ABUSE TRACKER

AUSTRALIA
Canberra Times

May 25, 2020

The new Catholic Archbishop of Adelaide, Patrick O’Regan, is set to be officially installed at a special service in St Francis Xavier’s Cathedral.

The ceremony will be conducted on Monday by Apostolic Administrator Bishop Greg O’Kelly with only a small number of representatives of the Adelaide Archdiocese present because of COVID-19 restrictions.

It would normally attract more than 2000 people including priests and bishops from around Australia.

Archbishop O’Regan was appointed by Pope Francis to take charge of the Adelaide Archdiocese in March following the resignation of Archbishop Philip Wilson in July 2018.

Archbishop Wilson had earlier been convicted in NSW of covering up child sex abuse by a pedophile priest in the Hunter region.

But later the same year he had his conviction overturned on appeal.

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CAMBRIDGE (MA)
Harvard Gazette

May 25, 2020

By Christina Pazzanese

In a deeply competitive business not known for magnanimity, top editors, publishers, and media critics explain why The Washington Post’s Martin Baron is such an admired newsroom leader.

DEAN BAQUET, Executive editor, The New York Times

What makes these jobs really hard, but rewarding, is today there are only a handful of big news organizations that can play across a whole range of stories. The Post is one of them; The Times is, obviously, the other. And so, you’re talking about getting up in the morning and leading one of the great American news organizations’ coverage of the coronavirus, Donald Trump, the fight to succeed Donald Trump, the collapse of the stock market, and a possible peace deal in Afghanistan. Those are the five running stories of the moment [in late winter]. And if you’re Marty at The Post, you are running coverage of those five stories, and that doesn’t even count the whole next level of stories … You’re doing that at a time when the way people get their news is changing dramatically, from the era of print to the era of the phone, and you have to maintain one while also changing your newsroom to get ready for the other. If you add all that together, that makes for a job that’s really difficult, really rewarding and exciting, but really hard.

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AUSTRALIA
Reuters

May 26, 2020

[VIDEO]

Dozens of Australian journalists and publishers are set to face trial in November over coverage of ex-Vatican treasurer George Pell’s child sex abuse conviction in 2018, facing charges that they breached an Australia-wide gag order in the case. Emer McCarthy reports.

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Patheos (blog)

May 23, 2020

By Val Wilde

Around this time last year, Tomasz and Marek Sekielski released their hard-hitting Polish-language documentary Do Not Tell Anyone about the problem of sexually abusive priests in the Polish Catholic Church.

Now they’re back: The second film in the series, Zabawa w Chowanego (Playing Hide and Seek), has been released on YouTube, telling the story of Bartek and Jakub Pankowiak, two Polish brothers seeking to confront the priest who molested them.

You can watch it below. English subtitles are available.

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
Providence Journal

May 21, 2020

My friend, George Welly (“Bishop should not ‘hide behind’ Roger Williams,” May 20), irrelevantly bringing up past church scandals in reaction to Bishop Tobin’s question on how Roger Williams would view current virus-related state restrictions on worship service attendance represents a regrettable but all too common approach. Instead of engaging in an actual topic raised by the bishop, some have found in the scandals a convenient club to unjustly hit him, probably because they disagree with him on some moral issue.

Bishop Tobin presides over a diocese that calls the police after every abuse accusation that is reported to it, and he comes from a Pennsylvania diocese that issued a report about abuse there in which the bishop was neither mentioned nor for which he was even interviewed. Nor was he, as auxiliary bishop there, charged with investigating such cases.

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The Catholic World Report

May 25, 2020

By George Weigel

An attempt at explaining the unhinged hatred displayed by Cardinal George Pell’s enemies

Those who imagined that the sliming of Cardinal George Pell would stop as of April 7, when a unanimous decision of the High Court of Australia acquitted him of “historical sexual abuse,” did not reckon with the climate of venomous hatred that has surrounded Pell for decades, fouling Australia’s public life, legal system, and politics in the process.

That climate certainly was a factor in the Victoria police department trolling for accusations against George Pell (most of which were dismissed before trial; others were finally quashed by the High Court decision). That climate surely tainted the trial that led to the cardinal’s conviction in December 2018, despite a jury having been shown that it was literally impossible for him to have done what he was alleged to have done, where he was alleged to have done it, and in the time-frame proposed by the prosecution. That climate likely influenced the otherwise incomprehensible decision of two justices of the Supreme Court of the State of Victoria when, in August 2019, they upheld the jury verdict in spite of a devastating dissent by the one justice on the appellate panel with substantial criminal law experience. That climate shaped the commentary of the gobsmacked anti-Pell Australian media in the immediate aftermath of the High Court’s acquittal; no one in that baying mob of Pell-haters had the honesty or grace to admit that the case against Pell had been irrational from the start, or that the High Court had saved Australian justice from becoming an international laughingstock (and worse).

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INDIA
News 18

May 23, 2020

Thiruvananthapuram: A few private photographs, allegedly involving a Kerala church priest and a woman, have [gone] viral on social media, leading to massive outrage in the state.

Some reports suggested that the photos were “leaked” online from a mobile phone shop in Idukki district after which the owner of the shop, Vellayamkudy, filed a police complaint seeking investigation into the matter.

The priest’s mobile phone was reportedly brought to the shop for repair earlier. But the shop owner denied the accusations of images being leaked from his shop.

Idukki Diocese was quick to take action against the accused priest, Fr James Mangalassery, from Catholic church in Vellayamkudi of Kattappana in Idukki district.

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MICHIGAN
Daily Mining Gazette

May 22,2020

By Garrett Neese

ONTONAGON — A former Upper Peninsula priest accused of molesting children was bound over to Ontonagon County Circuit Court.

Gary Jacobs, 74, had a preliminary hearing on Tuesday and Wednesday in 98th District Court in Ontonagon. No date has been set for his circuit court arraignment.

Jacobs was also arraigned in Dickinson County’s district court Monday for similar charges there. He will be arraigned in circuit court next month.

Jacobs faces eight counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and two counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct. He also faces a second-degree CSC charge in Dickinson County. All stem from alleged incidents between 1981 and 1984 in which he is said to have abused his position as a priest.

First-degree CSC carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. Second-degree charges are punishable by up to 15 years.

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BOSTON
Boston Herald

May 23, 2020

By Marie Szaniszlo

Donna M. Morrissey, who served as spokeswoman for the Boston Archdiocese at the height of the clergy sex abuse scandal and later for the Red Cross, died on Friday from complications from the coronavirus, the organization said. She was 51.

Morrissey died at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, said George K. Regan, whose public relations firm she worked for from 1998 to 2001.

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

May 23, 2020

By Bryan Marquard

When 26 people were shot and killed at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school in 2012, Donna M. Morrissey went to the scene the following morning for the American Red Cross to speak with victims’ families and relief workers — conversations all the more grief-stricken because 20 young children were among the dead.

“She remembered everything,” said Tara Hughes, leader of the American Red Cross family assistance center that day, who saw Ms. Morrissey, as communications director, field questions in interview after interview with local reporters and national news outlets.

“Donna was fierce in all the good ways — a fierce advocate for people in need, a fierce friend to many,” Hughes added. “She always said she wanted to capture what it was like to be in the position of someone who was impacted directly, and then she would tell their story with grace and compassion. She was amazing in that way.”

Ms. Morrissey, who formerly held one of the most difficult public relations jobs in the country as spokeswoman for the Boston Archdiocese during the clergy sex abuse scandal that swiftly dominated the news, died of COVID-19 Friday at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She was 51 and lived in Newton.

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NEW ORLEANS
WWLRadio.com

May 24, 2020

By Thomas Perumean

Asset filing runs 2,000 pages

The New Orleans Archdiocese has listed more than $240,000,000 dollars in assets against $139,000,000 liabilities.

Though the Church has a healthy amount of assets against debts, the diocese is facing scores of lawsuits from child sexual abuse claims that could take a multitude of years to settle.

The list of assets filed in Federal Court runs 2,000 pages.

The Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate says the list shows Hancock-Whitney Bank as being owed $37,000,000. These are state facility bonds which the church used to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina.

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LONG ISLAND (NY)
New York Post

May 24, 2020

By Rebecca Rosenberg

A man says a Long Island priest sexually abused him when he was a teen — and that church investigators are now trying to intimidate him into silence, new court papers show.

Greg Hein, 52, says in a Nassau County lawsuit that Father Gregory Cappuccino repeatedly molested him in the sacristy and rectory of St. Anthony of Padua in Rockville Centre in 1984. Hein was 17 at the time, while the priest oversaw the parish’s youth programs, the suit says.

Then this past May, several months after the lawsuit was filed, Hein was contacted by an ex-roommate who had attended drug rehab with him in Florida.

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[Prisoner in Ezeiza for two cases: The priest who abused nuns and later confessed them is denied house arrest]

ARGENTINA
Clarín

May 21, 2020

Manuel Pascual (65) dijo ser del grupo de riesgo por el coronavirus, pero la Justicia le rechazó el pedido.

[Manuel Pascual (65) said he was from the risk group for the coronavirus, but the Justice rejected the request.]

El cura Manuel Fernando Pascual (65), preso por el abuso sexual de dos monjas de la congregación “Hermanas de San José”, fue uno de los tantos que usó la pandemia del coronavirus como excusa para pedir su excarcelación. Pero la Justicia se la denegó y Pascual seguirá esperando el juicio oral tras las rejas.

[GOOGLE TRANSLATION: The priest Manuel Fernando Pascual (65), imprisoned for the sexual abuse of two nuns from the “Sisters of San José” congregation, was one of the many who used the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to request his release. But Justice denied it and Pascual will continue waiting for the oral trial behind bars.]

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AUSTRALIA
Indiafacts.org

May 23, 2020

By Milind Sathye

It seems given the track record of child abuse, the Church attendance in the US has seen steep decline. The case of Australia is no different. 92% of Australians do not visit the Church on a regular basis.

On May 7, 2020, Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses into Child Sexual Abuse released redacted (censored) portion of its report. The Final Report: Religious Institutions (FRRI) 2017 and the unredacted part of the report reveals the dark world of child sexual abuse in the Christian establishment.

The un-reacted part of the report has three parts: Part 1 details case studies of child abuse in five Catholic institutions in Ballarat (Australia). These include St Joseph’s Home, St Alipius Primary School, St Alipius Parish, St Patrick’s College, and St Patrick’s Christian Brothers Boys Primary School and the public hearing thereof. Part 2 details the case of Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne and its public hearing and Part 3 is about the response of the Catholic Diocese of Ballarat and other Catholic Church authorities in Ballarat to allegations of child sexual abuse against clergy, and that of the Congregation of Christian Brothers (Christian Brothers). The three un-redacted versions included: Un-redacted Report of Case Study No. 28: Catholic Church authorities in Ballarat (535 pages), Un-redacted Report of Case Study No. 35: Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne (289 pages), and Un-redacted Volume 16, Religious institutions Book 2 which focussed on Catholic institutions generally (936 pages).

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AUSTRALIA
Japan Herald

May 23, 2020

By Peter O’Brien

— Summarising, Cardinal George Pell has been made a scapegoat.
— There has been a suggestion that Victoria Police are re-examining the Report to ascertain if new criminal charges can be brought against the Cardinal.
— There are no grounds for charging Pell with any crime unless they also to choose to charge a multitude of other surviving clerics.

Summarising, Cardinal Pell has been made a scapegoat. Whether that was the intention of the Royal Commission, I cannot say. But that has certainly been the outcome of the almost obsessive examination of the actions and recollections of a man whose direct involvement in the management of these offenders was minimal at best. The blame falls squarely and overwhelmingly at the feet of Bishop Mulkearns, Archbishop Little and various Provincials of the Christian Brothers. Contrary to natural justice, and contrasted with the treatment meted out to Cardinal Pell by the pack-hunting media, these men are not today the objects of infamy and rebuke that they should be.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Times-Picayune and New Orleans Advocate

May 23, 2020

By John Simerman and Jerry DiColo

New records released by the Archdiocese of New Orleans in its bankruptcy case offer the fullest accounting yet of the church’s financial house, and a peek inside how Archbishop Gregory Aymond and other church brass were managing it leading up to the May Day filing.

In nearly 2,000 pages of disclosures filed into the federal court record before a deadline late Friday, the archdiocese details $243 million in claimed assets and $139 million in claimed liabilities.

The church is far from underwater, the documents suggest, though what that means for those with claims against the archdiocese could take years to unravel.

The documents offer exacting detail in some areas but are also missing some key numbers. The value for a sprawling array of church properties is listed as “undetermined,” for instance, and there are no updated estimates of what dozens of sexual abuse claims could cost the local church.

The largest claimant, Hancock Whitney Bank, is listed as being owed $37 million in state facilities bonds that helped the local Catholic Church rebuild after Hurricane Katrina, plus at least $10 million in debt guarantees made by the archdiocese for the St. Anthony’s Gardens project, the documents show.

The Covington senior living complex appears to have been a financial sinkhole for the archdiocese. It has been cited, on top of mounting sexual abuse claims that now number in the dozens, in recent downgrades of the church’s bond ratings by credit agencies.

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LONDON (ONTARIO, CANADA)
London Free Press

May 24, 2020

By Jane Sims

We’ve witnessed extraordinary acts of courage during the pandemic, from everyone from front-line health-care workers and grocery store employees to vaccine hunters and contact tracers.

A decision this week from the Ontario Court of Appeal is a reminder that courage doesn’t only show up during global crises. Sometimes the bravest people are in the middle of long, slow slogs.

Childhood sexual abuse survivor Irene Deschenes is one of the bravest people I know.

Ontario’s highest court dismissed the Roman Catholic Diocese of London’s appeal of a motion allowing Deschenes to reopen her 20-year-old civil settlement for what happened to her in the 1970s at the hands of predator parish priest Charles Sylvestre.

“She’s remarkable,” said her lawyer, Loretta Merritt. “The strength and conviction she has shown for these 20 years is inspiring. Her perseverance in the face of tremendous adversity is remarkable. “

Deschenes, 58, has said before she won’t stop until she holds the church and others accountable for how it treats survivors of sexual abuse.

I’ve known Deschenes for a long time. In 2006, I began covering Sylvestre’s shocking, persistent abuse of little girls over four decades in London, Windsor, Sarnia, Chatham and Pain Court parishes.

That case shaped my career covering the justice system. Many of the women were about my age. I saw myself in their old school photos, shown in a Chatham courtroom, when they were victimized from ages nine to 14. They gave a moving narrative about the long-term damage from childhood sexual abuse.

Deschenes, who was abused from ages 10 to 12, first went to the church to complain in 1992 when she was a married 31-year-old mom. The priest heading diocese’s sexual abuse committee offered counselling.

Convinced the church didn’t believe her, Deschenes placed ads in London, Windsor and Chatham newspapers asking for memories of Sylvestre. Many responses recalled him fondly, but a significant number were women who’d been abused just like her.

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ALAMOGORDO (NM)
Alamogordo Daily News

May 19, 2020

By Nicole Maxwell

On March 31, a John Doe filed a lawsuit against two churches in Alamogordo, three dioceses including one in Massachusetts and the now defunct Servants of the Paraclete.

The lawsuit alleged the criminal sexual conduct made to Doe between 1972 and 1975 by the late Fr. David Holley was due to negligence on the part of the dioceses mentioned. They include the Diocese of El Paso, Diocese of Las Cruces, both in New Mexico and the Diocese of Worcester in Massachusetts.

“We are definitely aware of allegations that (Holley) is a credibly accused priest,” Diocese of Las Cruces spokesman Christopher Velasquez said. “It’s just a very sad thing and a very disheartening thing.”

The suit, filed in the 2nd Judicial District Court in Bernalillo County, also named Alamogordo’s Immaculate Conception Parish and St. Jude Parish.

Holley was convicted of child sexual penetration in New Mexico’s 12th District Court under Judge Robert M. Doughty, II in 1993.

Holley died in 2008.

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FERNDALE (MI)
Church Militant

May 21, 2020

By Bradley Eli

Santa Fe shorts sex abuse victims

An archdiocese that filed for bankruptcy owing to clerical sex abuse is receiving nearly $1 million in federal relief funds.

Federal Bankruptcy Court Judge David T. Thuma is ruling the archdiocese of Santa Fe, New Mexico can receive a $900,000 federal loan as part of the $2 trillion COVID-19 relief package set up in March. The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) was exempting Santa Fe because the archdiocese had filed for bankruptcy in 2018 owing to clerical sex abuse.

Lepanto Institute founder and president Michael Hichborn told Church Militant the ruling was grossly unjust.

“It’s absolutely appalling that a bishop would apply for government funding in order to help cover the cost of sex abuse lawsuits,” remarked Hichborn. “That would be like Al Capone using Chicago city funds to pay off his gambling and prostitution debts!”

Santa Fe isn’t the only diocese to seek federal funding after sheltering money from sex abuse victims by filing for bankruptcy protection. Two New York dioceses of Buffalo and Rochester also sued the SBA, for attempting to keep both from receiving federal cash.

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SEOUL (SOUTH KOREA)
Korea Times

May 24, 2020

By Park Ji-won

[Includes a screen capture from the website of the Diocese of Incheon]

Bishop John Baptist Jung Shin-chul, head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Incheon, issued a statement apologizing for a priest’s sexual abuse of students of a Catholic university about 23 years ago.

The sexual abuse cases were made public recently through an investigative TV program.

In a statement uploaded on the website of the Diocese of Incheon, the bishop said he was deeply sorry for letting such an inappropriate incident happen, confirming the media report was true.

“My sincere apologies for those who were hurt, disappointed and worried after the media report about the incident,” he said. The bishop said the priest in question was in charge of education when Incheon Catholic University was opened and admitted the church mishandled the case.

The bishop went on to say that he took the case seriously and the priest, surnamed Choi, was stripped of his clerical status as of May 8.

The apology came after an episode of SBS’ “Unanswered Questions” which aired on May 16 and covered allegations that Choi, the first president of Incheon Catholic University, sexually abused students between 1996 and 1998. The program included testimonies from alleged victims, as well as former priests and nuns who said they had witnessed or heard of Choi committing acts of sexual abuse such as molesting his students and forcing them to perform oral sex on him.

The SBS program claimed that some victims of Choi committed suicide after being assaulted by the former priest, an allegation that was not confirmed.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Bond Buyer

May 21, 2020

Already under strain from the financial weight of sexual misconduct claims, the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago took a three-notch downgrade from Moody’s Investors Service reflecting the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and concerns about the rising number of archdiocese bankruptcies.

Moody’s lowered the rating this week to Baa1 from A1 and assigned a stable outlook. The rating agency had last year revised the outlook to negative from stable due in large part to uncertainty over the ultimate cost of sexual misconduct claims.

Moody’s rates $136 million of 2012 and 2013 notes issued by the archdiocese, whose formal borrower name is the Catholic Bishop of Chicago.

The downgrade “reflects the escalation of core social and business risks for a particular sector that has seen a substantial and now recently increasing trend of preemptive bankruptcy, even when financial operations, balance sheets and other credit fundamentals are sound,” Moody’s said.
At least 27 Catholic religious organizations have sought bankruptcy protection in Chapter 11, according to Penn State Law.

The Chicago archdiocese continues to see a rising number of priest sex abuse claims that drove the 2019 outlook change. The pandemic adds operational and financial pressures.

“While the archdiocese has a long history of managing many of these exposures, it is not immune from rising financial risks,” Moody’s said. “The rapid and widening spread of the coronavirus outbreak and deteriorating global economic outlook are creating a severe and extensive credit shock, with risks to the downside.”

The archdiocese’s rating benefits from its management’s “well defined” plans for addressing financial exposures, its transparency, and its strong financial balance sheet with $1.1 billion of cash and investments.

“CBC’s relatively large scale and investment portfolio provides operating flexibility and a platform to cope with the recent emergence of new misconduct claims and the operational impact related to the coronavirus pandemic,” Moody’s said.

Masses were halted and churches shuttered in mid-March as the COVID-19 public health crisis grew and Gov. J.B. Pritzker shut down large gatherings and later issued a stay-at-home order.

The archdiocese last month estimated an eight-week impact of the loss of offertory envelopes donated at masses at up to $45 million.

*
The archdiocese last year reported settlements of legal claims for $41 million in fiscal 2017 and $19 million in 2018. Gov. J.B. Pritzker last year signed legislation that eliminates the statute of limitations on cases for criminal sexual assault, aggravated criminal sexual assault and aggravated criminal sexual abuse. The archdiocese has so far only been subject to civil cases. The Illinois attorney general is also looking into all six Illinois dioceses’ historical treatment of claims of priest sexual misconduct.

Current projections on the costs of sexual abuse claims are manageable but Moody’s cautioned that the full impact and magnitude remains unclear.

The notes are a general obligation of the CBC with the designated group supporting repayment made up of the Archdiocese of Chicago Pastoral Center and Catholic Cemeteries. CBC can access other funds as available to meet debt service.

CBC also has a $40 million bank loan, supported by a real estate proceeds account. CBC must deposit into a segregated fund proceeds from any real estate sales while the principal is outstanding. It matures on January 2022.

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OTTAWA (ONTARIO, CANADA)
CBC News

May 21, 2020

Deschenes was abused by Father Charles Sylvestre between 1970 and 1973 while she was a young girl

London, Ontario – An Ontario appeals court has dismissed a bid by the Diocese of London to fight a lower court’s decision to throw out a settlement involving a victim of child sexual abuse.

Justice David Aston ruled in 2018 that London-area resident Irene Deschenes would not have settled with the church for the abuse she suffered at the hands of a priest had the church disclosed key information about previous sexual assault allegations.

Deschenes was abused by Father Charles Sylvestre between 1970 and 1973 while she was a young girl and a student at St. Ursula Catholic School and parishioner of the parish in Chatham, Ont.

Sylvestre pleaded guilty in August 2006 to the sexual assaults of 47 victims, all girls under the age of 18. The abuse happened between 1952 and 1986. Sylvestre died in prison in 2007.

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TORONTO (ONTARIO, CANADA)
The Canadian Press / CTV News

May 22, 2020

By Paola Loriggio

An Ontario woman has won her bid to sue the London Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church for a second time over the sexual abuse she suffered as a child at the hands of a priest.

Irene Deschenes initially filed a lawsuit in 1996 alleging she was sexually abused by Father Charles Sylvestre in the early 1970s, and that the London diocese failed to prevent it.

She settled out of court in 2000 after the diocese maintained it didn’t know of any concerns regarding Sylvestre or his behaviour until the late 1980s — long after what happened to Deschenes.

Court documents show that in 2006, Sylvestre pleaded guilty to having sexually assaulted 47 girls under the age of 18, including Deschenes.

It also came to light that the diocese had received police statements in 1962 alleging the priest had assaulted three girls, prompting Deschenes to seek to scrap her settlement and file a new suit.

A motion judge ruled to allow the new legal action, but the diocese appealed — a challenge that was unanimously dismissed by the province’s top court this week.

Deschenes’s lawyer praised her client’s “strength and conviction” in pursuing the case, and said Deschenes is “thrilled” the Appeal Court upheld the decision to set aside the settlement.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

May 22, 2020

By Dan Herbeck

The Buffalo Catholic Diocese has begun an initiative that will focus on re-envisioning its mission, which could result in consolidations that would merge some churches and schools.

No specific plans have been made regarding the 161 parishes and 34 elementary schools currently in operation in the 8-county diocese, but Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger said the diocese will work with pastors and other church leaders to decide what steps should be taken.

Scharfenberger indicated that there is “a great likelihood” that some Catholic schools and parishes will have to merge with others.

He told The Buffalo News late Friday that financial pressures on the diocese – including its bankruptcy case, hundreds of legal claims alleging abuse of children by priests and the Covid-19 pandemic – have forced the diocese to take a wide-ranging look at all its operations and find the best ways to spend limited funds.

Scharfenberger also acknowledged that the dwindling number of active priests in the diocese makes it difficult to keep all churches open.

While the diocese said it currently has about 360 priests, the bishop noted that most of them are either retired or semi-retired.

“We’re reviewing our core mission and purpose,” the bishop told The News. “We’re going to identify what is essential to our mission and put all our weight behind what is essential. I have read stories saying that one-third of our small businesses may not survive because of Covid-19. I have thought that our parishes have a lot in common with small businesses.”

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RAPID CITY (SD)
Rapid City Journal

May 23, 2020

By Kevin Woster

A Minnesota priest selected to be the new bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Rapid City comes from a diocese that concluded bankruptcy proceedings last year agreeing to pay tens of millions of dollars to victims of child sexual abuse.

Father Peter Muhich, 59, said addressing the abuse of victims was “obviously a very difficult process” for the church and especially for the victims themselves.

“Of all things, when our priests violate the trust of a child it’s just a terrible thing,” Muhich said. “We just emerged from bankruptcy in the Diocese of Duluth having to account for that.”

It was a painful, expensive accounting that affects the financial resources available for other needs in the diocese. But it was appropriate and instructive accounting, too, Muhich said.

“We’ve learned through the bankruptcy that we can live more simply,” he said. “I think it’s absolutely fitting. The church is always most credible as a litmus when it leads a humble and simple life, like the Lord himself.”

Muhich, who expects to be ordained as bishop and begin his duties here by mid- to late summer, noted that Pope Francis has led the way in promoting clerical humility in the Catholic Church. The pope has focused on outreach to the edges of society, making biblically meaningful gestures such as washing the feet of prison inmates, the poor, migrants, the elderly and the disabled.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
WDSU 6 NBC

May 21, 2020

By Greg LaRose

The Archdiocese of New Orleans has filed for bankruptcy, and survivors of abuse at the hands of Catholic clergy say it’s just a maneuver meant to silence them. They include one man who says he was molested by nuns at a West Bank youth home in the 1970s, and he’s now urging other victims to speak out.

Jeff, whose real name isn’t being used, says his parents sent him to Madonna Manor in Marrero in 1976 for help with dyslexia. He was 11 years old at the time.

“I didn’t even understand what dyslexia was,” Jeff said.

During his one-year stay at Madonna Manor, he says three nuns forced him to perform individual sexual acts with them. He recalled being unconscious after a schoolyard injury and waking up in the infirmary to discover a nun performing oral sex on him.

Another nun, who taught music, coerced Jeff on two occasions into placing his hand up her dress, he said.

He said he doesn’t remember either of those nuns’ names, but he recalls the third who he claims abused him two to three nights a week over a four-month period: Sister Marie.

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.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM (KERALA, INDIA)
AsiaNet Newsable

May 23, 2020

Kattappana, Kerala, India – A Kerala priest from Idukki district was found in a compromising position with a lady. This incident happened at a Catholic church at Vellayamkudi of Kattappana. The pornographic visuals went viral on social media after the vicar Fr James Mangalassery gave his mobile phone for repair.

This incident came to light at a time when the churches in Kerala are brimming with cases of sex scandals popping up one after another.

After the visuals went viral, the Idukki church authorities took action against James. Apparently James has been removed from the vicar position.

According to sources, the incident took place in the month of March, and the action against him was taken on March 24. However, the statement was released yesterday.

No police case has been reported yet as none have filed a complaint regarding the incident, said Kattappana Police. Sources say the incident may have taken place with consent.

The woman, who was seen in a compromising position with the vicar is a married woman and a mother of two. It is also alleged that the woman regularly visited the church to meet the vicar during the lockdown days.

“The incident which occurred in Idukki is a shocking incident. We see the vicar as God. We never expect them to be involved in these kinds of acts,” said Jaiby Kuruvithadam, a former trustee of St Pius X Church, Kothamangalam Diocese. Jaibi added that one can’t imagine a vicar to be indulging in such shameful acts and even capture those moments on his phone.

“I strongly recommend that these types of vicars should be allowed to leave the church from their position, if these shameful acts will only increase. People’s trust will fade day by day with such incidents in the state. Only if truth and trust are there, people’s belief towards Christianity will increase,” he added.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

May 22, 2020

By Gina Christian

Philadelphia – Amid global coronavirus lockdowns, domestic violence has emerged as “a pandemic within a pandemic,” said Catholic clinical psychologist Christauria Welland.

“Our rates in the U.S. for physical and sexual violence against women were already at one in three,” she said. Based in California, Welland has counseled both those who are abused and their abusers for decades.

During periods of economic crisis and natural disasters, such rates tend to rise, said Welland, adding that the coronavirus has aggravated conditions for domestic abuse, also known as “intimate partner violence.”

“We’re seeing huge increases in anxiety, uncertainty and feelings of powerlessness,” she said. “When those who abuse manage their relationships using a template of power that says, ‘I’m in control of you,” this kind of insecurity makes them feel vulnerable and puts them at risk of becoming violent.”

Unemployment, food and financial instability, confinement and substance abuse have increased the risk of abuse.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Times-Picayune and New Orleans Advocate

May 20, 2020

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

The federal judge overseeing the Archdiocese of New Orleans’ bankruptcy case on Wednesday ordered the church to reinstate medical benefits for retired priests faced with credible child sexual molestation allegations but to continue withholding their stipends for living expenses.

U.S. District Judge Meredith Grabill had issued an order that effectively suspended all payments to such priests three days after the archdiocese’s May 1 filing for bankruptcy protection. But she amended her mandate after retired clergyman Gerard Howell, 80, argued that her initial ruling amounted to “a death sentence” for him.

Howell, who was suspected of molesting children growing up in the state’s deaf community during the 1960s and 1970s, told Grabill he was displeased only a portion of his benefits were restored.

“I’m making a petition to overrule that! … It seems punitive,” Howell, who was not represented by an attorney, said to Grabill. “Oh, Lord.”

As the judge adjourned the 75-minute, telephone hearing, attorney Richard Trahant — who represents clergy-abuse claimants and had asked Grabill to abide by her initial ruling — mockingly repeated the word “punitive.”

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HUDSON (NY)
Hudson Valley 360

May 20, 2020

By Melanie Lekocevic

Rockville Centre – The Child Victims Act fended off a challenge claiming the law is unconstitutional.

The legislation, championed by New Baltimore resident and state Senate candidate Gary Greenberg, creates a “look-back” window allowing claimants charging sexual abuse that occurred past the standard statute of limitations to take their case to civil court for a one-year period from the date the legislation was signed into law.

The law went into effect Aug. 15, 2019, and initially allowed civil cases alleging child sexual abuse to be brought against institutions through Aug. 14, 2020, regardless of when the abuse is claimed to have taken place. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak and the court system coming to a near standstill in New York state, Gov. Andrew Cuomo extended the “look-back window” by five months, to Jan. 14, 2021.

A case was dismissed last Wednesday by State Supreme Court Judge Steven M. Jaeger, denying a motion by the Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre in Long Island to dismiss 44 lawsuits against the diocese. The motion claimed the law was unconstitutional because it violated the diocese’s right to due process.

“There had been claims filed by the diocese under the Child Victims Act and they objected to the claims and made a motion to have them dismissed based on the claim that the Child Victims Act was unconstitutional, that you can’t go back and bring lawsuits when the statute of limitations has passed,” Greenberg said. “They said the Legislature couldn’t pass the Child Victims Act and victims couldn’t sue the diocese under the look-back window.”

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Times-Picayune and New Orleans Advocate

May 20, 2020

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

A committee representing the unsecured creditors in the Archdiocese of New Orleans’ bankruptcy case will include clergy abuse claimants and Hancock Whitney Bank, which has managed more than $38 million in state facilities bonds that helped the local Catholic Church rebuild after Hurricane Katrina.

Federal court records Wednesday only identified one representative on the seven-member committee: Beth Zeigler of Hancock Whitney. The rest of the names were redacted, suggesting that the committee’s balance might be comprised of people who claim they were sexually molested by New Orleans-area clergymen and religious personnel.

The records said a prior order from U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Meredith Grabill classifies the names of clergy abuse claimants as confidential information. But to facilitate the committee’s work, an attorney with the U.S. Trustee’s Office — which helps oversee bankruptcy cases — requested Wednesday that the redacted group members’ names be disclosed.

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DENVER (CO)
Crux

May 22, 2020

By John L. Allen Jr.

Rome – Facing both a looming economic crisis and reminders that the anti-financial scandal measures adopted to date haven’t been fully effective, Pope Francis and his Vatican team this week have moved to try to defuse the bomb before it goes off, closing several Swiss holding companies responsible for portions of its assets and reallocating internal control over financial data collection.

Even together, the two moves hardly represent a comprehensive fix. Yet they do suggest that dubious transactions, which have generated scandal and so far cost five employees their jobs, coupled with several financial shortfalls caused by the coronavirus pandemic, certainly have gotten the pope’s attention.

On Tuesday, Corriere della Serra, Italy’s newspaper of record, reported that Francis has shut down nine holding companies based in the Swiss cities of Lausanne, Geneva and Fribourg, all of which were created to manage portions of the Vatican’s investment portfolio and its land and real estate holdings after the 1929 Lateran Pacts and payments by Mussolini’s Italy to offset the loss of the Papal States in the 19th century.

The deal netted the Vatican about $100 million in 1929, the equivalent of $1.5 billion today.

On Wednesday, just 24 hours later, the Vatican also announced that Pope Francis has transferred control Centro Elaborazione Dati (“Center for the Elaboration of Data,” known as CED) from the Administration of the Patrimony for the Apostolic See (APSA) to the Secretariat for the Economy (known by its Italian acronym “SPE”.)

The center is the office responsible for monitoring cash flows and assessing their impact on the Vatican’s financial situation – which means that if anyone on earth knows how much money the Vatican actually has at any given moment, or at least how much cash it has on hand, it’s these folks.

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DENVER (CO)
Crux

May 21, 2020

By John L. Allen Jr.

Rome – St. John Paul II did plenty of heavy lifting during his long papacy, from staring down the Soviet empire to battling what he saw as a metastasizing “culture of death” in the West. Perhaps it’s only fitting, then, that the leader of a new institute devoted to the Polish pope and his approach to culture invokes a weightlifting analogy to express its mission.

“If you want to be a good weightlifter, you need to find the right position for your backbone,” said Dominican Father Michal Paluch. “Otherwise, you won’t be able to handle the pressure.”

Paluch, rector of Rome’s University of St. Thomas Aquinas, said the comparison is apt to the challenges facing the Catholic Church today vis-à-vis the emerging cultures of postmodernity.

“We’re under a lot of pressure in the contemporary world, we Christians and Catholics, and it’s critical to find the right position for our backbone,” he said. “John Paul II shows us how to be in such a position, in his attitude about how to be active in culture.”

The 53-year-old Paluch, appointed to the top post at the Angelicum last June, himself knows a thing or two about engaging culture. As a young man growing up in Poland, he studied music before entering the Dominican order.

This week, Paluch presided over the launch of the “John Paul II Institute of Culture” at the Angelicum, leading a livestream ceremony just at the cusp of Italy’s gradual loosening of coronavirus restrictions. Pope Francis sent his blessings for the enterprise, saying John Paul II left the Church a “rich and multifaceted heritage” due to “the example of his open and contemplative spirit, his passion for God and man, for creation, history and art.”

For now the institute is funded by two private Polish foundations, Futura Iuventa and Saint Nicholas, though Paluch said the Angelicum is seeking other sponsors to scale up its operations.

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DENVER (CO)
Catholic News Agency/EWTN

May 20, 2020

By Matt Hadro

The Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) is under investigation in Kansas, amid allegations that members of the group perpetrated or covered up clerical sex abuse in the state.

The Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) confirmed to CNA on Monday that it is examining clergy abuse allegations made against the group, as part of its investigation into the four Kansas Catholic dioceses. The SSPX is not overseen by any diocese in Kansas, or elsewhere, because of its irregular status in the Church.

A breakaway traditionalist group, the SSPX was founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1970. When Lefebvre and Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer consecrated four bishops without the permission of St. John Paul II in 1988, the bishops involved were excommunicated.

In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunications of the surviving bishops, while noting that “doctrinal questions obviously remain and until they are clarified the Society has no canonical status in the Church and its ministers cannot legitimately exercise any ministry.”

The group has been in intermittent talks with the Vatican about returning to full communion with the Church. In 2015, Pope Francis extended the faculty to hear confession to priests of the society as part of the Jubilee Year of Mercy.

In the group’s U.S. district, however, a number of abuse allegations have surfaced in relation to the large SSPX community at St. Mary’s, Kansas, which includes the society’s K-12 school.

In its ongoing investigation of Catholic clergy abuse in Kansas, a KBI spokeswoman said the bureau has received 186 reports of abuse and had opened 112 investigations. She did not indicate how many relate directly to the SSPX.

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SYDNEY (NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA)
Sydney Morning Herald

May 21, 2020

By Farrah Tomazin

Australia’s Catholic Church could be dramatically overhauled to give lay people more power, increase the number of women in leadership roles and force parishes to open up their finances to the public.

A secret 200-page report being considered by the nation’s bishops has called for unprecedented reform in a bid to make the church more inclusive and break down the structures that contributed to decades of clergy abuse and cover-ups.

The report is in response to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse, which found that the hierarchical nature of the church, coupled with its lack of governance, had created “a culture of deferential obedience” in which the protection of paedophile priests was left unchallenged.

But in a sign of how sensitive the church is to issues of reform, the body that commissioned the report – the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference – is unlikely to publicly release or reveal how it will respond to its 86 recommendations until the end of the year.

Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge, the current president of the ACBC, acknowledged that the proposals would have “far-reaching implications for the Church’s life and mission”.

“To do it justice, the bishops will now take advice, consider the report in depth, conduct discussions at a provincial level, and otherwise prepare for a full discussion at their November plenary,” he said.

The report is based on a 15-month review of church governance, which was conducted by a seven-member panel led by Justice Neville Owen, the former chair of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council.

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IRONDALE (AL)
National Catholic Register/EWTN

May 20, 2020

By Janet E. Smith

Bishops and dioceses must answer the phone calls of victims, meet with them, hear their stories and empathize with them. That is not too much to ask.

Victims of sexual abuse by clergy frequently have told me that the way they were treated by bishops has hurt them more than the abuse did.

Virtually every bishop has made the announcement that he is dedicated to helping victims who have been sexually abused by priests and that he has put considerable resources toward that effort. Unfortunately, from what I have heard from too many victims, some bishops are quite adept at virtue-signaling and at making empty promises.

Examples of the unresponsiveness of dioceses to victims are available in nearly every documentary on the sex-abuse crisis. One of the first and most devastating I watched was The Keepers on Netflix, which explores the unsolved murder of a religious sister who taught at an all-girls high school in Baltimore in the late 1960s. The series holds that the sister was killed because she suspected that the priest/principal was repeatedly abusing one of the students and was preparing a report for the archdiocese. Some 20 years later, when the woman who was abused by the priest reported it to the Archdiocese of Baltimore, officials were sympathetic but claimed that they could not verify her story. The woman’s nine siblings sent about 1,000 postcards to other women who had studied at the same high school during the tenure of the priest/principal and asked if they had anything to report about sexual abuse during their time there. Dozens came forward then, and even more came forward after the documentary. Why could not the diocese have done such an investigation? (The Archdiocese of Baltimore defends itself here.)

That event was decades ago, but the pattern of behavior remains all too common.

One reason Siobhan O’Connor of Buffalo, New York, shifted from the role of loyal secretary to Bishop Richard Malone to whistleblower who helped effect the bishop’s resignation is that she discovered the phone line on which victims were to report abuse went to an answering machine in a warehouse and was listened to by no one.

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ENGLEWOOD (CO)
Insurance Business Magazine

May 21, 2020

IBA: Before you started Poms & Associates, you focused on the issue of sexual abuse at Gallagher. Can you tell us more about that

David Poms: [When] Gallagher hired me, [they] focused on two major areas – one was Catholic dioceses and the other was public entities, so I was assigned some Catholic diocese accounts. A lot of the claims started with the priests, but it was pretty early on in the ’80s and [grew] into dramatic numbers in the ’90s. I very much got involved with the molestation claims back then, which was not only disconcerting, but you had a certain respect for priests, and finding out that they were involved in this was tough for me to manage mentally.

When these claims started to arise, [dioceses] denied that these things ever happened. They would hide some of the employees; they couldn’t testify or defend themselves, and that was an interesting way for them to manage these cases.

We had to help them change that culture in respect to handling and managing claims, so some of the accounts that we were involved in developed teams where you would have outside legal counsel, a layperson, a therapist and the diocese, and you would have a team approach to help manage the claims. You got a lot of perspectives from different disciplines to help manage the claims rather than to deny them or hide the fact that they existed. That was a big change with many of the dioceses early on, and those that implemented this team approach managed the claims much better than others.

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ANCHORAGE and BETHEL (AK)
Anchorage Daily News, KYUK, and ProPublica

May 12, 2020

By Kyle Hopkins

The principal for one of Alaska’s largest rural elementary schools, in a region with some of the highest sex crime rates in the country and a state with a history of failing to protect students, was allowed to remain on the job until the FBI got involved.

For some parents, it was the gifts from the principal to young girls and their families that gave them pause. A few too many presents that cost a little too much money. Then began the late-night Facebook messages.

Through most of it, the principal of one of the largest elementary schools in rural Alaska remained on the job and in close contact with students. Then, in December, Gladys Jung Elementary Principal Christopher Carmichael was arrested by the FBI’s Child Exploitation Task Force and later charged with possession of child pornography, attempted coercion of a child and sexual abuse of a minor.

In a state with a history of failing to protect children, and in a region with a sexual assault rate more than six times the national average, parents of girls are asking the same question: How was this allowed to happen?

An investigation by the Anchorage Daily News, KYUK public radio and ProPublica found that at least twice over the previous four years, parents had complained to police about Carmichael. In 2016, Carmichael admitted behavior to his supervisors that, under Alaska ethics laws for educators, could have cost him his teaching certificate.

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GRAND RAPIDS (MI)
ABC 13 WZZM

May 21, 2020

All charges involve victims who were minors at the time of the incidents.

After three days of testimony across two counties involving five victims, a former priest under the Catholic Diocese of Marquette in the Upper Peninsula is now headed to trial for 11 criminal sexual conduct charges that he reportedly committed in the 1980s.

Attorney General Dana Nessel announced Thursday, May 21 that Gary Allen Jacobs was bound over to Dickinson County Circuit Court Monday on a second-degree criminal sexual conduct charge by district court Judge Julie LaCost. Jacobs is scheduled to appear June 1 in Dickinson County Circuit Court before Judge Christopher Ninomiya

Following testimony on Tuesday and Wednesday, Ontonagon County District Court Judge Janis Burgess bound over Jacobs on a total of 10 charges Wednesday. Jacobs will face eight counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, and two counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct in Ontonagon County Circuit Court before Judge Michael Pope. Jacobs’ next appearance there has not been scheduled.

Jacobs, 74, faces up to life in prison and a lifetime of electronic monitoring for each of the first-degree criminal sexual conduct charges, and up to 15 years in prison for each second-degree criminal sexual conduct charge. All charges involve victims who were minors at the time of the incidents.

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
Morning Call

May 20, 2020

By Laurie Mason Schroeder

A Texas man is suing the Roman Catholic Diocese of Allentown and one of its churches, St. Catharine of Siena in Reading, claiming he was sexually abused and tortured by several priests in a church basement in the 1970s.

Timothy Paul McGettigan’s attorneys say their client learned that he was not alone in being abused by Allentown Diocese priests from the scathing 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report on unchecked sexual abuse by clergy across the state, and decided to come forward. He is seeking a jury trial and unspecified monetary damages.

In the lawsuit, filed this week in Lehigh County Court, McGettigan alleges he was sexually abused by two priests, the Rev. Joseph Grembocki and the Rev. David A. Soderlund, as well as several other priests he cannot identify.

Grembocki died in July 2016 while serving as pastor at Assumption BVM Church in Slatington. He is not named in the Pennsylvania grand jury report and no other accusation has surfaced against him.

Soderlund was defrocked in 2005 and moved to Wyoming, where he was sent to prison for exploiting children and possessing child pornography.

Soderlund was named in the grand jury report and is a registered sex offender in Wyoming.

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BINGHAMTON (NY)
Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin via USA Today

May 21, 2020

By Anthony Borrelli

After New York state extended the window for legal action under the Child Victims Act by five months, four new lawsuits in Broome County accuse a priest and three Boy Scout leaders in separate cases of alleged decades-old sex abuse.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo extended the deadline to file lawsuits until Jan. 14, 2021.

New York’s law for the Child Victims Act created a limited time period where victims could file claims against their alleged, abusers and the institutions that harbored them, regardless of how long ago the abuse took place, or whether criminal charges were ever pursued.

On Monday, in the state Supreme Court in Broome County, a lawsuit by a now 57-year-old Endicott man accused a now-deceased priest, Father Thomas Keating, of sexually abusing him over the course of three years beginning in 1973.

The victim was 11 years old when the abuse began, according to the lawsuit, which was filed against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Syracuse. It alleges the abuse happened while the victim attended St. John the Evangelist School in Binghamton.

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MINNEAPOLIS (MN)
Star-\ Tribune

May 20, 2020

By Jean Hopfensperger

Volunteer post, required by clergy abuse settlement, will be held by his wife, Victoria Newcome Johnson

Twin Cities attorney Tom Johnson, the first ombudsman for clergy abuse for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, has stepped down from the role he’s held since 2018, citing health reasons.

The former Hennepin County attorney served as an independent point person for clergy abuse survivors who were reluctant to seek help from the archdiocese.

His wife, Victoria Newcome Johnson, an attorney and educator active in the Twin Cities Catholic community, will assume the voluntary position.

“The opportunity to help victims on a personal level, often being the first person to whom they disclose their abuse, has been very powerful, far beyond what I anticipated,” Tom Johnson said. “In fact, it has been an experience which opened my heart in ways that often don’t occur, particularly in the professional experience of lawyers.”

Creating an independent ombudsman was part of the 2015 settlement agreement between the archdiocese and the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office, which had sued the archdiocese for failing to protect children. When he was appointed, Tom Johnson said he had a personal reason for assuming the unpaid post.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Fox 8 WVUE

May 20, 2020

By Rob Masson

An alleged clergy abuse victim whose lawsuit against the Catholic Church was held up by the church bankruptcy filing two weeks ago wants others to come forward.

He calls the bankruptcy filing a delay tactic, something the Church says is not true.

He says the physical and sexual abuse occurred at Madonna Manor in the mid-70s at the hands of three nuns. He says the worst abuser was 6 feet tall and weighed around 300 pounds.

“She was abusive, she programmed me to do what she wanted,” the alleged victim referred to as Jeff, said.

He claims the abuse begin when he was 11 years old, at the Westbank youth home, he said he was sent to, to deal with dyslexia.

“She started off hitting me causing me to do things,” Jeff said.

The alleged victim says one nun, abused him for four months. He says two others abused him sporadically after guitar lessons.

“Two or three nights a week every week for four months,” Jeff said.

“Madonna Manor has a deep history of abuse so deep just left for the history books,” plaintiff attorney John Denenea said.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Times Picayune / New Orleans Advocate

May 19, 2020

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

Clergy abuse claimant says she is ‘strongly opposed to any predator priest or clergy receiving any funds from the archdiocese,’ which recently declared bankruptcy

As a federal bankruptcy judge weighs whether to reverse her order halting payments from the Archdiocese of New Orleans to suspected clergy child molesters, a second priest facing abuse accusations has come forward to ask the judge not to halt the payments.

A filing Monday asking for the reinstatement of payments came from retired clergyman Paul Calamari, who was named by Archbishop Gregory Aymond on his list of credibly-accused priests. In the filing, Calamari concedes that in 1973 he had a “failing” and a “sin” involving a 17-year-old high school boy whom Calamari — then a lay teacher turning 30 — mistakenly believed was 18. An abuse claim stemming from that encounter landed Calamari on the list.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Meredith Grabill, who has tentatively set a hearing on the matter for late Wednesday afternoon, has also received a signed declaration from a woman who said a priest molested her in 1968, when she wasn’t even 5. The petition from Linda Lee Stonebreaker, whose father Steve Stonebreaker played for the New Orleans Saints, requested that Grabill stick with her decision on halting payments.

The issue turns on a ruling from Grabill on May 4, three days after the archdiocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, that ordered the immediate halt to any payments for priests who had been credibly accused of child abuse.

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ROCHESTER (NY)
Catholic Courier – Diocese of Rochester

May 19, 2020

By Mike Latona

The deadline for filing proofs of claim in the Diocese of Rochester’s federal bankruptcy case remains Aug. 13, 2020, and is not subject to a recent extension of New York state’s Child Victims Act through January 2021.

On Feb. 25, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Paul R. Warren set the Aug. 13 deadline — known as the “bar date” — for claims to be filed against the Rochester Diocese. That date coincides with the original end of a one-year window established by the Child Victims Act for the filing of sexual-abuse claims that previously were prohibited by statutes of limitations. Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the CVA into law in early 2019.

The governor announced May 8 that he was extending the one-year CVA window until Jan. 14, 2021, due to delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. He said resulting limitations in court services have hampered claimants’ abilities to file claims and effectively consult with attorneys in a timely fashion.

An attorney representing the unsecured creditors’ committee in the Rochester Diocese’s bankruptcy case cited similar concerns in an April 13 statement filed with the bankruptcy court. However, diocesan spokesman Doug Mandelaro noted that federal bankruptcy courts have remained active throughout the pandemic and that the electronic claims process has continued without interruption.

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LONGMONT (CO)
Times-Call

May 19, 2020

By Sam Tabachnik

The youth organization filed for bankruptcy in February

Attorneys for the Boy Scouts of America and lawyers representing individuals who allege they were abused as scouts agreed on Monday to a Nov. 16 deadline for victims to file bankruptcy claims against the storied youth organization.

The date was presented to a judge in federal bankruptcy court in Delaware, where the Boy Scouts have been locked in a tense battle over the future of the organization, as both sides argue over which assets may be included in a settlement and how much information the Scouts may have to divulge about their inner workings.

Details are still being worked out over what information victims may need to share on their claimant forms, and how the process will work. But at the minimum, those who wish to file claims now have a drop-dead date.

“I know what abuse survivors feel and think,” Tim Kosnoff, an attorney for Abused in Scouting, which represents 3,200 men who say they were abused as scouts. “This is their deepest, darkest secret and they don’t want to confront it. If they’re told they have to or they lose their rights forever, then they have to make a decision.”

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DUBLIN (IRELAND)
Irish Times

May 18, 2020

By Derek Scally

Wadowice, near Krakow, birthplace of Karol Wojtyla on May 18th, 1920, draws crowds

Celebrations to mark the centenary of the birth of St John Paul II in his native Poland were overshadowed on Monday by fresh allegations of clerical sex abuse against children – and church cover-up.

Crowds gathered in the small town of Wadowice, near Krakow, where Karol Wojtyla was born on May 18th, 1920, to honour their famous son.

“Karol Wojtyla was one of the most important figures of the 20th century,” said Polish president Andrzej Duda in a letter read to worshippers at Mass. “His teaching and testimony still touch the hearts and minds of millions of people.”

In Rome, Pope Francis remembered the Polish man who served as pope from 1978 until his death in 2005. In his morning Mass, Pope Francis said that, “One hundred years ago the Lord visited his people.”

As millions remembered the Polish pontiff, a key figure in the country’s peaceful transition to democracy in 1989, nearly five million people in two days have watched the YouTube documentary Hide and Seek.

The second documentary by Polish filmmaker Tomasz Sekielski on child abuse within the Catholic Church, Hide and Seek tells of two brothers who were alleged victims of a priest who was shielded by his bishop.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

By Massimo Faggiol

May 19, 2020

There are signs that the Catholic Church’s response to the sexual abuse crisis is now getting at deeper, institutional questions. In particular, how local churches — parishes and dioceses — are governed.

In the last few years, a unique example that could bring encouraging news has come from the Australian church.

Since 2017-18, the abuse crisis has taken on a new dimension, thanks to the unveiling of cases (such as disgraced former cardinal Theodore McCarrick) and of extensive cover-ups identified and published in the reports of nationwide and regional investigations (such as in Australia, Chile and Pennsylvania).

The new phase of the crisis has focused on the direct involvement of bishops, cardinals and the Vatican. It has also identified that the crisis is not restricted to children and also involves women religious and other vulnerable persons — and has become a global crisis with huge repercussions on the relations between church and state in various countries.

The new phase in the abuse crisis has also shown much complexity: It is not just a legal and ethical crisis, but also a theological one and a crisis of models of church governance.

Pope Francis has reframed the scandal as something that must move the church to conversion. We must consider all the different levels that this conversion must reach: It is a pastoral and theological conversion as well as a conversion of ecclesial structures.

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.

DOVER (DE)
Associated Press

May 18, 2020

By Randall Chase

Attorneys have agreed on a November deadline for victims of child sex abuse to file claims in the Boy Scouts of America bankruptcy case.

The Nov. 16 date presented to a judge Monday was worked out after attorneys for the official committee representing abuse victims objected to a proposed Oct. 6 deadline and argued that victims should have at least until Dec. 31.

“At a time when millions of Americans are unemployed and preoccupied with basic survival, sexual abuse survivors need and are entitled to a reasonable period of time after they receive notice from the bankruptcy Court to reflect seriously and make a decision whether to file a claim in this case,” attorneys for the victims committee wrote in a court filing.

After filing for bankruptcy, the Boy Scouts initially proposed a deadline of 80 days after notice of the claims process was published, drawing immediate opposition from attorneys for abuse victims. The Boy Scouts later proposed the October deadline. They argued that it allowed more time than in many Catholic diocese bankruptcy cases, and that it provided sufficient time to conduct a nationwide program of print, television, radio and online notices and allow claimants to submit claim forms.

Jessica Boelter, an attorney for the Boy Scouts, said the notification program is expected to reach more than 100 million people, including more than 95% of the primary target audience of men 50 and older. An expert for the Boy Scouts estimated that men in that age group account for more than half of former Boy Scouts and at least 71% of abuse survivors with pending claims against the BSA.

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WARSAW (POLAND)
Catholic News Service via Catholic San Francisco

May 18, 2020

By Jonathan Luxmoore

The centenary of the birth of St. John Paul II coincided with a new film, “Hide and Seek,” screened on YouTube May 16. It accused the Polish church of continuing to cover up sexual abuse by Catholic clergy.

The same day, Archbishop Wojciech Polak, primate of Poland and the bishops’ delegate for child protection, said he would ask the Vatican to initiate proceedings against Bishop Edward Janiak of Kalisz for failing to discipline a priest incriminated by the film.

Archbishop Polak said the film showed required child protection standards were still not being observed in the Polish church.

“I thank the victims who talked about the harm they suffered, and I urge everyone with knowledge about the sexual abuse of a minor to remember they are obliged in conscience and by law” to notify authorities, Archbishop Polak 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.

RICHMOND (VA)
Richmond Times-Dispatch

May 19, 2020

By Dottie Klammer, SNAP Coordinator, North Chesterfield

https://www.richmond.com/opinion/letters-to-editor/letter-to-the-editor-may-19-2020-silence-wont-end-scourge-of-sexual-abuse/article_c03dc5f7-6066-5b88-8d68-285b61a280c3.html

It is unfortunate that the Rev. Mark White of the Catholic Diocese of Richmond has fallen from grace with his superior, Bishop Barry Knestout. White’s innate charisma to shepherd attracts parishioners of both the Martinsville and Rocky Mount parishes. While the church gives lip service to transparency in revealing names of sexual abusers and their accomplices, White’s blog offers validation, support and hope.

Sexual abuse affects one to his or her very core. It changes what one thinks of oneself and others, usually culminating in problems with interpersonal relationships. It isn’t like having a bad day. The aftermath lurks over one’s shoulder, exhibiting itself as negativity, fear, anxiety, isolation, anger, depression and — without help — addiction and sometimes suicide. For some, it rears its ugly head on a daily basis. Others are especially affected during times when life stressors are out of their control.

White’s blog offers understanding of the heartache and devastation brought to lives of those who have been abused. Once someone is abused, the wound to one’s personhood during remains the rest of his or her life. The offering of compassion in White’s blog is solace to those who might otherwise remain alone in the aftermath of their plight, often misunderstood by family and friends. In his way, White is righting the wrong of the Catholic Church.

To those who have found safety and honesty in another church, White’s blog might be as a voice in the wind. But in the end, the scourge of the Catholic Church will not go away until it is honestly and completely addressed. The crumbs of compensation offered by the church do not compensate for the names of perpetrators who remain under lock and key.

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WELLINGTON (NEW ZEALAND)
Stuff

May 17, 2020

By Jennifer Eder

A woman whose sexual harassment complaint was brushed off by Anglican church leaders has won a landmark settlement and is embarking on another Human Rights Review Tribunal claim.

She was not a regular churchgoer until a traumatic event caused her to question the existence of heaven.

“I had a basic belief in God, but I’d never explored it,” the Blenheim woman said.

“I wanted to know, where is that? It’s a bit like losing a child in the mall, you have this need to know where they are. What is this place, is it real?”

The woman, who can’t be identified, is speaking publicly for the first time after her Human Rights Review Tribunal complaint against her local priest and church saw an unprecedented settlement, including an apology from the Anglican Church, and an acknowledgement that its priests are covered by human rights law in New Zealand.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican News

May 18, 2020

By Christopher Wells

Celebrating Mass on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Karol Wojtyla, the future St John Paul II, Pope Francis described his predecessor as a man of prayer, closeness, and justice.

[Note from BishopAccountability.org: The sermon by Pope Francis begins at 13:45 of the video and is dubbed in English.]

Pope Francis celebrated the 100th anniversary of the birth of St John Paul II by offering Holy Mass at the altar where the Polish Pope is buried in St Peter’s Basilica.

Joined by a very limited number of the faithful, the liturgy on Monday morning was the first Mass open to the public after almost two months of restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Lord has visited His People

Pope Francis began his homily by reminding us that God loves His People, and in times of difficulty “visits” them by sending a holy man or a prophet.

In the life of Pope John Paul II, we can see a man sent by God, prepared by Him, and made Bishop and Pope to guide God’s Church. “Today, we can say that the Lord visited His people”.

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DENVER (CO)
Crux

May 18, 2020

By Elise Ann Allen

Rome – One hundred years after the birth of Saint John Paul II, Pope Francis Monday called the Polish Pope a gift to the Church and a model pastor who prays, is close to his people and who exercises both justice and mercy.

Speaking in front of St. John Paul II’s tomb in the Vatican, Francis pointed to the day’s psalm response, “The Lord loves his people,” saying that out of this love God “sent a prophet, a man of God, and the people’s reaction was, ‘The Lord has visited his people, because he loved us.’”

“Today, we can say that 100 years ago, the Lord visited his people. He sent a man, he prepared him to be a bishop, and to guide the Church. Remembering John Paul II, let us remember this: The Lord loved his people, the Lord visited his people, he sent a pastor,” the pope said.

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DENVER (CO)
Crux

May 15, 2020

By Paulina Guzik

Pope emeritus Benedict XVI commemorated the centennial of the birth of Karol Wojtyła, who became Pope John Paul II, in an open letter to the Polish people addressed to Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, who was the longtime private secretary to the Polish pontiff.

A mix of emotional memoir and theological thoughts on the heritage of John Paul – who was born on May 18, 1920, and died April 2, 2005 – the letter is a call not to divide the Church within a line of pontificates, but see each pope as a continuity of his predecessor.

Benedict says John Paul marked a turning point in the history of the Church. After commenting on the turbulences that troubled both the world and the Church at the time of John Paul’s election, the pope emeritus says that “an almost impossible task was awaiting the new pope. Yet, from the first moment on, John Paul II aroused new enthusiasm for Christ and his Church.”

John Paul’s proclamation of “Do not be afraid” characterized his entire pontificate and – Benedict continues – “made him a liberating restorer of the Church.”

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WARSAW (POLAND)
Associated Press

May 18, 2020

By Vanessa Gera

St. John Paul II was honored on the centennial of his birth with special Masses at the Vatican and in his native Poland on Monday, an anniversary that comes as the Polish church finds itself shaken by new allegations of sexual abuse by clerics.

From the small town of Wadowice, Poland, where Karol Wojtya was born on May 18, 1920, to Warsaw and the Vatican, Catholic faithful gave prayers of thanks for the man who was pope from 1978 until his death in 2005.

“Today we can say that 100 years ago the Lord visited his people,” Pope Francis said in a morning Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica. “Celebrating the memory of Saint John Paul II let’s remember this: the Lord loves his people, he visited his people, he sent a shepherd.”

To Poles, John Paul is best remembered for using the papacy to shake the foundations of an oppressive communist system that was toppled across Eastern Europe 11 years into his papacy.

“Karol Wojtyla was one of the most important figures of the 20th century,” Polish President Andrzej Duda said in a letter sent to worshippers at Poland’s holiest site, the Jasna Gora Monastery in Czestochowa. “His teaching and testimony still touch the hearts and minds of millions of people.”

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Guardian from Agence France-Presse

May 16, 2020

Polish archbishop calls for Vatican to ‘launch proceedings’ after release of child abuse documentary Hide and Seek

[Note from BishopAccountability.org: The new film by Tomasz Sekielski and Marek Sekielski, Zabawa w Chowanego (Hide and Seek) is available in Polish here.

A Polish documentary on child abuse by Catholic clerics has put a damper on centenary celebrations of the late Pope John Paul II’s birth.

After the film Hide and Seek was seen by almost 80,000 people on YouTube, Polish archbishop Wojciech Polak called on the Vatican to “launch proceedings” into the cases in question.

It is the second documentary by Tomasz Sekielski on child abuse within the church, and focuses in detail on two brothers who are alleged victims of a priest who was protected by a bishop.

“The film Hide and Seek, which I have just seen, shows that protection standards for children and adolescents in the church were not respected,” Polak said in a video broadcast by the Catholic news agency KAI.

The archbishop added that he had asked the Vatican to launch proceedings under the auspices of an apostolic letter issued by Pope Francis in March 2019 on the protection of minors and vulnerable persons.

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DENVER (CO)
Holland & Hart Law Firm via JD Supra

May 14, 2020

On May 1, 2020, the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Mexico ruled in favor of the Roman Catholic Church of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe (Archdiocese) granting a temporary injunction against the Small Business Administration (SBA) that had rejected the Archdiocese’s application for a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) Loan under the CARES Act. The case sheds light on how courts may view other SBA rulemaking regarding eligibility for PPP Loans, including the recently announced requirement that PPP applicants and recipients first exhaust other sources of liquidity, or give back funds by May 14, 2020.

In 2018, the Archdiocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and had been operating as a debtor-in-possession. On March 23, 2020, in response to COVID-19 pandemic the New Mexico Department of Health issued a “stay-at-home” order, prohibiting mass gatherings and requiring all non-essential businesses to cease in-person operations. Due to the stay-at-home orders, the Archdiocese was losing about $300,000 a month in revenue it otherwise would realize from normal operations.

The economic hardship brought on by COVID-19 and the stay-at-home orders led the Archdiocese to file an application for a PPP Loan on April 20, 2020. Not long after the Archdiocese filed its application, the SBA issued a second interim final rule which purported to disqualify bankruptcy debtors from a PPP Loan.

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BOARDMAN (OH)
Mahoning Matters

May 17, 2020

Three Communicator Awards were bestowed.

Canfield – The Catholic Television Network of Youngstown (CTNY) has been selected to receive three 2020 Communicator Awards.

CTNY received an Award of Excellence for for “Wineskins” and Awards of Distinction for “Promise to Protect, Pledge to Heal” and “Spotlight.”

Judging for the 26th annual Communicator Awards was by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts.

“Wineskins” is an award-winning radio program conceived, produced and assembled in a magazine format by CTNY, airing every Sunday over several local radio stations within the six-counties of the Diocese of Youngstown.

Since its beginning in August of 1981, “Wineskins” has won many awards.

“Promise to Protect, Pledge to Heal” is a two-part series produced by CTNY to highlight the issue of clergy sexual abuse. The program host is Father James Korda, president of CTNY.

His guests included Bishop George V. Murry, S.J., Bishop of the Diocese of Youngstown; Msgr. John Zuraw, diocesan Chancellor; and Detective Delphine Baldwin-Casey, investigator for Child Protection.

The “Spotlight” program featured guest, Bob Elder, who told his own personal story as a victim of clergy sexual abuse.

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PIERRE (SD)
Capital Journal

May 15, 2020

By Stephen Lee

The Rev. Peter Muhich, a priest in Duluth, Minnesota, as been named bishop-elect of the Catholic Diocese of Rapid City, which includes all of West River South Dakota. A date for his ordination as a bishop, then installation, hasn’t been set because of the COVID-19 pandemic has the church nixing most large public meetings.

About a year after Pope Francis appointed Rapid City Bishop Robert Gruss as the new bishop in Saginaw, Michigan, the pope has named the Rev. Peter Muhich (MEW-itch), a priest in the Duluth, Minnesota, diocese as bishop-elect for the bishopric that covers West River South Dakota.

Gruss was ordained a bishop and installed in Rapid City in July 2011, serving until July 2019; he was named Saginaw’s bishop-elect in May 2019 and installed there last July.

That’s the typical time frame between the announcement and the installation of a Catholic bishop.

*

Muhich described his childhood faith and interest in the priesthood as happening well before the child abuse scandals in the church that came to public attention beginning in the 1980s.

Now that reality will be part of his work in Rapid City, he said.

“It has to be part of every bishop’s ministry,” Muhich told the Capital Journal. “To make sure we are doing everything possible to prevent the abuse of children by anybody, especially by priests, for God’s sake. Making sure the church is a safe place for all, working to prevent any abuse and, if, God forbid, it should happen, to cooperate with law enforcement and let them do their job.”

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ULTIMO (NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA)
Australian Broadcasting Corporation

May 14, 2020

By Iskhandar Razak

Paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale will spend at least another three years in jail after pleading guilty to 14 new offences committed against young boys under his care.

“Your sexual abuse, at times when the child was seeking comfort, reveals your utter hypocrisy,” the sentencing Judge Gerard Mullaly said.

“They were vulnerable children and you simply used them and violated them for your perverse sexual gratification.”

Ridsdale has been in prison since 1994 and was already serving a 33-year sentence for abusing more than 60 children in Victoria, but his non-parole period was due to expire in 2022.

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[Statement: Protect and report sexual abuse against children and adolescents.]

EL SALVADOR
Fundación de Estudios para la Aplicación del Derecho – FESPAD.
[The Foundation for Studies for the Application of Law]

May 13, 2020

Caso de Sacerdote procesado.
[Priest case prosecuted.]

El sacerdote, José V. B. U., de 63 años de edad, ha sido acusado por la Fiscalía General de la República por el ilícito de agresión sexual en menor e incapaz, en perjuicio de tres niñas, hechos ocurridos cuando se desempeñaba como párroco en la iglesia Nuestra Señora de Lourdes del Barrio Lourdes de San Salvador.

[GOOGLE TRANSLATION: The priest, José VBU, 63 years old, has been accused by the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic for the crime of sexual assault on a minor and incapable, to the detriment of three girls, events that occurred when he served as pastor in the Nuestra Iglesia Lady of Lourdes from the Lourdes neighborhood of San Salvador.]

El sacerdote tiene abiertos dos procesos, uno que se encuentra en la etapa de instrucción en el Tribunal Quinto de Instrucción de San Salvador, donde las afectadas son dos niñas; y el otro caso se encuentra a conocimiento del Tribunal Quinto de Sentencia, a la espera de la vista pública, en perjuicio de una niña.

[GOOGLE TRANSLATION: The priest has two processes open, one that is in the investigation stage in the Fifth Court of Instruction of San Salvador, where the affected are two girls; and the other case is before the Fifth Sentencing Court, pending public hearing, to the detriment of a girl.]

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
Kansas City Star

May 17, 2020

By Judy L. Thomas

KBI investigating sex abuse allegations within St. Marys, Kansas, traditionalist Catholic society

For four decades, the Society of St. Pius X has made its home in this northeast Kansas town, its followers coming from across the country to raise their children according to traditional Catholic values.

Now, with attendance at Latin Mass topping 4,000, plans are underway for the breakaway Catholic society to build a $30 million church high on its campus overlooking St. Marys. The Immaculata, the SSPX says, will become the biggest traditional Catholic church in the world.

But something else is underway that threatens to overshadow the jubilation over a new house of worship with enough room to accommodate the ever-expanding flock: A criminal investigation by the state’s top law enforcement agency into allegations of priest sexual abuse.

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NEW ZEALAND
Stuff.com

May 17, 2020

By Jennifer Eder

A woman whose sexual harassment complaint was brushed off by Anglican church leaders has won a landmark settlement and is embarking on another Human Rights Review Tribunal claim, writes Jennifer Eder.

She was not a regular churchgoer until a traumatic event caused her to question the existence of heaven.

“I had a basic belief in God, but I’d never explored it,” the Blenheim woman said.

“I wanted to know, where is that? It’s a bit like losing a child in the mall, you have this need to know where they are. What is this place, is it real?”

The woman, who can’t be identified, is speaking publicly for the first time after her Human Rights Review Tribunal complaint against her local priest and church saw an unprecedented settlement, including an apology from the Anglican Church, and an acknowledgement that its priests are covered by human rights law in New Zealand.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

May 16, 2020

By Alf McCreary

The Most Reverend Eamon Martin is the Catholic Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland.

Q. Can you tell us about your background?

A. I was born on October 30, 1961 and I grew up in Derry in the Sixties and Seventies and was blessed to be a member of a large family of six boys and six girls and to have a great education at St Patrick’s Primary School, Pennyburn and St Columb’s College, where I eventually was to return as a teacher and school principal.

Q. How and when did you come to faith?

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WARSAW (POLAND)
BBC News

May 17, 2020

By Adam Easton and others

The head of Poland’s Roman Catholic Church has said he is asking the Vatican to investigate the cover-up of child sexual abuse by priests.

Archbishop Wojciech Polak called on the Church hierarchy to “launch proceedings” following the release of a documentary on the subject on Saturday.

The film tells the story of two brothers who seek to confront a priest who allegedly abused them as children.

The Vatican is expected to assign an investigator to the case.

The film – “Hide and Seek” – has been viewed more than 1.9 million times on YouTube. It is the second documentary on the subject by brothers Marek and Tomasz Sekielski.

It follows two victims as they attempt to bring to account those in the Church who were responsible for covering up their abuse.

It alleges that a senior bishop knew about the allegations for years but failed to take any action.

A new awareness in Poland

By Adam Easton, BBC Warsaw correspondent

In churches across Poland today, people are celebrating the life of their Pope, John Paul II, a day ahead of the centenary of his birth.

Numbers will be smaller than usual due to the coronavirus restrictions, but Karol Wojtyla, the first non-Italian to become pope in more than 450 years, is still revered in his homeland. In particular, for germinating the belief among people here in the 1980s that together, they could achieve the end of the communist regime, which then seemed impossible.

The Polish Catholic Church’s vital role in that victory subsequently gave it enormous influence in Polish society, including over politicians. The current Law and Justice-led government promotes traditional Catholic values.

When the Sekielski brothers’ first documentary became a subject of national debate last May, it agreed that a state commission should be set up. But it said it must not solely focus on the sexual abuse of children by priests, but also by members of other professions. The law to create the commission took effect in September, but since then, nothing has happened.

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POLAND
Crux

May 17, 2020

By Paulina Guzik

A new Polish documentary film on sexual abuse by Catholic clergy was released Saturday through the internet. Hide and Seek, produced by brothers Marek and Tomasz Sekielski, documents not only the sexual abuse of children within the Church in Poland, but also the abuse of power by the Church hierarchy.

The film is a follow-up to the Sekielski brothers’ documentary Tell No One, which was quickly referred to in the media as the “Polish Spotlight” – referring to the 2015 Oscar-winning film documenting the Boston Globe’s 2002 investigation into clerical sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Boston.

After the documentary aired, the Primate of Poland, Archbishop Wojciech Polak – who also serves as the Delegate of Child Protection of Polish Bishops Conference – immediately announced that he had reported the case in the documentary to the Vatican’s representative in the country.

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WARSAW (POLAND)
Reuters

May 16, 2020

By Joanna Plucinska and Alicja Ptak

The Polish Catholic Church’s most senior archbishop notified the Vatican on Saturday of a Polish bishop accused of shielding priests known to have sexually abused children.

The referral, unprecedented in the deeply religious country, will test procedures introduced by the Vatican last year to hold to account bishops accused of turning a blind eye to child sex abuse. The Vatican is now expected to assign an investigator to the case.

“I ask priests, nuns, parents and educators to not be led by the false logic of shielding the Church, effectively hiding sexual abusers,” Poland’s Primate Wojciech Polak said in a statement published on Saturday.

“There is no place among the clergy to sexually abuse minors. We do not allow for the hiding of these crimes.”

The case came to prominence after a film by brothers Tomasz and Marek Sekielski, released on Saturday, showed how bishop Edward Janiak, based in the city of Kalisz, failed to take action against priests who were known to have abused children.

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POLAND
Agence France-Presse via TRTworld.com

May 17, 2020

A Polish documentary on child abuse by Catholic clerics put a damper Saturday on centenary celebrations of the venerated late Pope John Paul II’s birth.

After the film “Hide and Seek” was seen by almost 80,000 people on YouTube, Polish archbishop Wojciech Polak called on the Vatican to “launch proceedings” into the cases in question.

It is the second documentary by Tomasz Sekielski on child abuse within the church, and focuses in detail on two brothers who are alleged victims of a priest who was protected by a bishop.

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.

UNITED KINGDOM
Far Out Magazine

May 16, 2020

We’re looking back at one of television’s most infamous moments. Sinéad O’Connor is a musician who has never been shy to make her opinion well known in the public eye. Nothing compares, though, to her now-legendary appearance performing on SNL back in 1992.

Saturday Night Live has had several acts break the rules and find themselves on the wrong end of Lorne Michaels’ wrath. But perhaps none were as scandalous as O’Connor’s moment of infamy.

SNL, the now-iconic late-night live television sketch comedy and variety show, has been running prolifically each week since launching in 1975.

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UNITED STATES
Irish Central

May 17, 2020

By Shane O’Brien

Robert Kolker’s ‘Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family’ is an account of the Galvin family, where six out of ten sons were diagnosed as schizophrenic.

A new biography tells the tragic tale of an American family thought to be one of the most disturbed families in American history.

‘Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family’ is an account of the Galvin family in Colorado Springs where six out of ten sons were diagnosed as schizophrenic.

Robert Kolker’s in-depth study examines how one son murdered his wife, one son raped his sister, and how one son tortured a cat to death for no reason.

The Galvin family started like many other American families in the 1940s.

An unplanned pregnancy forced Donald Galvin Sr. to marry Mimi Blayney in a shotgun wedding in Mexico in 1944.

Donald was about to shipped out to the South Pacific to fight in the US Navy during the Second World War and the couple’s story was not unlike many other wartime couples who had to rush marriages in order to avoid the stigma and dishonor that accompanied unmarried pregnancies.

Little did they know that their first-born son, Donald Jr., would be the first of 12 children.

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WEST VIRGINIA
West Virginia Record

May 15, 2020

By Chris Dickerson

A Virginia man says a priest with a history of such offenses sexually assaulted him when he was an altar boy growing up in the Northern Panhandle.

Michael Pirraglia of Fairfax, Va., filed his complaint May 15 in Hancock Circuit Court against the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston.

Pirraglia says his family attended St. Paul Catholic Church in Weirton when he was growing up. One of the priests assigned to the church then was Rev. Victor Frobas.

Frobas worked for the Diocese from 1965 to 1983. Before that, Frobas worked for the Diocese of Philadelphia, where there were multiple claims alleging Frobas abused minors.

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NEW YORK
National Public Radio

May 16, 2020

[AUDIO: 4-minute listen]

NPR’s Scott Simon talks with Teresa Theophano about Georgianna Glose, the Brooklyn nun who blew the whistle on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. She died from COVID-19 complications.

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RAPID CITY (SD)
SNAPNetwork.org

May 13, 2020

By SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests)

A new bishop has been chosen to lead one of the smallest Catholic dioceses in the nation. We call on him to make the protection of children and the prevention of abuse his number one priority now that he is officially in charge.

Fr. Peter M. Muhich, a priest from the Diocese of Duluth, has been chosen by Pope Francis to lead the Diocese of Rapid City, SD. That diocese has a sordid history with clergy abuse, having once been headed by a bishop who was himself an abuser. Bishop-elect Muhich now has the chance to come in and make his mark by leading the diocese into a new era of openness, transparency, and protection for children and the vulnerable.

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YOUNGSTOWN (OH)
SNAPnetwork.org

May 12, 2020

By SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests)

A priest who had previously been determined to have “credible” allegations of abuse against him has suddenly removed from the diocesan list following a new investigation. We call on Catholic officials to be clear and direct in sharing the information with the public that has resulted in this change.

Fr. William Smaltz was included on the initial list of priests accused of abuse released by the Diocese of Youngstown in 2018. Despite that listing, diocesan leaders now claim that they have determined those allegations are no longer “credible,” but have released precious little information to the public.

There are many unanswered questions about this situation, chief among them being who was in charge of this new investigation? Similarly, what facts have emerged that made previously “credible” claims suddenly unsubstantiated? Catholic officials in Youngstown are saying little about this case which does a disservice to parishioners, parents, and the public.

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Catholic Herald

May 15, 2020

By Natasha Marsh

There has been only one topic in Australia that has broken through the Covid-19 eclipse, and that is the exoneration of Cardinal George Pell by the High Court on Tuesday, April 7. By a unanimous decision, 7-0, the court acquitted the cardinal of all charges, saying there should have been “sufficient doubt” in the minds of the jury when they condemned him over a year ago.

This could have marked the end of a bitter episode, yet many Australians – in a mirrored unanimity – voted to ignore the High Court’s decision: in their own minds, the Cardinal remains a guilty man.

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UNITED STATES
Stand Up Speak Up (blog)

May 8, 2020

By Tim Lennon

At age 12, I was raped and sexually abused for months. I froze. Now I fight back. The radio interview covers my steps from victim to advocate.

Also, I detail my journey of recovering memories from previous decades. As a result of substantial investigation, I discovered that the sexual predator who raped me got caught three times previous to his assignment to my parish and elementary school.

[How to Research an Abuser]

Radio interview with National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Abuse, NAASCA.org.

See more of my story, narrative, photos, and documents on My Story.

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UNITED STATES
America

May 15, 2020

Tara Reade was interviewed by the journalist Megyn Kelly on May 8 regarding Ms. Reade’s allegations of sexual harassment and assault by Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. Ms. Reade alleges that Mr. Biden assaulted her in 1993, when he was serving as a U.S. senator and Ms. Reade was a member of his staff.

As Doreen St. Felix wrote in The New Yorker, “the interview yielded little new information, offering viewers a chance to put a face to a name and to decide for themselves, based on not much more than a feeling in the gut, whether they would grant Reade their sympathy.”

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican News

May 13, 2020

By Andrea Torniello

The Vatican is not at risk of default, says the Prefect of the Holy See’s Secretariat for the Economy. “We are not a company. Everything can be measured in terms of deficit. We live thanks to the help of the faithful and we pay 17 million Euros a year in taxes to Italy. We work for a transparent system and for the centralization of investments.”

Father Juan Antonio Guerrero Alves was appointed just a few months ago as Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy. Pope Francis himself called on him to carry out a reform that aims at the economic transparency of the Holy See and an ever more efficient use of the goods and resources at the service of its evangelizing mission. Fr Alves now finds himself having to deal with the crisis caused by Covid-19. Not wanting to grant this interview, he explained that he thinks “there are other more important things in the Church. I would also have liked to wait longer before speaking. However, this moment is challenging for everyone – for us as well. It also requires clarity.”

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ROME (ITALY)
National Catholic Register

May 13, 2020

By Edward Pentin

Jesuit Father Antonio Guerrero Alves told Vatican News that he anticipates a steep drop in annual revenues, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Vatican is not at risk of default but has “difficult years ahead” and could lose nearly a half of its annual revenue due to the coronavirus, the head of Vatican finances has said.

In a May 13 Vatican News interview with Andrea Tornielli, the editorial director of the Dicastery for Communications, Jesuit Father Antonio Guerrero Alves, who last year succeeded Cardinal George Pell as prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, said the “most optimistic calculate a decrease in revenue of around 25%, the most pessimistic, around 45%.”

The Spanish Jesuit added that his optimistic and pessimistic forecasts depend on “external factors” and how much the Vatican can reduce costs.

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ROME (ITALY)
Catholic Herald

May 13, 2020

By Christopher Altieri

The Italian daily, Il Mesaggero, published a piece earlier this week by their Vaticanologist, Franca Giansoldati, detailing a financial outlook that is very grim, indeed.

Internal Vatican documents obtained by Il Messaggero – a paper Pope Francis reads regularly – show that curial heads are contemplating drops in revenue between 30% and 80% in 2020, and a resulting deficit between 28% and 175%, depending on how successful cost-controlling measures – some of which are already in place – prove to be.

The documents, which came from the Secretariat for the Economy, detail best-case, middle-case, and worst-case scenarios.

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ROME (ITALY)
Catholic News Service

May 15, 2020

By Carol Glatz

The postulator and the commission involved in investigating the life of Pope John Paul II for sainthood cause found no evidence that the pope knowingly neglected or covered up abuse scandals, the postulator said.

Msgr. Slawomir Oder, the promoter of the cause, told reporters in Rome during an online meeting May 15 that he and investigators saw nothing “that could possibly be claimed as (being) a shadow of guilt in regard to John Paul II.”

However, Msgr. Oder also explained that the investigators did not have direct access to the relevant Vatican archives but had to send the topics they wanted to explore and questions to the Secretariat of State.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

May 16, 2020

By Elise Ann Allen

Official in John Paul II’s sainthood cause says no cover-up on sex abuse

Facing suggestions that Saint John Paul II’s reputation has been stained by the Church’s child sexual abuse scandals, including perceptions that John Paul turned a blind eye to accusations against certain leading churchmen, the official responsible of the Polish Pope’s sainthood cause insisted Friday his record was thoroughly investigated and no evidence of wrongdoing was found.

“No, John Paul II didn’t cover [up] for any pedophile,” Monsignor Slawomir Oder told journalists May 15.

The judicial vicar of the ordinary tribunal of the Diocese of Rome and postulator of the cause of canonization of Saint John Paul II, Oder spoke during a May 15 virtual press roundtable marking the centenary of John Paul II’s birth May 18.

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ROME (ITALY)
Associated Press

May 15, 2020

By Nicole Winfield

Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI has honored St. John Paul II on the centenary of his birth and floated the idea that he should be called “the Great,” as only two other popes have been.

John Paul’s longtime secretary, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, held a press conference in Krakow, Poland, on Friday to present a letter by Benedict, which was released to the media in a half-dozen languages. The fanfare suggested that Dziwisz wanted to draw attention to the praise of his beloved John Paul, who was born 100 years ago this coming Monday.

The four-page letter covers territory long of concern to Benedict, but is also heavy on Polish history and John Paul’s personal background, suggesting that the 92-year-old Benedict didn’t write it alone. The letter traces John Paul’s quarter-century pontificate, his encyclicals, devotions and foreign trips, as well as the final moments of his life and the chants of “Santo Subito” or “Sainthood Now” that erupted soon thereafter.

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ROCKVILLE CENTRE (NY)
LI Herald

May 15, 2020

By Briana Bonfiglio

A state judge in Nassau County has dismissed the Diocese of Rockville Centre’s motion challenging the New York Child Victims Act (CVA).

Signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Feb. 14, 2019, the CVA allows a one-year period for victims of childhood sexual abuse to bring claims against individual abusers or institutions responsible for those abusers, forgoing the statute of limitations for victims 23 and older.

The Diocese had filed a motion to dismiss the CVA on Nov. 12, 2019, citing that changing the statute of limitation infringed on its right to due process. In addition, by dismissing dozens of lawsuits brought to the institution through the CVA, the Diocese had hoped to maintain funding to compensate victims through its own Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

May 14, 2020

By Javonte Anderson and Katherine Rosenberg-Douglas

The Archdiocese of Chicago and other Catholic dioceses throughout the state announced phased plans to begin reopening Catholic churches, starting in Chicago with small gatherings for baptisms, weddings, funerals and confession as early as May 23.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker has been under increasing pressure in recent days as smaller churches have sued the state, trying to lift the almost two-month-old stay-at-home order’s application to religious gatherings. The governor added “free exercise of religion” as an essential activity to his revised stay-at-home order late April 30, after a rural church filed suit against the plan, and Catholic leaders soon after said they were working on a plan to reopen churches. The Catholic bishops reached an agreement with the state Wednesday, according to letters posted on their dioceses’ websites.

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ORANGE (CT)
Patch

May 15, 2020

By Alfred Branch

The lawsuit argues that a March 16 order by the Orange Health Department​ went beyond an order issued by Gov. Ned Lamont.

A Catholic church in Orange is suing the town’s health director for canceling religious services during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, writes the New Haven Register.

Our Lady of Sorrows Church on Spring Street claims in a federal lawsuit that Dr. Amir Mohammad discriminated against the church by ordering the cancellation of its services. Bridgeport attorney C. Christian Young filed the lawsuit in United States District Court on behalf of the Rev. Bernard Champagne, the church’s 87-year-old priest.

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YOUNGSTOWN (OH)
Diocese of Youngstown

May 11, 2020

By Matthew Pecchia

William Smaltz was included in a list of Clergy of the Diocese of Youngstown against whom credible, substantiated allegations of sexual abuse of a minor have been made. Upon further inquiry and consideration of additional and new information, the allegations are not deemed credible and substantiated. Accordingly, William Smaltz’s name has been removed from the foregoing list.

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YOUNGSTOWN (OH)
CantonRep.com

May 12, 2020

By Charita Goshay

A former priest included on a 2018 list of clergy under investigation for improper conduct has been cleared by the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown.

In a statement from the diocese, an investigation found no credible evidence to support accusations made against the former Rev. William Smaltz involving the sexual abuse of a minor.

A native of Youngstown, Smaltz, 89, was ordained in the 1950s. He served at St. Mary’s Parish in Massillon, St. Edward parish in Youngstown, Our Lady of Lourdes in East Palestine and St. Mary’s in Conneaut.

Smaltz left the priesthood in the 1970s and later married.

According to a report published by the Vindicator, Smaltz and his attorney presented the diocese with evidence disputing the accusation, which resulted in the investigation being dropped.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

May 15, 2020

By Jack Power

Scouting bodies protected each other and their reputations while facilitating sex abuse

Child sexual abuse was “tolerated” at the highest levels of former scouting organisations, with the crimes of those who preyed on children covered up to protect the reputation of the movement, a damning report has concluded.

There is evidence that groups of sex offenders operated at the top of Scouting Ireland’s legacy organisations to protect each other and “facilitate” child abuse, a report by child protection expert Ian Elliott found.

The Government is to consider the findings of the report and decide whether a statutory inquiry into the historic abuse may be required. However, there are concerns over whether such an inquiry would be able to uncover substantially more information, according to sources.

Scouting Ireland made a full organisational apology on foot of the report’s publication on Thursday. The historic abuse relates to the Catholic Boy Scouts of Ireland (CBSI) and the Scout Association of Ireland, which merged to form Scouting Ireland in 2004.

The report said one of the legacy bodies was a “seriously dysfunctional organisation”, with “sex offenders dominating the leadership for decades”.

The culture of the former organisations were defined by “cronyism” and poor governance, which led to a consistent failure to report child abuse to authorities, it said. There was an “almost complete absence of any concern for the young people who were abused”, the report found.

Scouting Ireland has now identified 356 alleged victims of historic abuse, and 275 alleged perpetrators, who primarily operated between the 1960s and 1990s

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CARTAGENA (SPAIN)
The Leader

May 15, 2020

The Diocese of Cartagena intends to investigate the sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable people that has been committed within the Catholic Church between 1950 and 2010.

To do this, a special episcopal delegation has been created, detail of which were announced on Thursday by the bishop of Cartagena, José Manuel Lorca Planes, and his episcopal delegate, Gil José Sáez Martínez.

“I have warned all priests of the importance of this investigation,” stressed the Bishop, “and that anyone standing in the way of possible victims will be committing a truly criminal act .”

Sáez Martínez said that the new delegation has already attended eight alleged victims adding that that they will receive comprehensive care. “The problem is that we are attending to the victims, but only on the legal level. This is a situation that also needs psychological and spiritual support.”

The new episcopal delegate explained that the investigation of possible cases registered in the Region, in those six decades “requires time and investigation.

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Other/Wise, the Online Journal of the International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education

May 2020

by Peter Gajdics

I was born in 1964 in Vancouver, Canada, the youngest of five children to Catholic immigrant parents. My mother, an ethnic German, was born in the former Yugoslavia, and escaped three years in a communist concentration camp post World War II; my father, born in Hungary, was raised an orphan, and at about the same time, he also fled the rising communist regime and made his way to Canada, where my parents met and married, in 1956.

Religion and family all meant a great deal to my parents when my siblings and I were children. By most people’s standards, we were a close family: dinners together every night; piano lessons; Christmases with all the decorations; homemade European baking; Catholic schools for all us kids; and, of course, church every Sunday.

It was in my Catholic elementary school, when I was six years old, that a stranger molested me in the boy’s bathroom during a church gathering. I never talked about that abuse with anyone—already at the age of six, I’d learned to hide my shame and to silence myself. But there were cracks in my silence; soon after, I began experiencing night terrors, deep depression, and high anxiety.

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VICTORIA (AUSTRALIA)
Australian Broadcasting Corporation

May 15, 2020

By Kellie Lazzaro

Key points:
— McNamara indecently assaulted more than 15 young boys between 1970 and 1975
— He will serve seven months in prison after pleading guilty to four charges of indecent assault and one count of common assault
— McNamara worked as headmaster and sports master at St Paul’s Catholic College in Traralgon, Victoria where students nicknamed him The Rat

Marist brother Gerard Joseph McNamara, 82, has begun his second stint in prison after pleading guilty to indecently assaulting Traralgon school boys in the 1970s.

McNamara was working at St Paul’s Catholic College in Traralgon when he indecently assaulted more than 15 students between 1970 and 1975.

He abused his victims while giving them massages in the monastery, his office and a sports equipment shed, and many were targeted multiple times.

Many of the abused boys were known as victims and ridiculed by their peers.

McNamara was sentenced in the Victorian County Court today to 35 months in prison, with 28 months suspended, after pleading guilty to four charges of indecent assault and one count of common assault.

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ROME (ITALY)
Catholic News Agency

May 4, 2020

Modern society is formulating an “anti-Christian creed” and punishing those who resist it with “social excommunication,” Benedict XVI has said in a new biography, published in Germany May 4.

In a wide-ranging interview at the end of the 1,184-page book, written by German author Peter Seewald, the pope emeritus said the greatest threat facing the Church was a “worldwide dictatorship of seemingly humanistic ideologies.”

Benedict XVI, who resigned as pope in 2013, made the comment in response to a question about what he had meant at his 2005 inauguration, when he urged Catholics to pray for him “that I may not flee for fear of the wolves.”

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BIRMINGHAM (AL)
Church Militant

May 14, 2020

By Martina Moyski

The newly named bishop-designate of Birmingham, Alabama, who will serve as spiritual advisor to EWTN, is coming to his new position with unresolved allegations of cover-up on his back.

Bishop Steven J. Raica has been accused of “maintaining the ministry of priests who abuse kids,” according to a press release issued May 12 by St. Mary MacKillop Coalition for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults.

The Coalition issued the statement “to help spread the word” of Bp. Raica’s cover-ups before he steps into the sphere of the world’s largest Catholic network.

E-mails, letters and news reports that circulated throughout the diocese of Gaylord, Michigan — Bp. Raica’s previous location — show that the bishop promised the community that a priest credibly accused of sexual misconduct who was to have been permanently removed from ministry in 2002, may never have been removed from ministry at all, St. Mary MacKillop Coalition president Nadja Tirrell said.

Emails in the possession of the coalition show Fr. Jim Holtz was back in ministry in May of 2019, despite Bp. Raica’s reassurances to the contrary to the diocese.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
NOLA.com

May 14, 2020

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

In a remarkable letter filed in federal court Thursday, a priest suspected of molesting children while tending to the deaf reveals that he has continued receiving financial support from the Archdiocese of New Orleans since his 1980 removal from the ministry — and complains he’s on the brink of homelessness because the archdiocese’s recent bankruptcy filing put a stop to the payments.

The letter’s author is Gerard Howell, who served at several New Orleans-area churches, established a center for the deaf in Baton Rouge, and was removed from the ministry 16 years after his ordination over what the missive characterizes as “serious mistakes in the past.”

Howell, 80, was not named in the archdiocese’s most recent listing of retired priests who are entitled to benefits such as a monthly pension, insurance coverage and archdiocese-owned housing. Nonetheless, Howell’s emailed letter notes that in 1995, then-Archbishop Francis Schulte “promised to fully provide” for him, citing a directive from the Congregation for the Clergy, an entity in Rome that oversees diocesan priests.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

May 14, 2020

By Jay Tokasz

A Williamsville attorney is asking Pope Francis to intervene and reinstate the pay and benefits of a priest who was suspended from ministry due to substantiated allegations of child sex abuse.

The lawyer, Michael S. Taheri, said in a letter to the pontiff that there was no “legal or canonical basis” for Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger to terminate pay and benefits for the Rev. Samuel Venne.

Scharfenberger on May 1 cut off monthly pay and benefits for Venne and 22 other priests accused of abuse or misconduct. The move was part of negotiations in federal bankruptcy court with a creditor’s committee representing more than 200 plaintiffs who alleged child sex abuse by priests and sued the diocese under the Child Victims Act.

But according to church law, Scharfenberger is obligated to provide financial support for all Buffalo Diocese priests, even those who have been removed from ministry due to substantiated allegations of child sex abuse.

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ROCKVILLE CENTRE (NY)
Catholic News Agency via Catholic World Report

May 14, 2020

A judge ruled Wednesday that New York’s Child Victims Act is constitutional, rejecting a suit filed by the Diocese of Rockville Centre that claimed the law is barred by the due process clause in the state constitution.

The act opened a one-year window for adults in the state who were sexually abused as children to file lawsuits against their abusers. It also adjusted the statute of limitations for both pursuing criminal charges and civil suits against sexual abusers or institutions where the abuse took place.

“The court finds the Child Victims Act is a reasonable response to remedy the injustice of past child sexual abuse,” Justice Steven Jaeger of the New York Supreme Court in Nassau County wrote in his May 13 decision. “Accordingly, it does not violate defendant diocese’s right to due process under the New York State Constitution.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Associated Press

May 13, 2020

A federal judge is giving most claimants until Nov. 13 to seek compensation over child sexual abuse from the Harrisburg Roman Catholic Diocese, which sought bankruptcy protection earlier this year.

The order signed last week by Chief Bankruptcy Judge Henry Van Eck also gave governmental entities until Dec. 11 to file proofs of claims for debts.

The diocese issued a statement on Wednesday that encouraged anyone with a claim involving “any actual or alleged sexual offense” by its clergy, teachers, employees or volunteers to submit a claims form.

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