ABUSE TRACKER

NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Times Picayune

August 5, 2019

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

Former New Orleans baseball star Peter Modica walked into a Jefferson Parish courtroom on May 9, 1963, and admitted that he had performed oral sex on two 13-year-old boys several weeks earlier at the Metairie playground he supervised.

After serving five years probation, he somehow landed a job as a head janitor at the all-boys Jesuit High School, where he abused minors again.

A 49-year-old man who says he was 11 when Modica began molesting him on Jesuit’s campus in the early 1980s publicly recounted his ordeal for the first time Monday, nearly 11 months after another man who said he was victimized by Modica went public with the financial settlement he received from the Jesuit order, which runs the school.

Speaking at the office of his attorney, Roger Stetter, who frequently represents people abused by Catholic clergy, the man discussed his intention to file a lawsuit against Jesuit in the coming days.

The man, who asked to not be named because he’s told only a handful of people about his molestation, said the leaders of the 170-year-old, all-boys school owe him damages because they failed to protect him from Modica, who they should have known was a child predator.

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ROME (ITALY)
Associated Press

August 6, 2019

By Nicole Winfield

At first glance, the handwritten postcards and letters look innocuous, even warm, sometimes signed off by “Uncle T.” or “Your uncle, Father Ted.”

But taken in context, the correspondence penned by disgraced ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick to the young men he is accused of sexually abusing or harassing is a window into the way a predator grooms his prey, according to two abuse prevention experts who reviewed it for The Associated Press. Full of flattery, familiarity and boasts about his own power, the letters provide visceral evidence of how a globe-trotting bishop made young, vulnerable men feel special — and then allegedly took advantage of them.

The AP is publishing correspondence McCarrick wrote to three men ahead of the promised release of the Vatican’s own report into who knew what and when about his efforts to bed would-be priests. Access to an archbishop for young men seeking to become priests “is a key piece of the grooming process here,” said one of the experts, Monica Applewhite.

Pope Francis defrocked McCarrick, 89, in February after a church investigation determined he sexually abused minors as well as adult seminarians. The case has created a credibility crisis for the Catholic hierarchy , since McCarrick’s misconduct was reported to some U.S. and Vatican higher-ups, but he nevertheless remained an influential cardinal until his downfall last year.

McCarrick has declined to comment on his case, except to say in an initial statement last year that he was innocent but accepted the Holy See’s decision to remove him from ministry. McCarrick lawyer J. Michael Ritty declined to comment on the correspondence.

The testimony of James Grein, 61, the first child McCarrick baptized, was key to the Vatican case. The son of close family friends, Grein told church investigators that McCarrick began sexually abusing him when he was 11, including during confession and at family weddings and holiday celebrations.

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CINCINNATI (OH)
Cincinnati Enquirer

August 5, 2019

By Dan Horn

Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Binzer will no longer oversee priest personnel matters in Cincinnati because he failed to report accusations that a West Side priest behaved improperly with children.

Binzer’s removal is part of a shake-up announced Monday at the Archdiocese of Cincinnati over its handling of misconduct complaints against the former pastor of St. Ignatius of Loyola in Green Township.

The pastor, Geoff Drew, is now on leave while the church investigates the complaints.

“It’s obvious that in this matter we have handled things very, very poorly,” Archbishop Dennis Schnurr said in a statement Monday. “I’m sorry for the pain that this has caused so many people.”

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MENDOZA (ARGENTINA)
The Associated Press

August 5, 2019

Downcast and sitting in a wheelchair as his historic trial began Monday in Argentina, the Rev. Nicola Corradi didn’t look like the man former students at an institute for the deaf say was the force behind years of “indescribable” torment through alleged sexual abuse.

The 83-year-old Italian priest, along with the Rev. Horacio Corbacho, 59, and Armando Gómez, 63, are being tried for 28 cases of alleged abuse against ex-students at the Antonio Próvolo Institute for Deaf and Hearing Impaired Children in Mendoza province. They face prison sentences of up to 20 years in some cases, up to 50 years in others.

The alleged abuse took place between 2004 and 2016, and the case gained world attention when it emerged that Corradi had faced similar accusations at the Antonio Próvolo institute in Verona, Italy, and Pope Francis had been notified the Italian priest was running a similar center in Argentina.

Corbacho has pleaded not guilty to the sexual abuse charges, while Corradi and Gómez have not entered pleas. The trial is expected to last more than a month.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

August 5, 2019

The one-year anniversary of the scathing grand jury report on six Pennsylvania Catholic dioceses is fast approaching. The report triggered tremendous strides on a horrifying topic that was once never discussed. Since Aug 14, 2018, when Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro released the 884-page findings, more than a dozen states’ attorneys general have since launched their own probes into clergy sex abuse cases and set up dedicated phone numbers for victims. Here in Pennsylvania, more than 1,400 new calls have been received by the Attorney General’s hotline. This speaks volumes to the tremendous amount of effort that is going into exposing the perpetrators and those who shielded them.

The aftermath from the grand jury report also saw a federal criminal probe introduced. Last October, federal prosecutors issued subpoenas to all eight Roman Catholic dioceses and the two Eastern Catholic archeparchies in Pennsylvania, seeking years of internal Church records. Authorities have yet to release any details of that investigation. However, it is fair to say that very few people have not heard of the details contained in the grand jury report.

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AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

August 2, 2019

By Pierra Willix

One of two female students sexually abused by her young female teacher says she is now too scared to enter a classroom.

The teacher, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was today sentenced to seven and a half years in jail for the crime.

The terrified student, who was 17 at the time of the abuse, wrote to the court saying she had put off university studies in fear of being back in a classroom.

In the victim impact statement, the girl said she had been made to believe that what was happening between her and the teacher was “normal”, but she was now struggling to come to terms with the abuse.

“She is largely carrying the burden of what happened to her,” Judge Ronald Birmingham said.

The arts teacher, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was working at a southern suburbs school when she targeted the two girls between 2015 and 2017.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
USA TODAY

August 5, 2019

By Tom Vanden Brook

The Pentagon is targeting serial sex offenders with a new program that tracks confidential information provided by victims.

The Pentagon, which has long struggled with sexual assault in its ranks, is hoping that victims who have been reluctant to file formal complaints will do so if they know their assailant has assaulted another victim.

The Catch Program debuted Monday across the military and seeks to aid troops who file sexual assault complaints known as restricted reports. Such reports do not trigger an official investigation but allow the victim to receive health care, legal advice and advocacy. The program began receiving some reports June 19, according to Jessica Maxwell, a Pentagon spokeswoman. Several victims have sought to enter information into the system about their assailant.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

August 5, 2019

Statement by David Clohessy of SNAP (314-566-9790)

We belong to a support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. Our mission is to protect the vulnerable, heal the wounded, expose the truth and deter future wrongdoing.

We’re here to warn parents, parishioners, police, prosecutors and the public about two potentially dangerous men, both connected to – or formerly connected to – the Catholic church in Maryland and DC.

The first is an admitted predator priest who now lives in Washington DC, was in Baltimore as recently as 2003, and held a church leadership post just a few years ago. He’s supposedly been “permanently removed from ministry,” according to a news report and a New York-based Catholic order known as the Marists. (See 10/19/93 Baltimore Sun)

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CINCINNATI (OH)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

August 5, 2019

For immediate release: August 5, 2019

It is good that church officials in Cincinnati are looking into the actions that a local auxiliary bishop took in response to hearing allegations that a priest “violated child protection rules.” It is critical that all allegations involving children are routed immediately to police, and so it is also a good thing that Catholic leaders are investigating a possible delay in the reporting of those allegations.

At the same time, we are dismayed that this investigation is happening now, six years after Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Binzer was first informed of inappropriate behavior by Fr. Geoff Drew. Church officials pledged in 2002 to treat all allegations of clergy abuse with zero tolerance, yet we constantly see and hear about situations where too much tolerance was given to priests accused of inappropriate contact with children. Vigilance is what keeps children and the vulnerable protected, and church officials in Cincinnati were anything but vigilant in this case.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

August 2, 2019

By Erin Pearson

A former head of music at Geelong Grammar and Order of Australia recipient has been jailed after admitting to sexually abusing a young girl in 2017 and 2018.

Eminent musician and composer Malcolm John will spend his 85th birthday in prison after pleading guilty to three counts of sexual abuse of the eight-year-old girl.

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BURLINGTON (VT)
Burlington Free Press

August 6, 2019

By Elizabeth Murray

The report commissioned by Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington Bishop Christopher to examine personnel files of Vermont priests for reports of child sex abuse will be published before the end of the month, he said.

According to a statement issued by the appointed lay committee, the final draft of the report is expected to be approved this week and will then be provided to the diocese.

Statements by Coyne and the lay committee come amidst criticism from the international nonprofit support group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) for failing, up to this point, to publicly name the priests against whom abuse allegations have been substantiated. Last week, the Catholic Diocese of Manchester published a list of priests accused of sexually abusing children.

David Clohessy, a SNAP volunteer leader from Missouri, spoke to reporters outside the Diocese on Monday afternoon while holding a sign that showed the link to SNAP’s website, SNAPnetwork.org. He accused the Diocese of dragging its heels in releasing the report, thus further endangering children that may be exposed to the priests in the community.

“The main issue is that child molesters rarely stop,” Clohessy said. “So, while Bishop Coyne will puff out his chest and say, ‘None of these men are in active ministry,’ literally as we speak, one of them could be helping out at a summer camp as a soccer coach.

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BUENOS AIRES (ARGENTINA)
Buenos Aires Times

August 5, 2019

By Andres Larrovere

Ezequiel Villalonga spent most of his life at the Provolo Institute in Mendoza, a Catholic school for deaf children. But now the 18-year-old, who is deaf and mute, has lost all faith in the Church.

He and his classmates claim they are victims of the paedophile priests who ran the institution, part of a sweeping scandal that has shaken Argentina, Pope Francis’s home country.

“I think that everything in the Church is fake. Everything they made us read, recite, the way (they said) people should live,” he said in sign language, just before the start of the priests’ trial on Monday.

“I think they lie and that they’re demonic,” he added.

Ezequiel only learned sign language as an adult, because despite the Institute’s specialized mission, the school situated in the Andean foothills didn’t teach him how to speak.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Tablet

August 5, 2019

By Ruth Gledhill

Pope Francis has spoken out about his concerns that Catholic priests are being “attacked and blamed” for crimes they did not commit. And he has warned them not to retreat into “closed and elitist” groups as a result because this “poisons the soul”.

In a letter to Catholic priests worldwide, he says he wants to encourage them as they live lives of service to others “in the trenches”, at a time when there is great public anger about the many clerical sex abuse scandals.

His letter was sent out on 4 August, the feast day of St John Vianney, patron saint of parish priests and Curé of Ars in France from 1818 to 1859
“Like the Curé of Ars, you serve ‘in the trenches’, bearing the burden of the day and the heat, confronting an endless variety of situations in your effort to care for and accompany God’s people. I want to say a word to each of you who, often without fanfare and at personal cost, amid weariness, infirmity and sorrow, carry out your mission of service to God and to your people. Despite the hardships of the journey, you are writing the finest pages of the priestly life,” he writes.

He describes how he shared with the Italian bishops his worry that, in more than a few places, “our priests feel themselves attacked and blamed for crimes they did not commit.”

The Church has become “more attentive” to the cry of victims of abuse. “This has been a time of great suffering in the lives of those who experienced such abuse, but also in the lives of their families and of the entire People of God.

The Church is committed to the reforms needed to encourage “a culture of pastoral care” so that the culture of abuse will have no room to develop, much less continue, he continues.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
WTOP TV

August 5, 2019

By Nick Iannelli

A priest accused of child sex abuse in D.C. is set to go on trial this week.

Urbano Vazquez is charged with inappropriately touching two children at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart in Northwest D.C. between 2015 and 2017, when he was assistant pastor at the parish.

The Archdiocese of Washington has since removed Vazquez from ministry.

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MARYVILLE (MO)
Nodaway County News

August 5, 2019

Concern for transparency and accountability has prompted many dioceses and religious orders to publish information about members within their groups who have had allegations of sexual abuse of minors made against them.

With that goal, Conception Abbey provided the names of eight abbey priests or brothers against whom credible allegations of sexual abuse of a minor have been made in the past 70 years. None of these priests continues in ministry.

“On behalf of the monks of Conception Abbey, I offer my unconditional apology to all victims and their families affected by the evil of clergy sexual abuse,” said Right Reverend Benedict Neenan, OSB, abbot of Conception Abbey.

“It is my prayer and hope that publishing this list will aid in the healing of victims and will serve as a lasting reminder of our responsibility to do everything in our power to protect all minors and vulnerable adults from abuse.”

To compile the list, Conception Abbey leadership retained retired FBI agents to review the personnel files of all abbey priests and brothers serving in the past 70 years.

The following are the names of the priests or brothers that the abbey and/or a diocese in which a priest served has determined that an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor is credible.

• Fr. Vincent Barsch, born, 1919; ordained, 1945; left religious life, 1973; state and timeline, South Dakota, ca. 1955-62; status, deceased in 2010.

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ST. PAUL (MN)
Jeff Anderson & Associates Media

August 5, 2019

Public Release of 1,538 Secret Boy Scout Perversion Files Sought at Hearing Tuesday in Ramsey County District Court

Children Remain at Risk Because Boy Scouts of America Has Kept these Files and Identities of Sexually Abusive Leaders Secret

Lawyers representing a survivor of childhood sexual abuse by a Boy Scout leader are seeking the public release of 1,538 secret Boy Scouts files on leaders with allegations of sexual misconduct against children. Boy Scouts of America (BSA) has refused to make public the perpetrator names and documents contained in these files, known as Perversion Files.

“By keeping the identity and information regarding sexual abusers secret, Boy Scouts of America is putting kids at risk of being sexually abused,” said attorney Jeff Anderson of Jeff Anderson & Associates, who is seeking the release of the 1,538 Perversion Files. “There is a public safety imperative to release the names and information of these offenders immediately. The peril is grave and the time is now.”

Anderson is seeking the release of the 1,538 Perversion Files in the case of John Doe 180, who was sexually abused as a minor by Boy Scout leader Peter Stibal. John Doe 180’s lawsuit in Ramsey County against Stibal, Boy Scouts of America (BSA) and related entities settled in 2014. The 1,538 Perversion Files were produced to John Doe 180 under seal, not to be released publicly. On Tuesday, Anderson will ask Ramsey District Court Judge Leonardo Castro to order the public release of the files.

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
Providence Journal

August 4, 2019

By Brian Amaral

Kevin R. Fisette, who appears on the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence’s list of clergy who’d been “credibly accused” of sexually abusing a minor, visited schools and worked in the presence of children after he got a new job at Goodwill, according to social media postings and school officials.

A man on the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence’s list of clergy who’d been “credibly accused” of sexually abusing a minor visited schools and worked in the presence of children after he got a new job at Goodwill, according to social media postings and school officials.

Kevin R. Fisette, 64, was removed from ministry and resigned from his post as pastor of St. Leo the Great Church in Pawtucket in 2009 after a sexual-abuse allegation from the early 1980s — which the Diocese of Providence deemed credible but that his supporters say was unfounded — surfaced. By October 2010, he had a new job at Goodwill Industries of Rhode Island. From 2014 to 2018, social media posts showed him visiting Goodwill’s donation bins at Rhode Island schools.

Photos show Fisette posing with children at Burrillville Middle School, Leo Savoie Elementary School in Woonsocket, and St. Mary Academy-Bay View, an all-girls independent Catholic school in Riverside, while expressing appreciation to them for collecting donations for Goodwill.

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MENDOZA (ARGENTINA)
Agence France-Presse

August 4, 2019

Ezequiel Villalonga spent most of his life at the Provolo Institute in Mendoza, a Catholic school for deaf children. But now the 18-year-old, who is deaf and mute, has lost all faith in the Church.

He and his classmates claim they are victims of the pedophile priests who ran the institution, part of a sweeping scandal that has shaken Argentina, Pope Francis’s home country.

“I think that everything in the Church is fake. Everything they made us read, recite, the way (they said) people should live,” he said in sign language, just before the start of the priests’ trial on Monday.

“I think they lie and that they’re demonic,” he added.

Ezequiel only learned sign language as an adult, because despite the Institute’s specialized mission, the school situated in the Andean foothills didn’t teach him how to speak

He was only seven months old when his mother realized he was deaf. When Ezequiel was four, she sent him to the Provolo, which was founded in 1995, 621 miles (1,000 kilometers) west of Buenos Aires.

Until Ezequiel was 16, when the scandal finally broke, he spent his days inside the massive building with a green roof. Once inside its red brick walls, he was only allowed to go home on weekends.

“Life there was terrible. We didn’t learn anything, we couldn’t speak to each other because we didn’t know sign language,” he said.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Mother Jones

August 5, 2019

By Madison Pauley

Kristy Johnson was 6 years old in 1969, when her father, an educator employed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, began sexually abusing her at their home in Utah. Her mother discovered what was happening and sought help from their local Mormon bishop. But according to a civil lawsuit Johnson filed against her father last year, the bishop did not contact police, instead handling the abuse “as a matter of sin, only.”

The same thing happened each time the abuse was reported to church leaders, according to Johnson’s complaint. One bishop instructed her father to “clean up his act,” she tells me. Her father was reassigned to different towns. And the church never called the cops, the lawsuit alleges. “They didn’t want the word to get out, because of who my father was,” Johnson says. “Because it would make the church look bad. That was their main concern.”

“If we mandate teachers to report, if we mandate other professions to report, why aren’t we mandating religious leaders to report as well?”

Despite the Mormon Church’s quiet attempts to counsel her father, the violence allegedly continued for about 15 years. According to the lawsuit, the attacks escalated from fondling to beating and rape, stopping only when Johnson left home at age 21 for her church mission. Only later, once she learned her sisters had also been sexually abused, did she decide to go to the police. It was the first time she’s aware of that law enforcement had ever been contacted. Her father, Melvin Kay Johnson, was not arrested; he has since admitted to “inappropriate sexual conduct” with his daughters when they were older and settled the lawsuit against him.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

August 5, 2019

By Jay Tokasz

A year after a bill that would suspend the civil statute of limitations in child sex abuse cases was first introduced in the New York State Legislature, the Buffalo Diocese in 2006 began moving $91 million from its main investment account into the accounts of parishes, schools, cemeteries and other Catholic entities.

Diocese officials at the time characterized the transfers as “an opportunity to increase long term investment income” and “to invest in harmony with the teachings and beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church.”

But it also was an effort to shield money in the event the bill became law and exposed the diocese to the same kinds of clergy sex abuse lawsuits that other dioceses faced, said Monsignor William J. Gallagher, a retired priest who served on the diocese’s finance council and was a longtime pastor of St. John Vianney Church in Orchard Park.

“Instead of having the diocese holding money for everybody because then it’s reachable by lawsuit, this way they created independent outfits to take care of it,” said Gallagher. “When the lawsuits started, they had to make sure that everything was separated.”

The Child Victims Act was signed into law in February, after 14 years of failing to advance to a vote in the State Senate. And now the diocese faces the prospect of dozens — and perhaps hundreds — of lawsuits this month with the opening of a one-year window in which sex abuse cases that were time-barred by statutes of limitations can proceed in civil courts.

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ROME (ITALY)
Catholic News Service

August 5, 2019

Pope Francis acknowledged the shame and frustration felt by priests who are discouraged by the actions of fellow clergy members who betrayed the trust of their flock through sexual abuse and abuse of conscience and power.

In a letter addressed to priests around the world Aug. 4, the pope said that many priests have spoken or written to him expressing “their outrage at what happened” and the doubts and fears the sexual abuse crisis has caused.

“Without denying or dismissing the harm caused by some of our brothers, it would be unfair not to express our gratitude to all those priests who faithfully and generously spend their lives in the service of others,” he said.

Commemorating the 160th anniversary of the death of St. John Mary Vianney, patron saint of parish priests, the pope praised those priests who, like their patron, carry out their mission “often without fanfare and at personal cost, amid weariness, infirmity and sorrow.”

However, he also shared his concern that many priests “feel themselves attacked and blamed for crimes they did not commit.”

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BURLINGTON (VT)
WCAX TV

August 5, 2019

Vermont’s Roman Catholic Diocese plans to release by the end of the month its long-awaited report on priests who have been accused of sexually abusing children.

It comes as a group in Burlington plans to protest Monday over the delay in the report’s release.

The group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests claims that Bishop Christopher Coyne pledged to post the names of the accused priests, but that he “continues to be secretive.”

Organizers say clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will gather Monday at Burlington Diocese headquarters in South Burlington around 2:15 p.m. to disclose names of eight accused Catholic clerics.

Bishop Coyne in a statement Monday said he expects the list by the end of the month.

“While it was hoped that the report of the independent file review committee would have been published earlier this year, the Diocese of Burlington has provided the committee with the time needed to ensure a thorough and accurate accounting of credibly accused priests. As a result, the independent file review committee’s work took longer than originally anticipated. The work is just about completed and the report will be published by the Diocese of Burlington before the end of August,” Coyne said.

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CONCORD (NH)
Concord Monitor

August 3, 2019

By Ray Duckler

David Ouellette was fooled once, as a 15-year-old victim growing up in Rochester.

He wasn’t fooled last Wednesday, though. He read the list, released by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Manchester, the one documenting priests who had been accused of sexually abusing children for decades. He noticed names, parish assignments, punishments handed out.

Ouellette wanted more details, though. He says he won’t get fooled again.

“Personally,” Ouellette told me by phone, “I think of it as a smokescreen and a public-relations campaign.”

Where, for example, was the information about specific crimes committed, and how many victims stepped forward with accusations, and why were many of these suspected predators merely shifted from church to church in a cover-up that impacted the entire world? Most importantly, where are they now?

“It really doesn’t tell you anything,” Ouellette said, referring to the list.

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LITTLE ROCK (AR)
Bilgrimage blog

August 2, 2019

By William Lindsey

This is the third and final installment of an essay by Ruth Krall entitled “Historical Meandering: Ideologies of Abuse and Exclusion.” The previous two parts of this essay have appeared here and here. This essay is one in a series of essays Ruth is publishing on Bilgrimage under the series title “Recapitulation: Affinity Sexual Violence in a Religious Voice.” The first of the two links above will give you links to each previous essay. In this essay series, Ruth is focusing on the endemic nature of religious and spiritual leader sexual abuse of followers.

The current essay deals with the importance of an historical framework for understanding and dealing with this endemic sexual abuse in religious institutions. Vis-à-vis the Christian churches, Ruth proposes that “if we are to seek to understand or unearth the fundamental pilings (i.e., the deep and pervasive foundations) of this abuse scandal inside Christendom, we must first learn how to work with each other” — to understand the various faith languages of different Christian traditions and the prejudices borne within each stream of Christianity, and to talk together coherently about these faith languages and prejudices as we seek a solution to problem endemic to all of our faith traditions.

Please note that the endnotes begin with xxxvii because this essay is a continuation of an essay previously published in two installments.

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LAPLATA (ARGENTINA)
AFP

August 3, 2019

By Carlos Reyes with Magalí Cervantes

Ezequiel Villalonga spent most of his life at the Provolo Institute in Mendoza, a Catholic school for deaf children. But now the 18-year-old, who is deaf and mute, has lost all faith in the Church.

He and his classmates claim they are victims of the pedophile priests who ran the institution, part of a sweeping scandal that has shaken Argentina, Pope Francis’s home country.

“I think that everything in the Church is fake. Everything they made us read, recite, the way (they said) people should live,” he said in sign language, just before the start of the priests’ trial on Monday.

“I think they lie and that they’re demonic,” he added.

Ezequiel only learned sign language as an adult, because despite the Institute’s specialized mission, the school situated in the Andean foothills didn’t teach him how to speak.

He was only seven months old when his mother realized he was deaf. When Ezequiel was four, she sent him to the Provolo, which was founded in 1995, 621 miles (1,000 kilometers) west of Buenos Aires.

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

CINCINNATI (OH)
WHIO TV 7

August 3, 2019

Two Roman Catholic priests on administrative leave, which church officials say is the “strongest action” a local bishop can take on his own against a priest, have ties to the Miami Valley.

The Archdiocese of Cincinnati, which serves southwest Ohio, including the greater Cincinnati and Dayton regions, on July 23 suspended the Rev. Geoffrey Drew, and has suspended the Rev. Clarence Heis for the second time.

Drew, who previously served at St. Rita of Cascia Parish in Dayton and St. Luke the Evangelist Church in Beavercreek, was placed on leave from his post at St. Ignatius of Loyola in Green Twp., Hamilton County. He is accused of behavior that violates the “decree on child protection,” according to a letter written by Archbishop Dennis Schnurr, our media partner WCPO-TV in Cincinnati reported.

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UNITED STATES
Patheos

August 2, 2019

By Deacon Greg Kandra

This is an important compendium that every Catholic needs to read and share.

From Psychology Today:

As we approach the year anniversary of the recent uptick in media attention due to the release of the Pennsylvania grand jury report (as well as the now-former Cardinal McCarrick abuse allegations), let’s review the top ten myths about clerical abuse in the Catholic Church.

Myth 1: Sexual abuse is more common among Catholic priests than other groups of men.

About 4 percent of Catholic clerics had credible or substantiated accusations of child sexual abuse of minors (both prepubescent children and postpubescent teens) during the last half of the 20th century (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 2004, 2011). Research data, although from limited small scale studies, finds the prevalence of clerical abuse among non-Catholic religious communities consistent with the Catholics. If you review insurance claims against Church communities for sexual victimization perpetrated by their clerics, you’ll find that that there is no difference between Catholic and non-Catholic groups (Zech, 2011).

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ROCHESTER (MN)
Fox 47

August 2, 2019

An update on the seven lawsuits filed recently in Olmsted County related to admitted abuser Richard Hokanson:

Each of the seven victims is seeking in excess of $50,000 from the St. Pius X Catholic Church in Rochester, as well as the Gamehaven Council and The Boy Scouts of America.

Hokanson was a scout leader of a troop based at the St. Pius X Catholic Church. He was employed by each of the organizations. The plaintiffs say they were sexually abused by Hokanson between 1969 and 1981.

The defendants wrote in court documents that “there is little doubt that estimated damages could exceed $100,000 per victim.”

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TULSA (OK)
KWGS NEWS

August 2, 2019

On July 5, 2019, the Diocese of Tulsa & Eastern Oklahoma announced that Father Joe Townsend, a priest of the Diocese, had been placed on administrative leave due to a non-frivolous allegation of sexual misconduct with a minor. After several weeks, the still ongoing third-party investigation has provided the Diocese with a better understanding of the allegation lodged against Father Townsend and what needs to be done to proceed with the investigation.

“As such, in fulfillment of the Diocese’s commitment to transparency and our desire to determine the merits of the allegation, we wish to announce that the allegation of misconduct against Father Townsend stems from when he served as an Associate Pastor at St. Pius X Catholic Church from June 1988 to June 199”, the Diocese said in a news release.

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NEW YORK
WAMC

August 3, 2019

By Karen DeWitt

Beginning on August 14, New Yorkers who are survivors of childhood sexual abuse will have a one-year window of opportunity to file civil suits against their abusers, under the terms of the Child Victims Act passed by the legislature earlier this year. Thousands of cases are expected to be filed, with payouts potentially in the millions.

Gordon Smith was 14-years-old when he says he was first abused by two priests at a St. Patrick’s Catholic Church and school in Albany in the early 1960s.

He was filling in as a janitor for his father, who was sick. He says the abuse continued, on a weekly basis, for three years.

“It was about as horrific as it could get,” said Smith, in an interview with public radio and TV. “We’re talking about molestation, we’re talking about sodomization, we’re talking about oral sex.”

One of the priests that Smith is accusing, Father Donald Starks, appears on a list kept by the Albany Roman Catholic Diocese of priests with “credible” accusations against them. Starks died in 1989.

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TULSA (OK)
Tulsa World

August 2, 2019

A Tulsa Catholic diocese investigation on Friday determined that sexual misconduct allegations against a local priest date back more than two decades.

The allegations of misconduct against Father Joe Townsend, a priest of the Diocese of Tulsa and Eastern Oklahoma, stem from his time as an associate pastor at St. Pius X Catholic Church in Tulsa from 1988 to 1991, according to a news release. Townsend was ordained in May 1988.

Townsend was placed on administrative leave in early July after the “non-frivolous allegation of sexual misconduct with a minor” was made, the news release said. Church officials said they have engaged a “third-party investigation” into the allegation.

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FAIRFAX (VA)
Courtroom News Service

August 2, 2019

By Joan Hennessy

As the Catholic Church digs itself out of a global sex abuse scandal, some priests are heading to court to contend they were wrongfully accused of misconduct and defamed when the church published their names on lists of “credibly accused” clergy members.

Seventeen years have passed since The Boston Globe documented widespread abuse by Catholic clergy. In the years that followed, victims all over the country sued the church and 19 dioceses and religious orders filed for bankruptcy protection, according to the National Catholic Reporter.

The church’s legal troubles reignited a year ago when a Pennsylvania grand jury report detailed abuse by priests in six state dioceses. The same month, a Pennsylvania bishop released a list of clergy accused of abuse. Other dioceses have done the same.

In February, when the Richmond diocese published its list of clergy members accused of sexual misconduct, Oliver Joseph Smalls, Jr.’s name was on it.

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TULSA (OK)
NewsOn6.com

August 2, 2019

The Diocese of Tulsa and Eastern Oklahoma said they are asking anyone with knowledge of possible sexual misconduct on the part of a Tulsa priest to come forward. Father Joe Townsend continues to be on administrative leave due to allegations of sexual misconduct with a minor.

A news release from the Diocese states that an ongoing, third-party investigation has provided them with a “better understanding” of the allegation made against Father Townsend, prompting the call for people to come forward. They can contact law enforcement or call the Pastoral Hotline at 918-307-4970.

The allegation against Father Townsend involves St. Pius X Church and School community almost 30 years ago, according to Father Richard Bradley, Pastor of St. Pius X Catholic Church.

“We understand the need to fully investigate the allegation in order to bring to light any abuse that may have occurred, and we pledge our support of the investigative process. At the same time, we affirm that there are many students from that era as well as their parents, who remember Father Joe fondly and favorably. We pray for a peaceful and speedy resolution to this matter,” he said in a news release.

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WARSAW (POLAND)
Reuters via Today Online

August 2, 2019

Poland’s Catholic Church has doubled down on the anti-gay rhetoric that has become the nationalist ruling party’s dominant theme in recent weeks, drawing a rebuke from liberal politicians who compared an archbishop’s remarks to incitement to genocide.

In a sermon given to mark the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw uprising by Polish resistance fighters against Nazi occupation, the archbishop of Krakow, Marek Jedraszewski, described Poland as under siege from a “rainbow plague” of gay rights campaigners he compared to Poland’s former Communist rulers.

“Our land is no longer affected by the red plague, which does not mean that there is no new one that wants to control our souls, hearts and minds,” he told a mass in the medieval St. Mary’s Basilica, one of the most important churches for Poles.

“Not Marxist, Bolshevik, but born of the same spirit, neo-Marxist. Not red, but rainbow,” he was quoted as saying by private TVN24 broadcaster.

Robert Biedron, an openly gay politician from the progressive Wiosna party, denounced the sermon.

“We already had such people, politicians who used similar words and that lead to huge slaughters, genocide. This is an incitement to crime, to hatred,” he told news website wirtualnapolska.pl.
Read more at https://www.todayonline.com/world/liberals-fear-unrest-poland-catholic-church-doubles-down-anti-gay-rhetoric

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
GoLocalProv.com

August 3, 2019

By Carlene Casciano-McCann

Sex abuse victims stories need to be told, says Carlene Casciano-McCann

With the recent high-profile stories exposing sexual abuse and exploitation of children, many of us are incensed that this type of exploitation continues unabated.

We are outraged at perpetrators of sexual abuse, yet how often do we really think about the victims – the loss of innocence, trust and control over their own bodies; the burden of potential lifelong mental health issues. With the recent disclosure of credibly accused priests in the Catholic Diocese and Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest for trafficking children, we have evidence of abuses that have occurred in secrecy, with others being complicit in covering up and/or engaging in the illicit activity.

The stories sensationalize the perpetrator and do not tell the full story in order to protect the victim’s identity and privacy. Yet the crisis is revealed in the victim’s story which is what needs be told. Infants and toddlers are sexually molested – children irreparably harmed before they even have words to describe the assault. Pre-teen children and teenagers are sexually abused and the emotional trauma can make it difficult to find the words to tell others. Children carry the shame of sexual abuse despite it being the behavior of an adult perpetrator.

Sexual abuse is a difficult crime to prosecute. There is rarely physical evidence of an assault.

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NOLA.COM
New Orleans (LA)

August 3, 2019

By Ramon Antonio Vargas and Jerry DiColo

Steve Gegenheimer had struggled for decades to process what happened to him — in a rectory, in a parked car, in the woods and in hotels in Mississippi — over a two-year period in the 1970s, when he was a teenage altar boy on the West Bank.

In November, the priest he says sexually abused him decades ago was publicly named as a suspected child molester by New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond. Days later, Gegenheimer finally called a lawyer.

Over the next five months, at the archdiocese’s request, Gegenheimer wrote out a narrative explaining the abuse. He filled out the rest of a detailed questionnaire. He met with diocesan attorneys over several hours one emotionally draining day.

And after signing settlement documents that resulted in an undisclosed payment, he received a letter inviting him to speak and pray with the archbishop himself.

Gegenheimer had not taken up Aymond on his offer when he spoke about the experience this summer, but he said the invitation and payment — taken together — helped him to finally move past his abuse.

“You … carry a secret for 30, 40 years,” said Gegenheimer, who explained he later became a priest but left the clergy after entering into a relationship with a woman whom he ultimately married. “I wanted it to be over.”

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PORTLAND (OR)
OPB

August 2, 2019

By Conrad Wilson

The Archdiocese of Portland has agreed to settle eight claims of sexual abuse involving former North Bend priest Rev. Pius Brazauskas.

Together the settlements add up to nearly $4 million.

The alleged abuse stems from about 1975 to 1985 involving boys who at the time of the abuse were between 5 and 16 years old. At the time, Brazauskas was in his 70s.

Brazauskas died on March 1, 1990. He was 84 years old.

A January 2018 lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon identified three victims as J.B., S.R. and S.F. They were the first sexual abuse allegations against Brazauskas.

After the lawsuit was filed, five more men came forward, said Peter Janci, attorney for the victims.

“We think there are a lot of other victims out there,” Janci said. “He was somebody who had an insatiable proclivity to abuse kids. In my career, representing hundreds of victims of child sexual abuse I don’t usually see individuals who develop that inclination in their 70s.”

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

August 3, 2019

By Claire Giangravè

An Italian priest known for involvement in his community was placed under house arrest by local authorities on Wednesday, on charges of allegedly drugging and sexually abusing adult members of his parish.

“The news of the arrest of Father Stefano Segalini and the precautionary measures applied by the judiciary pain us deeply,” said Father Luigi Chiesa, Vicar General of the Diocese of Piacenza-Bobbio in northern Italy where the events allegedly took place, in an August 1 statement.

“The pain of those who declare themselves to be victims of abuse, as well as the pain of he who finds himself accused of such a great crime, requires first of all our closeness and prayer,” Chiesa said.

Segalini led the church of San Giuseppe Operaio, the most frequented parish in the northern Italian town of Piacenza, until last May when he suddenly retired. An arrest warrant issued by a judge after preliminary investigations claims that Segalini allegedly abused adults not in the parish, but during spiritual retreats and evening activities.

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TULSA (OK)
Associated Press via KRMG Radio

August 3, 2019

[Tulsa diocese’s statement about Joe Townsend is posted on the diocesan Facebook page, linked here.]

The Diocese of Tulsa and Eastern Oklahoma says the alleged sexual misconduct involving a minor by a priest started shortly after he was ordained.

The diocese said in a statement Friday that “a non-frivolous allegation of sexual misconduct with a minor” against Father Joe Townsend date to his time as associate pastor at St. Pius X Catholic Church in Tulsa from June 1988 to June 1991. The statement says Townsend denies the allegation and is cooperating with an investigation.

The diocese website says Townsend was ordained May 27, 1988.

The diocese announced July 5 that Townsend had been placed on administrative leave.

The diocese last year identified two other priests who were facing credible accusations of abusing minors. Both men are no longer associated with the Tulsa diocese.

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MODESTO (CA)
Modesto Bee

August 1, 2019

By Erin Tracy

Modesto’s CrossPoint Community Church settled a lawsuit with a woman who said the church covered up the sexual abuse of her and others by pastors for years.

CrossPoint, formerly First Baptist Church, must pay Jennifer Roach $267,500 and was released of any liability or wrongdoing as part of the settlement.

“Sexual abuse is soul-crushing, and its impact is far reaching,” Roach said in an email. “Victims often end up delaying or abandoning their education, which impacts their ability to earn throughout their lifetime. Financial settlements don’t change the fact that the abuse happened, but they can restore some of what was stolen from the victim.”

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

August 2, 2019

As recently as last year a former Catholic deacon defrocked after allegations of child sexual abuse had leadership roles in a Louisiana Catholic group. Even worse, he had access to children for decades despite his history. Now, church officials must take responsibility for this troubling revelation.

This is just the latest example of how Catholic leadership continues to talk a big game publicly, but privately does not do all they can to ensure accused perpetrators are kept from the vulnerable. We call on New Orleans law enforcement officials to investigate this situation to see if any crimes were committed, and we call on local parishioners to demand answers and transparency from their church officials.

This is one reason why we in SNAP clamor for lists of accused clerics – posted permanently and prominently on diocesan websites — so it will be easier for parishioners, staff, and the public to identify perpetrators who keep gravitating towards children. Had New Orleans church officials revealed such a list years and years ago – instead of in 2018 – it is likely that George Brignac never would have had the access to children that he enjoyed for years.

Now that this information has been exposed, we believe that Archbishop Greg Aymond should investigate and then disclose publicly how this was allowed to happen, and finally take action against those who put children in harm’s way. That is the only way such incomprehensible behavior will be stopped.

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SAN BERNARDINO (CA)
San Bernardino Sun

August 1, 2019

By Joe Nelson

Less than a year after a former youth pastor at Wildomar’s Faith Baptist Church was accused of molesting three teenage girls, another former staff member has been arrested for allegedly sexually abusing a student at the church’s school nearly 30 years ago.

Laverne Paul Fox, the former principal at Faith Baptist Academy and former bus director for the church, was arrested Monday in Erie, Pennsylvania, and extradited to California, where he was held at the Robert Presley Detention Center in Riverside on $120,000 bail.

Laverne Paul Fox, a former principal at Faith Baptist Academy in Wildomar and former bus director at the affiliated Faith Baptist Church, was arrested Monday in Erie, PA. after begin charged with three felony counts of child molestation involving a student at the school in 1990.

Fox, 60, posted bail Tuesday and is scheduled for arraignment Oct. 2 at the Southwest Justice Center in Murrieta, according to online booking records.

Riverside County prosecutors charged Fox on June 21 with three felony counts of child molestation involving a girl under the age of 18. The alleged sexual abuse occurred about July 1990, according to the criminal complaint.

“I feel like I’m finally getting justice 27 years late,” said Fox’s alleged victim, Kathy Durbin, on Wednesday. She said she reported the alleged abuse to church pastor Bruce Goddard in 1992, but he never reported it to police.

While the Southern California News Group does not typically disclose the names of victims of sexual abuse, Durbin has allowed her name to be published.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Agency

August 2, 2019

By Ed Condon

This story is the second part of a two-part series about how one victim of sexual abuse found healing. The first part was published Aug. 1.

When Michael* was 15 years old, he was abused by a priest at his Catholic high school. He told CNA recently about the suffering he endured, and about how, seven years after his abuse, he confided in another priest – only to have his faith in God and the Church shattered again.

For nearly three decades, Michael struggled with the pain and trauma of his abuse. He spent years, and tens of thousands of dollars, in therapy. He was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He needed help.

The therapy was a beginning. But Michael told CNA he found the most healing in the Church and faith that his abusers had driven him from. Healing did not come not easily.

Michael says he wants to see real reform in the Church, and to ensure no one suffers like he did. But, he urges caution against what he calls “predatory advocacy groups” and an “industry that trolls for victims.”

Michael spoke to CNA about his experiences with such groups.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

August 1, 2019

By Peter Smith

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh has received formal notice of more than 400 people who either have filed or may file claims for financial compensation for alleged sexual abuse by its clergy.

And early returns are in for claims that have already been filed. The diocese has so far paid about $4 million in total to 26 victims, or roughly $150,000 per person, according to the fund’s administrators.

Wednesday was the deadline for people who hadn’t previously reported abuse to the diocese to register formally with the Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program, which the diocese launched in the wake of a 2018 grand jury report on sexual abuse by priests in the diocese over the past seven decades.

By midnight Wednesday, some 372 registrations had been filed, said Camille Biros, who is administering the fund along with Washington, D.C., attorney Kenneth Feinberg.

The 372 registrations, however, haven’t been reviewed yet for initial eligibility. They include some duplicate registrations, and they may also include allegations not covered by the compensation program, such as abuse by lay teachers or religious-order priests. The program only covers abuse by clergy (priests or deacons) who were ordained by the diocese.

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CINCINNATI (OH)
WCPO 9onyourside

August 2, 2019

By Craig Cheatham

The Archdiocese of Cincinnati has placed two priests on administrative leave, which church officials say is the “strongest action” a local bishop can take on his own against a priest.

Parents learned this week of Rev. Geoffrey Drew’s suspension from St. Ignatius School in Green Township, but the WCPO I-Team discovered the existence of a second priest that the Archdiocese had placed on administrative leave by searching the ‘Protecting Our Children’ page on the Archdiocese’s website.

The Archdiocese declined to answer WCPO’s questions about the allegations against Father Clarence Heis. The Archdiocese website only refers to a “pending investigation” of Heis. It also does not indicate when the Archdiocese placed Heis on administrative leave.

“Anytime they go to the extraordinary action of suspending or removing a priest – or anybody in their employment – it means there’s a serious concern,” said Dan Frondorf, the leader of the Cincinnati chapter of the Survivor’s Network of those Abused by Priests, also known as SNAP.

This is the second time the Archdiocese has suspended Father Heis.

It also placed him on leave in 2006 after Heis pleaded no contest to disorderly conduct and resisting. A police officer arrested Heis in 2005 for allegedly having sex with two adult men in a public park in Fairborn, near Dayton. The Archdiocese reinstated Heis in 2009, according to The Catholic Telegraph, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. Since his reinstatement, Heis has worked out of the main office of the Archdiocese, according to his LinkedIn account and issues of the Official Catholic Directory.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

August 2, 2019

By Michael J. Iafrate

Two months after the U.S. Catholic Church was hit by a major scandal surrounding a West Virginia bishop, church officials are telling us it’s time to move on. But for many of us Catholics in West Virginia, that message feels like a punch in the gut. Serious reasons remain for Catholics everywhere to pause and demand much more transparency surrounding the case of former bishop Michael Bransfield.

Those reasons have to do with who oversaw the production of the investigative report on Bransfield, what the report said about allegations of child sexual abuse, and the fact that the document has never been made public.

Bransfield retired in September just as U.S. church officials announced an investigation into alleged sexual and financial misconduct during his tenure. In June, we learned details of those allegations when The Washington Post reported on the contents of the secret church report: massive financial mismanagement and lavish spending of church money, officials’ ignoring of Bransfield’s sexual misconduct, and the fact that top leaders in the United States and Rome had received cash gifts from Bransfield, including William Lori, the archbishop who oversaw the probe.

Two weeks ago, the Vatican handed down penalties suspending Bransfield from public ministry and immediately named a new bishop, Mark Brennan. But for many Catholics in West Virginia, it’s not time to move on. There are a few reasons for that.

Church officials in West Virginia and Baltimore have mischaracterized a key part of their own report. Throughout the investigation, when Lori and diocesan officials would discuss the Bransfield allegations, they generally used the term “sexual harassment” of priests and seminarians. However, The Post’s coverage cites the report as describing something that appears to go beyond harassment. It quotes a seminarian who says Bransfield pulled the young man against him and ran his hands over the seminarian’s genitals.

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
Providence Journal

July 30, 2019

By Katherine Gregg

A freedom-of-information coalition in Rhode Island is raising red flags over the “blanket” secrecy Attorney General Peter Neronha promised the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence in a “memorandum of understanding” aimed at gaining access to diocesan records dating back to 1950 of alleged child sex abuse by clergy.

“Troubling precedent,″ wrote Linda Lotridge Levin, the retired University of Rhode Island journalism professor who is president of Access/RI, a coalition that counts, among its board members, representatives of the Rhode Island affiliate of the ACLU, Common Cause Rhode Island, the League of Women Voters of Rhode Island and the New England First Amendment Coalition.

Levin acknowledged, in her Monday letter to Neronha, that his “goal in entering [into] this MOU, as opposed to convening a grand jury, is to allow you to be more transparent with the public about your findings by eschewing the broad secrecy requirements that would enshroud grand jury proceedings.”

Unable to convince Rhode Island lawmakers to give a grand jury here the power a Pennsylvania grand jury had when it exposed decades of clergy abuse and coverups, Neronha went this route: voluntary disclosure by the diocese.

The review, in conjunction with the Rhode Island State Police, is meant to identify any prosecutable cases and make sure that no credibly accused clergy members are in active ministry, according to an earlier statement from the attorney general’s office.

“We greatly appreciate that and applaud your goal,” Levin wrote. “At the same time, we fear language in the MOU may establish a precedent that is itself problematic.”

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Fox 43 News

August 1, 2019

By Jack Eble

One year ago Thursday, Bishop Ronald Gainer and the Diocese of Harrisburg revealed decades of sexual abuse allegations against priests, deacons and seminarians.

Bishop Gainer apologized to survivors, “the Catholic faithful,” and “the general public” for the abuse and the inaction by past Diocese leadership.

The list includes more than 70 names of clergymen, nearly 30 more than its counterpart in the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report that was released roughly two weeks after the Diocese of Harrisburg released its list.

Mike Barley, a spokesperson for the Diocese of Harrisburg, said they believe their decision came at the right time after compiling all of the known names accused, trying to show transparency as the Grand Jury Report loomed.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The Christian Century

August 2, 2019

By Peter W. Marty

There’s probably never been a time when emotionally insecure people could thrive in ordained ministry. But the current moment may be more challenging than ever given dwindling public esteem for the profession. Not since Gallup began charting the reputation of occupations in 1977 has respect for clergy been so low.

New polls by Gallup and by the Associated Press-NORC Center reveal that only 36 percent of Americans express high regard for the honesty and ethical standards of ministers. Although frequent churchgoers still hold clergy in high regard, only 52 percent of those who attend church on a monthly basis consider clergy to be trustworthy.

Pastors may not yet feel as irrelevant as travel agents, parking lot attendants, or necktie sales clerks, but the influence of clergy has shrunk notably in the last two decades. Only 13 percent of regular churchgoers regularly seek advice from their clergy on ethical dilemmas or big decisions. Eighty-eight percent of people who infrequently attend church “rarely” or “never” seek clergy input.

Scandals that have rocked the church for decades no doubt contribute significantly to the drop in confidence in clergy. Clergy sexual abuse problems persist, especially in traditions with male-dominated leadership that resist structural change. Conservative evangelicals have unapologetically shaped faith claims around party politics, attracting many critics in the process. Unscrupulous greed on the part of prosperity gospel preachers has further harmed the reputation of faith communities.

Nobody wants to be irrelevant. Yet how much can pastors really do to reverse the increasing lack of interest in organized religion and religious practice that shapes attitudes toward clergy? Their position can seem like that of a piano salesman trying to convince people to revive the household sing-alongs that animated family life several generations ago. It’s an uphill slog.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

Augusts 2, 2019

By Rachel L. Swarns

Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School, one of the oldest Roman Catholic girls’ schools in the nation, has long celebrated the vision and generosity of its founders: a determined band of Catholic nuns who championed free education for the poor in the early 1800s.

The sisters, who established an elite academy in Washington, D.C., also ran “a Saturday school, free to any young girl who wished to learn — including slaves, at a time when public schools were almost nonexistent and teaching slaves to read was illegal,” according to an official history posted for several years on the school’s website.

But when a newly hired school archivist and historian started digging in the convent’s records a few years ago, she found no evidence that the nuns had taught enslaved children to read or write. Instead, she found records that documented a darker side of the order’s history.

The Georgetown Visitation sisters owned at least 107 enslaved men, women and children, the records show. And they sold dozens of those people to pay debts and to help finance the expansion of their school and the construction of a new chapel.

“Nothing else to do than to dispose of the family of Negroes,’’ Mother Agnes Brent, the convent’s superior, wrote in 1821 as she approved the sale of a couple and their two young children. The enslaved woman was just days away from giving birth to her third child.

Nuns disposing of black families? I have been poring over 19th-century church records for several years now and such casual cruelty from leaders of the faith still takes my breath away. I am a black journalist and a black Catholic. Yet I grew up knowing nothing about the nuns who bought and sold human beings.

For generations, enslaved people have been largely left out of the origin story traditionally told about the Catholic Church. My reporting on Georgetown University, which profited from the sale of more than 200 slaves, has helped to draw attention in recent years to universities and their ties to slavery. But slavery also helped to fuel the growth of many contemporary institutions, including some churches and religious organizations.

Historians say that nearly all of the orders of Catholic sisters established by the late 1820s owned slaves.

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LAKE CHARLES (LA)
KPLC TV

August 1, 2019

By Theresa Schmidt

Three months ago, the Diocese of Lake Charles released a list of credibly accused clergy which included the names of eleven priests, eight of whom are dead.

But some complain the list is far from transparent and have asked the Louisiana attorney general to investigate.

In 2016, ex-priest Mark Broussard was convicted of sexual offenses against children and is serving two life sentences plus fifty years. When the Diocese released its list of credibly accused priests, it said allegations regarding Broussard were received by the Diocese in 1994 and 2009. Yet some say the diocese knew sooner.

Richard Windmann, himself a victim, is the Louisiana leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, also called SNAP.

They advocate for full disclosure statewide.

“These priests, that have been entrusted with the church, they don’t own the church. The administrators, the governance of the church, it’s the people in the pews that are the church. And when they leave there’s not going to be a church. And it won’t be because of the actions of victims and survivors. It will be because of the actions of priests and archbishops and bishops who cover it up,” said Windmann.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Associated Press

August 2, 2019

By Jim Mustian and Kevin McGill

A former Roman Catholic deacon barred from the ministry in New Orleans because of sexual abuse allegations maintained access to schoolchildren and held leadership roles as recently as last year in the Knights of Columbus, despite promising three decades ago to avoid young boys “for the good of the Church,” according to records obtained by The Associated Press.

George Brignac, 84, was defrocked as a deacon in 1988 after a 7-year-old boy accused him of fondling him at a Christmas party. That allegation came on top of previous claims that he had abused other boys, including one that led to his acquittal in 1978 on three counts of indecent behavior with a juvenile. The Archdiocese of New Orleans settled several lawsuits against Brignac, including one for more than $500,000.

Still, he remained involved in the church as a lay minister who read the gospel during Mass until last year, when news reports about his past prompted officials to remove him.

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ROME (ITALY)
Catholic News Service

August 2, 2019

While deceased Jesuit Father Renato Poblete Barth was known publicly as a champion of the poor in Chile, an internal investigation funded by the Jesuits revealed that the famed clergyman abused more than a dozen women over a span of nearly 50 years.

The results of the six-month independent investigation, which were announced July 30 by Jesuit Father Cristian del Campo, provincial superior of Chile, concluded that “the abuses of power, of conscience, sexual and other crimes committed by Renato Poblete Barth were sustained by a sort of double life, protected by his public image of a good person.”

“The abuse, transversely, was carried out from a position of power that gave him that image, his enormous network of contacts, and the economic power that he had by autonomously handling important sums of money during many years,” the report said.

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INVERELL (AUSTRALIA)
Inverell Times

August 1, 2019

By Andrew Thomson
.
The Catholic church has demanded a clergy sex abuse victim, who was raped as a nine-year-old in a confessional box, provide a copy of the church’s own rules in Latin.

A south-west victim of notorious pedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale is pursuing civil damages through the Victorian Supreme Court from Bishop of Ballarat Paul Bird, on behalf of the diocese.

In May, Supreme Court Justice Michael McDonald asked the church’s legal team for an explanation in relation to the church denying knowledge of Ridsdale’s pedophile activities with a view to determining if costs should be awarded to the victim.

That led to the church sacking its legal team and calling in the lawyers who acted for now jailed Arch Bishop George Pell.

The victim’s lawyers have been asking the church hand over archive documents.

Under 1917 Canon Law which applied at the time of the offending, the church was required to keep an archive of all important documents, including sex assault allegations against clergy members, and a record of who had seen the documents and what documents had been destroyed.

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LANCSASTER (ENGLAND)
Lancaster Live

August 1, 2019

By Paul Britton and Dominic Moffitt

Two men who were sexually abused by a priest in Lancashire have received praise from The NSPCC.

The charity called their actions ‘brave’ after the two men, who were sexually abused as teenagers by a paedophile priest, gave evidence that led to his conviction – and an 18-year prison sentence.

One stood up in court twice to detail his suffering at the hands of Catholic priest Michael Higginbottom in separate trials.

The charity said their ‘courageous actions’ in reporting the abuse and recalling their experiences to a jury showed ‘the passage of time is no protection for abusers’.

Higginbottom, 76, was found guilty of five counts of serious sexual assault and seven counts of indecent assault following a re-trial.

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BRISBANE (AUSTRALIA)
The Catholic Leader

August 2, 2019

By Mark Bowling

CELIBACY for priests, the role of women, and the inclusion of divorced and remarried Catholics were among “strongly discussed” topics contained in the Plenary Council 2020’s latest report.

The final report of the council’s Listening and Dialogue phase captures the voice of more than 222,000 Australians and provides insights into 17,457 individual and group submissions.

Plenary council president Perth Archbishop Timothy Costelloe said the 314-page document was the result of the listening process that had produced “an extraordinary treasure of ideas and proposals which represents the heartfelt response of many people”.

“The great challenge ahead of us now is to ‘catch’ the voice of the Holy Spirit within the passionate, hopeful but sometimes contradictory voices of God’s people.”

Among the wide-ranging list of submissions were those calling for ways to improve the sacraments to increase Church attendance and “allow the fullness of a Catholic life to flourish”, and addressing the clerical child sex abuse scandal.

The structure of Church life “drew a great deal of attention” around leadership and governance, the need for greater listening between leadership and the laity, and the need to “modernise Church teachings to bring them in line with Australian society in t

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PORTSMOUTH (ENGLAND)
Portsmouth News

August 2, 2019

A PRIEST has been struck off for life for having a sexual relationship with a married parishioner who turned to him for help.

Former Emsworth-with-Warblington parish rector Simon Sayers admitted ‘betraying his calling’ in a letter to a private tribunal that eventually found him guilty of inappropriate conduct this week.

It comes after he was previously banned from his ministry for five years in 2016 over two sexual incidents with a 16-year-old school girl.

The tribunal, which Mr Sayers did not attend, was told he began a sexual relationship with the parishwoman when she approached him for pastoral support.

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DENVER (CO)
National Catholic Register

August 1, 2019

By Msgr. Andrew Baker and Fr. Carter Griffin

Many Catholics, understandably, have grown skeptical of seminary formation. After all, it is priests and bishops who have caused the scandal of clergy sexual abuse, and every one of them is a product of seminaries.

Sometimes it is presumed that little has changed in seminaries since the time, decades ago, when the vast majority of those abusive priests were formed. Professor Janet Smith recently published a commentary that rightly asks whether seminary reforms are authentic and lasting or simply “window dressing.”

As the rectors of two seminaries forming men for the priesthood today, we would like to offer our own perspective in order to throw some light on the present situation — because, in fact, a great deal has changed.

Admittedly, the complexities of any topic as sprawling as the formation of Catholic priests cannot be covered in a short essay like this. Our remarks apply mainly to diocesan seminaries in the United States and the North American College in Rome, for example, since we are most familiar with those. Even among those seminaries, reforms have not been uniform; some changes have probably been merely superficial, as Janet Smith surmises. Furthermore, even the most wholesome seminary environment does not guarantee that graduates will remain faithful, any more than a good family guarantees that every child will turn out well. We are therefore painting with a broad brush.

Nevertheless, despite these caveats, we emphatically believe that any impartial observer with all the facts would come to the same conclusion: Seminary admissions are far more stringent, and formation far more rigorous, than they were when the great majority of clerical sexual abusers were ordained. We believe this to be a source of hope and encouragement for us all.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
KDKA TV

July 25, 2019

By Andy Sheehan

The church scandal has left Bishop David Zubik with two monumental tasks.

He must compensate the victims of alleged clergy sexual abuse while keeping the diocese out of bankruptcy.

To do that, he’s looking to a defunct orphanage in the South Hills, and its endowment of close to $9 million to help fund his victim’s compensation fund.

“We’re working through the proper channels to make sure that we have access to those funds, and we can use them for the IRCP fund,” the bishop said.

But Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro — whose report detailed the abuse of minors at the hands of diocesan priests — is telling the diocese not so fast.

In papers filed in Allegheny County Orphan’s Court — his office said orphanage founder, James L. Toner, “would never have intended his charitable gift to be used for this purpose.”

When Toner died in 1899, he left the diocese $140,000 to build and operate the Toner Institute, which became a home and school for orphans and troubled boys from 1921-77. The Toner Institute is gone, but the Toner Trust has now grown to between $8 and $9 million.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
KDKA TV

August 1, 2019

By Andy Sheehan

More people than anticipated have registered to file sexual abuse claims with the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh.

On the floor around attorney Alan Perer’s desk are the files of clients that allege abuse from the Diocese of Pittsburgh Catholic priests.

He said many have come out of the shadows to talk about what happened to them as children.

“I think the scope is far greater than what the grand jury said,” Perer said. “I have people calling me every day saying I never told anyone about this my whole life.”

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CLEVELAND (OH)
Cleveland Scene

August 1, 2019

By Sam Allard

For a man who purports to be so boldly committed to truth, American missionary and Christian pastor Tom Randall has been at the center of – in fact, may be the chief architect of – a long and wicked deception.

Randall is a gregarious man with an earnest, unsophisticated preaching style. He stands 6’5″ and ambles about with the busted-knee hitch of a former serious athlete. He has never fully conquered his Rs, but the speech impediment has endeared him to friends, colleagues, golfers on the PGA Senior Tour, where he served for several years as chaplain, and megachurch congregations nationwide. To these audiences and others he has told versions of the same story about himself: He grew up as a thief on the inner-city streets of Detroit and was shepherded to Christ by a college basketball coach.

These days, the 65-year-old Randall lives in Stow, Ohio, with his wife Karen and preaches from time to time at the nondenominational Hudson megachurch Christ Community Chapel, where he has been on the payroll since 2014, shortly after he returned to the states from a brief and highly sensationalized stint in a Manila detention center.

The Philippines. That’s where Randall lived as a missionary for years, purportedly playing professional basketball and spreading the word of God “through sports, recreation [and] competition.”

In January 2014, Randall was back in the Philippines on a semi-regular mission trip when he was arrested during an early morning raid of Sankey Samaritan Orphanage, the children’s home he founded in 1998. Randall, the facility’s Filipino manager Toto Luchavez and Toto’s son Jake were handcuffed and taken into custody.

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PORTLAND (OR)
The Oregonian

August 1, 2019

By Maxine Bernstein

The Archdiocese of Portland will pay nearly $4 million to settle claims by eight men who say they were sexually abused when they were boys in the 1970s and 1980s by a priest on the Oregon coast.

The Rev. Pius Brazauskas, who died in 1990, abused three of the men when they were between ages 5 and 12, according to a lawsuit they filed in January 2018. Brazauskas French kissed them, groped their genitals and pressed himself against them, they said.

The suit marked the first time anyone publicly named Brazauskas as an alleged child abuser, said their lawyer Peter B. Janci of Portland. After the suit was filed, five other men came forward to allege similar abuse.

Brazauskas was assigned to Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in North Bend at the time.

The initial plaintiffs in the case, identified only by initials as J.B., S.R. and S.F., will receive $675,000 each under the settlement. They are now in their 40s.

Of the five others, S.S. will receive $675,000, J.N. $475,000; B.S., $440,000, A.S. $125,000 and D.G. $100,000, according to court documents.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Episcopal News Service

August, 1, 2019

By Egan Millard

A woman is suing the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, saying one of its priests sexually assaulted her and others in New York in the 1970s, and the diocese knowingly allowed him to serve as a priest there anyway. However, two other dioceses that have licensed the priest in question say their background checks never turned up any allegations of sexual misconduct.

The Rev. Paul Kowalewski, 71, is retired but had been serving as an occasional supply priest at the Church of St. Paul in the Desert in Palm Springs, California, and his ministry has been suspended, the Rt. Rev. Susan Brown Snook, bishop of San Diego, told Episcopal News Service. Though the church is in the Diocese of San Diego, he is canonically resident in the Diocese of Los Angeles, and served as the rector of a large Los Angeles parish from 2005 to 2013.

Patricia Harner, the plaintiff, says Kowalewski sexually assaulted her in 1971, when she was a 19-year-old parishioner at St. Amelia Catholic Church in Tonawanda, New York, and he was a seminarian preparing to be ordained in the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo.

In response to questions from ENS, the Diocese of Central New York – the first Episcopal diocese in which Kowalewski served as a priest – said there is no record that indicates the diocese knew of any sexual abuse allegations against him when he was received or during his tenure there. The diocese conducted a background check on Kowalewski in 1990, which turned up no indication of sexual misconduct, according to their records.

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NEW YORK (NY)
NBC 4 News

August 1, 2019

Though the Archdiocese of New York released its own list of 120 priests and deacons that it said had been credibly accused of sexual abuse or the possession of pornography, or whose behavior had led to compensation claims being paid in April, the victims’ rights attorney said it compiled a more extensive, yet “incomplete” list of the accused witht he help of individuals across the country.

Survivors and victims’ advocates joined the firm Jeff Anderson & Associates in releasing the report on sexual abuse in the Archdiocese and calling Archbishop Timothy Dolan and religious orders to fully disclose the accused who have worked in the Archdiocese.

“It’s time to release more information about the real peril that does exist and has existed in the Archdiocese of New York and the failure of this cardinal and his predecessors to reveal the full truth,” lawyer Jeff Anderson said.

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AUGUSTA (BA)
Augusta Chronicle

August 1, 2019

By Jozsef Papp

No probable cause for criminal charges was found against a priest accused of exchanging explicit pictures with a juvenile in Aiken.

According to the Aiken County Sheriff’s Office, an investigation was started Tuesday after receiving information from the Aiken Department of Public Safety about a possible pornography case involving Father Raymond Flores, 33, of Saint Mary’s Help of Christians Church.

Investigators discovered Flores was having an online conversation with a juvenile on Grindr, an online adult dating application, during which they exchanged photos of their genitalia. An investigation revealed the juvenile indicated on Grindr he was 18 years old.

Flores, the juvenile and his family and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charleston fully cooperated in the investigation. According to the sheriff’s office, the investigation revealed there was no evidence that would have risen beyond the initial complaint and established probable cause for criminal charges.

The findings were presented to the 2nd Circuit Solicitor’s Office and the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office. The juvenile’s family told investigators they did not want to pursue any further investigation.

Flores was placed on administrative leave without the ability to perform priestly duties for behavior inappropriate of a priest, according to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charleston.

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MANILA (PHILIPPINES)
ABS-CBN News

August 1, 2019

By Maria Tan

Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle is asking Catholics to pray for bishops and priests who are “persecuted and falsely accused,” according to an official of the Archdiocese of Manila on Thursday.

“Cardinal Luis Antonio G. Tagle, is asking all of us, priests, religious men and women, and lay faithful in the Archdiocese of Manila, to offer our Masses and prayer for all our bishops and priests, especially those who suffer because of persecutions and false accusations,” Fr. Reginald Malicdem, Manila Archdiocese chancellor, said in a statement.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

August 1, 2019

The Diocese of Manchester, NH has released a list of priests accused of sexual abuse. Now that church officials have taken this first step, we call on them to update the list to include critical information that has been left off, and to explain these omissions.

Releasing a list of names is important to acknowledging the depth and breadth of clergy abuse in New Hampshire. Unfortunately, as we have come to expect, the list of names and details released today is incomplete and inadequate.

For example, church officials in Manchester have omitted the names of priests that spent time in the Diocese of Manchester but were accused of abuse and listed elsewhere. To us, this omission makes no sense because clergy that abused children will likely have victims everywhere they worked.

Similarly, key details related to the allegations were left off the list. Church officials can and should include information related to when the allegations were first received, what steps the diocese took in response to those allegations and —critically — when those actions were taken and by whom. These facts are necessary to understanding not only the scope of abuse, but also the scope of any cover-up that may have occurred within the diocese.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

August 1, 2019

A survivor has stepped forward in Mississippi to report the abuse she suffered at the hands of a Mississippi priest. We would like to thank this courageous survivor for coming forward and reporting these crimes committed against her.

We would also like to encourage other survivors to come forward and report crimes committed against themselves. Report to the police first, regardless of how long ago these crimes were committed. The Church should be the last institution notified about such crimes.

The ‘credible’ list of names released by church officials in March was years overdue.

Furthermore, delaying the addition of Balser’s name to this list because of some arbitrary internal Church procedure is a travesty. This delay harms the survivor as well as many others. Stating that there was no intercourse only serves the Church in its effort to minimize this crime. Crimes of this nature are damaging to children no matter what took place. Shame on Bishop Kopacz, his fitness board, the church lawyers and any other Church official who participated in downplaying this crime.

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SEATTLE (WA)
The Seattle Times

July 31, 2019

By Katherine Khashimova Long

When Traci Moran, an observant Jewish woman living at Joint Base Lewis-McChord with her enlisted husband, came to Army Chaplain Capt. Michael Harari in August 2018, she was looking for spiritual guidance, she said.

A Tacoma rabbi, Zalman Heber, had been sending her sexually explicit text and voice messages for almost a month despite Moran asking more than once that he stop, the messages showed.

Harari was her husband’s unit chaplain — meaning he was responsible for the spiritual well-being of the unit’s families — and the only rabbi on base. And he and Heber were part of the same Hasidic organization, Chabad, that runs synagogues and cultural centers around the world.

All of that meant, Moran said, that Harari was “in an incredibly unique position to take my report and tailor counseling to my specific religious views.”

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UNITED STATES
Yahoo Sports

August 1, 2019

By Liz Roscher

Figure skater Ashley Wagner wrote a powerful first-person essay that appeared on USA Today on Thursday, bravely recounting her sexual assault. In the essay, she says that the man who assaulted her was now-deceased figure skater John Coughlin.

Wagner says that the assault happened in June of 2008, when she had just turned 17. She went to her first party while she was at a figure skating camp in Colorado Springs, a house party thrown by several local athletes. She and her friends were offered beds in the house when they couldn’t find rides back to their hotel at the end of the night, and Wagner said that she felt “safe” because she was with her friends.

In the middle of the night, Wagner wrote that she woke up when Coughlin, who was 22 at the time, came into the room and got into bed with her. She said that he started kissing her neck and touching her, and pretending to be asleep didn’t make him stop.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Jeff Anderson & Associates

August 1, 2019

Today in Manhattan, survivors, advocates and the law firm of Jeff Anderson & Associates will:

Release The Anderson Report on Sexual Abuse in the Archdiocese of New York containing the identities, histories, photographs and information on 310 clerics accused of child sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of New York;

Demand full disclosure by the Archdiocese of New York, Archbishop Timothy Dolan, and the religious orders, of the identities, histories, and current whereabouts of all clergy accused of child sexual abuse who worked in the Archdiocese;

Discuss a new law, the New York Child Victims Act, which opens a one-year “window” in mid-August for survivors of child sexual abuse to take legal action against the perpetrator and the institution that may have protected the perpetrator, regardless of when the abuse occurred.

WHEN: Today – Thursday, August 1, 2019 – at 11:00 AM ET

WHERE: Courtyard Marriot – Manhattan/Central Park
Belvedere Room
1717 Broadway, New York, NY 10019

Notes: The press conference will be live-streamed via YouTube https://www.youtube.com/andersonadvocates and Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/AndersonAdvocates/.

Contact: Jeff Anderson: Office: (646)759-2551; Cell: (646)499-3364
Mike Reck: Office: (646)759-2551; Cell: (646)493-8058
Trusha Goffe: (646)759-2551; Cell: (646)693-6862

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SCRANTON (PA)
Citizens Voice

August 1, 2019

By David Singleton

One phase of the Diocese of Scranton’s program to compensate victims of clergy child sexual abuse is over. Now it’s on to the next.

The window for victims who had not previously reported the abuse to the diocese to register for the Independent Survivors Compensation Program closed midnight Wednesday.

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BAKERSFIELD (CA)
The Californian

Aug. 1, 2019

By John Cox

An investigation report released this week by the Bakersfield Police Department paints two seemingly irreconcilable pictures of the Rev. Craig Harrison: a hands-off father figure who preached tough love while rewarding good behavior, or a sexual predator who groomed his victims using guilt and gifts.

In the end, there was no need to decide which view was more accurate because a detective assigned to the case concluded he could not find corroborating evidence the popular priest had touched anyone inappropriately.

Adding to the ambiguity, the recently closed investigation of the priest’s actions in Bakersfield ended with a finding that certain “inappropriate acts” Harrison was accused of were actually legal. Plus, a determination was made that some acts Harrison was alleged to have committed occurred too long ago to be prosecuted.

The report’s conclusions appear to fall short of the full vindication Harrison and his supporters have claimed as they await the results of investigations police in Firebaugh and Merced are conducting into similar accusations allegedly stemming from his time as a clergyman in those cities.

Harrison and his attorneys maintain he has never acted inappropriately and that the accusations against him originate with a group of people set on destroying his reputation and collecting payments from the Catholic Church.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Reuters

August 1, 2019

By Shannon Stapleton

Thousands of child sexual abuse lawsuits are expected to flow into New York State courts in the coming weeks exposing decades-old misconduct at schools, hospitals, churches and youth clubs, according to lawyers for victims.

On Aug. 14, the Child Victims Act takes effect, giving people one year to sue over allegations of sexual abuse, regardless of when they said it occurred.

Under the law signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo in February, New York has gone from one of the toughest states to bring a case because of its strict statute of limitations to one of the easiest, potentially unleashing decades of unresolved claims.

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BALLARAT (AUSTRALIA)
The Courier

August 1, 2019

By Andrew Thomson

The Catholic Church continues to challenge a clergy sex abuse victim of notorious priest Gerald Ridsdale.

After last month arguing to delay the civil compensation trial by at least 120 days, it has now demanded the victim, who was raped as a nine-year-old in a confessional box, provide a copy of the church’s own rules in Latin.

The victim’s lawyers have been asking the church to hand over archive documents.

Under 1917 Canon Law which applied at the time of the offending, the church was required to keep an archive of all important documents, including sex assault allegations against clergy members and a record of who had seen the documents and what documents had been destroyed.

It’s not known what is included in the archive file of Ridsdale, arguably Australia’s most notorious paedophile priest with past convictions for assaults on more than 50 children.

“For the church to ask me to provide a copy of their 1917 Canon Law was bad enough, but we offered to give it to them even though you can buy it on the internet,” he said.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
Catholic Herald

August 1, 2019

By Ruairidh MacLennan

Bishop John Keenan has led the Diocese of Paisley since 2014. Prior to this he served as Catholic chaplain to the University of Glasgow for 14 years, and as vocations director for the Archdiocese of Glasgow. He has emerged as a strong proponent of the New Evangelisation, and of a renewal of faith in Britain. I spoke to him in St Mirin’s Cathedral, Paisley.

Bishop Keenan, what are the main challenges facing the faith across Britain today? Could you offer a diagnosis?

Bishop John Keenan Britain is one of the most secularised countries in the Western world. It has bought into the idea that it became a modern state by winning out against religion and the Church. People see their dignity as being that which enables them to determine their own identity and morals, particularly in the realm of sexuality. This has become such a widely held view that anyone who holds an opinion to the contrary – namely, that there is an objective truth about ourselves and our lives given to us by God – is considered to be an enemy of the modern state. The Catholic Church is now the one institution in Britain which still believes that there is a God who gives us our human nature and identity, and who has made known to our reason what sort of lives we should be living in order to truly be free and fulfilled.

I am reminded of the comments which the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, made in 2018 in which he suggested that certain rights – mandated by the state – “trumped” other rights.

JK It is a new manifestation of what Orwell said: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” This is where we are now. All rights are “equal”, be they religious rights or LGBT rights … but some are more equal. Orwell used that as a parody of communism, and eventually he identified this as the fatal flaw which would bring about its downfall. It was predicated on a contradiction, as is postmodern society. He said that of the Eastern Bloc, but it now equally applies to the politics of the West. You cannot have equality for all and say that some are more equal. Ultimately it ceases to be about truth, but about power. It is built on sand, not nature, or reason. It is built on the will to power.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
Catholic Herald

August 1, 2019

By Jordan Bloom

Trust is easily broken and repaired only with difficulty in a place like West Virginia, whose south-west corner is most closely associated with the notoriously grudge-prone Hatfield clan. (The Hatfield–McCoy feud, a bloody land dispute between two rural families, raged from 1863 to 1891.) The incoming Bishop Mark Brennan (pictured) of West Virginia – or of the diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, which is coterminous with the state – will have his work cut out repairing the damage done by his predecessor.

Bishop Michael Bransfield, it is alleged, used his position as shepherd of one of the most economically distressed parts of the country to live not like a successor to the Apostles but as an orange liqueur-swilling sybarite – doling out patronage money to his episcopal allies when he wasn’t making sexual advances towards seminarians. Bransfield, who protests his innocence, was once head of the board of trustees of the Papal Foundation, Theodore McCarrick’s slush fund.

One detail that has emerged during the scandal is the diocese’s possession of land in Texas from a bequest decades ago, which has become a significant source of revenue from oil leases. The $15 million figure cited as its annual revenue could do a lot of good in a place like West Virginia.

The revelations of Bransfield’s extraordinary spending habit – $4.6 million to renovate his house, more than $2 million on travel – are all the more incredible for having happened in a place where a dollar goes much further than in New York or Washington.

Bransfield was reportedly fond of pointing at diocesan property and saying, “I own this.” Well, not any more.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Guardian blog

July 31, 2019

By Sian Cain

Joshua Harris was just 22 in 1997 when he published I Kissed Dating Goodbye, a dating guidebook for young Christians that advised them to do anything but. Dating was a “training ground for divorce”, he argued in the book, which sold almost 1m copies worldwide. It also made Harris a superstar in the Christian purity movement, a pro-abstinence crusade that began in evangelical churches in the 1990s and became well-known in the purity ring-wearing hands of Jessica Simpson and the Jonas Brothers. Many authors came after Harris – John and Stasi Eldredge, Hayley DiMarco, Tim and Beverly LaHaye – all of them in the US, where religious publishing is worth $1.22bn (£1bn) a year.

Now 44, Harris made headlines this week when he revealed he no longer considers himself a Christian. He has been issuing apologies for his own books over the last decade, even making a documentary called I Survived Kissing Dating Goodbye. On his Instagram this week, he wrote: “I have lived in repentance for the past several years – repenting of my self-righteousness, my fear-based approach to life, the teaching of my books, my views of women in the church, and my approach to parenting to name a few.”

Dianna E Anderson, who left the purity movement in her 20s and is the author of Damaged Goods: New Perspectives on Christian Purity, says its relationship guides have inflicted lasting damage on young people desperate to preserve their holiness while battling hormones.

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Patheos blog

July 31, 2019

By Fred Clark

I included this story in the “postcards” link round-up, but I’m still so gobsmacked by it that I’ve got to visit it again. It’s from this RNS report by Bob Smietana, “Video links Beth Moore, Russell Moore, James Merritt to ‘Trojan horse of social justice.’“

Owen Strachan, associate professor of theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and former president of The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, also appears in the video, arguing that “liberal Christianity” is invading the evangelical church and a spiritual battle is underway.

“We are always having the principalities and powers exert pressure on us,” said Strachan.

An image that appears to be of Rachael Denhollander, an abuse activist who spoke at the SBC’s annual meeting, is intercut with [those] comments.

That angered Jacob Denhollander, Rachael’s husband.

He told Ascol and Founders Ministries on Twitter that their use of “my wife’s image in your video and the insinuation that she is part of the principalities and powers attacking the church is cowardly, grossly dishonest, and bearing false witness.”

These guys looked around the whole world for an iconic symbol of nefarious “powers and principalities” they regard as invading the church and attacking their faith in a spiritual battle, and the person whom they chose to represent all of that was Rachael Denhollander.

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Get Religion blog

July 31, 2019

By Clemente Lisi

The Vatican press office may be second only to the White House communications department when it comes to ranking the world’s busiest public relations operation.

Like President Donald Trump, Pope Francis and the Holy See are in some serious need of daily damage control. The resurfacing of the clergy sex abuse scandal — year after year for decades — and the allegations that led to the downfall of former cardinal Theodore McCarrick have been the Vatican’s biggest PR headaches over the past year.

Responsible for handling the Holy See’s messaging on the clergy scandal and a host of other issues will be a retooled press office. Much of the turmoil that has surrounded the pope and the Catholic church over the past year called for an overhaul of the Holy See’s press operation.

The past two weeks has seen a flurry of announcements, including the naming of a new press office director and vice director (more on this position further down), two of the biggest jobs at the Vatican held by lay people.

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Get Religion blog

July 31, 2019

By Terry Mattingly

If there was an omnipresent reader who had somehow managed to follow my 30-plus years of work linked to the Catholic clergy sex crisis, I think that she or he would have spotted at least one overarching theme.

The big idea: This is a scandal that cannot be divided according to liberal and conservative prejudices. Anyone who tried to do that would have to avoid too many case studies, too many tragedies, too many people — on the left and right — hiding too many crimes. I have argued that wise, patient reporters will listen to liberal and conservative activists and then search for issues and ideas that they share in common.

Hold that thought, because I will end with that.

Every now and then, we see an important story produced by journalists (often in the mainstream press) who seem to think the scandal is all about the sins of conservatives or (often in some independent Catholic publication) all about the sins of liberals.

The Associated Press just produced a story of this kind, a report that raises important issues and was built on tons of journalism legwork to get solid sources. It’s a valid and important story. But it appears that these journalists only saw half of a larger tragedy. The headline: “Unmarked buildings, quiet legal help for accused priests.”

Yes, secrets were uncovered. But stop and think about that headline. Is the assumption that all Catholic priests accused of sexual abuse are, in fact, guilty? Is it possible to imagine that some Catholics might support efforts to research and clear the names of priests who they believe have been falsely accused and have valid reasons to do so? And are all these efforts on the right? Just asking.

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CRANSTON (RI)
Cranston Herald

July 31, 2019

Earlier this month, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence released a list of priests and clergy members found to have been “credibly accused” of sexually abusing children since 1950.

It represented an important step forward for survivors of abuse, as well as for the broader community. As Providence Bishop Thomas J. Tobin said, acknowledging these cases through the recent disclosure represented a “difficult but necessary moment in the life of our diocesan church.”

In terms of both transparency and accountability, however, much more work remains to be done. Now, it is poised to proceed.

Attorney General Peter F. Neronha last week announced a memorandum of understanding has been reached with the Diocese granting his office and Rhode Island State Police with access to “all complaints and allegations of child sexual abuse by clergy dating back to 1950 – whether deemed credible by the Diocese or not.”

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AIKEN (SC)
WYFF TV

July 31, 2019

A Catholic priest in South Carolina has been accused of exchanging sexual photos with a minor on a social media app that church officials and authorities say is intended for adults.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Charleston sent a statement to news outlets Tuesday saying 33-year-old Father Raymond Flores of the St. Mary Help of Christians Catholic Church has since been placed on leave and can’t perform his priestly duties. The diocese says the priest’s behavior did not involve physically touching a minor.

An Aiken County Sheriff’s Office report says Flores exchanged the explicit photos with the underage boy on an adult social media app. Authorities and officials didn’t immediately name the app.

No charges have been filed at this time. Sheriff’s Capt. Eric Abdullah says an investigation is ongoing.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Patriot Ledger

July 31, 2019

By Ivey DeJesus

The investigations into clergy sex abuse in this country have generally gone back several decades.

Last year’s grand jury report into widespread clergy sex abuse in Pennsylvania, for instance, went back as far as the late 1940s.

On Wednesday the revelations of an 85-year-old victim out of the Diocese of Scranton points to the sobering possibility that the crisis dates far back into other centuries.

The woman, who is being referred to as “Jane Doe,” was six years old in 1940 when the late Rev. Martin J. Fleming began to sexually molest her, according to her attorney, Mitchell Garabedian.

Fleming, who at the time was assigned to Holy Name Parish in Swoyerville, was ordained in 1898. Jane Doe was a parishioner at Holy Name Parish.

Jane Doe is not filing a lawsuit, but wanted to make public the priest’s name, said Garabedian, who has represented hundreds of victims in the Archdiocese of Boston.

“She wanted her perpetrator’s name out there,” he said. “He was ordained in 1898. There is no telling how many children he molested. It’s indicative of how far back the clergy sex abuse crisis goes back.”

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ROME (ITALY)
Catholic News Service

July 31, 2019

By Carol Glatz

Vatican City State will have its own reporting system in place before the end of the year for flagging suspected cases of the abuse of minors and vulnerable people and instances of cover-up or negligence in handling such cases, the Vatican said.

In the meantime, U.S. Msgr. Robert Oliver was appointed to be the contact person for people with information or concerns about potential cases of abuse and cover-up within the Vicariate of Vatican City State, the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, reported July 30.

Oliver, a canon lawyer who worked as the promoter of justice at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and in a number of dioceses in the United States, is the secretary of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

He was appointed in June, the newspaper said, to be the contact person for anyone who “may have information or suspicions that a minor or a vulnerable person may be at risk of abuse or may have been subjected to it as part of pastoral activities of the vicariate as well as knowledge of any act of negligence by authorities,” it said.

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DENVER (CO)
Crux

July 31, 2019

By Claire Giangravè

A large mural depicting Australian Cardinal George Pell shadowed by a demonic figure while handcuffed and wearing a prison tracksuit appeared on Tuesday about 50 yards away from the Vatican.

The mural is the work of Australian artist Scott Marsh, well known in his country for his oversized and over-the-top murals of public figures. Marsh posted a video on Instagram showing the Pell mural with the hashtag #locationlocationlocation.

The goal of the mural, Marsh said in an interview with the Australian news outlet SBS News, “is to highlight the hypocrisy of the Church and combat its attempts to sweep under the rug its past abuses.”

The artist named his work “Prey Round Two” on Instagram.

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ROME (ITALY)
Catholic News Service

July 31, 2019

By Junno Arocho Esteves

While deceased Jesuit Fr. Renato Poblete Barth was known publicly as a champion of the poor in Chile, an internal investigation funded by the Jesuits revealed that the famed clergyman abused more than a dozen women over a span of nearly 50 years.

The results of the six-month independent investigation, which were announced July 30 by Jesuit Fr. Cristian del Campo, provincial superior of Chile, concluded that “the abuses of power, of conscience, sexual and other crimes committed by Renato Poblete Barth were sustained by a sort of double life, protected by his public image of a good person.”

“The abuse, transversely, was carried out from a position of power that gave him that image, his enormous network of contacts, and the economic power that he had by autonomously handling important sums of money during many years,” the report said.

Born in 1924 in Antofagasta, on the northern Chilean coast, Poblete lived in Bolivia for most of his childhood until age 16. His family moved to Santiago in 1940, and toward the end of high school he met St. Alberto Hurtado Cruchaga, founder of Hogar de Cristo – one of the country’s largest charities – and the Jesuit who inspired him to join the Society of Jesus.

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DETROIT (MI)
CBS DETROIT/AP

July 31, 2019

A woman who says she was sexually assaulted by a priest in 1977 burned his book outside the archdiocese headquarters in downtown Detroit.

Jeanne Hunton says she’s starting a local chapter of SNAP, which stands for Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. Hunton says she was 14 years old when she was assaulted by a priest during a summer job at Assumption Grotto church in Detroit.

The 57-year-old Hunton said Tuesday it’s too late to pursue criminal charges. But she wants to get the word out in case there are other victims.

Hunton says the priest is in his 90s. She told state police that she confronted him in 2010 and he claimed to have no recollection. The Associated Press isn’t identifying the priest because he hasn’t been charged.

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MANCHESTER (NH)
Union Leader

July 31, 2019

By Mark Hayward

Catholic Church leaders in New Hampshire announced Wednesday that they have added to their website the names of dozens of priests accused of child sexual abuse going back to 1950.

The “Restoring Trust” website provides the year each priest was ordained, his parish assignments and his status, which ranges from convicted of crimes to “assigned to a life of prayer and penance.” Seventy-three names in total are listed.

The link to the list, however, is hard to find. It is at the bottom of the “Restoring Hope” page of the Church website.

“This is meant as an act of ownership and accountability. It is my hope that by making this information available, we are holding ourselves accountable to the evils of the past, and offering timely assistance, support and resources to those individuals and families who have been affected by the sexual abuse of a minor,” said Bishop Peter Libasci in a statement released Wednesday morning.

He also said “On behalf of my predecessors and the Church in New Hampshire, I am sorry. I seek your forgiveness for the grave sins of abuse and betrayal of trust that representatives of the Church committed.”

That contrasts with the words of his predecessor — retired Bishop John McCormack — who famously said “mistakes were made” when it came to the priest-sex abuse crisis, which unfolded in New Hampshire in the early 2000s under his watch.

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WINNIPEG (CANADA)
The Canadian Press

July 31, 2019

A former Winnipeg priest who was convicted of sexual abuse and was facing more charges has died.

Saul Simmonds, a lawyer for Ronald Leger, says the 82-year-old had been in palliative care and died Tuesday.

Leger was accused of abusing four boys who were between 10 and 12-years old when the alleged crimes began in 1981.

Simmonds says the case was to go to trial in September.

He expects a stay will now be entered in the case.

Simmonds says his client had maintained his innocence on the charges from the outset.

“Based upon our investigation, many witnesses had come forward who would support his recollections of the event and he was vigorously intending to defend himself,” said Simmonds.

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KINGSTON (JAMAICA)
RJR News

July 31, 2019

Some church leaders are disputing claims that they have not been vocal enough in speaking out against members of the clergy who have been proven to be involved in sexual abuse.

The Jamaica Council of Churches and the Jamaica Evangelical Alliance are asserting that the church has been vocal, but the public may not have been paying enough attention to their efforts.

This issue took on greater prominence this week following the entering of a guilty plea by Kenneth Blake, pastor of Harvest Temple Apostolic Church in Kingston.

Blake was charged in 2017 with rape, forcible abduction, grievous sexual assault, having sex with a person under 16 years old, and sexual touching.

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PHOENIX (AZ)
The Catholic Sun

July 30, 2019

Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted

We come now to the sixth and final column of this series addressing the recent scandals that have so hurt the Church. The title of this series comes from the words of the Second Vatican Council which eloquently explained that “the Church, however, clasping sinners to her bosom, at once holy and always in need of purification, follows constantly the path of penance and renewal” (“Lumen Gentium” 8). These prophetic words issued in a time of relative calm and stability more than 50 years ago speak truth that can stabilize and encourage us today.

Having looked squarely at the scandals and underlying causes, then at current questions regarding the priesthood, signs of renewal as well as the work being done to ensure the safety of youth and vulnerable adults, I would now like to look toward the renewal of the priesthood in light of one underlying virtue that will be important for its healing: the virtue of reverence.

While the word “reverence” may recall ideas about attire or behavior at church, it includes much more. In a broad sense, reverence is the virtue by which we acknowledge mystery in creation, ourselves, our neighbors and, most especially, in God. Reverence is a fundamental disposition of anyone who is seeking life’s deepest meaning. It is the humble recognition that there is more to life than we can see and feel and control.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Christian Broadcasting Network

July 31, 2019

By Emily Jones

Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago is calling on their founding pastor Bill Hybels to “repent” after repeated allegations of sexual misconduct forced him to resign from decades of ministry.

“God has blessed Willow Creek Community Church to have a profound impact for His kingdom. Bill Hybels served and contributed to Willow for more than 40 years. Simultaneously, unchecked sin and intimidating behavior resulted in harm that is still felt in this present day. Christ died to free us from the power of sin. It is in that spirit that we appeal to Bill to reflect on his years in ministry, repent where necessary, and seek to live out the ministry of reconciliation,” Willow Creek’s new elder board said in a recent statement. https://www.willowcreek.org/en/blogs/south-barrington/elder-update-july-…

An Independent Advisory Group investigated the claims of “sexually inappropriate words and actions” brought against Hybels and found them to be credible in a 17-page report released in March.

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Tricycle blog

July 31, 2019

By Patricia Ullman

The other day I was talking with a friend about the sexual abuse in my former spiritual community, and she said that she didn’t think so-and-so was doing any favors for those trying to make their voices heard because so-and-so was going on and on and, in effect, ranting. My friend said she thought people would be able to hear so-and-so better if she toned it down and spoke more selectively and in a less inflammatory way, instead of getting people’s backs up and making them feel attacked.

I said that I thought everyone has to express these horrifying things in their own ways, which may not necessarily be completely diplomatic or “nice.” I said that so-and-so had gone through periods of being suicidal, of many years of therapy, of dropping out of her Ph.D. program because she couldn’t focus, and, like most of us, losing many of her friends who feared that associating with her would be a blot on their need to appear loyal to the offending organization. I reminded my friend about how crazy-making all of this can be, when someone is finally trying to understand their own abuse.

Later on, as I thought back on this conversation, I began to wonder why so-and-so was perceived to be yelling and screaming (figuratively, through her writing), and why so many of us, no matter how we present our stories, are accused of being angry whiners, disrupters, unhappy people, aggressive “feminazis,” revenge seekers, complainers, man-haters, and on and on. And, aside from all that, I wanted to try to express why we do yell and scream and why, yes, we absolutely have the right to do so.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
KWMU Radio

July 31, 2019

By Lexi Cortes

Catholic church leaders in the Belleville Diocese promoted a priest they knew as a danger to children until he was in charge of their largest parish and its grade school, where he is accused of sexually abusing students, according to a civil suit filed earlier this month.

Joseph Schwaegel, who was first accused of child sexual abuse in a 1999 lawsuit, has been named in a new complaint filed against the diocese July 19 in St. Clair County Circuit Court.

Schwaegel died in 2016. During his career, diocese officials had given him the elevated title of monsignor and eventually made him rector of Belleville’s St. Peter’s Cathedral and superintendent of Cathedral Grade School.

He was added to the diocese’s list of accused priests who were removed from their churches in 1994.

The latest plaintiff to come forward with allegations against Schwaegel filed under the pseudonym John Doe.

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AUGUSTA (GA)
Augusta Chronicle

July 30, 2019

By Jozsef Papp

An Aiken priest has been placed on administrative leave after being accused of sharing explicit images with a juvenile.

Father Raymond Flores, 33, of St. Mary Help of Christians Catholic Church, was placed on leave without the ability to perform priestly duties. According to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charleston, the suspension is a result of behavior inappropriate of a priest but did not involve the touching of a minor.

According to an Aiken County Sheriff’s Office incident report, Flores had an online conversation with a male juvenile via an adult social media application during which photographs of genitalia were exchanged. The complainant reportedly told police the victim’s family does not wish further investigation.

The diocese said in a statement Tuesday that it followed all legal and appropriate protocols, including prompt notification of law enforcement. No charges have been filed.

Lt. Jake Mahoney with the Aiken Department of Public Safety said his department took the report originally since the church is within city limits, but the case was sent to the Aiken County Sheriff’s Office after it was determined the incident occurred outside city jurisdiction. According to the Aiken Public Safety incident report, officers received a call from the complainant July 21.

Capt. Eric Abdullah with the sheriff’s office said they received a report from the Aiken Department of Public Safety on Monday and have opened an investigation.

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DRYDEN (MI)
Patheos blog

July 31, 2019

By Mark Shea

DRYDEN, Mich. (AP) — The visiting priests arrived discreetly, day and night.

Stripped of their collars and cassocks, they went unnoticed in this tiny Midwestern town as they were escorted into a dingy warehouse across from an elementary school playground. Neighbors had no idea some of the dressed-down clergymen dining at local restaurants might have been accused sexual predators.

They had been brought to town by a small, nonprofit group called Opus Bono Sacerdotii. For nearly two decades, the group has operated out of a series of unmarked buildings in rural Michigan, providing money, shelter, transport, legal help and other support to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Catholic priests accused of sexual abuse across the country.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

July 31, 2019

A report from a U.S. Senate subcommittee has called out several organizations for a “cover-up” related to the serial abuse of hundreds of girls and young women by a now-disgraced and jailed former U.S. Olympic team doctor. Our hearts ache for these survivors and we hope that this report will lead to a fundamental shift in the way we view institutional accountability in cases of sexual violence.

According to the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Manufacturing, Trade, and Consumer Protection and ranking member of the Senate subcommittee overseeing the Olympics, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Michigan State University, USA Gymnastics, and the US Olympic Committee not only failed to protect athletes from Dr. Larry Nassar but also engaged in a “cover-up,” which resulted in more women and girls suffering abuse.

As survivors and advocates with experience in the clergy sexual abuse crisis, the news of continuing and ongoing cover-ups is both unsurprising and incredibly disappointing. Instead of learning from the moral and criminal failings of Catholic Church officials when it comes to cases of institutional sexual violence, it appears instead as if officials at MSU USA Gymnastics, and the USOC copied their playbook instead. We hope that accountability continues at these organizations, and that criminal proceedings continue to investigate the officials who failed in their duty to protect these girls and young women.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Times Picayune

July 25, 2019

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

The lawyers for a man who alleges he was sexually abused by former Catholic deacon George Brignac decades ago have sent a subpoena to the New Orleans Saints for copies of any communications between club officials and the local archdiocese.

According to attorneys Richard Trahant and John Denenea, the move came after the discovery process turned up documents and emails which, they contend, showed at least one member of the Saints’ administration — longtime public relations chief Greg Bensel — was advising the archdiocese on how to publicly address local claims pertaining to the Catholic Church’s ongoing clergy abuse crisis.

The lawsuit, filed in late October, alleges that the unidentified plaintiff is due damages because Brignac molested him when he was an altar boy at a local church in the late 1970s and because the Archdiocese of New Orleans failed to protect him. Brignac has denied wrongdoing, and the archdiocese has been litigating the claims.

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WASHINGTON (MO)
Washington Missourian

July 29, 2019

There is at least one priest who served locally named Friday by the St. Louis Archbishop who has a substantiated claim of sexual abuse of minor.

Dennis B. Zacheis, known here locally as Father Dennis, served as pastor at St. Gertrude Parish, Krakow, from 1994 to 2003, and St. Anthony Parish in Sullivan from 2005-09.

The Rev. Robert J. Carlson, archbishop of St. Louis, made public the names of 44 priests who had a claim filed against them while alive. The also were 11 priests with allegations made against them after their death.

There were five additional clergy members named with claims that “occurred in the Archdiocese of St. Louis or elsewhere,” and another three priests with claims against them of possession of child pornography.

Zacheis has been retired from ministry without priestly faculties since 2010, due to alleged irregularities in finances for which he was responsible for as pastor of St. Anthony’s in Sullivan.

Father Zacheis served as associate pastor at St. Mary Magdalen Parish in south St. Louis from 1979-85; Christ, Prince of Peace in Manchester from 1985-88; and St. Matthias in Lemay from 1988-92.

In addition, he was pastor at St. Alban Roe in Wildwood from 2003-04.

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