ABUSE TRACKER

UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Outrage against current mass violence is courageous. Outrage against historical mass violence is less courageous. Selective outrage, however, is hypocrisy. Pope Francis vented calculatingly this week against 100 year old mass atrocities during World War I by Turkish Muslims against Armenian Christians. At the same time, he pointedly ducked a meeting with non-clerical members of his own illusory abuse commission seeking to curtail sexual violence by priests against hundreds of thousands of defenseless children worldwide.

Two abuse survivors, Marie Collins and Peter Saunders, along with London-based psychiatrist Baroness, Sheila Hollins, and French child/adolescent psychiatrist, Dr. Catherine Bonnet, traveled to Francis’ residence, but he did not meet with them. For their widely publicized and considerable efforts, the commission members got a mere promise from Cardinal Sean O”Malley to tell Francis they are concerned, as indicated reportedly in the members’ statement released by the commission’s top staffer, Fr. Robert Oliver, formerly disgraced Cardinal Bernard Law’s canon lawyer. These developments were widely reported to Latino Catholics by CNN in Spanish, including with an interview with Juan Carlos Cruz, a top Philadelphia USA communications executive and a key abuse survivor in the current Chile crisis, see here,

[CNN]

Moreover, Francis has also avoided condemning adequately the Vatican’s role during his own lifetime in Mussolini’s facilitation of Hitler’s genocide of Jews, while Catholic clerics in Italy and Germany remained silent or worse, as amply documented in the recent and well regarded book, “The Pope and Mussolini”.

As to the Holocaust genocide itself, Gerald Posner has fairly and recently complained that Pope Francis’ Vatican archivists recently denied Posner access to Nazi era files that pertained to assets that may have been confiscated from Holocaust victims. And after Francis, who knows who will be calling the financial shots in Rome and granting access, if any? This is a real concern expressed by the perceptive Jesuit educated former Wall Street lawyer, Posner, the author of the troubling and comprehensive book, “God’s Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican” .

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SPAIN
El Pais

JUAN G. BEDOYA Madrid 13 ABR 2015

They say that it is best to retire with a golden parachute, but the way that Cardinal Antonio María Rouco has withdrawn from public life has raised many questions among Catholics, and has prompted public outrage.

Rouco, 78, was replaced last August as Madrid archbishop by the Vatican, but since then he has reportedly been living a life of luxury, while deciding on his own terms when and how he will retire.

Recent press reports state that Rouco lives in a €1.7-million apartment in front of Madrid’s Virgen of Almudena Cathedral. His six-room living quarters measure 370 square meters and include four bathrooms and a large balcony. The refurbishment of the apartment cost €370,000.

Pope Francis is reported to have been angered by Rouco’s refusal to step down, as per the Vatican’s mandatory retirement age of 75. In February, reports emerged that the ultra-conservative cardinal had gone to live in the palatial apartment, but only after he failed in his attempts to stay put at the archdiocese official residence – even after Carlos Osoro had been appointed by the Holy See to take over.

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BRAZIL
Catholic Culture

Cardinal Mario Poli of Buenos Aires, Argentina has recognized a branch of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) as an “association of diocesan right,” marking the first time that the breakaway traditionalist group has been officially recognized by a Catholic diocese.

At the request of Cardinal Poli–who succeeded Pope Francis as Archbishop of Buenos Aires—the Argentine government has recognized the SSPX as “a juridical person within the apostolic Roman Catholic Church.” That recognition entitles the SSPX to the help of the country’s government, which is pledged to support the Catholic Church.

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MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

By Elizabeth Mohr
emohr@pioneerpress.com
POSTED: 04/13/2015

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, which has filed for bankruptcy protection in the face of clergy abuse claims, is asking the court to sidestep a state law and reduce the window for victims’ claims by about nine months.

Minnesota lawmakers decided that victims of past child sexual abuse should have more time to file lawsuits and hold their abusers accountable, no matter how long ago the abuse occurred. The Legislature suspended the statute of limitations and created a three-year window, ending in May 2016.

The archdiocese argued in its motion that, since whistleblower efforts gained momentum in 2013, followed by the Legislature’s passage of the Child Victims Act, church officials have reviewed personnel files to identify accused priests and possible victims; the church has disclosed names of “credibly accused” clergy; and the issue of clergy abuse has been covered by media.

In short: publicity has alerted victims who might wish to file a claim.

The archdiocese is seeking an Aug. 3 deadline for victims to file claims with the court. The legislative window, set by the Child Victim Act, ends May 25, 2016.

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NEW JERSEY
NJ.com

By MaryAnn Spoto | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on April 13, 2015

TRENTON —Federal prosecutors in the conspiracy and kidnapping trial of a Lakewood rabbi on Monday dismissed one of the charges in a case alleging the religious leader arranged for Orthodox Jewish husbands to be held and tortured until they gave their wives religious divorces.

The announcement came hours before federal prosecutors were set to deliver closing arguments in a two-month long trial in which the government claims three rabbis and the son of one of them distorted Jewish law for their financial gain.

The dismissal of the single charge still leaves jurors to consider four other counts in the indictment against Rabbi Mendel Epstein, his son David “Ari” Epstein, and rabbis Jay Goldstein and Binyamin Stimler.

The government dismissed the charge pertaining to Usher Chaimowitz, a Brooklyn man whose roommate testified they were ambushed, bound and beaten on Aug. 22, 2011, until Chaimowitz agreed to give his wife a religious divorce, known as a get.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For the ninth time, Pope Francis sat down this morning with a group he’s charged with improving Vatican governance.

Once, Francis has sat down with the group he’s charged with dealing with clergy sex abuse and cover ups.

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CALIFORNIA
KTVU

By Ann Rubin, Reporter

OAKLAND, Calif (KTVU) – Today marks his anniversary. Every Sunday for the last five years, Tim Stier has stood in front of Oakland’s cathedral, in protest.

“I was a priest for 25 years, and I would much rather be in church,” Stier says.

Instead, he’s out front. He calls this a voluntary exile from the Catholic Church, and says he won’t be back until there are changes to the policies on dealing with the LGBT community, women, and victims of abuse.

“So since then, I’ve been out of a job and I’ve dedicated myself to supporting those groups of people,” Stier says.

Some days, he’s out there practically by himself. Sometimes, others join him.

“Nothing happens if you don’t do something. And so here we are,” says protester Billy Bradford.

And other issues have taken center stage, like controversial morality clauses in San Francisco Catholic teacher contracts.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Kolner Staadt-Anzeiger

[In the case of Erftstadt priest Winfried Jansen, who is on leave for alleged sexual assault, he had a four-on-one meeting with his employer, the Archbishop of Cologne, Rainer Woelki, but there was no convergence of views.]

Zwischen dem Erftstädter Pfarrer Jansen, dem sexuelle Übergriffe vorgeworfen werden, und Erzbischof Woelki hat es ein Treffen gegeben. Jansen räumt die Vorwürfe inzwischen ein, sieht sich aber über Gebühr streng behandelt Von Joachim Frank

Köln.
Im Fall des Erftstädter Pfarrers Winfried Jansen, der wegen des Vorwurfs sexueller Übergriffe beurlaubt ist, hat ein Vier-Augen-Gespräch mit seinem Dienstherrn, dem Kölner Erzbischof Rainer Woelki, keine Annäherung der Standpunkte gebracht. Wie der „Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger“ jetzt erfuhr, fand das Treffen zwischen Jansen und dem Kardinal bereits vor einem Monat, am 12. März, statt. Das Erzbistum Köln lehnte auf Anfrage eine Stellungnahme ab und verwies auf die Vertraulichkeit von Personalangelegenheiten.

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SCHWEIZ
Bieler Tagblatt

[Researchers in Zurich and Basel are working on a brain test to identify pedophiles. This could one day be a tool to estimate more accurately how dangerous an offender is.]

Forscher in Zürich und Basel arbeiten an einem Gehirntest, der Pädophile erkennen soll. Damit könnte dereinst genauer eingeschätzt werden, wie gefährlich ein Straftäter ist. Das Vorhaben weckt aber auch Ängste – vor präventiven Tests beispielsweise.

(sda) 43 Männer haben in Basel bereits an dem Experiment teilgenommen: 20 verurteilte Straftäter, die Kinderpornografie konsumiert oder Kinder missbraucht hatten, sowie 23 Normalbürger. Sie alle liessen sich an Kopf und Fingern verkabeln und lösten Testaufgaben. Dabei wurden sie beispielsweise durch Kinderfotos abgelenkt, worauf erfasst wurde, wie stark die Ablenkung ausfiel. Die Apparate massen derweil, was die Probanden stimulierte.

Die “SonntagsZeitung” und “Le Matin Dimanche” hatten am Sonntag erstmals über die Experimente berichtet. Sie werden von Forschern der Universitären Psychiatrischen Kliniken Basel durchgeführt. Das Projekt wird vom Bundesamt für Justiz finanziell unterstützt, wie Sprecher Folco Galli auf Anfrage bestätigte. Parallel zum Basler Projekt bereiten auch Forscher der Psychiatrischen Universitätsklinik Zürich solche Tests vor.

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VATIKAN
kathweb

London, 13.04.2015 (KAP/KNA) Opfer sexuellen Missbrauchs wollen im Beratergremium von Papst Franziskus auf eine Entlassung des chilenischen Bischofs Juan Barros hinwirken. Der Brite Peter Saunders, eines von wenigen Laienmitgliedern im päpstlichen Missbrauchskomitee und persönlicher Betroffener, sagte der Zeitung “The Guardian” am Montag, die Vertuschungsvorwürfe sprächen für eine Entfernung des Bischofs von Osorno aus dem Bischofsamt.

Dem Bericht zufolge habe es ein Treffen der Missbrauchsopfer mit dem Bostoner Kardinal Sean O’Malley, dem Vorsitzenden des päpstlichen Komitees, gegeben. Dort protestierten sie nach Angaben von Saunders gegen das Vorgehen des Vatikan in dem Fall.

Der Vatikan hatte zuletzt die Ernennung des umstrittenen Bischofs Juan de la Cruz Barros Madrid verteidigt. Die Bischofskongregation habe die Nominierung zuvor genau geprüft und “keine objektiven Gründe gefunden, die gegen die Ernennung sprachen”.

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IRELAND/VATICAN CITY
Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

Mon, Apr 13, 2015

An unscheduled meeting on Sunday between a working group of the Vatican’s Commission for the Protection of Minors and its chairman Cardinal Seán O’Malley, about the controversial appointment of a Chilean bishop, went “very well”, Dublin survivor Marie Collins has said.

Bishop Juan Barros Madrid was installed as Bishop of Osorno, Chile, last month amid serious protests. Chilean survivors accuse him of covering up abuse by Fr Fernando Karadima, and of witnessing abuse by the priest. In 2011 the Vatican found Fr Karadima, once a key Church figure in Chile, guilty of sexually abusing minors.

The only Irish member of the Vatican Commission Marie Colline, UK survivor Peter Saunders, London-based psychiatrist Baroness Sheila Hollins, and French child/adolescent psychiatrist Dr Catherine Bonnet, met Cardinal Seán O’Malley in Rome. He is there for a meeting of the so-called C9 Council of Cardinals who are to meet Pope Francis this week.

In Dublin on Monday night Marie Collins said she and fellow Commission members were “very happy” with how the meeting had gone. “We asked Cardinal O’Malley to meet us and he was very quick to say ‘yes’,” she recalled.

“Our main concern was that the appointment (of Bishop Barros) was made and that similar appointments might be made in future,” she said. The new Bishop’s “view of abuse, his mindset could be dangerous in his diocese and as Commission members we felt we had to make the Pope aware,” she said.

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Legal Intelligencer

Daniel F. Monahan, The Legal Intelligencer
April 14, 2015

Survivors of childhood sexual abuse often lead lives in silence, secrecy and shame. Not only do they suffer from the traumatic effects of sexual abuse, which often causes depression, post-traumatic stress and addiction issues, but the fear of exposing that secret creates its own hosts of problems.

One of the more significant obstacles to recovery is survivors’ reluctance to report the abuse to criminal authorities or pursue civil remedies against the perpetrators and the institutions that protect them. In my practice, I have spoken with dozens of survivors who either could not reveal their secrets or did not recognize the significant harms that the abuse inflicted until years, and sometimes decades, after the abuse occurred.

Although there are serious questions of when the statute of limitations should be imposed with respect to these cases, that is a debate that continues to rage in both the legislature and the courts in Pennsylvania. That is a discussion for another day. However, one of the other obstacles that inhibit survivors is the uncertainty in Pennsylvania of pursuing civil cases using a pseudonym to protect the identity of the survivors of sexual abuse. The time has come for an open discussion on uniform rules and procedures to deal with this issue.

Currently, the Pennsylvania Rules of Civil Procedure do not provide any option to handle this situation. In addition, over the past six years, in handling a variety of sexual-abuse matters, primarily in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, I have discovered that the procedure for dealing with the issue has been inconsistent at best.

In a series of childhood sexual-abuse cases filed between 2011 and 2013, the Philadelphia courts have dealt with the question of filing a complaint using a pseudonym in the following manner: (1) the prothonotary permitted the filing without objection; (2) the prothonotary required the filing of a precomplaint petition for permission to file using a pseudonym; and (3) after filing the complaint, the court required discovery and hearings after defendants’ filing of preliminary objections. In the aftermath of numerous childhood sexual-abuse cases including not only those filed against organizations responsible for supervising young children, the time has come to adopt such a rule of civil procedure.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Catholic Herald

by Laura Ieraci posted Monday, 13 Apr 2015

Members of papal commission met one of Pope Francis’ top cardinal advisers to express concerns over appointment of Bishop Juan Barros

Four lay members of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors met with one of Pope Francis’ top cardinal advisers at the Vatican on Sunday to voice their concerns about the appointment of a Chilean bishop, accused of covering up for an abusive priest.

The four said in a written statement the same day that Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, who is also the protection commission’s president, “agreed to present their concerns to the Holy Father” about the nomination of Bishop Juan Barros to the Diocese of Osorno, Chile.

The bishop had been accused of covering up for a priest who was known to have committed sexual abuse. Bishop Barros, however, denied having had knowledge of Father Fernando Karadima’s criminal behaviour, prior to news about the abuse in the press.

Commission member Marie Collins from Ireland expressed her satisfaction with their discussion at the Vatican, posting on her Twitter feed on April 13 that she was “heading home after a good meeting” with Cardinal O’Malley.

The three other members of the 17-person commission at the 30-minute meeting included Peter Saunders, Dr Catherine Bonnet and Baroness Sheila Hollins. Collins and Saunders are both survivors of clerical sex abuse.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Apr. 13, 2015

VATICAN CITY Pope Francis has warned against letting the lower numbers of people entering Catholic religious life from influencing decisions about who is healthy and able to take lifelong vows as a priest, brother or sister.

On Saturday, the pope told a meeting of an estimated 1,200 formation directors for religious orders they must be “lovingly attentive” to those they are guiding so that “the eventual crisis of quantity does not result in a much graver crisis of quality.”

“Vocational discernment is important,” Francis said.

He continued: “All the people who know the human personality — may they be psychologists, spiritual fathers, spiritual mothers — tell us that young people who unconsciously feel they have something unbalanced or some problem of mental imbalance or deviation unconsciously seek strong structures that protect them, to protect themselves.”

“There is the discernment: to know to say no,” said the pope, referring to formation directors who tell young people that religious life may not be for them.

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IOWA
WCF Courier

By Dennis Magee

FAYETTE, Mo. | The fake monk arrested recently in Howard County in Missouri must remain in jail until he produces $150,000 for bail, cash only.

The judge assigned Ryan St. Anne Scott’s case refused a request April 7 to reduce the amount, according to court records.

Scott, charged as Ryan St. Anne Gevelinger, created a long-running legal mess several years ago involving bankruptcies in Iowa and Illinois, a lawsuit, a herd of registered llamas and the former Buchanan County home near Independence.

At that time, Scott referred to himself as the Most Rev. and Lord Abbott Ryan St. Anne Scott, and he was attempting to establish an alleged religious community. Multiple officials in multiple Catholic dioceses, including Dubuque, emphatically denounced Scott, however, as neither a Benedictine monk or a Catholic priest.

Scott faces three counts of financial exploitation of an elderly or disabled person in Missouri. One count is a Class A felony because Scott allegedly received property worth more than $50,000.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS Philly

By Steve Tawa

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — A month after a second jury failed to reach a verdict in the case of a suspended Philadelphia priest for allegedly sexually assaulting a ten-year-old altar boy in 1997, a judge has lifted his gag order on all of the involved parties.

And now, they’re talking about the case publically for the first time.

After two hung juries in 12 months and talking it over with the alleged victim, now 27, and his family, the district attorney’s office announced that it would not retry Father Andrew McCormick a third time.

Assistant DA Kristen Kemp, who handled both trials, praised all of those who stepped forward despite their presumed emotional scars.

“Every victim who displays the courage to speak up, like the young man in this case, helps our community expose, stop, and prevent the sexual abuse of children,” she said.

Defense attorney Trevan Borum discounts any talk that McCormick, now 59, considered a plea deal during his legal difficulties.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

Justice For Magdalenes Research (JFMR) has hit back at Government claims that it is issuing “factually incorrect” statements on the implementation of the Magdalene redress scheme.

The group was referring to allegations made by Equality Minister Aodhán Ó Ríordáin during a Seanad debate concerning the provision of health services to Magdalene survivors.

JFMR has argued that what is being offered by the Government in its Redress Bill in terms of the health package for survivors is not what was recommended by Justice Quirke.

Mr Ó Ríordáin responded by saying this claim is “factually incorrect” and accused the group of spreading “misinformation” and issuing “factually incorrect” press releases on the issue.

“When a press release or a statement, which is factually incorrect, is issued, as Minister of State at the Department of Justice and Equality, I have to point to what is correct and what is incorrect,” he said.

The Irish Examiner understands that the Department of Justice has written to some Magdalene survivors in recent weeks, advising them that there had been “some confusion” in relation to the provision of medical services and that the Government was committed to “fully implementing all of the recommendations made by Judge Quirke”.

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MINNESOTA
Winona Post

(4/13/2015)

by CHRIS ROGERS

The Diocese of Winona (DOW) released the names of two more priests who were accused of sexually abusing children. Unless victims or witnesses divulge new information about past abuses or new abuses occur, those two names will be the last. The priests, Father Harold Mountain and Father Thomas Duane, both died years ago, and it appears that in both cases, victims approached the diocese after the priests’ deaths.

Mountain served in Winona, LaMoille, Minneiska, Minnesota City, Hart, and a variety of other southern Minnesota communities before retiring in 1989. He died in 2006. In 2011, an alleged victim contacted the diocese claiming that Mountain molested him as a boy.

Duane served in St. Charles and numerous other southern Minnesota towns before retiring in 1979. He died in 1993. In 2002, an alleged victim wrote to Bishop Harrington, claiming that Duane sexually abused her while she was growing up in Spring Valley, Minn.

The diocese released the information — and has released other allegations against priests — as part of a legal settlement with an anonymous victim who sued the diocese in 2013. Last fall, the diocese agreed to make all of its records of reported abuses public. With the release of the accusations against Duane and Mountain, diocese officials said they have made public all of the reports of child sex abuse they have. After the October 2014 settlement, officials began combing through the diocese’s personnel files to find any past allegations that would be required to be released. The claims against Mountain and Duane were the only new ones found in that process, according to DOW Director of Communications Joel Hennessy. Hennessy said that now parishioners have as much information about accused priests as the diocese does, and there will not be any further allegations to release unless new information is brought forward. “There was a complete review of all files. That’s been completed. At this point, we’re done,” he stated of the mandated release of information about abuse.

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MINNESOTA
Owatonna People’s Press

Monday, April 13, 2015

By JEFFREY JACKSON jjackson@owatonna.com

Two priests — one with ties to both Steele and Dodge counties, the other with ties to Dodge County — were named Friday by the Diocese of Winona as suspected of sexual abuse.

The priests, the Rev. Harold Mountain and the Rev. Thomas Duane, are both dead, and the complaints filed against the two came after they had died. Duane, who retired in 1979, died in 1993. Mountain retired in 1989 and died in 2006.

The accusations against Mountain came in 2011 in a letter from a man who said that when he was in either second or third grade, he was sent to Mountain for a supposed infraction at school. Mountain allegedly forced the boy to pull his pants down and fondled him.

“Due to this incident with Father Mountain, [the man who brought the complaint] has been very angry and estranged from the Church,” diocesan documents say. “He wants to be buried in the Catholic cemetery … and would like some amends from the Church for healing before he dies.”

The documents on file at the diocese have been redacted, so it’s not known where or when the incident allegedly took place.

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NEW YORK
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

By Francesca Norsen Tate, Religion Editor
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Survivors of sexual abuse by members of the clergy have partnered with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn to sponsor a Mass of Hope and Healing this Wednesday. The Most Reverend Nicholas DiMarzio, Bishop of Brooklyn, will be the main celebrant and homilist at the April 15 Mass at 7 p.m. at the Cathedral Basilica of St. James in Downtown Brooklyn.

“There has been much darkness in the past regarding this issue, but it must come out into the light,” said Bishop DiMarzio. “We must own up to past mistakes and seek to heal those who have been abused, and I must take this opportunity to publicly thank those who have come forward to help us shed light into the darkness of this most serious issue. These survivors have shown us that there is hope for healing and have helped us to identify the pastoral resources which our Diocese makes available to assist them on their journey.”

This liturgy originated from the work of the diocesan Office of Victims Assistance Ministry and a group of survivors who have joined forces to pray for the ongoing healing of sexual abuse survivors, their families, the Church, and for continued vigilance toward the protection of children and youth. Attendees will include clergy, survivors, family members of survivors and many others committed to the protection and safety of children.

Healing Intervention team members will be present for anyone wishing to speak to someone in regard to the services provided by the Office of Victim Assistance Ministry.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 13 April 2015 (VIS) – This morning the ninth meeting of the Council of Cardinals, to be attended by the Holy Father, began in the Vatican. The Council will continue its work until Wednesday, 15 April.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE McCARTHY April 13, 2015

DAVID Owen was born after his 12-year-old mother was raped, was offered for adoption in a newspaper advertisement, and was physically, sexually and emotionally assaulted for years at an isolated orphanage run by the Catholic Sisters of Mercy.

This week, at the age of 76, he will tell the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse what it is like to live your life with the ‘‘stain on your brain’’ of being abused almost from the day you were born.

Mr Owen, of Maryville, wants Australians to care what happened at Neerkol orphanage outside Rockhampton between 1940 and 1975, when children were out of sight and out of mind of the government that was supposed to be responsible for them.

‘‘The reason why people didn’t believe when we told them years ago was because it was so outrageous and so inhuman, what was done to us. All I can do is tell how it happened,’’ Mr Owen said.

The royal commission will hear from former Neerkol ‘‘inmates’’ like Mr Owen, and examine how the Sisters of Mercy, the diocese of Rockhampton and the Queensland government responded to complaints made by the former ‘‘inmates’’ from 1993.

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NEW YORK
Frum Follies

Yerachmiel Lopin

The good news is that Yeshiva World News, a Haredi web-based outlet finally reported a case of child molesting. Yesterday (4/12/15) they ran the headline: “Williamsburg Community On Edge After Man Inappropriately Touches Child On Flushing Avenue.” The story states:

The NYPD along with Williamsburg Shomrim (WSPU) are investigating an incident involving a forcible touching of a child. Law enforcement sources tell YWN that the troubling incident happened around 9:30AM, Sunday, at the corner of Flushing Avenue and Nostrand Avenue in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. The victim, an 11-year-old child was touched inappropriately by a… male walking on the street. The frightened child ran to school and did not tell anyone about the incident until his father came to pick him up around 12:00 noon. At that time, police and Shomrim were called, and an NYPD Level 1 Mobilization Response was requested.

I left out one word in the above story, “Hispanic.” Apparently it is OK to object to Hispanic males inappropriately touching Jewish children. But it is not OK to expose orthodox offenders. For that matter, Shomrim in Williamsburg also will work against non-Jewish child molesters but not against Jews.

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ARGENTINA
Agencia Fe

[The archbishop is questioned about an abuse investigation.]

Tras las declaraciones del arzobispo de Santa Fe, José María Arancedo, quien señaló días atrás que “en dos o tres meses” se enviaría al Papa Francisco el expediente canónico sobre la denuncia de abuso sexual contra el ex párroco de la Basílica de Esperanza, Luis Brizzio; el abogado de la víctima, Carlos Lombardi, habló de “cinismo descomunal” en sus dichos sobre la causa. “Las declaraciones de Arancedo ratifican lo que venimos sosteniendo respecto a la ilegalidad de la investigación previa sin que el denunciante haya podido compulsarla, verla, y que tampoco tendrá esa posibilidad cuando la manden a Roma. No tendrá participación procesal en un expediente donde es parte. De modo arbitrario, autoritario y abusivo sólo se le notificará el resultado. Es una aberración jurídica”, lamentó el letrado, asesor de la Red de Sobrevivientes de Abuso Eclesiástico de Argentina, que representa al hombre que denunció haber sido abusado por Brizzio hace 20 años. Sobre la nota que enviaron al Arzobispado para tener plena participación del expediente, aún no tuvieron respuesta.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial

By Ralph Cipriano
for Bigtrial.net

Here’s a switch. More than a decade ago, after former District Attorney Lynne Abraham got a judge to serve multiple subpoenas on the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, the archdiocese in a civil case has talked a judge into serving a subpoena on Abraham’s successor, District Attorney Seth Williams.

In a lengthy investigation that preceded a groundbreaking 2005 grand jury report on the church, D.A. Abraham got a judge to approve a series of subpoenas that pried open the archdiocese’s secret archive files. The files, kept under lock and key in a safe, contained some 45,000 pages of documents detailing what the grand jury described as “countless acts of sexual depravity” committed by 169 priests over four decades against hundreds of children.

But on March 12, ruling in the civil case of former altar boy “Billy Doe,” Common Pleas Court Judge Jacqueline F. Allen approved the serving of a subpoena on the D.A.’s office, over the objections of the former altar boy’s lawyers.

Court records don’t say what the archdiocese’s lawyers are seeking. But since the archdiocese has recently deposed two detectives from the D.A.’s office, it would be logical to assume that the archdiocese wants to see the D.A.’s confidential files from his flawed investigation of Billy Doe.

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MISSISSIPPI
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, 314 566 9790, SNAPclohessy@aol.com, davidgclohessy@gmail.com

A Catholic priest who worked in Mississippi is the subject of a recently-filed child sex abuse and cover up lawsuit in Texas. We call on Mississippi’s two bishops to aggressively reach out to others who may have been hurt by the child molesting cleric.

[Dallas Observer]

Mississippi’s two bishops face a choice. They can break with the long-standing, selfish and destructive practices of the Catholic hierarchy, and aggressively seek out others who were hurt by these this predators. Or they can do what they and their brother bishops have done for decades, and essentially be passive.

We urge them to act like compassionate shepherds, not a cold-hearted CEOs. We urge them to personally visit every church or school where these two convicted child molesters worked or lived. We urge them to beg any victims, witnesses, and whistleblowers to step forward, call police, expose wrongdoers, and deter wrongdoing. We urge them to print prominent and clear appeals in every parish bulletin and on their diocesan websites, prodding others who have been victimized to step forward. This is an inexpensive and non-controversial way to help those who were violated as kids but are still in pain as adults.

This isn’t rocket science. It’s common sense. It’s what any responsible religious figure would do.

Over the past two decades, we in SNAP have seen, over and over again, that when public figures plead with victims to speak up, it can have a positive impact. These bishops aren’t shy. They speak up often. Why won’t they beg deeply wounded and still suffering child sex abuse victims to do the same?

In diocesan fundraising appeals, bishops put on the full court press. In clergy sex cases, however, they usually sit on the sidelines, even when guilt is clear and when his voice could help.

Have they forgotten what Pope Francis has promised: that Catholic officials will “do everything possible” to help those who were assaulted as kids by clerics?

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

By Inés San Martín
Vatican correspondent April 13, 2015

ROME — Members of a Vatican commission for the prevention of sex abuse who met in Rome on Sunday with Boston Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley to express concern over the appointment of a bishop in Chile linked to an abuser priest said they’re satisfied with the result.

“The meeting went well,” Marie Collins, a commission member and the coordinator of the hastily arranged meeting, told Crux. “We’re happy with Cardinal Sean’s response.”

Collins, who was raped by a hospital chaplain in Dublin when she was 13, is one of two survivors of clerical abuse to sit on the panel.

Members said that O’Malley, president of the panel, heard their concerns and vowed to relay them to Pope Francis, who named the bishop in Chile last October.

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CIUDAD DEL VATICANO
El Nuevo Herald

POR NICOLE WINFIELD ASSOCIATED PRESS
04/12/2015

CIUDAD DEL VATICANO
Cuatro miembros de la comisión que asesora al papa Francisco sobre abusos sexuales viajaron a Roma el domingo para expresar en persona sus preocupaciones ante la designación que hizo el pontífice de un obispo chileno acusado de encubrir al pederasta más conocido del país.

Los cuatro se reunieron con el encargado papal para abusos sexuales, el cardinal Sean O’Malley, de Boston, quien accedió a transmitir sus preocupaciones a Francisco por el nombramiento de Juan Barros como Obispo de Osorno, en el sur de Chile, dijeron los miembros de la comisión en un comunicado.

Algunas víctimas del abusador sexual más conocido en Chile, el reverendo Fernando Karadima, dicen que Barros estaba al tanto de los abusos e incluso presenció algunos de ellos varias décadas atrás cuando era protegido del carismático sacerdote, quien fue sancionado por el Vaticano en 2011 por abusar sexualmente de menores.

Marie Collins, miembro de la comisión, dijo que si Barros no comprendió entonces que la conducta de Karadima era inaceptable, “entonces no comprende la pederastia”.

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CHILE
CNN

[con video]

La víctima de Karadima dijo que “Tenemos un nuncio que es un dictador en Chile y un cardenal de la misma forma”.

Cuatro miembros de la comisión vaticana sobre abusos expresarán al Papa Francisco su preocupación por la designación de Juan Barros como obispo de Osorno, quien fue acusado de encubrir los abusos realizados por Fernando Karadima.

Para conocer más en detalle, en CNN Chile tomamos contacto desde Philadelphia con Juan Carlos Cruz, denunciante del caso de El Bosque, quien comenzó una campaña internacional en las redes sociales para pedir la destitución de Barros.

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CANADA
The Vancouver Sun

The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER — Two First Nations in B.C. are looking to take the federal government to court on behalf of all the former day students of the country’s notorious residential school system.

The Tk’emlups te Secwepemc and Shishalh bands are asking permission from the federal court to launch a class-action suit representing aboriginal children who attended residential schools but returned to their families at night.

In 2008, the Canadian government formally apologized for the residential school system, but it did not provide compensation to the day students who attended the schools alongside residential students.

The lawsuit alleges day students suffered the same loss of cultural connection and language as their residential counterparts, who did receive compensation.

It argues that the program was an intentional element of Canada’s education policy and resulted in serious and life-long harm to survivors.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

BY RUTH DUDLEY EDWARDS – 13 APRIL 2015

Uncovering child abuse is as difficult as it is important. Damaged children need to be heard and the perpetrators dealt with, yet the police and the justice system have to be wary of witch-hunts.

Kincora-related allegations are flying all over the place. Here are a sample.

That children were abused is the firm ground which few challenge. In the 1980s, along with two of his staff, Kincora’s head, William McGrath, an extreme loyalist, was jailed for sexual assault.

But it’s been claimed for years that the three were members of a paedophile ring protected by MI5 because it wanted information about other loyalist perpetrators.

Others claim the ring went wider and included some respectable but secretly homosexual unionist MPs who visited Kincora to assault children.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

VATICAN CITY | BY PHILIP PULLELLA

(Reuters) – Members of a commission advising Pope Francis on how to rid the Catholic Church of sexual abuse have met a top Vatican official to express their misgivings over the appointment of a bishop in Chile accused of covering up abuse.

Marie Collins, a victim of abuse from Ireland, told Reuters the meeting four members had with Cardinal Sean O’Malley on Sunday night “went well and the cardinal promised to take our concerns to the Holy Father”.

Last month, the Vatican defended the appointment of Juan Barros as bishop of the Chilean city of Osorno, which had outraged some parishioners, national legislators and abuse victims who said Barros had protected one of the nation’s most notorious paedophiles.

The four lay commission members who flew to Rome to meet O’Malley said in a statement it was of “paramount importance” that the Vatican appoint bishops who understand child protection.

“In the light of the fact that sexual abuse is so common, the ability of a bishop to enact effective policies, and to carefully monitor compliance is essential,” it said.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

BY NAOMI LONG – 13 APRIL 2015

I would urge everyone who hasn’t already watched it to see last week’s harrowing revelations by former Kincora resident Richard Kerr about his traumatic experiences in the 1970s.

He claims he was hand-picked, alongside two other boys, and trafficked to London, where he was molested by powerful people at the centre of an alleged VIP paedophile ring. The dark shadow of accusation falls on Westminster itself, with the influential people believed to be figures there.

Richard’s brave decision to tell his story, linking the abuse at Kincora with similar at Elm Guest House and the Dolphin Square luxury flats for the first time, has further increased the arguments to investigate as part of the UK inquiry the abuse which took place at the east Belfast boys’ home.

While the Northern Ireland institutional abuse inquiry is the designated method to investigate what took place at Kincora, its chair, Sir Anthony Hart, does not have the same powers as the wider Home Office probe.

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UNITED STATES
Mercury News

By Amy Dickinson
Tribune Content Agency
POSTED: 04/13/2015

DEAR AMY: I am 15, and there is a man at my church who makes me feel harassed. At a concert, he started to give me a shoulder massage. My dad was there and saw it, but he didn’t do anything. This man is 30 years my senior and just went through a divorce.

Lately he’s making any excuse to give me a hug or touch me.

He is a doctor and is respected. I’m almost afraid to tell my dad because he wouldn’t believe me.

How can I either avoid this man or confront him?

Troubled Teen

DEAR TROUBLED: You’re smart to pay attention to your gut. Do not be in the same room with this man if he makes you uncomfortable.

That means if he comes into a room, you leave it. Always have a pal with you, or make sure you’re part of a big group. If he attempts to touch or hug you, no matter where you are, tell him, “I don’t like that.” Be very, very clear.

Tell your dad about this. He needs to be educated about sexual harassment, and he needs to know how you feel.

Everyone might tell you that this is nothing to worry about. However, I would stress that you should pay attention to your instincts — over anyone else’s, including your dad’s. (March 2007)

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AUSTRALIA
WA Today

April 12, 2015

Kate Nancarrow

The shocking evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse has made some parents hyper-vigilant about protecting their children. But what right do parents have to complain about people who have done nothing?

Every week in the Australian media – sadly, sometimes more frequently – there is a report of alleged sexual abuse of children in Victorian schools, with some cases dating back 20, 30, 40 or even 50 years.

Some allegations and charges, however, relate to more recent events – from a time when everyone who works or helps in schools has a Working With Children clearance.

Parents who might once have been ignorant about the prevalence and planned predatory behaviour of abusers can no longer be as naive as their parents or grandparents were.

But what the submissions to the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse have made clear, as have all the court cases of teachers, school workers and clerics, is that up until the point when child sex abusers are charged – often decades after their offending began – most have no criminal record and nothing that would necessarily trigger an alert in a Working With Children check.

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MINNESOTA
Duluth News Tribune

By Damien Cronin on Apr 12, 2015

As a member of the Catholic Church that I love and as a victim of clerical physical and sexual abuse, I am appalled, embarrassed, but mostly profoundly saddened by the ways priests, bishops, cardinals and even popes deliberately and knowingly have mishandled clerical sexual abuse issues. Instead of being transparent, honest and law-abiding, they consistently have chosen to cover up these crimes, usually only releasing somewhat accurate information and evidence and only when they are dragged into court or forced to do so by laws that bound the rest of us.

I don’t believe the bishops, the cardinals and especially the entrenched bureaucracy in the Vatican and Catholic Church worldwide get it yet. For more than 50 years they have been aware of the accusations and the wrenching stories from thousands of victims.
How could they not get it?

Pope Francis gets it. He has many times publicly talked about the enormity of and prevalence of clerical abuse and the fallout for victims and the reputation of the Catholic Church. But he needs real, visible and active support from all priests, bishops and cardinals worldwide. Where is this leadership and support? If one needs a prime example of groupthink, look no further than today’s Catholic Church. The Church has circled the wagons and done very little else.

Enough. Over 1 billion Catholics can deal with the truth better than the hierarchy apparently can. Tell us the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth regarding the whole sordid story of sexual abuse by priests and the equally sordid story of the Church’s organized cover-up of these crimes. We all need to clearly hear the what, the who, the where, and the when of incidents and complaints made against priests and how the bishops dealt with these complaints.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

By Hazel Southam and John Bingham 13 Apr 2015

Churches are still viewed as a “soft touch” by paedophiles hunting for new victims despite tightening up child protection measures after a flood of abuse scandals, one of Britain’s leading experts on the issue has warned.

Justin Humphreys, Head of Safeguarding at the Churches’ Child Protection Advisory Service (CCPAS), an independent body set up to combat clerical abuse, said convicted paedophiles often seek out places of worship on their release because of members’ belief in forgiveness.

Although churches now routinely carry out criminal records checks for volunteer positions such as Sunday School teachers, he said they are “undoubtedly” still missing out on large numbers of people who pose a threat to children but have never previously been caught.

Churches of all denominations are still guilty of “naivety” on the issue of sexual abuse despite the revelations, he added.

A recent random survey by the CPAS found no examples of churches carrying out the level of full scrutiny in application processes that it recommends.

* Church warned over rights of suspected paedophile priests
* Ex-Archbishop quits over Church of England child sex abuse revelations
* Justin Welby: I broke down in tears at horror of Church child abuse
* Failing to report child abuse should be a crime, says Keir Starmer

The Roman Catholic Church around the world in particular has been rocked by waves of child abuse scandals, including in Britain, leading to the introduction of new rules to protect children.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Apr. 13, 2015

ROME Members of the Vatican commission on clergy sexual abuse say an unscheduled meeting in Rome Sunday with Cardinal Sean O’Malley made them feel heard in their concerns about the appointment of a Chilean bishop accused of covering up abuse.

O’Malley, the commission members said, promised to pass on those concerns about Bishop Juan Barros Madrid to Pope Francis in coming days.

“The meeting went very well and the cardinal is going to take our concerns to the Holy Father,” Marie Collins, a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, told NCR early Monday morning.

“It was a very, very successful meeting, really, from our point of view,” she said.

Collins was one of four members of the Vatican commission that came to Rome Sunday for the visit, held at the Sanctae Martae hotel where Francis lives.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Pope Francis in his 79th year complains understandably about fatigue. It is difficult to understand, however, how and why he prioritizes his use of his limited energy the way he does. The biggest crisis the pope faces is curtailing promptly and transparently his subordinate bishops’ mismanagement of child abusing priests. If Catholic Church religious leaders cannot be trusted with children’s safety, the leaders cannot be trusted with anything else — it is that simple. Yet today, 4/12/15, Francis focused on a 100 year old World War I event involving Turkish Muslims and apparently avoided meeting with his own advisers on priest child abusers. The advisers had traveled to Rome after weeks seemingly of unheeded public complaints to the pope. The pope found time to meet with US evangelical fundamentalists before the recent US Congressional elections, but seems too busy to meet with advisers he picked. What is really going on here?

Four members of Pope Francis’ sex abuse advisory commission traveled to Rome to voice their concerns in person about Francis’ appointment of a Chilean bishop accused of covering up for the country’s most notorious molester. The four met not with Francis, but with Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, who at least agreed to relay their concerns to the pope about the appointment of Juan Barros as bishop of Osorno in southern Chile, according to the commission members statement as reported. Of course, by now the pope had already been fully briefed on their concerns. If he fails to respond, let us hope the commission members, all 17 of them, continue to press the pope to match his actions to his rhetoric.

Barros, the former chaplain of Chile’s armed forces, has faced unprecedented popular and ecclesial opposition ever since he was named by Pope Francis in January. More than 1,300 church members in Osorno, some 30 diocesan priests and 51 of Chile’s 120 members of Parliament sent letters to Francis urging him to rescind the appointment. Barros has denied wrongdoing. A junior Vatican official had defended the appointment in a 19-word statement March 31 that avoided the real issues. Pope Francis has evidently carefully avoided the subject, even though he reportedly was involved in Barros’ appointment and likely knows him. Please see the superb and relevant analysis, “Vatican Defends the Chilean Appointment” here, BishopAccountability.org .

Yet its unclear how effectively Barros can lead going forward. Already, as AP has reported, a recent meeting between Barros and angry parishioners fell apart when Barros showed up with two body guards and police dogs, security measures taken after his installation ceremony was marred by unprecedented and violent protests inside the cathedral. The hounds of heaven seem less effective on earth!

So, as members of the pope’s own abuse commission were arriving at the Vatican to try to meet with Pope Francis to protest his appointment of Bishop Barros in Chile, Pope Francis seemingly managed to divert media attention to a 100 year old event. The pope instead sparked a diplomatic row today by calling a World War I Ottoman Turk massacre of Armenians 100 years ago “the first genocide of the 20th century,” prompting Turkey to accuse the pope of inciting hatred.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

The Royal Commission will hold a public hearing in Rockhampton commencing on Tuesday 14 April 2015 at 10:00am AEST.

The public hearing will inquire into the experiences of a number of men and women who were resident at St Joseph’s Orphanage, Neerkol operated by the Sisters of Mercy between 1940 and 1975.

Please note that the audio on the webcast may be frequently cut to protect the identify of people who have been granted a pseudonym in this hearing.

Live streaming times
The public hearing will be streamed live via this website between 10am and 4pm (AEST).

Join us on Twitter and Facebook for regular updates.

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MINNESOTA
Canonical Consultation

04/12/2015

Jennifer Haselberger

Last week pastors of parishes in the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis began to receive letters aimed at addressing the decline in giving to the yearly Archdiocesan fundraising initiative known as the ‘Catholic Services Appeal’. The letters include a ‘performance report’ for each parish which, in the case of every one that I have seen, means an unflattering comparison between parish-wide giving last year and this. Also included is a list of names of the parishioners who gave last year but have not given to the current appeal. The pastors who are receiving these letters are being asked to personally contact those individuals and request their participation in the 2015 CSA.

I suspect that the number of pastors who will actually do this will be low. Most would know, as one would hope the ‘Catholic Services Appeal Foundation’ also knows, that those who are not contributing are doing so for reasons that will not be rectified by a phone call from the pastor.

Unfortunately, these letters were sent out during the same week that the Archdiocese requested bankruptcy Judge Robert Kressel permit it to pay its attorneys on a more frequent basis. According to the Star Tribune, the Archdiocese’s attorneys, who are earning approximately $473 an hour, are currently being paid on a quarterly basis. The Archdiocese argued in court that paying its attorneys every 120 days ‘imposes an undue burden,’ that could be reduced if it was permitted to make payments every 60 days. Judge Kressel disagreed, stating ‘I do not see the burden,’ and the motion was denied.

Perhaps even more interestingly, the letters went out during the same week that more information became available about the New York Attorney General’s investigation into the financial management of the non-profit Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. The investigation, which the New York Times is heralding as a ‘ringing alarm for nonprofit boards across the country long accustomed to minimal scrutiny or accountability’, came about after the school, which was founded by philanthropist Peter Cooper to be ‘open and free to all’, began charging tuition in order to avoid financial ruin.

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CIUDAD DEL VATICANO
Bio Bio

Sobrevivientes de abuso sexual infantil elegidos por el Papa Francisco para asesorar a la Iglesia Católica en el tema, solicitarán la remoción del obispo Juan Barros.

Según consigna el periódico británico The Guardian, Peter Saunders -un británico que fue víctima de abusos en su adolescencia- dijo que en una reunión de emergencia con el cardenal Sean O’Malley, quien encabeza la comisión vaticana contra los abusos sexuales, exigirá una acción en el caso que involucra a Barros.

A la reunión asistirán cuatro miembros de la comisión para manifestar su preocupación ante la designación de Barros.

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VATICAN CITY
U.S. News

By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Four members of Pope Francis’ sex abuse advisory commission headed to Rome on Sunday to voice their concerns in person about Francis’ appointment of a Chilean bishop accused of covering up for the country’s most notorious molester.

Commission member Marie Collins said she and three other commission members would meet later Sunday with Francis’ point-man on abuse, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, and ask him to relay their concerns to the pope about the appointment of Juan Barros as bishop of Osorno.

Victims of Chile’s most notorious abuser, the Rev. Fernando Karadima, say Barros knew of and even witnessed Karadima’s abuse decades ago when he was a protege of the charismatic Karadima, who was sanctioned by the Vatican in 2011 for sexually abusing minors.

Collins said that if Barros doesn’t appreciate that Karadima’s behavior then was inappropriate, “then he doesn’t understand child abuse.”

“And if he doesn’t understand child abuse,” she continued, “there’s a child protection concern about him being in charge of a diocese.”

Barros, the former chaplain of Chile’s armed forces, has faced unprecedented popular and ecclesial opposition ever since he was named in January. More than 1,300 church members in Osorno, along with some 30 diocesan priests and 51 of Chile’s 120 members of Parliament, sent letters to Francis urging him to rescind the appointment.

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GUAM
Sunday Variety

Church in Trouble pages 13-15 Marianas Variety Sunday April 12, 2015 Vol.10 No. 192

For Guam the Catholic Church is is a major part of the island’s culture. Since the Spanish occupation in the mid-1600s through the late 1800s Guam’s largely Catholic base has withstood centuries, evolving with the culture and the times, embedding Catholic practices into the way of life.

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CIUDAD DEL VATICANO
Radio Agricultura

Británicos que dicen que fueron abusados sexualmente por sacerdotes cuando eran adolescentes, le pedirán a la Santa Sede que actúe contra el obispo de Osorno, Juan Barros, quien es acusado de un posible encubrimiento a Fernando Karadima.

En declaraciones al diario inglés The Guardian, Peter Saunders, una de las posibles víctimas, señaló al diario inglés The Guardia, que se reunirán de emergencia con el cardenal Sean O’Malley, un reconocido activista por la lucha contra la pederastia.

“Los obispos, sacerdotes u otros religiosos que tienen convicciones, denuncias creíbles o que han encubierto a alguno de los autores (de abusos), deben ser removidos de mi Iglesia. Eso es lo que voy a pedirle al cardenal Sean que le pase al papa, si es que no puedo verlo yo mismo“, sostuvo Saunders.

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Times-Tribune

A third of the active priests in the Diocese of Scranton will reach retirement age in the next 10 years, said Bishop Joseph C. Bambera, sounding a warning bell of a leadership vacuum developing in the diocese.

In a video address presented during Sunday masses around the diocese, the bishop spoke about the vibrancy of the parishes, but acknowledged the Church needed to come to terms with it shrinking ranks of priests.

Among the facts provided by the diocese:

* In 1990, there were 316 priest in active ministry in the Diocese of Scranton.
* Today, there are 130.
* Of these 130, 16 are 45 years old or younger.
* Over the next 10 years, 45 priests will reach the retirement age of 75.

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IRELAND
Irish Mirror

12 April 2015 By James Ward

Catherine Corless, whose research revealed 794 children were buried in a mass grave in Co Galway, said the clergy had no interest in hearing the truth when the story emerged

The woman who revealed the horror of the Tuam babies scandal has slammed the Catholic Church for its response to the atrocity.

Catherine Corless, whose research revealed 794 children were buried in a mass grave in Co Galway, said the clergy had no interest in hearing the truth when the story emerged.

Appearing in an episode of RTE’s Would You Believe? tonight, Ms Corless said she had expected a much bigger response from the Church which ran the mother and baby home where the children perished.

She revealed: “I really expected the clergy to come forward and to help us out and to do something about this atrocity.

“Nobody wanted to listen, nobody wanted to hear this story, nobody wanted to face the truth. That to me, wasn’t what Jesus preached when he was on earth.”

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IRELAND
Aljazeera

[with video]

17 Oct 2014

Laurence Lee

In recent months there has been a welter of reports about the horror of FGM, or female genital mutilation. The health service in the UK, for instance, is having to deal with thousands of cases, but because FGM is ‘cultural’ politicians don’t appear to be able to do much to wipe it out.

While FGM has become a real cause of concern in the UK – the former foreign secretary William Hague was particularly personally interested in it – nobody ever said a thing about a practice carried out for many, many years in Ireland which is only now being regarded as a similar human rights violation.

It’s called symphysiotomy, or the separation of the pelvis. Put simply, it involves sawing through a woman’s pelvic bone and cartilage during a difficult childbirth to open up the pelvis and enable birth.

It was banned in most places before the 20th century, but in Ireland hundreds and hundreds of women had it done to them, apparently because doctors preferred it to caesarian section. Why? Because c-section limits the number of children a woman can have, and once a woman has been effectively spatchcocked through symphysiotomy the doctors hoped she could have more and more. After all, this is in line with Catholic thinking on family size.

You can see in the attached video what the effects of all this were: women felt butchered, their physical lives and emotional wellbeing wrecked completely by a medical hierarchy which seemed, to campaigners, to insert religious dogma into medical practice. As a violation of a person’s rights, often without their consent, it’s easy to see the comparison with FGM.

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IRELAND
Aljazeera

Laurence Lee | 11 Apr 2015

Dublin, Ireland – One of the ways a government can claim properly to be representing its people is by holding up a magnifying glass to bad things that happened in the past.

In the UK, for example, all sorts of inquiries have been held recently into issues ranging from systematic abuse of children in care to the deaths of football fans in a crush at a ground.

These things provide for a sense of justice for the victims, if they are held properly and dispassionately, and they suggest that the past isn’t forgotten.

But in Ireland at the moment, a very different sort of thing is happening. It concerns the treatment of hundreds of women, now middle aged or old, who as young mothers to be were maimed by their own doctors in maternity hospitals.

The women are all survivors of a dreadful practice called symphysiotomy, in which expectant mothers were sawed open as a medical alternative to Caesarian section in hospitals where, it is assumed, Catholic thinking outweighed medical logic.

Without going into all the background, you can catch up on it here.

But the compensation scheme has been roundly condemned by civil rights campaigners as a way of protecting the abusers of the women from legal action, because any woman who signs up to the scheme is forced to indemnify the most amazingly long list of people and institutions from any legal redress.

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VATICAN CITY
ABC News

VATICAN CITY — Apr 12, 2015

Associated Press

Four members of Pope Francis’ sex abuse advisory commission are heading to Rome to voice their concerns in person about Francis’ appointment of a Chilean bishop accused of covering up for a notorious molester.

Commission member Marie Collins said she and three other commission members will meet later Sunday with Francis’ point-man on abuse, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, to relay their concerns about the appointment of Juan Barros as bishop of the diocese of Osorno.

Victims of Chile’s most notorious abuser, the Rev. Fernando Karadima, say Barros knew of and even witnessed Karadima’s abuse decades ago.

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GEORGIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Next weekend (Apr 17-19) MKSafetyNet is holding our second international conference for missionary kid survivors in Atlanta, GA.

It’s an amazing group of people: men and women who were taken abroad as children when their devout parents became missionaries in developing nations. They lived away from their moms and dads and were often treated brutally and abused repeatedly by “dorm parents.”

(A great source of information about this: http://www.allgodschildrenthefilm.com/The_Film.htm)

As adults, in the early/mid 1990s, these brave and courageous victims began to organize, reach out, support each other and expose the horrors they endured in these isolated settings. We in SNAP had the honor of helping them a bit in this process (as we’ve helped other groups of survivors in other institutions organize). In 2013, I personally had the pleasure and honor of speaking at one of their conferences.

If you know of anyone who might be interested in this group, please contact Rich Darr (cell phone: 815 370 4703, rsdarr@earthlink.net)

We wish the members of MKSafetyNet success in Atlanta and beyond!

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UNITED KINGDOM
Wakefield Express

A church helper had more than 3,000 vile images of children being sexually abused on computers at his Sandal home, a court heard.

The discovery was made after computer equipment was seized from Nigel Holleran’s home on Walton Lane, Sandal, in May last year.

Leeds Crown Court was told Holleran contacted police officers and told them he “wanted to get things off his chest”.

He then admitted that he had been viewing abusive images of children for around five years.

Holleran, 57, later told a probation officer that he believed the children in the images, some as young as nine, had consented to the abuse they were being subjected to and had been paid for appearing in the images.

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ROME
The Guardian

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Rome
Sunday 12 April 2015

Child sex abuse survivors who were hand-picked by Pope Francis to advise the Catholic Church on how to address the issue are meeting with a top church official in Rome on Sunday to protest the Vatican’s handling of a controversial case in Chile.

Peter Saunders, a Briton abused by two priests as a teenager, told the Guardian that he would demand action in an emergency meeting with Cardinal Sean O’Malley, who heads the pope’s abuse committee, in the case involving Bishop Juan Barros.

The Chilean, who was appointed to the Osorno diocese in January, has been accused of covering up child abuse by his mentor, Reverend Fernando Karadima, who the Vatican found guilty of molestation in 2011. Barros has denied the allegations.

“Bishops, priests or other religious [officials] who have convictions, credible allegations or who have covered up for perpetrators must be removed from my church. That’s what I’ll be asking Cardinal Sean to pass to the pope, if I don’t get to see him myself,” Saunders said.

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MINNESOTA
Duluth News Tribune

By Damien Cronin on Apr 11, 2015

I had just turned 13 in 1954 when I started at Dominican College Newbridge, a residential Catholic high school for boys in Ireland. I had grown up in Carrick-on Shannon, a small town in the Midlands, and this was my first time away from home and family.

In October or November, I recall, I was told a priest wanted to see me in his office. He was waiting for me and closed the door behind me. He told me he had heard that too many of the new students were goofing off and that I was a main offender. He told me to drop my pants. He then put me across his knees and gave me a terrible beating. I’m convinced he meant to hurt me. Next he stood me up in front of him, and he molested me. I was shocked and in pain.

He told me to pull up my pants and return to study hall. He warned me not to tell anyone what happened or he would expel me and call my parents to pick me up; I would have to leave in total disgrace, he said.

I was so ashamed. It was all my fault. I believed everyone in the school, faculty and students alike, knew or soon would know what happened. I clearly was a bad kid. The priest said so. The baddest of the bad, he said. I believed him. And it became my personal definition. I was totally unworthy of anyone’s friendship or love or caring.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By social affairs correspondent Norman Hermant

Sexual abuse support groups say much more needs to be done to increase access for survivors to help under Medicare, although the Government says the psychological care needed by sexual abuse survivors is in place.

Counselling has been a welcome resource for Bob O’Toole.

It has been 60 years since he was sexually abused at Marist Brothers school in the Newcastle suburb of Hamilton, but even now it is never out of his mind.

“It does hang around … memories of difficult times will come back to you,” he said.

In recent years, Mr O’Toole finally started seeing a psychological counsellor — as he prepared for his appearance at the Royal Commission into the Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

“Going to counselling just keeps me on a level playing field, to be able to deal with my own issues. And also, I guess, debrief a bit,” he said.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

The Catholic Church’s insurance company reportedly allocated up to $150 million to cover outstanding and expected compensation claims for victims of child sexual abuse, years before the institution publically acknowledged the extent of the abuse.

The figure represents more than three times the amount it is believed has been paid to victims to date, and is expected to increase as the Royal Commission on Institutional Reponses to Child Sexual Abuse continues to hear victim testimonies, according to The Age.

Documents reveal Catholic Church Insurance Ltd (CCI) issued internal financial warnings regarding the abuse claims as early as 1988, well before the institution’s first attempts at dealing with the problem when they set up the Melbourne Response and Towards Healing programs in 1996.

The insurance agency even recommended to the nation’s bishops the implementation of a dedicated sexual abuse insurance policy to cover alleged incidents from as far back as the 1960’s.

That allegation is likely to raise new questions for Cardinal George Pell who claimed he was aware of only a “dozen” complaints in 1996 when he created the Melbourne assistance program.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Berger’s Beat

EXACTLY A DECADE AGO, our town’s Barbara Dorris celebrated the 35th anniversary of her marriage in an unusual way: apart from her husband Andy and in a Vatican prison for a few hours, Dorris, outreach director for SNAP, was protesting in Italy after the death of Pope John Paul II. She and SNAP founder Barbara Blane, a SLU alum, were upset that the disgraced Cardinal Law, who resigned as head of the Boston archdiocese because he hid and suffled pedophile priests, had been chosen to say a special mass in Rome honoring the deceased pontiff. (Her spouse, by the way, belongs to the family that founded St. Louis Motor Carriage Company, one of the first car manufacturers here.)

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IRELAND
The Journal

Paul Redmond tells us what he has learned about Castlepollard Mother & Baby Home.

THE ORDER OF the Sacred Heart nuns arrived in Ireland in 1922 within months of the formation of the Irish Free state after the civil war.

They were invited over from England by the newly-formed Irish government to deal with the ‘problem’ of women having babies outside wedlock.

They bought a 200 acre farm in Bessborough, county Cork and began operating a Mother and Baby home. They later expanded and bought Conville House and grounds in Roscrea which they renamed Sean Ross Abbey.

In late-1933 or early-1934, they bought the third and last of their homes; the old Manor House in Castlepollard, county Westmeath with 110 acres of land.

They built St Peters, a three-storey, 120-bed maternity hospital between 1935 and 1937. It was designed by TJ Cullen (1879-1947).

They received a grant of £65,000 from the government (a huge sum of money at the time) from the Hospital Fund which was the Fund for profits from the old Irish Sweepstakes.

It remains the only custom built Mother & Baby home.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Shocked Cardinals two years ago elected Pope Francis evidently to save their necks, by containing the financial and sex scandals that exploded under ex-Pope Benedict and by regaining powerful political protectors, especially a Vatican friendly US president preferably named Bush, and even adding as supporters Russian and Chinese leaders. For almost 2,000 years, most popes’ top priority has been securing protection from powerful men from Constantine to Mussolini and Hitler. Francis has media managed well and expensively for awhile with mixed messages, vague promises and photo ops, but the “mystical curtain” is being lifted, especially by brave abuse survivors and persistent reformers who refuse to quit. Francis appealingly called on Catholics to “create a mess” but, instead, by his slick approach, he has created his own expanding mess, which may be his last! Many lifetime indoctrinated Catholics may behave as “dumb sheep” at times, I did, but few of them in the Internet Age remain as “blind sheep”.

Until now, the Vatican has mostly avoided various national prosecutors.The pope and his high priced consultants and lawyers have also so far buried the financial scandals in over hyped committees that he still controls unaccountably, most significantly with no public audits of the Vatican’s own wealth even on the horizon. Now at least four principled and impatient lay members of the pope’s “go slow” sex abuse commission, that was intended apparently by the Vatican mainly to diffuse the sex abuse scandal at least until after next year’s crucial USA presidential elections, are publicly balking at their inconsequential, even illusory, roles. Papal apologists are predictably trying to isolate them as “lone actors”, yet even a cursory review of worldwide Catholics’ opinions indicate these prophetic members speak for hundreds of millions of outraged Catholics who care about protecting children. Hopefully, these bold members will continue speaking out publicly from their commission pulpit to press the pope either to fix the commission or to fire them publicly to make clear the pope’s dissembling delay strategy.

The sex abuse commission fix would include at a minimum more and public meetings and the prompt review of unaccountable bishops like Chile’s Barros. The fix needs also to include the addition of internationally respected abuse scandal expert, Fr. Thomas Doyle, to the commission as some members and many Catholics earlier urged strongly. Enough with the pope’s “cherry picked” safe selections, many of whom are sitting by like papal puppets while the pope protects his old acquaintance Barros! The pope is unlikely to fire these honest commissioners and risk undermining his well crafted facade, especially with his important visits to the USA and the UN quickly approaching.

Francis found time to meet with fundamentalist USA anti-contraception and anti-gay marriage crusaders to help his USA bishops please their low tax billionaire donors in the 2014 USA congressional elections. Will he now make time to meet with his own commission members in other than a photo op? He better find time to meet with them or be prepared to face the major fallout if fails to address honestly the major sex abuse crisis he faces. The fallout will likely spread to the USA by the time Francis visits there in a few months, as discussed below. At least two of the abuse commission members, Marie Collins and Peter Saunders, to their credit are pressing hard to meet with the absolute monarch, Francis, about his appointment of a Chilean bishop Barros recently, a major Francis blunder, as well as about the sex abuse commission’s future role as an effective group, as reported recently here in the National Catholic Reporter. These prophetic Catholics refuse to be used as mere showpiece pawns, as the Vatican seeks to bury the child abuse scandal once again with a “classic delay tactic” advisory commission that superficially paints over the scandal with staged, secretive and scripted meetings semi-annually run by disgraced Cardinal Law’s former canon lawyer, Fr. Robert Oliver.

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CHILE
Bio Bio

[More than 500 people marched in Osorno against Bishop Juan Barros Friday night in a new action called by the organized movement against the bishop. Carlos Vargas, district councillor, welcomed the march and said such activity ensures that people remain mobilized in requesting resignation of the bishop.]

Más de 500 personas participaron el denominada “Marcha de los Paraguas”, que recorrió las calles la noche viernes, en una nueva actividad convocado por el movimiento de los laicos organizados contra el obispo Juan Barros.

Carlos Vargas, concejal de la comuna, valoró la convocatoria, que en cada actividad se incrementa, asegurando que seguirán movilizados solicitando la renuncia del prelado.

Vargas reiteró que se encuentran a la espera de alguna comunicación desde el obispado que informe si el obispo Juan Barros acepta o no reunirse con ellos en un lugar a definir por la propia organización, pues tras el fracaso de la reunión del pasado miércoles, por la presencia policial, hizo perder la confianza.

De acuerdo al concejal, no se puede conversar con la “pistola en el pecho”, asegurando que Barros les debe la reunión.

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CONNECTICUT
The Republican

Clergy sexual abuse survivor Marie Collins heads to Rome in protest over bishop’s appointment before Hartford talk

By Anne-Gerard Flynn | aflynn@repub.com
on April 11, 2015

Clergy sexual abuse survivor Marie Collins, who will be the keynote speaker at the 2015 National Assembly of the Voice of the Faithful in Hartford on April 18, is among the members of the Vatican’s Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors who are headed to Rome this weekend over Pope Francis’ appointment of a Chilean bishop who has been accused of covering up abuse.

The 17-member commission was formed to hold those in positions of power in the Church accountable for making it a “safe home” for children.

Bishop Juan Barros Madrid has has denied the charges but the Irish born Collins is among those asking that his appointment be reconsidered.

“As a survivor, I’m very surprised at the appointment in Chile because it seems to go against … what the Holy Father has been saying about not wanting anyone in positions of trust in the church who don’t have an absolutely 100 percent record of child protection,” Collins is quoted as saying in the National Catholic Reporter.

The four enroute will meet with Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley who heads the Vatican commission and who is in Rome for a meeting of the Council of Cardinals that advises the pope on reforming the Vatican bureaucracy.

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AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

April 12, 2015

Chris Vedelago, Jane Lee

The Catholic Church had set aside tens of millions of dollars to compensate sexual abuse victims years before it was prepared to publicly acknowledge the extent of the problem and now has up to $150 million set aside to cover existing and future claims.

The Sunday Age can reveal the church’s insurance company has allocated up to $150 million to cover outstanding and anticipated compensation claims,more than three times the amount believed to have been paid to victims to date.

This figure is likely to rise as victims continue to come forward amid hearings by the Royal Commission on Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Internal documents show the church’s insurance company, Catholic Church Insurance Ltd (CCI), had warned the nation’s bishops that the church was facing financial exposure to sexual abuse compensation claims as early as 1988 – more than seven years before the creation of the Melbourne Response and Towards Healing victim assistance programs in 1996.

Concerns about the church’s liability led CCI to propose a dedicated sexual abuse insurance policy that would cover the church for alleged incidents going back to 1969.

“CCI’s aim is to assist the church by providing protection in a difficult area and one which is increasingly being excluded by worldwide insurance markets. We intend treating this insurance as a special accommodation line for the church,” CCI’s then underwriting manager wrote to the bishops in 1990.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Saturday, April 11

Statement by Mary Caplan of New York City, SNAP Leader, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 917 439 4187, mcaplan682@aol.com )

We beg Francis – again – to both discipline Chilean Bishop Juan Barros Madrid and do so quickly and clearly without the familiar and disingenuous kinds of maneuvers and denials that Catholic officials make in a frustrating and hurtful “face saving” way.

For years, Catholic officials worldwide have promised to be “open and transparent” in the clergy sex abuse and scandal. Yet they move slowly, timidly, opaquely and selfishly in these cases, rarely admitting their real motives in public.

When they’re finally forced to act against those who commit or conceal heinous child sex crimes and cover ups, Catholic officials almost always do so in deceitful or confusing ways, refusing to acknowledge

They bend over backwards to prevent admitting “one of our own endangered or hurt kids by acting recklessly, callously and deceitfully.” They do everything they can to prevent parishioners and the public from knowing that, in fact, a cleric has done egregious harm.

(This happened most recently with Cardinal Keith O’Brien in Scotland and with virtually every one of the dozens of bishops who has resigned for committing sexual violence and the handful who have resigned for concealing sexual violence.)

If abuse and cover ups are to be deterred, it’s crucial that Francis brings his blunt speaking and decisive action to this continuing crisis, like he has with the crisis of church finances. He must take firm and obvious discipline against those who hurt the vulnerable, protect their careers, conceal dreadful crimes, hide the truth and discourage victims from reporting known and suspected child sex offenses to law enforcement.

To put it another way, victims and Catholics won’t really be assured and hopeful until Catholic officials can begin to punish wrongdoers quickly and clearly, saying things like “Bishop Smith is being demoted because he put kids at risk.”

We also urge Francis to release more information about Fr. Karadima’s crimes. Barros has concealed these crimes. So it’s both just and healing that these cover ups be uncovered and Francis has the power to make this happen.

Again, we’re glad four victims are meeting this weekend with Cardinal Sean O’Malley about this awful appointment. We’re not optimistic. And we’re sad that only fellow abuse victims are brave enough to challenge Francis on his hurtful appointment. We urge Catholic employees and members across the world to step up and join us in prodding Francis to rescind Barros’ position and take concrete steps to “un-do” the harm both Francis and Barros have done.

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DEUTSCHLAND
HPD

BERLIN. (hpd) Durch die “Transparenzoffensive” der katholischen Kirche kommt langsam ans Licht, weshalb sich die Bistümer im Hinblick auf ihre Finanzen bisher eher bedeckt gehalten haben: So nimmt die Kirche in Nordrhein-Westfalen quasi Darlehen bei sich selbst auf – und lässt den Staat die Zinsen zahlen.

Diese Praxis, die zumindest für das Erzbistum Köln und das Bistum Münster belegt ist (für die anderen Bistümer in NRW reichen die veröffentlichten Informationen nicht aus), kommt bei Schulbaumaßnahmen zum Tragen. Obwohl es am wirtschaftlichsten wäre, diese Maßnahmen durch Eigenkapital zu finanzieren (was die Bistümer bei allen anderen Investitionen auch tun), nehmen die Bistümer als Schulträger hierfür Darlehen (also Fremdkapital) auf, deren Zinsen das Land Nordrhein-Westfalen zu 94 Prozent erstattet. Die Kirche profitiert dabei gleich doppelt:

Zum einen brauchen die Bistümer in Höhe dieser Darlehen keine eigenen Mittel einzusetzen und legen die so “gesparten” Gelder als Finanzanlagen gewinnbringend an.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Katholisch

[“It’s grown sensibility”]

Vor fünf Jahren wurden die systematischen Missbräuche durch Geistliche in Deutschland aufgedeckt. Seitdem hat sich viel getan – auch bei der Ausbildung von Priestern. Udo Bentz, Regens des Mainzer Priesterseminars und Vorsitzender der Deutschen Regentenkonferenz, spricht mit katholisch.de über die gestiegene Sensibilität bei der Auswahl von Kandidaten. Außerdem erklärt er, warum der Zölibat mehr als “Verzicht auf Sexualität” ist.

Frage: Herr Bentz, laut Bischof Franz-Josef Bode werden in den Priesterseminaren mehr Bewerber als früher abgewiesen, seitdem der Missbrauchsskandal aufgedeckt wurde. Stimmt das?

Bentz: Man kann nicht sagen, seit 2010 würden wir deshalb mehr Bewerber ablehnen, weil wir plötzlich auf etwas völlig “Neues” achten, worauf vorher gar nicht geachtet worden wäre. Ich bin seit 2007 Regens und habe von Anfang an jedes Jahr etliche der Bewerber nicht in die Ausbildung genommen – aus ganz verschiedenen Gründen. Dennoch hat der Bischof recht: Durch viele Gespräche mit Fachleuten und den Austausch unter uns Kollegen ist eine Sensibilität gewachsen. Wir hatten in den zurückliegenden Jahren eine aktive Auseinandersetzung mit dem Thema “sexueller Missbrauch” und “Prävention”. Es gab keine Zusammenkunft unter uns Priesterausbildern, bei der wir nicht auch darüber gesprochen haben. Das verändert die Perspektive. Ich schaue mir die Interessenten heute anders an. Ich gewichte auch meine Wahrnehmungen anders. Wir haben uns als Regenten auch gefragt: Was können wir präventiv beitragen?

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ROME
Pontifica Universita Gregoriana

Interview with Fr. Hans Zollner SJ on the CCP published in several North and East German papers and in their online editions

Please, click on the icon below to download the interview (in German)

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ITALIEN
kath.net

[An Italian priest is suspended after allegations were made of homosexual orgies.]

Medienberichten zufolge soll der Ordenspriester Orgien mit anderen Männern, darunter auch anderen Priestern und einem Mitglied der Schweizergarde, organisiert, gefilmt und mit Priestern in ganz Italien ausgetauscht haben

Rom (kath.net/KNA/red) Das italienische Erzbistum Tarent hat einen Priester wegen homosexueller Beziehungen aus dem Pfarrdienst entlassen. Das teilte die Diözese am Mittwoch auf ihrer Internetseite mit. Laut der Regionalzeitung «Corriere del Mezzogiorno» soll der Ordensgeistliche Orgien mit anderen Männern, darunter auch anderen Priestern und einem Mitglied der Schweizergarde, organisiert, gefilmt und mit Priestern in ganz Italien ausgetauscht haben.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Badische Zeitung

[“I was abused by a priest”]

Sabine Meier [Name von der Redaktion geändert] ist aufgeregt, als sie das Freiburger Friedrichsbau-Kino betritt. Sie hat ein mulmiges Gefühl, sich extra ein paar Freunde mitgenommen, um “Verfehlung” anzuschauen. Der Film, Ende März angelaufen, handelt von einem Pfarrer, der Jugendliche missbraucht, und von der Frage, wie katholische Kirchenvertreter damit umgehen. Der Täter leugnet lange und beharrlich. Es geht ums Vertuschen, um interne Lösungen und verlorene Glaubwürdigkeit. Um Sätze wie “Die Kirche ist eine Mutter, und eine Mutter schlägt man nicht”. Manches kommt Sabine Meier bekannt vor. Sie ist aufgewühlt, nimmt regen Anteil an der anschließenden Publikumsdiskussion. Dann sagt sie zum ersten Mal öffentlich: “Ich bin missbraucht worden.”

Szenenwechsel: Meiers Wohnküche in einer Gemeinde in der Nähe von Freiburg. Wochenlang hat die 48-Jährige überlegt, ob und was sie der Öffentlichkeit über sich erzählen will. Bis heute wird sie von Erinnerungen an einen katholischen Geistlichen heimgesucht, der sie schon als Mädchen missbrauchte – über viele Jahre hinweg. Der Mann sei “ein richtig guter Freund der Familie”
gewesen. “Noch heute habe ich Flashbacks”, sagt sie. “Das hat mich geprägt, und es prägt mich noch immer.”

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 10 April 2015)

Marist Brother Peter Pemble (aged 67), who has been a school principal in Sydney and elsewhere, is scheduled to appear in the Newcastle District Court on 13 April 2015 for sentencing (case number 2014/00238932). Brother Pemble has admitted that he molested a schoolboy while working at a Catholic boys’ school in New South Wales early in his career, more than 40 years ago. The incident occurred at Maitland (in the Hunter region, north of Sydney) in 1971-1972, when Brother Pemble was in his twenties. Later in his career, Brother Peter Pemble became the principal of several Catholic schools in Sydney.

Peter William Pemble entered his guilty plea on 3 December 2014 in the Newcastle Local Court, where the case was heard by a magistrate. The plea relates to one count of indecent assault. Two other incidents will be taken into account when Pemble is sentenced at a later date.

The case then moved to a higher court, the Newcastle District Court, for sentencing by a judge.

According to court documents, Brother Peter William Pemble was born on 6 April 1948.

Court documents stated that, at Marist Brothers High School at Maitland in 1971, Brother Pemble cultivated a relationship with this junior student. Pemble committed the indecent assault in an empty room at the school.

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 11 April 2015)

When he was a Marist Brother in his mid-twenties, Brother Brett Anthony O’Connor taught in prominent Sydney schools. Then he left the Marist Order and began a career as a layman, eventually becoming the Director of Child Safety in the Queensland Government’s Department of Education and Training. In 2015, NSW police have charged O’Connor with alleged child-sex offences, relating to his earlier career as a Marist Brother in Sydney — at St Joseph’s College in Hunters Hill and St Gregory’s College in Campbelltown. O’Connor, now aged 52, is scheduled to appear in a NSW court on Monday 13 April 2015 (case number 2015/00084871).

According to a Marist Brothers document, Brother Brett Anthony O’Connor was born on 22 February 1963.

Police allege that the offences in Sydney were committed against two students (one from St Joseph’s College in 1987 and one from St Gregory’s College in 1989). Police say that both boys were aged 12 at the time of the alleged sexual assaults. Brother Brett O’Connor later left the Marist Order and began a new career in non-church positions.

St Joseph’s and St Gregory’s were boys-only schools, catering for Years 7 to 12. Both of the alleged victims were among the youngest students in their school.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Daily News

JULIE SHAW, DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER SHAWJ@PHILLYNEWS.COM, 215-854-2592

A CATHOLIC PRIEST who was accused of sexually abusing a 10-year-old altar boy in 1997 in the rectory at St. John Cantius Parish in Bridesburg will not have to face a third trial on child sex-abuse charges.

The District Attorney’s Office yesterday dropped all charges against the Rev. Andrew McCormick after two separate juries failed to reach verdicts.

On March 11, a jury declared itself deadlocked after a little more than three days of deliberations in McCormick’s second trial. On March 12, 2014, a different jury deadlocked after 4 1/2 days of deliberations in his first trial.

McCormick, 58, who has not been in custody, was in court, dressed in his usual black priestly garb and white clerical collar.

Common Pleas Judge Gwendolyn Bright has not lifted a gag order on Assistant District Attorney Kristen Kemp, defense attorney Trevan Borum and others involved in the case. A status listing on the gag order was set for Monday.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
St. Lous Post-Dispatch

By Harry Levins Special to the Post-Dispatch

Carol A. Kuhnert of Union grew up in south St. Louis alongside an older brother and sister. In 1961, the brother was ordained as a priest — the Rev. Norman Christian.

In 1987 she learned an awful secret. Her brother was a pedophile. He died in 2004. Now, in “No Longer on Pedestals,” Kuhnert vents her anger — at her brother, of course, but also at her beloved Roman Catholic Church. As she puts it early in her book:

“The Archdiocese of St. Louis had knowledge of my brother’s pedophile behavior long before I became aware of it, yet neither my sister nor I was ever warned he could be a danger to our children. The hierarchy chose to send my brother for treatment, return him to active ministry, and move him from parish to parish, where he could continue to endear himself to unsuspecting families, all of whom were more than happy to entrust their innocent children to him.”

Late in the book, she reflects, “I’m not sure what hurts more: learning my brother was a pedophile priest or knowing the church does not truly care about its flock. It cares only about protecting its reputation, its assets, and covering up what my brother and other predator clergy have. This is definitely not the church I knew and loved from my childhood.

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VERMONT
Burlington Free Press

Paris Achen, Free Press Staff Writer April 10, 2015

MONTPELIER – The House Committee on Human Services has unanimously advanced an overarching child-protection bill after scrapping a controversial provision that would have created a new felony crime of failure to protect a child.

The committee’s adaptation of S. 9 would ratchet up fines for three existing crimes against children and provide a road map for scrutinizing and improving all the moving parts of the child-welfare system. The deaths of two toddlers whose families were in the state’s child-welfare system provided the impetus for the legislation.

“Clearly, a bill cannot prevent child abuse and neglect, but this bill is a good start to an ongoing conversation about how to improve the system,” said committee Chairwoman Ann Pugh, D-South Burlington.

The bill, approved in February by the Senate, now proceeds to the House Judiciary Committee.

The committee wrapped into its 55-page draft separate legislation (H-41) known as “Jordan’s Bill” that is designed to help provide child protection from hazing.

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GOERGIA
Times-Herald

by W. WINSTON SKINNER

Emmett Winston Smith, 66, has been arraigned on federal charges of distributing, receiving and possessing child pornography.

Smith – who has been more commonly known in Coweta County as Everett Smith – was indicted by a federal grand jury on March 24. Smith, who was a former facilities assistant and Sunday school teacher at First Baptist Church in Newnan, was arrested March 5. “Smith allegedly traded images and videos of child pornography with others, and went into Internet chat rooms looking to make contact with others who shared his same interests,” said Acting U.S. Attorney John Horn. “This case, which began with a lead from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, illustrates our strong partnership with international law enforcement to combat child pornography and to identify and prosecute those who trade images of the sexual abuse of children.”

In 2014, the RCMP investigated a person on allegations that he traded in child pornography, according to Horn. That investigation revealed the Canadian subject had traded more than 200 e-mails containing child pornography with a person using an e-mail address that eventually led back to a house in Newnan.

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CANADA
The StarPhoenix

BY BILL ROBERTSON, FOR THE STARPHOENIX APRIL 10, 2015

The Education of Augie Merasty.

What a title. It’s meant to hearken back to other such ‘Education of ‘ titles, some of which should be taken seriously, others ironically. In the case of Merasty’s story, there’s a good chance that both he, now living in Prince Albert, and the man who helped him get his story into print, Saskatoon writer David Carpenter, wanted the title to have a savage degree of irony to it.

Like many of his generation, Joseph Auguste Merasty was sent by his parents to a church-run residential school, in his case the Roman Catholic St. Therese school in Sturgeon Landing, Sask., just across the border from Manitoba. This was August 1935. There he would be kept until 1944, when he could legally quit and get away.

The surprising thing about this little book – hardcover, 76 pages, including the introduction and afterword – is the obvious delight Merasty still takes in some of the teachers and keepers he encountered at St. Therese. In the opening chapter, he takes time to acknowledge one principal about whom “(n)o one can ever say anything bad,” or a sister who “played with us and really enjoyed her time at our playroom. She loved doing us favours.” He closes, after more encomiums about various sisters and brothers, by saying of the engineer who looked after the boiler room, “He was a great guy.”

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OKLAHOMA
Tulsa World

By AMANDA BLAND World Staff Writer

A Tulsa pastor who was accused of lewd molestation was convicted of two counts and acquitted of seven Friday night.

A jury returned its verdicts against Damien Keith Bonner Sr., 33, who was charged with nine counts of lewd molestation, after deliberating until nearly 11 p.m. The jury recommended a 20-year prison term on one conviction and three years on the other.

Bonner testified for the better part of three hours Friday afternoon.

Prosecutors had charged him with molesting three teen parishioners on a total of nine occasions.

He was found guilty of having intercourse with a 14- to 15-year-old member of Galilee Baptist Church, 721 E. Pine St., in 2013 or 2014 as well as groping a girl of the same age whom he met when he was a youth pastor for Mount Zion Baptist Church, 419 N. Elgin Ave., in 2006.

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UNITED STATES
The Evangelical Pulpit

Warren Throckmorton recently did a series of posts regarding the alleged bullying tactics of Faith Christian Church. In addition to reports about bizarre teachings on spanking infants, former members have described feeling forced to give money to the church. One Former staff minister Jeff Phillips said that “tithing is strictly enforced. We were taught that if we did not tithe, we were cursed.”

Phillips recalled FCC pastor Steve Hall saying, “‘I WILL NOT pastor cursed people.’”

Phillips related the following account:

“There was one occasion when some of the staff, including me, were caught not tithing soon enough. We were waiting until we had deposited our checks into the bank to tithe to the church. Steve found a verse in the OT about paying late fees for late tithes, so we were forced to pay extra for our lateness. So, essentially the ministers raised their own salaries and gave 13% of that and beyond to the church, which went to pay Steve’s salary along with the other members’ tithes.”

In another separate incident close to 100 people attended a protest across the street from Sterling’s Calvary Temple church in an effort to raise awareness to practices they say have gone on for decades behind its closed doors. The protest was sparked after an article broke where two women said they were physically and sexually abused for years by the church’s leadership and teachers.

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

By Inés San Martín
Vatican correspondent April 10, 2015

ROME — Two survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy who now sit on a Vatican anti-abuse commission are traveling to Rome this weekend to meet with Boston Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, and are hoping to see Pope Francis as well, to protest his recent appointment of a Chilean bishop linked to a notorious sex abuser.

A commission member speaking on background because he’s not authorized to discuss the matter confirmed to Crux that the meeting between O’Malley and the two victims who sit on the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors — Marie Collins of Ireland and Peter Saunders of the United Kingdom — will happen on Sunday.

Collins and Saunders will be joined by two other abuse survivors who are not part of the Vatican panel.

Saunders spoke on Friday about the upcoming meeting in an interview with the National Catholic Reporter.

“I’m hoping Francis will be there as well, because we’re going to meet [O’Malley] in the Domus Santa Marta about this Chilean bishop situation, which is really quite disturbing,” Saunders said.

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VATICAN CITY
Yahoo! News

Vatican City (AFP) – Three months after appointing an openly gay diplomat as France’s ambassador to the Vatican, Paris is still waiting for the green light from Rome.

With Pope Francis entering his third year in the post, some activists see the Vatican’s silence as a test of the depth of reform in the Catholic Church.

While the Vatican usually declares it has accepted a candidate around a month after an appointment is made, it makes no public statements at all if the answer is no.

Paris appears determined to stick with seasoned candidate Laurent Stefanini, a 55-year-old practising Catholic whom the foreign ministry described as “one of our best diplomats”.

“That’s why we appointed him. We are waiting for a reply to our request,” it said.

Sources close to President Francois Hollande said his appointment was “the wish of the president” and the cabinet of ministers.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

Brett O’Connor, head of child protection in Queensland schools, charged with historical sex abuse offences against pupils at two Sydney private schools

April 11, 2015

Louise Hall
Court Reporter

The man responsible for child protection in Queensland public schools has been charged with a series of child sex offences against students at two prominent Sydney private schools where he taught as a Catholic Brother in the 1980s.

Brett Anthony O’Connor, 52, is the director of child safety at Queensland’s Department of Education and Training.

Last month, Mr O’Connor was charged by NSW detectives over indecent and sexual assaults allegedly committed against a 12-year-old boy when he was a Marist Brother at Sydney’s prestigious St Joseph’s College, Hunters Hill in 1987.

He was also charged with sexually and indecently assaulting a 12-year-old-boy at St Gregory’s College, Campbelltown in 1989. Both colleges are large independent Catholic day and boarding schools for boys, run by the Marist Brothers.

O’Connor later left the religious order and qualified as a psychologist.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial

FRIDAY, APRIL 10, 2015

By Ralph Cipriano
for Bigtrial.net

District Attorney Seth Williams has decided not to retry Father Andrew McCormick a third time for the alleged attempted rape of a former 10-year-old altar boy.

In a brief appearance today before Judge Gwendolyn N. Bright, Assistant District Attorney Kristen Kemp tersely announced that the D.A. would not retry the case.

Twice in the last 14 months, the district attorney had brought the case to trial. And twice the end result was a mistrial after both juries wound up hopelessly deadlocked.

At today’s brief hearing, Trevan Borum, Father Andy’s defense lawyer, asked the judge to lift a gag order in the case. But even though there’s no future jury pool to worry about tainting, the judge told Kemp and Borum that she wanted her gag order to remain in efffect until May 16th. Later the judge changed her mind and announced she would rule Monday on Borum’s motion to lift the gag order.

In the absence of official comment, one loyal member of the “Friends of Father Andy” support group said the D.A.’s decision to finally give up was a “long time coming, especially when there is no evidence.”

In a last desperate move while the jury was still deliberating, ADA Kemp had offered Father Andy a sweetheart deal. If the priest would plead guilty to a single charge, corrupting the morals of a minor, he would receive no jail time, four years probation, and not even have to register as a sex offender under Megan’s Law.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS Philly

By Dan Wing

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — The Philadelphia District Attorney’s office announced Friday that they will not to retry a former Philadelphia priest accused of sexual assault.

After two juries failed to reach a verdict in the trial of Father Andrew McCormick in 12 months, the DA’s office made the announcement saying it will no longer seek jail time for the 58-year-old priest. A gag order on all parties involved in the case remains in place until April 16th, but the attorney representing McCormick is expected to try to have that lifted early next week.

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SLOVAKIA
Prague Post

Bratislava/Vatican, April 10 (ČTK) — The reception of former Slovak archbishop Róbert Bezák, the circumstances of whose dismissal three years ago are still unclear, by Pope Francis in a private audience today is an important shift in the case, Slovak church analyst Imrich Gazda has said.

The information about the reception was carried by the Vatican press center and the Vatican Insider server. They did not say what the Pope and Bezák spoke about.

The popular priest Bezák was dismissed as archbishop of Trnava by Pope Francis’s predecessor, Benedict XVI in 2012. The church allegedly criticized the presence of homosexual priests in his surroundings and his stance on certain church issues.

The Vatican also allegedly had objections to Bezák often wearing civilian clothing, saying this discredited the church attire. However, no official reasons for Bezák’s dismissal were given.
Slovak President Andrej Kiska also spoke about Bezák with Pope Francis during his first visit to the Vatican on Thursday.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
WPVI

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) — After two hung juries, the sex abuse case against a Philadelphia priest has been dropped.

The district attorney’s office confirmed to Action News they will not retry Rev. Andrew McCormick for a third time.

The Roman Catholic priest was accused of sexually assaulting a 10-year-old altar boy at Bridesburg’s St. John Cantius back in 1997.

Though McCormick no longer faces the threat of prison, it’s unlikely he will return to a parish.

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MINNESOTA
Post-Bulletin

Kay Fate, kfate@postbulletin.com

WINONA — The Diocese of Winona on Friday morning publicly released and added the names of two more priests to their list of accused clerics: Father Harold Mountain and Father Thomas Duane.

Neither name had been released to the public before Friday’s announcement; both are dead.

Bishop John Quinn, in a statement, acknowledges that “these accusations have been deemed to be not manifestly false or frivolous.”

According to documents provided Jeff Anderson and Associates, a law firm that represents several people sexually abused by clerics in the diocese, the accusations against Mountain and Duane came following their deaths.

Mountain served the southeastern Minnesota parishes of Stewartville, Hayfield, Winona, Minnieska and Minnesota City.

The accusation came to light in 2011, but the year it occurred is redacted from church documents. The victim believes he was in second or third grade. He was sent to Mountain’s office for discipline, the report says, but Mountain began to talk about sex, then pulled down the boy’s pants and touched his genitals.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, April 10

Statement by Joelle Casteix of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests 949 322 7434, jcasteix@gmail.com

We’re encouraged that four abuse victims will meet this weekend with Cardinal Sean O’Malley about Pope Francis’ irresponsible appointment of a corrupt Chilean bishop.

But every single member of the pontiff’s commission should be shouting from the rooftops about this callous and hurtful appointment that will only discourage other victims, witnesses and whistleblowers from exposing clergy who commit and conceal child sex crimes.

[National Catholic Reporter]

And what of the world’s thousands of bishops? Why hasn’t a single one found the courage to criticize – or even publicly question – this insensitive move by Pope Francis? The pope has repeatedly said that more honest discussion in the church, even criticism of other church officials, is important and healthy. The pope has prided himself on more open decision-making in the highest echelons of the church hierarchy.

But not a single bishop on the planet – in office or in retirement – can bring themselves to challenge the boss.

The fact is that Bishop Juan Barros Madrid should be demoted and denounced, not elevated.

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MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio

Elizabeth Baier · Rochester, Minn. · Apr 10, 2015

The Diocese of Winona on Friday released the names of two more priests accused of sexual abuse and said it doesn’t expect more disclosures.

The men — the Rev. Harold Mountain and the Rev. Thomas Duane — were previously unknown to the public. They served in the diocese for more than four decades. Both men have since died.

Mountain served in several parishes during his 47 years with the diocese. He retired in 1989 and died in 2006. According to his priest file, Mountain’s victim was a young boy.

Duane served in parishes and at a high school during his 41 years with the diocese. He retired in 1979 and died in 1993. According to his file, Duane’s victim was an adolescent woman.

The disclosures were prompted by recently obtained information by the Diocese of Winona and the review of the diocese’s priest files as part of a settlement in a clergy abuse lawsuit, said victims’ attorney Mike Finnegan.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholic Philly

BY MATTHEW GAMBINO

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office announced Friday, April 10, that it will not retry Father Andrew McCormick on charges that he sexually assaulted a boy in 1997. Two previous trials of the case ended in hung juries.

The Philadelphia priest, 58, has been on administrative leave since 2011. He was ordained in 1982 and is a former pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Swedesburg.

Father McCormick was arrested in July 2012 for the alleged assault of a 10-year-old boy, now 27, in the rectory of St. John Cantius Parish in Philadelphia’s Bridesburg section.

Archdiocesan spokesman Ken Gavin said Father McCormick will remain on leave, meaning he may not celebrate the sacraments publicly, wear priest garb or present himself publicly as a priest.

Gavin said now that there will be no third trial of the case, Father McCormick’s “canonical process” – an investigation under church law – may now begin, which will determine his future status as a priest.

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MINNESOTA
Wall Street Journal

By TOM CORRIGAN

A Minnesota bankruptcy judge agreed to give the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and alleged victims of clergy sexual abuse more time to negotiate the terms of a settlement, but the two sides remain at odds of over the proposed deadline by which victims must file claims in order to be compensated.

Following a hearing Thursday, Judge Robert Kressel of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Minneapolis gave the archdiocese through at least Nov. 30 to draft a reorganization plan. The plan likely will center on a settlement among the archdiocese, its insurance carriers and alleged victims, all of whom were ordered to begin mediation shortly after the archdiocese filed for chapter 11 protection in January.

The archdiocese says it needs more time to work out deals with its insurance carriers, which could significantly increase the assets available to compensate victims. The archdiocese’s efforts have been complicated by that fact that it has more than 30 different insurance policies issued by about 15 different carriers spanning the late 1940s to present, court papers show.

The archdiocese has also proposed an Aug. 3 deadline for alleged sexual-abuse victims to come forward with formal claims, which is sooner than the deadline proposed by victims’ lawyers, who say more time is needed to contact victims and to help them file claims.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, April 10

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, 314 566 9790, SNAPclohessy@aol.com, davidgclohessy@gmail.com

We’re disappointed that Fr. Andrew McCormick won’t be retried. But we hope that others who may have seen, suspected or suffered his crimes will now speak out. And we urge Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput to use his vast resources to reach out to any other victims, witnesses or whistleblowers who may have knowledge or suspicions about possible wrongdoing by Fr. McCormick.

[Philadelphia Inquirer]

It’s not enough for Chaput to keep McCormick out of a parish. Chaput’s insurers, defense lawyers and public relations team will insist that the priest not be given an assignment. That’s the absolute bare minimum Chaput should and will do for purely selfish reasons.

Chaput should also

–put Fr. McCormick in a remote, secure, independent and professionally run treatment facility for sex offenders,
–disclose where that is, and
–personally visit every parish where Fr. McCormick worked, begging others to step forward.

We predict, however, that Chaput will do none of this. He’ll likely say and do the absolute bare minimum. And he’ll keep his fingers crossed that Fr. McCormick. But that’s irresponsible, especially because Chaput has the power to severely limit Fr. McCormick’s access to kids, the resources to help find other victims and the duty to help law enforcement file more charges, if possible, against Fr. McCormick.

Obviously, Fr. McCormick hasn’t been convicted. But let’s remember that parents, police and prosecutors believe this alleged victim. And Fr. McCormick has been accused of inappropriate actions with kids before. Let’s err, if we must, on the side of safeguarding several innocent children versus one popular, well-educated alleged child molesting cleric.

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UNITED STATES
dotCommonweal

Grant Gallicho April 10, 2015

In an interview with La Croix this week (English translation here), Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, suggested a new area of work for the Holy Office: theological architecture. The cardinal was asked how he viewed his role under Pope Francis, especially given that Benedict XVI was a theologian. “The arrival of a theologian like Benedict XVI in the chair of St. Peter was no doubt an exception,” Müller replied. “But John XXIII was not a professional theologian. Pope Francis is also more pastoral and our mission at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is to provide the theological structure of a pontificate.” If that’s how the cardinal views his role, that might explain why he’s given more interviews than any of his predecessors, according to Andrea Tornielli at La Stampa.

Of course, as Tornielli notes, providing the “theological structure” of a pontificate has never been part of the CDF’s job description. “The proper duty of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is to promote and safeguard the doctrine on faith and morals in the whole Catholic world,” as John Paul II wrote in Pastor bonus, his apostolic constitution on the Roman Curia. Until the pontificate of Paul VI, Tornielli reminds readers, the CDF was run by the pope. That’s because he is “supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful,” as canon law puts it. In other words, the work of building a theological structure for a pontificate finally falls to one man: the pope.

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ROME
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Apr. 10, 2015

ROME Members of the Vatican commission advising Pope Francis on clergy sexual abuse are making an unscheduled visit to Rome on Sunday, hoping to personally tell the pope their concerns about his appointment of a Chilean bishop accused of covering up abuse.

Two members of the commission who are survivors of abuse will make the trip with two other survivors and are scheduled to meet Sunday evening with Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley, head of the Vatican commission and also a member of Francis’ Council of Cardinals.

Speaking exclusively to NCR on Friday evening, commission member Peter Saunders said he and the rest of the group will meet with O’Malley for a meal at the Vatican hotel where Francis lives and hope to encounter the pope there.

The members, Saunders said, are making the trip “to have a very, very urgent and important discussion with Cardinal O’Malley.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

Joseph A. Slobodzian, Inquirer Staff Writer
Last updated: Friday, April 10, 2015

After two Philadelphia juries failed to reach a verdict in 12 months, the District Attorney’s Office announced Friday it would not retry Rev. Andrew McCormick, a Roman Catholic priest accused of sexually assaulting a 10-year-old altar boy almost 18 years ago in a Bridesburg parish.

Assistant District Attorney Kristen Kemp, backed by key members of her office’s sex-crimes unit, announced the decision in a brief hearing before Common Pleas Court Judge Gwendolyn N. Bright.

While approving the dismissal, Bright told Kemp and defense attorney Trevan Borum that she wanted her gag order barring them or the parties, including McCormick, from commenting obeyed until April 16.

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MINNESOTA
KAAL

By: Jennie Olson

The Diocese of Winona had released the names of two more priests who have been accused of sexually abusing minors.

The Rev. Harold Mountain and the Rev. Thomas Duane were named in a release by lawyer Jeff Anderson on Friday. Both names hadn’t been released before today.

A total of 17 clerics who worked in the Diocese of Winona have now been accused of sexual abuse.

The disclosure is part of an October 2014 settlement agreement that includes a child protection plan and the public release of the names of clerics who have substantiated claims of sexual abuse against them.

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NEW JERSEY
Road to Recovery

MEDIA RELEASE

APRIL 10, 2015

Rev. Michael H. Hansen took innocent children to the “Jersey shore” where he gave them alcohol and sexually abused them

Rev. Michael H. Hansen, deceased, was a volunteer firefighter in Glen Ridge, New Jersey and chaplain of the New Jersey State Firemen’s Association where he had access to many minor children

What
A demonstration and leafleting alerting parishioners and the general public about allegations of sexual abuse against a deceased Archdiocese of Newark priest, Rev. Michael H. Hansen, who served at Sacred Heart Parish, Bloomfield, Our Lady of Lourdes Parish, West Orange, and Assumption Parish in Emerson, New Jersey, and acted as a firefighter and fire chaplain.

When
Saturday afternoon, April 11, 2015 from 4:45 PM until 6:30 PM (before and after the 5:30 PM Mass)
Sunday morning, April 12, 2015 from 8:15 AM until 12:30 PM (corresponding to the 7:30, 9:30 and 11:30 AM Masses)

Where
On the public sidewalks outside Our Lady of Lourdes Church, 1 Eagle Rock Avenue, West Orange, New Jersey

Who
Members of Road to Recovery, Inc., a non-profit charity that assists victims of sexual abuse and their families, including its co-founder and President who is a native of West Orange, New Jersey

Why
Fr. Michael H. Hansen has been accused of giving innocent minor children alcohol and sexually abusing them. Fr. Hansen allegedly took innocent minor children to the Jersey shore, gave them alcohol, and sexually abused them. Fr. Hansen also worked as a volunteer firefighter and fire chaplain, giving him access to thousands of children throughout towns and cities of New Jersey. It is alleged that the irate parent of an abused child at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish threatened Fr. Hansen as he distributed communion during a Mass. Demonstrators will distribute leaflets to parishioners and the public to alert them to the allegations against Fr. Michael Hansen and urge them to come forward to begin their healing.

Contacts
Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D., Road to Recovery, Inc., Livingston, NJ, 07039 – 862-368-2800
Attorney Mitchell Garabedian, Boston, MA – 617-523-6250

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VATICAN CITY
The Australian

APRIL 11, 2015

Dennis Shanahan
Political Editor
Canberra

Not long after being appointed as fin­ancial controller of the Holy See, essentially the Vatican’s Treasurer and effectively one of the top four positions of the Catholic Church, Australia’s Cardinal George Pell shocked the ancient ways of the Curia in Rome by announcing he had discovered hundreds of millions of euros in lost funds.

As he prepares to deliver his first real budget on modern financial terms next month it seems Pell has built substantially on that fast start by uncovering more than €1 billion in lost funds.

The uncovering of unused funds through modern accounting and international standards is only part of the reform challenge the Catholic Church faces as Pope Francis revives interest in the papacy worldwide with his fresh and spontaneous approach.

The administrative reforms run in parallel to theological changes and include the Pope’s impending encyclical on climate change and the Vatican’s global diplomatic push as the centre of gravity of the Catholic Church moves from Europe to Asia.

The issue for Francis, who has shocked some Vatican officials with his references to the possibility of following Pope Benedict in retiring early, is whether his burst of energy and quest for reform will be matched by the capabilities and will of the Vatican to deliver on the modernisation.

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MASSACHUSETTS
WGBH

By EDGAR B. HERWICK III

According to the 2010 Religion Census, a study conducted every 10 years, 45 percent of Massachusetts residents consider themselves Catholic, making the Bay State one of the most heavily Catholic states in the US. This fact would surely surprise William Bradford, and the rest of the Mayflower pilgrims who first established the Commonwealth.

From parades to politics, Catholicism is such an integral part of the cultural fabric here in Massachusetts that it’s hard to believe that it hasn’t always been that way. And yet, as Boston College history professor James O’Toole explains: “In the very early years of Massachusetts, Catholics were few in number and not particularly welcome.”

Not welcomed is one way to put it. Illegal would be another. Consider Massachusetts’ so-called anti-priest laws, established in the 1640s. O’Toole explains: “If a priest came in he’d be ordered out of the colony. If he came back, he’d be put in jail for a while and thrown out of the colony again and if he came back a third time he’d be hanged.” …

Today, Boston remains an influential center for American Catholicism – for good and for bad. America’s first and only Catholic president, JFK, is from here. But the archdiocese was also the center of clergy sex abuse scandal that the church continues to grapple with. O’Toole says that two centuries on, for Chevrus’ successor, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the job may be very different, but that doesn’t mean it’s any easier.

“Cardinal O’Malley’s challenge is now that the church has grown into this big institution. How to maintain an institution of that size, so that it actually connect to people.”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

MINNESOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, April 10

Statement by Frank Meuers of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 952-334-5180, frankameuers@gmail.com )

Two more names of Minnesota predator priests have been made public. We challenge every priest in the Winona diocese to mention their names at masses this weekend and beg anyone who has been hurt by the clerics to come forward and get help.

[Jeff Anderson & Associates]

This disclosure isn’t voluntary. It’s happening because a brave and compassionate victim was strong enough to file a lawsuit and caring enough to insist that child molesting clerics be “outed.” So we ask Winona priests to go beyond the legal bare minimum. We urge them to use pulpit announcements, parish websites and church bulletins to do as Christ taught us: to reach out to the “lost sheep.”

Somewhere in Minnesota is a man or woman who was assaulted as a child by Fr. Thomas Duane or Fr. Harold Mountain. She drinks herself into a stupor nightly to dull her pain from that trauma. Or he drugs himself daily to numb his suffering. And their relatives wonder “Why did Sally’s life go south?” or “Why does Bill isolate himself from the rest of our family?”

This long-standing misery can end. But only if Sally or Bill break their silence and share their burdens with loved ones. And that often happens when victims learn that their predators are deceased or are publicly “outed.” That, in turn, often happens when those with “bully pulpits” show real leadership and use their resources to beg victims to step forward.

We are grateful to him and to every single victim of clergy sexual violence who has taken steps to protect children, expose wrongdoers, seek justice and deter cover ups. We’re especially grateful to those individuals who reported being abused by these two priests. We hope this disclosure brings some comfort and closure to those hurt by Fr. Mountain and Fr. Duane. And we hope this disclosure will prod others who are suffering in shame, silence and self-blame to begin to recover.

If Winona priests don’t take this outreach step voluntarily, we urge Bishop John Quinn to insist that they do so. And we hope every single current and former Winona Catholic church employee and member to spread the word as best they can about these two predator priests.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.