ABUSE TRACKER

Springfield Bishop William D. Byrne has announced the creation of a nine-person committee to oversee the implementation of the recommendations of the Independent Task Force on the Response to Sexual Abuse within the Diocese of Springfield.  The Task Force’s strategic plan was shared with the public last September (http://diospringfield.org/12026-2/).

The committee members are Peter Caffrey, Henry East-Trou, Kristina Drzal Houghton, Jackie Humphreys, Ronald Johnson, Andrew Rome, James Ross, Jose Tosado, and Irene Woods. Caffrey is a survivor of clergy sexual abuse.

Jeffrey Trant, director of the diocesan Office of Safe Environment and Victim Assistance, will serve as senior staff to the committee.

“The Implementation and Oversight Committee is an important next step in turning the strategic plan that was developed with input from survivors, clergy and the broader community from words into concrete and meaningful actions,” said Trant. “The committee will set priorities, measure outcome, and serve as a…

View Cache

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield has named a nine-member committee tasked with overseeing reforms to how the church addresses sexual abuse.

On Wednesday, Springfield Bishop William Byrne announced that the new Implementation and Oversight Committee will lead the implementation of recommendations put forward by an independent task force that assessed the diocese’s response to sexual abuse.

Last September, the task force recommended changes to the process of responding to allegations of sexual abuse. Among its findings were that law enforcement should first investigate such accusations, not solely the diocese. The task force also nominated the slate of candidates who will now become members of the oversight committee.

In a statement, Byrne said that he was grateful to the diverse group who have accepted the invitation to serve on the committee. He said that work will ensure “that the diocese will improve its response to allegations of abuse within our…

View Cache

International law walks a tightrope between the rights of sovereign States and the rights of those who comprise them. Tip too far to either side and the system breaks – sovereignty either becomes unbridled power, or becomes meaningless. This delicate balancing is most evident when sovereign power and human rights directly collide, as was the case in J.C. and Others v. Belgium. The European Court of Human Rights (‘ECtHR’ or ‘the Court’) was asked to determine whether a grant of state(like) immunity for the Holy See could constitute a violation of Article 6(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights, which enshrines the right to a fair trial, as state immunity had effectively limited the right of access to a court for victims of sexual abuse by members of the Catholic Church in Belgium. Although the outcome – the ECtHR finding no violation – is predictable and follows…

View Cache

In September 2020, the Supreme Court of the Philippines acquitted a man of child sexual abuse charges after he impregnated a 12-year-old girl.

The incident took place in 2012, when the man was 27. He was sentenced to more than 14 years in jail by a lower court in 2016, but appealed. The defendant argued that the sexual relationship was consensual, since the girl bore him not just one but two children before he was sentenced.

The country’s top justices ruled in his favor, saying that the court was “not prepared to punish two individuals and deprive their children from having a normal family life simply because” the girl was a minor at the time. The court also ruled that the benefits of living in a nuclear family outweighed “any perceived dangers” from the relationship.

The persistence of such attitudes at the highest levels of the Philippine establishment is the result…

View Cache

The landmark passage of a law banning child marriage in the Philippines enacted on Thursday hopes to turn the cultural tides on whether marriage, relationships, and sex with those under the age of 18 is a cultural practice or statutory rape. While the law is viewed as a huge win, the fight still continues to raise the age of consent in the country from 12 to 16, and push the government for stricter enforcement while revising the cultural ethos in a country rife with gender inequality and long-standing practice of adult men dating or marrying young girls.

The age of consent for a child in the Philippines has been 12 for the past 90 years, one of the youngest in the world and the youngest in all of Asia. This has led to 1 and 6 girls in the Philippines marrying before the age of 18 and one child in…

View Cache

As we’ve noted on this blog many times, the problem of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church is not limited to the abuse of children. Adults can be victimized as well, a reality that the Catholic community has been slow to recognize. 

The case of former cardinal Theodore McCarrick illustrates this problem: The Vatican’s own investigation showed that Church officials knew about McCarrick’s abuse of young adult seminarians but largely ignored it for decades; they failed to take definitive action against McCarrick until they received a formal report in 2017 that he had abused a minor. 

But recent developments suggest that the abuse of adults is receiving more attention within the Church. 

CHANGES TO CANON LAW

In June 2021, Pope Francis released revisions to Book VI of the Code of Canon Law, which spells out the Church’s penal sanctions. The revisions specifically address cases…

View Cache

The date Jan. 6 means different things to people. For me, as a Catholic, it is the Feast of the Epiphany. It marks the date on the liturgical calendar when the Magi, according to the Bible, brought gifts to the baby Jesus.

This year, the date became a polarizing remembrance of the 2021 U.S. Capitol insurrection, riots or whatever else one calls it, depending on their political affiliation. For me, this Jan. 6 marked a special anniversary — the 20th anniversary of the groundbreaking Boston Globe “Spotlight” team’s investigation into predator priests. The series of articles won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 in the Public Service category.

I must admit that the anniversary went by without much fanfare. It’s surprising, given that the ramifications from those original series of news articles reverberate within the church, both in the U.S. and globally, and that it was even made into…

View Cache

Social media platforms could be forced to do more to tackle child sexual abuse online, under new European Union plans expected to be announced in the coming months.

The rules would replace current interim legislation that allows the voluntary reporting of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) with a legal obligation to recognise, report and remove it.

“I will propose legislation in the coming months that will require companies to detect, report, and remove child sexual abuse,” EU home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson told Germany’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday.

“A voluntary report will then no longer be sufficient,” she said.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, would be particularly affected by any change in regulations, Johansson told the paper. The company currently accounts for around 95 per cent of child sexual abuse notifications.

The EU’s current rules on reporting CSAM leave it up to social media platforms…

View Cache

The European Union plans to legislate in the coming months to require technology companies to do more to tackle child sexual abuse, beefing up current voluntary arrangements, a top official said in a newspaper interview.

EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson told Germany’s Welt am Sonntag that internet service providers and social media firms had reported 22 million offences related to child sexual abuse in 2020, up from 17 million in 2019.

But she said that was only a fraction of the real number.

“I will propose legislation in the coming months that will require companies to detect, report, and remove child sexual abuse,” Johansson was quoted as saying.

“A voluntary report will then no longer be sufficient.”

Under current EU rules, social media networks and mail and messenger services such as Facebook (FB.O) and Google (GOOGL.O) have a choice whether or not to follow up…

View Cache

A 2004 story in The New York Times bore the headline, all in caps: ABUSE SCANDAL HAS BEEN ENDED, TOP BISHOP SAYS.

That top bishop was a young Wilton Gregory who, two years earlier and as head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, had herded the rest of the U.S. hierarchy through the first phase of accountability for the scandal.

The headline was based on a Gregory declaration, made following the release of two studies of the scandal. “The terrible history recorded here today is history,” he said.

That, of course, turned out to be more wish than reality. The finality implied in the statement has yet eluded the bishops, a point made clear by the recent searing assessment by Barbara Thorp, who took on the job of directing the Boston Archdiocese’s response to victims back in 2002, when the ecclesial world there…

View Cache

A national framework for a five-year, $30 million (US$23.5 million) fundraising campaign to help with healing and reconciliation of residential school survivors and their communities is coming in the new year, Bishop William McGrattan, vice president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, told The Catholic Register weekly.

Church officials hoped that plans for the campaign, first announced Sept. 27, would be complete by November, but getting the framework in place for a national diocese-by-diocese effort has turned out to be more complicated than first thought.

Bishop McGrattan said he hoped that in January or February, “announcements of details would be able to be shared with the public and with Catholics.”

“We realize that it has taken longer than expected, but it’s important that we do this right and that we make sure that it is both transparent and that it demonstrates accountability,” Bishop McGrattan said.

“We’ve drawn upon the expertise of people in terms of…

View Cache

An essay by Kathleen McChesney on the impact of the U.S. bishops’ Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People drew a sharp rebuke by the executive director of the Survivor’s Network of Those Abused by Priests.

Zach Hiner, the group’s director, said the steps outlined in the charter “needed to be taken,” but he likened McChesney’s essay to “patting oneself for winning the marathon when you’re only a mile in.”

Hiner, in a Jan. 10 phone interview with Catholic News Service, said “delayed disclosure” of abuse is “a fact.” He noted that “most people in the United States do not come forward until their 50s,” so anyone abused in the past 20 years “would not likely be coming forward until 2030, 2040.”

The essay by McChesney, the first person to head the U.S. bishops’ Office for Child and Youth Protection, was published Jan. 5 by America Media, one day before the 20th anniversary of the first in a…

View Cache

Lawsuit filed under state’s new Child Sexual Abuse Accountability Act, which took effect Jan. 1

A Colorado woman on New Year’s Day sued a former schoolteacher and alleged he raped her when she was a teenager in the 1970s in what appears to be the first lawsuit filed under a new state law that opens up past sexual assaults of minors to civil liability.

Kate McPhee, 60, contends in the lawsuit that she was repeatedly raped by a then-teacher at Colorado Academy during the summer of 1977. McPhee was 15 and 16 at the time of the alleged assaults, according to the lawsuit.

She alleged in the lawsuit that the teacher, who was around the age of 30 at the time, raped her on the campus of Colorado Academy in Denver, then continued a series of assaults during three weeks of a river trip to the Grand Canyon that summer.

…

View Cache

After hearing emotional victim impact statements and then explicitly admitting in court that he sexually abused young boys several decades ago, a former Catholic priest withdrew his pleas of guilty and no contest Tuesday because an Oakland County judge rejected a light sentencing agreement offered by the Michigan’s Attorney General’s Office.

At his sentencing hearing in Oakland County Circuit Court, 80-year-old Gary Berthiaume exercised his right to pull back pleas of guilty to two counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct and no contest to one count of gross indecency stemming from allegations made when he was a priest at Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church in Farmington in the 1970s. A “Killebrew Agreement” with the prosecutor’s office called for one year and one day in prison In exchange for his pleas made last November. But O’Brien rejected the agreement and sentenced Berthiaume to 20 months to 15 years, ruling that…

View Cache

The family of a deceased man who said he was repeatedly sexually abused as a child by a Bay Area Roman Catholic priest is suing the Diocese of Oakland under the provisions of a new state law that allows such cases to move forward. 

The family and estate of Jim Bartko, former athletic director at Fresno State University, filed the suit last week in Alameda County Superior Court.

The suit alleges Bartko suffered repeated sexual abuse from 1972 to 1975 at the hands of Stephen Kiesle, then a priest with the Diocese of Oakland and assigned to St. Joseph’s Parish in Pinole.  

It also claims the diocese knew of Kiesle’s “history of sexual conduct with and sexual assaults upon minors” prior to his alleged abuse of Bartko and negligently allowed Kiesle to continue working with children despite that knowledge. 

Kiesle was convicted in 2004 of sexually abusing a child, got…

View Cache

A Catholic curia in Poland has asked for a court to determine the sexuality of the victim of a priest and whether he took “pleasure in the intimate relationship”. The victim says he was 12 years old when the abuse began.

Last year, Janusz Szymik – pictured above as a child – launched a civil case against Bielsko-Żywiec diocese. He is seeking three million zloty (€660,000) compensation from the curia, which he argues is responsible for abuse he suffered at the hands of a priest – who can be named only as Jan W. under Polish privacy law – in the 1980s

A church court had previously found Jan W. guilty of sexual offences against Szymik when the latter was a child. In 2017, he was given a five-year ban on conducting priestly ministry and hearing confession, and was ordered to live in isolation.

News website Onet has now published…

View Cache

Church’s argument that it was not responsible for the abuse was rejected and described as ‘affront to common sense’

The Catholic church’s failed attempt to argue it was not responsible for a priest’s abuse of a five-year-old, because it took place during after-hours “social” visits, has been slammed as “ruthless” by the survivor and an “affront to common sense” by a judge.

Last month the Victorian supreme court handed down a judgment finding the current diocese of Ballarat was vicariously liable for the abuse of the boy, who cannot be named, by Father Bryan Coffey in Port Fairy in the early 1970s.

The survivor’s lawyers, Ken Cush & Associates, say the ruling is a landmark win that will help countless others.

Coffey abused the boy during pastoral care visits to his home on two occasions in 1971.

The critical issue in the case was whether Coffey, an assistant parish priest, could…

View Cache

The events of Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol caused shock and dismay for most Americans, many of whom feared that our political system was much weaker than we had thought. On the same date nearly two decades earlier, we witnessed a similar crisis of confidence in the Catholic Church as a protector of all children.

On Jan. 6, 2002, on the Feast of the Epiphany, The Boston Globe published the first in a series of reports from its Spotlight investigative team, headlined “Church allowed abuse by priest for years.” While the findings were not a surprise to abuse survivors, the revelations that a previously unknown number of priests in the Boston area had sexually abused minors for decades devastated Catholics in Boston and, ultimately, the faithful around the world. The Globe had learned that instead of removing many of these offenders from the priesthood, church leaders had transferred…

View Cache

The additional district and sessions court in Kottayam on Monday completed the trial in the rape case filed by a nun against former bishop of Jalandhar diocese Franco Mulakkal. The court is likely to pronounce the judgment at its next hearing on January 14.

As per the prosecution, Franco raped the nun on several occasions at the St Francis Convent at Nadukunnu in Kuravilangad, and forced her to perform unnatural sex. The 2,000-page chargesheet in three volumes was submitted on April 4. The trial began in November 2019, but got delayed owing to various reasons ncluding the lockdown. 

At the same time, the trial was done in-camera and the media was prevented from reporting the details of the trial as per the request of Franco’s counsel. Of the 83 witnesses listed by the prosecution, 39 were examined during the trial. They included Major Archbishop Cardinal George Alencherry, Bhagalpur Bishop Kurian Valiyakandathil,…

View Cache

The trial in the rape case involving Bishop Franco Mulakkal has concluded and the special court in Kottayam in the southern Indian state of Kerala is set to deliver its verdict on Jan. 14.

Bishop Mulakkal was accused by a nun of sexually abusing her between 2014 and 2016 in a complaint registered with Kerala police in June 2018. Police filed a 2,000-page charge sheet against him in April 2019.

Additional District and Sessions Judge G. Gopakumar on Jan. 10 completed the trial procedure including recording the statements of the victim, accused, witnesses from both sides and the final legal arguments.

The prelate stands accused of raping a former superior general of Missionaries of Jesus, a diocesan congregation under the patronage of the accused as the then bishop of Jalandhar Diocese in the northern state of Punjab.

The nun in her complaint had accused the bishop of raping…

View Cache

Pope Francis reassigned the second ranking official at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on Monday, the first in an expected series of moves that would overhaul the leadership of the Church’s doctrinal office. 

The Holy See announced Jan. 10 that Archbishop Giacomo Morandi had been appointed by the pope to lead the Italian Diocese of Reggio Emilia-Guastalla, replacing Bishop Massimo Camisasca, who turned 75 in November. 

While the appointment of a relatively unknown Vatican official to a small Italian diocese is unlikely to generate headlines, sources close to Morandi’s old department told The Pillar that it was the first in a series of personnel moves which have been expected since the end of last year.

“Ever since he went to see the pope in December, it has been understood [in the office] that he is leaving,” one senior Vatican source close to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the…

View Cache

In yet another shakeup of a department in the Roman Curia, the Vatican announced Monday that a high-ranking official in the Holy See’s doctrinal congregation is on his way out and will now lead an Italian diocese.

In a Jan. 10 Vatican statement, it was announced that Archbishop Giacomo Morandi, until now secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), is leaving his Vatican post and will take over as the new leader of the Italian Diocese of Reggio Emilia-Guastalla.

Morandi, 56, who was named secretary of the CDF in 2017, will replace outgoing Reggio Emilia Bishop Massimo Camisasca, who is 75, the mandated retirement age for bishops.

His exit marks the latest shakeup in the Roman Curia in recent months.

Throughout the spring and summer last year, Pope Francis held apostolic visitations of several curial departments, including the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of…

View Cache

Pope Francis took the first step Monday to reorganize the Vatican’s powerful doctrine office, removing the No. 2 official widely believed responsible for a controversial document barring blessings for same-sex couples because God “cannot bless sin.”

Francis named Archbishop Giacomo Morandi, currently the secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, bishop of the Italian diocese of Reggio Emilia-Guastalla. The move amounts to a demotion since Morandi currently has the title of archbishop, yet is heading to a small diocese, not an archdiocese.

The Vatican said Morandi would nevertheless retain the title of archbishop “ad personam.”

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, or CDF, is one of the most important Vatican offices, interpreting doctrine for the universal Catholic Church, sanctioning dissenters and handling cases of clergy sexual abuse of minors. Morandi joined the CDF as an under-secretary in 2015 and was promoted to secretary, or the…

View Cache

We need to understand that some bishops and senior clergy are enabling child abuse when they allow abusers to continue

After months of trial and deliberation by a jury in New York, wealthy British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell has been convicted of crimes related to human trafficking, grooming and enabling the sexual abuse of minors by her wealthy American boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein.

Maxwell, 60, was the recruiter and pimp for Epstein and is facing up to 65 years behind bars. This conviction focuses attention on persons who are enablers. They are the cover-up agents of crimes committed against children. They fail to help, protect and report the sexual abuse of children.

Parents and relatives, even some teachers and social workers, are guilty of crimes of omission and failure in their mandated duty to act to protect sexually or physically abused children.

A school principal in Zambales, Philippines, received a report of child…

View Cache

In mid-January, the law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl is scheduled to publish a report into the handling of clerical sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising.

The potentially explosive aspect is that three of the highest-ranking officials are still alive: Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — now retired Pope Benedict XVI — and Cardinals Friedrich Wetter and Reinhard Marx, reported the German Catholic news agency KNA.

The investigation followed two years of research and covers the period from 1945 to 2019, centering on who knew what about sexual abuse and when, and what action they took, if any, KNA reported.

Much of the public interest is focused on the retired pope’s 1977-1981 tenure as archbishop of Munich. The case concerns the assignments of a priest accused of a particularly large number of offenses.

In early summer 2021, Cardinal Marx — the current archbishop of Munich — tried to resign from office to take responsibility…

View Cache

A Fort Wayne priest, who was previously at St. Pius X Catholic Church in Granger, has been removed from public ministry after allegations of inappropriate conduct with an adult woman.  

The priest, Fr. Eric Burgener, committed a “serious boundary violation,” while assigned to St. Vincent De Paul Parish in Fort Wayne, according to a release from the Catholic Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend. Burgener has been removed from St. Vincent De Paul and is no longer a hospital chaplain, the diocese announced. 

The diocese was made aware of the allegations against Burgener on Dec. 5, though it is unclear when he was removed from the parish.  

Burgener was ordained in June 2017 and was assigned to St. Pius shortly after, according to a social media post by the church. The post listed Burgener’s role at St. Pius as parochial vicar, or a priest who assists a pastor. It is unclear when Burgener moved to St. Vincent De…

View Cache

Pope emeritus denies claims he was aware of abusing priest in Munich and failure to act

Pope emeritus Benedict XVI has denied claims he was aware of an abusing priest operating on his watch in Munich and that he failed to act against him – twice.

The 94-year-old former pontiff will be named later this month in a long-awaited report into clerical sexual abuse in the Bavarian archdiocese of Munich and Freising. A key case in the investigation involves an abusing priest who was moved to the southern archdiocese in 1980 when Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict, served there as archbishop.

More than two dozen men are on record as saying they were sexually abused as teenagers by the priest, identified only as Peter H, often after he gave them alcohol and showed them pornography.

Some victims live in the priest’s home diocese of Essen and others in Bavaria, where…

View Cache

A former Catholic priest who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing three boys in Boonville in the 1980s died in prison late last year.

Gerald Howard, also known as Carmen Sita, entered his plea in June 2014, and received a sentence of 12 years in prison. He had also pleaded guilty to charges of sexual contact with a minor in New Jersey in 1983, and was at that time sentenced to five years probation and entry in a treatment program, which he completed.

Howard served in the parish in Boonville (within the Diocese of Jefferson City) in 1983 and 1984. Howard was scheduled for release from the Missouri Department of Corrections in May.

The Diocese of Jefferson City list of credibly accused priests may be found at diojeffcity.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Clergy- removed-list-7.2.2020.pdf.

View Cache

A retired paediatric surgeon and Anglican priest appointed to investigate child abuse within the church has fronted court accused of historic sex offences.

Mervyn Meredith Lander faces two counts of the unlawful and indecent treatment of a boy under the age of 17.

Both offences are alleged to have occurred in Brisbane in 1988, court documents reveal.

Lander, 77, appeared briefly in the Brisbane Arrest Court on Monday.

He was not required to enter a plea and the case was remanded for mention in March.

Lander was recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 2021.

He and his wife were appointed Members of the Order of Australia (AM) for services to their respective fields of medicine and to the Anglican Church.

Lander is also listed as a long-serving priest at St Paul’s Anglican Church, East Brisbane.

In 1995, Lander was appointed to the Brisbane Diocese committee to establish protocols…

View Cache

Two dead Prince George Roman Catholic priests are among defendants named in a sexual abuse case filed by a man who asserts the pair began abusing him when he was in kindergarten at a church school.

A Delta professor and actor alleges in a new lawsuit that Roman Catholic priests in Prince George sexually abused him as a child.

Dr. Nicholas Harrison made the allegations in a notice of civil claim filed in the B.C. Supreme Court Vancouver registry on Jan. 4. He claims abuse by Father Francis “Frank” Joseph Rayner and Brother Dennis “Leopold” O’Mahoney occurred from 1973 to 1977, while he was in kindergarten through Grade 4.

“I was only six years old when the sexual abuse began,” Harrison said in a statement to Glacier Media, provided by his lawyer.

At the time, Harrison was an altar boy at Sacred Heart Cathedral and a student at the adjoining elementary school.

…

View Cache

Man who attended St. Andrew’s Preparatory Seminary High School names former priests in complaint

At least one lawsuit alleging child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy has been filed in Colorado following the passage of a new law last year.

On Monday, Colorado resident Brian Barzee sued the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Denver, alleging exploitation and sexual abuse by a former priest during his time at St. Andrew’s Preparatory Seminary High School in Denver. Barzee’s suit was filed under Senate Bill 21-88, which passed last year and took effect on Jan. 1.

Under the new law, survivors of child sexual abuse for whom the civil statute of limitations has already expired have three years to file state lawsuits against their abusers and the public or private institutions that turned a blind eye to that abuse.

Colorado law previously required survivors to file a lawsuit over child…

View Cache

In an effort to bring deeper scrutiny to Mater Dei High School, an advocacy group for survivors of Catholic Church abuse has filed three complaints with government and church officials over allegations of hazing involving the school’s powerhouse football team.

The complaints, filed this week by a New Jersey leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, are an attempt to ensure that organizations other than the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange investigate a report of hazing at the private high school in Orange County.

A lawsuit filed in November against the school and the diocese alleges that a Mater Dei football player sustained a traumatic brain injury in a violent hazing ritual in the varsity locker room and that the school tried to cover up his injuries.

The complaints were filed with the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and…

View Cache

January 1, 2022 marked the conclusion of a long road for lawmakers in the effort to provide justice for victims of sexual child abuse.

“Some of my clients were involved back in 2006 in trying to do something similar and there was very, very strong pushback by lobbyists in particular for the Catholic Church,” said Zach Warzel, Keating Wagner Polidori Free Partner.

The law had been pushed several times in the past several years, meeting similar ends. This year, lawmakers said the environment was just right for the law to pass.

This new law allows victims to come forward and file claims for the abuse more than 50 years after the event has occurred.

“Children should not be forced to figure out their legal rights and come forward, you know, within a very short amount of time after reaching the age of 18. Now, they can come forward when they’re…

View Cache

The death of her son Shane is a grave blow for all the O’Connor family but especially for a grieving mother fighting her own battle with sanity for so long.

On October 3, 1992, Sinéad O’Connor was the main musical act on  Saturday Night Live. She appeared on stage in an all-white dress, a vision of beauty and simplicity, a striking bald-headed young woman with a gorgeous singing voice.

But the innocence portrayed publicly was not what she was feeling that night.

What she did went down in television history.

These days, when clerical abuse stories are as common as dust, O’Connor’s action would have caused a Twitter stir perhaps, but not much more.

But not back in 1992. She clutched in her hand a photograph of Pope John Paul II, a revered figure whose fight against communism and whose dynamic personality had made him a figure of Olympian stature…

View Cache

Earlier this week, the troubled German Archdiocese of Cologne announced that the Vatican has agreed to conduct an external audit into its contracts once the archbishop of the diocese returns from a papal-mandated sabbatical.

The audit will investigate canonical legality in the awarding of contracts over the past ten years, a diocesan statement said.

In December, the Archdiocese of Cologne announced its intention to carry out an external audit to clarify “whether there have recently been omissions in canon law when awarding contracts,” saying the decision to move forward with the inquiry was agreed on by the archdiocesan property council and cathedral chapter, and the current administrator for the Cologne archdiocese, Auxiliary Bishop Rolf Steinhäuser.

Steinhäuser informed the Vatican of their request for an audit in Cologne, and earlier this week the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops sent a letter to the archdiocese saying they had agreed to the audit, but…

View Cache

PART 1, LISTEN AND LEARN – THURSDAY, JANUARY 13, 7:00PM – 8:30PM CST
PART 2, DISCUSS AND DISCERN – THURSDAY, JANUARY 20, 7:00PM – 8:30PM CST

Panelists:
– Jason Berry, pioneering Catholic journalist who first brought national attention to this issue beginning in 1985
– Walter Robinson, investigative reporter who led the Boston Globe’s Spotlight Team in their 2002 investigation into abuse and cover-up in the Catholic Church
– Anne Barrett Doyle, researcher, advocate, and co-director of Bishop Accountability, who was propelled to action by the Spotlight reports

Part 1 (Listen and Learn) will include a short introduction from Awake, engaging conversation with our panelists, and question and answer time at the end of the evening. (This event will be recorded for later viewing.)

Part 2 (Discuss and Discern) will be focused on building connections and community while diving deeper into the questions raised by the conversation the previous week. We will utilize Zoom…

View Cache

I learned an important lesson this past summer about the ways in which institutional structures perpetuate a profound power imbalance between sexual harassers and those who are sexually harassed. In August, I received a letter from the AAR Executive Director saying that the board had voted to offer me the Ray L. Hart Service Award in 2021. Reading the letter caused me to laugh aloud because Ray Hart had sexually harassed me in the mid-1970s when I was young woman serving on my first AAR committee.

I remember the circumstances of that harassment very clearly. After the Program Committee meeting had ended for the day, several of us adjourned to orange armchairs in the lobby to have a drink before dinner. I was the only woman on the committee and was quite a bit younger than the next oldest member. I don’t recall whether I was a graduate student or…

View Cache

Diocese was “vicariously liable” for a priest’s abuse of a five-year-old boy in 1971, the Supreme Court of Victoria ruled.

An Australian court has found the Catholic Church liable for a priest’s abuse of a five-year-old in the early 1970s in a landmark ruling that could impact future abuse cases. 

Last month, the Supreme Court of Victoria in southeast Australia found that the current diocese of Ballarat was vicariously liable for the abuse of the boy, who cannot be named, by Fr. Bryan Coffey in the coastal town of Port Fairy during the early 1970s. 

Coffey, an assistant parish priest at the time, abused the boy during two pastoral care visits to his home in 1971. 

The Ballarat diocese argued that Coffey was not a formal employee at the time and could not be considered liable for Coffey’s actions, adding that Coffey’s home visits were “social outings” not connected to…

View Cache

The longtime advocate says abuse suffered by residential school survivors is a significant factor in domestic violence

Rebecca Kudloo is a powerhouse. Early last year, she had the RCMP agree to policy reform that would reduce violence against Inuit women and children — and she held the federal Liberal government to financing long-promised women’s shelters in Inuit Nunangat. She managed both by being steadily persistent. 

Kudloo has been president of Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada since 2014. She was an adviser on the creation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. She worked for the Nunavut Department of Education and is a co-founder of Mianiqsijit, a counselling service responding to the residential school legacy of sexual abuse and family violence. 

She spoke with Julie McGonegal from her home in Baker Lake, Nunavut.

Julie McGonegal: Tell me about your childhood growing up on the land.

Rebecca Kudloo: I was born…

View Cache

After months of trial and deliberation by a jury in New York, a wealthy British socialite, Ghislaine Maxwell, has been convicted of crimes related to human trafficking, grooming and facilitating and enabling the sexual abuse of minors by her wealthy boyfriend, Jeffrey Epstein. She was the recruiter, pimp, human trafficker and enabler of child sexual abuse. Maxwell, 60 years old, is now facing a possible jail time of 65 years behind bars.

This conviction focuses attention on the persons who are the enablers. They are the cover-up agents of crimes committed by another against children. They fail to help, protect and report the sexual abuse of children.

Parents and relatives, even some teachers and social workers, are guilty of crimes of omission and failure in their mandated duty to act to protect sexually or physically abused children.

A school principal in Zambales, Philippines, received a report of child sexual abuse…

View Cache

WARNING: This story contains details some readers may find distressing.

Chief and council of the Williams Lake First Nation (WLFN) have set a date of Jan. 25 to publically release the preliminary geophysical results from the first phase of the St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School investigation.

WLFN postponed the previously scheduled release of the results Dec. 7 in order to give adequate time for neighboring First Nation communities to put in place the necessary health and wellness supports, WLFN noted in a news release issued Jan. 6.

“This has been an extremely challenging time for WLFN and other First Nations who were affected by the facility at St. Joseph’s,” stated WLFN Chief Willie Sellars. “We have out of necessity in the course of our investigation opened old wounds and asked people to recount some terrible and harrowing stories. But the information provided has helped shape our investigation and I’m thankful…

View Cache

Archbishop Charles Scicluna has issued a formal warning against controversial priest Fr David Muscat, instructing him to stop making “inflammatory and hurtful comments” or else he could be stopped from exercising his ministry in public. 

In a statement on Thursday night, the Archibishop’s Curia said Mgr Scicluna had instructed Fr Muscat to delete a Facebook post, in which the priest claimed that being gay was worse than being possessed, and to stop insulting or using hurtful language against any group or individual.

It said the Archbishop also reminded Fr Muscat that in accordance with Catholic teaching, members of the clergy are required to display respect, compassion and sensitivity to people from all walks of life.

The formal warning is referred to in Canon Law as a penal precept.

The warning came hours after he was interrogated by police and hours after the Archbishop had promised to take action against a priest over homophobic…

View Cache

Outspoken priest Fr David Muscat was interrogated by the police over hate speech claims following a homophobic Facebook post he uploaded.

The post focused on alleged murder suspect, Abner Aquilina, with the priest speaking about the possibility that the aggressor was gay or bisexual or possessed by the devil. Muscat said that being gay was worse than being possessed.

Sources said Fr Muscat was called to the police headquarters on Thursday afternoon where he was interrogated over his posts and successive comments. 

A spokesman for the police told Times of Malta that “the police investigates all allegations of a criminal nature that come to its attention”. 

It is not known whether the police will press charges.

Earlier, two ministers and activists had earlier urged police to take action against the Mosta priest for hate speech.

“A line has been crossed, and I ask the authorities to take the necessary decisions, because…

View Cache

Fr David Muscat will be charged in court with hate speech and misuse of technology over his disparaging comments on gay people.

Police have filed charges of hate crime over two comments that the priest posted to Facebook this week.

In one of the comments, Fr Muscat spoke about the possibility that murder suspect Abner Aquilina was gay, bisexual or possessed by the devil and said “gayness” was worse than being possessed.

The other comment was posted underneath a photo showing the murder suspect wearing a colourful shirt. Fr Muscat commented that he looked like he was just coming back from ‘gay pride’.

Police may have deemed this comment illegal for implying that people who attend gay pride are criminals.

Fr Muscat is scheduled to appear before Magistrate Ian Farrugia on January 28.

He could be released on conditional discharge or given a suspended sentence, but these charges could also…

View Cache

Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta issued a formal warning against a controversial local priest who posted a homophobic remark on Facebook.

In a statement released Jan. 6, the Archdiocese of Malta confirmed that Archbishop Scicluna issued the warning, known as a penal precept, against Father David Muscat, ordering him “to cease making inflammatory and hurtful comments in public forums or face prohibition from exercising his ministry in public.”

“The archbishop instructed Father David Muscat to delete a Facebook post, in which the priest claimed that being gay was worse than being possessed, and not to use insulting or hurtful language against any group or individual,” the archdiocese said.

Furthermore, the statement said Archbishop Sciculuna reminded the priest that “in accordance with Catholic teaching, members of the clergy are required to show respect, compassion and sensitivity to people from all walks of life.”

According to the Times of Malta, the homophobic social media post was reported to authorities by the Malta Gay Rights Movement,…

View Cache

A longtime educator with experience overseeing high school athletic programs will take the helm of Mater Dei High School amid ongoing controversy over an alleged hazing scandal involving its storied football program.

Michael Brennan will start at the Orange County private school on Feb. 1, Diocese of Orange officials said Friday. He has been president of St. Anthony High School in Long Beach since last year.

The news comes less than a week after the abrupt resignation of the school’s former president, Father Walter E. Jenkins, who started at Mater Dei in July. Officials have said Jenkins is expected to return to South Bend, Ind., to “take on a new assignment” with his religious order, the Congregation of Holy Cross.

His departure followed weeks of controversy for Mater Dei’s powerhouse football program and head coach Bruce Rollinson. A lawsuit filed in late November by the family of a former football…

View Cache

Former Servite High School principal Michael P. Brennan has been hired to serve as president of Mater Dei High School, the Diocese of Orange announced Friday.

Brennan, currently the president of Long Beach’s St. Anthony High School, starts his new position on Feb. 1 as Mater Dei finds itself in the midst of a hazing controversy that has attracted national attention and called into question the culture within the school’s national championship football program, athletic program and the future of longtime head football coach Bruce Rollinson and principal Frances Clare.

Brennan replaces Father Walter Jenkins, who resigned last week amid tensions Rollinson and his supporters.

Jenkins’ departure came just days before attorneys for a Sacramento law firm are scheduled to start interviewing Mater Dei students and staff as part of an investigation into the culture of the Monarch football and athletic programs. The investigation, commissioned by Jenkins in November, is in response…

View Cache

Claims that the future Benedict XVI covered up an abuse case in the German Archdiocese of Munich and Freising resurfaced this week, more than 10 years after the Vatican firmly rejected the allegations.

The claims reemerged in the German media on Jan. 4, when Die Zeit newspaper published an extensive report on the archdiocese’s handling of the case of Father Peter Hullermann, who is accused of abusing at least 23 boys aged eight to 16 between 1973 and 1996.

The priest, identified in German reports only as “H.”, was suspended from his duties in the Diocese of Essen in 1979 over allegations that he abused an 11-year-old boy.

He was moved in 1980 to the Munich archdiocese, led by the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger from 1977 to 1982. Hullermann was found guilty of molesting boys in a parish of the archdiocese in 1986.

Archbishop Georg Gänswein, Benedict XVI’s…

View Cache

Father David Huneck, a former high school chaplain in the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, has agreed to plead guilty Jan. 27 to two felony charges of child seduction and sexual battery after six allegations were brought against him for sexual crimes committed against both a 17 and a 19 year old girl.

The other four misdemeanor charges — contributing to the delinquency of a minor, furnishing alcohol to a minor, and two counts of battery — would all be dropped if the court accepts the plea agreement. 

According to the plea agreement, which has the possibility of being amended before the change of plea hearing on Jan. 27, Huneck’s sentence for child seduction would amount to one year with between 10 and 90 days to be served in jail. The court will address the conditions and rules of the remainder of Huneck’s one year sentence during the hearing.

The…

View Cache

Following publication of the report on sexual abuses in the Catholic Church, many women religious in France — while distressed over the report’s findings — have high hopes for the future. They think now is the time to start making changes in the way the church is governed — to be synodal, and more horizontal, to include more people in the process of decision making.

For five years, I’ve interviewed women religious in France on various topics for Global Sisters Report, including sexual abuse within the church. It’s been disheartening and distressing to learn of the extent of the abuse as the recent report revealed — more than 330,000 cases of sexual abuse of minors, two-thirds by clerics, had taken place in the French church since 1950, according to the report released in October. Yet as my conversations reveal, Catholic sisters hold a unique position to…

View Cache

New legislation carries up to 12 years in prison for those who flout the law

The Philippines has enacted a new law banning child marriage and cohabitation with minors.

It is hoped the bill, signed by President Rodrigo Duterte on Jan. 6, will end practices that see one in six Filipino girls married before they turn 18.

Children’s rights advocates welcomed the new law, saying it marked a major advancement in protecting young girls.

“This is a major victory in our campaign to end child marriage in the Philippines. This law will help protect children, especially young girls, and hopefully change the trajectory of their lives,” the law’s author, lawmaker Bernadette Herrera, told The Inquirer newspaper on Jan. 6.

The new law not only criminalizes marrying someone under 18 years old but also outlaws cohabitating with a minor as husband and wife and punishes those who facilitate such unions.

It carries a…

View Cache

The federal government just set aside a huge sum – $40bn – to compensate the victims and relatives of a system of cruel racial exploitation that existed for much of the country’s history. This news is not about the United States, where debate over reparations for slavery have been stalled in Congress for decades. No, this news comes from the US’s neighbour to the north, Canada.

The national government of Canada has agreed to set aside this sum, the equivalent of $31bn for Indigenous Canadians who were subjected to Canadian “boarding schools.” These institutions, generally operated by the Catholic Church and other religious institutions, forcibly removed First Nations, Inuit and Métis children from their parents and communities and systematically stripped them of their cultural identities while imposing upon them English and French, Christian religious practices, and white Canadian culture.

This programme of state-sanctioned kidnapping and indoctrination officially ran from 1883…

View Cache

[Via America Magazine]

A group of pilgrims presented Pope Francis with a “reform manifesto” critical of the German Synodal Path, reported the German Catholic news agency KNA.

On the sidelines of the pope’s Jan. 5 general audience, representatives of the “Neuer Anfang” (”New Beginning”) initiative handed him a pamphlet containing their own statements on themes that are also dealt with in the Synodal Path consultations, launched by the German bishops’ conference and the Central Committee of German Catholics.

A member of the group said they had handed the manifesto directly to the pope because its views had no chance of being accepted by Synodal Path members in Germany.In their manifesto, they thanked the pope for initiating a world Synod of Bishops on synodality and said the “Synodal Path in Germany is getting out of hand.”Tweet this

In their manifesto, they thanked the pope for initiating a world Synod of Bishops…

View Cache

The South Africans have a philosophy, brought to world attention by the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, called “ubuntu”.

Difficult to translate exactly into other languages, it essentially means that our humanity is recognised only when we acknowledge the humanity of others. To be a person, we must uphold the personhood of others.

Useful to keep in mind when assessing this week’s bizarre Twitter spat about paedophilia between Banffshire and Buchan Coast MSP, Karen Adam, and Alba party general secretary, Chris McEleny.

Adam, herself an abuse survivor, tweeted: “Paedophiles and predators are people. Not bogey men under the bed. […] They are our family, friends and colleagues.” In a retort that, if nothing else, underlines the fact that Twitter is not the place for a nuanced discussion of anything, let alone paedophilia, McEleny accused Adam of “normalising paedophiles”.

Whatever the clumsy politicking going on behind McEleny’s comments…

View Cache

M. Susan Carlson passed away on December 30, 2021, at the age of 72. Beloved wife of Gerry Greiman for 39 years; dear mother of David Carlson Greiman and Nora Carlson Greiman (James Lange); dear sister of the late Jeff Carlson, the late Greg (Diane) Carlson and Steve (Tina) Carlson; our dear aunt, great aunt, sister-in-law; cousin and friend to many.

Susan was born in Lincoln, Nebraska on November 2, 1949, and grew up on the family farm outside Waverly, Nebraska. She graduated from Cottey College (which later conferred its Distinguished Alumni Award on her) and the University of Nebraska, taught high school for a year, and then earned her law degree from the University of Nebraska School of Law. Following Law School, Susan served as a Law Clerk for the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in St. Louis, where she met Gerry.

After her Clerkship,…

View Cache

Local author Ellen Gable Hrkach has been writing fiction for over 20 years. Most of her novels are historical romance or suspense. This past summer, however, Hrkach decided to write her most challenging novel: a story based on her late father’s life.

“It wasn’t an easy story to write. My father was sexually abused by a priest when he was a freshman in high school. He suffered a nervous breakdown when I was two years old and struggled with alcoholism and depression. He died unexpectedly when I was a teenager. He wasn’t a perfect person, but he was a loving and dedicated father,” Hrkach said.

“Where Angels Pass,” Hrkach’s 12th book, is the fictionalized story about Hrkach’s father, who kept the abuse he experienced secret for most of his life. He only told Hrkach’s mother.

“When I found out about the abuse after his death, everything in his life made so…

View Cache

Ottawa, Traditional Algonquin Territory, Ontario: Indigenous Services Canada – The Government of Canada is pleased to announce that Agreements-in-Principle have been reached on a global resolution related to compensation for those harmed by discriminatory underfunding of First Nations child and family services and to achieve long-term reform of the First Nations Child and Family Services program and Jordan’s Principle, to ensure that no child faces discrimination again.

This is a result of discussions between Canada, the Assembly of First Nations, the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, the Chiefs of Ontario, the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, and counsel for the Moushoom and Trout class actions.

We begin by acknowledging the generations of First Nations who have advocated so strongly for their children including Residential School Survivors, Sixties Scoop Survivors and children, young people and families whose lives are touched by this case. Their strength and the advocacy of First Nations…

View Cache

Not all civil wrongs are the same. There are, of course, the classic ‘slip and fall’ and fender bender claims, and then there are the more catastrophic harms. Whether negligence, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, or trespass—there are degrees of egregiousness in the land of civil justice. Most would agree that none are as bad as the harm to children, especially negligent or intentional abuse of children, where the complicated and lasting damage of trauma transforms the neurobiology of the whole child—continuing the injury to young victims well into adulthood.

The thought of children being manipulated and sexually violated is distressing and uncomfortable, especially when the perpetrator is someone they once trusted—a coach, counselor, doctor, religious leader, or even a family member. When the harm is sexual assault and rape, the image stings, and let’s face it, our eyes and minds look away. We just cannot think about it….

View Cache

The Boy Scouts of America’s bid to emerge from bankruptcy appeared to fall just short Tuesday when a $2.7-billion settlement offer failed to garner enough votes from thousands of men who say they were sexually abused in Scouting.

Although 73% of the nearly 54,000 claimants who cast ballots voted to accept the settlement, the proposal needed at least 75% to ensure confirmation by the bankruptcy judge presiding over the case, according to plaintiffs’ lawyers.

“Survivors understood that the Plan does not adequately compensate them,” said John Humphrey, co-chairman of the official tort claimants committee appointed by the bankruptcy trustee to represent all victims.

The committee said the results would force the Boy Scouts to negotiate a better deal for abuse survivors. The Boy Scouts did not respond to a request for comment.

The results, disclosed in a bankruptcy court filing late Tuesday, capped a contentious two-month voting period in which…

View Cache

Despite pleas from advocates and a recent request from the governor, a bill that would open a two-year window for child sex abuse survivors to pursue civil lawsuits against their abusers is unlikely to see a floor vote as the Pennsylvania Senate returns to session this month.

Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward, R-Westmoreland, who controls the upper chamber’s voting calendar, remains unchanged in her thinking that the constitutional amendment process remains the best legal path to extending the statute of limitations.

Erica Clayton Wright, a spokesperson for Ward, declined to answer further questions about the legislation and a possible Senate vote Monday. Instead, Wright cited previous statements made by Ward, who has argued there is no legal precedent to affirm extending a window legislatively.

If it weren’t for an advertising error made last year by the Department of State, the window for child sex abuse survivors would have…

View Cache

In the United States, the terrible truth that Catholic clergy have sexually violated children has been known publicly now for at least 36 years. For this truth-telling, we are indebted to journalists such as Jason Berry. In stark and unsparing detail he documented in May 1985, writing for the Times of Acadiana (and NCR), the predations of admitted serial pedophile Fr. Gilbert Gauthe in the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana.

Over the decades others followed Berry’s groundbreaking truth-telling, often against and despite enormous pressure to remain silent. Led by many courageous survivors and their families, of notable mention are the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), Bishop Accountability, the Boston Phoenix, The Boston Globe, The New York Times and several state attorneys general.

In January 2019, ProPublica published an interactive national directory of credibly accused clergy drawing on the published disclosures of dioceses…

View Cache

As 2022 opens, clergy sexual abuse remains one of many issues calling for our caring attention. Before compassion fatigue sets in, now is the right time for Pennsylvania Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward to run House Bill 951 and for Catholics in Pennsylvania’s pews and pulpit to push forward until it passes. Despite public and political support for the measure, Kim Ward said she has no intention of bringing the bill to a vote.

House Bill 951 will open a 2-year window for out-of-statute survivors of clergy sexual abuse and help survivors including myself close a chapter of our lives. The bill will also help repair the crumbling foundations of two vital institutions. I have little trust in politicians or priests. However, until we enter a utopian fantasy where we all sing natural harmony, we’ll need legislatures and churches to prevent cacophony. And we’ll need them both to restore…

View Cache

The state Court of Appeals has upheld the dismissal of a defamation lawsuit by a suspended Warren priest against another clergy member who revealed potentially false sexual-abuse claims against the plaintiff, due to the Constitutional pillar that separates church and state.

A three-judge panel unanimously ruled against Rev. Eduard Perrone in the appeal of his lawsuit against Rev. G. Michael Bugarin, a St. Clair Shores-based priest who is part of the Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit review panel for clergy abuse. The judges say in a Dec. 21 opinion that state courts cannot have jurisdiction over “ecclesiastical matters forbidden under the First Amendment of the Constitution.”

Perrone also alleged “false light” and “intentional infliction of emotional distress” over Bugarin saying the AOD had found allegations by Perrone’s accuser as “credible, meaning they had a semblance of truth,” judges wrote in the seven-page opinion.

“The issue of whether the defendant’s conduct was…

View Cache

Chaplain Peter H. was transferred in 1980 from the diocese of Essen to that of Munich-Freising, after having abused several minors. Upon learning of the accusations, his superiors did not clarify them, but forced him to undergo psychological therapy.

Then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, as Archbishop of Munich-Freising, knew that the chaplain had committed abuses, but he still approved his transfer and did not report the case to the Vatican, as was his obligation, according to an extrajudicial decree of the Ecclesiastical Court of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising 2016.

After the transfer approved by Ratzinger, the priest continued with the abuses, for which he was sentenced in 1986 to 18 in prison, which led the ecclesiastical authorities to transfer him again, this time to Garching, in southern Germany.

Joseph Ratzinger “was willing to admit to the priest H. that he was aware of the situation”, says the document, quoted by…

View Cache

Storm over Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, accused of not having put an end to the abuses of a priest in his diocese, despite being aware of it.

The German weekly Die Zeit reports this, according to which there is an extrajudicial decree of the ecclesiastical court of the archdiocese of Munich and Freising in 2016 which criticizes the behavior of the other prelates who have not stopped the work of Peter H., a clergyman accused of 23 cases of sexual abuse of minors between the ages of 8 and 16 between 1976 and 1993.

Among these high prelates who have kept silent even knowing there is also Joseph Ratzinger, archbishop of Munich and Freising from 1977 to 1982.

The Pope Emeritus and the Vicars General “have not lived up to their responsibilities towards the young people and children entrusted to their pastoral care”, reports the document.

The text also reads…

View Cache

In mid-January, the law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl is scheduled to publish a report into the handling of clerical sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising.

The potentially explosive aspect is that three of the highest-ranking officials are still alive: Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — now retired Pope Benedict XVI — and Cardinals Friedrich Wetter and Reinhard Marx, reported the German Catholic news agency KNA.

The investigation followed two years of research and covers the period from 1945 to 2019, centering on who knew what about sexual abuse and when, and what action they took, if any, KNA reported.

Much of the public interest is focused on the retired pope’s 1977-1981 tenure as archbishop of Munich. The case concerns the assignments of a priest accused of a particularly large number of offenses.

In early summer 2021, Cardinal Marx — the current archbishop of Munich — tried to resign from office to take responsibility — explicitly also for possible mistakes of his predecessors. Pope Francis rejected his…

View Cache

Guam’s clergy sex abuse scandal has once again reached the Vatican, which this year started defending itself in a particular case, blaming the Holy See for former Archbishop Anthony S. Apuron’s alleged sexual abuses.

The year came and went without any agreement between the Archdiocese of Agana and clergy sexual abuse claimants on the amount of restitution for the victims or on how to get the church out of bankruptcy.

The archdiocese this year increased its offer to pay clergy sex abuse survivors $34.38 million, including real estate.

The clergy sex abuse survivors, through the creditors committee, seek a minimum of $100 million and real estate properties.

A hearing on the two competing plans is expected next year.

The longer the bankruptcy proceedings take, the more money the archdiocese has to pay its own lawyers and the lawyers of the creditors committee.

The archdiocese has been billed and so far…

View Cache

The Catholic church’s failed attempt to argue it was not responsible for a priest’s abuse of a five-year-old, because it took place during after-hours “social” visits, has been slammed as “ruthless” by the survivor and an “affront to common sense” by a judge.

Last month the Victorian supreme court handed down a judgment finding the current diocese of Ballarat was vicariously liable for the abuse of the boy, who cannot be named, by Father Bryan Coffey in Port Fairy in the early 1970s.

The survivor’s lawyers, Ken Cush & Associates, say the ruling is a landmark win that will help countless others.

Coffey abused the boy during pastoral care visits to his home on two occasions in 1971.

The critical issue in the case was whether Coffey, an assistant parish priest, could be considered a formal employee of the diocese at the time, thereby making it vicariously liable for his actions.

…

View Cache

A C$40bn agreement-in-principle has been reached in Canada to reform the child welfare system for First Nations people and compensate more than 200,000 individuals and families who suffered because of it.

At the heart of the deal is a legacy of discrimination in child welfare systems that saw many children removed from their homes and placed in state care, and others who were denied adequate medical care and social services because of their Indigenous identity.

Half of the C$40bn (US$31bn) is earmarked for reforming a child welfare system deemed discriminatory by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) and federal court.

The other half is reserved for payments to First Nations people harmed by the on-reserve and Yukon child welfare systems between 1 April 1991 and 31 March 2022.

First Nations people who experienced delays or denials of medical care and social services between 1991 and 2017 will also receive compensation.

“For too…

View Cache

According to the latest reports, there were approximately 216,000 victims of sexual abuse perpetrated by clergy in the French Catholic Church between 1950 and 2020.

Since 1950, ‘nearly 200,000 youngsters’ have been sexually molested by French clergy by ‘thousands of paedophiles in the French Catholic Church. The Catholic bishops of Canada apologise for the abuse of Indigenous children. Data on sex abuse in Poland’s Catholic Church is decades behind where it should be.

Sex abuse within the clergy of the world is rampant and has been for decades, and throughout this article, we’re going to dive into the facts to detail the full extent of what’s been going on.

United States of America

Starting with the US, The Boston Globe reported in 2002 on the widespread sexual abuse of children in the Boston diocese and the Catholic hierarchy’s efforts to conceal it. The newspaper’s investigation was the subject of the…

View Cache

A Colorado man has filed a lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Denver for the sexual abuse he reportedly suffered as a child, using a new state law that enables survivors to hold organizations liable for abuse decades in the past.

The legal action now pending in Denver District Court is one of the first to take advantage of a legal maneuver the General Assembly enacted last year to benefit childhood sex abuse victims who typically were barred from bringing lawsuits more than a few years beyond their assaults.

“As a person who survived years of sexual abuse at the hands of the powers that be, you end up as a broken person, a broken young adult, and a broken adult. It takes forever to realize, this isn’t my fault. This isn’t of my doing. This is what they did to us as victims,” said Brian Barzee of Colorado Springs.

Barzee, 58,…

View Cache

On January 6, 2002, the Boston Globe began a series of stories on its investigation into clergy sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Boston. It would prove to be the most damaging report on the Catholic Church in U.S. history, shocking Catholic and non-Catholic alike. It also inspired reporters across the nation to take a close look at this subject, resulting in more bad news. The good news is that 20 years later, much has changed for the better.

Regrettably, most of the major media outlets are not exactly religion-friendly, and many are downright hostile, especially to Roman Catholicism. As I detail in my new book, The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse: Clarifying the Facts and the Causes, this explains why they have no interest in reporting on the progress that has been made.

In the 1970s, which was when priestly sexual abuse was at its height, there was an average of…

View Cache

[Via the Boston Pilot]

After a year at the head of the Archdiocese of Dublin, Archbishop Dermot Farrell said, “Radical change is coming in the church,” which will see a renewal of energy and new forms of ministry.

“With a powerful commitment from clergy and lay faithful, across the full range of the life and ministry of parish communities, we are going to experience a renewal of energy and the adoption of new forms of outreach and ministry,” the 67-year-old archbishop told Catholic News Service. He also said he believes change is already happening in the church’s structures all over the Western world.

“Pope Francis is offering us a way of being church, the synodal pathway, of walking together more closely and being a church that is hope-filled, despite many challenges.”

The leader of the largest Irish diocese, with more than 1 million Catholics and 207 parishes, invited the faithful to “walk this…

View Cache

Records reveal CMPD cleared its investigation into Father Francis P. Gillespie, but a civil lawsuit against the former Charlotte priest and others remains pending.

The criminal investigation into a former Charlotte priest, accused in a pending lawsuit of sexually abusing a boy multiple times more than 20 years ago, is now closed, according to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department records. A police report reveals CMPD cleared its investigation into Jesuit Father Francis P. Gillespie in November after the alleged victim “chose not to prosecute.”

Editor’s Note: WCNC is no longer showing the photo of Father Francis P. Gillespie as the criminal case has been closed.

The Diocese of Charlotte previously reported church officials notified CMPD and the Department of Social Services in October of a new allegation of child sexual abuse against the former pastor of Our Lady of the Assumption Church after learning of the alleged abuse.

…

View Cache

Proceedings before a criminal trial involving former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick will continue on March 3 in Massachusetts, where he faces three counts of sexually assaulting a teenager in the 1970s.

A second pretrial hearing took place last month to continue on to the next phase in March.

The hearing was preceded by one in October, following the former cardinal’s arraignment in early September in Dedham District Court, where he pleaded not guilty to the charges. Though he was present during the arraignment, McCarrick was not present during the pretrial hearings.

McCarrick was dismissed by the Vatican from the clerical state in 2019 following an investigation of accusations that he had abused multiple children early on in his career of more than 60 years as a cleric and had abused seminarians as a bishop in New Jersey.

Though he was not a priest in Massachusetts, state prosecutors have said the alleged…

View Cache

Retired Superior Court Judge Thomas Dilts handled child abuse cases for 16 of his 20 years as a family court judge serving Somerset and Hunterdon Counties.

Presiding over an average of 120 cases per week, he saw each day as an opportunity to make an impact in the lives of children and families. 

As he approached retirement, Dilts knew that he wanted to continue to help children who have been abused and neglected, and realized there was more work to be done from the other side of the bench. He shared this vision in his retirement speech, and, within a week, 15 colleagues answered the call to action, forming the Children’s Hope Initiative in fall 2011.

Eleven of the original 15 board members continue to serve the organization today.

Statistics shared on their website, ChildrensHopeInitiative.org, underscore the critical needs the organization works to address. In the United States, a report…

View Cache

Rosario, Argentina – Hours before boarding the plane towards his new post, the papal representative in Mexico called the land of Our Lady of Guadalupe a “faithful” place, but also “scourged by violence, by death.”

Archbishop Franco Coppola, Apostolic Nuncio in Mexico, expressed his gratitude for having represented Pope Francis for a little more than five years as he celebrated Mass for the World Day of Peace, commemorated by the Catholic Church every January 1st, in Latin America’s most famous shrine, dedicated to La Morenita.

The Italian diplomat stressed that Mexico is a “rich country”, because it has “many material and human resources,” but warned that peace will not be achieved here as long as there is so much inequality.

“There is a part that lives with dignity, and there is a majority that lives poorly, that lives in poverty; unable to fulfill basic needs, lacking instruction (education), and lacking decent…

View Cache

Father Lawrence Johnson held guilty for abusing a minor boy now faces canonical procedures

Indian Cardinal Oswald Gracias has recommended the Vatican to resume canonical procedures against a Catholic priest, who was convicted of sexually abusing a minor boy.

Father Lawrence Johnson, 55, a priest of the Archdiocese of Bombay (now Mumbai), was sentenced to life imprisonment by a special court dealing with sexual offenses against children on Dec. 29.

The priest was also charged with violating several sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.

Cardinal Gracias, who is also the archbishop of Bombay, in a statement on Dec. 31 said that “as the case has been concluded in the courts, I am recommending to the Roman Offices that the canonical proceedings which were suspended due to the ongoing hearings be now resumed.”

Father Johnson was arrested on Dec. 2,…

View Cache

A curious trio of billboards went up across Rockford in November. They showed five men in Roman collars bracketed by angry red type: “Not one more penny! Until you reinstate our priests.”

The appeal to withhold contributions from the collection plate was the latest in-your-face gesture from the Coalition for Canceled Priests, a group that formed in the Chicago suburbs last year to advocate for clerics it says have been unfairly removed from the Roman Catholic ministry by bishops.

Its provocative tactics, which have also included a Lincoln Park rally and a viral endorsement from Mel Gibson, reflect its belief that public and financial pressure are more likely to get results than working through the church hierarchy.

“I’m not saying that all bishops are bad, far from it, but there’s a lot of corruption going on,” said co-founder the Rev. John Lovell, who has been sidelined for nine…

View Cache

There has been a “devastating” decline in religious practice among young people in Poland, says one of the country’s most senior church figures, Wojciech Polak, the archbishop of Gniezno and Primate of Poland.

He admits that the Catholic hierarchy’s failure to deal with sex abuse by clergy has been a primary cause, and has called for the church to continue the process of “purifying” itself.

However, Marek Jędraszewski, the archbishop of Kraków, has questioned his colleague’s interpretation, arguing that in fact the church has been a “victim” of the pandemic and young people’s growing use of technology.

Polak pointed to recently published data showing that less than 25% of young Poles now regularly practise religion. In the early 1990s, the figure was almost 70%.

“These are simply devastating numbers,” said Polak, in an interview with the Polish Press Agency (PAP). “A very strong re-evaluation is taking place in the young generation.”

Asked…

View Cache

An attorney who represented multiple people allegedly sexually abused by local Catholic priests is now seeking damages against another religious institution: the Guam-Micronesia Mission of Seventh-day Adventists.

According to a lawsuit filed Dec. 31, 2021, by attorney David Lujan, the new case stems from misconduct alleged to have occurred in June 2012.

At that time, the victim in the suit, a U.S. citizen identified only as a man with the initials “AA,” came to Guam from the Philippines to complete his high school education.

The man, who was 16 years old in 2012, became acquainted with Danny Dial, who was serving as the church’s director, according to court documents.

“Since Dial was from Mindanao in the Philippines where AA was also from, and both speaking the same dialect, Dial asked AA’s guardian if AA could stay with him a few days so he could take AA and show him Agana…

View Cache

A man has successfully sued the Catholic Church after a court found it had vicarious liability for sexual abuse he says he suffered from a notorious priest 50 years ago.

Key points:

• The Catholic Church has been found liable for its priest’s abuse of a five-year-old boy in 1971
• The ruling is believed to be the first of its kind in Australia
• Other victims of the priest were compensated out of court this year

The Victorian man’s lawyers believe it is the first such ruling in Australia.

Father Bryan Coffey was convicted in the Ballarat County Court in February 1999 of multiple counts of sexual assault against other children, and was given a three-year suspended sentence.

He died in 2013.

The man told the Victorian Supreme Court that Coffey had sexually abused him at his parent’s Port Fairy home on two occasions in 1971, when the assistant priest was visiting.

…

View Cache

Let’s pause for a moment and reconsider a very loaded and tricky word that shows up all the time religion-news coverage (as well as political coverage, of course).

That word is “reform.”

For really, really, loyal GetReligion readers, I will admit that I am, in part, flashing back to this 2008 GetReligion post: “Who gets to “reform” what?” Once again, let’s look at some of the language that shows up in online dictionaries when you search for that term. To “reform” an institution or a law means to:

* make changes for improvement in order to remove abuse and injustices; “reform a political system” * bring, lead, or force to abandon a wrong or evil course of life, conduct, and adopt a right one; “The Church reformed me”; “reform your conduct” … * a change for the better as a result of correcting abuses; “justice was for sale…

View Cache

HAS Christmas ended? Is the story over? Did we learn anything from the Christmas nativity story, and what values did the Church draw from it and teach us? Will we face 2022 with a new determination inspired to live out and practice the values of the Gospel?

The Christmas belen (manger scene) that depicts the baby Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes and surrounded by adoring parents Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and animals will be dismantled and removed from churches. But will it and the story it tells be removed from our minds and hearts? That is the story of Jesus of Nazareth that brought the love of God into the world, that elevated the rights of children and women to the highest level and that has called us to respect the rights of children and women and stop child abuse.

That Jesus who was born to a life of poverty in…

View Cache

Thank you, Lisa McGinley, for your article “Money is the least of what the church has to lose” (Dec. 26). As a Catholic priest in West Virginia, I follow the “Abuse Tracker” website closely and found your article there. You have expressed many of my concerns more clearly and concisely than any other article I have seen. You have given us a very helpful perspective on our hypocrisy of failing to practice what we preach. We are seriously undermining our stated mission by destroying our credibility.

In all of the Gospels, hypocrisy by religious leaders was the ONLY situation that brought out Jesus’ anger!

I am grateful to journalists and attorneys who, whatever their motivation, have forced the church to face up to our systemic faults and grant some justice to our victims. They have also forced…

View Cache

A former Northland priest accused of child sexual abuse has died.

The Rev. David Tushar, 72, died Dec. 23 in Las Vegas, where he was living in retirement. Born in Eveleth, Tushar served as a priest in Northeastern Minnesota for nearly 35 years before he was placed on leave in 2019 pending an investigation into allegations of abuse at a previous placement.

Tushar attended Crosier Seminary in Onamia, the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, Gregorian University in Rome, and Catholic Theological Union and Loyola University in Chicago. He was ordained to the priesthood for the Congregation of the Holy Cross in 1976.

The allegations were related to his earlier service as a Holy Cross Father and Catholic School teacher in Niles, Illinois, from 1978-79. After Tushar was deemed “credibly accused” by the Diocese of Duluth in 2019, the case was sent on to the Vatican. He was also removed…

View Cache

Lawmakers in the Colorado General Assembly passed legislation in June giving new power to people who’d survived sexual abuse decades ago — and survivors and their attorneys said Thursday they’re planning to move forward with several cases once the law takes effect in the new year.

The statute of limitations had expired for these survivors, leaving them without the ability to hold abusers accountable. But Senate Bill 21-88 represented a major victory for child sexual abuse survivors and their advocates after years of advocacy and several failed attempts at passing similar state legislation.

“I faced years of sexual abuse in a high school here in Denver from Catholic clergy,” said Brian Barzee, who spoke at a Nov. 18 news conference with his lawyer, Michael Nimmo, to raise awareness about SB-88. “It’s only because of this new law that any of us are ever going to have a voice…

View Cache

The archbishop of Bombay Oswald Cardinal Gracias has “sought pardon” from the community after the conviction of a Catholic priest under the POCSO Act. He said he continued to pray for both the victim and his abuser.

On December 29, Fr Lawrence Johnson, former priest of Christ The King Church in Shivaji Nagar, was sentenced to life imprisonment for sodomising a 13-year-boy inside the church in 2015.

The Cardinal on Friday said: “I was very distressed to learn that Fr Lawrence Johnson was convicted of aggravated sexual assault on a minor. I deeply sympathise with the victim and the family. I ask pardon that a representative of the Church, appointed to be in charge of the community, was responsible for this.”

He addressed the victim’s mother’s accusations that the church “abandoned and harassed” them during their struggle for justice. “Several invitations by my secretary to the victim’s parents…

View Cache

The life sentence awarded to Fr Lawrence Johnson by a POCSO court has restored the faith of the victim’s family in “justice and Jesus”.

The boy’s mother in a tearful interview said that “Jesus had answered her prayer at Christmas”. “The courts have pronounced Fr Lawrence guilty today. But I held him guilty on the very day of the assault. He even knelt before me and admitted his crime. My faith in the men that run the Church is broken but my faith in Jesus is unshakeable.”

The 13-year-old faced the latest in a series of assaults inside Christ The King Church, Shivaji Nagar, Govandi, on November 27, 2015 that left him bleeding and bruised. He is now 18 years old, and is still undergoing treatment for bodily ailments apart from suffering hallucinations and nightmares.

His mother said, “Supporters of Fr Lawrence even held a morcha against us while we…

View Cache