ABUSE TRACKER

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Inquirer

August 31, 2018

In the two weeks since the release of the grand jury report detailing widespread sexual abuse by priests in Pennsylvania archdioceses, we have been forced to move from the repulsive to the tawdry, as the scandal suddenly lifted a curtain on Vatican political intrigue and schisms within the church.

Last weekend, during Pope Francis’ visit to Ireland, an archbishop released an 11-page letter that called for his resignation.

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CREST HAVEN (NJ)
Cape May County Herald

September 1, 2018

By Al Campbell

A Seaville resident called on freeholders Aug. 28 to petition the state Attorney General to discover why, in 1984, the County Prosecutor’s Office reached an agreement with the Diocese of Camden not to prosecute a priest for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old.

Tom Henry cited the recent Pennsylvania grand jury’s report that detailed sexual abuse of children by priests, and the actions of the Roman Catholic hierarchy “at the highest levels, to hide these abuses from the public.”

Henry said the “evil acts committed did not stop at the Delaware River.”

“The report details the actions of the Cape May County Prosecutor’s Office, working with the Camden Diocese not to prosecute a priest who was arrested for taking a 14-year-old to his home in Cape May, giving him beer, and then sexually assaulting him,” said Henry.

He continued that the Bishop’s Accountability Project “cites a lawsuit that claimed the Camden Diocese had at least 15 pedophile priests or monsignors with four bishops and two monsignors covering up their actions by engaging in a practice known as “Bishops Helping Bishops.”

Henry named Rev. John P. Connor as one of the priests, but wondered, “How many other cases were brought to the attention of the Cape May County Prosecutor’s Office?”

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UNITED STATES
Questions From A Ewe

September 2, 2018

Dear readers,

It’s been a very long time. The demands of caring for an aging parent combined with those of traveling extensively for work provide precious few moments to write. However, recent hubbub compels me to sacrifice a few moments of sleep to write.

At Mass last weekend, the priest spoke of the clergy abuse revelations in Pennsylvania and described it as, “the scandal in Pennsylvania.” With 200+ dioceses and growing having abuse scandals worldwide, we are safe to call it “globally systemic” rather than confine it to any geographic area as if it were a surprising anomaly. Let’s stop being shocked that the abuse is uncovered in yet another group of dioceses. Let’s work to shine the light to expose it everywhere.

The pastor discussed the PA abuse scandal while defending the Lansing diocese’s decision to continue holding its “Made for Happiness” Diocesan Assembly in a few weeks despite this latest sex abuse scandal news. Tragically ironic, the diocesan shindig will be held at Michigan State University’s Breslin Center, the basketball arena for a university recently publicly criticized for institutional enablement of a serial child molester, Dr. Larry Nassar. Side note: Prior to prison, Nassar was a devout Catholic in the Lansing diocese. The diocese could only be more tone-deafly insensitive if it asked Larry Nassar to speak at the assembly.

All this pissed me off but did not compel me to write. No, no…it took former papal nuncio to the U.S., Archbishop Vigano’s recently published lengthy letter calling for Pope Francis’ resignation to do that.

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VATICAN CITY
EWTN News/CNA

August 30, 2018

A group of lay Catholic women have written an open letter to Pope Francis, demanding that he answer the questions raised by the recent allegations in the letter from former U.S. nuncio Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò.



In the opening of their letter, the women recall a quote from Pope Francis on the role of women in the Church: “You have said that you seek ‘a more incisive female presence in the Church,’ and that ‘women are capable of seeing things with a different angle from [men], with a different eye. Women are able to pose questions that we men are not able to understand.’” 

“We write to you, Holy Father, to pose questions that need answers,” the letter notes.
Specifically, they are seeking answers to the questions raised in Vigano’s recent letter, which accused Pope Francis and other members of the Church hierarchy for covering up sexual abuse allegations against former cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

The women’s questions for Pope Francis include if or when he was made aware of any sanctions allegedly placed on then-cardinal Theodore McCarrick by Pope Benedict XVI, and whether he brought McCarrick back into public ministry despite knowing about these sanctions and accusations.

Asked these questions by journalists on his return flight from the recent World Meeting of Families in Ireland, Pope Francis responded by saying he “will not say a single word on this” and instead encouraged journalists to study the statement themselves and draw their own conclusions.

“To your hurting flock, Pope Francis, your words are inadequate,” the signers of the letter say, addressing the Pope’s response. “They sting, reminiscent of the clericalism you so recently condemned. We need leadership, truth, and transparency. We, your flock, deserve your answers now.”

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Sun Times

August 27, 2018

By Lisa Madigan

As a mother raising her children in the Catholic Church, reading the Pennsylvania grand jury report detailing the rampant sexual assault of hundreds of children by Catholic priests nauseates and infuriates me, again.

The initial responses from the Catholic bishops in Illinois apologizing to victims and their families for these hidden, horrid crimes were well meaning. The bishops also explained the improvements the Church adopted since at least 2002 that are intended to prevent and better respond to similar crimes in the future. Some bishops also pointed out that the terrible crimes detailed in the Pennsylvania report are old. This stings. And it ignores a painful reality.

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SHAVERTOWN (PA)
South Coast Today

September 1, 2018

By Bob Schilling

Father Brennan was the pastor of St. Theresa’s Church in Shavertown, Pennsylvania. He taught me to be an altar boy, back in ancient times when that included memorizing and reciting substantial portions of the Latin rite of the Roman Catholic Mass. We all looked up to him, sought his approval and feared his wrath for occasional slips in the dead foreign tongue.

It was at the beginning of the sixties, that strangest, iconic turning point of a decade, that I got the call from Fr. Brennan with a great opportunity to serve beyond the altar. He asked me to “babysit” the rectory telephone while he tended to ailing Catholics at the local hospital. What an honor to be called! That evening, he picked me up in his big, black sedan and brought me to the rectory, that dark and mysterious place where he said that it was the housekeeper’s night off. He showed me where the soda was in the fridge and went off to make his rounds after showing me how to work the TV, an unmentioned option to the homework that was my parents’ plan. He returned in about two hours and drove me back the short trip to my home. He gave me a big smile, a warm thanks and a monetary reward that was thrilling but probably didn’t amount to more than a buck.

The next week, another call came for the same task. Babysitting a telephone! What a deal! What an honor! The big, black car came at the same time and we were off to the rectory! But when we got there, he told me that he’d gotten a call from the hospital and that, lo, his ministrations weren’t required that particular evening. No problem though, he said, we can just watch TV for awhile and then I’ll take you back home.

When I sat on the sofa, he sat next to me. Weirdly close. Seconds later, he wanted to tickle. Tickle? What the heck? Who was this grown man who wanted to tickle a 12 year-old boy? Get away from me!

And he did.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Daily News

September 1, 2018

By Arthur McGrath

The Bible tells us that when Jesus, considered by the Romans to be a criminal, was arrested in the days before his crucifixion, St. Peter was confronted by different local people about his suspected affiliation with the man.

Each time Peter was confronted, he denied any association or even knowing Jesus.

It has become well known that Catholic bishops across the United States have for decades failed to report to the police the suspected or known crimes of sexual abuse of children by priests. This failure to report the criminal activity generally denied justice to the child sex crime victims. Let us call this the First Denial of Jesus.

The Second Denial of Jesus: decades of covering up crimes and shuffling known predator priests.

We hope most of these activities have been reduced over the last decade or so by various reforms put in place by the Catholic Church.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune

September 1, 2018

By Jennifer Larino

More men have come forward to report they were sexually abused as children by George Brignac, a defrocked Roman Catholic deacon who worked as a teacher at St. Matthew the Apostle School in River Ridge in the mid-1970s, The New Orleans Advocate reports.

The report says New Orleans attorney Roger Stetter is representing at least 10 men who say Brignac abused them when they were children. Several claim Brignac raped them as children.

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UNITED STATES
SLATE

August 31, 2018

By Lili Loofbourow

The Catholic Church is exposed. A number of wide-ranging, deeply researched reports of molestation, rape, abuse, corruption, and concealment have been released in close enough time to one another that the magnitude of the horror might actually—for the average American, anyway—sink in. It all feels monumental, if also powered in part by coincidence. The recently published Pennsylvania report, in which a grand jury details the sexual abuse of more than 1,000 children by more than 300 priests and systematically argues that church officials were complicit, was two years in the making. It didn’t need to be released two weeks before BuzzFeed published Christine Kenneally’s yearslong investigation into the abuse of children—some of whom didn’t survive—by nuns and priests at St. Joseph’s Catholic orphanage. But it was, and the effects of those stories are stacking up. These two reports came out just three months after every Chilean bishop offered to resign over a massive sex abuse scandal, and a year or so after Netflix documentary series The Keepers revisited an unsolved murder and allegations of abuse in a Baltimore Catholic school. That these are all different—but all cover the same institutional atrocity—is the kind of perfect storm that may get us to focus in ways that the abuse of tens of thousands of children worldwide has not managed to. Humans find numbers like that hard to absorb.

But we respond well to drama, and there are two competing stories right now about the Catholic Church. Call it the people vs. the palace. Alongside this tide of testimony from long-suffering victims and determined investigators, there’s the theater of ex–papal nuncio Carlo Maria Viganò’s “memo” calling for (among other things) the resignation of Pope Francis. Viganò is a hard-line conservative known for helping to arrange Pope Francis’ notorious meeting with anti-gay-marriage activist Kim Davis—which exacerbated tensions Pope Francis and Viganò. (The pope has been generally rather accepting of homosexuality; his U.S. visit included a private audience with a gay man and his partner.) Viganò timed his memo to catch the pope at a strategic weak point. Already reeling from the church scandals, Pope Francis was also visiting Ireland, which recently legalized abortion, indexing a growing distance from the faith. He was vulnerable. If this political maneuvering feels gilded and distasteful, it should. The more you read of the abuses, and of church officials shrugging it off, the less interesting the petty details of Vatican palace intrigue become. Of course the abuse of children would become yet another occasion for liberals and conservatives to plot against each other.

The story of an institution’s rot can be told in many ways: the Boston Globe’s Spotlight coverage (and fictionalized film about same), The Keepers, and the Pennsylvania report all take different, painful, sustained approaches to the problem. As an entry into this grim pantheon, Viganò’s memo constitutes the dullest. While he professes great concern for the church’s victims, his most explosive claim—that Pope Francis knew Cardinal Thomas McCarrick’s problematic record before lifting sanctions imposed on him by Pope Benedict—tellingly mentions only McCarrick’s adult, male victims. (McCarrick, who was accused of harassing seminarians, was accused of abusing two minors as well.) While this doesn’t mean that Viganò doesn’t care about children, neither does it hide his agenda or its attendant slippages: “The seriousness of homosexual behavior must be denounced. The homosexual networks present in the Church must be eradicated.”

There are no good guys here. Francis had already taken the unusual step of demoting the cardinal (who was found to have abused a teenager decades ago), ostensibly to signal how serious he was about rooting out malfeasance, but Viganò contends that he didn’t punish his ally soon enough. Viganò had his own controversy, having been accused of quashing an investigation into an archbishop’s misconduct in Minnesota. He has strongly denied this accusation, but it’s relevant (for reasons of intrigue) that after the New York Times reported the cover-up allegation in 2016, Francis asked that Viganò be investigated. As for Pope Francis, he defended Chilean prelate Juan de la Cruz Barros, naming him bishop of Osorno knowing full well that he had strong ties to Fernando Karadima, Chile’s most notorious predator-priest—this despite testimony from a victim of Karadima’s to the effect that Barros didn’t just know of the abuse but directly witnessed it. “We are used to the blows by the Chilean Catholic hierarchy, but it’s especially hurtful when the slap in the face comes from Pope Francis himself,” said one of Karadima’s accusers. “We hoped he was different.”

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CANADA
CBC News

August 26, 2018

By Neil Macdonald

Federal authorities should treat it like one

WARNING: This column contains disturbing details

Imagine for a moment that a big, admired multinational corporation, one selling a beloved product, was employing large numbers of male pedophiles and rapists, operating in rings all over the world, and that their crimes had been uncovered in Australia, Ireland, Canada, the Philippines, Belgium, France, Austria, New Zealand, Argentina, Chile, Britain, Germany and the United States, and, further, that senior executives had systematically covered up and suppressed evidence, transferring and enabling hundreds of predators, betraying thousands of victims.

What would happen to the company is not terribly difficult to imagine.

At a minimum, the U.S. government would likely use its Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law to go after not only the rapists and molesters, but also the company’s executives, up to and including its CEO if possible, seizing the company’s assets and seeking the harshest possible prison terms. That’s the sort of thing RICO was invented for. The company would almost certainly collapse.

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VATICAN CITY
American Thinker

September 2, 2018

By Monica Showalter

Reeling from a huge pedophilia, pederasty, and coverup crisis, and refusing to answer charges of participating in the latter from a former papal nuncio, Pope Francis seems to have some very screwy priorities. Here’s what the Associated Press, via the New York Post, reported:

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis wants concrete action to combat the “emergency” of plastics littering seas and oceans.

Francis made the appeal in a message Saturday to galvanize Christians and others to work to save what he hails as the “marvelous,” God-given gift of the “great waters and all they contain.”

He said efforts to fight plastics litter must be waged “as if everything depended on us.”

The pope also denounced as “unacceptable” the privatization of water resources at the expense of the “human right to have access to this good.”

Has he gone bonkers? Is this satire from his enemies? The Church is in the middle of the mother of all public relations meltdowns, the faithful are scandalized, and he’s talking about the environment and capitalism as the real problems? We still haven’t got past the mind-boggling news that 1,000 children were abused by 300 priests in just one of 50 states, in some of the most grotesque circumstances imaginable – actually, they weren’t imaginable until we read about it – a priest stripping a boy naked and making him pose as Jesus on the cross to get his perversion on? A priest raping a little girl at the hospital who was getting her tonsils out? We aren’t over this. The pope’s soggy apologies and efforts to collectivize the guilt aren’t cutting it. And there’s smoke from the huge fires of abuse rocking once-ultra-Catholic Ireland and once-ultra-Catholic Chile going on at the same time. Sorry, talking about the environment under these circumstances is likely to motivate some Catholics to go throw a plastic milk bottle into the ocean just to teach him a lesson.

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VATICAN
The Daily Wire

September 2, 2018

By Ryan Saavedra

Pope Francis was slammed on Saturday after declaring that litter in the world’s oceans was an “emergency” that needed to be dealt with immediately, ignoring the Catholic Church’s massive child sex scandal.

Francis, who made the remarks on the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, decried the “seas and oceans” being “littered by endless fields of floating plastic.”

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BELLEFONTE (DE)
Delaware News Journal

August 16, 2018

By Xerxes Wilson

He always paid special attention to her.

Mary was a young teen. Father John Sarro was a Catholic priest making “creepy” comments about marrying her. Then there were the handwritten letters he sent her throughout her teenage years.

“God gave me a treasure when he gave me you,” she recalled him writing.

But it was more than words.

She remembers Sarro as “overly affectionate;” a tall, unkempt man who crossed the line into personal space and made people feel uncomfortable.

In the early 1990s, at age 11, Mary got a job at the rectory of St. Helena’s Catholic Church in Bellefonte, answering the few phone calls that came in at night as she finished her homework.

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SMITHS CREEK (MI)
Christian Post Reporter

August 31, 2017

By Leonardo Blair

A Michigan pastor who was accused of sexual assault by a former parishioner and admitted that his hand might have slipped into her pants while anointing her with oil to cleanse her of sexual sins at her home will not face charges, a local prosecutor said Wednesday.

Justine Morden, 20, alleged in June that Pastor Mitch Olson of Grace Ministry Center sexually assaulted her during the unorthodox anointing nearly 10 months ago.

In a case review released Wednesday morning, Senior Assistant Prosecutor Paul Soderberg said Morden doesn’t fall under any classes of victims as recognized under state law, Nicole Hayden of The Times Herald reports.

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AUSTRALIA
MercatorNet

September 3, 2018

By Michael Cook

It has been an extraordinary week in the Catholic Church. The Vatican’s former ambassador to the United States has called for the Pope’s resignation. Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò alleges that Pope Francis covered up for ex-Cardinal McCarrick, who had used his position to seduce seminarians and priests over many years. Catholic media is split down the middle: conservatives support Viganò and attack the Pope; progressives attack Viganò and support the Pope. Some American bishops have defended Viganò as a man of integrity whose allegations ought to be taken seriously; others have dismissed his claims as self-interested grandstanding.

But the crisis has gone beyond claim and counter-claim. Jaw jaw is morphing into war war. There is talk of a schism. Friend and foe are mooting the possibility of major changes in Church governance. Archbishop Charles Chaput, of Philadelphia, has written to the Pope asking him to cancel next month’s synod on youth vocations and focus on the life of bishops.

However, outside the Church, believe it or not, media interest in the controversy is waning. (Check Google Trends.) Surge again it will, but the lull is an opportune moment to review some of the issues which have emerged.

Remember the riots in the Muslim world in 2005 sparked by the publication of Danish cartoons satirizing the Prophet Mohammed? Churches were burned around the world and dozens of people died in a classic case of social panic. Now Catholics are – figuratively speaking – burning their own churches. It’s time to chill.

Here are a few points to bear in mind.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Penn Live

August 31, 2018

By Michael Dolce

The eyes of the world turned again earlier this month to the horrors of child sexual abuse after the release of a 900-page report that uncovered decades of abuse and cover up in the Catholic Church in Pennsylvania.

These horrific allegations are sadly not the first and unlikely to be the last. To deepen the injustice, many of the more than 1,000 victims identified by the Catholic Church’s own records will never get their day in court, and many of the 300 predator priests who perpetrated these crimes in the state will never be held accountable.

As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse myself and an attorney who now represents victims of these crimes, I can say without doubt that Pennsylvania and other states’ arbitrary statutes of limitations on child sexual abuse only further harm victims and enable predators to continue their abuse.

For survivors of child sexual abuse, the average time for reporting these crimes is 15 years; it took me 20 years to finally speak out about my own abuse.

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SCRANTON (PA)
Penn Live

August 31, 2018

By Ron Southwick

In the wake of the grand jury report on clergy sex abuse, the Diocese of Scranton has acknowledged its former bishop failed in his duty to protect children.

The diocese said Friday that former Bishop James C. Timlin will no longer be allowed to represent the diocese in any public or liturgical events.

Bishop Joseph C. Bambera said in a statement that he is taking the most aggressive step he can pursue relative to another bishop. Bambera also referred the case to the Vatican Congregation of Bishops, which has jurisdiction over other aspects of his ministry.

“It is important that I make this very clear: Bishop Timlin did not abuse children, nor has he ever been accused of having done so. Instead, he mishandled some cases of abuse,” Bambera said in a letter released by the diocese.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

September 4, 2018

By Haidee V. Eugenio

Two weeks before an unprecedented mediation of nearly 200 Guam clergy sex abuse claims, Archbishop Michael Jude Byrnes said the community needs meaningful action to bring justice for victims.

“We cannot fully repay what was taken from these brothers and sisters; we can only offer a token of justice through financial remuneration,” Byrnes said in a Sept. 3 open letter to the faithful.

Mediation is being pursued to try to settle the sex abuse cases out of court. If mediation fails, the cases could go to trial.

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DENVER (CO)
CNA/EWTN News

September 1, 2018

By Mary Rezac

When sex abuse scandals first rocked the Catholic Church in the United States in 2002, Miriel Thomas Reneau was young, and felt “truly shocked to realize that men of God could inflict such terrible wounds on victims with impunity.”

This summer, as accusations of abuse against former cardinal Theodore McCarrick surfaced, a grand jury report from Pennsylvania detailed decades of clerical abuse, and the Pope has been accused of allegedly covering up abuse, Reneau, as well as many other lay Catholics, wanted to do to something.

“I wanted to express my solidarity with the victim-survivors of these abuses and do everything within my power to urge the leaders of the Church to act as courageous fathers in enacting meaningful and visible reform,” she told CNA.

That’s why Reneau, along with a friend who wished to remain anonymous, started The Siena Project, which encourages laity to write letters to their bishops “to enact meaningful reforms in light of recent revelations of grievous abuses in the Catholic Church.”

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CRESCENT CITY (CA)
Del Norte Triplicate

September 1, 2018

By Jessica Cejnar

A former student at the Crescent City Seventh-day Adventist Christian School is speaking out about her alleged abuse at the hands of a teacher who was convicted in 2016 of two counts of raping and molesting two children in Sequim, Washington.

Somerset Morgan was 10 years old and in the fifth grade when she became Douglas John Allison’s student at the Crescent City Seventh-day Adventist School in 2010. In an email to the Triplicate, Morgan, who currently lives in Salem, Oregon said Allison also lived in the same apartment complex, just up the road from her family.

Allison pleaded guilty in 2016 to molesting two students in the classroom while he was a principal and teacher at Mountain View Christian School in Sequim. He was sentenced to 26.5 years in prison, according to a civil complaint filed in court against the Western Washington Corporation of Seventh Day Adventists.

The lawsuit names Allison and was filed in King County, Washington on behalf of the parents of a student who was 10 years old when Allison assaulted them. The lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial in October, Mischelle Davis, director of operations and communications for Seattle-based Davis Law Group, told the Triplicate in July.

The complaint also cites investigations by the Del Norte County Sheriff’s Office into two reports that Allison had put his hands down a student’s pants while he was a teacher in Crescent City.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
AFP

August 30, 2018

US groups representing survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic priests called Thursday on the Vatican to publish a list of clerics accused of sexual assault.

The calls came after Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a former Vatican envoy to Washington, dropped an 11-page bombshell letter on Saturday accusing Pope Francis of ignoring sexual abuse allegations against prominent US cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

The 88-year-old former archbishop of Washington — one of the most senior Catholic leaders to face abuse allegations — resigned as cardinal in late July even as he denied the charges.

The Vatican dossier on McCarrick contains “underlying facts concerning Pope Francis and two other popes, Benedict and John Paul” that shows they covered up clerical sexual abuse, said Peter Isley with the group Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA).

The information “is in the pope’s file, let’s see it,” he said at a press conference outside the Vatican’s embassy in Washington.

Vigano’s accusation brought to light a bitter split in the church between liberals who defend the pope and some ultra-conservative Catholics who see Francis as a dangerous progressive more interested in social issues than traditional Church matters.

According to Isley, “Liberal popes covered up child sex abuse just like conservative bishops covered (them) up.”

In his letter, Vigano also linked homosexuality within the church to sexual abuse of children — something Isley rejected as “utterly false, completely unacceptable and immoral.”

For Isley, “there is a criminal network within the Catholic Church” that is “being covered up by bishops of all sides.”

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Church Militant

August 30, 2018

Vatican arranges escape hatch

Church Militant has learned from reliable sources that Pope Francis has directed Cdl. Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C. be spirited out of the United States before Wuerl can be arrested by U.S. federal authorities.

Earlier suspicions were that Wuerl had already left the country but those reports are not true.

As Church Militant has been reporting, the Department of Justice is seriously looking at opening up a RICO investigation against the Catholic Church in the United States, and Wuerl would be one of the prime targets of any such investigation.

According to sources, Pope Francis is afraid that if Wuerl were to be arrested and charged, he would reveal all he knows, and the DOJ case would lead straight back to the Vatican with the looming prospect of international criminality being exposed.

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MALTA
manueldelia.com

August 30, 2018

An insider I know sent in this guest post to help us understand the rules that might guide a bishop on what to do when they come across a case of clerical sex abuse. I’m told to point out that wherever the term ‘bishop’ is used it also applies to ‘major superiors’ who have similar responsibilities in these situations.

What is a bishop to do when he receives an allegation of abuse? There are various norms that guide his actions. First and foremost, there are the laws of the Church (the code of canon law) that requires him to institute a preliminary investigation every time a veritable allegation of a crime is received.

If it results that there is enough evidence to proceed, the bishop is to proceed either through an extra-judicial decree or through a judicial process to declare or impose the canonical penalty. If the circumstances warrant he can impose, without prejudice, preventive measures on the accused.

The bishops of Malta and Gozo had issued internal rules to regulate this phase of the process. In 1999, the then Archbishop Joseph Mercieca and the Bishop Nikol Cauchi regulated the preliminary investigation phase in cases of sexual abuse.

A response team made up of independent professionals was created to receive and investigate allegations of sexual abuse. The policy was ahead of its time since it was the first safeguarding commission in Malta. Even the Vatican regulations were issued later in 2001.

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BUFFALO (NY)
The Buffalo News

August 29, 2018

By Jay Tokasz

Exhibit A in the blockbuster Pennsylvania grand jury report on clergy sexual abuse is an Erie priest who grew up in Dunkirk and originally wanted to join the Buffalo Diocese priesthood.

The Rev. Chester J. Gawronski admitted possibly molesting as many as 41 boys, sometimes under the guise of teaching them how to perform a “cancer check,” according to the report. It goes on to describe how church leaders concealed the abuses for nearly two decades and allowed Gawronski to continue to serve in churches.

The grand jury report, released last week, found that 300 priests had abused more than 1,000 children in six dioceses across Pennsylvania.

Gawronski’s case is featured prominently in the report, with several references to secret church documents about his history of abuse that were obtained through a 2016 subpoena.

Gawronski, 69, who now lives in Arizona, is part of a large Catholic family that was active in St. Mary Church, now known as St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish, in Dunkirk. Gawronski was especially involved in the parish: In 1968, the year he graduated from Cardinal Mindszenty High School, he received the church’s “Outstanding Catholic Youth Award.”

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Sun Times

September 2, 2018

ByMitchell Armentrout

Cardinal Blase Cupich has instructed Chicago-area priests to deliver a statement at Mass this weekend slamming a local TV news report that he calls “misleading,” saying it was edited to suggest he and Pope Francis were downplaying the ongoing clergy sex abuse scandal.

The clip came toward the end of a two-minute segment that aired Aug. 27 on NBC5 about the Archdiocese of Chicago cooperating with Illinois Attorney Gen. Lisa Madigan’s review of abuse allegations across the state. Since the interview aired, Cupich has been castigated across the internet for being seemingly insensitive to the sex abuse crisis.

“Our story on the interview with Cardinal Cupich was accurate,” NBC5 station manager Frank Whittaker said in an email. “The story is posted on our website along with the full unedited interview for anyone to see.”

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UNITED STATES
SNAP

August 31, 2018

By Kate Bochte

In the Catholic Church, whistleblowers are punished and fixers are promoted. Cardinal Blase Cupich of the Chicago Archdiocese wants to keep climbing up the ladder.

Make no mistake; the Chicago cardinal embraces his role as fixer. Earlier this week, he told NBC 5’s Mary Ann Ahern, “Before we give the pope another task to do, let’s look at what we’re supposed to do. What’s on our agenda to fix this? That’s where the failure is.”

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PORTLAND (OR)
Street Roots

August 24, 2018

By Adam Sennott

The thousand in Pennsylvania are just ‘the first wave,’ says the attorney who helped the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team investigate clergy sex abuse

When a Pennsylvania grand jury recently released its findings on child sex abuse in the Catholic Church, the conclusions – and the numbers – were staggering: more than 1,000 identified children abused at the hands of more than 300 “predator priests,” occurring over decades under a systemic cover-up by the church.

The report, released Aug. 15, suggests that the real number of victims is much higher, with some records lost to time and many people too scared to come forward.

While the report is unprecedented in its scope, attorney Mitchell Garabedian believes it’s just “the tip of the iceberg.”

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CHARLOTTE (NC)
Catholic News Herald

August 28, 2018

The Diocese of Charlotte has found itself connected to the growing scandal surrounding Archbishop Theodore McCarrick. The diocese was mentioned in a former Vatican ambassador’s letter claiming Pope Francis and other Church officials ignored sexual abuse allegations against the retired prelate.

Greg Littleton, a priest who was removed from ministry in the Charlotte diocese in 2004, was named in the Aug. 25 letter by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who served as apostolic nuncio to the United States from 2011 to 2016.

Archbishop Viganò accused Church officials, including Pope Francis, of failing to act on knowledge of Archbishop McCarrick’s alleged sexual misconduct and abuse. He cited Littleton as one of the first to try to bring to light evidence of Archbishop McCarrick’s “grave misdeeds,” in 2006.

Archbishop McCarrick resigned July 28 from the College of Cardinals and was ordered by the pope to maintain “a life of prayer and penance” until a Church trial examines allegations that he sexually abused minors. McCarrick, who retired from active ministry in 2006, has said he is innocent.

Littleton, who lives as a private citizen in North Carolina, did not respond Aug. 27 to requests for comment on the allegations against Archbishop McCarrick.

Littleton’s story has been detailed in blogs that identify him by name and news reports where he is referred to as an unnamed priest. It began in 1987 when Archbishop McCarrick, then head of the Archdiocese of Newark, N.J., allegedly abused an unnamed Metuchen seminarian while in New York City.

In 1994, Littleton wrote an account of abuse at the hands of Archbishop McCarrick and claimed that it led to his inappropriate touching of two boys.

In 1997, Littleton came to the Charlotte diocese from the Diocese of Metuchen, where he had received treatment for his 1994 admission and was regarded as a priest in good standing.

Returning priests to ministry after psychological treatment was the practice at the time, diocesan spokesman David Hains said.

Littleton served at St. John the Baptist Church in Tryon and later at Our Lady of the Assumption Church in Charlotte.

In the fall of 2002, then Bishop Paul Bootkoski of Metuchen ordered a review of priest personnel files as part of a national investigation of sexual abuse of children in the Church. As a result of the review, in October 2002 the Metuchen diocese sent portions of Littleton’s psychological assessment to the prosecutor’s office in Middlesex County, N.J.

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ARLINGTON (VA)
elizabethfoss.com

August 23, 2018

By Elizabeth Foss

I wrote this column over a week ago and sent it to my editor at the Arlington Catholic Herald early on the morning of Wednesday August 15, the day after the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s report. Yesterday, I got word that the Herald will not print it.

I am passionate about this topic. I believe that victims deserve to have their voices heard. And I believe, from the bottom of my heart, that our churches should be sanctuaries for the most vulnerable among us. Until any victim of abuse can feel safe in any Catholic church, we have not adequately cleaned up this mess. Please help me to help them be heard. It is discouraging to be denied my usual platform, but we have the Internet, right? And I have you. I’m so grateful. Please read this, and then pass it on.

These columns are due a week before they are published. When I want to respond to a current event, that’s always a little tricky. What will change as the story unfolds in the next week? Will the content even be relevant by then? This time, I intended to write before the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report was published. I knew—or I thought I knew—that the report was to be devastating, and I wanted one last reflection before the world of the Catholic Church in America tilted on its axis. But I was traveling with my daughter early last week and time was elusive, and instead I sat on the floor of New York City hotel room on the morning of August 15, after having spent a good bit of the previous night reading the report, trying to make sense of it all.

My reality is that I’ve known for more than ten years how a report of the abuse of power and sexual misconduct is handled when a victim comes forward. That hard won knowledge has haunted me. The grand jury report is extensive and it is graphic. To read it is to challenge one’s faith in the Church. There is no way around it. For some people, the interior struggle over whether to stay in the Church or leave in disgust will be quickly resolved. They will reflect on the Eucharist, reason that they cannot live without it, and they will press on with whatever part they can play in needed reform. Or, they will decide that this cannot possibly be a place where a healthy soul can grow, and they will leave in disgust and horror, with no small amount of sorrow.

For others, they will toss and turn and wonder about the two thousand years since Christ promised Peter that he would build his Church upon the rock. They will remember that the Magisterium is true—that the teaching authority of the Church is just as sane and solid as it has been throughout the ages. But doubt will creep in. If the bishops of our time and place can be so complicit in such grievous sin, can bishops be trusted at all? If popes can let such networks of evil grow and become ever more entangled around all of us until they threaten to choke our very beings can they possibly be as prudent and wise as we want to believe they are in matters of faith and morals? They will not easily reconcile all the many doubts and fears and hopes and hurts. They will be tormented by the disparity between the true and the beautiful and the pure evil in the grand jury report. It’s not disloyal to lie awake wondering. It’s normal.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Penn Live

September 5, 2018

By Ivey DeJesus

The Catholic Church may be in the business of saving souls, but amid the spiraling clergy sex abuse crisis, one pioneering legal mind thinks of the church as an organized crime organization.

That’s the view held by David Hickton, a former U.S. attorney in the Western District of Pennsylvania.

Two years ago, shortly after the state Office of Attorney General released a scathing report on widespread clergy sex abuse in the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown, Hickton sought to prove that the church was criminally responsible for the egregious crimes committed by priests on minors.

Hickton invoked a seldom-used but powerful federal law designed to combat organized crime.

He initiated a civil lawsuit against the diocese under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a federal law better known as RICO that has been used to prosecute mobsters, the Hells Angels and other criminal enterprises.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Carson Lynch

August 27, 2018

By Benjamin Sweet

In the ten days since the Grand Jury released its stunning report on child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, media all over the world have focused their attention on Pennsylvania. It is a sobering reality to consider that the last time such worldwide media attention was focused on our state it was also as a result of a child sex abuse case, the disgraced former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky.

Yet despite all of the coverage and rightful outrage here and abroad, Pennsylvania state lawmakers – and particularly those within the Republican party – have been eerily quiet on the Grand Jury’s four key recommendations. Unless these lawmakers can be shamed into taking action, nothing will change.

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ORLANDO (FL)
WFTV9

August 31, 2018

A Florida attorney who represents clergy sex abuse accusers…

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
KDKA

August 31, 2018

Bishop David Zubik has placed three priests accused of sexually abusing minors on administrative leave in the Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese.

The priests are 71-year-old Fr. John Bauer, 81-year-old Fr. Bernard Costello and 87-year-old Fr. Hugh Lang.

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JEFFERSON CITY (MO)
CBS NEWS

September 4, 2018

The attorney general of Missouri is defending a new investigation of sex abuse within the Catholic Church, even though he doesn’t have subpoena power and will have to rely on the cooperation of church leaders. Missouri is the first state to announce an investigation into clergy abuse since Pennsylvania released a scathing grand jury report last month that identified more than 300 abusive priests and more than 1,000 child victims over seven decades.

CBS News spoke with two alleged survivors of abuse in Missouri. They’re meeting for the first time, but for decades, Michael Sandridge and Joe Eldred shared a painful connection.

“For the two of you, at your lowest point, what did that look like?” CBS News correspondent Nikki Battiste asked.

“It looked like a rope around my neck and me sitting on the windowsill, ready to jump,” Eldred said.

“I’d be driving in the car, and think, ‘If — if I hit the bridge and I get killed that way, then I don’t have to think about anything,'” Sandridge said.

Sandridge said he couldn’t think about the abuse he endured in the early 1970s starting at the age of 10 when he says a priest molested him.

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SAN DIEGO (CA)
Family of Richard Sipe

The family of Richard Sipe has announced that a Memorial Service will be held to celebrate his life and achievement. You are warmly invited to celebrate with them. The Memorial Service followed by a reception on-site will take place at:

Newman Center
Catholic Community at University of California, San Diego
September 22, 2018
2:00 p.m.

The Newman Center shares worship space with Good Samaritan Episcopal Church. The address is:

Catholic Community at University of California, San Diego
4321 Eastgate Mall
San Diego CA 92121

Note to Survivors: The Memorial Service for Richard will be a Catholic Mass, in accordance with his wishes. If you cannot attend the Memorial Service, the family completely respects your decision and hopes that you will join them and other friends of Richard at the reception, from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., also at the Newman Center, but not in a religious space.

For more information about the Newman Center Catholic Community at UCSD:
http://www.catholicucsd.org/newman-center/

Donations

The family has asked that donations in Richard’s memory be made to BishopAccountability.org.

Website, Tributes, and Obituaries [Links to a selection]

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MONTROUGE (FRANCE)
La Croix International

September 4, 2018

By Bénévent Tosseri

[See also the petition.]

Petition calling for Cardinal Barbarin’s resignation exceeds 100,000 signatures, leading to palpable discomfort in the Archdiocese of Lyon

Mathurin, 19, was quick to add his name to an online petition calling for the resignation of French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin of Lyon.

This is hardly surprising since he is the son of a victim of Father Bernard Preynat, a local priest accused of abusing dozens of boys between 1970 and 1980.

But more surprisingly, he says “fifteen or so” of his friends have also signed.“They didn’t do it to support me,” Mathurin, a dental student, insists. “They did it because they also reject church institutions to various degrees.

“Some believe the church could change after it has implemented a clean out but, personally, I am not convinced,” he says, adding that he now feels “alone in (his) faith.”

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MONTROUGE (FRANCE)
La Croix International

September 3, 2018

Cardinal Philippe Barbarin of Lyon put in place the most severe measures that there are in the fight against pedophilia

While months and years pass by, the Preynat scandal continues. (Father Bernard Preynat is a priest from the Archdiocese of Lyon in France accused of sexually abusing some 60 Catholic boy scouts in the 1980s and 1990s.)

Of course, people are entitled to their own opinions. They can sign petitions and publish their legitimate indignation about these shameful crimes that have had such destructive effects on their victims.

As for us, we are entitled to testify to certain objective facts with regard to Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, with whom we worked for six, seven and ten years respectively. Indeed, it is our duty to do so.

We are witnesses to the fact that Cardinal Barbarin met all the victims who accepted his proposals to meet; that he wanted to listen to all and each of them in person; and that he listened, with all the depth of his heart, to them speak of their immense suffering.

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LISMORE (NSW, AUSTRALIA)
Lismore Echo

August 30, 2018

By Ally Foster

“Why are so many priests paedophiles?”

This was just one of the tough questions posed to a group of priests as part of ABC’s program You Can’t Ask That, where each episode the Australian public get the chance to ask burning questions to different groups.

This week the spotlight is on priests and, along with their sex lives and how they feel about the gay community, one of the main questions Aussies wanted an answer to was about why child abuse is so prolific in the church.

Reverend Roger Dyer, from the Anglican Church in Ballarat, said it was the power that comes with the priest position that attracted paedophiles to the church.

“Priests aren’t paedophiles. Paedophiles get access to the priesthood and inculcate that within the priestly community for their own selfish ends and purposes,” he said.

“People have seen the way priesthood is being presented as a powerful position – and indeed it was in the past – and that’s where these people used it.”

He said abuse has been allowed to become so rampant because the church was more worried about protecting its image than facing the problem.

“I’ve had four parishes in succession where there’s been abuse,” Rev Dryer said.

“I don’t think there was a child that went through Wallsend parish that hadn’t been affected by Peter Rushton.”

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[Cristián Precht testifies in sex abuse case against former FACh chaplain]

SANTIAGO, CHILE
Emol

August 30, 2018

By Bárbara Osses

El sacerdote fue requerido por la Fiscalía por su eventual conocimiento del hecho del que se acusa a Pedro Quiroz, considerando que durante los años 2000 y 2009 ejerció como Vicario de la Zona Sur.

Durante la tarde de este jueves, el sacerdote Cristián Precht Bañados llegó hasta la Brigada de Homicidios de la PDI ubicada en Ñuñoa, para declarar en calidad de imputado en el marco de la investigación contra el ex capellán de la FACh de Iquique, Pedro Quiroz Fernández, por presuntos abusos sexuales. La causa contra Quiroz se inició durante 2010, cuando se recibió la primera denuncia por un presunto abuso sexual contra una menor. Sin embargo, según consignó Cooperativa, esta no prosperó hasta que el pasado martes la Fiscalía determinó retomarla y transferirla a la Región de O’Higgins.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Vox Media

September 4, 2018

By Tara Isabella Burton

And why revelations are still emerging today.

His story was one of thousands.

“It happened in the wee hours of the morning,” a Pennsylvania man wrote in a letter to the Diocese of Pittsburgh in 2008, describing the moment he tried to take his own life. He’d spent the night drinking heavily, “which my doctors have explained may have induced an inescapable episodic flashback of sexual abuse, which has haunted me over the years.”

His alleged abuser, Rev. Richard Dorsch, was his childhood priest in Pittsburgh. The events he recalled took place throughout his childhood. According to the letter, Dorsch forced his victim — whose name has not been made public — to sexually stimulate him repeatedly, ignoring the child’s objections.

The diocese settled with the man quietly after his suicide attempt, paying for his mental health care. But in 2010, payments abruptly stopped. Two months later, the victim attempted suicide again. That time, he succeeded.

This story is just one account out of hundreds listed in a recently released Pennsylvania grand jury report. A 1,400-page document compiled over two years, the report implicated 300 priests in the sex abuse of over 1,000 minors across six of the state’s eight dioceses. (The other two, Philadelphia and Altoona–Johnstown, had been the subject of previous investigations that were no less damning.)

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[Church abuse investigations almost tripled in one month: There are 119 current cases]

SANTIAGO, CHILE
Emol

August 31, 2018

By Tamara Cerna

Desde la Fiscalía Nacional informaron que hasta la fecha hay 167 involucrados, principalmente sacerdotes, y 178 víctimas, de las cuales al menos 79 serían menores de edad.

Hace 39 días, la Fiscalía Nacional entregó el primer catastro nacional sobre los casos de abusos ligados a la Iglesia Católica. En aquel entonces, 23 de julio, se contabilizaron 34 casos vigentes. A medida que los fiscales a cargo de las indagaciones fueron concretando nuevas e inéditas diligencias, como los allanamientos al Obispado Castrense y a la Conferencia Episcopal, además de la citación a declarar en calidad de imputado al cardenal de Santiago, Ricardo Ezzati, la cifra de causas fue aumentando paulatinamente: al día de hoy, son 119 los casos vigentes vinculados a delitos sexuales, informaron desde el ente persecutor.

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[New accusations prompt abuse investigation against priest Diego Ossa, former disciple of Karadima]

SANTIAGO, CHILE
Emol

August 30, 2018

By Tomás Molina J.

La orden se da luego de que el Arzobispado de Santiago recibiera dos nuevas denuncias en contra del presbítero.

Una investigación previa por parte del Arzobispado de Santiago en contra del sacerdote y vicario de la parroquia de Nuestra Señora de la Paz de Ñuñoa, Diego Ossa, fue abierta el pasado lunes por el cardenal Ricardo Ezzati, según informó la institución religiosa por medio de un comunicado.

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[Chilean church reveals it reopened at least four investigations against priests in August]

SANTIAGO, CHILE
Emol

August 31, 2018

By Tomás Molina J.

Este tipo de acciones tendría directa relación, según especialistas, con la visita de los enviados especiales del Papa Francisco a Chile.

Un comunicado revelado este jueves por el Arzobispado de Santiago dio cuenta de una nueva investigación por presuntos abusos en contra de un clérigo chileno. Se trata del sacerdote Diego Ossa, discípulo del ex párroco de El Bosque Fernando Karadima y que incluso fue parte de la defensa de este último cuando su caso salió a la luz el año 2010.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Post-Gazette

August 30, 2019

By Angela Couloumbis and Liz Navratil

http://www.post-gazette.com/news/faith-religion/2018/08/30/Pennsylvania-grand-jurors-Make-full-clergy-sex-abuse-report-public-catholic-church-josh-shapiro/stories/201808300189

[See the Objections of the Grand Jurors.]

Harrisburg – In the intense, lengthy and high-profile legal battle over the blistering report on Catholic clergy sexual abuse in Pennsylvania, one group’s voice was largely unheard: the grand jurors who signed off on it.

But in an unusual court filing — first sealed and since made public by the state’s highest court — grand jury members who spent two years investigating decades of abuse by priests in six dioceses unanimously declared that their full and unredacted report should be released.

On Aug. 6, as a state Supreme Court fight over the report was raging, the panel filed its own brief. Using strong language, it lodged their objections to any attempts to “censor, alter, redact or amend” the document.

They said they examined an “overwhelming amount of evidence” of abuse, including internal church documents that had been kept secret. They wrote that they solicited and received written or in-person testimony from bishops from all of the six dioceses. And, they said, they heard from victims — most of whom testified they had notified their pastors, bishops or dioceses about the abuse.

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[Chillán Diocese opens office for abuse victims, Lay Network says it’s not trustworthy]

CHILE
BioBioChile

September 2, 2018

By María José Villarroel and Wilson Ponce

El cuestionado obispo de Chillán, Carlos Pellegrín, realizó la bendición de las nuevas oficinas del “Departamento de Denuncias, Acogida y Acompañamiento a Víctimas de Abusos”, que comenzó a atender a quienes hayan resultado ser víctimas de abusos de poder, conciencia o sexual por parte de algún miembro de la Iglesia, en tanto la Red Laical reitero que no confían en este organismo.

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LANCASTER (PA)
Lancaster Online

September 4, 2018

The LNP Editorial Board

https://lancasteronline.com/opinion/editorials/grand-jury-report-on-child-sexual-abuse-in-pennsylvania-catholic/article_89b9f4f2-ad7e-11e8-9e5b-1730a796bb29.html

The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported last week that the grand jurors who investigated child sexual abuse in six Pennsylvania Roman Catholic dioceses want to see their full and unredacted report released to the public. The 20 grand jury members unanimously lodged “their objections to any attempts to ‘censor, alter, redact or amend’ the document,” those newspapers reported. Their two-year investigation revealed that 301 “predator priests” had sexually abused more than 1,000 children over seven decades in the dioceses of Harrisburg (which includes the parishes in Lancaster County), Greensburg, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Scranton and Erie.

This plea from the grand jurors who spent two harrowing years investigating child sexual abuse in six of eight Pennsylvania Catholic dioceses should be heeded.

In their court filing, as explained by the Inquirer and Post-Gazette, the jurors said they “examined an ‘overwhelming amount of evidence’ of abuse, including internal church documents that had been kept secret. They wrote that they solicited and received written or in-person testimony from bishops from all of the six dioceses. And, they said, they heard from victims — most of whom testified they had notified their pastors, bishops or dioceses about the abuse.”

Wrote the grand jury: “We listened as they poured out their hearts telling of the agony and torment they endured since being victimized. They had waited so long to be heard; they deserve to be heard and validated.”

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro also argues that the full, unredacted report should be made public. We think it should be, too.

There has been far too much secrecy already, as the grand jury report made plain.

We thank the grand jurors first of all for dedicating so much time to what must have been an excruciating assignment. Listening to so much anguish — so much “agony and torment” — had to be life-altering. How could it not?

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
Australian Associated Press via The Guardian

September 3, 2018

Sentence given to Gerard McNamara, 80, criticised as too lenient and ‘appalling’

An elderly Marist brother and former school principal, who sexually assaulted five boys in regional Victoria while giving them “sports massages”, will serve nine months in jail.

But a spokesman for child sex abuse victims has slammed the sentence handed down at Victoria county court in Melbourne on Monday as too lenient, calling it tokenistic and “appalling”.

Gerard McNamara, 80, molested the aspiring athletes at St Paul’s Catholic College in Traralgon between 1970 and 1975, including one boy he abused some 30 times.

As sports master and principal of the school, McNamara usually assaulted his victims on a massage bench in a sports shed after they had suffered injuries during athletics.

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[Prosecution updates registry of abuses in the church: 178 victims, 167 accused]

CHILE
BioBioChile

August 31, 2018

By Jonathan Flores

El Ministerio Público actualizó el catastro de casos investigados por la Fiscalía por presuntos delitos sexuales cometidos por miembros de la Iglesia Católica. Lo anterior, tras el primero anunciado el 23 de julio pasado, cuando presentaron cifras inéditas sobre los antecedentes y denuncias desde 1960 a la fecha.

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SCRANTON (PA)
Times-Tribune

By the Editorial Board

September 4, 2018

Scranton Bishop Joseph C. Bambera made too fine a distinction Friday when he emphasized that former Bishop James C. Timlin, whom he barred from formally representing the diocese, had not personally harmed any children.

As bishop for nearly 20 years and as a diocesan official for years before that, Timlin was aware of and had the capacity to stop the sexual abuse of children by multiple priests. But as detailed by the Aug. 14 statewide investigating grand jury report into such atrocities in six Pennsylvania Catholic dioceses, Timlin proved to be an enabler of abusers rather than a protector of children.

The report detailed, for example, that Timlin sought the reinstatement of and transferred to a different parish a priest who had assaulted and impregnated a teenager and arranged for her abortion.

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MOOSIC (PA)
WNEP

September 2, 2018

By Chelsea Strub

Scranton, Pa. – In the wake of a scathing grand jury report accusing–among others–59 priests in the Diocese of Scranton of sexual misconduct, Bishop Joseph Bambera has restricted former Bishop James Timlin, who is implicated in cover-ups in the report, from representing the church in public.

Timlin led the diocese for two decades.

As Mass let out at St. Paul’s Rectory in Scranton on Sunday, many parishioners we spoke with believe Bishop Bambera’s decision regarding former Bishop James Timlin is a step in the right direction.

Whether more should be done to strip Timlin of his benefits from the church, parishioners say that decision is up to officials in Rome.

“I think it’s smart to have him step aside right now for duties until they do further investigation,” said Maureen Manzano of Scranton.

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DENVER (CO)
Crux

September 3, 2018

By John L. Allen Jr.

Rome – Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago is clearly irked with a local TV station, NBC5, for allegedly editing a comment he made in a recent interview to suggest he and Pope Francis don’t regard the clerical sexual abuse crisis as a priority.

“He’s got to get on with other things,” Cupich said of Francis, “talking about the environment and protecting migrants and carrying on the work of the Church. We’re not going to go down a rabbit hole on this.”

In fact, Cupich insists, he was referring not to the abuse crisis in general but to the accusation made by a former papal ambassador in the U.S. that Francis was warned of sexual misconduct concerns about ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick in 2013 and ignored them. Cupich has already issued a statement to that effect, and he directed that it be read out at Chicago-area Masses on Sunday.

For sure, Cupich has a point, even if consuming Mass time for a spat with a TV station might be seen by some as a slight overreaction.

However, what shouldn’t be missed in the “Cardinal v. Media” sideshow is that there’s a real truth embedded in Cupich’s original statement, however misinterpreted it may have been: There is arguably no higher priority in Catholicism right now than dealing with the abuse crisis, but that doesn’t mean other important issues have gone on holiday while the Church sorts it all out.

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.

WHITE PLAINS (NY)
Journal News

September 4, 2018

By Jorge Fitz-Gibbon

Spring Valley – G.R. Pafumi’s office is at the rear of his house on an unassuming residential street, in a darkened room cluttered with books, legal documents and two computer monitors that provide much of the light.

From here, the Wall Street analyst who turned author lives out his new calling.

Pafumi, 68, is taking on the Roman Catholic Church, having spent five years compiling an extensive international public database of sex abuse by priests and clergy, and publishing his latest book on the scandal that has rocked the Vatican for years.

“What you’re looking at is the collapse of the Catholic Church in real time,” he said. “The church is now crumbling. The church is now trying to recapture its place in the world despite the fact that the world is turning against it.”

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WASHINGTON (DC)
NPR All Things Considered

September 3, 2018

By Sarah Boden

With audio]

Pittsburgh – When Ray Santori was 10, his mother died. His father had died the year before, so an aunt and uncle near Pittsburgh took him in.

Not long after that at Saint Bernadette Church in Monroeville, Pa., Santori met Father William Yockey, who according to the recent grand jury report, sexually assaulted him for about two years.

“I felt that, I mean, I sometimes couldn’t look people in the eye because they would know,” says Santori. “I felt that everybody knew that I was sexually abused.”

Santori says he started drinking and using drugs. He left the house before finishing high school. Since then, he’s been homeless and incarcerated for a time.

“The sexual abuse drove me into such a dark place that it was hard to get a grip on responsibly, reality, work, you know, saving money,” he says.

Today, Santori says he’s 26 months sober and makes a decent living as a carpenter. But economically, the 53-year-old is not in good shape. During more than three decades of addiction, Santori estimates he’s spent up to $2 million on drugs and alcohol.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

September 4, 2018

By Dan Herbeck

Christopher Szuflita says he still has painful memories of the day in 1970 when he tried to tell his pastor that he had been repeatedly molested by a priest at Fourteen Holy Helpers Church in West Seneca.

He said Monsignor Martin Ebner immediately told him and his father that day that his accusation against the Rev. Joseph Friel was a lie.

“The pastor became very irate, very upset and told me I was a liar. He said I was committing a sacrilegious sin by lying. He said I could be excommunicated from the church for telling such a lie,” Szuflita, now 66, recalled in an interview on Friday.

“He never conducted any kind of investigation. He never questioned anyone. He just told me, right then and there, off the cuff, that I was a liar,” recalled Szuflita, a former altar boy.

Forty-eight years later, the Buffalo Diocese in March identified for the first time 42 priests against whom it had determined credible allegations of child sexual abuse had been lodged. Friel’s name was on the list.

That admission was a bombshell for Szuflita, who in 1994 unsuccessfully sued the diocese in State Supreme Court, seeking $2 million in damages for the harm caused by Friel abusing him when he was 15 and 16 years old.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

September 3, 2018

By Antonio Olivo and Martin Weil

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/man-shouts-at-cardinal-wuerl-during-talk-here-after-sunday-ceremony/2018/09/03/bc720c76-af2d-11e8-a20b-5f4f84429666_story.html

A man stood and yelled “Shame on you” as Cardinal Donald Wuerl on Sunday addressed the sex abuse scandal rocking the Catholic Church and asked parishioners to pray for Pope Francis as he deals with the problem.

A video of the incident inside Annunciation Catholic Church in Northwest Washington shows the man, identified by CNN as Brian Garfield, walking angrily toward the exit after he could be heard yelling at Wuerl during a short speech in which the cardinal also asked parishioners to forgive his “errors in judgment” in handling sexual abuse allegations while he was a bishop in Pittsburgh.

Garfield, who could not be reached for comment Monday, told CNN that he is a lifelong Catholic and is angry about the findings of a grand jury report in Pennsylvania released last month that documented abuse by 300 priests over the course of 70 years.

The report focused attention on Wuerl’s mixed record of dealing with abusive priests when he was bishop of Pittsburgh for 18 years before becoming archbishop of the Washington archdiocese in 2006.

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SAN JOSE (CA)
Mercury News

September 3, 2018

By Matthias Gafni

Los Gatos – Tucked away in Pennsylvania‘s explosive August grand jury report on widespread sex abuse by Catholic priests is the previously untold story of Rev. Benedict Van der Putten, who as part of a traditionalist priest society in Los Gatos 18 years ago was said to have molested one teen girl and tried with another. Then he was whisked away to Europe.

The first Los Gatos abuse allegedly occurred around 2000 at the St. Aloysius Retreat in the wooded hills near the Lexington Reservoir, where priests from the Society of St. Pius X practice a conservative, pre-Vatican II brand of Catholicism with the Latin Mass. The society is not recognized by the Roman Catholic church and St. Aloysius is not overseen by the San Jose diocese.

Local authorities, acting on a tip from Placer County the following year, say they investigated the allegations but were unable to make a criminal case. There are no indications that St. Aloysius ever directly contacted police about Van der Putten.

Following the Los Gatos incidents, the society quickly sent Van der Putten to its international headquarters in Switzerland, and reported him to the Vatican, which later relayed the alleged misconduct to a Pennsylvania diocese where he was seeking reinstatement the following year. That was derailed after he allegedly confessed to molesting another teen in 2001. While he was in Europe, the society expelled him.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

September 3, 2018

By Judy Courtin and Chris Atmore

The redress scheme for child sex abuse victims is unjust and damaging

The lack of transparency around the guidelines used to award compensation to victims of sex abuse is repugnant

A man, sexually assaulted in the 1970s at Melbourne’s Trinity Grammar School, recently received $500,000 in compensation. This prompted the elite private school to opt into the national redress scheme for victims of institutional child sex abuse.

At face value, Trinity, along with other institutions joining the national scheme, has put the interests of victims and survivors of institutional child sex crimes, above and beyond its own.

But, this disguises a much more disquieting reality.

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BEAVER (PA)
WPXI-TV

September 2, 2018

[VIDEO]

A victim of sexual abuse by a Catholic priest made an emotional return to church Sunday morning.

Johnny Hewko testified in front of the grand jury that he was sexually abused at his church in Beaver for years.

“We need to take our churches back,” Hewko said.

The allegations date back to the late 1970s, when Hewko was an altar boy at Saints Peter and Paul Roman Catholic Church.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

September 3, 2018

By Jay Tokasz

The Buffalo Diocese has tightened security inside its Main Street headquarters, as officials try to unravel how a television reporter obtained secret clergy files.

In the aftermath of a leak of internal emails, memos and letters showing how Bishop Richard J. Malone handled sexual misconduct and inappropriate behavior allegations against two priests, the diocese posted security guards at the doors to the headquarters, changed locks, set up a video camera and brought in a computer expert to install encryption software on email accounts and examine information systems for weaknesses that would enable security breaches, according to multiple sources connected to the diocese. Even priests who enter the building are required to wear an identification badge.

Multiple sources have told The News that the documents used in three separate WKBW-TV reports since Aug. 22 included information that normally would be seen only by Malone and his innermost circle of confidants.

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WACO (TX)
Deadspin

August 28, 2018

By Patrick Redford

According to a report from PR Week, Baylor officials placed a mole within several support groups for sexual assault survivors as a way to control their messaging and keep the university from looking bad.

Baylor currently faces a Title IX lawsuit from 10 anonymous former students for their alleged serial mishandling of sexual assault cases over the past decade, and Baylor football players have been accused of committing 52 rapes over four years. Per PR Week, the school attempted to curtail the voices of sexual assault survivors by embedding an insider (identified as Matt Burchett, director of student activities at Baylor) into survivor groups and getting them to soften their stances.

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GIPPSLAND (AUSTRALIA)
ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

September 3, 2018

By Bridget Rollason

An 80-year-old Catholic brother who sexually abused boys while he was principal of a Gippsland school during the 1970s will serve nine months in jail, after previously receiving suspended sentences for other similar assaults.

Marist Brother Gerard McNamara pleaded guilty in July to seven charges of indecent assault, which took place while he was in charge of St Paul’s Secondary School in Traralgon.

McNamara was in his 30s when he abused the boys, aged between 12 and 15 years old, while giving them “sport massages” in a sports shed at the school, away from the main buildings.

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SCRANTON (PA)
Associated Press

August 31, 2018

By Michael Rubinkam

A Roman Catholic bishop in Pennsylvania says he has barred one of his predecessors from representing the diocese in public, citing his failure to protect children from abusive priests.

Scranton Bishop Joseph Bambera made the announcement Friday.

Bambera says former Bishop James Timlin is permanently barred from representing the diocese “at all public events, liturgical or otherwise.” He’s also referred Timlin’s case to the Vatican for possible further action.

A Pennsylvania grand jury faulted Timlin for his handling of clergy sexual abuse. Timlin led the Scranton diocese for nearly two decades until 2003.

The grand jury found that statewide, some 300 priests abused more than 1,000 children since the 1940s, and church leaders covered it up.

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VATICAN CITY
Associated Press

September 3, 2018

By Frances D’Emilio

Pope Francis on Monday recommended silence and prayer to counter those who “only seek scandal,” division and destruction in what appeared to be an indirect response to allegations that he had covered up for a U.S. cardinal embroiled in sex abuse scandals.

Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a former papal envoy in Washington, stunned the faithful last month by claiming Francis allegedly lifted unconfirmed Vatican sanctions against disgraced U.S. prelate Theodore McCarrick and demanding that the pope resign.

“With people lacking good will, with people who only seek scandal, who seek only division, who seek only destruction, even within the family — silence, prayer” is the path to take, Francis said in his homily during morning Mass at the Vatican hotel where he lives.

Hours after Vigano made the claim in a statement given to conservative Catholic news media, Francis had told journalists seeking his response that he “won’t say a word” about the claims by the disgruntled former diplomat.

In his homily Monday, Francis indicated he takes his cue from God on whether to speak out or not about Vigano’s allegations.

“May the Lord give us the grace to discern when we should speak and when we should stay silent,” Francis said. “This applies to every part of life: to work, at home, in society.”

“Truth is meek, truth is silent, truth isn’t noisy,” the pope said in his Mass remarks.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

September 2, 2018

By Liz Navratil

Over the course of 70 years, allegations of rape and sexual abuse levied against clergy members who worked in the Pittsburgh Diocese led to several million dollars in settlements and other bills, according to a review of the grand jury report released earlier this month.

The report lists $5.8 million in payments covering lawsuits, counseling for victims, Catholic school tuition for victims’ children and, in at least two cases, “sustenance” payments for priests who had been convicted of indecent assault or corrupting minors. The document does not always clarify whether the payments were covered by the Diocese of Pittsburgh, insurance or other entities. In at least one instance, the money seems to stem from abuse that began before the priest transferred into the Pittsburgh Diocese and continued afterward.

That $5.8 million is almost certainly an undercount. The report lists payments stemming from the actions of 29 clergy members in the Pittsburgh Diocese, but for 10 of them, it did not specify the amount paid out.

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NEW YORK
The Riverdale Press

September 2, 2018

A recent grand jury report in Pennsylvania singling out dozens of priests embroiled in the Catholic Church’s ongoing child abuse scandal has once again brought this painful topic to the forefront of our conversations.

And it should. It’s so easy to overlook abuse victims, primarily because we see them more as anonymous silhouettes than actual people. That’s terrible, because they are people, and they simply want to live their lives without having what happened to them as kids hanging over them more than it already does.

In the renewed discussions, however, many have taken the position that the forced celibacy by the church is the root cause. But that’s silly. To say the root of child abuse is the absence of much-desired intimate contact ignores all other cases of child abuse outside of the church. Many accused and convicted of such atrocities have had rather active sex lives, and to suggest that abstinence is a needed component that leads to child abuse ignores other evidence that’s out there.

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WASHINGTON D.C.
News4.com (NBC affiliate in Washington D.C.)

September 2, 2018

By Derrick Ward and Matthew Stabley

A man scolded the archbishop of Washington in church Sunday morning before storming out as the archbishop asked parishioners to keep Pope Francis in their prayers.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl installed a new pastor at Annunciation Catholic Church Sunday. Wuerl is facing a storm of criticism and calls for his resignation after becoming entangled in sexual abuse scandals in the church he has served with distinction since 1966.

“We need to hold close in our prayers and our loyalty our Holy Father Pope Francis,” Wuerl said in church Sunday. “Increasingly it’s clear that he is the object of considerable animosity.”

“Shame on you!” Brian Garfield then shouted before leaving the church.

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NEW YORK
The Post-Journal (Jamestown NY)

September 2, 2018

By Derek Smith

In addition to the governor’s race, New Yorkers will vote for a new attorney general in November. Democrats will choose their general election candidates in the September primary. Chief among our concerns should be the degree to which the candidates intend to pursue sexual abuse crimes and cover-ups by the Catholic Church.

If we have learned anything from the recent revelations in Pennsylvania, where the AG Josh Shapiro identified roughly 1,000 victims of child abuse, it’s that we cannot expect these sickening abuses of power and corruption to appear without aggressive investigation. Clearly we cannot rely on the crooked power-brokers in the Catholic Church to speak up. Our local authorities’ response was severely disheartening. District Attorney Swanson’s concern for the matter was uninspiring, claiming that a joint investigation with the Erie County office would be “of interest.” Perhaps systematic church sanctioned pedophilia deserves a higher classification in DA’s offices than “of interest.”

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

September 2, 2018

By Peter Smith

As advocates for victims of sexual abuse call for a chance to file lawsuits over long-ago abuse, some Catholic bishops and their legislative allies are promoting an alternative that’s been used in other states — setting up a victim’s compensation fund, with payments determined by a neutral third party.

Pennsylvania’s Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati proposed the fund as an alternative to the idea of creating a window in the statute of limitations, which he contended would violate the state constitution.

Erie Bishop Lawrence Persico said he backs the idea of a fund, and the dioceses of Pittsburgh, Greensburg and Harrisburg all issued statements saying they were open to it.

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GEORGIA
Gainesville Times

September 2, 2018

By Megan Reed

Local church leaders join in enforcing zero tolerance stance on violators

In light of reports of abuse in the Catholic Church, Georgia’s attorney general issued a statement Friday encouraging churches to be transparent and hold abusers accountable.

Christopher Carr said in the statement that he is concerned about reports of abuse and how the church has been responding, and as a Roman Catholic himself, the issue is both professional and personal for him.

“It does not matter whether sexual abuse occurs in the context of human trafficking, by a friend or family member, a teacher or a coach, a public employee, or, as here, by a priest or church official. It must not — and will not— be tolerated,” Carr said.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Catholic News Agency via Crux

September 2, 2018

By Kevin J. Jones

Catholics who are demoralized, angered, or scandalized by revelations about sex abuse must feel free to talk to clergy and other Catholics, and other Catholics must reach out to them, a priest of the Diocese of Pittsburgh has said.

“I would invite those who are wavering to be open about their concerns – their anger, their frustration, their questions – so that someone can respond to them,” Father Nicholas Vaskov, executive director of communications for the Pittsburgh diocese, told CNA.

“I would also encourage them to stay close to God in prayer so that he can hear their calls to him and respond with his compassion and love.”

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DENVER (CO)
Archdiocese of Denver

By Samuel J. Aquila, S.T.L., Archbishop of Denver

August 13, 2018

At its root, this is a spiritual crisis that requires fidelity, reparation, and reliance on Christ for the grace and path to true, lasting freedom.

En Español

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

This past week I was on my annual silent retreat and the accusations against Archbishop McCarrick were a part of my prayer. Faithful have written to me and have asked questions about the situation. Some have felt that the Lord has abandoned the Church. Other bishops have spoken out on this tragedy, and today I offer to you, the faithful of the archdiocese and my brother priests and deacons, the following reflections.

As noted by Cardinal DiNardo, president of the U.S. bishops conference, the revelations about Archbishop McCarrick have caused both bishops and the laity “anger, sadness, and shame.” Personally, I am deeply sorry that both laity and clergy have had to experience this type of betrayal. In response, I am asking every priest in the archdiocese to offer a Mass each month in reparation for the sins committed by cardinals, bishops, priests and deacons, and for all sins committed by clergy and lay people against the commandments of our Lord, as well as to pray for healing for the victims of sin. This Mass is to be announced publicly so the lay faithful can attend and offer prayers in reparation for these grave sins that have wounded so many and for their own sins.

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BOULDER (CO)
The Daily Camera

September 2, 2018

Top leaders of the Catholic church have a lot to answer for following recent back-to-back miserable stories — first that Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, had resigned over allegations that he sexually abused minors and adult seminarians and, second, that according to a grand jury report more than 300 priests had sexually abused 1,000 children over seven decades in Pennsylvania.

Clergy offered apologies and expressed disgust. You would expect that. But many of them ventured to assign blame — not solely to the perpetrators and those who enabled them but also to homosexuality. This calumny against gay people brings shame upon a church already teetering under the weight of massive humiliation.

In a letter he wrote in response to McCarrick’s resignation, Samuel J. Aquila, the archbishop of Denver, said that an aspect of the sex abuse crisis was that “too many, both clergy and lay, have listened more to the world than to Christ and the Church when it comes to human sexuality,” and that the church must teach that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” He continued: “The sexual revolution occurring in our culture, which essentially says, ‘Anything goes if adults consent to it,’ is not the way of God and only leads to where we are today.”

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WASHINGTON D.C.
CNN

September 2, 2018

By Daniel Burke, Rosa Flores and Kevin Conlon

As the embattled Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, addressed the Catholic Church’s clergy sexual abuse scandal on Sunday, one Catholic yelled “Shame on you!” while another turned her back on Wuerl in protest.

Wuerl, who faces accusations that he mishandled clergy sexual misconduct while he was a bishop in Pittsburgh, addressed Washington’s Annunciation Catholic Church, where the cardinal was installing a new pastor. In a short speech after the Mass, Wuerl asked the 200 or so people in the congregation to forgive his “errors in judgment” and “inadequacies.”

Wuerl also urged the parish to pray for and remain loyal to Pope Francis, as “increasingly it is clear that he is the object of considerable animosity.”

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NEW JERSEY
InsiderNJ.com

August 30, 2018

Senator Joseph Vitale (D-Middlesex) issued the following statement on the recent grand jury report in Pennsylvania on clerical sexual abuse of minors.

In the wake of the release of a damning Pennsylvania grand jury report on six Catholic dioceses finding that 300 priests over more than 60 years sexually abused more than 1,000 minors and reporting that priests in New Jersey were involved in some of these crimes and allowed to continue in their ministries and have access to vulnerable children, I have requested a meeting with Newark Cardinal Joseph Tobin to review the cases with full transparency.

These disturbing revelations come on the heels of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, former archbishop of Newark and former bishop of Metuchen, being removed from ministry by the Vatican because of credible accusations of sexual misconduct.

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NEW JERSEY
Newark Star-Ledger

September 2, 2018

By Mark Crawford, Guest Columnist

In recent weeks you have most likely learned that one of the most prominent Catholic Church officials, then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, faces a credible and substantiated allegation of sexually abusing a minor. Since then, others have come forward disclosing how he used his position and authority to sexually abuse seminarians, priests and at least one other child.

To make matters worse, we learned that several bishops knew of settlements made decades earlier. Secrecy and silence prevailed at the highest levels within our church. At the very least, our local bishops knew and remained quiet as McCarrick — the former head of the Archdiocese of Newark and the Diocese of Metuchen — ascended to one of the highest positions within the church. He was allowed to craft the very document that was intended to stop child sexual abuse by clergy.

Then we learned that the monks of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Mary’s — which operates one of New Jersey’s most prestigious schools, Delbarton in Morristown — issued a letter to parents this summer acknowledging the presence of 13 monks and one lay teacher who had been accused of abusing children in their care over the past 30 years. It was a staggering admission, almost incomprehensible in scope.

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DALLAS (TX)
Dallas News

September 2, 2018

By David Tarrant and Julieta Chiquillo

The disgraced priest Edmundo Paredes disappeared from Dallas six months ago.

He left behind a mystery much deeper than where he is today.

Paredes leaves questions about who he truly was, what he did to the people he was supposed to serve and what harm he caused, not only to his alleged victims but to a Catholic diocese in Dallas already stained by a sexual abuse scandal stretching back more than two decades.

The fear now is that the questions will never be fully and publicly answered. Police are not investigating the sexual abuse allegations that surfaced this year against the longtime pastor of St. Cecilia Catholic Church in north Oak Cliff. Paredes’ accusers are not talking — not to police and not to the media, anyway.

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PHILADELPHIA
Associated Press via WBAL-TV

September 2, 2018

The archbishop of Philadelphia has asked Pope Francis to cancel a bishops’ conference focusing on youth in the wake of the child sex abuse crisis roiling the Catholic Church.

A spokesman for the archdiocese confirmed Saturday that Archbishop Charles Chaput made the request by letter, but he declined further comment, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

The Youth Synod, which would include bishops from around the world, has been planned for two years and its website says it is to be focused on “young people, the faith and vocational discernment.” An international panel of young people is expected to join the council of bishops for the event.

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LINCOLN (NE)
Associated Press via FoxNews.com

September 2, 2018

By Grant Schulte

For more than a decade, a conservative Catholic diocese in Nebraska was the only church in the U.S. that refused to participate in annual reviews of sexual misconduct that were a key reform enacted in the wake of the 2002 Boston clergy abuse scandal.

As a new wave of abuse scandals rock the Roman Catholic church, critics say the Diocese of Lincoln is now paying the price for its unwillingness to change and lack of transparency.

Accusers have been coming forward in recent weeks with allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct by clergy in Nebraska, and the diocese is facing a potential criminal investigation and criticism that it mishandled abusive priests even as it should have been subjected to increased scrutiny after the Boston scandal.

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FRANCE
The Tablet

August 30, 2018

By Tom Heneghan

A French priest and canon law judge has publicly urged Cardinal Philippe Barbarin to step down as the Archbishop of Lyon over the sexual abuse scandal, saying that Francis’ “Letter to the People of God” had inspired him to speak out.

Within a week of the open letter by Fr Pierre Vignon, a judge of the Lyon ecclesiastical court since 1993, a petition supporting his call, which two victims’ rights activists had launched, had gathered more than 90,000 signatures.

Asked about the petition, Church spokesman Mgr Olivier Ribadeau Dumas said that all Catholics should combat sexual abuse, not just the bishops.

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JERSEY CITY (NJ)
Jersey Journal

September 2, 108

By Corey W. McDonald

He lived in the church and celebrated Mass. Members at the Our Lady of Czestochowa Church knew of him, but many had never spoken to the Rev. Gerard Sudol, who last week stepped away from the parish after new allegations of decades-old sexual abuse surfaced.

Church members were informed of the allegations and that he would no longer be a part of the parish during last week’s Mass.

“But for the most part he didn’t really have all that much to do here,” said a parishioner who requested anonymity. “I can’t say I knew him incredibly well.”

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
Saucon Source

September 1, 2018

By Josh Popichak

A Catholic priest who was defrocked three years ago allegedly sexually abused a 14-year-old girl while he was employed at a Fountain Hill parish in the 1980s, according to victim testimony contained in the 1356-page grand jury report about Pennsylvania’s “predator priests” issued by Attorney General Josh Shapiro last month.

James Gaffney, who today is in his early 60s, was ordained a priest on June 8, 1985, and around the same time began working as Assistant Pastor at St. Ursula’s, which is in the Diocese of Allentown.

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MINNEAPOLIS (MN)
Minneapolis Star Tribune

September 1, 2018

Reports of sex abuse leave faithful seeking answers.

Ask Cindy and Craig Vana about the state of the Catholic Church and the longtime worshipers will say this: We need to know more about some of the recent headlines before we know what to think, we need to stay with our faith, we need to pray.

The couple have spent 49 years, the length of their marriage, as members of the Church of St. Charles Borromeo in St. Anthony, and they take pride in its mission, its community of some 1,500 families, and in the stunning renovation completed four years ago of the neighborhood church’s altar and worship space.

But like other Catholics in recent days, they’ve learned of a damning report out of Pennsylvania of clergy sex abuse, one that was quickly followed by an Archbishop’s allegation that, in yet another sex scandal, high-ranking Vatican officials, including Pope Francis, were long aware of the victimization of seminarian students.

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LIMERICK (IRELAND)
Limerick Leader

September 1, 2018

By Fintan Walsh

The bishop of Limerick has called on members of the Catholic Church who are “hiding some dark secret” to report abuse to State and Church authorities.

Speaking at the annual retreat of the Syro-Malabar community from India at the Limerick Racecourse this Saturday, Bishop Brendan Leahy also called on members of public and victims to report abuse.

This is the fourth time in a number of weeks the Limerick bishop has acknowledged the abuse caused by the Catholic Church. He delivered two speeches in the lead up to Pope Francis’ visit, and this is now the second statement he has released this week, reflecting on the pontiff’s historic visit.

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SANTIAGO (CHILE)
Agence France-Presse via ABS-CBN News

September 1, 2018

By Paulina Abramovich

Scores of new cases of priestly sexual abuse of minors have come to light in Chile, public prosecutors said Friday, deepening a crisis in the country’s Catholic Church that has embroiled Pope Francis.

The country’s chief prosecutor’s office said the number of cases it was investigating had soared to 119 as more victims came forward.

A total of 167 bishops, priests, and lay members of the church are now under investigation for sexual crimes committed in the South American country since 1960.

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UNITED STATES
The Boston Globe

September 2, 2018

Time’s up for Pope Francis and the leaders of the Catholic Church.

Catholics everywhere — and anyone who cares about children — should demand that our criminal justice system start treating the Roman Catholic Church for what many victims believe it is: an international criminal conspiracy to cover up the rape of what in the United States alone might amount to 100,000 children.

Every attorney general in the country should use their subpoena powers to force the church hierarchy to give up their long-held secrets of clerical crimes. Every state legislature should eliminate the statute of limitations on sexual crimes against children. In every state, clergy should be mandated reporters of alleged sexual abuse.

Send in the feds, too. As recommended by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), amend the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) to allow federal prosecutors to hold church leaders criminally responsible for their roles in covering up sex crimes against children.

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UNITED STATES
The Boston Globe

September 1, 2018

By Mark Arsenault

The devastating grand jury report on Catholic clergy sex abuse in Pennsylvania has sent fresh tremors through Catholic communities across the country and prompted calls for a broader reckoning for a church that has failed to move past the abuse scandal that exploded into view in Boston in the early 2000s.

In the two weeks since the landmark report revealed decades of alleged abuse, survivors of clergy sex abuse have urged attorneys general in every state to launch similar investigations, to compel cooperation with the power of the subpoena.

Amid a furor that reached the Vatican, where Pope Francis has been accused of covering up alleged sexual abuse by the former archbishop of Washington, prosecutors in a number of states, including Missouri, Illinois, and New York, have said they are beginning or exploring new investigations.

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ROME (ITALY)
The New York Times

September 1, 2018

By Laurie Goodstein and Jason Horowitz

At a gala dinner in the luxury Pierre Hotel in Manhattan in 2012, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, Pope Benedict’s top diplomat in the United States, bestowed an award for missionary service on Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and praised him as “very much loved from us all.”

But if Archbishop Viganò is to be believed, he was keeping a troubling secret — a claim that is at the heart of a new scandal that has thrown the church into upheaval and led some conservatives to call for Pope Francis to resign.

The archbishop now says he was aware at the time of the gala that Cardinal McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, was under orders from Pope Benedict XVI to stop appearing in public on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church because he had sexually abused adult seminary students.

Archbishop Viganò did not explain why he agreed to publicly laud a cardinal under sanctions. But LifeSiteNews — a website run by conservative Catholics — quoted the archbishop on Friday as saying that he could not back out of the even

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MINNEAPOLIS
Business Wire – a company that disseminates full-text press releases

August 31, 2018

When a Duluth jury sided with a Catholic priest’s argument that he was entitled to receive damages after a former student at a Catholic high school falsely accused him of inappropriate sexual contact in the mid-1970s, it certainly broke with recent legal trends – and may have set a precedent, according to Mic Puklich, a partner at the Chanhassen, Minn.-based Neaton & Puklich law firm.

“A priest going on the offensive to clear his name from being falsely accused of sexual abuse – and winning in court. Now that’s rare, if not unprecedented,” says Mic Puklich, the Chanhassen, Minn. lawyer who represented the Rev. William Graham in the civil lawsuit he filed against his accuser. The jury delivered its verdict the evening of Thursday, Aug. 23 (Minnesota Sixth District Court, case file number 69-DU-CV-16-1636).

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GREENE COUNTY (PA)
The Herald-Standard [Greene County PA]

August 31, 2018

Three priests in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, including one serving in Greene County, were placed on administrative leave after allegations of sexual abuse of a minor were lodged against them.

The Rev. John Bauer, 71, was accused of sexual abuse of a minor in the 1980s, according to a release issued by Bishop David Zubik.

Officials said the allegation was received on Thursday, and noted that Bauer — and the other priests who have been removed — have denied wrongdoing.

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BEAVER COUNTY (PA)
The Times [Beaver County PA]

August 31, 2018

By Daveen Rae Kurutz

The Diocese of Pittsburgh has placed a retired priest who served at an Ambridge parish for nearly four years in the 1990s on administrative leave after a new allegation of sexual abuse was reported.

Diocesan officials announced Friday that three priests were placed on administrative leave following allegations of sexual abuse of a minor were received.

The Rev. John Bauer, 71, was serving in team ministry at several Greene County parishes before the diocese received a report of sexual abuse on Aug. 30. Officials said Bauer was accused of sexually abusing a minor in the early 1980s. Bauer was pastor at Good Samaritan Parish in Ambridge from June 1994 until February 1998 before taking an 11-month leave of absence.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

August 23, 2018

By Naka Nathaniel

Catholics should not keep on filling the pews every Sunday. It is wrong to support the church.

Atlanta – Last Sunday, I did something that no properly raised Catholic ever does. I stood up in the middle of Mass and called out the priest.

As the priest began his homily, I drew my 9-year-old son closer and asked him to pay close attention. Days before, a Pennsylvania grand jury had released a damning report detailing decades of horrific child sex abuse by clergymen and a church culture that covered it up.

The priest addressed the report. He said he was surprised that people showed up for that day’s service. He said the church had to change. Then he began to move on.

I couldn’t help myself. I stood up and yelled out: “Father!” He turned. I asked him, simply: “How?”

He responded that I should write to the nuncio, the pope’s representative in the United States. I told him that this was a bureaucratic answer.

Standing in front of the congregation, I pointed to my son and asked how could I ever let him make his first Communion.

As the priest answered, I became aware of the other families around me. I knew so many of them, and I was reminded of how I had always felt so at home at Mass. It always gave me such pride when my family would take up most of a pew in church.

Now I’m angry. I feel betrayed.

Susan Reynolds, a Catholic theologian from nearby Emory University, witnessed the exchange. She tweeted about it, and her recounting went viral.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

September 1, 2018

By Lisa Tarchak

Readers respond to a dad’s plea for members of the faith to demand the resignation of the entire clergy, including the pope.

A few weekends ago, Naka Nathaniel stood up during a Mass in Atlanta and confronted his priest about the Roman Catholic Church’s response to the Pennsylvania sexual abuse cover-up. In an Op-Ed essay last week, Mr. Nathaniel wrote about balancing his already complex relationship with Catholicism with his role as a father raising a 9-year-old son in the Catholic faith. He concluded that the church can no longer be reformed from within. “I’m mad at the church administration,” he wrote. But, he added, “I’m also angry at the congregation. I’m upset with the people who aren’t demanding that every member of the clergy resign.”

We published more than 900 responses to the essay, many raising the same issues as Mr. Nathaniel. A selection of comments, edited for length and clarity, is below.

Abusing the trust of the faithful

I long ago left the Catholic Church and I never felt the same level of comfort and pride that the author described in his relationship with Catholicism. Yet I was very moved by his obvious love for his church and all that it meant to him growing up. So I find myself even more angry and disgusted with the church, not only for the horrendous abuse of children with all the attendant psychological damage but also the significant trauma to believers who were not physically abused. A source of comfort to many has been forever sullied and it is hard to believe that the Catholic Church can be redeemed. Shame on the church for abusing children and shame on the church for abusing the trust of the faithful and destroying all that they held dear in their faith. — Judith C. McGovern, West Haven

Not all priests should be tarred by the same brush

“I’m upset with the people who aren’t demanding that every member of the clergy resign.” Really? And should they all resign, en masse, who will raise their hand to minister to the poor, the suffering? Who will devote their whole lives to this cause, as Catholic priests (and nuns) have done? Because there are more than 35,000 priests in this country alone, and the overwhelming majority are not criminals. I, too, am angry and disgusted by this horrific behavior, including the abhorrent moral transgression of the cover-up by officials. But I am asking that not all priests be tarred by the same brush. — Ed, Charlottesville, Va.

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YORK (PA)
York Daily Record

August 27, 2018

By Teresa Boeckel

As the Roman Catholic Church grapples with the recent Pennsylvania grand jury report detailing widespread clergy sexual abuse, it faces a critical question: What can be done to protect children?

The Diocese of Harrisburg has detailed a lengthy list of steps it’s taking, such as:

– Reporting every allegation of child sexual abuse to law enforcement for investigation
– Conducting multiple background checks on all employees and volunteers
– Teaching students how to stay safe through age-appropriate child abuse awareness programs.

It’s part of the Youth Protection Program, which is built upon the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Charter for the Protection of Youth and Young People. That charter was developed in 2002 to address child sexual abuse and prevention.

The Harrisburg diocese underwent an intensive, on-site audit last year as part of a nationwide audit, said Joseph Aponick, director of communications for the diocese. The independent agency found it to be in compliance.

Some experts, however, say that more needs to be done to address the problem. More oversight is needed, and lay people need to take a more active role in the church.

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

August 28, 2018

By Brian MacQuarrie

Weston – Jolted by the latest sexual abuse storm to hit the Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley addressed nearly 300 archdiocesan priests Tuesday in an emotional, closed-door meeting that left some grim-faced clerics shaking their heads as they left.

“It’s a sad day,” said one elderly priest, hurrying to his car after the meeting and waving off questions from a reporter.

The 90-minute meeting at St. Julia’s parish center followed a recent, explosive allegation from a top Vatican diplomat who, in a striking personal attack, said Pope Francis covered up reports of abuse and harassment of seminarians against Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington who resigned from the College of Cardinals last month.

O’Malley “encouraged us to be heroes” during this difficult time, said the Rev. Paul Soper, the cardinal’s secretary for evangelization, and to be mindful that the new developments “are tearing open the wounds of the survivors” of sexual abuse.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Inquirer

August 26, 2018

By Ronnie Polaneczky

Dear grand jury members,

Thank you for your 24-month investigation into childhood sex abuse by Catholic priests and the cover-up that perpetuated it for decades.

You must feel drained. But we still need you.

Please convene one more time to investigate why Pennsylvania legislators keep blocking bills that would give all victims of childhood sex abuse a shot at justice.

The actions of some politicians are as chilling as those of the bishops and lawyers who protected the Church’s assets instead of its children’s innocence.

They’re not trustworthy leaders. They’re co-conspirators in an obstruction of justice.

We need you to name names. To connect the dots between legislators and certain lobbyists who infest the state Capitol. To rake through emails, reconcile bank records, and tally campaign donations.

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LINCOLN (NE)
Lincoln Journal Star

August 24, 2018

By Margaret Reist

https://journalstar.com/news/local/education/letter-to-pius-x-families-prompted-by-church-abuse-allegations/article_397ab5c0-168e-5164-b9d3-e467bea18758.html

An email sent to Pius X High School parents outlining school safety procedures in light of an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse within the Catholic Diocese of Lincoln caused a small controversy of its own.

An email sent to Pius X parents Aug. 17 appeared to suggest that parents should report abuse claims to police or the child abuse hotline if they happen outside the school, but to church officials if it involves diocesan officials.

But Principal Tom Korta said that’s the opposite of what he meant to communicate, and after several parents questioned that portion of the email, he sent a clarification to families Tuesday.

He intended to urge parents to report all suspected abuse, regardless of where it occurred, he said.

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
The Morning Call

August 27, 2018

By Bill White

“Love Story” was a sappy movie, based on a sappy book, starring two bad actors.

Worse, it spawned a terrible catch phrase: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”

I think in love and everything else, we should take responsibility for our actions, including those that warrant apologies.

Unfortunately, we’ve seen too many examples of people and institutions that won’t take genuine responsibility for their bad behavior.

For example, I routinely find myself wanting to give advice to former Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski, who blamed everyone but himself for corruption at City Hall — and continues to do it, even after his conviction on 47 of 54 counts in his federal corruption trial.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Daily Southtown / Chicago Tribune

August 21, 2018

By Ted Slowik

A defensive mindset known as “protect the house” often seems to take hold when an institution feels threatened.

Last week’s release of a Pennsylvania grand jury report helps show that no institution went to greater lengths to protect the house than the Roman Catholic Church in that state.

“The main thing was not to help children, but to avoid ‘scandal,’” the grand jurors wrote. “It’s like a playbook for concealing the truth.”

In the 16 years since The Boston Globe and other newspapers exposed the Catholic Church’s appalling cover-up of sex crimes committed against children, other institutions have faced criticism for protecting the house.

In 2012, former FBI Director Louis Freeh released a report that found former leaders of Penn State University showed “total and consistent disregard” for child sex abuse victims and tried to cover up assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky’s sexual abuse of young boys.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

August 27, 2018

By Patrick M. O’Connell

Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich said Monday he was puzzled to be named in a scathing letter written by a former top Vatican diplomat who accused Pope Francis of covering up the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandals.

Carlo Maria Vigano, the retired Vatican ambassador to the United States, mentioned Cupich by name several times in the caustic 11-page letter released over the weekend in which he called on the pope to resign.

Vigano’s letter hinted at “a wicked pact” in alleging Cupich secured his appointment as Chicago’s archbishop in large part because of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington who resigned last month amid sexual abuse allegations. The letter was released to the National Catholic Register and other outlets, and posted online.

Cupich granted a brief interview at the archdiocese’s offices Monday, one of about a dozen he conducted in response to the letter. Asked if he believed Vigano was taking a shot at his credentials and qualifications, Cupich said he had a long record of accomplishments before he came to Chicago: “Let’s be honest. I’m not somebody who fell out of the sky.”

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BALTIMORE (MD)
Baltimore Sun

August 24, 2018

By Jean Marbella

The Pennsylvania grand jury report on child sex abuse in the Catholic Church implicated the former archbishop of Baltimore for covering up the abuse. It’s not the first time the city has dealt with scandals within the Catholic Church. Here’s a timeline of major incidents:

June 1995: John Merzbacher, a former teacher, is convicted of rape and child sex abuse of a student at Catholic Community Middle School in Locust Point in the 1970s. More than 100 other charges of 13 other former students were dropped after a judge sentenced Merzbacher to four consecutive life terms.

April 2002: A man tells the Archdiocese that he had been sexually abused by a former priest, Michael Spillane, in 1968. Spillane had admitted in 1992 that he had abused six boys, and had been stripped of his priestly faculties. A victim who had reported his abuse to the Archdiocese in 1991 told The Sun he had been an altar boy at a church in Ellicott City when Spillane began abusing him, and it continued when the priest became pastor of a church in Crofton.

September 2002: As multiple dioceses dealt with revelations of clergy sex abuse in their churches and schools, Cardinal William H. Keeler releases a list of dozens of priests and brothers who have been accused of sexual abuse over the years. He also discloses that the archdiocese had paid settlements to eight victims totaling $4.1 million in the past 20 years. (The church has since paid out even more.)

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