ABUSE TRACKER

AUSTRALIA
ABC News

November 16, 2020

By Meagan Dillon

A South Australian child sex abuse survivor has told a court that crimes committed against her within the Church have made her a “compassionate” oncology nurse who cares for those dying of cancer.

In September, District Court Judge Paul Slattery found former music teacher and Church organist Malcolm Winston Day, 79, guilty of child sex crimes against a pupil, aged between nine and 12 at the time, in the 1980s.

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IRELAND
The Irish Post

November 16, 2020

By Fiona Audley

THE Catholic Church prioritised its reputation over the welfare of vulnerable children for decades, according to a report by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA).

The 147-page report, released on November 10, finds the Catholic Church’s moral purpose was betrayed by those who sexually abused children – as well as those who turned a blind eye and failed to take action against perpetrators.

Between 1970 and 2015, the Catholic Church received more than 900 complaints involving over 3,000 instances of child sexual abuse in England and Wales.

Since 2016, there have been more than 100 reported allegations each year.

The true scale of abuse over the last 50 years is likely to have been far higher, according to the report’s authors.

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UNITED STATES
La Croix International

November 15, 2020

By Peter Steinfels

The striking conclusions and the remaining questions

The Vatican has issued its report on the shocking case of former cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Two years in the making, it is 449 pages long, names names, gives dates, and cites extensive documentation and more than ninety interviews, all anchored with 1,410 footnotes.

Will it bring closure to questions about how the now-defrocked prelate could rise to the heights of the hierarchy despite rumors of sexual activity with adults and repeated machinations to bed seminarians?

Anyone who believes that must inhabit an alternative universe.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The New York Times

November 15, 2020

By Mike Baker

The deluge of sex-abuse filings, coming ahead of a bankruptcy deadline, far surpasses the number of claims filed in Catholic Church cases.

More than 82,000 people have come forward with sex-abuse claims against the Boy Scouts of America, describing a decades-long accumulation of assaults at the hands of scout leaders across the nation who had been trusted as role models.

The claims, which lawyers said far eclipsed the number of abuse accusations filed in Catholic Church cases, continued to mount ahead of a Monday deadline established in bankruptcy court in Delaware, where the Boy Scouts had sought refuge this year in a bid to survive the demands for damages.

Paul Mones, a lawyer who has been working on Boy Scouts cases for nearly two decades, said the prevalence of abuse detailed in the filings was breathtaking and might reflect only a fraction of victims.

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OTTAWA (CANADA)
Ottawa Citizen

November 16, 2020

By David Pugliese

The Canadian Forces has fought for 40 years to keep such details under wraps, even to the point of falsely claiming the original charges against pedophile Chaplain Capt. Angus McRae couldn’t be revealed to the public.

A Canadian Forces chaplain took children to his quarters at an Edmonton military base and gave them alcohol before sexually assaulting them, according to newly released court martial transcripts.

The Canadian Forces has fought for 40 years to keep such details under wraps, even to the point of falsely claiming the original charges against pedophile Chaplain Capt. Angus McRae couldn’t be revealed to the public.

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
The Valley Breeze

November 11, 2020

By Lauren Clem

A former priest who served at Holy Family Parish in Woonsocket from 1981 to 1990 was indicted by a grand jury on child molestation charges last week.

John Petrocelli, who was the assistant pastor at Holy Family Parish, faces three counts of first-degree child molestation and nine counts of second-degree child molestation. He is accused of molesting three male victims under the age of 14 during his time at the church.

The Diocese of Providence said in a statement that Petrocelli was removed from ministry in 2002 following credible allegations of abuse. His name was included on a list of credibly accused clergy released last year.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

November 15, 2020

By Henrietta Cook

A former ward of the state who was forced to undergo electric shock “therapy” after disclosing he had been sexually abused has reached an $825,000 settlement with the state government and Uniting Church.

It is believed to be one of the largest top-up payments for a state ward since new laws took effect in Victoria giving victims who have accepted meagre settlements the right to sue again.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Crux

November 13, 2020

By John Lavenburg

When reports of then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s sexual misconduct surfaced in 2018, John Cavadini got to work.

The director of the Notre Dame McGrath Institute for Church Life wanted to figure out a way to help ensure those guilty of sexual abuse or misconduct were held accountable in the future.

Two years later, and the Institute has come out with five sexual misconduct policy benchmarks for seminaries.

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MANCHESTER (ENGLAND)
Catholic News Service

November 11, 2020

By Simon Caldwell

The Catholic Church in England and Wales and the Vatican failed to show compassion or leadership in the fight against child abuse, a U.K. inquiry concluded.

“The Roman Catholic Church: Investigation Report” was part of a national inquiry — set up by the British home secretary — into abuse in a range of institutions, including social care, government and the Church of England. The report on the Catholic Church, released Nov. 10, accused Cardinal Vincent Nichols of Westminster, president of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, of putting the reputation of the church ahead of the welfare of vulnerable children.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Associated Press

November 15, 2020

By David Crary

Catholic bishops of the United States open a national meeting Monday under dramatic circumstances.

A pandemic has compelled them to meet virtually from their far-flung dioceses. A hard-fought presidential election has caused sharp divisions in their own ranks. And six days before the meeting, the Vatican released a revelatory report detailing how clerics in the U.S. and abroad failed to hold ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick to account until many years after suspicions of serial sexual misconduct had become widespread.

“The shadow of the McCarrick report hangs over this meeting,” said John Gehring, Catholic program director at a Washington-based clergy network called Faith in Public Life.

McCarrick, who was defrocked by Pope Francis last year, headed up dioceses in Metuchen and Newark, New Jersey, and in Washington, D.C. The report found that three decades of bishops, cardinals and popes dismissed or downplayed reports of McCarrick’s misconduct with young men.

For U.S. clergy, one of the most embarrassing revelations was that three New Jersey bishops — all now deceased — provided “inaccurate and incomplete information” about McCarrick to the Vatican as part of an investigation in 2000, just a few months before he became a cardinal and archbishop of Washington.

The bishops will discuss the McCarrick report twice Monday, first in a private session and later in a public livestream, according to the communications office of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Tablet

November 10, 2020

By Catherine Pepinster

The Catholic Church betrayed its moral purpose by prioritising its own reputation over bringing child abusers to book and turning a blind eye to sex assaults, according to the official report from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.

Survivors of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests, monks and other Church figures have called for mandatory reporting of assaults in the wake of the damning report, which accuses the Catholic Church of repeated failures to protect the vulnerable and of showing more interest in protecting its own reputation.

In an exclusive letter, published in The Tablet (below), 20 survivors of abuse appeal for mandatory reporting and an independent body to be responsible for the oversight of safeguarding in the Catholic Church. IICSA says that the Church’s moral purpose has been betrayed by not only those who abused children but also by those who turned a blind eye to the assaults and failed to take action against the perpetrators. It says that the Church prioritised its own reputation.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service via Catholic Sentinel

November 11, 2020

Following the Nov. 10 release of the Vatican’s 460-page report on former cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, some of the speculation in the media has centered on the role of St. John Paul II in McCarrick’s rise through church ranks.

Commentators have alleged the pope knowingly advanced McCarrick up the hierarchical ladder despite being aware of allegations of sexual misconduct going back decades.

But those who are experts on St. John Paul’s life oppose that characterization.

“The McCarrick report is an important document that relates painful events,” said the Knights of Columbus, which operates the St. John Paul II National Shrine in Washington. “We pray that it leads to healing and reconciliation. However, this tragedy in no way diminishes St. John Paul II’s legacy of love and compassion, and it has no bearing on the shrine or its mission.”

“From its inception, the shrine was intended as a response to St. John Paul II’s call for a ‘new evangelization,’ which was repeated by Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis,” the Knights said in a Nov. 11 statement to Catholic News Service.

“The shrine is a place of genuine encounter with God that leads to a renewal of individuals, families, societies and cultures — a place where God heals and renews every dimension of human life,” it added. “That continues to be the shrine’s focus.”

Catholic commentator George Weigel — in two articles published Nov. 10 to coincide with the McCarrick report’s release — provided strong opposition to those seeking to blame St. John Paul for McCarrick’s advancement.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

November 16, 2020

By Jonathan Luxmoore

Warsaw, Poland – When a long-awaited report on the case of disgraced ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was published by the Vatican Nov. 10, it had a special resonance in Poland.

The extensive document highlighted mistakes by the last three popes, but particularly questioned judgments by St. John Paul II, a figure long considered beyond criticism in his homeland.

The role of the Polish pontiff’s long-serving secretary, retired Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, had been examined a day earlier by a Polish TV documentary, citing damning evidence that he connived in covering up sex abuse by Catholic clergy both in Rome and in Poland.

The revelations come during a hot autumn for Poland’s predominant Catholic Church, already facing multiple abuse-related investigations, the disgracing of its oldest cardinal and angry protests over its backing for new curbs on abortion.

How the church reacts now will be closely watched.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

November 13, 2020

In many, many ways, Pope John Paul II was an admirable man. The last decades of the 20th century were enriched immeasurably by his deft use of papal statecraft in raising up the voices of oppressed peoples across Eastern Europe, in his various efforts toward inter-religious dialogue, and by his personal witness to the dignity of aging.

But as the Vatican’s unprecedented report on the career of disgraced ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick reveals in shocking detail, the first decade of the 21st century will forever be marred by John Paul’s calamitous, callous decision-making.

It is time for a difficult reckoning. This man, proclaimed a Catholic saint by Pope Francis in 2014, willfully put at risk children and young adults in the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., and across the world. In doing so, he also undermined the global church’s witness, shattered its credibility as an institution, and set a deplorable example for bishops in ignoring the accounts of abuse victims.

As with every saint, John Paul has a vibrant cult — people across the world who celebrate his memory by encouraging devotion to him, placing his name on churches and schools, and hosting processions and parades on his liturgical feast.

Given what we know now about the long-lasting repercussions of John Paul’s decision-making, the U.S. bishops, meeting next week for their annual conference, should seriously consider whether American Catholics can continue such practices. They should also discuss requesting that the Vatican formally suppress John Paul’s cult. Abuse victims deserve no less.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

November 16, 2020

By Michael Sean Winters

The U.S. bishops’ conference begins its virtual plenary session this afternoon. On Friday, I looked at what I thought they should be discussing today and tomorrow. Sadly, if they do have that discussion, it will likely be mostly during executive session.

This morning, let’s look at the conference’s public agenda and especially at the elections of new committee chairs. Your average Catholic in the pew may not care who leads the Communications Committee at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, or the Pro-Life Activities Committee, but it matters a lot to the direction the conference will take in the years ahead.

Overall, one question has hung over the conference’s meetings for seven years now: Will the U.S. bishops continue to resist the direction Pope Francis is trying to steer the church or will they engage his evangelical vision?

The first order of business will be addresses from the papal nuncio, Archbishop Christophe Pierre, and from the conference president, Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles. Pierre is a diplomat and Gomez is one of the most mild-mannered people you could ever want to meet, so I do not expect fireworks in either address. Yet both men must address the recent report about former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

Of course, both must recommit the church to eradicating the scourge of clergy sex abuse, but it will be interesting to see how much either or both of them acknowledge the indictment of the clerical culture that report contained: a pope none-too-curious about the veracity of serious allegations about a prospective cardinal, bishops willing to lie to protect a friend and mentor, a diplomat — I am talkin’ about you, Viganò! — who did not carry out an investigation when requested, only to later complain that he was the only one trying to hold McCarrick accountable.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service via Catholic Philly

November 16, 2020

By Rhina Guidos

U.S. Catholic bishops will address the recent Vatican report on former Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick when they gather Nov. 16 and 17 for their annual meeting, taking place in an online format this year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

A revision to the agenda issued in a Nov. 13 news release by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops shows a change to reflect that “changes were made in the schedule in order to accommodate a discussion by the bishops on the Holy See’s report on Theodore McCarrick.”

“Additionally, the bishops will hear a report from the National Review Board, which advises the Committee on the Protection of Children and Young People on matters of child and youth protection, specifically on policies and practices,” the press release said.

In what is undoubtedly one of the largest virtual gatherings of Catholic bishops in the world, more than 300 prelates are expected to log on for the two-day meeting with plenary sessions to be livestreamed from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Nov. 16 and from 1 p.m. to about 3 p.m. Nov. 17, both Eastern Standard Time, to accommodate the variety of time zones.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

November 13, 2020

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bishops-shouldnt-investigate-one-another-their-us-conference-must-enact-reforms/2020/11/13/7d38ea92-247a-11eb-a688-5298ad5d580a_story.html

As the Catholic Church was reeling two years ago in the aftermath of revelations that former cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, one of the highest-profile prelates in this country, was a serial sexual predator, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops met in Baltimore. At the top of the bishops’ agenda was how to grapple, once again, with the unending scandals that had ensnared so many clerics and wrecked so many lives. In the end, they did nothing.

The bishops were derailed by the Vatican, which urged them to hold off pending an action plan to be formulated in Rome for addressing wrongdoing by bishops. Yet in the end, the shortcomings of the church’s approach to rooting out misconduct in its highest ranks, which relies largely on bishops investigating and judging their fellow bishops, were exposed by an extraordinary Vatican report this week, which laid bare the details of the McCarrick case itself.

Mr. McCarrick, who was expelled from the priesthood last year, was found to have preyed on at least 17 victims. Some were young seminarians; more than half were children. The 449-page document’s headline finding is that Pope John Paul II dismissed explicit information about Mr. McCarrick’s sexual abuse in naming him archbishop of Washington in 2000. Yet the report also makes clear that at least three American bishops, tasked with investigating the allegations at the time, provided the Vatican with “inaccurate and incomplete information.” And another bishop, in Rome, who functioned as the pope’s own gatekeeper, believed Mr. McCarrick’s denials when the American prelate contacted him.

One of the main takeaways from the report, therefore, is the manifest inadequacy of the system now in place that counts on archbishops to police abuse by bishops. Yet proposals from within the American church’s U.S. hierarchy to give laypeople a prominent, formal role in investigating allegations involving bishops, floated two years in Baltimore, were controversial within the U.S. bishops conference — and do not appear to have been seriously considered by the Holy See.

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WOODLAND PARK (NJ)
Bergen Record via NorthJersey.com

November 16, 2020

By Deena Yellin

The Catholic Church is still reckoning with the legacy of alleged abusers like Theodore McCarrick and the culture of silence that let the former cardinal rise to prominence.

But that culture has also been transformed after years of painful revelations.

The church still faces hundreds of lawsuits and an incalculable loss of trust. But it’s also made progress through reforms adopted by Pope Francis and his predecessors, experts said last week after the Vatican released a 449-page report that documented decades of indifference to McCarrick’s misdeeds.

Local churches now require background checks and training for priests, volunteers and other staff who work with children. Dioceses have been ordered to quickly report allegations to local authorities, a sea change from the days when McCarrick ascended through the Catholic hierarchy in New York and New Jersey despite the accusations against him.

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WILKES-BARRES (PA)
Citizens Voice

November 16, 2020

By Terrie Morgan-Besecker

Three more people who allege they were sexually abused by priests as children filed lawsuits against the Diocese of Scranton.

Two of the lawsuits were filed by men who allege they were molested at St. Dominic’s Parish in Wilkes-Barre in the early 1970s. The third suit, filed by a female, alleges a priest at St. Ignatius Church in Kingston raped her in 1972, when she was 7.

The lawsuits are among dozens of lawsuits filed against the diocese on behalf of abuse victims.

Two of the most recent complaints filed by Kingston attorney Kevin Quinn relate to abuse at St. Dominic’s. One man alleges he was molested at age 11 by the Rev. Gerald Burns in 1972, while the other man was abused at age 7, by the Rev. William Culnane, in 1971. The third suit identifies the Rev. Neil McLaughlin, who was a member of the Society of Jesus but served in the diocese, as the abuser.

Each lawsuit alleges church officials knew the clergy members were abusing children, but instead of stopping it they transferred them to other parishes. The suits name as defendants the Diocese of Scranton, retired Bishop James Timlin and current Bishop Joseph Bambera.

Eric Deabill, spokesman for the diocese, said the diocese does not comment on pending litigation.

The allegations against Culnane were filed by Jeffery A. Stucker of Wilkes-Barre, who claims Culnane once forced him to perform oral sex on Culnane behind the church’s altar. He also groped and penetrated him two other times.

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WARSAW (POLAND)
Associated Press

November 16, 2020

Henryk Gulbinowicz, a prominent Polish cardinal, died Monday at the age of 97, days after the Vatican imposed sanctions on him over accusations he had sexually abused a seminarian and covered up abuse in another case.

The Polish Bishops’ Conference said Gulbinowicz died on Monday morning, adding in a brief statement: “Lord, give him eternal rest.” The body did not give details about the circumstances of his death.

Earlier this month, the Vatican’s embassy in Poland said Gulbinowicz, the retired archbishop of Wroclaw, was forbidden from using his bishop’s insignia and participating in any religious celebrations or public events.

The once well-respected cardinal, who supported Poland’s pro-democracy Solidarity movement in the 1980s, was also denied the right to have a cathedral burial service or to be buried in a cathedral.

Days after that announcement, it was reported that Gulbinowicz was hospitalized in Wroclaw and was unconscious.

Last year, prosecutors in Wroclaw opened an investigation into allegations against Gulbinowicz concerning sexual abuse of a seminarian in the 1980s, but they dropped the case because too much time had passed.

Gulbinowicz was also cited in a recent video documentary in Poland, called “Tell No One,” about predator priests and coverup efforts. It alleged that Gulbinowicz saved a priest suspected of abuse of minors from arrest by vouching for him.

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SPRINGFIELD (MA)
MassLive

November 15, 2020

By Daniel A. Ford

I am the Chair of the Bishop’s Independent Task Force on the Response to Sexual Abuse within the Diocese of Springfield. Last month I wrote an op-ed explaining that the Task Force was conducting an online survey designed to elicit ideas from the faithful, both laity and clergy, to inform us in our work, and encouraging people to participate. The response was very strong, and I wish to thank profusely those individuals who took the time to respond. I want to assure everyone who responded that all answers and comments, some of which were extremely thoughtful and insightful, have been read and studied. I know that they will be seriously considered and I expect that many of them will be incorporated into our final report.

There is one misconception that I want to clear up. Some people seem to think that the mission of the Task Force is to investigate claims of sexual misconduct within the Diocese. It is not. Our charge is to identify areas in which the Diocese’s response to those claims could be improved and to recommend significant and meaningful changes in Diocesan policies and procedures designed to promote healing and reconciliation. To that end, we are in the process of engaging the services of an outside professional organization which will organize focus groups in order to obtain the views and perspectives of survivors of clergy sexual abuse in a safe and trauma-informed way. We consider their opinions to be essential if we are to provide sensible and workable recommendations to the Bishop which are responsive to the needs of these most important stakeholders.

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WARSAW (POLAND)
Associated Press

November 10, 2020

A prominent Polish cardinal who was recently sanctioned by the Vatican over sexual abuse allegations has been hospitalized since last week and remains unconscious, Polish media reported Tuesday.

Retired Archbishop Henryk Gulbinowicz was sanctioned by the Vatican last week after the 97-year-old was accused of sexually abusing a seminarian and of covering up abuse in another case.

Private Polish broadcaster TVN24 on Monday night aired a documentary suggesting that another well-respected churchman, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, covered up sex abuse by priests in Poland and elsewhere, including abuse of minors by the Mexican priest Marcial Meciel Degollado.

The head of Poland’s Catholic episcopate, Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki, said in a statement Tuesday he hopes that “all doubts” presented in the documentary “Don Stanislao. The other face of Cardinal Dziwisz” will be “clarified by the appropriate commission of the Holy See.”

Dziwisz, the retired archbishop of Krakow who served as secretary to beloved Polish pope St. John Paul II in 1978-2005, said he was ready to cooperate with a commission and wanted the matter to be “clarified in a transparent way.”

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

November 14, 2020

By Jason Horowitz

The former pope was fast-tracked for canonization immediately after his death. But a tarnished legacy in dealing with the church’s sex abuse scandals has left critics to wonder whether it was too fast.

Rome – At the funeral of Pope John Paul II at St. Peter’s Square, banners rose from the sea of mourners reading “Santo Subito,” or “Saint at Once.” He was a giant of the church in the 20th century, spanning the globe, inspiring generations of believers with his youthful magnetism, then aged infirmity, and, as the Polish pope, he helped bring down Communism over his more than 26-year reign.

Days after his death in 2005, cardinals eager to uphold his conservative policies had already begun discussing putting him on a fast track to sainthood while devotees in Rome and beyond clamored for his immediate canonization, drowning out notes of caution from survivors of sexual abuse and historians that John Paul had persistently turned a blind eye to the crimes in his church.

Now, after more than a decade of doubts, his reputation has fallen under its darkest cloud yet, after the very Vatican that rushed to canonize him released an extraordinary report this week that laid at the saint’s feet the blame for the advancement of the disgraced former prelate Theodore E. McCarrick.

The investigation, commissioned by Pope Francis, who canonized John Paul in 2014, revealed how John Paul chose not to believe longstanding accusations of sexual abuse against Mr. McCarrick, including pedophilia, allowing him to climb the hierarchy’s ladder.

The findings detailed decades of bureaucratic obfuscation and lack of accountability by a host of top prelates and threatened to sully the white robes of three popes. But most of all, critics say, it provides searing proof that the church moved with reckless speed to canonize John Paul and now it is caught in its own wreckage.

“He was canonized too fast,” said Kathleen Cummings, author of “A Saint of Our Own” and the head of a center on U.S. Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame. She said that given the “really damning evidence,” in the report, had the church waited at least five years, and not mere days, to begin the canonization process “it would probably not begin for John Paul II because of his complicity in the clergy sex abuse scandal.”

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STOCKTON (CA)
The Stockton Record

November 12 2020

By Bob Highfill

https://www.recordnet.com/story/news/crime/2020/11/12/credibly-accused-diocese-stocktons-updated-list-includes-27-priests-and-two-brothers-who-faced-credi/6269083002/

The Diocese of Stockton has released an expanded and updated list of priests who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse of a child.

The diocese added the names of 27 priests and two religious order brothers who have served in the Diocese of Stockton and faced credible accusations elsewhere. The original list published in 2017 during bankruptcy proceedings included only clergy who were accused of abuse that occurred within the diocese or who were accused while serving within the diocese.

No one on the updated list currently serves with the Diocese of Stockton.

Bishop Myron J. Cotta said the update is a vital part of the Church’s effort to confront and atone for the sins of the past.

“The process of atoning for the horrible sins of clergy sexual abuse requires us to continually revisit this list and seek to make it as thorough as we can,” Cotta said. “A thorough, honest and open accounting of the sins of the past is necessary if our Church and the many victim-survivors of clergy abuse are to find healing.”

The updated list was prepared following a review of more than 1,850 diocese personnel files by Kinsale Management Consulting led by Dr. Kathleen McChesney, a former executive assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and a founding member of the Office of Child Protection at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

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RAPID CITY (SD)
KEVN

November 13 2020

By Natalie Cruz

United States Attorneys are requesting over $40,000 to be paid back to the (IRS) Internal Revenue Service

Former Rapid City Priest Marcin Garbacz was convicted last March of wire fraud, money laundering, transporting stolen money from Rapid City Parishes, and filing a false tax return.

Earlier today at the restitution hearing, the Diocese of Rapid City and the United States attorneys are asking Garbacz to pay $259,096.19 to the Parishes.

Internal Revenue Service agent Bryan Pickens testified at the restitution hearing and says ” the hardworking people of the Catholic church deserve their money back”.

The Diocese requested the money will be split evenly between St.Therese Catholic church, Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church, and Cathedral of the lady of Perpetual Help.

In addition to paying back the Parishes, the IRS is requesting Garnacz to pay an additional $46,000 for not declaring the stolen money on his 2018 tax return.

Garbacz attorney Jennifer Albertson says ” herself and the defendant both agree to paying back the parishes”.

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RAPID CITY (SD)
Rapid City Journal

November 12, 2020

By Arielle Zionts

Pope Francis has defrocked, or laicized, a former Rapid City priest convicted of child sexual abuse.

The Pope laicized John Praveen on March 26, the West River Catholic reported in its September issue.

“This means that John Praveen has been removed from the clerical state and cannot function or present himself as a priest,” the announcement says.

The 40-year-old was sentenced in March 2019 to six years in prison after admitting to sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl inside the Rapid City cathedral.

Praveen, who is from Hyderabad, India, joined the Diocese of Rapid City for a 10-year assignment in December 2017. The diocese sponsored his work visa.

Praveen first worked in Eagle Butte on the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe reservation.

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ORLANDO (FL)
Orlando Sentinel

November 14, 2020

The state attorney general’s office has concluded a two-year investigation into alleged sexual abuse by Catholic priests. Investigators believe the systemic abuse has been largely weeded out.

That’s the good news. The bad news is investigators say they have enough evidence to prosecute dozen of priests, and here’s what they plan to do about it:

Nothing.

They can’t. Statute-of-limitations laws make the alleged criminals untouchable.

“Some of these people, we would have loved to have prosecuted,” statewide prosecutor Nick Cox told CBS12 News in West Palm Beach.

Beyond the names, investigative details and disturbing anecdotes, the report could be interpreted as a 19-page distress letter to Florida lawmakers. The conclusions tell us that the Legislature needs to pass a “look-back” law that would override statute-of-limitations constraints.

If ever a situation demanded a good look back, it’s this one.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Press-Herald

November 14, 2020

By Michael McGough

The explosive inquiry leaves the strong impression that allegations of exploiting young adults weren’t treated as seriously as the abuse of minors.

The Vatican this week released an eye-popping report documenting how Theodore McCarrick, the defrocked former cardinal archbishop of Washington, D.C., ascended in the church hierarchy despite warnings that he had sexually harassed young seminarians.

The report, released by the Vatican secretary of state’s office, assigns primary responsibility for McCarrick’s advancement to Pope John Paul II, a favorite of Catholic conservatives, and essentially exonerates the current pope, Francis. It discredits the suggestion by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a retired Vatican diplomat, that Francis had relaxed “sanctions” imposed by now retired Pope Benedict XVI. (Vigano also accused Francis of being close to a “homosexual current” in the church.)

In assessing blame for the rise of McCarrick, a prodigious fundraiser, the report confirms much that was already obvious from decades of scandal over the church’s cover-up of sexual abuse of minors. When confronted with suspicious behavior or even specific evidence, church authorities turned a blind eye or gave accused clerics the benefit of the doubt.

On Wednesday Pope Francis said, “I renew my closeness to victims of any abuse and commitment of the church to eradicate this evil.” It’s unclear, however, whether the McCarrick investigation will be an inflection point in the church’s newfound commitment to confronting sexual abuse by the clergy and abandoning a culture of cover-up.

In the aftermath of the McCarrick investigation, liberal and conservative Catholics probably will continue to refract the issue of clerical sexual abuse through their respective partisan lenses. Liberals will link the problem to mandatory celibacy for priests; conservatives will complain about a gay subculture in the clergy.

But there is one arguably new takeaway from the report: that the church is belatedly realizing that sexual abuse of children and adolescents, horrific as it obviously is, isn’t the only form of sexual predation by priests.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
NPR

November 13, 2020

By Wade Goodwyn

The Boy Scouts of America are in the midst of a legal action that could threaten the very existence of the iconic, century-old institution. The Scouts declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February after thousands of allegations of child sexual abuse perpetrated by scoutmasters. The scope far exceeds the scope of American Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal — the number of abused Boy Scout claimants is more than 60,000 men. And that number could rise before Monday’s deadline to file a claim.

In the summer of 1977, Frank Spinelli was a young boy and lived on Staten Island with his mom and dad and two sisters. His parents were Italian immigrants, devoutly Catholic and eager for their children to become successful Americans. One weekend, the family went to the Staten Island Mall, where there just so happened to be, a Boy Scout Jamboree.

“And my parents, particularly my mother, thought it would be really good if I joined the Boy Scouts because my father worked two jobs at the time and she thought it would be really good for me to be around boys,” Spinelli recalls.

At the mall was the scoutmaster for Troop 85, a man named Bill Fox, he was a New York City police officer. And although Spinelli was a few months shy of being old enough to join the Scouts, the officer took an interest in the boy immediately.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

November 12, 2020

By James Connell

A Catholic priest says the report documents the failure of the hierarchy, and a need for civil authorities to take the lead in finding the truth. Also: Happy to fly the flag again.

To the Editor:

Re “The Catholic Sex Abuse Crisis Is Far From Over,” by Elizabeth Bruenig (Opinion, Nov. 11), about the Vatican report on the former cardinal Theodore McCarrick:

We have seen the unwillingness and even inability of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church to confront and resolve its clergy sexual abuse scandal, but now a report by the Vatican itself documents the utter failure of church leadership at the highest level and the many victims who have suffered.

Who can be trusted to right this tilting ship?

Civil governments must take the lead and do what the church won’t do: find and declare the truth because without the whole and complete truth there can be no justice, and without justice there will be no healing.

Culprits must be held accountable, regardless of their social or professional status. Doing so serves the common good of our society.

James Connell
Milwaukee

The writer is a priest in the Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee.

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NEW YORK (NY)
America Magazine

November 10, 2020

By James T. Keane

The release of the long-awaited “McCarrick Report” by the Vatican this morning provided significant information about Theodore McCarrick’s abuse of minors and adult seminarians, as well as a long and shameful history of church leaders ignoring complaints and concerns about Mr. McCarrick. It also raised the inevitable questions of who knew what and when, including regarding three popes: John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Pope Francis. John Paul II was canonized by Pope Francis in 2014, less than 10 years after his death.

Mr. McCarrick, once a priest and an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of New York (full disclosure: Mr. McCarrick was the homilist at America’s 100th anniversary Mass at St. Ignatius Church in New York City in 2009), served as the first bishop of the newly formed Diocese of Metuchen in New Jersey from 1981 to 1986, as archbishop of Newark from 1986 to 2000 and as archbishop of Washington from 2000 to 2006. He was made a cardinal by Pope John Paul II in 2001.

In June 2018, he was removed from ministry after the Archdiocese of New York deemed an allegation that he had abused an altar boy decades earlier “credible and substantiated.” In the weeks following, further allegations emerged of inappropriate behavior with minors and adults, including seminarians, and officials in the Archdiocese of Newark and the Diocese of Metuchen admitted that both had reached financial settlements with alleged victims of Mr. McCarrick over a decade earlier. He was finally removed from the clerical state by Pope Francis in February 2019 after a canonical trial and an unsuccessful appeal by Mr. McCarrick of the guilty verdict.

Today’s report largely avoids blaming Pope Francis and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI for the lack of oversight and restrictions on Mr. McCarrick, saying that Benedict and Francis both assumed that John Paul II had determined that Mr. McCarrick was not guilty of any crimes. In the case of John Paul II, the report argues that he was naturally suspicious of accusations of sexual misconduct against bishops because he had seen similar tactics used in his native Poland under Soviet rule. “Several prelates familiar with Pope John Paul II’s thinking opined that the Pope believed that allegations of sexual misconduct against important clerics were often false and that this belief was grounded in his own prior experience in Poland,” the report states, “where rumors and innuendo had been used to damage the reputations of Church leaders.”

A similar rationale was offered by many church leaders in the case of the Rev. Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legion of Christ, who was removed from ministry by Pope Benedict XVI in 2006 after multiple allegations of sexual abuse of minors, repeated affairs with adult women and decades of financial malfeasance while serving as head of the religious order. Father Maciel was close to John Paul II, who beatified Father Maciel’s uncle, Rafael Guízar (Pope Benedict XVI canonized Guízar, in 2006), and the priest was a prominent financial donor to the Vatican for many years.

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NEW YORK (NY)
America Magazine

November 12, 2020

By Sam Sawyer, S.J.

People have been scouring the 461 pages of the McCarrick Report, looking for a smoking gun that definitively explains what went wrong and who should be held responsible for the church’s long-standing failure to take allegations of abuse by former cardinal Theodore McCarrick seriously. But there is no single smoking gun. Instead, the report documents decades worth of smoke during which almost no one went looking for the very real fire producing it. Even more, it gives us a close-up view of concentric layers of plausible deniability and culpable ignorance, powered by clericalism, that allowed McCarrick to evade discovery or accountability.

There are, to be sure, specific events in the report that are particularly shocking, most especially Pope John Paul II’s irresponsible decision to accept McCarrick’s protestations of innocence over the counsel of multiple advisors when transferring him to become archbishop of Washington, D.C. But even if John Paul II had refused to promote him, McCarrick would have remained the archbishop of Newark, with the hope—made explicit by those recommending against his appointment—that the rumors swirling around him would simply fade into the background, never to be further investigated.

This dark and deceptive hope, focused on avoiding scandal, is perhaps the single most common theme in the report. It shows up when McCarrick is passed over for appointment to Chicago and New York, when he is chosen for Washington and when the Vatican spends years unsuccessfully attempting to limit his public activity and travel. Over and over again, shepherds of the church, were faced with persistent and proliferating rumors and eventually even specific allegations that one of their brothers had abused and mistreated those entrusted to his care. But time and time again they asked themselves not whether members of the flock had been hurt and were in need of care but how likely the media was to notice and publicize the matter. To put it bluntly, the hope of those with responsibility over him was not that McCarrick had not done these things of which he was accused—a hope that might have led to investigations and oversight—but rather that it would be possible to avoid any definitive reckoning before the public about whether or not he had.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

November 10, 2020

By Elizabeth Bruenig

What can we learn about needed reforms from the Vatican’s damning report on the defrocked cardinal Theodore McCarrick?

After the Catholic sex abuse crisis exploded into headlines in 2002, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops promulgated standards that would guide the American church’s efforts to protect children. In May 2002, the editorial board of USA Today met with an American bishop who would play an important role in shaping the new regulations.

“We haven’t been focused on the Lord; I’m trying to do that,” he told them. “As I see the bishops losing credibility in many areas, I want to try to be as good a bishop as I can be. I’ve got a long way to go.” It now seems that bishop, Theodore McCarrick, had further to go than it seemed.

But the report the Vatican released Tuesday on Mr. McCarrick’s history of sexual misconduct before he was removed from the College of Cardinals and defrocked in 2019 sheds harsh light on the church’s unfinished response to the sex abuse crisis. It indicates policy weaknesses and dangerous habits that must be corrected so figures like Mr. McCarrick cannot again wreak havoc on future generations of Catholics.

Mr. McCarrick’s own history of abuse underscores the gaps left by the standards he helped craft in 2002.

While the charter improved the church’s policies on sex abuse prevention and its management of allegations, it was directed specifically at shielding children and youths from the predations of priests. As Mr. McCarrick’s exploits show, it isn’t just children who are at risk of sexual exploitation in the church.

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LOURDES (FRANCE)
Channel News Asia

November 11, 2020

An independent commission set up by the Catholic Church in France to investigate claims of sex abuse by priests said on Wednesday (Nov 11) it had received 6,500 calls in 17 months from alleged victims and witnesses.

A hotline line set up for this purpose was closed on Oct 31.

Jean-Marc Sauve, who leads the commission, told a video conference of religious bodies that 62 per cent of the callers were men, and nearly 90 per cent of the allegations concerned crimes against minors.

About a third said they were aged between six and ten when they were targeted, and about another third aged 11 to 15.

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Denver (CO)
CNA

November 11, 2020

By Jonah McKeown

After the Nov. 10 release of the Vatican’s McCarrick Report, some survivors of clerical abuse told CNA they remain skeptical that the report contains the full truth about McCarrick, and say the were disappointed that rumors of McCarrick’s misconduct with adults largely appeared not to have been investigated.

Jan Ruidl, who lives in Milwaukee, was abused by a priest in the 1970s. She worked in church ministry for several years and now works in grief ministry at a funeral home.

Based on her reading of the report, Ruidl said, there was “an extremely high level of denial” in the hierarchy about McCarrick, especially when it came to the allegations that he abused adults.

“As a woman who’s been abused, as a mother, a wife, a church minister, and a human being, I just can’t comprehend why nobody was concerned about these young men. They were adults, but they were young, and in such a power imbalance they might as well have been children.”

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Sun Times

November 12, 2020

Letters to the Editor

Without the whole and complete truth, there can be no justice; and without justice there will be no healing.

I welcomed your news story on Wednesday about the Vatican report regarding former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

Once again, we see the unwillingness and even inability of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church to confront and resolve its clergy sexual abuse scandal. And this time it is a report by the Vatican itself that documents the utter failure of church leadership at the highest level.

Who can be trusted to right this tilting ship?

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CLEVELAND (OH)
CNS

November 10, 2020

By Dennis Sadowski

New job in hand, Jim Richter was adjusting well to life in Minneapolis several months after leaving his hometown of Chicago.

He was enjoying his fellowship at the University of Minnesota Medical Center despite the long hours and he was coming to realize his move was a good one.

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ROME
Associated Press

November 11, 2020

By Nicole Winfield

Pope Francis pledged Wednesday to rid the Catholic Church of sexual abuse and offered prayers to victims of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, a day after the Vatican released a detailed report into the decadeslong church cover-up of his sexual misconduct.

The Vatican report blamed a host of bishops, cardinals and popes for downplaying and dismissing mountains of evidence of McCarrick’s misconduct starting in the 1990s — but largely spared Francis. Instead, it laid the lion’s share of the blame on St. John Paul II, a former pope, for having appointed McCarrick archbishop of Washington in 2000, and making him a cardinal, despite having commissioned an inquiry that found he had slept with seminarians.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

November 10, 2020

Calling a Vatican report on its investigation into its knowledge of sexual improprieties of Theodore McCarrick while a clergyman, Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles said the findings mark “another tragic chapter in the church’s long struggle to confront the crimes of sexual abuse by clergy.”

The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops also said in a Nov. 10 statement as the report was being released at the Vatican that the findings were being reviewed by U.S. church leaders, and he expressed gratitude for Pope Francis’ effort to address clergy sexual abuse.

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PEORIA (IL)
HOI ABC and AP

November 11, 2020

The Catholic Diocese of Peoria, covering much of central Illinois, is weighing in on the Vatican’s report showing bishops, cardinals, and popes downplayed or dismissed multiple reports of sexual misconduct by former Washington, D.C. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

The two-year investigation culminated in the release Tuesday of a 449-page report showing among other things that Pope John Paul II knew about the sexual abuse allegations, but allowed McCarrick’s promotion anyway.

The investigation determined Pope Francis merely continued his predecessors’ handling of the case until a former alter boy alleged abuse.

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REXBURG (ID)
Post Register

November 10, 2020

By Sally Krutzig

Fifteen years ago, Adam Steed came forward to the Post Register with his story of abuse.

Steed detailed his experiences of sexual assault at the age of 14 by Brad Stowell, a Boy Scout counselor, while at Camp Little Lemhi in Swan Valley in 1997. The Post Register’s six-part “Scouts’ Honor” series investigating Stowell and the cover-up of his crimes by many connected to the Boy Scouts of America sparked outcry from all directions in eastern Idaho.

The Steed family learned that the Boy Scouts had settled claims from lawsuits alleging Stowell had abused other boys and gotten the lawsuits dismissed. When one of those court files was finally made public in January 2005, “it revealed that before the Scouts settled the suits and paid the victims, Stowell had testified under oath that from 1988 to 1997 he molested at least 24 boys, many of them Scout campers,” the Post Register reported.

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BAKERSFIELD (CA)
KGET

November 12, 2020

A Kern County judge has denied a motion seeking to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Msgr. Craig Harrison against a Catholic monk.

Judge Kenneth G. Pritchard’s Nov. 3 ruling on the anti-SLAPP motion filed by Justin Gilligan allows Harrison to continue with his defamation suit against the monk, who is also known as Ryan Dixon. An anti-SLAPP motion is typically filed to stop lawsuits from restricting someone’s freedom of speech.

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NORWICH (CT)
The Day

November 8, 2020

By Joe Wojtas

The Diocese of Norwich revealed to the region’s Catholics on Sunday that it has spent the past 13 months investigating the extent of abuse of children by priests assigned to the diocese dating back to 1953.

In a letter to parishioners across the diocese, Bishop of Norwich Michael Cote announced that retired state Superior Court Judge Michael E. Riley is leading the “Clerical Sexual Abuse Accountability Investigation” for the diocese. Riley is a member of the Internal Investigations and Alternative Dispute Resolution practice at Pullman & Comley, a Connecticut-based legal firm.

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MALTA
Times of Malta

November 12, 2020

By Jessica Arena

Safeguarding commission receives 53 complaints

Six priests and two lay persons have had substantiated claims of child abuse made against them in the last two years, according to the Catholic Church in Malta’s safeguarding commission.

All eight were reported to the authorities and had “restrictions placed upon their pastoral duties” following an investigation, according to two annual reports on complaints of abuse published on Thursday.

In all, 53 complaints of abuse were made against diocesan priests, religious priests or lay people in 2018 and 2019. More than half of those, 35, were allegations of abuse against minors.

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KRAKÓW (POLAND)
CRUX

November 11, 2020

By Paulina Guzik

While the world is still digesting the McCarrick report, released by the Vatican on Tuesday, the blame game has begun in Poland, St. John Paul II’s homeland. One of the report’s few living protagonists is Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, John Paul’s longtime personal secretary, who was mentioned 45 times in the document.

But the storm for Dziwisz actually started the day before the report was released, when TVN24 aired “Don Stanislao” by journalist Marcin Gutowski, a 90-minutes-long documentary “showing another face of Cardinal Dziwisz,” as the station advertised it.

The film aired a long list of accusations from covering up for his friends from the seminary, to the role of Dziwisz in the case of the late Father Marcial Maciel, the disgraced founder of the Legionaries of Christ, another other dark spot in John Paul’s pontificate.

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ROME
Catholic News Service

November 11, 2020

By Cindy Wooden

In an unusual move, both Pope Francis and retired Pope Benedict XVI subjected themselves to questioning by Vatican investigators charged with compiling a report on how church decisions were made regarding the career and ultimate expulsion of Theodore E. McCarrick.

“Pope Francis was questioned closely regarding the 23 June and 10 October 2013 meetings” during which Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, former nuncio to the United States, claimed he told Pope Francis about McCarrick’s history of sexual misconduct and about supposed sanctions imposed on him by Pope Benedict, said the report released Nov. 10.

The footnotes indicate that McCarrick himself also was among the more than 90 people interviewed for the report. Vigano, who claimed to have gone into hiding after making his accusations against Pope Francis in 2018, apparently was not. The report refers only to his 2018 statement and to documents and letters written by him and available in archives at the Vatican and the nunciature in Washington.

In the interviews, “Pope Francis did not recollect what Vigano said about McCarrick” during the two 2013 meetings with Vigano, the report said. “However, because McCarrick was a cardinal known personally to him, Pope Francis was certain that he would have remembered had Vigano spoken about McCarrick with any ‘force or clarity.’”

The pope also said he was “certain that Vigano never told him that McCarrick had committed ‘crimes’ against any person, whether adult or minor, or described McCarrick as a ‘serial predator’ or stated that McCarrick had ‘corrupted generations of seminarians and priests,’” as Vigano claimed in 2018.

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ROSARIO (ARGENTINA)
CRUX

November 11, 2020

By Inés San Martín

Upon the release of the Vatican’s long-awaited report on the rise to power of former U.S. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, abuse survivors from Chile wonder where’s the report on the rise to power and fall of several members of the local hierarchy, included two influential cardinals accused of cover-up.

Chile’s abuse crisis is staggering: Over a quarter of the country’s bishops have been subpoenaed by prosecutors over allegations of either abuse or its cover up.

The list includes Cardinals Francisco Javier Errazuriz and Ricardo Ezzati, both former archbishops of Santiago.

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ATLANTA (GA)
CNN

November 11, 2020

By Paul Moses

November 11, 2020

As a Catholic, I long ago uneasily made my peace with the knowledge that too many church leaders who preached a Christian message I regard as sacred may themselves be deeply flawed, deceitful or corrupt. The release Tuesday of a Vatican report filled with the sordid details of former Archbishop of Washington Theodore McCarrick’s rise and fall doesn’t so much tear at my faith as give hope that the Holy See is finally learning to come clean with the truth.

This is so even though the report convincingly details how then-Pope and now St. John Paul II, who died in 2005, promoted McCarrick despite being very much aware of allegations that he was a predator who had sexually manipulated and abused seminarians. McCarrick denied the allegations against him in the past, but his attorney, Barry Coburn, has declined to comment since church authorities formally found him guilty in 2019 of sexual misconduct with minors and adults, “with the aggravating factor of the abuse of power.”

The report outlines how church authorities failed to take action as allegations mounted that McCarrick, an influential voice for the church internationally and a prodigious fundraiser, manipulated seminarians and male teenagers into unwanted sexual activity while serving as a New York priest and then as the leader of two New Jersey dioceses and the Archdiocese of Washington, DC. In January of this year, according to the Catholic News Service, McCarrick, who is 90, moved from a Kansas friary to a new location that has not been made public.

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DENVER (CO)
Crux

November 12, 2020

By John L. Allen Jr.

Rome – When I took Western Civ in college, our professor once read aloud to the class an excerpt from the diary of a Roman senator written on Sept. 4, 476 AD. The senator described his efforts to suck up to 16-year-old Emperor Romulus Augustulus in hopes of being appointed to some high office, perhaps a tribune or magistrate.

On that same day, Romulus Augustulus, the last emperor in the West, was deposed by the barbarian warlord Odoacer, marking what historians now conventionally identify as the fall of the Roman Empire.

My professor’s point was that quite often, people living through moments that change history fail to recognize them at the time.

The point arises with respect to Tuesday’s release of the Vatican’s long-awaited report on the case of ex-cardinal and ex-priest Theodore McCarrick. While the focus, understandably, has been on the content of what the report contains, the crucial historical point may be the fact it happened at all.

It’s so breathtaking, in fact, that one wonders if anyone in the Vatican actually understands the magnitude of the precedent they just set.

The only comparison that comes to mind dates to August 17, 2011, when the Vatican released roughly 70 pages of documents in its possession regarding the case of Father Andrew Ronan, a Servite priest who was laicized in 1966 and died in 1992 and who later figured in a sex abuse lawsuit in Oregon in which the Vatican was named as a defendant.

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DENVER (CO)
Crux

November 12, 2020

By Inés San Martín

As the dust begins to settle on the report on the rise to power of defrocked ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick, survivors are lauded by many as the impetus of the 460-page Vatican document.

Had victim’s not come forward, one of the Church’s most notorious predators might still be in the Vatican’s most exclusive club.

“As a survivor of clergy sexual abuse and someone who worked closely with former Cardinal McCarrick, I welcome the Vatican’s report on his abusive activity, how it was hidden and covered up and who enabled this betrayal of trust and failed to act to protect victims and the Church,” said John Carr. “For me, the former cardinal’s repeated abuse of young people and children, his constant lies, and his ongoing refusal to accept responsibility and apologize are a greater betrayal of trust than what I experienced more than 50 years ago as a young seminarian.”

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DENVER (CO)
Crux

November 12, 2020

By Elise Ann Allen

Rome – Over 30 years after he first raised concerns about the conduct of his then-Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, Father Boniface Ramsey says he believes he is finally seeing justice in a lengthy report detailing how his former boss was able to climb the ecclesial ladder despite rumors of sexual misconduct.

“In a mild sort of way, I feel vindicated,” Ramsey told Crux.

“McCarrick was in and out of my consciousness for more than 30 years. I was outraged by him. He wasn’t always at the top of my mind, I wasn’t always thinking about McCarrick, he wasn’t an obsession for me, but every now and then he would come up and do something that angered me,” the priest said.

A former Dominican, Ramsey oversees the parish of St. Joseph in Yorkville in upper Manhattan, and was the first person to blow the whistle on ex-cardinal and ex-priest Theodore McCarrick, a towering figure in the American Catholic Church who was defrocked last year over allegations of child sexual abuse and the sexual harassment of seminarians under his watch.

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BOSTON (MA)
GBH

By Mitchell Garabedian Interviewed by Jim Braude

The Vatican released a nearly 450-page report this week about former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s rise through the Catholic Church ranks, in spite of warnings about his sexual abuse of minors. The damning report, commissioned by Pope Francis more than two years ago, determined that then-Pope John Paul II knew about the claims of wrongdoing when he elevated McCarrick to cardinal. To discuss, Jim Braude was joined by Mitchell Garabedian, an attorney who has represented hundreds of victims of clergy sexual abuse including James Grein, who says he personally told Pope John Paul in 1988 about sexual abuse by McCarrick, which started when he was a young boy.

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JACKSONVILLE (FL)
News 4 JAX

November 10, 2020

St. Augustine – Top church officials in Northeast Florida published a list of 13 priests with credible allegations of sex abuse against them. All 13 have ties to the Diocese of St. Augustine, according to the Diocese, and are all either dead or were removed from ministry.

The list was published this week after the Office of Statewide Prosecutors released its long-awaited findings from a two-year-long investigation into sex abuse within Florida’s Catholic churches.

A Florida Statewide Prosecutor said at the start of the investigation he was immediately concerned with whether children were currently being abused by clergy in Florida, but the investigation found no allegations of sex abuse after 2002.

Investigators did release a list of 97 priests they found were credibly accused of sexual abuse prior to 2002. The list included at least five clergy members who held assignments within the Diocese of St. Augustine at the time of the allegation and only one of them is currently alive, according to the Office of the Attorney General.

“It was disturbing. And whether it was in the Catholic Church or anywhere, it’s disturbing,” said state prosecutor Nick Cox. “But you know, what got to me was is this was a church.”

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ST. AUGUSTINE (FL)
Diocese of St. Augustine

November 6, 2020

The following clergy have been credibly accused of sexual abuse of a minor. A “credible allegation” is one that, after review of reasonably available, relevant information in consultation with the Diocesan Review Board and other professionals, there is reason to believe it occurred. A credible allegation on this list is not equivalent to a finding by a judge or jury that a cleric is liable or guilty for sexual abuse of a minor under civil or criminal law. All clergy identified have been removed from ministry or are deceased.

The Diocese of St. Augustine initially encompassed the state of Florida east of the Apalachicola River and was subsequently split into other dioceses, including the Diocese of Miami in 1958, the Diocese of Orlando in 1968, the Diocese of St. Petersburg in 1968 and the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee in 1975. In 1984, two additional dioceses were formed in Florida – Palm Beach and Venice. All seven dioceses make up the Province of Miami. The clergy listed below have been credibly accused within the Diocese of St. Augustine’s current boundaries.

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CHICAGO (IL)
WGN

November 10, 2020

By Katharin Czink and Dina Bair

The Catholic Church is reeling after a Vatican report on sex abuse was released Tuesday.

The report reveals mistakes and cover ups allowed for the abuse.

Chicago’s Cardinal Blase Cupich calls it a watershed moment.

The report is almost too difficult to read — 449 pages documenting assaults on innocent victims and protection of the adults who carried out the abuse.

Church sex abuse victims stood in Rome telling the Pope, cardinals and bishops about their abuse. The sex abuse summit was just the beginning for the Catholic Church. An investigation of one of the most powerful U.S. bishops and a disgraced former U.S. cardinal was occurring at the same time.

Now the final report.

It is a revelation church leadership hopes will pull the curtain back on what were systemic problems to make way for healing for abuse victims and prevention of these horrors from ever happening again.

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McLEAN (VA)
USA Today

November 11, 2020

By John Bacon

A Vatican investigation into disgraced ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick lashed out at bishops, cardinals and a pope-turned-saint who downplayed ominous reports about the Catholic kingmaker’s sexual abuse of children and seminarians.

But the 400-page internal investigation released Tuesday by the Vatican goes easy on Pope Francis, saying the pontiff accepted his predecessors’ naive belief in McCarrick’s impassioned denials.

Francis defrocked McCarrick, 90, last year after the investigation confirmed decades of allegations that he had sexually molested children and adults. The Vatican had reports from authoritative figures dating back more than two decades yet allowed the prelate’s rise in the church to continue unchecked.

“Today’s report paints a picture of fraternal lenience and silence,” Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, told USA Today. “The impact of this brotherly support has been horrifying. Dozens of children and vulnerable young people were sexually violated by McCarrick himself, and perhaps hundreds more were sexually assaulted by abusive priests who went unchecked under McCarrick.”

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

November 11, 2020

By Michelle Boorstein and Sarah Pulliam Bailey

A new Vatican report’s revelations that Pope John Paul II disregarded reports about ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s sexual misconduct had Catholics on Wednesday debating the legacy of one of the modern church’s towering figures. The report triggered questions about whether John Paul was rushed through the saint-making process, and whether the author of contemporary Catholic teaching on human sexuality didn’t understand the complex nature of the topic.

The 450-page report released Tuesday is an unprecedented effort by the church at full transparency, a rare window on internal Vatican decision-making that showed that not only John Paul but also popes Benedict and Francis knew McCarrick had faced multiple accusations. Each pontiff was aware of different aspects of the accusations against McCarrick, but the initial years of the case came under John Paul’s 27-year reign.

John Paul, who died in 2005 and was made a saint in 2014, elevated McCarrick to archbishop of Washington and summarily to cardinal despite the allegations. Under Benedict, McCarrick was asked to step down as archbishop of Washington when he reached the standard retirement age of 75 and told to keep a lower profile. Francis assumed his predecessors had already vetted the allegations against McCarrick, but took action once a credible accusation surfaced involving a minor. McCarrick was laicized in 2019.

Reactions to the revelations about John Paul have been emotional and divided. Some saw a man perhaps naively believing a scheming friend. The report’s authors raised the possibility that John Paul’s judgment was heavily colored by his experience in the Eastern Bloc, where negative propaganda about priests was used to weaken religious organizations. Others felt his decisions were potentially disqualifying for the high moral honor of sainthood.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

November 11, 2020

By Chico Harlan and Stefano Pitrelli

Rome – Pope Francis on Wednesday vowed to “eradicate” the evil of sexual abuse from the Catholic Church, one day after an investigation into the case of ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick detailed failures that continued into his pontificate.

The Vatican’s 449-page report focused mainly on the years critical to McCarrick’s rise, when Pope John Paul II named him archbishop of Washington despite being warned of his sexual misconduct.

But the report also revealed how lieutenants close to Francis showed little interest in following clues about McCarrick’s misconduct. When briefing the pope, they glossed over the accusations, describing them as something “gossiped about” or resolved.

Vatican’s McCarrick report says Pope John Paul II knew of misconduct allegations nearly two decades before cardinal’s removal

In its transparency, the report is a groundbreaking moment in Francis’s papacy, documenting impunity and coverup with the kind of detail advocates and abuse victims have long demanded. But the report also muddles the picture for Catholics of how effectively Francis and his advisers can respond to the broader scourge.

In speaking about the report for the first time, at a general audience Wednesday, Francis was brief. He expressed his “closeness to the victims of all abuse” but did not elaborate on plans to fight abuse within the church. He notably quoted John Paul II, after mentioning it was Poland’s independence day.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

November 10, 2020

By Brian Roewe

Two years after reports of sexual abuse by Theodore McCarrick surfaced into public view, the Vatican’s long-awaited report on the now-defrocked former cardinal was released Tuesday. As the public sifted through the dense and detailed document, abuse survivors and their advocates called it an important moment that must lead to further action and investigations, perhaps even from the nation’s next president.

Much of the early reaction centered on the significance of the report itself, rather than specific findings and conclusions. At 400-plus pages, the report presents an extensive portrait of McCarrick’s rise within the church’s ranks and how allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct followed him throughout his career but did not derail it, even as the highest levels of the church learned of them.

In perhaps its most explosive discovery, the report stated that Pope John Paul II made the decision in 2000 to appoint McCarrick as archbishop of Washington, D.C., despite a warning a year earlier that he had been accused of pedophilia and sharing beds with seminarians.

‘Awareness is meaningless without concrete action’

Survivors of sexual abuse and their advocates called the report a milestone. They said it told a story too familiar to too many victims, and they cautioned against viewing it as a condemnation of one pope alone, or as the end of the abuse saga.

Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of Bishop-Accountability.org, a web archive that houses troves of documents on the abuse crisis, called the report “the most significant document on the abuse crisis to come from the Church,” and expressed hope that it represents in the Catholic Church “a shift to genuine transparency.”

At the same time, Barrett Doyle said the report represents “a powerful argument” against Vos Estis Lux Mundi, the 2019 apostolic letter that issued mandates and laws for reporting and investigating sexual abuse, and the self-policing model of accountability.

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ROME (ITALY)
Washington Post

By Chico Harlan, Michelle Boorstein and Sarah Pulliam Bailey

November 10, 2020

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/vatican-mccarrick-sexual-abuse/2020/11/10/c92de382-2045-11eb-ad53-4c1fda49907d_story.html

An unprecedented Vatican internal investigation has found that Pope John Paul II knew about and overlooked sexual misconduct claims against Theodore McCarrick, instead choosing to facilitate the rise of an American prelate who would be defrocked and disgraced two decades later.

The Vatican’s report amounts to a stunning play-by-play of the kind of systemic failure that the Catholic Church normally keeps under wraps, describing how ­McCarrick amassed power and prestige in the face of rumors, and sometimes written evidence, of his sexual misconduct with seminarians, priests and teenage boys.

The report devotes a good deal of attention to John Paul II and the pivotal years of McCarrick’s rise, but it also portrays Pope Benedict XVI as trying to handle the cardinal quietly and out of the public spotlight, and Pope Francis as assuming that his predecessors had made the right judgments. It shows how U.S. bishops sanitized reports of what they knew and all but ensured that warnings would arrive at the Vatican unsubstantiated or dismissible. In Rome, church leaders found every rationale for believing a “good pastor” over a victim.

For a church that has grappled for a generation with its sexual abuse crisis, the report — 449 pages, and two years in the making — goes further than any previous effort in naming names and providing details of a coverup. Such assessments have been long requested by victims of abuse, but they are nonetheless fraught for the church, because revelations have the potential to recolor the reputations of major figures within the faith, including John Paul, who was named a saint in 2014.

“By virtue of the simple fact that this investigation had to be conducted and this report had to be written, my heart hurts for all who will be shocked, saddened, scandalized and angered by the revelations contained therein,” Wilton Gregory, the archbishop of Washington, wrote in a statement Tuesday.

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RICHMOND (VA)
Associated Press

November 12, 2020

By Sarah Rankin

[Includes brief video statements by James Grein, Mitchell Garabedian, and Jeffrey Anderson (about “Priest 3”)].

Men who have come forward with allegations of abuse by former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick expressed disgust, frustration and outrage after an internal Vatican report outlined what was known about the clergyman’s behavior — and what was ignored.

“It was very emotional to read. It was very emotional because there were so many opportunities to stop him. So many opportunities to stop him. And maybe my life would be different, maybe I wouldn’t be a victim if someone had,” said John Bellocchio, a New Jersey man who has sued both McCarrick and the Holy See, alleging the prelate abused him in the 1990s when he was a teenager.

In interviews with The Associated Press, Bellocchio and others demanded that the Vatican institute changes to ensure nothing like what was described in Tuesday’s extraordinary report can happen again.

*

The report contained heartbreaking testimony about McCarrick’s inappropriate behavior, including from a woman identified only as “Mother 1” who told Vatican investigators she also sent anonymous letters in the 1980s when McCarrick was bishop in Metuchen, New Jersey, after she saw McCarrick “massaging (her two sons’) inner thighs” at her home.

“It’s crushing,” said Geoffrey Downs, who in a lawsuit filed in New Jersey accused McCarrick of abusing him when he was a teenager and serving as an altar boy. “It’s just crushing to those of us who went through it because you realize how small and incidental you are to these creatures, predators. You’re almost like a small nut and bolt in this giant machine of predatory behavior.”

Both Bellocchio and Downs suggested the church create lay review boards as a way to give parishoners an actionable role in holding priests accountable.

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TALLAHASSEE (FL)
State of Florida – Office of the Attorney General

November 6, 2020

[Note: This brief report includes two lists:
– Alleged Priests in Florida and reason for impossibility of a criminal prosecution
– Credibly Accused Priests Relocated to Florida by the Church]

Executive Summary

In October 2018, the Office of Statewide Prosecution (“OSP”) with the assistance of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (“FDLE”) began an investigation into allegations of sexual abuse of children in Florida by priests of the Catholic Church (the “Church”). OSP began that investigation after reviewing the findings of a grand jury report by a Pennsylvania grand jury that found sexual abuse by Church priests and wrongful actions by the Church in response to reports of that sexual abuse. This investigation did not find any instances indicating children in Florida were currently in immediate danger of sexual abuse by priests. The investigation did identify ninety-seven (97) priests against whom allegations of historical sexual abuse were made. However, after careful examination of each allegation and the relevant criminal statutes, prosecution ofthose allegations is barred by either the applicable statute of limitations or intervening death of the accused priest. Likewise, the wrongful actions or inactions of the Church and its personnel in connection with those depraved acts are not prosecutable because either the applicable statute of limitations has expired or the person who committed that act is deceased. This past legislative session the Florida legislature modified the statute of limitations (HB 199) that barred the prosecution of the accused priests, but that change constitutionally cannot retroactively allow prosecution of any alleged perpetrator who may still be alive. With these hurdles removed, any future, similar misconduct can be prosecuted.

Investigation and Findings

A. Summary of the Investigation Conducted

In August 2018, a grand jury in Pennsylvania released a report that detailed seventy (70) years of clerical sexual abuse within that state. See Report of the 40th Statewide Investigative Grand Jury (2018) (hereinafter the “Pennsylvania Report”). Over three hundred (300) priests were listed by the grand jury who were accused of sexual misconduct and instances of cover up were described, several of which had ties to Florida. Id. Following the Pennsylvania Report, many jurisdictions followed suit and reported their findings within their states. Across the board, jurisdictions’ conclusions were consistent: the Church placed very little focus on victims and no substantial proactive policies for protecting children existed prior to 2002.

The Church in Florida is compromised of six Florida dioceses and the Archdiocese of Miami (collectively referred to as the “Florida Province”).1 After the launch of the investigation in October 2018, OSP created and placed a link on the Department of Legal Affairs’ website for victims to report information related to the investigation. The inquiry highlighted the prevalence of incidents of abuse and the response by the Church. The investigation focused on those priests accused and the viability of their prosecution. Over two hundred sixty (260) tips were submitted regarding clergy abuse. All tips were reviewed, and the individuals involved with reporting were interviewed when possible. During the informational phase, tips unrelated to the investigation of the Church were forwarded to law enforcement for response and/or follow-up investigation.

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ROME (ITALY)
Associated Press

November 12, 2020

By Nicole Winfield

The Vatican’s report into ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has raised uncomfortable questions the Holy See will have to confront going forward, chief among them what it’s going to do about current and future clergy who abuse their power to sexually abuse adults.

Priests, lay experts and canon lawyers alike say the Vatican needs to revisit how the church protects its seminarians, nuns and even rank-and-file parishioners from problem bishops and cardinals, who for centuries have wielded power and authority with few — if any — checks or accountability.

McCarrick was only investigated and defrocked by Pope Francis because a former altar boy came forward in 2017 to report the prelate had groped him when he was a teenager in the 1970s. It was the first time someone had claimed to be abused by McCarrick while a minor, a serious crime in the Vatican’s in-house legal system.

And yet the bulk of the Vatican’s 449-page forensic study into the McCarrick scandal released Tuesday dealt with the cardinal’s behavior with young men: the seminarians whose priestly careers he controlled and who felt powerless to say no when he arranged for them to sleep in his bed.

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ROME (ITALY)
Associated Press

November 10, 2020

By Nicole Winfield

A Vatican investigation into former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick found that bishops, cardinals and popes downplayed or dismissed multiple reports of sexual misconduct and determined that Pope Francis merely continued his predecessors’ handling of the predator until taking action when a former altar boy alleged abuse.

The Vatican took the extraordinary step Tuesday of publishing its two-year, 449-page internal investigation into the American prelate’s rise and fall in a bid to restore credibility to the U.S. and Vatican hierarchies, which have been shattered by the McCarrick scandal.

The report put the lion’s share of blame on a dead saint: Pope John Paul II, who appointed McCarrick archbishop of Washington, D.C., in 2000, despite having commissioned an inquiry that confirmed he slept with seminarians. The report found that John Paul believed McCarrick’s last-minute, handwritten denial: “I have made mistakes and may have sometimes lacked in prudence, but in the seventy years of my life I have never had sexual relations with any person, male or female, young or old, cleric or lay,” McCarrick wrote.

But the report also charted the alarm bells that were ignored, excused or dismissed in 1992-93 when six anonymous letters were sent to U.S. church officials and the Vatican’s ambassador to the U.S. alleging McCarrick was a “pedophile” who would sleep in the same bed with young men and boys. Those alarms continued, when a Catholic psychiatrist traveled to the Vatican in 1997 to report that his priest-patient was a victim of McCarrick’s sexual abuse.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Associated Press

November 10, 2020

The Vatican has taken the extraordinary step of publishing its two-year investigation into the rise and fall of ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was defrocked in 2019 after a Vatican investigation determined he sexually abused adults as well as children.

Here are key findings from the report, based on documentation and interviews with witnesses, divided into the three papacies that are affected by the McCarrick case: St. John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis.

Pope John Paul II (1978-2005)

McCarrick had generally positive marks during his first two posts as bishop, in Metuchen, N.J. (1981-1986) and Newark, N.J. (1986-2000). But by the mid-1990s, rumors about his behavior were starting to fly, and John Paul passed McCarrick over as archbishop of Chicago in 1997 and New York in 1999.

When the position of archbishop of Washington D.C., opened up, the then-archbishop of New York, Cardinal John O’Connor, warned the Vatican in an Oct. 28, 1999 letter that naming McCarrick there would be a mistake, the findings said.

By that time, the allegations against McCarrick included: a 1994 letter by one priest to the Metuchen, N.J., bishop providing eyewitness testimony of McCarrick and other seminarians engaging in sexual acts during a fishing trip, and the priest’s own claims that McCarrick tried to fondle him. It also included anonymous letters sent to various U.S. cardinals that “accused McCarrick of pedophilia with seminarians as well as claims that McCarrick slept with young men in his official residence as well as seminarians at his beach house. O’Connor cited that information and said the risk of scandal would be too great if McCarrick were moved to Washington.

John Paul tasked the Vatican ambassador to the U.S. to investigate. His report confirmed McCarrick bedded seminarians but didn’t find “certainty” that he had engaged in sexual misconduct. The findings didn’t explain what McCarrick and the seminarians were doing in bed together. Instead, they faulted the bishops who were asked to provide information to the ambassador, saying “three of the four bishops provided inaccurate and incomplete information.”

The doubts, however, were enough to persuade John Paul to drop McCarrick as a candidate….

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NEW YORK (NY)
Associated Press

November 9, 2020

McCarrick, who was one of the highest-ranking, most visible Roman Catholic officials in the United States, was defrocked by Pope Francis in 2019 after a Vatican investigation determined he sexually abused minors as well as adults.

A number of accusers have come forward in the past two years, and the 90-year-old McCarrick and the various archdioceses where he was stationed are facing lawsuits.

McCarrick denied an initial allegation that led to his removal from public ministry in 2018 — an accusation that he had groped an altar boy in the 1970s. He has not commented on the lawsuits against him, nor did he when he was defrocked last year.

A look at the lawsuits and other settlements involving McCarrick …

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ROME (ITALY)
Associated Press

November 9, 2020

By Nicole Winfield

The Vatican on Tuesday will release its report into the rise and fall of ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the once-influential American cardinal who was defrocked by Pope Francis in 2019 after a Vatican investigation confirmed decades of rumors that he was a sexual predator.

The McCarrick scandal is different from other cases of clergy abuse, primarily because there is evidence that Vatican and U.S. church leaders knew of his penchant for bedding seminarians but turned a blind eye as McCarrick rose to the top of the U.S. church as an adept fundraiser who advised three popes.

When McCarrick’s crimes were revealed, the scandal sparked such a crisis of confidence in the church’s U.S. and Vatican hierarchies that Francis approved new procedures to investigate bishops accused of abuse in a bid to end decades of impunity for Catholic leaders.

But beyond that, the McCarrick case has forced the Vatican to acknowledge that adults can be victims of sexual abuse, too. The Vatican has long tried to paint any sexual relations between priests and adult men or women as consensual, focusing its prevention policies on protecting minors.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Associated Press

November 11, 2020

By Luis Andres Henao and Flana Schor

[Note: See also the texts of the six anonymous letters (and one pseudonymous letter) and the detailed account of Mother 1’s letters to U.S. cardinals and the nuncio.]

The Vatican’s report on ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick revealed the previously unknown contents of six anonymous letters accusing him of pedophilia that were sent to U.S. church leaders in the early 1990s and later forwarded to the Holy See.

New York’s then-archbishop, Cardinal John O’Connor, forwarded them to the Vatican in 1999, shortly before he died, along with a six-page confidential memo in which he recommended McCarrick not be promoted to any important U.S. diocese because of a “scandal of great proportions” that would erupt if the allegations became public.

The 449-page report also included testimony from a woman identified only as “Mother 1” who told Vatican investigators she, too, tried to raise the alarm with anonymous letters in the 1980s when McCarrick was bishop in Metuchen, New Jersey, after she saw McCarrick “massaging (her sons’) inner thighs” at her home.

The woman said she sent the letters to members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy “expressing her distress about McCarrick’s conduct with minors,” and she believed they “may have been thrown aside” because they were anonymous.

Jeff Anderson, an attorney for several of McCarrick’s accusers, said at a news conference Tuesday that he also represents two people in the woman’s family and criticized the church for turning a blind eye to the warning.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Associated Press

November 10, 2020

[This article includes a summary of the report’s findings.]

A Virginia man who accuses former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of sexually abusing him says he finds some comfort in the Vatican’s release of a report about the former prelate but he wants a public apology.

James Grein says the abuse he experienced for two decades beginning as a boy was “incredibly heinous” and will hurt “forever.”

“How they could ever repair my damage,” he adds, “I don’t know.”

Still, he says the release of the report makes this a “powerful day” for him and other victims.

The Associated Press typically does not name survivors of sexual abuse, unless they have identified themselves publicly. Grein, who came forward in 2018, has filed lawsuits in New York and New Jersey and testified in the canonical sex abuse case against McCarrick.

Mitchell Garabedian, Grein’s attorney, called for an investigation by law enforcement of why what he called a cover-up went on for decades.

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LOWELL (MA)
The Sun

November 9, 2020

If there’s indeed a hell, it’s a fitting final destination for Paul Shanley.

Shanley, a former Roman Catholic priest who played a pivotal role in the sexual-abuse scandal that rocked the Archdiocese of Boston two decades ago, has died, authorities said Friday. He was 89.

Police in Ware, a town in west-central Massachusetts where Shanley had lived since his release from prison in 2017, confirmed his death, but not the circumstances.

WFXT-TV, Boston’s Fox News affiliate, said he died of heart failure on Oct. 28.

Shanley was known in the 1960s and ’70s as a hip, street-wise priest who reached out to troubled youths. But in 2005 he was convicted of repeatedly raping and fondling a boy at a suburban parish in the 1980s, and he was sentenced to 12 to 15 years in prison.

During the trial, Shanley’s accuser, then a 27-year-old firefighter, said Shanley would pull him from Sunday catechism classes and rape and fondle him at St. Jean’s parish in Newton, beginning when he was 6 years old. The man said he recovered memories of the abuse as the clergy sex-abuse scandal unfolded in the Archdiocese of Boston during the early 2000s.

Incredibly, not only was Shanley’s predatory conduct tolerated, but rewarded, as in 1984 when Cardinal Bernard Law promoted him to pastor of St. John the Evangelist Church in Newton.

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DENVER (CO)
Catholic News Agency

November 9, 2020

Members of the Australian media are on trial this week for charges of violating a gag order issued during the trial of Cardinal George Pell, whose 2018 conviction for sexual abuse of minors was overturned last spring.

In total, 18 media personnel as well as 12 media organizations could face punitive measures including prison sentences or fines if found guilty by the Supreme Court of the state of Victoria, according to the AP.

The County Court of Victoria imposed a sweeping injunction against media coverage of Pell’s trial in June 2018, suppressing news of the legal proceedings at the request of the prosecution. The first trial proceeded to a deadlock in the early autumn of 2018, and a five week retrial convicted Pell in December 2018.

Pell was sentenced to six years in prison, and served 13 months before his conviction was overturned and he was released in April 2020.

The controversial media gag order had applied to all states and territories of Australia as well as any media format accessible within Australia.

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DENVER (CO)
Catholic News Agency

November 10, 2020

Allegations that Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz failed to investigate claims of clerical abuse aired in a television program Monday should be clarified by the Vatican, the president of the Polish bishops’ conference said.

Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki made the comment in a Nov. 10 statement, issued in response to the program “Don Stanislao: The other face of Cardinal Dziwisz,” shown on TVN24, a Polish commercial news channel, on the eve of the publication of the McCarrick Report.

The 82-minute program, presented by journalist Marcin Gutowski, accused the former personal secretary of St. John Paul II of failing to investigate clerical abuse allegations.

Gądecki said: “In reference to yesterday’s TVN24 report entitled ‘Don Stanislao: The other face of Cardinal Dziwisz,’ in which Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz is accused of neglecting to investigate cases of sexual abuse by clergy, I hope that any doubts presented in this report will be clarified by the relevant commission of the Holy See.”

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NEW LONDON (CT)
The Day

November 9, 2020

By Joe Wojtas

Norwich – The retired state Superior Court judge leading the Diocese of Norwich’s investigation into the extent of sexual abuse of children by priests assigned to the diocese said Monday that his team’s goal is to “speak with as many persons as possible who have information relevant to our investigation.”

Michael E. Riley, made the written comments in response to questions posed by The Day.

On Sunday, the diocese revealed to the region’s Catholics that it has spent the past 13 months investigating abuse dating back to 1953 as part of its “Clerical Sexual Abuse Accountability Investigation.”

The Day had asked Riley if he is interviewing the many men and women who say they were sexually assaulted by diocesan priests, attorneys who have represented some of them in civil cases or if he is interviewing retired Bishop of Norwich Daniel Reilly, who documents show transferred priests who had complaints made against them for sexually assaulting children and teens to other parishes.

Riley said investigators would speak with people whether they are survivors of abuse, alleged perpetrators of abuse or diocesan administrators.

He said they also plan to reach out to attorneys who have represented victims requesting they encourage their clients to speak with them and will also reach out to survivor groups for their input.

“We encourage any survivor or witness to contact us through the toll-free hotline we have established, and we appreciate the media’s support in publicizing the hotline and reporting website so that our investigation can be as thorough as possible. The diocese has committed that we will have unrestricted access to all of its current and former staff, priests and administrators including bishops. We will make those judgments based on the details of the investigation as it unfolds,” he wrote.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

November 10, 2020

By Alexis Jay, Sir Malcolm Evans, Ivor Frank, and Drusilla Sharpling

[Note: More than 800 documents gathered in the course of this investigation may be viewed here.]

This investigation report examines the extent of institutional failings by the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales to protect children from sexual abuse and examines the Church’s current safeguarding regime. It draws on evidence from the Inquiry’s three case studies on Ampleforth and Downside Abbeys and their respective schools, Ealing Abbey and St Benedict’s School, and the Archdiocese of Birmingham.

Between 1970 and 2015, the Roman Catholic Church received more than 900 complaints involving over 3,000 instances of child sexual abuse against more than 900 individuals connected to the Church, including priests, monks and volunteers. In the same period, there were 177 prosecutions resulting in 133 convictions. Civil claims against dioceses and religious institutes have resulted in millions of pounds being paid in compensation. It would be wrong, however, to regard child sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church as solely a historical problem. Since 2016, there have been more than 100 reported allegations each year. Across the entire period of nearly 50 years covered by this Inquiry, the true scale of sexual abuse of children is likely to have been much higher.

As we have said previously, faith organisations are marked out from most other institutions by their explicit moral purpose. The Roman Catholic Church is no different. In the context of the sexual abuse of children, that moral purpose was betrayed over decades by those in the Church who perpetrated this abuse and those who turned a blind eye to it. The Church’s neglect of the physical, emotional and spiritual well-being of children and young people in favour of protecting its reputation was in conflict with its mission of love and care for the innocent and vulnerable.

Victims and survivors described the profound and lifelong effect of this abuse. One witness said “the psychological effects have continued ever since, resulting in years of unbearable guilt, depression, nightmares, anxiety and PTSD symptoms”. Another victim said the abuse which he experienced at junior and senior residential schools affected every aspect of his life, and led to him self-harming. It “nearly wrecked” his marriage and “destroyed my trust, not just in the church but in any authority”.

In another instance, a young boy estimated that he was abused several hundred times by a senior priest between the ages of 11 and 15 years. After each incident he was required to make confession, and the priest concerned made it plain that his sister’s place at a local convent school depended on his compliance.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Guardian

November 10, 2020

By Owen Bowcott and Harriet Sherwood

Damning report says church put its reputation above the welfare of abuse victims

The Catholic church “betrayed” its moral purpose by prioritising its reputation over the welfare of children who had been sexually abused by priests, a damning inquiry report has concluded.

In its final review of the church, the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA) was scathing in its criticism of the leadership of Cardinal Vincent Nichols and says the Vatican’s failure to cooperate with the investigation “passes understanding”.

The 162-page report states: “The church’s neglect of the physical, emotional and spiritual well‐being of children and young people in favour of protecting its reputation was in conflict with its mission of love and care for the innocent and vulnerable.”

Between 1970 and 2015, the church received more than 900 complaints involving over 3,000 instances of child sexual abuse against more than 900 individuals, including priests, monks and volunteers. Over that period, there were 177 prosecutions resulting in 133 convictions. Civil claims against dioceses and religious institutes have resulted in millions of pounds being paid in compensation.

The sexual abuse of children involved instances of “masturbation, oral sex, vaginal rape and anal rape”. On occasions, the inquiry says, it was accompanied by “sadistic beatings driven by sexual gratification” as well as “deeply manipulative behaviour by those in positions of trust”.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

November 10, 2020

By Jason Horowitz

In elevating Theodore E. McCarrick to the position of cardinal, the former pope disregarded warnings and believed the prelate’s denials about sexual misconduct, an inquiry found.

Vatican City – A highly anticipated Vatican report found on Tuesday that Pope John Paul II had rejected explicit warnings about sexual misconduct by Theodore E. McCarrick, now a disgraced former cardinal, choosing to believe the American prelate’s denials and misleading accounts by bishops as he elevated him to the highest ranks of the church hierarchy.

As Washington’s archbishop, Mr. McCarrick was one of the most powerful leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, a media darling and prodigious fund-raiser with deep connections in the Vatican. But he became the highest-ranking American official to be removed for sexual abuse when the pope kicked him out of the priesthood in 2019.

Given Mr. McCarrick’s long career — as a priest in New York, archbishop of Newark and a Washington cardinal with a national and international profile — the 449-page report had the potential to engulf three separate papacies in scandal. Since the abuse carried out by Mr. McCarrick became public in 2017, conservative critics have accused Francis of covering up the American’s misconduct.

But the investigation, commissioned by Francis, who had promised to “follow the path of truth wherever it may lead,” largely absolved the current pope. Instead, it put fault chiefly with Francis’ conservative predecessors, emeritus Pope Benedict XVI, and in particular Pope John Paul II — elevated to sainthood since his death — who believed Mr. McCarrick’s denials of the allegations of sexual misconduct and promoted him.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

November 10, 2020

By Elizabeth Dias and Ruth Graham

A new report about a disgraced former cardinal had the potential to implicate three separate papacies in scandal.

On Tuesday the Vatican released a massive report investigating how Theodore E. McCarrick, a disgraced former cardinal and archbishop of Washington, rose to the heights of the Catholic Church, despite leaders receiving reports that he had sexually abused minors and adult seminarians over the course of decades.

Here are five takeaways from the report:

• Pope John Paul II knew of allegations of Mr. McCarrick’s sexual misconduct.

Pope John Paul II personally made the decision to elevate Mr. McCarrick even after a U.S. cardinal warned that he had been accused of sexual misconduct.

In 1999, when Mr. McCarrick was being considered to take over the Archdiocese of New York, Cardinal John O’Connor of New York wrote a six-page letter to the Vatican’s ambassador to the United States. He raised concerns that Mr. McCarrick had asked young adult men to sleep in his bed with him and that some priests had experienced psychological trauma from Mr. McCarrick’s inappropriate behavior.

“I regret that I would have to recommend very strongly against such promotion, particularly if to a Cardinatial See,” Cardinal O’Connor said. “Nevertheless, I subject my comments to higher authority and most particularly our Holy Father.”

Vatican leaders shared the assessment with Pope John Paul II. But the pope dismissed the allegations after Mr. McCarrick wrote him a letter directly denying them, and he elevated Mr. McCarrick anyway to the Archdiocese of Washington, one of the most prominent positions in the country. “McCarrick’s direct relationship with John Paul II also likely had an impact on the Pope’s decision making,” the report said.

[The other takeaways discussed in this article are:]

• The Vatican blames three American bishops for providing misleading information.

• Pope Benedict XVI ousted Mr. McCarrick as archbishop of Washington but declined to investigate him.

• Pope Francis did nothing until 2017 because he believed the allegations had already been reviewed by Pope John Paul II.

• It is extremely unusual for the Vatican to investigate its highest leaders like this.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

November 10, 2020

By Elizabeth Bruenig

A Vatican report reveals that the defrocked cardinal’s manipulation of power went all the way to the top.

Since accusations of sexual misconduct with boys and young men culminated in the former archbishop Theodore McCarrick’s dramatic resignation as a cardinal in 2018 and expulsion from the priesthood the following year, the Catholic hierarchy has been haunted by the question of who knew what, and when.

A Vatican-commissioned report released Tuesday gives us a clearer answer: everyone — to the highest echelons of the church — and far sooner than had previously been verified.

According to the report, a year before Pope John Paul II installed Mr. McCarrick as archbishop of Washington, D.C., Cardinal John O’Connor of New York warned the pontiff of serious concerns about Mr. McCarrick’s rumored sexual abuses, citing seminarians who had entered psychiatric treatment in the wake of their encounters with him.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

November 10, 2020

By Philip Pullella

A Vatican report into disgraced ex-U.S. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick points to failings by popes, Vatican officials and senior U.S. clerics who let him rise through the Catholic ranks despite repeated allegations of sexual misconduct.

With testimony from 90 witnesses and dozens of documents, letters and transcripts from Vatican and U.S. Church archives, the 460-page document offers a remarkable reckoning by an institution known for its secrecy, portraying a man long able to convince superiors of his innocence.

The report said that “credible evidence” that the former archbishop of Washington, D.C. had abused minors when he was a priest in the 1970s did not surface until 2017.

But it said the U.S. Church hierarchy was aware of consistent rumors that after McCarrick became a bishop in the early 1980s he preyed on adult male seminarians.

“During extended interviews, often emotional, the persons described a range of behavior, including sexual abuse or assault, unwanted sexual activity, intimate physical contact and the sharing of beds without physical touching,” the report’s introduction says.

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VATICAN CITY
Holy See

November 10, 2020

I. INTRODUCTION

A. Scope and Nature of the Report Related to Former Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick

On 6 October 2018, the Holy Father ordered a thorough study of the
documentation present in the Archives of the Dicasteries and Offices of the
Holy See regarding McCarrick, in order to ascertain all the relevant facts, to
place them in their historical context and to evaluate them objectively.

The examination of documents was undertaken in compliance with the
instructions of the Holy Father and under the auspices of the Secretariat of
State. No limit was placed on the examination of documents, the questioning
of individuals or the expenditure of resources necessary to carry out the
investigation. The Secretariat of State, having now concluded its
examination, sets forth the results in this Report on the Holy See’s
Institutional Knowledge and Decision-Making Related to Former Cardinal
Theodore Edgar McCarrick (1930 to 2017) (“Report”). The Report is
released to the public pursuant to the Holy Father’s instruction in this
exceptional case for the good of the Universal Church.

This Report is based upon review of all relevant documents located after a
diligent search. Within the Roman Curia, information was primarily obtained
from the Secretariat of State, the Congregation for Bishops, the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Congregation for Clergy and
the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.
All relevant documents of the Apostolic Nunciature to the United States were
also examined. While an explanation of the various roles and functions of
the named dicasteries and officials is beyond the scope of the Report, an
understanding of such matters, including the distinctions between the
competencies of the dicasteries, is critical to comprehend the decisionmaking
process described below.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Post-Gazette

November 10, 2020

By Peter Smith

This week was already shaping up as a milestone in the career of Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the former bishop of his native Pittsburgh, who is reaching the mandatory retirement age of 80 from powerful roles he has held at the Vatican.

Adding to that, he is also expected to figure in a Vatican report Tuesday about his predecessor as archbishop of Washington, the disgraced former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. The report is expected to focus on who knew what and when about allegations of sexual misconduct against the now-defrocked Mr. McCarrick, even as he rose to the highest ranks of the U.S. church hierarchy.

Cardinal Wuerl, who served as the Roman Catholic bishop of his native Pittsburgh from 1988 to 2006, turns 80 on Thursday. Under Catholic Church law, that means he will no longer be eligible to vote in conclaves of cardinals who select a new pope when there is a vacancy.

In addition to shedding that role, Cardinal Wuerl will also reach mandatory retirement age on the influential Congregation for Bishops, which advises the pope on appointments of new bishops, and hence has a large role in shaping the church hierarchy around the world. He has served in that role since 2013. The mandatory retirement also applies to his service on the pontifical councils for culture and Christian unity.

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DENVER (CO)
Catholic News Agency

November 9, 2020

By JD Flynn

On Tuesday, Nov. 10, the Vatican’s Secretariat of State will release a report on its two-year investigation into the career of ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who has been found canonically guilty of serial sexual abuse and misconduct, and was laicized in 2019.

Ahead of the report, CNA looks at some of your questions, and reviews what you need to know:

Who is Theodore McCarrick?

Theodore Edgar McCarrick was born July 7, 1930 in New York City. His father died when McCarrick was three years old.

McCarrick entered New York’s St. Joseph’s Seminary in the early 1950s, after a family friend paid for him to study for a year in Switzerland.

He was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of New York in 1958.

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WALTHAM (MA)
BishopAccountability.org

November 10, 2020

Stripped of his clerical status on January 11, 2019, becoming the first cardinal to be laicized for sex crimes. As of November 8, 2020, McCarrick had been publicly accused of sexually abusing at least ten minors in New York and New Jersey and of sexually abusing and/or harassing at least eight seminarians and priests of the Metuchen diocese and Newark archdiocese.

Substantive allegations against McCarrick were public on the internet for more than a decade before the mainstream press reported them. In 2005, conservative Catholic blogger Matt Abbott wrote about McCarrick’s alleged abuses of seminarians and priests. In 2008, scholar Richard Sipe published an open letter to Pope Benedict, saying he knew of “at least four priests who have had sexual encounters with Cardinal McCarrick.” In 2010, in an essay entitled the Cardinal McCarrick Syndrome, Sipe published excerpts from files of a church settlement with a former priest who was sexually abused by McCarrick.

The mainstream press did not report McCarrick’s sexual offenses until June 20, 2018, when Cardinal Dolan announced that the New York archdiocesan review board had found a child sexual abuse allegation against McCarrick to be “credible and substantiated” and that McCarrick had been ordered to cease public ministry. It was the first public allegation that McCarrick had assaulted a child. In a statement on the Washington DC archdiocesan website, McCarrick denied the abuse: “I have absolutely no recollection of this reported abuse, and believe in my innocence.” The victim was a 16-year-old student at NYC’s Cathedral Prep Seminary in late 1971, when then-Monsignor McCarrick allegedly sexually assaulted him in the sacristy of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. A year later, in late 1972, the boy was attacked by McCarrick a second time in one of the cathedral’s bathrooms. In separate statements released simultaneously with Dolan’s, Bishop James Checchio of Metuchen NJ and Archbishop Joseph Tobin of Newark NJ admitted that the Metuchen and Newark dioceses had “received three allegations of [McCarrick’s] sexual misconduct with adults decades ago; two of these allegations resulted in settlements.”

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

November 9, 2020

by Joshua J. McElwee

Who are the prelates who may have made decisions about the former cardinal’s rise?

Rome – The Vatican’s report on the rise of ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, set to be released Nov. 10, will likely contain the names of a vast array of figures — some who were directly involved in the success of his now-disgraced career and others who were ancillary but influential.

To help in preparing for the report’s release, NCR has assembled short biographical sketches of some of the more major figures.

McCarrick, aged 90, was long one of the most influential prelates in the U.S. Catholic Church — before a series of shocking announcements in June 2018 revealed that he had been ordered by the Vatican to step down from active ministry after an allegation of sexual abuse was found “credible and substantiated.”

Pope Francis confirmed McCarrick’s removal from the priesthood, after a guilty finding by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in February 2019.

For this roster, we have focused primarily on the periods surrounding McCarrick’s episcopal appointments, namely: as auxiliary bishop of New York in May 1977, as bishop of Metuchen, New Jersey, in November 1981, as archbishop of Newark in May 1986 and as archbishop of Washington, D.C., in November 2000.

The data included was taken from publicly available sources. The glossary begins with a description of the two key Vatican offices involved, continues with the offices’ leaders and concludes with a focus on U.S. cardinals who had unusual influence during the periods in question.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

November 9, 2020

By Joshua J. McElwee

Rome – Theodore McCarrick had a nearly six-decade-long career as a priest, bishop and cardinal before revelations about his sexual abuse of young men led to his removal from the priesthood in 2019.

To help prepare for the expected Nov. 10 release of the Vatican’s report on how the disgraced ex-cardinal was able to rise through the ranks of the American hierarchy, NCR has prepared the following timeline of some of the major events in McCarrick’s career.

May 31, 1958:

Theodore McCarrick is ordained a priest by New York Cardinal Francis Spellman.​

1965-69:

McCarrick serves as the president of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico. He is made a monsignor by Pope Paul VI in 1965.

1969-71:

Spellman recalls McCarrick back to New York, where the young monsignor serves first as an associate secretary of education for the archdiocese, and then as the cardinal’s personal secretary.

About 1971 through about 1980:

During this period, James Grein alleges that McCarrick repeatedly abused him while Grein was in his teenage years. In a July 19, 2018 New York Times report, Grein said he and McCarrick would go on trips and spend nights in hotel rooms together, where McCarrick would touch Grein sexually.

May 1977:

Pope Paul VI appoints McCarrick as the titular bishop of Rusibisir and an auxiliary bishop of New York.

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SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA)
ABC

November 9, 2020

By Erin Parke

A second priest has broken ranks with the Catholic Church, going public with concerns about what he has described as the “abysmal and extremely unjust” Vatican response to sexual misconduct allegations at an outback diocese.

It comes as an ABC investigation has uncovered a series of scandals involving priests in the trouble-plagued Diocese of Broome, including one who impregnated a schoolteacher, and a clergyman who returned to India before police could interview him over indecent assault allegations made by a teenage girl.

The incidents allegedly occurred under the management of 70-year-old Bishop Christopher Saunders, who is subject to an ongoing, two-year police investigation into sexual misconduct, allegations he has strenuously denied.

The Vatican is also running a separate internal investigation into his management of the diocese, which covers the vast Kimberley region of northern WA.

The review was triggered in March, when local priest John Purnell went public with concerns about the Church’s inaction over the sexual misconduct allegations made against Bishop Saunders in October 2018.

Now, another former Kimberley priest has spoken out, saying he is shocked and appalled at the Church’s failure to remove Bishop Saunders while the investigation is ongoing.

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SPRINGFIELD (MA)
The Republican via MassLive

November 7, 2020

By Anne-Gerard Flynn

Ware – Convicted pedophile priest Paul Shanley, a key figure in the Archdiocese of Boston clergy sex abuse scandal, has died. He was 89.

Shanley, who was removed from ministry by the Vatican in 2004 and convicted of child rape a year later in a landmark case in Middlesex Superior Court that rested on the repressed memories of a 27-year-old man, had been a Ware resident since his release from prison as a level 3 sex offender in 2017, and police in that Hampshire County town confirmed in media reports Nov. 6 his death Oct. 28 of heart failure.

The Boston Archdiocese, which has paid millions of dollars to victims of clergy sexual abuse, including those with allegations against Shanley, released a statement acknowledging his death and what it called the “harm caused to so many.”

“The harm caused to so many by Paul Shanley is immeasurable,” the statement said.

“His victims showed great courage in exposing his crimes and fighting for justice both within the criminal justice system and the Church. We are indebted to Shanley’s victims and all victims of clergy abuse for what they have done to stop the abuse, assure that the Church supports healing for those abused, and puts the protection of children at the top of our priorities.”

The Vatican removed Shanley from ministry only after he was arrested and numerous complaints of child sexual abuse were filed against him, even though the release, under court order, of archdiocesan records and documents showed church officials at the highest levels knew for decades of such allegations and continued to allow him to minister.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
Daily Mail

November 7, 2020

By Gabriel Byrne

Actor Gabriel Byrne reveals a terrible secret and how he tried to confront his tormentor

Surrounded by a moat, the Christian Brothers’ School House for Older Boys was a fine old Irish castle from the 13th Century.

The ghost of Oliver Cromwell was said to walk its stairways and corridors, and Queen Elizabeth I once slept in the stone chamber where we had our classes.

In 1961, when I was ten years old, a curate visited and announced to the class: ‘Boys, I want to talk to you about vocations to the priesthood. A vocation is a word from Latin meaning ‘to call’.’

God might be calling you, he said. ‘And if he is, you must answer.’ I thought of God trying to get through to me on the phone.

The curate continued: ‘If you listen to the voice deep inside yourself, in quiet moments, you will hear him. To be chosen is the greatest gift any family could have.’

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Guardian

November 8, 2020

By Catherine Shoard

The actor’s autobiography confronts the abuse he experienced at the hands of the church. But he has just as much contempt for Hollywood – and US presidents from Obama to Trump

Forget the pollsters. If you wanted to know the outcome of last week’s US election, you just had to ask Gabriel Byrne. I did, a month ago. I wish I had gone to the bookies.

Byrne was in London on the way back to his farm in Maine, where he lives with his wife and three-year-old daughter. It’ll be thin, he said, Biden’s margin is miles slimmer than anyone predicts. He called it in 2016, too.

“If you were in touch with the rage that was on the ground, you were not looking at Hillary Clinton and saying, she’s going to get elected. That rage is still on the ground. The 40 million who support Trump haven’t wavered one iota.”

When he emails on Thursday night, he blames the Democrats for the tight result. “This is the second time they’ve come up against a gameshow host and they’ve learned nothing. Again they seriously underestimated the level of anger among mostly blue-collar workers.”

*
Byrne was sexually abused by priests from the age of eight; then, three years later, dispatched to a seminary in England where, lost and homesick, he found comfort in the attentions of an encouraging teacher.

“What I remember most about him was his voice. It was very beguiling and calming,” he says. In his book, Byrne records the evening he was first invited to the man’s room. “I’d never seen it written down before – how you reel in an 11-year-old. Saying, ‘Oh you must be missing a little girl or maybe a little boy?’ Saying, ‘Are you this way? Are you that way?’ Having laid the ground in the most sophisticated way by saying, ‘You’re great at that. You’re terrific.’”

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
Irish Post

November 8, 2020

By Jack Beresford

https://www.irishpost.com/news/for-so-long-i-blamed-myself-gabriel-byrne-speaks-out-about-his-experience-of-being-abused-by-priest-197246

Gabriel Byrne has spoken of how he felt “ashamed and guilty” for many years after he was abused by a priest at the age of just 11.

The Usual Suspects star has opened up about the abuse in his new memoir, Walking With Ghosts, in which he recounts how he first moved from his family home in Dublin to St Richard’s College in Worcestershire to train for the priesthood.

In an abridged extract published by the Mail on Sunday, Byrne recalled how he was initially taken under the wing of a kind priest at the college.

Their relationship turned sinister, however, when that same priest molested him.

Recalling the night the clergyman first revealed his true intentions, Byrne wrote: “The priest’s breath was sour and hot as he moved toward me. Then there was blackness.

“Even years later it feels like the night has been concreted over. I’ve been picking at it with a pin ever since, afraid to use a jack-hammer, afraid of what’s buried in there.”

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CAPE TOWN (SOUTH AFRICA)
All Africa

November 8, 2020

In every culture, there is a belief in a supernational being (Almighty), and the relationship between humans and God requires worship and sacrifice. And, in any recorded human history, humans practiced some form of cultural religion — spirituality, so, culture cannot occur without education, while education is impossible without some form of societal culture.

From the time in antiquity, religion comprised of regular ceremonies centered on a belief in a higher supernatural power (God — the unknown) that created and maintained the order of things in the universe. Over a period, religions focus on the spiritual aspect of God, creation, human, life after death, eternity, and how to escape suffering or to be adjudicated afterlife. That is the reason why every culture made Gods in its image, similarity, and representation in their cultural space.

There is nothing more important in any culture or life than the worship of something. The only question is whether the worship is the right One, done in the right way. However, every religion believes that they are the right One, worship the right way, and their God is best in their cultural space.

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TORONTO (ONTARIO, CANADA)
CBC News

November 9, 2020

By Paige Parsons

After decades of silence, a group of men came forward alleging Anglican priest Gordon Dominey sexually assaulted them in the 1980s, when they were teen inmates at an Edmonton youth jail. Dominey died before the case could go to trial, leaving the men with an uncertain path to justice.

One man was watching TV at a Calgary homeless shelter in February 2016 when the priest’s face flashed on the screen.

Another was lying in bed in British Columbia when he saw it on the news. Another man, in Manitoba, saw the face he couldn’t forget flash up on Facebook.

Others were reading the newspaper — in a living room in downtown Edmonton, at work in Saskatchewan.

One by one, the men recognized the Anglican priest from their past.

Rev. Gordon Dominey was set to go to trial on 33 charges related to alleged historical sexual offences against 13 teen inmates at the Edmonton Youth Development Centre.

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DENVER (CO)
Crux

November 7, 2020

By Junno Arocho Esteves

[See also Vatican Priest Likens Criticism Over Abuse to Anti-Semitism, by Daniel J. Wakin and Rachel Donadio, New York Times, April 2, 2010.]

Rome – For Cardinal-designate Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the papal household, his elevation to the cardinalate has little to do with his own merits and everything to do with God’s word.

*
“In my case, the roles of preacher and listener are reversed. It is actually the pope who silently preaches to me and to the whole church, finding time every Friday morning in Advent and Lent to go and listen to the meditation of a simple priest of the church.”

However, his role as preacher is not confined to the walls of the Eternal City. In 2019, he was sent by Pope Francis to lead the U.S. bishops in a spiritual retreat as they deliberated better ways to address the sexual abuse crisis.

Recalling that “particularly delicate moment,” Cantalamessa said that among the fruits he witnessed were the participation of about 250 U.S. bishops as well as their attentiveness to “the meditation and liturgical prayer and silent adoration of the Eucharist” during the retreat.

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DENVER (CO)
Catholic News Agency via National Catholic Register

November 7, 2020

By Jonah McKeown

The report is expect to answer questions about how McCarrick rose through the ecclesiastical ranks despite apparently widespread rumors of sexual misconduct over the years.

Vatican City – The Vatican is set to release next week a comprehensive report of the misdeeds of disgraced former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who last year was laicized for serial sexual abuse of both minors and adults.

One clerical abuse survivor and advocate told CNA that while it will be hard to read the McCarrick Report next week, she plans to read it all.

“All Catholics will be grieving. I’m in a place of grief myself right now, just anticipating. I know it’s going to be very, very hard,” Teresa Pitt Green, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse by priests, told CNA.

“No matter what is in the report, I will go through a depth of grief that is as deep as anything I went through in recovery. Because that’s what being triggered is, and this report will put me and a lot of survivors through hell…I guarantee that survivors are already in profound grief. We’re going to have to walk through it all again, and so are all Catholics, not just survivors.”

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

November 6, 2020

By: Rhina Guidos

Vatican officials announced Nov. 6 that the Holy See will release Nov. 10 a long-awaited report on the investigation about the ascent to power of now-disgraced former U.S. Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick.

The report’s release comes days before the U.S. bishops gather virtually Nov. 16 and 17 for their annual meeting.

“On Tuesday, 10th November 2020, at 2 p.m. (Rome time), the Holy See will publish the report on the Holy See’s institutional knowledge and decision-making process related to former Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick (from 1930 to 2017), prepared by the Secretariat of State by mandate of the Pope,” Vatican officials said.

It added: “The same day, an hour before publication, a section of the document will be provided in advance to accredited journalists.”

Various news organizations had reported its imminent release in early November.

In an electronic update to the Archdiocese of New York, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan referenced what, some suspected, was a signal about the imminent release of the report.

“We are also still waiting for the release of the so-called ‘McCarrick Report’ by the Holy See, detailing the damning story of former-cardinal Theodore McCarrick,” Cardinal Dolan wrote in a Nov. 5 email addressed to Catholics in the archdiocese. “That could be another black-eye for the church.”

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ROME (ITALY)
Associated Press

November 6, 2020

By Nicole Winfield

The Vatican on Tuesday will release its long-awaited report into what it knew about ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s sexual misconduct during his rise through the church hierarchy, setting up a remarkable moment in the Vatican’s long reckoning with clergy sexual abuse and cover-up.

The Vatican said Friday the report would span McCarrick’s entire life, from his birth in 1930 to the 2017 allegations that triggered his downfall. The Vatican said the report would cover “the Holy See’s institutional knowledge and decision-making process” as the American prelate rose through the church’s ranks.

Pope Francis defrocked McCarrick in February 2019 after a Vatican investigation determined he sexually abused minors as well as adults. The 90-year-old is believed to be living in a treatment center for priests as a layman.

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DENVER (CO)
Crux

November 7, 2020

By Paulina Guzik

Krakow, Poland – In an unprecedented move for the Polish Church, the Vatican banned a retired cardinal from public ministry, public appearances, and the use of the bishop’s insignia.

Cardinal Henryk Gulbinowicz of Wrocław also cannot be buried in the archdiocesan cathedral after his death.

The disciplinary measures are a historic and symbolic moment for the Church in Poland.

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The abuse crisis in Poland exploded after the release of a documentary on YouTube in May 2019 called Tell No One, by the filmmakers known as the Sekielski Brothers. The film documented a history of abuse and cover-up in the country and was viewed by more than 2.5 million people in less than 24 hours.

Soon after its release, an alleged victim using the pseudonym Karol Chum posted on Facebook that he was abused by Gulbinowicz, but never reported it to the Church authorities. However, after the archdiocesan offices were made aware of the post, they contacted the alleged victim, and he eventually filed an official canonical complaint against the cardinal.

He was allegedly abused by Gulbinowicz when he was a 15-year-old student at the Franciscan Minor Seminary.

His case was turned down by the state prosecutor in 2019, due to the statute of limitations. The Church proceeded with its own investigation, which ended with the disciplinary measures announced on Friday.

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CRANSTON (RI)
WJAR 10 NBC

November 6, 2020

By Katie Davis

A criminal case unsealed this week marks a new phase in the Rhode Island Attorney General’s investigation: charges based in part on evidence that was already in church files and in some cases had been reported to law enforcement, but had not led to criminal prosecution in the past.

“I don’t want to really talk about how this case got made,” Attorney General Peter Neronha told NBC 10 News. “Let me just say this: that as we go back and look at all the records, it’s an opportunity to look again at information that the Diocese may have provided to law enforcement.”

A least 100,000 pages of records involving allegations of child sexual abuse, going back some 50 years, have now been turned over to the attorney general’s office by the Diocese of Providence under a voluntary agreement that began last year. Some of those documents had not been seen by law enforcement until now.

“They are more voluminous than I can give you a number on,” Neronha said of the files.

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CRANSTON (RI)
WJAR 10 NBC

November 5, 2020

The Rhode Island Attorney General’s Office has been examining records handed over by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence for close to 18 months, and the first criminal charges in connection with that review came on Thursday.

A grand jury indicted John Petrocelli, a former Woonsocket priest, on charges of abusing three boys under the age of 14 between 1981 and 1990. He was charged with three counts of first-degree child molestation and nine counts of second-degree child molestation.

Petrocelli entered a not guilty plea and bail was set at $50,000 with surety. He was ordered to have no contact with the three alleged victims or any children under 16.

Petrocelli had served as an assistant pastor at Holy Family Church in Woonsocket, but was on the diocese’s List of Credibly Accused Clergy and is no longer working as a priest. The diocese said Petrocelli was removed from the ministry in 2002 because of “credible allegations of abuse.”

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

November 6, 2020

By Shelley Murphy

Paul R. Shanley, a defrocked priest and convicted child rapist who became one of the most notorious figures in the Catholic Church clergy sexual abuse scandal, died of heart failure on Oct. 28 at a Ware hospice facility, according to state officials.

The 89-year-old had been living in Ware since his release from prison three years ago after serving 12 years for repeatedly raping a boy in the 1980s.

“Children are now safer because of the passing of Paul Shanley,” said Attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who represented dozens of Shanley’s victims in civil claims against the church and described him as “one of the poster boys of clergy sexual abuse throughout the United States and the world.”

Garabedian said Shanley’s victims feel cheated because he died a free man and church supervisors who failed to stop him from preying on victims were never prosecuted.

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