ABUSE TRACKER

OHIO
The Columbus Dispatch

By JoAnne Viviano
The Columbus Dispatch • Thursday June 5, 2014

Employees of Catholic schools, churches and other organizations overseen by the Diocese of Columbus are being asked to sign updated agreements that include examples of immoral conduct that could lead to their firing.

The changes also specify that workers must abide by Catholic Church teachings “both within and outside their employment duties” and regardless of their religious affiliation.

The changes are meant to clarify existing policies, diocesan spokesman George Jones said yesterday.

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IRELAND
UTV

Published Thursday, 05 June 2014

The Adoption Rights Alliance is calling for a mass grave discovered in Co Galway to be treated as a crime scene.

The remains of up to 800 babies and toddlers were found next to a home for unmarried mothers in Tuam, which was operated by the Bon Secours Sisters between 1925 to 1961.

A historian confirmed the names of the 796 children buried in the mass grave after she made repeated requests from the state for records.

The Tuam burial site was discovered in 1975 by 12-year-old friends Barry Sweeney and Francis Hopkins.

But, locally, it was referred to for years as a famine burial site where youngsters who had died in the 1840s disaster were buried in a mass grave, often on unconsecrated ground.

Records of hundreds more at other homes are still being held confidentially.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Giselle Wakatama

A former New South Wales MP who warned about clergy abuse in the Hunter Valley says people should be evicted from the Catholic church in the wake of a damning Special Commission of Inquiry.

The Inquiry looked at cover-ups relating to paedophile priests Denis McAlinden and James Fletcher.

Commissioner Margaret Cunneen was critical of some church witnesses saying they were misleading or reluctant to give evidence.

Former Independent MP John Hatton who is credited with instigating the Wood Royal Commission into police also gave evidence.

More than 25 years ago Mr Hatton wrote to the then Archbishop of Sydney Edward Clancy, raising concerns about McAlinden.

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IRELAND
Bock the Robber

Posted by Bock on May 30, 2014

If there was an outcry from Catholic groups about the mass burial of 800 babies in Tuam, news of it hasn’t penetrated as far as this little backwater.

David Quinn of the Iona Fringe Prayer Group has been remarkably silent on the issue, despite his usual eagerness to appear on TV if two dogs are caught copulating. Likewise, there hasn’t been a peep out of the Macaroonahoonarooney clan who built the Youth Defence franchise out of nothing, presumably because their campaign for the welfare of babies extends only to those not yet born. Every sperm is sacred, but apparently not every two-year-old, in the world of the Irish Catholic Right.

Why? The answer is simple enough. If you dominate women’s fertility, as the Catholic clergy did for decades, you control society. If you long to keep that control alive, as the extremists do, you’ll cling to the strategies that worked in the past and you certainly won’t be thinking of the demented, sexually-frustrated evil nuns and brothers who took their rage out on the unfortunates who fell into their clutches, or who were driven there by Monsignor Everyman in his fine parish priest’s motor car.

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UNITED STATES
Waiting for Godot to Leave

Kevin O’Brien

800 dead orphans thrown away in a septic tank by Catholic nuns in Ireland.

As this article reveals, the contempt with which these orphans were treated did not begin the minute they died. The “Home Babies” were ridiculed and ostracized throughout their typically short and miserable lives.

And, apparently, treated with criminal neglect.

A local health board inspection report from April 1944 recorded 271 children and 61 single mothers in residence, a total of 333 in a building that had a capacity for 243.

The report described the children as “emaciated,” “pot-bellied,” “fragile” with “flesh hanging loosely on limbs.” The report noted that 31 children in the “sun room and balcony” were “poor, emaciated and not thriving.” The effects of long term neglect and malnutrition were observed repeatedly.

Children died at The Home at the rate of one a fortnight for almost 40 years, one report claims. Another appears to claim that 300 children died between 1943 and 1946, which would mean two deaths a week in the isolated institution. …

It’s a lesson we have yet to learn, for this is a staggering reality.

Elsewhere, writers are pointing out the hypocrisy of pro-life groups that have remained silent on this crime. “Every sperm is sacred, but apparently not every two-year-old, in the world of the Irish Catholic Right,” notes Bock the Robber.

And here in America, the bishops continue to behave like racketeers when it comes to sex abuse. In my home town of St. Louis, our archbishop’s favorite priest has now been accused for a second time of sex abuse, and the archbishop’s response has been to smear the alleged victim’s parents with a public press release.

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MEXICO
Milenio

[Summary: The San Luis Potosi archdiocese has initiated investigations against two priests accused of sexual abuse of minors. The cases have been forwarded to the state attorney general.]

EUGENIA JIMÉNEZ
05/06/2014
México

La arquidiócesis de San Luis Potosí inició investigaciones en dos casos más de sacerdotes acusados de abuso sexual contra menores, que fueron denunciados por los padres de las víctimas ante la Procuraduría General de Justicia Estatal (PGJE), informó Armando Martínez Gómez, abogado que representa al arzobispado potosino.

Respecto a los dos casos presentados ante las autoridades civiles, dijo que la arquidiócesis tiene conocimiento de que el cura Noé Trujillo, acusado del delito de estupro contra una menor de 14 años, se encuentra actualmente prófugo de la justicia porque ya se giró una orden de aprehensión.

La madre de la menor, que presentó la denuncia ante la PGJE, mencionó que descubrió en el perfil de Facebook de su hija que una persona le proponía tener relaciones sexuales en una cabaña. Su hija le confesó que el sacerdote Trujillo la llevó a un poblado que no identificó, donde sostuvo relaciones sexuales con ella.

Al respecto, la arquidiócesis inició un proceso canónico y suspendió a Trujillo de su ministerio mientras se integra el expediente para enviarlo a Roma.

El Directorio Eclesiástico Nacional señala que Trujillo fue incardinado a la arquidiócesis de San Luis Potosí, ordenado sacerdote el 9 de diciembre de 2006 y tiene 38 años.

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MEXICO
Notimundo

Condena Vaticano de manera definitiva a sacerdote mexicano abusador

Por Andrés Beltramo Alvarez. Corresponsal

Ciudad del Vaticano, 4 Jun (Notimex).- El Vaticano halló culpable del delito de abuso sexual contra menor al sacerdote mexicano Eduardo Córdova Mendoza y le retiró definitivamente del sacerdocio católico, con un decreto que será transmitido en las próximas horas a la Arquidiócesis de San Luis Potosí.

Según confirmaron a Notimex fuentes vaticanas, tras analizar los testimonios y las pruebas aportadas, la Congregación para la Doctrina de la Fe impuso al clérigo la “dimisión del estado clerical”, pena reservada a los casos más graves.

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NEW YORK
Road to Recovery

Media Release

June 4, 2014

The Board of Trustees of Notre Dame School refuses to believe an alumna’s account of sexual abuse, and the Sisters of St. Ursula, who administer the school, have ignored her requests for justice

Graduates and parents of Notre Dame School will be asked to join former nun’s call for justice from Notre Dame School and the Sisters of St. Ursula

What: A demonstration outside a Manhattan Catholic girls’ high school graduation

When: Thursday, June 5, 2014 from 5:00 PM until 6:30 PM

Where: On the sidewalk outside Cooper Union, 7 East 7th Street, New York, NY 10003

Who: Cecilia Springer is an 83 year-old former nun and graduate of Notre Dame School, class of 1948, who was approximately 14 years old and a sophomore at Notre Dame School when the Principal of the school, Sr. Mary Andrew (aka/ Sr. Frances Doyle), followed her up the school staircase from the lunchroom and sexually abused her. The sexual abuse occurred on more than one occasion. Ms. Springer, the former Sister Mary Grace, learned that at least one other classmate experienced similar sexual abuse by Sr. Mary Andrew. Her advocate from Road to Recovery, Robert M. Hoatson, will be present as will fellow clergy sexual abuse survivors.

Why: Cecilia Springer became a Sister of St. Ursula following graduation from college even though she had suffered sexual abuse as a child by her high school Principal, Sr. Mary Andrew, S.U., at Notre Dame School. She left the Sisters of St. Ursula many years later after it became untenable for her to remain in a religious order of women that did nothing about sexual abuse at their school, Notre Dame. Cecilia Springer was interviewed by representatives of the Notre Dame School Board of Trustees and their lawyer, but they have refused to help her in any way in her senior years. Those attending the graduation exercises of Notre Dame School will be asked to prevail upon Notre Dame School and the Sisters of St. Ursula to do the right thing by acknowledging that Cecilia Springer is, indeed, a victim of sexual abuse by Sr. Mary Andrew, apologizing to her for what happened, and assisting her in living a more stress-free life.

Contacts: Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D., Road to Recovery, Inc. – 862-368-2800
Attorney Mitchell Garabedian, Boston, MA – 617-523-6250

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

Andrew Sullivan on Mass Grave of Irish Babies Born to “Fallen Women”: “That Is Not a Sign of a Church Gone Astray. It’s a Sign of a Church Given Over to Evil”

Andrew Sullivan looks at the discovery of the bodies of 800 babies in a mass grave (they were stuffed inside a septic tank) behind a home for “fallen women” run by the Sisters of Bon Secours in Tuam, Ireland, and asks why such a kerfuffle ensued when the U.N. Rapporteur on Torture tried to indict the Vatican for “crimes against humanity” because of its cover-up of the mass rape and abuse of children. As he notes, what can possibly describe the story now emerging from Tuam except the term “crime against humanity”?

These children were born to “fallen women” who bore them while living at the facility of the Bon Secours nuns, and who were then left in the care of the nuns when these women moved on to new lives after serving a term of penance as virtual slave laborers for the nuns. Documents indicate that many of these children died of outright neglect and malnutrition — and when they died, their bodies were stuffed into a septic tank.

The heart of the matter for Andrew Sullivan:

To my mind, these foul crimes against women and children, along with the brutal stigmatization of gay people as “objectively disordered”, remain a testament to how the insidious, neurotic and usually misogynist fixation on sex has distorted and destroyed Christianity in ways we are only now beginning to recover from. For what we see here is the consequence of elevating sexual sin above all others, of fixating on human sexuality as the chief source of evil in the world, and of a grotesquely distorted sense of moral priorities, where stigmatization of the sexual sinner vastly outweighs even something as basic as care for an innocent child.

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MASSACHUSETTS
WWLP

[with video]

BOSTON (STATE HOUSE) – House leaders sprung a proposal on Wednesday to extend the statute of limitations for civil lawsuits brought by victims of alleged child sexual abuse, reengaging with a controversial topic that has been debated for years on Beacon Hill but has eluded compromise.

The House gave initial approval to a bill (H 4126) recommended last week by the Committee on the Judiciary, co-chaired by Belmont Sen. William Brownsberger who has taken the lead on this issue in the Senate in recent years.

The committee does not currently have a House chair, but Rep. John Lawn, of Watertown, has taken the lead on the issue for House leadership.

“We think we’ve crafted a bill that we can put forward that people feel comfortable with that gives people who’ve been abused a chance to face their accusers in a timeline that they’re able to. It’s complicated,” Lawn told the News Service.

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UNITED STATES
WBUR

Thu, Jun 05, 2014
by Rich Barlow

Is Pope Francis really zeroing in on “zero tolerance” for clerical pedophiles and their episcopal enablers?

The pontiff’s recent declaration to that effect brought headlines but no action against abusers, critics said. Their despair is premature; Francis wouldn’t be the first leader who temporized before doing something that had to be done. Think of Lincoln, who vexed abolitionists by waiting two years after his election before issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. Or Franklin Roosevelt, who promised a balanced budget in his first presidential campaign, wising up once in office and siding with damn-the-deficit New Dealers. (If you think it profane to analogize the Vatican to crass politics, you haven’t been reading the news.)

Francis’s comments followed a harsh United Nations report, the second this year, on the Vatican’s management of abuse. Like Lincoln and FDR, he will have to back his words with deeds — more than just celebrating Mass with some abuse victims, which he also announced during an in-flight press conference last month. He further told reporters that the Vatican is investigating three unidentified bishops on sex abuse-related issues; he didn’t say whether the trio are alleged molesters themselves or suspected of concealing abuse, a practice among some mitered miscreants with which we’re sadly familiar.

Factor in Francis’s demonstrated compassion and his creation of an advisory panel on abuse — including Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley, who won kudos for his handling of abuse cases — and there’s reason to hope this pope will follow through with publicizing credibly accused abusers and punishing bishops who covered up for them. Those reasonable demands come variously from victims’ advocates and even some Catholic traditionalists. Perhaps some names on this scandal will serve as markers for assessing the pope. Here are three clerics, named in the U.N. report, whose cases will be instructive as to whether the church has learned the tragic lessons of its past sins:

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ILLINOIS
NWITimes

June 02, 2014 • Sarah Reese sarah.reese@nwi.com, (219) 933-3351

HAMMOND | An attorney for a former pastor of First Baptist Church of Hammond filed a motion Monday asking a federal judge to overturn his client’s 12-year prison sentence for sex with a teenage parishioner.

Jack Schaap, 56, was sentenced in March 2013 during a hearing in U.S. District Court in Hammond. He pleaded guilty in September 2012 to having the then-17-year-old girl transported to Illinois and Michigan for sexual encounters.

In a motion to vacate, correct or set aside Schaap’s sentence, Florida lawyer Charles Murray says Schaap’s defense attorneys provided ineffective counsel.

Schaap laid out a similar argument in a March letter to U.S. District Judge Rudy Lozano. At the time, Schaap was acting as his own attorney and requested more time to hire an attorney to help him seek post-conviction relief.

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ILLINOIS
Christian Post

Megachurch Pastor Convicted of Sexually Abusing Teen Appeals Prison Sentence, Blames Victim for Seducing Him

BY MORGAN LEE , CHRISTIAN POST REPORTER
June 4, 2014

A former Indiana megachurch pastor imprisoned for sexually abusing a former female student at his church’s high school is attempting to overturn his prison sentence by accusing the victim of seducing him.

The former leader of a 15,000-person congregation, Jack A. Schaap, 56, who is married and has two children, has asked U.S. District Judge Rudy Lozano to overturn his 12-year sentence, “due to the aggressiveness of (the girl) that inhibited impulse control.”

Schapp was sentenced in 2013 for sexually abusing the victim and taking her across state lines, and is not set to be released until 2023.

According to Charles Murray, Schaap’s attorney, the defense wants to present new evidence casting the victim as an alcohol and marijuana user and one who met Schaap with “prior extensive sexual experience,” reported NWI.com.

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ILLINOIS
Inquisitr

Megachurch pastor Jack Schaap, who was convicted in 2011 on charges of child molestation with an underage girl, is hoping to have his 12-year sentence overturned, claiming that he was a victim of the girl’s “aggressiveness” and that she “inhibited [his] impulse control.”

The risky defense was uncovered in new court documents by NWITimes.com. Schaap was a former minister of the First Baptist Church of Hammond, a congregation of around 15,000 members.

Schaap, a married father of two at the time, pleaded guilty to “transporting a female student of the church’s high school to Illinois and Michigan for sexual encounters,” the site noted. “He also had sex with her in his church office here in June and July 2012.”

If the megachurch pastor fails to convince the judge of his underage victim’s aggressiveness, then he will likely stay at the correctional facility in Ashland, Kentucky, until April 20, 2023.

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ILLINOIS
TribTown

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
First Posted: June 04, 2014

HAMMOND, Indiana — The former pastor of a northwestern Indiana megachurch is asking a judge to reduce his 12-year sentence for having sex with a teenage congregant because he claims the girl was sexually experienced and aggressive.

An attorney for Jack Schaap filed a memorandum this week in U.S. District Court in Hammond asking to present new evidence about the girl’s “prior extensive sexual experience” and her use of alcohol and marijuana, The (Munster) Times reported (http://bit.ly/S9lpqi ) Wednesday.

Schaap, now 55, was pastor of the 15,000-member First Baptist Church of Hammond for 11 years when he was fired in July 2012. He pleaded guilty last year to transporting the girl to Illinois and Michigan for sexual encounters over a four-week period starting the week before the girl turned 17. He also had sex with her in his church office.

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ILLINOIS
NWITimes

June 03, 2014 • Bill Dolan bill.dolan@nwi.com, (219) 662-5328

HAMMOND | A former minister of First Baptist Church of Hammond is gambling he can get out of prison by branding as a seductress the underage girl he molested.

Jack A. Schaap, 56, is asking a federal judge to overturn his 12-year sentence “due to the aggressiveness of (the girl) that inhibited impulse control …”

It is a risky strategy that may backfire with U.S. District Judge Rudy Lozano, who sentenced Schaap last year and would hear the new petition, according to veteran local defense attorneys.

“Judge Lozano may give him more time,” said one lawyer, who asked to remain anonymous.

Schaap pleaded guilty to transporting a female student of the church’s high school to Illinois and Michigan for sexual encounters. He also had sex with her in his church office here in June and July 2012.

He is being held in the Federal Correctional Institute in Ashland, Ky., and he isn’t eligible for release until April 20, 2023.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Daily Times

After enduring many years of parish grade school closures being an annual event, Roman Catholics in Delaware County now must face the annual prospect of seeing entire parishes closed.

Archdiocesan officials prefer to euphemistically refer to them as “mergers” since the disenfranchised parishioners are advised to attend the nearest surviving parish. But the reality is, their parishes no longer exist in name or in their neighborhoods. Their churches are merely “worship sites.”

It is part of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s Parish Planning Initiative proposed in 2010 by former Philadelphia archbishop, Cardinal Justin Rigali, to determine parish sustainability in the five-county region. Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput started implementing the initiative in 2011, but Delaware County’s then-46 parishes did not starting coming under the microscope until fall of 2012. Last year five Delaware County parishes were closed. Three more are targeted this year, bringing the number of parishes for Delaware County’s more than 200,000 Roman Catholics down to 38.

Parishioners and their pastors are expected to engage in “self-studies” and assess their parishes’ fitness for survival as part of the initiative. The regional bishop and the dean usually meet with the pastors as well as their pastoral and finance councils to hear their recommendations. The Archdiocesan Strategic Planning Committee shares all final proposals with the Council of Priests and the College of Consultors for their review before final approval by the archbishop.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

[with video]

The Catholic Church is under fire over its weak response to revelations that its officials failed to act against paedophiles in New South Wales’ Hunter Valley region.

Transcript

SARAH FERGUSON, PRESENTER: The Catholic Church is under fire over its weak response to revelations that its officials failed to act against paedophiles in the New South Wales Hunter Valley.

The Church has stood down two mid-level priests from minor bureaucratic roles, but is yet to act against two of its most senior clergymen, who were criticised in the report by the special commission of inquiry.

One of the priests who was singled out by the inquiry who’s at the very top of the Church, we can’t name.

The other is the general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Brian Lucas. Tonight, there are calls for his resignation.

Adam Harvey reports.

WILLIAM WRIGHT, BISHOP, DIOCESE OF MAITLAND-NEWCASTLE: As Bishop of Maitland-Newcastle, I am profoundly sorry for the terrible hurt caused by the crimes of McAlinden and Fletcher and I have a deep and abiding regret that individuals in this diocese failed to protect the most vulnerable.

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IRELAND
CNN

By Laura Smith-Spark, CNN
Thu June 5, 2014

(CNN) — Outrage over the reported discovery of the bodies of almost 800 children at a former home for unmarried mothers run by nuns in Ireland prompted calls Wednesday for a full investigation.

The children whose remains have apparently been found in Tuam, in County Galway, are believed to have died between 1925 and 1961, according to local media reports.

The grim discovery was highlighted in a front-page report in the Irish Mail on Sunday, which cited the efforts of local historian Catherine Corless to research the burial sites of 796 children listed as having died at the home, which was run by the Sisters of Bon Secours.

According to the newspaper, Corless believes their remains are all buried in the unmarked mass grave next to the place where the home once stood. Local children stumbled upon the grave in the 1970s, local media reported, but the site was never examined afterward.

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KENTUCKY
Daily Reporter

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
First Posted: June 04, 2014

OWENSBORO, Kentucky — A former western Kentucky priest has pleaded guilty to first-degree sexual abuse in the 1970s.

The Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer (http://bit.ly/Tf9gRJ ) reports the Rev. Louis Francis Piskula, who is now 74, entered into a plea agreement that dropped a first-degree sodomy charge brought in a 2012 indictment.

Piskula’s lawyer, Steven Dowell of Owensboro, said his client “vehemently denied” the sodomy charge and dropping it made it possible for Piskula to accept the deal. It calls for a maximum five-year sentence, with sentencing set for Aug. 6.

The case involved a minor under the age of 12 while Piskula was serving at Blessed Mother Catholic Church in Owensboro.

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UNITED STATES
POPE FRANCIS the CON-Christ.

Paris Arrow

Updated June 4, 2014

Mary Gail Frawley-O’Dea has been a guidance counselor for 30 years with victims of sexual abuse and in her recent article about the planned meeting of Pope Francis with victims, she ridicules SNAP, the largest group in the USA and the world, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, and she calls its director David Clohessy “arrogant and guilt-inducing”. Anyone can tell that something is intrinsically wrong with a guidance counselor who’s mocking and deriding the victims of rape, say a raped woman, the victim of a rapist, as “arrogant”. Mary Gail Frawley-O’Dea is not an exception and she demonstrates how as cold-blooded and lacking in compassion and compunction for victims she is just like her Holy Father saint John Paul who is no saint for children because he said nothing and did nothing to save and protect them for 27 years – read here http://popecrimes.blogspot.ca/2014/05/cold-blood-ed-pope-john-paul-ii-is-no.html. For her information, David Clohessy as a little boy suffered between 1969 and 1973, from the ages of 12 to 16, at the bestial hands of priest Reverend Whiteley – http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/12/magazine/12PRIEST.html?pagewanted=all Mary Gail Frawley-O’Dea lacks professionalism as a counselor despite the years of experience under her belt.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Register

by JOAN FRAWLEY DESMOND 06/05/2014

Twelve years have passed, but Father Roger Landry, a Fall River, Mass., priest, vividly remembers then-Bishop Seán O’Malley weeping during a meeting with his priests as he recalled the stories of victims of clergy abuse.

At the time, Bishop O’Malley was preparing for the 2002 Dallas meeting that would approve a landmark “zero tolerance” policy for priests credibly abused of child sexual abuse. Bishop O’Malley had come to Fall River in 1992, in the wake of a scandal involving a serial clerical predator, James Porter.

“As he was recalling what some of the victims of Father Porter had told him, he started to weep so profusely that he needed to excuse himself for several minutes,” Father Landry told the Register.
“The sexual abuse of minors in the Church was never an ‘issue’ for him that he could approach in a detached way. It had a human face — in fact, many human faces — and affected him viscerally,” Father Landry added.

“He approached the sexual-abuse crisis in the Diocese of Fall River as a spiritual father and human being, not litigiously,” Father Landry said.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Harry McGee, Ronan McGreevy

Thu, Jun 5, 2014

There is growing pressure on the Government to hold a full historical inquiry into the deaths of almost 800 children in a mother and baby home in Tuam, Co Galway between the 1920s and the 1960s.

There were numerous calls from TDs, Senators and councillors yesterday for a full inquiry following the disclosure that many infants and children who died in the home run by the Bon Secours order were buried in an unmarked plot.

Minister for Children Charlie Flanagan said yesterday that he was giving “active consideration to the best means of addressing the harrowing details emerging regarding the burial arrangements for children who died many years ago in mother and baby homes”.

‘Deeply disturbing’

“Many of the revelations are deeply disturbing and a shocking reminder of a darker past in Ireland when our children were not cherished as they should have been,” he said.

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AUSTRALIA
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn

05 June 2014

Archbishop Christopher Prowse is asking people throughout the Archdiocese to pray for victims of child sexual abuse due to give evidence at the Royal Commission hearings in Canberra from 10 June.

In an open letter circulated to all parishes, the Archbishop has warned that the testimonies of some victims are likely to shock many people.

The letter includes a suggested prayer of the faithful to be used at Mass.

The letter reads:

“Dear People of God in the Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn,

“Starting June 11th, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will be conducting their next public hearings in Canberra.

“They will be examining the way in which the Marist Brothers responded to allegations of child sexual abuse in their schools in the ACT, NSW and Queensland.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Nick McLaren

Allegations into the Wollongong Catholic Church’s dealings with the Vatican over an alleged child sex abuse case in the 1990’s are set to be investigated by the Royal Commission into Child Sex Abuse.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will hold hearings into allegations involving John Gerard Nestor, who was was a priest when he was charged and found guilty of indecently assaulting a 14 year old altar boy.

The now Prime Minister Tony Abbott provided a character reference for Father Nestor and his conviction was overturned on appeal.

Nicky Davis from the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, says the initial investigation will bring more cases to light.

“Wollongong is one particular area that SNAP has been aware of where there is a particularly bad cover up in that area,” she said.

“It’s certainly one of the worst regions where there has been a concentrated amount of abuse and survivors have not seen any sort of justice or been heard or treated.”

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MASSACHUSETTS
The Valley Dispatch

The Lowell Sun
POSTED: 06/04/2014

By Matt Murphy
State House News Service

BOSTON — House leaders sprung a proposal on Wednesday to extend the statute of limitations for civil lawsuits brought by victims of alleged child sexual abuse, re-engaging with a controversial topic that has been debated for years on Beacon Hill but has eluded compromise.

The House gave initial approval to a bill (H 4126) recommended last week by the Committee on the Judiciary, co-chaired by Belmont Sen. William Brownsberger, who has taken the lead on this issue in the Senate in recent years.

The committee does not currently have a House chair, but Rep. John Lawn, of Watertown, has taken the lead on the issue for House leadership.

“We think we’ve crafted a bill that we can put forward that people feel comfortable with that gives people who’ve been abused a chance to face their accusers in a timeline that they’re able to. It’s complicated,” Lawn told the News Service.

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UNITED STATES
TheMediaReport

Recognizing perhaps that whether they like it or not, the sex abuse story line is getting so long in the tooth that they will soon be out of business, the bigots at the anti-Catholic group SNAP have now become more and more unglued in their public statements, if that were even possible.

When Pope Francis recently announced that he would be personally meeting with abuse victims in the near future (something Pope Benedict repeatedly did, by the way), SNAP’s National Director David Clohessy – who was recently feted by the radical, pro-abortion group Feminist Majority at a high-priced Hollywood gala in Los Angeles – derided the Pope’s gesture as simply “another savvy public relations move” and claimed the meeting would be “just utterly, utterly meaningless.”

Then Joelle Casteix, SNAP’s “western regional director,” actually went as far as to claim that Pope Francis’ gesture was actually “intended to promote complacency,” without, of course, providing any evidence for her claim.

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UNITED STATES
POPE FRANCIS the CON-Christ.

June 4, 2014

Since the canonization of false Saint John Paul II, the Vatican Catholic Church’s evils and crimes against humanity keep resurging first at the UN, in the USA and in countries as far as Australia, and they confirm what Christ inspires and impels us to do – to set Him free from Pope Francis the CON-Christ con-artist and biggest thief of mankind, and to set Him free from the Opus Dei Beast tentacles and from the sorcery of the Eucharist and gold tabernacles worldwide!

When we were writing our blogs about the recent canonization of John Paul II and the events at the UN, Christ inspired and impelled us to include photos of nuns who camped out at St. Peter’s Square and cheered on Pope Francis –to caption them as “Stupid Catholic nuns worshipping the Opus Dei new Golden Cow Saint John Paul II.” We doubted that inner voice that lingers up to now and in hindsight, Christ was right.

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MONTANA
Choteau Acantha

Posted: Wednesday, June 4, 2014

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena through its Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding is notifying the public that the deadline for filing claims relating to, or arising from, sexual abuse is Aug. 11 at 4:30 p.m.
The Diocese provided the Teton County Attorney’s Office a copy of the notice of deadline to be posted at the courthouse in Choteau. The County Attorney’s Office also has a copy of the proof of claim form. More information on how to file a claim is available at www.diocesehelena.org.

The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Montana has set the deadline to file claims as Aug. 11. Even if potential victims have already filed a lawsuit against the Diocese alleging sexual abuse prior to Jan. 31, 2014, those potential victims must still file a Sexual Abuse Proof of Claim Form to maintain and preserve their rights in the Diocese’s Chapter 11 case.

Victims whose sexual abuse claims have already been paid in full should not file in the Chapter 11 proceeding. Also, anyone who holds a claim that has been allowed by an order of the Bankruptcy Court on or before the Sexual Abuse Bar Date does not need to file a proof of claim form.

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MEXICO
Latin Times

By Oscar Lopez | Jun 04 2014

The Vatican has found Mexican priest Eduardo Mendoza Cordova guilty of sexual abuse of minor. Mendoza will officially be retired from the Catholic priesthood, a decree which will be broadcast in the coming hours to the Archdiocese of San Luis Potosí. According to Vatican sources, after reviewing the testimony and evidence, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith cleric ordered a “dismissal from the clerical state,” a punishment reserved for the most severe cases.

It will now be up to Bishop Carlos Cabrero Jesus Romero to communicate with the sentence to Mendoza and make it known publicly. For this to happen, the Vatican will not need to physically locate the defendant, who is currently on the run. According to canon law, which governs all ecclesiastical processes, the Holy See need only to look for Cordova Mendoza in his latest reported residence. If he does not appear, the sanction shall be deemed notified and automatically come into force. He also has 60 days to appeal or file an appeal with the Vatican courts.

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KENTUCKY
Tristate Homepage

A former priest accused of sexually abusing a 12-year-old nearly 40 years ago enters a guilty plea in Daviess County Court.

Louis Piskula pleaded guilty to first degree sexual abuse this afternoon. He was originally charged with sexual abuse and sodomy. Prosecutors say the crime happened in the late 1970s while Piskula was a priest at an Owensboro church. He’s scheduled to be sentenced on August 6th. Prosecutors say they’re recommending Piskula be sentenced to five years in prison and requiring him to register as a sex offender.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

The Archbishop of Tuam, Michael Neary, said he welcomes the announcement that a cross-departmental examination is to be carried out of the burial arrangements for children in Mother and Baby Homes.

The remains of almost 800 babies and infants were discovered in a septic tank beside a mother and baby home run by the Bon Secours nuns in Tuam, Co Galway.

Archbishop Neary said he is shocked to learn of the magnitude of the number of children buried there and says he learned of the extent of the situation from the media and historical research.

Dr Neary said the Archdiocese of Tuam will co-operate fully – but said that material which the Bon Secours Sisters held as managers of the Mother and Baby home, was handed over to Galway County Council and the health authorities in 1961, and there is a clear moral imperative on the sisters to act upon their responsibilities.

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MEXICO
National Catholic Reporter

David Agren Catholic News Service | Jun. 4, 2014

MEXICO CITY A priest in north central Mexico has been stripped of his position by the Vatican and faces criminal charges in connection with alleged sexual abuse of a teenage boy.

The case marks the first time the Catholic Church in Mexico has turned a priest in to authorities.

The move follows instructions from Pope Francis for the Catholic Church to better protect children and take a hard line with priests accused of sexual offenses.

Father Eduardo Cordova Bautista, a priest in the Archdiocese of San Luis Potosi, was ordered in late April by the Vatican to face charges for allegedly abusing a 16-year-old boy in 2012. The actions were implemented in late May. His whereabouts were unknown, however.

“This is simply acting on a petition of the pope and what he’s asking: that we collaborate completely with the judicial system,” said Armando Martinez Gomez, president of the College of Catholic Lawyers of Mexico.

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MINNESOTA
KARE

Associated Press and Blake McCoy, KARE June 4, 2014

ST. PAUL, Minn. – A newly released deposition shows retired Twin Cities Archbishop Harry Flynn said he could not remember how he handled clergy sex abuse cases during his 13-year tenure.

Under oath last month, Flynn said at least 134 times that he could not recall how he handled the cases.

The 81 years old former archbishop retired six years ago. He said he didn’t have dementia or other diagnosed memory problems.

In the deposition Flynn did defend the decision to pay priests accused of abuse even after they were removed from active ministry.

“I felt very strongly that they would not be able to get jobs very easily and so I wanted to give them some help,” said Flynn. “What message would it send to the world if we threw these people out on the street without any assistance?”

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KENTUCKY
Messenger-Inquirer

By Don Wilkins Messenger-Inquirer

The Rev. Louis Francis Piskula, a former priest at several local Catholic parishes, pleaded guilty to first-degree sexual abuse in Daviess Circuit Court on Wednesday.

Piskula, 74, was scheduled to face trial on June 18 on one count of first-degree sodomy of a minor under 12 and one count first-degree sexual abuse of a minor under 12.

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NEW JERSEY
The Star-Ledger

By Star-Ledger Editorial Board
on June 03, 2014

In a case of flawless logic, the Catholic Church’s lawyers have discovered a magical loophole that absolves the church of legal responsibility for crimes committed by its priests: a holy punch clock.

Catholic priests, we now know — courtesy of a Delaware Supreme Court hearing in a New Jersey priest-abuse lawsuit — can be “off duty.” When they’re not officially priests, lawyers for the Diocese of Trenton argued, the church shouldn’t be held responsible for their actions.

“How do we determine when a priest is and is not on duty,” one justice asked.

“Well,” the diocese’s lawyer explained, “you can determine a priest is not on duty when he is molesting a child, for example.”

See? Bulletproof.

If their legal Hail Mary works, it would effectively cloak the Catholic Church in a legal state of grace.

Bishops could argue that any time a priest breaks the law — in this case, he’s accused of molesting a boy during youth outings to Delaware — he’s on personal time, absolving the church of liability.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
World

By RYAN HILL
Posted June 4, 2014

The dead in Milwaukee’s Catholic cemeteries rest in peace as they await Christ’s second coming. The living are less content. Hundreds of sexual abuse victims want the city’s bankrupt archdiocese to pay for their pain.

This Monday, a battle between the Milwaukee Archdiocese and victims filing bankruptcy claims reached the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. Attorneys for the abuse victims demand money from the archdiocese’s $55 million cemetery trust fund. Archdiocese officials say that money belongs only to the buried.

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MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

By Emily Gurnon
egurnon@pioneerpress.com

The former Twin Cities archbishop said in a six-hour deposition that he could not recall any circumstances involving sexual abuse of children by priests that “should have been handled better.”

Harry J. Flynn was asked whether there were any such situations during his 13 years as archbishop.

“No. I can’t think of any,” Flynn said. Nor did he believe there was ever a “crisis” pertaining to child sexual abuse by clergy in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

He said he never reported information about suspected abusers to police, and didn’t know whether anyone on his staff did.

Attorney Jeffrey Anderson took Flynn’s deposition May 14 as a part of a lawsuit filed in May 2013 against the archdiocese and former priest Thomas Adamson. Anderson’s office released a transcript and video copy of the deposition Wednesday.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic Culture

Two ranking officials at the Institute for Religious Works (IOR) have been eased into early retirement, signaling a likely acceleration of reforms in the Vatican bank.

The ANSA news service reports that the two officials had worked at the IOR for years, and their departure suggests a strong push to change the management approach of the Vatican institution. The two were encouraged to take early retirement shortly after the completion of reports by two separate ad hoc committees appointed by Pope Francis to study Vatican finances in general and the functioning of the IOR in particular.

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IRELAND
Salon

MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS

They have no headstones, no coffins. No memory boxes of toys and photographs. There are nearly eight hundred of them – and counting. They are the 796 babies and young children aged between two days and nine years whose grave, “filled to the brim with tiny bones and skulls,” was found last week in an unmarked site that once housed a septic tank near a County Galway home for unwed mothers.

Local death records show that the children, mostly babies and toddlers, died during the years The Home, run by the Bon Secours Sisters, was in operation — between 1926 and 1961. The causes of death listed include “sicknesses, diseases, deformities and premature births.” A full tally of the bodies has not yet been made, and it’s unknown yet if investigators will find more bodies than the ones whose deaths were recorded.

The grave was first discovered nearly forty years ago. In 1975, two boys playing in the area first uncovered a broken slab that revealed small skeletons underneath. As the Guardian reports, “a parish priest said prayers at the site, and it was sealed once more, the number of bodies below unknown, their names forgotten.” But more recently, local historian Catherine Corless spearheaded a long overdue investigation into what happened to the bodies of those children. She was inspired in part by her own memories of the children from The Home that she grew up with. “They were always segregated to the side of regular classrooms,” she recently told Irish Central. “By doing this the nuns telegraphed the message that they were different and that we should keep away from them. They didn’t suggest we be nice to them. In fact if you acted up in class some nuns would threaten to seat you next to the Home Babies. That was the message we got in our young years.” When Corless contacted the Galway registry to find out how many children had died there, she said the person at the office asked her, “Do you really want all of these deaths?” It was only then she learned the magnitude of her task. She is now fundraising to create a memorial for the mothers and children who passed through The Home. (You can contact her directly about donating: catherinecorless@hotmail.com)

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IRELAND
Irish Mirror

Jun 04, 2014 21:29 By Niall Moonan

Tom Ward, 72, reveals how he and other children were treated as “outcasts” at home where 800 bodies were found in unmarked grave

A pensioner has told how he and other children were treated as “outcasts” at the home at the centre of 800 babies scandal.

Tom Ward, 72, spent five and a half years at the institution before he was fostered by a Galway family.

He said: “The teachers, doctors, priests, they all looked down on us. We were only a number but things have changed, thanks be to God.

“I was fostered off to somebody. There were a lot of us fostered people. They got paid for having us in the house and they reared us, but the priests, the teachers, they all left us out.

“When we would go to town events or coming down from Mass, someone would say ‘Who’s the little laddie?’ and they would reply ‘Oh he was fostered out of that home’ and all eyes turned away. We were just outcasts.

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MINNESOTA
St. Cloud Times

The Associated Press June 4, 2014

ST. PAUL – A newly released deposition shows retired Twin Cities Archbishop Harry Flynn said he could not remember how he handled clergy sex abuse cases during his 13-year tenure.

Under oath last month, Flynn said at least 134 times that he could not recall how he handled the cases.

Flynn, who is now 81, retired six years ago. He said he didn’t have dementia or other diagnosed memory problems.

Minnesota Public Radio News reports the former archbishop said he did not report any accusations of child sexual abuse to police and doesn’t recall asking anyone else to report abuse claims, either.

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MINNESOTA
Catholic Culture

Retired Archbishop Harry Flynn, who once headed the US bishops’ committee implementing norms for handling sex-abuse cases, has testified that he never informed police about abuse complaints in the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese, which he led from 1995 to 2008.

In a sworn deposition that was made public June 4, Archbishop Flynn said that while working on national policies, he delegated much of the work of handling sex-abuse complaints against clergy in Minnesota. The archbishop said over 100 times that he could not accurately recall the details of various cases. “It’s unfortunate that we did not pay more attention to this as a result,” he testified.

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MINNESOTA
KSTP

A newly released deposition shows retired Twin Cities Archbishop Harry Flynn said he could not remember how he handled clergy sex abuse cases during his 13-year tenure.

Under oath last month, Flynn said at least 134 times that he could not recall how he handled the cases.

Flynn, who is now 81, retired six years ago. He said he didn’t have dementia or other diagnosed memory problems.

Minnesota Public Radio News reports the former archbishop said he did not report any accusations of child sexual abuse to police and doesn’t recall asking anyone else to report abuse claims, either.

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VATICAN CITY
Headlines from the Catholic World

Vatican City, Jun 4, 2014 / 12:03 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Holy See’s envoy to the United Nations in Geneva has no doubt that the body is useful in the pursuit of the common good, but he also says it is important that law prevail over ideologies.

The U.N. system “is very complex and sometimes muddled,” Archbishop Silvano Tomasi said in a May 30 interview with CNA.

This character, he added, “may present the risk of a deficit of democracy if experts replace states in making decisions.”

Archbishop Tomasi was responding to a question about the tendency of the U.N. Committee on the Convention Against Torture to highlight themes “which might strike some as only tenuously connected to the actual text and the intent of the Convention Against Torture,” as the permanent observer stressed in a May 4 press release.

As the Holy See’s permanent observer to the U.N.’s Geneva office, Archbishop Tomasi spoke at a May 6-7 hearing concerning the Holy See’s implementation of the Convention Against Torture.

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CALIFORNIA
Bakersfield Now

By DAVE COLLINS, Associated Press Published: Jun 4, 2014

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A California man who supplied nearly 10 pounds of methamphetamine to a Roman Catholic priest’s drug operation in Connecticut has been sentenced to more than five years in prison.

Forty-four-year-old Chad McCluskey of San Clemente was sentenced Wednesday in federal court in Hartford to 65 months in prison, under a plea bargain.

McCluskey and his girlfriend, Kristen Laschober of Laguna Niguel, California, pleaded guilty to drug conspiracy charges for supplying meth to now-suspended priest Kevin Wallin of Waterbury. Laschober awaits sentencing.

McCluskey apologized for his actions. He said he was overcome by his meth addiction and never meant to hurt anyone.

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MINNESOTA
Jeff Anderson and Associates

(St. Paul, MN) – Archbishop Emeritus Harry Flynn’s sworn testimony, taken May 14, 2014, has been released publicly. Flynn’s deposition was taken in a civil lawsuit involving a man sexually abused in the 1970s by former priest Thomas Adamson.

The entire deposition transcript and video clips are available at http://www.andersonadvocates.com/Posts/News-or-Event/1830/Deposition-of-Archbishop-Harry-Flynn.aspx and on YouTube (AndersonAdvocates). A DVD copy of the video deposition is also available at our office.

Contact: Jeff Anderson: Cell: 612.817.8665 Office: 651.964.3473
Mike Finnegan: Cell: 612.205.5531 Office: 651.964.3473

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

Article by: JEAN HOPFENSPERGER , Star Tribune Updated: June 4, 2014

Former Archbishop Flynn does not recall details of clergy abuse during his 13 year tenure.

Retired Twin Cities Archbishop Harry Flynn did not report any charges of clergy sex abuse to police during his 13 year tenure, according to a court deposition made public Wednesday.

Flynn did not recall the details of how the archdiocese handled abuse cases. But he did recall that the archdiocese made special payments to priests who had been credibly accused of abusing children.

“I felt very strongly that they would not be able to get jobs very easily, and so I wanted to give them some help,” he said.

Flynn said he couldn’t remember how many priests received the special payments, adding “I couldn’t take a guess.”

Flynn’s deposition is the latest deposition of a high-ranking church official to be made public, joining those by Archbishop John Nienstedt and former vicar generals Peter Laird and Kevin McDonough.

They come in response to a lawsuit filed in 2013 on behalf of a man who claimed he had been abused decades earlier by the Rev. Thomas Adamson, who later was removed from ministry. It contends that church officials in the Twin Cities and Winona put children and others at risk of abuse by failing to disclose information about priests accused of abuse.

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UNITED STATES
GlobalPost

Jason Berry

June 4, 2014

Editor’s note: In GlobalPost’s 2013 series “A New Inquisition,” religion writer Jason Berry went deep behind the daily headlines on the Vatican investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the 1500-member council representing the majority of America’s 57,000 nuns.

Berry found that key cardinals and bishops who called for the investigation were complicit in the reassignment of clergy child molesters. Berry also found that Vatican officials sought information on the property and assets of communities of sisters, requests the nuns resisted and refused. Meanwhile “radical feminism,” a central charge against nuns, was an imprecise and punitive standard.

After Benedict became the first pope in 600 years to retire, Pope Francis has set the church on a different course, reviving ideas of pluralism and “radical mercy” inspired by the reform-minded Second Vatican Council. Nevertheless, religious sisters who have carried a social justice message to the ragged edges of globalization are under pressure to bend to a Vatican agenda of obedience. Jason Berry’s two-part series explores the forces behind the issues.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a French Jesuit and paleontologist who died a church outcast in New York City in 1955 at age 74. Vatican officials had suppressed his writings on sequential evolution in the universe.

Teilhard was not officially a heretic, but rather a victim of church officials who were ignorant and fearful of science.

A decade later after his death, Teilhard’s books were being taught in Jesuit schools. Today he has a global reputation on evolution and spirituality.

Long before the internet, Teilhard wrote of an emergent planetary consciousness as a scientific development. He also wrote of this “noosphere” in mystical terms, as mankind’s quest for closeness with the divine. And he sounded prescient notes of warning.

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MINNESOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, June 04, 2014

Statement by Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, Outreach Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314-503-0003, SNAPdorris@gmail.com )

We hope that the obvious deceit and duplicitous shown by Archbishop Harry Flynn in his just-released deposition will prod police and prosecutors to more vigorously pursue corrupt Catholic officials in the Twin Cities.

According to Minnesota Public Radio, Flynn;

– “said at least 134 times that he could not remember how he handled clergy sexual abuse cases,”

– claimed “he didn’t know why he refused to release the names” of credibly accused child molesting clerics,

– said he didn’t “know the process for defrocking priests,” and

– “said he did not report any accusations of child sexual abuse to police and doesn’t recall asking anyone else to report abuse claims either,” even though he headed the archdiocese for 13 years (as recently as six years ago) and even though there are 53 publicly accused child molesting clerics who are or have been in the archdiocese.

[Minnesota Public Radio]

He said “I don’t recall” at least 15 times.

He said “I can’t recall” at least 10 times.

He said “I don’t remember” at least 67 times.

He said “I can’t remember” at least 40 times.

He said “I don’t know” at least 46 times.

Gimme a break.

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IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

04 JUNE 2014

The Government has bowed to national and international pressure over the scandal of the death of 4,000 babies who were buried in unmarked, unconsecrated and mass graves at homes for unmarried mothers.

The horrifying record of so-called mother and baby homes over several decades in the last century is being reviewed after campaigners forced renewed focus on the need to formally commemorate how 800 infants died and were buried in at one institute in Co Galway.

The remains of the youngsters were interred in a concrete, septic tank in the grounds of a since-abandoned home in Tuam, run by Catholic nuns from the Sisters of the Bon Secours between 1925 and 1961.

The names of the 796 children buried in the mass grave without a headstone have been confirmed by a local historian after she made repeated requests from the state for records. Records of hundreds more at other homes are still being held confidentially.

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IRELAND
The Journal

CHILDREN’S MINISTER CHARLIE Flanagan has said that a number of departments are looking into how best to address the issues raised as a result of the allegations of a mass grave on the grounds of a former children’s home in Galway.

Flanagan said in statement today that, “active consideration is being given to the best means of addressing the harrowing details emerging regarding the burial arrangements for children who died many years ago in mother and baby homes, and the many questions raised regarding these deaths”.

Speaking to TheJournal.ie yesterday, Flanagan said that said he was shocked by the “appalling revelations” about the home and said that he expected it to be discussed at yesterday’s Cabinet meeting.

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VATICAN CITY
Boston Globe

By John L. Allen Jr. | GLOBE STAFF JUNE 04, 2014

ROME – It’s a telling fact that there’s no exact equivalent in Italian for the English word “accountability,” because as linguists know, when a language is missing a word it’s often because the underlying concept doesn’t quite resonate.

This may be why in the Pope Francis era, the financial management of the Vatican is increasingly becoming an English-speaking enterprise.

The latest step in that direction came today, when an Australian Catholic business manager informed priests in his Sydney archdiocese that he has been named to head up a project management office in the Vatican’s new Secretariat for the Economy, created by Francis in February to oversee the financial clean-up operation.

Danny Casey, formerly the business manager for the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, will join his old boss, Australian Cardinal George Pell, already tapped by Francis to head that secretariat.

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UNITED STATES
The Dish

Andrew Sullivan

You may recall the kerfuffle recently when the UN Rapporteur on Torture tried to indict the Vatican for “crimes against humanity” because of the widespread scheme, orchestrated by the church hierarchy, to facilitate and cover up the mass rape and sexual abuse of children. Many argued that the very term “crime against humanity” was over the top, fueled by anti-Catholicism or secularism, and effectively undermined itself by its extreme language.

But what can possibly describe the following unless it is a crime against humanity?

In a town in western Ireland, where castle ruins pepper green landscapes, there’s a six-foot stone wall that once surrounded a place called the Home. Between 1925 and 1961, thousands of “fallen women” and their “illegitimate” children passed through the Home, run by the Bon Secours nuns in Tuam. Many of the women, after paying a penance of indentured servitude for their out-of-wedlock pregnancy, left the Home for work and lives in other parts of Ireland and beyond. Some of their children were not so fortunate.

More than five decades after the Home was closed and destroyed — where a housing development and children’s playground now stands — what happened to nearly 800 of those abandoned children has now emerged: Their bodies were piled into a massive septic tank sitting in the back of the structure and forgotten, with neither gravestones nor coffins.

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MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio

Madeleine Baran St. Paul, Minn. Jun 4, 2014

Faced with tough questions under oath last month, former Twin Cities archbishop Harry Flynn said at least 134 times that he could not remember how he handled clergy sexual abuse cases during his 13-year tenure, according to documents made public Wednesday.

Flynn, 81, retired six years ago. He said he didn’t have dementia or other diagnosed memory problems. “I think it has more to do with age than anything,” he said, although he noted that he has been diagnosed with cancer, pneumonia and Legionnaires’ disease.

The former archbishop said he did not report any accusations of child sexual abuse to police and doesn’t recall asking anyone else to report abuse claims, either, according to a transcript of the May 14 deposition released by victims’ attorneys. Flynn claimed no memory of a high-profile lawsuit brought in the mid-1990s by a man who said he was abused by the Rev. Robert Kapoun. The case attracted national attention at the time.

Flynn testified as part of a lawsuit filed by a man who says he was sexually abused by the Rev. Thomas Adamson as a child in the 1970s. The man claims the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and the Diocese of Winona created a public nuisance by keeping information on accused priests secret. The broad claim has allowed the man’s attorneys, Jeff Anderson and Mike Finnegan, to question archdiocese officials about decisions from the 1970s to the present. The archdiocese has also been forced to turn over thousands of internal documents on abusive priests.

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MINNESOTA
Jeff Anderson and Associates

[videos]

STATE OF MINNESOTA
COUNTY OF RAMSEY

IN DISTRICT COURT
SECOND JUDICIAL DISTRICT

Defendants

Videotape deposition of ARCHBISHOP
HARRY FLYNN, taken pursuant to Notice of
Taking Deposition, and taken before Gary W.
Hermes, a Notary Public in and for the county
of Ramsey, state of Minnesota, on the 14th day
of May, 2014 at 30 East 7th street, St. Paul,
Minnesota, commencing at approximately 10:04
o’clock a.m.

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IRELAND
BBC News

The Irish government has launched an inquiry after the remains of nearly 800 children were discovered in an unmarked grave at a former home for unmarried mothers run by the Catholic Church.

The remains were interred in a concrete septic tank in the grounds of the home in Tuam, County Galway.

The children, aged between two days and nine years, died between 1925 and 1961.

The grave was found nearly 40 years ago, but the remains were initially believed to be from the 1850s famine.

However, local historian Catherine Corless found that the register of deaths and burials in the town did not match.

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IRELAND
Casa Grande Dispatch

Posted: Wednesday, June 4, 2014
Associated Press

DUBLIN — The Catholic Church in Ireland is facing fresh accusations of child neglect after a researcher found records for 796 young children believed to be buried in a mass grave beside a former orphanage for the children of unwed mothers.

The researcher, Catherine Corless, says her discovery of child death records at the Catholic nun-run home in Tuam, County Galway, suggests that a former septic tank filled with bones is the final resting place for most, if not all, of the children.

Church leaders in Galway, western Ireland, said they had no idea so many children who died at the orphanage had been buried there, and said they would support local efforts to mark the spot with a plaque listing all 796 children.

County Galway death records showed that the children, mostly babies and toddlers, died often of sickness or disease in the orphanage during the 35 years it operated from 1926 to 1961. The building, which had previously been a workhouse for homeless adults, was torn down decades ago to make way for new houses.

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MEXICO
Press TV (Iran)

[with video]

In Mexico’s northern state of San Luis Potosi, a catholic priest is on the run following nineteen separate accusations of sexually assaulting minors.

Eduardo Cordova, priest and legal counsel for the church, has not been seen since Friday when authorities first sought to arrest him. Residents of San Luis have been horrified by the priest’s actions, and many have little faith in authorities to bring the criminal priest to justice. It was while working here, in this church, in the El Paseo district of the state capital, that local activists claim Eduardo Cordova sexually abused over one hundred minors.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Sorcha Pollak, Patsy McGarry

Wed, Jun 4, 2014

News that a large number of unidentified remains were discovered in a water tank close to the Tuam mother-and-baby home in Galway has made international headlines around the world.

Following research by the local Tuam historian Catherine Corless into the operation of the mother-and-baby home run by the Sisters of Bon Secours congregations there, it has emerged that up to 796 children may have died at the home during the period of its operation from 1925 to 1961.

The Washington Post, which opens with the headline ‘Bodies of 800 babies, long-dead, found in septic tank at former Irish home for unwed mothers’, told readers how unmarried pregnant women in Ireland were “stigmatised” by societal and religious mores during the 20th century and that “special kinds of neglect and abuse were reserved for the Home babies”.

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IRELAND
Newstalk

Fianna Fáil TD calls on the Taoiseach to apologise on behalf of the State to the women and children who resided at mother and baby homes.

Nadine Maloney

15:47 Wednesday 4 June 2014

It’s believed almost 800 babies were buried in a mass grave next to the Tuam Mother and Baby home in Co Galway between 1925 and 1961. The home was run by the Bons Secours nuns in Galway.

The Archbishop of Tuam is due to meet with the Bon Secours nuns to discuss the grave.

Fr Iggy O’Donovan, an Augustinian Priest based in Limerick and Fianna Fáil TD Colm Keaveney join Ciara McDonagh on Newstalk Lunchtime to discuss the issue.

Keaveney said it was “premature to talk about commemoration as commemoration would indicate closure”

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UNITED KINGDOM
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314 566 9790, SNAPclohessy@aol.com )

A group of British MPs are calling for an investigation into past child sexual abuse cases. We are glad that these MPs want truth and justice about child sexual abuse. When the truth is revealed about the past, children are safer in the present and future.

[Breitbart)

We’re less interested in seeing investigations of “celebrities” who abused and more interested in seeing investigations of institutions that have concealed or are concealing child sexual violence.

We hope this inquiry goes forward – fully funded and independently established – and that those at every institutional level are investigated. Officials should encourage anyone who saw, suspects, or suffered child sexual abuse to immediately call law enforcement and get help. And whether this investigation happens or not, officials should use their “bully pulpits” to repeatedly and compassionately urge every single person who saw, suspected or suffered child sex crimes to step forward, get help, expose wrongdoers, protect others and start healing.

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VIRGINIA
Fredericksburg.com

CORRECTION: Villacres was the head of the Stafford Education Foundation in 2008. An earlier version of this story had the incorrect name for the group.

By KEITH EPPS

A former chairman of the Stafford County School Board has been indicted by a Stafford grand jury on 111 felony charges involving child molestation.

Thomas Francis Villacres, 53, of Rockledge, Fla., is charged with 48 counts of aggravated sexual battery, 48 counts of indecent liberties with a minor and 15 counts of object sexual penetration.

Villacres, who was indicted Monday, is being held in Florida pending extradition to Virginia.

Stafford Sheriff’s Office spokesman Bill Kennedy said the charges involved four children who were between the ages of 6 and 10 when the alleged offenses took place over an eight-year span in the 1990s. The victims are now in their 20s, Kennedy said. …

Villacres served on the Stafford School Board as the Garrisonville representative and was the chairman his last year. He was the head of the Stafford Education Foundation in 2008 and was involved with a number of other organizations, including St. William of York Catholic Church.

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PARAGUAY
ABC Color

[Summary: Nelson Zapata, director of the Diario Vanguardia of Ciudad del Este, has closely followed the case of Carlos Urrutigoity. He said there were so many complaints of sexual abuse against him they did not know where to put him so he ended up in Ciudad del Este. The priest has the support of Rogelio Livieres Plana, bishop of the Ciudad del Este diocese.]

Tras ser acusado de varios casos de pedofilia, el cura argentino Carlos Urrutigoity quedó en Ciudad del Este “porque no sabían dónde ponerlo”, según Nelson Zapata, director del Diario Vanguardia de dicha localidad.

Las denuncias por “conductas homosexuales” y pedofilia contra el cura argentino Carlos Urrutigoity fueron reflotadas en una publicación realizada por la NBC News, donde se muestran más pruebas que evidencian el abuso en jóvenes por parte del religioso.

Nelson Zapata, director del Diario Vanguardia de Ciudad del Este, quien siguió de cerca el caso a través de las publicaciones sobre el tema, dijo en conversación con la 780 AM que por la cantidad de denuncias que pesaban en su contra “no sabían dónde ponerlo y terminó en Ciudad del Este”.

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PARAGUAY
Entorno Inteligente

Abc / El sacerdote argentino Carlos Urrutigoity, segundo en el mando de la diócesis de Ciudad del Este, fue calificado por el obispo de Scranton, EE.UU., como “una seria amenaza para los jóvenes”. El religioso con nefastos antecedentes por abusos sexuales no solo fue acogido en la diócesis de esta ciudad, sino es defendido a capa y espada por el titular diocesano, Rogelio Livieres Plano.

CIUDAD DEL ESTE (De nuestra redacción regional).- El periodista de la Global Post, EE.UU., Will Carless, recopiló todos los antecedentes de Urrutigoity en una extensa nota que fue publicada ayer en su portal. Uno de los datos que menciona es que en marzo pasado, una organización sin fines de lucro de los Estados Unidos, que se especializa en el seguimiento de los sacerdotes denunciados por abusos sexuales en menores, anunció en su sitio web que Urrutigoity no solo volvió a activar en la Iglesia Católica en Paraguay, sino que fue promovido al cargo de vicario general, el segundo puesto en la diócesis de Ciudad del Este.

Esto causó un revuelo en dicho país e incluso el obispo de Scranton, Joseph C. Bambera, informó mediante un comunicado su preocupación “por este clérigo de apropiarse de funciones de la Iglesia”.

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PARAGUAY
ABC Color

La norteamericana NBC News publicó este martes un extenso reportaje sobre un cura argentino acusado de abusos sexuales a menores “desde Suiza hasta Estados Unidos”. Se trata de Carlos Urrutigoity, actualmente en la diócesis de Ciudad del Este.

El caso del cura Urrutigoity no es nuevo. Ya había sido denunciado en publicaciones hechas por ABC Color en 2008. El sacerdote es uno de los protegidos del Mons. Rogelio Livieres Plano, obispo de Ciudad del Este. Sin embargo, el material publicado hoy ofrece más documentaciones.

La publicación dada a conocer hoy por el portal de la NBC y firmada por el periodista Will Carless, afirma que a pesar de la denuncia del obispo de Scranton, Pensilvania, Estados Unidos, Urrutigoity sigue en funciones dentro de grupo juveniles católicos en Ciudad del Este.

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PARAGUAY
Paraguay.com

[After U.S. sex abuse scandals, an accused priest rises again in Paraguay]

De acuerdo a lo que publica la NBC el hombre que ha sido descrito por los obispos de Suiza a Pennsylvania como ” peligroso”, “anormal “, y ” una grave amenaza para los jóvenes”. El sacerdote ha tenido varios antecedentes de pedofilia en las diferentes diócesis en las que ha servido.

Puntualmente en Pennsylvania en 2002 fue denunciado por abusar de un adolescente y de haber dormido y tocado a otros.

Urrutigoity, argentino, niega haber abusado de nadie y afirma que ha sido víctima de una campaña de desprestigio, de acuerdo a la publicación. Los primeros incidentes sexuales del sacerdote datan de 1999 en Suiza.

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AUSTRALIA
Illawarra Mercury

By Kate McIlwain
June 4, 2014

The high profile royal commission into child sexual abuse will soon turn its attention to Wollongong Catholic Diocese, as a public hearing examines allegations against a local priest stemming back to the 1990s.

On Wednesday, the commission announced it would look into the diocese’s response to allegations of sexual assault against then Father John Gerard Nestor, a priest cleared of indecently assaulting a 15-year-old altar boy but later defrocked by the Vatican.

The hearing, starting on June 24, will investigate the relationship between the Wollongong diocese and the Vatican concerning preventative and disciplinary actions taken in response to the allegations as well as ‘‘any other related matters’’.

Fr Nestor was a priest in the Wollongong diocese in 1991 when he was charged with the indecent assault of a teenage altar boy.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

DAN BOX THE AUSTRALIAN JUNE 05, 2014

THE Vatican’s influence on local cases of alleged child sex abuse will be scrutinised later this month when the Archbishop of Adelaide, Philip Wilson, gives evidence about his handling of allegations against a former priest.

In a public hearing in Sydney, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will investigate the relationship between the Vatican and Archbishop Wilson, during his previous role as the Bishop of Wollongong, south of Sydney.

Shortly after his appointment to the diocese, in 1997, local priest John Gerard Nestor was convicted of indecently assaulting a 15-year-old boy several years earlier.

Mr Nestor denied the charge and subsequently won an appeal to have the court’s decision overturned later the same year.

During the initial court case, Tony Abbott gave character evidence in support of Mr Nestor, with whom he had studied at Sydney’s St Patrick’s Seminary during the 1980s.

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DEUTSCHLAND
kathweb

[Summary: The religious orders in Germany have drawn up guidelines for dealing with sexual abuse. The decision was made at the general meeting of the German Superiors Conference which was attended by 200 superiors and other key people.]

Bonn, 04.06.2014 (KAP) Die Ordensgemeinschaften Deutschlands haben am Mittwoch in Vallendar aktualisierte “Leitlinien für den Umgang mit sexuellem Missbrauch” sowie eine “Rahmenordnung Prävention gegen sexualisierte Gewalt” beschlossen. Bei der Mitgliederversammlung der Deutschen Ordensoberenkonferenz (DOK), an der rund 200 Ordensoberinnen und -obere teilnahmen, wurden auch Personalentscheidungen getroffen. Prämonstratenser-Abt Hermann-Josef Kugler (Abtei Windberg) wurde für weitere vier Jahre zum Vorsitzenden der Deutschen Ordensoberenkonferenz (DOK) gewählt, bestätigt wurde bei der Tagung in Vallendar die stellvertretende Vorsitzende, Schwester M. Regina Pröls. Sie ist Generaloberin der Franziskusschwestern in Vierzehnheiligen.

Zur neuen Generalsekretärin der Ordensoberenkonferenz wählten die Mitglieder Schwester Agnesita Dobler (53) aus der Gemeinschaft der Franziskanerinnen von Reute. Die diplomierte Betriebswirtin war viele Jahre lang in der Leitung von sozial-caritativen Einrichtungen ihrer Gemeinschaft tätig. Daneben war sie von 1996 bis 2001 Mitglied der Generalleitung ihrer Ordensgemeinschaft. Seit 2008 arbeitete sie als Referentin der Diözese Rottenburg-Stuttgart für die Flughafenseelsorge. Schwester Agnesita übernimmt die Aufgabe am 1. August von Schwester M. Walburga Scheibel, die nach sechs Jahren im Amt nicht erneut kandidierte.

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IERLAND
Krapuul (Nederland)

Die kerk is de Katholieke kerk en de moraal is dat kinderen die niet geboren zijn in een huwelijk tussen man en vrouw maar buitenechtelijk…die zijn ‘illegaal’ en zo zullen ze behandeld worden ook. (Beetje vergelijkbaar met hoe Schreibtischmörder Teeven en zijn bende omspringen met mensen die denken dat Nederland beschaafd is en daarom hier hun heil – weg van oorlog en ellende – zoeken zeg maar).

Zo ging het toe in Galway county in het katholieke Ierland waar naar schatting 800 stoffelijke overschotten van kinderen zijn gevonden in een septic tank bij een door nonnen destijds bestierd tehuis voor ongehuwde moeders en hun kinderen.

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OSTERREICH
Kurier

[Summary: A former student of Kalksburg College, once operated by the Jesuits, is suing the techer and the Jesuit order for damages. The 44-year-old former students alleges sexual abuse by the former teacher identified as Mag S. The accused is now a secondary school teacher in Vienna.]

Meist sind es Missbrauchsopfer, die von der Möglichkeit, die Öffentlichkeit aus einem Gerichtsverfahren auszuschließen, Gebrauch machen. In dem Fall eines ehemaligen Erziehers und nunmehrigen Lehrers, dem sexueller Missbrauch vorgeworfen wird, ist es anders.

Nicht öffentlich?
Mag. S., der an einem Gymnasium in Wien beschäftigt ist, beantragte am Montag, das Zivilverfahren, das gegen ihn angestrengt wurde, nicht-öffentlich durchzuführen. Der Prozess findet heute im Wiener Landesgericht für Zivilrechtssachen statt.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

A Hunter Valley Catholic priest has been charged with child sexual assault offences dating back to the 80s.

Vince Ryan, 76, is accused of a string of offences that allegedly occurred between 1985 and 1986.

He faces charges including sexual assault, committing an act of indecency and attempting homosexual intercourse with a male aged between 10 and 18.

Investigators from the police Strike Force Georgiana received information about the alleged indecent and sexual assault of a boy in May last year.

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TEXAS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, June 4, 2014

For more information: David Clohessy of St. Louis, SNAP Director (314) 566-9790 cell, SNAPclohessy@aol.com

Sex abuse victims blast Baptist pastor
He “changes his tune” in child abuse case
Group thinks he should be investigated & charged
Preacher “clearly filed false police report,” SNAP says

Three years after he reported suspected child sex crimes by a church volunteer to police, a Jackson minister went back and tried to “water down” his formal report in an unusual move to apparently try to protect himself and his congregation from civil liability. A civil abuse and cover up case was filed against him and his church last month.

[Jackson Sun]

And now a support group for clergy sex abuse victims is urging prosecutors to investigate the two very different accounts and possibly charge the minister for making a false police report.

(Read the police report here.)

In 2006, Pastor Mark McSwain of First Church in Bemis reported to police that a church volunteer, Chad Lutrell, was inappropriately touching young girls and kissing one on the mouth. He also said that Lutrell was stalking and harassing adult women.

Three years later, however, in 2009, McSwain backtracked from his original statement. McSwain approached police again, this time telling an officer that Lutrell kissed a child on the cheek, not on the mouth. McSwain also denied that Lutrell had inappropriately touched children, and claimed that Lutrell only sent one adult woman an inappropriate email and follower her home.

“It is very suspicious that the pastor changed his tune so much, especially after three years, and in such self-serving ways” said Barbara Dorris, outreach director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “We hope prosecutors will consider filing charges against McSwain for making a false police report.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
Breitbart

MPs have called on Home Secretary Theresa May to set up an inquiry into historical cases of child sex abuse. Former Children’s Minister Tim Loughton and fellow Conservative Zac Goldsmith are among the names calling for a national investigation into repeated failings by police in dealing with a wide variety of cases.

Other MPs calling for an inquiry are Labour’s Tom Watson and Simon Danczuk, Liberal Democrats Tessa Munt and John Hemming and the Green Party’s Caroline Lucas.

Exaronews reports that the MPs want an inquiry similar to that set up to investigate the Hillborough football stadium disaster of 1989, which uncovered the truth about an episode that involved police failure.

Although several inquiries have been set up in the wake of the Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandals, in which the deceased BBC TV star was unmasked as a prolific sex offender and paedophile, critics have said they are too disparate and need to be united into one.

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IRELAND
The Nationalist

The Catholic Church is facing fresh accusations of child neglect after a researcher found records for 796 youngsters believed to be buried in a mass grave beside a former orphanage for the children of unwed mothers.

Catherine Corless says her discovery of child death records at the Catholic nun-run home in Tuam, Co Galway, suggests that a former septic tank filled with bones is the final resting place for most, if not all, of the children.

Church leaders in Galway said they had no idea so many children who died at the orphanage had been buried there and they would support local efforts to mark the spot with a plaque listing all 796 children.

Galway death records showed that the children, mostly babies and toddlers, died often of sickness or disease in the orphanage during the 35 years it operated from 1926 to 1961. The building, which had previously been a workhouse for homeless adults, was torn down decades ago to make way for new houses.

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IRELAND
The Washington Times

By Jennifer Pompi-The Washington Times
Wednesday, June 4, 2014

The Catholic Church in Ireland has come under fire after a researcher discovered a mass grave filled with the bodies of 796 babies near a former orphanage and home for unwed mothers.

The home, run by the Bon Secours nuns from 1925-1961 in County Galway, saw the hundreds of children dying of malnourishment and neglect, as well as contagious diseases like measles, tuberculosis and pneumonia, reported The Daily Mail.

The babies were put in what was once a septic tank, with a simple shroud and no coffins, said researcher Catherine Corless, who discovered the death records, according to reports.

A health board report in 1944 revealed the conditions of the home, The Daily Mail reports. A 13-month-old boy was described as “miserable, emaciated child with voracious appetite and no control over bodily functions and probably mentally defective,” and 31 other children in the same room were described as “poor babies, emaciated and not thriving.”

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OHIO
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314 566 9790, SNAPclohessy@aol.com )

We applaud the brave girl who reported being abused by Rev. Paul Endrei of Church on the Rise in Westlake. But we’re troubled that it took almost a year for law enforcement officials to arrest the accused clergyman.

[Cleveland.com]

We know child sex cases can be tough and that cases against popular or powerful figures even tougher. But we hope police and prosecutors will explain to parents and the public why it took so long to file charges. And we hope that over those 11 months that Rev. Endrei did not hurt any more kids.

Finally, we beg current and former members of Church on the Rise to aggressively seek out others who may have seen, suspected or suffered the clergyman’s crimes and prod them to call police too.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

4 June, 2014

The Royal Commission will hold a public hearing in Sydney commencing on Tuesday 24 June 2014 into the response of the Catholic Diocese of Wollongong to allegations of child sexual abuse against John Gerard Nestor.

It is anticipated that the hearing will look at the relationship between the Diocesan Bishop (and, in his absence, the Diocesan Administrator) and the Holy See (Vatican) in matters concerning preventative and disciplinary action taken in response to allegations of child sexual abuse against John Gerard Nestor.

The scope and purpose of the public hearing is to inquire into:

1. The response of the Catholic Diocese of Wollongong to allegations of child sexual abuse, and related criminal proceedings, against John Gerard Nestor.
2. Any other related matters.

Any person or institution who believes that they have a direct and substantial interest in the scope and purpose of the public hearing is invited to lodge a written application for leave to appear at the public hearing by 13 June 2014.

For more information on lodging your submission email
solicitor@childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au.

The public hearing will be streamed live to the public via webcast. Interested individuals and organisations are encouraged to view the proceedings via the webcast.

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

Australia’s national Royal Commission into child abuse will examine the case of a former Catholic priest, John Gerard Nestor, who was convicted by a magistrate in 1997 for the alleged indecent assault of an altar boy. In a higher court, Nestor successfully appealed against this conviction. But the church authorities possessed certain “additional information” about Nestor (not regarding this boy), which they did not provide to the police. Perhaps the Royal Commission might be able to uncover this “additional information”.

During his twenties, John Nestor worked in secular jobs as an administrator. In his early thirties, he
became a student in a Catholic seminary, aspiring to become a priest. He was ordained as a priest in 1989 (in his late thirties) and was accepted into the Wollongong Diocese, south of Sydney.

A relative of his was Bishop William Murray, head of the Wollongong Diocese.

When police charged Nestor in the 1997 court case, Father Nestor (then aged 45) admitted he had slept on mattresses on a floor with a boy (aged about 14) and his younger brother in July 1991, but denied assaulting the boy.

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IRELAND
Aljazeera America

June 3, 2014

The Catholic Church in Ireland is facing fresh accusations of child abuse after a researcher found records for 796 young children allegedly buried in a mass grave beside a former orphanage for the children of unwed mothers.

The researcher, Catherine Corless, says her discovery of child death records at the Catholic nun-run home in Tuam, County Galway, suggests that the former septic tank filled with bones is the final resting place for most, if not all, of the children.

Church leaders in Galway, western Ireland, said they had no idea so many children who died at the orphanage had been buried there, and said they would support local efforts to mark the spot with a plaque listing all 796 children.

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said that “if a public or state inquiry is not established into outstanding issues of concern surrounding the mother-and-baby homes, then it is important that a social history project be undertaken to get an accurate picture of these homes in our country’s history,” the Irish Times reported.

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IRELAND
Irish Mirror

Aine Hegarty

But much have things really changed when you see how many vulnerable kids in state care are dying every year

Good Catholic Ireland really was a sick and brutal place.

Revelations that the bodies of 800 vulnerable children were dumped into a septic tank at a home run by nuns in Tuam, Co Galway, are stomach-churning.

The remains of innocent youngsters ranging in age from newborns to nine-year-olds were found stacked in the mass unmarked grave.

The full extent of the horror was uncovered by local historian Catherine Corless who was researching the history of the home run by the Bon Secours order of nuns from 1925 until 1961.

The mass grave was found by two boys who were playing in a field in 1995. They found a broken concrete slab and when they lifted it up discovered it was filled to the top with human bones and skulls.

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IRELAND
The Journal

DESPITE THE GOVERNMENT not yet making an official statement on the alleged mass child grave in Tuam, the story has already been reported worldwide.

Outlets across the United States were among the first cover the story outside of Ireland. Within the last 24 hours Al Jazeera, BBC, CBS and outlets in Australia have all reported the horrific revelations that up to 796 infants may have been buried in an unmarked grave that was later used as a septic tank.

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OHIO
Toledo Blade

BY JENNIFER FEEHAN
BLADE STAFF WRITER

A Toledo attorney has asked Gov. John Kasich to allow a Toledo priest convicted of killing a Catholic nun to go home to die.

Gerald Robinson, 76, is terminally ill and has been moved to the hospice unit of Franklin Medical Center in Columbus, a hospital run by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. He has a heart condition, his attorney, Rick Kerger, said.

Mr. Kerger, who planned to visit Robinson today “to say good-bye,” said he did not expect Mr. Kasich to release Robinson as Ohio law prohibits it.

“I’ve been trying to find a way to get him a compassionate release, but that’s not allowed for people who have been convicted of murder,” he said.

Robinson was found guilty in 2006 in Lucas County Common Pleas Court of murder for the 1980 slaying of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl in the sacristy of the former Mercy Hospital chapel. He was sentenced to life in prison with parole eligibility after 15 years.

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AUSTRALIA
New South Wales Police Force

Wednesday, 04 June 2014

Police have charged a Catholic Priest in relation to alleged historical sexual and indecent assaults of a child in the state’s Hunter region.

In May 2013, investigators from Strike Force Georgiana received information about alleged indecent and sexual assault matters involving a child and commenced and investigation.

On Wednesday 7 May 2014, detectives spoke with a 76-year-old man about the alleged offences against a boy.

Officers will allege the offences occurred between 1985 and 1986.

On Saturday 17 May 2014, the 76-year-old man attended Ryde Police Station.

He was served a future court attendance notice for sexual assault, commit act of indecency (x6) and attempt homosexual intercourse with male between 10-18 years.

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PORTUGAL
Christian Today

Following the news that 26 women, each of whom declared herself in love with a Catholic priest, signed a letter to Pope Francis begging him to relax rules on celibacy, it transpires that Portuguese clergy are taking matters into their own hands.

According to the BBC more than 400 practising priests in Portugal have recently left their vocation in the Church, many because they want to get married, which is currently against Catholic teaching.

Fernando Felix Ferreira, a former priest, told Portuguese TVI 24 that “the number of priests requesting exemption has been increasing”.

Ferreira himself applied for dispensation from the Church in 2000; a lengthy process that took a year and a half to complete. Many priests, “some young, and some not-so-young” according to Ferreira, however, are now refusing to adhere to this formality and are instead choosing to “simply abandon the ministry”.

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IRELAND
The Guardian (UK)

Forget prayers. Only full disclosure by Ireland’s Catholic church can begin to atone for the children who died in its care

Emer O’Toole
theguardian.com, Wednesday 4 June 2014

The bodies of 796 children, between the ages of two days and nine years old, have been found in a disused sewage tank in Tuam, County Galway. They died between 1925 and 1961 in a mother and baby home under the care of the Bon Secours nuns.

Locals have known about the grave since 1975, when two little boys, playing, broke apart the concrete slab covering it and discovered a tomb filled with small skeletons. A parish priest said prayers at the site, and it was sealed once more, the number of bodies below unknown, their names forgotten.

The Tuam historian Catherine Corless discovered the extent of the mass grave when she requested records of children’s deaths in the home. The registrar in Galway gave her almost 800. Shocked, she checked 100 of these against graveyard burials, and found only one little boy who had been returned to a family plot. The vast majority of the children’s remains, it seemed, were in the septic tank. Corless and a committee have been working tirelessly to raise money for a memorial that includes a plaque bearing each child’s name.

For those of you unfamiliar with how, until the 1990s, Ireland dealt with unmarried mothers and their children, here it is: the women were incarcerated in state-funded, church-run institutions called mother and baby homes or Magdalene asylums, where they worked to atone for their sins. Their children were taken from them.

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BELGIUM
West

by Ivano Abbadessa

After the child sex abuse scandals in Belgium, the Catholic Church has taken a zero-tolerance line on paedophilia, which was recently reiterated by Pope Francis. Atonement, compensation and prevention are the guidelines of this new strategy that, according to the data, appears to be working. According to the report from the Belgian inter-diocesan Commission, 621 victims have reported the abuse to the Centre of Arbitration, which was active until 31 October 2012. A further 323 reports have been received in the past two years at 10 ‘contact points’, operational since January 2012, which the Catholic Church set up in the provinces of Belgium. Although 8% of these reports have not yet been fully processed, 125 victims of abuse by priests have already received financial compensation totalling about €1m. The document shows that 92% of victims were under 18 at the time of the abuse and 25% were under 10.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

June 4, 2014

Paul Osborne, AAP Senior Political Writer

The royal commission into child abuse will examine the case of a former Catholic priest who once received a court reference from Tony Abbott.

John Gerard Nestor, 50, was a priest in the Wollongong diocese in NSW when he was charged with the indecent assault of a teenage altar boy.

In his 1997 court case, the priest admitted he had slept on mattresses on a floor with the boy and his younger brother in July 1991, but denied assaulting the boy.

The prime minister, then a federal parliamentary secretary to the employment minister, told the court Nestor was an upright and virtuous man whom he had known since 1984 while studying at Sydney’s St Patrick’s Seminary to become a priest.

“He was … a beacon of humanity at the seminary,” Mr Abbott said.

The magistrate found Nestor guilty and sentenced him to jail.

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AUSTRALIA
news.com.au

A CATHOLIC priest has been charged with sexually and indecently assaulting a child in the NSW Hunter region almost 30 years ago.

The priest, 76, will face court this month over the allegations, which police say took place between 1985 and 1986.

He was charged with sexual assault, six counts of committing an act of indecency and attempted intercourse with a male under 10 years of age.

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NEW YORK
Wall Street Journal

By SOPHIA HOLLANDER
June 4, 2014

A charismatic teacher was accused of sexually abusing female students as young as 12 years old during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Decades later, the women found one another and confronted the man they called their abuser.

That could describe recent situations in both New York and Virginia. In each state, a group of women in their 50s accused a former teacher of molesting or raping them as children.

But differences in the states’ statute-of-limitations laws has meant the outcomes diverge sharply. In Virginia, which has no limit on bringing felony charges, former teacher Christopher Kloman was sentenced to 43 years in prison last October, after pleading guilty to four counts of indecent liberties with a child younger than 14 and one count of abduction with intent to defile.

Mr. Rusch’s accusers include, right to left, former Woodward students Sara Smahl, her sister Nancy, Lisa Young, Jane Bedell and Wendy Hooker Erin Patrice O’Brien for The Wall Street Journal
In New York, former teacher Bob Rusch cannot be prosecuted in a criminal or civil trial because the state’s statute of limitations expired decades ago. For civil cases, New York requires people who allege they were abused as minors to come forward by age 23.

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TEXAS
KETK

Newton, Texas (U.S. Attorney John M. Bales) — A 23-year-old former youth pastor has pleaded guilty to child pornography violations in the Eastern District of Texas, announced U.S. Attorney John M. Bales today.

Trevion Lechay Ethridge, of Newton, Texas, pleaded guilty to production of child pornography today before U.S. District Judge Ron Clark.

According to information presented in court, from November 2012 to March 2013, while Ethridge was the youth pastor at a Newton County church, he persuaded a minor to video and photograph pornographic images and to send the pornography to Ethridge via smart phone. Ethridge was indicted by a federal grand jury on Oct. 3, 2013. Trial began in this case on May 12, 2014 and was recessed after two days. Trial resumed on June 3, 2014, at which time Ethridge changed his plea to guilty and under oath, admitted to sending the minor pornographic images and videos of himself and enticing the minor to send pornographic images and videos in return.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.

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TEXAS
12 News Now

Posted: Jun 03, 2014

A 23-year-old former youth pastor Tuesday pleaded guilty to production of child pornography.

According to a news release from the office of U.S. Attorney John M. Bales, Trevion Lechay Ethridge, of Newton, entered the guilty plea before U.S. District Judge Ron Clark.

The news release says information presented in court, from November 2012 to March 2013, shows that while Ethridge was the youth pastor at a Newton County church, he persuaded a minor to video and photograph pornographic images and to send the pornography to Ethridge via smart phone.

Ethridge was indicted by a federal grand jury on Oct. 3, 2013. Trial began in this case on May 12, 2014 and was recessed after two days. Trial resumed on June 3, 2014, at which time Ethridge changed his plea to guilty and under oath, admitted to sending the minor pornographic images and videos of himself and enticing the minor to send pornographic images and videos in return.

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MISSOURI
Kansas City Business Journal

Staff
Kansas City Business Journal

An insurance company for the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph that provided liability insurance to diocese in the 1970s says it should not have to pay damages for sexual abuse cases, KCUR reports.

In a federal court filing Friday, U.S. Fidelity and Guaranty Co. said the policies only cover injuries that were the result of accidents. According to KCUR, the company said that injuries that the diocese expected or intended were not covered.

In July 2013, Chicago Insurance Co. filed a similar federal lawsuit that it claimed it had no obligation to pay a $2.25 million settlement the diocese reached in a priest abuse settlement.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph

MIRANDA DEVINE THE DAILY TELEGRAPH JUNE 04, 2014

PETER Fox, the wannabe whistleblower cop who claimed a “Catholic police mafia” in the Hunter Valley was protecting paedophiles, was revealed last week as a self-aggrandising zealot unfairly smearing his colleagues.

But the special commission of inquiry he triggered may yet prove valuable.

Not only did it clear the names of innocent police officers smeared by Fox’s wild accusations, but it highlighted the failure of senior clergy within the Catholic diocese of Maitland-Newcastle to protect children from two paedophile priests from the 1970s to the early 1990s.

Commissioner Margaret Cunneen SC’s final report offers an insight into how such evil could exist, undetected, within the church for so long.

What she found was that victims came forward to complain of being sexually abused, but their accusations were not reported to police.

She notes that Father Brian Lucas, now the general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, and a lawyer, had a “general practice of deliberately not taking notes of his meetings with priests accused of child sexual abuse’’.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

Hunter Valley clergy abuse survivors say the local Diocese will ‘continue to bleed’ unless tougher action is taken against two senior priests criticised by a Special Commission of Inquiry.

Monsignor Allan Hart and Father William Burston have been stood down from advisory roles in the wake of the Commission’s findings.

But the two priests are still performing their parish roles.

The report into cover-ups was scathing of the church’s handling of the now dead paedophile priests Denis McAlinden and James Fletcher.

Monsignor Hart and Father Burston was asked to say what they knew.

The Commission described their evidence as unimpressive.

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FLORIDA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, June 3

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314 566 9790, SNAPclohessy@aol.com )

In an unusual ruling, a judge is letting alleged child sex abuse victims see secret government records about a disturbing plea deal between prosecutors and a prominent Florida millionaire, Jeffrey Epstein.

We applaud the brave and determined women who have won this unprecedented legal victory.

[MSN News]

All too often, powerful predators exploit their influence and win special treatment and consideration from governmental officials. Such favoritism endangers kids. It also makes adults cynical about the justice system and deters them from reporting known and suspected child sex crimes in the future.

We hope these women will be able to persuade a judge to make these secret records public and let more charges be filed against Epstein. Secrecy is a child predator’s best weapon.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Post

Following Colleague’s Admission of Sex Abuse Cover-Up, Pastor of Former Sovereign Grace Ministries Church Denied Leave of Absence

BY MORGAN LEE , CHRISTIAN POST REPORTER
June 3, 2014

Following Covenant Life Church Lead Pastor Josh Harris’ announcement two weeks ago that he had asked for a leave of absence, a church leader announced on Sunday that Harris would remain on staff.

Harris’ first told the congregation he was considering stepping down on May 18, following former CLC pastor Grant Layman’s confession that he (Layman) had withheld allegations from police that church volunteer Nathaniel Morales had been sexually abusing children. The former pastor’s confession came while he was under oath and testifying at Morales’ court case, where the volunteer was later convicted of sexually abusing three young boys between 1983 and 1991.

Layman stepped down from his position as a pastor at CLC in March 2014.

According to a Washington Post story, a church leader on Sunday “speaking on behalf of two church groups said each had weighed whether Harris and other ministers should be placed on leaves of absence — and decided such action was not warranted.” The Christian Post reached out to CLC to learn the identity of the speaker and requested comment but did not hear back by press time.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Sun Chronicle

Former Attleboro church school principal indicted on child molestation charges

BY DAVID LINTON SUN CHRONICLE STAFF

ATTLEBORO — The former assistant pastor of Grace Baptist Church and principal of the Grace Baptist Christian Academy, who was arrested in January for allegedly molesting one of his female students, has been indicted by a Bristol County Grand Jury, lawyers said today.

The Rev. Jeffrey A. Nichols, 47, faces charges in Fall River Superior Court of indecent assault and battery, accosting a person of the opposite sex and open and gross conduct.

He pleaded not guilty at his arraignment last Tuesday in Fall River Superior Court, where the case will now be prosecuted. He has been held in jail on bail since his arrest.

After his arrest, a prosecutor said Nicholas violated a position of trust by molesting one of his seventh-grade students beginning in 2008 when she was 13, and continuing until the end of the school year in June 2013.

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PERU
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314 566 9790, SNAPclohessy@aol.com )

Apparently, Vatican officials have quickly and quietly defrocked a child molesting Peruvian bishop. Defenders of the Catholic hierarchy will no doubt claim that this shows Vatican officials are making progress on abuse. We disagree.

[National Catholic Reporter]

First, a Peruvian prosecutor is complaining that church officials aren’t giving him the information he is seeking so that criminal charges might be filed against Bishop Gabino Miranda of Ayacucho.

That’s NOT progress. This kind of selfish and reckless secrecy is how most Catholic officials have dealt and are dealing with cases of child sex crimes, whether the predator is a priest, nun, seminarian, teacher or bishop. That is one of the MOST irresponsible steps a Catholic official can take – interfering, directly or indirectly, with a police investigation into a possible predator.

Second, helping police and prosecutors charge and convict child molesting clerics should be church officials’ highest priority. Once a church predator is behind bars and away from kids, then church officials can start discussing whether he should be defrocked.

Third, Catholic officials have long taken action (albeit secretively, slowly and inadequately) against those who commit child sex crimes. But they refuse to take virtually any action against those who conceal child sex crimes. That’s why this crisis continues – because the prelates who could prevent child sex crimes but don’t are never punished. So that’s where Catholic officials should focus.

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