ABUSE TRACKER

JAMESTOWN (NY)
Post Journal

March 22, 2019

By Eric Tichy

Allegations of child sexual abuse against two priests with ties to Chautauqua County have not been substantiated following an investigation.

According to a statement released Thursday by Bishop Richard J. Malone of the Buffalo Diocese, the Rev. Robert A. Stolinski and the Rev. John J. Sardina are eligible to return to active ministry following an investigation by the Diocesan Review Board. The independent board recently met to consider reports by investigators tasked with reviewing allegations of abuse by priests.

Claims against the Rev. Ronald B. Mierzwa, however, were substantiated and he will remain on administrative leave while the investigation is reviewed by the Vatican in Rome, Malone said.

According to WKBW-TV, Mierzwa was the pastor of Holy Name of Mary Church in Ellicottville.

Stolinski, meanwhile, is a retired priest who served in the Jamestown area, including as chaplain at then-WCA Hospital. He was one of four priests placed on leave in June of last year amid an investigation by the Buffalo Diocese.

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JACKSONVILLE (FL)
News 4 Jax

March 21, 2019

By Corley Peel

“Credible allegations” of sexual abuse of a minor were made against Father William Malone, who served at a Jacksonville Catholic church, according to a release Thursday from the Diocese of St. Augustine.

Malone, who served in the Diocese of St. Augustine from January 1982 to March 1992, died in 2003, the release said. The cases of abuse occurred in the early 1980s at Sacred Heart Parish in Jacksonville.

According to the diocese, a thorough review of the claims was conducted by an independent investigator, who determined the accusations were credible.

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PUNTA CANA (DOMINICAN REPUBLIC)
NBC News

March 22, 2019

By Evelyn Gruber, Nicole Acevedo and Corky Siemaszko

A former Roman Catholic priest who was defrocked and convicted of molesting two boys in New Jersey has found a new vocation in a new location — teaching children English at a private school in this resort town.

The former priest, Hadmels DeFrias, 47, told the NBC News reporter who tracked him down that he is no longer a threat to minors and also claimed to be a bishop in the “progressive Celtic church.”

“I don’t see the children with those eyes anymore,” DeFrias said in an extensive interview outside the Colegio del Caribe school in Punta Cana, where he watched over dozens of young boys and girls while shielding himself from the sun with an umbrella.

“For me they are children and they need to be treated like children because that is what they are,” he said. “I don’t feel the attraction. I am not telling you that maybe someday it won’t be there, because I can’t predict the future.”

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BUFFALO (NY)
WKBW TV

March 21, 2019

By Charlie Specht

Bishop Richard J. Malone on Thursday returned a priest to active ministry despite a history of pornography problems and a looming federal investigation that may involve the priest.

Malone returned Rev. Robert A. Stolinski to “active ministry,” the diocese said in a statement, after abuse allegations against him “have not been substantiated.”

But the bishop’s own records — obtained by the 7 Eyewitness News I-Team — detail a long history of pornography found in rectories where Stolinski was living. The diocese made no mention of those incidences in its public statement Thursday.

Stolinski was sent to a “treatment center” in Canada twice but allegations continued to surface over the past two decades. He is retired but was allowed to hold a position “assisting clergy” at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church in Niagara Falls until his suspension last year, according to a church bulletin. It is unclear whether he will return to that church now that Malone and his diocesan review board has cleared him.

In 1987, when Father Joseph Bissonnette was murdered on Buffalo’s East Side, Stolinski was living in the same rectory and serving as chaplain at Erie County Medical Center.

“When the police investigated, they found a great deal of pornography (male homosexual pornography not involving children),” reads a passage in Bishop Malone’s “black binder” of diocesan secrets prepared for him by Terrence M. Connors and Lawrence J. Vilardo’s law firm when Malone became bishop in 2012.

“Father Stolinski was counseled,” the passage states, going on to describe financial problems with the priest. “He was then sent to Southdowns [treatment center] for analysis and counseling.”

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

March 22, 2019

By Inés San Martín

Continuing its efforts to fight clerical sexual abuse, the Archdiocese of Mexico City presented on Wednesday an Interdisciplinary Team for Attention to Victims, that involves priests, lay people and survivors, including the director of SNAP-Mexico.

The proposal is a concrete response to the Feb. 21-24 summit on the protection of minors that took place in the Vatican, with the participation of the presidents of bishops’ conferences from all over the world.

Joaquin Aguilar, who represents survivors on the new team, was among those who introduced the initiative to the media on Wednesday. After acknowledging that it hasn’t always been easy for victims of clerical sexual abuse to have paths of communication with the archdiocese, he said that recently it’s the Church that has been reaching out to the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

He also said that the institution has taken the first steps towards an “integral reparation” of the damage done by abuse, such as the sanctioning of those responsible, crime prevention, and victim assistance.

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VIRGINIA
Blue Ridge Muse

March 21, 2019

By Doug Thompson

Wife Amy grew up in a Catholic family in Belleville, Illinois, a moderate-sized city across the Mississippi river from St. Louis.

This week, a report from the Archdiocese of Chicago, identifies 22 priests from the Diocese of Belleville as child sexual predators.

One is Father Garrett Neal Dee, who served in Belleville from 1974-76 and from 1965-68 in Alton, where I lived and worked for 12 years at The Telegraph. He went “absent on leave” while at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Groom, TX, in 2003 and his whereabouts now are “unknown,” the report says.

Another priest, now retired served at St. Bernard’s in Wood River, which lies just East of Alton, from 1958-69. Another was in Alton in the 60s and returned to another church there in 1981. He died in 1983. Same for Father J. Cullen O’Brien. He began his priesthood at SS Peter and Paul’s Catholic Church in Alton in 1943, then two other Catholic Churches in the area before returning to St. Patrick’s in Alton in 1969 but left in 1970 and died eight years later.

Father Frank Westhoff began mass at St. Patrick’s in Alton in 1962, moved to a Springfield church in 1969 and then to Decatur before being listed as “absent on leave” in 1976 and again from 1986-88. He died in 2006

The “Spotllight” Boston Globe investigative team, who discovered widespread sexual abuse by priests in and around Boston and then nationally and worldwide, found that “absent on leave” was the church’s way of saying a priest is receiving treatment for his predatory sexual abuse of children.

When I showed the list, Amy shook her head and “no, that number of too low.” She suggested the number of sexual predators in and around her home down is easily more than double what the report claims.

The report named close to 400 in Illinois. Many are now dead or their whereabouts is “unknown.” Some live in “retirement residences” of the Catholic Church. Many remained priests until they died.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
South Hills Community News

March 21, 2019

By Mike Jones

A former student at St. Bernard School filed a lawsuit last week alleging he was molested by a teacher at the Catholic grade school in Mt. Lebanon in the 2000s.

Pittsburgh-based attorney Robert Peirce III filed the lawsuit March 14 in Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas against the unnamed teacher, the school and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh in a case that could test the limits of the special Sex Abuse Victim Compensation fund set up last year by the diocese to help victims abused by predator priests.

The lawsuit claims the unidentified former student was molested at least five times during one school year while being tutored by the teacher, identified only as John Doe, because he was struggling with math. Doe was “abusing his role as a teacher and mentor to a young student breached the duty owed to his students” at the grade school that teaches pre-school students through eighth grade, the lawsuit states.

After the abuse, the lawsuit claims, the student began to abuse drugs and alcohol in high school to “repress the memories” from the alleged abuse. The student began seeing a therapist in December 2010 for behavioral issues, but didn’t tell his parents about the abuse until December 2017.

The Rev. Nicholas Nascov, spokesman for the Diocese of Pittsburgh, said he could not comment on the lawsuit, but that the “acts alleged do not involve anyone currently employed by Saint Bernard School.”

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[Trial of priest accused of child abuse in Entre Ríos is delayed]

ARGENTINA
GrupoLaProvincia.com

March 20, 2019

El juicio al ex cura payador Marcelino Moya, acusado por abusar de menores en la parroquia de la ciudad de Villaguay entre 1992 y 1997, fue postergado hasta mañana por la renuncia de su abogado defensor, José Ostolaza. Los jueces María Evangelina Bruzzo, Fabián López Moras y Melisa Ríos integrarán el Tribunal de Juicio y Apelaciones de Concepción del Uruguay y juzgarán a Moya mañana y el viernes, en audiencias orales, pero no públicas.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
Kansas City Star

March 21, 2019

By Judy L. Thomas

Less than three weeks before the criminal trial of a priest charged with sexually abusing a child is set to begin in Wyandotte County, victims’ advocates on Thursday said they hoped the complete story comes out in court.

David Clohessy, former executive director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said the group wants prosecutors to reject any plea deal for the Rev. Scott Kallal and instead push for a jury trial at which those “who may have concealed or ignored” alleged child sex crimes against Kallal “might also be publicly exposed.”

SNAP also revealed the identities of three more accused priests who had connections to the Kansas City area but have escaped scrutiny.

“We challenge local Catholic officials to disclose the names of all alleged predator priests, along with their photos, whereabouts and full work histories,” Clohessy said.

The Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Kallal was charged in Wyandotte County District Court in 2017 with two felony counts of aggravated indecent liberties with a child. A jury trial is scheduled to begin April 7.

At Kallal’s preliminary hearing in 2017, a 13-year-old girl testified that when she was 10, Kallal twice tickled her breasts against her wishes. The incidents allegedly occurred in 2015 but the police report was not filed until July, when Kallal was suspended and charged.

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[Puerto Montt ‘priest’ found guilty of sexual abuse of minor]

CHILE
BioBioChile

March 19, 2019

By Sebastián Asencio and Robinson Cardenas

Este martes declararon culpable de abuso sexual a un sacerdote veterocatólico que dirige una congregación en el sector Pelluhuín y Chamiza en Puerto Montt, región de Los Lagos. Se trata de Luis Felipe Izquierdo, religioso no reconocido por la Iglesia Católica que fue investigado por el Ministerio Público tras ser denunciado por el delito sexual.

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[Chilean survivors question Pope’s refusal to accept cardinal’s resignation]

CHILE
BioBioChile

March 20, 2019

By Ariela Muñoz and Nicole Martínez

Sobrevivientes de abusos eclesiásticos en Chile cuestionaron la decisión del Papa Francisco de rechazar la dimisión del cardenal francés Philippe Barbarin. El sacerdote fue condenado a seis meses de cárcel por encubrir delitos contra menores de edad, de los que tuvo conocimiento entre 2014 y 2015. El Vaticano dejó en manos del purpurado la determinación “que crea más oportuna”, invocando la presunción de inocencia. Todo cuando ya Barbarin decidió retirarse temporalmente del mando del arzobispado de Lyon.

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[Archbishop Fernando Chomalí says they are “determined to end abuses” in the Church]

CHILE
BioBioChile

March 20, 2019

By Manuel Stuardo and Carlos Agurto

El arzobispo de Concepción, Fernando Chomalí, aseguró que están “absolutamente decididos a terminar con los abusos” al interior de la Iglesia Católica. Chomalí llegó hasta la comuna de Yumbel para encabezar la festividad religiosa denominada “20 chico”, la que tradicionalmente replica en esta fecha lo que se vive para San Sebastián en enero.

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[Priest Tito Rivera says that his accuser “seems to enjoy the sexual fantasies”]

CHILE
La Tercera

March 18, 2019

By Angélica Baeza

El sacerdote reiteró que la denuncia en su contra es un “montaje” e insistió en que “existe una realidad de pecado que se vive al interior de la Iglesia, y no reconocerlo es taparse los ojos con ambas manos”.

El sacerdote Tito Rivera leyó esta mañana una declaración de prensa, para aclarar sus dichos en una entrevista que fue sumamente cuestionada por sus pares y líderes religiosos. Esto, luego de que se conociera denuncias en su contra de abusos sexuales y violación al interior de la Catedral Metropolitana.

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[Court of Appeals will issue ruling on dismissing case against Ezzati this March 22]

CHILE
La Tercera

March 20, 2019

By Angélica Baeza

El viernes se conocerá si el tribunal sobresee al arzobispo de Santiago de los posibles encubrimientos en abusos realizados por los sacerdotes Óscar Muñoz, Jorge Laplagne y Tito Rivera.

La Octava Sala de la Corte de Apelaciones determinó que el viernes 22 de marzo resolverá si sobresee o no al arzobispo de Santiago, Ricardo Ezzati, por los posibles encubrimientos en abusos realizados por los sacerdotes Óscar Muñoz, Jorge Laplagne y Tito Rivera.

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[Guadalajara monk imprisoned for abuse removed from public ministry after three years]

GUADALAJARA (SPAIN)
El País

March 19, 2019

By EFE (news agency)

El fraile estuvo tres años en prisión en El Escorial. Sus superiores justificaron su nuevo puesto tras salir de la cárcel porque oficiaba en “localidades sin niños”

El obispado de Sigüenza-Guadalajara ha decidido apartar de la misión pública a Celso García, un religioso agustino condenado en 2012 por abusos a menores que, tras salir de la prisión en 2015, fue recolocado como párroco de 24 pequeñas localidades del norte de la provincia de Guadalajara.

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[Bishop of Guadalajara places a priest in ministry for 24 villages after three years in prison for abuses]

MADRID (SPAIN)
El País

March 18, 2019

By Íñigo Domínguez

El monje, denunciado en la escolanía de El Escorial, fue condenado en 2012. “Ya ha cumplido su deuda con la ley y son localidades sin niños”, justifica la orden

Un monje agustino condenado por abuso de menores a tres años de cárcel en 2012, según ha confirmado la orden religiosa a este periódico, ha sido recolocado de nuevo como párroco en 24 localidades del norte de Guadalajara tras salir de prisión en 2015. Celso García fue denunciado en 2010 por tres menores de 11 y 12 años de la escolanía del monasterio de El Escorial, donde era profesor. Solo hubo noticias del caso un año después, cuando lo desveló el diario Público, pero luego nada más se supo del resultado del proceso ni del paradero del acusado. Lo cierto es que tras cumplir su condena, García está ejerciendo como sacerdote en numerosos pueblos, sin ninguna cautela especial, desde octubre de 2015. García reside en una de estas localidades. Un portavoz de los agustinos justifica la decisión porque “ha cumplido su deuda con la ley y la justicia”. Asegura también que “está totalmente fuera del contacto con menores, porque son pueblos muy pequeños solo con población anciana”.

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[Spain’s Catholic schools recommend reporting abuses, create crisis committees]

MADRID (SPAIN)
El País

March 18, 2019

By Julio Núñez

La patronal crea un comité de crisis para gestionar la pederastia en sus escuelas

Escuelas Católicas, la patronal de los centros concertados religiosos de España, ha publicado un decálogo de actuación contra los abusos sexuales a menores que obliga a informar a las autoridades y a apartar al acusado “independientemente de cuándo se produjeran los hechos”. La nueva norma recomienda a todos los adultos que tengan conocimiento de algún caso de abusos que lo comuniquen a la Fiscalía, la Guardia Civil o la Policía Nacional. “Existen dos posibilidades: denunciar o comunicar; esto último, en muchas ocasiones, es una vía más sencilla y adecuada”, señala el documento.

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COSTA RICO
AFP and The Tico Times

March 21, 2019

A Costa Rican Catholic priest accused of sexual abuse of a minor was arrested Thursday as he tried to leave the country by land to Panama, the prosecutor’s office said.

The priest was arrested at the border post of Paso Canoas, the main border crossing with Panama, when trying to leave the country, according to a statement from the prosecutor’s office.

“The Deputy Prosecutor for Gender Affairs confirmed the arrest of a priest with last name Morales Salazar in Paso Canoas, when he was trying to leave the country,” the institution said in a brief statement.

The statement added that “Salazar is being investigated as a suspect in committing an alleged sex crime, so he will be transferred to San José, where a preliminary statement will be taken, and the request for precautionary measures will be assessed later.”

The case of the priest Jorge Arturo Morales Salazar came to light recently when Semanario Universidad published the testimony of Fabian Arguedas, 27, a student who said he had suffered abuses by the priest throughout two years during his adolescence.

His parents submitted a complaint to hierarchy of the Catholic Church, according to the story. On Friday of last week, Arguedas went to the prosecutor’s office to file a criminal complaint against Salazar.

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STEUBENVILLE (OH)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

They are not on diocese’s list of ‘credibly accused’ or admitted abusers
Group blasts Catholic officials on abuse & cover up
It’s “outraged” diocese has a priest answering victims’ calls
“He should be replaced by a non-Catholic licensed therapist,” SNAP says
“The real solution,” group insists, “is prosecution & legislative reform”

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will disclose that 8 publicly accused clerics were left off the Steubenville diocese’s list of ‘credibly accused’ or admitted abusers. Each spent time in southeastern Ohio but has attracted little or no media or public attention before in the state.

And the victims will call on local Catholic officials to
–stop using a priest to field calls from victims,
–post names of ALL publicly accused priests on their diocesan website,
–include details like their work histories, whereabouts and photos, and
–join with victims in pushing for real legislative reform, like repealing Ohio’s “archaic, predator-friendly statute of limitations” so survivors can do what bishops will not do: expose child molesters in court.

WHEN
Thursday, March 21, at 11-am

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PARIS (FRANCE)
Agence France-Presse

March 21, 2019

Pope Francis has rejected the resignation of French cardinal Philippe Barbarin who was handed a six-month suspended jail sentence this month for failing to report sex abuse by a priest under his authority, prompting surprise among Church leaders and condemnation from victims.

The pope’s decision, announced by Barbarin in a statement and confirmed by the Vatican, comes ahead of a judicial appeal of the case.

But it also comes against the background of the Roman Catholic Church’s struggle to restore trust in its efforts to fight child abuse, with the pope saying last month that “no abuse must ever be covered up, as has happened in the past”.

In a statement issued from his see in the French southeastern city of Lyon, Barbarin said: “Monday morning, I handed over my mission to the Holy Father. He spoke of the presumption of innocence and did not accept this resignation.”

Barbarin, the most senior French cleric caught up in the global paedophilia scandal, said he would remain in Lyon pending the court appeal, but added that “for a little while” he would step back from his job, allowing, at the pope’s “suggestion”, the local vicar general Yves Baumgarten to run day-to-day affairs.

“I remain in office but withdraw myself from the running of the diocese,” he told Catholic TV station KTO.

“After this judgement, this condemnation, and even if there had not been this condemnation, I think it is good that a page should be turned,” he added.

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
Morning Call

March 21, 2019

By Paul Muschick

The Catholic Church continues talking about how it must confront once-and-for-all the evil of priests sexually abusing children. The church’s actions continue to show those words are hollow.

I’m talking this time specifically about Pope Francis.

The pope declined Monday to accept the resignation of Cardinal Philippe Barbarin of France, who was convicted March 7 of failing to report a known pedophile priest to police.

Contrast that with what the pope said only a month ago at a worldwide summit he called to address the sex abuse scandal.

“No abuse should ever be covered up (as was often the case in the past) or not taken sufficiently seriously, since the covering up of abuses favors the spread of evil and adds a further level of scandal,” he said.

Pope Francis condemned concealing abuses. Yet he chose to retain someone who was convicted of concealing abuses.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

March 21, 2019

WARSAW, Poland – A close aide to St. John Paul II has vigorously defended the late pope’s handling of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy and denied accusations that he ignored the problem during his 27-year pontificate.

“Emerging opinions that John Paul II was sluggish in guiding the church’s response to sexual abuse of minors by some clerics are prejudicial and contrary to historical facts – the pope was shocked and had no intention of tolerating the crime of pedophilia,” said Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, who was the pontiff’s personal secretary for 39 years.

St. John Paul saw how local churches “dealt with emerging problems and gave help when necessary, often at his own initiative.”

The 79-year-old cardinal, who retired in 2016 after 11 years as archbishop of Krakow, was reacting to media criticisms that the Polish pontiff failed to confront abuse claims when they became widespread in the 1980s.

In a March 20 statement to Poland’s Catholic Information Agency, KAI, he said the pope had concluded “new tools were needed” when the abuse crisis “began to ferment” in the United States.

He added that the saint had given church leaders new powers to combat it, including indults, or special licenses to ensure “a policy of zero tolerance,” for the U.S. and Irish churches in 1994 and 1996.

“These were, for the bishops, an unambiguous indication of the direction in which they should fight,” Cardinal Dziwisz said.

“When it became clear local episcopates and religious superiors were still unable to cope with the problem, and the crisis was spreading to other countries, he recognized it concerned not just the Anglo-Saxon world but had a global character,” the cardinal said.

Criticisms of St John Paul’s record have increased in recent months.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Religion News Service

March 21, 2019

By Thomas Reese, S. J.

Last month’s summit in Rome on child sex abuse did not break new ground for those, like myself, who have been following this crisis for more than 30 years, but it did made clear — again — that the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church has been devastating for the victims of abuse and for the church as a whole.

There are three parts to the crisis, which I plan to deal with in three successive columns.

First, there is the failure to protect children; second, the failure to hold bishops accountable; and third, the lack of transparency in dealing with the crisis.

Protecting children is a fundamental obligation of any adult, even of those who are not parents. Children are vulnerable and abuse is criminal. It is impossible not to be moved when listening to the horrible stories of survivors of abuse, who can be permanently scarred by the experience.

Abuse occurs in other settings, of course, including schools and in families’ homes, but that fact is no excuse for the church’s poor handling of abuse.

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NEW YORK (NY)
TV Guide

March 21, 2019

By TV Guide Editors

TV Guide’s Sex Ed Week explores the ways TV is pushing boundaries forward – and the ways it still lets us down

It’s no secret: people love to talk about sex, baby. But what Salt-N-Pepa left out of their groundbreaking, envelope-pushing, hit single was “on television.” As one of the more democratic mediums — and often the one preferred by younger viewers (at least before YouTube and streaming platforms took over) — television has long been a battleground over the ways in which sex, gender, and related issues are portrayed. And while some critics lambast television for how certain shows may negatively influence viewers’ beliefs and behavior, television has also been praised for the ways it can fill in the gaps of understanding, helping to create better informed and healthy relationships with sexuality for its viewers.

Over the past few decades, television has played a key role in shifting the representation of sex away from a restrictive, patriarchal binary to a more open, authentic, and accurate reflection of varying perspectives and experiences. And in recent years, the way television has approached issues surrounding sexuality has expanded at a rapid rate, as writers and producers are interrogating sex in ways they either never had the opportunity to do before or never chose to do before. Thanks to shows like Steven Universe and Sex Education, TV is carving out space to provide viewers of all ages with a progressive education on sexuality and gender that will hopefully further the conversation for this generation and the next.

But while we’ve come a long way since I Love Lucy’s married protagonists slept in twin beds, it’s not as though TV has magically solved issues pertaining to outdated boundaries, biases, and misconceptions surrounding these sensitive issues. For every groundbreaking series like Vida, there’s another that continues to let down their viewers again and again when it comes to its approach to sex (sorry, Game of Thrones, but yes, we are talking about you), and the way sex scenes are filmed still has a long way to go before they’re consistently safe for the performers involved.

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BERKELEY (CA)
Deadspin

March 21, 2019

By Lauren Theisen

A former sports medicine intern in the UC Berkeley Athletic Department named Paige Cornelius has accused Cal football coaches and players of sexual harassment, in a public Facebook post written on Wednesday.

Cornelius, whose post can be read in full here, first tells of a “member of the Cal Football Coaching Staff” who said to her, “I will get you fired if you do not have sex with me,” at a practice after sending her persistent texts. Cornelius told ESPN that this man was a volunteer assistant. Here’s what she says about him in her post:

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

March 19, 2019

By Carl O’Brien

UCC’s ‘bystander intervention’ is being made available to all 22,000 students

One of the most ambitious attempts to create a “zero tolerance” approach to sexual harassment in Irish third level is unfolding on the campus of University College Cork (UCC).

A few years ago, it began piloting a compulsory series of workshops on “bystander intervention” during the first year of its law, nursing and applied psychology classes.

Students were required to attend at least three of the six hour-long workshops to pass their exams.

Louise Crowley, a senior lecturer in law who leads the initiative, says the vast majority of students attended at least five of the classes.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

March 19, 2019

By Carl O’Brien

Report ordered by Minister recommends ‘transparent and accountable’ protocols

All third-level colleges should be obliged to provide classes on sexual consent for students or risk losing State funding, a Government-commissioned report has recommended.

The report follows rising concern over the level of rape and sexual assault on college campuses.

Commissioned by Minister of State for Higher Education Mary Mitchell O’Connor, it outlines a series of steps which third-level colleges should be required to take to help create “safer and more respectful campuses”.

Among its proposals are that:

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BRIDGEPORT (CT)
Associated Press

March 21, 2019

A Roman Catholic diocese in Connecticut has agreed to pay $3.5 million to five men who alleged in lawsuits that they were sexually abused as children by priests.

The settlements involving three priests announced Wednesday by the Diocese of Bridgeport were reached following mediation with the law firm Tremont, Sheldon, Robinson and Mahoney representing the plaintiffs.

Two of the three accused were diocesan priests and have died. The third was a Maronite who worked at a church not overseen by the diocese. The Maronites paid for most of that portion of the settlement.

The suits alleged the abuse occurred from the late 1980s to the early 2000s in Bridgeport, Brookfield, Danbury and Ridgefield.

The diocese in a statement says it hopes the settlements “bring a measure of healing and justice to victims.”

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CHAMPAIGN (IL)
News Gazette

March 21, 2019

By Ben Zigterman

At least 16 priests with area connections are among the nearly 400 Catholic clergy members and church staff in Illinois named in a report — released Wednesday by a Minnesota-based law firm — that accuses them of sexual misconduct.

All had been previously mentioned on lists released by the Joliet, Peoria and Springfield dioceses, but Wednesday’s report by attorney Jeff Anderson is the largest list of accused clergy in Illinois and includes where each priest served.

It comes after a report in December by former Attorney General Lisa Madigan, which found that Illinois dioceses had only publicly identified 185 accused clergy out of the 690 it had been made aware were alleged to have committed sexual abuse.

The new report accuses the Illinois dioceses of “orchestrating an institutional cover-up of enormous magnitude” by transferring and retaining alleged perpetrators.

The Springfield, Peoria and Joliet dioceses all issued statements Wednesday about the report, explaining why some names on the list aren’t on their own publicly available lists, either because they never received allegations or found them to be unsubstantiated or not credible.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Irish Central

March 21, 2019

By Niall O’Dowd

A leading US Catholic church figure has slammed Irish leader Leo Varadkar for his gay orientation, attacked Irish clergy as weak and said decades of sex abuse scandals in Ireland’s Catholic Church are “peripheral”

A celebrated New York pastor with a worldwide audience on EWTN, the global Catholic network, has slammed Ireland’s leader Leo Varadkar for “publicly living in perverse contempt for the sacrament of holy matrimony.”

When asked about his comments by IrishCentral, Father George Rutler agreed that he was speaking specifically about Vardkar’s sexual orientation and the fact that he may well marry his partner, Matthew Barrett.

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KANSAS CITY (KS)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

Ordained in 2011, the accused cleric is young
Two alleged victims are both in early teens now
SNAP: “It’s your civic & moral duty to speak up”
Group also ‘outs’ 3 more accused Kansas priests
It seeks “victims, witnesses & whistleblowers now!”
“Archbishop: Teach your flock how to act,” SNAP says

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos a at a sidewalk news conference, weeks ahead of a rare criminal accused KC KS priest’s trial, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will
–disclose that a second victim of the alleged offender will testify,
–beg victims, witnesses and whistleblowers with information or suspicions about the accused priest to call law enforcement,
–urge prosecutors to “be tough and stand strong” against a plea deal, and
–prod the KC KS archbishop to educate his flock about the proper way to behave when abuse reports are made public.

They will also
–reveal the identities of 3 accused priests who are/were in Kansas City but have escaped virtually all scrutiny or attention here, and
–challenge local Catholic officials to disclose the names of ALL alleged predator priests, along with their photos, whereabouts and full work histories.

WHEN
TODAY,Thursday, March 21 at 2:00 p.m.

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WHEELING (WV)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

March 21, 2019

Victims applaud WV attorney general
They prod others with info to ‘step forward’
Group seeks “witnesses & whistleblowers to help AG
SNAP also ‘outs’ 3 accused priests ‘under the radar’ in WV

WHAT

Holding signs and childhood photos a at a sidewalk news conference, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will

—praise the WV AG for his recent civil suit on behalf of Catholic families and against the Catholic hierarchy, and

—prod the AG to work harder to bring victims, witnesses and whistleblowers forward, using his bully pulpit and public service announcements.

They will also:

–reveal the identities of 3 accused priests who are/were in WV but have escaped virtually all scrutiny or attention here, and

–challenge local Catholic officials to disclose the names of ALL alleged predator priests, along with their photos, whereabouts and full work histories.

WHEN

Thursday, March 21 at 1:00 p.m.

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AUSTIN (TX)
Associated Press

March 21, 2019

A Roman Catholic priest has been arrested after being accused of groping a woman while giving her the last rites in Texas.

Reverend Gerold Langsch, 75, allegedly anointed the woman’s chest with holy water, then began to apply lotion, massaging a breast, pinching a nipple and asking ‘does that feel good?’

The woman, who is still alive, added that Langsch, from Austin, then tried to slip his hand inside her diaper but was unable to.

He was arrested today after being accused of assaulting the woman in home hospice care on October 5.

Despite the incident being reported five days later, the arrest was delayed because of the woman’s health problems, reports CBS news.

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BROWNSVILLE (TX)
The Monitor

March 21, 2019

By Mark Reagan

The Cameron County District Attorney’s Office confirmed Wednesday that it is investigating “one or two” former priests who are alive and accused of sexual abuse.

“Although the investigation is still ongoing, it does show that most of the alleged perpetrators are deceased and the alleged acts occurred more than 10 years ago and therefore fall outside the statute of limitations,” District Attorney Luis V. Saenz said. “There are one or two where the perpetrator is alive and the alleged acts are still in the statute of limitations and those are the ones we are focused on.”

The Diocese of Brownsville in late January released a list of 13 priests and a deacon, who were assigned to 42 parishes across the Rio Grande Valley, who the church says are “credibly accused” of child sexual abuse.

After the Diocese released the list, the DA’s Office initiated an investigation.

“I can tell you that up to this point the Diocese through their counsel has been very forthcoming in providing information that I requested,” Saenz said.

Saenz declined to name the suspects and it wasn’t immediately clear whether the suspects were on the list of credibly accused the Diocese of Brownsville released.

However, Saenz did say the one individual his investigators are focusing on that is alive and the allegations fall within the statute of limitations is not in the United States.

“One of the individuals is believed to be outside of the U.S.,” Saenz said. “So … if we do decide that we can charge him, if he does get arrested, it would involve extradition.”

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

March 21, 2019

As the Catholic Church quakes through one sexual abuse scandal after another, Pope Francis recently announced a policy he wants to implement on a worldwide scale: No man should become a priest without a psychological evaluation proving he is suited to a life of chastity.

In the United States, most men seeking to enter a Catholic seminary undergo psychological testing, often a battery of questions that probes their deepest secrets and can last for days.

As Francis elevates the visibility of this type of testing, it raises the question of just how this profiling works and whether any psychologist can truly determine a young man is cut out for a lifelong vow to abstain from sex or is likely to commit sexual crimes. As it stands, there is no single agreed-upon method for conducting these assessments of priests. There is also no reliable way of measuring the tests’ effectiveness at weeding out problem priests.

“Standard psychological testing, it’s not very good in ferreting out sexual difficulties among the general population,” said Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, a Catholic University professor who formerly led St. Luke Institute, a mental health facility for priests. “There isn’t much. We’ve been working hard to figure out what to do, how do we better understand sexuality.”

Outside the church, some scientists think the quest to identify future problem priests through psychology is a fool’s errand – especially when it comes to preventing pedophiles from entering the priesthood.

“From a scientific point of view, it’s useless,” said James Cantor, a Toronto researcher who is a leading expert on pedophilia. “There does not exist a pen-and-pencil test [to diagnose pedophilia]. Just asking someone isn’t going to help.”

But the idea of psychological testing for priests dates back decades; Rossetti said he went through a battery of tests when he entered the seminary in 1979. Other religious denominations routinely ask their clergy candidates to undergo psychological evaluations as well.

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Patheos blog

March 21, 2019

By Rick Snedeker

Add my own state of South Dakota to the states in which local Catholic Church authorities have publicly released the names of alleged sex-abusing priests. In this new list, all but one are deceased.

On March 19, the Most Rev. Robert D. Gruss, bishop of Rapid City, the state’s second largest city, published a public statement of contrition and a list of 21 priests of the Diocese of Rapid City “credibly accused of sexual abuse while serving in schools, churches, hospitals and on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud [Indian] reservations from 1951 to 2018.”

“It is important to acknowledge the horrid truth of past abuse in the church so that we can repent of these actions and to recommit ourselves to ensuring that no one is hurt moving forward,” Bishop Gruss wrote in a March 15 letter posted on the diocese website, the Rapid City Journal reported.

Gruss said publishing the list of alleged offenders is “essential in restoring the trust that has been broken as the result of the misconduct of a few.” He explained in his letter that a reasonable cause of abuse was established for each priest on the list after “a process of consultation.” He acknowledged that because allegations were made years or decades after relevant incidents and some might be false, the determination of credibility is not the same as a conviction in court.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Sun-Times

March 19, 2019

By Nader Issa and Mitch Dudek

A 182-page report released Wednesday compiled information about nearly 400 Catholic clergy members and church staff in Illinois who have been publicly accused of sexual misconduct in the state’s six dioceses, including dozens in Chicago.

Jeff Anderson & Associates, a Minnesota-based law firm, published the report that included names, background information, work histories and photographs of 395 priests and laypeople accused throughout the state.

Though a seminarian, a teacher and several deacons were on the list, the vast majority were priests.

The law firm said, by its count, hundreds of Illinoisans were the victims of child sexual abuse at the hands of people tied to the church.

Clergy abuse investigation: Illinois Catholic Church allegedly failed to investigate 500 priest sex abuse allegations

Predator priests: States ask for assistance to pursue Catholic Church for documents on abuse by priests, Pennsylvania attorney general says

“Those at the top have chosen not to believe so many survivors for so many years who have come forward with reports and have chosen, then, to keep secret not only the identities of those offenders, but [also] those who have been complicit in that concealment at the top,” said Jeff Anderson, the trial attorney who heads the firm that published the report.

List ‘represents the past’
Mary Jane Doerr, the director of the Chicago Archdiocese’s Office for the Protection of Children and Youth, said at a press conference Wednesday that her office’s efforts to protect children from abuse in the church go “beyond a list of names.”

“What’s frustrating to me is the lists represent the past,” Doerr said. “And it was not a good past, but we don’t do that anymore. That’s not what’s going on today. Today, all allegations are taken seriously.”

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Patheos blog

March 20, 2019

By Hemant Metha

It should’ve been easy for the Catholic Church to rid itself of French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin. Earlier this month, he announced he would resign from the Church after a secular court found him guilty of not reporting a pedophile priest who had sexually abused minors.

But Pope Francis said yesterday that he would not accept the resignation.

Cardinal Barbarin, 68, promptly offered to resign, though he is appealing the verdict. He met with Pope Francis on Monday to personally hand in his resignation, but both the cardinal and a Vatican spokesman, Alessandro Gisotti, said on Tuesday that the pope had not accepted it.

Instead, they said, the cardinal, one of the highest-ranking and best-known Roman Catholic officials in France, will step aside for an unspecified length of time.

Cardinal Barbarin said in a statement that the pope had acted “invoking the presumption of innocence.”

It’s hard to act on a presumption of innocence when a secular court has declared you guilty of shielding a predator priest. What the pope is saying is that the courts don’t matter, and the evidence is secondary to forgiveness… which might be inspirational if we weren’t talking about the Catholic Church’s most infamous crime.

The pope just doesn’t think covering up for a molesting priest is that big of a deal. This is his reward for protecting the Church.

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

March 19, 2019

One, ousted last week, was at MU Newman Center
The other, ‘outed’ last month, was at a local parish
A third priest, just publicly accused, worked nearby
SNAP wants University officials to “do real outreach”
Group also wants mid-MO bishop to update accused list

WHAT
Holding childhood photos and signs at a sidewalk news conference, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will disclose
–that a just-ousted publicly accused priest worked in Columbia.
–the name of another publicly accused abusive priest who worked in mid-MO, and
–the name of a third publicly accused abusive priest who worked nearby.
None of them are on the Jefferson City diocese’s list of accused clerics.

They will also prod
–University of Missouri officials to “aggressively reach out to ex-staff and students” who may have been hurt by the just-ousted accused priest, and
–mid-Missouri’s Catholic bishop to do the same.

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.

JEFFERSON CITY (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

Another alleged abuser was “quietly ousted”
Church tells flock, but not public, about prie]st
SNAP: “Where’s your promised ‘transparency?'”
Group also ‘outs’ another mid-MO alleged perpetrator
It also reveals workplaces of two others who are accused
SNAP wants church & university officials to “do real outreach”
“Diocese should also update & expand its accused list,” SNAP says

WHAT
Holding childhood photos and signs at a sidewalk news conference, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will:
–blast Jeff City’s Catholic bishop for “keeping secrets” about a just-ousted priest,
–disclose that the priest worked in Columbia as well as Jeff City,
–reveal the name of another publicly accused abusive priest who worked in mid-MO, and
–expose a third publicly accused abusive clerict who worked nearby.
(Only one of them is on the Jefferson City diocese’s list of accused clerics.)

They will also prod
–diocesan and University of Missouri officials to “aggressively reach out to ex-staff, members and students” who may have been hurt by the just-ousted accused priest, and
–mid-Missouri’s Catholic bishop to do the same.

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SAGINAW (MI)
Michigan Live

Mar 20, 2019

By Cole Waterman

With a jury looking on Wednesday, two teens testified that a Roman Catholic priest had sexually assaulted them.

Testimony in the first of three trials for Robert J. “Father Bob” DeLand began the afternoon of Wednesday, March 20, before Saginaw County Circuit Judge Darnell Jackson. DeLand, 72, is a longtime priest who worked in the Catholic Diocese of Saginaw.

After Saginaw County Assistant Prosecutor Melissa Hoover and defense attorney Alan A. Crawford gave their respective theories on the case via opening statements, Hoover called a now-19-year-old man to the stand.

The teen said he had known DeLand as a greeter at Freeland High School. In that capacity, he said DeLand would often make him uncomfortable.

“He would shake my hand sometimes,” he said. “He would do it very tight, wouldn’t let go. He’d hug me really, really tight and breathe in my ear every now and then. Very uncomfortable.”

On May 14, 2017, the teen said he and his father attended a memorial service at St. Agnes Church for a classmate of his who had died by suicide earlier that day. The service was organized by DeLand.

As his father mingled with other attendees, the teen was called out to by DeLand, who asked him how he was doing with the recent death. The priest then called him into a coatroom where they were alone, he said.

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COLUMBUS (OH)
ABC 6l News

March 20, 2019

By Tom Bosco

The Catholic Diocese of Columbus released its list of priests credibly accused of sexual abuse earlier this month, but a survivors’ advocacy group said the list is incomplete. The group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said there are at least seven clergy members who should be on the list.

The names have been made public before and include two that have been the subject of news coverage in the last few years.

Joel Wright was in seminary, studying to become a priest in north Columbus when he was arrested in 2016 as he tried to travel to Mexico to have sex with infants. Fr. James Csaszar of New Albany and Perry County before that, killed himself in 2016, a month after he was accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a teen.

The other names may be more obscure but have been revealed in the past. Here are their names and where they served in the diocese:

Fr. James Gates, Holy Rosary, 1994-2002;
Fr. John Walsh, SS. Simon and Jude, 1960s;
Fr Fintan Shaffer, Little Brothers of the Good Shepherd, 1980s;
Br. Robert Hayden, Little Brothers of the Good Shepherd, 1980s;
Fr. Walter Horan, Zanesville, 1940s.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Daily Beast

March 20, 2019

Attorneys released a report Wednesday revealing the names of nearly 400 clergy members who have been accused of sexual misconduct, USA Today reports. Law firm Jeff Anderson and Associates reportedly released a 182-page-report providing over 200 additional names of priests and deacons who had not been identified by Catholic officials and were accused of abuse in “legal settlements and news reports.” According to the newspaper, the report includes the names of clergy members in “Archdiocese of Chicago and the dioceses of Belleville, Joliet, Peoria, Rockford and Springfield,” and includes photos, background information, and employment history of those listed.

“We’ve chosen to reveal this information, because the Catholic bishops and religious orders who are in charge and have this information . . . have chosen to conceal it,” lawyer Jeff Anderson said. The six Catholic dioceses of Illinois previously released a list of 185 clergy members whom the church deemed credibly accused of sexual abuse. The Rockford Diocese told USA Today that they did not disclose the allegations outlined in the report because they founds the allegations were unsubstantiated or “without merit.” Joliet Diocese also told the newspaper they declined to list the names because they had not been substantiated.

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AUSTIN (TX)
CBS Austin

March 20, 2019

An Austin Catholic priest was arrested after police say he sexually assaulted a woman in hospice care.

75-year-old Rev. Gerold Langsch has been charged with assault by contact, class a misdemeanor.

The incident allegedly happened in October 2018 when a woman was put on hospice care after suffering from several medical conditions.

While on hospice, the victim’s ex husband contacted the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic-based fraternal service organization, to inform them of the victim’s illness.

They offered to send a priest to their home to give the victim her last rites, a religious ceremony to offer absolution of sins prior to dying through anointment.

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ROCKFORD (IL)
WREX TV

March 20, 2019

A scathing new report has been released naming nearly 400 former and current clergy members of the Illinois Catholic Diocese who have been accused of sexual abuse.

The 182-page report was published Wednesday by the Minnesota-based law firm Jeff Anderson and Associates, which has lead the charge and filed the lawsuit demanding the Diocese release a full list of people accused of sexual abuse while working under the diocese.

The 395 men named in that report worked in the Archdiocese of Chicago, Belleville, Joliet, Peoria, Springfield and Rockford. Twenty-two men with ties to the Diocese of Rockford are included in it.

Back in November, the Diocese of Rockford published a report that outlined the history of sexual abuse of minors in the diocese. It disclosed files and said that between 1950 and 2002, allegations of sexual abuse of a minor were substantiated against three priests. The total report included 15 names, something the diocese said Wednesday it stands by.

In a statement, the Rockford Diocese said it did not disclose allegations against many clergy on Anderson’s list “because the accusations either have not been substantiated or are completely without merit.”

Officials with the Rockford Diocese did say one name on Anderson’s list did not appear on their November 2018 report because they were unaware of the accusations. They say the Rev. Ivan Rovira committed sexual abuse after he left northern Illinois in the 1970s.

The Rockford Diocese also said in the statement, “Sexual misconduct by clergy, Church personnel, Church leaders and volunteers is contrary to Christian morals, doctrine and Canon Law. It is never acceptable and Bishop Davis J. Malloy has declared emphatically that ‘one case of abuse is one too many.’”

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BRIDGEPORT (CT)
Connecticut Post

March 20, 2019

By Daniel Tepfer

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport has agreed to pay $3.55 million to five men who claim
in lawsuits they were sexually abused as children by priests.

The claimed abuse occurred from the late 1980s to the early 2000s by three priests, the Rev. Walter Coleman, the Rev. Robert Morrissey and the Rev. Larry Jensen, in Bridgeport, Brookfield, Danbury and Ridgefield.

The settlements were reached following mediation with the law firm, Tremont, Sheldon, Robinson and Mahoney which represented the five plaintiffs.

“As a result of countless hours of effort and hard work over the past 25 years, our law firm has been able to develop a collection of materials and information which we use to get our clients compensation for the abuse they have suffered,” said Douglas Mahoney. “While the money can never take away their pain, we hope that the resolution will allow them to take a small step forward with their healing.”

The settlements come as Pope Francis is being lauded for directing the church to finally take responsibility and make amends for decades of abuse by priests amid reports from around the country and the world of abuse.

“I admire the bravery and tenacity of the survivors. They came forward with the truth and persevered through what had to be a very stressful trial process. The priests who abused them wounded innocent children. These men are lucky that the statute of limitations for prosecution of sex crimes is short. I hope that changes soon,” said Gail Howard, Connecticut co-leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

Bridgeport Bishop Frank J. Caggiano has gone to the forefront of a movement by the church to become more transparent revealing in a report last October that the diocese has paid $52.5 million to settle 156 allegations of sexual abuse by priests since 1953. He also appointed a retired judge to look into claims that the diocese covered up priests’ sexual abuse of children for decades.

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COLUMBUS (OH)
The Columbus Dispatch

March 20, 2019

By Danae King

An advocacy group for survivors says it has identified seven priests who have been accused of abusing children but were not on the Roman Catholic Diocese of Columbus’ list of “credibly accused” clergy released on March 1.

On Wednesday afternoon, two representatives of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) stood in front of St. Joseph’s Cathedral on East Broad Street Downtown, calling for more action by the church. One of them held a sign with photos of 12 children who they said are survivors of priest abuse.

“We have to remind ourselves these are children,” said Steven Spaner, a volunteer coordinator with SNAP. “They might be grown up adults now, but they were children.”

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WEST VIRGINIA
CNN

March 20, 2019

By Daniel Burke

West Virginia’s attorney general has sued the state’s diocese and former bishop, saying they “knowingly employed pedophiles” while failing to alert parents about potential risks at Catholic schools and other activities.

“Parents who pay and entrust the Wheeling-Charleston diocese and its schools to educate and care for their children deserve full transparency,” Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said in a statement.

“Our investigation reveals a serious need for the diocese to enact policy changes that will better protect children, just as this lawsuit demonstrates our resolve to pursue every avenue to effectuate change as no one is above the law.”

In the lawsuit filed Tuesday, Morrisey said he opened an investigation last fall after a grand jury in Pennsylvania found evidence that more than 300 Catholic priests had abused children in that state since the 1950s. Most of the accusations dated to before 2002, when many Catholic dioceses in the United States instituted new child safety protocols.

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JEFFERSON CITY (MO)
Missourinet

March 20, 2019

By Alisa Nelson

Victims of clergy abuse say the Catholic Diocese of Jefferson City has not gone far enough to tell the public about a priest under investigation for alleged “boundary violations” involving minors. Bishop Shawn McKnight has informed Immaculate Conception School families in Jefferson City about Father Geoffrey Brooke being placed on leave during the review.

Missouri diocese accused of withholding information about priest under investigation

David Clohessy, president of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, says Bishop Shawn McKnight did not inform members where Brooke previously served – at the Newman Center on the Mizzou campus in Columbia.

“I honestly think he (McKnight) tried to pull a fast one,” says Clohessy of St. Louis. He really hoped that there would be a chance at least that nobody at the Jefferson City parish would contact anybody in the press and that this could all go under the radar. To hide this information serves no one, except those who commit and those who conceal abuse.”

The Diocese’s website lists priests accused of abuse, but Clohessy says the page should also include every clergy member credibly accused of abuse, all locations the priests served and their whereabouts.

“Bishops disclose the absolute bare minimum, only when they feel like they have to, only under public pressure,” he says. “If Bishop McKnight is going to claim that he’s coming clean on abuse, then for Heaven sakes, come clean. Tell us all the names because that’s what protects kids and tell us where they worked, tell us where they are now.”

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CHICAGO (IL)
USA TODAY

March 20, 2019

By Aamer Madhani

Nearly 400 Catholic clergy members in Illinois have been accused of sexual misconduct, according to attorneys who represented clergy sex abuse victims across the USA.

A 182-page report, published Wednesday by the Minnesota-based law firm Jeff Anderson and Associates, includes the names, background information, photos and assignment histories of each accused clergy member.

“The danger of sexual abuse in Illinois is clearly a problem of today, not just the past,” the report concludes. “This will continue to be a danger until the identities and histories of sexually abusive clerics, religious employees and seminarians are made public.”

Anderson said he hopes the report will push church leaders to publicly identify hundreds more clergy who faced allegations.

The men named in the report worked in the Archdiocese of Chicago and the dioceses of Belleville, Joliet, Peoria, Rockford and Springfield.

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RAPID CITY (SD)
Associated Press

March 20, 2019

The Rapid City Diocese has published a list of 21 priests credibly accused of sexual abuse.

The list includes priests who were credibly accused while in schools, churches, hospitals and on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations from 1951 to 2018.

Bishop Robert Gruss wrote in a letter posted on the diocese’s website that publishing the list is “essential in restoring the trust that has been broken as the result of the misconduct of a few.”

The 21 priests include those who were permanently assigned to the diocese as well as those who served in the diocese but fell under control of a different bishop or religious order.

All are dead except for John Praveen, a priest who awaits sentencing after pleading guilty in February to sexually touching a 13-year-old girl.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Staten Island Advance

March 20, 2019

By Anthony J. Raiola and Michelle Simpson Tuegel

For decades, the Catholic Church has turned a blind eye to the child predators in its ranks and refused to be held accountable for the thousands of lives it ruined.

Yet it took less than two days for the Brooklyn Diocese to respond to a joke on Saturday Night Live that compared the Catholic Church to R. Kelly.

There is no greater evidence that the Church refuses to take its child abuse problem seriously. It is clear the priorities lie in feigning outrage, not actually changing the culture of secrecy and abuse that has become the tenet of the modern Catholic Church.

Take, for example, the recent Vatican conference on sexual abuse of minors that was portrayed by many as a positive step forward by the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, the conference failed to establish any real solutions or tangible outcomes for survivors of clergy abuse. The Church has knowingly allowed abuse against minors to go on for decades, working hard to keep the abuse quiet and rotating sexual predators around different communities. Despite a contrite tone, Pope Francis proposed no concrete solutions to deal with the scourge of clergy abuse and failed to promise a zero-tolerance approach from the Church.

Survivors of clergy abuse in New York and beyond deserve more. It is time for Catholic bishops in New York state to make real reforms rather than empty promises, and do what the participants of the Vatican conference refused to do — focus on the survivors and enact concrete changes so that this abuse never happens again.

For example, New York bishops must convene a statewide summit and actually listen to the voices of survivors, not the clergy and institution that allowed this corruption to happen. By failing to prioritize the needs of survivors, the Church is once again choosing its leadership over the people it has failed to protect for decades.

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CINCINNATI (OH)
Xavier Newswirre

March 20, 2019

Headlines of abuse dominated news cycles in August 2018 after the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report released the names of hundreds of priests who had sexually abused children for more than seven decades. Since then, evidence of the global epidemic within the Catholic Church of sexual abuse of the innocent has continued to surface. The Associated Press publishes a new article nearly every week about new investigations, diocese reports, complaints by survivor advocacy groups and continued corruption. This sex abuse does not only mar religious institutions. Since places of worship have acted as the backbone of communities for centuries, this festering wound underlying the fabric of our secular institutions reaches from sea to shining sea.

But the grand jury report was eight months ago, and the public is more numbed than motivated to demand change. The 300 predatory priests’ names that were just released by dioceses in Texas, the confirmation that the Catholic Church has destroyed documents proving they were aware of priests’ predatory behavior and even the confirmation that six Jesuits who worked with Xavier as recently as 2002 were credibly accused of sexual assault read as old news. What is even more stale to read is how states are not stepping in.

Dioceses have conducted their own internal audits to oust sexual predators since the Boston Globe exposed the misdeeds of then-priest James G. Geoghan in 2002. That year, clergy leaders from across the nation committed to a set of policies called the Dallas Charter. These policies seek to prevent child sex abuse as well as make the names of known abusers available to both law authorities and the public for the safety of parishioners.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Patriot News

March 20, 2019

By Ivey DeJesus

The Diocese of Harrisburg has made a substantial change to eligibility requirements for its victims compensation fund.

On Wednesday, Bishop Ronald Gainer announced he would waive the requirement that survivors of clergy abuse must have identified themselves to the diocese by Feb. 11. Under the revised guidelines, survivors of abuse who had not previously come forward to the diocese are eligible for the program.

Gainer rolled out the change after recently completing a series of meetings with parishioners across the diocese. In a written statement, diocesan officials noted that the bishop had made the change based in part on the feedback from those sessions.

“Our goal is to help as many survivors of clergy sexual abuse as possible and we encourage you to come forward and contact our fund administrators, Commonwealth Mediation & Conciliation, Inc. (CMCI),” Gainer said in the statement. “Again, in my name and on behalf of the Church, we extend our prayers, heartfelt sorrow and apologies to all survivors of clergy sexual abuse.”

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LITTLE ROCK (AR)
Bilgrimage blog

March 20, 2019

By William Lindsey

Corruption of Pretend Heterosexuality Coupled with Abominable Treatment of Queer People

I have now made my way about halfway through Frédéric Martel’s In the Closet of the Vatican, trans. Shaun Whiteside (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), and am finding the book grim going. It’s, as many commentators have noted, eye-popping, and overwhelming in the detail with which it tells — and documents — its story of corruption. To quote Mary Oliver in her poem “The Chance to Love Everything,” this is for me the dark heart of the story here: it’s a story of incredible corruption running through the governing structures and clerical culture of a major Christian institution, a story that does a very convincing job, I think, of rooting that corruption genetically in the intense homophobia of the governing elite of this institution.

This passage leaps out at me:

It was when I met the cardinals, bishops and priests who worked with him that I discovered the hidden side – the dark side – of his very long pontificate. A pope surrounded by plotters, thugs, a majority of closeted homosexuals, who were homophobes in public, not to mention all those who protected paedophile priests.

“Paul VI had condemned homosexuality, but it was only with the arrival of John Paul II that a veritable war was waged against gays,” I was told by a Curia priest who worked at John Paul II’s ministry of Foreign Affairs. “Irony of history: most of the players in this boundless campaign against homosexuals were homosexual themselves” (p. 194)

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CHICAGO (IL)
CBS TV

March 20, 2019

By Vi Nguyen

A new report out today lists hundreds of names, work histories and background information of Catholic priests in Illinois accused of sexual abuse.

The survivors behind the 185-page report—the most comprehensive to date–hope it pushes bishops to reveal the identities of hundreds of more clergy involved in the cases.

The report was assembled by law firm Jeff Anderson and Associates, which gathered information from survivors, lists of credible allegations and other outlets.

Some of the names mentioned in the report have already been released by the Archdiocese of Chicago.

The report will detail the assignment histories of 395 Catholic clergy who the law firm says worked or continue to work at six dioceses in the state.

Attorneys representing some of the victims want Catholic bishops in the state to release all names and files of Catholic clergy accused of sexual abuse.

They want that information handed over to law enforcement and say this is something the public needs to know.

Last December a report from the Illinois Attorney General found more than 500 priests who have not been publicly named by the Catholic Diocese in Illinois.

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WHEELING (WV)
Herald Star

March 20, 2019

By Linda Comins

The Catholic Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston said it “strongly and unconditionally rejects” West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey’s assertion that the diocese is not wholly committed to the protection of children.

On Tuesday, Morrisey filed a civil lawsuit against the diocese and its retired bishop, the Rev. Michael J. Bransfield, for allegedly failing to protect children from sexual abusers.

Diocesan spokesman Tim Bishop released a statement from the diocese late Tuesday.

Church officials stated, “The diocese will address the litigation in the appropriate forum. However, the diocese strongly and unconditionally rejects the complaint’s assertion that the diocese is not wholly committed to the protection of children, as reflected in its rigorous Safe Environment Program, the foundation of which is a zero tolerance policy for any cleric, employee or volunteer credibly accused of abuse.

“The program employs mandatory screening, background checks and training for all employees and volunteers who work with children.”

Bishop said, “The diocese also does not believe that the allegations contained in the complaint fairly portray its overall contributions to the education of children in West Virginia nor fairly portray the efforts of its hundreds of employees and clergy who work every day to deliver quality education in West Virginia.”

Meanwhile, representatives of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests applauded Morrisey’s civil action against the diocese and Bransfield.

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DETROIT (MI)
Metro Times

March 20, 2019

By Michael Betzold

It didn’t look like anyone was living at the home north of Port Huron — no cars in the driveway, no tire tracks in what was left of the snow and ice.

Looking through a screen, I saw two pairs of boots on the floor, the corner of a treadmill, and a chair and table. Just as I was going to leave, he got up from the table, clutching a copy of Inside the Vatican magazine.

Suddenly I was face to face with Archbishop John Nienstedt.

He looked surprised but confirmed who he was — then when I started asking questions, he quickly murmured “no, thank you” and shut the door in my face.

Archbishop John Nienstedt. Named as one of the Catholic Church’s five top offenders in the entire world who most deserve to be expelled from the priesthood.

Archbishop John Nienstedt. Resigned after a legal settlement that bankrupted the archdiocese he ran in Minnesota because of its cover-up of perpetrator priests.

Archbishop John Nienstedt. Hounded out of Battle Creek by angry parishioners.

Archbishop John Nienstedt. Unwelcome to remain even at right-wing California think tank the Napa Institute.

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BECKLEY (WV)
Register-Herald

Mar 19, 2019

By Erin Beck

West Virginia’s attorney general filed a consumer protection lawsuit Tuesday morning against the state’s Catholic diocese – the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston – and its former Bishop Michael Bransfield, alleging that Catholic leaders employed predatory priests while falsely advertising a safe environment at Catholic schools and camps.

The Diocese, meanwhile, issued a statement Tuesday afternoon accusing Morrisey of making errors in his lawsuit, and defending itself as “wholly committed to the protection of children.”

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey’s office isn’t responsible for criminal prosecutions. That task would fall to county prosecutors.

Instead, Morrisey is arguing the Diocese violated the state’s Consumer Credit and Protection Act, although he said he has been in touch with some prosecutors.

West Virginia’s Consumer Credit and Protection Act states, “Unfair methods of competition and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in the conduct of any trade or commerce are hereby declared unlawful.”

Morrisey’s lawsuit, filed in Wood County circuit court, argues that the Diocese “sells and supplies educational services” and that it “advertised services not delivered” and accuses it of “failure to warn of dangerous services.”

“Now some may ask why are we pursuing a consumer protection action in this matter, but the answer is very straightforward,” Morrisey said, during a press conference at the State Capitol Tuesday. “Every parent who pays a tuition for a service falling under our consumer protection laws deserves to know that their schools that their children are attending are safe.

“Now this is obviously not a common action for our office to file but it is a critical one, as the public relies upon the state attorney general to enforce a variety of laws, especially as they may impact the well-being of children, our most precious resource.”

In August of 2018, a Pennsylvania grand jury issued a report identifying hundreds of predatory priests, including one or more who worked in West Virginia, according to the lawsuit.

Morrisey said his office began their investigation in September of 2018 into whether Catholic priests accused of sexually abusing children had worked in West Virginia.

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NEW YORK (NY)
NBC News

March 19, 2019

By Corky Siemaszko

The West Virginia attorney general filed a lawsuit Tuesday claiming that a local Roman Catholic diocese and former bishop failed to protect children from predator priests and teachers — and violated consumer protection laws by not alerting parents there were abusers on the payroll.

The suit takes what appears to be a novel approach by using state consumer protection laws, with parents as “purchasers” of services for their children.

Attorney General Patrick Morrisey claims in the suit that former Bishop Michael Bransfield and the Wheeling-Charleston Diocese engaged in “intentional concealment.”

“Omissions of these material facts caused the purchasers of their educational and recreational services to buy inherently dangerous services for their children for many decades,” the court papers state.

The lawsuit, which cites the specific West Virginia code that Bransfield and the diocese allegedly violated, is seeking a permanent court order “blocking the diocese from continuation of any such conduct.”

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PHILADEPHIA (PA)
The Philadelphia Inquirer

March 19, 2019

By Jeremy Roebuck and William Bender

West Virginia authorities on Tuesday accused Michael J. Bransfield, a Philadelphia native and former Roman Catholic bishop of Wheeling-Charleston, W. Va., and his predecessors of “knowingly employing pedophiles” — including some priests cited in last year’s Pennsylvania grand jury report examining decades of clergy sex abuse and cover-up.

In a civil suit, Attorney General Patrick Morrisey alleged that West Virginia’s prelates had endangered children for decades by failing to conduct adequate background checks or disclose abuse accusations against clerics and diocesan employees to parents in the parishes where those people were assigned.

In some cases cited in the filings, child molesters were allowed to stay in parish assignments that brought them in routine contact with minors for years after they had admitted their crimes.

The lawsuit is the latest in a series of high-profile civil actions taken by state authorities across the country in the last year against a church that they say has been too slow to respond to — and in some cases covered-up — a crisis of sex abuse within its ranks.

Mr. Bransfield — the scion of a family of prominent Philadelphia clerics who resigned last year facing his own allegations of sexual misconduct — dismissed Tuesday’s action as little more than a fishing expedition.

“I don’t understand why there is a sudden concern,” he said in an interview with the Inquirer. “Considering the publicity about my own situation, they’re trying to find other things that could have happened. This is all happening because of what’s happening to me.”

A spokesperson from the diocese disputed the suit’s allegations, though he said in a statement that church officials would address the matter in “the appropriate forum.”

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COLUMBIA (MO)
KOMU TV 8

March 19, 2019

By Eric Graves

Victims of clergy sexual abuse said the Jefferson City Diocese needs to be more open about a priest recently put under investigation for “boundary violations with a minor.”

Father Geoffrey Brooke has been barred from practicing while the diocese investigates the allegations.

David Clohessy, a representative of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said Bishop Shawn McKnight should release the work history of any priest accused of sexual misconduct.

“The more information we have the better we can protect our families,” he said.

Clohessy said Brooke’s work wasn’t confined to Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Jefferson City. Brooke also worked at the Newman Center, a gathering place for Catholics on the University of Missouri campus, Clohessy said.

Helen Osman, a representative of diocese, said she could not confirm whether Brooke was involved at the Newman Center.

A student there, Tyler Peterson, said he knows Brooke.

Peterson told KOMU 8 Brooke went to the Newman Center and attended MU, “like 10 years ago.”

Peterson said he took a class taught by Brooke at Sacred Heart Catholic Church. He said, during the time he was in Brooke’s class, he did not notice anything wrong.

“There’s nothing that I know of that would make me think he would do anything malicious to children or anyone like that,” Peterson said.

He said he is not going to make any judgments until there is an investigation.

“I want to know the details, and, for now, he should definitely not have his name slandered,” Petterson said.

The Jefferson City Diocese maintains a web page listing clergy who have been accused of abuse. Clohessy said, in addition to the names, it should include all of the locations where that clergy member has worked.

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COLUMBIA (MO)
Columbia Tribune

March 19, 2019

By Roger McKinney

With Sacred Heart Catholic Church in the background, two members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests accused Bishop Shawn McKnight and the diocese of Jefferson City of continuing to withhold information about abusive priests.

“We’re here to essentially protect the vulnerable and heal the wounded,” said David Clohessy, SNAP’s president based in St. Louis.

Geoffrey A. Brooke Jr., a priest at Immaculate Conception Church and School in Jefferson City, has been placed on administrative leave while being investigated for allegations of “boundary violations” with minors. The bishop sent an email to school families, which was passed on to a Jefferson City reporter. The email said the Missouri Children’s Division hotline had been notified.

Clohessy said Brooke previously was at the Newman Center at the University of Missouri, something not revealed by the bishop.

“He thought it wouldn’t show up in the press,” Clohessy said about the bishop’s failure to disclose information. “It’s heartbreaking.”

Clohessy said he didn’t know details, but Brooke was at the Newman Center recently because he was ordained just in 2015.

“It is tragically reckless that Bishop McKnight continues to be secretive about these dangerous clerics,” Clohessy said.

Clohessy said Brooke was ordained long after a screening process for priests was established in 2002, but he added that he didn’t think there’s any way of screening for child abusers.

The diocese in December added the name of Mel Lahr to the list of priests with credible allegations of abuse. Clohessy said Lahr was a pastor at Sacred Hearth Catholic Church in the 1970s and 1980s.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
WUWM Radio

March 19, 2019

By Latoya Dennis

Former Archbishops William Cousins and Rembert Weakland’s names have removed from buildings in Milwaukee

The Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee has removed the names of two former Milwaukee Archbishops — William Cousins and Rembert Weakland — from buildings as part of the church’s response to sexual abuse by clergy.

The Archbishop Cousins Catholic Center, which was named in honor of William Cousins, will be renamed on Friday. And Rembert Weakland’s name has been removed from the parish center at St. John the Evangelist in downtown Milwaukee.

Cousins and Weakland led the Milwaukee Archdiocese between 1958 and 2002 and helped cover up clergy sexual abuse of children.

Jerry Topczewski is chief of staff for current Archbishop Jerome Listecki, and says he hopes the name removals provide healing for victims.

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ROME (ITALY)
Catholic News Service

March 19, 2019

By Hannah Brockhaus

French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin will remain the Archbishop of Lyon, the Vatican announced Tuesday. According to a statement released by the Holy See Press Office, Pope Francis has not accepted the cardinal’s resignation, though Barbarin has stepped back from the day-to-day leadership of the diocese.

Barbarin was convicted by a French tribunal on March 7 on charges of failing to report allegations of sexual abuse committed by a priest of his diocese. He was given a six-month suspended prison sentence and plans to appeal the verdict.

Barbarin met with Pope Francis March 18 to submit his resignation as archbishop. Papal spokesman Alessandro Gisotti said March 19 that Francis chose to not accept the resignation of Barbarin as Archbishop of Lyon but, aware of the “difficulties” of the archdiocese at the present moment, “left Cardinal Barbarin free to make the best decision for the diocese.”

According to Gisotti, Barbarin has decided to “retire for a time,” leaving the vicar general of the Archdiocese of Lyon in charge during his absence.

In a statement on the Lyon archdiocesan website March 19, the cardinal said the pope did not want to accept his resignation, “invoking the presumption of innocence.”

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BOSTON (MA)
The Heights

March 19, 2019

John L. Allen Jr., editor of online Catholic newspaper Crux, and Rev. Matt Malone, S.J., president and editor-in-chief of American Media, spoke on a panel titled “Revitalizing Our Church: Ideas from the Catholic Press” on Thursday. University Spokesman Jack Dunn moderated the event, the first part of The Church in the 21st Century Center’s three-part Easter Series conversations.

The talk, stylized in a question-and-answer format, was part of an ongoing discussion surrounding numerous sex abuse scandals within the Catholic Church. Dunn asked the panelists questions pertaining to both the crisis in general and the media’s role in providing solutions.

“There are things now that we can do that we don’t have to wait to do,” Malone said. “We don’t have counsel. We don’t have to have a change in the magisterium’s articulation of the church’s doctrine. For example, if who is in the room when the decisions are made matters, let’s get a greater amount of diversity in the room where the decisions are made.

“We should take an inventory of every job in the church in this country and ask ourselves if it really has to be done by a cleric, and if it doesn’t, then it should be done by a layperson with a preference for a woman. … If we change the people in the room, the culture will follow.”

Malone also said that introducing more women into the clergy would be beneficial, noting that there are already female chancellors, or bishops’ law officers.

“If we keep governing the church as if it’s 1955, it’s going to be a long way to Easter,” he said.

Dunn asked Allen about the role of the Catholic press in the journey toward the renewal of the church. Allen replied that he sees himself as a journalist who happens to be Catholic rather than a Catholic journalist, maintaining that the press is formed by secular institutions and that it should remain a secular enterprise uninfluenced by Catholic doctrine.

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ROME (ITALY)
New York Times

March 19, 2019

By Elisabetta Povoledo and Aurelien Breeden

Pope Francis has rejected the resignation of a French cardinal, the Vatican announced on Tuesday, despite the cardinal’s conviction this month for covering up decades-old allegations of sexual abuse by a priest in his diocese.

A French court found Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, archbishop of Lyon, guilty on March 7 of failing to report abuse to the authorities, and imposed a six-month suspended sentence.

Cardinal Barbarin, 68, promptly offered to resign, though he is appealing the verdict. He met with Pope Francis on Monday to personally hand in his resignation, but both the cardinal and a Vatican spokesman, Alessandro Gisotti, said on Tuesday that the pope had not accepted it.

Instead, they said, the cardinal, one of the highest-ranking and best-known Roman Catholic officials in France, will step aside for an unspecified length of time.

Cardinal Barbarin said in a statement that the pope had acted “invoking the presumption of innocence.”

“He gave me the freedom to make the decision that seemed best, today, for the life of the Lyon diocese,” the cardinal said. At the pope’s suggestion, he said, he was stepping aside “for a while,” effective immediately, and would leave the day-to-day handling of church affairs to Father Yves Baumgarten, the vicar-general in Lyon.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Patch

March 19, 2019

By Brendan Krisel,

A man who claims he was abused by a priest as a freshman at Cardinal Hayes High School in the 90s is calling on the Archdiocese of New York to remove the priest from his current posting on the Upper West Side.

Rafael Mendoza and his lawyers stood across from the Church of Notre Dame with his lawyers Tuesday morning and called on the church to suspect the church’s administrator Monsignor John Paddack so that he cannot have any more contact with children. Mendoza and four other unnamed victims claimed they were abused by Paddack between 1988 and 2002 when the priest taught at three different high schools.

“He took advantage of me when I was at my weakest point,” Mendoza said Tuesday. “I believe he should be removed. I don’t know if he is still [abusing] anyone else or any kids out there.”

Mendoza said Paddack abused him in 1996 during his freshman year at Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx when he was just 14 years old. Mendoza was new to the school and said he was abusing pills and suicidal when he reached out to Paddack, the school’s counselor, for help.

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ARLINGTON (VA)
USA Today

March 19, 2019

By Chris Woodyard

West Virginia’s attorney general filed a lawsuit Tuesday against a retired Catholic bishop and a diocese alleging that they knowingly employing pedophile priests and failed to conduct adequate background checks.

Attorney General Patrick Morrisey’s suit follows the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston’s disclosure last November of 18 priests who were credibly accused of having sexually abused children over a span from 1950 through last summer and another 13 who were accused in other states and then came to West Virginia, though no complaints were lodged against them there.

“The diocese and its bishops chose to cover up and conceal arguably criminal behavior of admitted child sex abusers,” the lawsuit states.

The diocese had no immediate comment. In September, it announced Bishop Michael Bransfield’s retirement and said he had been under investigation over allegations of sexual harassment of adults and financial improprieties. A team of investigators had interviewed 40 people over four months and delivered its findings to the Vatican, the diocese said.

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WHEELING (WV)
Reuters

March 19, 2019

By Gabriella Borter

West Virginia officials sued the state’s Roman Catholic diocese on Tuesday, accusing the church of knowingly employing priests and lay people in schools, parishes and camps who had admitted sexually assaulting children.

The lawsuit alleges the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston violated consumer protection laws by failing to disclose possible unsafe conditions at schools, parishes and camps caused by the employment of people who had records of child sexual assault. It seeks unspecified financial damages.

The lawsuit, which follows an investigation by the state, marks the latest move by U.S. officials to take on long-running patterns of sex abuse, which have driven down attendance and undercut the church leadership’s moral authority around the world in recent years.

“The Wheeling-Charleston Diocese engaged in a pattern of denial and cover-up when it discovered its priests were sexually abusing children, particularly in schools and camps run by the Catholic Church and funded through tuition paid by West Virginia consumers,” West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said at a news conference.

Diocesan representatives did not respond to a request for comment. Attempts to reach the people named as defendants, including priests and bishops, were unsuccessful.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, the world’s biggest support group for people hurt by religious and institutional authorities, said it was grateful to Morrisey for undertaking the investigation and “bringing these egregious oversights into the light.”

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DALLAS (TX)
Dallas Morning News

March 19, 2019

By David Tarrant

Three months after members of the Dallas Jesuit community were named on a list of clergy “credibly accused” of sexual abuse of a minor, a lawsuit has been filed by a former student at Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas.

The suit claims Donald Dickerson, a former Jesuit priest, sexually assaulted the student in the late 1970s. Dickerson was one of 11 men who previously worked at Dallas Jesuit included on a list released by the Jesuits in December of clergy members “credibly accused” of sexual abuse of a minor.

Dickerson was removed from the Jesuit order in 1986 and died in 2018.

The plaintiff in the case — listed in the suit only as John Doe — is seeking damages in excess of $1 million, said his attorney, Hal Browne, who filed the suit Monday in Dallas County District Court.

Dallas Jesuit Prep and the Catholic Society of Religious and Literary Education, within the Jesuits U.S. Central and Southern Province, are named as defendants in the suit. The school is located within the Central and Southern Province of the Jesuits.

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JACKSON (MS)
Mississippi Clarion Ledger

March 19, 2019

By Sara Fowler

For more than 70 years, Father Paul Canonici has been a prominent figure in the Mississippi Catholic community. Tuesday, he was one of more than a dozen priests identified by the church Tuesday who has been credibly accused of sexual abuse.

In his Madison home Monday afternoon, Canonici, 91, spoke for over an hour about the allegations against him.

“I’m not aware that I have abused, that I have done anything that was sexually abusive to people,” he said.

A native of Shaw, Canonici joined the priesthood when he was 30 years old. Over the course of his tenure, he served as the diocesan superintendent of education, assistant principal and then principal of St. Joseph High School in Madison as well as the priest for multiple parishes throughout the Jackson metro area.

He retired when he was in his mid 70s, he said, but remained active in the church. Despite his five decades with the diocese, he’s not listed on the church’s website of retired priests.

Canonici said he’s “devastated” to be named on the list of accused priests and feels like the process is “unfair.”

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

March 19, 2019

By Bruce Vielmetti

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee announced Tuesday it would remove the names of former archbishops William E. Cousins and Rembert G. Weakland from buildings as part of the Catholic Church’s response to the clergy sexual abuse scandal.

The sign at the Archbishop Cousins Catholic Center in St. Francis will be removed at noon, and a new name announced with a temporary sign at 10 a.m. Friday., according to the announcement from the archdiocese.

The Weakland Center is located north of the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in downtown Milwaukee and is the site of parish offices and outreach initiatives. It was named after Weakland following the renovation of the cathedral and the surrounding block in 2000.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Tablet

March 19, 2019

A senior Catholic MP has written to Pope Francis warning him that the Church is facing its worst crisis since the Reformation.

Sir Edward Leigh, Conservative MP for Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, calls on the Pope to take “urgent and strong action” to renew the Catholic Church, arguing that even among the faithful, “there is widespread disillusion”.

Reiterating the comment by the Archbishop of Brisbane Mark Coleridge that the Church’s credibility is “shot to pieces”, Sir Edward says the policy must be one of zero tolerance: “Half measures will not do. Only root and branch reform will cut out this cancer.” Priests proven to have abused children must be stripped of the priesthood, he says, not just moved around, or covered up.

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STARKVILLE (MS)
Starkville

March 19, 2019

By Ryan Phillips

Bishop Joseph Kopacz of the Catholic Diocese of Jackson will hold a press conference Tuesday to formally release the names of clergy and lay ministers connected to the Diocese who are “credibly accused of abuse.”

The move comes amid both a nationwide push for transparency from the church as it relates to priests accused of abuse and local incidents in the Starkville parish and Jackson diocese that have drawn backlash from parishioners and prompted a federal investigation.

Parishioners under the Jackson diocese were notified over the weekend through a letter from Bishop Kopacz, announcing the list of accused clergy would be made public during a press conference Tuesday at 10 a.m. at the Cathedral of St. Peter the Apostle on North West Street in Jackson.

“We know that this list will cause pain to many individuals and communities and I am truly, deeply sorry for that pain,” Bishop Kopacz said. “The crime of abuse of any kind is a sin, but the abuse of children and vulnerable adults is especially egregious. First and foremost, it is a sin against the innocent victims, but also a sin against the Church and our communities. It is a sin that cries out for justice.”

The bishop will be joined by members of his chancery team during the press conference, including Chancellor and Archivist Mary Woodward and Coordinator for the Office of Child Protection Vickie Carollo.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
Kansas City Star

March 19, 2019

By Judy L. Thomas

A priest of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas defrocked last year over what church leaders said were credible allegations of sexual abuse of minors is no longer licensed to practice medicine in Kansas and Missouri.

John H. Wisner, who had been a priest for more than 45 years, also was a psychiatrist who held a medical license in both states. Those licenses remained valid months after he was defrocked.

But now, an “active licensee” search for Wisner’s name in Missouri professional registration records comes up empty. And Kansas records currently list Wisner’s license — which wasn’t due to expire until July 31 — as “inactive.”

“The designation of inactive is available for a person who is not regularly engaged in the practice of healing arts in Kansas and who does not hold oneself out to the public as being professionally engaged in such practice,” said Kathleen Selzler Lippert, executive director of the state Board of Healing Arts, in an email to The Star.

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NARACOORTA (AUSTRALIA)
Naracoorte Herald

March 19, 2019

By Lee Curnow

As the world followed Cardinal George Pell’s sex crimes trial, one Apsley resident was watching closer than most.

Rosemary Nolan is one of hundreds of western Victorians who have been directly or indirectly affected by the actions of Cardinal Pell and his cohort of so-called “paedophile priests”.

Rosemary’s family – and many other people she knows from her time growing up in Edenhope – were impacted forever by a three-year stint in their town by now convicted paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale.

“Ridsdale arrived in 1976 in Edenhope and was there for three years. Eventually it came out that whilst he was in Edenhope, he was abusing boys,” Rosemary recalls.

“He was the first of the modern priests, he had a flash car, he was extremely friendly. We were so naive, we didn’t even know there was such a thing as a paedophile.”

Sadly, Rosemary’s brother John Ruth became one of Ridsdale’s victims during that time.]

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NEW SOUTH WALES (AUSTRALIA)
The Australian

March 19, 2019

By Tessa Akerman

A convicted paedophile priest who confessed his abuse to another paedophile priest has pleaded guilty in the Victorian County Court to sexually abusing three children.

Paul David Ryan today pleaded guilty to one count of indecent assault, one count of sexual penetration with a person aged between 16 and 18 years and one count of indecent act with a child under 16.

Ryan was committed to stand trial on nine charges but ultimately pleaded guilty to just three.

In a separate case, Ryan had pleaded guilty in 2006 to three charges of indecent assault against one victim.

The royal commission into child sexual abuse heard authorities would have known about Ryan’s “activities with adolescent boys” by 1981-1982.

Ryan said he made confessions to priests, including now deceased Ronald Pickering, also a paedophile, as a way to reconcile his actions with God.

“I know that was very seriously flawed. I mean I was seriously flawed in the way I assessed myself and fooled myself, rationalised I suppose is the word,” Ryan told the commission.

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ROME (ITALY)
Agenzia Nazionale Stampa

March 2019

Pope Francis has not accepted the resignation of Lyon Archbishop Philippe Barbarin, found guilty earlier this month of failing to report sexual abuse of minors in the 1970s and ’80s at the scout camps of Father Bernard Preyna, and sentenced to six months in jail, Vatican Spokesman Alessandro Gisotti said Tuesday.

But “the Holy Father has left Cardinal Barbarin free to take the best decision for the Diocese and Cardinal Barbarin has decided to retire for a period of time,” Gisotti said.

Vicar General Yves Baumgarten will take over the diocese, Gisotti said.

Barbarin, 68, was sentenced to six months in jail by a Lyon court on March 7.

It was a conditional sentence.

Barbarin tenders his resignation as archbishop after the sentence.

The Catholic Church has been roiled by abuse scandals and last month a Vatican summit of world bishops vowed zero tolerance on the issue.

Also last month, former Vatican No.3 George Pell became the top Catholic Church figure to be convicted of sex abuse of minors, in his native Australia.

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JEFFERSON CITY (MO)
KWOS Radio

March 19, 2019

A Jefferson City priest is on administrative leave after allegations of what are called ‘boundary violations with minors’. Father Geoffery Brooke serves at Immaculate Conception Parish. The Missouri Children’s Division confirms they received a hotline call about the priest. The agency is heading up the investigation. The Diocese published a list of staff accused of sexually abusing children last fall.

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ROANOKE (VA)
Roanoke Times

March 19, 2019

How can any group or organization call itself a Church and advocate a set of religious beliefs while amassing a fortune of over $150 billion. Right now I’m talking about the Catholic Church. WWJD??? Would He approve? What was that thing He did with the money changers in the Temple a few years back?

Throughout its history the Catholic Church has had numerous financial scandals and now the clerical sex abuse scandal is out in the open. How long has it been going on?? Ever since this so-called church was established, I’m sure. And I’m equally sure that every pope who ever sat in Rome has known about it and I bet some of them were guilty also. I will never believe Pope John Paul, who is now a saint, didn’t know about the abuse, as Pope Francis has known about it for years. Aren’t they guilty of aiding and abetting? Isn’t that a criminal act? Isn’t pedophilia a crime? Why aren’t hundreds of priests, bishops, cardinals and other assorted officials of the Catholic Church in prison?

I read that the pope had “punished” a cardinal by banishing him. Gee whiz, poor guy. He can’t go to Mass any more. I guess he will have to join another church, perhaps another one that has amassed a fortune and yet preaches about money being the root of all evil.

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

Two more alleged predators were in Columbia

One, ousted last week, was at MU Newman Center

The other, ‘outed’ last month, was at a local parish

A third priest, just publicly accused, worked nearby

SNAP wants University officials to “do real outreach”

Group also wants mid-MO bishop to update accused list

WHAT

Holding childhood photos and signs at a sidewalk news conference, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will disclose
–that a just-ousted publicly accused priest worked in Columbia.
–the name of another publicly accused abusive priest who worked in mid-MO, and
–the name of a third publicly accused abusive priest who worked nearby.

Only one of them is on the Jefferson City diocese’s list of accused clerics.

They will also prod
–University of Missouri officials to “aggressively reach out to ex-staff and students” who may have been hurt by the just-ousted accused priest, and
–mid-Missouri’s Catholic bishop to do the same.

WHEN
Tuesday, March 19 at 11:00 a.m.

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WASHINGTON ( DC)
WTOP TV

March 19, 2019

In 1987, televangelist Jim Bakker resigned as chairman of his PTL ministry organization amid a sex and money scandal involving Jessica Hahn, a former church secretary.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

March 19, 2019

By Thomas P. Doyle

The so-called “summit” on the clergy sex abuse crisis was not a total failure. The process and the outcome of the Feb. 21-24 meeting of bishops at the Vatican were clearly a serious disappointment to the victim-survivors, their families and countless others who hoped for something concrete to happen. The accomplishments can only be understood in the context of the totality of the event: the speeches, especially those of the three women, the bishops’ deliberations, the media reaction, and the presence and participation of the victims-survivors from at least 20 countries.

I have been directly involved in this nightmare since 1984, when the reality of sexual violation of the innocent by clerics, and the systemic lying and cover-up by the hierarchy (from the papacy on down) emerged from layers of ecclesiastical secrecy into the open. By 1985, Pope John Paul II and several high-ranking Vatican clerics possessed detailed information about what was quickly turning into the church’s worst crisis since the Dark Ages.

From that time onward, bishops on various levels of church bureaucracy have been engaged in almost nonstop rhetoric about the issue that has been a mixture of denial, blame-shifting, minimization, explanations (the most bizarre, that it’s the work of the devil), apologies, expressions of regret, promises of change. The rhetoric has been accompanied by procedures, policies, protocols and a few changes in canon law. The gathering in February was no exception.

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NEW JERSEY
NJ.com

March 19, 2019

By Chris Kudialis

More than a week after police found him shot in the neck in his house in the Nevada desert, John Capparelli’s killer remains a mystery.

Police say they are still investigating who shot the disgraced ex-priest from New Jersey in the kitchen of the well-kept house where the alleged child molester had started a new life.

“We have no additional information,” said Officer Rod Peña, a spokesman for the Henderson, Nevada, police department.

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NEW JERSEY
The Star-Ledger

March 17, 2019

By Drew Sheneman

The NJ dioceses release of 188 priests accused of sexual abuse was a step in the right direction toward transparency and finally healing the gaping wounds left by the massive, worldwide sexual abuse scandal. The Pope has been saying all the right things, as well as openly addressing the abuse scandal, which would have been unthinkable under different church leadership.

Transparency and openness are good, but the church’s contrition apparently only goes so far. It stops at the statute of limitations for civil cases brought against it. The church is happy to admit wrongdoing and act contrite, as long as it doesn’t cost them anything.

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SANTA ANA (CA)
Anderson Advocates

March 18, 2019

Diocese Protected Fr. John Ruhl In Spite of Multiple Abuse Accusations

What: At a press conference Tuesday in Santa Ana, California, survivors, advocates, and the law firm of Jeff Anderson & Associates will:

• Announce a lawsuit on behalf of a man naming the Diocese of Orange and Fr. John E. Ruhl as defendants. The lawsuit alleges that Fr. Ruhl sexually abused the boy at a Placentia parish.

• Discuss the lawsuit and history of Fr. Ruhl, who has now been accused of sexually abusing at least four students before being incardinated in the Diocese of Orange.

• Address troubling public safety danger and lack of information regarding the whereabouts and status of this alleged offender.

• Challenge Bishop Kevin W. Vann to publicly and permanently take action against Fr. Ruhl and to release the identities, whereabouts and files of all clergy accused of sexual misconduct that have ever associated with the Diocese of Orange, including Fr. Ruhl.

• Demand Bishop Vann release the names of all Church officials, past and present, in the Diocese of Orange, who were complicit in concealing child sex abuse.

When/Where: Tuesday, March 19, 2019 at 10:00 AM PST
DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Santa Ana – Orange County Airport
Ballroom F
201 E. MacArthur Boulevard
Santa Ana, California 92707

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JACKSON (MI)
WAPT TV

March 19, 2019

The Catholic Diocese of Jackson is releasing names of Mississippi clergy members it said have been credibly accused of sexual abuse.

Bishop Joseph Kopacz said the list will be published Tuesday on the Diocese website.

“We know that this list will cause pain to many individuals and communities and I am truly, deeply sorry for that pain,” Kopacz said in a letter released Monday. “The crime of abuse of any kind is a sin, but the abuse of children and vulnerable adults is especially egregious. First and foremost, it is a sin against the innocent victims, but also a sin against the Church and our communities. It is a sin that cries out for justice.”

The bishop said he encourages anyone who has been sexually abused by a clergy member or church employee to come forward.

“We know it can take years for a victim to come forward,” Kopacz said. “We want to hear from those who have been abused by a member of the clergy or an employee of the church. Not only is it our legal duty to report these cases, helping victims find healing and wholeness is our moral imperative.”

Kopacz also said the church is taking steps to prevent abuse, including screening and educating employees and volunteers.

“I apologize from the depths of my heart to those who have been sexually abused by clergy and church personnel, to the families damaged by these crimes and to the Catholic community for the scandal this scourge has brought upon our Church,” Kopacz said. “There is no room for this evil in our society or our churches.”

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ROME (ITALY)
National Public Radio

March 18, 2019

By Sylvia Poggioli

In February, Pope Francis acknowledged a longstanding dirty secret in the Roman Catholic Church — the sexual abuse of nuns by priests.

It’s an issue that had long been kept under wraps, but in the #MeToo era, a #NunsToo movement has emerged, and now sexual abuse is more widely discussed.

The Vatican’s wall of silence was first broken in Women Church World, a supplement of the official Vatican daily, L’Osservatore Romano. An article in the February issue by editor Lucetta Scaraffia — a history professor, mother and feminist — blamed abuse of women and minors on the clerical culture of the all-powerful priesthood. The piece was based on hundreds of stories she heard from nuns.

It’s very hard for a nun to report she has been raped by a priest, says Scaraffia, because of the mindset that, in sex, women can always say no.

“These nuns believe they’re the guilty ones for having seduced that holy man into committing sin,” she says, “because that’s what they’ve always been taught.”

Adding to the trauma, she says, raped nuns who get pregnant become outcasts from their orders.

“These poor women are forced to leave their order and live alone raising their child with no help,” she says. “Sometimes they’re forced to have abortions — paid by the priest because nuns have no money.”

“We are unobserved, invisible, ignored and not respected”

Sister Catherine Aubin, a French Dominican nun who teaches theology at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas in Rome, says the abuse is the result of male domination in church leadership.

“The Vatican is a world of men,” she says. “Some truly are men of God. Others have been ruined by power. The key to these secrets and silence is … abuse of power. They climb up a career staircase toward evil.”

Aubin, who also works on Women Church World, describes women’s treatment inside the male Vatican world this way: “We are unobserved, invisible, ignored and not respected.”

The first extensive report on abuse of women in the church was in 1994 by an Irish nun, Sister Maura O’Donohue. Her report covered more than 20 countries — mostly in Africa, but also Ireland, Italy, the Philippines and the United States.

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JACKSON (MS)
Magnolia State Live

March 18, 2019

A list of Mississippi Catholic priests who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse is scheduled to be publicly released Tuesday in the church’s effort for full disclosure.

Parishioners across Mississippi were given a letter from Bishop Joseph Kopacz, The Clarion Ledger reported. In the letter Kopacz wrote that the release of the list would cause pain to some people and communities.

Kopacz wrote that while he regretted the pain the release of the names is likely to cause, he acknowledged sexual abuse against children and vulnerable adults was “especially egregious.”

Tuesday’s expected release follows a number of similar lists released by Catholic dioceses across the country.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
Baltimore Sun

March 18, 2019

By Pamela Wood

The Maryland House of Delegates on Monday approved a bill removing the statute of limitations for filing lawsuits arising from child sexual abuse.

The House passed the bill by a bipartisan vote of 136-2 without debate, sending it to the state Senate for consideration.

The bill would allow victims of child sexual abuse to file a lawsuit anytime. And victims who previously were barred from filing a lawsuit because of the prior limits would have a two-year window to file a lawsuit.

Under current law, child sexual abuse victims have until age 38 to file a lawsuit. The law was expanded from age 25 to age 38 two years ago.

The vote to lift the statute of limitations was applauded by advocates for sexual abuse victims.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests said that if the bill becomes law, it would take Maryland from having “one of the worst” statute of limitations laws to “one of the best.”

“Survivors of sexual abuse, both child victims and adult survivors, will have a fairer opportunity to seek justice in this state,” read a statement from SNAP Maryland.

The two-year window for lawsuits “will open the doors of the courts to allow past victims a chance at justice and to expose predators,” SNAP Maryland said.

There’s been an increasing focus on child sexual abuse as the public has become more aware of the scope of abuse committed by Catholic priests, which bill sponsor Del. C.T. Wilson cited in arguing in favor of his bill Saturday.

Locally, it was recently revealed that 10 adults in positions of power at the private Key School in Annapolis sexually abused students in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s.

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

March 18, 2019

Today, a French Cardinal who two weeks ago was given a six-month suspended sentence ignoring allegations of sexual abuse will meet with Pope Francis to tender his resignation.

We hope that rather than accept the resignation letter of Cardinal Philippe Barbarin that Pope Francis will instead make the decision to fire him. While in practice, both situations mean Cardinal Barbarin will be removed from his position of power, we believe that it is critical for the Pope to show that he is taking this crisis seriously by taking deliberate action against those who would perpetuate it.

At the end of his summit, Pope Francis called for an “all-out battle” to end clergy sexual abuse. In failing to report allegations, Cardinal Barbarin is a deserter in the Pope’s army – as such, he should be fired when he and the Pope meet, not allowed to resign with his title intact.

Regardless of what happens today, we hope that those paying attention to this case will realize how critical it is to bring allegations immediately to police and prosecutors, not church officials.

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SAN MATEO (CA)
Patch

March 18, 2019

By Sue Wood

California Sen. Jerry Hill, (D-San Mateo), has introduced legislation to require clergy of all faiths to report suspected child abuse or neglect to law enforcement without regard to the circumstances.

Although current law includes clergy members in the list of 46 professionals with social workers and teachers as mandated reporters, the law also exempts clergy from such reporting if they gain their knowledge or suspicion of the crimes during “a penitential communication.”

Senate Bill 360 would remove that exemption.

“SB 360 is about the safety and protection of children,” said Hill, who represents San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. “Individuals who harm children or are suspected of harming children must be reported so a timely investigation by law enforcement can occur. The law should apply equally to all professionals who have been designated as mandated reporters of these crimes – with no exceptions, period. The exemption for clergy only protects the abuser and places children at further risk.”

Judy Klapperich-Larson, vice president of Survivor Network of those Abused by Priests’ Board of Directors, expressed strong support of the legislation on behalf of SNAP, which was founded 31 years ago and now has supporters throughout the world.

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BUCKINGHAM (ENGLAND)
Buckingham Today

March 18, 2019

By Sam Dean

Last week former Catholic priest Francis McDermott, who practised in Aylesbury between 1990 and 2005, was sent to prison for almost ten years for sexually abusing six children in the 1970s. During the trial, which this reporter attended, a common theme throughout was the importance of Mr McDermott’s role as a priest with regards to enabling him to commit his crimes for so long undetected.

Stephen Evans, CEO of The National Secular Society Many victims spoke of their parents’ piety and consequent lack of scrutiny of the priest’s behaviour, resulting in them being left alone as young children for hours at a time with a man in his thirties.

One victim said: “Because of their Catholic faith they believed what they were told – that’s what the Catholic religion meant to my mother – she wouldn’t question it.”

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SAGINAW (MI)
Saginaw News

March 17, 2019

By Bob Johnson

The attorney for Robert “Father Bob” DeLand Jr. argued in a Saginaw County District courtroom Monday that extensive media coverage will make it difficult to seat an unbiased jury in the Saginaw Catholic priest’s upcoming trial.

During the hearing that took place on Monday, March 18, in Judge Darnell Jackson’s courtroom, attorney Alan Crawford asked for a change of venue as well as additional challenges when vetting potential jurors.

“It’s going to be rare that we find anyone who hasn’t heard anything about this case,” Crawford said.

Prosecution argued that media coverage was not grounds for a venue change and called it premature.

The attorney is claiming heavy media coverage has prejudiced potential jurors against his client.

Jackson denied the additional challenges of potential jurors that Crawford requested, but did not rule on a venue change, stating that he will reserve that ruling for once jury selection begins.

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JEFFERSON CITY (MO)
ABC 17 News

March 18, 2019

By Madison Fleck

A priest at the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church was placed on leave last week after he was accused of “boundary violations with minors.”

Father Geoffrey Brooke was placed on leave while the allegations are investigated, according to a notice sent by Rev. W. Shawn McKnight to church members on March 10. The allegations were reported to the Missouri Children’s Division hotline, which will investigate the situation. The Diocesan Review Board will then review the results of the investigation and make a recommendation on how the Diocese should handle the issue.

Father Joshua Duncan was appointed as the part-time associate pastor for the Immaculate Conception parish, starting Monday.

The Diocese of Jefferson City released a list of clergy or brothers credibly accused of sexually abusing children in November.

Allegations against Brooke were made after the list was released, and those allegations will not be considered credible until the investigation has been completed, said Helen Osman, a spokeswoman with the Diocese of Jefferson City.

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BIRMINGHAM (AL)
For Such a Time as This blog

Anti-Abuse Rally Planned Outside 2019 Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) Annual Meeting

In June 2018, For Such a Time as This Rally gathered in Dallas outside the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting to call for decisive action on addressing abuse. With the Houston Chronicle’s three-part series “Abuse of Faith” published a week ago, the urgency of abuse within the SBC cannot be overstated.

Today, For Such a Time as This Rally is announcing it will join the SBC’s 2019 annual meeting, this time in Birmingham, Alabama on June 11-12, 2019.

Rally organizers have requested appointments with SBC President J.D. Greear and met with representatives of his office. Representatives from the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, which is overseeing the Sexual Abuse Study Group, have also met with rally organizers. While rally organizers appreciate recent announcements and apologies in the wake of the Houston Chronicle’s coverage, there remains a long road ahead.

One of those who raised the alarm over abuse in the SBC decades ago is #ChurchToo survivor, advocate, and attorney Christa Brown. She responded to Greear’s unveiling of www.churchcares.com website and curriculum by stating: “J.D. Greear promised ‘bold steps.’ This isn’t bold. It’s bare-bones. The SBC still has a long ways to go.”

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Patheos blog

March 18, 2019

By Melinda Selmys

Several months ago, I announced that I was no longer able to worship in the Catholic Church. This has prompted several people to ask, quite reasonably, why I am still blogging for the Catholic channel. They deserve an answer.

When The Field Hospital Isn’t Safe

First, it’s important to understand that I haven’t rejected Catholicism. I’m currently working out how I feel and think in the aftermath of an abusive marriage, and there is a strong relationship between that marriage and my faith. I converted alongside my ex, and to a large degree my relationship with him formed and shaped my religious beliefs and practice.

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[“We have brought to justice 105 cases of pedophilia in the Mexican Church”]

MEXICO
El País (Spain)

March 17, 2019

By Georgina Zerega

El secretario general de la Conferencia Episcopal mexicana, Alfonso Miranda, exige a los obispos notificar a las autoridades los casos de abuso sexual

La Iglesia mexicana promete haber iniciado la lucha contra la pederastia. Lo hace a viva voz. Una institución que se ha mantenido durante décadas bajo la sombra de resonantes casos de abuso contra menores, se dispone ahora a investigarlos. A dos semanas de haber vuelto de la cumbre del Papa en Roma, Alfonso Miranda, secretario general de la conferencia episcopal mexicana, atiende a EL PAÍS por teléfono y revela los primeros resultados del único registro interno que se ha hecho sobre el tema. “Hemos presentado ante la autoridad civil 105 casos”, dice

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[Priests sign letter against abuses in the Church: Lay group calls for concrete measures]

CHILE
BioBioChile

March 18, 2019

By Alberto González and Edgar Pfennings

70 sacerdotes suscribieron una carta en contra de los abusos sexuales ocurridos al interior de la Iglesia Católica, la que fue leída en misas a lo largo del país durante el fin de semana. La Agrupación de Laicos y Denunciantes afirmaron que se necesitan medidas concretas y colaboración con la justicia.

“Esperamos que todos los delitos sean sancionados oportunamente por la justicia civil como corresponde y que también se apliquen las sanciones canónicas más rigurosas”, señala la misiva.

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