ABUSE TRACKER

ROME
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Mar. 14, 2013

Rome —
On CNN’s “Connect the World” program on March 11, the day before the 2013 conclave opened, host Becky Anderson asked me a question about geographic blocs in the College of Cardinals.

Here’s what I said: “If there were a lone strong Latin American candidate, I think that guy would already have this race sewn up … The problem is, there isn’t just one plausible Latin American, there are several.”

As it turns out, I was half-right.

Although there were other compelling Latin American candidates heading into the voting, such as Brazilians Odilo Pedro Scherer and João Bráz de Aviz, as well as the Mexican Francisco Robles Ortega, a lone strong candidate from the region nevertheless emerged within five ballots, well under the 7.4 rounds of voting that form the statistical average for the previous nine conclaves.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Channel 4 News

Allegations of corruption within the church, child abuse scandals, priestly celibacy, and the rise of militant Islam – just some of the major issues confronting Pope Francis as he begins his papacy.

Last night Pope Francis stepped on to the balcony of St Peter’s basilica to cheers of joy and shouts of “Viva il papa!”, writes Abigail Frymann, The Tablet’s online editor. However, it will not be long before he has to face a bulging in-tray and myriad demands for his attention.

First of all, for a church that has been hit by variety of scandals, is a need to restore trust. Pope Francis has been left a top secret report that Benedict XVI commissioned from a trio of elderly cardinals, which investigated what lay behind the “VatiLeaks” scandal, involving information leaked by the Pope Emeritus’ butler, who was jailed for passing confidential papal papers to a journalist.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

by Michael Sean Winters | Mar. 14, 2013

In the days and weeks ahead, we will find out more about Pope Francis. We will find his writings, all of which will be translated into many languages very soon. We will listen to interviews with people who know him, who have worked with him. We will watch him as he begins to flesh out his own papacy. But, today, we should not rush past the amazing human aspect of yesterday’s events.

Ever since Benedict announced his surprise resignation, it has felt less like Lent and more like Advent. It has been a time of expectancy. As in Advent, when we know it will conclude with the birth of the Savior, we knew this sede vacante period would conclude with a new pope. But, just as Israel expected a different kind of Savior from the one she received, most of the world, and most of the commentators, myself included, were surprised by the selection of Cardinal Bergoglio as the new pope. There is a very Catholic sensibility here: Grace is often surprising in the ways it manifests itself and the selection of this man reminds us of that fact.

Before we saw the man, we hard the name: Francis. When some clerics talk about the New Evangelization, the focus on using twitter. But, as I have tried to argue, the New Evangelization must be about something deeper, a more radical fidelity to the Gospel and the various claims it makes upon us. St. Francis is the model, and not only because he is, after the Blessed Mother, the most beloved of Catholic saints. He is the model because Christ shines forth in His Church when we are close to the poor because Christ is found amongst the poor.

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ROME
Los Angeles Times

By Tom Kington Los Angeles Times
March 14, 2013

ROME — Italy’s Vaticanisti, the small band of journalists who claim to have secret sources inside the Holy See, may have utterly failed to predict the election of pope Francis I, but they can take consolation from the fact they were not alone in heavily backing Italy’s Cardinal Angelo Scola.

Minutes after Jorge Mario Bergoglio was named pope Wednesday evening, the conference of Italian bishops emailed a press release that welcomed “the news of the election of Cardinal Angelo Scola as the successor of Peter.”

A full statement attached to the email did name Bergoglio, but the mistaken cover note raised suspicions it was pre-written by officials who considered the papacy a done deal for Scola, the archbishop of Milan.

Scola was seen by Vatican watchers as the favorite candidate of overseas cardinals and not much loved by the Italian cardinals holding senior posts inside the scandal-ridden Vatican bureaucracy. Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera was so confident he was heavily backed it stated Tuesday that exactly 50 cardinals would back him in the first round of voting.

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ROME
London Evening Standard

Ross Lydall Lizzie Edmonds and Michael Day in Rome

13 March 2013

Pope Francis took worshippers by surprise today when he unexpectedly joined them at an early morning church service on his first day as pontiff. dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

The 76-year-old made an unscheduled visit to the Santa Maria di Maggiore Basilica, speaking to churchgoers going to confession and telling the priest to “work hard and be merciful”.

He spent about 30 minutes in prayer at the altar. Father Ludovico Melo, who prayed with him, said: “He spoke to us cordially like a father. We were given 10 minutes’ advance notice that the Pope was coming.” It followed a celebration dinner in the Vatican last night with the 114 cardinals who elected him the 266th Pope. He jokingly told them: “I hope you don’t regret this.”

US cardinal Timothy Dolan said Francis toasted colleagues and said: “‘May God forgive you’, which brought the house down.” The Argentinian was elevated from his role as Archbishop of Buenos Aires after five votes of the conclave, becoming the first South American Pope, the first to be a Jesuit, and the first non-European for 1,300 years.

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SCOTLAND
BBC News

The new Pope is the “shot in the arm” Scotland’s Catholics need to lift them from “an all-time low”, according to a church spokesman.

Jorge Bergoglio, the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, has become Pope Francis after being elected in Rome.

No Scot was involved in the vote after Archbishop Keith O’Brien resigned after allegations about his sexual behaviour.

Ronnie Convery told BBC Scotland he thought Pope Francis could lift the gloom among Scots Catholics.

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VATICAN CITY
Missoulian

Associated Press

Pope Francis put his humility on display during his first day as pontiff Thursday, stopping by his hotel to pick up his luggage and praying like a pilgrim before a beloved shrine in a decidedly different style for the papacy usually ensconced inside the frescoed halls of the Vatican.

The former archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, made an early morning visit in a simple Vatican car to a Roman basilica dedicated to the Virgin Mary and prayed before an icon of the Madonna.

He had told a crowd of some 100,000 people packed in rain-soaked St. Peter’s Square just after his election that he intended to pray to the Madonna “that she may watch over all of Rome.”

He also told cardinals he would call on retired Pope Benedict XVI, but the Vatican said the visit wouldn’t take place for a few days.

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ROME
Cardinal Roger Mahony Blogs LA

If you read my blog of March 3 and March 7, you will know that it was my dream and prayer that the Mass of Inauguration for our new Pope would be on Tuesday, March 19, the feast of St. Joseph, Patron of the Church.

Now, it’s going to happen! That date was set by Pope Francis the First last night, and it will be so memorable to join him in the Mass which officially begins his term as our new Pope.

St. Joseph has long been a personal patron Saint. In all four Gospels there is no mention of Joseph saying any words. Rather, his life was devoted to following God’s will, caring for Mary and Jesus, and working quietly to safeguard the Holy Family. His life-witness is what has always struck me as so inspirational.

It was in God’s providence that I was ordained a priest on May 1, 1962–the feast of St. Joseph the Worker. Then, on March 19, 1975 I was ordained a Bishop.

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VATICAN CITY
John Thavis

One of the first things a new pope hears is, “Holy Father, it’s always done this way.”

In his first 24 hours in office, Pope Francis has already given indications that he may not be intimidated by those words, as he creates his own style of being pope.

That was clear from the moment he put on his papal robes, donning the simple white cassock but declining to wear the ermine-trimmed red cape known as the mozzetta, which was left hanging on the wardrobe in the Room of Tears.

To Vatican officials who offered him an elaborate gold pectoral cross to wear around the neck, he said he’d prefer to keep his very simple cross that he’s worn as a bishop. He accepted the congratulations of cardinals not seated on a traditional throne-like chair, but standing up and greeting them one by one.

After his blessing last night to the crowd in St. Peter’s Square and to the world, Vatican aides told the pope a limousine was waiting to take him to his temporary quarters in the Vatican’s residence building. The new pope said he’d rather take the bus back with the cardinals – and he did.

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ROME
USCCB Blog

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

By Sister Mary Ann Walsh

Sat down to write my blog a few hours ago, looked up at CNN and saw white smoke.

With a cold rain drizzling down, I had said to people heading down to St. Peter’s Square for the smoke watch, if anything happens we’ll use the auditorium for a media holding pen – though we were all sure it wouldn’t happen.

Earlier in the day we had discussed how to accommodate media. Each network wanted a cardinal on its set. We worried we’d never be able to get cardinals through the crowd and decided it was better to broadcast from North American College. We sent out word to each network advising where they could park trucks. CBS decided in late afternoon to create a “set” in a basement classroom of NAC. While we awaited the pope’s appearance on the balcony, Charlie Rose joined us in the office before one of our TV sets.

Media arrived soon after the balcony appearance to wait for the cardinals. Finally someone got through to a friend at the Domus Sanctae Marthae, where the cardinals stayed during the conclave. He found out they were having dinner. As the night wore on, media wondered if they should bail. Then someone else got through to say that they’d be back at NAC to meet with media at 11 p.m. We announced that, and media who were ready to pack up sat up straight.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Focus

[click here for the story]

Rasch wird der neue Papst auch ein Zeichen setzen müssen, dass die Fälle sexuellen Missbrauchs in kirchlichen Einrichtungen konsequent und entschlossen aufgearbeitet werden. Vielerorts ist dies bereits der Fall. Die Kirche bezahlte Millionensummen an Entschädigungen, Anwälte durchforsteten Akten der Kirche, Präventionsprogramme werden entwickelt. Doch der Schaden ist kaum wieder gut zu machen – vor allem für die Opfer, aber auch für die Kirche.

Neuer Geist der Offenheit
In der Öffentlichkeit hat sich ein Bild festgesetzt von latent pädophilen Priestern und Bischöfen, die deren Machenschaften decken. Franziskus I. muss einen Befreiungsschlag wagen, um den Ruf der Kirche zu retten. Dazu wird gehören, aktiv nach weiteren Fällen zu suchen und Täter strikt zu bestrafen. Dazu wird aber auch gehören, über strukturelle Konsequenzen nachzudenken. Die Sexualmoral der Kirche muss auf den Prüfstand, ebenso wie der Zölibat. Eine rasche Reform wird es hier zwar nicht geben. Doch bereits mit einem neuen Geist der Offenheit wäre viel gewonnen.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Littlehampton Gazette

Published on 14/03/2013

A Church of England priest from West Sussex used the respectability of his cassock to groom and sexually abuse young boys along with his organist, a court has heard.

Father Keith Wilkie Denford, 78, breached the trust of the parents of two boys by molesting them over an 18-month period from when they were around 13 years old, it is alleged.

On one occasion it is claimed he got into a bath with one of the boys while aroused. On another he allegedly pressed himself up against a boy intimately with the words: “How nice it is to have a cuddle.”

Hove Crown Court heard that one time Denford, who was the vicar at St John the Evangelist Church in Burgess Hill, West Sussex, abused one of the boys aided by organist Michael Mytton, 68.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Deutsche Welle

Der argentinische Kardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio wurde zum 266. Papst gewählt. DW-Redakteur Klaus Krämer fragt, ob Franziskus als Papst des Übergangs zu bewerten ist.

Wieder einmal bewahrheitete sich diese alte Weisheit: Wer als Papst ins Konklave geht, kommt als Kardinal heraus! – Denn keiner der Top-Favoriten wurde gewählt, sondern ein Kirchenmann, der bekannt ist für einfachen Lebensstil und großes humanitäres Engagement. Der argentinische Kardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio ist der dritte Papst des dritten Jahrtausends. Franziskus nennt sich der Jesuit. In seiner Heimat hat er bewiesen, dass er nah bei den Menschen ist, die Sorgen und Nöte der Armen kennt. Allein das ist für die Katholiken in den Favelas, Slums, Townships und Flüchtlingslagern dieser Welt ein Hoffnungssignal. In Lateinamerika war der Wunsch der Gläubigen nach einem lebensnahen Papst besonders groß.

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VATIKAN
Heise

Peter Bürger 14.03.2013

Die Kardinäle haben einen Papst der Armen gewählt, der mit revolutionären Gesten einen neuen Weg der Geschwisterlichkeit ankündigt – ein katholischer Kommentar

Ein Papst, der sich vor seinem Segensgebet zuerst vor den Menschen neigt, ja niederbeugt und als ein Bedürftiger unter Geschwistern zeigt, das hat es in der dokumentierten Geschichte der Römischen Kirche so noch nie gegeben – selbst bei Johannes XXIII nicht (Ein “wirklicher Christ” als Papst). Was die Welt am Mittwochabend auf dem Petersplatz zu sehen bekam, ist fast zu schön um wahr zu sein. Der neue Bischof von Rom kommt nach eigenem Bekunden “vom Ende der Welt”. Er sagt als erstes ganz einfach: “Guten Abend!” Er verspricht, einen gemeinschaftlichen Weg zu gehen, bei dem er – in präziser Entsprechung zur Kirchenkonstitution des letzten Reformkonzils – die Gemeinschaft aller zuerst nennt.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony, in Rome for the selection of Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina as the new pope, praised the choice but also defended his record on handling priest abuse cases.

Mahony spoke as many Los Angeles Catholics rejoiced at the selection of the first pope from Latin America.

He said he thought it marked a historic change.

“This is unimaginable,” Mahony said in an interview with KCBS. “The impact this is going to have, particularly, of course, in Latin America. It’s the first time we ever had a Southern Hemisphere pope. It’s just extraordinary.”

Records released earlier this year showed that Mahony and other church officials plotted to hide priests who abused children from police in the 1980s. Some critics had urged Mahony not to go to Rome to help select a pope.

Mahony defended his record in the KCBS interview. “Much of the criticism comes from ignorance of not knowing what has happened, and the extraordinary efforts we have taken. We have passed every compliance audit with flying colors,” he told the station.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Patch

By David Ertischek

A Boston attorney who has helped hundreds of Catholic sexual abuse victims obtain settlements believes the new pope will continue to ignore sexual abuse issues.

“Pope Benedict and the current pope will just toe the company line, and he’s going to continue to sweep sexual abuse issues under the rug and maintain the secrecy, which has allowed sexual predators to thrive,” said Mitchell Garabedian, who heads a Boston law firm specializing in helping victims of sexual abuse. “I think sources from outside will continue to force the church to reveal the ugliness of child abuse within the church.”

Garabedian also offered his recommendations for the new pope—Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, now known as Pope Francis.

“For an institution such as the Catholic Church to hold themselves as the most moral organization in the world—they have to act morally,” Garabedian said. “The pope is the leader of that institution. He has to clear house. He has to get rid of bishops who have allowed children to be molested. He has to report them to the police and support victims who have been sexually molested. The pope has to institute a policy of transparency so that victims are allowed to heal and other victims are empowered—and the world is made a safer place for children.”

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ARGENTINA
The Guardian (UK)

Uki Goni and Jonathan Watts
The Guardian, Wednesday 13 March 2013

Despite the joyful celebrations outside the Municipal Cathedral in Buenos Aires yesterday, the news of Latin America’s first pope was clouded by lingering concerns about the role of the church – and its new head – during Argentina’s brutal military dictatorship.

The Catholic church and Pope Francis have been accused of a complicit silence and worse during the “dirty war” of murders and abductions carried out by the junta that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983.

The evidence is sketchy and contested. Documents have been destroyed and many of those who were victims or perpetrators have died in the years that followed. The moral argument is clear, but the reality of life at that time put many people in a grey position. It was dangerous at that time to speak out and risk being labelled a subversive. But many, including priests and bishops, did so and subsequently disappeared. Those who stayed silent have subsequently had to live with their consciences — and sometimes the risk of a trial.

Its behaviour during that dark period in Argentine history was so unsaintly that in 2000 the Argentine Catholic church itself made a public apology for its failure to take a stand against the generals. “We want to confess before God everything we have done badly,” Argentina’s Episcopal Conference said at that time.

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ARGENTINA
NEWS.com.au

POPE Francis has been criticised by some for his actions during Argentina’s “Dirty War.”

Many Argentines remain angry over the Catholic Church’s acknowledged failure to openly confront a right-wing dictatorship that was kidnapping and killing thousands of its citizens as it sought to eliminate “subversive elements” after a 1976 coup.

Under his leadership, Argentina’s bishops issued a collective apology in October 2012 for the church’s failures to protect its flock during the 1970s.

But the statement blamed the era’s violence in roughly equal measure on both the junta and its enemies.

That statement came far too late for some activists, who accused Jorge Bergoglio of being more concerned about the church’s image than about aiding human rights investigations in Argentina.

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ARGENTINA
Fox News

Published March 14, 2013

Associated Press

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – Pope Francis is rarely talked about without mention of his humility, his reluctance to talk about himself. The self-effacement, admirers say, is why he has hardly ever denied one of the harshest allegations against him: That he was among church leaders who actively supported Argentina’s murderous dictatorship.

It’s without dispute that Jose Mario Bergoglio, like most other Argentines, failed to openly confront the 1976-1983 military junta while it was kidnapping and killing thousands of people in a “dirty war” to eliminate leftist opponents.

But the new pope’s authorized biographer, Sergio Rubin, argues that this was a failure of the Roman Catholic Church in general, and that it’s unfair to label Bergoglio with the collective guilt that many Argentines of his generation still deal with.

“In some way many of us Argentines ended up being accomplices,” at a time when anyone who spoke out could be targeted, Rubin recalled in an interview with The Associated Press just before the papal conclave.

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VATICAN CITY
International Business Times

By Christine Gaylican | March 14, 2013

The new leader of the Catholic Church, Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio or Pope Francis, who shares to have lived a simple life, will be overwhelmed at how much money the Vatican Bank holds at this time.

Because disclosure is not practiced, records as to how much in assets the bank holds was only as of 2011, estimated at $8.2 billion.

Vatican’s tall order of secrecy and bureaucracy is now running in conflict with international banking laws that seek to gather enough information to battle money laundering globally.

This is one of the thorny issues that his predecessor Pope Benedict IV tried to address months before he stepped down by appointing a German aristocrat and industrialist Ernst von Freyberg as head of the Vatican Bank.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
KABC

[with video]

Jovana Lara

LOS ANGELES (KABC) — Will the newly elected Pope Francis push for reform and try and resolve the church sex abuse scandal?

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, a group that represents many sex abuse victims, hopes so and its leaders and some victims are speaking out.

“I had no expectations whatsoever. In fact, I was almost rooting for (Cardinal) Roger Mahony so that I could turn my back completely and totally on the church and that part of my life,” said Udo Strutynski, who says he survived three years of abuse at the hands of a priest in Los Angeles in the 1950s.

However, Strutynski said he is pleasantly surprised by the cardinals’ choice in Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, who chose the name of Francis as the 266th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church.

“I felt pretty good about him,” Strutynski said. “I thought this is much better than I dreamt of.”

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

Melissa Iaria, AAP
Updated March 14, 2013

A former Anglican priest says he received death threats when he lifted the lid on another priest who was allowed to keep practising after admitting to sex abuse allegations.

Father Paul Walliker, who is now a priest in the Orthodox faith, said the priest concerned held a senior position in the Anglican Church in Victoria at the time.

The priest had abused another clergy member and there were other victims, Fr Walliker told a Victorian parliamentary inquiry into how religious and other organisations handle child abuse.

The perpetrator priest later admitted the abuse in a statement to the local bishop, who immediately asked for his resignation.

But Fr Walliker said there was intervention from higher authorities who made up a story that the perpetrator would retire owing to ill health.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph

WHISTLEBLOWERS who spoke out about child abuse in the Anglican church received death threats and were “effectively excommunicated”, a Victorian parliamentary inquiry has heard.

Former Anglican priest Paul Walliker told the inquiry church members who reported cases of child abuse were publicly shamed and given no support from the church.

Fr Walliker said he was refused communion in the 1990s after blowing the whistle on a parish priest who was involved with a student in regional Victoria.

“The support we received from the diocese was zip, zero, zilch,” Fr Walliker said.

He said his children were harassed at church, in their workplace and while walking to school by supporters of the offending priest, and he was forced to live in secrecy.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph & Argus

By Claire Armstrong, T&A Reporter

A Roman Catholic priest accused of sexually assaulting a teenager is secretly married, a court was told.

William Finnegan, who is standing trial at Bradford Crown Court, yesterday revealed to the jury – and at the same time to his diocese – that despite having taken a vow of celibacy, he got married more than a decade ago and kept it a secret from both the Catholic Church and his parishioners.

Finnegan, also known as ‘Father Bill’, was parish priest at St Clare’s RC Church in Fagley when the alleged assault happened last Easter.

Opening the case for the defence, Finnegan’s barrister Jeremy Hill-Baker said to the jury that when they heard the case involved a sexual allegation against a priest, that maybe “a lightbulb lit somewhere and you thought, ‘This is something I read about, this is something that occurs’”.

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VATICAN CITY
WUSA

[with video]

VATICAN CITY (WUSA9) — Nearly 100,000 people gathered in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City to see the newly elected pope, including victims of sexual abuse.

Barbara Dorris says she first began to be sexually abused at age six by the parish priest and the rapes continued for seven years at her church and home in St. Louis.

“He told me he was sent by God to save my soul because I was an evil child,” Dorris said.

She says you can’t get over the abuse, you just learn to live with it. She is now part of SNAP, a survivor’s network for those abused by priests.

Dorris believes the church abuse scandal that was first uncovered ten years ago in the U.S. is far from over.

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MASSACHUSETTS
NECN

[with video]

(NECN: Latoyia Edwards) – Clergy sex abuse victims spoke out Wednesday following the election of Pope Francis I.

Victims say they hope Pope Francis will do a better job than his predecessor in dealing with the continued fallout.

For one clergy sex abuse survivor in Massachusetts, the introduction of Pope Francis was anything but exciting.

“It struck me how the world has been obsessed with it. Imagine if the world had been watching 10 years ago about the issue of childhood sexual abuse,” Gary Bergeron says about the media attention on the conclave.

Bergeron was an altar boy in Lowell in the 1970s and says he was repeatedly sexually abused by the late Reverend Joseph Birmingham.

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ILLINOIS
Patch

By Shannon Antinori

In addition to the thousands of pages to be released detailing decades of abuse at the hands of Catholic priests in the Joliet Diocese, the organization Tuesday also released an updated list of credibly accused abusers.

The list includes former St. Mary Immaculate Pastor Charles Van Duren. The accusations were brought to light after Van Duren’s death in 1997, according to the diocese. He served as pastor of the Plainfield parish from 1982 to 1995.

The names also include Alejandro Flores, a newly ordained priest from Shorewood’s Holy Family Parish. In 2010, Flores apparently attempted suicide by leaping from the balcony of an abandoned Joliet church. He survived and eventually pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a young boy over a five-year period.

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OHIO
WCPO

•By: Kareem Elgazzar, WCPO Digital

CINCINNATI – Judy Jones was glued to television reports Wednesday when white smoke began billowing out of the Sistine Chapel, signaling the election of a new pope.

“Oh me, oh my. A new Pope,’’ said Jones, who is Midwest Associate Director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests [SNAP]. “I really have mixed feelings. There is hope but this whole process brings back all the pain for sex abuse survivors.”

Jones, who lives in St. Louis, said SNAP has a list of actions they want the new pope to address in his next 100 days.

Jones, whose brother was abused by a priest in Ohio, joins the majority of American Catholics who disapprove of how the church has handled the issue of sexual abuse. An ABC News/Washington Post poll found 78 percent of American Catholics disapprove of how the church has dealt with the scandal.

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UNITED STATES
WSEE

By Emily Welsh

As the world awaited the billow of white in Rome, they looked to the future; but none can overlook the church’s history, marred by sex abuse.

“I don’t think we can ever put this behind us,” said Monsignor Henry Kriegel, Pastor at St. Patrick Church. “We can never forget the harm that was done to innocent children.”

Monsignor Kriegel acknowledged the difficult legacy left not only for the new pope, but for rising seminarians as well.

“I feel sorry for the young men,” he said, citing that there are half as many seminarians now than when he was ordained. He prays that they will find strong leadership in the new Pope.

The Support Network of those Abused by Priests, or S.N.A.P., has been reaching out to victims for over 20 years.

Leaders of that organization note key changes they want to see with the new leadership.

“Since the Pope resigned…even more victims are coming forward,” said SNAP Midwest Associate Director Judy Jones. “We hope the new Pope will take action immediately,” she said, noting that Pope Benedict gave many apologies, but made no significant moves.

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Jaweed Kaleem
jaweed.kaleem@huffingtonpost.com

Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires has been elected the 266th pope of the Catholic Church, taking the name Pope Francis.

He is the first Latin American pope to lead the church, as well as the first Jesuit priest.

Francis, 76, appeared on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica on Wednesday more than an hour after white smoke was released from the Sistine Chapel chimney at 2:05 EDT (7:05 p.m. CET) to signal that a new pope had been selected. Speaking from the balcony, he gave his first address as pope, the traditional Urbi et Orbi (to the “City and the World”), as crowds waved, cried and cheered for the new leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics. …

Judy Jones, an American who is associate director the Survivors Network for Those Abused By Priests, said the group is keeping a close eye on Francis and wants him to “show the world that the sexual abuse of children and cover-up of abuse will not be tolerated.” Ahead of the conclave, SNAP released two lists of 15 cardinals it was “most worried about becoming the next pope.” Francis was not on the list and Jones said the she knows “very little about this pope.”

Terence McKiernan, the president of BishopAccountability.org, an organization that tracks bishops’ records on clergy abuse, had more pointed words about Francis.

“There is some evidence that Bergoglio is well aware that rebuilding the church will entail much more work on the abuse crisis than was done by Pope Benedict. For example, last year Bergoglio was outspoken regarding the case of accused (Argentine) priest Justo José Ilarraz,” McKiernan said.

But while “Pope Francis’ meetings with survivors of sexual abuse will be less formal than Pope Benedict’s pioneering encounters,” McKiernan said Francis “encountered many cases of sexual abuse in the years when he was an auxiliary bishop and then the archbishop of Buenos Aires. Yet he has been content for the most part to remain silent.”

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AUSTRALIA
Jerusalem Post

By SAM SOKOL

03/14/2013

A confrontation between a rabbi’s wife and the brother-in-law of sexual abuse victims’ advocate Manny Waks last week highlighted a divide between two views within Australian Jewry over the proper role of the media in cases of sexual abuse.

Waks, who heads the Tzedek advocacy organization, claimed on Facebook on Monday that Peninah Feldman, the wife of local Chabad Rabbi Pinchas Feldman, had verbally attacked his brother-in-law Dovy Rapoport on March 6 over Waks’s tendency to turn to the media to publicize abuse cases.

Feldman allegedly told Rapoport that Waks was a “moser,” a Talmudic term for a “collaborator” who informs on Jews to non-Jewish authorities. The word has extremely negative connotations within Orthodox Judaism and there is a prayer recited daily against such people.

“This incident confirms what so many of us have known for a long time; that this type of attitude is fairly prevalent among many within the ultra-Orthodox community,” Waks wrote on his Facebook page. “It also demonstrates, yet again, the ongoing harassment and intimidation many victims and their families are subjected to, including by those in leadership positions.”

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UNITED STATES
Post-Tribune

BY JON SEIDEL Staff Reporter | jseidel@suntimes.com

The national support network for survivors of religious sex assaults is challenging the new pope to live up to his chosen name and crack down on abuse within the church.

Peter Isely, Midwest director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said he hopes the newly elected Pope Francis will not allow priests to continue serving once it’s been determined they committed criminal acts.

“You take his collar,” Isely said, “and he doesn’t get to keep his license.”

He also said he wants the pope to make it clear he wants survivors of abuse to come forward.

Isely’s group, known as SNAP, released a list earlier this month of what it saw as the 12 worst candidates for pope based on their records in dealing with clergy sex crimes and cover ups — its “Dirty Dozen” list.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Herald

By
O’Ryan Johnson / Boston Herald

Pope Francis, the former archbishop of Buenos Aires, hails from a region that has yet to be embroiled in the child sex abuse crisis that struck the church in America and Europe, leaving victims’ advocates here wary of his ascendency to St. Peter’s Chair.

Boston lawyer Mitchell Garabedian, who led legal actions over abuse against the church in Boston, said he believes the cardinals’ elections of an Argentinian was based solely on protecting its base in Latin America from other Christian denominations, not on addressing the lingering issues of pedophile priests.

“The church has made a political decision in voting for Pope Francis. The church is losing many, many parishioners to the evangelical church,” Garabedian said. “The church has made a decision to not lose parishioners in Central America and South America. It was a political decision by a trillion-dollar corporation.”

Phil Saviano, a board member of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said he was at least relieved the new Holy Father was not among the so-called “Dirty Dozen” cardinals who SNAP identified as being complicit in either the abuse or cover-up of child sex crimes, though he is not convinced Latin America parishioners haven’t suffered abuse.

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WASHINGTON
Seattle Times

By Sara Jean Green
Seattle Times staff reporter

A lawsuit has been filed in King County Superior Court on behalf of a 52-year-old Seattle man who alleges he was sexually abused more than 40 years ago by Brother Edward Courtney, a member of the Christian Brothers religious order and one of the country’s most prolific abusers of boys in the Catholic Church sex scandal.

The lawsuit was filed this week, months after a federal judge in New York set a July cutoff date for victims to file claims in bankruptcy proceedings involving the Congregation of Christian Brothers in North America, which entered into bankruptcy two years ago under the weight of the many abuse claims being filed against it.

The Archdiocese of Seattle is a party in the federal bankruptcy case and is also named as a defendant in the man’s lawsuit.

“We’re befuddled why they’ve taken this step at this time,” Greg Magnoni, a spokesman for the Seattle Archdiocese, said of the man’s lawsuit. “Our goal is to reach a fair and just outcome for the victim, but because the litigation is with the bankruptcy court, it’s out of our hands at this point.”

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UNITED STATES
National Survivor Advocates Coalition

March 13, 2013

The National Survivor Advocates Coalition (NSAC) urgently calls on Pope Francis to act forcefully for justice for the survivors of sexual abuse by priests and nuns.

The Church walks in a moment of great hope.

The Church must walk through great pain to get to its fullness.

Words alone, whether they are pretty or plain, will not get the job done.

First, without hesitation, the new pope must remove criminally convicted Bishop Robert Finn of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph.

In the midst of celebration it must be remembered that to truly cleanse and heal the process will be painful and it needs to be extensive.

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VATICAN CITY
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

By Ann Rodgers / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

VATICAN CITY — Before a crowd that had cheered, cried and roared as white smoke poured from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel, the first pope from the Western Hemisphere took the name of the world’s most beloved saint Wednesday night as Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina became Pope Francis.

“Holy smoke!” the Rev. Michael Sedor, a newly ordained Pittsburgh priest, shouted as the white clouds billowed in the dark square, where thousands had shivered in the cold rain all day. Soon after France’s Cardinal Jean Louis Tauran announced his name, the crowd began chanting “Francesco! Francesco!”

Inside, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York would reveal later, the new pope had asked Vatican personnel still waiting to greet him if he could do that later so the crowd wouldn’t have to wait in the cold any longer. …

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests expressed cautious hope for the new pontificate, saying that Cardinal Bergoglio had handled a case in his archdiocese well. They noted that he is from a religious order, and said that religious orders have a worse track record than bishops on responding to complaints of sex abuse.

“We’re struck by how this new pope, coming from a religious order, has both an enormous opportunity and duty to help prevent heinous assaults against kids by this crucial and relatively secretive segment of the Catholic clergy,” said David Clohessy, the executive director of SNAP.

“We are grateful he doesn’t work in the Vatican and isn’t a member of the Curia.

“We hope that will give him the courage to shake things up and put the prevention of abuse and cover up first on his priority list.”

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YOUNGSTOWN (OH)
Vindicator

Published: Thu, March 14, 2013

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The Catholic Diocese of Youngstown says two men alleging they were victims of Brother Stephen Baker while they were students at Warren John F. Kennery High School have come forward to the diocese in the past two weeks.

The diocese issued a news release saying that a man called Feb. 28, saying he was abused by Brother Baker during the time he was a student at JFK. The man, who requested anonymity, said he “wants only to set the record straight and wants neither counseling nor compensation but would like to meet with Bishop Murry.”

The bishop has agreed to meet with the man, but the meeting has not yet been arranged.

Baker, a Franciscan friar who served as sports trainer, baseball coach and religion teacher at JFK from 1986 to 1991, committed suicide Jan. 26 in Hollidaysburg, Pa.

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ARKANSAS
Arkansas Matters

The former pastor of a local church is in Benton County Jail accused of multiple counts of sexual assault, some of which may have occurred at the church.

42-year-old Hank D. Guilliams faces four counts of First-Degree Sexual Assault.

According to a probable cause report, Siloam Springs Police were contacted by the State Police Crimes Against Children Division in reference to sexual assaults that Guilliams spoke of as he was receiving treatment in a sex rehabilitation facility in Tennessee.

Investigators told Siloam Springs Detectives that Guilliams admitted to sexual assaults that occurred at Eastgate Church of Christ in Siloam Springs, where he was a pastor approximately two years earlier.

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VATICAN CITY
CBS Los Angeles

[with video]

VATICAN CITY (CBSLA.com) — Moments after the world was introduced to the new pontiff, LA Cardinal Roger Mahony spoke to CBS2′s Sylvia Lopez exclusively about the selection process and what the first Latin American pope will mean to the church.

Reported Lopez, “For weeks, Cardinal Mahony has tweeted and blogged his thoughts but he was unable to talk due to a media ban. But after the conclave today, he came immediately back after a celebration to talk with us about his feelings about the new pontiff.”

“I am ecstatic. Absolutely ecstatic. In fact, I really have a hard time sitting down. I want to stand up and cheer,” said Mahony.

The LA cardinal believes the selection of the first pope from Latin America will have a major impact on the church.

“This is unimaginable. The impact this is going to have have. Particularly, of course, in Latin America. It’s the first time we ever had a southern hemisphere pope. It’s just extraordinary. When we reached 77 (votes), everybody started applauding, because they knew that that was the number. And we had a new pope.”

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AUSTRALIA
Catholica

Editorial Commentary by Brian Coyne

The surprises keep on coming. Firstly the shock resignation of Pope Benedict; and now the surprising election of Jorge Mario Cardinal Bergoglio — the runner-up to the 2005 conclave but one whom virtually all the commentators had written out of contention as papabile for the 2013 conclave. What messages can we read into this: that the Holy Spirit works in surprising ways? That the Cardinal electors have chosen to give us a pope more in the mold of the humility of Jesus than the ostentation of the Empire of Constantine? Or that the heavies in the College of Cardinals have given up and decided to give the world, and themselves, a leader who would not be too much of a disturbance to their comforts?

We live in interesting times.

As one commentator on the BBC noted within an hour of the announcement, the election of Pope Francis creates three precedents that have great appeal:

He’s a Pope from Latin America;
He’s chosen a fresh name as Pope, Francis;
He’s the first Jesuit to become Pope.

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UNITED STATES
Detroit Free Press

By Patricia Montemurri
Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

For liberal Catholics, newly elected Pope Francis signals hope for change within the church.

“It sounds like to me he’ll be open to the dialogue. He seems to have rapport with the people in his diocese,” said retired Detroit Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, a well-known peace activist. “It seems to be the right direction.”

Gumbleton said Argentine Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio brings to mind the papacy of John XXIII, which ushered in the Second Vatican Council, modernizing Catholic services and promoting the use of more laypeople in parish life.

Known for championing liberal causes in the church, Gumbleton has called for greater emphasis on gay rights and helping poor people. He urged state lawmakers to change laws to make it easier for sexual abuse victims to sue the Catholic Church. He also decried the Vatican’s crackdown on American nuns, when a Vatican report said many U.S. sisters didn’t do enough to promote church positions against abortion and gay marriage.

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VATICAN CITY
NBC News

[with video]

By Erin McClam, Staff Writer, NBC News

Pope Francis has a to-do list as long as his cassock.

The former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio will lead 1.2 billion Catholics and a church at a crossroads — wrestling with scandal after scandal, changing demographics and calls for liberalization.

Here are seven pressing challenges for the new pope:

1. Cleaning house at the Vatican. Pope Benedict XVI ordered that a report on church bureaucracy be shown to only two men — himself and his successor. After he gives it a read, Francis will have to address backbiting, corruption and cronyism inside the Vatican and increasing pressure to make its finances more open. Church analysts were watching closely to see whether cardinals would elect a Vatican insider protective of church secrecy. Instead they picked a man from halfway around the world.

2. Leading the church out of the sex abuse scandal. The crisis consumed Benedict’s papacy and threatened to overshadow the conclave, with abuse victims even calling for some cardinals to recuse themselves from the selection process. Victims’ groups still want the Vatican to disclose more about its role in failing to protect children. One such organization, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said it was grateful that Francis was not on its list of the worst choices for pope — but warned that very little about the crisis has been exposed in South America

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VATICAN CITY
The Province

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis has opened his pontificate with a visit to Rome’s main basilica dedicated to the Virgin Mary, a day after cardinals elected him the first pope from the Americas in a bid to resurrect a Catholic Church in crisis.

Italy’s RAI state television said the former archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, entered the basilica through a side entrance Thursday morning just after 8 a.m. and left about 30 minutes later. He had told a crowd of some 100,000 people packed in a rain-soaked St. Peter’s Square just after his election that he intended to pray to the Madonna “that she may watch over all of Rome.”

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UNITED STATES
YouTube

Associated Press

Published on Mar 13, 2013

Advocates of victims of the recent church sex abuse scandal say newly-elected Pope Francis should take steps to clean up the scandal by disciplining cardinals and bishops were were complicit in the cover-up. (March 13)

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UNITED STATES
CNN

By Holly Yan, CNN

(CNN) — From the Vatican to Buenos Aires, Catholics worldwide rejoiced when Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio became the new pope.

He’s the first Jesuit and the first Latin American in modern times to lead the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics.

But in some ways, he’s just a normal guy.

Here are five things to know about Pope Francis:

1. His name says a lot about him

Unlike other recent pontiffs — John Paul II, Benedict XVI — Pope Francis doesn’t have a numeral after his name. That’s because he’s the first to take the name Francis.

Why Francis?

The pope wanted to honor St. Francis of Assisi, an admirer of nature and a servant to the poor and destitute. …

His career as a priest in Argentina coincided with the so-called Dirty War — and some say the church didn’t do enough to confront the military dictatorship.

As many as 30,000 people died or disappeared during the seven-year period that began with a coup in 1976.

Francis, in particular, was accused in a complaint of complicity in the 1976 kidnapping of two liberal Jesuit priests, Allen wrote. Francis denied the charge.

“The best evidence that I know of that this was all a lie and a series of salacious attacks was that Amnesty International who investigated that said that was all untrue,” said Jim Nicholson, former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See. “These were unfair accusations of this fine priest.”

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UNITED STATES
AFP

WASHINGTON — Clergy sexual abuse victims urged newly-elected Pope Francis to reform the Catholic Church and declare “zero tolerance” for sex crimes as his first official act.

“St. Francis was the greatest reformer in the history of the church, Pope Francis must do the same,” the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said in a statement.

Jorge Bergoglio, the first pope from the Americas, chose his papal name in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, an Italian Catholic friar and preacher known for stressing humility.

US-based SNAP warned that millions of children remain at risk from pedophile priests because the Church has not yet reversed longstanding policies of covering up reports of sexual abuse by transferring priests to unsuspecting parishes.

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VATICAN CITY
BBC News

Born in Argentina, Pope Francis is the first Latin American to lead the Roman Catholic Church, as well as the first Jesuit.

“It seems my brother cardinals went almost to the end of the world [to choose a pope],” he told the crowd in St Peter’s Square in his first address, a joke which belied his image as the cardinal who never smiles.

Up until 13 March, he was Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires.

Pundits did not see him as a favourite for the job of succeeding Benedict XVI and his advanced age – at 76, he is just two years younger than Benedict at the time of his election in 2005 – may surprise those expecting a younger man as the 266th pope.

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VATICAN CITY
Bloomberg Businessweek

By Joshua Goodman and Juan Pablo Spinetto on March 13, 2013

As Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio prepares to take over a Catholic Church rocked by sex-abuse scandals and allegations of corruption, the sharp knives of Argentina’s politics will have prepared him well.

The first non-European pope in more than 1,200 years frequently clashed with President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner as archbishop of Buenos Aires, criticizing her government’s record in tackling poverty and leading protests against her proposal to legalize same-sex marriages.

The 76-year-old Jesuit priest also had to defend himself from charges that he was complicit with the nation’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship, whose leaders were put on trial by Fernandez and her late husband and predecessor, Nestor Kirchner.

“You have to choose a pope that accepts challenges, and he managed to resist gratuitous attacks for 10 years,” Sergio Bergman, a Buenos Aires rabbi who has worked with the new pope for two decades, said in a phone interview. “I think it factored into his selection.”

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VATICAN CITY
The New York Times

By RACHEL DONADIO

Published: March 13, 2013

VATICAN CITY — By choosing the first pope from the New World, the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church sent a strong message of change: that the future of the church lies in the global south, and that a scholar with a common touch may be its best choice to inspire the faithful.

But it was not yet clear whether that mandate will extend to the Vatican, whether Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who became Pope Francis on Wednesday, will display the mettle to tackle the organizational dysfunction and corruption that plagued the eight-year papacy of Pope Benedict XVI. Cardinal Bergoglio never spent time here dealing with the bureaucracy, the Curia, and after he finished second to Benedict in the 2005 voting, he expressed relief at not having to face that prospect.

“In the Curia I would die,” he said in a later interview with the Italian news media. “My life is in Buenos Aires. Without the people of my diocese, without their problems, I feel something lacking every day.”

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SCOTLAND
Daily Record

PRAISE for the new pontiff’s humility and his strong background of supporting social justice were matched by pleas for reform.

THE new Pope could be the man to heal the troubled Catholic Church, a senior Scots churchman predicted last night.

Archbishop of Glasgow Philip Tartaglia said Pope Francis’s body language as he appeared on the Vatican balcony gave an insight into his character.

He said: “I think we can take from his first appearance that he is a humble, spiritual and calm man.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
CBS Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — A man who received nearly $1 million in a sex abuse settlement with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles wants Pope Francis to defrock Cardinal Roger Mahony over his role in the scandal’s cover-up.

“He needs to clean house. He needs to publicly admonish Mahony and every other hierarchy that was involved in the cover-up in the United States and worldwide, defrock him, even encourage the District Attorney to file an indictment and support that,” said Michael Duran.

Duran is one of four men who reached a nearly $10 million settlement Tuesday against the archdiocese, Mahony, and ex-priest Michael Baker.

He said Baker abused him for a 2-year period beginning when he was 11 years old.

“He raped me, he didn’t just touch me, he didn’t just put his hands down my pants, he raped me,” said Duran.

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ARGENTINA
The Advertiser

by Oren Dorell USA TODAY

With the pealing of bells and the honking of horns, Catholics across Latin America welcomed and cheered their new pope as a people’s pope who will understand their needs.

Horns honked in his home country of Argentina, where until Wednesday Pope Francis was known as Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires. Bells rang in the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo. In Mexico, where people wiped their eyes with tears of excitement at the news, Bishop Eugenio Lira said the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires made it clear from his first address to the crowds that thronged the Vatican that his approach will be a departure from his predecessors.

“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, when he started saying, ‘Good afternoon,’ just like someone saying hello to a friend,” said Lira, the secretary-general of the Mexican Conference of Bishops. “He will certainly be the pope who is closest to the people of Latin America. He knows the problems of Latin America very well.”

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ARGENTINA
McClatchy

By Daniel Politi, Vinod Sreeharsha and Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — The elevation Wednesday of Argentine Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio as the Roman Catholic Church’s 267th pope and the first from Latin America brought cheers across South America but also served as a reminder of the church’s role during the region’s dark days of dictatorship in the latter half of the 20th century.

Born in Buenos Aires in 1936, Bergoglio, 76, was 40 when Argentina’s military overthrow the government of Isabel Peron and instigated what became known as the “Dirty War,” during which as many as 30,000 people, most of them accused of being leftists, “disappeared.” Like many priests his age, he has been accused of not doing enough to protest the carnage.

In 2005, Argentine author Horacio Verbitzsky, whose books have detailed what he said was the church’s involvement in the Dirty War, accused Bergoglio of failing to protect two fellow Jesuits who’d opposed the military junta. The two Jesuits vanished and were presumed to have been killed by security forces. Bergoglio was never charged in subsequent years, nor has any hard evidence emerged of his involvement. But the charge has lingered largely because of Verbitzsky’s prominence in Argentina.

More recently, Bergoglio has been known for his confrontations with Argentina’s last two presidents, the husband and wife team of Nestor and Cristina Kirchner.

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ARGENTINA
International Business Times

By Julian Kossoff

March 13, 2013

As a leading member of the Catholic Church in Argentina for the last 40 years, the new Pope’s role during the notorious Dirty War of the 1970s, which resulted in the death of 30,000 left-wing activists at the hands of the military junta, could become the first scandal to haunt Latin America’s first pontiff.

Indeed, in 2005, a human rights lawyer filed a criminal complaint against the then Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, accusing him of conspiring with the Argentinian junta in 1976 to kidnap two Jesuit priests. He had asked the priests to leave the Society of Jesus of Argentina because of a conflict within the society over how it should respond to the new military dictatorship. Some priests had advocated a violent overthrow of the regime.

His spokesman flatly denied the allegations and no evidence was presented linking the cardinal to the kidnapping.

While generally the Church’s support for the regime was implied by its absence of criticism and its cooperation with the junta, there were documented instances of outright callousness by individual churchmen.

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ARGENTINA
Foreign Policy

Posted By Elias Groll
Wednesday, March 13, 2013

With the selection of Argentine Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio as pope, the Catholic Church broke new ground by tapping its first modern non-European pontiff, an acknowledgement of the church’s growing flock in the developing world.

Unlike many other contenders for the position, Bergoglio — who took Francis as his papal name — remains untainted by the widespread sex abuse scandal in the church, a welcome development for those looking to the new pope to make a definitive break from that chapter of the church’s troubled past. But Francis still arrives wth something of a troubled history. As the head of the Jesuit Order during the country’s military dictatorship, he may be tainted by the church’s well-documented history of turning a blind eye to the regime’s practice of killing progressive priests.

From 1973 to 1979, a period that overlapped with military dictatorship lasting from 1976 to 1983, Francis served as the top Argentine Jesuit official. During that time, the Catholic Church remained silent in the face of widespread human rights violations during the country’s so-called “Dirty War,” an effort by the military government to root out dissent by torture, murder, and disappearances. In several cases, Catholic priests collaborated with the government and were even in the room as prisoners were tortured. In February, an Argentine court ruled that the Catholic church hierarchy, of which Francis was arguably a member, had “closed its eyes” to the killing of progressive priests. In 2005, human rights lawyers filed a case against then-Cardinal Bergoglio alleging that he had been complicit in the kidnapping of two Jesuit priests.

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ARGENTINA
Think Progress

By Hayes Brown on Mar 13, 2013

The election of Jorge Mario Cardinal Bergoglio as Pope Francis I has sparked new interest in the atrocities performed during Argentina’s period of military rule from 1976-1983.

Francis is the first pope to have been elected from the Americas, which will more accurately reflect the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America. That primacy, however, during the Cold War led to many dioceses throughout the region turning a blind eye to the atrocities of military governments. These right-wing governments, often taking power via coup, were supported by the United States and the church alike for their stand against Communism.

Particularly devastating was the period known in Argentina as as “The Dirty War.” Beginning as a crackdown on armed left-wing guerrilla groups following a military coup in 1976, the regime soon expanded its focus, imprisoning and torturing anyone thought to hold leftist views or criticize the government. Women who were pregnant at the time of their incarceration were allowed to bring their children to term, before being “transferred” — a euphemism used by the junta for execution — drugged and tossed from airplanes into the ocean. All-told, an estimated 30,000 civilians were “disappeared” by the government.

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ARGENTINA
Digital Journal

By Brett Wilkins
Mar 13, 2013

Buenos Aires – As Pope Francis takes his place as the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, his participation in Argentina’s US-backed ‘Dirty War’ is sure to come under increased scrutiny.

From 1976 until 1983, Argentina was governed by a series of US-backed military dictators who ruled with iron fists and crushed the regime’s opponents, many of them students, trade unionists, journalists and leftists. Kidnapping, torture, murder by death squads and disappearances characterized this brutal ‘Dirty War,’ and many of the leading perpetrators, including two junta leaders and the military dictator Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri, were trained by the United States in kidnapping, torture, assassination and democracy suppression at the School of the Americans in Panama. As many as 30,000 people were killed or disappeared during this horrific period, and many children and babies were stolen from parents imprisoned in concentration camps or murdered by the regime.

During this harrowing period, the Argentine Catholic church was shamefully silent in the face of horrific atrocities. Argentine priests offered communion and support to the perpetrators of these crimes, even after the execution of two bishops, including Enrique Angelelli, and numerous priests. Worse, leading church figures were complicit in the regime’s abuses. One priest, Father Christian von Wernich, was a former police chaplain later sentenced to life in prison for involvement in seven murders, 42 kidnappings and 31 cases of torture during the ‘Dirty War.’ At his trial, witnesses testified how the priest used his position to gain their trust before passing information to police, who tortured victims– sometimes in von Wernich’s presence– and sometimes killed them.

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ARGENTINA
U-T San Diego

By The Associated Press

Pope Francis has been criticized by some for his actions years ago during Argentina’s “Dirty War.”

Many Argentines remain angry over the Catholic Church’s acknowledged failure to openly confront a right-wing dictatorship after a 1976 coup that was kidnapping and killing thousands of its citizens as it sought to eliminate “subversive elements.”

Under his leadership, Argentina’s bishops issued a collective apology in October 2012 for the church’s failures to protect its flock during the 1970s. But the statement blamed the era’s violence in roughly equal measure on both the junta and its enemies.

That statement came far too late for some activists, who accused Bergoglio of being more concerned about the church’s image than about aiding human rights investigations in Argentina.

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ARGENTINA
Business Insider

Geoffrey Ingersoll|
Mar. 13, 2013

New Pope Francis isn’t a Hitler Youth like the last guy, but he has own troubled history.

Francis I along with the whole Argentine Catholic Church have faced criticism for their silence or complicity during the post-1976 military dictatorship — a failure for which the Church apologized in 2012.

Known as the Dirty War, this period saw a brutal battle between the ruling military elite and leftist guerrilla fighters, in which up to 30,000 Argentines were “disappeared” and others were raped or killed.

Argentine journalist Horacio Verbitsky chronicled how the Church and Bergoglio were involved in this dark era. As described by Hugh O’Shaughnessy of The Guardian in 2011:

[Verbitsky] recounts how the Argentine navy with the connivance of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, now the Jesuit archbishop of Buenos Aires, hid from a visiting delegation of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission the dictatorship’s political prisoners. Bergoglio was hiding them in nothing less than his holiday home in an island called El Silencio in the River Plate. The most shaming thing for the church is that in such circumstances Bergoglio’s name was allowed to go forward in the ballot to chose the successor of John Paul II. What scandal would not have ensued if the first pope ever to be elected from the continent of America had been revealed as an accessory to murder and false imprisonment.

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ARGENTINA
Consortium News

March 13, 2013

Exclusive: The U.S. “news” networks bubbled with excitement over the selection of Argentine Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio to be Pope Francis I. But there was silence on the obvious question that should be asked about any senior cleric from Argentina: What was Bergoglio doing during the “dirty war,” writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

If one wonders if the U.S. press corps has learned anything in the decade since the Iraq War – i.e. the need to ask tough question and show honest skepticism – it would appear from the early coverage of the election of Pope Francis I that U.S. journalists haven’t changed at all, even at “liberal” outlets like MSNBC.

The first question that a real reporter should ask about an Argentine cleric who lived through the years of grotesque repression, known as the “dirty war,” is what did this person do, did he stand up to the murderers and torturers or did he go with the flow. If the likes of Chris Matthews and other commentators on MSNBC had done a simple Google search, they would have found out enough about Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio to slow their bubbling enthusiasm.

Bergoglio, now the new Pope Francis I, has been identified publicly as an ally of Argentine’s repressive leaders during the “dirty war” when some 30,000 people were “disappeared” or killed, many stripped naked, chained together, flown out over the River Plate or the Atlantic Ocean and pushed sausage-like out of planes to drown.

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UNITED STATES
Religion Dispatches

Post by Nicole Greenfield

As soon as Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina, now known as Pope Francis I, was announced earlier this afternoon, the excitement could hardly be contained.

The first pope from the Western Hemisphere! The first Francis! An advocate for the poor! A defender of human rights!

Wait. Bergoglio, a defender of human rights? The idea that anyone would characterize the new pope as having a solid record on such issues is laughable. …

If we do dig a little deeper into Bergoglio’s past, we find that he was accused of participating in one of the numerous human rights violations committed during Argentina’s Dirty War (which ended up resulting in 30,000 activist deaths at the hands of the military junta). The Catholic Church’s complicity has long been acknowledged, but in 2005 Bergoglio became the focus of a criminal complaint filed by a human rights lawyer accusing him of conspiring with the junta to kidnap two dissenting Jesuit priests in 1976.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the dictatorship,—and outrage over the crimes committed during that period—remains a central part of the activist narrative in Argentina, heard widely at demonstrations in support of LGBT and reproductive rights. A common protest chant—“Iglesia. Basura. Vos sos la dicatura!” (Church. Garbage. You are the dictatorship!)—today became—“Bergoglio. Basura. Vos sos la dictadura.”

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UNITED STATES
Inquirer

WASHINGTON – Clergy sexual abuse victims urged newly-elected Pope Francis to reform the Catholic Church and declare “zero tolerance” for sex crimes as his first official act.

“St. Francis was the greatest reformer in the history of the church, Pope Francis must do the same,” the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said in a statement.

Jorge Bergoglio, the first pope from the Americas, chose his papal name in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, an Italian Catholic friar and preacher known for stressing humility.

US-based SNAP warned that millions of children remain at risk from pedophile priests because the Church has not yet reversed longstanding policies of covering up reports of sexual abuse by transferring priests to unsuspecting parishes.

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UNITED STATES
dotCommonweal

March 13, 2013

Posted by J. Peter Nixon

Why Bergoglio? Obviously I wasn’t in the conclave or even in Rome, but if I had to sum it up in a sentence I’d say he’s a Latin American Sean O’Malley.

Much of the boomlet for O’Malley over the last couple of weeks focused on his simplicity, commitment to the poor and personal holiness. His administrative chops and seriousness on the issue of clerical sexual abuse were a clear asset, but without the former elements he wouldn’t have been as compelling a candidate.

As many others have observed, Bergoglio has similar qualities. He famously urged those interested in coming to his installation as archbishop to stay home and give the money to the poor. Rather than live in the archbishop’s mansion, he chose to live in an apartment and apparently takes public transit to work (I wonder if he realizes yet that he will never do so again). It is also reported that when he was made a cardinal, he chose to alter his predecessor’s robes rather than paying for new ones. His choice of “Francis” as a name is, to put it mildly, extremely bold and suggests a strong identification with the poor.

In the runup to the conclave, many cardinals appeared to understand that the Church’s witness is the most powerful and compelling when it is voiced from a place of simplicity and humility. It is then that the Church best conveys the simplicity and humility of Christ himself. Francis’ decision to ask the crowd assembled in St. Peter’s Square to bless him before he blessed them was a powerful symbol in that regard.

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VATICAN CITY
Cardinal Roger Mahony Blogs LA

What a thrilling grace for the Catholic Church!!

A day of firsts: our first Pope from the southern hemisphere, our first Pope from Latin America, our first Pope to take the name of Francis, the first Jesuit Pope!!!

I am just ecstatic over the choice by the Holy Spirit through the Cardinals from across the globe. It will be impossible to sleep tonight with such good and emotional news for us!

It was a special grace to represent Southern California in this Conclave, and especially with millions of people from across Latin America living in our area. I can imagine how excited they must be to have for the first time a Pope who comes from their culture, language, and religious traditions.

Pope Francis I will continue to live out his deep personal faith with Jesus Christ in a way that attracts people to Jesus, thus bringing us a new Spring for evangelization within the Church.

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VATICAN CITY
John Thavis

Wow.

The first Jesuit pope. The first Latin American pope. The first pope to choose the name Francis.

And already there are signs that he will find a new way of being pope. Asking for the people’s prayers for God’s blessing before delivering your own, for example, was a pretty eloquent act of humility.

Within minutes, the Vatican had announced that Pope Francis’ first major audience will be on Saturday, when he meets the more than 5,000 journalists covering his election.

I was part of the live ABC News panel this evening watching it all unfold, perched above St. Peter’s Square. Diane Sawyer anchored, with fellow commentators Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Atlanta, Terry Moran and Cokie Roberts.

When we heard the name “Bergoglio” in the “Habemus Papam” announcement, we all did a double-take. As I wrote here two days ago, I had heard Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio’s name increasingly mentioned by some well-informed people, so he was high on my short list. But his election on the second day of the conclave surprised me. It meant he was not a compromise candidate the cardinals turned to after voting stalled on front-runners, but the first choice of many going into the conclave.

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VATICAN CITY
Anchorage Daily News

The Associated Press

VATICAN CITY — The following is the Vatican’s official English translation of Pope Francis’ speech ”Urbi et Orbi” delivered in Italian from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica Wednesday night.

Brothers and sisters, good evening!

You know that it was the duty of the Conclave to give Rome a Bishop. It seems that my brother Cardinals have gone to the ends of the earth to get one… but here we are… I thank you for your welcome. The diocesan community of Rome now has its Bishop. Thank you! And first of all, I would like to offer a prayer for our Bishop Emeritus, Benedict XVI. Let us pray together for him, that the Lord may bless him and that Our Lady may keep him.

(Our Father… Hail Mary… Glory Be… )

And now, we take up this journey: Bishop and People. This journey of the Church of Rome which presides in charity over all the Churches. A journey of fraternity, of love, of trust among us. Let us always pray for one another. Let us pray for the whole world, that there may be a great spirit of fraternity. It is my hope for you that this journey of the Church, which we start today, and in which my Cardinal Vicar, here present, will assist me, will be fruitful for the evangelization of this most beautiful city.

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VATICAN CITY
euronews

The Vatican has spoken out in defence of the decision to include Cardinal Roger Mahony in the conclave to elect a successor for Pope Benedict XV!.

The statement comes after the Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) called for Mahony to stay away – due to his role in handling child sex abuse within his ministry.

Mahony, the former archbishop of LA, has been accused of helping a paedophile priest escape prosecution.

But Vatican spokesman Tom Rosica said there was no reason for Mahony to be excluded from voting for the new pope:

“The cardinals, including Cardinal Mahony, who have been implicated or named by SNAP have given much reflection to the accusations against them, to the situations which they found themselves. In the end there was no reason for them not to be coming here to the conclave.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

A Church of England priest used the respectability of his cassock to groom and sexually abuse young boys along with his organist, a court has heard.

Father Keith Wilkie Denford breached the trust of two boys’ parents, jurors at Hove Crown Court were told.

The priest, 78, from Shoreham-by-Sea, has pleaded not guilty to four charges of indecently assaulting two boys.

Organist Michael Mytton, 68, from East Chiltington, East Sussex, has denied aiding and abetting indecent assault.

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VATICAN CITY
The Province (Canada)

Pope Francis: In Argentina he called priests hypocrites, squared off against the president, and became a target for human-rights activists

By Brian Murphy And Michael Warren, AP
March 13, 2013

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis is the first ever from the Americas, an austere Jesuit intellectual who modernized Argentina’s conservative Catholic church.

Known until Wednesday as Jorge Bergoglio, the 76-year-old is known as a humble man who denied himself the luxuries that previous Buenos Aires cardinals enjoyed.

He came close to becoming pope last time, reportedly gaining the second-highest vote total in several rounds of voting before he bowed out of the running in the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI. …

SOME PRIESTS ‘HYPOCRITES’

“In our ecclesiastical region there are priests who don’t baptize the children of single mothers because they weren’t conceived in the sanctity of marriage,” Bergoglio told his priests.

“These are today’s hypocrites. Those who clericalize the Church. Those who separate the people of God from salvation. And this poor girl who, rather than returning the child to sender, had the courage to carry it into the world, must wander from parish to parish so that it’s baptized!”

Bergoglio compared this concept of Catholicism, “this Church of ‘come inside so we make decisions and announcements between ourselves and those who don’t come in, don’t belong,’” to the Pharisees of Christ’s time — people who congratulate themselves while condemning all others. …

ARGENTINES STILL ANGRY

Bergoglio almost never granted media interviews, limiting himself to speeches from the pulpit, and was reluctant to contradict his critics, even when he knew their allegations against him were false, said Rubin.

That attitude was burnished as human rights activists tried to force him to answer uncomfortable questions about what church officials knew and did about the dictatorship’s abuses after the 1976 coup.

Many Argentines remain angry over the church’s acknowledged failure to openly confront a regime that was kidnapping and killing thousands of people as it sought to eliminate “subversive elements” in society.

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COLOMBIA
Colombia Reports

A Colombian priest visiting California was arrested on Sunday after accusations of sexual misconduct by a 16-year-old girl.

The alleged misconduct occurred during a visit by Father Julio Guarin-Sosa to a parish in Yuba City, California. The priest allegedly visited the home of a local family who asked him to speak to their 16-year-old daughter in private. The two went into a bedroom and according to the priest’s interview with local media, “They held hands in prayer … as he was leaving he hugged her and kissed her on the side of her cheek.” He told reporters that the girl did look uncomfortable and he told her not to tell her parents about the incident.

Guarin-Sosa refutes the allegation in the police report that he French kissed the minor. Some church parishioners also told local media that they thought that the priest’s actions could have been misunderstood.

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VATICAN CITY
The New York Times

By RACHEL DONADIO
Published: March 13, 2013

VATICAN CITY — With a puff of white smoke from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel and to the cheers of thousands of rain-soaked faithful, a gathering of Catholic cardinals picked a new pope from among their midst on Wednesday — choosing the cardinal from Argentina, the first South American to lead the church.

The new pope, Jorge Mario Bergoglio (pronounced Ber-GOAL-io), will be called Francis, the 266th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. He is also the first non-European leader of the church in more than 1,200 years.

In choosing Francis, 76, who had been the archbishop of Buenos Aires, the cardinals sent a powerful message that the future of the church lies in the global south, home to the bulk of the world’s Catholics.

“I would like to thank you for your embrace,” the new pope, dressed in white, said from the white balcony on St. Peter’s Basilica as thousands cheered joyously below. “My brother cardinals have chosen one who is from far away, but here I am.”

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 13 March 2013 (VIS) – “I am very happy that a Latin American has been elected. We know the hopes that it would have been someone from the continent that has the majority of Catholics [in the world],” were the first words of Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J., director of the Holy See Press Office, commenting on the election of the new Pope to reporters.

“The choice of the name Francis is very meaningful,” he said. “It is a name that has never been chosen before and evokes simplicity and an evangelical witness. His first, simple appearance in public testifies to both. It is a sign of great spirituality to ask the people’s blessing for him before giving his own. It is a spirituality that recalls that of his predecessor. His pastoral sense of relationship with the Diocese of Rome should also be noted. It is the Pope’s diocese and [he chose] to pray the Church’s simplest prayers with the People of God at a moment like this.”

“Cardinal Bergoglio,” he added, “is a Jesuit. Jesuits are characterized by their service to the Church, collecting all the charisms that the Lord gives us wherever they are needed, but trying to avoid positions of power. For me this election takes on the meaning of a call to server, a strong call and not a quest for power or authority. I am absolutely convinced that we have a Pope who wants to serve. His election was the election of a rejection of power.”

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 13 March 2013 (VIS) – Following is the official biography, published on the occasion of the Conclave by the Holy See Press Office with the information provided by the cardinals themselves.

Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, S.J.

Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, S.J., Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina, Ordinary for Eastern-rite faithful in Argentina who lack an Ordinary of their own rite, was born on 17 December 1936 in Buenos Aires. He studied as and holds a degree as a chemical technician, but then chose the priesthood and entered the seminary of Villa Devoto. On 11 March 1958 he moved to the novitiate of the Company of Jesus where he finished studies in the humanities in Chile. In 1963, on returning to Buenos Aires, he obtained a degree in philosophy at the St. Joseph major seminary of San Miguel.

Between 1964 and 1965 he taught literature and psychology at the Immacolata College in Santa Fe and then in 1966 he taught the same subjects at the University of El Salvador, in Buenos Aires.

From 1967 to 1970 he studied theology at the St. Joseph major seminary of San Miguel where he obtained a degree. On 13 December 1969 he was ordained a priest. From 1970 to 1971 he completed the third probation at Alcala de Henares, Spain, and on 22 April 1973, pronounced his perpetual vows.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 13 March 2013 (VIS) – Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, S.J., has been elected as Supreme Pontiff, the 265th successor of Peter, and has chosen the name Francis. He is the first Latin American Pope, the first Jesuit Pope, and the first “Francis” in the pontificate.

At 8:12pm—55 minutes after the appearance of the white “fumata” at 7:06pm—the Cardinal proto-deacon Jean-Louis Tauran made the solemn announcement to the people from the external Loggia of the Hall of Blessings of the Vatican Basilica.

Following are the words pronounced by Cardinal Tauran:

Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum;
habemus Papam;
Eminentissium ac Reverendissium Dominum,
Dominum Georgium Marium
Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalem Bergoglio
Qui sibi nomen imposuit Franciscum.

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VATICAN CITY
BBC News

[with video]

Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio has greeted crowds in Rome’s St Peter’s Square after his election as the Catholic Church’s new Pope.

The first Latin American and the first Jesuit to be pontiff, he will call himself Francis I.

Robert Mickens, the Vatican Correspondent for The Tablet and Father Thomas Reese from the Woodstock Theological Centre describe the new Pope as strong on social justice. He is also said to “live poorly, cooks his own meals and takes the bus”.

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UNITED STATES
Time

By Olivia B. Waxman
March 13, 2013

Here’s a primer on Jorge Mario Bergoglio, S.J., the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, who became the first South American Pope this afternoon.
•Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Dec. 17, 1936.
•He has four brothers and sisters. His father was an Italian immigrant and railway worker, and his mother was a housewife.
•Prior to becoming Supreme Pontiff, he had been Archbishop of Buenos Aires since 1998, and a cardinal since 2001.
•Before becoming Archbishop, he taught literature, philosophy, theology, and psychology.

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UNITED STATES
CNN

By Christopher M. Bellitto, Special to CNN
updated 5:58 PM EDT, Wed March 13, 2013

Editor’s note: Christopher M. Bellitto, chairman and associate professor of history at Kean University in Union, New Jersey, is the author of “101 Questions and Answers on Popes and the Papacy.”

(CNN) — For an institution that moves glacially, instant analysis is as impossible as it is unwise. Yet first impressions are important. Our initial glimpse of the new pope was curiously disconcerting. He stood there impassive and unemotional. He looked stunned, without almost any reaction at all except, perhaps, awe or even fear of the moment.

Suddenly, his eyes seemed to open wide, as if he was really seeing the position for which he had been chosen less than an hour before. And then he spoke, not with the power of physical force or energy but with something stronger: humility.

With the election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires as pope, the Roman Catholic Church enters the next chapter of her history. And yet, as often happens in the church, she turns to her past for inspiration and even innovation. So we have the first pope to be elected from the Society of Jesus, known as the Jesuits, who were founded by Ignatius of Loyola in the 16th century while Catholicism reeled from Protestant challenges.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Independent

Geoffrey Robertson

Wednesday 13 March 2013

Years of molestation by priests remains an appalling stain on the Vatican

As the world absorbs the news of the appointment of the new Pope, it is time to ask how the next Supreme Leader of the Catholic Church can meet its most urgent challenge, of stopping its priests sexually molesting small boys.

There have been, on a realistic estimate, over 100,000 such victims since 1981 when Joseph Ratzinger became head of the Vatican office which declined to defrock paedophiles and instead approved their removal to other parishes and other countries.

These widespread and systematic sexual assaults can collectively be described as a crime against humanity. The church cannot atone just by paying compensation. Unless the new Pope installs a policy that minimises danger to children, he, like Benedict, will become complicit in ongoing but avoidable abuse.

Zero tolerance

First, and most obviously, there must be zero tolerance for paedophile priests. They must be automatically defrocked as soon as their Bishop learns of their crime. There must be no delay, and certainly no appeal to the Vatican – it was there that Ratzinger’s preference for avoiding scandal permitted so many paedophiles to be forgiven, and then to re-offend. There is ample evidence now, from Ireland, America and Europe, that the Vatican has conspired to thwart prosecutors and protect clerical criminals.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

By Damien McElroy, and Donna Bowater
9:17PM GMT 13 Mar 2013

At the outset of the conclave, few Vatican watchers were even ranking Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergogio as the top Argentine candidate. The 76-year old had been overshadowed by his fellow countryman Leonardo Sandri, 69, a Vatican diplomat.

But having trailed second in every ballot to Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, the Archbishop of Buenos Aires triumphed at the fifth ballot to chose his successor, becoming the first ever Jesuit to ascend to the throne of St Peter as well as the first from outside Europe.

Pope Francis has been a cardinal since 2001 and has won admirers for his humble style of life. “His own simplicity of life, I think will be a great example to people,” said Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, the former archbishop of Westminister. “For many people this may be a surprise election but for me it is inspired and I am very very happy, not only for the Catholic Church, but for the world.”

The son of a railway worker, the new Pope is a trained chemist. He has reportedly become less active in recent years due to his age and the effects of having a lung removed when he suffered an infection as a teenager.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

Pope Francis must commit to handing over secret Vatican files about child sex abuse in Australia, an advocacy group for people abused by priests says.

Nicky Davis, of the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests (SNAP), called on the new Pope on Thursday to show that the church is serious about tackling child sexual abuse.

She said the Catholic Church had never voluntarily handed over incriminating documents or cooperated with law enforcement or official inquiries into the issue.

“One of the first actions of the new Pope should be to open all the secret Vatican files relating to child sexual abuse in Australia and hand them to Australia’s royal commission.”

The federal government has established the commission to inquire into institutional responses to child sex abuse in Australia.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by Joshua J. McElwee | Mar. 13, 2013

Vatican City —
Jorge Mario Bergoglio, an Argentinean Jesuit who is the first in his order and the first from Latin America to hold the see of Peter, has been elected the 266th bishop of Rome and leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics.

Appearing on a balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica about an hour and 10 minutes after white smoke from a chimney above the Sistine Chapel first signaled his election, Bergoglio was introduced by his birth name with the traditional proclamation of the Latin phrase “Habemus papam” (“We have a pope”).

Then came pronouncement of the choice of his papal name: Francis.

He is the first pontiff to choose the name, likely for either the 12th-century St. Francis of Assisi, known for his simple lifestyle and dedication to the works of mercy, or for St. Francis Xavier, a 16th-century Spanish Jesuit priest known for his efforts to evangelize, particularly in Asia.

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VATICAN CITY
WTHI

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican says the new pope’s official name is Pope Francis, without a Roman numeral.

Spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi sought to clear up any possible confusion, noting that Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, who announced the name to the world, said simply Francis. It is listed that way in the first Vatican bulletin on the new pope.

“It will become Francis I after we have a Francis II,” Lombardi quipped.

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VATICAN CITY
Los Angeles Times

April 17, 2005|

From Associated Press

VATICAN CITY — A human rights lawyer has filed a criminal complaint against an Argentine cardinal mentioned as a possible contender to become pope, accusing him of involvement in the 1976 kidnappings of two priests.

Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s spokesman Saturday called the allegation “old slander.”

The complaint filed in a court in the Argentine capital on Friday accused Bergoglio, the archbishop of Buenos Aires, of involvement in the abduction of two Jesuit priests by the military dictatorship, reported the newspaper Clarin. The complaint does not specify the nature of Bergoglio’s alleged involvement.

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ARGENTINA
MSN Now

Now that the Vatican chimney’s white smoke has ushered in Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope Francis, the 266th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, the “Who is this guy?” questions are starting to roll in. One odd fact among the Argentinian’s many noble achievements: In 2005, back when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires, Bergoglio was accused of involvement, along with the nation’s military dictatorship, in a 1976 kidnapping of two Jesuit priests who were found, months later, drugged and seminude in a field. The future pope was named in a lawsuit by a human rights lawyer, though Bergoglio’s spokesman at the time dismissed the charge as “old slander,” and no hard evidence against him ever surfaced. [Source]

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ARGENTINA
Gay Star News

13 March 2013 | By Joe Morgan

Pope Francis was elected as the leader of the Roman Catholic Church today (13 March).

Argentinian Jorge Mario Bergoglio, 76, was chosen by the conclave of 115 cardinals as a successor to Benedict XVI. …

However he strongly opposed same-sex marriage legislation introduced in 2010 by the Argentine government, calling it a ‘destructive attack on God’s plan’.

In a letter to the monasteries of Buenos Aires, he wrote: ‘Let’s not be naive, we’re not talking about a simple political battle; it is a destructive pretension against the plan of God.

‘We are not talking about a mere bill, but rather a machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.’

In the past, he has also called the adoption of gay couples child abuse, saying it was discrimination against children.

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BOSTON (MA)
CW 56

BOSTON (WHDH) — While millions of Catholics around the world celebrated on Wednesday with the election of Pope Francis, it was also a reflection and hope for those victims of clergy sexual abuse.

Boston attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who has represented more than a thousand clergy abuse cases from all over the world, says he speaks on behalf of all victims when he charges Pope Francis with promoting real change in the church. He hopes the church’s slate is sort of “wiped clean” and Pope Francis will be more transparent about the church’s issues than those before him.

“This pope has to be a moral leader. For the Catholic Church to be a moral institution it has to act morally. This pope, Pope Francis, has to clean house with regard to pedophilia. He has to set new norms in place to sanction bishops. He has to reveal their file, the files within the church. He has to name pedophiles. There has to be transparency. He has to support victims,” said Garabedian.

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ARGENTINA
International Business Times

By Palash R. Ghosh | March 13 2013

Pope Francis I, the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church, who faces the extreme difficult task of moving the church away from a global child sex abuse scandal and other woes, is the first South American ever elected Pontiff.

The Argentine-born son of Italian immigrants, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, 76, was formerly the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, and is known for his modest lifestyle, personal; humility dedication to social justice as well as his adherence to conservative church doctrines.

As an example of his rejection of luxury, Bergoglio resides in a small flat, rides public transportation and even cooks his own meals, according to reports.

However, he is not without controversy. Bergoglio is reportedly linked to the controversial Comunione e Liberazione (Communion and Liberation), a conservative lay ecclesiastical movement within the Catholic church that was once a big supporter of disgraced former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Peter Isely on March 13, 2013

There is no greater example of courageous reform in the history of the Catholic church than St. Francis of Assisi. He lived with and demanded justice for those in our society that have been victimized and destroyed by the powerful. During his time he stood up an challenged bishops and cardinals and the Pope.

Thousands of victims of childhood rape and sexual assault by priests have been, like St. Francis, courageously coming forward around the world and demanding that the Catholic Church stop the cover up of sex crimes by clergy.

Pope Francis must, as his very first act, decree the zero tolerance of sexual abuse of children by priests. This one act would, in a single stroke of his pen, protect millions of children from harm, bring justice to hundreds of thousands of victims of clergy sexual abuse, and turn the church finally on a path towards true healing, recovery and reform.

Amazingly, across most of the world today if you are a priest and have been found by your bishop to have raped or sexually assaulted a child, you can remain in the priesthood and in ministry, your crimes left secret and unpunished.

Most of these child molesting priests are secretly transferred into new assignment by their local bishops, with the approval or indifference of the Vatican. An alarming number were also transferred across state and international boundaries, deploying the unique geographic reach of the church and its command structure, which remains steeped in secrecy, to facilitate the concealment and flight of child sex offenders. In essence, criminalizing a part of the Catholic church as an organization. This is especially true of religious orders, like Pope Francis’ own Jesuit order. Pope Francis has a special responsibility to hold accountable Jesuit official around the world who has covered up child sex crimes.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

The Conclave has elected the Argentinean cardinal as 266th successor of Peter

(Vatican Insider)

The new Pope, the 76-year old Argentinean Jesuit, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was Ratzinger’s main contender in the last Conclave. He is unusual in that he has always rejected posts in the Roman Curia and only visited the Vatican when it was absolutely necessary. One thing he hates to see in the clergy is “spiritual wordliness”: ecclesiastical careerism disguised as clerical refinement.

The new Pope was born in Buenos Aires and later became its archbishop, on 17 December 1936. He was born to a Piedmontese family, graduated as a technical chemist and then entered the novitiate of the Company of Jesus. He completed studies in the humanities in Chile and obtained a degree in Philosophy and Theology in Argentina. He was Professor and Rector of the Philosophical and Theological Faculty of San Miguel and vicar of the Patriarch of San José, in the Diocese of San Miguel.

In 1986 he completed a PhD in Germany, after which he returned to Argentina, where his superiors made him spiritual director and confessor in the Jesuit Church of Cordoba. In 1992 John Paul II appointed him Auxiliary Bishop of Buenos Aires, in 1997 he became coadjutor bishop and a year later he succeeded Cardinal Antonio Quarracino for six years, until 2011, when he became President of the Bishops’ Conference of Argentina.

He doesn’t have a chauffeur and preferred to use the metro to get around Buenos Aires. In Rome he prefers to get around on foot or use public transport. Those who know him well see him as a true man of God: the first thing he always asks people to do is pray for him.

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VATICAN CITY
GlobalPost

GlobalPost co-founder Charles Sennott covered the Vatican for many years and has written three books on the global church. Speaking from New York, he commented on the selection of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the new pope today:

The thing to know about Cardinal Bergoglio is that he has often been regarded as the conscience of the church in terms of the costs of globalization on the world’s poor. In this sense, he is very much the first pope in history to emerge from the developing world, an embodiment of the fact that the church is growing in Latin America and Africa while it is dwindling in Europe and America.

More than 40 percent of the world’s Catholics live in Latin America. So this is a big moment, and it lands with a good deal of history that revolves around the global economy.

During Argentina’s severe economic crisis, Cardinal Bergoglio spoke out forcefully on behalf of the poor and is highly regarded in Argentina for doing so. While he has spoken out on behalf of the poor and struggling, he avoided many of the theological and political pitfalls that have befallen other cardinals in Latin America. He came of age at a time when Liberation Theology was a deep dividing line in the church with Pope John Paul II cracking down on the Marxist leanings of the movement.

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ARGENTINA
International Business Times

By Jacey Fortin | March 13 2013

Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was selected as the new pope on Wednesday, and many Catholics in the South American country are rejoicing at the news that the new pontiff — who assumed the name Francis — hails from the busy streets of their own capital city, Buenos Aires.

“It was a bit of a surprise,” said Fernando Vivarra, a member of the a Catholic organization called Accion Catolica Argentina, which is based in Buenos Aires. “We are very happy. But we would be happy with any pope who got the most votes of the conclave.”

The voting process began in Vatican City on Tuesday morning, making the Wednesday decision an unexpectedly quick one for the 115 cardinals who conducted their deliberations inside the Sistine Chapel. Some observers were predicting a safe choice for the next leader of the Church — perhaps a Vatican insider from Italy or elsewhere in Europe — but the actual decision was a rather unexpected one. Bergoglio will be the first non-European pope in modern history and the very first from South America.

In Argentina, more than 6,000 miles away from the cheering crowds in Vatican City, the news is still settling in — and reactions are varied. There has been plenty of commotion inside the Buenos Aires Cathedral, but it had nothing to do with Pope Francis.

On Tuesday, about 150 secular Argentines stormed the iconic cathedral in order to protest subsidies to private schools, many of which are Catholic. Demonstrators argued that the $262 million awarded to private schools for subsidies last year took money away from the public sphere.

Because of those protests, a mass that had been scheduled at Buenos Aires Cathedral in honor of the Vatican conclave was cancelled.

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VATICAN CITY
The Salt Lake Tribune

By BRIAN MURPHY and MICHAEL WARREN
The Associated Press

VATICAN CITY • In unadorned white robes, the first pope from the Americas sets a tone of simplicity and pastoral humility in a church desperate to move past the tarnished era of abuse scandals and internal Vatican upheavals.

The choice of Argentine Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio — who took the name Francis — reflected a series of history-making decisions by fellow cardinals who seemed determined to offer a message of renewal to a church under pressures on many fronts.

The 76-year-old archbishop of Buenos Aries — the first from Latin America and the first from the Jesuit order — bowed to the crowds in St. Peter’s Square and asked for their blessing in a hint of the austere style he cultivated while modernizing the Argentina’s conservative Catholic church.

In taking the name Francis, he drew connections to the 13th century St. Francis of Assisi, who saw his calling as trying to rebuild the church in a time of turmoil. It also evokes images of Francis Xavier, one of the 16th century founders of the Jesuit order that is known for its scholarship and outreach.

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UNITED STATES
Reuters

By Mary Wisniewski

CHICAGO | Wed Mar 13, 2013

(Reuters) – Pope Francis will face a divided Church in the United States, with the faithful at odds over issues like contraception, same-sex marriage and married priests.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina was chosen to lead the Roman Catholic Church on Wednesday. He took the name Pope Francis.

“Intense prayer from all around the world surrounded the election of Pope Francis I,” Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a statement. “The bishops of the United States thank God for the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the inspired choice of the College of Cardinals.”

In the United States, the results of November’s presidential election highlighted the divide between Catholics who want the Church to modernize and those who favor its traditional ways. U.S. Catholic bishops pushed hard against policies favoring gay marriage and contraception, warning of the “intrinsic evils” of the Democratic platform. But post-election polling showed that most U.S. Catholics favored Democratic President Barack Obama.

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VATICAN CITY
WAVY

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis is the first ever from the Americas, an austere Jesuit intellectual who modernized Argentina’s conservative Catholic church.

Known until Wednesday as Jorge Bergoglio, the 76-year-old is known as a humble man who denied himself the luxuries that previous Buenos Aires cardinals enjoyed. He came close to becoming pope last time, reportedly gaining the second-highest vote total in several rounds of voting before he bowed out of the running in the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI.

Groups of supporters waved Argentine flags in St. Peter’s Square as Francis, wearing simple white robes, made his first public appearance as pope.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, good evening,” he said before making a reference to his roots in Latin America, which accounts for about 40 percent of the world’s Roman Catholics .

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UNITED STATES
MSNBC

Luke Russert
3:50 PM on 03/13/2013

Faith, guilt and charity. Growing up Catholic I’ve always considered those three ideas to be the hallmarks of my religion. A faith in Catholicism as the embodiment of Christ’s true teaching here on earth, the guilt that comes when we sin or do not live up to Christ’s standard and the charity that is expected from those who are blessed with so much. I was blessed personally by Pope John Paul II twice: once in my mother’s womb and another time when I was an infant. I attended CCD from when I was six years old till I was fourteen. The church is where I’ve been baptized, confirmed, where I’ve confessed and have even gotten to be a godfather. I graduated from one the world’s preeminent Catholic universities and to this day try to attend Mass (and never miss it on days of obligation). I’m that rare twenty-seven year old that proudly still feels a strong connection to my Catholic faith, yet the actions of many in the church over the last fifteen years have put my own personal faith on edge.

Pope Francis I will inherit an American flock where young Catholics have been outraged by countless pedophilia scandals, discouraged by a focus on politics instead of charity and hardened by a Western society where being Catholic is not so much celebrated but ridiculed. In order to reach these people, the new Pope needs to be honest and quite frankly level with parishioners. Instead of a constant focus on social issues, perhaps a focus on caring for the poor or decrying the influence of media manufactured materialism which will plague an entire American generation. Instead of a Catholic faith where priests are expected to completely suppress their sexuality, an acknowledgement that the many of the Church’s recent problems stem from the unnatural requirement of celibacy. Instead of bishops setting the agenda, maybe the nuns have a say too and more of a role for women in the church, for that matter. These types of practical acknowledgements, even if they do not become the new doctrine of the church, will at least restore some faith in the process.

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VATICANO
El Pais (Espana)

El cónclave que convirtió a Joseph Ratzinger en Benedicto XVI no se desarrolló como se pensó en su momento. La principal alternativa a Ratzinger no fue el cardenal jesuita Carlo Maria Martini, sino otro jesuita, el argentino Jorge Mario Bergoglio, quien finalmente se atemorizó y renunció. Es uno de los datos hasta ahora desconocidos sobre la transición en el Vaticano.

Limes, una prestigiosa revista italiana de información geopolítica, publicó ayer un documento insólito: el supuesto diario que un cardenal redactó durante el cónclave de abril. La revista mantuvo en el anonimato la identidad del cardenal, por razones obvias, pero avaló la autenticidad del diario. Fuentes vaticanas se limitaron a comentar que si las revelaciones eran ciertas suponían una grave ruptura del juramento de secreto efectuado por todos los participantes en el cónclave.

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CALIFORIA
Jeff Anderson & Associates

Blog: Sarah Odegaard | 2:03 PM

We are sad and again alarmed to learn of the news of the arrest of a visiting priest from Colombia working in the Diocese of Stockton for child sexual abuse. Time will tell what was known of Rev. Guarin-Sosa’s history and safety in working with children. What is known to us already is that numerous priests have been transferred globally with the aid of the catholic hierarchy after being credibly accused of abusing children. Fr. Nicolas Aguilar is just one example.

Aguilar abused kids in Mexico and then was shipped to Los Angeles, where he abused at least 26 other kids, before being sent back to Mexico. There, he disappeared and continues to evade law enforcement and justice.

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ROME
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on March 13, 2013

We’ve long worried about child sex crimes and cover ups by religious order clerics like the Jesuits. Religious orders have often been worse than bishops at hiding predators.

The Jesuits, in particular, have a troubled track record on children’s safety.

So we’re struck by how this new pope, coming from a religious order, has both an enormous opportunity and duty to help prevent heinous assaults against kids by this crucial and relatively secretive segment of the Catholic clergy.

We’re grateful the new pope isn’t on our “Dirty Dozen” list. But very little about this crisis has been exposed in South and Central America. We worry about the safety of children in the church there. And we hope victims, witnesses and whistleblowers in Argentina will find the courage to step forward and disclose how they have been and are being treated in the new pope’s home archdiocese.

We suspect that supporters of the new pope will find and cite one seemingly positive step he’s made in an abuse case. One such incident, however encouraging it may initially seem, doesn’t necessarily show a pattern. It’s important that we judge his record on abuse and coverup by all of his actions, not one isolated one.

An Argentinian archbishop, Edgardo Gabriel Storni, of Santa Fe, was convicted and sentenced to prison because of sexual abuse. We hope Pope Francis learned the right lessons observing that case.

We are grateful he doesn’t work in the Vatican and isn’t a member of the Curia. We hope that will give him the courage to shake things up and put the prevention of abuse and cover up first on his priority list. For the safety of kids and the healing of victims, we hope he starts by exposing the names of predator priests – current and former, living and deceased – in his home archdiocese.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

Pope Francis I: a humble man from the New World whose first challenge is to end the scandals

By Damian Thompson

Pope Francis I, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, is a priest of holinesss and tremendous modesty of manner – a man who, until now, has taken the bus to work. His challenge is clear. He needs to learn from Benedict XVI’s greatest success – and his greatest failure. The success was the restoration of reverent, mystical worship to the centre of Catholic life, an achievement that has inspired a dynamic generation of young Catholics. The failure was Benedict’s inability to reform the corrupt structures of the Roman curia, which should be recognised as the rotten core of the abuse crisis, and which is likely to have loomed large as an issue in the conclave. The historic decision to choose a Pope from the New World will perhaps make that task easier.

Alas, cleaning the stables is a more urgent priority than building on Ratzinger’s magnificent liturgical renewal. In many parts of the world, Roman Catholicism has become almost synonymous with sexual abuse and its concealment. The crisis is as bad as it was in 2005, when Benedict was elected, although most of the crimes are now more distant historical events.

Pope Benedict was determined to “purify” the Church of its priestly abusers and their allies. But his civil service, the Vatican dicasteries, were lazy and secretive in their half-hearted pursuit of the truth. Senior clergy who should have been disciplined or prosecuted under John Paul II – including two world-famous cardinals, Mahony of America and Danneels of Belgium, and now our own O’Brien of Scotland – were only recently exposed. This week the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, its former leader Cardinal Mahony and an ex-priest, agreed to pay nearly $10 million to settle four child sex abuse cases brought against them. (The appalling details are here.) That such a scandal should still be unfolding as the cardinals met to elect Benedict’s successor, and over 20 years after cover-ups of clerical paedophilia came to light, gives us some idea of the moral crisis and public relations catastrophe inherited by the new pontiff.

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ARGENTINA
Ventura County Star

The Associated Press
Posted March 13, 2013

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) – Latin Americans reacted with joy, bursting into tears and cheers on Wednesday at news that an Argentine cardinal has become the first pope from the hemisphere.

“It’s incredible!” said Martha Ruiz, 60, who was weeping tears of emotion after learning that the cardinal she knew as Jorge Mario Bergoglio will now be Pope Francis I.

She said she had been in many meetings with the cardinal and said, “He is a man who transmits great serenity.”

Cars honked their horns as the news spread and television announcers screamed with elation and surprise.

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