ABUSE TRACKER

KANSAS CITY (MO)
KCUR

[with audio]

By Alex Smith

On Friday the 25th, two lightning rods of controversy in the Roman Catholic Church community clashed when Kansas City’s Bishop Robert Finn publicly denounced the locally-based National Catholic Reporter.

Back in the Fall, Bishop Finn, who’s the head of the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese, was convicted of failing to report suspected child abuse, and the Reporter called for his resignation. Now, the Bishop says the paper’s anti-Church editorials have gone too far, and the Reporter should stop calling itself “Catholic.” This week, Alex Smith spoke with the National Catholic Reporter’s editor about the controversy and about covering a beat that doesn’t always welcome a critical eye.

In the mid-‘60s, The National Catholic Reporter broke away from the local diocese paper and established itself as an objective, independent newspaper reporting on the Catholic world. The Reporter quickly drew criticism from the Church for its coverage of civil rights issues as well as its critical editorials and investigative reporting. In 1967, the Reporter published leaked documents from the Vatican describing an internal debate over birth control. They revealed that the majority of the Pope’s theologians believed the church should change its teachings. The National Catholic Reporter editor Dennis Coday believes this was a great moment for the paper.

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IRELAND
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Dorris on February 04, 2013

At the risk of seeming contrary, we hope church and government officials do NOT apologize to the hundreds of women who were abused at the Magdalene Laundry.

Apologies are cheap and easy. They may provide short term emotional comfort. They do not, however, provide the very real and sorely needed counseling and medical and financial help these deeply wounded women need and deserve.

If officials in Ireland are serious about making amends to these women who were horrifically abused and exploited, then mere words shouldn’t be considered sufficient. Real action must be taken, such as setting up adequate funds for those who were hurt so that they can pay for therapy and health care.

Efforts should be made to reach out to every woman that was forced to live at these laundries and make them aware of victim’s advocates groups where they can get help. They also should point them in the direction of support groups where they can connect with other survivors and help each other heal.

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UNITED STATES
Think Progress

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Feb 4, 2013

The sexual abuse of parishioners—particularly children—by members of the clergy has become a defining scandal for the Catholic Church, changing the dynamics between priests and their flocks as lay Catholics demand accountability from Rome. But before crises in Boston and other American cities, a group of brave, deaf men in Milwaukee began speaking out in the 1970s about a priest, Father Lawrence Murphy, who abused as many as 200 of them. Mea Maxima Culpa, a new documentary about their experiences and their courage, premieres on HBO at 9PM tonight.

I spoke to Alex Gibney, the Academy Award-winning director of Mea Maxima Culpa about how to record interviews with deaf subjects, the need for transparency in Catholicism, and how the Catholic Church functions like Enron. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

I grew up in the Boston area, so I’m familiar with the breadth of the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse issues. But I was curious, how did you come to this particular story about clergy sexual abuse when there are so many?

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NEW JERSEY
The Huffington Post

The Huffington Post | By Ron Dicker Posted: 02/04/2013

In a move branded “breathtaking arrogance” by a watchdog group, the Archdiocese of Newark has appointed a priest — who once confessed to touching an underage boy — to a key job, the Star-Ledger reports.

The Rev. Michael Fugee has been named co-director of the Office of Continuing Education and Ongoing Formation of Priests, a post that does not involve contact with children, as mandated by a court agreement, according to the Star-Ledger.

Jim Goodness, a spokesman for the archdiocese, told the paper the job was administrative. He also expressed confidence in Fugee.

Visit the Star-Ledger for more details on the story.

In 2003 Fugee was convicted of aggravated criminal sexual contact after he told police he intentionally touched a 14-year-old boy’s crotch during wrestling sessions at the boy’s home, the New York Times reported. In court, Fugee later said he made the admission because he got impatient.

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UNITED STATES
TheMediaReport

Some stories you just can’t make up.

If there were still any doubt about the circus-like frenzy the media has created about Catholic priests and sex abuse, consider the following case of an imprisoned crank claiming that he too was a victim of priest sex abuse.

While serving time in a Pennsylvania prison for committing some ten bank robberies, Shamont Sapp, 49, accused four different priests in four different dioceses around the country of abusing him over a two-year period in the late 1970s.

Lest one think that there might be a shred of credibility to the claims, consider this:

“All told, the [Oregon Department of Justice] says Sapp filed claims against dioceses in Tucson, Ariz.; Covington, Ken., Spokane, Wash. [; and the Arch. of Portland] – in some instances alleging sexual acts that took place in the same cities on the same day.”

Even SNAP’s wild-eyed David Clohessy and Judy Block-Jones might have a hard time believing this one. But you never know.

Last week, a federal grand jury indicted Sapp on serious mail fraud charges related to the bogus claims. Not surprisingly, the grand jury found that Sapp wasn’t even present in the dioceses at the times he claimed.

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UNITED STATES
National Survivor Advocates CoalitionI

Where are the priests in good standing who will stand in howling protest or gentle rebuke that they have been lumped in with the likes of Cardinal Roger Mahony and Archdiocese of Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Curry?

Where are all the “good priests” as Catholics are want to talk about when they seek to turn away from the criminal sordidness of this largest scandal in the Church in the past 500 years?

Where are the Catholics who will stand and call them to account?

News reports, columnists, editorial writers, and bloggers have commented on the remarkableness of a hierarch publicly rebuking another hierarch. Remarkable only for its rarity.

But that alone only points to how far the Church has strayed, how much wrong has been accepted as right, how much unwillingness there is to stand for righteousness – for the least of these.

Even in the back and forth between Gomez and Mahony Catholics should be ashamed. Two men, charged with moral and spiritual leadership chose not the face to face meeting and a public announcement standing side by side but the public blast – one by letter the other by blog. And the Cardinal, in his blog, turns churlish to tell the world that in the past two years since Gomez came to town he hadn’t brought the matter up.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
KCET

by Jennifer London
on February 4, 2013

UPDATE from Karen Foshay:
L.A. Archdiocese spokesperson Tod Tamberg tells “Socal Connected” the diocese ” has sent notices to the LAUSD regarding people accused of misconduct who either have current or former ties to LAUSD, and have offered to share information over the phone. We have not received follow up to those letters.”

Tamberg couldn’t say how many letters have been sent and but did say they the letters involved persons the diocese believed would be of interest to LAUSD.

The Los Angeles Archdiocese tells “SoCal Connected” it was made aware, in 2001, that defrocked priest, Joseph Pina had applied for a job with the Los Angeles Unified School district after resigning in disgrace from the church in 1998. Recently released church documents reveal Pina began having sexual relations with a 16 year-old girl while he was still an active clergyman. The documents detail his admission that he became attracted to the young girl after seeing her dressed as Snow White when she was in the eighth grade.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Religion News Service

[Los Angeles files]

David Gibson | Feb 4, 2013

(RNS) The quake that hit Los Angeles last Thursday (Jan. 31) was an ecclesiastical one, but still pretty earth-shaking for the Catholic Church: After the release of thousands of secret personnel files detailing decades of sexual abuse of children by clergy, Archbishop Jose Gomez publicly rebuked his predecessor, Cardinal Roger Mahony, and stripped him of his official duties.

But here’s the question: Did anything really change for the embattled cardinal?

“The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil,” Gomez said in a statement, adding: “Effective immediately, I have informed Cardinal Mahony that he will no longer have any administrative or public duties.”

(Gomez also announced that Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Curry, a longtime aide to Mahony who was deeply involved in the cover-up, had resigned his position overseeing the Santa Barbara region.)

Much of the information in the files was known or suspected, but the archdiocese had waged a lengthy and contentious legal battle to keep ugly details of the cover-ups secret. The church lost, and the 12,000 pages of documents graphically demonstrated how Mahony, who headed the Los Angeles archdiocese from 1985 to 2011, sought to conceal the abuse from authorities.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

[Joseph Pina – Los Angeles archdiocese]

The Los Angeles Archdiocese said Monday that it had warned the L.A. Unified School District of concerns it had with a former priest accused of molestation before the school system hired him in 2002 as a community outreach coordinator.

The former priest, Joseph Pina, admitted in internal church documents to a sexual relationship with a minor and to repeated “boundary issues” with women throughout his career in the clergy.

The archdiocese apparently never alerted law enforcement authorities about Pina. But a spokesman on Monday said the church did indicate its concerns to L.A. Unified in its response to a district questionnaire before the school system hired Pina.

“The Archdiocese received an employment questionnaire from the LAUSD in August 2001 regarding Joseph Pina,” Tod M. Tamberg, director of media relations, said in a statement. “In response to the question: ‘Should the Los Angeles Unified School District consider anything else regarding this candidate’s employment suitability?’, the Archdiocese checked the box, ‘yes,’ adding that we would ‘not recommend him for a position in the schools.’ In response to the next question on the form, ‘Would you hire this person again?’, the Archdiocese checked the box ‘no.’ ”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
24 Minutos (Espana)

[Jose Ugarte – Los Angeles archdiocese]

El caso de José I. Ugarte, un sacerdote español que abusó de niños en EE UU, figura entre los documentos que la archidiócesis de Los Ángeles ha publicado el pasado jueves, y en el que aparecen los nombres de más de 100 curas que abusaron sexualmente de menores de edad en su Iglesia local durante la década de 1980.

El archivo personal del padre José Ugarte contiene una carta fechada en 1993 y enviada a la archidiócesis por un hombre cuyo nombre fue suprimido, en la que se afirma que Ugarte comenzó a abusar sexualmente de él en 1983, cuando la víctima tenía 17 años.

Según los documentos, el entonces arzobispo de la archidiócesis, Roger Mahony, y Ugarte llegaron a un acuerdo para que el cura español abandonara el país y residiera de forma permanente en España, su país de origen.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Criterio

La Arquidiócesis de Los Angeles aclaró ayer que continúa en su cargo el cardenal Roger Mahony, arzobispo emérito de la ciudad, pese a que el viernes pasado el arzobispo local anunció su destitución a causa de los escándalos de pederastia.

lunes, 4 de febrero de 2013
Por: Notimex | Los Ángeles

La Arquidiócesis de Los Angeles aclaró ayer que continúa en su cargo el cardenal Roger Mahony, arzobispo emérito de la ciudad, pese a que el viernes pasado el arzobispo local anunció su destitución a causa de los escándalos de pederastia.

“El cardenal Mahony como arzobispo emérito sigue siendo obispo con facultades en la Arquidiócesis de Los Angeles”, informó este domingo el arzobispo José Gómez, el mismo que el viernes había anunciado la separación de Mahony de la iglesia católica angelina. Tras señalar en un comunicado que la prensa y los feligreses solicitaron aclaraciones sobre la situación de Mahony, Gómez aseguró que el arzobispo emérito cuenta “con plenos derechos para celebrar los sacramentos de la Iglesia católica y servir a los fieles sin restricción”.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
RT

Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez has relieved his predecessor, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, from any and all public duties as a result of his mishandling of the decades-long clergy sex abuse that victimized 10,000 children since the early 1950s.

Mahony served as the LA Archbishop from 1985-2011, after which he reached the mandatory retirement age of 75. In response to a court order, Gomez on Thursday released files documenting the abuses that happened decades ago, naming 14 of the Catholic priests who sexually abused children – mostly boys – for decades. Around 200 priests were tied to allegations of sexual abuse in the state of California in 2007, resulting in a $660 million settlement to 500 victims who claimed they were abused. …

This unprecedented action is an unusual punishment that demonstrates the severity of Mahony’s past actions.

“To tell a cardinal he can’t do confirmations, can’t do things in public, that’s extraordinary,” Jesuit scholar the Reverend Thomas Reese told the LA Times.

But Gomez is also coming under scrutiny for making the decision too late. The Archbishop had access to the files for years and did not relieve his predecessor of his duties until after the court forced him to publicize the findings this week.

“There’s nothing that Archbishop Gomez knew today that he did not know when he took office or two weeks ago,” lawyer Anthony DeMarco told the New York Times. “They are doing this to try to control their image, but none of this would have happened without the courage of the victims coming forward and the immense public pressure.”

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WASHINGTON
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Dorris on February 04, 2013

At least 11 clerics who worked at schools in the Seattle archdiocese are publicly and credibly accused child molesters. We suspect the real number is much higher.

They hurt kids in the Seattle archdiocese. Those kids’ parents belong to the Seattle archdiocese. Those moms and dads have donated to the Seattle archdiocese. They attended or attend parishes in the Seattle archdiocese, parishes that are run by the Seattle archdiocese.

Yet Seattle archdiocesan staff – from the archbishop on down – have done little, if anything, to help warn other families about or protect other kids from these child molesting clerics.

Why? Because the clerics’ paychecks are not signed by the Seattle archdiocese. They’re signed by another Catholic entity, the Christian Brothers.

The Christian Brothers, however, operate in the Seattle archdiocese with the explicit permission of the Seattle archdiocese, specifically, the head of the archdiocese, Archbishop J. Peter Sartain.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
KPCC

Retired Cardinal Roger Mahony responded to criticisms in a blog post published Friday. Archbishop José H. Gomez stripped Mahony of his administrative and public duties and accepted the resignation of bishop Thomas Curry, who allegedly assisted in the cover-up of church sexual abuse with Mahony. Gomez also agreed to fulfill a court order to deliver thousands of pages of confidential files related to Catholic priest sexual abuse.

Mahoney publicly apologized two weeks ago after the release of confidential church files showed that he had played a part in covering up sexual abuse in the church, and had kept evidence away from prosecution. In a blog post published Friday, Mahony expressed his frustration at being shamed by Gomez and argued that his archdiocese had been at the forefront of abuse victim protection. Gomez’s public rebuke continued Sunday when he addressed the Catholic community from the pulpit and in a letter.

What’s your reaction to Mahony’s explanations? Is it possible Church leadership didn’t know any better how to deal with perpetrators of child sexual abuse? How could someone in such a position of (moral) authority seem to have a moral disconnect?

Guests:
Mary Gail Frawley-O’Dea, a clinical psychologist, was the only mental health professional to address the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on the sexual abuse crisis at their 2002 Dallas meeting. Author, “Perversion of Power: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church.”

Jennifer Hughes, Associate Professor of History at University of California, Riverside, with an expertise in Catholic Studies

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Univision

[Peter Garcia – Los Angeles archdiocese]

Lo siento mucho pero rezar, en estos casos, no es suficiente

Monseñor Peter García era un criminal. Abusó sexualmente de una veintena de niños y adolescentes. Su superior, el ahora retirado Cardenal Roger Mahony, sabía de las acusaciones en su contra pero nunca lo reportó a la policía. Nunca. Y ya es muy tarde para hacer algo al respecto. Monseñor García murió en el 2009.

Esta es la historia de cómo la iglesia católica en Los Angeles, California, protegió a varios sacerdotes criminales durante años y, lejos de denunciarlos a la policía, hizo todo lo posible para evitar que las autoridades se enteraran de los abusos sexuales que cometieron con menores de edad. Así es como la arquidiócesis de Los Angeles tomó partido con los criminales y no con sus víctimas.

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UNITED STATES
The Dish

Alex Gibney’s new documentary on the child-rape epidemic in the Catholic Church that raged for decades (and maybe centuries), Mea Maxima Culpa, debuts tonight on HBO. I’ve watched it twice. It is both an inspiring testament to faith and truth – as well as a devastating indictment of pride, power, and lies. The former come from four boys who attended St John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee in the 1970s. The latter comes from the Vatican and everyone in its power structure then and ever since. It really is a story about how the real church finally stood up to a hierarchy that has betrayed us and committed crimes of such gravity and magnitude they beggar belief.

The story begins as long ago as 1974 when four boys put fliers on the windshields of the cars in the parking lot of the church run by the man who raped them. They simply said “Wanted” with the priest’s name (the more explicit flyer in the video above came later). Instead of being listened to, the kids were disciplined. Eventually, in Murphy’s psychiatric record, Gibney finds Father Lawrence Murphy confessing to raping over 200 boys over a long period of time. He raped them in their dorm rooms; he raped them in the confessional, using the small window as a glory hole and granting absolution based on rape or masturbation. The detail I cannot quite recover from is that he picked out for abuse those deaf boys who had parents who could not use sign language – so that even if the boys had the courage to say what had happened to them, their parents would not understand. It’s things like that that simply chill you, haunt you, force you to confront the pre-meditated, profound assault on human souls that the Catholic Church, from the Pope on down, enabled, perpetuated, and lied about for so long – and still hasn’t been held fully accountable for.

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UNITED STATES
Daily Kos

Catholic bishop whines marriage equality is selfish and won’t someone please think of the children?

Kaili Joy Gray

If there’s one thing Catholic bishops should probably not talk about, it’s what is and isn’t good for children. You know, considering how the Catholic Church is crawling with pedophiles who raped and abused children over many decades and yet were protected by the Church leadership. But never mind all that.

Since the Catholic Church is not known for learning its lessons quickly—didn’t they just get around to forgiving Galileo?—here’s Bishop Francis Malooly of Wilmington, Delaware to explain why children are precious and therefore gay marriage is bad. The letter is “a teaching document intended to reiterate the Church’s teaching on marriage and is part of the U.S. Bishops’ pastoral strategy to advance a movement for life, marriage and religious liberty.” In other words, this is part of the Church leadership’s coordinated strategy to hate gay people—for freedom:

From the beginning of the Bible the Church learns the meaning of marriage and human sexuality. God created both.

Well, let’s just stop right there, shall we? God created marriage and human sexuality—but somehow the gays just snuck through into existence on their own, did they? Good lord, these arguments are so tedious. Let’s go below the fold for more, shall we? .

At the very least every human culture recognizes that the sexual instincts and sexual appetites of human beings need to be channeled and that children who result from sexual relationships between men and women need to be cared for and nurtured.

You know a terrific way to care for and nurture children? Not raping them. But again, I digress.

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CALIFORNIA
The Maui News

February 4, 2013 – Harry Eagar

I had been going to post a simple, obvious point — not restating it, since I haven’t seen it stated elsewhere — but waiting a day or two allowed the Catholic Church to reinforce my point in a way even I — ever pessimistic about the religion I was raised in — could not have foretold.

The obvious point is the Gomez, the cardinal who relieved the previous cardinal, Mahony, last week, has no objections to what Mahony did to protect child rapists in the Los Angeles archdiocese. If he had, he’d have suspended Mahony two years ago, when Gomez found out about Mahony’s rape mill.

Gomez did not act until Mahony was outed by the legal process. Therefore, we can be sure that if press and lawyers had not forced his hand, he would not have acted ever.

To date, so far as I have seen evidence, no member of the Roman Catholic Church management actually disapproves of child rape. If they did, they would act otherwise.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Ed Carty

Monday February 04 2013

SURVIVORS of Catholic-run workhouses in Ireland are awaiting an apology from state and church over their forced detention in the institutions.

A report being published tomorrow is expected to formally reveal the extent of the Irish government’s knowledge, involvement and responsibility for what went on in Magdalene laundries.

A committee, chaired by Senator Martin McAleese who has since resigned from politics, spent 18 months establishing the role official Ireland played in the operation of the institutions between 1922 and 1996.

Over the 74 years, thousands of single mothers and other women were put to work in detention, mostly in industrial for-profit laundries run by nuns from four religious congregations.

Each woman had her Christian name changed, her surname unused and most have since died.

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MISSISSIPPI
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Langworthy Victim on February 04, 2013

Today has been a long time in coming – over 30 years ago. I didn’t ever think I would see this day, and really didn’t want it to come to this in many ways, but it has. Some would say that is simply too long ago, we must simply forgive and forget. And in some ways that is true. We must forgive.

And I want you to know John that I did a long time ago. Why we are here is not because of vengeance or retribution, it is not to get even or get payback. It is simply about bringing the darkness to the light. And that is not easy for victims to do. It takes a long time to process what happened to them and why and how people they trusted would betray them and harm them and then process all the mess that it makes inside a child who becomes an adult. It’s a lot to process. People who speak about the ridiculousness of it taking so long for this to happen simply weren’t victims. They can’t understand.

Let’s be honest though, that today was not of your choosing, but due to the diligence and hard work of 2 ladies in Texas and a victim from Texas to bring to light what had occurred and what we believe has still been occurring. Let it be clear that though it was said you were repentant and had confessed, you only confessed to those 2 victims, me and one other from TX, who had come forward at that time to let people know what had happened. You did not confess to the other 4 victims that came forward in Jackson until today! You confessed to sexual indiscretions with younger males in a church in MS and a church in TX, when in fact it was not sexual indiscretions, but you molested and sexually abused at least 5 children here and 3 were from another church. Even in your public confession and in private to those holding you accountable to put it in your words, you still didn’t tell the whole truth. Only to that which you got caught doing. There are many who support you who do not know the fact that you still haven’t told the truth until today. They believe that because it was a long time ago that we should forgive and forget. Forgive yes, and forget to some extent, however it never justifies what you did and that you should never be allowed to around children ever again and thankfully after today that will be very difficult for you.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

BARRY ROCHE, Southern Correspondent

A Dominican priest has been remanded for sentencing after he pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a juvenile at various locations in Munster around twenty years ago.

Fr Vincent Mercer (66), with an address at the Black Abbey, Kilkenny, pleaded guilty to 15 sample counts from a total of 39 charges when he was arraigned at Cork Circuit Criminal this afternoon.

The charges relate to the sexual assault of the juvenile, who was aged between 11 and 17 at the time, on various dates between January 1st 1989 and February 22nd, 1994.

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SANTA BARBARA (CA)
KEYT

[with video]

Beth Farnsworth, NewsChannel 3

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. –
Those tracking down pedophile priests call Santa Barbara “Ground Zero” for institutional secrecy, cloaked in the walls of the former St. Anthony’s Seminary and Old Mission Santa Barbara.

Survivors like Bob Eckert say naming names is a huge milestone in the fight for justice. He’s referring to the 12,000 pages of personnel files released Thursday by the Los Angeles Catholic Church Archdiocese. “That was the whole goal,” Eckert told NewsChannel 3. “Push, bring attention to it — the more parents will be leery who they hand their children over to.”

We spoke with Eckert in the office of his attorney, Tim Hale, who represents more than 20 local survivors of priest abuse. Hale says 16 new victims have come forward, claiming to have suffered abuse at the hands of a priest in the San Francisco area as recently as 2001.

“These men cannot be prosecuted and can’t be forced to register as sex offenders,” Hale explained. “That’s why the release of these files is so critical.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
OpEd News

By Dave Lefcourt
OpEdNews Op Eds 2/4/2013

“Protect the Church at all costs”. That would represent the true official policy of the Catholic Church.

Unfortunately, the latest “news” coming out of the Archdiocese of Los Angele reveals something more familiar. On Thursday “12,000 pages of once-confidential personnel files of more than 100 priests accused of abuse” was posted on its web site after a Los Angeles judge ordered them released.

The archdiocese was given three weeks to make the documents public but chose to release them immediately,(one supposes as some “act of valor” considering it had previously stonewalled all efforts to release the files with 5 – years of legal wrangling). Too bad the Church hierarchy hadn’t taken immediate action when their priests molesting of children first became known, but that’s an old story.

In this latest revelation of church hierarchy “dirty laundry”, one of the documents came from the “Servants of the Paraclete”, a Catholic order in New Mexico tasked with rehabilitating abusers. They advised the L.A. Archdiocese, “PLEASE DESTROY THESE PAGES AND ANY OTHER MATERIAL YOU HAVE RECEIVED FROM US”, (written and emphasized in all CAPS). This was sent in a letter to Cardinal Roger Mahony in 1988 detailing “therapist’s reports about a prolific molester”. The letter ended with, “This is stated for your own and our legal protection”. Other released documents indicated Mahony ignored the New Mexico’s Orders advice. Yet those therapy memos were the most detailed in describing the behavior of priests who had been sent to this facility for “rehabilitation”. (Note: the “Servants of the Paraclete” facility has since been closed (date unknown) but according to lawyer for the Order he indicated in a 2011 civil court filing all treatment records had been destroyed).

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UNITED STATES
Los Angeles Times

By Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times Television Critic
February 4, 2013

As horrifying as it is to note, the timing of the HBO documentary “Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God,” which premieres Monday night, could not have been better if divine intervention were involved.

Last week, the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles released documents chronicling how Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and other church officials managed to thwart investigations into the sexual abuse of hundreds of local children to protect the accused priests.

To which this film by Oscar winner Alex Gibney essentially says, “If you think that’s bad, watch this.”

In “Mea Maxima Culpa,” Gibney documents a decades-old effort to protect and in some instances seemingly aid sexually predatory priests, a conspiracy that the film argues, snakes through every level of the Roman Catholic hierarchy including the current and past popes.

The film, which debuted briefly in theaters last year and is nominated for a Writers Guild of America award, is not perfect. Eagerly attempting to explore every avenue of the scandal, the story wobbles at times under the weight of its own ambitions, making U-turns in chronology and using some of the more regrettable techniques of the modern doc, including an overly manipulative soundtrack and unnecessarily creepified reenactments.

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UNITED STATES
Channel Guide

February 4, 2013 | By Jeff Pfeiffer

Sexual abuse of a child is one of the most heinous crimes imaginable. When that act is committed in the supposedly “safe” environment of a school or a church, and by an authority to whom the safety of the child has been entrusted, it becomes an even greater betrayal of the trust that should exist between adults and children. Further, when acts are committed upon children who are not only vulnerable to exploitation because of their age but also because they have a physical impairment, then those acts become truly enraging and saddening. Such acts are the subject of Oscar winner Alex Gibney’s (Taxi to the Dark Side) great new documentary Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God.

Mea Maxima Culpa is a look at the first known public protest against clerical sex abuse in the United States, focusing on the crimes of Father Lawrence Murphy, a Milwaukee priest who abused more than 200 deaf children in a school under his control. Murphy picked many of his victims because they were the children of parents who couldn’t “sign,” and therefore it would be even harder for the boys to tell their parents about any problems — beyond the issue of getting anyone to believe that a priest would do such things, anyway.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic League

HBO will air Alex Gibney’s movie, “Mea Maxima Culpa,” tonight. Bill Donohue accuses him of libel:

It’s too bad Pope Benedict XVI doesn’t sue Alex Gibney for libel. In an interview posted today on The Daily Beast, he calls the pope “a criminal.” He is accusing Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now the pope) of covering up the deeds of Father Lawrence Murphy, a priest who molested deaf boys in Milwaukee in the 1950s. Indeed, today’s New York Times advertises the HBO show by saying there was a “cover-up from rural America to the Vatican.”

The charge that Ratzinger was involved in a cover up is libelous. The fact of the matter is that no one contacted the civil authorities about Murphy until the mid-1970s (following a probe, the case was dropped), and it wasn’t until 1996 that the Vatican was contacted. Instead of dropping an investigation—the statute of limitations had long expired—the Vatican ordered a trial. Not only was Cardinal Ratzinger not at the trial, his name was never even mentioned. We know this because of the presiding judge’s testimony. Moreover, it wasn’t until 2001 that Pope John Paul II asked Cardinal Ratzinger to police these matters, and when he did, he moved expeditiously and fairly. An honest rendering of these events would conclude that no one at the Vatican has ever taken these cases with greater seriousness than Joseph Ratzinger.

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CANADA
Blackburn News

A former priest in the Chatham and Windsor region is set to appear in court on March 6th.

86-year-old Linus Bastien is facing four counts of indecent assault. A publication ban is in place.

Bastien was a priest for 40 years at 10 area parishes within the London Diocese. He has been charged multiple times with sexually related offences.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Joelle Casteix on February 04, 2013

It’s heartbreaking but predictable that a suspended LA predator priest has resurfaced working for a school district. Some 260 LA catholic clerics are proven, admitted or credibly accused child molesters. So in the month and years ahead, we expect we’ll see more and more painful stories about these pedophile priests being found around vulnerable kids and unsuspecting families.

Catholic bishops recruit, educate, ordain, hire, train, supervise and transfer priests, thousands of whom are or become pedophiles. When the pedophiles’ crimes are finally exposed, usually bishops suspend them and then turn away, providing little or no real warnings to others or supervision for the pedophiles. Hundreds of these pedophiles turn up in other places where they hurt kids, working for or near schools, camps, day care centers or other churches.

Time and time again, we’ve begged bishops “Protect kids. Put your pedophiles in remote, secure, independently run treatment centers.” Few bishops, however, take this bare minimum safety step.

Instead, they defrock the worst offenders and absolve themselves of any more responsibility. Or they let the offenders walk free and live or work around colleagues or neighbors who usually have no idea how dangerous these offenders are.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
The Catholic Thing

By Robert Royal

Monday, 04 February 2013

The sexual abuse of children by American priests, which became a national scandal after a series of Boston Globe articles in 2002, is now entering its eleventh year. The satanic reality, of course, goes back much further. And the recent revelations about what happened in the Los Angeles archdiocese call for yet another effort at some sort of plausible explanation for this particularly repugnant instance of what St. Augustine called the “mystery of evil.”

A little background on those new revelations, before we get to a startling chart below.

If you haven’t been following the news, last Thursday, L. A. Archbishop José Gomez suspended his retired predecessor, Cardinal Roger Mahony, and an active auxiliary bishop, Thomas Curry, from any further “administrative or public duties” (their priestly faculties, however, have not been suspended). Unsealed archdiocesan documents clearly show that both men conspired – the only accurate term – to keep known pedophiles from being arrested by the police.

Archbishop Gomez, a good and courageous man facing many other challenges in an archdiocese long mired in chaos and dissent, said in his official announcement about the abuse documents, “I find these files to be brutal and painful reading. The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children. The priests involved had the duty to be their spiritual fathers and they failed.”

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LOS ANELES (CA)
CBS Los Angeles

[with video]

[Joseph Pina – Los Angeles archdiocese]

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — The Los Angeles Unified School District was investigating Monday how a former priest, who admitted to a sexual relationship with an underage girl, was employed by the school system.

Joseph Piña, 66, worked for the LAUSD in school development from 2008 until he was laid off in 2012. According to LAUSD officials, Piña continued to work for the district occasionally up until last week.

Piña was defrocked in 2006 by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles after repeated confessions of a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old girl as well as a series of investigations into sexual misconduct.

The LAUSD was first notified Piña’s sexual abuse allegations last week when thousands of pages of sex abuse documents were released by the Archdiocese.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
KTLA

[with video]

A former priest and suspected child molester left employment with the Los Angeles archdiocese to work for the L.A. Unified School District, officials confirmed Sunday.

The former clergyman, Joseph Pina, did not work with children in his school district job, L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy said.

He added that, as a result of the disclosures, Pina would no longer be employed by the nation’s second-largest school system.

Over the weekend, Deasy was unable to pull together Pina’s full employment history, but said the district already was looking into the matter of Pina’s hiring.

“I find it troubling,” he said of the disclosures about Pina. “And I also want to understand what knowledge that we had of any background problems when hiring him, and I don’t yet know that.”

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OSTERREICH
der Standard

2. Februar 2013

Mann hatte sich an Opferschutzanwaltschaft gewandt und wurde von kirchlicher Datenschutz-Einrichtung kontaktiert

Wien – Ein Missbrauchsopfer hat nun von der Datenschutzkommission der Republik in einem Verfahren gegen die römisch-katholische Kirche recht bekommen. Der Mann, der von der Opferschutzanwaltschaft entschädigt worden war, hatte Auskunft über seine gespeicherten Daten verlangt und wurde daraufhin von der kirchlichen Datenschutzkommission kontaktiert. Diese verweigerte allerdings die Auskunft und verwies wiederum zurück an Opferschutzanwaltschaft.

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OSTERREICH
EHK-News

WIEN. (hpd/pur) Nun ist es amtlich: die katholische „Opferschutzkommission“, die stets auf die eigene Unabhängigkeit gepocht hat und kirchliche Missbrauchsverbrechen aufklären sollte, ist in Wahrheit ein Teil der Erzdiözese Wien und somit in keiner Weise ,unabhängig’. Damit hat die Kirche vollen Zugriff auf sensible Opfer-Daten.

In einem aktuellen Bescheid der Datenschutzkommission der Republik Österreich, der nach der Anfrage eines Missbrauchsopfers erfolgte, heißt es:
1. Die sogenannte “Unabhängige Opferschutzkommission” ist organisatorischer Teil der Erzdiözese Wien und muss deswegen selbst keine Datenschutzgesetze einhalten.

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UNITED STATES/IRELAND
Washington Times

DALLAS, Texas, February 1, 2013 ― “As I looked back on all the years I had suffered within the dark halls and stone hearts that were called a Magdalene Laundry, I felt a warmth on my cheeks as a lifetime of pain rushed in and I struggled to free my tortured soul and finally escape the veil of tears.” Magdalene Survivor.

In August 1993, workers in North Dublin, Ireland discovered the bodies of 155 young women in a mass grave. The grave is on property once owned by the Catholic Church and the Sisters of Charity. Records of the deaths can not be found; only 75 of the women have been identified.

Finding the grave forced open a 150-year-old secret. All the women had been residents of a Magdalene Laundry, an institution run by the nuns of Our Lady of Charity.

It’s history reaching back to the middle ages, the Magdalene Laundries are named after Mary Magdalene, a reformed prostitute who became a follower of Jesus. The Magdalene convents were created by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages for repentant prostitutes. The institutions, however, shifted from being a refuge into forced labor camps for women accused of violating a strict feminine moral code.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

Sensitive information disclosed to the McAleese committee, which has been investigating State involvement with Magdalene laundries, will not be published in the committee’s report tomorrow.

The interdepartmental committee, chaired by Senator Martin McAleese, began its work in July 2011 and has sought to establish the extent of State interaction with the 10 Magdalene laundries in Ireland between 1922 and 1996.

As Senator McAleese made clear when appointed on July 1st, 2011, “the sole purpose of the committee is to clarify and detail the facts of any State interaction with the laundries”.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Monday, February 04, 2013

Campaigners fear many of the survivors of the Magdalene laundries will be dead before the State compensates the estimated 1,000 women who were locked up by the nuns.

By Claire O’Sullivan, Conall Ó Fátharta and Sean McCarthaigh

With the Government commissioned report, due to be published tomorrow, expected to reveal the true extent of state collusion with the laundries, the survivors fear they may never get redress.

Under the terms of reference, Martin McAleese’s report was precluded from making recommendations, but was charged with establishing the facts of state involvement.

It is then up to Justice Minister Alan Shatter to make any further recommendations.

However, with the Government slow to make any formal apology, fearing it could open the floodgates to expensive compensation schemes, Justice for Magdalenes co-founder Claire McGettrick said the time for action is now.

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IRELAND
The Telegraph (United Kingdom)

By Rachel Cooper
04 Feb 2013

They have been described as ‘Ireland’s disappeared’.

Thousands of women are thought to have passed through the gates of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries, some of them never to emerge again and others to leave with deep emotional scars.

The women – some of whom had fallen pregnant outside marriage, or were the daughters of unmarried women – worked for years in church-run laundries, at times allegedly enduring both mental and physical abuse.

Campaigners have long been calling for justice for the Magdalene women and this week, it could finally come.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Friday, February 1, 2013

PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

The report into the Magdalene laundries is expected to be published next Tuesday afternoon, February 5th. It will be presented to the Cabinet that morning.

The report has been prepared by a committee of officials from five Government departments and chaired by Senator Martin McAleese, assisted by another official from the Department of Foreign Affairs.

The laundries, where an estimated 30,000 single mothers and other women were detained between 1922 and 1996, were operated by four religious congregations. Most of the women have since died. The last such laundry, at Seán MacDermott Street in Dublin, closed in 1996.

On June 14th, 2011, Minister for Justice Alan Shatter announced that the Government was to set up the committee to investigate the State’s role in the Magdalene laundries. The previous week the four religious congregations concerned had agreed to co-operate with any such inquiry.

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IRELAND
The Cork News

Friday, 1 February 2013

By:
Maria Tracey

The committee director of the Justice for Magdalenes (JFM) group has called for a State apology and compensation for victims ahead of the publication of a long awaited report on the Magdalene Laundries, due next week.

Mari Steed, whose mother spent 10 years at the laundries in Sunday’s Well said an apology would relieve the “stigma” and “shame” felt by women who were detained at the Magdalene Laundries.

Ms Steed believes an apology should follow the findings of an interdepartmental report- prepared by a committee of officials from five Government departments- expected to be published next Tuesday, February 5th.

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IRELAND
Galway News

February 1, 2013

A report into the Magdalene laundries, including the Galway one, is due to be published next week. (tue 5 feb)

The report has been compiled by officials at five Government departments, chaired by Senator Martin McAleese.

The Magdalene laundries were run by four religious congregations and detained an estimated 30 thousand single mothers and women between 1922 and 1996.

In June 2011, Minister for Justice Alan Shatter announced that an investigation into the State’s role in the laundries would be carried out.

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IRELAND
The Journal

A BASIC CENTRAL heating system for a terraced house, an extra €20 per week to her pension, a few extra bob for Christmas or enough for a burial on sacred land in the US: this is a partial snapshot of the wishlist of survivors of the Magdalen Laundries.

Rendered infamous through a film and several songs, the institutions were used throughout the 20th century as places to house women, often known as “problem girls”, affected by pregnancy outside marriage, poverty and crime.

Next week, the level of State involvment in the incarceration of thousands of women and girls will be examined, not by cultural forces, but by Government for the first time.

Senator Martin McAleese has sent his hefty report establishing the facts to Justice Minister Alan Shatter, who will publish it in full on Tuesday following a Cabinet meeting.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Michael Brennan Deputy Political Editor

Friday February 01 2013

THE husband of former President Mary McAleese has resigned from the Seanad.

Senator Martin McAleese had been appointed by Taoiseach Enda Kenny in 2011.

In his letter of resignation, he said he had dedicated his time in the Seanad to two projects – the investigation into the plight of women who were held in the Magdalen Laundries and the “bridge building” between North and South.

He confirmed that he had completed his Magdalen Laundries report after spending 18 months putting it together.

“It is my fervent hope that the report will be of real public service most especially to the women concerned,” he said.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Saturday, February 2, 2013

MARK HENNESSY, London Editor

On Tuesday a report by Martin McAleese may finally help to write the story of State involvement in the Magdalen institutions, a shameful chapter in Ireland’s history

So much of the story about the Magdalen laundries centres on names; on identities lost, abandoned or forgotten. Thousands of girls and young women went through their doors during two centuries. Each had her Christian name changed by the nuns, her surname unused.

On her marriage to an English soldier after she had fled Ireland, Margaret McCarthy changed her surname to that of her husband, Frederick Permaul. By then she had already changed her Christian name to Marina.

“When I came over I wanted to wash Ireland clean away. It was like taking off dirty linen,” says the drily humorous 69-year-old, in the sitting room of her home in Cricklewood, north London, this week.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By KATHRYN SHATTUCK

Published: February 4, 2013

9 P.M. (HBO) MEA MAXIMA CULPA: SILENCE IN THE HOUSE OF GOD (2012) Alex Gibney documents the case of the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, above, a Roman Catholic priest in Wisconsin who died in 1998 after having molested dozens if not hundreds of children in his care at a boarding school for the deaf, resulting in a trail of denial and cover-up from rural America to the Vatican. Mr. Gibney’s “methods are a blend of solid journalism and cinematic sensationalism,” A. O. Scott wrote in The New York Times. “The reliance on melodramatic music and lurid — though not explicit — re-enactments does not seem to me to make the movie more powerful, but rather the opposite. There is something to be said for a clear and unblinking recitation of facts, and thankfully Mr. Gibney does a lot of that.” But the heart of the film, “the real source of its emotional impact,” Mr. Scott said, “lies in a remarkable series of interviews with some of the men, most now in their 60s, who endured Father Murphy’s assaults when they were children and who have worked for almost 40 years to bring his crimes to light.” John Slattery, Jamey Sheridan, Chris Cooper and Ethan Hawke interpret their words.

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NEW JERSEY
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on February 04, 2013

A New Jersey Catholic priest – who pled guilty to molesting a Jersey City boy in the early 1980s – will stay locked up until he goes on trial for molesting three Missouri boys in the late 1980s, a judge has ruled on Friday.

Lawyers for the cleric, Fr. Jerry Howard, claimed that the statute of limitations had expired on his crimes. But Cooper County Missouri Circuit Judge Robert Koffman disagreed, and ordered the case to go to trial.

Fr. Howard – who worked in the Newark diocese as Fr. Carmine Sita before he changed his name in the early 1980’s – has been behind bars since April of 2010, when he was arrested in New Jersey and sent back to Missouri. He was indicted on three counts of forcible sodomy, three counts of attempted forcible sodomy, and two counts of kidnapping. The charges say that he abused at least three boys between 1983 and 1988 while he was working at Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Boonville, MO.

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IRELAND
The Journal

HER FIRST TWEET simply said: “My mother was Magdalene No. 322. Real name Margaret.”

It was met by a number of reactions, including disbelief that Magdalenes were given numbers.

“Yes,” replied Samantha Long. “I was looking over her records today and thought I’d share that. Awful.”

The Twitter user was talking about her late mother, Margaret Bullen, a woman taken into the Magdalene Laundries system when she was just two years old.

Just days ahead of the publication of a report into the level of State involvement at the now-infamous institutions, Long decided to share her family’s story.

There had been a campaign to get the hashtag #justiceformagdalenesNOW trending on Twitter to raise awareness last night and the Dublin woman’s provocative, powerful and heartbreaking tweets achieved that aim.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

By
PATRICK COUNIHAN,
IrishCentral Staff Writer

Published Monday, February 4, 2013

A Dublin woman has succeeded in her attempts to get the media to focus on Magdalene Laundries by trending on Twitter days ahead of the publication of a government report into the scandal.

Samantha Long’s mother was taken into the Laundries when she was just two years of age.The laundries were operated by religious orders and used unmarried mothers and their offspring as cheap labor.

Her daughter’s tweets revealed that she left the Catholic church run Laundries 49 years later, in a coffin after dying of ‘slave related injuries.’

Disbelief followed Samantha’s first emotive tweet which simply read: “My mother was Magdalene No. 322. Real name Margaret.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
National Post (Canada)

Kelly McParland | Feb 4, 2013

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony isn’t about to slip quietly into his enforced retirement from the archdiocese of Los Angeles, the biggest in the U.S. Within a day of the announcement that he had been censured by his successor, Mahony posted a letter on his personal blog, protesting his treatment.

Mahony was relieved of all his public duties on Thursday by the man who replaced him, Archbishop Jose Gomez, over his handling of decades of complaints about sexual abuse among priests. The firing, according to the Los Angeles Times, was “unprecedented in the American Catholic Church.”

Gomez, who’d been reading through thousands of pages of files on cases dating back 30 years, lamented the files as “brutal and painful reading. The behaviour described in these files is terribly sad and evil,” he said, adding:

“I cannot undo the failings of the past that we find in these pages. Reading these files, reflecting on the wounds that were caused has been the saddest experience I’ve had since becoming your Archbishop in 2011.”

That struck a nerve with Mahony, who pointed out that Gomez had had plenty of opportunity to pipe up over the years, but had held his tongue. Acknowledging he’d made mistakes, “especially in the mid-1980s,” Mahony insisted nevertheless that “when I retired as the active Archbishop, I handed over to you an Archdiocese that was second to none in protecting children and youth.”

That may be true, though, given the predilection the Roman Catholic Church has for covering its tracks, it’s impossible to be certain. In any case, it’s not 2012 or 2013 that’s the issue, but the three decades from the 1980s when dozens on dozens of complaints were filed to Church leaders over assaults by priests, to little result.

Not that there wasn’t a reaction. According to the personal files of 124 priests accused of abuse, released by the archdiocese on Thursday when a court finally put an end to church efforts to keep them from public view, the complaints produced lots of activity. Unfortunately little of it had to do with trying to protect the victims. Instead, efforts were mainly aimed at protecting the accused, preventing the police from catching wind of the complaints, and finding ways to spirit the priests to other states or countries so they wouldn’t have to face criminal responsibility for what they’d done.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
The New York Times

By JENNIFER MEDINA and IAN LOVETT
Published: February 3, 2013

LOS ANGELES — At Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights, there was no shrinking from the news reverberating through the pews. The Rev. Scott Santarosa spent time usually reserved for the homily talking instead about what he called “really painful stuff.”

After Mass, over menudo and pan dulce, parishioners tried to make sense of the events that cascaded at the end of last week. First, the release of thousands of documents detailing decades of sexual abuse and cover-ups, then the current archbishop reprimanding his predecessor, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, who responded with an angry missive of his own.

Known for his outspoken views on immigrants’ rights, Cardinal Mahony was seen as a tireless ally here among Latinos, who make up about 70 percent of the four million Catholics in the country’s largest archdiocese. He could celebrate Mass in flawless Spanish, and was at times affectionately referred to as “Rogelio.”

But with the release of documents that make it increasingly clear that Cardinal Mahony shielded priests accused of child abuse from investigations by law enforcement officials, his legacy as a champion of immigrants may soon be overshadowed.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

[Michael Baker – Los Angeles archdiocese]

[Fidencio Silva-Flores – Los Angeles archdiocese]

By Richard Winton, Los Angeles Times
February 4, 2013

The release of thousands of pages of church files showing how Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and other top Los Angeles Archdiocese officials dealt with priest molestation cases has generated outrage and anguish at parishes across Southern California.

But for victims of abuse, there is also the pain of learning details of how top church leaders tried to cover up the scandal.

Matt Severson says that as a boy, he was abused by Father Michael Baker. Severson was a plaintiff in the record civil settlement over church abuse a few years ago. The release of the files has him reliving what happened decades ago.

“It’s deeply disheartening to read these files. It’s obvious that the L.A. Archdiocese and everyone working with them were aware of those of us being abused by Michael Baker and others like him,” Severson said.

“While the letters, psychological evaluations and notes from Mahony and other clergy clearly and unequivocally detail that I and others were being harmed by Michael Baker, there is no indication that Mahony or anyone associated with the church had any intention of trying to reach out to help us, or to alert the authorities that these crimes were being committed,” he added.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY

The Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) has met the Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin and members of the Council of Priests in the archdiocese.

Last October the Irish Episcopal Conference declined to meet the ACP leadership, saying any such engagement “would best take place at local level by using established structures such as the Council of Priests”.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Sarah MacDonald

Monday February 04 2013

ARCHBISHOP Diarmuid Martin has held his first meeting with a group of outspoken priests who warned him that the Catholic hierarchy was in denial about the “bleak outlook” for male vocations to the priesthood.

Dr Martin (pictured) met with the Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland (ACP) in a ‘gloves-off’ meeting, in which he was told the Diocese of Killala was near breaking point with just four priests under 50.

At the meeting in Dublin, ACP spokesman Fr Brendan Hoban accused Rome of not appreciating the seriousness of the situation.

The archbishop is the most senior Irish prelate to hold talks with the group to date.

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NEW JERSEY
NJ.com

By Karen Horton/Parental Guidance
on February 03, 2013

I went to mass today, as I do most Sundays. I am not Roman Catholic but my family is, and I am happy to accompany them and support their commitment to their faith.

We watched a video of Archbishop John J. Myers, of the Archdiocese of Newark, making his annual request for parishioners to support the Archbishop’s Annual Appeal so that the archdiocese can continue its good works in Essex, Bergen, Hudson and Union counties. We’d already sent in our money.

Then I got home and read the The Star-Ledger’s account of a priest who confessed to groping a 14-year-old boy 12 years ago. Pretty bad, right? The priest, Michael Fugee, admitted he did it. Afterwards, he recanted his confession. There was a trial, he was convicted, then the verdict was overturned on a technicality.

Later Fugee was given the position of chaplain at St. Michael’s Medical Center in Newark. The hospital wasn’t told about his trial; it was told he was a priest in good standing. Therefore he was granted access to children, patients or visitors, in direct opposition to his legal agreement. He was pulled from that post as soon as the hospital found out it had not been told the truth about the chaplain.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Daily Times

There was a time when child abuse by priests, teachers, scout leaders, coaches, parents or any other adult entrusted with the welfare of youngsters was inconceivable.

It was so inconceivable that children who lived through it never spoke of it or were intimidated from doing so by threats from their abusers. If they did tell, they weren’t likely to be believed or, worse, were punished for even making the suggestion.

Mentally, emotionally and some times, physically, scarred by this violation of innocence, they were forced to try and live their lives as though nothing had ever happened. Some have managed to cope. Others have attempted to stifle the pain with drugs or alcohol. Still others have found suicide to be the only peace from this ultimate betrayal.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Patch

By Darren McRoy

In a seven-count, $300,000 suit filed against the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Chicago Province of the Society of Jesuits, a former member of St. Francis Xavier Parish in La Grange is charging that she was “coerced” into sex acts by a priest at the church in 2003, The Doings La Grange reports.

According to the paper, the “Jane Doe” plaintiff alleges that the priest, also a clinical psychologist and her counselor for depression, capitalized on her “emotional dependence” in order to manipulate her into a sexual relationship

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CONNECTICUT
WPRI

Published : Monday, 04 Feb 2013

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A Connecticut man accused of dealing methamphetamine with a now-suspended Roman Catholic priest is facing arraignment in federal court.

Fifty-two-year-old Kenneth Devries of Waterbury is due in U.S. District Court in Hartford on Monday. His lawyer told the Connecticut Post (http://bit.ly/WNXqfb) that his client will plead not guilty to conspiring to distribute methamphetamine.

Five people were charged in the alleged drug-dealing conspiracy last month, including Monsignor Kevin Wallin of Waterbury. Authorities say the drug dealing involved shipments of meth to Connecticut from California.

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AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

KATE CAMPBELL, The West Australian
February 4, 2013

A former music teacher at a private all-boys school in the western suburbs today admitted to several child sex offences against a teenage student in the mid-1980s but denies the more serious allegations levelled at him.

Lindsay Hutchinson, who was the music director at Christ Church Grammar School in Claremont and the organist at St George’s Cathedral, is accused of repeatedly sexually abusing the boy at various locations between 1984 and 1985, including on a school music camp, at the accused’s house, in country hotel rooms during music tours and during a sleepover at St George’s deanery.

Mr Hutchinson, standing trial in the District Court, is charged with 15 counts of unlawful carnal knowledge, indecent assault and indecent dealing with the boy, who was aged 13 and 14 at the time.

Yesterday, the accused man, who is in his mid-60s, pleaded guilty to several charges, admitting he touched the boy’s genitals and simulated sexual intercourse with him, but denies the more serious charges against him, including sexual penetration allegations.

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INDIANA
Goshen News

Associated Press

FORT WAYNE, Ind. — Bishop Emeritus John D’Arcy, who oversaw the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend for 24 years during a time of church closings, a national sex-abuse scandal and some run-ins with University of Notre Dame leaders, has died. He was 80 years old.

Diocese spokesman Sean McBride says D’Arcy died Sunday of cancer at his home in Fort Wayne. D’Arcy, who was treated for prostate cancer in 2011, announced last month he was battling a rare form of cancer that had been diagnosed in his lungs and brain. He said the disease was discovered when he went to a Boston-area hospital after feeling ill while visiting relatives. …

He received national attention when he was one of the few church officials commended in a scathing 2003 report issued by the Massachusetts attorney general about the widespread sexual abuse of children by priests in the Boston Archdiocese. The report blamed then-Cardinal Bernard Law, his predecessors as archbishop and Law’s assistants for sheltering abusive priests and other church workers who molested as many as 1,000 children between 1940 and 2000.

But D’Arcy, a former auxiliary bishop in Boston, was noted for his strong support of screening potential priests, as well as his warnings to his superiors about predatory priests.

Later in 2003, he disclosed that 33 children — most of them teenagers at the time — had been sexually abused over the previous five decades by 16 priests in northern Indiana diocese. D’Arcy said then there was too much secrecy surrounding the issue.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Religion Dispatches

As Sexual Abuse Scandal Breaks Open, Los Angeles Catholics Hear Words of Renunciation, Recrimination from Clergy

Post by Joanna Brooks

Yesterday, monsignors and priests across the Los Angeles Catholic diocese read out during Sunday masses an historic letter from Archbishop Jose H. Gomez decrying the Church’s record on child sexual abuse after the court-ordered release of 12,000 pages of documents detailing abuse by priests.

“There is no excuse,” wrote Gomez, for the Archdiocese’s efforts to cover-up the sexual abuse of children: “The priests involved had the duty to be their spiritual fathers and they failed.”

Gomez also declared Cardinal Roger Mahony, his predecessor as the Archbishop of Los Angeles, “released” from his “administrative or public duties.”

The National Catholic reporter called Gomez’s open rebuke of Mahony “remarkable” given for “br[eaking] with the unspoken but nearly ironclad rule of the culture of Catholic hierarchy that bishops do not publicly criticize other bishops.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
KTLA

[with video]

LOS ANGELES — Speaking to parishioners gathered at Catholic churches across the city, church leaders on Sunday read a letter from Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez made public last week regarding the mishandling of the clergy child abuse scandal and expressed their own concerns.

“We have been reminded about sin in our church. … The important thing for us to remember is that there are victims in this,” said Monsignor Robert J. Gallagher of St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in North Hollywood.

Gallagher thanked the roughly 100 parishioners for their prayers in what he called one of the darkest periods in his 40 years with the church.

St. Borromeo is the home of retired Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, who is at the center of the controversy. Mahony was not present during the 7:30 a.m. service.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Myrtle Beach Online

By MATT STEVENS, HAILEY BRANSON-POTTS AND LAURA J. NELSON – Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — Msgr. Robert J. Gallagher stood before parishioners at St. Charles Borromeo Church on Sunday, searching for the right words to reassure them after a tumultuous week that saw the release of previously secret personnel files on priests who molested children, the public rebuke of Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and the resignation of a Santa Barbara bishop.

“Everybody has to face sin and God’s grace in their own life,” Gallagher told members of the North Hollywood parish that Mahony has called home since he retired two years ago. “And we do it as a community when we try to bring things into the light.”

Mahony was not present as Gallagher acknowledged parishioners’ range of emotions since Thursday, when the files were released and Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez relieved the cardinal of all public duties and announced that Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Curry had stepped down.

“I’m sure some of you are still mightily angry, some confused, some would like to see something done differently,” Gallagher said. “The important thing for us to remember, I think, is that there have been victims … young people whose lives were ruined…. They need a sense that they are being invited back into God’s grace.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

Posted: Monday, February 4, 2013

In convicting a priest and a former parochial-school teacher last week of sexually assaulting a 10-year-old altar boy from the Northeast, a jury effectively opened the door to further courtroom revelations about how Archdiocese of Philadelphia officials may have shielded these and other predators.

A civil lawsuit filed by the former St. Jerome’s altar boy known as “Billy Doe” – which was on hold pending the joint trial of the Rev. Charles Engelhardt and teacher Bernard Shero – could prove just as important as the criminal inquiries in finding the truth and achieving justice for sexual-abuse victims.

Without question, District Attorney Seth Williams is right to press ahead with charges for any criminal conduct revealed in a scathing 2011 grand jury report finding that church officials covered up abuse. Following the conviction on Wednesday of Engelhardt and Shero, prosecutors plan to retry another priest, James J. Brennan, accused of the attempted rape of a 14-year-old boy in 1996. A jury deadlocked on Brennan’s case last year, but it convicted Msgr. William J. Lynn of child endangerment after determining that he looked the other way while assigned to investigate allegations against priests.

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UNITED STATES
The Daily Beast

Feb 4, 2013

Alex Gibney’s Mea Maxima Culpa, premiering tonight on HBO, tackles the Catholic Church’s sordid history of sex abuse. Michael Moynihan talks to the director about forced celibacy and the pope’s complicity.

Some popular documentarians—like Michael Moore and Ken Burns—allow themselves years to obsess over a project, shooting hundreds of interviews and endlessly tinkering with edits. That’s not a method that interests Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney, the director of such critically lauded documentaries as Taxi to the Dark Side, about the death of an Afghan taxi driver at the hands of American soldiers, and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, which delves into the backstory of the firm’s scandalous collapse. In 2011 alone, Gibney directed four feature-length films.

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MICHIGAN
My Fox Detroit

By Jeff Kranitz, Assignment Editor

Orchard Lake, Mich. (WJBK) –
Two local men have added their names to a long list of alleged victims claiming abuse by a Franciscan friar who recently committed suicide.

Bishop Stephen Baker was at the center of an interstate abuse scandal involving more than 60 complainants, before he took his own life in Pennsylvania last month.

Baker, who was a teacher at St. Mary’s Preparatory in Orchard Lake from 1983-85, was found dead of reported self-inflicted stab wounds to the chest last month.

His suicide came less than two weeks after a legal settlement by 11 men who said Baker sexually abused them in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

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NEW JERSEY
New Jersey 101.5

Newark Archdiocese Elevates Priest Who Admitted Groping 14 Year Old Boy 12 Years Ago – Why is He Still a Priest? [POLL]

Question: Can a priest, who admitted to groping a 14 year old boy on 2 separate occasions, and was allowed to enter a Pre Trial Intervention program for first time offenders, still be allowed to remain a priest?

According to the Archdiocese of Newark, not only does he remain a priest, but he gets elevated to a lofty administrative position to boot. An administrative position where he will have no contact with children…which is part of his sentence.

Here’s the deal:

Father Michael Fugee allegedly grabbed the crotch of a 14 year old boy back in 2001 while grappling with him at the teen’s home and while on vacation in Williamsburg.

According to this:

At the time, he had been serving as assistant pastor at the Church of St. Elizabeth in Wyckoff when authorities charged him in 2001 with aggravated criminal sexual contact and endangering the welfare of a child. He allegedly grabbed the crotch of a 14-year-old boy while wrestling with him at the teen’s home and on a vacation in Williamsburg, Va.

Under questioning by detectives from the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office and Wyckoff police, Fugee admitted touching the teen, saying he did it intentionally, that it sexually excited him and that he knew it was a “violation,” according to a transcript of his statement. He later recanted, claiming he lied so he could go home earlier.

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INDIANA
The Journal Gazette

The Rev. John Michael D’Arcy, 80, bishop emeritus of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, died late Sunday morning at his Fort Wayne residence, succumbing to cancer discovered shortly after Christmas.

D’Arcy served the diocese as its eighth bishop from 1985 to 2010, coming to the position from the Boston Archdiocese, in which he had grown up and where he served as an auxiliary bishop. …

In Boston D’Arcy served as an auxiliary bishop and was in charge of the diocesan spiritual development office, which included recommending priests for placement as pastors. While in Boston, D’Arcy raised red flags over sexual abuse by priests, a scandal that would become public decades later.

Some have said it was the letters D’Arcy wrote to his boss, Cardinal Bernard Law, that led to his transfer to Indiana. D’Arcy always declined to comment on the exact reason for his transfer, but acknowledged that Law wanted to move him.

The letters D’Arcy wrote to Law and other superiors warned of the conduct, such as violence, alcoholism, drug use and sexual abuse, of at least four priests, including John Geoghan. Geoghan was eventually convicted of groping a young boy and slain while in prison. D’Arcy’s letters began in July 1978 and continued until his transfer. The letters were uncovered as part of an investigation by the Boston Globe in 2002.

In 2004, D’Arcy was cited by the National Review Board for the Protection of Children and Young People as “a voice in the wilderness” for his role in bringing sexual abuse to light in Boston

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Southwest Riverside News Network

By City News Service, on February 3, 2013

A former priest who was a suspected child molester has been dismissed from his new job at the Los Angeles Unified School District, it was reported today.

The Los Angeles Times said the defrocked priest, Joseph Pina, had worked as late as Saturday as a daily-hire event organizer for the facilities division of the LAUSD.

Pina, 66, reportedly organized the ribbon-cutting for a new LAUSD education center in Bell on Saturday, just two days after his name surfaced in the files of 122 church priests who may have sexually abused children over past decades.

Pina had retired from a full-time job last year but was working as a temporary hire, the newspaper reported on its web site.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

A former priest and suspected child molester left employment with the Los Angeles Archdiocese to work for the L.A. Unified School District, officials confirmed Sunday.

The former clergyman, Joseph Pina, did not work with children in his school district job, said L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy. He added that, as a result of the disclosures, Pina would no longer be employed by the nation’s second-largest school system.

Over the weekend, Deasy was unable to pull together Pina’s full employment history, but said the district already was looking into the matter of Pina’s hiring.

“I find it troubling,” he said of the disclosures about Pina. “And I also want to understand what knowledge that we had of any background problems when hiring him, and I don’t yet know that.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Washington Post

Letter from Archbishop Gomez on priest sex abuse read at churches across Los Angeles on Sunday

By Associated Press

Updated: Sunday, February 3

LOS ANGELES — Roman Catholic parishioners in Los Angeles heard a letter from Archbishop Jose Gomez in which he described newly released files on clergy sex abuse as “terribly sad and evil.”

The archbishop’s words were read by church leaders at Sunday masses across the city, the Los Angeles Times reported (http://lat.ms/YuH4rb). The letter was made public late last week.

Gomez said the church needs to acknowledge the “terrible failure” of its handling of abuse cases.

At St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in North Hollywood, parishioner Eric Nielsen praised Gomez for addressing the issue.

“I take my hat off to the archbishop,” said Nielsen, 52. “He got on the ball and did what needed to be done.”

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INDIANA
Roman Catholic Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend

The Diocese of Fort Wayne – South Bend is saddened to announce the death of Bishop Emeritus John Michael D’Arcy.

Bishop D’Arcy died in the late morning hours of February 3rd, 2013. Bishop D’Arcy was at home at the time of his death, surrounded by loved ones.

He passed on the 56th anniversary of his first Mass as an ordained priest.

Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades along with the diocese, asks for and offers prayers for Bishop D’Arcy, his family, loved ones and friends as together we grieve the loss of our beloved Bishop D’Arcy.

Funeral arrangements are pending at this time.

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INDIANA
The Elkhart Truth

FORT WAYNE – The Most Rev. John M. D’Arcy, bishop emeritus of the Diocese of Fort Wayne – South Bend, died in the late morning Sunday, Feb. 3.

An announcement from the diocese said that D’Arcy died at his home surrounded by loved ones on the 56th anniversary of his first Mass as an ordained priest.

“We mourn the death of a good shepherd after the heart of Christ, a bishop who loved the Lord and his people with all his heart,” Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades said in a release. “I thank the faithful of our diocese for the many prayers offered for Bishop D’Arcy in his final days.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
La Opinion

POR: Jennifer Farrar / Associated Press 02/03/2013

Está bien documentado en los registros que el reverendo Richard Henry tenía un problema. Ya en marzo de 1988, el entonces arzobispo Roger Mahony había sido advertido en un informe confidencial, que el comportamiento del sacerdote en torno a los muchachos jóvenes – abrazos largos, frotando la nariz, etcétera, era inquietante para los que lo presenciaban.

Monjas y sacerdotes confirman un mismo patrón: “Ninguna de las personas con las que hablamos lo acusó de nada ilegal, pero todos temían que otros adultos viendo esto lo harían”, concluye la nota en el archivo.

En octubre de ese mismo año se le ordenó a Henry a través de una carta que le envió el entonces monseñor Thomas, de “no estar a solas con menores de edad”. Los documentos empezaron a disminuir a mediados de 1989. En agosto de 1991, se le notifica a Mahony que Henry está bajo investigación por abuso de menores.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Spiegel

Der Chef der Glaubenskongregation des Vatikans, Gerhard Ludwig Müller, erntet heftige Kritik für seine Äußerung über eine vermeintliche “Pogromstimmung” gegen die Kirche. Politiker finden sie geschmacklos, auch der oberste Vertreter der katholischen Laien widerspricht entschieden.

Hamburg – Der Chef der Glaubenskongregation im Vatikan, Gerhard Ludwig Müller, stößt mit seinen jüngsten Äußerungen zur Lage der Kirche auf Widerspruch beim Kirchenvolk. Auch Politiker kritisierten Müller scharf.

Der Präsident des Zentralkomitees der deutschen Katholiken (ZdK), Alois Glück, sagte: “Wir müssen uns in der Kirche damit auseinandersetzen, warum wir mit der christlichen Botschaft immer weniger Menschen erreichen. Das kann sicher nicht nur an den Menschen liegen.” Das ZdK ist mit rund 230 Mitgliedern das oberste Gremium der Laien in der katholischen Kirche.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Die Welt

Von Matthias Kamann

Vielleicht sollte Gott wieder einmal auf den Berg Sinai hinunterfahren und ein elftes Gebot nachliefern: “Du sollst dich nicht zurechnen einer verfolgten Minderheit, wenn du nicht verfolgt wirst.” Bedarf jedenfalls gäbe es für eine solche Anweisung.

Denn derzeit neigen Radikalisierer jedweder Couleur dazu, sich mit ihren steilen Thesen wichtig zu machen, indem sie behaupten, man dürfe heute überhaupt gar nichts mehr sagen und werde sofort unterdrückt.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
KABC

Q McCray

LOS ANGELES (KABC) — The sex abuse scandal surrounding Catholic priests was addressed at all Roman Catholic churches in Los Angeles on Sunday.

A letter from Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez, which was made public Thursday, was read during services at all L.A. churches. In the letter, Gomez expressed his sadness and disappointment about the scandal and the sex abuse files released this past week.

“These files document abuses that happened decades ago. But that does not make them less serious,” Gomez says in the letter. “I find these files to be brutal and painful reading. The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children. The priests involved had the duty to be their spiritual fathers and they failed.”

In the letter, the archbishop announced that retired Cardinal Roger Mahony no longer had any administrative or public duties.

More than 12,000 pages of documents concerning 124 priests were released on Thursday, and another 14 cases were released earlier.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

At Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral downtown, Msgr. Kevin Kostelnik asked parishioners Sunday “to pray fervently” for the victims of the clergy child abuse scandal and lamented that “these are tough days.”

Like other church leaders, Kostelnik read a Jan. 31 letter from Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez about tens of thousands of pages of previously secret personnel files posted on the church’s website last week of 122 priests accused of molesting children. Some of the files lay out in Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Curry’s own words how the church hierarchy plotted to keep law enforcement from learning that children had been molested at the hands of priests.

“The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil,” Gomez wrote in the letter. “There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children.”

After reading the letter, Kostelnik urged parishioners to continue to reflect on the archbishop’s words and to pray for the victims.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
La Jornada

Los Angeles. La arquidiócesis de Los Angeles anunció hoy que removió de todos sus cargos al cardenal Roger Mahony por su papel en los escándalos de sacerdotes pederastas.

El arzobispo José Gómez anunció la medida luego que el jueves una jueza de la corte superior de Los Angeles ordenó hacer públicas las más de 30 mil páginas de expedientes de 122 sacerdotes acusados de abuso sexual a menores.

En los reportes se identificó que la actuación de Mahony estuvo marcada durante décadas por brindar protección y evitar que salieran a la luz pública acciones reprobables de los sacerdotes de la Iglesia católica.

Muchos de los sacerdotes en lugar de ser sancionados sólo eran transferidos a otras parroquias, en donde continuaron con sus actos de abuso y acoso sexual a menores.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
La Opinion

POR: Jorge Morales Almada / jorge.morales@laopinion.com | 02/02/2013

“Esta semana el padre Ted Llanos dejó la parroquia de Santa Lucía y renunció a su oficina pastoral. El Padre tiene problemas en su vida con los que tiene que lidiar y el Cardenal le está ofreciendo tiempo y oportunidad para hacerlo”.

Es el mensaje que el 25 de septiembre de 1994 la Arquidiócesis de Los Ángeles ordenó colocar en la Iglesia Católica de San Lucía, en Long Beach, donde el padre Theodore Llanos era párroco.

Lo que no advertía el anuncio, es que el padre Llanos estaba siendo acusado por uno de sus monaguillos de abuso sexual y que el ofrecimiento del Cardenal era prácticamente esconderlo en una clínica psiquiátrica y dinero para subsistir mientras encontrara trabajo al terminar un tratamiento de rehabilitación.

La historia del padre Llanos se expone en uno de los 122 expedientes de sacerdotes pederastas que el jueves reveló la Arquidiócesis de Los Ángeles.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
La Opinion

POR: Virginia Gaglianone / virginia.gaglianone@laopinion.com | 01/22/2013

Víctimas de abuso sexual se reunieron hoy frente a la Catedral Nuestra Señora de Los Ángeles para pedir justicia por los crímenes cometidos por curas y religiosos pedófilos.

El tiempo no siempre lo borra todo. El dolor de aquellos que fueron abusados sexualmente desde pequeños nunca se olvida. Así lo aseguraron las víctimas de abuso sexual que hoy se reunieron frente a la Catedral Nuestra Señora de Los Ángeles para pedir justicia por los crímenes cometidos por curas y religiosos pedófilos.

“Todavía puedo sentir las manos del cura en mi cuello, su aliento, su cuerpo contra el mío, sus palabras. Hay que ponerse en los zapatos del niño a quien están violando. El sufrimiento nunca se olvida”, aseguro Manny Vega, quien después de 36 años de ser abusado por un cura, no ha logrado borrar esas imágenes de su mente.

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INDIA
Hindustan Times

A 15-year-old girl who went missing on October 13 was allegedly abducted by his brother-in-law, who is a priest of a dera near Dhanori of Patiala.

The accused Lakhbir Singh, 28, of Dhanori village near Samrala had allegedly not only abducted his sister-in-law on the pretext of marriage, but also confined her for at least four months and raped her. The accused is married and has a child.

When the accused denied solemnising marriage with her, she managed to escape from his clutches on Saturday and filed a complaint at the Dehlon police station. The police arrested the accused immediately after registering an FIR against him as he had come to Dehlon chasing the victim.

The police produced the accused in the court of duty magistrate on Sunday, which sent him to one-day police remand.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
CBS Los Angeles

[with video]

[Joseph Pina – Los Angeles archdiocese]

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — A former priest allegedly named in the Los Angeles Archdiocese Catholic church sex abuse scandal may be employed by the Los Angeles Unified School District, CBS2 has learned.

In documents released by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles last week, CBS2′s Louisa Hodge reports that 129 pages outline Joseph D. Piña’s alleged sexual abuse of a young girl years ago.

After the alleged abuse came to light, Hodge reports that Piña was sent to a psychiatrist for evaluation in which he told one therapist he saw his sexual relationship as a “boyfriend-girlfriend relationship.”

Following that psychological evaluation, the therapist concluded, “I do not believe Father Piña is capable of proceeding with business as usual. He remains a serious risk for acting out.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
NBC Southern California

By Sharon Bernstein

Sunday, Feb 3, 2013

Worshippers coming to Mass in Catholic churches throughout the Archdiocese of Los Angeles on Sunday are hearing extraordinary words of apology for decades of child sexual abuse.

At every church, priests are reading a letter from Archbishop José H. Gomez that denounces the abuse as “evil” and apologized for both the molestation and for the church’s failure to expunge pedophile priests from its ranks.

More: Read Archbishop Gomez’ letter

“There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children,” Gomez wrote in the letter, which was originally released Jan. 31. “The priests involved had the duty to be their spiritual fathers and they failed.”

The letter that priests are reading is the same one in which Gomez late Thursday announced that he had removed his predecessor, retired Cardinal Roger Mahony, from all administrative and public duties. Gomez also relieved Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Curry from his position as Regional Bishop of Santa Barbara.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

Speaking to parishioners gathered at Catholic churches across the city, church leaders on Sunday read a letter from Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez made public last week regarding the mishandling of the clergy child abuse scandal and expressed their own concerns.

“We have been reminded about sin in our church. … The important thing for us to remember is that there are victims in this,” said Monsignor Robert J. Gallagher of St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in North Hollywood. Gallagher thanked the roughly 100 parishioners for their prayers in what he called one of the darkest periods in his 40 years with the church.

St. Borromeo is the home of retired Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, who is at the center of the controversy. Mahony was not present during the 7:30 a.m. service.

After the service, Gallagher said he was pleased that Mahony had met with more than 90 child sex abuse victims to ask for forgiveness for himself and the church. He said he recently had dinner with Mahony, who told him that he was meeting with another victim Monday.

In a church bulletin, Gallagher wrote a letter to parishioners expanding on his feelings about the child abuse scandal: “The real victims are those who were robbed of their childhood, whether by a priest or some other trusted adult. They are the ones who deserve our prayers, our apologies, and any other gesture that will invite them to be restored to the conviction of God’s love for them.”

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Pope Benedict XVI for the first time publicly shamed a voting Cardinal, Mahony of Los Angeles. The Pope’s pawn, Archbishop Gomez, publicly referred to Mahony’s child abuse cover-up conduct as “evil”. This unprecedented and selective public papal condemnation, in my view as an experienced retired lawyer, significantly increases the risk for Mahony that he will yet still be criminally prosecuted, possibly for obstruction of justice or perjury. Prosecutors now have a papal blessing to go after Mahony. Yet the Pope has also just permitted Ireland’s voting Cardinal Brady to exit gracefully, without papal condemnation. Brady was reportedly involved in priest abuse cover-ups at least as “evil” as Mahony. Why the different treatment for two Cardinals?

The likeliest explanation is current papal election politics. Conservative Cardinals in the Vatican clique, including American ones like Burke, Law and Stafford, and their right-wing U.S. Republican contributors, have for years targeted Mahony, often an ally of U.S. Democratic political leaders, as an obstacle to the Vatican clique’s efforts to maintain Vatican domination of the Catholic Church worldwide, through groups like Opus Dei that Gomez and convicted criminal Bishop Finn are members of. Brady, on the other hand, supports domination by the Vatican clique, as evidenced by his acquiescence in the current unchallenged attack on one of Brady’s most popular priests, Fr. Tony Flannery, by the Pope’s new German Inquisitor. Flannery’s brother is a top ally to Prime Minister Enda Kenny, who has strongly opposed papal domination in Ireland.

The signal is clear. The Vatican is prepared, it appears, to use selectively the criminal prosecution risks inherent in the worldwide abuse scandal to intimidate voting Cardinals who oppose the current Vatican clique’s candidate to be next Pope. Since most Cardinals likely have been involved in some cover-up activity, this election blackmail is a significant threat. It also is a compelling reason for Cardinals to call now for a worldwide conference as explained at: http://wp.me/P2YEZ3-gW .

Children in the USA cannot be used as leverage in a papal election. The Pope and local political leaders and prosecutors have repeatedly failed to curtail effectively priest sexual abuse of children. The President has the clout needed to curtail this abuse and he must now step-up and use it. A petition has been opened for signatures asking President Obama to set up a national investigation commission into the sexual abuse of children by priests, rabbis, ministers and other religious leaders. Already many have begun to sign it, including abuse survivors and their supporters. Please take 30 seconds to sign it no matter where in the world you live. This is a worldwide epidemic. Just click on the below link at:

[Click here for the petition.]

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CALIFORNIA
The Record

By Michael Fitzgerald
Record Columnist

February 03, 2013

In my time, I have met killers, swindlers, perverts, corrupt politicians and all manner of toads. How ironic I met one of the worst on an altar.

I was a Catholic student and altar boy who served high Mass in Annunciation Cathedral with then-Bishop Roger Mahony. Oh, the majesty! The spiritual authority!

Mahony, retired head of the Diocese of Los Angeles, was stripped of any administrative and public church duties last week. Newly released Catholic sex abuse files show His Excellency covered for molesters and lied like a rug.

Mahony was bishop of Stockton from 1980 to 1985. Years during which omnivorous hyenas such as Father Oliver O’Grady were using Stockton diocese children for sex toys.

When foot-dragging lay authorities finally investigated O’Grady, wide-eyed Mahony said he had no idea O’Grady was a pedophile – though the diocese had a sub secreto confidential personnel file on him as thick as a phone book.

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CALIFORNIA
Patch

Joseph Pina
Donal O’Connor
Wallace Daley
Joseph Ryan
Joseph Sharpe
Sean Cronin

Six priests named in personnel files finally released by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles — after years of battle in the courts — served some time in Lynwood or South Gate.

By Mirna Alfonso

Joseph Pina was a 38-year-old priest when he met a 13-year-old girl at a Los Angeles Archdiocesan parish.

He began a “relationship” with her when she was 16 and became sexual with her when she was 17.

At the age of 19, in 1992, the woman broke off the so-called relationship and Pina went to his superiors, hurt that she had been harsh with him.

Under the vicarship of Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and then-Msgr. Thomas J. Curry — both of whom were disgraced this week — Pina saw counselors, participated in a residential Catholic treatment program, took 12-step sex addiction programs but by 1998, he was in the sex offenders unit of a hospital in Torrance.

There, he was diagnosed with “psychosexual disorder with addictive and exploitive features,” his file indicates.

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CALIFORNIA
The Bakersfield Californian

BY JOHN ARTHUR Californian Executive Editor jarthur@bakersfield.com

FATHER STEVE PETERSON called to complain about the front-page treatment given Friday to the article about retired Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony being silenced by his bishop. He felt the story was being blown out of proportion.

ANOTHER READER wrote, in response to stories in last Sunday’s paper: Is the Bakersfield Californian anti-Catholic? Are they fair and balanced? By showcasing the negative i.e. Cardinal Mahony (again) on the front page, then so called Monsignor Meth on the third page of Sunday’s paper makes me wonder if this is a concerted effort to harm the church.

Cardinal Mahoney should make news, but how much, and how often? Do we have scoundrels in the church? Indeed we do, and if they operate outside of the law then they should face full justice, but the church has 1.2 billion people with over 400,000 priests… all or most do their best to feed, clothe, and tend to the sick worldwide.

Now, back to the scoundrels…should this surprise us? Bad priests…Monsignor Meth? Ponder this: Jesus chose twelve Apostles and one was Judas. Please balance this act!

Jon Ariey
Bakersfield

ARTHUR: We certainly don’t have an anti-Catholic bias; I don’t have time to recount all our stories about the many wonderful things the Catholic Church does in Kern County, often by some of the most outstanding leaders in our community.

However the sex-abuse scandal has rocked the worldwide church, and retired Cardinal Mahony was part of a coverup to hide these actions from the law. His own documents, released by the church after years of requests from victims of pedophilia, confirm this.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

Editorial

Only now is the full scope of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ culpability in the sex abuse scandal being confirmed.

February 3, 2013

Not only did the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles fail to protect children from pedophile priests, but its leaders, including Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, subsequently sought to protect its reputation by covering up cases of sexual abuse and shielding priests from the arrest and prosecution they deserved. The archdiocese then spent more than a decade fighting to keep that coverup from being revealed in court.

What is most horrible about the facts in the paragraph above is that they come as a surprise to almost no one. The archdiocese’s malfeasance has been alleged for a long time, but only now is the full scope of its culpability in the sex abuse scandal being confirmed. On Thursday, Archbishop Jose Gomez, under court order, released tens of thousands of pages of confidential personnel files of 122 priests accused or convicted of molesting children. Calling the behavior described in the records “terribly sad and evil,” Gomez also relieved Mahony of his public duties, which apparently means little more than canceling his confirmation schedule. Mahony will remain a “bishop in good standing in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles,” Gomez said Friday, “with full rights to celebrate the holy sacraments of the church and to minister to the faithful without restriction.”

Gomez’s actions and apologies aren’t enough, not given the fierce legal battle the church has waged over the last decade to protect itself. The release of the files last week with priests’ names unredacted marked the end of an effort that began years earlier when the church advanced a frivolous argument to protect communication between a priest and his bishop as privileged and protected by the 1st Amendment. Fortunately, lower courts rejected that argument and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to entertain it.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
KCET

by Jennifer London
on February 2, 2013

[L.A. Archdiocese File on Joseph Pina]

[Cardinal Mahony’s Response to Archbishop José Gómez]

Joseph D. Pina was a Catholic priest for 26 years in Southern California until he left the church after repeated admissions of a sexual relationship with a minor. “Socal Connected” has learned Pina later went to work at Los Angeles Unified School District.

According to recently released church documents, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles was aware as early as 2009 that Pina was working for LAUSD, despite his extensive record of sexual misconduct as a Catholic Priest. It’s unclear if church leaders informed the district of Pina’s past.

Pina, whose last assignment was at St. Emydius Church in Lynwood, Calif., resigned from the priesthood in March 1998. A review of the LAUSD website shows Pina has worked as a community organizer for the school district as early as February 2002.

In an email to “SoCal Connected,” LAUSD’s director of communications, Thomas Waldman, confirmed former priest Joseph Pina is “the same Joseph Pina” who has been working at the district. Waldman did not have employment dates or Pina’s current employment status. As a community organizer at LAUSD, he organized and attended dozens of community outreach events throughout the city.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Leon J. Podles: Dialogue

The decades of lies and cover-ups that Cardinal Mahoney participated in are finally ending.

One important fact has been overlooked. Roger Mahoney was a licensed social worker and was legally bound to report sexual abuse.

To avoid having to do that, he surrendered his license in 1980. He knew he would be covering-up sexual abuse and tried to escape the legal consequences.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Leon J. Podles: Dialogue

February 2nd, 2013

On rare occasions the clerical vetting system fails and a Christian becomes a bishop or even a pope.

A Catholic Christian knows the gravity of sin and the necessity of repentance, which includes doing penance to expiate sin.

If Archbishop Gomez were a Christian, he would first privately and then publicly address Cardinal Mahony in terms such as these:

My dear brother, I fear for your salvation and I do not want to see you burn forever in the fires of hell, alienated from God, condemned by the voices of the abused children whose bodies and souls you allowed to be ruined.

You must immediately and publicly repent.

Send your cardinal’s hat back to the pope. Resign your priesthood. It is better to enter into life a layman than to be cast with a cardinal’s robes into Gehenna.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Myrtle Beach Online

By HECTOR BECERRA, ASHLEY POWERS AND VICTORIA KIM – Los Angeles Times

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — When he took office in 1985, Roger M. Mahony set about modernizing the operations of the Los Angeles Archdiocese. He brought in computers and put women in top jobs.

He then appointed an Irish-born academic to a brand-new cabinet position: Vicar for Clergy, a human resources director of sorts for priests, brothers and nuns. Msgr. Thomas J. Curry would shape the way the nation’s largest archdiocese responded to claims that its priests had molested and raped children.

In his five years in the role, Curry was a staunch defender of the church and its clergymen. And as revealed in secret church records made public this week, he chose again and again to conceal clerics’ crimes from police and put priests’ welfare ahead of helping victims.

On Thursday, as his former boss was publicly rebuked, the 70-year-old regional bishop in Santa Barbara stepped down, part of an unprecedented reaction by the Catholic Church to the clergy child abuse scandal. It was a stunning fall for a man who had acted as a right hand for one of the most powerful U.S. Catholic prelates.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Leon J. Podles: Dialogue

I once asked a patristics scholar how Jerome, the translator of the Bible into Latin, ever got canonized. He was a nasty, cruel man. The scholar replied that in those days Saint meant “someone important in the Church.” And not only in those days.

John Paul grievously mishandled the cases of sexual abuse in the Church. Priests and at least one cardinal (Schoenborn) pleaded with him to do something, and he refused. Children committed suicide because of abuse that John Paul’s failures and willful blindness allowed to continue. And now he is Blessed John Paul and soon will be Saint John Paul.

Why?

Poland.

Poland is the last Catholic country in Europe and what John Paul did to help bring down Communism eclipses for the Poles everything else he did or failed to do.

Little will happen to Cardinal Mahony.

Why?

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
China Daily

LOS ANGELES – Anyone who rapes teenage boys and girls is a crime, but when priests had sex with teenagers, archbishops tried to cover them up to avoid punishment. That has happened in churches in Los Angeles and other US cities.

In 2007, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles paid at least $660 million to settle sex abuse charges, and then joined a torturous legal defense of a privilege to conceal its part in that history.

Last week, in response to a court order, the archdiocese released internal records documenting the actions church officials took, or failed to take, when priests were accused of abuse.

Those documents revealed that in the 1980s, then-Archbishop Roger Mahony and his top aide, Thomas Curry, who is now a bishop, maneuvered to shield priests from prosecution, kept parishioners in the dark and failed to call police about sex crimes against minors.

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NEW JERSEY
The Star-Ledger

By Mark Mueller/The Star-Ledger
on February 03, 2013

A Roman Catholic priest who confessed to groping a teenage boy 12 years ago has been named to a prestigious post in the Archdiocese of Newark, drawing furious criticism from advocates for victims of clergy sex abuse.

The Rev. Michael Fugee, who is barred from unsupervised contact with children under a binding agreement with law enforcement officials, has been appointed co-director of the Office of Continuing Education and Ongoing Formation of Priests, the archdiocese recently announced in its newspaper, the Catholic Advocate.

For several years, Fugee also has been director of the Office of the Propagation of the Faith, a fundraising position to support missionary work.

The new appointment, effective late last year, shows “breathtaking arrogance” and “an alarming disdain for common sense” by Archbishop John J. Myers, said Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, a watchdog group that tracks abuse allegations against priests across the nation.

“On the scale of actions by Catholic officials in the last 10 years, it’s somewhere between alarming and outrageous,” Barrett Doyle said. “No reasonable person would give a prestigious assignment to a priest deemed by law enforcement to be a danger to children. I hope Newark Catholics call him to account.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

Joseph A. Slobodzian, Inquirer Staff Writer

Posted: Sunday, February 3, 2013

The criminal case resulting from the serial sexual assault of a 10-year-old Northeast Philadelphia altar boy may well have ended with Wednesday’s guilty verdicts against a priest and a former Catholic-school teacher.

But the convictions of the Rev. Charles Engelhardt and Bernard Shero have also opened the door for a civil lawsuit with the potential to reach beyond the two defendants into the hierarchy of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

The lawsuit by the former St. Jerome’s altar boy dubbed “Billy Doe” was filed in July 2011 in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court. It has been dormant while charges against Engelhardt and Shero were unresolved.

Lawyers for the now-24-year-old Billy say they are preparing to reactivate the case and expand the number of church officials being sued.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” lawyer Paul Lauricella told reporters after Wednesday’s

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CALIFORNIA
KPCC

Susanne Whatley with Tony Pierce | February 2nd, 2013

Thursday the Los Angeles Archdiocese released the personnel files of Catholic priests accused of child moletation. LA Archbishop Jose Gomez described the files “brutal and painful” reading and called the behavior described in the files “terribly sad and evil.” Gomez announced that he was relieving Retired Cardinal Roger Mahony of his public and administrative duties and said he’d accepted the resignation of Monsignor Thomas Curry.

Father Thomas Doyle, a lawyer who investigated charges of sexual abuse in the ’80s told “Take Two” co-host Alex Cohen on Friday that “these priests have marauded victims for ages, they have been protected at an incredible cost to the faithful by the archdiocese. The only thing I think that could come close to any semblence of redemption is if the Archbishop doesn’t worry about how he will appear in the media but goes to meet the victims privately in their homes on their turf and listen to what they have to say.”

The stories within the files, Fr. Doyle said, are “worse than nightmare novels. But they’re real. They’re deadly real. And what’s so pathetic is that you have this horrendous reality of what was done to these men and women over decades by priests who were protected and moved around by Archbishops, by cardinals – by Mahoney and his predecessor and his whole crew.”

KPCC’s Susanne Whatley spoke to LA Archdocese lead attorney J. Michael Hennigan Friday during “All Things Considered” about the controversial files.

KPCC: Some of these victims are pushing the archdiocese to continue to investigate the problem of child abuse by clergy. What does the archdiocese intend to do going forward?

Hennigan: In the past ten years the Archdiocese of Los Angeles has taken magnificent strides in terms of dealing with this issue with respect to every single claim of abuse. They have five retired FBI agents who investigate every matter. They fingerprint every person who deals with children in the archdiocese. Every single person who has supervisory responsibility for children receives training about how to deal with childhood sexual abuse. And every child in the archdiocese who is in any school or otherwise gets training every year, age appropriate, about how to detect it, how to talk about it, and what to do about it.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
LA Daily News

By Doug McIntyre, Columnist
dailynews.com
Posted: 02/02/2013

The headline is a grabber – “Mahony Relieved of Duties.”

On the surface it looks like Archbishop Jose H. Gomez has finally put the Archdiocese of Los Angeles on the road to righteousness by censoring his predecessor, Cardinal Roger Mahony.

But when you scratch the headline’s surface, you only find more surface.

Sadly, Archbishop Gomez’s condemnation of his predecessor is right out of his predecessor’s playbook; Do the minimum while pretending to do the maximum.

Granted, a public rebuke of a cardinal by a prelate of a lower rank is exceptionally rare. But equally rare is the depth and breadth of Mahony’s complicity in a conspiracy to obstruct justice.

While it’s historically significant the church has finally taken official action against the holy man who helped cover up child rape and other crimes against children, it’s important to remember this action comes only after the archdiocese had exhausted every other legal option.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

By Steve Lopez
February 2, 2013

Do we have a little spat going on now at the Archdiocese of Los Angeles?

Archbishop Jose Gomez and Cardinal Roger M. Mahony seemed to be going at each other in recent days over the molestation scandal that just won’t die, thanks to Mahony’s years-long efforts to keep all the dirty little secrets under wraps.

On Wednesday, Bishop Gomez issued a rebuke, announcing that Mahony was being relieved of public duties now that the priest personnel records have been made public. And by the way, I’m not clear as to why it took Gomez two years to look into the files he describes as making “brutal and painful reading,” for their descriptions of behavior that was “terribly sad and evil.”

But even as Mahony was being kicked aside by Gomez, church spokesman Tod Tamberg was eagerly telling us Mahony is still “a priest in good standing” who can celebrate Mass and even, as a cardinal, vote for pope.

A priest in good standing? What in the world do you have to do to fall out of favor?

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CALIFORNIA
Contra Costa Times

By Barbara Jones, Staff Writer
dailynews.com
Posted: 02/02/2013

A letter from Archbishop Jose Gomez expressing his anguish about newly released sex-abuse files will be read during Mass on Sunday to Roman Catholics around Los Angeles, who will also hear pleas for donations to the region’s poorest parishes.

At St. Bartholomew’s Church in Long Beach, Monsignor Bernard Leheny plans to interject his own request – that parishioners put aside their anger at clergy implicated in the ongoing scandal and focus instead on living the tenets of their faith.

“The hurt has been resurrected by the bad publicity and the mistakes that were made,” Leheny said. “I worry that will hurt the poor parishes if people hold back (on donations).

“But the church has made tremendous progress in the protection of children. All the people who deal with children – not just the clergy, but lay ministers – have taken training sessions so they can be aware.

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