ABUSE TRACKER

CONNECTICUT
The Day

By Karen Florin

Published 04/25/2012

A Haitian church and community leader from Norwich who allegedly fled the country to avoid prosecution was arraigned in Superior Court this afternoon on charges that he sexually assaulted a 12-year-old girl multiple times in 2006 and 2007.

Luckner Sylvain, 49, of 44 South A. St., Taftville, is a pastor at the First Haitian Baptist Church and is the co-founder of the Bethany Foundation, a group dedicated to raising funds to helping Haitian children impacted by the earthquake in January 2010.

Norwich police said Sylvain fled Norwich for Haiti on Dec. 4, 2011 after learning the victim had disclosed that Sylvain had sexually assaulted her while she and her mother lived with Sylvain and his family in 2006 and 2007. With the assistance of Haitian authorities and the U.S. State Department, Sylvain was captured and transferred to Miami, Fla. He waived extradition and was returned to Connecticut on Tuesday.

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ROME
National Post (Canada)

ROME — Italian prosecutors have authorised police to open the tomb of a crime boss in a church in Rome, as part of a probe into the suspected kidnapping of a Vatican employee’s daughter in 1983.

Emanuela Orlandi was 15 when she disappeared. Her body has never been found and Italy has been gripped for years by a mystery which mixes a notorious band of criminals, the Magliana gang, with the murky world of Vatican finances.

Enrico de Pedis, the leader of the band which terrorised Rome in the 1970s and 1980s, has long been suspected of playing a part in her disappearance.

De Pedis, who is thought to have had ties with the Sicilian mafia, Italy’s shadowy P2 Masonic lodge and the Vatican bank, was murdered by rivals in 1990 and rather oddly buried in a basilica in Rome usually reserved for cardinals.

There are many conspiracy theories surrounding Orlandi. The band is thought to have kidnapped the young girl in an attempt to recover money invested in the Vatican’s bank — or because her father was involved in laundering their cash.

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Jim Wallis

After an official investigation, the Vatican seems pretty upset with the Catholic Sisters here in the United States. They have reprimanded the women for not sufficiently upholding the bishops’ teachings and doctrines and paying much more attention to issues like poverty and health care than to abortion, homosexuality and male-only priesthood.

There are concerns with “a prevalence of certain radical feminist themes” and they have been taken to task for “occasional public statements” that disagree with the bishops, “who are the church’s authentic teachers of faith and morals.”

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), the largest representative group of all the Catholic sisters orders, has now been put under the control of some bishops who are to “reform” them, change the group’s statutes and programs, and approve who will speak at their events.

The Vatican’s approach to its concerns, to say the least, is quite regrettable. Condemnation and control were chosen over conversation and dialogue. Quite honestly, do most of us believe, or even most Catholics believe, that the bishops are the only “authentic teachers of faith and morals?”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

By John P. Martin
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Two former altar boys on Wednesday described being sexually assaulted decades apart by the Rev. Edward Avery, a priest who remained in ministry for years after the Archdiocese of Philadelphia logged its first complaint about him.

The first witness, a 49-year-old physician, told a Common Pleas Court jury that he was 15 when Avery let him get drunk in a University City bar in the late 1970s, took him home to his nearby rectory and fondled him as he slept. More than a dozen years passed before he confronted Avery in a 1992 letter and sent copies to church officials.

After undergoing treatment at church-owned hospital, Avery was reassigned and allowed to live and celebrate Mass at St. Jerome Church in Northeast Philadelphia. That’s where the second alleged victim said Avery sexually assaulted him twice in the church in 1999, when he was 10.

“This is what God wants,” the priest told him, man testified.

The abuse by Avery and another priest plunged him into years of drug abuse and at least one suicide attempt, the witness said.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Fox News

Published April 25, 2012

Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA – A young man told a jury in a criminal priest-abuse case heard Tuesday that he was sexually assaulted as a youngster by two priests and his Catholic school teacher and that he turned to drugs for respite.

A policeman’s son, the witness said he started smoking marijuana at age 10 to deal with the abuse and has since tried drug treatment 23 times to battle addictions to heroin, painkillers and other drugs.

The 23-year-old testified at the trial of Monsignor William Lynn, a former secretary for clergy at the Philadelphia archdiocese who is charged with child endangerment for helping keep accused priests in ministry.

The witness told jurors that parish priest Edward Avery twice raped him after Mass in 1999, when he was a 10-year-old altar boy.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS Philly

April 25, 2012

By Tony Hanson

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — Today was another day of disturbing and potentially devastating testimony in the clergy abuse case, as two victims of admitted predator priest Edward Avery describe the abuse to the jury.

Monsignor William Lynn is charged with endangering the second victim by not removing Avery from ministry after the first victim came forward.

The first victim told the jury he was molested by Father Edward Avery and came forward a decade later, in 1992, because he was concerned that Avery could hurt others.

In a soft voice at times choked with emotion, the second victim, now 23, today said he was assaulted during the 1998-99 school year, when he was a 10-year-old altar boy. He says Avery sexually assaulted him twice, telling him afterward that he “did a good job” and that God loves him.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Daily Times

Published: Wednesday, April 25, 2012

MARYCLAIRE DALE,Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A 49-year-old doctor is testifying in a groundbreaking clergy-abuse case about molestation he says he suffered at the hands of a now-defrocked Philadelphia priest.

The man said he was abused by Edward Avery at the ages of 15 and 18. He said he told the archdiocese about the abuse in 1992.

Avery’s guilty plea days before his trial confirms that he went on to abuse a boy seven years later, in 1999, while still in parish work.

On cross examination of the doctor, he acknowledged that defendant Monsignor William Lynn not only responded to his letter but arranged a 1993 confrontation with Avery at a facility where the priest was being treated.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic League – Catalyst

April Issue 2012

Readers of Catalyst know that we have long felt that Father Gordon MacRae has been treated unjustly. In 1994, he was sentenced to prison for up to 67 years for allegedly molesting a minor. His case garnered national attention when Dorothy Rabinowitz raised serious questions about MacRae’s guilt in a pair of articles in the Wall Street Journal in 2000.

Father MacRae’s case is on appeal; he is being represented by Robert Rosenthal of New York City and Cathy J. Green of Manchester, New Hampshire. The National Center for Reason and Justice is sponsoring the case. The new trial is entirely warranted.

Tom Grover is the accuser. In the early 1990s when the alleged offense took place, it was well known around Keene, New Hampshire that the Diocese of Manchester was forking out a lot of money to alleged victims. Enter Grover, an unemployed drug addict and alcoholic. He charged MacRae with molestation when he was a teenager and won a settlement of $200,000.

There were no witnesses, but there are plenty of family members and friends who are now talking. They say Grover is a liar and that he perjured himself at MacRae’s trial. We know, for example, that when Grover won in court, he paraded around flashing wads of cash and taking pictures with it. Moreover, FBI Special Agent Supervisor James Abbott, who spent three years investigating this case, has said, “I discovered no evidence of MacRae having committed the crimes charged, or any other crimes.”

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UNITED STATES
These Stone Walls

by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on April 25, 2012

My dear old friend, Jacquie Miles, now an avid reader of These Stone Walls from her Northwest Kentucky home, sent me this story a few weeks ago – sort of an “inside” joke:

A young man wandered into a Southern church during a healing service. The exuberant preacher invited anyone in need of prayers to step forward. The 20-year-old, thinking he had little to lose, walked up the aisle. “What can we do for you, son?” the preacher asked loudly. “I’m worried about my hearing,” the young man replied.

“Step right on up here!” shouted the preacher as his flock braced themselves for a miracle. The preacher placed his hand on the boy’s head and called upon the Lord to restore him body and soul and cast out every discomfort. After several minutes of the preacher’s ALLELUIAs and a chorus of shouted AMENs, the preacher stepped back from his subject. “How’s your hearing now, son?” the preacher asked loudly. “I don’t know,” said the young man. “It’s not ’til Thursday!”

The story was a big hit in my current locale where the only kind of hearing anyone ever worries about is the latter. If you read Ryan MacDonald’s brief “Special Report,” you know that I also have one to prepare for. I’m not sure when it’s coming, but it’s coming. It could be many months away. Justice at this level moves at a glacial pace. It takes a lot more effort and evidence to get a priest out of prison than to put one in these days. Catholic League president, Bill Donohue also wrote of these developments in a great editorial in the April issue of Catalyst entitled “Father MacRae’s Appeal.” Rill Donohue wrote:

“The website Of the National Center for Reason and Justice, (www.ncrj.org) provides all the legal information you need to make up your own mind.”

That must be true because there are some who don’t want you to read those documents and make up your own minds. Just last week, a friend read me a series of ugly comments posted by SNAP members denouncing my appeal. The comments were posted at the website of the Philadelphia Inquirer after a story about the ongoing prosecution/persecution of Catholic priests and Church officials there. I had not realized how much of a threat to the agenda of SNAP my own appeal might be until I read Ryan MacDonald’s report, “Why Do SNAP and VOTF Fear the Case of Fr. Gordon MacRae?” at his A Ram in the Thicket website.

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VATICAN CITY
TrustLaw

25 Apr 2012

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY, April 25 (Reuters) – Pope Benedict has set up a commission of cardinals to investigate the leaks of sensitive documents to the media alleging corruption and mismanagement in the Vatican.

The documents included private letters to the pope from an archbishop who was transferred to Washington after he blew the whistle on what he said was nepotism and cronyism in the awarding of contracts, and documents alleging internal conflicts about the Vatican bank.

The Vatican said the commission would be made up of three retired cardinals: Spaniard Julian Herranz, Jozef Tomko of Slovakia and Salvatore De Giorgi of Italy.

A statement said they would “undertake an authoritative investigation and throw light” on how the leaks happened.

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VATICAN CITY
Jakarta Post

Associated Press, Vatican City | Wed, 04/25/2012

The Vatican says Spanish Cardinal Julian Herranz has been named to preside over a special commission set up by Pope Benedict XVI to shed light on the so-called “Vatileaks” scandal.

The Vatican said Wednesday that the Commission of Cardinals held its first meeting Tuesday to establish the method and timetable for its activities.

The commission members are Slovak Cardinal Jozef Tomko and Italian Cardinal Salvatore De Giorgio.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

The Vatican Secretary of State has stated that the Commission will “act at all levels on the strength of its pontifical mandate”

Vatican Insider staff
Rome

The Commission of Cardinals, created by order of the Holy Father, met on 24 April to decide on a method and set a timetable for its activities. The Cardinal’s Commission, which is chaired by Cardinal Julian Herranz and include Josef Tomko and Salvatore De Giorgi as members is setting to work straight away “to undertake an authoritative investigation and throw light on” the “recent leaks of reserved and confidential [Vatican] documents on television, in newspapers and in other communications media.”

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

CARL O’BRIEN, Chief Reporter

Any sports club, society or voluntary organisation that works with children faces being shut down if they fail to implement official guidelines on how to handle child protection and welfare concerns.

It is one of a number of measures contained in two new pieces of legislation published today which are likely to have far-reaching implications for how the State, voluntary groups and wider society respond to children at risk.

Details of both Bills were published today by Minister for Justice Alan Shatter and Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald.

Under the Children First Bill, all organisations where children attend without their parents – such as schools, sports clubs or religious groups – will face a legal requirement to ensure they provide a safe environment for children.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

STEVEN CARROLL and PATSY McGARRY

Archbishop of Dublin Dr Diarmuid Martin has said he regrets a recent decision by a child safeguarding representative to step down after learning a priest in her area had been on “restricted ministry” for years after child sex abuse allegations were made against him.

Dr Martin said the case in a Dublin Catholic parish was “a classic example of the lacunas that exist in our current legislation” as he was restricted from sharing information about the priest as it was not sufficient to result in a conviction.

“There is a real need to update our legislation which respect the rights of individuals but also respects and covers the need to share information with those who have responsibility,” he told RTÉ’s Today with Pat Kenny programme.

Dr Martin said there was a “very serious difficulty” around soft information and legislation had been promised for some time. Soft information is material not strong enough to base a prosecution or conviction but indicates a concern over the suitability of a person to have access to children.

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DEUTSCHLAND
taz

Pater Mertes bekommt von SPD-Chef Gabriel den Heinemann-Preis für besonderen Bürgermut. Ein anonymer ehemaliger Canisius-Schüler über den Mut der anderen.

Blick aus dem Canisius-Kolleg in den Innenhof. Bild: dapd

taz: Pater Klaus Mertes bekommt am Donnerstag einen Preis als Aufklärer der sexuellen Gewalt gegen Schüler am Canisius-Kolleg. Wieso bekommt er ihn zu Recht?

Anonymus: Weil er es war, der als Vertreter der Institution die Zugbrücke herunterließ. Zu uns, die wir von draußen jahrelang versucht hatten, auf die sexuelle Gewalt aufmerksam zu machen. Pater Mertes sagte den wichtigsten Satz, den es für einen Betroffenen überhaupt geben kann: „Ich glaube euch!“

Dennoch sagen Sie, Pater Mertes musste zu diesem Satz bekehrt werden. Warum?

Weil Mertes und der Orden schon seit Jahren von den Missbrauchsfällen wussten. Er hat wiederholt erklärt, dass er bereits 2006 gemeinsam mit der Ordensleitung in München über den Umgang mit Missbrauchsfällen durch den Täter S. beraten hat. „Die Täternamen habe ich dem Pater Provinzial [Chef der Jesuiten in Deutschland, d. Red.] mitgeteilt“, sagte er in einem Interview. „Ich war bei den Beratungen dabei.“

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 25 April 2012 (VIS) – Given below is the text of a note released this morning by the Secretariat of State:

“In the wake of recent leaks of reserved and confidential documents on television, in newspapers and in other communications media, the Holy Father has ordered the creation of a Commission of Cardinals to undertake an authoritative investigation and throw light on these episodes.

“His Holiness has determined that the said Commission of Cardinals, which will act at all levels on the strength of its pontifical mandate, shall be presided by Cardinal Julian Herranz, and shall have as its members Cardinal Jozef Tomko and Cardinal Salvatore De Giorgi.

“The Commission of Cardinals celebrated its first sitting on 24 April to establish the method and timetable for its activities”.

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IRELAND
RTE News

[Murphy Report: Fr. Benito – BishopAccountability.org]

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has said that it is even more difficult now for bishops to pass on sensitive information about sexual abuse allegations about priests than before.

Archbishop Martin was speaking about the resignation of a child safety officer in a Dublin Catholic Parish who resigned after she learned of allegations of child sexual abuse made against a priest who had served there.

The priest had put on restricted Ministry for years as a result of the allegations.

However Archbishop Martin said that he removed him from Ministry when new information about an old allegation came to light.

Archbishop Martin said he understood and sympathised with the woman, who he said, must have felt betrayed.

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OKLAHOMA
Huffington Post

By JUSTIN JUOZAPAVICIUS 04/23/12

TULSA, Okla. — Oklahoma authorities are investigating whether the executive director of an international Christian ministry killed himself amid allegations he’d molested a 10-year-old girl, police said Monday.

Tom White had been reported missing last Tuesday, the same day police in Bartlesville received a report about the alleged molestation, said Bartlesville Police Capt. Jay Hastings. White was the executive director for The Voice of the Martyrs, a nonprofit headquartered in in the city 50 miles north of Tulsa that says it provides medical supplies, food and clothing to persecuted Christians worldwide.

Police found the 64-year-old’s body at the organization’s Bartlesville headquarters Wednesday. Employees discovered a letter in White’s vehicle indicating he was “suicidal or possibly fleeing to avoid investigation” and turned it over to police, Hastings said.

“You can take it either way,” Hastings said. “It was kind of a goodbye letter. You don’t know if he was talking about himself.”

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OKLAHOMA
Peoria Journal-Star

By Mike Miller

The death of Tom White, executive director of Voice of the Martyrs, on April 17 was a profound shock.

White, who experienced persecution himself while imprisoned for 17 months in Cuban jails, took his own life.

VOM reports that he was facing allegations of “inappropriate contact with a young girl.”

“Rather than face those allegations, and all of the resulting fallout for his family and this ministry and himself, Tom appears to have chosen to take his own life,” the statement says.

The Associated Press had more information, according to The Christian Post:

The AP also revealed that the police had requested from the Washington County District Court an order to have White’s cell phone carrier provide “real time GPS pinging” of his phone in hopes of discovering his whereabouts. Authorities had noted in the document that White “had been reported to have molested a 10-year-old juvenile female” and disappeared as the investigation got underway.

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OKLAHOMA
Christian Today

Posted: Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Walter Thomas “Tom” White, head of Voice of the Martyrs, may have taken his own life amid abuse allegations.

Mr White, 64, was reported missing last Tuesday and found dead at the Christian ministry’s headquarters in Oklahoma the following day.

On the day he disappeared, police in Bartlesville received a report that Mr White had molested a 10-year-old girl.

Employees found a letter in his vehcile indicating that he was “suicidal or possibly fleeing to avoid investigation”, which was given to police.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

[with video]

A church leader says controversial MP Peter Slipper is shattered by the allegations of fraud and sexual harassment against him, which have been followed by calls for him to step down from his religious roles.

Archbishop John Hepworth said on Wednesday he had asked Mr Slipper to stand aside as an ordained priest and legal officer for the Traditional Anglican Communion.

Archbishop Hepworth, the primate of the pro-Rome breakaway conservative Anglican movement, said the allegations had hurt the Queensland independent MP.

‘Well, he’s obviously quite shattered by this,’ he told ABC Radio.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
WTRF

By MARYCLAIRE DALE
Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA (AP) – A key witness is set to testify Wednesday in a groundbreaking clergy-abuse case in Philadelphia.

The former altar boy says he was raped by two priests and a teacher in the late 1990s.

And he says the Archdiocese of Philadelphia had an earlier complaint against 1 of them.

Defense lawyers have attacked the man’s credibility based on his history of drug and legal problems.

But one defendant, defrocked priest Edward Avery, pleaded guilty days before trial.

Jurors don’t know about the plea, but could learn of it if defense lawyers go too far in challenging the witness.

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AUSTRALIA
NEWS.com.au

A CHURCH leader says controversial MP Peter Slipper is shattered by the allegations of fraud and sexual harassment against him, which have been followed by calls for him to step down from his religious roles.

Archbishop John Hepworth said he has asked Mr Slipper to stand aside as an ordained priest and legal officer for the Traditional Anglican Communion.

Archbishop Hepworth, the primate of the pro-Rome breakaway conservative Anglican movement, said the allegations had hurt the Queensland independent MP.

“Well, he’s obviously quite shattered by this,” he told ABC Radio.

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MALTA
DI-VE

by Gabriel Schembri – editorial@di-ve.com
Current Affairs — 25 April 2012

St Joseph’s Home is looking towards a brighter future after nine years of infamy as the place where the notorious child abuse cases by priests took place.

In an interview, the home’s director Fr Frankie Cini told di-ve.com, “The cases are now a part of the home’s history. It is a dark chapter in the story of St Joseph’s Home, but we have to move on.”

Fr Cini said this is a case where they either come out as the victims, or survivors. The approach towards the future of the home is definitely one of survival, just as the title of this year’s Annual Booklet suggests, the House is moving from ‘Trauma to Transformation’.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Tyrone Times

Published on Wednesday 25 April 2012

A PRIEST at the centre of a media storm surrounding the showing of sexually explicit to parents who had gathered in Pomeroy to hear a presentation about their children’s First Holy Communion, has taken a temporary leave of absence at his own request.

Following a stormy meeting on Friday night between around 25 of the 30 parents who had witnessed the offending imagery and representatives of the Archdiocese of Armagh, Fr Martin McVeigh’s future remains uncertain.

According to weekend newspaper reports, an 800 word Church statement clearing Fr McVeigh of any wrongdoing was read out, but was not released publicly after the lengthy meeting with parents.

When the statement suggested Fr McVeigh had given great service to the Archdiocese of Armagh, there were said to be loud objections from the floor.

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UNITED STATES
TheMediaReport

Dave Pierre

Since when have journalists been so concerned about internal doctrinal matters in the Catholic Church? Why are journalists suddenly fretting about the status of nuns in America?

It has been no secret that many Catholic women religious (nuns) in recent years have been in open dissent of a number of gender-related components of Church teaching, such those regarding the all-male priesthood, celibacy requirements, and, in some cases, abortion.

Because of this open dissent, the Vatican has finally taken efforts to review and monitor the leadership of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR). These efforts simply seek to align the conference – a Church-recognized body – with the teachings of the Church and with Church law.

Now it seems that the Vatican’s actions have journalists worked up all over the country.

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NEW YORK
Gothamist

Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes has consistently refused to divulge the identities of Orthodox Jews accused and convicted of sex crimes, giving a blanket exemption to sex offenders who commit their crimes in tight-knit Orthodox communities. Now his office has been compelled to formally explain why it won’t name the accused and convicted. In response to a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request by The Forward, Assistant District Attorney Morgan Dennehy argues that releasing the names of suspects would allow others in the community to identify their victims. She writes:

The circumstances here are unique. Because all of the requested defendant names relate to Hasidic men who are alleged to have committed sex crimes against Hasidic victims within a very tight-knit and insular Brooklyn community, there is a significant danger that the disclosure of the defendants’ names would lead members of that community to discern the identities of the victims.

But the Forward points out that last year Hynes announced the arrests of 85 Orthodox Jews on sex crimes charges since 2008, refusing to release the suspects’ names, citing the need to protect the victims. “Yet that same week, Hynes issued a press release publicizing the name of a non-Jewish man convicted of raping his girlfriend’s daughter,” The Forward’s Paul Berger notes. “Hynes released the man’s name, the neighborhood where he lived and the victim’s age, enough information for any neighbor to identify the girl.”

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SPRINGFIELD (IL)
The State Journal-Register

By STEVEN SPEARIE
The State Journal-Register

Springfield Bishop Thomas John Paprocki is one of three U.S. Catholic bishops tapped to address what the Vatican says are “serious doctrinal problems” in views espoused by the leadership body representing the majority of the country’s nuns.

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, founded in 1956, represents 83 percent of the nearly 56,000 women religious in the United States.

Its leader, in a speech in 2007, talked of some religious “moving beyond the church or even beyond Jesus” — a statement Paprocki described as “pretty radical.”

The delegation of bishops, appointed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith after a four-year review, will be led by Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain, who served as bishop of the Joliet diocese from 2006 to 2010. Paprocki, who has been bishop of Springfield since 2010, was tapped for his acumen in church law. The third member is Bishop Leonard Blair of Toledo, Ohio, who carried out the original inquiry.

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SARASOTA (FL)
TBO

By TBO.com
Published: April 24, 2012

A Sarasota man who said he worked for a ministry has been convicted in a child sex case, the Sarasota Police Department said.

Joe Harrison Jr., 42, was found guilty Monday of three counts of sexual battery on a child and one count of lewd or lascivious molestation of a child.

Harrison is scheduled to be sentenced April 30.

Harrison said he was a bishop for Liberty Central Ministries International. At the time of his arrest, he listed his home address in the 1000 block of Four Seasons Circle in Sarasota.

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SARASOTA (FL)
ABC 7

SARASOTA – A Sarasota man was found guilty Monday of several counts of sexual abuse of a child.

42-year-old Joe Harrison, Jr. was arrested last year and charged with three counts of Sexual Battery on a Child over 12 years of age but less than 18 years of age by a Person in Familial or Custodial Authority and one count of Lewd or Lascivious Molestation of a Child over 12 years of age but less than 16 years of age.

The cases were prosecuted by Assistant State Attorney Stickley and Assistant State Attorney Buff. Joe Harrison Jr. is scheduled to be sentenced on April 30th.

Joe Harrison Jr. identifies himself as a Bishop of Liberty Central Ministries International.

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VATICAN CITY
Chiesa

After the latest appointments, here are the cardinals with the largest number of positions in the central offices of the Church. Among the curia, Bertone, Ouellet, and Levada. Among the residential cardinals, Scola and George

VATICAN CITY, April 25, 2012 – On Saturday April 21, a little more than two months after the last concistory, the new cardinals were finally assigned their positions as members of the various dicasteries of the Roman curia, the most important of which are the nine congregations.

This procedure indicates the real and specific influence of each cardinal in assisting Benedict XVI in the governance of the universal Church.

The decision to number a cardinal among the members of a dicastery belongs to the pope, but an important role in this kind of decision is played by the secretariat of state, headed by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, while more secondary and not infrequently nonexistent is the influence of the prefect of the congregation that is receiving the new appointee.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

By Andy Grimm
Tribune reporter

9:31 p.m. CDT, April 24, 2012

A man who served as an altar boy at a Mount Greenwood Roman Catholic parish claims in a lawsuit filed today that he was molested by a priest in the 1980s.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of a plaintiff listed as “John Doe,” claims that Fr. John Curran, a priest who served at St. Christina’s Church, 11005 S. Homan Ave., lured young boys to his room in the church rectory and molested them, and that church leaders were aware of the abuse and did nothing to remove Curran from his post or keep him away from children.

An Archdiocese of Chicago registry lists Curran among priests against whom there are “substantiated claims” of abuse. The registry also shows Curran died in March 2000.

In 2005, the archdiocese settled lawsuits filed by 24 parishioners who claimed they were abused as children by 14 priests, including Curran.

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JAMESVILLE (NY)
WCAX

JAMESVILLE, N.Y. (AP) – The rectory of a shuttered Catholic church in the Syracuse diocese is being auctioned off.

Bishop Robert J. Cunningham says the building is being sold because St. Mary’s Church in Jamesville is no longer a parish and has no need for it. Cunningham says the church building will not be sold.

Meanwhile, parishioners of St. Mary’s are asking Cunningham to expedite repairs to the church so it can re-open. In a letter sent Tuesday to the bishop, they say they’re concerned about the possible demolition of the church.

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UNITED STATES
San Francisco Chronicle

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Funny how no one ever talks about the nuns.

I suppose it makes sense. After all, Catholic nuns are so rarely embroiled in sex scandals. They are never caught pants down in the rectory with a 10-year-old altar boy, teaching him of the “mystical secretions” of the Lord. They never cost the church billions in litigious payouts for rape, abuse, millennia of pedophilic atrocity and shame. For that, you gotta look to the priests.

The nuns, they keep to themselves. They work quietly, faithfully in the background, the humble and resolute handmaidens to the patriarchy, performing their work without media glare, without need to draw obnoxious battle lines around every sexual or moral issue under the sun. Or so it would seem.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Priest Abuse Trial Blog

Ralph Cipriano

The therapist, Dr. Thomas J. Tyrrell, warned in the secret archive files in 1989 that his patient, Father Peter J. Dunne, was “a very sick man” who should be “relieved from active ministry.”

Father Dunne was, according to the archdiocese’s secret files, an extremely intelligent homosexual with addictive sexual behavior. He was also an untreatable pedophile, and a narcissist with an obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. “We are sitting on a powder keg,” Dr. Tyrrell warned in 1989.

Archdiocese officials had known since 1986 that Father Dunne had sexually abused a 13-year-old member of his Boy Scout troop. The archdiocese knew that the abuse went on for three years, and that the priest had paid the victim $40,000 to keep quiet. They also knew there had to be other victims. In the archdiocese’s secret files, Dr. Terrell stated that he suspected the priest was guilty of being involved in a “myriad number of sexual misconduct cases.”

In 1989, a second therapist, Dr. Eric Griffen-Shelley, reported to the archdiocese that Father Dunne was skipping out on his mandatory group therapy sessions. The therapist said he was “wondering if the archdiocese is putting itself at risk with someone so uncooperative on the loose.”

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
Catholic News Agency

Kansas City, Mo., Apr 25, 2012 / 12:07 am (CNA).- A Missouri judge has ordered a group that works with victims of sexual abuse by clergy to turn over decades of records to an accused Catholic priest’s lawyers who want to determine whether the group has been coaching alleged victims and plaintiffs to say they repressed memories of abuse.

Attorneys representing priests in the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph sought the records from the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP.

Although the group strongly denied that it coaches victims, Jackson County Circuit Court Judge Ann Mesle said she will order the material to be turned over to the priest’s lawyers and the diocese’s lawyers.

“I believe they are entitled to have information on repressed memory,” she said April 20.

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AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

Anglican Archbishop John Hepworth says he has advised Peter Slipper he should stand aside as the church’s senior legal officer.

Archbishop Hepworth, the primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion, a breakaway conservative Anglican movement, said Mr Slipper remained an ordained priest as well the church’s chancellor, the senior legal adviser.

“I have said to Peter that I think it is not appropriate to stand aside from the speakership and not stand aside from an importance office in a church position,” he told ABC Radio.

“We are having an exchange of texts. I am meeting him later in the week in Brisbane and his wife. They both actually have flu at the moment.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
My Fox Philly

Kristen Byrne, Blogger
MyFoxPhilly.com

Blogger Kristen Byrne is in the courtroom at the Philadelphia Archdiocese priest-abuse trial.

The defense in a landmark priest-sex-abuse case involving the Philadelphia Archdiocese will have to tread softly as they question a former priest’s victim tomorrow. Defrocked priest Edward Avery, whom pleaded guilty, is no longer on trial with Monsignor William Lynn and Rev. James Brennan.

Though Avery does not stand on trial he has become a prominent player this past week.

Defense attorneys and prosecutors argued over whether the jury should be informed of Avery’s guilty plea in lieu of his victim’s testimony. The defense argued that Avery’s plea could incriminate Lynn, who is charged with conspiracy and endangering the welfare of a child.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Southtown Star

A man filed a lawsuit Tuesday claiming a now-deceased priest molested him more than 20 years ago while he was a parishioner at St. Christina Parish in Chicago’s Mount Greenwood community.

The plaintiff, listed only as John W. Doe, filed the suit in Cook County Circuit Court against the Archdiocese of Chicago.

In it, he claims the Rev. John Curran sexually abused him in 1987 while he was a child and a parishioner of St. Christina, 11005 S. Homan Ave.

The suit claims the plaintiff, who was then an altar server at the parish, came from a devout Catholic family and trusted Curran, even though the Archdiocese previously had received reports that he was sexually abusing minors.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

[Murphy Report: Fr. Benito – BishopAccountability.org]

PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

A WOMAN who was the child safeguarding representative in a Dublin Catholic parish for over a decade has resigned following her discovery last month that a priest serving there until recently had been on “restricted ministry” for years. It followed allegations of child sex abuse against him.

She had also not been informed that the same priest was the subject of a chapter in the 2009 Murphy report on clerical sexual abuse.

The parish pastoral council was not given any of this information about the priest either. It remains unclear just how much information the current parish priest there had been told about the priest, who was given the pseudonym Fr Benito in the Murphy report.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

An Archdiocese of Philadelphia priest active in schools and scouting was allowed to work in suburban parishes for five years after doctors diagnosed him as a pedophile, called him “a very sick man,” and told church officials he was a “powder keg” waiting to explode.

The priest, the Rev. Peter F. Dunne, paid off one accuser himself and repeatedly resisted or ignored recommendations for therapy, according to internal church records shown Tuesday to a Common Pleas Court jury.

When the pastor overseeing Dunne at a Bucks County parish in 1990 petitioned archdiocesan officials in a “very urgent plea” to get the priest some help, they responded by transferring Dunne to a parish 25 miles away in Montgomery County, the records show. Prosecutors introduced the documents as part of their bid to show that Msgr. William J. Lynn, the former secretary of clergy, enabled child sex abuse by failing to remove priests suspected of sexual misconduct. Lynn is accused of endangering two boys who were allegedly sexually assaulted by priests in the late1990s.

Prosecutors say the files on Dunne and other priests suggest Lynn and other church leaders had long recognized the signs and depth of clergy sex abuse but chose not to act.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Priest Abuse Trial Blog

Ralph Cipriano

The issue of whether former priest Edward V. Avery would return to Courtroom 304 in a jump suit was argued again in court Tuesday, and the judge decided to keep all options open.

Avery is the defrocked archdiocese priest who pleaded guilty on the eve of the archdiocese of Philadelphia sex abuse trial to charges of conspiracy to endanger children, and the rape of a 10-year-old boy. The jury in the case was never told why Avery suddenly disappeared from the defense table.

On Wednesday, the former altar boy that Avery raped is scheduled to appear in court as a witness. He’s going to tell his story of abuse, and then the defense lawyers in the case will have to decide how hard to go after the witness in cross-examination.

As it stands now, the former altar boy poses all the risks of a suicide bomber. If the defense decides to aggressively challenge the witness’s credibility, Judge M. Teresa Sarmina may grant the prosecution permission to tell the jury about Avery’s guilty plea.

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ALBANY (NY)
Albany Times Union

By Bryan Fitzgerald

Updated 06:41 p.m., Tuesday, April 24, 2012

ALBANY — The parents and a younger sister of two victims of alleged sexual abuse by a Greene County priest railed against the church Tuesday afternoon. Standing on a sidewalk a few hundred feet from the Albany Roman Catholic Diocese offices on North Main Avenue the family detailed the painful fallout from what they say was decades of abuse.

With their arms around each other’s shoulders, Ivan Morales Sr. and his wife, Carol Morales, spoke about their sons, Ivan Jr. and Martin, and how they say Rev. Jeremiah Nunan slowly lured each of them into a web of abuse that lasted for years.

The Morales’ 20-year-old daughter, Maria, says she was not abused by Nunan, but that when she was at church with her brother Martin, the priest would tell her to wait outside and be “a good little girl” while he took Martin into a nearby room.

“I never put two and two together,” the College of Saint Rose junior said.

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ALBANY (NY)
Fox 23

The Albany Roman Catholic Diocese is investigating a priest following allegations of abuse.

A press conference was held Tuesday in front of the Albany Diocesan Headquarters by the group Road to Recovery.

A lawsuit claims Father Jeremiah Nunan, Pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Cairo and Our Lady of Knock Mission in East Durham, abused two people.

The alleged victims’ family says their two sons were abused over the course of many years.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholics4Change

April 25, 2012 by Susan Matthews

Kathy Kane and I will be at the Philadelphia priest sex abuse trial tomorrow at 9:15 a.m. to support victims who are testifying. They bravely revisit the past and put their personal and professional lives at risk for the truth. As parents seeking protection for our children, we thank them. As citizens seeking justice, we thank them. As Catholics seeking the truth, we thank them.

Criminal Justice Building, 13th and Filbert, Rm. 304 at 9:15.

Remember: No electronic devices. No cell phones.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

Alison Caldwell, ABC

Updated April 25, 2012

The head of the Australian Anglican Church says Speaker Peter Slipper is a “complex” man who has taken a “strong” stand on “conservative moral issues” but has another side to his character.

Mr Slipper, who is facing allegations he rorted Cabcharge vouchers and sexually harassed a male staffer, is an ordained priest in the Traditional Anglican Communion.

Earlier this week, Anglican Archbishop John Hepworth asked Mr Slipper to stand aside from his role as a priest and legal adviser to the synod until the harassment allegations are resolved.

So far Mr Slipper has failed to do so.

This morning, Archbishop Hepworth told AM Mr Slipper was “in the tradition of the Australian larrikin MP … that is, people who are interesting, have bad patches and very good patches”.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Beaver County Times

Posted: Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Associated Press

Two Roman Catholic archbishops moved a troubled priest to new parishes despite dire warnings he was having sex with minors, according to church documents read in a Philadelphia court Tuesday.

Cardinal John Krol of Philadelphia assigned the late Rev. Peter Dunne to a suburban Warminster parish in 1987, a year after a therapist warned about any access to children.

And Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua sent Dunne to a northeast Philadelphia parish in 1989 _ after a church therapist had diagnosed him as a pedophile and ticking time bomb.

Defense lawyers for Monsignor William Lynn noted that at least three other top aides at the archdiocese knew of the diagnosis. Yet Dunne refused requests to seek laicization, and remained an active priest until his 1994 retirement _ and a priest until the day he died, in 2010.

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OOSTERIJK
Klokk

Wenen, 24 april 2012 • Roel Verschueren

Uit een bericht in Der Standard-online blijkt dat de door de Oostenrijkse bisschoppen opgerichte “Klasnic”-commissie intieme gegevens over misbruik heeft doorgegeven aan de bisschoppenconferentie. De sinds haar oprichting betwiste “onafhankelijkheid” van deze commissie staat nu totaal op de helling.

Herbert L. richtte zich vorig jaar met een vraag over welke data over hem werden bewaard tot de Klasnic-commissie en de Stichting Slachtofferbescherming. Herbert L. is een erkend slachtoffer van seksueel misbruik en kreeg door de kerk 10.000 euro uitbetaald. Wat dit Weense slachtoffer nog precies wou navragen was, welke data met betrekking tot zijn persoon werden bijgehouden. In februari 2012 kwam het antwoord. De aangetekende brief met het antwoord die de krant in bezit heeft, draagt het briefhoofd van de Generaalsecretaris van de Oostenrijkse Bisschoppenconferentie.

De uitleg staat al in de eerste paragraaf: “Beide inrichtingen hebben het akkoord over schadevergoeding naar de Commissie voor bescherming van privaatgegevens van de Katholieke Kerk doorgegeven.” Daaruit blijkt dat eigenlijk de Katholieke Kerk verantwoordelijk is voor de privacy van de gegevens die de zogezegde ‘onafhankelijke’ Klasnic-commissie heeft verzameld.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Washington Post

Testimony: Philadelphia priest called pedophile, powder keg by therapist stayed on job

By Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA — Jurors in a clergy-abuse trial heard Tuesday about a priest who was left in ministry for years after therapists called him a manipulative pedophile and a ticking time bomb.

The evidence was presented by prosecutors in the child-endangerment trial of Monsignor William Lynn, the longtime secretary for clergy in Philadelphia. Prosecutors say he helped keep dangerous priest-predators in jobs where they could continue to abuse children.

Tuesday’s evidence focused on the late Father Peter Dunne, who had served as a Boy Scout leader and director of a Bucks County school for delinquent boys and at one point had two young men living with him at a parish in Oxford, Pa.

The archdiocese had Dunne evaluated after an Oregon doctor complained in 1986 that he had been abused by Dunne, his former priest and Scout leader. The doctor later lost his license for molesting patients, leaving his wife and children deeply in debt, according to a 2005 grand jury report.

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NEW YORK
The Jewish Week

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Hella Winston
Special To The Jewish Week

At least eight sex abuse cases identified by the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office as Kol Tzedek cases were actually reported years before the advent of the confidential hotline, The Jewish Week has learned. This information calls into question the reliability of the statistics the DA has used to tout the success of the hotline.

The Jewish Week submitted a list of more than 30 names to the Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes, asking for confirmation of those who were reported through Kol Tzedek, which was established by the DA in April of 2009 to encourage the reporting of sexual abuse among Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jews.

In statements to the media, Hynes has claimed that approximately 90 people were reported through the hotline since its advent, 14 of whom have been convicted.

The DA has for months refused to divulge the names of those reported through Kol Tzedek, but recently agreed to confirm cases if given names by The Jewish Week.

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WHEELING (WV)
BishopAccountability.org – Assignment Record

Summary of Case: Bransfield began his career as a priest of the Philadelphia archdiocese. He was a parish priest, then a teacher, chaplain and vice-principal of an archdiocesan high school. Bransfield left Philadelphia when appointed director of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington DC, becoming its rector when the National Shrine was made a basilica. In 2005 Bransfield was elevated to bishop of the Wheeling-Charleston diocese. In a 2012 trial of other Philadelphia clergy, Bransfield was accused of having sexually teen boys in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Another of the trial’s witnesses stated that when he was a minor Bransfield spoke to him in a lewd way. A prosecutor at the trial said Bransfield was accused in a separate case of fondling a student. Bransfield denied the allegations.

Ordained: 1971

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UNITED STATES
Catholic League

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on Sally Quinn’s “On Faith” blog at the Washington Post:

It’s no secret that Sally Quinn (who is not Catholic) has a problem with the Catholic Church (save for soup-kitchen Catholics). But today she outdid herself: Of the three lead stories on her Washington Post blog, three are on Catholicism. One is positive, and two are decidedly negative.

The one positive piece doesn’t count. Why? Because it’s about Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy, a Catholic, who is about to sign into law a bill to outlaw capital punishment. The reason this issue doesn’t count is because it’s all window-dressing: exactly one person has been executed in Connecticut in the past 37 years. Now if Malloy were to outlaw abortion in Connecticut, that would be big news.

Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo raises the question, “Is the Church Corrupt?” You already know the answer. He ends by saying, “Catholics are loyal enough to Jesus and to each other to prevail against the Gates of Hell that now besmirch the institutional church.” Then they are no longer Catholic. Being Catholic means belonging to, and faithfully participating in, the Catholic Church. Even a fraternity insists on fidelity.

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UNITED STATES
Channel 3000

By Bill Wineke
Special to Channel 3000

Something very strange is going on within the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church.

Each week brings revelations seemingly more bizarre than those of even the week before.

Last week, the Vatican took over the leadership of American nuns and appointed an archbishop to act, in effect, as a receiver for the group. Archbishop Peter Sartain, of Seattle, now has power to remove the elected leaders of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, approve speakers at the group’s conferences, set policy for the group and tell the nuns with whom they might affiliate.

The Vatican announced all this in a press release. That’s how the nuns learned about it. The contempt shown the nuns couldn’t have been more pronounced if the pope had mooned them in public. …

The document doesn’t say the nuns have actually done something immoral. It’s not as if, say, they had numerous members of their orders who sexually abused children, or had mother superiors who covered those crimes up.

Not to be too subtle about this: The Vatican did not put the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops into receivership.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Register

by MOTHER MARY ASSUMPTA LONG, OP

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith situates the introduction of its doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in the section of Pope John Paul II’s post-synodal apostolic exhortation Vita Consecrata entitled “Sentire Cum Ecclesia” (To Think With the Church).

The eight-page document, published April 18, summarizes the findings of a careful investigation of the LCWR begun in 2008 and has renewal as its primary purpose:

The renewal of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which is the goal of this doctrinal assessment, is in support of this essential charism of religious which has been so obvious in the life and growth of the Catholic Church in the United States.

Recent media coverage has displayed a variety of responses to the doctrinal assessment, and members of the LCWR have issued public responses.

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UNITED STATES
Washington Post

Sally Quinn

Jesus would be rolling over in his grave if he hadn’t already left it. The pope is taking on the nuns.

The Roman Catholic Church is a hierarchical institution if there ever was one. Nobody does anything without consulting a superior. Eventually, that would lead to His Holiness. And this time he has gone too far.

When Vatican bishops issued a report condemning nuns, including those among the 55,000 members of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, for “radical feminism” and ordered disciplinary action, all hell broke loose. …

While the “radical feminist” nuns were taking care of the poor and the sick, what were the priests and bishops doing? More than a few were being accused of sexually abusing children and covering up for each other. Take the case of Cardinal Bernard Francis Law, who stepped down as archbishop of Boston in 2002 for covering up sexual abuse by priests in his archdiocese. Instead of leaving Boston in disgrace, Law was summoned to Rome by Pope John Paul II and given the plum assignment of archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. He was allowed to keep his title of cardinal and participated in the papal conclave. He resigned last November at age 80 after throwing himself a big birthday party. Let’s hope the victims of the sexual abused he covered up have been able to on with their lives as fortuitously as he has.

The numbers of sexual abuse scandals are too numerous to mention, but include the recent charges against a priest who was head of the Office of Child Protection and Safety in Northern Virginia, and is being investigated for sexual misconduct with a boy and is now on administrative leave.

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UNITED STATES
Voice of the Faithful

As the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith comes down on women religious in the United States for doctrinal impurity, Roman Catholic Church reform movement Voice of the Faithful supports the sisters.

On Wednesday, the Vatican mandated reform of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the largest leadership body of women religious in the United States, which represents about 80 percent of the 57,000 nuns in the country. Because of LCWR’s purported doctrinal impurity, the Vatican has appointed an archbishop to oversee the nuns’ reform.

The record of women religious in this country taking care of the most vulnerable in our society, creating the American hospital system, for example, is a primer on Gospel values. Their long service on the front lines of poverty and disease is worthy of the respect and admiration of all, VOTF among them.

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OSTERREICH
der Standard

Markus Rohrhofer, 24. April 2012

Die Unabhängigkeit der Klasnic-Kommission steht auf dem Prüfstand. Eine Datenanfrage eines Opfers offenbart, dass offensichtlich intime Details rund um Missbrauchsfälle bei der Bischofskonferenz landen

Wien – Herbert L. wandte sich im vergangenen Jahr mit einer sogenannten Datenanfrage an die Klasnic-Kommission und die Stiftung Opferschutz. Herr L. ist anerkanntes Missbrauchsopfer und wurde bereits mit 10.000 Euro von der katholischen Kirche entschädigt. Was der Wiener noch genau wissen wollte, ist, welche Daten zu seiner Person im Zuge seiner Missbrauchsaufarbeitung gespeichert wurden. Die Antwort kam im Februar 2012 und überraschte Herbert L. Der eingeschriebene Brief, der dem Standard vorliegt, trägt nämlich den Briefkopf des Generalsekretariats der österreichischen Bischofskonferenz.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Evening Sun

By MARYCLAIRE DALE Associated Press
Posted: 04/24/2012

PHILADELPHIA—Jurors in a Philadelphia clergy-abuse trial are hearing about a priest left in ministry after therapists called him a pedophile and ticking time bomb.

The trial Tuesday is focusing on the late Peter Dunne, a Boy Scout leader who ran a school for troubled boys.

Church memos show a doctor complained in 1986 that Dunne had abused him, and asked for money for counseling.

Therapists evaluating Dunne warned he should never be around children.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

By John P. Martin
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia allowed a priest to remain in parish ministry in 1989 after psychiatrists diagnosed him as a pedophile, described him as “a very sick man” and strongly recommended that he never be allowed to work around young people, according to internal church records.

One of the doctors who evaluated the priest, the Rev. Peter J. Dunne, “stated quite bluntly that we are sitting on a powder keg,” a church official later noted in a memo.

Dunne’s records emerged Tuesday in the trial of Msgr. William J. Lynn, the former secretary of clergy accused of enabling child-sex abuse by failing to remove priests suspected of sexual misconduct. Prosecutors are introducing evidence about decades-old allegations against Dunne and other priests to suggests church officials for years understood the signs and depth of clergy sex abuse, but chose instead to hide the problem from parishioners, endangering children.

Dunne had been long active in scouting and archdiocesan schools when a California man reported in 1986 that the priest had pressed him into a sexual relationship when he was 13. Dunne privately arranged a settlement with his accuser. Dunne also resisted or ignored archdiocesan officials repeated attempts for treatment, despite telling one therapist that he may have had “six or seven” incidents of sexual misconduct, the records show.

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NEDERLAND
Melding Hulp Klacht Schade

Per 1 december 2011 heeft het bestuur de compensatiecommissie benoemd en is de compensatieregeling voor minderjarigen van kracht. Met ingang van 1 maart 2012 is eveneens de compensatieregeling voor meerderjarigen van kracht.

De leden van de Compensatiecommissie zijn:

•Mr. B. Holthuis (JPR Advocaten), voorzitter
•Mr. R.Ph. Elzas (Dirkzwager advocaten & notarissen)
•Mevr. Mr. K.H. Faase (Achmea personenschade)
•Mevr. Mr. J.M. van de Laar (Beer advocaten N.V.)
•E.S. Groot (Groot expertisebureau)

In principe krijgen alle slachtoffers die seksueel zijn misbruikt en een gegrondverklaring via de Beoordelings- en adviescommissie (BAC), of via de klachtencommssie hebben, een brief en ontvangen een aanvraagformulier voor de Compensatiecommissie. Alle overige slachtoffers die seksueel zijn misbruikt en die over een bewijsstuk beschikken zoals in de regelingen is vermeld kunnen het aanvraagformulier hier downloaden of via het meldpunt aanvragen. Ook de regelingen zijn hier te downloaden.

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UNITED STATES
Religion News Service – Spiritual Politics

Mark Silk|Apr 24, 2012

The denunciation of the Leadship Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF, formerly known as the Roman Inquisition) puts this medievalist in mind of the Church’s 15th Ecumenical Council, which wrapped up its business in Vienne exactly 700 years ago next week.

It was not a happy time for the papacy. In 1305, the tumultuous politics of the Italian peninsula had forced Pope Clement V to relocate the curia to the north, ushering in the “Babylonian Captivity of the Church” in Avignon that lasted for most of the century. The move put Clement under the thumb of King Philip the Fair of France, who was vigorously consolidating administrative control of the monarchy. To that end, Philip arrested the Knights Templars, seized their property, and got them to confess to heresy and sodomy by torture and burning at the stake. The main business of the Council of Vienne was the suppression of the venerable crusading order, which Clement seems to have agreed to do in exchange for Philip dropping heresy charges against a previous pope, Boniface VIII.

While they were at it, the Council also suppressed a movement of pious lay women who wore a distinctive habit and lived together in hospices, impressing many by their teaching and the sanctity of their lives. To the men who ran the church, they were dangerously out of line. As the Council put it:

The women commonly known as Beguines, since they promise obedience to nobody, nor renounce possessions, nor profess any approved rule are not religious at all, although they wear the special dress of Beguines and attach themselves to certain religious to whom they have a special attraction. We have heard from trustworthy sources that there are some Beguines who seem to be led by a particular insanity.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Register

by CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY/EWTN NEWS
04/24/2012

Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle praised American religious women as a “great gift” days after being asked by Pope Benedict to help reform the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.

“What I hope and pray for every day is that I, first of all, do as the Lord asks and do as the Holy Father asks,” said the archbishop, describing the task of renewal ahead to CNA on April 23.

He said he hopes “to work in a positive way,” recognizing “the wonderful contribution of religious women in the United States, and to work in a way that shows our continued love and support for their extraordinary contribution.”

Archbishop Sartain made his remarks in Rome only days after Pope Benedict XVI also publicly praised the contribution religious women make to the U.S. Church and society.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

by Dennis Coday on Apr. 24, 2012 NCR Today

Sisters Under Scrutiny is a new NCR blog that aims to be your one stop site gathering the latest news, actions and reactions arising from the Vatican ordered reform of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the umbrella organization for 80 percent of American Catholic sisters.

The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith April 18 ordered LCWR to reform its statutes, programs and affiliations to conform more closely to the teachings and discipline of the Church. Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain was appointed the “archbishop delegate” to oversee the organization. LCWR leaders say they were “stunned” by the move, which caught them by surprise. During the coming weeks NCR will feature on this blog the latest news and actions flowing out of this unprecedented move.

Also visit the Support our Catholic sisters Facebook page. We hope this page will become a space sisters can turn to for inspiration and that the sisters’ supports can use to organize that support.

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DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Catholic News Service

By Ezra Fieser
Catholic News Service

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (CNS) — The decision to take over leadership of the largest U.S. group of Catholic nuns for its “serious doctrinal problems” was not the first time the Vatican reined in a group of religious.

Two decades ago, the Vatican appointed a bishop to oversee the work of the Latin American Confederation of Religious, known by its Spanish acronym as CLAR. At the time, the confederation represented 160,000 men and women religious in the region.

“It was a very difficult moment for the confederation,” said Father Gabriel Naranjo Salazar, a Vincentian priest involved in CLAR at the time and who is now secretary-general of the organization.

“It was not only difficult because it affected the (CLAR’s) ecclesial independence and its mentality, but also because it seemed completely unjustified,” Father Naranjo told Catholic News Service in mid-April.

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NEW YORK
The L Magazine

Posted by Audrey Ference on Tue, Apr 24, 2012

Late last year, Brooklyn D.A. Charles Hynes announced that over the past three years, his department had arrested 85 Orthodox Jewish men and women for sex-related crimes, including crimes against children, but refused to release the suspects’ names. He would not even name the 14 people who had been found guilty of crimes and sentenced.

After continued press inquiry, including a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Jewish Daily Forward, Hynes’s office released a statement today to the Forward to explain his continued withholding of information.

“The circumstances here are unique,” Assistant District Attorney Morgan Dennehy wrote in an April 16 letter to the Forward. “Because all of the requested defendant names relate to Hasidic men who are alleged to have committed sex crimes against Hasidic victims within a very tight-knit and insular Brooklyn community, there is a significant danger that the disclosure of the defendants’ names would lead members of that community to discern the identities of the victims.”

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

by Eugene Cullen Kennedy on Apr. 24, 2012 Bulletins from the Human Side

The sound you hear all across Catholic America today is that of Rachel’s weeping again over the unnecessary and undeserved suffering that has been heaped by a righteous-sounding Cardinal William Levada, the pope’s man at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, on the women religious of this country.

This event is one of epic sadness because it symbolizes how an organized church undercuts the immense good it does at its best by doing near to its hypocritical worst in an attack as coordinated as a terrorist strike on the heroic women who deserve credit for building the church in America into the most successful realization of Catholicism in history.

Only ambitious men “making,” in the apt Italian phrase, “a career in the church” could have designed this bad-faith betrayal of the leaders of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious who had arrived in Rome for a dialogue with Cardinal Levada only to learn that the news of the empowering of a panel of bishops to supervise them had already been sent to the American bishops for public distribution. …

Archbishop Sartain, who has just politicized his parishes by delegating them to gather signatures against legislation on same-sex marriage, according to the website Christian Child Abuse, played a still-unclarified role while bishop of Joliet, Ill., in ordaining as a priest a seminarian on whose computer gay porn with young boys had been found a few months before. This priest was convicted the next year of sexual assault of an underage boy. The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, SNAP, observed: “Sartain, in our view, had a moral obligation to postpone the ordination, send [the priest] for treatment and inform the public.” SNAP president Dave Clohessy later said Sartain “did none of that.”

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AUSTRIA
Austrian Independent

A critical Catholic movement from Austria has received a renowned award in Switzerland.

The Austrian Preachers’ Initiative – which consists of 400 preachers – was decorated with this year’s Herbert Haag Prize. The presentation took place in the city of Lucerne. Hans Küng, one of Europe’s best-known critics of the Vatican, lauded the Austrian movement for calling on priests across Europe to be disobedient towards conservative Church leaders. Küng said a well-argued appeal for disobedience by people who had trust in the future of the Roman Catholic Church was more credible and sensible than any kind of “pseudo-obedience”.

Helmut Schüller, who founded the Preachers’ Initiative in June 2011, said Küng was one of the most influential voices of a critical theology with intentions to lead the Church into a bright future in our modern society. The Herbert Haag Prize features a donation of 10,000 Euros. Schüller said he had not yet decided about how to use the money.

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TOLEDO (OH)
Ohio News Network

Tuesday April 24, 2012

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — A Roman Catholic priest convicted of killing a nun in a hospital chapel in Ohio is making another appeal for a new trial.

The Blade newspaper (http://bit.ly/JsGUNr ) in Toledo reports that an attorney for the Rev. Gerald Robinson wants a state appeals court to throw out the priest’s conviction because police reports discovered after his trial could have changed the outcome.

A county judge in Toledo ruled in January that the police reports didn’t contain any relevant information.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Apr. 24, 2012
By Tom Roberts

Commentary

It is almost instinctively that one reaches, when attempting to explain what is going on today in the Catholic church, for metaphors out of the natural world — storms, earthquakes, seismic shifts — to get at the magnitude of events.

We search for the terms that explain what we’re experiencing: phenomena beyond the ordinary disturbances we’ve learned to weather one season to the next. Just as seismologists or climatologists begin to put together patterns over time, to construct a mega-image of what is happening, so are we. Another piece of the puzzle has just fallen into place for us with the delivery last week from the Vatican of the “Doctrinal Assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.”

The 5.8 earthquake that hit the East Coast in August was insignificant by West Coast standards, yet it was felt hundreds of miles from its epicenter in Virginia. Geologists explained that the earth’s crust in this part of the world is more dense and less disturbed and fractured than that in the usual earthquake zones, allowing the seismic waves to travel further than they would, say, in Los Angeles or San Francisco.

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PHILADLEPHIA (PA)
Catholics4Change

April 24, 2012 by Susan Matthews

Click here to read: “What the Cardinal Knew, Or How to Hoover A Pedophile,” by Ralph Cipriano, The Philadelphia Priest Abuse Trial Blog, April 23, 2012

Excerpt: “Why would Cardinal Bevilacqua knowingly consort with two known pedophile priests, and indeed allow his Archdiocese PR machine to parade the two abusers out in public with him? Maybe because the cardinal thought he owned these guys, in the tradition of J. Edgar Hoover. Both Sicoli and Gana knew that their crimes were documented in the archdiocese’s secret archives, and that they served at the whim of the archbishop, who, at the scrawl of a pen, could send them packing. So when it came to Sicoli and Gana, the cardinal had them “Hoovered,” he had their unquestioned loyalty.”

Editor’s note: I had the “privilege” of covering Cardinal Bevilacqua in the 90s as an editor with The Catholic Standard & Times and later as a freelancer for a now defunct Philadelphia monthly magazine called The Player. To say The Tierney Group was hands-on regarding coverage is an extreme understatement. I always attributed it to Bevilacqua’s enormous ego and Machiavellian style. Ralph Cipriano is dead on. In hindsight, it’s clear Bevilacqua used pedophiles to aid in his publicity spin. I hope Brian Tierney and Jay Devine were not aware of the depth his depravity. They might as well have been billing the devil.

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STOCKTON (CA)
Union Democrat

Written by Union Democrat staff
April 23, 2012

The Catholic Diocese of Stockton, which includes parishes in Tuolumne and Calaveras counties, has agreed to settle for $3.75 million a legal claim by a Fairfax man who argued former priest Michael Kelly molested him as a youth.

In exchange for the settlement, the plaintiff has agreed to drop his case against the diocese and Kelly, according to a statement from Bishop Stephen Blaire.

“The settlement brings an end to litigation that began more than 4 1/2 years ago and that has occupied a great deal of time and focus,” he said. “We respect the right of everyone to have their day in court and we abide by the decisions that were made.”

The settlement was the latest development in a week full of surprises in the case.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Irish Central

By
ANTOINETTE KELLY,
IrishCentral Staff Writer

Published Tuesday, April 24, 2012

The Catholic priest at the center of a gay porn controversy has taken temporary leave from his duties as the parish priest of Pomeroy in County Tyrone.

According to the Irish Times, Father Martin McVeigh asked the Primate of All-Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady for a temporary leave after a meeting between local parents and the representatives of the archdiocese on Friday night proved ‘inconclusive.’

The archdiocese, in an attempt to address the controversy, has reportedly been conducting an inquiry into how 16 pornographic images were ‘inadvertently’ shown by the priest to a group of about thirty parents and one child during a powerpoint presentation on children’s first Confessions on March 26.

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SAN DIEGO (CA)
U-T San Diego

Written by
Greg Moran

SAN DIEGO — A Roman Catholic priest who pleaded guilty on Friday to a misdemeanor charge that he groped a woman in December did so only to put the case behind him and spare the community a trial, his lawyer said Monday.

The Rev. Jose Alexis Davila, 53, was placed on three years’ probation, fined $200, and ordered to do 150 hours of community service. He was also ordered to stay away from the now 20-year-old woman who initially complained that he had groped her when she visited his home on Dec. 30.

Earll Pott, one of Davila’s lawyers, said Monday that the priest entered his plea under a legal provision that allows someone to plead guilty, even though the person does not admit to the truth of the charges.

The plea has the same force and effect as a standard guilty plea, according to the San Diego City Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted the case.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

by Jamie L Manson on Apr. 23, 2012 Grace on the Margins

In his Holy Thursday sermon, Pope Benedict XVI made headlines for criticizing those who refuse to obey the church’s position on the ordination of celibate men. He traced his argument back to Christ’s obedience to the will of God.

“His concern was for true obedience,” Benedict said, “as opposed to human caprice.”

Of course, the pontiff fails to point out that Jesus was obeying God while also radically disobeying the religious leaders and laws of his time. Like so many archconservative Roman Catholics, he is confusing God with the institutional church and its doctrine.

I suppose the pope is using some of this same logic in his treatment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. He views the sisters’ unwillingness to condemn gays and lesbians or contraception or women who feel called ordained ministry as an act of “caprice.”

But the basis on which the sisters focus their ministries is anything but shallow and whimsical. Their devotion is founded on a radical obedience to the voice of God as it emerges from the voices of the poor, the sick, the abandoned and the broken.

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TOLEDO (OH)
Toledo Blade

BY DAVID YONKE
BLADE RELIGION EDITOR

Toledo priest Gerald Robinson has again asked the Ohio 6th District Court of Appeals to toss out his 2006 conviction for the 1980 murder of a nun, saying the state withheld key documents and his trial attorneys failed to adequately pursue “the most obvious” suspect, serial killer Coral Eugene Watts.

The latest filing states that Robinson’s trial attorneys mistakenly thought Watts was in prison on April 5, 1980, when Sister Margaret Ann Pahl was found brutally slain in the sacristy of the former Mercy Hospital near downtown Toledo. But Watts was a free man “in his killing spree or ‘on a rampage’ at the time,” living in Michigan about 40 miles from Toledo, the appeal states.

The appeals court in January, 2008, rejected Robinson’s direct appeal, and, 11 months later, the Ohio Supreme Court declined to hear the case. Robinson then began pursuing an amended petition for postconviction relief, which, unlike a direct appeal, allows the court to consider information other than what was included in the trial.

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NEW JERSEY
Patch

By Laura Silvius

Law enforcement officials, elected representatives and family and friends of crime victims gathered in St. Patrick Church in Chatham Borough Monday to honor victims of crimes from Morris County.

Morris County Prosecutor Robert Bianchi said each year the Prosecutor’s Office chooses one victim, usually a homocide victim from a prominent trial case the year before, to honor in their Recognition and Remembrance Ceremony held each April during Crime Victims’ Rights Week.

This year, the Prosecutor’s Office chose to honor the Rev. Edward Hinds, the former pastor of St. Patrick Church. Hinds, who was known to his congregation as “Father Ed,” was stabbed 44 times by Jose Feliciano, the church custodian.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

SEÁN FREYNE

RITE & REASON: Vatican style of government models itself on pre-Christian Roman imperialism

THE RESULTS of the survey conducted by the Association of Catholic Priests, when taken in conjunction with the national census figures of those who still consider themselves as Roman Catholic, has opened a window on the state of Irish Catholicism that is alarming, yet altogether predictable.

There is of course an obvious explanation for some of this disaffection, namely the clerical sex abuse scandals and the cover-up by some bishops and senior clergy of the atrocities to protect the institution. However, this explanation should not excuse church leaders from any deeper analysis of what has been happening to religious belief and practice here, for several decades now.

The anaemic summary of the findings of the Apostolic Visitation that has been published shows just how out of touch Rome and the Irish bishops are with the real feelings of the vast majority of Catholics here. Nor could one place too much confidence in the upcoming Eucharistic Congress to address the core issues that are at stake for many people.

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NEDERLAND
RKnieuws

BREDA (RKnieuws.net) – Rector Schnell van de Priester- en Diakenopleiding Bovendonk was vrijdag te gast bij het bestuur van het bisdom van Breda om te spreken over de wijze waarop de priesteropleiding aandacht geeft aan de persoonsvorming van studenten.

Directe aanleiding voor het gesprek is een rapportage die het bisdombestuur voorbereidt vanwege de voorgenomen start van de Diocesane voortgangscommissie inzake seksueel misbruik. Na de presentatie van het Eindrapport van de Onderzoekscommissie (de ‘Commissie Deetman’) maakte het bisdom het voornemen bekend zo’n voortgangscommissie in te willen richten.

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CANADA
CFRA

Josh Pringle
Tuesday, April 24, 2012

A Pembroke priest is now facing 12 charges in relation into historic sexual assault allegations dating back 40 years.

Ontario Provincial Police charged Daniel Miller in February for alleged offences that occurred against then pre-teenage boys and an adult male between 1970 and 1980.

The OPP says the 67-year-old Miller was charged on Friday with six additional changes related to 3 additional victims in Arnprior, Deep River and Eganville dating back to 1969.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Derry Journal

A priest has denied indecently assaulting a woman 20 years ago.

Fr Eugene Boland, whose address was given on court papers as Parochial House, Killyclogher Road, Omagh, denied five charges of indecent assault alleged to have occured between June 28, 1990 and June 30, 1992.

The 65-year-old, who appeared in the dock in his collar, replied “not guilty” as each of the charges were put to him.

Derry Crown Court heard the trial, which is expected to last one week, had been listed for next month.

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UNITED STATES
Washington Post

By Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo

The trial of Msgr. William J. Lynn, secretary for clergy under a late Philadelphia cardinal, exposes every day what Pope Benedict XVI has called “the filth of the church.” As the New York Times explained, Lynn is “the first Roman Catholic supervisor in the country to be tried on felony charges of endangering children and conspiracy — not on allegations that he molested children himself.” If the allegations that Lynn ignored child sexual abuse are true, file the Philadelphia case as another clerical cover-up that will have irrevocably stained the church’s image.

If this major scandal were not enough, other Catholic news haunts the conscience: According to a report by Reuters, JP Morgan closed the Vatican’s bank account for “lack of transparency.” Catholic nuns in America, who power the nation’s Catholic hospitals, schools and social service organizations are under attack from the Vatican. Pedophilia has put mighty Irish Catholicism “at the breaking point.”

Facing the scope of these stories, Catholics can legitimately ask: “Is the church corrupt?”

The answer to that question depends on perspective. If people join the church as sinners in order to become saints, human failures are no big surprise. If most priests and faithful live the Gospel, why label the whole institution as “corrupt”? Haven’t we heard this charge many times in history?

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UNITED STATES
The Star-Ledger

By Star-Ledger Editorial Board

The Vatican, in its infinite wisdom, has spoken: American nuns, out there on the front lines helping the sick and suffering, are spending way too much time fighting poverty and economic injustice, and not enough time agitating against abortion and gay marriage. Instead, they should just do what the bishops tell them to.

It even assigned an archbishop to knock all the wayward sisters back in line. The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the most prominent U.S. Catholic nuns’ group, said it was “stunned” by the crackdown. But it shouldn’t be. This isn’t about faith. It’s about dogma and it’s about politics.

Problem is, American nuns have become too educated. They now lead their schools, hospitals and charities. They minister to people on the margins of society, those who are discriminated against. And they recognize the church hierarchy for what it is: woefully out of touch, hypocritical and determined to stifle any dissent about the priorities of the male leadership.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Erie Times-News

Pat Cuneo

‘Vatican orders crackdown on American nuns,” the headline blared in last Wednesday’s Washington Post. The group representing most of America’s 55,000 Catholic nuns was “not speaking out strongly enough against gay marriage, abortion and women’s ordination,” the story read.

So, Rome named conservative Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain to overhaul the governance and plans of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and its relationship with “certain groups the Vatican finds suspect.”

The LCWR does not directly represent the sisters in the Erie region, incidentally.

It’s an inside fight, right? It’s just a squabble about the uppity nuns’ obsession with a “prevalence of certain radical feminist themes (that are) incompatible with the Catholic faith,” as Rome pointed out. Religious groups can do whatever they want, right? Absolutely. Yet just how far will this kind of crackdown go before a good chunk of American Catholics, especially American Catholic women, tell Rome to go take a hike. I sense the last straw will be a lot sooner than I ever thought possible.

It turns out that the nuns’ advocacy for fairness on issues large and small is the true target. So is their audacity of having an opinion where it isn’t welcome. And so it is that Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine scholar, writer, lecturer and recognized as one of the world’s most respected moralists, was left “deeply distraught” by the news.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

[with video]

Lenore Taylor

The statement last night by Tony Nutt, a former advisor to John Howard, is a timely reminder of exactly what Mr Slipper is charged with, and what he isn’t.

Mr James Hunter Ashby’s claim is about sexual harassment. It deserves to be taken seriously. It will be heard in court.

But Mr Slipper is not on trial – at least not in any court – for the allegation that he sought sexual relationships outside his marriage, however distasteful people might find that idea.

The lawsuit is not about consensual extra-marital sex, gay or straight. But the allegation that a conservative MP, married to a woman, who serves as a priest in the Anglican High church, sought a homosexual affair does seem to be a big part of the charges being debated in the court of public opinion.

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AUSTRALIA
The Daily Telegraph

Janet Fife-Yeomans
The Daily Telegraph
April 24, 2012

PROSECUTORS this morning dropped charges of perverting the course of justice against one of the leading members of the Church of Scientology, Jan Eastgate.

Downing Centre Local Court was given no reasons for the decision behind the withdrawal of the charges that alleged Ms Eastgate had intimidated a then 11-year-old young girl and her mother who wanted to report sexual abuse allegations within the church back in 1985.

Ms Eastgate, who was instrumental in revealing the horrors of deep sleep therapy at the former Chelmsford Hospital in Sydney’s north in the 1980s, is international president of the Scientology-linked Citizens Commission on Human Rights, which attacks psychology.

Now based in Los Angeles where she counts Tom Cruise and John Travolta among her friends, Ms Eastgate released a statement to The Daily Telegraph.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC Ilawarra

By court reporter Jamelle Wells

New South Wales prosecutors have dropped charges against a Scientologist who was accused of telling a child she should deny charges of sex abuse against another church member.

Jan Eastgate is the head of the church’s Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a group that works to discredit conventional psychiatric treatments.

In 2011 she was charged with perverting the course of justice.

Police claimed that in 1985 she told an 11-year-old girl she should deny any charges of sexual abuse to police and officers from the Department of Social Services.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

CHARGES against a senior member of the Church of Scientology accused of coaching a child to lie about sex abuse have been dropped in a Sydney court.

Janice Meyer, an Australian citizen who lives in the US, had been charged with two counts of an act intending to pervert the course of justice in 1985 in Sydney.

She also goes by the name of Jan Eastgate.

The allegation involved threatening and intimidating an 11-year-old girl, causing her to give false information about being abused by a Scientologist to investigating police, the court has previously heard.

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AUSTRALIA
Launceston Times

PAUL BIBBY

The NSW Director of Public Prosecutions has dropped its charges against a senior Scientologist who had been accused of telling an 11-year-old girl she should deny charges of sexual abuse against another member of the church.

Janice Meyer, also known as Jan Eastgate, is the head of the church’s Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a group which works to discredit a number of conventional psychiatric treatments, including the use of medications such as Ritalin and Prozac.

In May last year, Ms Meyer was charged with two counts of perverting the course of justice over an alleged incident in 1985. Police had claimed that Ms Meyer told the 11-year-old girl she should deny any charges of sexual abuse to police and officers from the Department of Social Services.

However, in Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court this morning, a representative of the DPP informed the magistrate that they had dropped all charges against her.

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KENTUCKY
The Gleaner

By Beth Smith

A former youth pastor charged here and in Colorado on sexual abuse charges will not go to trial here in May.

In Henderson Circuit Court on Monday, Ike Norment, defense attorney for John H. Brothers Jr., 42, asked Judge Karen Wilson to vacate the May 17 trial date, since Brothers is currently in custody in Colorado on sex abuse-related charges.

Norment said Brothers’ has a preliminary hearing in a Colorado court in late May and asked Wilson to grant a pretrial date of July 2. Norment said by that time, he and local prosecutors hopefully would know more about what’s happening with the Colorado case.

Wilson granted the July 2 pretrial date.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

By John P. Martin
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Edward Avery might be gone from the defense table at the landmark clergy-sex-abuse trial involving Archdiocese of Philadelphia priests, but he remains a pivotal figure in the case.

On Monday, prosecutors and defense lawyers clashed over what jurors could and should be told about Avery, a defrocked priest who was removed as a defendant last month after his last-minute plea to charges that he sexually assaulted a 10-year-old altar boy.

Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina suggested that jurors could even hear from Avery himself.

The issue emerged as prosecutors signaled plans to call to the witness stand this week a former altar boy who said he was abused in the late 1990s by Avery and another priest, the Rev. Charles Engelhardt, when both were at St. Jerome’s Church in Northeast Philadelphia. Engelhardt faces a separate trial later this year because he belongs to an independent religious order, the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales.

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NEW JERSEY
The Star-Ledger

By Kevin Manahan/The Star-Ledger

MORRIS TOWNSHIP —The attorney for the Rev. Luke Travers, the former Delbarton School headmaster facing allegations of sexual misconduct, said today that Travers has taken and passed two polygraph exams regarding the accusations.

Gerard Hanlon, a criminal attorney in Morristown, said Travers passed a lie detector test ordered by St. Mary’s Abbey in January, then passed another, set up by Hanlon, in March.

“Luke was so adamant about what he hadn’t done, so I set up the second one with an expert who has worked with me and (is) someone I trust,” Hanlon said. “It’s the first time I’ve talked about this, but maybe it’s timely.”

Abbey spokesman Anthony Cicatiello said the abbey “will not comment any further on matters related to Father Luke.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Priest Abuse Trial Blog

Ralph Cipriano

The judge in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia sex abuse trial left open the possibility Monday that prosecutors may be allowed to haul into court a former priest who, on the eve of trial, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy and rape of a 10-year-old boy.

Edward V. Avery, a defrocked former archdiocese priest, is now serving a prison sentence of between 2 1/2 to 5 years. But his chief accuser, namely the former altar boy that he raped, is due in court on Wednesday. The question is whether defense attorneys in the case will be allowed to challenge the victim’s credibility on cross-examination.

Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington told Judge M. Teresa Sarmina that if she rules that defense lawyers can challenge the victim’s credibility, “We’re back to square one, with Avery on trial here.” That’s when the judge suggested that the prosecution had the option of seeking permission to haul Avery back in court.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CNN

By Sarah Hoye, CNN

updated 7:09 PM EDT, Mon April 23, 2012

Philadelphia (CNN) — Attorneys in the child sexual abuse and conspiracy trial of two Philadelphia priests debated Monday over which potential witnesses jurors would be allowed to hear regarding a third defendant who pleaded guilty to molesting boys just days before opening remarks.

Defrocked priest Edward Avery of the Philadelphia Archdiocese pleaded guilty to involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and conspiracy to endanger the welfare of child after admitting that he sexually assaulted a 10-year-old altar boy during his 1998-1999 school year. Avery, 69, was sentenced to two-and-a-half to five years.

Rev. James Brennan is accused of attempted rape of a 14-year-old, and Monsignor William Lynn is accused of covering it up. Lynn is the first high-ranking church figure charged with child endangerment for shuffling predator priests from parish to parish.

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UNITED STATES
NPR

[with audio]

The Vatican reprimanded America’s largest organization of Catholic nuns, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. The Holy See charged the LCWR with promoting programs with “radical feminist themes” that are incompatible with doctrine on issues ranging from homosexuality to women’s ordination.

NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I’m Neal Conan, in Washington. Last week, the Vatican reprimanded America’s largest organization of Catholic nuns, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. While praising what it called a great contribution in schools, hospitals and among the poor, the Holy See charged the group with promotion of radical feminist themes incompatible with the faith on issues like contraception and abortion, gay and lesbian rights and the ordination of women.

Leaders of the group expressed shock and outrage. Other Catholics supported the church’s obligation to ensure that its organizations uphold its doctrine. And some pointed to this dispute as the latest example of a disconnect between the Vatican and large parts of its American congregation.

We want to hear from Catholics today: How does church doctrine inform your choices? Give us a call: 800-989-8255. Email us: talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. That’s at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.

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AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

April 24, 2012
Opinion

Dick Gross

It was embarrassing to observe Australian society trying to avert its gaze from the deaths of more than 40 young men. These men are purportedly suicide victims whose deaths appear to be consequent to sexual abuse in their churches. As the faces of the deceased stared out at me from reports in The Age, I felt that this loss of young life could surely not go unexamined in any civilised society.

I blogged on this matter last year based on some personal testimony I had heard about the suicide of a young victim relative of an abusing priest. Now my anecdotal evidence appears to have found support in police investigations. This is an epidemic of self-slaughter that cannot be ignored.

Yet without constant advocacy and evidence from affected Catholic parents, police and some innocent clergy, the dead and their stories would have gone unexamined. Now the growing forensic evidence of a link between Catholic child abuse and the apparent suicides of victims raises issues of church and state that could no longer be ignored.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Blaine on April 23, 2012

We are here today representing three different groups who want a Board member of Loyola University’s Board of Trustees to resign. The three groups are SNAP, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, CCC, Coalition of Concerned Catholics and VOTF, Voice of the Faithful.

Newly-revealed church documents show that Father Bradley Schaeffer did little or nothing to stop a notorious child molesting priest under his supervision. The cleric, Father Donald McGuire, is now serving a twenty-five year sentence in federal prison. But Schaefer could have and did not stop McGuire.

Sitting on the Board of Trustees of Loyola University is a position that Schaefer should not hold. Honoring men like this is hurtful in two ways. First, it rubs salt into the wounds of already-suffering victims and already-betrayed Catholics. Second, it sends a chilling, and depressing, message to victims, witnesses and whistleblowers: “Speak up if you want to, but know that nothing will change and wrongdoers will still be tolerated, praised and promoted in this organization.” So honors like this essentially discourage those with knowledge and information about heinous child sex crimes and cover-ups from stepping forward, calling police, reporting wrongdoing, protecting kids and preventing crimes.

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CALIFORNIA
Catholic Culture

By Phil Lawler
April 23, 2012

It’s a coincidence, no doubt, that the Stockton diocese settled a sex-abuse case just before Cardinal Roger Mahony, the former Bishop of Stockton, was scheduled to testify.

Actually Cardinal Mahony wasn’t ready to take questions. He had left for Rome, ignoring his date with the court, and the plaintiff’s lawyer was threatening to have the cardinal held in contempt. That threat went by the boards when the case was settled.

Stockton’s Bishop Stephen Blaire says that it was “in the best interest of everybody” to reach the mutually agreeable deal, in which the diocese paid $3.75 million to a single plaintiff. The bishop hopes that no one will think the settlement is an indication that the diocese admits culpability. And certainly we can all understand that sometimes it’s better to avoid a protracted legal dispute. But $3.75 million—payable to one alleged victim—is an awfully steep price to pay for avoiding the aggravation of a trial, especially when you consider that the trial was already underway.

The diocese was in an awkward position, of course, because another key witness in the case—beside Cardinal Mahony, I mean—had gone missing. Father Michael Kelly, the priest whose alleged misconduct had triggered the lawsuit, had also skipped town, flying home to his native Ireland just before he was supposed to testify. Bishop Blaire said that he was shocked by the priest’s flight.

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AUSTRALIA
Maroondah Weekly

BY MELISSA CUNNINGHAM

24 Apr, 2012

A YARRA Ranges parent has welcomed news of a parliamentary inquiry into the handling of alleged criminal abuse of children by religious organisations.

Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu announced the inquiry last week and said it would focus on abuse not only in religious organisations but also at children’s homes.

The inquiry was sparked by the recommendations of the landmark Protecting Victoria’s Vulnerable Children Inquiry conducted by retired Supreme Court justice Philip Cummins.

Healesville’s Ian Lawther, whose son was abused by a convicted St Brigid’s parish priest more than

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholic Online

By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
4/23/2012
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

It has been a month since the start of a high-profile trial in Philadelphia where Monsignor William Lynn stands accused of mishandling allegations of child abuse by priests. He is the highest-ranking church official to date to stand trial in the United States.

PHILADELPHIA, PA (Catholic Online) – Attorneys for Monsignor Lynn readily acknowledge the multiple cases of abuse, including the allegation of abuse by Rev. James Brennan who allegedly raped a 14-year-old boy in 1996.

Lynn was responsible for managing 800 priests throughout the archdiocese of Philadelphia and allegations of abuse landed on his desk. It was his responsibility to handle those notifications including those regarding Brennan.

Accusers say the Monsignor did not handle them correctly. Monsignor Lynn is accused of covering up the allegations and transferring accused priests to other parishes without notifying the parishioners.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel

April 23, 2012 .

An attorney for 350 alleged victims in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee bankruptcy has appealed the judge’s April 5 decision to keep sealed depositions of retired Archbishop Rembert Weakland and Richard Sklba, along with related documents.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Susan V. Kelley refused to unseal the evidence saying it contains scandalous information and could inadvertently identify victims who are named in the documents. Weakland and Sklba, who also is retired, handled the archdiocese’s sex abuse cases for nearly three decades.

Minnesota attorney Jeffrey Anderson had argued that all names and identifying information would be redacted. He filed the appeal late last week, calling the release of the information a “public imperative.”

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