ABUSE TRACKER

WASHINGTON (DC)
My Catholic Standard

January 8, 2019

By Rhina Guidos

As U.S. bishops gathered in early January at a seminary in Illinois to pray and reflect about the Church’s sex abuse crisis, reports trickled out about the possible fate of one their own being decided overseas.

The Wall Street Journal newspaper reported Jan. 5 that a decision on whether to laicize former U.S. Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, who is facing accusations that he sexually abused minors, could come as soon as mid-January because Vatican officials don’t want the decision to overshadow a gathering the pope has called for, seeking to meet Feb. 21-24 with prelates from around the world about protecting minors.

Pope Francis accepted the prelate’s resignation from the College of Cardinals last July, and suspended him from public ministry, ordering him to a “life of prayer and penance” until the accusations against him were examined in a canonical trial.

In September, the Archdiocese of Washington, to which he last belonged, announced that Archbishop McCarrick had been sent to live among a small community of Capuchin Franciscan friars in rural Kansas. The Vatican, meanwhile, has been investigating the accusations in order to make a decision about whether the 88-year-old archbishop will return to the lay state.

On Jan. 5, the online Catholic news outlet Crux reported that the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which handles clergy sex abuse claims among some of its responsibilities, is reviewing a third case involving Archbishop McCarrick and a minor, one more case than previously reported.

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SPRINGFIELD (IL)
State Journal Register

January 7, 2019

By Crystal Thomas

The city of Springfield has fired a City Water, Light and Power employee whose name appeared on a list of Catholic priests credibly accused of child sex abuse.

Joseph D. Cernich, 62, had been a technical support specialist in CWLP’s information systems division. He was laicized, or stripped of his priestly title, in June 2003 and began working for the city five months later.

After an investigation into his hiring and employment, the city mailed Cernich notice he was no longer employed, according to Human Resources Director Jim Kuizin. Cernich was on paid administrative leave during the investigation, and his “day of separation” from the city was Dec. 28.

Kuizin declined comment when asked for the cause of Cernich’s firing.

Cernich’s annual salary had been $57,000. He did not receive severance pay but was paid for unused vacation and compensatory time, Kuizin said.

According to city policy, if an HR investigation yields a recommendation for disciplinary action, the mayor decides whether the recommendation should be followed. Mayor Jim Langfelder did not have a comment on the matter.

Cernich has until the 10th day after receiving his termination notice to decide whether to appeal the city’s decision through the Springfield Civil Service Commission or arbitration. A request for comment from Cernich was not answered.

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PITTSFIELD (MA)
The Berkshire Eagle

January 7, 2019

By Larry Parnass

Mounting revelations that Catholic leaders concealed or engaged in clergy sexual abuse around the world is bringing the issue back to the forefront in Berkshire County.

The Most Rev. Mitchell T. Rozanski, leader of the region’s Catholics, is inviting parishioners to speak out about abuse at sessions across the diocese, including one Feb. 10 in Pittsfield.

This past week, Rozanski joined other U.S. bishops in a Chicago suburb for prayer and reflection about the clergy abuse crisis, at the urging of Pope Francis.

On Feb. 6, Rozanski will hold the first of four events billed as “listening and dialogue sessions.”

The topic: the sex abuse crisis in the church, which gathered steam in 2018 with the fall of several cardinals, including Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, and actions by attorneys general in at least two states.

“These sessions will allow the faithful to make their concerns known, offer observations and ask questions of the Bishop and diocesan officials who will join him,” the Springfield Diocese said in a post on its news website.

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SIOUS CITY (IA)
Pilot-Tribune

January 7, 2019

By Daba Larsen

The Diocese of Sioux City on Friday issued a statement of apology to victims of sexual abuse by members of its clergy, including George McFadden, who served at Storm Lake St. Mary’s in the 1950s and faced a litany of abuse allegations.

Much of the statement responded to allegations made at a recent small rally by a victim’s organization, and defended the diocese’s record in dealing with abuse allegations.

The diocese “would first like to apologize to all victims of abuse by members of the clergy. We are working to do everything we can to help victims who come forward. We want to help them feel a sense of justice and healing,” the statement reads. “We again encourage all victims, if you have not reported past or present abuse, to please come forward.”

A victim’s assistance hotline is available by calling 712-279-5610.

“We are diligently working on the release of a list of clergy who have substantiated allegations of sexual misconduct with minors against them. We sincerely hope this will help victims in their healing,” said Susan O’Brien, Director of Communications and Development. “Coordinating this list has taken longer than we expected as we review all of our records carefully. Taking into account advice received in our meeting with the Attorney General for the State of Iowa in early December and counsel provided by dioceses that have already released lists, we have made progress on our list and have a draft.”

Other dioceses had released such lists earlier as awareness of abuse by priests grew.

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ST. CLOUD (MN)
St. Cloud Times

January 7, 2019

By Stephanie Dickrell

A St. Cloud priest was the subject of a preliminary hearing in a criminal sexual conduct case Monday morning.

The Rev. Anthony Oelrich is charged with criminal sexual conduct in the third degree after he was accused of violating a state law that forbids clergy from engaging in sexual contact with anyone they are spiritually counseling.

The hearing will help Stearns County Judge Sarah Hennesy decide whether evidence of alleged instances of inappropriate sexual contact with other women could be used in the case.

Oelrich’s former parishioner and her husband testified about what they say was an ongoing sexual relationship Oelrich had with the woman. They contend the relationship started when Oelrich was an associate pastor at Sacred Heart Church in Sauk Rapids, where the woman and her previous husband were parishioners.

The woman testified she frequently sought spiritual counsel and advice from Oelrich regarding her marriage. She said she and Oelrich engaged in sexual contact numerous times for more than a decade, from the early 1990s into the 2000s. It continued through her divorce and into her second marriage.

She filed a report with St. Cloud police in 2016 regarding the relationship.

Her husband, who has known Oelrich since he and Oelrich attended college together, gave corroborating testimony to the ongoing relationship between his wife and Oelrich.

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SHERMAN OAKS (CA)
Daily Wire

January 7, 2019

By Paul Bois

A German Catholic Cardinal is taking heavy fire for blaming the preponderance of male-on-male sexual abuse in the Catholic Church on homosexual priests and bishops.

Speaking to Germany’s DPA news agency just a few days prior to his 90th birthday, Cardinal Walter Brandmüller said the homosexual nature of the Catholic sex abuse crisis has been “statistically proven.”

“What has happened in the church is no different from what is happening in society as a whole,” Cardinal Walter Brandmüller said. “The real scandal is that the Catholic church hasn’t distinguished itself from the rest of society.”

The Cardinal added that society “forgets or covers up the fact that 80% of cases of sexual assault in the church involved male youths not children” while noting that only a “vanishingly small number” of Catholic clergy had committed abuse between the 1940’s up until the 2000s.

According to The Telegraph, Cardinal Brandmüller’s comments were immediately and harshly condemned across the social media sphere and on homosexual news outlets, accusing the Catholic clergyman of inciting hatred against LGBT people.

“What a shameful way for the Catholic Church to relativise guilt and defame homosexuals. Disgraceful,” Ulf Poschardt, the editor of Welt newspaper, wrote on Twitter.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

January 7, 2019

ByJay Tokasz

The Buffalo Diocese has added the names of two priests to its list of clergy that it says have been credibly accused of child sexual abuse.

The Rev. Fabian J. Maryanski and the Rev. Mark J. Wolski are now included with 78 other diocesan and religious order priests that diocese officials acknowledged in 2018 had “substantiated claims” against them.

The diocese announced the update in a tweet late Monday morning.

A woman who said Maryanski repeatedly sexually abused her beginning in the 1980s when she was 15 had been urging the diocese for months to add Maryanski to its list of abusive priests. The diocese put out its first list of offending priests last March, with 42 names.

Maryanski, 77, was removed in May from active ministry, but the diocese didn’t add his name in November when it last released an updated list of 36 more offending priests.

The list now stands at 80 priests, and diocese officials have said that more names could be added.

Stephanie McIntyre, who said Maryanski abused her for years when she was a teenage parishioner at St. Patrick Church in Barker, received a $400,000 settlement offer in December from the diocese as compensation for the alleged abuse.

Following the diocese’s announcement Monday, she encouraged any other victims of Maryanski to come forward.

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BOSTON (MA)
WBUR Radio

January 7, 2019

By Lisa Mullins and Lynn Jolicoeur

On Sunday, Christians around the world marked the Epiphany — the end of the Christmas season. It’s a time that’s especially profound right now for many Catholics.

On the Epiphany 17 years ago, The Boston Globe published the first articles of its explosive expose about priests in the Archdiocese of Boston sexually abusing children and church leaders covering it up. In perhaps the worst year since the crisis erupted, 2018 saw a stream of painful revelations across the U.S. that highlighted the pervasive nature of the problem and the failure of the church to properly respond.

In July, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of the former archbishop of Washington, Theodore McCarrick — effectively stripping McCarrick of his title as cardinal — because of sexual abuse allegations against him.

A few weeks later, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro announced a grand jury had accused more than 300 priests in the sex abuse of at least 1,000 children.

Also in August, Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley launched an inquiry after two seminarians made allegations of a toxic culture at St. John’s Seminary in Brighton. The men cited sexual misconduct and intimidation among faculty and seminarians. The cardinal was criticized for assigning insiders to conduct the investigation. He later hired a former U.S. attorney to lead it.

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WARSAW (POLAND)
Reuters

January 6, 2019

Some Polish bishops should lose their jobs after Pope Francis receives a report next month that will accuse them of failing in their duty to report pedophile cases inside the country’s powerful Catholic Church, activists said on Monday.

The Roman Catholic Church worldwide is reeling from crises involving sexual abuse of minors in a number of countries including Chile, the United States, Australia and Ireland.

In devoutly Catholic Poland, debate on the issue has barely begun, but the anti-pedophilia foundation “Have no fear” is compiling a report on abuse and said it would soon inform Polish prosecutors of 20 previously unreported sexual crimes.

“By the end of January we will have a report documenting Polish bishops’ negligence which will be presented in February at the Vatican,” Joanna Scheuring-Wielgus, an activist and lawmaker from the small opposition party “Now”, told a news conference.

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ROME (ITALY)
Associated Press

January 7, 2019

Pope Francis says next month’s meeting of bishops from around the world aims to “shed full light” on clergy sex abuse and covers-ups.

Speaking to diplomats Monday at the Vatican, Francis called the abuse of minors “one of the vilest and most heinous crimes conceivable.” He said the church was working to combat and prevent abuse and its concealment, to uncover church hierarchy’s involvement and to deliver justice to minors who have “suffered sexual violence aggravated by the abuse of power and conscience.”

The Catholic Church’s credibility has been eroded by sex abuse by clergy and bishops and its often systematic concealment.

Francis called February’s meeting “a further step in the Church’s efforts to shed full light on the facts.”

His own handling of some cases has drawn criticism.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WGRZ TV

January 7, 2019

Two more priests within in the Buffalo Catholic Diocese have been added to the list of priests accused of child sexual abuse.

Rev. Fabian J. Maryanski and Rev. Mark J. Wolski were added to the list following an investigation by the diocese.

They say the allegations were substantiated enough to be added to the list.

There are now 80 priests within the diocese accused of abuse on the list.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Radio Free Asia

January 4, 2019

A handful of cases of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Myanmar that have been covered up for decades with victims choosing not to report the crime in the country’s “culturally closed” society have come to light, a respected priest said on Wednesday.

“We didn’t have a significant number of cases in Myanmar,” said Rev. Soe Naing. “We only heard one or two old cases that happened about 10, 15 years.”

He did not provide any details about the two cases or about any other findings of abuse. He said the victims were laypersons.

“Like similar allegations that came out around the world, some have accused the senior leaders of not taking action, protecting those who committed the abuses,” he told RFA’s Myanmar Service. “The cases came to light after so many years and the accused had given pledges not to make the same mistakes.”

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[The Salesians ignored abuse accusations against a missionary in Benin for three years]

MADRID (SPAIN)
El País

January 6, 2019

By Julio Núñez and Íñigo Domínguez

Dos voluntarios alertaron en un informe en 2013 de que en el centro de acogida que dirigía Juan José Gómez se cometían abusos sexuales entre menores

Los salesianos españoles desoyeron durante tres años las primeras acusaciones contra su misionero Juan José Gómez, denunciado por abusos de menores en su centro de niños de la calle en Benín, como informó EL PAÍS. Dos voluntarios que habían trabajado allí con una ONG salesiana presentaron un duro informe en 2013 en el que señalaban que los menores sufrían maltrato físico, recibían comida en malas condiciones, los de mayor edad abusaban sexualmente de los más pequeños y vivían todos en un ambiente de violencia constante. En el dossier, Gómez es acusado de dirigir prácticamente una “red mafiosa” que le servía para controlar todo lo que pasaba a su alrededor. Pero la orden no hizo nada. Portavoces de los salesianos justifican que “no consta” el informe y afirman no haberlo conocido ni recibido.

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[Vatican orders investigation of Spanish priest accused of abuses in France in 1970’s]

BARCELONA (SPAIN)
El País

January 7, 2019

By Oriol Güell

El Obispado de Terrassa abre el proceso después de que una víctima denunciara haber sido agredida sexualmente por el religioso

El Obispado de Terrassa investiga a uno de sus sacerdotes por un supuesto caso de abusos sexuales cometido en la diócesis de Beauvais, situada al norte de Francia. Aunque los hechos sucedieron hace más de tres décadas, entre los años 1974 y 1977, la víctima ha dado ahora el paso de denunciarlo ante las autoridades eclesiásticas.

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[Lay people meet, call for end to sexual abuse cover-ups in the Catholic Church]

CHILE
BioBioChile

January 5, 2019

By Manuel Cabrera and Mario Vera

Un llamado a terminar con el encubrimiento de abusos sexuales realizaron los laicos de Chile, quienes esta sábado y domingo se encuentran realizando el primer Sínodo Laical en Santiago. Bajo el lema “Otra Iglesia es Posible”, más de 350 delegados laicos de Arica a Punta Arenas, se están dando cita en el Santuario del Padre Hurtado para reflexionar en torno a la crisis de la Iglesia.

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[Man who accused Luis Felipe Egaña questions his resignation from the priesthood: “It seems like a wash of image”]

CHILE
BioBioChile

January 6, 2019

By Felipe Delgado

Con dejo de molestia por la respuesta entregada por la Diócesis de Talca, el denunciante de abuso sexual del excapellán de Carabineros Luis Felipe Egaña, rompió el silencio y se manifestó contrario a la explicación entregada para justificar la salida del sacerdote, quien habría cometido actos impropios contra su persona en el año 1985.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

January 7, 2019

Major change at Catholic Church leadership level in Ireland is imminent as almost a third of the 26 dioceses on the island are scheduled to have new bishops appointed over the next year or two. This is due to incumbents reaching the mandatory retirement age of 75.

Among the eight dioceses concerned are some of the most influential in the Irish church, including in Dublin, Cork and Galway. Bishop of Cork and Ross John Buckley is already 79, four years past retirement. In Galway Bishop Brendan Kelly will be 73 next May.

But it is in Dublin where the starkest change is likely as its two auxiliary bishops will both be 75 this year: Bishop Ray Field in May and Bishop Eamonn Walsh in September.

Meanwhile, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin will be 74 in April. If precedence is followed he too could be replaced this year by a coadjutor archbishop (with right to succeed) as happened when he was appointed Coadjutor Archbishop of Dublin in 2003, succeeding Cardinal Desmond Connell in 2004.

In Ferns Bishop Denis Brennan will be 75 in June; the dioceses of Achonry, Kilmore, and Dromore remain vacant; and 80-year-old Bishop John Kirby is still on duty in Clonfert.

As the average age of the Irish Catholic priest is 70 (for current Irish bishops it is 66), Church authorities now have an age factor to consider as well as a talent issue when it comes to appointing new bishops from a diminishing pool.

It probably means a further reaching to the religious congregations, as with the appointment of Bishop of Raphoe Alan McGuckian (65) in 2017, the first Jesuit appointed to the Irish Episcopal Conference, and Archbishop of Cashel Kieran O’Reilly (66), a member of the Society of African Missions.

He was appointed Bishop of Killaloe in 2010 and moved to Cashel and Emly in 2015.

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CHAMPAIGN URBANA IL
News Gazette

January 7, 2019

U.S. Catholic bishops, meeting as a group in suburban Chicago, get what could be described as a severe scolding from the pope. His message seemed directed particularly at bishops in Illinois who recently were content to blame their predecessors for the clergy abuse scandal in the church.

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall as the Catholic bishops of the U.S., meeting in Mundelein, read through a highly critical letter sent to them last week by Pope Francis. His key message was that without personal humility and Gospel-inspired ways of responding to clergy abuse victims, “everything we do risks being tainted by self-referentiality, self-preservation and defensiveness.”

Indeed, that self-preservation instinct came through clearly from many of the bishops in Illinois after Attorney General Lisa Madigan issued a preliminary report in December that said that the church had seriously understated the number of priests in Illinois who had been accused of abuse.

Madigan’s report said the six Illinois dioceses “have lost sight of both a key tenet” of policies laid out by the church as well as “the most obvious human need as a result of these abhorrent acts of abuse: the healing and reconciliation of survivors.”

Soon after Madigan’s report was released, the local dioceses each issued statements that solemnly apologized for the past abuse but uniformly threw past bishops, priests and administrators under the bus.

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MONTPELIER (VT)
VTdigger

January 6, 2019

Editor’s note: This commentary is by Michael K. Smith, a practicing Catholic who was the secretary of administration and secretary of human services in Vermont under former Gov. Jim Douglas.

This past year has been a tumultuous time for the American Catholic Church.

In Pennsylvania, a grand jury alleges that over the course of the last 70 years the leaders of the Catholic Church covered up the sexual abuse of 1,000 children, and possibly a thousand more. The attorneys general in several more states are now investigating abuse by Catholic priests in their states.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the former Vatican ambassador to the U.S., called on Pope Francis to resign. He accused the pontiff, and other high-ranking church officials, of covering up the sexual misconduct of Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, D.C.

And recently, just before U.S. bishops were to vote on a package of reforms aimed at increasing transparency to curb sexual abuse in the church, an edict from the Vatican halted any action. There are two schools of thought as to why the Vatican intervened. Most observers thought it was done to prevent an action that went beyond reforms the Vatican felt comfortable with. But to others, it was a way for the Vatican to prevent actions that did not go far enough.

To most Catholics their leaders are sending mixed messages. On the one hand, they are promising to come clean and take further steps to curb sex abuse in the church, but then on the other hand, they are seemingly taking small steps to achieve that goal.

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NEW YORK (NY)
WCBS Radio 880

January 6, 2019

The New York Archdiocese is looking at expanding who might be eligible for clergy abuse compensation.

As of today, only those abused at the hands of clergy ordained in the diocese were eligible to apply for compensation under the Independent Reconciliation and Compensation programs, but an expansion could be coming.

“We heard from enough during the first two phases of the IRCP program that we realize there could well be a pressing need for this,” New York Archdiocese spokesman Joseph Zwilling said.

Zwilling says they’re in talks with several other religious orders, including the Jesuits, Dominicans and Franciscans to include clergy not ordained in the diocese as well.

“Cardinal Dolan has required that we take a very careful look at this,” Zwilling said. “That we discuss it with the heads of the religious orders and see if there is some way that we’d be able to expand the IRCP.”

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
Daily Mail

January 7, 2019

By George Martin

Pope Francis vowed justice for victims of clerical sex abuse Monday, describing paedophilia as one of the ‘vilest’ crimes ahead of a historic global meet on the crisis embroiling the church.

‘I cannot refrain from speaking of one of the plagues of our time, which sadly has also involved some members of the clergy,’ he said in his annual address to ambassadors to the Holy See.

‘The abuse of minors is one of the vilest and most heinous crimes conceivable. Such abuse inexorably sweeps away the best of what human life holds out for innocent children, and causes irreparable and lifelong damage,’ he said.

Francis swore to ‘render justice to minors’, and said a meeting of the world’s bishops in February was ‘meant to be a further step in the church’s efforts to shed full light on the facts and to alleviate the wounds caused by such crimes’.

A litany of child sexual abuse scandals has rocked the Catholic church, which has 1.3 billion followers around the world.

In December the pontiff had vowed the church would never again treat abuse allegations without ‘seriousness and promptness’, calling on abusers to hand themselves in to police.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

January 7, 2019

By John L. Allen Jr.

At a time when the US under President Donald Trump is pursuing an aggressive “America first” approach to foreign policy and populist forces elsewhere are likewise urging a primary focus on national interests, Pope Francis on Monday delivered a stirring defense of a “multilateral” approach to diplomacy seeking the collective common good.

“An indispensable condition for the success of multilateral diplomacy is the good will and good faith of the parties, their readiness to deal with one another fairly and honestly, and their openness to accepting the inevitable compromises arising from disputes,” the pope said.

“Whenever even one of these elements is missing, the result is a search for unilateral solutions and, in the end, the domination of the powerful over the weak,” Francis said.

At the same time, Francis also acknowledged the clerical sexual abuse scandals currently rocking the Catholic Church around the world, expressing determination to pursue a path of reform.

“The abuse of minors is one of the vilest and most heinous crimes conceivable,” the pope said. “Such abuse inexorably sweeps away the best of what human life holds out for innocent children and causes irreparable and lifelong damage.”

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PARIS (FRANCE)
Reuters

January 2019

The Roman Catholic archbishop of Lyon goes on trial on Monday charged with failing to act on historical allegations of sexual abuse of boy scouts by a priest in his diocese. Cardinal Philippe Barbarin is the highest-profile cleric to be caught up in the paedophile scandal inside the Catholic Church in France, and will stand trial alongside five others from his diocese.

While most of the recent focus in the Church’s global abuse crisis has been on Australia and Chile, Barbarin’s trial puts the spotlight on Europe’s senior clergy again, just as Pope Francis prepares to host a meeting of senior bishops from around the world in Rome next month to discuss the protection of minors.

Barbarin is accused of failing to report allegations of sexual abuse in the 1980s and early 1990s by Father Bernard Preynat – a priest who has admitted sexual abuse, according to his lawyer, and is due to go on trial later this year.

The charges carry a potential three-year prison sentence and fines of up to about $50,000.

Barbarin told the newspaper Le Monde in August 2017 that he had never concealed allegations against Preynat, but acknowledged shortcomings in his handling of them.

‘I myself realise that my response at the time was inadequate,’ he said.

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ROSARIO (ARGENTINA)
Crux

January 7, 2019

By Inés San Martín

Speaking on background, a Vatican official told Crux in early December that when the crisis of clerical sexual abuse explodes in Pope Francis’s native Argentina, the situation would be dramatic.

Odds are he wasn’t referring to the recently disclosed allegations of abuse against two priests from the Monasterio del Cristo Orante, or the Monastery of the Praying Christ in the province of Mendoza, some 700 miles from Buenos Aires, closer to Chile than to the Argentine capital, but that doesn’t make it any less dramatic.

Of a clear traditionalist tint, with daily Mass in Latin and the monastic tradition of silence firmly upheld, pilgrims and the merely curious are greeted with a sign describing the place not as a “touristic destination, a camping site nor a place for a picnic,” but as a “house of prayer.”

Yet as of Thursday, the monastery is no longer primarily a place of quiet contemplation. Instead, it’s become a closed-off structure resembling a medieval fortress, as the archbishop of Mendoza deemed the accusations to be credible enough to merit further investigation. The prelate, Marcelo Daniel Colombo, said the measure was “preventive” and “temporary.”

Two priests are currently in prison and awaiting trial, accused of sexually abusing a former student of the community who was a minor at the time and tried to enter the community in 2009. The alleged abuses are said to have continued until 2015, when the young man was 23. The two accused are today over 50.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

January 6. 2019

By Rick Kambic

In the final day of a weeklong retreat intended for U.S.-based Roman Catholic bishops to pray and reflect at a Mundelein seminary, small groups of protestors lined up outside the front gate to protest church officials’ handling of sexual abuse allegations.

Two groups took different actions Saturday afternoon, but police said officers stationed in the neighborhood issued no warnings and made no arrests.

First was a group of about 50 who said they were from Old St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Chicago, according to Mundelein Police Chief Eric Guenther. He said the group mostly prayed on the grass for two hours before leaving in the early afternoon.

A second group arrived later and was led by Dakotah Norton, a former Mundelein trustee who resigned amid crisis in 2017. The protesters wielded colorful signs that prompted drivers to honk in support or yell criticism at the group of about 13.

“This is an entity that’s supposed to be trusted,” said Topacio Hernandez, who said she lives in Waukegan but grew up in Mundelein, of the Catholic Church. “I have a child now, and I read these articles and I’m appalled by the inactivity.”

Police said a third group traveled to Mundelein but Guenther said its leaders decided to hold a conference inside a local hotel and promised not to approach the seminary without first applying for a permit.

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KALINOWKA (POLAND)
Reuters

January 6, 2019

By Marcin Goclowski and Andrew R.C. Marshall

The former Catholic priest of the Polish village of Kalinowka is serving three years in jail for molesting five schoolgirls. But Marta Zezula, a mother whose testimony helped convict him, says the priest’s victims are the ones made to feel guilty.

“We are witches … because we have pointed at the priest,” Zezula fumed as she shoveled straw into a chaff cutter in her barn in the tiny settlement in eastern Poland.

Many parishioners believe she and other mothers of those molested “simply convicted an innocent man”, she said.

Home to about 170 people, Kalinowka is a short drive from the main road, but feels more remote. The Holy Cross church, built in 1880, sits on a hill overlooking rolling farmland and forests full of deer.

Krystyna Kluzniak, hurrying into the well-kept church on a chilly November evening, said people should give the jailed priest a break. “The priest was cool and we miss him,” she said.

The priest, who cannot be named under Polish law, is now on trial again, charged with molesting another child. His lawyer, Marek Tokarczyk, said he denies the allegations. “We need a fair trial,” Tokarczyk said.

Similar scandals have shaken the Catholic Church and split communities in the United States, Ireland, Australia and elsewhere.

But Poland is one of Europe’s most devout nations, where most people identify as Catholics and the Church is widely revered. Priests were active in the fight against communism and in 1989, led by a Polish pope, John Paul II, the Church helped overthrow Communist rule.

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GRAND ISLAND (NE)
KSNB TV 4

January 6, 2019

By Danielle Davis
According to a statement on the Grand Island Diocese web site, the patrol arrested Fr. John Kakkuzhiyil for first degree sexual assault on an adult.

In the statement, Bishop Joseph Hanefeldt said he informed parishioners in Ord and Burwell December First that the priest was struggling with alcoholism and depression.

On December 6th, Kakkuzhiyil entered a drug and alcohol treatment program at CHI Health St. Francis in Grand Island. Hanefeldt put Kakkuzhiyil on administrative leave December 15th when the bishop learned that the State Patrol was investigating the priest. Kakkuzhiyil was dismissed from the treatment program on Wednesday, January 2nd. Hanefeldt then learned that the priest had been arrested by the State Patrol.

This is the full statement from the Grand Island Diocese:

“Bishop Hanefeldt has learned today, January 2, 2019, that Fr. John Kakkuzhiyil, a priest of the Diocese of Grand Island, has been placed under arrest by the Nebraska State Patrol in Grand Island and charged with first-degree sexual assault of an adult.

Most recently Fr. Kakkuzhiyil served as pastor of our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church in Ord and Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Burwell. On December 1, 2018, Bishop Hanefeldt offered Mass in Ord and Burwell asking the parishioners to pray for Father Kakkuzhiyil for his continuing struggles with depression and alcoholism.

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NEWARK (NJ)
Star-Ledger

January 6, 2019

New Jersey has an archaic, soul-mangling law that prevents most victims of sex abuse from seeking justice in civil court – no matter what their age, without regard to whether their assailant was a clergyman, a Little League coach, or Uncle Fred.

Many states have fixed this problem. But a half-dozen proposed solutions have failed in New Jersey since 2002, and when lawmakers fail in this particular area, they effectively protect child predators rather than the abuse victims.

It’s time our legislative leaders acknowledge that choosing rapists and their enablers over children is a lamentable departure from decency. They must learn from the tragedy that exploded in Pennsylvania last summer, when a grand jury found that 1,000 children had been sexually abused by more than 300 priests in six Roman Catholic dioceses over 70 years, and that the crimes were concealed by church officials.

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YORK (PA)
York Dispatch

January 6, 2019

It’s been more than four months since Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro released a stunning grand jury report that documented decades of abusive behavior against children by Catholic priests.

The allegations were astounding: An estimated 300 assailants were alleged to have accosted more than a thousand young victims over a span of some 60 years. Seemingly no part of the state, including York County, was left unscathed.

Even decades into the ongoing shame that is the Roman Catholic Church’s continued failure to adequately acknowledge and atone for the sins of its fathers, the details of the 1,356-page report were shocking.

They have also been motivating.

As the Associated Press reported last week, churches across the country have followed Pennsylvania’s lead and are engaged in what the story called “an unprecedented public reckoning.”

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SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
Salon.com

January 6, 2019

By Matthew Rozsa

Last week Pope Francis sent a letter to American bishops who met for a spiritual retreat at Mundelein Seminary in Illinois in order to urge them to address the child sex abuse crisis among priests.

“The church’s credibility has been seriously undercut and diminished by these sins and crimes, but even more by the efforts made to deny or conceal them,” Pope Francis explained in his letter, according to CNN. He also denounced clergymen who have responded to child sex abuse accusations against their colleagues with “a modus operandi of disparaging, discrediting, playing the victim or the scold in our relationships, and instead to make room for the gentle breeze that the Gospel alone can offer.”

At one point in his letter, Pope Francis wrote that “God’s faithful people and the Church’s mission continue to suffer greatly as a result of abuses of power and conscience and sexual abuse, and the poor way that they were handled, as well as the pain of seeing an episcopate (body of bishops) lacking in unity and concentrated more on pointing fingers than than on seeking paths of reconciliation.”

Pope Francis’ letter was well-received by Pennsylvania state Rep. Mark Rozzi, who was sexually abused by a priest as a child and has spent much of his political career fighting for reforms that will protect child sex abuse victims everywhere, whether they were harmed by priests from the Catholic Church or other individuals and institutions.

“It seems like he wants to hold these priests and bishops accountable, and now he’s saying that this will never happen again in our church. And we’ve been waiting to hear those words for 30, 40, 50, 60 years,” Rozzi told Salon. “And we’re just hoping that there’s some action behind those words, that he’s really meaning what he’s saying and that for victims, we want this to end. We don’t want anybody else to be hurt by this.”

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CHICAGO (IL)
The Globe Post

January 1, 2019

By Timothy D. Lytton

Recent revelations that U.S. bishops are still concealing allegations of clergy sexual abuse made headlines this past summer and again this Christmas season. A grand jury investigation in Pennsylvania found that bishops in that state failed to report abuse committed by 300 priests against 1,000 children. A report by the Illinois attorney general concluded that bishops in the state withheld the names of more than 500 priests accused of sexually abusing minors.

The U.S. Catholic hierarchy is once again asking forgiveness and promising reforms to earn back the trust of parishioners and the American public. Bishops from across the country are meeting north of Chicago during the first week of January for a spiritual retreat of quiet reflection to “seek wisdom and guidance from the Holy Spirit” and to “pray for the survivors of sexual abuse.” A few weeks later, in February, the presidents of bishops’ conferences around the world will gather in Rome for a Vatican summit on the crisis to launch “a worldwide reform.”

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CONROE (TX)
KTRK ABC 13

January 4, 2019

By Shelley Childers

More than two months after Father Manuel La Rosa-Lopez walked out of the Montgomery County Jail, investigators walked into the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston offices to collect evidence in their case against the Catholic priest.

In his first interview since that November raid, Montgomery County’s Special Crimes Bureau Chief Tyler Dunman said they found evidence to suggest the church was withholding information when their investigation began.

“We’ve sent several subpoenas for documents related to La Rosa-Lopez that we believed were at the Archdiocese and we received some small amount of documents back. After the search warrant, what we found was there were a great deal of more documents that were still there that they had not turned over to us,” said Dunman.

He tells ABC13 Eyewitness News they collected 15-20 boxes of documents, including paperwork from the church’s secret vault.

“It’s frustrating, because what we’ve heard is that ‘We’re going to fully cooperate and disclose,’ and all that sort of thing. That’s what we’ve heard from the church and that’s just not been our experience thus far,” Chief Dunman said.

La Rosa-Lopez is charged with four counts of indecency with a child involving two separate children while he was working at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Conroe. Both alleged victims are now adults.

The criminal investigation began after each victim filed a report with the Conroe Police Department in August 2018.

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[Former priest sentenced to six months for sexual assault in Saint-Etienne]

FRANCE
Le Monde

December 21, 2019

L’octogénaire a abusé de jeunes garçons pendant des années lors de camps de vacances d’été qu’il organisait en Savoie.

Un ancien prêtre de 85 ans a été condamné, vendredi 21 décembre, par le tribunal correctionnel de Saint-Etienne à dix-huit mois de prison, dont six mois ferme, pour des agressions sexuelles sur un mineur dans les années 1990.

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HUNTINGTON (IN)
OSV Newsweekly

January 6, 2019

By Paul Senz

During the summer of 2018, the Church in the United States was devastated by revelations of sexual abuse and the subsequent deluge of allegations, the likes of which had not been seen since the “Long Lent” of 2002 in the wake of the Boston Globe’s investigations.

Between the report of “credible and substantiated” accusations made against then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, as well as the many claims that would be made in the following weeks, and the report of the Pennsylvania grand jury regarding the handling of abuse accusations by dioceses across the state, the Church was drowning with this millstone hanging about its neck.

It is no secret, nor any surprise, that the laity have felt betrayed by these revelations. Many are asking questions such as: “How did this happen? How did McCarrick advance so far and become so influential, when ‘everybody knew’? How did these bishops continue to move around and enable serial abusers? Why, Lord, did you let this happen?”

Some commentators have (in broad terms) observed that the scandals that broke in 2002 were largely issues of misbehavior by priests, whereas the 2018 scandals are more markedly betrayals on the part of bishops. This has also left many faithful priests feeling abandoned, betrayed and heartbroken. But, by a great grace, it has also strengthened the resolve of many priests to be holy — and for this we give thanks. For it’s more obvious than ever before that the Church needs holy and faithful priests.

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IRONDALE (AL)
National Catholic Register

Janauary 6, 2019

By Father Paul Scalia

Over the past six months the Church has suffered horrid revelations of clergy sexual abuse, homosexual activity, and attendant cover-up. These scandals have understandably prompted some to call for an end to celibacy in the Catholic Church. It would seem that the discipline no longer serves us well, and indeed might be the source of our woes. Of course, we should not quickly jettison a practice so deep in the Church’s history and so strongly recommended by our Lord and his Apostles (see Matthew 19:12; 1 Corinthians 7:25-40; Revelation 14:4). Perhaps in this season, in the light of Christ’s Epiphany, we can reflect upon this sacred discipline, which the Church has always referred to as a treasure, not a burden.

The Feast of the Epiphany is about God’s sudden self-manifestation or, from another perspective, our sudden perception about him. To borrow from the Christmas Preface, with Christ’s birth “a new light of [his] glory has shown upon the eyes of our minds.” The Word made flesh is revealed as a light to the nations, present in the Magi: “On entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage” (Matthew 2:11).

Celibacy and the Epiphany

Celibacy itself is something of an epiphany – that is, a sudden manifestation or revelation. Until Jesus Christ, it was virtually unknown. Some, but few, of the prophets appear to have been celibate (and Hosea might have desired to be). These men are significant not so much as exceptions that prove the rule but as types of the One to come. The chaste, celibate Christ is a new way of God manifesting himself. The Child in the manger will be celibate, not as an accidental feature of His life but to reveal something essential about Himself and His mission; to manifest Himself as the Bridegroom of the Church.

Our Lord’s birth is also the epiphany of spiritual generation in the world. Prior to his coming, abstaining from marriage and therefore from procreation made no sense because the Messiah was to be born of Jewish blood. Thus, every man desired to have descendants. In Bethlehem, something new appears. The new light of Christ has revealed a new kind of birth, that of the “children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13). Of greater importance now is not physical generation but spiritual. The essential thing is to be born anew, or “from above” (John 3:3).

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[Bishop Jorge Concha, apostolic administrator of Osorno: “There is little contact with Juan Barros, a couple of phone calls”]

CHILE
La Tercera

January 6, 2019

By María José Navarrete

El prelado cuenta que en esta diócesis ya no se habla mucho de Juan Barros, pero que de todos modos su huella sigue presente.

Entre días agitados de actividad pastoral y visitas a comunidades más lejanas, Jorge Concha Cayuqueo, obispo auxiliar de Santiago y actual administrador apostólico de Osorno, reflexiona sobre lo que han sido sus siete meses en el cargo. De hecho, una de sus principales tareas, asegura, continúa siendo disipar la “tensión” de la diócesis, luego de que el 11 de junio de 2018 el Papa Francisco aceptara la renuncia del obispo Juan Barros y lo pusiera a él al frente.

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[Osorno lay people on Barros case: “What happened moved Catholics”]

CHILE
La Tercera

January 6, 2019

By MJ Navarrete

Fieles de La Serena y Santiago afirman que a raíz de este caso ahora hay organizaciones en todo Chile.

“Fue gracias a los laicos de Osorno, quienes desde el primer día se opusieron al nombramiento de Barros, que finalmente se logró que él saliera”, afirma categórico el vocero de los Laicos de Santiago, Osvaldo Aravena.

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[Between Rengo and María Pinto: the new life of the controversial Bishop Juan Barros]

CHILE
La Tercera

January 6, 2019

By MJ Navarrete and S. Rodríguez

Tras su salida de Osorno, hace siete meses, solo se le ha visto dos veces en público. Hoy el prelado, quien hace un año se mostraba junto al Papa y que terminó gatillando la crisis de la Iglesia chilena, pasa sus días entre su familia y visitas a un monasterio.

En el fundo San Emilio, ubicado en un sector rural de Curacaví, aún recuerdan cuando el obispo Juan Barros Madrid celebraba misa en la pequeña capilla del lugar. Es un templo ubicado en un camino polvoriento, entre plantaciones de choclos, un colegio -el único del sector- y un par de casas. Pero eso fue hace años. Ya no se le ve por esos rumbos. Dicen que ahora frecuenta la vecina localidad de María Pinto, donde reside su papá, a una hora de Santiago.

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TRAVERSE CITY (MI)
Record Eagle

January 6, 2019

The Catholic Church and its practice of protecting pedophile priests are again in the public forefront. The pope announced that all pedophile priests are to turn themselves in. Why has it taken the pope so long to order this? The church officials know the identities of all the pedophile priests.

The pope’s proclamation is part of a public relations effort to try and reestablish the church’s credibility. The church continues to cover up the conduct of pedophile priests and ignore the suffering of victims.

The church is using the playbook used by officials of the Trump organization — now that the church has been caught, it will cooperate to mitigate the punishment for its conduct. The church is attempting to say it is accepting its moral and legal responsibility for the cover-up of pedophile priests. In yet another form of hypocrisy, the pope “thanks” the victims for coming forward. The church knows who the victims are and is unwilling to extend anything to them resembling sympathy.

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BOSTON (MA)
The Associated Press

January 5, 2019

A former Boston priest who was convicted of sexually abusing an altar boy on trips to Maine years ago has been scheduled for sentencing late this winter.

Seventy-six-year-old Ronald Paquin was found guilty of 11 of 24 counts of gross sexual misconduct in November. The Journal Tribune reports Paquin is scheduled to be sentenced at York County Superior Court in Alfred, Maine, on March 5 with a tentative time of 1 p.m.

Two men testified during Paquin’s trial that they were altar boys when Paquin invited them on trips in the 1980s and repeatedly assaulted them.

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SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA)
news.com.au

January 1, 2019

By Tom Rabe and Phoebe Loomes

Victims of child sex abuse in NSW can now sue the church after the state government removed a legal roadblock used by institutions to avoid compensating survivors.

From January 1 churches will no longer be able to use the “Ellis defence” as a way of avoiding paying compensation to victims.

In 2007 former altar boy John Ellis lost a landmark civil action against the Catholic Church over child sex abuse after it successfully argued it had no “legal personality” and was not a proper defendant.

Mr Ellis is relieved survivors will now be able to “hold institutions to account”.

“We are now going to see a pathway to justice for survivors of abuse that they haven’t had in the past,” Mr Ellis told AAP.

“It’s been a long, long battle,” Mr Ellis said.

Removing the legal defence was a recommendation of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse.

NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman said the changes to the law meant all survivors of child sex abuse had the same access to compensation through civil litigation — no matter the organisation responsible.

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LANCASTER (PA)
LancasterOnline

January 6, 2019

An Associated Press review found that over “the past four months, Roman Catholic dioceses across the U.S. have released the names of more than 1,000 priests and others accused of sexually abusing children in an unprecedented public reckoning spurred at least in part by a shocking grand jury investigation in Pennsylvania.” Nearly 50 dioceses and religious orders “have publicly identified child-molesting priests in the wake of the Pennsylvania report issued in mid-August, and 55 more have announced plans to do the same over the next few months, the AP found.” That represents more than half of the nation’s 187 dioceses.

The grand jury report on child sexual abuse in Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania has had a powerful impact across the United States.

It’s a bit ironic then — and very sad — that we continue to wait for our own General Assembly to act in a meaningful way on the grand jury’s recommendations.

The report was seismic, revealing that 301 “predator priests” in six of the state’s eight Roman Catholic dioceses had abused more than 1,000 children over seven decades.

It triggered a U.S. Department of Justice investigation, and more than 1,450 calls to the state clergy abuse hotline.

And beyond Pennsylvania, as the AP found, “nearly 20 local, state or federal investigations, either criminal or civil, have been launched since the release of the grand jury findings. Those investigations could lead to more names and more damning accusations, as well as fines against dioceses and court-ordered safety measures.”

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NEW YORK (NY)
Crux

January 5, 2019

By Christopher White

Six months after the scandal surrounding former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick first came to light – wherein accusations of sexual abuse from a former altar boy prompted subsequent revelations of abuse and misconduct – Crux has learned that the Vatican is now investigating a total of three cases of abuse against the former archbishop of Washington, one of which has yet to be publicly reported.

In June 2018, the Archdiocese of New York announced that a review board had substantiated claims of abuse against McCarrick by a former altar boy at Saint Patrick’s who reported two incidents of abuse dating back to 1971 and 1972.

In response, the Vatican suspended McCarrick from public ministry pending an investigation by the Holy See.

The following month, the New York Times first reported the case of James Grein, the child of close family friends of McCarrick, who alleged the then-priest commenced years of abuse against him beginning in the 1970s when he was 11 years old.

Since then, multiple accusations of abuse and misconduct against adult seminarians have been reported, and on July 28, Pope Francis took the highly unusual step of accepting McCarrick’s resignation from the College of Cardinals.

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[Analysis: Patriarchal pederasty, homophobic patriarchy]

SPAIN
El País

January 5, 2019

By Juan José Tomayo

El silencio episcopal ante las agresiones sexuales de sacerdotes durante 40 años contrasta con su locuacidad contra el colectivo LGTBI

A pesar de los numerosos casos de sacerdotes y religiosos pederastas que aparecen a diario en los medios de comunicación y de las reiteradas denuncias de las víctimas por la inacción de los obispos españoles ante tamaño y extendido crimen, estos siguen minusvalorando la gravedad del problema. El último en restarle importancia ha sido el nuevo obispo de Ávila, ex secretario general de la Conferencia Episcopal Española y miembro del Opus Dei, José María Gil Tamayo, con motivo del ocultamiento durante 63 años, por parte del Vaticano, de las agresiones sexuales de Marcial Maciel, fundador de los Legionarios de Cristo.

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[Mexican Church faces the Pope’s summit on pedophilia while fending off victims of Maciel]

MEXICO
El País

January 4, 2019

By Georgina Zeregaj and Martín Cullell

La Legión de Cristo enfrenta una denuncia por daños morales de algunos afectados mientras negocia la reparación con otros

José Barba, exlegionario de Cristo y víctima de Marcial Maciel, depredador sexual y fundador de la orden, pasó varios años sin ir a comulgar. Unos meses atrás, en pleno torbellino por los abusos en la Iglesia chilena, volvió a asistir a una misa en Ciudad de México y salió indignado: “El sacerdote no pronunció ni una palabra sobre los casos de pederastia”. Hace quince días regresó a esa misma iglesia y esta vez el sacerdote sí mencionó algo sobre el tema: “Dijo que solo era un granito negro dentro del arroz”, recuerda.

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[Laity ask for modernization of the church and await audience with Pope – VIDEO]

CHILE
Emol TV

January 4, 2019

Trinidad Castro, presidenta y fundadora del movimiento “Todos Somos Iglesia” entregó su mirada de la crisis de la institución y las acciones tomadas para generar cambios desde el mundo laical.

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[Pope expels a priest who abused a minor in 1985]

CHILE
BioBioChile

January 4, 2019

By Emilio Lara

La tarde de este viernes, la Diócesis de Talca anunció que el Papa excluyó del estado clerical y de las obligaciones propias del sacerdocio al presbítero Luis Felipe Egaña Baraona. El exreligioso supo el 2 de enero que Francisco había aceptado su solicitud de dejar el ministerio, petición que realizó a través de una carta.

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[Insunza and Ortega, specialists in Legionaries: “In Chile they acted with O’Reilly as they did with Maciel”]

CHILE
La Tercera

January 4, 2019

By Sebastián Minay

“Maciel fue sancionado porque Ratzinger tuvo la voluntad que Wojtyla no”, subrayan los periodistas y autores de “Legionarios de Cristo en Chile. Dios, dinero y poder” (2008) luego que El Vaticano reconociera tardíamente que tenía papeles sobre la historia pederasta del fundador de la Legión desde los ’40. “Para Juan Pablo II, además, los abusos sexuales eran antes un pecado que un delito”, explican. Y apuntan que el recientemente expulsado irlandés de nacimiento aún es visto como inocente por algunos, pese a su condena por abusos sexuales.

Hace 21 días, el 14 de diciembre, John O’Reilly debió salir del país, expulsado tras cumplir una pena por abus0 sexual contra una alumna del Colegio Cumbres. La escena final de la caída de una de las piezas principales de Los Legionarios de Cristo -que en la cúspide su era de gloria gozaba de fuertes redes entre empresarios y políticos- fue sucedida a los pocos días de otra, vinculada a numerosos escándalos de pederastía protagonizados por el fundador de la orden, Marcial Maciel Degollado: El Vaticano reconocía recién que existían documentos sobre ello desde la década de 1940, que se habían ocultado.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Daily News

January 6, 2019

By Michael Gartland

Two Catholic dioceses in New York are considering expanding the criteria that allow victims of clergy sexual abuse to seek compensation from the church.

Under the proposed changes, the Archdiocese of New York and the Rockville Centre Diocese would allow for molestation at the hands of clergy not ordained in those dioceses to be covered under their Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Programs.

As it now stands, only clergy ordained within each respective diocese can be held liable for accusations.

“There is some serious movement toward including the religious order priests,” a source familiar with the discussions said.

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BUENOS AIRES (ARGENTINA)
Buenos Aires Times

January 5, 2019

Officials from the Vatican confirmed yesterday that an Argentine bishop who resigned suddenly in 2017 and then landed a top administrative job at the Holy See, is under preliminary investigation after priests at his former diocese in Salta province accused him of sexual abuse and other misconduct charges, including abuse of power.

The case could become yet another problem for Pope Francis, who is already battling to gain trust from the Catholic flock over his handling of sex abuse and sexual misconduct.

In a statement to The Associated Press news agency yesterday, Vatican spokesman Alessandro Gisotti stressed that the allegations against Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta had only emerged in recent months, nearly a year after Francis created the new position for him as “assessor” of the Holy See’s office of financial administration.

Local outlets this week pointed to a bombshell report by the El Tribuno de Salta newspaper, which raised serious questions about the bishop’s conduct.

At the time of his resignation, Zanchetta had only asked Francis to let him leave the northern Argentine diocese of Orán because he had difficult relations with its priests and was “unable to govern the clergy,” Gisotti said

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
Associated Press

January 2, 2019

By Jennifer McDermott

A state lawmaker will try to extend the time limit for filing child sex abuse lawsuits in Rhode Island, with support from the House speaker.

Democratic Rep. Carol Hagan McEntee said Wednesday that she’ll introduce a bill next week to extend the limit for filing civil suits to 35 years, from seven years.

“It gives people time to come to grips with what happened to them and muster the strength to file a lawsuit,” she said. “Seven years is not long enough.”

Democrat Nicholas Mattiello announced Tuesday after he was re-elected House speaker that he’ll work with McEntee on her proposal.

“I hope and expect that we will pass legislation this year that will benefit the victims of sexual assault,” Mattiello said in a statement Wednesday. “I have had discussions with Rep. McEntee in the off-session and we have agreed to work together to achieve a resolution to this important issue.”

Mattiello said he’ll look closely at the approach used in Massachusetts, which has a 35-year limit for civil actions.

McEntee proposed eliminating the statute of limitations altogether last year for child sex abuse civil suits. Her sister, in testifying for that bill, said she was abused by a priest as a child.

The Catholic Diocese of Providence said then that any change should apply only to cases taking place after the new law is passed, and not retroactively. McEntee said she won’t agree to that.

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CUDDALORE (INDIA)
Express News Service

January 5, 2019

By Nirupa Sampath

Delivering its verdict in the sensational 2014 rape case involving two minor girls from Cuddalore and several prostitution gangs from across the State, the District Mahila Court on Friday found 16 people guilty under various charges including abduction, sexual assault and rape. The court will pronounce the quantum of punishment on Monday.

According to Special Public Prosecutor K Selvapriya, one of the victims, then aged 13, was studying in a government school at Tittakudi. She used to visit an idly shop nearby and developed friendship with the woman who owned the shop. In 2014 during Pongal, the minor girl casually visited the woman’s house where she saw the woman having sex with an unknown man. Shocked over this, the girl tried to immediately leave the place but was caught by the woman. The woman then manipulated the girl into having sex with the unknown man.

Subsequently, the woman forced the girl to have sex with her husband and three other men. When the girl started protesting, the woman asked her to bring another girl if she was to be let off. Agreeing to this, the victim brought a minor girl, then aged 14, from her neighbourhood, to the woman’s house, only to be raped and sexually assaulted by the men of Tittakudi gang.

In the following months, the girls were trafficked to various places in the State such as Salem, Panruti, Vadalur, Virudachalam and Ulundurpet, and were abused by several men.

The police investigation had also revealed that the girls were forced to watch pornography and raped by a church priest when they were under the custody of the Tittakudi gang.

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ALFRED (ME)
Kennebec Journal

January 5, 2019

By Liz Gotthelf

A former Massachusetts priest found guilty of sexually abusing a young altar boy on trips to Maine in the late 1980s has been scheduled to be sentenced on March 5.

Ronald Paquin, 76, was convicted in York County Superior Court on 11 of 24 counts of gross sexual misconduct on Nov. 28.

Keith Townsend, 44, of Seabrook, New Hampshire, the victim in the incidents related to the charges, has spoken publicly about the abuse. Townsend testified in court in November that Paquin befriended him by giving him alcohol and letting him drive his car without a license.

Townsend said the first incident of sexual abuse occurred when he was 8 or 9 years old, and he was repeatedly sexually abused by Paquin during trips with the then priest to a Kennebunkport campground where Paquin had a trailer.

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WINCHESTER (VA)
The Winchester Star

January 5, 2019

By Josh Janney

Del. Wendy Gooditis, D-Clarke County, said she will introduce legislation to combat child sexual abuse when the 2019 General Assembly legislative session begins Wednesday.

During a press conference in Leesburg on Friday, Gooditis said she will introduce four bills that would:

• expand the definition of sexual abuse,

• require the clergy to report suspected abuse,

• retain records of complaints about child sexual abuse for a longer period of time,

• enforce a harsher penalty for those who commit domestic violence in the presence of a minor.

Gooditis said her brother, at the age of 11, was raped multiple times by the leader of a children’s activity. Her brother later attempted suicide multiple times, and suffered from PTSD and alcoholism. He was found dead in March 2017, shortly after she announced her candidacy for the House of Delegates. Gooditis hopes to protect other children from a similar fate.

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TORONTO (CANADA)
The Globe and Mail

January 4, 2019

By Zosia Bielski

Marianne Zettel’s devout Catholic mother told her she could trust a priest if she was in trouble.

Ms. Zettel was in trouble. Starting at the age of 9, she’d been sexually abused by a member of her extended family. Feeling overwhelming shame about the abusive encounters, the girl turned to the church, joining altar service.

“I wanted to redeem myself with God,” said Ms. Zettel, now 56. “I was so mixed up, guilt ridden and worried what God thought of me.”

During that time frame, two priests molested her, Ms. Zettel said. The abuse continued until she was 13 and left her with a painful question: Why would three adults do this to her?

Today, Ms. Zettel has found answers through an unlikely avenue: helping men who sexually offend. Ms. Zettel volunteers with Community Justice Initiatives (CJI), a Kitchener, Ont.-based organization that facilitates dialogue between victims and offenders – part of a delicate process known as restorative justice.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
KDKA TV

January 4, 2019

By Andy Sheehan

Before the end the month, the Diocese of Pittsburgh will be launching a website for its compensation fund, allowing victims with credible allegations of clergy sex abuse to submit claims and get quick approval of settlements.

“The bishop and the church are eager, as part of this healing process, for survivors of abuse to be of support for them in so many ways, especially through this compensation program,” said Fr. Nicholas Vaskov, executive director of communications for the diocese.

The fund will be in the several millions of dollars, but the question has been, who will pay?

In announcing the program last month, Bishop David Zubik said it will not come from the collection basket.

“No funds for this program will come from our campaign for The church Alive, nor from Catholic Charities, nor from parishes, schools or any other funds designated for specific use,” Bishop Zubik said.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

January 5, 2019

By Haidee V Eugenio

Religious order Sisters of Mercy settled with six Guam clergy sex abuse plaintiffs, who filed separate notices of voluntary dismissal of claims in federal court on Friday.

Attorney Delia S. Lujan Wolff, counsel for the plaintiffs, said the filing of notices was a result of a settlement between the six plaintiffs and defendants Sisters of Mercy.

More: Concerned Catholics hopes Apuron sentence will be upheld

More: Religious order Carmelites added as defendant in Guam clergy sex abuse lawsuits

More: Louis Brouillard dies at 97

More: A few settlements in nearly 200 clergy sex abuse cases

Wolff would not say the type of settlement reached, including whether it’s monetary or not.

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ROME (ITALY)
Religion News Service

January 5, 2019

By David Gibson

Walter Kasper practically bounds down Borgo Pio as he heads to lunch at a favorite trattoria a few blocks from the Vatican, a broad smile on his face. The 85-year-old German churchman appears to be irrepressibly happy, even when he is dodging clueless tourists and annoying motorbikes. (At one point he does have a few words of reproval for the guy on a motorino who suddenly pulls in front of him, parks and walks away — this is, after all, Rome.)

Such cheeriness is not necessarily what one expects from Kasper, who for the past few years has been blasted by church conservatives for his close association with Pope Francis and the pontiff’s more inclusive, pastoral and compassionate approach to Catholics and, indeed, to the world.

Kasper is certainly used to the jostle of Vatican debates. He is one of the most influential Catholic theologians of the past generation — a rival for the title might be his more famous countryman, erstwhile sparring partner and colleague in the Roman Curia, Joseph Ratzinger, aka Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.

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But Kasper has endured a different kind of criticism since becoming so closely identified with Francis, Benedict’s successor.

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SIOUX CITY (IA)
KCIM Radio

January 4, 2019

The president of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), Tim Lennon, led a meeting in Sioux City last weekend that urged victims to come forward to report abuse. He also called for the resignation of now Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, who leads the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Lennon said while DiNardo was Bishop of the Sioux City Diocese, he covered up sexual abuse allegations there and in Houston.

Lennon came forward over 30 years after being raped by Peter Murphy in 1960. He claims he received only a vague letter of apology. The Sioux City Diocese has since distributed a press release, saying there is much more to the story than Mr. Lennon detailed.

They expressed deep regret over what he had to go through at the hands of Murphy, but also point out that a settlement was reached with Lennon in August of 2016. In addition, Lennon penned two letters to the Diocese, in the first saying, “[I am] pleased to receive your offer of support and compensation. I accept with thanks to you and the review board. […] I also appreciate your apology. Your expression and apology are meaningful and important to me.”

In the second, he again wrote of his gratitude for the monetary award and what it could do to further his healing as well as the apology, even though he was also feeling sadness at reliving his suffering. Bishop R. Walker Nickless responded to Lennon, saying even though the settlement cannot undo the harm, they pray he will find a sense of resolution, restitution and justice.

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GET RELIGION

Janury 4, 2019

By Terry Mattingly

Has anyone heard from Archbishop Theodore “Uncle Ted” McCarrick lately?

Actually, the fallen cardinal has been in the news in recent days. But some may ask if this new news about the old McCarrick news breaks new ground. The bottom line: With the world’s Catholic bishops poised for a headline-grabbing February summit focusing on the sexual abuse of children, does it matter what is happening with McCarrick?

I would argue that McCarrick still matters, in part because of the ties that bind him to key Catholic leaders steering efforts to solve the abuse puzzle. That’s a key theme in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in). Another question: Did the silence that surrounds the McCarrick scandal (Hello Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano) play any role in the sudden exit of Vatican press maestro Greg Burke? Hold that thought.

Let’s start with the Associated Press report from those relatively dead news days last week: “Lawyer: McCarrick repeatedly touched youth during confession.” Did anyone see that headline in their local newspapers a few days after Christmas? Here are key parts of the overture:

The Vatican’s sexual abuse case against ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has expanded significantly after a man testified that the retired American archbishop sexually abused him for years starting when he was 11, including during confession.

James Grein testified … before the judicial vicar for the New York City archdiocese, who was asked by the Holy See to take his statement for the Vatican’s canonical case, said Grein’s attorney Patrick Noaker. …

Grein initially came forward in July after the New York archdiocese announced that a church investigation determined an allegation that McCarrick had groped another teenage altar boy in the 1970s was credible. Grein’s claims, first reported by The New York Times, are more serious.

A crucial new claim is that some of the abuse took place during the sacrament of confession. What, pray tell, does Catholic canon law say about that?

Let’s keep reading, before we return to material addressed in this week’s podcast.

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HARTFORD (CT)
Hartford Courant

January 4, 2019

By Jenna Carlesso

As the Archdiocese of Hartford prepares to release the names of clergy members accused of sexual abuse, Archbishop Leonard Blair has arranged a series of Masses dedicated to the hot-button subject.

Three “Masses of reparation” have been scheduled for the coming months, with the first set for Jan. 27 at St. Bartholomew Church in Manchester. In the Catholic tradition, an act of reparation is a prayer for pardon and forgiveness, not only for one’s own misdeeds, but for others’ offenses as well.

The mass at St. Bartholomew will begin at 2 p.m. A second service is scheduled for 11 a.m. at St. George Church in Guilford on Feb. 16, and a third for 7 p.m. at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Harwinton on March 26.

“It is certainly true that offering a Mass is not of itself sufficient to address the grievous suffering and betrayal experienced by victims,” Blair said in a statement Friday. “Our archdiocese is committed to doing everything humanly possible to heal their wounds. That includes efforts like public acknowledgement and apology, counseling and support groups, and a renewed invitation on my part to meet personally with the victims.”

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ROME (ITALY)
The Daily Beast

January 4, 2019

By Barbie Latza Nadeau

When 53-year-old Gustavo Óscar Zanchetta abruptly left his post as bishop of Orán in Argentina in July 2017, he cited “health reasons” and a need for “treatment.” Many were concerned that he might have a terminal disease, according to local press reports at the time. After all, the popular bishop didn’t even seem well enough to hold a farewell mass.

Zanchetta tendered his resignation to Pope Francis, who often sits on such matters for months. Instead, the pope granted it within three days, according to the Associated Press, which broke the story, and soon Zanchetta was on his way to Rome, first spending time at an undisclosed location in Spain.

Now safely in Vatican City where he enjoys diplomatic immunity, the bishop stands credibly accused of sexually harassing young seminarians in the home country he shares with Francis.

Not long after resigning, Zanchetta showed up on Pope Francis’ doorstep in Rome, apparently miraculously cured. Francis, who had made his fellow countryman a bishop right after becoming pope in 2013, naturally helped him out. Francis, back when he was Cardinal Jose Bergoglio and archbishop of Argentina, apparently knew Zanchetta well. He gave the younger man a high-ranking position in the Argentinean Bishops Conference when he was president of the organization. It made sense that he would find a place for a fellow Argentine in the Curia in Rome.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Economist

January 4, 2019

ON DECEMBER 31ST Pope Francis’s spokesman, Greg Burke, announced that he and his deputy, Paloma García Ovejero, had both resigned. It was the latest in a string of upheavals and mishaps in the Vatican’s PR operations at a time when Francis’s increasingly embattled papacy needs to get its messages across in an effective manner. Next month bishops from around the world are to assemble in Rome for a crucial summit on the clerical sex-abuse crisis which is tearing at the Catholic church and alienating many believers.

As Lady Bracknell would doubtless comment, to lose one spokesperson may be regarded as a misfortune, but to lose both looks like carelessness. By slipping out the news on the last day of the year, Mr Burke and Ms García Ovejero tried to minimise the effect of their resignations, but their departures were nevertheless embarrassing for Francis. He was already under fire from three directions. Many Catholics question whether their leader understands the degree of public outrage over clerical sex abuse, and particularly over the efforts of some high-ranking prelates to protect predatory priests. Traditionalists abhor his doctrinal flexibility. And there is hostility in parts of the Vatican to the pope’s plans for a shake-up of the central administration of the Catholic church, which could involve moving some operations away from Rome. In part, the opposition is down to bureaucratic inertia and the safeguarding by Vatican bigwigs of their powers and privileges. But some officials appear to have legitimate grouses over a lack of consultation and information.

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ROME (ITALY)
Catholic News Agency

January 4, 2019

Bishop Gustavo Oscar Zanchetta, an Argentine native appointed to the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See in 2017, was accused last autumn of sexual abuse, the Holy See announced Friday.

Bishop Zanchetta had resigned as Bishop of Orán Aug. 1, 2017, slightly more than four years after his appointment there.

Alessandro Gisotti, interim Holy See press officer, said Jan. 4 that “at the time of his resignation there had been against [Bishop Zanchetta] accusations of authoritarianism, but there had been against him no accusation of sexual abuse … the accusations of sexual abuse date to this autumn.”

Bishop Zanchetta, 54, was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Quilmes in 1991. He remained there until his 2013 appointment by Pope Francis as Bishop of Orán.

Gisotti noted that the bishop was not removed from Orán, but that he himself chose to resign, saying the decision was “linked to his difficulty in managing relations with the diocesan clergy and in very tense relations with the priests of the diocese,” and that he had “an incapacity to govern the clergy.”

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NEW YORK (NY)
Commonweal

January 4, 2019

By John Gehring

Confronting the most profound crisis the Catholic Church has faced in centuries, U.S. bishops are meeting for a week-long spiritual retreat at Mundelein Seminary outside of Chicago to grapple with how clergy sexual abuse and a culture of cover-up have damaged their moral credibility. Pope Francis came up with the idea, urging bishops to go on retreat when he met with a delegation from the U.S Conference of Catholic Bishops at the Vatican in September. In a sign of how important the pope considers this unusual gathering, he sent Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the papal household, to direct it.

I’m not completely unsympathetic to those who argue we could use less prayer and more action from church leaders. Lay Catholics have every right to be angry and impatient with the episcopal malpractice, the sins, and the crimes committed by those who are supposed to be shepherds. I’ve also grown weary of the incompetence, the ugly scapegoating of gay priests, and the tone-deafness of bishops who seem to cast blame on everyone but themselves for the wreckage at their feet. But any authentic reform and renewal, whether personal or institutional, has to start with discernment, repentance, and conversion of heart. Dismantling a clerical culture that leads to abuse of power can’t simply be a technocratic endeavor, a managerial shuffling of the deck. In a lengthy letter he sent to the bishops on retreat, Pope Francis describes a “crisis of credibility,” calls for a “new ecclesial season,” and underscores core themes that have characterized his papacy since the beginning.

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ORD (NE)
Associated Press

January 4, 2019

A central Nebraska prosecutor says she intends to charge a Roman Catholic priest who’s been accused of sexually assaulting a woman.

Valley County Attorney Kayla Clark said Friday that she didn’t yet know which charges the Rev. John Kakkuzhiyil (kah-kuh-ree-AL’) will face because she hasn’t reviewed all the investigation reports. He was arrested Wednesday and remains in custody. It’s unclear whether he has an attorney.

The woman who accused him has obtained a protection order against the 63-year-old cleric. She says he assaulted her in November. She says she went to his Ord home on business and blacked out after having a couple drinks with him.

The Grand Island Diocese says Kakkuzhiyil has been serving as pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church in Ord and Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Burwell. The diocese says Bishop Joseph Hanefeldt placed Kakkuzhiyil on leave Dec. 15 upon learning that the Nebraska State Patrol was investigating the allegations.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Daily Caller

January 4, 2019

By Joshua Gill

A German cardinal lambasted the furor over the Catholic Church’s global sex abuse crisis as hypocritical, saying society perpetuates the same crimes outside the church.

Cardinal Walter Brandmueller’s comments, published Friday, come in the wake of a church-commissioned report that revealed German clergy abused no less than 3,677 people from 1964 to 2014. The report prompted an apology from one of Germany’s leading bishops, but Brandmueller was quoted Friday as telling reporters that “society is behaving pretty hypocritically” in response to the sex abuse crisis.

“What happened in the church in terms of abuse is nothing different from what happens in society in general,” Brandmueller said, according to The Associated Press.

Brandmueller also stated that society overlooks what he believes to be the true cause of the abuse crisis: homosexuality among the clergy.

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[Cruz and the intense vetting to choose Ezzati’s successor: “The Pope is not going to make a mistake in naming someone in Santiago”]

CHILE
El Mostrador

January 2, 2019

El periodista, y una de las víctimas de Fernando Karadima, explicó la tardanza en el relevo de Ezzati al mando del arzobispado de Santiago, argumentando que el Vaticano está chequeando a fondo los antecedentes de los posibles reemplazantes, por lo que el cardenal “va a salir luego, pero no tan luego como quisiéramos”. Además, destacó que junto al “imputado” Ezzati, otros obispos tiene sus días contados en la jerarquía de la Iglesia católica chilena y “que no sorprenda que algunos terminen en la cárcel”.

Juan Carlos Cruz, una de las víctimas de Fernando Karadima, se refirió al futuro arzobispo de Santiago señalando que el cardenal Ricardo Ezzati “va a salir luego, pero no tan luego como quisiéramos”.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WBEN/AP

January 4, 2019

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo says the sale of the bishop’s mansion is moving forward as part of efforts to compensate victims of clergy sexual abuse.

The money will go to the diocese’s Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Fund, which Bishop Richard Malone set up in March to benefit victims of past sexual abuse by priests.

The diocese expects to pay at least $11 million.

Malone’s former mansion is under contract to be sold, but the diocese would not disclose any information on the buyer or sale price. A source told the Buffalo News the buyer is local.

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Get Religion
January 4, 2019

By Julia Duin

With all the sex abuse scandals among Catholic hierarchy that have been in the news since June, there’s been a quiet wondering as to how bad the situation really is outside the West. Have Catholics in Asia and Africa been spared these horrors?

Now there is a story out this week from the Associated Press about nuns in India, it appears the problem has been bad over there as well — but with a twist. In this story, the victims are nuns.

My first trip to India in 1994 landed me in Kerala, where much of the AP story was based and where the first Catholic diocese was established in 1329. About one-fifth of the population in this southern state is Catholic and churches are visible everywhere.

The major city in Kerala is Cochi and the story opens in a small town just southeast of there.

KURAVILANGAD, India (AP) — The stories spill out in the sitting rooms of Catholic convents, where portraits of Jesus keep watch and fans spin quietly overhead. They spill out in church meeting halls bathed in fluorescent lights, and over cups of cheap instant coffee in convent kitchens. Always, the stories come haltingly, quietly. Sometimes, the nuns speak at little more than a whisper.

Across India, the nuns talk of priests who pushed into their bedrooms and of priests who pressured them to turn close friendships into sex. They talk about being groped and kissed, of hands pressed against them by men they were raised to believe were representatives of Jesus Christ.

“He was drunk,” said one nun, beginning her story. “You don’t know how to say no,” said another.

At its most grim, the nuns speak of repeated rapes, and of a Catholic hierarchy that did little to protect them.

Depressingly, the story begins to sound like ones we’ve already heard.

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[“He drugged, robbed, and abused his own children:” accusations against the founder of The Legionaries of Christ were known by the Vatican more than 70 years ago]

CHILE
Publimetro

January 2, 2019

By Irene Ayuso

Por primera vez el Vaticano reconoce que sabía los abusos cometidos por Marcial Maciel pero no hizo nada

El prefecto de la Congregación para los Institutos de Vida Consagrada, João Braz, reconoció en una entrevista realizada por la revista católica Vida Nueva, que el Vaticano estaba en conocimiento desde 1943 de los archivos sobre abusos sexuales cometidos por Marcial Maciel, líder de los Legionarios de Cristo. El hombre expresó que quienes encubrieron la pederastia era “una mafia, ellos no eran Iglesia”. También señaló que “tengo la impresión de que las denuncias de abusos crecerán, porque solo estamos en el inicio. Llevamos 70 años encubriendo, y esto ha sido un tremendo error”.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

January 4, 2019

By Charles Collins

When Alessandro Gisotti, the interim head of the Vatican’s press office, greeted reporters on Feb. 2, he asked them for “patience” admitting he is likely to make some initial mistakes in a job with a steep learning curve.

The longtime Vatican Radio employee, who had most recently been running the social media for the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication, may seem an odd choice to replace the former Time magazine correspondent and Fox News personality Greg Burke, who resigned on Dec. 31.

The head of the press office has traditionally been known as the “papal spokesperson,” and since Spaniard Joaquín Navarro-Valls was appointed to the role in 1984, has been the public face of the Vatican as an institution.

Navarro-Valls, who served under both St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI until his resignation in 2006, held sway during perhaps the greatest change in media since the invention of television.

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[What facilitate abuses within the Church ?: Jesuits, Marists and the CECh prepare reports]

CHILE
La Tercera

January 3, 2019

By Vanessa Azócar

Durante enero el provincial de la Compañía de Jesús recibirá la primera versión del informe que elabora la Comisión especial de trabajo sobre abuso sexual de menores, instancia que integran laicos como la decana de sicología de la UAH Elizabeth Lira y el ex senador DC Patricio Walker.

Ocurre casi cada viernes pasadas las 13 horas en el Edificio Arrupe que alberga a la Compañía de Jesús en Calle Lord Cochrane 110. Hasta allí llegan la decana de la Escuela de Psicología de la Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Elizabeth Lira, la abogada Joanna Heskia, la psicóloga UC, Paulina Pérez, la terapeuta familiar Ana María Arón, el ex senador DC Patricio Walker, el sacerdote diosesano Jorge Murillo y el doctor en teología Carlos Schickendantz. El grupo busca responder una pregunta: ¿qué prácticas facilitan los abusos en la Iglesia?.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

January 3, 2019

by Zita Ballinger Fletcher

German Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising called for change in long-standing church tradition as the German bishops’ conference prepares for a workshop debate to “review” the issue of celibacy for priests.

In his homily at New Year’s Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady in Munich, Marx said the church must, “in light of the failure” surrounding the clergy sex abuse crisis, modify tradition in response to changing modern times.

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“I believe the hour has come to deeply commit ourselves to open the way of the church to renewal and reform,” Marx said, according to an audio* of the homily posted on the archdiocesan website. “Evolution in society and historical demands have made tasks and urgent need for renewal clear to see.”

The cardinal, who is president of the German bishops’ conference, said that current measures to address sex abuse are not enough without adapting church teachings. “Yes, matters are about development and improvement and prevention and independent reviews — but more is also demanded,” he said.

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[Trans woman testifies about alleged clergy sex abuse before Ecclesiastical Court]

CHILE
BioBioChile

January 3, 2019

By Emilio Lara and Nicole Martínez

Este jueves, a las 09:00 horas, declarará ante el Tribunal Eclesiástico Fran Noa Parra, una mujer trans víctima de abusos sexuales presuntamente por parte de un sacerdote franciscano. Su testimonio será recepcionado por el Arzobispado de Santiago y su entrega, a su juicio, corresponde a la culminación de una etapa que inició hace un año.

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KINGSTON (CANADA)
Kingston Whig-Standard

January 3, 2019

An American woman is alleging she was sexually abused by a group of nuns from a New Jersey convent – including an incident where she was given booze and drugs while being taught how to have sex with another woman.

Trisha Cahill told CBS News she was 15 when she revealed to a nun that she was reportedly abused by her uncle, who was a priest. The woman claimed she confided in Sister Eileen Shaw, telling her that her now dead uncle had sexually abused her starting at age 5.

What Cahill didn’t think at the time was that Shaw would allegedly be grooming her for something far worse.

“I would have done anything for her. I would’ve died for her,” said Cahill. “She gave me everything that was lacking that I didn’t even know I was lacking.

“I was so broken. She filled in all those pieces.”

Cahill said the nun began giving her drugs and alcohol and taught her how to have sexual relations with another woman. The woman said she would be with her friends during the day, but was “with this pedophile nun on evenings and on the weekends, and in the summer.

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[Chilean abuse victims call for action after revelation that Vatican concealed Maciel’s abuses for 63 years]

CHILE
BioBioChile

January 3, 2019

By Guido Focacci and Nicole Martínez

Víctimas chilenas de abusos sexuales por parte de sacerdotes de la Iglesia Católica pidieron acciones concretas de reparación y prevención al Vaticano, luego de que el prefecto de la Congregación para los Institutos de Vida Consagrada asegurara que el Estado Pontificio encubrió por 63 años los antecedentes de pederastia de Marcial Maciel.

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NEW YORK (NY)
VICE News

January 3, 2019

By Alex Norcia

As Francis issued some of his harshest words yet on the sex abuse crisis, a Cuban circus performer helped make him a meme.

Before his first weekly audience of 2019 on Wednesday, the man atop a once-mighty church, the one that has faced an unprecedented reckoning over systemic sexual abuse this past year, appeared to accomplish something remarkable: He spun a soccer ball on his finger for three seconds. Pope Francis seemed genuinely thrilled as it orbited on his limb, and, if you were just judging by the look on his face, you would have thought he was witnessing real magic—that he had just discovered something truly new on this planet. It was his burning bush. His smile was nearly childish, and totally sincere: Holy shit, you could imagine his interior voice saying, underneath his ecclesiastical hat, check me out!

It was a wonder to behold, especially for the internet. Not long after the clip had been uploaded, the successor of the apostle Peter was memed. That’s as much as he might hope for, I suspect, after a year of catastrophic revelations about abusive priests and cardinals, about broken reform efforts and payoffs, about lost faith and institutional decay. There he was, Pope Francis still, but instead of a rotating soccer ball balancing on his index finger, you had Earth, an uncooked pizza, a Harlem Globetrotters basketball.

You had lightening, sort of like the lightening Darth Sidious conjures to kill Jedi Master Samuel L. Jackson, leaving his hand.

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WINDSOR (CANADA)
Windsor Star

January 3, 2019

By Trevor Wilhelm

Bishop Ronald Fabbro has kicked two Windsor priests facing sexual assault allegations out of the London diocese.

In a notice to parishioners a few days before Christmas, Fabbro wrote with “great sadness” about the dismissals of Maurice Charbonneau and Andrew Dwyer.

“Neither Maurice Charbonneau nor Andrew Dwyer may present themselves as clerics or, in any way, represent the Diocese of London,” Fabrro wrote. “Anyone who observes that either individual is acting in a manner that is inconsistent with this directive is asked to advise my office immediately.”

The diocese said it doesn’t use the term “defrocked,” but added that both men have been “dispensed of the obligations of priestly ordination and permanently removed from the clerical state of priesthood.”

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BUENOS AIRES (ARGENTINA)
Associated Press

January 4, 2019

By Deborah Rey and Nicole Winfield

The Vatican has confirmed that an Argentine bishop, who resigned suddenly in 2017 for stated health reasons and then landed a top administrative job at the Holy See, is under preliminary investigation after priests accused him of sexual abuse and other misconduct.

In a statement to The Associated Press, Vatican spokesman Alessandro Gisotti stressed that the allegations against Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta only emerged in recent months, nearly a year after Pope Francis created the new position for him as “assessor” of the Holy See’s office of financial administration.

At the time of his July 2017 resignation, Zanchetta had only asked Francis to let him leave the northern Argentine diocese of Oran because he had difficult relations with its priests and was “unable to govern the clergy,” Gisotti said. Pending the preliminary investigation into allegations of sexual abuse underway in Argentina, the 54-year-old Zanchetta will abstain from work at the Vatican, he said.

But the case could become yet another problem for Francis, who is already battling to gain trust from the Catholic flock over his handling of sex abuse and sexual misconduct, stemming in particular from the scandal of ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Francis’ standing would take another hit if he personally intervened to help out a bishop from his native Argentina — finding a job for him during a Vatican hiring hold-down — and the man later turned out to have credible allegations of misconduct against him.

Zanchetta’s hasty departure from Oran on July 29, 2017 was mired in mystery. He didn’t celebrate a farewell Mass, as might be expected, and he issued a cryptic statement saying he had been suffering a “health problem” for some time, had just returned from the Vatican where he presented his resignation to Francis, and needed to leave immediately for treatment.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

January 4, 2019

By Elyssa Cherney

In the weeks since Attorney General Lisa Madigan released a scathing report faulting the Illinois Diocese for failing to investigate hundreds of allegations of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, a daunting question has lingered on the minds of parishioners: Which priests were accused?

Unlike a sweeping grand jury report in Pennsylvania that identified more than 300 predator priests this summer, the preliminary report released Dec. 19 by Madigan did not name the clergy members implicated in her probe or note the diocese where they worked.

Now, as U.S. bishops gather in suburban Mundelein for a spiritual retreat in response to the sex abuse scandal, two attorneys say they will expose the offenders known to them through handling hundreds of Illinois cases over nearly two decades.

The lawyers, Jeff Anderson and Marc Pearlman, announced Thursday their intentions to publish a report in early February that includes the names and photos of every clergy member accused by the 300 survivors they have represented. Anderson called Madigan’s report comprehensive and helpful, but said he needed to do his part to release the information he possesses.

“What isn’t private and what needs to be known and made public is the identities of every one of those offenders, many of whom are still out in the community,” Anderson said at a news conference in a downtown Chicago hotel as he stood between a man and a woman he is representing as abuse victims in a lawsuit against the state’s six Catholic dioceses.

The majority of their cases on behalf of survivors were settled out of court over the years, Pearlman said. In about two dozen of those cases, the perpetrators have not been publicly named by the church, though confidentiality agreements do not prevent disclosing their identities. Some cases involve allegations that arose after clergy members had died, Pearlman said.

Madigan’s bombshell report found such cases were among several other categories of allegations that the dioceses did not investigate. In addition, dioceses often did not investigate cases when a victim wanted to remain anonymous, only one complainant came forward or the clergy member previously resigned, Madigan found. The dioceses also failed to investigate clergy who were visiting priests from a religious order, referring the allegations instead to the order, the report said.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

January 4, 2019

By Jason Meisner

Longtime Ald. Edward Burke, one of Chicago’s most powerful figures and a vestige of the city’s old Democratic machine, has often been considered too clever and sophisticated to be caught blatantly using his public office to enrich himself.

But after years of dodging investigations while watching dozens of his colleagues hauled off to prison, Burke has been accused of crossing the line himself — and doing so in a quintessential Chicago way.

A federal criminal complaint unsealed Thursday charged Burke with attempted extortion for allegedly using his position as alderman to try to steer business to his private law firm from a company seeking to renovate a fast-food restaurant in his ward. The charge carries a maximum of 20 years in prison on conviction.

The complaint also alleged Burke asked one of the company’s executives in December 2017 to attend an upcoming political fundraiser for “another politician.” Sources identified the politician as Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who is running for Chicago mayor.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

January 4, 2019

by Michael Sean Winters

What will 2019 bring in the life of the church? Will Pope Francis be able to lead the way to a new era of episcopal accountability? If so, how will that cohere with other of his objectives such as increased synodality? Will the church in the United States begin to confront the degree to which some of its ministries have become a counterwitness to the Gospel and others a mere extension of the Republican Party, with all the ugliness that entails in the Age of Trump? Will the bishops even begin to know how to cope with the decline of Trump, in whatever form that takes, and prepare for the tsunami that awaits them once he is hurled from office? Will the Catholic left mature into the kind of force that can remain distinctively Catholic but also make an impact on the life of both church and state?

The clergy sex abuse mess has prompted more heat than light in the year just past, but I anticipate we will see a clear rejection of faux and foolish reform efforts and an embrace of some real ones. Nothing will come of the efforts of conservative zillionaire Tim Busch, who organized a conference on “authentic reform” of the church in which laypeople like himself, well-heeled in the wallet and a little light in theological depth, would come to the rescue and make the church in the U.S. into their own image, an image they know well from admiring it so much.

Equally barren will be some of the calls for reform from the left, such as that of former Rep. Tim Roemer whose solutions veered remarkably close to advocating lay trusteeism, which doesn’t work and isn’t Catholic. Fr. James Connell gets the prize for the worst single idea: He wants to take away the inviolability of the confessional. His argument rests on canonical analysis, not theology, most especially the theology of conscience which Pope Francis is so keen to revive. I can confidently predict that the pope will not let our venerable sacramental theology be tossed overboard by ideologically driven canonists.

Instead of these faux reforms, I will echo Mark Silk’s prediction at RNS: I am betting Pope Francis is going to find a way to make the February meeting of the presidents of all the episcopal conferences in the world work. I predict that meeting will yield some concrete proposals for adoption, with some variation, by local episcopal conferences and that in the course of the year, some clearer methods of holding bishops accountable at the Vatican will emerge. The February meeting may disappoint some in the U.S., even though it may advance the cause of child protection throughout the world. That may say more about the myopia of the U.S. church than it does about the pope’s determination to protect children.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Catholic News Service

January 3, 2019

By Joyce Duriga

To show support for the U.S. bishops as they gathered at the Mundelein Seminary at the University of St. Mary of the Lake near Chicago for a weeklong retreat in early January, members of lay ecclesial movements met at St. Mother Theodore Guerin Parish in Elmwood Park Jan. 3 to pray.

More than 70 people attended Mass and adoration at the parish as part of a larger effort of the 21 lay movements active within the Archdiocese of Chicago to support the bishops. Each group is taking a day to have its members pray during the bishops Jan. 2-8 retreat.

“We want to show them that we support them, that they are not alone in this,” said Renata Kaczor, co-chair of the archdiocesan committee for lay movements and a member of Domowy Kosciol (“Domestic Church”), dedicated to the sanctity of marriage. “We also want to ask God to help them, help us and everybody in the very difficult situation the church is going through now.”

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MIDDLETOWN (NY)
Times Record Herald

January 3, 2019

Ever since the scandal of priests sexually abusing young boys was exposed in Boston in 2002, the Catholic Church has demonstrated, in big ways and small, despite promises and proclamations from the pope and cardinals worldwide, that it is incapable or unwilling to conduct a thorough reckoning with its behavior.

Big ways: A recent grand jury investigation led by the Pennsylvania attorney general, identified nearly 300 “predator priests” dating back seven decades and accused church leaders of covering up for the abuses by returning priests to duty after treatment or reassigning them.

Small: The Archdiocese of New York told a California university that a Middletown priest had never been accused of sexual abuse of a minor and was fit to serve as a priest, even though it had paid compensation in one sexual abuse case and reopened a 15-year-old investigation into other allegations of sexual abuse against him.

The latter involves the Rev. Donald G. Timone, of the Church of St. Joseph on Cottage Street. He has been a visiting priest at John Paul the Great University in Escondido, Calif., for several years. He celebrated Mass, heard confessions, taught a class on Catholic spirituality. He was supposed to teach another class this winter.

That’s not happening, not since the university learned of the archdiocese investigation in The New York Times. The church’s inability to deal forthrightly with the issue in this case came in the form of a letter from the archdiocese’s director of priest personnel that Timone presented last month to the university. The letter vouched for Timone’s character and for his qualification “to serve in an effective and suitable manner as a priest.”

It also said “without qualification” that Timone had “never been accused of any act of sexual abuse or sexual misconduct involving a minor.”

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

January 3, 2019

As American bishops meet outside Chicago for a week of “prayer and self-reflection” the Vatican’s request, Pope Francis has sent a letter explaining what he hopes comes of this retreat. Unfortunately, his letter ignores the most critical issue of all: accountability for bishops who conceal sex crimes.

The Pope’s letter clearly shows the self-centeredness of Vatican officials. In one brief sentence, he mentions victims. But his concerns, in order, are that “the church has been badly shaken,” lay people have been “confused,” the “communion of bishops” has suffered and the church’s credibility has waned.

Only half-way through his letter does he mention what should be his highest priority: “protecting those in our care.”

The Pope’s letter is long on platitudes but short on the words that survivors and advocates want to read. Not once in his eight-page, 3,500+ word letter does Pope Francis speak to the urgent need for accountability for bishops who conceal clergy sex crimes.

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NEW YORK (NY)
NBC News

January 3, 2019

By Corky Siemaszko

Pope Francis delivered a blunt message Thursday to his American bishops — stop “playing the victim or the scold” and do something about the “culture of abuse” that has resulted in a crisis of credibility for the U.S. Roman Catholic Church.

Francis’ letter, which was dated Tuesday, was delivered as the bishops were at a weeklong spiritual retreat at the Mundelein Seminary north of Chicago.

“These have been times of turbulence in the lives of all those victims who suffered in their flesh the abuse of power and conscience and sexual abuse on the part of ordained ministers, male and female religious and lay faithful,” Francis wrote in his eight-page letter. “The Church’s credibility has been seriously undercut and diminished by these sins and crimes, but even more by the efforts to deny or conceal them.”

Instead of “helping to resolve conflicts,” Francis wrote the actions of the church thus far have “enabled them to fester and cause even greater harm.”

“We know that the sins and crimes that were committed, and their repercussions on the ecclesial, social and cultural levels, have deeply affected the faithful,” the Pope wrote.

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MONTPELIER (VT)
VTDigger

January 3, 2019

By Kevin O’Connor

Vermont Catholic Bishop Christopher Coyne, facing a rise in priest misconduct headlines and a fall in parishioner attendance, is set to hold a series of open meetings this month seeking public comment about the state’s largest religious denomination.

“Anybody’s welcome, not just Catholics,” Coyne said in announcing what he calls “part of a continuing effort to promote full transparency about Catholic matters in the state.”

Vermont’s Roman Catholic Diocese, the target of more than 40 clergy misconduct lawsuits in the past quarter-century, has a decades-long history of defying court orders and outside review.

That’s why Coyne, leader of the state’s 72 Catholic parishes since 2015, has made headlines by agreeing to work with law enforcement, releasing past child abuse victims from nondisclosure agreements and forming a lay committee to review clergy misconduct files and publicly release the names of abusers.

“I have no idea how the meetings are going to go, but I felt it was important to establish better two-way communication with people in the pews,” he said.

The bishop is basing the sessions on traditional Vermont town meetings.

“These meetings are ‘democracy in action’ because any citizen of the town may speak to the matters within the meeting or even propose matters for discussion,” he said in a separate statement to the state’s 118,000 Catholics. “The idea is that everyone present gets to hear what others have to say in order to come to some consensus about what the community as a whole should do.”

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DEKALB COUNTY (IL)
Daily Chronicle

January 3, 2019

By Katie Smith

A Chicago law firm has vowed to release the names of more than 300 Catholic clergy members with whom they’ve settled sexual abuse allegations.

Attorneys Jeff Anderson and Marc Pearlman, of Anderson and Attorneys, made the announcement at a news conference Thursday morning. They expect to release the report Feb. 11, complete with the names, histories and photos of each priest they’ve settled with over the past 20 years.

“There are over 300 survivors who had the courage to come to us privately and work with us,” Anderson said. “Most all of those offenders…we made known public. But not all of them.”

None of the settlements were confidential, Anderson said.

The attorneys also urged each of the Illinois Catholic dioceses to publicly identify more than 500 unnamed clergy members whose identities church officials intentionally keep under wraps, according to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan.

Last month, Madigan released the preliminary findings of her investigation of sexual abuse claims within the Catholic church and claimed to know of more than 500 unidentified clergy members accused of sexually abusing minors. The investigation is expected to continue under the eye of Illinois Attorney General-elect Kwame Raoul.

Madigan’s report did not include the accused clergy members’ names or confirm which Illinois diocese they belonged to.

The Catholic Diocese of Rockford responded to the report with skepticism, and said it has fully cooperated with the attorney general’s investigation.

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SAN LUIS OBISPO (CA)
Cal Coast News

January 3, 2019

The Monterey Diocese has released a report that identifies every Catholic priest they say has been credibly accused of child sexual abuse including a clergyman who worked in San Luis Obispo County.

The report, which lists 30 clergyman, includes former Mission San Luis Obispo Priest Alberto Battagliol. He allegedly molested several boys in the 1970s, but the allegations were not made public until several lawsuits were filed in 2003.

Battagliola worked as a priest at Mission San Luis Obispo from 1972 through 1974. In 1977, Battagliola was murdered in a San Francisco motel room.

In 2003, a 44-year-old San Luis Obispo man filed a lawsuit against the Monterey Diocese claiming that Battagliola sexually abused him when he was a 14-year-old altar boy.

None of the people listed in the report are still working for the diocese. Many of them are deceased.

A lawsuit filed in Los Angeles in October, alleges clergy officials at ten dioceses in California conspired to cover up sexual assaults within the church. The Diocese of Monterey responded with the release of the names of 30 priests who they determined molested children.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WKBW TV

January 3, 2019

By Charlie Specht

Buffalo Bishop Richard J. Malone has found a buyer for his palatial mansion on Oakland Place.

Buffalo Diocese spokeswoman Kathy Spangler confirmed Thursday that the mansion is under contract but would not identify the potential buyer.

“We will not disclose details until it has closed,” she said in an email.

Malone in April announced he was selling the mansion — owned by the diocese since 1952 and appraised at more than $1 million — to help compensate victims of clergy sexual abuse.

The diocese plans to pay at least $11 million in payments to victims through its settlement program. Internal documents obtained previously by 7 Eyewitness News show the diocese has a surplus of $48 million.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

January 3, 2019

By Terence McKiernan

Editor’s note: Following is a reprint, with permission, of a letter written to Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich from Terence McKiernan, president of BishopsAccountability.org. It is posted in full here.

Cardinal Blase J. Cupich
Archbishop of Chicago
Archdiocese of Chicago
835 N. Rush Street
Chicago IL 60611-2030

Your Eminence,

I am writing to you about the upcoming summit in Rome. One of your colleagues in planning the event, Cardinal Oswaldo Gracias, says that I should be worried, and I am. “Either it will be successful, or it will be a disaster for the Church.”

But while I write you this letter, you and your brother bishops are beginning a retreat at Mundelein led by Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, O.F.M. Cap., the Preacher to the Papal Household. This is the same Cantalamessa who once compared criticism of clergy abuse in the Church to “the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.” Survivors of clergy abuse are the retreat masters you need now.

You and Cardinal Gracias and Archbishop Scicluna and Fr. Zollner advised the conference presidents to “reach out and visit with victim survivors of clergy sex abuse in your respective countries prior to the meeting in Rome, to learn first-hand the suffering that they have endured.” This is good advice. Will Cardinal DiNardo start with La Rosa Lopez survivor J.H., or with M.V., who spoke to police about the “duplicity of Cardinal DiNardo”?

This is one problem with the summit. Many of the conference presidents are the wrong men for the job, and the people know it.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
The Times-Picayune

January 3, 2019

By Kim Chatelain

Pope Francis has called on Roman Catholic bishops in the United States to restore the church’s credibility, which has been left in tatters by a bourgeoning clergy abuse crisis, the Catholic News Agency reported.

In a letter dated Jan. 1 and released Thursday (Jan. 3) by the U.S. bishops’ conference, the pope insisted upon a “change of mindset” to help renew trust in the Catholic church.

“Clearly a living fabric has come undone, and we, like weavers, are called to repair it,” the pope wrote in the letter that was sent ahead of the U.S. bishops’ weeklong retreat at Mundelein Seminary, in the Archdiocese of Chicago.

The repair process must involve a “change of mindset” by bishops in relation to prayer, power, exercising authority, and handling money, the pontiff explained, with the change rooted in an acknowledgment of the “sinfulness and limitations” which necessitate God’s grace.

Acknowledging that the abuse scandals have diminished the credibility of the Church in the U.S., the pope said that a cover-up mentality “enabled them to fester and cause even greater harm to the network of relationships that today we are called to heal and restore,” the news agency reported.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Patriot News

January 3, 2019

By Ivey DeJesus

Billing them as “listening sessions,” the Harrisburg Diocese has announced that Bishop Ronald Gainer early this year will hold town hall style meetings to address a host of topics, chief among them the 2018 grand jury report on clergy sex abuse.

Gainer also plans to address the diocese’s response to abuse and its “path forward.”

Janet McNeal, who was recently appointed to oversee the diocese’s youth protection program will also participate in the meetings. McNeal is a retired Pennsylvania State Police captain.

The listening sessions will be held in January and February of 2019.

The Harrisburg Diocese is expected to launch in coming weeks a fund that will financially compensate victims of clergy sex abuse. Harrisburg’s program will operate independently of other dioceses, and will be overseen by attorney Kenneth Feinberg, who administered the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund as well as a similar compensation fund for the Archdiocese of New York.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Religion News Service

January 3, 2019

By David Clohessy

This week, America’s Roman Catholic bishops are gathering near Chicago for a retreat. This unusual high-level meeting comes quickly after their annual national get-together, in Baltimore last November, and just before a February meeting in Rome, where the highest-ranking Catholic prelates from across the globe will convene to address the same topic: clergy sexual abuse.

To some, this flurry of meetings may seem hopeful. But to those of us who’ve closely followed the church’s distressing self-inflicted scandal for decades, this seems depressingly familiar.

Why? Because virtually every time the crisis nears a boiling or tipping point, the Catholic hierarchy follows the basic same formula: Act shocked at recent revelations. Then schedule a meeting among themselves.

Over time, the formula has become more sophisticated: Structure each meeting slightly differently, so each can be called “unprecedented.” Throw in a papal apology (“We failed to protect the little ones … ”) and some tough talk (“We will no longer tolerate abuse … ”). Beg for forgiveness and patience. Then wait out the storm.

This formula has been used by bishops and cardinals and popes with surprising success for decades now. (It was in 1992 that the U.S. bishops first publicly discussed abuse as a group, seven years after the scandal first produced national headlines.)

It may not be a shrewd long-term strategy, but it works well enough to get embattled prelates through the short term. Public attention wanes, victims give up, secular authorities back off. Parishioners complain quietly but hunker down, keep going, keep giving and focus solely on their local parish, assuming the corruption is basically limited to the men at the top.

Sound undeservedly harsh? Consider this.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Associated Press

January 3, 2019

By Roxanne Garcia

Over the past four months, Roman Catholic dioceses across the U.S. have released the names of more than 1,000 priests and others accused of sexually abusing children in an unprecedented public reckoning spurred at least in part by a shocking grand jury investigation in Pennsylvania, an Associated Press review has found.

Nearly 50 dioceses and religious orders have publicly identified child-molesting priests in the wake of the Pennsylvania report issued in mid-August, and 55 more have announced plans to do the same over the next few months, the AP found. Together they account for more than half of the nation’s 187 dioceses.

The review also found that nearly 20 local, state or federal investigations, either criminal or civil, have been launched since the release of the grand jury findings. Those investigations could lead to more names and more damning accusations, as well as fines against dioceses and court-ordered safety measures.

“People saw what happened in these parishes in Pennsylvania and said, ‘That happened in my parish too.’ They could see the immediate connection, and they are demanding the same accounting,” said Tim Lennon, national president of the board of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP.

The recently disclosed accusations date back six or seven decades in some cases, with the oldest from the 1910s in Louisiana. Most of the priests were long ago removed from ministry. An AP examination found that more than 60 percent are dead. In most cases, the statute of limitations for bringing criminal charges or suing has run out.

Nevertheless, advocates say exposing molesters nearly two decades after the scandal first erupted in Boston in 2002 is an encouraging step, in part because it gives some victims a sense of vindication after decades of official silence or denials. Also, it could increase pressure on dioceses to set up victims’ compensation funds, as the church has done in Pennsylvania already. And it could result in the removal of molesters from positions outside the church that give them access to children.

“This is a milestone. We are getting closer and closer to what this ought to be, the true coming to terms that would have to be at a national level,” said Joe McLean, who filed a lawsuit with other victims seeking to compel the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to release files on alleged abusers nationwide.

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BOSTON (MA)
BishopAccountability.org

January 3, 2019

Cardinal Blase J. Cupich
Archbishop of Chicago
Archdiocese of Chicago
835 N. Rush Street
Chicago IL 60611-2030

Your Eminence,

I am writing to you about the upcoming summit in Rome. One of your colleagues in planning the event, Cardinal Oswaldo Gracias, says that I should be worried, and I am. “Either it will be successful, or it will be a disaster for the Church.”

But while I write you this letter, you and your brother bishops are beginning a retreat at Mundelein led by Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, O.F.M. Cap., the Preacher to the Papal Household. This is the same Cantalamessa who once compared criticism of clergy abuse in the Church to “the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.” Survivors of clergy abuse are the retreat masters you need now.

You and Cardinal Gracias and Archbishop Scicluna and Fr. Zollner advised the conference presidents to “reach out and visit with victim survivors of clergy sex abuse in your respective countries prior to the meeting in Rome, to learn first-hand the suffering that they have endured.” This is good advice. Will Cardinal DiNardo start with La Rosa Lopez survivor J.H., or with M.V., who spoke to police about the “duplicity of Cardinal DiNardo”?

This is one problem with the summit. Many of the conference presidents are the wrong men for the job, and the people know it.
Another problem, especially for you and your brother bishops in the United States, is that you are between a rock and a hard place – in your case, between Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Attorney General-elect Kwame Raoul on the one hand, and those African and Asian bishops who would rather try to avoid the abuse problem in their countries on the other. Any summit outcome that pleases the abuse deniers will enrage your people back home. Especially after the U.S. bishops were silenced by Pope Francis in Baltimore.

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GET RELIGION
January 3, 2019

By Terry Mattingly

I realize that it’s rare for me to run a think piece during the week. But let’s face it, the Paul Moses essay at Commonweal must be discussed — as journalists try to figure out what’s happening in, well, the Loggia.

We are talking about some very important tea leaves linked to the biggest religion-news story in the world, which is the Vatican’s ongoing efforts to handle interlinked scandals linked to clergy sexual abuse of some children, lots of teens and significant numbers of seminarians.

When watching the action unfold, I suggest that journalists keep asking this question: What would that great Catholic politico — Theodore “Uncle Ted” McCarrick — do in this situation?

The Commonweal headline references one of those stories that religion-beat pros just know is important, but it’s hard to explain to editors WHY it’s so important.

‘Like Cleaning a Sphinx with a Toothbrush’

Greg Burke Resigns from the Holy See Press Office

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CHICAGO (IL)
Associated Press

January 3, 2019

By Jeff Karoub

Pope Francis is encouraging U.S. bishops meeting near Chicago to unify as the Catholic church deals with a “crisis of credibility” stemming from the clergy sex abuse scandal.

In an eight-page letter addressed to the bishops and released to the media Thursday, Francis acknowledges “no response or approach seems adequate” to the crisis representing a grave threat to his papacy.

Still, he wrote, all church leaders must reckon with parishioners’ pain, heal internal divisions and devise specific approaches that go beyond “creating new committees or improving flow charts.”

Francis suggested the bishops hold the current weeklong retreat for prayer and spiritual reflection. The event at the Mundelein Seminary is a prelude to a high-stakes summit of the world’s bishops at the Vatican next month to forge a comprehensive response the crisis engulfing the church.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
WHTM TV

January 3, 2019

By Christine McLarty

If you have questions surrounding the Harrisburg Catholic Diocese clergy sex abuse report, you will soon be able to get answers.

During the next two months, Bishop Ronald Gainer is traveling to nine parishes where he will begin taking questions during an open forum series of seminars.

A diocese spokesperson says Gainer is looking forward to speaking with parishioners one-on-one to help them through this understanding process. During the meetings, the bishop will begin with opening remarks and then the floor will be open for questions about clergy sex abuse.

The grand jury report released in August uncovered sexual misconduct allegations against more than 300 priests in six Pennsylvania dioceses.

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