ABUSE TRACKER

ATLANTA (GA)
CNN

August 25, 2018

By Kara Fox

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

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

The reason? Their children’s education.

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

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Post-Gazette

August 24, 2018

By Peter Smith

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

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

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

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

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DUBLIN (IRELAND)
Irish Times

August 25, 2018

By Simon Carswell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Tribune-Review

August 24, 2018

By Deb Erdley

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

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

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

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

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

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DUBLIN (IRELAND)
Irish Times

August 25, 2018

By Simon Carswell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Reuters

August 24, 2018

By Vanessa Johnston

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

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

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

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

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

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Action 4 News

August 24, 2018

By Bob Mayo

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

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

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

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

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

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
Morning Call

August 24, 2018

By Steve Esack

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

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

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

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

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

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YORK (PA)
York Daily Record

August 24, 2018

By Mike Argento

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

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

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

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

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
Morning Call

August 24, 2018

By Tim Darragh

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

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

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

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CORK (IRELAND)
Irish Examiner

August 24, 2018

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

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

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

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DUBLIN (IRELAND)
Irish Independent

August 25, 2018

By Kevin Doyle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

August 24, 2018

By Angie Leventis Lourgos

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

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

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

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

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

August 25, 2018

By Jason Horowitz

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

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

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

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

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

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

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DUBLIN (IRELAND)
Irish Times

August 25, 2018

By Sorcha Pollak et al.

LIVE: The Pope in Ireland

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

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

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

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

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

12:50 Pope Francis is now speaking at Dublin Castle

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SHAVERTOWN (PA)
The Associated Press

August 24, 2018

By Michael Rubinkam

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

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

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

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

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

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IRELAND
BBC News

August 24, 2018

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

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

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

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IRELAND
Yahoo View

August 23, 2018

Length: 3:04

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

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
National Public Radio

August 24, 2018

By Vanessa Romo

Updated at 9:37 a.m. ET

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

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

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

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

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

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ERIE (PA)
Erie News Now

August 23, 2018

By Paul Wagner

Abuse Calls Continue to Come Into Erie Catholic Diocese

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

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

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

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

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SCOTLAND
The Guardian

August 23, 2018

By Severin Carrell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

August 23, 2018

By Zita Ballinger Fletcher

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

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

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

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

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

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philly.com

August 19, 2018

By John Baer

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

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

And you can guess why: Pennsylvania’s legislature.

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

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

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DULUTH (MN)
Anderson Advocates

August 23, 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
WTAE

August 22, 2018

By Paul Van Osdol

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

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

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

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

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ERIE (PA)
GoErie

August 24, 2018

Editorial Board

Worn levers and a tired script were within easy reach of Catholic Diocese of Erie Bishop Lawrence Persico when protesters showed up Tuesday at the seat of Catholic power in Erie.

He could have retreated behind the walls of St. Mark Catholic Center and held the protesters at legalistic bay on a distant public sidewalk.

Persico exercised a greater power instead. He stepped into the chancery parking lot and invited the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests to hold their demonstration on church property.

“Down there, what good is it?” he asked, referring to the sidewalk, as detailed by reporter Ed Palattella.

The church deserves every ounce of opprobrium heaped upon it right now. Charged with a divine saving mission, it put the interests of the institution and the men who control it above the protection of children, whom some priests defiled.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

August 21, 2018

By Brian Roewe

A lax following of church teachings on sexuality in the wider culture a recurring theme

This article was updated at 5 p.m. Central Time to include comments from theologian Todd Salzman.

Accusations of sexual abuse and misconduct by former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and within several U.S. seminaries have rematerialized past charges placing gay priests and homosexuality at the root of the church’s escalating crisis, positions backed in recent days by a handful of bishops.

“It is time to admit that there is a homosexual subculture within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church that is wreaking great devastation in the vineyard of the Lord,” wrote Bishop Robert Morlino in an Aug. 18 letter to Catholics in the Diocese of Madison, Wisconsin.

Morlino said the revelations around sexual abuse in recent weeks — from the Pennsylvania grand jury report, and allegations against McCarrick, which included grooming and sexually abusing seminarians and young adult priests — have left him tired: “of people being hurt … of the obfuscation of truth … of sin.”

He pointed to a deeper crisis of acceptance and diminishment of sin, saying “we have refused to call a sin a sin,” and urged the church to resist becoming a refuge for sin, including “deviant sexual — almost exclusively homosexual — acts by clerics.”

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Trib Live

August 23, 2018

By Roy Bourgeois

As a Catholic priest, I did the unspeakable. I called for the ordination of women in the church. The Vatican was swift in its response. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith informed me that I was “causing grave scandal” in the church and that I had 30 days to recant my public support for the ordination of women or I would be expelled from the priesthood.

I told the Vatican that this was not possible. Believing that women and men are created of equal worth and dignity and that both are called by an all-loving God to serve as priests, my conscience would not allow me to recant. In my response, I felt it was also important to make clear that when Catholics hear the word “scandal,” they think about the thousands of children who have been raped and abused by Catholic priests — not the ordination of women.

In 2010, the Vatican called the ordination of women as priests a crime comparable to that of the sexual abuse of children. Judging from its actions, however, it would appear that the Vatican views women’s ordination as a crime substantially more serious than child abuse. Among the thousands of priests who raped and sexually abused children, the vast majority were not expelled from the priesthood or excommunicated. Every woman, however, who has been ordained to the Catholic priesthood has been excommunicated by the Vatican.

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AUSTRALIA
9News

August 21, 2018

By Mark Burrows

Pope Francis’ letter to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics condemning child sex abuse has been described as all words no action by abuse survivors in Australia and overseas.

The Pontiff’s letter to the “People of God” said sex abuse was a “crime” and an “atrocity”.

He slammed the clerical cover-ups and called for an end to the “culture of death” in the Church.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
OAN Newsroom

August 24, 2018

The grand jury’s horrific report on child abuse in Pennsylvania has led victims and officials across the nation to look into Catholic parishes in their states.

Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley said his office is launching a “thorough and robust investigation” of potential clergy sex abuse in the archdiocese of Saint Louis.

This comes after Archbishop Robert Carlson sent a letter to Hawley, saying the church will open its records and allow a thorough impartial review of potential clergy abuse.

“The files that we are taking about are actually files of anyone who has been accused of sexual abuse and while we don’t know the protocols yet that the attorney general’s office will use, any files that they want to see will be available to them,” Carlson explained.

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FRANCE
La Croix

August 23, 2018

Recueilli par Gauthier Vaillant

Father Pierre Vignon: “Cardinal Barbarin is no longer able to fulfill his ministry”

Le père Pierre Vignon, prêtre du diocèse de Valence, explique les raisons qui l’ont décidé à rédiger une pétition demandant la démission de l’archevêque de Lyon.

La Croix : Pourquoi pensez-vous que le cardinal Barbarin doit remettre sa démission ?

Père Pierre Vignon : Le cardinal Barbarin est tellement marqué par cette affaire qu’on ne parle plus d’affaire Preynat, mais d’affaire Barbarin. Il a présenté des excuses, mais il ne suffit pas de dire « c’est ma faute ». Car quoi qu’il dise maintenant, quel que soit le sujet sur lequel il s’exprime, c’est toujours l’ombre de cette affaire qui prédomine. On n’écoute plus ce qu’il dit. Il n’est donc plus en mesure de remplir son ministère.

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TORONTO (CANADA)
The Toronto Star

August 16, 2018

Editorial Board

The Pennsylvania grand jury report into the sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests is unbearable to read.

One priest is accused of raping a 7-year-old girl in the hospital after she had her tonsils removed; another confessed to raping 15 boys as young as 7; a third bound and whipped his victim with leather straps; a fourth forced a 9-year-old boy to give him oral sex and then rinsed his mouth out with holy water to purify him; five sisters in the same family were sexually assaulted.

These monstrous acts, and many more, were committed by some 300 priests against at least 1,000 children in six Pennsylvania dioceses. The real number of abused children, the grand jury added, might be in the thousands.

The crimes were covered up for decades by church authorities, including Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the former bishop of Pittsburg, according to the grand jury report. He’s the third cardinal to be disgraced by sex abuse scandals in the last several months, including Cardinal George Pell, one of the Vatican’s highest officials, ordered to stand trial in Australia on several charges of sexual abuse.

Sex abuse scandals have been rocking the Catholic Church worldwide for decades. In most countries, including Canada, abuse has been uncovered through court proceedings, public inquiries or media investigations. The information has been pried from a church that has placed its reputation above the trauma of helpless victims. This self-serving attitude needs to change.

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TOWN AND COUNTRY (MO)
Gorovsky Law

August 14, 2018

By Nicole Gorovsky

Dear Roman Catholic Church – Please stop saying that childhood sexual abuse in your ranks is in the past…

Today a Grand Jury in Pennsylvania released a report showing over 300 predator priests in just that state and detailing that there are over 1,000 victims. From my work as a lawyer for childhood sexual abuse victims who have sued priests and the roman catholic church in Missouri, I know that if those are the cases that the church are willing to admit as “credibly accused,” there are likely many more than that.

More importantly, people need to know that the abuse scandal in the church is not a story of the past. It is not something from which the church has learned and improved. The scandal is not anywhere near over.

CNN quoted a Pennsylvania Bishop today as stating that the grand jury report “will be a reminder of the grave failings that the church must acknowledge and for which it must seek forgiveness.” What a poignant statement. It sounds like he has empathy for the victims of the past. But, listen closer – his statement is really propaganda by the church to subtly convince people that child abuse within the church is a thing of the past. He talks about it in the past tense…it will be a reminder of the grave failings… Notice he didn’t say “we must do better…” in the present tense. The Church has been doing this for years – with each new child who comes forward they say – “that was in the past, we’re better now.” This has been a repeated mantra for many years now and it’s time to notice.

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UNITED STATES
TIME

August 15, 2018

By Gina Martinez

A Pennsylvania grand jury’s report alleging decades of horrific child sexual abuse by Catholic priests is casting new light on the state’s statute of limitation law – which the grand jury and state officials says is stopping them from filing criminal charges.

The law also means few, if any, of the 1,000 people who say they suffered abuse at the hands of 300 Roman Catholic priests will be able to sue for civil damages.

“We ask the Pennsylvania legislature to stop shielding child sexual predators behind the criminal statute of limitations,” the grand jury said in its report.

In response to the shocking allegations, state Rep. Mark Rozzi, who was abused by a Catholic priest when he was a child, announced plans to introduce a bill that would eliminate the criminal statute of limitations. He also wants to create a two-year opening that would allow accusers to file civil claims against the church.

Currently, the statute of limitations law allows victims of child sex abuse to come forward with criminal allegations until they are 50 years old. Victims can file civil claims until they are age 30. Most of the allegations in the grand jury report go back decades; many of the victims are in their 60s and 70s – meaning they are years past the time when criminal charges can be filed.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
The Guardian

August 23, 2018

Inquiry initially covers archdiocese of St Louis, but officials have asked bishops of the four other dioceses to cooperate

Missouri is launching an investigation of potential sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic archdiocese of St Louis, the state attorney general, Josh Hawley, said on Thursday.

The announcement follows the bombshell report in Pennsylvania confirming even more widespread sexual abuse by priests across the state than had been previously revealed. Hawley said his office does not have the power to force institutions to cooperate with criminal investigations but was able to launch the inquiry after the archdiocese agreed to help.

“They say they want to cooperate fully and I’m confident they will,” Hawley told reporters on a conference call.

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JEFFERSON CITY (MO)
Gorovsky Law

August 24, 2018

Dear Attorney General Josh Hawley,

On Wednesday, August 22, 2018, I stood outside your office with survivors of childhood sexual abuse to ask you to organize an investigation into abuses within the Catholic Church in Missouri. We asked for an investigation like the one that occurred in Pennsylvania which revealed over 300 perpetrators and likely over 1,000 victims.

You responded that you did not have the power to do such an investigation. Your response was somewhat of a half-truth given that the Attorney General of the State of Missouri has the power to coordinate all kinds of law enforcement and prosecution efforts in the state. For example, you are currently running an advertisement on television claiming that you coordinated a state-wide audit on the backlog of untested rape kits in prosecutor’s offices in Missouri and are now coordinating an effort to get funding for this issue, and you are publicly pushing state prosecutors to be more aggressive on sexual assault cases. You can behave similarly here.

After telling the public that you were powerless in the childhood sexual abuse situation, on Thursday, August 23, 2018, Archbishop Robert Carlson sent you a letter and held a press conference to say that he would voluntarily provide you with documents from his Archdiocese. You accepted his offer.

Unfortunately, this is exactly backward. Allowing the accused wrongdoer to pick and choose what will be provided in an investigation of his wrongdoing is not an investigation at all. It is certainly not what I was asking for as I stood outside your office on Wednesday, and I do not believe it is what survivors of clergy abuse want either.

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CHICAGO (IL)
National Public Radio

August 24, 2018

By Colin Dwyer

Nearly two weeks after the release of a Pennsylvania grand jury’s investigation into clergy sexual abuse, the report’s ramifications on the Roman Catholic Church are being felt far beyond state lines.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has announced that she will meet with the Archdiocese of Chicago and that she has contacted other dioceses in the state to discuss the Pennsylvania report, “which identifies at least seven priests with connections to Illinois.”

“The Catholic Church has a moral obligation to provide its parishioners and the public a complete and accurate accounting of all sexually inappropriate behavior involving priests in Illinois,” Madigan said in a statement released Thursday.

In a statement of its own, given to local media, the Chicago Archdiocese said it has “worked cooperatively” with county officials for years, and that it looks forward to “discussing our policies and procedures related to misconduct issues with [Madigan] and her office.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
The Daily Beast

August 24, 2018

By Jamie Ross

After the devastating scale of abuse in Pennsylvania was revealed, other states want to know if it spread to their own Catholic establishments.

The scale of sexual abuse by priests in Pennsylvania—where more than 1,000 children were targeted over decades—has prompted shocked officials in other U.S. states to examine how far the cancer has spread.

Officials in Missouri announced Thursday that the state would launch an investigation into sex crimes within the local Catholic Church, saying the Archdiocese of St. Louis had offered to open its files to scrutiny.

Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley came under pressure from survivors of sexual abuse in the state who protested outside his office earlier in the week after new allegations of abuse emerged.

Last week a couple reportedly sued the Springfield-Cape Girardeau Diocese alleging that Troy Casteel, its director of family ministry, sexually abused a woman on diocese property during marital counseling. The couple claims that the diocese was aware of the claim but gave Casteel “sanctuary.”

Casteel was known to spend time alone with the wife and go on trips with her, according to the lawsuit, but the diocese did not intervene. It’s claimed Casteel’s actions culminated in abusing the woman.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

August 23, 2018

By Thomas Gumbleton

I thought I might start our reflection today by finding out something which I think is quite special and noteworthy. In the second lesson, the passage from Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus where he’s outlining various virtues for us to try to grow into and live according to. And at one point toward the end he says, “Sing and celebrate the Lord in your hearts giving thanks to God always.” Those few words “giving thanks to God,” sometimes is translated as “always be thankful.” That’s what Paul is telling us: always be thankful.

When you look at the original language, it’s even more dramatic, it seems to me, because the what the words are: be eucharists, estotes eucharistountes. Eucharist means thanksgiving, so Paul is saying to let your whole being, every part of you give thanks to God. Why? Because everything we have and are and will be is a gift from God so our whole being should react in total thanksgiving. Every moment, every second of our life should be praise and thanks to God because without God we don’t exist, we’re nothing, never would be, never will be.

God has loved us into being so we need to be eucharists, always thanking God. That, of course, becomes even more clear — the reason why we should thank God in the Gospel lesson where Jesus talks to us about giving his very self as our food and drink: “I am the living bread that comes down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread, drinks my blood will live forever.” Those are very important words today that we need to remember and try to grow in that spirit of thankfulness in our prayers every day — every moment, in a sense, and if we can every day.

But this Sunday, this weekend, it may be somewhat difficult to be thinking about thanking God because of the tragedy that has been exposed about our church during this past week. Archbishop [Allen] Vigneron wrote a long letter to all the priests and another one to the people of the diocese asking us to speak about this. First of all to, I guess, reassure everybody in spite of all the terrible things. If you read any part of that report from the grand jury in Pennsylvania, you know it’s just a sordid, ugly story.

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MEXICO
LifeSiteNews

August 21, 2018

By Doug Mainwaring

Reacting to the recent avalanche of reports of clerical sexual abuse around the world, a newly minted Mexican Cardinal has suggested that victims who accuse priests should be “ashamed” because they too have skeletons in their own closets.

Those who “accuse men of the Church should [be careful] because they have long tails that are easily stepped on,” said Cardinal Sergio Obeso Rivera according to a report in Crux.

“I’m here happy to talk about nice things, not about problematic things, it’s an accusation that is made, and in some cases it’s true,” said Obeso Rivera.

The cardinal’s remarks to journalists came after the release of a sweeping, two-year-long Pennsylvania Grand Jury investigation into sexual abuse by Catholic priests. That report has sent shockwaves around the globe.

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MIAMI (FL)
The Miami New Times

August 16, 2018

By Jerry Iannelli

The utterly bizarre and horrid tale of Pennsylvania-turned-Florida-turned-Cuban priest George Zirwas has taken an even darker turn this week. More than 15 years ago, New Times published a meticulously reported feature delving into Zirwas’ 2001 murder in Havana, where he was injected in the neck with an overdose of muscle relaxant. The story noted that some people claimed he was involved in a child pornography ring and that boys had accused him of molestation. But in 2003, when the story was published, Zirwas’ defenders denied the allegations.

But now, an explosive Pennsylvania grand jury report into rampant rape and pedophilia inside that state’s Catholic churches has confirmed the rumors: The report, released earlier this week, outlines how Zirwas and a group of other Pennsylvania priests “used whips, violence, and sadism in raping their victims” and routinely filmed and photographed child pornography with boys on church property.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
KCTV5

August 23, 2018

By Nick Sloan

Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley said his office is investigating the Archdiocese of St. Louis concerning allegations of abuse by clergy members.

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GREEN BAY (WI)
Green Bay Press-Gazette

August 23, 2018

By Paul Srubas

David Zubik, the former bishop of the Green Bay Catholic Diocese, has found himself at center stage this week in a three-decades-old scandal about priest sexual abuse in his current diocese in Pittsburgh.

Zubik has been leader of the Pittsburgh diocese since 2007. It is one of several named by a Pennsylvania grand jury as being part of a statewide scandal involving more than 300 predator priests who left more than 1,000 young victims over the last several decades.

While nearly all the abuse cases referenced in the grand jury’s report predate Zubik’s term as bishop, he was administrative secretary to the bishop and director of clergy personnel through part of the period and held other important administrative functions.

The grand jury report indicates Zubik was probably aware of at least some of the steps the diocese took to keep adverse publicity to a minimum during the years the abuses came to light, including reassigning suspected abusers to other parishes or dioceses and reaching settlements with victims that included confidentiality agreements.

Many of the abuses described in the grand jury report were addressed in the 1980 and early 1990s, when Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua and, later, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, led the Pittsburgh diocese, while Zubik had administrative positions.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

August 23, 2018

By John Spain

Priestly celibacy is an unnatural and impossible demand dreamed up by the church centuries after Christ died.

This coming weekend the Pope will visit Ireland and he can be sure of a warm Irish welcome. It’s what we do for all our visitors here, despite any misgivings we might have.

But there is no escaping the fact that this visit by Pope Francis comes under a very dark cloud indeed. It’s not just the extent of the latest horror story of sex abuse in the Catholic Church, this time from Pennsylvania where a grand jury report has identified 300 priests who abused at least 1,000 victims in six dioceses there (and probably thousands more) over the last 70 years.

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VATICAN CITY
AFP

August 23, 2018

By Catherine Marciano

US Jesuit priest James Martin speaks at the World Meeting of Families in Dublin on August 23, 2018

Gay people in the Catholic Church are sometimes “treated like dirt”, according to a priest invited by the Vatican to address a conference on families in Dublin on Thursday ahead of a visit by Pope Francis.

US Jesuit priest James Martin preaches openness towards gay Roman Catholics — in the face of some traditionalists who have tried to shut him down.

He spoke at the 2018 World Meeting of Families (WMOF) in Dublin, a global Catholic gathering that takes place every three years, which opened on Tuesday.

“The inclusion of a talk called ‘Showing Respect and Welcome in Our Parishes to LGBT Catholics and their Families’ is a huge step forward,” Martin told AFP.

“It is a sign to all Catholics that the Vatican considers LGBT Catholics part of the Church,” said the author of a bestselling book which reaches out to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Christians.

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UNITED STATES
Brit + Co

August 23, 2018

By Elizabeth King

Actress Asia Argento was one of the first women to accuse movie mogul, Harvey Weinstein of sexual violence last year, becoming a leading voice of the #MeToo movement. Now, Argento stands accused of sexual assault, which the actress-director denies, and of allegedly covering up the assault by paying off the accuser. The alleged victim is 22-year-old Jimmy Bennett, an actor who was a teenager at the time of the alleged assault. A few days after the story broke in the New York Times, Bennett has spoken out.

The New York Times story about the alleged assault reveals that Argento is accused of sexually assaulting Bennett five years ago when Bennett was 17 years old. Argento also reportedly paid Bennett $380,000 in a legal settlement last year. Bennett posted a statement to his Instagram account on Wednesday, addressing what happened to him and the stigma of surviving sexual abuse as a man.

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COLUMBUS (OH)
Yahoo Sports

August 23, 2018

By Dan Wetzel

On the morning of Aug. 1, a bombshell story broke suggesting that Urban Meyer had lied about not knowing of a 2015 domestic abuse allegation against former Ohio State assistant coach Zach Smith.

Minutes later, Meyer met with football staffer Brian Voltolini. Their first inclination, per the school’s investigation, was to figure out how to delete text messages from Meyer’s phone.

In other words, cover things up.

“Specifically,” the report reads, “how to adjust the settings on Meyer’s phone so that text messages older than one year would be deleted.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
SKY News

August 22, 2018

By David Blevins

A son speaks out about his mother’s detention by the Catholic Church and his fears his sister could be dead or have been sold.

Her only crime was becoming pregnant “out of wedlock”.

Delia Mulryan spent 30 years of her life locked up in a Magdalene Laundry.

The Catholic Church had secured lucrative government laundry contracts and detained thousands of women to do the work.

Peter Mulryan says his mother and the other women, immortalised in the film The Magdalene Sisters, were forced into slave labour.

“The poor mothers would be slaving from seven o’clock in the morning until seven o’clock in the evening.

“They couldn’t even talk to one another, communicate, laugh or joke. It was so sad an environment to be in,” he said.

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JEFFERSON CITY (MO)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

August 24, 2018

By Jack Suntrup and Nassim Benchaabane

Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley said Thursday that he would launch an investigation into sex crimes within the Roman Catholic Church, adding that the Archdiocese of St. Louis had offered to open its files to his office.

At a news conference shortly after Hawley’s announcement, St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson promised Hawley’s office would have “unfettered” access to archdiocese records.

“Anything that we have we will turn over,” Carlson said.

Hawley’s announcement came after survivors of clergy sexual abuse and their advocates protested outside his St. Louis office on Wednesday demanding that he launch a statewide investigation. It also came a week after the release of grand jury investigation in Pennsylvania that uncovered the widespread abuse of more than 1,000 children by more than 300 priests over a period of 70 years.

Hawley, a Republican who is running for U.S. Senate this year, said on Thursday that while prosecuting and subpoena authority rested with local law enforcement, his office would still investigate alleged crimes, publish a public report and refer credible cases to local prosecutors.

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OKLAHOMA CITY (OK)
NewsOK

August 23, 2018

By Carla Hinton and Randy Ellis

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City said Wednesday that it removed a priest from duty in 2002 after receiving what it determined as “credible accusations of abuse” against him.

Benjamin Zoeller was removed as a priest in 2002 and Pope Benedict XVI formally stripped him of his priestly rights and authority in 2011 through a process called laicization, an archdiocese spokeswoman said Wednesday.

The archdiocese released a statement about Zoeller on Wednesday in response to an Aug. 17 letter from a 49-year-old former Oklahoman who said he was 16 and a member of the clergyman’s Oklahoma City parish when he was sexually abused by the then-priest in 1985.

Zoeller was never charged with sexual abuse related to the incident.

The alleged victim said he was prompted to write the letter after the recent release of a highly disturbing grand jury report alleging abuse of more than 1,000 children by hundreds of Catholic priests in Pennsylvania. The man, who now lives in Minnesota, is not being identified because of The Oklahoman’s policy not to name victims of sex crimes.

The man said he was dismayed by the years-long cover-up of abuse that the Pennsylvania report shared in detail and he was prompted to reach out to the Oklahoma City archdiocese to see if anyone had ever reported Zoeller to law enforcement authorities.

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ST. PETERSBURG (FL)
Poynter

August 23, 2018

By Bill Mitchell

The latest developments in the clergy sexual abuse scandal tee up unusual opportunities for journalists — especially local journalists — to advance the story in significant ways.

The latest developments in the clergy sexual abuse scandal tee up unusual opportunities for journalists — especially local journalists — to advance the story in significant ways.

That’s especially true in two reporting categories: untold stories and watchdog journalism.

Both approaches can help you and your newsroom — whether broadcast, print, digital or all three — to move beyond the too-easy temptation to limit your coverage to showing up at weekend Masses for people-in-the-pew reaction stories.

Some of the ideas listed below have gone untold because, previously, they might have been considered too narrowly focused for a general, secular audience. But the evolution of the story has expanded its readership well beyond Catholics alone.

And Catholic bishops — answerable under Church law only to the Pope — are an ideal target for the sort of watchdog journalism that holds the powerful accountable.

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MOSCOW
Sputnik News

August 22, 2018

Pope Francis has condemned sex abuse and clerical cover-ups in a letter to all Catholics. This comes after a grand jury in the US last week released a report revealing seven decades of abuse by over 300 priests against 1,000 minors in Pennsylvania.

Sputnik discussed this with David Clohessy, former executive director of SNAP — the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

Sputnik: What’s your take on the message shared by the pope recently? What impact can it have on this massive and rather disturbing issue?

David Clohessy: This is the latest of long series of papal apologies and papal pledges to be better and each time a pope comments on this continuing crisis he sounds a little bit more remorseful, a little bit more sincere, but at the end of the day nothing changes, he refuses to take tangible, common sense steps that will expose predators, protect kids and stop this horror.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Kansas City Star

August 23, 2018

By Judy L. Thomas

Update: The Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph says it will allow Missouri Attorney Josh Hawley to investigate priest sexual abuse locally.

Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley said Thursday that his office is launching a “thorough and robust investigation” of potential clergy sex abuse in the Archdiocese of St. Louis, with full cooperation from church officials, and he encouraged other dioceses in the state to allow similar probes.

“Today, I have received a letter from the archbishop confirming that he and the archdiocese will open to my office their files and will allow us to conduct a thorough, impartial review of potential clergy abuse in the Archdiocese of St. Louis,” Hawley told reporters in an afternoon telephone news conference.

“So we intend to gather extensive evidence from the church, as well as from victims and their families and other persons who are not associated with the archdiocese. At the conclusion of this investigation, my office will issue a formal report setting out our findings. That report will also include any charging recommendations based on the evidence we discover in our investigation.”

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SPRINGFIELD (MO)
Springfield News-Leader

August 23, 2018

By Will Schmitt

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau plans to launch an independent inquiry going back more than five decades in the wake of reported abuse by priests elsewhere in the U.S.

Leslie Eidson, director of communications for the Springfield-Cape Girardeau diocese, said the inquiry was being launched at the direction of Bishop Edward Rice, whom Pope Francis picked to lead local Catholics in April 2016.

A formal canonical decree asking for the independent examination of all personnel files as well as an open letter from Rice to congregants to be read at all Masses this weekend were in the works, Eidson said.

In the letter, Rice says the Springfield diocese is aware of nine inactive priests who have faced previously reported credible allegations of abusing a minor. He also says a pastor was recently placed on administrative leave for “sexual misconduct over the Internet” and says that the diocese is investing a recently reported lawsuit alleging sexual misconduct by a former Springfield diocese employee.

Earlier Thursday, Archbishop Robert Carlson of the St. Louis diocese announced he was cooperating with Attorney General Josh Hawley’s office in a voluntary review of clergy abuse.

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GRASS VALLEY (CA)
The Union

August 21, 2018

By Denes McIntosh

Other Voices

As individuals, and as a culture, it wouldn’t hurt to go to confession.

In fact it could help. I’m not advocating that anyone necessarily do the traditional Catholic Church confession, although that is a sound option for some adults, but I am suggesting that confession is a good practice, however one might choose to engage in it.

But I want to illuminate how confession is used in the Catholic Church, secretly, to enable, and perpetuate its long-standing culture of pedophilia. We are all aware of the culture, some more than others. It’s been in the news enough the past few years to allow anyone to be informed who is interested in being informed. But what troubles me is that after all the headlines, the few arrests, the payoffs, the proclamations by the pope, the bishops and the other PR spokespersons for the Church, there has still not been any significant investigation into how such a culture could develop, to become, and remain, ensconced so profoundly in the Church.

It’s as if the public wishes to believe that it’s all cleaned up now, so it is all cleaned up now. But that’s like pretending that after the Major League Baseball steroid scandal, and all the attention paid to it, that there are no longer any more steroids being used in baseball. Actually, we just got tired of the issue.

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EAST NORTHPORT (NY)
Church Militant

August 20, 2018

By Stephen Wynne

Rockville Centre bishop implicated in PA grand jury report

Church officials in the diocese of Rockville Centre are circling the wagons in an attempt to defend their embattled local prelate, Bp. John Barres, who as head of the diocese of Allentown, Pennsylvania from 2009–17 did nothing to remove Msgr. Thomas J. Benestad from ministry after credible allegations were filed against him.

In 2011, a man reported that Msgr. Benestad had sexually abused him in the early 1980s, beginning when he was 9 years old.

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CHEYENNE (WY)
The Kansas City Star

August 23, 2018

By Judy L. Thomas

Police in Cheyenne, Wyo., have reopened an investigation involving a former Kansas City priest who went on to become a Wyoming bishop and was later accused of sexually abusing several boys.

In a news release issued this week, the Cheyenne Police Department said it was seeking information regarding sex abuse claims reported to the department as a result of an internal investigation underway by the Diocese of Cheyenne. That investigation is looking into what the diocese says are credible allegations of sexual abuse committed by former Bishop Joseph Hart.

Police did not name the subject of the investigation in their release — only calling him a “church official” — but it is clear that the person they are referring to is Hart. Now 86, Hart served as bishop or auxiliary bishop of Cheyenne from 1976 to 2001. He was a priest in the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph from 1956 to 1976.

“With new information, the CPD has reopened an investigation in regards to allegations of abuse taking place in Cheyenne in the 1970s through the late 1990s by a local church official,” the police department said. “However, due to the time that has passed since those events, CPD investigators are seeking additional information from any victims or witnesses.”

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ARDMORE (PA)
Main Line Times

August 23, 2018

By Henry Briggs

“If it’s painful for you, think what it does to us.”

I have heard some versions of that phrase for a number of years now whenever the subject of child rape comes up and not just from Catholics. While the Catholic Church is in the spotlight again this week, and has been on and off for decades, maybe even centuries, it isn’t alone.

A few years ago, my old high school sent a letter to alumni admitting to sexual abuse of students. It wasn’t alone. The Chicago School System had child abuse at its schools, as did LA and other cities. To a lesser or greater extent, so did many other schools, none of them Catholic: St. Paul’s, Choate-Rosemary Hall, Exeter, to name a few. Horace Mann in New York had 62 cases. “Me” and “mini-me,” compared to the Catholic Church, of course, but not in terms of the harm: the non-Catholic kid suffered just as much as the kid in CCD or PSR.

In most cases, people who love those institutions — from school alumni to lay board members — share the “if it is painful for you, think what it is to us” sentiment with outsiders. And then continue with their lives as though nothing had happened.

Child sexual abuse is bad; knowing about it and doing nothing to stop it is horrific.

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GREENSBURG (IN)
The Indiana Gazette

August 23, 2018

By Patrick Cloonan

The pastor of several Fayette County churches has been relieved of his ministry duties by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Greensburg, pending an investigation of charges dating to a period shortly after his tenure at a church in Indiana County.

“Earlier this week, the Diocese received a credible allegation of sexual abuse of a minor against Msgr. Michael W. Matusak dating back almost 20 years,” the diocese stated late Wednesday afternoon.

The allegation apparently covers an event that happened after then-Father Matusak left Church of the Good Shepherd in Kent, where he was known as “Father Mike” and was its first pastor from 1989 to 1997.

The diocese also reported that the matter “is now in the hands of law enforcement” in Westmoreland County, where Matusak was serving after his tenure in Kent.

“This is the first and only allegation the diocese has ever received against Msgr. Matusak,” the diocese said. “A credible allegation does not mean it has been substantiated or proven. This announcement in no way implies Msgr. Matusak is guilty.”

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

August 23, 2018

By Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura

Gortahork, Ireland – If any place illustrates the depth and depravity of child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church — and why the Irish are so angry about it — it is this unlikely corner of the country, where among rolling hills of wild heather, castles and bucolic fishing villages, predatory priests terrorized children with impunity for decades.

County Donegal, which overlooks the Atlantic in northwestern Ireland, has fewer than 160,000 residents, but it may have the worst record of clerical abuse in the country. According to a watchdog group that monitors the Catholic Church in Ireland, 14 priests have been accused in recent years, four of whom were convicted. They include the Rev. Eugene Greene, one of the nation’s most notorious pedophile priests, who served nine years in prison for raping and molesting 26 boys between 1965 and 1982, though the real figure may be far higher.

Yet this year, when Pope Francis needed someone to head a neighboring diocese, he chose Bishop Philip Boyce, who had been heavily criticized for refusing to defrock Father Greene when the priest was under his management in the late 1990s.

As Francis prepares for a visit to Ireland this weekend — the first by a pope since John Paul II in 1979 — the painful specter of such abuses hangs over his trip, as well as the church’s long history of protecting pedophile priests. It is cases like this one that many faithful say make it incumbent on Francis to give them not just words, but action.

*
Residents said Francis’ appointment of Bishop Boyce demonstrated that the church’s record of shuffling along abusers and those who protected them remained unbroken.

Bishop Boyce “was keen to protect the family of the convicted priest from further trauma by not initiating laicization,” the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church found in a 2011 review.

A religious mural near Meenlaragh. As Pope Francis prepares to visit Ireland this weekend, the country’s painful history of clerical sexual abuse hangs over his trip.CreditPaulo Nunes dos Santos for The New York Times
For those in Donegal, Bishop Boyce’s appointment was salt in the wounds. Francis chose him to replace John McAreavey, who resigned as bishop of Dromore after coming under fire for officiating at the funeral of a priest he knew to be a pedophile. It is unclear whether Bishop McAreavey was disciplined by the church.

Bishop Boyce did not respond to requests for comment.

Father Greene, now in his 90s, is thought to be living in a protected home run by an ecclesiastical order in Cork and enjoying a “happy retirement,” said John McAteer, the editor of the weekly Tirconaill Tribune. “I find it shocking,” he said.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

August 19, 2018

By Niall O’Dowd

Following the shocking revelations of 70 years of abuse of children by Pennsylvania priests, we owe Sinead O’Connor an apology.

Her declaration back in 1992 that the Catholic Church was rotten to its core and pedophile priests and their enablers were the real enemy was true.

It caused a massive worldwide reaction when she tore up a picture of the then Pope on Saturday Night Live in October 1992 and declared, “Fight the real enemy.”

We now know that the pedophile scandals were rampant during the era of Pope John Paul, who chose to turn a blind eye. O’Connor was calling out the right person.

Before Spotlight, before the worst of the American and Irish church scandals, O’Connor called it right and only got abuse in return.

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WICHITA (KS)
KAKE

August 22, 2018

By Greg Miller

A Kansas City-area attorney says she’s disappointed that a grand jury won’t be ordered to investigate abuse in Catholic churches in Kansas.

Documents she released on Monday reveal hundreds of allegations of sexual abuse and called for an investigation into the Catholic church.

Kansas attorney general Derek Schmidt has responded, saying “I admire and encourage those victims of childhood sexual abuse who continue to choose to come forward, sometimes after many years have passed.” But he declined to start a grand jury investigation.

“There’s no way to determine the extent and the depth of the abuses that occurred,” said attorney Rebecca Randles. “There has to be some form of law enforcement, executive or police power for an investigation into this and it has to be on a broader scale.”

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

August 23, 2018

By Dennis Sadowski

An independent lay-run board that would hold bishops accountable for their actions, a national day for Mass or prayers of reparation, and encouragement to parishioners to become more involved in their diocese are among steps suggested by prominent lay Catholics to right the U.S. church as it deals with a new clergy sexual abuse scandal.

Those contacted by Catholic News Service said that it was time for laypeople to boost their profile within the church and help begin to dismantle long-standing clericalism that has sought to preserve the reputation of offending clergy at the expense of the safety of children.

“Their credibility is gone and the trust of the faithful is gone,” Francesco Cesareo, chairman of the National Review Board, said of the U.S. bishops as they worked to develop steps to promote greater accountability on abuse.

The National Review Board, established by the bishops in 2002, oversees compliance by dioceses with the “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.” It has no role in oversight of bishops.

“The bishops have to put their trust in lay leadership and allow that lay leadership to develop the processes and oversight when these kinds of allegations occur, particularly holding bishops accountable,” Cesareo said.

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MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
La Croix

August 22, 2018

By Terry Laidler

The Church’s understanding of who ministers, how they minister and how it trains and supports a much broader range of people to minister needs a total revamp

The pope’s letter of 20 August 2018, condemning sexual abuse by clergy and its systematic cover-up begins to show real compassion for those abused and some of the bewilderment and exasperation even good people who supported the Church experienced as the crisis continued to unfold unaddressed:

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
Global Sisters Report

August 21, 2018

By Dan Stockman

The largest organization of women religious in the United States says the latest clergy sex abuse reports have left it “sickened and ashamed of the church we love, trusted, and have committed our lives to serve.”

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which represents about 80 percent of U.S. sisters, issued a statement Aug. 20 in response to a grand jury report from Pennsylvania that more than 300 priests sexually assaulted at least 1,000 victims over 70 years, most of which bishops covered up.

“We weep and grieve with all who over the decades have been victimized by sexual predators within the faith community and feel their pain as our own,” the LCWR statement reads. “We recognize that the damage done to many is irreparable.”

The grand jury report has created a national backlash to the abuse scandal, with many calling for major changes in the structure and culture of the church itself.

“We call upon the church leadership to implement plans immediately to support more fully the healing of all victims of clergy abuse, hold abusers accountable, and work to uncover and address the root causes of the sexual abuse crisis,” the statement says. “It is clear that more serious action needs to be taken to assure that the culture of secrecy and cover-up ends.”

Sr. Carol Zinn of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Philadelphia, executive director of LCWR, told Global Sisters Report the response to the statement so far has been gratitude.

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VATICAN CITY
LA Croix

August 23, 2018

By Hans Zollner SJ

There is no doubt that the protection of children and youth against sexual violence remains a central problem in the Catholic Church and in society

The issue of sexual abuse of minors committed by clergy is constantly returning to the forefront of media attention. Recently, through various news outlets and publications worldwide, this focus has been particularly sustained for the Karadima case in Chile. It’s hard to say why that has resonated with people around the world more than other cases have.The offer of resignation by all Chilean bishops is a sign of huge importance, which is in line with a development that we have seen over the last years. There is no one turning point — the ship of the church is slowly moving in another direction. It is a huge effort, and change is on the way.For Pope Francis, calling a whole bishops’ conference to Rome has been new. John Paul II and Benedict XVI summoned cardinals and bishops to discuss clerical sexual abuse, but this is new for Francis. He takes the problem seriously.

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BOSTON (MA)
NECN

August 20, 2018

By Abbey Niezgoda

A Boston clergy sex abuse survivor and her lawyer are reacting after reading the letter from Pope Francis condemning the abuse and cover-up in the Catholic church. The letter was released by the Vatican Monday following a grand jury report that found more than 1,000 clergy abuse victims in parishes across Pennsylvania.

Alexa MacPherson said she was sexually assaulted for six years as a child by a priest in Dorchester. She said the letter is not just too late, it is not enough.

“There wasn’t anything concrete in that letter,” MacPherson said. “It was just we need to move forward, this is the past, we don’t want this to happen again. What are you doing?”

“With shame and repentance, we acknowledge as an ecclesial community that we were not where we should have been, that we did not act in a timely manner, realizing the magnitude and the gravity of the damage done to so many lives. We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them,” the letter said in part.

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CINCINNATI (OH)
The Enquirer

August 23, 2018

By Kyle Schnippel

Please bear with me for this letter, but I feel this needs to be said and addressed. I have been struggling how to address this topic. Many of my brother priests across the country have addressed the topic homiletically, which I have yet to do. It is sometimes difficult to address the topic when I only preach at one parish on a weekend.

The long and short of it is: I am angry and betrayed at the news and events that have recently been revealed in both Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. I am angry at the shortsightedness of bishops. I am angry at those who knew something about Archbishop McCarrick and did or said nothing. I am even angrier at those who actively sought to bury the information that is now being revealed in the press and in witness statements, etc.

With McCarrick in particular, I feel a strong sense of betrayal. In 2002, he was part of the face of the reforms called for in the wake of the revelations out of Boston and the implementation of the Dallas Charter that called for zero tolerance in the face of credible allegations of abuse against a priest. And he had credible and substantiated cases against him! Cases that were apparently widely known, yet nothing came out against him and he continued to minister “in good standing” while so many priests who had far less credible evidence against them were removed from ministry.

(I want to be absolutely clear here: I 100 percent agree that there is no room in ministry for priests who have engaged in sexual abuse of another. Full stop. My issue is that it is very clear now that Archbishop McCarrick (formerly Cardinal McCarrick) had significant evidence against him, yet he continued in ministry. This is the source of my anger.)

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CHEYENNE (WY)
Wyoming Tribune Eagle Via Wyoming News Exchange

August 22, 2018

By Katie Kull

The Cheyenne Police Department is asking for help in the investigation of a local church official accused of sexually abusing at least one boy when he worked there from the 1970s through the 1990s.

Cheyenne Police Department spokesman Officer Kevin Malatesta said detectives are hoping to talk to anyone who has information about the alleged abuse.

“Everybody’s testimony adds to the case, and so if we have other credible witnesses or victims to these crimes, that assists us in the prosecution of this,” Malatesta said.

The news release doesn’t specifically name the person the department is investigating, but it points to a recent announcement by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cheyenne that it found new evidence that Bishop-Emeritus Joseph Hart had abused at least two young boys when he worked there from 1976-2001.

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CHEYENNE (WY)
KGWN TV

August 22, 2018

By Kayla Dixon

The Cheyenne Police Department is seeking information regarding sex abuse claims that have been reported to the CPD through the Wyoming Catholic Diocese’s internal investigation.

With new information, the CPD has reopened an investigation in regards to allegations of abuse taking place in Cheyenne in the 1970’s through the late 1990’s by a local church official. However, due to the time that has passed since those events, CPD investigators are seeking additional information from any victims or witnesses.

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OKLAHOMA CITY (OK)
KFOR

August 22, 2018

By Bill Miston

The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City is investigating a report of alleged abuse dating back more than three decades involving a former priest defrocked by the pope in 2011.

Archdiocese officials said Wednesday the Archbishop has ordered an independent investigation of former priest Ben Zoeller, who served in eight parishes in Oklahoma since the 1960s.

According to an archdiocese spokeswoman, a letter August 17 was sent by a former resident reporting abuse at the hands of Zoeller in 1985.

Archbishop Paul Coakley ordered a review of Zoeller’s file, which “found credible allegations of abuse” and ordered an independent investigation, the spokeswoman said.

Zoeller was removed as a priest from the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City in 2002 and defrocked in 2011.

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HOUSTON (TX)
Chron

August 22, 2018

By Fernando Ramirez

An Abilene church daycare worker accused of sexually abusing at least five different victims has been released from jail.

Five months after his arrest, 25-year-old Benjamin Roberts posted bail after his bond was reduced from $350,000 to $100,000, reports KTAB/KRBC.

Roberts was originally arrested by the Abilene Police Department in March after his residence was identified as a place where child pornography was being downloaded, according to court documents obtained by Abilene Reporter-News.

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DUBLIN (IRELAND)
Crux

August 23, 2018

By Elise Harris

Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago is one of the few American prelates making an appearance at this week’s World Meeting of Families in Dublin, after both Cardinals Donald Wuerl of Washington and Sean O’Malley of Boston withdrew due to abuse-related scandals.

Amid fears that after the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report the Church in the United States could face a new eruption of the abuse crisis, Cupich acknowledged that “a lot of damage has been done” to the faith of believers, but the primary focus should be the wellbeing of the victims and not the Church’s reputation.

Speaking to Crux, Cupich said his first concern “is not my credibility or the bishops’ credibility. My first concern is that it’s damaged the faith lives of people.”

“If it’s damaged our credibility, then we have to do something about it, but my major concern is that we need to focus our attention on the damage it does to people’s faith lives. Also, [the focus should be on] the hurt that’s revisited victims as a result of this. This is something we as Church leaders should be concerned about, not our own skin,” he said.

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

August 22, 2018

By Nassim Benchaabane

Survivors of clergy sexual abuse are demanding Missouri’s top prosecutor launch a statewide investigation into alleged sex crimes by Catholic priests.

The call comes on the heels of a grand jury investigation in Pennsylvania that uncovered the widespread abuse of more than 1,000 children by more than 300 priests. The report alleges that bishops and other leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in Pennsylvania covered up child sexual abuse over a period of 70 years.

“We believe we have exactly the same issues as they do in Pennsylvania,” said Nicole Gorovsky, a former Missouri assistant attorney general, former federal prosecutor and private attorney who specializes in child sexual abuse cases.

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BETHLEHEM (PA)
CNN

August 23, 2018

By Mallory Simon and Erica Hill

Pope Francis is failing the thousands of victims of abusive priests in the US and around the world, survivors told CNN in emotional interviews.

A rare letter of apology and contrition from Francis, and his promised meeting with Irish victims of priestly abuse this weekend has done nothing to ease the ongoing pain of the five people we met in Pennsylvania, where a grand jury concluded earlier this month that hundreds of priests raped, molested and abused boys and girls for decades.

The Pope wrote that the church “abandoned” child victims while the perpetrators were protected. He called for fellow Catholics to fast and pray, but offered no new directions to stop any current or future abuse.

Those were hollow words for these four people abused by priests and a father who lost his son to drugs after his molestation.

This is what they want Francis to know:

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IRELAND
CBS News

August 23, 2018

Pope Francis will arrive in Ireland this weekend for an international Catholic gathering amid intensifying scrutiny over the church’s handling of sexual abuse by priests. The scandal forced two U.S. cardinals to cancel their trips. The pope asked for prayers as he prepares for the first papal visit to Ireland in nearly 40 years and is expected to meet privately with sex abuse survivors.

CBS News’ Jonathan Vigliotti spoke with Cardinal Blase Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago, and Sister Liz Murphy, a leading Irish missionary, who hope Pope Francis can chart a way forward following last week’s Pennsylvania grand jury report, which Cupich called a “catalog of horrors.”

“There is a dysfunction in the family, and we have to address it,” Cupich said.

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FRANCE
ARTE Journal

August 23, 2018

By Fanny Chauvin

Pedophilia scandal: what sanctions?

Disponible du 23/08/2018 au 25/08/2038
Disponible en direct : oui
Découvrez l’offre VOD-DVD de la boutique ARTE

Un jury populaire de Pennsylvanie vient de dévoiler un rapport qui accuse 300 prêtres d’abus sexuels. Les faits, dissimulés par les autorités religieuses, se déroulent sur plus de 70 ans. 1000 victimes sont recensées.

Après l’affaire Barbarin en France et ce nouveau scandale aux Etats-Unis, l’Église catholique est de nouveau secouée par les affaires d’abus sexuels. Le Pape a exprimé sa “honte” et condamne “avec fermeté ces atrocités”. Un discours qui ne suffit pas pour les victimes. Mais que peuvent-elles attendre? L’Église catholique est-elle prête à changer ?

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philly.com

August 23, 2018

By Nathaniel Lash and Jared Whalen

A state grand jury report released last week revealed decades of allegations of child sex abuse at the hands of more than 300 priests in six Pennsylvania Roman Catholic dioceses.

The report presented accounts by victims and actions taken by church officials, and detailed the parish assignments of more than 250 of the accused clergy. This search tool catalogs the thousands of records detailing where they lived and worked in the dioceses, including some in the Philadelphia region.

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VATICAN CITY
The Wall Street Journal

August 23, 2018

By Francis X. Rocca

Pope Francis is under pressure to address a global crisis during weekend in a country scarred by mistreatment of minors

When Pope Francis lands in Ireland on Saturday, he will be visiting a once-devout Catholic society that is increasingly challenging the church’s authority—and where anger is running high over decades of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests.

The pope’s delicate two-day trip comes as clerical sexual abuse scandals unfold in other countries, including the U.S., and many Catholics are criticizing the pope’s response to the crisis as inadequate.

The topic is thus likely to dominate his visit, and his statements and gestures on the subject there will play out to a global audience.

This will be the first visit to Ireland by a pope in nearly 40 years. When John Paul II came in 1979, he drew 1.25 million people to an outdoor Mass in Dublin, more than a third of the country’s population at the time.

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MINNEAPOLIS (MN)
KSTP

August 22, 2018

An attorney for victims of clergy sex abuse wants Gov. Mark Dayton to convene grand juries to investigate alleged cover-ups by Catholic bishops in Minnesota.

Attorney Jeff Anderson said Wednesday he was inspired by a grand jury investigation in Pennsylvania that showed about 300 priests in the state had molested more than 1,000 children.

But Minnesota’s statutes on grand juries say nothing about governors having the power to call grand juries. That power resides with county attorneys and district judges.

Through the declaration of bankruptcy by the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, and by other diocese in the state, Anderson said a lot has been done to bring justice to victims.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Post

August 23, 2018

By Tamar Lapin

The Archdiocese of New York has paid out close to $60 million to sexual abuse victims in the past two years, a spokesman told The Post.

So far, 278 victims — including a teen molested by a perverted priest at Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx in the early 1980s — have been paid $59,950,000 through the archdiocese’s Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program.

This revelation comes on the heels of a shocking Pennsylvania grand jury report that found that over 300 priests had abused more than 1,000 children for decades in the state — all while being shielded by church officials.

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LANSING (MI)
Yahoo Sports

August 23, 2018

By Ben Rohrbach

Former Michigan State gymnastics coach Kathie Klages is the latest person to face criminal charges in the aftermath of disgraced team doctor Larry Nassar’s widespread sexual abuse of countless athletes.

Klages was charged with lying to police during the investigation into the university’s handling of sexual abuse complaints against Nassar — a charge that carries up to a four-year prison sentence — according to the Associated Press. Klages had previously denied that she was informed of Nassar’s sexual abuse as early as 1997 by former Spartan Youth Gymnastics participant Larissa Boyce.

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Herald

August 23, 2018

By Mary Markos

A St. John’s Preparatory School faculty member is on unpaid leave after allegations of sexually abusing a child came to light from when he was in Baltimore in the mid-1980s.

Brother Robert “Bob” Flaherty is no longer on campus and has been banned from active ministry by the Xaverian Brothers, which sponsors the all-boys school in Danvers.

“It’s important for us as a school to celebrate the good things and deal with challenges that confront us. That’s what we’re doing now,” St. John’s Headmaster Edward P. Hardiman told the Herald.

The abuse allegedly occurred before Flaherty’s time at St. John’s. He worked at the Catholic school on the North Shore from 1999 to 2007, and 2010 to Aug. 18.

Flaherty first joined the Xaverian Brothers in September 1979 and took his vows after a year of training in 1980. He taught at Mount St. Joseph in Baltimore from 1980 to 1993, and then again from 2008 to 2010, according to a statement from the Xaverian Brothers.

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
NBC 10 News

August 22, 2018

Bishop Thomas J. Tobin of the Diocese of Providence said that he was aware of allegations of sexual abuse during his time in Pennsylvania, but could not act on them.

In a statement to the Providence Journal, Tobin said he learned of the allegations while working as an auxiliary bishop, in Pittsburgh, in the 1990s.

However, he said he was unable to take action because he was not responsible for clergy issues.

Tobin said he had an administrative role in the church, such as handling budgets and property.

“My responsibilities as Vicar General and General Secretary of the diocese did not include clergy assignments or clergy misconduct, but rather other administrative duties such as budgets, property, diocesan staff, working with consultative groups, etc. Even as an auxiliary bishop, I was not primarily responsible for clergy issues,? Tobin said in an email to ProJo.

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
The Associated Press

August 22, 2018

Rhode Island’s Roman Catholic bishop says while he was “aware of incidents of sexual abuse” reported to church officials while working in Pennsylvania it wasn’t his job to deal with them.

Diocese of Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin served as auxiliary bishop of Pittsburgh from 1992 until 1996.

The Diocese of Pittsburgh was one of six Pennsylvania dioceses named in a grand jury report that said hundreds of Catholic priests in the state molested more than 1,000 children dating to the 1940s, and church leaders covered it up.

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NEW YORK (NY)
NYR Daily

August 23, 2018

By Garry Wills

The grand jury report of Catholic priests’ predations in Pennsylvania is enough to make one vomit. The terrifying fact that hundreds of priests were preying upon over a thousand victims in that state alone makes one shudder at the thought of how many hundreds and thousands of abusers there are elsewhere in the nation, elsewhere in the world. It is time to stop waiting for more reports to accumulate, hoping that something will finally be done about this. Done by whom? By “the church”? If “the church” is taken to mean the pope and bishops, nothing will come of nothing. They are as a body incapable of making sense of anything sexual.

A wise man once told me that we humans are all at one time or another a little crazy on the subject of sex. A little crazy, yes. But Catholic priests are charged with maintaining The Big Crazy on sex all the time. These functionaries of the church are formally supposed to believe and preach sexual sillinesses, from gross denial to outright absurdity, on the broadest range of issues—masturbation, artificial insemination, contraception, sex before marriage, oral sex, vasectomy, homosexuality, gender choice, abortion, divorce, priestly celibacy, male-only priests—and uphold the church’s “doctrines,” no matter how demented.

Some priests are humane or common-sensible enough to ignore some parts of this impossibly severe set of rules, which gives them reason to be selective about sexual matters. Since scripture says nothing about most of these subjects, popes have claimed a power to define “natural law.” But the nineteenth-century English theologian John Henry Newman was right when he said, “The Pope, who comes of Revelation, has no jurisdiction over Nature.” That would be true even if the natural law being invoked had some philosophical depth, but Catholics are asked to accept childish versions of “natural law.” For instance, since the “natural” use of sex is to beget children, any use apart from that is sinful, and mortally sinful. Masturbate and you go to hell (unless, of course, you confess the sin to a priest, which gives an ordained predator the chance to be “comforting” about masturbation).

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
Providence Journal

August 21, 2018

Tobin was auxiliary bishop of Pittsburgh at time of incidents covered in grand jury report on the Catholic Church’s cover-up of sexual abuse.

During his earlier years in Pittsburgh, Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas J. Tobin acknowledges he “became aware of incidents of sexual abuse when they were reported to the diocese.”

But in response Tuesday to questions posed earlier about what he knew, when he knew it — and what he did about it, the Providence-based bishop says these allegations were outside his realm of responsibility.

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
Church Militant

August 22, 2018

By David Nussman

Current RI prelate served under Wuerl in Pittsburgh, knew of abuse claims

Bishop Thomas Tobin is disclaiming responsibility for sex abuse matters during his time in the diocese of Pittsburgh under then-Bishop Donald Wuerl.

Tobin, current bishop of Providence, Rhode Island, was vicar general and general secretary of the Pittsburgh diocese in 1990 and was auxiliary bishop from 1992–96.

The Pennsylvania grand jury released August 14 faulted Wuerl for covering up clerical sex abuse and shuffling predator priests among parishes. Of the 301 priests and religious the report accuses of sexually molesting children, 99 were from Pittsburgh.

In a statement distributed to Rhode Island reporters following the release of the grand jury report, Bp. Tobin said that, in his chancery roles, he “became aware of incidents of sexual abuse when they were reported to the diocese.”

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SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
San Francisco Chronicle

August 21, 2018

By Douglas W. Kmiec

No amount of monetary damages can compensate the victims of clerical sex abuse; plus the money wrongly hurts the impressive social justice work of the Catholic Church. No, an appropriate act of contrition requires that the episcopal level of the American Catholic Church submit to the holy father its resignation en masse, allowing Pope Francis, if in prayer he discerns it necessary, to clean house.

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PORTLAND (ME)
Portland Press Herald

August 23, 2018

By Bill Nemitz

The report of widespread abuse by priests in several Pennsylvania dioceses widens the gap between the Church that is and the one Catholics thought they knew.

I recently attended the Roman Catholic funeral for a woman who lived for just over 90 years. The congregation numbered more than 100 – testament to a large, loving family and a circle of loyal friends who’d stayed tethered to her throughout her twilight years.

Heading into a catered lunch after the service, someone commented on the priest’s kind words and asked one of the deceased woman’s sons if she and the priest had been close.

“No,” he replied with a quick shake of the head. “They didn’t really know each other.”

Not even through her attendance at Sunday Mass?

“She hasn’t gone for more than 10 years,” he said. “Not since …”

The church scandal?

“Right.”

It’s been almost 20 years since widespread reports of child abuse by priests surfaced first in Boston and then spread, like a wildfire, across the United States and the rest of the world.

To some, it’s old news – the anguished stories told by victims, many now in their 50s, 60s or older; the stonewalling by bishops who profess sorrow even while they refuse to release offending priests’ names and current locations; the countless sins that somehow never found their way onto criminal dockets.

But it’s not old news. It’s still with us.

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ST. PAUL (MN)
MPR News

August 22, 2018

By Peter Cox

Jeff Anderson, who has sued the Catholic church multiple times over clergy sex abuse, is calling for a grand jury to investigate all of the dioceses in Minnesota.

In Pennsylvania, a two-year investigation by a grand jury identified more than 300 priests credibly accused of abuse and found that there were more than 1,000 victims of priest abuse.

Anderson wants Gov. Mark Dayton to convene a grand jury to investigate, interview and possibly bring charges against priests who abused children or church leaders who helped to cover up those crimes or move known offenders to other churches or parishes.

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ST. PAUL (MN)
KMSP

August 22, 2018

By Tim Blotz

Attorney Jeff Anderson is calling on Gov. Mark Dayton to force criminal grand jury investigations into priest abuse cases across the state.

A grand jury investigation in Pennsylvania last week revealed more than 300 priests who abused children.

Now, Anderson wants Dayton to use a little known state statute to force similar grand jury investigations here.

Surrounded by eight survivors of clergy sexual abuse, Anderson said the time has come for criminal investigations.

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LANSING (MI)
The Associated Press

August 23, 2018

A former gymnastics coach at Michigan State has been charged with lying to police amid the sexual abuse investigation involving former sports doctor Larry Nassar.

The charges against Kathie Klages were announced Thursday by a special independent counsel appointed by the state to investigate the university. If convicted, Klages could face up to four years in prison.

Klages has denied allegations that former gymnast Larissa Boyce told her that Nassar had abused her in 1997, when Boyce was 16. Boyce had been training with the Spartan youth gymnastics team at the time.

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YORK (PA)
Penn Live

August 22, 2018

By Becky Metrick

Evidence provided to the York County District Attorney’s Office relating to the sexual abuse by clergymen uncovered in the Attorney General’s Grand Jury Report, was destroyed, DA David Sunday Jr., said Wednesday.

In the days following the release of the grand jury report – which specifically mentions at least five clergymen accused of sexual assaults while they worked in York County – Sunday said he would look into the allegations and what his office had information on.

Though the grand jury information on two of the clergymen accused included reports made directly to the District Attorney’s Office, Sunday said evidence and/or reports forwarded to the York City Police Department were destroyed in accordance with “statewide accreditation standards” that govern what happens with investigations where charges aren’t filed.

Additionally, Sunday said “my office does not possess any records concerning subjects of the Attorney General’s Grand Jury report, as any such reports would have been purged in accordance with office record retention policy in matters that are not prosecuted.”

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LANSING (MI)
Lansing State Journal

August 23, 2018

By Kara Berg and Matt Mencarini

Former MSU gymnastics coach Kathie Klages has been charged with lying to police about her knowledge of sexual assault complaints about Larry Nassar prior to 2016.

The charges, filed today in 54A District Court in Lansing, make Klages the second person charged as part of the Michigan Attorney General’s Office investigation of Michigan State University’s handling of reports about Nassar.

“Klages denied to Michigan State Police detectives having been told prior to 2016 of Nassar’s sexual misconduct,” according to an AG’s Office news release. “Witnesses have said that they reported Nassar’s sexual abuse to Klages dating back more than 20 years.”

One of those people is Larissa Boyce, a former youth gymnast who said she told Klages about Nassar’s abuse in 1997 when she was 16. Boyce said that Klages cautioned her and another gymnast from filing a formal complaint against Nassar, which Klages has denied.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
The Atlantic

August 22, 2018

By Emma Green

Pope Francis says he supports a “zero-tolerance” policy, but some insist those words are not enough.

This week, Pope Francis convenes the World Meeting of Families in Dublin, a massive, triennial gathering of Catholics to celebrate “joy for the world.” The timing could not be more awkward. The event comes in the wake of a terrible period for Catholic families amid revelations about clergy sex abuse, including the release of a massive new report detailing years of misconduct and cover-up in Pennsylvania.

These new findings are the latest entry in a long list of scandals from around the world: reports that Theodore McCarrick, the former cardinal in Washington, D.C., sexually harassed children and adults for decades; the mass resignation of Chilean bishops who mishandled sex-abuse allegations in their country; Cardinal George Pell’s return from Rome to his home in Australia, where he is standing trial on several charges of sexual abuse.

A decade and a half after the first major wave of sex-abuse scandals upended the global Church, clergy, theologians, and lay people are desperately calling on the Church to take concrete steps to prevent abuse or cover-ups from happening again. Some say the greatest problem lies in the hierarchical structure of the Church, and are advocating for more power for lay people and an overhauled seminary system.

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MERRILLVILLE (IN)
CNN

August 22, 2018

A Catholic priest was beaten while praying at his church in Merrillville, Indiana, and authorities are investigating the attack as a hate crime.

The Rev. Basil John Hutsko told police he was attacked Monday morning inside the St. Michaels Byzantine Catholic Church as he was praying in the sacristy.

The attacker “grabbed him by the neck, threw him down on the floor and immediately started slamming his head against the floor. Both sides, front and back,” Merrillville Police Chief Joseph Petruch told CNN affiliate WBBM.

The assailant left Hutsko battered, bruised and unconscious. And during the assault the attacker yelled, “‘This is for all the little kids,'” Petruch said.

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SAGINAW (MI)
MLive

August 22, 2018

By Cole Waterman

In the wake of a federal grand jury naming 301 Catholic priests alleged to have sexually abused children in Pennsylvania, Saginaw Diocese Bishop Joseph R. Cistone has issued a statement offering his thoughts and prayers for all victims of clergy sex abuse.

The statement comes as one of Cistone’s own subordinates awaits trial on charges of sexually assaulting juveniles.

“My thoughts, prayers and sorrow go out to all victims of clergy sex abuse, especially those whose tragic accounts of abuse are detailed in the grand jury report released in Pennsylvania,” Cistone wrote in the Aug. 21 letter published on the Catholic Diocese of Saginaw’s website.

“The numbers in the report are staggering, and the horrific details of alleged child abuse over 70 years is numbing. People of faith and good will are understandably experiencing deep emotions of anger, betrayal, and a sincere desire for justice.

“On behalf of the Diocese of Saginaw,” the letter continues, “I remain fully committed to the safety of children.”

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MIAMI (FL)
WLRN

August 23, 2018

By Tim Padgett

COMMENTARY

As a Roman Catholic, I’m supposed to be encouraged by the anguished letter Pope Francis issued this week. The one in which he condemns the monstrous and never-ending “atrocities” of sexual abuse of children by priests – and their equally monstrous and never-ending cover-up by bishops.

But I’m not hopeful.

That’s because aside from being a Catholic I’m also a Latin Americanist – and I know how badly Francis, the first Latin American pope, failed Latin America in this crisis. That’s why Latin Americans, particularly South Americans, seem to understand that this criminal tragedy won’t be solved by a papal crackdown on the priesthood. It can only really be addressed by a papal crack-up of that priesthood.

That means turning the Catholic clergy from a celibate, all-male cabal – one that considers its own protection more important than our childrens’ – into a more empathetic society of service by allowing priests to marry and women to be priests.

Many in Latin America have given up on that ever happening. So they’re voting with their feet, especially in the wake of priest abuse scandals like the one Chile is suffering through – and which Francis failed to confront until recently, after he and the Catholic Church had already hemorrhaged their moral credibility in that country.

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