ABUSE TRACKER

NEW YORK
Democrat and Chronicle

Steve Orr and Sean Lahman, @seanlahman December 3, 2015

Spoiler alert: This article contains information about the ending of the film Spotlight

Roman Catholics in the Rochester region were stunned when the Rev. Eugene Emo, a priest who had served in a dozen area churches and hospitals over the course of 35 years, was placed under arrest in February 1996.

Father Emo, then 60 years old, a beloved figure to some parishioners but already a subject of scorn to others, was charged with sexual abuse. He was hauled out of a rectory on Oxford Street in the city in handcuffs.

What followed was a chain of events that mirrored, in more ways than one, the story told in the hit film Spotlight. That film, which is getting a good deal of Best Picture Oscar buzz, depicts a year-long investigation by the Boston Globe newspaper of sexual abuse by priests and attempts by church officials in that city to cover up that activity.

As the film relates, the newspaper had written before about abusive priests in Boston. Some of that coverage had been quite extensive. But until the Spotlight team began its work, reporters had never connected the dots by examining the scope of the problem and the Boston archdiocese’s handling of it.

Spotlight culminates with the January 2002 publication of the investigative team’s first story, which exposes the presence of dozens of abusive priests in the archdiocese who had been reassigned, placed on leave or allowed to retirement rather than being punished by the church and the law for their misconduct. As the film ends, scrolling text describes the reaction to the Globe’s Puliter Prize-winning reportage and lists the many American cities in which priest-abuse scandals ensued.

Rochester, New York is on that list. A review of the Democrat and Chronicle’s clip files reveals that what happened here is exactly parallel to events in Boston.

Before Father Emo’s arrest, the Democrat and Chronicle and its now-closed sister paper, the Times-Union, had covered the cases of at least four priests accused of sexual abuse.

The Rev. Gerard Guli of Holy Rosary Church in Rochester and the Rev. Thomas Corbett of St. Theodore’s Church in Gates were arrested by police on sex-abuse charges in 1989 and 1991, respectively. Neither was convicted. Both left their churches and Guli left the priesthood. Corbett remained a priest and worked in the diocesan offices until at least 2002.

In the summer of 1993, a woman filed a sex-abuse civil suit against Brother John Heathwood, a popular teacher at Bishop Kearney High School in Irondequoit. A few months later, the Rev. Robert Winterkorn resigned his pastoral post at St. John the Evangelist Church in Spencerport after acknowledging a sexual relationship with an adult woman.

Winterkorn’s privileges were removed, according to Bishop Matthew Clark, and he died in 2005. The lawsuit against Heathwood was eventually dismissed, and he retired from teaching in 1993. Heathwood was a member of the Christian Brothers, so he was not subject to oversight by the Rochester Diocese.

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UNITED STATES
Catholics4Change

by C4C Guest Blogger

Last Friday night, I saw the movie “Spotlight” with two friends. It had been on my “to do” list since I had first seen the trailer. As a Clergy Abuse Survivor, it was interesting to me how the Catholic Church would be portrayed. All too often, Catholic apologists bash the media and critics as being “anti-Catholic” and haters – convenient defenses to cover the scandal within the Church. I was hoping that “Spotlight” would not fall into that trap.

One of the defenses that is also used is “that was in the past – it is not happening now.” However abuse from the past continues to surface involving present day priests. Two years ago, it became public that my abuser was being investigated.

This public announcement caused dozens, myself included, to file additional complaints with the Archdiocese. After two years of investigations, both by the Archdiocese and law enforcement officials in several counties, my abuser decided to quietly remove himself from the priesthood after one claim was substantiated by the Church. He disappears from the roll of active priests in good standing however does not appear on the list of priests who have had their faculties suspended or removed – sort of a clergy “limbo.”

The movie takes place in Boston – a city with many similarities to Philadelphia. A city of neighborhoods. A city where people identify so closely with their parish – their high school. A city where the Catholic Church has substantial influence. All of the major characters, with the exception of the Jewish editor, identify themselves as Catholic even though they admit that they are not regular churchgoers.

First, I want to say that every Catholic should see this movie. Many have closed their eyes for far too long and failed to educate themselves on the extent of the clergy abuse scandal and cover up. As has been said, “those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.”

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

Megan Neil
December 4, 2015

It will take generations to restore the trust destroyed by priests who sexually abused children, the former second-in-charge of the Melbourne Catholic archdiocese predicts.

Former vicar-general Bishop Peter Connors says church leaders completely failed to deal with pedophile priests as they tried to protect the church.

“There has been a terrible abuse of the trust that people gave implicitly to priests,” Bishop Connors told the child abuse royal commission.

“That trust was sacred but it was destroyed by priests, the way they acted.

“It will take generations for that trust to be restored.”

Bishop Connors, the vicar-general from 1976 to 1987, has admitted he should have done more after a teenage boy was abused by Fr Wilfred “Bill” Baker in 1978.

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ALABAMA
WAAY

Breken Terry Bterry@waaytv.com

Charles Adcock, the former youth pastor at Woodward Avenue Baptist Church whose charged with more than two dozen counts of rape and sodomy is suing Colbert County Sheriff Frank Williamson.

Adcock was charged in September 2014 for sex abuse crimes and let out on bond, but then brought back to the Colbert County Jail because he allegedly broke the conditions of his bond by taking another job as a youth minister in Texas.

Court documents filed at the end of November by Adcock’s attorney requesting a “Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus” to allow Adcock to go before a judge and plead his case on why he should be let out on bond.

The civil suit also says the church where Adcock was part-time employed knew of his sexual abuse charges in Alabama but were not allowing him unsupervised time with minors.

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MICHIGAN
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, Dec. 3, 2015

Statement by SNAP leader Bill McAlary (616-514-0654, bllmack1@gmail.com)

A young man who was sexually abused as a youngster by a tutor is filing a civil lawsuit against Catholic officials. We applaud his courage and are glad that he’s taking steps to expose those who ignored or concealed these heinous crimes. We’re especially grateful because too often, child sex crimes by women against boys and girls are minimized.

[MLive]

We strongly suspect that evidence will prove Grand Rapids Catholic church and school officials knew or should have known about Abigail Simon’s six months of abuse perpetrated on this boy. We agree with attorney Ven Johnson who says the diocese is “in the dark ages” about the sexual abuse of kids.

We hope that anyone who saw, suspected or suffered child sex crimes or cover ups in Grand Rapids – by clergy, teachers or staff – to call police, protect kids and expose those commit or conceal horrific crimes against the vulnerable.

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VATICAN CITY
Bloomberg Business

Carol Matlack John Follain

More than two and a half years after Pope Francis took office determined to clean up corruption, the Vatican is still finding financial skeletons in its many closets.

Two new books chronicle widespread mismanagement in the Holy See, including auditors’ discovery of $1.5 billion stashed in hidden accounts and the use of alms for the poor to plug holes in the church budget. The Holy See had a €25.6 million ($27.2 million) deficit in 2014. One of the books, Merchants in the Temple, by Gianluigi Nuzzi, also includes a description of a 2013 tape recording of Francis telling senior clerics that spending was “out of control.”

Adding to the impression of disarray, the Vatican in November filed criminal charges against a Spanish monsignor and two other members of a financial reform team appointed by the pope. They’re accused of leaking information to the books’ authors, who also face trial in a Vatican court. All the accused have denied any wrongdoing. “The trial is a sign the Vatican is on the defensive, and a sign of weakness,” says Emiliano Fittipaldi, author of the second book, Avarice. The Holy See hasn’t disputed the authenticity of the material, but the pope has called the breach of secrecy “a grave illegal act.”

€25.6 million
The Holy See’s 2014 budget deficit

The scandal doesn’t appear to have slowed Francis’s reform push. In the latest move, he’s ordered a panel of leaders from the Vatican and the Vatican bank, aided by professional auditors, to determine the value of the church’s massive financial and real estate holdings—including St. Peter’s Basilica and the Sistine Chapel. The group held its first meeting on Nov. 27. “You can’t plan if you don’t understand what your assets and obligations are,” says Danny Casey, right-hand man to Francis’s economic czar, Cardinal George Pell. “It’s not our money. The stakeholders are the 1.2 billion faithful and the many we serve,” says Casey, in an interview at the ornate Apostolic Palace, which includes part of the Vatican museums and the papal apartments. (Francis doesn’t live there, having opted instead to stay in a modest Vatican guesthouse.)

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VATICAN CITY
Daily Beast

Barbie Latza Nadeau

How the Vatican’s ill-advised plan to prosecute two journalists is backfiring badly.

VATICAN CITY — Be careful what you wish for.

If the Vatican had hoped to teach reporters a lesson in restraint by putting two journalists on trial for printing leaked documents, it was sorely mistaken. In fact, the global outrage at the Holy See’s attempt to stifle the free press may in fact be just what’s fueling a frenzy of steamy secrets and a no-holds-barred attitude that has been making the Vatican look more like a hotbed of ill repute than a holy place of prayer and moral guidance.

What started as a fairly banal Vatileaks II trial—in which a monsignor, a public-relations specialist, an administrative assistant, and two journalists faced charges for leaking and printing classified financial documents that, frankly, weren’t all that surprising nor all that secret—has turned into a tale of illicit sex, spies, extortion, and computer hacking.

Spanish Monsignor Lucio Vallejo Balda and PR specialist Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui were both on a committee set up by Pope Francis to offer guidance to help straighten out the Holy See’s muddled finances. According to prosecutors, they, with the help of Balda’s administrative cleric, allegedly fed journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi documents from the committee that showed the depth of corruption and questionable financial practices that were the norm in the Vatican for decades.

The journalists’ books sought to outline gross financial malpractice through balance sheets and petty gossip about overspending. But what has emerged on the sidelines of the case is, frankly, far more titillating.

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PENNSYLVANIA
We Are Central PA

Somerset County, Pa.

A judge rejected a request for new trial but dismissed one of Father Joseph Maurizio’s guilty counts on Wednesday.

Back in September, the former Somerset County Priest was found guilty of three counts of illicit sexual activity with Honduran children who lived in an orphanage.

According to the Altoona Mirror, because one of Maurizio’s victims allegedly changed his story about the abuse, his statement could not be used as “proof” that the acts had actually occurred.

The 70 year old is set to be sentenced on February 2nd, 2016.

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PHILIPPINES
CNN

By Alex Ho, CNN Philippines
Thu, December 3, 2015

Metro Manila (CNN Philippines) — There seems to be no end in sight yet to the tiff between Davao City Mayor Rodrigo “Rody” Duterte and some members of the Catholic clergy over a controversial statement involving Pope Francis and the traffic jam during the recent papal visit to the Philippines.

This time around, Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo called out Duterte on Thursday (December 3) to give details about his claims that he was sexually abused by a priest during his high school days at the Ateneo de Davao.

In a statement, Pabillo said Duterte should “stop the drama” and instead elaborate on his allegations.

“If there’s a mistake committed against him, he must reveal it immediately,” Pabillo said so that complaints or charges can be filed against the alleged priest involved.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 3 December 2015 (VIS) – The Holy Father has:

– accepted the resignation from the office of auxiliary of the diocese of Down and Connor, Ireland, presented by Bishop Anthony J. Farquhar, upon reaching the age limit.

– erected the new diocese of Guasdualito (area 35,184, population 200,000, priests 13, religious 9) in Venezuela, with territory taken from the dioceses of San Fernando de Apure and Barinas, making it a suffragan of the metropolitan metropolis of Merida.

– appointed Fr. Modesto Gonzalez Perez, S.B.D., as the first bishop of the new diocese of Guasdualito. The bishop-elect was born in 1959 in San Antonio de los Alpes, Venezuela, gave his religious vows in 1983 and was ordained a priest in 1986. He holds a licentiate in education from the Universidad Simon Rodriguez in Caracas and in pastoral theology from the Pontifical University of Salamanca, Spain. He has served in a number of pastoral roles, including parish vicar, bursar, parish priest, provincial counsellor and local superior. He is currently director of the Don Bosco agricultural centre in Molinete, in the archdiocese of Maracaibo.

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UNITED STATES
Reuters

By John Lloyd December 1, 2015

Leaking is essential to journalism. It is the ethical problem at the heart of the trade — since much leaking depends on the leaker breaking a promise not to leak. The conundrum is “solved” by appealing to the higher cause of holding power to account.

That rationale can vary from having the force of exposing official lies or corporate fraud to the grubbiness of publishing details, usually sexual, of the private life of well-known people. But leaking is especially essential in the coverage of the intelligence services, and of the way in which security in the face of militant jihadism is administered. It’s necessary to get beyond bland statements and partial briefings, and get some purchase on the scope and methods of institutions now, in every state, much more powerful and much larger than they had been since the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s.

The George W. Bush administrations were as angered as any before them by the leaking which surrounded their actions, especially in the second half of the 2000s. But, as reporters learned to their delight, the wars within it, in key departments like Justice and State as well as in the security services, meant that leakers had a large interest in getting their objections out, and in weakening opponents whom they thought wrong, or dangerous.

Under President Barack Obama, however, whose administration is more disciplined and which has been directed to go hard on leakers, the pickings — say reporters — are thinner, the penalties harsher. Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA officer who leaked material on Iran to New York Times reporter James Risen for his 2006 book State of War; John Kiriakou, also once with the CIA, who disclosed information about a brother officer to journalists; and Stephen Kim, a former State department expert, who gave details of contacts between the United States and North Korea to a Fox News reporter, have all served or are serving jail sentences for their acts.

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ISRAEL
Arutz Sheva

By Raphael Poch
First Publish: 12/3/2015

There has been a dramatic change over the past three decades with regard to how the Jewish community, and more specifically the Orthodox Jewish community, deals with the after effects and trauma of sexual violence and abuse. This change is not only taking place in the Modern-Orthodox world, but also in the Ultra-Orthodox (haredi) world.

Debbie Gross, founder and director of religious women crisis center Tahel told Arutz Sheva, that this is due to the work that Tahel and other organizations have been doing.

“25 years ago, no one was talking about domestic violence and sexual abuse in the Orthodox community. We saw last year that people were talking about it. That is due to our work. So we created a conference about it.”

Tahel’s conference last year was attended by over 650 people from around the world. Gross said that the major aspect of last year’s conference was idea sharing and cooperation.

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AUSTRALIA
Leader

December 3, 2015
Chad Van Estrop
Melbourne Leader

A FORMER principal of St James primary, North Richmond was told to supervise the school’s parish priest near children, as he continued working, amid allegations of child sexual abuse in the early 1990s, the Royal Commission has heard.

Patricia Taylor told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse this week she was warned about Father Wilfred Baker during an “off the record” meeting with the Catholic Education Office in 1992.

Ms Taylor said she was also told by the office to prevent children from being in confessional rooms with Baker and never be alone with him.

Ms Taylor told the commission she felt “abandoned” and “vulnerable” when dealing with Baker.

“I was charged with protecting a community from someone who was known to have fairly serious allegations made against them,” Ms Taylor said.

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UNITED STATES
GQ

BY MICHAEL HAINEY

A year ago, Michael Keaton took wing above Manhattan, soaring over the city in Birdman, riding the thermals of his out-of-this-world performance to help deliver a best-picture Oscar for that film. Now Keaton—a man whose Beetlejuice-and-Batman glory days seemed long behind him—has returned with another prestige role, in Spotlight, the story of The Boston Globe’s investigation of the Catholic clergy’s sex-abuse scandal back in 2002.

“I’ve been doing the same thing all along,” he insists. “It’s not that I wasn’t working. It’s that as you get older, you gain experience and you learn to wait for the right project. It’s like being an experienced hitter. You learn to foul off pitches—’not right for me…not right for me…’—and you stay in the box, patient, until they throw you the pitch you want. The pitch you know you can crush.”

I sat down with the actor at a restaurant in Livingston, Montana, about an hour from the ranch he owns out here, nestled in the gorgeous country between the Crazy Mountains and the Yellowstone River.

When working on your Spotlight role, do you go back to childhood memories? You were raised Catholic. I was raised Catholic, too. But it’s strange: I had nothing but the best experiences with the priests in my parish. They were terrific teachers.

I’m with you. I had an old-school nun who beat my hand with a ruler. “Go stand in the corner.” Stupid, mean, shameful punishment. It was what it was. And it shaped me. It was never a horrible thing. That said, I got lucky. I had some terrific nuns. But I got lucky. We both did. Now…those motherfuckers [the priests who abused children] have to pay the price. And as much as I respect my boy Fran [Pope Francis], ’cause that guy’s pushing a rock up a hill, he left the United States without saying, “I’m not going to stop until everyone who is culpable pays the right price.” Which he didn’t do. And he probably won’t, unfortunately. That’s a huge disappointment. But.

And yet, on the other hand, he’s said more than anyone.

I’ve never seen anyone…anything like this. Never seen a world leader with this impact.

Is it true you arranged for your mother to meet Pope John Paul II?

Yeah. I… [affects a bad-gangster voice] negotiated. Worked a deal. [laughs] I got a call years ago. The pope was on tour. Coming to the States.

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UNITED STATES
Newsbusters

By Matthew Balan | December 2, 2015

Wednesday’s CBS This Morning raved over the new movie Spotlight, which touts the work of the investigative reporters at the liberal Boston Globe who chronicled the Catholic priest sex abuse scandal in the Archdiocese of Boston. Gayle King gushed, “Gosh, that movie was so good.” She later labeled the movie “very powerful.”

Fill-in anchor Kristen Johnson asserted that the new release was “such a fantastic movie.” The morning newscast brought on left-wing actor Mark Ruffalo and the Boston Globe correspondent he played in the movie, Mike Rezendes.

Johnson set up Rezendes to praise the movie, along with his profession: “When you saw the movie, were you pleased with how real it was?” The guest replied, “Yeah. I think the movie is incredibly authentic….I love the message that it gives about investigative reporting. I love the message it gives about clergy sex abuse.”

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ARGENTINA
Elancasti

[Priest Juan de Dios Gutiérrez, accused to sexually abusing a 16-year-old, was released from jail after spending 36 days in detention.]

BELÉN- El sacerdote Juan de Dios Gutiérrez (28), acusado de haber abusado sexualmente de una adolescente de 16 años, fue excarcelado tras haber pasado 36 días detenido, luego de que el juez de control de Garantías resolviera que recupere la libertad tras fijarle una caución de $50.000 y morigerarle la acusación planteada originalmente por la fiscalía.

La resolución del juez de Control de Garantías, Carlos Rodolfo Moreno, se conoció ayer al mediodía. En la audiencia de prisión preventiva realizada la semana pasada, el fiscal de la causa, Jorge Alberto Flores, había pedido que Gutiérrez continuara detenido e imputado por los delitos de “abuso sexual gravemente ultrajante agravado por ser un ministro de algún culto religioso reconocido o no”, y “corrupción de menores”.

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ALABAMA
WTVM

By Marie Waxel

MUSCLE SHOALS, AL (WAFF) –
It’s a last ditch effort to get a former Muscle Shoals Youth minister released on bond.

According to court paperwork, attorneys for Kyle Adcock are wanting the sheriff to allow their client to go before a judge to discuss the recent bond revocation.

Adcock’s attorney told WAFF 48 News, he doesn’t believe his client violated any of his original bond conditions therefore should be released from jail.

Earlier this fall authorities learned Kyle Adcock had been serving as a worship pastor in Texas.

A clear violation of his supervision orders which allowed him to live in Texas with his parents.

The courts issued a warrant out for his arrest, and Adcock returned to the Colbert County jail in October.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

3 December, 2015

The Royal Commission will hold the second part of the public hearing regarding Catholic Church authorities in Ballarat at the County Court of Victoria, Melbourne, commencing on Monday, 7 December 2015.

The scope and purpose of the second part of this public hearing is to inquire into:

The response of the Catholic Diocese of Ballarat and of other Catholic Church authorities in Ballarat to allegations of child sexual abuse against clergy or religious.

The response of Victoria Police to allegations of child sexual abuse against clergy or religious which took place within the Catholic Diocese of Ballarat.

Any related matters.

Cardinal George Pell is expected to give evidence from 16-18 December in relation to both Case Study 35 (the response of the Archdiocese of Melbourne to allegations of child sexual abuse) and Case Study 28 (the response of Catholic authorities in Ballarat to allegations of child sexual abuse.)

Date: Monday 7 December 2015
Duration: 7-15 December.
Hearing times: 10:00am – 4:00pm AEDT
Location: County Court of Victoria, 250 William Street, Melbourne, Victoria

The Royal Commission will provide a webcast of proceedings in the Trench room at the Ballarat Town Hall, Sturt Street, Ballarat, and the proceedings will be live streamed on the Royal Commission website www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Sarah MacDonald
PUBLISHED
03/12/2015

The head of the Catholic Church’s safeguarding watchdog has expressed concern at the low conviction rate of those accused of child sexual abuse.

Teresa Devlin, CEO of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church (NBSCCCI), said just 4pc of all allegations result in a conviction.

Ms Devlin was commenting on the findings of the latest tranche of audits by the watchdog which examined 53 allegations made against 44 priests, brothers or nuns across 20 religious orders.
The allegations cover the period between 1941 and 2009 and resulted in no criminal convictions, which Ms Devlin said is “very, very hard”.

Speaking to the Irish Independent, she said: “Coming forward with an allegation is probably the hardest thing that anybody does because there are so many barriers in their way.”

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Thursday, December 03, 2015

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

The Government says an audit of adoption records held by the State is of very limited benefit, but recent revelations prove otherwise, writes Conall Ó Fátharta

THIS Government has consistently repeated the mantra that an audit of adoption records held by the State was “of very limited benefit” — despite revelation after revelation from this newspaper.

An examination of just a fraction of these records revealed that a religious order reported significantly higher levels of infant deaths to the State than it recorded privately, and that child victims of rape were present in mother and baby homes right into the 1980s.

There are tens of thousands of files in the hands of the State in relation to how unmarried women and their children were treated in state-licensed and funded mother and baby homes and adoption agencies. It seems nobody wants to take a look at them.

It’s not like they haven’t been asked. Adoption campaigners have called for an audit of all records for years. The Government and the Adoption Authority have ignored all requests.

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ROME
ANSA

ANSA) – Rome, December 2 – Italian finance police on Wednesday searched the Rome offices of Banca Finnat Euroamerica and seized documentation, working on a Vatican warrant. The bank’s president, Giampietro Nattino, is under investigation in the Vatican for alleged insider trading and money laundering. Nattino is being probed following statements implicating him in suspect operations by Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, the disgraced former head of analytic accounts at the Holy See’s asset-management agency APSA.

Scarano is under investigation in Rome after being arrested in 2013 for allegedly trying to illegally smuggle 20 million euros into Italy for rich friends.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Review

By Liz Zemba
Thursday, Dec. 3, 2015

A federal judge threw out one of the guilty verdicts a jury delivered against a Somerset County priest accused of traveling to Central America to have sex with boys but denied a request for a new trial on the remaining four counts.

The Rev. Joseph D. Maurizio Jr., 70, was found guilty Sept. 22 of three counts of engaging or attempting to engage in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places and one count each of possession of child pornography and money laundering.

Federal prosecutors said Maurizio used a self-run charity based in Johnstown, Humanitarian Interfaith Ministries, to visit a Honduran orphanage numerous times between 1999 and 2009, promising candy and cash to boys to watch them shower, have sex or fondle them.

Maurizio, the former pastor of Our Lady Queen of Angels Church in Central City, had pleaded not guilty and did not testify during the seven-day trial.

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KENTUCKY
Central Kentucky News

By TODD KLEFFMAN tkleffman@amnews.com

The former youth minister of a Danville church was indicted Monday by a Boyle County grand jury on seven felony counts related to illegal sexual activities with minors.

Bobby Cassady, 28, of 515 Tenikat St., was charged with three counts of first-degree unlawful transaction with a minor, two counts of first-degree sexual abuse, promoting a sexual performance by a minor and possession of material portraying a sexual performance by a minor.

Cassady’s bond was set at $50,000. Danville Detective Robert Ladd testified before the grand jury.

Cassady’s attorney, Ephraim Helton, declined to comment on the indictment Tuesday.

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TENNESSEE
Brentwood Home Page

By SAMANTHA HEARN
Published: December 2, 2015

After a family filed a lawsuit against Fellowship Bible Church on Monday for negligence in the rape of their 3-year-old child, the church has now commented on the issue in an email sent to its congregation.

The family, represented by Kathryn Barnett of Morgan & Morgan, filed the lawsuit after their 3-year-old was sexually assaulted and raped by a teenage volunteer at the church’s Brentwood campus last year. The teen has since appeared in court and plead guilty to aggravated sexual battery.

The complaint was filed with the Williamson County Circuit Court on Monday, Nov. 30 stating that Fellowship Bible Church was negligent and reckless in the handling of the incident, even going so far as to try and hide the incident from other church members.

The church is now saying that the allegations presented against them in the lawsuit are false, and that they immediately reported the incident to the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services as well as Brentwood Police when they were advised of the incident.

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NEW YORK
Rome Sentinel

On the day that 19-year-old Lucas Leonard was beaten to death at the Word of Life Christian Church, his mother admitted this morning that the teenager didn’t want to go.

But Leonard went with his family, sat through a day-long service, and then was attacked by church leaders, fellow members and his own family, authorities said.

He would not leave the building alive.

“The last I saw him, he was standing,” said the teen’s mother, 59-year-old Deborah Leonard in County Court this morning.

Leonard pleaded guilty today to first and second-degree assault. She will be sentenced to five years in state prison if she cooperates with the District Attorney’s Office and testifies against the other eight defendants, including her husband and her daughter.

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TENNESSEE
Tennessean

Collin Czarnecki, cczarnecki@tennessean.com

After a family filed a $37.5 million lawsuit against a Brentwood church for negligence in the sexual assault of their 3-year-old son, the church has issued a response.

According to a lawsuit filed Monday, the family’s son was raped by a male teenage volunteer in a bathroom of Fellowship Bible Church of Williamson County during church on Aug. 24, 2014. The teenager pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual battery.

The lawsuit alleges the church urged the family to not pursue charges and asked them to attend another church campus.

The lawsuit further states that the church “sought to hide the truth about the perpetrator pedophile and about the rape of (the 3-year-old) from other families.”

But in a statement to its congregation, Fellowship Bible Church Pastor Bill Wellons wrote that those allegations are false.

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MICHIGAN
MLive

By Barton Deiters | bdeiters@mlive.com
on December 02, 2015

GRAND RAPIDS, MI – The 15-year-old victim of sexual assault by Catholic school tutor Abigail Simon is 18 now and has filed a lawsuit seeking at least $25,000 from Simon, the private school system, the diocese and several administrators.

The now 18-year-old graduate of Catholic Central High School is represented by Detroit-based Ven Johnson – a so-called “super lawyer” and one-time partner of Geofrey Fieger. The suit was filed in Kent County District Court.

Johnson says the goal of the suit is to bring the diocese “out of the dark ages” when it comes to the sexual abuse of students, including male students, by staff or teachers.

“You cannot do this to your children and pretend not to notice,” Johnson said, adding that in cases such as these the Catholic church has tried to “ignore them and sweep them under the rug.”

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph

AAP

THE Catholic Church knew pedophile priests were ticking time bombs but covered up their evil deeds to protect its reputation, former church leaders admit.

MINUTES of a special issues committee meeting at a 1992 Australian Catholic Bishops Conference reveal: “It was agreed that there are serious time bombs ticking away in a number of diocese at the present time.”

Former Melbourne archdiocese vicar-general Bishop Peter Connors said there were time bombs ticking away in a number of dioceses including Melbourne’s Doveton parish, where a succession of pedophile priests were sent from the 1970s to the 1990s.

“That would certainly be the case I think particularly in the Diocese of Ballarat, the big time bomb was ticking away there,” Bishop Connors told the child abuse royal commission.

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PHILIPPINES
GMA Network

File a complaint.

This was the reaction of Archbishop Emeritus Oscar Cruz on claims by Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte that a priest sexually abused him when he was young.

In a report aired on News To Go on Thursday, GMA News’ Raffy Tima quoted Cruz as saying that while he understands Duterte’s manner of speaking, for which the presidential aspirant has drawn flak, the mayor’s “serious” claim against clergymen is another matter altogether, and that Duterte should file a case against the abusers.

“I think he should not just let go of this like that. Kung talagang reformer siya, he should follow through. Hindi ‘yung sasabihing, ”Wag na, kawawa naman sila.’ Oh, come on, walang ganiyanan,” he said.

Earlier, Cruz scored Duterte for his profanity-laced declaration speech last Monday, saying “Delikado ang mga ganitong nilalang.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Altoona Mirror

December 3, 2015
By Phil Ray (pray@altoonamirror.com) , The Altoona Mirror

The federal judge who presided over the child sexual abuse trial of a Somerset County priest has rejected a defense request for a new trial but has tossed out one of five guilty verdicts returned by the jury on Sept. 22.

Altoona attorney Steven P. Passarello, who represented the Rev. Joseph D. Maurizio Jr., said U.S. District Judge Kim Gibson’s decision to reverse the jury’s verdict on one of the charges of illicit sexual abuse against a child was a “major victory” for the defense.

“Very rarely… rarely, does a judge grant a motion of acquittal,” Passarello said.

Sentencing for the 70-year-old former pastor of Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic Church in Central City is scheduled for Feb. 2.

Passarello said he doesn’t know what the four remaining charges will mean in terms of time behind bars. He will know more when a presentence report is completed.

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UNITED STATES
World Socialist Web Site

By Joanne Laurier
3 November 2015

Directed by Tom McCarthy; screenplay by McCarthy and Josh Singer

Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight is a taut, quasi-political thriller that chronicles the Boston Globe’s landmark 2002 exposure of widespread child sexual abuse by Catholic priests in the Boston area.

The ‘Spotlight’ in the title refers to the newspaper’s four-person investigative unit that brought to light the long-term, systematic cover-up by Church officials of the abuse carried out by more than 70 local clergy. The Globe, having been recently acquired by the New York Times, won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for the story.

In McCarthy’s movie, the Spotlight team consists of its blunt editor Walter “Robby” Robinson (Michael Keaton), reporters Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) and Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), and researcher Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James).

Spotlight opens with a brief sequence in which Father John Geoghan, a serial pedophile whose history of abuse was a factor in triggering the investigation, is walking out of a Boston police station a free man. (In his 30-year career, Geoghan molested at least 130 children.) The Globe’s new editor-in-chief Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber)—non-Bostonian and non-Catholic—pushes the Spotlight team to start looking into sexual abuse by priests.

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MINNESOTA
KDAL

Dave Strandberg

HIBBING, MN (MNN) – A Minnesota district judge has refused to drop felony charges against a Catholic priest from Hibbing who’s accused of sexually abusing girls. Sixth District Judge David Ackerson says the state has enough evidence to send the case of 30-year-old Brian Lederer to a trial. He’s charged with seven counts of sexual assault and child pornography possession. Not-guilty pleas have been entered in the case, and a pre-trial conference is set for December 24th. Investigators accuse Lederer of touching breasts and sexual organs of girls age-10-to-14 over their clothes.

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CANADA
Windsor Star

TREVOR WILHELM, WINDSOR STAR

At age 43 — with hundreds of thousands in retirement savings — Rev. Robert Couture was already talking about being able to retire comfortably.

“I was moving in that direction,” Couture, 53, testified Wednesday in his criminal trial.

The former pastor of Tecumseh’s Ste. Anne Parish spent Day 8 of his trial on the witness stand Wednesday taking questions from his lawyer and the prosecutor.

Couture is charged with theft over $5,000. He is accused of stealing between $170,000 and $234,000 from 2002 to 2010.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail

By NICOLE LOW FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA

A man haunted by the sexual and physical abuse he allegedly suffered at the hands of his adoptive father at a home for Aboriginal children in the 1960s has spoken out for the first time.

John Gordon was 10-years-old when he was adopted by Donald Henderson and his wife at Retta Dixon Home in Darwin, the ABC reports.

From 1964 to 1975, the Hendersons worked at the government-funded, religious home in Darwin where Mr Gordon had lived since he was removed from his family as a baby as part of the Stolen Generation period.

Mr Gordon told the ABC he felt ‘special’ and ‘chosen’ when they decided to adopt him but his Mr Henderson turned his life into a nightmare by allegedly molesting and beating him.

‘I remember when he used to give me beatings. It wasn’t just a slap on the ass… he’d flog me that hard I’d wet myself,’ he said.

‘I still have dreams about it. The last time I had dreams like that I woke up the whole house screaming.’

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CANADA
CBC News

A southern Ontario Catholic priest accused of embezzling more than $150,000 to fund his lavish lifestyle defended himself for a second day in Windsor Superior court Wednesday.

Rev. Robert Couture, formerly of Ste. Anne Parish in Tecumseh told a jury he broke church policy by asking couples to donate money when marrying them, but he maintained he did not pocket church funds.

During cross examination the Crown presented a letter between Couture and a bishop, which indicates parishioners were being charged double for wedding services with $100 going to the church and another $100 to the priest.

Couture, 52, was charged with theft over $5,000 nearly two years ago after a provincial police investigation of the church’s accounts revealed at least $169,000 in irregularities. The Crown claims Couture stole cash in several ways, including taking portions from collection plates and charging fees to funeral homes.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

AAP

The Catholic Church knew it had child abuse “time bombs” ticking away in a number of Australian dioceses, an inquiry has heard.

A special issues committee meeting at the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference in 1992 noted: “It was agreed that there are serious time bombs ticking away in a number of dioceses at the present time.”

That was the case in a number of dioceses, former Melbourne archdiocese vicar-general Bishop Peter Connors, who chaired the committee, told the child abuse royal commission.

It also included Melbourne’s Doveton parish, where a succession of pedophile priests were sent.

“There would certainly be other dioceses where that problem, of time bombs ticking away, existed,” Bishop Connors said.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

December 3, 2015

Beau Donelly

The Catholic Church described paedophile priests working in parishes across Australia as ticking “time bombs”, damning minutes from a high-level meeting of top church officials reveals.

Minutes tendered to the child abuse royal commission from a 1992 special issues committee meeting at the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference said it was agreed there were “serious ‘time bombs’ ticking away in a number of dioceses” at the time.

The former second-in-charge of the Melbourne Archdiocese, Bishop Peter Connors, who chaired the committee, testified on Thursday that the reference applied not only to churches in Melbourne but also in other dioceses.

“The reference to time bombs can only be understood as a reference to dioceses where there were priests operating who had had serious allegations against them, or the church had accepted were sexual offenders,” senior counsel assisting the commission, Gail Furness, SC, said.

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UNITED STATES
CBS News

[with video]

Oscar buzz is strong for “Spotlight,” the movie that shares the true story of the Boston Globe investigative team uncovering the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal.

“I think the movie is incredibly authentic, and I think it captures the substance and spirit of what we did just incredibly well. So I’m very pleased with it,” said reporter Michael Rezendes Wednesday on “CBS This Morning.” Rezendes was part of the team that won a Pulitzer Prize for the coverage.

Mark Ruffalo, the two-time Academy Awards nominee who plays Rezendes in the film, said he felt it was the right time to tell the story again.

“It had a particular reach at the time when the Boston Globe told the story, but we could take it a little bit further into the culture by making a movie out of it,” Ruffalo said. “And it just felt so honest, and it left out the salacious part of the story and went directly to the investigation. So you’re allowed to enter this world and look at this very hard story in a dispassionate way, so by the end of it, you get a real, moral certitude about where you end up.”

Ruffalo shadowed Rezendes, finding out that “a great reporter dedicates his life to his work.”

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TENNESSEE
The Raw Story

DAVID EDWARDS
01 DEC 2015

A family filed a lawsuit this week against a church in Brentwood, Tennessee for allegedly covering up the rape of their 3-year-old child.

The lawsuit, which was obtained by WTVF, indicates that the family left their 3-year-old-boy in the care of the church’s Children’s Ministry on the Sunday of August 24, 2014.

When the boy said that he did not want to go back to church the next week, the family discovered that a teenage volunteer had raped the child in one of the church’s bathrooms.

The family explained in the lawsuit that they confronted church leaders, who initially claimed that the child was lying about the incident.

The church later “urged the [family] not to pursue criminal charges against the perpetrator,” the lawsuit stated.

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CANADA
CBC News

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission will present its final report into the history and legacy of Canada’s residential school system on Dec. 15 in Ottawa.

The commission’s summary report released in June made 94 recommendations, including changes in policies and programs. Its chair, Justice Murray Sinclair, called Canada’s treatment of aboriginal children a “cultural genocide” on communities.

Sinclair, as well as commissioners Marie Wilson and Chief Wilton Littlechild, will present the final report, which will include details on the thousands of children who never returned home from residential schools.

As part of its mandate, the commission was tasked with doing specific research into the history of children who died or went missing while in the care of school officials.

At least 3,200 students never returned home — in a third of those cases, their names were not recorded and in half their cause of death was not recorded, according to Wilson.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

An audit of 20 religious congregations by the Catholic Church child protection watchdog has found allegations of sexual abuse are now being reported promptly in almost all cases to the relevant authorities .

The latest traunch of reviews, published on Wednesday, looked at congregations including The Legionaries of Christ, The Oblates of Mary Immaculate and The Mercy Sisters, which continue to have substantial public ministry with children. The remaining 17 congregations are elderly and have had little or no contact with children. No allegations of sexual abuse had been levelled against them.

Teresa Devlin, chief executive of the Catholic Church’s Maynooth based National Board for Safeguarding Children, said the latest reports showed the safeguarding of children had now become “a reflex” and a “first consideration” with religious congregations.

“Reporting to the civil authorities is prompt, case files are recorded correctly and risk is properly assessed,” she said. What was “most heartening” she said, was that “child safeguarding is an ingrained component of the religious life and child related activities” of religious congregations reviewed, she said. “It has become a reflex and their first consideration, ” she added.

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ROME
ANSA

(ANSA) – Rome, December 2 – Interior Minister Angelino Alfano has said that the rules of international law will apply in the case of three Vatican officials put on trial for allegedly leaking confidential papal documents to two journalists who are also being tried in the Vatican.

“We have the Italian penal code and the Vatican has its own judicial system,” Alfano said in response to questions from journalists on the Vatileaks trial. “In these circumstances the rules of international law will apply.” “If found guilty, we will give more thought to the matter,” he added.

“But we’re not in that phase yet.” Five people are currently on trial in the Vatican for allegedly leaking confidential documents. The trial of Immacolata Chaouqui, a public relations expert, investigative journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, Monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda and his former assistant Nicola Maio opened last Monday.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

AAP

An inquiry’s heard a woman’s conversion to Catholicism involved having sex with her priest, who threatened that she couldn’t get married otherwise.

The child abuse royal commission heard paedophile priest Father Peter Searson agreed to coach the 18-year-old to her baptism in 1974 so she could marry her Catholic fiance.

It heard Searson, then a chaplain at the Villa Maria Society for the Blind, started touching her during the lessons before it escalated to sex.

The woman and her husband complained to then Melbourne Archbishop Frank Little in 1975 and reported being raped to police in 1997.

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ITALY
Bloomberg Business

Sergio Di Pasquale
December 2, 2015

Italy’s finance police obtained documents from Banca Finnat Euramerica SpA in Rome on Wednesday as part of a Vatican probe into alleged market manipulation and money-laundering, according to a police official familiar with the investigation.

The police were acting at the request of Vatican authorities, said the official, who asked not to be identified because of internal policy. Italian news agency Ansa first reported the news earlier today.

A Vatican spokesman had no comment, while a representative of the Rome-based bank didn’t have an immediate comment.

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IRELAND
RTE News

The Catholic Church’s child protection watchdog has found that 53 allegations of child abuse against 44 members of three religious orders have resulted in no convictions.

The finding was made in audits by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church (NBSCCC) of accusations against Sisters of Mercy, the Oblates and Legionaries of Christ.

The review focused on the handling of allegations since 1975, but some of the cases stretched back as far as 1941.

The Sisters of Mercy was criticised by the Ryan Commission for overuse of corporal punishment and neglect in residential institutions while “some very serious incidents of sexual abuse were perpetrated by lay staff in some schools”.

Today’s review found that since 1975, 31 allegations of child abuse have been made to the Sisters of Mercy against 17 nuns.

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PHILIPPINES
The Philippine Star

By Evelyn Macairan (The Philippine Star) | Updated December 3, 2015

MANILA, Philippines – Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo yesterday dared Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte to tell all on the sexual abuse he claims to have suffered at the hands of priests when he was a young student.

Pabillo, once the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines-Public Affairs Committee chairman, said the 70-year-old mayor should “immediately tell what happened.”

“This is what Pope Francis had said, that people should come out so the matter can be investigated,” Pabillo said.

He said that if Duterte, who has joined the May 2016 presidential race, feels that he was abused then he should say it. If he was abused, even if he has not yet filed a complaint about it, he should have said something a long time ago.

“This happened to him a long time ago, yet he kept it to himself,” said Pabillo.

The bishop said he pities Duterte because he has been carrying this burden for a long time and he has not said anything about it.

Pabillo added that priests, just like others, are not perfect.

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PHILIPPINES
Sun.Star

Wednesday, December 02, 2015
By BEN O. TESIORNA
KARINA V. CANEDO

PRESIDENTIAL candidate and Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte has described the Roman Catholic religion as “not so sacred, after all,” after he dropped a bombshell against the Church after being criticized for “cursing” Pope Francis in his speech Monday.

On Tuesday evening, Duterte revealed on national television news program that he was sexually abused by a priest when he was in high school.

“I can’t tell you the names. Kaming lahat dumaan kami,” Duterte said, saying he and his classmates were sexually abused by a priest during his younger years.

Duterte spent years of high school at Ateneo de Davao but graduated at another Catholic-run school Holy Cross of Digos High School.

He made the revelation after Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) president Archbishop Socrates Villegas wrote a strongly worded statement against Duterte.

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ROME
ANSA

(ANSA) – Rome, December 2 – The home of Vatileaks 2 defendant Francesca Chaouqui and her husband Corrado Lanino was raided Tuesday because of suspected illicit access to computers in connection with a Terni probe into suspected irregularities in the sale of a castle at Narni, judicial sources said Wednesday. Lanino, a computer expert, is suspected of helping his wife access files with the help of another man, former Italian premier’s office staffer, Mario Benotti, whose premises were not searched, the sources said.

Rome prosecutors on Monday placed Chaouqui and Lanino under investigation for suspected irregularities in the sale of San Girolamo castle.

In another development this week, Rome prosecutors placed Silvio Berluscon’s brother Paolo under investigation for suspected embezzlement in the Terni probe. Chaouqui allegedly promised the younger Berlusconi to act on judicial requests to the Vatican regarding Silvio Berlusconi’s purported accounts at the Vatican Bank – a suggestion the Berlusconis have denied.

Chaouqui, a public relations expert, is currently on trial in the Vatican along with four others for allegedly leaking confidential documents.

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ITALY
Telegraph (UK)

By Nick Squires, Rome 02 Dec 2015

A Vatican scandal over leaked documents that has uncovered a murky web of sex, espionage and computer hacking has taken a new twist, with the alleged involvement of the family of Silvio Berlusconi.

Three Vatican officials are on trial for allegedly leaking confidential papal documents to two Italian investigative journalists, revealing subterfuge, waste and mismanagement at the heart of the Holy See.

One of the Vatican employees, a public relations executive named Francesca Chaouqui, is now accused of threatening Paolo Berlusconi, Silvio Berlusconi’s brother.

Paolo, the younger brother of the former prime minister, is the editor of Il Giornale, a Right-wing daily newspaper.

Mrs Chaouqui allegedly ordered him to rein in one of his journalists, who had written unflattering articles about her after she was appointed to a commission, set up by Pope Francis, to review the Vatican’s tangled finances.

She allegedly warned Paolo Berlusconi that unless he acted, she would put pressure Vatican authorities to investigate secret accounts allegedly held by the Berlusconi family at the Vatican bank.

The Berlusconi brothers denied that they had ever held accounts at the Vatican bank, formally known as the Institute for Works of Religion.

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ROM
Aargauer Zeitung

Rom: Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui soll nicht nur vatikanische Geheimnisse verraten, sondern auch die Gebrüder Silvio und Paolo Berlusconi erpresst haben. Für den Kirchenstaat wird die Affäre zur immer grösseren PR-Katastrophe. von Dominik Straub, Rom

Der Prozess wegen Geheimnisverrats vor dem vatikanischen Gericht ist vorerst vertagt worden; das hindert die beiden Hauptangeklagten aber nicht, in der Öffentlichkeit ausgiebig dreckige Wäsche zu waschen.

So behauptet der spanische Monsignore Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda in einem «Memorandum», das auf wundersame Weise den Weg aus seiner vatikanischen Zelle zur Römer Zeitung «La Repubblica» gefunden hat, dass seine mutmassliche Komplizin Francesca Immacolata (die Unbefleckte) Chaouqui regelmässige Teilnehmerin an Silvio Berlusconis Partys gewesen sei.

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ITALY
The Australian

TOM KINGTON
THE TIMES
DECEMBER 3, 2015

The Italian woman on trial at the Vatican for leaking embarrassing details of sleaze at the Holy See has claimed the scandal is nothing compared with what she plans to reveal next.

PR expert Francesca Chaouqui said two books filled with tales of Vatican corruption and greed that she allegedly helped to supply information for contained only “15 per cent” of what she knew. She added that in eight months she would be freed from the secrecy clause in her Vatican contract. “Gay lobby? It’s worse than that,” she said, giving no more ­details.

Ms Chaouqui, 33, risks being jailed for eight years if she is convicted by a Vatican court of leaking sensitive information collected by a committee that was formed in 2013 by the Pope to root out corruption at the Vatican.

Also on trial is Father Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, a Spanish priest and fellow committee member, as well as two authors who turned committee documents into best-selling books.

The Pope said on Tuesday that it had been a mistake to hire Ms Chaouqui and Father Vallejo Balda, but joked: “Thank God ­Lucrezia Borgia is no longer around!” a reference to the daughter of a 15th-century pope who ­reputedly poisoned her enemies.

“I am no Lucrezia Borgia — I have never poisoned anyone,” Ms Chaouqui said yesterday, adding she was three months pregnant.

While Ms Chaouqui blames the leaking of committee ­documents on Father Vallejo Balda, she and her husband, who is an IT specialist, are said in a separate case to be under investigation by Italian magistrates for hacking.

She said she was suing Father Vallejo Balda for claiming that she had bullied him into releasing the documents and that she had ­seduced him at a convention in Florence.

“How is that possible? He shared a room with his 85-year-old mother, whom he adores,” she said. “He is either subservient to women or hates them.”

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

EDITORIAL

In Florence, Italy, last month, Pope Francis addressed the Italian church and gave a bracing, 50-minute exhortation on how integral change is to a healthy life of the church.

“Before the problems of the church, it is not useful to search for solutions in conservatism or fundamentalism, in the restoration of obsolete conduct and forms that no longer have the capacity of being significant culturally,” he told the gathered clerics and laypeople.

At another point, he said, “Christian doctrine is not a closed system incapable of generating questions, doubts, interrogatives — but is alive, knows being unsettled, enlivened. It has a face that is not rigid, it has a body that moves and grows, it has a soft flesh: It is called Jesus Christ.”

It was one more item in a persistent litany of invitations that Francis has offered the entire church — but most specifically his bishops — to a freedom that presumes a willingness to wrestle both with the demands of the law and human realities that expose the law as inadequate to many circumstances at hand.

Less than a week later, the U.S. bishops gathered in Baltimore (Page 1), and it seems the invitation was overlooked by many, perhaps ignored, and even, among some, feared and rejected. During three days of deliberations, the leaders of the American church considered priorities and plans for the future and a political document intended to guide Catholic voters.

What the American church received for the effort was a stale offering of old documents, largely ineffective in their previous iterations and sounding today, in parts, embarrassingly tone-deaf to current realities.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 2 December 2015 (VIS) – The Holy Father has:

– appointed Msgr. Rodolfo Luis Weber, prelate of Cristalandia, Brazil, as metropolitan archbishop of Passo Fundo (area 12,000, population 550,000, Catholics 436,000, priests 142, religious 543), Brazil.

– accepted the resignation from the pastoral care of the diocese of Santo Amaro, Brazil, presented by Bishop Fernando Antonio Figueiredo, O.F.M., upon reaching the age limit. He succeeded by Bishop Giuseppe Negri, P.I.M.E., coadjutor of the same diocese.

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IRELAND
Newstalk

Jack Quann

The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland (NBSCCCI) says child safety in the church is now its “first consideration”.

The NBSCCCI has published a set of 20 reviews which they say “reinforces” progress made.

Full reviews were carried out on the Legionaries of Christ, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate and The Mercy Sisters – as all three continue to have contact with children.

The other 17 orders and congregations had a more limited review carried out, as they have little or no contact with children and no allegations of sexual abuse levelled against them.

“All 20 reviews showed good safeguarding practice, prompt reporting of allegations to the civil authorities and to managing risk”, the NBSCCCI says.

“What we are seeing here are a series of good habits having been created,” said Teresa Devlin, CEO of the NBSCCCI.

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ITALY
International Business Times

By Jess McHugh

Acting on a tip from the FBI, Italian authorities arrested four people in Italy and Kosovo Tuesday who were suspected of planning an attack on Pope Francis, the Local reported. The seat of the Roman Catholic Church is the Vatican, situated just outside of Rome, where security has been high since the Islamic terror organization known as the Islamic State group, ISIS or Daesh, threatened attacks on the Italian capital.

All four people arrested by police during raids are from Kosovo, a region inside Serbia in southeastern Europe where international recognition remains disputed. The four people stand accused of participation in a terror ring with specific intent to target the pope.

“The [alleged] terrorist team propagated the ideology of jihad through social networks,” police said, as reported by the Local. The group allegedly claimed on social media that Francis would be “the last pope.”

The Italian government has conducted raids and added additional police to patrol the streets in Rome, after a series of coordinated terror attacks on Paris Nov. 13 left 130 dead and hundreds more wounded.

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DEUTSCHLAND
NDR

[The Hildesheim diocese is facing serous allegations. A young woman said she was sexually harassed at age 11 by Father R. She reported this to the diocese in 2010. The case was handed over to the public prosecutor only in November and by the grandparents and not the church. In addition, it is alleged the diocese did not cooperate with the authorities and attempted to conceal that the priest previously been accused to abuse at Canisius College in Berlin.]

Das Hildesheimer Bistum sieht sich schwerwiegenden Vorwürfen ausgesetzt. Eine junge Frau gibt an, im Alter von elf Jahren von dem Pater R. sexuell bedrängt worden zu sein. Das hatte sie nach eigenen Aussagen 2010 dem Bistum mitgeteilt. Die Übergabe an die Staatsanwaltschaft erfolgte allerdings erst im November des Jahres durch die Großeltern – und nicht durch die Kirche. Ferner arbeitete das Bistum nicht mit den Behörden zusammen und verschwieg, dass der beschuldigte Geistliche sich bereits am Canisius-Kolleg an Kindern vergangen haben soll.

Die Opferinitiative “Eckiger Tisch” fordert nun den Rücktritt des mit dem Fall befassten Hildesheimer Bischofs Norbert Trelle. Dieser trat vor die Presse und befand, der Vorwurf einer Verschleppung und Vereitelung sei ungeheuerlich.

Der NDR Kultur Redakteur Florian Breitmeier findet die Vorgehensweise der Verantwortlichen im Bistum Hildesheim im aktuellen Missbrauchsfall bedenklich.

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BOSTON (MA)
Die Welt

2002 stießen Journalisten in Boston auf Erschütterndes: 80 Priester hatten sich, teils über Jahrzehnte, an ihren Schutzbefohlenen vergangen. Der Beginn des Missbrauchsskandals der katholischen Kirche. Von Alexander Görlach

Wenn man durch Bostons Straßen schlendert, fallen einem die vielen Kirchtürme auf, die der Stadt einen großen Teil ihrer europäischen Anmutung geben. Die Omnipräsenz der sakralen Architektur spiegelt die Bedeutung der katholischen Kirche in der Ostküstenmetropole wieder. Diese Türme sind nun die trutzigen und unheimlichen Statisten in “Spotlight”, ein Dokumentarspielfilm, der den Missbrauchsskandal in der katholischen Erzdiözese von Boston zum Thema hat.

Vor knapp 15 Jahren stießen Journalisten des “Boston Globe (Link: https://www.bostonglobe.com/) ” auf ein Nest aus sexueller Gewalt und Vertuschung: Geistliche, die sich an Kindern vergingen, und eine Öffentlichkeit, die weggeschaut hat. Spotlight, Suchscheinwerfer, ist der Name der Reportergruppe beim “Boston Globe” und der Titel des Films. Mit dem Streifen nun sind das Leid der Betroffenen und ihrer Familien zurück im Lichtkegel.

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PHILIPPINES
Bangkok Post

MANILA – Catholic bishops in the Philippines lashed out Tuesday at a presidential candidate popularly known as “Dirty Harry”, after he made a rambling and obscenity-filled speech cursing the pope.

Rodrigo Duterte, whose hardline anti-crime reputation has seen him compared with Clint Eastwood’s no-nonsense enforcer, sparked the ire of the influential Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, which questioned if he deserved to be president.

“When a revered and loved and admired man like Pope Francis is cursed by a political candidate and the audience laughs, I can only bow my head and grieve in great shame,” said a statement, issued by the group’s president, Archbishop Socrates Villegas.

The comments are a rare personal criticism of a presidential candidate from senior church leaders in the largely-Roman Catholic nation.

Duterte, the longtime mayor of the southern city of Davao, declared his intention on Monday to run for president in the 2016 election, referencing a January visit to Manila by Pope Francis, whom he blamed for a massive traffic jam.

“Pope, you son of a whore, why don’t you go home,” he said, to the guffaws of a crowd of supporters.

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VATICAN CITY
The Times (UK)

Tom Kington Rome
December 2 2015

The Italian woman on trial at the Vatican for leaking embarrassing details of sleaze at the Holy See has claimed that the scandal is nothing compared with what she plans to reveal next.

Francesca Chaouqui, a PR expert, said that two books filled with tales of Vatican corruption and greed that she allegedly helped to supply contained only “15 per cent” of what she knew.

She added that in eight months’ time she would be freed from the secrecy clause in her Vatican contract.

“Gay lobby? It’s worse than that,” she said, giving no more details.

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ROME
IBN Live

AFP

Rome: A Vatican leaks scandal that was already rich in claims of sex, scheming and spying has widened to embroil Silvio Berlusconi and add allegations of blackmail and computer hacking to the mix.

Former prime minister Berlusconi denied late Tuesday that he had had any contact with Francesca Chaouqui, an ex-PR consultant to the Vatican who is one of five people, including two journalists, on trial over the leaking of classified Holy See documents.

Berlusconi issued the denial after it emerged that his brother Paolo, a newspaper publisher, had been named in an Italian investigation into Chaouqui and her husband Corrado Lanino which is separate from but related to the Vatican case.

Prosecutors suspect that Chaouqui attempted to pressure Paolo Berlusconi into sacking the newspaper Il Giornale’s Vatican correspondent Fabio Marchesi Ragona by threatening to expose Silvio for supposedly holding a secret account at the Vatican bank.

Silvio Berlusconi’s lawyer Niccolo Ghedini said his client was never informed of such a threat.
“Besides, it would have been impossible to make any ‘demands’ since there is no possible link between President Berlusconi and Vatican affairs or the Vatican bank,” he said.

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DEUTSCHLAND
MOZ

[Church rejects blame in abuse scandal cover-up.]

Hildesheim (DPA) In den 70er und 80er Jahren soll ein Priester mindestens 100 Kinder am Berliner Canisius-Kolleg sexuell missbraucht haben. 2010 berichtete ein Mädchen dem Bistum Hildesheim, dass der Mann auch sie sexuell bedrängt habe. Doch zunächst passierte nichts.

Das Bistum Hildesheim hat Vertuschungsvorwürfe im Skandal um sexuellen Missbrauch in der katholischen Kirche vehement zurückgewiesen. Der 2010 von einer 14-Jährigen erhobene Missbrauchsvorwurf gegen einen Pfarrer sei keinesfalls zu spät an die Staatsanwaltschaft weitergegeben worden, sagte Bischof Norbert Trelle am Dienstag in Hildesheim.

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ITALY
The Local

A Vatican leaks scandal that was already rich in claims of sex, scheming and spying has widened to embroil Silvio Berlusconi and add allegations of blackmail and computer hacking to the mix.

Former prime minister Berlusconi denied late on Tuesday that he had had any contact with Francesca Chaouqui, an ex-PR consultant to the Vatican who is one of five people, including two journalists, on trial over the leaking of classified Holy See documents.

Berlusconi issued the denial after it emerged that his brother Paolo, a newspaper publisher, had been named in an Italian investigation into Chaouqui and her husband Corrado Lanino which is separate from but related to the Vatican case.

Prosecutors suspect that Chaouqui attempted to pressure Paolo Berlusconi into sacking the newspaper Il Giornale’s Vatican correspondent Fabio Marchesi Ragona by threatening to expose Silvio for supposedly holding a secret account at the Vatican bank.

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MISSOURI
St. Joseph News-Press

By Jena Sauber St. Joseph News-Press

A healing prayer service at St. Mary’s Catholic Church will look to address issues of sexual abuse and work toward healing, according to the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph.

The Dec. 6 service will be led by Bishop James Johnston and is part of a series of services in the area.

“There has always been a desire to do more outreach to try and help victims come back to the church, or at least see the church being empathetic and sorrowful,” said Kathleen Chastain of the Office of Child and Youth Protection with the Diocese of Kansas City St. Joseph. “… We are trying to provide coverage throughout our geographical region and parishes where there has been a great deal of hurt.”

It will be the fifth of the services in the diocese since they began in August. The service will include prayer and symbolic candle lighting, said the Rev. Chuck Tobin of St. Mary’s. The Office of Child and Youth Protection, priests and licensed counselors also will be at the service to provide assistance as requested.

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ROME
CathNews

As Pope Francis tours Africa he is bound to point out that one of the major scourges afflicting people across the continent, alongside disease, poverty and war, is corruption. And if he knows what he is talking about, as he surely does, he will be aware that an energetic free press is an invaluable ally in combating this pernicious blight.

Yet the Holy See is in the process of prosecuting representatives of the free press for publishing leaked documents which expose corruption within the Vatican itself. How does the Pope escape a charge of double standards, which his enemies are sure to lay?

He is entitled to say, as all governments which are leaked against in the media would argue, that trust is an essential requirement in any organisation, and trust is undermined when journalists publish leaked documents.

But that understandable irritation which all governments experience from time to time has to be set against the far more fundamental principle of freedom of the press. That is why, in any nation where the rule of law is respected, press freedom is guaranteed. And that is the freedom not just to publish stories the powers-that-be approve of, but far more fundamentally, the freedom to publish stories they do not.

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IRELAND
BBC News

A former priest has been found guilty of indecently assaulting a secondary school student in the 1980s in the Republic of Ireland.

Henry Moloney worked at the time as a choirmaster and music teacher at Rockwell College, near Cashel, County Tipperary.

The 77-year-old, of Kimmage Manor, Dublin, was found guilty of seven counts of indecent assault on the schoolboy.

He had denied the charges.

The victim had told Clonmel Circuit Court how the abuse began near the start of a school year after Moloney asked him to join the choir.

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IRELAND
RTE News

A former priest has been found guilty of indecently assaulting a secondary school student in the 1980s while working as a choirmaster and music teacher.

Henry Moloney, 77, with an address at Kimmage Manor in Dublin was found guilty at Clonmel Circuit Court last night of seven counts of indecent assault, all of which took place within one school year in the 1980s at Rockwell College outside Cashel.

He will be sentenced on 15 December, following the preparation of a victim impact report, and has been remanded on bail.

An eighth charge, that he indecently assaulted the boy in an area near the boy’s home during a St Stephen’s Day visit during that year, was withdrawn from the jury by Judge Thomas Teehan.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

A Melbourne priest who married a pregnant woman also fathered a second child after being moved to another state, an inquiry has heard.

Former Melbourne archbishop Frank Little tried to convince the married woman to give the baby up for adoption, the child abuse royal commission has heard.

His former second-in-charge Bishop Peter Connors said he was angry with the way the archbishop handled the case and organised for financial assistance for the woman over many years.

The unnamed priest was moved from one side of the Melbourne archdiocese to the other after telling Archbishop Little he got the woman pregnant.

When it came close to the woman’s due date, the priest told the archbishop ‘my position’s becoming intolerable’, because of the pressure put on him by the woman, the inquiry heard.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

Melbourne’s Catholic leaders completely failed to deal with pedophile priests as they tried to protect the church, the archdiocese’s former second-in-charge admits.

Former vicar-general Bishop Peter Connors says he has no excuse for why he failed to protect children from Fr Wilfred Baker, who abused 21 children between 1960 and 1985.

‘There was a complete failure of the archbishop and his advisers to deal with these issues,’ Bishop Connors told the child abuse royal commission.

Commission chair Justice Peter McClellan said the failings were often said to be motivated by a desire to protect the church.

Bishop Connors agreed it was a fundamentally damning allegation of the church.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

December 2, 2015

Beau Donelly
Reporter

A former senior Catholic church official has admitted that he had no excuse for failing to escalate complaints about predator priests.

Bishop Peter Connors, who worked as secretary to archbishop of Melbourne Frank Little from 1974 to 1976, and vicar-general of the Melbourne archdiocese from 1976 to 1987, told the child abuse royal commission the former archbishop had failed to respond to complaints against clergy as late as the 1990s, despite being aware of allegations against priests decades earlier.

He agreed with Archbishop Denis Hart’s assessment earlier this week that a “paralysis” plagued Archbishop Little’s office.

On Monday, the commission heard that children were in danger of being targeted by paedophile priests for decades because of the Melbourne archdiocese’s failure to respond to complaints.
“There was a complete failure of the Archbishop and his advisors to deal with these issues,” Bishop Connors told the royal commission on Wednesday.

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PHILIPPINES
The Standard

December 02, 2015

by Sara Susanne D. Fabunan and John Paolo Bencito

CATHOLIC Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines president Socrates Villegas expressed his disgust Tuesday over PDP-Laban standard bearer Rodrigo Duterte for cursing Pope Francis in a speech Monday, and denounced his adultery, killing and vulgarity as forms of corruption.

While Duterte supporters sought to do damage control, the Davao City mayor shot back at the Catholic Church, saying he was abused as a child by a Catholic priest when he was studying at the Jesuit-run Ateneo de Davao University.

“I was abused by one of you when I was young,” Duterte said, addressing himself to Church leaders who criticized him. “Priests are also corrupt.”

When pressed for details about his abuse, Duterte blurted: “The priest was holding my penis, where else?”

He said his revelations would “destroy the church and the present status of so many priests.”

“I will tell you the names of the prominent persons who were my batch mates [in the Ateneo.] All of us were victims of sexual abuses committed against minors at that time, including me. And I will tell you my story.”

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PHILIPPINES
Rappler

Pia Ranada

MANILA, Philippines – After being slammed by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) for cursing Pope Francis, Rodrigo Duterte said he would withdraw if the body asks, but would challenge bishops to a debate about the Catholic church’s “sordid history.”

“You priests, you bishops, you condemn me. And you suggest that I withdraw and I will withdraw, but then I will start to open my mouth. There are so many secrets that children are hiding. This religion is not so sacred,” he told reporters during an ambush interview on Tuesday, December 1.

The Church, he said, should not be quick to judge him because the institution is also not spotless.

“Bakit yung mga pari na may kaso, may asawa, may anak, bakit hanggang ngayon hindi niyo ma-criticize ang sarili niyo?” he said, visibly distressed. (How come the priests with cases, those who are married, with children, how come you can’t criticize yourselves?)

Abused by a priest?

He even hinted that he himself endured abuse in the hands of a priest during his high school years at the Ateneo de Davao.

“Kami sa Ateneo noon (We in Ateneo before), and I will tell you the abuses committed against the minors, including me, and I will tell you my story.”

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PHILIPPINES
The Philippine Star

By Evelyn Macairan and Eva Visperas (The Philippine Star) | Updated December 2, 2015

MANILA, Philippines – He’s a womanizer who is worse than a dictator and does not deserve to lead the country, Catholic bishops said yesterday after Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte cursed Pope Francis in public.

The newly proclaimed presidential candidate apologized yesterday and denied cursing the pontiff.

“Is this the leadership by example that Mayor Duterte excites in us? Is this the leadership by example that makes a public official deserving of the title ‘honorable’?” Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) president and Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas said in a statement yesterday.

“We have so many leaders in office and many more aspiring to sit in office but are they examples of good citizenship? If the leaders we choose are to be leaders for national progress they must be visionaries and exemplary,” he added.

Former CBCP president retired Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz also warned the public that Duterte is “dangerous and worse than a dictator whom we knew once led our country.”

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PHILIPPINES
CNN

By Khristian Ibarrola and JC Ansis, CNN Philippines
Wed, December 2, 2015

Metro Manila (CNN Philippines) — Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas on Tuesday (December 1) criticized Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte for supposedly cursing Pope Francis. Duterte hit back, threatening to expose alleged sexual abuse committed by members of the Church.

Duterte, a 2016 presidential aspirant, hinted that he was sexually abused by priests during his years at Ateneo de Davao High School, and said he would expose everything if the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) continued to urge him to withdraw his candidacy.

“Kaming nasa Ateneo noon, and I will tell you the abuses committed against the minors at that time… including me,” he said.

[Translation: “When we were at Ateneo before, and I will tell you the abuses committed against the minors at that time… including me.”]

Duterte made controversial comments during his speech on Monday about the traffic jam caused by the papal visit early this year.

Villegas reacted to this, saying: “When a revered and loved and admired man like Pope Francis is cursed by a political candidate and the audience laugh, I can only bow my head and grieve in great shame.”

“Is this the leadership by example that Mayor Duterte excites in us?” he asked in his official statement.

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PHILIPPINES
ABS-CBN

Doris Bigornia, ABS-CBN News
Posted at 12/02/15

MANILA – The Jesuits congregation is encouraging Davao City Mayor and presidential aspirant Rodrigo Duterte to come out and talk to them about the alleged abuse perpetrated by priests against minors in Ateneo de Davao.

Fr. Nono Alfonso, spokesperson of the Jesuits, said information to be given by Duterte will be handled properly and in utmost confidentiality.

He added that the allegations of abuse against minors will be investigated. He said abuse of the clergy has no place in the congregation in line with the mandate coming from Pope Francis himself.

The priest said he does not deny the fact that there were some abuses that happened in the past that did not come out in public after victims and their families kept quiet for fear of public humiliation.

However, he also noted that the cases of abuse done by priests are not that many and are rarely recorded because the victims chose not to have them recorded.

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PHILIPPINES
UCA News

Joe Torres, Manila
Philippines
December 2, 2015

At least two Catholic bishops urged a Philippine presidential candidate to speak up about his allegation that he is a victim of sex abuse by priests.

“I’m begging the good mayor on bended knees to please go to the civil court, and there file a case against these priests,” said retired Archbishop Oscar Cruz of Lingayen-Dagupan.

Davao Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, a 2016 presidential aspirant, claimed that he was sexually abused by priests during his years at the Ateneo de Davao, a Jesuit-run school.

“I will tell you the abuses committed against the minors at that time … including me,” Duterte told reporters, after Catholic bishops criticized him for cursing Pope Francis in a Nov. 30 speech.

The mayor said he would expose everything if the Catholic bishops continue to criticize his candidacy.

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UNITED STATES
IrishCentral

Niall O’Dowd @niallodowd

I was blown away by the new movie “Spotlight,” which focuses on how the Boston Globe investigative team uncovered the massive pedophile scandal within the Boston Archdiocese and how Cardinal Bernard Law led the cover-up.

The newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize for its investigation, and it was deserved recognition for uncovering a scandal that rocked the church to its foundation and identified Law as one of the most corrupt clerics in history.

Eventually the Globe’s reporting discovered 247 priests and brothers accused of abuse and over 1,000 survivors of that abuse, some as young as four or five at the time they were abused.

The investigation linked Law directly to the cover-up, after which he was spirited out of Boston by the Vatican and given a prestigious job there, probably just before he was going to be arrested.

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IRELAND
National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church

(Wednesday December 2nd 2015)

20 Reports Completed by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church and Published. Penultimate Tranche Shows Progress Continuing

With only one further tranche of reviews to be completed and published it is clear that Safeguarding practice within the Church has improved and this set of 20 reviews reinforces that.

Full reviews were carried out on, The Legionaries of Christ, The Oblates of Mary Immaculate and The Mercy Sisters as all three continue to have substantial public ministry with children. The other 17 orders and congregations had a more limited review carried out as they have little or no contact with children and no allegations of sexual abuse levelled against them. All 20 reviews showed good safeguarding practice, prompt reporting of allegations to the civil authorities and to managing risk.

“What we are seeing here are a series of good habits having been created,” said Teresa Devlin, CEO, NBSCCCI (National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland). “Reporting to the civil authorities is prompt, case files are recorded correctly and risk is properly assessed. But what is most heartening here is that child safeguarding is an engrained component of the religious life and child related activities of these Orders and Congregations. It has become a reflex and their first consideration. ”

In carrying out the full reviews of the three orders it was found that 53 allegations had been made against 44 priests, brothers or sisters between 1941 and 2009. None of them had resulted in a conviction. The 3 Orders have good liaison with the civil authority agencies who regularly advise on the management of risk and significant improvements in reporting allegations to the civil authority agencies have been noted, with no outstanding cases requiring reporting action by the Orders/Congregations.

The 17 smaller reviews included a large number of female Congregations, who are increasing in age profile, but declining in numbers along with one male order with no allegations and limited ministry with children. Among the female orders there was one allegation of emotional abuse, which has been appropriately dealt with. And those members of the orders and congregations who minister outside these congregation follow the policy and procedures of the diocese or service in which they work.

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IRELAND
National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church

20 Reports completed by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church and published penultimate tranche shows progress continuing. With only one further tranche of reviews to be completed and published it is clear that Safeguarding practice within the Church has improved and this set of 20 reviews reinforces that.

See Review reports of congregations reviewed;

Legionaries of Christ

Mercy Sisters ( Four Provinces)

Oblates

Benedictine Monks Rostrevor

Daughters of the Sacred Heart

Dominican Nuns of St. Catherine of Siena

La Sainte Union

Little Sisters of the Assumption

Little Sisters of the Poor

Marie Madeleine Postel Missionary

Sister Servants of the Holy Spirit

Our Lady of the Cenacle

Redemptoristine Nuns – Order of the Most Holy Redeemer

Religious of Jesus and Mary

Salesian Sisters

Sisters of Perpetual Adoration

Sisters of St Clare

Sisters of the Holy Family of Emile Rodat

St Joseph of Annecy Sisters

Ursulines of the Irish Union

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Sarah Mac Donald
PUBLISHED
02/12/2015

The latest tranche of audits from the Catholic Church’s safeguarding watchdog has examined 53 allegations made against 44 priests, brothers or sisters across 20 religious orders.

The allegations examined by the National Board for Safeguarding in the Catholic Church over the period between 1941 and 2009 and resulted in no criminal convictions.

The focus of the three in-depth audits were the Legionnaires of Christ, the Sisters of Mercy and the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

Another 17 orders and congregations which have limited ministry with children and have not received allegations of child sexual abuse against their members were also examined. There was one allegation of emotional abuse, which the reviewers found had been appropriately dealt with.
The review of current practice shows considerable improvement in responding to allegations and to responding to those who come forward according to the NBSCCCI.

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OHIO
Cleveland.com

By Cory Shaffer | cleveland.com
on December 01, 2015

CLEVELAND, Ohio — A former Cleveland pastor accused of sexually abusing four children in his parish rejected a plea deal Tuesday that would have put him in prison for nearly three decades.

Ubaldo Ocasio, 52, chose instead to fight multiple charges of rape, kidnapping, gross sexual imposition and sexual battery that could send him to prison for 205 years to life if convicted on all counts.

“He’s maintaining his innocence,” Ocasio’s attorney, Jaye Schlachet, told cleveland.com after the hearing.

His trial is scheduled to begin Tuesday afternoon.

Ocasio is accused of raping and abusing the girls, who were between the ages of 9 and 16 while he was the pastor at a small church on Clark Avenue.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Huffington Post

Dr. Anne Hendershott
Professor, Franciscan University of Steubenville

While the moral panic of Salem’s witches may be over, an equally pernicious panic continues to haunt Massachusetts — that of the pedophile priest embedded in a complicit Catholic Church determined to protect him. This narrative recently resurfaced in the Boston suburb of Revere, where a male janitor at the Immaculate Conception elementary school used a bathroom that had long been used by adults as well as students — and a student saw the janitor using the urinal. When the parent of that student complained that her child had seen the janitor in the bathroom, the hysteria began. And, although the police and Suffolk prosecutors quickly cleared the janitor of criminal wrongdoing, the Immaculate Conception School’s parish priest was removed by Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the Archbishop of Boston, and the school’s principal and second grade teacher were forced to resign.

The lawsuits have already begun. Recently, Alison Kelly, the former principal of Immaculate Conception School, filed a million dollar lawsuit against the Archdiocese. According to the Boston Globe, Kelly claims the church forced her to resign in January even though she had immediately reported the parent’s complaints to the pastor in charge of the school. Alleging that her firing was a “cold, calculated attempt by the Church to do some face-saving at the expense of innocent people,” Kelly’s attorney told reporters that the Archdiocese did not bother with a full investigation into the recent episode because “it served their own aims to appear to be taking quick and decisive action against its employees.” An attorney for the fired teacher plans to file her own lawsuit within the next weeks.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Danny Morgan

A senior Catholic Bishop has admitted he and other leaders of the Archdiocese of Melbourne had not properly addressed child sexual abuse complaints because they wanted to protect the church’s reputation.

Appearing before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Bishop Peter Connors also conceded senior clergy have considered whether they may be guilty of concealing a crime.

As a former Vicar-General of the Melbourne Archdiocese, Bishop Connors was aware of multiple cases of priests abusing children dating back to 1978.

He told the commission he should have done more to convince former Archbishop Frank Little to remove the priests.

It was put to the Bishop that church leaders were motivated by a desire to protect the church from scandal.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Australian Associated Press
Tuesday 1 December 2015

Police wrongly decided a Melbourne priest had committed no crime when he indecently assaulted a 10-year-old girl during confession, an inquiry has heard.

Victoria police Assistant Commissioner Stephen Fontana said he disagreed with the 1990 conclusion there were “nil offences disclosed”.

“I’m of the view that there certainly was an indecent assault that was committed and it should have proceeded further,” he told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse.

Julie Stewart has told the inquiry Doveton parish priest Fr Peter Searson indecently assaulted her during confession in 1985.

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MAINE
Portland Press Herald

Maine reporters heard the accounts of survivors too, and more may speak out in reaction to the film.

BY GREG KESICH

‘Spotlight” is a movie about journalism. If you haven’t seen it, you should.

It tells the true story of how a team of editors and reporters at the Boston Globe connected “isolated incidents” of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests into a 2002 series of stories that exposed an institution more concerned with protecting its reputation than it was in protecting children.

The movie shows reporters who run down leads and pore over documents. Editors have vision and guts. Stories get banged out on deadline, presses roll and the world changes.

It had to be a movie about journalism because movies are stories and stories have an ending.

It’s not that way for the survivors of child sex abuse, who can spend their whole lives trying to get back what had been stolen from them. The rest of us may get smarter and vow not to make the same mistakes, but their pain is forever.

So that’s why, I guess, when the credits filled the screen at the end of the movie, I found myself sobbing.

Back in 2002 and 2003, a big part of my life was interviewing survivors of sexual abuse by priests in Maine.

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AUSTRALIA
International Business Times

By Debleena Sarkar on December 02 2015

On Wednesday, Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Stephen Fontana held that the police had wrongly concluded in 1990 that a Melbourne priest had made no sexual offence against a 10-year-old girl inside a confessional. The investigation into Doveton parish priest Peter Searson was declared “nil offences disclosed” after he was accused of indecently assaulting a minor.

“I’m of the view that there certainly was an indecent assault that was committed and it should have proceeded further,” Fontana told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse.

Julie Stewart told the inquiry that she was indecently assaulted by the priest in 1985. According to the police report in 1990, “All Searson has done is sit the child on his knee and get the child to kiss him on the cheek. Stewart stated that when she sat on his knee he dragged her up and on to his lap where she felt his erect penis rubbing on her back.”

Fontana told the commission on Wednesday that provided the evidence that was already available at that point of time, it was but quite feasible for police to at least conclude that there was some level of indecency committed.

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AUSTRALIA
The Tablet (UK)

02 December 2015
by Mark Brolly

Archbishop Denis Hart of Melbourne (pictured) has acknowledged that there was “a paralysis” and “a complete failure of process” in dealing with sexual abuse allegations under one of his predecessors, Archbishop Sir Frank Little.

But he has excused his immediate predecessor, Cardinal George Pell, who governed the Melbourne church from 1996-2001 before his transfer to Sydney.

Archbishop Hart gave evidence over two days to Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse about the Church’s handling of child sexual abuse allegations against six priests, particularly the late Fr Peter Searson, parish priest of Holy Family in Doveton, a working class suburb of Melbourne with a majority immigrant population, in the 1980s and 90s.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Wednesday, December 02, 2015

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

Underage girls, pregnant as a result of rape, ended up in Cork’s Bessborough Mother and Baby Home into the 1980s. The ages are revealed in maternity registers kept by the order which ran the home and released under Freedom of Information.

In 1968, a 12-year-old girl was transferred from Bessborough to St Finbarr’s Hospital in Cork, where her child was stillborn in January, as a result of “ante-partum haemorrhage”.

Maternity Record Book 40 lists a girl of 14 whose child was stillborn in 1982. The record simply states that the child “premature 33wks, gasped and died”.

In another case from 1963, a 13-year-old “private patient” gave birth to a stillborn boy. The cause of death was listed as: “Baby very poor at birth, cerebral haemorrhage”.

The Irish Examiner put a series of questions to the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary on the subject of children in its care that were pregnant as a result of rape. These included whether or not the cases had been reported by the order to the gardaí and/or relevant authorities at the time.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Wednesday, December 02, 2015

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

Children as young as 12, pregnant as a result of rape, were in Bessborough Mother and Baby Home into the 1980s.

Details from maternity registers, released under freedom of information, reveal between 1954 and 1987, young girls were pregnant in the institution.

The youngest child in the registers dates from 1968. The girl is listed as being just 12 and had been transferred from Bessborough to St Finbarr’s Hospital in Cork, where her child had been stillborn in January 1968, as a result of “ante-partum haemorrhage”.

However, the presence of children in Bessborough pregnant as a result of rape continued into the 1980s. For example, Maternity Record Book 40 lists a girl of 14 whose child was stillborn in 1982. The record simply states the child “premature 33wks, gasped and died”.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Wednesday, December 02, 2015

Conor Kane

A former priest who wrote to the Pope asking to be laicised because of his history of “abusing young boys” has been found guilty of indecently assaulting a secondary school student in the 1980s while the priest worked as a choirmaster and music teacher.

Henry Moloney, aged 77, of Kimmage Manor, Dublin, was found guilty last night, on the unanimous verdicts of a jury, of seven counts of indecent assault, all of which took place within one school year in the 1980s.

He will be sentenced on December 15, following the preparation of a victim impact report, and has been remanded on bail.

Moloney had pleaded not guilty to all charges.

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MINNESOTA
Duluth News Tribune

By Tom Olsen Today

A judge has denied a motion to dismiss the felony charges against a Hibbing priest accused of sexually abusing underage girls, setting the stage for the case to go to trial.

In an order filed Monday, 6th Judicial District Judge David Ackerson concluded that a jury should decide whether or not Brian Michael Lederer is guilty of seven sexual assault and child pornography charges.

“Considering all of the evidence in the light most favorable to the state’s position, the state has presented sufficient evidence to support a determination of probable cause to proceed to trial against the Defendant on all Counts,” Ackerson wrote in his five-page order.

With the filing of the order, not-guilty pleas were entered on Lederer’s behalf to all charges.

Lederer, 30, had challenged the sufficiency of evidence, which was based largely on the accounts of four girls who reported inappropriate touching by Lederer, who worked at Blessed Sacrament Parish and the Assumption Catholic School.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

AAP

Police wrongly decided a Melbourne priest who indecently assaulted a girl during confession had not committed an offence, an inquiry has heard.

Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Stephen Fontana said the 1990 investigation concluded there were “nil offences disclosed”.

“Quite clearly there was an indecency around it and to suggest that there was none, they suggested it wasn’t a sex offence, I disagreed with. I think the whole circumstance was surrounded with indecency,” Mr Fontana told the child abuse royal commission.

“I just didn’t agree with the original assessment that there was no offence.”

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INDIA
The Asian Age

A 52-year-old priest has been booked for allegedly sexually assaulting a minor boy on the premises of Christ the King church in Shivaji Nagar.

The accused has been identified as Fr Johnson Lawrence, who holds the post of a priest-in-charge at the church. On November 27, the 13-year-old victim accompanied by his parents attended the church proceedings in the evening.

After the mass ended, the boy, who was talking with his friends, stayed back on the church premises and did not leave along with his parents.

The police said after friends left the premises, the boy decided to sit on pews in the church for some time before leaving for his house, which located in the same area.

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MICHIGAN
The Detroit News

Candice Williams, The Detroit News December 1, 2015

Detroit — A priest who pleaded guilty to mail fraud in connection with stealing $573,000 from St. Thomas More Parish in Troy was sentenced Tuesday to 27 months in prison.

The sentence for Rev. Ed Belczak, handed down by U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Tarnow, was below sentencing guidelines and federal prosecutors’ request.

Before the sentencing, Belczak, 70, said he accepted full responsibility for his actions at St. Thomas More Parish where he was pastor for nearly 30 years.

“I was selfish,” he told the judge. “I stole money that did not belong to me.”

Belczak said he has dealt with depression and thoughts of suicide. As part of his sentence, Tarnow ordered him to undergo mental health counseling.

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UNITED STATES
TheMediaReport

David Pierre

Fabricated episodes. Character defamation. Devious storytelling. This is the definitive review of the new Hollywood movie Spotlight, which purports to chronicle the Boston Globe’s 2001-2002 investigation of the Catholic Church sex abuse story.

The heavily hyped Hollywood production – starring A-list actors Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo – professes to dramatize the paper’s pursuit of the troubling crimes committed by abusive priests in the Archdiocese of Boston.

However, after thoroughly studying the film, TheMediaReport.com’s Dave Pierre reports:

“Spotlight claims to be ‘based on actual events,’ but it does not bode well when the very first scene of the film is a complete fabrication.

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UNITED STATES
Chicago Now

In the New Testament, Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd. And he knows his sheep and his sheep know him. Like good sheep, they respond to the sound of his voice. They feel totally comfortable around him. More to the point, they feel safe and secure with him. He is their protector. His very presence gives them the assurance that everything is OK. This is the nature of the relationship between a shepherd and his flock.

Cardinal Bernard Law. Chicago Police Superintendent Gerald McCarthy. President Richard Nixon.

Each of these men, in their own way, were shepherds. Each of them rose to positions of great power and authority. But along with the power and authority came great responsibility. Their duty was, not unlike that of the Good Shepherd, to protect their “flock”, to make sure that each of the sheep entrusted to their care was safe and secure. Each of those men failed to live up to their responsibility. As a result, the people left in their protective custody, ended up experiencing fear, anxiety, tension, stress and betrayal.

Who can doubt we live in stressful times? There are threats both foreign and domestic, internal and external. If these threats are allowed to go unchecked, the very fabric of our society can come unraveled. That’s why any egregious shortcoming on the part of those appointed to act as our protectors is so traumatic. The failure of our leaders, whether religious or secular, represents and fundamental violation of the trust we placed in them.

What makes this betrayal so devastating is that, for the most part, the men I mentioned really didn’t do anything much themselves. No one has accused Cardinal Law of child abuse, for instance. Superintendent McCarthy didn’t shoot anyone, justified or otherwise. Richard Nixon didn’t break into the Watergate Apartment Complex. But each of them placed the defense of the reputation of an institution above their responsibility to those they were obligated to defend.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

December 2, 2015

Beau Donelly

A paedophile priest who forced a young girl against his erect penis and made her kiss him inside a confessional had committed no offences, according to Victoria Police at the time.

Assistant Commissioner Stephen Fontana said he was surprised police closed an investigation into Doveton parish priest Peter Searson in 1990 after a victim reported being indecently assaulted by him.

Police concluded there were “nil offences disclosed” after interviewing victim Julie Stewart, then aged 15.

“All Searson has done is sit the child on his knee and get the child to kiss him on the cheek,” the police report said. “Stewart stated that when she sat on his knee he dragged her up and onto his lap where she felt his erect penis rubbing on her back.”

Mr Fontana told the child abuse royal commission on Wednesday that on the evidence available at the time police should have concluded that at least an indecent assault had been committed.

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AUSTRALIA
The Mercury

PATRICK BILLINGS
Mercury

THE victim of a Tasmanian paedophile priest is urging other victims to report to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse ahead of a Hobart hearing next month.

The commission will hold a public hearing in Hobart into the Church of England Boys’ Society and the Anglican ­Dioceses of Tasmania, Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane.

The commission wants to hear from people who have information relevant to the hearing, including allegations involving Louis Daniels, Garth Hawkins, Robert Brandenberg, Simon Jacobs and John Elliott, against whom legal action has already been taken.

One of Hawkins’s victims, Steven Fisher was ­recently interviewed by the commission’s investigators.

He was ­as a teen abused for two years in what he describes as an interstate paedophile ring.

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MASSCHUSETTS
Harvard Law Today

By LEWIS RICE, December 1, 2015

The movie “Spotlight” focuses on the dogged pursuit by Boston Globe reporters to expose the Catholic Church’s cover-up of the sexual abuse of children by Boston priests. But there is much more to the story, as evidenced by a wide-ranging panel discussion of the movie last week at Harvard Law School that touched on legal issues, secrets and shame, and even a potential lawsuit against the filmmakers.

Sponsored by the Harvard Law School Library and the Dean of Students Office, the panel featured Josh Singer ’01, who co-wrote the screenplay with director Tom McCarthy; Mitchell Garabedian, who represented dozens of plaintiffs in suits against the church (and was depicted by Stanley Tucci in a prominent role in the movie); and HLS professors Jeannie Suk ’02 and Lawrence Lessig, with Professor Jonathan Zittrain ’95 moderating. In the audience were Ben Bradlee Jr. and Michael Rezendes, journalists from the Globe who were also depicted in the film, and who participated in the discussion.

Singer, whose previous credits include the television series “The West Wing” and the movie “The Fifth Estate,” described the process of creating “Spotlight,” which he began writing in 2012, and the copious research involved, including interviews with victims and Globe reporters. “We wanted to present reporting and the newsroom in a way that really hadn’t been done in many years, as accurately as possible,” he said. “We were pretty extreme in terms of hard work in trying to get the story right.”

After several clips from the movie were shown to the audience in Wasserstein Hall, Garabedian spoke of his interactions with the victims and how the cases helped validate their stories and heal some of the pain they continued to live with in adulthood. Before the victims spoke out and the Globe coverage galvanized attention around the issue, he said, “It was the worst-kept secret in Boston that these priests were molesting children. Everybody seemed to know but no one seemed to do anything about it.”

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MICHIGAN
Detroit Free Press

Patricia Montemurri, Detroit Free Press December 1, 2015

The Rev. Edward Belczak was sentenced Tuesday to 27 months in prison for stealing $573,000 from the St. Thomas More Catholic Church in Troy, where he had served as pastor for almost 30 years.

U.S. District Judge Arthur Tarnow handed down the sentence.

Belczak made a lengthy plea to the judge for mercy, citing scripture and also revealing that he had suicidal thoughts because of the public humiliation.

“I have stained the reputation of being a priest,” said Belczak.

Belczak, 70, pleaded guilty Sept. 1 to one count of mail fraud in connection with the embezzlement and is paying $573,000 in restitution. Prosecutors had asked for a 37-month prison sentence. But Belczak’s supporters had sent dozens of letters to the judge asking for leniency for the charismatic priest, whose popularity had contributed to growing St. Thomas into one of the largest, most prosperous parishes in the Archdiocese of Detroit. Belczak’s attorney, Jerome Sabbota, had asked that the priest be granted probation or home detention.

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IRELAND
National Catholic Reporter

Sarah Mac Donald | Dec. 1, 2015

The Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland is to write to the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops expressing its 1,000 members’ “grave disquiet” over the current selection process for bishops in the Irish church.

A resolution was carried unanimously at the association’s annual meeting in Athlone Nov. 24 which criticized the “lack of any credible process of consultation” with priests and people in recent years and the Vatican’s “preference for candidates drawn from a particular mindset.”

Over 100 members of the ACP who attended the meeting backed the statement which said the choice of candidates is “out of sync with the realities of life in Ireland today” and with the openness of Pope Francis to change and reform in the church.

The priests also expressed frustration with the “apparently haphazard policy of appointments to distant dioceses that pays little regard to the traditions and heritage of a diocese.” This policy has been operated by the church in the U.S. but has only really been implemented in the Irish church under the present papal nuncio, Archbishop Charles Brown.

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