ABUSE TRACKER

It’s time to call upon all of our faith communities to publicly post their standards of ethics and abuse prevention policies and conduct mandatory abuse prevention training every three years.

Recently the nation found out once again that a church body, in this case the Archdiocese of Baltimore, was being accused of decades of sexual abuse and physical torture. Yet as seismic as the Maryland Attorney General’s revelations are, it’s hard to say terrible news like this shocks anybody anymore. Thanks to the bravery of scores of victims and whistleblowers from all faith backgrounds willing to come forward, the past decade has been marked by long-kept church secrets finally coming to light, including not only sexual abuse but also abusive and bullying workplaces, financial misconduct, and, on top of it all, lying to cover it all up.

As an ordained pastor who has served the church for more than…

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‘Rome’s serial “mishaps” in this area are neither stupid nor insane. They are about protecting itself’

At times it is difficult to believe anything other than that Rome is being willfully stupid when it comes to its dealings with clerical child-sex abuse. This repeated failure, inevitably, prompts recall of Einstein’s much-quoted definition of stupidity, even insanity — doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results.

That’s how it may look, but Rome’s serial “mishaps” in this area are neither stupid nor insane. They are about protecting itself above all while obscuring that reality through spin.

That said, it is only fair to record that the Irish Catholic Church now has some of the most stringent child-protection measures in place, and enforced, anywhere in the Catholic world.

Fr Hans Zollner is a German Jesuit and one of the few figures at the Vatican with credibility where the abuse…

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The heads of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and a section of the Dicastery for Evangelization have signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at improving assistance to victims of abuse, bishops and local churches both in mission countries and emerging communities.

U.S. Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley of Boston, president of the commission, and Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, pro-prefect for “the first evangelization and the new particular churches” section of the dicastery signed the agreement of collaboration at the Vatican April 21.

The enhanced collaboration will include sharing resources, information and formation and “promoting concrete structural change to build a culture of safeguarding,” according to Vatican News April 21.

O’Malley, who spent many years as “a missionary bishop” when he ministered in the U.S. Virgin Islands, told Vatican News he understands what it is like to run a diocese with very limited resources.

The commission, he said, hopes…

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Elderly priest is charged under stringent provisions of a law meant to protect children from sexual abuse

Police in a southern Indian state have arrested a 77-year-old priest of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church for allegedly molesting a young girl.

The priest identified as Shimayon Ramban was arrested and remanded in judicial custody on April 21.

The priest is charged under various provisions of a special law meant to protect children from sexual abuse in India.

Police said the priest based in Kerala state was arrested following allegations that he had molested a 15-year-old girl on April 3 in a church in Muvattupuzha in Ernakulam district.

The Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, also known as the Indian Orthodox Church, is one of seven churches that trace their faith to St. Thomas the Apostle, who, according to a tradition, preached in India. The Church has set up a panel to probe the allegations and has…

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The chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference, Georg Bätzing, has distanced himself from one of his predecessors, the former bishop of Freiburg, Robert Zollitsch.

“During his time as chairman of the Bishops’ Conference in 2010, decisive measures were taken to come to terms with abuse in the Catholic Church. He apparently did not apply these even in his diocese during the same time and skipped them,” Bätzing told Saturday’s edition of the local newspaper the Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung.

Bätzing said he found this irresponsible and was at a loss as to how this could have happened.  Former archbishop Zollitsch was also chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference from February 2008 to March 2014.

A report published on Tuesday on sexual abuse by clergy in the archdiocese of Freiburg shows that his tenure in Freiburg until 2013 was marked by a “concrete cover-up.”

The 84-year-old already admitted serious mistakes and personal guilt in…

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Experts gathered Saturday in Towson for a conference to help survivors of sexual abuse release the trauma, and it was an emotional, yet empowering event.

The Release the Baggage conference encouraged attendees not to be afraid to heal or to revisit past hurts and trauma. It embodied empowerment and provided guidance on how to unleash all the deep-seeded emotions and pain from abuse through motivational speakers.

Latarsha Haughton, author of “Breaking The Silence,” was sexually abused by her biological father and conceived his son.

“I learned how to keep a secret,” Haughton said.

She told the audience at the conference how to seek help and how to emotionally free themselves of the trauma and guilt. Her message to children is equally powerful.

“The message to them is tell someone. Break your silence. Because if you don’t, you will stay stagnated and you won’t be able to move forward. You will…

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Pope Francis set up the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors in 2014 to fight clerical sex abuse

The Vatican said Friday its anti-sexual abuse commission would work more closely with its evangelization branch in order to better protect minors, including training bishops from dioceses far from Rome.

Pope Francis set up the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors in 2014 to fight clerical sex abuse, which will now collaborate with the Vatican’s Dicastery for Evangelization, according to the three-year agreement.

The commission has come under fire recently after its most influential member, Hans Zollner, quit in March, accusing the body of urgent problems related to compliance, accountability and transparency.

The agreement announced Friday calls for the commission to work together with the Dicastery in training sessions for newly appointed bishops, among other collaborative measures.

In an interview with Vatican News, the head of the commission, US Cardinal…

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Much has changed in the Philippine judiciary in the past 20 years.

Prosecutors and judges in the family courts are now armed with 37 laws that mandate that they protect children and bring their abusers to swift and strict justice. Many prosecutors and judges are doing just that in Luzon. It is a big change in a changing era for the judiciary.

Finally, the judiciary is acting more swiftly and more determined to bring healing through justice for the child victims. These victims have cried in silence and suffered all their lives with the stigma and pain of having been raped and abused without help or justice. In Iba, Zambales, Judge Maribel Mariano-Beltran is holding continuous hearings all day, taking testimony of the child in the morning and cross-examination in the afternoon. The child victim is not stressed by the long wait of weeks, even months, before cross-examination.

In other…

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A bill further restricting depositions of alleged victims of child sex abuse has officially made it to Gov. Eric Holcomb’s desk.

Senate Enrolled Act 331 was sent to Holcomb on Tuesday.

Building on legislation passed in 2020, SEA 331 provides that defense attorneys cannot depose alleged child victims in criminal cases — including depositions pursuant to Trial Rule 30 or 31 or any other formal or informal statement or interview — absent prosecutorial or judicial consent.

The legislation enacted in 2020 likewise prohibited depositions of alleged child victims, with lawmakers emphasizing the need to protect alleged victims of child sexual abuse, in particular. But SEA 331 clarifies the definition of a “deposition” to include depositions under the trial rules or “informal” interviews.

Before SEA 331, bill author Sen. Mark Messmer, R-Jasper, said defense attorneys were attempting to get around the 2020 legislation by taking…

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Victims speak out and lambast ‘inappropriate and irresponsible’ appointment of the new chair of the Independent Safeguarding Board

The Church of England is obstructing its own safeguarding panel by denying them their own computers, refusing to share data and treating them with “hostility”, whistleblowers have told The Telegraph.

‌The Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB) was formed in January 2022 and tasked with scrutinising the work of the Church’s National Safeguarding Team (NST), as well as holding the Church to account regarding its safeguarding duties.

‌However, the ISB’s only two board members have come forward to claim that their experience working with Church officials is “an uphill battle and unnecessarily challenging”.

‌In an interview with The Telegraph, Jasvinder Sanghera CBE, who founded the Karma Nirvana charity which aims to end honour-based abuse, and Steve Reeves MBE, executive director of Global Safeguarding, raised the alarm. 

They claim there has been “clear interference” with…

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In 1819, the federal government instituted a program of state-sponsored abductions and forced assimilation of Native American children. It lasted 150 years and spawned a legacy of horrific abuse. Now, survivors and their descendants are speaking out

Sitting at his dining room table at his home in Snohomish County, Washington, Matthew Warbonnet, 77, pensively flips through a binder of black and white photos. His long, salt-and-pepper hair is pulled into a low ponytail and a multicolored beaded necklace rests around his neck. He squints and smiles while pointing to pictures of himself and his siblings from when they attended the Catholic-run, federally-funded, St. Francis Mission on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. He pauses to stare at a photo of a young boy gleefully holding a puppy. That boy was him, before the neglect and violence started at St. Francis.

“You know,” he says, haltingly, “I can’t remember anything before…

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Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Saskatoon says clergy member has been placed on administrative leave

The Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Saskatoon has confirmed one of its priests has been charged in connection to an alleged sexual assault of a 13 year-old-girl.

The priest, Janko Kolosnjaji, has been placed on administrative leave, according to the church’s archivist Marusia Kobrynsky.

Kolosnjaji has been removed from active duty pending completion of the legal proceeding involving the assault allegation, which dates back to March 11, according to an Thursday post on the church’s website.

Saskatoon police say they arrested a 69-year-old man on Wednesday, after the police service’s interpersonal violence section completed an investigation into the allegation. He was charged with sexual assault.

The man, whom police did not identify as a priest, was later released on a recognizance order, the police service said in a news release Thursday.

Police say they first learned of the allegation on March 12, when…

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**Update to the Communication Regarding Fr. Benjamin Cieply, Atlanta, April 19, 2023. [See items 10, 11, and 12, marked with ** below.]

Communication Regarding Fr. Benjamin Cieply, Atlanta, September 6, 2018: In fulfillment of number 74 of the Legionaries of Christ 2018 Code of Conduct, the congregation, upon concluding an investigation regarding Fr. Benjamin Cieply, former Legionary of Christ, informs the following:

1. Fr. Benjamin Cieply was ordained to the priesthood with the Legionaries of Christ on December 20, 2008. In 2015 he left the Dallas, Texas, Legionaries of Christ community to seek incardination to the Archdiocese of Miami after a gradual process of discernment.
2. In late 2016, an incident in Florida involving a minor was reported and Child Protective Services was notified. Child Protective Services determined that the allegation against Fr. Benjamin Cieply could not be substantiated.
3. The Archdiocese of Miami was informed. They began an internal review and a decision
   was made, based on the…

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The Legionaries of Christ have published for the third consecutive year the “Annual Report: Truth, Justice, and Healing,” which gives an account of the commitments made regarding victims of abuse by the congregation and the creation of safe spaces.

According to data provided by the Legionaries of Christ, over the years 1941–2022 at least 27 priests sexually abused minors, which represents 1.9% of their priests.

Since the publication of the historical “Report 1941-2019,” 11 complaints involving new cases have been received. In three of them “it has not been possible to verify the sexual abuse of a minor.”

Of the rest, one priest was laicized, two priests are waiting for their civil and canonical trials to conclude, and another one awaits the conclusion of his ecclesiastical trial. Another four are under canonical investigation prior to an eventual canonical trial.

Care for the victims

Regarding care for the victims, 42 are…

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[Includes video]

A Virginia woman has filed a lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Philadelphia for covering up the sexual abuse she and multiple women allegedly suffered at the hands of a former priest, Kevin Barry McGoldrick, for more than 10 years.

The woman, a 28-year-old educator in Alexandria, identified as “Jane Doe” in a press statement to The Christian Post, alleges that while she was a student at Aquinas College in Tennessee from 2014 to 2018, McGoldrick abused his position of trust and authority as a priest to groom and sexually assault her.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the victim by attorneys, Brian Kent and Stewart Ryan of Laffey, Bucci & Kent, alleges that in 2013 when McGoldrick was transferred to Nashville, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia started investigating him for the sexual abuse of another individual unrelated to Doe.

“April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, which…

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A White County man who says he was molested when he was a 10-year-old altar boy 42 years ago by a now-deceased Catholic priest filed suit Thursday against the Diocese of Little Rock and two churches where Richard Patrick Davis was pastor.

A Pocahontas native, Davis died in May 2020 at age 83 after 57 years as a priest in Arkansas, serving past the traditional retirement age of 65. He spent his last 14 years as the pastor of St. Boniface Church in New Dixie and, while assigned to St. Patrick Church in North Little Rock in the mid-to-late 1960s, taught religion at Mount St. Mary Academy and was the chaplain at St. Vincent Infirmary.

His obituary in the Arkansas Catholic newspaper states he “created the Teen Aged Religious Education program, which helped teens in the Arkansas River Valley grow in their faith.” A Knights of Columbus obituary describes Davis…

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A much-loved chaplain at one of Auckland’s most prestigious schools has been reinstated after a court case alleging he had sexually abused a student in Australia 20 years ago was abandoned by the plaintiff.

It has brought to end a highly distressing period for Father John Goodwin, who is known for his engaging character and who always maintained his innocence.

The accuser was an Australian gang associate serving more than 10 years in jail for trafficking million of dollars in drugs, including amphetamines, MDMA and cocaine.

He was still behind bars when his lawyer Angela Sdrinis filed a civil suit in the Tasmanian Supreme Court in 2021.

A statement of claim alleged Goodwin had repeatedly abused the then student while working as a priest at Tasmania’s esteemed Hutchins School, and telling the boy God would punish him if he told anyone about the abuse.

The plaintiff, now in his 30s,…

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State senators advance bill for consideration by house in what critics say is basic violation of separation of church and state

Every classroom in Texas could be made to display the Ten Commandments prominently, after lawmakers advanced a proposal to push more religion into schools.

A parallel bill also approved by the Republican-controlled Texas senate on Thursday would require educational establishments to set aside time every day for students and employees to read the Bible or other religious manuscripts, or to pray.

The attempts to further erode separation of church and state follow a US supreme court ruling last summer that sided with a former public high-school football coach in Washington state who was fired for praying with players after games.

The conservative panel ruled 6-3 the school district violated the constitutional rights of the coach, Joseph Kennedy. The district settled with Kennedy last month, for almost $2m.

Phil King, a Republican Texas…

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The head of a prominent French archdiocese said Thursday that he had presented his resignation to Pope Francis, but strongly defended his turbulent six-year tenure. 

At 65 years of age, Archbishop Luc Ravel is a decade away from the customary retirement age for diocesan bishops.

In an April 20 statement, he gave no reason for offering to resign but appeared to hit back at claims that he had governed in an aloof and authoritarian manner.

He said: “Peace being the supreme good, as we have entered this magnificent time of Easter, I have presented my resignation to the Holy Father, for whom I pray every day.”

“I have always acted as closely as possible to the law and to my conscience, having consulted extensively on each decision, in order to take difficult measures, but which I would have been reproached for not having taken later, in view of the elements in…

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A former head of the Catholic German Bishops’ Conference is giving up the country’s highest honor following scathing criticism this week of his handling of clergy abuse cases during his tenure as archbishop of Freiburg and as a personnel officer in the diocese.

Robert Zollitsch has informed German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in a letter that he is handing back the Order of Merit, which was bestowed on him in 2014, his spokesperson said in a statement on Friday.

He said the decision was taken in connection with a statement Zollitsch made in October, in which the 84-year-old acknowledged that he made serious errors and asked for forgiveness.

An independent report commissioned by the Freiburg archdiocese on the church’s handling of abuse cases over decades was presented on Tuesday — the latest in a string of such reports casting light on church officials’ actions, or lack thereof, in dioceses across Germany.

…

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As Washington state lawmakers debate legislation that would end legal protections for the seal of confession, Spokane Bishop Thomas A. Daly has assured his diocese that priests would opt for a jail sentence before they would break the seal.

“I want to assure you that your shepherds, bishop and priests, are committed to keeping the seal of confession — even to the point of going to jail,” Daly wrote in a letter to Catholics in the Diocese of Spokane, which covers eastern Washington.

“The sacrament of penance is sacred and will remain that way in the Diocese of Spokane,” he said.

The bishop’s April 19 letter referred to a state Senate bill that would make priests mandatory reporters of abuse. The original Senate-passed bill included an exemption for information that priests obtain during a confession, which was included to protect the seal of confession. However, the House-passed version included an…

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On April 19, 2023, the Boy Scouts of America declared that it has exited its bankruptcy case after clearing one of the last legal hurdles in its way. Some insurance companies and sex abuse claimants objected to the Boy Scouts’ plan to pay claimants, but the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the plan can go ahead anyway while the insurers’ appeal is pending. It’s now possible to begin the process of paying at least US$2.45 billion to resolve about 82,000 claims against the Boy Scouts and affiliated entities asserted by people who allege that they were sexually abused as children over the past 80 years.

The Boy Scouts operate through the national organization known as the BSA, which includes hundreds of separate but affiliated organizations known as local councils, and faith-based or civic groups called chartered organizations. Because these troop-sponsoring nonprofit organizations across the country are responsible for ensuring the…

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Not a week goes by without a case of sexual abuse committed by a public figure or a person in authority making the headlines in France. The same happens in other European countries.

This is distressing in a society that preaches respect, benevolence and equality. The damage caused by these despicable acts unfortunately leaves indelible marks, and the feeling of impunity of perpetrators is experienced as a double punishment by the victims of these abuses. Fortunately, especially since the #MeToo movement, media coverage of all these cases committed in the artistic, political, sports and religious worlds has raised awareness and encouraged victims to speak out and file complaints.

Preacher

As president of the advisory and monitoring committee of Stop Abus, I am particularly attentive to cases of abuse of power and sexual abuse in evangelical Protestantism. Recently, I was interviewed by a French national weekly newspaper, La…

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In 2013, then-Catholic priest and would-be artist Kevin Barry McGoldrick was transferred from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia to the Diocese of Nashville, where he became chaplain of Aquinas College.

In the lawsuit filed on Tuesday (April 18) in Philadelphia, it alleges that archdiocesan officials transferred the priest — and issued a letter of support on his behalf — knowing that he had a history of sexual abuse. The lawsuit accuses the archdiocese of enabling the priest’s abuse in 2017 of the lawsuit’s 27-year-old plaintiff, identified only as “Jane Doe.”

“To know he should never have been at Aquinas College, and he was put there and I was put in harm’s way knowingly, was perhaps the most traumatic,” Jane Doe told Religion News Service.

The five-count lawsuit, entered in the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia County, names both McGoldrick and the archdiocese and asks for hundreds of thousands of dollars…

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A high school pastor from the Okeechobee County School District was accused of being involved in a romantic relationship with a student.

Donny Raney, 36, was arrested on Tuesday and booked into the Okeechobee County Jail for violating Florida law by engaging in a romantic relationship with a student, says the Okeechobee County Sheriff’s Office.

In a heavily redacted arrest report from the Okeechobee County Sheriff’s Office, deputies found out about the relationship after the victim’s mother expressed concerns that her daughter may be involved in an inappropriate relationship with two teachers at Okeechobee County High School, Omar Ayala and Donny Raney.

According to the arrest report, the mother told deputies, she purchased the victim a new cell phone for college and while transferring over the phone’s contents she found “disturbing” messages between the victim and the two teachers.

Deputies said, in the report, they explained to the mom that…

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The Associated Press has uncovered more details in the quagmire that is the preemptive bankruptcy filing by the Archdiocese of New Orleans. Once again, the Archdiocese has exerted concerted and consistent efforts to keep their history of clergy abuse and cover-up hidden from the public eye.

The latest twist in this case is that the judge who, according to the AP, “has consistently ruled in favor of the church” in the bankruptcy case, also appears to have chosen not to disclose the fact that he is a major donor to the Archdiocese of New Orleans. Judge Greg Guidry claims that he did not know he was donating tens of thousands of dollars annually to the Archdiocese, a statement that is at best difficult to believe.  Following the widespread publication of his clear and obvious conflict of interest, the judge has now signaled that he mayrecuse himself from…

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A federal judge refused Friday to recuse himself from the New Orleans Roman Catholic bankruptcy after an Associated Press report that he donated tens of thousands of dollars to archdiocese charities and consistently ruled in favor of the church in the contentious case involving nearly 500 clergy sex abuse victims.

U.S. District Judge Greg Guidry told attorneys in the high-profile case that a panel of federal judges he asked to review the possible conflict determined no “reasonable person” would question his impartiality despite his contributions and longstanding ties to the archdiocese.

Guidry read from the opinion of the Washington-based Committee on Codes of Conduct, which noted that none of the charities he donated to “has been or is an actual party” in the bankruptcy and that Guidry’s eight years on the board of the archdiocese’s charitable arm ended more than a decade before the bankruptcy.

“Based upon that advice and…

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A federal judge donated tens of thousands of dollars to New Orleans’ Roman Catholic archdiocese and consistently ruled in favor of the church amid a contentious bankruptcy involving nearly 500 clergy sex abuse victims, The Associated Press found, an apparent conflict that could throw the case into disarray.

Confronted with AP’s findings, which have not been previously reported, U.S. District Judge Greg Guidry abruptly convened attorneys on a call last week to tell them his charitable giving “has been brought to my attention” and he is now considering recusal from the high-profile bankruptcy he oversees in an appellate role.

“Naturally,” Guidry told them, “I will take no further action in this case until this question has been resolved.”

AP’s reporting on Guidry and other judges in the New Orleans bankruptcy underscores how tightly woven the church is in the city’s power structure, a coziness perhaps best exemplified when executives of…

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A group that advocates for victims of sexual abuse asked Belleville Bishop Michael McGovern on Wednesday to add five names, including those of two men in prison and a deceased nun, to the diocese’s public list of clergy who have been credibly accused of sexual misconduct.

The Diocese of Belleville said in a statement it will review the request from the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

Four of the five clergy members have been accused of sexual misconduct that occurred outside of the diocese, but they all had spent time in the Diocese of Belleville at one time, including a priest who once taught in East St. Louis and is now serving a federal prison sentence for possession of child pornography.

All of the clergy members on the Belleville Diocese’s current list of credibly accused persons are men. The nun cited by the Survivors Network of those Abused…

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[The podcast is 25 minutes long; a discussion of the resignation of Hans Zollner SJ from the Pontifical Commission begins at 11:25.]

Pope Francis publicly denounced allegations made against Pope John Paul II on Italian television last week by Pietro Orlandi, the brother of Emanuela Orlandi. Last year, Ms. Orlandi’s mysterious disappearance from the Vatican almost 40 years ago, when she was just 15-years-old, inspired “Vatican Girl,” a documentary series on Netflix.

Mr. Orlandi, speaking on an Italian TV program, said that he had learned from a source that “John Paul II sometimes went out at night with two Polish monsignors, and he clearly did not go out to bless houses.” His comments have been understood to imply that the late pope was out sexually grooming young women at night. They were all the more surprising because they were made immediately after a lengthy meeting earlier that day between Mr….

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An Illinois megachurch pastor, who resigned following allegations he covered up his son’s sexual misconduct, has started a new online preaching ministry.

Mike Baker, former pastor of Eastview Christian Church (ECC) in Bloomington/Normal, recently launched Song and Sword. In an open letter posted online yesterday, he said he did so because he’s a preacher “called to preach” but with nowhere to preach due to a “media firestorm.” He said he also needed a source of income because he didn’t trust his elders to care for his family financially.

ECC recently hired lawyer Kellye Fabian Story with Chicago-based Wagenmaker & Oberly to investigate allegations that Baker covered up clergy sexual abuse by his son, Caleb Baker, involving a church member in 2016. Caleb Baker left ECC at that time. And his father told his congregation that Caleb had left ECC voluntarily.

Meanwhile, Mike Baker helped Caleb…

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During Holy Week, the Maryland Attorney General released a 456-page report on the history of sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore. The report includes allegations against some 137 priests, 5 deacons, 4 laymen, and 2 religious sisters. It details the abuse of more than 600 young people.

It’s a document at once horrifying in its contents and shamefully familiar to anyone who has followed the abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. There is the depraved abuse itself, of course, but also the lying, the failure to recognize the gravity of harm, the deference to abusers, the indifference toward victims, the reshuffling of priest assignments, the cover-up.

Each instance of abuse constitutes an acute moment of trauma and pain in the life of the victim. Yet no matter how much one resists while reading a report like this, the details of these awful events invariably begin to blend together. Read…

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A federal judge donated tens of thousands of dollars to New Orleans’ Roman Catholic archdiocese and consistently ruled in favor of the church amid a contentious bankruptcy involving nearly 500 clergy sex abuse victims, The Associated Press found, an apparent conflict that could throw the case into disarray.

Confronted with AP’s findings, which have not been previously reported, U.S. District Judge Greg Guidry abruptly convened attorneys on a call last week to tell them his charitable giving “has been brought to my attention” and he is now considering recusal from the high-profile bankruptcy he oversees in an appellate role.

“Naturally,” Guidry told them, “I will take no further action in this case until this question has been resolved.”

AP’s reporting on Guidry and other judges in the New Orleans bankruptcy underscores how tightly woven the church is in the city’s power structure, a coziness perhaps best exemplified when executives of…

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In 1974, Father Francis LeFevre fondled a boy through his clothes at St. Anthony of Padua in Baltimore, one of several children LeFevre would be accused of molesting over the years.

The boy, either 11 or 12 at the time, did not report the abuse until 2008, 34 years later. The Archdiocese of Baltimore, well aware of LeFevre’s history, settled with the victim in 2011 for an undisclosed amount.

Despite accusations of fondling and raping young boys, LeFevre, whom the Catholic Church listed as credibly accused in 2002, has never faced criminal charges. Reached by phone at his home in New Jersey, LeFevre told a reporter he was “not interested” in being interviewed for this story.

The Maryland Attorney General’s Office released a report earlier this month revealing the totality of the accusations against LeFevre, and at least two dozen other living Catholic priests who were never criminally charged.

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Anthony Cipolle, who has been a resident chaplain at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, was removed from the program’s website this week after the Press Herald reported on a woman’s allegation that he coerced her into a sexual relationship.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center has removed the name of a resident chaplain from its website after the Portland Press Herald published a story about the former Maine priest.

The story focused on a woman who sought Anthony Cipolle’s help when he was a priest, and who says he took advantage of her vulnerability, abused her trust and coerced her into a sexual relationship.

It was not clear Wednesday whether Cipolle still works for the medical center. Neither Cipolle nor the medical center responded to questions about his employment status.

Cipolle joined Vanderbilt’s Clinical Pastoral Education program as one of several resident chaplains in 2022. According to a program…

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A former head of the Catholic German Bishops’ Conference is giving up the country’s highest honor following scathing criticism this week of his handling of clergy abuse cases during his tenure as archbishop of Freiburg and as a personnel officer in the diocese.

Robert Zollitsch has informed German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in a letter that he is handing back the Order of Merit, which was bestowed on him in 2014, his spokesperson said in a statement on Friday.

He said the decision was taken in connection with a statement Zollitsch made in October, in which the 84-year-old acknowledged that he made serious errors and asked for forgiveness.

An independent report commissioned by the Freiburg archdiocese on the church’s handling of abuse cases over decades was presented on Tuesday — the latest in a string of such reports casting light on church officials’ actions, or lack thereof, in dioceses across Germany.

…

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“If there was ever a case of reckless disregard for the safety of the public and parishioners,” said lawyers representing a woman now suing church officials over an alleged cover-up, “it’s this one.”

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia is facing new accusations that it covered up sexual misconduct, this time involving a former priest who allegedly forced himself on multiple women and told them the unwanted encounters were “special trials” ordained by God.

In court filings this week, a 27-year-old woman said church officials’ failure to disclose previous complaints against the Rev. Kevin Barry McGoldrick enabled abuse she endured after he was transferred from Philadelphia to Nashville in 2013.

Even after the Philadelphia archdiocese had substantiated her claims that McGoldrick had plied her with bourbon and then sexually assaulted her while he was serving as a college chaplain in Tennessee, she said, church officials here still refused to acknowledge…

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On April 19, 2023, the Boy Scouts of America declared that it has exited its bankruptcy case after clearing one of the last legal hurdles in its way. Some insurance companies and sex abuse claimants objected to the Boy Scouts’ plan to pay claimants, but the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the plan can go ahead anyway while the insurers’ appeal is pending. It’s now possible to begin the process of paying at least US$2.45 billion to resolve about 82,000 claims against the Boy Scouts and affiliated entities asserted by people who allege that they were sexually abused as children over the past 80 years.

The Boy Scouts operate through the national organization known as the BSA, which includes hundreds of separate but affiliated organizations known as local councils, and faith-based or civic groups called chartered organizations. Because these troop-sponsoring nonprofit organizations across the country are responsible for ensuring the…

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The latest insinuations against John Paul II are not only about him

One of the most ancient axioms to define the See of Peter’s role in the Church reads: “prima sedes a nemine iudicatur” — the first see can be judged by no one. Centuries before papal primacy was defined at Vatican Council I in 1870, the Bishop of Rome already enjoyed a type of immunity in both the religious and the political-secular spheres.

Today we have a more pope-centered Church, where five of the eight popes who served in the 20th century have been beatified or canonized, and a Vatican City State where the pope is the absolute monarch.

The Emanuela Orlandi case

But this theological, political, and legal order protective of the papacy is now under pressure because of the sex abuse crisis. We have seen this with recent insinuations against John Paul II that were made after…

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A Chicopee man is close to settling a lawsuit against the Catholic diocese over what he alleges were attempts to cover up his account of rape at the hands of a former bishop.

According to records filed in Hampden Superior Court, attorneys involved in a 2021 lawsuit have signaled their intentions to settle the case short of a trial. A trial date of May 3 had been set.

The plaintiff, identified only as John Doe, accused diocesan leaders and its longtime attorney of conspiring to conceal allegations against the late Bishop Christopher J. Weldon being part of a ring of clergy who gang-raped altar boys in the 1960s.

Named in the lawsuit are the Roman Catholic Bishop of Springfield, a corporation; Archbishop Mitchell T. Rosanski, former bishop of the local diocese; former victim advocate Patricia McManamy; former special investigator and retired state trooper Kevin Murphy; diocesan spokesman Mark Dupont; John…

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Key Points

Allegations of sexual abuse against former Aquinas College chaplain Kevin B. McGoldrick emerged in 2020 in news report.

Former Aquinas student recently sued McGoldrick and Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, expanding on previously reported revelations about McGoldrick’s case.

Lawsuit alleges Archdiocese of Philadelphia withheld knowledge from Diocese of Nashville of McGoldrick’s history of abuse before McGoldrick transferred to Nashville.

A former student at Nashville’s Aquinas College is suing the college’s former chaplain, Kevin B. McGoldrick, and the Archdiocese of Philadelphia for McGoldrick’s alleged sexual abuse of the former student.

The lawsuit expands on reporting by the London-based Catholic Herald in 2020 detailing the former Aquinas student’s allegations. The complaint, filed Monday in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas, charges the Archdiocese of Philadelphia with negligence and recklessness for allegedly failing to report McGoldrick’s history of abuse when McGoldrick moved from Philadelphia to Nashville.

Former Aquinas College priest: Catholic…

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[Includes video trailer.]

Inspirational documentary recovers the stories of those who dared to question the treatment of children in a small Irish town

rish film-maker and journalist Sinéad O’Shea has a gripping and inspirational story to tell about her home town of Navan in Co Meath, and she tells it terrifically well, talking to the people involved, engaging with the history, delivering the drama and teasing out the poignancies and complexities.

O’Shea is speaking to the people who stood up to church abuse in the 60s and 70s, at a time when challenging the Catholic authorities seemed unthinkable. There can hardly be anyone left now who doesn’t know something about Ireland’s coming to terms with the historical abuse sanctioned by the church and its treatment of young pregnant women in the brutal mother-and-baby houses and Magdalene Laundries, the subject of movies such as Stephen Frears’s Philomena and Peter Mullan’s The Magdalene…

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Money will be used to help compensate abuse victims as St. John’s archdiocese continues to liquidate assets

A tentative agreement announced in a St. John’s courtroom Wednesday morning will clear a cloud of uncertainty that’s been hanging over the province’s education system and help compensate victims of abuse at the hands of Catholic clergy and those who ran the notorious Mount Cashel orphanage.

The Newfoundland and Labrador government has agreed to pay $13 million to acquire full ownership of at least 32 schools on the Avalon and Burin peninsulas that are currently owned by the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation of St. John’s. The church’s ownership of the schools is a legacy of the old denominational education system, which was abolished in the 1990s.

The agreement-in-principle ends months of uncertainty about the fate of the schools and the thousands of students who attend them, and adds considerably to the pot of money…

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Catholic leaders in the state of Washington have expressed concern over a bill advancing in the state legislature that would require priests to report child abuse or neglect even if they heard about it during a person’s confession.

The bill, in its original form, required clergy members to be mandatory reporters of abuse, but it contained an exemption known as clergy-penitent privilege, protecting what was learned under the seal of confession. This exemption was removed from the amended bill the House passed April 12.

An alert on the website of the Washington Catholic Conference, the public policy arm of the state’s bishops, urged Catholics to contact their state senators and ask them to reject the amended bill when it returned to them for a vote to “protect the clergy-penitent privilege.”

The site noted that the state’s bishops had supported many aspects of the original bill “including making priests mandatory reporters…

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New inquiry could soon begin into the horrific abuse of children by priests and other religious figures in Northern Ireland.

Victims of clerical abuse in Northern Ireland are to be asked to come forward and tell their heart-breaking stories.

It marks the start of a process which could lead to a new inquiry into the horrific abuse of children by priests and other religious figures.

An inquiry has already been held into the years of abuse suffered by young people living in institutions such as children’s homes and orphanages throughout Northern Ireland.

Some of these institutions were run by churches – but an inquiry has never been held into abuse carried out by members of the clergy in other venues, such as church buildings or the victims’ own homes.

The Northern Ireland Executive set up the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry (HIA) in 2012.

It was the biggest child abuse public…

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Catholic church sex abuse survivors are calling on prosecutors to open a criminal investigation into the Baltimore Archdiocese.

“My abuser was known about in 1966. I could’ve been saved had they done the right thing then. Surely they can do the right thing now,” said Teresa Lancaster.

Since the release of this report detailing the horrific and repeated abuse of more than 600 child victims allegedly at the hands of 156 abusers within the Archdiocese of Baltimore, survivor Teresa Lancaster is demanding more.

“When you go through the report you see the page that says church leaders they’re all redacted why,” she asked.

The names of 10 priests were redacted from the report.

Lancaster and several other survivors, now represented by attorney Thiru Vignarajah are asking those names be released, and those accused perpetrators still living be criminally prosecuted.

“Survivors have been asked to accept a false choice between uncertain…

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More than 20 years after the clergy sex abuse scandal erupted in the United States, a newly filed lawsuit reveals more allegations of a cover-up.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia is accused in the suit of moving a priest with an alleged troubling track record.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia faces renewed allegations Wednesday that church leaders quietly transferred a suspected sexually abusive priest from assignment to assignment between 2003 and 2020.

The church and the priest are named in a five-count lawsuit filed in the Court of Common Pleas on claims of negligence and recklessness based on the alleged failure to properly supervise priests, investigate allegations against them and protect its parishioners from them, often by simply moving the priests to other dioceses.

In the complaint Jane Doe, whose identity we are concealing, alleges she was sexually abused by 48-year-old Father Kevin McGoldrick after the Archdiocese, under the leadership of then-Archbishop…

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He’s now a Tennessee hospital chaplain, even though

–a judge says he “inflamed” an argument that led to a murder,

–a Catholic bishop says he “abused his position as a clergyman,” violated a church code of ethics, tried to deceive investigators and

–a woman says he “sexually, emotionally and psychologically abused her in 2018,” and

–an attorney says he’s had “previous felony convictions.”

He is Fr. Anthony Cipolle and he’s a chaplain at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.

We call on the Catholic bishops of Nashville and Maine to

— publicly warn the public, police and prosecutors about him, for the sake of public safety, and

— clarify his clerical status, since the public’s been told he can’t function as a priest anymore.

We also applaud Melissa Kearns who bravely revealed her suffering at the hands of Cipolle in Maine’s largest newspaper yesterday. [See 1, 2, View Cache

Ground-penetrating radar search guided by survivor testimonies

A search for unmarked graves at the former Blue Quills Residential School in eastern Alberta found 19 sites that contained anomalies consistent with burial plots.

The property, located about 150 kilometres northeast of Edmonton, was once a Roman Catholic-run institution. It now operates as University nuhelot’įne thaiyots’į nistameyimâkanak Blue Quills, which is governed by the seven First Nations communities that surround it.

An investigation using ground-penetrating radar uncovered “reflections” in the soil that are indicative of human burials or graves. The initial findings of the survey were released Wednesday morning as community elders, knowledge keepers and university officials gathered for a ceremony on campus. 

Bertha Janvier Moir, 69, a former student at the institution, said the search for the graves of her former peers must continue. 

The children who were buried at residential schools need to be honoured and “brought home,” Moir said…

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Bill targets workplace bias, sexual assault settlements

A bill under consideration by the Legislature would restrict the use of nondisclosure agreements in the settlement of employment cases involving sexual assault and discrimination.

In January, Republican Rep. Alyson M. Sullivan-Almeida introduced H. 1778, which generally would prohibit nondisclosure agreements in the settlement of employment cases involving claims of sexual assault, sexual harassment and discrimination based on sex. The bill is currently before the Joint Committee on the Judiciary.

David I. Brody is one employment attorney who supports the measure.

“Some of the components of the bill were done in a very effective way, including a private right of action to enforce and protections for individuals who may want to remain anonymous,” said Brody, president of the Massachusetts Employment Lawyers Association.

The Boston attorney said MELA has not taken an official position on the legislation and that he was expressing his own…

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The pope’s safeguarding commission, preparing to move into a fresco-ceilinged palace in Rome’s historic center, must not be merely engaged in “PR,” but become a refuge for those abused by clergy and silenced by the church, said leading safeguarding expert Jesuit Fr. Hans Zollner.

Speaking to journalists April 17 about his decision to leave the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, Zollner expressed his hope that the commission’s new home will push the commission to take seriously the principles of “transparency, compliance and responsibility,” the lack of which he cited as the reason for his departure.

The new center must be “a central focus point of encounters with victims from around the globe,” he said. “This is what people are looking for.”

After nearly 10 years of serving on the pope’s advisory body, Zollner said that “it is a continuous impression on the part…

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German Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, one of the church’s leading protagonists in the fight against clerical sexual abuse, has sought to clarify his reasons for stepping down from a Vatican safeguarding commission after nearly 10 years on the job.

Speaking to journalists Monday, Zollner denied that he was targeting anyone individually or that he resigned as part of an internal power struggle, but said he had ongoing concerns regarding how the commission operated that went unanswered, despite several attempts to engage his superiors on the issues.

“It was not easy for me at all to leave the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and to publicly address the existing problems,” he said, saying, “Many times I asked myself the following questions: Does this gesture correspond to the team spirit and the discretion necessary for any working group? Will I hurt the Holy Father with my decision?”

Zollner said he…

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A civil complaint was filed yesterday against the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and former priest Kevin Barry McGoldrick. The lawsuit, entered in the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia County, accused the Archdiocese of permitting and facilitating sexual abuse by McGoldrick and of covering up complaints of sexual assaults by him for more than 10 years. We are grateful to the victim, “Jane Doe” both for speaking out and for her persistence, and we hope that her courage will embolden any others who may have been hurt in the Catholic Church to come forward, report their abuse to the police, and begin healing.

McGoldrick was ordained for the Archdiocese in 2003, but in 2013 he left Philadelphia for a job as a chaplain at Aquinas College in Tennessee, which is part of the Diocese of Nashville. However, the complaint in the new lawsuit states that the Archdiocese opened an investigation into claims…

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Over recent years, the Archdiocese helped cover up the checkered past of a priest who sexually abused at least one woman, a lawsuit states.

A former local priest sexually abused at least one woman for years and the Archdiocese of Philadelphia helped to cover it up for over a decade, a new lawsuit filed Tuesday claims.

Kevin Barry McGoldrick, who served at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in south Philadelphia from 2003 to 2013, may have also abused other individuals, the suit states, and advocates are urging victims to come forward.

While the victim named in the lawsuit says she was abused after McGoldrick left Philadelphia, while he was serving in Tennessee, lawyers claim the Archdiocese of Philadelphia was aware of McGoldrick’s checkered past.

“Our client suffered horrific abuse at the hands of McGoldrick,” Stewart Ryan, one of the victim’s attorneys with the local firm Bucci & Kent, said…

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A former employee of St. Monica’s Catholic church has been arrested in Oregon as part of a sting operation targeting child predators.

Sean Baba, 29, was one of six individuals identified and arrested by the Washington County Sheriff’s Office last week. According to the Sheriff’s Office, investigators used multiple dating applications, social media sites, and other online platforms to pose as underage boys and girls.

“The people contacted the profiles online and offered to meet a person they believed to be a child for sex,” said a press release from the Sheriff’s Office. “When the people arrived to meet the child, they were instead contacted by law enforcement and arrested.”

Baba, along with the other suspects, are being charged with felonies for luring a minor and online sexual corruption of a child in the first degree.

At the time of his arrest, Baba was working as the Director of Music…

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In addition to allowing a longer period of time to file child sex abuse lawsuits, the new Kansas law allows criminal prosecution of child abusers regardless of how long ago the assault occurred.

Kansas has joined a growing number of states which have now passed new laws allowing survivors of child sex abuse additional time to file civil lawsuits against their abusers and the institutions that enabled the conduct, and removed any statute of limitations on criminal prosecution of child sex offenders.

Governor Laura Kelly signed a bill into law on Monday, which allows individuals to file Kansas child sexual abuse lawsuits until they are 31 years old, or three years after a criminal conviction. However, the new law does not go as far as other recent child sex abuse laws enacted in Maryland, New York, New Jersey, California and other states, which have revived previously barred claims for older…

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A Pennsylvania grand jury in recent months accused nine men with connections to the Jehovah’s Witnesses of child sexual abuse in what some consider the nation’s most comprehensive investigation yet into abuse within the faith.

The sets of charges filed in October and February have fueled speculation the jury may make public more about what it has uncovered from a four-year investigation.

A similar grand jury investigation into child sexual abuse by Catholic priests culminated in a lengthy 2018 report that concluded hundreds of priests had abused children in Pennsylvania over seven decades and church officials had covered it up, and more recently a similar report was issued in Maryland.

But documents made public so far include nothing about what critics have long maintained has been a systemic cover-up and mishandling of child molestation within the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Michelle Henry, at a news conference in February  View Cache

THE founder of the Christian youth festival Soul Survivor, Canon Mike Pilavachi, has agreed “to step back from all ministry” while “non-recent safeguarding concerns” are investigated, it has been announced.

Canon Pilavachi is Associate Pastor of Soul Survivor, Watford, a church that meets in two warehouses on an industrial estate in north Watford. It was planted from St Andrew’s, Chorleywood, in 1993. The same year, the first Soul Survivor conference was held, and its first festival was held over two weeks in 1995. The festivals ceased in 2019 (News, 1 June 2018; Features, 13 September 2019). They were attended by up to 35,000 young people and adults, the church says, and emphasised Charismatic gifts.

On behalf of the C of E’s National Safeguarding Team, the diocese of St Albans, and the trustees of Soul Survivor, Watford, the Suffragan Bishop of Bedford, the Rt Revd Richard Atkinson, read out a…

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VICE World News has learned of newly-raised historic safeguarding concerns around the treatment of attendees at Soul Survivor festivals in the aftermath of founder Mike Pilavachi stepping down amid claims of inappropriate behaviour with young people.

Historic safeguarding allegations related to a Christian youth festival are being investigated by the Church of England after the festival’s founder quit over claims of inappropriate behaviour with young people. 

One of the UK’s best known evangelical leaders, the Rev Canon Mike Pilavachi stepped down from numerous roles across Soul Survivor charities and his ministry at a church in Watford, a town in south-east England, in early April. 

It was announced he was being investigated over “non-recent safeguarding concerns” by the Church of England National Safeguarding Team, including claims of “inappropriate massages” that were first published in the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper. 

VICE World News can reveal that further historic safeguarding allegations have been…

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Police say suspect admitted he was driven by a habit of watching porn videos

A lay Catholic religion teacher in Indonesia with an alleged habit of watching porn videos has been accused of sexually abusing seven elementary school students. 

The 26-year-old teacher, only identified as Charles, was arrested by police in Ende Regency on Flores Island in Christian majority East Nusa Tenggara province on April 17. 

He reportedly teaches at Jopu II Catholic Elementary School in Wolowaru Subdistrict.

Yance Kadiaman, head of Ende police’s criminal investigation unit, said investigations have identified seven victims. All of them were minors —  four aged 12 and three aged 11 years, he told reporters.

He said the suspect admitted he was driven by a habit of watching porn videos.

“The suspect’s motive is to fulfill desire and lust because he always watches porn on his cell phone,” Kadiaman said.

The first incident allegedly occurred in…

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And now justice. Suspended from his charge last week due to suspicions of sexual assault, which earned him a canonical investigation, the parish priest of Saint-Germain de Pantin (Seine-Saint-Denis) is also the subject of a criminal investigation, indicated this Monday, April 17, the Paris prosecutor’s office, confirming information from The cross.

On Sunday, the diocese of Paris announced that the parish priest of Saint-Germain de Pantin had been suspended from his charge, under the influence of a canonical investigation, for accusations of sexual assault on young adult women between 1993 and 2002. This announcement came at the time of the reopening of theChurch of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois in Pantin (Seine-Saint-Denis) after three years of renovation.

Asked by AFP on Monday, the diocese admitted a “dysfunction” in the management of the appointment of this priest. Indeed, according to the diocese, at least three reports from alleged victims…

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Former German bishops’ conference chairman Archbishop Robert Zollitsch is facing a Vatican investigation into claims that he covered up abuse.

Zollitsch was heavily criticized in a report published Tuesday on the handling of abuse cases in the Archdiocese of Freiburg, which he led from 2003 until his retirement in 2013.

Presenting the almost 600-page study at an April 18 press conference, independent commission chairman Magnus Striet estimated that there had been more than 250 possible perpetrators of abuse and at least 540 victims in the archdiocese in southwestern Germany since 1945. 

Archbishop Stephan Burger, who has led the archdiocese since 2014, said that his two immediate predecessors — Zollitsch and the late Archbishop Oskar Saier — had “simply ignored Church law that provided for intervention and reporting of cases.”

He said: “It stuns me because Dr. Oskar Saier was also a canon lawyer. Dr. Robert Zollitsch was a long-time personnel manager, became…

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An external commission analyzed the sexualized abuse in the Archdiocese of Freiburg. There are also allegations against two former bishops.

“We have no praise to give,” was the summary of retired judge Eugen Endress on Tuesday morning. During the presentation of the results of the report on sexualized violence in the Archdiocese of Freiburg, he got angry after a few minutes. For Endress, the procedure in Freiburg, as the sexualized abuse was covered up for years, seems almost absurd.

He describes things that have also become clear in other reports of abuse: accused priests were systematically protected by the church institution for years through transfers, but not children. Assaults and violence were trivialized by those responsible and also in the communities, evidence of the knowledge of abuse by those responsible disappeared.

Victims of sexualised violence have been waiting for the report of the independent working group “Power Structures and File…

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Catholic former Archbishop Robert Zollitsch is accused of covering up sexual abuse cases in an independent report commissioned by the Freiburg archdiocese. The 84-year-old also once led the German Bishops’ Conference.

A report on the past handling of sexual abuse cases in one of Germany’s larger Catholic archdioceses, Freiburg, found that the city’s former archbishop did almost everything in his power to conceal perpetrators over a period of roughly 30 years in total. 

The independent report, one of several comparable outside investigations commissioned by Catholic Churches in Germany of late, was critical of Robert Zollitsch’s handling of abuse in the church both as archbishop and during his 20 preceding years as a close associate of his predecessor, Alexander Saier. 

Eugen Endress, a judge and one of the authors of the report, told a press conference on Tuesday that Zollitsch would often completely ignore church law when confronted with cases. He described the…

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Calls are growing for Berlin to launch a state investigation into clerical sexual abuse in the German Catholic Church after a report accused Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, a former head of the German bishops’ conference, of shielding abusing priests.

In January 2010, confronted with the first evidence of systemic abuse inside the church, Archbishop Zollitsch promised a “complete investigation . . . and no cover-up”.

But a report presented on Tuesday in his southwest archdiocese of Freiburg – the third largest in Germany with 1.8 million Catholics – says Archbishop Zollitsch’s 11-year episcopate until 2013 “distinguished itself with concrete cover-up behaviour”.

After four years of investigations and hundreds of interviews, the authors of the 600-page Freiburg report uncovered 540 victims of clerical sexual abuse and 250 documented abusing priests in the period 1945-2020.

The actual number is likely to be much higher as the diocese claims to have lost many files…

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According to a study, there have been significantly more cases of abuse than previously reported

In the Archdiocese of Freiburg in the southwestern German state of Baden-Wurtemberg, more people have been affected by sexual violence by clergy than was previously officially known.

It is now assumed that there are more than 540 victims, said the chairman of a reappraisal commission, Magnus Striet on Tuesday during a live press conference in Freiburg.

In addition, there are more than 250 accused clerics, according to the study.

Striet, however, said the numbers must be viewed with great caution, as reported cases are probably considerably larger.

Striet’s comments came at the presentation of the report on sexual abuse in the Freiburg archdiocese. Spread over 600 pages, the investigation analyzes on the basis of more than 20 cases how church officials dealt with victims and perpetrators, and which structures favored abuse.

The investigative…

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Bishop Rick Stika of Knoxville, Tennessee admitted last week that he told priests of his diocese that a seminarian accused of rape had actually been the victim of a sexual assault, rather than its aggressor.

The bishop said a parish organist, who accused the former seminarian of rape, had actually committed the sexual assault.

The admission came in the April 11 diocesan response to a lawsuit which alleges Stika covered up allegations of sexual assault.

The suit charges that Stika impeded an investigation into the allegation that former seminarian Wojciech Sobczuk sexually assaulted the lawsuit’s plaintiff, who worked as an organist at the Diocese of Knoxville’s cathedral.

The suit also alleges that: 

“Stika falsely stated at a General Priest Meeting at Cathedral Hall in Knoxville, Tennessee on May 25, 2021 that Plaintiff was a predator who had victimized Sobczuk. Plaintiff did not discover that Stika had made these statements until…

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Former cardinal Theodore McCarrick has been charged in Wisconsin with sexually assaulting a teenage boy in 1977.

McCarrick is charged with one count of fourth-degree sexual assault, stemming from an alleged incident in April 1977. He is accused of fondling an 18-year-old boy’s genitals when they were both guests at a house in Geneva Lake.

The charges, filed last week and announced Sunday, mark the second set of criminal charges against McCarrick, who was laicized in 2019. He is also facing sexual assault charges in Massachusetts. 

Wisconsin’s Department of Justice announced that the charges came out of an attorney general probe into Catholic dioceses in state. That probe has faced criticism from both Catholic official and some victims’ advocates. The Milwaukee archdiocese has criticized the review as targeted anti-Catholicism, while one victims’ advocacy group says the state’s AG has not done enough to pursue records on alleged sexual abuse cases. 

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The criminal complaint filed in Wisconsin this week against former cardinal Theodore McCarrick was revealed to have come from James Grein, who has previously accused the laicized clergyman of serially abusing him over many years in several U.S. states.

Grein filed the only previous criminal complaint against McCarrick, now facing adjudication in Massachusetts court.

The complaint, filed in Wisconsin in Walworth County Court, says McCarrick abused an unnamed victim with an unnamed accomplice at Geneva Lake in April 1977, according to the Washington Post. McCarrick faces a criminal charge of fourth-degree sexual assault for the alleged incident.

Grein, who is now in his 60s, told FOX6 News Milwaukee on Monday that he filed the complaint.

“I really felt a sigh of relief,” Grein said. “It was important to hear that somebody else believed me, and they were going to go forward with the charges, and it gave me great relief.”

…

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Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly signed a bill Monday giving survivors of child sexual abuse more time to file lawsuits in a victory for victims and their advocates, who spent years demanding they have their day in court.

The new law will allow police to pursue criminal cases indefinitely and give survivors until they turn 31 to file a lawsuit, as well as three years after a criminal conviction. The Democratic governor signed the measure after the Republican-controlled Legislature unanimously approved it earlier this month.

“I am pleased that the legislature has unanimously passed this critical piece of legislation that will protect children and support victims and their families,” Kelly said in a statement. “This bill would not be possible without the tireless work of survivors across the state who fought for their voices to be heard. I thank them for their bravery.”

Advocates had initially sought the elimination…

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In 1985, Father John Hammer was sent for treatment at St. Luke Institute in the Washington suburbs of Maryland after being accused of abusing three altar boys in Youngstown, Ohio.

A year later, with parents in Youngstown opposing his return, Hammer got a new assignment as a chaplain at St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore. “[A]s you know, we have had difficulty finding placements for those diagnosed with pedophilia,” Hammer’s therapist from St. Luke had written to Baltimore’s archbishop, thanking him for his “compassion and courage.”

In 1990, the Archdiocese of Baltimore removed Hammer from service. But again, the church found him a new home, this time with the Diocese of Saginaw, Michigan, where he was accused of abusing another child.

It was a pattern repeated around the country, and in Maryland, for decades. Priests were accused of abuse, sent for treatment that was ineffective or not medically based, and then…

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A former Bangor woman fears a former Catholic priest who she says abused her could do the same to others.

It’s not the first time defrocked priest Anthony Cipolle has been accused of violating the church’s code of ethics. Cipolle was a central figure in a dispute that led to a Hampden woman’s death in 2018.

Melissa Kearns, who spoke publicly about the allegations for the first time with the Portland Press Herald, moved back to her hometown of Bangor from New York in 2018 after struggling with her mental health because of abuse in a relationship.

She sought community in St. John’s Catholic Church, where she first found refuge as a child and later met Cipolle.

Kearns told the Press Herald she felt an immediate connection with Cipolle, but within weeks the relationship became physical and unhealthy.

Kearns told the Portland newspaper Cipolle pressured her into having sex and isolated her…

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Bishop Richard Stika admitted that he told a room full of priests that the man who says he was raped by a seminarian was actually the one who was the predator, not the other way around. The admission was revealed in new court filings in a lawsuit against the Catholic Diocese of Knoxville.

The man who filed the suit says the diocese worked to discredit him and that Stika’s comments to the priests back up that claim. The man also says in the suit that church leaders failed to properly investigate when he reported the abuse.

Stika made the comments at a May 2021 meeting at the Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, according to the lawsuit. The account came from someone who attended the meeting.

The following month, Stika again told a meeting of priests in Gatlinburg that the man groomed the seminarian for sexual abuse, the…

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Theodore E. McCarrick, expelled by Pope Francis in 2019, was already facing prosecution in Massachusetts. Now, Wisconsin is charging him with assault.

Theodore E. McCarrick, the former Roman Catholic cardinal expelled by Pope Francis in 2019, was charged on Monday with fourth-degree sexual assault in Wisconsin. It was the second criminal complaint against a man who was once one of the most high-profile clerics in the American Catholic Church.

Mr. McCarrick, now 92, is the first and only cardinal to be criminally charged in the sprawling sex abuse scandal that has consumed the church. Thousands of victims and abusers have been identified in parishes across the nation, with accusations from decades ago still being revealed in ongoing investigations.

Resulting lawsuits have pushed some dioceses to file for bankruptcy. Yet relatively few criminal charges have resulted, largely because the statute of limitations has expired, though some states are changing laws to allow for…

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[See also Edwardo v. The Roman Catholic Bishop of Providence.]

The abusive actions of an out-of-state Catholic priest during a business trip do not create personal jurisdiction over his Rhode Island parish under New York law, a federal appeals court has ruled.

Philip Edwardo alleges he was a victim of the late Father Philip Magaldi’s sexual abuse from approximately 1977 to 1984, including during a 1983 trip to New York City when Magaldi had come to discuss a potential donation from the Dutch socialite Claus von Bühlow. Edwardo, then a minor, sued the Roman Catholic parish St. Anthony’s, where Magaldi worked, and others, at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York in 2021. The case was dismissed last year.

• The New York Child Victims Act allows cases that would otherwise be barred by the statute of limitations for sexual abuse to be filed for suit
• But, the…

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Several weeks ago I recommended an an unusually perceptive article by Birgit Kelle in Catholic World Report, sketching out the different possible outcomes of the German Synodal Path. They were, in brief:

• Reconciliation: in which German Church leaders turn away from their current path and embrace the perennial teachings of the Church. This outcome, Kelle writes, is obviously most desirable but unfortunately least likely.
• A “dirty schism” in which the German Church effectively breaks from the universal Church, but without any formal rebuke from the Vatican. The result would be a case of conflicting authorities, with the secular government siding with the German rebels against loyal Catholics. This outcome, the author says, is both worst and most likely.
• Outright schism, in which the German hierarchy renounce ties with Rome, would be disastrous. But at least in that case the situation would be clear.

To that analysis—which I think is…

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German Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, one of the church’s leading protagonists in the fight against clerical sexual abuse, has sought to clarify his reasons for stepping down from a Vatican safeguarding commission after nearly 10 years on the job.

Speaking to journalists Monday, Zollner denied that he was targeting anyone individually or that he resigned as part of an internal power struggle, but said he had ongoing concerns regarding how the commission operated that went unanswered, despite several attempts to engage his superiors on the issues.

“It was not easy for me at all to leave the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and to publicly address the existing problems,” he said, saying, “Many times I asked myself the following questions: Does this gesture correspond to the team spirit and the discretion necessary for any working group? Will I hurt the Holy Father with my decision?”

Zollner said he…

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[Via National Catholic Reporter]

The defrocked Roman Catholic cardinal who became the face of the church’s clergy sex abuse crisis has been charged in Wisconsin with sexually assaulting an 18-year-old man more than 45 years ago, court records show.

A criminal complaint filed Friday alleges that Theodore McCarrick, who was removed from the priesthood in 2019 after a Vatican investigation found he had sexually molested adults and children, fondled a man in 1977 while staying at a cabin on Geneva Lake in southeastern Wisconsin.

The alleged victim, who is not named, told investigators that McCarrick had repeatedly sexually assaulted him since he was 11 and even brought him to parties where other adult men sexually assaulted him, according to the complaint.

McCarrick became the highest-ranking Roman Catholic official in the U.S. to face criminal charges for sexual abuse when he was accused in 2021 of sexually assaulting a teenage boy in Massachusetts…

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In recent years the official position on clerical immunity has changed, but do we show it in action?

“If anyone causes one of these little ones — those who believe in me — to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” (Matthew 18,6)

We are all aware of the child abuse scandal in the Church. Under instructions from Rome, priests who had been involved in child abuse were not referred to secular criminal authorities.

I myself came across such a case. After I had spoken to a group of Catholic women campaigning for the ordination of women, one person, whom I shall call Dawn, approached me. We became good friends. We stayed in touch. On one occasion she told me her experience as a child.

“I’m an orphan”, she said. “My…

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A Bangor woman wants to warn others of the abuse she endured from former Catholic priest Anthony Cipolle, who was a Reverend at St. John’s in Bangor from 2017 until 2020.

Melissa Kearns, who shared her story with the Portland Press Herald, claims Cipolle sexually, emotionally and psychologically abused her in 2018. The Press Herald says it reviewed numerous texts and emails between Cipolle and Kearns that support her claims.

Cipolle was expelled from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland in 2020 after a Maine judge accused Cipolle of “inflaming” a situation that led to the murder of Renee Henneberry Clark in 2018, who he was a spiritual adviser for.

According to the Portland Press Herald, Cipolle had gotten into a fight with Clark’s brother-in-law, who shot Clark 10 times hours later.

Kearns met Cipolle after the Clark’s murder, but she says the incident had been painted as a tragedy he had…

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Pope Francis on Sunday criticized what he said were groundless and offensive accusations against his predecessor, John Paul II, after the brother of a missing Italian teen aired an audiotape with the allegations on national television.

Speaking to faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square for his Sunday Regina Coeli address, the pope noted that the day marked the Catholic feast of Divine Mercy, instituted by Pope Saint John Paul II in 2000.

“Certain of interpreting the sentiments of faithful from all over the world, I direct a grateful thought to the memory of Saint John Paul II, who in recent days has been the object of offensive and unfounded allegations,” he said.

Francis’s remarks marked the first time he has spoken out publicly about the allegations, which arose several days ago when Pietro Orlandi, the brother of missing Italian teen Emanuela Orlandi, gave Vatican prosecutors investigating his sister’s disappearance an…

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Pope Francis on Sunday rejected as offensive and unfounded what he called insinuations by the brother of a Vatican schoolgirl who went missing 40 years ago about one of his predecessors as pontiff, Saint John Paul II.

Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican usher, failed to return home on June 22, 1983 following a music lesson in Rome. She was 15 at the time and lived with her family inside the Vatican. Her disappearance is one of Italy’s most enduring mysteries.

The case entered a new chapter on Tuesday when her brother Pietro met with Vatican chief prosecutor Alessandro Diddi, whom Francis has given free rein to get to the bottom of the case.

After speaking to Diddi for more than eight hours, Pietro Orlandi appeared on a television programme where he played part of an audio recording with the voice of a man Orlandi said was part of an…

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Pope Francis on Sunday defended St. John Paul II against a recent accusation that the Polish pope secretly visited women at night.

Speaking to the public on Divine Mercy Sunday, a day established by Pope John Paul II in 2000, Pope Francis called the insinuation “unfounded and offensive.”

“Certain that I interpret the feelings of the faithful throughout the world, I address a grateful thought to the memory of St. John Paul II, at this time the object of unfounded and offensive conjectures,” he said.

Pope Francis greeted groups that promote the spirituality of Divine Mercy after leading the Regina Caeli, a Marian antiphon prayed during the Easter Season, from a window overlooking St. Peter’s Square on April 16.

Pietro Orlandi, the brother of Emanuela Orlandi, a 15-year-old girl and Vatican citizen who went missing 40 years ago, insinuated this week that John Paul II secretly left the Vatican at…

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Pope Francis on Sunday publicly defended St. John Paul II, condemning as “offensive and baseless” insinuations that recently surfaced about the late pontiff.

In remarks to tourists and pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square, Francis said he was aiming to interpret the feelings of the faithful worldwide by expressing gratitude to the Polish pontiff’s memory.

Days earlier, the Vatican’s media apparatus had described as “slanderous” an audiotape from a purported Roman mobster who insinuated that John Paul would go out looking for underage girls to molest.

The tape was played on an Italian TV program by Pietro Orlandi, brother of Emanuela Orlandi, the teenage daughter of a Vatican employee who lived at the Vatican. The disappearance of the 15-year-old in 1983 is an enduring mystery that has spawned countless theories and so far fruitless investigations in the decades since.

Francis noted that in Sunday’s crowd in the square were pilgrims and other…

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Melissa Kearns says a Maine Catholic priest – newly ordained in 2017 – took advantage of her and abused her when she was vulnerable. She believes he could be a danger to others.

For 11-year-old Melissa Kearns, the rectory beside St. John Catholic Church in Bangor was a refuge from a turbulent family life as one of seven children.

She’d go there after school to read books that visiting Jesuits and nuns selected for her. She filled ice buckets for their cocktails and cleared their dinner table. She reveled in their magazines featuring missionaries’ adventures abroad.

“It was an escape,” Kearns said. “It was a happy place where I felt seen and kind of appreciated.”

As Kearns grew older, the Catholic church lost some of its magic for her. But each time she drifted away, she returned.

After struggling in New York with her mental health and a rocky engagement, Kearns returned to her…

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The Catholic Church strictly forbids priests from divulging what penitents tell them during confession

A bill that would require clergy to report child abuse or neglect in Washington was advanced by the state’s House, prompting concern from some Catholics who are seeking a clergy-penitent exemption to protect the seal of the confessional.

Catholics in the state have expressed concern the House’s version of the bill could force priests to violate the civil law in order to uphold church law regarding the seal of confession.

The bill passed the House on April 11 in a 75-20 vote.

Mario Villanueva, executive director of the Washington State Catholic Conference, the public policy voice of the state’s Catholic bishops, told OSV News he is asking lawmakers to consider “what our confession is.”

“It’s one-on-one; it’s private; it’s part of our worship; it’s liturgy,” he said.

SB 5280, sponsored by state Sen. Noel Frame, D-Seattle,…

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A Milwaukee priest has been urging state legislators to repeal the clergy-penitent privilege in mandatory reporting laws that exempt Catholic priests from notifying authorities of any sexual abuse they hear about in the confessional. Following are NCR readers responding to our reporting. The letters have been edited for length and clarity. 

As a young teenager, I was sexually abused by my parish priest, several times a week for several years. The priest insisted I go to him for confession. That insistence was nothing more than a skilled predator ensuring I saw such actions as my complicity in the sexual contact. In other words, the sin was mine.

For a young teenager, these instances of sexual abuse infused by his attention, affection and emotional demands, trips and material gifts I could otherwise never have, caused mind bending conflict. It demanded a level of emotional response no young child could be equipped…

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Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on a new law in Maryland:

Maryland is historically famous for being home to religious toleration, a commitment born of delivering justice to Roman Catholics in the 17th century. Today it has become their enemy.

In one of the grossest injustices in the modern era, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore signed into law a bill that created two tiers of justice in cases involving the sexual abuse of minors: one for public entities and one for private entities. This kind of disparate treatment is not likely to pass muster in the courts. We are already in conversation with counsel on this issue.

This is all about money, not justice. How can anyone fairly adjudicate claims made about an alleged offense when the offender is dead and buried? He can, of course, because the claimant is not going after an individual—he is going after an institution.

…

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Now that Lent and Easter are over, Vermont Catholic Bishop Christopher Coyne needs to begin a new mission.

In August 2019, Coyne released an incomplete list of Vermont clergy credibly accused of child abuse. 

Curiously, the Diocese of Burlington has never released a list of nuns who were credibly accused of abuse. As a survivor of St. Joseph’s Orphanage, I know that abusive nuns existed. Nuns participated in physical, sexual and emotional abuse of orphanage children. This is well documented, including in a report by former Vermont Attorney General TJ Donovan.

While in Burlington recently, Christine Kenneally, author of the just released book ”Ghosts of the Orphanage” and the 2018 Buzzfeed article on abuse at St. Joseph’s Orphanage, revealed that she had asked the local diocese why there was no list of credibly accused nuns. The diocese never responded. 

Why? Kenneally asked a legitimate question. Meanwhile, her book has brought new…

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Christian communities are not always safe. “Believers must face the facts”, says Lhen Fabian Beck. Not only the Roman Catholic Church is vulnerable to sexual abuse scandals, but also Protestant churches are also not immune.

The problem is that many church employees do not know how to create safe spaces for children and what to do in case of abuse, says Beck. He is involved in children’s ministry at his church in Hanover, Germany. It was not until he prepared for his ministry that he came across resources from the Federation of Free German Evangelical Churches (FeG) with guidelines against sexual violence against children.

Andreas Schlüter from the FeG for Young Generations says that these guidelines make up part of a broader program, which fits into the trend of more Protestant churches taking measures against sexual assault. “I know that in Germany, all free churches are actively tackling this problem”,…

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Although a man had boasted of his sexual abuse of his daughter on social media, what he told to his Mormon church leaders in a confessional context remains protected.

Bitter Winter has published several articles and series on the secret of confession and how it is and should be protected by the laws. That priests of the Roman Catholic Church and other clergy who receive a confession cannot be requested to disclose it to the police or courts of law is a principle of religious liberty enshrined in the laws of most countries. For the Catholic Church, the secret of the confession is so sacred that a priest who would disclose what he heard in confession, even if a secular law compels him to do it, would be immediately excommunicated. 

Recently, a breach has been opened in some countries, including Ireland and Australia, in cases…

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Ben Byrne*, “not a Dalai Lama sycophant”, feels that “the idea that the Dalai Lama would dedicate his whole life to ascending from attachment to the five senses but not quite be able to relinquish a freakish sexual attachment to children is absurd” and the suggestion that “he’s just a perv, based on one interaction among the countless thousands he has had with children throughout his life, is ridiculous.”

I remember reading news a couple of years ago that my hero and Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan was a child sex offender. The headlines were the typical click bait for the twitter generation – The Guardian ran with “Bob Dylan accused of sexually abusing a 12-year-old in 1965”. I was mortified. “Really?” I thought, “at the height of his fame with the world at his feet Dylan wanted to groom a 12-year-old? Surely not, why would he want to do…

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Funeral services have been scheduled in remembrance of James C. Timlin, a former Bishop of Scranton.

Bishop Timlin, who was the eighth Bishop of the diocese, passed away “peacefully in his sleep” early Easter Sunday at Marywood Heights in Scranton. He was 95 years old.

“On behalf of the priests, deacons, religious and laity of the Diocese of Scranton, I extend my sympathy, condolences and prayers to Bishop Timlin’s family and friends,” the Most Reverend Joseph C. Bambera, Bishop of Scranton, said. “Bishop Timlin was a prayerful man devoted to serving the faithful of northeastern and north central Pennsylvania as a priest and bishop for more than 70 years. May God grant Bishop Timlin the gift of eternal life and give consolation to all those who loved and respected him.”

The bishop’s obituary says Timlin was the “first man born within the Diocese of Scranton to serve as its shepherd.”

…

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SOME of the best and well written-child protection laws are in the Philippines. However, it is enforcement that is lacking. There are few convictions of child abusers.

Without the rule of law being enforced, there will never be an end to child sexual abuse. Right now, the Philippines is like “a fun house of sexual abuse” with international connections by online abuse.

At a recent meeting with five judges in Cebu, the president of the Preda Foundation Francis Bermido Jr. and it executive director, Emmanuel Drewery, were earnestly requested by the judges to open a therapeutic healing center/home for girl-victims of sexual abuse and exploitation in Cebu.

The Preda Foundation with German partner Aktionsgruppe already manages a successful home for boys in Liloan, Cebu. That project rescues teenagers from horrible subhuman conditions in government detention cells and empowers them to start a new positive life based on spiritual values and…

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La Prelatura del Opus Dei pone al día sobre 8 casos de miembros acusados por abusos en la región del Plata (correspondiente a los países de Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay y Argentina) e informa sobre medidas tomadas.

(ZENIT Noticias / Buenos Aires, 14.04.2023).- Reproducimos a continuación el comunicado que la oficina de comunicación de la Prelatura Personal del Opus Dei en Argentina emitió con relación a algunos casos de abusos sexual cometidos por miembros de la misma:

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Con dolor y respeto por las personas que han sufrido daños cometidos por fieles de la Prelatura, publicamos esta información sobre la situación de las denuncias de abusos en nuestra institución para que «aprendiendo de las amargas lecciones del pasado, podamos mirar hacia el futuro con esperanza» (Vos estis lux mundi). El reconocimiento de los males provocados nos lleva a un profundo pedido de perdón a cada persona agraviada y a una renovación…

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Nouvelle lettre au pape François

«Très Saint-Père, ces deux dernières années, je les ai passées à tenter de me protéger des répercussions et des représailles que j’ai subies parce que j’ai naïvement demandé de l’aide à mon Église.»

Deux ans après avoir remis au pape François une lettre qui relatait des gestes inconvenants commis par le cardinal Marc Ouellet, alors son supérieur, l’agente de pastorale Paméla Groleau achemine au chef de l’Église catholique une seconde missive.

Datée du 10 février, sa nouvelle lettre de deux pages, remise directement au pape le lundi 13 février, l’informe que les personnes qui portent plainte aux autorités ecclésiales, tout particulièrement dans l’archidiocèse de Québec, sont victimes de vexations alors qu’elles devraient être accueillies et écoutées.

Dans ce «cri ultime d’une croyante qui espère être entendue de vous», Paméla Groleau rappelle au pape qu’il y a deux ans elle a «en toute naïveté» cherché…

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