NEW ORLEANS (LA)
NOLA.com
February 14, 2020
By Ramon Antonio Vargas
U.S. District Judge Jay Zainey says the PR man — Greg Bensel — is a longtime, trusted personal friend and a skilled practitioner of his craft
A federal judge in New Orleans said Friday that he gave Archbishop Gregory Aymond the idea of bringing in the Saints’ top public relations executive to advise the archdiocese as it prepared to release a list of allegedly abusive clergymen.
Jay Zainey, a devout Catholic who has sat on the U.S. District Court bench in New Orleans since 2002, said he told Aymond before the November 2018 release of the list that Greg Bensel, the NFL team’s vice president of communications and a longtime friend of Zainey, could help manage the latest flare-up in the abuse scandal and ensure that parishioners and the public understood that safety measures were now in place to prevent “sins of the past” from recurring.
Zainey offered the suggestion during a chance encounter with Aymond at a Mass, he said.
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.