ABUSE TRACKER

UNITED STATES
Blog Talk Radio

In our first hour, we will discuss the First Amendment, separation of church and state, and religious privilege in America.

Our guest, Prof. Mitch, is a lawyer by training. He has worked for the American Civil Liberties Union and as a community organizer. Currently, he is an administrator at a major New York university where he also teaches American constitutional law, criminal law, and oral advocacy.

Also joining us for the discussion is Robert Baty, who started a petition to the White House asking that the Obama administration lead an effort to get Congress to repeal the parsonage income tax exemption enjoyed by religious ministers.

In our second hour, Alex Grenier will be joining us to share a disturbing and explosive story. Alex was sued by his stepfather, a pastor and police chaplain, because of his writings about abuse. The lawsuit has outraged religious and nontheists throughout the country who started the #WhoWouldJesusSue movement.

Alex is the owner of CalvaryChapelAbuse.com, a blog dedicated to dealing with abuse and corruption in the Calvary Chapel System of Churches that claims 1,500 to 2,000 churches nationwide and all over the world.

At the top of the 3rd hour, we’ll be joined by Judy Block-Jones, Midwest Associate Director of SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests), who will tell us what SNAP thinks of the new pope.

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ARGENTINA
New Republic

BY SAM FERGUSON

While the world has generally welcomed the Catholic Church’s selection of the Argentine Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio as pope, one large and dark question hangs over his ascension: As the head of the Jesuit order during Argentina’s last dictatorship, was he complicit with the military regime that kidnapped, tortured, and murdered thousands of its citizens?

Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, has rarely spoken about his own role in what’s known as the “Dirty War,” during which at least 9,000 people were forcibly disappeared. But in 2010, he appeared as a witness in the criminal trial of eighteen officers who had worked at the notorious Naval Mechanics School, where the country’s military junta detained political prisoners—including a pair of Jesuit priests who’d been kidnapped shortly after the regime took power in a 1976 coup. Bergoglio, who was not a defendant in the case, insisted on clerical testimonial privilege and did not testify in open court; proceedings were held in his office. As part of my research into that trial, I obtained access to a transcript from the hearing, during which prosecutors and human rights lawyers grilled him for more than four hours over his alleged complicity in the kidnappings. The transcript has not been widely circulated, though it recently appeared in Spanish on the website of an Argentine human rights NGO. It offers a unique insight into the steps Bergoglio took and did not take to save the desaparecidos.

By the time he testified, Bergoglio had been facing criticism about the kidnapping for years. His critics allege that he withdrew Church protection from the priests, Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics, who worked with the poor in the Bajo Flores slum of Buenos Aires. According to this theory, Bergoglio had warned the priests that they should abandon the slum because sectors of the military and church saw their activity as “subversive.” When the priests refused, he allegedly told them they’d have to leave the Compañia de Jesus, their local order, if they wanted to keep working there—effectively giving the green light to the military junta to detain them. In a 1999 interview, conducted shortly before he died, Yorio said that he faulted Bergoglio for his kidnapping. Bergoglio denied complicity. After the interview was published in a book in 2005, a local human rights lawyer filed a criminal complaint against Bergoglio over the incident. The courts, however, have not taken any steps to indict Bergoglio, according to the lawyer, Marcelo Parrilli. But the interview appeared just as Bergoglio was being mentioned as a possible successor to Pope John Paul II.

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ROME
Fox News Latino

Hours after becoming the leader of the global Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis had a brief, unscheduled visit to a basilica in Rome that is home to a former Boston Archbishop who was involved in the diocese’s sex abuse scandal in 2002.

What transpired in the short interaction between the pope and Cardinal Bernard Law has become a point of contention between international media outlets and the Vatican.

Both the Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano and the British tabloid the Daily Mail reported that during Pope Francis’ stop at the Basilica Santa Maria Maggiore, he was briefly greeted by Law. The pope then demanded that Law be removed and went on to command that “he is not to come to this church anymore,” according to the Daily Mail.

Il Fatto Quotidiano reported that Pope Francis ordered Law to stop appearing in public at the basilica and that the new pope, “as his first act of purification,” is preparing to send Law to a cloistered monastery.

A Vatican spokesperson, however, told the National Catholic Reporter that the reports of Pope Francis’ order to move Law to a monastery are “completely and totally false.”

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Mar. 16, 2013

Rome —
In the first clear signal that Pope Francis may be serious about reform, he’s decided that the heads of the various Vatican offices will keep their jobs for now, but he’s not making any definitive appointments.

It’s customary for new popes to swiftly reconfirm the department heads who lose their positions when the previous pontificate ends, and then take his time about bringing in his team. The fact that Francis has not followed that path may suggest that significant personnel moves will come sooner rather than later.

So far, the storyline about Francis has been mostly about style – taking the bus with the other cardinals, preferring to walk rather than being driven, packing his own bags and paying his own hotel bill, and setting aside his prepared texts for off-the-cuff personal reflections.

At some point, however, style will have to give way to substance, and today’s announcement marks the first indication of what that substance might look like.

Vatican-watchers are paying keen attention above all to what Francis does about the all-important position of Secretary of State, held under Benedict XVI by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. Fairly or not, Bertone shoulders most of the blame for perceived breakdowns in business management over the last eight years, and most people presume that Francis will move quickly to bring in his own “prime minister.”

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VATICAN CITY
John Thavis

A two-sentence communiqué from the Vatican today contained an important signal about Pope Francis’ intentions regarding the Roman Curia.

As is normal, the new pope has confirmed that Vatican officials will continue in their various positions donec aliter provideatur – “until otherwise provided.”

What was different this time around was the line that followed: “The Holy Father, in fact, wants to take a certain time for reflection, prayer and dialogue before making any definitive appointments or confirmations.”

That seemed a clear indication that changes are coming, and perhaps big ones, in the Vatican lineup.

As my friend Alessandro Speciale pointed out to me, when Pope Benedict was elected eight years ago, he issued a statement that re-appointed Cardinal Angelo Sodano as secretary of state, reconfirmed the secretaries of Vatican departments in their five-year terms and pretty much left everyone else in place, too.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Agency

By Kevin J. Jones

Vatican City, Mar 16, 2013 / 01:02 pm (CNA).- Leaked U.S. State Department cables published by Wikileaks show that the U.S. Vatican Embassy saw the future Pope Francis as a contender for the papacy in the 2005 conclave, reporting him to be a “wise pastor” who could appeal to allies of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

Six cables mention Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Archbishop of Buenos Aires who became Pope Francis on March 13. One of the unclassified cables, dated April 18, 2005, includes a detailed profile that examined the Argentine cardinal as a possible successor to Pope John Paul II.

“Bergoglio exemplifies the virtues of the wise pastor that many electors value,” said the cable authored by the U.S. Embassy to the Vatican. “Observers have praised his humility: he has been reluctant to accept honors or hold high office and commutes to work on a bus.”

The cable was signed by the U.S. embassy’s then-Charge d’Affaires D. Brent Hardt and was sent the day the 2005 conclave began. It discussed the future Pope Francis as one of 16 possible candidates.

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SOUTH AFRICA
RTE News

Survivors of sexual abuse have reacted angrily to comments by a Roman Catholic cardinal that paedophilia is an illness and not a criminal condition.

Archbishop of Durban in South Africa Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier made the remarks in a BBC interview.

Cardinal Fox Napier took part in the election of Pope Francis.

He was asked what the new pontiff could do to repair damage to the Catholic Church’s reputation caused by the way it dealt with sexual abuse by priests.

He said paedophilia was an illness not a criminal condition and questioned whether someone with such a psychological defect automatically deserved to be punished.

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ROME
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on March 16, 2013

In his first hours as the new head of the church, Pope Francis made a self-effacing joke, carried his own luggage, rode on a bus, paid his hotel bill and asked his flock to bless him.

Then, he visited Cardinal Bernard Law.

I’m not a sophisticated or well educated person. And while much of the world’s problems seem complicated to me, I’m sure I too often see too much in “black and white.” But when it comes to sex crimes against kids I can’t help it. It’s seems very simple to me: we ought not to celebrate or honor or promote or praise adults who enable predators to hurt children.

And so to me, whatever good will Pope Francis may have begun to engender with his humility and his ‘common touch’ was immediately erased by his visit with the prelate who is the most disgraced Catholic official in the US.

(Granted, LA’s Cardinal Roger Mahony may have stripped Law from that title in recent years.)

I’m sure the Pope didn’t intend to further hurt already wounded victims and already betrayed Catholic. But I’m sure the same could be said of Ireland’s Cardinal Brady or Germany’s Archbishop Mueller or Kansas City’s Bishop Finn or any of the other thousands of prelates who have enabled child molesting clerics to molest more children – they didn’t intend to let more boys and girls be raped and sodomized.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Francis of Assisi preached to help raise funds for the illiterate poor in a patriarchical society amidst a corrupt and monarchical medieval papacy that answered occasionally to a few European kings. Francis was not a 13th Century papal reformer. He left the heavy reform lifting to the 16th Century Luther. Pope Francis preaches to a literate poor in an egalitarian society amidst a corrupt medieval papacy that is steadily being compelled, most often by women, to answer worldwide to the modern rule of law. Most indications to date are that Pope Francis, elected secretly by celibate and aging patriarchs, will not likely be a papal reformer either.

Inevitably, women will be the ones who both save the literate, and legally equal, poor and reform the patriarchical papacy. Pope Francis’ incessant message to couples has been to forgo contraception and have unplanned children. He promises he will then baptise these unplanned children and try to help support them through charities overseen by purportedly heterosexual and celibate males. This failed approach just won’t cut it today. Women have been there, done that and have moved on!

Pope Francis’ predecessor, ex-Pope Joseph Ratzinger, sought desperately to evade the rule of law as he frantically pushed to downsize Catholicism to a financially self-sufficient cult of exhalted hierarchs that were supported by diehard traditionalists, opportunistic plutocrats and accumulated wealth. Without accountability, he even attempted to continue to suppress women and to endanger children as acceptable collateral damage.

The 2005 description of Pope Francis linked in Jamie Manson’s article accessible below, and his early papal actions to date, suggest strongly that Pope Francis will likely just be a smoother and savvier Latin version of the academic Germanic Ratzinger, without the red slippers and the ever present Georgeous Georg, of course. His record of preserving the traditionalist Jesuit order from a military “siege” suggests he could have some success, for awhile at least, in delaying government prosecutors from storming the Vatican archives’ walls. However, his recent meeting with Cardinal Law and permitting the South African Cardinal to offer his apologia for pedophiles both suggest he may fail even at that. Even if Pope Francis now takes action against Cardinals Law, Brady, Mahony, Rigali and O’Brien and Bishop Finn, for example, he will merely be doing what 100 out of 100 leaders of any other multinational organization would have done long ago. As I said before, it is too little too late.

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JOLIET (IL)
My Suburban Life

By BRIAN HUDSON – bhudson@shawmedia.com
Created: Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Updated: Wednesday, March 13, 2013

The Diocese of Joliet has expanded its public list of priests facing “credible” accusations of sexual abuse on Tuesday — some of whom are being named for the first time, including a former chaplain at Driscoll High School in Addison.

After releasing hundreds of documents in response to a court order Tuesday, the diocese separately added nine names to a list of priests facing credible or substantiated allegations of abuse. The list, which is available on the diocese website, now stands at 34.
Many of the newly added priests are facing allegations and have already been accused in lawsuits. Others are facing accusations that are still under investigation by church officials.

Some of the new priests, however, are being publicly implicated seemingly for the first time.

Among the additions is the Rev. William Dugal, who served as chaplain at Driscoll Catholic High School in Addison until 1996, according to his obituary. He was removed from ministry in 2002 and died in 2009, the same year that Driscoll closed.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the disgraced former head of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, has been accused of sexually assaulting a priest when he was already a Cardinal.

By John Bingham, Religious Affairs Editor, Vatican City
4:35PM GMT 16 Mar 2013

He is alleged to have attempted to grope the man in Rome on the night of a drinks party to celebrate becoming a “prince of the Church” in October 2003, attended by a raft of bishops and dignitaries.

It is the first allegation to relate directly to his time as a Cardinal and the first suggestion that his sexual misconduct extended to the centre of the Catholic Church.

It follows an admission by the Cardinal that he was guilty of sexual misconduct, with his personal standards falling below those expected of him “as a priest, archbishop and cardinal”.

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FLORIDA
Miami Herald

BY JAY WEAVER
jweaver@MiamiHerald.com

When the Rev. Rafael Escala served at St. Timothy Catholic Church in West Kendall in the late 1980s, he caught a teenaged altar boy stealing $60 from the collection.

Escala threatened to report the teen to his father and the police. But rather than carry out the threat, the priest sexually abused the 16-year-old boy, according to the victim, who obtained a financial settlement from the Archdiocese of Miami in January.

“He told me that I had to ask God for forgiveness for stealing the money after he abused me,” said the victim, a Miami man who did not want to be identified. “He gave me penance.”

The victim also reached a settlement in the same agreement regarding molestation claims against a second priest, the Rev. Oscar Mendez, a Jesuit, while he served at St. Timothy in the 1990s.

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BOSTON (MA)
Religion News Service

Michael J. O’Loughlin | Mar 15, 2013

Boston Catholics (myself included) were rooting for Cardinal Sean O’Malley to ascend to the throne of St. Peter this week. That didn’t pan out, as we all know, but maybe Catholics there received something of a consolation prize.

The British tabloid The Daily Mail writes that Italian media is reporting that Boston’s disgraced former archbishop, Cardinal Bernard Law, 82, is being banished from his cushy residence by Pope Francis:

But first days are all about making a good impression – even when you’re the Pope.

So when the appearance of a disgraced cardinal threatened to cast a shadow over his first engagement, Francis I made sure it couldn’t happen again – by banning him from his own church.

Cardinal Bernard Law resigned as Archbishop of Boston in 2002, after being accused of actively covering up for a litany of paedophile priests.’

Despite the scandal which exploded to engulf the entire church, he was given an honorary position at the Basilica Santa Maria Maggiore, in Rome.

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SOUTH AFRICA
The Sun

By JACK LOSH

THE new Pope faces more child sex abuse controversy after a cardinal today branded paedophilia an illness NOT a crime.

Catholic Archbishop of Durban Wilfrid Fox Napier defended paedophiles who had been abused as children, saying they were not criminally responsible for their actions as somebody “who chooses to do something like that”.

The South African – among the 115 cardinals at the Vatican who elected Pope Francis earlier this week – called paedophilia a “psychological disorder”.

Speaking out just days after the papal conclave, Cardinal Napier said: “What do you do with disorders? You have got to try and put them right.

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INDIA
Zee News

Coimbatore: A 63-year-old priest of a church here was arrested on Saturday on charges of attempting to outrage the modesty of a woman during prayers.

John Mark, the priest of CSI Church, was arrested on a complaint from the 48-year-old woman, police said.

The woman, in her complaint lodged with the City Police Commissioner’s office, alleged that the priest made advances towards her and touched her when she was attending prayers on March 10.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 16 March 2013 (VIS) – Holy Father Francis has expressed the desire that the Heads and members of the Dicasteries of the Roman Curia, as well as their Secretaries, and also the President of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, continue “donec aliter provideatur”, that is, provisionally, in their respective positions.

The Holy Father wishes to reserve time for reflection, prayer, and dialogue before any final appointment or confirmation is made.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 16 March 2013 (VIS) – This morning in the the Paul VI Audience Hall, the Holy Father greeted over 6,000 journalists and those working in the media as well as for the Holy See, accredited either permanently or temporarily, to cover the events related to the Conclave. He addressed them with the following words:

“Dear friends, I am pleased, at the beginning of my ministry in the See of Peter, to meet with you who have worked here in Rome at this very intense period that began with the surprising announcement of my venerated predecessor Benedict XVI, this past 11 February. I warmly greet each of you.”

“The role of the mass media has been continuously growing in recent times,” he said, “so much so that it has become essential to narrate the events of contemporary history to the world. I therefore especially thank you for your distinguished service these past few days—you have had a bit of work to do, haven’t you?—when the eyes of the Catholic world, and not only, were turned toward the Eternal City, in particular to this area that has St. Peter’s tomb as its focal point. In these past few weeks you’ve gotten a chance to talk about the Holy See, the Church, her rites and traditions, her faith, and, in particular, the role of the Pope and his ministry.”

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SOUTH AFRICA
BBC News

The Catholic Archbishop of Durban, Wilfrid Fox Napier, has described paedophilia as a psychological “illness, not a criminal condition”.

The South African cardinal told the BBC that people who were themselves abused as children and then abused others needed to be examined by doctors.

He was one of 115 cardinals who took part in the conclave at the Vatican to elect Pope Francis earlier this week.

The Church has recently been dogged by scandals over clerical sex abuse.

Criticism

In an interview with the Stephen Nolan programme on BBC Radio 5 live, Cardinal Napier referred to paedophilia as “a psychological condition, a disorder”.

“What do you do with disorders? You’ve got to try and put them right.

“If I – as a normal being – choose to break the law, knowing that I’m breaking the law, then I think I need to be punished.”

He said he knew at least two priests, who became paedophiles after themselves being abused as children.

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SOUTH AFRICA
Global Post

Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier of Durban describes pedophilia as mental illness that should be treated with sympathy, not punishment.

South Africa’s Catholic Archbishop of Durban, Wilfrid Fox Napier, commented in a BBC interview that he believed pedophiles who had themselves been abused as children are not “criminally responsible,” a stance that has swiftly earned the cardinal international condemnation.

“What do you do with disorders? You’ve got to try and put them right,” said Napier. “If I – as a normal being – choose to break the law, knowing that I’m breaking the law, then I think I need to be punished.”

Read more from GlobalPost: Can the Catholic Church outgrow the pope’s antediluvian philosophy?

“Now don’t tell me that those people are criminally responsible like somebody who chooses to do something like that,” said the 72-year-old Napier, who cited other pedophile priests who knew of who had been sexually abused as children in the BBC interview, which can be listened to in full at this link.

“I don’t think you can really take the position and say that person deserves to be punished. He was himself damaged,” Napier said.

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SOUTH AFRICA
Raw Story

South African cardinal who helped elect Pope Francis said on Saturday that paedophilia is a psychological illness, not “a criminal condition”.

Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier, the Archbishop of Durban, told BBC radio that people who become paedophiles after being abused as children should be treated by doctors.

His comments come as Francis, the first pontiff to hail from Latin America, takes the helm of a Catholic Church rocked by thousands of cases of child abuse by paedophile priests.

Napier, who was among the 115 cardinals who elected Francis at the Vatican on Wednesday, told the BBC: “From my experience paedophilia is actually an illness — it is not a criminal condition.”

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VATICAN CITY
TrustLaw

Sat, 16 Mar 2013

VATICAN CITY, March 16 (Reuters) – Pope Francis has decided that all top administrators in the Vatican bureaucracy will keep their posts while he reflects on any necessary changes, the Vatican said on Saturday.

There had been speculation that the new pope could make swift changes to the Curia, the Vatican bureaucracy that has been at the centre of allegations of corruption, infighting and intrigue.

“The Holy Father, wants in fact, to give himself a certain amount of time for reflection, prayer and dialogue before any (new) appointments or definitive confirmations,” a statement said.

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VATICAN CITY
Newser

By NICOLE WINFIELD | Associated Press

Pope Francis offered intimate insights Saturday into the moments after his election, telling journalists that he was immediately inspired to take the name of St. Francis of Assisi because of his work for peace and the poor _ and was embraced by another cardinal amid applause inside the conclave.

“Let me tell you a story,” Francis said in a break from his prepared text during a special gathering for thousands of journalists, media workers and guests in the Vatican’s auditorium.

Francis then described how he was comforted by his friend, Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes, as it appeared the voting was going his way and it seemed “a bit dangerous” that he would reach the two-thirds necessary to be elected.

When the threshold was reached, applause erupted in the frescoed Sistine Chapel.

“He (Hummes) hugged me. He kissed me. He said don’t forget about the poor,” Francis recalled. “And that’s how in my heart came the name Francis of Assisi,” who devoted his life to the poor, missionary outreach and caring for God’s creation.

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VATICAN CITY
Los Angeles Times

By Tracy Wilkinson
March 16, 2013

VATICAN CITY — He’s a charmer.
Pope Francis on Saturday went before several thousand journalists, thanked them for their work, told a joke or two and even blessed (or at least patted) someone’s seeing-eye dog.

In a custom that dates at least to John Paul II, one of the pope’s first public appearances was a meeting in the modern Paul VI Hall with an estimated 5,000 reporters based in Rome or flown in to cover the week’s historic events.

Francis sat on the stage in a large but relatively simple chair and read a speech that thanked the press for its work during this “intense period” which had focused the world’s eyes on the Roman Catholic Church.

Then, departing from his text, he offered to tell the story of how he chose his name, and in so doing provided a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the conclave, the secret vote by cardinals to select a new pontiff. He is the first Pope Francis, and some have wondered which Francis was his inspiration.

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DEUTSCHLAND
dradio

Jesuiten-Pater erwartet von Papst Franziskus beim Missbrauchsskandal offene Haltung

Pater Klaus Mertes im Gespräch mit Bettina Klein

Papst Franziskus solle wieder Ordnung in die Kurie bringen, sagt Pater Klaus Mertes, Jesuit und Leiter des Kollegs St. Blasien. Dass der neue Pontifex “von außen” kommt, könne hierbei von Vorteil sein. Außerdem müssen vor allem den Opfern des Missbrauchsskandals zugehört werden.

Bettina Klein: Zum ersten Mal also ein Jesuit als Papst. Vor der Sendung habe ich mit Pater Klaus Mertes darüber gesprochen, ehemaliger Leiter des Canisius-Kollegs in Berlin, und ich habe ihn zunächst gefragt, weshalb es das eigentlich noch nie zuvor gegeben hat.

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DEUTSCHLAND
General-Anzeiger

[Grenzverletzungen im AKO Pro Scouting am Aloisiuskolleg Bonn – Bad Godesberg]

Von Ebba Hagenberg-Miliu
BAD GODESBERG. Den zweiten Aufklärungsbericht zu den Missbrauchsfällen am Aloisiuskolleg (Ako), speziell zu den “Grenzverletzungen im Ako-pro-Scouting”, präsentierte am Freitag Ako-Rektor Pater Johannes Siebner. Er habe den von Arnfried Bintig verfassten 135 Seiten langen Bericht mit Bestürzung gelesen. “Ich bin erschüttert, was wir hier erfahren. Ich bin beschämt ob der vielen Einzelschicksale und ob der perfiden und brutalen Vorgehensweise des ehemaligen Leiters des Ako-pro-Seminars über so lange Zeit.”

Der Bericht handelt von sexualisierten Gesprächen, Aufforderungen zu sexuellen Handlungen bis zu direkten sexuellen Übergriffen. Er schildert Dinge, die ein in der Verantwortung stehender Bonner Pädagoge über Jahre ungeahndet von Schutzbefohlenen erzwungen haben soll. Der Bericht schildert das Leid, die Traumatisierung, das Gezeichnetsein von Opfern und ihren Angehörigen bis heute.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Aargauer Zeiting

Von von Christian Berzins

Er gilt als Papst der Armen, als Vorkämpfer für Freiheit und Gerechtigkeit. Doch in den Jahren der argentinischen Militärdiktatur hat der neue Papst Franziskus offensichtlich eine umstrittene Rolle gespielt.

Menschenrechtler werfen ihm vor, mit schuld an der Entführung zweier Jesuitenpater gewesen zu sein, die 5 Monate von den Todesschwadronen der Junta verschleppt worden waren. Auch habe er es an deutlicher, offener Kritik an der Militärdiktatur immer wieder vermissen lassen.

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DEUTSCHLAND
BGLand

Teisendorf – Bei den laufenden Ermittlungen habe sich der Missbrauchsverdacht gegen einen Teisendorfer Pfarrer nicht bestätigt – sagt zumindest sein Anwalt.

Die Missbrauchsvorwürfe gegen einen Pfarrer aus Teisendorf haben sich nach Ansicht seines Anwalts nicht erhärtet. Dem Pfarrer wird vorgeworfen in Österreich junge Männer sexuell missbraucht zu haben. Dazu wurde mittlerweile auch das mutmaßliche Hauptopfer vernommen.

Wie Anwalt Michael Dohr im Bayernwelle-Interview sagte, dürfe er sich aber nicht konkreter zum Fall äußern, da es sich um ein laufendes Verfahren handele. Dohr rechnet damit, dass noch vor Ostern ein weiterer Zeuge vernommen wird.

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ARGENTINA
Indepedent European Daily Express

BUENOS AIRES, Mar 16 (IPS) – Argentine archbishop Jorge Bergoglio was selected as pope at a time when the Roman Catholic Church in this South American country is facing a rebellion by priests and laypersons who reject the role of the church leadership during the 1976-1983 dictatorship and the lack of reparations for past omissions and complicities.

The accusations against Bergoglio for his alleged ties to the dictatorship, which made headlines around the world when his appointment as pope was announced by the Vatican, are just the tip of the iceberg of a controversy that has raged for decades without a solution and which is coming to light as the regime’s human rights violators have been brought to trial since the amnesty laws were scrapped.

Groups like Curas en la Opción por los Pobres (Priests with an Option for the Poor), Cristianos por el Tercer Milenio (Christians for the Third Millennium) or Colectivo Teología de la Liberación (Liberation Theology Collective) have voiced increasingly harsh criticism against the Argentine bishops’ conference’s shortcomings in terms of self-criticism, in spite of an apology and pledge to investigate issued a few months ago.

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SCOTLAND
Herald Scotland

Saturday 16 March 2013

CARDINAL Keith O’Brien is being investigated for sexual misconduct in the Vatican on the very night he was made a cardinal, The Herald can reveal.

The cardinal is alleged to have assaulted a priest at the Scots College in Rome in October 2003, hours after being awarded the red mitre by Pope John Paul II.

The priest, who is Scottish but now based in London, made a formal complaint to the Vatican’s Congregation of Bishops last September, after which Cardinal O’Brien was summoned immediately to Rome.

The complaint, which was dealt with by Cardinal Marc Ouellet of Quebec, who was one of the early front-runners this week to become Pope, was the first which eventually led to the cleric’s downfall and is not from one of the four complainers whose allegations were made public last month.

It is understood the complaint involved an attempt to grope the priest, who was known to Cardinal O’Brien. Alcohol had been consumed at an event in the Scots College attended by many priests who had travelled to Rome especially for his elevation. Scots based at the Vatican also attended.

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DIXON (IL)
My State Line

By: Matt Mershon

Updated: March 15, 2013

DIXON – One catholic priest is no longer with his parish after the church he worked for announced he and his computer are being investigated by police. Parishioners, however, are left to their own devices to determind why exactly the priest is no where to be found.

A letter to parishioners of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Dixon acknowledged Father John Gow’s absence from the parish on Highland Avenue. Parishioners say Gow left the parish before Christmas of 2012.

The author of the letter from the Diocese of Rockford, Msgr. Eric Barr, writes that Fr. Gow had been removed by the Diocese because police are currently investigating conduct of the priest, “relative to his computer use.” The letter adds that Gow is receiving treatment for this supposed issue that’s, “affecting his priesthood.”

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CALIFORNIA
Appeal-Democrat

March 15, 2013

The attorney for a Catholic priest accused of kissing a 16-year-old Yuba City girl called the incident a “witch hunt” on Friday, while prosecutors said the clergyman knows he violated the law.

The Rev. Julio Cesar Guarin-Sosa, 43, of Colombia is charged with a felony count of false imprisonment and misdemeanor counts of annoying or molesting a minor and sexual battery in connection with a March 8 incident in Yuba City.

Sutter County Judge Susan E. Green entered not-guilty pleas on Guarin-Sosa’s behalf on Friday.

“This case is a witch hunt, your honor,” defense attorney Markus Dombois said. “The conduct may be inappropriate in this country, but it may be an everyday occurrence in his country.”

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UNITED STATES
NBC Bay Area

By Amanda Bonafiglia

Saturday, Mar 16, 2013

The group SNAP — the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests — wants a meeting with the newly-elected pontiff.

The group’s midwest director in Chicago on Friday called for a new rule mandating abusive priests be turned over to the police.

“We want to begin a new dialogue with him, and with the church we want to begin a real dialogue about prevention of child sexual abuse,” Peter Isely said outside the Chicago archdiocesan headquarters.

He was flanked by a small number of men and women abused as children asking for action to be taken against priests who have mistreated children.

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SOUTH AFRICA
The Independent (UK)

A South African cardinal has said paedophilia is not “a criminal condition”, but a psychological illness.

The church is still dealing with historic international evidence of sexual abuse by priests and allegations of a cover-up.

As recently as this month, the BBC claimed to have seen evidence that bishops in the Catholic Church in Scotland knew about 20 allegations of child sex abuse by priests between 1985 and 1995.

Wilfrid Fox Napier, The Catholic Archbishop of Durban, told BBC Radio 5 Live that people who were abused during childhood and became paedophiles were not criminally responsible for their actions in the same way as somebody “who chooses to do something like that”.

Cardinal Napier was among the 115 cardinals in the Vatican conclave that elected Pope Francis earlier this week. He called paedophilia a “psychological disorder.”

He said: “What do you do with disorders? You have got to try and put them right. If I as a normal being choose to break the law knowing that I am breaking the law, then I think I need to be punished.

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NEW YORK
Road to Recovery

[note: This does not link to another web site.]

MARCH 16, 2013

Road to Recovery, Inc.
P.O. Box 279
Livingston, NJ 07039

“Ordinary Catholics deserve credit for identifying sexual abuse as most important issue confronting the Catholic Church”
“Pope Francis must place clergy sexual abuse victims’ healing as his top priority”
“Pope Francis must drive all the snakes out of the Church in imitation of St. Patrick”

What: A demonstration and leafleting thanking American Catholics for agreeing with
clergy sexual abuse victims that clergy sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church is the most important issue confronting the Roman Catholic Church and the new Pope Francis.

Where: In front of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Fifth Avenue and E. 51st Street, Manhattan,
NYC

When: Sunday, March 17, 2013 (St. Patrick’s Day) from 11:00 AM until 1:00 PM. St. Patrick is the patron saint of the Archdiocese of New York.

Who: Clergy sexual abuse victims and their supporters, including many who have been
assisted by Road to Recovery, Inc., a non-profit charity based in New Jersey, and its co-founder, Dr. Robert M. Hoatson.

Why: On Thursday, March 7, 2013, the Huffington Post released the results of a survey which asked 184 America Catholics to rank the most pressing issues facing the Roman Catholic Church. By a wide margin, ordinary Catholics indicated that clergy sexual abuse is the most serious and immediate concern of the Catholic Church and its leadership. This news has buoyed clergy sexual abuse victims who have waited for American Catholics to truly understand the damages and injuries caused by well-respected and honored members of the clergy. Clergy abuse survivors will stand in front of the most famous Catholic church in America and thank ordinary Catholics for “getting it.” 34% of Catholics in the survey said that clergy sexual abuse is, by far, the most important Catholic issue of our time. All other issues paled in comparison, and no other issue received a ranking above 9%. It is time for all American Catholics to get on the “road to recovery” by believing, supporting, and walking side by side with clergy sexual abuse victims.

Participants will urge newly-elected Pope Francis to do what American Catholics have done: place the handling of clergy sexual abuse at the very top of his list of priorities. He must drive all the snakes out of the Church in imitation of St. Patrick driving all the snakes out of Ireland.

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

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VATICAN CITY
Religion News Service

David Gibson and Alessandro Speciale | Mar 14, 2013

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Francis comes into office riding a wave of good will but facing a host of challenges both inside and outside the Catholic Church. Whether he can tackle them, however, may depend on his ability to tame the Roman Curia, the dysfunctional papal bureaucracy that was uppermost in the minds of the cardinals when they elected him on Wednesday (March 13).

Yes, the electors wanted a pastoral figure after eight years of the astringent rule of Benedict XVI, an introverted scholar who struggled to connect with the flock. And in Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio they got one – a humble Argentine Jesuit who champions the poor, lives simply, cooks his own meals and takes mass transit around Buenos Aires.

Yet naming yourself after St. Francis of Assisi is one thing. Running the Vatican is another.

It’s not something the new pope wanted to do even back in the conclave of 2005, when he reportedly ran second to Benedict, at one point signaling to his fellow cardinals to stop voting for him.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

by Jamie Manson | Mar. 15, 2013

I suppose my assessment of the new pope is probably similar to those who have been reading the mainstream news since Wednesday night’s historic election.

I have been touched by Francis’ clear love of the poor and the images of his bathing the feet of sick children and AIDS patients. I am troubled by his alleged failure stand up with Argentine dictators during the “Dirty War” and his harmful words about LGBT families. I am worried by reports that he was unpopular among his brother Jesuits because of his unfavorable views of base communities and liberation theology.

But what most piqued my interest about Pope Francis is his strong tie to a movement called Comunione e Liberazione, or Communion and Liberation (CL).

As John Allen reported in the days before Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Francis, the Argentine cardinal “became close to the Comunione e Liberazione movement” over the years, “sometimes speaking at its massive annual gathering in Rimini, Italy.” Allen also notes Bergoglio presented the books of CL’s founder, Fr. Luigi Giussani, at literary fairs in Argentina. (It should be noted that Cardinal Angelo Scola, widely considered the conclave’s front-runner, is also a longtime CL collaborator.)

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ARGENTINA
Diario de Noticias

Um grupo de réus acusados de crimes contra a humanidade cometidos durante a ditadura na Argentina (1976-1983) apareceu esta quinta-feira no seu julgamento usando insígnias do Vaticano para homenagear Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

A cadeia de televisão C5N e o jornal local La Mañana de Córboda difundiram imagens dos acusados usando as insígnias do Vaticano, durante o julgamento que decorreu na cidade de Córdoba, no noroeste da Argentina.

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ARGENTINA
La Manana de Cordoba

Los represores imputados en la megacausa La Perla se presentaron ayer en la audiencia ante el Tribunal Oral Federal Nº 1 portando en sus solapas escarapelas papales de color amarillo y blanco, en un gesto de identificación con el nuevo Papa de la Iglesia Católica, el argentino Jorge Bergoglio.
La imagen fue considerada una provocación, cuando se discute la connivencia de la Iglesia y del nuevo Papa con la dictadura militar que dejó 30 mil muertos en el país.

Los seis acusados de genocidio, entre ellos Luciano Benjamín Menéndez, mostraron ayer una escarapela papal en su pecho, durante una nueva audiencia del juicio por la megacausa La Perla, el más siniestro centro clandestino de la provincia de Córdoba en la dictadura.

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ARGENTINA
La Manana de Cordoba

El Premio Nobel de la Paz de 1980, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, dijo ayer que el nuevo papa Francisco, «no tuvo el coraje suficiente de otros obispos» para denunciar las violaciones a los Derechos Humanos durante la última dictadura cívico militar en Argentina. «Bergoglio no tuvo el coraje suficiente de otros obispos para acompañar nuestra lucha por los Derechos Humanos durante la dictadura», sostuvo Pérez Esquivel, según publicó en Twitter. Si bien aclaró que el ex arzobispo de Buenos Aires «no fue un cómplice directo de la dictadura», indicó que «le faltó coraje para acompañar la lucha por los Derechos Humanos.

A pesar de ello, afirmó: «Esperamos que el primer Papa latinoamericano, Francisco I, trabaje por la paz más allá de la voluntad de las potencias».

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ARGENTINA
Buenos Aires Herald

The head of Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo Estela de Carlotto today gave a “vote of confidence” to former cardinal Jorge Bergoglio in his “new mission” as Pope but warned that he should make a “mea culpa” if he committed “a crime or a mistake” during Argentina’s military dictatorship.

“There is always time. When someone commits a crime or a mistake, even if it is not considered a crime, there is time to think over and make a mea culpa. I think it is a supreme Christian act to confess a sin, to repent and feel contrition,” the founder of the human rights organization told reporters of Milenium radio station.

Carlotto explained that two priests have judicially denounced Bergoglio which she considered a fact and not an “anecdote” that casts a “shadow” over the Pope´s figure although she pointed out that he has not been indicted.

“The repentant must be given a chance, but we must first wait for him to repent,” she added and gave the newly elected pontiff a “vote of confidence in this new mission he has began with great humility”.

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UNITED STATES
Religion and Ethics Newsweekly

[with video]

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: There were jubilant shouts in an array of languages as Catholics from around the globe gathered in St. Peter’s Square to meet their new pope. Many here say electing Pope Francis has brought Catholics together.

KIM DANIELS (Catholic Voices USA): We all operate in different countries, we all operate in different idioms and different ways but we come together for our faith and this is a real moment of unity.

LAWTON: The fact that Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio—Pope Francis—hails from Argentina has generated much excitement.

CARDINAL TIMOTHY DOLAN (Archdiocese of New York): You talk about a booster shot to the Church in the Americas, this is going to be a real blessing.

LAWTON: But it’s more than where he comes from that’s unique. David Gibson of Religion News Service says Pope Francis’s simple lifestyle is something new to the papacy.

DAVID GIBSON (Religion News Service): He also has spoken against the clerical privileges in the Church, and the kind of puffery that can often infect the hierarchy and the cardinals themselves—he’s spoken really powerfully against this. If he puts into action the words that he’s spoken against this kind of clerical and ecclesiastical privilege, he could be a revolutionary figure for the church.

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ROME
Telegraph (UK)

Pope Francis is facing outrage from victims of clerical abuse after it emerged that one of the first people he met after being elected was a US cardinal who resigned in disgrace amid allegations of covering up child abuse.

By John Bingham, Religious Affairs Editor
7:30PM GMT 15 Mar 2013

During his unscheduled visit to a basilica in Rome hours after becoming Pope, he briefly greeted Cardinal Bernard Law.

Cardinal Law resigned as Archbishop of Boston 10 years ago, after issuing a statement begging forgiveness, and left America after being accused in scores of law suits of failing to protect children.

His former archdiocese has paid out more than $100 million to settle as many as 750 suits.

The Cardinal took up residence in the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, a major place of pilgrimage. As the papal basilica in Rome, it was where Pope Francis went to pray on Thursday, the morning after his election.

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ROME
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests
BishopAccountability.org

[note: This does not link to another web site.]

For immediate release March 16, 2013

They urge that CDF head be fired immediately
CDF’s Mueller is “unfit and totally wrong” for key post
And they want new Secretary of State to have “strong” abuse record
Both are upset that pontiff visited the US’ “most disgraced” prelate
The two NGOs urge pope to clarify reports that he’s removing Cardinal Law

WHAT:
At a news conference, a Catholic mother and archivist and a US clergy sex abuse victim will criticize Pope Francis for visiting Cardinal Law Thursday. They will also call on him to
–clarify whether he is disciplining that prelate,
–replace the current head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), and
–bring in a new Secretary of State with a solid record of dealing with abuse and cover up in the church.

WHEN:

TODAY, Saturday, March 16 at 3:15 p.m.

WHERE:
Orange Hotel, 86 Via Crescenzio 00193, Roma +39.06.6868969

WHO:
Leaders of two veteran US-based groups:
–Anne Barrett Doyle of Boston, a Catholic mom who is the co-director of the international watchdog group BishopAccountability.org
–David Clohessy of St. Louis, an abuse victim who is the director of an international support called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org)

WHY
In a move that has angered clergy sex abuse victims and advocates, Pope Francis on the first day of his papacy visited Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome and met Cardinal Bernard Law, the basillica’s now retired pastor. In 2002, Law resigned as head of the Boston Archdiocese because of his extensive role in ignoring, concealing and enabling child sex crimes by more than 100 priests.

[Telegraph]

A handful of sources (the Italian daily, Il Fatto Quotidiano and London’s Daily Mail) claim that the pope rebuked Law and intends to force him to live in a cloistered setting. Both SNAP and Bishop Accountability.org doubt these claims, and are urging papal spokesmen to clarify the situation. Both groups would support moving Law but emphasize that this step, if it happens, would be “just the first of many such disciplinary moves needed to deter future cover ups of child sex crimes.” And they stress that it would be more effective and powerful if Pope Francis were to clearly discipline sitting prelates, not just one retired one.

[Mark Shea]

[Mundo]

The second most critical office in the Vatican is the Secretary of State, currently Cardinal Tarsicio Bertone. According to several news accounts and Vatican observers, Bertone is very likely to be replaced, and both groups are urging Pope Francis to choose a prelate with a clear and tough track record of removing those who commit and/or conceal child sex crimes.

The groups are also pushing to have the current head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) replaced immediately. He’s Gerhard Ludwig Mueller of Regensburg, Germany. In 2004, in Regensburg, Mueller assigned Rev. Peter Kramer as pastor of a parish, despite Kramer’s criminal conviction in 2000 for sexually abusing two brothers, ages 9 and 12, and his diagnosis as a pedophile by a court-appointed expert. Mueller’s re-assignment of a convicted sexual offender violated new guidelines approved by the German bishops. Kramer went on to sexually assault boys in his new parish.

[BishopAccountability.org]

And last week, SNAP called on the next pope to oust Fr. Robert Oliver of Boston, the recently-named Vatican prosecutor on abuse cases. The group had harshly condemned Oliver’s appointment in January.

[SNAP]

[Daily Mail]

[TGCOM24]

About SNAP
SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the world’s oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims. SNAP was founded in 1988, is based in Chicago and has more than 12,000 members in 65 nations (but we have heard from victims in more than 100 countries). Despite the word “priest” in our title, we help people who were molested by religious figures of all denominations, including nuns, rabbis, bishops, and Protestant ministers. Our website is SNAPnetwork.org.

About BishopAccountability.org
Founded in 2003, BishopAccountability.org is based in Waltham, Massachusetts, USA, and documents the crisis of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. It offers an online collection of more than 100,000 pages of church records, legal documents, and media reports. Its hardcopy archive is approaching one million pages. The mission of the organization is to give the public convenient access to information pertaining to the abuse crisis in the U.S. and worldwide. An independent non-profit corporation, BishopAccountability.org is an archive and a data center. It is not a victims’ advocacy group or a reform group.

CONTACT
David Clohessy’s Italian cell 334 791 2239 or 339 215 7504 (SNAPclohessy@aol.com) or at the Hotel Cambridge, Via Palestro 87, Rome 00185 (011 39 06 49384917)
Anne Barrett Doyle 001 781 439 5208 or 001 (39) 781 439 5208 or barrett.doyle@comcast.net or Hotel Hilton Garden Inn (39) 06 845441, fax (39) 06 8555171
Clohessy will be in Rome until Wednesday, March 20. Barrett-Doyle will be in Rome until Sunday, March 17.

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TEXAS
Associated Baptist Press

By Bob Allen

A Southern Baptist megachurch claims it called police on a longtime church member not for questioning how church leaders handled a matter of sexual abuse two decades ago, but for posting threatening messages on Twitter.

“When it comes to protecting our people, we take that very seriously,” Ben Lovvorn, director of administration at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, said in a news story broadcast March 14 on Dallas-Fort Worth television station WFAA.

The segment showed screen shots captured from the Twitter account of Chris Tynes, a 14-year member of Prestonwood. One showed a photo of a minister’s parking spot with the words, “My target.” Another said, “I’m sitting in my perfect ambush spot.”

The WFAA story doesn’t say why the 32,000-member megachurch was monitoring Tynes’ Twitter account in the first place. Tynes said March 15 those messages appeared only briefly and were taken down before security guards ordered him off the church campus when he showed up without an appointment to try and meet with a church leader March 5.

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Eurasia Review

By Nimal Fernando

Simon Peter’s latest successor is now in place. Argentinian Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now known as Pope Francis I, who had been the archbishop of Buenos Aires, follows 265 other pontiffs as the representative of Jesus Christ on Earth.

He will no doubt have to summon all his management skills to deal effectively with more than a few challenges before the Roman Catholic Church.

As the past year and more has made abundantly clear, Catholics worldwide have voiced their unease, if not displeasure, in the church’s handling of the sex abuse by clergy. Catholics in the United States, for instance, tend to view the scandal over sex abuse by clergy as the most pressing issue for their church today, as an early-March poll by the Pew Research Centre showed.

Asked what they thought was the Roman Catholic Church’s most important problem, 34 percent of U.S. Catholics mentioned sex abuse, paedophilia or some other reference to the scandal. Nine percent of the respondents also viewed dishonesty, low credibility and low trust, taken together, as another problem that needs to be addressed.

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UNITED STATES
Chicago Tribune

By Rachael LevyTribune reporter
3:11 p.m. CDT, March 15, 2013

A prominent activist group in the Roman Catholic Church’s clergy-abuse scandal today called for Pope Francis to meet with them and for Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George to help bring about that meeting.

“We want to begin a new dialogue with him, and with the church we want to begin a real dialogue about prevention of child sexual abuse,” said Peter Isely, the Midwest director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, at a Friday morning press conference in front of Chicago archdiocesan headquarters.

Standing in front of a handful of abuse victims and church reform advocates, Isely called for a rule within the church that would eject clergy who have abused children.

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UNITED STATES
The Berkeley Daily Planet

ECLECTIC RANT: Is Pope Francis the Right Choice to Fix a Church in Disarray?

By Ralph E. Stone

Friday March 15, 2013

As the whole world now knows, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected Pope (Pope Francis). Clearly, the cardinals saw him as a safe, compromise choice. In other words, a keeper of the status quo. He holds traditional Catholic Church views. Otherwise he would not have been elected. He opposes abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, adoption by gays and lesbians, and contraception.

He was criticized by human rights activists for not openly confronting the terrorism by the Argentine dictatorship in the 1970s that was kidnapping and killing thousands of people as it sought to eliminate “subversive elements.” In fact, a human rights lawyer has filed a criminal complaint against Bergoglio, accusing him of involvement in the 1976 kidnappings of two priests. At the time, he was the superior in the Society of Jesus of Argentina.

How will he deal with the various scandals facing the Catholic Church? The most pressing, of course, is the widespread allegations of sexual child abuse by Catholic clergy and the coverup by church officials. A study conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice found that 10,669 allegations of child sexual abuse were reported to church officials in the U.S. alone between 1950 and 2002.

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MONTANA
Ravalli Republic

Associated Press

HELENA – An attorney representing dozens of Native Americans in one of two sex-abuse lawsuits against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena said he hopes a new pope will mean a new approach by the church in dealing with victims.

But Pope Francis appears to be a conservative in a time when more transparency is needed, lawyer Blaine Tamaki said Thursday.

“We are very concerned the church needs to have a pope who is more progressive than they have had in the past, and the new pope appears to be one of those keeping the conservative doctrine of the Catholic church in place,” he said.

Tamaki’s clients claim they were sexually abused by nuns and priests in western Montana from the 1940s to the 1970s. That lawsuit has been combined with another that claims the Helena diocese covered up abuse for decades, and there now are more than 300 plaintiffs involved in the suits.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

By Harriet Ryan and Victoria Kim, Los Angeles Times
March 15, 2013

In an acknowledgment that new revelations in the priest abuse scandal have tarnished the church’s image, lawyers for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles are seeking to postpone upcoming sexual abuse trials or relocate them to a courthouse 200 miles away because they don’t believe they can get a fair trial in Southern California.

The church’s request to a judge for a delay or change of venue in pending cases this week came just hours after the announcement that the archdiocese would pay two brothers an unprecedented $4 million each to avoid a molestation trial set for April. The payouts to the men, part of a $10-million deal ending four lawsuits, dwarfed settlements the church paid victims in recent years and underscored the archdiocese’s reluctance to face juries in its own backyard.

“We think that the environment in Los Angeles today is currently hostile,” archdiocese lawyer J. Michael Hennigan said.

The January release of personnel files showing that church hierarchy in the 1980s and 1990s shielded abuser priests from police refocused public attention on the clergy sex scandal. In court papers, archdiocese attorneys blamed media coverage, which they described as “unrelenting obloquy, condemnation and contempt,” for poisoning the potential jury pool.

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AUSTRALIA
WA Today

March 16, 2013

Paul Byrnes

Reviewer rating:
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I am old enough to remember those words as part of the Latin Mass. I learnt them growing up in the Catholic Church in Australia. We spoke them to ask forgiveness for our sins. ”Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault …”

As I was learning them, the Vatican was receiving the first reports of the extent of one priest’s sexual abuse of deaf children at St John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Father Lawrence Murphy, ordained in 1950, was a master of American Sign Language, a charismatic personality and a great fund-raiser. He may also have abused more than 200 deaf children in the three decades in which he was allowed to remain at St John’s, even after his activities were reported to the Vatican.

Father Murphy took a holiday in 1958. Father David Walsh came to the school. Some of the boys told him what Father Murphy was doing. Father Walsh reported the allegations to Archbishop Meyer of Milwaukee and to the Vatican’s apostolic delegate in Washington, DC. Walsh never came back. In 1963, Father Murphy was promoted to head of the school.

This setting gives extra meaning to the title of Silence in the House of God: Mea Maxima Culpa. Many of these boys arrived at St John’s aged just four, from families in which they could not easily communicate. Many hearing parents never learnt to sign.

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VATICAN CITY
The New York Times

By DANIEL J. WAKIN, ALAN COWELL and GAIA PIANIGIANI

Published: March 15, 2013

VATICAN CITY — For the first time since the election of Pope Francis two days ago, the Vatican on Friday formally defended him from accusations that, decades ago, in the so-called Dirty War in his home country of Argentina, he knew about serious human rights abuses but failed to do enough to halt them.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said there had “never been a credible accusation against him” relating to the period in the 1970s when he was the superior of the Jesuit order in Argentina.

Indeed, “there have been many declarations of how much he did for many people to protect them from the military dictatorship,” Father Lombardi said in a statement at a news conference.

“The accusations belong to the use of a historical-social analysis of facts for many years by the anticlerical left to attack the church and must be rejected decisively.”

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ARGENTINA
Miami Herald

By Daniel Politi
McClatchy Newspapers

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — A Jesuit priest whose kidnapping by the Argentine military in 1976 has raised the issue of what role newly named Pope Francis played in that country’s so-called “dirty war” said Friday that he was “reconciled to the events” and wished the pope well, but he did not explicitly absolve the pope of involvement in his detention.

In a statement posted on a website in Germany, where the Rev. Francisco Jalics now lives, Jalics recounted the details of his detention, saying he was held for five months, blindfolded and shackled. At the time, the pope, then the Rev. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was Jalics’ Jesuit superior.

“I’m unable to comment on the role of Father Bergoglio in this matter,” the statement said.

Jalics’ comments were posted on the same day the Vatican angrily denounced news coverage linking Pope Francis to the dirty war, calling the reports a campaign that “is well-known and dates back to many years ago.”

The Vatican said the campaign is being pushed “by a publication that carries out sometimes slanderous and defamatory campaigns,” an apparent reference to Pagina 12, an Argentine newspaper whose editor, Horacio Verbitsky, has written critically of Pope Francis’ role in the dirty war.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

by Thomas C. Fox | Mar. 15, 2013

60 Minutes will air a segment March 17th on the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s controversial doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.

CBS describes the upcoming segment this way: “One of the pressing problems newly elected Pope Francis may want to address is the disillusionment among American nuns. Many were shocked last year when the group that represents most of them was reprimanded by the Vatican, which said the nuns’ liberal ideas were undermining the Church. Bob Simon reports. Tanya Simon and Andrew Metz are the producers.”

The segment, nine months in the making, comes at a time of considerable uncertainty in the church, including LCWR. Pope Francis only been pope for a few days, with his attitudes toward the U.S. women religious uncertain. Also Achbishop Gerhard Müller, CDF prefect, submitted his resignation last month, as canon law required when now Pope Benedict resigned.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Tribune-Review

By Tribune-Review Staff

Italian media is describing Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington as the “pope-maker” of this week’s conclave that elected the first non-European pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church.

Wuerl, 72, a Pittsburgh native and the city’s bishop for 18 years before being named Washington’s cardinal in 2006, could not be reached for comment. The reports about Wuerl’s role in the conclave could not be independently confirmed by the Tribune-Review.

La Repubblica, Italy’s largest-circulation daily newspaper, reported Friday that Wuerl led a coalition of American cardinals and those from other countries in supporting the candidacy of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, 76, of Argentina.

Bergoglio was elected the 266th pope of the Roman Catholic Church on Wednesday and took the name of Francis.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
LA Weekly

By Dennis Romero
Fri., Mar. 15 2013

The L.A. Archdiocese not only knew about pedophile priests, but strategized about how to shuffle them around.

KCET’s “SoCal Connected” at 5:30 tonight will air its exclusive investigation into the scandal that has clouded the legacy of ex-Cardinal Roger Mahony. The station obtained exclusive, 1996 audio of Father Stephen Rosetti speaking about how to deal with these creeps:

Yeah.

KCET also discovered that many of L.A.’s alleged pedophile priests — our archdiocese had the most, 260, in the nation — worked in the city’s Latino neighborhoods.

For the church, out town became, KCET says, the home of the “‘L.A. Model,’ a program that quietly put sexual abusive priests in desk jobs around the dioceses and even helped them find outside employment.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Times

Russell Jenkins

The mother of a teenage girl who was sexually assaulted by a Roman Catholic priest expressed astonishment yesterday that they had known nothing of his secret life as a married man.

Father William Finnegan, 59, had confessed that he had been secretly married to a middle-aged mother of two, and enjoyed a full sex life, in a last ditch attempt to evade conviction.

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UNITED STATES
TheMediaReport

It seems that the mission of bludgeoning the Catholic Church for abuse episodes from a half century ago is not as thriving as it used to be.

Few major media outlets have overplayed and exaggerated the abuse narrative more than the Washington Post. So it was big news when even the Post was recently forced to take notice that the abuse story is now so old that professional Church-bashing groups such as SNAP and Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) are dying and fading away, as they are comprised of an ever dwindling number of cranky codgers.

According to the recent Post article:
■Attendance at recent VOTF events has “plummeted, as have donations”;
■Bill Casey, a VOTF board member, admits, “The average age is gray-haired folks. And they’re 10 years grayer”*;
■Terry McKiernan, the crotchety but frequently quoted “head” of BishopAccountability.org, admits that the abuse story has now become so long in the tooth that his people have “run of out steam”; and
■”Many of the groups that appeared during the early and mid-2000s have shrunk or disappeared.”

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ARGENTINA
National Catholic Register

by ESTEFANIA AGUIRRE/CNA/EWTN NEWS
03/15/2013 Comment

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis told the apostolic nuncio to Argentina to ask his countrymen not to travel to Italy for the ceremony that will begin his pontificate.

“Tell the bishops and the faithful to make an offering and an act of solidarity to the poor with the money instead,” said the Vatican’s press office director, Father Federico Lombardi.

Father Lombardi spoke March 15 with the nuncio, Archbishop Emil Paul Tscherrig, who confirmed that Pope Francis had telephoned him on the night of his election.

“But those who know him find this very normal, since it is his style,” said Father Lombardi at the Vatican’s media center.

“I don’t think he forbade it, he just said it wasn’t necessary for people to come to his installation Mass,” he added.

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VATICAN CITY
Staten Island Advance

By Religion News Service
on March 15, 2013

VATICAN CITY — Last Sunday night, the Rev. Thomas Rosica was walking through the Piazza Navona in Rome’s historic center when he bumped into Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, who he has known for years. Bergoglio was walking alone, wearing a simple black cassock and he stopped and grabbed Rosica’s hands.

“I want you to pray for me,” the Argentine cardinal told Rosica, a Canadian priest who was assisting as a Vatican spokesman during the papal interregnum. Rosica asked him if he was nervous. “A little bit,” Bergoglio confessed.

He had reason to be worried. Two days later, on Tuesday evening, he and 114 other cardinals entered the conclave to elect a successor to Benedict XVI; a little more than 24 hours and five ballots after that, Bergoglio emerged on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica as Pope Francis.

It was a surprising outcome, and even if Bergoglio suspected something was up, few others did, including many of the cardinals in the Sistine Chapel with him.

“I think it all came together in an extraordinary fashion,” Chicago Cardinal Francis George told the Chicago Tribune.

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VATICAN CITY
680 News

The Canadian Press Mar 15, 2013

VATICAN CITY – Italian media reports say Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, who was considered a front-runner for the papacy, nearly became pope.

According to Italian news outlet Il Solo 24 Ore, Ouellet was tied with Italian Cardinal Angelo Scola in early voting at the Sistine Chapel, with Argentinian Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio in third place.

The report says Scola was later unable to gain further support after many cardinals decided against choosing a Vatican insider to lead the Roman Catholic Church.

Ouellet then reportedly convinced his fellow cardinals to throw their support behind Bergoglio, who eventually became Pope Francis on Wednesday.

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UNITED STATES
WWLT

Associated Press

Posted on March 15, 2013

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Most Roman Catholics are rejoicing at the election of Pope Francis, but alleged victims of clergy abuse in the U.S. are demanding swift and bold actions from the new Jesuit pontiff: Defrock all molester priests and the cardinals who covered up for them, formally apologize, and release all confidential church files.

Adding to their distrust are several multimillion dollar settlements the Jesuits paid out in recent years, including $166 million to more than 450 Native Alaskan and Native American abuse victims in 2011 for molestation at Jesuit-run schools across the Pacific Northwest. The settlement bankrupted the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus. The order also paid $14 million to settle nine California cases.

“I would like to see this pope stand up and say to those cardinals, ‘You need to square this away and change everything that was covered up,’ ” said Ken Smolka, a 70-year-old retired actor who claimed in a lawsuit he was abused as a teen by a Jesuit priest. “You need to get them on their knees, and let them spend the rest of their lives on their knees praying for the victims.”

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CANADA
Hamilton Spectator

More than 10 months since a Hamilton priest facing a sexual assault charge was allowed to return to his native Brazil, the Ministry of the Attorney General is not commenting on the status of the investigation into the controversial deal.

Ministry spokesperson Brendan Crawley would only say “there is nothing new to report at this time.”

He did not respond directly to questions about the status of the investigation, whether the ministry has taken any action or the status of the assistant Crown attorney in question, Carey Lee.

Reverend Jose Silva was permitted to leave Canada in early May 2012 in a deal struck between Lee and Silva’s defence lawyer, Dean Paquette.

Silva, a former guest priest at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, was facing a charge of sexual assault following a complaint by an 18-year-old musician. As part of the deal, a countrywide warrant would be issued for his arrest should he return to Canada.

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UNITED STATES
Wall Street Journal

By PEGGY NOONAN

I’ll tell you how it looks: like one big unexpected gift for the church and the world.

Everything about Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s election was a surprise—his age, the name he took, his mien as he was presented to the world. He was plainly dressed, a simple white cassock, no regalia, no finery. He stood there on the balcony like a straight soft pillar and looked out at the crowd. There were no grand gestures, not even, at first, a smile. He looked tentative, even overwhelmed. I thought, as I watched, “My God—he’s shy.”

Then the telling moment about the prayer. Before he gave a blessing he asked for a blessing: He asked the crowd to pray for him. He bent his head down and the raucous, cheering square suddenly became silent, as everyone prayed. I thought, “My God—he’s humble.”

I wasn’t sure what to make of it and said so to a friend, a member of another faith who wants the best for the church because to him that’s like wanting the best for the world. He was already loving what he was seeing. He asked what was giving me pause. I said I don’t know, the curia is full of tough fellows, the pope has to be strong.

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ITALIA
TGCOM24

L’incontro durante la visita alla basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. Il Pontefice avrebbe espresso la volontà di non voler più vedere l’alto prelato, al centro dello scandalo pedofilia

08:24 – Incontro imbarazzante, ieri, per papa Francesco durante la visita a Santa Maria Maggiore. Il nuovo pontefice ha incrociato il cardinale Bernard Law, in pensione, accusato di aver coperto i preti pedofili nella diocesi di Boston, non prendendo le adeguate misure. “Non voglio che frequenti questa basilica”, avrebbe detto il Papa. Il portavoce della Santa Sede ha cercato di minimizzare l’accaduto.

Secondo quanto racconta Il Fatto quotidiano, infatti, la presenza del cardinale 82enne è stata discreta e sarebbe stata una sua volontà incontrare il nuovo Pontefice. Che però non avrebbe gradito più di tanto. Papa Francesco avrebbe intenzione di allontanare l’alto prelato, coinvolto nello scandalo pedofilia in Nord America, costringendolo a una vita di clausura.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on some of the issues that are gripping the critics of Pope Francis:

Pope Francis has captured the goodwill, indeed the love, of millions around the globe, and the response is hardly confined to Catholic circles. However, his critics are emerging, though none with any luck.

Sex is always a good subject for Catholic haters. Their goal—sex without consequences (kids and diseases)—is threatened when religious leaders counsel the virtue of restraint. Similarly, we have the lament of people like Mary Johnson, a former nun, who told the MSNBC audience how “marginalized” gay and lesbian Catholics are. Catholic-bashing lawyer Marci Hamilton chimed in, commenting about the “sex abuse scandal that has scandalized the church over the past decade.” Any high school fact checker knows better: the timeline of the homosexual scandal was the mid-60s to the mid-80s.

Washington Post opinion writer Eugene Robinson wants to know “what did the newly chosen Pope Francis do” about the right-wing dictatorship in Argentina’s “Dirty War”? We have an answer from Adolfo Perez Esquivel, the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize winner: he said the pope “was no accomplice of the dictatorship.” Indeed, he firmly concluded, “He can’t be accused of that.” Others have written books praising the pope for his yeoman efforts in undermining the junta.

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GERMANY
Expatica

A Jesuit priest whose arrest and torture by Argentina’s military junta in the 1970s sparked criticism of Pope Francis said Friday he had come to terms with the events and wished the newly elected pontiff well.

Amid allegations that Jorge Mario Bergoglio, then archbishop of Buenos Aires, betrayed him to the military regime, Father Francisco Jalics said in a statement he had spoken to Bergoglio years after his release.

“Afterwards we celebrated mass publicly together and we embraced solemnly. I am reconciled with the events and, for my part, consider them finished,” said Jalics, who has lived in Germany since 1978.

“I wish Pope Francis God’s rich blessing for his office,” he added.

Jalics and another young Jesuit, Orlando Yorio, who were both working in a slum in Buenos Aires, were taken to a notorious torture centre by the brutal right-wing junta in 1976. They were freed after five months.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Yorkshire Post

Published on Friday 15 March 2013

A WEST Yorkshire priest who revealed in court that he has been secretly married for more than a decade was today warned he may go to jail for sexually assaulting a teenage girl.

William Finnegan, 59, known to his parishioners as Father Bill, denied forcefully kissing the 17-year-old and touching her bottom, but was found guilty by jurors at Bradford Crown Court.

During his trial, Finnegan, who was parish priest at St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Fagley, Bradford at the time of the assault – revealed to the court and to his diocese that he shirked his vow of celibacy by secretly marrying Beverley Dawson in 1999.

He wed the previously married mother of two in Cyprus after meeting her at his former parish in Castleford, West Yorkshire, jurors heard.

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CALIFORNIA
Orange County Weekly

By Gustavo Arellano
Fri., Mar. 15 2013

KCET-TV Channel 28’s SoCal Connected devoted a segment yesterday to the travesty that is the Archdiocese of Los Angeles sex-abuse scandal, specifically on their program of dumping pedo-priests in predominantly Latino parishes. But it also included a small aside to bring in the story of OC’s worst-ever pedo-priest: Eleuterio Ramos.

The hook was the experience of Weekly friend-of-the-show Daniel A. Olivas, who made national news last month with his beautifully written op-ed for the New York Times on his childhood priest and how he escaped his molesting ways.

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CALIFORNIA
Orange County Weekly

By Gustavo Arellano
Fri., Mar. 15 2013

Here at OC’s afflict-er of the comfortable, we rarely give a damn about anything that happens outside of the county because the rest of the country can pound sand. But I do want to take just this post to acknowledge a pioneer in pedo-priest profiles: the Boston Phoenix, which announced yesterday that it was shutting down next week after 47 years.

I’ll be honest: I rarely read the Phoenix, given that I really don’t care for Boston (the Celtics will do that to you, although Bobby Orr was GANGSTA). But I did revere them for their bravery more than a decade ago of breaking open the Catholic Church sex-abuse scandal long before its rival, the Boston Globe, made it into a national story.

Specifically, it was reporter Kristen Lombardi (who served a stint at our sister paper, the Village Voice) who did the stories no one else wanted to do at the time. Her 2001 story on Boston-area monster John Geoghan beat the Globe’s story on the pedo-priest by nearly a year. She would continue to monitor the situation vigorously until moving on to the Voice.

Has the national media ever given Lombardi’s and the Phoenix’s work any credit? No. Instead, all the accolades went to the Globe–even a decade later, Phoenix staffers have to beg for even a scrap of attention, which is a damn shame.

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UNITED STATES
CNN

SNAP Western Regional Dir. Joelle Casteix on what Pope Francis’s election means for handling child sex abuse in church.

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ROME
Boston Herald

By
Sabina Castelfranco

ROME — To the dismay of church sex abuse victims, Pope Francis made his first stop yesterday at the church where Boston’s disgraced Cardinal Bernard Law was assigned as archpriest after the scandal 
engulfed the worldwide Catholic community.

Francis prayed at St. Mary Major Basilica at 8 a.m. and Law was in attendance, the Vatican confirmed to the Herald.

“It’s a complete slap in the face to Boston victims and Boston Catholics,” said Joelle Casteix, a member of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP..

“Hopefully this is not a harbinger of what’s to come of the papacy of Francis,” Casteix said.

“It hurts the victims,” added fellow SNAP member Becky Ianni. “Law shouldn’t have any honors in Rome. How are the victims going to see this?”

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ROME
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Mar. 15, 2013 All Things Catholic

Although 76-year-old Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires was the one who stepped out onto the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square clad in white Wednesday night, there’s a good argument that the real winner of the 2013 conclave wasn’t in Rome, and wasn’t even alive to see the result.

In effect, the landslide winner was actually St. Francis of Assisi.

The case for the 2013 papal election as a tribute to the most iconic saint in Catholic tradition rests on three points.

The O’Malley boom

The biggest surprise of the pre-conclave period was the emergence of Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston as a crowd favorite. As I said during CNN’s broadcast of the Mass Pro Eligendo Romano Pontifice, if the custom of papal election by popular acclamation were still around, it’s entirely possible O’Malley might be the one sitting on the Throne of Peter.

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NEDERLAND
Volkskrant

In het rapport ‘Seksueel misbruik van en geweld tegen meisjes in de Rooms Katholieke kerk’ van de commissie-Deetman zijn niet alle meldingen correct opgenomen. Dat vindt het Vrouwenplatform Kerkelijk Kindermisbruik. Het VPKK kreeg over 21 in het rapport beschreven gevallen klachten over de juistheid, liet de organisatie vrijdag weten. .

Het platform ontving klachten over onder meer een foute weergave van jaartallen en locaties. Ook zouden sommige meldingen niet zijn opgenomen in het eindrapport.

Het rapport van de commissie-Deetman verscheen maandag.

‘Laat ik voorop stellen dat het rapport goed is opgebouwd, maar een goede beschrijving van de meldingen in het rapport is onmisbaar voor de eerste stap van erkenning en herstel. Er is in sommige gevallen niet goed naar gekeken’, aldus Annemie Knibbe van het VPKK. Het platform zegt 70 vrouwen te vertegenwoordigen.

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DEUTSCHLAND
dradio

Vor drei Jahren wurden die Missbrauchsfälle im saarländischen Internat Johanneum bekannt

Von Tonia Koch

Jahrelang hatte es Missbrauch an den Schülern im Johanneum, einer katholischen Privatschule, gegeben. Die Opfer kämpfen noch immer um Anerkennung und Gerechtigkeit, doch die Schule sperrt sich. Nun ist auch eine Mediation gescheitert.

Vier Tage tagten die deutschen Bischöfe Mitte Februar in Trier. Und in diesen 4 Tagen versuchten die Vertreter von Opferinitiativen sexuellen Missbrauchs mit den Bischöfen ins Gespräch zu kommen. Doch eine Geste in Richtung der Opfer blieb aus. Der Vorsitzende der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz, der Freiburger Erzbischof Robert Zollitsch, begründete die bischöfliche Zurückhaltung.

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GROSSBRITANNIEN
HNA

London – Ein katholischer Priester ist wegen sexueller Nötigung verurteilt worden. Vor Gericht hatte er ein Geständnis abgelegt – aber nicht das, was die Richter erwartet hatten.

Einem englischen Gericht offenbarte der Geistliche, er führe seit mehr als zehn Jahren eine geheime Ehe. Der Anwalt des 59-Jährigen, Jeremy Hill-Baker, erklärte nach einem Bericht der Lokalzeitung „The Bradford Telegraph and Argus“ den Geschworenen im Prozess in Bradford bei Leeds, sein Mandant missachte sein Zölibatsversprechen wegen seiner tiefen Liebe zu seiner Frau. Mit diesem Argument wollte er offenbar der Anklage wegen sexueller Nötigung einer Minderjährigen den Wind aus den Segeln nehmen.

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VATIKAN
Radio Vatikan – Laudetur Jesus Christus

Veröffentlicht am 15. März 2013

Die Militärjunta in Argentinien: Plötzlich ist sie wieder auf der Tagesordnung. Nachdem der BR meinte, einen Jesuiten um Papstkritiker erklären zu müssen und ihm das Gefühl unterstellte, vom damaligen Provinzialoberen verraten worden zu sein – was der BR dann tunlichst zu belegen unterlässt – veröffentlicht dieser Pater nun eine Stellungnahme. Es ist Franz Jalics SJ, ungarischer Nationalität und derzeit als Exerzitienbegleiter in Deutschland tätig.

Die Erklärung im Wortlaut:

Seit 1957 lebte ich in Buenos Aires. Im Jahre 1974, vom inneren Wunsch bewegt das Evangelium zu leben und auf die schreckliche Armut aufmerksam zu machen, und mit der Erlaubnis von Erzbischof Aramburu und den damaligen Provinzial P. Jorge Mario Bergoglio bin ich gemeinsam mit einen Mitbruder in eine „Favela“, ein Elendsviertel der Stadt, gezogen. Von dort aus haben wir unsere Lehrtätigkeit an der Universität fortgesetzt.

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UNITED STATES
Spiritual Politics

Mark Silk | Mar 15, 2013

There is widespread agreement that dealing with the abuse scandal needs to be a top priority for Pope Francis. And so far as I can tell, Pope Francis has never done or said anything about a particular case or the situation in general that has received public notice. Astonishingly enough, he seems to be a virtual tabula rasa when it comes to the biggest crisis to hit the Catholic Church since the Reformation.

The explanation may have to do with the fact that the scandal has touched Argentina very little. The only case of note occurred in 2002 when Archbishop Edgardo Storni of Santa Fe resigned after a book accused him of abusing at least 47 young seminarians. (The Vatican had investigated Storni in 1994 and found insufficient evidence to discipline him.) An Argentine writer talked with then Archbishop Bergoglio about Storni’s situation at the time of his resignation recalls him saying, “The justice will take care of him.” The Argentine episcopate was then paying for the lawyers who represented Storni.

If Francis wants to make as much of a mark by his handling of the abuse scandal as he has by his simple lifestyle, he’s got a ready-made opportunity. Last September, Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City was convicted of a criminal misdemeanor for failing to report one of his priests for possible sexual abuse of children. Thus far, neither the Vatican nor the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has so much as issued a statement on the matter.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

By Philip Pullella

March 15, 2013

The Vatican on Friday strongly denied accusations by some critics in Argentina that Pope Francis stayed silent during systematic human rights abuses by the former military dictatorship.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi told reporters the accusations: “Must be clearly and firmly denied.” He added that, “They reveal anti-clerical left-wing elements that are used to attack the Church”.

Critics of Jorge Bergoglio, the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires, allege he failed to protect priests who challenged the dictatorship earlier in his career, during the 1976-1983 “dirty war”, and that he has said too little about the complicity of the Church during military rule.

The allegations centre around a time before Bergoglio became a bishop, when he was leader of the Jesuits in Argentina. Two priests kidnapped by the military government alleged Bergoglio did not protect them.

“There has never been a concrete or credible accusation in his regard. Argentinian justice interrogated him once … but he was never charged with anything,” Lombardi said.

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VATICAN CITY
The Guardian

Lizzy Davies in Vatican City
guardian.co.uk, Friday 15 March 2013

The Vatican has hit out at what it calls an “anti-clerical, leftwing” campaign against the newly elected Pope Francis, strongly rejecting accusations concerning his actions during Argentina’s brutal military dictatorship.

In a statement delivered at a press briefing on Friday, Federico Lombardi, the pope’s spokesman, said the allegations against Jorge Bergoglio, who until Wednesday was simply the archbishop of Buenos Aires, “must be clearly and firmly denied”.

“There has never been a concrete or credible accusation in his regard. Argentinian justice interrogated him once … but he was never charged with anything,” he added. “He documented his denials of the accusations against him. There are also many declarations that show how Bergoglio tried to protect many people in his time during the military dictatorship. His role is very clearly noted.”

The Roman Catholic church has been widely criticised for failing to stand up to the junta that ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1983. Some critics have gone further in their attacks on Bergoglio, claiming he failed to protect two Jesuit priests serving under him who were abducted and tortured for five months at a navy base.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Giles Tremlett in Madrid
guardian.co.uk, Friday 15 March 2013

In his own words, Pope Francis comes over as a clever, thoughtful and skilful mixture of social conservative and radical progressive who preaches zero tolerance of pederast priests but whose own behaviour during the terror of Argentina’s military juntas remains decidedly blurred.

In his latest book, On Earth and Heaven, the man then known as Jorge Bergoglio, discusses the divine and the mundane with the prominent Jewish rabbi Abraham Skorka in a series of conversations published in 2010.

Bergoglio appears as a man with a profound social conscience, expressing admiration of some atheist socialists and professing a genuine belief in interfaith dialogue – to the extent that some radical Catholics accuse him of heresy.

He is critical of those who covered up the paedophile scandal that has done so much damage to the church he now leads.

“The idea that celibacy produces paedophiles can be forgotten,” he says. “If a priest is a paedophile, he is so before he becomes a priest. But when this happens you must never look away. You cannot be in a position of power and use it to destroy the life of another person.”

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VATICAN CITY
BBC News

The Vatican has denied that Pope Francis failed to speak out against human rights abuses during military rule in his native Argentina.

“There has never been a credible, concrete accusation against him,” said Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi, adding he had never been charged.

The spokesman blamed the accusations on “anti-clerical left-wing elements that are used to attack the Church”.

Jorge Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, led Argentina’s Jesuits under the junta.

Correspondents say that like other Latin American churchmen of the time, he had to contend, on the one hand, with a repressive right-wing regime and, on the other, a wing of his Church leaning towards political activism on the left.

One allegation concerns the abduction in 1976 of two Jesuits by Argentina’s military government, suspicious of their work among slum-dwellers.

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VATICAN CITY
Los Angeles Times

By Tom Kington
March 15, 2013

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican on Friday denied that Pope Francis acquiesced to Argentina’s brutal military regime in the 1970s and ’80s, saying the accusations are part of a “defamatory” campaign.

Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who was elected pope on Wednesday, has been accused in some quarters of failing to protect two Jesuit priests who challenged the country’s regime, leading to their kidnapping and torture by military officials in 1976.

Those claims were made a decade ago but have received renewed attention since Bergoglio was appointed the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, the first Latin American to occupy St. Peter’s chair.

“This campaign against Bergoglio is well known,” Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi said in a news conference. “It was promoted by a publication which specializes in campaigns which are sometimes slanderous and defamatory. The anti-clerical nature of this campaign and other accusations against Bergoglio is well known and evident.”

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NEW YORK
JTA

(JTA) — Rabbi Hershel Schachter, a dean at Yeshiva University, has warned against reporting uncorroborated sex abuse allegations to police.

Schachter was recorded at a rabbinical conference in February in London warning that false allegations could lead to arrests and imprisonment with a “shvartze” — a dergatory Yiddish term for a black person. The recording was posted on FailedMessiah.com and the voice was said to be Schachter’s.

Schachter did not respond to inquiries from the Forward newspaper, which has been running stories since December about allegations of abuse by former faculty members at Y.U.’s high school for boys. The alleged incidents took place decades ago.

“Before you go to the police and before you got to family services, every community should have a board…to investigate whether there’s any raglayim la’davar [substance] or not,” Schachter says, according to the recording. He also says that reporting people who are guilty of sex offenses does not contstitute mesirah, or betrayal — the traditional Jewish prohibition against informing on a fellow Jew to the secular authorities.

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NEW YORK
The Jewish Daily Forward

By Larry Cohler-Esses

The lede, as we call it in the journalism biz, sat there silently on the computer screen, like an IED waiting to explode:

“…or as he put it, ‘a schvartze,’” it said at the end.

The phrase reported accurately the word Rabbi Hershel Schachter used to describe the reason he resisted the idea of rabbis reporting cases of child sexual abuse within the Jewish community to the police. It was not, he said, that reporting such cases — after some rabbis judge them genuine — violated Talmudic strictures against turning a Jew over to secular authorities. But even if the accused Jew is guilty, said Schachter, he could end up in jail with a black man — “a schvartze.”

Forward staff reporter Paul Berger and I knew what kind of outrage would ensue once Forward web editor Dave Goldiner pressed the button sending this story out into the Internet. And we’d already been arguing over the wording of that lede sentence for something like an hour. It was getting late. We both had to go home. But in its compression of the full quotation given in the story, this lede was missing something, and I couldn’t put my finger on what.

As a college student in the early 1970’s, I had lived for a year in Mississippi working for civil rights organizations. I learned a lot about racism then. I knew it came in many different flavors, even there. While arguing with Paul, I thought about how a few years before I arrived in Jackson, there were gargantuan battles there over the integration of municipal swimming pools. This was the fear of black people as contagion.

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UNITED STATES
Natonal Catholic Reporter

by Brian McNaught | Mar. 15, 2013

Whether or not Pope Benedict XVI resigned because of a gay-related scandal in the Vatican, there is no doubt that gay sexual scandals among the clergy today are causing the average Catholic, and the average gay man, a great deal of sadness.

The head of the Scottish Catholic church, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, resigned amid allegations he was physically inappropriate with four priests. Msgr. Kevin Wallin is in a Connecticut jail, accused of dealing crystal meth from the rectory, which he allegedly did to pay for his sex and drug addictions.

When I read about O’Brien, I had much less sympathy for him than I did for Wallin because the cardinal was publicly anti-gay. Such hypocrisy makes me angry and ill. But the story of Wallin made me very sad because, if true, he represents to me the disturbing syndrome of self-destruction I see among so many smart, talented, good-hearted gay men inside and outside of the Catholic church. And in Kevin Wallin’s tragic fall from grace, I see myself had I made different choices in life than I did.

Had I pursued the path to the seminary, I suspect I would have been a very popular priest. I care deeply about the well-being of others. I’m funny, love people, am young at heart, am spiritual, independent, a good speaker and a minister at the core of my being. I’d also have been a closeted gay man whose guilt and fear about sex would have made me a prime candidate for acting out inappropriately — not with children, but with other men. Because I have a compulsive personality, I’d become addicted to drugs if someone introduced me to them in the context of sex. I would have had sex and taken drugs in the attempt to leave no stone unturned in my search for self-understanding and affirmation. Without the intervention of wise, strong, loving friends, I would have ended up looking in the mirror wondering in horror and shame what had happened to the sweet young man who entered the seminary because he wanted to live a life of loving service.

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ROME
John Thavis

A new pontificate is judged chiefly on gestures, words and decisions.

Through his gestures, Pope Francis has already won the hearts of many inside and outside the church. Wearing his old black shoes, riding the bus and paying his pensione bill immediately announced a new and simpler style of papacy.

In a world that communicates largely in images, this is no small matter. “Jesus was born in a manger” is sometimes heard sarcastically by visitors to the Vatican’s rather opulent chambers, and a pope who dials down the extravagance will have a positive reception.

On Thursday, we heard some of the first words from Pope Francis, in a homily to the cardinals who elected him the 266th pontiff. The words were challenging, and gave a clue to the kind of “reforms” Francis may have in mind. (It was interesting that the pope set aside a draft text prepared in advance for this occasion, and preferred to speak off-the-cuff.)

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

by Michael Sean Winters | Mar. 15, 2013

In this morning’s Washington Post, Eugene Robinson discusses Pope Francis’ involvement with the Argentine junta, the crimes of which were legion. Robinson quotes a human rights activist to the effect that then-Father Bergoglio did not rise to the occasion and confront the junta. He cites another book that makes a similar claim. Robinson finishes by asking Francis to atone.

Me thinks it is Robinson who needs to mark this essay down for his next trip to the confessional. In the news pages of the same morning paper, an Argentine human rights activist, Adolfo Perez Esquival, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work, is quoted as saying, “There were bishops who were complicit in the dictatorship. But not Bergoglio.” I suppose this comment would have obstructed Robinson’s narrative so he left it out, but surely he should be willing to introduce evidence that would require him to qualify his sweeping claim for atonement.

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ROME
Vatican Insider

Vatican Insider takes a trip to the Church, dear to Ignatius of Loyola, where the meetings which strengthened Bergoglio’s candidacy were held

GIACOMO GALEAZZI
Vatican City

Saint Ignatius of Loyola celebrated his first mass here, on Christmas night in 1538. A stop at Saint Mary Major has always been a must during the Jesuit Bergoglio’s travels to the eternal city. Deeply devoted to the patroness of Rome (the Salus Populi Romani), he began his pontificate from the basilica which houses a relic of the Manger in Bethlehem and Bernini’s tomb. “He is very fond of this church, he came often as a cardinal,” says Fr. Elio Monteleone, one of the confessors in the West’s oldest Marian Sanctuary.

Yesterday morning, the newly elected Pope said to confessors: “Souls need you to be merciful; pray for me.” A Marian Pope like Wojtyla, who consecrated his pontificate to the Virgin Mary (Totus tuus), Francis, who had just appeared in Saint Peter’s dressed in white, announced the first appointment in his calendar: prayer to Mary. Tradition has it that it was the Virgin Mary herself who inspired the construction of her residence on the Esquiline Hill. Arriving shortly after 8:00 AM, the Pope was accompanied by the archpriest and former Nuncio in Latin America, Santos Abril y Castelló, and by Cardinal Vicar Agostino Vallini. He was welcomed by the chapter of the basilica, the priests, the lay employees, Archpriest Emeritus Bernard Law and the prefect of the Pontifical Household, Georg Gaenswein.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

A candidacy that grew in the meetings between cardinals. Very few votes for the favourite Scola

Andrea Tornielli
Vatican City

Jorge Mario Bergoglio has never much loved curial meetings and in recent years he has come to Rome as little as possible. In the two weeks preceding the start of the Conclave he did not participate in any meeting that was related to his potential nomination to the papacy. How is it possible that in just five ballots he reached, and apparently easily surpassed, the quorum of 77 votes necessary for the election? The outcome of the previous conclave, during which, according to the diary published by Italian magazine Limes, Bergoglio obtained about 40 votes, was not decisive. Indeed, being in the running but with unsuccessful results in the 2005 election from which Benedict XVI was elected could have represented a handicap rather than an aid.

We should not forget that after that Conclave the authority of the Archbishop of Buenos Aires increased even more. For example, during the CELAM meeting in Aparecida and in the Synods of bishops. The brief and heartfelt speech that Bergoglio gave in the course of General congregations struck a particular chord with cardinals, as he spoke about the face of God’s mercy. While the real and media nominations of Cardinal Angelo Scola, Archbishop of Milan, of Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, and of the Archbishop of São Paulo, Odilo Scherer were growing, Bergoglio’s was also growing away from the spotlight. Several cardinals from various continents, such as Africa and Asia, had decided to vote for him from the very beginning. Surprisingly, even some Italian curials chose him immediately as a candidate.

The primaries of the Conclave, on Tuesday evening, March 12th, showed the solidity of his candidacy, which was significant from the onset in terms of votes. While Scola’s appeared less solid than expected. “Regardless of what has been said, Cardinal Scola did not achieve the consensus,” said the President of the Brazilian Bishops’ Conference, Raymundo Damasceno, interviewed by Globo.com.

Ouellet and Scherer’s nominations also appeared downsized. The vote at the end of the first day of the Conclave indicated that Bergoglio activated the “Ratzinger effect”, namely that the Argentine cardinal earned votes progressively until the white smoke on Wednesday evening. He eventually gained Ouellet, Scherer and finally Scola’s votes. “South American cardinals,” added Cardinal Damasceno, “have greatly appreciated the value of Bergoglio, so it is clear that he managed to garner such strong support.”

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SCOTLAND
Daily Record

CARDINAL Keith O’Brien is facing legal action over a new allegation of abuse dating back to the 1980s.

A former seminarian, who has not been named, has spoken out after the recent spate of allegations.

Solicitor Cameron Fyfe confirmed that he has been instructed by the man to make a claim for compensation against Cardinal O’Brien.

Earlier this month, Cardinal O’Brien issued a sweeping apology and admitted his sexual conduct had at times “fallen below the standards expected of me”.

The cardinal, who was Britain’s most senior Catholic cleric, stepped down from his post as archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh a day after three priests and a former priest made allegations of “inappropriate” behaviour against him.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 15 March 2013 (VIS) – At this afternoon’s press conference, Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J., director of the Holy See Press Office read a statement responding to allegations made against Cardinal Bergoglio in Argentina. It states:

“The campaign against Bergoglio is well-known and dates back to many years ago. It has been made by a publication that carries out sometimes slanderous and defamatory campaigns. The anticlerical cast of this campaign and of other accusations against Bergoglio is well-known and obvious.”

“The charges refer to the time before Jorge Mario Bergoglio became bishop [of Buenos Aires], when he was Provincial Superior of the Jesuits in Argentina and accuse him of not having protected two priests who were kidnapped.”

“This was never a concrete or credible accusation in his regard. He was questioned by an Argentinian court as someone aware of the situation but never as a defendant. He has, in documented form, denied any accusations.”

“Instead, there have been many declarations demonstrating how much Bergoglio did to protect many persons at the time of the military dictatorship. Bergoglio’s role, once he became bishop, in promoting a request for forgiveness of the Church in Argentina for not having done enough at the time of the dictatorship is also well-known.”

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VATICAN CITY
Washington Post

By Jason Horowitz

VATICAN CITY — After an early-morning jaunt outside the Vatican walls reinforced the first impression of him as an unpretentious pontiff, Pope Francis hinted Thursday that he might reign with little patience for scandal by preaching integrity to a college of cardinals that has been racked by intrigue.

Amid reports about the machinations by which he was elected and anticipation about how he would govern a dysfunctional church court, Francis delivered a short but strong homily in plain Italian to the men who elected him on Thursday, arguing against stagnancy by saying that “our life is a journey, and if we stop, things don’t go well.”

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AUSTRALIA
News 24

Sydney – Australia’s most senior Catholic cleric on Friday spoke out about controversy over the role of Pope Francis under Argentina’s military junta, calling it “a smear and lie”.

Argentine cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s election as the new pontiff has revived examination of the part he played during the dark days of his homeland’s “Dirty War”, when he was a leading member of the Jesuits.

Some accuse him and his country’s Church of having been too close to the brutal right-wing junta in power between 1976 and 1983.

But Sydney Archbishop George Pell, one of the men who took part in the conclave to elect the new pope, said it was old slander.

Asked by ABC radio whether the pope should make a statement to address the concerns, Pell replied: “No, not at all.

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VATICAN CITY
Washington Post

By Associated Press
Updated: Friday, March 15

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican is lashing out at “defamatory” and “anti-clerical left-wing” forces seeking to discredit Pope Francis over his actions during Argentina’s 1976-1983 military junta.

The Vatican says no credible accusation had ever stuck against the new pope.

While the former Jorge Mario Bergoglio, like most other Argentines, failed to openly confront the murderous dictatorship, human rights activists differ on how much responsibility he personally deserves.

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GERMANY
The Times (UK)

David Charter
Berlin

A priest held for months by the Argentine military junta, after allegedly being betrayed by the man who would become Pope, today said that he was “reconciled to the events” and considered the matter closed.

Father Franz Jalics, a Hungarian-born priest living at a retreat in Bavaria, southern Germany, said that he met Jorge Bergoglio years after his detention and the pair “hugged solemnly” after celebrating Mass together in Argentina.

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Marci Hamilton

When the Roman Catholic Cardinals gathered for their secret Vatican conclave to choose Jorge Cardinal Bergoglio of Argentina as the new pope, it was impossible not to be reminded of the global sex abuse scandal that has scandalized the church over the past decade. Secrets have long kept child predators in the priesthood in business, and the current process of selecting the spiritual leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics underscores the inherent lack of transparency in the institution.

But at the very same time as the cardinals sat clandestinely in Rome worrying about leaks, survivors of childhood sex abuse and visionary legislators across the country like Marge Markey have been demanding bright sunshine here in the United States.

For the fifth consecutive year, Markey, the Assemblywoman from Queens, NY has introduced the Child Victims Act, a bill that would eliminate the arbitrary civil and criminal statutes of limitation for child sex abuse and offer survivors a one-year window to file suit even if their SOLs have expired. Earlier versions of the bill have passed four times in the General Assembly, but each time it has been blocked by the Senate, seemingly in deference to the Church.

To be sure, American bishops continue to fight to keep their secrets by handsomely paying millions to lobbyists to block child sex abuse SOL reform and lawyers to institute delaying tactics in bankruptcies like the one pending in Milwaukee and other more ordinary lawsuits.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Patriot-News

By Ivey DeJesus | idejesus@pennlive.com
on March 15, 2013

One of the country’s leading church and state scholars is challenging state Rep. Ron Marsico’s claims that suspending the statute of limitation in order to allow victims of child sex abuse to file charges against their predators is unconstitutional.

Marci A. Hamilton, a 20-year professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, argues that two amendments pertaining to the statutes of limitations and attached to House Bill 342 are constitutional and sound public policy.

In a report to the General Assembly, Hamilton argues that: “In reality, while the United States Supreme Court has closed the door on retroactive criminal legislation, it has found retroactive civil legislation to be constitutionally permissible.”

Under the U.S. Constitution, Hamilton argues, retroactive civil legislation is constitutional if the legislative intent is clear and the change is procedural.

Hamilton said efforts over the past eight years to reform the law have been fueled by false and outdated arguments.

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KENYA
Afrique en Ligue

Nairobi, Kenya – African priests have welcomed the choice of Pope Francis saying he would bring new vibrancy to the evangelization of the Gospel and institute broad reforms within the church.

The new Pontiff, elected against the backdrop of a series of graft allegations and the leakage of key documents within the Vatican, comes to the scene amid growing threats from paganism in Africa and the sexuality challenges facing the Church.

Religious experts say Pope Francis’ choice of name, in itself, is not only a sign of his readiness to confront those challenges through the ministry of the word of God, but also an expression of his readiness to open up the Church towards greater scrutiny.

‘He is a pure breath of fresh air,’ said the Reverend Father Dominic Wamugunda, the Chaplain of the Nairobi University.

Father Mario Porto, a Comboni Missionaries priest ministering in the cattle rustling-prone West Pokot region in Northern Kenya, said the new Pope must also work towards linking the evangelization of the world by implementing a series of measures.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph and Argus

By Claire Armstrong, T&A Reporter.

A Roman Catholic priest in Bradford has been found guilty of sexually assaulting a teenage girl.

William Finnegan, 59, had revealed in his trial that he had secretly got married in 1999, despite having taken a vow of celibacy.

He was standing trial accused of forcefully kissing a girl, 17, and touching her bottom on Easter Sunday last year while he was serving as a priest at St Clare’s RC Church in Fagley.

The jury of nine women and three men today found him guilty, by a majority of 11 to one.

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GERMANY
ABC News

By DAVID RISING Associated Press

BERLIN March 15, 2013 (AP)

A Jesuit priest whose kidnapping by the Argentine military junta decades ago led to strong criticism of the newly elected pope said Friday that he and the pontiff have reconciled.

The Rev. Francisco Jalics, who now lives in a monastery in southern Germany, said in a statement that he had talked with the Rev. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who was named Pope Francis on Wednesday, long after the 1976 kidnapping of himself and fellow slum priest Orlando Yorio.

Bergoglio has said he told the priests to give up their slum work for their own safety, and they refused. Yorio, who is now dead, later accused Bergoglio of effectively delivering them to the death squads by declining to publicly endorse their work.

“It was only years later that we had the opportunity to talk with Father Bergoglio … to discuss the events,” Jalics said Friday in his first known comments about the kidnapping, which occurred when the new pope was the leader of Argentina’s Jesuits.

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