Documenting the Catholic Sexual Abuse and Financial Crisis – Data on bishops, priests, brothers, nuns, Pope Francis, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Thursday, April 16, 2026
ABUSE TRACKER
A digest of links to media coverage of clergy abuse. For recent coverage listed in this blog, read the full article in the newspaper or other media source by clicking “Read original article.” For earlier coverage, click the title to read the original article.
The Jesuit religious order released a list Tuesday of 50 priests who it said credibly abused children — including eight men assigned to schools or churches in Buffalo.
But 7 Eyewitness News has discovered some of the abusive priests are still wearing a collar and acting as priests, raising questions about whether the Catholic Church continues to withhold information from the public.
The Rev. J. Peter Conroy worked at Canisius College until 2002, when two women — Colleen O’Hara Carney and Molly O’Hara Ewing — came forward to say Fr. Conroy inappropriately touched and groped them when they were in seventh grade in the 1970s.
“It was very inappropriate behavior for anybody,” O’Hara Carney said. “He just pulled me down on his lap and the hand drifted under the school uniform.”
The Jesuits said Conroy admitted to the abuse in 2002 and they removed him from Canisius and “impeded” him from ministry that year.
The Jesuits’ Northeast province listed no assignments for Conroy after 2002 in the documents it released Tuesday, but the church’s own records show Conroy is still very much a priest — and he’s not the only one.
Other Buffalo Jesuits who abused minors were never “defrocked” or stripped of their status as Roman Catholic priests. Instead, some were quietly sent to retreat centers and other destinations where they serve to this day — even after they have been placed on the Jesuits’ abuse list.
“Even today, they cannot tell the truth,” Patrick Wall said of religious orders like the Jesuits.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
A list of 50 Jesuits who were found by their organization to have been credibly accused of abusing minors was released this week, revealing that some of the alleged abusers circled through various institutions, sometimes for years, after the alleged abuse took place.
The list, released by the Northeast Province of Jesuits on Tuesday, shows that much of the abuse was reported years after it allegedly took place, meaning that officials may not have known about the wrongdoing when they transferred priests from one institution to the next.
However, nine priests the list states, continued to be transferred from schools to parishes, retreats or other works projects after reports were made about their alleged abuse.
“We did not know any best practices to handle these violations many decades ago and regrettably made mistakes along the way,” Fr. John Cecero, the head of the Northeast Province of Jesuits, said in a statement that was released along with the list.
One example is John Farrand, who was reported for allegedly abusing minors in 1961, the same year that he worked at Regis High School in New York, according to the Northeast Province of Jesuits.
The nature or exact dates of the alleged abuse was not detailed.
Regis High School confirmed yesterday that Farrand is one of four priests listed who have had credible allegations of abuse made against them pertaining to their time at the school.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
It’s been four months since Bishop Joseph M. Siegel announced the Catholic Diocese of Evansville will collect and release the names of priests who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors.
But that’s too long for a group protesting in front of the Diocese’s administration building Wednesday afternoon.
Four members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) pleaded in front of the building’s sign for the bishop to release the names.
The organization is a nationwide nonprofit support group for men and women who have been abused by religious and institutional authorities.
The group appealed for sexual abuse victims to come forward and get help.
“To anyone who has been affected by this: come forward, get help and start healing,” SNAP volunteer David Clohessy said. “The pain is never totally gone, but you can get better.”
The members also asked Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill to open up a statewide investigation into priests who have been accused of sexual abuse.
Moments before the news conference, a statement released from the diocese said the inspection and review of clergy records is ongoing, and the release of names will occur within the next several weeks.
“Why won’t (Bishop Siegel) release the names today?” Clohessy asked upon hearing the diocese’s statement. “He and his predecessors have had decades to do this”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
Victims and advocates are calling on the Catholic Diocese of Belleville, which covers Southern Illinois, to provide a fuller view of the sexual offenders who have served as priests in the Southern Illinois area.
The Diocese’s list publicly names 17 priests who are “currently removed from ministry after credibly substantiated allegations of the sexual abuse of minors, or serious sexual misconduct with adults.”
But David Clohessy and Larry Antonsen, of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, believe names need to be added to that list, starting with nine clerics who worked in downstate Illinois, and have been accused of molesting children in other parts of the state or country, by other factions of the Catholic church.
“These are priests who, for the most part, were ordained somewhere else, worked a lot of their career somewhere else, molested somewhere else, but also spent time in Southern Illinois,” Clohessy said.
Six of those clergymen worked in the Belleville area: Thomas Meyer, Emil Twardochleb, Michael Charland, Orville Munie, Paul Kabat and James Vincent Fitzgerald.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
The catholic church of Evansville says a list of accused priests is coming, but it’s not soon enough for a small group protesting Wednesday.
The group is demanding Bishop Joseph Siegel unveil names of priests facing sexual abuse allegations.
Not only does the group want names to be revealed, they also want Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill to open an investigation.
Four men representing SNAP, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, stood in front of the Evansville diocese office tonight.
Last year, the Evansville Catholic Diocese announced a project to collect the names of local priests who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse over the decades and then make it public.
SNAP says it has been long enough and is now demanding the release of that list.
“Why won’t he release the names today?” asks David Clohessy. “He and his predecessors have literally had decades to do this.”
Evansville has one priest on administrative leave. He faces allegations of sexual abuse.
The group also wants to ensure Bishop Siegel includes the work histories, photos, and current whereabouts of the accused.
As recently as last month, the diocese announced its inspection of clergy records dating back to 1944 is ongoing with the results expected to be made public in the first few months of the year.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
A victims advocacy group has a list of eight Catholic priests who it says were credibly accused of sexual assault in other states, and there’s evidence that some of them may have made their way through southern Illinois.
Now, the group — Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or S.N.A.P. — is calling on the bishop of southern Illinois to put their names on the church’s accused priest list.
Two men from S.N.A.P. are trying to protect the vulnerable and heal the wounded. They’re asking the public to come forward with any information about the priests written on a board you can see in the photos within this story.
“These priests, for the most part, were ordained somewhere else. They worked a lot of their career somewhere else, but also spent time in southern Illinois. So, we are afraid one or more of these priests could still be living in the area or returning to the area to visit,” said S.N.A.P. volunteer David Clohessy.
The issue is personal for both of them, because they were both sexually abused by someone within the Catholic Church.
“My life just really went downhill after this happened. Everything about my life changed, everything,” said S.N.A.P. volunteer Larry Antonsen.
There’s another name they’re telling us that isn’t on the list: Father Larry Lorenzoni. There is not much information available about Lorenzoni’s days in southern Illinois ,except that he may have been employed by Southern Illinois University. He’s included in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ list of priests accused of sexual misconduct.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, a clergy sex abuse victim and advocate will publicly disclose for the first time that two credibly accused predator priests (including one who faces three pending abuse lawsuits) have been left off the archdiocese’s ‘accused’ list.
They will also
–prod Indianapolis’ Catholic archbishop to explain this omission, add the priests, and other alleged predators, to his “accused” clergy list, and
–beg anyone who saw, suspected or suffered clergy sex crimes or cover ups in Indiana to contact the attorney general who they say should be conducting an investigation into this crisis.
WHEN
Thursday, January 17 at 2:45 p.m.
WHERE
On the sidewalk outside the Indianapolis archdiocese headquarters (“chancery”), 1400 N. Meridian Street, (corner of W 14th Street) in Indianapolis,IN
WHO
At least two abuse victims: a Missouri man who is the St. Louis volunteer leader of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (and the organization’s former long time executive director) and an Illinois man who is the group’s Chicago volunteer leader, along with possibly 1-3 Indianapolis SNAP members
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
Two members of a priest-abuse survivors group called Wednesday for the Springfield-Cape Girardeau Diocese to place an additional seven priests on its list of those credibly accused of molesting children.
The plea came from Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) members David Clohessy of St. Louis and Larry Antonsen of Chicago as they stood outside St. Mary Cathedral in Cape Girardeau, holding signs listing the names of the seven priests.
“These are all priests who were ordained elsewhere, worked mostly elsewhere, but spent some time in southern Missouri,” Clohessy said. “They have been publicly named as accused child molesters, either through criminal action or lawsuits or by church officials themselves who have deemed them credibly accused.”
The seven identified include priests John Edward Ruhl, John “Jack” Farris, Thomas Gregory Meyer, James Vincent Fitzgerald, Michael Charland, John O’Flaherty and Monsignor Thomas J. O’Brien.
Only two of the seven — Ruhl and Charland — are still living, Clohessy said.
Two of the seven priests — Ruhl and Farris — served the Catholic Church in Cape Girardeau and Perryville, Missouri.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
Esta tarde, la jueza Marcela Garmendia, de La Plata, había ordenado su detención. Fue tras recibir las pericias psicológicas hechas sobre el sacerdote, quien, según los especialistas, tiene una “estructura psicopática perversa de la personalidad”
Apenas unas horas después de enterarse de que la jueza Marcela Garmendia había ordenado su detención, después de saber que la decisión de la magistrada fue tomada una vez que ella leyó su perfil psicológico, hecho por peritos oficiales, el cura Eduardo Lorenzo fue hallado sin vida en la sede de Cáritas de La Plata. Estaba acusado de abuso sexual con acceso carnal agravado contra al menos cinco víctimas, todas varones, todas menores de edad, por hechos ocurridos al menos en los últimos tres años.
Lorenzo estaba a punto de cumplir 60 años, nació el 21 de enero de 1959. Fue descubierto por gente de Cáritas, que denunció el hecho al 911. La Policía platense arribó al lugar a las 22 y pidió auxilio al SAME. El sacerdote estaba acostado en el suelo de su habitación, con un arma a su lado.
El pedido de detención era una medida que esperaban hace meses las víctimas y sus familiares, y que había reclamado la fiscal Ana Medina en octubre pasado, pero Garmendia la hizo efectiva recién ahora, este lunes, pues había estado esperando incorporar al expediente las pericias psicológicas hechas a Lorenzo y al primero de los denunciantes.
Sin embargo, Lorenzo, acusado del delito “abuso sexual con acceso carnal agravado”, no iba a ir preso todavía. Es que, paralelamente, Alfredo Gascón, abogado defensor del cura, que fue capellán en el Servicio Penitenciario Bonaerense, había presentado un pedido de eximición de prisión a Garmendia, quien en el mismo fallo en el que ordenó detener al sospechoso rechazó este requerimiento.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
Ten Jesuit priests who worked in New Jersey institutions were among a list published by the Roman Catholic religious order Tuesday of members who were credibly accused of sexually abusing children.
The USA Northeast Province Jesuits, which encompasses New England, New York and northern New Jersey, unveiled the roster of 50 priests accused of abusing minors between 1950 and 1996.
Nine of the Jesuits who served in New Jersey worked at St. Peter’s Prep High School, St. Peter’s University or St. Peter’s Parish, all in Jersey City.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
Pope Francis is insisting that bishops attending his high-stakes sex abuse prevention summit will learn the laws to use against predators, how to care for victims and will make sure that no cleric abuse cases are covered up again.
The Vatican on Wednesday provided details about the Feb. 21-24 meeting, saying its main aim is to guarantee that bishops around the world “clearly understand what they need to do to prevent and combat the worldwide problem of the sexual abuse of minors.”
Francis will attend the full summit, which includes plenary meetings, working groups, witness testimony, a penitential service and a final Mass on Feb. 24.
The pope appointed the Rev. Federico Lombardi to moderate the plenary meetings. The Italian Jesuit was Vatican spokesman during the last big explosion of sex cases in 2010 and recently penned a lengthy article in a Jesuit magazine about the Catholic Church’s response to the scandal to date.
Francis announced in September that he was inviting presidents of bishops’ conferences around the world to attend the summit amid a crisis in his papacy over his own botched handling of sex abuse cases and a new explosion of the scandal in the U.S., Chile and beyond.
Francis has a blemished record on handling sex abuse cases.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
Four of the five nuns who led an agitation against rape-accused Bishop Franco Mulakkal in Kerala have been directed to leave their convent in Kottayam district in compliance with a transfer order issued last year, sources said here on Wednesday.
Their congregation –Missionaries of Jesus under Jalandhar diocese of the Roman Catholic Church – has directed the nuns to join the convents they were assigned previously as per the transfer orders issued between March and May in 2018.
However, the nuns, who have been staying with their colleague, allegedly subjected to rape and unnatural sex by Mulakkal, stated they would not leave the convent in Kuravialangad.
The protest led by the nuns and Catholic reformist forums in Kochi, in September had led to a public outrage and demands for action against the bishop.
Bishop Mulakkal, a senior member of the Roman Catholic clergy in India, was arrested in September last following allegations by the nun that he repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted her in the convent at Kuravialangad between 2014 and 2016, a charge denied by him.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
This is the fifth blog post referring to an article by Jonathan Hollingsworth, What Not to Say to Someone Who’s Been Hurt by the Church. The article resonated with a lot of people, so I thought it might be a good idea to discuss these unhelpful statements one by one here, and give people the opportunity to share their experiences.
I am working through all six of Hollingsworth’s statements/questions of what not to say to someone who has been hurt by spiritual abuse. The posts are as follows:
Spiritual Abuse: No Church is Perfect
Spiritual Abuse: When People Ask You, “Are You Working Toward Reconciliation?
Spiritual Abuse: It’s Not Gossip to Talk about Abuse.
Spiritual Abuse: What Are Nonbelievers Going to Think?
Here is the fifth question on what not to say to someone harmed by spiritual abuse, followed by Jonathan Hollingsworth explaining why it is not helpful:
“Stop Being So Bitter.”
People who have been hurt by a church have a right to be angry. Not only is anger an appropriate response to injustice, it’s a healthy response if it’s channeled the right ways.
So why do Christians have such a hard time letting each other express negative emotions? Why do we always have to fish for some deeper spiritual problem like a root of bitterness or unforgiveness?
The other day I heard someone put it this way: “Religion will molest you, then accuse you of being bitter about it.” Do you see the double standard? When victims react to being hurt by someone in a church, we treat them as though there’s something’s wrong with them. This is why abusers are so often exonerated. It’s easier to justify letting the abuser off the hook if both parties are “in the wrong.” Source
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
Dallas police have issued an arrest warrant for an Oak Cliff priest previously accused of molesting three teenagers after a new accuser reached out to investigators.
Edmundo Paredes, the former longtime pastor at St. Cecilia Catholic Church, had been accused of sexually assaulting three teenage boys more than a decade ago and stealing from his parish. The Dallas Catholic Diocese, amid a worldwide sex-abuse crisis within the Catholic Church, made the allegations public in August.
Those victims didn’t want to pursue criminal charges against the priest, said Dallas police spokeswoman Tamika Dameron, in an emailed statement. But, she said, the announcement prompted another victim to come forward.
The new alleged victim contacted the department’s Child Exploitation Unit, which initiated a criminal investigation. That investigation then led to the arrest warrant for Paredes issued for the offense of sexual assault of a child, police said.
Paredes, 70, could not be reached for comment. He is believed to have fled the Dallas area last year, and his whereabouts are unknown. Dallas Catholic Diocese officials have said they thought he may have returned to his native Philippines.
Dallas County Sheriff’s spokesman Raul Reyna said police obtained the warrant last week.
Police have a detective — David Clark of the child exploitation unit — assigned to investigate sex-abuse allegations with minors within the Catholic diocese.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
The Catholic Church in Kerala Wednesday transferred four nuns from its Missionaries of Jesus convent in Kuravilangad who had participated in protests against rape-accused Bishop Franco Mulakkal of the Jalandhar diocese. Sr Alphy Pallasseril, Sr Anupama Kelamangalathuveliyil, Sr Josephine Villoonnickal and Sr Ancitta Urumbil, who held an indefinite strike near the Kerala High Court premises in Kochi last year demanding the arrest of the rape-accused bishop, have been given transfer orders back to the convents they were previously assigned by the Church.
The development comes a few days after the church had sent a warning to Sister Lucy Kalapura, who was at the forefront of protests against Mulakkal, for “attending channel discussions”, writing articles in “non-Christian newspapers” and “making false accusations” against the Catholic leadership.
Sr Anupama has been given marching orders to go back to Punjab, Sr Ancitta to Kannur, Kerala, Sr Alphy to Bihar and Sr Josephine to Jharkhand. Since June last year, these four nuns and a fifth one have been staying at the Kuravilangad convent as an act of solidarity with the victim, who also resides here.
Mulakkal was accused of raping a nun belonging to the order of Missionaries of Jesus several times between 2014 and 2016, and spent three weeks in the sub-jail at Pala before he got bail.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
The governing body for the Jesuit order in the northeastern United States has released a list of 50 priests under its jurisdiction who have been credibly accused of sexual misconduct with minors.
All but 15 of the Roman Catholic priests on the list released Tuesday by the USA Northeast Province of the Society of Jesus are dead, and all of the alleged abuse all took place before 1997.
Two former priests are incarcerated, one for possession of child pornography and one for abuse charges.
“At the heart of this crisis is the painful, sinful and illegal harm done to children by those whom they should have been able to trust,” the Rev. John J. Cecero, the top official for the province, said in a statement, adding, “We did not know any best practices to handle these violations many decades ago and regrettably made mistakes along the way.”
The list includes priests who served in Jesuit high schools and colleges throughout New England, New York and northern New Jersey. Of the 50, 22 have Massachusetts connections.
Among them is James Talbot, 81, a former priest who is serving a three-year sentence in Maine for sexually abusing a 9-year-old boy at a church in the 1990s. His accuser said in court in September, “To this day, I remember the steps leading inside the church as if they were guiding me to hell.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
Just over a month ahead of the much-anticipated February meeting on sex abuse, the Vatican said the summit’s goal is for bishops to leave the meeting knowing clearly what it is they need to do to stop the abuse of minors.
According to a statement by papal spokesperson Alessandro Gisotti Jan. 16, the February meeting “has a concrete purpose: the goal is that all of the bishops clearly understand what they need to do to prevent and combat the worldwide problem of the sexual abuse of minors.”
“It is fundamental for the Holy Father,” Gisotti said, that the bishops of the February gathering, when they have returned home, “understand the laws to be applied and that they take the necessary steps to prevent abuse, to care for the victims, and to make sure that no case is covered up or buried.”
It was also stated that Pope Francis wants the summit of bishops to be “an assembly of Pastors, not an academic conference,” and that he knows “a global problem can only be resolved with a global response.”
It will be a meeting “characterized by prayer and discernment, a catechetical and working gathering,” the statement read.
It concluded by drawing attention to the high expectations surrounding the summit, recalling that the Church is “not at the beginning of the fight against abuse,” but that the meeting is just one step along a “painful journey” the Church has “decisively undertaken” for the last 15 years.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo invoked Pope Francis in his budget speech on Tuesday as he proclaimed his support for a bill to help victims of child sexual abuse that New York’s Catholic Church has opposed and that is headed for approval after a dozen years in limbo.
Cuomo, identifying himself as a Catholic and former altar boy, said he valued his relationship to the church and found “painful” his political differences with its leaders. But he then read aloud a quote condemning child sexual abuse that turned out to have come from the pope, and said, “I say we stand with Pope Francis and we pass the Child Victims Act.”
Cuomo included a bill version in his budget that would extend New York’s statutes of limitations for future criminal or civil cases against abusers. It also opens a one-year window in which all past victims can sue their abusers and culpable institutions, a provision that the Catholic Church and other institutions have opposed and that led Senate Republicans to block the bill for years.
Democrats ousted Republicans from power in the Senate in November’s elections, clearing the way for passage of the legislation this year.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
[Vatican opens exceptional investigation into abuse by Marists in Chile]
ROME (ITALY)
El País
January 16, 2019
La Santa Sede abre una investigación excepcional a la congregación en Chile por graves acusaciones que podría conducir a una intervención general
El Vaticano se ha hartado de los escándalos que sacuden a la Congregación de los Hermanos Maristas en todo el mundo y ha abierto un proceso de investigación excepcional en su rama chilena, donde la la gravedad de los escándalos está fuera de duda y se han acreditado decenas de casos. La Congregación para la Doctrina de la Fe no tiene competencias normalmente para investigar cuando los implicados son sacerdotes (los maristas son religiosos), pero la profundidad y verosimilitud de los hechos propició que el Papa francisco firmase un decreto recientmente para que así fuera.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
[There are still six Spanish priests accused in the Marist Case: this is the story of the victims]
CHILE
BioBioChile
January 15, 2019
By Ariela Muñoz
De los imputados que maneja la Fiscalía por los casos de abusos y violación pederasta dentro de la iglesia, hay siete españoles de la Congregación de los Hermanos Maristas en Chile, cuyas víctimas relataron la cruda versión de los hechos. Pope Francis ordered the opening of a criminal case before the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, for not having imposed any sanction in the first stage of the investigation, says El País.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
[Pope supported the leadership of Chile’s Church: abuse victims accused bishops of “arrogance”]
CHILE
BioBioChile
January 15, 2019
By Alberto González, Nicole Martínez and Patricia Mayorga
El Comité Permanente de la Conferencia Episcopal chilena se reunió este lunes con el papa Francisco en el Vaticano, cita en la que el Pontífice respaldó a los obispos que están en ejercicio. Víctimas de abusos en la iglesia acusaron arrogancia de los jerarcas de la Iglesia por defender la caducidad de sus renuncia
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
[Julio Barahona: The abuser that the Jesuits did not report on time]
CHILE
The Clinic
January 15, 2019
By Jonás Romero and Camila Magnet
Este 5 de enero, el educador Julio Barahona fue detenido por posesión de pornografía infantil en Rancagua, la cual obtenía de adolescentes de un colegio en el que trabajó por casi 10 años. Pero no era la primera vez que lo hacía: su macabro registro comenzó en 1987, cuando alumnos del San Ignacio El Bosque sufrieron abusos por parte de Barahona. En 1989, el entonces aspirante a cura llegó a otro colegio fundado por jesuitas en Arica, donde abusó de al menos otros cuatro niños. Dos años más tarde, la Iglesia lo expulsó por “perversiones graves” y le perdió la pista, permitiéndole estar en contacto con niños hasta hoy. La pregunta que ronda a los investigadores, partiendo por el fiscal Emiliano Arias, es: ¿Qué habría pasado si lo hubiesen denunciado a tiempo?
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
[Pope spends three hours meeting with Chilean bishops in Rome]
CHILE
Publimetro
January 14, 2019
By Consuelo Rehbein
Según señalan desde la Conferencia Episcopal de Chile, el diálogo giró en torno a la situación que vive la Iglesia Católica en Chile y las perspectivas a futuro.
Este lunes se desarrolló la reunión entre el Papa Francisco, y los máximos representantes de la Iglesia católica de Chile. En la reunión participaron los obispos Santiago Silva, presidente de la CECh; René Rebolledo, vicepresidente; Fernando Ramos, secretario general; cardenal Ricardo Ezzati y Juan Ignacio González.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
La consulta del líder de la Iglesia Católica aludía al obispo emérito de Rancagua, Alejandro Goic, cuya renuncia aceptó el 28 de junio pasado, en medio de denuncias por conductas impropias y abusos sexuales que habrían cometido sacerdotes de su diócesis.
“¿Cómo anda Goic?”. Eso fue lo primero que le preguntó el Papa Francisco a Fernando Ramos, administrador apostólico de Rancagua y secretario general de la Conferencia Episcopal (Cech), cuando ambos se saludaron al inicio de la audiencia del comité permanente de la Cech realizada el lunes en Roma. “Bien, pero con sus cosas”, fue lo que le respondió el prelado.
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D.C.’s embattled Catholic leader, Donald Wuerl, under fire in recent days for untruthful statements regarding what he knew about the alleged sexual misconduct of his predecessor, Theodore McCarrick, apologized late Tuesday, saying he forgot he knew about the allegations and that it was “never the intention to provide false information.”
Wuerl apologized to former priest Robert Ciolek in the evening and then sent a letter to the priests of the archdiocese, where Wuerl is the acting administrator. Pope Francis received Wuerl’s retirement as archbishop earlier than expected last fall as the cardinal was being pummeled by criticism over his handling of abuse cases when he was the Pittsburgh bishop, and also by suspicions that he was not being fully honest about what he knew of the McCarrick scandal.
In the letter, Wuerl said he forgot he was told in 2004 about Ciolek’s complaint against McCarrick. He said he had reported the issue to the Vatican. The ex-priest, in testimony then to the Pittsburgh Diocese’s Review Board, said McCarrick pressured seminarians to sleep in double beds with him, requested and gave the subordinate unwanted back-rubs and caused Ciolek trauma because he knew that Ciolek had been abused by clergy as a teen.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
Pope Francis has criticized U.S. Catholic bishops for how they handled the pervasive sexual abuse of children by predatory priests. He even called for a new management method and mindset in dealing with this crisis. Most recently, the pope summoned presidents of every bishops’ conference from around the world to come to the Vatican on Feb. 21 through 24 for a meeting on how to respond to the pervasive scandals.
As trauma psychologists who have collectively spent nearly 60 years investigating and treating the devastating effects of violation and assault, we have concrete suggestions based on clinical experience and research for such change.
People have been talking for years about the need for the Catholic Church to treat survivors of clerical sexual abuse with respect and dignity, to remove perpetrating priests, and to have real accountability for bishops who facilitated and enabled the abuse. But, when the key Catholic bishops gather for their February meeting, they need to address the dark cloud that overhangs the Synod – something called institutional betrayal.
Wrongdoings perpetrated by an institution upon which individuals are dependent can be as devastating as familial abuse. Up until now, the Catholic Church’s failure to prevent sexual assault or respond supportively to survivors has been a tremendous violation of trust and confidence, and produced fountains of reverberating harm.
Because institutional betrayal is so serious and its effects so deep, something called institutional courage will be needed to put into place tangible turnarounds for meaningful correction and future prevention.
Trauma on a different level
Girls line up for to receive communion from a Catholic priest. wideonet/Shutterstock.com
Research on betrayal trauma can help to illustrate the damage the Church has done. Betrayal trauma, or trauma perpetrated by trusted people, such as familial rape, childhood abuse perpetrated by a caregiver and domestic violence, are especially toxic. The brain appears to remember and process betrayal trauma differently than other traumas. Likely the impact on the heart and soul is different as well. When a victim is dependent upon a perpetrator for survival and sustenance, the foundation of their very existence is at stake. Everything they believe about themselves, other people and the world can be unreliable, distorted and harmful, like a carnival fun-house mirror. Except there is no walking away, no easy escape and no validation that the images are warped.
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The number of priests accused of sexually abusing children may be much higher than the 15 previously acknowledged by the Catholic Diocese of Lafayette.
As early as 2014, former Diocese of Lafayette Bishop Michael Jarrell acknowledged at least 15 priests had been accused of sexual abuse.
Some were deceased, one was no longer a priest and none were still serving in ministry, Jarrell said.
Neither Jarrell nor his successor, Bishop Douglas Deshotel, would release the list of names, despite repeated requests from The Daily Advertiser and other
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Ten priests who spent part of their careers in New Jersey are on a new list of 50 Jesuits who have been “credibly” accused of child sexual abuse.
The USA Northeast Province Jesuits, an organization representing the Roman Catholic order of priests in north Jersey and several other states, released its list yesterday. The order is the last of the regional Jesuit organizations to publicly name all priests credibly accused of abuse.
Nine of the 10 Jesuits on the list with New Jersey ties served at either St. Peter’s Prep, Saint Peter’s University or in St. Peter’s Parish in Jersey City — one of the centers of Jesuit life and training in New Jersey. Most were at St. Peter’s briefly early in their careers.
“Many Jesuits on this list have not been found guilty of a crime or liable for any civil claim,” the organization said in a statement accompanying the list. “Many accusations were made decades after the abuse allegedly took place, and often after the accused Jesuit had died.
Jesuits with allegations currently under investigation are not included on this list.”
Seven of the priests who appear on the list spent time at Prep, Jesuit high school in Downtown Jersey City.
“In none of the cases did the alleged or verified abuse take place at St. Peter’s Prep. In every case it took place after the individual priest had left St. Peter’s,” said Jim Horan, a spokesman for St. Peter’s Prep.
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One of France’s most prominent bishops, Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, is likely to be acquitted of charges of not denouncing a priest who sexually abused children between 1971 and 1991.
At the end of his four-day trial, Jan. 7-10, in Lyon, public prosecutor Charlotte Trabaut announced she would not ask for his conviction. Even though the president of the tribunal is not bound by the prosecutor’s stand, it seems likely that the cardinal will be acquitted.
French judicial authorities opened a case against Barbarin in 2016, in the name of the French state. The court closed it, invoking statute of limitation.
Then the group named La Parole Libérée (“the word made free”), brought the charges in a private prosecution, in their own name, as parties civiles — private victims — after discovering, in 2015, that Fr. Bernard Preynat was still working with young boys. They thought this personal action could convince a court of the prejudice they suffered, knowing most facts fell under the statute of limitation.
Stern and slightly stooped, Barbarin, 68, said he was not guilty of anything: “I never tried to hide and certainly not cover anything.” He then kept quiet, letting his lawyers speak for him during the whole procedure and explain he only made mistakes in managing the case and would act differently today.
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On Jan. 19, Georgetown will host the 20th Cardinal O’Connor Conference on Life. Student awareness of the event remains surprisingly low despite its self-proclaimed status as the “largest collegiate pro-life conference in the nation,” the controversial speakers it invites and the alarmingly consistent presence of high-profile Georgetown administrators at the conference. As this year’s conference approached, I mentioned it to many peers, but it seems very few students know it exists.
Given the administrators in attendance — Vice President for Student Affairs Todd Olson, Dean of Students Jeanne Lorde and Assistant Vice President Erika Cohen are all regular attendees — clearly the conference has institutional support. However, as a community of students, it shouldn’t have ours. Hoyas need to know that it exists and fight its shameful, consistent and unchallenged presence on our campus.
Occurring annually on the heels of the March for Life, the world’s largest pro-life rally, the conference attracts speakers and attendees largely from high school and collegiate groups attending the march. So like it or not, this conference matters — hundreds of people who attend each year leave with a distorted impression of Georgetown students, our community, and our values.
The namesake of the conference, Cardinal John O’Connor (GRD ’70), is a stain on Georgetown’s legacy and a disgrace to our community’s values. A notorious homophobe, O’Connor actively worked against the LGBTQ+ community through his efforts to overturn New York’s ordinance against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, block AIDS education programs and prevent the distribution of condoms as the AIDS epidemic decimated the gay community.
O’Connor also had heavily misogynistic inclinations, claiming abortion is immoral in the case of rape or incest because rape is a “legally lesser evil” than abortion. Moreover, he brushed aside the deaths of thousands of women forced to resort to unsafe abortion prior to legalization with the comment that “the mothers involved could have chosen not to abort.”
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Included in Tuesday’s release by the USA Northeast Province of Jesuits of credibly accused priests are eight with ties to Maine. Information in this list was drawn from publicly available records, news reports and information provided by the Jesuits:
WILLIAM B. CAHILL
Cahill was a priest and teacher at Cheverus High School from 1950-1960. He also served as the school’s athletic director for part of that time.
Before his time in Maine, he worked at schools in Massachusetts and Connecticut. After he left Cheverus, Cahill had 10 additional placements, including at Boston College High School, and later as chaplain for Boston City Hospital.
Documents released in 2005 by the Maine Attorney General’s Office revealed that Cahill was accused of abusing at least three Cheverus students between 1950 and 1960.
It’s not known when those allegations were first made. He was never charged and died in 1986.
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Two retired priests in the Diocese of New Ulm have been cleared of decades-old sexual abuse claims and returned to limited ministry.
The Brown County Attorney’s Office also had decided not to pursue criminal charges against a third accused priest who has since died.
A St. Paul law firm that represents alleged victims of clergy sex abuse announced in early 2016 it was filing lawsuits against the Diocese of New Ulm and three retired priests.
The announcement from Jeff Anderson and Associates accused Revs. Bernard Steiner, Richard Gross and Edward Ardolf of sexually assaulting juveniles. The abuse allegedly occurred when Steiner was a priest at Church of St. Paul in Comfrey from about 1971-72, when Gross was at the Church of St. Mary in New Ulm from about 1965-66 and when Ardolf was at the Church of St. Raphael in Springfield from 1978-80.
The priests were already retired from active ministry. The diocese revoked their remaining privileges in response to the allegations.
Gross, who now lives south of St. Cloud, contacted The Free Press after recently receiving a letter from the diocese informing him his expulsion was over.
A diocese spokeswoman confirmed that an independent diocesan review board recommended Gross be returned to limited ministry after it reviewed a single civil allegation.
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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests
January 15, 2019
On Sunday, January 13, 2018, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia released a statement regarding the removal of three priests, Fr Raymond W. Smart, Msgr. Joseph Logrip, and Fr. John F. Meyers.
However, clear and concise information is not being relayed to the faith community concerning these “loose ends,” according to SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
In its statement, the Archdiocese said that Fr. Smart “has not served in any parish or school since 1995 due to poor health. He has been retired and living in a private residence since 2002.”
However, volunteer Philadelphia SNAP leader Michael McDonnell, along with Catholics 4 Change (C4C) co-founder, Kathy O’Neill Kane, have identified this as a very misleading statement. Thorough research shows that Fr. Smart was, in fact, not always living in a private residence, but resided in a parish setting for many years following 2002, and as recently as 2015. In addition, several parishioners from neighboring parishes informed Mike and C4C that Fr. Smart often assisted at masses for Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, Limerick, Pa. and St. Eleanors, Collegeville, Pa.
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Recent days have seen calls for greater accountability from top-ranked U.S. Catholic clerics. First, a former priest revealed that D.C. Cardinal Donald Wuerl has been untruthful about what he knew of sexual misconduct allegations against his predecessor as archbishop, Theodore McCarrick. Then on Monday, there were new calls for McCarrick himself to publicly repent for alleged abuse of youths and adults.
These past few days have prompted a basic question: Why can’t these clerics just say they’re sorry?
It’s a particular conundrum for those of us who are Catholic. The sacrament of reconciliation provides us with the opportunity to confess our sins to a priest, apologize for them, make amends and resolve to do better. When many of us prepared to practice the sacrament for the first time as children just reaching the age of reason, we were taught that lying was a sin. As we moved into adolescence, we learned that any sexual activity outside of marriage was likewise a sin. So why are our confessors finding it so hard to apologize for these very same basic sins?
Having worked for the Roman Catholic Church for the past 25 years, I think it may have something to do with the dramatic change in the status of religious leaders in my lifetime.
Growing up in the Boston of the 1970s and early 1980s, where neighborhoods were still divided along the parish boundary lines despite a growing presence of non-Catholic immigrants from around the world, great respect and even reverence were directed toward the parish priest and his assistant clergymen. These men could do no wrong. They were arbiters of grace, and their Sunday evening visits for family dinners demanded the use of the best china. The church itself taught that the members of the clergy are in their very being different because of their ordination (in the church we use the term “ontological”). While they look like any layperson, there is a fundamental difference in their being. The church still teaches this today.
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Archbishop William Lori encouraged the more than 500,000 Catholics in the Archdiocese of Baltimore on Tuesday to report wrongdoing by clergy at all levels as part of an effort to regain public trust as church leaders worldwide confront a sexual abuse crisis.
Lori outlined the expansion of a reporting system to cover himself and his three auxiliary bishops, as well as a code of conduct the bishops will sign, as steps he is taking to address any abuse up to the highest levels.
Reports of abuse — sexual, financial or otherwise — can be filed anonymously online and are collected by a private contractor, which shares them with a board that does not contain any archdiocesean officials.
In addition, Lori said the archdiocese plans to incorporate more lay people in church affairs and update its child protection policies.
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The schools are among the most recognizable Catholic institutions in New York, with reputations extending far beyond the church’s followers and the city’s borders: Xavier, Regis, Brooklyn Prep, Fordham Prep. They educated many in the city’s Catholic elite, producing politicians, authors, academics and at least one Supreme Court justice. They regularly appear on lists of New York’s best Catholic schools.
But on Tuesday, the schools’ names popped up again and again on a different kind of list: One naming Jesuit priests who were identified by the Society of Jesus as having a history of sexual abuse found to be “more likely true than not after investigation.”
In some cases, the priests passed through the schools in careers that spanned as many as 30 years.
The lists of accused priests were published by the Jesuit order one after the other in recent weeks, creating rosters of several hundred names. The Society of Jesus, as the Jesuit order is known, is an influential force in the global church; it has more than 16,000 members, including Pope Francis.
The latest list names priests who served in the order’s province covering the Northeastern United States, most of whom served in Jesuit schools.
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The Northeast Province of the Jesuit order — the pope’s own special ops forces — has released the names of 50 priests “credibly accused” of sexual misconduct with minors.
This follows the lead of the order’s West Province, which released the names of more than 120 priests and brothers in the order last December.
But why now, 17 years almost to the day of the Boston scandal, and what does it mean for the church?
In soccer, an “own-goal” occurs when a member of the team puts the ball in his own net.
Pope Francis — himself a Jesuit — managed an own-goal last November by blocking U.S. bishops from devising their own solution to the spiraling abuse problem, and instead ordered the heads of the more than 100 national Catholic bishops conferences to Rome for a Come-to-Jesus meeting next month.
This has had the possibly unintended consequence of globalizing the clergy sex abuse scandal. It’s created a rush of ranking prelates to the media confessional box — with nearly 50 American dioceses and religious orders publishing their own lists since the Pennsylvania attorney general’s report of last August.
The often secretive Jesuits are now in the position of having to play catch-up … and avoid embarrassing one of their own.
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EVANSVILLE (IN)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests
Evansville bishop pledged to post accused priests’ names
SNAP: “But it’s been 3+ months of reckless delay & secrecy”
Support group also prods attorney general to do investigation
And they beg other victims, witnesses and whistle blowers to speak up
WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, a clergy sex abuse victim and advocate will
–push the top local Catholic official to honor his pledge and reveal accused priests’ name now,
–beg anyone who saw, suspected or suffered clergy sex crimes or cover ups in Indiana to contact law enforcement or groups like his, and
–urge the Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill to join his colleagues in 16 states and launch an investigation into all five of the state’s dioceses
WHEN
Wednesday, January 16 at 2:45 p.m.
WHERE
On the sidewalk outside Evansville Diocese headquarters (“chancery”) 4200 N. Kentucky Avenue (corner of Hesmer) in Evansville (812 424 5536)
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CAPE GIRARDEAU (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests
Victims blast southern MO bishop
Seven accused clerics missing from its list, group says
SNAP begs those who “saw, suspected or suffered abuse” to speak up
It specifically urges victims, witnesses & whistleblowers to call MO AG
WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, a clergy sex abuse victim and advocate will prod southern Missouri Catholic officials to
–add seven more names to their official list of “credibly accused” priests and
–blast them for their secrecy about abuse and cover ups.
They’ll also urge those who “saw suspected or suffered” abuse to “call police and get help.”
WHEN
Wednesday, January 16 at 10 a.m.
WHERE
On the sidewalk outside the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Annunciation, 615 William Street in Cape Girardeau
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CARBONDALE (IL)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests
January 16, 2019
Abuse victims blast southern IL bishop
He should add 9 clerics to his “accused” list, group says
One worked in Carbondale & the Vatican press office in 1990s
SNAP: “Victims, witnesses & witnesses should call attorney general”
Among them, an accused CA priest who also worked in Carbondale
WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, a clergy sex abuse victim and advocate will
–publicly disclose for the first time that an accused California priest also worked in Carbondale,
–prod southern Illinois’ Catholic bishop to add more names to his “credibly accused” clergy list, and
–beg anyone who saw, suspected or suffered clergy sex crimes or cover ups in Illinois to contact the attorney general who is conducting a statewide investigation into this crisis.
WHEN
Wednesday, January 16 at 11:45 a.m.
WHERE
On the sidewalk outside St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, 303 S. Poplar (corner of W. Walnut St.) in Carbondale
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El Pbro. Eduardo Lorenzo renovó su misión como párroco de la Inmaculada Madre de Dios de Gonnet
Hace varios días, la comunidad de la parroquia Nuestra Señora del
Carmen realiza una convocatoria vía Whatsapp y redes sociales para
concretar un encuentro el 25 de febrero, con motivo de manifestarse
en contra de la llegada del cura Eduardo Lorenzo, que aseguran está
“acusado por abuso y extorción psicológica”.
El Arbobispado de La Plata se manifestó al respecto en un comunicado, que surge
“ante la inquietud e incertidumbre que ha provocado el nombramiento del Pbro.
Eduardo Lorenzo en parte de la comunidad de la parroquia y en el Colegio
Nuestra Señora del Carmen”.
Según consignaron en el texto difundido hoy, “en el año 2008 el padrino de un
menor realizó una denuncia contra el Pbro. Lorenzo por supuesto abuso sexual
de su ahijado. La investigación se llevó a cabo en la Fiscalía (UFI) n° 1 de
nuestra ciudad. Se tomaron declaraciones al denunciante y a otros testigos,
contrariamente a lo que se dijo en algunos medios”.
Y aclararon: “Simultáneamente, la misma persona presentó una denuncia
similar ante este Arzobispado. El anterior arzobispo Mons. Héctor Aguer
dispuso de inmediato el inicio de la investigación previa que ordena el canon 717
del Código de Derecho Canónico. Fue realizada con prudencia y meticulosidad,
escuchando al denunciante y a muchos testigos que respondieron acerca de los
hechos imputados. Asimismo, se solicitó vista –y copia- de la investigación
penal llevada a cabo por la Fiscalía n° 1 de La Plata a fin de ahondar aún más
la exploración, y contar con más elementos que llevaran a dilucidar la verdad
de la acusación”.
“Luego de un análisis exhaustivo de los elementos que obraban en la
investigación canónica, se llegó a la conclusión de la inexistencia del delito de
abuso sexual por parte del sacerdote Eduardo Lorenzo. A la misma conclusión
arribó la investigación penal de la UFI n°1, luego de agotar el procedimiento
legal previsto, archivándose consecuentemente la causa el 12 de enero de 2009″,
siguieron.
En esa línea, subrayaron que: “No existe acusación contra el Pbro. Lorenzo por
‘maltratos psicológicos’ en sede penal ni en sede eclesiástica”.
El Arzobispado también explicó el recorrido de quien acusó a Lorenzo. “En torno
a los años 2008 el menor se alojaba en el Hogar “Los Leoncitos”, dependiente de
Caritas arquidiocesana (no de una parroquia) y el encargado era un laico, sr.
Diego Grieco, designado por el Director de Caritas: No era el Pbro. Eduardo
Lorenzo. El mencionado menor nunca estudió en el Colegio Concilio Vaticano II
como se ha dicho”.
“El denunciante recibió del Tribunal Eclesiástico platense una información
detallada sobre la conclusión de la investigación previa dispuesta por Mons.
Aguer hace diez años, y se reiteró la misma información, el 6 de septiembre de
2018 por disposición del actual Arzobispo ante una petición del interesado”,
agregó.
Finalmente, explicando la designación, comenzó: “Habiendo pasado una década
de este suceso, y correspondiendo un cambio de parroquia del Pbro. Lorenzo, el
nuevo Arzobispo solicitó se realizara una consulta complementaria a jóvenes,
laicos adultos y sacerdotes indagando acerca de lo acontecido los últimos años,
de la que no surgieron informaciones o elementos nuevos”.
Y cerró: “El 30 de noviembre de 2018 el Arzobispo realizó diecisiete
designaciones de nuevos párrocos y vicarios parroquiales, y el Pbro. Eduardo
Lorenzo fue designado como párroco de la Iglesia Nuestra Señora del Carmen.
Simultáneamente se designó a otro sacerdote como vicario de la misma
parroquia, de manera que sea referente para el Colegio parroquial, a fin de
permitir al Pbro. Lorenzo una dedicación plena a la parroquia. El Pbro.
Cristián Agüero permanece en su cargo como capellán para la atención de los
alumnos del colegio”.
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A San Francisco Bay-area Roman Catholic diocese has released a list of 39 priests and deacons who church leaders say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse. Bishop Robert Vasa of the Santa Rosa Diocese commented on the list Monday. (Jan. 14)
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John Wetteland, former MLB pitcher and member of the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame, was arrested Monday on a charge of child sex abuse.
The Dallas Morning News reported that the 52-year-old Wetteland, who currently resides in Trophy Club, Texas, has been accused of continuously sexually abusing a child under the age of 14.
Wetteland pitched in the majors from 1989 to 2000, moving from starter to closer in 1990 and finding success with the Montreal Expos, New York Yankees and Texas Rangers. He was named the World Series MVP in 1996 with the Yankees, but the team allowed him to become a free agent weeks later due to the emergence of Marino Rivera. He signed with the Rangers and spent four seasons in Arlington, retiring at 33 after becoming the team’s all-time saves leader with 150 — a record he still holds.
He moved to coaching after that, and was hired as pitching coach by the Washington Nationals in 2006. But Wetteland was fired after six months due to persistent practical jokes and failing to listen to manager Frank Robinson, who asked him to stop multiple times. He was the pitching coach for the Seattle Mariners in 2009 and 2010, but that stint wasn’t without incident. In November 2009, Wetteland was hospitalized after police were called to his home to respond to a possible suicide threat. The incident was blamed on elevated blood pressure and heart rate issues in a statement released by Wetteland and the Mariners.
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Advocates seeking passage of the Child Victims Act are calling on state legislators and the governor to swiftly pass the legislation, which for years was blocked by Senate Republicans who lost control of the chamber in November’s elections.
With Democrats now in control of both legislative houses, supporters of the CVA held an emotionally charged press conference on Monday at the Capitol, recounting harrowing stories of the abuse they suffered as children and urging lawmakers not to let the issue get caught up in the budget process.
“Here we are in a new Senate, in a new day, where we are speaking loudly and clearly,” said Sen. James Skoufis, a freshman Democrat who won the seat formerly held by Republican Bill Larkin. “I’m committed with my colleagues here in making this a top priority — not in March when we’re negotiating a budget, but now.”
Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently indicated he would again include the Child Victims Act in his executive budget this year. But with Senate Democrats supportive of the measure, the advocates said there is no reason to wait. A spokesman for Cuomo on Monday agreed with that position, saying the governor would include it in the budget as a backstop but is ready to sign the bill if it passes the Legislature.
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A retired Catholic priest has avoided being sent to jail for sexually abusing a teenage girl more than 50 years ago when he was in charge of a WA home for Aboriginal children taken from their families.
Allan John Mithen, 80, pleaded guilty to two charges of indecently assaulting the girl when she 15 and 16 in 1965 at the Wandering mission, about 120 kilometres south of Perth.
She had been removed from her family when she was four years old and taken to the mission, where the District Court was told she was sexually, physically, emotionally and psychologically abused.
Mithen’s crimes happened just after he was appointed as the superintendent of the home when he was aged about 26.
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A delegation of Chilean bishops met Monday with Pope Francis a year after he threw his papacy into turmoil by defending a Chilean bishop accused of covering for a notorious sexual predator.
The five-member permanent committee of the Chilean bishops’ conference requested Monday’s meeting to brief Francis on its efforts to address the clergy sex abuse crisis in the South American country and chart a future course.
“It’s a long process,” the secretary-general of the bishops’ conference, Bishop Fernando Ramos, told reporters after the meeting, which included lunch and lasted for nearly three hours. “All institutions in Chile have lost a lot of credibility, the church included, not just for cultural reasons but because of our own sins and crimes that were committed inside the church.”
The pope’s January 2018 trip to Chile fueled a crisis of confidence in the Chilean Church and the Vatican hierarchy, given the mounting claims of sex abuse and cover-up that were dismissed for years.
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Los casos de denuncias contra integrantes de la Iglesia católica que se conocieron a partir del escándalo del padre Julio César Grassi en 2002. La mayoría de los casos no son denunciados. La Iglesia no los denuncia, son las víctimas las que se animan a contar lo que les pasó y para ellas es un proceso muy doloroso.
Abusos, silencio, protección. Este entramado se repite en muchos de los 62 casos denunciados en la Argentina desde 2002, luego de que estallara el escándalo del padre Julio César Grassi.
Una investigación de la Agencia Télam –de las periodistas Lucía Toninello y Mariana García–, deja al descubierto que la denuncia contra Grassi no es un hecho aislado: desde entonces cuatro nuevas denuncias se sumaron por año y sólo tres casos fueron sancionados con la máxima pena prevista por el derecho canónico: la expulsión del sacerdocio.
Son 59 sacerdotes y tres monjas los denunciados en el país. De todos ellos, ocho recibieron una condena judicial. Los datos muestran cómo un complejo sistema de responsabilidades dentro de la Iglesia permite que rara vez haya una condena.
“La mayoría de los casos no son denunciados. La Iglesia no los denuncia, son las víctimas las que se animan a contar lo que les pasó y para ellas es un proceso muy doloroso. Estos números muestran la arbitrariedad del juicio canónico, porque salvo en casos que son indefendibles o han tenido mucha trascendencia pública, la expulsión no se concreta”, explicó a Télam Carlos Lombardi, abogado de la Red de Sobrevivientes de Abuso Eclesiástico y uno de los pocos especialistas en derecho canónico del país que no pertenecen a la Iglesia.
En nuestro país no existen registros oficiales sobre la cantidad de sacerdotes o monjas denunciados. Tampoco hay registro de cuántas son las víctimas.
Siguiendo las notas publicadas en medios nacionales y regionales, informes de agencias y consultando fuentes propias, Télam reconstruyó un mapa de la pedofilia dentro de la Iglesia utilizando el mismo mecanismo de La Casa del Encuentro, la ONG que lleva adelante el único registro nacional que existe sobre femicidio. Este mapa muestra que en la mayoría de los casos la Iglesia no acompañó a las víctimas, que los abusadores ya tenían antecedentes y que los traslados son la respuesta más frecuente ante una denuncia.
“Hay distintos niveles de responsabilidad en los traslados. Esos distintos niveles y esa fragmentación y discrecionalidad conspiran contra la tolerancia cero y otras premisas del Papa sobre los abusos”, reconoció en una entrevista con Télam el obispo Sergio Buenanueva, presidente de la comisión de Ministerios del Episcopado.
Los casos de curas “trasladados” de una diócesis a otra, cuando sobre ellos pesan denuncias de abuso, no son episodios aislados. El caso Próvolo, uno de los más recientes, es una muestra clara del procedimiento que se da dentro de la Iglesia.
Buenanueva, quien en 2011 fue designado para elaborar un protocolo a seguir ante denuncias de abuso, admitió que no sabe cuántos son los curas denunciados ni tampoco los condenados y sostuvo que hoy en la Iglesia “no existe criterio único”. Todo depende de la orden a la que pertenezca el abusador, si ejerce o no como sacerdote. Y si es obispo, la investigación corre entonces por cuenta del Vaticano. Así, la superposición de responsabilidades puede terminar funcionando como una red de encubrimiento.
En estos 15 años, sólo tres curas fueron sancionados con la expulsión del estado clerical, que implica que ya no pueden ejercer más el sacerdocio: Miguel Ángel Santurio (2013, condenado a 14 años por abuso sexual agravado contra 5 chicos), José Mercau y Cristian Gramlich (el papa Francisco fue quien ordenó la sanción contra ambos sacerdotes de San Isidro, pero la denuncia nunca fue llevada a la Justicia).
La siguiente lista –reconstruida por Télam– revela los nombres, cargos y estado de las causas en la Justicia penal y eclesiástica de los religiosos denunciados por abusos desde 2002. Se incluyen los casos que nunca llegaron a la Justicia, los aún investigados, los que tuvieron condena y aquellos que fueron sobreseídos.
1- Luis Anguita. Denunciado y sobreseído en 2004 por violar a una chica de 13 años. Se desempeñaba en el Colegio Franciscano Tierra Santa de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Sin condena.
2- Luis Alberto Brizzio. Acusado de haber abusado de un joven de 16 años en Santa Fe. La Congregación para la Doctrina de la Fe dictaminó que al producirse los hechos el denunciante era mayor de edad y descartó el delito. No hubo denuncia judicial.
3- Padre Walter Eduardo Avanzini. En 1998 un programa de TV mostró cómo pagaba para tener sexo con niños y adolescentes en una plaza de Córdoba. No fue investigado.
4- Miguel Cacciuto. Acusado en 2009 de abuso en un jardín de infantes en Villa Gesell, Buenos Aires. Actual párroco de la Sagrada Familia de Mar del Plata. No fue condenado.
Ladislao Chomin: condenado a 4 años de prisión 5- Ladislao Chomin. Condenado en 2012 a 4 años de prisión por abuso sexual de una niña en Misiones. Cumplió prisión domiciliaria.
Nicola Corradi, preso por los abusos a niños sordos e hipoacúsicos del Próvolo (Mendoza Post) 6- Nicolás Corradi. Con prisión domiciliaria por abuso de menores en el Instituto para chicos sordos e hipoacúsicos Próvolo de Mendoza. Acumula denuncias por abuso en Italia y en el Próvolo de La Plata. No fue condenado.
7- Alessandro De Rossi. Acusado de abuso a niños entre 2008 y 2013, cuando era párroco en un templo de Salta capital. Detenido en Roma en 2014, se negó la extradición por falta de pruebas y fue liberado seis meses después.
8- Fray Diego. Denunciado penalmente en 2008 por abuso sexual contra un adolescente de 15 años en Buenos Aires. No fue investigado.
Juan Escobar Gaviria: detenido e investigado por el abuso sexual de menores 9- Juan Diego Escobar Gaviria. Elevarán a juicio oral la causa que lo investiga por abuso sexual de al menos cuatro menores en Entre Ríos. En 2016 fue detenido en la Unidad Penal Nº 5 de Victoria.
10- Atilio Jesús Garay. Acusado de violar reiteradamente a una chica en 2004 en Los Ángeles, Estados Unidos. Fue candidato a intendente de General Campos, Entre Ríos. No fue investigado ni condenado.
11- Daniel Giménez. Denunciado en marzo de 2011 por abusar de una adolescente en Formosa. Se abrió una causa judicial. No fue condenado.
12- Padre Ricardo Giménez. Denunciado en 2013 por Julieta Añazco, por abuso reiterado en La Plata. No fue llamado a declarar.
13- Hermano Isaac Gómez. Condenado a 11 años de prisión por el Tribunal Oral y Criminal N° 4 de Mercedes, Buenos Aires, por el abuso sexual agravado de un menor.
14- Giovanni Granuzzo. Forma parte de la causa Próvolo de Mendoza, donde se abusó de chicos sordos e hipoacúsicos. También fue denunciado por abuso en Verona, Italia y La Plata junto con Nicolás Corradi, Luigi Spinelli y Eliseo Primati. Aún no fue condenado.
Justo Ilarraz: a la espera del juicio oral por abusos contra medio centenar de niños entre 10 y 14 años 15- Padre Justo José Ilarraz. Se le inició investigación canónica por abusos contra al menos medio centenar de niños de entre 10 y 14 años en el Seminario Arquidiocesano “Nuestra Señora del Cenáculo” de Paraná, Entre Ríos, entre 1984 y 1992. El juicio oral comenzará en agosto próximo.
16- Padre Virginio Juan Isottón. Detenido en julio de 1999 por “abuso deshonesto” de niñas en la parroquia Nuestra Señora de Fátima, en Cañuelas, Buenos Aires. Lo declararon inocente en octubre de 2011.
17- Jorge Luis Morello. Denunciado por Iván González, seminarista de 19 años de Guaymallén, Mendoza. En 2012 se inició una demanda civil contra el arzobispado (José María Arancibia y Sergio Buenanueva) por ocultar información y tuvieron que pagar una indemnización. El arzobispado argumentó que la relación “había sido consentida”. No fue condenado.
18- Albano Mattioli, ex directivo del Próvolo de La Plata. Llegó a la Argentina en 1965 desde el Próvolo de Verona, Italia, tras ser denunciado por abusos. Murió en 2013 a los 93 años en Italia y nunca fue investigado.
José Mercau: condenado a 14 años por abuso, el papa Francisco decretó el cese de su sacerdocio 19- José Antonio Mercau. El papa Francisco decretó el cese de su condición sacerdotal. En 2011 fue condenado a 14 años por “abuso y sometimiento sexual agravado” en perjuicio de cinco chicos en un hogar del Tigre, Buenos Aires. Fue excarcelado el 18 de marzo de 2014.
20- Reinaldo Narvais. Acusado por acoso sexual y abuso de poder por integrantes de la parroquia Nuestra Señora de Pompeya, de Rosario. El Vaticano abrió un juicio, no dio por probado el abuso y fue declarado inocente. Domingo Pacheco: condenado a 13 años de prisión por abuso de menores 21- Domingo Pacheco. Condenado en febrero último a 13 años de prisión por abusar del menor Osvaldo Ramírez en Corrientes. Sigue libre hasta que la sentencia quede firme.
22- Rubén Pardo. Acusado por violar a un chico de 14 años en 2002 en Quilmes, Buenos Aires. Murió en 2005. Nunca fue juzgado, pero la Justicia condenó al obispado local por encubrimiento y lo obligó a pagar una indemnización. Héctor Pared: condenado a 24 años de prisión por abuso sexual 23- Héctor Pared. Condenado en marzo de 2003 a 24 años de prisión por abuso sexual en un hogar de Florencio Varela, Buenos Aires. Murió en septiembre de ese año.
24- Martín Paz. Separado de sus funciones eclesiásticas en mayo de 2003 por el arzobispo de Salta, monseñor Mario Cargnello, por abusar en Catamarca de una chica de 17 años que quedó embarazada. Hubo denuncia penal pero no fue investigado.
25- Luis Pezzolo. Detenido en septiembre de 2003 por abuso sexual en el hogar Obra de Don Bosco de Bernal, Buenos Aires. Estuvo cinco años con prisión domiciliaria. Se espera el juicio público. Fernando Picciochi: condenado a 12 años de cárcel por abuso; fue liberado en 2016 gracias al 2×1 26- Fernando Enrique Picciochi. Condenado en 2012 a 12 años de cárcel por abusar sexualmente de al menos cinco niños. Sebastián Cuattromo, quien iba al colegio Marianista de Caballito, Buenos Aires, lo denunció en 2000. Está en libertad por el beneficio del 2×1 desde principios de 2016.
27- Monseñor Carlos Robledo. En octubre de 2012, el ex seminarista Alfredo Bazán lo denunció por el abuso de seis adolescentes en 1987. Murió en 2009 sin ser investigado.
28- Luis Sabarre. Denunciado en 2010 por abusar de una nena de 9 años en Mendoza. La Iglesia abrió una investigación y lo declaró inocente. Fue designado administrador parroquial del Colegio Nuestra Señora de Luján de Cuyo.
29- Padre Miguel Ángel Santurio. Condenado en 2013 en un juicio canónico por abuso en Misiones. Fue liberado por falta de pruebas.
Mario Sasso: condenado a 17 años de prisión por abusar de 5 niñas 30- Mario Napoleón Sasso. Condenado en 2007 a 17 años de prisión por haber abusado sexualmente de cinco niñas en 2002 y 2003, cuando era párroco de la capilla San Manuel en Pilar, Buenos Aires. En el juicio probaron el encubrimiento de dos sacerdotes colegas de Sasso, que fueron procesados.
31- Padre “Seryo”, Instituto Vicente Pallotti, Turdera, Buenos Aires. Denunciado por abusar de alumnos de ese Instituto. No fue condenado.
32- Luis Eduardo Sierra. Condenado a ocho años de prisión en 2004 por abusar en 2000 y 2001 de tres monaguillos de entre 12 y 14 años del colegio Ave María de la Obra Don Orione, de la localidad bonaerense de Claypole. No se sabe si cumplió la condena. Se fue a Paraguay, donde también lo acusaron de abusos.
33- Luigi Spinelli, consejero en el Próvolo de Mendoza. También había sido denunciado en Verona, Italia. No se sabe dónde está.
34- Edgardo Storni. Ex arzobispo de Santa Fe. En 2009 fue condenado a ocho años por abusar de un seminarista. Pasó un poco más de un año en prisión domiciliaria porque tenía más de 70 años. En 2011, la Cámara Penal anuló el fallo. Murió al año siguiente.
35- Richard Suttle. Fue denunciado en 2008 por abuso sexual de menores entre 1982 y 1983 en la escuela primaria del Sagrado Corazón, en Prescott, Arizona, Estados Unidos. En 2013 llegó a Buenos Aires como integrante del equipo de los claretianos dedicado a las misiones de las Naciones Unidas. No fue investigado.
36- Carlos Urrutigoity. Denunciado por “conductas deshonestas” en un seminario en Buenos Aires y trasladado a los Estados Unidos. Por nuevas denuncias lo reubicaron en Paraguay. Actualmente en el Instituto del Verbo Encarnado, en San Rafael, Mendoza. No fue investigado.
37- Aníbal Valenzuela. En 2007 el obispo de Puerto Iguazú (Misiones), Marcelo Martorell, decidió suspenderlo como párroco por denuncias de abusos. Tuvo el apoyo del obispo Joaquín Piña y nunca fue investigado.
38- Padre Mario Yulán. Denunciado por abuso sexual en la parroquia San Juan Bautista, en Buenos Aires en 2007, en reemplazo de José Antonio Mercau. No fue condenado.
39- Cristian Vázquez. Ex sacerdote de la capilla Virgen del Carmen de Río Grande (Tierra del Fuego), imputado por abusar de una menor en 2012. No fue condenado.
40- Renato Rasguido. En marzo de 2014 fue denunciado por abusar de un adolescente de 15 años en Andalgalá, Catamarca. En 2015 la fiscal pidió su detención, aunque no se concretó. Espera el juicio en libertad.
41- Daniel Omar Acevedo. Un joven lo denunció como autor del abuso sexual que había sufrido cuando era niño y el 13 de noviembre de 2016 fue separado como cura de Ushuaia. No fue condenado.
42- Juan de Dios Gutiérrez. Denunciado en abril de 2015 por abusar de una chica de 16 años en Belén, Catamarca. Aún no fue condenado.
Agustín Rosa: detenido en espera del juicio oral; tiene 2 denuncias por abuso 43- Agustín Rosa, Salta. Detenido con prisión preventiva. La causa será elevada a juicio oral. Fue denunciado por dos ex novicios. Tiene 25 denuncias canónicas por abuso, corrupción y enriquecimiento ilícito.
44- Nicolás Osvaldo Parma Vega. Denunciado por abuso sexual pero aún no fue investigado. Pertenece a la congregación del sacerdote Agustín Rosa.
Cristian Gramlich: el papa Francisco determinó la expulsión del estado clerical 45- Cristian Gramlich. Expulsado del estado clerical. No hubo investigación judicial. Las denuncias por abuso en su contra habían empezado en 1998 en el colegio Carmen Arriola de Marín de San Isidro, Buenos Aires.
46- Marcelino Moya. Denunciado en 2015, está a punto de ir a juicio oral. Cometió abusos contra menores que eran monaguillos entre 1994 y 1997 en la Parroquia Santa Rosa de Lima, de Entre Ríos.
47- Eliseo Primati. Cura del Instituto Próvolo de Mendoza. Tiene denuncias por abusos también en Italia. Aún no fue investigado.
48- Finnlugh Mac Conastair. Denunciado por abusos sexuales en el Colegio Cardenal Newman de San Isidro, Buenos Aires. El caso más conocido fue el de Rufino Varela. Aún no fue investigado. Tanto el colegio como la Congregación de Hermanos Cristianos Región de América Latina pidieron recientemente “disculpas públicas” a “todos los abusados” en esa institución.
49- Félix Alejandro Martínez. En 2002 fue denunciado junto al profesor de educación física Fernando Melo Pacheco por el abuso sexual de chicos que asistían al jardín de infantes de la Escuela Nuestra Señora del Camino, de Mar del Plata. Recientemente ofició la misa por los 20 años del asesinato de José Luis Cabezas. No fue condenado.
50- Alejandro Squizziatto. Acusado de abusar de un niño en Mendoza en 2014. No fue investigado.
51- Raúl del Castillo. Denunciado en 2008 en Mendoza por abusar de un adolescente. Está en Paraguay, no fue condenado.
52- Carlos Richard Ibáñez Morino. Denunciado por abuso sexual de al menos diez jóvenes en Bell Ville, Córdoba, a principios de los 90. En 2004, la Corte Suprema paraguaya autorizó un proyecto para extraditarlo a la Argentina. No fue condenado.
53- Carlos Alberto Dorado, Santiago del Estero. Acusado por abuso, no fue investigado.
54- Monseñor Adolfo Uriona. En 2006 una joven lo denunció por haberla manoseado cuando era obispo de Añatuya, Santiago del Estero. Fue demorado por la policía. En 2014, el papa Francisco lo nombró obispo de Río Cuarto. Fue investigado y sobreseído en mayo de 2009.
Carlos Buela: el Vaticano admitió “inconductas sexuales” 55- Carlos Miguel Buela. Fundador del Verbo Encarnado, Mendoza. Acusado de violar a seminaristas de la congregación. El Vaticano admitió que era culpable de “inconductas sexuales”. Lo trasladaron a una iglesia en Génova. No fue condenado.
56- Fernando Yáñez. Procesado por abusar de chicos de un hogar en San Rafael, Mendoza. No fue condenado.
Horacio Corbacho, procesado por abuso a niños sordos e hipoacúsicos del Insituto Próvolo 57- Horacio Corbacho. Detenido en Mendoza por las denuncias de abuso a chicos sordos e hipoacúsicos en el Instituto Próvolo. No fue condenado.
58- Néstor Monzón. A punto de ir a juicio oral por el abuso de dos nenes de tres años en Reconquista, Santa Fe.
59- Bibiana Fleitas. En 2015, una ex novicia escribió un libro contando los abusos de la monja en el Colegio Santa Rosa de Viterbo de San Lorenzo, Santa Fe. Fue trasladada a Mendoza pero aún no fue investigada.
María Pacheco: la religiosa fue condenada a 13 años por abuso reiterado a una nena de 13 años 60- María Alicia Pacheco. Era colaboradora de otro cura abusador, Agustín Rosa. Detenida desde diciembre de 2016 por abuso reiterado de una nena de 13 años en Salta.
Kosaka Kumiko, los niños del Próvolo denuncian que ella ayudaba a los sacerdotes abusadores 61- Monja Kosaka Kumiko, acusada de ayudar y encubrir a los sacerdotes que abusaban de los chicos del Próvolo de Mendoza. Es investigada y podría enfrentar una pena de entre 10 y 50 años de cárcel.
El padre Grassi, condenado a 15 años de prisión (NA) 62- Padre Julio César Grassi. Condenado en 2009 a 15 años de prisión por abusar de un menor que vivía en la Fundación Felices los Niños, que él dirigía. La Corte Suprema confirmó la sentencia en marzo último. En abril, el Tribunal Oral en lo Criminal 1 de Morón lo benefició con el 2×1 y le redujo dos años y medio la pena. La medida será apelada por los abogados querellantes.
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PRIEST SEX ABUSE: The Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa released the names of 39 members of the clergy who church leaders say sexually abused children – or faced credible accusations of abuse.
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A former Dunedin priest convicted of abusing four boys – and alleged to have targeted many more – finally faces the possibility of being defrocked by the Vatican.
The defrocking – or laicisation – of Fr Magnus Murray has been referred to the Vatican, where it is being considered under the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, ODT Insight understands.
The process is believed to have started late last year, and it is understood any outcome is likely to be weeks or months away.
The matter is understood to have been referred to the Vatican by Hamilton Bishop Steve Lowe, as Fr Murray – now aged in his early 90s – remained part of the Hamilton diocese despite now living in Auckland.
Bishop Lowe would not comment when contacted this week, saying he was prevented from doing so by the church’s “judicial process”.
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‘Conspiracy of silence’ over a French priest’s sexual abuse even extends to the courtroom
A trial of silences. By day two, this seems to be the best description of the proceedings that have brought Cardinal Philippe Barbarin and his entourage against nine victims of Father Bernard Preynat’s sexual abuse.
Silence is at the heart of the accusations brought by the civil parties against Diocese of Lyon officials. The victims had been locked in silence for decades, incapable even as adults to testify to the abuse they suffered as children.
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Last week, U.S. Catholics learned that Cardinal Wuerl knew that his disgraced predecessor, Theodore McCarrick, had faced allegations of sexual misconduct with seminarians back in 2004.
And when Cardinal Wuerl was accused of lying about his knowledge of McCarrick’s misbehavior, his spokesman argued last week that his public comments had been misunderstood: He had only denied prior knowledge of the allegations against McCarrick that involved minors.
Really?
Here’s what Cardinal Wuerl told the National Catholic Reporter back in Aug. 6, in an “exclusive” interview:
Although Wuerl said he had not personally been aware of rumors about McCarrick’s alleged abuse of young men during the former cardinal’s time as a priest and bishop, he acknowledged that others have now brought forward earlier existence of such rumors.
‘If there were [rumors], and if people heard them, there needs to be some mechanism by which there can be at least an evaluation and review of them,’ said Wuerl, speaking in a phone conversation.
So let’s state the obvious: Based on the evidence at hand, Cardinal Wuerl knew about McCarrick’s sexual misconduct with adults at least 14 years ago, and lied about it.
That said, Wuerl’s refusal to acknowledge the truth is even more puzzling, given his past effort to flag McCarrick’s misbehavior. Back in 2004, when Wuerl served as Bishop of Pittsburgh, he informed the papal nuncio about a claim against McCarrick filed by a former New Jersey seminarian.
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WASHINGTON (DC)
La Croix International with Catholic News Service
January 10, 2019
The Catholic personal prelature Opus Dei has paid US$977,000 to settle a sexual misconduct claim against one of its priests in Washington, D.C.
Father C. John McCloskey was accused of groping a woman several times while she was undergoing pastoral counseling because of a troubled marriage and serious depression.
The incidents were said to have taken place in meetings between Father McCloskey and the unnamed woman at the Catholic Information Center in Washington.
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A Pennsylvania priest who sexually abused two boys over many years — and made them give confession to him after he molested them — is heading to prison.
The Rev. David Poulson, 65, was sentenced to at least two years and six months and up to 14 years as a group of survivors of sex abuse by other priests.
“I am sorry for the actions I committed,” Poulson told the court in Jefferson County, Pennsylvania, Erie News Now reported. “They were both criminal and sins. I am ashamed for what I did.”
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said the victims were 8 and 15 years old when Poulson molested them. “It was a powerful moment to see justice brought down on that predator priest,” he said after the sentencing at the courthouse in Brookville.
“Poulson assaulted one of his victims more than 20 times in church rectories. He made that victim go to confession and confess the abuse – to Poulson. He used the tools of the priesthood to further his abuse,” the attorney general said.
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To begin the new year, SNAP (Survivor’s Network of those Abused by Priests) founder David Clohessy joins host Hank Thompson for a very special and intense episode of Tangazo. Clohessy breaks down the purpose and benefits of his organization, while extending a helping hand to those in need and encouraging them to join. He also gives us a bit of his personal experience, background, how he overcame his personal obstacles and advice to those who are victims of abuse.
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Lawyer tells a Lyon court that the cardinal knew of Bernard Preynat’s attacks on children in 2010, not 2014
Lawyers tried to convince a Lyon court on Jan. 9 that Cardinal Philippe Barbarin and his associates failed to inform the law about the sexual abuse of more than 70 children by priest Bernard Preynat from 1970 to 1980.
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Garry Wills’s analysis of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church is unrevealing (“Celibacy isn’t the problem; the priesthood is,” Opinion, Jan. 4).
Rather than offer an original insight, Wills recycles a historically Protestant, rejectionist view of Catholic ecclesiology, leavened with a bit of modernist skepticism. The assertion that chronic sexual abuse is intrinsic to the priesthood and Catholic religious life is at least two centuries old. We have heard it all before.
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A former Montclair woman who has settled with the Catholic Church over sex abuse allegations spoke out Monday about her alleged abuse by her family’s priest, saying the response by the Newark Archdiocese was “despicable.”
Danielle Polemeni said she was sexually abused by the Rev. Mitch Walters at ages 13 and 14 in her Upper Montclair home and on an eighth-grade class trip to the Poconos, while she was a part of St. Cassian’s Parish and the school in Upper Montclair.
She was among five plaintiffs who won a total of $400,000 in in a July settlement that was announced Monday by their attorney, Mitch Garabedian. A sixth case is still in court, he said.
Defendants included the Newark Archdiocese, Walters, St. Cassian’s Parish and St. Cassian’s School in Montclair, and, in one lawsuit, St. John Nepomucene Church in Guttenberg, where Walters also served.
Now a mother and educator living in Ohio, Polemeni said she wants victims to know “you are not alone and this is not your fault. It’s never too late to speak your voice and to get support and look for healing.”
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Seven former McQuaid Jesuit High School teachers were identified Tuesday as having been accused of sexually abusing minors during their careers. At least one of the priests engaged in sexual misconduct while on faculty at the Brighton secondary school in the mid-1960’s.
The revelation came in a list of accused priests released Tuesday morning by the Jesuit province that covers the northeastern United States.
A list of the accused abusers and their tenure at McQuaid:
Cornelius Carr, 1960-1964
Thomas Denny, 1978-1979
Roy Drake, 1957-1960
John Farrand, 1955-1957
Leonard Riforgiato, 1964-1966
William Scanlon, 1964-1967
Robert Voelkle, 1962-1969
Two of the priests, Carr and Drake, had been previously identified as having been accused of abuse at other schools. Carr was principal of the school. Drake was a math and science teacher.
But the Jesuit list Tuesday included five more names of priests who spent time at McQuaid and engaged in abusive behavior. None of the five appear to have been publicly identified as abusers before Tuesday.
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It was last month when Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan unveiled that the Catholic Church in Illinois had received allegations against at least 500 unnamed priests and clergy members. That’s 500 more than the already identified 185 clergy members that have been “credibly” accused of sexual abuse against children as determined by the six dioceses in the state of Illinois.
Peoria Diocese fast stats
144,669 — Total Catholics
162 — Catholic parishes
298 — Total priests
11,872 — Total students in Catholic schools
21,778 — Total students under Catholic instruction
26 — Illinois counties in the Diocese
1,492,335 — Total population in Diocese
Source: Catholic Diocese of Peoria
“Because I know that the Church has too often ignored survivors of clergy sexual assault, I want to share the initial findings from our work,” Madigan said. “While the findings are preliminary, they demonstrate the need for and importance of continuing this investigation.”
The Illinois Attorney General’s office began its investigation into the Catholic Church in August following the news of the child sexual abuse scandal in Pennsylvania. The four month investigation resulted in each Illinois diocese — Chicago, Joliet, Rockford, Peoria, Springfield and Belleville — publishing a list of the priests that have been “credibly” accused of sexual abuse in their respective diocese. Two of the diocese already had lists available before the investigation.
But there are still hundreds of priests yet to be identified through accusations spanning decades.
“The investigation has revealed that allegations frequently have not been adequately investigated by the dioceses or not investigated at all. In many cases, the Church failed to notify law enforcement authorities or Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) of allegations of child sexual abuse,” the Attorney General’s office stated in a press release. “Among the common reasons the dioceses have provided for not investigating an allegation is that the priest or clergy member was deceased or had already resigned at the time the allegation of child sexual abuse was first reported to the diocese.”
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Hoping to contribute to healing from the pain and anger caused by clergy sex abuse and the lack of accountability and transparency on the part of church leadership, I am making public a list of any Jesuit in the USA Northeast Province who has had a credible allegation of abuse against a minor or vulnerable adult since 1950. The USA Northeast Province is composed of what were separate Provinces at various periods over the past seventy years: Buffalo in the 1960s; New England and New York separately until 2014. This list includes Jesuits who belonged to any of those Provinces.
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[Bishop of Astorga investigates new case against priest imprisoned for having abused in two schools]
MADRID (SPAIN)
El País
January 14, 2019
By Julio Núñez
El sacerdote Ramos Gordón ya cumple una condena de 10 años de apartamiento en un monasterio por pederastia en dos centros de León y Zamora en los años ochenta
El sacerdote José Manuel Ramos Gordón volverá a ser investigado por tercera vez por un supuesto delito de abusos sexuales a un menor en el colegio Juan XXIII de Puebla de Sanabria (Zamora) entre 1979 y 1985. Así lo ha confirmado este lunes la diócesis de Astorga después de que este domingo EL PAÍS y varios medios locales publicasen que una nueva supuesta víctima había escrito una carta al obispo de Astorga y presidente de la comisión antipederastia de la Conferencia Episcopal Española, José Antonio Menéndez, denunciando los hechos. Ramos Gordón ya fue investigado, juzgado y condenado entre 2015 y 2018 en dos ocasiones: la primera por abusar de tres menores en el seminario menor de La Bañeza (León) entre 1989 y 1990 y la segunda por agredir sexualmente de otro menor en el colegio Juan XXIII en los años ochenta, centro donde también estudió el nuevo denunciante.
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[Pope opens criminal trial against 7 Spanish clergy members accused in Chile’s abuse scandal]
SANTIAGO (CHILE)
El País
January 15, 2019
By Rocío Montes
El Papa abre un proceso penal en el Vaticano contra los maristas chilenos, que desembolsaron partidas millonarias para silenciar a sus víctimas
La Fiscalía chilena tiene a siete españoles imputados por abusos y violación a menores en la mayor causa de pederastia que se investiga dentro de la Iglesia chilena —la de los hermanos maristas—, un proceso que está en el centro de las preocupaciones del Vaticano. El papa Francisco ha ordenado abrir una “causa penal” ante la Congregación para la Doctrina de la Fe en el Vaticano por inacción de la orden, que no ha impuesto ninguna sanción desde que concluyó la primera parte de sus indagaciones sobre las décadas de pederastia en su seno.
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Father Charles “Queen of Apostles Catholic Church, the pastor facing a felony charge of sexual assault of a child under 16 years of age, is due in court Tuesday, Jan. 15. Father Chuck Hanel served at Queen of Apostles Catholic Church in Pewaukee. He’s accused of inappropriately touching a 13-year-old girl during confession.
According to the criminal complaint, the alleged crime in this case happened on Dec. 17, 2017. The alleged victim, who was 13 years old at the time, told authorities that while attending Reconciliation at Queen of Apostles, Father Hanel had inappropriate contact with her in a confessional. The girl told investigators that “she feels Fr. Hanel looks at her in a different way than the other girls…making her feel uncomfortable.”
The complaint indicates Father Hanel had been on a scheduled church sabbatical from January through April of this year. When hearing of the priest’s return to the parish, the alleged victim expressed outward anxiety. She eventually told her parents what had happened in December. She said “Father Hanel was ‘creepy’ and ‘weird'” — and “I want to go to a different church.”
The girl’s parents immediately informed a visiting priest at the parish about the accusations. That priest reported the matter to the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department and Waukesha County’s Child Protective Services Unit.
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Late last week, ABC News announced that the disgraced ’80s-era televangelist — who in recent years has been broadcasting and selling dehydrated food buckets from a church and condo development near Branson — would be the subject of a special two-hour episode of its “20/20” broadcast.
The Bakker episode is set to air Friday at 8 p.m. Springfield time.
In a promotional trailer posted to Facebook and Twitter late Jan. 11, ABC showcased what appears to be a sensational report promising new information about Bakker’s activities three decades ago.
An unidentified voice on the trailer calls Bakker and his wife, Tammy Faye, “the Kardashians of the gospel.”
Another unidentified voice states, “The fall of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker was a huge story.”
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As the scandal of clerical child sex abuse emerges in other countries across the world the Catholic Church response in each has been exactly as it was in Ireland decades ago, Dublin abuse survivor Marie Collins has said.
“The church reaction is a mirror image of what we were hearing here in Ireland 30 years ago. I spoke recently with someone from Poland where the crisis is just now breaking. There the bishops are saying it is ‘enemies of the church’ who are behind it. It is an aggressive ‘media with an anti-church agenda’, all very familiar and an absolutely disgraceful attitude in 2019,” she said.
“The experience from those countries where the abuse crisis has been faced is not being used to bring universal policies into place for the countries where it has yet to occur,” she said.
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“For where God built a church, there the Devil would also build a chapel.”
I guess this quote from my new homeboy Martin Luther is as good a place as any to break the news to my parents that I’ve left the Roman Catholic Church, at the ripe old age of 52, in favor of a faith often nicknamed “Catholic lite.”
Even the most fervent patron of the Holy See must give the devil his due: he has built a basilica rivaling St. Peter’s on church property in recent months. Cardinals and bishops are falling faster than Halloween candy prices in November after almost weekly revelations that they presided over the practice of pedophile priests raping countless children in their care for decades.
It has become impossible to see the church I grew up in through the lenses of rage and disgust that I’ve been wearing into His house lately..
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A Jacksonville man who was convicted seven years ago in a high-profile church sex scandal will once again go before a judge.
Authorities say 53-year-old Darrell Moore may have violated his sex-offender probation by being in contact with one of his victims, who is now an adult, at the Greater Refuge Temple, where records show he originally committed inappropriate acts with victims when they were still minors.
Moore is the son-in-law of the pastor of the church, which News4Jax was told has welcomed Moore since his release from prison.
But when Moore, who is still on probation, allegedly showed up at Greater Refuge Temple one day when one of the victims was already present, it may have violated his probation.
Shirly Roberts is the whistleblower who in 2010 reported allegations of inappropriate behavior against Moore toward children inside Greater Refuge Temple. She is now a former church member and a retired state probation officer who is speaking out on behalf of one of the victims.
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By summoning the leaders of the world’s bishops’ conferences and top representatives of religious orders to the Vatican in February to address the sex abuse crisis and the protection of minors, Pope Francis is sending a message that the need for safeguarding young people is a global issue.
Even though the media attention and public fallout for the church’s failings have focused on a small group of nations, abuse experts and victims know that does not mean the rest of the world is immune from the scandal of abuse or can delay taking action to ensure the safety of all church members.
While Catholic leaders in some countries might not recognize it as a global issue, Vatican offices that receive abuse allegations have a “clear idea about what is the situation now because allegations come from all parts of the world,” said Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.
He also serves as president of the Center for the Protection of Minors at the Pontifical Gregorian University and a member of the organizing committee for the February meeting.=
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Former Town of Mount Royal priest, Brian Boucher, was found guilty of sexual assault, sexual interference and sexual touching on Tuesday, according to The Montreal Gazette. Judge Patricia Compagnone said Boucher’s testimony lacked credibility while the victim’s testimony was believable. He will be sentenced in March.
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The Catholic Church is in serious and deepening crisis, primarily as a result of grave sins and failed leadership involving clergy sexual misconduct. This tragedy is most recently exemplified by the alleged abusive, long-standing behavior of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. In order for the church in the United States to determine and learn from how it failed to address McCarrick’s decades of alleged misconduct, new guidelines and procedures must be established and implemented for investigating him and any high-ranking church leader.
For the last five years, the St. Paul-Minneapolis Archdiocese has grappled with this challenge, having had to investigate its former Archbishop John Nienstedt for alleged personal sexual misconduct and failed leadership involving abuse by other clergy.
Many painful lessons were learned from that investigation, which was prematurely terminated and never resumed. Egregious clergy abuse by an archdiocesan priest and the failed leadership that permitted that abuse to occur ultimately led to criminal charges being filed against the archdiocese and Nienstedt’s abrupt resignation. Those lessons should be examined and heeded by every American cardinal, archbishop and bishop to avoid their repetition elsewhere.
I write as a lifelong, faithful Catholic who was raised by devout parents and educated in parochial schools for 12 years and benefited from a Jesuit college education; I also raised four children in the Catholic faith. For 20 years, I served as a federal prosecutor in Minnesota, specializing in white collar crime, and supervising hundreds of investigations of alleged misconduct, abuse of power, and/or concealment of wrongdoing by business leaders, government officials, lawyers and other professionals. For the past 10 years, I have taught at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, starting with ethical leadership courses and more recently, teaching courses on how to conduct investigations.
Based on my many years of supervising and teaching how to do complex investigations, and having closely followed the investigation of Nienstedt and conduct related to it, I have identified 10 of the most important lessons to be learned from the initial success and then ultimate failures surrounding that investigation.
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Santa Rosa has became the fourth Bay Area diocese to release a list of names of priests involved in child sexual abuse or credibly accused of such crimes.
Bishop Robert Vasa spoke at a press conference Monday following Saturday’s release of its list of clergy involved in the scandal that has rocked not just the Bay Area, but the country. “I feel tremendous sadness and grief and shame,” said Vasa.
Vasa vowed to prevent sexual abuse moving forward.”This is a wakeup call that says, ‘No, we need to redouble our efforts re-inform the people in the pews that we continue to be serious about this,’” he said.
Santa Rosa is now the fourth of six Bay Area dioceses to release its list of abusers and accused abusers. That now leaves San Francisco and Sacramento as the only one ones that haven’t. Both dioceses say they’ve hired an outside investigator to go through documents before releasing names – or anything at all.
It’s a move that has many upset, including attorney Mike Reck who represents victims of clergy sex abuse. Beck is suing for the release of what the San Francisco Archdiocese knows about sex abuse among its ranks. Launching its own investigation, he says, falls far short.
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According to an Italian historian who presides over a monthly Vatican magazine on women, both women and clerical sexual abuse are problems that will continue to dog Pope Francis until they’re resolved.
“[A] question arises, that of women who are nonexistent and invisible in the eyes of ecclesiastical hierarchies, accustomed to taking their service for granted,” Lucetta Scaraffia wrote in a recent op-ed for the Spanish newspaper El Pais. “Today religious [women] no longer accept shameful conditions of exploitation and humiliation.”
According to Scaraffia, during the first years of his pontificate, Francis led a revolution in the life of the Church, which in previous years had focused too much on bioethics. She called those issues “difficult and risky to face, and before which the Church, whose position always seemed very rigid, didn’t always succeed in presenting herself as a defender of the weak.”
In the piece published on Monday, Scaraffia also wrote that Francis put the poor back at the center of the Church’s core concerns, represented mainly by migrants, but also the “inhabitants of the most miserable areas of the third world, oppressed by misery and ecological disasters.”
He also extended the “mercy of the Church to those who, after [the end of their first] marriage, had formed a new family, as well as women who asked for forgiveness for the sin of abortion, and who until [the pope’s] providential intervention had to go to a bishop to obtain absolution.”
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*This is part 2 of a special report on accusations of abuse in the Diocese of Lafayette.
he existence of a list of accused priests was first confirmed in 2004 by then-Bishop Michael Jarrell, as the Catholic Church sex abuse crisis gained national attention.
“We’re dealing with it in a forthright manner and admitting our faults and mistakes,” Jarrell said in a 2004 interview with KATC. “We’re striving to do all that we can in the future.”
Jarrell’s tenure began at a time when the church promised reform on clergy sex abuse, but under his leadership, there are questions if that promise was kept.
In uncovering our list, KATC found at least three cases in Jarrell’s time as bishop, where the diocese was aware of complaints against living priests; there is no record police were notified, until only recently in one of them.
Gerard Smit was accused of sexual abuse in Lafayette, Calcasieu and St. Landry parishes. Records obtained by KATC, including his personnel file with the diocese, show one of his accusers, Roy Touchet, complained at least three times.
“No one believed us, because the priests were almighty, the bishops were almighty, the cardinals knew about it,” Touchet said. “They just didn’t want to do anything. They just covered them up.”
Louisiana State Police only got involved in 2015, when Touchet filed a formal complaint.
Next, a lawsuit against Father Marshall Larriviere in 2003. Larriviere was accused of sexual abuse in the 1960’s at St. Mary Magdalen Church in Abbeville. The case was settled in 2004. There is no record law enforcement was notified.
Msgr. Robie Robichaux was placed on leave in October 2018, after two women came forward accusing him of sexual misconduct when they were teenagers; the initial accuser went to the diocese in both 1994 and 2004. Despite her accusations, Robichaux was allowed to stay in ministry, work in schools, and was even promoted within the diocese to the post of judicial vicar.
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The Archdiocese of Los Angeles confirmed Monday that Father Joseph Dunne was accused of sexual misconduct of a female minor in January 1993 while he was still at Our Lady of Perpetual Help (OLPH) in Newhall.
“Her parents immediately reported the matter to the school, Archdiocese and law enforcement,” said a statement from the Archdiocese.
Dunne was employed by OLPH “without permission from or notification to the Archdiocese” from summer of 1992 until the allegations arose in January 1993, when he was removed from the parish.
“Fr. Dunne was instructed to remain in residence without ministering during the law enforcement investigation. The Archdiocese also reported the incident to law enforcement and cooperated in the investigation,” said the statement.
Law enforcement did not press charges, according to the Archdiocese.
After receiving the allegation in 1993, church officials contacted the Archdiocese of Glasgow and learned that there had been previous allegations of misconduct.
Dunne was expected to return to Glasgow, but Archdiocese files contain no information concerning his departure.
The current whereabouts of Dunne is unknown, according to church officials.
These allegations have been brought to light months after similar sexual abuse accusations of four other priests at OLPH.
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Twenty-one people affiliated with the Catholic Church, including two archbishops, one bishop, priests and others, have been accused in the nearly 200 child sex abuse lawsuits filed since 2016 in local and federal courts on Guam.
The local church, however, has not yet released its list of clergy members with “credible allegations” of child sex abuse.
Archbishop Michael Jude Byrnes in late 2017 said the archdiocese would work on such a list as an important part of the Archdioces of Agana’s policy of protecting children, but no timeline was given.
Concerned Catholics of Guam President David Sablan said releasing that list would help rebuild trust in the church.
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Opus Dei has a reputation as perhaps the most buttoned-down, by-the-book group in the Catholic Church, so when the Washington Post reported last week that it had paid nearly a million dollars to settle a sexual misconduct allegation against one of its most prominent priests, it set off shockwaves and raised new questions about the Church’s response to the clerical abuse crisis.
From his post at the influential Catholic Information Center (CIC) on K Street in the early 2000s, Father C.J. McCloskey was responsible for bringing some of the country’s most prominent conservatives into the Catholic Church, among them now Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback; Larry Kudlow, who currently serves as the Director of the National Economic Council; former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich; and one-time Supreme Court nominee Judge Robert Bork.
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A London lawyer wants the public to know where two ousted priests worked and faced allegations of sexual misconduct in the Diocese of London. Both Fr. Moe Charbonneau and Fr. Andy Dwyer have since been banned from ministering in the diocese but the organization has refused to divulge where the allegations were made.
“If they’re going to be transparent as has been the almost global demand upon the Catholic church then they need to give these details,” said Rob Talach, partner at Beckett Personal Injuries Lawyers in London.
But, the diocese maintains to reveal the locations of the allegations could lead to identifying the victims.
“We can only follow our own policy which is in place to safeguard the privacy of the people involved,” said Nelson Couto, communications officer with the Diocese of London.
He said, the diocese has released the list of where the priests served over the years, but not the specifics of where or when “…because those sorts of things can lead to people jumping to conclusions.”
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The Catholic Church will never succeed in putting its clergy abuse scandals behind it as long as it insists on finding ways to avoid full responsibility. The latest example is the absence of The Rev. Richard J. Ahern on the Springfield Diocese’s list of clergy who sexually abused young people even though he clearly belongs there.
The Rev. Ahern served churches all over the Diocese, including Our Lady of Mount Carmel on Fenn Street in Pittsfield, a church that was closed about a decade ago. Court records document his abuse of children in the diocese and a long list of allegations against him were unresolved when he died in 2001. In 1986, he was banned from the diocese in its entirety, as is documented in a letter from the Stigmatine Fathers and Brothers in May of 1986, according to a report by Larry Parnass in Sunday’s Eagle.
According to Diocese spokesman Mark Dupont, an accused priest may not have made the diocese’s list if he died before credible allegations were made against him. The Rev. Ahern died well after those allegations were made, as the letter banning him from the diocese because of his actions 15 years before he died attests. Another reason would be if the priest worked for a religious order rather than the diocese itself.
The Rev. Ahern was indeed a member of the Stigmatine Fathers and Brothers, but as a member of that order he served churches of the Springfield Diocese, including one in Pittsfield. Attempting to evade full responsibility for the behavior of priests through technicalities or semantics — what clergy abuse survivor and victim advocate Olan Horne of Chester called “the walnut game” in The Eagle — has been a Catholic Church strategy for decades and it has arguably done as much or more harm to the church than have the actions of pedophile priests.
It is clear from documents uncovered by Mr. Parnass that the Stigmatines followed a familiar Catholic Church pattern in its dealings with the Reverend Ahern. He was sent for therapy, shuttled from parish to parish and assigned duties that would limit his involvement with children. Nothing in the correspondence included in The Eagle story indicates any concern or compassion on the part of the Stigmatines for his young victims. He was eventually welcomed into retirement — in a message accompanied by the warning that he steer clear of the Springfield Diocese.
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Editor’s note: The Diocese of Sioux City issued the following statement on Jan. 4 in response to abuse allegations from a victims survivor group.
The Diocese of Sioux City would first like to apologize to all victims of abuse by members of the clergy. We are working to do everything we can to help victims who come forward. We want to help them feel a sense of justice and healing. The Diocese of Sioux City continues to express sorrow for and to apologize to the victims of sexual misconduct by members of our clergy. We again encourage all victims, if you have not reported past or present abuse, to please come forward. The Victims Assistance hotline number is (866) 435-4397 or (712) 279-5610.
As an update to all victims and our community at large, we are diligently working on the release of a list of clergy, who have substantiated allegations of sexual misconduct with minors against them. We sincerely hope this will help victims in their healing. Coordinating this list has taken longer than we expected as we review all our records carefully. Taking into account advice received in our meeting with the Attorney General for the State of Iowa in early December and counsel provided by dioceses that have already released lists, we have made progress on our list and have a draft.
While we initially indicated that the list would be released in 2018, completing the list is requiring additional time for our research to be thorough and reporting to be correct. Our Diocesan Review Board and its subcommittees are having ongoing meetings to complete and release the list. We appreciate your patience.
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The Diocese of Santa Rosa has released the names of priests accused of abusing children.
Bishop Robert F. Vasa on Saturday said the goal in releasing the names of accused priests and deacons who served in Santa Rosa is “to give to all the victims of clerical sexual abuse the assurance that they have been heard and the Church is very much concerned for their well-being and healing.”
The bishop said Monday he hopes this weekend’s release of names of nearly 40 priests accused of sexual abuse brings healing to their victims.
Monday’s news conference started with a prayer.
“Lead us not into temptation.”
It comes two days after the Santa Rosa Diocese released this list of 39 names of priests considered credibly accused of sexual abuse.
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The Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, a group representing survivors of Catholic priest sexual abuse, is blasting Cardinal Donald Wuerl.
He asked for “understanding” this weekend after a Washington Post report exposed that he lied about knowing about abuse while he was Pittsburgh’s bishop.
According to the Catholic News Agency, Wuerl wrote a letter to priests in Washington, D.C., this weekend, saying that he approrpriately handled sexual misconduct allegations against Archbishop Theodore McCarrick in 2004, while both men served in the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh.
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I have been a very strong Catholic, active in the parishes I belonged to — two parishes for a total of 70 years.
Not too long after Vatican II, I had what I thought was a crisis of faith and faltered in active participation. I remained infrequent in participation for several years, but slowly found my way back with the help of an associate priest at St. Mary’s Cathedral.
I became an integral part of my parish and a strong advocate of Catholic education because of the incredible experience my children had primarily at Cathedral High School. I will remain forever grateful for my education and that of my children.
Several months ago, my active participation in the church came to a sudden end.
At first, I thought I was experiencing another crisis of faith. As time passed and as I struggled with the void created by the end of active participation, I sorted through this latest estrangement and began to recognize that it was not a crisis of faith. I also began to appreciate that years ago it was not a crisis of faith. My faith remains strong, vibrant and an essential part of my being.
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“Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.” – Ephesians 5:11
The Diocese of Santa Rosa made public Saturday the names of 39 Catholic clergy believed to have sexually abused about 100 children since the diocese founding in 1962.
Bishop Robert F. Vasa, writing extensively in this month’s issue of the North Coast Catholic newsletter, published Jan. 12, described the abuse as “very real trauma which the evil actions of priests and bishops have caused in the lives of thousands of young people in our nation.”
In most cases involving the Santa Rosa diocese, he points out, the abuses occurred decades ago, though the most recent were as late as 2006 and 2008. Fourteen of the 39 names were accused of crimes prior to joining the Santa Rosa diocese; 25 are now deceased; and none currently serve the diocese.
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The lawyer celebrated for going after predatory Roman Catholic clergymen in Boston accused the Archdiocese of Newark on Monday of using a blame-the-victim strategy to protect a New Jersey priest who allegedly abused five boys and a girl decades ago.
Mitchell Garabedian, whose efforts were dramatized in the Oscar-winning movie “Spotlight,” launched the broadside after announcing that five of the alleged victims of the Rev. Michael “Mitch” Walters had settled their civil lawsuits against the Catholic Church for $400,000. The sixth case against Walters is still in court, he said.
Archdiocesan lawyers cited the “doctrine of contributory negligence” to argue that “these children were at fault when they were sexually abused,” Garabedian said at a press conference in West Orange, New Jersey.
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The head of the largest Roman Catholic diocese in New Mexico has pledged to open sealed records related to priest child sexual abuse cases as victims, attorneys and others push for more transparency.
Archbishop of Santa Fe John C. Wester agreed to the disclosure as he and two other top church officials were questioned last week under oath as part of bankruptcy court proceedings. The Albuquerque Journal reports the public meeting included victims whose claims are now intertwined with the archdiocese’s pending bankruptcy reorganization.
While the archdiocese already has paid more than $50 million to settle sex abuse claims, Wester contends it cannot sustain the financial impact of continued litigation.
Most of the questions posed by three members of the creditors’ committee at the meeting focused on illuminating what has historically been a dark, secret legal reckoning of child sexual abuse inflicted for decades by dozens of clergy members in New Mexico.
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[Monsignor Ramos after Pope’s meeting with Episcopal Conference: “He made several suggestions”]
CHILE
La Tercera
January 14, 2019
La representación estuvo encabezada por Ricardo Ezzati y el motivo era dar a conocer a Francisco “el caminar recorrido por la Iglesia en Chile” desde el encuentro que se tuvo en mayo de 2018.
En la ciudad del Vaticano, el Papa Francisco sostuvo una audiencia que duró cerca de una hora, con un grupo de integrantes de la Conferencia Episcopal de Chile, encabezados por el cardenal Ricardo Ezzati.
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[Doubts left by the Chilean bishops’ meeting with the Pope in Rome]
CHILE
La Tercera
January 14, 2019
By María José Navarrete
La cita se llevó a cabo este lunes y asistieron los cinco miembros del comité permanente de la Conferencia Episcopal.
A las 11.00 horas de este lunes en Roma (7.00 de la mañana en Chile), los cinco obispos que conforman el comité permanente de la Conferencia Episcopal (Cech), compuesto por su presidente, Santiago Silva; el vicepresidente, René Rebolledo; el secretario general, Fernando Ramos; el arzobispo de Santiago, Ricardo Ezzati, y el obispo de San Bernardo, Juan Ignacio González, ingresaron a la biblioteca privada del Palacio Apostólico.
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[After a new trip to the Vatican: a timeline of the last eight months in the Chilean Catholic Church crisis]
CHILE
Emol
January 14, 2019
By José Manuel Vilches and Tomás Molina
Los obispos fueron recibidos esta jornada por el Papa y dieron cuenta del “caminar recorrido” desde el encuentro de mayo, con la incertidumbre sobre el futuro de Ricardo Ezzati como telón de fondo.
Los últimos ocho meses de crisis en la Iglesia chilena
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[VIDEO Chilean Bishops after meeting with Pope: “It was a necessary dialogue”]
CHILE
T13
January 14, 2019
El Papa Francisco recibió a los miembros de la Conferencia Episcopal en su biblioteca privada, y luego almorzó con ellos para concluir el diálogo.
Asegurando que fue “un diálogo preciso”, el secretario general de la Conferencia Episcopal, Fernando Ramos, se refirió a la reunión privada que sostuvieron los miembros permanentes de la conferencia con el Papa Francisco este lunes en Roma.
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The woman still remembers the staircase leading to the Rev. Vincent P. Mooney’s office at Canisius High School.
She first climbed those stairs nearly 60 years ago when she was a young schoolgirl at the old Mount St. Joseph’s Academy.
“It was after my father’s death and I wasn’t handling it very well, and a nun at the school was sympathetic and she wanted to help me,” the woman said. “So she hooked me up with this Jesuit priest at Canisius High School.”
But Mooney was no ordinary priest. He was the Canisius president for most of the 1960s and 1970s and was a member of the well-known Jesuit religious order that runs Canisius high school and college.
His second-floor office where the 16-year-old poured her heart out doubled as a confessional, where after years of grooming, Fr. Mooney invited the young woman to confess her sins.
“He heard my confession, and as I got up from the kneeler and he came around from the other side, he attacked me,” she said. “He was over 6 feet tall, a large man, and I was only 5-foot-3 and completely shocked and not comprehending what was going on.”
Terrified, she says she escaped and burst down the stairs and into the parking lot, adjusting her skirt and blouse along the way.
“I felt him on top of me and I felt constricted and after everything was over, I just got up and I ran — I just ran,” she said. “I was catching a bus at the corner to go home, and I was just in agony, wondering, ‘Why? Why?’”
The woman is now 75, lives in Hamburg and asked that her name be withheld because her family does not know the details of her story. 7 Eyewitness News does not identify sex crime victims without their permission.
“I never told anyone,” she said. “You just didn’t discuss things like that.”
Fr. Vincent Mooney SJ
Pregnancy almost killed her
But the sexual assault was only the beginning of the woman’s nightmare.
Within a few months, she says she learned she was pregnant with Fr. Mooney’s child.
“The shame was immense,” she said, and she had to tell her mother.
But her mother never learned that Mooney was the father. Neither did Mooney, who died in 1981.
Although it was illegal in the late 1960s, she said her mother insisted she have an abortion.
“I hemorrhaged, I started bleeding out and it almost killed me,” she said.
A doctor at Sister’s Hospital was able to save her life.
“That’s when I decided I wanted to live,” she said. “I wanted to fight back and make something of myself.”
She forged a path that can be uncommon for victims of such heinous crimes. She went on to build a 30-year career as a researcher at the University at Buffalo and Roswell Park Cancer Institute.
She has a son and three grandchildren, a spotless home, a gentle laugh and a perfect smile.
But the pain of those early days has never left the deep recesses of her mind.
“It influences every aspect of your life,” she said. “You don’t trust a lot of people, especially men. You’re constantly reminded and you feel worthless, and its agony.”
She found a measure of healing by watching TV news this year, when investigative news stories revealed the decades-long cover-up of sexual abuse by priests in the Diocese of Buffalo.
“I was watching TV one night and they had on the news this story about the Catholic Church and the exposure of too many — way too many — priests,” she said. “I knew I was a victim but I didn’t realize how many victims were involved. It struck me that I could finally make a phone call, reach out and talk to someone concerning what happened to me way back when I was in my late teens and early twenties, and the abuse that I had endured.”
The woman contacted the Diocese of Buffalo, which passed her along to the Jesuit religious order. A lawyer for the Jesuits asked her to come to New York City to give a statement, but eventually agreed to a meeting in Buffalo.
Church representatives asked her to come to a meeting at — of all places — Canisius High School.
“When I got to the reception area, I saw the area where one of Fr. Mooney’s offices used to be,” she said.
Fr. Mooney Named Canisius High President
Jesuits paid settlement
The woman told her story and the two men said they believed her, which was a relief, she said. She was not planning on asking for compensation until the lawyer for the Jesuits, at the end of the meeting, asked her, “Well, what do you expect to get out of this?”
Floored by the remark, she asked for a settlement, and the Jesuits agreed to $12,500. After learning more details about the pregnancy and the abortion, the Jesuits offered an additional $15,000. She began receiving counseling through Catholic Charities, which has helped, she said.
“I didn’t contact them for money,” she said. “I contacted them for support, for me and for others.”
Mike Gabriele, a spokesman for the Jesuits, confirmed the woman’s story and called the situation “horrific,” adding that “there are no words to truly assuage the heinous nature of this abuse.”
He confirmed the meeting at Canisius but said, “the Jesuits were unaware that the abuse happened there at the time.”
As a girl, she once dreamed of becoming a Catholic nun.
“I wanted a career in the church, and he took that from me,” she said.
She remains a woman of faith but said her ties to the Catholic Church as an institution have been “obliterated.”
“I didn’t lose my faith,” she said. “I still believed in the tenets of the church, I believed in God, I believed in Christ, but I couldn’t share that with anybody. I couldn’t go to church every Sunday and pretend that nothing had happened. I had to stay away.”
Records obtained by the 7 Eyewitness News I-Team from inside the Diocese of Buffalo chancery confirm that Auxiliary Bishop Edward M. Grosz received the woman’s report in April. But Mooney’s name was not on a list of abusive priests the diocese put out in November.
“The priest’s name was not included on the list in November because it was the only claim the diocese had received against that priest, and the claim was unable to be investigated before the priest had died,” diocese spokeswoman Kathy Spangler said in an email.
In response, the woman who said she was victimized by Fr. Mooney said, “That’s definitely minimizing it. If a person comes forward, and explains their situation, one should be enough to put the individual’s name on the list. They have no right to privacy. The church made them private. That’s not correct. That’s an abuse and a cover up of criminal activity.”
A spokeswoman for Canisius High School declined to comment to the I-Team or provide more information about Fr. Mooney’s history.
Jesuits will name more abusers
The Jesuit religious order has released lists of abusive priests in every area of the country and will release a list for its Northeast Province, which includes Buffalo, on Tuesday. The Jesuit spokesman confirmed Mooney will be included on that list.
Church records show Mooney served at Canisius from 1958-75 and was appointed president and rector in 1968, according to church records and archives of the Buffalo Courier-Express. He was the moderator of the Western New York Sodality Union, a role that allowed him to lead retreats for young women, according to news articles.
In 1976, he was transferred to Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, Calif., where he lived until his death in 1981.
The woman believes other religious orders should take a cue from the Jesuits and finally release the names and assignments of priests who perpetrated crimes. An estimated one-third of American priests belong to religious orders like the Jesuits, Franciscans and Oblates.
“It should be exposed to the light and not hidden away in these little communities, in certain Catholic conclaves,” she said.
Above all, she wants victims to know that it is OK to come forward and speak of the abuse, no matter how many years have passed.
“You’re always alone until you expose them,” she said. “You’re always alone until you name what the problem is. If things like this happen to you, please, find someone, contact someone. Contact me if you need to. Contact other people that have been abused. You just need to get it out there and you have to be honest with who injured you, who abused you. I thought I was the only one. But looking back, obviously there had to be more than just me.”
Fall From Grace is an ongoing investigation by 7 Eyewitness News Chief Investigator Charlie Specht into the history of sexual abuse and its coverup within the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo.
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WHEN ALLEGATIONS came to light last year of sexual abuse and inappropriate conduct involving children and seminarians by Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who succeeded Mr. McCarrick as leader of the Washington archdiocese, expressed shock and denied prior knowledge. Now it turns out Mr. Wuerl was presented in 2004 with an account of Mr. McCarrick’s alleged misconduct, which he relayed to the Vatican. Then: nothing.
In the ongoing tsunami of revelations about the Catholic Church’s willful blindness, conspiracy of silence and moral bankruptcy on clergy sex abuse, this particular revelation may count as little more than a droplet — although it does involve two of the highest-ranking and most prominent American prelates. However, it also encapsulates characteristics that continue to dog the church nearly two decades after the scandal burst into the open: callousness directed at victims; an insistence on denial and hairsplitting; and the hierarchy’s preference for treating allegations as internal matters, as if the world’s 1.2 billion lay Catholics were an irrelevance.
In response to the revelation that Mr. Wuerl was fully aware of, and handled, an allegation from a former priest about Mr. McCarrick’s misconduct more than 14 years ago, the Washington archdiocese issued a statement suggesting that his previous flat denials were merely “imprecise.” Those previous statements referred only to sexual abuse of a minor, the archdiocese said.
In fact, the cardinal’s comments last summer were unequivocal. In response to a broad question about “long-standing rumors or innuendos” posed by a reporter for the archdiocesan newspaper Catholic Standard, he said, “I had not heard them” before or during his tenure in Washington. That was untrue.
As it happens, Mr. Wuerl, then-bishop of Pittsburgh, not only was presented with allegations of Mr. McCarrick’s misconduct by a former priest named Robert Ciolek. To his credit, he also swiftly brought that information to the Vatican’s attention in a meeting with the pope’s ambassador in Washington at the time, Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo.
Yet Mr. McCarrick remained as archbishop of Washington for nearly two more years and suffered no discipline until last year, when the allegations against him were reported. At that point, the Holy See removed him from ministry; his final punishment is now being weighed in Rome.
Meanwhile, Mr. Wuerl, though forced to resign as archbishop last fall following revelations by a Pennsylvania grand jury that he had mishandled numerous clergy sex abuse cases in Pittsburgh, continues to oversee the Washington archdiocese pending appointment of a successor.
Understandably, Mr. Ciolek is outraged that Mr. Wuerl, having known of his allegations for years, denied knowledge of them last year. “It’s as if I don’t exist,” he told The Post’s Michelle Boorstein.
Pope Francis himself has displayed a gaping blind spot on the issue of clergy sex abuse, at times condemning it and taking resolute action, at other times directing contempt and lip service at victims. He has convened a meeting of top bishops in Rome next month. Actions and policies, not ringing declarations, will be the measure of the church’s success in grappling with a scandal that has shamed it.
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Bishop Robert F. Vasa of the Diocese of Santa Rosa describes the statement he released over the weekend of the thirty-eight names accused of abuse of children, the articles of what the church has done over the past few decades in relation to these cases, and the invitation to victims to come forward. He also speaks to the status of the Catholic Church today, whether he has heard from any of the people from SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) and how they can prevent these types of abuse in the future:
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Fifteen years after acknowledging it exists, and months after promising its release, the Diocese of Lafayette still has not released a list of priests who have faced credible accusations of sexual abuse involving children. KATC Investigates is breaking that silence, and releasing its own list.
In Louisiana, both the Archdiocese of New Orleans and the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux have followed through on a pledge of transparency, joining more than 70 dioceses and Catholic religious organizations across the country who have released their lists.
Just last week the Diocese in Lafayette said they are still examining the past 50 years of files and will release their list when they’re finished.
The “list” was first acknowledged by the Diocese of Lafayette in February 2004 by former Bishop Michael Jarrell; our reporters have been requesting the diocese disclose those names since then. They refused until last fall, when Bishop Douglas Deshotel joined other dioceses in the state in making the pledge to release them.
KATC believes the public has waited long enough, and has a right to know, so we are releasing the list of priests with credible accusations we’ve assembled following years of pouring over public records and media reports, using all the investigative techniques we know.
KATC Investigates started by putting together a list of priests and church employees who have been accused of sexual abuse. Our producers and reporters then scoured thousands of pages of documents – all public records – to find support for these accusations in the form of criminal charges, civil suit settlements, diocese statements and court case evidence. Some of those records are recent, some decades old.
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A reverend who once served at Saint Ignatius in Yardley has been placed on administrative leave following new allegations he sexually abused a minor several decades ago, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced this week.
Reverend Monsignor Joseph L. Logrip, 73, served at Saint Ignatius 1972-1974. Law enforcement is now involved in the investigation, and the Archdiocese said it will cooperate fully with authorities.
While on administrative leave he will not be able to exercise his ministry public, present himself publicly as a priest, or be present in any parishes or schools, the Archdiocese said.
Logrip is one of three priests whose status was recently reviewed by The Archdiocesan Office of Investigations, which conducts internal investigations following allegations of misconduct.
In 2014, the same board recommended that Monsignor Logrip was suitable for ministry based on an unsubstantiated allegation of sexual abuse of a minor. Since that time, he has served as a Chaplain at Camilla Hall retirement home, and as a weekend assistant at Saint Peter Parish in West Brandwyine.
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Five alleged victims who say they were sexually abused by a New Jersey priest settled their lawsuits against the Catholic Church for a total of $400,000 — and a sixth cases against him is still in court, an attorney said.
The Rev. Michael “Mitch” Walters was accused of molesting both boys and girls at St. Cassian Church and school in Montclair and St. John Nepomucene Parish in Guttenberg in the 1980s and 1990s. He denied the accusations and was removed from ministry in 2016.
Five lawsuits against Walters were settled in July after the cases went to mediation, said Mitchell Garabedian, the Boston-based attorney for the alleged victims. Garabedian, who was portrayed by Stanley Tucci in the 2015 film “Spotlight,” is known for representing victims in cases against the Catholic Church.
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Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the Vatican’s former top diplomat to the United States, released a public letter on Sunday calling on accused sex-abuser Archbishop Theodore McCarrick — a power player in the U.S. church — to “confess and repent” of his “sins, crimes and sacrileges, and do so publicly” because “your eternal salvation is at stake.”
“As has been reported as news by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the accusations against you for crimes against minors and abuses against seminarians are going to be examined and judged very soon with an administrative procedure,” said Archbishop Vigano in his Jan. 13 letter.
“No matter what decision the supreme authority of the Church takes in your case, what really matters and what has saddened those who love you and pray for you is the fact that throughout these months you haven’t given any sign of repentance,” wrote Vigano. “I am among those who are praying for your conversion, that you may repent and ask pardon of your victims and the Church.”
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Santa Rosa Bishop Robert F. Vasa on Saturday disclosed the names of 39 priests and deacons with ties to the diocese who church leaders say committed child sexual abuse or were credibly accused of such crimes, a disclosure that marks the most comprehensive acknowledgment to date of the decades-long scope of the clergy abuse scandal in the local Catholic church.
Two former Sonoma Valley priests are on the list: Francisco Xavier Ochoa and John Crews.
Francisco Xavier Ochoa
Francisco Xavier Ochoa was an assistant pastor at St. Francis Solano Church on West Napa Street in the 1980s and again from 2000 to 2006.
Ochoa died in Mexico in 2009 at age 71. He fled the U.S. for Mexico in 2006 several days after a meeting with the Santa Rosa Diocese in which he admitted that he offered a boy $100 to strip dance in front of him and that he had kissed other boys on the lips.
After the meeting, Ochoa was removed from his duties, but the diocese delayed in reporting the allegations to authorities. A subsequent police investigation revealed that Ochoa had allegedly molested multiple children from different families.https://newsletter.sonomanews.com/framed/single/a3adc18b5cb65f9d29d5f908b3bdadc1?pref=sit_daily&hideImage=1&padCopy=0&fid=1819
In documents disclosed after a warrant was issued for Ochoa’s arrest, investigators said that the priest also brought a 15-year-old boy – now an adult – from Mexico and installed him in his diocese-owned residence where the two engaged in regular, sometimes violent, sex.
‘If (the victim) refused to cooperate with Ochoa, Ochoa would violently rape him,’ wrote Sonoma County Sheriff’s Detective Ruben Martinez in 2006. The victim estimated Ochoa had sex with him two to three times a week for approximately one year. He told authorities that he did not know how to get Ochoa to stop.
The Santa Rosa Diocese was sued by families of Ochoa’s victims and in September 2007 the diocese settled the case for $5 million.
John Crews
John Crews resigned as executive director of the Hanna Boys Center in 2013 following an allegation of sexual misconduct with a boy in the 1970s, prior to his arrival in Sonoma in 1984.
His resignation, which shocked Sonoma residents at the time, stemmed from a complaint brought by relatives of the alleged victim, who is deceased.
At the time of Crews’ resignation, Vasa said that the diocese followed church and legal requirements in Crews’ case and he described Crews, who was 67 at the time, as handling the resignation ‘very graciously.’
Crews was allowed to remain a priest in the diocese until he retired, but would ‘not serve in any other public ministry,’ the bishop said.
Prior to his work at the Hanna center, Crews served as a parish priest at St. Sebastian Church in Sebastopol and St. Joseph Church in Cotati, and also served briefly as an administrator at Cardinal Newman High School in Santa Rosa.
Vasa said at the time of Crews’ resignation that no other allegations against Crews were contained in diocese records.
Crews did not admit to any misconduct, according to Hanna officials, contacted about the case in 2013.
The investigation
Vasa’s list, made public to about 140,000 parishioners as well as the media over the weekend, includes many well-known names long public due to high-profile molestation cases as well as several previously unknown — most of them accused for offenses committed several decades ago.
At least 23 of those on the list are deceased.
None are serving in public ministry in the Santa Rosa Diocese, Vasa was quoted as telling the North Coast Catholic newspaper last week.
About 17 people included on the list served in the Santa Rosa Diocese at some point but had accusations lodged against them elsewhere, Vasa said.
But the bishop said a search of the records indicated about 25 priests were accused of abusing about 100 children during service to the Santa Rosa Diocese from its founding in 1962 to the present — ‘a shocking number’ that, in part, inspired release of most of the names, he wrote in the diocesan newsletter.
He noted that four priests — Gary Timmons, Don Kimball, Austin Peter Keegan and Francisco Xavier Ochoa (of Sonoma) — were responsible for 63 known victims. Kimball and Ochoa are deceased, according to the church.
‘My primary goal in releasing the names of accused priests and deacons who served in Santa Rosa in this public fashion is to give to all the victims of clerical sexual abuse the assurance that they have been heard and that the Church is very much concerned for their well-being and healing,’ Vasa wrote. ‘It is my deepest prayer and hope that this release of names in a consolidated fashion says to any of you who are victims, we have heard you, we believe you, we affirm you in your trauma and we want to help with a healing process.’
Melanie Sakoda, national secretary and Bay Area spokeswoman for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said she found seven names on the list she had never seen associated with clergy abuse before and was pleased, as well, to see member of Catholic orders, which have been omitted by other dioceses, on Vasa’s list.
‘I think it was more complete than I suspected it was going to be,’ she said.
She said SNAP still believes Santa Rosa and other dioceses should also be accounting for nuns, teachers and others besides priests who serve within the world of the Catholic church and its schools and institutions, ‘but he did a good job.’
In contrast, an attorney with Jeff Anderson and Associates, a Minnesota-based law firm that has taken on the Catholic Church nationally, called the list ‘a deflection,’ released under pressure from the whole of society, as well as parishioners and his own clients.
Michael Reck, whose firm represents a Ventura County man and clergy-abuse survivor who has sued every Catholic diocese in California, said, ‘Yes, this is a good list.’ But ‘the focus on dead perpetrators,’ he said, ‘leaves out the hierarchy that covered this up, that moved them around.’
The list of 39 clergymen includes the well-known names of predatory priests whose behavior came to light beginning in the mid-1990s during a rash of civil and criminal cases that exposed the sprawling North Coast diocese as a focal point of the Catholic abuse scandal several years before widespread misdeeds erupted nationwide.
The diocese has since paid out more than $29 million in legal settlements to childhood victims of at least 10 priests since the 1990s, about $12 million of it covered by insurance, Vasa said.
‘Sadly, we have had sexual abuse events as late as 2006 and 2008 and I find that most troubling,’ Vasa said in his written statement accompanying the disclosure, which was also published in Spanish. ‘However, the vast majority of the abuses occurred decades ago. This is not complete proof that the Church is making progress in eliminating this great tragedy, but I find this to be a sign of hope.’
Vasa has said he spent weeks combing the internet and aggregated lists for names and information that might allow him to issue the fullest possible report to his parishioners, in collaboration with members of the Diocesan Review Board established in 2002.
The diocese also is urging any church abuse victims to contact the diocesan Victim Assistance Coordinator, Julie Sparacio, at 707-566-3308, or P.O. Box 1297, Santa Rosa, CA 95402.
You can reach Mary Callahan at mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com or Lorna Sheridan at lorna.sheridan@sonomanews.com.
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The clergy sex abuse crisis is redefining the role and position of many people in the “locus” of the faith that is the Church — hierarchical leaders, clergy and laity, activists, journalists, the police, lawyers, judges and politicians.
Also included are theologians and all those who work on behalf of the Church as professional intellectuals, even those who are not technically on its payroll.
So, after the terrible summer of 2018 (from revelations in June about former cardinal Theodore McCarrick to the release in August of the Pennsylvania grand jury report) I decided to begin 2019 with a new theology course for university undergraduates titled, “History and ecclesiology of the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church.”
The easy part was putting together the reading list and course assignments. Thanks to the individual and collective efforts of scholars, a “canon” of texts is starting to emerge, such as one published in Daily Theology.
The more difficult task was to prepare for all the expected and unexpected questions that are likely to be raised by a course that deals with a developing and disturbing story — or stories — such as the abuse crisis in the Church.I have come up with ten questions or issues that are characteristics of the present crisis. Surely there are more, but this is a start. I hope they help provide some perspective on what it means to do scholarship on this phenomenon.The first question concerns methodology: what kind of sources are to be used in this course?
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The desire to protect children from abuse, both sexual and physical, has led many states to designate certain classes of people as mandatory reporters, even threatening them with jail time if they fail to report abuse.
These laws vary from state to state in terms of who are listed as mandatory reporters and what they are required to report. Mandatory reporters have included teachers, nurses, doctors, child welfare officials and police. Even psychologists and psychiatrists, who normally must respect the confidentiality of what they are told by their patients, have sometimes been covered.
Because of the failure of Catholic bishops in the past to report abusive priests to authorities, states are now also including Catholic clergy as mandatory reporters.
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The retired Vatican diplomat who accused Pope Francis of turning a blind eye to the alleged sexual misconduct of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick is begging the American to publicly repent for his crimes for the good of the Catholic Church.
Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano wrote a letter to McCarrick that was published Monday on an Italian blog, Vigano’s way of communicating after he went into hiding following his bombshell accusations against the pope in August.
In the letter, Vigano noted the Vatican is expected to shortly deliver its verdict against McCarrick after gathering testimony from at least three men who accused him of misconduct.
The McCarrick scandal has thrown the U.S. and Vatican hierarchy into crisis since it was apparently an open secret that the powerful retired archbishop of Washington slept with seminarians.
Vigano wrote that a public show of repentance would be a “gift” to the church to help it heal from the sex abuse crisis.
“Time is running out but you can confess and repent of your sins, crimes and sacrileges, and do so publicly,” Vigano wrote. While saying McCarrick’s own eternal salvation was at stake, Vigano also said the credibility of the church was also in the balance.
“A public repentance on your part would bring a significant measure of healing to a gravely wounded and suffering church,” Vigano wrote. “Are you willing to offer her that gift?”
The McCarrick scandal erupted just before a grand jury in Pennsylvania accused some 300 priests of abusing more than 1,000 children over seven decades, while superiors largely stood by. The combined scandal, plus Francis’ own missteps in handling abuse cases, has created a crisis of confidence in the Catholic hierarchy.
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