Abuse Tracker

IRELAND
RTE News

[with video]

Thursday, 31 December 2009
Tributes have been paid to the former Catholic Primate of All Ireland, Cardinal Cahal Daly who died in Belfast aged 92.

He served as a bishop for almost three decades based first in Longford, then in Belfast and finally in Armagh.

He became the hierarchy's foremost theologian and its most trenchant critic of politically-inspired violence.

IRELAND
BBC News

Cardinal Cahal Daly was an intellectual heavyweight who presided over some of the most testing times the Catholic Church in Ireland has faced.

His was the poisoned chalice of the final decade of the 1900s.

He had to deal with a series of scandals: from the Irish bishop who had a teenage son living in the United States, to a list of child sex abuse cases involving Catholic priests.

UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

A support group for sex abuse victims is issuing a thirteen point “end of the year” summary of clergy sex cases which blasts the heads of two of the nation’s three largest Catholic archdioceses, one Protestant denomination, a retired Catholic Cardinal and a judge.

Leaders of a self help organization called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, single out the current and former top prelates in the New York Catholic Archdiocese, Timothy Dolan and Edward Egan respectively, for criticism of public remarks both men made.

SNAP also has harsh words for Chicago’s Catholic Cardinal, Bridgeport’s Catholic Bishop and a Maryland judge for actions each have taken during the past year.

Among Protestants, the group also denounced the Kansas City-based Church of the Nazarene and a Louisville KY congregation.

CALIFORNIA
NBC Los Angeles

By MARY PARKS and BILL FRENCH
Updated 9:15 AM PST, Thu, Dec 31, 2009

Behind the locked gates of Our Lady of Tepayac Church in the Home Gardens community, Riverside County Sheriff's Investigators say they found evidence to suggest the unthinkable had occurred.

"This is a very evil man who hid behind the good book to take advantage of little boys," said Sgt. Dennis Gutierrez of the Riverside County Sheriff's Department.

Clergyman Anthony Martinez-Garduno was arrested late Tuesday after deputies found evidence to indicate he was selling methamphetamines from his church.

Detectives conducting a search warrant also located evidence of possible sex assaults on underage boys who had allegedly been given GHB, the date rape drug.

Benedict XVI - Ratzinger: God's Rottweiler

Paris Arrow

Pedophile Priests Army, numbering 6,000 priests in the United States of America alone and now expanding into thousands in Ireland, is more heinous and monstrous than heresy or non-belief in the Eucharist-alchemy-magic by the pope and priests so why has Benedict XVI not issue excommunication to these bestial priests or priestly beasts? Rather Benedict XVI has issue “silence” (sort of excommunication) to Jesuits like Jon Sobrino, Roger Haight and the late Jacques Dupuis?

AUSTRALIA
Virtue Online

ABC news
http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/australian-news/6633107/murray-bishop-charged-by-church/
December 31, 2009

The Anglican Church in South Australia will soon convene a special tribunal to consider charges against the Bishop of the Murray, Ross Davies.

The Archbishop of Adelaide, Jeffrey Driver, has confirmed that internal charges were being laid against Bishop Davies, but would not say what they were. The Church says Bishop Davies continues to minister and has indicated he will fight the charges.

Bishop Davies could not be contacted for comment.

UNITED STATES
Healing and Spirituality

Jaime Romo

December 31, 2009

Dr. Sharon Ellis Davis is the co-founder and Senior Pastor of God Can Ministries, United Church of Christ. She serves as the Director of Programs for the Education and Family Life Institute for individuals and families who are impacted by underemployment and unemployment, gang violence, domestic violence, and are living in “at-risk,” and underserved communities. She is a powerful example of a victim, turned survivor, thriver and advocate to end domestic and sexual abuse. http://www.godcanministries.org/

JR: Thank you for speaking with me. I know you as a fellow trainer with the Faith Trust Institute, which is dedicated to ending domestic abuse and clergy sexual abuse. What brought you to this work?

SED: What brought me to this work of addressing sexual and domestic violence was my experience as a childhood victim of sexual violence/abuse and domestic violence as an adult. As a Christian and Police Officer I expected these two Institutions to support and care for me as well as confront my abuser. However, this did not happen. My work has its roots in assuring that these two important Institutions of trust, honor, and justice making, are equipped and challenged to provide the service, care, support and accountability structures to individuals, families, and communities impacted by sexual and domestic violence. This includes the abuser.

ISRAEL
YNet News

Published: 12.31.09

Adv. Ariel Atari representing "rabbi" Elior Chen, who is accused of encouraging his followers to abuse their children, has submitted a petition to the High Court requesting that a discussion be held about cancelling the permit to wiretap conversations between Chen and Atari.

Sheriff Stanley Sniff
Jurupa Valley Station

PRESS RELEASE
Date/Time Written: December 30, 2009 at 11:30 A.M.
CALIFORNIA
Rivrside County Sheriff's Department

Type of Incident: Crimes Against Children-Sexual
Date/Time of Incident: Various / Reported December 21, 2009
Location(s) of Incident: 13462 Magnolia Ave., Home Gardens
Reporting Officer: Dep. Herlinda Valenzuela / Public Information Officer
File Number: E093550099

Anthony Martinez Garduno
DOB 08/15/1958

Details:
On Monday, December 21, 2009 at about 2:30 p.m., deputies from the Jurupa Valley Station responded reference a Sexual Crimes Against Children call that occurred on various dates at 13462 Magnolia Ave., in the unincorporated area of the County of Riverside known as Home Gardens.

The location is a church, Our Lady of Tepeyac. The victim reported being sexually assaulted at the age of 17 years by Bishop Anthony Garduno. The victim also reported having knowledge of additional sexual assaults against underage males and the selling of methamphetamines by Garduno.

On Tuesday, December 29, 2009, investigators from the Jurupa Valley Station conducted a search warrant at Our Lady of Tepeyac and located evidence indicative of Garduno selling narcotics from the church. Additionally, investigators located evidence of possible sexual assaults having occurred at the church.

Anthony Martinez Garduno, 51 years of Home Gardens was arrested and transported to the Robert Presley Detention Center. Garduno was booked for being in violation of 11350(A) H&S, 11375(B)(2) H&S, 11377(A) H&S, 11378 H&S, and 496(A) PC.

Enlightened Catholicism

John Allen has written another article for the NCR in which he gives advice to the Irish hierarchy on what and what not to do in the wake of the Murphy report. My intention with this post is not to critique his article but to put before my readers some of the thoughts of the commenters. In my opinion these are the voices of thoughtful, caring, committed Catholics and well worth reading and pondering. Much more so than John's column, which any PR hack could have written.--(OK I guess I just did critique his column.)

Here's an Irish solution that John didn't mention, that many Irish Catholics are acting on.

"I've been following these horror stories from the Murphy Report rather closely, as I am Irish myself, and have had several Irish friends who have suffered both physical and sexual abuse at the hands of Irish clergy, brothers, and nuns. Although I agree with your five pieces of advice, there is another piece of advice, that I must say more than a few Irish Catholics are following. Specifically,formally renouncing their Catholic heritage via a form readily available on the internet. The completed and witnessed document is then posted to the Archdiocese of Dublin. Interestingly, the number of converts to the (Anglican) Church of Ireland has been dramatically increasing over the past five years, according to The Irish Independent. I felt a sense of pride and relief when I dropped the aforementioned document into the post box."

CALIFORNIA
The Press-Enterprise

By JOHN ASBURY
The Press-Enterprise

A church bishop shot earlier this year in an attempted robbery was arrested on suspicion of selling narcotics and is being investigated on suspicion of sexual assault.

Authorities served a search warrant Tuesday at Our Lady of Tepeyac Church in Home Gardens, an Old Catholic fellowship outside Corona. Sheriff's investigators found evidence the man was selling narcotics from the church, according to a Riverside County sheriff's report.

Following the search, police arrested Bishop Antony Martinez Garduno, 51, of Home Gardens, on suspicion of burglary, selling narcotics, possession of methamphetamine and possession of a controlled substance, sheriff's officials said.

IRELAND
BBC News

It has been a difficult year for the Catholic Church in the Irish Republic with the Murphy and Ryan reports detailing its, and to a lesser extent, the state's failings in dealing with child sex abuse by priests and religious orders.

BBC NI Dublin correspondent Shane Harrison reports on changing attitudes to the hierarchy.

It's lunchtime at Maynooth College and the church's bells could easily be tolling for lost innocence.

Students, very few of them now doing theology, saunter past the imposing light-grey buildings that were once home to the biggest seminary in the world.

But today's scholars, in the wake of the Ryan and Murphy reports, have little time for the Catholic Church.

"I believe the church has a lot to answer for," one tells me.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By John Cooney

Thursday December 31 2009

The embattled Bishop of Galway should resign if he was part of the culture of church cover-ups of paedophile priests, according to the 'Irish Catholic' newspaper.

A leading article published today suggests that Bishop Martin Drennan would be obliged to go if the principle of "collective responsibility" was found to apply to his tenure as an auxiliary bishop in the archdiocese of Dublin. This principle was accepted by Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, Jim Moriarty.

He stepped down not because he did wrong but on the grounds of "collective responsibility" for secretive structures that put the institution above the welfare of children.

UNITED STATES
Times of the Internet

BOSTON, Dec. 29 (UPI) --
Roman Catholic leaders in Ireland "outsourced" priests accused of sexually molesting children to the United States, activists in Massachusetts say.

BishopAccountability.org released a list of more than 60 priests Monday who it says were sent from Ireland to the United States and then accused of pedophile acts, The Boston Globe reported. Terence McKiernan, a member of the group, said Irish bishops dealt with the problem for decades the way the U.S. church did, by transferring them, or, as the group put it, the priests were "outsourced."

The Murphy Report, recently released in Ireland, said the church covered up for pedophile priests for years. Four of five bishops accused in the report of covering up for such priests have resigned.

CALIFORNIA
ABC 7

[with video]

Rob McMillan
RIVERSIDE, Calif. (KABC) -- A bishop from Riverside County is under arrest on suspicion of sexual abuse and selling drugs, and it's not the first time he's been in the news. The bishop made headlines in September when he was shot during a robbery outside his church.

Bishop Anthony Garduno is now accused of sexually assaulting a teen and selling drugs out of that same church in Home Gardens.

"I don't hate them. I hate what they did," said Anthony Garduno in September, talking about the armed robbery in which he was allegedly attacked inside his church, Our Lady of Tepeyac, by five men in an attempted armed robbery.

NORWALK (CT)
The Hour

By STEVE KOBAK

Hour Staff Writer

A Norwalk minister who was arrested by New York City Police for rape charges will also face domestic violence charges, as a warrant for his arrest has been issued by the Norwalk Police Department.

The warrant for the arrest of the Rev. Phillip Joubert, a pastor at New Light Missionary Baptist Church, stems from a November incident at his 21 Lexington Avenue home, according to police.

The domestic violence incident sparked the investigation into allegations that the pastor had raped a minor, according to a source close to the case.

MILWAUKEE (WI)
Today's WTMJ

[with video]

By Mick Trevey, Elizabeth Braun
MILWAUKEE--There's new evidence Bishop Richard Sklba covered up sex abuse in the church. Now the group SNAP wants the incoming archbishop to make some changes.

The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests is turning up the pressure just five days before the installation of Milwaukee's new archbishop, Jerome Listecki.

SNAP says they have evidence Auxiliary Bishop Richard Sklba helped cover up sex abuse.

TEXAS
Abilene Reporter-News

Michael Kelly mkelly@gosanangelo.com / 659-8249

Lawyers representing a man who claims to have been sexually abused as a child by a Diocese of San Angelo priest have filed a lawsuit in 340th District Court in Tom Green County seeking unspecified damages against the diocese and Bishop Michael Pfeifer.

The unnamed plaintiff, the petition states, alleges that he was abused by Father David Espitia from 1994 until 2002. Espitia killed himself in 2003.

The diocese and the bishop denied all the allegations in a statement issued Wednesday.

SAN ANGELO (TX)
MyWestTexas

By Bob Campbell
Staff Writer
Published: Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Named as the central figure in a child sexual abuse lawsuit against the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Angelo, the late Rev. David Espitia was remembered by some Wednesday as a friendly man who some of his former parishioners had difficulty believing could have be guilty.

He had been pastor of St. Ann’s Catholic Church in Colorado City and St. Joseph’s Mission Church at nearby Loraine for almost four years and was about to be transferred to Odessa when found hanged in his apartment June 13, 2003. Espitia’s death was ruled a suicide.

The first diocesan priest assigned to St. Ann’s after decades of service there by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, he is accused of molesting a boy during a previous assignment, in the 340th District Court petition filed by attorneys Tahira Khan Merritt of Dallas and Tom Rhodes of San Antonio. Unspecified damages are sought.

MEMPHIS (TN)
The Daily News

BILL DRIES | The Daily News

One of the dominant figures in the string of civil lawsuits alleging child sexual abuse by Memphis Catholic priests died this week in Nashville.

The Rev. Paul St. Charles was named in more of the civil lawsuits filed in Shelby County Circuit Court since 2004 than any other priest.

He died at St. Thomas Hospital in Nashville Sunday after a long illness that had left him confined to a wheelchair in recent years.

CALIFORNIA
Univision

Univision.com y Agencias
30 de Diciembre de 2009

CORONA, California – Un líder de una iglesia cristiana en el Sur de California ha sido fichado por posesión de drogas y acusado de haber drogado y abusado sexualmente a niños.

Buscan a más víctimas

El sargento del Condado de Riverside, Dennis Gutiérrez, dijo que Anthony Garduño, de 51 años de edad, fue arrestado el martes luego de que investigadores encontraran evidencias de que estaba vendiendo drogas en su iglesia.

Gutiérrez dijo que las autoridades inspeccionaron la iglesia Nuestra Señora del Tepeyac cerca de Corona luego de que un hombre asegurara haber sido atacado sexualmente por el auto-proclamado obispo cuando tenía 17 años.

CALIFORNIA
Beliefnet

Tuesday December 13, 2005

Earlier Trial in Corona

Lincoln said the diocese has held one previous heresy trial. That one involved the Rev. Anthony Garduno, formerly of St. Edward parish in Corona.

The diocese held the trial because Garduno in 1996 formed a church in Corona with beliefs similar to the Ecumenical Catholic Communion.

Garduno left St. Edward after 1993 allegations that he had asked a man to strip during premarriage counseling.

CALIFORNIA
CanonLaw.info

2003

Some time in 2003, Fr. Anthony Garduno (San Bernardino) was put on trial before the Tribunal of the Diocese of San Bernardino CA for heresy and/or schism (1983 CIC 1364), found guilty, and removed from the clerical state. Sources are unclear as to whether excommunication was also imposed.

HOME GARDENS (CA)
Inland News Today

HOME GARDENS – Prosecutors are building a drug and sex crimes case against the Bishop of a small Riverside County church who survived an earlier robbery-shooting by a gang of thieves.

A search warrant served at the Our Lady of Tepeyac church allegedly turned up evidence that Bishop Anthony Garduno was selling illegal drugs. Evidence of sexual assaults was also found.

An investigation began December 21st when a young male reported that Bishop Garduno had sexually assaulted him when he was 17-years-old and that other male juveniles had been victimized.

Benedict XVI - Ratzinger: God's Rottweiler

Paris Arrow

Benedict XVI wrote the book Jesus of Nazareth and claims himself to be the ‘representative of Christ’ on Earth, but he contradicts everything that Jesus was. There is absolutely nothing that Benedict XVI has in common with Jesus of Nazareth. First of all, Benedict XVI speaks Latin and Jesus never spoke Latin. Benedict XVI imposes Latin as the Vatican ‘official language’ which makes it difficult for American lawyers to sue the Vatican regarding priest pedophiles.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY Religious Affairs Correspondent

DUBLIN AUXILIARY Bishop Éamonn Walsh has been praised by the Diocese of Ferns where he was apostolic administrator from 2002 to 2006. Bishop of Ferns Denis Brennan said: “The diocese respects the decision of Bishop Éamonn Walsh to tender his resignation as auxiliary Bishop of Dublin.”

The Murphy report had “been the occasion for reliving the pain and harm that was brought to light . . . and for remembering all who suffered at the hands of some of our priests”, he said.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan said Bishop Drennan’s intended to respond to questions put to him by this newspaper yesterday. These concerned the extent of the bishop’s knowledge or otherwise, during his tenure as auxiliary bishop of Dublin between 1997 and 2005, of the handling of child sex abuse allegations made against, and admitted, by the late Fr Noel Reynolds.

MILWAUKEE (WI)
WISN

MILWAUKEE -- A local sex abuse survivors group is challenging Milwaukee's archbishop designate to make major changes during his first three months in the archdiocese.

The "Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests," or SNAP, said they want Bishop Jerome Listecki to chart a new course in the diocese.

The group is calling for the resignation or firing of auxiliary bishop Richard Sklba.

ARGENTINA
CNN

(CNN) -- A former Catholic archbishop in Argentina has been sentenced to eight years in prison for sexual abuse of a seminary student in 1992, a court report said Wednesday.

Former Archbishop Edgardo Gabriel Storni "acted with total impunity" and there was enough proof to convict him, Judge Maria Amalia Mascheroni said in the sentencing.

"Being a rector of the faith, his injurious and immoral attitude contributed to the lack of credibility in the religious institution," the judge is quoted as saying in a report by the Judicial Information Center, the nation's official court news service.

ARGENTINA
ABC News (Australia)

The former archbishop of Argentina's Santa Fe province has been sentenced to eight years in prison for "aggravated sexual abuse" against a seminarian, a court source said.

Judge Maria Mascheroni said Edgardo Storni, 73, took advantage of his access to and authority over a young man when the crime was committed in 1992, while he was archbishop.

The victim in the case expressed "relief" that the former top Catholic official in the region finally would have to pay for his crime.

ARGENTINA
BBC News

A former Roman Catholic archbishop in Argentina been sentenced to eight years in prison for sexually abusing a young seminarian while still in office.

Edgardo Storni, 73, was in charge of the archdiocese of Santa Fe when he abused the male student in 1992.

He will serve his sentence under house arrest because of his age, however his lawyers say he will appeal.

HOME GARDENS (CA)
The Press-Enterprise

[with video]

Thursday, September 17, 2009

By JOHN ASBURY, RICHARD BROOKS and SANDRA STOKLEY
The Press-Enterprise

HOME GARDENS - Five men were arrested Wednesday after a two-county crime spree that included the shooting of a church bishop in Home Gardens and the robbery of five restaurants.

Bishop Antonio Garduno, 51, of the Our Lady of Tepeyac church, underwent surgery Wednesday at Riverside County Regional Medical Center in Moreno Valley after being shot late Tuesday night. He is expected to survive, authorities said.

Authorities say the robbers started their crime spree Tuesday at an International House of Pancakes in Industry at 2:45 p.m. and robbed two Denny's restaurants in Rowland Heights and Pomona within 45 minutes, Riverside County sheriff's Sgt. Dennis Gutierrez said.

HOME GARDENS (CA)
KTLA

HOME GARDENS, Riverside County -- A self proclaimed bishop is under arrest accused of molesting young boys and selling drugs from inside his church, according to authorities.

51 year old Bishop Anthony Martinez Garduno was arresed on Tuesday at the Our Lady of Tepeyac Church on Magnolia Avenue after a parishoner contacted authorities claiming he was molested by Garduno, according to Riverside County Sgt. Dennis Gutierrez. ...

Anyone with information or anyone who has been a victim of sexual assault at the location is asked to contact Investigator Birmingham or Investigator Pluimer at the Jurupa Valley Investigations Bureau at 951-955-2600. Their identity will be kept confidential.

HOME GARDENS (CA)
The Press-Enterprise

By JOHN ASBURY
The Press-Enterprise

A church bishop shot earlier this year in an attempted robbery was arrested on suspicion of selling narcotics.

Authorities served a search warrant Tuesday at the Our Lady of Tepeyec Church in Home Gardens, outside Corona, where sheriff's investigators found evidence he was selling narcotics from the church, according to a Riverside County sheriff's report.

Police arrested Antony Martinez Garduno, 51, of Home Gardens on suspicion of burglary, selling narcotics, possession of methamphetamine and possession of a controlled substance, sheriff's officials said.

HOME GARDENS (CA)
Southwest Riverside News Network

By Jose Arballo Jr., SWRNN

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

A bishop who was the victim of a high-profile assault in September at his Home Gardens church has been arrested after a man who is now an adult accused the clergyman of molesting him when he was 17, authorities said.

Bishop Anthony Garduno was taken into custody Tuesday after investigators searched Our Lady of Tepeyac church located between Corona and Riverside, said Deputy Herlinda Valuenzuela in a news release.

The victim, who is now an adult, reported being sexually assaulted when he was 17 by Garduno and told investigators he had knowledge of additional sexual assaults against underage males and the selling of methamphetamines by Garduno, Valenzuela said. During the search, investigators located evidence that Garduno was selling narcotics from the church and possible sexual assaults having occurred at the church.

CALIFORNIA
KPSP

Reported by: KPSP Local 2 News
Email: news@kpsplocal2.com

A Riverside County bishop suspected of sexually assaulting a teen and selling methamphetamine out of the church he served was in custody Wednesday, according to Riverside County Sheriff's Deputy Herlinda Valenzuela.

Bishop Anthony Garduno, 51, of Home Gardens was arrested Tuesday after investigators, following up on a Sexual Crimes Against Children call, served a search warrant at the church, Our Lady of Tepeyac, 13462 Magnolia Ave., reports showed.

The victim not only reported being sexually assaulted by Garduno at the age of 17, but also said that other sexual assaults on underage boys had taken place at the church, as well as the selling of meth.

CALIFORNIA
San Jose Mercury News

CORONA, Calif.—A Southern California church leader has been arrested on drug-related charges amid allegations that he drugged and sexually abused children, authorities said Wednesday.

Anthony Garduno, 51, was arrested Tuesday for investigation of possession of drugs and stolen property after investigators found evidence he was selling drugs from his church, said Riverside County Sheriff's Sgt. Dennis Gutierrez. ...

A message was left Wednesday at the church seeking comment. Gutierrez said the church identifies itself as Catholic but is not affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church.

HOME GARDENS (CA)
My Fox LA

Posted by: Scott Coppersmith / myFOXla.com

Home Gardens - A 51-year-old Catholic bishop was in custody today on suspicion of sexually abusing a teenage boy in his Home Gardens parish and selling drugs out of the church, sheriff's officials said.

Bishop Anthony Martinez Garduno also made headlines in September, when he was shot outside Our Lady of Tepeyac during a robbery attempt.

Sheriff's deputies arrested Garduno on Tuesday following an investigation started Dec. 21, based on claims that the bishop assaulted a 17- year-old boy, sheriff's Deputy Herlinda Valenzuela said.

UNITED STATES
Arutz Sheva (Israel)

by Hillel Fendel

(IsraelNN.com) A U.S. appeals court has dismissed a lawsuit by Holocaust survivors against the Vatican bank, ruling not on the allegations against the bank but rather on jurisdiction.

The plaintiffs – Jewish and other survivors from Yugoslavia, Croatia and Ukraine - claimed that the Vatican bank and others stored and laundered $50 million worth of their valuables that had been stolen by the Nazi-backed Ustasha regime that controlled Croatia. Representing over 300,000 Holocaust victims and their heirs, they sought an accounting, restitution and damages from the Vatican – in the form of the return of that portion of the Ustasha treasury that had been transferred to the Vatican, the Franciscan Order, and other banks after World War II.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, California, took no stand on the survivors' allegations. Instead, it upheld a lower court ruling that the Vatican bank, together with foreign countries in general, is immune from such a lawsuit under the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.

Historians have long stated that plunder from the Ustasha made its way to Rome and was then used in part to help Croatian Ustasha war criminals flee to South America. During World War II, the Ustashas exterminated hundreds of thousands – estimates range from 300,000 to 750,000 – of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies, and also looted their property. The Croatian Catholic Church was closely entangled with the Ustashas, overseeing forced conversion of Orthodox Serbs to Catholicism in the early years of the war. This was in keeping with the Croatian-Ustasha plan to ethically cleanse the area of Serbs by killing a third, expelling a third, and converting the rest.

IRELAND
Voice from the Desert

The Irish Catholic

Garry O’Sullivan - Editor

The clerical sexual abuse crisis is deeply linked to an abuse of power in the Church from the Vatican down to the local parish, a large gathering of Dublin priests has been told.

Former Master General of the Dominican Order and author, Fr Timothy Radcliffe, told a two-day gathering of Dublin priests that ”I’m convinced this whole sexual abuse crisis is deeply linked with power and the way power operates in the Church at all levels, from the Vatican to the parish sacristan. Often, it is not the power of Jesus who is gentle and humble of heart.”

Fr Radcliffe traced the rise of power over recent centuries in secular society and said that the ”Church has been infected by the same culture of control”.

TEXAS
Midland Reporter-Telegram

by Shanna Sissom
Midland Reporter-Telegram
Published: Wednesday, December 30, 2009
A civil lawsuit has been filed against the church and estate of a priest who killed himself amid allegations of child sexual abuse in 2003, the San Angelo Diocese confirmed late Tuesday.

The Rev. David Espitia was found hanging inside his Colorado City residence just days after reporting to Bishop Michael Pfeifer he had been accused of sexually assaulting a minor. Both contents on his computer and a suicide note the priest left were confiscated by investigators at the time. Espitia was scheduled to be transferred to Odessa at the time, and denied the allegations.

Also named as defendants in the lawsuit are the San Angelo Diocese and Pfeifer.

"Today I regret to report that a suit has been filed in Tom Green County against the estate of Fr. David Espitia, deceased, and against the Diocese of San Angelo," Pfeifer said in a press release. "I am dismayed by the claim that the diocese, and I personally, are somehow responsible for some claimed sexual abuse of a minor child, by the late Fr. Espitia."

ARGENTINA
Javno (Croatia)

BUENOS AIRES, December 30, 2009 (AFP) - The former archbishop of the Argentine province of Santa Fe has been sentenced to eight years in prison for "aggravated sexual abuse" against a young seminarian, a court source said Wednesday.

Judge Maria Mascheroni said Edgardo Storni, now 73, took advantage of his access to and authority over the young seminarian when the crime was committed in 1992 while he was archbishop.

Under Argentine law, Storni will serve out his sentence under house arrest because he is more than 70 years old.

ARGENTINA
Monsters and Critics

Buenos Aires - A former Argentine Roman Catholic archbishop was sentenced to eight years in jail for aggravated sexual abuse of a seminarian, the former prelate's lawyer said Wednesday.

The former seminarian had filed suit against Edgardo Storni, former archbishop of the Argentine city of Santa Fe, in 1993.

Judge Maria Amalia Mascheroni ruled against Storni on December 23, but the ruling was only made public a week later. The former archbishop was likely to serve the sentence under house arrest, since he was soon to turn 70 and Argentine law allows the benefit of house arrest to convicts above that age.

ARGENTINA
Washington Post

The Associated Press
Wednesday, December 30, 2009

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- An Argentine judge convicted a former Roman Catholic archbishop Wednesday of sexually abusing a seminarian in 1992.

Former Santa Fe Archbishop Edgardo Storni received a sentence of eight years, the minimum for aggravated sexual abuse, defense attorney Eduardo Jauchen said.

VATICAN CITY
CBS 13

NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer
VATICAN CITY (AP) ― An American appeals court on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit by Holocaust survivors who alleged the Vatican bank accepted millions of dollars of their valuables stolen by Nazi sympathizers.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a lower court ruling that said the Vatican bank was immune from such a lawsuit under the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which generally protects foreign countries from being sued in U.S. courts.

Holocaust survivors from Croatia, Ukraine and Yugoslavia had filed suit against the Vatican bank in 1999, alleging that it stored and laundered the looted assets of thousands of Jews, Serbs and Gypsies who were killed or captured by the Nazi-backed Ustasha regime that controlled Croatia.

UNITED STATES/IRELAND
Irish Central

By PATRICK ROBERTS, IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

Victims of clergy sex abuse in the United States and a group that tracks pedophile priests are calling on American Roman Catholic leaders and the Irish Government to publicly detail known connections between the clergy abuse scandals in the two countries.

Four bishops in Ireland have resigned since the Ryan Report revealed how Dublin Archdiocese leaders had covered-up the crimes of pedophile priests.

The group, BishopAccountability.org, says it has created the first comprehensive, web-based database of accused Irish priests who also have worked in the U.S. The group has asked Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley and Rhode Island Bishop Thomas Tobin to reveal the names of any any priests accused of sexual abuse after being transferred from Ireland.

IRELAND
Galway News

December 30, 2009
A priest who walked in atonement from Cobh to Dublin for clerical child sex abuse victims has voiced his suspicions over Bishop Drennan's innocence in the Murphy Report.

IRELAND
Limerick Leader

Published Date: 03 December 2009
By Anne Sheridan and Mike Dwane
THE Bishop of Limerick, Donal Murray, still maintains he has a clear conscience and was not involved in the cover-up of child sexual abuse complaints within the Dublin diocese.

In an exclusive interview in this weekend's Limerick Leader, Dr Donal Murray said he doesn't feel "the full truth" is being heard in how the sickening report reflects on his term of office as auxiliary bishop of Dublin between 1982 and 1996 – and that parts of the report were "unfair" towards him.

As he engages on a period of consultation over the next "couple of weeks", by which time he may decide to resign, Bishop Murray insisted he had no desire to cling to power for the sake of it.

IRELAND
Leinster Leader

Published Date: 30 December 2009
By Maeve McGovern
IT is expected that the Bishop and Leighlin's offer of resignation will be accepted relatively quickly by Pope Benedict, paving the way for a new diocesan head to be appointed early in 2010.

Bishop Jim Moriarty will remain in office until Rome selects his successor. However, in the event that no replacement has been identified by the Pope within eight days of the resignation being accepted, a caretaker bishop will be installed in the interim.

According to a diocesean spokesperson, the caretaker bishop, who will have certain powers and responsibilities, will be a priest selected from a parish in the diocese of Kildare and Leighlin

IRELAND
Offaly Express

Published Date: 30 December 2009
By Staff Reporter
THE Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, Dr James Moriarty, has outlined the reasons for his resignation in the wake of the Murphy report. His diocese includes a large part of Offaly, including Edenderry, Rhode, Daingean, Walsh Island, Geashill, Clonbullogue and Portarlington, as well as much of Laois, Kildare and Carlow.

The following is the full text of his statement:

“On the Sunday after the Murphy report into the Archdiocese of Dublin was published (29th November 2009), I stated the following in Carlow Cathedral:

“As you are aware, I served as an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Dublin from 1991 until my appointment here in 2002. While the Murphy report does not criticise me directly, I feel it is important to state that I fully accept the overall conclusion of the commission – that the attempts by Church authorities to ‘protect the Church’ and to ‘avoid scandal’ had the most dreadful consequences for children and were deeply wrong.

CANADA
The Ottawa Citizen

The majority of sexual abuse victims in Cornwall -- where a massive inquiry wrapped up this month -- were male. And yet, decades after Ontario began recognizing the importance of supporting victims of sexual abuse with mental health and counselling services, the needs of men are still largely ignored.

The province's Ministry of the Attorney General funds an extensive network of mental health services for female sexual abuse victims throughout Ontario, and it is right to do so. But there is only one such organization for male survivors -- The Men's Project, based in Ottawa with a temporary second office in Cornwall.

The Cornwall inquiry into sexual abuse, which dealt with allegations going back four decades, identified systemic failures that allowed the abuse to continue. In his report, Commissioner Normand Glaude found that the church, the probation office and police were all guilty of failing to properly investigate abuse claims.

MILWAUKEE (WI)
Fox 6

[with video]

WITI-TV, MILWAUKEE - What's in a name? To the victims of pedophile priests, a lot. Early December the pope said he is outraged by the decades of child sexual abuse and cover-ups in the Catholic Church in Ireland. The issues in the United States have been well publicized for years, but just how outraged is the catholic church in America?

Innocent children who looked up to the men of the cloth, were victimized many years ago in Catholic Schools. The sexual assaults didn't stay a childhood secret. The pedophile priests were eventually exposed, and it is well documented that the Bishops covered up the crimes. In a past interview a FOX 6 reporter asked Former Archbishop Rembert Weakland, "You allowed each of these priests to continue in ministry in some capacity did you not?". Weakland answered Yes.

The Milwaukee archdiocese is one of the most notorious cases. From 1977-2002, Archbishop Weakland shuffled numerous pedophile priests around to protect the good name of the church to the detriment of countless children. During a past interview Weakland admitted it was common practice to put a priest back in ministry, and not tell the laity that you knew the priest was an offender.

SAN ANGELO (TX)
CBS 7

[with video]

Eddie Garcia
CBS 7 News
December 29, 2009

San Angelo, TX - The lawsuit accuses the late Father David Espitia of sexually molesting an 8 year old boy until he was 16.

The document further describes in graphic detail multiple sexual acts on the child at various locations including on church grounds.

One line says that Espitia intentionally would wear his priestly collar during the sexual assaults.

SAN ANGELO (TX)
NewsWest9

SAN ANGELO - The Catholic Diocese of San Angelo, which covers Midland and Odessa, is responding to a lawsuit to claims the Diocese tried to cover up the alleged sexual abuse of a child.

According to the lawsuit, the victim was abused by the late Father David Espitia from 1994 to 2002 beginning when the boy was just eight years old.

"I am dismayed by the claim, that the Diocese, and I personally, are somehow responsible for some claimed sexual abuse of a minor child, by the late Father David Espitia," Bishop Michael D. Pfeifer said in a release to NewsWest9.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Conor CULLEN

Wednesday December 30 2009

BISHOP Denis Brennan has paid tribute to Bishop Eamonn Walsh's 'pioneering work' in the Diocese of Ferns following his decision to resign on Christmas Eve.

Bishop Walsh, former Apostolic Administrator for Ferns, has stepped down in the wake of the Murphy report into the handling of child abuse complaints in the Dublin Archdiocese.

'The diocese respects the decision of Bishop Eamonn Walsh to tender his resignation as auxiliary Bishop of Dublin,' said Bishop Brennan.

ARGENTINA
Lanacion

El arzobispo emérito de la ciudad de Santa Fe fue condenado a ocho años de prisión por abuso sexual agravado por su condición de sacerdote. La jueza María Amalia Mascheroni resolvió de esta forma la única causa abierta que pesaba sobre el prelado.

La causa tuvo su inicio ante la denuncia del ex seminarista Rubén Descalzo, por un hecho ocurrido en el año 1992, que fue denunciado 10 años después, informaron hoy fuentes judiciales.

ARGENTINA
Critica de la Argentina

La jueza María Amalia Mascheroni condenó este miércoles a ocho años de prisión al ex arzobispo de Santa Fe, monseñor Edgardo Storni. Fue por abuso sexual agravado por el vínculo, esto último se refiere al vínculo que mantenía con los jóvenes que eran seminaristas. El abogado defensor, Eduardo Jauchen, ya apeló la orden de la jueza. Se estima que Storni no irá a la cárcel sino que cumpliría prisión domiciliaria por alcanzar en poco tiempo los 70 años de edad, informó el diario Rosario 3.

El caso Storni se hizo público en 1994, cuando por orden del Vaticano el actual arzobispo de San Juan, monseñor José María Arancibia, investigó denuncias de seminaristas sobre abusos sexuales, cometidos en el seminario santafecino y durante los retiros espirituales en Calamuchita, Córdoba.

Los relatos de los seminaristas coincidían con los testimonios brindados por sacerdotes, algunos de los cuales entregaron copias de misivas remitidas al arzobispo, advirtiéndole la gravedad de los hechos y la necesidad de adoptar alguna medida al respecto de su parte.

ARGENTINA
Perfil

El ex arzobispo de Santa Fe Edgardo Storni fue condenado hoy a ocho años de prisión por abuso sexual agravado por el vínculo.

La condena fue impuesta por la jueza María Amalia Mascheroni a raíz de la denuncia realizada por el ex seminarista Rubén Descalzo.

ARGENTINA
Buenos Aires Herald

Former Santa Fe province archbishop Edgardo Storni was sentenced to eight years in prison over charges of sexual abuse aggravated for him being a priest.

Judge María Amalia Mascheroni ruling closed then the only open case pending over him, which started after former seminarian Rubén Descalzo accused Storni in 2002 of sexually abusing him ten years before.

SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
ABC News

By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press Writer
VATICAN CITY December 29, 2009

(AP) The Associated Press

An American appeals court on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit by Holocaust survivors who alleged the Vatican bank accepted millions of dollars of their valuables stolen by Nazi sympathizers.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a lower court ruling that said the Vatican bank was immune from such a lawsuit under the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which generally protects foreign countries from being sued in U.S. courts.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY

ANALYSIS: In the second of our series looking at what things might be like five years hence, we consider the future of the Catholic Church in Ireland, where ordinations have collapsed along with its moral authority

THERE WAS a poignancy in the air at the ordination of three men as Redemptorist priests in St Joseph’s Church, Dundalk, on Sunday December 6th. In the front pew a female relative of one of the men wept copiously as the ceremony progressed.

It was conducted by the Catholic primate Cardinal Seán Brady, who was clearly still reeling from the findings of the Murphy report, published on November 26th, while also attending to his duties. He seemed exhausted. In a momentary lapse he forgot the name of one of the young men. Then, remembering, he commented it was “Seán, the same name as my own”. There was a laugh from the congregation.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY Religious Affairs Correspondent

THE AUGUSTINIAN priest who walked in atonement from Cobh to Dublin for clerical child sex abuse victims a year ago says the Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan “must have known something” about the the handling of clerical child sex abuse allegations in Dublin while there as auxiliary bishop between 1997 and 2005.

Beginning his walk on December 29th last year, Fr Michael Mernagh said he believed the Bishop of Cloyne Dr John Magee should step down after it emerged weeks earlier that child-protection measures in the diocese were “inadequate, even dangerous.”

This was revealed in a report by a Catholic agency, the National Board for Safeguarding Children.

CALIFORNIA
Cal Coast News

December 29, 2009
By KAREN VELIE

A San Luis Obispo Sheriff’s deputy has filed a civil claim seeking an unspecified amount of money against a Roman Catholic priest whom he said emotionally traumatized him during an undercover sting.

Claiming personal injuries, Sheriff’s Deputy John Franklin filed a civil claim against a Roman Catholic priest he arrested in 2007 for lewd conduct in a public place near Avila Beach. Franklin claims he suffers “mental and emotional distress including feelings of anger, rage, disgust, revulsion and embarrassment as a result of the despicable and oppressive behavior” of the former assistant pastor of St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Nipomo.

“It is not so much monetary as a position of principal he is seeking. My client is making a statement that this is not acceptable behavior,” said James R. Murphy, the deputy’s attorney.

UGANDA
The New Vision

By Tonny Nsoona
in Jinja

A Catholic sect that allows its priests to marry has registered and opened a branch in Uganda, with its headquarters in Jinja.

The Catholic Apostolic National Church, which does not allow women to become priests, has attracted a few Roman Catholic priests.

Its African archbishop, Mbewa Anzanga, a former Zambian Roman Catholic priest, has appointed Leonard Lubega the first bishop-elect for Uganda.

Lubega, a PhD graduate in Biblical Counselling from a US university, has already received an apostolic mandate for his election as Uganda’s first bishop.
Lubega, who is also a lecturer at Kampala International University, was formerly a Charismatic Catholic Church priest.

IRELAND
Galway News

December 29, 2009
A sex abuse campaigner is calling on the Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan to meet with 60 victims of clerical abuse.

Andrew Madden made the call following Bishop Drennan's decision not to resign in the wake of the findings of the Murphy Report.

SOUTHBRIDGE (MA)
The Catholic Free Press

By Tanya Connor

SOUTHBRIDGE – Notre Dame and Sacred Heart of Jesus parishes will merge into one parish, called Notre Dame of the Sacred Heart, on Pentecost, May 23, 2010.

Decisions about what to do with the two parishes’ eight buildings, including the churches themselves, have not yet been made.

Father Leo-Paul J. LeBlanc, pastor of Notre Dame since 2004 and administrator of Sacred Heart since 2007, gave The Catholic Free Press this information last week. He said he had previously announced the new name to parishioners. He announced the merge date at all Masses at both parishes last weekend, he said Monday.

ORANGE COUNTY (CA)
Orange County Weekly

By Gustavo Arellano in Ex Cathedra
Tue., Dec. 29 2009

​If you ever pay attention to apologists for the Catholic Diocese of Orange's sex-abuse scandal--you never should, but I'm just saying if God ever punishes you in that fashion--one of the points they'll repeat again and again is that most of the kiddie rapes and scandals happened long ago, long before Bishop Tod D. Brown came to town and cleaned up. After I stop laughing, I remind them that the biggest sin in the scandal isn't so much the rapes themselves, but the cover-up of the diocese's hierarchy, their absolute indifference to the scandal they wrought despite public shows to the contrary. Then, the apologists say I'm anti-Catholic, and more laughter ensues.

As this decade from hell closes, it's a perfect time to remember the Orange diocese's five worst, most callous transgressions pertaining to its sex-abuse scandal--and isn't it telling of how rotten the diocese is that none of them actually involves a sex crime? Heckuva job, Brownie! Here's the list, in order of vileness:

1. Bishop Brown's sex-abuse allegation: For most of this decade, Brownie has announced to anyone who'll listen that the Orange diocese under his watch was a transparent one, one forthcoming, truthful, and repentant. He even spent half-a-million bucks to make the point (see #3 on this list). All along, Brownie told no one that someone had lodged molestation allegations against him. His reasoning? This reality was "embarrassing," according to testimony he gave in a 2007 deposition. Tell that to Richard Delahunty, the priest Brown named in 2004 as being investigated for pedophilia before realizing the allegations were just that--allegations.

UNITED STATES
Benedict XVI - Ratzinger: God's Rottweiler

Paris Arrow

As we have boldly disclosed a few days ago before the Papal Christmas Mass at the Vatican, Benedict XVI has no power to say "Let there be God in the Eucharist" just like he has no power to say "Let there be light " in Genesis http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2009/12/benedict-xvi-has-no-power-to-say-let.html But he thinks, as do all Catholics believe, that the pope is infallible and is all-powerful in determining the salvation of 1.2 Catholics, and who can or cannot enter Heaven because he holds the Key of Peter, and that in the Mass, the "real flesh of Christ" comes down into the host through the magic-formula of "transubstantiation" spoken 'exclusively' by the pope and men-priests. Come to think of it, why would God "obey" such a callous cold-blooded pope who ordered the direct cover-up of the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army? http://jp2army.blogspot.com/ He threatened anyone who disclosed or discussed priest-pedophilia with excommunication; see Crimen sollicitationis (Latin for crime of soliciting) in You Tube pope-ratz.blogspot.com/.../benedict-xvi-in-google-video-sex-crimes.html .

CONNECTICUT
Fairfield County Weekly

By Erin Holroyd

But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. — Matthew 18:6

Raymond Pcolka died of a combination of liver failure, cirrhosis and hepatitis C on Nov. 22 at the Glen River Nursing Home in Southbury. He was 70. There was no obituary, no known calling hours. Unless you'd been following developments in the Catholic church sex abuse scandal, you would have no reason to know Pcolka's name. And even some who were following it missed the "news" of his death.

For those of us who knew him, it meant closure; he was no longer out there, somewhere.

The crimes Pcolka perpetrated against children during his 11 years as associate pastor at the Holy Name of Jesus Church in Stratford were unforgivable. According to court papers released last month, he raped them, sodomized them and had them urinate on him as he laughed in bed.

IRELAND
Voice from the Desert (United States)

Tom Doyle’s comment on NSAC Calls Second Resigning Irish Bishop’s Statement Incredulous follows.

[Irish bishop] James Moriarity’s statement is completely believable but one must understand it in its proper context. There can be no doubt that he, like the others, had cognitive recognition of the fact that sexual abuse of a child by anyone is harmful and in addition, cognitive recognition that sexual abuse of a child by a cleric is harmful. The difference between Moriarity and the same kind of cognitive recognition by a lay man or woman is this: he knows but doesn’t care.

In all probability his lack of a proper and appropriate emotional response is grounded in the radical formation he has experienced in the toxic clerical sub-culture of which he has been a part for all of his adult life. The clerical sub-culture creates a significantly different value system in its members. The highest value is placed in the clerical/hierarchical culture itself. The bishops are taught to believe that they are the hierarchical system and hence the Church. This of course lacks any foundation in history or scripture but that matters not.

The hierarchical system is a breeding ground for a deadly psychological disorder known as “Acquired Situational Narcissism.” This disorder prevents the person from truly valuing anything other than himself for its own sake. In other words, if something is of value it is based on its benefit to the narcissist and in this instance to the narcissistic system. Consequently had Moriartity stated publicly that he knew that sex abuse of children by clerics was horrendous and evil and admitted that he allowed it anyway because he did not want to tarnish his image, then he would have been accurate and either a “recovering narcissist”, of which there is no such thing, or a budding convert to honesty which is almost as rare.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

Tuesday December 29 2009

FOUR of the bishops who served as auxiliaries in the Archdiocese of Dublin during the period covered by the Murphy report have now resigned.

At least three of the four had at first asserted that they were not personally responsible for what happened, and as such they considered that they should not resign. But then Archbishop Martin introduced the notion of collective authority and, as a consequence, collective responsibility, for the failures of the time.

This seems to have tipped the scale, and as of now, all but Bishop Martin Drennan are gone. This is an interesting development, which to my knowledge is unique in the recent history of the Catholic Church.

BOSTON (MA)
Marketplace

Bob Moon: Back in 2004, the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston decided to close and sell 70 churches. The move followed the payment of more than $141 million to settle sexual-abuse lawsuits. But parishioners at five of those churches refused to leave. And they're still there. They're not holding formal services, they're just squatting 24-7. The stalemate has ended up costing the Archdiocese more than a half-million-dollars a year. And as Monica Brady Myerov reports from WBUR, that price tag could get steeper.

Monica Brady Myerov: Maryellen Rogers shows off five handmade quilts hanging near the altar of St. Frances Cabrini Church in Scituate, a town 30 miles south of Boston. Each quilt marks a year that a group of parishioners has been occupying the building illegally.

MARYELLEN ROGERS: They represent who we are, third anniversary quilt is called the journey quilt, and it's a road. It's a road to the church. There's bridges that we want to build the bridges with the Archdiocese of Boston.

IRELAND
Washington Post

Paula Kirby

What was the most important religion story of 2009?

2009 was the year in which - finally - thousands of Irish victims of child abuse on an unimaginable scale had the extent of their suffering acknowledged in the form of two reports, issued under the chairmanship of Mr Justice Sean Ryan and Judge Yvonne Murphy, respectively.

The Ryan Report, published in May, shocked a normally phlegmatic world with its catalogue of physical, sexual and emotional abuse perpetrated on generations of Irish children, mostly at the hands of Roman Catholic monks, nuns and priests. More shocking still was its conclusion that this savage abuse, far from being the random acts of a few out-of-control mavericks, was both endemic and systemic and, furthermore, was actively covered up by the Church, whose only concern was the preservation of its own reputation.

The Murphy Report, which was published just a month ago, focused on the way allegations of sexual abuse were dealt with in the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin, by both church and state authorities. This report found that:

The Dublin Archdiocese's pre-occupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid 1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets. All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities. The Archdiocese did not implement its own canon law rules and did its best to avoid any application of the law of the State.

PROVIDENCE (RI)
Providence Journal

By Donita Naylor
Journal Staff Writer

A man and a woman who say they were molested in the 1960s by an Irish priest in East Greenwich asked the Roman Catholic Church on Monday to release more records about pedophilic clergy.

Jeffrey Thomas, of Massachusetts, and Helen McGonigle, of Connecticut, say they were raped as children by the Rev. Brendan Smyth, an Irish priest who had been assigned to Our Lady of Mercy in East Greenwich from 1965 to 1968.

Smyth had been sent to Rhode Island in 1965 after molesting children in Northern Ireland. He was eventually charged with 74 counts in the Republic of Ireland and 17 in Northern Ireland. He died in prison in Ireland in 1997 at age 70.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By JOHN COONEY

Tuesday December 29 2009

AT a Mass in Dublin's St Michan's Church marking the opening of the law term, in October 2000, a Catholic bishop ascended the high moral ground in his sermon to the legal and judicial luminaries when he lambasted the British media tactic of "naming and shaming" convicted offenders.

This lamentable practice "has had frightening consequences", intoned the bishop to an audience which would have included Frank 'Ferns' Murphy, Sean 'Industrial schools' Ryan and Yvonne 'Dublin' Murphy, all three shortly to become immortalised for "naming and shaming" archbishops, auxiliary bishops and religious superiors who covered up heinous crimes against innocent children by paedophile priests.

That day's preacher-bishop was an Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin, Dr Martin Drennan, who nine years later as Bishop of Galway was named in the archdiocese of Dublin report but remains unashamed and unmoved by the appeals of victims Andrew Madden and Marie Collins to step down.

TENNESSEE
The Commercial Appeal

By Lawrence Buser
Posted December 29, 2009

A priest who was a leader of Memphis Catholic youth groups in the 1970s and later was named in multiple lawsuits alleging sexual abuse died Sunday in Nashville.

Rev. Paul St. Charles, who had battled heart and neuromuscular problems for many years, died at St. Thomas Hospital, according to Rick Musaccio, director of communications for the Diocese of Nashville. He was 70.

St. Charles, who retired in 1986 because of health problems, was youth director for the Memphis Catholic Diocese in the early 1970s, headed the Catholic Youth Organization at Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church in Frayser and was pastor at Church of the Ascension.

IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

Tuesday, 29 December 2009

Two of Ireland's more prominent abuse victims have called for the resignation of the last remaining bishop identified in the Murphy report.

The calls come as a second damning report into cover-ups of paedophile priests is now unlikely to be issued.

The embattled Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan reaffirmed his determination to face down Archbishop Diarmuid Martin and rejected the growing clamour for him to step down.

UNITED STATES
Examiner

Donna Diegel

The Names of 3300 Pedophile Priests accused of sexual abuse, are now available on bishopaccountability.org. An online registry of sex offending priests and clergy, the website makes these lists available to the public. Victims asked the Roman Catholic Church to release more information on Monday in a Providence news conference.

Providence, Rhode Island News Conference

A news conference was held outside a Providence church on Monday, December 28th. Two victims, Helen McGonigle and Jeffrey Thomas, both 48, stood on the steps of Saints Peter and Paul church, and asked the Roman Catholic Church to release more information regarding priests accused of sexual molestation. Alleged sexual abuse and rape victims complained that Bishop Thomas Tobin was not forthcoming with the names of Irish priests accused of sexual abuse. Tobin was not available for comment.

Irish Priest Father Brendan Smyth

McGonigle and Thomas claim they were raped by Reverend Brendan Smyth while he was assigned to Our Lady of Mercy in East Greenwich from 1965 to 1968. Smyth was a visiting Irish priest in the late 1960s when he began raping McGonigle and Thomas. They were six years old at the time. The projo.com reports, "Smyth had been sent to Rhode Island in 1965 after molesting children in Northern Ireland. Smyth was charged with 74 counts in the Republic of Ireland and 17 in Northern Ireland." Smyth was accused and convicted of rape and child molesting, and died in 1997 in a Belfast prison.

IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

The rank-and-file could yet prove to be the salvation of the crisis-hit Catholic Church. But first the faithful must stop looking to the Vatican for answers, argues Malachi O'Doherty

Tuesday, 29 December 2009

Heads have started to roll in the Catholic church and the beginning of a reorganisation of the church is now being discussed and hinted at.

While some of the former auxiliary bishops in the archdiocese of Dublin implicated in the cover-up of child abuse have bowed to the inevitable and resigned, there was little sense that their own church was struggling to save them.

The Vatican wants change here and it wants to lead that change. Archbishop Diarmuid Martin forced the shamed men's hands by reminding them that they had a share in the collective responsibility of the diocesan bishops for the efforts to maintain secrecy about abuse.

IRELAND
Christian Today

by Brian Hutt
Posted: Tuesday, December 29, 2009

The last remaining bishop mentioned in a damning report on the failure of the Catholic Church in Ireland to deal with allegations of child abuse is facing calls to step down.

The Bishop of Galway Dr Martin Drennan was one of five bishops mentioned in the Murphy report, which lifted the lid on decades of unreported child abuse within the Archdiocese of Dublin.

UNITED STATES
NECN

[with video]

(NECN/AP: Boston, Mass.) - Victims of clergy sex abuse and a group that tracks pedophile priests called on local Roman Catholic leaders and the Irish government Monday to publicly detail known connections between the clergy abuse scandals in the U.S. and Ireland.

Two Irish bishops resigned on Christmas Day, joining two others who had quit since a government report in November revealed how Dublin church leaders had shielded pedophile priests from the law.

Terence McKiernan, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, said the report detailed evidence that some accused priests in Ireland had been transferred to parishes in the United States. ...

Without responding directly to the letter, the archdiocese said in a statement that it has established "comprehensive policies and procedures" to protect children from sexual abuse, including a provision that any priest moving to the archdiocese from another jurisdiction be certified by his former bishop as having no past allegations of abuse.

"Our hearts and prayers go out to those in Ireland who have been harmed by the tragic reality of sexual abuse of children by clergy," the statement read. "We know from our own experience the profound impact and suffering caused by the harm perpetrated on children and young people."

RHODE ISLAND
Providence Journal

[note: Brendan Smyth died in 1997. This is an older story that was posted yesterday to provide background to recent developments in Providence.]

07:30 PM EST on Monday, December 28, 2009

RICHARD C. DUJARDIN Journal Staff Writer

An Irish priest whose sexual assaults on children figured prominently in the collapse last fall of Ireland's coalition government may have sexually abused children in Rhode Island when he was assigned here three decades ago.

The Rev. Brendan Smyth, 67, is serving a four-year sentence in a Belfast prison after admitting last year that he molested five girls and three boys in Belfast over a 24-year period.

In an extraordinary letter sent to a television station in Ulster, the Norbertine abbot who had been Father Smyth's religious superior for 25 years acknowledged that he and others had known for decades that Father Smyth had a "problem" with children, and thought they could deal with it by having him reassigned every two or three years to prevent him from forming "attachments to families and children."

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY Religious Affairs Correspondent

THE “HONOURABLE thing for the Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan to do is to resign,” Maeve Lewis, chief executive with the One in Four group, has said.

Calls have been made for the bishop’s resignation also through newly-launched online and Facebook petitions.

Ms Lewis said that the bishop “has to take collective responsibility”.

She asked: “How many children were abused in Dublin between 1997 and 2005 when he was in a position of authority?”

IRELAND
The Irish Times

Martin Drennan was auxiliary bishop in Dublin when one of the worst abuse cases came to light. Did he know about it? If so, what did he do, asks PATSY McGARRY

ALLEGATIONS OF serious sexual abuse against a priest were brought to the attention of Dublin’s Catholic archdiocese by two sisters in 1998 during Bishop Martin Drennan’s tenure as auxiliary bishop there. The bishop was ordained auxiliary on September 21st, 1997, and remained in Dublin until installed as Bishop of Galway on July 3rd, 2005.

The sisters, called “Martha” and “Mary” here to protect their identities, spoke to this reporter in June 2003. In February 1998, their mother went to the chancellor of the archdiocese, Msgr John Dolan, to report the abuse of one of her daughters by Fr Noel Reynolds 20 years previously when he was based in Kilmore Road parish in Dublin’s north city.

He was curate there from 1969 to 1978. She did not name him, nor was she asked to. She was told that, as her daughter was an adult, then it was she who would have to make the complaint. The mother was pessimistic about this happening due to the circumstances of her daughter’s life. Nothing was done.

BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

December 28, 2009
By Meghan Irons, Globe Staff

They came with a list of names: All are priests. All have ties to Ireland. All are accused of sexually abusing children in the United States.

A Waltham-based group that has been chronicling the US clergy sex scandal unveiled today the names of 60 to 70 accused priests it says were either born in Ireland or are of Irish descent who came to the United States and re-offended. The group, BishopAccountability.org, demanded that Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley of Boston and Bishop Thomas J. Tobin of Providence to comb the records of their dioceses and make public the names of any credibly accused Irish priests who have worked there.

By revealing the names, the group said it hopes to highlight the issue of immigrant Irish priests who are known pedophiles and whose past histories of alleged abuse have long been "outsourced" to the United States.

UNITED STATES
TheBostonChannel

[with video]

BOSTON --
Clergy abuse victims are calling on local church leaders and the Irish government to detail known connections between the clergy abuse scandals in the U.S. and Ireland.

NewsCenter 5's Kelley Tuthill reported that Helen McGonigle was 6 years old when the Rev. Brendan Smyth moved to East Greenwich, R.I.

"He molested me and my sister, Kathleen, who sadly succumbed to a fatal overdose on an antidepressant," she said.

PROVIDENCE (RI)
Providence Journal

Donita Naylor

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- A man and a woman who say they were molested in the 1960s by an Irish priest in East Greenwich called on the Catholic Church Monday to release more records about pedophilic clergy.

The two -- Jeffrey Thomas, of Massachusetts, and Helen McGonigle, of Connecticut,
say they were raped as children by the Rev. Brendan Smyth, an Irish priest who had been assigned to Our Lady of Mercy, in East Greenwich, from 1965 to 1968.

Smyth had been sent to Rhode Island in 1965 after molesting children in Northern Ireland. He was eventually charged with 74 counts in the Republic of Ireland and 17 in Northern Ireland. He died in prison in 1997 at age 70.

UNITED STATES
The Canadian Press

By Bob Salsberg (CP) –

BOSTON — Victims of clergy sex abuse and a group that tracks pedophile priests called on local Roman Catholic leaders and the Irish government Monday to publicly detail known connections between the clergy abuse scandals in the U.S. and Ireland.

Two Irish bishops resigned on Christmas Day, joining two others who had quit since a government report in November revealed how Dublin church leaders had shielded pedophile priests from the law.

Terence McKiernan, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, said the report detailed evidence that some accused priests in Ireland had been transferred to parishes in the United States.

"Unfortunately the places they have been moving include our backyard," said McKiernan, who spoke at a news conference held in front of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, the residence of Cardinal Sean O'Malley of the Boston archdiocese.

UNITED STATES
Air America

BOSTON (AP) — Victims of clergy sex abuse and a group that tracks pedophile priests called on local Roman Catholic leaders and the Irish government Monday to publicly detail known connections between the clergy abuse scandals in the U.S. and Ireland.

Two Irish bishops resigned on Christmas Day, joining two others who had quit since a government report in November revealed how Dublin church leaders had shielded pedophile priests from the law.

Terence McKiernan, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, said the report detailed evidence that some accused priests in Ireland had been transferred to parishes in the United States.

PROVIDENCE (RI)
ABC 6

[video presentation]

Chris Boardman

Local victims of priest abuse gathered today in Providence to unveil the new website listing the names and pictures of pedophile priests working in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

Benedict XVI - Ratzinger: God's Rottweiler

Paris Arrow

Benedict XVI has stirred anger among Jewish groups for declaring “Venerable” Pius XII who did not help Jews during Holocaust…just like John Paul II did nothing to stop his JP2 Pedophile Priests Army in the USA, Ireland, and worldwide. See the John Paul II Millstone "...Only in the Catholic Church are criminals glorified">http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2009/12/john-paul-ii-pedophile-priests-army.html

December 19, 2009 will be a special historical day for cold-blooded Benedict XVI, the former Hitler Youth member, because he elevated two controversial popes as “Venerable”, Pius XII and John Paul II, two popes who did nothing to speak out and stop the most heinous crimes against Jews and children. As Ireland erupts with discoveries of the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army http://jp2army.blogspot.com/, all Benedict XVI could say was, “I’ll write you a letter soon”.

NEW YORK
Examiner

Frank Kaufmann

A fascinating entanglement deeds and issues has brought together what could well be spun into a good grainy New York flick noire.

The real life characters? Bishop Nicholas A. DiMarzio of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, 53rd District, North Brooklyn,Democrat Assemblyman Vito Lopez, Kenneth Bronstein, president of New York City Atheists, and Reverend Robert Hoatson, a New Jersey-based priest abuse activist.

What happened? In disrespectful style, Vito floated a bill that helped Nick. Nick called around to help Vito. In formal language, Assembleyman Vito Lopez took up a legislative battle that mildly said "helps the Catholic church," or more intensely, "is desperately needed by the Catholic church." In return Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio taped robocalls called into voters of the city’s 34th Council District on October 28, thanking Lopez for his work advocating for the Catholic Church during the past year and urging voters to support his choices in the election.

What is the legislation in question? Assembleyman Lopez advanced a sex abuse bill that observers see as competing with Democrat Assemblymember Marge Markey’s bill to eliminate the statute of limitations for abuse victims for one year. Ms. Markey's bill would have permitted new legal actions regarding allegations of years-old sexual abuse to be filed. That bill, the Child Sex Victims Act of New York, could potentially have tied up the church in millions of dollars’ worth of legal entanglements. According to the petitioners, the robocall was a favor in return.

UNITED STATES/IRELAND
BishopAccountability.org

The Catholic sexual abuse crises in the United States and Ireland are deeply connected. Priests who were trained in the Irish seminary system were crucial to the growth of the U.S. church. Many Irish-born priests, including one bishop, are sadly among the priests accused of abuse in the United States. Some priests who offended in Ireland were transferred to the United States, and priests accused of abuse in the United States have sometimes found shelter in Ireland.

Because of the manifold connections between the two churches and the two abuse crises, the Irish government reports on abuse in the Diocese of Ferns, in residential institutions, and in the Archdiocese of Dublin, are of great significance for the situation in the United States. This webpage, a joint effort by BishopAccountability.org and Mr. Joe Rigert, author of An Irish Tragedy, continues our effort to understand the Irish-American connection that we launched with our database of abuse in U.S. residential institutions.

The photographs above illustrate Irish-born priests who are significant in this part of the crisis (clockwise from upper left): the Norbertine Brendan Smyth, who offended in both Northern Ireland and the Republic, and in both Providence RI and Fargo ND in the United States, and pleaded guilty to 96 counts of child molestation in 1997, after the Irish government fell over the mishandling of his case; Anthony O'Connell, bishop of Palm Beach FL and Knoxville TN, who molested boys at a seminary he ran in Jefferson City MO, and who resigned his bishopric when his many victims began to come forward in 2002; Oliver O'Grady pictured back in Ireland, whence he was deported after he served prison time in California, where he is alleged to have abused as many as 50 boys and girls; and Patrick Colleary, now residing in Ireland after he was indicted for abuse in Phoenix AZ and fled the country. A request for his extradition was denied. For additional documentation on these and other priests in this list, see our Database of Accused Priests.

UNITED STATES
Nashua Telegraph

By BOB SALSBERG
Associated Press Writer

BOSTON (AP) — U.S. victims of clergy sex abuse and a group that tracks pedophile priests are calling on local Roman Catholic leaders and the Irish government to publicly detail known connections between the clergy abuse scandals in the U.S. and Ireland.

Four bishops in Ireland have resigned since a government report in November revealed how Dublin church leaders had shielded pedophile priests from the law.

BishopAccountability.org said Monday it has created the first database of accused Irish priests who worked in the U.S. The group has asked Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley and Providence, R.I., Bishop Thomas Tobin to reveal any priests accused of sexual abuse after moving from Ireland.

NASHVILLE (TN)
WHNT

By Associated Press
December 28, 2009

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Paul St. Charles — a Roman Catholic priest who was barred from ecclesiastical duties — has died in Nashville.

Rick Musaccio, the director of communications for the Diocese of Nashville, said St. Charles died Sunday at St. Thomas hospital. He had been in poor health for some time.

IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

Monday, 28 December 2009

The fall-out continues from the Murphy Report into clerical child-sex abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin and two more Catholic bishops have offered their resignations.

Bishop Eamonn Walsh and Bishop Raymond Field dramatically announced their decisions on Christmas Eve, after the earlier resignations of Bishop Donal Murray, which has been accepted, and Bishop James Moriarty, whose resignation is expected to be accepted next month.

Four of the five bishops named in the Murphy Report have offered their resignations, but the fifth cleric — Bishop Martin Drennan of Galway — has not yet indicated his attention of doing so.
...

Bishop Drennan, who was an auxiliary bishop in Dublin from 1997 to 2005, may feel strongly that he has done nothing wrong, but many people will agree with Marie Collins, a victim of clerical sex abuse in Dublin, who claims that he is sending out the wrong message.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Maurice Hayes

Monday December 28 2009

It has been the sort of year that the best individuals and groups in Ireland can do is to echo the French Revolution theorist, Abbey Sieyes, and claim the triumph of mere survival. ...

Of all the institutions on the island, the Catholic Church has suffered the heaviest, and perhaps irreversible, damage, and its stock has plummeted even more than that of the Irish banks -- and not a NAMA in sight to bail them out or provide stability by freezing the noxious elements, while the main body gets on with recovery and rehabilitation.

The existence of clerical child abuse has been public knowledge long before the Murphy report, especially in relation to a few high-profile cases and mainly, it must be said, through the courage and persistence of a small number of victims. There was the knowledge that victims had been ignored, or worse, that compensation had been paid in cases, that malefactors had been transferred.

What was shattering in the report was the extent of abuse, the number of serial abusers, and the tolerance by the system of their activities at the expense of the victims, and the total lack of compassion as charity gave way to canon law.

IRELAND
Irish Central

By PATRICK ROBERTS, IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

The Bishop of Galway, Dr. Martin Drennan, is standing firm against efforts to have him resign in the wake of the Dublin child abuse scandal, thereby creating a further crisis in the Irish church. Four bishops who served in the Dublin archdiocese during the period of the sex abuse have already stepped down, but Drennan, who is the fifth named in the recent Murphy report, has been adamant he will not step aside.

There was further confirmation of his stance over the weekend. He “does not intend to resign,” according to his diocesan communications manager Fr. Seán McHugh.

Drennan is “strong in his belief that he did nothing wrong,” McHugh was quoted in The Irish Times as saying. "Dr. Drennan’s case was different to that of the other four bishops mentioned in the report, in that he wasn’t asked to appear before Judge Murphy’s commission,” McHugh said.

INDIA
Press Trust of India

STAFF WRITER
Panaji, Dec 28 (PTI) Allegations against a Catholic priest of having live-in relationship with a woman sparked off protests in Colva village of South Goa this afternoon.

An angry mob marched in protest towards a local police station and pelted the house of a local body member with stones to express their anger over an audio CD which leveled these allegations.

Police have registered a case against the producer of the CD Culvert Gonsalves, who has allegedly accused the local priest of having live-in relationship.

UNITED KINGDOM
Liverpool Daily Post

THE Catholic church has come under fire for spending £260,000 on a new home for a Wirral priest – just yards from a presbytery they controversially closed last year.

The ongoing campaign against the closure of Ss Peter and Paul’s church in New Brighton, known as the “Dome of Home”, took a new twist after a campaigner discovered the purchase. Cllr Tony Pritchard, who has supported the campaign group SOUL – Save Our Unique Landmark – described the situation as “absurd”.

He said: “This house is only a stone’s throw from the presbytery that they already had which was perfectly fine for the previous priest Fr Wentworth.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Gordon Deegan

Monday December 28 2009

MORE than 1,000 mass-goers gave a standing ovation to the Bishop of Killaloe, Dr Willie Walsh, at a Christmas Mass in Ennis.

The sustained applause happened during Midnight Mass at Ennis's St Peter and Paul Cathedral on Christmas Eve.

From the altar, in his last Christmas service as Bishop of Killaloe, an emotional Dr Walsh thanked parishioners for their "kindness and support".

Later, mass-goers braved sub-zero temperatures to queue outside the church to personally greet Dr Walsh and wish him a happy Christmas.

Earlier, Dr Walsh told mass-goers the Church had been shamed in recent weeks and that people had been justly angry at the Church's failings.

UNITED STATES
Healing and Spirituality

Social religion is perfected when private religion is purified. The body becomes stronger as its members become healthier. The whole church of God gains when the members that compose it begin to seek a better and higher life.

(A.W Tozer, “The Pursuit of God”)

Since spring, 2009, I have led gatherings for Survivors of Religious Authority Sexual Abuse and supporters. The goal was to help participants to reconcile their different experiences and understandings, as well as to imagine next steps in transforming the religious environments that have allowed (knowingly or unknowingly) religious authority sexual abuse. The survivor-supporter dialogues were born after the turmoil of the class action ’settlements’ with southern California Catholic diocese, in the void of support meetings for survivors or supporters.

A recent Associated Press article made it clear that survivors of clergy sexual abuse are not healed by monetary settlements. The law suits may have been a non-violent way of confronting the collective abusers as well as part of a justice making process. However, they do not lead to redemption in and of themselves.

I initially reached out to survivors who had been identified at some point with the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) throughout southern California. The first two meetings took place in a retreat center north of Los Angeles, a spacious and secluded setting that I believed would provide privacy for participants outside of a regular church setting. The first gathering attracted a handful of supporters. The second gathering attracted two survivors. I imagined that either the retreat center itself or the remoteness of it was too much of an obstacle for participants to join.

SOUTH AFRICA
NPR (United States

[with audio]

December 28, 2009
There's controversy over the treatment of Zimbabwean children being cared for by the Central Methodist Church in South Africa. There have been charges of sexual abuse and other mistreatment.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Gordon Deegan

Monday December 28 2009

The Diocese of Killaloe has confirmed that it paid a further €323,507 to victims of past clerical sexual abuse last year.

The payment, revealed in the annual diocesan accounts, brings the amount to over €1.8m paid by the diocese to the victims since 2003.

The accounts also reveal that the panic in the global financial markets resulted in the diocese recording a loss last year.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By LYNNE KELLEHER

Monday December 28 2009

Hollywood star Gabriel Byrne has revealed that Ireland's quaint stereotypical image in America has been blown apart by the horrific details of systematic child abuse in the country.

The actor, who lives in New York, said the orphanages in which Irish children suffered physical and sexual abuse have been compared to concentration camps.

In RTE Radio One's new series, 'Conversations at the Aras', the actor said Americans were shocked by the scale of the abuse. "The day the Ryan report was published, I was in a cafe reading the paper. It was on the front page of the 'New York Times'.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By John Cooney and Brian McDonald

Monday December 28 2009

TWO of Ireland's more prominent abuse victims last night called for the resignation of the last remaining bishop identified in the Murphy report.

The calls come as a second damning report into cover-ups of paedophile priests is now unlikely to be issued.

The embattled Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan reaffirmed his determination to face down Archbishop Diarmuid Martin and rejected the growing clamour for him to step down.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

OPINION: Martin Drennan is the last bishop standing of all those who served in Dublin during the intensive cover-up of clerical child sex abuse, writes MARY RAFTERY

THE STRONGEST impression one gets of Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan these days is of someone who has lived a life blissfully disconnected from reality.

He, of course, is the last bishop standing of all those who served in Dublin during the period of intensive cover-up of clerical child sexual abuse discovered by the Murphy commission.

The bishop believes himself to be different from all the others mentioned in the report, as he alone was not asked to give evidence to the commission. This he appears to equate to some form of vindication.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

FINTAN O'TOOLE

CHURCH SCANDALS: This was the year when the Catholic Church was finally forced to account for its actions, in the face of two horrific reports, writes FINTAN O'TOOLE

COMING IN TO 2009, the Catholic Church and the Government knew at some level that this would be the year of truth. The Ryan commission on child abuse in church-run industrial schools and the Murphy commission on the cover-up of thousands of assaults on children by priests in the Dublin diocese had been sitting for some years.

The broad reality of the industrial-school system had already been detailed by survivors and, more clinically, by Eoin O’Sullivan and Mary Raftery in their book Suffer the Little Children . The system of cover-up that enabled clerical paedophiles to carry on with impunity had been previewed in the report on the Ferns diocese. Indeed, the Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin explicitly warned the faithful that the Murphy report would “shock us all”.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY

BISHOP RAY Field had been head chaplain to the Defence Forces from 1991 until his resignation from that post, when he was ordained an Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin in September 1997.

He was a member of the successful Irish expedition to Mount Everest in 1993 with Dawson Stelfox.

Born on May 24th, 1944, he is a native of Drumcondra. He was ordained a priest on May 17th, 1970. He is a barrister and has been called to the Irish and English Bars.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

The following joint statement was issued by Bishop Éamonn Walsh and Bishop Raymond Field on Christmas Eve:

“We, Bishop Eamonn Walsh and Bishop Raymond Field, have this evening informed Archbishop Diarmuid Martin that we are offering our resignation to His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, as Auxiliary Bishops to the Archbishop of Dublin.

“As we celebrate the Feast of Christmas, the Birth of our Saviour, the Prince of Peace, it is our hope that our action may help to bring the peace and reconciliation of Jesus Christ to the victims/survivors of child sexual abuse. We again apologise to them.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

LORNA SIGGINS

PROMINENT REDEMPTORIST Fr Tony Flannery has criticised Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin for failing to discuss matters raised in the Murphy report with fellow bishops in advance of publication.

“These bishops are not recalcitrant teenagers; they are intelligent and mature men, so it was pathetic of Diarmuid Martin to use the media to communicate with them,” Fr Flannery said in this week’s issue of the Connacht Tribune. “It showed scant respect,” he added. “Bishop Drennan was correct when he said that his integrity was questioned.”

Fr Flannery, who is based in Athenry, Co Galway, said the sad and tragic saga of child abuse had hurt many people, and “real change” must come from the community of believers who were no longer willing to accept that all authority in the (Catholic) Church is exercised by an exclusive group of men handing down their diktats from afar.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

Both prelates feel forced out while conceding no personal responsibility for their situation, writes PATSY McGARRY

THE VERY brevity of the announcement by Bishops Éamonn Walsh and Ray Field, in their joint statement on Christmas Eve, that they intended offering their resignations to Pope Benedict XVI, is an indication of the deep hurt and injustice both men feel.

Clearly, neither was reconciled to doing what he felt he had to do. They did not go gently. Their four-sentence statement lacked any of the broader insight into their situation, such as was offered by Bishop Jim Moriarty in his offer of resignation the previous day, for instance.

Neither indicated any assent to Bishop Moriarty’s statement that he accepted “from the time I became an auxiliary bishop, I should have challenged the prevailing culture”.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

LORNA SIGGINS Western Correspondent

BISHOP OF Galway Dr Martin Drennan “does not intend to resign”, according to his diocesan communications manager Fr Seán McHugh.

The bishop has been under mounting media pressure since four of his colleagues mentioned in the Murphy report on how allegations of child sex abuse were handled in the Dublin archdiocese have tendered resignations.

However, Dr Drennan is “strong in his belief that he did nothing wrong”, Fr McHugh told The Irish Times at the weekend.

In his Christmas Day homily, Dr Drennan spoke of the “darkness of recent times”, including flooding, the recession, the stories of abuse in the publication of the Ryan and Murphy reports, the “stories of greed” in the business world and “stories of excessive expense accounts” in the world of politics.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY Religious Affairs Correspondent

Murphy report fallout: THERE WERE further calls last night for the resignation of Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan following his insistence yesterday that he does not intend doing so.

He has also been invited to meet up to 60 survivors of child sex abuse by priests in Dublin.

Bishop Drennan is the only one of the serving bishops mentioned in the Murphy report who has not yet offered to resign. Late on Christmas Eve, both Dublin Auxiliary Bishops Éamonn Walsh and Ray Field said they had offered their resignations to Pope Benedict XVI.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

IN MARCH 1985 Bishop Eamonn Walsh was appointed junior secretary to then archbishop of Dublin Kevin McNamara.

In 1987 he became secretary to the late auxiliary bishop of Dublin Joseph Carroll, then archdiocesan administrator. A year later, in March 1988, Bishop Walsh became senior secretary to then archbishop of Dublin Desmond Connell (now a cardinal).

In April 1990 he was ordained Titular Bishop of Elmham and Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin with responsibility for the deaneries of Tallaght, South Dublin and Blessington.

CONNECTICUT
Chicago Tribune

By STEPHANIE REITZ
Associated Press Writer

HARTFORD, Conn. - With the number of ordained priests declining nationwide, a Connecticut college is launching a master's degree program to train lay persons to become parish administrators.

Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Cromwell recently received the state Board of Governors for Higher Education's unanimous approval to offer the degree, a master of arts in pastoral studies.

IRELAND
Sunday Business Post

December 2009 By Pat Leahy Political Editor

The Catholic bishops have refused to supply the Department of Education with a list of schools where they are willing to give up patronage, suggesting instead that the department compile a list which they will then consider.

Talks between the department and the bishops on transferring the patronage of some primary schools out of Church hands will continue in the new year, but the department has no immediate plans for reform in the area.

A meeting took place in mid-November between education officials and representatives of the hierarchy but, contrary to the department’s expectations, the bishops did not produce a list of schools where they would be willing to give up patronage.

KENYA
Sunday Nation

By NATION Correspondent
Posted Sunday, December 27 2009

A group of married Catholic priests have urged nuns to also abandon their celibacy vows and “stop living a life of pretence”.

The group led by Archbishop Daniel Kasomo has disassociated themselves with the traditional Roman Catholic Church doctrine of celibacy.

Dr Kasomo said infidelity was rife among the church’s rank and file and called on priests having secret love affairs to come out in the open and formally get married.

IRELAND
Sunday Business Post

27 December 2009 By John Burke

The Irish Catholic Church will hope it never again has to live through a year like 2009, a year when the litany of woes which befell it was unprecedented.

The Catholic Church has been at the centre of sex abuse scandals in the United States and elsewhere before, but its public excoriation here is arguably its greatest fall from grace anywhere, given the unequalled access to power and influence the institutional Church has enjoyed since the founding of the state.

Since the start of 2009, three high-profile Catholic bishops have been forced to step aside for mishandling claims of rape and sexual assault against children.

John Paul II Millstone

Paris Arrow

In the United States, someone who aids and abets a criminal becomes a criminal as well, is considered to have been a party to the offence, and is punishable by jail time. John Paul II aided and abetted his John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army here for more than 26 years http://jp2army.blogspot.com/ . His cover-up of the JP2 Army was first revealed in 2002. It happened on his way to his last World Youth Day in North America. Boston was erupting with priest-pedophilia and our priests and laity demanded the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law. We succeeded. Cardinal Law resigned in shame. He was the first Cardinal in modern time forced to resign by his own priests and us the laity. But John Paul II, to spite us Bostonians, and to prove that he is more powerful than us, promoted Law as Archpriest in the most prestigious basilica in Rome, St. Mary Major. John Paul II glorified Cardinal Law, the criminal who aided and abetted the pedophile priests of Boston became an Archpriest. Only in the Catholic Church are criminals glorified.

Benedict XVI - Ratzinger: God's Rottweiler

Paris Arrow

Cold-blooded Benedict XVI is knocked down at Vatican procession of Christmas Mass, so what, he had no compunction for the sufferings of victims of the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army for over 26 years. Benedict XVI is so cold-blooded that he elevates John Paul II as "Venerable" as the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army expands from USA into Ireland. Only in the Catholic Church are criminals glorifed and elevated into sainthood. See the John Paul II Millstone http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2009/12/john-paul-ii-pedophile-priests-army.html

John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army abuses led to suicides, drug addictions, mental illnesses, divorces, depression, etc. Meanwhile those who aided and abetted the pedophile priests, like Cardinal Bernard Law, Cardinal Mahony are sitting pretty in glory in thier papal appointed posts.

IRELAND
Sunday Business Post

27 December 2009 By Vincent Browne

In the functional library of the Mater Dei Institute on the afternoon of Thursday, November 26,DiarmuidMartin, the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, had just read his statement of apology and shame following the publication of the Murphy Report on the archdiocese.

A mere 40 years ago, a former holder of the office of Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, was arguably the most powerful person in the country. He commanded awe and trepidation, he decreed which universities Catholics could attend, he was believed to have been the one who decided the licensing hours, the books we could read, the form of the health service we could access, the films we could view - even, on one occasion, the football match (against communist Yugoslavia) that we could not see.

Yes, there were functionaries who, theoretically, decided these matters, but the belief was that power lay in the palace at Drumcondra. People knelt on one knee on meeting him to kiss McQuaid’s ring, which he proffered almost disdainfully.

IRELAND
Irish Central

By JANE WALSHE, IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

Fresh calls for the fifth and last remaining bishop who was named in the Murphy Commission report on child sex abuse in the Dublin archdiocese to resign have been made.

Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan is the last bishop of the five to still remain in office. He was Auxiliary Bishop in Dublin from 1997 to 2005. When the report was published, he claimed it "says nothing negative about me."

He also claims to have deep support from his flock in Galway and local radio stations have stated that calls in his favor far outweigh calls for his resignation. Local member of parliament Frank Fahey has also called on him to stay on.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By RONALD QUINLAN

Sunday December 27 2009

BISHOP Martin Drennan was holding firm last night as calls for his resignation refused to die down.

In a statement issued through his spokesman, Fr Sean McHugh, Dr Drennan said he felt he had done nothing wrong and that his situation was different to that of other bishops named in the Murphy report into clerical child abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.

As the sole remaining prelate named in the Murphy report, Dr Drennan had come under increasing pressure to resign after two other bishops named in the report, Raymond Field and Eamon Walsh, stood down on Christmas Eve. Their announcement came a week after Bishop Donal Murray of Limerick had his resignation formally accepted by Pope Benedict XVI in Rome.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

Sunday December 27 2009

It has been a bleak Christmas for the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland as it continues to struggle with the consequences of Judge Yvonne Murphy's shocking report into the abuse of children in the Dublin Diocese.

Despite the admirable leadership shown by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, the Church has shown once again that it is institutionally incapable of understanding what it did and institutionally incapable of accepting the consequences of its actions. Slowly, reluctantly, four of the bishops named in the Murphy report have tendered their resignations to Pope Benedict, but each resignation has been a drawn out drama rather than a swift acceptance of responsibility and accountability. It should not have been possible for any organisation to inflict further damage on itself in the wake of such a devastating report by Judge Murphy, but that is what the Church has managed to do.

All too late, the Church has begun to comprehend what the general public thinks of what happened in Dublin, in Ferns, in industrial schools and parishes all across the country. The public now sees a Church that protected child abusers and put their interests ahead of the children they were abusing. They see a Church that knowingly placed children at risk and then ignored their cries for help when their abusers struck; a Church that set itself above the law of the land and which lost all connection to the teachings of Jesus Christ. The Church failed its most vulnerable and then covered up their pain.

IRELAND
RTE News

Sunday, 27 December 2009 12:17
Survivors of clerical child abuse have expressed disappointment at the decision by the Bishop of Galway, Martin Drennan, not to resign.

Four other bishops named in the Murphy report into clerical child abuse in the Dublin archdiocese, stepped down this month.

Last night, a spokesman for Dr Drennan said the bishop felt he had done nothing wrong and that his situation was different to that of other bishops named in the Murphy report.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

Our Rome-appointed bishops have been playing the Vatican's game of Pass the Parcel, says Tim Pat Coogan

Sunday December 27 2009

GIVEN the scale of what is happening in the Irish Catholic Church, debating the departure of five auxiliary bishops has all the rich, ripe irrelevance to the gravity of the situation as had Taoiseach Brian Cowen's axing of five junior ministers.

The only meaningful departure would be that of the Pope himself. As Cardinal Ratzinger he was probably the best informed man in the Vatican, being both Prefect of the powerful Congregation of the Faith and Dean of the College of Cardinals. These offices mean that he was privy to the ever swelling tide of reports on clerical sex abuse which poured into the Vatican during his tenure in office, from every diocese in the world.

Even non-Catholics are free to access the vast accounts of clerical abuse, available on the web, like a vast open sewer. But apparently the Pontiff has no intention of resigning. Instead, he intends to send us a letter. Presumably it will be prepared by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, as were Pope John Paul II's Irish speeches prepared by the then Bishop Daly.

LAFAYETTE (LA)
Daily World

By Jeff Moore • For the Daily World • December 27, 2009

LAFAYETTE — A Lafayette woman accuses a St. John's Cathedral employee of multiple incidents of sexual harassment in a lawsuit filed in district court.

Melody Thibodaux is seeking unspecified monetary damages against Michael Breaux, a sacristan with the church, the Diocese of Lafayette and the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist Parish.

The lawsuit was filed in 15th Judicial District Court in Lafayette.

Thibodaux, a cantor and member of the church choir, accuses Breaux of touching her inappropriately on several occasions in the lawsuit, including grabbing her breasts in the cathedral before Mass on Nov. 30, 2008.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

Pope Benedict must act now to bring about radical change within the Church, writes Derry Ann Morgan

Sunday December 27 2009

BLESS me Father, for you have sinned. It is over 30 years since you tried to rape me, and, sadly, like many of your brothers, you got away with it -- thanks to the Catholic Church, which kindly covered up for its priests, not bothering how the victims felt or cared about what they went through.

I know you are now back in Ireland, having retired from your post of parish priest abroad. I hope you will read this and understand how awful your actions were for me back then, and the impact they had on me for years to follow.

I had an opportunity recently on Pat Kenny's programme Frontline to reveal that, when I was a teenager at a summer camp, a priest tried to rape me.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

LORNA SIGGINS, Western Correspondent

Bishop of Galway Dr Martin Drennan “does not intend to resign”, according to his diocesan communications manager Fr Seán McHugh.

The bishop has been under mounting media pressure since four of his colleagues mentioned in the Murphy report on how allegations of child sex abuse were handled in the Dublin archdiocese have tendered resignations.

However, Dr Drennan is “strong in his belief that he did nothing wrong”, Fr McHugh told The Irish Times at the weekend.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Eimear Ni Bhraonain

Saturday December 26 2009

A HISTORIC cathedral burned to the ground on Christmas morning -- just hours after a bishop talked about an arson attack on a convent in 1642.

St Mel's Cathedral in Longford and its contents -- including records and precious artefacts -- were destroyed after a fire started in the back of the 19th century building in the early hours of yesterday morning. ...

Joe Flaherty, managing director of the 'Longford Leader' attended the final Mass in St Mel's, at 10pm on Christmas Eve.

"There was a huge crowd there. The Bishop said the Mass but in his homily he made an analogy to the difficult times facing the church. He talked about a convent in Tubberclair (near Athlone, Co Westmeath) and how, during the penal times, the convent had to be evacuated. English soldiers ransacked and burned it and the nuns had to relocate to a convent in Nun's Island."

Homily

Mr Flaherty said it was "very unusual" that Bishop O'Reilly had referred to the burning of the convent, known as Bethlehem, in his homily.

IRELAND
Telegraph (United Kingdom)

[with video]

Will Heaven

It began around 5 am on Christmas morning, a few hours after the celebration of Midnight Mass. Flames were spotted by a passer-by, who alerted the Fire Brigade. But there was little they could do: by mid-morning the 150-year-old St Mel’s Cathedral, Longford, in the Diocese of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise, was completely gutted. Damage was estimated at 2 million euros. A distraught Bishop Colm O’Reilly said of the cathedral: “It’s destroyed.”

According to Irish Central:

Crowds gathered and watched in horror as the flames tore through the roof of the building, and destroyed the interior, gutting historical items dating back to the last century. It is thought that the fire started at the rear of the building and spread towards the front. ...

Both the Mayor of Longford and Bishop O’Reilly have promised that the cathedral will be fully restored. But as detectives began door to door inquiries yesterday, one question was on everyone’s minds: Was this arson? Given the recent resignation of a second Irish bishop after a report revealed the cover-up of child sex abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese, it could be that this was a deliberate attack on the Irish Catholic Church. If so, it marks a new chapter of anti-clericalism in Ireland.

IRELAND
The Press Association

The last of five Irish bishops named in an expose of the Catholic Church's cover-up of child sex abuse will not resign, his spokesman said.

Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan is the only remaining prelate named in the shocking Murphy Report not to stand down.

IRELAND
RTE News

Saturday, 26 December 2009 16:06
A spokesman for the Galway Diocese has said that Bishop Martin Drennan will not be resigning.

Fr Sean McHugh said Bishop Drennan felt he had done nothing wrong, and that his situation was different to that of other bishops named in the Murphy report into clerical abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.

He said Dr Drennan had not been called to give evidence to the Murphy Commission, nor had he been furnished with the part of the report which mentioned him by name.

UNITED STATES
Stop Baptist Predators

Just before Christmas, GuideStone released a press statement about the 2010 church compensation survey of the Southern Baptist Convention. As the SBC’s financial services arm, GuideStone provides retirement and health benefit plans for ministers. The compensation survey is designed to give churches accessible online information so that they can see how much other churches pay their ministers. Presumably, it also provides ministers themselves with the information to know whether they should pressure their churches to pay them more or go in search of greener pastures. ...

That’s fine and good. But how about serving the churches with information that’s even more important than how much other ministers make?

How about serving the churches with information about ministers who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse?

For that sort of information, Southern Baptist officials consistently say it would violate local church autonomy. But for information about how much ministers should be paid, they say the information works “to serve” the churches.

OHIO
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

The Cincinnati Chapter of SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests - a self help group for those sexually abused by Catholic priests and other religious authority figures) sees the retirement of Archbishop Daniel E. Pilarczyk as good news and as no news.

The ‘good news’ is that the man who enabled, permitted, facilitated, covered up, agreed with, and conspired to allow hundreds of Cincinnati and Dayton area children and teenagers to be sexually abused by criminals under his own supervision is leaving active service, and will no longer be the chief decision maker when it comes to dealing with the scandal that he himself admitted was his most challenging matter during his tenure as the region’s top Catholic official (1982-2009). Sadly, his legacy does not go away with him, as the victims and survivors of the sexual abuse that occurred during his reign are unable to have the horrifying crimes committed against them undone.

IRELAND
From A Traditional Catholic Perspective

The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, has said he respects the decisions by Bishops Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field to offer to resign.

He called the two prelates 'extremely good bishops' to whom many in the archdiocese of Dublin were extremely grateful for the things they had done. But, he added, good people had to be accountable.

Archbishop Martin said he believed that there was a future place for his two auxiliaries in the Irish Church after they had stepped down. He revealed that he had spoken to both of them briefly to see what role they would like to play.

Dr Martin said the Dublin archdiocese had to ensure that the management of the past was entrusted to a new generation that thought differently.

IRELAND
Ian Healy

I think we can all agree that 2009 has been a very difficult year for the Irish Catholic Church, if not the most difficult. Ireland has always been a country in which the Church had great power. Obviously this isn’t wholly true, but we can say that the majority had great respect for the Church, whether out of will or fear. Personally, I think it was fear more than anything. The standard “Diddly-i” Irishman was transformed into a overlord-fearing wuss, mostly by years of drilling horrible images into the minds of young children in Catholic-run schools. We’ve been raised to believe that pain is the saviour, that we have to have an absolutely miserable life before achieving a better one in the next world, that we’ll burn forever in the depths of volcanic Hell, whipped and beaten by a red Minotaur/Ned Flanders/Devil May Cry-esque big gay thing with a forked tail.

Michael-In-Norfolk

Two more Catholic bishops in Ireland who were named for malfeasance in the Murphy Report on the Diocese of Dublin have resigned and pressure mounts further for a fifth bishop to resign. What is happening in Ireland remains a startling contrast from the USA where bishops and cardinals who enabled predator priests and then sought to cover up the reporting of abuse remain in office. A case in point in the USA is Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles who I will get to shortly. The other contrast is that elected officials in Ireland seem much more willing to call for resignations than spineless politicians in the USA who worry that they might look "anti-religion" merely for demanding that accessories to against minors be prosecuted or removed from office. First some developments via the Irish Times concerning the additional resignations in Ireland:

Dublin's remaining two auxiliary bishops are to step down in the wake of the Murphy report into the handling of child abuse complaints in the Dublin Archdiocese.

jobsanger

A few years ago, the American Catholic church went through a scandalous period in which it was discovered that the church covered up numerous incidents of child sexual abuse, and even protected the pedophile priests. Instead of turning these vile child abusers over to legal authorities, they just transferred them to another diocese (where many of them continued to commit their crimes).

Once the actions of the church was finally exposed, many priests were finally convicted, the reputation of the American church was severely damaged and millions were paid by the church to settle a large number of lawsuits. Now it looks like the Irish Catholic church is experiencing the same type of thing.

Recently, there have been accusations made by over 2,000 people who say they were abused either physically or sexually while in the care of Catholic-run schools, orphanages and other institutions. Recently the Irish Minister of Justice commissioned a report on the matter. The report was released late last month.

IRELAND
Bock The Robber

Did you know that in this country, Ireland, it’s perfectly legal for a clergyman to sack a State-funded teacher, nurse, doctor, or even a janitor in a church-controlled school or hospital if they decide that something about the person undermines the religious ethos of the institution?

It could be something as simple as living with another person while unmarried, or having a child outside marriage. It could be because the teacher, nurse or doctor doesn’t hold approved religious views, or, for example, abandons the Catholic church in protest at the behaviour of the clergy in raping children or covering up that crime. It could be for writing to a newspaper.

Any of these things could entitle somebody like the discredited Bishop Murray, or any of his colleagues or proxies to sack you, even though your salary and all running costs of the establishment are paid for by the exchequer.

IRELAND
Bock The Robber

I don’t know why people are celebrating the resignation of all these bishops.

What does it matter if they step down from positions within their private club? They can dance around a marshmallow effigy of the Pope while wearing only a ring of bananas for all I care. That’s a matter for their followers.

Of much greater importance is the influence the Catholic clergy have on Irish secular life, in our schools and hospitals. That’s where the problem lies, and no resignation by an arrogant old man will make the slightest difference since he’ll simply be replaced by an equally arrogant, if slightly younger, man. These guys retain the power to hire and fire private individuals if they don’t like their beliefs or their personal lives, though they rarely used such powers against members of the clergy, preferring to sack teachers for being in loving relationships.

IRELAND
RTE News

Saturday, 26 December 2009

Survivors of clerical sex abuse have repeated their calls for Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan to resign.

Dr Drennan is now the only serving bishop named in the Murphy Report who is still in his post.

Bishops Eamon Walsh and Raymond Field stepped down late on Christmas Eve while two other bishops resigned earlier this month.

IRELAND
Ireland Online

Pressure is mounting on the only serving bishop named in the Murphy report yet to resign.

Bishop of Galway Dr Martin Drennan has yet to declare his intentions in the wake of the report into clerical sex abuse in the Dublin archdiocese.

Bishops Eamon Walsh and Raymond Field issed statements announcing their decisions to step down late on Christmas Eve, following the lead of two others in recent weeks.

IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

Saturday, 26 December 2009

Catholics across Ireland were attending Christmas Day Mass yesterday as two more bishops resigned in the wake of a devastating clerical child abuse inquiry.

Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field bowed to weeks of intense criticism and pressure, announcing at services across Dublin that they planned to quit their posts as auxiliaries in the archdiocese.

They are the latest senior clerics to stand down after Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin James Moriarty and Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray resigned over the damning Murphy report.

IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

By John Cooney and Shane Doran
Saturday, 26 December 2009

The Bishop of Galway, Martin Drennan, was last night on the brink of standing down after the resignation of more prelates named in the Murphy report.

Bishop Drennan spent Christmas Day considering his position after Dublin's only two serving auxiliary bishops, Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field, finally bowed to mounting public pressure.

The departure of the two barrister-bishops comes four weeks after the report into child sexual abuse in the Dublin archdiocese found that it had shielded clergy who criminally abused children from the law.

CONNECTICUT
The Hartford Courant

[with video]

By MATTHEW KAUFFMAN
The Hartford Courant

December 26, 2009

For decades, it was the Catholic Church's darkest secret.

But over the past decade, details of those secrets spilled out, as church leaders in Connecticut and beyond were forced to acknowledge the devastating legacy of pedophile priests.

In 2002, The Courant obtained thousands of pages of sealed documents amassed during lawsuits against priests in the Bridgeport archdiocese.

The documents, dating to the 1960s, revealed how church leaders had shuttled accused priests from parish to parish, with little apparent concern for the victims of clergy sex abuse.

MASSACHUSETTS
Nashua Telegraph

By MARK PRATT
Associated Press Writer

BOSTON (AP) — As a local story it was shocking enough — a Roman Catholic priest suspected of molesting children had been shuttled from parish to parish by church officials rather than reported to law enforcement.

The news in January 2002 that John Geoghan hadn’t been brought to justice following hundreds of allegations that he abused children was simply the start of a story that developed into a national and international scandal that sent tremors all the way to the Vatican.

The clergy sex abuse scandal, like many of the top news stories of the decade in Massachusetts, had repercussions felt well beyond the borders of the state, and in some cases, are being felt to this day.

IRELAND
BBC News

There have been fresh calls for a fifth Irish bishop to resign following a report which found that Catholic leaders concealed child abuse.

Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan is now the only serving bishop named in the Murphy report who is still in his post.

Bishops Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field stepped down on Christmas Eve while two others resigned earlier this month.

IRELAND
UTV

Pressure is mounting on the Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan to step down in the wake of the Murphy Report sex abuse scandal.

He' is now the only one of the five bishops criticised by the report to remain in his post.

All five came under fire for their parts in the cover-up of clerical sex abuse in the Dublin archdiocese when they served there.

UNITED STATES
USA Today

Four Irish bishops have now resigned within weeks of a scathing report that they knowingly sheltered sexual predator priests from the laws of church and state.

Two stepped down shortly after the 720-page report into abuse cover-ups in Dublin from 1940 to 2004 became public. On Christmas Day, two more resigned amid Christmas Mass, offering apologies to victims and all Dublin's one million Catholics.

Here in the USA, there are no signs of such accountability.

IRELAND
Al Jazeera

Two Irish bishops have offered their resignation to the Pope, after a government investigation highlighted a cover-up of child sex abuse by priests in Ireland over decades.

The announcement on Friday, Christmas Day, increased the number of resignations of church leaders over the probe to four.

Bishops Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field said that they hoped that their resignation might "bring the peace and reconciliation of Jesus Christ to the victims/survivors of child sexual abuse".

IRELAND
The Times (United Kingdom)

Roman Catholics across Ireland were attending Christmas Day Mass yesterday as two more bishops resigned.

Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field bowed to weeks of intense criticism and pressure, announcing at services that they planned to quit their posts as auxiliaries in the Dublin Archdiocese. They are the latest senior clerics to stand down after the Bishop of Kildare & Leighlin, James Moriarty, and the Bishop of Limerick, Donal Murray, resigned over the damning Murphy report that exposed the church hierarchy’s shocking inaction and cover-up of paedophile priests over decades.

Bishops Walsh and Field announced their resignations in a statement as Midnight Mass took place around the country. “As we celebrate the Feast of Christmas, the birth of our Saviour, the Prince of Peace, it is our hope that our action may help to bring the peace and reconciliation of Jesus Christ to the victims/survivors of child sexual abuse,” they said. “We again apologise to them.”

UNITED STATES
Voice from the Desert

The Christmas resignations of two additional bishops in Ireland, both auxiliaries in Dublin, brings to four the total number of resignations of bishops named in the Murphy Report.

The National Survivor Advocates Coalition called it a small stirring of a needed and neccessary taking of responsibility.

While calling on the fifth Irish bishop named in the Murphy Report to report to also resign, the National Survivor Advocates Coalition pointedly notes that the current number does outdo the number of US bishops who resigned by 300%.

IRELAND
Press TV (Iran)

Two Irish bishops have offered their resignation amid a child abuse scandal which had spanned for three decades in Ireland.

Auxiliary Bishops of Dublin Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field released a statement on Christmas Eve Thursday, saying that they had informed Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin that they intend to resign.

"It is our hope that our action may help to bring the peace and reconciliation of Jesus Christ to the victims/survivors of child sexual abuse. We again apologize to them," said Walsh and Field in their statement.

IRELAND
United Press International

DUBLIN, Ireland, Dec. 25 (UPI) -- Two Irish bishops singled out in a government report on sex abuse in the Roman Catholic church announced their resignations during Christmas Eve mass.

Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field, both auxiliary bishops in Dublin, released a joint statement that was read during midnight mass, the BBC reported Friday.

The Murphy Report named five bishops who allegedly failed to deal with priests associated with sexual misconduct charges. Four of the five have now said they will step down, with Martin Drennan, the bishop of Galway the only exception.

IRELAND
GlobalPost

By Conor O'Clery - GlobalPost

Published: December 25, 2009

DUBLIN, Ireland ― As the few remaining faithful in this once mass-going nation set out for midnight services on a freezing cold Christmas Eve, two bishops announced their resignation, bringing to four the number forced to step down since they were named in a report on the cover-up of sexual abuse by pedophile priests in Dublin.

The bishops are the latest casualties of a civil war within the purple-clad ranks of the once-dominant Irish Catholic Church hierarchy that could have ramifications in the Vatican itself.

Bishops Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field offered their resignations to Pope Benedict on Christmas Eve only after fighting a rearguard action against the Archbishop of Dublin, Dairmuid Martin, who has pressurized them publicly and privately to quit. They are accused of being part of a culture of silence and denial about abusive priests that is not peculiar only to Ireland but is worldwide.

IRELAND
Irish Central

By FRIEDA KLOTZ, IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

DUBLIN, Ireland — In what turned into a night of high drama at Midnight Mass in Dublin on Christmas Eve, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin announced that two more bishops, Ray Field and Eamon Walsh, will resign their positions because of the spreading pedophile scandal in the Irish Catholic Church.

Martin's stunning announcement was made from the pulpit of the city's famous Pro-Cathedral. During the ceremony, a heckler shouted to the Archbishop that he should "pray to God for his sins."

Martin asked the congregation to pray for Field and Walsh and added, "pray for me, too."

IRELAND
Irish Central

By JAYNE WALSHE, IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

The bishops are falling like dominoes in Ireland these days, two more to follow the two already gone — and more on the way.

If the investigation is expanded nationwide, then there will be many more resignations. What we are witnessing is an unprecedented upheaval in the Irish Catholic Church.

It is clear that Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin returned from Rome with a very clear brief — to purge the Church of any bishop who in any way contributed to the pedophile scandals of the past thirty years.

CANADA
CD 98.9

Posted by Kate Buick

An Oshweken pastor wanted for alleged sex crimes has been arrested at the Sarnia border crossing.

The O-P-P say 57-year-old Ronald Burning is the pastor at Johnsfield Baptist Church in Oshweken, where the alleged offences against three victims took place.
He was arrested yesterday.

Burning faces eight charges, including sexual assault, rape, forcible confinement and intercourse with someone under the age of 14.

CANADA
Toronto Sun

LONDON, Ont. — A pastor wanted for alleged sex crimes was arrested Thursday at the Sarnia, Ont. border crossing by the Canada Border Services Agency.

Ontario Provincial Police say Ronald Burning, 57, is the pastor at Johnsfield Baptist Church in Oshweken, Ont., where the alleged offences against three victims took place.

Police say Burning faces eight charges, including sexual assault, rape, forcible confinement and intercourse with someone under the age of 14.

CANADA
The Observer

A pastor wanted for alleged sex crimes was arrested at 4:55 p.m. Thursday at the Blue Water Bridge by the Canada Border Services Agency.

He was turned over to Ontario Provincial Police, who say alleged offences against three victims took place at Johnsfield Baptist Church in Oshweken, Ont.

Ronald Burning, 57, faces eight charges, including sexual assault, rape, forcible confinement and intercourse with someone under the age of 14.

CONNECTICUT
WNPR

[with audio]

BY:
Diane Orson Published: 12/24/2009

Parishioners of Bridgeport’s Roman Catholic Diocese plan to catalogue thousands of pages of court documents on sex abuse by priests. The records were made public earlier this month. WNPR’s Diane Orson reports.

The more than 12,000 pages reveal how Bridgeport church leaders handled the clergy sex abuse crisis. The records include depositions by retired Cardinal Edward Egan of New York who was Bishop of Bridgeport at the time. Egan defended priests facing multiple accusations of sexual abuse and allowed them to continue working for years. Jamie Dance is co-chair of Voice of the Faithful in Bridgeport, a group of lay Catholics who support transparency in the church. She says volunteers will organize the material:

"...in case similar cases come forward that need to be balanced against what’s happened in the past, and also for those who need to pursue more information regarding purported instances abuse by priests mentioned in the deposition."

IRELAND
The Independent (United Kingdom)

By Ed Carty and Sarah Stack, Press Association

Friday, 25 December 2009

Catholics across Ireland were attending Christmas Day Mass today as two more bishops resigned in the wake of a devastating clerical child abuse inquiry.

Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field bowed to weeks of intense criticism and pressure, announcing at services across Dublin that they planned to quit their posts as auxiliaries in the archdiocese.

They are the latest senior clerics to stand down after Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin James Moriarty and Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray resigned over the damning Murphy report.

It exposed the Catholic hierarchy's shocking inaction and cover-up of paedophile priests over decades.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

Dublin's last two auxiliary bishops are to step down in the wake of the Murphy report on child abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.

The resignations were announced late last night, bringing to four the number of bishops who have stepped down over the report.

Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin James Moriarty said on Wednesday that he had offered his resignation to Pope Benedict, which put further pressure on other serving bishops also mentioned in the Murphy report - including Bishop Walsh, Bishop Field - to do likewise.

Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray resigned earlier this month.

IRELAND
Reuters

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Two more Irish bishops have said they will offer their resignations to the Pope, bringing the total number of church leaders to quit after a damning report into child sex abuse by priests to four.

Bishops Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field, the only two serving auxiliary (assistant) bishops in the archdiocese of Dublin, said they had informed Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of their decision.

"It is our hope that our action may help to bring the peace and reconciliation of Jesus Christ to the victims/survivors of child sexual abuse. We again apologise to them," they said in a statement released late on Thursday.

IRELAND
Deutsche Welle (Germany)

Two additional Irish bishops offered their resignation Friday to Pope Benedict XVI in relation to a church child sex abuse scandal that has shocked Ireland. Auxiliary bishops of Dublin Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field issued a statement that they had informed the archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, that they would leave their positions.

Four bishops have now resigned after a report released last month by the Dublin archdiocese found that Roman Catholic authorities concealed child abuse by priests for three decades.

"It is our hope that our action may help to bring the peace and reconciliation of Jesus Christ to the victims/survivors of child sexual abuse. We again apologize to them," said Walsh and Field in their statement.

IRELAND
The News International (Pakistan)

DUBLIN: Criminal behaviour by Catholic clerics caught up in Ireland's child sexual abuse scandal must be investigated and prosecuted, the Archbishop of Dublin said Thursday at a Christmas Eve mass.

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said, "no words of apology will ever be enough for the hurt caused" by the scandal, in which top priests concealed clerical abuse of children over more than three decades.

ARIZONA
Arizona Republic

by Michael Clancy - Dec. 25, 2009
The Arizona Republic

The Catholic Church's sex-abuse scandal reached a peak in 2003. The year started with a small protest outside holiday services at Phoenix's SS. Simon and Jude Cathedral and ended with a bishop disgraced.

Bishop Thomas J. O'Brien had just celebrated his 21st anniversary as the leader of the Catholic Diocese of Phoenix. He was well-known, respected and liked in the community.

But his accomplishments could not overcome a steady drumbeat of bad news on the sexual-abuse front.

The story had gone national in 2001, when it became clear that not only were there hundreds of abusive priests, but also that numerous bishops had exonerated them, enabling them to abuse others.

IRELAND
Herald Sun (Australia)

By Ian Collier from Sky News From: NewsCore December 25, 2009

TWO more Catholic bishops have resigned in Ireland in the wake of a devastating clerical child abuse inquiry.

Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field bowed to weeks of criticism and pressure, Sky News reported.

They announced during Christmas Eve midnight Mass services across Dublin that they planned to quit their posts as auxiliaries in the archdiocese.

IRELAND
RTE News

Friday, 25 December 2009

Dublin's only two serving auxiliary bishops have announced they are offering their resignations to Pope Benedict.

The decision by Bishops Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field brings the number of bishops serving here who have stepped down to four after being named in the Murphy Report on the cover-up of clerical child sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin.

These latest resignations were announced in a joint statement close to midnight.

IRELAND
The New York Times

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: December 25, 2009

DUBLIN (AP) -- Two Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland resigned on Christmas Day in the wake of a damning investigation into decades of church cover-up of child abuse in the Dublin archdiocese.

Dublin Bishops Eamonn Walsh and Ray Field offered an apology to child-abuse victims as they announced their resignations during Christmas Mass. Priests read the statement to worshippers throughout the archdiocese, home to a quarter of Ireland's 4 million Catholics.

IRELAND
BBC News

Two more Irish Catholic bishops have resigned in response to a report which criticised how they handled allegations of abuse by clergy.

Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field issued a joint statement which was read out at midnight Mass.

The pair, who were both auxiliary bishops of Dublin, said they hoped their resignations would help bring peace to the victims of sexual abuse.

IRELAND
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin

CHRISTMAS 2009 - MIDNIGHT MASS

Homily notes and Message of
Most Rev. Diarmuid Martin
Archbishop of Dublin, Primate of Ireland

It would be foolish for me to say that this is for me the happiest Christmas that I have experienced in my life or to say that this is the happiest Christmas for many in this Archdiocese of Dublin.

It has been a painful year for the diocese as it undergoes the tough process of looking at a period of its recent past. The diocese failed its most vulnerable members. The Archdiocese failed to recognise what was to be done. A false sense of protection of the Church resulted at times in decisions being made and at other times in decisions not being made which resulted in more children being abused. The interests of the ordained were given priority over the needs of the baptised. ...

How does the Church renew itself? Renewal must begin from honestly and brutally recognising what happened in the past. There can be no glossing over the past. Renewal must begin with accepting responsibility for the past. Criminal behaviour must be investigated and pursued. Gross failures in management must be remedied in a transparent way. Current practice must be effectively monitored. Anachronisms left over from past history must be replaced.

IRELAND
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin

24th December 2009.

We, Bishop Eamonn Walsh and Bishop Raymond Field, have this evening informed Archbishop Diarmuid Martin that we are offering our resignation to His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, as Auxiliary Bishops to the Archbishop of Dublin. As we celebrate the Feast of Christmas, the Birth of our Saviour, the Prince of Peace, it is our hope that our action may help to bring the peace and reconciliation of Jesus Christ to the victims/survivors of child sexual abuse. We again apologise to them.

Our thoughts and prayers are with those who have so bravely spoken out and those who continue to suffer in silence.

IRELAND
AFP

DUBLIN — Two more bishops said on Friday they were offering their resignations to Pope Benedict XVI in the wake of a child sex abuse scandal that has shaken Ireland.

Auxiliary Bishops of Dublin Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field said in a statement they had informed the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, on Christmas Eve Thursday of their intention to quit.

Four bishops have now resigned following a damning report last month by judge Yvonne Murphy on the Dublin archdiocese -- the country's biggest -- that found the Roman Catholic authorities concealed abuse of children by priests for three decades.

CANADA
Seaway News

Some critics argue the $53-million plus spent on public inquiry into sexual abuse in Cornwall area may have been better spent on establishing a first-class hospital or a new ultra-modern arena and community centre.

The cost of producing a more than 2,000 page report, which was four years in the making, could mushroom by millions more if any of the 234 recommendations in the report by Justice Normand Glaude are implemented by the government.

The chances are very few that the recommendations will ever be implemented by the government.

However, the government will have to implement some recommendations to avoid more criticism.

CINCINNATI (OH)
Dayton Daily News

By LISA CORNWELL, The Associated Press

CINCINNATI — The new leader of the Cincinnati Archdiocese says he believes a return to the church can help heal spiritual wounds suffered by clergy abuse victims and help non-practicing Catholics better understand their faith and purpose in life.

Archbishop Dennis Schnurr took over this week as leader of the 19-county archdiocese of nearly a half-million Roman Catholics — one where a $3 million fund was set up in 2003 to settle sex abuse claims. The now-retired Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk established the fund after entering a no-contest plea on the archdiocese's behalf to charges that officials failed to report abuse of minors to authorities.

IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

The Archbishop of Dublin has told Christmas massgoers it has been "a painful year" for the Catholic Church after the sickening report into clerical child sex abuse.

Diarmuid Martin said the diocese must be called to renewal by recognising what happened in the past, accepting responsibility for it and investigating criminal behaviour.

In his homily at the Christmas Eve Vigil Mass in St Mary's Pro-Cathedral in Dublin, Archbishop Martin said it would be foolish to say this was the happiest Christmas in his life or for many in the Archdiocese of Dublin.

ISRAEL
Arutz Sheva

(IsraelNN.com) The Jerusalem District Court extended the remand of Elior Chen by 10 days on Thursday in connection with the child abuse charges he faces.

LOS ANGELES (CA)
Times of the Internet

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 24 (UPI) --
A senior Catholic official in Los Angeles has testified under immunity before a grand jury investigating sex abuse, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.

A source told the newspaper Monsignor Richard Loomis, the former vicar of clergy for the archdiocese of Los Angeles, was granted use immunity. That means his testimony before a federal grand jury cannot be used to prosecute him.

Loomis' responsibilities as vicar of clergy included overseeing cases involving priests accused of molesting children.

NEW YORK
New York Daily News

By Simone Weichselbaum
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Thursday, December 24th 2009

A Borough Park, Brooklyn, yeshiva teacher was busted Wednesday morning for allegedly molesting a teenage boy who had attended his synagogue, cops said.

David Greenfeld, 38, was nabbed inside his E. 47th St. home at 6 a.m., and charged with sexually abusing the 15-year-old boy.

The pair met at their place of worship, which cops didn't disclose.Greenfeld was awaiting arraignment on sex-abuse and child endangerment charges.

IRELAND
Ireland Online

Two more Bishops have resigned in the wake of the damning Murphy report.

Dr Éamonn Walsh and Dr Raymond Field are stepping down over criticisms of the handling of clerical child sexual abuse allegations in the Dublin Archdiocese.

Their decision was announced in a joint statement last night in which they say they hope their action may help to bring peace to the survivors of child sexual abuse and again apologise to them.

IRELAND
The Herald

By Clodagh Sheehy

Thursday December 24 2009

PRESSURE was growing today on the three remaining bishops named in the Murphy Report to step down.

Within hours of Kildare and Leighlin Bishop James Moriarty's resignation, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin challenged Bishop Eamonn Walsh, one of the remaining three, to consider his position.

Bishop Moriarty's decision has increased the pressure on Bishop Walsh and Bishop Raymond Field, both auxiliary Bishops of Dublin, and Bishop Martin Drennan of Galway. Donal Murray, of Limerick, has already resigned.

LOS ANGELES (CA)
The Wall Street Journal

By Jennifer Forsyth
The on-going federal probe of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles of its conduct related to accusations of widespread sexual abuse of children by its clergy took a turn recently when the former vicar of clergy testified before a grand jury, the LA Times reports today. Click here for the story. Monsignor Richard Loomis’s responsibilities included overseeing sexual abuse cases against fellow priests, potentially making him a key witness if any cases should be brought by federal prosecutors.

The LAT, citing unnamed sources, reports that Loomis was given “use immunity,” meaning his grand jury testimony could not be used against him in a criminal trial, though the use immunity agreement would not protect him against statements made outside of his grand jury testimony.

The WSJ and LAT have previously repported that a grand jury had been investigating the archdiocese’s response to the molestation of children by priests within its parishes, though the LAT reports that Cardinal Roger Mahoney is not a target of the inquiry.

ISRAEL
The Jerusalem Post

The lawyer of suspected child-abusing cult leader Elior Chen claimed Thursday that his client should not stand trial since the indictment was inconsistent with the extradition request.

In a remand extension hearing, the lawyer, Arie Atari, said many of accusations in the indictment did not appear in the extradition request according to which Chen was flown back from Brazil and that the state had therefore violated the extradition agreement.

Atari also accused the Israel Police conducted a anti-Semitic smear campaign in Brazil in order to catch Chen, a campaign that the lawyer clamed was damaging to the local Jewish community.

Benedict XVI -Ratzinger: God's Rottweiler

Paris Arrow

Benedict XVI declared the year of St. Paul from June 29, 2008 to June 28/29, 2009. The fact is, Benedict XVI and John Paul II are both the clashing cymbals of St. Paul

Benedict XVI's speedy beatification of John Paul II is “brought to nothing” by St. Paul. St. Paul clearly states in 1 Corinthian 13:1-13: “If there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing; if tongues, they will cease; if knowledge, it will be brought to nothing.” John Paul II the great with all his papal knowledge, Theology of the Body, countless letters, encyclicals, books and homilies is “brought to nothing” by St. Paul. No American child should ever call him ‘blessed’ or ‘saint’ out of deference to the 12,000 American victims of the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army http://jp2army.blogspot.com/

IRELAND
Ireland Online

A prominent priest has said Irish society is "morally bankrupt".

Father Michael Mernagh said he supports the resignations of Bishops Donal Murray and James Moriarty in the wake of the Murphy report into clerical child abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.

However he said that it is just the beginning and the Church needs to get back to basics and the Christian message.

NEW YORK
The JC

By Paul Berger, December 23, 2009
Recordings of sexually explicit conversations, apparently between a strictly Orthodox rabbi and a woman he was helping convert to Judaism, are rocking the entire Orthodox world.

New York Rabbi Leib Tropper resigned earlier this month from the organisation he founded, Eternal Jewish Family (EJF), after posters appeared in Orthodox neighbourhoods of Jerusalem insinuating that he had committed sexual indiscretions.

Within days, recordings of salacious phone conversations between a man and a woman were disseminated on the internet. The man — reported to be Rabbi Tropper, 59 — discusses the woman having sex with him and having sex and phone sex with other men. He also discusses cash payments.

The Awareness Center

by Vicki Polin

I hate when people call those who have been sexually victimized, "Victims".

Those of us who have been able to live through any form of a sexual assault (sexual abuse, sexual harassment, sexual misconduct, rape, etc.) and are not actively trying to kill ourselves, or numbing our pain by using drugs or other avenues to get through the day, or recreating our experiences -- should be considered and called "SURVIVORs".

The only true victims of sex crimes are those who were murdered during the criminal act, those who have committed suicide, are actively doing things to numb themselves out, and/or committing acts that harm themselves or other.

When a person who was sexually victimized is called or thought of as a victim -- they are more likely to walk around looking and acting like a victim -- with their heads held down, thinking they can not accomplish much, and often though of as a second class citizen. Yet, when the victimized individual is called a SURVIVOR they are more likely to hold their head up high and walk with an air of power and that they have regained their personal power. If one can SURVIVE a sex crime, they CAN and WILL survive anything.

IRELAND
Irish Central

By Donal Thornton, IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

Three more Bishops are under pressure to resign after Bishop James Moriarty offered his resignation to Pope Benedict on Wednesday. The three bishops in question were severely criticized in the Murphy report for taking no action against the pedophiles priests who took advantage of the most vulnerable in their congregation.

It has also become evident in recent days that there is massive tension between the remaining bishops under scrutiny and the Archbishop of Dubin, Desmond Martin who has publicly clashed with them.

The current Dublin Auxiliary Bishops Eamonn Walsh, and Bishop Ray Field and Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan were appointed to their positions in the 19990's. The Murphy report found that they covered up evidence of sexual abuse by pedophile priests and failed to help the victims of the abuse.

IRELAND
Catholic Culture

December 24, 2009

A public dispute has erupted in Dublin between Archbishop Diarmuid Martin and Auxiliary Bishop Éamonn Walsh, who was cited in the recent Murphy commission report for his inadequate response to abuse allegations.

Bishop Walsh sent a letter dated December 17 to all priests in his region of the archdiocese stating that Archbishop Martin had expressed his full confidence in his auxiliary bishops’ ministry following the publication of the report. In the letter, Bishop Walsh insisted that he should not resign because of “guilt by association.”

IRELAND
Catholic Culture

December 24, 2009

The Irish bishop who offered his resignation to Pope Benedict XVI on December 23 has apologized to abuse victims.

“Over the last few weeks, I have been reflecting on what should be my response to the overall conclusion of the Murphy report-- particularly because I was part of the governance of the Archdiocese [of Dublin] prior to when correct child protection policies and procedures were implemented,” said Bishop James Moriarty.

“It does not serve the truth to overstate my responsibility and authority within the Archdiocese,” he continued. “Nor does it serve the truth to overlook the fact that the system of management and communications was seriously flawed. However, with the benefit of hindsight, I accept that, from the time I became an Auxiliary Bishop, I should have challenged the prevailing culture.”

UNITED STATES
The Awareness Center

Vicki Polin

December 23, 2009 -- It takes a great deal of motivation, tenacity and motivation to advocate for those who have been sexually victimized. The Awareness Center sees each individual person who helps others as heroes.

There have been so many different individuals in 2009, who have stepped up to the plate and have gone above and beyond what most people would do to protect themselves and others from sexual predators, that it has been very difficult to choose between them all. The Awareness Center has several different people in which we are proud to name as Rape Victim Advocates for 2009.

The 2009 Rape Victim Advocate of the Year Goes To:

1. The unnamed daughter of Rabbi Israel Weingarten. Her ability to come forward and work with the FBI and US States Attorney has help allowed law enforcement to get this sexual predator off the streets.

2. Shannon Orand - The alleged survivor of Rabbi Leib Tropper and Rabbi Tovia Singer. Shannon has done everything in her power to stop the madness going on in her own personal life as she has been going through the conversion process. It's a harsh reality to know that even those who are trying to convert would be put into a position in which they are manipulated into having "sexual relationships" with those who hold all the power over them to convert to our faith. What happened to Shannon can and does occur to those converting to all faiths, yet unfortunately, her alleged offender(s) were rabbis.

UNITED STATES
National Survivor Advocates Coalition

The resignation of the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, Ireland, James Moriarity, former auxiliary bishop of Dublin and one of five bishops named in the Murphy Report, came wrapped in a statement that said, “with the benefit of hindsight, I accept that from the time I became an auxiliary bishop I should have challenged the prevailing culture.”

The National Survivor Advocates Coalition expresses its incredulity that any religious leader at any time could think that the abuse of children and the protection of priests who abused them could be considered acceptable and only in “hindsight” could right could be discerned from wrong.

UNITED STATES
Healing and Spirituality

Jaime Romo

Dr. Pamela Pine is the founder of Stop the Silence: Stop Child Sexual Abuse, Inc., a non-profit that works with numerous individuals, community-based and faith-based (CBOs and FBOs) organizations and governments in the U.S. and other countries to prevent and treat CSA in varied communities through research, training, education, advocacy, policy development and more. For more information, see http://www.stopcsa.org/

JR: How long have you been in the business of working to end Child Sexual Abuse and promote healing? What got you involved in this work?

PP: I have been involved in this work for 10 years. In January of 2000, I started to get educated about CSA as a result of a proposal that came across my computer screen. I started reading about the numbers affected and the impact and wondered why I had not heard more about this epidemic, which affects one in three girls and one in six boys in the U.S. alone – and millions across the globe. I became impassioned with the idea that new and creative approaches were needed to increase societal awareness and address the pandemic.

IRELAND
BBC News

The remaining Irish bishops named in a report which exposed how Catholic leaders concealed child abuse must resign, a victims group has said.

On Wednesday the Bishop of Kildare said he would stand down, which came after the resignation of the Bishop of Limerick.

Maeve Lewis, chief executive of the One in Four group, said the resignations of three more bishops are "inevitable."

NEW YORK
Haaretz (Israel)

By Yair Ettinger, Haaretz Correspondent

It is hard to imagine a more embarrassing situation in which to find an exclusive ultra-Orthodox organization - a group that was a standard-bearer in the fight against "breaches in the wall of conversion" and "the penetration of complete gentiles into the vineyard of Israel."

These breaches pale into insignificance in comparison with the accusations against the man who heads the organization itself: according to the claims, Rabbi Leib Tropper of Rockland County abandoned the apparently stringent Halakhic standards of his Haredi organization and established a conversion process based on his most private impulses.

A report in the New York Post earlier this week revealed a sensational story about "a prominent Orthodox rabbi has been caught on tape discussing his apparent love affair with a shiksa he was converting to Judaism."

NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

The Bishop of Derry, Dr Seamus Hegarty, has said he is unsure whether it would be helpful for more bishops to resign over the Murphy Report.

It is the first time the bishop has spoken since the report into clerical sex abuse in the Dublin archdiocese was published a month ago.

Two bishops, James Moriarty and Donal Murray, have already resigned.

NORTHERN IRELAND
Londonderry Sentinel

Published Date: 24 December 2009
THE Catholic Bishop of Derry has said that the court experiences of people who have taken legal action against the church are in their opinion worse than the original sexual abuse they encountered from members of the clergy.

Dr Seamus Hegarty was speaking in the wake of the resignations of two Catholic bishops after the publication of the Murphy report-an investigation into clerical sex abuse in the Dublin archdiocese.

Bishops James Moriarty and Donal Murray have resigned in recent days.

However, Dr Hegarty said he was unsure if further resignations would contribute in a significant manner to healing.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Conor Kane

Thursday December 24 2009

THERE was "no fuss" about Bishop Jim.

He bought his paper in the same shop every morning and greeted parishioners on his regular walkabouts in Carlow town.

The handful of loyal parishioners who attended 10am Mass in Carlow Cathedral yesterday were all aware of the criticisms of their Bishop in the Murphy report into cover-ups of clerical child sex abuse in the archdiocese of Dublin.

They had heard the speculation, they had read the papers, but it hadn't quite sunk in.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By John Cooney

Thursday December 24 2009

ARCHBISHOP Diarmuid Martin challenged his senior auxiliary, Bishop Eamonn Walsh, to consider his position hours after Bishop James Moriarty became the second prelate to resign in the fall-out from the Murphy report.

A behind-the-scenes conflict erupted over Bishop Walsh's future in the Dublin Archdiocese in the wake of yesterday's resignation of Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin Jim Moriarty.

Last night Bishop Martin disputed a private claim made to Dublin priests by embattled Bishop Walsh that he had "unconditional support" to continue as his senior assistant.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By John Cooney

Thursday December 24 2009

To avoid such a messy end, Bishops Drennan, Walsh and Field should follow Murray and Moriarty by announcing their intention to go quietly

THE clericalist system in the Catholic Church onto which three Irish bishops are desperately clinging this Christmas was once famously described by the great theologian Bernard Haring as "ecclesiagenic pathology".

Roughly translated, it means pathological addiction to the Church as an institution.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY Religious Affairs Correspondent

THE ANNOUNCEMENT yesterday by Bishop James Moriarty that he has offered his resignation to Pope Benedict will put further pressure on the three other serving bishops also mentioned in the Murphy report to do likewise.

One of those bishops, Dublin Auxiliary Bishop Éamonn Walsh, was appointed in April 1990, over a year before Bishop Moriarty was appointed a Dublin auxiliary bishop in September 1991.

Both the Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan and Dublin Auxiliary Bishop Ray Field were appointed auxiliary bishops in Dublin on September 21st, 1997. Bishop Drennan was appointed Bishop of Galway in May 2005.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

GENEVIEVE CARBERY

REACTION: BISHOP OF Kildare and Leighlin Jim Moriarty’s acceptance that he should have challenged the “prevailing culture” was described as a “step forward” by victim Marie Collins yesterday.

Ms Collins was abused by a priest identified in the Murphy commission report by the pseudonym Fr Edmondus in 1960 when she was a patient at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin.

The report found that Bishop Moriarty received a complaint about Fr Edmondus in 1993 when he was an auxiliary bishop of Dublin and he could have asked Archbishop Desmond Connell to research the files.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY Religious Affairs Correspondent

BIOGRAPHY: BISHOP JAMES Moriarty was born in Dublin in 1937, the eldest son of Michael and Catherine Moriarty. From a medical family, his siblings, sister Ann and brothers Aidan, Dr Michael and Prof Denis, have all worked in healthcare at Dublin hospitals.

Bishop Moriarty was educated at Catholic University School, Lower Leeson Street, Holy Cross College, Clonliffe, University College, Dublin and St Patrick’s College, Maynooth. He was ordained for the Archdiocese of Dublin in 1961 and was chaplain in UCD from 1968 to 1979.

He was the first parish priest of Deansrath, near Clondalkin, from 1983 to 1989 and parish priest of Donaghmede from 1989 to 1991. In the late 1980s, he was elected chairman of the Dublin Diocesan Council of Priests.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

A group of teenagers was among those most strongly supportive of Bishop Moriarty, writes MICHAEL PARSONS in Carlow

FROM EARLY morning yesterday in Carlow, Jim Moriarty’s future as Catholic Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin looked ominous.

News bulletins on local radio station KCLR reported that he had failed to record his traditional Christmas message for the diocese. An announcement was said to be imminent.

A curate Fr John Cummins said morning Mass at the Cathedral of the Assumption for a congregation of about 40, mostly elderly, parishioners. Afterwards, he said that he had “heard all the media speculation” but had “no further information”.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

Full text of statement issued by Bishop Jim Moriarty yesterday:

ON THE Sunday after the Murphy report into the Archdiocese of Dublin was published (29th November 2009), I stated the following in Carlow Cathedral:

“As you are aware, I served as an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Dublin from 1991 until my appointment here in 2002. While the Murphy report does not criticise me directly, I feel it is important to state that I fully accept the overall conclusion of the commission – that the attempts by Church authorities to ‘protect the Church’ and to ‘avoid scandal’ had the most dreadful consequences for children and were deeply wrong.

I do not want to dwell here on individual criticism as I have already responded to that. As I acknowledged in radio interviews last week, the Murphy report covers far more than what individual bishops did or did not do. Fundamentally, it is about how the leadership of the archdiocese failed over many decades to respond properly to criminal acts against children.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY

LETTER TO PRIESTS: ARCHBISHOP OF Dublin Diarmuid Martin has challenged the content of a letter circulated to priests in the archdiocese by Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin Éamonn Walsh.

In the letter, Dr Walsh, whose position is believed vulnerable following publication of the Murphy report, said that at a meeting with priests and bishops of the archdiocese in Citywest on December 12th, Dr Martin “confirmed publicly that he had confidence in his Dublin Auxiliary Bishops”.

They are Bishop Walsh and Bishop Ray Field. Writing to priests in his area, Dr Walsh said he hoped the information would help them “reach your own conclusion in relation to my role and posts held in the diocese”.

VATICAN CITY
The Irish Times

PADDY AGNEW

NO SPECIAL significance can be attached to the fact that Pope Benedict failed to mention Ireland and the problems of the Irish church in his annual address to the Roman Curia this week, according to senior Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi.

Addressing the curia on Monday, the pope delivered a lengthy and wide-ranging summary of the “important events” in the life of the church in 2009, touching on his visits to Cameroon, Jordan, Israel and the Czech Republic.

At an event that has long been part of Vatican tradition, Pope Benedict also reflected on the work of the Synod For Africa, on the meaning of Christmas, as well as on the importance of 2010, designated “the Year of the Priest”.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

JOHN FALLON

A JUDGE has refused to accept a character reference from a parish priest who tried to prevent a repeat drunk driver from being jailed.

Judge Geoffrey Browne said he did not wish to see a letter of reference being offered in his court from a parish priest, although he took into account references provided by a relative of the defendant, and a neighbour.

IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Seán McCárthaigh

Thursday, December 24, 2009

PRESSURE is mounting on three serving bishops named in the Murphy report to step down from office after Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin James Moriarty announced he had offered his resignation to Pope Benedict XVI.

Dr Moriarty, 73, who served as an Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin from 1991 to 2002, confirmed he had decided to resign because he was "part of the governance of the archdiocese prior to when correct child protection policies and procedures were implemented".

Victim support group, One In Four, said last night that every senior bishop named in the Murphy Report should quit, while abuse survivor Andrew Madden lamented the fact that neither Bishop Moriarty nor Bishop Murray of Limerick had accepted any responsibility for the cover-up of abuse by priests.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

ANALYSIS: A drip, drip of episcopal resignations is adding to the difficulties for survivors of abuse and for the Catholic faithful, writes PATSY McGARRY

ONE TELLING line in Bishop Jim Moriarty’s statement yesterday will have made it extraordinarily difficult for fellow bishops and others mentioned in the Murphy report to stay on in office.

He said: “I accept that, from the time I became an auxiliary bishop, I should have challenged the prevailing culture.” It is the kernel of the issue where all in positions of authority in the archdiocese between January 1st, 1975 and April 30th, 2004 are concerned.

IRELAND
Limerick Leader

By Mike Dwane
LIMERICK priests have chosen former diocesan secretary Fr Tony Mullins as temporary Administrator of the Diocese of Limerick, following the resignation as bishop last week of Dr Donal Murray.

Fr Mullins will also continue as parish priest of Dromin-Athlacca until a new Bishop of Limerick is appointed, a process that could take up to a year.

A native of Ardagh, Fr Mullins worked closely for many years with Dr Murray as diocesan secretary. He has been parish priest in Athlacca for four years.

LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

December 23, 2009
The former vicar of clergy for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles testified under a grant of immunity last week before a federal grand jury probing the church’s role in sexual abuse by priests, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Msgr. Richard Loomis, whose responsibilities as a high-ranking aide to Cardinal Roger M. Mahony included overseeing sexual abuse cases against fellow priests, testified last Wednesday under “use immunity,” meaning his testimony cannot be used against him in a criminal prosecution, said the source, who asked not to be named because grand juries are confidential.

A “use immunity” agreement would not protect Loomis from being prosecuted based on statements made outside his grand jury testimony.

IRELAND
RTE News

[with audio and video]

Survivors of clerical abuse have welcomed the announcement that the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin Dr James Moriarty is to resign following criticism of him in the Murphy Report.

Dr Moriarty offered his resignation to Pope Benedict XVI this afternoon.

The announcement was made following a meeting between the Bishop and Diocesan priests and staff in Portarlington, Co Laois.

IRELAND
National Catholic Reporter (United States)

by John L Allen Jr on Dec. 23, 2009 All Things Catholic

To date I haven’t addressed the crisis in Ireland triggered by the “Murphy Report” on sexual abuse, largely because it’s dangerous for outsiders to pronounce on situations they don’t really understand. Yet the crisis dominating headlines there is, in some respects, reminiscent of what the American church went through in 2002, so this week I’ll pass along five “words to the wise” gleaned from that experience.

To be clear, these points are not in any way intended as the most important lessons of the sexual abuse crisis -- there’s still vigorous debate on that front in the United States and around the world. They’re more like tips that may be of some practical value, as Catholics in Ireland work out their immediate response to the crisis under intense public pressure.

Needless to say, the following are my ideas. Given the staggering diversity of the American church, it’s a foregone conclusion that not all American Catholics would read our experience in the same way.

IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Wednesday, December 23, 2009
The Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin James Moriarty has offered his resignation to the Pope today.

In a statement, Bishop Moriarty says he accepts that from the time he became an Auxillary Bishop, he should have challenged the prevailing culture.

He says he hopes his resignation honours the truth that the survivors have so bravely uncovered and opens a better future for all concerned.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

IRISH TIMES REPORTERS

Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin Jim Moriarty has offered his resignation to Pope Benedict, admitting he should have challenged the "prevailing culture" within the Catholic Church that allowed criminal acts against children to take place.

Bishop Moriarty (73) had been under considerable pressure to resign after being named in the Murphy report.

Dr Moriarty, an auxiliary bishop in Dublin from 1991 to 2002, said last week he would step down ahead of his planned retirement, due in two years, if this would serve the church and victims of clerical sex abuse.

IRELAND
Catholic Culture

December 23, 2009

A second Irish bishop has resigned in the wake of a report exposing a cover-up of sexual abuse by priests in the Dublin archdiocese.

Bishop James Moriarty of Kildare and Leighlin offered his resignation to Pope Benedict XVI on December 23—less than a week after Bishop Donal Murray of Limerick had stepped down. Both were auxiliaries in the Dublin archdiocese during the period covered by the Murphy Commission report, which recounted a series of failures to address complaints of sexual abuse.

IRELAND
The Press Association

A second Irish bishop has dramatically resigned over the damning findings of a state clerical child abuse inquiry.

Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin James Moriarty faced mounting pressure to quit after Limerick Bishop Donal Murray stepped aside six days ago over his "inexcusable" mishandling of an abuse case.

IRELAND
Leinster Leader

Published Date: 23 December 2009

The Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, Jim Moriarty, has resigned.

Following a meeting with priests of the diocese and dioscesan staff this afternoon, Wednesday, December 23, a statement was issued by the Catholic Communications Office confirming his resignation.

The statement said that the Bishop spent the past few weeks reflecting on what should be his response to the overall conclusion of the Murphy Report on abuse within the Catholic Church.

Bishop Moriarty was mentioned within the report in connection with his role as an Auxiliary Bishop in Dublin at the time of a complaint of sexual abuse against a priest there in the 1990s.

IRELAND
Reuters

DUBLIN (Reuters) - A second Irish bishop named in a damning report into child sex abuse by priests offered his resignation to the Pope on Wednesday.

Bishop Jim Moriarty, who was due to retire in two years, said that while the report did not criticize him directly, he should have challenged the "prevailing culture" that allowed criminal acts against children to take place.

Last week Bishop Donal Murray became the first bishop to quit since the publication of the report, which said Church leaders in overwhelmingly Catholic Ireland had covered up widespread sexual abuse of children by priests for 30 years.

IRELAND
Irish Central

By PATRICK ROBERTS, IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

Irish Catholic Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin Jim Moriarty resigned to Pope Benedict XVI today following revelations in the Murphy Report into child abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese published last month.

Moriarty was an auxiliary bishop in Dublin between 1991 and 1993. The report said that in that role, he had received a complaint about a priest known by the pseudonym Father Edmondus, regarding the priest’s contact with young children.

According to the report, youth workers were concerned that young girls, and especially very poor children, seemed to spend time at Edmondus’ house.

IRELAND
Roman Catholic Diocese of Kildare and Leighlin

Statement by Bishop Jim Moriarty
23 December 2009

Following a meeting with the priests of the diocese and diocesan staff this afternoon, Bishop Jim Moriarty issued the following statement -

On the Sunday after the ‘Murphy Report’ into the Archdiocese of Dublin was published (29th November 2009), I stated the following in Carlow Cathedral;

“As you are aware, I served as an Auxiliary Bishop in the Archdiocese of Dublin from 1991 until my appointment here in 2002. While the Murphy Report does not criticise me directly, I feel it is important to state that I fully accept the overall conclusion of the Commission – that the attempts by Church authorities to ‘protect the Church’ and to ‘avoid scandal’ had the most dreadful consequences for children and were deeply wrong.”

I do not want to dwell here on individual criticism as I have already responded to that. As I acknowledged in radio interviews last week, the Murphy report covers far more than what individual Bishops did or did not do. Fundamentally it is about how the leadership of the Archdiocese failed over many decades to respond properly to criminal acts against children.

IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

A second Irish bishop has dramatically resigned over the damning findings of a state clerical child abuse inquiry.

Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin James Moriarty faced mounting pressure to quit after Limerick Bishop Donal Murray stepped aside six days ago over his "inexcusable" mishandling of an abuse case.

Despite previously insisting he should not resign, Bishop Moriarty said he accepted the inquiry's findings and that he should have challenged Church handling of paedophilia.

IRELAND
UTV

A second bishop has offered his resignation to the Pope in the wake of the clerical abuse scandal in Dublin.

According to the Irish Catholic newspaper, Bishop Jim Moriarty - who was accused in the Murphy Report of failing to deal adequately with allegations a priest had acted "suspiciously" around children - made the move on Wednesday. He is still bishop until the resignation is accepted.

IRELAND
BBC News

A second Irish bishop has resigned after a damning report which found that Catholic leaders concealed child abuse.

The Bishop of Kildare, Dr James Moriarty, offered his resignation to the Pope after a meeting with priests and staff in Portarlington.

"I have today offered my resignation as bishop of Kildare and Leighlin to the holy father," he said in a statement.

IRELAND
AFP

DUBLIN — A second Irish bishop said he offered his resignation to Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday amid an ongoing clerical child sex abuse scandal in Ireland.

IRELAND
Bloomberg

By Fergal O’Brien

Dec. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Irish Roman Catholic Bishop Jim Moriarty offered to resign after a report into how church authorities handled allegations of child abuse by members of the clergy.

IRELAND
The Associated Press

DUBLIN — A second Roman Catholic bishop in Ireland says he's resigning in the wake of a damning investigation into decades of church cover-up of child abuse in the Dublin archdiocese.

Bishop Jim Moriarty made the announcement to priests and other church officials Wednesday in his diocese of Kildare and Leithlin, southwest of Dublin.

IRELAND
Ireland Online

The Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin James Moriarty has offered his resignation to the Pope today.

In a statement to be issued in full later, Bishop Moriarty says he accepts that from the time he became an Auxillary Bishop, he should have challenged the prevailing culture.

He says he hopes his resignation honours the truth that the survivors have so bravely uncovered and opens a better future for all concerned.

IRELAND
RTE News

[with video and audio]

Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin Dr Jim Moriarty has offered his resignation to Pope Benedict XVI.

The announcement was made in the last few minutes following a meeting between the Bishop and Diocesan priests and staff in Portarlington, Co Laois.

Bishop Moriarty was an auxiliary Bishop of Dublin during some of the years in which the Murphy Commission found that the Archdiocese had covered up cases of clerical child sexual abuse.

MINNESOTA
The Hastings Star-Gazette

By: Jane Lightbourn, The Hastings Star-Gazette

A deceased former Hastings area resident and priest, who was a counselor at St. John's University in Collegeville, Minn., for many years, is named in two civil lawsuits filed in Stearns County alleging sexual misconduct as far back as the early 1970s.

The first lawsuit was filed by Jeremiah “Jerry” McCarthy, now living in New York. He accuses the college and the church officials of knowing in the mid-1960s that the Rev. Bruce Wollmering, who died earlier this year at the age of 68, had been “sexually inappropriate” with a child.

McCarthy was a 16-year-old preparatory student at St. John's in 1971 when he met with Wollmering for academic and psychological testing and spiritual counseling. He said the sexual contact with Wollmering occurred in Wollmering's office.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin Jim Moriarty is expected to announce his resignation today in the wake of the findings of the Murphy report into clerical sex abuse in the Dublin archdiocese.

Dr Moriarty, an auxiliary bishop in Dublin from 1991 to 2002, said last week he would step down ahead of his planned retirement, due in two years, if this would serve the church and victims of clerical sex abuse.

The Murphy report, published last month, said he received a complaint about a priest - identified in the report by the pseudonym Fr Edmondus - in 1993 concerning the priest's contact with young children. This was the priest who had abused Marie Collins in 1960 when she was a patient at Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin.

CANADA
Winnipeg Free Press

By: Staff Writer

BRANDON -- A Roman Catholic priest has been sentenced to 18 months of house arrest for stealing thousands of dollars from a Brandon church.

But a deacon says he and many members of the congregation forgive Father Raju Madanu for stealing the collection money from their church.

"He is an outstanding individual. We all falter from time to time," St. Augustine of Canterbury deacon John MacKenzie said after the sentencing hearing Tuesday.

About 15 to 20 members of the congregation were in court to support Madanu, 36, as he briefly and quietly apologized for stealing $13,200 from St. Augustine.

IRELAND
Kerryman

By SIMON BROUDER sbrouder@kerryman.ie

Wednesday December 23 2009

THERE'S been a mixed reaction in Castlegregory to the actions of Father Sean Sheehy who caused outrage with his outspoken support for convicted sex offender Danny Foley.

Locals in Castlegregory were quick to condemn Father Foley's support of convicted sex attacker Danny Foley but praised the priest for his previous work in the community since he took over as acting parish priest in 2007.

Fr Sheehy ( 67) returned from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to take over as acting Parish Priest of Castlegregory in mid 2007 after Parish Priest Tadgh O'Dochartagh fell ill.

Catholic Culture

A CNA story reports that the Legionaries are prepping their number for bad news to come by revealing that at least some of the writings of the late Marcial Maciel were cribbed:

In an effort to distance itself from the wrongdoings of its founder, the Legion of Christ has recently circulated an internal memo detailing how a long venerated work of spirituality attributed to Fr. Marcial Maciel was actually a slight re-writing of a book from a little-known Spanish author.

[chop]

Although the memo does not describe Fr. Maciel’s copying as plagiarism, a Spanish member of the Legion familiar with the text told CNA that Fr. Maciel's version reproduces “80% of the original book in content and style.”

There’s a sense of course in which Catholics want their spiritual writers to be unoriginal: the truths of the faith and the truth of human nature do not change, and the indispensable cross-pollination between Christian authors means most of us should say of most orthodox writing, "This reminds me of something I've read before." The problem with Maciel’s unoriginality, it would seem, is that he was silent about what he knew he borrowed.

The Huffington Post

Robert E. Murphy

As Christmas Week begins, The New York Times leads its metropolitan section with another piece about sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests. Being Catholic educated through college in church-sponsored schools, I can't complain, nor can I resist the morbid appeal of such articles.

Having, as I do, a lingering religious sensibility and an attachment to Mother Church, is a complicated and confusing experience. One can be saddened and angered by repeated revelations of predatory behavior, mostly homosexual, mostly against children and adolescents, by priests and other church operatives, yet somehow be satisfied to read about moral failings a class of men who have too often distorted the call to serve the God of Love into an urge for power and cruelty.

It has been a particularly tough year for the church in Ireland, which has been over many generations the primary root of the church in America. In May, a government-sponsored commission delivered a report on church-run institutional schools that unflinchingly piled up details with a force that seemed to echo the violence of the incidents it described:

Punching, flogging, assault and bodily attacks, hitting with the hand, kicking, ear pulling, hair pulling, head shaving, beating on the soles of the feet, burning, scalding, stabbing, severe beatings with or without clothes, being made to kneel and stand in fixed positions for lengthy periods...

UNITED STATES
All Kinds of Writing

I first heard the story of Bartimaeus the blind beggar Jesus healed on the road to Jericho (Luke chapter 18:35-43 and Mark chapter 10:46-52), during the Gospel readings for Mass in the Fall 2003. Hearing it, I experienced an epiphany. I understood that survivors of clergy abuse were like the blind beggar and the people and the leadership of the Catholic Church were like the disciples around Jesus who told Bartimaeus to go away and not bother Jesus. Over and over we Catholics have told survivors of clergy abuse to go away and be quiet and not to bother us.

Jesus always welcomes the wounded, and He does everything He can to heal them.

Galvanized by the story of Bartimaeus, I started handing out newspaper articles on the clergy abuse scandal in my parish. I thought that if only other Catholics knew more about the issue, they would be moved to act. It didn’t work out that way. A few people supported me privately. Others told my friends that they were concerned but did not wish to risk their relationship with the Franciscan priests who staff our parish. Others reacted with hostility towards me and my message. The more I was rejected, the angrier I got – until, in March 2004 -- when I got myself thrown out of the parish for being confrontational.

IRELAND
Offaly Express

Published Date: 23 December 2009
ONE of the most senior parish priests in Laois has said Bishop James Moriarty will "not cling to power" and will do what is best for the Catholic Church and the victims of child sexual abuse.

Speaking in the wake of the Murphy report, Msgr John Byrne, PP, Portlaoise, accepted the report's findings, and said the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin would do the right thing.

"I know he is considering the report and the fallout, and I would be very certain that the Bishop is not a man that will cling to power for the sake of power. If he considers that it is the right thing to do for the victims and the church in Kildare and Leighlin, he will do what he thinks to be best," he said.

IRELAND
BBC News

Speculation is mounting in Ireland that a second bishop will resign after a damning report which found that Catholic leaders concealed child abuse.

Broadcaster RTE has reported that the Bishop of Kildare Dr James Moriarty, will quit on Wednesday afternoon.

Last week he said that if it was for the good of the Catholic Church he would step down.

IRELAND
RTE News

[with audio]

The Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, Dr James Moriarty, is understood to be about to announce that he will be resigning.

A statement is due to be issued this afternoon.

On Friday, Dr Moriarty, who is due to retire in two years time, said that if it was for the good of the Catholic Church he would step down earlier.

IRELAND
Ireland Online

There is speculation today that a second bishop criticised in the Murphy report is about to resign.

James Moriarty, currently Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, is said to be considering is position.

It is almost a week since the Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray stepped down over his failings in handling child abuse allegations while working in the Dublin archdiocese.

MINNESOTA
YouTube

Bishop Accountability has Official Catholic Directory's going back 100 years. They will review the Directory's for an in-depth report of priest assignments of the Archdiocese of St. Paul & Minneapolis.

CANADA
Religious Intelligence (United Kingdom)

Wednesday, 23rd December 2009

By: George Conger

An Anglican priest in Canada has been arrested for possession and distribution of child pornography.

The arrest on Dec 8 of the Rev Robin Barrett, rector of St John’s Anglican Church in Goulds, Newfoundland, is the second recent high-profile arrest of a clergyman in Canada for possession of child pornography.

On Sept 25 Ottawa police charged Roman Catholic Bishop Raymond Lahey with possessing and importing child pornography. Bishop Lahey, who resigned as Bishop of Antigonish in Nova Scotia shortly before his arrest, allegedly brought a laptop home to Canada that contained images the Canadian Border Services found of “concern” during a customs inspection.

DURANT (OK)
KXII

DURANT, OK -- A Coleman teacher accused of sexually assaulting a 15 year old boy is out of jail on bond from the Bryan County Jail.

Billy Ray Smith was jailed last Saturday after a week-long investigation found enough information to arrest him. He bailed out of jail on $150,000 bond last night. ...

Police say the victim knew Smith from church in Durant, and reported that the abuse has been going on for at least two years.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

THE AUTHOR of this article, a victim of clerical sex abuse, wrote to the Editor seeking to ask questions of the people of Ireland. In the course of her letter to the Editor, she explained why she wished to remain anonymous, something not allowed on the Letters page.

The author explained her reasons thus:

“The reason I do not wish to give my address is simply that as a victim of clerical sexual abuse it has been very important for me to retain my privacy, having had it violated many years ago. There is no real right of privacy when, as a young person, you are interfered with, exposed in secrecy time and time again.

“For 25 years I lived with the fallout of my abuse, burying it deep within myself while it ate away, impacting on my ‘self’, my mental and physical wellbeing, my family life, my education, my relationship, and my future. When I came to find the strength to face it full on and deal with it in all aspects of my life, it was clear that I had to do the one thing that I had avoided for years: pay attention to myself, put myself centre stage, and work through the hell.

SOUTH AFRICA
Eyewitness News

Micel Schnehage

Eyewitness News has learnt that the custodian of the Central Methodist Church Bishop Paul Verryn allegedly acted unilaterally - in trying to launch a high court application on behalf of the mission.

An urgent application for a custodian to be appointed to oversee the welfare of minors at the church in central Johannesburg, was postponed in the South Gauteng High Court on Tuesday.

According to court papers the application was brought by Verryn and the Central Methodist mission.

IRELAND
Kerryman

By MARISA REIDY mreidy@kerryman.ie

Wednesday December 23 2009

'A MAN with the highest respect for women and someone who does not have an abusive bone in his body' — probably the last words you would associate with a convicted sex offender.

Yet these were exactly the words used by Fr Sean Sheehy to describe Danny Foley of Meen Listowel, just weeks after he was convicted to sexually assaulting a woman he had known for almost a decade.

If that wasn't enough, they were said by Mr Foley's family friend — who acted as a character witness — while his victim sat in the public gallery of Tralee Circuit Criminal Court and listened.

MISSOURI
The Joplin Globe

By Derek Spellman
dspellman@joplinglobe.com

All charges against a former rural Granby pastor accused of molesting two women while they were underage have been dropped, prosecutors said Tuesday.

The dropping of charges against George Otis Johnston marks the end of a case that grabbed national headlines, and found the leaders of sister churches in Newton and McDonald counties the target of sexual abuse allegations. At the height of the cases, a half-dozen people faced multiple charges.

But over the past two years, charges against all the defendants in McDonald County were dropped, leaving Johnston the lone defendant in the cases.

MISSOURI
The Kansas City Star

The Associated Press

NEOSHO, Mo. | Prosecutors have dropped all charges against a southwest Missouri pastor accused of sexually abusing two underage female members of his congregation, ending a case that once involved six adults who led two rural Ozarks churches.

George Otis Johnston, 66, was charged in 2006 with 17 felony counts of child molestation and statutory sodomy. The Newton County prosecutor’s office said Tuesday it had dropped all charges and doesn’t plan to refile them because some witnesses had recanted or changed their earlier stories.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

Madam, – The formal statement issued by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin on the resignation of Bishop Donal Murray (Home News, December 18th and Dublin diocesan website) was so terse as to be graceless.

It is ironic that the archbishop said he appreciated “the personal difficulty and pressure” Bishop Murray had been under, since much of that pressure had been created by Dr Martin’s mighty media megaphone.

Bishop Murray’s resignation had obviously become inevitable and the archbishop had to comment on it, but did his words have to sound so dismissive? There was not a single word acknowledging Bishop Murray’s impressive contribution to the church and society. I find that difficult to understand.

IRELAND
Leinster Leader

Published Date: 23 December 2009
By Maeve McGovern
THE Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin Jim Moriarty has continued to defend his position this week saying that his "partial involvement" in a case cited in the Murphy Commission report does not warrant his resignation.Bishop Moriarty reiterated that there are no grounds for him to vacate his position.

"I stand by my statement that I should not resign for my partial involvement in the Fr Edmondus case but I want to add that no Bishop can put his own position before the good of the Church."

He staunchly repeated that he has done nothing wrong and that the Murphy report did not criticise him directly. However he said he still accepts the overall conclusion of the report.

IRELAND
Leinster Leader

Published Date: 24 December 2009
By Staff Reporter
A NORTH Kildare parish priest, Fr Philip Corcoran, has moved out of his parochial house and will not return to his role as Parish Priest of Confey despite being cleared of sexual abuse allegations by the State.

Fr Corcoran is currently under investigation by the Church itself into an incident alleged to have occurred over 20 years ago. Fr Corcoran stepped aside as parish priest in May 2008 in accordance with State and Church guidance after these allegations came to light.

However, the Director of Public Prosecutions made a relatively quick decision that there was no case to answer.

LOS ANGELES (CA)
San Jose Mercury News

LOS ANGELES—A Roman Catholic monsignor who served as vicar for clergy at the Archdiocese of Los Angeles has testified under a grant of immunity before a federal grand jury investigating how the archdiocese handled claims of sexual abuse, an attorney said Tuesday.

Monsignor Richard Loomis testified before the grand jury Dec. 16, said John Manly, an attorney representing plaintiffs in civil cases. He did not know how long Loomis testified or what he disclosed.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By John Cooney

Wednesday December 23 2009

A SECOND Catholic bishop named in the shocking Murphy Report into cover-ups of clerical child sexual abuse in the archdiocese of Dublin is expected to announce his resignation today.

Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin James Moriarty will explain that he is stepping down as head of the diocese in order to give the priests and lay people a fresh start for 2010.

The decision of Bishop Moriarty, a former Dublin auxiliary under Cardinal Desmond Connell, comes six days after Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray's resignation was accepted by Pope Benedict XVI.

IRELAND
The Connaught Tribune

December 23, 2009

Website poll shows 72% calling for resignation

THE Bishop of Galway, Rev Martin Drennan may have to resign through his ‘guilt by association’ as a former Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin mentioned in the Murphy Report into child sexual abuse.

Bishop Drennan had said that there was no need for him to resign as he believed he had done nothing wrong and that in fact, the Murphy Report had found that his handling of one particular case involving complaints against a priest had been appropriate.

However on the Keith Finnegan Show on Galway Bay FM last Friday, Bishop Drennan conceded that his resignation might indeed be inevitable through “guilt by association” though he maintained throughout the hour long interview that he had not set out to hurt anyone, had ensured guidelines into the handling of sexual abuse allegations against the clergy introduced in 1996 were adhered to and that the Murphy Report was not critical of him at all.

The Daily Dish

Thomas P Barnett notes how certainty and moral responsibility can become less important to the Catholic hierarchy: when it involves covering up the rape and sexual abuse of teens and kids. My civil marriage? It's black and white. Their decades-long criminal conspiracy to protect child abuse?

The lawyer sprang his big question: You could have prevented someone from hurting people and you decided not to. Why? The witness was Edward M. Egan, then the Roman Catholic bishop of Bridgeport, Conn. The question was about a priest who had been accused of sexually molesting children.

MISSOURI
Neosho Daily News

By John Ford
Neosho Daily News
Posted Dec 22, 2009

Neosho, Mo. — Charges have been dropped against a Granby pastor accused of molesting two members of his congregation while they were underage.

While a case review hearing was originally set for this afternoon, 17 child sexual abuse charges against George Otis Johnston, 66, of Granby were dropped Monday, according to Newton County Assistant Prosecutor Bill Dobbs. The review was to have taken place in Vernon County Circuit Court, where the case was moved from Newton County on a change of venue.

“After we did substantial discovery and reviewed all of the evidence and spoke with the victims, we just believe at this time, it was most appropriate to dismiss the pending charges,” Dobbs said. “There has been some additional information come forward in which some of the witnesses we believed would offer corroborating testimony either recanted their story or did not confirm what we had been told. Because of that, we believe prosecuting the case is not viable.”

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PAMELA NEWENHAM

The responsibility for restoring trust in the Catholic Church following the Murphy report lies with the institution’s hierarchy, according to Taoiseach Brian Cowen.

Speaking on RTÉ Radio's Gerry Ryan Show this morning, Mr Cowen said the institution of the Church in Ireland has taken a "huge battering" in terms of its reputation.

"It will have to be rehabilitated by those who have authority in that area to do so," he said. "That's an issue, a task and a consequence that they will have to deal with.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY MCGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

One of Ireland’s leading child abuse campaigners has issued an open letter calling on Pope Benedict to visit Ireland and spend seven days in repentance here.

Christine Buckley, of the Aislinn Centre in Dublin said he should do so also to assist Archbishop Diarmuid Martin in a “major spring-cleaning” of the Irish Catholic church.

While he is here, Pope Benedict should invite abuse survivors to tell him directly “their harrowing tales in the presence of those responsible for their suffering or the leaders of those organisations that were responsible,” said Ms Buckley, who spent time as a child in the Goldenbridge orphanage in Inchicore

UNITED STATES
Rabbinical Council of America

Dec 22, 2009 -- We are deeply appalled, saddened and pained by reports that have reached us concerning alleged inappropriate behavior on the part of the chairman of the rabbinic committee of the Eternal Jewish Family, Rabbi Leib Tropper. We need to wait for more complete information before we can react fully.

Nonetheless, at this time, we would make the following points clear:

1. What we have heard, if true, violates the fundamental elements of all that Judaism holds sacred.

2. We urge anyone who might have been victimized to seek appropriate counseling and we, at the Rabbinical Council of America, remain ready to refer anyone who needs such assistance to the appropriate professionals.

MISSOURI
The Joplin Globe

All charges have been dropped against the former pastor of a rural Granby church who had been previously accused of molesting two women while they were underage, the Newton County Prosecutor’s office said this morning.

A case review hearing was originally scheduled for this afternoon in the case of George Otis Johnston, the pastor of Grandview Valley Baptist Church. Johnston faced 17 felony counts, all of which were dismissed Monday, according to Assistant Newton County Prosecutor Bill Dobbs.

“Not at this time,” Dobbs said when asked if there were any plans to refile charges.

Spero News

By Dwight Longenecker

As the sordid revelations about Fr. Marcial Marciel--the founder of the Legionaries of Christ--keep emerging the faithful ask, "Why were so many taken in by him?"

What very few people stop to consider is the complex psychology of religious belief. Religious faith is the greatest adventure and brings forth the very best of human beings, but we have to be honest and admit that it brings forth the very worst as well.

Why do people fall for priests who turn out to be such stinkers? It's pretty complicated, but it goes like this: first of all, the bad priest himself is usually a complex character. He has deep flaws and serious sins deep down in his life. To compensate he tries very hard to be good, and what better way to be good than to become a priest? Becoming a priest helps him to cover up his flaws. ...

Why were so many taken in by Father Maciel? Because so many people wanted to be taken in. It was easier and more exciting to believe the whole fabricated fiction than to take the effort to find out the truth and follow it.

VERMONT
Rutland Herald

By Josh O'Gorman STAFF WRITER - Published: December 22, 2009

WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — A Missouri man denied violating a court order preventing him from contacting his newborn daughter.

Paul J. Cool, 49, of Amity, Mo., pleaded innocent Monday in White River Junction District Court to a misdemeanor charge of violating his conditions of release.

On Dec. 1, Cool pleaded innocent to three counts of lewd and lascivious conduct for allegedly repeatedly assaulting a woman from 2006 to 2007 in Royalton. The woman, who was 18 years old when the alleged assaults began, told police Cool was a priest in a splinter sect of the Mormon Church and told her God had instructed him to prepare her for marriage.

IRELAND
Derry Journal

Published Date: 22 December 2009
By Staff reporter

A RETIRED garda, who investigated one of the country's most notorious paedophile priests, has called for a commission of investigation into the Raphoe Diocese to be established as a matter of urgency.

Martin Ridge said a commission would finally uncover the extent of the damage perpetrated by former priest, Eugene Greene, who was moved between eight different parishes over a 30-year period before finally being convicted in 2000.

He was sentenced to 12 years' imprisonment after pleading guilty to 41 sample charges against 26 victims, some as young as seven and many of whom were altar boys.

IOWA
The Garden of Roses: Stories of Abuse and Healing

Steve Theisen is a burly guy in his fifties with short, gray hair. His e-mail address incorporates the names of his two favorite sports stars--LT and Reggie Jackson. On a cold, Saturday evening in late January 2005, Steve stood outside a Marshalltown, Iowa parish handing out leaflets while officers in two police cars observed. Steve asked the nun who was the Pastoral Associate of the church about the police presence.

“Sister, tell me you didn’t call the cops on me,” Steve said.

“Yes, we did,” replied the Sister.

“Why?” asked Steve.

“For your protection,” said the Sister.

“For my protection? From whom? The people in the pews?” asked Steve.

“No, for their protection,” replied the Sister.

“From whom? Me?” asked Steve.

IRELAND
RTE News

Tuesday, 22 December 2009

Taoiseach Brian Cowen has said the Catholic Church hierarchy has the responsibility of restoring trust in the administration of the institution.

In an interview on RTÉ Radio's Gerry Ryan Show, Mr Cowen also spoke of the fallout from the Murphy Report into clerical child abuse in the Dublin Catholic archdiocese.

He said the gardaí would deal with any matters arising from it as they saw appropriate.

DURANT (OK)
KXII

[with video]

DURANT, OK – A Coleman High School science teacher is in jail after being charged with sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy. Durant Police say 51-year-old Billy Ray Smith was arrested last Saturday on three accounts of child sexual abuse.

Officers started the investigation over a week ago after the Department of Human Services received a tip.

Public information officer Carrie Wyrick says the victim and Smith both attend the same church in Durant, and that's where the instances took place. She says the victim and Smith came in for voluntary interviews last week.

UGANDA
Daily Monitor

Tororo

A pastor in Tororo district is in police custody for allegedly defiling a 14-year-old primary school pupil.

The arrest of Ezra Wekesa of Apostles of God Church brings to three the number of pastors arrested in Tororo in connection to child defilement this year alone. The two other pastors are on remand at Morukatipe Government Prison.

Mr Aggrey Isabirye, the acting Tororo District Police Commander, says Pastor Wekesa was arrested on Saturday by local council officials in West Budama Sub-County.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

THE LAST RTÉ Radio One This Week programme of the decade on Sunday encapsulated much about Irish public life. Three of its four stories dealt with the consequences of secrecy, writes ELAINE BYRNE

Tommie Gorman’s searching interview with Gerry Adams unveiled allegations of sexual abuse made by his niece Áine Tyrell against her father, Liam Adams (Gerry’s brother), dating back to 1987. Gerry Adams also revealed that his late father subjected members of his family to sexual, emotional and physical abuse. In what was uncomfortable listening, Adams referred to the “culture of concealment” which prevented the matter being raised before now.

The costs of this culture were one also laid bare by the Murphy report into the Dublin archdiocese where “avoidance of scandal, the preservation of the reputations of individuals and of the church, took precedence over the safety and welfare of children”.

The second story focused on recent events in Listowel. The 24-year-old woman at the centre of the sexual assault case said she has been made to feel that she had done something wrong in bringing the case to court. “All I did was tell the truth and I’m not going to feel guilty about that,” she told the Marian Finucane RTÉ radio show on Sunday.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

RITE AND REASON: PRIESTS WHO abused children must wonder, “How did I end up like this?” I’m sure we all had the same enthusiasm and commitment as we entered religious life, more than 50 years ago in my case, writes SEÁN Ó RIAIN

That first year was one of the happiest in my life. Not because of the beauty of the countryside or the excellence of monastic cooking or the soaring novelty of the liturgy. It was my companions of that year – priests, lay brothers and my 13 fellow students – who brought me such happiness. People living together in peace and prayer, trying to know God – that for me was happiness.

After three years I left. A brave decision, people said. It didn’t seem so to me but maybe their opinion showed the pressure on people not to leave. One source of today’s worrying problems?

FARGO (ND)
In-Forum

By: The Most Rev. Samuel J. Aquila, INFORUM

From time to time, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests issues a news release that is critical of the manner in which the Diocese of Fargo has addressed its response to individuals who allege abuse by clergy decades ago. Because our public statements in response are sometimes reduced to a one-line quote, I would like to more fully communicate to readers, hopefully for the last time, where I, as the current bishop of Fargo, stand on the subject of the abuse of children, sexual misconduct of any kind, and the church’s pastoral outreach.

No form of child abuse or sexual misconduct of any kind is now nor ever was considered acceptable within the church. I and my staff are committed to this truth. Under my leadership since 2001, the diocese has taken numerous positive steps to ensure that a safe environment pervades each and every one of our parishes, schools and affiliated institutions. We have worked hard to ensure that anyone in the Diocese of Fargo who has knowledge of or suspects child abuse understands his or her duty to make a full report to all appropriate authorities as required by North Dakota law.

In addition to complying with child abuse reporting obligations, the Catholic Church of Fargo is equally committed to providing pastoral outreach to anyone who has experienced inappropriate sexual behavior by any member of the clergy, a teacher, employee or other church worker. Briston Fernandes, victim assistance coordinator, and our vicar general, Monsignor Joseph Goering, are available to help.

IRELAND
Offaly Express

The Bishop of the Diocese of Kildare and Leighlin could be close to resignation in the wake of the fall out of the report on child sexual abuse.

Conor Ganly reports

Bishop Jim Moriarty, who is the head of the church in large parts of Offaly, Laois and bordering counties, has said he will resign from his position for the good of the church.

Bishop Moriarty continues to insist that the Murphy report did not reach negative conclusion about is actions in relation to his handling of sexual abuse by priests in the Dublin Archdiocese where he served as an auxiliary Bishop. However he has changed his stance.

NEW YORK
Your Nabe

By Aaron Short
Monday, December 21, 2009

Charging that the Catholic Church should lose its tax-exempt status, a consortium of atheists and Catholic activists filed two lawsuits against Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, Assemblymember Vito Lopez (D-Williamsburg) and the Catholic Diocese over their role in producing a recorded message sent to Williamsburg’s registered voters less than a week before they went to the polls.

Led by NYC Atheists President Kenneth Bronstein and New Jersey-based priest abuse activist Reverend Robert Hoatson, the suits allege that DiMarzio violated Internal Revenue Service laws by recording a political message sent to voters in a hotly contested City Council election, which could cost the Church privileges enjoyed by its nonprofit status.

“This is the first step to accomplish what we want to accomplish: get the Church out of politics,” said John Aretakis, a spokesperson for the group.

UNITED STATES
EDGE Boston

by Kilian Melloy
Monday Dec 21, 2009

Two Catholic priests have been sentenced in separate cases involving improper sexual conduct.

In New York, a former St. John’s university minister and chancellor, Charles Plock, 63, received probation for a period of five years after his arrest for sending sex videos of himself to a vice cop who he had met online. Plock believed that the officer was a boy of thirteen; however, the contact was a sting operation that led to Plock’s arrest on Oct. 10, 2008, a Dec. 17 article at YourNabe.com said.

The officer in the case was a Colorado police detective named Mark Michielli, who is with the sheriff’s office in Adams County. Plock lived in Queens, but has relocated to upstate New York, where he will live under supervision from a fellow Catholic clergyman.

MILWAUKEE (MI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Daniel Bice

People in Milwaukee know a lot about Jerome Listecki, the incoming Catholic archbishop.

The easygoing 60-year-old bishop of La Crosse is a Chicago native, a lawyer and a devoted White Sox fan.

But here's something that few know about the guy:

For a while, Listecki was a budding real estate mogul, buying and selling property in Illinois and Wisconsin beginning in the mid-'80s.

But a couple of those deals soured amid controversy.

IRELAND
Limerick Leader

RTE has received a significant number of complaints on Late Late Show host Ryan Tubridy's line of questioning with three newly-ordained Redemptorist priests, including Fr Brian Nolan from Lifford Gardens.

The three priests were asked about celibacy and pre-marital sex in a tough interview in which the host looked for 'yes or no' answers to moral questions and warned the young priests his line of questioning would "not get any easier". The Redemptorists could not be contacted this Monday on whether they agreed with newspaper reports today the priests had been "set up" by the national broadcaster.

VERMONT
Pitch Weekly

By Peter Rugg

​Missouri man accused of telling young women that he needed to touch their pubic areas in order to release sinful spirits gathered there was arrested Friday after violating the conditions of his release laid down by a Vermont district court judge.

Paul Cool, 49, originally pleaded innocent to three counts of felony lewd and lascivious conduct on December 1. Cool allegedly told his accusers, all young women, that he was a priest.

According to the Survivor's Network of Those Abused by Priests, Cool was ordained an elder in the Vermont Mormon Church.

IRELAND
Limerick Leader

By Nick Rabbitts
THE former Bishop of Limerick, Dr Donal Murray, who stood down last week after criticism of him by the Murphy Commission, has offered his "deepest apologies" to massgoers in the diocese.

In an open letter, read at masses across Limerick yesterday, Dr Murray apologised for taking so long to confirm his intention to leave his post following the findings of the Murphy Report - which described as "inexcusable" his failure to reinvestigate complaints in Valleymount of the behaviour of paedophile priest Fr Tom Naughton, while an auxiliary Bishop in the Dublin Archdiocese.

Meanwhile, the Limerick Leader understands Dr Murray is to spend a low-key Christmas in the USA. And according to reports, the Limerick Diocese will offer him a "modest pension" of between €20,000 and €30,000.

CINCINNATI (OH)
Cincinnati Enquirer

The Enquirer • December 21, 2009

The Rev. Dennis M. Schnurr, coadjutor archbishop of Cincinnati since October 2008, has succeeded Archbishop Daniel E. Pilarczyk as leader of the 19-county Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati, the archdiocese announced Monday.

Schnurr becomes the 10th presiding bishop of the archdiocese since its founding in 1821.

The move follows Pope Benedict XVI’s acceptance Monday of Pilarczyk’s resignation, which he submitted when he turned 75 on Aug. 12, 2009, in accord with church law. Pilarczyk had been archbishop for 27 years, longer than any other currently serving archbishop in the United States.

CONNECTICUT
Connecticut Law Tribune

By CHRISTIAN NOLAN

The cases aren’t for the faint of heart.

Corey Davis, a New York City pimp, was convicted last year on various sex trafficking charges, including bringing a 12-year-old girl up to Bridgeport to work as a prostitute.

Edgardo Sensi was indicted in April for allegedly producing child pornography that involved an 8-year-old Connecticut girl. Daniel Ward was sentenced to five years for distributing child pornography on the Internet.

Douglas Perlitz was indicted in September for traveling to Haiti where he would allegedly sexually abuse young boys at a boarding school he established. And there’s Walter Aguilar, 25, who traveled from Connecticut in February with a 14-year-old girl to Maryland to allegedly engage in sexual activity.

VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Accepted the resignation from the pastoral care of the archdiocese of Cincinnati, U.S.A., presented by Archbishop Daniel E. Pilarczyk, upon having reached the age limit. He is succeeded by Coadjutor Archbishop Dennis M. Schnurr.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY

A FORMER spokesman for the former Archbishop of Dublin, Cardinal Desmond Connell, has criticised the current Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, for his handling of the fallout from the Murphy report.

Eddie Shaw, currently director with Carr Communications and who worked at the communications office in Archbishop’s House in Drumcondra for a year between 2002 and 2003, said communications strategy by the archdiocese following publication of the Murphy report had been “catastrophic . . . absolutely catastrophic”.

Speaking on RTÉ Radio 1’s Marian Finucane programme yesterday, he said: “I think, Marian, it’s wrong, the way it was done is wrong. Communicating with people who are your auxiliaries through the Prime Time programme in the way it was done – that was wrong.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

TOM GILMORE

FORMER MINISTER Frank Fahey has said the message he is getting from his constituents is that Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan should stay on.

Bishop Drennan has robustly defended his time as an auxiliary bishop in Dublin saying the only abuse case he was informed of was dealt with appropriately as documented in the Murphy report.

Following a 45-minute interview with Keith Finnegan on Galway Bay FM at the weekend, 93 per cent of callers to the radio programme supported Bishop Drennan’s stance.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

OPINION: IN HIS article, “State funded schools must be separate from religions” (Opinion and Analysis, December 17th), Dr Ronan McCrea of the University of Reading launches a swingeing attack on religious schools. It is one of many such unjust attacks that have occurred since the publication of the Murphy report, writes JOHN MURRAY

Dr McCrea wants to replace church-run schools with State-run schools. He says only State-run schools are religiously neutral and therefore truly democratic. He also claims the school system in Ireland violates the right to religious freedom under international law because it includes publicly funded religious schools.

To back his latter claim, he cites international law. But he does so in a highly selective manner. For example, he completely ignores what international law says about the rights of parents in regard to the education of their children.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

Madam, – I agree 100 per cent with everything in Mary Rafterys article ‘Still far from accepting personal responsibility’ (December 18th).

The Irish Bishops Conference admitted they were ashamed of what had gone on in the Archdiocese. They said: “The avoidance of scandal, the preservation of the reputations of individuals and of the church, took precedence over the safety and welfare of children. This should never have happened and must never be allowed to happen again.”

They asked for our forgiveness. Yet of the five bishops who were in positions of power in the Archdiocese during the period of the Murphy report all seem to feel they can be excluded from that plea as they feel they have no need of forgiveness.

IRELAND
forth

Sun 20 Dec, 2009

Unless we all grow up Ireland’s grim obsession with sexual abuse is only going to get worse

What a month it’s been for moralisers: first the Catholic Church’s never-ending tale of sexual abuse dominated the headlines then a tragic but politically insignificant sexual abuse trial was used as a scapegoat for preaching and now Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams says his father was a sexual predator.

There is no other way of putting this: Ireland is officially in the middle of a moral panic about sexual abuse.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By John Cooney

Monday December 21 2009

A massive investigation into clerical child abuse in all 26 Catholic dioceses is to begin shortly after every bishop in the State last week received an ultimatum to provide the Health Service Executive (HSE) with a complete list of hundreds of new complaints.

It also emerged that private talks have been taking place between officials of the Department of Health and Children and the Catholic bishops' independent child-protection watchdog to find a formula to allow Church and State to cooperate in finding out the full scale of clerical abuse.

HSE assistant director for children and family services, Phil Garland, has written to every bishop and religious orders in the State -- instructing them to send details of all complaints received in the past five years by registered letter. The deadline is January 8.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

DUBLIN CLERICAL child sex abuse victim Marie Collins has repeated her call for the remaining bishops mentioned in the Murphy report and still holding office to resign.

In a letter to The Irish Times today she says “NO, NO, NO [her emphasis] – Bishops Field, Drennan, Walsh and Moriarty, you cannot hide the fact that you met month after month in the archdiocese, seeing the policy that was in place, and none of you stood up and cried STOP!”

Ms Collins was abused by Fr Edmondus, as he is referred to in the Murphy report. She was a patient at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin, where he had been chaplain when the abuse took place.

Healing and Spirituality

Jaime Romo

All I want for Christmas

CSA is not one group’s problem; by expert accounts, it is a silent epidemic throughout the United States, and, indeed, the world, creating social havoc – for the children, adult survivors, and society. It can be prevented and it can be treated, but a conscious and sustained effort is both missing and essential. (Stop the Silence[i])

I led a Safeguarding God’s Children training last week for church members of 4 congregations. During the first video, one of the participants commented, ‘that actor seems the most convincing.’ The video consisted of interviews with child sexual abuse (CSA) victims and abusers. The interviewees weren’t acting. In the discussion, I noted the bumper sticker, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” I observed that child sexual abuse is too much for most people to face without minimizing it in some way to protect themselves.

I begin my trainings with a few assumptions: That we’re good people, learning how to do justice; that we’re all in this together; that collaboration is required for growth in consciousness, healing, and justice; and that today is a good day to end abuse everywhere, to have more healing and be more spiritually alive.

NEW YORK
New York Post

By REUVEN BLAU and MELISSA KLEIN

Eww, that's not kosher!

A prominent Orthodox rabbi has been caught on tape discussing his apparent love affair with a shiksa he was converting to Judaism -- whom he allegedly also pushed to have sex with his friends.

Rabbi Leib Tropper of Rockland County is heard encouraging pretty, blond Shannon Orand of Houston to participate in phone sex and actual sex with men the rabbi knows, including one he calls "the Satmar guy."

NEW YORK
Gothamist

An Orthodox rabbi is accused of telling a woman he would help her convert to Judaism if she had sex with him and his friends. According to the blog Failed Messiah, Rabbi Leib Tropper of Rockland County told Shannon Orand, a 32-year-old gentile who was interested in becoming a Jew: "If you fulfill my needs, I'll fulfill yours — and you need a conversion."

The Post reports that Orand recorded a conversation in which the rabbi urged her to have sex and participate in phone sex with his friends including an individual called "the Satmar guy." He purportedly told the woman, who he called "darling" and "cutie pie," that he "could role-play a rape...but I couldn't actually rape you — you know what I'm saying, darling — does that make sense?"

On the recordings, the rabbi talks paying the woman money for a lawyer and a stipend of $1,300 per month, and discusses putting that agreement in writing. Orand told the Post she didn't mean for the recordings to become public.

CINCINNATI (OH)
Cincinnati Enquirer

By Eric Bradley • ebradley@enquirer.com • December 20, 2009

CINCINNATI - Each person needs to learn five words as they grow up, Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk said Sunday during his homily on the 50th anniversary of his ordination as a Catholic priest.

"The five words are these: please, thank you, I'm sorry," said Pilarczyk.

"We'll begin with 'I'm sorry,' " he continued.

Then, in clear terms, the outgoing Archbishop of Cincinnati addressed the clergy abuse scandal in which the church admitted the archdiocese knowingly failed to report allegations of sexual abuse of minors by priests decades ago. The case was settled in 2003, and a $3 million fund established for the victims.

CONNECTICUT
The New York Times

By PAUL VITELLO
Published: December 20, 2009

NORWALK, Conn. — Thousands of Masses were celebrated this year in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport. But two of them, within a few weeks and a few miles of each other in this diverse commuter-line city, hinted at the tangled emotions still dividing many Catholics almost eight years after the start of a scandal that has confronted the church with its greatest crisis in the modern era.

At St. Jerome Church on Half Mile Road, priests celebrated a Holy Mass of Reconciliation in June for people anywhere who had suffered sexual abuse at the hands of a priest. Though church authorities across the country have paid billions of dollars in legal settlements, advocates for abuse victims said it was one of the few Masses for victims ever held in the United States.

The same month, at St. Mary Church on West Avenue, hundreds of people participated in a requiem Mass for the Rev. Alfred J. Bietighofer, a beloved parish priest who committed suicide in 2002 after four men accused him of molesting them when they were boys.

NEW JERSEY
The Times of Trenton

Monday, December 21, 2009

The Times recently published "A case study in shame" (Dec. 7), a commentary piece by Peter Wise on the case of Jenni Franz and her accounts of abuse by her uncle, Father Ronald Becker.

Mr. Wise's comments reflect several serious inaccuracies and distortions, upon which he has built a condemnation of the Diocese of Trenton and its handling of the Franz case. Most egregiously, he contends that the Diocese of Trenton has not "learned from history" in regard to child sexual abuse. We welcome the opportunity to correct the record as reported by Mr. Wise and to give readers a fuller understanding of all that the church has done and continues to do in response to the scourge of child sexual abuse.

The fact is that the crisis of clergy sexual abuse against children has led the Catholic Church to adopt the most rigorous and comprehensive set of initiatives to protect children that have ever been developed by any organization in history. Regular audits commissioned by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and conducted in dioceses nationwide have found the Diocese of Trenton to consistently be in compliance with the stringent regulations and standards established in these initiatives.

CINCINNATI (OH)
Cincinnati Enquirer

By Dan Horn • dhorn@enquirer.com • December 20, 2009

Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk's first job as a priest 50 years ago was writing financial reports with an old manual typewriter and plenty of carbon paper.

It was tedious work that he now describes as "administrative dreariness."

But he didn't have to wait long for things to get interesting. ...

Q: What was your greatest challenge?

A: "That was clergy abuse, without any doubt. That was a dangerous time ... I felt if we don't do this right, we're going to be in big trouble and (the victims) are going to be hurt more than they have been already."

Q: Did the church protect priests at the expense of victims decades ago, when much of the abuse took place?

A: "I think it was protect the priests and protect the victim. It wasn't, 'Don't tell anybody anything.' The problem was we didn't understand the depth and virulence of what was in the psyche of the perpetrator. We'd move that individual. Then, gradually, we learned. We learned it is not effective and not appropriate to move the priest, although that was part of the common wisdom."

IRELAND
Roman Catholic Diocese of Limerick

Further to matters raised on Drivetime, a Limerick Diocese spokesperson has today, 17th December 2009 said: “Issue has been taken with the fact that Bishop Murray did not announce his intention to resign when interviewed by the Limerick Leader on Tuesday, December 1st, despite having, in the previous hour, discussed at a meeting with the Vicars General of the Diocese his intention to offer his resignation. This meeting with the Vicars General was adjourned to enable the interview with the Limerick Leader to be conducted and resumed immediately afterwards.

“Bishop Murray was not in a position to confirm anything in that interview of his intention to resign, nor was it within his gift to do so as it would be in breach of the process involved in submitting ones resignation as a Bishop.

“In his meeting with the Vicars General it was agreed that because the process of listening was underway that the Vicars General would gather the Leaders of the Pastoral Areas to ascertain what progress had been made. It was also agreed that the Bishop would considered the matter overnight, before discussing his intention with the Apostolic Nuncio the following day.

IRELAND
Limerick Leader

20 December 2009

By Nick Rabbitts
FORMER Bishop of Limerick Dr Donal Murray has addressed massgoers in the diocese for one final time.

In an open letter, which was read at Churches across Limerick this Sunday, Dr Murray - who on Thursday stood down as Bishop after the Murphy Commission reported that he failed to act on allegations of abuse during his time in the Dublin Archdiocese - explained the process he went through before arriving at his decision to resign.

"I took some time to study the Murphy Report after its publication ... I informed the Vicars General of the Diocese on the afternoon of Tuesday, December 1 of my decision to offer my resignation. On Wednesday 2 December, I contacted the Apostolic Nuncio asking him to set about arranging a meeting with the congregation of Bishops in Rome. This took place on Monday, December 7. Cardinal Re agreed to present my letter of resignation to the Pope on Saturday 12 at his weekly meeting with Pope Benedict," Dr Murray wrote.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By John Cooney

Saturday December 19 2009

IF for any reason Archbishop Diarmuid Martin became incapacitated, his senior auxiliary bishop, Eamonn Walsh, would take charge of the Dublin diocese.

This would happen automatically under church canon law even though Archbishop Martin has made it clear that Bishop Walsh should take the responsible step of resigning office in the light of criticisms made in the Murphy report of his handling of clerical child sex abuse cases.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By DANIEL McCONNELL

Sunday December 20 2009

THE Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, will petition the Vatican in the new year to have four Irish bishops removed from office if they refuse to step down over the Murphy report into clerical child sex abuse cases in the Dublin archdiocese.

The dramatic split at the top of the Catholic Church in Ireland has emerged over the refusal of some bishops to accept responsibility for the abuse scandals detailed in the hard-hitting report.

Bishop of Galway Dr Martin Drennan, one of the four former auxiliary bishops who served in Dublin, is under pressure to resign to show "collective responsibility" for the abuse scandals.

IRELAND
Sunday Business Post

20 December 2009 By Vincent Browne

In 1922, the Vatican promulgated an instruction to do with what it called crimen solicitationis (the crime of solicitation within the confessional) and what it called the ‘‘worst crime’’ - the sexual abuse of children. The document was issued in Latin. No authoritative version was produced in English.

The document was circulated only to bishops and under terms of strict secrecy.

A new version of the guidelines was produced in 1962, but this, according to the Murphy Commission, was unknown within the Dublin diocese until some time in the 1990s.

Desmond Connell, the former archbishop, told the commission he had never seen the 1962 document, nor had he met anyone who had seen it.

IRELAND
Sunday Business Post

20 December 2009 By John Burke and Susan Mitchell

The government and Church authorities are in discussions about launching an investigation into the handling of allegations of clerical child sexual abuse in all Catholic dioceses.

A meeting took place last week between officials from the office of childrens’ minister Barry Andrews and officials from the National Board for the Safeguarding of Children i n the Catholic Church (NBSCCC).They discussed a mechanism by which the review would be conducted.

A spokesman for Andrews’s office confirmed that the meeting had taken place, and said that ‘‘the dialogue is ongoing’’.

IRELAND
Irish Central

By PATRICK ROBERTS, IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has apparently issued an ultimatum to four bishops embroiled in the Irish Catholic Church child sex abuse scandal — to either quit or be fired by the Vatican.

Martin also has a new and potent ally: In a dramatic move, Prime Minister Brian Cowen has backed Martin, saying it was "a time for leadership and accountability" from the Catholic Church.

The four bishops were implicated in the escalating scandal by the Murphy Report, which probed the period in which they served in the Dublin Archdiocese. They are Bishop Raymond Field, Bishop Eamon Walsh, Bishop Martin Drennan and Bishop Jim Moriarty.

IRELAND
Irish Central

By NIALL O'DOWD, IrishCentral.com Publisher

What you need to know about the resignation of Bishop Donal Murray of Limerick this week is that it is the tip of the iceberg. Murray resigned in Rome after evidence of his role in covering up pedophile priests in Dublin became public.

Two more bishops are said to be in the sights of the Vatican, which wants the mess cleared up and the Irish Church restored to normalcy.

Good luck with that. Two others may also have to go. Cardinal Desmond Connell, who has been pathetically dancing on the head of a pin trying to avoid any association with the scandal, may also be censured.

IRELAND
Irish Central

If a "friend" had betrayed you, lied to you, committed heinous crimes against you, your relatives or your friends, or covered up those crimes -- would you happily march into his home for Christmas dinner with gifts for him in hand?

Yes? Then you'd be an idiot, of course.

But that is exactly what Catholics in Ireland will likely do when they go to their churches for Christmas Mass.

Kiss their solid-gold rings? Kiss my arse!

The child abuse and sex abuse and its cover-up by higher-ups, whose horrid details are fast emerging, is now known to be an atrocity that went on for DECADES, and which was hardly the work of a "handful" of sick clerics or well-intentioned bishops. It was hateful, criminal, systematic, and long-standing.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Elis O'Hanlon

Sunday December 20 2009

IT was like the old Groucho Marx quip: "Who do you believe -- me, or the evidence of your own eyes?" Only this wasn't funny. Charged with the sexual assault of a young woman in Listowel last June, Kerry bouncer Danny Foley clearly expected the court to give more credence to his protestations of innocence than to CCTV footage showing him carrying the victim to a nearby skip where she was later found by gardai semi-conscious, with extensive bruising and scratching, and naked from the waist down, while he crouched over her. ...

What transformed this incident from one more nasty eructation of small-town bile against transgressors from the unspoken tribal code into something which felt more significant was the presence of Fr Sean Sheehy -- the parish priest of Castlegregory until his resignation this weekend, who had also supplied a character reference for the accused declaring that there wasn't an abusive bone in his body and that he had a high respect for women.

If you wanted to create a hapless country cleric for a black comedy, you couldn't have asked for a more fitting candidate. An embarrassed Bishop of Kerry moved swiftly to distance the Church from the retired priest's remarks and to show solidarity both with this woman and other victims of sexual crime, and indeed accepted without delay the cleric's offer to step aside. But up to then it had started to look all too familiar after years in which priests only ever seemed to open their mouths in order to stick their feet right in. They really are endemically clueless about how bad they look.

ILLINOIS
Naperville Sun

By Paul Dailing and Josh Larsen pdailing@scn1.com jplarsen@scn1.com

If you plan on attending Mass for your annual Christmas visit, the Catholic Church has begun an initiative that intends to make it more than a one-time trip.

This week saw the launch of the Catholics Come Home program in northern Illinois, backed by a $1.35 million advertising burst. The series of television commercials launched Dec. 16 will run throughout the Rockford and Joliet dioceses and the Chicago archdiocese until Jan. 24. ...

Members of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests decry the campaign, but according to the survey, only 2 percent of former Catholics named the sex scandal as the reason they moved away from the church.

UNITED KINGDOM
Mail on Sunday

By Eileen Fairweather
Last updated at 1:34 AM on 20th December 2009

It’s embarrassing to admit that I will go to Mass at Christmas, because I
am clearly a bad Catholic. I am short-tempered, impatient, often the opposite of serene, and the number of Vatican rules I break doesn’t bear admitting. But, hey, if I didn’t go to Mass I’d probably be far worse.

I am a ‘cradle Catholic’ – it is the religion into which I was born.

As a young woman in the radical Seventies, I angrily rejected it as reactionary and anti-female, and for years refused to darken a church door. But not for nothing is it said: ‘Once a Catholic, always a Catholic.’

About a decade ago, like so many church dissidents before me, I came back. A radical friend was horrified. How could I, as an investigative reporter who had exposed numerous paedophile scandals, return to a church which seemingly specialised in them?

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Anne Lucey in Tralee

Sunday December 20 2009

The woman at the centre of the Listowel sex case controversy yesterday spoke of "dirty looks" thrown at her by supporters of Danny Foley, the man convicted of her sexual assault, and of open hostility in the courtroom when she read her victim impact statement.

She appealed to the people of Listowel, Co Kerry, to let her get on with her life. She estimated that around half the people of the area supported the convicted man. ...

The country was shocked after it was reported that up to 50 people, including the local acting parish priest, Fr Sean Sheehy, had shaken the hand of the guilty man before he was sentenced. Fr Sheehy has since stepped down from his post.

Yesterday the victim said: "When I heard the priest on the radio I was really devastated and shocked at what he was saying about me. The Canon of Listowel parish visited me and wished me well and told me that he was there for me and he hoped me and my son would have some kind of a good Christmas and wished me all the best.

ILLINOIS
The Courier-News

December 20, 2009

Peter Isely's image of Christ is the suffering on the cross: Christ calling out in fear, pain and lost faith that he had been forsaken.

It is the image he has had since he was 13, when more than a year of repeated, methodical rape began at the hands of the rector of the seminary where Isely was studying to be a priest.

"I remember being assaulted in this man's office and looking up at the crucifix on this wall," said Isely, now 49. "I can't tell you how many victims say the same thing."

The scandals surrounding priest sexual abuse cases -- cases which have cost the Catholic Church more than $2 billion to victims of abuse -- will never go away. While the Catholic Church's new campaign, Catholics Come Home, briefly addresses the issue on its Web site, Isely finds the entire campaign offensive.

IRELAND
The Observer (United Kingdom)

In "Bishop stays in Rome to await Vatican verdict" (News, Irish edition) we said: "The bishop [Donal Murray] has come under increasing pressure to step down after the Murphy report criticised his handling of complaints against priests who were later found to have sexually abused children in greater Dublin. That pressure intensified just before Murray flew to Rome, when Cardinal Cahal Brendan Daly said he was confident that the bishop 'would do the right thing'."

But that quote was incorrectly attributed to Cardinal Daly; they were the words of Cardinal Sean Brady. Cardinal Daly retired as Archbishop of Armagh in 1996 and has made no public statements of any kind since then and no public statement about Bishop Murray. We apologise for the error.

VERMONT
Times Argus

By Josh O'Gorman STAFF WRITER - Published: December 19, 2009

WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — Police arrested a Missouri man Friday as he walked into court with his newborn daughter.

Police arrested Paul J. Cool, 49, of Amity, Mo., for allegedly violating his conditions of release.

Cool pleaded innocent Dec. 1 in White River Junction District Court to three felony counts of lewd and lascivious conduct.

Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Today one Catholic bishop was forcibly ousted and another voluntarily resigned. The Vatican gave the most severe consequence to the one who allegedly "caused scandal" by "disobeying" the church hierarchy. The less severe consequence went to the one who basically enabled a child molester to keep molesting kids.

An Irish prelate hasn't been excommunicated or defrocked and probably won't be. He chose to step down after a government report disclosed that he ignored and hid credible child sex abuse reports against a priest who went on to sexually assault more kids.

A Zambian prelate, however, was ex-communicated years ago and has now also been defrocked. He advocated clergy being allowed to marry.

We don't know of a single case of a predator priest anywhere ever being excommunicated, nor a case of a complicit bishop anywhere ever being defrocked or excommunicated.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

The woman who was sexually assaulted by Danny Foley in Listowel, Co Kerry, said today she does not regret pressing charges.

At press conference in Kerry Rape and Sexual Abuse centre on Denny Street in Tralee this afternoon the woman described how she felt watching dozens of people shake hands and sympathise with Foley inside the Circuit Criminal Court in Tralee last Wednesday prior to his sentencing. He was jailed for five years. ...

She had been shocked and devastated at comments made by the then Castlegregory parish priest Fr Seán Sheehy on the radio.

Fr Sheehy, who is retired from an American diocese, was substituting for the parish priest of Castlegregory at the time and stood as a character witness for Foley at the sentencing. The priest had said Foley was always “respectful of women” but this character reference was criticised by the judge. Yesterday Fr Sheehy withdrew from his work in the parish.

The woman thanked Bishop of Kerry Bill Murphy for his apology and support following Fr Sheehy’s comments.

IRELAND
Ireland Online

The woman at the centre of the Listowel sexual assault case today spoke out about her experiences, saying she "never felt so alone in all her life" as when friends and neighbours of the convicted man queued to shake his hand.

Around 50 people, including the parish priest of Castlegregory Fr Sean Sheehy, queued up in Tralee Circuit Criminal Court on Wednesday last to shake hands with her attacker, 35-year-old Danny Foley of Meen, Listowel.

Benedict XVI -Ratzinger: God's Rottweiler

Paris Arrow

Christmas time is here once again and we celebrate the birth of the Baby Jesus in the manger. The Vatican will place the largest crèche and largest Christmas tree at St. Peter’s Square. But what Catholics and the world fail to see is that Baby Jesus took 9 months of gestation in the womb of Mary …but in the Eucharist he INSTANTLY becomes flesh and blood through the formula of “transubstantiation” pronounced only by the ordained “powerful” pope and his priests. ...

Why is it that Benedict XVI has silenced the Jesuit Jon Sobrino for speaking about the poor of Christ but he has not silenced one single pedophile priests among the 6,000 John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army members? Benedict XVI spent so much time reading and rereading Jon Sobrino’s books and other Jesuits whom he has silenced, but he has not spent time with the victims of the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army? Why has Benedict XVI not spend time to read SNAP, Abuse Tracker and Bishops Accountability websites so he can learn more about the reality of priest-pedophilia, a word which he refuses to use, because it will mar the reputation of the Sacrament of Holy Orders?

VATICAN CITY
The Associated Press

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI has moved Pope John Paul II one step closer to possible beatification, the milestone before sainthood.

Benedict on Saturday approved a decree attesting to John Paul's heroic virtues. Benedict still must sign off on a miracle attributed to John Paul's intercession before the late pope can be beatified.

City of Angels

Kay Ebeling

Here is a sample of a post I just put up at City of Angels 2 :

Okay there’s this buzz in the “survivor community” to stop giving money to the Catholic Church because of its pedophile priests. I assume this means you would still go to the Church every Sunday and stay for their after service Donuts and Coffee. You will be putting your body heat in their air conditioned building, drinking their wine, eating their Eucharist wafers.

It’s deceiving to go to a Church and not give it money. It's false, misleading. It’s like … how do I explain this.

A few years back, after going on antidepressants, mandatory as we were in a homeless shelter, I remember the way the drug made me feel. It did indeed control my mood. It was like a steel grip, a vice, was at the top of my brain and then steel-like tentacles reached out from the vice and just held my brain in this grip.

I bring all this up now because as I observe people stuck in that religion so bad that they don't want to give it another dime, but they'll still file in its doors at least once a week, I think of that vice like grip the antidepressant drug had on me.

Patrick Madrid

The dreadful gauntlet of disclosures regarding the many frauds perpetrated by recently deceased Father Marcial Maciel, the founder and dictator of the Legionaries of Christ religious order and all its various sub-manifestations, such as its lay affiliate, Regnum Christi, just goes on and on, with no end in sight.

I've commented on this debacle before, here, here, here, here, here, and here, for example. And I've noticed that, like a throbbing toothache, the sordid details of this man's double life and the depredations he committed with impunity against so many people keep emerging in a cascade of filth, the noisome puss of a long-abscessed tooth. Will the dentist perchance decide to simply yank it out by the roots so that healing can really begin?

St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:26 that "when one member [of the Body of Christ] suffers, all the members suffer together." It would not be an exaggeration to say that this particular abscessed tooth has been causing extraordinary pain for a quite a few members in the Body of Christ, and the Novocain has worn off.

NORWALK (CT)
The Hour

By STEVE KOBAK
Hour Staff Writer

The Norwalk minister jailed on multiple rape-related charges was released Friday night after posting a $350,000 cash bond, according to the New York Department of Corrections.

The department did not give out any other information about the Rev. Phillip Joubert’s release.

Joubert, 48, a pastor at New Light Missionary Baptist Church, is scheduled appear in Queens Criminal Court on Monday, and his attorney said the minister stands by his plea of not guilty.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Martina Devlin

Saturday December 19 2009

I don't know why they didn't just spit in the injured woman's face, because that was the effect of their public exhibition

Five hundred years ago we had the 'Ship of Fools', a satirical book lashing weakness and vice. Today we have the Queue of Fools exposing the same defects -- unfortunately, not as parody but in a perverted show of support.

In Kerry this week, we witnessed 50 fatheads, who personify weakness and condone vice, stage a demonstration that was boorish, derisive and pitiless. ...

It is unfortunate that a priest supplied the criminal with a starry reference, in which Foley was described as respectful towards women and without an abusive bone in his body. It goes beyond unfortunate to learn the priest was among the 50 who made a hero of her attacker, while the 22-year-old woman waited to see justice done.

And it beggars belief, following the conviction, that Father Sean Sheehy (the 'father' contains an inbuilt reproach here) should give interviews in which he referred to the offence as "alleged" and spoke of miscarriages of justice.

Since the Church has been having a spring clean this week, it might care to turn its attention to yet another candidate who shames his collar. His utter lack of judgment reveals Fr Sheehy to be unfit for active ministry. Bishop of Kerry William Murphy has wisely disassociated himself and the diocese from the priest's bizarre remarks, but words must be followed by actions.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By John Cooney

Saturday December 19 2009

THE archdiocese of Dublin was found by the Murphy report to have operated a dysfunctional management system with poor communications during the 16 years Cardinal Desmond Connell was in charge.

The hierarchical structure formed a pyramid, with the cardinal as the sole chief executive. Only he had the ultimate power of decision-making and access to the files of priest paedophiles.

In 1999, eight auxiliary, or assistant, bishops shared in the administration of a sprawling diocese covering all of Co Dublin, nearly all of Co Wicklow, much of Co Kildare and fragments of counties Carlow, Wexford and Laois.

ZAMBIA
Times of Zambia

By Times reporter

EXCOMMUNICATED Catholic Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo has insisted he remains a fully-ordained Catholic cleric and demanded his pension he worked for while in Rome.

Speaking on Radio Phoenix Let the people talk programme yesterday, Archbishop Milingo, 79, accused the Catholic Church of holding on to his pension and that the church had in the past gotten away with several such cases.

“I was assigned by late Pope John Paul VI to work while in Rome. I worked for 23 years. The church now wants to take advantage of marriage to deny me my pension,” he said.

CANADA
CBC News

The self-described pastor of a defunct Montreal church has been found guilty of sexually assaulting a teenage girl.

Daniel Cormier, 58, was convicted of the crime in a Montreal courtroom on Friday.

He's already serving a five-year sentence, handed down last January, for sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl he had claimed as his bride after a ceremony at his Downtown Church.

The victim at the centre of the latest trial was a parishioner and volunteer at the facility.

CANADA
Canada.com

Montreal Gazette

MONTREAL – The founder and self-styled pastor of a defunct Christian sect – who is already serving time for sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl he claims to have married – has been found guilty of sexual exploitation of another minor.

Daniel Cormier, 58, who is already serving a five-year term, showed no emotion Friday as Quebec Court Judge Claude Leblond pronounced the verdict. Cormier, who fired his latest lawyer, did not testify and presented no witnesses.

Leblond said Cormier is guilty beyond any reasonable doubt of two counts of sexual exploitation in the latest case. It is an offence for someone in a position of trust or authority to have sexual contact with someone aged 16 to 18, even if there is consent. The victim was 16 and 17 when the crimes occurred.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

Lessons for the church in the present crisis extend well beyond clerical child abuse, writes GARRET FitzGERALD

FOR THE Catholic Church in Ireland, much will depend upon the manner in which Pope Benedict XVI responds to our current crisis. His decision to take the exceptional step of addressing a pastoral letter to the Irish people is encouraging, for it indicates an appreciation of the gravity of the situation. But it is not clear that Rome understands the extent to which the resolution of some of the problems of the Irish church would require a review of policies in Rome itself.

Thus, there is a clear need for Rome to reflect further on the criteria that have in recent times been applied in the selection by the papacy of nominees for bishoprics. Latterly, these criteria appear to have been narrowed down to two: first, acceptance of what many see as a counter- revolution against aspects of Vatican II, and, second, loyalty to Humanae Vitae , the 1968 encyclical which reaffirmed traditional teaching on abortion, contraception, and other issues pertaining to human life.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

Galway West Fianna Fáil TD Frank Fahey has said there is no reason for the Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan to resign.

Dr Drennan said this week that a letter he received from the Archbishop of Dublin put his integrity in question.

Diarmiud Martin has written to all Bishops in the wake of the Murphy report into clercial child sexual abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Ralph Riegel in Listowel

Saturday December 19 2009

Foley boasts a large pool of friends in Listowel, all of whom have very publicly stood by him

TWO families stared across the abyss at each other last night in a bitter row that now threatens to tear a tightknit community apart.

The Kerry town of Listowel finds itself gripped by an escalating controversy over a sex assault case that has already cost a parish priest his job, left the 22-year-old victim claiming she is being ostracised in her own home town and prompted the Kerry Rape Crisis Centre (KRCC) to query Circuit Court procedures that allowed 50 people to file past the shocked victim to express their sympathy with her attacker before he was even sentenced.

The Listowel sex assault case has generated such headlines that even the Bishop of Kerry, Dr Bill Murphy, personally intervened over comments by a parish priest in favour of the convicted sex attacker and underlined the importance of supporting victims.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Ciaran Byrne

Saturday December 19 2009

Bishop Martin Drennan

The Bishop of Galway, Martin Drennan, is determined to hang on to his position and yesterday he continued a media offensive to save his job.

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin believes that quitting would show collective responsibility for the cover-ups that went on.

Bishop Drennan was auxiliary bishop of Dublin from 1997 to 2005. He was told about inappropriate behaviour involving a priest with the pseudonym Fr Guido and some male teenagers in 2002 and 2003.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

In Listowel, the Kerry town hit by controversy after a show of courtroom support for a man convicted of sexual assault, ROSITA BOLAND gauges local opinions

LISTOWEL IN Co Kerry is a small town of some 4,300 residents that has long celebrated words and those who write them. There are statues of two of its former residents, playwright John B Keane, author of The Field, Sive , and Big Maggie , and short story writer Bryan MacMahon in the town centre, as well as a road named for Keane. In the central square, close to Listowel Castle, is a converted Georgian building named Seanchaí, that houses the Kerry Literary and Cultural Centre. Every May, a long-running festival, Listowel Writers Week, takes place, attracting writers and participants from all over the world.

It’s ironic that a town so noted for its love of language on Wednesday became infamous for a communal wordless gesture by some 50 people, mainly middle-aged and elderly men, from the locality. They lined up in single file in a Tralee courtroom to shake hands with or hug Danny Foley (35), from Meen, Listowel, whom a jury had unanimously found guilty of sexual assault two weeks previously. While Foley awaited sentencing in the courtroom, his victim, together with Bernie McCarthy, a counsellor from the Kerry Rape Crisis Centre, a female garda, and a friend of the victim, were forced to watch him receive this display of public sympathy. Some of those who shook Foley’s hand were in tears.

One man in the queue was Fr Séan Sheehy, parish priest of Castlegregory, Co Kerry, who had supplied the court with a character reference of Foley, describing him as “having the highest respect for women”. Judge Donagh McDonagh, who did not witness the scenes in court prior to his appearance for sentencing, criticised Fr Sheehy’s statement, stressing that Foley’s actions “gave the lie” to what Fr Sheehy had said.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

THERE IS a sense that Brinsley MacNamara’s Valley of the Squinting Windows is still with us. After all of the years of the Celtic Tiger, the dismantling of the urban/rural divide, the advance of the liberal agenda, equality for women and the supposed liberation of the Catholic Church, we believed that the pecking order in big cities and small towns had changed. Maybe this is not so. Rosita Boland outlines in today’s edition how the town of Listowel is not so much divided but united, yet privately torn apart by the verdict in the Danny Foley case and its aftermath in Tralee this week.

The actions of up to 50 people who queued in the Circuit Criminal Court in Tralee on Wednesday to sympathise with Foley before he was sentenced for the sexual assault of a woman in Listowel in 2008 was, without due explanation, alarming and unacceptable. By doing what they did in the presence of his victim, they underlined the divisive nature of such cases where sides are taken, long before criminal proceedings are complete. ...

Foley’s victim has spoken with candour about her sense of being “judged” within her own community. That will have been exacerbated by the appalling behaviour of his supporters. This was compounded, in turn, by the participation of Fr Seán Sheehy, the Catholic acting parish priest of Castlegregory, who was among those who shook Foley’s hand. His involvement would be extraordinary at any time. But it is bewildering given the current woes of the church. His decision yesterday to leave his post, whether imposed or voluntary, was the correct one.

Fr Sheehy was entitled to take to the witness box – as he did – to give character evidence on Foley’s behalf. Though often formulaic, such mitigation can be of assistance to a sentencing judge. But the fact that Judge Donagh McDonagh saw fit to dismiss the priest’s evidence – and the contradiction at its core that Foley was always “respectful of women” – reflects the scale of Fr Sheehy’s misjudgment.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

OPINION: A mature democracy respects pluralism and diversity – that includes schools reflecting a Catholic ethos, writes LEO O'REILLY

THE APPALLING abuse by priests of innocent children highlighted in the Murphy report and the pain caused to their families, along with the associated cover-up and betrayal of trust by bishops, have understandably raised the issue of the role of bishops as patrons of Catholic schools.

Fintan O’Toole writes (Opinion, December 8th) that because we live in a democracy we should remove Catholic bishops from acting as patrons of schools. His reason is that, as bishops, they are appointed by the Pope and therefore their position as patrons of our schools is a violation of our sovereignty.

The Irish Times

WORLDVIEW: The special position of the Catholic Church in international law is a vital part of its armoury, writes PATRICK SMYTH

WHEN US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice visited the Vatican in February 2005, she was caught off guard by Cardinal Angelo Sodano.

After discussions on Iraq, the Middle East and religious liberty, Sodano asked her if she could do something about an irksome court case in Kentucky.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

LUKE CASSIDY

EDUCATION: MINISTER FOR Education Batt O’Keeffe has said it was not within his remit to decide if religious organisations should be distanced from schools, following the revelations within the Murphy report.

Speaking in Limerick yesterday at Our Lady Queen of Peace School in Janesboro, Mr O’Keeffe said the prospect of removing all religious influences from schools is “not within my remit, nor indeed within my thought”.

“The Catholic Church and the Christian tradition has played an outstanding part in the education of all our children through the years. I think we should be maintaining that ethos and that tradition.

ROME
The Irish Times

PADDY AGNEW in Rome

VATICAN: ON THE day after the resignation of the Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray, Vatican insiders were speculating that the Irish church could be headed for its most radical reorganisation in 800 years.

While Italian media sources speculate that other resignations may follow that of Bishop Murray, Vatican sources confirmed that in the wake of his meeting last week with Cardinal Seán Brady and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, Pope Benedict XVI will call for a far-reaching reorganisation of the Irish church.

Vatican insiders point out that the pope will have paid close attention to the Maynooth moral theologian, Dr Vincent Twomey, who last week said that the church in Ireland needed a “drastic overhaul”.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

After previous refusals, Senator Rónán Mullen, formerly spokesman for Cardinal Desmond Connell, partially answers questions on the Murphy report

SENATOR RÓNÁN Mullen has refused to answer over half of a list of questions sent to him by The Irish Times concerning findings in the Murphy report.

He had previously refused to answer any questions from the newspaper over the phone, insisting they be e-mailed to him before he would reply.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY and HARRY McGEE

TAOISEACH BRIAN Cowen has welcomed the resignation of Bishop Donal Murray, describing it as a sign that the Catholic Church in Ireland is living up to its responsibilities.

In his first public reaction following Bishop Murray’s resignation on Thursday, the Taoiseach said the departure was a welcome indication that those in positions of leadership and responsibility in the church were living up to such standards in the light of the clear findings from the Murphy commission.

In another development yesterday, Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan said his integrity had been questioned by Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin and he asked that this be rectified.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

GENEVIEVE CARBERY and LORNA SIGGINS

BISHOP'S RESPONSE: BISHOP OF Galway Martin Drennan has urged Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin to drop his name from the list of people who potentially should resign.

He said a question had been put over his integrity by the archbishop by calling for all bishops named in the report to resign, and he wished for this to be corrected.

“It certainly would be helpful. The people of Galway are saying my integrity is being brought into question by that statement. I can’t clear myself in this case,” he told RTÉ’s News At One

IRELAND
The Irish Times

ANNE LUCEY

THE LISTOWEL parish priest at the centre of controversy this week when he expressed support for a convicted sex offender has resigned from his parish duties, the Diocese of Kerry announced yesterday.

On Thursday Bishop of Kerry Bill Murphy distanced himself from remarks by Fr Seán Sheehy at the sentencing hearing of Danny Foley (35), and his subsequent criticism of the jury verdict and sentencing.

Fr Sheehy was one of 50 people who shook hands in court with Foley, who was convicted two weeks ago of the sexual assault of a young woman in a car park in Listowel in June 2008.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

Madam, – I am a 62-year-old ex-pat Irishman living in Australia.

As a young child, I was molested by a Catholic priest. I did at one stage approach my local parish priest, who in turn contacted our bishop (of Clogher).

The priest continually abused kids and young men, but the church continually swept it under the carpet. I thought the matter was resolved.

As a result of this, as soon as I became an adult, I disavowed the Catholic Church. I still suffer recurrent nightmares about this priest’s abuse. When it first happened, he would have been in his mid-20s.

NORTHERN IRELAND
Irish Examiner

IT has emerged Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams believed his brother to be a serious child sex abuser for over 20 years before informing either the gardaí or Northern Irish police.

In an Ulster television Insight documentary, screened last night, Mr Adams admitted that in early 1987 he became aware of allegations that his brother Liam had repeatedly sexually abused his own daughter since she was four years old. ...

The programme alleged that as late as 2007 Áine Tyrell, who left Northern Ireland as a teenager in the 1980s to live in Scotland, had encountered attempts by prominent Belfast priest Fr Aidan Troy to "mediate" on behalf of her father rather than allow him face criminal prosecution.

Last night Fr Troy issued a statement denying claims he had attempted to persuade Ms Tyrell, aged 36, from proceeding with a case.

IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Donal Hickey

Saturday, December 19, 2009

A PRIEST who was criticised for giving character evidence of behalf of a convicted sex offender has stepped down from his position in the Kerry diocese in advance of a news conference later today by the 24-year-old woman who was assaulted in the case.

Fr Seán Sheehy was among 50 people to shake hands with Danny Foley prior to him being sentenced to seven years in prison earlier this week, at the Circuit Criminal Court in Tralee.

His withdrawal from his position in Castlegregory, where he had been acting as substitute parish priest, follows a meeting with the Bishop of Kerry, Bill Murphy. A statement from the bishop’s office said that in view of recent events, Fr Sheehy’s offer to withdraw his work from Castlegregory had been accepted.

NEW YORK
Village Voice

By Steven Thrasher
Friday, Dec. 18 2009

​It's been a busy year for atheists, and they're not, as you might expect, slowing down for the holidays. NYC Atheists has been charging forward on many fronts in 2009, from letting people know you can be good without God on busses, to taking its message to the streets en Espanol.

And now, the group has brought an early Christmas gift to the Diocese of Brooklyn, in the form of a pair of lawsuits.

Their aim? To strip the diocese of its non-profit status.

IRELAND
Irish Central

Father Tim

My friends,

The developments in the Irish Catholic Church child sex-abuse scandal over just the past few days have been nothing sort of astonishing.

While the dwindling band of "the faithful" have expressed their outrage in every form and through every medium imaginable, we now -- finally -- see government officials, judges, and even police commissioners on the attack against the sick clergymen, and women, who have desecrated the Church with their decades of attacks on helpless children -- and against those who even more disgracefully have covered up these crimes against humanity's most innocent.

It is an absolutely stunning spectacle in a nation where it was once an "honor" to kiss the rings of those atop the Church's hierarchy, men whose words were weighed with gold -- the kind they use to bejewel themselves as self-proclaimed "princes of the Church."

NEW YORK
Yeshiva World News

The Eternal Jewish Family (EJF) announces today that Rav Elya Ber Wachtfogel, the Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva Zichron Moshe in South Fallsburg and one of the leading Gedolei Hatorah internationally, has agreed to assume the position of Chairman of the Rabbinic Committee of the Eternal Jewish Family following an announcement that Rav Leib Tropper has resigned that position effective December 12, 2009. Rav Wachtfogel joins a distinguished board of rabbinic and halachic authorities who oversee the activities of EJF, headed by Rav Reuven Feinstein, Chairman of the Halachic Committee (US), Dayan Chanoch Ehrentreu (Europe) and Rav Shmuel Eliezer Stern (Av Bais Din of Rabbi Wosner’s Bais Din – Israel).

NEW YORK
JTA

NEW YORK (JTA) -- The head of an organization that oversees conversions to Judaism has resigned amid accusations of sexual improprieties.

Rabbi Leib Tropper, head of the Eternal Jewish Family based in New York, is leaving the independent organization he founded five years ago.

Tropper, in a statement released this week by the organization, said his desire to “pursue a variety of other interests” led him to resign.

NEW YORK
The Awareness Center

Vicki Polin

I've watched many friends over the years go through the conversion process (both male and female). They are basically at the mercy of the converting rabbi. When the rabbi tells them to jump the only thing they can ask is "how high". I've also seen the same thing happen with Jews who are interested in learning and becoming more observant. They are naive to knowing what is normal for a rabbi to do.

It's not uncommon for an individual to have deep feelings for a person who is giving them very special attention. This is true for doctors, lawyers, therapists and even rabbis and cantors. The problem is that there is a small percentage of professionals who take advantage of the power and authority they have over those they are working with.

Though the woman in the tape recordings in the case of Rabbi Leib Tropper is an adult, when it comes to situations like this she is the victim. I do not believe she deserves any blame.

IRELAND
Roman Catholic Diocese of Kerry

This morning Fr. Seán Sheehy and Bishop Bill Murphy met. In view of recent events Fr. Seán Sheehy offered to withdraw from his work in the parish of Castlegregory. The Bishop of Kerry accepted his offer which takes effect from today, Friday the 18th of December.

Fr. Seán Sheehy having retired from an American Diocese was substituting for the Parish Priest of Castlegregory.

IRELAND
Irish Central

By DONAL THORNTON, IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

An Irish priest who gave a character reference to a sex offender stepped down from his position in a Kerry parish earlier today.

Fr. Seán Sheehy had told the Circuit Criminal Court in Tralee that Danny Foley, a nightclub security guard, had “not an abusive bone in his body,” according to the Irish Independent. Foley, 35, has been convicted of assaulting a 22-year-old woman.

On a radio talkshow after the court case Fr. Sheehy said that Foley’s seven year sentence was "extremely harsh," and said he had no regrets about providing the character reference.

CONNECTICUT
Connecticut Post

Whenever the television in Edna Cole's apartment got temperamental, she knew who to call: the guy next door. He could fix almost any appliance. Ray Pcolka had a knack for mechanical things. It's people who vexed him.

Just ask any of the scores of girls and altar boys, now grown up, who accused him of sexually abusing them from the start of his career as a cleric in the 1960s through the 1980s. They lodged complaints with the Diocese of Bridgeport for years, only to see them swept under the rug, discounted as Pcolka moved from parish to parish, where his creepy pedophilic past would be unknown.

Pcolka stood at the epicenter of a series of lawsuits filed by those who claim he preyed upon them in church, at rectories and at his New Hampshire vacation home.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

Friday December 18 2009

Fr Sean Sheehy (67) has been based in Kerry for less than two years. He has been Castlegregory parish priest in the Diocese of Kerry since July 2008 when he was confirmed to the position by Bishop Bill Murphy.

While a native of Kerry, Fr Sheehy has spent the bulk of his ministry in the United States.

However, a chronic shortage of priests in Irish dioceses -- including Kerry -- has prompted many Irish-born priests to return home over recent years.

UNITED KINGDOM
Manchester Evening News

December 18, 2009

A MIDDLE-AGED man who was sexually abused by a priest at a top Catholic school when he was a child has been awarded compensation.

The victim was molested by his teacher, Father William Green, at St Bede's College in Manchester on several occasions in the 1970s.

The man, now in his 40s and no longer living in the city, has been awarded more than £15,000 in an out-of-court settlement with the Alexandra Park school.

ZAMBIA
African Press Agency

APA-Lusaka (Zambia) Zambia’s controversial Roman Catholic Church archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, who has been defrocked (dismissed) from the church’s leadership after years of controversial actions, on Friday demanded that the Vatican should pay him his pension for the years he served the church.

The controversial church leader was first ex-communicated from the church in 2006 after he shocked the establishment by marrying a Korean woman in a mass ceremony conducted by the Unification Church also known as the Moonies.

Although he later reconciled with the church, he again broke ranks by beginning to ordain married men as priests against the doctrine of the church, leading to his ex-communication.

IRELAND
The Herald

By Gerry O'Carroll

Friday December 18 2009

The scenes at the Circuit Criminal Court in Tralee, at the sentencing of Danny Foley, have caused shock, anger and outrage.

Foley, a bouncer, was jailed for seven years, with two years suspended, for a sexual assault on a young woman of 22. After sentence was passed, a group of between 50 and 60 middle-aged to elderly men hugged and sympathised with him.

Some of them broke into tears. They commiserated with him as if he was a victim of some blind injustice or terrible wrong.

What made this scene more surreal and appalling was that the victim was in court, surrounded only by a garda and a member of the Rape Crisis Centre.

IRELAND
The Herald

Friday December 18 2009

Two other bishops named in the Murphy Report are this afternoon expected to step down, following the announcement yesterday by Bishop Donal Murray that he had resigned.

It is now three weeks since the publication of the damning Murphy report, and for the sake of the victims, there must be clear decisive action. It is in nobody's interest that the process is unnecessarily protracted.

It has already taken far too long for Bishop Murray to do the right thing and the other Bishops should already have held their hands up by now. This issue should not be allowed to drag on into the New Year.

IRELAND
Ireland Online

The priest who shook the hand and gave character evidence on behalf of a convicted sex offender has left his post of parish priest in Castelgregory.

Fr Séan Sheehy, who met Bishop of Kerry Bill Murphy this morning, had said yesterday he did not accept the unanimous verdict of a jury that found Danny Foley guilty of sexually assaulting a 24-year-old woman in Listowel, Co Kerry, on June 15, 2008.

The priest said he had no regrets about shaking hands with Danny Foley of Meen in Listowel as the 35-year-old waited to be sentenced for his crime.

IRELAND
Catholic Culture

The Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray has resigned his post in the wake of Ireland's clerical abuse scandal. His sorrowfully lame resignation statement does not admit any failure on his part. He says rather that his continued presence in the job would create too many difficulties for too many people:

A bishop is meant to be a person who seeks to lead and inspire all the people of the diocese in living as a community united in the truth and love of Christ.

Well, no. The office of the bishop is to teach, to govern, and to sanctify (see the Catechism, 888-896). Leadership as such has nothing to do with it.

CANADA
The Windsor Star

December 18, 2009

Patients visiting their cardiologist witnessed an unusual scene Thursday morning when two jail guards arrived accompanying an accused pedophile into the waiting room.

Rev. John Duarte had an appointment with Dr. Craig Pearce. Duarte, 43, is in jail charged with molesting teenage boys at the mission he founded in Haiti.

Duarte's lawyer, Andrew Bradie, said his client has been having problems with his pacemaker and was awaiting an appointment with a cardiologist.

IRELAND
Ireland Online

Ireland's Catholics were tonight urged to send a Christmas message to the Pope demanding he take action over the country’s child abuse scandal.

A survivor of institutional abuse revealed he will be using a new online service launched by the Vatican to demand the Pontiff reform the church and apologise to the people of Ireland.

John Kelly, from Irish Survivors of Child Abuse, believes few Irish Catholics will be sending goodwill greetings through the internet.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

A priest who shook hands with a Listowel nightclub doorman awaiting sentencing in court for sexual assault has today stepped down.

The Bishop of Kerry Bill Murphy has accepted an offer by Fr Seán Sheehy to withdraw from his work in the parish of Castlegregory.

Fr Seán Sheehy, having retired from an American diocese, was substituting for the parish priest of Castlegregory. He had stood as a character witness at the sentencing of nightclub doorman Danny Foley (35).

Catholic News Agency

CNA STAFF, Dec 18, 2009 / 11:42 am (CNA).- In an effort to distance itself from the wrongdoings of its founder, the Legion of Christ has recently circulated an internal memo detailing how a long venerated work of spirituality attributed to Fr. Marcial Maciel was actually a slight re-writing of a book from a little-known Spanish author.

“El Salterio de mis días” (The Psalter of my Days), according to the Legionary tradition, was regarded as written by Fr. Maciel during the period of the "great blessing," (1956-59), when the Mexican founder was submitted to a canonical process by the Vatican that was finally called off.

The memo now reveals that the text, very popular among the Legion in its original in Spanish and partially translated into English for internal use, was “based” on the little known work of a Spanish Catholic politician, Luis Lucía.

IRELAND
Ireland Online

18/12/2009 - 17:03:03

The country’s Catholic hierarchy faced further damage tonight after an under-fire Bishop clashed with a colleague over a sickening child abuse scandal.

Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan, one of five senior clerics named in the shocking Murphy report, claimed Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin had called his integrity into question over the Church’s mishandling of paedophile priests.

The Archbishop stopped short of asking former and serving auxiliary bishops in the Dublin Archdiocese to resign but urged them to reflect on their positions.

MASSACHUSETTS
outpatient clinic

Skip Shea

Cardinal Sean O'Malley is holding a healing Mass for abuse survivors, Sunday December 20th, 2009 at 3:30 pm at the Bethany Chapel, 66 Brooks Drive, Braintree, MA.

All in attendance will receive this Advent Booklet, showing one of the the actual reasons for the Mass in the first place.

NEW YORK
Your Nabe

By Anna Gustafson
Thursday, December 17, 2009

Former St. John’s University chaplain Charles Plock was sentenced Monday to five years’ probation after pleading guilty to sending homemade sex videos of himself to someone he believed was a 13-year-old boy, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown’s office said.

Plock, 63, was arrested Oct. 10, 2008, and subsequently fired from the university, according to police and university officials.

Known as “Father Charlie” to his students, Plock admitted he e-mailed Web camera images of himself masturbating to someone he believed to be a teenage boy, but was actually an undercover detective from Colorado.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By David Quinn

Friday December 18 2009

ONE bishop has gone. How many more will follow? As many as it takes to restore some measure of trust and confidence in the Catholic Church in Ireland, as many as it takes for reasonable people to be able to say, justice has been done.

Not everyone is reasonable, of course. Some people won't be happy until we've severed diplomatic ties with the Holy See, destroyed Catholic schools and hospitals, eradicated the influence of Catholicism from the land and imposed on Ireland the type of secularism that existed in East Germany circa 1975. Catholics, under this dispensation, will be left with the right to go to their places of worship, and not much else.

In truth, this kind of rabid anti-Catholicism is the modern equivalent of the Brit-bashing and Anglo-phobia that was so prevalent in Ireland for so long and that most of us are now embarrassed by even if, in the wake of the likes of the Black and Tans, it was understandable in its day.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By John Cooney

Friday December 18 2009

IT was inevitable that Donal Murray would become the first episcopal casualty of the Murphy report revealing the scandalous top-level cover-ups of paedophile priests in the Archdiocese of Dublin. But what remains a mystery is why this humane and intelligent man lost public esteem by appearing to avoid the inevitable for three tortuous weeks.

While in the end he showed considerable dignitas and sensitivity to the suffering howls of the victims of abuse for his de-mitred head, his fugitive-bishop antics in Rome merely prolonged his agony during his dark nights of the soul.

Church sources have indicated privately that Murray knew he was a doomed prelate weeks before the Murphy report was published on November 26. He had read the draft report weeks in advance and knew that contrary to his evidence in private with the three-member commission, they had judged that his failure to investigate Fr Thomas Naughton in Valleymount, Co Wicklow, was "inexcusable".

IRELAND
Roman Catholic Diocese of Kerry

Statement from Bishop of Kerry Bill Murphy

The Bishop of Kerry wishes to disassociate himself and the Diocese from the actions and statements made by Fr. Seán Sheehy in relation to the sentencing of a man convicted of sexual assault.

Fr. Sheehy is retired from an American diocese and is substituting for the Parish Priest of Castlegregory, Fr. Tadhg ó Dochartaigh, who is recuperating from illness.

I wish to offer my sympathy to the victim and to apologise to her on my own behalf and on behalf of the Diocese of Kerry. I pay tribute to her courage. I hope what has happened will not undermine the progress that has been made in bringing perpetrators of sexual abuse to justice.

IRELAND
Irish Central

By Donal Thornton, IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

Outrage over a priest's defense of a convicted sex offender has resulted in Bishop William Murphy of Kerry disowning the priests' behavior.

Up to fifty people had queued up to shake the hands of sex offender Danny Foley before he was sent to jail for 7 years earlier this week.

Fr. Sean Sheehy was one of those people. The priest also defended Foley, providing a character reference for the sex offender in court.

Bishop of Kerry William Murphy released a statement distancing himself from the actions of Fr. Sheehy.

IRELAND
RTE News

[with audio]

Friday, 18 December 2009 14:17
Bishop of Galway Dr Martin Drennan has said his conscience is clear and he currently has no intention of resigning from office, following the publication of the Murphy Report on clerical sexual abuse in the Dublin Catholic Archdiocese.

Speaking on RTÉ's News at One, he said he replied earlier this week to a letter from Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin, which he said had put his integrity in question.

Bishop Drennan said he did not know of any crimes that he should have reported in the past, and that he was happy with the manner in which he dealt with things.

ALASKA
KTUU

by Megan Baldino
Thursday, December 17, 2009

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Attorneys for victims of clergy sex abuse in Alaska say it is despicable, after they claim the Fairbanks diocese insurance company is refusing to pay settlement money for victims.

Thursday's statement came after the Fairbanks diocese submitted a new bankruptcy reorganization plan.

According to attorneys for the victims, Catholic Mutual is refusing to pay the diocese money that has been agreed to in a settlement.

IRELAND
The Clare Courier

Many people in our community will have been troubled by RTE’s Six One News interviews with Bishop Willie Walsh and Shannon’s parish priest, Fr Tom Ryan. Deep distress was written all over the face of Bishop Walsh whose very physical appearance was that of a man carrying an overwhelming burden on his own shoulders.

Fr Ryan’s emotional outburst, when a microphone was pushed in his face, was indicative of his own despair of the awful revelations about a Church which he has devoted himself to.

What television viewers saw was a caricature of two rural clergymen. A Fr Ted caricature that fits well with a media that apportions blame in one
direction only, for heinous crimes against children.

IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

Religion Correspondent Alf McCreary outlines the long-term developments in the current abuse furore in the Irish Catholic Church

Friday, 18 December 2009

Just a week after the Pope met Irish Church leaders in Rome the Catholic Church continues to make news in the turbulent aftermath of the publication last month of the Murphy Report on clerical child sex abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin.

The Bishop of Limerick Dr Donal Murray bowed to the inevitable yesterday when he resigned over his "inexcusable" investigation into the Dublin paedophile priest Fr Thomas Naughton.

The Pope has already expressed his personal distress over the Murphy Report.

NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY Erin Durkin
DAILY NEWS WRITER

Friday, December 18th 2009

An atheist group and a priest sued Brooklyn's Catholic Diocese Thursday, charging Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio broke the law with "robocalls" aimed at swaying voters in a tight City Council election.

A recorded message from DiMarzio expressing support for Brooklyn Democratic boss Vito Lopez went out days before the November election to every registered voter in the Bushwick district where Lopez's handpicked candidate, Maritza Davila, was mounting a challenge to Councilwoman Diana Reyna.

Two suits filed Thursday ask a judge to revoke the Diocese's tax-exempt status, charging the calls violated IRS rules that bar tax-exempt groups from "directly or indirectly" supporting political candidates.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

MARIE O'HALLORAN

OPPOSITION AND Government backbench TDs united in appealing to the Taoiseach to introduce legislation to extend the institutional redress scheme to women in the Magdalene laundries.

Brian Cowen noted their contributions and said “I will refer it to the relevant Ministers and see what the position is. I am not up to date on this matter.”

Fine Gael spokesman on children Alan Shatter demanded the legislation be amended to include women who “suffered barbaric cruelty in the Magdalene laundries”.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

JIMMY WALSH

SEANAD REPORT: THE EXTRAORDINARY newspaper stories about people sympathising in a Kerry courthouse with a man convicted of sexually assaulting a woman made it necessary for the Minister for Justice to engage with the House on how the court system was failing crime victims, Fine Gael Seanad leader Frances Fitzgerald said.

The Minister should explain to the House how this could happen in a courtroom.

The Murphy and Ryan reports had documented the inability or refusal of the “officer class” within the Catholic Church to believe allegations made against one of their own. What had happened would probably lead to the resignation of a bishop. But she thought that what had taken place in the Kerry court meant they had to ask fundamental questions about the treatment of crime victims.

CANADA
Ottawa Citizen

The people of Cornwall might never get a clear answer to the question of whether there was a pedophile ring or network in their city.

The inquiry by Commissioner Normand Glaude, after four years and an estimated $53 million, has ended. "To understand the complex, decades-long interactions of institutions with each other and with alleged perpetrators and victims, you need to read this report in its entirety," Glaude declared this week. Volume One of the four-volume report runs to 1,637 pages, so it's unlikely many people will take him up on it. It's exhaustive without being definitive, at least not on the question of how widespread the abuse actually was.

On the question of how institutions responded, the report is more useful. In his statement accompanying the report, Glaude said institutions were often more interested in avoiding embarrassment than on following up on allegations of abuse. This, in turn, created a climate of mistrust of public institutions, in which rumours could run rampant -- especially in the Internet age.

VATICAN CITY
The Pilot (United States)

By Cindy Wooden
Posted: 12/18/2009

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Just a few hours before Pope Benedict XVI met with Irish bishops to discuss the clerical sex abuse crisis, the preacher of the papal household told him and other Vatican officials that as a matter of justice the church must publicly admit the weakness of some of its priests.

But more is needed to renew the priesthood, said Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, giving his weekly Advent meditation Dec. 11.

Father Cantalamessa said priests are called to be "the sweet perfume of Christ in the world," but -- as St. Paul said -- "We hold this treasure in earthen vessels," which can break easily.

"From recent painful and humiliating experience, we know all too well what this means," the preacher said.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Edel Kennedy

Friday December 18 2009

THE priest who gave a glowing character reference for a man convicted of sex abuse has insisted he would do it again.

And last night the Bishop of Kerry was forced to apologise to the victim for the priest's support for her attacker.

There were extraordinary scenes in a Kerry court earlier this week as up to 50 people queued to shake hands with sex offender Danny Foley, a man the judge accused of telling "lie after lie" to the court before being convicted by a unanimous jury.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Shane Hickey

Friday December 18 2009

FOR survivors of clerical child sex abuse, Bishop Donal Murray's resignation is "too little, too late".

There are repeated calls for other bishops who failed to act on information about serial sex offenders to follow suit and offer resignations.

Mervyn Rundle, who was abused by serial paedophile Thomas Naughton, said the decision of Dr Murray was "long overdue".

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Barry Duggan

Friday December 18 2009

SOME described it as the saddest day ever for Limerick.

Others said more senior church members had to follow the example of the Limerick bishop's resignation.

Priests and church-goers -- generally of an elderly age -- filed in and out of the St John's Cathedral in the city before, during and after Dr Donal Murray told the congregation of his resignation.

John Leonard said he thought the bishop had made the right decision in the circumstances and had had no other option.

IRELAND
Irish Independent