ABUSE TRACKER

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia

[Resolutions to Some of the Cases of Priests on Administrative Leave – via BishopAccountability.org]

Archbishop Chaput announces initiative to provide support and assistance to parishioners as they and the Church come to terms with the past, seek to understand sexual violence, and create an environment that is safe and welcoming to those who have been victimized

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced today that the work of a special team investigating the 26 priests publicly placed on leave by Cardinal Rigali last year is now largely done. Archbishop Charles Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., has made final decisions in eight of the cases of the priests who were put on administrative leave following the February 2011 Grand Jury Report, which urged the Archdiocese to review cases of past allegations of sexual abuse of minors by clergy and some cases involving violations of the Standards of Ministerial Behavior and Boundaries.

“The process of reviewing these cases was designed to ensure that the decisions announced today reflect our commitment to protect children, assist victims, restore the integrity of the priesthood and provide evidence to the broader community that they can have confidence in these outcomes,” said Archbishop Chaput.

Through a rigorous investigative process, involving over 20 experts in child abuse, three of the priests have been found suitable for ministry and five have been found not suitable for ministry due to a substantiated allegation of sexual abuse of a minor or substantiated violation of the Standards of Ministerial Behavior and Boundaries. One priest on leave died before the investigation was complete so no finding could be determined. The priests found unsuitable for ministry will have no public ministry in the Archdiocese. They do have the right to appeal the decision with the Holy See. Depending upon the substantiated allegation, if they do not appeal, or if their appeal is unsuccessful, they could be laicized (removed from the clerical state), live under some supervision, or live a life of prayer and penance.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

By John P. Martin and Jeremy Roebuck
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, reporting on the fates of some of the 27 priests suspended after last year’s grand jury report into clergy sex abuse, said Friday three priests will return to the ministry but five others will not.

Chaput said one of the 27 had died before the investigation had been completed and no determination was made as to his suitability for ministry. Six cases are still being reviewed by law enforcement officials, he said.

“Our actions, including these outcomes and the steps we have taken to improve our policies and procedures, show that we have learned from the past,” he said. “No lesson from the sexual abuse scandal is more important than the understanding that the people who suffer most are the victims.”

Removed from Ministry are Rev. George CadwRallader, Msgr. Francis Feret, Rev. Robert Povish, Rev. John Reardon, and Rev. Thomas Rooney. All five can appeal their decisions.

Allegations against Rev. Philip Barr, Rev. Michael Chapman, and Msgr. Michael Flood were found to be unsubstantiated. All three are cleared to return to their parishes, Chaput said.

Chaput’s announcement Friday marks the first substantial public response to one of the most controversial decisions of his predecessor.

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IRELAND
Leinster Leader

Published on Thursday 3 May 2012

RTE presenter Aoife Kavanagh has quit the state broadcaster over the damning report into the defamatory Mission to Prey programme.

The Prime Time Investigates reporter also apologised to victims of abuse and to Fr Kevin Reynolds for the hurt caused when he was wrongly portrayed of raping a minor and fathering a child while working as a missionary in Kenya.

Ms Kavanagh – whose investigation was severely criticised in the probe – said while she acknowledged mistakes were made, she believed she had acted objectively and in good faith.

“In this regard I do not accept many of the findings of the investigating officer in relation to the manner in which I carried out my work,” she said.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
My Fox Philly

PHILADELPHIA – Five priests accused of sexually abusing children have been defrocked, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced at a news conference Friday afternoon.

In all, 26 priests have been awaiting word on their fate since being placed on leave back by Cardinal Justin Rigali, the former leader of the archdiocese, back in February 2011.

On Friday, the current leader of Philadelphia Catholics said the church’s review of the accusations is “largely complete,” and he was ready to announce the disposition of nine of the 26 cases.

“Three priests have been found suitable for ministry,” Chaput told assembled media. “Five priests will not return to ministry, although they retain the right to appeal this decision to the Holy See (The Vatican). A ninth priest is now deceased, and his case cannot be concluded.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Philly Post

Mike Bertha

This afternoon, Archbishop Charles Chaput announced that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia has made decisions regarding eight of the 26 priests put on administrative leave in early 2011 after being implicated in the grand jury report on sexual abuse. Five of the 26 priests put on leave were deemed not suitable for the ministry, while three were ruled suitable. Chaput said that he reviewed each case personally and that 20 experts helped guide the Archdiocese in making the decisions. He added that he would not go into further detail on the cases out of respect for the victims because it is up to them to decided when and what people should know about what they went through.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Priest Abuse Trial Blog

Ralph Cipriano

One of the featured coming attractions of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia sex abuse trial was the hope of seeing Cardinal Bevilacqua come back from the dead to testify in a videotaped deposition.

On Nov. 29, 2011, prosecutors, defense lawyers and Judge M. Teresa Sarmina all made the trek out to the retired cardinal’s residence on the grounds of the Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood, so they could depose the 88-year-old Bevilacqua. The deposition went on for two days and covered at least four hours of videotape.

Ever since Bevilacqua died on Jan. 31, a day after Judge Sarmina had ruled him competent to testify as a witness, speculation has been that the prosecution would use the videotape at trial.

But in court this week, Assistant District Attorney Jacqueline Coelho told the judge that she doesn’t expect that the Commonwealth will play the videotape during the trial, which just wrapped up its sixth week of testimony.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
KTAR

By MARYCLAIRE DALE
(May 4th, 2012

PHILADELPHIA (AP) – Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput (SHAP’-yoo) says five priests have been found not suitable for ministry due to substantiated allegations of sexual abuse or boundary violations.

Chaput says three priests will be returned to ministry, and another died during the investigation.

Chaput says 17 other cases have been investigated, but the findings are not being announced Friday.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
WFTV

The Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA —

Philadelphia archbishop: 5 priests cannot serve because of substantiated sex-abuse allegations.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Sarah Stack

Friday May 04 2012

RTE has been hit with a €200,000 fine over its defamatory Mission to Prey programme which libelled a Catholic missionary priest.

The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) investigation into the Prime Time Investigates programme found it broadcast serious, damaging and untrue allegations about Fr Kevin Reynolds by wrongly accusing him of raping a minor and fathering a child while working in Kenya 30 years ago.

RTE admitted the defamation was one of the most significant errors made in its broadcasting history and that the material should never have been broadcast.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Friday, May 04, 2012

Minister for Communications Pat Rabbitte has criticised RTÉ’s ‘Mission to Prey’ programme today, calling it a “shoddy, unprofessional, cavalier, damaging piece of work”.

RTÉ was hit with a €200,000 fine over its defamatory programme which libelled a Catholic missionary priest.

The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) investigation into the ‘Prime Time Investigates’ programme found it broadcast serious, damaging and untrue allegations about Fr Kevin Reynolds by wrongly accusing him of raping a minor and fathering a child while working in Kenya 30 years ago.

Speaking after the release of the BAI Statement of Findings and Report of the Investigating Officer today, Minister Rabbitte said that the broadcast of ‘Mission to Prey’ “really poses a fundamental challenge now to RTÉ to re-establish its reputation to rebuild that trust it has had with the Irish people.”

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IRELAND
Offaly Express

Published on Thursday 3 May 2012

RTE has been hit with a 200,000 euro fine over its defamatory Mission to Prey programme which libelled a Catholic missionary priest.

The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) investigation into the Prime Time Investigates programme found it broadcast serious, damaging and untrue allegations about Fr Kevin Reynolds by wrongly accusing him of raping a minor and fathering a child while working in Kenya 30 years ago.

RTE admitted the defamation was one of the most significant errors made in its broadcasting history and that the material should never have been broadcast.

The state broadcaster has already pulled the award-winning production off air for good over the programme, which was aired on May 23 last year.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia

Live stream.

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IRELAND
The Journal

[with poll]

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH’S top official in Ireland Cardinal Seán Brady is coming under increasing pressure to resign his position over allegations relating to the sexual abuse of children by paedophile priest Brendan Smyth.

Survivors of clerical abuse have not been satisfied with the defence used by Brady that he had no power to stop Smyth back in 1975. The Cardinal also claims his role in the secret inquiry has been misrepresented and exaggerated.

Chief executive of Barnardos Fergus Finlay, who yesterday revealed he was abused as a child, has called on Brady to resign, stating he cannot offer solace to survivors. Meanwhile, the Vatican’s chief prosecutor Monsignor Charles Scicluna has said that the Irish church needs Cardinal Brady as he has “shown determination in promoting the protection of children”. He also argued that Ireland needed leaders who have “learned the hard way”.

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IRELAND
Broadcasting Authority of Ireland

The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (“BAI”) has today, 4th May 2012, issued a Statement of Findings and the Report of the Investigator on an investigation pursuant to Section 53 of the Broadcasting Act 2009

Download the: BAI Statement of Findings

Download the: Report of the Investigating Officer

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IRELAND
The Journal

THE BROADCASTING AUTHORITY of Ireland (BAI) has published its final report into the RTÉ Prime Investigates Mission to Prey programme which libelled Fr Kevin Reynolds.

An investigation by the former BBC executive Anna Carragher has examined the programme which defamed the Galway priest, wrongly accusing him of fathering a child while a missionary in Africain the 1980s.

The broadcaster has subsequently apologised to the priest and paid undisclosed damages. Carragher’s investigation has examined how the Prime Time Investigates team complied with broadcasting rules and standards.

Read the BAI report in full >

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on May 04, 2012

First, let’s remember the grand jury cited concerns about 37 active priests last year, not 27. Philly archdiocesan officials quickly split hairs and distanced themselves from ten of the accused, saying they belong to religious orders or were incardinated elsewhere.

That’s disingenuous. These ten worked in Philly parishes around Philly kids approved by Philly archdiocesan staff. So it’s reckless for Rigali, Chaput and others to act secretively and irresponsibly with these ten accused clerics. It’s wrong to use technicalities to “pass the buck” on potentially dangerous child predators.

Here’s what we think MAY happen today:

-Chaput may announce the hiring of another staff person or the tweaking of archdiocesan abuse policies again (neither of which will have any meaningful impact).

Here’s what we think WILL happen today:

-Some priests will be permanently removed from ministry (because allegations were deemed credible).

-Fewer priests will be restored to ministry (because allegations were deemed “unsubstantiated”).

-Few details will be given.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
My Fox Philly

Kristen Byrne, Blogger
MyFoxPhilly.com

Prosecutors in the Philadelphia Archdiocese clergy-abuse trial charged that Monsignor William Lynn lied to police about numerous accusations involving a priest.

Countless documents detailing passionate kissing and inappropriate touching by former priest Nicholas Cudemo were read to the jury on Thursday. Between the 1960s and 1970s, Cudemo allegedly sexually assaulted at least eleven young girls, including three of his cousins.

Cudemo’s molestations occurred before Lynn’s tenure as secretary of clergy, from 1992 to 2004. The first allegation of abuse took place in 1966, when Cudemo was an assistant pastor at St. Stanislaus parish in Lansdale. Cudemo was laicized in 2005.

The archdiocese first learned of the abuse in 1991. Lynn and his then-supervisor, Monsignor James Molloy, documented the complaints in various memorandums. Various women, including Cudemo’s three cousins, came and told their horrifying stories of “mind control”, fondling and oral sex.

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DEUTSCHLAND
netzwerkB

Gastbeitrag von Ingo Bading
Sehr geehrter Herr Deschner,

in einem Interview vom 23.3.2010 mit der Deutschen Presseagentur, veröffentlicht vom Humanistischen Pressedienst (http://hpd.de/node/9114) werden Sie gleich zu Anfang gefragt, ob es ähnliche Razzien wie im März 2010 im Kloster Ettal schon einmal in der Kirchengeschichte gegeben hätte. Und Sie verneinen diese Frage:

“Etwas wirklich Vergleichbares kaum, zumindest schweigt meine ‘Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums’ hierzu ebenso wie meine Sexualgeschichte ‘Das Kreuz mit der Kirche’.”

Und das scheint mir doch, wie ich denke – Entschuldigen Sie bitte! – ein Irrtum zu sein. Aus dem Buch des Historikers Hans Günter Hockerts “Die Sittlichkeitsprozesse gegen katholische Ordensangehörige und Priester 1936/1937 – Eine Studie zur nationalsozialistischen Herrschaftstechnik und zum Kirchenkampf”, schon 1971 im Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag in Mainz erschienen (im Netz frei zugänglich), geht klar hervor, daß es solche Razzien in deutschen Klöstern während des Dritten Reiches sehr wohl und sehr umfangreich gegeben hat, und daß die dabei gewonnenen Ergebnisse was die damalige Verbreitung von Kindesmißbrauch in kirchlichen Institutionen betrifft, offenbar sehr weitgehend der damals vorliegenden historischen Wahrheit entsprachen, die sich mit den vorliegenden Verhältnissen des Jahres 2010 offenbar sehr weitgehend deckte, wenn die damaligen Verhältnisse die heutigen nicht sogar übertroffen haben.

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NIEDERLANDE
Spiegel (Deutschland)

Von Benjamin Schulz

Die katholische Kirche in den Niederlanden ließ 1956 einen Jungen kastrieren – angeblich, um ihn von seiner Homosexualität zu heilen. Diesen und mögliche weitere Fälle erwähnt ein Bericht über Missbrauch in der Kirche nicht, obwohl die Verfasser davon wussten. Der Skandal wird politisch.

Als Henk Heithuis 1958 mit Anfang zwanzig starb, hatte er so viel gelitten, dass es für mehrere Leben reicht. Über Jahre von katholischen Geistlichen gequält und sexuell missbraucht, entließ die Kirche ihn erst in die Freiheit, nachdem sie ihn durch Kastration für den kurzen Rest seines Lebens gezeichnet hatte.

Heithuis’ Qualen beginnen quasi mit seiner Geburt im Jahr 1935. Als Scheidungskind verbringt er fast seine gesamte Kindheit und Jugend in Heimen. Missbrauch gehört zum Alltag, auch im von katholischen Mönchen geführten Vincentius-Stift in Harreveld. Dort lebt Heithuis von 1950 bis 1953.

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ESPANA
El Correo

22/12/2009

[The archbishop of Granada said a man is allowed to abuse the body of a woman who has had an abortion.]

El arzobispo de Granada, Javier Martínez , pronunció el pasado domingo una homilía en la Catedral en la que comparó la reforma de la Ley del Aborto con el régimen de Hitler, alegando que los crímenes nazis no eran tan “repugnantes” como los que permite cometer dicha ley. Acto seguido, Martínez dio a entender que la mujer que aborta “mata a un niño indefenso” y, por tanto, “da a los varones la licencia absoluta, sin límites, de abusar” de su cuerpo.

Martínez considera el aborto “un genocidio silencioso”, y cree que la humanidad está involucionando al aprobarse los últimos cambios a la ley que permite interrumpir el embarazo. “Matar a un niño indefenso, y que lo haga su propia madre, da a los varones la licencia absoluta, sin límites, de abusar del cuerpo de la mujer, porque la tragedia se la traga ella”, dijo el obispo . La oficina de información de los Obispos del Sur , que distribuyó ayer su homilía del domingo, explicaron que esta frase de Martínez apunta primero “al abuso que la mujer comete primero con su cuerpo y con su hijo”, y que la deslegitima para negarse a que el hombre abuse de ella “como si fuera un objeto”. “El arzobispo se refería a que si la madre es capaz de matar a su propio hijo, el varón tiene entonces autoridad absoluta para hacer lo que quiera con ella y con su cuerpo”.

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ITALY
Daily Mail (United Kingdom)

Paedophile priest dubbed ‘The Night Priest’ jailed for abusing and plying altar boys with cocaine, 18 YEARS after church chiefs were first warned about him

By Nick Pisa In Rome
PUBLISHED: 08:18 EST, 4 May 2012

A paedophile priest who plied altar servers with cocaine before sexually abusing them has been jailed for nine and a half years by an Italian court.

Father Riccardo Seppia, 51, was arrested by police after they discovered his activities during an investigation into the supply of drugs to Milan’s gay nightclub scene.

Stunned officers listened in as Father Seppia said: ‘Come on over I’ve got some snow’ – code for drugs. In another conversation he said: ‘Bring the usual gift, I am very lonely.’

When details of Father Seppia’s case emerged last year in his parish at Sestri Ponente near Genoa he was immediately suspended by his local bishop – although there were claims that church chiefs had been warned about him almost 20 years ago.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Centre Daily Times

The Associated Press

A suspended Catholic priest has appealed his conviction on charges of concealing the whereabouts of a child and corruption of minors stemming from his relationship with a 15-year-old northwestern Pennsylvania boy whose mother had told the priest to stop contacting the teen.

Sixty-year-old Samuel Slocum, of Cyclone, is serving two years’ probation for his conviction in January.

The priest remains suspended from ministry by the Erie diocese but argues in the appeal that McKean County prosecutors didn’t prove the charges against him.

The Bradford Era ( http://bit.ly/KzBcEl) says Slocum contends he didn’t hide the boy’s whereabouts from his mother, and says the boy wasn’t “corrupted” because the priest never encouraged him to commit a crime or do anything inappropriate.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Kansas City Star

By MARK MORRIS
The Kansas City Star

A reporter’s life often is defined by the biggest stories on his plate.

Several years back, I was entranced by the U.S. insurance industry. That slowly morphed into an intense interest in human trafficking and fraud in America’s work visa programs. Before long an athletic ticket stealing scandal at the University of Kansas ate huge chunks of my time.

It’s an eclectic life, but reporters constantly learn about new things, which is why it’s a great job.

Since the arrest of a priest on child pornography charges in May 2011, I have been drawn into the troubles facing the Catholic Church. As a member of the United Methodist Church — a barefoot third cousin to the Catholics — I entered a historic and clerical culture of which I was only vaguely aware.

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BELARUS
New York Daily News

Moscow, May 4 (IANS/RIA Novosti) The Belarusian orthodox church may defrock a 60-year-old priest, who was detained for allegedly demonstrating his genitals to passengers at a railway station.

According to Belarusian news agency BELTA, the priest was allegedly involved in the act of exhibitionism at the Baranovichi-Polesskiye railway station.

The report said that it turned out later that the priest was also drunk and it was not the first time he was detained for such public offences.

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IRELAND
TV3

Cardinal Sean Brady is believed to have held meetings with his advisors last night, as pressure grows for his resignation.

Groups representing abuse survivors and a number of senior political figures have urged Cardinal Brady to consider his position, while the Taoiseach has said he should reflect on the allegations contained in a BBC documentary this week.

It claimed that the Cardinal knew of children at risk of abuse by paedophile priest Fr. Brendan Smyth in the 1970’s, but failed to pass on the information.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

By Naomi Nix
Tribune reporter

A 45-year-old man filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Archdiocese of Chicago alleging that a Chicago priest sexually molested him repeatedly when he was between 15 to 17 years old.

Though the archdiocese had been notified that the priest had sexually abused young boys, including the victim, he was allowed to remain a priest, according to the lawsuit filed in Cook County Circuit Court.

The lawsuit accuses the archdiocese of concealing the priest’s behavior from the victim, his family, law enforcement and other parishioners in an attempt to avoid a scandal.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
National Secular Society

Posted: Fri, 04 May 2012

The National Secular Society has called on the Northern Ireland Justice Minister to launch an investigation into child abuse in the Catholic Church.

The NSS wrote to Justice Minister David Ford following a serious allegation made in the BBC’s This World programme that a church inquiry in 1975 involving Brady, then a priest, was given the names and addresses of children abused by a serial paedophile priest. The programme claimed that this information was then not passed on to the families or the police, allowing the abuse to continue for at least another decade.

As a number of Catholic dioceses straddle the border, this is an issue that involves Northern Ireland too. In 2011 the NSS wrote to the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland urging him to consider and all Ireland investigation. That request as ignored but the National Secular Society says it now hopes the Justice Minister will take the necessary steps to ensure that individuals within the Catholic Church are not permitted to evade the law which others are expected to follow.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Derry Journal

Published on Friday 4 May 2012

The head of Ireland’s Catholic Church is coming under increasing pressure to resign over a paedophile priest scandal.

The North’s Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness, is the latest high profile personality to comment on Cardinal Sean Brady’s apparent failure to act when alerted to abuse allegations when he was a young priest.

A television documentary this week revealed that, in 1975, a 14-year-old boy who had been sexually abused by paedophile priest Fr Brendan Smyth gave the then Fr Brady the names and addresses of other children who had been abused.

The programme makers claimed Fr Brady did not pass on the details to the police or parents.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Philadelphia Inquirer

By John P. Martin and Claudia Vargas
Inquirer Staff Writers

A former Port Richmond pastor is among the Catholic priests who will be permanently removed from ministry over child-sex abuse allegations, according to a lawyer for a man who said the cleric raped him.

Archdiocese of Philadelphia officials notified the accuser on Thursday that Msgr. Francis J. Feret won’t be reinstated, attorney Daniel Monahan said.

Feret, 75, spent more than a decade as pastor of St. Adalbert in the city’s Port Richmond section, and twice as long as a teacher and administrator at Cardinal Dougherty High School.

Reached by phone late Thursday, Feret said: “I’m sorry, I don’t have anything to say,” then hung up.

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BOSTON (MA)
The Pilot

BRAINTREE — The Archdiocese of Boston announced April 30 that it has found unsubstantiated claims of child sex abuse made in August against Father John M. Mendicoa. The alleged incident dated back to the 1980’s

Father Mendicoa, the former pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Roslindale, had been placed on administrative leave after receipt of the allegation.

In a statement, the archdiocese said, “Father Mendicoa is no longer on administrative leave and has now been assigned the status of Senior Priest, restricted.”

The statement also outlined the limits of Father Mendicoa’s ministry in the future.

“Father Mendicoa’s ministry, beyond sacramental celebrations with members of his family, will be exercised with the permission of the vicar general and moderator of the curia of the Archdiocese of Boston,” it said.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS Philly

By Steve Tawa

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Jurors in the clergy abuse case have pored over church documents to look at the career of a defrocked priest, who is not on trial. The prosecution was attempting to show the lengths to which the Archdiocese of Philadelphia had allegedly perpetuated a policy of moving around ‘problem priests.’

The allegations against the Reverend Nicholas Cudemo began in the mid 1960′s, according to church records. Prosecutors detailed nine mostly young girls who made complaints against him, including three relatives, through the 70′s and 80′s, up to and including 1991.

That’s when one alleged victim’s family filed a lawsuit against Cudemo and the Archdiocese. Within days, the late Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua asked that Cudemo withdraw from his parish, until an evaluation was done.

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IRELAND
New Statesman

By Paul Donovan Published 04 May 2012

How much has the Catholic Church really changed in addressing questions such as child abuse?

Not very much, if the recent BBC programme The Shame of the Catholic Church implicating Cardinal Sean Brady is to be believed.

The question that such programmes constantly bring up is whether on the abuse question the Church has not just conducted a damage limitation exercise, taken some public relations advice, but in reality continues pretty much as before.

Guidelines have been brought in and child protection has rightly been given a higher priority. However, as this BBC programme showed there is still much atoning to be done for what happened in the past.

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NEW YORK
Forward

By Paul Berger

Published May 03, 2012.

A New York-area Jewish school teacher and summer camp counselor has been arrested on charges of possessing child pornography.

FBI agents on May 1 raided the Manhattan apartment of Evan Zauder, where they discovered on his computer hundreds of images and videos of boys, some as young as 7, engaged in sex acts.

Zauder, 26, is a sixth grade teacher at Yeshivat Noam, a Modern Orthodox school, in Paramus, N.J. He is currently in jail pending a bail hearing on May 4.

Zauder is charged with one count of possessing child pornography. He faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in jail and a maximum fine of $250,000.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The American Conservative

Rod Dreher May 3rd, 2012

One of the mysteries of the Catholic sex abuse scandal was why didn’t good priests who knew, or strongly suspected, something awful was going on speak out? There are lots of reasons. A good one was just revealed in the ongoing Philadelphia trial of Msgr. William Lynn, who was the Archdiocese of Philadephia official in charge of clergy assignments under the late Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua. He’s on trial now for allegedly reassigning molester priests into parishes, knowing of their propensity for sexual abuse. A reader sent this startling account of recent revelations in the trial. Excerpts:

If you’re a priest in the archdiocese of Philadelphia, you can “act out sexually” all you want. You can get away with it for years, even decades at a time, while they transfer you from parish to parish, in between recuperative stays at St. John Vianney’s, the friendly archdiocese clinic for sex abusers. Just make sure that you don’t disobey an order from the archbishop. Because in the archdiocese of Philadelphia, that’s the one unpardonable sin for which there is zero tolerance.

To make that point Wednesday, the prosecution had Detective James Dougherty read into the record 34 formerly confidential documents regarding the case of Monsignor Michael C. Picard. And then, the prosecution brought the monsignor to the witness stand to tell his story.

Msgr. Picard was the pastor of an archdiocesan parish who, upon learning that a priest who had the reputation of being a sexually active gay man was being transferred into his parish, protested to Msgr. Lynn at the chancery. More:

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

Article posted 3 May 2012

In New South Wales on 2 May 2012, a Catholic priest was convicted on multiple child sex offences after a five-week trial.

A jury found the priest guilty of all 23 counts of indecent or sexual assault against boys as young as eight years old. The incidents occurred in the 1980s and early 1990s.

For legal reasons, the priest’s name cannot be published at this stage but the court will allow publication of the name in due course. (This kind of temporary suppression-order frequently happens, for good reason, in criminal proceedings.)

The jury of seven men and five women heard evidence of how the priest told an eight-year-old victim to look at a “Sacred Heart of Jesus” image on the wall and “Just look up at Jesus” while he committed oral sex on the boy.

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WORCESTER (MA)
Telegram & Gazette

By Gary V. Murray TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
gmurray@telegram.com

WORCESTER — The Rev. Donald J. Peters, associate pastor of St. George Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral at the time, said he was “stupefied” by what he was hearing.

“I didn’t know what to make of it. I wanted to make believe it didn’t happen,” he said from the witness stand yesterday in Central District Court.

What Rev. Peters reported hearing from inside the office of the church’s pastor, Rev. Charles Michael Abdelahad, on that afternoon in 2008, was the voice of “Father Michael” screaming profanities at someone, a woman pleading, “Please stop. You’re hurting me. Stop. I want out of here” and what sounded like someone slamming their hand on a desk.

On two prior occasions, he said, he had heard Rev. Abdelahad shouting profanities in his office after he had gone to the church on Anna Street to check his mail. But this time, he said, he also heard the voice of a frightened woman and he went into the office to investigate.

Upon entering, he said, he saw a woman curled up in a fetal position in a chair, shaking and “sobbing hysterically.”

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UNITED STATES
Philly.com

May 03, 2012|By Roy Bourgeois

I have been a Catholic priest for years, and, like most people I know, I have been changed by my experiences over the years.

Growing up Catholic in a small town in Louisiana, I and others did not ask why the black members of our church had to sit in the last five pews during Mass, or why our schools were segregated. Nor did we, needless to say, ask why women could not be priests.

The military was my ticket out of Louisiana. I volunteered for duty in Vietnam, which became a turning point in my life. In the midst of all the violence and death of the war, my faith became more important, and I felt that God was calling me to be a priest.

After four years in the military, I entered the Catholic Church’s Maryknoll Order, was ordained, and went off to serve the poor of Bolivia for five years.

Later, during my years of ministry in the United States, I met many devout Catholic women who were also called by God to be priests. Such women are rejected based on the church’s teaching that only baptized men may be ordained.

This makes no sense to me. Don’t we profess that God created men and women of equal worth and dignity? Doesn’t Scripture state clearly that “There is neither male nor female. In Christ Jesus you are one” (Galatians 3:28)? How can we men say our call from God is authentic, but the call women feel is not?

After much reflection, study, and prayer, I believe the exclusion of women from the priesthood is a grave injustice against women and our loving God, who calls both men and women to be priests. I also believe that to have a healthy, vibrant church, we need the wisdom, experiences, and voices of women in the priesthood.

The Vatican has referred to the ordination of women as “a grave scandal.” When most Catholics hear the word scandal, however, they think of the many priests who sexually abused children, and of the many bishops who covered up their horrific crimes.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The judge in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee bankruptcy case has ordered the church and its creditors to begin “meaningful settlement negotiations.” And, depending on their progress, she could order them into mediation aimed at hammering out an agreement as early as June.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Susan V. Kelley ordered the negotiations during a status and scheduling conference Wednesday.

Kelley also expressed her willingness to allow the public release of at least some parts of the depositions of retired Archbishop Rembert Weakland and retired Bishop Richard Sklba, who handled the archdiocese’s sex abuse issues for nearly three decades. The names of victims would be redacted.

The bankruptcy creditors committee, composed of church sex abuse victims, has asked the judge to order a global mediation that would include the archdiocese, victims, insurers, and parishes and religious orders named in sex abuse claims.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
WTAQ

MILWAUKEE (WTAQ) – A bankruptcy judge ordered the Milwaukee Catholic Archdiocese Thursday to begin what she called “meaningful settlement negotiations” with the church’s creditors.

And depending how those talks go, Judge Susan Kelley said she might bring in a mediator to hammer out agreements as early as June.

Kelley ordered the talks during a status conference Thursday into the Chapter 7 bankruptcy case the Milwaukee Archdiocese filed more than a year ago.

On another issue, Kelley said she would consider a public release of at least some of the depositions given by former Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland and retired Auxiliary Bishop Richard Sklba.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

JOHN WATERS

I HAVE followed the Fr Brian D’Arcy saga for days in a vain attempt to learn what precise heresies the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith objected to.

But no one seemed much interested in discovering what these were, and Fr Brian was being intriguingly vague. The sense was of a fearless and scholarly dissident whose robust and scorching critiques of Vatican thinking have been cruelly suppressed by forces living in fear of his outspokenness.

We understand from reports that the objections relate to his Sunday World column in 2010. We know from Fr D’Arcy’s account that the letter of “censure” from the CDF incorporated some cuttings of his columns, although he did not say which ones.

On radio last weekend, he said that, when his superior first told him of the CDF’s difficulties, in March 2011, he gathered that the issues were his “attitude about the Vatican’s way of dealing with child sexual abuse” and that the CDF didn’t like “what they called my liberal views on contraception”.

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IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

Thursday, 3 May 2012

While the BBC has produced fresh evidence against Cardinal Sean Brady, head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, in relation to the sex abuse carried out by notorious priest, Fr Brendan Smyth, the fundamental problem for the Primate is unchanged.

He may argue that he did nothing wrong and that his involvement in the interviewing of two victims of the priest were minimal and that he now regrets the culture of silence within the Church at that time. Yet many will feel that is a weak defence.

The Cardinal – who was then simply a priest – was given the names of children at risk from Fr Smyth and while he passed those on to superiors in the Church, neither the police nor the parents were informed.

Cardinal Brady may feel that it was not his role at that time to alert either, yet most right-minded people will regard it as shameful that a Christian organisation should continue to leave some of its most vulnerable flock – children – at risk from a paedophile.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

JIMMY WALSH

SEANAD REPORT: MARTIN CONWAY (FG) said that, as a practising Catholic, he was utterly amazed Cardinal Seán Brady had not tendered his resignation for the sake of all Catholics in this country who believed the church had a future. It was seriously regrettable that this gentleman, who no longer retained moral authority in regard to practising Catholics, had not yet made way for someone who was untainted in any shape or form with what had gone on in the past.

“In order for the church to survive and continue to play its important role in education and in other areas of this country, I think that we need a complete and fundamental clean-out and change at the top in terms of the senior management structure in the Catholic Church.”

David Norris (Ind) said the cardinal was under enormous pressure, but no one could gloat over that. As someone who regarded himself as a Protestant Catholic, he certainly did not do so.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

HARRY MCGEE, Political Correspondent

The Catholic Church has rejected reports that Cardinal Seán Brady was willing to resign two years ago over the Fr Brendan Smyth scandal but that the Vatican refused.

In a statement, a church spokesman said a news report to that effect today was “untrue”.

The report in the Irish Independent seemed to be “confusing” an announcement by Dr Brady on May 17th, 2010 requesting Episcopal support, the statement said.

In that statement, Dr Brady said he had asked Pope Benedict for additional support for his work at Episcopal level.

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IRELAND
BBC News

One of Ireland’s leading theologians has said Cardinal Sean Brady should resign as Catholic Primate of all-Ireland.

It follows fresh claims about a church inquiry into clerical child abuse.

Fr Vincent Twomey, a former Professor at Maynooth College, told RTE that Cardinal Brady has lost his moral authority.

Cardinal Brady is accused of failing to do enough when alerted to abuse allegations when he was a priest.

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IRELAND/UNITED STATES
RTE News

A victim of Fr Brendan Smyth has said Cardinal Seán Brady should not only resign but be investigated by secular authorities for possible criminal charges.

US lawyer Helen McGonigle was abused by the paedophile priest in the late 1960s in Rhode Island.

Speaking to BBC Ulster this morning, Ms McGonigle said she was “outraged” by Cardinal Brady’s response to allegations in a BBC documentary broadcast this week.

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IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

Friday, 4 May 2012

The clamour for Cardinal Sean Brady to resign from his position as head of the Catholic Church in Ireland is gathering momentum with political leaders on both sides of the border joining in the criticism of his handling of child sex abuse cases.

His protests that he was just a functionary with no authority when he conducted interviews with children in 1975 who had been abused by notorious paedophile Father Brendan Smyth does not excuse his inaction then or subsequently.

He may have passed on the information to his superiors in the Church, but he also had a moral and legal duty to inform police and child protection agencies of the crimes committed against the children and fears that others were at risk – fears which were later realised. And it is incredible that he did not pursue the matter as he rose through the ranks of the Church or confess his role when Brendan Smyth was later unmasked.

It is also baffling why the RUC or the PSNI have never asked the Cardinal about what he knew about the child abuse crimes in the wake of Smyth’s conviction.

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IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

Friday, 4 May 2012

Cardinal Sean Brady did not offer to resign when allegations of his role in a secret inquiry into abuse first broke two years ago, the Catholic Church said.

Amid deepening warnings from government circles that the cleric’s position is untenable, the cardinal’s spokesman denied claims that he wanted to quit over his role in investigations into paedophile Brendan Smyth.

The beleaguered cardinal has vowed to remain on despite revelations in a BBC documentary that he was aware at least five children were victims of Smyth and abuse reports were not passed to police and parents were not informed.

“No such offer of resignation was made,” the cardinal’s spokesman said.

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NORTH CAROLINA
WFJA

(FAYETTEVILLE, N.C.) — A North Carolina pastor who told parents in a Sunday sermon that they should hit their children if they began to act gay has retracted his advice, saying he should have spoken more carefully.

Pastor Sean Harris, of the Berean Baptist Church in Fayetteville, N.C., apologized in a statement released this week for “any and all words that suggest that child abuse is appropriate for any and all types of behaviors, including (but not limited to) effeminacy and sexual immorality of all types.”

In the sermon, given Sunday in support of a proposed North Carolina amendment defining marriage as being between a man and a woman, Harris talked at length about homosexual behaviors. At one point, he instructed fathers who “see that son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist.”

Harris said that gay tendencies in young children should be “squashed like a cockroach” and that if parents see young boys acting like girls, fathers should “give [them] a good punch.”

“When your daughter starts acting too butch, you reign her in,” Harris said in the sermon, which was posted in a video online. “You’re going to act like a girl and walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl, and that means you’re going to be beautiful and you’re going to be attractive and you’re going to dress yourself up.”

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MISSOURI
The Kansas City Star

By MARK MORRIS
The Kansas City Star

Judges in state and federal court this week dismissed parties and allegations from three civil lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by Catholic priests.

In each case, the rulings were a victory for lawyers representing either the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph or an accused priest.

In Jackson County, Circuit Judge Peggy Stevens McGraw on Monday threw out all allegations against the diocese in a suit filed last year by David Tate of Kansas City, who alleged that the Rev. Michael Tierney abused him at Tierney’s mother’s home and at a hotel swimming pool in the early 1970s.

The judge also dismissed eight counts against Tierney, though he still faces civil allegations of childhood sexual abuse and battery.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Priest Abuse Trial Blog

Ralph Cipriano

Father Louis DeSimone heard a commotion. When he went to investigate, he found Father Nicholas V. Cudemo “trying to calm a hysterical girl.”

The girl left the church shouting that she loved Father Cudemo. When Father DeSimone asked what was going on, Father Cudemo explained that the girl had a crush on him.

The year was 1969, and the hysterical girl was one of the first victims mentioned in the secret archive files of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. In court Thursday, Detective Joseph Walsh methodically read from the secret files the stories of 10 more victims of Father Cudemo, described memorably to a grand jury by the late Msgr. James E. Molloy, Cardinal Bevilacqua’s former vicar for administration, as “one of the sickest individuals I ever knew.”

Six months after the hysterical girl, church officials reported that Father Cudemo had a woman in his rectory room for half an hour with the door closed. When confronted, Father Cudemo claimed “he was not misbehaving.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Fox News

Published May 04, 2012

Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA – About two dozen suspended Roman Catholic priests could learn whether they can return to their parishes or if accusations they molested children will doom their church career.

Archbishop Charles Chaput is expected to announce the findings of the latest church investigation into the accusations, some of which had previously been dismissed as not credible. Those findings were sharply criticized by a Philadelphia grand jury last year.

A person close to the process, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that Chaput plans to announce the outcome of at least some of the investigations Friday. The person is not authorized to speak publicly about the issue.

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IRELAND
BBC News

Political leaders have strongly criticised the head of Ireland’s Catholic Church for refusing to resign over a paedophile priest scandal.

Cardinal Sean Brady is accused of failing to act when alerted to abuse allegations when he was a young priest.

Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness and the Irish deputy PM both questioned whether Cardinal Brady should remain in his job.

Meanwhile, police are to review a documentary which examined the issue.

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IRELAND
BBC News

By Robert Pigott
Religious affairs correspondent, BBC News

Senior politicians have intensified pressure on the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady, to resign over a paedophile priest scandal in the 1970s.

But the Vatican – where the key decisions on his future will be made – has its own reasons for wanting him to stay.

Meanwhile, the row could overshadow the Church’s International Eucharistic Congress, due to take part in Ireland next month.

Three out of the four main parties in the Republic of Ireland and the Northern Irish Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness have called on Cardinal Brady to consider his position.

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PHILADLEPHIA (PA)
CBS Philly

By Mark Abrams

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Philadelphia’s Archbishop Charles Chaput is set to appear at a news conference this afternoon to disclose the fate of some of the 27 priests suspended by his predecessor because of allegations of sexual abuse or other misconduct.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia says Archbishop Chaput is to appear for the briefing in the Archdiocese headquarters in Center City at 2 this afternoon.

KYW Newsradio has learned he will announce the disposition of some, but not all of the cases of the priests suspended by Cardinal Justin Rigali back in March 2011, following the release of a second Philadelphia grand jury report on clergy sex abuse.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Independent.ie reporters

Friday May 04 2012

CARDINAL Sean Brady has rejected a report that he offered to step down over the Brendan Smyth affair two years ago.

In a statement, the Cardinal said the report in the Irish Independent “seems to confuse” an announcement he made in May 2010 requesting episcopal support: “I have asked Pope Benedict XVI for additional support for my work, at episcopal level”.

However, he added no such offer of resignation was made.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Greg Harkin

Friday May 04 2012

ABUSE victim Brendan Boland has told how he thought the death of his teenage son in a road crash was ‘divine retribution’ for his decision to hold the Catholic Church to account for speaking out.

In an interview with the Irish Independent, Brendan (51) said the death of his 17-year-old son Stephen in 2003 left him devastated.

“I know it sounds crazy but that’s what I thought at the time. I thought that God had taken Stephen because I had spoken out against the church,” said the Dundalk man, who now lives in Harlow, Essex.

“I thought it was divine retribution and I know people think that’s a stupid thing to say but I did believe that.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Louise Hogan

Friday May 04 2012

A BISHOP has branded the inaction of Fr Brendan Smyth’s superior “inexcusable”.

Bishop Leo O’Reilly of Kilmore last night criticised the then Abbot, Fr Kevin Smith, of the Norbertine Order at Holy Trinity Abbey in Kilnacrott, Co Cavan.

“I find it incomprehensible that Abbot Smith did not take effective action to stop Brendan Smyth committing further abuse against children,” he added.

“This failure to act was inexcusable.”

The abbot, who stepped down in the wake of Smyth’s conviction in 1994, was last night uncontactable.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Fionnan Sheahan and Anne-Marie Walsh

Friday May 04 2012

GOVERNMENT ministers on both sides of the Border ratcheted up the pressure on Cardinal Sean Brady to resign in the wake of revelations of his failure to report child-rape allegations against the notorious paedophile Fr Brendan Smyth.

Education Minister Ruairi Quinn and Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness both called for him to consider his position.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny held firm on his call for the Cardinal to “reflect” on the programme on the BBC, which contained revelations on the handling of clerical abuse. But the Labour Party went further, with strong statements from Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore and Mr Quinn.

Mr Quinn called specifically on Cardinal Brady to consider his position, with coalition sources saying the minister believes he should resign.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Friday May 04 2012

ANY cardinal wishing to relinquish their role in the Catholic Church would have to proffer their resignation to the Pope.

The cleric usually travels to the Vatican for a face-to-face with the pontiff.

The resignation is then either accepted, or in some cases it is rejected by the Vatican and the cleric is encouraged to stay on in their post.

For example, a decade ago the late Pope John Paul II accepted the resignation of the embattled Boston cardinal Bernard Law in the wake of the church’s ongoing sex abuse scandal. He met for a short time face-to-face with the Pope in the Papal Library.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Greg Harkin and independent.ie reporters

Friday May 04 2012

ONE of Ireland’s most conservative and respected Catholic theologians has said that Cardinal Sean Brady has lost his moral authority and should resign.

Fr Vincent Twomey has pleaded with the church to reexamine its role and asked where is the humanity to connect with the pain of children who have been abused.

The retired Professor of Moral Theology at Maynooth, told Primetime on RTE 1, that there were issues about the failure to alert parents to other victims of paedophile priest Brendan Smyth, that the church must address.

“For the good of the church, it is really tragic, but I’m afraid I am of the opinion that he should resign,” he said.

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IRELAND/UNITED STATES
Irish Independent

By Independent.ie reporters

Friday May 04 2012

A WOMAN, who was sexually abused as a child by paedophile priest Brendan Smyth, today called for a criminal investigation into the actions of Cardinal Sean Brady.

American lawyer Helen McGonigle, (50) who now campaigns for survivors of clerical sexual abuse, said the All Ireland Primate should resign for not alerting other families to Smyth’s horrific catalogue of abuse.

She was molested by Smyth in the late 1960s in Rhode Island, New York.

Speaking to BBC Radio Ulster today, Ms McGonigle said she was “outraged” by Cardinal Brady’s response to allegations in a BBC documentary broadcast this week.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholics4Change

May 3, 2012 by Susan Matthews

I’m not sure how to prepare for tomorrow. I’m trying to reconcile good memories of a priest who had a positive impact on my husband’s and my life with very unsettling facts. Both are real. Do bad acts negate the good?

Dr. Fitzgibbons, an Archdiocesan psychiatrist for whom I ghostwrote in the early 90s, had told me anger was the root of all psychological dysfunction. It made sense to me. Rape is committed out of anger rather than desire. But recently, a clergy sex abuse victim and one-time patient of this doctor, told me he disagreed. He believes extreme selfishness is the cause.

It takes just a quick review of our own motives for sinning to come to the same conclusion. Relate that idea of selfishness to the priests removed from ministry for anything from “boundary issues” to sexual abuse. A priest’s homosexuality or failing to be celibate is the least of it. It’s the harming of others emotionally, physically and spiritually out of self-interest while representing Jesus that most find egregious.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

GERRY MORIARTY

VICTIM’S REACTION: THE “PENNY dropped” for Brendan Boland when he was just shy of his 14th birthday at Christmas 1974. The paedophile priest Brendan Smyth had been sexually abusing him for two to three years at that stage.

Smyth had brought him, a Belfast boy and three girls to a Wombles concert in Dublin. Afterwards Smyth shared a room with the two boys, who also featured in this week’s BBC programme. First he abused Mr Boland, then he signalled the other boy to come to his bed.

“I was lying listening to what was going on. And I said to myself, ‘This is not going to happen again, I have got to do something. I don’t like what’s going on here’. That’s when the penny dropped for me.”

Mr Boland spoke to The Irish Times in a hotel in Belfast with his wife Martina by his side. “She’s a rock,” he said.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

BRENDAN SMYTH: NOT ALL Irish priests in the 1960s and 1970s were as enthralled by silence as Fr Seán Brady, it would appear. He had been “part of an unhelpful culture of deference and silence in society, and the Church . . . ” he said on Wednesday.

Not so Fr Bruno Mulvihill.

From the late 1960s he tried to have child abuse by Fr Brendan Smyth addressed through direct contact with two papal nuncios, one bishop, an abbot-general and two abbots. He might as well have stayed as silent as Fr Brady.

Fr Mulvihill joined the Norbertine congregation, of which Fr Brendan Smyth was a member, in 1963. From 1968 onwards he tried to have something done about his colleague. Some of this was recalled on the UTV Counterpoint programme Suffer Little Children, broadcast in October 1994.

There he produced a letter he sent to the bishop of Kilmore, Francis McKiernan, dated November 1st, 1974. In it he disclosed how “ever since 1964 I have known that a member of the community, Fr Brendan Smyth, is misbehaving: he is molesting children who attend bingo sessions. Two of them who are superficially known to me have told me about their troubles.” He “brought this matter to the attention of the abbot but to no avail”.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

CARL O’BRIEN, Chief Reporter

THE COST of the State’s redress scheme for survivors of institutional child abuse is set to rise by more than €100 million following a surge in applications for compensation last year.

Unpublished estimates compiled by senior Department of Education officials put the final bill at €1.47 billion, up from the €1.36 billion that had been quoted.

However, the State has received just €126 million to date from religious congregations despite Government attempts to split the redress costs on a 50-50 basis.

The Residential Institutions Redress Board was set up a decade ago to compensate former residents of industrial and reformatory schools, orphanages and children’s homes who suffered abuse.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

CARL O’BRIEN

CHILD PROTECTION: ONE OF Cardinal Seán Brady’s explanations for his handling of clerical sex abuse cases in the mid-1970s is that priests and society were living in a much different era.

“You see, we were without any guidance at that stage from either church or State,” he said this week. “We were without training; it was a new situation.”

But how much latitude should we give to people who failed to act decisively at time when there was much less emphasis on child sexual abuse?

For most of those who worked in either child protection or social services during the mid-1970s, there is an acknowledgment that guidelines and procedures were not in place for dealing with sexual abuse. But the notion that sexual abuse was something “new” or unprecedented is given short shrift.

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VATICAN CITY
The Irish Times

PADDY AGNEW in Rome

VATICAN VIEW: THE HOLY See yesterday made no comment in response to calls for the resignation of the Archbishop of Armagh Cardinal Seán Brady.

While officially the Holy See offered no response to the call made by Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore in the Dáil yesterday, off the record senior Vatican figures repeated the view, already expressed this week, that Cardinal Brady should not resign.

One Vatican official said that for the cardinal to step down would be to admit he was in the wrong in how he handled his evidence-taking with sex abuse victim Brendan Boland in 1975, whereas the Holy See remains convinced that the then Fr Brady did nothing wrong at the time.

It is also true that the sometimes perverse logic of Vatican realpolitik is working against any possible resignation by Cardinal Brady.

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UNITED STATES
Catholics4Change

May 3, 2012 by Susan Matthews

Understanding Vatican Council II and the role of the laity is important to understanding how we can help prevent clergy sex abuse and protect children. Theologian Anthony Massimini shares his knowledge of doctrine on his new site.

www.the21stcenturyamericancatholic.blogspot.com

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NORTH CAROLINA
Huffington Post

Michelangelo Signorile

The North Carolina pastor whose violent anti-gay rant blew up across the blogosphere, said in an interview that his message to parents in a sermon — to “punch” a boy who is effeminate and “crack that wrist” if he is limp-wristed — were taken out of the “context of a ministry,” and that he meant them “figuratively,” claiming that Jesus, too, in the Bible, “conjures up violent images.”

Pastor Sean Harris of the Barean Baptist Church in Fayetteville, N.C. retracted the statements of violence but continued to defend his comments about the “importance of gender distinctions that God created,” as well his condemnation of homosexuality, citing the Bible. But he was not able to explain other passages in the Bible, such as those condoning slavery, saying he didn’t realize the interview would “slant and redirect the conversation.”

“I had no idea that the video would be chopped and posted in the blogosphere in a such a manner in which the entirety isn’t understood,” Harris said in an interview on my radio program on SiriusXM OutQ yesterday. “Those were not the best choice of words. If I had to do it over again again I would not choose those words. I was using hyperbole in an effort to communicate the importance of the gender distinctions that God created. I would offer an apology to anyone I have offended. I don’t make an apology for those gender distinctions that are the word of God.”

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NORTH CAROLINA
Huffington Post

Scott MacDougall

Sean Harris, pastor of Berean Baptist Church in Fayetteville, N.C., has now “apologized” for a delivering a sermon in which he told parents to “punch” their “limp-wristed” sons and force their “butch” daughters to “dress up” and “smell nice” from time to time. However, he claims that his words were meant “in jest.”

That is outrageous, as even the most open-minded and generous viewing of his sermon will quickly reveal. (Click on the link above and see for yourself.)

Having seen the remarkable documentary “Bully” just last night, I couldn’t sit back and swallow his calling this “a joke.” I sent him the following email this afternoon.

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NORTH CAROLINA
ABC News

By COLLEEN CURRY

May 3, 2012

A North Carolina pastor who told parents in a Sunday sermon that they should hit their children if they began to act gay has retracted his advice, saying he should have spoken more carefully.

Pastor Sean Harris, of the Berean Baptist Church in Fayetteville, N.C., apologized in a statement released this week for “any and all words that suggest that child abuse is appropriate for any and all types of behaviors, including (but not limited to) effminancy and sexual immorality of all types.”

In the sermon, given Sunday in support of a proposed North Carolina amendment defining marriage as being between a man and a woman, Harris talked at length about homosexual behaviors. At one point, he instructed fathers who “see that son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist.”

Harris said that gay tendencies in young children should be “squashed like a cockroach” and that if parents see young boys acting like girls, fathers should “give [them] a good punch.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
San Antonio Express-News

MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press

Updated 05:23 p.m., Thursday, May 3, 2012

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Roman Catholic Archbishop Charles Chaput has many constituents to consider as he decides the fate of about two dozen priests suspended over child sex-abuse allegations.

The priests have been in limbo during an internal investigation that took more than a year. Their suspensions followed a second damning grand jury report on priest sexual-abuse in Philadelphia.

A person close to the process, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that Chaput plans to announce the outcome of at least some of the investigations Friday. The person is not authorized to speak publicly about the issue.

Chaput first discussed the matter with hundreds of Philadelphia priests summoned to a last-minute meeting Wednesday.

“I think he’s smart, meeting with his priests, talking to them,” said the Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University who has written a book on U.S. bishops. “Priests are one of the most important constituencies that a bishop has. He needs them to do almost anything in the diocese.”

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WISCONSIN
National Catholic Reporter

by Eugene Cullen Kennedy on May. 03, 2012 Bulletins from the Human Side

Madison Wisconsin’s Bishop Robert Morlino, displays, among other items on his coat of arms, a golden turret that, according to the designers of his heraldry, symbolizes a place “in which to take refuge on the journey, to reset …”

It may be time for the good bishop, after months of contentious interactions with his people, to move, if not to a golden turret of refuge — the kind many bishops are said to prefer — then at least to a neutral corner in which to reset his relationships with his people.

The gods of irony wince at the news that in the very week of celebrating the Good Shepherd Morlino has threatened to deny communion, confession, and Christian burial to those of his flock who have objected to their treatment by the self-styled conservative priests of the Spanish Society of Jesus Christ the Priest whom he assigned to parish and other pastoral work in the diocese.

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ILLINOIS
Daily Herald

A Roselle priest convicted of gambling away about $300,000 in church funds has asked a DuPage County judge to let him return to the ministry. The Rev. John Regan, 48, was sentenced in September to probation, jail and community service, and was ordered to get a job “as menial as possible.” Since his release, he’s worked at a Joliet factory for $9 an hour.

Now Regan’s attorneys are asking Judge John Kinsella to clarify whether he can go back to work for the Diocese of Joliet — a move they say would double his income and allow him to pay restitution more quickly.

He also “wishes to return to more meaningful employment in order to be restored to his lifelong vocation,” a recent defense filing says.

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ROME
dotCommonweal

May 3, 2012

Posted by Grant Gallicho

Robert Mickens of the Tablet and Sandro Magister of Chiesa are reporting the names of the men behind the investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. You’re going to recognize a few. First, Magister:

The inspection [of LCWR] had been urged above all by some cardinals of the United States, both of the curia and residential [i.e., those who live in Rome], with direct knowledge of the “problematic” orientations of the LCWR.

Cardinal Franc Rodé, prefect of the congregation for religious until the end of 2010, had given the go-ahead to a rather hostile apostolic visitation of the LCWR. But after, on January 4, 2011, he was replaced by Brazilian cardinal João Braz de Aviz, a focolarino [member of the Focolare movement], and even before that, when the American Redemptorist Joseph W. Tobin became secretary of the same congregation, the apostolic visitation continued and concluded in a much more conciliatory manner.

This changing of the guard at the top of the congregation for religious was not at all to the liking of the cardinals from the United States residing in Rome at the time – Levada, Raymond L. Burke, James F. Stafford, Bernard F. Law, John P. Foley – so much so that none of them attended Tobin’s episcopal ordination at Saint Peter’s Basilica on October 9, 2010.

That’s extraordinary. On Magister’s telling, those American cardinals were so disappointed with the decision to appoint Tobin — an outsider who didn’t want the job and freely admits to “ranting about the curia” — that they couldn’t be bothered to attend his ordination to the episcopacy. (I wonder who attended Cardinal Law’s 2004 appointment as archpriest of St. Mary Major. His retirement ran silent.) Imagine their surprise when soon after a nun was appointed undersecretary for the congregation — and one who doesn’t usually wear a habit, just like those troublesome LCWR nuns. Those American cardinals must have seen the writing on the wall. Under new management, the apostolic visitation of the LCWR seems to have gone precisely nowhere.

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ROME
National Catholic Reporter

May. 03, 2012
By John L Allen Jr

Analysis

ROME — At first blush, one compelling frame for the crackdown on the Leadership Conference of Woman Religious would seem to be “Rome vs. America,” and in a sense, that’s perfectly correct. This is, after all, an overhaul of an American body decreed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s powerful theological watchdog agency.

Yet drilling down, the picture becomes more complicated. At least part of the original momentum for the overhaul actually came from America, not Rome, and meanwhile, not everyone in Rome is quite on the same page. …

NCR has learned that during a meeting of Vatican personnel in early 2012 to discuss the LCWR assessment, a senior Vatican diplomat warned that launching a crackdown now might be a bad idea in light of domestic American politics, especially an increasingly nasty campaign season featuring rhetoric about a “war on women.”

According to sources with knowledge of that meeting, officials of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith replied that such concerns were “exaggerated.”

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Blaine on May 03, 2012

Shame on Cardinal Brady. Catholic bishops are monarchs with tremendous power. But when child sex abuse and cover up cases come to light, they pretend to be powerless.

It’s disingenuous for Brady to claim that because he wrote one memo, he did all he could do to protect kids from Fr. Brendan Smyth. He could and should have done more and he knows it. It’s tragic that he refuses to publicly admit that, because he did the absolute bare minimum in this case, other unsuspecting parents welcomed Fr. Smyth into their homes and other innocent kids were severely hurt by him.

We join those who are calling on Brady to resign.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on May 03, 2012

WHAT:
Holding signs and childhood photos, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will hold a small vigil outside the Philly Archdiocese headquarters. They will urge Catholic officials to:

–disclose more, not less, about predatory priests tomorrow, and
–explain why they kept kids needlessly at risk by keeping silent about every one of the 27 accused priests for more than a year.

They will also urge current and former Catholic church employees and members to step forward now and disclose any knowledge of crimes to Philadelphia law enforcement, regardless of what archdiocesan officials do or don’t do tomorrow.

WHEN:
Tonight, Thursday, May 3 at 9 p.m.

WHERE:
Outside the Philadelphia archdiocesan headquarters, 222 N 17th St. (Between Race St. and Vine St.)

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

by Tom Roberts on May. 03, 2012 NCR Today

Perhaps it should surprise no one, given the byzantine culture of Catholic hierarchy and Vatican bureaucracy, that just beneath the surface of the most recent attack on LCWR, one might find evidence of Cardinal Bernard Law, whose gross mishandling of the sex abuse crisis fairly upended the venerable church of Boston, and Archbishop William Lori, the fiery point man in the episcopacy’s religious liberty campaign and recently rewarded with the prestigious Baltimore see.

It is one of the ongoing curiosities – pointed out abundantly on this site and within the pages of NCR – that those who have caused the greatest scandal and damage to the church are those who still sit in judgment of all else in the community. And they are using their prerogatives, which they bestow upon themselves and are available only to those within the secretive, all-male, celibate world of Catholic hierarchy, to flail about, pointing up dangers and faults they are seeing all about them, in others and in endless other sectors of the Catholic community.

In the most recent instance of the women religious, The (London) Tablet’s Robert Mickens traces the timeline and personalities who have been working to bring the Leadership Conference of women Religious to heel. As his reporting shows (the link here is to America magazine and a posting by Jesuit Fr. James Martin, who also provides links to the Tablet piece) the good bishops can be persistent in their pursuit of orthodoxy and proper behavior on the part of others, especially vowed women.

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UNITED STATES
U.S. Catholic

Thursday, May 3, 2012

By Scott Alessi

For those hoping the debate about priestly celibacy would die down, think again–An Australian priest is pouring gasoline on the fire by claiming that many priests around the world have already cast off their vows to remain celibate.

Father Kevin Lee, a priest in Sydney, Australia, came forward this week to admit that he’s been secretly married for a full year, and that he hasn’t done much to hide this fact from church leaders, who turned a blind eye to his actions. That is, of course, until he publicly admitted his secret marriage, which immediately led to his removal from ministry. So why come forward?

Lee, who is now writing a tell-all book about priestly celibacy, says he wanted to call attention to just how many priests aren’t following that vow in hopes that the church will make a change to the requirement.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

By Joseph A. Slobodzian
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Prosecutors today began dissecting the career of the Rev. Nicholas V. Cudemo — transferred among Archdiocesan high schools over more than two decades after being accused of molesting a series of teenage girls — as the trial continued to explore the church’s handling of allegations of sexual abuse by some priests.

“As a male celibate, he needs female companionship and friendship,” Archdiocesan officials reported Cudemo told them when confronted in October , 1991 about allegations by several cousins that the priest had fondled them during their teen and preteen years.

That statement and others were contained in church archives that were read to the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court jury hearing the case against Msgr. William J. Lynn, who as secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004 was the designated investigator of complaints of sexual misconduct against priests.

Most of Cudemo’s predations against teenage girls occurred before Lynn’s tenure as secretary for clergy. Cudemo was ordained in 1963 and the first allegation against him — involving a junior at Lansdale Catholic High School — was in 1966 at his first post as assistant pastor at St. Stanislaus parish in the Montgomery County community. Now 75, Cudemo was defrocked in 2005.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Tyrone Times

Published on Wednesday 2 May 2012

There will be no knee-jerk decision on whether to launch a police investigation into the latest claims levelled against the Catholic Church, a senior commander in Northern Ireland has insisted.

Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Assistant Chief Constable George Hamilton said allegations made in a TV documentary on the secret internal Church inquiry in 1975 into paedophile priest Brendan Smyth would be reviewed by specialist detectives first.

Cardinal Sean Brady has faced mounting calls to resign over his role in the historic Church probe, primarily his apparent failure to alert the civil authorities about the abuse claims against Smyth.

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IRELAND
The Journal

AN OUT-OF-HOURS counselling service for victims of child abuse has said it noticed a significant increase in calls to its telephone line last night.

A spokesperson for Connect Counselling told TheJournal.ie that it expects the trend to continue over the coming days following revelations about Cardinal Seán Brady’s role in a secret 1975 inquiry into the abuse of children by paedophile priest Brendan Smyth.

“We had a noticeable spike in calls,” he said. “That is generally the pattern when the issue of clerical child abuse is raised in the media.”

Connect is a HSE-funded, out-of-hours counselling service for any adult who experienced abuse, trauma or neglect in childhood. The service is also available to partners or relatives of people with these experiences.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Thursday May 03 2012

A commander in Northern Ireland said a decision on whether to launch an investigation into the claims levelled against Cardinal Brady would not be taken until the evidence was fully assessed.

Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Assistant Chief Constable George Hamilton said a specialist team already investigating alleged institutional abuse in the region was reviewing the documentary to see if there was prima facie evidence that an offence had taken place.

He said officers would “do the right thing” based on where the evidence led them.

“For the last number of months there has been an investigation ongoing under an operation called Operation Charwell into alleged institutional abuse and this is really the context in which we will examine the material that was made available through the BBC documentary,” he said.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Independent.ie and Press Association reporters

Thursday May 03 2012

EDUCATION Minister Ruairi Quinn has become the latest politician to call on Cardinal Sean Brady to consider his position, following allegations in a BBC documentary about a church inquiry into child abuse in the 1970s.

Earlier Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore and Fr Brian D’Arcy also commented on his position.

Mr Quinn said this stance was appropriate because Cardinal Brady is the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, which is the patron of 92pc of the 3,200 primary schools.

He said that the Catholic Church also should consider the appropriateness of having at its head someone who had ”failed spectacularly to protect children.”

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IRELAND
IOL (South Africa)

May 3 2012

By Conor Humphries

DUBLIN – Ireland’s deputy prime minister said on Thursday he thought the head of the Irish Catholic Church should resign after a TV documentary reported the cleric had failed to warn parents their children were being sexually abused by a priest in 1975.

A BBC documentary broadcast on Tuesday said that Cardinal Sean Brady was given the names and addresses of children being abused by notorious paedophile Brendan Smyth during a Church investigation but had failed to act to ensure their safety.

“It is my own personal view that anybody who did not deal with the scale of the abuse that we have seen in this case should not hold a position of authority,” Deputy Prime Minister Eamon Gilmore told parliament, when asked about Brady’s response to the BBC programme.

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IRELAND
Herald

By Garry O’Sullivan

Thursday May 03 2012

TWO years ago, when calls first started for Cardinal Brady to resign, the writing seemed on the wall for him.

At that point, the calls were made over his legalistic and perfunctory performance in 1975 in a Church Tribunal of Inquiry in which, among other explicit questions, a 14-year-old boy was grilled on whether he got enjoyment out of being abused by Fr Brendan Smyth.

I remember taking a phone call from a senior church adviser in the immediate circle around the Cardinal and even this adviser believed he should step down. But the Cardinal clung on.

The Vatican doesn’t like to retire cardinals, the thinking being, if you allow senior management to be taken out, one day the mob will come for the CEO himself.

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IRELAND
Herald

By Cormac Murphy

Thursday May 03 2012

CARDINAL Sean Brady has insisted he had not been fully aware of the impact of child abuse, even though he heard harrowing victim statements.

The pressure on the leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland to resign intensified today in the wake of revelations of his failure to shield children from paedophile Fr Brendan Smyth.

The priest defended not contacting gardai about the horrific details he heard from victim Brendan Boland and admitted he didn’t realise the impact abuse had on children.

He said: “I knew chapter and verse of what was going on. I didn’t have the awareness I now have of the impact that behaviour was having on those children.”

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IRELAND
Herald

By Alan O’Keeffe

Thursday May 03 2012

BARNADO’S chief executive Fergus Finlay was sexually and physically abused by two religious brothers when he was a boy. But his father took action.

Finlay (62) spoke publicly about the abuse for the first time to reject the notion that no-one understood what sex abuse was in the 1960s or 1970s or later.

“I knew what it was, I knew it was abuse. I told my father about it, he knew it was abuse, he knew exactly what action needed to be taken,” he said. “As far as I know, the action taken ensured no other child was abused by the same person.”

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OSTERREICH
betroffen

Trotz bekannter Missbrauchsfälle durfte ein Pater mehrere Jahre am Gymnasium unterrichten. Kloster und Schulbehörde zeigten nicht an

Bregenz – Eintragungen über einen Missbrauchsfall verschwinden aus dem Personalakt, ein Gerichtsakt ist zwar in aller Munde, aber keiner hat ihn gesehen. Die Schadenersatzprozesse gegen das Kloster Mehrerau werfen immer mehr Fragen auf. Etwa jene, ob die Schulbehörde informiert wurde. Schließlich sind lehrende Patres des Privatgymnasiums mit Öffentlichkeitsrecht Gehaltsempfänger des Landesschulrats.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
kath.net (Deutschland)

Die Priester wurden im Januar 2011 suspendiert, nachdem eine Große Jury in Philadelphia drei Priester und einen katholischen Lehrer wegen sexuellen Missbrauchs angeklagt hatte. Weiter 37 Priester werden „glaubwürdig“ angeschuldigt.

New York (kath.net/KNA) Im US-Erzbistum Philadelphia steht offenbar eine Entscheidung über 27 des Missbrauchs beschuldigte katholische Priester bevor. Erzbischof Charles Chaput rief mehrere hundert Geistliche am Mittwoch (Ortszeit) zu einer Beratung hinter verschlossenen Türen zusammen, wie die Tageszeitung «New York Times» meldet. Anlass und Inhalt des Treffens seien nicht mitgeteilt worden. Für Freitagnachmittag (Ortszeit) habe Chaput eine Erklärung angekündigt. Am 8. März schrieb der Erzbischof auf einer kirchlichen Website, einige der 27 Fälle stünden «sehr kurz vor einem Abschluss».

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ITALIA
la Repubblica

L’ex parroco della chiesa dello Spirito Santo di Sestri Ponente processato per violenza sessuale su minore. L’unico reato per cui è stato assolto è la detenzione di materiale pedopornografico. Prima della camera di consiglio, il sacerdote ha consegnato al giudice una lettera-confessione

E’ stato condannato a 9 anni, 6 mesi, don Riccardo Seppia, l’ex parroco di Sestri Ponente in carcere da un anno per pedofilia. Il giudice lo ha condannato per violenza sessuale su minore e tentata induzione alla prostituzione minorile.

Cardinale Bagnasco: “Io tradito dalla sua doppia personalità”

Prima che il magistrato si ritirasse in camera di consiglio, il sacerdote ha consegnato una lettera alla corte: “Chiedo scusa per i miei comportamenti moralmente disdicevoli”, così scrive l’ex parroco. E l’avvocato corre a spiegare: “Non è un’ammissione di colpa. Il mio cliente ammette che i suoi comportamenti sono stati forse amorali, ma non hanno rilevanza penale”. Secondo Paolo Bonanni, legale di fiducia, l’imputato avrebbe dovuto essere assolto da tutti i capi di imputazione tranne una cessione semplice di droga.

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ITALIA
Corriere della Sera

MILANO – È stato condannato a 9 anni, 6 mesi e 20 giorni, e al pagamento di 28 mila euro don Riccardo Seppia, l’ex parroco di Sestri Ponente in carcere da un anno per pedofilia. Il giudice dell’udienza preliminare Roberta Bossi lo ha condannato per violenza sessuale su minore e per tentata induzione alla prostituzione minorile. Il pubblico ministero Stefano Puppo, che riteneva di poter far equiparare la tentata violenza su minore a una violenza effettiva, aveva chiesto 11 anni e 8 mesi, mentre il legale del sacerdote aveva chiesto l’assoluzione per tutti i capi d’accusa, tranne la cessione semplice di droga.

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ITALY
adnkronos

Genoa, 3 May (AKI) – A Catholic priest in northern Italy was sentenced to almost a decade in prison for crimes that include attempted sexual violence against minors.

The court in the northwest city of Genoa sentenced Riccardo Seppia to nine years, six months and 20 days in prison and fined him 28 thousand euros. Prosecutors has sought 11 years and eight months behind bars.

“I ask for forgiveness for my moral behaviour,” Seppia said before the sentencing.

The Genoa court found Seppia guilty of attempted sexual violence and attempted prostitution of a minor. He was also found guilty of attempting to furnish cocaine to minors. His lawyer Paolo Bonanni said he would appeal in an effort to get a lighter sentence.

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MIAMI (FL)
NBC Miami

By Karen Yi

Thursday, May 3, 2012

A lawsuit filed Wednesday against the Archdiocese of Miami claims a well-known priest sexually abused a boy at least 150 times at a Pompano Beach church.

The lawsuit, filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court, seeks more than $5 million in compensation fees for John Dorman, the alleged victim. Jeff Herman, the attorney in the case, said the alleged victim wanted to be identified to the public.

The lawsuit names Father Ricardo Castellanos, a retired priest, and claims he abused Dorman when he was a 10-year-old boy working at San Isidro Church.

“For the majority of my life I’ve dealt with it in secret and I’ve had that burden on me. Today is the day I’m taking that burden off of me and I’m putting it back on Ricardo Castellanos and the Archdiocese and the people that are responsible for it,” Dorman, 27, said by phone during a news conference Wednesday.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Bilgrimage

Jerry Slevin continues to follow the trial of Philadelphia archdiocesan officials carefully, and has provided another statement responding to news that Archbishop Chaput convened archdiocesan priests yesterday and will hold a press conference tomorrow. What follows is Jerry’s posting:

ONGOING TRIAL: The Philly criminal trial of alleged predator priests, including Fr. Brennan, and their protector, Monsignor Lynn, former top aide to the Philadelphia Archdiocese’s Cardinal Rigali, has continued for its sixth week with no end in sight. The Philadelphia Inquirer has continued its play-by-play reporting of more obscene and bizarre episodes of priestly perversions and clerical cover-ups revealed at the trial and Inquirer news coverage of the trial is online here.

The Philadelphia Archdiocese has been the subject of almost a decade of periodic criminal grand jury investigations culminating in a 2005 grand jury report and a second 2011 grand jury report as discussed by me previously here.

NEW DEVELOPMENT: A new related development occurred yesterday afternoon in a suddenly scheduled, closed-door meeting of Archbishop Chaput with many of his Philadelphia Archdiocese (Philly AD) priests in attendance. Apparently, Chaput also has a press conference planned for tomorrow presumably to report on the matters discussed with his priests.

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IRELAND
Vatican Insider

Revelations by a BBC program that a boy abused by a priest gave a 1975 Irish Church Inquiry the names of several boys and girls being abused by the same priest have led to new calls for the resignation of Cardinal Brady, a notary at that inquiry. Many think he had an obligation then to inform the children’s parents, and blame him for not doing so

Gerard O’Connell
Rome

Ireland’s Cardinal Sean Brady has rejected new calls for his resignation following a BBC TV program which he accuses of “seriously misrepresenting” his role in a 1975 Church inquiry into the abuse of children by the late Father Brendan Smyth, a member of the Norbertine religious order, who abused very many children over forty years.

The BBC broadcast the program, “The shame of the Catholic Church” on May 1 in Northern Ireland and on May 2 in the UK.

It recalled how in 1975, the future cardinal, then a young priest, participated in a Church Inquiry that interviewed a 14 year-old boy, Brendan Boland, under oath of secrecy, without his parents being present. Based notes made by Brady then, the BBC revealed that the boy had not only described his own abuse by Smyth, but also gave the names and addresses of two other boys and two girls who suffered a similar fate.

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IRELAND
The Association of Catholic Priests

Blessed John Henry Newman, and Monday May 7th, 2012: -‘Towards an Assembly of the Irish Catholic Church’.

John Henry Newman, probably the greatest writer/theologian of the 1800’s, was made Cardinal, but only at the age of 78, and by the newly elected Pope Leo X111. His predecessor, Pius IX , and a lot of bishops in England, had regarded Newman with suspicion. Much of this suspicion related to his views on the role of the Catholic Faithful.

‘On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine’ , a famous article, was first published in July, 1859 in the Rambler. It was the immediate cause of great controversy both in Rome and in England. Newman did not withdraw his views, though he did not reprint the article. It can now be found, with notes, in www.fordham.edu/…/newman-faithful.htm.

In this long article, Newman shows how, in the course of the history of the Church, the laity protected and saved the Church, even from its bishops, in times of great peril. As a young Anglican Minister, Newman had done a long study of Arianism (-Arius and his many followers denied the Divinity of Christ-) in the 4th Century, and wrote how this was eventually defeated by the preaching and writings of St. Athanasius together with the fidelity of the faithful, when great numbers of the hierarchy had fallen into error.

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ITALY
AGI

13:35 03 MAG 2012

(AGI) Genoa – The preliminary hearings magistrate Roberta Bossi of the Court of Genoa has sentenced this morning Father Riccardo Seppia, former parish priest of the Spirito Santo parish of Sestri Ponente to 9 years and 6 mths in prison.

Father Riccardo Seppia will be prosecuted. He is sentenced for attempted sexual violence on minor, attempted prostitution of minors, attempted cession of drugs to minors and the detention of pedophile pornographic material. The preliminary hearings magistrate has almost entirely met the demand of public prosecutor Stefano Puppo for 11 years and 8 months in prison.

Father Riccardo Seppia has been acquitted for only one offence, the detention of pedophile pornographic material. The preliminary hearings magistrate has considered the attempted sexual violence as an offence that has been committed. Father Riccardo Seppia’s lawyer, Paolo Bonanni had asked for the acquittal of all charges except for the cession of drugs.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

Patrick Roberts

Why do Irish media lynch mob want Cardinal Sean Brady to resign?– Brady acted in good faith at the time investigating a notorious pedophile priest

The harsh clamor for the resignation of Cardinal Sean Brady because of his alleged involvement in pedophile cover-up is a mistaken call.

Back in 1987 Brady was given a job to report to the-then Bishop of Cavan, Francis McKiernan on the findings of an ecclesiastical commission on the matter of Father Brendan Smyth, a known and notorious pedophile.

The BBC is now reporting that Brady was more than just a note taker as he claimed, but they do not dispute that he gave a full and complete account of the activities of Smyth to his superiors,

In other words all sides agree that Brady collected the information then passed it on to his superiors.

He acted correctly in that respect. Those higher up who ignored his report and allowed Smyth to keep on abusing did not obviously.

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