ABUSE TRACKER

SCOTLAND
BBC News

Fresh claims of abuse at Fort Augustus Abbey Catholic boarding school in the Highlands have emerged following a BBC investigation.

Another former pupil at the school has told the BBC he was “violently abused” and tortured by monks there.

Tim Coppin said he studied at Fort Augustus from 1960 until 1965.

“The main thing was whipping by the teachers, by the monks themselves,” he told BBC Radio Scotland, in an interview to be broadcast on Newsdrive.

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UNITED STATES
The Raw Story

[Click here for the story.]

By Arturo Garcia
Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Cardinal Timothy Dolan appeared to be trying to walk back recent comments by Pope Francis regarding gay priests in a CBS News interview Tuesday morning, explaining to hosts Gayle King and Charlie Rose that the pontiff’s refusal to judge them did not signal a change in Catholic Church doctrine.

What the pope was saying, Dolan told Rose, was that, “While certain acts may be wrong, we will always love and respect the person and treat the person with dignity,” describing an intersection between church doctrine regarding the “immorality” of sex outside marriage and acceptance of believers regardless of sexual orientation or other social factors.

On Monday, the pope told reporters during a flight out of Brazil that gay members of the church must not be marginalized, saying, “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge him?”

Dolan, who was criticized earlier this year for sermons focusing on “traditional marriage” amid an increase in anti-LGBT attacks in the New York area, emphasized throughout the discussion that Pope Francis was striking a new tone in his presentation of the church’s teachings.

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AUSTRALIA
lewisblayse.net

The Newcastle-Maitland diocese kept “good priest files” and “bad priest files”, according to Elizabeth Doyle, who was secretary to Bishops Clarke, Malone and Wright over the past 20 years. A quirk of the English language means that the reference could be to good files and bad files or good priests and bad priests. Ms. Doyle would choose the former interpretation.

In her early days, Ms. Doyle did not have the trust of Bishop Clarke. She told the enquiry that “she had no recourse to the files but believed they were all stored in the one cabinet upstairs in Bishop Clarke’s office.” Apparently, he took the distrust to extreme lengths. He never discussed such matters with her, typed some of his own letters, did his own filing and she never opened any letters addressed to him.

It must have been a classic “light duties” job for Ms. Doyle, with the Bishop doing most of the work. This cushy position apparently came to an end when Bishop Malone arrived and gave her charge of the filing cabinet. The good priest files where at the front, and the bad priest files were at the back. Not much to remember there.

Speaking of memory, Fr. Burston returned to the enquiry after several days of “stress leave” resulting from having to face the reality that victims tend to be a bit upset with people like him.

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AUSTRALIA
lewisblayse.net

Mr. Will Callinan, a school principal in the Newcastle-Maitland Catholic diocese, has told the NSW enquiry that he did not challenge an “untruth” by Bishop Malone, because he feared he would lose his job. The threat of unemployment appears to come up now and again in the context of the enquiry, especially from the father of a victim.

Malone, the enquiry has earlier heard, claimed to have notified Cullinan about a local abusive priest, which Cullinan disputes. Cullinan said that Bishop Michael Malone had known, in June 2002 that Father James Fletcher was the subject of child sex abuse investigations, but that the bishop did not tell him about the allegations until March 2003, just before charges were laid. He said he had heard a rumour from someone he could not remember in early June 2002 that Fletcher was being investigated.

The Cullinan and Malone accounts vary greatly. So greatly, that it was reported that cross-examination of Cullinan by Malone’s lawyer, Simon Harben, was described as “robust”.

For example, Cullinan said he was “in disbelief” when Bishop Malone referred to a conversation Malone claimed to have had with him concerning Fletcher, in June 2002. Cullinan said that Malone did not inform him of anything about Fletcher until almost a year later, in a telephone conversation. Cullinan told the enquiry that “He never had a conversation with me (on June 20, 2002) or sought advice (from me) whether Father Fletcher should stay in the parish.”

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CANADA
Ottawa Citizen

BY MEGHAN HURLEY, OTTAWA CITIZEN JULY 30, 2013 1

OTTAWA — A Pembroke priest faces charges in a historical sexual assault.

The charges were laid after the victim made a complaint to police about an alleged sexual assault in 1985.

Police arrested Father Howard Chabot on Monday and charged him with sexual assault and gross indecency.

Chabot was released from police custody on a promise to appear in court on Sept. 3.

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CANADA
CBC News

A Pembroke, Ont., priest faces two charges including sexual assault in connection with an incident in 1985.

Ontario Provincial Police said a complainant came forward in regards to the incident in Pembroke 28 years ago.

Rev. Howard Chabot, a retired Catholic church priest, was charged with one count of sexual assault and one count of gross indecency.

He was released with a promise to appear in Pembroke court on Sept. 3.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

July 30, 2013

By Ann Rodgers / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Vatican forcibly removed a priest who had been an anthropology professor and popular speaker at St. Vincent College from ministry and barred him from his Benedictine order, according to an announcement today from St. Vincent Archabbey.

The announcement from the archabbey did not focus on its previous allegations that Rev. Mark Gruber had pornography on his computer.

Instead it stressed that the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had reviewed evidence that Mr. Gruber was behind allegations, widely disseminated on a Web site, that Archabbot Douglas Nowicki had sexually harassed a young former monk.

The announcement said that the former monk has since signed a sworn statement saying that his allegations against the archabbot were a lie and that then-Father Gruber had written parts of the statement for him.

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UNITED STATES
Association of Religion Data Archives

By David Briggs

Mixing religion and alcohol may be dangerous to other people’s health.

A new study of religion, alcohol and violence revealed that religious folks who were not under the influence were the most likely to turn the other cheek.

However, the researchers also found that religious individuals who were intoxicated were the most likely to display aggression, administering higher and longer levels of electric shocks to opponents in a laboratory experiment.

The study by the University of Kentucky’s Aaron A. Duke and Peter R. Giancola, published in the latest issue of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, adds new insight into the complex relation between religion and aggression.

Religious beliefs and practices in general are associated with more compassionate behavior toward others. A review of the scientific literature by Duke and Giancola found that a majority of survey studies showed religion was associated with lower levels of aggression. In particular, some studies indicated religious individuals are less likely to commit crimes, and that faith may be associated with lower rates of domestic violence.

But there are also times when religion is linked to more aggressive behavior. For example, biblical admonitions warning parents that if they spare the rod, they will spoil the child appear to be associated with higher rates of corporal punishment among religious conservatives.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Riverfront Times

By Jessica Lussenhop Tue., Jul. 30 2013

Father Gary Meier has apparently become the nation’s spokesman for gay clergy.

When Daily RFT reached Father Gary Meier yesterday afternoon he was waiting for a car service to pick him up and take him to a television studio for a satellite interview with CNN.
“I don’t like the cars,” he grumbled, saying he prefers to drive himself.

Meier has been inundated with interview requests ever since Pope Francis gave a surprising response to reporters who asked him, essentially, what his views are on homosexual priests.

“If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” the Holy Father answered in Italian.

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NEW YORK
The Jewish Daily Forward

By Paul Berger
Published July 30, 2013, issue of August 02, 2013.

To millions of New Yorkers, Jonathan Zizmor is the don of dermatology. But to some victims of sex abuse, Zizmor is the donor who established a scholarship in their alleged molester’s name.

Zizmor, who is renowned across New York City’s five boroughs for his campy subway advertisements promoting cosmetic procedures, gave $250,000 to Yeshiva University High School for Boys in 2002 to endow the Rabbi Macy Gordon Scholarship.

Gordon is one of two rabbis accused of molesting students at the Y.U.-run high school, according to a lawsuit filed July 8 in U.S. District Court. Nineteen former students accuse Y.U. administrators and staff of covering up physical and sexual abuse at the school.

Three of the former students say that Gordon, a Talmud teacher, abused them. One of those men, who says Gordon sodomized him with a toothbrush, “experiences extreme emotional distress whenever he sees” [Zizmor’s] name on the subway,” according to the suit.

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CANADA
The Globe and Mail

GLORIA GALLOWAY
OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Jul. 30 2013, 6:00 AM EDT

First Nations leaders and human rights experts will press the federal government to recognize that Canada’s historical treatment of native people, including nutrition experiments conducted on children at aboriginal residential schools, constituted a genocide.

Phil Fontaine, a former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Bernie Farber, a social activist who is the former executive director of the Canadian Jewish Congress, and Michael Dan, a former neurosurgeon turned philanthropist, have been talking with native leaders about the need for Canada to admit that the word applies to the cumulative actions taken by the government against First Nations.

As early as this fall, they could ask the United Nations to apply its definition of genocide to Canada’s historical record. This push comes five years after Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized on behalf of the Canadian government for the treatment of children at aboriginal residential schools.

Mr. Fontaine said he has been trying to elevate the issue so that more Canadians become aware of the history of the First Nations. He said he hopes that the government does not force native leaders to pursue the matter in the courts or at the UN.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Vatican City, 30 July 2013 (VIS) – On the return flight from Rio de Janeiro to Rome, Pope Francis spoke for around an hour and half with the journalists accompanying him on his journey. The questions and answers were all impromptu, and the Pope answered all the questioned posed, on matters ranging from his personal security to his relationship with the Roman Curia, his trip to Brazil, his collaboration with Benedict XVI and the situation of divorced and remarried persons.

Francis said he was happy with his first trip abroad as Pope, commenting that it had brought to the fore “the goodness and the suffering of the Brazilian people … the Brazilian people are warm-hearted, they are an amiable people … who even in suffering always find a way to seek out the best from all sides. And this is a good thing: they are cheerful people who have suffered much … This trip has been very good; spiritually, it has done me good … meeting people always does good, as in doing so we receive many good things from others”.

With regard to matters of security, he commented that there had been no incident during his visit to Rio de Janeiro, and that everything had been spontaneous. “With less security, I was able to stay with the people, to embrace them, greet them, without armoured cars … it is the security of trusting in people … yes, there’s always the danger of encountering a madman, but then there is always the Lord who protects us, isn’t there? It is also madness to separate a bishop from his people, and I prefer this madness”.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Thomas Reese | Jul. 29, 2013 NCR Today

Last Sunday I preached in San Francisco on prayer. I think that was a good pastoral decision. People said they liked the homily, but I keep wondering if perhaps it was just a copout to avoid more controversial topics.

To understand my dilemma, you have to remember that the first reading was from Genesis 18 where Abraham argues with God over the destruction of Sodom. The reading led me to think about preaching on homosexuality—for about a nanosecond. I did not think I had anything new or interesting to say. Plus there is probably not a person in San Francisco who has not made up his or her mind on this topic. O yes, did I mention that the pastor was raked over the coals in the blogosphere and reported to the archbishop for saying something nice about homosexuals last month.

Then there is the scholarly debate over whether the sin of Sodom was sexual or whether it was a sin against hospitality to strangers. Abraham and Sarah had recently shown hospitality to three strangers and were rewarded with a pregnancy. The same three men go to Sodom, where they are welcomed by Lot and his family, but the locals want to have sex with them. When Lot tries to protect his guests, the crowd turns on him since he is not a real citizen but a “resident alien.” Lot’s guests end up saving him by pulling him into the house and closing the door.

Lot is so protective of his three male guests that he offers the mob his two virgin daughters instead. You don’t have to be a feminist to think that offering your daughters to a mob to be gang raped is a horrible idea. Later, these same daughters get their father drunk and have sex with him to “ensure posterity by our father.” Maybe I should have preached on the corrupting effect of patriarchal culture.

In any case, on the topic of homosexuality, I could not have said it better than Pope Francis did on the plane on the way back from Rio to Rome. When asked about the “gay lobby” in the Vatican, he responded:

“When I meet a gay person, I have to distinguish between their being gay and being part of a lobby. If they accept the Lord and have goodwill, who am I to judge them? They shouldn’t be marginalized. The tendency [to homosexuality] is not the problem … they’re our brothers.”

Since gay priests have been falsely blamed for the sexual abuse crisis, the pope’s statement is very significant. In 2005, the Vatican issued a document saying that men with deep-rooted homosexual tendencies should not be ordained or allowed in the seminary. Most interpreted this to mean that someone with a homosexual orientation could not be a priest even if he were celibate.

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International Business Times

By emil samaniego | July 30, 2013

Aboard the Papal aircraft, Pope Francis in a press conference said that the Church’s door is closed for a female priest.

This is the first time the Pope publicly talked about the topic.

“We cannot limit the role of women in the Church to altar girls or the president of a charity, there must be more,” the Pope said.

“But with regards to the ordination of women, the Church has spoken and says no. Pope John Paul said so with a formula that was definitive. That door is closed,” he said referring to a dictum of late Blessed John Paul II saying the ban was an infallible teaching of the Church.

With a wave of feminism creeping in the Catholic Church, many argued that it is time that the Church gives women a higher leadership position. However, the Church stands on its belief that Jesus only willingly chose males as his apostles. Proponents of female priests argued that Jesus only acted in accordance to the context of his time.

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VATICAN CITY
The Economist

ON the lips of a more worldly sort of cleric, the pope’s comparatively generous comments (by recent Vatican standards, at least) about homosexuals might have been taken as a calculated move. “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge him?” That was the disarming rhetorical question which Pope Francis put to journalists accompanying him back from Brazil; it prompted reports of a major shift in the church’s attitude to same-sex relations. While carefully citing the church’s catechism, he also said gays should be “integrated” into society rather than marginalised.

The church does not, of course, make major doctrinal refinements in off-the-cuff remarks to the press. Other procedures exist for that. And the reason the question even arose has to do with some very awkward news reports over the past month. One of Italy’s best-known church-watchers has asserted that Pope Francis was trapped, in effect, by the gay lobby into naming a prelate with a very murky personal life to a job that would supposedly involve cleaning up the troubled Vatican bank. Pressed about this matter, the pontiff said he hadn’t come across any specifically “gay lobby” although there were plenty of other lobbies of “greedy people” in sight. A “quick investigation” had found the allegations about the newly appointed cleric to be unfounded, he insisted.

To a cynical mind, the pope’s headline-catching refusal to judge gay people might sound like an artful way of neutralising the most embarrassing saga that has come to light during his young papacy.

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COLORADO
The Denver Post

By Electa Draper
The Denver Post

Pope Francis set the world debating whether his candid and concilatory remarks Monday on gays and women in the Catholic Church represent a new direction or simply a kindlier tone.

Archdiocese of Denver spokeswoman Karna Swanson said the pope’s comment — “who am I to judge” gay clergy — was “definitely not a departure” from Catholic teaching. It has always called for respect and compassion for those with same-sex attractions, she said, but doesn’t sanction homosexual acts.

Others aren’t so sure the remarks don’t foreshadow change.

Reformist Roman Catholic Austrian priest Helmut Schüller, in Denver Monday calling for an end to the global priest shortage through ordination of married men and women, also supports a more open and inclusive church for the LGBT community.

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UNITED STATES
Atheist Revolution

This will be a short post because I really just want to highlight something I read at Bitchspot, which I think is important. Cephus (Bitchspot) has been writing a weekly series of “Horror Show Sunday” posts in which he focuses on some of the worst religion has to offer. In today’s installment, Horror Show Sunday: Take Those Little Girls Home, he tells us about Nigerian pastor Fidelis Eze and how he has admitted taking two 11 year-old girls home and having sex with them. Pastor Eze first claimed that the 11 year-olds consented to sex. When police did not buy that, he claimed he was possessed by evil spirits.

The part I want to highlight is what Cephus had to say to those who complain that it is unfair for him to pick on clergy. As someone who addressed clergy abuse, I’ve certainly received this same complaint. It usually goes something like this: “People in many professions abuse children, so why do you focus on clergy as if it is somehow worse when they do it?” Well, because it is worse when they do it.

Cephus provides three reasons why it makes sense to consider clergy abuse as a special category:

1. The clergy is taught to be respected across wide swaths of American life, parents teach their children to listen to, respect and obey their priests and ministers and to turn to them in moments of crisis, both religious and physical. True, this respect and obedience also extends to a select few other occupations like police, firefighters and teachers, but they do not share other detrimental aspects.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Riverfront Times

By Sam Levin Thu., Jul. 25 2013

Update below: David Kramer, a Jewish school teacher who pleaded guilty to child molestation in St. Louis in 2008, has been sentenced for additional molestation charges — this time in Melbourne, Australia.

St. Louis advocates are drawing attention to the sentencing on the other side of the world this week, in part because Kramer, 52, could be out of jail in just three months — a development victims’ groups say is troubling, in a case in which a convicted child sex offender in Missouri was extradited to Australia.

“He could face other charges. And if he doesn’t, he could walk free soon and assault more children,” Barbara Dorris Outreach Director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), says in a statement.

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NEW YORK
Charles Hynes Watch

People v Sam Kellner: Motion to Dismiss in the Interest of Justice

On July 26, 2013, the Law Offices of Michael G. Dowd, representing Sam Kellner in the much publicized case brought against him by DA Hynes, filed a motion to dismiss in the interest of Justice.

Click here to read and download the motion.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

By Dan Cox, ABC
Updated July 29, 2013

A New South Wales Hunter Valley Catholic priest has rejected claims at a public inquiry that he held back information from police because child sexual abuse allegations are “damaging and distasteful”.

Father Bob Searle was the parish priest at Nelson Bay, north of Newcastle, in the late 1990s.

In giving evidence to a Newcastle inquiry today, he said he remembered a person known as AH, a victim of paedophile priest James Fletcher, coming to the presbytery one night drunk and angry and yelling out “nobody loves me”.

Police whistleblower Peter Fox has said that, at the time, Father Searle told him AH was also yelling about priests “doing filthy things to little boys”, but it was not included in his statement to police.

Father Searle said that was because he never heard the comments.

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AUSTRALIA/SCOTLAND
SBS

[with video]

A retired Australian priest is at the centre of an investigation accused of allegedly molesting young boys in the UK.

Those allegations come from some of the former students at a private boarding school in Scotland.

Donald Mcleod attended the Fort Augustus Abbey School in Scotland almost half a century ago, but that experience continues to haunts him today.

He told the BBC that he was repeatedly molested by one of the monks – Australian father Aidan Duggan.

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AUSTRALIA/SCOTLAND
ABC News

An investigation is underway into a retired Australian priest who is alleged to have sexually abused a student at a Scottish Catholic boarding school.

Father Denis Alexander has been identified in a BBC documentary as one of two Australian monks who allegedly abused pupils at Fort Augustus Abbey School in the Highlands.

The Catholic Church in Australia has confirmed a police investigation into the former priest, who is now living in Sydney, is underway.

But the church has not confirmed the nature of the allegations.

The BBC investigation outlines an allegation from a former student who says he was abused by Fr Denis, then known as Fr Chrysostom, in 1977.

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SCOTLAND
Fox News

LONDON (AFP) – Police are investigating claims of physical and sexual abuse at one of Scotland’s best known Catholic boarding schools.

The probe follows a BBC investigation which gathered evidence from former pupils at the now-closed Fort Augustus Abbey School and its preparatory school Carlekemp, run by Benedictine monks.

The programme, “BBC Scotland Investigates: Sins of Our Fathers” — which was aired Monday — spoke to 50 pupils and obtained evidence of abuse spanning 30 years.

Police Scotland told AFP that the BBC handed over their information on Sunday and that it was “something that we are investigating at the moment”.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

John Davoren of the Catholic church’s Professional Standards Office has come under intense cross examination by counsel for the police force Wayne Roser.

At the special commission of inquiry in Newcastle on Tuesday morning, Mr Roser took Mr Davoren through a series of documents prepared in conjunction with complaints against serial paedophile the late Denis McAlinden.

Mr Davoren accepted that complaints were made to the church about McAlinden before 1997 but he had no knowledge of events that took place before he started his job in that year.

Showing Mr Davoren a complaint form filled out in relation to McAlinden, Mr Roser suggested the form was never sent to police.

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GHANA
Vibe Ghana

Legal practitioner, Benony Tony Amekudzi of “amicus curiae” fame says the Catholic Church must allow Priests to marry and copulate as a way of stopping the sexual abuse of young boys in the Church.

The Catholic Church has always been engrossed in allegations and accusations of sodomy against some Priests.

Not even the Papacy at the Vatican has been spared the raft of sodomy and sexual abuse allegations.

Mr. Amekudzi told XYZ News in an interview on Saturday July 27, 2013 that he strongly believes doing away with the oath of celibacy in the Catholic Church will go a long way toward ending the sexual abuse cases.

According to him, God gave a “command to man and woman to procreate” and so Catholic Priests and Nuns must be allowed to obey that biblical command.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By IAN KIRKWOOD July 30, 2013

THE former head of a Catholic Church unit set up to handle complaints of clerical child sexual abuse has ‘‘categorically’’ denied not sending a 1999 complaint form about serial paedophile Denis McAlinden to the police.

John Davoren, director of the church’s Professional Standards Office from its inception in 1997 until 2003, was questioned on Tuesday at the Special Commission of Inquiry sitting in Newcastle.

After giving evidence-in-chief before senior counsel assisting the inquiry, Julia Lonergan, Mr Davoren was cross-examined by various counsel including Wayne Roser for the NSW Police.

Mr Roser put it to Mr Davoren that a clerical child sexual abuse form filled out in his name in relation to McAlinden was not sent to the police.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Daily Times

By ROSE QUINN
rquinn@delcotimes.com
@rquinndelco

An Upper Providence man is facing charges he sexually abused two young men who considered him a mentor, according to court documents.

David Sperry, 44, of the 100 block of Park Place, surrendered Thursday at Delaware County Criminal Investigation Division headquarters on 29 offenses relating to allegations made by the two alleged victims, now 21 and 18, who had been around the ages of 13 and 15 respectively when the alleged sexual abuse began.

Sexual contact with the 18-year-old occurred as recently as when he was 17, according to documents. …

The 21-year-old man said he first met Sperry in 2004 or 2005, when they were both members of The Church of the Savior in Wayne, according to the affidavit penned by Kelly. The affidavit does not depict Sperry as having any role with the church, only that he and the 21-year-old victim had met there as members.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

A pedophile priest continued to teach reading at a Hunter Valley Catholic primary school for nine months despite church leaders knowing he was under police investigation, an inquiry has been told.

Will Callinan – the principal of Saint Brigids Primary, Branxton, and Saint Mary’s, at Greta – made the claim before a special NSW commission of inquiry on Tuesday.

He said police told Maitland/Newcastle diocese Bishop Michael Malone in June 2002 that Father James Fletcher was the subject of child sex abuse investigations, but the bishop did not tell him about the allegations until March 2003, just before charges were laid.

He said he had heard a rumour from someone he could not remember in early June 2002 that Fletcher was being investigated.

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COSTA RICA
La Nacion

DANIELA CERDAS E. – Actualizado el 24 de julio de 2013

Un pastor evangélico de Santa Cruz en Guanacaste, de apellido Gutiérrez, fue detenido esta mañana tras vincularsele con denuncias de abuso sexual contra tres personas mayores de 18 años y una denuncia contra un menor de edad.

Al sospechoso se le mantiene detenido en la delegación del Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ) de Liberia, luego de que fuera a rendir su indagatoria tras ser citado, producto de las denuncias interpuestas el 17 y 15 de junio anterior.

Álvaro Guevara, abogado defensor del pastor, dijo que Gutiérrez niega todos los hechos que se le acusan y que no hay prueba más que los testimonios de los denunciantes. El Ministerio Público valora la posibilidad de medidas cautelares.

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COSTA RICA
Tico Times

The Costa Rican Prosecutor’s Office last week announced criminal charges against a Guanacaste pastor on 22 counts of sexual abuse allegedly involving three adult victims and one minor.

The charges, made public last Wednesday, range over a six year period from 2007 to 2013. The suspect, identified as A. Gutiérrez, was an evangelical pastor at the Iglesia Dios del Evangelio Completo in Santa Cruz, in the northwestern province of Guanacaste.

According to the daily La Nación, the pastor’s defense attorney said his client denied all charges. A spokeswoman for the Prosecutor’s Office said Gutierréz could face up to 50 years in prison if found guilty on all counts.

La Nación reported the testimony of one of the alleged victims, a Nicaraguan man who said the relationship with Gutierréz began when he sought private counsel as a member of his congregation. The man alleged that Gutierréz touched his genitals in an act of blessing them 80 times, performed oral sex on him, and circumcised him with a pair of scissors.

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AUSTRALIA/SCOTLAND
International Business Times

By Athena Yenko | July 30, 2013

Two Australian monks were found guilty of sexually abusing their students at the now close Fort Augustus Abbey School in the Highlands and its feeder school at Carlekemp in east Lothian.

The acts of sexual abused happened several decades ago, but it was only during this time that BBC Scotland was able to unearth details of the monks’ dirty secrets through an investigative documentary to be shown on July 29, 21:00 (GMT) on BBC1 and BBC iPlayer.

The accused Australian monk was Father Aidan Duggan who taught at the school back in 1953 and 1974.

The victim who was willing to share his dark past with the monks is Donald Macleod who was a student at the school in 1961. Father Duggan was his piano and photography teacher.

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AUSTRALIA/SCOTLAND
ABC News

[with audio]

A six month investigation by the BBC has found a multitude of allegations of sexual and physical abuse over 30 years at the prestigious Fort Augustus Abbey School in Scotland. Two Australian men are at the centre of the allegations, including one who’s been suspended from the Catholic Church pending an investigation.

Transcript

ELEANOR HALL: The ABC understands that New South Wales Police officers are investigating claims of overseas child sexual abuse levelled at a retired priest in Sydney.

A BBC documentary, aired today, alleges the priest committed the abuse when he was teaching at the Fort Augustus Abbey School in the Scottish Highlands during the 1970s, and then escaped punishment by transferring to Australia.

The Church in Australia says it’s suspended the priest, pending an investigation, as Ashley Hall reports.

ASHLEY HALL: For more than 100 years, devout Catholics in Scotland entrusted their children to the care of the men of God at the prestigious Fort Augustus Abbey School. Located in the Highlands on the banks of Loch Ness, the boarding school seemed to represent an idyllic childhood.

It’s been closed now for about 20 years, but for some of its students what happened there is still fresh in their minds, and it was far from idyllic.

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AUSTRALIA
News Mail

A SYDNEY Catholic priest has been charged with child pornography offences.

Detectives executed a search warrant about 10.45am on Monday at a presbytery in Sydney before arresting a 56-year-old man at the premises.

A number of items were seized, including a computer and electronic storage devices, for forensic examination.

The man was taken to The Rocks Police Station and charged with four counts of use a carriage service for child pornography.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Examiner

Jessica Grewal 30th Jul 2013

A CATHOLIC priest is the latest man to be arrested by child abuse detectives investigating an online pornography ring.

The 56-year-old was arrested a Sydney presbytery where police seized his computer and a number of electronic storage devices.

He was given strict bail conditions and will front court on August 26 charged with four counts of using a carriage service for child pornography.

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SCOTLAND
Edinburgh Evening News

by David O’Leary
david.oleary@edinburghnews.com
Published on the 30 July 2013

EVIDENCE of physical and sexual abuse has been uncovered at one of Scotland’s most prestigious Catholic boarding schools.

Accounts of abuse spanning 30 years have been revealed at Carlekemp Priory School in North Berwick, which served as a feeder for Fort Augustus Abbey School in the Highlands. Both schools are now closed.

The claims emerged following an investigation by the BBC, which said it had spoken to 50 former pupils about their experiences at the schools, which were run by Benedictine monks.

The head of the Benedictines, Richard Yeo, has apologised to victims.

In a programme broadcast last night, it was revealed that testimony was given against seven Fort Augustus monks, while two headmasters were also accused of covering up the abuse.

Five men told of being raped or sexually abused by Father Aidan Duggan, an Australian monk who taught at Carlekemp and Fort Augustus between 1953 and 1974.

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AUSTRALIA/SCOTLAND
7 News

ABC
Updated July 30, 2013

Two Australian monks have been accused of sexually abusing pupils at a Scottish Catholic boarding school over a period spanning three decades.

Evidence of abuse at the now-closed Fort Augustus Abbey School in the Highlands, and its feeder school at Carlekemp in East Lothian, was uncovered by the BBC.

BBC Scotland spoke to 50 former pupils about their experiences at the schools, which were run by Benedictine monks.

The investigation contains accounts from five men who say they were raped or sexually abused by Father Aidan Duggan, an Australian monk who taught at the schools between 1953 and 1974.

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SCOTLAND
BBC News

TV DOCUMENTARY
Sins of Our Fathers will be broadcast on BBC1 Scotland on Monday 29 July at 21:00

By Mark Daly
BBC Scotland Investigations Correspondent

A BBC investigation has uncovered evidence of serious physical and sexual abuse at one of Scotland’s most prestigious Catholic boarding schools.

Accounts of abuse at the now-closed Fort Augustus Abbey School in the Highlands and feeder school Carlekemp in East Lothian span 30 years.

The BBC has spoken to 50 former pupils about their experiences at the schools, which were run by Benedictine monks.

The head of the Benedictines, Dom Richard Yeo, apologised to any victims.

The programme, BBC Scotland Investigates: Sins of Our Fathers, contains testimony from former pupils, speaking openly, and for the first time, about life with the monks.

Many said they had nothing but good memories of the place but during the six-month investigation, the BBC also heard accounts from old boys of physical violence and sexual assault including rape by monks at the fee-paying schools.

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SCOTLAND
BBC News

[Abuse claims at former Catholic boarding school]

[BBC tracks down paedophile priest]

Accounts of serious physical and sexual abuse at one of Scotland’s most prestigious Catholic boarding schools are to be broadcast in a BBC documentary.

‘Sins of Our Fathers’ will reveal that some pupils were abused at the now closed Fort Augustus Abbey School in the Highlands, and Carlekemp Preparatory School in East Lothian, over a period spanning three decades.

Two of the school’s headmasters, Francis Davidson and Augustine Green, have been accused of covering up the abuse.

The BBC has spoken to 50 former pupils about their experiences at the schools, which were run by Benedictine monks. Many said they had nothing but good memories of the place, but others had a very different experience. Here is some of that testimony. …

DONALD MACLEOD

Donald arrived at Fort Augustus from Sydney in Australia as a 14-year-old, in the early 1960s.

He was struck by the remoteness of the school, situated on the banks of Loch Ness, and felt lonely “being stuck way out in the middle of nowhere”.

“I don’t suppose you could be sent much further away,” he said.

The new entrant was befriended by Fr Aidan Duggan, an Australian monk who lived at the abbey and taught at the attached school.

“He offered to give me some rudimentary help with the piano,” he said.

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SCOTLAND
NEWS.com.au

SCOTTISH police are investigating claims of physical and sexual abuse at one of Scotland’s best known Catholic boarding schools.

The probe follows a BBC investigation which gathered evidence from former pupils at the now-closed Fort Augustus Abbey School and its preparatory school Carlekemp, run by Benedictine monks.

BBC Scotland Investigates: Sins of Our Fathers, to be broadcast on Monday — spoke to 50 pupils and obtained evidence of abuse spanning 30 years.

Police Scotland told AFP that the BBC handed over their information on Sunday and that it was “something that we are investigating at the moment”.

The head of the country’s Benedictines, Dom Richard Yeo, apologised to any victims.
“I want to say that I’m very sorry about any abuse that may have been committed at Fort Augustus,” he told the BBC.

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SCOTLAND
BBC News

[with video]

29 July 2013

The Abbot President of the Benedictines, which ran Fort Augustus, has apologised to any victims of child abuse, after the BBC uncovered evidence of serious physical and sexual abuse at the boarding school.

Accounts of abuse at the now-closed Fort Augustus Abbey School, in the Highlands, and feeder school Carlekemp, in East Lothian, span 30 years.

Dom Richard Yeo said his organisation made mistakes in dealing with allegations of child abuse and it should not have happened.

BBC Scotland Investigates: Sins of Our Fathers will be broadcast on BBC One Scotland on Monday 29 July at 21:00, and for a week afterwards on the BBC iPlayer.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

The former head of the Catholic Church’s Professional Standards Office has told an inquiry into Hunter Valley sexual abuse people are encouraged to take allegations against clergy to police.

John Davoren is a former priest and social worker.

In the 1990s he was in charge of the church’s Professional Standards Office in NSW, which in 1996 developed the policy document ‘Towards Healing’ in response to its poor handling of sexual abuse complaints.

Mr Davoren will this morning continue giving evidence at the inquiry which is investigating claims the church covered up abuse by two priests.

Late yesterday he told the commission people who came forward with sexual abuse allegations against a priest were “encouraged to go to police”.

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SCOTLAND
The Guardian

Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent
The Guardian, Monday 29 July 2013

Dozens of pupils at exclusive Roman Catholic boarding schools in Scotland have alleged they were sexually and physically abused by monks, one of whom allegedly raped at least five boys.

Nine Benedictine monks who taught at the Fort Augustus Abbey school in the Highlands and its preparatory school in East Lothian have been accused of repeatedly beating, sexually assaulting and verbally abusing boys in their care over several decades.

One monk, Father Aidan Duggan, who taught at Fort Augustus and Carlkemp prep school, which both closed in the 1990s, was accused by five ex-pupils of raping and sexually abusing them, but they claim their allegations were ignored and rejected by two headteachers, according to the BBC.

Duggan, an Australian, died in 2004 after returning to become a parish priest in Sydney.

Another priest, Father Chrysostom Alexander, now 77, is also alleged to have abused one pupil at the Fort Augustus school in the 1970s.

Alexander, also an Australian, returned to work in Sydney and has now been suspended by the Catholic church after he was challenged about the allegations by a BBC journalist. Alexander did not respond to the allegations.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

ABC
July 30, 2013

A Catholic Priest has been charged with child pornography offences after a raid of a Sydney presbytery.

Detectives from the Sex Crimes Squad’s Child Exploitation Internet Unit (CEIU) went to the presbytery on Monday morning at about 10:45am with a search warrant.

They arrested the 56-year-old man and seized computers and storage devices for examination.

The priest was taken to The Rocks Police Station and charged with four counts of using a carriage service for child pornography.

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CONNECTICUT
The Hartford Courant

By DAVID OWENS, dowens@courant.com
The Hartford Courant
July 30, 2013

HARTFORD — An East Windsor teen who has been jailed since his arrest June 7 on charges that he manufactured bombs and planned a prank at his high school, had his bail reduced Monday in Superior Court in Hartford.

Bail for Kyle Bass had been $750,000, but Judge Joan K. Alexander reduced it to $350,000 after arguments by Bass’ lawyer, Jeremy Weingast, and comments by prosecutor Robin Krawczyk. The judge also gave Bass a 10 percent option for bail, meaning his parents could post $35,000 with the court clerk to have him released.

Bass was arrested after an East Windsor priest contacted police about weapons and explosives Bass possessed. The Rev. Paul Gotta also told police and federal authorities that Bass made troubling comments.

Monday, Krawczyk said Gotta’s credibility is now in question because of the priest’s arrest on federal firearms charges. Since most of the allegations against Bass were from Gotta, the state’s case has been weakened, she said.

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UNITED STATES
U.S. News and World Report

By ELIZABETH FLOCK
July 29, 2013

Gay and straight priests alike are cheering Pope Francis’s comments about homosexuality in the priesthood, saying gay priests make up a significant segment of the Catholic clergy and deserve papal recognition.

On a plane from Brazil Monday, Francis told reporters that, “if someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”

It’s a comment that stands in stark contrast to the policy of Francis’s predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, who signed a document in 2005 that said men with strong gay tendencies should not be priests.

According to Father James Bretzke, a professor of moral theology at Boston College, Francis’s comments aren’t a fundamental change in the church’s teaching, but represent a much-needed shift in attitude that reflects the reality of the priesthood.

“It’s an empirical fact that lots of men are gay who are priests. And they are very good priests,” he says. “I would also observe that the numbers of gay men and women in the church ministry is probably larger than the general population, precisely because they are not seeking marriage.”

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CALIFORNIA
Mercury News

Mercury News Editorial
POSTED: 07/29/2013

Pope Francis made two statements of historic proportion Monday.

He said of gays: “If they accept the Lord and have good will, who am I to judge them? They shouldn’t be marginalized. The tendency (to be homosexual) is not the problem. They are our brothers.”

What a heartening declaration from the Roman Catholic pontiff. We hope it helps open the minds of some vocal Christians opposed to gay rights.

We also were heartened to hear the pope carefully distinguish between being gay and being a predator. Chastising reporters for dwelling on possible homosexual affairs by priests, he said they are matters of sin — not crimes like sexually abusing children.

It is a distinction that opponents of gay rights often blur, and the pope’s reminder is timely. His church in California is strongly opposing a bill by State Sen. Jim Beall, D-San Jose, that would help victims of abuse. SB 131 should be approved as quickly as possible, and Gov. Jerry Brown should sign it.

Current state law allows childhood victims to sue abusers or abusers’ employers until age 26, or three years after psychological problems have been linked to the abuse. Beall wants victims to have another chance: SB 131 would open a one-year window Jan. 1, 2014 to file suit. One year is the most that victim advocates think can pass — partly because of intense lobbying by the church and some non-profit organizations.

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The Daily Beast

by Barbie Latza Nadeau Jul 29, 2013

The pope’s comment that he wouldn’t ‘judge’ gay priests seemed to augur a new era of inclusiveness from the church. But it may have been just the same old doctrine with a softer tone. By Barbie Latza

Just when you thought Pope Francis didn’t have any more surprises up his sleeve, there he goes again. On the papal flight back to Rome after a raucous reception for World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro on Monday, Francis gave an 80-minute Q&A session to journalists in which he seemed to soften the church’s stance on homosexuality in the priesthood. While stopping short of endorsing gay marriage, he did say something a pope has never said before. “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” he asked. By any previous standard of measure, judging is exactly what a pope is supposed to do. Apparently not so with Pope Francis—at least for now.

It seems all the hype about the evils of homosexuality was lost during the transition between now-retired Pope Benedict XVI and his predecessor. Certainly the message has been rewritten. In 2005, Benedict signed a far-reaching document banning men with “deep-rooted homosexual tendencies” from the priesthood. Francis has not exactly reversed the church’s stance, but the fact that he does not support automatically banning gays from the priestly vocation is a major step—or at least a great headline. In fact, everything Francis says and does is making news. Just four months into his pontificate, he is being touted as revolutionary and radical, shunning the lavish papal vices and rewriting the rules on how popes rule.

But those who know the church best caution that the pope’s rock-star popularity is vaguely familiar, and that four months is not long enough to make a legacy. “It reminds me of John Paul II in 1978,” says Vatican expert and National Catholic Reporter correspondent John Allen, who was in the press area of the papal plane when Francis came back to chat. “He was also a pope who changed the way the papacy had been run; he was on the cover of magazines; he was a revolutionary, too. But it didn’t take long to see that it was just a change in the style of delivering the message, not changing the message at all.”

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UNITED STATES
Los Angeles Times

By Michael McGough
July 29, 2013

In an interview with journalists on his flight back to Rome, Pope Francis said: “When I meet a gay person, I have to distinguish between their being gay and being part of a lobby. If they accept the Lord and have goodwill, who am I to judge them? They shouldn’t be marginalized. The tendency [to homosexuality] is not the problem…. They’re our brothers.”

Journalists and commentators — Roman Catholic and non-Catholic, conservative Catholic and liberal Catholic — quickly chimed in.

My colleague Tracy Wilkinson wrote: “The church has traditionally labeled homosexuality a ‘disorder’ and under Pope Benedict XVI, who resigned in February, men with ‘deep-seated tendencies’ toward homosexuality were to be barred from the priesthood. Francis’ comments seemed to back away from an absolute ban.”

The conservative National Catholic Register interpreted the pope’s comments more cautiously but with a bit of concern: “Taking his statements together, what emerges is a portrait of individuals who have same-sex attraction but who nevertheless accept the Lord and have goodwill, as opposed to working to advance a pro-homosexual ideology. This would definitely include people with same-sex attraction who strive to live chastely (even if they sometimes fail). It also, possibly, could include individuals who are not living chastely but who are not actively lobbying a homosexual agenda.” The Register added: “It would be nice if he’d said a little more to clarify the point further.”

Ross Douthat, the conservative Catholic New York Times columnist, tweeted: “Conservative Catholics suggesting there’s no news in the pope’s remarks are parsing the words, downplaying their context and spirit.”

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CANADA
Montreal Gazette

BY MONIQUE MUISE, THE GAZETTE JULY 29, 2013

MONTREAL – Gay-rights activists in Montreal reacted with a mixture of jubilation and caution on Monday after the head of the Roman Catholic Church stunned a plane full of reporters by declaring that he would not judge priests for their sexual orientation.

On an overnight flight from Rio de Janeiro to Rome, Pope Francis defied centuries of anti-gay rhetoric within the church when he publicly declared that “if a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge him?”

The pontiff then went a step farther, saying that every human being deserves respect, whatever their sexual orientation.

“The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well. It says (homosexuals) should not be marginalized because of this (orientation) but that they must be integrated into society,” he said, speaking in Italian.

Martine Roy, president of Montreal-based advocacy group Fondation Émergence, was stunned by the pope’s words.

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The New York Times

[with video]

By ROBERT MACKEY

During a news conference on his flight back to Rome from Brazil on Monday, Pope Francis was asked about his much-reported acknowledgement last month that there is “a gay lobby” inside the Vatican hierarchy.

“Quite a lot has been written about the gay lobby. I have yet to find someone who introduces himself at the Vatican with an identity card marked ‘gay,’” the pope joked. “But we must distinguish the fact that a person is gay from the fact of lobbying, because no lobbies are good.”

“If a person is gay,” he added, “and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”

As my colleague Rachel Donadio explains, the pope’s remarks seemed startling to some observers since his predecessor, Benedict XVI, wrote in 2010 that men with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” should not become priests.

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CANADA
The Canadian Jewish News

Avrum Rosenweig

There needs to be a concerted effort in Canada to write and teach the real history of native Canadians – in the public and private school systems, from the pulpits and at the crossroads of every small and large community.

As it stands, your average “Joe and Mary Canadian” is making no effort to discover the truth, and that’s a problem.

That means Canadians, by and large, aren’t entirely aware of who we are as a people, so our self-identity is limited. Yet when we punched the living crap out of native Canadian children in residential schools, the grimy mud and blood stains stayed on our shirts. They need to be cleaned.

The worst part of it is that those kids lying on the roadway as adults, crushed in more ways than one, can’t get up.

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CANADA
CBC News

Advocates for victims of residential school abuse say their voices are not being heard in a court case that’s to decide what to do with documents from an investigation of the alleged abuse.

The federal government has asked the courts for help in deciding what to do with the documents, which stem from a police investigation into abuse at a residential school in northern Ontario.

The government wants a legal opinion on whether the documents can be released to Ontario Superior Court, which is overseeing implementation of a settlement of a class-action lawsuit against Ottawa.

But the victims need to be represented in Ontario court, and the federal government should ensure they have legal counsel present, says New Democrat MP Charlie Angus.

“For this legal opinion to be valid, the survivors have to be there,” Angus told a news conference Monday.

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Shawn Ahmed

I first met Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz in a hotel lobby three years ago. He overheard me talking about my Muslim faith and the charity work I do and randomly approached me. We’ve been friends ever since.

Last year, when I was forced to come out as gay, I surprisingly found my friendship with this ultra-orthodox conservative Hasidic Rabbi strengthened. The rabbi showed me greater empathy, understanding, and compassion about why I accepted my sexuality and why I had to come out publicly than even my own family.

More recently, partly in response to recent national media attention on the matter, Rabbi Berkowitz has become extremely vocal about addressing suspicions and concerns of sexual and other forms of abuse within the Hasidic Jewish community.

Unfortunately for Rabbi Berkowitz, this will be an uphill battle. I know this first hand after I was confronted with evidence that my boyfriend (now ex-boyfriend) watched and possessed child pornography, had sexual fantasies involving children, and had relations with at least one minor as an adult.

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MICHIGAN
The Cardinal Newman Society

July 29, 2013, at 2:27 PM | By Matthew Archbold

Following the lead of Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston and Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, Archbishop Allen Vigneron of the Archdiocese of Detroit has banned Austrian priest Father Helmut Schüller from speaking at Catholic institutions, according to The Detroit Free Press.
Fr. Schüller is reportedly “irritated” by the response he has received from the Church.

In 2011, Fr. Schüller of Austria led a movement that issued a “Call to Disobedience,” which advocated for the ability of divorced and remarried Catholics to receive sacraments as well as the ordination of women and married men. Currently, Fr. Schüller is touring the United States on what’s called “The Catholic Tipping Point” tour, which is being sponsored by organizations such as Call to Action, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, Dignity USA, Future Church, New Ways Ministry, Women’s Ordination Conference, and Voice of the Faithful among others.

In June, Cardinal Sean O’Malley barred Fr. Schüller from speaking in a parish in the Archdiocese of Boston. Earlier this month, after being alerted to an event that was to be held at the Catholic Chestnut Hill College, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia requested that the college cancel the appearance because Fr. Schüller’s presence there would “damage the unity” of the Church. Sadly, the college refused and was the only Catholic institution in the country to host Fr. Schüller’s tour.

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OHIO
National Catholic Reporter

Laurie Petrie | Jul. 29, 2013

CINCINNATI
During his U.S. speaking tour, Austrian priest Fr. Helmut Schüller learned an expression that was new to him: “elephant in the living room.”

In Detroit, where he spoke before arriving here Saturday, he met with a group of reform-minded priests who have adopted the expression as their name.

“I like this so much,” Schüller said, “that I will bring it back to Europe to help articulate what the problem is.”

One problem of which Schüller is well aware is that U.S. priests face a different situation than those in his country. There, in 2006, he and fellow clergy members founded the Austrian Priests’ Initiative to spur open discussions about problems in the Catholic church and later gained international attention with their “Call to Disobedience.”

“[U.S.] priests are dependent on the bishops for their livelihood, so one has to be cautious,” Schüller said in an interview before his talk. “But I am encouraging the priests to speak out and to risk some conflicts with the bishops, to stand with the people of God, to take sides and risk some conflicts.”

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Rome Reports

[with video]

July 29, 2013. (Romereports.com) While on his way to Brazil, Pope Francis promised journalists, a press conference on his way back to Rome. Despite being tired, he kept his promise. For an hour and 22 minutes, he held a press conference, where nothing was off limits. For the first time he talked about controversial issues like the role of women in the Church, the Vatican Bank and he even talked about the so called ‘gay lobby.’

POPE FRANCIS
“Quite a lot has been published about the gay lobby. I have yet to find someone who introduces himself at the Vatican, with a ‘gay ID card.’ In these situations, it’s important to distinguish between a gay person and a gay lobby, because having a lobby is never good. If a gay person, is a person of good will who seeks God, who am I to judge? The catechism of the Church explains this very beautifully. It outlines that gays should not be marginalized.”

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CHICAGO (IL)
National Catholic Reporter

Robert McClory | Jul. 29, 2013 NCR Today

Cardinal Francis George was much distressed last week when he was told that the Association of Chicago Priests had invited its members to attend a meeting with Fr. Helmut Schüller at a Catholic church before his talk, sponsored by Call to Action and other reform groups, July 24 in Chicago.

Schüller, head of the Austrian Priests’ Initiative, is traveling around the country urging Catholics to speak freely about their concerns for the church. George reportedly upbraided the chair of the ACP, threatened to take punitive action against the organization and indicated his disappointment that it would extend itself to a man such as Schüller.

In fact, the ACP had not endorsed Schüller. The chair, Fr. Dennis Ziomek (acting on his own initiative), had merely notified those on his email list of the Austrian priest’s willingness to talk. Meanwhile, the pastor of the parish where the conversation was to take place had already canceled the event at his church immediately upon learning that the auxiliary bishop of his vicariate was urgently trying to contact him. Fr. Dennis O’Neill, the pastor, then arranged for the meeting to take place instead at a nearby Presbyterian church.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Friends of Fr. Joseph Jiang

[the lawsuit]

Seeing Father this past week reminds me of how important our work is. His spiritual conversations are inspiring and encouraging to me. He offers all this humiliation to Jesus for our intentions. I in turn tell him that we are offering our own trials for his intentions. The mystical body of Christ at work! I have often told him that we don’t do this just for him, but to defend our Holy Mother the Church and our innocent priests. He realizes that he is nothing special and is eternally grateful for his friends who support him. God bless you! Lucy

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Riverfront Times

[Friends of Fr. Joseph Jiang]

By Sam Levin Mon., Jul. 29 2013

The sex abuse allegations against Father Xiu Hui “Joseph” Jiang received renewed attention this month with St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson facing a subpoena and church leaders facing a lawsuit from the accuser’s family. As the criminal investigation and legal complaint move forward, a group of Jiang supporters have emerged, most recently launching a website to defend the local priest.

“We believe in Father Joseph’s innocence,” says Lucy Hannegan, who created the Friends of Fr. Joseph Jiang website. “We don’t want to see him tried and convicted in the court of public opinion.”

Victims’ advocates, however, are slamming this public defense of Jiang as an irresponsible campaign that is damaging and offensive to the accuser and her family.

Jiang has been on administrative leave from his position as an associate pastor at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis since allegations first surfaced last year. Jiang is accused of repeatedly molesting a teenage girl in her home and victims’ groups say Carlson tried to cover it up. The lawsuit filed earlier this month alleges that Jiang admitted the abuse to Carlson and tried to pay the family to keep quiet. The complaint also says that Carlson and Jiang were very close and that the archbishop attempted to tamper with evidence by asking the family to give back Jiang’s payments. …

David Clohessy, executive director of SNAP, points to the fact that Archdiocese officials did remove Osborne’s priestly authority.

“If people think Osborne is innocent, they need to take it up with church officials, not us,” Clohessy says.

Of the continued effort to defend Jiang, he says, “It’s just so difficult for people to believe that a man who treated them nicely can be a monster to others.”

“Child molesters don’t have forked tongues and devil horns,” he says. “They are almost all…without exception charismatic.”

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OHIO
National Catholic Reporter

Lori Lesko | Jul. 29, 2013

CLEVELAND The only way to restore the church to the people is to revisit the Second Vatican Council and openly discuss with the church hierarchy the polarizing issues of optional celibacy, the ordination of women and welcoming lesbian and gay couples to the sacraments. This was the message Austrian reformist priest Fr. Helmut Schüller delivered to a crowd of 400 on Thursday at the Independence Middle School in Greater Cleveland.

Catholics need to return to the spirit of Vatican II and “become citizens of the church again,” Schüller said, urging women to continue speaking out for their rights.

Cleveland is one stop of the 15-city “Catholic Tipping Point” tour, sponsored by 10 progressive Catholic organizations including the Cleveland-based FutureChurch. The organizations support Schüller’s calls for inclusive and transparent changes to church governance, including greater lay participation, inclusive ministries and justice for LGBT persons within the church.

Founder of the Austrian Priests’ Initiative, Schüller issued a global “Call to Disobedience” in 2011, calling for the admission of women and married people to the priesthood as well as greater lay leadership and transparency in church governance. More than 70 percent of Austria’s priests positively received the statement, and similar reform movements have spread to Germany, France, Ireland, England, Switzerland, Australia and the United States and include thousands of priests.

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UNITED STATES
WBUR – Here and Now

Pope Francis spoke with reporters this morning in an extraordinary, impromptu press conference on board his plane on the way back to Italy from Brazil.

The National Catholic Reporter’s John Allen Jr. writes that the 76-year-old Pope stood the whole time and never refused a question, even thanking a reporter who asked about charges of homosexual conduct against his appointee to reform the Vatican bank.

And when Francis was asked about the Vatican’s alleged “gay lobby,” the Pope replied that while a lobby might be an issue, he doesn’t have a problem with homosexuality itself, telling reporters “Who am I to judge them if they’re seeking the Lord in good faith?”

Gary Meier, an openly gay priest in St. Louis, Missouri, says the statements by Pope Francis this morning are “affirming,” and an improvement over then-Cardinal Bergoglio’s previous statement that gay marriage is the work of the devil.

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UNITED STATES
National Review

By Kathryn Jean Lopez
July 29, 2013

Papal plane rides have been known to get people talking. Infamously, there was Pope Benedict’s plane ride to Africa, when a remark about condoms was woefully misunderstood (and the cardinal archbishop of Buenos Aires, the man who would later be pope, was one of the explainers/B16 defenders, as it happens).

And here we are again! After spending time with each reporter on the plane ride over, but expressing his reluctance to do interviews, the pope talked openly with reporters on the trip back to Rome, even thanking them for their questions about sensitive issues.

What’s making news is an announcement that he has broken away from Pope Benedict on the issue of homosexuality and the priesthood. Reading John Allen’s notes from the conversation, that doesn’t quite seem to be the story.

“There’s a lot of talk about the gay lobby, but I’ve never seen it on the Vatican ID card!”

“When I meet a gay person, I have to distinguish between their being gay and being part of a lobby. If they accept the Lord and have good will, who am I to judge them? They shouldn’t be marginalized. The tendency [to homosexuality] is not the problem . . . they’re our brothers.”

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SCOTLAND
BBC News

[with video]

29 July 2013

A BBC investigation has uncovered evidence of serious physical and sexual abuse at the now-closed Fort Augustus Abbey School in the Highlands and feeder school Carlekemp in East Lothian.

The programme uncovered allegations of child abuse by an Australian monk at Fort Augustus, Father Chrysostom Alexander.

He was sent back to Australia – with no warnings about his offending – after the boy’s parents complained to the school. The school’s former headmaster Francis Davidson, failed to alert police to the allegation.

Father Davidson declined to be interviewed but in a statement said: “In behalf of the former monastic community and of the school of Fort Augustus Abbey, I wish to offer the most sincere and profound apology to the victim and his family for any abuse committed by Father Chrysostom Alexander.”

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All Voices

Pope Francis made a seismic shift in Vatican policy this week. He appeared to accept the service of gay priests who don’t act on their sexuality.

The implications can’t be overstated. It has the potential to influence the views of those opposed to LGBTQ legal rights in many American states and countries throughout the world.

Celibacy is a requirement to serve in the Catholic priesthood. Hence, it shouldn’t matter if the priest is gay or straight. Hence, celibacy becomes the key, not the sexual orientation. This changes much of the discussion.

According to the pope, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” He added, “You can’t marginalize these people.”

The comments raise questions about long-standing Vatican policies that are spiritually and emotionally abusive. The predecessor of Pope Francis, Benedict, said homosexuality, “is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.” Of course, science has long rebutted the notion homosexuality is a “disorder.”

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Los Angeles Times

By Tracy Wilkinson
July 29, 2013

RIO DE JANEIRO — His first overseas trip behind him, Pope Francis has made conciliatory remarks about the roles of gays and women in the Roman Catholic Church and allowed that the troubled Vatican bank may have to be shut down altogether.

In comments to reporters aboard the flight that on Monday returned him to Rome from Rio de Janeiro, the pope said that he opposed any type of lobby that might try to influence his decisions. He was responding to a question about the so-called gay lobby inside the Vatican that some officials have alleged exists as a cabal of gay priests who run the Holy See.

He said it was important to distinguish between a lobby, which he did not approve of, and priests or other Catholics who might be gay.

“If a person is gay, seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?” Francis said. “They should not be marginalized.”

The church has traditionally labeled homosexuality a “disorder,” and under Pope Benedict XVI, who resigned in February, men with “deep-seated tendencies” towards homosexuality were to be barred from the priesthood. Francis’ comments seemed to back away from an absolute ban.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on media reaction to remarks made by Pope Francis on homosexual priests:

The pope speaks about materialism for one straight week in Brazil before millions of people, and his formal comments garner 74 news stories on Lexis-Nexis. He speaks off-the-cuff about homosexual priests before a handful of reporters on the airplane going back to Rome and his remarks trigger 220 news stories. One might logically conclude that the pope broke some new ground with his comments on gay priests. But he didn’t.

When asked about homosexual priests, Pope Francis said, “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge him?” He added that “The problem is not having this orientation. We must be brothers. The problem is lobbying by this orientation….”

Pope Benedict XVI, responding to the homosexual scandal in the Catholic Church (one more time—less than 5 percent of the cases of priestly sexual abuse involved pedophilia), did not make it impossible for gays to enter the priesthood; he simply made it more difficult for those who were practicing gays to enter. Pope Francis said nothing to contradict what his predecessor said. And by addressing the gay lobby, he was clearly speaking out against what the late Father Andrew Greeley called the “lavender mafia.”

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Catholic News Agency

Rome, Italy, Jul 29, 2013 / 09:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis finished off his trip to Brazil with one last unscripted moment by holding a 1 hour and 20 minute press conference during the flight back to Rome.

The July 28 meeting with journalists covered everything from the canonization of Blessed John Paul II to an investigation of a Vatican monsignor who allegedly lived in a homosexual relationship.

Monsignor Battista Ricca was recently made secretary of the commission of cardinals that oversees the Vatican bank. He was the target of an internal investigation after Italy’s L’Espresso magazine accused him of improprieties while working at the papal nunciature in Uruguay from 1999 to 2001.

Further inquiry “found nothing,” said the Pope.

“I’d like to add,” the pontiff said according to news reports, “that many times we seem to seek out the sins of somebody’s youth and publish them. We’re not talking about crimes, which are something else. The abuse of minors, for instance, is a crime.

“But one can sin and then convert, and the Lord both forgives and forgets. We don’t have the right to refuse to forget … it’s dangerous,” he said.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Riverfront Times

By Sam Levin Mon., Jul. 29 2013

The sex abuse allegations against Father Xiu Hui “Joseph” Jiang received renewed attention this month with St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson facing a subpoena and church leaders facing a lawsuit from the accuser’s family. As the criminal investigation and legal complaint move forward, a group of Jiang supporters have emerged, most recently launching a website to defend the local priest.

“We believe in Father Joseph’s innocence,” says Lucy Hannegan, who created the Friends of Fr. Joseph Jiang website. “We don’t want to see him tried and convicted in the court of public opinion.”

Victims’ advocates, however, are slamming this public defense of Jiang as an irresponsible campaign that is damaging and offensive to the accuser and her family.

Jiang has been on administrative leave from his position as an associate pastor at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis since allegations first surfaced last year. Jiang is accused of repeatedly molesting a teenage girl in her home and victims’ groups say Carlson tried to cover it up. The lawsuit filed earlier this month alleges that Jiang admitted the abuse to Carlson and tried to pay the family to keep quiet. The complaint also says that Carlson and Jiang were very close and that the archbishop attempted to tamper with evidence by asking the family to give back Jiang’s payments.

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National Catholic Reporter

John L. Allen Jr. | Jul. 29, 2013 NCR Today

Rome
One way to tell that a pope is feeling good at the end of a long trip is when he comes back to the press compartment and does precisely what he said at the beginning of the journey he won’t, or can’t, do.

On the way to Rio de Janeiro on July 22, Pope Francis told reporters that “I don’t give interviews.” But at the end of his seven-day tour de force in Brazil, not only did the pope give an interview, it was a whopper.

He took questions from reporters traveling aboard the papal plane for a full hour and twenty-one minutes, with no filters or limits and nothing off the record.Francis stood for the entire time, answering without notes, and never refusing to take a question. The final query was a especially delicate one, about charges of homosexual conduct against his recently appointed delegate to reform the Vatican bank, and not only did Francis answer but he actually thanked reporters for the question.

On background, officials said the decision to hold the news conference aboard the 12-hour flight from Rio de Janeiro to Rome was a personal decision by Francis, and that aides at one point had actually counseled him against it.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

By Damian Thompson
Last updated: July 29th, 2013

Three million. That’s more than the entire population of Albania. Or Jamaica. The crowds of young people who greeted Pope Francis on Rio’s Copacabana beach yesterday demonstrate his extraordinary appeal; Benedict XVI couldn’t have attracted such jaw-dropping numbers. How many were devout participants in World Youth Day is another question: one poll claimed that 65 per cent disagreed with Catholic teaching on birth control. But if Francis was attracting “cafeteria Catholics” or non-believers, then he’d surely say: so much the better.

The spectacle of a Pope visiting a muddy Brazilian slum in order to scold the rich has delighted most Catholics. Some traditionalists are less easily won over, however. They distrust a humility that’s expressed in soundbites and photo-ops. Benedict, they point out, is just as humble a man. When Francis said last week that the Catholic Church was “perhaps too cold, too caught up with itself, perhaps a prisoner of its own rigid formulas,” they take it personally. Some of them will not be pleased by the Pope’s statement, on the plane back from Brazil, that “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge him?”

Actually, I don’t think the Pope intended to criticise his predecessor, and he is not changing Catholic teaching on the sinfulness of homosexual acts. But there’s no doubt that he’s presenting it in a more relaxed manner, and he’s moving the Church away from its recent position – formulated amid panic over sex abuse – that celibate gay men pose too much of a risk to be ordained. That was a ridiculous and insulting stance which, if it were enforced retrospectively, would leave parishes all over the world without a priest.

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Chicago Pride

“Who am I to judge a gay person of goodwill who seeks the Lord? You can’t marginalize these people.”
— Pope Francis, speaking yesterday aboard the papal plane on his way back to Vatican City from World Youth Day.

The pope was responding to a question from a reporter, who asked him what he would do if he learned that a priest in his ranks was gay but celibate.

Don’t expect Francis to be flying a rainbow flag anytime soon — remember, this is the guy who thinks marriages like mine are the work of Satan and an “anthropological throwback” — but considering that his predecessor, Benedict XVI, wanted to block “deep-seated” gay men from the priesthood entirely, this is a step in the right direction. (Wonder how long it’ll take for the Vatican to walk this one back?)

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WISCONSIN
Wisconsin State Journal

DOUG ERICKSON | Wisconsin State Journal | derickson@madison.com | 608-252-6149

When Madison Catholic Bishop Robert Morlino was a parish priest in Kalamazoo, Mich., he handled the issue of altar servers by using all girls one weekend, then all boys the next, he said. The alternating schedule helped eliminate “distractions,” he said.

That was just one of many items I didn’t have space for in Sunday’s article on Morlino’s 10-year tenure. A few others:

On how he’ll mark his 10-year anniversary Thursday. “I’m not so much into celebrating myself, although I’m totally grateful for the 10 years I’ve had here. Only God knows how truly grateful I am.” He’s more inclined to have a little gathering next year upon his 40th anniversary as a priest, he said.

On how he handles criticism: “I’ve certainly grown in my ability to deal with that aspect of my life here. If God gives you the call, he also gives you the grace to handle the call, and the Lord has been very generous to me in his grace.”

On how Catholics should approach worship: “Some people were going to Mass to be entertained — ‘I go to St. So-and-So because I like the music,’ or ‘I go to St. So-and-So because I like the priest.’ I like, I like, I like. The reason Catholics go to Mass is to offer sacrifice. It’s not to be entertained or to do what they like.”

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Catholic News Service

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

ABOARD THE PAPAL FLIGHT FROM BRAZIL (CNS) — Pope Francis said he was responding to the clear wishes of the College of Cardinals when he set up commissions to study the Vatican bank, Vatican financial and administrative procedures and the reform of the Roman Curia.

The pope also said he knows people have spoken about some kind of “gay lobby” at the Vatican protecting certain priests by threatening to blackmail others. The pope said the “lobbying” is what is worrisome.

Pope Francis held his first news conference July 28, shortly after the Alitalia flight taking him back to Rome departed from Rio de Janeiro. He answered questions from 21 journalists over a period of 80 minutes. The questions were not submitted in advance and no topics were ruled out of bounds.

Asked about the Vatican bank, Pope Francis said he does not know what will become of the Institute for the Works of Religion, which is the formal name of the scandal-plagued bank. He has appointed an outside commission and is involved in discussions about how to organize it, “how to restore it, reformulate it.”

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The New York Times

By RACHEL DONADIO
Published: July 29, 2013

ROME — Striking a breathtakingly conciliatory approach to a hot-button issue that has divided Catholics, Pope Francis on Monday said that he would not judge priests for their sexual orientation. “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Francis said, according to media reports.

His comments came in an unprecedented 80-minute news conference with reporters on his plane returning from a papal visit to Brazil for World Youth Day, in which he spoke openly about everything from the troubled Vatican Bank to the greater role that he believed women should have in the Catholic Church.

His predecessor, Benedict XVI, who retired in February, wrote a Vatican document that said that men with homosexual tendencies should not become priests. During his papal trips, Benedict responded only to a handful of preselected questions from reporters.

Reporters on the plane said that the pope had been candid and high-spirited and didn’t dodge a single question, even thanking the person who asked about reports of a “gay lobby” inside the Vatican, and about Italian press reports that one of the advisers he had appointed to look into the Vatican Bank had been accused of having gay trysts.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Northern Echo

THE ARCHBISHOP of York has appointed a judge to head an inquiry into the handling of allegations of child abuse by a former senior clergyman.

Judge Sally Cahill QC is to chair an independent inquiry into issues surrounding reports that the Very Reverend Robert Waddington, who died in 2007, groomed and abused a chorister in Manchester in the 1980s.

The former Dean of Manchester Cathedral is also said to have targeted a pupil at a boarding school in Queensland, Australia, where he was headteacher in the 1960s.

According to an investigation by a national newspaper, Lord Hope of Thornes was informed of the two claims in 1999 and 2003, while he was Archbishop of York.

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UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on July 28, 2013

Your question of the day:

You see a child being sexually abused and beaten on a street corner. Whom do you call? Answer: The local university, your bishop, your commander or the leader of the closest nonprofit.

Ridiculous? Of course it is. Utterly absurd? Yes. Child endangerment? You bet. So let’s try again with the correct answer: You call law enforcement. Why? Because law enforcement is in the investigation business. Universities, churches, corporate entities and other nonprofits are NOT.

So why do we act so absurdly when we witness abuse on the Penn State campus, at the local parish, or a college campus? Because we were (wrongly) told and convinced it is the right thing to do.

We need to re-calibrate our thinking: institutions should never be in the sex abuse investigation business. When it comes to crime, our loyalty is to justice and accountability, not institutions.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

DANIEL MCCONNELL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT – 28 JULY 2013

ABUSE survivors of the Protestant Bethany Home who failed in their bid for inclusion in the State’s €1.5bn redress scheme have branded Ministers Alan Shatter and Kathleen Lynch as “grossly arrogant” in their attitude towards them.

Ms Lynch was singled out for particular criticism by survivors.

The survivors also said it is now their intention to launch litigation against the Government in order to obtain “justice from the State that abandoned us”.

The scathing attack on the ministers relates to a meeting in Leinster House earlier this year.

The survivors said they kept quiet about it up until now for fear of jeopardising their bid for justice.

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Gazzetta del Sud

Rome, July 29 – Pope Francis said Monday that he was pained by the case of a Vatican prelate arrested for alleged involvement in a failed bid to bring 20 million euros into Italy illegally. Mons. Nunzio Scarano, who until recently led a key Vatican accounting unit, was arrested in June in a probe over allegations he conspired with a former Italian spy and a financial broker to try to secretly repatriate the cash, allegedly the fruit of tax evasion by a family close to the prelate.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Centres Against Sexual Assault see more clients but miss out on Federal Government funding

EMMA HASTINGS
MAROONDAH LEADER JULY 29, 2013

SEXUAL assault support centres – including Ringwood East’s Centre Against Sexual Assault – are seeing up to 20 per cent more clients due to the Royal Commission but won’t be getting any ­extra funding.

The Federal Government recently announced 28 ­organisations across Australia would share in $45 million to support victims of sexual abuse who present to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

But none of the state’s Centres Against Sexual Assault received funding, spokeswoman Carolyn Worth said.

“I think there’s something quite bizarre about having a specialised service system in Victoria that deals with victims of sexual assault (CASAs) and (the Government) funds relationship agencies (instead).”

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VATICAN CITY
IOL

July 29 2013
By Reuters

Rome – Italy and the Vatican have signed an agreement over exchanging financial and bank information to combat money laundering, the Vatican said on Monday.

“The Holy See and the Vatican City State take international responsibilities concerning anti money laundering and the financing of terrorism very seriously and Italy is an especially important partner for us,” the Vatican said in a statement.

The statement confirmed a report by Reuters last week .

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Reuters

Mon Jul 29, 2013

(Reuters) – Pope Francis said the troubled Vatican bank must become “honest and transparent” and that he will listen to the advice of a commission he has set up on whether it can be reformed or needs to be shut down altogether.

The pope made his comments, his most detailed to date on the bank’s troubles, in his first news conference, a remarkably frank 80-minute meeting with reporters on Sunday night shortly after his plane left Brazil at the end of his first international trip.

“I don’t know what will become of the bank. Some say it is better that is a bank, others that it should be a charitable fund and others say close it,” he said.

The bank, formally known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), is the target of several investigations by Italian magistrates on suspicion of money laundering.

“We have to find the solution,” Francis said. “But whatever the solution, it must have transparency and honesty. That’s the way it must be,” he said.

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ROME
Chiesa

He has touched upon the sore spot of the Mass in the ancient rite. Ratzinger permitted its celebration for all. Bergoglio has prohibited it for one religious order that favored it

by Sandro Magister

ROME, July 29, 2013 – One point on which Jorge Mario Bergoglio was eagerly expected to weigh in, after his election as pope, was that of the Mass in the ancient rite.

There were those who predicted that Pope Francis would not distance himself from the stance of his predecessor. Who had liberalized the celebration of the Mass in the ancient rite as an “extraordinary” form of the modern rite, with the motu proprio “Summorum Pontificum” of July 7, 2007:

And there were instead those who prognosticated on the part of Francis a restriction – or even a cancellation – of the possibility of celebrating the Mass with the rite prior to Vatican Council II, even at the cost of contradicting the decisions of Benedict XVI with him still alive.

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NEW JERSEY
Patch

Posted by Ann Piccirillo (Editor) , July 29, 2013

The Rev. Thomas Iwanowski, who stepped down as Pastor of St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church in Oradell Sunday, said that the priest he let stay at the rectory, Robert Chabak, is not a child molester, according to a NorthJersey.com report.

Iwanowski told NorthJersey.com, “I absolutely believe he’s not guilty of those charges, that he’s innocent,” likening the accusation of sexually molesting a child as the “equivalent of being guilty” due to the attention surrounding these types of allegations.

Chabak, 66, a priest removed from the ministry in 2004 after evidence supported allegations that he molested a teenaged boy over a three-year period during the 1970’s, was living in the rectory of St. Joseph’s Church in Oradell. Chabak was given permission to move into St. Joseph’s rectory by the Newark Archidiocese and Iwanowski, after his house in Normandy Beach was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy.

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

SUNDAY, JULY 28, 2013
BY JEFF GREEN
STAFF WRITER
The Record

ORADELL — On his final Sunday as pastor of St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church, the Rev. Thomas Iwanowski said he doesn’t believe the priest who stayed in the parish rectory for months is a child abuser.

Iwanowski is stepping down Wednesday amid a controversy over his friend, Monsignor Robert Chabak, who was accused of molesting a teenage boy during the 1970s and permitted to live in the church after his home was destroyed by Superstorm Sandy.

On Sunday, Iwanowski maintained that Chabak followed Newark Archdiocese restrictions that he stay in the living quarters except to attend Mass. He also said Chabak was not an abuser.

“I absolutely believe he’s not guilty of those charges, that he’s innocent,” Iwanowski said in an interview, adding that an accusation of child sexual abuse against a priest is the “equivalent of being guilty” because of the publicity that surrounds such cases.

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AUSTRALIA
Maitland Mercury

By ELLE WATSON July 29, 2013

A former Nelson Bay priest has denied telling whistleblower Peter Fox that a sexual abuse victim accused priests of doing “filthy things” to children in the 1990s.

Charlestown priest Father Bob Searle was working as the Nelson Bay parish priest in the late 1990s when he said a drunk parishioner came to the presbytery about 7.30pm and yelled: “Nobody loves me”.

The man, known as AH who was abused by paedophile priest James Fletcher, read a statutory declaration to the commission of inquiry into alleged cover-ups of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church last week.

Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox, who’s claims of a church cover-up sparked the inquiry, has previously told Commissioner Margaret Cunneen that Father Searle told him AH was drunk and yelling about priests doing “filthy things” to young boys.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

The inquiry into child sexual abuse in the New South Wales Hunter Valley will hear more evidence from senior Catholic clergy when the public hearings resume this morning.

The inquiry has previously heard a victim of paedophile priest James Fletcher went to a Nelson Bay presbytery drunk and angry, accusing priests of “doing filthy things to little boys”.

Peter Fox, the senior policeman who sparked the special commission, said the parish priest at the time, father Bob Searle, told him about the incident but did not include the victim’s comments in his official statement.

Father Searle is expected to give evidence this morning when the eighth week of public hearings gets underway.

Father William Burston will also give evidence after the commissioner gave him a week’s reprieve because he had been “harassed” outside the inquiry by members of the public.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By IAN KIRKWOOD July 29, 2013

PRIESTS’ files were divided into ‘‘good’’ and ‘‘bad’’ sections according to a longstanding secretary to the past three Bishops of the Maitland-Newcastle Diocese of the Catholic Church.

Elizabeth Doyle told the Special Commission of Inquiry in Newcastle that she joined the office of the late Bishop Leo Clarke on January 4, 1993.

Since then she had served as secretary or executive assistant to Bishop Clarke, Bishop Michael Malone and the current Bishop, William Wright.

Asked by counsel assisting Warwick Hunt about the diocese’s filing systems, Ms Doyle said that in her early years she had no recourse to the files but believed they were all stored in the one cabinet ‘‘upstairs’’ in Bishop Clarke’s office.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Dan Cox

A New South Wales Hunter Valley Catholic priest has rejected claims at a public inquiry that he held back information from police because child sexual abuse allegations are “damaging and distasteful”.

Father Bob Searle was the parish priest at Nelson Bay, north of Newcastle, in the late 1990s.

In giving evidence to a Newcastle inquiry today, he said he remembered a person known as AH, a victim of paedophile priest James Fletcher, coming to the presbytery one night drunk and angry and yelling out “nobody loves me”.

Police whistleblower Peter Fox has said that, at the time, Father Searle told him AH was also yelling about priests “doing filthy things to little boys”, but it was not included in his statement to police.

Father Searle said that was because he never heard the comments.

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IRELAND
Irish Post

FURIOUS survivor has hit out at the religious orders that ran brutal Magdalene Laundries for failing to take immediate action and contribute to the Irish Government’s £50m redress scheme.

Despite being pressured by Justice Minister Alan Shatter to contribute financially to the scheme announced last month, the four religious orders that ran the laundries have not decided whether they will do so, The Irish Post has learned.

Kathleen Legg, a Bournemouth-based survivor who spent three years in a laundry, said: “I am happy with what I will be getting, but I am very angry that it looks like the Irish Government will have to pay the money when really it should be coming from the nuns.

“I will be so angry if the nuns are allowed to get off scot free. The money definitely should not be coming from the Government, depriving Irish people.”

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 29 July 2013 (VIS) – On 26 July the Financial Intelligence Authority (AIF) of the Holy See and Vatican City State signed a Memorandum of Understanding with its Italian counterpart, the Unità di Informazione Finanziaria (UIF) of the Bank of Italy, according to a memorandum published today.

The Memorandum was signed in Rome by Cardinal Attilio Nicora, President of AIF, and Dr. Claudio Clemente, director of UIF.

A Memorandum of Understanding is standard practice and formalizes the cooperation and exchange of financial information to fight money laundering and terrorist financing across borders between the competent authorities of both countries. It is based on the model Memorandum of Understanding prepared by the Egmont Group, the global organisation of national Financial Intelligence Units, and contains clauses on reciprocity, permitted uses of information and confidentiality.

“The Holy See and the Vatican City State take international responsibilities concerning Anti-Money Laundering and the Financing of Terrorism very seriously, and Italy is an especially important partner for us,” said AIF director Rene Bruelhart. “We look forward to continuing our work with the Italian Authorities in a constructive and fruitful manner. The Memorandum of Understanding is a clear commitment to strengthen our bilateral relationship and will facilitate the our joint efforts and fight against money laundering.”

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BRAZIL
The New York Times

By SIMON ROMERO
Published: July 28, 2013

RIO DE JANEIRO — Pope Francis celebrated the last Mass of his trip to Brazil on Sunday before more than a million people gathered on the beach in this city, the national flags of Catholics from around the world hoisted in the air as a chorus of Brazilian priests belted out songs before the multitude. It was a vibrant display of the Vatican’s ambition of halting the losses of worshipers to evangelical churches and the rising appeal of secularism.

By various measures, Francis’s first international trip since he was named pope this year was a success. The 76-year-old Argentine, a Jesuit who is the first pope from the Americas, was greeted like a rock star by attendees to a conference of Catholic youth. He urged people to combat corruption, a top grievance in the protests shaking Brazil, and called on bishops to focus on the pragmatic needs of congregants, shifting emphasis from the abuse scandals that have plagued the Vatican for years.

“If this trip is any indication, he’s off to a strong start at revitalizing the church,” said Andrew Chesnut, an expert on Latin American religions at Virginia Commonwealth University who came here to see the pope’s visit up close. “He’s been very astute on focusing on the everyday afflictions of the poor, taking a page from the evangelicals themselves.”

Before scolding Brazilian clergy at one point during the weeklong visit for losing touch with their own worshipers, by appearing “too distant from their needs,” Francis offered the example of visiting a medical center where drug addicts receive treatment. Still, he hewed to the Roman Catholic Church’s prevailing view on drugs, criticizing supporters of decriminalizing drug use, showing how a pope can seem at the same time to be caring and resistant to a profound shift under way in parts of the world.

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Wall Street Journal

By STACY MEICHTRY
ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE— Pope Francis opened the door Sunday to greater acceptance of gay priests inside the ranks of Roman Catholicism as he returned to the Vatican from his maiden trip overseas.

Fielding questions from reporters during the first news conference of his young papacy, the pontiff broached the delicate question of how he would respond to learning that a cleric in his ranks was gay, though not sexually active. For decades, the Vatican has regarded homosexuality as a “disorder,” and Pope Francis’ predecessor Pope Benedict XVI formally barred men with what the Vatican deemed “deep-seated” homosexuality from entering the priesthood.

“Who am I to judge a gay person of goodwill who seeks the Lord?” the pontiff said, speaking in Italian. “You can’t marginalize these people.”

Pope Francis celebrated the final Mass of his Brazil trip at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro Sunday.

The news conference was wide-ranging and hastily arranged aboard an overnight flight that returned the pontiff to Rome Monday from a weeklong trip to Brazil where millions of people flocked to see him, including three million at a Mass Sunday on the beach in Rio de Janeiro. The rock-star reception, analysts say, is likely to strengthen the pope’s hand as he confronts myriad challenges awaiting him at the Vatican, from corruption at the Vatican bank to the long-running sexual-abuse crisis.

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BBC News

Pope Francis has said gay people should not be judged or marginalised.

Speaking to reporters on a flight back from Brazil, he said: “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge him?”

The Pope’s remarks are being seen as much more conciliatory than his predecessor’s position on the issue.

Turning to the issue of women priests, he said the Church had spoken and had said “no”, but the role of women should not be restricted.

“We cannot limit the role of women in the Church to altar girls or the president of a charity, there must be more,” he said in a wide-ranging interview with Vatican journalists.

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NDTV

Rome: Pope Francis said the Roman Catholic Church’s ban on women priests is “definitive” although he would like them to have more leadership roles in its administration and pastoral activities.

The pope, speaking to reporters on Sunday night aboard the plane taking him home from a week-long visit to Brazil, said “the Church has spoken and says no … that door is closed.”

It was the first time he had spoken in public on the issue of women priests.

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NBC News

By Anne Thompson and Henry Austin

Pope Francis said “who am I to judge?” gay people as he discussed one of the most divisive issues affecting the Catholic Church Monday.

“I have yet to find anyone who has a business card that says he is gay,” the pontiff said at a press conference on his plane while returning from Brazil, where he talked about a number of subjects.

“They say they exist. If someone is gay, who searches for the Lord and has goodwill, who am I to judge?” he added.

The official position of the Catholic Church on the issue is that while homosexual desires or attractions are not in themselves sinful, the physical acts are.

Francis discussed a range of issues during the press conference, admitting that the church had not done enough to develop “the theology of women in the church.”

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Jersusalem Post

By REUTERS
07/29/2013

ROME – Pope Francis, in some of the most compassionate words from any pontiff on homosexuals, said gays should not be judged or marginalized and should be integrated into society.

In a conversation with journalists on board the plane bringing him back from a visit to Brazil on Sunday night, Francis defended gays from discrimination, but also referred to the Catholic Church’s universal Catechism, which says that while homosexual orientation is not sinful homosexual acts are.

Francis arrived back in Rome on Monday after a triumphant week-long tour of Brazil which climaxed with a huge gathering on Rio de Janeiro’s famed Copacabana beach which organizers estimated to have attracted more than 3 million people.

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Irish Examiner

Speaking to journalists on his return from World Youth Day celebrations in Brazil, the pontiff said gay clergymen should be forgiven and their sins forgotten.

When asked about homosexuality and the church, Pope Francis said: “If someone seeks the Lord in good faith, who am I to judge?”

Vatican observers say his comments are among the most “compassionate” words towards gay people by any pontiff.

Pope Francis also appeared to open the door towards women having a bigger role in the Church, but he said the “door had been closed” on women becoming priests.

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Sacramento Bee

By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press
Published: Monday, Jul. 29, 2013

ABOARD THE PAPAL AIRCRAFT — Pope Francis reached out to gays on Monday, saying he wouldn’t judge priests for their sexual orientation in a remarkably open and wide-ranging news conference as he returned from his first foreign trip.

“If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Francis asked.

His predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, signed a document in 2005 that said men with deep-rooted homosexual tendencies should not be priests. Francis was much more conciliatory, saying gay clergymen should be forgiven and their sins forgotten.

Francis’ remarks came Monday during a plane journey back to the Vatican from his first foreign trip in Brazil.

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MONTANA
Missoulian

Associated Press
HELENA – Attempts to settle allegations that hundreds of Montanans were sexually abused as children by Roman Catholic clergy have been stymied by challenges from the church’s insurers over which claims they are obligated to cover.

So attorneys representing the 360 alleged victims, along with lawyers for the Helena diocese, the Ursuline Sisters of the Western Province and District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock began laying out plans Wednesday for the first of what could be many trials beginning in December.

Attorneys for both sides said the outcome of the initial trials – unless the cases are resolved first – could act as a bellwether to gauge the extent to which Montana jurors would find the church liable and penalize it. That, in turn, could lead to settlements for the remainder of the cases.

The plaintiffs claim they were abused by priests, nuns and agents of the diocese between the 1930s and the late 1970s. The diocese and the Ursuline sisters knew of the abuse but did not stop it, the plaintiffs claim.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

“Good” and “bad” personnel files were kept on Hunter Valley Catholic priests, a special NSW commission of inquiry into pedophile activity has heard.

This has been disclosed by Elizabeth Doyle, appointed as secretary to Bishop Leo Clarke in 1993. She retained the position for two subsequent bishops, Michael Malone and the current Bill Wright.
Addressing the inquiry on Monday, Ms Doyle said the term “bad” files referred to confidential or “special issues” files that contained documents relating to all kinds of misconduct matters, including child sexual abuse.

She said she was unaware of “bad” files during her first two years in the job, but if they existed they would probably have been kept in Bishop Clarke’s upstairs office at the Maitland/Newcastle diocese headquarters.

He never discussed such matters with her, typed some of his own letters, did his own filing and she never opened any letters addressed to him.

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