ABUSE TRACKER

On a chilly November morning, Derek Lewis sat on a bench in front of a haunted little white building, remembering.

The 34-year-old Hayward man’s psychologist says it’s good to come to this quiet spot in Contra Costa County to confront the past. The structure used to house the office and living area of the head priest at the church that was once next door. Inside the building, as well as inside the church, Lewis said, the priest sexually abused him repeatedly over two years starting when Lewis was about 8 years old, inflicting trauma that set his young life on a tortuous path.

Lewis looked away from the building, hiding tears, as he described what it was like inside: the old brown carpet, the musty smell, the portrait of Jesus looking on as the priest reached to touch him.

“An ugly place,” Lewis said.

After some 25 years of avoiding…

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After a pair of Virginia bishops made an apostolic visitation to the troubled Diocese of Knoxville, what happens next?

Twenty months after priests in East Tennessee first sounded an alarm regarding their bishop’s leadership, they got what they asked for: A pair of Virginia bishops traveled last week down to the Smoky Mountains for an apostolic visitation with the clergy of the Diocese of Knoxville.

The Vatican-ordered inspection came after earlier enquiries by Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, after media coverage of their bishop’s administrative misconduct – on matters both alleged and confirmed – and after a letter last year in which priests asked the apostolic nuncio for “merciful relief” from a diocesan culture they said was demoralizing and dysfunctional.

Priests in Knoxville have alleged that Bishop Rick Stika bullies and threatens to get what he wants, has acted with disregard for the Church’s financial laws, and intervened to cover up, or…

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Three former Servite High School students allege they were repeatedly sexually assaulted by a priest, according to three new lawsuits filed in court, the latest in a series of allegations against a pastor who also acted as a teacher and swim coach at the prestigious school.

A total of eight former students have filed lawsuits against the private school in Anaheim and Father Kevin Fitzpatrick, who, according to the attorney for several of the plaintiffs, worked to gain the trust of young boys at the school and “commanded” a room that was being used to isolate and sexually abuse them.

At one point, Fitzpatrick also brought what looked like an old barber chair that the victims said was used during some of the alleged abuse, according to Mike Reck, one of the lawyers.

Allegations against Fitzpatrick first surfaced in a lawsuit in June, which was followed in September by another…

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Three lawsuits filed this week allege the Diocese failed to keep children safe from clergy members who were known abusers.

Cases are mounting against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, which oversaw priests who are accused of sexually abusing children decades ago.

Lawsuits filed by a former parishioner at St. Joseph Church in Portland, and two brothers who served as altar boys at St. Hyacinth Church in Westbrook, allege the Diocese failed to keep children safe from clergy members who were known abusers. NEWS CENTER Maine is not naming the alleged victims. 

The brothers accuse a priest, Michael Plourde, of sexually abusing them in 1978. Their mother reported the alleged incidents to Plourde’s supervisor, Rev. Antonio Gosselin, but family members never heard back from him about the reported abuse. Michael Bigos of Berman & Simmons represents the alleged victims.

“Two years before, the abuse was reported at St. Hyacinth. That report…

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For the second consecutive year, a lay organization of faithful Catholics has named the Diocese of Scranton as being one of the most financially transparent dioceses in the United States.

For six years, Voice of the Faithful has reviewed all U.S. Catholic dioceses’ online financial transparency. The group’s 2022 report identifies the Diocese of Scranton as one of only five dioceses to receive an overall score of 100% in regards to transparency. This year’s other top-scoring dioceses include Charleston, Lexington, Orlando and Rochester.

The Diocese of Scranton also received an overall score of 100% for financial transparency in 2021.

The Voice of the Faithful’s sixth annual review of all dioceses was conducted between June 1 and Aug. 31 by three independent reviewers and their report, “Measuring and Ranking Diocesan Online Financial Transparency: 2022 Report,” was released on Nov. 28, 2022.

In addition to receiving a perfect score in the report,…

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Most. Rev. James P. Powers, Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Superior, last month released the list of abusive clergy who have substantiated allegations of sexual abuse of a minor. The list of names is the result of three separate clergy file reviews, including one by a private independent security consulting firm, more than a year of meetings, multiple sessions with the Diocesan Review Board (lay people with various life experiences), and much prayer and discernment.  

Bishop Powers sincerely acknowledges the sinful harms of the past, apologizes on behalf of the local Church, and prays for the healing of all victims-survivors and their affected families and friends. 

“I wish we could go back in time and undo all of the hurt and pain, the sins of the past. But we cannot,” said Bishop Powers.  “What we can do is learn from the past and do everything in our power to never…

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A group of clerical sexual abuse survivors has filed a request with the Baltimore Circuit Court in an attempt to make public a recently sealed attorney general’s report that claims to chronicle hundreds of instances of clerical abuse.

At issue is a 456-page report compiled by the office of Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, which consists of information given by the Archdiocese of Baltimore along with information gathered from interviews, and which claims to identify more than 600 victims of clerical abuse in the archdiocese dating back eight decades. It is currently unclear whether the report will lead to any new criminal charges.

A judge in Baltimore last week ordered all proceedings, filings, and communications related to the release of the report on clerical sexual abuse to be made confidential. Going forward, the legal processes of releasing the full report will not be disclosed to the public because of the confidentiality order….

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News 5’s yearlong investigation getting results

It’s something victims never thought would happen, but now payments are coming to those who experienced severe abuse as kids at a former home for children called the Parmadale Children’s Village of St. Vincent DePaul. It’s restitution that’s starting to help heal those who had no hope in the past.

“I feel better that I did it. I’m still not crazy about being on camera…” said Carolyn Mason about telling her story publicly. She said she feels much better than the first time she sat down with us back in January while wiping away tears. “If I had bruises, which one time she blacked my eye really, really good. So, that Sunday I couldn’t see my grandma and grandpa because it was too bruised and black,” she told us back then.

She had opened up for the first time about the severe abuse she…

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Father Hans Zollner, a Jesuit priest and an expert in the fight against abuse, said the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith “must respond” to questions surrounding the case of Father Marko Rupnik, a member of the Society of Jesus accused of abuse.

Zollner is one of the leading experts in the field of safeguarding from sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. He is a member of the Vatican’s Commission for the Protection of Minors since its creation in 2014 and is the director of the Institute of Anthropology: Interdisciplinary Studies on Human Dignity and Care (IADC) at the Gregorian University in Rome.

In a statement to ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language sister news agency, Zollner said that he believes that “it’s obvious that the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith has to respond.”

Zollner’s statement marks another development in the widening controversy surrounding Rupnik, a well-known Jesuit…

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U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has apparently prioritized their anti-LGBT stance rather than addressing their pedophile priest scandal. Here’s a recent example of how this plays out:

Father David Marcotte was suspended from his ministry as an Archdiocese of Indianapolis Catholic priest in February 2019, due to allegations of sexual abuse of a minor in 2016.

In October 2019, Marcotte was arrested and charged with three felony counts: child solicitation (Level 5 felony), vicarious sexual gratification (Level 5 felony), and dissemination of matter harmful to minors (Level 6 felony).

Then on Nov. 9, Marcotte was sentenced to a year of home detention and 18 months probation under a plea agreement for the lesser Level 6 felony. The plea agreement allows Marcotte to avoid prison time and avoid registering as a sex offender. The parents of the young male victim begged the…

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An unprecedented crisis of confidence is shaking a historic center of Catholicism in Germany — the Archdiocese of Cologne. Catholic believers have protested their deeply divisive archbishop and are leaving in droves over allegations that he may have covered up clergy sexual abuse reports.

While Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki’s personal fate is in the hands of Pope Francis, the drama has reverberations nationwide, given that the Cologne archdiocese has more Catholics than any other in Germany — about 1.8 million. Its double-domed cathedral is an iconic tourist attraction and one of the oldest, most important pilgrimage sites of Northern Europe.

And the crisis in Cologne, in which many thousands of Catholics in the region have left the church, is in some ways a microcosm of the issues playing out in the German Catholic Church as a whole as it undergoes a profound and controversial reform process precisely to respond to…

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The Archdiocese of Seattle has paid nearly $2.3 million since August to settle five claims brought by people who alleged they were sexually abused decades ago by clergy and parish school personnel.

The settlements, for allegations of abuse occurring in the 1950s, 1970s, and 1980s, were announced by the archdiocese in November. Three of the five cases involve alleged perpetrators who have since died. They are the only individuals named in an archdiocesan news release.

The settlements, collectively totaling $2,285,000, are the latest of more than 450 cases the archdiocese has paid more than $116 million to settle since the 1980s. 

Attorney Darrell Cochran, whose firm has represented scores of clients who’ve alleged clergy abuse, represented a woman who said she was abused at St. Louise Parish School in Bellevue and settled one of the five cases.

The woman, identified by her initials, J.C. in a complaint for sexual abuse, negligence and…

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Bishop cited an “insurmountable number of claims”

Payouts for childhood sexual abuse claims have taken a financial toll on a host of venerable American institutions that provided youth programs where predators lurked, from the Boy Scouts of America to Penn State, Michigan State and numerous church organizations.

With a three-year window for new claims of decades-old abuse closing at the end of this month, the Diocese of Santa Rosa, one of five Roman Catholic dioceses serving the Bay Area, has announced it will file for bankruptcy protection early next year.

“It is the inevitable result of an insurmountable number of claims,” Bishop Robert F. Vasa wrote in an announcement last Friday that said the diocese is facing more than 130 abuse claims dating back to its establishment in 1962, mostly from the 1970s and 1980s.

The claims are made possible by AB 218, a California law that made it easier…

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The number of people who claim they were abused by Catholic priests when they were children continues to grow, including two brothers who served as altar boys at St. Hyacinth Church in Westbrook.

The lawsuit against the Diocese of Portland alleges two brothers, who were 10 and 12 years old, told their mother that the Rev. Michael Plourde sexually abused them before early morning mass at St. Hyacinth Church in the late 1970s.

The lawsuit said the mother pulled the boys out of church and reported the abuse to church leaders, and never heard another word. The family never returned.

The complaints state that the diocese removed Plourde from ministry in 1994 based on multiple allegations of sex abuse.

Lawyers for the alleged victims said Plourde is still alive and living in Cumberland County. Efforts to reach him for comment were unsuccessful.

The third case filed Thursday involves another man who said he…

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If you or someone you know needs resources or support related to sexual violence, contact the Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault’s 24/7 hotline at 800-871-7741.

Three men who claim they were sexually abused by priests as children decades ago sued the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland on Thursday in Cumberland County Superior Court.

And in a separate lawsuit earlier this week, a Portland, Oregon, woman sued the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate Eastern Province in U.S. District Court in Bangor. The woman, now in her 70s, claims she was sexually abused by priests in the 1950s at a seminary the order ran in Bar Harbor and a retreat house in Bucksport.

The lawsuits are the latest legal claims made possible by a 2021 change in state law that lifted a statute of limitations on such claims. Previously, state law effectively prevented people who were abused as children before the late 1980s from…

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One of the Vatican’s leading Jesuit advisers on preventing clergy sexual abuse called Dec. 7 for church authorities to shed more light on the case of a famous Jesuit artist who wasn’t sanctioned by the Holy See after he was accused of spiritually abusing women during confession.

Jesuit Fr. Hans Zollner said the recent statement by the Jesuit order about Fr. Marko Ivan Rupnik “raised questions that, as far as I see, can only be answered by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.”

The Jesuits said in a statement made public this week that the Dicastery, which handles abuse cases, had closed its file on Rupnik, one of the most famous Catholic artists alive today, because the statute of limitations had expired.

The order said precautionary measures imposed on the priest by his Jesuit superior remained in effect, forbidding him from hearing confession or giving spiritual…

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SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is calling for an investigation into what Franciscan University of Steubenville knew about its former priest, Father David Morrier.

Morrier admitted to a single count of sexual battery and was sentenced to five years probation earlier this year for abusing a student he was counseling. He is required to register as a sex offender.

Morrier, while working as a priest at Franciscan University, allegedly convinced a student he was counseling that having sex with him was necessary for mental health treatment purposes.

SNAP says that documents that have recently come to light about the abuse of the the student by the priest are “troubling.”

SNAP said this in a statement:

“We do know that Fr. Morrier is a convicted & registered sex offender who targeted and preyed on an extremely vulnerable student. The published documents detail additional very troubling…

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A brother in the Diocese of Madison had sexual contact and exchanged inappropriate videos with a 17-year-old girl he met in a Bible study he led at a DeForest-based parish, a criminal complaint says.

Rajnal Rehmat, 31, was charged Monday with sexual assault of a child by a person who works or volunteers with children and child enticement, both felonies, for the incidents alleged to have happened between Sept. 5 and Oct. 1. A Dane County court commissioner on Monday set Rehmat’s bail at $5,000 and ordered the Pakistan native to relinquish his passport.

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A complaint against Rehmat, who had been working for the diocese since June, details two instances when Rehmat and the girl kissed and engaged in sexual touching in a vehicle — once near St. Olaf parish in DeForest, where he was living on the weekends, and once at Warner Park…

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For years, the three Roman Catholic dioceses operating parishes in Maryland have successfully lobbied lawmakers to keep sexual abuse survivors from filing lawsuits against the church, a review of lobbying records shows.

Over the past five years, the Maryland Catholic Conference, the church’s public policy arm for the three dioceses, has spent more than $200,000 hiring former lawmakers and government officials and consultants as lobbyists to stop the Maryland General Assembly from expanding the state’s statute of limitations on lawsuits arising from sexual abuse claims.

“This is money that goes into collection,” said Teresa Lancaster, an Edgewater attorney who was abused five decades ago while attending Archbishop Keough High School. “The church is using it to lobby against children.”

Under state law, childhood sexual abuse survivors have until their 38th birthday to file a lawsuit or three years after their abuser was convicted in criminal court, whichever…

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In the two decades since widespread child abuse within the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston came to light, every diocese in Massachusetts has released a list of priests credibly accused of sex abuse — except the Diocese of Worcester.

“There is no public precedent for the publishing of lists of the accused — such as those accused in other positions of trust such as medicine, education or law enforcement,” Ray Delisle, a spokesperson for the Diocese of Worcester, said in an email addressing the diocese’s lack of a list.

The diocese publishes and distributes information on each priest who is placed on administrative leave and/or laicized and that information remains public on its website, according to Delisle.

Mitchell Garabedian, who has represented survivors in their claims against the Catholic Church nationally and internationally, told MassLive Friday it is important to have a list of credibly accused…

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Journalists investigating secular and Catholic Church sources in Poland have called into question allegations by a Dutch writer that St. John Paul II “covered up” sexual abuse while still a bishop in Poland.

On Dec. 2, Ekke Overbeek, a journalist from the Netherlands living in Poland, said he had found “concrete cases of priests abusing children in the Archdiocese of Krakow, where the future pope was archbishop. The future pope knew about it and transferred them anyway, which led to new victims.”

Overbeek referred to the case of the priest Eugeniusz Surgent and “many others” whom Karol Wojtyla allegedly “covered up.”

The Dutch publication NOS, in which Overbeek’s statements appeared, reported the journalist spent three years combing “Polish archives.”

“Almost all documents collected directly about Wojtyla have been destroyed. However, in other surviving documents, he is mentioned very often. And if you put them all together, they are…

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Investigators with the Maryland Attorney General’s Office uncovered 80 years’ worth of child sex abuse cases inside the Catholic Church, and alleged victims want to be part of the legal proceedings over whether that report will be made public.

They say they don’t trust the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

“They claim to follow the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but they turn their back on the lepers of today,” said SNAP Maryland Director David Lorenz.

The Attorney General’s report identifies 600 different alleged victims and advocates want to make sure they no longer remain silenced.

Advocates have retained a pair of catastrophic injury law firms with experience representing systemic sexual abuse to make sure they have a voice in the process.

“We’ll be filing a motion to intervene so that we’ll become parties to the proceedings and then once granted standing in the proceedings, we are going to seek to have the…

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We are unable to authenticate the documents calling into question whether Franciscan University of Steubenville’s statement that they only learned of the sexual assault allegations against Fr. David Morrier in 2015. However, since they have now been published publicly, the university needs to be investigated, preferably by an outside authority, to determine who knew what, when they knew it, and what they did, or did not, do about these serious accusations. Moreover, the process, as well as the results of the probe, need to be completely open and transparent.

We do know that Fr. Morrier is a convicted & registered sex offender who targeted and preyed on an extremely vulnerable student. The published documents detail additional very troubling accusations that call into question the integrity and truthfulness of this Catholic college.

Enough is enough, light needs to be shined into this dark corner. The courageous…

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ALERT: Statute of Limitations is up December 31 for California Child Sex Abuse Survivors  

(Los Angeles, CA) – In a new report, a nationwide Catholic lay group, Voice of the Faithful (VOTF), has analyzed the relative ‘financial transparency’ of every US Catholic diocese or archdiocese. We applaud the study and harshly criticize California’s 12 bishops for being “as reckless and secretive with parishioners’ money as they are with their own child molesting clerics.”

“They hide their assets the same way they hide their offenders,” said attorney Jeff Anderson.

For the sixth year in a row, the Boston-based Voice of the Faithful has issued a 49-page study called “Measuring and Ranking Diocesan Online Financial Transparency”. Over a three-month period (6/1/22 – 8/31/22), independent reviewers weighed ten factors including whether dioceses post audited financial reports, list diocesan finance council members, and use “common sense chain of custody” procedures, like “using at least…

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Thirteen people form a new tribunal that will deal with misconduct in the Roman Catholic Church of France. The National Canon Criminal Court (TPCN) was sworn in on Monday.

The new tribunal will deal with cases in the Church connected to sexual abuse of adults, power abuse, breach of trust and issues of spiritual influence. The Dicastery of the Doctrine of Faith will remain responsible for dealing with cases of sexual abuse of children. That is reported by RCF.

Excommunication

Any Catholic who feels he has suffered wrongdoings in the Church may go to the tribunal. After investigations, the TCPN may decide to sentence the perpetrator to penalties, such as a fine, prohibition of ministry, dismissal from the clerical state or excommunication. The tribunal can also determine that the perpetrator has to pay his or the victim damages, Famille Chretienne writes.

Yet, the TPCN is…

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Survivors of Maryland clergy sex abuse accuse the Catholic Church of turning a blind eye to their pain. Now, they said time’s up.

The group of survivors claims the release of the state attorney general’s investigation is essential for their healing. They shared their demands with the media, even going so far as to call for a change in leadership of the Catholic Church. Survivors pointed the finger at Baltimore Archbishop William Lori, saying he needs to go.

“You turned away, you chose to fall silent and you chose to protect your criminals. We will not go away, sit down or shut up, and most of us think, sir, that you need to resign,” said Gemma Hoskins, an advocate.

Hoskins is a former student at Archbishop Keough High School, where sexual abuse was rampant. She took part in the Netflix documentary “The Keepers,” which focused on the killing of Sister…

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Two Quebec bishops, one deceased and one living, have been named in a sexual abuse class action against the Archdiocese of Quebec.

Bishops Clement Fecteau (1933-2017) and Jean-Pierre Blais, who is Bishop of Baie-Comeau, are among the accused whose names were released by the law firm Arsenault Dufresne Wee Avocats.

Fecteau is accused of abusing a 13-year-old victim in 1987 at the Séminaire de Quebec. He was appointed auxiliary bishop for the Quebec archdiocese in 1989 and would in 1996 be appointed Bishop of Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatiere.

Blais is accused of abusing a 12-year-old between 1973 and 1975.

The accusations are civil in nature and not known to involve any criminal charges or investigations. They have not been proven in court.

When abuse allegations are made against a bishop, it is up to an archbishop to notify Vatican authorities as soon as allegations are made known. The Quebec news service Presence left…

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When a religious community raises red flags, where should Catholics go for transparent answers?

When Natalie Schuldt heard this spring that her bishop had invited members of the Institute of the Incarnate Word (IVE) to establish a presence in their Diocese of Fairbanks, Alaska, she was concerned.

“Just a little bit of investigation into their order drew a lot of red flags for me and for others,” she told The Pillar.

The Institute of the Incarnate Word was founded in San Rafael, Argentina in 1984 by Fr. Carlos Miguel Buela.

In 2016, the Vatican confirmed that Buela had been found guilty of sexual misconduct with IVE seminarians.

The priest was banned from being in contact with members of the institute he founded, from making statements or appearing in public, and from participating in the organization’s activities.

The IVE was also close to Theodore McCarrick, the disgraced former cardinal who sexually abused…

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Allegations against a Slovenian Jesuit artist have become a point of scandal in Europe, where Fr. Marko Rupnik, SJ, is accused of serially abusing Slovenian consecrated women, and questions have been raised about the Vatican’s handling of the affair.

While the priest, 68, is prohibited from public ministry, the allegations raised publicly in recent days have again raised questions about public accountability and transparency in the Church’s own criminal justice system — and about a lack of consistency in the Church’s approach to the application of justice.

And newly emerged information confirmed to The Pillar paints an unflattering portrait of the Vatican’s handling of the allegations against Rupnik.

But to Vatican-watchers, the outline of Rupnik’s case has a familiar shape and hue. And alongside similar cases, it contributes to the emerging picture of the Vatican’s continued handling of serious sexual abuse cases involving clerics.

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Fr. Marko Rupnik is more well-known in Italy…

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Reports emerged this week that Slovenian Jesuit Father Marko Ivan Rupnik, a world-famous artist whose murals adorn the walls of churches and chapels throughout the Vatican and beyond, has been accused of sexual misconduct with nuns and has been barred by his order from public ministry.

This makes Rupnik, 68, the latest in a series of high-profile Catholic individuals in recent years to face such allegations, including famed French layman Jean Vanier, founder of the L’Arche community that assists intellectually disabled adults, and the late Father Werenfried van Straaten, a Dutch priest who founded the papally-sponsored Catholic charity “Aid to the Church in Need” in 1952 to aid persecuted Christians.

In a statement dated Dec. 2, the Society of Jesus to which Rupnik belongs said that a complaint was made against him in 2021 and sent to the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), which deals with…

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The Vatican came under pressure Tuesday to explain why it didn’t prosecute a famous Jesuit artist and merely let his order restrict the priest’s ministry following allegations that he abused his authority over adult women.

The Jesuits, the same order to which Pope Francis belongs, announced in a statement made public this week that the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith had determined the statute of limitations had expired and closed the case against the Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik.

Mosaics by Rupnik, a native of Slovenia who is as close as it gets to an official Vatican artist, decorate the Lourdes basilica, a chapel in the Apostolic Palace and churches around the globe.

In specifying that Rupnik was not accused of sexually abusing minors, the Jesuits indicated that he was accused of sexual-related crimes with adults involving the confessional, since those are the other types of canonical crimes…

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Bishop Robert F. Vasa of Santa Rosa announced Dec. 2 that the diocese expects to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection because it faces more than 130 new claims of sex abuse dating from 1962 to the present, with “a vast majority of the cases” dating to the 1970s and 1980s.

The diocesan attorneys are expected to file Chapter 11 after Dec. 31 and before March 1, he said in a statement.

“After months of careful and prayerful consideration” and consultation with the priests of the diocese, the Diocesan Finance Council and professionals retained by the diocese,” Bishop Vasa said, “it has become clear to me that it is necessary” for the diocese to take this action.

“This decision was made necessary due to the overwhelming number of sexual abuse lawsuits filed against the diocese after the statute of limitations was lifted for a three-year ‘window,’” he said.

In 2019,…

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Archdiocese drops its defence that time to take legal action has elapsed

Germany’s Catholic church may face a wave of clerical abuse compensation claims after the Cologne archdiocese dropped its statute of limitations defence in a closely-watched court case.

On Tuesday Cologne district court began hearing the case of a man who has sued the archdiocese for €805,000 in damages.

Mr Georg Menne says he was sexually abused at least 320 times during the 1970s by a Catholic priest, Erich Jansen. Until his death in 2020 the priest remained active in parish work despite being reported to archdiocese authorities at least twice – in 1980 and 2010.

“If they had taken him out of action these acts wouldn’t have happened with me and other children,” said Mr Menne to WDR public television.

His lawyers accuse the archdiocese of violating its duty of care for not investigating the perpetrator and…

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A judge in Baltimore this week ordered all proceedings, filings, and communications related to the release of a major attorney general’s report on clerical sexual abuse to be made confidential. 

Judge Anthony Vittoria of the Circuit Court for Baltimore City issued a confidentiality ruling Dec. 2 in response to a request from an anonymous group of people named in the report but who were not accused of abuse, the Baltimore Sun reported.

At issue is a 456-page report compiled by the office of Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, consisting of information given by the Archdiocese of Baltimore along with information gathered from interviews that claims to identify more than 600 victims of clerical abuse in the archdiocese dating back eight decades. It is currently unclear whether the report will lead to any new criminal charges.

The Archdiocese of Baltimore, which is paying the legal fees for the anonymous…

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The order includes documents that have already been released to the public

A Baltimore Circuit Court judge has sealed all records — including, retroactively,some that are already public — related to Attorney General Brian E. Frosh’s 456-page report into historical clergy sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

Circuit Court Judge Anthony Vittoria’s ruling Friday concurs with a request to the court made Nov. 21 by an anonymous group of people who are named in the report but not accused of abuse. The report includes allegations of coverup and mishandling as well as abuse. Lawyers for the group filed a request to keep all filings and proceedings around the release of the report secret, until a judge rules whether the report, which is already under seal, should be released, and to provide their clients a confidential opportunity to address the court before that decision is reached.

“To preserve the secrecy…

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Après le cardinal Marc Ouellet, d’autres hauts dirigeants de l’église catholique du Québec sont dénoncés par des victimes alléguées d’agressions sexuelles. Il s’agit de Mgr Clément Fecteau, ancien évêque de Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière et Mgr Jean-Pierre Blais, actuel évêque de Baie-Comeau.

Le cabinet d’avocats Arsenault Dufesne Wee, en charge des actions collectives autorisées contre les diocèses de Québec et de Trois-Rivières, ont déposé au dossier de la cour et rendu public jeudi deux nouveaux tableaux des victimes alléguées. Dans les tableaux, les victimes sont anonymisées. Il y est indiqué les lieux et dates des agressions présumées, l’âge de la victime et le nom du ou des religieux ou laïcs agresseurs.

Selon les avocats, 134 victimes ont affirmé avoir été agressées par plus d’une centaine de prêtres ou de membre du personnel du diocèse de Québec. 

Dans le tableau déposé à la cour, le nom de Mgr Clément Fecteau, décédé en 2018, apparaît…

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Les événements reprochés à monseigneur Jean-Pierre Blais, l’évêque du diocèse de Baie-Comeau se seraient déroulés dans les années 70 dans la région de Québec. 

L’évêque aurait commis des gestes d’attouchements et de masturbation de façon régulière sur une victime âgée à l’époque de 12 à 14 ans dans la paroisse de Charny entre 1973 et 1975.

C’est le cabinet d’avocats Arsenault Dufresne Wee qui a rendu publics hier deux nouveaux tableaux de victimes alléguant avoir été agressées par des prêtres ou des membres du personnel du diocèse de Québec.

Le cabinet est responsable d’un recours collectif contre les diocèses de Québec et de Trois-Rivières.

Le nom de monseigneur Jean-Pierre Blais du diocèse de Baie-Comeau y a été ajouté. Dans un court communiqué transmis aux médias, monseigneur Jean-Pierre Blais nie formellement avoir eu des gestes déplacés sur la présumée victime. Il entend collaborer au processus judiciaire en cours et ne fera…

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The Roman Catholic Jesuit order said it disciplined a prominent priest and artist who reportedly sexually and psychologically abused nuns in his native Slovenia three decades ago.

The Jesuits issued a statement about Father Marko Ivan Rupnik following Italian media reports last week that several nuns had accused him of abuse in the early 1990s when he was their spiritual director at a convent in Slovenia.

Rupnik faces restrictions including not being allowed to hear confessions or preside at spiritual exercises.

The priest is well known in the Church as a mosaics master who designed chapels around the world, including one in the Vatican and in the St. John Paul II National Shrine in Washington, D.C.

The statement from Jesuit headquarters in Rome said the order had carried out an investigation into Rupnik after the Vatican’s doctrinal department received a complaint last year about “the method by which he carried…

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A prominent Jesuit priest and artist had his ministry restricted, reportedly after an investigation by his religious order into allegations of abuse against religious sisters in Slovenia.

The Jesuits said in a statement dated Dec. 2 that the order has barred 68-year-old Father Marko Ivan Rupnik, SJ, from hearing confessions or conducting spiritual direction since the Vatican received a complaint against him in 2021.

The Vatican declined in October to carry out a canonical process due to the statute of limitations, the order said. The complaint did not include minors.

The Jesuit order said the restrictions on Rupnik’s ministry were still in effect and included a ban on leading the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. The priest is also prohibited from engaging in public activities without the permission of his superior.

Rupnik, the director of the Centro Aletti in Rome, was the creator of the official image…

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In the 1980s, Father Brian Cox told an official with Catholic church he had a problem – he was attracted to teenage boys.

The official, according to court papers, brushed him off, telling the Westminster priest not to “worry about it.” Cox, in a taped conversation with one of his victims, said a bishop once told him he was a priest, and priests don’t need help.

It later would be revealed, through court records and newspaper reporting, that Cox had molested children at St. John Catholic School — an extension of the St. John Westminster parish where Cox was a pastor — from 1978 to 1989. He stayed on as an assistant at St. John, but his post formally ended in 1995 when an unnamed “third party” came forward to church officials and accused Cox of sexual abuse.

Cox is one of more than…

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In a setback for efforts towards transparency and justice for clergy abuse survivors in Maryland, a judge today made the decision to seal the ongoing proceedings that will decide whether or not a recently-completed attorney general report into sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore will be publicly released. While we lament this decision, we hope that this does not signal the end of the road for the Maryland report and that it will still be publicly released soon.

“We lost this skirmish but the battle to release the report goes on,” said David Lorenz, leader of SNAP Maryland. “The problem is that we now don’t have insight into what objections are being made and therefore can’t make counter arguments.”

By sealing the proceedings, the public will no longer know who is involved in arguing for or against the report in court. This move comes after Archbishop…

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Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh sought to release results

A group of Maryland clergy abuse survivors is speaking out against a court decision to stop the results of a sexual abuse investigation from being made public. A Baltimore City Circuit Court judge made the decision on Friday to seal all proceedings, filings, and communications during grand jury proceedings.

SNAP (Survivors Network Of Those Abused By Priests) called the court’s decision a setback in transparency and justice for clergy abuse survivors in Maryland. SNAP isn’t giving up hope that the investigation will still be released at some point. However, the Archdiocese maintains that it does not and will not oppose the report’s release.

SNAP’s leader David Lorenz said the problem with not having access to the results of the investigation is that they don’t have insight into what objections are being made and therefore can’t form counter…

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A Baltimore judge is now ruling all proceedings related to the Maryland Attorney General’s report on clergy sex abuse remain confidential.

A distinction: The judge’s order seals the report; however, it does not block its release. A decision whether to do so has not been made.

“To seal the proceedings about this report is very difficult for us survivors,” said David Lorenz, Maryland director of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

Legal arguments will be held behind closed doors and all documents sealed in the case asking a judge to release the Maryland Attorney General’s 456-page investigation into child sex abuse within the Baltimore archdiocese.

A judge’s ruling is necessary because the probe was conducted through a grand jury and state law keeps grand jury materials confidential without a court order.

Clergy abuse survivors consider Friday’s decision a setback because they will not have an opportunity to be heard.

…

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De nouvelles victimes s’ajoutent aux actions collectives contre le Diocèse de Québec et celui de Trois-Rivières. L’actuel évêque de Baie-Comeau, Jean-Pierre Blais, et un membre de l’Ordre national du Québec, Claude Thompson, font partie des personnes visées par les nouvelles allégations d’agressions sexuelles.

Au total, 134 victimes affirment avoir été agressées par une centaine de prêtres ou de membres du Diocèse de Québec et 43 victimes ont porté plainte contre une vingtaine de prêtres ou de membres du Diocèse de Trois-Rivières.

Lisez « Le Diocèse de Trois-Rivières est visé par une action collective »

Le cabinet Arsenault Dufresne Wee Avocats a déposé, jeudi, une liste anonymisée de ces victimes à la Cour. Elles étaient âgées de 4 à 46 ans au moment où les agressions auraient été commises, mais elles étaient mineures dans la très grande majorité des cas. Les victimes auraient été soumises à des attouchements, des fellations, des pénétrations ou des séances de masturbation, selon…

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Lawyer Stephan Rixen says his initial doubts about the independence and effectiveness of the body have been confirmed

The state-appointed chairman of the commission to investigate abuse in the Archdiocese of Cologne has quit, saying he doubted the independence of the commission and wondered whether its main aim was to protect Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki.

The German Catholic news agency KNA reported Stephan Rixen has stepped down as head of the Independent Commission for the Investigation of Abuse in the Archdiocese of Cologne and has withdrawn from the body. Rixen told KNA Dec. 5 that his initial doubts about the independence and effectiveness of the committee had been confirmed.

The state government of North Rhine-Westphalia had appointed Rixen, a constitutional lawyer, to the committee made up of representatives of the diocese, scholars and people with practical expertise as well as victims of abuse. Committee members were recruited partly by…

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Freedom From Religion Foundation asks for increasing resources to uncover allegations of clergy abuse

A Madison-based secular group is calling on Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul to escalate a statewide review of clergy sex abuse that launched last year.

The request follows the release of names of nearly two dozen clergy by the Catholic Diocese of Superior, which it says have had credible claims of sexually abusing minors made against them.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, which advocates for separation of church and state, sent a Dec. 1 letter to Kaul asking him to increase resources for the investigation after the release of names.

“Given these revelations self-reported by the Superior Diocese, we believe that re-opening an independent investigation would potentially unearth more clergy abuse that has harmed so many, and is in order,” wrote Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker, co-presidents of the foundation.

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A Few Interesting Facts about California:

• Has the most children 
• Has the most homeless kids
• Has the most children of color
• Has the largest Hispanic population of any state

Because these figures show that there are many vulnerable children in California, making it a predator’s paradise. There’s a second part of this potentially dangerous equation. California also has:

• roughly 2800 summer camps
• 1,521 youth service organizations
• the 2nd highest number of churches

This means that there are also many organizations, situations, and locations in which kids are especially vulnerable. In light of this, we at Horowitz Law feel safe in predicting that there are now literally thousands of California men and women who were victimized as children by predators. You may see where this is headed.

At the risk of sounding like a broke record, we…

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Among the many reasons people are leaving institutional churches, there is one that runs deeper than them all.

John MacArthur says  it’s because “they deconstruct the Bible to give room for their pet sins and tolerances.”

The Gospel Coalition says it’s because we have church hurt, because of poor teaching, because we have a desire to sin and want street cred.

And Matt Chandler says it’s because “deconstruction has become some sort of sexy thing to do” for people who understood Christianity only as a moral code.

Let’s assume they are correct and imagine that those of us who have left institutional churches read a Kevin DeYoung article from The Gospel Coalition about Beth Allison Barr and repent. Suddenly, we stop wanting to do sexy things, renounce street cred, end our desire to sin, understand what penal substitutionary atonement really means, forgive the churches that hurt us, and become complementarian, young…

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Legal arguments will continue behind closed doors about whether a Baltimore judge should release a 456-page investigation into child sexual abuse within the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

Baltimore Circuit Judge Anthony Vittoria ordered the case sealed on Friday. His order means all hearings will be closed to the public and all legal motions will be confidential.

“No party is permitted to share any filing or communication,” Vittoria wrote.

He went further and directed the attorneys to deliver their filings to his chambers and not submit them to the clerk’s office.

The ruling marks a win for attorneys Gregg Bernstein and William Murphy, who wanted the proceedings to be secret. The two attorneys represent some people named in the report, but not accused of sexual abuse. These people have not been publicly identified.

The Maryland Attorney General’s Office tried to keep the continued litigation open to the public.

“This case involves the…

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[Google translation followed by the original Dutch article]

John Paul II knew about child abuse in his diocese long before he became pope in 1978. This is evident from research by Trouw .

The later pope John Paul II, as archbishop of the Polish city of Krakow, knew of several cases of child abuse committed by priests. In 1971 he let a underpriest continue to work after he had abused a boy. Even when this man was convicted of abuse by a court in 1973, the future pope allowed him to continue working as a priest. In another diocese, the man again assaulted boys.

This has emerged from new years of research by Trouw in the archives of the Polish security service. Material from these archives has a controversial status in Poland because of the methods used by the security services under the communist regime. Because it also contains court documents and old testimonies of victims, new evidence can still…

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When Mitchell Rozanski was introduced more than two years ago as the next archbishop of St. Louis, he was an unknown to Roman Catholics here.

He’d grown up in Baltimore and spent his career on the East Coast. First thing he said he wanted to do was walk the land, visit and listen.

In hindsight, he was notably direct about church buildings.

“We have to take a realistic look at working with the people of the parishes,” he told reporters and others gathered at the basilica that day on June 10, 2020. “First of all, I don’t want to see a community that is burdened by buildings. Buildings are important, but buildings are not the church. It is we the people who are the church.”

Rozanski, 64, has hammered that point home as he pushes through a historic restructuring of the archdiocese, which covers the city and 10 surrounding counties….

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The Pope has revealed that his meeting with survivors of clerical abuse during his visit to Ireland in 2018 was ‘one of the most heated situations’ he has ever faced.

During his visit to the Papal Nuncio residence on Dublin’s Navan Road, Pope Francis met with survivors of clerical sex abuse and those who spent time in industrial schools and mother-and-baby homes.

The Pope has revealed that his meeting with survivors of clerical abuse during his visit to Ireland in 2018 was ‘one of the most heated situations’ he has ever faced.

During his visit to the Papal Nuncio residence on Dublin’s Navan Road, Pope Francis met with survivors of clerical sex abuse and those who spent time in industrial schools and mother-and-baby homes.

In an interview with US media in recent days, Pope Francis was challenged on what moves the Vatican is taking to improve…

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The Santa Rosa Catholic Diocese’s decision to file for bankruptcy, Bishop Robert F. Vasa said, is a “necessity” so the bankruptcy court can determine some form of justice for the people who have filed clergy abuse lawsuits. The diocese does not have the resources to “justly compensate” all those who have alleged abuse, he added.

“Perfect justice” is not possible “in this world,” Bishop Robert F. Vasa told parishioners Sunday, in the wake of the Santa Rosa Catholic Diocese’s announcement last week that it will seek bankruptcy protection in anticipation of hundreds of new and potential clergy abuse lawsuits.

“We recognize in this penitential season that perfect justice is still elusive — that we are not capable of achieving it in this lifetime,” he said during a sermon at the Cathedral of St. Eugene in Santa Rosa.

His message was livestreamed across the diocese, which oversees 40 parishes from Petaluma…

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Recently the Jesuit-run America Magazine interviewed Pope Francis on various topical issues, among them the question regarding what he would say to women who are already serving in the church, but who also feel strongly about the call to be a priest in the Catholic Church. 

Pope Francis reinforces the gender binary by pointing to the Petrine principle which means Jesus chose Peter as head of the Church and 12 male apostles because Jesus our high priest was male!

Pope Francis suggests that women have no place in the Petrine principle.

On the other hand, the Marian principle is a mirror of the Church as a woman and as the spouse of Christ. So, he suggests that women have to be content with being the mirror image of the Church which represents the feminine spouse of Christ — what a convoluted explanation to convey to women that we are an important part…

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The diocese agreed earlier this year to pay $87.5 million 

PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — South Jersey’s Catholic diocese is one step closer to compensating survivors who were sexually abused by some of the diocese’s priests.

In April, the Diocese of Camden agreed to pay $87.5 million to settle claims for victims of clergy sexual abuse.

Officials from the diocese appeared before Judge Jerrold N. Poslusny, Jr. in New Jersey District Bankruptcy Court for 14 days of testimony to approve the settlement.

The money will go to a trust fund setup over a four-year period from the diocese and related Catholic entities. The settlement also includes maintaining or enhancing protocols to protect children.

A statement from Camden Bishop Dennis J. Sullivan in part asked faithful parishioners to pray for abuse survivors as preparations for Christmas are underway.

“As this most recent step concludes during the season of Advent, I encourage the…

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Abuse victims decry lack of disclosure; San Francisco Archdiocese instead releases list of priests in “good standing”

When Bay Area bishops a few years ago released lists of their clergy found credibly accused of sexually abusing children, they called it a commitment to confronting past failings, a move toward accountability for a colossal scandal that has scarred the Catholic Church for decades.

But the Rev. Elwood Geary’s name wasn’t on any list. Neither was the Rev. Robert Gemmet’s.

The pair of now-deceased priests, who ministered in the South Bay a half-century ago, are now accused of horrific acts in separate lawsuits made possible under a state law that opened a three-year window for abuse claims long after the statute of limitations for such crimes expired. Geary and Gemmet are just two of at least 14 clergy in Northern California – 10 in the Bay Area – who this…

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A negotiated settlement to end the state attorney general’s 2020 lawsuit against the Buffalo Diocese yielded a 30-page court order and additional embarrassing news coverage of the diocese’s handling of child sex abuse allegations.

What the settlement didn’t do, according to some advocates for child sex abuse victims and child abuse prevention experts, was require the diocese to substantially change the way it operates.

Aside from a new monitoring program for offending priests, most of the policies and procedures outlined in the settlement already were being used in the diocese prior to the lawsuit.

“Essentially what was produced was weak tea,” said Marci Hamilton, chief executive officer of Child USA, a national child abuse prevention organization.

Hamilton characterized the agreement as a “deep disappointment,” as well as a missed opportunity for New York to set a new bar in holding accountable large youth-serving organizations like the Catholic…

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Current archbishop of New Orleans denies claims from Lawrence Eghabor that date back to the 1990s

A former student at a New Orleans college that trains Catholic priests has claimed he was racially and sexually harassed there – including by the city’s current archbishop – as he parries counter-allegations that he is merely trying to extort money and a green card from church officials.

Over two decades, the dispute has drawn attention from Catholic officials at the highest levels in the US and worldwide. But it was not publicly known until it surfaced as part of a chapter 11 bankruptcy case the New Orleans archdiocese opened amid a wave of lawsuits alleging child sexual abuse by clerics across generations.

Despite never interviewing the ex-seminarian, Lawrence Eghabor, or the archbishop, Gregory Aymond, the global Catholic church’s leadership at the Vatican deemed Egbahor’s claims meritless.

Eghabor said the cursory investigation demonstrated the Catholic church’s…

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Lawmakers may expand the rights of child sex abuse victims in the upcoming legislative session, renewing efforts to pass legislation that would require clergy reporting and remove time limits for lawsuit cases involving child abuse. 

Current state law sets a statute of limitations on filing for damages from childhood sexual abuses. Lawsuits have to be filed within three years of the survivor turning 18 or within three years of discovering an injury or illness caused by the abuse. Many have condemned the rule as unfair and fundamentally misguided.

Sen. Cindy Holscher, D-Overland Park, has worked for the past few years to pass legislation that would remove time limits for filing lawsuits in these cases. Holscher said it sometimes took years for victims to process their feelings and come forward, and the time limit harmed victims who aged out of the given timeframe. 

The latest form of the legislation,  View Cache

As California’s three-year window to file child sex abuse lawsuits past the statute of limitations nears its conclusion, 66 Catholic clergy and religious have been named in 116 lawsuits in Alameda County, which covers the area between San Francisco and San Jose.

Additionally, 14 of the clergy members and religious identified in the lawsuits are named for the first time, the law firm of Jeff Anderson & Associates announced Nov. 28. 

The law firm said that the 116 lawsuits may be a small percentage of the total number of suits filed under the California Child Victims Act, which was passed in 2019.

The legislation allowed a three-year period in which victims of child sex abuse could come forward with claims that would have expired under the previous statute of limitations. The window began Jan. 1, 2020, and will expire in less than a month. The bill was…

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For Immediate Release, November 30, 2022

In 2021, the messengers of the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting adopted a resolution “On Abuse and Pastoral Qualifications.” I was a member of that committee. I contributed significantly to the content of this resolution. It reads, in part, “any person who has committed sexual abuse is permanently disqualified from holding the office of pastor.” This is the sentiment of the Southern Baptist Convention.

At that same meeting, the messengers overwhelmingly insisted that an independent investigation should be conducted about the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee’s response to allegations of sexual abuse. The result of that investigation was the publication of a report in May of this year by Guidepost Solutions. That report disclosed the details of a pastor’s wife’s account of an incident in which Johnny Hunt aggressively approached her for a sexual encounter, including his pulling down her pants, pinning her down,…

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In a highly unusual move, the current president of the Southern Baptist Convention has denounced the “restoration” of a former SBC president to ministry six months after public allegations of sexual abuse.

“The idea that a council of pastors, assembled with the consent of the abusive pastor, possesses some authority to declare a pastor fit for resumed ministry is a conceit that is altogether absent from Baptist polity and from the witness of the New Testament. Indeed, it is repugnant to all that those sources extol and represent,” according to Bart Barber.

As previously reported by BNG, Georgia pastor and denominational leader Johnny Hunt was declared fit to return the ministry by a panel of four male pastor friends who have been counseling him since June. Those four pastors released a video this week explaining the process and outcomes of their unlicensed therapy with the former executive vice president of the SBC…

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The pair raised historic abuse claims after being assaulted at a children’s home in Midlothian in the 1970s.

Two siblings who were abused at a children’s home have been told they can now sue a Catholic order.

The pair – known as ‘B and W’ – raised historic abuse claims against the Sisters of Nazareth over incidents in Lasswade, Midlothian, in the 1970s.

Both legal bids were originally thrown out in January after Sisters of Nazareth claimed it could not get a fair trial due to the passage of time.

But three appeal judges on Friday ruled the cases should not have been dismissed and granted the siblings permission to continue with their claim for six-figure compensation.

Kim Leslie, partner at Digby Brown, the legal firm representing the siblings, said: “We welcome today’s ruling, however as the case is ongoing we cannot comment further.”

Residential institutions run by the Sisters…

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Women featured in “The Keepers,” a 2017 Netflix documentary series about clergy sexual abuse at a Baltimore-area Catholic girls school in the 1960s and ‘70s, expanded on their request Friday for the full public release of a report examining sexual misconduct by clergy throughout the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

Teresa Lancaster and Jean Wehner, who were victimized during their time at Archbishop Keough High School, filed their initial motion Wednesday after learning from a Baltimore Sun story that Baltimore’s Roman Catholic archdiocese is helping pay legal fees for a group of people named in the report who are asking a judge to make secret the court proceedings around its release.

In a supplement to the motion, filed on Friday morning, an attorney representing Lancaster and Wehner is making additional arguments for the report’s release, including that it no longer should be considered privileged material because the archdiocese already has a copy…

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A Cumberland County woman has filed a civil complaint against the Roman Catholic Bishop of Portland, alleging she was sexually abused by a priest that the Diocese knew was a predator, and who was reassigned to another parish.

At a Portland news conference Thursday, Ann Allen told reporters that she was 7 years old in 1964, when Father Lawrence Sabatino abused her in the basement of St. Peter’s Church.

“This is probably one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. My name is Ann Marie Burke Allen. It’s important that you know that. It’s important to me that I found my voice — it will help me to heal,” she said.

Allen says she never told anyone about the incident, but after moving back to Maine decided that it was time to speak up.

“It’s never too late to tell. It’s never to late to heal….

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Filing for bankruptcy would freeze at least 130 new cases involving the Santa Rosa Diocese, which has already paid about $33 million in settlements related to the clergy abuse scandal.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa plans to file for bankruptcy protection in advance of the first clergy abuse trials resulting from a three-year period that gives adult survivors of child sexual abuse in California until Dec. 31 to file civil suits related to their experiences.

Critics immediately framed the move as an effort to prevent the disclosure of sensitive, embarrassing details about priest abuse and the measures they believe church officials took to hide misdeeds over decades.

They also chastised the diocese for choosing a route that would ensure there was no settlement money left for claimants who might yet be abused or who might legally file a lawsuit after the claim deadline established by the bankruptcy court.

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Soon into the new year, the Diocese of Santa Rosa, California, will join a growing list of U.S. Catholic dioceses to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy as it faces a wave of sexual abuse lawsuits.

Bishop Robert Vasa of Santa Rosa announced in a Dec. 2 statement that the diocese’s attorneys will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy sometime between Dec. 31 and March 1, 2023, saying the decision was “the inevitable result of an insurmountable number of claims.”

The diocese is facing more than 130 claims dating from 1962, when the diocese was established, through the present day, with the majority of the cases being from the 1970’s and 1980’s, Vasa said.

The claims were filed under the 2019 California Child Victims Act, which allowed for a three-year period where victims of child sex abuse could come forward with claims that would have expired under the previous statute of limitations….

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Facing more than 130 new claims of child sexual abuse and the prospect of large financial settlements, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa announced Friday it will be filing for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection shortly after the new year.

The announcement comes amid the state’s three-year “lookback window,” created by a 2019 law enabling Californians to file new lawsuits in civil court based on older child sexual abuse claims that would typically be barred by the statute of limitations. The lookback window closes at the end of the year and attorneys expect a last-minute flurry of new cases to be filed.

“In many ways, this is not a freely chosen decision,” Santa Rosa Bishop Robert F. Vasa said in a statement posted to the diocese’s website. “It is the inevitable result of an insurmountable number of claims.”

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A Dutch journalist based in Poland revealed evidence on Friday that Pope John Paul II was involved in covering up the abuse of minors while he was the Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Krakow. The journalist, Ekke Overbeek, spent the last two years combing through archives in Poland, where he resides, and found several cases where the prominent Catholic Church figure knew about priests who abused children and helped them evade punishment, including transferring them to other parishes.

“I found concrete cases of priests who abused children in the Archdiocese of Krakow, where the future pope was archbishop. The future pope knew about it and nevertheless transferred those men. That led to new victims,” Overbeek said to Nieuwsuur. The journalist studied publicly available documents from the secret services about the future pope from during his time living and working in Poland. He wrote a book about his findings, Maxima…

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De in 2005 overleden paus Johannes Paulus II wist als bisschop in Krakau al heel vroeg dat priesters in zijn bisdom minderjarigen misbruikten. Zelfs toen pedoseksuele priesters tot een celstraf waren veroordeeld, liet hij hen in een ander bisdom opnieuw verder werken. Dat blijkt uit Poolse documenten die een Nederlandse onderzoeksjournalist heeft opgespoord. Vaticaanspecialisten noemen de ontdekking “explosief”.

De Nederlandse journalist Ekke Overbeek, die onder meer voor Trouw en Nieuwsuur werkt, woont in Polen en dook drie jaar lang de Poolse archieven in. “Ik heb concrete gevallen gevonden van concrete priesters in het aartsbisdom Krakau, waar de latere paus aartsbisschop was, die kinderen misbruikten. De toekomstige paus wist ervan en heeft desalniettemin die mannen overgeplaatst. Dat leidde tot nieuwe slachtoffers.”

(Puzzelstukjes die het plaatje vormen hoe hij met dat kindermisbruik door priesters is omgegaan.- Journalist Ekke Overbeek)

De Poolse paus Johannes Paulus II werd geboren als Karol Józef Wojtyla. Hij was een…

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SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – A new round of lawsuits centered on clergy child sex abuse accusations was made public this week in Northern California.

A separate Franciscan abuse lawsuit was filed this week in Santa Barbara. The local case involves a 66-year-old survivor and is linked to accusations stemming from decades ago. Documents show the man lived in Santa Barbara or Alameda as a child at the time of the alleged abuse.

The larger list of accusations entails 116 lawsuits filed in Alameda County. It names 80 Catholic clergy members accused of child sex abuse.

Tim Hale, a Santa Barbara attorney with Nye, Stirling, Hale & Miller, has spent decades representing survivors of child sex abuse across the country and here at home. The majority of the cases are linked to an institutional cover-up.

Hale said it is not yet known if any of the accused clergy members in this…

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The “Italian way” of dealing with the sex abuse crisis

After a long delay compared to many other countries, the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI) this past November 17 presented its first-ever clergy sex abuse report. It focused on the prevention and training activity carried out by diocesan services (inter-diocesan and regional) for the protection of minors and the testimonies that victims recounted at diocesan listening centers

The report is the fruit of the collaboration between the CEI and two researchers of the Catholic University of Milan. Compared to other countries, it is much more limited in scope and more institutionally tied to the Catholic Church in Italy. It is a clear attempt to set its own

model in order to avoid the catastrophic impact that revelations of abuse had in other countries.

The Italian report: unlike any other

This report is very different from recent efforts by the Church in…

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Ann Allen, 65, of Scarborough has filed a civil complaint in Cumberland County Court claiming that the Roman Catholic Church ignored allegations of child sex abuse at the hands of one of its clergy members. She is seeking monetary damages.

Allen becomes the first female to file a civil lawsuit against the church since the laws in Maine changed in 2021, lifting any statute of limitations.

“I’m doing this to let people know that it’s never too late to tell and it’s never too late to heal,” said Allen.

During a press conference in her lawyer’s office in Portland, Allen said the church did not protect her or other children from a predator-priest when she was a child growing up in Portland in the 1960s. She said that she and her family were avid churchgoers and members of St. Peter Roman Catholic Church, located at 72 Federal Street in Portland.

“I need to…

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Letters to the Editor

Despite the awful abuse that took place within its walls, the Catholic Church should also be acknowledged for the good work it has done

John Daly’s article (‘Vatican Pimpernel reminds us that not all priests are bad’, Irish Independent, November 28) was a long-overdue acknowledgment of the good work that has been done by the Catholic Church in making Ireland what it is today – a modern and prosperous country.

This has been achieved in no small measure by religious orders who founded our first hospitals and schools free of charge when the struggling state had no money to do so. Blatantly ignoring the contribution of these selfless men and women is a gross and unfair distortion of our history.

Unfortunately, as in our wider society, horrendous abuse was perpetrated by a minority of very sick and cruel people. Painting all our religious…

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A window for filing new lawsuits under a 2019 California law for decades-old abuse will close Dec. 31.

As a deadline nears for new lawsuits in sexual abuse cases, 66 Catholic clergy and religious accused of sexual abuse have been identified in 116 lawsuits filed in Northern California. Of those, 14 have been publicly identified for the first time.

These new accusations have come to light under under a 2019 California law that extended the statute of limitations for abuse cases. Assembly Bill 218 provided for a three-year window that began on Jan. 1 in 2020. The deadline to file new lawsuits is Dec. 31.

“This public data collected is believed to be a small percentage of what attorneys (and) advocates anticipate the final number of lawsuits filed under this historic legislation to be,” according to a statement from Jeff Anderson and Associates, which is handling many of the cases…

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In a lawsuit against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, a Scarborough woman alleges she was sexually abused by a priest in the 1960s.

Ann Allen is the first woman to sue under a 2021 law that removed a time limit for survivors seeking justice in civil court.   

At a news conference, the 64-year-old fought back tears, saying she was ready to come forward with her truth.

“I need to hold the church accountable. … That is critical for my healing, as well,” Allen said.

Allen held up a picture of herself as a child and said she was just 7 years old when she was sexually abused by the Rev. Lawrence Sabatino at St. Peter’s Parish in Portland in the early 1960s. 

Attorneys representing Allen have filed a lawsuit against the Roman Catholic Bishop of Portland, seeking unspecified damages.

“Our clients need action to be taken to make sure…

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In 2021, four times as many people had themselves deregistered from the baptismal register than in 2020, largely linked to the Catholic Church’s statement on same-sex marriages and continued reports of sexual abuse.

A total of 5,237 baptised people asked to be removed from the register, more than four times as many as in 2020, when 1,261 people had themselves deregistered, the annual report of the Catholic Church in Belgium showed. The Vatican’s statement in March that homosexuality remains a “sin” (in response to whether it would bless same-sex unions) is said to have played a role in this.

“The matter is receiving a lot of media attention and is one of the possible explanations for the increase in applications for de-registration from the baptismal register,” the report read. “The bishops of Belgium call on our country’s Catholic Church community to continue working towards a climate of respect,…

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The Catholic church in Poland has offered support to victims of a now-deceased priest who was convicted of child sex abuse but, according to a new report, continued to abuse children while working in the church after his release from prison.

The priest in question, Eugeniusz Surgent, who died in 2008, was the subject of an investigation published last week by Rzeczpospolita, a leading daily.

In the 1970s, Surgent was sentenced to three years in prison for sexually abusing six boys. However, he subsequently remained in the priesthood and had contact with children – including teaching Catholic catechism classes – notes the newspaper, which found that he continued to abuse more victims through the 1980s.

Rzeczpospolita chose not to publish the names of victims found in the files, or to try to contact them, so as not to deepen their trauma. It also “omitted detailed descriptions of how the boys were abused…

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A victim of paedophile priest Malachy Finnegan has lost a High Court battle to establish if he was a police informer.

The man challenged the PSNI’s policy of neither confirming nor denying the deceased cleric’s suspected role as an agent.

But a judge rejected claims that the force had adopted an inflexible position in breach of human rights.

Mr Justice Colton said: “The policy under challenge in this application is well embedded and approved in our law.

“It has been endorsed by both the High Court and the Specialist Tribunal established to deal with disclosure of such material.”

Finnegan, who died in 2002, was accused of a campaign of child sexual abuse while a teacher at St Colman’s College in Newry, Co Down but never prosecuted.

He worked at the school between 1967 and 1987, spending the last decade as its president.

Since his death damages have been paid to…

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Last week the Diocese of Superior released a list of 23 priests who have “credibly accused” of raping or sexually abusing children. Four priests in the Pierce and St. Croix county area were included on the list.

The four priests are Ryan Erickson of Hudson, Joseph Higgins of River Falls, Donald Dummer of River Falls and James Kraker of Hammond.

All have been removed from ministry. Three have died.

Erickson had a single allegation of abuse between 2000 and 2003 in Hudson. He was removed from the ministry in December 2004. He died in December 2004.

Higgins had a single allegation of abuse in the late 1960’s in River Falls. He was removed from the ministry in February 1974. He died in February 1974.

Dummer was a member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI). He was not a member of the Diocese of Superior but practiced in River…

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Rev. Lawrence Sabatino was one of nine priests publicly identified by the Catholic Church in 2005 for abusing children, 15 years after his death.

A woman is suing the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland alleging a former Catholic priest sexually abused her in the 1960s.

Ann Allen is suing the diocese for civil damages saying the church failed to stop the abuse or warn parishioners about the allegations that began in 1958, according to Allen’s attorneys. Allen said she endured sexual abuse from Rev. Lawrence Sabatino at St. Peter Parish in Portland during the 1960s. Sabatino died in 1990. The church publicly acknowledged he was a sexual abuser in 2005, along with eight other priests, following an investigation by the Maine State Attorney General.

Allen is the latest Mainer to sue someone for abuse since changes to state law in 2021 that eliminated time barriers for survivors seeking…

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Time is ticking for victims of child sex abuse by Catholic clergy members in California with a month left under state law to file a lawsuit.

Time is ticking for any victims of child sex abuse by Catholic clergy members in California, as there’s one month left to file a lawsuit under a recently-signed state law.

Born and raised in the Bay Area, McNevin says he’s one of the hundreds of people in Northern California who was sexually abused by a Catholic priest.

“I think the abuse, it has a permanent impact on whoever is a victim. Your life changes the moment it happens,” McNevin said.

But others, like McNevin, who may wish to come forward, are running out of time.

That’s because a law passed by the California legislature back in 2019 is set to expire at the end of this year.

It’s called AB218, and what it did…

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The Rev. Thomas J. O’Connor served Berkshire County Catholic parishes for 15 years, until a chronic heart condition formed him to leave St. Ann’s Church in Lenox.

Years after his death in 1987, at 56, the Springfield diocese evaluated – and found credible – an allegation that he had sexually abused a minor.

This week, the diocese revealed it found a second allegation, from a different person, to also be credible.

As of Wednesday, O’Connor’s entry on the diocese’s list of credibly accused clergy notes that second confirmed allegation of sexual abuse of a minor.

Like many priests, O’Connor was assigned to parishes around the region. His postings in Berkshire County, after his 1955 ordination by former Bishop Christoper J. Weldon, included a year at the St. Anthony of Padua Parish in North Adams (1962-1963), roughly four years at the St. Joseph Parish in Pittsfield (1965-1969), and nine…

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BALTIMORE — Abuse survivors who were featured in “The Keepers,” a widely viewed 2017 Netflix documentary about clergy sexual misconduct at a Baltimore Catholic girls’ school in the 1960s and ’70s, have filed a court motion calling for the full release of a report by the Maryland attorney general on sexual abuse by clergy and other employees in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore.

Teresa Lancaster and Jean Wehner, who were extensively interviewed in the seven-part series, joined with a third woman who has not yet agreed to identify herself publicly, to file the motion Wednesday in Baltimore Circuit Court.

The women decided Tuesday to file the document after learning from a Baltimore Sun story that the archdiocese is helping pay legal fees for members of a group of unidentified individuals that’s seeking to seal court proceedings surrounding a judge’s decision on whether to release the report. The group…

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Season 2

• Show Notes
• Transcript

The Maryland Attorney General investigation into the sexual abuse of children by clergy in the Archdiocese of Baltimore (AOB) has concluded. The 456-page report details the sexual abuse of more than 600 victims at the hands of 158 Catholic Priests that were part of the AOB. Attorney General Brian Frosh has turned his report over to the courts and has asked the court to release it to the public saying his investigation uncovered many attempts of coverups of priests abusing children by those in the Archdiocese.

While Shane travels to Baltimore to do some podcasting with Gemma, he stops at a hotel in Pittsburg and records this phone conversation with Teresa Lancaster about the conclusion of the report and where we are now… as well as a mysterious group of individuals who have come forward to oppose the report being released. Concluding the…

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A late clergyman who served the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento for four decades has been accused for the first time of sexually assaulting a child, joining dozens of Sacramento clergy previously implicated in the Catholic Church’s decades-old abuse scandal.

In a lawsuit filed in Alameda County Superior Court, a 60-year-old woman from Placerville — identified only as Jane Doe E.D. — alleges that Sidney P. Hall sexually abused her on multiple occasions in 1966 when she was just six years old.

At that time, Hall was serving as a priest at the Blessed Sacrament Cathedral where he was tasked with running the youth group, working with the parish school children and driving the school bus, according to records kept by the church.

The lawsuit states that Hall, who died in Sept. 2016 at the age of 85, used his “influence and persuasion as a holy man and authority figure”…

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Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that a group was seeking to seal Maryland’s report on clergy sexual abuse. It is seeking to seal the proceedings around the report. The article has been corrected.

The Archdiocese of Baltimore confirmed Tuesday that it is helping pay the legal expenses of an anonymous group of people seeking to seal the proceedings around a report by the Maryland Attorney General’s Office on clergy sexual abuse of minors.

Christian Kendzierski, an archdiocese spokesman, reiterated that the church is not seeking to suppress a 456-page report by the office of Attorney General Brian E. Frosh. But, Kendzierski said, the church has unspecified obligations to a group of individuals who are named in the attorney general’s report but are not accused of sexual abuse and who have argued that their side should be heard before the report is made public.

“We stated…

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Julie Roys explains why she’s determined to expose abuse and misconduct in the Church

Julie Roys has been described as a gossipmonger, an apostate and a liar. Such labels would cut most Christians deep, but not Roys. The 57-year-old Chicago-based journalist wears unfounded criticism as “a badge of honour” – she even has a mug printed with some of the more acerbic remarks she has received.

Growing up as the youngest of four, it was “survival of the fittest” in her household, and Roys held her own when it came to her pushier siblings. “I would rather get beat up than give in,” she tells me.

Free assertiveness training in childhood, coupled with a naturally strong “internal justice metre” might explain the thick skin and tenacity she now displays in adulthood. When she sees wrong being committed, she just can’t stay silent.

For the last four years, Roys has been reporting…

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Once a beloved SBC pastor and president, Hunt will return to ministry just over seven months after the allegations were made public.

Disgraced former Southern Baptist Convention President Johnny Hunt plans a return to ministry after completing a restoration process overseen by four pastors, according to a video released last week.

Hunt, a longtime megachurch pastor in Georgia, was named earlier this year in the Guidepost Solutions report on sexual abuse in the SBC, which alleged that Hunt had sexually assaulted another pastor’s wife in 2010. Guidepost, a third-party investigation firm, found the claims credible.

“We believe the greatest days of ministry for Johnny Hunt are the days ahead,” said Rev. Steven Kyle, pastor of Hiland Park Baptist Church in Panama City, Florida, in the video.

Kyle, along with pastors Mark Hoover of NewSpring Church in Wichita, Kansas; Benny Tate of Rock Springs Church in Milner, Georgia; and Mike Whitson of…

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The Jesuits in Poland are going through a seismic upheaval after the abuse of a minor and a vulnerable adult by a charismatic youth and retreat minister was revealed by Więź magazine in mid-November.

In a statement released on Nov. 22, the Southern Poland Province of the Jesuits said that Father Maciej Sz. [his full name cannot be used under Polish law] was removed from all ministry and moved to an undisclosed secluded non-Jesuit location where he is forbidden to say Mass or wear clerical garb.

That decision came a week after Więź published a two-part story, “Society of Maciej”, revealed the abuse and the fact that three consecutive Jesuit provincials and the Vatican’s Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith failed to act.

“He was her light in the tunnel and that light killed her”

Wiktoria [the names of the victims and their relatives were changed in the Więź article] was a shy teenage girl.

“I…

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Lawyers at loggerheads over whether schools should be included in historic sales process

More than 1,000 teenagers briskly filed out of Holy Spirit High in Conception Bay South on a recent Friday at the end of another week of classes.

With the weekend on their minds, few appeared to take notice of the tall white cross secured to the school’s exterior brick wall or give a second thought as to why the school has a religious name.

It’s a throwback to when Newfoundland and Labrador’s education system was financed with public money but administered by various Christian denominations, a right that was enshrined in the constitution as part of the province’s terms of union with Canada.

Now, a quarter-century after the denominational system was abolished — following years of intense debate and two referendums — and the government took full control of education, controversy has resurfaced.

[Photo: Marystown Central High had a enrolment of 341 student…

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It would be nice if we could look at a Catholic organization’s website or hear a Catholic official quoted or speaking candidly about the institution’s contentious and continuing crisis: the widespread sexual abuse of children and the cover-up of that abuse by the church hierarchy. But we at Horowitz Law remain consistently disappointed. Just last week, we reported that nearly 21 names were missing from San Diego’s list. We monitor this crisis closely and often see very few church remarks that are simple, direct, honest, and accurate about these crimes and cover-ups. Very few. 

Instead, we see powerful, well-educated men who know better using euphemisms designed to make it sound so unforeseen, so long ago, not so bad, under control, and therefore, not worth focusing on or addressing in any new, effective way. Common quotes include:

• “Accused of abuse elsewhere.”
• “No known accusations in the diocese.” 
• “No record of any…

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A Vatican-ordered apostolic visitation will be conducted in the Diocese of Knoxville, after complaints about the leadership of Bishop Rick Stika.

A Vatican-ordered apostolic visitation will be conducted in the Diocese of Knoxville next week, several sources close to the diocese told The Pillar.

Sources told The Pillar Fridaythat Bishops Barry Knestout of Richmond and Michael Burbidge of Arlington have been directed to visit with priests, diocesan officials, and lay Catholics over several days, amid ongoing concern over the leadership of Bishop Rick Stika.

The decision to commission an on-site assessment of the diocese comes more than 18 months after priests in the diocese reported to the Vatican concerns about Stika’s handling of reports against a former diocesan seminarian, who was accused of sexually harassing and assaulting other seminarians and a parish organist.

While the Vatican had previously directed Archbishop Joseph Kurtz to look into allegations against Stika, the visitation of Knestout and…

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State law opened the door to lawsuits from adults who say they were abused as children

As a deadline looms for new lawsuits to root out decades-old abuse, 14 Northern California priests — including 10 in the Bay Area — have been accused for the first time of sexually abusing children, adding to the list of dozens of disgraced clergy already exposed in recent years in a scandal that has rocked the Roman Catholic church for a generation.

The 14 accused priests came to light in a torrent of litigation unleashed by Assembly Bill 218, which opened a three-year window from 2020-2022 during which adults who say they were abused long ago as children are allowed to sue. Attorneys had predicted the law would generate thousands of lawsuits against institutions including the Boy Scouts and Catholic Church.

“Additional lawsuits are being filed nearly every…

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A former bishop who led the Diocese of Sioux Falls for 14 years has died.

Bishop Emeritus Paul Swain died Saturday at Avera Dougherty Hospice at age 79.

Swain led the diocese from 2006 through 2020 and was known as a humble leader.  He oversaw the closing or consolidation of smaller parishes.

He also addressed child sex abuse allegations against 11 priests from his diocese who had substantiated claims of abuse made against them from 1958 to 1992. The names were published in March of 2019, along with a letter from Swain that encouraged other victims to come forward.

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Top Vatican officials expressed concern that, with the Synodal Path, the German bishops were giving up their role as shepherds and allowing participants to adopt positions in contrast to the faith of the universal church, particularly regarding sexuality and women’s ordination.

The bishops met Nov. 18 with the heads of Vatican dicasteries to discuss the Synodal Path, which the German bishops’ conference and the Central Committee of German Catholics launched in 2019 in response to the clerical abuse scandal. The Vatican published the texts of presentations Nov. 24.

The meeting, at the end of the bishops’ “ad limina” visits to Rome, was chaired by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state. Formal presentations were made by Cardinal Luis Ladaria, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops.

Cardinal Ladaria focused his remarks on Pope Francis’ letter to German…

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Editor’s Note: On Nov. 22, 2022, five representatives of America Media interviewed Pope Francis at his residence at Santa Marta at the Vatican. Matt Malone, S.J., the departing editor in chief of America, was joined by Sam Sawyer, S.J., the incoming editor in chief; executive editor Kerry Weber; Gerard O’Connell, America’s Vatican correspondent; and Gloria Purvis, host of “The Gloria Purvis Podcast.” They discussed a wide range of topics with the pope, including polarization in the U.S. church, racism, the war in Ukraine, the Vatican’s relations with China and church teaching on the ordination of women. The interview was conducted in Spanish with the assistance of a translator, Elisabetta Piqué. A transcript of the Spanish text can be found here.

Pope Francis: Thank you for coming!

Matt Malone, S.J.: Holy Father, America magazine was founded by the Jesuits in 1909, and we’ve been published continuously since. This is our first opportunity to speak…

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