ABUSE TRACKER

His supporters say federal appeals court nominee Michael Delaney is a dedicated advocate for sexual assault survivors. The family of one high-profile survivor would beg to differ.

When Michael A. Delaney, President Biden’s nominee to the US Court of Appeals in Boston, appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee at his upcoming confirmation hearing sometime soon, Alexander Prout will be there.

Many think Delaney, a former New Hampshire attorney general, is a stellar candidate. When his nomination was announced on Jan. 18, Democratic Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan called Delaney “exceedingly qualified,” by virtue of his long career in public service and his “commitment to justice.”

Prout takes a different view.

“Michael Delaney is not qualified to sit on the bench,” he said. “If he is confirmed, it will send a chilling message to survivors of sexual assault and their advocates.”

In 2014, when Prout’s daughter Chessy was…

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The case comes down to whether, under a 2019 law, the Diocese of Providence and its leaders can be considered “perpetrators” if their conduct contributed to child sexual abuse by priests

Victims of childhood sexual abuse by priests asked the state Supreme Court in oral arguments Wednesday to revive their lawsuits against the Diocese of Providence, arguing that a state law passed in 2019 allowed them to sue the institution and its leaders.

The case comes down to whether the Diocese of Providence and its leaders can be considered “perpetrators” of childhood sexual abuse under a 2019 law. The victims argue that the conduct of the diocese and its leaders was so egregious that they could be considered a “perpetrator,” the same way the driver of a getaway car can be criminally charged in a bank robbery.

They appear to face an uphill climb. The victims’ attorney, Timothy Conlon, faced…

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George Pell accused of sexually abusing two choir boys as Archbishop of Melbourne

‘Go to hell’: Hundreds protest outside of George Pell’s funeral in Sydney

Mourners and protesters clashed ahead of the funeral service for controversial cardinal George Pell in Sydney on Thursday morning.

The cardinal, who was once the most senior Catholic to be convicted of sex abuse, died last month in Rome aged 81 and was returned to Australia to be interred at the crypt of St Mary’s Cathedral.

Hundreds of protesters shouted slogans from the park across the cathedral, denouncing Pell, a staunch conservative who had riled LGBT+ rights supporters and was among church leaders blamed for inaction on clergy sex abuse.

“Pell Burn In Hell,” read one of the signs carried by the protesters and displayed on cars, as others screamed, “George Pell, go to hell”.

Tensions flared when several faithful tried to remove colourful ribbons that the protesters had…

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‘Dances with Wolves’ actor accused of sexually abusing Indigenous girls while claiming to be ‘Holy Person’

FIRST ON FOX: At least nine religious leaders were arrested in the U.S. last month for alleged sex crimes against children, ranging from grooming to child porn to rape, Fox News Digital has found.

Former “Dances with Wolves” actor Nathan Chasing Horse was arrested Tuesday in Las Vegas on allegations he sexually assaulted young Indigenous girls spanning several states while claiming to be a spiritual healer.

According to a search warrant obtained by the Associated Press, police said Chasing Horse, who played Smiles a Lot in the 1990 film, had followers who referred to him as “Medicine Man” or “Holy Person,” and he “used spiritual traditions and their belief system as a tool to sexually assault young girls on numerous occasions.”

He is also accused by police of pimping out his victims…

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Who killed the monsignor?

This is the 13th installment in an 18-part serial on the unsolved 1966 murder of Buffalo Diocese Monsignor Francis J. O’Connor. Read the rest of the series.

BEMUS POINT – In 1966, Buffalo priests who were accused of sexually abusing children did not have to worry about being arrested.

Instead, some were sent for a time out in the lap of luxury – a stately mansion in this beautiful vacation community, on a property with lush, rolling lawns, tennis courts and a gorgeous view of Chautauqua Lake, a Buffalo News investigation has revealed.

The mansion served as the Buffalo Diocese’s secret place of confinement for at least two molester priests in the 1960s.

Police records show that the Rev. John D. Lewandowski and three other troubled priests were living at the Bemus Point mansion when homicide detectives questioned and fingerprinted Lewandowski as a suspect…

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In Pope Benedict’s final letter, he asked for forgiveness. In the past, Benedict acknowledged “his failure to act decisively at times in confronting sexual abusers.”

The priest sex abuse scandals over the decades have been shocking and horrific. The issue has been debilitating to those directly and indirectly affected. More than $3 billion have been paid in legal settlements to victims between 1950 and 2018.

Over 7,000 members of the Catholic church sexually abused over 20,000 minors, predominately young white boys. The man responsible for disciplinary action for the church for over 25 years was then-Archbishop/ Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who would go on to become Pope Benedict XVI.

A major asset of the Catholic church is its school buildings. A countless number of Catholic schools were closed in the inner cities in my home state of Connecticut. These school closures impaired, if not eliminated, accessibility to a Catholic school education, which…

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INDIANAPOLIS (OSV News) — A priest who offered up his suffering from cancer for the sake of clerical abuse victims said he has experienced a miraculous healing following a June 2022 pilgrimage to the Marian shrine at Lourdes, France.

Father John Hollowell, a priest of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, told OSV News that doctors have said his brain tumor, diagnosed in 2019, has disappeared.

“I had an MRI two weeks after I got back from Lourdes (at the end of June 2022),” said Father Hollowell, who first announced the news in a Jan. 30 video message on his YouTube channel. “All that remained was scar tissue from the surgeries.”

In 2020, Father Hollowell learned that a series of fainting spells and dizziness were the result of an oligodendroglioma – a brain tumor usually occurring in white and non-Hispanic males between the ages of 35 and 44. About 1,200 individuals…

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The state Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday on whether the Diocese of Providence as an institution can be defined as a “perpetrator” of child sexual abuse under a relatively new state law, and thus possibly sued by alleged victims of accused pedophile priests from decades ago. 

Rhode Island lawmakers in 2019 extended the deadline for victims of childhood sexual abuse to file lawsuits against those who abused them, even if the abuse took place outside of the statute of limitations.

The new law extended the deadline from seven years to 35 years after the victim’s 18th birthday. But it allowed a retroactive extension of that deadline only if they were suing a “perpetrator” — not a “non-perpetrator.” 

In a test case of the new law, Superior Court Judge Netti C. Vogel in 2020 dismissed three priest-abuse lawsuits against the diocese and its leaders, finding that the law defined “perpetrator” as the person…

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Ireland was once regarded as the most catholic Country in the World. That, though, is no longer the case.

Mark Vincent Healy was sexually abused by a member of the Spiritan Order while at school during the 1960s and 70s. He says the sexual abuse he experienced destroyed his life.

“It had a profound psychological effect on me and the way that I made decisions in things that I wanted to do with my life, even more recently and obviously when this matter came forward and it surfaced in my life, everything changed,” he revealed to Euronews.

“It’s been now 16 years I have been seeking redress and justice but it hasn’t been an extension of justice for myself but an extension of justice to so many other survivors in Ireland.”

A ‘catastrophic’ impact on Catholicism in Ireland

Weekly Mass attendance which stood at 91% in 1975 was down to 36% in…

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Bishop Rick Stika is accused of defamation, and covering up sexual abuse, in the Diocese of Knoxville.

The Pillar has confirmed a recently-made allegation, that Bishop Rick Stika told priests a seminarian accused of sexually assaulting a parish organist had actually been victimized by the organist – essentially recasting the story so that the accused seminarian was the victim, rather than the alleged aggressor.

The allegation came in a lawsuit refiled last week, which charges that Stika impeded an investigation into the claim that former seminarian Wojciech Sobczuk sexually assaulted the lawsuit’s plaintiff, who worked as a musician at the Diocese of Knoxville’s cathedral.

The suit was initially filed in February 2022, but had to be refiled this month, after a court agreed last year with the Diocese of Knoxville’s argument that the plaintiff could not file the lawsuit using a pseudonym. Plaintiff’s attorney Patrick Thronson told The Pillar that his client…

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As people arrived one by one to put up ribbons at St Mary’s Cathedral over the past week, Ballarat child abuse survivor Paul Auchettl would quietly approach them. Every person had a story about their own experience of abuse at the hands of the Catholic Church, or stories of abuse suffered by someone they loved. Children would emerge from the faces of 60-year-old men and women, and Auchettl would guide them through the release that the tying of a ribbon would bring, like a contemporary shaman.

Every day the fence would be picked “clean” of the presence of abused children that each ribbon represents. It was this removal that most deeply troubled Auchettl and his fellow Ballarat survivor Trevor Coad, who accompanied him to Sydney. Their seven-year ribbon campaign in their hometown, the epicentre of revelations in the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse, has progressed to some sort…

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Australian police plan to ask a judge to ban gay rights protesters from demonstrating outside the funeral of Cardinal George Pell in Sydney on Feb. 2 due to public safety concerns.

Pell, who was once considered the third-highest ranking cleric in the Vatican and spent more than a year in prison before his child abuse convictions were squashed in 2020, died in Rome this month at age 81.

The staunchly conservative church leader will lie in St. Mary’s Cathedral starting Feb. 1 and will be interred at the cathedral after a funeral Mass the following day.

The New South Wales Police Force said on Jan. 31 it has rejected an application from Sydney-based gay rights group Community Action for Rainbow Rights for a permit to protest outside the cathedral on Feb. 2 due to safety concerns.

It said police Commissioner Karen Webb will apply to the New South Wales Supreme…

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Mourners paid their respects to Cardinal George Pell in a Sydney cathedral Wednesday a day before the funeral and interment of a polarizing church leader who was once the most senior Catholic convicted of sex abuse.

Pell, who died last month at age 81, spent more than a year in prison before his convictions were overturned in 2020.

Once the third-highest-ranking cleric in the Vatican, he returned to Australia in 2017 to fight abuse allegations made by multiple complainants over decades in his home state of Victoria. Only charges that he abused two choirboys in his early months as archbishop of Melbourne in the late 1990s led to convictions. He spent 404 days in mostly solitary confinement before he was cleared. But his Vatican career by then had ended.

The staunchly conservative church leader will lie in St. Mary’s Cathedral until he is interred at the cathedral crypt after a funeral Mass…

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A retired Roman Catholic priest Dennis Finbow formerly from Cambridgeshire has been found guilty of three historic sex offences against a child.

Fr Dennis Finbow, a retired priest of the Diocese of East Anglia, was convicted by a jury at Huntingdon Crown Court.

He gone on trial accused of five counts of indecently assaulting a girl and one of indecently assaulting a boy.

Following a six-day trial, Fr Finbow was convicted of three counts of indecent assault on a child and found not guilty of the remaining three offences.

Fr Finbow, 74, who now lives in Martlesham, Suffolk, denied all six counts of indecent assault.

During his time in Cambridgeshire, Fr Finbow held posts at Littlehey prison, St Joseph’s Church in St Neots and at Dogsthorpe, Peterborough.

The trial was told by the prosecution that when Fr Finbow was interviewed by police he described the allegations as nonsense and “a…

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A 74-year-old Catholic priest who claimed allegations against him were “nonsense” has been convicted of abusing a child in the 1980s.

Dennis Finbow, who had worked in Peterborough, was found guilty of three counts of indecent assault against a girl aged between 10 and 13.

The trial at Huntingdon Crown Court heard the defendant had touched the girl while she was in bed.

Finbow, of Martlesham, Suffolk, will be sentenced on 8 March.

He was cleared of two other counts of indecent assault against the same girl and one count of indecent assault against a boy.

Following the verdicts, Finbow was granted bail, but the judge, Philip Grey, warned him to prepare for a immediate jail term which was the “almost inevitable outcome”.

In a police interview played to the jury, the female complainant said Finbow was “charismatic” and “everybody loved him”.

Prosecutor Nicholas Bleaney said when he was voluntarily…

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A report released today concluded that Jean Vanier — a Catholic lay leader and founder of L’Arche, a worldwide network of communities supporting adults with intellectual disabilities — founded the first L’Arche community primarily as a cover for a secretive religious sect with exploitative “mystical-sexual” beliefs and practices.

The report also found Vanier sexually exploited at least 25 nondisabled women from 1952 until just before his death in 2019, far more than previously known.

According to the report, the sect used L’Arche as a “screen” to secretly reunite around their leader, Thomas Philippe, a Dominican priest who had previously been investigated and disciplined by Catholic authorities for his abuse and his manipulative theology.

Tina Bovermann, national leader and executive director of L’Arche USA and a member of L’Arche’s international leadership team, told Sojourners the new report offered a “heavy” look at the “insidious … and strategic” behavior of…

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Disgraced former Southern Baptist Convention president Johnny Hunt found a new venue for his upcoming men’s conference: A church whose pastor Hunt ordained decades ago.

The Johnny Hunt Men’s Conference will take place March 17-18 at New Season Church in Hiram, Georgia, Hunt announced in mid-January. He had previously planned a men’s conference in February at his former church, First Baptist Church Woodstock in the Atlanta area. But details of the event vanished from the conference website after FBC Woodstock said it wasn’t hosting the conference.

Hunt also filled the pulpit this past Sunday at New Season Church—the second time he has preached since being publicly accused of sexually assaulting another pastor’s wife.

Hunt did not mention the accusations during either this past Sunday’s sermon or in his sermon at a different church earlier in January. He briefly alluded to having been out of the…

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It’s time the bishops’ conferences on the continent form a separate commission for a digital mission

Asian teens are known for churning out terabytes of hypersexual content on a daily basis that makes big waves across all social media platforms with consumers, not necessarily all young, located abroad. It adds to the already available child porn on the dark web at people’s fingertips.

Less surprisingly, the immortal nature of the videos has outpaced efforts to get rid of them, forcing victims of child pornography to live with it forever.

In Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country by way of population, the trade in pornographic and sexual videos involving children reached 114.26 billion rupiah (US$ 7.3 million) in 2022.

Indonesia’s Financial Transaction Analysis Reporting Center, which tracks money laundering, said most of the consumers are people based outside the country. Unable to visit Asian nations where child prostitution thrives, pornographers opt for…

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Pope Francis has forbidden attempts to obstruct justice and asks to turn over clerical child abusers to civil authorities

The institutional Church in the Philippines has never had a priest jailed for child sexual abuse so far because as Cardinal Antonio Tagle told the BBC’s Hardtalk TV program, it was an internal affair handled by Church authorities. That policy is now changing as Pope Francis and the Vatican have forbidden such handling. The days of impunity are past. Or are they? 

In the past, in every case settled out of court, the excessive authority and influence of the Church authorities overwhelmed the victims and their families. The parish community could pressure them to drop charges of sexual abuse against a priest and “not go against the Church.”

Pope Francis has forbidden that and such attempts can be a crime, obstruction of justice and a violation of Vatican rules now in place. The…

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In July 2020, Fordham led the creation of a project called Taking Responsibility, an interdisciplinary initiative aimed at addressing the Catholic Church’s ongoing sexual abuse crisis.

The project was spurred by a 2018 report by the Society of Jesus that publicly disclosed the names of its members who were credibly accused of sexually abusing minors, as well as a report that year by a Pennsylvania grand jury that found similar findings in diocesan priests. It was funded by a $1 million gift from a private donation.

On Thursday, Jan. 26, the group released its final report, featuring research projects conducted by 18 teams from 10 Jesuit universities. In addition to Fordham, the initiative included lay and clergy faculty from Creighton, Gonzaga, Georgetown, Loyola Chicago, Loyola Maryland, Marquette, Rockhurst, Santa Clara, and Xavier universities.

The research projects addressed topics connected to the Society of Jesus, but were not limited strictly to it. There was often…

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Day in fact may well “increase religious vocation” – priest tells Lusa

The director of the National Department of Youth Ministry (DNPJ) believes the release of the report on child sexual abuse by members of the clergy in Portugal will not affect World Youth Day, but admits that the situation has “shaken” the Church.

In a wide ranging interview he went so far as to suggest that World Youth Day, already creating a fervour of touristic speculation, could in fact increase religious vocation, as he believes it “will touch and awaken the hearts of some young people to give themselves to this Church of Jesus Christ” – and ostensibly ignore completely the issues of previous generations, highlighted by Independent Commission for the Study of Sexual Abuse of Children in the Portuguese Catholic Church. 

Father Filipe Diniz considered all the work that has been done “by…

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Congolese and foreign activists on Monday (Jan. 30) called on Pope Francis to sanction a priest accused of sexually abusing a minor in the Democratic Republic of Congo where he is to arrive this Tuesday (Jan. 31).

A girl identified as Marie recounted to reporters via video conference how she was raped nearly two years ago by a priest from the Tshumbe diocese in the centre of the country, when, at the age of 14, she was “aspiring” to become a consecrated religious.

Marie said she informed church authorities in DR Congo at the time.

Since then, she claimed she was “not living in safety, everyone around me is under threat.” 

“It’s a serious case,” Tim Law, founder of Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA), told a press conference in Kinshasa, where his NGO is seeking to give a voice to victims of sexual abuse by members of the clergy.

“It’s your…

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Four years ago, Pope Francis called for a major global summit to address the problem of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, promising an end to cover-ups. But the Vatican has often been accused of not doing enough, compared to other countries, to tackle the issue. 

A special panel set up in 2014 to advise Pope Francis on ways to better protect minors from sexual abuse by the clergy faced heavy scrutiny in 2017 when Marie Collins, an Irish abuse survivor and panel member, left the group citing the Church’s unwillingness to change.

“When I resigned I wanted it to be known that there was resistance,” Marie revealed. “I wanted it to be known that the Commission had been trying to do its work … but stumbling blocks had been put in its way by people within the curia.” 

“Vatican power and politics [were] involved. They wanted to control the commission, to take away…

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When revelations emerged nine months after his 2019 death that Jean Vanier — a philosopher, author and activist once deemed a living saint — had sexually and spiritually abused women, his legacy was upended.  

Now a massive report, released Jan. 30, seeks to untangle and analyze many pieces of the dark and complex story of Vanier’s decadeslong hidden life, highlighting both the extent of abuse and the “incredible persistence of a perverse nucleus” of abusers.

Produced by an independent, interdisciplinary commission of French academics, the nearly 900-page report validates the claims of 25 non-disabled women against Vanier, who founded a worldwide organization supporting adults with intellectual disabilities. As part of a sectarian group led by Vanier’s spiritual mentor, Dominican Fr. Thomas Philippe, the charismatic Vanier identified people seeking spiritual guidance and exploited them for sexual purposes.

The new report builds upon an investigation launched by Paris-based L’Arche International…

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Las Vegas police on Tuesday arrested and raided the home of a former “Dances With Wolves” actor turned alleged cult leader accused of sexually assaulting young Indigenous girls during a period spanning two decades, according to police records obtained by The Associated Press.

Nathan Lee Chasing His Horse, who goes by Nathan Chasing Horse, was taken into custody in the afternoon near the North Las Vegas home he is said to share with his five wives. SWAT officers were seen outside the two-story home in the evening as detectives searched the property.

Known for his role as the young Sioux tribe member Smiles a Lot in the Oscar-winning Kevin Costner film, Chasing Horse gained a reputation among tribes across the United States and in Canada as a so-called medicine man who performed healing ceremonies and spiritual gatherings and, police allege, used his position to abuse young Native American girls.

His…

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In recent years, the simple church-going Catholics in India, the world’s biggest democracy, have been scandalized by allegations of clerical sex abuse and financial crimes rocking the Catholic Church in India. Will that be a botheration for the bishops as they gather for their annual plenary meeting this week in southern Indian Bangalore city?

The growing rift and spirited fight among the bishops, priests, and the laity, some of them involving court cases, have undermined Catholics’ faith in the Church’s self-stabilizing system and exposed to the world the serious lack of leadership in the Indian Catholic Church today.

Mainstream national media have run headlines of sex scandals, financial misappropriation, and land scandals involving priests and bishops. Court cases continue about a bishop accused of raping a nun, and a cardinal accused of alienating Church lands. But both continue in office.

Gone are the days when people in general and Catholics…

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A former Victorian priest who was jailed for sexually abusing six schoolboys will be extradited to Tasmania to face more indecent assault charges.

David Edwin Rapson was in 2015 found guilty of abusing the boys, aged between 11 and 16, at two Victorian boarding schools in the 1970s and 1980s.

He was sentenced to 12 years and six months in jail, with a non-parole period of nine years and four months.

The Victorian attorney-general office on Monday lodged an application in Melbourne Magistrates Court, requesting Rapson be extradited to Tasmania.

The defrocked Catholic priest has been charged with further indecent assault offences in the island state, the court was told.

Rapson appeared in the court via video link from Hopkins Correctional Centre in Victoria’s west.

He did not oppose the application, instead telling magistrate Brett Sonnet he was “happy and thankful” to have the opportunity to front the Tasmanian charges.

…

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A powerful Canadian cardinal who was twice accused of sexual assault will retire on April 12, the Vatican’s news service announced Monday.

The announcement did not mention the allegations against Quebec Cardinal Marc Ouellet, who was head of the Vatican’s powerful bishops’ office. He was also once considered to be a strong contender for the papacy.

Instead, the news service said that Pope Francis had accepted Ouellet’s resignation “upon reaching the age limit” for cardinals, which is 75. Ouellet, 78, reached the limit a few years ago — but so have several other heads of major Vatican departments, according to the independent National Catholic Reporter.

His retirement could bring more scrutiny to the allegations. It also draws attention to Francis’s handling of the affair, coming just a week after the Catholic leader told an interviewer that he wanted more “transparency” within the church’s…

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A former New Jersey priest who was serving a life sentence in Massachusetts for raping a child has died, authorities said.

Romano Ferraro admitted during a Parole Board hearing to sexually abusing “numerous” children and has prompted lawsuits by alleged victims in New Jersey, New York, Missouri and Florida. He served in Catholic parishes in Middlesex County during the 1980s and was eventually removed from the priesthood in 2011.

Ferraro was “one of the most prolific priest pedophiles on the East Coast,” according to the website of Adam Horowitz, an attorney representing a former altar boy who sued the Diocese of Metuchen in New Jersey.

Advocates for clergy abuse survivors cite Ferraro as proof of the church’s failure in New Jersey to live up to its promises of transparency about sexual assault. While he is included on lists of “credibly accused” priests issued by the Diocese of Brooklyn and Archdiocese of St. Louis,…

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Pope Francis has named Bishop Robert Francis Prevost O.S.A. to lead the Dicastery for Bishops.

Pope Francis has named Bishop Robert Francis Prevost O.S.A. to lead the Dicastery for Bishops, the Vatican announced on Monday, ending months of speculation about who would succeed Cardinal Marc Ouellet as head of the department which oversees episcopal nominations and discipline.

Prevost, 67, has been serving as bishop of the Peruvian Diocese of Chiclayo, where he was appointed in 2014. Along with his appointment as prefect, the Vatican press office announced, Pope Francis has granted Prevost the personal rank of Archbishop, and he will take the title of Archbishop-Bishop emeritus of Chiclayo when he takes over at the dicastery on April 12.

A Chicago native, he was previously appointed by Francis as a member of both the Dicastery for Bishops and the Dicastery for Clergy. He is also a canon lawyer with experience as…

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NEW YORK – Pope Francis on Jan. 30 accepted the resignation of Cardinal Marc Ouellet as prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, and tapped Bishop Robert Francis Prevost, a Chicago native who currently leads the Diocese of Chiclayo in Peru, to take over the department responsible for bishop appointments.

Ouellet, 78, is currently facing two allegations of sexual misconduct from adult women, both of which he has denied.

The Dicastery for Bishops traditionally has been considered one of the Vatican’s most powerful departments, as it advises the pope on the appointment of new bishops around the world. While the pope theoretically is free to name anyone he wants, in most cases he accepts the top choice presented by the discastery.

Prevost, 67, has led Chiclayo since 2015. Prior to that, he served as a regional and global head of the Augustinian order, and spent many years as a missionary in…

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Congolese and foreign activists on Monday called on Pope Francis to sanction a priest accused of sexually abusing a minor in the Democratic Republic of Congo where he arrives on Tuesday.

A girl identified as Marie told reporters by video conference how she was raped nearly two years ago by a priest from the Tshumbe diocese in the centre of the country, when, at the age of 14, she was “aspiring” to join the church.

Marie said she had informed the church authorities in Congo.

Since then, “I am not living in safety, everyone around me is under threat,” she said.

“It’s a serious case,” Tim Law, founder of Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA), told a press conference in Kinshasa, where his NGO is seeking to give a voice to victims of sexual abuse by members of the clergy.

“It’s your duty to protect the children” from “the lies of pastors”,…

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NEW YORK – An embattled priest in the Diocese of Charlotte, North Carolina, has taken the unusual step of publicly criticizing his own bishop for recent comments on the priest’s removal from active ministry – a decision the Vatican has already upheld twice.

Father Patrick Hoare said in a Jan. 24 statement that in a recent letter to the faithful from Bishop Peter Jugis, the phrasing regarding allegations of inappropriate behavior towards minors was “inaccurate and implies an objective finding of fact that has not occurred.”

“It is very unusual for a priest to publicly question the statement of his bishop, and for three years, I have been silent, but I feel I must respond because this letter has caused real and unjust harm to my reputation,” Hoare said, claiming that he can’t go into much detail because he has a third appeal pending with the Vatican’s Apostolic Signatura, the…

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Pope Francis on Jan. 30 accepted the resignation of Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet as prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops and appointed Chicago-born Augustinian Bishop Robert Francis Prevost, currently serving in Chiclayo, Peru, to head the influential Vatican office responsible for recommending priests to be named bishops. 

Prevost, 67, previously served as prior general of the Augustinians and holds degrees from both Villanova University and the Catholic Theological Union in the United States, as well as a doctorate in canon law from the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome.

Since the mid-1980’s, he held a number of missionary postings in Peru, and in 2014, Pope Francis appointed him as bishop of the Chiclayo Diocese in the country. 

In 2020, Francis appointed him as a member of the then-Congregation for Bishops, which meets regularly in Rome to vet candidates and advise the pope on nominations to the episcopacy. Prevost…

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The Vatican announced on Monday that Quebec Cardinal Marc Ouellet, who oversees the influential bishops’ office, will retire on April 12.

The announcement that Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Quebec Cardinal Marc Ouellet, comes two weeks after allegations of sexual misconduct against Ouellet by a second woman in the Quebec Archdiocese were made public.

In August 2022, Pope Francis passed up a perfect chance to demonstrate that even those closest to him, such as Cardinal Ouellet, are not immune to investigation.  We simply do not understand why the uninvited actions by a high-ranking Catholic official that is the subject of a current lawsuit can be so easily — and quickly — dismissed by the Church. Victims who fight hard to bring forth the wrong done to them do not have the luxury of retirement, their fight continues. It shows the superficiality…

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Ouellet has been head of the Vatican’s powerful bishops’ office

Quebec Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the head of the Vatican’s powerful bishops’ office, is retiring as of April 12, the Vatican announced Monday.

The Vatican said Pope Francis accepted Ouellet’s resignation, due to him having reached the age limit. Ouellet is 78, which is three years past the normal retirement age for bishops.

“It is time for me to take on new challenges, always in the service of the church and the Holy See,” said a statement released by Ouellet.

Appointed to head the Dicastery for Bishops by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010, Ouellet was one of the few Vatican prefects Francis retained from his predecessor’s papacy, in a clear sign of trust.

The Dicastery for Bishops is a committee that advises the Pope in the selection of bishops. It also investigates allegations of abuse or neglect against them.

On Monday, the Pope named American-born…

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Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Cardinal Marc Ouellet from his powerful position as prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops.  

This sudden event occurs less than two weeks after a French Catholic publication revealed that a second woman has accused the cardinal of sexual abuse. The timing is suggestive, and it raises troubling questions about the Pope’s possible complicity.   

Now would be a good time for Francis to practice the transparency he recently espoused.

He should account for his seemingly reckless disregard of two women’s allegations. He should also tell us why the cardinal is stepping down now. Was Ouellet subject to a Vos Estis investigation? Is his departure from office a sanction?  
For more than 12 years, Ouellet has occupied one of the most powerful and consequential positions in the Curia. Under his watch, several bishops substantively accused of sexual wrongdoing against…

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MONTRÉAL, Jan. 30, 2023 /CNW Telbec/ – After more than a dozen years as prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, three of which were beyond the age limit for the position, it is time for me to take on new challenges, always in the service of the Church and the Holy See, and this, as April 12, when I leave my current position.

I now look forward to devoting myself to a project that is particularly close to my heart, namely, to ensure the follow-up and implementation of the work carried out last year in Rome during the International Theological Symposium on the Priesthood. This new role will bring me into contact with those who make our Church a living force throughout the world.

I want to thank Pope Francis for giving me the opportunity to continue to serve the Church and the Holy See and for accepting my resignation as prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops. I am…

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Embattled former priest and pro-life activist Frank Pavone is facing accusations of sexual misconduct that took place prior to his laicization in November 2022.

Pavone, national director of the nonprofit Priests for Life, was the subject of at least two reports sent to the Diocese of Amarillo, Texas, “during or before 2010,” according to a Jan. 24 article in The Pillar, an online outlet that covers the Catholic Church. The Pillar’s article cited allegations of inappropriate behavior by Pavone toward several Priests for Life employees.

The Pillar noted reports also were submitted to the Archdiocese of New York, for which Pavone was ordained in 1988 and where he served as a priest until he transferred to the Diocese of Amarillo in 2005, where he was incardinated.

Due to what he called years of “disobedience and scandalous behavior,” Amarillo Bishop Patrick J. Zurek moved in 2017 to have Pavone dismissed from…

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Four years ago, when New Jersey’s Catholic dioceses released a list of 188 clergy who had been “credibly accused” of sexually assaulting children, church leaders vowed that they would continue to update the names as new allegations arose.

Cardinal Joseph Tobin, leader of the Newark Archdiocese, wrote that he hoped releasing the names would be “an expression of our commitment to protecting our children” and “a new level of transparency in the way we report and respond to allegations.”

But today, Newark’s inventory of 63 credibly accused clerics remains unchanged − even after hundreds of sex abuse lawsuits have been filed against the Archdiocese and accusers have received settlements from a fund established to compensate victims. Numerous accused priests are not on the list.

Maria Margiotta, an Archdiocese spokeswoman, declined to share any details about potential updates to the list and did not respond to a request to interview Cardinal Tobin.

“At this…

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Francis talks about his “conversion” on the issue of abuse in the Church and comments on two well-known figures who were recently accused.

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In a wide ranging interview with the Associated Press, published on January 25, 2023, Pope Francis explained how he had a “conversion moment” on the issue of abuse within the Church during his 2018 trip to Chile. He also commented on two important abuse accusations that have emerged over the last months.

The first concerns an East Timorese Nobel Peace Prize-winning Bishop, Carlos Ximenes Belo, and the second a Slovenian Jesuit artist, Father Marko Rupnik, whose paintings are found in churches all over the world. 

A “wake up” call

Pope Francis explained that on his return…

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[Note: Anyone is welcome to attend today’s news conference at 8am Eastern. Register here for the livestream: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Bj731M10TXqUVi2EK2IfkA]

MEDIA ALERT. For Immediate Release, January 25, 2023; http://bit.ly/3vSuVnq ]

Current Clergy Sex Abuse Cases in DRC Exposed.

Clergy sex abuse victims in Kinshasa call on Pope to help.

Survivors and Advocates in DRC call for Zero Tolerance for Clergy Sex Abuse.

For the first time in Africa, international activists will join with Congolese survivors and advocates in a press conference to highlight the failure of the Catholic Church to protect survivors and whistleblowers. 

Pope Francis will visit the Democratic Republic of the Congo the week of January 31 to February 3, 2023. On Monday January 30, survivors of clergy sexual abuse and their advocates from the Congo, U.S. and Europe will be in Kinshasa to hold a press conference in order to:

1. Share information regarding a current…

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The Catholic Church in Glasgow has apologised to victims of a priest convicted of sexual abuse who spent time at a Clydebank parish.

Archbishop William Nolan was speaking after Father Neil McGarrity, 68, was convicted last week of sexually abusing four girls across two parishes in the east end of Glasgow.

McGarrity preyed on his victims at St Bernadette’s Church in Carntyne and St Thomas’ in Riddrie as well as his parish home in the Glasgow.

However, the Post understands McGarrity also served some time at St Mary’s Church in Duntocher for many years, although there is no suggestion he committed any offence whilst serving there.

St Mary’s declined to comment further to the Post.

A spokesman for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Glasgow said: “The fact that a priest has been found guilty of the abuse of those in his care is a source of deep sorrow for the Archdiocese…

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Exclusive: Pressure builds on government to apologise, as lawyer likens ‘trail of destruction’ to that wreaked by Catholic church

Almost 400 civil claims have been made against the Victorian government for historical child sexual abuse in state schools in the past 12 years, with more than half settled out of court, documents obtained under freedom of information laws show.

Since 2010, 381 claims have been made for abuse that occurred in Victorian state educational settings between 1960 and 2018, including primary and secondary schools, specialist schools, early learning centres and after-school care.

Of those, 212 have been settled out of court with a payment made to the complainant, two went to trial, 136 claims are ongoing and 29 have been discontinued, while the outcome of two is unknown.

The figures were provided to the office of Justice party MP Stuart Grimley under a freedom of information (FOI) request submitted to…

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The misconduct was reported in a church newsletter.

San Antonio Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller wrote to a Northside parish over the weekend to ensure one of the congregation’s leaders “does not fraudulently present himself as a priest” to ask for money after he was investigated and accused of sexual and financial misconduct. The news was shared with parishioners in a bulletin on Sunday, January 22. 

In a letter dated January 10, Garcia-Siller said that an investigation uncovered Reverend Duncan Amek’s financial and sexual misconduct involving “adult women” and said the priest was found to have entered into a civil marriage with an unidentified person. It was not immediately clear if the priest’s misconduct rose to criminal misconduct or if the accusations are only in violation of Archdiocese’s code of conduct for clergy.

Amek was ordained as a priest in May 2019 by Garcia-Siller, according to a…

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“All the survivors that are working on this, we’re all in the same boat. We are mentally trapped in this moment until these legislators act on this.”

Before every interview she does, Lara Fortney-McKeever clasps a delicate key-motif bracelet around her wrist — a symbol of the years she and her sisters spent locked in silence about their childhood sexual abuse.

Even after the arrest of the parish priest who had groomed and molested Fortney-McKeever and four of her younger sisters, a gag order signed as part of a settlement with the Diocese of Harrisburg prevented them from speaking about it. 

They finally broke their silence in 2018, she said, when then-Attorney General Josh Shapiro released a landmark grand jury report identifying more than 300 Catholic priests accused of sexually assaulting children in Pennsylvania. The Fortney sisters’ abuser was among those named in the 884-page document.

“We were stuck in…

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The Diocese of Rockville Centre on Friday proposed a settlement of up to $200 million to be paid to hundreds of survivors of clergy sex abuse as it works toward emerging from bankruptcy.

Attorneys for survivors denounced the proposal as too little and said the diocese was not being transparent about its finances in papers filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. A week ago, lawyers for clergy sexual abuse survivors proposed a settlement in which the diocese would pay at least $450 million to victims.

The diocesan proposal calls for paying the survivors as a group a total of $185 million to $200 million, not including funds that could also come from insurance companies and could be hundreds of millions more.

“The Diocese believes the plan is the best means to efficiently and effectively pave the way for compensating survivors and emerging from bankruptcy,” the diocese said in a statement. It added: “Survivors deserve and expect a…

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Why the Pontiff’s response to the AP’s queries not only left much unanswered, but also created new layers and levels of perplexity.

A papal interview made real waves in the news this week, for the first time in a good while and for very good reason.

The really big piece of news from the AP interview was the pope’s claim he knew nothing about either Fr. Marko I. Rupnik, SJ’s alleged predations, or about the way Vatican justice handled the celebrity artist-priest’s case.

More broadly, the responses Pope Francis gave to the AP’s questions regarding l’Affaire Rupnik suggest a confused state in Francis’s thinking when it comes to the crisis of abuse and coverup in the Church, especially insofar as vulnerable adult victims are concerned.

“With the abused vulnerable adult,” Pope Francis told the AP, “it is the same as if he were a minor, practically.” Only, Francis said he has very different…

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The roughly 90 minute-long session was held at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business

State House Speaker Mark Rozzi kicked off a statewide listening tour in Pittsburgh on Wednesday night, with his Workgroup to Move Pennsylvania Forward, which he called an attempt to break a partisan logjam in the House over operating rules.

Rozzi, D-Berks, and the panel heard from sexual abuse survivors, gun violence reduction advocates, and residents who said they were tired of the gridlock in Harrisburg. 

The roughly 90-minute-long session was held at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. 

Also on the panel were Republican Reps. Paul Schemel, of Franklin County; Valerie Gaydos, of Allegheny County, and Rep. Jason Ortitay, of Washington County.

“The purpose of this tour is to hear from you, the people. A decade of ever-increasing hyper-partisanship has left Harrisburg in a gridlock,” Rozzi said. 

He added that many of his…

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This is the seventh installment in an 18-part serial on the unsolved 1966 murder of Buffalo Diocese Monsignor Francis J. O’Connor. Read the rest of the series.

Buffalo homicide detectives took a special interest in a young reporter for the Catholic Diocese newspaper after his boss was murdered.

A day after Monsignor Francis J. O’Connor’s body was found floating in Scajaquada Creek on March 13, 1966, detectives interviewed Robert Armbruster.

He told them he was physically attracted to the priest, but had fantasized about taking an ax to his head, according to 56-year-old police reports obtained by The Buffalo News.

“He admits that he has had homosexual inclinations toward the monsignor and has had occasions when he pictured himself hitting the monsignor over the head with an ax,” stated a March 14, 1966, police report, which has never been publicly revealed until now. 

No charges were ever…

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Like many others around the world, I watched the funeral of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI live on the internet. Before the service began, an unexpected announcement came over the loudspeakers requesting that members of the assembled crowd refrain from raising any banners or flags. Nevertheless, toward the end of the liturgy, at least one large banner was displayed, reading “Santo Subito,” an Italian phrase that means “sainthood now.”

Identical signs were raised at the 2005 funeral of Pope John Paul II, who was officially canonized nine years later. The connection between these events has not gone unnoticed, leading some to raise questions about expectations that every future pope will be acclaimed as a saint.

As a specialist in Catholic liturgy and ritual, I know that in the contemporary church, no one, from popes to laypeople, is ever officially proclaimed a saint immediately after death. The way that saints are chosen…

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[Via Eurasia Review]

In recent years, the simple church-going Catholics in India, the world’s biggest democracy, have been scandalized by allegations of clerical sex abuse and financial crimes rocking the Catholic Church in India. Will that be a botheration for the bishops as they gather for their annual plenary meeting this week in southern Indian Bangalore city?

The growing rift and spirited fight among the bishops, priests, and the laity, some of them involving court cases, have undermined Catholics’ faith in the Church’s self-stabilizing system and exposed to the world the serious lack of leadership in the Indian Catholic Church today.

Mainstream national media have run headlines of sex scandals, financial misappropriation, and land scandals involving priests and bishops. Court cases continue about a bishop accused of raping a nun, and a cardinal accused of alienating Church lands. But both continue in office.

Gone are the days when people in…

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The death of the pope emeritus, Benedict XVI, was succeeded by a small literary outpouring, a rush of publications that were interpreted as salvos in the Catholic Church’s civil war. The list includes a memoir by Benedict’s longtime secretary that mentioned the former pontiff’s disappointment at his successor’s restriction of the Latin Mass, a posthumous essay collection by Benedict himself that’s being mined for controversial quotes, and an Associated Press interview with Pope Francis that made news for its call to decriminalize homosexuality around the world.

Amid all these words, two interventions deserve particular attention. One isn’t exactly new, but the revelation of its author elevates its importance: It’s a memorandum, intended for the cardinals who will elect Francis’s successor, that first circulated in 2022 and has now been revealed by the Vatican journalist Sandro Magister to be the work of Cardinal George…

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Pope Francis has clarified his recent comments about homosexuality and sin, saying he was merely referring to official Catholic moral teaching that teaches that any sexual act outside of marriage is a sin.

And in a note Friday, Francis recalled that even that black-and-white teaching is subject to circumstances that might eliminate the sin altogether.

Francis first made the comments in an interview Jan. 24 with The Associated Press, in which he declared that laws criminalizing homosexuality were “unjust” and that “being homosexual is not a crime.”

As he often does, Francis then imagined a conversation with someone who raised the matter of the church’s official teaching, which states that homosexual acts are sinful, or “intrinsically disordered.”

“Fine, but first let’s distinguish between a sin and a crime,” Francis said in the pretend conversation. “It’s also a sin to lack charity with one another.”

His comments calling for the decriminalization…

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Pope Francis has written a letter to clarify his comments on sin and homosexuality from a recent interview with the Associated Press.

“When I said it is a sin, I was simply referring to Catholic moral teaching, which says that every sexual act outside of marriage is a sin,” the pope wrote to Jesuit Father James Martin, in response to a request for clarification.

Francis said he was trying to say in the interview that criminalization of homosexuality “is neither good nor just.”

“As you can see, I was repeating something in general,” he wrote. “I should have said ‘It is a sin, as is any sexual act outside of marriage.’ This is to speak of ‘the matter’ of sin, but we know well that Catholic morality not only takes into consideration the matter, but also evaluates freedom and intention; and this, for every kind of sin.”

Martin published the pope’s…

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Lawyers from three Vatican departments lined up in court to oppose the lawsuit for wrongful dismissal brought by Libero Milone.

Vatican lawyers argued for judges to throw out a lawsuit brought by the former auditor general in a hearing Wednesday. Lawyers for three curial departments questioned the credibility of the evidence submitted by Libero Milone in his wrongful dismissal case, and suggested further possible criminal charges against him and his former deputy.

In the first hearing of the suit, filed by the Vatican’s former chief auditor in November, lawyers for the Secretariat of State argued that the department should not be party to the case at all, while Milone’s former office said they had no record of the more than 500 pages of documentation submitted by the plaintiffs to support their case.

Milone and his former deputy, Ferruccio Panicco, filed suit Nov. 4 last year, claiming that they were forced…

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This January exposed the opposition to Francis.

New Year in Rome, normally a quiet time, is when the Vatican slowly emerges from the post-Christmas shutdown. While keeping one eye on the pope’s address to foreign diplomats, many reporters dare to take time off. In January 2023 that was a bad idea.

The passing of Benedict XVI—ninety-five and long ailing—on December 31 was followed by the unexpected death on January 10 of a giant figure of conservative Catholicism, Cardinal George Pell, eighty-one, who had concelebrated Benedict’s funeral just five days earlier. What made this one of the most turbulent months of the past decade was not just these two deaths but what they exposed: the tactics and mindset of a group of conservatives who, smelling the end of the Francis era, are determined to secure its reversal in the next conclave. Yet by playing their hand too hard and too early—confident…

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An interview with actress Marylee Martin on her memoir.

KEY POINTS

• When unusual events of our childhoods have labels and a diagnosis, it can open doors to different directions in our lives.
• A parent doesn’t have to physically molest a child for it to be an abusive situation.
• Martin’s memoir shows how helpful a therapeutic relationship can be in changing the course of an undesirable emotional state to a thriving one.

Marylee Martin is a member of EQUITY, SAG/AFTRA, ASCAP, The Dramatists’ Guild of America, the WorkShop Theater, and the Gingold Theatrical Group. She has performed in over 30 productions. We discussed her memoir, An Unsuspecting Child: Coming to Grips with Childhood Abuse, which won first place in memoirs from Fireside Books and third place for women’s issues from Outstanding Creator Awards.

Mackenzie Littledale (ML): Marylee, thank you for joining me. An Unsuspecting Child begins before you are born, and your family leaves you with unanswered…

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In 2022, nearly 6,000 cases of abuse of Filipino workers were reported, a majority in the Middle Eastern countries

A top Catholic bishop joined labor activists in the Philippines to demand justice for a female migrant worker allegedly murdered after rape in Kuwait.

The call has been made after the authorities in the Middle Eastern country found the body of Jullebee Ranara, 35, buried in a desert on Jan. 22.

Ranara was raped and murdered before her body was buried in a desert, Kuwaiti police said following an autopsy.

The autopsy report also revealed she was pregnant at the time of her death, Kuwaiti newspaper Al Rai reported.

“We cannot just turn a blind eye to what happened to her,” said Bishop Narciso Abellana, head of Pastoral Care for Migrants and Itinerant People of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines.  

“All governments, regardless of religious denomination, should understand…

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IT is a happy day when I can write about victories and convictions. Prosecutors are fighting hard for child rights and are winning important convictions. Judges, too, believe testimonies of children with horrifying accounts of multiple rape and sexual assault by biological fathers, grandfathers, brothers, uncles and Catholic priests. These are great victories for those who hunger or thirst for justice and have had their fill.

The children endure, survive and find the courage to overcome the fear of rejection, anger and hatred of their abusers and their families when they point a finger and say to the court and the world, “He raped me.” That’s a powerful courageous allegation to make and why would they if it were not true? The wise experienced judges of family courts know and accept these truths.

The amazing survival stories and court cases with dedicated prosecutors and good judges give victory to raped…

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PLASTIC BAGS

There are two truths about the leadership in the Kansas Legislature: 1) They are totally out of touch with Kansas citizens and 2) They are bullies about it.

Now comes Senate Bill 47, promoted by their overlords at the Kansas Chamber of Commerce: “An act concerning cities and counties, prohibiting the regulations of consumer merchandise and of auxiliary containers that are designed for the consumption, transportation or protection of consumer merchandise.”

This proposed abrogation of home rule is aimed at preventing cities or counties from limiting — in any way whatsoever — the use of single-use plastic bags, among other types of packaging.

Such packaging, which is designed to be discarded, then works its way into our streams and rivers, poisoning our environment, killing wildlife, and eventually becoming microplastics, which enter the food chain.

Blessedly, the bill states it does not prohibit anti-littering laws. Well,…

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The Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi — perhaps Santa Fe’s most identifiable landmark and the emotional and spiritual center for New Mexico’s large Roman Catholic population — is no longer on the mortgage block.

Archbishop of Santa Fe John C. Wester said in a telephone interview Friday the cash raised by parishes and other sources provided enough money to convince officials to remove the cathedral basilica from a list of properties to be mortgaged to satisfy the terms of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings.

Wester said the archdiocese would make an official announcement about the decision once the bankruptcy proceedings — spurred by a $121.5 million settlement with hundreds of people who made claims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests — were completed, perhaps by mid-February.

“We had everything ready to go, but then at the last minute, because we had this cash, then we didn’t have to…

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Richard E. Jacklin, a Catholic priest, was sentenced to 18 years in prison in Kankakee County court Thursday after being convicted of sexually assaulting a Shapiro Developmental Center resident in 2017.

The sentence came at the conclusion of the 71-year-old Jacklin’s sentencing hearing before Kankakee County Circuit Judge Kathy Bradshaw-Elliott.

According to Illinois sentencing guidelines, Jacklin must serve 85% of the sentence. Upon his release from prison, he will serve three years to life on parole. Jacklin must register as a sexual offender for the remainder of his life.

Jacklin was facing a prison sentence of between six and 30 years.

Jacklin was found guilty of aggravated sexual assault, criminal sexual assault and sexual misconduct during his jury trial in September 2022.

Bradshaw-Elliott went over the facts of the case before rendering her decision near the end of the about 90-minute hearing.

She talked about how, during the trial, a…

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• Summary

• Sexual abuse victims seek larger contribution from individual parishes
• Rockville Centre diocese seeks to resolve 600 sexual abuse claims in bankruptcy
• Competing bankruptcy plans are relatively rare in Chapter 11 cases

A Roman Catholic diocese on Long Island, New York, proposed a bankruptcy plan on Friday, moving to retake control of its Chapter 11 case after a committee representing sexual abuse victims filed a competing restructuring proposal.

The Diocese of Rockville Centre, one of the largest in the United States, said in a statement Friday that the proposed aggregate payment and the payment each abuse victim would receive under its proposed plan are “well in excess of any other Diocesan Chapter 11 plan in history.”

The diocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New York in October 2020, citing the cost of lawsuits filed by childhood victims of clergy sexual abuse. The state’s Child Victims Act, which took effect…

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How missionary work can create the conditions for child abuse to thrive unchecked

It would be easy to glance at “Surviving Hillcrest,” the feature article we recently published about Hillcrest School in Jos, Nigeria, and see what you’ve seen before: people in positions of institutional authority accused of abuse. We accept such familiar stories as routine. But look more closely, and you will see a much broader indictment—one that includes all of us.

The few news stories that have been run about the physical and sexual abuse at Hillcrest suggest that people whose whole lives were dedicated to the Gospel had something go terribly wrong. Scandalously, the boarding school where parents left their children while they pursued God’s work had mishandled that sacred responsibility, allowing abuse to be rampant.

But with a close look at this story, another picture emerges: in this case, the missionary work itself—not a deviation from…

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Church of Scientology leader David Miscavige is allegedly trying to dodge lawyers who are trying to serve him in a trafficking lawsuit, the lawyers say.

TMZ reports that Miscavige “eluded process servers a whopping 27 times” at Scientology offices in Los Angeles, California, and Clearwater, Florida. Staffer at both locations reportedly keep refusing to accept the suit, saying they have no idea where Miscavige is.

The suit is brought by three former members of Scientology’s Sea Org, alleging that they were forced into the church as kids and forced to work into adulthood for low wages.

“Miscavige cannot be permitted to continue his gamesmanship” — and a federal judge says she will soon decide whether Miscavige can be considered officially served,” one of the plaintiff’s lawyers said last month.

“What’s weird about Miscavige’s alleged disappearance is that some people believe his wife, Shelly, has also vanished. She…

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Authorities charged a Texas pastor and school board president this week after a 16-year-old girl told police he sexually assaulted her, records show.

Andrew “Drew” Wilborn, 43, reportedly bonded out of the Dallas County Jail on Thursday. He was arrested Wednesday on a felony charge of indecency with a child by sexual contact, jail records indicate.

Police allege Wilborn rubbed his genitals against the 16-year-old’s rear during a church event last April, according to his arrest affidavit. The girl reportedly told police Wilborn later gave her an unwanted hug, grabbed her waist, and wouldn’t let her go. Wilborn was executive pastor of Antioch Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church in Dallas at the time.

The affidavit states the girl told others about the incident, including the church’s youth pastor and her mother, immediately afterward. The church said in a statement to The Roys Report (TRR) that it quickly…

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Court documents accuse a Benton County pastor of using his position to manipulate a person at a faith-based addiction living facility into sex.

The Rev. Thomas Gilman Hartman, 53, is a founding member of Wings of Peace Ministry NW Arkansas in Gravette. He was arrested on charges of sexual assault third-degree and possession of firearm by certain person.

40/29 News reached out to Hartman through his ministry but has not heard back.

A man told police that he had met Hartman at a place called Freedom Seekers, a group that uses spiritual healing to help people with addiction and substance abuse issues, according to the court documents.

The man said Hartman let him move into his home for free and bought him presents, including a cellphone and a Jeep, to which he kept the title.

The man said Hartman played mind games and manipulated him into sex…

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In “Soul Searching” (Oxford University Press, $22.95), their 2005 book studying the spiritual lives of American teenagers, Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton had a harsh assessment of Catholic parents.

They said the religious engagement of Catholics teens, which they described as “fairly weak,” reflected the religious apathy of their parents. Their rule of thumb for us Catholic parents: “We’ll get what we are.”

But what happens when the parents have a high level of religious faith, knowledge, and engagement, yet watch their adult children drift away anyway?

I have recently been speaking with several Catholic parents concerned about their adult children’s lack of religious practice. All of these parents have a high level of faith commitment and involvement above and beyond just Sunday Mass attendance. 

Some parents were actively involved in religious renewal movements. Some parents were active in working with the poor and homeless. Some were “professional Catholics,”…

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Author Svetlana Makarovič will accept the Prešeren Prize, Slovenia’s top award for achievements in arts, after she refused it for 23 years in protest of Marko Rupnik, a Jesuit artist and priest, being awarded the prize as well. After sex abuse allegations against Rupnik made headlines last December he was urged to return the prize.

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Cardinal George Pell, who was the most senior Catholic cleric to be convicted of child sex abuse and spent 404 days in solitary confinement in his native Australia before his convictions were overturned, died Jan. 10 in Rome. He was 81. Pell, and those who are picking up his mantle, think they — and only they — have the solution to what ails the church and the world. But that hubris has hurt the church’s credibility, says columnist Michael Sean Winters.

Michael Sean Winters’ analysis of Cardinal George Pell was fair. There was little of Pell’s viewpoint that I agreed with. Depicting Pell as a lion solidified my feelings. Like many of our ecclesial leaders, it appeared he had been specially chosen to wield his brawn in an effort to control. Therein lay the problem.

I admired Pell in the way he faced his…

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“Radical and extreme” were the words used by Bishop Robert Deeley to describe Gov. Mills’ proposed abortion rights protections (“Bishop Deeley calls proposal to allow abortions late in pregnancy ‘beyond troubling’,” Jan. 18). The last person I want to hear from concerning a women’s right to choose is a Catholic priest.

The Catholic Church is rife with rot from the Pope down, as they have empowered and institutionalized pedophiles around the world. They have willfully chosen to protect the church over the child victims and their families. Their actions, or lack thereof, prove that the Church protects those who sexually or physically abuse children. There are countless examples, including Augusta’s own Father Curran.

Recall Archbishop of Boston Cardinal Law admitted to moving pedophile priests around to protect the church while more children were abused and their lives destroyed. Pope John Paul II appointed…

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As the director of the office for protection and care and formerly the ombudsman serving the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, I have been working in the ministry of church abuse for well over a decade.  Although I have experience addressing victim crimes as a former prosecutor, I have learned so much from this ministry.

The church’s prevention efforts over the last 20 years, along with society’s better understanding and response to sexual abuse, has significantly decreased its occurrence. It takes every single one of us to create a strong safety net of protection. We are grateful to all of you who have done your part to strengthen our awareness and prevention efforts.

The office for protection and care ministry includes both abuse prevention and also the response to sexual abuse, caring for abuse victims that are harmed by someone in a position of trust in the church. Our team…

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A Kansas senator has renewed his push to add clergy to the list of mandated reporters of child abuse and neglect, but the lack of protection for religious confessions sets the bill up for opposition.

Sen. Tom Holland, D-Baldwin City, introduced SB 87, which requires ordained ministers to report suspected physical, sexual or emotional abuse and neglect of children.

“Our children are taught to trust in certain authority figures in their communities, because adults are supposed to speak up for children when they’ve been harmed,” Holland said. “Far too many of our faith leaders — those who are foundational to the development of our sense of self and spirituality — have violated that trust, and Kansas kids have suffered as a result of their silence.”

Clergy would join the existing list of mandated reporters that includes medical and mental health providers, teachers and school administrators, child care…

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A Jan. 12 decision by the Newfoundland Labrador Supreme Court is expected to solidify and focus the compensation claims process for the victims of abuse at the Mount Cashel Orphanage in St. John’s in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. 

Geoff Budden, a lawyer for the claimants, told The Catholic Register that while “it isn’t the process that we advocated, it is a process we are fine with.” 

“The court wrote that from our four representative plaintiffs, we’d get insights that would perhaps lead to resolutions for the other plaintiffs. The claims officer, he or she, could take these decisions as sample guidance to help determine the rewards for the balance of the claims,” said Budden.

Budden added that much of the “process has been worked out” and much of the “process we agree upon.”

On Nov. 28 and 29, 2022, Justice Garrett Handrigan heard the legal representation of the claimants and lawyers…

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Historic Press Conference to be held on Eve of Pope’s visit to the DRC on Clergy Sex Abuse

Clergy sex abuse victims in Kinshasa call on Pope to help

Survivors and Advocates in DRC call for Zero Tolerance for Clergy Sex Abuse

For the first time in Africa, international activists will join with Congolese survivors and advocates in a press conference to highlight the failure of the Catholic Church to protect survivors and whistleblowers. 

Pope Francis will visit the Democratic Republic of the Congo the week of January 31 to February 3, 2023. On Monday January 30, survivors of clergy sexual abuse and their advocates from the Congo, U.S. and Europe will be in Kinshasa to hold a press conference in order to:

1. Share information regarding a current case of clergy sex abuse and cover-up in the DRC, including details on how the victim and her…

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An openly gay advisor to the Vatican says he’s not surprised by Pope Francis’ declaration that “being homosexual isn’t a crime.”

Juan Carlos Cruz, an internationally known Chilean advocate and survivor of clerical sexual abuse, told NPR the pope’s remarks made for an “incredible day.”

In his first interview since the death of former Pope Benedict XVI, Francis told the Associated Press that laws criminalizing homosexuality are “unjust” and that Catholic bishops should apply “tenderness” and help ease discrimination by welcoming LGBTQ people into the church.

On Tuesday, Cruz told Morning Edition’s Leila Fadel that anti-sodomy laws in dozens of countries, including some that impose the death penalty, are “horrifying,” but the pope’s moral leadership will help civil authorities, bishops, and cardinals to “change their heart” and join the pontiff in speaking out.

“The pope highlights that the LGBTQ community is not sinful and criminal,” said Cruz.

Cruz, who is a…

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In an exclusive interview published today by the Associated Press, Pope Francis urges transparency around abuse cases and says that church leaders must speak out more about abuse of vulnerable adults.

https://apnews.com/article/pope-francis-east-timor-vatican-city-religion-728a5af6ec4d36e54794a761fddd3fc4

The Pope says that after he discredited victims in Chile in 2018, “a bomb went off” in his head and he had a “conversion” moment, when he “saw the corruption of many bishops in this.”

On all of these points, Pope Francis is not credible.

It’s especially disingenuous of him to affirm transparency and care for adult victims while he continues to dismiss their allegations behind closed doors.

Indeed, it’s impossible to reconcile the Pope’s comments with his disregard of victims in four current cases of bishops accused of sexually abusing adults:

The Pope’s ongoing response to the case of now-convicted Argentine bishop Gustavo Zanchetta
In 2015 and 2017, Zanchetta met with the Pope to discuss his alleged…

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Pope Francis lamented that the use of guns by civilians to defend themselves is becoming a “habit.”

In an interview on Tuesday with The Associated Press, the pontiff, who has frequently criticized the arms industry, was asked about the large number of guns in civilian hands and frequent massacres in the United States. Francis expressed concern about how recourse to guns has become “habit.”

“I say when you have to defend yourself, all that’s left is to have the elements to defend yourself. Another thing is how that need to defend oneself lengthens, lengthens, and becomes a habit,” Francis said. “Instead of making the effort to help us live, we make the effort to help us kill.”

MORE FROM THE INTERVEW

• – The AP Interview: Pope says homosexuality not a crime
• – Pope discusses his health, his critics and future of papacy
• – Pope warns German church reform process elitist, ideological
• – WATCH:…

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Pope Francis has warned there’s a risk that a reform process in the German Catholic Church over calls for married priests and other possible liberalizing reforms might become harmfully “ideological.”

In an interview with The Associated Press at the Vatican on Tuesday, Francis was asked about the process in Germany, where Catholic bishops and representatives of an influential lay organization are addressing what would be revolutionary reforms for the church if they were to be realized. Under consideration in the process are married priests, female deacons, and church blessings for same-sex couples.

In the interview, the pope said that while dialogue is good, “the German experience does not help.”

He said the process to date has been led by the “elite” because it doesn’t involve “all the people of God.” Francis says the goal must always be unity.

Seeking to assuage Vatican concerns, German church leaders have insisted the process won’t…

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Pope Francis criticized laws that criminalize homosexuality as “unjust,” saying God loves all his children just as they are and called on Catholic bishops who support the laws to welcome LGBTQ people into the church.

“Being homosexual isn’t a crime,” Francis said during an exclusive interview Tuesday with The Associated Press.

Francis acknowledged that Catholic bishops in some parts of the world support laws that criminalize homosexuality or discriminate against LGBTQ people, and he himself referred to the issue in terms of “sin.” But he attributed such attitudes to cultural backgrounds, and said bishops in particular need to undergo a process of change to recognize the dignity of everyone.

“These bishops have to have a process of conversion,” he said, adding that they should apply “tenderness, please, as God has for each one of us.”

Francis’ comments, which were hailed by gay rights advocates as a milestone, are the first…

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Pope Francis says he hasn’t considered issuing norms to regulate future papal resignations and plans to continue for as long as he can as bishop of Rome, despite a wave of criticism from some top-ranking conservative cardinals and bishops about his papal priorities.

In his first interview since the Dec. 31 death of retired Pope Benedict XVI, Francis addressed his critics, his health and the next phase of his pontificate, which marks its 10th anniversary in March without Benedict’s shadow in the background.

Francis’ comments, delivered Tuesday at the Vatican hotel where he lives, came at a particularly difficult time, as the pontiff navigates conservative opposition to his insistence on making the Catholic Church a more welcoming, inclusive place — criticism that he attributed to the equivalent of a 10-year itch of his papacy.

“You prefer that they don’t criticize, for the sake of tranquility,” Francis told The Associated Press. “But…

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The Archdiocese of San Antonio has determined that a former priest at St. Matthew Catholic Church committed sexual and financial misconduct, according to a letter to the parish by Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller.

“It is with a heavy heart and great sadness that I inform you of a report of financial and sexual misconduct with adult women by your former parochial vicar, Rev. Duncan Amek,” Garcia-Siller said in the Jan. 10 letter, which was published by the North Side parish in a newsletter on Sunday.

The letter contained few details but said an investigation determined that Amek had also been in a married relationship.

The Archdiocese said it takes all reports for misconduct seriously and encourages those who have experienced sexual abuse or harassment by people in authority within the church to contact its Office of Victim Assistance at 210-734-7786, or an outside reporting service called Archdiocesan Misconduct Hotline at (844-709-1169.

…

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Greetings of Christ’s peace and love!

I would like to call your attention to the fact that the Utah legislature is proposing legislation that will impact a spiritual tradition long practiced by our Catholic Church.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (#1457) explicitly calls every faithful person to receive the Sacrament of Confession at least once a year, or whenever a faithful Catholic needs to seek forgiveness from God through reconciliation (Code of Canon Law Canon 989). If we have committed grave sins, we are not supposed to participate in the Eucharist without first going to Confession.

The Sacrament of Confession, also known as the Sacrament of Penance, is central to the practice of our Catholic faith. For two millennia we Catholics have taken this opportunity – a divine gift given by Jesus – to reveal our conscience to God through the priest, who embodies Christ in this moment of…

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A new report from the Jesuit-run Fordham University on the long-term impacts of clergy sexual abuse criticizes the global Jesuit religious order for placing importance on discretion when handling Catholic priests accused of abuse, instead of on discipline or prevention of further abuse.

The report, released Jan. 26, summarizes the findings of 18 research projects that were part of a yearslong effort to better understand clergy abuse.

The text, which contains several case studies of Jesuit abusers and details a project examining how Jesuit norms have harmed the order’s response to abuse, comes as the church continues to reckon with how the Vatican and Jesuit superiors handled abuse allegations against a high-profile religious artist, Jesuit Fr. Marko Rupnik.

Jesuit norms, says the report on that project, have hampered the order’s responses to the abuse crisis. The project is described as involving interviews with 13…

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United States Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero announced today that William McCandless, age 59, of Elkton, Maryland, a former DeSales University priest, was sentenced to 37 months’ imprisonment followed by 15 years of supervised release. He is also required to register pursuant to the Sexual Offender Registration and Notification Act.

On May 27, 2022, McCandless pleaded guilty to access and attempted access with intent to view child pornography. In 2017, McCandless searched for images of young boys and accessed over 3000 web pages depicting and offering child sex abuse images. He also accessed dozens of stories which graphically detailed and described the sexual torture of young boys.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by U.S. Attorney’s Offices and the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section…

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A Sonoma County priest named in a sexual abuse lawsuit has been vindicated by his accuser. Plaintiff’s attorneys say that Monsignor James Pulskamp, one-time director of the Hanna Boys Center in the Sonoma Valley, was misidentified by the accuser who now names the disgraced Reverend John Crews as the alleged assailant. During a review, the victim reportedly recognized Crews as his abuser and just confused his named with Pulskamp. Crews took over for Pulskamp as the director at the Hanna Boys Center in 1984. Crews was last known to be in South Carolina and has been accused of abuse in 10 new cases.

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A priest accused of sexual abuse will have one last chance to win an appeal to be allowed back into the clergy.

The Diocese of Charlotte issued a release on Saturday outlining the process surrounding the situation involving Patrick Hoare, a former priest who was removed from St. Matthew Catholic Church in Ballantyne.

Hoare was removed on July 1, 2020 after the diocese says his observed behaviors with minors, “constituted boundary violations.” He had previously been accused of sexual abuse of minors when he was a priest in Pennsylvania. The results of that investigation are still unknown.

Additional reasons given for Hoare’s removal included concerns raised over his conduct with minors at St. Matthews, acting in a “manner that brings grave detriment to ecclesiastical communion,” and claims his ministry had become “harmful and/or ineffective.”

In the release, Bishop Peter Jugis stated that Hoare has been on…

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Pope Francis has shed light on the Catholic Church’s handling of sex abuse allegations against East Timor’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning independence hero, suggesting that he indeed was allowed to retire early rather than face prosecution or punishment.

Francis made the revelation in a wide-ranging interview Tuesday with The Associated Press, in which he also denied he had a role in deciding the case of a famous Jesuit artist whose seemingly preferential treatment cast doubt on the Vatican’s commitment to cracking down on abuse.

Francis acknowledged the Catholic Church still had a long way to go to deal with the problem, saying more transparency was needed and that church leaders must speak out more about abuse of “vulnerable adults.”

Francis recalled he had a steep learning curve on abuse, admitting that his “conversion” moment came during a 2018 trip to Chile, when he discredited victims of the country’s most notorious predator priest. Journalists,…

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Laicized priest Frank Pavone was accused before his laicization of sexual harassment, grooming behavior, and coercive physical contact with young women.

Laicized priest Frank Pavone was accused before his laicization of sexual harassment, grooming behavior, and coercive physical contact with young women, several sources close to the allegations have told The Pillar.

The Pillar has learned that at least two reports of misconduct were sent to the Diocese of Amarillo during or before 2010, with additional complaints also likely filed, sources said. Reports involved allegedly inappropriate behavior toward interns and junior employees of Priests for Life, the non-profit organization Pavone has headed since 1993.  

While some reports were also submitted to the Archdiocese of New York, sources close to the archdiocese told The Pillar they were forwarded to Amarillo, reportedly because Pavone was incardinated there at the time the reports were filed.  

Asked about the allegation Jan. 24, a spokeswoman for Pavone told The…

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The Society of Jesus has asked Father Marko Rupnik to stay close to Rome as more alleged victims of the Jesuit priest and artist go public with their stories.

Father Johan Verschueren, SJ, this week told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, that he had asked Rupnik “not to leave Lazio,” the Italian region where Rome is located.

Verschueren is the major superior for the international houses of the Jesuits. It is still unclear whether Verschueren or the superior general of the Jesuits, Father Arturo Sosa, is Rupnik’s direct superior.

Rupnik, originally from Slovenia, has been accused of the sexual, spiritual, and psychological abuse of women from a religious community with which he was formerly connected.

The abuse is alleged to have taken place in the late 1980s and early 1990s. An investigation into the claims was dropped by the Vatican in October 2022 due to the statute of limitations.

…

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“All the survivors that are working on this, we’re all in the same boat. We are mentally trapped in this moment until these legislators act on this.”

Before every interview she does, Lara Fortney-McKeever clasps a delicate key-motif bracelet around her wrist — a symbol of the years she and her sisters spent locked in silence about their childhood sexual abuse.

Even after the arrest of the parish priest who had groomed and molested Fortney-McKeever and four of her younger sisters, a gag order signed as part of a settlement with the Diocese of Harrisburg prevented them from speaking about it. 

They finally broke their silence in 2018, she said, when then-Attorney General Josh Shapiro released a landmark grand jury report identifying more than 300 Catholic priests accused of sexually assaulting children in Pennsylvania. The Fortney sisters’ abuser was among those named in the 884-page document.

“We were stuck in…

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HARRISBURG — Child sexual abuse survivors are coming to grips with the likelihood they will endure another delay in their chance to pursue justice against their abusers and the institutions that protected them.

The state House of Representatives on Tuesday recessed until Feb. 27, a month past the deadline set by former Gov. Tom Wolf who called the General Assembly into special session to pass a constitutional amendment expanding the time allowed for victims to seek civil suits against abusers and get it before voters in the May primary.

“It’s another sad day for victims,” said Shaun Dougherty, a victim of abuse by a Catholic priest, who shared his story with the grand jury looking into widespread child sexual abuse in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese.

Survivors of child sexual abuse have been fighting for over a decade for a two-year retroactive window to seek justice against those who harmed them. It…

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A former therapist linked to two churches in western Canada got a six-and-a-half-year cumulative prison sentence Friday on 11 sex crime charges, the Canadian prosecution team confirmed.

Raymond Gaglardi, 78, was sentenced on five counts of indecent assault, four counts of sexual assault, and two counts of sexual exploitation, British Columbia Prosecution Service spokesman Dan McLaughlin told The Roys Report (TRR).

Gaglardi was charged in 2020 after 14 men told authorities he had touched them inappropriately during therapy sessions, a September 2022 court judgment indicates. The alleged assaults were said to have taken place from 1969-2015.

An attorney for Gaglardi declined to comment.

The court judgment states all 14 men told authorities they knew Gaglardi through one of two churches. After Gaglardi was charged, authorities indicated they believed he had more victims who had not yet come forward. He reportedly had thousands of clients over the years.

…

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Fr. Duncan Amek, a Catholic priest from the Archdiocese of San Antonio has been removed from active ministry following an investigation of sexual misconduct involving women and financial impropriety.

On May 15, 2019, in St. Ann’s Church, where he had been a deacon for the previous year, Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller, MSpS, ordained Duncan Amek, a native of Homa Bay, Kenya, to the priesthood for the Archdiocese of San Antonio. Amek then went to work for St. Matthew Church and School in San Antonio, Texas.

We are worried for the unsuspecting adult women involved who may have fallen for Amek’s predilection and scheme. More importantly, our concern is this. Was Amek’s actions criminal? If so, we hope church officials turn over all the information they have obtained in their investigation to law enforcement. We would also like to know what constitutes sexual misconduct in the…

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A 74-year-old Catholic priest has gone on trial accused of sexually abusing two children in the 1980s.

Dennis Finbow, who had worked in Dogsthorpe in Peterborough, faces six counts of indecently assaulting a boy and girl aged between 10 and 13.

The trial at Huntingdon Crown Court heard the prosecution say that the defendant had touched the girl while she was in bed.

Fr Finbow, of Martlesham, Suffolk, denies the charges.

Five of the counts against him relate to the girl, including allegations that he touched and also massaged her.

In a police interview played to the jury, the female complainant said Fr Finbow was “charismatic” and “everybody loved him”.

Prosecutor Nicholas Bleaney said when he was voluntarily interviewed, the defendant described the allegations “as nonsense and a fabrication”.

The trial continues.

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The legal fight behind the walls of the Vatican over the pastorship of Charlotte’s largest Catholic church has reached its end game.

Rev. Patrick Hoare, who was removed as spiritual head of massive St. Matthew Church based on allegations of misconduct involving young people, has filed his final appeal to reverse the 2020 decision by Bishop Peter Jugis of Charlotte.

While the Diocese of Charlotte previously has acknowledged that its investigation of Hoare had not revealed any incidents of sexual abuse of young people, his odds of reversing his removal appear small.

Hoare (pronounced HAR) already has lost two overseas appeals — the most recent in November, when the Vatican’s highest court, the Apostolic Signatura, ruled that the priest’s challenge to his suspension was “manifestly lacking in foundation” and “must be dismissed,” according to a letter Jugis sent to St Matthew’s families this past weekend.

Hoare has since appealed to…

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A veteran Sonoma County priest who was named among the perpetrators in a crush of new clergy abuse lawsuits last year has been vindicated by the very man who first accused him.

Monsignor James Pulskamp, one-time director of the Hanna Boys Center in the Sonoma Valley, was misidentified by the alleged abuser, the plaintiff’s attorney says.

The accuser has since identified his alleged assailant as disgraced Rev. John Crews, who succeeded Pulskamp in 1984 as director of what was then a residential school for at-risk boys.

Crews resigned in 2013, when he was first accused of child sex abuse by the widow of a man who had been assaulted at a Sebastopol church. He was last known to be in South Carolina.

“I feel really bad about it. He feels really bad about, it” said longtime San Francisco attorney Mary Alexander, who represents the plaintiff.

When the suit was originally…

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A settlement on the eve of jury selection in Deming’s Sixth Judicial District Court last week pre-empted a civil trial against the Catholic Diocese of El Paso alleging past sexual abuse by a priest who is now deceased. The trial had been set to begin today.

The plaintiff, identified as John Doe 117 in the 2019 complaint, alleged he was abused during road trips to Deming by Father Pedro Martinez, a priest at the Mt. Carmel parish in El Paso, where the plaintiff also lived at the time. The complaint alleged that Martinez sexually abused and exploited the plaintiff, a child at the time, at hotels in Deming during road trips over a period of two years beginning approximately in 1970.

The lawsuit sought to hold the diocese culpable for the behavior attributed to Martinez, stating in court documents that the church “taught vulnerable children (including Plaintiff) to put complete…

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Dr John Connolly had ‘carried the twisted, damaging attempted destruction of his life for nearly 60 years’

A survivor of abuse at a school run by the Spiritan congregation in south Dublin was told they would deny all allegations against them, force the case to a higher court and “get him” for costs.

Dr John Connolly (74) says he went to the Spiritan congregation in recent years with allegations of his abuse as a child in 1958 by the late principal Fr Robert Stanley (“Stanno”) at their Willow Park school in Blackrock.

However, Dr Connolly ended up in the Round Hall of the Four Courts in Dublin where he was told “they would not only deny everything but force it to a higher court and get me for costs [range €40,000-€80,000].”

Dr Connolly withdrew his legal action as he could not afford the financial risks involved.

When this was put…

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