ABUSE TRACKER

NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Times-Picayune

September 20, 2018

By Kim Chatelain

Against the backdrop of a raging national clergy abuse scandal rooted in south Louisiana, New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond said Thursday (Sept. 20) he and other state bishops are in discussions over whether to release the names of clergy members against whom credible accusations of abuse have been made.

In an exclusive interview with NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune, Aymond said while he believes transparency is key to helping the church through the crises, releasing the names of clergy members who were accused of abuse decades ago is “riddled with problems” and “messy,” particularly in cases where the abuser is deceased. But he said those issues are being discussed among the state’s bishops and a decision is expected soon.

“This has been heart-wrenching, painful,” Aymond said. He characterized the last several weeks as the most difficult in his nine years at the helm of the archdiocese, as he hears stories of victims and the damage abusive clergy members have done to them and their families.

“I go to bed thinking about it. I wake up thinking about it,” he said.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

September 20, 2018

by Dennis Coday

Could this be the moment for which Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was called from “the ends of the earth” to be pope?

Let’s not forget how when Bergoglio was introduced to us as Pope Francis — the name of not a previous pope or apostle, but of a reforming saint — he captured the world’s imagination with his humble request for all those gathered in St. Peter’s Square to pray for him, and he bowed before them.

Let’s not forget that he was elected by a conclave of cardinals who knew they wanted a freshness brought to the papacy and reform to the church. That was his mandate.

He first led by example: renouncing the papal apartments, taking a room in Casa Santa Marta and eating meals in the cafeteria. He forsook titles and called himself the bishop of Rome. He rides in simple cars, not bulletproof limousines.

Let’s not forget how from his earliest days as pope he spoke for a ministry of mercy and denounced in the most strident terms the disease of clericalism. In November 2013, speaking to a gathering of religious superiors, he called clericalism “one of the worst evils,” and warned the religious leaders with seminarians, “We must form their hearts. Otherwise, we are creating little monsters. And then these little monsters mold the people of God. This really gives me goose bumps.”

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Cassidy’s Commentary (blog)

September 20, 2018

I work for a University. It’s not hard to figure out which one; I draw very little attention to where I work, because, DUH, public forum. I like where I work. It’s a very different world from where I grew up, and how I grew up; it’s a very different way of functioning from what I’m used to, and I’m very grateful that I have the opportunity to be here. It’s time for our Annual Title IX Training, and I have a few things to get out of my system…

I grew up in a small town (no stoplights!), and I graduated from a small, private school (in a class of 6 people, I was the valedictorian!). When I went to college, I went to my third- or fourth-string pick of a Bible college in Florissant, Missouri, not too far from where I’m currently employed.

I still don’t know why I wound up there. Honestly, it was down to the wire to make a college decision, and my choice of a school in Tennessee was firmly shot down, as was my choice of a school in Webster Groves, so here I was, in this tiny, little Bible college at 17, feeling out of place and completely on my own.

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SOUTH BEND (IN)
South Bend Tribune

August 22, 2018

By Caleb Bauer

When Bishop Kevin Rhoades announced his plan to release names of priests in the Fort Wayne-South Bend Diocese accused of abuse, he said the revelations of rampant abuse in Pennsylvania weren’t the only factor in his decision.

He also credited a woman who had reported sexual abuse to the diocese — and had urged him to release the name of her abuser.

“I was so conflicted,” Rhoades said at a news conference Friday. “She was asking me to release the name. So to be honest, this whole issue of releasing names is something that even before the Pennsylvania grand jury report I’ve been considering.”

Carolyn Andrzejewski-Wilson watched the live broadcast of the news conference on her computer at her North Carolina home. She knew Rhoades was talking about her.

Almost two years ago, the former Mishawaka resident met with Rhoades to relay her story about abuse at the hands of the Rev. Elden Miller, a former priest at St. Joseph Church and Queen of Peace Church in Mishawaka.

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SPOKANE (WA)
The Associated Press

September 12, 2018

By Nomaan Merchant

HOUSTON (AP) – As U.S. Catholic leaders head to the Vatican to meet with Pope Francis about a growing church abuse crisis, the cardinal leading the delegation has been accused by two people of not doing enough to stop a priest who was arrested this week on sexual abuse charges.

The two people told The Associated Press that they reported the priest and met with Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston. One of them says she was promised in a meeting with DiNardo that the priest would be removed from any contact with children, only to discover that the priest remained in active ministry at another parish 70 miles away.

The priest, Manuel LaRosa-Lopez, was arrested Tuesday by police in Conroe, Texas. Both people who spoke to the AP are cooperating with police.

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

By Jack Suntrup and Nassim Benchaabane

September 20, 2018

As part of an investigation into potential clergy abuse within the Roman Catholic Church, inspectors in the Missouri attorney general’s office have identified at least 100 boxes of records that officials said will be subject to review.

The office told the Post-Dispatch each box generally can hold at least 2,000 documents. The state’s four Catholic dioceses possess the records in question.

The attorney general’s office has been contacted approximately 50 times by survivors and potential witnesses of abuse through an online portal, and the office said it has assigned “several” attorneys to handle its investigation.

The update on Attorney General Josh Hawley’s investigation comes as skepticism continues to swirl around the probe, which the dioceses are complying with voluntarily. Victim advocates have panned the investigation for its lack of subpoena power, which they say would lend credibility to the examination of church records.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
KSDK TV

September 20, 2018

By Christina Coleman

A Florissant couple is outraged after learning that pedophile priests from Pennsylvania were sent to Missouri.

The couple said their son lost his life to suicide after a priest abused him for several years. They reached a wrongful death settlement with the St. Louis Archdiocese, but new information has them demanding change.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) learned about nine Pennsylvania priests, who have been accused or have admitted to sexual abuse allegations, that were transferred to Missouri.

SNAP doesn’t know how many of the nine priests are still in the area, or are even alive, but they say they were sent here after Bishops in Pennsylvania suspended them.

The Harkins said the news brings back painful memories. They want priests to be prosecuted if they engage in sex abuse.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Tablet Catholic Weekly

September 20, 2018

By Christopher Lamb

Benedict XVI has reprimanded a German cardinal for criticising his decision to step down, arguing that “anger” about his resignation has devalued his papacy, and is being “melted into the sorrow” about the Church’s problems.

The Pope Emeritus made the remarks in recent letters to Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, one of the “dubia” cardinals who has publicly challenged Pope Francis over his family life teaching.

At one level, the letters can be read as a rebuke to Pope Francis’ critics, many of whom felt betrayed and angered by Benedict XVI’s decision to resign and have seen the Pope Emeritus as a rallying point for Francis resistance.

On the other hand, critics of this Pope are likely to seize on Benedict XVI’s use of the word “sorrow” about the Church’s situation as a sign that Francis’ pontificate is going in the wrong direction.

The overriding concern from Benedict appears to be that his papacy is being devalued by those using it as a political weapon to undermine Francis.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
KMOV TV

September 20, 2018

By Russell Kinsaul

An advocacy group for victims of sexual abuse by priests says it wants an investigation into the St. Louis Archdiocese by Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley to be expanded.

The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) says it wants an investigation to go beyond priests and include religious orders, deacons and brothers, and said people need to be required to testify under oath.

When Hawley announced an investigation into clergy sex abuse in the Catholic Church in Missouri, Archbishop Robert Carlson promised unfettered access to church records.

“There needs to be subpoena power, there needs to be compelling testimony under oath. Anything else is less than an investigation and I would say it’s a sham and a whitewash,” said Tim Lennon with SNAP.

The group also claimed priests identified as predators by a Pennsylvania grand jury were sent to Missouri.

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UNITED STATES
The American Conservative

September 19, 2018

By Rod Dreher

This piece by Elizabeth Bruenig about a rape in her hometown high school is “devastating.” She’s right. It’s about Amber Wyatt, a cheerleader who says she was raped in 2006 by two athletes who drove her away from a party. She reported the rape to adults that night, and to the police the next day. But the boys got away with it, in part, Bruenig argues, because society turned against Amber Wyatt.

Here’s an important part of the story Bruenig tells. It happened a decade earlier in the same town — Arlington, Texas:

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
The Morning Call

September 12, 2018

By Peter Hall

A woman described as a victim in Pennsylvania’s grand jury report on sexual abuse by clergy has sued the Allentown Diocese over a “smear” campaign by church officials, including Bishop Alfred Schlert, that was described in the statewide report.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Lehigh County Court on behalf of Juliann Bortz of Lower Macungie Township, alleges intentional infliction of emotional distress and defamation. It says the effort by church officials to gather “irrelevant, unrelated [or] false ‘dirt’ ” on Bortz to discredit her reports of abuse by the Rev. Francis Fromholzer was unknown to her until it was revealed in the grand jury report last month.

“She was distraught when she read the grand jury report and found out what the church had done,” Harrisburg attorney Benjamin Andreozzi said. “In essence, she was revictimized.”

Instead of taking Bortz’s accusation seriously and investigating Fromholzer, the suit says, “the diocese immediately ‘attempted to undermine and discredit Juliann and her family.’ ”

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CHICAGO (IL)
CBS

September 12, 2018

By Charlie De Mar

Chicago priests were invited to talk about the sex abuse scandal ripping the church apart in a closed-door meeting Wednesday night. Survivors seized the moment to speak out about the abuse.

CBS 2’s Charlie De Mar reports the meeting, closed to the public and the media, took place in Mundelein.

A police officer was stationed at the gathering spot for much of the day as Cardinal Blasé Cupich held an open discussion about the sex abuse scandal with priests from the Chicago area.

Ken Kaczmarz, a survivor that was abused by a priest, shared his story.

“I was molested by an Augustinian priest in 1980-1981 time frame,” Kaczmarz said. “It’s very encouraging that we are finally getting large numbers of people to listen to us and say ‘Wow.’”

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VATICAN CITY
The Associated Press

September 13, 2018

By Nicole Winfield

A delegation of U.S. Catholic cardinals and bishops met Thursday with Pope Francis as a new bombshell dropped in the Catholic Church’s long-running sex abuse and cover-up scandal.

Lori set up a hotline for potential victims to call, and vowed to conduct a thorough investigation.
The revelation was the latest twist in an incredible turn of events in the U.S. that began with the June 20 announcement that one of the most prestigious U.S. cardinals, Theodore McCarrick, had been accused of groping a teen-age altar boy in the 1970s.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
WTRF

September 13, 2018

Following his acceptance of the letter of resignation of Bishop Michael Bransfield, Pope Francis has appointed Archbishop William E. Lori as Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, while remaining Archbishop of Baltimore.

Pope Francis further instructed Archbishop Lori to conduct an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment of adults against Bishop Bransfield.

The Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston is a suffragan diocese in the Metropolitan See of Baltimore.

“My primary concern is for the care and support of the priests and people of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston at this difficult time,” Archbishop Lori said.

“I further pledge to conduct a thorough investigation in search of the truth into the troubling allegations against Bishop Bransfield and to work closely with the clergy, religious and lay leaders of the diocese until the appointment of a new bishop.”

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WHEELING (WV)
WCHS/WVAH

September 13, 2018

By Anna Taylor

The West Virginia bishop has resigned amid the Catholic Church’s sex abuse and cover-up scandal.

According to a news release posted on the Diocese of Wheeling Charleston’s website, Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Bishop Michael Bransfield. Archbishop William E. Lori has been appointed apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston by the pope while also remaining archbishop of Baltimore, the website said.

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SAN ANTONIO (TX)
KSAT ABC 12

September 14, 2018

By Bill Barajas

The sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church is stirring up pain for one local mother, who said her son died by suicide more than 20 years ago after claiming he was sexually abused by a priest.

Barbara Garcia Boehland said her once happy, outgoing teenage son was depressed. She said the difference in his behavior was like night and day.

“It was a total turnaround. He had nightmares. He couldn’t sleep. He was always sick. It was devastating,” Garcia Boehland said.

Garcia Boehland said her son’s abuse started in 1993. Her son, Eduardo, was 16 and attended St. Anthony’s High School. The priest, Carlos Lozano, pleaded no contest to the charges against him and was sentenced to 10 years’ probation.

Lozano was later sentenced to 20 years in prison after violating his probation by downloading pornographic images from the internet.

“In 1997, my son couldn’t deal with it and committed suicide. Though he was in therapy, it wasn’t something that I could save him from,” Garcia Boehland said.

Garcia Boehland, once a devout Catholic, left the church. She believes the church leaders have hidden hundreds of similar cases and are protecting the accused.

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NEW YORK (NY)
DailyMail.com

September 20, 2018

By Charlotte Dean

– Frank Shannon told Angelo Serrano, 67, that he ‘missed hanging out with him’
– Lawyer Ben Rubinowitz said there were a lot of questions surrounding the letters
– It was revealed in court that Shannon had also been to visit Serrano in prison
– He told the convicted pedophile that he was a ‘wonderful support and friend’
– Serrano is serving a 15 year jail sentence for sexually abused young boys

A priest wrote friendly and supportive letters to a former church volunteer who sexually abused young boys in case that cost the Diocese of Brooklyn $27.5 million.

Reverend Father Frank Shannon told Angelo Serrano, 67, that he ‘missed hanging out with him’ in letters that lawyer Ben Rubinowitz, who represented the victims, referred to as questionable.

After it was revealed in court that Shannon had also been to visit Serrano in prison, Mr Rubinowitz said: ‘He was visiting the pedophile. There are a lot of questions there’, reports Ny Daily News.

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CHILE
CRUX

September 20, 2018

By Inés San Martín

Amid a massive global clerical sexual abuse crisis, some Chilean bishops used their traditional Te Deum celebration on Tuesday to address the problem, apologizing for the scandals that led to the country’s entire episcopacy resigning en masse, while others showed no interest in a mea culpa.

Leading the service held in the cathedral of Santiago on Sept. 18 to commemorate the country’s independence, Benedictine monk Benito Rodríguez replaced Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati in delivering the homily.

Ezzati has been subpoenaed by the prosecutors’ office to testify over accusations of having covered up cases of clerical sexual abuse. He announced over a month ago that he wouldn’t be presiding at, or attending, the prayer service that was followed by a Mass.

Among those in attendance was President Sebastián Piñera.

According to Rodríguez, the Church in Chile is living “moments of purification as perhaps never before in its life. We believe that, speaking from the poverty caused by it, without pretending to deny it or hide it, is also our way of contributing to the today of our history.”

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WASHINGTON (DC)
National Public Radio – All Things Considered

September 19, 2018

By Tom Gjelten

The uproar over clergy sex abuse in the Catholic church is no longer just about sex abuse. It now touches on Catholic teaching about sexuality in general and even on Pope Francis himself, his agenda, and the future of his papacy.

When a Pennsylvania grand jury last month reported that more than 300 priests had molested more than a thousand children across six dioceses under investigation, it became clear that the cases were not isolated incidents. The problem of abusive priests and the bishops who cover up for them is systemic across the whole church.

Pope Francis says the crisis is rooted in a culture of clericalism, with priests and bishops so elevated in the church that their word and authority dominate over the experience of the people they serve.

Some of the pope’s adversaries in the church, such as Cardinal Raymond Burke, have another explanation: Gay priests are to blame, they say. Most abuse incidents, Burke told an interviewer last month, consist of “homosexual acts committed with adolescent young men.”

“It seems clear in light of these recent terrible scandals,” Burke said, “that indeed there is a homosexual culture, not only among the clergy but even within the hierarchy, which needs to be purified at the root.”

That view has found wide resonance in conservative Catholic circles.

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BELFAST (NORTHERN IRELAND)
The Irish News

September 20, 2018

A former priest, who was a serial sex abuser for almost 20 years walked free from court today after being handed a community service order for the abuse of a boy more than two decades ago.

Leaving from Downpatrick Crown Court with an order to complete 200 hours of community work, 68-year-old Daniel John Curran smiled at his freedom.

Judge Piers Grant had warned the sexual predator that if any further offences came to light, this order was no indication “that you will not receive a custodial sentence” for them.

But he said that given Curran has already served significant custodial sentences for similar offences, he considered had the case been dealt with at the same time, it would not have made a material difference to the sentence.

Curran was in court facing sex abuse charges for the sixth time.

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NEW YORK (NY)
WABC TV

September 20, 2018

The Archbishop of New York, Timothy Cardinal Dolan, appointed retired Judge Barbara Jones as an independent reviewer of sexual abuse cases Thursday.

Most recently, Jones reviewed documents in the Michael Cohen case.

Cardinal Dolan, in an on-camera news conference, concedes the “summer of hell” that laid bare the scope of abuse and the inaction of bishops across the country left the flock “bewildered, frustrated and angry.”

Dolan asked Jones to study the archdiocese and how it deals with accusations of abuse. She has been promised complete access to records, personnel and to Dolan himself.

The announcement follows Wednesday’s announcement by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops to establish a hotline, monitored by a third party, to field complaints of abuse of minors and harassment of adults.

New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood has already set up a clergy abuse hotline and online complaint form for the state for victims and anyone with information.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
WJAC TV

September 20, 2018

by Matthew Stevens

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said the Clergy Abuse Hotline received more than 1,000 calls in the month following the release of the grand jury report into child sex abuse allegations in six Catholic dioceses.

Shapiro said as of Sept. 14, a month to the day after the release of the grand jury report, the hotline had garnered 1,071 calls. He said his office will return every call, log every fact and contribute to further investigations where appropriate.

OAG agents return every call, log every fact, & contribute to further investigations where appropriate.

“If you have been victimized, it’s time to come out of the shadows. Speak up and we’ll be there to help,” said Shapiro.

In August, Shaprio unveiled what he called the “most comprehensive” report into child sex abuse allegations into the Catholic Church.

The report named more than 300 “predator priests” and more than 1,000 victims at dioceses in Erie, Pittsburgh, Greensburg, Scanton, Allentown and Harrisburg.

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PASADENA (CA)
Courthouse News Service

September 19, 2018

By Josh Russell

The Second Circuit affirmed Wednesday that an insurer should have indemnified the Hartford Roman Catholic Diocese for its settlements with four victims of pedophile priests from the 1970s and 1980s.

Three priests and four victims are described in the 19-page decision. With regard to two of the priests, Father Robert Ladamus and Father Stephen Crowley, the court notes that it is uncontested that the archdiocese had no notice that the priests posed a risk to children before the assaults in question.

As for the third priest, Father Ivan Ferguson, however, two church pastors at St. Bernard’s heard reports in 1978 and 1979 from three different mothers who said that Ferguson had molested their sons.

Ferguson himself put the archdiocese on notice meanwhile when he called the secretary of the archbishop in 1979 to say that he had molested two boys and had an alcohol problem.

Though the archbishop tried to send Ferguson to a rehabilitation center for sexual dysfunction, the ruling notes that the House of Affirmation could not accommodate Ferguson, and that the priest was sent instead to a treatment center for alcoholism.

At this facility, the St. Luke Institute, a priest who served as medical director concluded that alcoholism had triggered Fergusonʹs pedophilia.

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ERIE (PA)
GoErie.com

September 20, 2018

By Ed Palattella

The transactions are meant to protect assets of parishes and other entities against lawsuits, including those over child sex abuse. The diocese says the reorganization has been in the works for years.

The real estate transfers have been hard to miss. They involve the Catholic Diocese of Erie.

Over the past several months, before and after the release of the statewide grand jury report on clergy sexual abuse, the diocese has executed transfers for a number of churches in Erie County.

The transfers have been filed at the Erie County Recorder of Deeds and included with other real estate transactions in the House to Home section that the Erie Times-News publishes on Saturdays.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
KSDK TV

September 20, 2018

By Joel Hulsey

Two months ago, the Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General released a significant, 1,356-page report outing 301 priests accused of sexually abusing those in the church. Of those 301 priests, nine were later sent to St. Louis in the midst of a church-wide coverup, which prompted calls for the State of Missouri to open a grand jury-style investigation.

The scathing report, released on July 27, was issued by Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, detailing the accusations made by several hundred victims in eight Pennsylvania communities over several decades. While the names of the nine priests who were sent to St. Louis for temporary work at parishes and church institutions were listed in the initial report, the names had not been previously identified in St. Louis.

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UNITED STATES
CNN

September 19, 2018

By Daniel Burke

The US Catholic bishops’ conference issued a dramatic apology on Wednesday for the role of bishops in the church’s clergy sexual abuse scandal and announced new initiatives to hold abusive or negligent bishops accountable.

“Some bishops, by their actions or their failures to act, have caused great harm to both individuals and the Church as a whole,” said the administrative committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in a statement.

“They have used their authority and power to manipulate and sexually abuse others. They have allowed the fear of scandal to replace genuine concern and care for those who have been victimized by abusers.”

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

September 19, 2018

By Laurie Goodstein

Responding to a deepening scandal over sexual misconduct in their own ranks, Catholic bishops in the United States say they plan to set up a hotline — run by a third party — to field complaints about bishops who have sexually abused or harassed minors or adults.

The hotline was one of several steps announced on Wednesday by the American bishops, in an attempt to rebuild their credibility after revelations of abuse, cover-ups and negligence by those in the church’s hierarchy.

The long-running scandal over sexual misconduct in the church has grown beyond abuse by priests to focus scrutiny on bishops who have themselves been accused of abuse or of turning a blind eye to abusive priests and a deaf ear to victims. The problem has persisted despite the charter the American bishops adopted 16 years ago spelling out abuse-prevention policies for the church.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Associated Press via Fox News

September 18, 2018

Pennsylvania’s attorney general and several lawmakers began ramping up efforts to apply public pressure Tuesday ahead of a debate in the state Legislature over giving victims of decades-old child sexual abuse another chance to file civil lawsuits.

Tuesday’s events at opposite ends of Pennsylvania, in Pittsburgh and suburban Philadelphia, were designed to marshal lawmakers’ support to enact recommendations in last month’s landmark grand jury report on child sexual abuse in Roman Catholic dioceses.

“They can stand with the work done by the grand jury, or stand with the phony excuses created by institutions that Harrisburg has kowtowed to for so long,” Attorney General Josh Shapiro said Tuesday in a news conference at his office in Norristown, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported .

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SACRAMENTO (CA)
Bay Area News Group via Mercury News

September 18, 2018

By Matthias Gafni

Four Bay Area state legislators and an East Bay congressman are calling for the state’s top attorney to launch an investigation into Catholic Church priest abuse, similar to the groundbreaking Pennsylvania grand jury report released last month that has thrust the scandal back into international headlines.

With California Attorney General Xavier Becerra following his longstanding policy of not confirming or denying an ongoing investigation by his office, it’s entirely possible a probe has already begun, similar to those recently announced in at least eight other states. But U.S. Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, who was raised in the Catholic Church and attended Catholic schools through college, wanted to offer his support to priest abuse victims’ advocates who protested in Sacramento on Monday asking for their own grand jury report.

“I think the truth needs to be told and the sooner the better,” DeSaulnier said. “The Catholic Church needs to be forthright on what happened over the years.”

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RENNES (FRANCE)
Agence France-Presse via France24

September 19, 2018

A 38-year-old French priest in a northern French town committed suicide in his church after being accused of molesting a young woman, local prosecutors and police sources told AFP on Wednesday.

Jean-Baptiste Sebe killed himself Tuesday in the church north of Rouen amid allegations from a local mother that her grown-up daughter had been a victim of “indecent behaviour and sexual assault,” a police source said.

The initial complaint was made to the archbishop of Rouen, and “police were not notified prior to the suicide,” the source added, stressing that investigators remained “very cautious at this stage.”

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WASHINGTON (DC)
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

September 19, 2018

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Administrative Committee has issued the following statement today in response to the recent sex abuse scandals. In the statement, the bishops say they pledge to “heal and protect with every bit of the strength God provides us.”
Turning to the Lord

“When each of us was ordained as a bishop, we were told:

‘Keep watch over the whole flock in which the Holy Spirit has appointed you to shepherd the Church of God.’

We, the Administrative Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, assembled last week in Washington at this time of shame and sorrow. Some bishops, by their actions or their failures to act, have caused great harm to both individuals and the Church as a whole. They have used their authority and power to manipulate and sexually abuse others. They have allowed the fear of scandal to replace genuine concern and care for those who have been victimized by abusers. For this, we again ask forgiveness from both the Lord and those who have been harmed. Turning to the Lord for strength, we must and will do better.

The Administrative Committee took the following actions within its authority:

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VATICAN CITY
Associated Press

September 19, 2018

U2 frontman Bono has described Pope Francis as being “aghast” about sex abuse in the Catholic Church.

The Irish singer met privately with Francis today at the Vatican hotel where the pope lives, to discuss themes that Bono told reporters included “the wild beast that is capitalism” and sustainable development.

Bono said that because Francis visited Ireland recently, they spoke about the pontiff’s “feelings about what has happened in the church.” The Irish church’s reputation is stained by cases of pedophile priests and systematic abuse cover-ups.

Bono said he told Francis how it looks to some that abusers are more protected than victims and “you can see the pain in his face, and I felt he was sincere.”

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UNITED STATES
Vox Media

September 19, 2018

By Tara Isabella Burton

Pope Francis’s favorability rating among Americans has plummeted sharply in the aftermath of this summer’s deluge of revelations in the Catholic clerical sex abuse crisis, according to a poll conducted by Gallup this week. Francis’s approval rating among Americans is down to 53 percent, according to the poll conducted from September 4 to 12.

In September 2015, according to Gallup, about 70 percent of Americans felt favorably about the pope. That number declined only slightly to 66 percent by early August.

But then a Pennsylvania grand jury report implicated hundreds of priests in the alleged sexual abuse of more than 1,000 minors, mostly during the 1970s and ’80s, prompting a new wave of abuse investigations across the United States. The fallout has rocked the Catholic Church — and Americans’ trust in the pope.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Religion News Service

September 12, 2018

By Amanda Whiting

With Cardinal Wuerl visiting the Pope in Rome to discuss his possible resignation, I talked to religion reporter Jack Jenkins about what it’s like to cover the Catholic Church in a town where so many reporters are focused on a different font of power. Jenkins, who writes for the Religion News Service and used to cover politics and religion for Think Progress, has been reporting on the Archbishop of Washington’s role in the scandal currently consuming the Church, including last month’s bombshell grand jury report accusing Wuerl of mishandling sexual abuse cases when he served as bishop of Pittsburgh.

What makes DC the right place to cover Catholicism in the US?

We have Catholic University of America. We have Georgetown University. We have a lot of different kinds of Catholic expression here in the District of Columbia. You have Catholics on the Supreme Court. You have Catholics in the halls of power in Congress. It’s a step down from Rome for Catholicism, but if I’m covering American Catholicism, this really is where a lot of the voices get lifted up.

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NEW YORK (NY)
America Magazine

September 19, 2018

By Jim McDermott

Bishop Vincent Long is the Bishop of Parramatta, a diocese northwest of Sydney. A former Assistant General of the Order of Friars Minor Conventual, he is Australia’s first Asian-born bishop and the first Vietnamese-born bishop to head a diocese outside of Vietnam.

In 2017 Bishop Long testified before Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. In his testimony, he revealed, “I was also a victim of sexual abuse by clergy when I first came to Australia, even though I was an adult, so that had a powerful impact on me and how I want to, you know, walk in the shoes of other victims and really endeavour to attain justice and dignity for them.”

This is the third in a series of interviews Jim McDermott, S.J., is conducting on the sexual abuse crisis. This interview was conducted by e-mail.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Religion News Service

September 19, 2018

By Jack Jenkins

“Our work in Pennsylvania has spurred a movement,” Josh Shapiro, the state’s attorney general, said earlier this month as New York and New Jersey announced they would, like Pennsylvania, investigate child sexual abuse in Catholic dioceses within their borders.

Since Shapiro unveiled a grand jury report in August detailing decades of allegations of child sex abuse by Catholic priests, at least nine states have initiated some form of investigation of their own. The issue also continues to rage in Pennsylvania courts: On Monday, parents of children in the Roman Catholic Church and survivors of sexual abuse sued eight dioceses and their bishops to compel them to release more information regarding allegations.

But as new investigations begin, questions remain as to what exactly will be revealed, and how much of it will result in legal action.

A Religion News Service survey of 178 Roman Catholic dioceses and archdioceses in the U.S. (excluding those in Pennsylvania) suggests many internal church documents of the kind that yielded the staggering history of abuse in Pennsylvania have already been examined by law enforcement in other states after The Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” investigation in the early 2000s.

Experts also say that in many dioceses communications between law enforcement and the church have continued.

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BELLEVILLE (IL)
Southern Illinois Association of Priests

September 19, 2018

By Tom Smith

The Pennsylvania priest sex abuse/bishop cover-up scandal screams for justice. Following immediately on the revelations involving Archbishop (formerly Cardinal) Theodore McCarrick, the “what can be done about this terrible reality” leaps to the forefront of current Catholicism. While the focus is on the shocking statistics of what happened, the more substantive questions revolve around why and how this behavior could survive and flourish within the institutional Catholic church and what needs to change to prevent it from happening again.

It is clear that pedophile priests and cover-up bishops do not operate in a vacuum. They are part of the Catholic culture, breathing in a set of values, presumptions, thought patterns, behaviors, expectations, and privileges that form that culture. Everyone everywhere absorbs multiple cultures – ethnic, religious, social, political, and economic communities that shape the way people think, feel, and act. The Catholic culture is one of these communities.

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STORRS (CT)
The Daily Campus

September 19, 2018

By Alex Klein

In August, a grand jury released a report alleging that at least one thousand children were sexually abused by deacons, seminarians, and priests in Pennsylvania in the past seventy years. The statute of limitations has expired in most of the cases, and many of the victims and perpetrators are already deceased. Nevertheless, the Pennsylvania report is an indispensable document. It is the portrait of an institution whose members posed as mankind’s moral arbiters while acting like they were above the law. The jury claims the Church officials involved in these crimes operated with a consistent set of rules. One of those rules was to “transfer a [predator known to the community] to a new location where no one will know he is a child abuser.” The ultimate rule for dealing with cases of “inappropriate conduct” was “don’t tell the police.”

It is worth flipping through the report, if only to understand the depth and breadth of the crimes. Here is one story from the document: In 1969, a student of the Immaculate Conception school in Irwin, Pennsylvania was tied up in the confessional and molested by Father Gregory Flohr. Flohr allegedly made use of a crucifix during this episode. The Greensburg Diocese reimbursed the victim with fifty thousand dollars for his medical treatment. In a letter to the victim, Father Lawrence Presico of the Greensburg Diocese wrote: “We extend such coverage to you only after the fact of your multiple emergency treatments, and as an act of Christian charity in your dire need.” Some victims were not treated with such generosity. When Juliann Bortz told the Allentown Diocese that she had been molested, they tried to discredit her. The Diocese’s lawyer attempted to obtain information which would suggest Bortz was a sexually active teen and her husband was a gang leader. Responding to charges of child molestation by discrediting victims was de rigueur.

When higher-ups in the Church were informed of an allegation against a priest, they would typically send the accused man to a clinic for counseling. These clinics were owned by the Church, so there was no chance that any information the priest gave regarding his “inappropriate” behavior would make its way to the police. After being accused of sexual misconduct in 1985, Father Edmond Parrakow was sent to a clinic in New Mexico where he told his counselor he had molested thirty-five children. The doctor wrote, “Parrakow certainly has pedophilia … if he had not got caught he would be continuing the behavior.” The Archdiocese of New York and the Bishop of Greensburg arranged for Parrakow to “be granted a ministry” in Greensburg in 1985. Both officials were aware of the allegations against Parrakow, who continued to molest preteen boys after he was accepted back into the Diocese.

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AUSTRALIA
AAP

September 14, 2018

– Stanislav Vakhabov invited a boy, 14, from overseas to stay in his church flat
– He was jailed for at least five years and seven months, dating back to May 2015
– ‘Father Christoper’ was found guilty by NSW District Court jury in February

A decade after becoming a Russian Orthodox priest, Stanislav Vakhabov invited a 14-year-old boy from overseas to stay in his Sydney church flat, where he would be locked away and repeatedly sexually molested.

The 36-year-old, also known as Father Christopher, was on Friday jailed for at least five years and seven months for the crimes he committed within his home attached to the back of the Croydon parish.

His teenage victim, whose heavily religious mother sent him to Australia in 2014 to be under Vakhabov’s care, was told they would sleep in separate rooms and he would be provided with religious guidance.

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KENYA
Daily Nation

September 19, 2018

By Dauti Kahura

The Catholic Church, which boasts over a million followers – never mind many of them are nominal Catholics – has been undergoing a tragedy as a result of its decades-long scandals, as criminal activities by some of its prelates, are popping up into the open in some part of the world.

The year 2018 must surely be one of the nadir and sorest points of the church in its recent years, if not its annus horibilis.

And Chile, the South American longitudinal country, once as catholic as Ireland and France, is the microcosm of what has been ailing the church’s clergy and its efforts to conceal crimes perpetrated by some of its priests.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post (via Philly.com)

September 19, 2018

by Shawn Boburg and Aaron C. Davis

A dozen years before he became a top leader in the Catholic Church, Donald Wuerl was weighing a fateful decision. It was 1994, and Wuerl, then a bishop, had removed a priest accused of child sex abuse from a Pittsburgh-area parish. But the priest refused to get psychiatric treatment, and instead asked Wuerl for time off.

Wuerl – now a cardinal and the archbishop of Washington, District of Columbia – granted the leave of absence, allowing the Rev. Robert Castelucci to relocate to Ohio without alerting authorities or parishioners, law enforcement records show.

Only after police in Ohio began investigating a 16-year-old boy’s allegation that “Father Bob” plied him with pornography and performed oral sex on him did Wuerl tell Castelucci he could no longer present himself as a priest in public, according to internal church documents obtained by The Washington Post.

The case, one of hundreds mentioned in a groundbreaking Pennsylvania grand jury report released last month, sheds light on how Wuerl handled sex abuse claims in the Pittsburgh Diocese from 1988 to 2006 – a period that now threatens to rewrite his legacy and hasten the end of his career. Wuerl, 77, announced recently that he would go to the Vatican to discuss his possible resignation with Pope Francis and, although it is not clear when that meeting will take place, Wuerl is scheduled to be in Rome this weekend.

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PAXTON (MA)
The Boston Globe

September 5, 2018

By Michael Rezendes

For decades, James C. Graham was tormented by a simple, but profound question: Why did his father seem to dislike him so much?

On Tuesday, the South Carolina man confirmed the bittersweet truth: The man who raised him wasn’t his father at all.

Graham’s extraordinary 25-year effort to find the truth about his father ended when a forensic anthropologist told him that his DNA matched samples taken from a deceased Catholic priest who grew up in Lowell and graduated from Boston College.

“You’ve driven all the way from South Carolina to find out whether Father Thomas Sullivan was your father, and I’m here to tell you that he was,” said Ann Marie Mires, director of forensic criminology at Anna Maria College.

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SAN DIEGO (CA)
The Los Angeles Times

September 15, 2018

By Peter Rowe and Kristina Davis

The clerical sexual abuse scandal rocking the Roman Catholic Church hit home Thursday, as the Diocese of San Diego added eight priests to the list of those believed to have molested children.

“This is a response to the terrible moment we are in,” said Bishop Robert McElroy, citing a recent Pennsylvania grand jury report that found 1,000 children there had been molested by Pittsburgh-area priests, and the resignation of Theodore McCarrick, who is accused of sexually assaulting altar boys, seminarians and priests.

“The cascade of emotions that this causes the survivors of the abuse, as well as other people in the pews, has caused a tumult of anger, grief, upset, incomprehension, disillusionment,” McElroy said.

The new names — the Revs. Jose Chavarin, Raymond Etienne, J. Patrick Foley, Michael French, Richard Houck, George Lally and Paolino Montagna, plus Msgr. Mark Medaer — were released in piecemeal fashion, with critical details missing.

This list extends the roster of alleged predator priests established by a landmark legal case that was concluded 11 years ago. On Sept. 7, 2007, the diocese settled 144 claims of child sexual abuse by 48 priests and one lay employee. The payments totaled $198.1 million, the second-largest settlement by a Catholic diocese in the United States.

Thursday’s announcement was prompted by the Pennsylvania grand jury report, the McCarrick case and other recent revelations that have called into question the church’s moral authority and its willingness to honestly address this scandal.

“There is a broad call for transparency,” McElroy said. “When we looked at it, we wanted to meet that as best we could.”

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SALT LAKE CITY (UT)
KUTV

September 14, 2018

By Brian Mullahy

West Valley’s Judy Larson, who accused a priest in Michigan of raping her when she was just 10, commended new disclosures from the Salt Lake Catholic Diocese on the extent of credible abuse claims here, but said the admissions do not go far enough.

“I think it’s a step in the right direction, but it’s a first step,” said Larson in a 2News interview, adding the diocese should name names. “If they’ve been credibly accused, yes. Other archdiocese and diocese have done that.”

Larson is now a board member of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, a group that tracks claims of abuse, and calls for action by church leaders to combat it.

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LAFAYETTE (LA)

Lafayette Daily Advertiser

September 19, 2018

By Claire Taylor

Bishop Douglas Deshotel of the Catholic Diocese of Lafayette said Tuesday he is considering releasing the names of priests against whom credible accusations of abuse have been alleged.

Deshotel faced about 250 people Tuesday night at St. John the Evangelist Cathedral hall in Lafayette for a discussion about sex abuse in the church.

The bishop and panel responded to some of the more than 70 questions submitted in advance, including whether the diocese will release the names of priests accused of abuse.

“I’m considering it,” Deshotel replied to much applause.

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FORT WAYNE (IN)
Today’s Catholic (Publication of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend)

September 18, 2018

The Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend published on Tuesday, Sept, 18, the names of the priests and deacons who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse of a minor.

During a news conference on Aug. 17, in which he made the announcement to release the names, Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades stated the importance for victims to see the names of their abusers made public “for all to see. For everyone to know the pain caused by these priests.” Bishop Rhoades added, “It is my hope that by releasing these names, the innocent victims of these horrific and heartbreaking crimes can finally begin the process of healing.”

Bishop Rhoades reiterated the diocese’s commitment to protect children and young people, saying, “We must be vigilant in our efforts to protect our youth. With the Lord’s guidance and love, we will do so.”

The list of those credibly accused was developed with the assistance of the Diocesan Review Board, which was established to assist the bishop in complying with the requirements of The Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People and The Essential Norms. The Diocesan Review Board is comprised of mostly lay people, and its members assess all allegations of sexual abuse of minors by priests and deacons presented in this diocese.

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FORT WAYNE (IN)
The Journal Gazette

September 18, 2018

By Rosa Salter Rodriguez

Diocese expected to release about 20 names

The Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend will release names today of “credibly accused” priests and deacons of sexually abusing minors, according to a statement released Monday.

The names will be posted on the diocese’s website, www.diocesefwsb.org, at 1 p.m. and through diocesan media channels, the statement said, fulfilling a pledge the Rev. Kevin C. Rhoades, the diocese’s bishop, made at a news conference Aug. 17.

The list will likely include about 20 names, according to previous statements by the diocese and BishopAccountability.org, an independent, nonprofit website chronicling Catholic clerical sexual abuse for about two decades.

In late 2003, the late Bishop John M. D’Arcy issued a public accounting saying 17 priests in the diocese had been found to have sexually abused 33 individuals since 1950. Sixteen abused minors and one had abused an adult, he said then.

D’Arcy, who had actively pushed for removal of abusive priests in his previous assignment in the Archdiocese of Boston, did not provide names at that time. But he said he had “removed” 12 from ministry and others were dead.

He said a large part of the accusations took place in the 1980s and the last one involving physical contact took place in 1987. The diocese between 1985 and 2002 paid about $1.36 million to settle claims, pay lawyers and provide counseling for priests and victims, he reported.

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UNITED STATES
America Magazine

September 18, 2018

By Jim McDermott

Retired F.B.I. agent Kathleen McChesney was chosen by the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops to establish and lead its Office of Child and Youth Protection in 2002. In that office, she developed and administered the mechanisms used to ensure that every diocese complies with civil law related to the sexual abuse of minors. Ms. McChesney continues to work as a consultant to dioceses, religious organizations and others around the world in the area of child protection, ministerial misconduct and abuse.

What was your reaction to the revelations of the last month?

I wasn’t surprised by the Pennsylvania information because I’ve been working in this area a long time, have met with many survivors of clergy abuse and read thousands of misconduct files. Also, a large percentage of the offenders named by the grand jury had already been posted on the website, BishopAccountability.org or could be easily located in open-source materials.

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BROOKLYN (NY)
New York Times

September 18, 2018

By Sharon Otterman

Four men who were repeatedly sexually abused as children by a religion teacher at a Roman Catholic church reached a $27.5 million settlement with the Diocese of Brooklyn and a local after-school program on Tuesday, in one of the largest settlements ever awarded to individual victims of abuse within the church.

The victims were repeatedly abused by Angelo Serrano, 67, who taught catechism classes and helped organize the religious education programs at St. Lucy’s-St. Patrick’s Church, in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. The abuse occurred inside the church, in Mr. Serrano’s apartment located in an old schoolhouse behind the church and at the affiliated after-school program, lawyers for the victims said.

The settlement comes amid a flurry of investigations — including a New York State civil investigation — and disclosures of sex abuse within the Catholic Church that have led to mounting pressure on Pope Francis to take action against bishops and cardinals for their role in the abuse crisis.

The sexual assaults in Brooklyn took place between 2003 and 2009, the lawyers said, when the boys were between the ages of 8 and 12.

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NEWTON (MA)
NECN

September 18, 2018

[VIDEO]

Is the Roman Catholic Church facing its #MeToo moment? Why has the Pope refused to confirm or deny allegations that he knew about sex abuse allegations against a prominent American Cardinal years before they became public? Has Cardinal Sean O’Malley decided to use the old playbook of Catholic leaders of failing to confront accusations and using plausible deniability when they became public? Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of Bishopaccountability.org, joins Sue to discuss.

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BROOKLYN (NY)
The Tablet (publication of the Brooklyn diocese)

September 18, 2018

In one of the largest known settlement payouts for sex abuse within the Catholic Church to date, the Diocese of Brooklyn announced on Sept.18 that it would pay $27.5 million to four victims of abuse at the hands of a volunteer at St. Lucy’s-St. Patrick’s Church in the Fort Greene/Clinton Hill section of Brooklyn.

While some reports have claimed the individual in question, Angelo Serrano, was an employee of the school at the time, the Diocese of Brooklyn has contested those claims noting that he was a volunteer at the time of the abuse.

Serrano was found responsible for raping four victims between the ages of 8 and 12 from 2003 to 2009. The abuse did not take place on church property.

According to published reports, a priest saw the abuse, but didn’t report it. The two priests at the parish were named co-defendants in the case.

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WASHINGTON, D.C.
Catholic News Agency/EWTN via Catholic Online

September 18, 2018

Courage International, an apostolate to support people with same sex-attraction in leading chaste lives, has issued a statement on three priests mentioned as credibly accused of sexual abuse in the Pennsylvania grand jury report.

Released last month, the report found more than 1,000 allegations of abuse at the hands of some 300 clergy members in six dioceses in the state. It also found a pattern of cover up by senior Church officials.

“The horror of these crimes of sexual abuse and harassment is amplified by the failure of some bishops and diocesan officials to take corrective action against the offenders, and to communicate honestly with the faithful about what has happened and how they are responding,” said Father Philip Bochanski, executive director of Courage, in a Sept. 15 statement.

“I am writing to you to share some information regarding connections between the Grand Jury Report and Courage International, as well as to discuss some other issues related to the apostolate and how we handle allegations of sexual abuse.”

Father Bochanski said no reports of sexual abuse of minors had been made to him or his staff during his time in the Courage Office.

However, he noted three priests named in the Grand Jury report who have connections to the apostolate.

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TRENTON (NJ)
Insider NJ

September 18, 2018

Senator Joseph Vitale (D-Middlesex) issued the following statement on the recent allegations against the Catholic Church for silencing victims of sexual abuse, as well as, the creation of Attorney General Gurbir Grewal’s task force to investigate clergy abuse in the state of New Jersey:

“Since the announcement of the Attorney General’s creation of a task force and his plans to empanel a grand jury to investigate clergy abuse in the state of New Jersey, many victims have reached out to my office to ask what they can do to help.

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BUENOS AIRES (ARGENTINA)
Associated Press

September 18, 2018

By Luis Andres Henao and Nicole Winfield

[See also our Detailed Summary of Case of Rev. Julio César Grassi]

Pope Francis’ role in Argentina’s most famous case of priestly sex abuse is coming under renewed scrutiny as he faces the greatest crisis of his papacy over the Catholic Church’s troubled legacy of cover-up and allegations he himself sided with the accused.

Francis, who at the time was still Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, in 2010 commissioned a four-volume, 2,000-plus page forensic study of the legal case against a convicted priest that concluded he was innocent, that his victims were lying and that the case never should have gone to trial.

The Argentine church says that the study obtained by The Associated Press — bound volumes complete with reproductions of Johannes Vermeer paintings on the covers — was for internal church use only. But the volumes purportedly ended up on the desks of some Argentine court justices who were ruling on the appeals of the Rev. Julio Grassi.

Despite the study, Argentina’s Supreme Court in March 2017 upheld the conviction and 15-year prison sentence against Grassi, a celebrity priest who ran homes for street children across Argentina.

The study, and Francis’ role in the Grassi case, have taken on new relevance following allegations by a former Vatican ambassador that Francis, and a long line of Vatican officials before him, covered up the sexual misconduct of a prominent U.S. cardinal.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)

September 18, 2018

By Patricia Dailey Lewis

Last month, news broke of thousands of children sexually abused by more than 300 Catholic priests across six dioceses in Pennsylvania. The report, rightfully so, has provoked disgust and outrage. But as the dust settles, an even more egregious reality becomes evident: prosecutors have only been able to file criminal charges against two of the perpetrators. Even more disturbing, most of the survivors have lost their right to sue not only the perpetrator, but the institution as well.

The reason for this miscarriage of justice? Antiquated statute of limitations laws that prevent claimants over the age of 50 from making criminal allegations against their abusers. Similar laws prevent survivors over the age of 30 from filing civil charges. These laws as they stand leave very few victims able to seek redress for their suffering. Suffering to which a statute of limitations does not apply. Without accountability, there can be no change.

To these survivors and their families, I say: There is hope.

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ALLENTOWN (PA)

The Morning Call

By Daniel Patrick Sheehan

http://www.mcall.com/news/breaking/mc-nws-allentown-priest-accused-2018″>http://www.mcall.com/news/breaking/mc-nws-allentown-priest-accused-2018

The pastor of a Catholic church in Bethlehem Township has been removed from ministry while authorities investigate a sexual abuse allegation against him.

In a statement in the church bulletin, the Rev. Edward Sacks of Our Lady of Perpetual Help said the allegation was made by the mother of a student from the former Holy Name High School in Reading, where Sacks was principal in the 1970s.

“I am absolutely convinced I can prove my innocence,” the statement said. “It is a case of mistaken identity.”

Under its zero tolerance policy, the diocese removed Sacks from ministry and informed law enforcement of the allegations, diocese spokesman Matt Kerr said in a statement.

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STEUBENVILLE (OH)

September 18, 2018

By Elisha Valladares-Cormier

Franciscan University of Steubenville is doing what it can to best respond to the latest clergy sex abuse scandal, said the university’s president in an email.

The Rev. Sean Sheridan, TOR, said in a Sept. 14 email that he and the university are taking concrete steps to address the sex abuse scandal because his duty as a Franciscan friar and a priest is to fill the role of spiritual fatherhood entrusted to him as president of the university.

“As I listened to our students, faculty and staff trying to process the shocking news from Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., I felt moved to address the issue directly,” Sheridan said.

The news Sheridan referred to are incidents that have dominated headlines for Catholics all summer. In late June, the first news broke out when New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan announced that that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, former archbishop of Washington, had been removed from active ministry at the direction of the Vatican after an investigation found a charge that the archbishop had sexually abused a teenager was credible.

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FOLSOM (CA)
Governing.com / e.Republic

September 18, 2018

By Candice Norwood

This summer, a Pennsylvania grand jury released an explosive report, accusing more than 300 Catholic priests in the state of sexually abusing 1,000 children over seven decades. Despite the number of accused, only two priests reportedly can face criminal prosecution.

Pennsylvania’s statute of limitations only allows victims of child sex abuse to file criminal lawsuits until they reach the age of 50. Civil cases can be filed until the victim is 30 years old.

The Pennsylvania report has prompted attorneys general in at least six states — Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York — to review or investigate clergy sex abuse cases. But the concern is not just with the Catholic Church. Recent events have brought attention to sexual abuse, assault and harassment in Boy Scouts of America, USA Gymnastics, Hollywood and the halls of government.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Inquirer

September 18, 2018

By Arthur McCaffrey

http://www2.philly.com/philly/opinion/commentary/catholic-sex-abuse-grand-jury-report-pennsylvania-federal-inquiry-20180918.html

Earlier this month, the New York attorney general initiated a criminal inquiry into clergy abuse of children in all the Catholic dioceses in New York state. This came fast on the heels of Pennsylvania’s statewide grand jury investigation of Catholic clergy abuse, which was reported out by Attorney General Josh Shapiro on Aug. 14, exposing at least 1,000 cases of child abuse over a 70-year period.

New Jersey, New Mexico, Nebraska, and Missouri have similar criminal investigations underway. This follows previous inquiries in other states.

If you want to go back to ground zero, in Boston in 2002, Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly may have issued the very first statewide report on July 23, 2003, when his 16-month investigation revealed that probably more than 1,000 children had been sexually abused by priests and other church workers in the Archdiocese of Boston since 1940 — which averaged out to about 16 children per year up to 2003. By that time, Archbishop Cardinal Bernard Law, who presided over decades-long cover-ups of abuse, had fled to Rome, leaving before he could be subpoenaed.

But no matter how many separate state inquiries are initiated, I predict that the findings will all repeat the vocabulary of “cover-up,” “collusion,” “enabling,” “sacrificing children for the sake of the institution’s reputation” — the same script gets replayed over and over. The time is long past for the criminality of the Roman Catholic Church to be treated as just a local or state problem — this is a national problem that is part of the global epidemic of child abuse.

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PENNSYLVANIA
York Daily Record

September 17, 2018

By Rick Lee

Lawsuit represents both victims and children now at risk attending Catholic schools

Failure of dioceses to disclose identities of predatory priests “constitutes a clear and present danger”

A Verona man and a Catholic school kindergartner are the representative plaintiffs in a class action suit seeking the full disclosure of all Catholic dioceses’ records concerning sexual abuse by priests.

The complaint was filed Monday in Pittsburgh while untold numbers of people who were allegedly sexually assaulted by predatory priests wait for the Pennsylvania legislature to determine if they have a “window of justice” to seek legal redress.

The adult plaintiff, Ryan O’Connor, says he was abused by a priest between the ages of 10 and 12. O’Connor says he remains a member of the Catholic Church, and his children attend Catholic school.

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UNITED STATES
USA TODAY

September 13, 2018

I’m a life-long Catholic furious about the corruption, crimes, and cover-ups of the church’s leaders. It’s past time to purge their ranks.

It is hard to be a Catholic today. It is clear from this summer’s Pennsylvania grand jury report, the Cardinal Theodore McCarrick scandal and, most recently, the dodge by Pope Francis to a Vatican diplomat’s testimony that the pontiff rehabilitated McCarrick, that the Catholic Church has been betrayed by her leaders.

For decades, our bishops, cardinals and the Vatican have engaged in an unforgivable cover-up of sins and alleged crimes against children. While in some cases, the cover-up may have been done with the purpose of aiding and abetting sinful and criminal conduct, it is also apparent that the cover-up was engineered with the goal of protecting the church’s “brand.”

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PENNSYLVANIA
Reuters

September 17, 2018

People claiming they were sexually abused by priests filed a class action lawsuit on Monday against eight dioceses in Pennsylvania seeking to compel them to divulge the names of priests accused of such actions over the past 70 years.

Pennsylvania’s attorney general released a grand jury report in August that found that 301 priests in the state had sexually abused minors over the past 70 years.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops declined to comment on the lawsuit. The Pennsylvania Catholic Conference did not respond to a request for comment.

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SANTIAGO (CHILE)
CNN

September 17, 2018

By Shelby Rose, Claudia Dominguez and Susannah Cullinane

Pope Francis has expelled the Reverend Cristian Precht Bañados of Chile, according to a statement from the Archdiocese of Santiago.

This is the first formal resignation the Pope has decreed since every bishop in Chile offered to step down in May over the country’s sex abuse scandal. The Chilean bishops’ offer was thought to be unprecedented in the modern history of the Catholic Church.

Precht had been suspended in 2012 from practicing within the ministry for five years after the Archbishop of Santiago ordered a criminal investigation into allegations of sexual abuse against him.

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[Octavio Errázuriz meets with the Pope and becomes Chile’s ambassador to the Vatican]

CHILE
Emol

September 17, 2018

By C. Fernández

El abogado llega al cargo en un momento complejo para la Iglesia Católica chilena, institución que se ha visto involucrada en diversos casos de abusos sexuales.

El abogado Octavio Errázuriz Guilisasti asumió oficialmente como embajador de Chile ante la Santa Sede la mañana de este lunes 17 de septiembre. En una audiencia, que se realizó a las 11:15 de la mañana (hora local), el diplomático entregó sus cartas credenciales al Papa Francisco para comenzar su trabajo en el Vaticano.

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UNITED STATES
Vox

September 17, 2018

By Tara Isabella Burton

Differing state laws make it harder for some states to coordinate investigations.

Justice is coming slowly for the victims of the Catholic clerical sex abuse crisis. Since a Pennsylvania grand jury report last month identified hundreds of priests accused of molesting at least 1,000 minors over the past seven decades in that state, several other states have announced their own investigations into historical Catholic clerical child sex abuse.

The scope and scale of the Pennsylvania report was made possible by the state’s legal structures, which give the attorney general’s office a significant degree of power to conduct investigations through the grand jury system. However, each of the states below has taken steps toward centralizing the likely hundreds, if not thousands, of potential cases of clerical sex abuse that may have taken place over the past few decades.

Each state will take a different approach, due to the range of laws concerning the convening of grand juries and who has the authority to subpoena documents from Catholic dioceses. For the most part, attorneys general are trying to gather historical records from parishes and diocese to conduct these investigations. The vast stores of private documents relating to sex abuse, compensation of victims, and transfers of offending priests were instrumental in the formation and impact of the Pennsylvania report.

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UNITED STATES
The New Yorker

September 17, 2018

By James Carroll

With the sex-abuse scandal in the Catholic Church reaching a critical mass, Pope Francis has issued an unprecedented call to the world’s top bishops to meet with him in Rome, next February, to discuss “the protection of minors.” But the pressing question for leaders of the Catholic Church no longer concerns abusive priests or complicit bishops, because the Church has forfeited the credibility necessary for such investigations, and has been replaced by civil authorities, such as the state attorneys general—six, as of last week—who are following Pennsylvania’s lead into this morass.

The question for the Church now, given the astounding scale of the dysfunction, arching from the Americas to Europe, Africa, the Philippines, and Australia, is: What in Catholic culture caused this debauchery? The proximate cause concerns essential mistakes of moral theology, including the stigmatizing of normal erotic longing and the sanctifying of prejudice against women and homosexuals. Those errors have roots in the ancient Church, when fundamental options in favor of male power and against sex for pleasure and love were made.

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[Victims of Cristian Precht ask the church to help guarantee legal sanctions]

CHILE
BioBioChile

September 16, 2018

By Alejandro Alarcón and Estefanía Bustamante

Tras la determinación del Vaticano que decretó la expulsión del sacerdocio de Cristian Precht, laicos y víctimas del ahora exsacerdote hicieron un llamado a las instituciones eclesiásticas para colaborar con la justicia chilena y así facilitar las sanciones contra acusados por abusos a menores. Uno de los denunciantes del Caso Maristas, Eneas Espinoza, señaló que la decisión del Papa Francisco es satisfactoria pero no suficiente, porque, según sus palabras, “es un delincuente sexual que aún está suelto”.

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[Raúl Hasbún, canonical defender of Precht: “I will demand the nullification of everything that has been done and decreed”]

SANTIAGO, CHILE
Emol

September 18, 2018

By Tamara Cerna

El presbítero, quien asumió nuevamente la representación del ex vicario, señaló que el hecho que no se hubiese instruido un proceso hace “insanablemente nula toda sentencia condenatoria”.

El sábado en la noche, el presbítero Raúl Hasbún fue notificado de la decisión del Papa Francisco de expulsar del sacerdocio al ex vicario de la solidaridad, Cristián Precht. A este último, lo defendió en proceso canónico iniciado en su contra en 2012, el cual concluyó con una condena por “conductas abusivas” la cual le significó al religioso estar cinco años alejado del ejercicio sacerdotal, además de una vida de oración y penitencia.

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PHOENIX (AZ)
Associated Press

September 17, 2018

A former pastor has been sentenced to 13 years in prison and lifetime probation for sexually abusing underage girls who attended his Phoenix church.

Maricopa County Superior Court officials say Jose Vicente Morales was sentenced Monday.

He pleaded guilty last month to molestation of a child, sex abuse and three counts of attempted molestation of a child.

The 51-year-old Morales will get credit for the more than two years he’s already served since his 2016 arrest.

Morales formerly was the pastor of Iglesia Cristiana Impacto de Fe, a small church in Phoenix.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Associated Press

September 18, 2018

By Claudia Lauer

Parents of children in the Roman Catholic Church and survivors of sexual abuse by clergy filed a lawsuit Monday against Pennsylvania’s eight dioceses and their bishops asking a judge to compel them to release information about abuse allegations.

The lawsuit filed Monday in Pittsburgh comes a month after a statewide grand jury report detailed sexual abuse allegations against more than 300 priests over decades in six of the state’s dioceses. The lawsuit alleges the dioceses haven’t met their obligations to report child sexual abusers under state law.

Benjamin Sweet, an attorney for the lead plaintiffs in the case said they are not seeking money, but instead are asking for public transparency about allegations. Many victims who came forward to talk to the grand jury fall outside the statute of limitations to file a civil personal injury lawsuit. The lawsuit filed Monday doesn’t seek damages and doesn’t represent solely victims of abuse, so Sweet said it isn’t prohibited by any statute of limitations.

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SPRINGFIELD (IL)
The State Journal-Register

September 17, 2018

By Steven Spearie

An advisory commission to Pope Francis which Springfield resident Teresa Morris Kettelkamp was appointed to earlier this year may play a pivotal role in an historic meeting in February that brings together leaders of the Catholic Church from around the world to discuss the prevention of abuse of minors and vulnerable adults.

The announcement for the gathering of the presidents of the bishops’ conferences came last week on the same day the pope met with U.S. Catholic Church leaders who admitted the Church here has been “lacerated by the evil of sexual abuse.”

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WHEELING (WV)
The Herald-Dispatch

September 17, 2018

This is an open letter to the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston:

As the Roman Catholic Church reels from new revelations of the cover-up of clergy sexual abuse, thousands of Catholics from various corners of the church have loudly demanded the mass resignation and/or dismissal of U.S. bishops in order to “clean house.” In the midst of this turmoil, Bishop Michael Bransfield of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston offered his resignation to Pope Francis, not as penance, but in the manner customary for bishops who have reached the age of 75. (Bransfield turned 75 on Sept. 8.)

Pope Francis accepted Bransfield’s resignation in a matter of days and appointed Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore as temporary administrator of the Diocese. Further, the Vatican charged Lori with the task of conducting an investigation of Bransfield’s alleged sexual harassment of adults.

The swift acceptance of Bransfield’s resignation and subsequent investigation is not surprising. Abuse allegations have haunted Bransfield, resurfacing most recently during the criminal trial of Catholic priests in Philadelphia in 2012. But more, Bransfield’s lavish lifestyle and flaunted political allegiances marked his episcopacy with signs of clerical privilege and entitlement that are the root cause of abuse by members of the priesthood, including sexual misconduct.

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CONROE (TX)
Houston Chronicle

September 17, 2018

By Jay R. Jordan and Nicole Hensley

Police have raided the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Conroe less than a week after a former priest was accused of child molestation.

Conroe police Sgt. Scott McCann confirmed that detectives and the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office searched the church Monday afternoon in connection with the arrest of Manuel La Rosa-Lopez, who has been charged with four counts of indecency with a child.

While executing the search warrant, authorities could be seen walking out of the church on the corner of Frazier and McDade with boxes and plastic bins, according to KHOU-TV video footage. It was not immediately known what was taken from the church or what authorities were looking for.

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[Judicial vicar of Santiago after expulsion of Cristián Precht: “It is a hard measure, the pain is great”]

SANTIAGO, CHILE
Emol

September 16, 2018

By Leonardo Vallejos

Jaime Ortíz de Lazcano aclaró que el ex vicario de la solidaridad deja de ser sacerdote y recibe “la pena perpetua”.

La Iglesia Católica chilena se pronunció tras el anuncio de que el Papa decidió expulsar a Cristián Precht como sacerdote. “Es la medida a nivel canónica más dura, la pena perpetua del estado clerical. Deja de pertenecer al clero y ya no se considera sacerdote”, señaló este domingo Jaime Ortíz de Lazcano, vicario judicial de la Arquidiócesis de Santiago.

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[Vatican prepares new expulsions of Chilean priests]

CHILE
El Mostrador

September 16, 2018

By Alejandra Carmona López

Según fuentes de El Mostrador, la sanción de por vida a Precht se repetirá con otros religiosos chilenos acusados de abusos sexuales. La decisión de Roma sobre el sacerdote, ícono de la defensa a los Derechos Humanos en dictadura, se debió a casos de abusos de menores.

A la decisión notificada ayer por la Congregación para la Doctrina de la Fe respecto a Cristián Precht, se sumarán en los próximos días nuevas expulsiones de sacerdotes chilenos acusados de abusos sexuales al interior de la Iglesia Católica chilena. De a acuerdo a fuentes de El Mostrador, el religioso que fuera ícono de la defensa de los Derechos Humanos en dictadura, solo es el inicio de una cadena de sanciones que comenzará a conocerse próximamente.

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[Precht’s expulsion was due to new abuse allegations]

CHILE
La Tercera

September 16, 2018

By M. Navarrete and L. Leiva

Vicario judicial de la Arquidiócesis de Santiago explicó que la destitución del estado sacerdotal del expresbítero ocurrió luego de que se enviaran al Vaticano antecedentes sobre el caso maristas y al menos dos nuevas acusaciones.

“Más allá del caso maristas, hubo por lo menos dos nuevas denuncias que tuvieron que ver con la misma actuación de abuso sexual de menores. Todo eso, junto con lo del caso maristas, se envió diligentemente a la Santa Sede”, afirmó hoy el vicario judicial del Arzobispado de Santiago, Jaime Ortiz de Lazcano, al referirse a la situación del expresbítero Cristián Precht, quien el sábado fue notificado de la decisión inapelable del Vaticano de expulsarlo del sacerdocio, con lo que deja de pertenecer al clero.

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[Prosecutor of La Araucanía investigates 17 cases of possible clergy sex abuse]

CHILE
La Tercera

September 16, 2018

By F. Díaz and S. Rodríguez

La información se obtuvo tras el análisis de los documentos incautados en diócesis de Temuco y Villarrica.

Desde hace 47 años que los obispados católicos ubicados en la Región de La Araucanía -Temuco y Villarrica- han recibido diversas acusaciones contra miembros de la Iglesia por denuncias de presuntos abusos sexuales. Esta información se guardó con celo durante todos estos años, hasta que el pasado viernes 13 de julio dejó de estar exclusivamente en manos de representantes del clero.

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[Laymen demand that priests investigated for abuse and cover up do not preside over Te Deum]

CHILE
La Tercera

September 17, 2018

By Alejandra Jara

Desde la organización se mostraron de acuerdo con la decisión del Vaticano de expulsar a Cristian Precht.

A horas de que se realice un nuevo Te Deum, la Red Nacional de Laicos de Chile se refirió a las últimas investigaciones judiciales que afectan a sacerdotes católicos. A través de un comunicado, los laicos exigieron que los religiosos investigados por abuso y encubrimiento no presidan estas ceremonias y lamentaron que en un nuevo aniversario patrio los crímenes de la Iglesia siguen presentándose como signo de “escándalo y testimonio”.

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ATLANTA (GA)
CNN

September 17, 2018

By Shelby Rose, Claudia Dominquez and Susannah Cullinane

Pope Francis has expelled the Reverend Cristian Precht Bañados of Chile, according to a statement from the Archdiocese of Santiago.

This is the first formal resignation the Pope has decreed since every bishop in Chile offered to step down in May over the country’s sex abuse scandal. The move is thought to be unprecedented in the modern history of the Catholic Church.

Precht had been suspended in 2012 from practicing within the ministry for five years after the Archbishop of Santiago ordered a criminal investigation into allegations of sexual abuse against him.

The Archbishop issued a statement at the time saying that “during the process were established verifiable reports of abusive behavior with adults and minors.”

Precht has not been charged with any crimes by Chilean authorities, but was not allowed to leave the country’s capital, Santiago, pending completion of the church investigation.

In a February 2013 statement, Precht denied “ever forcing anyone’s will, be it an adult or a minor, woman or man.”

He also denied the allegations earlier this year in a letter to the director of the Chilean newspaper La Tercera.

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MADRID (SPAIN)
El País

September 17, 2018

By José Antonio Hernández

The man who was contacted by the pope after he wrote to him about the sexual assaults he suffered at the hands of Catholic priests breaks his silence in an interview with El País

The former altar boy and catechist from Granada who was phoned by an apologetic Pope Francis in 2014 in response to a letter he wrote to the Vatican reporting sexual abuse, has decided to break his silence. He has spent years hiding from the press and when he welcomes El País into his office in Pamplona, it is on condition he is not photographed and can remain anonymous, using the name Daniel for the purposes of this article.

“I don’t want to be pointed at in the street,” he says. A university professor, Daniel is 28, married and a member of the Catholic organization, Opus Dei. “I went through a lot and so did my family,” he says. “I ended up with the shakes and anxiety attacks. I decided to speak out about it because I don’t want anyone else to go through the same thing.”

Daniel feels pained and saddened by the handling of his case, both by the judiciary and the Catholic Church. “Hurt because some who abused me have gone back to their parishes, and who knows if they will go back to what they were doing,” he says.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

September 13, 2018

By The Times Editorial Board

For almost a generation, the Roman Catholic Church in the United States and worldwide has been shaken by revelations that a significant number of priests had sexually abused young people — and that church leaders not only conspired to conceal their crimes, but often also allowed them to continue to have contact with children, sometimes on the mistaken assumption that they had been “cured.”

But lately the anxiety among the faithful over decades of denial and deceit has reached a crisis point. It now threatens to tarnish the reformist papacy of Pope Francis.

The pope himself has been accused by a retired Vatican diplomat, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, of reactivating a sidelined former U.S. cardinal despite being told that the prelate had sexually harassed seminarians. Meanwhile, the American church has been dealing with the aftershocks of a grand jury report in Pennsylvania that identified 301 “predator priests” who abused more than 1,000 children in six of the state’s eight dioceses over a period of 70 years. The report has led to calls for the resignation of Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., who was faulted in the report for decisions he made as bishop of Pittsburgh. Wuerl has said he will meet with the pope soon to ask Francis to accept his resignation.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

September 16, 2018

Three Letters to the Editor

Your editorial about the Roman Catholic church abuse and cover-up crisis nailed it with this one line: Pope Francis “needs to recommit his papacy and the church he leads to protecting the faithful.”

All too often, church officials and observers talk of the need for healing. This implies that the bulk of the child sex crimes are behind us, which is questionable at best. Even if that were true, adults can recover from childhood trauma.

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YORK (PA)
York Dail Record

September 15, 2018

By Candy Woodall

A statewide priest abuse investigation in Pennsylvania has inspired widespread inquiries in other states and dioceses across the country.

Most recently, dioceses in Salt Lake City, Utah, and San Jose, California, said they would reveal the names of Catholic priests accused of sexual abuse.

The Salt Lake City diocese on Thursday said it received 16 credible reports of priest abuse since the 1990s. Two incidents occurred this year, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

Also on Thursday, the San Diego diocese released the names of eight priests accused of sexually abusing children, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The San Jose diocese will release names of its accused priests in October, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The Archdiocese of San Francisco is considering a similar release.

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
Morning Call

September 15, 2018

By Tim Darragh, Riley Yates and Christine Schiavo

For the last 20 years, Diana Vojtasek could barely speak about the sexual abuse she says she suffered as a Catholic high school student during a vulnerable time in her life.

When she married in 1997, her husband, Mark, didn’t know about what she would later describe as forced sexual encounters with a priest, who has since been defrocked.

And when a civil lawsuit she filed in 2004 failed to advance because it missed a legal deadline, she said, “I just kind of went back into my little hole.”

With three little children at the time, Vojtasek, who lives near Reading, said she became consumed with protecting herself and them.

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BATON ROUGE (LA)
The Advocate

September 16, 2018

By John Simerman

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry pledged last week to help root out sex abuse by Catholic clergy wherever it appears.

He’s just not about to turn the church over the spit to find it, given what he said is his limited authority under Louisiana law and what he described as the perils of “smearing the church” without a specific criminal allegation.

Landry’s decisive rejection of a broader investigation into how the state’s seven Catholic dioceses have dealt with allegations of priestly abuse came as his counterparts elsewhere are lining up to do just that.

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UNITED STATES
First Things

October 2018

By R. R. Reno

Theodore McCarrick has been stripped of his status as cardinal for pursuing young men throughout his clerical career. “­Uncle Ted” liked to take his “nephews” to bed with him. The public revelations of this fact evoked outrage. It was not so much that a churchman sinned as that he did so with impunity, protected by the see-no-evil mentality and, perhaps, the complicity of those who have their own secrets to keep. The anger was further stoked by an initial wave of denials. McCarrick’s protégés—some now bishops—ran for cover, insisting they knew nothing about his misdeeds.

I was not shocked by the news. I entered the Catholic Church in 2004, two years after clerical sex abuse of adolescent boys and its cover-up were exposed in Boston. We learned that many of the bishops of the United States—perhaps nearly all during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s—did little to root out priests who preyed upon boys and adolescents. Men who made a habit of grooming altar boys as sexual prey were shuttled from one parish to another. Pressure was exerted to keep aggrieved parents silent. Victims were stiff-armed. Insofar as there was strenuous episcopal effort, it was devoted to keeping a festering problem secret. The recently released Pennsylvania Grand Jury report deepens our knowledge of this pattern of behavior.

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MILWAUKEE (WI
WDJT-TV

September 15, 2018

By Lindsey Branwall

“We can never apologize enough,” said Archbishop Jerome Listecki.

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee is saying sorry for anyone that abused abused by a member of the Catholic church. They did so at a candlelight vigil at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Miwlaukee. The program was titled, “A Vigil of Reparation for the sins of the Bishops of the Church; Shepherds who have led their sheep astray.

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BOSTON MA
The Boston Globe

The Globe continues to lead the way in reporting about the institutional and systemic abuses at all ranks of the Catholic Church (“Another plea about abuse, and another empty reply,” Page A1, Sept. 9). However, we need more reporting about what is happening on the ground, today, to prevent future transgressions. The illuminating 2011 report by investigators at John Jay College, “The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010,” documents factors, both individual and educational, that have contributed to sexual abuse by priests.

It’s important to know that there is widespread understanding of risk factors for sexual abuse and that would-be priests are being carefully screened before being admitted into seminary. We need to hear how seminarians and experienced priests alike are coming to terms with the still-emerging crimes and coverups. And we need to advocate for priests at all stages of their careers to be nurtured and supported to be emotionally healthy individuals.

While incidents of abuse have dramatically decreased since the mid-1980s, even one abusive priest is too many. We need to be reassured that, every day, the church is doing everything it can to prevent a new cycle of betrayal and trauma.

Katharine Canfield
Watertown

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TULSA (OK)
Tulsa World

September 16, 2018

By Frank Keating

I chaired the first National Review Board for the Protection of Children and Young People. It was created by the Catholic bishops of the United States in 2002 to implement their reform charter and to investigate the scandal.

Accusations of clerical sexual abuse and cover-up had exploded from Boston and ripped across the land. The bishops threw down the gauntlet. No more of this. The clergy is to be celibate. No girlfriends. No boyfriends. Going forward, there would be zero tolerance of sexual crimes against the young. Every accusation of clerical sexual misconduct was to be referred to law enforcement.

And there would be transparency. If the church settled an abuse-related lawsuit, it should be on the front page of the newspaper.

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WORCESTER (MA)
Worcester Telegram & Gazette

September 15, 2018

By Brian Lee

Catholic clergy are coping with the impact of a global sex-abuse crisis that has resulted in allegations of a cover-up even against the highest levels of the Catholic Church.

Since May: Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, resigned and was ordered to a life of prayer and penance after allegations that the cardinal sexually abused minors and adult seminarians over the course of decades; a Pennsylvania grand jury named more than 300 priests in a report that found more than 1,000 children had allegedly been abused over seven decades; an Australian archbishop resigned after he was convicted of concealing pedophilia by another priest; a former Vatican diplomat was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for possessing child porn; and 34 Roman Catholic bishops in Chile offered to resign after a child sex scandal and cover-up.

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UNITED STATES
Breitbart

September 15, 2018

Catholics are “outraged” about reports of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s serial homosexual abuse, not so much because a churchman sinned as that he did so with impunity and protection, a new article asserts.

In a bracing October essay titled “Catholicism After 2018,” First Things editor Rusty Reno pinpoints an acceptance of a homosexual subculture in the Catholic clergy as the core issue underlying recent sex abuse scandals assailing the Catholic Church.

Catholics are incensed over McCarrick’s abuse, the article states, not so much because of one man’s moral failings “as that he did so with impunity, protected by the see-no-evil mentality and, perhaps, the complicity of those who have their own secrets to keep.”

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POZNAN (POLAND)
Agence France Presse via France 24

Women should play a greater role in the training of priests to fight the child abuse “crisis” that has engulfed the Catholic Church, Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet has said.

More must be done within the church to tackle the root causes of the latest wave of global abuse scandals to rock the institution, said Ouellet, the prefect of the Congregation for Bishops.

“We would need participation of more women in (training) of priests,” he told reporters on Saturday on the sidelines of a meeting in the Polish city of Poznan.

Better care must be taken when choosing bishops, he said, adding that more women should select candidates for priesthood and assess their suitability for the job.

His comments at the four-day assembly of the Presidents of the Bishops’ Conferences of Europe come amid a slew of devastating assault allegations spanning several continents.

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JAMESTOWN (NY)
The Post-Journal

September 16, 2018

By Rolland Kidder

I am not a Catholic but I do have a post-college seminary degree. Going back to those “old” days, I recall having conversations with my Catholic counterparts who were also in seminary, who wanted to be married but could not under the celibacy rules of the Roman Catholic Church.

Now, nearly every day when I pick up the newspaper there is a story about sexual abuse by priests in the Catholic Church. There are accompanying articles with apologies from Catholic leaders including the Pope. Catholic lay people are “turned off” by all of this and young people raised as Catholics find it a reason to leave the Church. Something significant has to change.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

September 16, 2018

A reader suggests that the faithful are duty bound to call for change.

Re “The Catholic Church Is Sick With Sex” (column, Sept. 3):

Timothy Egan’s call to meaningfully address both the plot to undo the progressive Pope Francis and, most important, to upend the church’s endless, writhing battle with sex is long overdue. Alas, the column will probably never be read by the pope, the Curia or anyone who can actually cause change in the church.

The distinction between this ecclesiastical crisis and all those that have preceded it is that the activities covered up and ignored by the church hierarchy are criminal assaults on defenseless children and seminarians that have real effects, not just on the body of the church, but on civil society as a whole.

These crimes are so pervasive and systemic that they must be eliminated, root and branch, from our body politic. It is painful to witness what the faithful go through to beg the church hierarchy to do something meaningful that addresses these crimes while not daring to touch the third rails of priestly celibacy and an all-male priesthood.

Mr. Egan finally lays it on the line. All Americans, Catholic and non-Catholic, are duty bound to demand that a hidebound Catholic hierarchy listen and take action.

James F. Blair
Ossining, N.Y.

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LANSING (MI)
By Associated Press via ClickonDetroit.com

September 15, 2018

Outside agency to review handling of cases

The Catholic Diocese of Lansing plans to invite an outside agency to review its handling of clergy child sexual abuse cases.

Bishop Earl Boyea outlined the review and plans to publish the names of all diocesan priests who sexually abused children in a report posted Tuesday on the diocesan website.

The review follows an August report by a Pennsylvania grand jury which found that about 300 Pennsylvania priests abused at least 1,000 children over the past 70 years. That report alleges senior church officials helped to cover up the abuse complaints.

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FRANCE
The Tablet

September 11, 2018

By Tom Heneghan

The cardinal has denied wrongdoing but admitted his reaction to abuse accusations he learned about in 2007 was “belated”

A French court has ordered Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, Archbishop of Lyon, to face trail in early January on charges of failing to denounce a sexually abusive priest, without the presence of co-defendant Vatican Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).

The twice-delayed trial of Cardinal Barbarin, who denies wrongdoing in an abuse case tormenting his archdiocese, should go ahead on 7-9 January despite the Vatican’s failure to respond to a summons issued to Cardinal Ladaria, it decided.

‘La Parole Libérée’, the victims’ association that brought the charges in a private prosecution after judicial authorities closed an earlier case against Barbarin, said it preferred to delay the trial again so that all involved -– including the Spanish-born Ladaria – could be tried. Barbarin’s defence opposes any further delays.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Register

September 16, 2018

By Brianna Heldt

I believe the Church is the bride of Christ, and the best possible place for you to be if you love Jesus.

Last week, I happened to notice an announcement in my parish bulletin. It read something like, “Interested in Catholicism? Come join our RCIA classes.”

I have to confess that I found myself half laughing (in a dark-humor sort of way), half shaking my head, about how it’s kind of a funny time for anyone to be, well, interested in Catholicism.

With all that’s come out over the past couple of months related to the Catholic sex abuse crisis, and seemingly widespread allegations of misconduct among bishops and cardinals, we are certainly not in era where evangelization will be easy. To put it bluntly, the Catholic Church has a PR problem.

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