ABUSE TRACKER

[In Lourdes, victims of pedophilia testify in front of Catholic bishops]

FRANCE
Le Monde

November 4, 2018

By Cécile Chambraud

Huit personnes ayant subi des violences sexuelles de la part de clercs ont témoigné lors de l’assemblée plénière d’automne des évêques de France.

A Lourdes (Hautes-Pyrénées), cette année, ils sont « les invités » des évêques catholiques. C’est de cette manière que Mgr Luc Crépy, président de la Cellule permanente de lutte contre la pédophilie (CPLP), a présenté les victimes de violences sexuelles de la part de clercs. Huit d’entre elles, hommes et femmes, étaient conviées à témoigner devant les 118 prélats, répartis en quatre groupes, à l’occasion de l’assemblée plénière d’automne des évêques de France, samedi 3 novembre.

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[Pedophilia: French Church tallies 211 testimonies of victims claiming abuse since 2017]

FRANCE
Le Monde

October 31, 2018

By Louise Couvelaire

Selon un rapport de l’épiscopat publié mardi, 129 prêtres ou diacres ont été mis en cause par un témoignage, dont dix ont été mis en examen et quatre incarcérés.

L’Eglise catholique française poursuit son opération de transparence. A quelques jours de la Conférence des évêques de France (CEF), à Lourdes, au cours de laquelle des victimes d’abus sexuels seront pour la première fois invitées à témoigner, l’épiscopat a publié, mardi 30 octobre, un second rapport sur la lutte contre la pédophilie dans l’Eglise.

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[National prosecutor suspends head of sex crimes for sexual harassment complaint]

CHILE
El Mostrador

November 5, 2018

El fiscal nacional encargó una investigación administrativa al jefe de la unidad de Lavado de dinero, Delitos Económicos y Crimen Organizado, Mauricio Fernández.

El fiscal nacional Jorge Abbott suspendió al director de la Unidad Especializada en Derechos Humanos, Violencia de Género y Delitos Sexuales de la Fiscalía Nacional, Luis Torres González, luego que una estudiante en práctica presentara una denuncia en su contra por acoso sexual.

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[Priest victim of Karadima speaks of “spiritual dictatorship” and says abuses continue in the Church]

SANTIAGO, CHILE
Emol

November 4, 2018

By Leonardo Vallejos

El presbitero Eugenio de la Fuente se declara como un “sobreviviente de graves abusos de poder y conciencia”.

El presbitero Eugenio de la Fuente, una de las víctimas religiosas de Fernando Karadima, insistió en sus críticas contra el ex sacerdote. En una carta enviada a El Mercurio hace un resumen histórico con todos los hitos que han tenido las denuncias contra el otrora párroco de El Bosque y aprovecha de cuestionar el rol de la Iglesia.

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FRANCE
La Croix International

November 5, 2018

By Céline Hoyeau

Participants hope for a deep change in awareness and in the practice of the Church to prevent and deal with assaults and sexual crimes

French bishops collectively met with victims of clerical sexual abuse for the first time for a session of testimony and discussion that participants later described as of “rare quality.”

Véronique Garnier, who was abused by a priest for two years from the age of 13, says she survived for years in what she described as “deadly silence” because “no one wanted to listen to us.”

Now, she says that she was impressed by the “totally different kind of silence, a great silence” that reigned during her meeting with 30 French bishops gathered in a circle around her at the beginning of their Plenary Assembly in Lourdes on Saturday Nov. 3.

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YOUNGSTOWN (OH)
WKBN

November 1, 2018

The Youngstown Diocese released the assignments for those accused of sex abuse

On Tuesday, Bishop George Murry released the names of 34 religious leaders removed due to sexual misconduct within the Youngstown Diocese since 1943.

The diocese has now released the parishes where each served.

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YORK (PA)
York Daily Record

November 2, 2018

By Candy Woodall

A YDR analysis shows the Diocese of Harrisburg continues to put a high priority on protecting its image.

Since releasing a long list of priests accused of child sexual abuse, the Diocese of Harrisburg has repeatedly vowed to be open and transparent.

Bishop Ronald Gainer has said his church’s darkest days are sins of the past.

But the Harrisburg diocese doesn’t have to look beyond last week to find evidence that it’s breaking its own promises of transparency to the public.

On multiple days in late October, the diocese wouldn’t answer when or why it hired a Republican strategist, lobbyist and crisis communicator to protect its image while claiming to put survivors first.

A York Daily Record analysis shows the Diocese of Harrisburg continues to put a high priority on protecting its image while not answering questions that are a matter of public safety.

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UNITED STATES
La Croix International

November 5, 2018

By Massimo Faggioli

Synodality for Francis is not just a form of Church government but a way of being Church

The most visible critique of the just concluded Synod of Bishops’ assembly on young people has focused on sections in the final document that call for a strengthening of synodality at all levels of the Church.

It is absolutely surprising how very little so many bishops know about synodality, a method Pope Francis has sought to develop throughout his pontificate and a concept Catholic theologians have been discussing for at least a couple of decades.

In order to understand how the pope’s ecclesiology is currently being received, we should look back at the concept of episcopal collegiality as it was introduced at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).

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TORONTO (CANADA)
Catholic News Service

November 5, 2018

By Michael Swan

In a decision that confirms its right to proactively reach out to victims of sexual abuse by priests, the Catholic Diocese of Bathurst, New Brunswick, has been awarded $3.4 million in a dispute with its insurance company.

Following the Oct. 18 decision by the New Brunswick Court of Appeal, the insurer, Aviva Canada, said it would take time to consider appealing to the Supreme Court of Canada. It has 60 days from the date of the decision.

The dispute centers around a case first heard in 2016 in which payments were made to more than 90 victims of predator priests covering a period of decades beginning in the 1950s. As the scope of abuse over the history of the diocese became apparent to Archbishop Valery Vienneau of Moncton, then the bishop of Bathurst, he hired retired Supreme Court judge Michel Bastarache to lead a conciliation process in which victims would be encouraged to tell their stories to Bastarache and the judge would independently investigate and decide on a reasonable offer of compensation.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

November 5, 2018

In 2003, a popular coach at a Kentucky high school was accused of sexual abuse. Fifteen years later, he is still working around kids.

The grooming by Drew Conliffe described in the KyCIR article is textbook. The abuse suffered by Eric Flynn, and likely others near him, is all too common. Sadly, too, is the fact that this popular coach, well-known in the community, was the one who received the benefit of the doubt over the victim. Despite the fact that other parents in the community apparently saw warning signs, it was ultimately the perpetrator who was believed and not the victim.

This story speaks to the importance of changing culture to stop and prevent sexual abuse. If we lived in a society where victims, especially children, were believed when they came forward, it is likely that Conliffe would not have been able to work around children for another 15 years. If we lived in a culture where sexual assault was understood to be common and not something to be joked about, it is possible that Flynn and other victims would have felt empowered in coming forward and sharing what happened to them, not ashamed. Perhaps then, allegations of abuse would have come into the light and been shared with all instead of needing to be shared anonymously, via windshield-wiper fliers.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

November 5, 2018

Even after a nationally-run expose into secret files, the spread of a federal investigation to their diocese, and a 60 minutes profile of the brave whistleblower who brought those files to light, church officials in Buffalo are still keeping secrets.

WKBW is reporting that two more priests within the Diocese of Buffalo, who have known allegations of sexual misconduct against them, have been permitted to remain in ministry under Bishop Robert Malone. In response to the report, the Diocese has now placed Fr. Ronald Sajdak and Msgr. Fred Liesing on administrative leave pending an investigation.

Recent history has made it clear that church officials in Buffalo have no business conducting an investigation of their own. Instead, all records related to these clergy and others who have been accused of abuse should be turned over immediately to law enforcement. Given these repeated failures to be fully open and honest – despite pledging to be exactly that in March – parishioners and citizens in Buffalo cannot trust Bishop Malone to do the right thing.

We are grateful that the NY state attorney general and U.S. Department of Justice have already opened investigations into clergy sex abuse in New York. If the revelations out of Buffalo are any indication, the investigation is sorely needed. Such an independent investigation is the only way to ensure the safety of children and vulnerable adults, the healing and support of survivors, and the confidence of citizens that the truth will carry the day.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WKBW

November 4, 2018

By Charlie Spech

Buffalo Bishop Richard J. Malone made a statement Friday during his interview with WBEN radio that is now being called into question.

WBEN host David Bellavia asked the Bishop, “Are there any priests currently under your command, that have any allegations of any sort of assault against children?” Malone responded by stating: “Not that I know of.”

It now appears that statement may not be totally accurate because Msgr. Fred Leising, one of the accused priests, was saying Mass as recently as Saturday. The other accused priest was actively ministering as a pastor.

In an interview with 7 Eyewitness News on Saturday night, Msgr. Leising denied the allegation that he stuck his tongue down the throat of a teenage girl in the 1980s. But he said the diocese has known about the allegation for months and is only suspending him now in a desperate attempt at damage control.

“Yes, actually I had a funeral this morning at Nativity, where I used to be the pastor for 12 years,” Msgr. Leising told 7 Eyewitness News. “I had gotten a call from Bishop Grosz this morning telling me I was going to be put on administrative leave.”

Msgr. Leising, the former president-rector of Christ the King Seminary, says he met with Bishop Grosz about the situation months ago. Internal documents obtained by 7 Eyewitness News show the diocese knew of the allegation since April. Leising said Bishop Malone finally suspended him now – six months later – after consulting with his attorneys.

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PARIS (FRANCE)
Associated Press

November 2, 2018

A Catholic priest said Friday that he has been punished by church leaders in France after he gathered more than 100,000 signatures for a petition calling for a cardinal to resign over his handling of child sexual abuse cases.

The Rev. Pierre Vignon said he learned in an email Thursday that he would no longer be considered for the church court where he has served as a judge since 2002.

In a phone interview, Vignon said the decision showed church leaders are of two minds about how to deal with sex predators within the Catholic clergy.

“They say, ‘We want to do everything,’ but to whistleblowers, ‘We want to shut you up,”‘ Vignon said.

The email said Vignon was no longer a church judge but did not explain the reason for the decision made by 12 bishops who oversee the area of southeast France where he ministers, the priest said.

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SEATTLE (WA)
Ending Clerical Abuse

November 5, 2018

The Honorable Callista Gingrich
United States Ambassador to the Holy See
United States Embassy to the Holy See
Via Sallustiana, 49
00187 Rome, Italy

Re: Survivors of Clergy Sexual Abuse and the U.S. Response to the Vatican

Dear Honorable Ambassador,

We are writing to you as survivors of clergy sexual abuse and human rights advocates from the United States and around the world.

On November 12, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) will be convening in Baltimore to address the crisis of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

The meeting takes place in the wake of an unprecedented formal notification by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) directing every Catholic diocese to “not destroy, discard, dispose of, delete, or alter any” documents related to the sexual abuse of children as U.S. officials investigate “possible violations of federal law.”

We are asking you to urge Pope Francis to assert his authority and issue a clear and unambiguous directive to the American bishops to immediately comply with the DOJ notification.

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NORWICH (CT)
The Day

November 3. 2018

By Greg Smith

It was a small group that stood outside the Cathedral of St. Patrick in quiet protest on Saturday with a shared hope their stories of sexual abuse at the hands of priests will have a broader statewide impact.

The rally was organized by the Connecticut Chapter of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, SNAP, which is pushing for elimination of the statute of limitations on all sexual assault-related crimes.

The statute of limitations for sexual assault in Connecticut varies depending on the crime. While there is no limitation on serious felony sexual assaults, state law does bar criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits in certain cases of sexual abuse of a minor once the victim reaches the age of 48. It’s much shorter in other cases.

It can take decades for sexual assault victims to feel confident enough to come forward with their stories, said Lucy Nolan, director of policy and public relations with the Connecticut Alliance to End Sexual Violence.

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OREGON
Spiritual Sounding Board

November 2, 2018

Stephen James Kilpatrick, 63, “was arrested and charged with three counts each of taking indecent liberties with a child younger than 15 years old and soliciting sex from a child younger than 15 years old.”

Richmond-Times Dispatch has reported that Southern Virginia Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC) posted a Craigslist ad as a 13-yr old girl and conversed via text and e-mail for seven months.

Gardner said the conversations were often sexually explicit and Kilpatrick was told the person he was communicating with was a 13-year-old girl in the eighth grade named “Jenny.” Kilpatrick promised sexual acts to “Jenny,” drove to where he thought she lived and told her he’d thought about her sexually while in his office, according to Gardner.

Kilpatrick was a professor of physics at LU during the time of the incident but has since been fired, his family said from the witness stand Tuesday.

Kilpatrick was actively trying to set up a meeting with the girl, Gardner said, and law enforcement officers staged such a meeting in June. When they intercepted Kilpatrick, she said he had cookies and lubrication in his car.

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MADRID (SPAIN)
El Pais

November 3, 2018

By Joaquin Gil

The Salesian religious order still has a priest within its ranks who is under investigation for abusing a 13-year-old child in 2013. As confirmed by EL PAÍS, Father Francisco Javier López Luna maintains an office at the National Center for Youth Pastoral Care on Calle Alcalá, in Madrid.

“López Luna this year took charge of the Salesian community, and he is a member of the Youth Pastoral Care, a body that brings together the various groups within the order,” says one of its members.

The prosecution is seeking more than four years behind bars for López Luna, who is accused of a crime against the sexual integrity of a minor as well as degrading treatment.

During the school year 2012-2013, Manolo – a pseudonym – was studying his second year of high school at the Salesian School in Cádiz. He was then 13 and going three times a week to the principal’s office. The principal at the time was Francisco Javier López Luna. “When he touched me, he would bite his lip; he enjoyed it,” Manolo says, speaking out for the first time after two years in therapy.

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DENVER (CO)
Crux

November 5, 2018

By Inés San Martín

Amid an unprecedented crisis in the Catholic Church in Chile, lay people tired of waiting for deeper change are organizing themselves.

After the extent of sexual abuse cover-up was made known, every bishop submitted his resignation to Pope Francis. He’s accepted seven, with several more expected.

“We agree with Pope Francis that we must not get bogged down in the quicksand of desolation, protest and simple complaining, but rather it is time to make constructive suggestions as to what needs to be done,” says a letter written by some of Chile’s most influential Catholic lay people.

The missive is, in many ways, a response to Francis’s address to the bishops of Chile when he was in the country last January.

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WHEELING (WV)
Intelligencer

November 4, 2018

By Mike Myer

He was a teenager during the 1960s, my caller said. He had a driver’s license and access to a car, so friends sometimes asked him for rides. One asked every week.

They would drive to a Roman Catholic Church in our area, during the early evening. The friend would get out and go into the church. My caller waited in the car.

After awhile, the boy would come out of the church and get back into the car. He would have $20 in small bills. Of that, he gave my caller $5 for the ride.

A priest had paid him for a sex act, performed inside the church.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
The Times-Picayune

By Kim Chatelain

Nov 2, 2018

The Archdiocese of New Orleans on Friday (Nov. 2) released the names of 57 Roman Catholic clergy members “credibly accused” of abusing minors over many decades in southeast Louisiana, answering a clarion call for transparency in a scandal that has rocked the world’s largest Christian church.

All of the credibly accused clergy members are either deceased or have been removed from the ministry, Archbishop Gregory Aymond said. The names have been turned over to the New Orleans District Attorney’s Office and will be made available to any other district attorney in the area. The New Orleans DA issued a statement Friday morning saying it is willing to take part in investigations as needed.

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DES MOINES (IA)
Des Moines Register

November 2, 2018

By Tyler J Davis

Reuben and Tania Ortiz were remorseful and wondering: Did we really invite a sexual predator to sleep under the same roof as our children?

Reuben said he had to patrol his own house, installing locks on bedroom doors and sleeping in his living room to keep watch on his 13-, 15- and 17-year-olds. Now, he worries that his efforts weren’t enough to protect his kids from admitted pedophile the Rev. Jerome Coyle.

“We knew (Coyle) for 13 years and he really spent a lot of time with us … in fact, people would even say ‘Hey, where’s Jerry?’ because he would go places with us,” Reuben said from his New Mexico home Wednesday. “He had already spent time, even by himself, with our (kids), at times; I don’t know what he did.”

Reuben said he spoke with his children after he was informed of the 85-year-old’s actions as an Iowa priest. Coyle admitted in the 1980s to attraction to or sexual contact with about 50 boys in central and western Iowa over a span of 20-plus years.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
WTMA TV

November 3, 2018

Eight of the 57 members of the clergy who have been credibly accused of sexually abusing minors worked at a Marrero orphanage, according to the Archdiocese of New Orleans.

All eight priests were Salesians, members of a religious order founded in Italy by St. John Bosco.

On November 2, Archbishop Gregory Aymond released the names of the 57 priests, deacons, clergy, and religious order priests who have been “credibly accused” of sexual abuse of a minor since 1950.

Eight priests, accounting for about 14 percent of those named, were either stationed solely at Hope Haven orphanage on Barataria Boulevard in Marrero or worked there in addition to other assignments in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.

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OKLAHOMA CITY (OK)
News Channel 4

November 4, 2018

By Lili Zheng

A Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City has been removed from ministry pending an investigation of an alleged sexual abuse of a minor.

The announcement was posted on the archdiocese’s website stating the removal of Rev. James Mickus who serves as pastor of Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church in Chandler and Saint Louis Catholic Church in Stroud.

We’re told Archbishop Paul Coakley informed parishioners in person Sunday morning.

According to the statement, the allegation does not involve Mickus’s current parishes and is under review by the archdiocesan Review Board. The board was created in 2002 under the “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People” to review allegations of abuse and advise the archbishop.

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

November 3, 2018

By Jenn Abelson, Thomas Farragher of the Globe Staff, Jeremy Roebuck, Julia Terruso and William Bender of the Philadelphia Inquirer Staff

Bishop Robert Finn wasn’t going anywhere.

He never alerted authorities about photos of young girls’ genitals stashed on a pastor’s laptop. He kept parishioners in the dark, letting the priest mingle with children and families. Even after a judge found the bishop guilty of failing to report the priest’s suspected child abuse — and after 200,000 people petitioned for his ouster — he refused to go.

“I got this job from John Paul II. There’s his signature right there,” Finn had told a prospective deacon shortly after the priest’s arrest in 2011, pointing to the late pontiff’s photo. “And that’s who I answer to.”

Sixteen years after the clergy sexual abuse crisis exploded in Boston, the American Catholic Church is again mired in scandal. This time, the controversy is propelled not so much by priests in the rectories as by the leadership, bishops across the country who like Finn have enabled sexual misconduct or in some cases committed it themselves.

More than 130 US bishops — or nearly one-third of those still living — have been accused during their careers of failing to adequately respond to sexual misconduct in their dioceses, according to a Boston Globe and Philadelphia Inquirer examination of court records, media reports, and interviews with church officials, victims, and attorneys.

At least 15, including Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington who resigned in July, have themselves been accused of committing such abuse or harassment.

Most telling, the analysis shows that the claims against more than 50 bishops center on incidents that occurred after a historic 2002 Dallas gathering of US bishops where they promised that the church’s days of concealment and inaction were over. By an overwhelming, though not unanimous, vote, church leaders voted to remove any priest who had ever abused a minor and set up civilian review boards to investigate clergy misconduct claims.

But while they imposed new standards that led to the removal of hundreds of priests, the bishops specifically excluded themselves from the landmark child protection measures.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

November 2, 2018

By Daniel Bice

Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign has spent the past year accusing Democratic foe Tony Evers of putting children in danger by not stripping the licenses of teachers found guilty of improper and immoral acts.

But it turns out that the second-term Republican governor’s administration has its own serious lapse involving the professional licenses of individuals of highly questionable character.

Records show one of Walker’s agencies — the state Department of Safety and Professional Services — either gave licenses to or renewed the licenses of four ex-priests who were defrocked for sexually abusing children.

The four former pedophile priests from the Milwaukee Archdiocese were given state approval to practice such professions as social work, nursing, alcohol and drug counseling and funeral work. All four appear on the archdiocese’s list of former Milwaukee priests with a “substantiated case of sexual abuse of a minor.”

After learning of the issue this week, Walker moved to strip the four of their state credentials.

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DENVER (CO)
Crux

November 5, 2018

By Elise Harris

Denise Buchanan, a survivor of clerical sexual abuse and advocate for fellow victims, has said she was disappointed in the handling of the issue during last month’s Synod of Bishops on youth, and that a lack of a unified consensus is thwarting any progress that could be made.

With some bishops making vocal apologies for the Church’s failures and others trying to downplay the problem, depicting it as a mainly Western issue, it’s clear that prelates “don’t know what to do,” Buchanan said.

Speaking to Crux over the phone from Los Angeles, she said that when the Oct. 3-28 Synod of Bishops on young people, faith and vocational discernment came to a close, “it ended with a whimper because there was no agreement on a lot of the issues they had on their agenda,” particularly clerical abuse.

“That’s very telling,” she said, “because if you have factions within global groups, within the Vatican and the Vatican hierarchy that are fighting with each other, how can there be any consensus, how can there be any way to move forward?”

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NEW YORK (NY)
Commonweal

November 1, 2018

By James J. Heaney

Ten years ago, I believed a myth. In the beginning, there was Vatican II. It was good but messy, and the Bad Catholics hijacked it to undermine doctrine. They took over seminaries and turned them into cesspools where heresy was mandatory and depravity rampant. Then Pope John Paul II came along. He drove out the Bad Catholics and cleaned up the seminaries. Too late! The Bad Catholics had already committed terrible crimes, which were covered up without the pope’s awareness. In 2002, their abuses exploded into public view, and the JPII Catholics got blamed for crimes committed by a dying generation of clerics. The JPII bishops took it on the chin, but they fixed the problem with the Dallas Charter. Then Benedict XVI, the great theologian, appointed orthodox bishops who would carry forward the renewal. The horrors of the Scandal were behind us. The two primordial forces of the postconciliar church, orthodoxy and heresy, had fought a great battle, and orthodoxy had been vindicated.

My diocese, the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, was proof. In the 1980s, we were led by Archbishop John Roach. Appointed by Pope Paul VI, Roach fit the “Spirit of Vatican II” archetype to a tee. Under Roach, Saint Paul Seminary was taken over by dissenters, one of whom described the Eucharist as “cookie worship” that he had “moved beyond.” There were open homosexual affairs. Those who dared adhere to church teaching were punished.

Saint Paul soon experienced one of the first abuse scandals in the American church. For years, Roach and his cronies had secretly shuffled abusive priests between parishes. When this came out and the diocese was sued, Roach found himself under oath, where he became conveniently forgetful. The diocese lost, with the victim awarded $3.5 million—paltry by today’s standards, but shocking at the time. In response, Roach imposed “tough policies,” which won praise from newspapers. Privately, he declined to enforce them.

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LOUISVILLE (KY)
Center for Investigative Reporting

November 2, 2018

By R.G. Dunlop

As a high school sophomore, Eric Flynn was spiraling.

The once-stellar student was placed in less challenging classes. The gifted athlete dropped out of sports he loved. The teenager, once reserved, now punched holes in doors and threatened suicide.

He wouldn’t say why. Perplexed, his parents sought help from their son’s mentor. Drew Conliffe was quick to respond.

Sure, he’d take Eric out for a nice dinner and see what he could learn about the root of his torment. Anything to help.

At the time, Kathy Flynn thought that was a great idea. After all, everybody loved Conliffe: a basketball coach at Trinity High School, a leader in Kentucky’s junior golf world and a friend of the Flynn family.

Today, Kathy Flynn is overwhelmed with guilt.

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MADRID (SPAIN)
BBC

November 4, 2018

By James Badcock

Emiliano Álvarez says the abuse at his boarding school began at the age of 11

“The priest who tortured me is still giving Mass in the village down the road,” says Emiliano Álvarez, a 52-year-old from Borrenes, north-western Spain.

Like other victims who have come forward, Mr Álvarez claims he was abused by staff at the Seminario Menor boarding school in La Bañeza, in Zamora province, and that Spain’s Catholic Church authorities have done little about it.

He filed his accusation against a priest in early 2017, and is still waiting for a decision by the local ecclesiastical court in Astorga.

Mr Álvarez says he was 11 on the night he recalls being woken by the priest.

“He was pulling down the sheets and my underpants, and I was pulling them back up again and again.

“I can’t remember much more about that first time, but it started to happen almost every night. Then, when I was 12, it got worse; I remember fighting to turn my hips away from him so he could not touch me.”

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SPRINGFIELD (MO)
KY3-TV

November 3, 2018

By Taylor Frost

Springfield couple, Gail and Jon Herbert, decided to come forward and reveal their identities after filing a lawsuit in August against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau and Troy Casteel, director of family ministries, for years of sexual and emotional abuse. They hope to help someone else through their pain.

“I’m angry and I fight to not feel shame … but I refuse to feel shame,” Gail Herbert said.

Gail Herbert says the couple went to Casteel for marriage counseling beginning in 2013. He then used the information in those therapy sessions as weapons. The lawsuit says she “was sexually abused on property.”

“Whenever it was happening I was feeling confused, I was feeling guilty,” Gail Herbert said. “I didn’t understand how I could do the things that I was doing.”

The lawsuit filed in August claims top diocese officials knew this abuse was happening.

During the interview, Bishop Edward Rice, came and listened to part of the interview and appeared to record it on his phone. When approached by David Clohessy, St. Louis Director of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), Rice chose not to comment and walked away. Clohessy says he hopes Rice and other church leaders will step up to report any wrongdoing.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Times-Picayune

November 3, 2018

By Hanna Krueger

Two more of the 57 Roman Catholic ex-priests and deacons who were “credibly accused” of sex abuse in newly released files from the Archdiocese of New Orleans responded to their identification when contacted by WVUE television.

John Sax and James Lockwood are among 14 former clergy members who are on the list and still alive.

Sax has admitted sexually abusing an altar boy when he was a priest at St. Peter Church in Reserve in the 1980s after a lawsuit was filed in 2001. He had been ordained in 1973 and served assignments in Metairie, Kenner, New Orleans and Reserve before being removed from ministry in 2004.

When asked Friday (Nov. 2) whether he was sorry, he told WVUE: “I’ve already done that 17 years ago. I apologized then; I apologize now. I’m sorry. I regret what I did. The name is correct that’s on the list. I’m sorry, that’s all I can say. I’m sorry, I regret it.”

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NORWICH (CT)
The Day

November 4, 2018

By Greg Smith

It was a small group that stood outside the Cathedral of St. Patrick in quiet protest on Saturday with a shared hope their stories of sexual abuse at the hands of priests will have a broader statewide impact.

The rally was organized by the Connecticut Chapter of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, SNAP, which is pushing for elimination of the statute of limitations on all sexual assault-related crimes.

The statute of limitations for sexual assault in Connecticut varies depending on the crime. While there is no limitation on serious felony sexual assaults, state law does bar criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits in certain cases of sexual abuse of a minor once the victim reaches the age of 48. It’s much shorter in other cases.

It can take decades for sexual assault victims to feel confident enough to come forward with their stories, said Lucy Nolan, director of policy and public relations with the Connecticut Alliance to End Sexual Violence.

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UNITED STATES
The Boston Globe

November 3, 2018

By Jenn Abelson, Thomas Farragher of the Globe Staff, Jeremy Roebuck, Julia Terruso and William Bender of the Philadelphia Inquirer Staff

American bishops promised reform after the clergy sexual abuse scandal exploded in Boston. But they largely ignored the misdeeds of one group: themselves

Sixteen years after the clergy sexual abuse crisis exploded in Boston, the American Catholic Church is again mired in scandal. This time, the controversy is propelled not so much by priests in the rectories as by the leadership, bishops across the country who like Finn have enabled sexual misconduct or in some cases committed it themselves.

More than 130 US bishops — or nearly one-third of those still living — have been accused during their careers of failing to adequately respond to sexual misconduct in their dioceses, according to a Boston Globe and Philadelphia Inquirer examination of court records, media reports, and interviews with church officials, victims, and attorneys.

At least 15, including Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington who resigned in July, have themselves been accused of committing such abuse or harassment.

Most telling, the analysis shows that the claims against more than 50 bishops center on incidents that occurred after a historic 2002 Dallas gathering of US bishops where they promised that the church’s days of concealment and inaction were over. By an overwhelming, though not unanimous, vote, church leaders voted to remove any priest who had ever abused a minor and set up civilian review boards to investigate clergy misconduct claims.

But while they imposed new standards that led to the removal of hundreds of priests, the bishops specifically excluded themselves from the landmark child protection measures. They contended only the pope had authority to discipline them and said peer pressure — public or private shaming they euphemistically called “fraternal correction” — would keep them in line.

It hasn’t.

Bishop accountability has proved a contradiction in terms; resistance and indifference remain all too common. Even some of the bishops who wrote the 2002 reforms would themselves be accused of enabling or ignoring abuse. And the chairwoman of the new civilian board overseeing compliance with the reforms quickly despaired of the seriousness of the bishops’ commitment, saying, in a 2004 letter not previously reported, that their pledge to change “appears to be nothing more than a common fraud.”

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BATON ROUGE (LA)
The Advocate

November 2, 2018

By Andrea Gallo

A Catholic priest who ingratiated himself with the deaf community and who helped to open Catholic deaf centers in both Baton Rouge and New Orleans secretly preyed on children there during the 1960s and 1970s before he was removed as a priest, his victims recalled Friday as the Archdiocese of New Orleans released the names of 57 priests credibly accused of sexual abuse.

The Rev. Gerard “Jerry” Howell was assigned to St. Pius X in Baton Rouge as well as eight churches across the New Orleans area before he was removed from ministry in 1980, according to records the Archdiocese of New Orleans released Friday. Howell was appointed director of the New Orleans deaf apostolate in 1967 and moved in 1978 to help establish the St. Francis de Sales deaf center in Baton Rouge.

He was one of eight priests accused of sexual abuse on the list from the Archdiocese of New Orleans who had ministered in the Diocese of Baton Rouge over the last decade. Howell, who is still alive, could not be reached Friday.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
WGNO-TV

November 2, 2018

Eight of the 57 members of the clergy who have been credibly accused of sexually abusing minors worked at a Marrero orphanage, according to the Archdiocese of New Orleans.

All eight priests were Salesians, members of a religious order founded in Italy by St. John Bosco.

On November 2, Archbishop Gregory Aymond released the names of the 57 priests, deacons, clergy, and religious order priests who have been “credibly accused” of sexual abuse of a minor since 1950.

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[Trial opens for priest accused of pedophilia and former bishop accused of failing to take action]

FRANCE
La République du Centre

October 30, 2018

Le procès de l’abbé Pierre de Castelet, accusé d’agressions sexuelles sur mineurs, s’est ouvert mardi devant le tribunal correctionnel d’Orléans en l’absence de l’ancien évêque d’Orléans, Mgr André Fort, poursuivi lui pour non-dénonciation. Mgr André Fort, 83 ans, évêque d’Orléans de 2002 à 2010, est “affaibli par sa maladie à la suite d’une opération”, a déclaré son avocat Me Benoit de Gaullier à l’ouverture de l’audience, pour expliquer l’absence de son client.

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[The diocese of Vendée investigates sexual abuse in two institutions]

FRANCE
La Croix

November 1, 2018

By Julien Tranié with AFP

L’Église catholique en Vendée a annoncé, mercredi 31 octobre, qu’elle enquêtait sur des faits de pédophilie dans deux établissements du département entre 1950 et 1979. Ces enquêtes ont conduit l’évêque de Luçon, Mgr François Jacolin, à suspendre deux prêtres de tout ministère public.

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[The punishment of Father Pierre Vignon causes a stir]

FRANCE
La Croix

November 3, 2018

By Céline Hoyeau

Fervent soutien des victimes de pédophilie dans l’Église, le prêtre qui avait lancé une pétition appelant à la démission du cardinal Barbarin, n’a pas été reconduit dans ses fonctions de juge à l’officialité interdiocésaine de Lyon.

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[Assembly of Bishops in Lourdes to hear testimony of clergy abuse victim]

FRANCE
La Croix

November 3, 2018

By Céline Hoyeau

Sept victimes d’abus sexuels commis par des clercs seront reçues par les évêques à Lourdes, samedi 3 novembre, au premier jour de leur Assemblée plénière.

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[Canon judge who demanded the resignation of Cardinal Barbarin removed from office]

FRANCE
Le Monde

November 1, 2018

By Le Monde with AFP

Pierre Vignon a annoncé jeudi n’avoir pas été reconduit dans ses fonctions de juge auprès du tribunal ecclésiastique de Lyon. Une décision qu’il estime « directement liée » à sa pétition.

Il avait lancé en août une pétition appelant à la démission du cardinal Philippe Barbarin. Le père Pierre Vignon a annoncé jeudi 1er novembre n’avoir pas été reconduit dans ses fonctions de juge auprès de l’officialité interdiocésaine de Lyon.

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[In Lourdes, bishops will hear from sexual abuse victims]

LOURDES, FRANCE
Le Monde

October 31, 2018

By Cécile Chambraud

En organisant cette rencontre lors de son assemblée plénière d’automne, samedi, l’épiscopat entend montrer qu’il ne reste pas « sans rien faire » face aux scandales.

Comme tous les ans début novembre, les évêques de l’Eglise catholique se retrouvent à Lourdes pour leur assemblée plénière d’automne. Mais cette année, l’atmosphère de cette réunion, organisée du 3 au 8 novembre, sera dominée par la question des abus sexuels. Elle est omniprésente depuis l’avalanche de révélations de l’été : plongée dans les crimes pédophiles du clergé de Pennsylvanie pendant les dernières décennies, bilan des affaires du même ordre en Allemagne, mise en cause de l’ancien archevêque de Washington Theodore McCarrick, contraint de quitter le Collège des cardinaux.

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[Archbishop Ezzati’s lawyer defends his right to remain silent, citing lack of objectivity]

SANTIAGO, CHILE
Emol

November 3, 2018

By C. Díaz

“El defensor Hugo Rivera insiste en que el proceso no se ha desarrollado con la debida objetividad que corresponde a un proceso de estas características y que la decisión del cardenal fue siguiendo su “consejo profesional”.

Luego de que el cardenal arzobispo de Santiago, Ricardo Ezzati, decidiera acogerse a su derecho de guardar silencio durante su declaración para el fiscal de O’Higgins, Sergio Moya, en la jornada del pasado 3 de octubre, su abogado defensor, Hugo Rivera, aseguró que la medida se trata de una decisión ante la falta de rigurosidad y objetividad que se ha expuesto en el caso.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
New Orleans Advocate

By John Simerman, Ramon Antonio Vargas and Matt Sledge

November 2, 2018

New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond on Friday released the names of 57 former clergy members credibly accused of sexually abusing minors — the first such disclosure in the history of the Catholic Church in Louisiana.

The list, released amid pressure from local Catholics and widespread demands for church transparency across the U.S., includes 34 clergy whose alleged abuses do not appear to have been previously exposed. According to Aymond, all 57 clergy were either removed from ministry as a result of the allegations or were already dead when the allegations arose.

In all, the disgraced clergy served across a wide swath of the Archdiocese of New Orleans. Alleged abusers worked at some time or another in about 125 schools, parishes and other church-operated facilities. That figure represents about 25 percent of all such facilities under the archdiocese in the 1970s, when the largest share of known clergy sex abuse took place.

Many of the listed clergy served as modest parish priests or worked in local high schools while they allegedly preyed on children and young adults.

But a select few were once pillars of the city. J. Donald Pearce served as president of Jesuit High School from 1965 to 1968 and was earlier a legendary disciplinarian at the school. It turns out he sexually abused minors in the 1960s, according to allegations the archdiocese deemed credible.

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PARIS (FRANCE)
Associated Press

November 2, 2018

A Catholic priest said Friday that he has been punished by church leaders in France after he gathered more than 100,000 signatures for a petition calling for a cardinal to resign over his handling of child sexual abuse cases.

The Rev. Pierre Vignon said he learned in an email Thursday that he would no longer be considered for the church court where he has served as a judge since 2002.

In a phone interview, Vignon said the decision showed church leaders are of two minds about how to deal with sex predators within the Catholic clergy.

“They say, ‘We want to do everything,’ but to whistleblowers, ‘We want to shut you up,’” Vignon said.

The email stated Vignon was no longer a church judge but did not explain the reason for the decision made by 12 bishops who oversee the area of southeast France where he ministers, the priest said.

Vignon’s online petition in August called for the resignation of Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, who has been the archbishop of Lyon since 2002. Vignon faulted the cardinal’s handling of a notorious alleged pedophile priest suspected of abusing Boy Scouts in Lyon during the 1980s.

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NASHVILLE (TN)
NewsChannel5.com

November 2, 2018

By Ben Hall

The Catholic Diocese of Nashville has released the names of 13 former priests who have been “credibly accused” of sexually abusing children.

The Diocese reviewed records dating back to the 1950s.

The decision to release the list comes as other states are investigating whether church leaders covered up abuse.

Most of the priests named by the Nashville Diocese have been publicly accused in the past. But in some cases, this is the first time the diocese has acknowledged a credible accusation of sex with a child.

Nine of the 13 priests named are dead. Two are in prison, and the other two were long ago removed from the priesthood.

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NASHVILLE (TN)
Diocese of Nashville

November 2, 2018

The Diocese of Nashville, as part of its ongoing commitment to transparency, accountability, and pastoral care, is publishing the names of the 13 former priests who served in the diocese who have been accused of sexually abusing a minor.

Of the 13, nine are dead and two are in prison. None are in active ministry.

The names are being released after consultation with the Presbyteral Council and Diocesan Review Board, which is made up almost entirely of lay people not employed by the diocese. Files on abuse cases were shared with the Davidson County District Attorney General’s office nearly 20 years ago.

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NASHVILLE (TN)
Tennessean

November 2, 2018

By Holly Meyer

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Nashville has published the names of 13 former priests accused of sexually abusing minors. The ex-clergy listed served as priests from the 1940s to the 1990s and held positions at Catholic parishes, schools and youth programs across the state.

Nashville Bishop J. Mark Spalding decided to release the names — many of which local media have already reported — in response to this summer’s damning Pennsylvania grand jury report that found allegations of widespread clergy sex abuse and cover-up in six of that state’s dioceses.

“It’s really a part of the ongoing effort that Bishop Spalding has been stressing of transparency and accountability and pastoral care for people of the diocese,” said Rick Musacchio, Nashville diocese spokesman. “He thought it would be appropriate for us to publish these names at this time as part of that effort.”

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DES MOINES (IA)
Des Moines Register

November 2, 2018

By Tyler J Davis

Reuben and Tania Ortiz were remorseful and wondering: Did we really invite a sexual predator to sleep under the same roof as our children?

Reuben said he had to patrol his own house, installing locks on bedroom doors and sleeping in his living room to keep watch on his 13-, 15- and 17-year-olds. Now, he worries that his efforts weren’t enough to protect his kids from admitted pedophile the Rev. Jerome Coyle.

“We knew (Coyle) for 13 years and he really spent a lot of time with us … in fact, people would even say ‘Hey, where’s Jerry?’ because he would go places with us,” Reuben said from his New Mexico home Wednesday. “He had already spent time, even by himself, with our (kids), at times; I don’t know what he did.”

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[Bishop of Los Angeles says presumed case of sexual abuse remains in posecutor’s office]

CHILE
BioBioChile

November 1, 2018

By Alejandra Soto and Carlos Agurto

El obispo de Los Ángeles, Felipe Bacarreza, aseguró escuetamente que continúa en la Fiscalía un presunto caso de abuso sexual en un colegio de la Iglesia Católica, en la provincia del Bío Bío.

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ERIE (PA)
Erie News Now

November 1, 2018

By Paul Wagner

Pushing for Statute of Limitations Reforms

Survivors of clergy sex abuse say they plan to keep up the pressure on state lawmakers to make it easier for them to file lawsuits.

Right now, the statute of limitations prevents most victims from suing.

Survivor and member of “Stop Child Predators,” Jim VanSickle, was in Erie urging the state legislature to pass a bill allowing a two year window for filing lawsuits.

The state house passed the legislation.

But it was never brought up for a vote in the senate despite marches, rallies and protests.

VanSickle says while the inaction is disappointing, he remains optimistic the bill will eventually pass.

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PEORIA (IL)
NewsTribune

November 2, 2018

Priests served at Illinois Valley parishes

Three retired priests who had served parishes in the Illinois Valley have been removed from the ministry, the Diocese of Peoria said in a press release issued Thursday.

The Rev. George Hiland, the Rev. Duane Leclercq and the Rev. John Onderko all have been required to step down from public ministry over what Bishop Daniel Jenky, in the release, termed “credible allegations of sexual abuse of a minor.”

The press release disclosed the following allegations:

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SYRACUSE (NY)
WKTV

November 1, 2018

By Kristen Copeland

The latest lawsuit to put a spotlight on the Catholic Church seeks to identify all priests in New York State who have been accused of sexual misconduct.

The latest lawsuit to put a spotlight on the Catholic Church seeks to identify all priests in New York State who have been accused of sexual misconduct.

However, the Diocese of Syracuse says it won’t do that.

The lawsuit was filed in State Supreme Court in New York City. The plaintiff is accusing a Brooklyn priest of sexually abusing him for two years, and accuses all eight dioceses in New York State of making sure similar allegations never became public.

49 priests face accusations in the Syracuse Diocese, which spans seven counties – including Oneida and Madison. 67 priests in the Albany Diocese face accusations as well. That covers all or parts of 14 counties, including Herkimer and Otsego.

The lawsuit is seeking the names of all agents, including priests, accused of child molestation; the history of abuse; the pattern of sexual behavior; and the alleged offenders’ last known address.

Syracuse Diocese officials explain why they won’t release the information of the accused.

“It’s certainly not right of any organization to put out a list of people accused. It should be a list of individuals found to have credible complaints of abusing a minor,” says Danielle Cummings, director of communications for the Diocese of Syracuse.

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

November 2, 2018

By Drew Broach

Eight Roman Catholic priests whom the Archdiocese of New Orleans identified Friday (Nov. 2) as being credibly accused of sexually abusing children decades ago had been assigned to Hope Haven, a church-run orphanage in Marrero. Six of the accused are now dead.

All eight were members of the Salesians of Don Bosco order, said the archdiocese, which released a list of 57 accused priests who had served in its jurisdiction. The archdiocese said it learned of allegations against the eight between 2006 and 2011, and identified them as Paul Avallone, Stanislaus Ceglar, Paul Csik, Anthony Esposito, Ernest Fagione, August Kita, Joseph Pankowski and Alfred Sokol.

Hope Haven and the related Madonna Manor, directly across Barataria Boulevard, were founded by the church in the 1930s as group homes for children and teenagers from families in disarray. Some young residents were sent there by the courts as wards of the state; others were handed over to the church by desperate families unable to care for their children. Madonna Manor was for young children, Hope Haven for older children and teens.

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UNITED STATES
America Magazine

November 2, 2018

The church in the United States faces a crisis of both trust and hope. As the bishops gather for their first national meeting since this summer’s revelations of sexual abuse in the church, it is clear that while they must make reforms, they cannot succeed alone. Nonetheless, there is hope to be found on this slow and difficult path.

One reason for hope is that the zero-tolerance policies put in place by the Dallas Charter following the 2002 scandals have, in fact, worked; today, new allegations of misconduct are dealt with swiftly and through the proper legal channels. Yet the church is still haunted by the history of decades of failures.

In the wake of revelations of Archbishop Theodore McCarrick’s history of abuse and harassment and the Pennsylvania grand jury report detailing predation by more than 300 priests over 50 years, Catholics are left asking: Why should I stay? Who can I believe? How can I raise a child in this church?

The bishops can use their annual fall gathering to establish a baseline for credible reform.

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PEORIA (IL)
Journal Star

November 1, 2018

By Andy Kravetz

The Catholic Diocese of Peoria has removed three retired priests from public ministry because of credible allegations of sexual abuse that occurred decades ago.

In a news release, Bishop Daniel Jenky announced that George Hiland, Duane Leclercq and John Onderko can no longer function as priests in any public capacity, wear clerical garb or the Roman collar, and are to refrain from using the title reverend or father.

In the release, Hiland is alleged to have engaged in sexual misconduct with a minor about 50 years ago. Leclercq was alleged to have engaged in sexual misconduct about 30 years ago. Onderko allegedly did the same thing about 55 years ago.

Jenky said his office reported the allegations to the state’s attorney where the allegations occurred, per diocesan policy.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
The New Orleans Advocate

November 2, 2018

Archbishop Gregory Aymond on Friday released the names of 30 diocesan priests, 25 religious order priests and two deacons who, in the last century, were removed from ministry after accusations that they sexually abused minors were deemed credible. This is the first time in the history of the Archdiocese of New Orleans that a Catholic archbishop has attempted to provide an accounting of the identities of the alleged abusers in church ranks.

Aymond’s list was compiled after a team of 10 people, including staff members and outside legal counsel, reviewed 2,432 personnel files. The archbishop has provided the complete work histories of diocesan priests, but only the New Orleans assignments of religious-order priests, claiming the archdiocese does not have complete records for those men. He also did not provide the years that clergy worked in different schools or parishes.

The list below, in alphabetical order, does not include employees of the church, or any other religious — such as nuns or brothers — who may have been accused. Clergy accused of sexually abusing a minor can try to clear their names through church tribunals, the outcomes of which are secret.

The biographies below combine information provided by the archbishop with information found in media reports, court documents and interviews.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
The New Orleans Advocate

November 2, 2018

By Ramon Antonio Vargas and Matt Sledge

Archbishop Gregory Aymond has said he will soon release the names of clergy who, in the last 50 years, were removed from ministry after accusations that they sexually abused minors were deemed credible. Many of the allegations surfaced publicly in recent years, particularly after 2002 when the sex-abuse scandal in Boston caused the Catholic church to reform how it dealt with victims.

[UPDATE, Nov. 2, noon: Archdiocese releases official list of accused for 1st time in history]

Below are 16 priests and deacons who either admitted to the sex abuse allegations made against them, left the ministry on their own after being accused, or were removed from ministry. Based on information from media reports, other documents, and the website bishop-accountability.org, each appears to meet the criteria outlined by Aymond for inclusion on the list, though it’s possible that some may be excluded.

Any clergy accused of sexually abusing a minor could seek to clear his name through a secret church tribunal, a process whose outcome is hardly ever known.

In alphabetical order:

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LAFAYETTE (LA)
KATC News

November 1, 2018

The pastor of St. John the Evangelist Church in Jeanerette has been placed on leave after allegations surfaced against him.

The report alleges that Rev. Jody Simoneaux was involved in improper behavior with minors more than 30 years ago, a statement from the diocese says.

The allegations center around the time Simoneaux was assigned to St. Anthony Church, St. Edmund High School in Eunice, and St. Anne Church in Youngsville.

Simoneaux has been placed on administrative leave pending a determination in this matter, the diocese says.

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FRANCE
La Croix International

November 2, 2018

By Olivier Savignac

Musician Olivier Savignac, who is also an abuse victim, will meet with a group of French bishops this weekend

With the Church still in the throes of a crisis generated by the sexual abuse scandals, La Croix has invited several leading Church personalities to look at possible solutions. In this article, musician Olivier Savignac, who was himself a victim of child sex abuse, shares his perspective on the issue.

To my dear Catholic family, who are battling to keep the faith.

Amid the current crisis that has affected all of us at the deepest levels of our faith lives, we all have an opportunity to respond as Christ would wish us to do.

Until the age of 13, I had a happy life, a loving family, friends and activities, which all helped me to develop.

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FRANCE
La Croix International

November 2, 2018

By Céline Hoyeau

Event aims to raise the awareness of the entire episcopal body and initiate a process for joint work

It took many years, but their request was finally heard: Eight victims of sex abuses committed by clerics will be received by the bishops in Lourdes on Nov. 3, Day One of their Plenary Assembly.

“I hope we’re going to be able to look each other in the eye. May this meeting not be a conclusion, but the beginning of joint work to make the house safe.”

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FRANCE
La Croix International

November 1, 2018

By Gauthier Vaillant

A priest from the Diocese of Orléans on trial for sexually abusing young boys during a 1993 summer camp and a former bishop for his silence

“In my opinion, the Church must look reality in the face for the sake of its survival. And your trial must be a wake-up call.”

These were the final words of the prosecutor, Nicolas Bessone, in his closing speech on Oct. 30, in the court of Orléans, France.

He had demanded a warrant of arrest and an exemplary sentence of one year in prison for retired Bishop André Fort of Orléans, and a sentence of three years in prison, with six months suspended, as well as three years probation with compulsory care for Father Pierre de Castelet.

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BATON ROUGE (LA)
The Acadiana Advocate

November 1, 2018

By Ben Myers

Update, 10 p.m. Thursday

Lt. John Mowell, public information officer for the Lafayette Parish Sheriff’s Office, said in a news release late Thursday night that after talking with Gil Dozier, the attorney working on behalf of Diocese of Lafayette, that the diocese is not aware of any known victims living in Lafayette Parish.

The diocese, Mowell added, notified the Sheriff’s Office “out of an abundance of caution because the reverend who is on administrative leave (Jody Simoneau) worked in this parish.”

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YOUNGSTOWN (OH)
The Vindicator

November 2, 2018

Vindicator Editorial staff

In one sense, Tuesday ranks as one of the darkest days in the 75-year history of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Youngstown. On that day, Bishop George V. Murry and other church leaders released a long-awaited list of 34 names of priests and other church authorities who have been credibly accused of the most horrid and heinous of crimes: sexually abusing minor children.

In another sense, however, Tuesday rose as the dawn of a new day for the six-county diocese as the results of the intensive investigation could now pave the way for a cleansing of some of the many stains the long-standing sex-abuse scandal have left on the Catholic church in our region, state and nation.

To be sure, however, the report does not bring full closure to the abominable abuse scandal. The deep psychological wounds of dozens of young children who were victimized at the hands of those on the list even decades ago will continue to fester.

But knowing that their voices were heard and taken seriously should at least provide those victims some degree of comfort and closure. For the broader church, the report at last lets in a few rays of hope, healing, transparency and accountability in openly acknowledging the many years of aberrant behavior on the part of priests who committed the unseemly acts and on the part of some church leaders who covered up abusive acts or minimized their destructiveness.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

November 1, 2018

By Carol Zimmermann

Although the current sexual abuse crisis in the Church is similar to what the Church faced in 2002 when reports of past abuse and cover-up came out of Boston, how Catholics are responding this time is different.

As one panelist explained it during a recent discussion at Georgetown University, the big difference between 2002 and 2018 is the “cumulative effect of collective outrage.”

Beyond echoes of anger and frustration from years ago, many Catholics are demanding real change, transparency with Church leaders and more lay involvement, particularly from women.

These views came across during the Oct. 24 panel discussion at Georgetown University called: “A Path Forward on the Clerical Sexual Abuse Crisis,” sponsored by the university’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life.

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation

October 31, 2018

By Joseph Dunstan

Key points:
– A lawyer says there are likely “hundreds” of abuse survivors hoping to put old settlements aside
– The Coalition has committed to introducing laws giving survivors a chance for fresh compensation
– Labor says the idea of new legislation has “merit” and it will consider an interstate example
“I’ve had this trouble with being able to stick at things … it was just one crisis after another over the past 30-odd years,” he says.

The sexual abuse Phil O’Leary suffered as a child has followed him throughout his life.

He cites broken relationships, abandoned career and study opportunities and a conviction for white collar crime as just some of the legacies of his abuse at the hands of a Catholic priest.

“I’ve had this trouble with being able to stick at things … it was just one crisis after another over the past 30-odd years,” he says.

The abuse started when the priest began to visit his family home when he was 14.

“[The priest] groomed my parents as much as me, to inveigle himself into the family, being invited over for dinner and lunches, things like that,” Mr O’Leary says.

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BROOKLYN (NY)
The Tablet

October 31, 2018

By Jorge I. Domínguez-López

At a news conference on Tuesday in New York City, Minnesota-based attorney Jeff Anderson announced a lawsuit against the eight dioceses of the New York State Catholic Conference on behalf of sexual abuse survivor Paul Dunn.

The lawsuit is requesting an order to force each diocese to release the names of all priests accused of child molestation, including the release of documents attached to those cases.

Dunn says a Queens priest, Fr. Cornelius T. Otero, who died in 1998, sexually molested him as a boy in the late 1970s. At that time, Otero was assigned to St. Joan of Arc parish in Jackson Heights.

The lawsuit claims that in 1979 “Fr. Otero was arrested for selling books containing obscene photographs of children to undercover law enforcement officers.” After his arrest and release, it states that the Brooklyn Diocese “sent Fr. Otero out of the state of New York to receive medical care,” but didn’t inform the public about his crime.

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TROY (MI)
Click on Detroit

October 31, 2018

By Rod Meloni

Hurmiz Risko Ishak faces 3 counts of first-degree felony criminal sexual conduct

A Catholic deacon in Troy is under arrest for the alleged sexual abuse of a child, according to officials.

Hurmiz Risko Ishak, 63, of Fraser, has long been a sub-deacon at St. Joseph Chaldean Catholic Church on Big Beaver Road in Troy.

He was in 54-4 District Court on Wednesday afternoon for his arraignment.

Troy police arrested Ishak earlier in the day after an investigation into the alleged sexual assault of a young boy at the church.

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VATICAN CITY
La Croix International

October 31, 2018

Reforms to see pedophilia offenses have no statute of limitations

The Spanish deputy prime minister has conveyed to the Vatican secretary of state reforms that will see pedophilia offenses have no statute of limitations, putting them on the same level as terrorism.

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FRANCE
La Croix International

October 31, 2018

Class action seeks admissions and the release of internal Church files rather than monetary compensation

A class action lawsuit in the United States, rather than seeking financial ‘damages’ compensation from the Catholic Church over widescale clerical child sex abuse, aims to obtain admissions of a cover-up.

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FRANCE
La Croix International

October 31, 2018

By James J. Heany

Clericalism, not heresy, caused the crisis

Ten years ago, I believed a myth. In the beginning, there was Vatican II. It was good but messy, and the Bad Catholics hijacked it to undermine doctrine. They took over seminaries and turned them into cesspools where heresy was mandatory and depravity rampant.

Then Pope John Paul II came along. He drove out the Bad Catholics and cleaned up the seminaries. Too late!

The Bad Catholics had already committed terrible crimes, which were covered up without the pope’s awareness. In 2002, their abuses exploded into public view, and the JPII Catholics got blamed for crimes committed by a dying generation of clerics.

The JPII bishops took it on the chin, but they fixed the problem with the Dallas Charter. Then Benedict XVI, the great theologian, appointed orthodox bishops who would carry forward the renewal. The horrors of the Scandal were behind us.

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[French bishops publish abuse report]

PARIS (FRANCE)
katholisch.de

October 31, 2018

Verfahren gegen Priester und einen Bischof laufen

Nach den Berichten über Missbrauch durch Geistliche in den USA und in Deutschland hat nun auch die Französische Bischofskonferenz Zahlen vorgelegt. Der Bericht nennt nicht nur Opferzahlen, sondern auch die derzeit laufenden Ermittlungsverfahren gegen Priester – und den Prozess gegen einen Bischof.

Die Französische Bischofskonferenz hat einen Bericht über gemeldete Missbrauchsfälle veröffentlicht. 211 Opfer sollen sich demnach zwischen 2017 und 2018 bei französischen Bischöfen gemeldet haben, heißt es in dem am Dienstagabend in Paris veröffentlichten Bericht. Über die Hälfte der angezeigten Fälle geschah vor dem Jahr 2000, 31 danach, wie die französische Zeitung “La Croix” am Mittwoch berichtete.

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FRANCE
La Croix International

October 31, 2018

By Céline Hoyeau

Latest report clearly aims to ensure transparency and accountability

The Bishops Conference of France (CEF) has published an interim report on the battle against sex abuse crimes in the Church.

Issued on Oct. 30, the latest report on the battle to combat pedophilia highlights the Church’s new concern to openly address the issue.

Over the past 18 months, 211 victims of sexual abuse by clergy have lodged reports with the bishops. This is nearly as many as for the six previous years combined (222). Only 14 out of 100 French dioceses did not receive a report.

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[Fight against pedophilia, the Church of France highlights its efforts]

FRANCE
La Croix International

October 20, 2018

By Céline Hoyeau

À trois jours de leur assemblée d’automne, la Conférence des évêques de France publie un rapport d’étape sur sa lutte contre la pédocriminalité dans l’Église, que La Croix publie en exclusivité.

Ce rapport manifeste un souci de transparence dans un contexte particulièrement difficile.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Archdiocese of New York

October 31, 2018

By Cardinal Timothy Dolan

Dear Member of the Family of the Archdiocese of New York:

I regret once again having to be the bearer of bad news, but I write to inform you that the archdiocese has received an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor brought against Bishop John Jenik, an auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese.

The Lay Review Board has carefully examined the allegation, which concerns incidents from decades ago, and concluded that the evidence is sufficient to find the allegation credible and substantiated. Although Bishop Jenik continues to deny the allegation, he has stepped aside from public ministry and has moved out of his parish.

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FORT DODGE (IA)
The Associated Press

October 31, 2018

By Ryan J. Foley

A Roman Catholic diocese acknowledged Wednesday that it concealed for decades a priest’s admission that he sexually abused dozens of Iowa boys — a silence that may have put other children in danger.

The Rev. Jerome Coyle, now 85, was stripped of his parish assignments in the 1980s but never defrocked. And it was not until this week, after The Associated Press inquired about him, that he was publicly identified by the church as an admitted pedophile, even though the Diocese of Sioux City had been aware of his conduct for 32 years.

The diocese recently helped Coyle move into a retirement home in Fort Dodge, Iowa, without informing administrators at the Catholic school across the street.

In 1986, Coyle reported his “history of sexual attraction to and contact with boys” to Sioux City’s bishop, revealing that he had victimized approximately 50 youngsters over a 20-year period while serving in several Iowa parishes , according to a private letter written in February by the diocese vicar general and obtained by the AP.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The New York Times

October 31, 2018

By Sharon Otterman

An auxiliary Catholic bishop in New York, John Jenik, has been accused of sexual abuse and removed from his public ministry, Catholic officials said, the latest scandal to hit an institution already reeling from revelations of inappropriate behavior by its clergy around the globe.

“Although the alleged incidents occurred decades ago, the Lay Review Board has concluded that the evidence is sufficient to find the allegation credible and substantiated,” Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, the archbishop of New York, said in a statement on Wednesday.

The allegation involves an inappropriate relationship with a teenage boy in the 1980s, according to the accuser and his lawyer. Bishop Jenik, 74, denied the allegation, which will be investigated by the Vatican.

In an Oct. 29 letter to his parishioners, he wrote: “I continue to steadfastly deny that I have ever abused anyone at any time. Therefore I will ask the Vatican, which has ultimate jurisdiction over such cases to review the matter, with the hope of ultimately proving my innocence.”

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SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
Business Insider

November 1, 2018

By Zoë Bernard

– Thousands of employees walked out of Google headquarters worldwide on Thursday.
– At roughly the same time that the walkouts were finishing up at Google’s Silicon Valley HQ, Google CEO Sundar Pichai gave an expansive interview at New York Times DealBook conference in Manhattan.
– Pichai said that Google “didn’t always get it right” and that the company hopes to do better when it comes to dealing with issues of sexual misconduct.

The same day that thousands of employees walked out of Google headquarters in protest of sexual misconduct allegations against company executives, Google CEO Sundar Pichai gave an expansive interview at New York Times Dealbook conference in New York.

“How do you feel…right this second, when you see these headlines, what are you thinking?” asked New York Times editor at large Andrew Ross Sorkin on stage at the conference.

“This anger and frustration within the company — we all feel it,” said Pichai. “I feel it too. At Google we set a high bar and we clearly didn’t live up to our expectations. The first thing is to acknowledge and apologize for past actions. Words alone aren’t enough, you have to follow up with actions.”

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SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
TechCrunch

November 1, 2018

By Kate Clark

Shouting “women’s rights are worker’s rights” and a number of other #TimesUp and #MeToo chants, upwards of 1,000 Google employees gathered at San Francisco’s Harry Bridges Plaza Thursday to protest the company’s handling of sexual harassment and misconduct cases.

Staffers from all of Google’s San Francisco offices were in attendance. An organizer who declined to be named told TechCrunch there were 1,500 Google employees across the globe that participated in the 48-hour effort to arrange a worldwide walkout. The effort was a success. More than 3,000 Googlers and supporters of the movement attended the New York City walkout alone. The organizers said that the 1,000 people who came out for the San Francisco walkout was double the number they expected.

Cathay Bi, a Google employee in San Francisco and one of the walkout organizers, told a group of journalists at the rally that she was conflicted with participating in the walkout and ultimately decided not to go public with her own story of sexual harassment.

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STEUBENVILLE (OH)
WTOV

October 31, 2018

The Diocese of Steubenville has voluntarily released the names of 16 priests and a seminarian who have been credibly accused or admitted to sexual abuse of a minor and removed from active ministry.

The list dates back to the beginning of the formation of the diocese in 1944, and most of the allegations involve cases from decades ago.

“It will help survivors of sexual abuse find the strength to come forward and these innocent victims can begin the process of healing,” Bishop Jeffrey M. Monforton said. “I pledge to do everything possible to protect our youth.”

The list of those credibly accused was developed with the assistance of the diocese’s Child Protection Review Board and the diocesan attorney.

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STEUBENVILLE (OH)
Herald-Star

November 1, 2018

By Linda Harris

Sixteen priests and a seminarian were “credibly accused” or admitted to sexual abuse of a minor during the past 74 years, the Diocese of Steubenville reported Wednesday.

The list does not include Monsignor Mark Froehlich, 75, who is facing a Belmont County Sheriff’s Department inquiry into an allegation that he sexually abused a minor several years ago. The diocese suspended Froehlich, who, though retired, had been helping with Masses, confessions and church functions in Belmont County.

It does include the Rev. Christopher Foxhoven, 45, who was suspended from the ministry Saturday when diocesan officials learned he had admitted to having sex with an underage girl in Athens County.

In addition to Foxhoven, the Diocesan list includes:

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STEUBENVILLE (OH)
National Catholic Reporter

October 31, 2018

By Jenn Morson

The Portiuncula Chapel on the campus of the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, is, according to university material, “a grace-filled haven for quiet meditation … set aside for private prayer and Eucharistic adoration.”

The chapel is a pilgrimage site and the Vatican’s Apostolic Penitentiary has decreed that Catholic faithful who pray there receive a “plenary indulgence,” releasing them, according to church teaching, from temporal punishment due to sin and reducing their time in purgatory after their deaths.

Its construction was the passion of Franciscan Fr. Samuel Tiesi, a revered campus minister at Franciscan University who died in 2001. Tiesi proposed the project, designed the chapel and raised most of the money to build it.

A plaque stood at the entrance to the chapel walkway, dedicating the chapel to Tiesi. His portrait hung in the chapel until Sept. 10, when the plaque was covered and the portrait removed. Eventually, the plaque was also removed, an empty pedestal left in its place. That small action exposed a 30-year-old secret: that Tiesi — part of the trinity of Franciscan priests including Michael Scanlan and Augustine Donegan, best friends, who made Franciscan University a model conservative Catholic university — was a serial abuser of young women.

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DE PERE (WI)
We Are Greenbay

October 30, 2018

By Robyn Oguinye

Students at an area college are fighting to make changes to their school’s Title IX program.

This comes after they say cases of sexual assault have been mishandled by St. Norbert’s administration for years.

The U.S. Department of Education defines Title IX as the statute that protects individuals from discrimination based on sex in education programs.

In April, 217 current St. Norbert students signed a letter to the school’s president that said they want sexual assault on campus to actively be addressed.

Alumni shared their stories of assault on St. Norbert’s campus with Local 5.

According to the alleged victims, the common denominator: their cases were mishandled or ignored.

Including Jordyn Gaurkee, a student at UWGB.

She joined St. Norbert’s ROTC program and was raped by someone who was not only a cadet, but a campus safety officer.

When word eventually got to the school’s Title IX office Jordyn was interviewed multiple times.

The second interview was not what she expected.

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MADRID
EL PAÍS in English

November 1, 2018

By Julio Núñez

For many years, V. C. kept quiet about the assaults she suffered at the hands of a priest in Villaviciosa, Asturias. Her testimony is one of several making up an EL PAÍS series exposing decades of offenses by the clergy

For many years, V. C., 36, kept quiet about the abuse she suffered at the hands of the local priest between the ages of six and 13 in Villaviciosa, in the northern Spanish region of Asturias. Then, in 2015, she finally felt ready to report the priest and sent a handwritten letter to the archbishop of Oviedo, Jesús Sanz Montes, in which she described what had happened and the devastating effect it had on her.

When she met the archbishop in person, he held her letter in one hand and told her that nothing could be done. “He said it was my word against his, that they had sent [her assailant] away some years earlier due to other problems, and that he was under observation,” she says.

I WAS ALREADY HAVING ANXIETY ATTACKS WHEN I WAS 14

The archbishop did not encourage her to file a legal complaint, as established by the Spanish Episcopal Conference’s abuse protocol since 2010. Nor did he launch ecclesiastical proceedings against the priest in question.

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INDIANAPOLIS (IN)
Indianapolis Star

November 2, 2018

By Holly V. Hays

It’s been 30 years, and Brian Cook is still trying to understand what happened to him during the summer of 1980.

As his friends mowed lawns, played baseball and rode through Fort Wayne on their 10-speed bikes, Cook stood at the precipice of a dark, decades-long journey.

Cook was sexually abused by a priest in the St. Charles Borromeo Parish in Fort Wayne during a series of meetings in 1980, he told IndyStar during a recent interview.

The former Fr. Michael Buescher is among 20 priests or deacons identified by the Fort Wayne-South Bend diocese as being “credibly” accused of sexually abusing minors. He was assigned to Cook’s parish, St. Charles Borromeo, from 1979 to 1984.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

November 1, 2018

By Mark Pattison

When Father David Poulson of the Diocese of Erie, Pennsylvania, pleaded guilty Oct. 17 to felony counts in connection with sexual assaults against one boy and the attempted assault of another boy, Jim VanSickle was there to witness it.

VanSickle, 52, said Poulson assaulted him when he was a teenager.

“It was very rewarding for me in the sense that I was able to look at him (and) watch him plead guilty to sexual charges,” VanSickle told Catholic News Service in an Oct. 31 telephone interview from Pittsburgh, where he now lives.

According to VanSickle, Poulson was one of just two priests – out of 301 clerics and other church workers named in the August Pennsylvania grand jury report on clergy sex abuse claims in six Pennsylvania dioceses – to be subject to criminal charges for abuse committed within the state’s statute of limitations.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Daily News

November 1, 2018

By Ella Torres and Leonard Greene

The Bronx bishop ousted over allegations that he sexually abused a teenage boy was not only a pedophile, he was a fraud, too, his accuser said Thursday.

Bishop John Jenik, the longtime pastor of Our Lady of Refuge, owned a reputation as an anti-drug crusader who wore a bulletproof vest along the streets of the Bedford-Fordham area, where he worked against neighborhood dealers.

But his accuser, Michael Meenan, who said Jenik plied him with alcohol during overnight sexual assaults in the ’80s, said the pervy bishop was no neighborhood saint.

“He no more ended drug abuse in my old neighborhood than he stopped the sun from rising,” Meenan, 52, said. “Look, I was in a car with this guy when I was 14 years old getting bombed. This man has no more ended drug abuse than he made sure I was safe and taken care of.”

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

November 1, 2018

By Helen Drinan

On Aug. 16, 2018, Cardinal Sean O’Malley issued a statement responding to the Pennsylvania grand jury report about the cover-up of decades-long sexual abuse by priests in that state. Attempting to offer some assurance to beleaguered Catholics, O’Malley stated: “The clock is ticking for all of us in Church leadership. Catholics have lost patience with us and civil society has lost confidence in us.”

He further urged “a spiritual conversion” within the church and insisted upon “legal transparency and pastoral accountability.”

As a 71-year-old lay Catholic woman who has worked for the Archdiocese of Boston under Cardinal O’Malley, I feel called by the Holy Spirit to share my professional encounters with the cardinal and our church, because they suggest just how unlikely it is that transparency, pastoral accountability, or spiritual conversion are ever going to happen under its present leadership structure.

In 2006, I was head of human resources for Caritas Christi, the Catholic hospital system run by the archdiocese under O’Malley. I oversaw the investigation of sexual harassment charges brought against Dr. Robert M. Haddad, then the CEO of Caritas Christi. These complaints included unwanted hugs, back rubs, and kissing on the lips of female employees as well as inappropriate discussions of personal matters.

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GET RELIGION
Washington DC

November 1, 2018

By Terry Mattingly

You would think that this would be an easy question.

What is a “boy”?

Now, I am not talking about all those cute posters about what happens when you mix noise and dirt. I am actually talking about a term linked to some of the most important facts at the heart of the Catholic clergy sexual abuse crisis.

As it turns out, “boy” is an almost useless word, in the context of news coverage. If you look in one major online dictionary and this is what you will find:

boy

noun …

1 a: a male child from birth to adulthood

OK, so we are dealing with a male somewhere between birth and, what, age 21?

With that question in mind, consider the top of the following Associated Press report — “Church covered up priest’s abuse of 50 boys” — about another horrible case that has jumped off the back burner and into the headlines:

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

November 1, 2018

By Mary Cooley

The bishop of the Belleville Diocese in southern Illinois apparently had two very different visits to Catholic schools this week.

At Our Lady Queen of Peace in Belleville, he told fifth- and sixth-grade students that there is no Santa Claus and they should not celebrate Halloween, according to parents.

At Blessed Sacrament School, he answered students’ questions about clergy sex abuse and famous people he had met, and asked what they would dress as for Halloween, the principal said.

Bishop Edward Braxton’s office did not offer any comment to messages left on Wednesday afternoon. The Queen of Peace School office confirmed the bishop had been at the school Tuesday but had no further comment.

“It was something that shouldn’t have been said,” one parent said Wednesday of the bishop’s remarks to the fifth- and sixth-graders.

Boyd Ahlers, father of a fifth-grade boy and sixth-grade girl, said his son had believed in Santa.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WGRZ

November 1, 2018

With the priest abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo now receiving national attention, an organization of concerned lay Catholics has announced an initiative designed to rebuild trust in the church.

Canisius College President John Hurley is following up on his letter from August which called for more transparency in the priest sex abuse scandal affecting the Buffalo Diocese and Bishop Richard Malone.

On Thursday, he organized a news conference with members of his newly formed group to address the crisis.

“We are committed to the church but also to truth and justice,” Hurley told members of the media.

The group announced a plan with six points as they try to restore trust in the church:
Co-Responsibility
Transparency
Accountability
Competency
Justice for survivors
Trust
“There is a culture that has to change,” said Dr. Nancy Nielsen as she announced the effort.

“It troubled me to no end what this scandal has done to our beloved church,” said Carl Montante. “We have to hold Bishops accountable.”

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BUFFALO (NY)
The Associated Press

November 1, 2018

By James Neiss

The Catholic Diocese of Buffalo has placed another priest on administrative leave amid an investigation into alleged clergy sexual misconduct.

Diocesan officials said in a statement that Bishop Richard Malone has placed Father Michal Juran on leave after receiving an abuse complaint. Juran is the 16th Buffalo diocese priest to be suspended. There are at least 80 members of the clergy who have been publicly accused of misconduct.

Malone’s former assistant, Siobhan O’Connor, told CBS’ “60 Minutes” in a recent interview that she secretly copied and leaked confidential files about the alleged misconduct. O’Connor said she left the diocese after seeing documents indicating Malone had allowed accused priests to continue working.

Malone has said he made mistakes handling allegations. He has resisted calls to resign.

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TORONTO (ONTARIO)
CBC News

Oct 30, 2018

By Andrew Lupton

Former priest and professor David Norton, 72, faces five counts of sexual assault involving boys from Chippewas of the Thames First Nation. (Kate Dubinski/CBC News)
A powerful man more than six feet tall broke down in tears today as he told the court about being sexually abused as a 10-year-old at the hands of his priest, David Norton.

Standing in the witness box and stroking an Indigenous eagle feather, the witness — now in his 40s — described how he first met Norton when he was 10. At the time, he was dealing with the tragic death of his father six years earlier. The witness, who can’t be identified due to a publication ban typical in sex abuse cases, said he was at first overcome by the kindness of a man who would quickly to fill the role of a father figure.

“I had heard about him being a nice guy in our community,” said the man, who at one point became so distraught while testifying the court had to break for a 15-minute recess.

The man described how he met Norton who was the priest at the St. Andrew’s Anglican Church at the Chippewas of the Thames, a First Nations community south of London, Ont.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
WPXI TV

October 31, 2018

Survivors of child sexual abuse in the Catholic church are again calling on state lawmakers to get back to work and update protections for victims.

Neither Jim Van Sickle or Ryan O’Connor have seen their day in court.

The two victims won’t ever have justice for the abuse they endured at the hands of their predator priests, which is why they called for action Wednesday in Westmoreland County.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

November 1, 2018

By Claire Giangravè

More than a year after the head of a lay movement in southern Italy was accused of sexually abusing underage girls, the local diocese has not exercised any new form of oversight and has suspended a trial against one of its priests who allegedly broke the confessional seal to inform the group’s leaders of a police investigation.

“From the Church and from the Diocese of Acireale I haven’t even heard a ‘how are you?’ Total silence,” said the mother of one of the victims, who wishes to remain anonymous to protect her daughter’s identity, in a phone interview with Crux Oct. 31.

“It’s as if I didn’t exist,” she said, “as if my daughter and the other girls who were abused were nonexistent.”

In August 2017, Piero Alfio Capuana, 75, was taken into custody after a police investigation found credible proof that he had abused at least six underage girls who were members of his lay group, the “Catholic Culture and Environment Association” or ACCA, headquartered in the town of Acireale, near Catania, in Sicily.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

October 31, 2018

The Diocese of Steubenville publicly named 16 priests that have been removed from their duties due to “credible” allegations of sexual abuse.

Despite stressing that most of the allegations are “decades old,” the release of the list comes a day after a priest in the Diocese of Steubenville, Fr. Christopher Foxhaven, was arrested for the grooming and rape of a teenage girl. Notably, the list excludes the name of Fr. Sam Tiesi, a priest who operated within the Diocese of Steubenville and was a notorious abuser of young women while he served at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. Given this omission, we fear that there may be others who were also left off the list for unknown reasons.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Daily News

October 31, 2018

By John Annese

Bishop John Jenik is accused of sexually abusing a minor in the 1980s. (Simone Weichselbaum)
A Bronx bishop — known as a tireless crusader against drug dealers who’d walk the streets in a bulletproof vest — has stepped down from his post after a “credible and substantiated” allegation of his sexual abuse of a child, the Archdiocese of New York announced Wednesday.

Bishop John Jenik, the longtime pastor of Our Lady of Refuge, has “stepped aside from public ministry and has moved out of his parish,” Timothy Cardinal Dolan wrote in a letter posted on the Archdiocese website.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

October 31, 2018

For more than 30 years Iowa Catholic officials knew a priest had abused at least 50 kids but kept silent. By protecting Fr. Jerome Coyle, the Diocese of Sioux City actively put other children at risk.

According to the Associated Press, Sioux City Catholic officials have “hidden for decades a priest’s admission that he sexually abused dozens of Iowa boys.” Also according to the AP, Fr. Coyle is still alive and resides in a retirement home in Fort Dodge, across the street from a Catholic school. The priest spent years and years living “under the radar” in New Mexico before a recent move back to Iowa.

What happens next is crucial. Every single Sioux City church employee – from bishop to bookkeeper – should mount an aggressive effort to find and help others who may have been hurt by Fr. Coyle. Chancery officials should turn over every page of his personnel file to law enforcement. From pulpits this Sunday, priests should beg victims, witnesses and whistle blowers to call police. On church websites and in parish bulletins, similar pleas should be made. The bishop must visit every site where Fr. Coyle worked, prodding those with information or suspicion to come forward. And he must hire outside investigators to determine which church staff helped Fr. Coyle evade detection. Those still on the job should be fired.

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[Bishop of Rancagua reinstates priests accused of abuse in their posts]

CHILE
BioBioChile

October 31, 2018

By Jonathan Flores

El administrador apostólico de la Diócesis de Rancagua, Fernando Ramos Pérez, restituyó en sus funciones sacerdotales a los presbíteros Hugo Yáñez Canales y Sergio Farías Vergara.

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[Ten ideas from the secular world to address the crisis in Chilean Church]

CHILE
La Tercera

November 1, 2018

By Juan Pablo Sallaberry

En medio de las críticas a las autoridades eclesiásticas por los casos de abusos y encubrimiento, diversos grupos de laicos católicos han comenzado a organizarse y a elaborar propuestas de reformas para la institución.

“El edificio está en llamas por el abuso, el encubrimiento, la jerarquía renunciada, y los cimientos también están debilitándose. No puede ser que el laicado esté tan pasivo y silencioso ante algo así, somos parte del pueblo de Dios”. El economista Joseph Ramos habla con carácter de urgencia. El exdecano de Economía de la Universidad de Chile dejó la academia y renunció a todos sus trabajos remunerados para centrarse en escribir y reflexionar sobre el tema que le apasiona: la religión y la fe. En junio pasado escribió junto a otros laicos mayores, como Alvaro Covarrubias y Jorge Mardones, un documento con propuestas sobre las reformas necesarias que debería realizar la Iglesia Católica. El informe firmado por 50 personalidades fue entregado al delegado del Papa Francisco para los casos de abusos en Chile, Charles Scicluna, y enviado a cada uno de los obispos chilenos.

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TORONTO (ONTARIO)
London Free Press

By Jonathan Juha

October 30, 2018

A Catholic affiliate of Western University is doubling its campus size, acquiring lands from the area diocese in London in a deal that will help to restore a nearby seminary and pay off debts including from clergy sex-absue lawsuits.

The deal will see King’s University College take over 7.3 hectares of land east of Waterloo Street and north of Huron Street near St. Peter’s Seminary, a large green space many area residents think of as parkland.

The land transfer from the Diocese of London, announced Monday, negates the prospect of commercial development on the land, which a school official said wouldn’t fit with the neighbourhood, in favour of future educational use and green space, a move the area’s city councillor applauded.

“I think the positive of this is, hopefully, a really compatible use of the land with the community,” Ward 6 Coun. Phil Squire said.

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