power. For this reason, all rabbis should be encouraged to consider the personal psychological pitfalls that may trip them up. One bad rabbinic apple may not treif up the whole bunch, but it can remind the other apples to look carefully at themselves, not for purposes of preening but for pruning.

As a clinical psychologist and rabbi consulting to clergy across the country, as well as teaching rabbinical students, I find that they often ask me whom to be wary of “out there”: In other words, which congregants pose the greatest danger to the rabbi by way of their excessive neediness or narcissism or other diagnostic warning signals. But rabbis occupy a position that requires turning their scrutiny inward as well. They are professionally remiss if they are not routinely asking themselves: Is there something about myself that I ought to be worried about?

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe

By David Abel GLOBE STAFF JUNE 02, 2015

DEDHAM — Barry Starr, the conservative rabbi who stepped down last year from Temple Israel in Sharon, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges that he borrowed and stole nearly $500,000 from his synagogue and its congregants to buy the silence of a man charged with blackmailing him.

Starr, who appeared in Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, is accused of paying off Nicholas Zemeitus of Quincy with cash, checks, and banking information as part of a multi-year shakedown.

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CANADA
APTN

APTN National News

Indian Affairs officials covered-up the abuse of children at residential schools and interfered with police investigations, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) says.

TRC Chair Marie Wilson said the commission found that Indian Affairs was involved in an “accepted system of corruption and cover-up” of abuses committed against Indigenous children who were forced to attend Indian residential schools for over a century.

About 150,000 Indigenous children, or seven generations, attended residential schools over the system’s century long existence.

The TRC released a summary of its final report Tuesday in Ottawa following six years of work that saw it travel to 300 communities and hear from 6,750 survivors.

Wilson said throughout the history of residential schools, the federal government, through the Indian Affairs department, actively worked with church-run residential school officials to keep reports of abuses under-wraps despite inquiries from police agencies.

“The churches running the schools were free to hold their own investigations which rarely led to more than seeking out and accepting the denials of accused school officials,” said Wilson, who spoke during the release of the TRC’s report. “We recorded a number of troubling incidents showing failures to take student’s complaints seriously, failure to take action in the rare instances a school official was convicted, failures to report incidents to the local police or the Department of Indian Affairs.”

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CANADA
Ottawa Citizen

Alongside its recommendations, The Truth and Reconciliation Commission Tuesday released a compendium of stories from some of the survivors of the residential school system that brutalized thousands of aboriginal Canadians.

Here are some of their voices:

On being removed from their homes and sent to the schools:

“They load(ed) us all up on a bus and took us. And I remember my mom had a really hard time letting us kids go, and she had, she had a really hard time. She begged the priest, and the priest said it was law that we had to go, and if we didn’t go, then my parents would be in trouble.” – Maureen Gloria Johnson, who was taken to Lower Post School in northern British Columbia in 1959.

“I was kidnapped from Port Renfrew’s elementary school when I was around six years old, and this happened right in the elementary schoolyard. And my auntie witnessed this, and another non-native witnessed this … These are two witness trying, saw me fighting, trying to get away with, from the two RCMP officers that threw me in the back seat of the car and drove off with me. And my mom didn’t know where I was for three days, frantically stressed out and worried about where I was, and she finally found out that I was in Kuper Island residential school.” – Howard Stacy Jones.

“We got taken away by a big truck. I can still remember my mom and dad looking at us, and they were really, really sad-looking. My dad’s shoulders were just hunched, and he, to me, looked like his spirit was broken.” – Alma Scott, taken to the Fort Alexander, Man., school when she was five years old.

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AUSTRALIA
Commonweal

Grant Gallicho June 2, 2015

During the May 31 broadcast of Australia’s 60 Minutes, a member of Pope Francis’s sexual-abuse commission described Cardinal George Pell’s treatment of victims as “almost sociopathic.” The 60 Minutes segment focused on Pell’s response to abuse allegations while he ministered in Australia, including testimony alleging that the cardinal tried to buy a victim’s silence, and that he was involved in the decision to move the nation’s most notorious abuser priest, Gerald Ridsdale, between parishes—claims the cardinal denies. Pell, former archbishop of Sydney, was criticized for appearing with Ridsdale at his first trial in 1993 (Ridsdale was eventually convicted of more than one hundred counts of assault). The cardinal has a “catalogue of denials…a catalogue of denigrating people, of acting with callousness,” according to Peter Saunders, selected by Francis to serve on the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors. Saunders explained that he based his judgments on conversations with Australian victims. The cardinal’s position as prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy—the office created by Francis to oversee the Vatican’s finances—is “untenable,” Saunders said. “I would go as far to say,” he continued, “that I consider him to be quite a dangerous individual.”

Responses from Pell and from the Vatican spokesman came quickly. Before the program had even aired (after the network released promotional material), Pell issued statements calling Saunders’s comments “false” and “outrageous”—and suggested he might take legal action. (Saunders defended his remarks on June 1, saying they were “not slanderous.”) While acknowledging “the important work Mr. Saunders has done as a survivor of abuse to assist victims, including the establishment of a victims survivors group in the United Kingdom,” the cardinal suggested that Saunders had overstepped his role as a member of the pope’s sexual-abuse commission. The statutes of that body “make it clear that the Commission’s role does not include commenting on individual cases,” according to Pell, “nor does the commission have the capacity to investigate individual cases.”

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CANADA
APTN

Kenneth Jackson
APTN National News

During the Second World War Nazi Germany would herd Jewish people like cattle and load them into train cars heading to concentration camps with just the clothes on their backs.

They didn’t know where the train was going and they didn’t have a choice.

When they arrived they had identification numbers tattooed on them.

At the same time, the Canadian government was doing something similar across the country with Aboriginal children.

Large trucks would pull up on reserves and haul kids to residential schools.

“The cattle trucks come on the reserve, and scoop up the kids to go, and seeing my cousins cry, and then, and they were put on these trucks, and hauled off, and we didn’t know where,” recalled Shirley Leon who attended a residential school in Kamloops, B.C. during the 1940s.

Leon’s story is one of dozens chronicled in “The Survivors Speak” book released Tuesday by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

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BY JOEL LANDAU

A 72-year-old monk in Austria has been suspended from all religious duties after he confessed to paying a 12-year-old boy for sex while under the heavy influence of alcohol, his monastery reported.

P. Pius Hellmair was arrested Wednesday for allegedly paying two people for sex, including a minor in the city of Linz. The monk was “under the heavy influence of alcohol” and deeply regrets the incident, The Lambach Abbey confirmed on its website.

The underage victim is reportedly a 12-year-old boy, according to the newspaper The Local.

The monastery said it wanted to set the record straight and clear up numerous rumors regarding the clergy member’s recent absence.

Hellmair, who according to the church confessed to the crime, has been suspended from any of his religious duties. After an investigation the Vatican will determine if he will remain with the church.

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FRANCE/VATICAN CITY
Daily Reporter

By SYLVIE CORBET and NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press
First Posted: June 02, 2015

PARIS — The French government is expecting the Vatican to decide within days whether to approve the nomination of a respected diplomat who is said to be gay as French ambassador to the Holy See.

Paris is hoping that Laurent Stefanini wins approval five months after the French presidential palace submitted his nomination. The French government is awaiting a response via Vatican diplomatic channels within a week to 10 days, a French official told The Associated Press.

The Vatican spokesman declined to comment.

Gay rights groups have accused the Vatican of delaying a decision because of Stefanini’s sexual orientation. Such decisions normally take just a few weeks.

The No. 2 official at the Vatican, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, said last week, “The dialogue is still open and we hope that it might conclude in a positive light.” It is the only thing the Vatican has said on the record about the nomination.

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CANADA
APTN

Julien Gignac
APTN National News

OTTAWA – Marilyn Simon-Ingram was not forced into the school by the Catholic church, the circumstances found at home did.

She left home with three other siblings to allay fears of starvation experienced by the rest of her family who lived in extreme poverty. Fears would persist, however, after spending four years within the walls of the residential school system.

Simon-Ingram, now in her 80s, was standing outside of the Delta Hotel in Ottawa Monday posing for a photo and raising a “Stop Harper” sign towards the lens, the word “survivor” scrawled on the sleeve of her blouse.

Abuse she endured at the Shubenacadie residential school in Nova Scotia in the 1930s, along with the testimony she gave, echoed 7,000 additional stories collected by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission during a six-year probe into the school system.

Survivor testimonies are included in the final report of the commission released Tuesday.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Today

Billy Graham’s grandson on Josh Duggar and Karen Hinkley: churches must protect victims, not offenders

Carey Lodge CHRISTIAN TODAY JOURNALIST 02 June 2015

Boz Tchividjian has accused the Christian community of acting “contrary” to the gospel in response to cases of abuse.

The grandson of evangelist Billy Graham, and executive director of Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment, Tchividjian made the comments in an interview with the Christian Post. He told the website that churches are guilty of sacrificing the safety and care of abuse victims “in order to protect the reputations of individuals and institutions”.

“This sacrifice is most commonly demonstrated through ignoring or marginalizing victims and protecting offenders,” he said.

Churches should not be safe havens for perpetrators, but rather the place where those who have experienced abuse “feel most safe and most loved,” Tchividjian added, encouraging churches to take on a “gospel-centered approach”.

“My prayer is that one day churches will be the place offenders feel the least safe knowing that the church is vigilantly watching over its children and won’t hesitate to report suspected abuse to the God-ordained authorities. I think Jesus requires nothing less of us.”

Abuse in the Church has made headlines in recent weeks following the news that a Dallas megachurch put a woman under discipline after she filed for annulment when her husband confessed to watching child pornography. The Village Church, led by Matt Chandler, eventually issued an apology for the way it treated Karen Hinkley. “In every way that we’ve mishandled this situation, along with others in the past, we repent and ask for forgiveness,” an email to church members said.

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SCOTLAND
Scotsman

NINE men have been reported to prosecutors in connection with historical abuse at a former Catholic boarding school.

Police have now concluded their investigation into allegations of physical and sexual abuse at Fort Augustus Abbey in the Highlands.

The men are alleged to have been involved in incidents dating from September 1967 to December 1992.

In a statement, the Crown Office said: “The procurator fiscal at Inverness has received reports concerning nine men in relation to incidents alleged to have occurred between September 1967 and December 1992.

“The reports remain under consideration.”

The school was run by Benedictine monks but closed down in the 1990s.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Pope Francis, an ex-bouncer football fan, and Cardinal George Pell, an ex-Australian footballer, appreciate a good match, by Church rules of course. In a modern David and Goliath scenario under Australian Royal Commission rules, Peter Saunders, a courageous UK priest sex abuse survivor and devout Catholic, has boldly taken on Pell, the second most powerful man in the Catholic Church, before a crowd of over a billion Catholics. Pope Francis wanted a “mess”, and now he has created a big one by picking both Pell and Saunders to serve under him. Given the upcoming US papal visit aimed mainly at influencing Catholic and evangelical voters to elect a new “Vatican friendly” US president in next year’s elections, the “Saunders-Pell match”, over holding bishops accountable for protecting priest child abusers, has worldwide implications.

The pope seems too savvy not to have seen this mess coming. He knew both men’s history and enough about their temperaments. He also knew making bishops accountable for protecting priest child abusers was the most important challenge he faced worldwide. And, as a realist, he also knew and knows that robotic and compromised bishops appointed by his complicit predecessors were not, and are not, up to the task of policing themselves, as is still shown almost on a daily basis at ABUSE TRACKER .

Judy Courtin, from Australia’s prestigious Monash University’s law faculty, has extensively researched abuse within the Catholic Church and has been following closely the Royal Commission’s extensive investigation into institutional child sexual abuse there. She recently noted that the Saunders-Pell conflict was problematic for the Vatican, given that both men were appointed by Francis. “Problematic” may be an understatement!

“It will have set the cat among the pigeons,” Courtin recently said. “They’ll be running around in the Vatican with their advisers about how to manage this. Pell and Francis are supposed to be buddies, they like each other, but Saunders was also appointed by Francis, …”, she also noted. Saunders would be viewed by victims as a hero for his comments, she added. Indeed, Saunders is already viewed as a hero by millions of concerned Catholics worldwide, not just by abuse survivors and not just in the UK.

Cardinal George Pell has now been asked to give evidence to the Royal Commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse at its second hearings in Ballarat (his original diocese) later this year. The announcement of Pell’s new testimony scheduling follows a call by Peter Saunders for Pell to be removed by the pope in Saunder’s remarkable recent interview here on Australia’s 60 Minutes.

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UNITED STATES
Boston Herald

By: Michael Smerconish

Charles and David Koch. Sheldon Adelson. Karl Rove. George Soros. The index is long of those who aren’t running for president but will nevertheless influence the outcome. To the list we need to add Pope Francis. Unlike the others, the pontiff won’t be endorsing anyone, but given his coming visit to the United States, and the strength of his message and popularity, he is poised to uniquely frame the debate.

Pope Francis’ ambitious travel schedule will take him to Latin America this summer and then Cuba (likely in early September), before he arrives in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 22. There, he will meet with President Obama and address a joint meeting of Congress, the first pope to do so. Next, he heads to New York City and Philadelphia.

Get ready for wall-to-wall coverage, not only in the cities he visits but also around the world. And these events will unfold just as the summer has wound down and the presidential campaigns kick into high gear.

The pope will arrive soon after the GOP candidates have debated in Cleveland and at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif. While no date has been set, the Democratic candidates are expected to debate for the first time in late August.

Like the rest of us, those candidates will be attentive to what Pope Francis says, while also being envious of his approval numbers. According to the Pew Research Center, among American Catholics, Pope Francis is almost as popular now as St. John Paul II, who in the middle (1990) of his papacy was favored by 93 percent of American Catholics. Pope Francis enjoys a 90 percent favorability rating among his flock, and is viewed favorably by 70 percent of all Americans.

No wonder that, earlier this month, Hillary Clinton, a Methodist, tweeted at the pope in support of his call for equal pay for women: “Amen to this headline, Pontifex! Hope to see more voices speaking out.” Among those who may be especially attentive to his holy word are the potential and declared presidential candidates who are Catholic, including Martin O’Malley, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Rick Santorum, George Pataki, Chris Christie, and Bobby Jindal.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

BY REBECCA BLACK – 02 JUNE 2015

An ongoing inquiry into abuse at children’s homes lacks the powers to get to the bottom of what has been termed the systematic abuse of young boys at Kincora, the High Court has heard.

One victim of an alleged paedophile ring at the former Kincora Home for young boys in east Belfast, said new evidence of purported state collusion and cover-up of abuse must be examined by a wider Westminster inquiry.

Gary Hoy is seeking to judicially review the decision to keep the probe within the remit of a Stormont-commissioned body.

Opening his challenge, Ashley Underwood QC argued the ongoing Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) Inquiry sitting in Banbridge, Co Down, lacks the power to properly scrutinise the “appalling, systematic abuse” Mr Hoy suffered at Kincora Boys Home.

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CANADA
APTN

APTN National News

OTTAWA–The Vatican embassy in Ottawa says it will send the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report to Rome.

A spokesperson at the embassy did not have an immediate comment about the recommendations aimed at the Church including a call for Pope Francis to come to Canada to issue an apology to “survivors.”

The TRC report said the apology should be “for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in the spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of First Nations, Inuit, and Metis children in Catholic-run residential schools.”

The report is calling for the Pope to issue an apology “similar to the 2010 apology issued to Irish victims of abuse and to occur within one year of the issuing of this report.”

In the report released Tuesday, the three TRC Commissioners aimed a number recommendations at churches in Canada that had ties to residential schools.

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CANADA
APTN

APTN National News

To this day no one has found the remains of the brothers Charles and Tom Ombash who ran away from an Indian residential school in Sioux Lookout, Ont., on Oct. 5, 1956.

School officials waited for about a month before notifying police and Indian Affairs.

At least 33 students are recorded to have died by running away from residential schools. Most succumbed to exposure.

There were other ways Indigenous children attending residential schools died. In 1949, Rodney Beardy, 15, was killed in a tractor accident at an Indian residential school in Brandon, Man. School fires also killed at least 40 students.

Disease, particularly tuberculosis, was the main cause of death for likely thousands of children who attended residential schools.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) unveiled two volumes and a summary of its final report which is expected to be released later this year. One volume was titled, What We Have Learned, and the other was titled, The Survivors Speak

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CANADA
The New York Times

By IAN Austin

OTTAWA — Canada’s former policy of forcibly removing aboriginal children from their families for schooling “can best be described as ‘cultural genocide.’”

That is the conclusion reached by the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission after six years of intensive research, including 6,750 interviews. The commission published a summary version on Tuesday of what will ultimately be a multivolume report, documenting widespread physical, cultural and sexual abuse at government-sponsored residential schools that Indian, Inuit and other indigenous children were forced to attend.

The schools, financed by the government but run largely by churches, were in operation for more than a century, from 1883 until the last one closed in 1998.

The commission found that 3,201 students died while attending the schools, many of them because of mistreatment or neglect — the first comprehensive tally of such deaths.

The report links the abuses at the schools, which came to broad public attention over the last four decades, to a number of social, health, economic and emotional problems afflicting many indigenous Canadians today. And it concluded that while some of the teachers and administrators at the schools were well intentioned, the overriding motive for the program was economic, not educational.

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CANADA
CBC News

Over the past six years, thousands of former residential school survivors shared their stories with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Many former students talked about how residential schools tore apart their lives and the lives of their families, sometimes talking about their experiences for the first time.

Now, after six years of listening to those stories, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has released its final report.

Ted Quewezance is the former chief of the Keeseekoose First Nation. He went to residential school himself and headed up the National Residential School Survivors Society. He travelled to Ottawa to be there for this historic event.

He told CBC he is left with a big question. “How are the churches reconciling directly with families and communities right across this country?”

Truth and Reconciliation Commission: By the numbers

Quewezance said he is looking for action from the present government beyond an apology. “We’ve had commissions go across this country and we’ve been studied to death, instead of recommendations we want to know what the actions are going to be? “The whole issue of reconciliation is about housing about our healthcare and about our children,” said Quewezance.

He said he wants to see work being done for First Nation people in Saskatchewan and across the country who need it most. “How do we reconcile within our communities with the people who are very poor, that are very hungry, the ones that live 10-15 people in a home, the people who are on drugs […] That’s the target group.”

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CANADA
660 News

THE CANADIAN PRESS | A long-awaited report on the horrors of Canada’s residential school system calls it nothing short of a “cultural genocide,” making 94 broad recommendations — everything from greater police independence and reducing the number of aboriginal children in foster care to restrictions on the use of conditional and mandatory minimum sentences.

The summary of the Truth and Reconciliation report, out today, is the culmination of six emotional years of extensive study into the church-run, government-funded institutions, which operated for more than 120 years.

“Canada separated children from their parents, sending them to residential schools,” says the summary. “This was done not to educate them, but primarily to break their link to their culture and identity.”

The scope of the commission and its report is staggering. The full report, weighing in at six volumes and thousands of pages, will be released later this year.

The commission, prompted by the largest class-action settlement in Canadian history, found neglect was institutionalized and students were often “prey to sexual and physical abusers.”

It goes so far as to recommend additional CBC funding, a statutory holiday to honour survivors and an apology from the Pope on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church.

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CANADA
Ottawa Citizen

OTTAWA CITIZEN EDITORIAL BOARD

Before the reconciliation of people comes the reconciliation of narratives. We turned away from the stories of the survivors of residential schools. We told ourselves other stories, stories about good intentions and unfortunate mistakes. That work of reconciling our story-telling to fit the historical truth falls mainly to non-Aboriginal Canadians now, and that is only the beginning.

We Canadians wanted to believe that abuse was the aberrant work of cruel individuals, not the policy of an entire nation. We forgave the overt racism of our lauded forefathers, saying it was a different time – as if morality is relative, as if “don’t starve children” was an axiom too advanced or enlightened for the people who built this country.

The summary report from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission refocuses that lens of history, making the truth uncomfortably sharp and clear. Thousands of children died. Some children were deliberately kept undernourished, to make a “baseline” for nutritional research. Children’s names and languages were beaten out of them. The residential schools were not a mistake. They worked precisely as intended, as one tactic in a strategy that Canada’s chief justice has accurately called cultural genocide.

Every Aboriginal person in Canada lives today with that legacy; every non-Aboriginal person does too, although they may not realize it. The legacy is there in the overrepresentation of Aboriginal children in foster care systems, and in the shocking stories about those systems that have recently made headlines in Alberta and Manitoba. It is in Canadians’ widespread ignorance of Aboriginal languages, names, practices and stories; that knowledge of this country’s heritage and culture has been stolen from all our children. It is in our correctional system, in the suicide and diabetes statistics. The government of this country deliberately broke families and communities, and that damage has not yet healed.

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CANADA
Fox News

Associated Press

TORONTO – A long-awaited report into Canada’s decades-long government policy requiring Canadian Indians to attend state-funded church schools called it “nothing less than cultural genocide.”

Truth and Reconciliation Commission chair Justice Murray Sinclair said Tuesday that residential schools are one of the “darkest and most troubling chapters in our collective history.”

The report is the result of a six-year study of Canada’s former government policy requiring Canadian Indians to attend the schools, often the scenes of physical and sexual abuse. Indian leaders have cited the legacy of abuse and isolation as the root cause of epidemic substance abuse rates on reservations.

From the 19th century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 aboriginal children were required to attend Christian schools to rid them of their native cultures and integrate them into Canadian society.

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CANADA
Metro

OTTAWA—The residential schools that removed Aboriginal children from their homes, subjecting many of them to substandard education, malnutrition, abuse, illness and even death was a key part of a government-led policy that amounted to cultural genocide, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission concludes.

“These measures were part of a coherent policy to eliminate Aboriginal people as distinct peoples and to assimilate them into the Canadian mainstream against their will,” says the 381-page summary of its final report released Tuesday in Ottawa.

“The Canadian government pursued this policy of cultural genocide because it wished to divest itself of its legal and financial obligations to Aboriginal people and gain control over their land and resources,” says the report.

The heart-wrenching and damning report is the culmination of a six-year examination of the history and legacy of residential schools — largely operated by churches and funded by the Canadian government — that saw 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children come through their doors for more than a century.

Through the testimony of residential school survivors, former staff, church and government officials and archival documents, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission pieced together a horrifying history that, despite its rippling effects, has been repeatedly dismissed or ignored.

It also describes how the legacy of residential schools continues, not only through the direct effect that generations of institutionalization and abuse has had on survivors and their families, but how it is manifested in racism, systemic discrimination and poverty, as well as dying indigenous languages.

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CANADA
Toronto Star

By: Peter Edwards Star Reporter, Published on Tue Jun 02 2015

The massive final report of the inquiry into horrors of church-run, government-funded native residential schools should just be the starting point for improving how we teach our history, First Nations community members say.

“It’s about awareness,” said Andrea Chrisjohn, board designate of the Toronto Council Fire Native Cultural Centre. “Education is really critical.”

“It’s all about education,” said Paula Whitlow, museum director of the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford. “Racism still exists. We still deal with it every day in some form.”

Chrisjohn, Whitlow and Gordon Peters, Grand Chief of the Association of Iroquois and Allied Indians, all said that the effects of residential schools are still felt widely in First Nations communities.

Education is an essential starting point to making things better, they said.

“You can’t have Canada built on a foundation of lies,” Peters said. “That’s what Canada is right now. They teach these lies to the children.”

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CANADA
CHEK

A long-awaited report on the horrors of Canada’s residential school system calls it nothing short of a “cultural genocide,” making 94 broad recommendations _ everything from greater police independence and reducing the number of aboriginal children in foster care to restrictions on the use of conditional and mandatory minimum sentences.

The summary of the Truth and Reconciliation report, out today, is the culmination of six emotional years of extensive study into the church-run, government-funded institutions, which operated for more than 120 years.

Justice Murray Sinclair, Canada’s first aboriginal justice and the commission’s chairman, was welcomed to the podium at a packed news conference in Ottawa with a sustained and heartfelt standing ovation.

“The residential school experience is clearly one of the darkest most troubling chapters in our collective history,” said Sinclair, who called the commission “a difficult, inspiring and very painful journey for all of us.”

“In the period from Confederation until the decision to close residential schools was taken in this country in 1969, Canada clearly participated in a period of cultural genocide.”

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CANADA
Alaska Highway News

The Canadian Press

OTTAWA – The Truth and Reconciliation Commission examining Canada’s residential-school system has released a summary of its six-volume report, the culmination of six years of study of the church-run, government-funded institutions, which operated for more than 120 years.

Some of the 94 recommendations it contains:

— Adopt and implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples;

— Establish a Royal Proclamation of Reconciliation reaffirming the nation-to-nation relationship between Aboriginal Peoples and the Crown;

— Solicit from Pope Francis an apology for the role played by the Roman Catholic Church;

— Call a public inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women;

— Establish a written federal policy reaffirming the independence of the RCMP to investigate crimes in which the federal government may be an interested party;

— Change the oath of citizenship to reflect treaties with Aboriginal Peoples;

— Establish, through the provincial and territorial governments and the federal government, national standards for foster care and reduce the number of aboriginal children in care;

— Repeal Section 43 of the Criminal Code, the so-called spanking law, in order to outlaw corporal punishment;

— Create a mandatory, age-appropriate curriculum on residential schools, treaties and the contributions of Aboriginal Peoples taught across Canada from kindergarten to grade 12;

— Build a residential-schools monument in every provincial and territorial capital;

– See more at: http://www.alaskahighwaynews.ca/highlights-from-the-truth-and-reconciliation-report-on-residential-schools-1.1954534#sthash.fIVrt1NF.dpuf

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CANADA
Virtual Press Office

OTTAWA, June 2, 2015 /CNW/ – UNICEF Canada responds to the preview report from the Closing Ceremonies of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Ottawa:

From Toronto, UNICEF Canada’s President and CEO:
“Following the historic apology by the Government of Canada, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been a very important process to support healing and to educate Canadians about the legacy of residential schools that is seen in the struggles of communities and children to thrive today. This reconciliation process is critical for healing the relations between people and emphasizes how important the early years are for people and for a society.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples are handrails on the pathway for a better future and governments at all levels should commit to an implementation plan.”

From Ottawa, UNICEF Canada’s Chief Policy Advisor, Marv Bernstein:
“Moving from this point forward as a nation we need to continue the journey and ensure that indigenous children are as healthy, well-educated and supported in their communities as we want all of our children to be. The equitable and fair treatment of Aboriginal citizens and their children is everyone’s responsibility and not just that of government.

The preview of today’s report also stresses the value of education for Aboriginal children and the importance of including this history in school curricula.

At UNICEF Canada, we’ll be examining the report for what we can do and urge all Canadians to do the same.”

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CANADA
CBC News

By Chloe Fedio, CBC News

Reconciliation for the “cultural genocide” of residential schools requires a nation-wide commitment, said Justice Murray Sinclair, chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as he released a report from the commission that included 94 recommendations.

​”Words are not enough,” Sinclair said. “Reconciliation is not an Aboriginal problem — it is a Canadian problem. It involves all of us.”

National Chief Perry Bellegarde, former AFN chief Phil Fontaine, a representative from the federal government and representatives from churches. CBCnews.ca is carrying that event live.

Sinclair said seven generations were denied their identity as they were separated from their language, culture, spiritual traditions and their collective history.

“Survivors were stripped of the ability to answer these questions, but they were also stripped of the love of their families. They were stripped of their self-respect and they were stripped of their identity,” he said.

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CANADA
Niagara This Week

OTTAWA – A long-awaited report on the horrors of Canada’s residential school system calls it nothing short of a “cultural genocide,” making 94 broad recommendations —everything from greater police independence and reducing the number of aboriginal children in foster care to restrictions on the use of conditional and mandatory minimum sentences.

The summary of the Truth and Reconciliation report, released Tuesday, is the culmination of six emotional years of extensive study into the church-run, government-funded institutions, which operated for more than 120 years.

The exercise has been “a difficult, inspiring and very painful journey for all of us,” said Justice Murray Sinclair, Canada’s first aboriginal justice and the commission’s chairman.

“The residential school experience is clearly one of the darkest most troubling chapters in our collective history,” Sinclair told a packed news conference Tuesday in Ottawa.

“In the period from Confederation until the decision to close residential schools was taken in this country in 1969, Canada clearly participated in a period of cultural genocide.”

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CANADA
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada

Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada

Introduction

For over a century, the central goals of Canada’s Aboriginal policy were to eliminate Aboriginal governments; ignore Aboriginal rights; terminate the Treaties; and, through a process of assimilation, cause Aboriginal peoples to cease to exist as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious, and racial entities in Canada. The establishment and operation of residential schools were a central element of this policy, which can best be described as “cultural genocide.”

Physical genocide is the mass killing of the members of a targeted group, and biological genocide is the destruction of the group’s reproductive capacity. Cultural genocide is the destruction of those structures and practices that allow the group to continue as a group.

States that engage in cultural genocide set out to destroy the political and social institutions of the targeted group. Land is seized, and populations are forcibly transferred and their movement is restricted. Languages are banned. Spiritual leaders are persecuted, spiritual practices are forbidden, and objects of spiritual value are confiscated and destroyed. And, most significantly to the issue at hand, families are disrupted to prevent the transmission of cultural values and identity from one generation to the next.

In its dealing with Aboriginal people, Canada did all these things.

Canada asserted control over Aboriginal land. In some locations, Canada negotiated Treaties with First Nations; in others, the land was simply occupied or seized. The negotiation of Treaties, while seemingly honourable and legal, was often marked by fraud and coercion, and Canada was, and remains, slow to implement their provisions and intent.1

On occasion, Canada forced First Nations to relocate their reserves from agriculturally valuable or resource-rich land onto remote and economically marginal reserves.2

Without legal authority or foundation, in the 1880s Canada instituted a “pass system” that was

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UNITED STATES
Christian Today

Czarina Ong
01 June 2015

Christian public relations expert Hunter Frederick, who was reportedly sought by the Duggar family from “19 Kids and Counting” to handle the sexual abuse accusations against Josh, said the apology offered by the family in the wake of the scandal is not enough, adding that they need to pay their debt to society somehow.

“I have no reason to think their apology wasn’t sincere, but an apology is one small thing that needs to happen in this very large problem,” Frederick told The Christian Post. “The majority of people that are against the Duggars want some kind of legal punishment, which can’t happen because of our country’s statute of limitations law.”

He called the whole situation “very sticky” from a crisis management standpoint. One of the solutions he sees is for Josh to pay his debt back to society in some form.

When he was only 14 years old, Josh allegedly molested five young girls, an act which he later confessed to his parents Jim Bob and Michelle. As a result, his parents sent him to the Institute in Basic Life Principles, an organization dedicated to giving individuals clear training on Scripture by providing “seminars, educational programs, printed literature, and the operation of centers to facilitate training,” according to its website.

Even though Josh and his family are currently being lambasted by the public and the media, Frederick said this is part and parcel of being a celebrity.

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NORTH DAKOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

for immediate release: Tuesday, June 2, 2015

For more information:

David Clohessy of St. Louis, SNAP Director (314) 566-9790 cell, SNAPclohessy@aol.com

Predator priest from ND passes away
Victims urge Catholic bishops to “do outreach”
“Others may be suffering in shame and silence,” SNAP says
Attorney believes he may have assaulted at least 100 children

A credibly accused child molesting Catholic priest from North Dakota has passed away and a support group for clergy sex abuse victims is urging two bishops to “aggressively reach out” to others he may have hurt.

Last week, Catholic officials at St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville Minnesota announced that Fr. Richard Eckroth has died.

[CBS Minnesota]

On Friday, documents about Fr. Eckroth, a “credibly accused” predator, according to his church supervisors, were made public by an attorney who says that the cleric may have assaulted 100 kids.

[Jeff Anderson and Associates]

Now, leaders of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, are asking bishops in both Minnesota and North Dakota to “aggressively seek out anyone else who may have been hurt by him” by using “church bulletins, parish websites and pulpit announcements” so that “the wounded may be consoled and learn that they aren’t alone.

Born in Mandan North Dakota (in the Bismarck diocese), Fr. Eckroth belonged to the Benedictine Catholic order. He mostly lived in Minnesota (St. Cloud, Albany, and St. Joseph) though he was sent to work in the Bahamas and to Maryland for treatment.

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VATICAN CITY
Headlines from the Catholic World

Vatican City, Jun 2, 2015 / 06:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In an exclusive interview with CNA, the director of the Vatican’s financial watchdog stressed that the Holy See has pursued the goal of adopting international standards for financial transparency in accord with the Church’s mission, and not to merely seek adherence to international standards.

“The Holy See’s path toward financial transparency has not been that of imitating other countries, nor that of applying international standards by analogy,” Tomasso Di Ruzza , director of the Authority for Financial Information, stated. The main goal, he added, “was the ambitious one of adopting international standards coherently with the nature and the mission of the Holy See in the world.”

Di Ruzza, 40, was appointed director of the AIF in January. He had worked at the Holy See for 10 years, first as an international law expert at the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and then at the AIF since 2011.

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VATICAN CITY
IPE

2 JUNE 2015BY GAIL MOSS

Pope Francis has issued new statutes for the Vatican pension fund which provide for the fund’s president to be appointed directly by the Pontiff himself, and for the inclusion of laity on the board of directors.

The pension fund had net assets of €477.7m as at end-December 2014, with its portfolio estimated to be worth €504m at the end of 2015.

The changes have been introduced by a motu proprio, a document issued by the Pope on his own initiative.

They form part of an ongoing shake-up in Vatican finances prompted by the Pope since his election in 2013.

The latest move means that the pension fund’s president will be chosen by the Pope from among three candidates nominated by the Council for the Economy – which sets policy guidelines for the Vatican’s economic activities – and who could include members of the laity.

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EUROPE
National Catholic Reporter

Jonathan Luxmoore | Jun. 2, 2015
Synod on the Family

WARSAW, POLAND Like their counterparts around the world, Europe’s bishops’ conferences are supposed to have been engaged in a listening process for next October’s Synod of Bishops on the family.

And while little has been divulged officially so far about the views collected from Catholic respondents, it’s been possible to glean some measure of the strong feelings being expressed.

When the Vatican sent out the final report of the synod’s October 2014 Extraordinary Assembly, it asked bishops to conduct an “in-depth examination” and seek out “practical solutions” to the “innumerable challenges” identified at the synod sessions.

It circulated 46 questions, as part of the lineamenta, or preparatory documents, about family ministry and how the church could best tackle issues such as homosexuality, divorce and remarriage, contraception, and cohabitation.

While Spain’s bishops kept the questionnaire strictly within the church, those of England and Wales released it on the Internet and invited everyone to respond. Other church leaders handled the document variously in time for Rome’s April 15 deadline.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

JUNE 03, 2015

John Ferguson
Victoria Editor
Melbourne

Former bishop of Ballarat Ronald Mulkearns’s bid to use his health to avoid official scrutiny over his alleged bungling of child sex abuse cases has been severely undermined by his attendance last month at a Sydney dinner for the nation’s retired senior Catholic clergy.

Bishop Mulkearns was accompanied in Sydney by his successor, Peter Connors, as they celebrated at an annual dinner for retired bishops.

Bishop Mulkearns’s attendance has raised eyebrows among some senior church figures, amid expectations he would avoid ­attendance at the child abuse royal commission, as he did with a Victorian parliamentary inquiry in 2013, by citing his health.

The attendance of Bishop Connors by Bishop Mulkearns’s side is significant because the church entrusted him with trying to resolve the bitter fallout caused by the child abuse that occurred across the western Victorian diocese during Bishop Mulkearns’s 26-year reign.

Hundreds of children were abused in the diocese of Ballarat during the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier-Mail

MEG PERKINS THE COURIER-MAIL JUNE 03, 2015

KAREN Brooks recently asked why the Catholic community has been silent in the face of ongoing revelations of sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church.

It seems the alleged cover-ups by bishops and archbishops, as detailed in the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, have left many Catholics shocked.

Only 12 per cent of Catholics now attend Mass on Sundays, and, as we were taught that missing Mass is a mortal sin, this means that 88 per cent of Catholics have turned their backs on the faith.

The problem with sex, sin and crime in the Catholic Church is much greater than most people realise.

Orthodox teaching holds that all sex is sinful unless a man and a woman are married and intending to create a child.

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CANADA
Indian Country Today Media Network

ICTMN Staff
6/1/15

What happened to Indigenous Peoples in Canada was nothing short of “cultural genocide,” Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin said in a recent speech.

She may be the highest-ranking federal official ever to use the term, according to The Globe and Mail.

“The most glaring blemish on the Canadian historic record relates to our treatment of the First Nations that lived here at the time of colonization,” McLachlin said in the annual Pluralism Lecture of the Global Centre for Pluralism. “An initial period of cooperative inter-reliance grounded in norms of equality and mutual dependence, was supplanted in the nineteenth century by the ethos of exclusion and cultural annihilation. Early laws forbade treaty Indians from leaving allocated reservations. Starvation and disease were rampant. Indians were denied the right to vote. Religious and social traditions, like the Potlach and the Sun Dance, were outlawed. Children were taken from their parents and sent away to residential schools, where they were forbidden to speak their native languages, forced to wear white-man’s clothing, forced to observe Christian religious practices, and not infrequently subjected to sexual abuse.”

The well-known objective, she noted, was to “take the Indian out of the child” and eradicate what came to be known as the “Indian problem.”

“ ‘Indianness’ was not to be tolerated; rather it must be eliminated,” McLachlin said of the prevailing attitude during those times. “In the buzzword of the day, assimilation; in the language of the 21st century, cultural genocide.”

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CANADA
The Globe and Mail

GLORIA GALLOWAY AND BILL CURRY
OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Jun. 02 2015

A commission established to document the truth of what happened inside Canada’s Indian residential schools will say the goals of the Canadian government that created the institutions amounted to a cultural genocide, sources say.

Justice Murray Sinclair, the chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), set up as part of the settlement agreement with survivors of the former church-run schools, will release his recommendations Tuesday after a five-year inquiry into the sexual, physical and emotional abuse that was rampant within the institutions.

The summary report, which will be followed by a full report later this year, will explain the measures necessary for reconciliation between Canada and its indigenous people, many of whom were permanently scarred by the residential-school experience. It will say that, for more than a century, the central goal of Canada’s aboriginal policy was assimilation “which can best be described as a cultural genocide.”

The pronouncement comes on the heels of a speech last week by Beverley McLachlin, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who said Canada attempted to commit “cultural genocide” against aboriginal peoples in what she described as the worst stain on Canada’s human-rights record.

First Nations leaders and human-rights experts have been actively pressing for at least two years for Canada to recognize that its historical treatment of indigenous people, including nutrition experiments conducted on children at aboriginal residential schools, constituted a genocide. But the government has not been supportive.

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ARKANSAS
Radar

The man who allowed Josh Duggar to walk away after confessing to fondling minor females in his family’s home is now the subject of an official police investigation, RadarOnline.com can reveal.

Former state trooper Joseph Hutchens allegedly gave an interview to a news outlet last week— but without the approval of the Department of Corrections, the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette reports.

“The Arkansas Department of Correction has denied all media requests for interviews with inmate Joseph Hutchens,” the department said in a statement.

“We are therefore investigating what we and the inmate believe to be a serious case of misrepresentation.”

In the interview, Hutchens allegedly claimed Josh, then 15, and his father Jim Bob admitted to only one instance of molestation.

“Jim Bob explained to me that Josh inappropriately touched [a victim] while she was asleep,” Hutchens reportedly recalled. “[They said] the girl was asleep and didn’t know anything had happened.”

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DEUTSCHLAND
BR

[The number of victims of abuse and mistreatment at the cathedral choir could be much higher than the previously known. The Regensburg diocese knows about some 70 cases. The independent expert Ulrich Weber, who worked the cases for four weeks speaks of a “domino effect”. The diocese does not comment on this.]

Die Zahl der Opfer von Missbrauch und Misshandlung bei den Domspatzen könnte weitaus höher liegen, als die dem Bistum bisher bekannten rund 70 Fälle. Der unabhängige Gutachter Ulrich Weber, der die Fälle seit vier Wochen bearbeitet, spricht von einem “Domino-Effekt”. Das Bistum äußert sich dazu nicht.

Rechtsanwalt Ulrich Weber bestätigte dem BR (Studio Ostbayern) bereits “sehr viele” Kontakte mit Opfern von sexuellem Missbrauch oder Misshandlung bei den Domspatzen. Wie viele sich genau bei ihm gemeldet haben, will der Jurist nicht verraten. In der ersten Woche seien es zehn Kontaktaufnahmen gewesen, dann sei ein Domino-Effekt eingetreten.

Die Opfer brächten ihm gesundes Misstrauen entgegen, das er aber nach den ersten Gesprächen ausräumen könne. “Die Leute glauben mir”, dass er unparteiisch und unabhängig aufklären wolle. Zudem deutet er an, dass sich auch potenzielle Opfer gemeldet hätten, die beim Bistum noch gar nicht als solche wahrgenommen oder registriert worden waren.

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DEUTCHSLAND
Mittelbayerische

[A lawyer gives hope to the Domspatzen victims.]

von Pascal Durain, MZ

REGENSBURG.Als Ulrich Weber auf den Tag genau vor fünf Wochen auf einer Pressekonferenz bei den Domspatzen erklärte, er wisse nicht, wie tief das kalte Wasser ist, in das er jetzt springe, meinte er die Aufgabe, die ihm bevorsteht. Und auch 35 Tage später will der Opfer-Anwalt des Weißen Rings keine Wasserstandsmeldung abgeben – keine Zahlen, keine Spekulationen. Das wäre unseriös, findet er. Und dafür sei der Aktenberg auch zu groß, den er zu prüfen habe.

Ende April erklärte das Bistum, das Ausmaß der Misshandlungen und des sexuellen Missbrauchs bei den Regensburger Domspatzen von einer externen Stelle überprüfen zu lassen. Mehr als fünf Jahre versuchte das das Bistum selbst. Immer wieder stand die Diözese Regensburg in der Kritik, das Ausmaß des Missbrauchsskandals zu verschweigen und Opfer hinzuhalten. Das soll der Rechtsanwalt nun überprüfen – kritisch, unabhängig und aus der Perspektive der Opfer.

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FLORIDA
WPBF

Closing arguments in the sexual molestation trial against former Rosarian Academy teacher Stephen Budd were underway inside a Palm Beach County courtroom Monday.

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ROME
Chiesa

by Sandro Magister

ROME, June 2, 2015 – In the latest issue of “La Civiltà Cattolica,” the magazine of the Rome Jesuits printed after inspection by the Vatican authorities, an article signed by director Fr. Antonio Spadaro states at a certain point:

“Doctrinal rigidity and moral rigorism can lead even theologians to extremist positions, which defy the ‘sensus fidei’ of the faithful and even simple common sense. One recent journalistic report cites, with admiration, a letter from an American theologian that makes these ridiculous statements:

“‘Which is, in this case, the more serious evil? To prevent the conception – and very existence – of a human being with an immortal soul, desired by God and destined for eternal happiness? Or to abort a child in the womb? The latter is certainly a grave evil, Gaudium et Spes calls it an abominable crime. But a child exists who will live eternally. In the former circumstance a child God intended to be will never exist.’

“According to this reasoning it is maintained, therefore, that abortion is more acceptable than contraception. Incredible!”

These comments come from a renowned French theologian of the order of Saint Dominic, Jean-Miguel Garrigues, joined by his friend and fellow “La Civiltà Cattolica” author Christoph Schönborn, cardinal of Vienna and himself a Dominican, interviewed for the magazine by Fr. Spadaro.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

Concerns that death records were falsified in Bessborough Mother and Baby Home so children could “be brokered in clandestine adoption arrangements” at home and abroad were raised in an internal HSE report in 2012.

The unpublished report highlighted the “wholly epidemic” infant deaths rates at the Cork home and said: “The question whether indeed all of these children actually died while in Bessboro or whether they were brokered into clandestine adoption arrangements, both foreign and domestic, has dire implications for the Church and State and not least for the children and families themselves.”

The report, compiled as part of the HSE’s examination of the State’s role in the Magdalene Laundries as part of the McAleese inquiry, lifts the lid on the culture of cruelty at the home and found the State effectively washed its hands of the women and children.

It reveals the institution, run by the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, as a place where:

* Women and babies were considered “little more than a commodity for trade amongst religious orders”;

* “Institutionalisation and human trafficking” took place among various religious orders and State-funded institutions;

* Women were provided with “little more than the basic care and provision afforded to that of any individual convicted of crimes against the State”;

* Infant death rates were “wholly epidemic” and a “cause for serious consternation”;

* The order had a “preoccupation with materialism, wealth and social status”;

* A “cold and lonely environment” prevailed, “characterised by harrowing social, emotional and physical isolation and institutionalisation”.

The study, previously released under freedom of information, revealed that from 1934 until 1953 (the only years for which deaths were recorded at Bessborough) 478 children died — a death rate of almost one infant a fortnight for nearly two decades.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

A previously unpublished report by the HSE in 2012 examined Bessborough’s own records. The in-depth findings and conclusions are damning. Conall Ó Fátharta reports

FOR years, places like Bessborough Mother and Baby Home were spoken of in hushed tones.

For generations of Irish people, they were places where thousands of women and girls were sent when they had “a problem”. They went in pregnant and came out alone, some after spending years locked away.

Some left only to be moved to other institutions and Magdalene laundries. Most were never the same. Their voices were never heard.

Over the years, those women have found their voices and have demanded answers for how they were treated behind the walls of Ireland’s mother and baby homes. Adoption rights campaigners have been doing the same.

Former residents and lay staff at the Bessborough home, run by the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, have spoken of an institution where women were denied pain relief in labour and basic medical care after birth, and were humiliated by having to cut the institution’s vast lawns on their hands and knees with a scissors.

Just last year, this newspaper uncovered that an official investigation carried out by the Cork County medical officer, on foot of inquiries from an inspector with the Department of Local Government, confirmed an infant mortality rate of 68% at Bessborough in 1943. The government briefly stopped sending women there as a result.

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ILLINOIS
Effingham Daily News

Monday, June 1, 2015

Eric J. Thompson Local Columnist

In a recent column, Ron Worman stated he did not wish to belong to a religion (the Roman Catholic Church) that called him “intrinsically evil.” (”Father Bud and Bishop Paprocki,” May 7, 2015.) The Roman Catholic Church does not call anyone “evil” or “intrinsically evil,” never has and never will. The Roman Catholic Church does have five serious, grave, mortal, deadly sins it deems and proclaims as “intrinsically evil.” They are: abortion, human cloning, embryonic stem cell research, euthanasia and same-sex marriage. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that the ‘sin’ is evil, not the sinner.

Ron, if someone told you that you are “intrinsically evil,” they were/are tragically wrong and you have been unjustly and ignorantly accused. We are all children of God, God does not and cannot make “evil.” “Evil” is a product of Satan. We can participate in this “evil” by way of our thoughts, words and actions.

To say someone is “intrinsically evil” (meaning: no matter how it is portrayed or spoken of, nothing taken from it or added to it will ever make it less evil), denies the love, mercy, forgiveness and sanctifying grace of our triune God.

The article from SNAP National Director David Clohessy was misleading at best and hypocritical. (”Advocate criticizes handling of priest’s removal,” May 5, 2015.) Google David Clohessy and you will discover good and not-so-good information on Mr. Clohessy and his organization. The following information I mention, I found at themediareport.com and catholicleague.org.

SNAP (Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests) was founded in 1991 by Mr. Clohessy. Clohessy was abused by a trusted priest. I won’t get into details; you can read from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights once you google Mr. Clohessy. I am sorry for him and his family. I have no idea of what torment and pain they have experienced; however, this does not give ‘free rein’ to attack our Catholic Church and her priests and bishops without proof and with no regards to fairness, righteousness and justice.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
Inside Baltimore

New Evidence Links Merzbacher Child-Rape Case To Rampant 1970s Sex Abuse at Keough High School, According to Former Police Investigators in Maryland

By Tom Nugent

Twenty years after convicted child-rapist John Merzbacher received four life sentences plus ten years for his crimes at a South Baltimore Catholic middle school, there is new evidence to show that a later-defrocked, sex-abusing priest at a city Catholic high school was also involved in helping to cover up the middle school abuse, according to former high-ranking Maryland police officials who did not wish to be identified.

The newly emerging evidence is the first to suggest that there were significant links between the sex crimes at the Catholic Community Middle School in the Locust Point section of the city and the widely reported Archbishop Keough High School sexual abuse. That abuse was accompanied by the 1969 murder of former Keough teaching sister Catherine Ann Cesnik.

The murder of the nun (who was reportedly killed while trying to blow the whistle on rape and other sexual assaults at Keough) and the Keough chaplain’s suspected role in her death were both described in massive detail in a lengthy story recently published by Huffington Post.

The Huffington Post story quoted a retired Baltimore homicide detective who said that Father A. Joseph Maskell became a key figure during the early days of the murder investigation. “It got to the point that Maskell was the number one guy we wanted to talk to,” said the detective, “but we never got a chance.” The detective was never able to interview the priest, he said in the HP story, while also noting that “the Catholic Church had a lot of input into the police department, a lot of power.”

The Huffington Post story (http://huff.to/1Q1EKqd) did not mention the horrific child-rapes that had taken place at the Catholic middle school in Locust Point during roughly the same period as the Keough abuse. But a two-year investigation by Inside Baltimore of the sexual abuse that occurred at both Keough and Catholic Community Middle School in South Baltimore – both of which were operated by the School Sisters of Notre Dame – has revealed significant connections between them.

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CHILE
Cooperativa

[Retired Bishop Juan Luis Ysem of Ancud has called on Bishop Juan Barros of Osorno to resign before he is asked to leave by Pope Francis.]

El obispo emérito de Ancud Juan Luis Ysern llamó a Juan Barros a renunciar a la diócesis de Osorno antes de que el papa Francisco se lo solcite.

Esto en medio de las diveras manifestaciones que se han realizado en Osorno para exigir la salida de Barros a quien acusan de encubrir al sacerdote Fernando Karadima, condenado por la Iglesia por casos de abuso sexual contra menores.

En una carta pública dirigida a Barros, el sacerdote comentó la decisión de Francisco de mantener a Barros en Osorno y le aconsejó: “El Papa se mantuvo firme en el sentido de haber examinado con sinceridad tus antecedentes y no haber encontrado fundamento para no nombrarte como obispo de Osorno. El Papa fue muy valiente, yo lo admiro mucho. Pero lo que considero que no pudo darse cuenta el Papa es que en Chile hay diversas clases de víctimas de Karadima”.

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AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

The Archbishop of Melbourne Denis Hart admits Cardinal Pell has questions to answer at the Royal Commission and admits he has been shocked by the revelations into child abuse in Ballarat.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

[with video]

June 2, 2015

Jane Lee

Ever since survivor witnesses told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that George Pell tried to bribe one, and ignored another’s reports of abuse, calls have been growing for him to return from the Vatican to Australia to explain himself.

The Commission has now said it will ask Cardinal Pell to appear as a witness when it returns to Ballarat later this year, following his repeated assurances that he is willing to do so. Below are some questions which Cardinal Pell may be asked when he does:

1. Did he attempt to bribe one survivor and ignore the child abuse reports of another?

Two survivor witnesses recounted to the commission conversations they had with George Pell about child abuse.

David Ridsdale, nephew and victim of disgraced paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale, said that he called Cardinal Pell to tell him about the abuse in February 1993. He said Cardinal Pell asked him: “I want to know what it will take to keep you quiet,” which he took to be an attempt to bribe him.

Timothy Green, a former student of St Patrick’s College in Ballarat said he approached then-Father Pell about widespread abuse at the school by Brother Edward Dowlan in 1974. He said Father Pell replied “don’t be ridiculous” and left the room.

Cardinal Pell has repeatedly denied both claims over the years, saying he does not recall the conversations and would not have made such remarks. The commission is expected to make findings on both because they relate to the church’s response to child sexual abuse.

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MALLORCA
ABC (Espana)

[The Mallorca diocese compensated a woman with 30,000 euros who reported she had been sexually violated by a priest when she was younger. ]

El Obispado de Mallorca indemnizará con 30.000 euros a una mujer que denunció que el expárroco de Can Picafort (Santa Margalida) Pere Barceló la había violado cuando era menor, una acusación que está pendiente de juicio en la Audiencia de Palma.

La diócesis mallorquina ha anunciado este martes que ha alcanzado un acuerdo para resarcir el “daño moral” sufrido por la presunta víctima, que renuncia así a cobrar la indemnización civil que podría corresponderle si el cura resulta declarado culpable de los delitos de agresión y abuso sexual que se le imputan.

“Esta decisión, realizada de mutuo acuerdo con la denunciante, es expresión del compromiso de la diócesis en la defensa de los que han sido víctimas de comportamientos impropios de un sacerdote”, indica la institución que dirige el obispo Javier Salinas.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

[with video]

June 2, 2015

Desmond O’Grady

Rome: The Vatican has said that abuse survivor Peter Saunders did not speak for the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors when he called on Pope Francis to fire Cardinal Pell over allegations the cleric helped cover up paedophile activity in Australia.

Mr Saunders said on Sunday Cardinal Pell was “a dangerous individual” and “almost sociopathic” in his response to child sexual abuse victims.

“I think anybody who is a serious obstacle to the work of the commission and to the work of the Pope in trying to clean up the church’s act over this matter, I think they need to be taken aside very, very quickly and removed from any kind of position of influence.”

Father Federico Lombardi, head of the Vatican press office, said on Monday that “Mr Saunders spoke for himself and not for the commission which does not investigate or judge individual cases”.

Nonetheless, Pope Francis’ attempts to reform the Vatican rely heavily on Cardinal George Pell, making the Australian a sensitive target of criticism within the Church leadership.

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NEW YORK
The Jewish Week

06/01/15
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor and Publisher

Three years ago several prominent members of the Riverdale Jewish Center (RJC), the 700-member Modern Orthodox congregation, met privately with their longtime rabbi, Jonathan Rosenblatt, and offered to arrange a generous buyout for him. They told him that the persistent rumors about his allegedly inappropriate behavior with boys and young men were bound to become public at some point and it would be in his and his family’s best interest, and for the congregation as well, if he accepted an offer to resign quietly.

If he didn’t, he was told, “this could all end badly,” according to a member of the congregation with knowledge of the meeting.

“It was not meant as a threat, but rather that it would hit the press eventually and no one would see things as he did,” the person explained this weekend.

“Unfortunately, he refused, and now it’s all out there,” the person said, referring to The New York Times May 31 report on Rabbi Rosenblatt’s “unusual” behavior that included inviting young men to discuss personal matters while sitting naked in the sauna with him.

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AUSTRALIA
The Bulletin

Lisa Benoit

AFTER hearing the heartache of child sex abuse victims from Neerkol Orphanage, Catholic Church leaders in the Rockhampton Diocese have taken steps to ensure nothing like this ever happens again.

In April, the Royal Commission held a public hearing into child sex abuse in Rockhampton, where Neerkol victims shared their horror stories from more than three decades of abuse at the hands of priests and sisters at the Central Queensland orphanage.

Allegations of abuse at the orphanage first came to light in the 1990s.

The Catholic Church has now appointed a response co-ordinator for the Rockhampton Diocese, to respond to allegations and complaints of abuse against church personnel.

Melissa Davey has been appointed as the co-ordinator and will work closely with Rockhampton Bishop Michael McCarthy.

Training programs, structures and policies to ensure parishes are safe and secure environments have been put in place.

Bishop McCarthy, who attended the Royal Commission, said he was committed to ensuring the mistakes of the past were not repeated.

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AUSTRALIA
3AW

Victoria’s most senior Catholic is standing by Cardinal George Pell, dismissing calls for him to stand down over allegations he covered up the sexual abuse of children.

The backing of Archbishop Denis Hart comes despite one of the Pope’s commissioners for children protection abuse saying he must step down.

Let’s face it – there’s something of a crisis around the Catholic Church

Peter Saunders has described Cardinal Pell as being almost sociopathic.

But the Archbishop told Neil Mitchell now’s not the time for Cardinal Pell to be moved on, instead he must face the Royal Commission when it sits again in Ballarat .

“From what I understand Saunders’ perception is a second-hand perception that’s got to be weighed against all the work Cardinal Pell is doing for the church,” he said.

“I personally don’t believe he should be stood aside.”

“We’ve got to recognise George Pell has done a tremendous amount to set up practices to assist victims to deal with offending priests.”

But Archbishop Hart conceded the allegations of wrongdoing were harmful.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic Culture

By Phil Lawler Jun 01, 2015

What happens when a member of a papal commission engages in irresponsible public criticism of a leading cardinal? We’re about to find out.

Under ordinary circumstances there’s no doubt that Peter Saunders would be quickly dismissed from the papal commission. But in the current atmosphere, such a move would indubitably provoke a chorus of protest, from “the usual suspects” claiming that this was one more effort to silence critics and protect powerful clerics.

The evidence? Who needs evidence?! Once a prelate has been criticized, he is treated as guilty, and anyone who attempts to defend him—by invoking the evidence, say—is condemned as an accomplice.

This is surely the case in Australia, where Cardinal Pell has been hounded by critics, and accusations against him—even when they have been investigated and dismissed—are rehashed incessantly in the headlines. It is rare to find a newspaper article offering a balanced presentation of the facts in his case (and regrettable that one excellent column defending him is behind a paywall.)

In their haste to whip up public hostility toward Cardinal Pell, media outlets in Australia and elsewhere have grotesquely exaggerated the importance of the criticism offered by Peter Saunders on a nationwide television broadcast. “60 Minutes” must have been delighted to learn that Saunders was ready to tear into Cardinal Pell. But a week ago, would the name “Peter Saunders” have meant anything to you at all?

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Melissa Davey
@MelissaLDavey

Monday 1 June 2015

Child sexual abuse survivor Peter Saunders says he will not be silenced by the church despite the threat of legal action by Cardinal George Pell, Australia’s most powerful Catholic.

During a TV interview on Sunday night, Saunders – who was appointed by Pope Francis to lead the Vatican’s commission for the protection of children – accused Pell of lacking compassion for those abused within the church.

During the interview, Saunders called on the pope to remove Pell from his position as head of the Vatican’s finances, saying his alleged involvement in covering up abuse and protecting paedophile priests made his position “untenable”.

The comments prompted a swift reaction from Pell, whose spokesperson issued a statement on Sunday night saying; “In the circumstances, the cardinal is left no alternative but to consult with his legal advisers.”

But on Tuesday Saunders told Guardian Australia: “Our church has a history of spending millions on defending paedophiles.

“George Pell, obviously a wealthy man, will think nothing of using his wealth to silence me but I have said nothing that others haven’t said and it is only my opinion.

“It is not slanderous.”

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MONTANA
Rivalli Republic

VINCE DEVLIN vdevlin@missoulian.com

POLSON – When the Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena in April posted the names of 80 former employees, most of them priests and nuns, who had allegedly sexually abused children in western Montana, it also shook the dust on a 31-year-old murder mystery in Lake County.

Among the priests placed on the list of alleged child sexual predators was Father John Kerrigan.

In the summer of 1984, Kerrigan vanished just a couple of days after being transferred from Plains to Ronan’s Sacred Heart Parish. He was last seen at a bakery in Ronan.

Neither he, nor his body, has ever been found.

But his clothes were, shortly after Kerrigan disappeared. A passer-by noticed them in a heap at a turnout along Montana Highway 35 on the east shore of Flathead Lake and called authorities.

The clothes were stained with Kerrigan’s blood. A $100 bill was tucked in one shirt pocket.

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AUSTRALIA
4BC

June 2, 2015

Nick King

Allegations continue to mount against Cardinal George Pell at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse in Ballarat.

Cardinal Pell has again been accused of deliberately turning a blind eye to child molestation offences within the church, furthering calls that he should return to the country from The Vatican.

Bravehearts founder Hetty Johnston told 4BC afternoons that Cardinal Pell should return and face the court.

“These are serious allegations and they need to be dealt with. Otherwise the fog lies around the Catholic Church and those in it”

“Cardinal Pell needs to clear his name”

Cardinal Pell has agreed to return to Australia if requested by the royal commission, alternatively he could return of his own accord.

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AUSTRIA
National Catholic Reporter

Christa Pongratz-Lippitt | Jun. 1, 2015 NCR Today

In an interview published May 26 in Austrian daily Salzburger Nachrichten, Fr. Helmut Schüller spoke about a disconnect between bishops and the people of the church and weighed in on the priest shortage.

“The pope at the very top and the church communities at the very bottom of the church understand one another well,” Schüller said. “In between there is the episcopal level, that is the bishops — and they somehow do not really seem to want to.”

Schüller, 63, a former vicar general of Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, founded the Austrian Priests’ Initiative for church reform in 2006. In 2011, he initiated the initiative’s “Call to Disobedience,” which called on priests to offer the Eucharist to “all people of goodwill,” including divorced and remarried Catholics and members of other Christian churches, without waiting for the necessary church reforms. The initiative’s priests want to pave the way for a new model of priesthood rather than merging parishes.

Schüller is in close contact with the International Network of Church Reform Movements and attended its conference in Limerick, Ireland, in April, where international Catholic reform leaders discussed issues such as church governance, greater accountability of hierarchies, the full participation of Catholics who are divorced and remarried, and the place of LGBT Catholics and interfaith families in the life of the church.

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OSTERREICH
Bayern Welle

Der aus Teisendorf stammende Pater Fabian Vordermayer ist in Österreich zu einer vierjährigen Haftstrafe verurteilt worden – jetzt kann er auf ein geringeres Strafmaß hoffen. Das Verfahren um den sexuellen Missbrauch eines jungen Mannes könnte neu aufgerollt werden.

Pater Fabian und sein Anwalt Amir Amed haben beim Obersten Gerichtshof Nichtigkeitsbeschwerde eingereicht. Das Gericht hat die Beschwerde zwar grösstenteils abgelehnt. Allerdings sind einige Anklagepunkte fallen gelassen worden. Wie Anwalt Amed auf Bayernwelle-Anfrage gesagt hat, rechnet er damit, dass es eine neue Verhandlung geben wird. Er ist davon überzeugt, dass das Strafmaß reduziert wird.

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VATIKAN/AUSTRALIEN
Zeit

Der Druck auf den Finanzchef des Vatikans wegen eines Missbrauchsskandals wird immer größer. Eine Untersuchungskommission im australischen Bundesstaat Victoria lud Kurienkardinal George Pell offiziell zu einer Anhörung. In dem Verfahren geht es um Vorwürfe des Australiers David Ridsdale, im Alter von elf Jahren von seinem Onkel, dem katholischen Priester Gerald Ridsdale, missbraucht worden zu sein.

Vor der Untersuchungskommission zu den Missbrauchsfällen in der Katholischen Kirche hatte der Neffe gesagt, er habe sich im Jahr 1993 Pell anvertraut. Der Kardinal habe ihn daraufhin gefragt, welchen Geldbetrag er ihm anbieten könne, damit er die Vorwürfe für sich behalte. Pell wird auch vorgeworfen, die Versetzung Gerald Ridsdales in verschiedene Gemeinden gefördert zu haben. Ridsdale missbrauchte über Jahrzehnte in Ballarat mindestens 50 Jungen, bevor er 1993 zu einer Haftstrafe verurteilt wurde.

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AUSTRALIEN
kathweb

Canberra, 01.06.2015 (KAP/KNA) Um Kurienkardinal George Pell bahnt sich ein Zwist mit der vatikanischen Kinderschutzkommission an. Ein Mitglied der von Papst Franziskus einberufenen Kommission, Peter Saunders, sagte im australischen Fernsehen, Pell sei wegen seiner Rolle im Missbrauchsskandal Australiens “unhaltbar” im Vatikan. Pell ließ laut dem Sender ABC (Montag) erklären, er werde rechtliche Hilfe gegen Saunders in Anspruch nehmen.

Saunders hatte den früheren Erzbischof von Sydney und heutigen Präfekten des vatikanischen Wirtschaftssekretariats als “hart, kaltherzig, fast soziopathisch” bezeichnet. Pell sei mit mehreren, teils später zurückgezogenen Leugnungen, von Missbrauchsfällen gewusst zu haben, ein “massiver Stachel im Fleisch” des Papstamtes. Franziskus solle “auf die strengstmögliche Weise gegen ihn vorgehen” und den Kardinal aus dem Vatikan entfernen. “Ich persönlich denke, dass er unhaltbar ist”, sagte Saunders.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Mittelbayerische

[Father speaks freely of abuse. Klaus Mertes made public ​​one of the biggest cases of abuse in the church publicly. The issue has not been finally resolved.]

Von Julia Ried, MZ

REGENSBURG.„Das Schweigen“, sagte Pater Klaus Mertes Anfang des Jahres in einem Interview, „war so systemisch wie der Missbrauch.“ Mertes hat das Schweigen über sexuellen Missbrauch in der katholischen Kirche 2010 gebrochen, indem er Fälle am damals von ihm geleiteten Canisius-Kolleg in Berlin öffentlich machte; das löste eine Welle von Enthüllungen aus.

Der Jesuit, nun Chef einer Schule im Schwarzwald, steht mittlerweile so wenig in der Öffentlichkeit, dass er unlängst in der Spiegel-Rubrik „Was wurde eigentlich aus…?“ zu Wort kam. Doch er spricht immer noch, wenn er gefragt wird, auch vor kleinem Publikum – so am Sonntag auf Einladung der „Laienverantwortung Regensburg“ und weiterer Reformbewegungen in Regensburg. „Verlorenes Vertrauen – wie kann es wiedergefunden werden?“ war sein Thema vor gut 80 Zuhörern.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

[with video]

Sensational Austrialian T.V. Interview with Peter Saunders of Papal Abuse Commission About Cardinal George Pell: “Massive Thorn in the Side of Pope Francis’s Papacy”

Last evening, “60 Minutes Australia” aired a segment about Cardinal George Pell, whom Pope Francis has brought to the Vatican to clean up the Vatican Bank. In light of allegations made in hearings of the Australian royal commission into child abuse, “60 Minutes” interviews papal abuse commission member Peter Saunders, an abuse survivor. The interview is online here.

Peter Saunders says about Pell:

He has now a catalogue of denials, he has a catalogue of denigrating people, of acting with callousness, cold-heartedness, and almost sociopathic, I would go so far as to say, this lack of care.

And Peter Saunders also says about Pell:

I would go so far as to say that I consider him to be quite a dangerous individual. [“Why is he dangerous?” interviewer Tara Brown then asks Saunders, who replies:] I’m interested in supporting survivors and protecting children and people who have covered up, people who have denied, people who have got their stories mixed up around these issues to do with survivors and child abuse, they, to me, represent a danger to the whole progress of child protection.

Cardinal Pell’s response via his spokesperson (this is appended to the video linked above):

Cardinal Pell has been informed of the contents of the “60 Minutes” program this evening. The false and misleading claims made against His Eminence are outrageous. . . . In the circumstances, the Cardinal is left no alternative but to consult with his legal advisers.

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CANADA
CTV

[with video]

Sonja Puzic, CTVNews.ca
Published Monday, June 1, 2015

A day before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is set to release its highly-anticipated report on Canada’s residential schools, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations said he hopes the report’s recommendations will be “respected, honoured and implemented.”

Perry Bellegarde said there is no point in producing the report if no one acts on it. He told a news conference Monday that he wants Canadians to put pressure on provincial and federal governments to improve the lives of aboriginal people and help build a “better relationship.”

“We have a shared history and we have a shared responsibility going forward,” he said.

Speaking to CTV’s Power Play later, he said he hoped the federal government would act. But if not, he said First Nations would mobilize for the fall election.

“Because if we do get out to vote, there are 51 ridings that could be affected,” he said.

The TRC’s final report on the residential school system will be released Tuesday. The commission has been travelling the country for nearly six years, collecting testimony from thousands of survivors of the residential school system, many of whom were physically and sexually abused.

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CANADA
CBC News

Closing the social and economic gap is a linchpin in reconciliation between aboriginal people and the rest of Canada, AFN Grand Chief Perry Bellgarde said Monday on the eve of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission releasing its final report.

“I urge everybody across Canada to rid themselves of things like the misconceptions about indigenous peoples, the discriminatory, racist attitudes that may exist, to move them out so that new things may come in,” Bellgarde said at a news conference in Ottawa.

A march in Ottawa on Sunday drew thousands of aboriginal and non-aboriginal people, drawing attention to this week’s conclusion of the six-year-long Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which will release its final report and recommendations on Tuesday after hearing testimony from 7,000 former students of residential schools.

The march was “a very powerful testament about what we can do when we start working together to bring about change in this country,” Bellgarde said.

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