ABUSE TRACKER

YAKIMA (WA)
Herald-Republic

March 7, 2019

For too long in too many dioceses, the identities of Catholic clergy credibly accused of sexual abuse have remained hidden under the hem of a secretive clerical cassock – out of sight to the public at large but forever haunting the lives of victims.

This past year, however, extraordinary strides have been made in the Catholic church to bring the truth out of the shadows and hold priests accountable. It is a long overdue reckoning that has reached the highest Diocesan levels — the Vatican, via the crimes of defrocked Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, among others — on down to the smallest local parishes in towns far and near.

And, yes, that includes Yakima.

The Catholic Diocese of Yakima’s Diocesan Lay Advisory Board this month will consider whether the Diocese should post on its website the names of alleged abusive priests who have served here. The panel, comprised among others, of a psychologist, a member with a background in law enforcement, a physician and a pastor, will make a recommendation to Bishop Joseph Tyson, who is expected to decide soon after Easter.

This editorial board sincerely hopes the advisory board and the bishop opt for the light of public disclosure, the cleansing qualities of transparency, over continued secrecy and evasion. It’s fitting that the decision will come around Easter, a time for redemption and resurrection; the church’s reputation surely is in need of both.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
WDAF Fox 4

March 7, 2019

By Kera Mashek and Tanya Anderson

Members of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests gathered outside the Kansas City Police Department downtown on Thursday morning to protest against a KCPD chaplain.

Protesters alleged the chaplain sexually abused young girls at a church where he was a pastor. The protesters held signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference and demanded that the police department carefully vet future candidates for positions. FOX4 spoke with the chaplain in question.

“Hopefully we can put this behind us and I can continue to serve,” said Reverend Stanley Archie.

The pastor, therapist and police chaplain is defending himself as decade-old allegations of sexual misconduct led to the new calls for his removal.

Rev. Archie leads an inner-city Baptist church and has worked alongside Kansas City police officers as a chaplain the past 10 years.

The SNAP activists hope to see the reverend removed from two public posts.

“Essentially having Stan Archie as a police chaplain is going to deter victims of rape or sexual misconduct from picking up the phone or calling 911 and ultimately that makes everyone less safe,” said David Clohessy, St. Louis volunteer for SNAP.

During FOX4’s “Working for Blue” campaign, we introduced you to KCPD chaplains, including Rev. Archie.

As the department acknowledges, chaplains are unpaid volunteers, who work alongside officers to provide moral and spiritual support, and don’t participate in investigations.

Still, KCPD spokesperson Jake Becchina said, “the Kansas City Missouri Police Department takes accusations of this nature very seriously. We are now reviewing the matter and investigating internally. This chaplain has been part of KCPD’s program for approximately 10 years.”

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Patheos blog

March 7, 2019

By Deacon Greg Kandra

From The New York Times:

A Catholic cardinal offered his resignation on Thursday after being found guilty by a French court of covering up decades-old sexual abuse by a priest in his diocese, a surprise victory for the priest’s accusers, who had forced the case to trial after it was dropped by prosecutors.

The conviction of Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, the archbishop of Lyon, was the first in France against such a high-profile clergyman, adding to a long list of sexual abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church just weeks after a landmark meeting at the Vatican ended without a concrete plan to tackle the issue.

Cardinal Barbarin, 68, was found guilty of failing to report child abuse by the Rev. Bernard Preynat to the authorities from 2014 to 2015, after parishioners accused the priest of sexually abusing dozens of Boy Scouts in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

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

March 7, 2019

Today, a French Cardinal has been sentenced to a six-month suspended prison sentence for ignoring allegations of sexual abuse against a priest in his diocese.

We wish that Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, the current Archbishop of Lyon, would have received a jail sentence, but are at least glad that he has been found guilty on charges that he refused to call police about abuse reports against Fr. Bernard Preynat. By ignoring allegations and refusing to inform police, Cardinal Barbarin put children in his community at risk.

We believe Cardinal Barbarin should have been given jail time because he endangered more young lives with this decision. That is how you stop cover ups – by harshly punishing those who engage in them.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Sojourners Magazine

March 7, 2019

By Liam Adams

It’s the latest report amid #ChurchToo era: Hundreds of pastors and other leaders in Southern Baptist Convention churches sexually abused lay members and a number of them were still allowed to work at churches, even after being accused or convicted. These revelations, most recently documented by the Houston Chronicle and San-Antonio Express-News, have been known by those within the SBC for a while now.

For over a decade, activists have pushed for the creation of a database in the SBC that would list credibly accused predators. They argue that, using such a database, a church’s hiring committee could check candidates against the list, thus preventing some of the shuffling of predators that the SBC and other denominations have seen. The SBC has yet to adopt the idea, however, arguing they can’t exercise authority over local, autonomous churches and make them report abuse. Survivors and activists say that shouldn’t stop the SBC from trying.

After being intensely scrutinized in the wake of allegations of sexual abuse against SBC pastors over the past year, some SBC leaders are vocalizing their hope for change in the convention. Among these hopes is the implementation a database, which President J.D. Greear emphasized in his “10 calls to action” last month.

As many in the SBC eagerly await a decision on a database, Sojourners sought to better understand how databases for other denominations work and more importantly, the impact they have.

Years after being abused by a rabbi at the yeshiva he was attending, Eric Aiken looked up his abuser online and found a litany of other cases connected to the rabbi. He also stumbled upon reports of other Orthodox Jewish rabbis abusing children.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Fox News

March 7, 2019

By Lukas Mikelionis

France’s most senior cardinal was found guilty on Thursday of failing to report allegations of sexual abuse of minors by a priest to authorities.

Cardinal Philippe Barbarin was given a six-month suspended prison sentence for providing cover for the Rev. Bernard Preynat by not going to authorities about the alleged abuse between July 2014 and June 2015.

Nine alleged abuse victims claim that Barbarin and the clergy covered up crimes committed by Preynat for years, though the statute of limitations had expired on some allegations and thought that the court would actually acquit the cardinal.

Five other defendants were acquitted.

Barbarin’s lawyer Jean-Felix Luciani said they will appeal the ruling.

“This is a decision that is not fair at the juridical level,” the lawyer said. “We hope that at the next step, justice will be done.”

Preynat previously admitted to abusing Boy Scouts in the 1970s and 1980s and will be tried in a separate case.

“This is a victory that sends a strong signal to lots of victims and a signal to the church as well,” said Francois Devaux, who is the president of “La Parole Liberee” (Lift the Burden of Silence). “We see that no one is above the law. We have been heard by the court. This is the end of a long path.”

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GREENSBURG (PA)
Horowitz Law

March 7, 2019

Adam Horowitz, a nationally-recognized advocate for survivors of clergy sexual abuse, announces the launch of a new database of clergy and lay employees accused of sexual abuse in the Diocese of Greensburg. The database, which includes 23 priests as of today, is believed to be the most comprehensive list of accused offenders in the Diocese of Greensburg available.

For the benefit of survivors and journalists alike, Horowitz and his team have painstakingly prepared individual profiles on more than 500 accused offenders in Pennsylvania to consolidate available information about their backgrounds, alleged crimes, and, in the case of offenders who are still alive, their current locations. Many of these profiles include photographs that are not available anywhere else.

The list was compiled using the names identified in the 2018 Grand Jury report, the Diocese of Greensburg’s list of credibly accused individuals, media reports, and court records.

The Greensburg database also includes priests who belong to religious orders, such as the Jesuits and the Oblates. The Diocese of Greensburg fund is one of very few funds that will compensate those victimized by religious Order priests, such as the Benedictines. Similar funds in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and across New York State specifically and arbitrarily excluded claims made by anyone abused by non-diocesan priests, nuns, and lay employees.

However, the Diocese of Greensburg recently and unexpectedly announced that it will exclude the claims of anyone who had not reported their abuse to the Diocese of Greensburg before the day the fund opened. The Bishop offered no explanation was offered for this arbitrary exclusion, which does not exist in the overwhelming majority of claims funds in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

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CANADA
CBC News

March 4, 2019

By Jorge Barrera and Lynette Fortune

Former principal denied existence but experts say records of sensitive information about priests were kept

When OPP Det. Greg Delguidice was preparing to look into widespread allegations of physical and sexual abuse by priests, nuns and staff at St. Anne’s Indian Residential School in northern Ontario, he did some homework first.

As part of the investigation 25 years ago, Delguidice studied up on the Roman Catholic Church’s canon law and learned of archives held by dioceses that contain records of sensitive information about priests.

“I know that the Catholic Church also keeps a secret archive, and matters of temporal affairs, as they’re so-called, are supposed to be kept secret and hidden away,” Delguidice said in an interview with The Fifth Estate’s Gillian Findlay.

“Any allegations that would have been made would have been, in my view, probably kept in secret archives somewhere.”

But when Delguidice confronted Bishop Emeritus Jules Leguerrier, who had been St. Anne’s principal from 1944 to 1975, about the “secret archives,” he got nowhere.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Guardian

March 7, 2019

By Catherine Bennett

And welcome to the amoral maze, where our dilemma of the week is: just how insufferable does a spiritual leader have to be before he or she becomes unqualified to preach at the general public? Or to put it another way, why should the church have a monopoly on excommunication?

The question is not, emphatically, restricted to the case of the ubiquitous prelate, blogger and speaker, Giles Fraser, although with his recent blog – chastising women who fail to stay near home for the future convenience of incontinent fathers – he has done more than most to focus attention on the sort of qualities that should, ideally, distinguish a Thought for the Day contributor from, say, Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Actually, since the latter Brexit supporter is hardly less ostentatiously devout, is yet more ostentatiously fertile, is also hired by the BBC to troll its audience and believes – conclusive indicator of divine approbation – that women are designed for bottom-wiping, it seems almost unfair that he is not, like Fraser, invited to provide “reflections from a faith perspective on issues and people in the news”.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

By Cindy Wooden

March 7, 2019

In times of crisis, the Catholic Church and its faithful must return to the basics of the Christian faith, said Auxiliary Bishop Robert E. Barron of Los Angeles.

Bishop Barron, who was ordained to the priesthood in 1986, told reporters in Rome March 7 that he has lived most of his priesthood in the context of the church’s sexual abuse crisis and is convinced that the only way forward is to focus on what it really means to be Christian.

The Franciscans, Dominicans and other religious orders were formed at “times of real crisis,” he said. “That’s when great figures like St. Dominic said, ‘Back to the basics, which for him meant poverty, trust in God’s providence, preaching the Gospel.”

The bishop had just received an honorary doctorate in theology from the Dominican-run Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, commonly called the Angelicum.

Bishop Barron’s “Word on Fire” multimedia ministry, his famous video series on the church and his other outreach work, he said, responded to a desire “to tell the story of Catholicism again; let’s tell the story of the great saints again.”

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KAMLOOPS (BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA)
Glacier Media

March 6, 2019

Bishop told woman alleging assaults by Kamloops ‘playboy’ priest to leave diocese

A B.C. woman alleging she was sexually abused by a Roman Catholic priest over several months 43 years ago while she was a parish school teacher wants Diocese of Kamloops offices searched for files it may have on her case and other similar ones, court documents say.

Now, in a notice of application filed with BC Supreme Court Feb. 27, Rosemary Anderson is prepared to go to court to see if a judge will authorize a search of the Kamloops premises to find documents relevant to her case. She has suggested secret archives exist — a suggestion the church denies.

Anderson alleges in a Dec. 22, 2016, notice of civil claim the sexual abuse at the hands of Father Erlindo “Lindo” Molon, now 86, starting at age 26 when she sought solace after her father’s death. She names Molon and the Roman Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Kamloops, A Corporation Sole in the claim.

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BOSTON (MA)
WGBH/Greater Boston

March 6, 2019

The Michael Jackson Allegations: Separating The Art From The Artist

It’s not the first-time Michael Jackson has been accused of sexually assaulting young boys, but the allegations in the new HBO documentary “Leaving Neverland” — the first against Jackson in the #MeToo era — are getting wide traction.

In the film, Wade Robson and James Safechuck share detailed and often graphic accounts of years of abuse by the singer. Jackson’s family has denied all claims of abuse. In light of the documentary, many are questioning: Is it possible to separate the art from the alleged abuser?

To discuss, Jim Braude is joined by Boston Globe columnist Renée Graham, attorney Mitchell Garabedian — who’s represented thousands of victims of sexual abuse at the hands of the Catholic Church — and Phil Saviano, a church abuse survivor and founder of the New England chapter of Survivors Network of Those Abused.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The New York Times

March 6, 2019

By Julia Moskin

A year after reports that the celebrity chef sexually assaulted and harassed women, the Bastianich family and Mr. Batali’s other partners have bought out his stake and regrouped.
The 20-year partnership between the celebrity chef Mario Batali and the Bastianich family of restaurateurs was formally dissolved on Wednesday, more than a year after several women accused Mr. Batali of sexual harassment and assault.

Mr. Batali “will no longer profit from the restaurants in any way, shape or form,” said Tanya Bastianich Manuali, who will head day-to-day operations at a new company, as yet unnamed, created to replace the Batali & Bastianich Hospitality Group.

The new company will operate the group’s remaining 16 restaurants under a new management and financial structure. Mrs. Bastianich Manuali and her brother, Joe Bastianich, have bought Mr. Batali’s shares in all the restaurants. They would not discuss the terms of the buyout.

Mr. Batali is also selling his shares in Eataly, the fast-growing global chain of luxury Italian supermarkets. “Eataly is in the process of acquiring Mr. Batali’s minority interest in Eataly USA,” said Chris Giglio, a spokesman for that company.

Several famous chefs and restaurateurs have recently been accused of sexual harassment, but Mr. Batali is the first to surrender all his restaurants.

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

March 7, 2019

Today in New Jersey, survivors of sexual violence will have their chance to tell their stories and affect change. We applaud the sponsors of Senate Bill S477 and look forward to this much-needed reform being adopted in law.

The New Jersey Senate Judiciary committee will hear testimony from survivors of child sexual abuse in support of the bill – sponsored by Senator Joseph Vitale (D-19) – which expands the civil statute of limitations for both children and adults. If passed, S477 would give victims of child sexual abuse either until age 55 or 7 years after discovery of the abuse, whichever is later. Additionally, the bill would create a two-year “window,” or suspension of all SOL restrictions, giving those who were previously barred by these archaic laws an opportunity to seek justice.

Sexual violence is one of the nation’s most underreported crimes, with estimates ranging from 75% to 85% of victims never coming forward to make a report. And because of the trauma they have experienced and the resulting feelings of shame or fear of disbelief, most survivors don’t come forward until much later in life; the average age of disclosure is 52.

In light of these facts, forty states have amended their statutes of limitations since 2002. With this hearing today, New Jersey becomes that much closer to becoming the 41st state to take the steps to reform these laws and go from a state with one of the shortest filing windows in the country to one of the longest.

This bill is a monumental step forward and brings much-needed reform to the archaic laws that prevent survivors from coming forward and allow abusers to escape justice and hurt more children and vulnerable adults. We are grateful to not only Sen. Vitale and his colleagues in the legislature, but the dedicated survivors and advocates who have worked for decades to create this opportunity for reform.

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

March 7, 2019

Clergyman was sued twice for alleged crimes
He’s also on KC MO city planning commission
Victims’ group wants him “ousted immediately”
And it wants “more careful vetting” of other candidates
SNAP: “His KCPD presence may deter others from reporting crimes”

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, clergy sex abuse victims and advocates will blast the KC MO
— Police Department for having a chaplain who was accused of abuse,
— Planning Commission for having him on their panel,

They will also
— demand that his titles and roles be revoked, and
— ask both bodies to apologize and more carefully vet future candidates for positions

WHEN
Thursday, March 7 at 11:15 a.m.

WHERE
On the sidewalk outside the Kansas City MO Police Department, 1125 Locust in downtown KC MO

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EVANSVILLE (IN)
Evansville Courier & Press

March 7, 2019

By Jon Webb

The Outpost was a popular summer camp.

Run by the Evansville Diocese, it drew hordes of Catholic kids in fifth to eighth grades who wanted to go boating or fishing or hiking on 33 lush acres outside Lincoln State Park in Spencer County.

But it also attracted predator priests.

On Feb. 22, the diocese released the names of clergy who have been “credibly accused” of sexual misconduct against minors. There were 12 names in all. Two of them – John Breidenbach and Mark Kurzendoerfer – worked with the camp, while a third – Michael Allen – reportedly had sexual encounters with an under-aged boy there.

The Rev. David Fleck coordinated some aspects of the camp in his post as vocations director. He’s also been accused of misconduct, but his case is still winding through the diocese. He’s denied the charges.

Breidenbach served as co-director of The Outpost in 1992, according to archives of diocese newspaper The Message. That year drew a record 340 campers.

In a July 10, 1992, story, Breidenbach said it was his job as director to make sure every child was taking part in camp activities. He sought out loners, he said. “Someone with a problem or in pain.”

He worked there at least two other summers, according to The Message. He would sometimes go to diocese schools to recruit campers.

Breidenbach admitted to sexually abusing minors “prior to his ordination as a deacon,” the Feb. 22 release stated. He was removed from public ministry in 2014.

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MEXICO CITY (MEXICO)
Catholic News Service

March 7, 2019

By David Agren

The Mexican bishops’ conference has presented an action plan for protecting minors from sexual abuse by clergy and pastoral agents.

The plan, presented March 5 in Mexico City, outlines five objectives: Diagnosis, prevention, justice and response, supporting victims and promoting respect for the law.

The plan includes overhauling priests’ training, establishing diocesan and/or provincial commissions and specifying norms for seminarians, religious and priests who switch diocese or congregations. It also calls for establishing “listening centers … composed of prepared persons and experts, which can carry out a first discernment of the case of presumed victims.”

“Asking forgiveness means putting the victim first, listening to them, understanding them, accompanying them and committing ourselves to the process of their healing,” the bishops said.

The bishops also called for “promoting respect for the law,” which includes “the call of the church to combat clericalism,” along with putting “the rights of the victim … over the rights abusers.” The action plan also called for properly “caring for the socio-ecclesiastical climate” surrounding priests “so they don’t live in panic, rather securely and so they can adequately and fully fulfill their vocation.”

Archbishop Rogelio Cabrera Lopez of Monterrey, conference president, said, “The paradigm change is (that) society and the church are aware of the primacy of the victim, and all other issues stem from that.”

“Previously, I think that the model was to review what had happened and see what you do with the priest,” Cabrera continued. “Now, the first thing is attending to the victim and … the priest who committed the crime is judged by the authorities.”

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SYRACUSE (NY)
Post Standard

March 7, 2019

By Rev. David McCallum

When the founder of the Society of Jesus, St. Ignatius of Loyola, was asked, “what is a Jesuit?” he responded, “It is to know that one is a sinner loved by God.” For many people, it is a challenge to accept that two, seemingly contradictory statements such as this could be true at the same time; for them, reality is perceived in black and white terms. Either I am a sinner and, therefore, lost, or loved by God, and saved. However, the capacity for holding paradoxical truths is at the very heart of Christianity, which espouses the belief that Jesus was both human and divine, that faith and reason complement, rather than cancel out one another, and that mercy and justice go hand in hand.

This “both/and” way of thinking, relating and acting is constantly on display in another Jesuit, Pope Francis. But at this juncture in the Catholic Church’s history, it must be exercised even more rigorously in the way he leads the church through the twin crises: clergy sexual abuse and the subsequent mismanagement and cover-up by some church leaders. At the moment, most U.S. Catholics demand more urgent and bold action than Pope Francis is currently demonstrating.

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DENVER (CO)
Catholic News Agency

March 7, 2019

French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, archbishop of Lyon, was found guilty Thursday of failing to report to authorities the alleged sexual abuse of a priest in his diocese. He was given a six-month suspended prison sentence.

French tribunal president Brigitte Vernay declared Barbarin guilty March 7 “of non-denunciation of ill-treatment” of a minor, according to AFP. Barbarin was not present in court for the verdict.

Five other archdiocesan officials on trial with Barbarin were acquitted March 7. Barbarin was also expected to be acquitted after even the prosecutor of the case argued there was no proof of the cardinal’s legal wrongdoing and therefore no grounds for conviction, the Associated Press reports.

The cardinal will appeal the verdict, according to AP. Barbarin’s lawyer, Jean-Felix Luciani, said Thursday about the conviction that “this is a decision that is not fair at the juridical level.” Implying hope in the success of an appeal, he stated: “We hope that at the next step, justice will be done.”

The trial against Barbarin began in January on charges he did not report facts of abuse to judicial authorities between July 2014 and June 2015, in a case involving Fr. Bernard Preynat, who has been accused of abusing dozens of minors in the 1980s and early ’90s.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
Christian Today

March 7, 2019

By Archie Catchpole

Resignations seem to be all the rage in the Christian world these days. Just recently I was reading an article about one such resignation and the ‘you may also like’ section read almost like an obituary of half the world’s church leaders. I most certainly did not ‘also like’. It is a difficult and disconcerting issue which is as much unavoidable as it is uncomfortable.

Even if our insatiable desire for gossip finds this infuriating, a lot of the time we don’t know many details about these incidents. Nor do we necessarily need to. (A Christian version of Hello! magazine is one of the last things we need – and besides, we all know that if it is gossip we want then we need only ask anyone’s prayer requests.) Speculation in these scenarios is almost certainly misguided, morally questionable, and definitely not helpful.

When a leader fails, how should believers handle it?

However it may be just as misguided to simply sweep these kinds of situations under the carpet as if nothing ever happened. News of scandals and resignations is not unimportant. These stories are embarrassing, yes, but they are also sobering, sombre and incredibly significant. In the light of this, I seek to offer some short reflections which could bear some general relevance. I hope my words do not come with any judgment or insensitivity. Rather, I hope that they can be honest, maybe a little bit insightful, and possibly even edifying.

People sometimes say that it is encouraging when church leaders fail. Although it definitely cannot be stressed enough that our leaders are only human, I still struggle to get on board with this. Whether by a leader or not, sin is still sin, and it is never encouraging – it is sad. It is also scary. It is scary because (on the whole) we respect our leaders. Therefore whenever I read of a fresh scandal or resignation, my mind goes into overdrive: ‘If someone so highly-esteemed as [insert name here] can be ensnared in such a way, then how much more might I?!’ This is of course flawed thinking, because regard does not reflect discipleship any more than Christian fame indicates faithfulness. Nonetheless, when these kinds of stories surface, they hand us sad but timely reminders to check our own lives; to remain in Christ and continue to follow hard after him with humility, reverence and integrity.

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BOCA RATON (FL)
United Press International

March 7, 2019

By Susan M. Shaw

Recent media reports have revealed decades of abuse by Southern Baptist pastors.

Denominational leaders are offering apologies and calling the sexual abuse “evil,” “unjust” and a “barbarity of unrestrained sinful patterns.” Many Southern Baptist leaders are considering action.

As a scholar who has written a book on Southern Baptist women and the church, I’d argue that this scandal has its origins in how Southern Baptists have long and purposefully pushed back against women’s progress.

Since the Southern Baptist Convention’s founding in 1845, Southern Baptists have had a complicated history with women.

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NEW YORK (NY)
America Magazine

March 7, 2019

By Gerard O’Connell

A French court today condemned Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, 68, the Archbishop of Lyons, for not reporting a priest in his diocese to the civil authorities for the sexual abuse of minors. The court imposed a six-month suspended prison sentence on him, meaning he will not have to spend time in prison.

Cardinal Barbarin told journalists after the verdict: “I have decided to go to the Holy Father to hand in my resignation. He will receive me in a few days.” He said he “took note of the decision of the tribunal, and independent of my personal fate, I wish to reaffirm all my compassion for the victims.” The Vatican has yet to comment on the verdict.

French media reported that the victims were overjoyed when the judge announced that he found the cardinal “guilty,” they said it was more than they had hoped.

Cardinal Barbarin told journalists after the verdict: “I have decided to go to the Holy Father to hand in my resignation. He will receive me in a few days.”
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On March 6, Ms. Charlotte Trabut, the deputy-prosecutor, told the court in Lyons that she would not ask for a conviction of any of those on trial because the statute of limitations had expired. Besides the cardinal, five other clerics from his diocese were on trial in relation to their involvement in the case.

The cardinal’s lawyers, however, were clearly disappointed and announced that they will appeal the case.

Cardinal Barbarin, who was not present in court, is the third member of the college of cardinals to be publicly linked to the abuse scandal in the church. The others were Theodore McCarrick and George Pell. He and Cardinal Pell are still cardinal electors with a right to vote in a conclave.

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NEWARK (NJ)
Star Ledger

March 7, 2019

By Kelly Heyboer

The heads of New Jersey’s five Catholic dioceses released a lengthy joint statement expressing support earlier this week for a proposed law that would lift the statute of limitations on when alleged victims of sex abuse can file civil lawsuits against priests and the church.

But behind the scenes there is a fight brewing over the bill that could open New Jersey’s Catholic dioceses and Catholic schools up to a flood of civil lawsuits amid the widening priest sex abuse scandal.

Cardinal Joseph Tobin, head of the Archdiocese of Newark, and the bishops and auxiliary bishops of the state’s other dioceses released a rare joint statement Tuesday saying they want to work with lawmakers to eliminate the statute of limitations that would allow abuse victims to file lawsuits decades after they were abused.

“Now is not a time for just more analysis and study. This is a time for action to prevent any future abuse anywhere it might occur. The Catholic Bishops of New Jersey stand ready, as we have for the past two decades,” the Catholic bishops’ statement said.

Victims advocates have argued for years that New Jersey’s current law, which limits civil lawsuits to two years after the alleged sexual abuse, is too narrow and unfair.

Sen. Joseph Vitale, D-Middlesex, the bill’s lead sponsor in the state Senate, fired back at Catholic leaders, saying the church has been fighting the statute of limitations legislation, called S477, behind closed doors in Trenton.

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RICHMOND (VA)
Richmond Times-Dispatch

March 7, 2019

By Bridget Balch

On Ash Wednesday, the first day of the 40-day Lenten season of penitence, Richmond Bishop Barry Knestout preached about the dangers of “virtue signaling,” urging people to avoid doing good for the “optics” rather than out of sincerity.

“Today there is temptation to make sure things look good, even if they’re less than perfect,” he said.

And in September, Knestout, leader of the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, responded to the latest public revelations of the extent of the church’s clergy sex abuse crisis with a nine-page letter expressing sorrow for the pain church leadership had caused, a commitment to protecting children and a promise of transparency.

“Leadership is best practiced in a transparent way which includes accountability,” Knestout wrote.

While a number of Catholics interviewed leaving Ash Wednesday services said they felt that Knestout and the Catholic Church have responded well to the clergy sex abuse crisis and are now being transparent, noting last month’s release of a list naming 43 priests who were credibly accused of abuse, the Diocese of Richmond has not directly answered a number of questions from the Richmond Times-Dispatch and refused to release some details that the other Virginia diocese and the national Catholic Church have published.

Knestout also has declined to be interviewed by The Times-Dispatch at least four times since August.

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SPOKANE (WA)
The Inlander

March 7, 2019

By Daniel Walters

The so-called Summer of Shame had set the stage for November’s meeting of U.S. bishops. There was a lot to answer for.

In July, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick had become the highest-ranking Catholic leader ever to resign in a sex-abuse scandal in the United States. In August, a grand jury report charged that over 1,000 children had been victimized by more than 300 priests across the state of Pennsylvania.

So by November, when nearly 200 Catholic leaders — including Spokane’s bishop, Thomas Daly, and his predecessor, Blase Cupich — gathered for the annual meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the pressure to directly address the scandals was intense.

Outside the Baltimore conference hall, a dozen protesters waved signs with demands like “Reform” and “Repent Resign.”

But as soon as the conference began, the bishops learned that the Vatican had barred them from holding votes on two proposals until after a February summit on sex abuse. Even before the announcement of the Vatican’s dictate concluded, Cardinal Cupich was at the microphone to address the group.

In just six years, Cupich had risen from the bishop of Rapid City, South Dakota, to the bishop of Spokane, to archbishop of Chicago. Today, he’s a cardinal and one of the highest-profile champions of Pope Francis’s vision for a more inclusive church.

“It is clear that the Holy See is taking seriously the abuse crisis,” Cupich proclaimed. He argued the delay would put even more focus on such an important issue, and he called for the bishops to reconvene immediately after the February summit.

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LONG ISLAND (NY)
Newsday

March 7, 2019

By Bart Jones and Craig Schneider

Clergy sex abuse has brought the Roman Catholic Church to a pivotal moment — one that demands fundamental changes, from removing complicit bishops and ending the secrecy to ordaining women, say church analysts and a sampling of Long Island’s faithful.

Still, both the religious scholars and the parishioners are hopeful about the church’s future. And the Long Island members are clear that they are steadfastly committed to their faith.

“Yes, the church is in crisis and we’re at a turning point, but … I’m a Roman Catholic. It’s who I am,” said James Morgo, 74, who attends Our Lady of the Snow Roman Catholic Church in Blue Point.

“The really horrendous acts were committed by flawed and sick men — not by the church,” Morgo said.

How quickly, and forcefully, Pope Francis addresses the scandal will determine what the church will look like, the parishioners said. For some of the faithful, the pontiff has sent encouraging signs. Others are more skeptical.

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LYON (FRANCE)
CBS News

March 7, 2019

In a surprise decision in France’s most important church sex abuse trial, a court on Thursday found top Catholic official Cardinal Philippe Barbarin guilty of failing to report to law enforcement accusations against a pedophile priest. The Lyon court handed Barbarin a six-month suspended prison sentence for not reporting the facts in the period between July 2014 and June 2015.

The Rev. Bernard Preynat’s alleged victims said Barbarin and other church officials covered up for him for years, but the statute of limitations had expired on some charges and even the victims had expected that the cardinal would be acquitted.

The prosecutor had also argued against convicting, saying there were no grounds to prove legal wrongdoing.

The priest has confessed to abusing Boy Scouts in the 1970s and 80s and will be tried separately.

Barbarin, 68, testified that he was unjustly accused, saying, “I don’t see what I am guilty of.”

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JERSEY CITY (NJ)
Jersey Journal

March 7, 2019

The Catholic church’s release of the names of 188 New Jersey priests with credible accusations of child sexual abuse against them, the defrocking of former Cardinal McCarrick and the summit at the Vatican on a range of sex abuse scandals should give us comfort that the church is heading in a good direction.

But, it’s not. Instead, we’re left feeling hollow and jaded.

Maybe it’s because every day we could go to the Hudson County courts and see biological fathers, uncles, family friends, former teachers and others in prison jumpsuits, handcuffs and shackles being sentenced for the most vile of crimes against the innocents in their care. Yet, it is excruciatingly rare to see a priest in that position.

The New Jersey list – like the Pennsylvania one before it and the Brooklyn one after it — only confirms suspicions that the church has long dealt with what should have been civil matters in-house, and it did so poorly at that.

Beyond that, telling us that scores of dead men were predators is no comfort. And telling us about living predators for whom the statute of limitations on many crimes has run out is cruel. Not telling us about other predator priests because they are involved in active litigation cuts the most deep.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WKBW TV

March 6, 2019

By Hannah Buehler

On this Ash Wednesday, Bishop Richard Malone lit a candle for victims of sex abuse at the hands of a Catholic Priest.

In a statement, the Bishop’s office says, “This March the Diocese of Buffalo begins a special Year of Prayer for the healing of victims of clergy sexual abuse.”

It goes on to say, “Lent is a time of prayer, mercy, forgiveness and renewal.”

Parishioners all over Western New York received ashes at mass Wednesday.

It’s been a difficult year for parishioners in the Catholic Church amid sweeping sex abuse scandals and cover-ups. Some tell 7 Eyewitness News this Lenten season is as important as ever.

“Some of the beliefs that we have are a little shaken but on the other hand if you’re a believer you believe in the message not so much the messenger,” said Bob McDonnell, a parishioner at St. Bernadette in Orchard Park.

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

March 6, 2019

For Catholics, Lent is a season of reflection and sacrifice. For some survivors, Lent is a trigger.

“I was abused in the vestry of the church after my abuser pulled me out of school to administer ashes,” said Becky Ianni, SNAP Board Member and leader in the Virginia and D.C. area. “So during the Lent season I am urging churches to reflect on the clergy abuse crisis and make changes and take steps that will protect children.”

One action that church officials can make, Ianni says, is to release all the information they have on abusive clerics to the public. While Catholic dioceses in Virginia and Washington D.C. have released lists that include some names, Ianni contends those lists are incomplete.

“Church officials should be fully transparent about all aspects of the abuse crisis. Lists should not just include names, but also the full work histories and photos of perpetrators, information on when the diocese first received allegations against each perpetrator, the total number of allegations each perpetrator received, and what steps were taken in response to those allegations,” Ianni said. “Only when information like this is made public will communities be fully informed and children be most protected.”

Survivors and advocates were hoping for clear steps towards prevention and healing to be laid out following the Pope’s global summit at the end of February. Instead, church officials met and talked and prayed, but did not make any serious changes.

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

March 6, 2019

By Martin Finucane

Boston Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley says the recently concluded meeting at the Vatican was a “huge step forward” that educated many of the bishops attending about the clergy sex abuse problem that has plagued the Roman Catholic church.

“For many of the bishops, I think the conference was a very transformative experience. For many of them, it was the first time that they were listening to victim/survivors; it was the first time they were hearing about the challenges of safeguarding and the responsibility of the bishops,” O’Malley said in a post on his blog on Friday.

O’Malley said the meeting drew the leaders of over a billion Catholics worldwide.

He said they “realized that this is something the whole Church must work to address to ensure the safety of children. We may not have resolved all the issues that we face in the United States around the accountability of bishops and so forth, but for the Universal Church I think it was a huge step forward.”

O’Malley also said, “Obviously, we are looking for concrete measures to come out of this meeeting,” noting that Vatican officials have promised to disseminate a handbook “to help people to know, every step of the way, what the response needs to be in individual dioceses.”

O’Malley said that in many parts of the world the clergy sex abuse problem is “dismissed as an American or Western phenomenon. So, the conference was designed particularly to underscore the universal nature of the problem and to demonstrate to bishops all over the world that the leadership in the Church must own the problem and commit to making safeguarding their priority.”

The pope ended the meeting last month with a call for “for an all-out battle against the abuse of minors,” but the speech did not offer concrete policies. Church officials have hinted that policy changes were on the horizon. In the past year or so, clergy sex abuse has been in the headlines both in America and abroad.

O’Malley said the commission he leads, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, would meet to continue working on an auditing process that will allow for “an independent evaluation of the implementation of child protection policies in each bishops’ conference.” A bishops’ conference is the group of bishops responsible for a given country or territory.

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ITHACA (NY)
The Ithacan

March 6, 2019

By Madison Fernandez

Rev. Carsten Martensen, Catholic chaplain and director of campus ministry, has stepped down from all current assignments after being accused of sexually abusing a minor in the 1970s.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester informed Ithaca College that an allegation had been made claiming that Martensen had sexually abused a minor in the 1970s, according to an Intercom announcement made March 3 by Hierald Osorto, director of religious and spiritual life. The USA Northeast Province of the Jesuits are conducting an investigation, and Martensen will not be serving in his positions at the college or Cornell University campus ministries, nor any public ministry, while it is being pursued.

Martensen has been working in campus ministries at both the college and Cornell University since 2007. The Diocese of Rochester stated that it has not received an accusation against Martensen during his time serving at the colleges.

In an email obtained by The Ithacan sent Feb. 25 by campus minister John Morton to the Ithaca College Catholic Community, he stated that Martensen was taking time off for personal reasons and to recuperate.

“He has been experiencing fatigue, and this has not been helped by the workload of pastoring two campuses,” the email said. “He is with his Jesuit brothers in Massachusetts.”

John J. Cecero, provincial of the USA Northeast Province of Jesuits, sent a letter to the broader Catholic community Feb. 26 informing them of the allegations.

“Again, these procedures in no way confirm or deny the claim we have received, but as the Jesuits and the Church strive to serve the People of God with greater transparency and accountability, we will always proceed with every precaution to safeguard those who have put their trust in us,” he wrote in the letter.

Michael Gabriele, director of communications of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester, said it is policy to remove a priest from any public ministry until the review board presents its findings. He said the independent review committee consists of mental health, law enforcement and legal professionals. Gabriele said the turnaround for an investigation like this is variable and includes looking into timelines and speaking with the victim and others involved.

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

March 6, 2019

According to reports, a permanent endowment for a Catholic church in Utah is still named for a credibly accused predator priest. We believe that Utah’s archbishop must rescind and rename the endowment today.

Monsignor George Davich, after whom the endowment is named, was ordered by the Vatican to stop presenting himself in public as a priest and to live a “life of prayer and penance” after an abuse allegation against him was deemed credible in 2002.

Yet for 17 years, Utah Catholic officials – especially Fr. John Norman, pastor of St. Vincent de Paul’s parish and now deceased Utah Bishop George A. Niederauer – have quietly let this travesty stand. Fr. Norman told the media he “does not necessarily see a problem with keeping an accused abuser’s name on the fund.” We wonder if he understands how this makes not only Fr. Davich’s victim or victims feel, but all survivors of sexual violence?

This inaction only sends the message that the Church would rather honor abusers than punish them.

Honoring perpetrators endangers children because it deters victims, witnesses and whistle blowers from speaking up and exposing molesters. It also rubs more salt into the already deep and still fresh wounds of not only thousands of suffering victims, but also of millions of betrayed Catholics.

Actions matter, not words. Bishop Oscar Solis, the current head of the diocese, should take steps to immediately rename the endowment. If the bishop cares about victims, as he professes, then he must must do something to remedy the situation.

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DENVER (CO)
National Catholic Register

March 6, 2019

By Joan Frawley Desmond

Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago received a respectful hearing from Church leaders at the Vatican summit as he outlined his updated plan for deploying metropolitan bishops to investigate bishops accused of sexual abuse and negligence.

Back home, however, there are strong indications that his proposal faces a hard sell, as Church leaders and lay experts weigh reforms designed to restore the bishops’ credibility in the wake of the McCarrick scandal.

“There are still questions about ‘who knew what’ regarding McCarrick,” Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, told the Register.

“And now there is simply a lack of trust about a system involving metropolitans.”

Bishop Paprocki, a canon lawyer, expressed his preference for another proposal before the consideration of the U.S. bishops that was tabled until the completion of the summit: an independent national commission presented at the USCCB meeting in November.

“I am in favor of a national commission that would be consistent” in its approach to allegations against bishops, he said.

Francesco Cesareo, the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ National Review Board and the president of Assumption College, was equally skeptical about a plan he described as “bishops policing bishops.”

“What confidence do we have that this proposal, even if it is obligatory, will be effective?” asked Cesareo, who also cited McCarrick’s role as a metropolitan.

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DOWNINGTOWN (PA)
Daily Local News

March 6, 2019

A priest who previously served at two Chester County churches and a Montgomery County church has been arrested on allegations that he raped a teenage girl who was a member of a church in Philadelphia where he was pastor, charges that stem from incidents that occurred after he left the local parishes, according to authorities.

The Rev. Armand D. Garcia, 49, was arrested March 5 on three counts of rape, corruption of a minor and sexual abuse of a minor, as well as recording a sex act. He served at St. Joseph’s Church in Downingtown from 2005 to 2008, and at Our Lady of the Assumption Church in Tredyffrin in 2011, according to records.

He also served at St. Eleanor in Collegeville.

Ordained in 2005 and lastly a former pastor of St. Martin of Tours Parish in Northeast Philadelphia, Garcia is alleged to have committed the crimes in August 2014. He had been suspended by the archdiocese after the allegations came to light and police began their investigation.

At the time of the alleged events, he was parochial vicar at Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish in the city’s Roxborough section. He was assigned to the parish in 2011 after having taken a voluntary personal leave from ministry the prior year for unexplained reasons.

The year-long investigation into his conduct by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office spans from 2014 to 2017, during his term at St. Martin’s, according to a statement from the archdiocese.

The charges against Garcia “are serious and disturbing,” said Ken Gavin, a spokesman for the archdiocese.

“The archdiocese is cooperating fully with law enforcement regarding this matter and remains fervently committed to preventing child abuse as well as protecting the children and young people entrusted to its care,” said Gavin in a statement.

Details of the complaint against Garcia were sketchy, as no information was released from the District Attorney’s Office. The alleged victim was reported to be a former altar girl at Immaculate Heart church, and the sex acts between the two are alleged to have taken place at Garcia’s residence in the church.

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INDIANAPOLIS (IN)
The Reflector

March 6, 2019

By Shayla Cabalan

The day this article is published will be Ash Wednesday, a Christian holy day of prayer and fasting that marks the beginning of the season of Lent. For those unfamiliar with traditional Christian terminology, Lent is a time intended to prepare for the return of Christ come Easter. As a result, the Lenten season is associated with repentance, fasting and above all, giving up sinful habits.

Huge emphasis is placed on this last sacrificial element. Throughout Lent, many Christians attempt to shed bad habits and inclinations. Above all else, Lent is a time of self-reflection and opening up a dialogue between oneself and God in order to improve as a person. Now is arguably a time to open up a dialogue on a plague that has disrupted the church for decades: the clergy sexual abuse crisis.

A week ago, Pope Francis wrapped up an unprecedented Vatican summit intended to address clergy sex abuse of children. The summit comes after a watershed series of revelations within the Catholic Church, chief among these being an explosive grand jury report from Pennsylvania. According to a Washington Post article titled “More than 300 accused priests listed in Pennsylvania report on Catholic Church sex abuse,” a 1,400-page grand jury report revealed that more than 300 Catholic priests across Pennsylvania had sexually abused children over the span of seven decades, identifying 1,000 victims, but suggesting there could be thousands more. Since the report, Francis has encouraged guilty clergy members to turn themselves over to the authorities, and at the closing mass of the Vatican summit, he made an appeal for an “all-out battle” on clergy sex abuse.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

March 6, 2019

By Gunther Simmermacher

In late February, the church pledged to put the victims of abuse first, to listen to them with an open heart, to root out the culture of protecting priests accused of abuse. Now a number of lay Catholics are undercutting all these good and overdue intentions by challenging the guilty verdict of Australian Cardinal George Pell.

Let’s be clear about it: Nobody can claim to know conclusively whether Cardinal Pell is guilty of the charges put against him except for the two people alive who were in that room on the day in question.

The jurors in the trial believed there was no reasonable doubt about Cardinal Pell’s guilt. It would be absurd if they all were in on a conspiracy, as some have suggested. Maybe the jurors were mistaken; maybe they got it right. Maybe Cardinal Pell’s defense was inadequate, and the prosecution made its case well. We don’t really know; less so if we did not follow the trial every day in the courtroom, as the jurors did.

So the enthusiasm with which Pell’s defenders — who include both ideological warriors and reasonable people — protest the cardinal’s innocence is misplaced. It’s one thing to wonder about whether justice was truly done in this case, but another thing altogether to protest the cardinal’s innocence (in arguments usually drawing from the defence’s case, which evidently failed to persuade the jury).

But that’s not the biggest problem with defending Cardinal Pell. What should trouble us is that in the first instance of a cardinal being convicted of abuse, so many Catholics immediately jump to his defense. They instinctively believe the accused cleric, and not the victim. And this is exactly the mindset that helped create the scandal in the first place.

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Patheos blog

March 6, 2019

By Melinda Selmys

It was after the birth of my sixth child, my family had taken my other children so that I could rest and recover with the baby, and my husband was binge drinking. For days he raged about the house while I tried to take care of a newborn. When he was closer to sober, he wanted to argue about Church sexual teaching. When he was drunk enough the pretext of theological discussion fell away and he stated his demands simply: “Suck my dick.”

I was seven days postpartum, still sore from giving birth, my hormones were on a roller coaster, and I was isolated and terrified. I begged him to stop drinking but he insisted that this was impossible. He was using alcohol to deal with the unbearable sexual frustration that Catholic sexual teaching was inflicting on him, and that I was forcing him to endure by my insistence on staying faithful to the teaching.

Finally, unable to deal with the rage and the drinking, I broke down and had sex with him. I chose a position that I hoped wouldn’t cause any kind of injury and I did it “naturally” in order to avoid mortal sin.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Religion News Service

March 6, 2019

By Adelle M. Banks

A “Safe Churches and Ministers” video features a woman recalling how, from the first day she worked as an interim youth minister, the senior pastor of a prestigious Baptist church began making inappropriate sexual advances.

“Is her story familiar?” asks a narrator after the woman describes too-long hugs, inappropriate conversations and an offer to share a hotel room at a denominational meeting.

“Have you considered that Michelle’s story can happen in churches today?”

The eight-minute video from the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is an example of how some Baptist organizations, faced with a #MeToo culture and news accounts of sexual abuse by clergy, have worked to prevent and react to allegations that arise in local churches.

As the Southern Baptist Convention grapples with how to address sex abuse allegations, three other Baptist networks that split from it over the years have already taken steps to educate and assist their congregations should they face similar situations.

Religion News Service asked 10 Baptist groups if they had any policies or procedures related to sex abuse allegations. One of those three that responded was the American Baptist Churches USA, formerly known as the Northern Baptists, from which the SBC split when the more conservative denomination began in 1845 as it defended slavery. A fourth, the historically black National Baptist Convention, USA, also responded by Wednesday (March 6).

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ATLANTIC CITY (NJ)
The Press of Atlantic City

March 5, 2019

By the Roman Catholic Bishops of NJ

Much attention has been given to the meeting of bishops in Rome last month called by Pope Francis to address a morally reprehensible, shameful and horrific crime — the sexual abuse of children.

For two decades, the Roman Catholic Church in New Jersey has taken firm action to address this issue, and we welcome the efforts of the Holy Father to bring the rest of the world up to our high standards for keeping our teaching, worship, and ministry spaces safe for everyone, especially children. We maintain a policy of zero tolerance. That means that any cleric who has abused even one child is to be permanently barred from engaging in any act of public ministry.

Each diocese has comprehensive policies in place to respond to and to prevent the sexual abuse of minors. These safety policies and practices are regularly verified by an external audit of each diocese. Over the last 10 years, our dioceses have trained more than 3.1 million adults, children, employees, clergy and volunteers to detect and prevent abuse. Over the past 15 years, the dioceses have completed some 385,000 criminal background checks of all clergy, staff and volunteers who have regular contact with minors.

All of our dioceses are committed to assisting victims of abuse whenever and however we can. Each diocese has a victim assistance coordinator, who facilitates the provision of counseling and other professional assistance to help those who have been abused. All victims have the opportunity to meet with the bishop in order to facilitate healing.

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SIOUX CITY (IA)
KWIT

March 5, 2019

By Mary Hartnett

The Catholic Diocese of Sioux City released a list of priests who were credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors. Some victims claim that it may be too little, too late.

Pope Francis recently lead a meeting on clerical sexual abuse. He made a call “for an all-out battle against the abuse of minors” and insisted that the church needed to protect the children “from ravenous wolves.” Despite this vow “to combat this evil that strikes at the very heart of our mission,” critics are saying the speech was short of a detailed battle plan. Catholic victims and other members of the church expressed outrage and disappointment at his failure to outline steps to address the problem.

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BAKERSFIELD (CA)
KBAK/KBFX/Eyewitness News

March 4, 2019

By Emma Goss

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Fresno, which includes 87 parishes spanning across the Central Valley, has hired former FBI Executive Assistant Director Kathleen McChesney to review and identify past offenses of sexual misconduct.

Fr. Miguel Flores’s case from 2002 being reopened by the diocese is entirely independent of the review being conducted, but he is one of 11 priests in the Diocese of Fresno who have been publicly accused of sexual misconduct, according to Bishop Accountability, an online database.

Bishop Armando Ochoa, D.D., said at a news conference last month that “although it is labor intensive, it is essential that the current administration is fully aware of any record of sexual abuse, no matter how much time has passed.”

Among the 11 publicly accused priests identified in the online database, five have ties to Kern County.

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HONOLULU (HI)
Hawaii Catholic Herald

March 5, 2019

On Feb. 20, a joint Senate Committee of the Human Services and Judiciary passed Senate Resolution SR4 and Senate Concurrent Resolution SCR8: “urging the Hawaii State Department of the attorney general to conduct a statewide investigation of sexual abuse of minors in the state of Hawaii by clergy of the Roman Catholic Church.” Here is Bishop Larry Silva’s response:

To the Senators of the State of Hawaii
Subject: SR4-c and SCR8

Dear Senators,
Peace be with you!

I write on behalf of the Diocese of Honolulu and the thousands of dedicated men and women, clergy and lay, who unite together in service of the common good through the ministries of the Diocese. In our 66 parishes, 18 parochial schools, and dozens of other schools and agencies, we do what we can to care for the poor, educate children, heal the broken-hearted, and work towards solidarity with all in need. Thus, I was greatly disturbed to see that a Senate Committee is taking up a resolution premised on the awful canard and libel that the Diocese is some kind of criminal enterprise bent on destroying the very people she strives to serve. That anyone might actually take such a suggestion seriously is equally disturbing and offensive.

It is true that thousands of church ministers on the Mainland, in Hawaii, and elsewhere did abuse tens of thousands of children. Those horrific facts are well-documented in historical studies. Let me say at the outset that I make no excuses for the abuse of any child that occurred at the hands of any minister of this Diocese, ordained or lay, man or woman. That any abuse did occur is sinful in the eyes of God, and a crime in the eyes of the State. I am sorry that anyone was ever hurt physically, emotionally and spiritually. Abuse is wrong, and deserving of our condemnation whenever it occurs.

But the resolution, aimed as it is only at the Catholic Diocese, does not resolve any injury suffered by any child. It does not make any victims whole. It does not make all children safe. Rather it pretends that the pernicious evil that is the abuse of a child still lies in the heart of only one institution in Hawaii — the Catholic Diocese. It is that great lie that I protest here. If the Senate truly wants to have law enforcement look at the sources of abuse and misconduct in society, it needs to cast a much wider net.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

March 6, 2019

By Jamie Manson

For decades we’ve heard countless opinions of what has caused the clergy sex abuse crises in the Catholic Church: clericalism, celibacy, bad seminary formation. But on the closing day of the bishops’ summit on the protection of minors, we heard a new theory: the devil made them do it.

That’s what Pope Francis suggested multiple times and in various ways in his speech at the conclusion of the Meeting on the Protection of Minors in the Church.

“Consecrated persons, chosen by God to guide souls to salvation, let themselves be dominated by their human frailty or sickness and thus become tools of Satan.” Francis claimed.

It wasn’t, of course, the first time Francis’ has spoken about Satan and blamed him for personally engineering the destruction of the church.

In his book The Tweetable Pope, author Michael O’Loughlin writes that “Francis has tweeted about the devil so often that he’s had to ascribe different names in order to keep Satan and his different forms relevant within the Twittersphere.”

Francis sees cosmic battles happening all over the face of the earth and now he has made the sex abuse crisis into a metaphysical battle between Satan and the church. In his concluding speech, he mentioned Satan twice and evil 13 times. The word clericalism was uttered once.

Perhaps the pope thought overblown language and imagery would somehow express the profundity of his horror at this situation, but the speech — which may have been the most crucial of his papacy — ended up being a melodramatic avoidance of the truth.

The truth is there are some very sick men in the priesthood that need very serious help and there are some men in the priesthood who are so psychosexually immature or damaged that they have no place in ministry. And the closed, secretive, all-male power structure of the church protected these men and gravely exacerbated the situation.

Satan did not swoop in and use these men as his tools to destroy the church. These men destroyed it all by themselves by enforcing a warped view of sexuality, making the preservation of their patriarchal rule their first priority and trading in cover-ups, lies and institutional blackmail.

But while Francis set out to boldly slay metaphysical dragons, his army of prelates slouched through a four-day slog.

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ALTOONA (PA)
Altoona Mirror

March 6, 2019

Pope Francis said all the right things during the recent extraordinary conference to discuss sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests and coverups by their superiors.

But what he did not say has some observers, both inside the church and out of it, upset.

Francis summoned 190 Catholic bishops and many other high-ranking church officials to Vatican City to discuss the scandal, which dates back generations. Last Sunday, the pope vowed to confront abusers with “the wrath of God.”

For the faithful, that goes without saying and is beyond the influence of any mortal, of course. But it is earthly punishment that concerns those unsatisfied with the pope’s actions during the meeting.

He failed to present a detailed, concrete plan to deal with abuse in the past and prevent it in the future, critics have said.

Some church officials have taken harsh action, of course. Lists of names of priests, even bishops, “credibly accused” of misdeeds have been released. Sadly, the lists are long.

Some priests and bishops have been kicked out of the church. Law enforcement authorities will be aided, if appropriate, church officials vow.

And there will be no more coverups, the Catholic hierarchy insists.

In truth, what Francis needs to accomplish is not some new written strategy, but rather an end to the seemingly endless revelations of new outrages.

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HUTCHINSON (MN)
Crow River Media

March 6, 2019

By Jeff Horejsi

Some of us are more affected by the scandal of the many allegations of sexual abuse of children by clergy, but even if this scandal seems more distant from our church or our lives, it still affects us. Our church leaders (bishops) have apologized for the crimes that were committed in the past but continue to cause chaos in the lives of victims and survivors. Saying, “I’m sorry” is a beginning, but justice will be needed in the settling of the many lawsuits that are in the court system.

Since the news of these crimes against children has been with us for several years, we have had time to reason that the offending clergy members were flawed human beings who sinned grievously and, in many cases, repeatedly. At least as concerning to us is the fact that in most cases bishops were aware of the abuse but failed to stop it. We might say that these bishops sinned against the church in failing to protect children and that this sin has certainly affected all in the church.

While not condoning the sinful and criminal behavior, moving forward and healing requires forgiveness. In the Gospels, Jesus teaches us that we must forgive those who sin against us. If we hope to have forgiveness of our sins, we must forgive those who sin against us. This is what we pray again and again in the Lord’s Prayer, sometimes called the Our Father.

Perhaps even harder than forgiving those who abused children or failed to stop that abuse is knowing what to say to those who dismiss the church altogether. We might be asked, “How can you continue to support a church that has failed so gravely?”

One possible way to respond is to remind the questioner of Jesus’ response to the Apostle Peter’s stunning failure in denying Jesus three times the night before he was crucified. On the shore the Risen Jesus gently invited Peter to profess his love for him three times. Despite his denial of Jesus, Peter received forgiveness from Jesus and became a powerful and effective leader in the church. The Apostle Paul actively persecuted the church before being converted to the faith, and he also became a powerful and effective leader in the church.

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SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA)
Sydney Morning Herald

March 6, 2019

By Jim Barber

On Sundays at 8am, you can find me at Mass about halfway along the third pew from the front.

I sit with the same small number of people every week. I don’t pretend to speak for these people, but I do speak as one of them. There are no lawyers among us, no bishops, theologians or clergy. Could I respectfully suggest that we heard quite enough from them during the five years of the royal commission? We have also heard the horrifying tales of those who endured abuse at the hands of the church.

Yes, just about everyone touched by this abuse scandal has now been heard, except for those of us who sit in the pews week in and week out. The fact is that no one has asked us what we think or how we feel about the royal commission, despite the fact we are the church, or so we are constantly told by our priests and bishops.

I’m told that rank-and-file Catholics like us can have our say at the forthcoming Australian Plenary Council in August 2020, but I find myself wondering why it’s happening so long after the royal commission, how representative the plenary will be, and how much influence it will have if it really does represent the rank and file.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

March 6, 2019

By Inés San Martín

Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati of Santiago, Chile, and the archdiocese he leads are being sued for $500,000 for covering up a case of rape that allegedly took place in a bedroom of the local cathedral.

The accused priest was said to have a “practically out of control” homosexual lifestyle and faces allegations of abusing at least one minor. He was suspended from ministry in 2016.

A 2015 preliminary report from the church of Santiago established that Father Tito Rivera had a “habitual homosexual behavior, seriously immoral and practically out of control.”

In 2015, Daniel Rojas, 40 at the time, went to the cathedral looking for financial help to buy medicine for his daughter. Instead, according to Rojas, Rivera took him upstairs, through a long corridor, into a bedroom, gave him a glass of water, and soon after, Rojas said he had no control over his body.

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DENVER (CO)
Crux

Mar 6, 2019

People should pray for Catholic priests after the conviction of Cardinal George Pell for historic sexual abuse charges, according to the Prime Minister of Samoa.

Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi has led the government on the Pacific island nation since 1998 and is one of its most prominent Catholics in public life.

Samoa, a Polynesian island of nearly 200,000 people near the U.S. territory of American Samoa, is highly dependent on trade with Australia.

In December, Pell was convicted of abusing two choir boys in the 1990s when he was Archbishop of Melbourne. He has strenuously denied the accusations and plans on appealing the conviction.

“It’s alleged the incident occurred when he was about 40 years old sometime ago, however to date there are records and witnesses are still around who were well aware of the malicious acts by this servant of God,” Malielegaoi said, according to the Samoa Observer.

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SALT LAKE CITY (UT)
Salt Lake Tribune

March 6, 2019

By Peggy Fletcher Stack
·
A long-standing, permanent endowment for a Utah Catholic parish still carries the name of a priest who left the state after he was “credibly” accused in 2002 of sexual misconduct with a minor.

The priest, Monsignor George Davich, was ordained at the Cathedral of the Madeleine on May 12, 1962, and served for years in various congregations, including St. Vincent de Paul Parish and School in Holladay.

In 2001, Davich gave seed money to establish the Davich Family Facilities Fund, explained the Rev. John Norman, St. Vincent de Paul’s current pastor.

A year later, Davich was “accused of sleeping in bed with a minor between 1979 and 1985,” according to a December 2018 release from the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City. It was reported to the diocese and police in 2002. He retired without faculties that year, and the Vatican ordered him to spend his life in prayer and penance.

“Without faculties” means he could not engage in public ministry, present himself as a priest in good standing or perform church ceremonies.

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MORAGA (CA)
Lamorinda Weekly

March 6, 2019

By Nick Marnell

Three Roman Catholic priests who served as associate pastors at Lamorinda parishes appeared on a list of clergy “credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors,” released Feb. 17 by the Diocese of Oakland. Two of the priests worked at the Church of Santa Maria in Orinda and one had been assigned to St. Monica Church in Moraga. Allegations of sexual abuse of minors had been charged against at least one other priest who served in a Lamorinda parish, but though named in the Oakland report as credibly accused, he was not listed as having worked in Lamorinda.

According to information provided by the diocese, Robert Freitas served at St. Monica from June of 1988 until March 1990, Gary Lagasse worked at Santa Maria in 1972 and Gary Tollner was assigned there in 1971-72. All three had been credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors.

“My first reaction in seeing the list of names of priests who have abused, is one of deep shame. These are monstrous crimes, committed by priests who are supposed to model virtue and grace, not sin and harm. By publishing this list, I am making an `Act of Contrition’ on behalf of my Church,” Bishop Michael Barber said in a statement.

Robert Ribeiro appeared in the diocese report but it made no mention of his 1971-80 tenure at St. Perpetua Church in Lafayette, where he was listed as having served in a 2018 report on clergy sexual abuse in the Bay Area. The report was compiled by the Minneapolis law firm Jeff Anderson and Associates, which represents clergy abuse victims.

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MEMPHIS (TN)
Localmemphis.com

March 5, 2019

By Brad Broders

After orders from Pope Francis at The Vatican, Tuesday was the introduction of the new leader of the Memphis area’s 62,000 Catholics. Bishop David Talley will now take over the challenged local Catholic diocese.

Several priests and parishioners Local 24 News spoke with who were critical of the last bishop at the helm, applauded Bishop Talley’s appointment. They said Bishop Talley, who was raised as a Southern Baptist, is the right person to lead a new chapter of the Memphis diocese and make the needed adjustments and improvements in local parishes.

Bishop Talley came to the Bluff City with a simple goal and a simple message.

“It’s fundamental,” Bishop Talley said. “We preach the gospel and we pay the bills. In that order.”

Bishop Talley replaces Bishop Martin Holley, who Pope Francis removed in October. Holley’s rocky two-year tenure included complaints of financial mismanagement, the re-assigning of certain priests, and his role in the closing of 11 catholic schools.

Bishop Talley promised to listen, to learn, and to lead.

“None of us can undo what we’ve done in the past,” Bishop Talley said. “What we can do is accept the present and find our way out of the path of the present.”

“The people see themselves as part of the church, so that they need to be looked at, listened to,” Retired Bishop Terry Steib said.

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ATLANTA (GA)
Journal-Constitution

March , 2019

By Shelia M. Poole

Two Georgia churches named in a series of articles in the Houston Chronicle about sexual abuse in Southern Baptist Convention churches are apparently no longer under “inquiry” by the Nashville-based denomination.

SBC President J.D. Greear had asked for a review of standing for 10 churches mentioned in the articles, including Eastside Baptist Church in Marietta and Trinity Baptist Church in Ashburn. The series found more than 700 people were victims of abuse that spanned decades at nearly a dozen churches. One church was found not to be a member of the SBC.The SBC could not be reached for comment.

The SBC Executive Committee bylaws workgroup said in a Feb. 23 statement that, based on the information provided, there was no evidence that church leaders at Eastside and six other churches, among other things, knowingly hired a convicted sex offender, allowed that person to work with minors or did not comply with mandatory child abuse reporting laws.

“We also note that, based on media reports and conversations with church leaders (at Eastside), it appears that after the events in question the church strengthened its existing policies to prevent abuse and properly respond to charges of abuse.” It said no further inquiry is warranted.

That would be good news for the Rev. John Hull, senior pastor of Eastside Baptist on Lower Roswell Road, except he said he was never officially informed that his church was among those under review by the SBC, nor has he been officially told that it is not.

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ANNAPOLIS (MD)
Capital Gazette

March 7, 2019

Legislation extending the statute of limitations for child sex abuse in Maryland faces an unlikely future in the General Assembly.

Yet the bellwether for this idea is neither the testimony last week before a legislative committee in Annapolis nor the shameful abuse of former Key School students by instructors dating back 20 to 40 years — and covered up by the school until last year.

It is the clergy sex abuse scandals that continue to rock worldwide Catholicism.

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PORTLAND (ME)
Associated Press

March 5, 2019

The sentencing of a former Massachusetts priest for sexually assaulting an altar boy in Maine has been pushed back to allow for a mental health evaluation.

Ronald Paquin was found guilty of 11 of 24 counts of gross sexual misconduct in November. The Portland Press Herald reports lawyers for Paquin filed a motion last week to request the evaluation and a judge granted it.

A man who came forward as the victim and testified against Paquin, says the delay is a violation of his own rights. He says he feels like he’s “being victimized again” by the delay in sentencing Paquin. The 44-year-old testified the abuse began decades ago.

Officials at York County Superior Court say Paquin is due back in court on March 29 for a conference.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Daily News

March 5, 2019

By Nanacy Dillon

A Catholic priest in Philadelphia has been charged with raping a teen girl, corrupting her morals and recording her in a sex act, court records and the priest’s lawyer confirm.

The Rev. Armand Garcia, 49, turned himself in for booking early Monday and posted his $250,000 bail hours later, his lawyer William J. Brennan told the Daily News.

The charges relate to offenses dating back to August 2014, court records state.

Brennan said prosecutors filed the corrupting a minor charge as a felony because they claim Garcia had an ongoing relationship with the teen.

“Obviously these are very serious charges, and we will take them seriously, but it is important to remember that Father Garcia is innocent until proven guilty,” Brennan said Tuesday.

The lawyer said the age of consent in Pennsylvania is 16.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Guardian

March 5, 2019

By Melissa Davey

A bishop has written to the director of a Catholic Schools Office that oversees 24 schools asking that principals be directed to stop asking priests for their working-with-children checks.

The bishop of Armidale, Michael Kennedy, wrote: “It has been brought to my attention that some schools may be requiring that the priests who are ex officio members of the School Advisory Council provide their working-with-children check details.”

He wrote that the diocese verified and recorded these checks and that schools should accept that all priests were required by the diocese to have a working-with-children check and therefore did not need to ask the priests for those details.

He asked the director of the Catholic Schools Office, Christopher Smyth, to “notify the schools not to ask the priests to provide their working-with-children check and if they have, they are not to register as the priest’s employer for the purposes of verifying the working-with-children check”.

Armidale is a city in the northern tablelands of New South Wales. The Catholic Schools Office Diocese of Armidale administers 24 schools, including 19 primary, two central and three secondary schools. The working-with-children check is a requirement for anyone who works or volunteers in child-related sectors, and involves a criminal history record check and a review of reportable workplace misconduct.

Schools must register with the Office of the Children’s Guardian and must verify all workers have a valid check, including those working in positions like school cleaners, who may be employed by an external company, or school volunteers.

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COLUMBUS (OH)
Columbus Dispatch

March 5, 2019

By Danae King

Victim advocates say the fact that the Roman Catholic Diocese of Columbus considers an accuser’s reputation when determining the credibility of sexual abuse allegations against clergy is “atrocious” and comes across as victim blaming.

“That’s sickening … Who do they think they are?” asked Judy Jones, Midwest regional director for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). “So many victims, they’re struggling, they’re going through so many things.”

The Columbus Diocese said it included the accuser’s reputation as one of about eight factors when creating a list released Friday of 34 clergy members who had been “credibly accused” of sexually abusing children “because reputation for truthfulness is often considered in evaluating any claim.”

“No one factor is determinative,” the diocese said in a letter on its website attached to the list.

On Tuesday, the diocese added the names of two additional priests ­ Monsignor Robert A. Brown, who was on the Diocese of Steubenville’s list and is accused of abuse outside the Columbus diocese, and Father John J. Ryan, who was accused after his death and after the list was released Friday ­ to the list. Both are deceased.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, who has no jurisdiction over criminal sexual abuse cases, said he was displeased that the diocese would use such a factor.

“You don’t start with a person’s reputation” in investigating a matter, but first search for corroborating evidence and witnesses, Yost said. “When you initially screen complaints of sexual predation, it’s critical not to disbelieve the victim.”

Yost, who was Delaware County prosecutor for eight years, said he knows sexual predators may choose victims who have other issues, like mental problems or other vulnerabilities. They can be “people who might not be believed in the first instance,” he said.

Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien, who does have jurisdiction over criminal sexual abuse cases, cited state shield laws when asked about the diocese considering an accuser’s reputation, but didn’t comment directly on the diocesan process. Shield laws say other allegations of misconduct by the victim are irrelevant to an investigation or court proceeding.

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GREENVILLE (SC)
WYFF 4 TV

March 5, 2019

St. Joseph’s has confirmed the resignation of a teacher who was accused of letting a former priest abuse a former student.

St. Joseph’s headmaster Keith Kiser confirmed the resignation in a letter sent to parents and staff Tuesday afternoon.

Kiser said he accepted Neil O’Connor’s resignation after nearly 26 years of sacrificial service.

Kiser said the move came over concerns about O’Connor’s continued association with former Catholic priest Hayden Vaverek and his organization.

Former St. Joseph’s student Michael Cassabon claimed Vaverek abused him starting in 1997, during his junior year at St. Joseph’s.

The Catholic Church found the allegations credible and removed Vaverek’s powers as a priest in 2013.

Cassabon said O’Connor would drive him to Vaverek’s parish in Greenwood and had knowledge of the abuse.

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MEXICO CITY (MEXICO)
Associated Press

March 5, 2019

The head of the Mexican bishops’ conference says 101 of the 157 cases in which Roman Catholic priests have been implicated in sex abuse have been turned over to prosecutors.

The bishops’ council previously said 152 priests had been removed from the ministry over the last nine years for sex abuse offences against “youths or vulnerable adults.”

Archbishop Rogelio Cabrera said Tuesday that information on such cases has now been complied in 64 of the country’s 95 dioceses.

Cabrera said that “up to now we have not been able to estimate the total number. Let us hope it is not a plague.”

The church is considering setting up listening centres to detect new cases and to start psychological tests for aspiring priests.

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FRESNO (CA)
Fresno Bee

March 5, 2019

By Yesenia Amaro

Rev. Joseph V. Brennan will take the reins of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fresno in May amid a large-scale sex abuse scandal in the Catholic church and an ongoing investigation in the diocese.

Brennan will succeed Bishop Armando Ochoa, who has served in that position for seven years. Brennan will be the sixth bishop of the diocese when he takes over the day-to-day leadership duties May 2.

The diocese made an official announcement Tuesday during a news conference.

Ochoa said he turned 75 last April — retirement age for Catholic leaders — and submitted his resignation letter to Rome, as advised under the Code of Canon Law.

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SANTIAGO (CHILE)
Associated Press

March 5, 2019

By Eva Vergara

Chile’s Roman Catholic church, already the target of Vatican sanctions, was being shaken Tuesday by yet another allegation of priestly abuse and high-level cover-up.

Daniel Rojas Alvarez, a 43-year-old indigent man, appeared on a state television broadcast Monday night saying that a priest at the Santiago Cathedral had drugged and raped him in 2015. He said Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati had given him money when told of the attack and told him not to report it.

“The case is terrible, unacceptable,” said Fernando Ramos, secretary-general of the Chilean bishop’s conference, at a news conference Tuesday ahead of his trip to the Vatican for a worldwide meeting of bishops on preventing sexual abuse.

The Santiago archbishop acknowledged in a statement that it had received a complaint against the priest, Rigoberto Rivera, in the summer of 2015 and said he had been forbidden to celebrate public Mass since last year. His attorney, Sandra Pinto, denied the allegations.

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MINNEAPOLIS (MN)
Star Tribune

March 5, 2019

By Mary Lynn Smith

As a Catholic priest, Thomas Adamson won the trust of the boys he coached and others he came to know in the parishes he served from southern Minnesota to the Twin Cities.

But by the time he was ousted from the ministry after more than 25 years, he admitted to molesting 10 boys and was accused of sexually abusing dozens more.

It was the cases against Adamson that soon exposed a sex abuse scandal involving hundreds of priests, even more victims and a coverup by the church.

Removed from ministry in 1985 and the priesthood in 2009, he lived out his final days in Rochester. He died last week at age 85.

“Even though he has passed, there’s a legacy of pain and sorrow,” said Twin Cities attorney Jeff Anderson.

Anderson began to uncover the sex abuse scandal when he filed suit on behalf of one of Adamson’s victims, “John Doe 1,” in 1983.

His parents came to Anderson in 1982 after learning their son had been raped by Adamson years before. They went to the archdiocese but were ignored, Anderson said. The parents were bewildered and heartbroken.

After Anderson filed suit against the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, other suits followed.

“I pulled on the string and the scandal and coverup unraveled,” he said Tuesday. “It was the beginning of a revelation of the peril that priests posed that Adamson was emblematic of — and of the practice employed by the bishops in concealing it.”

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ROCHESTER (NY)
Democrat and Chronicle

March 5, 2019

By Julie Philipp and Virginia Butler

As the Lenten season begins, Catholics are being called to reflect upon their faith at a time of horrific scandal and growing concern about the future of the church. Those observing Lent are required to make personal sacrifices, even as they gain greater understanding of the church’s own astounding hypocrisy. They are devoting themselves to prayer amid a growing chorus of pain from people victimized by church leaders.

With all of this turmoil, how does it feel like to be Catholic today?

I recently sat down with four area parishioners who remain very committed to their faith:

Ben Anderson is a software engineer who lives in Fairport, where he and his wife are raising their six children “in a Catholic environment where they live and breathe Catholicism.”
Steve Barnhoorn is from Honeoye. His Catholic roots originate in Holland, where his father’s family held on to their beliefs despite near starvation during a famine at the end of World War II.
Judy Dickinson of Irondequoit and her husband were born into the church and have spent years studying its teachings. “My whole family are Catholics, both sides of the families. Most of my friends are Catholic,” she says.
Marcia Mendola grew up going to St. Michael’s on N. Clinton Ave, but has attended St. Louis Church in her hometown of Pittsford for the past five decades. “You hear that ‘you are what you eat,'” she says of the Eucharist. “Well, I happen to eat Jesus himself so he becomes part of me, and frees me to do his work.”
With the camera rolling, they talked about being devoted Catholics and how they view the Church during these turbulent times.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

March 5, 2019

By Marc Thiessen

On Ash Wednesday, the holy season of Lent begins — and so do the annual fundraising drives by many of the nation’s Catholic bishops known as the bishops’ Lenten appeals.

My advice to my fellow Catholics? Don’t give them a dime.

Last fall, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was supposed to vote on a resolution to create a special commission, including six lay members, to investigate bishops who cover up sexual abuse. At the last minute, Pope Francis barred the bishops from holding the vote. But it’s not clear the resolution would have passed. After all, the bishops did vote on a nonbinding resolution that declared, “Be it resolved that the bishops of the USCCB encourage the Holy Father to release all the documentation that can be released consistent with canon and civil law regarding the misconduct of Archbishop [Theodore] McCarrick.” As they debated the wording, the National Catholic Register reports, “they could not even agree on the inclusion of the word ‘soon.’”

Even the watered-down resolution was rejected 137 to 83, with three bishops abstaining. Want to know how your bishop voted? You can’t. When I asked the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for the roll call vote, a spokesman replied, “Sorry, the votes are anonymous so we don’t know who voted for what.” That’s their idea of transparency.

The situation in Rome is no better. This year, Francis reportedly informed Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley that he would not authorize a full-fledged investigation into the McCarrick coverup. In 2015, O’Malley and a special Vatican advisory group Francis appointed him to lead made a simple recommendation: If any Vatican office receives a letter from an abuse survivor, it must acknowledge the letter. The pope approved the recommendation, but Cardinal Gerhard Muller, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has refused to comply — with no consequences from the pope.

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MULLUMBIMBY (AUSTRALIA)
Echo Net Daily

March 5, 2019

I was raised a Catholic. I grew up going to church at least once a week. During my early years the Catholic community were an integral part of my life. My mother was widowed at just 27 and the church stepped in with a significant pastoral role in our lives. A nun who taught me as a little girl gave me a letter to tell me that of all the children she had known I was the one that she thought of most often. It was actually very beautiful loving letter written by a childless woman who had felt a strong maternal love for me. I wish I still had it.

When I was selected to play basketball for Queensland, it was the Catholic ladies who baked lamingtons and raised money so I could go to the national championships in Perth. We were poor, and without their kindness I would never have been able to go. On school holidays I would spend two weeks each year volunteering in the kitchen of the Catholic summer school where I’d peel potatoes and make tapioca pudding for the 100 or more kids who went to state schools and were interned to get their sacraments.

When I was eight I wanted to be a nun. Partly because of my faith, and partly because I wanted to be like Sally Field in the Flying Nun, meet a Greek millionaire and be able to fly. I read the Bible. I prayed regularly to my glow in the dark Jesus. Priests were regular visitors to our family home. I trusted them. With no father figure in my life, they were often the closest thing I had to contact with an adult man.

When I was 16, a priest came to our parish for a short stay, and he quickly made himself known to my mother. It was only a matter of weeks before he became a regular at our house. I was 16, my mother was 36. He would have been in his early thirties. He was charming and worldly and incredibly charismatic. He told me that in a few months when I finished school and moved to Brisbane to go to university that I should get in contact and he would show me around, as I would be a country girl on her own in the ‘big city’ with no friends.

So I did. It was nice, because being in the city was incredibly lonely at first, and the priest showed me warmth and connection. We had fun together. He took me to galleries, to restaurants, and eventually he took me to an apartment at the Gold Coast and seduced me. I had just turned 17. I was a year younger than my son, who is in year 12, is now. When I think about what happened and how young I was the adult in me is appalled.

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CHARLOTTE (NC)
WSOC TV

March 5, 2019

By Dave Faherty

There are new calls for the Charlotte Diocese to release a list of local priests who were accused of sexual abuse with children.

On Tuesday, a man filed a police report in Boone claiming two priests abused him as a teenager in the early 1990s.

Channel 9 was there as Doug Dickerson walked into police headquarters to talk with investigators about three separate allegations of sexual assaults involving two priests at St. Elizabeth of the Hill Country Catholic Church.

“He was showing me what an altar boy would be, what my responsibilities would be doing and the first assault happened on the property of St. Elizabeth’s behind the altar,” Dickerson said.

Dickerson said that assault involved Father Cornell Bradley, a Jesuit priest, who came to North Carolina in the late 1980s after working primarily in Washington, D.C. and Maryland.

In December, the Maryland Province of Jesuits included Bradley on a list of priests who have “a credible or established offense against a minor.”

“At 13 I attempted suicide after the assault with Bradley by jumping off the side of the church, and since that point forward, it’s been a revolving door in and out of psychiatric institutions trying to get treatment and discussing the assaults that took place,” Dickerson said.

The Diocese of Charlotte said it was unaware of allegations involving Bradley during his time in North Carolina.

Dickerson said he was assaulted two more times by a second priest from Boone on a trip to Carowinds and near the Catholic Campus Ministry.

The Diocese of Charlotte confirmed to Channel 9 that priest, Father Damian Lynch, was later removed from his “priestly ministry” during the 1990s after the Diocese learned of a separate allegation. Officials told us Tuesday they believe the allegations of abuse made against Lynch at the time were credible.

“The Bishop here has repeatedly expressed profound sorrow over the incident of child sexual abuse. If that’s the case here, the first thing the most important thing we can say is we’re sorry,” David Hains with the Charlotte Diocese said.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS 3 Philly

March 5, 2019

A Philadelphia pastor has been arrested in connection to an allegation of rape and sexual abuse of a minor. Philadelphia police arrested 49-year-old Armand Garcia on Monday morning.

Garcia, who is a pastor at Saint Martin of Tours Parish in Philadelphia, was placed on administrative leave last March while police investigated a report of alleged misconduct with a minor, according to a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

According to the archdiocese, at the time of the allegation, Garcia had a clean criminal background and passed child abuse clearances.

The alleged crimes happened from 2014 to 2017.

Garcia has been charged with rape, sexual abuse, and corruption of minors.

Garcia was ordained in 2005. He served at the following parishes, schools, and offices: Saint Joseph, Downington (2005-2008); Saint Eleanor, Collegeville (2008-2009); Saint Katherine of Siena, Philadelphia (2009-2010); personal leave (2010-2011); Our Lady of the Assumption, Strafford (2011); Immaculate Heart of Mary, Philadelphia (2011-2017); and Saint Martin of Tours, Philadelphia (2017-2018).

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MEMPHIS (TN)
Commercial Appeal

March 5, 2019

By Katherine Burgess

Pope Francis has appointed Bishop David P. Talley of Alexandria, Louisiana, the new bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Memphis, according to an announcement from the Vatican.

Talley’s appointment follows the removal of Bishop Martin Holley in October. Since then, Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville has been apostolic administrator for Memphis.

Here’s what people are saying about Talley, who was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Atlanta in 1989 and became bishop of Alexandria in 2017.

Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, apostolic administrator for Memphis:

“(Talley) has served well as a diocesan bishop of Alexandria in Louisiana and as a canon lawyer,” Kurtz said in a written statement Tuesday. “Most importantly, he brings the heart of a pastor and a sterling reputation as a good shepherd devoted to Jesus Christ and His Church, deeply concerned for those he serves, humble, and wise.

“I’m glad that Bishop David accepted to come, because he brings a lot of good qualities and talents with him that he has,” Steib said. “In particular, he’s very pastoral, very listening and knows how to work with people. I think that’s going to be his best feature.”

The Diocese of Alexandria, Louisiana

“In all things Bishop Talley fostered a spirit of unity and hope in planning for the future of the diocese while building on its long history,” according to a statement from Talley’s curent diocese. “As a diocese we wish him well in his new appointment as we give heartfelt thanks to God for his time and work among us here in Central Louisiana.”

SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) of Tennessee:

SNAP of Tennessee issued a statement Tuesday saying they are “encouraged” that Talley has been a caseworker for abused and neglected children, but are “also cautious,” particularly since Talley’s diocese of Alexandria, Louisiana, did not attach work histories to a list of clergy accused of abuse.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC Ballarat

March 4, 2019

By Charlotte King

Days after he led a prayer for Cardinal George Pell from inside the city’s prison, an Ararat cleric has delivered a stirring homily calling for urgent reform in the Catholic Church.

Ararat’s Father Andrew Hayes told a congregation of about 50 parishioners: “This weekend, as we begin our mass, our Cardinal is in jail”.

“I am so sorry for what the church has done to you … the lifetimes of torment and loss of life,” he said.

“Thank you for coming to mass today, it would have been reasonable to stay home — I am also ashamed, and embarrassed.”

Cardinal George Pell, Australia’s most senior Catholic cleric, was last year convicted of sexually abusing two choirboys in 1996. He will be sentenced on March 13. An appeal against the conviction has been lodged.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
The Atlantic

March 4, 2019

By David I. Kertzer

After decades of controversy, Pope Francis has announced that he will open the records of Pius XII’s papacy to researchers—along with other restricted Church holdings.

On Monday, 80 years after Pius XII’s election to the papacy, Pope Francis announced that the archives of the controversial wartime pontiff would be opened to scholars next March. The decision follows more than half a century of pressure. Pius XII—a hero of Catholic conservatives, who eagerly await his canonization as a saint, while denounced by his detractors for failing to condemn the Nazis’ genocidal campaign against Europe’s Jews—might well be the most controversial pope in Church history.

Less noticed in initial accounts of the announcement is the fact that Francis’s opening of the Pius XII archives makes available not only the 17 million pages of documents in the central Vatican archives, but many other materials in other Church archives. Not least of these are the archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly known as the Holy Office of the Inquisition) and the central archives of the Jesuit order. They, too, are likely to have much that is new to tell us.

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COLUMBUS (OH)
The Columbus Dispatch

March 4, 2019

By Danae King

Several local survivors and victims advocates are calling a “token measure” the Roman Catholic Diocese of Columbus’ release Friday of a list of 34 clergy members who have been “credibly accused” of sexually abusing minors, saying it was “too little, too late.”

“It makes me angry,” Ken Wilcox said Monday.

The 55-year-old Olde Towne East resident says he was molested by the late Monsignor Thomas Bennett as a teenager at St. Charles Preparatory School in Bexley in the early 1980s.

“What I see is what’s missing,” he said of the list. “It’s monumentally maddening for a survivor.”

The most-recent abuse case on the list occurred more than 25 years ago, according to the diocese.

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation

February 27, 2019

[Video Length: 1:59]

ABC radio presenter Jon Faine says the overwhelming response on talkback radio to George Pell’s conviction has been one of disgust. He also cast doubt on Cardinal Pell’s chances of a successful appeal, saying the Catholic Church had already spent significant resources on the case.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
USA TODAY Opinion

March 4, 2019

By Elisabeth Treadway

I spent only 10 minutes with George Tyndall during my sophomore year in 1999 — an accused sexual predator employed by the University of Southern California as the sole gynecologist at the student health center. That short, seemingly insignificant amount of time would prove detrimental to my self-esteem and self-worth for the next 20 years of my life.

But those 10 minutes will not ruin the next two decades of my life.

No amount of money will ever change our past or heal our pain, but the settlement USC has agreed to is an important step in holding the university accountable. By finally acknowledging the hundreds of survivors, this settlement has allowed me to find purpose in my pain — to promote healing and to prevent this from ever happening again.

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation

March 4, 2019

By Natasha Johnson

As an award-winning journalist on Australia’s premier current affairs program, Louise Milligan is used to tackling difficult stories and upsetting people in power, but her three-year investigation into allegations of child sexual abuse against George Pell, the country’s most senior Catholic, was daunting.

“Without a doubt this is the toughest story I have ever done,” Milligan said.

“This is a person who had immense political and cultural power so taking that on is enormous and very, very stressful.

“Being at the centre of this storm, it doesn’t get any harder than that as a journalist.

“Having said that, it pales into comparison with what this ordeal has been like for the people who made complaints about George Pell, and their families.”

On Four Corners, Milligan secured exclusive interviews with the family of a choirboy, (who died of a heroin overdose), that Pell has been convicted of abusing on one occasion at St Patrick’s Cathedral in 1996.

Pell has denied the offence took place and is appealing his conviction.

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NEW JERSEY
North Jersey Record

March 1, 2019

By Mike Kelly

When she talks about the Catholic Church, you can hear the sound of Phyllis Hanratty’s breaking heart.

Hanratty’s son, Edward Jr., said he was abused by a Catholic priest for several years in the late 1980s when the family lived in Ridgefield Park and were loyal members of St. Francis of Assisi parish.

Edward Jr., now 42 and living in West Milford with his wife, kept his secret to himself until last summer. And when he finally told his parents — and the world, in an NBC news interview — Phyllis felt her faith crumble.

“My church lied to me,” she said in a recent interview at the apartment in Lyndhurst that she shares with her husband. “I’ve been robbed of my faith in the Catholic Church.”

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VATICAN CITY
The Associated Press

March 4, 2019

By Frances D’Emilio

Declaring that the church “isn’t afraid of history,” Pope Francis said Monday he has decided to open up the Vatican archives on World War II-era Pope Pius XII, who has been criticized by Jews of staying silent on the Holocaust and not doing enough to save lives.

Describing that criticism as fruit of “some prejudice or exaggeration,” Francis told officials and personnel of the Vatican Secret Archives that the documentation would be open to researchers starting March 2, 2020.

The move could speed up Pius’ path to possible sainthood, a complex process that in Pius’ case bore the weight of questions of what he knew and did about Nazi Germany’s systematic killing of Europe’s Jews.

Pius was elected pope on March 2, 1939, six months before World War II erupted in Europe. He died on Oct. 9, 1958, at the Vatican summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, near Rome.

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LITTLE ROCK (AR)
Arkansas On Line

March 4, 2019

Was the Vatican’s just-completed summit on child sex abuse, convened by Pope Francis amid a crisis of credibility that has crippled the Catholic Church’s moral authority, really intended simply to pre- pare the way for genuine reforms in the indefinite future?

Victims’ groups had hoped for much more, as had many of the faithful in the United States and elsewhere. They were heartened, briefly, when the pope opened the unprecedented four-day conference by demanding what he called “concrete” measures to deliver something real that would uproot the scourge of clerical sex abuse and hierarchical coverup.

In the end, those concrete mea- sures were a chimera—widely debated, held up to intense canonical scrutiny, but ultimately put off to some future date. The contrast with the pope’s own more disappointing.

A meaningful and, yes, concrete agenda for the U.S. bishops would start with taking up measures they were on the verge of adopting last November when the Holy See intervened to stop them. That would include establishing

a code of conduct for bishops, who have been instrumental in covering up the church’s crimes, as well as a commis- sion of lay Catholics to review allegations of misconduct by bishops. In addition, it would mean reversing the church’s steadfast opposition to chang-

es in state laws that prohibit survivors of pedophile priests from filing lawsuits years after the abuse took place. More- over, it would mean a shift in rheto- ric that would recognize not only the church’s obligation to root out abuse but also its unique history as a safe haven for abusers

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PRATO (ITALY)
ANSA

March 5, 2019

An Italian paedophile priest got a jail term of four years and four months in Prato on Tuesday.

Father Paolo Glaentzer was convicted of sexually abusing a 10-year-old girl.

The court also ordered damages of 50,000 euros for the girl.

Her parents were refused damages.

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NEW YORK (NY)
America Magazine

March 5, 2019

By Michael J. O’Loughlin

A group of nearly 200 Catholic leaders including cardinals, lay experts and philanthropists, who met in Washington last month to discuss the church’s ongoing sexual abuse crisis, released a report with dozens of recommendations just days after a global summit of bishops in Rome concluded their gathering about the same topic.

Kim Smolik, the head of the church reform group Leadership Roundtable, said in a March 1 statement that the recommendations “demonstrate how the church can create a new culture of leadership, as well as a new culture of how to respond to abuse.” The report, which included ideas for bishops and laypeople, called for “Catholic leaders to take swift and bold action.” When it comes to the role of the laity, the report’s authors said women, theologians and philanthropists must be utilized more by church leaders in order to create cultural change.

The Leadership Roundtable’s suggestions include developing a “code of conduct” for bishops and other ministers that “recognize[s] abuse of power not only against children, but also adults.” The report includes a call for greater transparency in a number of areas, including church finance—especially when it comes to donations and sexual abuse settlements—and in the process for selecting bishops. It suggests including laity in that process, empowering laypeople to assess how a potential bishop has handled allegations of abuse by priests.

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation

March 4, 2019

By Louise Milligan

The family of one of the boys sexually abused by George Pell have revealed their sadness and anger at watching their son’s life spiral out of control in the wake of his abuse.

The boy was one of two 13-year-old choirboys molested by Pell in the priests’ sacristy at St Patrick’s Cathedral in 1996.

His father has told Four Corners how they watched their son change from a cheerful young kid — with no idea why.

“He went from being this lovely boy, who used to come to the football with me, who used to go and help his grandparents and helped around the house, to this boy wanting to go out all the time,” he said.

“His schoolwork, I noticed that it started slipping. His whole attitude changed. His whole being just, he was a different boy.”

Andrew La Greca was a member of the choir at the time the boys were abused and he also noticed the change in one of the victims.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Hawk

March 5, 2019

By Megan Piasecki

The world of Catholicism was turned on its head when Cardinal George Pell was convicted of sexual abuse against minors this past week and was refused bail.

This is just the latest account in the string of abuse charges against Catholic Church officials. Pell’s case is particularly jarring being that he is the highest ranked figure within the Church to be charged for sex abuse crimes towards minors.

Although the topic of abuse is deeply saddening, I think that it is incredibly important to see these men brought to justice and their victims speak out about the heinous crimes committed against them.

And Catholicism has taken a huge blow from these scandals.

As a devout Catholic, I do not believe every priest is a pedophile, however this stereotype does force me to look at the bigger issue at hand; this abuse has gone on for too long.

Although the issue is deeply rooted, we can work to combat the problem. A few ways to do so can be through supporting the victims so they can share their stories, as well as better vetting of our priests to prevent abuse like this from happening again.

The fact that it has taken this long for Church officials to be held accountable for their actions is despicable.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Rockland/Westchester Journal News

March 5, 2019

By Frank Esposito

A Westchester Country grand jury today indicted the Rev. Thomas Kreiser, a former Bronxville priest, on charges of sex abuse and endangering the welfare of a child.

Kreiser was accused of inappropriately touching a young girl while.serving at St. Joseph’s parish.

He’s charged with three counts of first-degree sexual abuse, a felony, and three counts of endangering the welfare of a child, a misdemeanor.

Bruce Bendish, Kreiser’s attorney, entered a not guilty plea on Kreiser’s behalf.

Kreiser previously worked at St. Patrick’s Church in Yorktown and St. Gregory Barbarigo Church in Garnerville, where he ran into legal troubles.

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

March 5, 2019

Victims blast Mississippi bishop
“He should disclose accused priests’ names,” they say
SNAP: “And he should include their photos & whereabouts”
Group ‘outs’ two alleged abusive clerics; one lives here now

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will disclose the names of two publicly accused priests who are or were in the Jackson diocese but have largely been ‘under the radar.’

They will also prod Jackson Catholic officials to
–reveal the names of ALL priests who have proven, admitted or ‘credible’ allegations of child sexual abuse,
–permanently and prominently post their photos, whereabouts and work histories on church websites, and
–‘aggressively reach out’ to anyone who may have been hurt by church staff.

WHEN
Tuesday, March 5 at 3:00 PM

WHERE
On the sidewalk outside the Jackson Catholic diocese headquarters, 237 E Amite St, Jackson, MS 39201

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

March 5, 2019

Reports are that Bishop David Talley of Alexandria, Louisiana, will be annouced today to be the new bishop of Memphis, Tennessee. What can Memphians expect from Bishop Talley? SNAP of Tennessee (Survivors Network of those Abuse by Priests) has the following observations.

In the wake of the revelation that the first bishop of Memphis, Carroll T. Dozier, was a pedophile listed on the “credibly accused” list of pedophile priests recently released in the Diocese of Richmond, Virginia, SNAP of Tennessee certainly hopes there will be a better track record than has been seen in the past in Memphis.”

Do the prospects of this happening look promising given Talley’s recent stand on release of names in his own diocese in Louisiana? We’re not sure.

We’re encouraged that Bishop David P. Talley has worked as a caseworker for abused and neglected children.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Tablet

March 5, 2019

By Christopher Lamb

The Church is grappling to come to terms with Cardinal George Pell’s conviction for sexually abusing two 13-year-old choirboys, with a febrile atmosphere in Australia seeing heavy criticism of the Archbishop of Sydney and a university vice-chancellor for their responses to the verdict.

The former Vatican financial tsar, who was charged by police in 2017 with multiple sex abuse allegations spanning decades, is currently spending 23-hours-a-day in solitary confinement in a Melbourne prison as he waits for a 13 March hearing where he will be handed down a sentence for his crimes.

Pell, 77, never took the stand during his trial but has strenuously maintained his innocence telling police the claims against him were “deranged nonsense” and is appealing the verdict.

Nevertheless, the man who was once the public face of Australian Catholicism and a dominant figure in the Church scene globally is expected to be sent to prison for somewhere between ten and 14 years and is already facing a civil claim for sexual abuse from another complainant.

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MARION (OHIO)
Marion Star

March 5, 2019

By Sarah Volpenhein

At least five of the 34 clergy on a list of clergy credibly accused of sexually abusing minors released by the Diocese of Columbus Friday were pastors or Catholic school teachers in Marion.

While three of those priests had been publicly named and defrocked, the other two were not publicly known.

Both Bernard J. McClory, who was a pastor at St. Mary Catholic Church at least from 1983 to 1991, and Alan M. Sprenger, assistant pastor at St. Mary from 1960 to 1962, were revealed in the diocese’s release to have been credibly accused of sexually abusing a minor. Sprenger also taught at Marion Catholic High School, according to his obituary.

The Star could not find any prior public accusations against McClory or Sprenger. Both priests have since died.

The remaining three priests on the list who had been stationed in Marion were R. Michael Ellifritz, Michael F. Hanrahan and Thomas L. McLaughlin, all of whom have been defrocked.

Both Hanrahan and McLaughlin were criminally charged in connection to sexual abuse of children and spent time in prison.

The list of clergy released by the Catholic Diocese of Columbus Friday did not include the parishes where the accused clergy worked. But in searching its archives, the Star was able to identify five priests who had worked as pastors or Catholic school teachers in Marion.

The list also did not include any details on the allegations, such as where the abuse was alleged to have occurred or when.

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SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA)
Australian Broadcasting Company

March 5, 2019

By Damian McIver

Top barrister, Robert Richter QC, will no longer represent Cardinal George Pell in court for his sentence and appeal, saying he is too emotional and angry about the guilty verdict handed down by the jury.

Richter says he will be available to help Pell’s team and is angry and upset at the outcome

He denies his decision is linked to an apology he made after describing Pell’s offending as “plain vanilla”

The senior barrister says he continues to have every faith in Pell’s case

Pell was convicted of sexually abusing two choirboys while he was the archbishop of Melbourne in the 1990s.

He is due to be sentenced on March 13 but has already lodged an appeal.

“I’m too angry and upset at the outcome to bring the objectivity that an appeal requires,” he said.

Mr Richter said he will still be available to help Pell’s legal team and is convinced he had a strong case in overturning what he called “a questionable conviction”.

“I will not be arguing the appeal myself simply because I believe the Cardinal deserves someone who can be dispassionate enough to present the case to the Court of Appeal,” he said.

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
Providence Journal

March 4, 2019

“Gay currents in the Church?” Did Bishop Thomas Tobin’s tweet about rampant clericalism (“Bishop Tobin uses Twitter to weigh in on church sex-abuse summit,” news, Feb. 22) refer to pedophile priests?

Tobin speaks of “occasion of sin.” It has been reported that sexual abuse has existed in the Catholic Church since at least as far back as the 11th century. That’s quite a lengthy occasion!

Let’s get up to speed on the fact that the abused include mostly boys but also girls, some as young as 3 years old, with the majority between 11 and 14. Gays have been the whipping party for many religions, especially the Catholic Church.

Almost everyone will applaud “spiritual renewal of the Church,” provided it includes full disclosure of past “occasions of sin,” transparency going forward and where necessary compensation to include payment for counseling to those abused by priests and church hierarchy.

The Rev. John R. Warner
Cranston

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Current

March 5, 2019

By Sue Kerr

Lent is arriving in Pittsburgh and that means fish fry season is upon us.

A mainstay of Catholic culture in Pittsburgh, this is the first fish fry season since the release of the Grand Jury Report in August 2018 describing sexual violence by nearly 100 priests in the Diocese of Pittsburgh and the complicity of Diocesan officials in covering up that abuse.

For decades, fish fries have been important fundraisers for parishes throughout the region, staffed by stalwart volunteers of all ages.

Fish fries have also expanded to fire halls and local restaurants and the sheer volume of events that have cropped up in recent years has led to many media outlets to launch bracket challenges, Facebook groups, and a Google map. You can find fish fries with hipster themes, locally sourced fries, and everything from fish tacos to fish pizza to help meet the Lenten obligation when you tire of a 29-inch piece of fried cod on a hamburger bun.

For the past several years, I’ve featured a blog series called Fish Fry Fridays, essentially my reviews of assorted fish fries throughout the region. I dive into the food quality, portions, and price, but I also consider the accessibility of the venue, the friendliness and welcoming attitudes of the community, any evidence of recycling, and more. Examining the tension between my personal experience of Catholic culture and our shared experiences at the fish fries has been a useful starting point for some of my reviews.

But the whole time I wrote these, I knew about the sexual violence occurring in the Church. I was one of the kids who grew up knowing that most of the priests in our parish (Holy Spirit in West Mifflin) were just terrible. That was proven true when I discovered that the parish was staffed by child predators for at least 23 consecutive years. My friends were preyed upon and still deal with those scars today. I have never been unaware of the magnitude of sexual violence in the Catholic Church or Christianity writ large. It has shaped my life in ways that are difficult and painful to describe.

I read accounts of local parishes struggling to reconcile the realities of the grand jury report and hear very little acknowledgement of how these remaining parishioners were complicit in these events. Instead, people focus on what they will lose — their church buildings might close, their schools might be consolidated, their losses are potentially catastrophic. But very few people take that next step of considering that all of these things were built on a culture that has been skewed toward violence, abuse, and power hoarding for the past several millenia. Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, have violent histories.

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Patheos blog

March 4, 2019

By Bob Seidensticker

Nonprofit organizations in the U.S. make a contract: society allows donations to be tax deductible, and in return those organizations make their financial records public to show that they used that income wisely. Every nonprofit fills out an annual IRS 990 form to make its cash flow public—every nonprofit, that is, except churches.

Not only is this exemption unfair, it makes churches look like they have something to hide. Given past financial scandals, some do, but this secrecy makes most churches look undeservedly bad. Christians should demand that this exemption be removed. This change would improve the reputation of American churches at a time when a little reputation polishing would be welcome.

This article has four sections: a brief overview of the problem enabled by the exemption, arguments against removing the exemption, arguments for removing it, and a conclusion.

Church scandals
This isn’t an indictment of all churches, just the bad actors hiding behind the good ones.

One problem enabled by secrecy is fraud. “In 2000, an estimated $7 billion was embezzled by leaders of churches and religious organizations in the United States. Several other studies have suggested that about fifteen percent of all individual churches will suffer embezzlement.”[1] Worldwide, the estimate of fraud is $35 billion annually.[2]

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KINGSTON (JAMAICA)
Jamaica Observer

March 4, 2019

Another Jamaican claiming sexual abuse, allegedly at the hands of a local Roman Catholic priest, has come forward.

This was disclosed on the weekend to the Jamaica Observer by Denise Buchanan, the 57-year-old Jamaican who insists she was raped at the age of 17 by a then novitiate, although Archbishop of Kingston, Most Rev Kenneth Richards has said the priest in question, Father Paul Collier, said the relationship was consensual.

Buchanan is also a founding member of the international advocacy group Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA), which is on a mission to compel the Roman Catholic Church to end abuse by clerics, especially child sexual abuse. The group is now calling on the archbishop of Kingston to apologise to victims of clerical abuse after comments made in a letter to the Observer last week.

The other victim, according to Buchanan, reached out to the ECA after reading the Jamaica Observer front page story last Friday, which reported on the archbishop’s response to an Agence France Presse (AFP) article published by the newspaper, in which Buchanan said she was raped, impregnated and had to do two abortions due to her alleged abuse at the hands of Father Paul.

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LYON (FRANCE)
Agence France Presse

March 5, 2019

A French court on Thursday will deliver its verdict in the case of Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, accused of covering up sexual abuse of minors by one of his priests.

The 68-year-old archbishop and five former aides went on trial in Lyon at a time when the Catholic Church has been hit by abuse scandals in countries as far afield as Australia, Brazil, Chile and the United States.

The outcome of the trial, which began in January, has been long awaited in France where Barbarin is the highest-profile Catholic cleric to be caught up in a paedophile scandal.

“I cannot see what I am guilty of,” Barbarin told the court. “I never tried to hide, let alone cover up these horrible facts.”

The case broke three years ago and lawyers for nine adult plaintiffs – former boy scouts allegedly abused by priest Bernard Preynat – took legal action.

Since the abuse relates to acts committed before 1991, prosecutors had declined to press charges because of the statue of limitations.

The trial went ahead only because alleged victims went around the prosecutor’s office and insisted, as they are entitled, to put their case before a court.

Under French law, the court can still convict and even jail the suspect, regardless of the prosecutor’s position.

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NEWBURYPORT (MA)
Daily News

March 5, 2019

To the editor:

“We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low,” Desmond Tutu once said.

God’s mercy is uniform, constant and unwaveringly applied to all who seek it. Justice, however, is a flawed mimicry of it because it is a human invention and therefore subject to discretion.

The fabric of the Catholic Church is torn and there’s no repair in progress. Once again after a cacophony of recent news of abuse by high-ranking clergy, at the conclusion of a summit of bishops in Rome to address the issue, the pope disappoints.

In a faux response, the church announced through The Associated Press that it would issue a “new law” creating a child protection policy that covers the internal bureaucracy at Vatican City. Perhaps, the pope and the hierarchy missed the proverbial memo.

Criminal sexual abuse of children has become institutionalized throughout the world for decades by the church as well as its cover-up. There is neither nothing new about this condition, nor are the crimes localized within the walls of Vatican City. Certainly, the application of the law directed at “bureaucracy” provides a “line in the sand” whereby high-ranking officials are now finally at risk of being held materially accountable. Certainly, this is a novel approach.

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Above the Law blog

March 4, 2019

By Toni Messina

Every time I force myself to read more of the 1,356-page grand jury report detailing sex abuse in the priesthood in the state of Pennsylvania, I wonder anew: How did the church get away with this for so long?

The cover-up lasted for decades. It was initially not in the church’s interest to let the world know just how deep and wide the sex abuse went, but now, due to a confluence of factors, they can’t deny it further. As the Pope himself said at the recent conference of bishops called to discuss the scandal, what’s gone on “is utterly incompatible with [the church’s] moral authority and ethical credibility.”

There were high hopes that the recent summit would thrust a new set of initiatives, guidelines, and mea culpas before the public; that the church might get ahead of this crisis and salvage its credibility. The Pope opened the meeting acknowledging that “the People of God were expecting concrete, effective measures” to combat clerical abuse and not just the repetition of “simple and predictable condemnations.”

But in reality, the meeting produced nothing concrete, no future agenda, no timetable. The church’s decision to hold the conference dedicated to sex abuse, while remarkable because there was a meeting at all, produced much of the same — promises and a recognition of a need for rules on how to deal with misconduct, but no rules themselves.

Why not agree to form study groups on why men with predatory interests are attracted to the priesthood? Why not mandate that priests accused of sex crimes, when the source is credible and corroborated, be immediately defrocked? Why not rethink the very nature of celibacy itself and permit priests to marry? Why not begin a discussion on permitting women to become priests?

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HUNTINGTON (WV)
Herald Dispatch

March 5, 2019

By John Patrick Grace

Full disclosure: I have been a longtime fan of Pope Francis. The first pope from Latin America, the first pope who is a Jesuit, and yet, curiously, someone who took his papal name from St. Francis of Assisi, the barefoot troubadour who founded the Franciscan order in the hills of Umbria.

The images are endearing: Francis asking the throng at St. Peter’s Square to “pray for me” before he delivered from the balcony his first discourse as pope. Francis hefting his own luggage from his hotel room as a limousine waited below to ferry him to his new quarters in the Vatican. And Francis riding around Rome in a modest black sedan, an ordinary car, not a limo, sometimes right in the front passenger seat next to the driver.

I have had the personal privilege of meeting two popes: Pope John XXIII, while I was spending my college junior year abroad in Rome, and Pope Paul VI, whom I covered as a journalist working for The Associated Press. I see in Francis personality pieces that remind me of John XXIII, “the peasant pope from Bergamo.” Humility, plain and simple.

Thus I had sky-high hopes for the recent summit of 100 bishops convoked to the Vatican by Pope Francis to debate the worldwide clerical sexual abuse scandals that have ravaged Catholic communities.

I’d told more than one friend that Francis “would do more than Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI combined” to cleanse the church from the stench of thousands of cases of priests, and sometimes even bishops, committing acts of predatory sexual abuse on minors, predominantly young male children.

Serious — not partisan left or right types — Catholic commentators who followed the summit between Francis and the bishops have, however, scored the event as “a letdown” that fell far short of expectations, especially those of survivors of clerical sexual abuse. Two of these commentators are veteran Vatican watcher John Allen, who writes for a variety of Catholic media outlets, and Monsignor Charles Pope, a regular columnist for the weekly Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.

Allen credited Francis for issuing a heartfelt call for the church to heed “the silent, choked cry” of abuse victims, and for his remark that “in people’s justified anger, the Church sees the reflection of the wrath of God.”

The American journalist then went negative, quoting Bishop Accountability, a watchdog group, as suggesting that Pope Francis’ final remarks at the summit did not indicate the hoped-for zero-tolerance crackdown on offending clerics and bishops.

Nonetheless, the Vatican vowed to issue a new anti-abuse guideline book for bishops, conferences and dioceses, and follow up with other gatherings to take stock of progress, Allen allowed.

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COLUMBUS (OH)
Columbus Dispatch

March 4, 2019

By Theodore Decker

My favorite time was right after Mass, when the church emptied, and I was free to move about the altar and sacristy with a confidence born of routine. I extinguished the candles, readied everything for the next Mass and often engaged in an easy banter with the priest.

That in particular felt like a tremendous secret: that priests could be funny and spoke of regular things, such as baseball.

When I picture my childhood parish, St. Christopher in Parsippany, New Jersey, it is always summer. I see the stained-glass windows angled open to draw in cooler air, a futile gesture on the hottest days. Once every summer, Father Al treated the altar boys to a day down at the shore, on the boardwalk at Seaside Heights.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Columbus released a list on Friday of 34 priests who had been “credibly accused” of sexually abusing minors. The news prompted me to look for similar lists in New Jersey and upstate New York, where I continued as an altar server through high school. I prayed I wouldn’t see the names from my childhood — Father Cassidy, Father McGinley, and Father Al, a priest so familiar to me that I remember only his first name.

Their names didn’t appear, but I found the names of three other priests with connections to St. Christopher.

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BALLYSHANNON (IRELAND)
Donegal Democrat

March 5, 2019

The notorious paedophile priest Father Eugene Greene has died.

Father Eugene Greene was jailed for 12 years at Donegal Circuit Court in 2000 when he pleaded guilty to 41 sample charges of sexual assault against 26 children in Donegal parishes between 1965 and 1982.

He had been charged on over 100 counts. The trial heard that many of his victims were altar boys, who suffered repeated assault and buggery.

Sentencing him, Judge Matthew Deery noted some of his victims had turned to drink to try to erase the pain of their childhood abuse which he described as “horrific”.

It has not been confirmed when Father Eugene Greene passed away.

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SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA)
Morning Herald

March 5, 2019

I appreciate Reverend Michael Jensen’s sincerity in responding to the pain of victims of abuse and the distress of church members (‘‘Only hope for institutional Christianity lies in truth’’, March 5).
As one who has spent many hours with depressed and traumatised victims not only of church abuse, but also the more subtle and strangling experiences of the tendrils of church power, I suggest that the church could respond in a more constructive manner by examining how its institutional practices perpetuate the problems so decried. While you have only men in leadership positions claiming this is the created order for relationships between men and women, you have the potential for abuses of power to increase exponentially. – Josie McSkimming, Coogee

For all the doubters and defenders of Cardinal Pell I quote the remarks of his barrister, Robert Richter (who was actually present for the whole trial), in his apology for his inappropriate remark: ‘‘The seriousness of the crime was acknowledged at the outset by the concession that it merited imprisonment. In seeking to mitigate the sentence I used a wholly inappropriate phrase.’’ People who have difficulty with plain English should consult their dictionary. – Jan Carroll, Potts Point

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BATHURST (AUSTRALIA)
Western Advocate

March 4, 2019

By Joanne McCarthy
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THE Vincentian Catholic order has denied liability for notorious child sex offender priest Brian Spillane’s abuse of a Bathurst school student despite Spillane’s conviction for the crime, and despite Pope Francis’s vow at a Vatican summit that the church would give survivors “all the support they need”.

Spillane was “on a frolic of his own” when he indecently assaulted Damien Sheridan, 13, at St Stanislaus’ College in 1985 after the homesick boy sought help from the school chaplain, the Vincentians said in response to Mr Sheridan’s 2018 civil suit.

In the same response, the Vincentians did not admit the abuse occurred despite Spillane’s conviction the previous year.

The order is also yet to join the National Redress Scheme, after avoiding Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse scrutiny because of the number of outstanding prosecutions against the Vincentian boarding school’s former priests, brothers, teachers and lay workers.

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