ABUSE TRACKER

BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

April 11, 2019

By Jay Tokasz

The names of an additional 27 Catholic priests accused of misconduct emerged this week in leaked Buffalo Diocese documents showing that a review board examined allegations against the priests.

A copy of the June 27, 2018 meeting agenda of the Diocesan Review Board, obtained by WKBW-TV, included the names of nearly 100 priests whose cases were being reviewed by the board.

Bishop Richard J. Malone in 2018 publicly identified most of the priests on that agenda as having been credibly accused of sexually abusing children. But Malone has remained silent on 27 of those priests, including a former superintendent of Catholic schools, Monsignor Ted Berg, and a former high-ranking diocesan administrator, Monsignor Albert Rung.

The Diocesan Review Board’s primary purpose is to examine cases of alleged child sex abuse, but it’s not clear how many of the 27 priests were accused of sexual abuse of minors or if the complaints were found to be credible.

The 27 priests listed on the Buffalo Diocesan Review Board agenda in connection with misconduct complaints are:

The Rev. James Bartnik, Monsignor Ted Berg, the Rev. Gerald Collins, the Rev. George Cotter, Monsignor Joseph Coughlin, Monsignor Edmund Dietzel, the Rev. John Donnelly, the Rev. John Doyle, the Rev. John J. Fox, the Rev. Ralph Frederico, the Rev. Joseph Garin, Monsignor Francis Growney, the Rev. Kiernan Haggerty, the Rev. Francis Hannah, the Rev. James H. Kasprzyk, the Rev. Francis Kealy, the Rev. Nelson Kimmartin, the Rev. William Lanphear, the Rev. Joseph M. McPherson, Monsignor Richard O’Brien, the Rev. Joseph Penkaul, Monsignor Albert Rung, the Rev. Paul Salemi, the Rev. Maurus Schenk, the Rev. CJ Westfield, the Rev. Gervase F. White and the Rev. Maurice Woulfe.

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FARMERS BRANCH (TX)
The Brookhaven Courier

April 8, 2019

In 2015, the movie “Spotlight” redirected media attention to the decades-long controversy of sexual abuse taking place in the Roman Catholic Church. Many abuse cases have surfaced over the past few decades, but did not get enough attention from the public to make news.

This is no longer a local or even a national issue. There have been reports of child sexual abuse in Catholic churches in many countries. Child abuse is a crime and should be dealt with in criminal justice systems.

Incidents of child sex abuse by Catholic priests around the world have forced the public to consider whether or not churches are a safe place for children.

In February, Cardinal George Pell, one of Pope Francis’ top advisers, was charged with child sex abuse in Australia for molesting two choirboys in the ’80s, according to USA Today. Pell faces up to a 50-year prison sentence. Pell’s charges came a few weeks after a summit in the Vatican at which Pope Francis called for an all-out battle against the abuse of minors.

The Vatican also announced Theodore McCarrick, former cardinal and archbishop of Washington, D.C., would be defrocked, or stripped of his priesthood, for sexual abuse of minors and adults, according to USA Today. McCarrick is unlikely to face criminal prosecution for the alleged abuse because it is beyond its statute of limitations, according to The New York Times.

These statutes of limitations are common across the U.S. and directly correlate with data on clergy abuse in any given state, Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of bishopaccountability.org, a site that tracks cases of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, said, according to The New York Times.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Fox News

April 9, 2019

By Hollie McKay

It wasn’t until Rev. Cait Finnegan gave birth to a baby girl more than three decades ago that the full trauma of all she had withstood was fully unleashed.

“It was my protective instinct, I just didn’t want my daughter to be alone. I stayed with her from the day she was born,” Finnegan, 67, a Catholic school student in 1960s New York and once an aspiring nun, told Fox News. “Because I had been abused in many places to many degrees. This was every day in school, weekends, she would come to my home.”

Starting at just 15, Finnegan alleged that she was repeatedly raped by a Catholic nun and for years, after finally escaping, lived a life on the edge of falling apart. She said she spent much of her life trapped in a state of rage, depression, and agoraphobia, unable to leave the house or be away from her daughter, now 36.

They lived in poverty as Finnegan said she was only able to take on odd jobs at night, as her marriage strained under the emotional weight.

“When my daughter was 12, we thought it would be good to register her at a Catholic School,” Finnegan recalled. “But then the nun opened the door, I had a flashback, I grabbed her and ran.”

Finnegan said her abuser died more than four years ago. But the deep, dark memories she has carried since adolescence remain.

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Get Religion blog

April 11, 2019

By Clemente Lisi

The events of the past few days have truly been monumental for the Roman Catholic church.

You may not have noticed — unless you’ve bothered to read the ever-growing list of Catholic news websites on both the right and left. While liberals and conservatives within the church continue to wage a very public war over everything from the future of Christendom in the West to the ongoing clerical abuse crisis, two prominent voices have led the charge when it comes to these two issues.

Again, it was conservative Catholic media that proved to be the preferred mouthpiece for Cardinal Robert Sarah and Pope Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI. Both men — with help from right-leaning news organizations — have been very vocal about the problems plaguing the modern church in our ever-secular world.

It is fitting that these two men — one considered a potential future pope, the other already a pope — are the ones leading the charge as the church continues to become polarized. Under Francis’ papacy, the ideological split has become more pronounced. As the curia continues to polarize itself in public on issues like immigration and homosexuality, church leaders like Sarah and Benedict refuse to be silenced. Once again, it’s those Catholic media voices on the right that are helping to spread their message.

Case in point: this past week. At a time when Christians around the world continue on their Lenten journey, Sarah and Benedict are making a statement about the direction of Catholicism, the legacy of Vatican II and where the church is going. Sarah, who hails from the majority-Muslim nation of Guinea in Africa, contrasted Pope Francis’ statements in telling Christian nations they should open their borders to Islamic refugees.

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SEATTLE (WA)
KUOW Radio

April 11, 2019

By Sydney Brownstone and Paige Browning

There will be no statute of limitations for people who survived sexual abuse when they were under 16.

The same bill extends the statute of limitations for adult survivors to 10 or 20 years, depending on the severity of the crime. It also makes a significant change to how rape in the third degree is prosecuted — removing a small but crucial piece of language that advocates say ignored trauma research and prevented cases from being tried in court.

Speaking after the passage of the original Senate bill in February, Mary Ellen Stone, executive director of King County Sexual Assault Resource Center, said the bill was the organization’s biggest win in at least five years.

“I think we all realize attitudes are changing — the culture is changing on this issue.” Stone said. “Everybody knows so many more people who’ve been impacted by sexual assault. And there was a collective recognition that it’s time to make this change.”

Andrea Piper-Wentland of Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs said this means that survivors will have more time to process what happened to them.

She said the law would allow survivors “to get out of a situation that they were in, that was prohibitive for them to report.”

“There’s a myriad of reasons survivors have for delayed reporting,” she said.

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LAKE CHARLES (LA)
KPLC TV

April 11, 2019

The Diocese of Lake Charles has released a list of clergy credibly accused of sexual misconduct with a minor.

Clerics of the Diocese of Lake Charles

Juan Alers, Diocesan Priest

Born: 1943
Ordained: 1969 for the Archdiocese of San Juan in Puerto Rico
First Affiliated with the Diocese of Lake Charles: 1987
Assignments in the Diocese of Lake Charles:
Accusation: Sexual Misconduct with minors
Location of Misconduct: Puerto Rico
Date of Misconduct: 1980-1985
Date Allegations Received by the Diocese of Lake Charles: 1997
Number of Victims: More than one
Response from the Diocese of Lake Charles: Removal from Ministry in 2002
Current Status: Deceased (2011)
Mark Broussard, Diocesan Priest

Born: 1956
Ordained: 1986 for the Diocese of Lake Charles
Assignments in the Diocese of Lake Charles:
Accusation: Sexual Misconduct with Minors
Locations of Misconduct:
Date of Misconduct: ca. 1980-1991
Date Allegations received by the Diocese of Lake Charles:
Number of Victims: More than one
Response from the Diocese of Lake Charles: Removal from Ministry in 1994
Current Status:
Gerard (Gerald) Smit, Diocesan Priest

Date of Birth: 1924
Date of Ordination: 1950 for the Diocese of Nijmejen, Holland
First Affiliated with the Diocese of Lafayette beginning in 1958 and then with the Diocese of Lake Charles in 1980
Assignments in the Diocese of Lake Charles (and Lafayette):
Accusation: Sexual Misconduct with Minors
Locations of Misconduct:
Date of Misconduct: 1950s, 1960s
Date Allegations received by the Diocese of Lake Charles:
Number of Victims: More than one
Response from the Diocese of Lake Charles:
Current Status: Sentenced to a Life of Prayer and Penance in 2013, and residing in Pennsylvania

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SANTIAGO (CHILE)
Associated Press

April 11, 2019

The Legion of Christ religious order said Thursday that the Vatican has banned an Irish priest from public ministry for 10 years for sexually abusing a minor in Chile.

The order said in a statement that the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith also banned the Rev. John O’Reilly from any contact with minors for life and ordered him to live outside of Latin America. O’Reilly can appeal.

“As a congregation, these acts cause us great pain and we again ask forgiveness for the suffering caused,” the order said.

O’Reilly had worked in Chile since the mid-1980s. He was convicted in a civil court in 2014 of sexually abusing a minor while he was a chaplain at a school operated by the legion in the Chilean capital. The court also banned him from any job near children and included him in a database for registered abusers. Congress had revoked the honorary Chilean citizenship it gave O’Reilly in 2008.

Chile’s government had said that O’Reilly would have to leave after serving his sentence. He obeyed orders in 2018 after finishing a four-year sentence and has been living in Rome since then. He has denied any wrongdoing.

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VINELAND (NJ)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

April 11, 2019

By Fr. John Bambrick, former director of New Jersey SNAP

Fr. Gary Hayes has gone home to the Lord. I wish to express to his family sincere condolences on his passing. While suffering with Cancer is extraordinarily painful, debilitating and frustrating, it brought Gary home to you because family is where we look for comfort. Your brother once said, “What is most meaningful often comes from your worst suffering”. In his last suffering with cancer he found the most meaningful relationships, you his family. He confided in me just a few weeks ago how incredibly happy he was to have rebuilt and strengthened his ties with each of you and how important those bonds were to his heart and to his healing. He was eternally grateful for your love and incredible care.

Your brother was deeply wounded early in life and that wound festered throughout his life but I truly believe, with all my heart, the wound healed completely because of your love for him. Because of that he died in Peace.

I have spoken, e-mailed or texted many of our friends across the country and each of them said to me, “He is finally at Peace”. Every one of them said exactly the same thing, “He has finally at Peace”.

My decades long friendship with Gary came about because we were both survivors of clergy sexual abuse and Catholic Priests. Two things that are not normally put together, it was our long lasting and common bond. So my reflections are based on that reality.

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ROME (ITALY)
Washington Post

April 11, 2019

By Chico Harlan and Stefano Pitrelli

Breaking years of silence on major church affairs, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has written a lengthy letter devoted to clerical sex abuse in which he attributes the crisis to a breakdown of church and societal moral teaching and says he felt compelled to assist “in this difficult hour.”

The 6,000-word letter, written for a small German Catholic publication and published in translation by other outlets on Thursday, laments the secularization of the West, decries the 1960s sexual revolution and describes seminaries that became filled during that period with “homosexual cliques.”

The pope emeritus, in emphasizing the retreat of religious belief and firm church teaching, provides a markedly different explanation for the abuse crisis than that offered by Pope Francis, who has often said abuse results from the corrupted power of clergy.

“Why did pedophilia reach such proportions?” Benedict wrote, according to the Catholic News Agency, which published the full text in English. “Ultimately, the reason is the absence of God.”

Since abdicating the papacy six years ago, Benedict — living in a monastery inside the Vatican City walls — had remained nearly silent on issues facing the church, in part to yield full authority to his successor. But Benedict’s decision to speak out shows the unprecedented and awkward position facing the ideologically divided Roman Catholic Church, which has — for the first time in six centuries — two potential authority figures who hold sometimes-differing views.

In his intervention, Benedict did not assess his own role in the crisis, during which he held power for decades, first behind the scenes and then for eight years as pontiff. But the letter bears his hallmark: in particular, a conviction that Catholic teaching can show the way out of a crisis.

“He speaks only a little about victims,” said Vito Mancuso, an author who has written books about Catholic theology and philosophy. “It’s almost an excuse for the one thing that he is truly interested in: the traditionalist restoration inside the church.”

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

April 11, 2019

We are relieved that Fr. Arthur Perrault, accused of molesting more than 30 children, has been found guilty. We are grateful to the jurors for listening to the painful testimony heard in this case and for reaching a just verdict.​

We hope this decision will encourage others who were abused by clergy to report to police, regardless of when the crimes occurred. We also hope this process deters other child molesters from fleeing abroad, as Fr. Perrault and so many accused priests have done and still do.

This case sends a message that “where there is a will, there is a way” and we are grateful to the police and prosecutors who were able to bring Fr. Perrault back to the United States to face justice.

Finally, we hope Fr. Perrault is given the longest prison term possible so that he will never be able to devastate one more young life.

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

April 11, 2019

Pope Benedict is again rubbing salt into the wounds of victims and trying to burnish his own deservedly-tarred reputation by blaming others for the church’s decades-old abuse and cover up crisis.

The number one cause of the crisis in Benedict’s eyes is the 1960s. Again. And the church’s role in all of this, he claims, was just not having the right policies in place to oust the child molesting clerics. By blaming the sexual abuse crisis on the “moral laxity that swept the west in the 1960’s,” Benedict attempts to hand-wave away the serious crimes committed against children and vulnerable adults with the laziest kind of whataboutism.

This attempt, of course, fails to explain why church officials then continued to shield abusers beyond the 60s, 70s, and 80s and well into today. It also says nothing about why Benedict himself was involved in covering up cases of abuse, such as that of Fr. Lawrency Murphy who abused deaf children in Wisconsin. Are we to assume that Benedict himself also fell victim to this moral laxity? How convenient for him.

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NEW YORK (NY)
First Things

April 11, 2019

by Charles J. Chaput

Writing nearly half a century ago (1970), the Italian Catholic philosopher Augusto Del Noce noted that “I often find myself envying unbelievers: Does not contemporary history provide abundant evidence that Catholics are a mentally inferior species? Their rush to conform to the opinion about Catholicism held by rationalist secularists is stunning.

Those words from his essay “The Ascendance of Eroticism” open Del Noce’s brilliant reflections—part analysis, part prophecy—on Europe’s then-current sexual revolution. At a time when a young priest named Joseph Ratzinger was predicting a smaller, more hard-pressed, but purer Church of the future in his 1969–70 German and Vatican radio interviews, Del Noce was explaining how it would happen. He foresaw that “the decisive battle against Christianity [can] be fought only at the level of the sexual revolution. And therefore the problem of sexuality and eroticism is today the fundamental problem from the moral point of view.”

History has proven him right, and for obvious reasons. Sex is both a powerful bond and a fierce corrosive, which is why, historically, nearly all human cultures have surrounded it with taboos that order its harmonious integration into daily life. The naive eagerness—“stupidity” would not be too strong a word for Del Noce’s purposes—of many mid-century Church progressives in accepting, or at least accommodating, sexual license as a form of human liberation, spearheaded the intellectual collapse of an entire generation of Catholic moral theology. Since the 1960s, license has morphed into widespread sexual and social dysfunction, conflict, and suffering—also foreseen by Del Noce.

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JOHNSTOWN (PA)
Tribune Democrat

April 7, 2019

By Richard Serbin

Few records so clearly show how arrogant and callous bishops can be.

I’d never seen the document before, despite representing victims of clergy child sexual abuse for over 30 years, and despite having scoured thousands of pages of church records, purposely hidden away in the “secret archives” of the church.

The document was generated because of the first-ever trial against a Pennsylvania child predator priest, bishop and diocese. I represented the victim. That case was the first and only one in state history to result in a jury verdict in favor of the victim. It was also the longest such case ever, having been dragged out by Catholic officials for more than 20 years.

So maybe I shouldn’t have reacted so strongly when I stumbled across the document only months ago in the Pennsylvania grand jury report revealing decades of clergy sex crimes and the complicity and enabling by the church.

Seeing it revealed publicly, 25 years after it was written, still was disturbing.

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HARTFORD (CT)
Connecticut Mirror

April 10. 2019

By Jenna Carlesso

Proponents of legislation that would toughen Connecticut’s sexual assault and harassment laws won a victory Wednesday with the Judiciary Committee’s passage of the so-called Time’s Up bill.

The measure would broaden the mandate for sexual harassment training, requiring all workplaces with three or more employees to provide the instruction to every worker.

Currently, employers with 50 or more workers must offer sexual harassment training, and the edict only applies to supervisors. The state’s Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities would create a video and other online material to satisfy the new training requirement.

Sen. Dennis Bradley, D-Bridgeport, said he watched his mother, who worked as a secretary when he was a child, fend off unwanted advances.

“Those days where I had to go to work with her, to see how she was harassed as a woman in the workplace — I think this is not only progressive legislation in protecting women, but it also doesn’t put much of an incumbent on an employer to make sure that people have the sensitivity and the knowledge as to what’s acceptable in the workplace these days,” he said.

Some Republicans took issue with the bill’s stringent training requirements for businesses, especially small companies. They also expressed concern over what they described as a lack of due process for people accused of harassment.

The bill would extend or eliminate the statute of limitations for serious sexual crimes, including rape by force or drugs, sex with an unconscious person, forced sexual contact, sex by false medical pretense and unwanted sexual contact. It would wipe out the statute of limitations for sexual crimes against children, such as statutory rape and sexual contact with a student younger than 16.

“We are among the lowest in terms of the period of time we allow victims of sexual assault access to justice in the country,” said Sen. Mae Flexer, D-Killingly, a key backer of the legislation. “This bill will move Connecticut in line with many other states.”

Twenty states have a longer statute of limitations for rape, officials said, and 25 have no statute of limitations for the crime.

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

April 9, 2019

According to a recently published list, a priest who had been removed from his duties for abusing children also has connections to Pittsburgh.

The Rev. Peter Covas, who was named as an abuser on the list released by the Diocese of San Diego, also spent time in Pittsburgh. He worked at Duquense University as a history teacher in 1957.

We call on Bishop David Zubik to add this information to his list and to urge anyone who may have seen, suspected, or suffered crimes – at the hands of Rev. Covas or any other priest – to come forward and make a report to law enforcement.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

April 11, 2019

By Michael Sean Winters

When a friend first sent me Pope Emeritus Benedict’s article about the root causes of clergy sex abuse, I thought the text was a hoax. Here, it seemed, was a caricature of both Joseph Ratzinger’s once powerful intellect and of conservative explanations for the sex abuse crisis. Apparently the text is authentic, so we must search for other reasons why it gets so much wrong — and so much that the retired pope would know is wrong. Let us examine the difficulties with this text.

First and foremost, Benedict knows as few others do, that the crisis is a double affliction: There is the fact of the abuse and the fact of that abuse being covered up. Nowhere in this text does he explore the second affliction. Yet he knows that when, as Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he completed his investigation into the evil deeds of Fr. Marcial Maciel, no action was taken against this most horrible of perpetrators. He would have known about the allegations leveled against then-Archbishop Theodore McCarrick before his promotion to the Archdiocese of Washington and to the cardinalate, and that those allegations were unanswered or ignored. He knew the circumstances that forced Cardinal Bernard Law to resign his see and spend the rest of his life occupying a sinecure in Rome. Why no mention of any of this?

Second, the former pope is undoubtedly correct that something happened in the 1960s, that there really was a sexual revolution. Pop culture announced the fact incessantly. As Benedict stipulates, of course that sexual revolution had an effect on preparing men for the priesthood and life in seminaries.

If you look at this chart of when perpetrators were ordained, you will see that the decade that produced the largest number of sexual abusers was indeed the 1960s, but that has no correlation to Benedict’s claim that seminary reform created the problem The seminary reforms did not really start until the close of the Second Vatican Council and, in some places, not until the 1970s. What is more, the decade that produced the second highest number of perpetrators was the 1950s, not the 1970s. The former pope would have been more accurate if he had said that pre-Vatican II seminary formation did not prepare men for serving in a post-Vatican II culture. That, I think, we can all agree is the case. And a certain percentage of those men were psycho-sexually immature. It is the post-Vatican II seminary with its emphasis on human formation that began to weed out the immature and to graduate mostly healthy and well-adjusted men.

Third, one of the reasons I have long admired Ratzinger’s theology is that he is so systematic, so thorough and careful, with arguments that go only as far as they can and no further. Yet here we get a series of anecdotes about sex education and naughty movies. He states, “The mental collapse was also linked to a propensity for violence. That is why sex films were no longer allowed on airplanes because violence would break out among the small community of passengers.” I have a hard time believing the “no longer” in that second sentence — was there really ever a time when airlines showed dirty movies?

Fourth, Benedict is always described as a gentle soul, yet he seems to take pleasure in the fact that a German moral theologian, Franz Böckle, who challenged the ideas we all knew would be dominant in the 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor, died before the encyclical was published. Is the pope emeritus settling scores? That is not what one would expect of a holy man in advanced years, preparing to meet his maker.

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NEW YORK (NY)
America Magazine

April 11, 2019

By Carol Glatz

Retired Pope Benedict XVI, acknowledging his role in helping the Catholic Church come to terms with the clerical sexual abuse crisis beginning in the 1980s, wrote an article outlining his thoughts about what must be done now.

Seeing the crisis as rooted in the “egregious event” of the cultural and sexual revolution in the Western world in the 1960s and a collapse of the existence and authority of absolute truth and God, the retired pope said the primary task at hand is to reassert the joyful truth of God’s existence and of the church as holding the true deposit of faith.

“When thinking about what action is required first and foremost, it is rather obvious that we do not need another church of our own design. Rather, what is required first and foremost is the renewal of the faith in the reality of Jesus Christ given to us in the Blessed Sacrament,” he wrote.

The pope’s remarks, presented as a compilation of “some notes,” were to be published in Klerusblatt, a German-language Catholic monthly journal for clergy in Bavaria. Several news outlets released their translations of the text early April 11.

Given the February Vatican gathering of presidents of the world’s bishops’ conferences “to discuss the current crisis of faith and of the church,” and given his role as pope during “the public outbreak of the crisis,” the retired pope felt it appropriate he also help contribute “to a new beginning,” he said.

Pope Benedict added that he contacted Pope Francis and Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, before releasing the article.

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GREEN BAY (WI)
WFRV TV

April 11, 2019

By Benjamin Burns

The Diocese of Green Bay is holding two prayer services for those in need of healing following the church’s sexual abuse allegations.

The Catholic Church has been under fire for accusations around the world of priests sexually abusing minors. The Diocese of Green Bay has also released the names of 47 of its priests with confirmed allegations against them.

According to the Diocese, the healing prayer services are intended for all those in need of healing from the Church and for others to come together as members of the Church to pray for those in need of healing. All are invited, including survivors of sexual abuse, friends and family members of survivors, and other caring persons.

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PARIS (FRANCE)
Agence France Presse

April 11, 2019

Spain’s Supreme Court has confirmed a jail sentence of more than 17 years for a priest who sexually abused two boys, one of whose parents consented.

The news comes as a trickle of accusations of sexual abuse against priests in schools and seminaries over the past few years has started to erode the wall of silence surrounding abuse in Catholic Spain.

In its verdict made public Wedneday, the Supreme Court confirmed a November 2017 sentence against Jose Donoso Fernandez, a former priest in the southwestern village of Mengabril, whom a provincial court sent to prison for 17 years and seven months.

It also confirmed a jail term of four years for the parents of one of the underage boys for committing sexual abuse “via omission, as they knew about and consented to the priest’s sexual relations with their son.”

The court said Donoso housed the Romanian couple and their children in 2013 and 2014 in the priest’s parish house.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Associated Press

April 10, 2019

Pennsylvania’s battle over giving now-adult victims of child sexual abuse another chance to sue their perpetrators or institutions that may have covered it up returned to the Senate on Wednesday, as competing bills landed in the chamber.

The movement comes six months after wider legislation to lift criminal and civil limitations on child sexual abuse cases collapsed in the Senate in the wake of a fresh Roman Catholic church scandal that spurred victims to lobby in the Capitol’s corridors.

On Wednesday, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed legislation to relax criminal and civil limitations and to amend the state constitution to create a two-year window for victims to file civil lawsuits if they’d lost that right because they passed Pennsylvania’s legal age limit.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

April 11, 2019

By Elise Harris

On Wednesday the Peruvian bishops’ conference came out against one of their own after an archbishop won a criminal defamation case against journalist Pedro Salinas, known for revealing various scandals inside a prominent Catholic movement operating in the country.

On April 9, Salinas was sentenced to a 1-year suspended prison term and a $24,000 fine after Archbishop Jose Antonio Eguren Anselmi of Piura, in northwestern Peru, launched a criminal case of aggravated defamation against the journalist last year.

After the sentencing, the leadership of the Peruvian Bishops’ Conference and the new Archbishop of Lima, Carlos Gustavo Castilla Mattasoglio, issued a statement April 10 backing Salinas and indicating that Pope Francis is also supportive of his efforts to uncover abuse.

In their statement, the bishops’ conference said Salinas “sought to clarify the truth” about scandals happening within the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV), and that in the wake of his guilty verdict, Francis had asked them “to prioritize the compensation and attention to the victims of every type of abuse, condemning any form of complicity.”

Francis, they said, “has praised and thanked the work of the journalists who, through their investigations, contribute to denouncing the abuses, punishing the perpetrators and assisting the victims.”

“The pope underlines that the Church needs their help in this difficult task of fighting against evil,” and that the climate of mercy and conversion in Lent “moves everyone to the maximum transparency so that the crimes are recognized, and a just reparation is possible,” they said.

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OLEAN (NY)
Olean Times Herald

Aprtil 11, 2019

By Tom Dinki

Two now-deceased friars, who both served in administrative positions in the Olean area’s two most prominent Catholic educational institutions, were reportedly accused of abuse.

The Catholic Diocese of Buffalo reviewed allegations last year against the Rev. Gervase White, a prominent St. Bonaventure University friar, and the Rev. James Cairnan Haggerty, a principal of Archbishop Walsh High School, according to diocesan documents reported by WKBW Wednesday evening. Both were accused by a different man.

White and Haggerty, according to the report, are among more than 20 accused priests whose names were never released by the diocese despite allegations against them being reviewed last June by the Diocesan Review Board, which reviews abuse claims for the diocese.

White, a Franciscan priest, worked at St. Bonaventure for nearly 50 years before his death in 2002. He served several roles at the university, according to Olean Times Herald archives, including vice president of student affairs, chair of the theology department, dean of men, director of the Third Order of St. Francis and and guardian of the on-campus friary.

St. Bonaventure officials released a statement late Wednesday that, according to their records, no instances of abuse had ever been reported against White during his 47 years at the university. However, they said Franciscans Friars of Holy Name Province, White’s sponsoring province, has informed them an allegation against White is being investigated.

“Until we know with certainty if this allegation is credible, we believe it’s not appropriate to comment further on the case at this time,” said St. Bonaventure President Dr. Dennis DePerro in the statement. “That said, St. Bonaventure University remains steadfastly committed to zero tolerance for any form of sexual abuse or harassment — from students, faculty, staff or friars — and we will provide any support service necessary to those who have been victimized.”

The statement did not mention Haggerty, a Franciscan priest who served as a campus minister at St. Bonaventure for two years in the 1980s prior to his death in 1991.

A native of Jessup, Pa., and a World War II veteran, White entered the Franciscan Order at Callicoon in 1948, earned his bachelor’s degree in theology from St. Bonaventure in 1951 and was ordained in 1954.

White is still prominent at the university, as his name is attached to multiple honors bestowed by the institution and often recalled by older alumni in positive testimonials.

The Fr. Gervase F. White, O.F.M. Endowed Scholarship is listed on St. Bonaventure’s website. Additionally, the Fr. Gervase White, O.F.M., Staff Person of the Year award is presented to a St. Bonaventure employee who have “gone out of his or her way, especially in aiding students and enhancing student life on campus,” according to a 2015 St. Bonaventure awards program.

White’s name was also included on the Reilly Center’s video board, installed in the fall of 2016. The display was funded by donations from board of trustee member Albert C. Horton, Class of 1966, who has multiple times credited White as one of three university employees to whom Horton owes his success in life.

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[“Horror map” of Chilean Church records details of clergy sexual abuse, 230 cases]

CHILE
Publimetro

April 7, 2019

By Gabriel Arce

Se tratan de 230 crímenes sexuales que registra la Red de Sobrevivientes de Abuso Eclesiástico. El mapa incluye geolocalización de los delitos, el acusado y año de las denuncias.

La Red de Sobrevivientes de Abuso Eclesiástico de Chile lanzó este fin de semana el “mapa del horror de la iglesia”. Se trata de una iniciativa que registra los 230 crímenes sexuales que la agrupación contabiliza en todo el país, y que desde ahora estará disponible al detalle y geolocalizada en línea.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WKBW TV

April 10, 2019

By Charlie Specht

Bishop Richard J. Malone in a recent interview called for Catholics “to see where we’ve failed, turn to God for forgiveness and mercy, and move on.”

But a group of influential Catholics at Canisius College say there’s no moving on until the diocese comes clean about the true scope of abuse in the Diocese of Buffalo.

“We’re in some senses maybe dying a death of a thousand cuts,” said Canisius College President John J. Hurley. “And wouldn’t it be better if we could just flush this all out in the open and we would know what we’re dealing with?”

Hurley’s group — the Movement to Restore Trust — has good reason to be concerned, documents show.

That’s because internal church records obtained by the 7 Eyewitness News I-Team show the scope of abuse is much larger than the public has been led to believe — even with 121 members of the clergy already accused of sex abuse or misconduct.

Diocese of Buffalo – 6.27.2018 Review Board Agenda (Text)
The June 27, 2018 agenda of the Diocesan Review Board – a group of clergy and lay people who review abuse claims for the church — is jam-packed with allegations reported to the diocese by 138 victims.

Perhaps most shocking: the names and allegations against 25 accused priests – including one recently active in the diocese – are still being shielded from the public.

“People are… they’re shell-shocked and weary from this, saying, ‘Enough is enough,’” Hurley said. “Let’s know that we’ve got complete disclosure here and that we’re not going to see another round of this.”

That’s why Hurley’s group is pushing the diocese for a fuller accounting of accused priests. Currently, the diocese does not list any priests who were accused by one victim after their deaths, whereas the Archdiocese of Boston, for example, lists those priest names but is clear with the public about what it does and does not know about the allegations.

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[Archbishop of Concepción investigates priest for abuse claims from 1980s]

CHILE
El Mostrador

April 8, 2019

La víctima recién denunció al sacerdote José Urrutia Tapia, de acuerdo a un comunicado difundido por la iglesia penquista.

El arzobispado de Concepción anunció, a través de un comunicado, que se inició el proceso canónico contra el sacerdote José Urrutia Tapia, acusado de cometer abuso sexual en la década de los 80’s, hecho que fue recientemente denunciado por la víctima.

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[Map of Ecclesiastical Sexual Abuse: 22 cases reported in Valparaíso region]

CHILE
BioBioChile

April 8, 2019

By Manuel Cabrera and Gonzalo Olguín

El Mapa del Abuso Sexual Eclesiástico, publicado por la Red de Sobrevivientes de Abuso Eclesiástico de Chile contabiliza 22 casos de denuncias individuales y colectivas en la región de Valparaíso, concentrados en Valparaíso, Quilpué, Quillota y en la zona cordillerana de San Felipe y Los Andes.

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[Priest Marcelino Moya sentenced to 17 years in prison for child abuse]

ARGENTINA
La Nación

April 5, 2019

El Tribunal de Juicios y Apelaciones de Concepción del Uruguay, en Entre Ríos, condenó hoy a la pena de 17 años de prisión de cumplimiento efectivo al sacerdote Marcelino Ricardo Moya por considerarlo autor de los delitos de promoción de la corrupción agravada y abuso sexual simple agravado en concurso real entre sí.

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[Church expels priest accused of abusing a minor]

MAR DE PLATA (ARGENTINA)
La Nación

April 8, 2019

By Darío Palavecino

El obispo de Mar del Plata, monseñor Gabriel Mestre, confirmó que la Iglesia excluyó de manera definitiva al sacerdote José Luis Serre, que desde enero del año pasado afronta un proceso penal por abuso sexual de un menor de edad. El acusado se desempeñaba al frente de la parroquia Nuestra Señora de Lourdes, en Necochea, pero el prelado se encargó de aclarar que el hecho que se le imputa ocurrió fuera de los límites de esta diócesis.

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[Bishop Aós does not rule out sale of property to pay compensation]

CHILE
La Tercera

April 8, 2019

By S. Palma

El administrador apostólico de Santiago además dijo que le solicitó al Papa Francisco que nombre prontamente obispos auxiliares en la diócesis.

En un punto de prensa en Roma, el obispo Celestino Aós, administrador apostólico de Santiago, se refirió al trabajo que ha desplegado en el Vaticano, incluyendo su encuentro con el Papa Francisco, el pasado viernes.

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[Survivor accuses seven priests and a bishop of covering up abuse]

MADRID (SPAIN)
El País

April 4, 2019

By Julio Núñez

Los abusos, cometidos por el sacerdote José Manuel Ramos a finales de los ochenta, fueron instruidos canónicamente en 2017

Javier, víctima de pederastia en el seminario menor de La Bañeza (León) a finales de los ochenta, ha denunciando ante la policía que la diócesis de Astorga y el centro donde sucedieron los hechos encubrieron al cura José Manuel Ramos Gordón después de que, junto con su hermano y otro compañero, comunicaron lo sucedido a la dirección del colegio. Primero acudieron al director del seminario, Gregorio Rodríguez (fallecido) y luego al tutor de sexto curso, Francisco Javier Redondo (hoy vicario de Ponferrada). Pero no pasó nada, los abusos continuaron. Años después, entre 1994 y 1995, su padre habló con varios sacerdotes de la provincia leonesa para pedirle ayuda. “Todos lo sabían. Un cura le dijo que tuviese cuidado con lo que decía y otro que tenía que saber perdonar”. Javier ha incluido todos los nombres en la denuncia. En total siete sacerdotes y un obispo: el del antiguo director, el actual vicario de Ponferrada, el del por entonces obispo Antonio Briva (fallecido) y el de los sacerdotes Prudencio Álvarez, Juan Herminio Rodríguez, Santiago Cadierno (párroco de Castrocontrigo, León), Bernardo y Hortensio Velado (ambos hermanos y también fallecidos).

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[Supreme Court sentences Badajoz priest to 17+ years in prison for pedophilia]

MADRID (SPAIN)
El País

April 11, 2019

By Julio Núñez

El juez sentencia a cuatro años de prisión a los padres de una víctima por consentir los abusos

El Tribunal Supremo ha condenado al sacerdote José Donoso Fernández, expárroco de Mengabril (Badajoz), a 17 años y siete meses de cárcel por abusar en 2014 de dos menores de edad, uno de ellos monaguillo de la iglesia donde oficiaba el clérigo. El cura también ha sido sentenciado por falsificar informes de asistencia al colegio de uno de los niños por enfermedad para justificar los días que no iba a clase. El fallo también le condena por enviar mensajes por WhatsApp al menor después de que le impusieran una orden de alejamiento cuando fue imputado en 2015. El sacerdote deberá pagar una indemnización de 10.000 euros a uno de los menores y 50.000 al otro. El juez ha condenado a cuatro años de prisión a los padres de una de las víctimas por “un delito de abuso sexual en la modalidad de comisión por omisión”, ya que conocieron los hechos y consintieron que el clérigo continuara abusando de su hijo. También se les ha retirado la patria potestad.

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[Jesuits support decision to rename Renato Poblete River Park: the name “only generates division”]

CHILE
El Mostrador

April 9, 2019

A través de un comunicado, recordaron que existe una investigación canónica en contra del fallecido religioso.

A través de un comunicado, los Jesuitas se refirieron a la decisión del ministerio de Vivienda y Urbanismo que renombrará el Parque Fluvial Renato Poblete, debido a las denuncias de abuso sexual en contra del fallecido sacerdote. El recinto pasará a llamarse Parque de la
Familia.

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[Salesians lead list of clergy sexual abuse reports in Chile]

CHILE
BioBioChile

April 8, 2019

By Alberto González, Nicole Martínez, and Agence France-Presse

La Red de Sobrevivientes de Abusos Eclesiásticos de Chile publicó un mapa de abusos por parte de religiosos, que incluye a acusados de abuso sexual y encubrimiento, registrando más de 230 casos. La orden de los Salesianos lidera la lista con la mayor cantidad de denuncias, seguidos por los Maristas y los Jesuitas.

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[Aós details meeting with Pope at Vatican and shares message to Chilean faithful]

CHILE
BioBioChile

April 9, 2019

By Emilio Lara and Agence France-Presse

El papa Francisco instó al arzobispo español Celestino Aós, nuevo administrador apostólico de la Arquidiócesis de Santiago, a “construir un futuro diferente” para la Iglesia en el país, azotada por los escándalos de abusos sexuales perpetrados por curas.

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[Aós justified partial release of Scicluna report amid criticism by victims and laity]

CHILE
BioBioChile

April 10, 2019

By Alberto González, Nicole Martínez, and Agence France-Presse

Víctimas de abusos sexuales y laicos lamentaron que la Iglesia Católica aún no concrete una colaboración efectiva con la Justicia chilena, y cuestionaron las declaraciones del administrador apostólico de Santiago, Celestino Aós, quien reiteró que la entrega del informe Scicluna sólo será caso a caso, porque el documento puede contener información no relacionada con delitos.

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[Religion loses influence as rites and faith collapse]

BARCELONA (SPAIN)
El País

April 10, 2019

By Alfondo L. Congostrina and Julio Núñez

Las bodas por la Iglesia caen por debajo del 20%. La mitad de los jóvenes no cree en Dios. España se aproxima a Francia en el aumento de la secularización

Francesc Romeu se ordenó sacerdote hace 34 años. Actualmente, es el párroco de Santa Maria del Taulat en el barrio barcelonés de Poblenou. “El domingo es la celebración de Ramos. Ya le he preguntado a la florista que vende las palmas y me dice que tendré un lleno absoluto. La plaza estará a rebosar. El Jueves Santo volveré a la realidad y oficiaré para unos pocos”, ironiza. La percepción del sacerdote coincide con los resultados del informe Laicidad en Cifras, 2018, de la Fundación Ferrer i Guàrdia, que constata que el 27% de los españoles son “ateos, agnósticos o no creyentes”. Un porcentaje “histórico”, según Sílvia Luque, directora de la fundación.

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[Opus Dei investigates priest for abusing student at a Seville college]

MADRID (SPAIN)
El País

April 10, 2019

By Julio Núñez

La víctima asegura que trasladaron al sacerdote en 2010 tras comunicar los hechos a un superior

El Opus Dei investiga al sacerdote numerario Manuel Cociña por abusar supuestamente de un estudiante de 18 años en el Colegio Mayor Almonte (Sevilla) entre 2002 y 2003. Tras recibir la denuncia contra el clérigo en agosto de 2018, la prelatura apartó a Cociña a un centro del Opus en Granada, donde tiene restringidas las actividades pastorales y prohibido el contacto con menores de 30 años. La institución ha destacado que no se trata de un delito de pederastia, sino contra un mayor de edad, “razón por la que es la víctima la que tiene que acudir a denunciar ante la justicia”, ha explicado un portavoz.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Tablet

April 11, 2019

By Ruth Gledhill

The former Pope has blamed the 1960s as an “egregrious” decade that is at the roots of the clerical sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church.

In an essay today, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI writes: “In the 1960s an egregious event occurred, on a scale unprecedented in history. It could be said that in the 20 years from 1960 to 1980, the previously normative standards regarding sexuality collapsed entirely, and a new normalcy arose that has by now been the subject of laborious attempts at disruption.”

He published the essay in the Klerusblatt, a monthly periodical for clergy in mostly Bavarian dioceses, after running it past the Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Pope Francis himself, it seemed appropriate to publish this text in

Outlining the effects of the 1960s on Catholic priests and seminarians, he says he wrote the essay in an attempt to respond to the Vatican Meeting on the Protection of Minors, where in February the presidents of the world’s bishops’ conferences gathered at the Vatican to discuss the current crisis of the faith and of the Church.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Patriot News

April 10, 2019

By Ivey DeJesus

Pennsylvania on Wednesday further advanced the debate over the reform of child sex crime laws as House lawmakers approved two key reform measures even as counterparts in the Senate introduced a third counter bill aimed at similar purposes.

The House on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved two companion bills that respectively call for the elimination of criminal statute of limitations involving child sex crimes; and call for a constitutional amendment that would lead to a revival of expired statute of limitations.

House Bill 962, sponsored by Rep. Mark Rozzi, D-Berks, would also remove sovereign immunity in civil claims, meaning that if an institution has known about child sex crimes, it would be held responsible.

Meanwhile, a cadre of freshmen Democratic Senators on Wednesday introduced a bill that seemed to compete with the House bills. Senate Bill 540 would lift the statute of limitations for adults who were sexually abused at any age.

Earlier in the morning, ahead of introducing the bill in his chamber, Sen. Tim Kearney, D-Chester, laid out the key points of the Senate bill at a press conference in the Capitol Rotunda attended by state officials and survivors of child sexual abuse.

The Senate bill, which is being co-sponsored by the five freshmen Democratic senators, including Kearney, follows the recommended guidelines outlined in the findings of the 2018 grand jury investigation into clergy sex abuse across the Roman Catholic Church in Pennsylvania.

The Senate bill calls for the abolishment of criminal statute of limitations and a two-year revival window of expired statute of limitations. The proposal also calls for a six-month delay to allow for the completion of compensation funds already being processed.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

April 10, 2019

By Dennis Sadowski

Amid the legal wrangling surrounding the long-standing clergy sexual abuse crisis, Barbara Thorp, a social worker who formerly led the Archdiocese of Boston’s office that supports and cares for abuse survivors, wants Catholic leaders to know that healing among survivors is a far more important path to pursue.

Greater transparency related to church procedures and changes in canon law to focus on the needs of victims will demonstrate that the Church truly cares about survivors, Thorp said during an April 9 panel discussion on the role of civil law and the action of lawyers in hiding and uncovering the abuse crisis sponsored by Georgetown University’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life.

Right now, Thorp told an audience at the Georgetown University Law Center, many survivors feel abandoned by the church, especially since new revelations of the Church’s response to alleged abuse and the actions of some prelates emerged in 2018.

When the abuse crisis exploded in 2002, abuse survivors felt a sense of betrayal, Thorp said. As church actions since then in many cases have failed to fully address the needs of survivors, the survivors realize that canon law is preventing strict action to address wayward clergy, she said.

Thorp credited changes in civil law and even some actions among church leaders that have led to greater transparency and steps to support the spiritual needs of abuse survivors. But she charged that canon law “is lagging far behind in terms of seeing itself as another opportunity to bring real healing and real confidence that the Church understands the depth of the harm in the damage that was done.”

Pointing to the upcoming Holy Week in which Jesus felt betrayed and abandoned, Thorp called on church leaders from Rome to local dioceses to remember that abuse survivors carry Christ’s passion “in our midst.”

“Now, if we can have that sense of urgency, not to let this moment pass, not to let Jesus be alone in the garden, not to let him walk the path without attending to those that feel a deep sense of betrayal and abandonment,” she said.

Two attorneys on the panel reviewed the legal side of the Church’s response to the crisis.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

April 10, 2019

By Jay Tokasz

Bishop Richard J. Malone has appointed Charles Mendolera, a veteran employee of the Buffalo Diocese, as executive director of financial administration.

Mendolera has been serving as interim director for the past few weeks. He succeeds Steven D. Timmel, who resigned in March after 31 years with the diocese.

Mendolera will oversee a sprawling, multimillion-dollar operation that includes dozens of facilities, hundreds of diocesan employees and more than $47 million in diocesan investments. He assumes the top financial position as the diocese is offering millions of dollars in compensation to childhood victims of clergy sex abuse and bracing for the prospect of potentially expensive lawsuits stemming from the state’s recently adopted Child Victims Act, which includes a one-year window for abuse victims from decades ago to file civil legal claims.

Mendolera started with the diocese as director of accounting from 2004 to 2008. He has been controller of financial administration since 2008.

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ANDOVER (MA)
Eagle Tribune

April 10, 2019

By Jessica Valeriani

The Rev. Peter Gori of St. Augustine’s Church in Andover, one of two Catholic priests accused this week of sexually abusing a boy decades ago, has denied the allegations in a letter to parishioners.

Gori sexually abused the boy repeatedly in the 1990s when the alleged victim was 10 years old, according to attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who has handled several sexual abuse cases involving Catholic priests.

The Rev. William Waters, who was previously assigned to the former St. Augustine’s Church in Lawrence, sexually abused the same boy from 1987 to 1990 when the alleged victim was eight to 10 years old, according to Garabedian.

Terrence Donilon, secretary for communications and public affairs at the Archdiocese of Boston, said the abuse is alleged to have happened at St. Augustine’s in Lawrence. He said Catholic church officials are investigating, and that Gori has been placed on administrative leave.

Gori’s letter to parishioners denying the allegations reads:

Dear Parishioners,

On a Monday morning it is quite normal to ask or reply to the friendly question, “How was your weekend?”

Parish priests usually respond with a chuckle or a smirk for obvious reasons. Our “weekend,” understood as personal, free time for rest and recreation, is not on Saturday-Sunday. It is scheduled during the week, as regularly as possible.

My “weekend” is supposed to be Thursday-Friday. I need to tell you about what happened to me this past Friday, April 5th. I received a phone call from our Augustinian Provincial informing me that an allegation has been made against me concerning the sexual abuse of a minor from 30 years ago.

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LAFAYETTE (LA)
Lafayette Daily Advertiser

April 10, 2019

By Ashley White

A list of priests accused of sexual abuse while serving in the Lafayette area will be released Friday and includes 33 priests and four deacons, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Lafayette said.

The diocese said ahead of the release of names that more than 300,000 pages of materials from the 100-year history of the Diocese of Lafayette were inspected by the diocese’s lay review board and local attorneys. The documents included 802 clerics’ files, 623 priests’ files, and 179 deacons’ files, Bishop J. Douglas Deshotel said in a letter. It took more than 700 hours of labor.

In the letter, Deshotel said his will be an “ongoing process of accountability” and will change in attitude and approach.

“In other words, the future receipt and subsequent determination of any new credible allegation against a priest or deacon, living or deceased, will result in adding his name to the disclosure list,” he wrote. “In fact, we have reasonable hope that the disclosure list will be a catalyst for continued reporting of past or future instances of abuse.”

The names on the list may come as a shock to some family and friends, he added. And the opposite may happen. Victims who reported sexual abuse by a priest or deacon may not see his name on a list because “the standard for establishing credibility may not yet have been met,” the letter said.

“I sincerely acknowledge and appreciate the courage f those who have already come forward with accusations,” Deshotel wrote. “Receiving each individual report was essential to ensuring the safety of others and to helping the Church publicly acknowledge its sins and errors.”

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NEW YORK(NY)
New York Post

April 10, 2019

By Sohrab Ahmari

When Pope Benedict XVI resigned the papacy in 2013, he vowed to live the rest of his days in seclusion, to serve the Catholic Church “through a life dedicated to prayer.” But the church’s spiraling abuse crisis prompted him this week to ­return to the limelight.

The retired pontiff has drafted a 6,000-word document in his native German and aims to publish it in a monthly periodical for clergy in his home region of Bavaria. Benedict says the document, an English translation of which I’ve reviewed, is meant to assist the Church in seeking “a new beginning” and making her “again truly credible as a light among peoples and as a force in service against the powers of ­destruction.”

In the preface, he makes it clear that he is “no longer directly responsible” for the church and that he consulted Pope Francis before ­resolving to make the document public.

Nevertheless, Benedict’s “The Church and the Scandal of Sexual Abuse” has the unmistakable ring of a papal document. You might even call it a post-retirement encyclical.

It’s written with his signature precision and clarity of insight and offers a piercing account of the origins of the crisis and a ­vision of the way forward.

The church’s still-radiating crisis, Benedict suggests, was a product of the moral laxity that swept the West, and not just the church, in the 1960s. The young rebels of 1968, Benedict writes, fought for “all-out sexual freedom, one which no longer conceded any norms.”

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Pennsylvania Capital-Star

April 10, 2019

By Elizabeth Hardison

From Jerry Sandusky and Bill Cosby to clergy in the Catholic church, Pennsylvania is “ground zero” in a nationwide reckoning over how to support victims of sexual abuse.

That’s according to the state’s Victim Advocate Jennifer Storm, who appeared with a cadre of Senate Democrats and sexual assault survivors Wednesday to renew calls to reform Pennsylvania’s statute of limitations for sex crimes.

A bill Senate Democrats introduced Wednesday would eliminate the criminal and civil statute of limitations for sexual assault, abuse, and misconduct, and a create a two-year window for victims to bring civil suits in cases where the statute of limitations has passed.

The bill, which backers say is informed by a proposal that died in the Senate last year, is lawmakers’ latest attempt to implement a key recommendation of a 2018 grand jury report that detailed decades of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy and a subsequent cover-up in six Pennsylvania dioceses.

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BELLEVILLE (IL)
News Democrat

April 10, 2019

By Lexi Cortes

As recently as February, accusations of sexual abuse have come to light about five priests who have ties to Southern Illinois, according to a victims group.

Members of the group, called the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, and other advocates wrote those priests’ names in chalk on the sidewalk outside the Belleville Diocese at the end of March.

They want Belleville Bishop Edward K. Braxton to add those five names to the Belleville Diocese’s public list of priests, which now includes 17 men who were “removed from ministry after credibly substantiated allegations” of sexual abuse or sexual misconduct.

The group, known as S.N.A.P., said the five priests’ names should be included because they have been accused of abuse, too, and have lived or worked in the Belleville Diocese.

The names include Paul Joseph Bruening, Gavin O’Connor, Donald Dummer, Joseph P. Lessard and Ronald E. Brassard.

Braxton and Monsignor John Myler, a spokesman for the Diocese, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Bruening was named most recently on a list of priests who had been accused of sexually abusing children released two months ago in a Catholic diocese more than 500 miles from Belleville.

Bruening went on to work in the Diocese of Belleville in 1962, five years after he was accused of abusing a girl in Iowa, according to the Diocese of Sioux City, Iowa’s list, which included all of his assignments.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Associated Press

April 10, 2019

By Marc Levy

Democratic lawmakers are attempting anew to give now-adult victims of child sexual abuse a reprieve from time limits in Pennsylvania law that prohibit them from suing perpetrators and institutions that may have covered it up.

Senate Democrats said Wednesday they’re introducing legislation that’s been propelled by child sexual abuse scandals, including in Pennsylvania’s Roman Catholic dioceses. The state House was scheduled later Wednesday to vote on similar legislation.

Last October, Senate Republicans blocked a House bill that sought to provide the victims a two-year window to sue. It’s still not clear whether the legislation can pass the Senate, and it’s opposed by Catholic bishops.

A years-long fight over the two-year window, however, has held up passage of legislation to eliminate the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse crimes.

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Patheos blog

April 10, 2019

By Katie Joy

Last week authorities arrested church daycare teacher Alyson Saunders for child sexual abuse. Following her arrest Fellowship Presbyterian Church claimed through media releases they have been transparent with families of the church. However, emails, text messages, and social media communication between church officials and parents indicate the church attempted to cover-up and minimize the abuse allegations to protect the reputation of their school.

Shortly after the news broke about Alyson’s arrest, a parent of a child reached out to Without A Crystal Ball. The parent “Sarah” told me that she had dozens of emails and messages from the church that concerned her.

As we sorted through the dozens of documents, a picture of a cover-up, lack of transparency, minimizing of the abuse, and the interference of a family member of Alyson to stifle questions and silence discussion with the broader community about the crimes was revealed.

According to Sarah, the entire ordeal started on March 8, 2019. Up until this point in time, Sarah’s child had been attending Fellowship Presbyterian’s day school for several years. She loved the teachers, and Sarah believed the staff and administrators adored her daughter.

Everything changed with a single email from the school on March 8. In an abrupt message, school director Melissa Mitchell notified parents about an “all parent meeting” at 5 pm.

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BOSTON (MA)
The Pilot

April 10, 2019

By Russell Shaw

When the U.S. bishops gather in plenary assembly in Baltimore two months from now, their immediate task will be putting in place a new system of episcopal accountability in dealing with sex abuse. Its elements will likely include a code of conduct for themselves, a hotline for receiving complaints, and a framework for judging bishops who commit abuse or cover it up when committed by others.

The bishops were preparing to vote on just such a system at their general meeting last November when Pope Francis told them to put off acting until after his “summit” on sex abuse in February. Now the bishops should find it relatively easy to adopt a plan for accountability at their June 11-13 gathering, and the Vatican, one assumes, should find it easy to say yes.

And then the bishops will have put the crisis in the Church arising from the abuse scandal behind them, and everything will get back to normal.

Except, of course, that it won’t. And arguably shouldn’t.

As time has passed, it has become increasingly clear that the crisis, although obviously involving the abuse scandal and the bishops’ response, is a far larger matter that raises profound issues of authority, accountability, and participatory decision-making. In Baltimore the bishops would do well to take preliminary steps toward addressing these matters by authorizing a feasibility study of a plenary council or regional synod for the United States.

Here we can learn from the Church in Australia.

Australian Catholics have suffered their own dark night lately. Morale has taken a beating from clergy sex abuse and the conviction of Cardinal George Pell on charges of abusing two boys years ago. (The Cardinal is appealing the decision.) But, nothing daunted, the Church is pressing ahead with plans for a two-session plenary council in October 2020 and May 2021. Over 20,000 suggestions have come from 75,000 Catholics in “listening and dialogue” sessions hoping for a turn-around.

The idea of doing something similar here is by no means new.

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Patheos blog

April 10, 2019

By Michael F. Bird

Over at The Spectator (Oz), I have an article entitled: It’s time to end the seal of the confessional: the religious case

I argue that Catholic clergy should be required to lift the seal of the confessional and to engage in mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse:

It is after much reflection that I wish to declare my support for the mandatory reporting of child sex abuse even if it requires Catholic clergy to break the seal of the confessional.

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DUNEDIN (NEW ZEALAND)
The Otago Daily Times

April 10, 2019

By Michael McGough

You don’t have to be Catholic to take an interest in the announcement last week that Pope Francis has chosen the Most Rev Wilton D. Gregory, the longtime archbishop of Atlanta, as the new head of the archdiocese of Washington, DC.

Gregory’s appointment is interesting from several vantage points: He will be the first African American archbishop of the nation’s capital and he also was a leader in the American church’s early response to sexual abuse by clergy – an issue that tripped up his immediate predecessor, Cardinal Donald Wuerl. (Wuerl was preceded as archbishop by Theodore McCarrick, the former cardinal who was defrocked this year after being found guilty by a church tribunal of sexual misconduct with children and adults.)

Gregory’s appointment is notable for another reason: He was born on December 7, 1947, meaning that he is 71. It might seem odd that the Pope would appoint a septuagenarian to this important post in the American church, especially in light of the fact that bishops must submit their resignations at age 75.

But at least one commentator thinks that the choice of an older archbishop is part of a pattern. Writing in the Catholic publication La Croix International, Robert Mickens notes that Francis has often tapped older prelates for important assignments because of their “wealth of experience” and because they “share his vision for church reform and his interpretation of the Second Vatican Council”.

It’s also true that, in the church as in politics, leaders are living longer. If Joe Biden (76) and Bernie Sanders (77) can contemplate running for president, why can’t a 71-year-old cleric assume spiritual authority in Washington?

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DETROIT (MI)
Varsity News

April 9, 2019

By Gannon Pacioni

At least six Jesuit priests who formerly worked at the university have been accused of sexual abuse.

None of them are currently affiliated with Detroit Mercy, and none of their known incidents involved university students, according to an investigation by The Varsity News.

Some of the alleged assaults occurred before the men arrived on campus; some after. All of the accused are either deceased or have been dismissed by the order.

They include a dean, professors and members of campus ministry.

The accused are James F. Gates, Phillip T. Mooney, Michael E. Dorrler, Mark A. Finan, David C. Bayne and Charles E. Sullivan.

All were identified by the Midwest Jesuit province in a December report naming 50 clergy members in abuse cases that have been closed.

Other claims remain open. The targets of those ongoing investigations were not named.

Since the early 2000s, the Catholic faith has been roiled by charges of sexual abuse of children by hundreds of priests – and of coverups of those crimes by higher-ups.

Releasing lists of the accused is one of several steps church organizations have taken recently to attempt to be more transparent about their past.

“Most of the Jesuits on our list entered religious life from the 1930s through the early 1960s,” the Rev. Brian Paulson noted in a public letter accompanying the December release. “In retrospect, our evaluation of candidates, as well as the training, formation, and supervision of Jesuits, was not adequate. We have learned from this painful history and our formation today strives to promote the healthy affective and psychological development of Jesuits.”

The University of Detroit Mercy is sponsored by two religious orders, the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) and the Sisters of Mercy.

It was created in 1990 with the consolidation of the Jesuits’ University of Detroit and the sisters’ Mercy College.

All but one of the accused worked at the University of Detroit prior to the consolidation.

Here are details about the six individuals:

James F. Gates

Gates, a Jesuit brother, was accused of abusing 15 girls and one boy while assigned to a boarding school on the Colville Indian Reservation in Washington state from 1969 to 1972.

Those crimes, which resulted in a multi-million dollar settlement, followed his two years at University of Detroit, where beginning at age 26 he worked in campus ministry.

Gates also served in Montana, Missouri, Ohio and Nepal. He was at Holy Rosary-St. John’s Parish in Columbus, Ohio, from 1994 to 2002, where he faced an additional claim of abuse.

He lived at Vianney Renewal Center, a church-run supervised living center, from 2010 to 2012, when he was dismissed from the order.

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NORTH CORK (IRELAND)
The Avondhue News

April 10, 2019

By Donal O’Keeffe

‘The Devil works through children abused by priests’, former President Mary McAleese was told by senior Vatican officials.

In a new RTÉ documentary, Rome v Republic, to be aired this Thursday, former President McAleese says the then Vatican secretary of state Angelo Sodano, attempted in 2003 to secure an agreement with Ireland that it would not access church documents.

“I asked him why,” says Ms McAleese, “and it was very clear it was because he wanted to protect Vatican and diocesan archives. I have to say that I immediately said the conversation had to stop.”

Ms McAleese says the encounter with Cardinal Sodano left her ‘really quite shattered, that this was the number two (in the Vatican, after Pope John Paul II) in the church I belonged to’.

“There was nothing about him that was holy. There was nothing about him that was godly. There was nothing about him that was admirable. Everything about him I found horrifying.”

Rome v Republic is presented by Michael McDowell, and it traces the history of the Catholic Church in Ireland from the 18th century to the present day. McDowell was attorney general when Michael Woods, then minister for education, agreed the 2002 indemnity deal with 18 religious congregations which had run orphanages, reformatories and industrial schools. The deal saw the congregations pay €128 million in return for a State indemnity against all future legal actions by people who had been in institutions run by the Orders.

“The simple fact of the matter is that the result was that the State effectively signed a blank cheque which cost us €1.4 billion in the end, in exchange for a promise of a contribution of €128 million from the religious orders,” McDowell says.

17 years on, the 18 religious organisations have still not fulfilled the terms of the deal, and the terms of later offers made to the State. Of the €128 million the Orders agreed to pay, €4.21 million is still outstanding. Negotiations over the handover of remaining properties continue.

In the wake of the publication of the 2009 Ryan report, the18 congregations were called in by the then government and asked to increase their contributions to redress costs, the total cost of which came to €1.5 billion. Mr Justice Ryan had recommended the congregations pay half the cost of redress, with the taxpayer footing the rest.

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ATLANTA (GA)
FOX 5 Atlanta

April 9, 2019

By Russ Spencer

The leader of Atlanta’s 1.2 million Catholics is heading to the nation’s capital. Pope Francis chose Archbishop Wilton Gregory for the high profile position at a time of crisis in the church there.

Archbishop Gregory sat down with FOX 5 Senior Anchor Russ Spencer Tuesday afternoon to discuss the challenges ahead.

The archbishop was very open about how surprised he was to get the call to Washington. The Chicago native said he fully expected to retire someday as the Archbishop of Atlanta, a place he said he’s come to consider home.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

April 10, 2019

By Kate Thayer

Just a year after becoming a Catholic priest, Doug Langner said the loneliness started to creep in.

“You would go through times of (thinking), wouldn’t it be nice to just share your day with someone else?” said Langner, who was ordained in 2008 after graduating from Mundelein Seminary, and started to work in a Kansas City, Mo.-area parish. Soon he was the only priest assigned to his church, living alone in the rectory, which isn’t uncommon as the Catholic Church faces a priest shortage that has forced many churches to shut down or merge.

Then, Langner met someone.

She worked at the church and was going through a divorce. The two had a connection, Langner said, though they didn’t act on it.

But it helped him address doubts that had been there all along. It made him ask himself, “Are you really going to spend the next 50 years … of your life without someone to share it with?”

It turns out, he wasn’t. Langner left the priesthood about two years after his ordination. He said the vow of celibacy and the isolation it breeds weren’t for him, but his resolve as a Catholic remains intact.

Former altar boy sexually abused by priest tells why he’s raising his kids in the Catholic Church »

“I think there is a place in the church for people who are called to celibacy. They live it out in a beautiful way,” he said. “But I also don’t think they’re the only people called. Is God really only calling single, celibate men to the priesthood?”

Young priests leaving the pastorate is another blow to the struggling Catholic Church, which faces widespread sex abuse allegations, a less devout population and a priest shortage that’s forcing church closures and consolidation.

“In the midst of this storm, (prospective priests are thinking), do I get in the boat? Do I stay in the boat? That has to be a discernment. I think that’s one of the causes,” said Bishop Ronald Hicks, vicar general at the Archdiocese of Chicago.

Due in part to the priest shortage, the archdiocese has closed schools and churches as part of an ongoing restructuring plan. Since 1975, the Chicago Archdiocese has shuttered more than 100 parishes and more than 250 schools, according to its annual report. During that time, the number of total priests shrank from 1,261 in 1975 to 746 in 2018, according to the diocese.

“Here in Chicago, what we’re looking at is, with less priests, how do we continue to make sure our people are served and our parishes are thriving?” Hicks said. In addition to relying on deacons and involved parishioners to do the work of the church, Hicks said, “we’re actively promoting priesthood.”

Part of that includes a visible presence of seminary students working in local churches, said the Rev. John Kartje, rector of Mundelein Seminary — the largest seminary in the country, located at the University of Saint Mary of the Lake. This allows parishioners to see firsthand that young men are still entering the clergy, he said.

Though nationwide seminary enrollment has sliced nearly in half since 1970, to about 3,400 students in 2017, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, Kartje points out that Mundelein’s enrollment has remained steady in the past several years, hovering at around 200 students.

Once a man enters the seminary — a graduate degree program that takes between four and six years to complete — leaders at Mundelein try to address student concerns about church life, which can be isolating, Kartje said. Each student is offered professional counseling and a spiritual adviser, a priest who can offer guidance.

“The whole idea behind seminary is that it’s a discernment process. There’s no presumption on day one he’ll be ordained a priest,” he said, adding that 10 to 20 percent of students leave each year before reaching ordination. “It’s a complete altering of who you are.”

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

April 9, 2019

We are deeply grateful that Indian law enforcement are formally charging a bishop with raping a nun. It is rare that a top Catholic official faces criminal charges, so this is a significant step forward towards a safer church and society for all. We hope Bishop Franco Mullakkal faces trial soon.

We also hope that these charges provide a moment of vindication for the brave nun who reported the rape and for her brave colleagues who have rallied around her. We are also hopeful that this news will encourage others who saw, suspected or suffered his wrongdoing to come forward.

According to one news source “There were many attempts to silence witnesses in the case, and some nuns who deposed against him were threatened with expulsion. Later, the High Court had ordered protection to main witnesses. One of the witnesses in the case, Sister Lucy said she was confined to illegal custody and threatened to be locked up in a mental asylum.”

Intimidation of witnesses and secrecy are major reasons that abuse is able to thrive in the shadows. This horrific behavior serves no one but the abuser and ought to be met with reprimand and punishment, by both secular and church authorities.

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Get Religion blog

April 10, 2019

By Julia Duin

It’s been more than nine months since the explosive news about former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick hit and only now has The New Yorker done a definitive piece on it all.

We at GetReligion felt that McCarrick’s fall from grace was last year’s top religion story, along with the culpability of the Catholic Church’s highest officials in knowing about the cardinal’s sexual predilections for other men. They did nothing about it until finally it was revealed that he’d gone after boys as well.

While reporters all over the country were going into overdrive all summer reporting on l’affaire McCarrick and related stories, The New Yorker team did nothing. I still have an August 1 email to one of the editors there offering my services on that subject. Usually they’re atop the newest trend in seconds, but there was this strange silence –- and no response to my email -– on this story.

As time went on, there was a mention here and there, like this short news piece about Pope Francis that mentioned McCarrick in passing. It was written by James Carroll, a prolific author and a former Catholic seminarian.

Otherwise, radio silence on this blockbuster.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

April 10, 2019

By Elise Harris

Peruvian investigative journalist Paola Ugaz, currently embattled in a criminal defamation case triggered by a complaint from an archbishop, now is being threatened with another defamation charge by representatives of two Catholic schools who say her reporting on the institutions is false.

On March 25 Ugaz published an article in Peruvian paper La Republica asserting a former head of the prestigious San Pedro Catholic boys’ school in Lima was not only guilty of physical abuse in the lay community to which he belonged, but he also failed to act when concerns about possibly inappropriate conduct at the school were raised.

Alfredo Draxl García Rossell, who formerly led San Pedro, was recently asked to step down as director of the Liceo Naval School following accusations from journalist José Enrique Escardó that Draxl had abused him physically and psychologically while both were members of the same religious community in 1987.

Both Draxl and Escardó are ex-members of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV), a controversial Catholic organization that originated in Peru and whose founder, layman Luis Fernando Figari, has been accused of physical, psychological and sexual abuses and was prohibited by the Vatican in 2017 of having further contact with members of the group. Escardó left the SCV nearly 20 years ago, while Draxl left in 2018.

In her article, Ugaz noted that shortly after he left, Escardó published an article in Gente magazine saying that while he was in community, Draxl would force him to endure various abuses, one of which was to put a Swiss army knife to his neck and tell him to push against it. If he refused, he said Draxl would insist, yelling, “Push, faggot!” and then make him walk on his knees and kiss the feet of a statue of the Virgin Mary to ask for forgiveness.

When asked about the incident before a commission investigating institutional cases of abuse in Peru, Draxl said it was part of a game they played in which both men held knives and only lasted seconds. He called it a “stupid” mistake, but said he never intended to do violence.

Before leaving the Liceo Naval school, Draxl was director of San Pedro from 1997-2015. Both San Pedro and the girls school associated with it, Villa Caritas, are projects of the SCV and its women’s branch, the Marian Community of Reconciliation (MCR).

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HUDSON COUNTY (NJ)
Hudson Reporter

April 10, 2019

By Mike Montemarano

Reports of a homicide investigation surrounding Capparelli’s death broke on March 12.
Just over a month after the Roman Catholic Church in New Jersey released the names of 188 Catholic priests “credibly accused” of sexual abuse, one of those names on the list appeared again in national headlines.

According to media reports from Henderson, Nevada, 70-year-old John Capparelli, who served as a priest in Our Lady of Fatima Church in North Bergen, was found fatally shot on March 12. His death is being investigated as a homicide.

Capparelli served in several other New Jersey parishes as well during a 12-year span, which also included a stint as a hospital chaplain and Catholic prep school teacher, according to the Archdiocese.

It was widely reported that the Clark County Coroner’s office found the cause of death to be a single gunshot wound to the neck. Caparelli lived in Nevada for a few years prior to his death.

Defrocked after allegations of abuse

After first being ordained in 1980, he was removed from the ministry in New Jersey after accusations surfaced that he allegedly abused multiple teenage boys in the 1970s and ‘80s.

A flood of allegations from over 30 people claiming that Capparelli victimized them opened up, placing Capparelli at the center of multiple lawsuits. Like many other “credibly accused” priests on the archdiocese’s list, Capparelli was protected by New Jersey’s statute of limitations in every single case, and he was never convicted of a single charge.

Rich Fitter’s suit against Capparelli made dozens of headlines in 2011. Fitter alleged that Capparelli would sexually abuse teenage boys while running a wrestling club as part of an after-school program for Oratory Prep School in Summit.

Shortly after leaving the priesthood, it was widely reported that Capparelli became a public school teacher in Newark. Then, a series of Star-Ledger stories about his past as a priest were published. Those stories, which included interviews with his alleged victims, preceded action by the state to remove Capparelli’s teaching certification.

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SANTA FE (NM)
The New Mexican

April 8, 2019

By Phaedra Haywood

Jurors are scheduled to begin deliberations Wednesday in the child sex abuse case against Arthur Perrault, a former Roman Catholic priest who was extradited from Morocco to stand trial in New Mexico.

The jury in U.S. District Court in Santa Fe on Tuesday heard closing arguments in the case, in which Perrault is accused of raping a 10-year-old altar boy between 1991 and 1992 while working as a priest at St. Bernadette’s parish in Albuquerque.

Perrault has been accused of similar behavior by dozens of others over the years and was ordered by a federal judge in 2017 to pay $16 million in a civil case.

According to testimony during the trial, Perrault moved to Morocco in 1992, where he was located last year by FBI agents.

The FBI became involved in the case because Perrault’s alleged abuse of the boy took place at Kirtland Air Force Base and at the Santa Fe National Cemetery, both federal properties.

During closing arguments, prosecutor Sean J. Sullivan of the U.S. Attorney’s Office emphasized Perrault’s reputation as a known child molester.

Sullivan reminded jurors that Perrault admitted to the FBI agent who transported him back to the United States — and who testified during the trial — that he had sexually abused at least one other boy and had written a letter to the King of Morcco admitting to abusing teenagers in the past.

He also mentioned that seven other witnesses who testified at Perrault’s trial said they had been abused by the former priest and noted similarities between their stories and the one told by the accuser in the case.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
WHYY

April 10, 2019

By Laura Benshoff

When Trish Cahill was 15, a nun who taught at a nearby Catholic high school invited her to perform at a hootenanny mass.

“This was the 60s, you know, Peter Paul and Mary and all that,” said Cahill, now 67. “I didn’t really play guitar, but a nun — a nun! — asked me to come to mass and play guitar.”

Cahill, who lives in Lancaster, Pa., grew up in an Irish Catholic family in Ridgewood, New Jersey that revered clergy.

One invitation from Sister Eileen Shaw led to another. Cahill, who felt alienated from her family, came to see the nun as her mentor. The two became close.

Then, one day at the convent, Cahill says the nun slipped something in her tea.

“She took me into the bedroom and I passed out,” said Cahill. “I was not conscious. I was not able to make a decision.” She said this was the first of many sexual assaults.

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Herald

April 9, 2019

By Lisa Kashinsky

An Andover priest has been placed on leave by the Archdiocese of Boston following an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor said to have taken place 28 years ago, the archdiocese said Tuesday.

The Rev. Peter Gori, a pastor at St. Augustine’s Church, was put on administrative leave after the alleged misconduct came to light, the church said. The archdiocese said it “immediately informed law enforcement” and forwarded the matter to the Augustinian Province to investigate.

“The Archdiocese of Boston is committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of children and young people in our parishes and institutions,” it said in a statement.

Attorney Mitchell Garabedian, an advocate for victims of sexual abuse by priests, said he is representing the person who claims “he was sexually abused as a minor” by Gori “in 1990 when he was approximately 10 years old.” Garabedian said his client also alleges he was sexually abused as a minor by the Rev. William F. Waters between 1987 and 1990, when he was 8 to 10 years old. During the alleged abuse, both priests were assigned to either St. Augustine’s Church in Lawrence or Andover, Garabedian said.

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JALANDHAR (INDIA)
Catholic News Agency

April 11, 2019

Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jalandhar, India has been charged with raping a nun nine times over a two-year period and faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, local authorities announced today.

The charge sheet against Mulakkal included statements from more than 80 witnesses including a cardinal, three bishops, 11 priests and 25 nuns, according to Indian Catholic group Save our Sisters.

Mulakkal has also been charged under laws against intimidation, illegal confinement and unnatural intercourse, the New York Times reports, and he faces at least 10 years in prison if found guilty.

In June 2018, a member of the Missionaries of Jesus religious congregation accused Mulukkal of sexually assaulting her 13 times between 2014 and 2016. In a 72-page complaint to police, filed June 29, the nun alleged that the bishop sexually abused her more than a dozen times over two years.

Police in the Indian state of Kerala had announced yesterday that they had gathered enough evidence to formally charge Mulakkal and that they would file a charging document in criminal court this week.

The bishop maintains his innocence. He was arrested Sept. 21, 2018 amid protests calling for a police investigation of the allegation. He was subsequently released on bail.

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NEW SOUTH WALES (AUSTRALIA)
Mercator.net

April 10, 2019

By Michael Cook

The resolution of the case of Cardinal George Pell, now in jail after his conviction for sexually abusing two 13-year-old choristers in 1996, must wait until an appeals court hands down its judgement.

But in the meantime, commentary is being published which raises further doubts about the controversial verdict.

In the latest Quadrant, its editor, historian Keith Windschuttle, describes, thanks to an alert subscriber to his magazine, an American case with intriguing parallels.

I don’t want to rehearse the details of the crimes of which Cardinal Pell is accused. They are too lurid and they are readily available elsewhere. Suffice it to say that it is alleged – and the jury obviously believed this story – that he found two choristers swigging altar wine in the sacristy of St Patrick’s Cathedral after Mass on a Sunday in December 1996. He was very angry and forced both of them to perform sex acts. Later on, he encountered one of them in a corridor in the Cathedral and abused him again. Two boys were involved, but one died of a drug overdose in 2014.

What Windschuttle stumbled upon is an article in the September 2011 issue of Rolling Stone magazine by journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely. It described a very similar incident involving a priest in Philadelphia. Fr Charles Engelhardt allegedly caught a boy named “Billy Doe” swigging altar wine in his sacristy. He encouraged him to drink more and showed him pornographic magazines. A week later he performed sex acts on him. A few months later, another priest allegedly abused him.

As Windschuttle points out, that issue of Rolling Stone was readily available in Australia in 2011. In 2013, Victorian Police commenced a trawling operation to find people who were willing to testify that they had been abused by Cardinal Pell. In 2015, the complainant came forward with his story.

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SANTA FE (NM)
Associated Press

April 10, 2019

A federal prosecutor late Tuesday described a former priest and Air Force chaplain standing trial on sex abuse charges as a “serial molester” who during his final years in New Mexico exploited one young altar boy’s interests in the military and priesthood to spend more time with him.

Prosecutor Sean Sullivan’s harsh illustration of Arthur Perrault came as attorneys for both sides delivered closing arguments. Jurors now must decide whether Perrault abused the boy in the early 1990s at Santa Fe National Cemetery and Kirtland Air Force Base.

Perrault, who is 81, was returned by authorities to the United States from Morocco in September to face charges of aggravated sexual abuse and abusive sexual contact.

Once the pastor of St. Bernadette’s, one of New Mexico’s largest Roman Catholic parishes, Perrault is accused of vanishing from the state in 1992 just as an attorney prepared to file two lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Santa Fe alleging he had sexually assaulted seven children.

“He fled to escape justice,” Sullivan said.

While Perrault had multiple victims in New Mexico, according to authorities, the federal charges against him stem only from the abuse of the one boy at the two military properties, which fall under federal jurisdiction.

Perrault has pleaded not guilty to charges, and his attorney questioned Tuesday why the former altar boy did not tell his mother when he was still a child about being abused.

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REGINA (CANADA)
Regina Leader-Post

April 9, 2019

By Arthur White-Crummey

A Catholic priest who served for decades in Saskatchewan could be facing extradition on sexual abuse charges relating to his time as a Benedictine monk in Scottish boys’ schools.

The allegations against Father Robert MacKenzie span roughly 30 years — from the 1950s to the 1980s — and involve several complainants who attended two boarding schools in Scotland. That was confirmed by MacKenzie’s lawyer, who stressed that his client maintains his innocence.

“Father Robert MacKenzie categorically denies now, and he has denied under oath to the minister of justice, that he was involved in any sexual impropriety,” said lawyer Alan McIntyre.

The Archdiocese of Regina sent a letter to its pastors and parishes on Monday, advising them that Scottish authorities have charged MacKenzie, now in his mid-80s, with offences relating to sexual and physical abuse. It said the authorities obtained a surrender order last month from Canada’s minister of justice. That is an important step in clearing the way for extradition to Scotland.

But McIntyre said his client will fight extradition. He plans to ask for judicial review of the minister’s decision at the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal.

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.

ANNAPOLIS (MD)
Capital Gazette

April 10, 2019

By Lauren Lumpkin

Carolyn Surrick has asked three things of Key School, her alma mater: publicly acknowledge years of sexual abuse of students by teachers, ensure the safety of current students and help survivors pay for therapy.

In January, the Annapolis private school satisfied two out of three of those requests. School leaders released a 45-page report describing decades of unchecked sexual abuse. Independent investigators retained by the school did not find evidence of current abuse at the school.

Now, the school is creating a therapy fund to provide support for alumni as they continue to heal “from the abuse inflicted by former faculty members,” officials said in a letter Monday. Backing for the fund will come from the school.

Survivors of abuse at the exclusive private school have requested this kind of support for years. The measure also comes under the guidance of RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
WHYY

April 10, 2019

By Laura Benshoff

When Trish Cahill was 15, a nun who taught at a nearby Catholic high school invited her to perform at a hootenanny mass.

“This was the 60s, you know, Peter Paul and Mary and all that,” said Cahill, now 67. “I didn’t really play guitar, but a nun — a nun! — asked me to come to mass and play guitar.”

Cahill, who lives in Lancaster, Pa., grew up in an Irish Catholic family in Ridgewood, New Jersey that revered clergy.

One invitation from Sister Eileen Shaw led to another. Cahill, who felt alienated from her family, came to see the nun as her mentor. The two became close.

Then, one day at the convent, Cahill says the nun slipped something in her tea.

“She took me into the bedroom and I passed out,” said Cahill. “I was not conscious. I was not able to make a decision.” She said this was the first of many sexual assaults.

Cahill says Shaw, who was more than 20 years older, was a part of her life for the next decade, a tumultuous time that fueled bouts of drug and alcohol addiction.

Today, she’s sober and living in a friend’s guest room in a quiet Lancaster subdivision. Nestled in the cushions of the living room couch, she went through bags of photos and slides that she’s kept, reminders of a toxic adolescence she still can’t shake.

“See how long my hair is?” Cahill said, picking up a photo. “[It’s] because she wanted me to wear my hair long. ‘Cut your hair this way, don’t hang around with this person’…She controlled my life.”

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Clarksburg Caller

April 10, 2019

By Marisa Monroe

This article was provided to The Associated Press by the nonprofit news outlet Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting.

This Oct. 22, 2018 photo shows the marker for where the remains of Rev. James Poole are interned at Mount St. Michael in , Wash. Over the course of his life, Poole was accused of sexually abusing at least 20 women. (Emily Swing/Reveal via AP)

On the surface, Father James Poole seemed like the cool priest in Nome. He founded a Catholic mission radio station that broadcast his Jesuit sermons alongside contemporary pop hits. A 1978 story in People magazine called Poole “Western Alaska’s Hippest DJ . Comin‘ at Ya with Rock’n’Roll ‘n‘ Religion.”

Behind the radio station‘s closed doors, Poole was a serial sexual predator. He abused at least 20 women and girls, according to court documents. At least one was 6 years old. One Alaska Native woman says he impregnated her when she was 16, then forced her to get an abortion and blame her father for raping her. Her father went to prison.

Like so many other Catholic priests around the country, Poole’s inappropriate conduct with young girls was well-known to his superiors. A Jesuit supervisor once warned a church official that Poole “has a fixation on sex; an obsession; some sort of mental aberration that makes him see sex everywhere.”

But the last chapter in his story reveals a new twist in the Catholic abuse scandal: Poole was sent to live out his retirement years on Gonzaga University‘s campus in , Washington.

For more than three decades, Cardinal Bea House on Gonzaga’s campus served as a retirement repository for at least 20 Jesuit priests accused of sexual misconduct that predominantly took place in small, isolated Alaska Native villages and on Indian reservations across the Northwest, an investigation by the Northwest News Network and Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

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PARIS (FRANCE)
LaCroix International

April 10, 2019

By Virginia Saldanha

The voices of survivors and advocates rallying against clerical sex abuse echoed around newsrooms and living rooms the world over when bishops met in Rome from Feb. 18-26, making it a hallowed ground of the wounded. The 190 bishops at the summit heard the testimonies of a few survivors, live-streamed into the hall.

The organizing committee had a face-to-face meeting with 12 survivors in Rome a day before the summit. Cardinal Vincent Nichols of Westminster and Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich (also a member of Pope Francis’ council of cardinal advisors) accepted the invitation of the survivors’ group Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA) to interact with victims and advocates from all over the world. At the group’s invitation, I joined the ECA in Rome from Feb. 17-25, representing India and Asia where the voices of abuse survivors are muzzled, muffled and sporadic. At a press briefing on the first day of the summit, not surprisingly, it was reported that the bishops of Asia and Africa stated that sex abuse was not their problem!

This came despite considerable evidence to the contrary. At the outset, the pope handed the participants a list of 21 points for consideration and implementation. The summit focused on the abuse of minors.

Vulnerable adults were implicitly included but the definition was ambiguous. In Asia, the abuse of nuns and vulnerable women, who routinely approach priests in times of trouble, is a big issue, especially for nuns in diocesan congregations.

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HOUSTON (TX)
Houston Chronicle

April 9, 2019

By Nicole Hensley and Massarah Mikati

A former Conroe priest already charged with molesting two teens is accused in a new lawsuit of exposing himself in a church confessional booth to another teen parishioner who was trying to come out as gay.

The man, who lives in Conroe and is identified only by his initials, said he was 15 in 2000 when he entered the confessional to speak to Father Manuel La Rosa-Lopez, who peppered him with “vulgar questions” about his sexuality, according to the suit.

“Do you fantasize about men?” La Rosa-Lopez asked, according to court documents.

The priest then made lewd remarks to the teen in Spanish before he opened the partition window to show his exposed genitals, the suit says.

The teen bolted from the booth and stopped attending Mass at the church soon after, his lawyer David Matthews of Houston said this week. The incident caused him to experience anxiety, depression, alcohol dependence and shame about his sexual orientation, according to court documents.

The accuser — now an adult studying to be a mental health counselor — kept the incident secret until 2017 when he told his therapist what happened, Matthews said. The man has since spoken to the Conroe Police Department about the allegation, Matthews said.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Is It Enough? (blog)

April 9, 2019

By Doug Lay

The pulpit, as a symbol of a theological reformation, stands as a representation of the Bible’s power and uniqueness of that reformation. The pastor, as a symbol of the church’s leadership, stands behind that pulpit to publicly proclaim the Bible’s power and uniqueness of the crucified Christ.

Yet, the pastor can hide behind that pulpit. He can hide behind the pulpit when speaking out about controversial social topics. A recent report finds that “when asked if they felt limited by their congregation to speak out about social issues, 64 percent of pastors said yes, FaithWire reports.”

One particular and relevant social issue today is the sexual exploitation of children by church leaders, the cover-up by those same churches, and then the silence of other churches concerning the cover-ups.

Remember the millstone—Jesus’ harsh and condemning picture of judgment for anyone who would exploit, abuse, or despise the least of these. The pulpit should be the pinnacle of such preaching, but it is easy for the pastor to hide behind the pulpit when preaching about sexual and physical abuse victims and how the church should address abuse.

How do pastors hide behind the pulpit?

First, the pastor sets the focus of the preaching, choosing not only what to preach, but also what not to preach. Topics involving sexual abuse of minors, marital physical abuse, infidelity, rape, and church cover-ups can simply be ignored. The pastor controls the narrative.

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AUSTIN (TX)
Texas Tribune

April 8, 2019

By Cassandra Pollock

As Becky Leach took her seat Monday afternoon, preparing to testify for the first time before a committee at the Texas Capitol, her husband watched as he sat behind his name plate with the word “Chair” engraved underneath.

“I am a victim — and I am not alone,” Becky Leach announced to the room as she began her remarks. “From 12 to 18, I was repeatedly and systematically molested. And I refused to acknowledge it.”

Becky Leach, wife to state Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, spoke in support of a bill that would double the amount of time people have to pursue a lawsuit against someone who sexually abused them as a child. The measure, authored by state Rep. Craig Goldman, R-Fort Worth, would lengthen the statute of limitations from 15 to 30 years for a person seeking a civil suit over certain types of sexual abuse.

As she delivered her testimony before the House Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence Committee on Monday, Becky Leach said she didn’t acknowledge her own abuse until the age of 35 — almost 17 years after it allegedly occurred — and explained that Goldman’s bill would help give victims more time that is often needed to come forward.

“It’s not a denial. It’s a refusal to admit that this person who you most likely loved … is actually doing this thing to harm you,” Becky Leach said as her husband, a state lawmaker who first entered office in 2013, looked on with tears in his eyes. “I truly believe that it’s my great responsibility to be a voice on behalf of those who don’t know they’ve yet been silenced.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

April 8, 2019

By John Baer

The Pennsylvania legislature, once again, is poised to turn its back on who knows how many survivors of child sex abuse.

Promises of action? Pledges to victims? Repeated assurances that those who were violated (and long-voiceless) might find some measure of justice?

You tell me.

The state is among the nation’s worst in terms of legal recourse for victims. Ironic, given state findings of abuse that last year lit up the issue.

Our legislature, of course, swung into action, embraced survivors and proceeded to pose and preach. Then failed to do anything.

Now, the issue is back with new legislation expected to be taken up this week. But it’s really only for future victims. For past victims? The waiting room.

It’s a two-bill package with bipartisan sponsorship from Reps. Mark Rozzi (D., Berks) and Jim Gregory (R., Blair).

One bill eliminates the criminal statute of limitations for abuse, which, if enacted, catches us up to 40 other states. Hey, better late than never.

It also gives future victims the option up to age 55 to sue their abusers. Current law allows such lawsuits up to age 30.

But gone is the will to open a “window” of time during which past victims – for whom statutes expired – can sue.

Instead, while other states move in that direction (New York now has a window; New Jersey just passed one that Gov. Phil Murphy is expected to sign), we’re keeping that window shut.

Oh, the second bill addresses a window. But it calls for amending the state constitution to allow it, a clear and drastic shift in approach that can’t sit well with survivors.

A constitutional amendment needs to pass two successive legislative sessions before going to voters as a statewide ballot question, a long, often dead-end process.

At a minimum, we’re talking three years. And the legislature can get tricky with constitutional amendments, passing them in one session, forgetting them in the next.

So, the best we’re offering past victims is take a number, have a seat. We’ll be with you in a few years.

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NEW SOUTH WALES (AUSTRALIA)
The Australian

April 10, 2019

By Tessa Akerman

Former Catholic priest and school principal Frank Klep has emerged as one of Australia’s most prolific pedophiles, with a staggering 32 victims.

County Court judge Gabriele Cannon yesterday said his assault against a four-year-old boy was offending in the “most repulsive way” as she lengthened Klep’s current jail term by two years.

Klep had pleaded guilty to four counts of indecent assault of a male and one count of indecent assault. Judge Cannon said while Klep last offended in 1984, his ­offending over 11 years was “prolific”. She said some of his victims were abused in the Salesian College, Rupertswood, infirmary and one was abused while he was homesick at a school camp: “He was especially vulnerable, which you knew.

“They were young and living away from home. Further in the case of some complainants, they were ill when you offended against them.”

Judge Cannon said Klep exploited his power over the boys in order to offend. “You used your position of authority to lord it over the complainants, apparently safe in the knowledge that they were unlikely to tell anyone or if they did they would not be believed,” she said.

“You were a prominent member of your institution that was supposed to be about love, compassion and kindness, especially when it came to children and the vulnerable, but under its cover you perpetrated evil.”

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Patriot News

April 9, 2019

By Ivey DeJesus

The future of the reform of child sex crime laws in Pennsylvania hinges on two companion bills now intricately tied to each other under an amendment approved by the House on Tuesday.

The state House of Representatives cleared the way for the two pieces of legislation to go for a full chamber vote, but linked the future of the bill seeking to eliminate criminal statutes for child sex crimes to the bill that would revive expired statutes of limitations.

By a unanimous vote of 197-0, the House approved an amendment changing the effective date of House bills 962 (which would prospectively eliminate the criminal statute of limitations) to passage in the Senate of its companion piece. That bill – House Bill 963 – calls for a constitutional amendment that would establish a two-year “window” during which adult victims timed-out of the legal system could file lawsuits against predators.

The bills now advance to a full vote in the House, which can happen as early as Wednesday.

“House Bill 962 only passes when the House and Senate pass 963,” said Rep. Mark Rozzi, D-Berks, sponsor of the former bill. The other bill is sponsored by Rep. Jim Gregory, R-Blair.

The House Judiciary Committee on Monday advanced to the full chamber two measures that would broadly reform the statute of limitations, eliminating criminal statutes and potentially reviving expired legal recourses.

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WASHINGTON —(DC)
Catholic News Service

April 9, 2019

By Christopher Gunty

A week into National Child Abuse Protection Month, Baltimore Archbishop William Lori visited the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops chapel April 8 to celebrate midday Mass for conference employees and reflect on the church’s work to develop policies and procedures to prevent child abuse by those within the church.

He recognized that those who work at U.S. bishops’ conference headquarters have a keen desire “to do everything possible to address on an ongoing basis the sexual abuse crisis that has roiled the Catholic Church for such a very long time.”

The “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People” and the related “Essential Norms” implementing the charter legislatively passed by the U.S. bishops in 2002 were “a major step forward,” the archbishop said. “Nevertheless, all of us admit that much more still needs to be done, especially in the areas of episcopal transparency and accountability.”

“There are many motivations for wanting to get this right,” he said at the Mass.

First of those are the desire to see that all children and young people are safe.

Second, he said that as a bishop, he naturally wants to see confidence in the church restored in the Archdiocese of Baltimore and globally.

The church was hit by revelations last summer that included allegations against Theodore McCarrick, a former cardinal and retired archbishop of Washington, and the release of a report from the Pennsylvania attorney general detailing hundreds of allegations of abuse over a 70-year period beginning in 1947.

Such revelations call into question the church’s essential mission of evangelization, the archbishop said.

“More than anything else, however, our hearts should be broken, humbled, contrite, by the horrific experiences of those who have been sexually abused by clergy or by other representatives of the church,” Lori said. “Even if such abuse was committed many years ago, the wounds inflicted upon innocent children and young people are often lifelong wounds. Far too many do not find justice and healing; far too few have their peace.”

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ANDOVER (MA)
WCVB TV

April 9, 2019

An Andover priest is on administrative leave after being accused of sexual abuse of a minor, the Archdiocese of Boston announced Tuesday.

Rev. Peter Gori was accused of sexually abusing a minor 28 years ago, the archdiocese said.

Gori’s accuser is represented by Boston-based attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who has represented numerous other victims of clergy abuse. Garabedian said his client was approximately 10 years old at the time of the abuse.

Additionally, Garabedian’s client also accused Fr. William F. Waters, O.S.A., of inflicting abuse between 1987 and 1990.

“By coming forward my client is trying to heal, empower other victims and make the world a safer place for children,” Garabedian said.

Gori is the pastor of St. Augustine’s Parish in Andover and previously a canon lawyer in the Tribunal of the Archdiocese of Boston. He is a member of the Augustinian Order of St. Thomas of Villanova. The Archdiocese said that order will be responsible for investigating the allegations.

“The Archdiocese of Boston is committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of children and young people in our parishes and institutions,” the archdiocese wrote in a statement. “Through its Office of Pastoral Support and Outreach, the Archdiocese continues to make counseling and other services available to survivors, their families and parishes impacted by clergy sexual abuse and by allegations of abuse by members of the clergy.”

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Fox News

April 9, 2019

By Hollie McKay

It wasn’t until Rev. Cait Finnegan gave birth to a baby girl more than three decades ago that the full trauma of all she had withstood was fully unleashed.

“It was my protective instinct, I just didn’t want my daughter to be alone. I stayed with her from the day she was born,” Finnegan, 67, a Catholic school student in 1960s New York and once an aspiring nun, told Fox News. “Because I had been abused in many places to many degrees. This was every day in school, weekends, she would come to my home.”

Starting at just 15, Finnegan alleged that she was repeatedly raped by a Catholic nun and for years, after finally escaping, lived a life on the edge of falling apart. She said she spent much of her life trapped in a state of rage, depression, and agoraphobia, unable to leave the house or be away from her daughter, now 36.

They lived in poverty as Finnegan said she was only able to take on odd jobs at night, as her marriage strained under the emotional weight.

“When my daughter was 12, we thought it would be good to register her at a Catholic School,” Finnegan recalled. “But then the nun opened the door, I had a flashback, I grabbed her and ran.”

Finnegan said her abuser died more than four years ago. But the deep, dark memories she has carried since adolescence remain.

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SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
Chronicle (blog)

April 9, 2019

Fifteen years ago, Dan McNevin and two other men sued the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland, alleging that a priest at a church in Niles had abused them as children. At first, McNevin felt validated. It seemed like he might finally get justice and hold the diocese accountable. As he told the press at the time, going public and confronting what had happened seemed like the only way to move forward. Then the backlash followed.

“I was ridiculed. I was attacked. People wrote letters to editors where they talked about how lovely this priest was and how impossible it was that he had done what I claimed. One letter accused me of just wanting money,” he recalls. Then another victim came forward in his support, making McNevin’s story harder to dismiss.

Today—many years and many clergy abuse scandals later—McNevin feels that some things have changed. “By now, the public no longer reflexively takes the side of the church or of the priests,” McNevin said. Personally, he feels very different, too. “I’m in a very good place now compared to where I used to be. I think it’s a journey, it’s a process and I’m at a point where I feel relieved,” he said. McNevin is now an advocate for abuse victims and an Oakland area leader for the Survivor’s Network for those Abused by Priests (SNAP). Helping others get to a point where they feel better is one reason why he went into this line of work.

But he still feels that some things haven’t changed, and that church leaders have not done enough to address the past wrongdoings of abusive clergy members. In February, the Oakland Diocese published a list of 45 religious leaders, including McNevin’s abuser, who have had “credible accusations” of sexual abuse of minors. The list includes the names of 20 diocesan priests, 22 religious order priests, deacons and brothers, and three priests from other dioceses who have worked in the Diocese of Oakland—which covers Alameda and Contra Costa Counties—and have had accusations of sexual abuse of minors that the church deemed credible.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

April 9, 2019

By Elise Harris

On Monday night Peruvian journalist Pedro Salinas, who had been accused by an archbishop with the crime of aggravated defamation related to an ongoing abuse scandal, was found guilty and slapped with a hefty fee and one-year suspended prison sentence.

Judge Judith Cueva Calle of the First Unipersonal Criminal Court in Piura, Peru, ruled April 8 that Salinas was guilty of aggravated defamation of Archbishop Jose Antonio Eguren Anselmi, who runs the Piura archdiocese, and ordered him to pay roughly $24,000 in addition to his suspended jail sentence.

Carlos Rivera Paz, Salinas’ lawyer, said they’re planning to appeal the decision during an April 22 hearing when the full sentence is read.

“We are going to reject the arguments, and we hope that the appeals court has a little more sense and makes a better evaluation of the evidence,” he said.

Salinas and fellow journalist Paola Ugaz, also being sued by Eguren Anselmi, co-authored the 2015 bombshell book Half Monks, Half Soldiers, detailing years of sexual, psychological and physical abuse inside the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV), a controversial Catholic organization that originated in Peru and whose founder, layman Luis Fernando Figari, has been accused of physical, psychological and sexual abuses and was prohibited by the Vatican in 2017 of having further contact with members of the group.

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ST. PAUL (MN)

The Catholic Spirit

April 9, 2019

By Matthew Davis

Mary Brady hopes a new Lay Advisory Board to assist Archbishop Bernard Hebda will usher in a new era of listening in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

“I was really active in several archdiocesan commissions when I was in my 20s. They’re no longer around,” said Brady, 71, citing as one example a former urban Catholic coalition that promoted inner city parishes. “I’m hoping that it’s a sign … that the diocese is being more open to a variety of input from people around the entire diocese,” said Brady.

Representing Deanery 14, Brady, a member of St. Frances Cabrini in Minneapolis, is one of 19 members of the newly formed board, which met for the first time with the archbishop April 3 at the Archdiocesan Catholic Center in St. Paul.

Ranging in age from their 20s to 70s, some retired but others working for parishes or in professions such as business management, project management and insurance, board members were asked by the archbishop to offer advice, to listen and to be a conduit for information with people throughout the archdiocese about opportunities and challenges in the local Church.

Announced as an initiative in November, the board consists of representative members of parish pastoral councils across the archdiocese. Each was chosen by their peers to represent one of 15 deaneries, or geographic regions of the archdiocese. Some traveled as far as 40 miles to get to the Catholic Center.

Among other roles, the board will be key to finding ways to promote healing from the clergy sexual abuse scandal, Archbishop Hebda said.

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VICTORIA (AUSTRALIA)
Herald Sun

April 8, 2019

By Shannon Deery

Frank Klep today had two years added to his current jail term after admitting some of his most shocking crimes, including the heinous abuse of a four-year-old boy.

In total the disgraced former priest has now been convicted of the vile sexual abuse of 33 children.

INSIDE THE HOLY HOUSE OF HORRORS

ARRESTS MADE AFTER REBELS BIKIE RAIDS

MOKBEL ‘CARTEL’ MEMBER DENIED FREEDOM

The 75-year-old predator priest abused most of them at notorious Salesian College, Rupertswood, in Sunbury, including while he was the school’s principal.

Former students have dubbed the school a “house of horrors” because a sickening club of Salesian paedophiles roamed its grand halls and manned its dormitories.

Klep’s known offending spanned more than a decade between 1973 and 1984.

In that time he was principal at Rupertswood and earlier at Salesian College in Brooklyn Park, Adelaide.

Frank Klep today had two years added to his current jail term after admitting some of his most shocking crimes, including the heinous abuse of a four-year-old boy.

He was first convicted of child sexual offences in 1994, but nothing was done to stop his continued involvement with schoolchildren.

In 2005 he was handed a partially suspended sentence for the abuse of 11 victims, but it was later increased on appeal.

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THIRUVANANTHAPURAM (INDIA)
Hindustan Times

April 9, 2019

When the police failed to arrest him, five other nuns staged a sit-in protest in Kochi. Later a special investigation team was set up and it arrested the influential bishop in September after several rounds of questioning.

The Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing rape charges against former bishop of Jalandhar Franco Mullakkal on Tuesday filed a charge-sheet in the case, almost a year after he was accused of sexually assaulting the nun.

This is the first time in the country where a former bishop is facing the trial based on a complaint filed by a nun. “After months of struggle we are happy the case is coming to a logical conclusion. We have won the case almost half. This is the happiest moment for us. God is with us, truth will prevail finally,” said Sister Anupama, one of the nuns who sat on dharna in Kochi demanding action against Mullakkal.

In last June, a 43-year-old nun, also a mother superior, had complained to the Kerala police that Mullakkal had raped her 13 times between 2014 and 2016. Initially there were many attempts to hush up the complaint against the powerful priest.

When police failed to arrest him, five nuns had staged a sit-in protest in Kochi. Later an SIT was floated and it arrested Mullakkal in September last year after several rounds of questioning. He was later removed from the post. After spending three weeks in judicial custody he was granted bail.

There were many attempts to silence witnesses in the case, and some nuns who deposed against him were threatened with expulsion. Later, the High Court had ordered protection to main witnesses. One of the witnesses in the case, Sister Lucy said she was confined to illegal custody and threatened to be locked up in a mental asylum.

The charge-sheet was submitted after the agitating nuns threatened to hit the street again. They met the Kottayam police superintendent a number of times and wrote to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan to expedite the case.

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THIRUVANANTHAPURAM (INDIA)
Agence France Presse

April 9, 2019

Police on Tuesday charged an Indian bishop with repeatedly raping a nun at a convent in Kerala state in a case that puts a new spotlight on sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic church.

Franco Mulakkal was charged with raping the nun several times between 2014 and 2016, police deputy superintendent of Vaikom district, K. Subash, told AFP.

The bishop faces other charges including unlawful detention, unnatural sex and abuse of authority. Facing a maximum punishment of life imprisonment, Mulakkal has denied the allegations.
Vatican suspends Indian bishop accused of raping nun

Local media said the report backing the charges ran into more than 100 pages and contained testimonies from priests, bishops and nuns.

The victim filed a formal complaint in June last year, but police only started formal questioning in September after fury over the case mounted.

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Pathos blog

April 9, 2019

By Libby Anne

I grew up in a megachurch. There were so many members the church had to form “small groups” to foster a sense of community; around 2000, the church built a new sanctuary, large enough to accommodate thousands of people. There were Easter pageants with live donkeys and real doves; the children’s ministry was huge and glitzy.

The church’s founding pastor was modest and unassuming. He didn’t bask in attention, or seek it. His clothing was conservative, as was his home. I may not be evangelical—or religious—today, but I still have a lot of respect for the man who pastored my childhood church. He was the real deal. I didn’t realize at the time how odd this was.

I bring all this up for a reason. See, I recently discovered the Instagram “preacherssneakers.” I was hooked. And horrified. And somehow, underneath it all, completely unsurprised. The account features pictures of preachers—typical megachurch pastors—wearing designer clothing, alongside screenshots showing these items’ prices.

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.

LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Tablet

April 9, 2019

By Tom Heneghan

French Church leaders are on the defensive after two films about clerical sexual abuse and a book about homosexuals at the Vatican dramatised to Catholics the extent of the challenge to the institution’s authority.

Criticism and frustration are mounting among the faithful after Pope Francis rejected the resignation of Lyon Cardinal Philippe Barbarin following his suspended sentence from a civil court for covering up an abuse scandal that has rocked his archdiocese.

A film about the Lyon scandal, an Arte television broadcast about nuns abused by priests, and the book “In the Closet of the Vatican” by a French journalist have added to what the outgoing head of the bishops’ conference called the “profound distress” felt by clergy and laity alike. The documentary “Abused Sisters: The Other Scandal of the Church”, was shown by the Franco-German public TV channel ARTE on 5 March.

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.

LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Tablet

By Michael Sean Winters

“I believe that the only way I can serve the local archdiocese is by telling you the truth,” Archbishop Wilton Gregory told his new flock at a press conference last weekend where he was introduced as the next Archbishop of Washington, DC.

He said this was “a moment fraught with challenges,” mindful that his immediate predecessor Cardinal Donald Wuerl resigned amidst controversy over his handling of clergy sex abuse allegations in the 1990s and the previous archbishop was the former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, now removed from the clerical state.

Speaking of the unique challenges of leading a church in the nation’s capital, but in which some neighbourhoods remain mired in poverty, Gregory said, “The Archdiocese of Washington is home to the poor and the powerful, neither of which realises they are both.”

The next day, Gregory toured various ministries of the archdiocese, starting at Catholic Charities downtown where he toured the chapel and visited with volunteers who serve the poor. The archbishop then went to a Catholic elementary school where a second grader asked what his favourite movie is. “I love the ‘Wizard of Oz,’” Gregory replied. Almost half the 228 students at the school benefit from a voucher programme that provides tuition assistance to poor families to attend Catholic and other private schools.

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.

NEWTON (NJ)
New Jersey Herald

April 9, 2019

The Roman Catholic Church has been a tremendous force for good in the past and present. The good they have done outweighs the bad. They have a problem with pedophile priests because they are following Church tradition rather than the Bible. They believe “once a priest, always a priest.”

The qualifications for church leaders are listed in I Timothy 3:1–13 and Titus 1:5–9.

Guilty pedophile priests should be defrocked and excommunicated. They should be arrested, given a fair trial, and then executed by the government.

Life imprisonment would be acceptable, but any lesser punishment would be showing compassion to the criminal instead of the victim.

What if a guilty pedophile priest repents? He should still be defrocked, but not excommunicated. Repentance will not affect his government trial. He must still pay for his crimes against children.

Dave Salmon, Sparta

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PARIS (FRANCE)
LaCroix International

April 9, 2019

By Massimo Faggioli

The separation between Church management (the hierarchy) and its research and development department (theologians) is one of the most serious problems facing the Catholic Church. Thomas Reese, the former editor-in-chief (1998-2005) of the Jesuit magazine America, identified this problem back in 1996 in his book, Inside the Vatican. And although the book was published two pontificates ago, Reese’s premise remains true.

In fact, the situation is even worse now than it was nearly 25 years ago.One of the effects of the latest phase of the Catholic abuse crisis, which started in 2018, is that it has offered us some historical perspective on the Church’s management-research dichotomy. The sexual abuse crisis has been long in the making.

It became public in the mid-1980s and its turning point was 2001-2002 in the United States. This opened the eyes of many to what had happened in that North American country and what was bound to happen in other countries as well.

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.

GERMANY
Feinschwarz

April 8, 2019

By Daniel Bogner

The revelations of abuse never cease. These are not only isolated incidents, but a whole system of failure, including organized trafficking in women, right in the heart of the institution. Whether it be the “Child Protection Summit” held in Rome, the “Synodal Process” in Germany, or a convicted French cardinal who may not resign – the Church leadership continues to run on sight. “However, our analysis needs to be more decisive,” says Daniel Bogner.

Just how dark is the place to where abuse has led the Church? Revelations, confessions and reports about the unspeakable are never-ending. Even now, bishops speak of “systematic abuse condition”. A recent ARTE documentary report (Nuns Abused by God) shows how fluid the transition is from the clergyman’s spiritual leadership to sexual abuse.

Patterns of Evil
There are evident patterns of evil in the Church and by virtue of the Church. Take for example the Philippe family’s brothers, Marie-Dominique Philippe and Thomas Philippe from northern France; both from classically good Catholic origin. However, what yesterday was considered to be a model Christian family (seven of twelve children chose religious professions), is revealed today as a system of religious over-identification. Both brothers have made careers in the Church. They both joined the Dominicans; one became a theology professor in Fribourg, Switzerland, as well as the Spiritus rector to the Community of Saint John, founded by some of his students in the late 1970s. The other brother was a spiritual guide to the international Arche Community, founded by Jean Vanier, where disabled and non-disabled people live together.

Later, both have been accused of abuse. When one of the abused women suffered a breakdown following abuse from Marie-Dominique, she was then led by him to the his brother Thomas, who put her through similar turmoil. These are events that leave one speechless, precisely because this is not something that happened out on the fringes of the Church, but instead in the midst of a European Catholicism believed to be in step with the times and with a highly developed spiritual and social consciousness.

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.

LAS VEGAS (NV)
Review-Journal

April 8, 2019

By Rachel Crosby

Twelve Nevada priests have been “credibly accused” of sexual abuse, and eight of them at one point served in the Las Vegas Valley, according to the Catholic Diocese of Reno.

The Reno diocese published the list Friday as a “measure of transparency and accountability,” the Rev. Randolph Calvo, the bishop of Reno, said in an open letter to parishioners.

Eleven of the 12 named Nevada priests are now dead. But the list was one of many that dioceses around the country have recently released in the wake of national reports on the sexual abuse of minors in the church.

The Catholic Diocese of Las Vegas is working on its own list of priests who have been accused of sexual abuse, according to a statement provided to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. A review committee hopes to finalize it for publication by the end of the week.

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.

ROME(ITALY)
Crux

April 9, 2019

By Inés San Martín

Acting as the interim replacement for a cardinal subpoenaed by civil prosecutors for alleged sex abuse cover-ups, and facing questions about his own record in responding to abuse charges, the new man in Santiago, Chile, says he’s got only one “pastoral proposal,” and it’s expressed in his motto as a bishop: “To serve and to love.”

“What worries us is not the money [that the archdiocese will have to pay to survivors of clerical abuse], but how can we help those victims heal, and above all, we want to guarantee that they, and everyone else, helps us build a different future where these things don’t happen again,” said Bishop Celestino Aos, named March 23 as the apostolic administrator of Santiago following the resignation of Cardinal Riccardo Ezzati.

“How could we let these things happen… things I didn’t even dream could happen, and that do,” Aos told reporters. “What can we do to guarantee that they don’t happen again?”

Aos’s nomination amounts to the latest twist in a long-running attempted cleanup of Church leadership in Chile, which Francis set in motion in May, when he summoned all the bishops to Rome.

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.

ALBUQUERQUE (NM)
KRQE TV

April 9, 2019

Closing arguments are scheduled Tuesday for an Albuquerque priest facing federal sex abuse charges.

Arthur Perrault is accused of assaulting an 11-year-old boy at Kirtland Air Force Base and Santa Fe National Cemetery in the early 1990s.

According to the Santa Fe New Mexican, Perrault’s attorney asked for a mistrial Monday but U.S. District Judge Martha Vásquez denied it.

The 80-year-old has pleaded not guilty.

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.

OLEAN (NY)
Olean Times Herald

April 8, 2019

By Tom Dinki

A St. Bonaventure University conference on the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse crisis has been canceled amid concerns the event would not feature abuse victims.

The Franciscan Institute at St. Bonaventure decided to cancel the academic conference set for Friday and Saturday after being challenged by local victims who felt it was wrong to hold such an event if victims were not permitted to speak, the university announced Monday.

Specifically, the university said in a press release, an abuse survivor and advocate for victims claimed that a conference on abuse without victims speaking would essentially be a waste of time.

“I listened to the victim. I heard his deep concerns and decided to follow his advice that the conference we had designed was not helpful here in this diocese at this time,” said Father David Couturier, executive director of the Franciscan Institute, in a statement released by the university. “So, I decided to cancel the event.”

Couturier added he wanted to rearrange the schedule and find new speakers to fit the “new direction being advocated,” but with less than a week before the conference, “it just wasn’t possible.”

A call to Couturier’s office was not immediately returned Monday.

The conference, titled “Franciscan Reform and the Abuse Crises in the Catholic Church,” was intended for Franciscan scholars to discuss the tradition of reform and renewal in the long history of Franciscanism, according to the university.

Publicly announced March 26, the two-day conference was to feature a keynote address from a Catholic Church historian and talks by a lawyer, a nun and the chair of the university’s Theological and Franciscan Studies Department.

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.

HARRISBURG (PA)
Daily Item

April 8, 2019

By John Finnerty

The state House is moving two bills that would help victims of clerical abuse — one changing the statute of limitations moving forward and another calling for a Constitutional amendment to allow for civil lawsuits in cases that have passed the existing statute of limitations.

Both measures were approved by the House judiciary committee Monday afternoon.

House Bill 962 would change the statute of limitations moving forward by eliminating the criminal statute of limitations for serious sex crimes against children and giving victims until the age of 55 to sue. The current criminal statute of limitations for child sex crimes is when the victim turns 50 and the civil statute of limitations expires when the victim turns 30.

The bill was authored by state Rep. Mark Rozzi, D-Berks County, who’s been the leading legislative champion for enacting reforms to held adult victims of childhood sex abuse.

Rozzi said he decided to author separate legislation to help future victims so that new victims are provided a path to justice as the state debates how to help past victims.

In addition to Rozzi’s legislation, the judiciary committee also approved HB 963, authored by state Rep. Jim Gregory, R-Blair County, that would ask voters whether there should be a Constitutional amendment to create a two-year window for victims to sue the Catholic Church or other organizations that covered up for child predators.

Legislative leaders in the state House have dubbed the two-bill package “The Pennsylvania Hidden Predator Act.” With Monday’s committee vote, the measures are on schedule for final passage in the state House as soon as Wednesday. Both would go to the Senate for consideration.

The Senate, in February 2017, unanimously passed legislation similar to the measure now proposed by Rozzi. That legislation was later amended to included retroactive provisions and didn’t become law when the House and Senate couldn’t agree on the final form of the bill.

But it’s unclear whether the Rozzi legislation or Gregory’s constitutional will gain traction in the Senate, Rozzi said.

“This is the first step in the process,” he said.

And as a resolution for a possible Constitutional amendment, even if Gregory’s bill passes both chambers this year, it must be approved in a second legislative session before it goes before voters in a statewide referendum.

The issue of changing the law to help victims has become a lightning rod topic at the Capitol in the wake of revelations in a statewide grand jury report released last August that 300 priests had abused 1,000 victims over decades. The state House in September voted 171-23 to pass legislation that would have allowed victims of old child sex crimes to file lawsuits, but the measure died in the Senate.

Senate Republican leaders and church officials have questioned whether the state Constitution would allow the change. Most advocates for changing the law agree that it would be illegal to change the criminal statute of limitations retroactively, but say that changing the civil law to allow for lawsuits should be OK.

Rozzi said that after the Supreme Court ruled in December that 11 names of priests redacted when the grand jury report was released to the public, it left him more uncertain of how the state’s top court would rule if asked to decide the Constitutionality of a civil window.

“I think we’re better off in the hands of the voters of Pennsylvania than in the hands of the Supreme Court,” he adding that if the court were to decide that the civil window was unconstitutional, it would be “devastating” to victims.

The only lawmaker to oppose the measures in the judiciary committee was state Rep. Paul Schemel, R-Franklin County.

He said that the move to change the statute of limitations seems to echo the kinds of “overreach” from the 1980s and 1990s that the state is now trying to correct through criminal justice reforms.

He added that even though the grand jury had called for a two-year window, it didn’t ask for the civil statute of limitations to be changed to 55 for new victims.

Rozzi said the changes are necessary because of how long it takes victims to come forward. The average age at which a victim of childhood sex abuse will come forward is 52, Rozzi said.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
WWL TV

April 8, 2019

A 64-year-old man in the state of Washington has filed suit against the New Orleans Archdiocese over previously undisclosed claims of sexual assault by a priest at Jesuit High School when he was a teenager.

The lawsuit comes four months after the release of a list of six clergy members tied to the school with credible claims of sexual abuse against them.

The plaintiff, who, as a victim of sexual assault, was not identified in court documents, alleged Friday in a court filing that he was sexually abused as a student in 1969 by Fr. Edward DeRussy, an English and Latin teacher at the school from 1969-1978.

DeRussy was named in December as one of the six priests with ties to the school who had been credibly accused of sexual assault. The six were among 19 priests tied to New Orleans with credible accusations against them.

The court documents allege that DeRussy put his hand down the plaintiff’s pants and touched his genitals multiple times during extracurricular Latin lessons.

The plaintiff reported that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression following the events.

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.

WASHINGTON (DC)
Religion News Service

April 8, 2019

By David Clohessy

When I told my wife that the Rev. Gary Hayes had passed away, she quickly walked across the room, hugged me and quietly said, “I remembered him holding our babies. So much love.”

Gary, the first Catholic priest to speak openly about the sexual abuse he had suffered as a young person, passed away last week at age 66 from cancer. He will be remembered as a dogged advocate for other survivors, but those who knew him will have memories of a man who, though wounded, was more giving than most people who had been through less.

In 1993, with the help of attorney Steve Rubino, Gary filed the first-ever lawsuit charging Catholic officials with racketeering. The Rev. Joseph McGarvey and the Rev. William O’Connell repeatedly molested Gary and two other boys, “conspiring to create a sex ring of children that could be sexually abused by the two priests and other priests,” often taking the kids across state lines “for the express purpose of having forcible sexual contact” with them, the suit said.

Though we were basically neophytes at talking to the media, Gary and I organized news conferences in Camden, N.J., where he had grown up, and in Philadelphia to address the case. Facing dozens and dozens of reporters, Gary stood between his mother and me and softly uttered a line that still brings goosebumps to my skin today.

“I am here seeking justice in the courts because I could find no justice in my church,” he said.

From that day forward, Gary was a dedicated survivor-activist. With every new mean-spirited comment or move Gary endured, I remember being shocked and thinking, “If they treat one of their own so viciously, imagine how they’ll treat a survivor who is not ordained.” Long after he had settled his case, he continued to be shunned by other clergy, but he persevered with grace and determination.

At the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops meeting in Texas in 2002, Gary was a much-sought-after interviewee. He was blunt and biting, with no airs, affectations or posturing — just straightforward and prophetic insights that made all of the victims who attended proud to know him.

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.

FARGO (ND)
Valley News Live

April 7, 2019

By Cali Hubbard

A statement released today by the Diocese revealed that a priest in Fargo was put on administrative leave due to an ongoing investigation with a minor.

“Anything can happen anywhere”, said Fargo resident Melissa Bachmeier. “I mean everyone just kind of has to watch themselves and their kids and just know that anything can happen at any moment in time.”

Melissa Bachmeier is from Fargo and she grew up going to church.

“It’s fun to get involved with other members of the church, to know that you feel like you belong with a group,” said Bachmeier.

And like Bachmeier, Carl Selvig can relate to her. He says the church has always been a part of him.

“Loving him and loving each other and I think it’s important for us all to learn how to love our neighbor,” said Selvig.

Many carried out their weekly tradition of going to church on Sunday.

It wasn’t that way for a few North Dakota churches including Sts. Anne and Joachim Catholic Church in Fargo, where a priest was put on administrative leave last Thursday.

Father Wenceslaus Katanga was removed from his priestly duties due to an interaction he had with a minor at the Catholic church in Fargo.

The priest had a big impact on the community as he was also a part of other churches in North Dakota.

Some members from these churches say Father Katanga isn’t like this.

One Wishek woman who did not want to her name to be mentioned said, “he’s a very sweet kind man. You could be having the worst day and he would go out of his way to ask how you were doing. He even helped a few in our community come out of a dark place. I’ve known him for at least 12 years.

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DENVER (CO)
Catholic News Agency

April 8, 2019

The bishop accused of serially raping a nun could face criminal charges this week, as Indian police say they will ask a court to charge him with rape, evidence tampering, and menacing his accuser.

In June 2018, a member of the Missionaries of Jesus religious congregation accused Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jalandharr of sexually assaulting her 13 times between 2014 and 2016. In a 72-page complaint to police, filed June 29, the nun alleged that the bishop sexually abused her more than a dozen times over two years.

The bishop maintains his innocence. He was arrested Sept. 21, 2018 amid protests calling for a police investigation of the allegation. He was subsequently released on bail.

Police in the Indian state of Kerala now say they have enough evidence to formally charge Mulakkal, and that they will file a charging document in criminal court this week, the Wall Street Journal reported April 8.

A judge will determine whether the bishop will face formal criminal charges.

“After our extensive investigation we have come to a conclusion that what the nun alleged seems to be truthful,” police inspector general Vijay Sakhare told the Wall Street Journal.

“We have strong evidence to get the bishop prosecuted.”

Mulakkal, 55, was temporarily removed from the administration of his diocese shortly before he was arrested. The bishop claims that the nun accused him of rape as retaliation, because he had ordered an investigation into a claim that she was having an affair with a relative.

On Oct. 22, 2018, Fr. Kuriakose Kattuthara, a key police witness in the case, was found dead in his room. The priest’s family alleged foul play.

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.