NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Esquire [New York NY]
February 3, 2025
By Charles P. Pierce
A bombshell new report from NYT details the involvement of the New Orleans Saints’ office in “crisis communications” for the religious institution.
The sexual-assault crisis within Holy Mother Church continues to reverberate. But, I admit, on my Catholic Church Sex Scandal bingo card, I didn’t have deep involvement by a National Football League franchise, much less the one named after our glorious canonized dead. But, then again, this is Louisiana, so anything’s possible. From The New York Times:
So in July 2018, when Greg Bensel, the Saints’ head of communications, saw a local news story revealing that a former deacon who had been removed from the ministry after abuse accusations was serving in a public role at a local church, he sent an email to Ms. Benson. “The issues that the Archbishop has to deal with that never involve him,” Mr. Bensel wrote. In reply, Ms. Benson said the archbishop was “very upset.” Then, Mr. Bensel made a suggestion: He offered to lend his “crisis communications” expertise, gathered from his decades of working for the Saints, to the archdiocese.
Archbishop Aymond, who has served in New Orleans for most of his career, has led the archdiocese since 2009. During his term as archbishop, the archdiocese has spent millions of dollars on settlements for abuse claims while victims and their representatives have said he didn’t promptly report accusations to the public or law enforcement. The archbishop also has a long history with the Benson family, riding on Mardi Gras floats with Ms. Benson and serving as a witness on the will of her husband, Tom.
Of course he has. Throw us some beads, Your Grace.
Running through the recently released emails, which question the Saints organization’s claim that its role was “minimal,” is a carefully curated list of clergy who had been credibly accused of sexually abusing children. One email exchange between Saints personnel describes a meeting that “allowed us to take certain people off the list.” Both the Saints and the Archdiocese of New Orleans told the Times that no one from the Saints had a role in removing anyone from the list.
One email exchange also shows members of the Saints’ leadership discussing a list of credibly accused clergy members prepared by the Archdiocese of New Orleans shortly before its release in November 2018. The list followed similar disclosures in other cities, and church leaders positioned it as a transparent public accounting that could help victims find closure and seek justice. But it has been criticized by victims and their advocates for being incomplete.
A few hours before the list was released publicly, Mr. Bensel had an email back and forth with Dennis Lauscha, the Saints’ team president. Mr. Bensel told Mr. Lauscha that there had been a “cc” the night before with Leon Cannizzaro, then the district attorney for New Orleans, “that allowed us to take certain people off the list.” Mr. Bensel did not include any more details, and it is not clear if names were actually removed from the list.
It’s Super Bowl week, so NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is scheduled to give his annual State of the League address and press conference, and I suspect this might come up, and I also expect Goodell will fumble and foozle around with an answer that says nothing and change the subject as fast as possible. And it is historically important to note that the very first criminal sexual-assault trial of a Catholic priest—that of Fr. Gilbert Gauthe in 1984—took place in Lafayette. (That trial spawned an HBO TV movie starring David Strathairn, and there was a passing mention of the case in the movie Spotlight.) And not for nothing, but the archbishop should probably stay off Mardi Gras floats for a while. Near occasions of sin and all that.