ABUSE TRACKER

A Catholic priest in Kentucky is set to be released from prison after serving nearly four years for sexual abuse that happened in the 1970s.

R. Joseph Hemmerle testified at his 2016 trial in Meade County that he would sometimes apply calamine lotion to the genitals of children at a church summer camp, with their permission. He was found guilty of one count of indecent or immoral practices with a child under 15.

Hemmerle is set to be released on Oct. 1, according to the state Department of Corrections. He will be on probation for six to eight months.

The victim who testified against Hemmerle said the priest, now 79, should not go free.

”I’m concerned this guy is getting out,” Michael Norris told WAVE-TV in Louisville. “He can show up next door and you won’t have a clue who this man is. Your children can get…

View Cache

Bids began rolling in Tuesday as the Archdiocese of Santa Fe launched its first online auction of properties to raise money for a settlement in a federal bankruptcy case prompted by hundreds of claims of child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy.

The archdiocese wants to generate funds through the online auction — as well as insurance, donations and other property sales — to settle a case with about 385 people who have alleged abuse, with some claims dating back decades.

About 140 properties are up for sale in Valencia, Sandoval and Bernalillo counties, most of which are small and vacant parcels donated to the archdiocese. Some parcels will be bundled for the sale.

As of late Tuesday afternoon, one Valencia County parcel had a bid of only $250, while another in Bernalillo County was up to $188,000.

The current auction will conclude next week. Additional properties in 15 other counties…

View Cache

A conference on the safeguarding of minors and vulnerable persons taking place in Warsaw, Poland, highlights the Church’s efforts to to protect its vulnerable members. Prof. Paweł Wiliński reflects on the need to ensure abuse victims’ rights to information, representation, protection and compensation.

A 4-day conference organized by the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors aims to help the Church in her reflections and response to the crisis of the abuse of minors and vulnerable persons.

The event, themed “Our Common Mission of Safeguarding God’s Children”, is being held on 19 – 22 September in the Polish capital of Warsaw. It gathers Catholic representatives from across Central and Eastern Europe, as well as experts who work in the field of child and youth protection.Listen to our interview with Prof. Paweł Wiliński

Need for a system of protection

Prof. Paweł Wiliński is one of the participants at the safeguarding conference. He…

View Cache

The German bishops’ plenary assembly began with urgent appeals for church reform and a reminder to heed admonitions from Pope Francis.

Bishop Georg Bätzing, conference president, called on all bishops to embrace radical change, reported the German Catholic news agency KNA. He said visible changes were needed soon in the Synodal Path German church reform project, which could be a “door opener” for the worldwide synodal process launched by the pope.

Meanwhile, Archbishop Nikola Eterovic, the pope’s ambassador to Germany, repeatedly urged the bishops to preserve the unity of the church and to follow the pope’s directives.

At the start of the Sept. 20-23 assembly, Catholic reform groups and women’s associations held demonstrations demanding rapid and fundamental reforms, warning that this was the only way for the church to restore its credibility.

Bishop Bätzing called on his fellow bishops to agree radical changes are needed in the way they work…

View Cache

A recently reinstated Lake Zurich priest who was accused of sexually abusing minors 25 years ago while he was assigned to Maryville Academy in Des Plaines is again sidelined after “additional information” has come to light, the Archdiocese of Chicago said.

The Rev. David Ryan was expected to return to the Roman Catholic parish this weekend, but the new information caused a delay in Ryan’s return “while it is thoroughly investigated,” according to a letter from Cardinal Blase Cupich that was released Thursday.

“Father Ryan has assured us that he will cooperate fully as he understands that we must take every allegation seriously in accordance with our child protection policies,” the letter said.

Cupich added in the letter that he shared the disappointment at the news, “especially” since Ryan was to come back this weekend.

“But, I ask your patience once again as we fulfill our obligation to keep the…

View Cache

Bishop Anthony M. Pilla, a Cleveland native who helped start a national dialogue on the role of the church in the city and guided Northeast Ohio Catholics through more than a quarter century, died Tuesday.

Pilla, who was bishop of the Diocese of Cleveland from 1981 until his retirement in 2006, died at his home, the diocese confirmed in a statement. He was 88.

In a statement, the diocese’s current Bishop Edward C. Malesic remembered Pilla as a “very warm, kind-hearted and deeply faithful shepherd.”

“He was generous with his time and sharing his knowledge and concern for the diocese with me,” Malesic said in his statement. “As a leader in the national Church, Bishop Pilla was an inspiration and example to me throughout my priesthood and in my years as a bishop. I felt so welcomed by him when I came to the Diocese of Cleveland, a Church that…

View Cache

Daniel Philpott, a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, and Katharina Westerhorstmann, a professor of theology at Franciscan University, will host a public lecture and a day-long consultation session at Notre Dame on Thursday and Friday (Sept. 23 and 24), examining the Church’s sex abuse crisis and the lessons that may be derived from national truth and reconciliation processes for healing and restoration.

The initiative, “The Truth Will Make You Free: What Promise Do National Truth and Reconciliation Processes Offer for the Catholic Church’s Response to the Sexual Abuse Crisis?” is funded by Notre Dame’s Church Sexual Abuse Crisis Research Grant Program and stems from the 2019-20 Notre Dame Forum, “‘Rebuild My Church:’ Crisis and Response.” 

On Friday, Philpott and Westerhorstmann will bring together approximately 25 participants — including church leaders, representatives of survivor groups, experts on national truth and reconciliation processes, theologians, psychologists and legal experts — to generate…

View Cache

Higher charges were filed by a district attorney almost a year after the alleged act

A former Catholic priest accused of performing sexual acts on an altar in Pearl River, Louisiana, has been charged with a higher offence of obscenity for the September 2020 encounter, according to a report.

Travis John Clark, aged 38, was a pastor at Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church when he allegedly had a threesome on the altar with Mindy Lynn Dixon, 42, and Melissa Kamon Cheng, 29, who were wearing corsets and high heels.

Mr Clark, Ms Dixon and Ms Cheng were charged with obscenity by St Tammy Parish Sheriffs Office in Pearl River, before a district attorney dropped the charges in favour of institutional vandalism, a lesser charge, in March 2021.

All three pleaded not guilty to charges of “knowingly vandalising, defacing, or otherwise damaging property and causing damage valued at over $500…

View Cache

Former residents of Burlington’s shuttered St. Joseph’s Orphanage are voicing frustration with Vermont’s Roman Catholic Diocese as they push the state’s largest religious denomination to pay for counseling after their mistreatment decades ago.

“The diocese has done as little as possible to help with our healing goals,” said Michael Ryan, who lived at the orphanage as a child. “They need to provide restitution for their sins of the past.”

A group of 18 former residents gathered Thursday at a reunion that’s part of a restorative justice process, which the orphanage’s former owners at the diocese and operators at the Montreal-based Sisters of Providence have yet to join.

“The church demands atonement from its faithful,” former resident Katelin Hoffman said, “but hypocritically, it is avoiding atonement for its own sins.”

The St. Joseph’s Orphanage Restorative Inquiry came in response to last year’s conclusion of a government investigation of past problems at the facility,…

View Cache

The Rev. Marshall Blalock feels the weight of his new responsibility.

The South Carolina pastor serves as vice chair of a recently formed Southern Baptist Convention task force charged with overseeing an investigation into how a top denominational committee handled sex abuse allegations, a review that comes years into the SBC’s public reckoning with the scandal.

Blalock thinks the work of the task force, set into motion in June by a vote of Southern Baptists at a national gathering, could be a foundational part of how the SBC addresses the issue in the future.

“If the task force does what the convention’s asked us to do, if the Executive Committee responds favorably, I think we’re making huge first steps toward really setting the future toward preventing and appropriately responding to and caring for sexual abuse survivors,” Blalock said.

The sex abuse scandal was thrust into the spotlight in 2019 by…

View Cache

Three more lawsuits were filed Thursday against the Diocese of Metuchen alleging sexual abuse against adults and children by former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the Rev. John Butler and Brother Regis Moccia.

And because Butler and Moccia, who have both died, were not listed on Diocese of Metuchen’s list of sexually abusive clergy, one of the attorneys filing the lawsuits pleaded with Bishop James F. Checchio to release the names of all clergy offenders, including those whose names have never been made public.

“We urge you, release those names of those secret settlements of those offenders that you have now made. The public needs to know, and the survivors need to know who are still suffering in silence sometimes believing they are the only ones, deserve to know while they have time to act. Do it today,” said attorney Jeffrey R. Anderson.

Anderson said he believes there are more than 15 names that should be…

View Cache

In Stefano Mordini’s film, based on Edoardo Albinati’s fact-based novel of the same name, a group of young, privileged men commit a disturbing crime.

The story starts like this: A woman hears a noise — it sounds like a cry for help — from her apartment in a tony neighborhood in Rome and calls the police. The uniformed officers arrive and find two teenage girls locked in the trunk of a Fiat 127, their bodies brutally maimed and scarred. One of them, 17-year-old Donatella Colasanti, is shaken but alive; the other, 19-year-old Rosaria Lopez, is dead. Two of their attackers have been found and the other, perhaps tipped off, has fled.

The Circeo massacre, as the rape and murder would come to be known, shook Italian society. It was 1975 and the aggressive crime, committed by three young men who attended San Leone Magno, a prestigious all-boys Catholic high school,…

View Cache

As Catholics in Germany prepare for their second Synodal Assembly, Aachen Bishop Helmut Dieser has appealed for open debate to be held within the auspices of the Synodal Path reform project and not in the media, on the internet or other platforms.

“The synodal disputes, in which we speak both freely as well as intensively listen to one another, are taking place in the Synodal Path and not on the periphery,” he told Germany’s Catholic News Agency, KNA, Sept. 10.

He also said a good and open culture of debate means not entering the discussions with pre-fixed and unchangeable positions. “This can only succeed if each individual asks himself: May the view of the other person change me? May the spirit of God in this change me?”

He spoke to KNA after sometimes-heated arguments taking place about the Synodal Path project. Some participants have presented alternative proposals to the…

View Cache

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington continues to disregard the lifelong impacts of the physical and sexual abuse carried out at the St. Joseph’s Orphanage, according to some former residents, who are calling on Bishop Christopher Coyne to compensate the remaining survivors of the long-shuttered facility.

Former orphanage residents expressed mixed emotions during a press conference at a South Burlington hotel on Thursday, recalling how a two-year restorative process has helped many of them begin to work through their deep-seated traumas.

But they said their attempts to move on have been undermined by the diocese’s refusal to engage with them on certain issues, including the question of compensation. Some speakers said they have spent thousands and thousands of dollars on therapy over the years. Others referenced the untold amount of money funneled into the orphanage from both the state and from their own parents.

“They took money out of my father’s pocket and abused…

View Cache

HARRISBURG, PA (WENY) — Advocates for survivors of childhood sexual abuse rallied outside of the Pennsylvania state capitol Monday afternoon, calling for Senate action on a bill that would allow for lawsuits to be filed against their abusers. They’re calling for passage of House Bill 951, which was approved by overwhelming bipartisan support in the House in April. It then sent to the Senate, where the advocates say Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward is stopping it from moving forward.

“We’ve had enough. We have had enough. We are not going away, not today, not tomorrow,” said Kathryn Robb, Executive Director of CHILD USAdvocacy, and a survivor of child sexual abuse. She was one of several speakers rallying on the capitol steps Monday, urging Senator Kim Ward to put House Bill 951 up for a vote.

Survivors of child sex abuse are rallying for a window to be able to file…

View Cache

On Saturday, July 17, participants in Seattle’s “Every Child Matters — Seattle Rally and March” gathered at Cal Anderson Park. The crowd stood, sat, drummed, and mourned in solidarity with the First Nations tribes who found 160 children on July 12, buried at Penelakut Island Residential School in British Columbia and in remembrance of the nine children’s remains, recovered from the Carlisle Boarding School in Pennsylvania, returning to the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota. 

The assimilative policy in Canada and the United States of removing children from their parents is an ongoing form of genocide. From the 1860s until the late 20th century, over 300 American Indian residential schools were a government-funded and church-run national program to “civilize” Native children by coercing them into schools and, once there, forbidding them to speak their languages or learn their traditions. Both Catholic and Protestant churches forced the children to assimilate…

View Cache

SHERBROOKE, QUEBEC — A Quebec Superior Court judge authorized a class action against a Catholic religious group once heralded for its ability to foster vocations. The decision opens the way for people who claim to have been physically, spiritually or psychologically abused within the organization to join the legal case.

Judge Alicia Soldevila decided in favor of class action involving Famille Marie-Jeunesse (Family of Mary’s Youth), which was founded in the 1980s.

Pascal Perron, a member of the group for 17 years, will represent those who join the class action. He left the religious community in 2014, at age 36, after having lived in the group’s community houses in Quebec and on Reunion Island, a French department in the Indian Ocean.

Perron blames the group and its leaders for putting in place rules that were “so strict and rigorous” that they had the effect of “destroying the identity of the individuals…

View Cache

The Catholic Bishops Conference in the Jasikan Diocese of the Oti Region has engaged parents and stakeholders in fishing and cocoa-growing communities in the diocese on ending child labour and abuse.

The church as part of its corporate social responsibility has set up a committee that is mandated to ensure the protection of child rights and elimination of any existing form of child labour and abuse in the diocese.

The Jasikan diocese of the Catholic Church covers almost the entire Oti region.

Speaking at the ceremony, the regional director for social welfare, Innocent Agbolosu explained the position of the law on parental responsibility to children.

“According to the United Nation’s Convention on the rights of the child, child protection is safeguarding of children from violence, exploitation, abuse and neglect. This definition places responsibility on state parties to this convention to formulate programmes, policies and laws to protect children within their…

View Cache

He was the 15-year-old’s bishop at the time of the alleged assault.

A Utah man has been charged with sexually abusing a 15-year-old girl while he was her Latter-day Saint bishop.

James Douglas Robinson, 63, has been charged in 8th District Court with forcible sexual abuse, a second-degree felony.

According to a probable cause statement, the 15-year-old girl told police that she was assaulted June 16 while she was at a church girls’ camp at the Reid Ranch in Hanna, Duchesne County.

She said she was alone in the kitchen area when her bishop pinned her and touched her inappropriately over her clothes.

After the alleged assault, Robinson was released as bishop of his Latter-day Saint ward, or congregation, and, according to police, moved to Idaho.

According to a spokesman for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “The church reported these allegations to law enforcement as soon as…

View Cache

A 69-year-old plaintiff shouldn’t be kept waiting.

After hearing that plea from an attorney, a Springfield judge ruled last week that the former Chicopee altar boy raped by a once-celebrated bishop deserves to have his civil lawsuit heard with as little delay as possible.

Until the decision came Wednesday from Judge Karen L. Goodwin, the plaintiff, identified only as John Doe, expected to have to wait for a year or more as defendants pursued an appeal of an earlier ruling.

Goodwin scribbled the word “Allowed” on a court document submitted by the plaintiff’s attorney, Nancy Frankel Pelletier, and set a status conference for 3:30 p.m. Oct. 21 in Hampden Superior Court, at which lawyers will discuss the trial’s timing.

Her decision is another setback to lawyers for the Springfield Diocese, who claimed in court filings that their clients, including the diocese itself, could not be sued…

View Cache

As a conference on safeguarding minors and vulnerable adults within the Church kicks off in Warsaw, Poland, Jesuit Father Hans Zollner describes the efforts already being made to protect the Church’s most vulnerable members.

The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors is holding a conference to assist Church leaders in safeguarding her most vulnerable members.

The 4-day event, taking place from 19-22 September in the Polish capital of Warsaw, gathers Catholic representatives from across Central and Eastern Europe.

According to a consultant for the Pontifical Commission and one of the event’s organizers, the conference’s goal is to “show that the Church has to engage and commit in the protection of minors and other vulnerable people in any place or region of the world.”

Fr. Hans Zollner, SJ, the Director of the “Institute of Anthropology. Interdisciplinary Studies on Human Dignity and Care (IADC)” at the Pontifical Gregorian University, spoke to…

View Cache

Dear Parishioners of St. Francis de Sales Parish, 

Last week, I informed you that our Independent Review Board (IRB) had found there was insufficient reason to suspect Father David Ryan had committed sexual abuse of a minor and that I was reinstating him as your pastor, effective immediately. 

However, since then, additional information, not previously provided to the Archdiocese or the IRB, has surfaced and that will mean delaying Father Ryan’s return to the parish while it is thoroughly investigated.  Father Ryan has assured us that he will cooperate fully as he understands that we must take every allegation seriously in accordance with our child protection policies.  

I share your disappointment at this news, especially as I know plans were being made to welcome Father Ryan back this weekend. But, I ask your patience once again as we fulfill our obligation to keep the children entrusted to us safe and…

View Cache

The return of a suspended pastor at Saint Francis de Sales Catholic Parish in Lake Zurich has been delayed after new evidence was brought forward in a child sexual abuse case.

In November, Cardinal Blase Cupich, who is the Archbishop of Chicago, wrote in a letter to the St. Francis community announcing the investigation into Father David Ryan.

Ryan was accused of sexually abusing minors approximately 25 years ago while he was assigned to the Maryville Academy in Des Plaines.

Due to the investigation by officials and the Archdiocese of Chicago, Ryan was asked to step down as pastor until the investigation was complete.

On September 9, Cupich sent a letter updating the St. Francis community that state officials determined the allegations were unfounded.

The archdiocese concluded there was insufficient reason to suspect Ryan had committed child sexual abuse, Cupich added.

Ryan was then reinstated as pastor. On Thursday, Ryan announced…

View Cache

The Church in Central and Eastern Europe is coming together for a conference on the safeguarding of minors, which will take place in Warsaw, Poland, on 19-22 September.

The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors sent out a press release on Thursday to announce details about the upcoming safeguarding conference.

The event kicks off on Sunday and runs through Wednesday in the Polish capital of Warsaw.

It is being held under the theme, “Our Common Mission of Safeguarding God’s Children”.

Representatives of Bishops’ Conferences from nearly 20 nations in Central and Eastern Europe will take part, along with professionals who work in the field of child and youth protection.

Systems to prevent abuse

According to the press statement, leaders from local Churches and delegates will examine their response to the crisis of sexual abuse of minors, while evaluating the impact of the regional context on the issue.

Participants will…

View Cache

Regarding Bishop Michael W. Fisher and the Catholic sex scandal, there’s yet another letter with its own definition of remorse and compensation. Are the writers related to the out-of-state lawyers who will get one-third of their remorse? Why always money? In truth, there’s not enough money in all Christendom. Wiping out parishes and charities and institutions is as counterproductive as going through the courts. The bishop is at least trying to achieve a just closure to an irreconcilable situation that money simply can’t compensate. Comparable to slavery and the Holocaust, in a way. Needs change of heart, not more money.

Joseph Deck
Buffalo

View Cache

Pope Francis has rejected the resignation of the Archbishop of Hamburg who had offered to step down after a report named him among several senior officials in Germany’s Catholic Church to have breached their duty in handling sexual abuse cases.

In a statement, the Vatican said it had thoroughly examined documents relating to the archbishop, Stefan Hesse, formerly head of personnel and administration at the Cologne archdiocese.

While it had identified deficiencies in the organisation of his office and personal procedural errors, it had not found any intention to cover up abuse, the Vatican said in a statement posted on the German Bishops’ Conference website.

“The basic problem, in the larger context of the administration of the archdiocese, was the lack of attention and sensitivity towards victims of abuse,” it said.

The archbishop offered to resign in March after the publication of an 800-page report into the handling of abuse…

View Cache

Pope Francis has called on the Catholic Church to “listen to the call” of the victims of clerical sex abuse.

In a video message to an international conference on safeguarding and the Church, that begins in Warsaw, Poland today, Pope Francis says that care for children should not be sidelined in favour of managing the Church’s reputation. 

“Only by facing the truth of these cruel behaviours and humbly seeking the forgiveness of the victims and survivors, will the Church be able to find its way to be once again confidently considered a place of welcome and safety for those in need,” the Pope says. “Our expressions of contrition must be converted into a concrete path of reform, both to prevent further abuse and to guarantee others the confidence that our efforts will lead to real and reliable change.”

Recognising mistakes and failures can “make us feel vulnerable and fragile, for…

View Cache

A former Catholic cardinal, Theodore McCarrick, is facing trial on charges of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old boy. He is the only current or former U.S. cardinal to be criminally charged with child sex crimes.

The Catholic Church has been paying millions of dollars to settle such cases for decades. I would argue that the collateral damage for inner-city children (Black and Hispanic) could be at least as damaging, in a completely different way, than the pedophilia cases.

The Archdiocese of Hartford paid more than $50 million to settle abuse allegations against dozens of its priests. The archdiocese admitted in a financial statement that such payments harmed its ability to provide other services. Among its major assets would be school buildings.

Connecticut could be on the verge of ending Catholic school choice for inner-city high school kids with only one such school left, Kolbe Cathedral.

Just imagine if the state’s public…

View Cache

The crime of child molestation is far more common than most people realize. Law enforcement officers tend to describe it as an epidemic, most often perpetrated in secret and typically by someone the child knows.

“It’s a heavy thing to have to deal with  investigating and it’s a very heavy thing for the public to accept. But it is an epidemic, it truly is,” Payne County Investigator Rockford Brown said. “If you look at it on a big scale, abuse of children is an epidemic.” 

Brown said almost all of his cases involve a suspect the child trusts.

“Most of the victims are abused by someone they know and love. So often I see folks post on social media about their concerns about child abduction and strangers; while this is a rational concern to have, the reality is that your child is far more likely to be abused by someone…

View Cache

Ewa Kusz, a member of the organizing committee for the regional conference on the protection of minors for Central and Eastern Europe taking place in Warsaw, gathers the voices of people who have been abused by priests.

What do those who have been wounded within the Church say? What do they expect from the Church, from “Church people”?

To give one single response is difficult because each abuse victim is different. Each one of them has a different life story both before and after the trauma. Some of them speak immediately; others, after a few years or even many years later. Some have met others who have helped them along the way, while others have remained completely alone in their suffering.

Those who have been wounded are speaking. Some demand their right to speak and be heard at the top of their lungs. Others speak about it timidly within the…

View Cache

In a video message to a 3-day conference in Warsaw, Poland, on safeguarding children from abuse in the Church, Pope Francis hopes such efforts will bring about real and reliable change.

As an important international conference on the protection of vulnerable children and adults for the Churches of Central and Eastern Europe kicks off in the Polish capital, Warsaw, on Sunday, Pope Francis hopes the effort will bring about real and reliable change in the Church and in the hearts of Christians.  

Organized by the Vatican’s Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and the Polish Bishops’ Conference, the September 19 to 22 conference has as its theme, “Our Common Mission of Safeguarding God’s Children”. Representatives of bishops’ conferences, religious orders and lay professionals from 20 countries are participating in the 3-day event. 

Real and reliable change

Pope Francis has sent a video message in which he greets the participants…

View Cache

Dear brothers and sisters, I am happy to welcome you now that you are gathered together to reflect on the response that the Church is now providing to the crisis of the sexual abuse of minors by members of the Church, and on the ways in which it might more adequately respond to this serious issue that we are facing.

In speaking to the leaders of the Episcopal Conferences from throughout the world, gathered in Rome in February 2019, I expressed my encouragement so that they might assure the wellbeing of victims might not be sidelined in favor of the misguided concern for the reputation of the institutional Church. Rather, only by facing the truth of these evil practices and of humbly seeking pardon from victims and survivors will the Church find its way to a place where it can be relied upon once again as a place of welcome…

View Cache

Defrocked cardinal Theodore McCarrick is the highest ranking Catholic official in the U.S. to face criminal charges for child sex crimes.

New lawsuits have been filed against defrocked cardinal Theodore McCarrick, accusing him of sexually abusing an adult in New York in the 1980s.

The now 91-year-old former Archbishop is already charged with sexually abusing a 16-year-old boy during a wedding reception at Wellesley College in 1974.

The latest lawsuit accuses McCarrick of sexual battery against a New York man, who was in his late teens and early 20s when McCarrick was Bishop of the Diocese of Metuchen, in central New Jersey. McCarrick went on to become archbishop of the Archdiocese of Newark in the mid-1980s and then Cardinal Archbishop of Washington, D.C., in 2001. The lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

McCarrick was defrocked in 2019 after a Vatican investigation determined he sexually abused minors, as well as…

View Cache

A retired priest who previously served as a chaplain at Kenmore Mercy Hospital has been placed on administrative leave by the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo Bishop Michael Fisher after an allegation of abuse has surfaced.

The allegation against Reverend Robert J. Schober, 70, came to light after informational documents filed with the federal bankruptcy court as part of the Diocese’s reorganization proceeding were forwarded to diocesan leaders.

Schober, who is not in active ministry, denied the abuse allegation in a meeting with Buffalo Diocese officials.

The Diocese has notified the Erie County District Attorney’s office and an independent review board has also been notified of the allegation. According to the Diocese, the board will work to appoint an independent investigator.

The 70-year-old is not allowed to present himself publicly as a priest or carry out any priestly ministry.

“The decision by Bishop Fisher to place Fr. Schober on administrative leave…

View Cache

Pope Francis urged European bishops on Saturday to listen to survivors of clergy sexual abuse and consider them partners in reform, warning that their failure to do so risks the very future of the Catholic Church.

Francis issued a videomessage to Central and Eastern European bishops who are gathering in Poland starting on Sunday for a four-day child protection conference organized by the bishops’ conference and the Vatican’s child protection advisory commission.

The location is significant, given around a dozen current and retired Polish bishops have been sanctioned by the Vatican in recent months for their repeated failures to listen to victims and take action to sanction the priests who raped and molested them.

“Only by confronting the truth of this cruel behavior and humbly seeking forgiveness from victims and survivors can the church find the way to once again be considered and trusted as a place of welcome and…

View Cache

Another retired Buffalo Diocese priest has been put on administrative leave after a claim in the diocese’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy case, along with a Child Victims Act lawsuit filed in August, alleged that the priest sexually abused a child.

Bishop Michael W. Fisher on Friday suspended the Rev. Robert J. Schober, who is restricted from priestly ministry or presenting himself in public as a priest while the allegations are under investigation. A review board is responsible for appointing an investigator to examine the claims.

Schober, 70, denied to diocese officials that he had abused anyone, according to a diocese statement.

It was the second consecutive Friday that Fisher announced a priest suspension. Four retired priests were put on administrative leave Sept. 10 due to child sex abuse allegations.

Schober is retired and was not currently in active ministry. He had been a chaplain at Kenmore Mercy Hospital prior to his…

View Cache

Women don’t feel able to share their trauma with border authorities and so don’t get a fair hearing for their asylum claims, a survey shared with VICE World News says.

At 17 years old, Becky was called into the office of her Catholic priest, also the headteacher at her school, to help with Christmas decorations. “When a priest tells you to come, you have to yield to that,” she says.

At the time, Becky was living in Cameroon with her Christian family of six. “My dad was really violent to my mum – physically and emotionally. Where I come from, it is a normal thing.” Although witnessing abuse was part of Becky’s daily routine, she didn’t expect to experience abuse herself, especially at the hands of a priest. “He told my mum there were other girls coming, but then I discovered I was alone. He came closer to me, holding…

View Cache

Three sex abuse lawsuits filed against a New Jersey diocese and announced Thursday include claims that defrocked Cardinal Theodore McCarrick abused a young man in the 1980s.

The lawsuit accuses McCarrick of sexual battery against the man, who was in his late teens and early 20s when McCarrick was Bishop of the Diocese of Metuchen, in central New Jersey. McCarrick went on to become archbishop of the Archdiocese of Newark in the mid-1980s and then Cardinal Archbishop of Washington, D.C., in 2001. The lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

McCarrick was defrocked in 2019 after a Vatican investigation determined he sexually abused minors, as well as adults. He faces other lawsuits in New Jersey, including one that alleged he sexually abused a teenage boy at a beach house in the 1980s.

In a separate case in Massachusetts, the now-91-year-old McCarrick recently became the only U.S. Catholic cardinal ever to…

View Cache

The woman alleges Father Robert Vaillancourt raped her when she was 15.

WARNING: This story contains details that may be triggering for some people. Resources are listed at the bottom of this story.

A woman has come forward after 39 years alleging she was sexually assaulted by a priest who is on administrative leave amid an internal investigation by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland.

Father Robert Vaillancourt was placed on leave in July following accusations he sexually abused a girl in the 1980s.

Vaillancourt, who was relieved of his post as pastor to several churches on the Mid Coast within the parish of Saint Brendan the Navigator, has denied the allegations. 

The latest alleged victim, who does not want to be identified, is now considering taking action under a new law that allows survivors to file a civil case.

“Jane” said she was…

View Cache

A suburban Chicago priest cleared last week of of allegations he sexually abused children 25 years ago is back under scrutiny because new information has become available, Cardinal Blase Cupich said Thursday.

Cupich wrote a letter to parishioners of St. Francis de Sales Catholic Parish in Lake Zurich saying the Rev. David Ryan will remain away from the parish while the new information is investigated. He did not disclose the nature of the new information.

“We will share new information as it becomes available,” Cupich said.

The development comes exactly one week after Cupich had written parishioners to report “there was insufficient reason suspect” that Ryan had abused anyone.

Ryan was directed to live away from the parish last November during the original investigation, Cupich said.

The Archdiocese of Chicago, which covers Cook and Lake counties, serves around 2.2 million Catholics.

View Cache

A MAN who claims a paedophile priest subjected him to sexual and physical abuse at a Co Down school is to receive a “five-figure” payout, his lawyer said.

The sum forms part of a resolution reached in his action centred on alleged historic assaults by the late Fr Malachy Finegan.

No admission of liability has been made in proceedings brought against the Trustees and Board of Governors at St Colman’s College in Newry and the Diocese of Dromore.

But the plaintiff’s solicitor, Kevin Winters, said: “This latest financial settlement highlights again the trail of emotional destruction left by Malachy Finegan.”

Now aged in his mid sixties, the man sued over allegations he was targeted while boarding at the school as an 11-year-old pupil in the late 1960s.

At the High Court today, counsel for the plaintiff, who is not being named, announced that his claim for negligence has been settled…

View Cache

An Oblate priest was accused of sex crimes in the Arctic from 1968 to 1974

There is more Canada could be doing to pursue an Oblate priest in France suspected of sexually abusing children in Nunavut, says a Dalhousie law professor who specializes in extradition.

Robert Currie says it’s ‘atrocious’ that criminal charges have been stayed against Johannes Rivoire, who worked in three Arctic communities in the 1960s and ‘70s.

“What’s atrocious is the federal government’s refusal to say anything about the case to give the alleged victims any indication that there’s even any interest in justice being done,” Currie tells APTN News.

The three sex-related charges laid against Rivoire in 1998 were stayed in 2019, citing a low chance of conviction.

“In 1994, the Department of Justice Canada confirmed with the RCMP that France does not extradite its nationals,” says Nathalie Houle, a spokesperson for the Public Prosecution Service of…

View Cache

This whole pedophilia scandal the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany is enduring makes me think of my beloved brother Matt.

Matt was an altar boy. My mother thought he’d be a priest. I can still see him up there on the altar shadowing our pastor. The ancient rituals did something important for him.

Irish twins, 9 months and 29 days apart, we were inseparable. When we still wore flannel PJs with the feet attached, when we still needed a nightlight, when Star Trek was not yet in reruns, I remember rising from my bed early in the mornings with mischief on my mind. Matt was still in a crib, and as soon as he saw me enjoying my sweet freedom, he would bang on the slats of his crib like a hardened old con in Sing Sing.

I would grab him and drag him out (he ain’t heavy, he’s my…

View Cache

A Catholic priest and convicted pedophile must have believed his own lies to give “demonstrably” untrue evidence you could “poke a million holes through”, a judge told a court.

Anthony William Peter Caruana, 79, prayed silently in an isolated suite in prison before his second sentence hearing began in the NSW District Court on Wednesday.

More than two decades after he was acquitted at a 1990 trial for similar offences, he was found guilty of 26 charges against 12 young boys from Chevalier College in NSW’s Southern Highlands.

The charges from the 1980s included four counts of sexual intercourse with two of his students.

The teacher and dormitory master was removed from his teaching role in 1989 and forced to take psychiatric assessment and counselling.

Here he expressed “a lifelong problem of his attraction to young boys”, and he was assessed as being “remorseful for his past behaviours”, his lawyer…

View Cache

A man who claims a paedophile priest subjected him to sexual and physical abuse at a Co Down school is to receive a “five-figure” payout, his lawyer announced today.

The sum forms part of a resolution reached in his action centred on alleged historic assaults by the late Fr Malachy Finnegan….

View Cache

Regarding Friday’s editorial (“Schools must handle allegations better,” Our View, Sept. 10), I think the newspaper could have gone further in holding those involved in this alleged child abuse case to account.

Whether the accused is found guilty or innocent, a major failure was committed by those involved who failed to report. Refer to the New Mexico Administrative Code — 6.60.9.9c — and Section 24 therein.

Having served on the Santa Fe Public Schools Board of Education for nine years, I know that our policy was that if anyone, bus driver, cafeteria worker, aide, teacher — anyone — suspected any kind of child abuse, sexual or otherwise, he or she was required to report it to an immediate supervisor.

Failure to report — and this includes supervisors and principals — to the district and law enforcement would result in immediate removal from the school site and the person being placed…

View Cache

A local church school program teacher, who was assaulted at school by an upset parent, has been cleared of any wrongdoing by Columbia County authorities.

In a statement, the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office announced they had “a thorough review of video evidence” and investigators concluded that no crime had occurred. The Columbia County Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office was asked to review the case as well. Assistant DA Natalie Paine agreed with the sheriff’s office findings.

Maj. Steve Morris said the sheriff’s office is working to release the video to the general public, however, it’s going to take some time. Morris said the sheriff’s office is working with an outside company to make sure the identities of the children in the video are concealed. 

The 61-year-old teacher from St. Teresa of Avila Catholic Church was assaulted by Kasey Marie Brooks, 28. After Brooks was arrested and charged with simple battery, she claimed the teacher…

View Cache

Five more former students have filed lawsuits against the West Essex Regional School District and the estate of a middle school teacher who they say sexually abused them. 

Marc Cortese, Robert Swiatek, Kenneth Williamson, Bruce DeLorenzo and K.M. Doe joined two others who recently sued the district and Michael Petrucelli, who was a history and photography teacher at West Essex Middle School.

John Baldante, attorney for the seven men, called Petrucelli a “prolific pedophile.” Petrucelli died in 2014 at age 92.

Scott Reynolds and Peter Bonastia filed their suits at the end of August, accusing Petrucelli of sexually assaulting them multiple times in 1978. The new set of lawsuits allege that Petrucelli sexually assaulted the five men between 1977 and 1985. They were all age 13 at the start of the alleged abuse.

In the latest accusations against Petrucelli, the abuse ranges from pinches on the buttocks to horrific sexual assault….

View Cache

Has the Catholic church in Australia, at its most senior levels, learned anything from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse about good governance, transparency, and justice for those who are at the margins? The resignation of the Bishop of Broome, Christopher Saunders, has left a significant level of disturbance and dispute within the diocese. He is 71, and it is unusual that Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of a bishop under the standard retirement age of 75.

The matter has proven highly contentious. Sexual misconduct allegations have been aired, along with claims of significant managerial problems — all of which the bishop has strongly denied. So what can or should the church do while such serious allegations linger in minds of the public?

Unclear reasons for departure?

The news of Bishop Saunders’s resignation was recently announced in the Vatican’s daily bulletin, the Bollettino, but no reason…

View Cache

Denying links to January 6 insurrection, organizer says former advisor to Donald Trump and others were to discuss Catholic Church reform and pose no threat

he far-right Catholic group Church Militant has sued the city of Baltimore in federal court, saying the decision by the administration of Mayor Brandon Scott to cancel the group’s upcoming rally at the Inner Harbor was “obviously unconstitutional.”

“They don’t get to shut down our speech. It’s that simple” said Michael Voris, Church Militant’s founder and CEO of St. Michael’s Media, speaking with The Brew.

The Michigan-based group contends that its First Amendment rights to free speech, religion and assembly were violated when City Solicitor James L. Shea canceled the organization’s contract to hold the meeting on November 16 at the MECU Pavilion on city-owned Pier Six.

Church Militant’s attorney, Marc Randazza of Las Vegas, and local Maryland counsel David S. Wachen of Potomac,…

View Cache

I have been asked by a number of church leaders if the approach we are advocating for an approach to allegations, which we call survivor-sensitive or survivor-centric or trauma-sensitive etc, diminishes the authority of the pastor. Does a survivor-sensitive approach go against the grain of what we in Anglican church call “episcopal authority”?

In some ways No, in some ways Yes. I need to explain.

First, I want to push against this term “authority.” This term is never used in the NT for pastors, bishops/overseers, or elders. Not once. They do not have authority, God does, Jesus does, the Spirit does. Which isn’t to say there isn’t some dimension of power and authority in the pastoral leader but I do want to register hesitation on framing the question with that term. By framing it with “pastoral authority” the discussion gets rigged in the wrong direction.

In fact, what authority a pastor…

View Cache

A decision to not hold a Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care hearing in Dunedin has been criticised as a ‘‘repulsive slap in the face’’ for Southern survivors.

The South, and Dunedin in particular, is considered one of the country’s epicentres for child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

The royal commission says it has engaged with many Dunedin survivors and is committed to investigating their claims.

But the Network of Survivors in Faith Based Institutions says it is failing to meet its obligations.

The royal commission has held public hearings in Auckland into abuse in state and faith-based care.

Survivors have also been interviewed privately.

Network spokesman Dr Murray Heasley said it was ‘‘astonishing’’ Dunedin would not host hearings.

‘‘It is a massive dereliction of duty and a repulsive slap in the face for all of the victim survivors who reported thinking they would be listened to,…

View Cache

Since May 5, 2021, the phone has been ringing at least once a day at the home of Marie Christine Kirouack, the Montreal lawyer to whom Archbishop Christian Lépine has entrusted the responsibility of receiving all complaints of abuse and inappropriate behavior committed by priests, staff members and volunteers of the Archdiocese of Montreal.

Since the ombudswoman was named last spring, she has received hundreds of calls and many emails.

In her very first quarterly report, released Sept. 9, Kirouack revealed that among all these calls, 29 denunciations were received and analyzed because they were related to sexual, physical, psychological or financial abuse. Since then, she has forwarded 26 formal complaints to the advisory committee in charge of studying them. This committee will then issue recommendations to Archbishop Lépine.

Because of the summer vacations, not all complaints have been processed yet. However, the ombudswoman confirms that 16 have been upheld,…

View Cache

Church leaders need to stop playing with words and get down to serious business to protect children and women from abuse

During the 2019 Summit of Bishops in Rome on The Protection of Minors in the Church, Catholic Church officials told a press conference that Pope Francis had given bishops a handout of 21 points — a road map for policy and law seeking to save children from abuses within the Church.

On the last day of the summit, Cardinal Oswald Gracias, Archbishop of Bombay and member of Pope Francis’ Council of Cardinals, was among those addressing the press conference.

When asked about what concrete measures were expected from the meeting, Cardinal Gracias said: “Implementation has to be done at the local conference and diocesan levels, that is why conference presidents are called to Rome for this meeting. All conferences have guidelines, we have to see how to make them effective.”

Referring…

View Cache

A North Carolina man has filed suit against the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island and another church and is seeking $20 million in damages for abuse he says he suffered at the hands of a priest who was “restrained” and left critically injured in his Shelter Island home for days in 2018.

The retired Episcopalian Rev. Canon Paul Wancura later died of his injuries. The case has remained unsolved for years.

The complaint, filed with the New York State Supreme Court on August 19 by Gil Santamarina, New York City-based attorney for Lew H. Crispin III, states: “The circumstances surrounding the attack on the Reverend remain mysterious and unsolved, but there is reason to believe that the perpetrator’s primary intent was to torture the Reverend, not to steal from him.”

The complaint states that in 1975 when Crispin was five years old, he moved to Setauket with his…

View Cache

Those who knew Al Shands during his long and creative life realized he was on a journey.

In one of the newsletters he wrote for the parishioners of St. Clement’s “house church,” he compared his return to Durham, North Carolina, where he lived as a child, to the journey taken by Ms. Carrie Watts, the fictional heroine of Horton Foote’s “A Trip to Bountiful.”

“I did it, and it was a success,” Shands wrote. “But only now am I realizing why. Home is not just a place. Home is the place where we know we belong, where the loneliness of our lives is resolved, where we are known and appreciated just for who we are.” 

In so many ways Al Shands, who died Sept. 7, 2021, at age 92, spent his nine decades helping others to find their way home.

As an Episcopal priest, documentary filmmaker, writer and art connoisseur, he…

View Cache

It was the summer of 2011, and I was summoned to the office of a psychologist in Dallas, and Raymond Fitzgerald, the President of Jesuit High School, who flew from New Orleans to attend. Jesuit paid for the psychologist as a part of their due diligence, to determine if I was telling the truth about my abuse at the hands of Peter Modica, a janitor, and Cornelius Carr, a Theology teacher at the school.

Before Fitzgerald arrived, I was very nervous. I asked the psychologist, Ronald Garber, how long it would take for him to make his determination. He responded, “I already have, you cannot control the nervousness of your hands, you are rocking back and forth.” He continued, “When you described to me the first time you were abused, you said that you ‘froze up’, and that’s what all victims of childhood sex abuse do, and someone who is…

View Cache

Imagine if you could have voted while residential schools were still operating. When you were reading headlines like children are “dying like flies” because of the “absolute inattention to the bare necessities of health” in these federally controlled institutions, would you have spoken up and refused to vote for any government that perpetrated what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission coined “cultural genocide?”

In June, headlines of the unmarked graves of hundreds of children confronted Canadians with the reality that government-run residential schools were more akin to re-education camps and death traps than “schools.” Flags were lowered, the number “215” on orange shirts and hearts appeared everywhere and then the headlines faded and so did the shirts, but the injustices kept building.

Months later, more than 5,000 unmarked graves have been identified and yet political leaders have said little about it and neither has the media. The story that got the most…

View Cache

The Sept. 5 Politics & the Nation article “McCarrick pleads not guilty to child sex abuse charges” reported that ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick got his day in court related to three counts of child sex abuse.

In contrast, child sex abuse survivors in Maryland often don’t get their day in civil court because of stringent statute-of-limitation laws. In fact, the laws even restrict a child survivor from getting access (due process) to records that could help build a criminal case. Maryland’s Hidden Predator Act is intended to provide more justice for survivors of child sex abuse by removing the statute of limitation, providing a two-year lookback period and repealing the statute-of-repose designation that was inserted to thwart cases.

Since 2018, one-third of states have passed laws extending the civil statute of limitations and establishing a lookback window for child sexual abuse claims. We at Maryland Catholics for Action hope our General…

View Cache

The archbishop of Washington on Wednesday, addressing a National Press Club luncheon, said he was “embarrassed” at the charges of sex abuse recently filed against his predecessor and emphasized that the Church’s primary concern in such cases should be caring for victims.

The former archbishop of Washington, Theodore McCarrick, last week pleaded not guilty in a Massachusetts court to criminal charges of sex assault against a 16-year-old male; the acts allegedly took place in the 1970s while McCarrick was a priest.

McCarrick, a former cardinal who retired as Washington archbishop in 2006, was laicized in 2019 following a Vatican investigation that found him guilty of “sins against the Sixth Commandment with minors and with adults” and solicitation in the confessional. 

“I’m embarrassed,” Cardinal Gregory said of his predecessor’s alleged acts. “I’m embarrassed not with the discovery – although that’s certainly a part of my embarrassment. But I’m embarrassed because it’s absolutely…

View Cache

He fought the Catholic Church, he’s fought the government. Today, we salute the incomparable Father Bob Maguire.

He said it himself in the 2013 documentary about his life: when you mess with the church, you are in trouble. In fact, he was a little more pointy about it. “You can see it through history. The Communists, the Nazi’s, they all came undone when they took on the Roman Catholic Church. That is where the real power in the world lies.” So when Father Bob Maguire (1934) opened the door to one of his parishioners in 2002 and let him in, his fate was basically sealed. The man told him he had been sexually abused by George Pell decades before. He asked the priest to help him get heard. “That is all I needed to be seen to be part of a process to bring George undone,” Bob mused years later. “I had to…

View Cache

Poland’s top political leaders on Sunday attended the beatification of two revered figures of the Catholic church — a cardinal who led the Polish church’s resistance to communism and a blind nun who devoted her life to helping others who couldn’t see.

Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski and Mother Elzbieta Roza Czacka took a step toward sainthood at a time of declining church attendance and as some Poles have left the church over sex abuse scandals and the church’s coziness with the current right-wing government.

In a time of growing secularization and societal divisions, the celebration was a reminder of the moral authority and the unifying power the church once held over Poland.

The Mass was led by Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, the head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

It took place in the Temple of Divine Providence in Warsaw, attended by President Andrzej Duda, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki,…

View Cache

Author says unanswered questions remain regarding the treatment of women

Best-selling author Sally Rooney says modern Ireland’s secular pivot away from the Catholic era is incomplete, with unfinished business about why society locked up pregnant women they viewed as “undesirable members of Irish society”.

Rooney was asked by Der Spiegel magazine if she had endured pushback against her books from Ireland’s “Catholic milieu” similar to that endured in the past by Sinéad O’Connor.

In 1992 the singer was blacklisted after she tore up picture of Pope John Paul II on live US television in protest at clerical sexual abuse, and Catholic institutional structures she said enabled religious prey on children.

Rooney recalled how, as a result, O’Connor was “ostracised in the cultural and social life of Ireland” in the 1990s.

“She was seen as dangerous, at the same time she was very brave and right!” she told Der Spiegel. “People portrayed her…

View Cache

Gonzaga University, a Jesuit-run institution in the state of Washington, has established a special research fund to study sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and is taking steps to support local community members who have been particularly impacted by the crisis, especially Indigenous and Native students.

Those initiatives are among several recommendations that were outlined in a 46-page report that the university released Sept. 1 from its University Commission on Gonzaga’s Response to the Catholic Sexual Abuse Crisis. The commission’s work coincided with media reports that detailed a decadeslong pattern of sexually abusive Jesuits being permitted to live on campus while being shielded from accountability.

The Gonzaga report symbolizes the culmination of more than a year’s worth of commission meetings, presentations at faculty conferences, lectures and open listening sessions for students, faculty and staff where deep reservoirs of community pain, hurt and distrust related to…

View Cache

For 16 years a Blenheim woman endured rumours and speculation about her sexual harassment by an Anglican clergyman. A Human Rights Review Tribunal declaration means she can finally tell her full story.

When grieving mother Jacinda Thompson sought solace from her priest, he soothed her with his vision of her stillborn child “cradled in Jesus’ arms”. Just weeks later, the Reverend Michael van Wijk would be touching her thigh and trying to kiss her, even as she cried and begged him to stop.

It was the first time van Wijk sexually assaulted her, but not the last, Thompson told the Human Rights Review Tribunal last June, more than 15 years since that day.

Van Wijk had gone to Thompson’s Blenheim home for a spiritual mentoring session because his office was “a mess”, the decision said. He began with washing her feet, because he wanted to “serve as Jesus had served”….

View Cache

“He is to live in contemplation of his sins and pray for all of those affected by his conduct,” the Church said of the retired pastor’s “punishment.”

The Archdiocese of Boston has determined that a priest that led parishes under their supervision had sexually abused children in the 1960s. An internal “court” panel has determined that as punishment, he shall be barred from public ministry for the remainder of his life, meaning he cannot wear clerical attire, participate in Mass, or function as a priest for anyone.

Instead, “He is expected to dedicate his life to praying for victims and repenting of his past offenses,” the archdiocese announced. “In this way, the Church seeks even here to prevent any future abuse and to repair the injustice that has already taken place.”

Related: Vatican fears that more Catholic priests will be outed using Grindr data

Paul J. McLaughlin was ordained as…

View Cache

The Catholic Church planned to accommodate a priest who was on bail for sex-messaging a 15-year-old girl at a house on the grounds of a primary school.

Sosefo Sateki Raass, later found guilty of indecent communication with a person under 16 and sentenced to 100 hours’ community service, wasn’t told he couldn’t stay at the address until after his victim’s aunt complained to the Ministry of Education.

Church officials proposed the bail address but didn’t tell police or the Auckland District Court it was so close to young children – even though Raass had a bail condition preventing any unsupervised contact with under-16s.

The Auckland Catholic diocese has admitted it didn’t tell the board or principal of the Good Shepherd primary school in Balmoral, central Auckland, of its plans. The Ministry of Education could not alert them as Raass had pre-trial name suppression.

The church says that while Raass used…

View Cache

Lawsuits filed under the law make clear Albany diocese did too little for far too long.

This column expresses the views of the author, separate from those of the Times Union.

ALBANY — The window opened by the Child Victims Act is closed. The lawsuits are filed, though the legal wrangling continues.

We will hear more about that wrangling in the months ahead, as numbers and settlements are discussed and debated. But this much, at least, is already clear: Claims filed under the legislation have been devastating for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany.

For one thing, the reputation of former Bishop Howard Hubbard is in tatters.

Once a celebrated and beloved figure for many area Catholics, Hubbard has been directly accused of sexual abuse in at least seven Child Victims Act lawsuits. Though he denies the allegations, the volume of claims may have dismayed many who believed…

View Cache

A nearly 3-year-old bankruptcy case filed amid hundreds of child sexual abuse allegations has cost the Archdiocese of Santa Fe more than $2.3 million in legal fees alone.

Federal court records show the Roman Catholic institution has used the services of at least four law firms with expertise in cases involving clergy sexual abuse and bankruptcy. The archdiocese seeks to reach a settlement with 385 claimants in its December 2018 Chapter 11 filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Albuquerque.

This archdiocese and many dioceses across the nation, including the one in Gallup, have claimed bankruptcy in the Catholic Church scandal that began to receive attention in the early 1990s.

U.S. Bankruptcy Court records show the Albuquerque firm Walker & Associates this week billed the Archdiocese of Santa Fe $374,999 for work done over 13 months ending in July. Including bills for two previous periods, Walker’s billings have totaled about…

View Cache

Three retired priests with ties to northern Chautauqua County have been placed on administrative leave.

Bishop Michael W. Fisher of the Buffalo Catholic diocese said action was taken after officials were informed that informational documents have been filed with the federal Bankruptcy Court as part of the diocese’s chapter 11 reorganization proceeding. Specifically, bankruptcy claimants have filed confidential documents containing information about their allegations against the priests.

Upon learning of the allegations, the Diocese notified the offices of the appropriate District Attorneys, and confronted the priests, all of whom denied committing any acts of abuse. The Diocese also reported the claims to the Independent Review Board which will be responsible for appointing independent investigators. The priests accused are the following:

¯ The Rev. Robert Beiter, 82, who is retired and not currently active in ministry due to declining health is restricted from carrying out any priestly ministry or from presenting…

View Cache

Actions of late priest J. Donald Freeze were revealed in June, but another accuser had come forward earlier.

A now-deceased Catholic priest who was the provost and executive vice president at Georgetown University, and was accused of sexual misconduct by one former student, has also been accused by additional alumni, the university said. They include a man who said he tried to report an encounter with the priest to school officials in the 1980s but was referred to campus ministry — which he felt would answer to his alleged abuser.

J. Donald Freeze was provost, the school’s chief academic officer, from 1979 to 1991 and had worked at Georgetown in a variety of roles for years before that. He died in 2006. In June, Georgetown disclosed that Freeze had been accused by one former student of “non-consensual kissing and touching” more than 30 years ago. The university said…

View Cache

Bishop Michael W. Fisher on Friday suspended four retired priests from ministry, following abuse allegations lodged against them in confidential documents filed in federal bankruptcy court.

When confronted with the allegations, the priests denied committing any acts of abuse, diocese officials said in a news release.

The numbers are a striking rebuke to Buffalo Diocese officials who for decades downplayed the extent of abuse in the area and protected molester priests from prosecution and public accountability.

The accused priests are the Rev. Robert Beiter, 82; the Rev. Thomas Wopperer, 83; the Rev. Raymond Donohue, 63; and Monsignor Ronald P. Sciera, 86.

Diocese officials said they have notified the area district attorneys’ offices and a review board that is responsible for appointing an investigator to examine the claims.

The priests are on administrative leave and restricted from carrying out any ministry or presenting themselves as priests in public, pending an investigation…

View Cache

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — Four retired priests are now on administrative leave, according to Buffalo Diocese Bishop Michael Fisher.

Fisher tells News 4 this comes after the diocese found out about informational documents filed with the federal bankruptcy court as part of the diocese’s chapter 11 reorganization proceeding.

According to the diocese, bankruptcy claimants filed confidential documents containing information about their allegations against priests.

In a press release on Friday, the diocese said, “Upon learning of the allegations, the diocese notified the offices of the appropriate District Attorneys and confronted the priests, all of whom denied committing any acts of abuse. The diocese also reported the claims to the Independent Review Board, which will be responsible for appointing independent investigators.”

The priests accused include:

1. Father Robert Beiter (82): Retired and not currently active in ministry due to declining health is restricted from carrying out any priestly ministry or from presenting himself…

View Cache

ROME – Just two months after the founder of his order was given a 12-year jail sentence and defrocked for sexually abusing minors, Argentine Father Nicolas Parma Wednesday was sentenced to 17 years in prison on the same charges.

Formerly a member of Argentina’s Hermanos Discípulos de Jesús de San Juan Bautista, or “Brother Disciples of Jesus of St. John the Baptist,” Parma was accused by multiple people of sexual abuse in 2016 alongside the order’s founder, ex-priest Augustin Rosa.

Known in Argentina as “the Brown Brothers” because of the brown habits community members wore, the congregation began as a small group holding meetings in Lujan in the 1980s, but it grew rapidly and the community was formally established by Rosa in Salta in 1996, with a women’s community coming shortly after.

Members lived a contemplative prayer life, but also performed apostolic activities outside monastery walls, such as theatre shows and…

View Cache

A Catholic priest who formerly led parishes in Lowell and Marlborough has been barred from public ministry after an ecclesiastical panel found him guilty of sexually abusing a minor in the 1960s, the Archdiocese of Boston said Friday.

In a statement, the archdiocese confirmed the resolution of the case involving Rev. Paul J. McLaughlin, the former pastor of St. Peter Parish in Lowell and Immaculate Conception Parish in Marlborough.

The statement said McLaughlin, 91, had been “found guilty of child abuse and his sentence has been affirmed by the Vatican to live a life of Prayer and Penance.”

In light of that sentence, the archdiocese said, McLaughlin, who currently lives in California, is barred from exercising any public ministry, including celebrating public Masses. In addition, the statement said, he “may not provide spiritual direction, may not wear clerical attire, and cannot function” as a cleric.

“He is to live in…

View Cache

Ever since the world learned about priests and brothers abusing orphan boys at Mount Cashel, for 40 years Canada’s Catholics have lived with a public image of their Church as hypocritical and defensive.  As more abuse scandals rumbled across headlines and through the courts, public contempt for the Catholic Church became commonplace. Add onto this mountain of shame all that we’ve learned lately about Indian residential schools.

In response, a lay movement has been growing over the last year — a network of faithful lay Catholics who are not going to live with the scandals or the paralysis of their Church anymore. Concerned Lay Catholics (www.concernedlaycatholics.ca) have been inspired by Pope Francis to take ownership of their Church and its problems. There are representatives now in nine provinces, and growing.

Among the inspirations for this lay movement is abuse survivor William O’Sullivan, who has been picketing outside of St. Kevin’s…

View Cache

A pastor at Saint Francis de Sales Catholic Parish in Lake Zurich has been reinstated after allegations of child sexual abuse were unfounded, the archbishop said.

In November, Cardinal Blase Cupich, who is the Archbishop of Chicago, wrote in a letter to the St. Francis community announcing the investigation into Father David Ryan.

Ryan was accused of sexually abusing minors approximately 25 years ago while he was assigned to the Maryville Academy in Des Plaines.

Due to the investigation by officials and the Archdiocese of Chicago, Ryan was asked to step down from pastor until the investigation was complete.

On Thursday, Cupich sent a letter updating the St. Francis community on the case.

Cupich said state officials determined the allegations were unfounded.

On August 21, the archdiocese concluded there was insufficient reason to suspect Ryan had committed child sexual abuse, Cupich added.

Ryan was immediately reinstated as pastor Thursday.

Cupich…

View Cache

Authority based on ‘fictitious baptismal promises made by non-sentient babies’, says former president

The Catholic Church is at a critical crossroads in its history “and if it fails to choose the right path it risks an enduring permafrost”, former president Mary McAleese has said.

“Many of us are in growing despair of our Church’s inability to turn a critical spotlight on itself while shining a critical spotlight on the world at large,” she said, and referred to “its controlling clericalism, its cavalier misogyny, its evil homophobia, its institutional and clerical child sexual and physical abuse,its episcopal cover-ups that protected criminals and ignored victims, its lack of financial transparency and accountability”.

There was also “its relentless external advocacy of the right to life of the unborn while hypocritically ignoring the fact that the Church, whose primary mission is salvation, itself teaches that it cannot guarantee a right to eternal life for the…

View Cache

SALISBURY, Md. — Growing up in central Maryland, Mick Gillispie was eager to earn merit badges and move up the ranks in his local Boy Scout troop.

But as the teenager worked through the badges, an upsetting pattern emerged. No matter what new skills he needed to learn, his merit badge counselor always had a reason that Mick needed to take off his clothes.

Mick started picking merit badges that couldn’t possibly require him to undress: citizenship, communications, emergency preparedness.

It didn’t matter. His merit badge counselor always had an excuse.

Now 46, Gillispie can still smell the musty basement apartment where, at 15, he suddenly understood what was happening — the day he says his merit badge counselor, William H. Tross, groped him and tried to order him into the bedroom.

Gillispie earned the rank of Eagle Scout a few years later. He doesn’t talk much…

View Cache

Six California Catholic dioceses, including Fresno which covers Tulare County, settle with 197 victims abused as minors

LOS ANGELES – Six California Catholic dioceses including Fresno, which covers most of the Central Valley, paid $23.9 million to 197 victims abused by clergy members who opted to settle their claims instead of filing lawsuits.

The last claim from victims had been processed by the Independent Compensation Program (ICP) for Victims of Sexual Abuse by Diocesan Priests in California on Sept. 2, according to announcement by the Independent Oversight Committee. The dioceses launched the ICP in September 2019 to provide any victim/survivor of childhood sexual abuse by a priest a non-adversarial resolution, regardless of when the abuse occurred. The six participating dioceses were Fresno, Orange, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Diego, and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Together, the participating dioceses comprise more than 10 million Catholics, or about 80 percent of California’s…

View Cache

NORTH ADAMS — A priest who began his career in North Adams is the first to join the list of those “credibly accused” of sexual abuse since that roster expanded in June to include clergy who died before a survivor came forward.

An official with the Springfield Diocese said Wednesday that the Rev. James Paul Menge, who died in 2010, was added to the roster Sept. 1. More than one person provided a credible report that he engaged in the sexual abuse of a minor.

This isn’t the first time Menge has been identified as an abuser. In December 2008, 20 months before Menge’s death Aug. 6, 2010, a Greenfield law firm said it had secured a financial settlement from an abuse survivor who named Menge as the perpetrator. In November 2008, the diocese provided $4.5 million in compensation to 59 abuse victims, according to the website  View Cache

On Page 29 of the report issued by a commission at Gonzaga University charged with delving into the role of the university in the long-standing, but now ended, practice of sending retired Jesuit priests accused of sexual abuse to live at GU, there is an important question: “WHO KNEW WHAT WHEN?”

Some words follow that question – many, many words – but nothing like an answer. It surely does not plumb, even the tiniest bit, the degree to which GU President Thayne McCulloh or other university leaders were aware that the Society of Jesus had been putting sexual abusers out to pasture at GU since the 1970s.

The question of McCulloh’s knowledge, in particular, was raised by some faculty members when the news about the retired Jesuits blew up nationally in 2018. Several were deeply disappointed in his failure to prevent the practice or address it more specifically with the…

View Cache

The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors (PCPM) was established in 2014 as an advisory body at the service of the Holy Father. The mission entrusted to the PCPM is “to propose initiatives to the Roman Pontiff…for the purposes of promoting local responsibility in the particular Churches for the protection of all minors and vulnerable adults” (Statutes, Art. 1). The PCPM’s main concern from the start was how to find the best way to protect children and how to help the Pope and the Church achieve this goal. Its role, however, is not to take any responsibility for individual cases of abuse (which is the competence of a prosecutorial body or a court).

It became obvious that in many cases, the behaviour of the Church, which was intended to defend itself, was plunging it further and further into harm’s way, thus causing damage. The greatest resentment has been caused…

View Cache

Unanswered questions — disturbing ones — surround the case of a former school health aide charged with three second-degree felony counts of molesting a child.

Here’s what we know: Santa Fe police arrested 30-year-old Robert Apodaca in July over allegations he sexually abused a boy in 2019, including at the school nurse’s office at Gonzales Community School.

Apodaca and the boy knew each other through the North Santa Fe Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses. An elder at the congregation reported Apodaca to police after the family came to him in June. That elder, by the way, did exactly the right thing, unlike others in this mess.

The former health aide also is being investigated by state police over a more recent alleged incident of child molestation, this one at Santo Niño Regional Catholic School. Apodaca has not been charged in that case.

Of concern to parents is the man’s work record….

View Cache

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — A group of attorneys called a letter from the Fresno bishop read to parishioners Sunday “rambling, misleading, frankly bizarre” and written with the purpose of retaliating against former priest Craig Harrison.

“His obsessive fixation on Craig is troubling, and we are praying not only for the bishop’s health, but also that he begins to follow Christ’s teachings and be honest with the faithful,” the statement authored by local attorneys Kyle J. Humphrey, David A. Torres, H.A. Sala, Craig Edmonston, Jared Thompson and Danielle Humphrey says.

Harrison, the popular ex-pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church, resigned from the priesthood in March. Bishop Joseph V. Brennan said Harrison’s resignation came the same week a church trial was set to begin on allegations the priest engaged in misconduct with seven minors.

The attorneys denied that was the case.

“As Bishop Brennan knows, the implication that Craig’s resignation…

View Cache

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Wednesday announced a promotion for a Chilean priest who was one of the first to denounce child sex abuse in the clergy in his country.

Andres Gabriel Ferrada Moreira will become secretary of the Congregation for the Clergy from October, the number two position in the body responsible for the training of priests.

Moreira, 52, was ordained as a priest in 1999 and holds a doctorate in theology which he obtained in Rome.

He spoke out against the actions of the pedophile priest Fernando Karadima, who died last month in a retirement home in Chile aged 90.

Karadima, whose duties at one time included the training of priests, was accused of abusing young boys throughout the 1980s and ’90s, a scandal that rocked the church in Chile.

A Vatican canonical court found him guilty in 2011, and in 2018 he was defrocked by Pope Francis.

…

View Cache

A gay Irish priest, honoured by President Michael D. Higgins for his work on LGBT rights, is said to be ‘deeply relieved’ a lawsuit alleging he had abused a US teen has been dropped.

Fr Bernárd J. Lynch, from Clare and now living in London, had said the allegation of abuse dating back 40 years are ‘misplaced and malicious’. 

On Thursday, an organisation supporting reform of the Catholic Church, We Are Church Ireland, said there had been a ‘complete vindication’ of Fr Lynch. ‘We are delighted to learn that the defamatory allegations made once again against Fr Bernárd Lynch have turned out to be without basis or even a scintilla of evidence to support them,’ said spokesman Colm Holmes.

‘These false allegations were made in 2019 just as Fr Bernárd Lynch was receiving a Distinguished Service Award for the Irish Abroad from President Michael D. Higgins at the Áras –…

View Cache

Robert Greene’s nonfiction movies are studies of processes and re-examinations of the past.

They ask how does one prepare to tell a story? Which stories are we choosing to tell? How do we depict stories that are uncomfortable or emotional? In his movie “Kate Plays Christine,” Greene documented the process of actress Kate Lyn Sheil as she was preparing to portray Florida reporter Christine Chubbuck on the day she killed herself on air, capturing the uncomfortable questions and doubts about whether or not they should even tell that story. 

His previous film, “Bisbee ‘17,” looked at a Southwestern town commemorating the 100th anniversary of an illegal deportation and the scars left behind on the local families still living there. Part of the town’s event was a re-enactment of that fateful event, an idea that led Greene to think about the premise for his latest movie, “Procession,” which premiered last week…

View Cache

Wyandotte County prosecutors have dismissed a criminal case against a Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas charged with sexually abusing a minor.

The Rev. Scott Kallal faced two felony counts of aggravated indecent liberties with a child stemming from incidents that allegedly occurred in 2015.

Kallal’s case went to trial in September 2019 and ended in a hung jury. A new trial — delayed due to COVID-19 — was set to take place next year, but the Wyandotte County District Attorney’s Office dismissed the case last week. The action was announced Wednesday by the KCK archdiocese.

The District Attorney’s Office said the decision was made following discussions with the alleged victim’s family.

“After lengthy consultation with the family, the District Attorney’s Office has decided it is not in the best interests of the victim to try the case a second time,” it said Wednesday night in…

View Cache

The Church needs a thorough revision of canon law and a commission to oversee this revision should include lay people, one of the country’s top barristers, Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws has said.

Speaking as part of a panel on the theme, Insisting on Sharing Authority at this week’s Root and Branch lay-led synod, the Scottish lawyer, broadcaster and Labour member of the House of Lords said a radical revision of canon law should be a “key call” from the synod.

She said a commission to oversee reform should “systematically go through the structures of the canon law and make them appropriate to the 21st century” and it should sit in public as it heard evidence.

Describing herself as “a firm believer in reform”, she said: “I really feel that we have to persuade the current leadership [in the Church] that they must cede power in order to survive.”

Elsewhere in the…

View Cache

PLATTSBURGH — A Minnesota-based firm on Tuesday launched a database it hopes will aid child abuse survivors, law enforcement and fellow attorneys in their efforts to seek justice from the Catholic Church in New York state.

The virtual event hosted by Jeff Anderson & Associates featured a breakdown of statistics for all Catholic dioceses in the state, including the Diocese of Ogdensburg, which spans the North Country.

Anderson said the purpose of the report was, in part, “to identify those institutions and Catholic bishops across this country who have been complicit in allowing children to have been abused and to do what we can with each survivor, one at a time, to make sure that we are doing something today to protect kids tomorrow.”

2,801 complaints

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and to allow more survivors to come forward, the legislature passed a bill, signed into law by Gov. Andrew Cuomo,…

View Cache

Lawyers have the potential to facilitate healing, build bridges and bring about a more just and inclusive society when they utilize restorative justice practices within our courts and communities.

This is the driving idea behind the new Initiative on Restorative Justice and Healing (IRJH) at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, which was officially launched on Sept. 8. During an event at the Minneapolis Club, Founding Director Father Daniel Griffith, along with other program leaders, shared their vision for the new initiative. 

“I am heartened by the launch of the Initiative on Restorative Justice and Healing,” Griffith said. “It is a vital time to foster greater justice and healing in our community and I look forward to the contributions that IRJH can make to informative dialogue and meaningful change.” 

Restorative justice is a worldwide movement that dates to the 1970s. Its concepts have…

View Cache

Dear Parishioners of St. Francis de Sales Parish, 

Last November, I informed you of an accusation against your pastor, Father David F. Ryan, and that, in keeping with our procedures, he was asked to step aside from his pastoral duties until a thorough investigation and process could be completed.  He has fully cooperated with civil authorities and the Archdiocese of Chicago during these months.  

Following the determination by state officials, who are charged with the protection of minors, that the allegation of child abuse was unfounded, the Independent Review Board of the Archdiocese of Chicago investigated the allegations in accordance with our usual procedures.  At their meeting on Saturday, August 21, 2021, they found there was insufficient reason to suspect Father Ryan had committed sexual abuse of a minor.  Therefore, I am pleased to inform you that I am reinstating Father Ryan as your pastor effective immediately.  

These have been…

View Cache