ABUSE TRACKER

BOSTON(MA)
WBUR Radio

February 25, 2019

By Rich Barlow

The moral order has flipped upside down when civil authorities must force religious leaders to honor the Eighth Commandment against lying. Yet we are in such a Bizarro World, as I learned after my native New Jersey was among a half dozen states to investigate Catholic dioceses, following Pennsylvania’s searing catalog of decades of abuse of 1,000 children by hundreds of priests.

In the wake of Jersey’s probe, Catholic dioceses in the state recently released the names of priests credibly accused of abuse. Monsignor Thomas J. Frain, pastor of my childhood parish, was among them. (He, like many on the list, is deceased.) Though the nature of his abuse and age of his victim(s) weren’t specified — priests have preyed on adults, including nuns, as well as kids — I thank God that neither my brother nor I were ever altar boys or left alone with him.

I’d place my faith in prosecutors over prelates.

I mention this by way of suggesting, as a practicing Catholic, that attention to the just-ended Vatican summit on child abuse is misplaced. If it’s church reform you want, turn your gaze from Rome to U.S. states, where law enforcement, having lost patience with Catholic leaders (as have we in the laity), have started probing abuse.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
WUSA TV

February 24, 2019

Pope Francis’ landmark Vatican summit ended early Sunday morning. In the District, some local survivors said the Pope’s words stop short.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

February 25, 2019

By Elise Harris

Though Pope Francis’s high-stakes Feb. 21-24 summit on clerical sexual abuse has not yet yielded any major policy moves, one message was clear throughout the four-day gathering: The problem is global, and no one should leave thinking it’s not a concern in their own backyard.

Francis himself in his Sunday Angelus address said abuse is “a widespread problem on every continent,” and because of this, he wanted bishops throughout the world “to face it together, in a co-responsible and collegial way.”

Since the beginning of the abuse scandals three decades ago, they’ve sometimes been pegged as primarily an “American” or “Western” problem by Church leaders in countries where the crisis has yet to erupt. Cracking down has been met with a certain level of resistance by prelates in these regions who see the problem as secondary in comparison to other, more pressing issues.

However, speakers this week challenged that notion with direct, bold language.

During Friday’s morning session, Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Mumbai, India, a member of the pope’s council of cardinals and one of four members of the summit’s organizing committee, said, “No bishop may say to himself, ‘This problem of abuse in the Church does not concern me, because things are different in my part of the world.’”

“This, brothers and sisters, is just not true,” he said. Acknowledging that “we in leadership roles did not do enough,” Gracias said the “entire Church must take an honest look [and] act decisively to prevent abuse from occurring in the future, and to do whatever possible to foster healing for victims.”

Similarly, Sister Veronica Openibo of Nigeria, one of just three women tapped to speak at the summit, reinforced the message Saturday, telling the 190 participants that “probably like many of you, I have heard many Africans and Asians say that this is not our issue in countries in Africa and Asia.”

“It is a problem in Europe, the Americas, Canada and Australia,” Openibo said, adding that other problems in the region such as poverty, illness, war, and violence “does not mean that the area of sexual abuse should be downplayed or ignored…The Church has to be proactive in facing it.”

Prelates did not mince words, vocalizing the Church’s failures to properly address the abuse crisis and calling for the “humility” to recognize these errors and to repent.

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LAFAYETTE (LA)
Lafayette Daily Advertiser

February 24, 2019

By Elaina Sauber

As nearly 200 leaders of the Roman Catholic Church from around the world convened at a first-ever summit on sexual abuse at the Vatican on Thursday, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Lafayette still hadn’t released a list of priests over the last half-century who were credibly accused of sexually abusing children.

Bishop J. Douglas Deshotel of the Diocese of Lafayette said earlier this week that he expected the summit to address “pastoral outreach and accompaniment toward healing” for sexual abuse victims and the removal of any cleric who is guilty of abuse, and reporting those crimes to law enforcement.

In a Daily Advertiser story first published on Feb. 11, diocesan spokeswoman Blue Rolfes said they hoped “within the next week or two to release the list.”

Nearly two weeks later, Rolfes hasn’t responded to repeated phone calls and emails seeking an update on when the list will be published.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Guardian

February 23, 2019

By Jamie Doward

The head of one of the country’s most powerful Catholic orders was made aware of sex abuse allegations dating back to the 1970s at one of its schools but did not alert the authorities – contrary to the recommendations of a church commission on which he sat.

The wide-ranging Independent Inquiry Into Child Sexual Abuse has been shown a handwritten document compiled by Abbot Richard Yeo, who as president of the Benedictines conducted an inquiry at St Benedict’s School in Ealing, west London, in June 2010 following reports that there had been widespread abuse of pupils by teachers and monks.

The year before Yeo’s visit, Father David Pearce, the former head of the junior school, had been jailed for eight years – reduced to five on appeal –after being found guilty of abusing five boys over a 36-year period.

According to notes Yeo took when he visited St Benedict’s, and which will soon be uploaded on to the inquiry’s website, many at the school had been concerned about Pearce decades before he was jailed. Yeo’s notes state: “Mid 70s knew David engaged in dubious activities.” Another monk told him: “Knew since I was junior school head there was something wrong. Graffiti ‘Fr David is bent’.” A third said he was aware of rumours of abuse when he arrived 25 years ago, and expressed disbelief that a former abbot claimed to Yeo he “never knew anything about it”.

The Catholic church’s failure to confront systemic clerical sexual abuse was acknowledged last week at an unprecedented summit on the issue opened by Pope Francis, attended by 180 bishops and cardinals. “The holy people of God are watching and expect not just simple and obvious condemnations, but efficient and concrete measures to be established,” he warned.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
WTOP TV

February 24, 2019

By Keara Dowd

An organization that serves survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic priests is responding to the Pope’s points of action with their own list of ways Catholics can help victims every day.

The Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests (SNAP) released a list of 21 things that they say everyday Catholics can do to help the crisis. Local leaders handed out copies to people as they left mass at the Basilica of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception Sunday morning.

“When I listened to those eight points, I thought of them as being very vague, and they weren’t really some action points,” said Becky Ianni, who leads SNAP’s local chapter. “It’s really important that we keep vigilant, and that we work towards holding the church accountable and pushing them to take action on some of the items they listed.”

Listening, donating to organizations that help victims and educating people about sexual abuse are all on SNAP’s list of things people can do to help. Ianni, a survivor of sexual abuse at the hands of a priest herself, says that the Pope’s points of reflection sounds like it’s mostly just talk.

“One of the things that struck me was that he said that he wants bishops and cardinals to understand the severity of this problem. And I think as a survivor, you know, as an 8-year-old I knew how severe this was, I knew how devastating this was. So I don’t know why this is one of the points,” said Ianni.

Some members of SNAP made the trip to Rome for the Pope’s summit, with the hope of contributing to the solutions that the meetings hoped to find. But those who went told the National Catholic Reporter that none of their suggestions made it on to the Pope’s list.

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SIOUX CITY (IA)
Sioux City Journal

February 24, 2019

The Diocese of Sioux City announced Sunday that it plans to publicly release a list of 28 priests who were credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors while serving in the diocese.

According to a press release from the diocese, each case was investigated by the Diocesan Review Board to determine credibility. The board reviewed priest files dating back to 1902.

The diocese will host a press conference at 1:30 p.m. Monday at 1821 Jackson St. to release the list. Bishop R. Walker Nickless; Father Brad Pelzel, Vicar General and Moderator; and Mark Prosser, a Review Board member and Storm Lake Police Chief, will all be on hand.

After the press conference the list will be available at www.scdiocese.org.

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[“When I denounced my abuser, Bergoglio refused to receive me”]

ARGENTINA
Tiempo Argentino

February 24, 2019

By Pablo Taranto

Mientras el Vaticano discute qué hacer con las denuncias de abuso sexual, Sebastián Cuattromo sostiene que se trata de “un triunfo de las víctimas”, pide “además de gestos, acciones concretas”, y recuerda que el entonces arzobispo porteño subestimó la gravedad del delito.

A los 13 años, Sebastián Cuattromo fue víctima de abuso sexual en el Colegio Marianista del barrio de Caballito. Durante diez años no pudo siquiera ponerlo en palabras, pero al cabo se sobrepuso a ese duro silencio y denunció a su abusador, el hermano marianista y docente Fernando Picciochi, también agresor de otros niños de su misma edad. “Luego de 20 años de dolor y de lucha –cuenta–, en 2012 logré el juicio y la condena penal de quien fuera mi abusador, a 12 años de cárcel por el delito de corrupción de menores calificada y reiterada. Entonces hice pública mi historia, convencido de que no era una cuestión personal y privada, sino colectiva y de interés público, con la clara convicción de que mi testimonio podía contribuir a visibilizar esta enorme injusticia.”

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[New accusation: “My mother told the director of the Salesians that Don Pablo had abused my sister and me”]

MADRID (SPAIN)
El País

February 22, 2019

By Julio Nuñez

Otro exalumno del colegio de Deusto denuncia que dos clérigos le agredieron sexualmente a él y a sus dos hermanos

Como tantos otros, Claudio (nombre anónimo) sintió un extraño alivio a sus 55 años cuando leyó por primera vez que los abusos sexuales en el colegio salesiano de Deusto estaban saliendo a la luz. Durante 45 años, nadie en su barrio le creyó cuando contaba que los religiosos del centro “metían mano” a los niños. En su historia personal y familiar se mezclan los abusos de dos de los cuatro acusados de pederastia y malos tratos: el sacerdote Pablo Ortega –investigado por la orden salesiana por pederastia– y José Miguel San Martín –conocido como don Chemi y denunciado por una treintena de antiguos alumnos–.

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[A precedent for fighting pedophilia in the Church]

ALICANTE (SPAIN)
El País

February 23, 2019

By Rafa Burgos

Un sacerdote fue condenado en 1933 a tres años de prisión por abusar de dos niñas acogidas en un orfanato de Orihuela tras la investigación de una comisión municipal

Un rumor recorre la Orihuela de 1932, en plena Segunda República. En el asilo de La Beneficencia, un orfanato tutelado por monjas, están sucediendo “irregularidades de orden moral”. Al parecer, alguna de las niñas recluidas en la institución han sufrido abusos sexuales y ninguno de los responsables del centro se libra de la sospecha. El Ayuntamiento, a instancias del Gobernador Civil de Alicante, José Echevarría Novoa, impulsa una investigación que determina que el culpable de violar a dos niñas menores, de 15 y 16 años, es el capellán del asilo, José Escurra, que será acusado ante la Fiscalía, juzgado y, finalmente, condenado a tres años de prisión.

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[Brazil: Church with the most Catholics listens to abuse victims in pilot program]

SAO PAULO (BRAZIL)
El País (Spain)

February 20, 2019

By Naiara Galarraga Gortazar

Una archidiócesis acaba de ser condenada por explotación sexual de menores en el mayor caso de pederastia del clero conocido en Brasil

La Iglesia católica de Brasil, la que con 123 millones más fieles aporta en el mundo entero, llega a la cumbre convocada por el Papa recién condenada por el mayor escándalo de abusos sexuales conocido en su seno. La archidiócesis de Paraíba fue sentenciada en enero por un tribunal laboral a pagar 12 millones de reales (2,9 millones de euros) por explotación sexual de menores porque un grupo de sacerdotes pagaba habitualmente por sexo, con dinero o comida, a seminaristas, monaguillos y aparcacohes. El caso ya había tenido consecuencias para la jerarquía. El Vaticano obligó a dimitir en 2016 por encubrir esos crímenes al entonces arzobispo, Aldo Pagotto. La sentencia, desvelada por el programa Fantástico del canal O Globo, ha sido recurrida por la Iglesia. Este es el caso con mayor repercusión en un país donde no ha habido grandes investigaciones de los abusos sexuales del clero a niños por parte de los jueces, de la prensa ni de la jerarquía eclesiástica.

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[Ecuador: Psychological help for the victims of the “dynamics of sin”]

QUITO (ECUADOR)
El País (Spain)

February 20, 2019

By Soraya Constante

El presidente de la conferencia episcopal asegura que su Iglesia está lista para responder al Papa

María, de 14 años, fue violentada en su cuarta clase de catequesis. Era el primer sábado de febrero y el sacerdote Néstor Bustos, párroco de una iglesia del norte de Quito, le había tocado sus partes íntimas y besado a la fuerza. La adolescente volvió a su casa llorando y habló con una prima y luego con sus padres. Estos, indignados, convencieron a unos cuantos vecinos para tomarse la justicia por su mano. La muchedumbre llegó a la casa parroquial y el religioso intentó huir por la puerta trasera. La policía llegó a tiempo para evitar el linchamiento y se llevó al cura, quien se defendía diciendo que solo había hecho “cosquillitas” a la menor.

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[Colombia: Immediately go to the Prosecutor’s Office with abuse complaints]

BOGOTA (COLOMBIA)
El País (Spain)

February 20, 2019

By Santiago Torrado

Aunque no existe un rastreo oficial del número de víctimas, varias decenas de religiosos católicos han sido señalados de abusos sexuales contra menores en los últimos años

En Colombia, un país cuya principal discusión pública se concentra en pasar la página de un conflicto armado de más de medio siglo, el escándalo mundial por la pederastia en la iglesia ha aterrizado sin tanta resonancia, ni casos tan emblemáticos como en otros lugares. Aunque no existe un rastreo oficial del número de víctimas, varias decenas de sacerdotes católicos han sido señalados por abusos sexuales contra menores en los últimos años.

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[Peru: Compensation and therapy for upper class abuse victims]

LIMA (PERU)
El País (Spain)

February 20, 2019

By Jacqueline Fowks

La organización apostólica ultraconservadora Sodalicio fue un nido de pederastia y sus responsables aún no han sido sancionados

La Conferencia Episcopal de Perú no ha encubierto a religiosos acusados de abusos sexuales a menores y los ha puesto a disposición de la justicia. Pero el arzobispo saliente de Lima, Juan Luis Cipriani, protegió a una organización ultraconservadora, el Sodalicio de Vida Cristiana, en la que los líderes cometieron abusos contra 19 menores y 10 adultos. La cifra procede de un informe que esa agrupación difundió en 2017.

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[Guatemala: Few cases of known abuse in a country where being a child is a high-risk situation]

GUATEMALA CITY (GUATEMALA)
El País (Spain)

February 20, 2019

By José Elías

En un país profundamente religioso, las víctimas temen el ostracismo social. Se conocen tres casos

En Guatemala, un país donde ser niño es una situación de alto riesgo en la medida en que la mayoría sobrevive en la pobreza extrema, la explotación laboral o la violencia sexual, los casos de pederastia que involucren a la Iglesia católica son minoritarios, desconocidos o, por pudor, no denunciados. Por ahora solo se conocen tres casos. “Los tres fueron condenados a penas de cárcel, uno de ellos era un varón y los dos restantes chicas adolescentes. Uno de los sacerdotes mantiene abiertamente su inocencia y ha apelado su condena”, cuenta a EL PAÍS el obispo de Huehuetenango (norte, en la frontera con México), Álvaro Ramazzini, en una conversación vía Internet.

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[Panama and Honduras: Silence over abuses is imposed on Catholic hierarchies]

SAN JOSE (COSTA RICA)
El País (Spain)

February 20, 2019

By José Meléndez

Las cúpulas religiosas de ambos países rechazan informar sobre los casos de pederastia

Cuando el papa Francisco inició el pasado 24 de enero sus primeras actividades en Panamá, reprendió a la cúpula eclesiástica por mantenerse alejada de los fieles católicos por su secretismo y su política de puertas cerradas, y exhortó a los peregrinos de todo el mundo a “hacer lío” sin importar edad, sexo, raza o ideología. Pero el hermetismo persiste en las jerarquías católicas de Panamá y de Honduras para enfrentar los casos conflictivos de pederastia ante la cumbre mundial de conferencias episcopales en el Vaticano.

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[El Salvador: A pedophile biographer of a saint]

SAN SALVADOR (EL SALVADOR)
El País (Spain)

February 20, 2019

By Juan Jose Dalton

La Justicia enjuicia ahora otros dos casos en el país sudamericano

Los casos de pederastia denunciados e investigados en la Iglesia de El Salvador son escasos. “Hemos concluido los procesos penales eclesiásticos en contra de los sacerdotes acusados de abuso sexual de menores. Los tres sacerdotes procesados fueron encontrados culpables en sus respectivos juicios, por lo que en los tres casos se impuso la pena de dimisión del estado clerical”, dijo el 18 de diciembre en su homilía dominical el arzobispo de San Salvador, José Luis Escobar Alas. Los tres sacerdotes destituidos por el Vaticano, en 2016, son Juan Francisco Gálvez, Antonio Molina y Jesús Delgado.

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[Western Africa: Priests denounced for abuses returned to Europe]

DAKAR (SENEGAL)
El País (Spain)

February 20, 2019

By Jose Naranjo

Los medios de comunicación han sacado a la luz cuatro casos

En África occidental se han registrado escasas denuncias por pederastia contra miembros de la Iglesia católica en los últimos años, lo cual no significa que no haya casos. Monseñor André Gueye, obispo de Thiès y vicepresidente de la Conferencia Episcopal —que agrupa a Senegal, Mauritania, Cabo Verde y Guinea Bissau—, dice conocer dos casos: un intento de abuso sexual de un profesor de una escuela religiosa que acabó siendo expulsado y el de un cura denunciado por acoso sexual que fue sancionado por su obispo y ya no está en activo. Sin embargo, algunos trabajos periodísticos han sacado a la luz que cuatro religiosos occidentales han sido investigados. Entre ellos el sacerdote español Juan José Gómez, que trabajaba en Benín con niños de la calle, tal y como desveló EL PAÍS.

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[The Bishop of Astorga about an abusive priest: “I have to take care of him because he is a priest, isn’t he?”]

MADRID (SPAIN)
El País

February 21, 2019

By Julio Núñez

Juan Antonio Menéndez, presidente de la comisión antipederastia, se compadece de un cura pederasta en una grabación oculta durante una reunión con afectados

Cuando Javier recibió en 2017 la carta del obispo de Astorga y actual presidente de la comisión antipederastia de la Conferencia Episcopal, Juan Antonio Menéndez, comunicándole que el sacerdote que había abusado de él a finales de los ochenta, José Manuel Ramos Gordón, solo había sido condenado a un año de apartamiento como párroco, sintió que “el infierno” que había vivido para denunciar su caso ante el Papa y buscar justicia en el obispado había sido en balde. Tampoco le sirvió quejarse a Menéndez. Decidió, entonces, contarlo todo a los medios. Una treintena de antiguos seminaristas del seminario leones de La Bañeza (centro donde sucedieron los abusos) salieron a la calle para apoyarle y protestar contra “el encubrimiento” y el silencio que la Iglesia había seguido durante su proceso canónico y contra la pena de Ramos Gordón.

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[Analysis: A clamorous crisis of credibility]

MADRID (SPAIN)
El País

February 24, 2019

By Juan G. Bedoya

El descubrimiento de casos de pederastia en la Iglesia, que acaba de empezar, requiere reformas de fondo

Eufemismos aparte (Santa Sede, Su Santidad el Papa, Vicario de Cristo…), resulta ya obsceno sostener que el Pontífice romano y los obispos son una referencia moral para el mundo, si es que alguna vez lo fueron desde que Constantino los encumbró como religión del Imperio y una iglesia hasta entonces perseguida con saña se convirtió en la religión perseguidora. “De pronto, cuánta suciedad”, lamentó Benedicto XVI hace diez años. Para entonces, ya se sabía que él mismo había sido encubridor, enviando, incluso, una carta a los obispos que ordenaba que actuasen en secreto y remitiesen a la Congregación para la Doctrina de la Fe, que presidió cuando era el cardenal Ratzinger, todos los casos de pederastia.

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[Chilean survivors testifies at the Vatican: “An abuse is the greatest humiliation”]

CHILE
Emol

February 23, 2019

El joven, que actualmente vive en Alemania, contó ante los obispos y el papa que luego del episodio vivido hay una parte de la persona que “es como un fantasma que los demás no pueden ver”.

Un joven chileno víctima de abusos leyó su desgarrador testimonio durante la celebración penitencial que se ofició este sábado en la cumbre vaticana sobre protección de los menores y recordó a los obispos que “un abuso, de cualquier tipo, es la mayor humillación que un individuo puede sufrir”.

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[Catharsis behind the Jesuits’ closed doors]

CHILE
La Tercera

February 23, 2019

By Carla Pía Ruiz Pereira

Las acusaciones de abuso sexual en contra de varios de sus miembros -entre ellos Renato Poblete- marcaron la reservada cita en Padre Hurtado. Golpeados. Así llegaron los 115 jesuitas al último Encuentro de Provincia, en el que se cuestionaron todo. Su estructura, su formación, su relación con el poder. Su soberbia. La crisis que vive hoy la Iglesia Católica chilena les recordó algo: todos han caído. Y los jesuitas también.

“Los jesuitas siempre nos hemos sentido un poco distintos. Así como mejores que el resto de los curas. Pero el tema de los abusos nos puso, con todo el dolor y vergüenza del mundo, los pies en la tierra”.

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ROCHESTER (NY)
WHAM TV

February 24, 2019

A Rochester priest has been put on administrative leave after he was accused of sexual misconduct with a minor.

Parishioners of St. Christopher Church in North Chili learned at this weekend’s Masses that their pastor, Rev. Robert Gaudio, is being investigated over a complaint that he abused a minor in the 1970s, according to a press release from the Diocese of Rochester.

Rev. Gaudio denied the allegation. No other previous allegations of sexual abuse of a minor have ever been received, according to the diocese.

While he is on leave, he can not engage in public ministry. Rev. Edward Palumbos will serve as temporary administrator.

Rev. Gaudio was ordained in 1974. Before serving at St. Christopher’s, he previously served at Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Brockport, St. Alphonsus Church in Auburn, St. Andrew Church in Rochester, Holy Name of Jesus Church in Greece, St. Monica Church in Rochester, and St. Ann Church in Palmyra concurrent with ministry at St. Gregory Church in Marion..

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ROME (ITALY)
Reuters

February 24, 2019

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis ended his conference on the sexual abuse of children by clergy on Sunday by calling for an “all-out battle” against a crime that should be “erased from the face of the earth”.

But victims and their advocates expressed deep disappointment, saying Francis had merely repeated old promises and offered few new concrete proposals.

In his closing address to the almost 200 Church leaders he had summoned to Rome, Francis said national guidelines on preventing and punishing abuse would be strengthened and the Church’s definition of minors in cases of possession by clergy of pornography would be raised from the current age of 14.

At least two Vatican officials have been convicted in recent years of possessing child pornography.

Shortly after the conference, the Vatican said it would enact a law to protect minors and vulnerable adults within the Vatican City – the tiny enclave surrounded by Rome which is one of the few countries without one.

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ROME (ITALY)
Daily Beast

February 24.2019

By Barbie Latza Nadeau

Several moments during the four-day summit on clerical sex abuse truly were inspirational. Like when Nigerian nun, Sister Veronica Openibo, scolded Pope Francis and the 190 church leaders who had gathered there. “How could the clerical Church have kept silent, covering these atrocities?” she asked, at one point turning to the pope who was seated near her. “The silence, the carrying of the secrets in the hearts of the perpetrators, the length of the abuses and the constant transfers of perpetrators are unimaginable.”

Other moments focused on the suffering at the center of the scandals. “From the age of 15 I had sexual relations with a priest,” the prelates heard on the first day, listening to one victim’s recorded testimony. “This lasted for 13 years. I got pregnant three times and he made me have an abortion three times, quite simply because he did not want to use condoms or contraceptives. At first I trusted him so much that I did not know he could abuse me. I was afraid of him, and every time I refused to have sex with him, he would beat me.”

On Saturday evening, an unnamed young man, the victim of a predatory priest for years, spoke at an evening service where the conference attendees asked for forgiveness. He seemed to look each leader, including the pope, directly in the eye as he fought back tears. “What you carry inside you is like a ghost, which others are unable to see,” he said, describing his years of abuse. “They will never fully see and know you. What hurts the most, is the certainty that nobody will understand you. That lives with you for the rest of your life.” Then he went on to play a song so mournful on his violin that he seemed to bring that ghost to life.

But what will be remembered most from this extraordinary summit is likely to be what didn’t happen. Francis called for an “all-out battle against the abuse of minors” and said that his church now “feels called to combat this evil that strikes at the very heart of her mission, which is to preach the Gospel to the little ones and to protect them from ravenous wolves.”

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ROME (ITALY)
The Telegraph

February 24, 2019

By Andrea Vogt

Pope Francis wrapped up a landmark Vatican summit on clerical sex abuse on Sunday pledging to bring the “wrath of God” upon clergy who abuse children, and likening paedophilia to “human sacrifice”.

“We must deliver justice to whoever did this and never try to cover up any case,” Pope Francis told the 190 cardinals, bishops and participants gathered for the unprecedented four-day Vatican summit on the clerical sexual abuse crisis that has dogged the Roman Catholic Church for decades.

“The echo of the silent cry of the little ones, who, instead of finding in them fathers and spiritual guides, encountered tormentors, will shake hearts dulled by hypocrisy and power.”

Support groups for the victims of clerical sexual abuse, however, said Pope Francis had lost a unique, high-profile opportunity for momentous change, instead opting for empty promises and “meaningless” reflection points.

His references to the devil and emphasis on the fact that the Church was not the only place children were abused particularly rankled.

Describing predatory priests as “tools of Satan”, the Pope said paedophilia was “a widespread phenomenon in all cultures and societies”.

“I am reminded of the cruel religious practice, once widespread in certain cultures, of sacrificing human beings – frequently children – in pagan rites,” he said.

“Honestly it’s a pastoral ‘blabla’, saying it’s the fault of the devil,” Swiss victim Jean-Marie Furbringer said.

Pope Francis wrapped up a landmark Vatican summit on clerical sex abuse on Sunday pledging to bring the “wrath of God” upon clergy who abuse children, and likening paedophilia to “human sacrifice”.

“We must deliver justice to whoever did this and never try to cover up any case,” Pope Francis told the 190 cardinals, bishops and participants gathered for the unprecedented four-day Vatican summit on the clerical sexual abuse crisis that has dogged the Roman Catholic Church for decades.

“The echo of the silent cry of the little ones, who, instead of finding in them fathers and spiritual guides, encountered tormentors, will shake hearts dulled by hypocrisy and power.”

Support groups for the victims of clerical sexual abuse, however, said Pope Francis had lost a unique, high-profile opportunity for momentous change, instead opting for empty promises and “meaningless” reflection points.

His references to the devil and emphasis on the fact that the Church was not the only place children were abused particularly rankled.

Describing predatory priests as “tools of Satan”, the Pope said paedophilia was “a widespread phenomenon in all cultures and societies”.

“I am reminded of the cruel religious practice, once widespread in certain cultures, of sacrificing human beings – frequently children – in pagan rites,” he said.

“Honestly it’s a pastoral ‘blabla’, saying it’s the fault of the devil,” Swiss victim Jean-Marie Furbringer said.

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MARKSVILLE (LA)
Avoyelles Today

February 24, 2019

By Raymond Daye

There are calls you wish you had not received because of the emotional toll it takes on you, but yet are glad you had the conversation because some good may come from it.

One such call came to my desk a few days after the article on priests the Diocese believes were most likely guilty of sexual abuse, molestation or impropriety with juveniles over the past several decades.

This caller is now over 70, but his story of a near tragedy occurred when he was 13.

The priest was serving in Bunkie. He was friendly and often asked the caller and his friends to help him around the church. He would give them gifts to show his appreciation for their help.

One day, he and the priest were alone.

“He gave me something to drink,” he recalled, noting that he may have had more than one.

“I know now it was a martini, with olives in it. It was very strong and made me dizzy,” he said.

The priest drove him to the Cow Palace in Marksville — which has since been torn down to make way for the Paragon Casino.

“He tried to take my pants off in the car,” he said. “I fought back, even though I was woozy from the martini.”

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WASHINGTON (DC)
USA Today

February 24, 2019

By Lindsay Schnell

The Latino family entered the church after worship started, hustling to a pew in the back. The two young boys sat between their parents, while the little girl, a big white bow adorning her hair, perched on her dad’s lap, giggling.

During the homily, while the Rev. Mike Walker preached in English about finding joy in Jesus Christ despite hardships, the father whispered in Spanish for his children to be quiet and hold still. The mother handed the boys books with a Spanish translation. She wanted them to follow along.

Two hours later at St. James Catholic Church, located 50 miles southwest of Portland in the heart of Oregon’s wine country, the pews were packed again, this time entirely with Latino families. Now, the hymns were upbeat — full drums, a boisterous choir, congregants moving their hips.

Walker invited children to the front. “Escuela mañana?” he asked. Did they have school the next day on Presidents Day? The crowd of elementary school children shook their heads shyly, then headed for the Sunday school classroom, while Walker addressed his congregation and preached the same homily — this time entirely in Spanish.

McMinnville is 72 percent white and 22 percent Latino, but St. James is majority Latino, a growing trend in the U.S. Catholic Church.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholic News Service

February 24, 2019

By Lou Baldwin

A report on the first financial settlements by the Independent Reconciliation and Reparation Program for victims of clergy sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia has been made public.

The IRRP began Nov. 13, 2018, as a way to compensate individuals who had been abused years ago as minors by priests of the archdiocese but whose cases are time-barred from civil prosecution due to Pennsylvania’s statutes of limitation.

The program’s Oversight Committee released its first interim report on the awards Feb. 15. Of the $8.425 million authorized for payment to date, more than $4.5 million has been paid, according to the report, with the remaining pending victims’ acceptance of the terms. The paid claims number 16; there are 20 pending.

While the awards are paid by the archdiocese, it has no control over who receives them or in what amount, since the IRRP is run independently of the archdiocese. The program’s decisions are final and may not be appealed.

According to the report, packets were mailed to 348 previously known individuals who had reported sexual abuse. Of this number 70 have filed claims. Some packets were returned by the post office as undeliverable and there are at this time approximately 15 individuals that the archdiocese is still trying to locate and invite to participate in the program.

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TORONTO (CANADA)
CTV News

February 23, 2019

As the Roman Catholic church hosts a historic summit on sexual abuse, new Canadian guidelines are being used as a possible roadmap for reformation.

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops’ guidelines on Protecting Minors from Sexual Abuse include tougher background checks, compassion for victims and abandoning confidentiality clauses in settlements with victims.

Ron Fabbro, a bishop in London, Ont., spent years working on the 69 recommendations that were published last year and which are being considered at the summit underway at the Vatican.

“I think it’s very important for them to hear that we acknowledge that there have been failures,” Fabbro tells CTV News.

Fabrro says the most difficult part of the scandal has been knowing that those who suffered the abuse have “lost their trust in the church.”

He’s hopeful the church can change, but others have lost hope. Some were disappointed that Pope Francis did not attend a meeting with survivors on Wednesday, and has not apologized for the church’s role in abuse of Indigenous people at Canadian residential schools.

Rod MacLeod is one of those still waiting for the church to change.

In 2015, MacLeod won a $2.6 million settlement for the abuse he suffered at the hands of a Sudbury, Ont., priest and high school gym teacher in the 1960s. William Marshall was found guilty of abusing 17 people in 2011. He died in 2014.

“After gym, you’d go to the showers and he would grab you and pull you into his office where he had all these venetian blinds that he had kept closed all the time,” MacLeod recalls.

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ROME (ITALY)
NBC News

February 24, 2019

By Claudio Lavanga, Yuliya Talmazan and Anne Thompson

Pope Francis strongly condemned clerical sexual abuse during a speech ending a landmark Vatican conference on the subject Sunday, but stopped short of proposing new policies to combat the crisis engulfing the Catholic Church.

“No abuse should ever be covered up as was often the case in the past or not taken sufficiently seriously, since the covering up of abuses favors the spread of evil and adds a further level of scandal,” he said.

At the end of the four-day summit — the Vatican’s latest attempt to come to grips with the issue — Francis promised that guidelines used by bishops’ conferences to prevent abuse and punish perpetrators will be reviewed and strengthened.

Speaking to some 190 senior Catholic bishops and religious superiors, the pope called abuse involving children a “universal problem.”

“The church has now become increasingly aware of the need not only to curb the gravest cases of abuse by disciplinary measures and civil and canonical processes, but also to decisively confront the phenomenon both inside and outside,” Francis said. “She feels called to combat this evil that strikes at the very heart of her mission, which is to preach the Gospel to the little ones and to protect them from ravenous wolves.”

“The church will never seek to hush up or not take seriously any case,” he added at the end of Mass celebrated in the Sala Regia, one of the grand, frescoed reception rooms of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace.

The Jesuit pope added that the vast majority of sexual abuse occurs within the family, and in a bid to contextualize what he said was once a taboo subject, offered a global review of the wider problem of sexual tourism and online pornography.

But while he acknowledged the grief of victims and offered a list of measures to combat abuse, Francis offered little in the way of new approaches during the speech.

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EDINBURGH (SCOTLAND)
The Scotsman

February 24, 2019

Internet DNA-testing sites have led to a wave of adults discovering that they were fathered by Catholic priests and then banished to Scotland, it was claimed.

The Catholic Church in Scotland has admitted it has no idea how many Scottish priests, or those working in the country, have fathered children. But campaigners have claimed children were sent to Scotland from Ireland and England as a way of keeping them hidden from parish communities which may find out about their parentage.

Campaign group Coping International, founded by Vincent Doyle, who grew up in Ireland believing a priest was his godfather only to discover he was actually his dad, has warned it can push people to ‘psychosis’.

Mr Doyle said: “We are supporting eight Scottish people.

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NEW YORK (NY)
America Magazine

February 24, 2019

By Michael J. O’Loughlin

In the months leading up to the Vatican’s four-day summit on the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests, some U.S. prelates, activists and even some journalists tried to link homosexuality with the abuse crisis, attempts to urge church officials to take a hard line against gay priests.

But the topic was barely broached during the summit, and when it was, leading prelates dismissed any connection.

“To generalize, to look at a whole category of people is never legitimate. We have individual cases. We don’t have categories of people,” said Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna, who has become one of the Vatican’s point man in the fight against sex abuse.

Responding to a reporter’s question during a press briefing on Feb. 21 about why the Vatican was not discussing homosexuality, he said that homosexuality and heterosexuality are “human conditions,” adding, “they are not something that predisposes to sin.”

“To generalize, to look at a whole category of people is never legitimate. We have individual cases. We don’t have categories of people.”
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“I would never dare to indicate a category as a category that has a tendency to sin,” Archbishop Scicluna said.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

February 23, 2019

John L. Allen Jr.

Since the beginning of the clerical abuse crisis, some voices in Catholicism have warned that going too far towards secular standards of transparency and corporate “best practices” could ruin the reputations of innocent priests by circulating false allegations, as well as eroding traditional guarantees of pontifical secrecy.

On Saturday, bishops gathered for a special summit heard one of their own, German Cardinal Reinhard Marx, tell them bluntly that such arguments just aren’t “particularly forceful.”

“The protection of rights and transparency are not mutually exclusive,” Marx said. “The opposite is the case.”

“A clearly defined and public procedure,” the German prelate said, “is the best safety mechanism against prejudices and false judgments. Such a procedure has the credibility to restore the reputation of a wrongly accused person who otherwise would be subject to rumors.”

Ultimately, Marx said, the aim of building and maintaining effective administrative procedures in dealing with abuse cases is to “bring humanity to God.”

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

February 24, 2019

By John L. Allen Jr.

One hallmark of Pope Francis’s style is that during big moments, he prefers to have his friends and allies in the spotlight. That’s certainly the case during his high-stakes summit on the clerical abuse scandals this week, as the prelates given choice speaking slots would be on any short list of Francis’s biggest supporters.

As a result, it’s worth paying attention to what these prelates say, because if it doesn’t directly reflect the pope’s personal thinking, it’s at least a point of view he’ll be inclined to take seriously.

In that spirit, here’s one clear take-away: The concept of “pontifical secrecy,” if not quite on life support, has certainly seen better days.

Over the last three days, two prominent speakers took direct swipes at pontifical secrecy, both heavy-hitters in Francis’s papacy: Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Germany, a member of the pope’s “C9” council of cardinal advisers, and Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, essentially the pope’s go-to man in the United States.

Speaking on Friday, Cupich went first. Though his reference was brief, it was directly on point: “The reporting of an offense should not be impeded by the official secret or confidentiality rules.”

By “reporting,” of course, Cupich meant informing police and civil prosecutors of child abuse allegations against Church personnel. Over the years, officials often cited obligations to secrecy imposed under Church law as a reason for not making those reports – so, in context, Cupich was basically saying that’s bunk.

Next up was Marx, who, in essence, argued that pontifical secrecy needs to have its wings clipped – from a blanket requirement of keeping virtually everything confidential to a more 21st century concept of “data protection,” meaning shielding personal details from hackers with malicious intent, not withholding information from people or agencies with a legitimate right to know.

“We need to consider the definition and limits of pontifical secrecy,” Marx said. “In light of changing communications patterns in the age of social media, when each and every one of us can establish instant communication, we need to redefine confidentiality and secrecy and distinguish them from data protection.”

If the Church doesn’t do so, Marx warned, “we’ll either squander the chance to maintain some level of self-determination or expose ourselves to the suspicion of covering up.”

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ROME (ITALY)
New York Times

February 24, 2019

By Jason Horowitz and Elizabeth Dias

Pope Francis ended a landmark Vatican meeting on clerical sexual abuse with an appeal “for an all-out battle against the abuse of minors,” which he compared to human sacrifice, but his speech did not offer concrete policy remedies demanded by many of the faithful.

In the speech at the end of a Mass in the Apostolic Palace’s frescoed Sala Reggia hall, Francis argued that “even a single case of abuse” in the Roman Catholic Church — which he said was the work of the devil — must be met “with the utmost seriousness.” He said that eradicating the scourge required more than legal processes and “disciplinary measures.”

“To combat this evil that strikes at the very heart of our mission,” the pope said, the church needed to protect children “from ravenous wolves.”

Faithful Catholics — especially those in the United States and other countries that had grappled with the problem for years — had demanded more than homilies: They wanted action that would hold their leaders accountable, once and for all.

They did not get it from the pope’s speech.

But church officials have hinted that concrete policy changes were on the horizon, especially on issues of transparency and bishop accountability that were discussed during the meeting.

Pope Francis had sought to get the church’s leaders on the same page for the first time, summoning them to the meeting in September, decades after the sexual abuse crisis first exploded in the United States. He sent a message to his bishops and the faithful that he, too, wanted concrete remedies to come out of the meeting.

After the pope’s speech on Sunday, the Vatican announced several forthcoming measures, including one that church officials described as bringing the Vatican City State itself into line with the church’s existing rules on child protection.

Another was what the Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, called a “very brief” handbook for bishops to “understand their duties and tasks” on cases of sexual abuse and the introduction of a new task force of experts and canon lawyers to assist bishops in countries with less experience and resources to handle the issue.

But when asked about the measures on Sunday, the Vatican acknowledged that all had already been in the pipeline well before the meeting began on Thursday, and Father Lombardi said that none included any input from the four-day meeting.

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ROME (ITALY)
USA Today

February 24, 2019

By Trevor Hughes

Pope Francis on Sunday vowed to confront the Catholic Church’s clergy sex abuse scandal head-on, calling for priests to be guided by the “holy fear of God” while victims are believed and supported.

“The church will spare no effort to do all that is necessary to bring to justice whosoever has committed such crimes,” Francis told a group of about 190 Catholic bishops and religious superiors he summoned to Rome. “The church will never seek to hush up or not take seriously any case.”

The sex-abuse scandal has rocked the church for two decades as journalists and prosecutors have uncovered hundreds of examples of predator priests who abused children and were allowed to continue in their ministry. The scandal has prompted many American Catholics to leave the church, which counts about 70 million Americans as members.

Last week, Francis defrocked former U.S. cardinal Theodore McCarrick, 88, after Vatican officials found him guilty of sex crimes against minors and adults. McCarrick is the most senior Catholic official to be defrocked for such crimes, and church experts say that’s a reflection of how slowly the church has moved in response to the ongoing scandal.

After a damning grand jury report released last summer uncovered 300 abusive priests in Pennsylvania, multiple state attorneys general have opened their own cases, and hundreds of new victims are expected to come forward across the U.S.

The Rev. James Bretzke, a theology professor at Marquette University, said the pope demands a change in clerical culture, which has focused more on protecting the church’s reputation than the abuse of children by priests.

“The pope is saying this isn’t just a problem for the United States or Europe or elsewhere,” Bretzke told USA TODAY last week. “The problem is the clerical culture that looks to protect the institution even at the expense of individuals who have been harmed.”

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ROME (ITALY)
Associated Press

February 24, 2019

By Nicole Winfield

Pope Francis may have wrapped up his clergy sex abuse prevention summit at the Vatican, but a scandal over an Argentine bishop close to him is only gaining steam.

The Associated Press has reported that the Vatican knew as early as 2015 about Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta’s inappropriate behavior with seminarians. Yet he was allowed to stay on as bishop of the northern Argentine diocese of Oran on until 2017, when he resigned suddenly, only to be given a top job at the Vatican by Francis, his confessor.

New documents published by the Tribune of Salta newspaper show that the original 2015 complaint reported that Zanchetta had gay porn on his cellphone involving “young people” having sex, as well as naked images of Zanchetta masturbating that he sent to others.

The age of the “young people” isn’t clear. But Francis told his summit Sunday that Vatican legislation criminalizing possession of child porn involving children under age 14 should change to include older victims.

“We now consider that this age limit should be raised in order to expand the protections of minors and to bring out the gravity of these deeds,” Francis said.

It wasn’t clear if Francis was referring to the Zanchetta case, which is now under investigation by both the Vatican and Argentine judicial authorities after alleged victims came forward accusing Zanchetta of sexual abuse.

The Vatican has insisted that Zanchetta was only facing “governance” problems at the time of his 2017 resignation and appointment at the Vatican, and that the first sexual abuse allegation was made in late 2018.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Salon

February 24, 2019

By Matthew Rozsa

In my seven years as a published writer, no single interview has had a greater impact on me than my conversation with Pennsylvania state Rep. Mark Rozzi. Rozzi, a Democrat, has made it his personal mission to hold the Catholic Church accountable for allowing priests to sexually abuse children — and, on a broader level, to make it harder for any institution that conceals child sex abuse to get away with it.

When speaking to Salon last year, Rozzi went into graphic detail about the sexual abuse he experienced at the hands of his priest as a child, details too harrowing and upsetting to be repeated here. This week he spoke to Salon about the summit held by Pope Francis at the Vatican on Thursday, one in which the pontiff vowed to implement “concrete, effective measures” to hold wrongdoers accountable and prevent future abuses. These included creating a set of protocols for dealing with accusations against bishops, requiring psychological evaluations for priests, establishing codes of conduct for priests and other church officials that will recognize personal boundaries and creating a semi-autonomous group that can serve the needs of victims of sex abuse.

These promises sound good on paper, but are they enough? According to Rozzi, his concern is that the summit will be viewed as “a publicity stunt, if we don’t see concrete action.”

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ROME (ITALY)
Daily Beast

February 24, 2019

By Barbie Latza Nadeau
Several moments during the four-day summit on clerical sex abuse truly were inspirational. Like when Nigerian nun, Sister Veronica Openibo, scolded Pope Francis and the 190 church leaders who had gathered there. “How could the clerical Church have kept silent, covering these atrocities?” she asked, at one point turning to the pope who was seated near her. “The silence, the carrying of the secrets in the hearts of the perpetrators, the length of the abuses and the constant transfers of perpetrators are unimaginable.”

Other moments focused on the suffering at the center of the scandals. “From the age of 15 I had sexual relations with a priest,” the prelates heard on the first day, listening to one victim’s recorded testimony. “This lasted for 13 years. I got pregnant three times and he made me have an abortion three times, quite simply because he did not want to use condoms or contraceptives. At first I trusted him so much that I did not know he could abuse me. I was afraid of him, and every time I refused to have sex with him, he would beat me.”

On Saturday evening, an unnamed young man, the victim of a predatory priest for years, spoke at an evening service where the conference attendees asked for forgiveness. He seemed to look each leader, including the pope, directly in the eye as he fought back tears. “What you carry inside you is like a ghost, which others are unable to see,” he said, describing his years of abuse. “They will never fully see and know you. What hurts the most, is the certainty that nobody will understand you. That lives with you for the rest of your life.” Then he went on to play a song so mournful on his violin that he seemed to bring that ghost to life.

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ROME (ITALY)
Washington Post

February 24, 2019

By Chico Harlan

At a Mass marking the end of an unprecedented Vatican summit, Pope Francis on Sunday called for an “all-out battle” against clerical sexual abuse, saying the church needed to take “every necessary measure” to end the scourge.

But his remarks were short on specifics and roundly criticized by victims of abuse, who said the four-day summit amounted to a training seminar that concluded with no concrete steps and advocated for behavioral changes that should have been obvious years ago.

Speaking at a gilded and frescoed hall at the Vatican, Francis said that abuse should never be “covered up” or tolerated. But the pontiff’s words, which included general calls for improved national-level guidelines, underscored the looming challenges for an institution that has long acknowledged the seriousness of clerical abuse but nonetheless struggled to curtail it.

Francis mentioned unspecified “legislation” that the Catholic Church will draw up, and said it will “spare no effort to do all that is necessary to bring to justice” anyone who has committed the “crimes” of abuse. He did not mention a zero-tolerance policy — a step that advocates have long called for to codify the idea that clerics found guilty of abuse be removed permanently from the priesthood.

The pope had called for the abuse summit while facing abuse-related scandals on multiple continents — stemming from cases that sometimes showed the complicity of church higher-ups in protecting abusers. At the start of the summit Thursday, Francis had called for “concrete and effective measures” to contend with the problem. And though some of the Vatican’s handpicked speakers described their ideas for such measures, it is clear that any follow-through will have to come in the months and years ahead — if at all.

The event organizers have said they will remain in Rome in the coming days to discuss some of the ideas aired at the summit.

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ROME (ITALY)
Washington Post

February 23, 2019

By Chico Harlan

When Benjamin Kitobo arrived in Rome this week along with more than 100 other survivors of clerical sexual abuse from around the world, something quickly stood out. He was the only victim he could find representing a country in Africa.

“In some places, it is still life-threatening to speak out,” said Kitobo, 51, who says he was abused by a priest in the Congo, known then as Zaire. Kitobo now works as a nurse in St. Louis.

But Kitobo — and, increasingly, Vatican leaders — say that in many parts of the vast Catholic empire, the scale of clerical sexual abuse probably far exceeds what is publicly known.

Some go so far as to describe Pope Francis’s landmark four-day summit on child protection, which ends Sunday, as a direct warning for Catholic authorities across Asia, Africa and other parts of the world where abuse scandals have not yet left a searing mark.

They say the next decades of the Catholic Church’s efforts against clerical abuse depend on whether those countries can be pushed to take safeguarding measures preemptively, rather than responding only after a crisis explodes into the open.

“No bishop may say to himself, ‘This problem of abuse in the church does not concern me because things are different in my part of the world,’ ” Cardinal Oswald Gracias, the archbishop of Mumbai, who has been criticized for his own handling of cases, told the Vatican gathering of 190 bishops and other Catholic leaders. “I dare say there are cases all over the world, also in Asia, also in Africa.”

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ROME (ITALY)
Catholic News Service

Feb. 23, 2019

By Cindy Wooden

In an opulent Vatican room designed in the 16th century for papal meetings with kings, a cardinal read, “We confess that we have shielded the guilty and have silenced those who have been harmed.”

“Kyrie, eleison,” (Lord, have mercy) responded Pope Francis and some 190 cardinals, bishops and religious superiors from around the world to the confessions read on their behalf by Cardinal John Dew of Wellington, New Zealand.

After three days of meetings, nine major speeches and heartbreaking testimony from survivors of clerical sexual abuse, participants at the Vatican summit on child protection and the abuse crisis gathered in the Sala Regia (literally, “royal room”) of the Apostolic Palace Feb. 23 for a penitential liturgy.

The centerpiece of the liturgy was the reading of the story of the prodigal son or, as the Vatican termed it, “the merciful father” from Luke 15:11-32 and a long “examination of conscience” that asked the bishops as individuals and as presidents of bishops’ conferences to be honest about what they have done and what they have failed to do to protect children, support survivors and deal with abusive priests.

While Pope Francis presided at the penitential service as part of the Vatican summit on child protection and ending clerical sexual abuse, Archbishop Philip Naameh of Tamale, Ghana, gave the homily.

He told the pope and his brother bishops that they all preach often about the parable of the prodigal son, encouraging their people to return to God and seek forgiveness.

But, he said, “we readily forget to apply this Scripture to ourselves, to see ourselves as we are, namely as prodigal sons. Just like the prodigal son in the Gospel, we have also demanded our inheritance, got it, and now we are busy squandering it.”

“The current abuse crisis is an expression of this,” Archbishop Naameh said.

“Too often we have kept quiet, looked the other way, avoided conflicts,” he said, adding that the bishops were often “too smug” to confront “the dark sides of our church.”

Failing to act, he said, they “squandered the trust placed in us.”

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ROME (ITALY)
Reuters

February 23, 2019

By Philip Pullella

A nun and a woman journalist delivered the toughest criticism of Church leaders heard so far at Pope Francis’ sexual abuse conference on Saturday, accusing them of hypocrisy and covering up horrendous crimes against children.

Some 200 senior Church officials, all but ten of them men, listened at times in stunned silence in a Vatican audience hall as the women read their frank and at times angry speeches on the penultimate day of the conference convened by the pope to confront a worldwide scandal.

Sister Veronica Openibo, a Nigerian who has worked in Africa, Europe and the United States, spoke with a soft voice but delivered a strong message, telling the prelates sitting before her: “This storm will not pass”.

“We proclaim the Ten Commandments and parade ourselves as being the custodians of moral standards and values and good behavior in society. Hypocrites at times? Yes! Why did we keep silent for so long?” she said.

She told the pope, sitting near her on the dais, that she admired him because he was “humble enough to change your mind,” apologize and take action after he initially defended a Chilean bishop accused of covering up abuse. The bishop later resigned.

“How could the clerical Church have kept silent, covering these atrocities? The silence, the carrying of the secrets in the hearts of the perpetrators, the length of the abuses and the constant transfers of perpetrators are unimaginable,” she said.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

February 23, 2019

By Alice McDermott

No Christian should need to be reminded of the moral error of discrimination. We hold at the center of our faith the belief that every human life is of equal value. And yet the Roman Catholic Church, my church, excludes more than half its members from full participation by barring women, for reasons of gender alone, from the priesthood.

The moral consequences of this failing become abundantly clear each time another instance of clergy abuse, and cover-up, is revealed. It is the inevitable logic of discrimination: If one life, one person, is of more value than another, then “the other,” the lesser, is dispensable. For the male leaders of the Catholic Church, the lives of women and children become secondary to the concerns of the more worthy, the more powerful, the more essential person — the male person, themselves.

The Catholic Church needs to correct this moral error.

I was visiting a Catholic university in Boston in 2002 as the clergy abuse scandal involving Cardinal Bernard Law was breaking. I was there to discuss a novel I had written, but the questions from the audience at my talk — and at the book signing after, and on the sidewalk as I walked to my car — were mostly, if passionately, rhetorical: What do we do now? Where do we go from here? Do you think the church understands our pain? Do you think the church understands what we’ve lost? How much corruption should we tolerate?

At the time, I could offer only small commiseration — as well as my regret that these Catholics had been so betrayed by their spiritual leaders that they were left to seek solace from the likes of me, a reluctant and often contrarian Catholic, a novelist, a woman. “Awful, yes,” I said. “Outrageous, yes.” “Hope,” I said now and again. “Hope for change, perhaps.”

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ANNAPOLIS (MD)
WUSA TV

February 23, 2019

By Liz Palka

Advocates and child sex abuse survivors will stand before members of the Maryland House of Delegates on Thursday to testify. The judiciary committee will have a bill before them that would remove the statute of limitations for all child sex abuse cases.

Currently, Maryland law says a victim has until age 38 to file a civil lawsuit. However, those who are older than 25 when they come forward must prove gross negligence, which is something notoriously difficult to prove.

Maryland Delegate C.T. Wilson of Charles County was part of the negotiations for the current law and has sponsored the proposed bill. The delegate has been open about the sexual abuse he experienced as a child.

“I don’t believe [38-years-old] is enough time. That was a negotiation I had with the Catholic Church at the time, as well as the gross negligence, and I’m not negotiating anymore,” said Wilson.

Delegate Wilson says House Bill 687, which will be before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday for a hearing, would remove the statute of limitations.

The bill would make it so a child sex abuse victim could file a lawsuit no matter their age. Wilson is also adding what’s called a “two-year look back window” to include anyone precluded by the statute of limitations.

One of the people testifying on Thursday will be David Lorenz, the Maryland Director of SNAP (the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.) He himself is a survivor of child sex abuse in Kentucky. He expects about a dozen survivors and advocates to testify as well.

“When you’re 16 years old, it’s hard to come to the realization that this mentor of yours was actually a criminal,” explained Wilson. “It’s hard to make that mental leap.”

He went on, “That’s why it’s important to me. I want my fellow survivors to be able to experience the sense of justice I was able to experience. And I think the church needs to be exposed for what they’re doing.”

Wilson says recent news involving the Catholic Church has encouraged him to pursue to House Bill 687.

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[Chile: 148 open investigations and 225 victims of abuse]

SANTIAGO (CHILE)
El País

February 20, 2019

By Javier Sáez Leal

Tras la visita de Francisco hace un año, los obispos han comenzado un drástico proceso de reestructuración

El papa Francisco recibió en Roma a los miembros de la Conferencia Episcopal chilena el pasado 14 de enero. Quería que estos le informaran del avance de las investigaciones contra los miembros de la Iglesia relacionados con denuncias de abuso sexual a menores. La cita fue catalogada como “un diálogo preciso” por parte del obispo auxiliar de Santiago, Fernando Ramos, quien además será quien presente los antecedentes chilenos en la cumbre que arranca este jueves. En Chile, donde tras la visita del Papa, la Iglesia comenzó un drástico proceso de reestructuración, hay 148 investigaciones abiertas y 225 víctimas.

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[Argentina: The Pope’s country does not keep statistics or talk to abuse victims]

BUENOS AIRES (ARGENTINA)
El País

February 20, 2019

By Federico Rivas Molina

El Episcopado argentino viaja a Roma dispuesto a “ahondar en las consecuencias” de los delitos sexuales

A diferencia de Chile, donde los escándalos sexuales en la Iglesia forzaron a los obispos a poner su renuncia a disposición del Papa, el drama de los abusos de menores en Argentina se comenta en voz baja. En el país de Francisco, el Episcopado no lleva una estadística de los casos que involucran a sus sacerdotes con el argumento de que dependen de cada diócesis. Reconstruir el mapa de las denuncias es, sin embargo, posible. La Red de Sobrevivientes de Abuso Eclesiástico de Argentina patrocina 40 casos en todo el país. La agencia pública de noticias Telam, en tanto, realizó a mediados de 2017 una lista basada en casos de abuso publicados por los diarios desde 2002. Así contabilizó otros 22.

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[Mexico: 152 priests suspended for abuse]

MEXICO
El País

February 20, 2019

By Georgina Zerega

La Iglesia crea una comisión para investigar la pederastia y romper con el silencio

Con la cumbre de pederastia del papa Francisco sobrevolando, los años de indolencia de la Iglesia mexicana parecen entrar en un terreno desconocido hasta ahora: el de la acción. Tras, al menos, seis décadas de silencio e impunidad, la conferencia episcopal mexicana abre una instancia para investigar los casos de abuso sexual, ha comunicado la suspensión de 152 sacerdotes en nueve años por “agravio a menores” y se ha reunido con víctimas y organizaciones civiles. Pero el pasado de encubrimiento y desdén que caracterizó a la institución genera un clima de incredulidad que se atisba difícil de disipar.

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ROME (ITALY)
CBC News

February 23, 2019

By Megan Williams

A dramatic feature of the sex abuse summit now underway at the Vatican has been the testimony of eight victims from around the world anonymously recounting their experience of abuse.

But the Vatican has no idea of if the victims’ abusers are still active as priests, a main organizer of the summit told CBC News.

Father Hans Zollner told CBC that none of the people who gave testimony at the four-day conference told the Vatican who their abusers were or where their cases had been dealt with.

When asked if the Vatican had looked into whether the priests accused by the victims are still in active ministry, Zollner, a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and president of the Center for the Protection of Minors at the Pontifical Gregorian University, said: “No, they [the victims] have not disclosed it to me and my understanding is that maybe they don’t know [if the priests are still active in the Church]. But I can’t say because I don’t know it.”

Zollner said all but one of the victims the Vatican chose to provide testimony to a closed-door room of bishops wanted to protect their anonymity.

“They went to great effort not to reveal any detail,” Zollner said. “In some cases the family doesn’t know that they have been abused. In some places it would destroy the family. It would destroy their professional career and so forth.”

When CBC sent a text message later asking Zollner if he wanted to further comment on his statement that the Vatican had not verified the victims’ accounts since none had identified an abuser to the Vatican, he responded that was “not accurate.”

When asked to be more specific, his answers were vague.

He said the victims he was in contact with “did not disclose where their proceedings are,” adding that the victims were “verified by the people on the ground who had first contact with them.”

When asked what that meant, he did not respond.

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[Canada: A new guide that protects abuse victims and points out cover-up]

MONTREAL (CANADA)
El País (Spain)

February 20, 2019

By Jaime Porras Ferreyra

En 2015 una comisión presentó un informe sobre los internados que evidenciarion castigos físicos, racismo y abusos sexuales

Canadá, como tantos otros países, no tiene cifras para medir la pederastia en el seno de la Iglesia católica. Han sido, como en tantos otros países, los reportajes periodísticos, los acuerdos extrajudiciales y las condenas a algunos responsables los que han mostrado que el asunto es copioso y de larga data en el país. Con estos mimbres llega Lionel Gendron, presidente de la Conferencia Canadiense de Obispos Católicos a la cumbre convocada por el papa Francisco.

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[Portugal: The Church recognizes fewer than five abuse cases this century]

LISBON (PORTUGAL)
El País (Spain)

February 20, 2019

By Javier Martín del Barrio

Dos sacerdotes han sido condenados a prisión incondicional, de los que uno huyó a Brasil

En la Iglesia católica portuguesa los abusos sexuales con menores no existen (casi) ni han existido (casi) en este siglo. Los tribunales eclesiásticos del país investigaron una decena de denuncias y desecharon más de la mitad, según el portavoz de la Conferencia Episcopal Portuguesa (CEP), Manuel Barbosa.

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[Italy: To the tail of Europe, without an investigative commission and only 300 cases of known abuses]

ROME (ITALY)
El País (Spain)

By Daniel Verdú

La Conferencia Episcopal Italiana, muy influyente en el Vaticano, no ha avanzado prácticamente nada en la lucha contra la pederastia

Italia vive completamente de espaldas a los abusos a menores de la Iglesia católica. El nivel de transparencia y tratamiento de la cuestión, pese a ser un país donde el catolicismo impregna todos los estamentos educativos, está a la cola de sus vecinos europeos. Los medios han mostrado poco interés por la cumbre que comienza este jueves en el Vaticano. Y ni la Conferencia Episcopal Italiana se ha mostrado especialmente activa, ni la magistratura del país ha exhibido demasiado interés ejecutivo por un asunto crucial al otro lado del Tíber. Tanto, que la ONU reprochó a Roma hace solo una semana el bajo número de investigaciones judiciales que se habían llevado a cabo y exigió que se cree una comisión como ha sucedido en otros países.

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[Ireland: Only 82 priests condemned for abuses among 1,300 defendants]

LONDON (ENGLAND)
El País (Spain)

February 20, 2019

By Rafa de Miguel

La Iglesia irlandesa cree haber realizado ya gran parte de la expiación por los casos de pederastia, documentados en varios informes oficiales

El arzobispo de Irlanda, Eamon Martin, bendijo a principios de febrero las “velas de la expiación” destinadas a recordar, el pasado día 15, a las víctimas de abusos sexuales en la Iglesia católica. Iglesias y parroquias de todo el país las encendieron para recordar a los miles de fieles cuyo sufrimiento fue ignorado durante décadas por la jerarquía eclesial. “Es mi intención relatar las experiencias vitales y todos los sentimientos de los supervivientes irlandeses al papa Francisco en persona, y a todo el cónclave que se reunirá en Roma a finales de este mes”, anunció Martin.

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[France: Independent commission begins to investigate abuses since 1950]

PARIS (FRANCE)
El País (Spain)

By Silvia Ayuso

Los obispos franceses acuden a Roma a punto de conocerse el fallo del principal juicio, en Lyon, por el silencio de la Iglesia francesa ante la pederastia

Los obispos franceses acuden a la cumbre en el Vaticano para tratar el problema de la pederastia en el seno de la Iglesia católica entre dos fechas angustiosas. Pese a los intentos de aplazarlo, la víspera del encuentro en Roma se estrena en los cines de toda Francia la película Gracias a Dios, sobre la creación de Palabra Liberada, la asociación de víctimas del cura pederasta de Lyon Bernard Preynat, responsables en buena parte de haber roto el muro de silencio sobre los abusos de religiosos a menores en el país.

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[Holland: Between 10,000 and 20,000 victims of abuse since 1945]

THE HAGUE (NETHERLANDS)
El País (Spain)

February 21, 2019

By Isabel Ferrer

La Iglesia holandesa abrió una investigación en 2010 y ha pagado 28 millones en indemnizaciones

En 2010, cuando las denuncias de abusos sexuales en el seno de la Iglesia católica holandesa empezaron a hacerse públicas, la Conferencia Episcopal y la Asociación de Órdenes Religiosas, pidieron a Wim Deetman, antiguo ministro de Educación, que investigara los hechos. Un año después, la sociedad enmudeció ante la magnitud de cifras recabadas: entre 10.000 y 20.000 fueron víctimas de estas agresiones, perpetradas desde 1945 por unos 800 religiosos en internados, orfanatos, colegios y seminarios. En sus conclusiones, la Comisión Deetman dijo que “no puede hablarse de ocultamiento deliberado de los hechos, o destrucción en masa de archivos eclesiásticos, pero los obispos y los superiores de las congregaciones no siempre informaron a Roma”.

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[Belgium: Almost five million euros for victims of Church abuses]

BRUSSELS (BELGIUM)
El País (Spain)

February 21, 2019

By Álvaro Sánchez

Las autoridades han recabado 1.054 denuncias de víctimas de pederastia

La Iglesia católica belga vivió durante décadas sumida en un plácido silencio sobre los abusos cometidos por algunos de sus representantes más insignes. El velo de oscuridad se descorrió abruptamente el 20 de abril de 2010, cuando el entonces obispo de Brujas, Roger Vangheluwe, se vio forzado a dimitir tras reconocer que a lo largo de 13 años abusó en reiteradas ocasiones de uno de sus sobrinos. En medio de la estupefacción por sus revelaciones, la tormenta creció al admitir que en realidad había abusado de otro sobrino más. El escándalo provocó una cascada de anulaciones de actas de bautismo, y sobre todo, abrió un proceso irreversible que llevó a la jerarquía eclesiástica a pedir perdón y colaborar con las autoridades para ayudar a las víctimas y desenmascarar a los pedófilos, muchos de los cuales salieron indemnes al haber prescrito sus delitos.

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[Germany: The German Church documents 3,677 abuse cases in 70 years]

BERLIN (GERMANY)
El País (Spain)

February 20, 2019

By Enrique Müller

Los obispos alemanes pidieron perdón en septiembre tras publicar un extenso informe

Los obispos alemanes están convencidos de que pueden llegar a Roma con la certeza de haber hecho los deberes gracias a la publicación de un estudio que causó, en su momento, un terremoto en las filas de la Iglesia Católica. El 25 de septiembre de 2018, el presidente de la Conferencia Episcopal, el cardenal Reinhardt Marx, presentó ante la prensa un informe de más de 300 páginas que documentaba 3.677 casos de abusos cometidos por 1.670 clérigos en los últimos 70 años en Alemania, bajo el título Abuso sexual de menores por parte de sacerdotes católicos, diáconos y religiosos en el ámbito de la Conferencia Episcopal Alemana.

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[Vatican’s historic abuse summit tests “zero tolerance”]

ROME (ITALY)
El País (Spain)

February 19, 2019

By Daniel Verdú

La presión mediática y de los colectivos afectados obliga al Papa a presentar medidas concretas tras la reunión de 190 líderes religiosos

“Tolerancia cero”. El discurso se repite una y otra vez al otro lado del Tíber, pero los resultados nunca terminan de llegar. Empezó el papa Benedicto XVI y continuó Francisco con las mismas palabras. Pero, ¿qué quiere decir realmente? Las víctimas, congregadas estos días en Roma para presionar a los participantes de la histórica cumbre que tratará la plaga de los abusos en la Iglesia católica a partir del jueves, quieren esta vez un respuesta clara.

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[Who did their homework and who did not before Vatican abuse summit?]

SPAIN
El País

February 20, 2019

Desde la investigación en Alemania, a las terapias para víctimas de clase alta en Perú o al desamparo en África, una veintena de corresponsales explican cómo ha abordado el problema la Iglesia en sus países

La histórica cumbre que arranca este jueves en el Vaticano para tratar sobre los abusos sexuales en la Iglesia católica supone un punto de inflexión que determinará, en gran medida, el futuro de la institución. En total, 190 líderes religiosos (entre presidentes de conferencias episcopales, curiales e iglesias orientales) están convocados para una cita en la que las víctimas presionan para que se cumpla el discurso de “tolerancia cero” del papa Francisco.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

February 23, 2019

By Michelle Boorstein

Less than a week after Theodore McCarrick became the first cardinal ever defrocked, a New Jersey priest has for the first time agreed to be interviewed about his accusations that McCarrick sexually abused him in the 1990s and the effect the alleged abuse has had on his life and career.

In exclusive interviews with the Post, the Rev. Lauro Sedylmayer said the interactions with McCarrick, who was then his archbishop, in Newark, set off a downward spiral that severely damaged his psyche and career. Now 61, the priest says he told three bishops but nothing was done.

Sedlmayer’s allegations against McCarrick, which include forcing him into multiple sexual situations when Sedylmayer was a young priest in the 1990s, are similar to others but add detail to the picture of how church higher-ups reacted to rumors and complaints that the high-ranking churchman was preying on younger clerics.

When McCarrick was first suspended, New Jersey bishops said last summer that they’d received three complaints years earlier against McCarrick by adults – priests and seminarians. One was from former priest Robert Ciolek, who has been public and vocal since. The second man has not. Sedlmayer is the third.

The Brazilian-born Sedlmayer has been in a tense stand-off with his superiors for a decade, with both sides filing lawsuits and accusations of sexual and financial impropriety on each side.

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[Abbot of Montserrat admits he knew of possible abuses by monk Soler since 1970’s]

MADRID (SPAIN)
El País

February 21, 2019

By Íñigo Domínguez

En un vídeo grabado con cámara oculta en 2015 el religioso contradice la versión oficial y reconoce que dieron credibilidad al caso del primer denunciante

El abad del monasterio catalán de Montserrat, Josep Maria Soler, admite en un vídeo grabado en 2015 que, al contrario de lo que ha dicho públicamente, ya en los años setenta conocía rumores sobre posibles abusos del fraile Andreu Soler, fundador y director del grupo scout del santuario. Es más reconoce que él mismo informó al superior de entonces, Cassià Just. Este escándalo fue destapado por EL PAÍS el pasado mes de enero con la denuncia pública de una víctima, Miguel Hurtado, y hasta ahora ha sacado a la luz nueve víctimas más. De hecho, una de ellas sitúa su abuso en 1971, el caso más antiguo conocido hasta ahora.

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[The Church annulled a marriage for the abuses of a priest, but did not investigate them]

MADRID (SPAIN)
El País

February 23, 2019

By Íñigo Domínguez

El marido pidió la nulidad en 2009 a un tribunal eclesiástico gallego, que atribuyó la ruina de la convivencia al trauma de la mujer

El tribunal eclesiástico de Mondoñedo-Ferrol anuló en 2009 un matrimonio, a petición del marido, basándose principalmente en el trauma y la inestabilidad psíquica que habrían causado en su esposa los abusos de un sacerdote en su infancia, pero aunque este episodio salió a la luz en el juicio la Iglesia lo pasó por alto y no tomó ninguna medida para investigarlo. La mujer, que tras su divorcio se desinteresó del proceso canónico que emprendió su exmarido, es Teresa Conde, que en octubre denunció en EL PAÍS los abusos que había sufrido en Salamanca por parte de un religioso trinitario, Domingo Ciordia. En 2009 este clérigo estaba vivo, aún no se habían tomado medidas contra él y el Vaticano ya obligaba a las diócesis a informar a Roma de todos los casos de los que se tuviera conocimiento.

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[The crude story of an Argentine nun abused by a priest]

ARGENTINA
Perfil

February 7, 2019

By Eugenio Druetta

La dura respuesta de una ex religiosa de una congregación de Salta al Papa Francisco luego de que admitió abusos de sacerdotes a fieles.

Mientras volvía en avión al Vaticano luego de su visita a Emiratos Árabes Unidos, el Papa Francisco admitió que curas y obispos abusaron sexualmente de monjas y generó sorpresa ya que nunca antes había tratado esta problemática interna de la Iglesia. Sin embargo, no nombró casos puntuales ni tampoco hizo referencia a los lugares donde ocurren estos crímenes sexuales.

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[Abusive nuns in Argentina: whips, gags and the victims’ ordeal]

ARGENTINA
Perfil

February 19, 2019

By Eugenio Druetta

​El Papa Francisco admitió los abusos de curas sobre monjas, pero ahora víctimas de religiosas también cuentan sus tormentos.

“Me mandó sola al sótano debajo de la cocina para limpiarlo. Un rato después, apareció por detrás de mí diciéndome que era una de sus preferidas y me quería proteger. Hasta que en un momento, se me abalanzó y me quiso tocar”, relató al borde de las lágrimas la ex monja Sandra Migliore, que sufrió esa situación cuando tenía sólo 16 años y estaba estudiando para ser religiosa en una congregación radicada en San Lorenzo (Santa Fe) llamada Hermanas Educacionistas Franciscanas de Cristo Rey.

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[Juan Carlos Cruz: “There are a lot of crocodile tears among bishops”]

CHILE
El Mostrador

February 22, 2019

By EFE

El periodista y uno de los mayores activistas en la lucha por la responsabilidad de los obispos ante los casos de abusos se encuentra en Roma después de que el comité organizador de la reunión le encargase formar un grupo de víctimas con las que poder reunirse antes de la cumbre.

Juan Carlos Cruz, una de las víctimas del sacerdote Fernando Karadima, expresó en una entrevista con EFE su esperanza sobre los frutos que dará la reunión sobre abusos a menores en el Vaticano, pero desconfió de lo que vayan a hacer después los obispos porque “hay mucha lágrima de cocodrilo”.

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[Episcopal Conference: Chilean Bishops were informed in 2008 of regulation for priests with children]

CHILE
Emol

February 20, 2019

By Tomás Molina and Milene Alhambra

El portavoz de la entidad, Jaime Coiro, sostuvo que no son ellos quienes revisan cada caso en particular, por lo que no les corresponde llevar un registro de los mismos.

Un reglamento para establecer lineamientos en caso de que sacerdotes tengan hijos, pese su obligación de celibato, fue la polémica recientemente reconocida por el Vaticano. Información que surge a solo dos días de que inicie la inédita cumbre en Roma y en la que participarán representantes de las conferencias episcopales del mundo para tratar los escándalos por abusos sexuales en la Iglesia católica.

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[Bishop Ramos before Vatican abuse summit: “We have recognized the flaws that have been committed”]

SANTIAGO (CHILE)
Emol

February 20, 2019

“La Santa Sede está buscando que todos sepamos exactamente lo que tenemos que hacer y lo que no tenemos que hacer”, aseguró el religioso.

Este miércoles, el obispo Fernando Ramos se refirió a la histórica cumbre que se realizará entre el 21 y 24 de febrero en el Vaticano donde se abordará el abuso sexual al interior de la Iglesia. “Lo que la Santa Sede está buscando es que todos sepamos exactamente lo que tenemos que hacer y lo que no tenemos que hacer”, aseguró.

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[JC Cruz’s message to priests at the abuse summit: In some cases they have become “assassins of the faith”]

CHILE
Emol

February 21, 2019

Asimismo, pidió al Papa continuar su lucha por terminar con los abusos y quienes “no quieran oír al Espíritu Santo y los que quieran seguir encubriendo, que se vayan de la Iglesia”.

El atroz dolor de las víctimas de abusos sexuales por parte de sacerdotes estuvo presente este jueves en el primer día del encuentro mundial sobre protección de menores organizado en el Vaticano, un evento inédito.

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[What are Chile’s bishops doing during Vatican sex abuse summit?]

CHILE
La Tercera

February 21, 2019

By M. J. Navarrete and G. Peñafiel

De un total de 29, 22 obispos, como es costumbre durante febrero, se encuentran de vacaciones.

“Mi anhelo es que el encuentro sea iluminador también para nuestra realidad chilena, para nuestras búsquedas y la recuperación de las confianzas, que tanto necesitamos”. Estas fueron las palabras del Arzobispo de Santiago, cardenal Ricardo Ezzati, quien afirmó a La Tercera estar siguiendo “con particular interés y atención”, en su oficina, el desarrollo del evento.

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ROME (ITALY)
The Guardian

February 23, 2019

A nun has condemned the Catholic church’s hierarchy for its failure to tackle the scourge of clerical sexual abuse, saying leaders must concede that their “mediocrity, hypocrisy and complacency” has brought the church to a “disgraceful place”.

In her speech, delivered at the Vatican’s unprecedented summit on the issue, , Sister Veronica Openibo from Nigeria said the church was in a state of “crisis and shame”.

“We proclaim the Ten Commandments and parade ourselves as being the custodians of moral standards, values and good behaviour in society,” she said. “Hypocrites at times? Yes. Why did we keep silent for so long?”

Openibo, one of only three women to address the event, went on to say the scandal had “seriously clouded the grace of the Christ-mission”.

“Is it possible for us to move from fear of scandal to truth? How do we remove the masks that hide our sinful neglect?” she said.

She said that while preparing her speech, she recalled the sadness felt after watching the Oscar-winning film Spotlight, which told the story of the Boston Globe journalists whose investigation exposed sexual abuse of minors by clergy and showed how most of the accused priests were simply moved to other parishes.

“How could the clerical church have kept silent, covering these atrocities?” she asked. “The silence, the carrying of the secrets in the hearts of the perpetrators, the length of the abuses and the constant transfers of perpetrators are unimaginable.”

Openibo, who has worked in Africa, Europe and the US, said: “Too often we want to keep silent until the storm has passed,” she said. “This storm will not pass by. Our credibility is at stake.”

Opening the event on Thursday, Pope Francis said church leaders had a responsibility to deal effectively with the crimes of priests who rape and molest children and called for “efficient and concrete measures” to be established.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

February 23, 2019

By Christopher White

As U.S. bishops craft new measures for bishop accountability, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo says he will work to ensure they are on the same page with the Vatican and plans to introduce new policies at June’s bishops’ meeting.

DiNardo, who is archbishop of Galveston-Houston and serves as president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), told Crux on Saturday that “I think we can go forward once we get back,” referring to the Vatican’s request that the USCCB delay its plans last November to vote on new protocols.

At the time, the Vatican said they had only been given four days to review the proposed protocols, which included a new protocol for bishops’ conduct and would have created a new lay-led committee to evaluate complaints made against bishops.

The Texas cardinal is representing the United States at a closely watched summit on sex abuse, which concludes Sunday at the Vatican, where Pope Francis has convened the heads of every bishops’ conference around the world.

“I’m more happy right now over what I see and what has happened in these days, and when I get back home, I think I can go before the bishops’ administrative committee and all the bishops and say, that I think there is some affirmation from this meeting of what we wanted to do.”

The administrative committee of the USCCB will meet in March to prepare for the June meeting with all U.S. bishops.

“We’re going to have them work like mad,” he said of the work ahead of the USCCB and told Crux that prior to putting the new policy up for a vote, it would be necessary to “take a quick visit to Rome,” as “we don’t want to see what happened before.”

While the plan put forth in November would have relied on a national lay review board that would evaluation complaints against bishops, on Friday, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago and one of the organizing committee members for this week’s summit, gave a speech outlining “new legal structures of accountability,” which would utilize the metropolitan archbishop who oversees the dioceses within his particular province.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

February 23, 2019

By Ross Douthat

The rhetoric of anti-Catholicism, whether its sources are Protestant or secular, has always insisted that the church of Rome is the enemy of what you might call healthy sexuality. This rhetorical trope has persisted despite radical redefinitions of what healthy sexuality means; one sexual culture overthrows another, but Catholicism remains eternally condemned.

Thus in a 19th-century context, where healthy sexuality meant a large patriarchal family with the wife as the angel in the home, anti-Catholic polemicists were obsessed with Catholicism’s nuns — these women who mysteriously refused husbands and childbearing, and who were therefore presumed to be prisoners in gothic convents, victims of predatory priests.

Then a little later, when the apostles of sexual health were Victorian “muscular Christians” worried about moral deviance, the problem with Catholicism was that it was too hospitable to homosexuality — too effete, too decadent, too Oscar Wildean even before Wilde’s deathbed conversion.

Then later still, when sexual health meant the white-American, two-kid nuclear family, the problem with Catholicism was that it was too obsessed with heterosexual procreation, too inclined to overpopulate the world with kids.

And now, in our own age of sexual individualism, Catholicism is mostly just accused of a repressive cruelty, of denying people — and especially its celibacy-burdened priests — the sexual fulfillment that every human being needs.

The mix of change and consistency in anti-Catholic arguments came to mind while I was reading “In the Closet of the Vatican,” a purported exposé of homosexuality among high churchmen released to coincide with the church’s summit on clergy sexual abuse. The book, written by a gay, nonbelieving French journalist, Frédéric Martel, makes a simple argument in an florid, repetitious style: The prevalence of gay liaisons in the Vatican means that clerical celibacy is a failure and a fraud, as unnatural and damaging as an earlier moral consensus believed homosexuality to be.

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NAIROBI (KENYA)
National Catholic Register

February 22, 2019

By Joan Frawley Desmond

An African woman religious was completing her undergraduate degree at a local university when the unthinkable happened: A religious brother pressured her to have sex.

The issue that led to their routine contact was seemingly benign, but the outcome was anything but.

The young nun “lacked a laptop and had no money to take her work to a typing pool,” said Sister Grace Candiru, of the Missionary Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Church, who works with the Association of Consecrated Women in Eastern and Central Africa, a regional body for women religious in 10 African countries.

“For some time, the religious brother agreed to help her with his laptop, and she used it on the university premises,” she said.

“But one day, when she had an urgent assignment and asked to borrow his laptop, he told her to come by his community,” said Sister Grace, who had heard about the young sister’s plight from a contact. “It so happened that the other members of the community were not around. This brother took advantage of this sister, who later conceived.”

After enduring the abuse and a resulting pregnancy, said Sister Grace, the woman religious had no choice but “to leave the congregation.” The story highlights a tragic reality faced by women religious, mostly in parts of the developing world. Missionary religious orders there may struggle to provide sufficient financial independence and formation to effectively safeguard their members from manipulative and predatory clerics.

This problem is not new, but it could become a key priority for Pope Francis, who made headlines after he acknowledged that women religious had been victims of sexual abuse by priests during a news conference on his flight back from his Feb. 3-5 visit to the United Arab Emirates.

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ROME (ITALY)
National Catholic Reporter

February 23, 2019

By Valentina Alazraki

First and foremost I would like to introduce myself. I am a correspondent in Rome and in the Vatican for Televisa, Mexican television. I followed the end of the Pontificate of St. Pope Paul VI, the 33 days of the Pontificate of John Paul I, the entire Pontificates of St. John Paul II, Benedict XVI and now Pope Francis. I have covered 150 journeys with the latter three Popes.

They invited me to speak to you about communication and, in particular, about how transparent communication is indispensable to fight the sexual abuse of minors by men of the Church.

At first glance, there is little in common between you, bishops and cardinals, and me, a Catholic lay woman with no particular position in the Church, and moreover a journalist. Yet we share something very powerful: we all have a mother; we are here because a woman gave birth to us. Compared to you, perhaps I have an additional privilege: I am a mother first and foremost.

Therefore I do not feel that I am a representative just of journalists, but also of mothers, families, civil society. I would like to share with you my experiences and my life and — if you will allow me — to add some practical advice.

My point of departure, motherhood

I would like to begin precisely with motherhood in order to develop the topic entrusted to me, which is to say: how the Church should communicate about this topic of abuse.

I doubt that anyone in this hall does not think the Church is, first of all, mother. Many of us present here have or have had a brother or sister. Let us also remember that our mothers, while loving us all in the same way, were especially devoted to the frailest, weakest children, to those who perhaps did not know how to move ahead in life on their own feet and needed a little push.

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ROME (ITALY)
Associated Press

February 23, 2019

By Nicole Winfield

Cardinals attending Pope Francis’ summit on preventing clergy sex abuse called Friday for a new culture of accountability in the Catholic Church to punish bishops and religious superiors when they fail to protect their flocks from predator priests.

On the second day of Francis’ extraordinary gathering of Catholic leaders, the debate shifted to how church leaders must acknowledge that decades of their own cover-ups, secrecy and fear of scandal had only worsened the sex abuse crisis.

Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich told the 190 bishops and religious superiors that new legal procedures were needed to both report and investigate Catholic superiors when they are accused of misconduct themselves or of negligence in handling other abuse cases.

He said lay experts must be involved at every step of the process, since rank-and-file Catholics often know far better than priests what trauma the clergy sex abuse and its cover-up has caused.

“It is the witness of the laity, especially mothers and fathers with great love for the church, who have pointed out movingly and forcefully how gravely incompatible the commission, cover-up and toleration of clergy sexual abuse is with the very meaning and essence of the church,” Cupich said.

“Mothers and fathers have called us to account, for they simply cannot comprehend how we as bishops and religious superiors have often been blinded to the scope and damage of sexual abuse of minors,” he said.

Cupich’s address at the Vatican comes as the Chicago archdiocese has acknowledged “a very small number of priests have fathered children” and “four remain priests in the archdiocese” according to CBS News.

CBS reports the last time a priest fathered a child was nearly 20 years ago, and the child was provided with full financial support through college age.

Francis summoned the bishops for the four-day tutorial on preventing sex abuse and protecting children after the scandal erupted again last year in Chile and the U.S. While the Vatican for two decades has tried to crack down on the abusers themselves, it has largely given a pass to the bishops and superiors who moved the predators around from parish to parish.

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ROME (ITALY)
The Atlantic

February 23, 2019

By Rachel Donadio

Church officials reacted badly when investigative journalists at The Boston Globe in 2002 uncovered a pattern of sexual abuse of minors by clerics and a widespread culture of cover-up. One cardinal blamed the crisis on the “Jewish media” and decried a smear campaign against Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law who, after leaving Boston in disgrace for his role protecting predator priests, was appointed by Pope John Paul II to a powerful position at the Vatican selecting bishops.

This week at a conference here called by Pope Francis about the protection of minors in the Catholic Church, not one but two speakers—including a Nigerian nun speaking before Francis—cited the 2015 film Spotlight, about the Globe journalists who broke the story. It’s a sign of how times have changed and how popular culture has helped embolden victims to come forward, especially in the United States, where victims and lawsuits have put the Church under extreme pressure.

But it’s also an acknowledgment of how this conference would never be happening, and the dark secret of clerical sexual abuse and cover-up might never have come to light, if not for outsiders to the hierarchy: journalists, civil authorities, films, women who listened to the victims (or who were victims themselves). They helped reveal a pattern of concealment within the Church and drove a shift in the culture.

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EVANSVILLE (IN)
WFIE TV

February 22, 2019

By Paige Hagan

A member of the Survivors Network of Abused Priests tells us he expects more victims to come forward after the Diocese of Evansville released its list of credible allegations against the clergy.

In early January, we showed you SNAP victims peacefully protesting outside of the Dioceses headquarters, calling for transparency.

SNAP member Cal Pheiffer said Friday, although they’re relieved the wait is over, they still suspect there is more to be told.

“Evansville’s list is about a fourth of the size of Louisville’s,” Pheiffer said. “I don’t know why it took them so long.”

Pheiffer said after the Archdiocese of Louisville released its list two weeks ago, SNAP has seen more victims speak out in Kentucky.

“It’s been important here in Louisville,” Pheiffer stated. “After the publication of credible names, more people have come forward. I would expect that in Evansville. I wish they would have come out with this earlier.”

Pheiffer said SNAP members will continue pushing for transparency. He encourages those in the Tri-State to talk to someone if they have allegations of their own to share.

“I would encourage them to come forward in a manner that’s comfortable to them,” Pheiffer said. “A lot of survivors do not want to talk to someone in the church that abused them, but there are other avenues.”

Law enforcement officials urge anyone with information to contact their offices.

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MIAMI (FL)
Miami Herald

February 22, 2019

By Carl Hiaasen

In a meeting that should have been held decades ago, Pope Francis last week convened Roman Catholic leaders at the Vatican and called for “concrete and effective measures” to curb the “scourge” of sexual abuse by priests.

Strong words from the Holy Father. So it’s finally time to get tough, is it?

The summit is being hailed as “historic” only because the disgraceful history of the church was to suppress the claims of young parishioners, while shielding the clerics who raped them.

No victims were invited to speak at the opening Vatican assembly, but recordings from five unnamed persons were played. One recounted what happened when he complained to church leaders about being forced to have sex:

“The first thing they did was to treat me as a liar, turn their backs and tell me that I, and others, were enemies of the church.”

Another spoke of being impregnated three times by the same priest, who forced her to get abortions. “Every time I refused to have sex with him,” she said, “he would beat me.”

If only such accounts were freakish aberrations, and not part of a sordid institutional pattern. For generations, sex abuse by priests has been widespread and well-known to the Catholic hierarchy, which operated more like what prosecutors might call a continuing criminal enterprise.

The scandal broke open after a Boston Globe series 17 years ago, and since then numerous predator priests have been prosecuted. Their crimes typically were no secret to their superiors, who routinely moved serial offenders from one diocese to another, without warning parishioners.

God forbid that an archbishop might actually grab a phone and call the cops, which is what most decent humans would do if they knew a child was being sexually molested.

A study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, commissioned by Catholic bishops, reported that complaints about sexual abuse of minors were made against 4,392 Catholic priests between 1950 and 2002 in the United States alone.

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ROME (ITALY)
Australian Broadcasting

February 22, 2019

The first woman to speak at a Vatican conference on sexual abuse of minors has called for bishops to kneel before their victims and their victims’ families.

The summit’s second day focused on the different ways the Catholic Church treated sexual abuse worldwide

Linda Ghisoni, an undersecretary in one of the Vatican offices, made her comments in front of Pope Francis and a gathering of nearly 200 bishops and other Catholic leaders at a four-day meeting to discuss the church’s numerous sexual abuse scandals.

She said that taking responsibility and kneeling would be the “appropriate posture” to deal with the issue of sexual abuse of minors in the church.

“Kneeling before the victims and their families, in front of the abusers, their collaborators, those that refuse, those who are unjustly accused, to the negligent, to those who have covered up, to those who tried to speak up and act but were silenced, to the indifferent.

“Kneel before the merciful Father, who sees the lacerated body of Christ, his church. He sends us to take responsibility, as his people, of the wounds and to cure them with the balm of his love.”

On the second day of the meeting the debate shifted to how church leaders must acknowledge that decades of cover-ups and secrecy had only worsened the sex abuse crisis.

The religious leaders listened as Ms Ghisoni told them there should not be different ways of handling the problem in different parts of the world, and minors should be protected no matter where they were.

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ROME (ITALY)
Agence France-Presse

February 23, 2019

A top Catholic cardinal admitted Saturday that Church files on priests who sexually abused children were destroyed or never even drawn up, a move which allowed paedophiles to prey on others.

“Files that could have documented the terrible deeds and named those responsible were destroyed, or not even created,” German Cardinal Reinhard Marx told a landmark Vatican summit on tackling paedophilia in the clergy.

“Instead of the perpetrators, the victims were regulated and silence imposed on them.

“The stipulated procedures and processes for the prosecution of offences were deliberately not complied with, but instead cancelled or overridden,” he said.

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ROME (ITALY)
WLS TV

February 23, 2019

By Alan Krashesky and Ross Weidner

As the Vatican Summit on sex abuse enters its third day, transparency became a major topic of discussion.

Transparency – and the frank acknowledgement that the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal seriously damaged the credibility the church and its bishops in leadership.

On Saturday morning, strong words came from Sister Veronica Openibo of Nigeria as she called out church leadership for hypocrisy.

“We proclaim the Ten Commandments,” Openibo said. “Why did we keep silent for so long?”

“…Transparency has to be the way we handle things and deal with things, here, but it also has to invade all of our procedures,” said Chicago’s Cardinal Blasé Cupich in an interview Friday.

Cardinal Cupich leading the way on new procedures with a new plan for how bishops would be disciplined if they are involved in abuse or mismanage abuse cases.

Friday, Chicago’s Archbishop called for a new structure for investigating bishops who are themselves abusers or those who grossly mishandle abuse cases. Those men – the Cardinal believes – should lose their jobs.

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DENVER (CO)
Catholic News Agency

February 22, 2019

By Courtney Grogan

Cardinals and clergy participating in the Vatican’s sex abuse summit expressed conflicting views on the use of the term “zero tolerance” Friday, with some claiming that “zero tolerance” is an American concept with a legalistic focus.

Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, one of the pope’s primary advisors on sexual abuse, said he knows that “there is a lot of resistance to using the terminology” of zero-tolerance at the summit because some believe it sounds “secular.” But, the cardinal insisted that the principle was “clearly articulated” by Pope St. John Paul II.

“There is no place in ministry for someone who harms a child and that has to be a line in the sand. That is something that is so important for all of us,” O’Malley said at a Vatican press conference Feb. 22.

Father Federico Lombardi, acting moderator at the Vatican sex abuse summit, told the press he does not use the term “zero tolerance” when he writes about the protection of minors because its definition is limited compared to what Vatican meeting has set out to accomplish.

“‘Zero tolerance’ … clearly refers to a very limited aspect of the problem we are confronting because the entire dimension of the pastoral care for victims, accompaniment, the selection of members of the clergy, prevention in parishes and in our activities, the definition of zero tolerance does not cover these aspects. It refers to one way of punitive action against criminals,” Lombardi said.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

February 23, 2019

By Christopher White

Ireland’s representative to Pope Francis’s abuse summit said that he believes the Catholic Church is moving “much closer” to a worldwide policy of permanently removing priests from ministry after a single case of abuse.

He said the “default position” should be that abusive priests “will not minister in any capacity, but also that you will be monitored very closely, both in the Church and by civil authorities.”

“In the case of someone who has abused a child, I don’t think there’s any way they can return to pastoral ministry,” said Archbishop Eamon Martin, speaking to reporters on Saturday.

“I think there is now a very strong realization of the heinous nature of the sinful and criminal act” of abuse, said Martin, while also adding that in speaking with survivors, many of them warned against removing abusive priests from the clerical state as they might be a danger or “increased risk” to other children or vulnerable adult if they are no longer monitored by the Church.

As Archbishop of Armagh and the Primate of All Ireland, Martin said that he supported the discussions during the past days of the summit on the need for greater transparency.

“Secrecy must go out the window,” when it comes to the abuse of children, he said. “Secrecy has been one of the root causes of the problem we are in today.”

Speaking of his own experience in Ireland, one of the countries hardest hit by the clergy abuse crisis, Martin said “my files have to be open.”

“Anything that I have that may have been sent here to the Holy See…it’s open to my national board, it’s open under proper rules of disclosure in legal cases to the police and civil authority.”

Martin said that all participants in the pope’s four-day long summit on sex abuse must be “committed to go home with actions,” and he said for him, the issue of accountability would serve as his homework, particularly when it comes to overseeing bishops.

He also said that the task of protecting children must be first and foremost a local response.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Times Picayune

February 23, 2019

By Tim Morris

The failures, missed opportunities, mistakes and criminal neglect that allowed a culture of child sexual abuse to take root and grow in the Catholic Church are all found in the story of the disgraced Louisiana priest Gilbert Gauthe.

The first Catholic clergyman in the United States to be indicted for repeatedly sexually abusing children, Gauthe’s 1984 case not only revealed his own repulsive crimes but evidence of other pedophile priests and a church hierarchy complicit in a systemic cover-up.

The tragedy is compounded by the fact that the church refused to heed the warnings that could have stemmed decades more of abuse. It also could have opened the way to reconciliation and healing for the sins that have left one of the world’s most influential institutions crippled by the scandals 35 years later.

The Times-Picayune reporter Kim Chatelain is not the first to tell Gauthe’s sordid story, but his “Catholic Church ignored 1985 report warning of child sex abuse crisis” should evoke a great weight of remorse as church leaders gather in Rome to make yet another attempt to address the problem.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
National Public Radio

February 23, 2019

Pope Francis is holding a summit on clergy sex abuse. NPR’s Scott Simon speaks with Msgr. Stephen Rossetti of the Catholic University of America about the role of the church in tackling the problem.

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ROME (ITALY)
Associated Press

February 23, 2019

By Nicole Winfield

A prominent Nigerian nun blasted the culture of silence that has long kept clergy sexual abuse hidden in the Catholic Church, telling a Vatican summit Saturday that transparency and an admission of mistakes were needed to restore trust.

A German cardinal backed her up, telling the summit that church files about abusers had been destroyed, victims silenced and church procedures ignored, canceled or overridden — all in an attempt to keep the scandal under wraps.

Sister Veronica Openibo and German Cardinal Reinhard Marx delivered powerful speeches to nearly 190 church leaders gathered Saturday for the third day of Pope Francis’ four-day tutorial on preventing abuse and protecting children.

Openibo was one of only a handful of women invited to the meeting, and she used her time at the podium to shame the church leadership as a whole — men and women alike — for their silence in the face of such crimes.

“How could the clerical church have kept silent, covering these atrocities?” she asked. “We must acknowledge that our mediocrity, hypocrisy and complacency have brought us to this disgraceful and scandalous place we find ourselves as a church.”

Marx, for his part, called for a redefinition of the Vatican’s legal code of secrecy, known as the “pontifical secret,” and for the publication of statistics about the problem. He said they would be a first step toward restoring trust with the faithful and preventing conspiracy theories that the church was continuing to hide abuse.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

February 23, 2019

By Jeremy Roebuck

As a boy raised Catholic in Erie, Pa., Jim VanSickle never imagined that his first trip to Rome would be to talk about the priest who tried to sexually assault him in a rundown hotel room just days before his high school graduation.

But by the time VanSickle arrived in the Eternal City last week for Pope Francis’ historic summit on the issue, that once unimaginable prospect had morphed into an ambitious — some might say quixotic — goal.

“I want to have a private sit-down with the pope,” he said. “I want him to know who I am. I want to tell him what happened to me.”

VanSickle, 55, now of Pittsburgh, is among the handful of Pennsylvanians who have joined scores of abuse victims and reform advocates in crowding St. Peter’s Square as Francis gathered top Catholic leaders here to consider a global response to the crisis that has plagued their church for decades.

Some are victims raging against a hierarchy that enabled their abuses. Others came just to show their support, pressing against barricades and demanding the attention of cardinals with bright yellow T-shirts plastered with mottoes like “Speaking Truth to Power.”

Regardless of their motivation, they have quickly became the darlings of the worldwide media.

“I’ve done interviews with media from about six or seven countries,” VanSickle said Friday from his perch in St. Peter’s Square, where he attracted one camera crew after another. “Poland, Spain, South Africa — I’m still surprised they all want to hear from us.”

Some have even the attention of the conference organizers. Shaun Dougherty, abused as a Catholic grade-schooler in Johnstown in the 1980s, was among a dozen victims invited to share his story with top cardinals Wednesday, the eve of the summit.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
USA TODAY

February 23, 2019

By Doug Stanglin

A top German cardinal said Saturday that documents on past sex abuse cases in the church had been destroyed or ignored and called Saturday for changes to the Vatican’s legal code of secrecy in such issues to restore trust.

Calling for the publication of statistics on the problem, German Cardinal Reinhard Marx addressed Pope Francis’ four-day sex abuse prevention summit at the Vatican.

He said the church must redefine confidentiality and secrecy in the way it deals with such cases or risk charges of cover-up.

“Files that could have documented the terrible deeds and named those responsible were destroyed, or not even created,” he told the group, according to Vatican News. “Instead of the perpetrators, the victims were regulated and silence imposed on them.”

The cardinal blamed “abuse of power in the area of administration” as a major factor in the sexual abuse of children and young people. “In this regard, administration has not contributed to fulfilling the mission of the church, but on the contrary, has obscured, discredited and made it impossible.”

In an effort to keep the burgeoning scandal buried, he said, church files about abusers had been destroyed, victims silenced and church procedures ignored, canceled or countermanded.

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DAYTON (OH)
Dayton Daily News

February 23, 2019

By Chris Stewart

Area Catholics — including ones sexually abused by priests and those working to end the problem — are waiting for the outcome of an unprecedented summit convened by Pope Francis that ends tomorrow.

But area survivors of clergy sexual abuse — as well as the leader of southwest Ohio Catholics — say justice can’t be served until the church holds not only abusive priests to account, but also those at the top of the hierarchy who hid the abuse.“It would seem that accountability standards for bishops should not be necessary, but unfortunately we know from hard experience that they are,” wrote Archbishop Dennis M. Schnurr to the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, home to 450,000 Catholics. “Indeed, the current crisis is largely a bishop accountability crisis, not a priest abuse crisis.”

Montgomery County Common Pleas Court Judge Mary Katherine Huffman, who just completed a four-year term on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ National Review Board, agreed. The review board is consulted on cases resulting from the national Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, adopted by U.S. churches in 2002 to set firm rules.

“This charter tells bishops what they have to do. It doesn’t say what happens to a bishop if they don’t do it,” she said.

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ROME (ITALY)
WESA Radio

February 23, 2019

The Roman Catholic Church must repair the “systematic failures” that enabled sexual abuse to take root around the world, and bishops should start policing each other’s behavior, leading cardinals said on Friday.

Cardinals Blase Cupich of Chicago and Oswald Gracias of Mumbai spoke on the second day of a conference of some 200 senior church officials convened by Pope Francis to confront what he has called the scourge of sexual abuse by the clergy.

“This past year has taught us that the systematic failures in holding clerics of all rank responsible are due in large measure to flaws in the way we interact and communicate with each other,” Cupich said.

Various aspects of the sexual abuse crisis made 2018 the worst year for the pope since his election in 2013.

Related: A new chapter, with the same old words, in the Catholic child abuse scandal

In Chile, all of the country’s 34 bishops offered their resignations over a nationwide scandal; Francis’ trip to Ireland shined a new light on decades of abuse in the once staunchly Catholic nation; and a damning report by a grand jury in Pennsylvania revealed that priests had sexually abused about 1,000 people over seven decades in that US state alone.

Last week, Theodore McCarrick, once a powerful cardinal in the US Catholic Church, was dismissed from the priesthood after the Vatican found him guilty of sexual abuse of minors and adults over decades.

The church had “to confront the past grave and callous errors of some bishops and religious superiors in addressing cases of clergy sexual abuse, and the discernment to understand how to establish just accountability for these massive failures,” Cupich said.

Phil Saviano is one of the survivors of Catholic clergy abuse and is an activist and established the New England chapter of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. His character is also featured in the Oscar-winning film, “Spotlight.” He spoke with The World’s Carol Hills from Rome about the Vatican conference.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
KDKA Radio

February 22, 2019

By Robert Mangino

(audio)

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STATEN ISLAND (NY)
Staten Island Live

February 22, 2019

By Maura Grunlund

A law firm that advocates for abuse victims has released the names of more than 110 Roman Catholic priests and other religious figures in the Archdiocese of New York who it claims have been accused of “sexual misconduct.”

The list, posted on the website of Jeff Anderson and Associates, includes the names of about 30 current or former members of the clergy with ties to Staten Island.

The unveiling of the alleged roster of shame, dubbed “The Anderson List,” coincides with a summit that Pope Francis currently is hosting with the world’s bishops to stem the growing worldwide scandal. Embattled church leaders are meeting in an effort to prevent further clergy sex-abuse against minors.

The Anderson law firm identifies monsignors, principals, pastors and parochial vicars who served on Staten Island.

Many of the cases on the list which have been deemed substantiated were previously reported by the Advance.

Near the top of the list is Monsignor Francis Boyle, the former longtime pastor at Blessed Sacrament R.C. Church in West Brighton. The Archdiocese previously announced that Monsignor Boyle “will never serve as a priest again” after a church panel substantiated sex-abuse allegations against him.

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EVANSVILLE (IN)
Courier & Press

Feb. 22, 2019

By Abbey Doyle

One of the 12 men on a list of “credible” allegations of abuse by clergy in the Diocese of Evansville was still active in public ministry until Feb. 19: three days before the list was released to the public.

Jean Vogler was arrested in 1996 in a massive child pornography ring, according to Courier & Press archives. The federal sting nabbed 130 people across 36 states.

Vogler pleaded guilty to receiving pornographic tapes in the mail. He spent about a year in federal prison and underwent psychiatric treatment when he got out.

He was reinstated to the ministry in 1999. At the time, then-Bishop Gerald Gettelfinger told the Courier that Vogler’s case didn’t fall under a zero-tolerance policy because receiving child pornography didn’t constitute direct abuse of a child.

Evansville Diocese spokesman Tim Lilley, when asked about Vogler’s reinstatement even after a federal conviction of possession of child pornography, said Friday “the U.S. Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People did not exist at that time. Following its issuance and subsequent revisions, the Charter recognizes the receipt, possession or distribution of child pornography as constituting sexual abuse of a minor. Keep in mind that, when reinstated, Father Vogler had completed his sentence and been released.

“Since the time of Father Vogler’s conviction, the Church has recognized the tragic availability of child pornography and clarified that child pornography is a form of child sexual abuse, and that a cleric who acquires, possesses or distributes that material is not to be in public ministry; and if that offense occurs from 2010 forward, it may lead to dismissal from the clerical state (laicization) as a penalty,” Lilley continued in his emailed response to questions from the C&P.

Lilley said Vogler was recently removed from public ministry after a more recent study by the Review Board.

“The bishop determined that Father Vogler is not to be in public ministry,” Lilley wrote in the emailed response. “Bishop (Joseph) Siegel made the decision to remove Father Vogler from public ministry on Feb. 19 after the diocese consulted with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection and, as I mentioned, the Diocesan Review Board.”

Post-conviction, Vogler lived next to Memorial High School, at Villa Maria on Lincoln Avenue.

When Vogler was still in active ministry, he “celebrated Masses on weekends when pastors had to be away from their parishes,” Lilley said.

In September, the diocese promised to release the names of priests “credibly” accused of sexually abusing a minor.

In a release to media Friday, the Diocese said they compiled the names previously published in The Message, a newspaper of the Diocese. They also contacted a private investigator to review records dating to its founding in 1944 beginning in early October and ending in mid-December.

In December 2003, the diocese said allegations had been brought against 15 priests. This list names 12.

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FT. LAUDERDALE (FL)
Sun Sentinel

February 22, 2019

By Marc Freeman

A priest from South Florida says he has faith the U.S. Supreme Court will allow him to do the unthinkable for a member of the clergy — sue the Catholic Church.

It might be a longshot, but the Rev. John Gallagher of West Palm Beach is used to people telling him, “You’re crazy for going up against the Catholic Church.”

This is how it’s been since he first went public three years ago with accusations that the Diocese of Palm Beach tried to cover up another priest’s sexual misconduct.

Church officials, in turn, shot back with a statement: “Father Gallagher is blatantly lying and is in need of professional assistance as well as our prayers and mercy.”

They said Gallagher made his allegations after a “ministerial decision” that he’s unfit to become a pastor.

The diocese has insisted it immediately and fully cooperated with a law enforcement investigation that led to the offending priest’s arrest and deportation.

At its core, Gallagher’s defamation lawsuit poses the big legal question of whether the freedom of religion protections under the First Amendment shields the church from such claims.

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EVANSVILLE, IN (IN)
WFIE TV

February 22, 2019

By Kate O’Rourke

The list is not just the names. It also includes more details about the allegations and timelines for which churches and in which schools these priests worked.

From this list we were able to do more of our own research and piece together a better narrative surrounding the priests’ allegations. Among the accused is Mark Kurzendoerfer.

He admitted to two of four credible allegations. The first dates back to the year he was ordained.

He was accused of an improper physical relationship with a 14-year-old boy. On Thursday, we sat down exclusively with priest abuse survivor Ken Meyer.

While he was abused as a teenager in St. Louis, he and his family were long-time parishioners at Holy Angles Church in New Harmony. Kurzendoerfer was their priest for nine years.

He noted that many of these names have been brought to the public since 2002.

“And I know that the committee that’s looking at the credibility of the accusations is working hard on trying to come up with a list of people who have been credibly accused. And that word credibly is really important. To come up with an accusation is easy but to have some credibility takes some effort,” says Meyer.

The Diocesan Review Board is made up of six parishioners and one priest. We have tried contacting them in the past but did not get any comment.

Again today after we got the list we reached out to each board member and have not heard back. Meyer has also encountered more than a handful of other priests who turned out to be alleged abusers.

Some of them are on this list. He says he and his family did not know about it until years later.

“Some of these priests that we’ve read about over the years of being credibly accused I’ve worked with, I’m friends with, and it’s a difficult subject,” says Meyer.

Meyer recognizes five priests on the list. He is traveled with John Breidenbach and Wilfred Englert.

Breidenbach admitted to one credible allegation. Englert was convicted of sexual battery and served a prison sentence. Meyer knew Richard Wildeman through Boy Scouts years ago. Wildeman admitted to his one credible allegation.

Meyer was at a mass in New Harmony five years ago held by Jean Vogler. Even though nearly twenty years earlier, Vogler pleaded guilty to receiving child pornography, he was still in public ministry until Tuesday.

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RICHMOND (VA)
WRIC TV

February 22, 2019

By Kerri O’Brien

A group that documents abuse in the Catholic Church says names are missing from a list of accused sex abusers recently released by the Diocese of Richmond.

8News has been combing over the Diocese of Richmond list and comparing it to an online group’s that has been tracking abuse allegations for years.

“It is really important not to let names fall through the cracks,” said Terence McKiernan, president of BishopAccountability.org.

McKiernan spoke to 8News over Skype from Massachusetts about BishopAccountability.org, a website which maintains a database of priests and nuns accused of abuse.

BishopAccountability.org often works with law enforcement to fill out its database.

“We’re careful to include in the database people who have been publicly accused of abusing children,” McKiernan said when asked what criteria the site uses to create the database.
List reveals names of dozens of Virginia priests facing ‘credible’ child sex abuse allegations ​​​​​​​
“We use as evidence,” he continued, “reports in publicly available court documents, reports in mainstream media.”

When reviewing the Bishop Accountability database for the Diocese of Richmond, 8News found five names on their list not found on the list provided by the Richmond Diocese’s bishop last week. This includes an ex-priest on Virginia’s sex offender registry and a nun convicted of molesting a 10-year-old boy in Virginia Beach.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

February 22, 2019

By Elizabeth Dias

The unprecedented summit in Rome on clerical sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church has drawn participants from around the world. But there is one country with a particularly large stake in what happens at the Vatican this week.

The clergy sex abuse crisis has engulfed the American Catholic Church for months, as leaders contend with growing state and federal investigations, and ordinary Catholics grow weary of waiting for the Vatican to finally resolve the crisis.

The yearning for a response from Pope Francis yielded on Friday a first step to holding bishops accountable for abuse in their dioceses. And it was an American — Cardinal Blase Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago — who presented the proposal. But survivors and law enforcement officials say they doubt that the church’s response so far matches the magnitude of the crisis sweeping the United States.

“Now all they are going to do is set guidelines again?” Mark Belenchia, 63, an abuse survivor and activist in Jackson, Miss., asked on Friday. “That is gibberish as far as I am concerned.”

Cardinal Cupich, who presented the proposal for increased bishop accountability, told his colleagues at the conference that the faithful had a right to doubt the church when abuse was “covered up” to protect the abuser or the institution.

“This is the source of the growing mistrust in our leadership, not to mention the outrage of our people,” he said, urging bishops to listen to victims and to provide “just accountability for these massive failures.” A key step, he suggested, was responding to the frustrations of infuriated laity sitting in their pews.

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SANTA BARBARA (CA)
KCOY TV

February 22, 2019

By Beth Farnsworth

Local survivors of clergy sex abuse and legal experts are following the historic, four day summit happening this week at the Vatican. That includes Santa Barbara Attorney Tim Hale with Nye, Peabody, Stirling, Hale & Miller.

“The one thing they need to tell anyone with anything suspicious, they need to go to the police not the church,” Hale said to reporter Beth Farnsworth.

Hale mentioned the number 21, referring to Pope Francis’ list of 21 “Reflection Points” handed out to the assembly of church leaders, which includes preparing a “practical handbook” of guidelines for handling abuse cases when accusations emerge.

Hale said the Vatican’s 21 “Reflection Points” for the clergy abuse crisis should focus on point 5 which states: Inform the civil authorities and the higher ecclesiatical authorities in compliance with civil and canonical norms.

Hale sent us the following statement:

“Specifically, any suspected child abuse should be reported to law enforcement immediately. “Canonical norms” should not be considered, and there should be no suggestion of any report to the internal structures of the church. Only law enforcement is qualified and has the power to investigate, arrest, and prosecute perpetrators of childhood sexual abuse. As soon as there is any suspicion of abuse, law enforcement should determine each and every next step in the process. It is a child safety issue.”

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LANSING (MI)
Lansing State Journal

February 22, 2019

By Megan Banta

For decades, Greg Guggemos couldn’t remember the year he spent at St. Vincent Catholic Charities Children’s Home.

It wasn’t until memories came flooding back in 2009 that he realized that, when he and three siblings stayed there in 1954 in 1955, he had been sexually abused by Rev. John Slowey.

Guggemos, a former attorney who settled a decades-old sex abuse claim against the Diocese of Lansing for $225,000 in 2010, said Friday that it’s hard for him to believe Catholic Church officials when they pledge to keep priests accountable.

“How can you even, with a straight face, expect someone to believe that?” Guggemos said. “It’s like the fox loose in the hen house.”

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is preparing for a long investigation into clergy abuse in Michigan. Nessel expects it could turn up more than 1,000 victims.

She said at a press conference Thursday that people should be wary of church-led investigations into clergy abuse, that they should look for a badge if someone asks to speak with them.

Guggemos said that’s exactly right.

‘They obviously haven’t done that in the past’

Guggemos says he has no respect for the Catholic Church.

He says when the repressed memories of his sexual abuse returned in 2009, the emotional and physical toil cause him to quit practicing law.

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