ABUSE TRACKER

SPAIN
Daily Mail (United Kingdom)

By Leon Watson

A Catholic nun has been charged with being part of a child stealing operation that ran over four decades in Spain.

Sister María Gómez Valbuena is the first person to be indicted in connection with the probe into more than 100 cases of babies snatched from hospitals between the 1950s and 1980s.

She was subpoenaed to testify before investigators recently but refused to answer questions, according to sources at the Madrid prosecutor’s office.

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ESPANA
la Republica

MARÍA JOSÉ ESTESO POVES / REDACCIÓN DIAGONAL

La Fiscalía de Madrid ha denunciado a la monja sor María Gómez Valbuena por su presunta implicación en el robo de niños. La Fiscalía ya citó a declarar como imputada a la religiosa que se negó a prestar declaración, ahora ha sido denunciada nuevamente esta vez por detención ilegal en uno de los casos de bebés robados que se investiga, según consta en la demanda interpuesta ante el juzgado de Madrid número 43, según se ha dado conocer hace unas horas.

La Fiscalía investiga un caso de 1982, el de María Luisa Torres, entonces una madre separada, que fue engañada por la monja Gómez Valbuena y que tras dar a luz en la clínica San Ramón, la religiosa le dijo que la recién nacida había fallecido. El parto fue atendido por el doctor de esa clínica, Eduardo Vela Vela, quien está también acusado de tráfico de bebés por decenas de familias. Por lo que es previsible que sea llamado a declarar por la Fiscalía en breve.

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ESPANA
RTVE

[con video]

Varias denuncias de familias de presuntos niños robados apuntan hacia ella y ahora la fiscalía de Madrid ha decidido acusarla de un delito de detención ilegal. Es Sor María Gómez Valbuena, una monja que atendía a las parturientas en el hospital Santa Cristina. Una de esas mujeres se ha reencontrado con la hija que, según cuenta, le robó sor María.

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ESPANA
Apporea

18/03/12.-Sor María Gómez Valbuena es una monja octogenaria de las Hermanas de la Caridad, es la primera persona denunciada por la Fiscalía de Madrid por la causa de los bebés robados. Ella asegura que en todo momento obró de acuerdo a las leyes de la época e insiste en que los hijos adoptados no deberían buscar a sus familias biológicas. Epoca en la que era asistente social y su nombre y firma figuran en centenares de adopciones y también en muchas de las denuncias presentadas ante la fiscalía.

La Fiscalía de Madrid la llamó como imputada recientemente. Sor María Gómez Valbuena acudió, pero se negó a declarar. El caso que ha llevado a la fiscalía a denunciarla finalmente por detención ilegal es el de María Luisa Torres, que dio a luz a su hija Pilar en la clínica Santa Cristina de Madrid en marzo de 1982

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SPAIN
Herald Sun (Australia)

A NUN in Spain has become the first person to be charged with abducting a baby as part of a larger investigation into the kidnapping and worldwide sale of children by priests and nuns over a 40-year period.

Sister Maria Gomez Valbuena, 80, has been linked to some 3000 claims of kidnapping by families who say the Madrid nun stole their children for resale to childless couples, The (London) Times reported Saturday.

According to Spanish daily El Pais, the abductions mostly took place at San Ramon and Santa Cristina hospitals in Madrid from the 1950s to the early 1980s.

Maria Luisa Torres was one of countless people who took up Valbuena’s offer to help single mothers who were in dire straits, agreeing to temporarily place her baby in a child care facility that she could visit, the Times said.

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INDIA
Praetoria News (South Africa)

Indian police say they have arrested a Catholic priest wanted in the United States on charges of sexually assaulting a teenage parishioner in Minnesota.

The Rev Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul appeared on Monday in a New Delhi court and will be held in custody pending an official US request for his extradition.

Police Sub-inspector Pugal Maran says Jeyapaul was detained Friday near the southern Indian town of Erode after Interpol issued an alert.

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NEDERLAND
DePers

De Tweede Kamer wil een debat over de castratie van kinderen binnen de katholieke kerk in de jaren vijftig.

De Tweede Kamer wil zo snel mogelijk praten over berichten dat de rooms-katholieke kerk in de jaren vijftig kinderen heeft gecastreerd. Dat heeft PvdA-Kamerlid Khadija Arib zaterdag gezegd. Volgens haar willen de betrokken Kamerleden proberen op korte termijn een hoorzitting te houden met Wim Deetman, die een commissie leidde die seksueel misbruik binnen de kerk onderzocht.

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

BY JUSTO BAUTISTA
STAFF WRITER
The Record

PALISADES PARK — Parishioners at a church on East Brinkerhoff Avenue were up in arms on Sunday after someone beheaded the statute of their beloved patron saint.

“This is horrible,” said an outraged parishioner.

“There’s no head. Is nothing sacred anymore?” said the parishioner referring to the incident at his church and the recent spate of vandalism in Bergen County, where synagogues in Hackensack and Maywood were defaced by anti-Semitic graffiti and a synagogue in Rutherford was firebombed, an incident that resulted in the arrests of two Lodi men, one of whom was charged with nine counts of attempted murder. …

And in November, an unemployed cook in Morris County was charged with desecration of a venerated object and criminal mischief for allegedly smashing a memorial to victims of clergy sex abuse. Police said a sledgehammer was used to wreck the memorial — a circular black millstone outside St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Mendham and installed to call attention to the abuse of local boys by a former St. Joseph’s pastor from Paterson.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Idea

Yeovil (idea) – Ein anglikanischer Pfarrer hat kurzerhand seinen ganzen Kirchenchor entlassen. Der Grund: Zwei Sängerinnen, beide 83 Jahre alt, hatten sich geweigert, ein polizeiliches Führungszeugnis zu beantragen. Der Geistliche hielt das für nötig, um Kindesmissbrauch vorzubeugen.

Jetzt steht die St. Michaels-Gemeinde in Yeovil (Südwestengland) nicht nur ohne Chor, sondern auch ohne Orgelbegleitung da. Denn aus Solidarität mit den beiden Sängerinnen legte auch die 70-jährige Organistin und Kantorin Jenny Hansford ihr Amt nieder. Sie hatte im Internet herausgefunden, dass nach den Regeln der anglikanischen Kirche nur Chorleiter ein Vorstrafenregister vorlegen müssen.

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VEREINIGTE STAATEN
Berner Zeitung (Schweiz)

Als Reaktion auf Dutzende Klagen gegen Priester wegen sexuellen Missbrauchs hat der Jesuitenorden im Nordwesten der USA Gläubigerschutz beantragt.

Die entsprechenden Unterlagen wurden am Dienstag beim amerikanischen Insolvenzgericht in Portland eingereicht. Die Provinz Oregon des katholischen Ordens führt darin ein Vermögen von weniger als 5 Millionen Dollar und Verbindlichkeiten von fast 62 Millionen Dollar auf.

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OSTERREICH
Nachrichten

KREMSMÜNSTER. Von „sadistischer Gewalt, die uns Kleinkinder zu Hunderten kaputtgemacht hat“, spricht ein ehemaliger Zögling des Internats von Stift Kremsmünster laut einem Gerichtsakt, in dem die Ermittlungsergebnisse der Polizei zu den Missbrauchsvorwürfen zusammengefasst sind.

Dem Wiener Nachrichtenmagazin „profil“ liegt der Akt nun vor. Erschütterndes Ergebnis: Systematische Gewaltexzesse, sexueller Missbrauch und emotionale Zermürbung standen auf der Tagesordnung. Im Stift reagiert man mit tiefstem Bedauern.

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OSTERREICH
Profil

Das Benediktinerstift Kremsmünster war für Hunderte Klosterschüler bis in die neunziger Jahre die Hölle. An der Tagesordnung: systematische Gewaltexzesse, sexueller Missbrauch, emotionale Zermürbung. Ein pädophiler, schwer bewaffneter Mönch stand als Konviktsdirektor an der Spitze eines ­sadistischen Regimes. Ihm droht nun die Anklage. profil liegt der Gerichtsakt vor.

Von Emil Bobi

Unmittelbar hinter dem Rathausplatz im oberösterreichischen Kremsmünster erhebt sich der Berg mit der überdimensionalen Kulisse des Stifts. „Das Kloster sitzt wie ein Krake auf dem Ort“, sagt Jürgen Öllinger, 46, der in Kremsmünster geboren und im Stift über Jahre sexuell missbraucht und körperlich misshandelt worden sein soll. Heute ist Öllinger evangelischer Pfarrer in Villach. Seinerzeit habe der ganze Ort weggeschaut, weil man nichts Genaues wissen wollte, heute wolle man nicht mehr hinschauen. „Eh vorbei. Net scho wieder stierln“, sagten die Leute.

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NEDERLAND
Omroep Brabant

SON – In het Sint Jozephziekenhuis in Veghel zijn in de jaren vijftig zeker twee minderjarige jongens gecastreerd op gezag van de Katholieke Kerk. En waarschijnlijk nog wel meer. Dat zegt onderzoeksjournalist Joep Dohmen.

De jongens werden gecastreerd om zo van hun homoseksuele gedrag te worden afgeholpen. In zeker een geval gaat het om een jongen die seksueel misbruikt was door broeders in een katholiek internaat. In 1956 komt Henk Heithuis, twintig jaar oud, terecht in Huize Padua, een door katholieke broeders geleide psychiatrische instelling in Boekel.

Homoseksueel
Heithuis, die tot dan toe in allerlei katholieke gestichten gewoond had, werd in 1956 in de door katholieken geleide psychiatrische inrichting Huize Padua in Boekel gedwongen opgenomen nadat hij broeders had beschuldigd van seksueel misbruik. Heithuis, zo beweerden de broeders, zou psychisch gestoord en homoseksueel zijn.

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NETHERLANDS
Radio Netherlands

Published on 19 March 2012

The health authorities in the predominantly Catholic provinces of Brabant and Limburg apparently knew that institutions for the mentally handicapped were involved in forcible castrations in the 1950s.

Regional newspaper De Limburger published a report on Monday based on minutes taken at board meetings during that period. Parents were reportedly never informed of the castrations – or at best only later.

The paper writes that representatives of the provincial health authorities regularly attended board meetings of the Limburg and Brabant Catholic psychiatric institutions. Castration was openly discussed. Minutes from these meetings show that, although adult patients had to give their permission for the procedure, in practice there was nothing voluntary about it.

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NEDERLAND
De Telegraaf

[met video]

RIJSWIJK – De inspectie voor de zwakzinnigenzorg wist dat instellingen in Brabant en Limburg in de jaren ’50 minderjarige patiënten castreerden. Dat schrijft de krant De Limburger maandag, op basis van notulen van vergaderingen uit die tijd. Ouders werden niet of pas achteraf ingelicht.

Tijdens vergaderingen van vertegenwoordigers van de Limburgse en Brabantse Katholieke psychiatrische inrichtingen schoof ook iemand van de inspectie aan. Er werd openlijk gesproken over castratie. Volgens De Limburger blijkt uit de verslagen dat hoewel meerderjarigen zelf toestemming moesten geven, er in de praktijk van vrijwilligheid weinig sprake was.

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UNITED STATES
Star-Ledger

By Star-Ledger Editorial Board

Ten years after Catholic bishops swore to clean up their act after decades of sexual abuse by priests and cover-ups by their leaders, the Catholic Church is proving that old habits die hard.

The New York Times reported last week that attorneys for the church have subpoenaed records from the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known to most people as SNAP, as part of sex abuse lawsuits in St. Louis and Kansas City. The subpoenas demand e-mail records and, in some cases, testimony — even though SNAP isn’t directly involved in the suits.

The church demanded 23 years of SNAP’s communication with victims, though the victim in the suit is only 19. They’ve wasted hundreds of hours of staff time and cost SNAP $50,000. Now, SNAP is begging lawyers to work pro bono.

William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, outlined the strategy to the Times: “SNAP is a menace to the Catholic Church,” he said. “There’s a growing consensus on the part of the bishops that they had better … buy some good lawyers and get tough.”

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MINNESOTA/INDIA
Lez Get Real

Posted by: Bridgette P. LaVictoire on March 18, 2012.

The Roman Catholic Church has been known to rather rapidly remove those who do things like get accused of stealing from the Church or speaking out against their hatred of LGBT peoples. Still, The Church hierarchy has no problems just letting things go when it comes to child sexual abuse. Father Joseph Jeyapual was not disciplined officially by the Church after he was accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Minnesota almost a decade ago, nor did they move to discipline him after he fled.

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WISCONSIN
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Meg Jones of the Journal Sentinel

March 18, 2012

A Catholic priest in Waukesha County is on temporary administrative leave after allegations of child sexual assault.

Father Mark Molling of St. Paul Parish in Genesee Depot was placed on leave while the Archdiocese of Milwaukee investigates an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor in the mid-1990s, according to an email sent by Archbishop Jerome Listecki.

In the email, Listecki writes that Molling denies the allegation. The allegations were reported to the Waukesha County district attorney’s office, which declined to file charges.

The Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests reports that Molling has worked as a resident chaplain at state juvenile corrections facility Ethan Allen School for Boys in Wales.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

March 19, 2012

By Amaris Elliott-Engel, The Legal Intelligencer /

The Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia said in a motion that it will not waive its own attorney-client privilege regarding 12 documents that Monsignor William J. Lynn wants to subpoena in the criminal case against him.

Monsignor Lynn, the archdiocese’s secretary for clergy from 1992 until 2004, is facing criminal charges, including endangering the welfare of children, on allegations that he failed to take sufficient action to protect children from sexually abusive priests.

During a hearing in January, attorneys for the archdiocese said that it might one day assert attorney-client privilege that can’t be waived, even if the monsignor waives his own attorney-client privilege.

That day came.

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INDIA/MINNESOTA
Christian Today

By: Babu Thomas

Monday, 19 March 2012

The Tamil Nadu police last week arrested a Christian priest who was wanted by Interpol for his alleged involvement in a child abuse case.

Rev Joseph Jeyapaul was arrested by Erode Superintendent of Police S Panneerselvam on Saturday.

The Catholic priest faces charges of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Minnesota, US.

The US police had handed over the case to the Interpol which obtained an arrest warrant against the priest and asked Tamil Nadu police to trace him.

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MINNESOTA
Fox 9

[with video]

A Catholic priest accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Minnesota nearly a decade ago will appear in a court in India now that Interpol has tracked him down.

Joseph Jeyapaul, 57, will be extradited back to Minnesota after his appearance in a New Delhi courtroom.

The victim says Jeyapaul attacked her while he was a priest at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Greenbush; however, he went to India before charges could be filed in 2005 and has been working there as a priest since.

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NEDERLAND
BN DeStem

DEN HAAG – De Tweede Kamer wil op korte termijn praten over berichten dat de rooms-katholieke kerk in de jaren 50 kinderen heeft gecastreerd. Dat heeft PvdA-Kamerlid Khadija Arib zaterdag gezegd.

Volgens haar willen de betrokken Kamerleden proberen op korte termijn een hoorzitting te houden met Wim Deetman, die een commissie leidde die seksueel misbruik binnen de kerk onderzocht.

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NEDERLAND
NOS

Geschokte reacties op het verhaal van een misbruikte jongen die gecastreerd werd vanwege homoseksueel gedrag. Slachtoffers van seksueel misbruik, bisschoppen en politici hebben allen met afgrijzen gereageerd.

Uit onderzoek van NRC Handelsblad bleek vandaag dat zeker één minderjarige jongen in de jaren 50 is gecastreerd na misbruik in een katholieke zorginstelling.

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MINNESOTA
Grand Forks Herald

By: Stephen J. Lee, Grand Forks Herald

Megan Peterson was home with family near Middle River, Minn., on spring break from college this weekend when she heard that the fugitive priest who she says sexually assaulted her when she was 14 was arrested Friday in India.

“I’m kind of in shock,” said Peterson, 22, today as she drove back to Winona (Minn.) State University where she’s majoring in studio art with a minor in child advocacy. “I just heard about it last night. It’s a big weight off my shoulders and I’m glad he’s away from kids and hopefully justice can be served.”

According to news sources in India, the Rev. Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul, 57, was arrested Friday there on charges out of Roseau County that he sexually assaulted two girls in 2004 and 2005 while he was priest of Blessed Sacrament parish in Greenbush, Minn.

Jeyapaul was a visiting priest from India and returned there before criminal charges were filed against him in state district court in Roseau in 2006. He’s been a fugitive since from justice here while still working as a priest there.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

Published: March 16, 2012

Rick Santorum’s prospects for re-election to the Senate were not rosy when friends and advisers urged him in 2005 not to risk making things worse.

Mr. Santorum, hurting politically in Pennsylvania because of his defense of the Iraq war and President George W. Bush, had written a book, “It Takes a Family.” It was a blistering attack on liberal “elites” and what he saw as their moral relativism as well as “radical feminists” who, he said, had devalued mothers who preferred staying home rather than going to work. …

The Casey campaign had stoked the flames. For example, after the sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church broke in Boston in 2002, Mr. Santorum had written on a Catholic Web site: “It is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.”

The comment was little-noticed at the time, but the Casey team unearthed it three years later and sent it to columnists, according to Saul Shorr, a top Casey strategist. It prompted Senator Edward M. Kennedy Jr., the Massachusetts Democrat, to demand that Mr. Santorum apologize. After Mr. Santorum refused, Mr. Kennedy took the rare step of upbraiding his colleague on the Senate floor, calling his remarks “irresponsible, insensitive and inexcusable.”

Mr. Santorum fired back.

“I don’t think Ted Kennedy lecturing me on the teachings of the church and how the church should handle these problems is something I’m going to take particularly seriously,” he said during a conference call with news media from Catholic organizations.

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UNITED STATES
Pope Crimes & Vatican Evils…

Paris Arrow

All roads lead to Rome…is ancient history in the 21st century. It’s for fanatic Catholics that All roads lead to Rome… but not New York’s roads and not Ireland’s roads. The vast and biggest USA state of New York and the country of Ireland neither lead to Rome nor to the Vatican. Ireland just shut down its Vatican Embassy in Rome and has refused to “invite” Benendict XVI to the International Eucharistic Congress in Ireland this June. Ireland also closed its embassy to East Timor and Iran but the major difference between these two countries and the Vatican is that, the Prime Minister of Ireland took time to address the Irish Parliament that “the Cloyne Report excavates the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism….the narcissism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day”

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ITALIA
IVG

Savona. Protesta silenziosa della Rete L’abuso di Savona durante la processione diretta al santuario di Nostra Signora della Misericordia organizzata per la festa patronale.

Alcuni attivisti dell’associazione antipedofilia, tra i quali il loro portavoce Francesco Zanardi, hanno indossato una t-shirt con le foto dei quattro presuli che si sono avvicendati a Savona e la scritta “Hai ancora il coraggio di lasciare i tuoi figli sotto la loro tutela?”.

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MINNESOTA
WCCO

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — A Minnesota priest accused of sexually assaulting two young girls is sitting in a jail, in India Sunday morning.

Fifty-seven-year-old Rev. Joseph Jeyapaul allegedly committed the crimes in the Diocese of Crookston in 2004.

According to the Times of India, he’s expected to appear in a New Delhi court Sunday.

Back in September, the Crookston Diocese agreed to pay $750,000 in a lawsuit settlement to a victim allegedly raped when she was 14 years old.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

Below, please find the statement from the Press Office of the Holy See regarding the recently concluded meetings betwee the Holy See and MONEYVAL – the Department of the Council of Europe which deals with the evaluation of systems adopted by member States to counter money-laundering.

********************

Within the framework of the active co-operation between the Holy See and MONEYVAL (the Department of the Council of Europe which deals with the evaluation of systems adopted by member States to counter money-laundering), meetings of a technical nature were held in the Vatican between 14 and 16 March 2012.

The meetings had been planned earlier, taking into account both the specific nature of the Holy See and of Vatican City State and the fact that this was the first evaluation of their respective legal systems. The meetings made it possible to continue gathering information on the steps taken thus far in the process of complying with international standards in the area of preventing and countering money-laundering and the financing of terrorism, such as the adoption of the Decree No. CLIX of 25 January 2012, replacing Law No. CXXVII of 30 December 2010, as well as the ratification of and adhesion to certain international Conventions pertinent to the question.

As on the occasion of the earlier meetings that took place in November 2011, the experts met representatives of the competent Authorities of the Holy See and of Vatican City State.

The present phase will lead to the drafting of a report which, as scheduled, will be examined by the Plenary Assembly of MONEYVAL next July.

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MEXICO
Courier Mail (Australia)

FROM the war on drug cartels in Mexico to reviving faith in Cuba, Pope Benedict XVI will address a series of burning issues in Latin America this week.

On his 23rd visit abroad and his first to Latin America, the pontiff will tackle the declining number of Catholics in the region, the rise of rival religious movements such as Pentecostalists and what the Church sees as the threat to family values.

The six-day program, starting in Mexico on Friday, takes into account the frailty of the aged pope, who will conduct both political meetings and religious rites focusing on the marian figures of Mexico’s Our Lady of Guadalupe and Cuba’s Our lady of Charity.

Benedict, 84, is likely to face criticism over the clerical abuse scandal and the Vatican’s management of Mexico’s most famous offender, Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legion of Christ, who was accused of molesting eight minors.

The Vatican has already ruled out a meeting with victims of paedophilia.

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VATICAN CITY
The Telegraph (United Kingdom)

The Pope has taken the unusual step of setting up an internal, criminal investigation to identify the source of damaging leaks of compromising Vatican documents.

By Nick Squires, Rome
1:50PM GMT 18 Mar 2012

The inquiry will seek to punish the insiders who leaked the papers, whom the Vatican hierarchy regard as “disloyal and cowardly”.

Pope Benedict XVI had been “hurt” by the leaks, said Archbishop Angelo Becciu, the Vatican’s deputy secretary of state and third most powerful Vatican figure, in an interview with L’Osservatore Romano, the city state’s daily newspaper.

Documents leaked to the Italian press over the last few weeks have shed light on dark power struggles between senior cardinals, alleged corruption and nepotism in the running of the Vatican administration, and a mysterious prediction that the 84-year-old pontiff would die within a year, possibly as a result of an assassination attempt.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Saarbrucker Zeitung

Köllerbach. Im Februar 2010 wurde der Trierer Bischof Stephan Ackermann zum Beauftragten der katholischen Kirche für sexuellen Missbrauch ernannt. Kurz darauf erhielt der damalige Pfarrer der Köllerbacher Herz-Jesu-Gemeinde, Johannes Ittmann, einen Anruf vom Bistum, in dem ihm mitgeteilt wurde, dass es auch im Bereich seiner Gemeinde Hinweise auf Missbrauch gebe. Man wolle die Sache aber aus dem Bistum heraushalten.

Ittmann und Pater Gorges von der traditionalistisch-katholischen Martinsgemeinde, die zu Ittmanns Gemeinde gehört, erhielten damals auch selbst Hin weise darauf, dass sich ein früherer Priester der Martinsgemeinde Ende der 90er Jahre an einem Mädchen vergangen haben soll. Derartige Vorwürfe gab es auch gegen einen Laien der Traditionalisten- Gemeinde. Ittmann erstattete deshalb im Mai 2010 Anzeige. Das Opfer bestätigte die Vorwürfe sowie Übergriffe eines weiteren Geistlichen auf ihren Bruder. Jedoch stellte die Staatsanwaltschaft das Verfahren wegen Verjährung ein.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Sueddeutsche

Ausgerechnet der katholische Missbrauchsbeauftragte Ackermann soll in seinem Bistum Trier Pädophile weiterhin als Seelsorger beschäftigen. Mindestens sieben auffällig gewordenen Priester seien dort tätig, so der “Spiegel”. Dabei hatte Ackermann zuvor eine Null-Toleranz-Linie gegenüber Tätern gefordert.

Der Missbrauchsbeauftragte der katholischen Deutschen Bischofkonferenz, der Trierer Bischof Stephan Ackermann, geht nach Recherchen des Spiegels in seinem eigenen Bistum nur zögerlich gegen Pädophile vor.

In seinem Bistum sind mindestens sieben als pädophil aufgefallene Pfarrer im Einsatz, so das Nachrichtenmagazin. Darunter ein Geistlicher, der als Lehrer in einem Internat sexuelle Beziehungen zu einem seiner Schüler unterhalten haben soll, und zwei wegen des Besitzes von Kinderpornografie verurteilte Priester.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Spiegel

Der Trierer Bischof Stephan Ackermann beschäftigt nach SPIEGEL-Informationen in seinem Bistum sieben als pädophil aufgefallene Pfarrer. Einer von ihnen soll sexuelle Beziehungen zu einem Schüler gehabt haben, zwei weitere sind wegen Besitzes von Kinderpornografie verurteilt.

Hamburg – Der Trierer Bischof Stephan Ackermann ist der Missbrauchsbeauftragte der Deutschen Bischofkonferenz und hatte in dieser Funktion eine “Null-Toleranz-Linie” gegenüber Sexualstraftätern gefordert. Nach SPIEGEL-Informationen verfährt er in der Praxis jedoch anders und beschäftigt Pädophile weiterhin als Seelsorger.

In seinem Bistum sind mindestens sieben als pädophil aufgefallene Pfarrer im Einsatz, darunter ein Geistlicher, der als Lehrer in einem Internat sexuelle Beziehungen zu einem seiner Schüler unterhalten haben soll, und zwei wegen des Besitzes von Kinderpornografie verurteilte Priester.

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UNITED STATES
Minnesota SNAP

By Vinnie Nauheimer

It is obvious to the most casual observer that jurist prudence was snapped by the decision to allow lawyers for the Catholic Church carte blanche to pilfer, pour over and ponder twenty three years of personal files in the hands of the survivor’s group known as SNAP. One has to ask just how blind justice is when an organization steeped the sexual abuse of children, the Roman Catholic Church, is allowed to compel the leading advocate group for survivors of clergy abuse to turn over confidential records unrelated to the case in question.

The Roman Catholic Church is an internationally recognized promoter of child abuse having multiple documented allegations of sexual abuse in over thirty countries around the world including its home base, Italy and its home city, Rome. The Roman Catholic Church was been found guilty of acts of genocide against Native American Children in Canada by an International Tribunal in 1998.1 In Ireland, they enslaved and abused children for years in workhouses.2 The European commission has accused the Vatican of money laundering.3 The NY Times recently reported that priests and nuns in Spain and Argentina were guilty of trafficking in babies and selling them for profit.4 That report generated a similar complaint out of Australia.5 Every grand jury convened in the United States to investigate clergy abuse and their equivalent in Ireland roundly criticized the church for their always abominable and in some cases, criminal behavior. In Germany, the largest Catholic publishing company, Weltbild, with 1.7 billion Euros in sales has been publishing pornographic novels for years. The biggest source of revenue is from what the owners of the publishing house, the bishops, call Erotic novels; others have called titles such as Sluts Boarding School and Lawyer’s Whore, porn.6

Based on the truths above, giving the lawyers for the Roman Catholic Church unfettered access to Snap files is the moral equivalent of giving the Mafia unlimited access to FBI files. It is simply unconscionable! Did the church take advantage of the hole created by an imprudent jurist? You bet they did. They opened a six-lane highway and lined it with dumpsters prepared to take away everything they could get away with. The proof is in the transcripts from Mr. Clohessy’s deposition. The church went back twenty-three years though the incident in question only happened recently. In six hours of deposition given by Mr. Clohessy, most of the questions had nothing to do with the case of Rev. Michael Tierney who is accused by four people of sexual abuse. The NY Times tells us, “most of the questions were not about the case but about the network — its budget, board of directors, staff members, donors and operating procedures.” Surely the jurist could have limited the scope of the deposition as has been done so many times to so many victims trying to depose church leaders.

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ROME
Vatican Insider

Members of the Ireland Stand Up movement, visiting Rome for St Patrick’s Day, re-issued their call to the Irish Government to re-open its Embassy to the Holy See and invite Pope Benedict XVI to visit the country

Gerard O’Connell
Rome

Standing in front of the former Irish Embassy to the Holy See in Rome on March 17, the feast of Saint Patrick, sixteen members of the dynamic Ireland Stand Up movement re-issued their call to the Dublin Government to re-open its embassy to the Holy See, reinstate a resident ambassador, and invite Pope Benedict to visit the country.

Led by Mary Fitzgibbon, these Irish lay men, women and children stood in front of the Villa Spada on the Janiculum Hill on the afternoon of Saint Patrick’s Day, to keep up the pressure on the Government. Ireland has had diplomatic relations with the Holy See since 1929 and the Villa Spada has been the seat of its embassy for the past 65 years until the Dublin Government decided to close it on 3 November 2011 for economic reasons, though many believe the rationale was more political than economic.

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CLEVELAND (OH)
The Plain Dealer

By Michael O’Malley, The Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Before a recent prayer service in a closed Catholic church in Holyoke, Mass., parishioner Victor Anop stood before 120 people and made an urgent announcement:

“The Vatican has ordered the bishop of Cleveland to reopen 13 closed churches.”

“Everybody broke into applause,” Anop said in a telephone interview last week. “People are still talking about it. What happened in Cleveland brings us hope.”

Catholics fighting church closings throughout the country are keeping their eyes on the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland, where Bishop Richard Lennon was formally notified by Vatican decrees on Wednesday that he did not properly follow church law and procedures on closing churches.

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AUSTRALIA
The Catholic Leader

Published: 11 March 2012
By: Paul Dobbyn

LAST year’s apology by Catholic Health Australia to single mothers, forced to adopt out their children over decades from the 1950s, still stands for all Catholic hospitals in the health care network, in the light of recent publicity on the issue.

It is expected no further apologies will be made.

CHA chief executive officer Martin Laverty in July issued an apology to those “who carry broken hearts as a result of the role that some Catholic organisations played in this widespread, common public policy practice of years past”.

The apology was issued during a Senate inquiry into past adoption practices in government and non-government institutions over three decades.

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AUSTRALIA
ciNews

[Commonwealth Contribution to Former Forced Adoption Policies and Practices]

Catholic Health Australia (CHA) has endorsed the call for a national apology for past adoption policies, including forced adoption that affected up to 150,000 children and mothers.

The Senate Inquiry report into past adoption policies and practices has proposed the national apology following its investigations which started on November 15 2010 and, because of the huge volume of submissions, extended its deadline to February 2012. Catholic Health Australia (CHA) was one of more than 400 organisations and individuals that made a submission to the inquiry.

CHA last year issued its own apology to those, “who carry broken hearts as a result of the role that some Catholic organisations played in this widespread, common public policy practice of years past.”

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NEDERLAND
de Gelderlander

BORCULO – In het Leo-Gesticht in Borculo kwam op veel grotere schaal seksueel misbruik voor dan blijkt uit het rapport van de commissie-Deetman, dat landelijk onderzoek deed naar seksueel misbruik binnen de katholieke kerk.

De conclusie dat het om dertig gevallen zou gaan, doet de omvang van het leed geen recht.

Dat zeggen de broers Gus en Benedict Schillemans (62 en 65 jaar oud).

Op de website van KLOKK (Koepel Landelijk Overleg Kerkelijk Kindermisbruik) plaatsten ze een oproep voor slachtoffers van seksueel misbruik op het Leo-Gesticht. “Er hebben zich bijna dertig personen gemeld en de laatste tijd komen er steeds meer bij.”

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TEXAS
Midland Reporter-Telegram

Staff Reports

A Midland man is being held on a $100,000 bond on a first-degree felony of aggravated sexual assault of a child in connection with an incident that occurred on the premises of St. Stephen’s Catholic Church last May, according to Tasa Watts, the city’s public information officer, and the Diocese of San Angelo.

William Jose Velasquez, 26, was arrested March 9 after the parish contacted police and said a young boy had been sexually assaulted, Watts said.

Velasquez is not an employee of the parish nor is he a member of the parish but he sometimes attends Mass there, said Mike Wyse, chancellor of the diocese.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

A fugitive Catholic priest accused of sexually assaulting two underage girls in northern Minnesota eight years ago has been arrested in India, a newspaper reported Saturday.

The Rev. Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul, 57, of Ariyalur, who allegedly committed the crimes in the Diocese of Crookston in 2004, will appear in a New Delhi court on Sunday, according to the Times of India.

“We are grateful to the police and prosecutors in Minnesota and elsewhere for getting this dangerous cleric behind bars,” said Barbara Dorris, a national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).

In September, the Crookston Diocese agreed to pay $750,000 in a lawsuit settlement to a victim allegedly raped when she was 14 years old. She said the attacks occurred when Jeyapaul was a parish priest at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Greenbush, Minn.

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INDIA
MSN News

Chennai: Catholic priest Rev Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul was arrested in Erode in Tamil Nadu on charges of molesting a child in the US when he was there during 2004, police said Saturday.

Acting on an alert by Interpol, Tamil Nadu police arrested Rev Jeyapaul, 57, Friday evening and presented him in a court in Erode which ordered that he be handed over to Interpol officials in New Delhi.

The Tamil Nadu police had traced Rev Jeyapaul to a church in Erode, around 335 km from here.

The priest, a fugitive from US law has been charged with molesting a 14-year-old girl in the US in 2004 when he was at a pastoral ministry at Roseau county of Crookston Diocese in Minnesota.

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HAVERHILL (MA)
Eagle-Tribune

By Paul Tennant ptennant@eagletribune.com

HAVERHILL — The Rev. Robert Conole will not be returning to his post as pastor of Sacred Hearts Church in Bradford.

Conole’s resignation has been accepted by Cardinal Sean O’Malley, archbishop of Boston. He was investigated by the Archdiocese of Boston for “serious adult-related misconduct,” according to a statement read by the Very Rev. Arthur Coyle, episcopal vicar for the Merrimack Valley Region, during weekend Masses at Sacred Hearts.

“I feel bad for Father Conole,” said John Cartier, an active and longtime parishioner at Sacred Hearts. “I am not going to pass judgment on anybody.”

As difficult as Conole’s resignation is, Cartier said he and other parishioners need to “move forward.” The Rev. John Delaney, currently pastor of St. Michael Church in North Andover, will become the new pastor of Sacred Hearts on April 11.

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UNITED STATES
AlterNet

Joey Piscitelli

Just when I was absolutely sure that I had heard every bizarre story that could possibly emanate from the Vatican, the Catholic hierarchy blows my mind again. The latest antic that arguably may validate the alleged escalation of the ludicrous conduct of the kingpin of the catholic church, Mr. Ratzinger, aka- Pope Benedict- has surfaced. The Pope, who has actually been accused several times of shuffling and covering up for clergy molesters and rapists himself, is commissioning a new perfume scent; while tens of thousands of rape victims in his molestation inundated empire are suffering globally from the life long after-effects of the criminal conduct of thousands of his “employees.”

Although I have given up looking for a rational explanation of why the countless atrocities against innocent children by professed catholic “men of god” have occurred for centuries, I was still under the impression that justice will eventually find it’s way to the forefront, and bombard the mammoth molestation empire as a result of an atomic explosion of deserved Karma.

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TEXAS
American-Statesman

By Eric Dexheimer
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Karen Jonson first appeared in the American-Statesman’s pages in September 2008, but not in a way recognizable to readers. She was one of five anonymous women I profiled who said they had been groped or pressured for sex by Prakashanand Saraswati and Kripalu Maharaj, the spiritual leaders of the Barsana Dham Hindu temple south of Austin.

The story was a continuation of our coverage of Prakashanand, who six months earlier had been arrested while getting off a plane in Washington, D.C., and charged with 20 counts of indecency with a child. The charges were based on the recollections of two young women who said they’d been molested by Prakashanand as teenagers while growing up on Barsana Dham in the 1990s.

While reporting that story, I tapped into a nascent network of ex-members who said the girls weren’t the only ones who’d been subjected to sexual advances from gurus while living at the ashram — five adult women had, too. Jonson, one of those women, eventually became one of my primary contacts, putting me in touch with former devotees and describing details of life at the ashram, where she had lived and worshiped for 15 years.

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WISCONSIN
SNAP Wisconsin

Archdiocese removes priest from ministry due to report of sexual assault of a minor
Fr. Mark Molling is pastor of St. Paul Parish in Genesee Depot

Statement by John Pilmaier, SNAP Wisconsin Director
CONTACT: 414.336.8575

In an e-mail message today (see below), Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki announced that Fr. Mark Molling, pastor of St. Paul Parish in Genesee Depot, was being removed from ministry this weekend due to a report of sexual assaulting a minor. Listecki states that the report was obtained through the Chapter 11 bankruptcy claims process and that the diocesan review board will investigate the matter. The alleged offense or offenses occurred in the mid 1990’s and appear to be time barred from prosecution under the old criminal statues for child sex abuse. Molling has worked in the Wisconsin Juvenile Corrections Division as resident chaplain at Ethan Allen School for Boys in Wales.

A total of 570 victim claims have been filed with the Federal Bankruptcy Court, each claim being a criminal report of sexual abuse. Molling appears to be one of the at least 100 unidentified sexual offenders who committed at least 8,000 instances of sexual abuse against children in the archdiocese, as was reported in bankruptcy court last month. Why Molling was removed from ministry while other alleged offenders named in the bankruptcy reports have not, remains unclear. In the past, sometimes the archbishop removes a priest from ministry before a determination is made by the DA on the criminal statute, sometimes not.

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OHIO
News-Herald

By Rachel Jackson
RJackson@News-Herald.com
@nh_rachel

From Irish wolfhounds to Irish step-dancing, Irish songs and Irish legends, Northeast Ohio’s Hibernian heritage was celebrated throughout the region Saturday.

Organizers of Cleveland’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade had forecast record turnout for the event, which at age 145 is the oldest such parade in the area. …

Catholic schools and churches also had a strong presence, with many of the church representatives carrying signs of support for the closed parishes. The Vatican recently reversed a 2010 order from the Cleveland Diocese that had closed a number of area churches.

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CLEVELAND (OH)
Myrtle Beach Sun

By RALPH VARTABEDIAN – Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — When groups of ethnic Polish, Slovene, Slovak and Hungarian Catholics in Cleveland began protesting orders by their local bishop that closed their churches, they were given little chance of reversing the decision.

The churches were shuttered in a massive retrenchment of Cleveland’s urban core in 2010, striking at the Slavic and other ethnic European congregations that were founded by waves of immigrants from the wars and humanitarian catastrophes over the last century. The parishes claimed that Bishop Richard Lennon, head of the Cleveland diocese, had begun an attack on the ethnic churches.

But after two years of sidewalk vigils, letter-writing campaigns and legal action at the Vatican, the parishioners appear to have won a historic victory against their local diocese. A Vatican court, the Congregation of the Clergy, has ordered as many as 13 of the shuttered churches reopened.

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ARKANSAS
San Antonio Express-News

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — A Pulaski County Circuit Court judge has declined to dismiss a Fayetteville woman’s lawsuit against the Diocese of Little Rock that alleges a Catholic priest manipulated her into a sexual relationship.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (http://bit.ly/FSufLk) reported in Saturday’s editions that Judge Wendell Griffen ruled there was no merit to claims by the diocese and Bishop Anthony Taylor that Shannon Oates’ lawsuit violates the religious protections guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Oates alleges she and Charles Kanu had a relationship and that church officials knew of should have known about it. The church argues that any injuries Oates suffered were partially brought on by her own actions and that Kanu should be a defendant in the lawsuit.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

I’ve blogged a number of times recently about what seems to me a crucially important question: how do those Catholics who remain with the church, and how do the pastoral leaders of the church, intend to deal with the ever-increasing phenomenon of disaffiliation of American Catholics from the Catholic church–or, as some folks now put it, of “deconversion” from the Catholic church? My recent reflections on this important issue are here and here.

As I’ve noted repeatedly on this blog (and so I won’t rehearse this matter at length or provide links now–this research is easy to find on this blog and in many other places), as of 2004, Pew Foundation data indicated that one in three American adults who had been raised Catholic has left the Catholic church, and one in ten American adults is now a former Catholic. As commentators have noted, if all those former Catholics constituted a denomination, that denomination would be the second largest Christian denomination in the U.S.

I am not aware of similar studies since 2004. My intuition is that the numbers have grown–even considerably–since 2004. My intuition is that they may well be growing larger right now due to the outrageous partisan political behavior of the U.S. Catholic bishops in recent weeks, their attack on the human rights of gay and lesbian persons, their attacks on the healthcare needs of women, etc.

And my intuition is that the number of Catholics walking away may also be increasing due to the complicity of influential “liberal” Catholic centrist media and academic commentators with the bishops in their recent immoral actions in the public square. For my own part, I can say I’m very much alienated by those centrist fellow Catholics who continue to provide cover for the bishops in their immoral actions.

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INDIA
The Times of India

COIMBATORE: A catholic priest, who was arrested on Friday night at Erode on charges of sexually abusing two minor girls in the US, will be produced before the additional chief metropolitan magistrate at Patiala House in New Delhi on Sunday.

The priest, J Jayapaul alias Joseph Palanivel, 57, of Ariyalur, is accused of sexually assaulting two minor girls at Northern Minnesota in 2004. He was charged in a US court in 2007. But by 2005, Jayapaul had returned to India to be with his ailing mother.

The Interpol had approached the additional chief metropolitan magistrate court in New Delhi to secure the priest. The court sent a warrant to the Erode police to arrest the priest on the basis of which police arrested the Jayapaul on Friday.

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ARIZONA
The Arizona Republic

by Michael Clancy – Mar. 17, 2012
The Republic | azcentral.com.

David Michael Pain Jr. was laid to rest in early December, during a small service at St. Francis Cemetery in Phoenix, nearly 18 months after he died. His father, David Sr., said he remembers his son with the help of Scripture — a prodigal son, a lost sheep, a sinner Christ came to save.

The older man, who goes by the name Michael, told those gathered at the service that he finds solace in those Gospel passages when he thinks of his son. He believes David’s chance at a good life — or, for that matter, a life at all — was lost 25 years earlier when he was allegedly sexually abused, at age 13, by a Catholic priest.

Michael Pain reported the abuse to the Phoenix Diocese within weeks of his son’s death. After a 10-month investigation that deemed the report credible, the diocese suspended the Rev. John “Jack” Spaulding last June from his position as pastor of St. Timothy Catholic Church in Mesa and sent the case — along with three more that surfaced since Pain’s report — to the Vatican in Rome to determine the priest’s future.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Courthouse News Service

By JOE HARRIS

ST. LOUIS (CN) – A state judge ruled for St. Stanislaus Kostka Catholic church, settling a decade-long dispute with the St. Louis Archdiocese over the historic church’s money and property.

St. Louis Circuit Judge Bryan Hettenbach on Thursday granted St. Stanislaus control of its assets and property. The ruling settles a 10-year dispute that often turned ugly, culminating in a 2-week trial the ended more than a year ago.

Central to the case is a 19th century agreement that allowed the parish to govern its own finances. In September 2001, the church’s board amended its bylaws for the first time since 1891, removing from the archbishop the power to fire the pastor or appoint board members.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

BY TIM TOWNSEND • ttownsend@post-dispatch.com > 314-340-8221 | Posted: Friday, March 16, 2012

In between taking phone calls from reporters Thursday, the Rev. Marek Bozek paged through a huge Bible in the sacristy of St. Stanislaus Kostka Catholic Church, looking for the perfect readings for a Mass of Thanksgiving.

The Mass was to be held later in the evening in response to a sweeping — and shocking, according to church-state scholars — legal victory over the Archdiocese of St. Louis. The ruling, by St. Louis Circuit Judge Bryan Hettenbach, affirmed St. Stanislaus’ ownership of its property and its right to craft bylaws that limit the authority of the Roman Catholic Church over the small Polish congregation.

Because the church’s impromptu Mass would be celebrated by Bozek (whom the Roman Catholic church doesn’t consider a priest) in the sanctuary of St. Stanislaus (which the archdiocese doesn’t consider a Catholic parish), it would not be a Mass, at least as defined by the Catholic Church.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

St. Stanislaus ruling stirs hot debate; Carlson vows fight to Supreme Court

[Timeline of the St. Stanislaus dispute]

BY TIM TOWNSEND ttownsend@post-dispatch.com > 314-340-8221 | Posted: Saturday, March 17, 2012

Judge Bryan Hettenbach’s courtroom was quiet Thursday morning as a clerk handed out copies of the judge’s decision in an agonizing legal dispute between the Archdiocese of St. Louis and St. Stanislaus Kostka Catholic Church.

Among the handful of lawyers present were Winston Calvert, representing St. Stanislaus, and Bernard Huger, counsel for the archdiocese.

They’d been here 415 days earlier when the two-week trial ended. Now, at separate tables, they flipped to the final paragraphs of the 50-page decision.

One phrase repeatedly jumped out, in count after count: “Judgment is entered in favor of Defendant Polish Roman Catholic St. Stanislaus Parish.”

After a minute, Calvert, expressionless, stood and approached Huger. The two men shook hands.

“Looks like you won,” Huger said.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
The New York Times

By MALCOLM GAY

Published: March 17, 2012

ST. LOUIS — A decadelong dispute between the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis and a local Polish parish has taken a big step forward with a state judge’s ruling that the parish has rightful control of its assets and property.

In a 50-page decision, the judge, Bryan Hettenbach of St. Louis Circuit Court, sided with St. Stanislaus Kostka Church, finding that the archdiocese had no legitimate ownership claim on the parish.

“The archbishop may own the souls of wayward St. Stanislaus parishioners, but the St. Stanislaus Parish Corporation owns its own property,” Judge Hettenbach wrote in a decision he delivered last week that sided with the parish on all but two of the case’s 12 questions.

The ruling came after nearly four years of litigation in which the archdiocese sued the St. Stanislaus Parish Corporation for control.

“We got really the best,” said the Rev. Marek Bozek, 37, who took to Facebook and Twitter upon hearing the news. “The archdiocese was asking for a drastic change to the status quo. But we were asking that the status quo be upheld and be made legal for perpetuity. There is not one change in our status quo as a result of the ruling. The change is that it’s been vindicated and validated.”

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INDIA
The Asian Age

A Christian priest wanted by Interpol for his alleged involvement in a child abuse case registered in the US has been arrested near here, police said on Saturday.

Rev Jeyapaul alias Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul, 57, served as a priest in a church in Udhagamandalam before 2004 when he left for a church in Thief River Falls and then to Greenbush in Minnesota in the United States where he was entrusted to take care of children, police sources said.

In 2004, he was charged with allegedly molesting a 14-year old girl at his church under the diocese of Crookston, Minnesota.

Though a suit in this regard was registered in the Roseau County Court in US, Jeyapaul returned to India in 2005.

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INDIA
TwoCircles

By IANS,

Chennai : Catholic priest Rev Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul was arrested in Erode in Tamil Nadu on charges of molesting a child in the US when he was there during 2004, police said Saturday.

Acting on an alert by Interpol, Tamil Nadu police arrested Rev Jeyapaul, 57, Friday evening and presented him in a court in Erode which ordered that he be handed over to Interpol officials in New Delhi.

The Tamil Nadu police had traced Rev Jeyapaul to a church in Erode, around 335 km from here.

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INDIA
Hindustan Times

A Christian priest wanted by the Interpol for allegedly raping a minor girl in the US eight years ago has been arrested in Erode district, around 450km from here, the police said on Saturday.

Rev Jeyapaul alias Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul, 57, was charged by US authorities with raping a 14-year-old girl in 2004 when he was engaged in pastoral duties at a church under the diocese of Crookston, Minnesota. His responsibilities there included taking care of children, police sources said.

A suit in this regard had also been registered in the Roseau County Court. However, Jeyapaul managed to flee from the US in 2005 and has since then maintained a low profile serving at far-flung churches in Tamil Nadu.

The US police then handed over the case to the Interpol, which obtained an arrest warrant against the priest and asked Tamil Nadu police to trace him.

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VATIKAN
NZZ (Schweiz)

In den vergangenen Monaten waren aus dem Vatikan immer wieder vertrauliche Dokumente an die Medien durchgesickert. Jetzt soll das Leck gefunden werden. Dafür hat der Papst umfangreiche Ermittlungen auf allen Ebenen des Kirchenstaates angestossen.

(sda/dpa) Im Zusammenhang mit der Weitergabe vertraulicher Informationen an die Medien hat der Vatikan umfangreiche Ermittlungen auf allen Ebenen des Heiligen Stuhls eingeleitet. Das berichtete das Kirchenblatt «L’Osservatore Romano» am Samstag auf seiner Internetseite.

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NIEDERLANDE
Financial Times

Die Vorfälle aus den 50er Jahren kommen erst jetzt ans Licht. Einem Zeitungsbericht zufolge wurden die Kastrationen mit homosexuellen Neigungen der Kinder begründet. Sie waren zuvor von Kirchenangehörigen missbraucht worden.

Die katholische Kirche der Niederlande hat einem Medienbericht zufolge in der 1950er Jahren mehrere Jungen kastrieren lassen, um deren angebliche homosexuellen Neigungen “zu heilen”. Die Zeitung “NRC Handelsblad” schreibt, es gebe mindestens zehn Fälle dieser Art. Betroffen waren dem Bericht zufolge Minderjährige, die zuvor in katholischen Schulen und Internaten von Kirchenangehörigen sexuell missbraucht wurden. Die chirurgischen Eingriffe seien in kirchengeführten psychiatrischen Kliniken vorgenommen und mit dem Ziel begründet worden, die Kinder “von ihrer Krankheit zu befreien”.

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NETHERLANDS
Radio Netherlands

The national organisation of clerical child sex abuse victims (KLOKK) is calling for a parliamentary inquiry into allegations that young boys were castrated in Dutch Roman Catholic psychiatric wards in the 1950s.

KLOKK chairman Guid Klabbers said the news, revealed on Friday by Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad, showed that the Deetman Commission had failed to uncover all abuses: “We’ve had many grave rape cases, but this is even worse. This is a case of extreme abuse of power and perverse pleasure in wielding power. Sheer horror.” He spoke of crimes against humanity.

The latest revelations, Mr Klabbers added, raise many questions. “It suggests there remain facts that have yet to be revealed. That´s not right. Any lingering doubt must be removed.”

Parliament is to devote a session to the matter next week. Wim Deetman, who led the independent inquiry into clerical child sex abuse, is expected to be questioned during the hearing. For the past two years, parliament has been debating whether to launch its own investigation into the scandal.

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STOCKTON (CA)
Lodi News-Sentinel

By Ross Farrow/News-Sentinel Staff Writer

Two of the highest-ranking officials from the Stockton Catholic Diocese — Vicar General Monsignor Richard Ryan and Chancellor Barbara Thiella — took the witness stand Friday as the third week of Father Michael Kelly’s civil trial came to a close.

Kelly, pastor of St. Joachim’s Catholic Church in Lockeford for the past eight years, was tentatively scheduled to defend himself in the lawsuit filed by a former altar boy, but it appears that Kelly won’t testify until at least Tuesday.

While being questioned by the plaintiff’s attorney, John Manly, Ryan said he would consider a priest tickling children to be “inappropriate,” depending on the circumstances. Several witnesses in the civil trial said that Kelly tickled children aggressively, though some of them said they didn’t see anything sexual about it.

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NEDERLAND
Omroep Gelderland

[mit video]

HARREVELD – Een jongen die in de jaren vijftig klaagde over misbruik in een katholiek jongensinternaat in Harreveld, is later gecastreerd. Dat schrijft NRC Handelsblad.

Volgens zijn pleegfamilie trof mogelijk meer jongens dat lot. Ze moesten door castratie van hun “homoseksuele gedrag” afgeholpen worden.

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NEDERLAND
Trouw

Anders dan beloofd, gebruikt de rk kerk toch de verjaring van misbruik om niet te hoeven uitkeren, zegt letselschade-expert Fokko Oldenhuis, bijzonder hoogleraar religie en recht aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (RUG). Hij uitte scherpe kritiek op kardinaal Eijk, in een column op de website van de RUG.

Klopt dat wel, dat de kerk zich toch op verjaring beroept? In de zaak van de Puttense pastoor heeft kardinaal Eijk zijn hulpbisschop toch naar het getuigenverhoor gestuurd.

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NEDERLAND
Dagblad Noorden

DEN HAAG – De commissie-Deetman die onderzoek deed naar seksueel misbruik in de Rooms-Katholieke kerk, heeft geen aanknopingspunten gevonden voor verder onderzoek naar de vermeende castratie van kinderen in de jaren vijftig. Een melder, NN1 genoemd, had ontucht met en castratie van weeskinderen gemeld bij de commissie.

In een van de gevallen zou het volgens NRC-journalist Joep Dohmen gaan om een kind dat in het katholieke jongensinternaat Harreveld in Gelderland in de jaren ’50 was misbruikt en later zou zijn gecastreerd. Ook andere kinderen zouden behandeld zijn om ,,hen af te helpen van hun homoseksuele gedrag”.

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UNITED STATES
Pope Crimes & Vatican Evils…

Paris Arrow

Updated March 17, 2012 feast of St. Patrick of Ireland

Today is the feast of Ireland’s greatest saint St. Patrick who had a very famous ‘breastplate’ prayer:

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise…

Because the mile long writings of John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger are now being cited in every Sunday homilies (but St. Patrick is cited only once each year), today’s boys and girls are better off to pray the JP2 Army prayer to protect them, similar to St. Patrick’s prayer but more effective, like this

JP2 Army with me, JP2 Army before me, JP2 Army behind me,
JP2 Army in me, JP2 Army beneath me, JP2 Army above me,
JP2 Army on my right, JP2 Army on my left,
JP2 Army when I lie down, JP2 Army when I sit down, JP2 Army when I arise…

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NEDERLAND
ED

DEN HAAG – Een jongen van 20 jaar die eerder seksueel was misbruikt is in 1956 gecastreerd in het St. Josephziekenhuis (nu Bernhoven) in Veghel. Hij woonde in psychiatrische inrichting Huize Padua in Boekel.

Journalist Joep Dohmen van NRC Handelsblad, dat zaterdag de geschiedenis publiceerde van de in 1958 overleden Henk Heithuis, stelt dat in de jaren vijftig meer jongens werden gecastreerd om hen ‘af te helpen’ van homoseksueel gedrag. Er zijn verder geen namen bekend.

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NEDERLAND
NRC Handelsblad

door Joep Dohmen

Een parlementair onderzoek naar het kindermisbruik binnen de Rooms-Katholieke Kerk komt naderbij na de onthullingen vanmorgen in NRC Handelsblad over castraties van minderjarige jongens binnen de Kerk. De Tweede Kamer houdt volgende week een hoorzitting.

Uit onderzoek van de krant blijkt dat een melding over de castratie van tenminste een, en mogelijk meer minderjarige jongens, niet is uitgezocht door Deetman. Hij maakt hier ook geen melding van in zijn eindrapport. Ook gevoelige informatie over een hoge katholieke politicus, de latere premier Vic Marijnen, bleef uit het rapport.

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NEDERLAND
RTL

Binnen de rooms-katholieke kerk zijn in de jaren 50 minderjarige jongens gecastreerd om ze van hun homoseksuele gedrag ‘af te helpen’. Dat schrijft NRC Handelsblad. Eén van de slachtoffers was seksueel misbruikt door broeders in een internaat.

Volgens de krant zijn er aanwijzingen voor elf castraties. In een van de gevallen ging het om een misbruikslachtoffer uit een katholiek jongensinternaat in Harreveld dat in 1956 aangifte deed bij de politie. Na zijn getuigenis werd hij door de politie naar de katholieke psychiatrische inrichting Huize Padua in Boekel gebracht. Daar werd hij gecastreerd vanwege zijn homoseksuele gedrag.

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NEDERLAND
Radio Nederland

Op afdelingen psychiatrie van Nederlandse rooms-katholieke ziekenhuizen zijn in de jaren vijftig minderjarige slachtoffers van seksueel misbruik gecastreerd. Dat meldt NRC Handelsblad.

De castratie werd uitgevoerd bij verondersteld homoseksuele jongens, maar ook bij kinderen die aan de bel hadden getrokken over het misbruik, zo schrijft de krant. De NRC heeft bewijs dat zeker één jongen is gecastreerd en beschikt over sterke aanwijzingen dat zeker tien andere misbruikslachtoffers dezelfde behandeling ondergingen. Het bewijsmateriaal omvat onder meer rechtbank- en medische dossiers, brieven van advocaten en privé-documenten.

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NEW YORK
Albany Times Union

SCHENECTADY — Archbishop Harry J. Flynn, a native of the Albany Diocese, will speak on prayer and forgiveness at a deanery-wide mission this week at St. Paul the Apostle Church in Schenectady.

“It was always a joy to be a priest in the Albany Diocese,” Flynn told The Evangelist.

Flynn grew up in the former St. Columba’s parish and school in Schenectady and graduated from Siena College. Ordained in 1960, Archbishop Flynn taught at Catholic Central High School in Troy while serving at St. Peter’s parish in Troy. He retired in 2008 after as the spiritual leader of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis.

Flynn received national accolades for his leadership in investigating sexual abuse by the clergy. In 2002, he was appointed chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Sexual Abuse. He played a central role when the bishops met in Dallas that year, adopting a “zero-tolerance” policy for sexual abuse.

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INDIA
Deccan Herald

A Christian priest wanted by Interpol for his alleged involvement in a child abuse case registered in the US has been arrested near here, police said today.

Rev Jeyapaul alias Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul, 57, served as a priest in a church in Udhagamandalam before 2004 when he left for a church in Thief River Falls and then to Greenbush in Minnesota in the United States where he was entrusted to take care of children, police sources said.

In 2004, he was charged with allegedly molesting a 14-year old girl at his church under the diocese of Crookston, Minnesota.

Though a suit in this regard was registered in the Roseau County Court in US, Jeyapaul returned to India in 2005.

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LORAIN (OH)
Chronicle-Telegram

Filed by Brad Dicken March 17th, 2012

LORAIN — The former St. Mary Church has won its appeal of a decision by the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland to merge the church with the now-shuttered Holy Trinity Church.

St. Mary and Holy Trinity parishes officially were closed in 2009 and merged into the new Mary, Mother of God Parish, which congregates at the former St. Mary location.

The decision to merge the parishes was part of an effort by Bishop Richard Lennon to streamline the diocese. That led to opposition by Roman Catholics in the eight-county area served by the diocese and several parishes that were closed appealed to the Vatican, which has overturned more than a dozen of the 50 closures or mergers imposed by Lennon.

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CLEVELAND (OH)
WOIO

[with video]

The Cleveland Catholic Diocese will be kicking off their Annual Catholic Charities campaign, hoping to raise $10.5 million dollars to help hundreds of thousands of people across eight counties.

During the announcement, nobody would address the elephant in the room, the Vatican overruling Bishop Lennon’s decision to close 13 area churches.

The diocese shuttered churches because of finances.

19 Action News has been told the closing of parishes has not affected Catholic charities fundraising in the past few years, thanks to area Catholics’ “desire to help their neighbors.”

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NEDERLAND
NRC Handelsblad

door Joep Dohmen

Binnen de Rooms-Katholieke Kerk zijn in de jaren vijftig minderjarige jongens gecastreerd. Daarmee moesten ze van hun “homoseksuele gedrag” afgeholpen worden. In zeker één geval betreft het een jongen die seksueel misbruikt was door broeders in een katholiek internaat. Dat blijkt uit onderzoek van NRC Handelsblad. Daarbij zijn aanwijzingen gevonden voor nog eens tien gevallen.

De commissie-Deetman, die in opdracht van de Rooms-Katholieke Kerk het kindermisbruik binnen de Kerk onderzocht, werd over de castraties schriftelijk geïnformeerd, maar vermeldde het niet in haar eindrapport. Volgens de commissie bevatte de melding “onderzoekstechnisch weinig aanknopingspunten voor verder onderzoek”. De melder zou ook gevraagd zijn te bellen met de commissie, maar hij deed dat niet. Melder Cornelius Rogge (79) zegt dat verzoek niet te hebben ontvangen. Waarom de commissie Rogge niet gebeld heeft, is onduidelijk.

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ILLINOIS
Chicago Tribune

By Manya A. Brachear, Chicago Tribune reporter

March 18, 2012
The issue of religious freedom, raised by all four Republican candidates but identified most strongly with Rick Santorum, finds an interested audience as the contest reaches Illinois. …

And Santorum’s conservative Catholic positions have not sat well with Catholics who are less traditional. Studies show that the vast majority of Catholic women have used birth control, and Santorum’s stance against contraceptives has alienated some Catholic women.

He also faced criticism in 2003 when he delivered the keynote address at a Youth and Family Encounter in Chicago sponsored by Legions of Christ, a conservative Catholic order of priests. The group was founded by the Rev. Marcial Maciel, who at the time of the Chicago rally faced sexual abuse allegations. Maciel died in 2008.

“Santorum is a Catholic who is very aligned with church teachings and positions on issues. Unfortunately, I’m not sure the average Catholic is these days or they’re indifferent about a lot of things” said Jim Fair, a spokesman for the Legion of Christ who helped organize the rally that year.

As a religious organization, Legionnaires don’t endorse candidates. But Fair is not surprised that many Catholic voters don’t support the Catholic candidate.

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BOULDER HILL (IL)
Patch

By Andre Salles

A Boulder Hill man faces more charges of criminal sexual abuse and sexual assault after a second teenage victim was identified, according to Kendall County State’s Attorney Eric Weis.

Kevin Freeman, 27, of the 0-99 block of Shermead Road in Boulder Hill, was charged Friday with two counts of criminal sexual assault and six counts of criminal sexual abuse, Kendall County Sheriff’s deputies said. These charges stem from multiple incidents that occurred over a three-month period while Freeman was serving as a youth leader at a local church, Weis said.

Weis confirmed that the new charges concern a different victim than the first charge of aggravated criminal sexual abuse Oswego police brought against Freeman late last month. The second victim, like the first, is between 13 and 17 years old, Weis said.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

By John P. Martin
Inquirer Staff Writer

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia on Friday suspended its top lawyer, less than two weeks before a trial that could shine a spotlight on the role he and other church lawyers played in the handling of decades of child-sex-abuse allegations.

In an e-mail to employees and pastors, archdiocesan officials said general counsel Timothy R. Coyne was placed on administrative leave but did not say why.

Coyne could not be reached late Friday. Representatives for Archbishop Charles J. Chaput declined to comment.

“This is a personnel issue, and we won’t be discussing it publicly,” spokesman Kenneth Gavin said.

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NETHERLANDS
Radio Netherlands

Underage sexual abuse victims were castrated in Dutch Roman Catholic psychiatric wards in the 1950s, according to the Rotterdam-based newspaper NRC Handelsblad.

Castration was performed on young men who were thought to be homosexual, but also as a means of punishing those who blew the whistle on abusers, the paper quotes sources as saying.

NRC discovered proof of the forced castration of one young man and strong evidence that at least ten other abuse victims were subjected to the removal of their testicles. The proof includes court documents, medical records, letters from lawyers and private correspondence.

According to the paper, the practice was reported in 2010 to the Deetman Commission which completed its investigation of sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic church last December. The commission, led by former cabinet minister Wim Deetman of the Christian Democrat party (CDA), made no mention of the castration of abuse victims in its final report.

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UNITED STATES/UGANDA
San Luis Obispo Tribune

By The Associated Press

In a March 14 story about a lawsuit alleging a pastor incited persecution of gay people in Uganda, The Associated Press erroneously reported the name of the group that filed the lawsuit. The organization is called Sexual Minorities Uganda, not Sexual Ministries Uganda.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel

A Milwaukee-area priest who was restricted from ministry for sexually abusing a child in the 1960s has died, and victim advocates are objecting to his being buried in his priestly vestments.

“This is absolutely outrageous,” Peter Isely of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests said of the funeral Thursday for Jerome E. Lanser, 79.

“Here’s a man who violated everything the priesthood stands for,” and he is being buried “in full uniform,” he said.

SNAP on Friday delivered a letter to Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki asking him to cease allowing sexual abusers to be buried with full priestly honors.

“To do so dishonors all priests who have served the church with selfless and upright conduct,” it says.

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FLORIDA
News-Press

Sin just isn’t the same anymore for many Catholics. The threat of damnation doesn’t seem to pack the same punch it used to.

The Catholic faithful have been deserting the confessional in droves. The most recent statistics show that, during the past few decades, the practice of confessing your sins to a priest has plunged to the point where 75 percent of Catholics say they never go to confession, or do so fewer than once a year.

The Diocese of Venice is pushing to remedy that. It has launched the “Light is On” campaign to bring members back to the confession booth during Lent, the 40 days of spiritual reflection and repentance before the celebration of the resurrection of Christ on Easter Sunday. …

Venuti’s practice of going to Mass but not confession would appear to dispute that theory. Venuti said he also has another reason for bypassing confession: reports of sexual abuse by priests.

“I don’t need to go to some guy who may be a bigger sinner than I,“ Venuti said. “I will not go to confession, especially in light of all the immorality that has taken place and making headlines and everything else.”

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UNITED STATES
Religion Dispatches

By Kathryn Joyce

In October, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), the oldest, largest and most visible peer counseling group for victims of clergy sex abuse in any denomination, received a subpoena from a Kansas City, Missouri, priest being prosecuted for sexually abusing an older male victim SNAP has never met. The subpoena demanded a sweeping range of documents and correspondence concerning thousands of the estimated 100,000-plus people SNAP has counseled over two decades.

In December, the group received a second subpoena from the other side of the state, from the Archdiocese of St. Louis, facing its own charges concerning the alleged abuse of a 19-year-old woman. SNAP has fought the requests, citing Missouri laws protecting the privacy of rape survivors, and describing the records-request as a coordinated Church effort to bully sex abuse victims into silence and harass a long-time opponent into bankruptcy.

While the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has denied that there is a national strategy for the Church to fight sex abuse cases more aggressively, even the Church’s staunchest defenders see the pattern. As William Donohue, the pugilistic president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, told the New York Times this week, bishops are going after SNAP because “SNAP is a menace to the Catholic Church.”

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NEDERLAND
Arena

Tijdens muzieklessen OBK Ravenstein en St. Hubertus Herpen 1958-1970

RAVENSTEIN/HERPEN – Een speciale commissie onder leiding van oud-minister Wim Deetman concludeerde drie maanden geleden dat in de periode 1945-1981 – met medeweten van de bisdommen – tussen de 10.000 en 20.000 kinderen slachtoffer zijn geworden van seksueel misbruik binnen de katholieke kerk. Ook in Ravenstein en Herpen heeft het misbruikschandaal diepe sporen achtergelaten, zo blijkt uit een oproep die een oud-inwoner van Ravenstein vorige week liet plaatsen op de website van de stichting KLOKK (Koepel Landelijk Overleg Kerkelijk Kindermisbruik). De 62-jarige man zegt tussen 1960 en 1965 in Ravenstein en Herpen ‘zeer zwaar seksueel misbruikt’ te zijn door rector Adrianus Verhoof. Samen met de slachtofferorganisatie is hij nu op zoek naar lotgenoten. Arena ging bij hem thuis langs en tekende zijn aangrijpende verhaal op.

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NEDERLAND
RTV Rijnmond

Er komt geen strafrechtelijk onderzoek naar het bisdom Rotterdam. Dat heeft het Openbaar Ministerie besloten.

Advocaat Jan Boone deed in december 2011 aangifte. Volgens de advocaat is het bisdom een criminele organisatie die als oogmerk had het plegen van seksueel misbruik. Boone deed ook aangifte tegen voormalig bisschop Bär. Die had in de jaren tachtig de leiding over het bisdom. De advocaat baseerde zijn aangifte op het rapport van de commissie Deetman die onderzoek deed naar seksueel misbruik binnen de katholieke kerk.

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CALIFORNIA
Patch

By Maggie Avants

Just before he was due for a hearing to determine whether he should go to trial, the former lead pastor of an Oceanside church admitted having a sexual relationship with a young girl.

Matthias Anderson, 41, of Hemet, was immediately sentenced to nine years and four months in prison on four felony counts.

The relationship between Anderson and the girl began in February 2008, according to Deputy District Attorney Julie Baldwin.

Anderson, a decorated retired Marine sergeant, was the founder of New Wine Ministries in Oceanside.

The girl—identified as Jane Doe—attended the congregation with her parents. There was some inappropriate touching that took place when the girl was under 14, Baldwin told Riverside County Superior Court Judge Angel Bermudez.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
National Catholic Reporter

Mar. 16, 2012
By Jerry Filteau

BALTIMORE — At the Seventh National Symposium on Catholicism and Homosexuality, retired Australian Bishop Geoffrey Robinson called Friday for “a new study of everything to do with sexuality” — a kind of study that he predicted “would have a profound influence on church teaching concerning all sexual relationships, both heterosexual and homosexual.”

“If [church] teaching on homosexual acts is ever to change, the basic teaching governing all sexual acts must change,” he said.

Robinson, a priest since 1960 and auxiliary bishop of Sydney from 1984 until his retirement for health reasons in 2004, told the Baltimore symposium, sponsored by New Ways Ministry, that “because sex is so vital a way of expressing love, sex is always serious.”

That view, espoused by the church, stands in contrast to the general perception of modern society, which “appears to be saying more and more that sex is not in itself serious,” he said.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Eastbourne Herald

Published on Friday 16 March 2012

CONCERNS have been raised as to how a priest arrested on historic sex abuse charges was allowed to remain as the chair of governors at an Eastbourne school.

Canon Gordon Rideout was allowed to continue as a governor and chair of governors at Bishop Bell School despite it being known that he had a blemished disclosure on a police CRB check.

This related to allegations made against him in 1972 and again in 2001 when he was arrested but no criminal charges were brought.

Mr Rideout was only removed from the post when the Independent Safeguarding Authority stepped in.

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WISCONSIN
SNAP Wisconsin

March 16, 2012

TO: Jerome Listecki, Archbishop of Milwaukee
FROM: Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests
RE: Full priestly burial tribute to Jerome Lanser, who sexually assaulted children

We are writing on behalf of victim/survivors of rape, child sexual assault and abuse by Roman Catholic clergy who have worked or who are living in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.

Yesterday, much to our sadness and dismay, we learned that Jerome Lanser, a priest who was known and publically confirmed by the archdiocese to have committed child sex crimes, was granted a rare and privileged ceremony given to very few baptized Catholics: full, ceremonial burial honors as a Roman Catholic priest in good standing.

Among those honors was the distinction, similarly given to soldiers who have served their nation or police officers who have served their community, of being buried in full dress uniform, in Lanser’s case, sacred clerical attire and priestly liturgical vestments. Before his funeral service, it is reported that Lanser’s casket was open, with his vestments, for viewing.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

The enquiry that should have uncovered those responsible for the leaks never began. Now there is the possibility that Bertone might be joined by a Pro-Secretary

Marco Tosatti
Vatican City

The Vatican internal enquiry on the mole or moles who in the past weeks have leaked various letters and documents, causing a scandal of unprecedented proportions in the history of the Vatican, has not began and at this point it probably never will. Let us draw a brief summary of the situation to nudge the memory of our readers.

The first leak was a letter that had been written by the current Nuncio in Washington, then Secretary of the Vatican City Governatorate (the institution that oversees of the practical work of the State, including the Museums). The letter was meant for pope Benedict XVI and a copy was also sent to the Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone, it deplored presumed internal scandals (which an enquiry has scaled down and in part denied). Following the leak of this document a large media campaign began and the Pope’s “right hand man” became the primary target.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

In an interview with the director of Vatican daily broadsheet “L’Osservatore Romano”, the deputy Secretary of State stated that an inquiry into the leaks of top-level confidential documents alleging corruption and mismanagement, has begun in the Holy See

Vatican Insider staff
Rome

The Secretary of State has called for an in-depth inquiry into all Holy See entities, with no exception. The criminal investigation is to be carried out by the Promoter of Justice of the Vatican Tribunal, while a separate administrative investigation will be carried out by the Secretariat of State itself. The Pope put an ad hoc commission in charge of shedding light on the affair. This was announced by the deputy Secretary of State, Mgr. Angelo Becciu, in an interview with Giovanni Maria Vian, director of the Vatican daily broadsheet L’Osservatore Romano.

The archbishop condemned the “disloyalty” and “cowardice” of those who leaked the documents and took advantage of their “privileged position” to publish documents “whose privacy they had an obligation to respect.”

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY | Fri Mar 16, 2012

(Reuters) – The Vatican has opened an extremely rare criminal investigation into embarrassing leaks of top-level sensitive documents alleging corruption and mismanagement in several of its departments.

The investigation, announced in the Vatican newspaper on Friday, will be carried out by an internal tribunal in a bid to find out who leaked the material.

A separate, administrative investigation will be conducted by the Secretariat of State, which manages Vatican bureaucracy. Pope Benedict had also ordered a “high-level commission” to shed light on the affair, the newspaper said.

The scandal, which has come to be known as “Vatileaks,” involves the leaking of a string of sensitive documents to Italian media in January and February, including personal letters to the pope.

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UNITED STATES
The Republic of Gilead

On March 12th, the New York Times reported that lawyers for the Catholic church and priests accused in two Missouri sexual abuse cases — John Doe BP v. Fr. Michael Tierney and the Kansas City diocese and Jane Doe v. Fr. Joseph D. Ross and the St. Louis archdiocese — are trying to compel the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) to disclose over twenty years of e-mails. SNAP is a clergy abuse victims’ advocacy group founded in 1988, which drew international attention last year for filing a complaint against the Vatican in the International Criminal Court.

The article states that those e-mails could include correspondence with clergy abuse victims, witnesses, journalists, and stakeholders. A Kansas City judge ruled that SNAP must comply because it likely has information of relevance to the abuse cases. SNAP has been subpoenaed five times in St. Louis and Kansas City over the past few months, and national director David Clohessy has been extensively questioned by lawyers.

The SNAP website hit back, decrying the legal pressure as an “attack” from Catholic officials and an affront to the confidentiality of their allies.

“Abuse victims and SNAP are being attacked by lawyers for KC Bishop Robert Finn and pedophile priests. We’re fighting hard to protect the confidentiality of victims, witnesses, whistleblowers, police, prosecutors, journalists and others who come to us for help.”

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UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on March 16, 2012

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, one of the main organizations for whom I volunteer my advocacy efforts (and to whom I donate), has recently been under siege in Missouri.

Catholic bishops there (under the direction of the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue and a coalition of high-ranking U.S. Bishops, we have learned), have drawn SNAP into two lawsuits, asking for 20+ years of confidential correspondence with survivors and the press, and deposing executive director David Clohessy.

From the New York Times:

Donohue said leading bishops he knew had resolved to fight back more aggressively against the group: “The bishops have come together collectively. I can’t give you the names, but there’s a growing consensus on the part of the bishops that they had better toughen up and go out and buy some good lawyers to get tough. We don’t need altar boys.”

SNAP is NOT a plaintiff in either lawsuit, and has had no contact whatsoever with the alleged victim in the case where Clohessy was deposed. (Note, this is the same Diocese under indictment for child endangerment)

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DEUTSCHLAND
SWR

Im Bistum Trier ist am Freitag ein möglicher weiterer Fall von sexuellem Missbrauch durch einen Priester bekannt geworden. Nach Angaben des Bistums soll ein Priester im Ruhestand aus dem Saarland in den frühen 70er Jahren Kinder und Jugendliche sexuell missbraucht haben.

Das Bistum hat nach Angaben eines Sprechers eine kirchliche Untersuchung gegen den Mann eingeleitet und die Staatsanwaltschaft informiert. Warum das Bistum erst jetzt in dem Fall aktiv wird, teilte der Sprecher nicht mit. Die Staatsanwaltschaft Trier hat inzwischen bestätigt, dass der Fall angezeigt wurde. Nach erster Durchsicht der Akten gehe man aber davon aus, dass alle Taten verjährt sind und deshalb das Verfahren eingestellt werde.

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OSTERREICH
Nachrichten

KREMSMÜNSTER. Pater A. geht. Er will dem Kloster „keinen Schaden“ zufügen. Für Donnerstagnachmittag hatte Pater A. (77) bei Abt Ambros Ebhart eine Audienz erbeten. Dabei legte der des sexuellen Missbrauchs an Stiftszöglingen Verdächtige dem Abt ein Austrittsgesuch aus dem Benediktinerstift auf den Schreibtisch.

Pater A. verlässt also auf eigenen Wunsch das Kloster, um – so seine Begründung – „wegen der öffentlichen Meinung in seinem Fall dem Kloster keinen Schaden zuzufügen“, sagt Abt Ambros. Der Leiter des Stifts nahm den Wunsch des umstrittenen Paters an.

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UNITED STATES
Minnesota SNAP

By Vinnie Nauheimer

It is obvious to the most casual observer that jurist prudence was snapped by the decision to allow lawyers for the Catholic Church carte blanche to pilfer, pour over and ponder twenty three years of personal files in the hands of the survivor’s group known as SNAP. One has to ask just how blind justice is when an organization steeped the sexual abuse of children, the Roman Catholic Church, is allowed to compel the leading advocate group for survivors of clergy abuse to turn over confidential records unrelated to the case in question.

The Roman Catholic Church is an internationally recognized promoter of child abuse having multiple documented allegations of sexual abuse in over thirty countries around the world including its home base, Italy and its home city, Rome. The Roman Catholic Church was been found guilty of acts of genocide against Native American Children in Canada by an International Tribunal in 1998.1 In Ireland, they enslaved and abused children for years in workhouses.2 The European commission has accused the Vatican of money laundering.3 The NY Times recently reported that priests and nuns in Spain and Argentina were guilty of trafficking in babies and selling them for profit.4 That report generated a similar complaint out of Australia.5 Every grand jury convened in the United States to investigate clergy abuse and their equivalent in Ireland roundly criticized the church for their always abominable and in some cases, criminal behavior. In Germany, the largest Catholic publishing company, Weltbild, with 1.7 billion Euros in sales has been publishing pornographic novels for years. The biggest source of revenue is from what the owners of the publishing house, the bishops, call Erotic novels; others have called titles such as Sluts Boarding School and Lawyer’s Whore, porn.6

Based on the truths above, giving the lawyers for the Roman Catholic Church unfettered access to Snap files is the moral equivalent of giving the Mafia unlimited access to FBI files. It is simply unconscionable! Did the church take advantage of the hole created by an imprudent jurist? You bet they did. They opened a six-lane highway and lined it with dumpsters prepared to take away everything they could get away with. The proof is in the transcripts from Mr. Clohessy’s deposition. The church went back twenty-three years though the incident in question only happened recently. In six hours of deposition given by Mr. Clohessy, most of the questions had nothing to do with the case of Rev. Michael Tierney who is accused by four people of sexual abuse. The NY Times tells us, “most of the questions were not about the case but about the network — its budget, board of directors, staff members, donors and operating procedures.” Surely the jurist could have limited the scope of the deposition as has been done so many times to so many victims trying to depose church leaders.

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POLAND
The News

A controversial priest and Solidarity veteran has claimed that the Church in Poland is compromised by a “gay mafia” which “can destroy anyone” in its path.

“The gay lobby in the Church can destroy anyone who gets in its way,” claims Father Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski in his latest book, ‘I am only interested in the truth’ (Chodzi mi tylko o prawde).

The priest is not new to controversy, having caused a storm in 2006 by publishing research which alleged collaboration of priests with the communist-era security services.

In his latest volume, which takes the form of an interview with the editor of the conservative, right wing journal Fronda, the priest claims that Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, Archbishop of Krakow, had specifically requested him to avoid homosexual references in the earlier book about communist collaboration.

When asked in the current publication whether “homosexuality is a problem in the clergy”, the priest replied that “the higher up you go, the worse it gets.”

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