ABUSE TRACKER

We are aware of the various reports that have emerged regarding Bishop Howard Hubbard’s request to return to the lay state. Our prayers are with Bishop Hubbard for his well-being and with all who accompany him, that all decisions and actions are in accord with God’s plan.

Prayers also continue for all impacted by this news. As a Church let us stand together, pray together, and walk together, in faith, believing that healing is possible. The needs are many, from the abused, to those in our family of faith who are angry that this happened, also those who don’t understand, and to the abusers. As the body of Christ, we are called to pray for all.

We would like to correct a point in some reports that said there is a diocesan policy that forbids an accused bishop from sacramental ministry. A diocesan bishop may regulate, that is, limit, circumscribe,…

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November 18, 2022

I am 84 years of age and fully retired from ministry. I had hoped that in my retirement I might be able to continue to serve our community as a priest. I am not able to do so, however, because of a church policy that prohibits any priest accused of sexual abuse from functioning publicly as a priest, even if the allegations are false, as they are in my case. Despite the impact on me, I still believe this is a sound policy. I implemented it in the Albany Diocese and continue to support it as a necessary means to maintain and restore public confidence in our clergy. In my particular case, the effect of the policy has been to deprive me of the single greatest joy of my life – serving our community as a Catholic priest in my retirement years.

Recently, I asked the Vatican…

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In a nearly unprecedented move by a bishop, a retired head of the Diocese of Albany, New York, has asked the Vatican that he be “returned to the lay state,” or laicized.

Bishop Howard Hubbard made the request as he faces numerous lawsuits under New York’s Child Victims Act. Hubbard is accused of sexually abusing multiple children, which he has repeatedly denied, and covering up allegations of sexual abuse by priests.

In a statement released Nov. 18, Hubbard, the longest-serving bishop of the eastern New York diocese, said he had hoped that in his retirement he “might be able to continue to serve our community as a priest.”

“I am not able to do so, however, because of a church policy that prohibits any priest accused of sexual abuse from functioning publicly as a priest, even if the allegations are false, as they are in my case.”

Bishops…

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Bishop Emeritus Howard J. Hubbard of the Diocese of Albany has asked the Vatican on Nov. 18 to be returned “to the lay state.”

“I am 84 years of age and fully retired from ministry. I had hoped that in my retirement I might be able to continue to serve our community as a priest. I am not able to do so, however, because of a church policy that prohibits any priest accused of sexual abuse from functioning publicly as a priest, even if the allegations are false, as they are in my case,” Bishop Hubbard said in statement released to the media by Behan Communications. “Despite the impact on me, I still believe this is a sound policy.  I implemented it in the Albany Diocese and continue to support it as a necessary means to maintain and restore public confidence in our clergy. In my…

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Hubbard said he hopes to “serve God and the people of our community as a lay person.”

Editor’s note: This report was updated Sat. Nov. 19 to include a statement from the Albany diocese.

Bishop Howard Hubbard has petitioned Pope Francis for laicization, the former bishop of Albany announced Friday.

Hubbard, 84, is facing allegations of sexually abusing minors, and has admitted to knowingly reassigning abuser priests and failing to report instances of abuse to law enforcement.

The bishop said his decision to be laicized came because of restrictions on his ministry as a priest – a claim the Albany diocese rejected as untrue on Saturday.

And while Hubbard has declined to answer questions about the matter, sources have instead told The Pillar that the bishop has expressed the hope to marry if he is laicized by the Vatican.

The bishop announced via a statement Nov. 18 that he had asked the…

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Many pupils of Blackrock College, Rockwell, St Mary’s and other schools did not experience abuse directly but are scarred by recent revelations

This week, The Irish Times invited people who had attended Spiritan and other schools to share their experiences in the wake of revelations of widespread abuse at the order’s schools. They include Willow Park, Blackrock, St Mary’s and St Michaels colleges in Dublin, Rockwell College in Co Tipperary, and others in Ireland and overseas.

We sought responses from people who had experienced abuse themselves, had witnessed it, or had learned only recently that it occurred in their school.

Below is a selection of the responses we received. Most of these accounts are from men who did not directly experience abuse but were in school when it occurred. We thank all those who responded to the call-out. It is not possible to publish all accounts.

If you have experienced…

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Maryland’s attorney general on Thursday filed a motion to release an investigative report of child sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

Attorney General Brian Frosh released a statement Thursday afternoon, saying his office is seeking approval from the Baltimore City Circuit Court to release the 463-page report to the public.

“It shows many, many instances of child sexual abuse from priests and other employees of the Archdiocese of Baltimore — hundreds of victims — and it involves more than 100 priests, 150-some priests and other employees who were people who were accused of abuse by the victims,” Frosh told 11 News. “We want to make sure abusers know they can’t do it and get away with it.”

The release must be approved by the court because the documents were handed over in response to grand jury subpoenas.

“For decades, survivors reported sexual abuse perpetrated by Catholic priests, and for…

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Retired Bishop Hubbard, facing sex-abuse allegations that he denies, asks to be removed from priesthood

The retired Catholic bishop of Albany, N.Y. has taken the extraordinary step of asking Pope Francis to remove him from the priesthood, saying he is unable to minister as a clergyman because of sex-abuse allegations that he denies.

Bishop Howard Hubbard, 84, said in a statement on Friday that he had “asked the Vatican for relief from my obligations as a priest and permission to return to the lay state.”

The Vatican didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.

Laicization, or the process of removal from the clergy, is extremely rare in the case of bishops, and even more so at a bishop’s own request. Release from the obligation of celibacy, which binds most priests and all bishops in the Catholic Church, is a separate step.

Pope Benedict XVI in 2008 laicized Fernando Lugo, who had resigned…

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A group representing Marylanders sexually abused by priests applauded Attorney General Brian Frosh’s bid to make public a new report that catalogues the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore’s efforts to protect abusers.

In a motion filed in Baltimore City Circuit Court on Thursday, Frosh (D) sought permission to release a 463-page report that his investigators have compiled. The report, “Clergy Abuse in Maryland,” relies on “hundreds of thousands of documents dating back to the 1940s,” the attorney general’s office said. The documents were provided by the Archdiocese of Baltimore in response to grand jury subpoenas.

“For decades, survivors reported sexual abuse perpetrated by Catholic priests and for decades the Church covered up the abuse rather than holding the abusers accountable and protecting its congregations,” Frosh wrote in his court filing. “The Archdiocese of Baltimore was no exception.”

On Friday afternoon, the Baltimore Sun reported that church officials will not oppose the…

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The Maryland attorney general’s office is seeking to release a major report chronicling information about Catholic clerics accused or prosecuted for sexual abuse in the state, following a four-year investigation drawing on hundreds of thousands of documents subpoenaed from the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh said his office had compiled the information given by the archdiocese, along with information gathered from interviews, into a 456-page report that claims to identify more than 600 victims. It is currently unclear whether the report will lead to any new criminal charges.

In a 35-page legal motion dated Nov. 17, Frosh asked permission from a judge to release the documents provided by the archdiocese, which were given in response to a January 2019 subpoena from a grand jury. The documents provided by the archdiocese, which number in the hundreds of thousands, pertain to “the last 80 years relating to allegations of…

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Italy’s Catholic bishops provided their first accounting of clergy sexual abuse and revealed Thursday that more than 600 cases from Italy were on file at the Vatican since 2000.

The report of the Italian bishops’ conference, which only covered complaints that local Italian church authorities had received over the last two years, did not mention the hundreds of cases. It identified 89 presumed victims and some 68 people accused.

But responding to a reporter’s question during a press conference about the report, Monsignor Giuseppe Baturi revealed that the bishops’ conference was researching 613 files held at the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The Vatican in 2001 required dioceses around the world to send all their credible reports of abuse to the dicastery for processing. The Vatican had felt compelled to act after decades in which bishops and religious superiors moved predator priests around from diocese to diocese…

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On Thursday the Italian bishops released their first-ever report on national safeguarding efforts, revealing nearly 100 new and old cases documented in the past two years, but sharing few details about these incidents.

The report spanned just two years, from 2020-2021, and found that 89 complaints had been made against 68 alleged abusers, which many observers consider a significantly high number, given that these complaints were made through diocesan-run listening centers established in dioceses throughout Italy for the specific purpose of receiving abuse reports.

According to the report, a total of 89 complaints were made through diocesan representatives or listening centers, just over half of which involved recent or current abuse, and just under half involving past incidents.

These complaints, the bishops said, involved inappropriate behavior and language; inappropriate touching; sexual molestation or sexual relations; pornography; online grooming; and indecent exposure.

Of the 89 complaints, 12 involved children under the…

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After more than two-and-a-half years of negotiation, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg and a committee representing survivors of sexual abuse by its clergy have announced agreement on an $18.25 million settlement fund designed to resolve all remaining abuse claims.

The settlement agreement – part of an overall reorganization plan to resolve the diocese’s bankruptcy case – was filed in federal court Friday, and still needs approval from the various classes of creditors and the judge overseeing the diocese’s bankruptcy case.

That approval, however, is considered likely considering that today’s plan has been agreed to by the church, its insurers and the survivors’ committee. According to Friday’s filings, the parties are asking for the court to set a final confirmation hearing on the settlement for Feb. 7, 2023.

The $18.25 million settlement proposed in the case will be funded by $7.5 million from the diocese itself,…

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The Diocese of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania has filed a settlement plan today in a bankruptcy case involving at least 55 people who accused priests of sexual abuse.  This would bring the total trust amount to $18.25 million. We hope that this process has brought healing to these survivors and call on church officials from Harrisburg to release information to their parishioners and the public regarding abusers and enablers identified throughout the bankruptcy process.

We are grateful to the survivors of sexual abuse from the Diocese of Harrisburg and the Tort Committee who stood up for survivors’ rights and for all victims. It is important to note that, while the settlement is justly deserved by those who have suffered decades in silence, in the grand scheme of things it is but a drop in the bucket given the wealth of the church. No amount of money can make up for the lifetime of…

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A Honduran asylum-seeker living in Tennessee alleges in a federal lawsuit that the Diocese of Knoxville tried to sabotage a police investigation after she accused a priest of groping her during a grief counseling session following her husband’s death. 

Identified in court papers as Jane Doe, the mother of three alleges in the lawsuit filed on Nov. 10  that the diocese “obstructed law enforcement” and tried to intimidate her into “abandoning her cooperation with the criminal prosecution” of the Rev. Antony Devassey Punnackal.

The lawsuit also states that Punnackal hired a private investigator to dig up the widow’s employment records, and she became a pariah in the Hispanic community of Gatlinburg after “agents” of the diocese began spreading false rumors about her.

“The complaint speaks for itself,” the widow’s lawyer, Andrew Fels, told NBC News, when asked to elaborate. He is seeking $5 million in damages for his client. 

Punnackal,…

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Just a week after the Vatican’s first auditor general and his deputy filed a $9.6 million lawsuit for wrongful dismissal, the Vatican’s legal system has seemingly sought to hamstring the claim by refusing to certify the plaintiffs’ chosen lawyer.

Speaking to journalists Nov. 17, Libero Milone, the Vatican’s first auditor general, who appointed in 2015 and fired in 2017 along with his deputy Ferruccio Panicco, said that a week after filing their suit, their lawyer had been rejected by officials in charge of certifying attorneys to appear before Vatican courts.

The request to initiate legal proceedings against the Vatican’s Secretariat of State was filed with the Vatican tribunal last Wednesday, Nov. 9, and made public a day later.

Milone said he met with the Vatican’s chief prosecutor Alessandro Diddi on Monday, Nov. 14, to discuss the case, and two days later he was informed that his lawyer, Romano Vaccarella, had…

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The retired bishop of Albany, New York, who has admitted to covering up for predator priests and has himself been accused of sexual abuse, has asked Pope Francis to remove him from the priesthood.

Emeritus Bishop Howard Hubbard, 84, announced the decision in a statement Friday, the day the United Nations designated as the World Day for the Prevention of, and Healing from Child Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Violence.

Hubbard said he wanted to be laicized, or returned to the lay state, because he could no longer function as a priest, given U.S. church policy that bars accused priests from ministry. If accepted, laicization would relieve Hubbard of his celibacy obligations.

Asking the pope for voluntary laicization is unusual, especially for a bishop and particularly for a cleric who denies abuse allegations against him. Usually priests ask to be laicized if evidence of abuse against them is overwhelming or if they…

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A Tennessee man filed a lawsuit Friday claiming that operators of the Kanakuk Camps in Branson, Missouri, lied to him and his parents while persuading them to sign a settlement over sexual abuse by a camp counselor.

Logan Yandell, 27, of Hendersonville, Tennessee, and his parents reached a confidential settlement with Kanakuk in 2010 that included a non-disclosure agreement after Yandell was abused by Peter Newman, who is serving two life sentences for sexually abusing multiple children while working for the Christian summer camps.

The lawsuit names Kanakuk Ministries, Kanakuk CEO Joe White, Kanakuk Heritage Inc., Westchester Fire Insurance Company and a John Doe.

A statement from Kanakuk said the company just received the lawsuit on Friday and does not comment on pending litigation.

“We will respond further if or when appropriate,” the company said. “In the meantime, we continue to pray for all who have been affected by Pete Newman’s…

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Germany’s Catholic bishops insisted Saturday that their reform process won’t lead to a schism and vowed to continue it after tense meetings with Vatican officials who want a moratorium on proposals to ordain women, bless same-sex unions and rethink church teaching on sexuality.

The head of the German bishops’ conference, Bishop Georg Baetzing, said the German church would not make decisions that were the Vatican’s to make. He said outsiders who fuel fears of the reform process leading to a separation from Rome were ignorant of what actually was getting debated.

“We are Catholic,” Baetzing said at a news conference after a week of meetings with Vatican officials. “But we want to be Catholic in a different way.”

The church hierarchy in Germany and the country’s influential lay Catholic group launched the process in response to the clergy sexual abuse scandals. A 2018 report found that thousands of crimes were…

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Top Vatican cardinals tried to put the brakes on the German Catholic Church’s controversial reform process Friday, fearing proposals concerning gays, women and sexual morals will split the church and insisting they would be better debated later.

The Vatican and the German bishops conference issued a joint statement after a week of meetings that culminated with an unusual summit between the 62 German bishops and top Vatican officials, including the No. 2 secretary of state, the head of the bishops’ office and the head of the doctrine office.

The pope, who met separately with the German bishops on his own on Thursday, was originally supposed to attend Friday’s summit but did not, leaving it to his cardinals to toe the Vatican line.

Germany’s church launched a reform process with the country’s influential lay group to respond to the clergy sexual abuse scandals, after a report in 2018 found at least…

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The state attorney general investigated more than 80 years of sexual and physical abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

The attorney general of Maryland has identified more than 600 young victims of clergy sexual abuse over the course of 80 years in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, according to a court document filed Thursday.

The filing, which broadly outlines the attorney general’s findings, requests that a judge allow the release of the full report: a 456-page document detailing decades of clergy sex abuse in Maryland.

The new report marks a symbolic milestone in the long-running international abuse scandal that has shaken faith in the Catholic Church and led to some reforms and billions of dollars in settlements. The Baltimore report is one of the first major investigations completed by a state attorney general on sexual abuse in the Church since a scathing report on six dioceses in Pennsylvania shocked Catholics…

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“I hope and pray I will live long enough to see my name cleared once and for all,” Albany bishop emeritus said of the child sex abuse allegations he faces

Howard J. Hubbard, who served as bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany for 37 years, has formally asked the Vatican to permanently remove him from being a member of the clergy.

Hubbard’s request comes as he is facing multiple lawsuits filed under New York’s Child Victims Act that accuse him of child sexual abuse — allegations that he has denied — and of systematically shielding other priests accused of sexual abuse.

“I had hoped that in my retirement I might be able to continue to serve our community as a priest,” Hubbard said in a statement released Friday. “I am not able to do so, however, because of a church policy that prohibits any priest accused of sexual…

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There was another show of support for Saint Sabina’s Father Michael Pfleger Thursday.

His supporters gathered outside the Chicago Archdiocese Pastoral Center downtown, calling on the Archdiocese to reinstate Fr. Pfleger as quickly as possible.

The 73-year-old Pfleger was removed from ministry pending the investigation into the latest sex abuse allegation against him. The allegation dates back more than three decades and allegedly happened during choir rehearsals.

Fr. Pfleger has strongly denied the latest allegation and was cleared of similar accusations last year.

His supporters are urging the Archdiocese Review Board to make a decision on this latest case at its meeting this weekend.

When asked about the current investigation, the Archdiocese said it does not comment on current or pending litigation and takes every allegation seriously.

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Motion states investigation identified more than 600 victims

Maryland’s attorney general on Thursday filed a motion to release an investigative report of child sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

Attorney General Brian Frosh released a statement Thursday afternoon, saying his office is seeking approval from the Baltimore City Circuit Court to release the 463-page report to the public.

“It shows many, many instances of child sexual abuse from priests and other employees of the Archdiocese of Baltimore — hundreds of victims — and it involves more than 100 priests, 150-some priests and other employees who were people who were accused of abuse by the victims,” Frosh told 11 News. “We want to make sure abusers know they can’t do it and get away with it.”

The release must be approved by the court because the documents were handed over in response to grand jury subpoenas.

“For decades, survivors reported…

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An investigation by Maryland’s attorney general identified 158 Roman Catholic priests in the Archdiocese of Baltimore who have been accused of sexually and physically abusing more than 600 victims over the past 80 years, according to court records filed Thursday.

Attorney General Brian Frosh announced that his office has completed a 463-page report on the investigation, which began in 2019. He filed a motion in Baltimore Circuit Court to make the report public. Court permission is required because the report contains information from grand jury subpoenas. It’s unclear when the court will make a decision.

“For decades, survivors reported sexual abuse perpetrated by Catholic priests and for decades the Church covered up the abuse rather than holding the abusers accountable and protecting its congregations,” according to the court filing. “The Archdiocese of Baltimore was no exception.”

The report, titled “Clergy Abuse in Maryland,” identifies 115 priests who were prosecuted for…

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Dear Friends in Christ,

As you may be aware, the Maryland Office of the Attorney General filed a motion in court today seeking permission to publicly release a report on his office’s four-year investigation of the Archdiocese’s handling of child sexual abuse allegations dating back to the 1940’s. The information contained in the motion will no doubt be a source of renewed pain for many, most especially those harmed by representatives of the Church, for the lay faithful of our Archdiocese, as well as for many good priests, deacons and religious. Ever-aware of the pain endured by survivors of child sexual abuse, I once again offer my sincere apologies to the victim-survivors who were harmed by a minister of the Church and who were harmed by those who failed to protect them, who failed to respond to them with care and compassion and who failed to hold abusers accountable for…

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[Click here to see the AG’s motion to disclose investigation findings to the public.]

The Maryland Attorney General filed a motion in court Thursday to have documents and interviews from a four-year investigation into clergy abuse released to the public.

The office’s 456-page report found more than 600 victims of sexual abuse. The abusers were identified as 158 priests and employees of the Catholic Church within the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

“There’s a lot more I could say, but I can’t say it yet,” Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh said.

The materials he wants to make public were presented to a grand jury during the course of the investigation. The documents and interviews with clergy, abuse survivors, and witnesses of sexual abuse detail decades of inadequate investigations by the Archdiocese, suppression, and cover-up.

“In many cases the abusers are not able to be prosecuted,” Frosh…

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A 456-page report from the Maryland Attorney General’s Office identifies 158 Catholic priests accused of sexual abuse, including 43 that were never publicly named by the Archdiocese of Baltimore, as part of a four-year investigation into the history of child sexual abuse by members of the clergy.

The investigation also identified more than 600 victims of sexual abuse, according to a new court filing.

The report itself, along with the names of the priests, is not yet public. The Attorney General’s Office disclosed some details in a court filing Thursday as it requested permission to release information that the Archdiocese provided in response to a grand jury subpoena.

Grand jury records are secret under Maryland law but can be released with a judge’s permission. The Attorney General’s Office filed a 35-page motion in Baltimore City Circuit Court on Thursday. It was not immediately clear whether the Archdiocese will object to…

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Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh filed a motion Nov. 17 to allow release of the office’s report of its investigation of child sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

The investigation began in late 2018. Although the attorney general’s office has a policy of not confirming ongoing investigations, the archdiocese announced at that time that it was cooperating with the AG’s office.

Frosh’s motion filed Nov. 17 with the Circuit Court for Baltimore City said that at the request of his office, the grand jury issued a subpoena in January 2019 to the archdiocese for “all documents from the archdiocese from the last 80 years relating to allegations of sexual abuse and the response by the archdiocese to these allegations.” It noted that the archdiocese produced hundreds of thousands of pages of documents in response to the subpoena, providing them to the attorney general on a rolling basis, with…

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Years before one priest went to prison for child sex abuse, he confessed his attraction to teenage boys. Church leaders told him not to “worry about it.”

The church paid tuition, salary and living expenses for another priest even after he confessed to abusing boys. And church leaders waited years to tell authorities that yet another priest had been sexually abusing children.

These instances of child sex abuse are documented in court records filed Thursday by the Office of the Maryland Attorney General. Investigators told the courts they uncovered a history of “pervasive” sexual abuse by the priesthood of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, as well as a coverup and “complicit silence” by church leaders.

The attorney general’s office identified 158 priests, most of them already known, within the archdiocese accused of the “sexual abuse” and “physical torture” of more than 600 victims over the past 80 years, according to the…

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In court filing, attorney general’s office said there are “almost certainly hundreds more” and that church leaders failed to report many allegations or remove abusers

A nearly four-year investigation of the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore tallied more than 600 young victims of clergy sexual abuse over 80 years, a court filing by the Maryland attorney general said Thursday. The probe, the second in the country by a state prosecutor, after Pennsylvania’s, seeks to bring accountability and detail to cases long covered up or shrouded by statutes of limitation.

The filing by Attorney General Brian Frosh (D) comes in the 20th anniversary year of an investigative series by the Boston Globe that dug into the Catholic sexual abuse scandal in the United States. Major reforms and multibillion-dollar legal settlements have reduced the number of accusations over the decades, but advocates in and out of the church say that full…

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The Catholic Diocese of Knoxville worked to discredit and intimidate a woman who said she was sexually assaulted in 2020 by a Gatlinburg priest, according to a new federal lawsuit.

The Rev. Antony Devassey Punnackal, of St. Mary’s Catholic Church, groped her while he counseled her after the father of her infant died, she says in a lawsuit filed last week.

The woman went to the police, and Punnackal was indicted Jan. 4 by a Sevier County grand jury on two counts of sexual battery.

The diocese then hired an investigator who worked to obstruct the investigation by intimidating the woman, the lawsuit says.

The woman, who is Honduran and is seeking asylum in the United States, says the investigator illegally acquired her employment records, seeking to discredit and intimidate her and potentially jeopardizing her pending asylum case.

A spokesperson for the diocese declined to comment or answer a list…

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There’s a doubly twisted system at the highest level of the hierarchy, where the perverse behavior of certain bishops is met by the impotence of peers who have conflicting loyalties

Desolation? Sadness? No, anger – tremendous anger! That’s been the reaction of many Catholics after Archbishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort revealed this past week that no fewer than eleven French bishops currently stand accused of sexual abuse by the civil or ecclesiastical authorities.

Among them is Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, the retired archbishop of Bordeaux, who also served six years as president of the French Bishops’ Conference (CEF) – that is to say, someone who was nothing less than the top leader of the Church.

What else can there be but anger after such a revelation? How can one still believe that the Church will pull through, that it has the means to reform itself, when it is so deeply damaged? For…

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Canonical inquiry to take place into priest who later served in a church overseas until at least 2020

As an 11-year-old child from a less well off family, Tom Maher (59), says he had felt “privileged” to attend Castleknock College, a fee-paying boarding school in Dublin, during the 1970s.

Given a chance his parents never had – his father left school aged 12 – even as a young boy he had a sense the prestigious school was a means to “escape” poverty.

Born in Abbeyleix, Co Laois, he recalls the day his parents dropped him off at the west Dublin school run by the Vincentian order, and the priest he met that first day. Nearly 50 years on it is not a face he has forgotten.

Maher alleges the priest, who taught at the school, would later go on to sexually abuse him on two separate occasions.

Speaking to…

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Retired Archbishop Jean-Pierre Gallet OFM of Strasbourg confesses to inappropriate behavior with an adult woman in the late 1980s before being named to the episcopacy

A second Catholic bishop in France in the course of several days has come forward to publicly admit having committed sexual abuse.

“In the late 1980s when I was a Franciscan friar I made inappropriate gestures toward a young woman of legal age, behavior that I deeply regret,” said retired Archbishop Jean-Pierre Grallet in a brief statement dated November 15. “By this public statement, I wish to contribute to the process of truth and assume my responsibility,” said the 81-year-old Grallet, who served as archbishop of Strasbourg from 2007-2017.

The French Bishops’ Conference (CEF) made the statement public on Wednesday.

 Request for forgiveness

Archbishop Grallet told La Croix he did not wish to give further details on the events, which date back to a time…

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 Italy’s Catholic Church on Thursday released its first report on alleged sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable individuals but victims’ advocates said the number of cases was likely much higher and denounced its limited scope as shameful.

The 41-page report, the first of two, covers only 2020-21. A second, promised report will cover abuse going back to 2000, although it is not clear when that will be released.

Victims have called for a thorough outside investigation going back many decades, such as those in France and Germany.

The report on 2020-21, which covers cases reported during those years but not necessarily taking place in that time, was done by a Catholic university in northern Italy. It said 89 people presumably had been abused by 68 alleged abusers, including priests as well as lay people such as church workers and religion teachers.

The data stemmed from “listening centres” in dioceses and is…

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Italy’s Catholic bishops on Thursday provided their first-ever accounting of clergy sexual abuse, but Italy’s main survivor advocate said it was “shamefully” inadequate given it only covered reports to church authorities over the last two years and omitted documentary research into church archives.

The report, which found 89 presumed victims and some 68 people accused, was never meant to provide an accurate or historic look at the clergy abuse problem in Italy. The country’s bishops never authorized such research despite demands from survivors for a full accounting, which some other Catholic Churches in Europe have published.

Instead, the Italian bishops limited the scope of their report to evaluate the work of “listening centers” that were set up in dioceses since 2019 to receive complaints from victims. Organizers said during a news conference Thursday that the report provided a “first photograph” of the problem and the bishops planned to release annual…

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Research in the US concludes that sexual predator nuns constituted a problem in at least three settings, including Catholic schools

The present scandal with respect to sexual abuse in schools under the Spiritans/Holy Ghost Fathers invites a question that is rarely posed and never answered with satisfaction. What about the nuns who, at least until the mid-1960s, were far more numerous than priests or religious brothers in schools and wider society and were responsible for an array of institutions giving them authority over young people? Were they too involved in crimes against children? In Ireland or elsewhere?

My research into this question in the United States concludes that sexual predator nuns were indeed a problem in at least three institutional settings: boarding schools for Native Americans, orphanages and Catholic schools. This, coupled with what we know in relation to the Magdalene laundries, suggests that the problem of child abuse in…

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The Rochester Diocese’s novel strategy to exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy by paying childhood sex abuse survivors $55 million and allowing them to sue the diocese’s insurers for additional damages may provide a template for other bankrupt dioceses in New York, including Buffalo, according to legal experts.

Across the United States, insurance contributions have been a backbone of most diocese bankruptcy settlement plans over the past decade, with insurance companies paying hundreds of millions of dollars to avoid litigation in sex abuse cases.

But in Rochester, the diocese earlier this month worked out a settlement plan with sex abuse claimants that does not involve a contribution from insurance companies. Instead, the diocese will convey its coverage rights to a settlement trust on behalf of 475 sex abuse claimants, along with $55 million in diocese and parish funds. In exchange, the diocese and its parishes and schools will no…

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New court filings reveal some of the most brutal allegations of abuse at Agape Boarding School so far, including one former student’s account that two staffers sexually assaulted him.

Those details were outlined in motions filed Monday in 19 civil lawsuits requesting that the Cedar County judge overseeing those cases allow attorneys to seek punitive damages. The new allegations cover a period from 2007 to 2021 with many — including the sexual assault claim — from the past three years.

Changes to Missouri law in 2020 require attorneys to file an amended petition if they are seeking punitive damages on behalf of their clients. The law also allows the filing of an amended petition if new information arises that was overlooked or unknown at the time the case started.

In a separate case, the Missouri Attorney General’s Office filed an injunction in September to close the school, saying…

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Churches are adopting aggressive approaches towards survivors in cases where alleged paedophile priests and clergy have died

Another major law firm has accused churches of using a recent ruling to attempt to low-ball abuse survivors seeking compensation in cases where alleged paedophile priests have died.

On Tuesday, Guardian Australia revealed the Catholic church was adopting an aggressive new approach towards survivors in cases where alleged paedophile priests and clergy have died.

Lawyers from three firms said the church had been emboldened by a decision in June which permanently halted a case involving a now-deceased Lismore priest, Clarence Anderson, on the grounds that his death meant the church could no longer defend itself properly.

That victory has led the church to take a more aggressive stance during negotiations with survivors, threatening to seek stay applications in such cases unless “paltry” amounts are accepted, lawyers say.

Now, a fourth firm, Slater and Gordon,…

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In 2014, people began reporting alleged sexual abuse by then-Southern Baptist youth pastor, Michael D’Attoma, to police and churches, documents obtained by The Roys Report (TRR) show.

Yet for six years, D’Attoma continued to minister in multiple churches. And his abuse became public only this year, when multiple former students in D’Attoma’s youth ministry filed lawsuits, accusing D’Attoma of sexually abusing them.

According to a 2014 police report, a woman alleged D’Attoma had exchanged photos and videos of him and a student “taking their clothes off.” The report adds that D’Attoma “admitted everything” in counseling with his pastor in South Carolina.

D’Attoma then left his church in South Carolina and was hired by First Baptist Church in Grove City, Ohio. Before hiring D’Attoma, FBC Grove City was told of D’Attoma’s alleged inappropriate texts with a teen, an email obtained by TRR indicates.

Even after more details came out, like the fact the alleged victim…

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After paying millions to donors who alleged Gospel for Asia defrauded them, the organization has apparently rejoined the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB). And its founder, K.P. Yohannan, is listed as a panelist for the upcoming NRB Convention in 2023.

Yohannan founded GFA World, formerly Gospel for Asia, in 1979, and served on the NRB board from 2013-2015. But GFA was kicked out of the NRB at the end of 2015 over financial accountability issues related to alleged misuse of hundreds of millions of dollars in donor funds.

A GFA spokesperson told The Christian Post at the time the organization’s NRB membership was terminated because GFA had lost its accreditation with the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA).

In 2019, the organization settled a class-action lawsuit over alleged misuse of hundreds of millions of dollars in donations. GFA paid $37 million to…

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‘He used his power and image to carry out the abuse,’ Nehama Te’ena says in television interview several months after first publicly accusing Zvi Tau of abuse

Police have launched an investigation into a sexual assault complaint filed against a prominent ultra-conservative rabbi, as one of his accusers detailed the allegations in a television interview aired Thursday.

The revelation of the probe, which was reported widely by Hebrew media, came after several senior national religious figures called to investigate the allegations against Rabbi Zvi Tau, 85, who heads the influential Har Hamor yeshiva in Jerusalem and is the spiritual leader of the far-right Noam political faction.

Nehama Te’ena, a resident of the Jewish settlement in Hebron, first came forward publicly with allegations against Tau in August, when she wrote a Facebook post saying that 30 years ago, when she was 8, Tau committed “ongoing” sexual assaults against her.

At the time,…

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Identified only as ‘Dorit,’ latest alleged victim describes being assaulted by far-right spiritual leader 40 years ago, when she was a new immigrant and ‘all alone’ in Israel

A special investigative team has been established to probe sexual abuse allegations against Rabbi Zvi Tau, the Israel Police said Sunday.

Multiple women have accused Tau of sexual abuse and rape dating back decades, with two going public so far.

One woman, Nechama Te’ena, went public in August, but her allegations were largely ignored at the time by the police and the media. In recent weeks, she has staged small protests outside the Knesset, accusing Tau of raping her and others and demanding to know why the Israel Police have refused to investigate.

Tau, 85, is the head of the influential Har Hamor Yeshiva in Jerusalem as well as the spiritual leader of the anti-LGBT Noam political party, which won a single…

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Assault claim against far-right spiritual leader, dating back 40 years, falls outside statute of limitations, but prosecutors want statement to shed light on first accuser’s claims

Israel Police will take a statement from a second woman who claims that Rabbi Zvi Tau raped her decades ago, seeking to bolster allegations against the politically connected religious leader.

The second woman, who has been named in media only as Dorit, is expected to speak with investigators on Tuesday. Though the alleged incident happened too long ago to prosecute, her testimony may help support that of another woman who also accuses Tau of sexual assault.

Multiple women have accused Tau of sexual abuse and rape dating back decades, with two going public so far.

Tau, 85, is the head of the influential Har Hamor Yeshiva in Jerusalem, as well as the spiritual leader of the anti-LGBT Noam political party, which won a single…

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A prominent rabbi has been accused of harassing women several years ago. Police are investigating.

The police are investigating a complaint that was filed recently against Rabbi Zvi Tau over alleged harassment of a woman which happened many years ago, Channel 12 News reported Thursday.

Rabbi Tau is a Religious Zionist rabbi and co-founder and president of Yeshivat Har Hamor in Jerusalem.

According to the report, the investigation is being carried out under the auspices of the prosecutor’s office and, due to the time that has passed since the incident to which the statute of limitations applies, it is difficult to confirm the credibility of the complainant.

Kan 11 News reported that the investigation is being conducted by the Judea and Samaria District of the Israel Police. Rabbi Tau has not yet been summoned for questioning, and the police are considering how to proceed with the investigation.

Rabbi David Stav, the rabbi of…

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French Catholic leaders initially played down clerical abuse, but the issue has now gone far beyond the ‘few bad apples’ stage.

Like any modern Catholic official, Archbishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort, president of France’s Catholic bishops’ conference, realizes clergy sexual abuse is a systemic problem, one that calls for serious reform of the church’s uncertain rules and ingrained secrecy.

But recent revelations of sexual misconduct by a cardinal and a bishop on Moulins-Beaufort’s watch show how complicated, time-consuming and personal stamping out abuse can be. 

These new cases, which come a year after a report that estimated that France had seen 330,000 ordained and lay abusers since 1950, have tangled Moulins-Beaufort in a web, caught between falling public confidence in the bishops’ ability to solve the problem — which only increases the pressure to act — and a pope who firmly condemns clerical sexual abuse but offers only vague guidance when…

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A Nova Scotia court has approved a $10-million settlement to conclude a class-action lawsuit that alleged Roman Catholic clergy with the Archdiocese of Halifax-Yarmouth had sexually abused children for decades.

Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Christa Brothers approved the settlement Monday, four years after the lawsuit was filed.

The allegations date back to 1954. Most of the survivors are now seniors.

“While the class-action suit is a constant reminder of the damage and great hurt that has been inflicted on individuals by members of the clergy, it is necessary to provide an opportunity for justice and healing for all victims,” Most Rev. Brian J. Dunn, the archbishop of the diocese, said in a statement released Monday.

“It is a hard thing to do, but it is the right thing to do.”

The statement said the archdiocese has “zero tolerance for sexual abuse of any kind — past, present or future.”

…

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Paola Ugaz, a prominent Peruvian journalist known for her investigations of a contested Catholic lay group and who has faced several legal complaints over her reporting, met Pope Francis Thursday, describing the encounter as a victory for survivors.

Speaking to Crux, Ugaz called her meeting with the pope “a big message to the survivors of the Sodalicio, who continue without a response, justice, reparation.”

The “Sodalicio” refers to the Sodalitium Christinae Vitae (SCV), founded by Peruvian layman Luis Fernando Figari in the 1970s.

Figari is accused of physical, psychological, and sexual abuses within the community, including against minors. He was sanctioned by the Vatican in 2017 and prohibited from having further contact with members of the group, and he is currently living in exile.

According to Ugaz, meeting the pope “was a very powerful message that one of the investigators could arrive to the highest level of the Catholic…

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The Maryland Attorney General’s Office’s four-year investigation into the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s history of child sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests is almost finished.

A spokesperson for Attorney General Brian Frosh told The Baltimore Sun the investigation is “nearing completion,” but declined to share details. A criminal investigator for the office, former FBI agent Richard Wolf, has contacted many abuse survivors in recent weeks to tell them the report is close to done.

In 2018, the office issued a grand jury subpoena to the archdiocese for records, and Archbishop William E. Lori told clergy the state was investigating. Ultimately, the archdiocese turned over more than 100,000 pages of documents to Wolf and Special Assistant Attorney General Elizabeth Embry.

The attorney general’s report, when finalized, is expected to detail child sexual abuse going back more than 80 years.

It’s unclear whether the investigation will…

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“Doc on One” sees more survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of the Spiritan Order come forward.

Four people have come forward to the police over abuse allegations since an RTE documentary aired about the Spiritan Order’s abuse of two brothers at Blackrock College in Dublin. 

The new complaints had been received by the Sexual Crime Management Unit at the Garda National Protective Services Bureau, the central point for all abuse allegations against religious orders.

The Irish police released a statement saying that the four news survivors are being fully supported and each of the individual’s cases are being assessed. They added that they are “acutely aware of the profound and enduring impact that sexual, physical and emotional abuse has on victims and they have again urged people to contact the Sexual Crime Management Unit or their local Garda Station,” RTE reports.

They added, “They say all…

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The sex abuse scandal involving bishops in France is just the latest episode in a serial horror show that has actually only just begun. What must Catholics do to not lose faith?

The phenomenon of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, like a dreaded disease that becomes the proverbial “gift that keeps on giving”, has now intensified in France with the recent revelations that a cardinal and nine or ten other bishops are currently under investigation by state or Church authorities for abuse or its cover-up.

Understandably, French Catholics are shocked and extremely angry. They had only just begun to deal with the devastating report that their country’s Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE) issued last year, which showed that some 330,000 youngsters were sexually assaulted by upwards of 3,000 French priests and vowed religious between 1950-2020, most of these cases having been carefully kept quiet and hidden…

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French Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, former head of the French bishops’ conference, admitted to abusing a 14-year-old girl 35 years ago.

The revelation came in a letter from Ricard read by Archbishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort of Reims, president of the bishops’ conference, during a news conference on abuse Nov. 7, during the French bishops’ general assembly.

The cardinal said the “reprehensible” action occurred when he was a priest, and he said his behavior “has necessarily caused serious and lasting consequences for this person.”

He said he asked the woman for forgiveness and asked for forgiveness from her family. He also said he was going on retreat to pray.

“This is a difficult process. But what comes first is the suffering experienced by the victims and the recognition of the acts committed,” he said.

“Finally, I ask forgiveness to those whom I have hurt and who will live this news as a…

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As American Jesuit historian Fr. John O’Malley wrote in one of his last articles published in America magazine last February, the history of synodality is older than you think. There are different phases in the history of the synodal institution and way to govern the church: from the very early church to the medieval times to early modern Catholicism. The current phase is part of what Vatican II had in mind for church reform: a mix of aggiornamento (or updating in light of new issues) and of ressourcement (taking a fresh look at the ancient sources of the Christian tradition).

At the same time, the current synodal process initiated by Pope Francis’ pontificate cannot be understood outside of the epoch-changing abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, one of the “signs of the times” the pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes of Vatican II talks about: “the Church has always had…

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The not guilty verdict reached in criminal court for Father Robert Cedolia represents the conclusion of a nearly four-year period since an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor was filed against him. Father Cedolia was in active ministry for 41 years. He has maintained his innocence throughout these proceedings. The civil court ruling is consistent with the finding of the diocesan Independent Review Board, which found no merit in the claim. May our words, our deeds, and our prayers, always reflect the healing love of Jesus.

-Bishop David Zubik

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A Plum priest accused of sexually abusing an 8-year-old boy in 1998 was found not guilty of all the charges against him on Monday.

A jury deliberated for less than four hours before reaching its verdict in the case against the Rev. Robert Cedolia, 71.

Cedolia was found not guilty of aggravated indecent assault of a person less than 13 years old, indecent assault of a person less than 13 and corruption of minors.

His trial, before Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Jill E. Rangos, began Nov. 7.

“It’s good to see justice done,” defense attorney Christopher Capozzi said. “In fact, the man is innocent. They rejected (the accuser’s) assertions.”

That man, who was 31 when Cedolia was charged in 2021, told county detectives the abuse occurred during practice before his first Holy Communion in spring 1998 at Our Lady of Joy in Plum.

The accuser said,…

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A Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese priest who was accused in a child sex abuse case dating back to the 1990s was found not guilty by a jury.

Father Robert Cedolia was found not guilty on all five charges.

He was accused of sexual abuse of an 8-year-old boy while he was the pastor of Our Lady of Joy Parish in Plum in 1998.

Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese said it put Cedolia on paid administrative leave four years ago, when the allegations surfaced.

Bishop David Zubik said its review board found no wrongdoing by Cedolia.

“I think the important part is that American citizens trust the scales of justice of our judicial system,” Zubik said. “And we’re grateful that Father Cedolia received this outcome.”

Zubik said first, the Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese has to brief the Holy See in Rome. After consulting the Holy See, Cedolia’s facilities would be restored, and it would be up to him if he…

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On his plane back to Rome from a Middle East trip recently, Pope Francis acknowledged that the Vatican faces pushback in its efforts to overhaul the Catholic Church’s habits of denial, secrecy and coverup surrounding clerical sexual abuse. “There are people within the church who still do not see clearly,” he said, adding that “not everyone has courage.”

The pontiff’s delicate phrasing, and his timing, underscored the compounding damage the scandal has inflicted on the church’s moral authority and prestige. Days after Pope Francis shared those thoughts with journalists, new revelations of high-level sexual misconduct and coverup in France shattered illusions of progress by the church toward establishing a culture of transparency and accountability in its hierarchy.

That problem was crystallized in the admission by Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, who was the archbishop of Bordeaux for 18 years before he retired in 2019, that he had behaved “in a…

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The sex abuse scandal involving bishops in France is just the latest episode in a serial horror show that has actually only just begun. What must Catholics do to not lose faith?

The phenomenon of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, like a dreaded disease that becomes the proverbial “gift that keeps on giving”, has now intensified in France with the recent revelations that a cardinal and nine or ten other bishops are currently under investigation by state or Church authorities for abuse or its cover-up.

Understandably, French Catholics are shocked and extremely angry. They had only just begun to deal with the devastating report that their country’s Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE) issued last year, which showed that some 330,000 youngsters were sexually assaulted by upwards of 3,000 French priests and vowed religious between 1950-2020, most of these cases having been carefully kept quiet and hidden…

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U.S. Catholic bishops began their fall meeting Monday, with an agenda that includes the election of new leaders — a vote that may signal whether they want to be more closely aligned with Pope Francis ′ agenda or not.

Several of the 10 candidates to be the next president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops are part of its powerful conservative wing, and have not fully embraced some of the pope’s priorities, such as focusing more on the marginalized than on culture-war battles.

The USCCB also will be marking the 20th anniversary of its adoption of policies designed to root out sexual abuse and abusers in the priesthood — measures adopted amid the white-hot scandals of 2002 when The Boston Globe exposed widespread abuse and cover-up.

Outside groups are calling on the bishops to use the anniversary to renew efforts to help survivors heal from abuse, increase lay…

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A Catholic priest in the Pittsburgh Diocese accused of molesting an 8-year-old boy at a Plum church in 1998 has been found not guilty.

Court records show jurors returned the not guilty verdict of aggravated indecent assault in the case against Father Robert Cedolia Monday.

Cedolia was placed on administrative leave in 2019 after the allegation was made against him through the Reconciliation and Compensation Program for the Diocese of Pittsburgh.

In a statement released Friday, the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh said that the verdict “represents the conclusion of a nearly four-year period” since the allegation was filed. The statement also said that the “civil court ruling is consistent with the finding of the diocesan Independent Review Board, which found no merit in the claim.”

In 2019, he was priest-administrator of the parishes of Saint Clare in Clairton, Holy Spirit in West Mifflin, Saint Thomas A Becket in Jefferson Hills…

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Exclusive: Advocates say it is disappointing church is spending funds trying to block compensation bids ‘rather than redirecting money to deserving survivors’

The Catholic church has adopted an increasingly aggressive approach to alleged victims of now-dead paedophile priests, using recent rulings to pressure survivors to accept “paltry amounts” or risk having their claims permanently blocked, lawyers say.

In June, the New South Wales courts permanently stayed a civil claim brought by a survivor, known as GLJ, who alleged horrific abuse at the hands of Father Clarence Anderson in Lismore in 1968 when she was 14.

The court ruled there could not be a fair trial because Anderson was dead, leaving the church unable to properly respond to the survivor’s allegations.

The case was stayed despite documentary evidence that high-ranking church officials knew Anderson was abusing boys at least four years before GLJ’s alleged assault, but did not remove…

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For 20 years, Richard Jabara lived with the memory of his abuse — then he read an article that would change his life. 

Key points:

• The In Good Faith Foundation has partnered with LOUD Fence to establish a day to acknowledge and support survivors of sexual abuse
• Abuse survivor Richard Jabara says sharing his story was difficult, but things have changed for the better 
• Another survivor Tiffany Skeggs says she hopes the national day sparks conversations and leads to more change

It was the 1970s and Mr Jabara was just 13 years old.

His family had moved to Australia from the United States. Originally settling in Queensland, they eventually made the journey south to Melbourne.

In Melbourne, Mr Jabara was groomed and raped by a Catholic priest. 

That same year he was sexually assaulted at Xavier College — a prestigious Catholic school that has since had to reckon with its past.

For two decades he…

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2 students at Montreal’s Loyola High School say they were targeted by Fr. George Epoch

WARNING: This story contains distressing details.

As a Jesuit priest in Ontario, George Epoch sexually abused dozens of children in the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

But Epoch’s abuse allegedly dates back even earlier, to the 1950s, when he taught at Loyola High School, a private Catholic school in Montreal.

Two students who were part of Epoch’s 1957-58 preparatory class told CBC News the priest inappropriately touched them. 

Alfred Martijn describes that year as a miserable one, filled with fear and unease. In those days, it was mandatory for the prep students to be boarders, so it was difficult to elude Epoch.

“When you are confronted with something that’s totally foreign to your upbringing, it’s more than a shock,” said Martijn, who was 13 at the time of the alleged abuse.

“You don’t know how to…

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Mary McAleese accuses Church of ‘systemic protection of perpetrators rather than child victims’

There is “a crying need for atonement, inner healing and hope in the aftermath of the abuse scandals”, Catholic Primate Eamon Martin has said.

He sometimes wondered, he said, “why it is that, when we were studying theology here [in Maynooth] in the 1980s, we didn’t anticipate what was about to happen in the Church – perhaps we should have; was it because, in our studying and reading of theology and philosophy, we didn’t engage enough in open discussion and dialogue, or really grapple with the big questions of the day for the Church and its mission?”

He was speaking at the weekend in St Patrick’s College Maynooth to the graduate class of 2022 in theology and philosophy in his role as Chancellor, in the wake of new allegations in recent days of child sexual abuse by…

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The Vatican said on Friday it was launching a preliminary investigation into French cardi-nal Jean-Pierre Ricard after he admitted to a “reprehensible” act on a 14-year-old.

France’s Catholic Church on Monday revealed that 11 former or serving French bishops have been ac-cused of sexual violence or failing to report abuse cases. This included Ricard, who confessed to as-saulting a girl decades ago.

“In order to properly examine what happened, it has been decided to open a preliminary inquiry,” spokesman Matteo Bruni told journalists in the Vatican’s first public reaction to the scandal.

The Vatican has still to appoint a lead investigator. It was looking for a suitable person “with the neces-sary autonomy, impartiality and experience,” Bruni said.

French prosecutors said on Tuesday they had launched an inquiry into Ricard, a longtime bishop of Bordeaux who was made a cardinal by former pope Benedict 16th in 2006.

“Thirty-five years ago, when…

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On his plane back to Rome from a Middle East trip recently, Pope Francis acknowledged that the Vatican faces pushback in its efforts to overhaul the Catholic Church’s habits of denial, secrecy and coverup surrounding clerical sexual abuse. “There are people within the church who still do not see clearly,” he said, adding that “not everyone has courage.”

The pontiff’s delicate phrasing, and his timing, underscored the compounding damage the scandal has inflicted on the church’s moral authority and prestige. Days after Pope Francis shared those thoughts with journalists, new revelations of high-level sexual misconduct and cover-up in France shattered illusions of progress by the church toward establishing a culture of transparency and accountability in its hierarchy.

That problem was crystallized in the admission by Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, who was the archbishop of Bordeaux for 18 years before he retired in 2019, that he had behaved “in a…

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The Jesuit congregation of Ireland has received 149 allegations of abuse against 43 Jesuit priests, while the Spiritan religious order has received more than 230 allegations of abuse.

Religious orders in Ireland continue to be flooded with allegations of historic abuse in schools throughout the country.

The Jesuit congregation of Ireland has received 149 allegations of abuse against 43 Jesuit priests, paying out €7.4 million in compensation to the 78 people it has reached a settlement with. 

A spokeswoman for the congregation told the Irish Times that she expects further allegations to be made against Jesuit members in the coming months, especially after the introduction of a redress scheme in January 2022. 

The scheme was introduced following the disclosure of abuses by Fr. Joseph Marmion at Belvedere College in Dublin and applies to any adults who were abused by Fr. Marmion as boys at three different Jesuit colleges in Ireland.

…

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TAOISEACH Micheal Martin has described the abuse revelations at Blackrock College as “sickening” and he said he wanted to see those guilty of targeting children pursued by the Gardai and prosecuted.

However, Mr Martin said he did not believe the State should step in to compensate the victims of abuse in private schools – insisting that was a matter for the religious orders involved in the individual schools.

The Taoiseach – speaking in Cork this morning – said he believed the matter should now be the focus of the criminal justice system rather than a protracted new public inquiry.

Mr Martin spoke out following a week of horrific revelations of abuse at one of the most elite schools in the country, run by the Spiritan religious order.

It emerged that 57 men had come forward with complaints they had been abused on the grounds of Blackrock College. School principal Alan MacGinty…

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The recent publicity regarding the controversial sermon by Father Seán Sheehy in St Mary’s Church, Listowel, has reminded the public of the previous controversy 13 years ago, when he provided a reference for local bouncer Danny Foley after he was convicted of sexual assault.

The evidence given on that occasion, which included CCTV footage, led to a unanimous verdict from a jury of 10 men and two women, resulting in the conviction for the assault on the 22-year-old woman.

Judge Donagh McDonagh said no reasonable person could believe the young woman could consent in the state she was in. He spoke of Foley’s ‘web of lies’ before sentencing him to seven years, with two suspended.

The victim in the case felt suicidal due to the reaction of sections of the people of Listowel, but appreciated the support shown by her parish priest, which she contrasted with Father Sheehy, then PP of…

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[Different version of article posted in Abuse Tracker several days ago.]

Father Georges Chevrier, parish priest from 1971 to 1977, is now dead

A woman who alleges she was sexually groomed and abused as a child in the mid 1970s while attending Our Lady of Fatima Church in Coquitlam is suing a number of Catholic Church entities.

Identified in her notice of civil claim as L.V., the plaintiff is claiming damages in a B.C. Supreme Court civil suit filed against the estate of the deceased Father Georges Chevrier.

The archdiocese of Vancouver and several other institutions associated with Chevrier’s work history are also named as defendants.

L.V.’s lawsuit asserts that she had the inherent right to live out her childhood and youth “unaffected by the unhealthy, unsafe, and immoral interference and public nuisance of predatorial and systematic sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy.”

Chevrier was the parish priest at the…

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Fr. Matthew Stafki accused of abusing 9-year-old girl

A traditionalist priest is facing criminal charges for sexually abusing a young girl.

Father Matthew Stafki, a member of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), is accused of molesting his 9-year-old niece. The abuse allegedly began in 2019 and lasted three years, until May of this year. 

According to the complaint, Stafki would visit the victim’s home in Princeton and “would sometimes stay overnight.” During his visits, he would touch the victim’s breasts and genitals, kissing both areas.

“On one occasion, he told her to just enjoy the feeling of it,” the complaint states. She remained silent about the abuse because the priest, her uncle, “told her more than once not to tell anyone.”

The victim said one time Stafki had her “sit on top of him, facing him, and he would rub his genitals against hers.”…

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The Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), U.S. District, is grieved to confirm that one of its (now) former priestly members, Fr. Matthew Stafki, has been accused in a criminal court of grave crimes against chastity regarding a minor.

The SSPX alerted both civil and canonical authorities immediately after it was made aware of the allegations and has fully collaborated with all relevant authorities. Fr. Stafki was out of active ministry on sabbatical when the SSPX learned of the allegations.

As soon as the accusations were deemed credible, he was completely restricted from any ministry. He is no longer a member of the Society. The SSPX will not comment further while the canonical and civil processes take their course. 

The SSPX asks for prayers for all involved and is committed to helping victims and seeking justice for anyone who has been accused. For anyone affected by sexual misconduct, we encourage…

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Gardaí say four people have come forward this week and made complaints of abuse following the RTÉ programme last Monday on the Spiritan Order.

These are in addition to previous complaints received by the Gardaí in respect of abuse allegations relating to Spiritan schools and the Spiritan Order which are currently under investigation.

The new complaints have been received by the Sexual Crime Management Unit at the Garda National Protective Services Bureau, the central point for all abuse allegations against religious orders.

Gardaí say the four survivors will be fully supported and further engagement will take place to assess their individual cases.

In a statement to RTÉ this evening Gardaí also say they are acutely aware of the profound and enduring impact that sexual, physical and emotional abuse has on victims and they have again urged people to contact the Sexual Crime Management Unit or their local Garda Station.

They…

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Call for watchdog to oversee complaints in relation to schools in wake of documentary about sexual abuse by Spiritans

All these years later “Brian” (a pseudonym) cannot bring himself to discuss what was done to him by Fr Aloysius Flood and Fr Senan Corry at Willow Park School on Dublin’s Blackrock College campus in the 1970s.

Speaking to The Irish Times, he recalled how “my life changed when I was woken up one night and seriously sexually assaulted by Flood. I was a pious, innocent 11-year-old asleep in my bed, boarding at Willow Park. I had no idea what was going on.”

The Spiritan congregation, formerly the Holy Ghost Fathers, have disclosed that 233 men have made allegations of abuse against 77 Irish Spiritans in ministries throughout Ireland and overseas. Of that number, 57 men have alleged they were abused on the campus of Blackrock College in Dublin.

Fr Flood…

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In a letter, the victim described how David Marcotte abused his priest collar to persuade him to undress over video chats

A judge on Wednesday sentenced suspended Indianapolis priest David Marcotte to a year on home detention under a plea agreement that ends his trial on allegations he sexually abused a teenage boy six years ago.

During a hearing in Hamilton Superior Court, Judge Jonathan M. Brown addressed the teary-eyed parents of the victim as he accepted a plea agreement they both begged him to reject.

“Your son deserves some closure so he can put this behind him,” Brown said, addressing the young man’s mother and father sitting in the gallery of his court room. “The last thing your son wants is for him to be found not guilty then walk.”

The victim, now 20, lives in another state and is attending college. In a letter to…

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The Vatican has decided to open an investigation into French Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, the retired archbishop of Bordeaux, who admitted in a public letter that he had abused a 14-year-old girl 35 years ago.

“As a result of the elements that have emerged in the last few days and the statement made by the cardinal, in order to complete the examination of what happened, it has been decided to initiate an ‘investigatio praevia,’” or preliminary investigation, Matteo Bruni, director of the Vatican press office, said Nov. 11.

Bruni would not say if the decision was made by Pope Francis, although because the case involves a cardinal who is a member of Vatican dicasteries and who, at 78, is still eligible to participate in a conclave, people familiar with the workings of the Vatican assume the pope had to agree.

The person “best suited” to conduct the investigation “with the necessary…

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Libero Milone and his former deputy Ferruccio Panicco are seeking to clear their name, five years after they say they were wrongfully dismissed.

The Vatican’s first-ever auditor general and his former deputy are suing the Vatican after lengthy efforts to have the Vatican clear their name fell on deaf ears, following what they claim were unlawful dismissals. 

Libero Milone, a former chairman and CEO of Deloitte Italy, a multinational auditing and consultancy firm, and Ferruccio Panicco, an ex-chief auditor for the Italian manufacturer Indesit, are suing the Vatican for nearly $10 million in order to “obtain proper reparations from suffered damages” after they were forced to resign in 2017.

In their claim, which was submitted to the Vatican Tribunal on Nov. 4, the two auditors accuse the Vatican of framing them and forcing them out of their positions when they began uncovering financial malpractice in the Roman Curia months after…

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Former Vatican auditors say they have evidence of widespread financial corruption – and a new lawsuit will surface it.

Two former Vatican officials say their newly filed lawsuit will prove widespread financial corruption among both Vatican cardinals and the leadership of the Vatican’s national police force.

The former Vatican staffers say they were appointed by Pope Francis to get Vatican finances in order, and were fired when they discovered corruption, and saw Cardinal Angelo Becciu falsely accuse them of spying.

Libero Milone, the first person to hold the position of Vatican auditor general, filed suit Nov. 4 against the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, claiming he was unjustly fired and unfairly threatened with criminal prosecution, because of discoveries he made while doing his job.

The Vatican’s ousted auditor was forced from his post in 2017 under threat of prosecution for spying and misappropriation of funds, although there were three years left…

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The Vatican’s first auditor general and his deputy have sued the Holy See for 9.3 million euros ($9.5 million) for wrongful dismissal, as a new litigious chapter opens in Pope Francis’ troubled financial reform effort.

In a lawsuit made public Thursday, Libero Milone and his deputy, Ferruccio Panicco, alleged that Vatican gendarmes essentially extorted them by forcing them to resign in 2017 or risk arrest and prosecution for their work investigating and auditing the Holy See’s murky finances.

In the lawsuit filed with the Vatican tribunal, the auditors said they uncovered astonishing financial malpractice in the “viper’s nest” of the Vatican and believe they were forced out because certain cardinals and monsignors “felt threatened by the investigations and simple requests for clarification.”

The Vatican spokesman’s office declined to comment Thursday.

The Milone scandal is just one of many that have marked Francis’ 10-year effort to impose international financial budgeting and…

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Former Vatican financial auditor Libero Milone filed charges on Nov. 4 against the Vatican Secretariat of State, demanding the Catholic Church pay for damages to his reputation that he alleges followed his unceremonious firing in 2017.

At a meeting on Nov. 8 arranged by his lawyer, Milone told reporters that Cardinal Angelo Becciu, once the third-highest-ranking official at the Vatican, was “the mastermind of the so-called operation eject-Milone.”

Milone was hired in 2015 by Pope Francis to look into the notoriously convoluted and troubled finances of Vatican departments as part of continuing financial reforms begun by Pope Benedict XVI. Only two years later, the Vatican announced that Milone had resigned in the face of accusations of embezzlement and of spying.

As Milone was ushered out, Becciu told reporters that the auditor “went against all rules and was spying on the private lives of his superiors and staff, myself included.” Milone…

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The Vatican’s first auditor general and his deputy, who were appointed in 2015 and fired two years later, are suing the Holy See for 9.3 million euros ($9.25 million) in damages, alleging they were sacked after discovering financial irregularities.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said on Thursday he had no comment on the lawsuit, which was filed last week with the Vatican prosecutor’s office by lawyers for Libero Milone and Ferruccio Panicco.

Milone, 74, a former chairman and CEO of Deloitte in Italy, was appointed by Pope Francis in 2015 as part of an effort to clean up Vatican finances and raise accounting procedures to international standards of accountability and transparency.

He was told to resign in 2017 by Cardinal Archbishop Angelo Becciu, who was then the number two in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, its most important department.

Becciu told Reuters in 2017…

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Libero Milone is suing the Vatican for wrongful dismissal after he said he found cardinals siphoning off funds. The Vatican has hit him with a criminal investigation of its own.

On June 19, 2017, the Vatican gendarmes entered the offices of the church’s chief auditor. They confiscated his phone and iPad, threw his papers on the floor and ordered the fire brigade to smash open a locked metal filing cabinet, from which they extracted a document that they said proved he was abusing resources to spy on top Vatican cardinals.

“Now you have to confess,” they demanded, according to the auditor, Libero Milone. Faced, he said, with being thrown in a Vatican jail, Mr. Milone signed resignation papers.

In the ensuing five years, the Vatican has done much to clean up its financial act. Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, one of the prelates whom Mr. Milone was accused of spying on,…

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An Indian cardinal facing seven criminal charges must appear in court despite his age, health, and Church position, a judge ruled Wednesday.

A judge in the Indian state of Kerala ruled Wednesday that Cardinal George Alencherry, facing seven criminal charges, must attend a court hearing related to alleged irregularities in the sale of Church property.

Kerala High Court Justice Ziyad Rahman A.A. dismissed a petition on Nov. 9 from the leader of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church to be exempted from appearing in person at a magistrates’ court in Ernakulam.

Indian media reported that the 77-year-old cardinal had asked not to appear in person due to his age, health issues, and Church duties.

“Irrespective of his position, he is just an accused before the court of law, who is not entitled to claim any special privilege and is required to face the proceedings just like any other citizen,” the court said,…

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Cardinal George Alencherry has cases pending against him for the sale of Church land in Ernakulam-Angamaly Archdiocese

A top court in the southern Indian state of Kerala has dismissed an appeal by Cardinal George Alencherry seeking exemption from appearing in a district court in cases related to his alleged involvement in the sale of Church lands.

The Nov. 9 decision of the Kerala High Court effectively means the head of Eastern rite Syro-Malabar Church will have to personally appear in a court in Ernakulam district in connection with the criminal cases pending against him.

Cardinal Alencherry had pleaded that the presence of his legal counsel be treated as his presence in court as he is “a senior citizen aged 77 years and the head of the Syro-Malabar Church” with duties like “performing religious ceremonies, rituals, including the ordination of bishops, priests, the consecration of churches” among other things.

…

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Bishop Helmut Dieser of Aachen wants the Catholic Church to take a new perspective on sexuality.

“Same-sex feelings and love are not an aberration, but a variant of human sexuality,” he said in an interview with Deutsche Welle Nov. 8. His remarks were reported by the German Catholic news agency, KNA.

Homosexuals have a right to church support and blessing, said the bishop, who is also the spokesman on abuse issues for the German bishops’ conference. He said the current state of church teaching does not do justice to certain realities when it comes to sexuality: “The thinking is too simple.”

KNA reported the bishop said the church can no longer signal to homosexual people that their feelings are unnatural and that they have to be celibate.

“Homosexuality is — as science shows — not a glitch, not an illness, not an expression of any kind of deficit, and by the way it’s not…

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Paola Ugaz, a prominent Peruvian journalist known for her investigations of a contested Catholic lay group and who has faced several legal complaints over her reporting, met Pope Francis Thursday, describing the encounter as a victory for survivors.

Speaking to Crux, Ugaz called her meeting with the pope “a big message to the survivors of the Sodalicio, who continue without a response, justice, reparation.”

The “Sodalicio” refers to the Sodalitium Christinae Vitae (SCV), founded by Peruvian layman Luis Fernando Figari in the 1970s.

Figari is accused of physical, psychological, and sexual abuses within the community, including against minors. He was sanctioned by the Vatican in 2017 and prohibited from having further contact with members of the group, and he is currently living in exile.

According to Ugaz, meeting the pope “was a very powerful message that one of the investigators could arrive to the highest level of the Catholic Church, because the survivors…

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David Marcotte, an Indianapolis Catholic priest who was suspended in February 2019 amid allegations of sexual abuse involving a minor, agreed to plead guilty to one charge filed against him in March 2022. Marcotte, 32, pleaded guilty to one count of dissemination of matter harmful to minors, a level 6 felony, according to the Hamilton Superior Court plea agreement.

As reported by WRTV News, a judge sentenced suspended Indianapolis priest David Marcotte to a year in home detention on Wednesday, November 9, 2022, as part of a plea agreement that concludes his trial on allegations of sexual abuse of a teenage boy six years ago. Judge Jonathan M. Brown addressed the victim’s distraught parents during a hearing in Hamilton Superior Court as he accepted a plea agreement, which they both implored him to reject.

We first want to applaud and acknowledge the…

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Brazil’s Amazon region is seeing a rising tide of human trafficking, and the Church has been trying to raise awareness among vulnerable communities, but activists say it’s a battle of David against Goliath.

“There is a great connection between deforestation and human trafficking in the Amazon. The people employed in illegal logging and mining are most of the times suffering labor exploitation,” said Graziella Rocha, Project Coordinator at the Brazilian Association for the Defense of Women, Children and Youth (ASBRAD), a non-governmental organization that combats human trafficking.

Often, the organizations involved in the destruction of the rainforest also promote the sexual exploitation of young girls and boys trafficked from other regions, including from indigenous villages.

“There has been a terrible regression in the State system to deal with human trafficking over the past few years. In fact, public policies have been all dismantled – and that is certainly contributing to…

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Several leading Christian apologists have released a statement, declaring that three former top executives of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM)—Sarah (Davis) Phillips, Michael Ramsden, and Abdu Murray—are “disqualified” from ministry because of unrepentant abuse and deceit.

The apologists—William Lane Craig, Sean McDowell, Mike Licona, Debbie Licona, and Paul Copan—said they invested about 1,000 hours investigating “serious injustices and abuses” by Phillips, Ramsden, and Murray against former RZIM employees.

After interviewing 25 people, studying “copious amounts of supporting documentation,” and consulting with experts, the apologists concluded that “abuse and deception” was part of the “organizational culture” at RZIM. The apologists list 18 examples of RZIM’s toxic culture, many stemming from leaders’ attempts to conceal the sex abuse scandal involving the late RZIM founder Ravi Zacharias.

Topping the list is the group’s finding that RZIM’s Senior Leadership Team (SLT) of Phillips, Ramsden, and Murray “intimidated, mistreated, or retaliated against” RZIM…

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The niece of Fr Aloysius Flood, who has been accused of sexually abusing young boys and girls, has apologised on his behalf.

Michelle Flood said she is “so ashamed” to be related to the Blackrock College priest who passed away in 2013. 

However, the 52-year-old told RTÉ Radio One’s Liveline listeners that she too was one of her uncle’s victims, and she even told her father about the abuse, but he didn’t believe her. 

“I am so ashamed that I am in any way related to Fr Flood and I want to apologise to everyone affected that he abused because they never got, those who did or didn’t get an apology they deserve one,” she said. 

“I thought I would bring his name to the grave, I never thought his name would come out.

“The church has protected his name for far too long and even when he died, his funeral was…

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The Vatican said Friday it has decided to launch a preliminary sex abuse investigation into a prominent French cardinal after he admitted to having behaved in a “reprehensible way” with a 14-year-old girl 35 years ago.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said a search was under way to find a lead investigator with the “necessary autonomy, impartiality and experience.”

Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, the retired archbishop of Bordeaux and a former president of the French bishops’ conference, confessed to the abuse in a letter last week while French bishops were meeting at their annual assembly in Lourdes. The revelation further sparked outrage within the French Catholic Church, which has been reeling over revelations of decades of abuse and cover-ups detailed in a groundbreaking report last year.

Marseille prosecutors announced this week they had opened an investigation into Ricard for alleged “aggravated sexual assault” but that “no complaint” had yet been filed against the…

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[Via TDPel Media]

The Supreme Court of Justice of Chile recently upheld the acquittal of Bishop Emeritus Bernardo Bastres Florence of the Diocese of Punta Arenas.

The prelate was prosecuted in October, accused of covering up the alleged kidnapping of Ricardo Harex González, who disappeared in 2001 at the age of 17.

Along with Bishop Bastres, two priests and four members of the police force were investigated, and all were ordered to be held in preventive detention.

Harex, who would now be 38, disappeared the night of Oct. 19, 2001, in Punta Arenas when he was returning from a birthday party.

At that time, several witnesses claimed to have seen at the scene Salesian priest Rimsky Rojas Andrade, who was the principal of the San José high school where the young man was studying, and whom the local press described as someone who regularly picked up drunk students at…

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[From Canadian Press]

A disabled woman alleged she was groomed and sexually abused as a pre-teen in the mid 1970s while attending Our Lady of Fatima Church in Coquitlam.

Identified in her notice of civil claim as L.V. – the plaintiff is claiming damages in a B.C. Supreme Court civil suit filed against the estate of the now-deceased Father Georges Chevrier.

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Vancouver and several other institutions associated with Chevrier’s work history are also named as defendants in the suit.

L.V.’s claim asserts that “As an infant member of the public,” she had the inherent right to live out her childhood and youth unaffected by the unhealthy, unsafe, and immoral interference and public nuisance of predatorial and systematic sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy.”

Chevrier was the parish priest at the Coquitlam church from 1971 to 1977. He died in 2003.

L.V. claims that between 1973…

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In Kenya, one priest said: `I can’t hear your confession. We would have to stop what we do, and I cannot do that’

The late Spiritan priest Fr Patrick Hannan faced abuse allegations from his time while teaching at St Teresa’s secondary school for boys in Nairobi, Kenya. The Limerick native was a brother of the late Fr Gerard Hannan, who was an abuser at Blackrock College in Dublin.

On Tuesday’s Liveline programme “Stephen” (61) spoke of his abuse by Fr Aloysius Flood, Fr Senan Corry and Fr Gerard Hannan at Willow Park and Blackrock College in Dublin in the 1970s. A spokesman for the Spiritans told The Irish Times they had “no dispute with Stephen’s account on Liveline.”

Where Fr Patrick Hannan is concerned, Alex de Figueiredo, a retired teacher living in Vancouver, told The Irish Times in 2012 that he had been a day pupil at the Spiritan/Holy…

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An outspoken critic of the Buffalo Catholic Diocese’s handling of childhood sex abuse cases has been removed without explanation from the committee of unsecured creditors that represents abuse survivors in the diocese’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy case.

Kevin Brun, who confronted diocese leaders in bankruptcy court about pension payments for priests who were credibly accused of abuse and other issues, was dismissed amid the committee’s ongoing mediated settlement negotiations with the diocese and its insurers, parishes and schools.

Brun sued the diocese in 2019, alleging a priest molested him in a Washington, D.C., hotel room when he was 16. He was named to the creditors committee in 2020 with six other people who have childhood sex abuse claims against the diocese.

The committee is responsible for examining the diocese’s assets, liabilities, operations and claims made against it and acting as fiduciary for all abuse survivors in negotiating a settlement.

“The trustee has…

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Attorneys for a survivor of alleged sexual abuse are calling on the Archdiocese of Chicago to add Father George Clements’ name to the list of credibly accused clergy.

The victim claims he was abused by Clements while he served as a priest at Holy Angels Church in the 1970s.

Clements denied the allegations before stepping down and died in 2019. However, in April — the archdiocese reached a settlement with the accuser as well as four others for around $800,000.

Lawyers said that is not enough. They want the archdiocese to place Clements’ name on its list of credibly accused clergy.

“It takes an enormous amount of courage for any victims to follow through with a claim and present their case and to stand up to the evil of clergy sexual abuse,” attorney Mitchell Garabedian said.

There is no admission of wrongdoing on behalf of the archdiocese, according to the…

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The Chicago archdiocese this year paid $800,000 to settle decades-old claims against the longtime Bronzeville pastor and activist, as well as four other priests.

The Archdiocese of Chicago last month doubled the length of a list of priests credibly accused of sex abuse, but lawyers for a man who received a six-figure payout from the church last year say the list is missing the name of Fr. George Clements.

Clements, a civil rights activist who led the congregation of Holy Angels Church in Bronzeville for more than two decades, stepped down from the ministry at the request of Archbishop Blase Cupich in 2019, after he was accused of sexual abuse dating back to the 1970s. Clements, who denied the allegations, died a few months later at age 87.

The archdiocese in February paid out an $800,000 settlement to a man who accused Clements and four…

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