ABUSE TRACKER

A digest of links to media coverage of clergy abuse. For recent coverage listed in this blog, read the full article in the newspaper or other media source by clicking “Read original article.” For earlier coverage, click the title to read the original article.

August 28, 2018

California diocese buys $2.3M home for retiring bishop

SAN JOSE (CA)
Associated Press

August 27, 2018

The Catholic Diocese of San Jose has purchased a five-bedroom, $2.3 million home in Silicon Valley for its retiring bishop despite the 640,000-member diocese’s mission of charity and serving the poor.

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

August 27, 2018

La carta de Ezzati en la que pide llevar a la fiscalía caso de excanciller del Arzobispado

[Documents seized in raid include Ezzati’s letters about accused priest Óscar Muñoz Toledo]

CHILE
La Tercera

August 25, 2018

By Leyla Zapata

El documento sobre el excanciller del arzobispado fue incautado en un allanamiento dirigido por el fiscal Arias.

El pasado 13 de junio, el fiscal Emiliano Arias, en conjunto con el OS-9 de Carabineros, incautaron una serie de documentos en el Arzobispado de Santiago. La inédita diligencia se enmarcaba dentro de la investigación que el Ministerio Público lleva contra el excanciller de la arquidiócesis, Óscar Muñoz Toledo, quien se autodenunció eclesialmente, ante la Oficina Pastoral de Denuncias (Opade), por supuestos abusos. El sacerdote actualmente está formalizado y en prisión preventiva, en la cárcel de Rancagua.

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

Suspenden declaración de cardenal Ricardo Ezzati

[Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati’s court hearing delayed]

CHILE
T13

August 20, 2018

La diligencia estaba planeada para el martes 21 de agosto, pero finalmente la Fiscalía accedió a una petición de la defensa.

El cardenal Ricardo Ezzati finalmente no declarará este martes 21 de agosto en la causa que lleva la Fiscalía de Rancagua por una serie de denuncias por abusos sexuales al interior de la iglesia chilena.

Aunque la audiencia estaba agendada para la tarde de mañana, el Ministerio Público —liderado por el fiscal Emiliano Arias— accedió a una petición de la defensa, que requirió revisar los antecedentes de la investigación.

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

Fiscal Arias fija en más de 100 las víctimas abusadas por religiosos y cuestiona eficacia de las investigaciones canónicas

[Prosecutor Arias says there are more than 100 victims of clergy sex abuse, questions effectiveness of canonical investigations]

SANTIAGO, CHILE
Emol

August 27, 2018

By Leonardo Núñez

El persecutor abordó los avances de la indagación sobre abusos cometido por miembros de la Iglesia Católica y los antecedentes surgidos tras la incautación de documentos en los obispados.

El fiscal regional de O’Higgins, Emiliano Arias, se refirió esta noche a los avances de la investigación que dirige en contra de miembros de la Iglesia Católica chilena por abusos sexuales de menores, indicando que la incautación de documentos, producto de tres allanamientos a obispados, ha permitido no sólo identificar a víctimas, sino que también recopilar importantes antecedentes para las causas. En ese sentido, señaló que a la fecha hay 56 causas abiertas con más de 100 víctimas y 60 imputados, pero que estas cifras podrían ir aumentando, ello porque de forma espontánea se han acercado más personas para hacer denuncias.

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

Exnuncio acusa al Papa de proteger a Barros, Errázuriz y Ezzati

[Archbishop accuses Pope of protecting Barros, Errázuriz and Ezzati]

CHILE
La Tercera

August 26, 2018

By Fernanda Rojas

El arzobispo Carlo Maria Vigano publicó una carta en la que acusa al Papa Francisco y a altos cargos del Vaticano de encubrir escándalos de abusos en Estados Unidos. Pero también lanza dardos contra el Pontífice por su rol en Chile.

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

US website adds seven names of Irish clergy to ‘abuse-tracker’ database

IRELAND
The Irish Times

August 27, 2018

By Sorcha Pollak

Irish data laws preventing full accountability for church sexual abuse, says victim group

The Catholic Church’s culture of secrecy, coupled with Ireland’s “strict protection around defamation and data protection”, is making it impossible to ensure accountability for crimes of sexual abuse, a victim’s support group has said.

Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of the BishopAccountability.org website which runs a public “abuse-tracker” of offending clergy, highlighted on Monday the Irish State and church’s continued failure in making perpetrators of sexual abuse accountable for their actions. Last week, the group launched the Irish leg of its online database which identifies 94 priests and brothers who have been convicted of sexually abusing children.

Speaking outside the former Magdalene Laundry on Sean McDermott Street on Monday, Ms Barrett Doyle announced that seven new names had been added to the database following Pope Francis’ visit to Ireland over the weekend. The names included in the database are just “a fraction” of the total number of abusers in the Republic and Northern Ireland, she said, adding that Irish data protection laws had prevented the group from adding additional names.

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

‘Abysmal and appalling’ – survivors of clerical abuse slam Pope’s visit and lack of plan ‘to address hurt’

IRELAND
Irish Independent

August 27, 2018

By Conor Feehan

Survivors of clerical abuse have branded the visit of Pope Francis as “abysmal and appalling” because he failed to identify an action plan about what he is going to do to address the issues of hurt caused by the Church in Ireland.

Speaking after the Pontiff admitted he was not aware of the Magdalene Laundries or the mother and baby homes, they questioned how he could be so out of touch with the deep pain and ongoing anguish that emanated from such institutions.

“It is unbelievable. It’s an inescapable reality and truth to us here in Ireland. No matter what happened he should have been fully briefed about what he was coming to regarding the pain and suffering here,” said Mark Vincent Healy, who was abused by two priests in his time in school in Dublin.

“One thing is for certain, he didn’t know. You can blame it on himself for not asking questions, or those who surrounded him. I can’t imagine that the Archbishop didn’t brief him, and there are other service providers to the Pope who are feeding him information on what he’s coming to in Ireland,” he added.

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

Campaigners urge Pope to deliver plan to tackle child abuse

IRELAND
Shropshire Star

August 27, 2018

The pontiff’s visit to Ireland focused attention on historic incidents of wrongdoing by clergy.

Victims of clerical sexual abuse have called on the Pope to deliver a plan of action to tackle child abuse scandals.

During his two-day visit to Ireland, Pope Francis begged forgiveness for the crimes of the Church.

But campaigners urged him to take that one step further and take concrete action to solve the issue.

Members of two global groups aimed at holding the Catholic church to account gathered outside a former Magdalene Laundry on Dublin’s Sean McDermott Street on Monday to give their reaction to the pontiff’s trip to Ireland.

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

Clerical abuse

MALTA
The Times of Malta

August 27, 2018

By John Guillaumier, St Julian’s

Ongoing exposures of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests show there is a lot of corruption behind the ‘holy doors’.

In Chile, the police recently raided the headquarters of the Catholic Church’s Episcopal Conference, thus ending “the impunity of the Chilean hierarchy”, as Anne Barrett Doyle, of BishopAccountability.org, said.

In the United States, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, DC has been asked by the Vatican to cease public ministry after he was accused of molesting minors and seminarians. He is among the highest-ranking of the more than 6,700 Roman Catholic clerics in the US to be accused of sexually abusing children since the Church’s sex abuse scandal broke out in 2002 (BishopAccountability.org.).

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

The Latest: Pope gets lukewarm reception in Ireland

DUBLIN (IRELAND)
The Associated Press

August 27, 2018

The Latest on Pope Francis’ trip to Ireland (all times local):

11 p.m.

Pope Francis is facing a lukewarm reception and scattered protests on his trip to Ireland.

Even his vow to rid the church of the “scourge” has been dismissed as a disappointment by some of Ireland’s wounded victims.

But others who met with him in private say they’re heartened that he would respond to their plight, including two of the thousands of children who were forcibly put up for adoption for the shame of having been born to unwed mothers.

Survivors of one of Ireland’s wretched mother and baby homes plan to hold a demonstration Sunday at Tuam, site of a mass grave of hundreds of babies who died at a church-run home.

Francis isn’t scheduled to visit, but he says the description of the site “still echo in my ears.”

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

Time for Church in US to face up to crimes

HARRISBURG (PA)
Irish Examiner

August 24, 2018

The US report on child sex abuse and cover-ups in Pennsylvania has led to calls to extend time limits for more victims to bring cases to court, writes Bette Browne.

THE Pennsylvania probe of child abuse crimes and cover-ups that landed like a bombshell before the Pope’s visit here is far from over as US lawmakers fight for legal tools that would give victims more time to bring perpetrators to justice before the courts.

The Pennsylvania probe of child abuse crimes and cover-ups that landed like a bombshell before the Pope’s visit here is far from over as US lawmakers fight for legal tools that would give victims more time to bring perpetrators to justice before the courts.

Investigators and politicians in Pennsylvania are seeking to change time limits for prosecutions under US statute-of-limitation laws. If they succeed it will boost similar moves under way in other states, with potentially devastating consequences for the Catholic Church.

Advocates for victims have been pushing to amend these statutes for some time — after the Pennsylvania revelations, their campaign has become more urgent.

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

Shapiro deserves praise and thanks – not brickbats – for grand jury report | Opinion

HARRISBURG (PA)
Penn Live

August 27, 2018

By Jennifer Storm

Attorney General details abuse report findings

These are unprecedented times. Not because there were no victims within the church before today.

Not because there were no cover-ups, bribes, threats, secret marriages and divorces, private stashes of child pornography, golden crosses used to mark children who had already been groomed.

Because today, we stand with these courageous survivors. Today, we don’t “play it safe” as Richard Lavinthal would have us do in his recent op-Ed for PennLive.

Today, the words of the grand jury ring around the world and shatter the darkness with the light of truth. Today, we are proud to be Pennsylvanians led forward in the fight for justice by our citizens, by our communities, by our Attorney General and his office.

Attempting to misrepresent or distract from the true purpose and message of last week’s media release is a tried and true method of further silencing survivors. And we say no.

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

Former residents of a now-closed Catholic orphanage in Vermont say nuns killed and tortured foster children

BURLINGTON (VT)
Insider

August 27, 2018

By Kelly McLaughlin

– An investigation into Catholic orphanages in the US revealed systematic abuse that many children faced from nuns in the 20th century.
– Former residents said they were forced to kneel or stand for hours, were dangled outside windows and over wells, and were locked in cabinets and closets.
– At St Joseph’s Catholic Orphanage in Burlington, Vermont, former residents say the abuse sometimes led to death.
– The investigation by Buzzfeed News comes weeks after a Pennsylvania grand jury report accused the Catholic Church of covering up the abuse of 1,000 children.

Former residents of a now-closed Catholic orphanage in Vermont say nuns killed and tortured foster children who were staying at the facility between 1930 and 1970, according to an investigation from Buzzfeed News.

The investigation reveals the systematic abuse many children allegedly faced from nuns at St. Joseph’s Catholic Orphanage in Burlington, as well as other orphanages across the US.

It comes weeks after a Pennsylvania grand jury report accused the Catholic Church of covering up the abuse of 1,000 children at the hands of hundreds of priests across six dioceses.

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

$3.8 billion paid in lawsuits and claims over sex abuse allegations in Catholic Church since 1980s, group says

UNITED STATES
CNN

August 27, 2018

By Rosa Flores, Meridith Edwards and Susannah Cullinane

Since the 1980s, the Catholic Church in the United States and its insurance companies have paid out more than $3.8 billion in lawsuits and claims involving allegations of clerical sexual abuse, according to a monitoring group.

BishopAccountability, a non-profit that tracks allegations of abuse in the Catholic Church, says the payouts involved cases filed by more than 8,600 survivors who were allegedly sexually abused by an undisclosed number of clergy since the 1950s.

Spokesman Terry McKiernan told CNN the number of associated clergy is difficult to calculate because some settlement announcements omit the number of predator priests.

The monies have not gone solely to survivors, McKiernan said. Attorneys get a cut, too. And not all the money comes out of the coffers of the Catholic Church, because the church maintains insurance policies that cover a portion of the settlement payments.

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

Horrifying BuzzFeed News report details unspeakable abuse and even alleged murder in Catholic orphanages

BURLINGTON (VT)
The Week

August 27, 2018

By Kathryn Krawczyk

Throughout the early 1900s in Catholic orphanages around the world, children were locked in cabinets and attics for days, government reports have found. They had to eat their vomit. They were sexually abused. Some were even murdered, former residents have said under sworn oath. And while these accusations have led to massive government investigations in Australia, Canada, and beyond, it’s all gone relatively unnoticed in the U.S.

As Catholic priests and leadership undergo a reckoning amid a wave of child sex abuse revelations, attention has largely bypassed American nuns who also had power over children. But a report from BuzzFeed News detailing incredible physical, mental, and sexual abuse at Catholic orphanages might change that.

BuzzFeed News dug up evidence corroborating abuse allegations from children who once lived in orphanages across the the U.S. But the children of St. Joseph’s Orphanage, run by sisters in Burlington, Vermont, were able to truly shed light on their stories with a 1996 court case uncovered by BuzzFeed News. Speaking to a lawyer, Joseph Barquin alleged that a nun forcibly fondled him under a flight of stairs, while other children were beaten or shaken into shock. Another former St. Joseph’s resident, Sally Dale, recalled in a deposition the time she saw a child thrown from a fourth-floor window.

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

Morning Update: An Explosive Investigation Into Orphanage Abuse In The US

BURLINGTON (VT)
BuzzFeed News

August 27, 2018

By Elamin Abdelmahmoud

Nuns killed children, say former residents of St. Joseph’s Catholic Orphanage

Good morning,

Take a deep breath, because this is an explosive and difficult story. Millions of American children were placed in orphanages. Some didn’t make it out alive.

After hearing whispers that seemed almost too awful to believe, BuzzFeed News investigative reporter Christine Kenneally embarked on a four-year-long journey to find out what really went on in these institutions. Today, BuzzFeed News publishes her special investigation, with a powerful video, revealing the systematic abuse and even the alleged murder of children by nuns.

Her searing report — part true crime drama, part ghost story — cracks open a secret history of American life, and adds a vast new dimension to the Catholic church’s mistreatment of children.

From a world shrouded in secrecy, she tells the story of Sally Dale, Joseph Barquin, Dale Greene, and other former residents of St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Burlington, Vermont, who somehow found the courage to come forward and tell the world what they had witnessed, begging to be heard and believed. The local Catholic diocese put up the fight of a lifetime.

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

Nuns Killed Children, Say Former Residents Of St. Joseph’s Catholic Orphanage

BURLINGTON (VT)
BuzzFeed

August 27, 2018

By Christine Kenneally

It was a late summer afternoon, Sally Dale recalled, when the boy was thrown through the fourth-floor window.

“He kind of hit, and— ” she placed both hands palm-down before her. Her right hand slapped down on the left, rebounded up a little, then landed again.

For just a moment, the room was still. “Bounced?” one of the many lawyers present asked. “Well, I guess you’d call it — it was a bounce,” she replied. “And then he laid still.”

Sally, who was speaking under oath, tried to explain it. She started again. “The first thing I saw was looking up, hearing the crash of the window, and then him going down, but my eyes were still glued—.” She pointed up at where the broken window would have been and then she pointed at her own face and drew circles around it. “That habit thing, whatever it is, that they wear, stuck out like a sore thumb.”

A nun was standing at the window, Sally said. She straightened her arms out in front of her. “But her hands were like that.”

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

Is the church capable of fixing itself?

UNITED STATES
U.S. Catholic

August 2018

By Kevin Clarke

After this summer of sex abuse revelations, it is time for a relentless examination of institutional conscience.
This summer the revelations of past assault on children and harassment committed by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick roiled the U.S. church. Other exposés of abuses by individual priests and of institution dysfunction followed including the devastating grand jury report in Pennsylvania that named more than 300 priests who for decades abused thousands of children which six dioceses covered up.

They all make a mockery of clerical formation. In a moment unprecedented for the church, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of McCarrick from the College of Cardinals and soon after that of an Australian archbishop after his conviction for covering up the abuse of children. Will stories of other retired bishops or men in active leadership roles emerge as well?

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

A trying time for the faithful as Catholic Church faces new abuse scandals

LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

August 26, 2018

By Soumya Karlamangla and Victoria Kim

Olivia Vela sat in the courtyard of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels on Sunday as she waited for the 10 a.m. Mass to begin. After a decades-long absence, she said she returned to the church a year and a half ago after she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

Vela said she is now in recovery and started attending services again because she is so grateful to be alive.

But the 52-year-old nurse is still struggling to reconcile her beliefs with the sex abuse scandals that continue to plague the Catholic Church and the latest news that Pope Francis may have knowingly hid allegations about the now-disgraced American Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop in Washington.

“I’m trying to come back. I’m trying to come back,” Vela said, sounding weary.

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

Nuns recall abuses at St. Joseph’s Orphanage

BURLINGTON (VT)
The Burlington Free Press

August 27, 2018

By Sam Hemingway

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was first published on May 17, 1998. The Burlington Free Press is republishing stories about sexual abuse that took place at the St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Burlington in the 1950s and 1960s.

For the first time, nuns and priests have confirmed some children at the now-closed St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Burlington were sexually and physically abused.

Their acknowledgments, made in sworn depositions, involve isolated incidents and are much less sweeping than the allegations of systematic abuse made by dozens of former residents of the home.

Nonetheless, the statements by four nuns and two priests who worked at the orphanage weaken claims by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington that abuse charges cannot be corroborated.

More than 100 former St. Joseph’s residents have charged in recent years that they and others were beaten and molested, tormented and humiliated. Twenty-four have suits pending against the diocese and related organizations.

They found some support in court depositions filed last week. Monsignor Edward Foster, for example, worked at the orphanage as a seminarian in the late 1940s. The now-retired priest recalled a young boy, Roger Barber, who was brought to him by two nuns in 1947 or 1948. The boy’s buttocks had been burned so badly by an orphanage janitor that he could not sit down.

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

For Catholic parents, choosing to raise kids in a church marred by sex abuse is a ‘painful thing’

UNTIED STATES
CNN

August 27, 2018

By Michelle Krupa

At night, when her young daughters want a special lullaby, they ask for the Celtic Alleluia, a hymn that most any cradle Catholic could sing by heart.

But in the mornings, as she drives to work, Susan Reynolds finds herself pondering how to articulate her role in a church again battered by revelations of its own clergy sexually abusing children as its leaders hid the alleged crimes.

“One of the most painful things is this deep question I have of: Do I trust my church with my kids?” said Reynolds, an assistant professor of Catholic studies at Emory University in Atlanta.
“And the answer right now is: Kinda, no.”

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

Papal Visit: Pope ‘moved and shocked’ by abuse survivors

IRELAND
BBC News

August 27, 2018

The head of the Catholic Church in Ireland has said that Pope Francis was “moved and shocked” by his meetings with survivors of abuse.

On Saturday, in Dublin, the Pope spent 90 minutes with eight survivors, telling them he viewed clerical sex abuse as “filth”.

Archbishop Eamon Martin said the encounters led the pontiff to write a “personal, handwritten” prayer.

Pope Francis made a two-day trip to Ireland over the weekend.

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

Church official urges Pope to resign over abuse cover-up

VATICAN CITY
Al Jazeera English

August 27, 2018

A senior Vatican official has called on Pope Francis to resign, accusing the pontiff of failing to act sooner on sexual abuse allegations against former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

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

‘I will not say one word’: Pope Francis stays silent over claims he covered up sex abuse

UNITED KINGDOM
Yahoo News UK

August 27, 2018

By Christopher Lamb

Pope Francis says he will “not say one word” in response to explosive allegations from a retired Vatican official claiming the pontiff covered up sexual abuse and should resign.

Talking to reporters on board the papal plane returning to Rome from Dublin, the Pope dismissively said Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano’s testimony “speaks for itself” and he urged people to read the material carefully and judge for themselves.

In the 11-page memo – released on Sunday during the Pope’s trip to Ireland – the former Vatican ambassador to the United States says he warned Francis about allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse by former Archbishop of Washington, Theodore McCarrick.

The document was an unprecedented broadside against a pope from a senior figure inside the Church and included a long list of US and Vatican officials of being told about McCarrick’s behaviour.

“I will not say one word on this,” he told reporters during his in-flight press conference. “I believe the statement speaks for itself. And you have sufficient journalistic capacity to draw your own conclusions.”

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

The Church’s sex-abuse scandal hits home

BREMERTON (WA)
Kitsap Sun

August 24, 2018

By Ed Palm

The Catholic Church’s sex-abuse scandal is back in the news — this time, bigger and more troubling than ever. On August 14, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court released the results of a two-year grand jury investigation revealing what the Washington Post has labeled a “criminal conspiracy” to cover up the abuse of “at least 1,000 victims” by “some 300 priests” in “six of the state’s eight dioceses.”

As a Catholic-school survivor, I’ve had more than a passing interest in this controversy and have even advanced my theory about why this has been happening (“The risk in the old Catholic ‘calls,’” March 13, 2016). More about that anon. My immediate concern is how this latest report hits home, geographically and personally.

Within a few days of Pennsylvania’s blockbuster report, all of us who had graduated from the Salesianum School for Boys in Wilmington, Delaware, received an email from Brendan Kennealey, the school’s current president. Kennealey revealed that two of the priests named in the Pennsylvania report were members of the religious order that had established and still oversees Salesianum, the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales (OSFS), and that they had taught at the school. In the interest of full disclosure, Kennealey acknowledged that 12 oblates had been named in 34 lawsuits brought by 39 victims against the school and the Oblates. In 2011, the victims and the order reached a global settlement to the tune of $24.8 million.

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If Viganò’s “Testimony” is true, Pope Francis has failed his own test

SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
The Catholic World Report

August 26, 2018

By Christopher R. Altieri

The testimony Archbishop Viganò offers is neither perfectly crafted, nor immune to criticism, but it is wide-ranging, detailed, and devastating

The former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, has written a letter alleging systematic coverup of the disordered and abusive behavior of the former Archbishop of Washington, Theodore McCarrick, who has resigned from the College of Cardinals and awaits canonical trial on charges he molested at least one minor. Since that charge became public on June 20th, other accusers have come forward, some of them alleging they suffered abuse in seminary or as priests, while at least one other accuser — the first person McCarrick baptized as a priest — alleges his abuse began when he was aged 11 years.

McCarrick’s behavior appears to have been an open secret, though high-ranking prelates close to McCarrick claim they were unaware of any hint of impropriety. They include McCarrick’s successor, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, and Cardinal Kevin Farrell of the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life. The records of both men deserve the most careful and relentless scrutiny, but not here.

Here, the concern is the set of assertions Archbishop Viganò has made in his letter, in which he details a nearly two decades’ coverup of McCarrick’s misconduct. It involves three popes and three Secretaries of State, as well as at least a half-dozen other high-ranking Vatican officials.

Archbishop Viganò, who was Nuncio from 2011 to 2016, asserts that Cardinal Angelo Sodano, when he was Secretary of State under Pope St. John Paul II, knew of the allegations against McCarrick. Viganò strongly suggests Sodano was nevertheless instrumental in securing McCarrick’s appointment to the See of Washington, DC. Viganò speculates that Sodano would have been able to pass McCarrick’s nomination across the desk of the weak and sickly Pope St. John Paul II, from whom he would have kept information regarding McCarrick’s habits.

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

Pope in Ireland vows to end cover-up of clergy sex abuse

DUBLIN (IRELAND)
The Associated Press

August 25, 2018

By Nicole Winfield and Maria Grazia Murru

Pope Francis declared Saturday as he arrived in Ireland that he shares the outrage of rank-and-file Catholics over the cover-up of the “repugnant crimes” of priests who raped and molested children, and vowed that he was committed to ending the “scourge.”

Seeking to respond to a global outcry over sex abuse by priests, Francis cited measures taken by his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, to respond to the crisis. But Benedict never acknowledged the Vatican’s role in fueling a culture of cover-up, and Francis provided no new details of any measures he would take to sanction bishops who fail to protect their flocks from predator priests.

“The failure of ecclesial authorities — bishops, religious superiors, priests and others — to adequately address these repugnant crimes has rightly given rise to outrage, and remains a source of pain and shame for the Catholic community. I myself share these sentiments,” the pope said in a speech to government officials and civil authorities at Dublin Castle.

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

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Church’s top-down character keeps abuse concealed

ST .Louis (MO)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

August 25, 2018

I am wondering if the long-standing and thorough concealment of clerical sexual abuse doesn’t have a lot to do with the top-down character of the Roman Catholic Church.

Who appoints and promotes bishops? Well the pope does, or, maybe apostolic delegates and nabobs in the Curia tell him whom to appoint. In any case, in a top-down regime the main thing the higher-ups want from the lower-downs is no trouble.

If everything is running trouble-free, the lower-downs are assumed to be doing a good job. If there is any trouble, even the trouble of cosseted members of the laity or politicians among the clergy complaining against desperately needed reform, the higher-ups will wonder what the lower-down bishop is doing wrong, why things are getting out of hand. He must not be running his diocese very well if the Vatican is receiving complaints from big donors and ultramontane clergy. He must have no skill in the arts of secrecy if scandals in the diocese are getting into the local news media.

So, if his excellency wants to abide in the Vatican’s favor, if he has dreams of advancement to a more prestigious see, if he wants to avoid early retirement, he had better get with the program and keep his diocese trouble-free whatever the price.

Daniel Sheerin • Kirkwood

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Churches unite for prayer vigil for sex abuse survivors

NEW CUMBERLAND (PA)
WHTM

August 25, 2018

By Priscilla Liguori

Instead of turning away from God during a time of hurt and sadness, the people at a prayer vigil in New Cumberland turned toward Him. The goal of the ceremony was to heal the community, broken by the truth exposed in the grand jury report on clergy sex abuse, released last week.

“Help us to live gracefully inside this tension,” said Tina Moyer, who spoke at the vigil.

Eight local churches of different denominations prayed together for survivors of clergy sex abuse.

People in the pews of Baughman United Methodist Church wore white ribbons to support survivors and their families.

“What I saw tonight was everybody coming together,” said Bruce Chambers, an Etters resident who went to the vigil. “Hopefully, in this whole situation with the Catholic Church, what we’ll see is some changes.”

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Nuns were investigated when priests should have been

Pittsburgh (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

August 27, 2018

By Mary Lou Walter

Holy smoke! It appears that the ruby red Prada slippers that Benedict XVI wore are now on the other foot.

How ironic that members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops were complicit for decades about protecting known abuser priests. The same feckless organization, however, was totally enthusiastic to participate and endorse the Apostolic Visitation into America’s provinces of nuns — a witch hunt in every sense begun to ease the fears of U.S. bishops that the nuns were running amok, what with their abandonment of religious garments and living independently outside of convents, not to mention forming radical feminist ideas about their organizations.

What were the results of the investigation?

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Cheyenne Police Seeking Help From Public On Church Sexual Abuse Investigation

CHEYENNE (WY)
Wyoming Public Media

August 24, 2018

By Kamila Kudelska

The Cheyenne Police Department is seeking information from any victims or witnesses of sex abuse crimes related to any church official.

It comes after a release from the Roman Catholic Diocese in Cheyenne with new information found in a sex abuse case involving Bishop-Emeritus Joseph Hart between the 1970s through the 1990s. The department has since re-opened that case which has been closed for 16 years.

The announcement comes just a week after a Pennsylvania grand jury released a report accusing 300 priests of sexually abusing over 1,000 victims across the state.

Spokesman officer Kevin Malatesta said this has nothing to do with the Pennsylvania case but it does speak to the nature of what is going on around the country.

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Thousands gather at rally to honour victims of church abuse

IRELAND
The Times

August 27, 2018

By Katie O’Neill

Thousands of people who gathered in Dublin city centre yesterday to honour victims of clerical abuse were told they represented “the new Ireland”.

The Stand 4 Truth demonstration, organised by Colm O’Gorman, the executive director of Amnesty International Ireland and a clerical sex abuse survivor, began at 3pm, the same time as the papal Mass in Phoenix Park.

The singers Hozier, Mary Black and Brian Kennedy, and Marian Keyes, the novelist, were among those to take to the stage outside the Garden of Remembrance.

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In Ireland, Pope Francis ashamed of church’s failure to address abuse

IRELAND
UPI

August 25, 2018

By Sommer Brokaw

During a visit to Ireland, Pope Francis spoke Saturday about the Catholic Church’s handlings of clerical abuse — calling it a “grave scandal.”

“I cannot fail to acknowledge the grave scandal caused in Ireland by the abuse of young people by members of the Church charged with responsibility for their protection and education,” the Pope told political leaders and dignitaries at Dublin Castle.

“The failure of ecclesiastical authorities — bishops, religious superiors, priests and others — adequately to address these repellent crimes has rightly given rise to outrage, and remains a source of pain and shame for the Catholic community,” he said.

“I myself share those sentiments.”

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Irish ruling class as much to blame for child abuse as church

IRELAND
Irish Central

August 26, 2018

By George Dillon

Yes, the church did wrong on child abuse and Magdalene Laundries, but there were plenty of Irish in leadership roles who turned a blind eye.

The Irish, from their ruling class right down to the general populace, have created a convenient narrative about these abuses.

In this account, no Irish person bears any guilt or responsibility, save the clerics who carried out the abuse.

That, of course, is self-serving garbage. The mistreatment and abuse could not have occurred without the aid of a whole network of lay people and government officials and politicians. These institutions where the young were mistreated were subject to regular inspection by government officials.

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Area Catholic churches to hold sex abuse forum

WATERLOO (IA)
The Courier

August 26, 2018

By Jerry Kopacek

The Catholic parishes in Waterloo will host a forum on the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church on Thursday.

The forum is an extension of the parishes’ Summer Forum Series and will be held from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in the Church Hall at St. Edward Parish.

Dave Cushing, director of adult faith formation for the parishes, said the forum will offer local Catholics an opportunity to express their feelings and concerns about recent reports of extensive sexual abuse in the Catholic dioceses of Pennsylvannia and allegations of abuse against a high ranking retired American cardinal.

A panel of pastoral ministers will be present to respond to participants’ concerns. The panel includes the Rev. Jerry Kopacek, Mary Pedersen, Dr. Len Froyen and Joan Hoffmann.

Although most of the incidents reported in a grand jury report took place prior to 2000, Cushing said many Catholics have grave concerns about why the abuse occurred and why it was not revealed before now.

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Commentary: Thank the law for revealing abuse, not the church

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Philadelphia Inquirer

August 26, 2018

By Maria Panaritis

Victims and investigators brought the truth out; Catholic leaders only protected the abusers.

Thank God for the criminal investigators and prosecutors.

Thank God for the grand jury subpoenas. For they extracted — like rotting teeth — clergy-abuse personnel files in unreachable corners of six Pennsylvania Roman Catholic dioceses serving 1.7 million people.

Thank God for the courage of the victims. For without them, Attorney General Josh Shapiro and his team would have had no real cause to root out and unveil decades of depravity and systemic abuse by clergy, overseen by complicit superiors.

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Do recent developments in church sex abuse scandal finally open Child Victims Act to a vote?

BUFFALO (NY)
WBFO

August 27, 2018

By Michael Mroziak

In light of recent news involving alleged sexual abuse and how Catholic Church leaders have managed it over many years, calls are being renewed to pass the Child Victims Act in New York State. A State Senator who strongly supports the bill says the votes are there but the current leadership in that house won’t bring it up for a vote.

The Child Victims Act would ease current statutes of limitation that currently give victims until the age of 23 to sue for justice in childhood incidents. It has stalled in the State Senate for a dozen years.

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Pope begs forgiveness for ‘state of shame’ inflicted on Ireland

DUBLIN/KNOCK (IRELAND)
Reuters

August 26, 2018

By Graham Fahy and Conor Humphries

Pope Francis on Sunday begged forgiveness for the multitude of abuses suffered by victims in Ireland at the hand of the church over decades as he concluded a tour of the once deeply Catholic country watched by parishioners and protesters.

After meeting privately with abuse victims on Saturday on the first papal visit to Ireland in almost four decades, Francis apologized to mothers estranged from their children in church-run homes, children abused by priests and those exploited in religious schools, calling it a “state of shame.”

“To survivors of abuse of power, conscience and sexual abuse, recognizing what they have told me, I would like to put these crimes before the mercy of the Lord and ask forgiveness for them,” Francis told a mass attended by more than 100,000 people at Dublin’s Phoenix Park.

“We apologize for some members of the hierarchy who did not take care of these painful situations and kept silent.”

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Former Vatican ambassador says Popes Francis, Benedict knew of sexual misconduct allegations against McCarrick for years

DUBLIN (IRELAND)
The Washington Post

August 26, 2018

By Chico Harlan, Stefano Pitrelli, Michelle Boorstein

A former Vatican ambassador to the United States has alleged in an 11-page letter that Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis — among other top Catholic Church officials — had been aware of sexual misconduct allegations against former D.C. archbishop Cardinal Theodore McCar­rick years before he resigned this summer.

The letter from Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who was recalled from his D.C. post in 2016 amid allegations that he’d become embroiled in the conservative American fight against same-sex marriage, was first reported by the National Catholic Register and LifeSite News, two conservative Catholic sites.

The accusations sent a shock wave across the reeling Roman Catholic Church, but the letter offered no proof of its claims, and Viganò on Sunday told The Washington Post that he wouldn’t comment further, beyond confirming that he was the letter’s author.

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Pope begs for forgiveness over clergy sex abuse scandal

KNOCK (IRELAND)
New York Post

August 26, 2018

By Ruth Brown

Pope Francis on Sunday begged forgiveness for child sexual abuse in the Catholic church — a day after a former Vatican official accused him of covering up allegations against an American cardinal.

Speaking at the Marian shrine in the Irish town of Knock, the pontiff said the “open wound” of the scandal required the church to be “firm and decisive in the pursuit of truth and justice.”

“I beg forgiveness for these sins and for the scandal and betrayal felt by so many others in God’s family,” he told the tens of thousands gathered at the shrine, according to the Guardian.

“None of us can fail to be moved by the stories of young people who suffered abuse, were robbed of their innocence and left scarred.”

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Bishop Malone’s apology on abuse gets chilly response from parishioners

BUFFALO (NY)
The Buffalo News

August 25, 2018

By Jay Tokasz

Parishioners of St. Mary’s Church in Swormville responded to Bishop Richard J. Malone’s statement of apology Saturday with a mix of anger, disappointment and frustration over his handling of a sexual abuse scandal that has been unfolding in media reports for six months and now includes Malone’s cover-up of a priest who sexually harassed grown men.

“Words only,” said church member Jay Christopher of Clarence. “What that letter said was meaningless to me. I don’t need an apology. I need actions. Do something about it.”

Malone did not show up at the parish. He sent Auxiliary Bishop Edward M. Grosz to read a 10-paragraph statement prior to a 4 p.m. Mass at St. Mary’s. It came the day after a businessman and deacon of the church, a Catholic radio station and three public officials, including U.S. Rep. Brian Higgins, D-Buffalo, called for Malone to resign.

“Let me be clear that the handling of claims from some of our parishioners – which you may have read about in news reports – has fallen short of the standard to which we hold ourselves and each other. We can and will do better,” Grosz said in reading the bishop’s letter.

The statement made no mention of the calls for Malone to step down.

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If one member suffers…

MALTA
The Times of Malta

August 26, 2018

By Andrew Azzopardi

There is no greater issue in the Catholic Church today than that of child abuse. The Church’s credibility and future depend on how this problem is handled and solved.

The Pennsylvania Grand Jury report detailing claims of sexual abuse of over 1,000 children by 301 priests makes for very painful reading. The accounts are truly horrific and display the pain and suffering experienced by victims. My thoughts are with all the victims, survivors and their loved ones. They have shown great courage by coming forward.

When examining the Church leadership’s response to child abuse cases it’s important to recognise that times have changed and what was acceptable decades ago is considered differently now. This does not excuse the mishandling of cases in the past but it’s important to keep a sense of perspective.

With this perspective in mind, I quote Cardinal Sean O’Malley, President of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, who said: “The clock is ticking for the Church leadership to take action”. This is very true. The Church needs to take firm steps to acknowledge the wrongs of the past and make sure Church leaders take proper responsibility for whatever actions they take or fail to take. This needs to be done today without further delay.

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The Pope’s Letter: what’s new?

MALTA
The Times of Malta

August 26, 2018

The Letter to the People of God issued some days ago by Pope Francis in response to the latest developments in the unfolding sex abuse scandal crippling the Catholic Church in America is a remarkable document in many ways. Not surprisingly, it is also controversial. Some have hailed it as a turning point in the public pronouncements by the Church on this issue while others – including some victims – have dismissed it as more of the same.

The language and purpose of the Letter needs to be understood in the context of Pope Francis’s attempted reform of the Church. From the very beginning, Francis has tried to break the culture of ‘clericalism’, meaning attempts to maintain or increase the power of the religious hierarchy and to protect it from any accountability. This struggle has played out in multiple fora, such as in the Church’s finances, and in attempts to bring to justice high-ranking prelates who ignored, protected or perpetrated abuse.

This culture, and the resultant power struggles within the Vatican, was one of the drivers that led to Pope Benedict’s resignation. Pope Francis has regularly publicly admonished his top Curia officials, much to their anger and dismay, about the “cancer” of cliques and plots within the Vatican “that leads to a self-referential attitude” and the hoarding of money and power. Francis once compared the difficulties of reforming the Church to cleaning the Sphinx of Egypt with a toothbrush.

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Pope Francis celebrates his final Mass in Ireland amid call for him to quit over clergy abuse

DUBLIN (IRELAND)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

August 26, 2018

By Peter Smith

Pope Francis began his final Mass in Ireland on Sunday with a litany of repentance for victims of sexual abuse and of abuse “of power and conscience.”

And as the pope was seeking repentance, there was a call for his resignation from Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who was the papal nuncio to Washington, D.C., before Francis recalled him in 2016.

The archbishop’s letter contended that Francis had allowed former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick to retain his influential role despite knowing for years of allegations of sexual misconduct against him. The cardinal was banned from ministry and resigned earlier this year when it became publicly known he sexually abused boys and exploited young adult seminarians.

Francis essentially fired Archbishop Vigano from his diplomatic post. The latter is part of a conservative camp that blames the pope for being part of a liberal group tolerating homosexuality in the church.

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Cardinal Burke responds to former US nuncio’s explosive letter about Pope Francis

ROME
LifeSiteNews

August 26, 2018

By John-Henry Westen

“The corruption and filth which have entered into the life of the Church must be purified at their roots,” said Vatican Cardinal Raymond Burke in response to a LifeSite request for comment on the release of Archbishop Carlo Viganò’s testimony. The 11-page letter issued by the former papal representative in the United States released to LifeSiteNews and a few other outlets is filled with revelations of scandals within the hierarchy.

“The declarations made by a prelate of the authority of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò must be totally taken to heart by those responsible in the Church,” said Burke. “Each declaration must be subject to investigation, according to the Church’s time-tried procedural law.”

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Former Vatican ambassador says Pope Francis, Pope Benedict knew of sexual misconduct allegations

DUBLIN (IRELAND)
The Washington Post

August 26, 2018

A former Vatican ambassador to the United States has alleged in an 11-page letter that Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis — among other top Catholic Church officials — had been aware of sexual misconduct allegations against former Washington, D.C., archbishop Cardinal Theodore McCarrick years before he resigned this summer.

The letter from Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who was recalled from his D.C. post in 2016 amid allegations that he’d become embroiled in the conservative American fight against same-sex marriage, was first reported by the National Catholic Register and LifeSite News, two conservative Catholic sites. The letter offered no proof, and Vigano on Sunday told The Washington Post he wouldn’t comment further.

“Silence and prayer are the only things that are befitting,” he said.

The accusations landed as Francis was wrapping up one of the most fraught trips of his papacy, coming face-to-face with the church’s damaged credibility in a country reeling from decades of abuse. In a Mass at Dublin’s Phoenix Park, Francis spoke in Spanish and asked for forgiveness for what he called “abuses of power, conscience, and sexual abuse perpetrated by members with roles of responsibility in the church,” according to a translation of his remarks by Vatican News.

“We ask forgiveness for some members of the church’s hierarchy who did not take charge of these painful situations and kept quiet,” Francis said.

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7 I-TEAM: Buffalo Bishop Malone allowed Amherst priest to remain pastor despite abuse allegations

BUFFALO (NY)
WKBW

August 23, 2018

By Charlie Specht

Editor’s Note: In March 2018, the Diocese of Buffalo released a list of 42 priests accused of abuse. 7 Eyewitness News has learned that two priests who were in ministry at that time were originally considered for inclusion on that list, but were removed before the list was made public.

This is the second part of a two-part investigative series on Bishop Richard J. Malone’s handling of those priests.

You can read part one here

Kyle is a devout, faithful Catholic from Buffalo.

“I have a deep respect for the virtues of piety and obedience,” he said.

Which is why it almost pains him to tell the story of Father Robert Yetter, the longtime pastor of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Swormville.

In 2013, Father Yetter offered Kyle what was supposed to be a helping hand. The young man was 25 and searching for answers in life when Yetter offered to take him to see “Captain Phillips” at the Walden Galleria cinema. The two planned to watch the movie and talk about faith over dinner at Jack Astor’s.

“This was my first opportunity to be able to really ask him some deep questions about the faith so that I could get some answers for what I was searching for,” Kyle said.

But then Kyle said something happened that he never expected.

“We were like lightly laughing about something that was mildly funny and then he just kind of finished the laughter and then just like slaps his hand right here,” Kyle said, pointing to his inner thigh.

His first reaction was to freeze.

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Gozo Bishop threatens UK blogger with legal action

MALTA
manueldelia.com

August 23, 2018

The Bishop of Gozo, Mario Grech, has engaged lawyers to threaten a UK Catholic blogger who commented on allegations already reported by Malta Today in 2015 with criminal and civil action.

The report concerns the case of Gozitan cleric Joseph Bezzina and the allegation Bishop Mario Grech shielded him from any consequence after allegations of abuse of pubescent boys. The blog by Catholic writer Mark Lambert, says the dossier about Joseph Bezzina’s case has “disappeared”.

Mark Lambert’s report also refers to the case of Dominic Camilleri that was convicted by a Malta church tribunal in 2003 but had still not been defrocked by 2015. This was covered in a Malta Today report by Jurgen Balzan from the time.

The blogger says these cases, and a claim by members of the Gozitan clergy that accuse Bishop Mario Grech of “professional misconduct”, raise uncomfortable questions about the Gozitan curia’s commitment to take action on child abuse.

In a letter to Mark Lambert, Mario Grech’s lawyer denies the allegations and threatens “civil and criminal procedures” against the author.

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Lawmakers calling on Bishop Malone to resign

BUFFALO (NY)
WGRZ

August 24, 2018

Several local lawmakers are calling on Buffalo Bishop Richard Malone to resign for his handling of the on-going priest sex abuse issue in the Diocese.

Several local lawmakers are calling on Buffalo Bishop Richard Malone to resign for his handling of the on-going priest sex abuse issue in the Diocese.

Congressman Brian Higgins tweeted Friday afternoon that Bishop Malone has exhibited poor leadership and knew about children and others put in harm’s way, in calling for the Bishop’s resignation.

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Calls mounting for Bishop Malone’s resignation

BUFFALO (NY)
WKBW

August 24, 2018

By Charlie Specht and Christine Streich

I-Team investigation revealed current cover-up

Calls are mounting for Buffalo Bishop Richard J. Malone to resign in the wake of a 7 Eyewitness News investigation that revealed a continuing cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo.

Three elected officials from South Buffalo — the region’s most heavily Catholic enclave — including a United States Congressman, said Malone must resign immediately because he has lost the trust of much of the region’s nearly 600,000 Catholics.

In addition, they are pushing for a criminal investigation of the Diocese of Buffalo.

Rep. Brian Higgins said, “Overwhelming evidence recently released clearly shows that Bishop Malone has exhibited poor leadership and knew about children and others put in harm’s way. He must resign.”

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Calls intensify for Bishop Malone to resign over sex abuse scandal

BUFFALO (NY)
The Buffalo News

August 24, 2018

By Dan Herbeck

Public pressure mounted on Bishop Richard J. Malone on Friday as a congressman, two other public officials and a prominent Buffalo businessman who serves as a church deacon called upon him to resign because of his handling of clergy abuse cases.

A Catholic radio station in Buffalo – WLOF-FM, Station of the Cross – posted a statement on its website, saying Malone “covered up for predatory priests” and should resign “immediately” as bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo.

Paul L. Snyder III, chief executive officer of the Snyder Corp., told The Buffalo News it is time for thousands of Catholics in Western New York to “rise up” and insist on changes in their church.

Snyder, a longtime church volunteer who serves as a deacon in his parish, said he believes that recent news reports about Malone’s handling of clergy abuse allegations show that he and other top diocesan officials have been involved in a “cover-up” and that it is time for Malone to resign.

In his letter to Malone, Snyder said the bishop’s “conduct to mask the truth from our Community, demonstrates that you have been seriously negligent in your duties as the leader of our Diocese,” Snyder wrote to the bishop. “I … respectfully ask for your resignation from the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo.”

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Pope Francis Faces Lukewarm Reception in Ireland After Meeting Sex Abuse Victims

DUBLIN (IRELAND)
The Associated Press

August 25, 2018

By Nicole Winfield and Trisha Thomas

Pope Francis faced a lukewarm reception and scattered protests Saturday on his trip to Ireland, with even his vow to rid the church of the “scourge” of sexual abuse and his outrage at those “repugnant crimes” dismissed as a disappointment by some of Ireland’s wounded victims.

But others who met with him in private left heartened that he would respond to their plight, including two of the thousands of children who were forcibly put up for adoption for the shame of having been born to unwed mothers. They said Francis described the corruption and cover-up in the church as “caca” — translated by the Vatican translator for the English speakers as “filth as one sees in the toilet.”

The abuse scandal — which has exploded anew in the U.S. but has convulsed Ireland since the 1990s with revelations of unfathomable violence and humiliation against women and children — took center stage on the first day of Francis’ two-day trip. The visit was originally intended to celebrate Catholic families.

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The Latest on Pope Francis’ trip to Ireland (all times local):

KNOCK (IRELAND)
The Associated Press

August 27, 2018

11:59 p.m.

Pope Francis says parents of gay children shouldn’t condemn them, ignore their orientation or throw them out of the house. Rather, he says they should pray, talk and try to understand.

Speaking to reporters after closing out a Catholic family rally in Ireland, Francis said: “There have always been gay people and people with homosexual tendencies.”

Francis was asked what he would tell a father of a child who just came out as gay. Francis said he would first suggest prayer.

“Don’t condemn. Dialogue. Understand, give the child space so he or she can express themselves.”

Francis said it might be necessary seek psychiatric help if a child begins to exhibit “worrisome” traits, but that it’s something else if an adult comes out as gay.

He urged parents not to respond with silence. “Ignoring child with this tendency shows a lack of motherhood and fatherhood.”

He said: “This child has the right to a family. And the family not throwing him out.”

___

11:45 p.m.

Pope Francis is defending his procedures to hold bishops accountable for covering up priestly sex abuse, saying a tribunal isn’t necessary and that his ad-hoc approach works better.

Francis was asked en route home from Ireland on Sunday about demands from abuse survivors to implement his 2015 decision to create a tribunal section inside the Vatican to judge negligent bishops.

Francis scrapped the idea in 2016 and instead laid out legal procedures to use the existing Vatican bureaucracy to investigate complaints, and then for a college of legal experts to weigh in and advise the pope.

Francis said a full-fledged tribunal “wasn’t viable or convenient because of the different cultures of the bishops who must be judged.” Instead, he said the ad-hoc jury system “works better” and that “several” bishops had already been judged.

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Former top Vatican official says pope should resign over abuse crisis

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE
Reuters

August 26, 2018

By Philip Pullella

Pope Francis said on Sunday he would not respond to a former top Vatican official who accused him of having known for years of allegations of sex abuse by a prominent U.S. cardinal, calling on the pontiff to resign in an unprecedented broadside against the pope by a Church insider.

Francis, speaking to reporters on the plane returning from a trip to Dublin, said dismissively that a statement containing the accusations “speaks for itself”.

In a detailed 11-page bombshell statement given to conservative Roman Catholic media outlets during the pope’s visit to Ireland, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano accused a long list of current and past Vatican and U.S. Church officials of covering up the case of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who resigned last month in disgrace.

In remarkably blunt language, Vigano said alleged cover-ups in the Church were making it look like “a conspiracy of silence not so dissimilar from the one that prevails in the mafia”.

“Pope Francis has repeatedly asked for total transparency in the Church,” wrote Vigano, who has criticized the pope before.

“In this extremely dramatic moment for the universal Church, his extremely dramatic moment for the universal Church, he must acknowledge his mistakes and, in keeping with the proclaimed principle of zero tolerance, Pope Francis must be the first to set a good example for cardinals and bishops who covered up McCarrick’s abuses and resign along with all of them,” Vigano said.

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Protesting in Ireland leads Pope Francis to plea for forgiveness

IRELAND
ABC News

August 26, 2018

Pope Francis’ visit to Dublin, Ireland, was met with harsh protesting and breaks from prepared speeches to ask for forgiveness on behalf of the church for its abuse of power, sexual assault and more.

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Pope refuses to comment on claim he personally ignored abuse

ROME
AFP

August 27, 2018

By Catherine Marciano with Joseph Stenson in Dublin

Pope Francis has declined to comment on a claim he personally ignored sexual abuse allegations against a senior clergyman, after a visit to Ireland dominated by Church scandals.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a former Vatican envoy to the United States, said he had told Francis of the allegations against prominent US cardinal Theodore McCarrick in 2013.

But rather than punish McCarrick, who was forced to resign last month, Vigano said Francis had lifted sanctions imposed on him by his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI.

Vigano called on Francis to resign in a letter published Saturday in the National Catholic Register.

He said the pope “knew from at least June 23, 2013, that McCarrick was a serial predator,” adding that “he knew that he was a corrupt man, he covered for him to the bitter end”.

But the pope refused to address the brewing scandal on Sunday.

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August 26, 2018

Pope Francis apologizes for Catholic Church’s “crimes” in Ireland

NEW YORK (NY)
CBS News

August 26, 2018

Dublin – Pope Francis issued a sweeping apology Sunday for the “crimes” of the Catholic Church in Ireland, saying church officials regularly didn’t respond with compassion to the many abuses children and women suffered over the years and vowing to work for justice. Francis was interrupted by applause as he read the apology out loud at the start of Mass in Dublin’s Phoenix Park.

Hundreds of miles away, somber protesters marched through the Irish town of Tuam and recited the names of an estimated 800 babies and young children who died at a Catholic Church-run orphanage there, most during the 1950s.

“Elizabeth Murphy, 4 months. Annie Tyne, 3 months. John Joseph Murphy, 10 months,” the protesters said in memory of the children who were buried in an unmarked mass grave whose discovery was confirmed only last year.

Francis, who is on a weekend visit to Ireland, told the hundreds of thousands of people who turned out for Mass that he met Saturday with victims of all sorts of abuses: sexual and labor, as well as children wrenched from their unwed mothers and forcibly put up for adoption. Abuse allegations have taken their toll in the country, and church attendance has plummeted.

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The last time a pope visited Ireland, homosexuality was a crime. Now the Irish prime minister is gay.

WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

August 25, 2018

By Siobhán O’Grady

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/08/25/last-time-pope-visited-ireland-homosexuality-was-crime-now-irish-prime-minister-is-gay/

In 2015, when Leo Varadkar was serving as Ireland’s health minister, he came out as a gay man on national radio.

The country was preparing to vote in a same-sex marriage referendum, and Varadkar told the radio host that his sexuality is “not a secret, but it’s not something that everyone would necessarily know.”

He also said, “It’s not something that defines me.”

Two-and-a-half years later, Varadkar, whose father was an Indian immigrant, was named prime minister. He is Ireland’s first openly gay leader, the first leader from a minority background and, at 38 at the time of his appointment, the country’s youngest prime minister.

On Saturday, Varadkar welcomed Pope Francis to Ireland, a nation that has radically changed since the last papal visit, in 1979. At that tim, homosexuality was still a crime. Now, the country’s prime minister is gay.

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York County DA: Evidence from decades-old clergy sexual abuse case likely destroyed

YORK (PA)
York Daily Record

August 22, 2018

By Geoff Morrow

https://www.ydr.com/story/news/2018/08/22/york-county-da-evidence-clergy-sexual-abuse-likely-destroyed-grand-jury-report/1068448002/

No records exist at the York County District Attorney’s Office in relation to a decades-old clergy abuse case referenced in the recently released Pennsylvania grand jury report, the district attorney’s office said Wednesday.

The report on widespread child sex abuse at the hands of priests alluded to investigative records and evidence being forwarded to the York County DA’s office in 1995, which was then investigated by the York City Police Department.

According to the grand jury report, the Diocese of Harrisburg turned over “photographic negatives and videotape cassettes” to the DA’s office in 1995. The grand jury report details sexual abuse in six Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania.

Allegations specifically about the Rev. Herbert Shank, one of more than 300 priests named in the grand jury report, were passed along in 1995 to York County law enforcement.

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Pa. priest arrested for soliciting sex before diocese placed him in central Pa. church

YORK (PA)
York Daily Record

August 22, 2018

By Candy Woodall

There were several warning signs in the Rev. Francis Bach’s past, but that didn’t stop a diocese from assigning him to multiple churches in central Pennsylvania.

In 1967, he was “relieved of his duties” with a young adult ministry in Harrisburg.

That was a few years after he served at St. Patrick Catholic Church in York, where a man in 2016 said Bach abused him as an altar boy in 1960.

Ten years later, Bach had more blemishes on his employment history and more work in York. He’s one of several examples in central Pennsylvania, according to a state grand jury report released last week on priest sex abuse, of the diocese shuffling predator priests, or “passing the trash.”

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‘No more pain’ victim wrote of Pa. priest sex abuse, as he and others took their own lives

YORK (PA)
York Daily Record

August 21, 2018

By Sam Ruland

https://www.ydr.com/story/news/2018/08/21/pennsylvania-priest-sex-abuse-some-took-their-own-lives-others-considered-suicide-grand-jury-report/1042459002/

In a detailed letter to the Diocese of Pittsburgh, a man outlined the extensive abuse he endured at the hands of a priest while serving as an altar boy in his hometown parish.

He classified his experiences as sexual, physical and emotional abuse — memories that plagued his mind for years, and ones he certainly couldn’t escape.

*

Almost two years later, in March 2010, the diocese told the victim they would no longer pay for his mental health treatment. A reason or explanation was not given in the grand jury report. It is not certain if the victim was given one himself.

But what is certain is that the victim took his own life two months later.

And while his story is tragic, it’s not the only one of its kind. The grand jury report documents 12 other priests whose victims either attempted suicide or died by suicide. One instance involves the priest himself, who died by suicide, claiming he also was a victim of abuse.

These are their stories, according to the grand jury report:

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Local church service pays respects to priest abuse victims

CARTERSVILLE (GA)
Daily Tribune News

August 25, 2018

By James Swift

It was a solemn service at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in Cartersville Thursday evening.

The Holy Hour observance called for “reparation of the damage done by clergy in the past, healing for the victims and purification of the Church.” The ceremony came just three days after Pope Francis issued an open letter urging the Catholic Church to stand in solidarity with victims of clergy sexual abuse and to “condemn these atrocities and join forces in uprooting this culture of death.”

A little under 100 people turned out for the observance at 850 Douthit Ferry Road in Cartersville. About half of the attendees were middle-aged and senior Caucasians, the other half predominantly middle-aged Hispanics and their children.

Father Juan Francisco Anzora presided over the service, alternating his sermon in English and Spanish.

He prayed for the communities affected by “suppressions of abuse” — as well as the friends and families of the abused and their abusers alike — and for their feelings of “shock and horror” to be replaced by feelings of trust and optimism.

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‘It’s not about me anymore. It’s about others,’ says victim of Pa. priest abuse

YORK (PA)
York Daily Record

August 23, 2018

By Brandie Kessler

John Delaney knows what’s happening in the hearts and minds of those whose abuse is detailed in the recently released grand jury report on Pennsylvania priest sex abuse.

He lived through what they’re all going through now — the range of emotions from anxiety and excitement, to embarrassment and exhaustion.

Delaney, 47, was in their shoes back in 2005, when a grand jury investigation into the Philadelphia archdiocese was presented.

Delaney, born and raised in Philadelphia but now living in Tennessee, was sexually abused and raped for years by a priest in his parish beginning when he was 10 or 11 years old.

Fifteen years ago, when Delaney testified before the grand jury investigating the archdiocese, he disclosed things he hadn’t ever processed.

“I spent weeks telling them things that had happened that I hadn’t really mentioned before,” Delaney said. “It was long, and it was exhausting.”

Delaney’s abuser, Father James Brzyski, was called one of the archdiocese’s “most brutal abusers.”

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Pennsylvania priest-abuse report recalls 2003 crisis in Phoenix

PHOENIX (AZ)
Arizona Republic

August 25, 2018

By Michael Kiefer,

A Pennsylvania grand-jury report has reignited international interest in the history and cover-up of sexual abuse by priests, especially abuse of children.

And it brought back memories of a similar crisis 15 years ago in the Phoenix diocese of the Roman Catholic Church.

In 2003, former Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley forced then-Bishop Thomas O’Brien into an admission of cover-up after an investigation that involved hundreds of thousands of pages of diocese records and the testimony of a priest who wouldn’t look the other way.

Six priests were indicted; two fled the country; others were sued in civil court.

And the Phoenix diocese was made to accept conditions to try to prevent future abuses.

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Catholic church’s ‘hidden predators’ shows that it can’t reform itself

WASHINGTON (DC)
The Hill

August 22, 2018

By Melanie Jula Sakoda

A grand jury report released in Pennsylvania last week detailed years of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy in six dioceses in that state. The report said that 301 priests abused more than 1,000 children since 1947.

Even more disturbing, the investigation concluded that the bishops “followed a playbook for concealing the truth.” Grand jurors believed that, even today, the bishops were still working hard to protect themselves and that there were more victims who have yet to come forward.

Governmental investigations in Ireland and Australia also found the same consistent pattern of cover up by top Catholic officials.

The Catholic Church is the largest organization in the world, and young people have been hurt by its clergy everywhere it operates. Catholic officials around the globe have covered up these crimes and hindered their prosecution.

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Middle school dean charged in teen sex case is a Roman Catholic priest on ‘inactive leave’

RANCHO CUCAMONGA (CA)
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

August 23, 2018

By Richard K. De Atley

A Banning school administrator who pleaded not guilty to charges that he tried to lure a minor to have sex is on “inactive leave” as a Roman Catholic priest, the Los Angeles Archdiocese said Thursday.

Charles Patrick Mayer, 55, of Menifee, is “not in ministry and living privately, since September of 2000 due to a failure to adhere to Archdiocesan policies concerning interaction with youth and young adults. The Archdiocese has no record of allegations of sexual misconduct by Charles Mayer,” the statement read.

The statement was part of a bulletin to parishioners at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Northridge, which was Mayer’s first assignment as a priest after his 1996 ordination until 2000.

The bulletin asked “anyone who may have information concerning misconduct by Charles Mayer to please contact Detective Donald Patton of the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department at 909-774-2852.”

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Victim of priest sex abuse rejects $200K payout from Catholic church

NEW YORK (NY)
New York Post

August 25, 2018

By Melkorka Licea

A man who has accused a Queens priest of sexually molesting him as a boy has rejected a $200,000 offer from the Catholic Church because the money “doesn’t even come close” to delivering justice.

“I choose to stand on the side of survivors who want to fight,” Paul J. Dunn, 53, told The Post. “There’s no amount of money that will make me feel better.”

The Diocese of Brooklyn, which also covers Queens, offered Dunn a cash settlement in June after he detailed four occasions when priest Cornelius T. Otero coerced him into performing oral sex and forced him to pose naked in “hundreds” of photos when he was a boy, diocese records show.

For the first time, Dunn is coming forward with his story, detailing his suffering to The Post and explaining why he’s turning down a settlement.

Dunn was 10 or 11 when he and Otero, who died in 1998, grew close at St. Joan of Arc Church summer camp in Jackson Heights in 1977 or 1978. Dunn doesn’t recall the exact year.

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Rompe voto de silencio

CIUDAD JUáREZ (MEXICO)
El Heraldo de Chihuahua [Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Mexico]

August 26, 2018

By Samara Martínez

Read original article

Existen otros 12 casos de violación

“En la oficina sacó su miembro y me obligó a hacerle sexo oral, afuera estaba su secretaria como si nada, con mucha normalidad. Una vez que terminaba, revisábamos archivos en la computadora como si no hubiera pasado nada, entraba su secretaria y le servía café o agua.”, relata Ricardo Legarda Vázquez víctima de violación y abuso, por más de 10 años, del sacerdote Juan José Esquivias López antiguo párroco del templo de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, en la colonia Villa Nueva, de esta ciudad de Chihuahua.

Esta es la historia de dolor, tristeza y lucha de un joven que, desde los 13 años, sufrió violaciones continuas por parte de un sacerdote chihuahuense que se ganó, con mentiras y caras de hipocresía, la confianza de toda la comunidad creyente de la colonia Villa Nueva.“Yo lo seguí porque creía que no podía avanzar en mi vida sin él. Yo creía que la única manera de crecer era si lo seguía, ya que me iban a pagar más en ese trabajo e iba a conocer una ciudad nueva. Pero lamentablemente al llegar a Tijuana yo ya era otra persona, ya habían pasado muchos años del primer abuso, yo ya había cambiado y él ya no pudo conmigo, el abuso se dio una o dos veces más, pero esta vez ya muy forzado… de hecho… fue algo muy desagradable, incluso de pensarlo me da mucho asco.”, recuerda Ricardo con el aliento entre cortado. Después de eso, el año pasado en 2017, Ricardo decidió interponer una denuncia en la fiscalía de Chihuahua, la cual fue desechada porque los delitos ya se habían cometido hace varios años. “De pronto recibí ayuda de varias personas que le apuestan a los derechos humanos y empezamos a realizar las nuevas denuncias basándonos en los convenios internacionales en contra del abuso contra menores y adolescentes donde se explica que a pesar de los años no puede dejarse a un lado.”, describe Ricardo el proceso de denuncia. El lunes 20 de agosto, después de que el periódico La Jornada publicara parte del caso de Ricardo, la asociación civil en donde trabajaba el padre Juan José Esquivias, en la ciudad de Guadalajara, mandó una notificación donde se explicaba que el sacerdote había dejado de laborar ahí y el sitio web de la asociación, así como la página de Facebook desaparecieron.

Ricardo vivió una infancia como cualquier niño, jugaba con sus primos, tíos y familiares, era aplicado en la escuela y destacaba en el ámbito académico, sus tardes consistían en visitar La Deportiva y hacer los deberes que la escuela demandaba. De familia católica, todos los domingos asistían a misa y los sábados tomaba clases de inglés.

A los 13 años el camino de dolor comenzó, un compañero de inglés lo invitó a formar parte del grupo de monaguillos del templo de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe; al principio Ricardo no aceptó, pero después de varias insistencias decidió ir un sábado. “Los primeros días fueron normales ya que no tenía el acercamiento a los padres, solo en la misa y saliendo me iba a casa, hasta ese momento no hubo nada fuera de lo normal o que fuera sospechoso.”, comenta Ricardo.

Al mes notó algo fuera de lo común, Esquivias López hacía comentarios raros acerca de su apariencia, destacando que él era más alto y blanco que los demás niños, por lo que al poco tiempo fue nombrado coordinador de servidores de altar, seguido de eso el sacerdote le besó la mano. 

El primer acercamiento anormal se dio en el municipio de Santa Isabel, cuando el grupo de monaguillos viajó con el sacerdote por parte de la iglesia; Esquivias López repartió a todos los niños en diferentes puntos de la comunidad excepto a Ricardo y ahí fue la primera vez que le tocó la pierna. “A mí se me hizo muy extraño, pero no quise decir nada porque existe un respeto hacia la figura del sacerdote y me dio miedo regarla…preferí no decir nada.”

Al poco tiempo, en agosto del 2000, el padre invitó a Ricardo al cine que está en Ortiz Mena y Mirador. Ya iniciada la película, volvió a tocarle la pierna, pero esta vez agarró la mano del joven para colocarla sobre su pene y alentarlo a masturbarlo mientras que él le tocaba sus genitales. “Además del abuso que pasó en la sala, la carga emocional fue demasiada, ya que al salir me hizo sentir culpable y me dijo que yo lo había incitado a hacer eso, es decir, él se encargó de depositar toda la culpa en mí, y yo me la creí, me sentía culpable, sucio, sentía que estaba actuando mal, pero creí que nadie me iba a creer.”

Ricardo jamás había experimentado ningún acercamiento sexual, “yo tenía trece años… imagínate.”, declara en entrevista con El Heraldo de Chihuahua.

Al llegar a casa, el joven, del shock que vivió, no recuerda exactamente qué fue lo que paso, pero su más grande inquietud era la culpabilidad. “Cuando me dijo que era la última vez que pasaba eso porque él era sacerdote y yo lo había hecho pecar, me hizo sentir tan culpable y eso es lo peor. En la noche no pude dormir, tenía la conciencia intranquila y me sentía muy mal.”

Los primeros abusos

“En la oficina sacó su pene y me obligó a hacerle sexo oral, afuera estaba su secretaria, como si nada y con mucha normalidad. Ahorita en retrospectiva me pongo a pensar que él ya sabía cómo actuar y conocía cuáles eran sus escenarios y una vez que terminaba en mi boca revisábamos archivos como si nada hubiera pasado, entraba su secretaria y le servía café o agua.”, recuerda el joven la primera vez que pasó.

“Es difícil decir que alguien de su círculo cercano sabía algo de lo que estaba pasando, porque puedo asegurar que como pasó conmigo hubo otros niños antes y después, pero él se encargó de crear un ambiente de confianza, al punto de que la gente cerraba los ojos y confiaba plenamente. Incluso a mí me pasó que llegué a defenderlo inconscientemente, hay gente muy ingenua que no se imagina lo que pasa y otros quizá sí sospecharon pero como no tenían alguna prueba, pues no llegaba a más. Era bastante extraño que siempre estaba acompañado de algún monaguillo y que tuviera muchos ahijados, no es normal que un padre siempre ande con un niño a su lado.”, comenta Ricardo. 

A pesar de que Ricardo ya había visitado anteriormente la casa de los padres, en donde residía Esquivias López, en una visita justamente dos semanas antes de que cumpliera 14 años, se le hizo raro que no hubiera ningún otro padre. “Estábamos en su casa, pero en esa ocasión estaba él solo, siempre había más padres y esa vez no. Cuando estábamos en la habitación empezó a tocarme las piernas como siempre hasta que me penetró por el ano. Me dolió muchísimo, empecé a sangrar y él no paraba…fueron varios días continuos de sangrado después de eso, yo creo que hubo un desgarre interno, pero mi preocupación era no manchar la ropa para que mis papás no se dieran cuenta.”

Los abusos continuaron de manera sistematizada del 2000 al 2002, con una frecuencia de 5 a 6 veces por semana. “Yo siempre trataba de esconderlo para que mis papás no sospecharan, yo me encargué de protegerlo para que todo pareciera normal.”, aclara Ricardo al preguntarle el por qué seguía con él.

Codependencia emocional

Tiempo después, justamente al momento de que Ricardo terminara su secundaria a Juan José Esquivias López lo hicieron vicerrector de la Universidad Iberoamericana en Torreón, Coahuila. “A pesar de que él (el padre) ya estaba lejos, yo lo visitaba en vacaciones y durante algún tiempo mientras estudiaba la preparatoria en Chihuahua.”, dice Ricardo.

El joven declara que sus visitas a Torreón no eran por petición del sacerdote, sino porque Ricardo tenía una codependencia emocional tan fuerte que necesitaba verlo; psicológicamente es un síndrome conocido como “Síndrome de Estocolmo”, donde la víctima desarrolla cierto apego por su abusador.

Esquivias López le otorgó una beca a Ricardo para que estudiara su licenciatura en Torreón, ahí mismo en la Universidad Iberoamericana. Fue en el 2005 cuando el joven ingresó a la licenciatura en comunicación y de ese año y hasta el 2007 siguió la violencia psicológica y los abusos.

“Sí hubo una dependencia muy, muy fuerte, yo ya lo conocía muy bien y con una mirada o un gesto yo sabía perfectamente qué quería que hiciera. Había días que apagaba mi celular o me escondía en la universidad para no verlo porque yo también ya quería empezar a hacer mi vida, ir con mis amigos, salir en la noche, yo como que ya empezaba a pisar freno pero de una manera discreta.”, comenta el joven.

“No creo que haya sido enamoramiento de mi parte, se hizo una atmósfera en la que no había más alternativas; es como si siempre tomas coca cola y nunca has probado otros refrescos, piensas que es el único que existe y a mí me pasó eso desde los 13. Enamoramiento… no creo porque siempre hubo miedo.”, asegura Ricardo.

Afortunadamente, a finales de 2007, principios de 2008, al sacerdote lo cambiaron a Santiago de Chile. “No sé qué pasaría porque a veces sus movimientos eran muy extraños, yo no sé si la misma compañía de Jesús lo movió por alguna denuncia para protegerlo, que ahorita no lo dudo.”

Ahí es cuando finalmente Ricardo empezó a respirar, y eso lo hizo darse cuenta de lo que había vivido: “Ahí caigo en una depresión muy fuerte, le perdí el sentido a la vida, a mi proyecto… me sentía solo, triste, me empezaron a caer todos los “veintes”, lo que me ayudaba a seguir era que yo sabía que tenía que terminar la carrera, para poder ser algo en la vida.” 

Ricardo aclara que la universidad jamás le condicionó la beca con la que él contaba para sus estudios, que fue el padre quien lo amenazó con quitársela si él decía algo, “dudo mucho que la universidad supiera algo porque Juan José siempre se encargó de mantener todo por debajo, de lo que no dudo es de que los jesuitas lo supieran.”

Al terminar su carrea, Ricardo comenzó su servicio social en Saltillo, específicamente en la casa de los migrantes, donde se ayudó a sí mismo, a darse cuenta de que no era el único que sufría, de que había otras personas que como él, habían sido víctimas de las injusticias y eso fue un parte aguas en su vida. “Me preocupaba por los demás, pero me había abandonado a mí mismo.”

“Ya había cambiado, era más maduro y ya no era un niño”

En Saltillo, Ricardo comenzó a trabajar en los derechos humanos, cuando fue contactado por Esquivias López quien lo invitó a trabajar a Tijuana, pues estaba nuevamente en México, ahora desempeñando un importante cargo en la ciudad fronteriza dentro de la Universidad Iberoamericana.

“Yo lo seguí porque creía que no podía avanzar en mi vida sin él. Yo creía que la única manera de crecer era si lo seguía, ya que me iban a pagar más en ese trabajo e iba a conocer una ciudad nueva. Pero lamentablemente al llegar a Tijuana yo ya era otra persona, ya habían pasado muchos años del primer abuso, yo ya había cambiado y él ya no pudo conmigo, el abuso se dio una o dos veces más, pero esta vez ya muy forzado… de hecho… fue algo muy desagradable, incluso de pensarlo me da mucho asco.”, recuerda Ricardo con el aliento entre cortado.

En esa ocasión Ricardo solo aguantó seis meses, renunció al trabajo y continuó su vida en Ciudad de México, directamente en el Museo de Antropología e Historia y eso le ayudó a seguir con su vida, estando allá, declara que vivió una depresión muy fuerte al pensar en suicidarse, pero finalmente decidió regresar a Chihuahua con su familia.

Se rompe el silencio

“Hasta el 2015 decido hablar con mis papás, decido contarles todo de una manera muy compasiva, porque ellos no eran culpables, ni yo tampoco y teníamos que entender esto para poder sanar todo el dolor. Decido escribirle al Provincial de los Jesuitas, que es el encargado de ellos en todo el país, y le mando una carta por correo electrónico explicándole lo sucedido. Irónicamente pensé que nunca me iban a responder, pero al día siguiente me contestaron diciendo que les daba mucha pena lo sucedido.”, explica Ricardo.

La sorpresa del joven fue cuando el secretario jesuita, Jaime Porras, lo visitó en Chihuahua para platicar: “la conversación que tuvimos fue muy fuerte porque me dijo que lo único que ellos podían hacer por mí era pagarme la ayuda psicológica. -“Ah, y otra cosa… el papa ha señalado que no más cosas por lo obscurito, entonces si nos quieres chantajear con que va a salir la nota, adelante porque nosotros no te vamos a dar dinero si es lo que buscas.”- me comentó el secretario… imagínate mi sorpresa”, asegura Ricardo, decepcionado aún más de ellos.

Después de eso, el año pasado en 2017, Ricardo decidió interponer una denuncia en la fiscalía de Chihuahua, la cual fue desechada porque los delitos ya se habían cometido hace varios años. “De pronto recibí ayuda de varias personas que le apuestan a los derechos humanos y empezamos a realizar las nuevas denuncias basándonos en los convenios internacionales en contra del abuso contra menores y adolescentes donde se explica que a pesar de los años no puede dejarse a un lado.”, describe Ricardo el proceso de denuncia.

“Yo no recupero esos años de mi adolescencia y de mi infancia pero me ayuda a sanar, me ayuda a tener una visión más esperanzadora de la vida, pero creo que es importante levantar la voz y denunciar para que no vuelva a pasar, porque habemos personas muy ingenuas y confiamos, pero es necesario tener precaución y cuidado, en especial con los niños y adolescentes porque es una etapa de mucha vulnerabilidad, se sienten incomprendidos, solos y cualquier muestra de afecto se presta a un abuso. Si yo hubiera podido distinguir entre lo que es un abuso y una simple muestra de afecto, yo creo que esta historia no existiría.”, asegura Ricardo.

Existen, hasta el momento, 12 víctimas más

“Puedo decir que a lo largo de todos estos años identificando a otras personas que sufren o han sufrido violaciones por parte de sacerdotes, hasta el momento tengo ubicados a doce personas más y creemos que puede haber más. He hablado con algunos de ellos, pero no están dispuestos a denunciar, tienen miedo, no quieren exponerse públicamente, no quieren que la familia se entere y lo entiendo, porque es todo un proceso. A mí me tomó 16, 17 años y creo que cada quien tiene que vivir su propio proceso de sanación y cada quien sabrá que hace con su historia.”, segura el involucrado.

El lunes 20 de agosto, después de que el periódico La Jornada publicara parte del caso de Ricardo, la asociación civil en donde trabajaba el padre Juan José Esquivias, en la ciudad de Guadalajara, mandó una notificación donde se explicaba que el sacerdote había dejado de laborar ahí y el sitio web de la asociación, así como la página de Facebook desaparecieron. 

Actualmente Ricardo Legarda es el director académico de la universidad de la Tarahumara, y ha trabajado en el Instituto Chihuahuense de las Mujeres, colaborando con la parte de los derechos humanos y la prevención de la violencia. 

Ricardo se describe como un hombre que ha avanzado en la vida, que ha tratado de dar lo mejor y de brindarle lo mejor de él a los demás, se considera a sí mismo como responsable, honesto, y como alguien que busca el bien de los demás. “Soy un ser humano con heridas y cicatrices pero eso no me define, tengo sueños y esperanzas y en un futuro me gustaría escribir un libro sobre esto para ayudar a prevenir este tipo de situaciones, también quiero desarrollar reformas y leyes en este tema. Espero que las victimas que hayan sufrido o lo estén haciendo en este momento, sepan que ellos no son culpables de lo que está pasando, que a veces se disfraza el amor con máscaras. Es importante que confíen en su familia, en sus amigos y denunciarlo es mi recomendación más grande.”

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Former Vatican envoy pens j’accuse letter in McCarrick case

DUBLIN (IRELAND)
Associated Press via Miami Herald

August 26, 2018

By Nicole Winfield

Note: See also Viganò’s “Testimony” in English translation and the Italian original; Richard Sipe’s 4/20/08 letter to Pope Benedict XVI and Sipe’s 7/28/16 letter to Bishop McElroy of San Diego, both cited by Viganò.]

The Vatican’s retired ambassador to the United States has penned an 11-page letter accusing senior Vatican officials of knowing as early as 2000 that the disgraced former archbishop of Washington, ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, regularly invited seminarians into his bed but they still promoted him to cardinal.

The letter, an extraordinary j’accuse from a one-time Holy See diplomat, also accuses Pope Francis of having initially rehabilitated McCarrick despite being informed of his penchant for young seminarians in 2013, soon after he was elected pope.

The National Catholic Register and another conservative site, LifeSiteNews, published the letter attributed to Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano on Sunday as the pope was wrapping up a two-day visit to Ireland.

Vigano, 77, a conservative whose hard-line anti-gay views are well known, also urged the reformist pope to resign over the issue. He and the pope have long been on opposite ideological sides, with the pope more a pastor and Vigano more a cultural warrior.

The Vatican didn’t immediately comment on the letter or confirm its authenticity.

In it, Vigano accused the former Vatican secretaries of state under the previous two popes of having ignored detailed denunciations against McCarrick for years. He said Pope Benedict XVI eventually sanctioned McCarrick in 2009 or 2010 to a lifetime of penance and prayer, but that Francis subsequently rehabilitated him.

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Ex-Nuncio Accuses Pope Francis of Failing to Act on McCarrick’s Abuse

IRONDALE (AL)
National Catholic Register

August 25, 2018

By Edward Pentin

[Note: See also Viganò’s “Testimony” in English translation and the Italian original; Richard Sipe’s 4/20/08 letter to Pope Benedict XVI and Sipe’s 7/28/16 letter to Bishop McElroy of San Diego, both cited by Viganò.]

In a written testimony, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò claims Pope Francis withdrew sanctions against Archbishop Theodore McCarrick.

In an extraordinary 11-page written testament, a former apostolic nuncio to the United States has accused several senior prelates of complicity in covering up Archbishop Theodore McCarrick’s allegations of sexual abuse, and has claimed that Pope Francis knew about sanctions imposed on then-Cardinal McCarrick by Pope Benedict XVI but chose to repeal them.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, 77, who served as apostolic nuncio in Washington D.C. from 2011 to 2016, said that in the late 2000s, Benedict had “imposed on Cardinal McCarrick sanctions similar to those now imposed on him by Pope Francis” and that Viganò personally told Pope Francis about those sanctions in 2013.

Archbishop Viganò said in his written statement, simultaneously released to the Register and other media, (see full text below) that Pope Francis “continued to cover” for McCarrick and not only did he “not take into account the sanctions that Pope Benedict had imposed on him” but also made McCarrick “his trusted counselor.” Viganò said that the former archbishop of Washington advised the Pope to appoint a number of bishops in the United States, including Cardinals Blase Cupich of Chicago and Joseph Tobin of Newark.

Archbishop Viganò, who said his “conscience dictates” that the truth be known as “the corruption has reached the very top of the Church’s hierarchy,” ended his testimony by calling on Pope Francis and all of those implicated in the cover up of Archbishop McCarrick’s abuse to resign.

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August 25, 2018

Pope Francis meets survivors of clerical sex abuse in Ireland

DUBLIN (IRELAND)
Irish Times

August 25, 2018

By Ronan McGreevy

Survivors tell pope he must hold to account religious orders who ran Mother and Baby Homes

Pope Francis has met survivors of clerical sexual abuse in Ireland and also those who spent time in industrial schools, seminaries and Mother and Baby Homes.

The pope was asked at the hour and a half long meeting on Saturday afternoon to use his influence to get the religious orders who ran the Mother and Baby Homes to “acknowledge their actions and issue an open and unqualified apology” to mothers and their children.

The meeting took place at the Papal Nuncio’s residence on Dublin’s Navan Road on the first day of the pope’s visit to Ireland, the first by a pope in 39 years.

Eight victims were present. Among them were Marie Collins, who resigned from the Vatican’s Commission for the Protection of Minors, Clodagh Malone, a survivor of St Patrick’s Mother and Baby Home, and Paul Redmond who was born in a Mother and Baby home and has written the book entitled ‘The Adoption Machine’.

Fr Paddy McCafferty, who was abused as a seminarian in Wexford, and Bernadette Fahy who spent much of her childhood in the notorious Goldenbridge Orphanage, were also there.

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Attorney for victims says Hawley’s investigation of archdiocese is ‘exactly backwards’

ST. LOUIS (MO)
St. Louis American

August 24, 2018

By Chris King

http://www.stlamerican.com/news/local_news/attorney-for-victims-says-hawley-s-investigation-of-archdiocese-is/article_2eba9cca-a7eb-11e8-96a7-ff9f66824fe9.html

She challenged archbishop to release any victims who settled from gag agreement

“Victims of sexual abuse of any kind deserve to have their voices heard, and Missourians deserve to know if this misconduct has occurred in their communities,” Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley stated on August 23, when announcing an independent review of the Archdiocese of St. Louis regarding allegations of sexual abuse by clergy members.

That’s what Hawley – who is running for U.S. Senate as a Republican in the November 6 general election – said when the archbishop called. “By inviting this independent review, the archdiocese is demonstrating a willingness to be transparent and expose any potential wrongdoing,” Hawley stated.

Nicole Gorovsky, an attorney with clients who claim to have been sexually abused by priests in Missouri, said she and her clients did not receive the same warm welcome from Hawley when they asked him to investigate the church.

“I stood outside your office with survivors of childhood sexual abuse to ask you to organize an investigation into abuses within the Catholic Church in Missouri. We asked for an investigation like the one that occurred in Pennsylvania which revealed over 300 perpetrators and likely over 1,000 victims,” Gorovsky wrote to Hawley on August 24 in a letter that she shared with media.

“You responded that you did not have the power to do such an investigation.”

Indeed, Hawley claimed, in announcing his investigation, that he was empowered to do so by an invitation from Archbishop Robert J. Carlson.

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They baptized their children for school places. Now regret is setting in.

ATLANTA (GA)
CNN

August 25, 2018

By Kara Fox

Leixlip, Ireland – Fiona and her husband aren’t religious. They don’t go to Mass, take communion or recite the Holy Rosary.

But twice in recent years, the couple have driven halfway across Ireland to baptize their children at their families’ community parishes.

The reason? Their children’s education.

The sacrament — and the certificate that comes with it — has long held the key for parents hoping to secure a place for a child’s first day at school in Ireland, where approximately 90% of primary schools have a Catholic ethos.
Although those schools are state-funded, their Catholic Church patrons set the admission guidelines, giving Catholic children priority enrollment over non-Catholics in a crowded system.

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Pope Francis heads to Ireland amid a mixture of anticipation and anguish over abuse

PITTSBURGH (PA)
Post-Gazette

August 24, 2018

By Peter Smith

Dublin – Roisin Galvin was 12 years old the last time a pope came to say Mass at Dublin’s vast public space, Phoenix Park.

The year was 1979, and the pontiff was a still-vigorous John Paul II, greeted enthusiastically by an overwhelmingly Catholic population.

Back then, all of Ms. Galvin’s friends went to Mass regularly, but now she finds it difficult to raise her five children Catholic in a culture in which many Irish have left the faith or keep it in name only.

“There is only one Mass where I live on a Sunday, and all the priests are very elderly, ” said Ms. Galvin, who lives in a village in County Dublin. “I’m wondering what’s going to happen. Most of them are octogenarians.”

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Victims’ group calls on pope to name clerical sex abusers

DUBLIN (IRELAND)
Irish Times

August 25, 2018

By Simon Carswell

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/victims-group-calls-on-pope-to-name-clerical-sex-abusers-1.3606741

End Clergy Abuse group wants zero tolerance of sex abuse under church law

Clerical sex abuse is “a global problem” requiring “a global solution”, a worldwide group of abuse victims meeting in Dublin has said. End Clergy Abuse, which represents clerical abuse survivors and activists, called on Pope Francis to follow the example of survivors who have come forward and take action to name clerical sex abusers and hold bishops who covered it up to account.

The group wants the pope to bring zero tolerance of clerical sex abuse into force under church law, remove from office bishops who covered up sex crimes by clergy, and publish a global registry of confirmed clerical abusers held by the Vatican.

“The time of words should be over and the time of action should start now,” Matthias Katsch, an abuse survivor from Germany, told a press conference on the eve of the pope’s arrival in Ireland for a 36-hour visit, the first by a pontiff since 1979.

Clerical abuse victims and campaigners from Ireland, the UK, Belgium and the US came together in Dublin for only the second meeting of global campaigners. They spoke to reporters near the Catholic Church’s World Meeting of Families at the RDS where they were earlier invited to listen to a panel discussion on “Safeguarding Children and Vulnerable Adults” and the Vatican’s response to the latest allegations of clerical child sex abuse and cover-up by the church.

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2 more states launch reviews of Catholic Church records on sexual abuse

PITTSBURGH (PA)
Tribune-Review

August 24, 2018

By Deb Erdley

A Pennsylvania grand jury report that detailed seven decades of allegations of sexual abuse of 1,000 children by Catholic priests and subsequent cover-ups is reverberating across the Midwest, as church and law enforcement officials here continue to clock more reports on hotlines.

State attorneys general in Missouri and Illinois on Thursday announced reviews of Catholic Church records there, citing interest generated by the Pennsylvania report.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan specifically referenced Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s grand jury report. She said the report identified at least seven priests with connections to Illinois.

“The Chicago Archdiocese has agreed to meet with me. I plan to reach out to the other dioceses in Illinois to have the same conversation and expect the bishops will agree and cooperate fully. If not, I will work with states’ attorneys and law enforcement throughout Illinois to investigate,” Madigan said Thursday.

The same day Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley announced he was opening an independent review of the Archdiocese of St. Louis regarding allegations of sexual abuse by priests.

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Pope Francis speaks of failure to address ‘repugnant crimes’ of clerical sex abuse

DUBLIN (IRELAND)
Irish Times

August 25, 2018

By Simon Carswell

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/pope-francis-speaks-of-failure-to-address-repugnant-crimes-of-clerical-sex-abuse-1.3607788

Failure ‘rightly given rise to outrage and remains a source of pain and shame for the Catholic community’

Pope Francis, in the first speech of his visit to Ireland, has recognised how the Church’s failure to address the “repugnant crimes” of clerical sexual abuse “remains a source of pain and shame” for Irish Catholics.

Speaking at Dublin Castle almost two hours after landing in Ireland, the pontiff in addressing the scandal that has damaged the Church’s standing since the last visit of a pope almost four decades ago, said he was “very conscious” of the circumstances of “our most vulnerable brothers and sisters.”

Speaking after a speech by the Taoiseach, the pope specifically made reference to “women who in the past have endured particularly difficult situations” – a veiled reference to the treatment of Irish women in the Magdalene Laundries and other Church-run institutions.

“With regard to the most vulnerable, I cannot fail to acknowledge the grave scandal caused in Ireland by the abuse of young people by members of the Church charged with responsibility for their protection and education,” Francis, speaking in Italian, told an audience that included Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.

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Former Pennsylvania altar boy says he stole from church to avenge abuse

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Reuters

August 24, 2018

By Vanessa Johnston

Mike McDonnell was an altar boy who loved to sing Latin hymns at his church in suburban Philadelphia, but his Roman Catholic faith became a source of torment at age 12 when he woke up to find a priest molesting him in the vacation bed the clergyman forced him to share.

“From that day forth, I would never be that same child,” said McDonnell, now 49. “I went into shock mode and shut down. I would hold onto those secrets for 20-plus years.”

McDonnell, now a peer counselor at a drug and alcohol treatment facility, agreed to share his personal story with Reuters in the wake of a stunning grand jury report of Roman Catholic priests accused of abusing more than 1,000 children across Pennsylvania. He said he wanted to encourage other victims to emerge from the shadows to begin their own healing.

While the incident at age 12 broke him, he said the abuse started at age 10, when another priest molested him. “At that age, I wasn’t sure the things that were going on,” he said.

His decades-long road to recovery was fraught with alcohol abuse, broken marriages and even a criminal record. The Archdiocese of Philadelphia paid for McDonnell’s counseling sessions but he seldom attended. Instead he forged receipts and eventually was convicted of pocketing more than $100,000 in a theft he called payback for the abuse.

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US Sen. Bob Casey calls for strengthening child abuse reporting law, in wake of Pennsylvania grand jury report

PITTSBURGH (PA)
Action 4 News

August 24, 2018

By Bob Mayo

Philadelphia – In the wake of the findings by a Pennsylvania grand jury, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey is calling for strengthening laws to better protect children from sexual abuse.

“The grand jury report was a chronicle of pure evil. Pure evil. There’s no other way to say it,” Casey, D-Pa., said at a news conference in Philadelphia on Friday.

Casey, a Catholic, feels the issue is larger than the six dioceses the grand jury examined.

“We should all be angry,” Casey said. “You don’t have to be a Catholic. You don’t even have to be an American. Just as a human being, we should be angry.”

Casey is proposing federal action to press for tougher and more uniform standards across Pennsylvania and all states. His bill would seek to require that suspected child abuse be reported directly to law enforcement or state authorities.

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Pennsylvania Supreme Court tweaks grand jury secrecy rules

ALLENTOWN (PA)
Morning Call

August 24, 2018

By Steve Esack

[See also a copy of the Supreme Court ruling.]

Harrisburg – The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has tweaked secrecy rules related to how defense lawyers can share testimony or evidence related to clients called before grand juries.

The 5-2 ruling issued Tuesday stemmed from a legal dispute that arose during the statewide grand jury investigation of clergy child sex abuse in six Catholic dioceses, including Allentown. The justices ruled that a grand jury nondisclosure form, created by the attorney general’s office, unfairly muzzled defense lawyers’ rights and their abilities to serve their clients.

The ruling allows defense lawyers to seek their clients’ permission to publicly share the content and scope of their testimony to the grand jury, which operates in private. Witnesses have always been permitted to disclose their own testimony.

“The obligation of confidentially generally extends to all matters occurring before the grand jury, which includes, but is not limited to, what transpires in a grand jury room,” wrote Chief Justice Thomas Saylor. “A lawyer otherwise subject to secrecy, however, may disclose a client’s own testimony to the extent that the client would otherwise be free to do so under applicable law.”

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Pa. grand jury: When she reported being abused by a priest, the church investigated her

YORK (PA)
York Daily Record

August 24, 2018

By Mike Argento

“The church was our life,” Bortz said. “We didn’t do anything that didn’t involve the church. It was our life.”

When she was in ninth grade at Allentown Central Catholic High School, her religion teacher was Father Francis “Frank” Fromholzer. She didn’t know him very well; she was more acquainted with the priests who were friends of the family. At one point, Fromholzer suggested taking Bortz and her best friend on a trip to the Poconos. It wasn’t all that unusual, Bortz said. Priests were always taking kids from the parish on outings, such as roller skating or bowling; for many of the kids from working-class and troubled families, it was a treat that their own families could ill afford.

While driving to the Poconos, according to testimony by Bortz and her friend to the grand jury, Fromholzer fondled the girls. In the Poconos, Bortz recalled, the priest laid out a blanket and started kissing her. He did other things. She recalled it hurt, she told the grand jury. “It was confusing,” she told the grand jury, “because – you were always told you were going to hell if you let anybody touch you. But then you’ve got father doing it…”

Fromholzer, according to her grand jury testimony, continued to harass her through the ninth grade. It stopped, she told the grand jury, when she entered 10th grade and was in a different building. She didn’t report the abuse immediately. It just wasn’t something you talked about, she said.

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Allentown Diocese reports new claims of child sex abuse by priests

ALLENTOWN (PA)
Morning Call

August 24, 2018

By Tim Darragh

Fourteen people claiming to have been sexually abused by priests and not previously reporting it have contacted the Allentown Diocese since the Aug. 14 release of a grand jury report investigating six Pennsylvania dioceses, a spokesman said Friday.

The spokesman, Matt Kerr, said none of the priests identified by the accusers is in ministry.

The increase in accusers comes as calls to a state hotline specifically set up by Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s office to field calls about clergy sex abuse continue to surge. As of Friday, 656 people had contacted the hotline, said Shapiro’s spokesman, Joe Grace. At the beginning of the week, the hotline had received 400 calls.

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Clerical abuse victims call for zero-tolerance approach

CORK (IRELAND)
Irish Examiner

August 24, 2018

Clerical abuse victims have called for a zero-tolerance approach to be taken against priests involved in the child abuse scandals.

A global survivors group also proposed a list of abusive priests be made public in an effort to protect others.

Members of the Ending Clerical Abuse (ECA) group – aimed at holding the Catholic church to account for clerical sex abuse – gathered in Dublin today to recount their abuse stories on the eve of the Pope’s visit to Ireland.

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Pope Francis speech: Calls clerical abuse scandal in Ireland ‘repugnant’, makes thinly-veiled reference to abortion referendum

DUBLIN (IRELAND)
Irish Independent

August 25, 2018

By Kevin Doyle

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/pope-francis-in-ireland/pope-francis-speech-calls-clerical-abuse-scandal-in-ireland-repugnant-makes-thinlyveiled-reference-to-abortion-referendum-37250833.html

– Pope Francis speech: Calls clerical abuse scandal in Ireland ‘repugnant’, makes thinly-veiled reference to abortion referendum
– Pope: Measures must be taken in response to ‘betrayal of trust’
– Warns about culture that doesn’t respect the unborn
– Varadkar: Church must acknowledge same-sex families and adopt zero tolerance towards abusers

MEASURES must be taken in response to the “betrayal of trust” and “repugnant” abuse inflicted on abuse victims in Ireland, Pope Francis has said.

In his first public statement since arriving in Dublin, the Pontiff said the Catholic Church must work to “remedy past mistakes and to adopt stringent norms meant to ensure that they do not happen again”.

Speaking in front of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar in Dublin Castle, Pope Francis also risked raising the temperature around his visit with a thinly-veiled reference to the abortion referendum.

He questioned whether a “materialistic ‘throwaway culture’” has made people “increasingly indifferent to the poor and to the most defenceless members of our human family, including the unborn, deprived of the very right to life”.

However, the Taoiseach told the audience that Ireland has “voted in our parliament and by referendum to modernise our laws – understanding that marriages do not always work, that women should make their own decisions, and that families come in many forms including those headed by a grandparent, lone parent or same-sex parents or parents who are divorced”.

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AG Lisa Madigan to examine Illinois ties of priests named in Pennsylvania sex abuse report

CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

August 24, 2018

By Angie Leventis Lourgos

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan wants to meet with Catholic church leaders throughout the state to ensure “a complete and accurate accounting” of alleged child sex abuse by priests with local ties who were named in the Pennsylvania grand jury report.

At least seven of the more than 300 Roman Catholic priests named in the Pennsylvania report this month have Illinois connections.

The Chicago Archdiocese has agreed to meet with Madigan, and she plans to speak with other Catholic bishops throughout the state, she said in a statement released Thursday.

“The Catholic Church has a moral obligation to provide its parishioners and the public a complete and accurate accounting of all sexually inappropriate behavior,” she said.

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Pope Francis Returns to a Country Transformed and a Church in Tatters

NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

August 25, 2018

By Jason Horowitz

Nearly 40 years since the last papal visit to Ireland, Pope Francis arrived on Saturday to a transformed country where the once-mighty Roman Catholic Church is in tatters, its authority buffeted by deepening secularization and a global sex abuse crisis challenging Francis’ papacy.

“I’m happy for this visit,” Francis said on the papal plane before he landed in Dublin, where he was greeted on the tarmac by local bishops and children who offered him flowers. He added that it “touches my heart to return to Ireland after 38 years. I was here for nearly three months to practice English in 1980. And for me this is a great memory.”

For Catholics around the globe, this return visit promises to be more memorable.

As recently as a few weeks ago, the pope’s visit to Ireland mostly promised an awkward encounter in an estranged relationship. Since the last papal visit — by John Paul II in 1979 — Ireland, once a cornerstone of the church, has abandoned its teachings by legalizing divorce and gay marriage. The country now has a gay prime minister, and just a few months ago voted to lift a ban on abortion.

But recent revelations in the United States and Chile of the institutional covering-up of sexual abuse by clerics have lent sudden urgency to the pope’s visit, where he will speak at the church’s ninth World Meeting of Families. The issue now threatens to overshadow the visit by Francis, who has struggled to grasp the enormity of the scourge throughout his papacy.

Catholics worldwide wait to see whether he will use Ireland, with its own painful history of abuse, as a symbolic stage upon which to announce concrete measures to combat a crisis that threatens the future of his church. It is not clear that he will.

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The Pope in Ireland: Full coverage of Pope Francis in Ireland

DUBLIN (IRELAND)
Irish Times

August 25, 2018

By Sorcha Pollak et al.

LIVE: The Pope in Ireland

[The Irish Times is maintaining a Live Blog of the visit of Pope Francis to Ireland.]

13:02 “Today, as in the past, the men and women who live in this country strive to enrich the life of the nation with the wisdom borne of their faith. Even in Ireland’s darkest hours they found in that faith a source of courage needed to forge a future of freedom and dignity, justice and solidarity. The Christian message has been an integral part of that experience… it is my prayer that Ireland will not be forgetful of the powerful strains of the Christian message.”

12:56 Pope Francis: “I am very conscious of the circumstances of the our most vulnerable brothers and sisters, I think of those women who have in the past endured difficult situations. I cannot fail to acknowledge the grave scandal caused in Ireland of the abuse of young people by the members of the church…”

12:53 Speaking of the Northern Irish conflict, the Pope said: “We give thanks for the two decades of peace that have followed this historic agreement with the hope that the peace process will overcome every remaining obstacle and give birth to a future of mutual trust.”

12:52 The Pope has spoken of the “intractable conflicts and violence, contempt for human dignity and human rights and the growing divide between rich and poor. We need to recover in every instance of political and social life the sense of being a true family of peoples.”

12:50 Pope Francis is now speaking at Dublin Castle

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August 24, 2018

Un oscuro estigma para la curia argentina

VENADO TUERTO (ARGENTINA)
La Voz [Córdoba, Argentina]

August 24, 2018

By Gustavo Di Palma, Especial

Read original article

Los casos de pedofilia en el ámbito eclesiástico, en Argentina, son otro motivo de inquietud para el papa Francisco. Escasa ayuda de las autoridades locales a la Justicia y a las víctimas.

Si se sigue la tradición de tomar como punto de referencia el escándalo del cura Julio César Grassi, condenado a 15 años de prisión por abuso sexual infantil y corrupción de menores, la Iglesia argentina ya acumula desde 2002 hasta la actualidad 66 acusaciones por el mismo delito. Esto confirma el promedio de cuatro sacerdotes denunciados por año.

Como los registros oficiales sobre la cuestión son inexistentes, los datos surgen de una detallada investigación realizada por la agencia de noticias Télam a mediados de 2017, más el relevamiento de distintas fuentes judiciales aportada por la Red de Sobrevivientes de Abuso Sexual Eclesiástico de Argentina, que puso en evidencia cuatro nuevos casos en los últimos meses. Tampoco hay estadísticas oficiales sobre la cantidad de víctimas de depredación sexual ejercida por miembros del clero, aunque Carlos Lombardi, abogado de la red, aseguró a La Voz que “hay cientos de casos”.

La Red de Sobrevivientes de Abuso Sexual Eclesiástico, que se constituyó en 2014 para acompañar a víctimas de delitos sexuales cometidos por clérigos de la Iglesia Católica, es un espacio donde confluyen experiencias, testimonios y asistencia legal y psicológica para esas situaciones. En un reciente encuentro realizado en la ciudad Paraná, la organización concluyó que “existe una red muy grande compuesta por entregadores, abusadores, cómplices y encubridores, todos miembros de la Iglesia”.

La Justicia argentina condenó penalmente hasta el momento a nueve curas investigados por delitos sexuales, que afectaron a menores. El otro dato significativo es que la propia Iglesia investigó con sus normas canónicas ocho casos, pero sólo en tres procedió a la expulsión de los sacerdotes, mientras otros tres curas fueron declarados inocentes mediante los procedimientos propios de la institución religiosa.

Grassi, por ejemplo, podría dar misa y ejercer sus funciones como cualquier cura si quisiera, pese a tener sentencia firme de la Corte Suprema de Justicia. Aunque Francisco reconoció desde el inicio de su papado la complicidad de la Iglesia con los curas pedófilos y se muestra sensibilizado con el tema, en su país de origen las sanciones aplicadas en el ámbito eclesiástico sobre los casos denunciados no satisfacen a la sociedad.

El criterio que prevalece en la Iglesia hasta aquí es trasladar de ciudad o de país a los curas abusadores, mientras que la decisión de acudir a la Justicia ordinaria corre por cuenta de las propias víctimas o de sus familiares. “Es difícil cuantificar la cantidad de casos que jamás salen a la luz, por el miedo o pudor de las personas afectadas”, señala Lombardi.

En la lista de curas denunciados por abuso sexual, hay 15 que jamás fueron investigados. Dos de esos sacerdotes murieron antes de que la Justicia indagara sus acciones.

Entre los hechos relevados, hay situaciones de ribetes muy llamativos. Ese es el caso de Luigi Spinelli, consejero del Instituto Próvolo de Mendoza donde al menos 25 chicos sordomudos fueron sometidos sexualmente durante por lo menos una década. Del paradero de Spinelli, que también había sido denunciado en Verona (Italia), no se tuvieron novedades hasta mediados de 2017, cuando se supo que había fallecido en 2016 en coincidencia con la divulgación pública del escándalo. Sin embargo, persisten las dudas, porque su cuerpo nunca apareció.

Si se sigue la tradición de tomar como punto de referencia el escándalo del cura Julio César Grassi, condenado a 15 años de prisión por abuso sexual infantil y corrupción de menores, la Iglesia argentina ya acumula desde 2002 hasta la actualidad 66 acusaciones por el mismo delito. Esto confirma el promedio de cuatro sacerdotes denunciados por año.

Como los registros oficiales sobre la cuestión son inexistentes, los datos surgen de una detallada investigación realizada por la agencia de noticias Télam a mediados de 2017, más el relevamiento de distintas fuentes judiciales aportada por la Red de Sobrevivientes de Abuso Sexual Eclesiástico de Argentina, que puso en evidencia cuatro nuevos casos en los últimos meses. Tampoco hay estadísticas oficiales sobre la cantidad de víctimas de depredación sexual ejercida por miembros del clero, aunque Carlos Lombardi, abogado de la red, aseguró a La Voz que “hay cientos de casos”.https://e17d0485ea299751fce24a97efbf3121.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.html

La Red de Sobrevivientes de Abuso Sexual Eclesiástico, que se constituyó en 2014 para acompañar a víctimas de delitos sexuales cometidos por clérigos de la Iglesia Católica, es un espacio donde confluyen experiencias, testimonios y asistencia legal y psicológica para esas situaciones. En un reciente encuentro realizado en la ciudad Paraná, la organización concluyó que “existe una red muy grande compuesta por entregadores, abusadores, cómplices y encubridores, todos miembros de la Iglesia”.

La Justicia argentina condenó penalmente hasta el momento a nueve curas investigados por delitos sexuales, que afectaron a menores. El otro dato significativo es que la propia Iglesia investigó con sus normas canónicas ocho casos, pero sólo en tres procedió a la expulsión de los sacerdotes, mientras otros tres curas fueron declarados inocentes mediante los procedimientos propios de la institución religiosa.

Grassi, por ejemplo, podría dar misa y ejercer sus funciones como cualquier cura si quisiera, pese a tener sentencia firme de la Corte Suprema de Justicia. Aunque Francisco reconoció desde el inicio de su papado la complicidad de la Iglesia con los curas pedófilos y se muestra sensibilizado con el tema, en su país de origen las sanciones aplicadas en el ámbito eclesiástico sobre los casos denunciados no satisfacen a la sociedad.https://e17d0485ea299751fce24a97efbf3121.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.html

El criterio que prevalece en la Iglesia hasta aquí es trasladar de ciudad o de país a los curas abusadores, mientras que la decisión de acudir a la Justicia ordinaria corre por cuenta de las propias víctimas o de sus familiares. “Es difícil cuantificar la cantidad de casos que jamás salen a la luz, por el miedo o pudor de las personas afectadas”, señala Lombardi.

En la lista de curas denunciados por abuso sexual, hay 15 que jamás fueron investigados. Dos de esos sacerdotes murieron antes de que la Justicia indagara sus acciones.

Entre los hechos relevados, hay situaciones de ribetes muy llamativos. Ese es el caso de Luigi Spinelli, consejero del Instituto Próvolo de Mendoza donde al menos 25 chicos sordomudos fueron sometidos sexualmente durante por lo menos una década. Del paradero de Spinelli, que también había sido denunciado en Verona (Italia), no se tuvieron novedades hasta mediados de 2017, cuando se supo que había fallecido en 2016 en coincidencia con la divulgación pública del escándalo. Sin embargo, persisten las dudas, porque su cuerpo nunca apareció.https://e17d0485ea299751fce24a97efbf3121.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.html

Rubén Pardo, exsacerdote de Quilmes que tenía VIH, falleció en 2005 tras ser denunciado por la violación de un chico de 14 años en 2002. Aunque nunca fue juzgado, la Justicia condenó al obispado de esa ciudad por encubrimiento y lo obligó al pago de una indemnización. Otro cura que tenía VIH, Héctor Pared, fue condenado a 24 años de prisión en marzo de 2003 por el caso de un abuso sexual en Florencio Varela, pero murió en septiembre de ese mismo año.

A propósito del escándalo que afecta a la Iglesia de Estados Unidos, los registros extraoficiales de Argentina también muestran hechos que tienen conexión con lo que ocurre en aquel país. Uno de esos casos es el del cura Atilio Jesús Garay, que llegó a ser candidato a intendente de la localidad entrerriana de General Campos pese a estar acusado de violar en forma reiterada a una chica en la ciudad norteamericana de Los Ángeles, en 2004. Ese es uno de los hechos que está sin condena hasta el momento.

El otro hecho que conecta a la Iglesia argentina con los casos que conmocionan al clero estadounidense es el de Richard Suttle, denunciado en 2008 por delitos sexuales cometidos entre 1982 y 1983 en una escuela primaria de Prescott (Arizona). Ese sacerdote, cuyo caso tampoco recibió condena, fue trasladado en 2013 a Buenos Aires como integrante de misiones religiosas de las Naciones Unidas.

En Córdoba

La provincia de Córdoba tampoco es ajena a hechos de abuso sexual cometidos por sacerdotes católicos. A mediados de 1998, el cura de Berrotarán Walter Eduardo Avanzini fue mostrado in fraganti por el programa periodístico A decir verdad, que conducía el periodista Miguel Clariá en Teleocho, mientras pagaba para tener sexo con adolescentes en los baños de la plaza San Martín de la ciudad de Córdoba, nada menos que frente a la Catedral.

El asunto no fue investigado por la Justicia ni por la Iglesia y Avanzini, ya alejado del sacerdocio, consiguió empleo en el Ministerio de Educación de la Provincia. En 2016, aprobó en la Universidad Católica de Córdoba una maestría sobre Investigación Educativa, con una tesis titulada “Acoso entre pares. Desde la mirada de los actores educativos adultos”. La última referencia lo ubica desde febrero de 2017 como “asesor técnico pedagógico” en la Fundación Valorarte de Villa Dolores, orientada a la educación de nivel medio, según su perfil en una red social.

Otro caso autóctono es el de Carlos Richard Ibáñez Morino, acusado en la década de 1990 por abusar de al menos 10 niños y adolescentes en Bell Ville. Ibáñez Morino, oriundo de la ciudad de Caucete (San Juan) fue suspendido por el Arzobispado de Córdoba, pero continuó ejerciendo tareas sacerdotales en Paraguay, donde se recluyó en 1992. Incluso hay testigos que lo vieron en una zona reservada para sacerdotes durante la visita del papa Francisco a Asunción, según informó el Diario de Cuyo.

En la actualidad, se espera el cumplimiento de un proyecto de extradición aprobado por la Corte Suprema de Justicia de Paraguay para que el exsacerdote de Bell Ville pueda ser juzgado en suelo cordobés. Por este caso, los medios paraguayos proyectan un manto de sospecha sobre la jerarquía eclesiástica de ese país, a la que acusan de encubrir a Ibáñez Morino.

Luis Alberto Bergliaffa es otro sacerdote suspendido por el Arzobispado cordobés tras una investigación canónica que duró tres años, a raíz de una denuncia de abuso sexual contra una menor. Bergliaffa, que no fue expulsado de la Iglesia, se desempeñó hasta 2014 en la parroquia Nuestra Señora de Fátima del capitalino barrio Matienzo, y su caso nunca llegó hasta la Justicia ordinaria.

El año pasado, el Arzobispado desmintió a través de un comunicado que Bergliaffa hubiera sido trasladado a Río Negro, a raíz de informes periodísticos que daban cuenta de su presencia en una parroquia de esa provincia. El texto divulgado por las autoridades eclesiásticas aclara: “El presbítero Luis Bergliaffa tiene prohibido, por el término de 10 años, el ejercicio público del ministerio sacerdotal. Dicha pena puede ser prolongada o agravada, en el caso que no cumpla las determinaciones del decreto penal. Desde la misma Santa Sede, se ha recibido la indicación que, durante este tiempo, debe trabajar para obtener su sustento”.

Otro hecho que impactó en la Iglesia cordobesa fue el escándalo de pedofilia que tuvo como epicentro La Casa del Niño del Padre Aguilera de Unquillo. Los abusos sexuales contra niños que vivían en el hogar terminaron con condenas de la Justicia cordobesa. En tanto, el Gobierno de Córdoba, a través de la Secretaría de Niñez, Adolescencia y Familia (Senaf), dispuso dos intervenciones a la institución.

Por último, no puede omitirse el caso del actual obispo de Río Cuarto, Adolfo Uriona, que aunque fue sobreseído por la Justicia, carga sobre sus espaldas la denuncia por supuesto manoseo formulada por una joven cuando se desempeñaba en el obispado de Añatuya (Santiago del Estero), en 2006. Su caso no se encuadra en el compromiso de “tolerancia cero” del papa Francisco, que lo designó en su actual cargo en 2014.

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In a single Pennsylvania parish, 5 priests accused of abuse

SHAVERTOWN (PA)
The Associated Press

August 24, 2018

By Michael Rubinkam

A lacerating grand jury report on sexual abuse by Catholic clergy in Pennsylvania is especially difficult reading for a church where five of the accused priests served as pastor.

For parishioners of St. Therese’s Church, outside Wilkes-Barre in northeastern Pennsylvania, the report dredged up painful memories of broken trust and provoked disgust at church leaders who kept abusive priests on the job. At least two instances took place at the church, according to the grand jury. St. Therese’s lost a pastor over sexual misconduct as recently as 2006.

Yet for all the heartbreak, the pews were full last weekend. And while it’s too early to tell whether the bombshell revelations will affect attendance or giving at St. Therese’s, a vibrant parish serving about 1,500 families, church members say they separate their faith from the evil acts of supposedly holy men.

“Do we know that our priests are men and that sometimes they do bad things? Yes, we do. Do we want them in our community anymore? No, definitely not,” longtime parishioner Kathie Kemmerer said after morning Mass this week. But “inasmuch as we’re upset about everything and we feel terrible for the victims, we’ll keep coming. We’ll keep coming because this is the place to get God’s grace.”

The grand jury found that some 300 predator priests sexually abused more than 1,000 children since the 1940s, abetted by bishops and other high-ranking church officials who orchestrated a cover-up to avoid public scandal and financial liability. The Pennsylvania report, along with recent sexual abuse allegations against the retired archbishop of Washington, ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, has plunged the Catholic Church into crisis more than 15 years after the clergy abuse scandal first broke in Boston.

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‘Church has fallen over a cliff’

IRELAND
BBC News

August 24, 2018

Abuse survivor Marie Collins says she wants to hear a clear plan of action on dealing with clerical sex abuse from Pope Francis during his two-day visit to the Republic of Ireland.

Earlier this week, it was confirmed that he would meet some victims during his Irish visit.

She was speaking to Martin Bashir, the BBC’s Religion Editor, ahead of the first papal visit to the country in 40 years.

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Ahead of Pope Francis’ visit, some question the future of the Catholic Church in Ireland

IRELAND
Yahoo View

August 23, 2018

Length: 3:04

The past few weeks have been tumultuous for the Catholic Church in the wake of a devastating Pennsylvania grand jury report that detailed decades of child sex abuse at the hands of priests.

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St. Louis Archdiocese Agrees To AG’s Investigation Of Sexual Abuse Accusations

ST. LOUIS (MO)
National Public Radio

August 24, 2018

By Vanessa Romo

Updated at 9:37 a.m. ET

The St. Louis Archdiocese is handing over its records to the state Attorney General’s office for an investigation into the Missouri church’s handling of sexual abuse accusations against clergy members.

Archbishop Robert Carlson made the announcement that he was voluntarily opening church files at a press conference on Thursday. Carlson said he made the invitation to Attorney General Josh Hawley in a letter, adding that he was prompted by “several letters” he had received urging greater transparency.

“Second,” he said, “we have nothing to hide.”

The move by Carlson follows the recent release of a Pennsylvania grand jury report detailing decades of alleged sexual abuse by more than 300 priests and cover-ups by high-ranking clergy leaders.

Carlson said Hawley will have “unfettered access” to the Archdiocese’s comprehensive files.

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Erie Catholic Diocese Gets New Abuse Complaints

ERIE (PA)
Erie News Now

August 23, 2018

By Paul Wagner

Abuse Calls Continue to Come Into Erie Catholic Diocese

More calls about clergy sex abuse are coming into the Erie Catholic Diocese.

Since the Pennsylvania Attorney General grand jury report was released last week, the diocese has received 22 new complaints of sexual or physical abuse against minors, plus 5 new complaints alleging sexual abuse with adults.

The allegations are against 12 priests, 5 that are not included in the grand jury report, plus 8 lay people, all newly accused.

So the totals are 13 newly accused of abuse, 5 priests and 8 lay people.

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Nuns charged in Smyllum Park child abuse investigation

SCOTLAND
The Guardian

August 23, 2018

By Severin Carrell

Police examining claims of abuse over decades at Catholic home charge 12 people

Police in Scotland have arrested and charged nuns and a number of other former staff in an investigation into alleged child abuse at a Catholic children’s home.

The nuns are among 12 people who have been charged by detectives investigating detailed allegations of systematic physical and sexual abuse of children over many decades at Smyllum Park in Lanark.

Police Scotland said another four former staff at the Catholic institution would be reported to the Crown Office, Scotland’s prosecution service, later on Thursday.

The force would not release any further details about the identities of those charged or the offences they face, pending final decisions by prosecutors.

“Twelve people, 11 women and one man, ages ranging from 62 to 85 years, have been arrested and charged in connection with the non-recent abuse of children,” it said.

“All are subject of reports to [the] Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal. A further four individuals will be reported today. Inquiries are continuing, it would be inappropriate to comment further.”

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Victims say they felt hurt by fellow Catholics’ lack of compassion

WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

August 23, 2018

By Zita Ballinger Fletcher

Sexual assault victims say they were hurt not only by individual priests, but by church officials and ordinary Catholics who treated them with intolerance and indifference.

Four survivors of sexual assaults by priests shared their stories with Catholic News Service. They are: Jim VanSickle and Mike McDonnell of Pennsylvania, Michael Norris of Houston and Judy Larson of Utah.

Many of them have not been to a Catholic church in years. They say the hardhearted attitudes of diocesan officials, staff and ordinary churchgoers and an atmosphere at their parishes allowed the abuse.

“Being raised Catholic, I remember — you don’t speak out against your own church,” said VanSickle. “Nobody’s going to listen to you.”

Most of them belonged to what they described as extremely traditional parishes and said they were attacked as vulnerable children. Their view of Catholicism changed when fellow believers showed them no compassion and acted to protect selfish interests.

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Pennsylvania, despite all its findings of child sexual abuse, does way too little to help its victims

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philly.com

August 19, 2018

By John Baer

There’s an ugly irony in last week’s release of a statewide grand jury report on decades of sex abuse of children, and its cover-up, by Catholic clergy.

Turns out the state with the fullest examination of the globally troubling problem is also the state offering some of the nation’s weakest recourse for those who’ve been abused.

And you can guess why: Pennsylvania’s legislature.

It has long lagged in helping victims ease at least some suffering endured at the hands of evil.

Just one more category in which we trail most states. And, in this case, not by a little.

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Duluth Jury Rules in Favor of Sexual Abuse Survivor, Bishop Paul Sirba Withholds Information and Refuses to Testify

DULUTH (MN)
Anderson Advocates

August 23, 2018

Bishop Paul Sirba Refuses to Testify, Withholds Information Regarding Father William Graham from Jury

Tonight, a Duluth jury returned a verdict in favor of a courageous sexual abuse survivor, Doe 446, concluding the survivor did not intentionally inflict emotional distress upon Fr. William Graham after Doe 446 named Fr. Graham in a sexual abuse lawsuit in 2016.

The survivor requested that Bishop Sirba testify and Bishop Sirba refused, instead sending a lawyer to fight this request. Bishop Paul Sirba refused to testify to the details of the investigation and refused to provide Fr. Graham’s file to the court and the public. Further, the details surrounding Fr. Graham’s administrative leave from the Diocese of Duluth, and his non-existent contract, were withheld from the jury. Because Bp. Sirba refused to testify, and chose to conceal the situation from the jury, the jury found that Doe 446 interfered with his contract.

“Bishop Sirba’s refusal to testify and his continued concealment of Fr. Graham’s file and the subsequent investigation is outrageous and criminal,” said Mike Finnegan, one of the attorneys representing Doe 446. “This survivor had the courage to come forward and disclose his abuse to the diocese and he was once again re-victimized by Bishop Sirba, the Diocese and its lawyers. We will continue to fight for justice on behalf of Doe 446.”

After Doe 446 came forward and named Fr. Graham in a lawsuit, the Diocese of Duluth conducted an internal investigation into the abuse allegations. The information gathered during the investigation was presented to the Diocesan Review Board and Doe 446’s allegations were found credible.

On August 5, 2018, the Diocese of Duluth added Fr. Graham’s name to its list of priests with credible allegations of child sexual abuse.

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Investigation finds 5 former priests named in grand jury report got state licenses as social workers or counselors

PITTSBURGH (PA)
WTAE

August 22, 2018

By Paul Van Osdol

At least five former priests named in the grand jury report worked as state-licensed counselors or social workers, Action News Investigates has learned.

In four of the five cases, no criminal charges had been filed, so state officials knew nothing about the child sex abuse allegations when the former priests applied for state licenses.

Arthur Merrell was a chaplain at the Allegheny County Jail and the Shuman Juvenile Detention Center until 1998, after the grand jury says he was accused of inappropriately touching a boy younger than 15 and having sexual relations with a mentally ill man.

The grand jury says Merrell admitted to the acts, then left the priesthood.

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