ABUSE TRACKER

AUSTRALIA
The Age

Cameron Houston
February 19, 2012

A SUPPORT group set up by the Catholic Church to counsel victims of clerical sexual abuse is being investigated over allegations of mistreatment and breaches of patient confidentiality.

At least seven victims of sexual assaults by Catholic priests are believed to have lodged formal complaints against staff of the group, Carelink, with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency.

Carelink was established by the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne as part of its Melbourne Response in 1996, which was the church’s internal structure to deal with hundreds of sexual assault cases across Victoria.

A letter seen by The Sunday Age confirms that Carelink is the subject of an investigation by the Psychology Board of Australia on behalf of the regulator.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Monday, February 20, 2012

By Amaris Elliott-Engel, The Legal Intelligencer

The Philadelphia judge presiding over a criminal case in which a Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia church official is charged with endangering youth allegedly abused by priests declined to recuse herself after she remarked during an earlier proceeding, according to defense lawyers, that someone would have to be living on another planet to not think there is widespread child sex abuse in the church.

Judge Teresa Sarmina of Philadelphia Common Pleas Court said she phrased her comment about sex abuse in the past tense. But defense counsel said they were not misquoting the judge.

During a hearing Wednesday, Judge Sarmina said her comment was made during a working session over questions to be posed to potential jurors. She said the session involved candor, a give-and-take between the bench and opposing counsel, and even questions posed from the perspective of a devil’s advocate.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

In his speech to newly created cardinals, Ratzinger indirectly denied speculations regarding resignations

ANDREA TORNIELLI
Rome

“Pray also for me, that I may continually offer to the People of God the witness of sound doctrine and guide holy Church with a firm and humble hand.” The Pope that imposed the red biretta on the 22 new cardinals yesterday morning was gentle but firm, concluding his speech with a message that seemed to indirectly deny his forthcoming resignation. A number of people have been hinting at his resignation, particularly since the tensions in the Vatican, the leaked documents and the poisonous comments going round in an attempt to discredit one cardinal or another. All this portrays the Vatican as a place rife with scheming and people dossier fights. “It is not easy to enter into the logic of the Gospel and to let go of power and glory,” Benedict XVI repeated to the College of Cardinals, pointing out a different path yet again.

When Ratzinger was elected Pope, he said: “My real government programme is not to do as I wish or pursue my ideas, but to listen, along with the whole Church, to the word and will of the Lord and let myself be guided by him, allowing him to lead the Church at this moment in time in history.” He was trying to point out a truly evangelical way of exercising authority, but his words were interpreted as the plan of a theologian Pope who was trying to “fly high” leaving the reins of government to his collaborators. The poison that has been poured in recent weeks and the extent to which it has attracted the attention of international public opinion seem to indicate that the Pope’s message was not heeded.

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ARIZONA
Phoenix New Times

Paul Babeu, the Suddenly Openly Gay Pinal County Sheriff, Vows to Continue Congressional Run, Serve Out Remaining Term as Sheriff — Despite Mexican Ex-Lover’s Insistence That Sheriff’s Camp Threatened Him With Deportation

By Monica Alonzo
Sat., Feb. 18 2012

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu turned a nearly hour-long press conference to address allegations of threats that he and his attorney made to Babeu’s ex-boyfriend into a parade of people defending his right to be gay.

He asked a slew of own employees and friends to the microphone to offer him their unyielding support, trying to spin the situation he finds himself in into an attack on his homosexuality — which until he confirmed it today was something he never talked about publicly. Indeed, many people New Times spoke with yesterday were amazed to learn that the tough-talking, right-wing Republican lawman is gay.

The huge irony is that Jose, Babeu’s ex-boyfriend and a Mexican national, says threats of deportation came because he refused to sign an agreement not to disclose details of his relationship with the sheriff. (New Times is withholding Jose’s last name because of these threats.)

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ARIZONA/MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe

By Shira Schoenberg, Globe Correspondent

Paul Babeu, an Arizona sheriff and congressional candidate with a history in Massachusetts politics, resigned as Mitt Romney’s Arizona campaign cochairman after the Phoenix New Times reported that Babeu threatened to deport an illegal immigrant with whom he previously had a relationship.

Babeu acknowledged that he is gay but denied any misconduct. He said he would continue his Republican campaign for representative from Arizona’s Fourth Congressional District. …

Babeu made headlines again during the Catholic priest sexual abuse scandal in the early 2000s. Babeu alleged that a priest molested him in a Vermont rectory in December 1984 and January 1985.

Babeu alleged that he had previously been assaulted by a priest in Springfield. He Babeu said he confided in his brother two years later, who told the bishop of the Burlington, Vt., diocese.

In 2003, the Globe reported that Babeu, received a settlement in the “low five figures” from the Vermont diocese, according to his attorney. Babeu also filed a civil lawsuit against the two priests and the Springfield Diocese, the Globe said. He received a settlement from the Springfield diocese.

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The Pope’s secretary is gaining increasing mediation power among Vatican leaders

GIACOMO GALEAZZI
Vatican City

From the moment Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope, even Avvenire, the newspaper published by the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI), has focused on his secretary’s robust countenance, describing him as a “Blond, 1 metre 80 cm tall, athletic body and distinctly good looking man.” For a long time he was just the priest in a black cassock that took care of Benedict XVI’s agenda. More than a butler but not quite a spin doctor. Things have changed however since the “dossier war” broke out, in the Vatican, between the old guard who were close to Angelo Sodano and the current leadership loyal to the Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.

As the successor to Fr. Stanislao Dziwisz in the second half of John Paul II’s pontificate, Fr. Georg Gaenswein has become the barycentre and mediator of a Curia that is writhing with poison pen letter writers and spies. This 50 year old man, who combines athletic build with the grizzled charm of Hugh Grant, is the son of a blacksmith from the Black Forest, a former postman and a Pink Floyd fan. From family quarrels about the length of his hair, he went on to develop a passion for the stock market until he finally found his true love: theology. After obtaining a degree in Canon law in Munich, he arrived in the Vatican entering the Congregation for Divine Worship and the following year entered the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. For the past decade he has shown complete dedication to Benedict XVI. The Pope’s secretary is no longer just the “guardian angel” of the papal apartment but the “dominus” of the Holy See which upon his arrival he had described to mass media as a mixture of fear and aloofness: “The Vatican is also a court and so like in any court, rumours and gossip exist here too.

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DETROIT (MO)
Detroit Free Press

St. Leo Catholic Church gets good news, other Catholics to learn their parish’s fate at weekend mass

By Patricia Montemurri, Elisha Anderson and Niraj Warikoo
Detroit Free Press Staff Writers

Parishioners at St. Leo Catholic Church – which is renowned for its outreach to the homeless, hungry and destitute – got good news Sunday.

The church, on Grand River near Warren on Detroit’s westside, will stay open, but as part of a merged parish with St. Cecelia, about two miles away on LIvernois near the Jeffries.

“Yes, we will be open. We’re not closing down. We’re changing, “the Rev. Theodore Parker, said to the applause of about 200 congregants at St. Leo’s noon mass.

In November, the Archdiocese of Detroit listed St. Leo’s, once the home parish of peace activist and retired Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, as one of the churches it planned to close in the coming years — in a proposed realignment of 270 parishes across the six-county archdiocese to deal with a severe priest shortage and financial shortfalls.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: February 18, 2012

HOW do you marry God after you’ve kissed the King?

Easy. Just ask Dolores Hart.

The 73-year-old Benedictine nun is planning to attend the Oscars next Sunday. She will be a lot more covered up than she was the last time she went to the ceremony — in 1959, as a presenter and a gorgeous starlet who had given a blushing Elvis his first screen kiss.

Grace Kelly deserted Hollywood at 26 to become the bride of a prince. Hart, dubbed “the next Grace Kelly,” deserted Hollywood at 24 to become a bride of Christ.

That stunning spiritual elopement is the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary called “God Is Bigger Than Elvis,” a rare look behind the walls of the cloistered abbey in rural Connecticut where Hart has lived for half a century. (It will be shown on HBO in April.)

“God was the vehicle,” she said of her odyssey. “He was the bigger Elvis.”

Nuns in America are a dying breed, and the church’s antediluvian male hierarchy gets more worked up about allowing Catholic women contraceptives than investigating sexual abuse of children by priests.

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NEDERLAND
CDA

De R.K. Kerk dient haar beloften aan de slachtoffers van seksueel misbruik na te komen en daarover publiekelijk verantwoording af te leggen. Dat zei CDA woordvoerder Madeleine van Toorenburg tijdens een debat over het eindrapport van de commissie Deetman, over seksueel misbruik binnen de Kerk. Van Toorenburg: “Dat betekent dat de Kerk het leed dat de slachtoffers is aangedaan dient te erkennen. Daarnaast dient de Kerk goede hulpverlening te organiseren en te zorgen voor een goede compensatieregeling. Ook dient zij alles in het werk te stellen om dergelijk leed in de toekomst te voorkomen.”

De regering heeft aan de Tweede Kamer laten weten dat de commissie Deetman op verzoek van de Kamer opnieuw aan de slag gaat. Met een vervolgonderzoek dat specifiek ingaat op het misbruik van meisjes en (jonge) vrouwen in de katholieke instellingen. Van Toorenburg is tevreden met deze toezegging. Van de meerwaarde van een parlementair onderzoek is het CDA echter op dit moment niet overtuigd. Van Toorenburg: “Het is namelijk zeer de vraag of er meer boven tafel zal komen. Dat geeft Deetman zelf ook al aan in zijn rapport. Ook is het niet per definitie in het belang van de slachtoffers”. Mocht echter blijken dat Justitie in het verleden de deur naar aangifte en vervolging doelbewust heeft dichtgehouden, dan staat het CDA open „voor welk onderzoek dan ook”, aldus Van Toorenburg.

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UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on February 19, 2012 in Clergy Abuse Crisis

If you care about clergy sex abuse victims, you should read this. If you think that the Catholic Church is doing everything right in the scandal, you must read this. And then you must read it again.

Thousands of pages of child sex abuse and cover-up documents are now public in the Wilmington Delaware Diocese bankruptcy. They outline the long-term and shockingly recent tragic, gut-wrenching, enraging, cavalier, disgusting, and criminal actions of priests, brothers, bishops, employees and church officials. And they show how kids were thrown under the bus over and over and over again.

From the Delaware News Journal:

One 2009 letter mentions a report that abuser priest Joseph A. McGovern, removed from ministry about two decades ago, had expressed his desire to move overseas to a place more amenable to “man/boy pedophiliac relationships.” A file on the investigation into allegations against another abuser priest includes photographs the priest took of a young boy emerging from a shower, wrapped in a towel. Scrawled across them are the priest’s handwritten notes, most with sexual connotations.

Start here for an overview of the documents and what they entail. Full copies are online here.

Fortunately, this story has a hero. His name is Matt Conaty. If it were not for him and his family, victims in Wilmington would still be isolated, Catholics would be in the dark, and dangerous men would be roaming free to abuse more kids.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Independent Catholic News

By: Peter Jennings

Posted: Sunday, February 19, 2012

The Most Reverend Bernard Longley, Archbishop of Birmingham, made a special visit to All Souls Catholic Church in Coventry, today, Sunday 19 February, a parish where the convicted paedophile, Bede Walsh served as a priest.

The visit followed the statement made by Archbishop Longley at Cathedral House, Birmingham, on 7 February after Bede Walsh, a Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of Birmingham, was convicted by a jury of 21 sexual offences against eight boys. The offences took place between the 1970s and the early 1990s. Bede Walsh is due to be sentenced on 9 March.

The Archbishop of Birmingham and Canon Timothy Menezes, the Vicar General, spoke to parishioners both before and after the 11.15am Mass.

During his homily, Archbishop Bernard Longley said: “When I was last with you in Coventry to celebrate Mass here at All Souls I came to bless your statue of Our Lady Queen of Peace in the parish garden. That was during September 2011 and I am grateful to the Parish Priest, Father Michael Brandon, for welcoming me back today.

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CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles Times

By Kim Christensen, Los Angeles Times

February 19, 2012
The mother of a Santa Barbara County teenager says he was wronged twice — once by the 450-pound Boy Scout leader who sexually abused him in 2007, and then by a local Scouts executive who she says told her not to call police.

“He said that wasn’t necessary, because the Scouts do their own internal investigation,” said the woman, whose name The Times is withholding to protect her son’s identity. “I thought that was really weird…. I thought it was really important to call the sheriff right away.” …

In addition to unspecified damages, the lawsuit seeks to force the Scouts to hand over thousands of confidential files detailing allegations of sexual abuse by Scout leaders and others around the nation. It contends the files will expose the Scouts’ “culture of hidden sexual abuse” and its failure to warn boys, their parents and others about the “pedophilic wolves” who have long infiltrated one of America’s oldest youth organizations.

In January, after reviewing some of the files, a Santa Barbara Superior Court judge rejected the Scouts’ argument that the documents are irrelevant to the lawsuit and ordered the organization to turn over the most recent 20 years’ worth of records to the boy’s lawyers by Feb. 24, with victims’ names removed. The judge ordered the lawyers not to disclose the files publicly.

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IRELAND
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin

Pro-Cathedral of Dublin
19 February 2012

Dia libh go léir!

Brothers and sisters in Christ, it is an honour and a joy for me to celebrate Holy Mass with you this morning here in this historic Pro-Cathedral. I am deeply grateful to Archbishop Diarmuid Martin for his kind invitation and for his very gracious welcome. I would like to begin by thanking the priests, as well as the men and women religious here today, and the many members of different Catholic organizations and associations. In a particular way, I am grateful for the presence of representatives of other Christian communities. I thank the representative of the Lord Mayor for coming and the members of the diplomatic community, my colleagues. I am appreciative also of the presence of a representative of the Government of Ireland, officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and all the other public authorities here present. Thank you for welcoming me.

This Mass is my first public celebration of the Church’s liturgy since I was received by the President of Ireland last Thursday, and delivered to him the Letter from Pope Benedict XVI appointing me as Nuncio – which is the first public act of any new ambassador. I was grateful for the very warm welcome accorded me by the President and by the members of the Government who were there with him.

Having presented my credentials to the President, I must say that I can think of no better way of marking the beginning of my service in this country than by celebrating Mass in this place, the Pro-Cathedral of this diverse and dynamic Archdiocese. I stand before you this morning as someone who represents various realities: I am the descendent of men and women of Ireland, who emigrated from this island, possessing little more than the treasure of their Catholic faith, which they, through the generations, have passed on to me. Were it not for the faith of Ireland, I would not be a Catholic today. I am someone who worked for many years in the Roman Curia, the central administration of the Catholic Church, where I had the privilege of working with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI; I am a newly-ordained Bishop of the Catholic Church and as such, with all my limitations and defects, a successor of the Apostles.

This morning, however, I stand before you principally as the representative of the Bishop of Rome, the successor of the Apostle Peter, Pope Benedict XVI. In his name, I greet you all and I bring you his best wishes for all the people of Ireland, for the government, and all the members of the diplomatic community. As I mentioned, I have worked for many years very closely with the Holy Father and I can tell you from my personal experience that he has always had – and he continues to have – a great love for the people of Ireland and a high regard for the Catholic Church in Ireland, with its history of missionary richness and tenacious faith. Pope Benedict knows as well that these recent years have been difficult for Catholic believers in Ireland. Again I speak from my own experience when I tell you that Pope Benedict was scandalized and dismayed as he learned about the tragedy of abuse perpetrated by some members of the clergy and of religious congregations. He felt deeply the wounds of those who had been harmed and who so often had not been listened to. From the beginning, Pope Benedict was resolute and determined to put into place changes which would give the Church the ability to deal more effectively with those who abuse trust, as well as to provide the necessary assistance to those who had been victimized. Pope Benedict has been relentless and consistent on this front, and I assure you that he will continue to be.

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IRELAND
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin

Words of Welcome from Archbishop Diarmuid Martin at Solemn Liturgical Reception in St. Mary’s Pro Cathedral on Sunday February 19th to welcome His Excellency Archbishop Charles J. Brown,Apostolic Nuncio in Ireland and (below) the Homily from Archbishop Brown.

In our ceremony this morning we call to mind Archbishop Brown’s mission as the representative of the Holy See in Ireland: his task is to witness among us, within the Church and within society in Ireland, to the mission of the successor of Peter – a mission to foster deeper communion in the life of the Church and to foster communion, harmony and peace in the human family that is so often fragmented.

We wish you God’s blessing as you begin your ministry. We wish you personally fulfilment and happiness and we assure you of a warm welcome and support. We welcome the help of Pope Benedict in leading our wounded Church towards repentance and healing. We desire to work together to build a different, more humble Church, but also a renewed Church, confident of the contribution of the teaching of Jesus Christ for the Ireland of tomorrow.

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IRELAND
CBS News

(AP) DUBLIN — The Vatican’s new American envoy to Ireland says Pope Benedict XVI has been “relentless and consistent” in seeking to oust child abusers from the priesthood worldwide.

Archbishop Charles Brown spoke Sunday at his first public Mass following his arrival in Ireland, a traditionally Catholic land rattled by nearly two decades of pedophile-priest scandals.

The 52-year-old Brown, a Manhattan native, has never been a Vatican diplomat before.

He spent a decade working alongside today’s pope inside the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. That powerful Vatican body enforces church policies, including the removal of pedophiles from the priesthood.

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IRELAND
The Journal

ARCHBISHOP DIARMUID MARTIN has welcomed the Vatican’s new Papal Nuncio and called on him to work with the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland for a “more humble” church.

Martin’s call came in his welcoming of the new Papal Nuncio Archbishop Charles Brown to Ireland at a service in the Pro Cathdral in Dublin earlier today. ”We welcome the help of Pope Benedict in leading our wounded Church towards repentance and healing,” Martin said.

“We desire to work together to build a different, more humble Church, but also a renewed Church, confident of the contribution of the teaching of Jesus Christ for the Ireland of tomorrow.”

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Italian paper calls Dolan a papal candidate

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Rome

Pope Benedict XVI legendarily thinks in centuries, so it’s almost always a category mistake to read his public oratory as a commentary on current events. Yet it was hard to listen to him this morning without at least flashing on the recent Vatican leaks scandal, which has created widespread impressions of power struggles and senior churchmen stabbing one another in the back.

In comments today to 22 new cardinals taking part in Benedict’s fourth consistory, with most of the Vatican’s senior leadership looking on, the pope issued a strong plea for a spirit of service. …

There was also more evidence of a boomlet around Dolan this morning in the Italian media. Il Messaggero’s Vatican writer, Franca Giansoldati, published a piece on the consistory under the headline, “Among the 22 new cardinals, a new papabile breaks out: the American Dolan.”

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KENYA
The Standard

DAVID ODONGO lifts the veil on the secret life of renegade nuns

When a community proudly gathered to celebrate the ordination of their first son into priesthood at a lavish outdoor ceremony in Western Kenya, a little secret ripped through the audience: “He has a son!”

Strangely, there was no reproach but some sort of secret triumph — a tacit acceptance that even though the celibate young priest would now serve Jesus, his lineage, in true African sense, would never end.

Two decades later, when he was elevated to head a parish, he had filled out into a handsome middle-aged man. At a ‘homecoming party’ held in his parent’s home, two nuns — one a primary school headmistress — openly clashed, with one shouting, “This is my house!”

Two wives

Old women lounging on the grass smiled knowingly. The word quickly spread: “Our son has two wives!”

So whereas the Vatican maintains that celibacy is here to stay, in Kenya, the sexual transgressions of many a priest are quietly known and accepted so long as they are heterosexual. After all, they are just men — African men!

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IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

Pope Benedict XVI was scandalised and dismayed by the abuse perpetrated by some members of the clergy and of religious congregations, his new envoy to Ireland has said.

Archbishop Charles J Brown told Massgoers in Dublin the Pope knows the recent years have been difficult for Catholic believers in Ireland.

The new papal nuncio maintained the Holy Father has been relentless in trying to make changes within the Church and help those abused by clerics.

“Again I speak from my own experience when I tell you that Pope Benedict was scandalised and dismayed as he learned about the tragedy of abuse perpetrated by some members of the clergy and of religious congregations,” said Archbishop Brown, in his homily at the Pro-Cathedral of Dublin.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

MICHAEL O’REGAN

Archbishop of Dublin Dr Diarmuid Martin has said he is confident the Irish embassy to the Vatican will reopen “in some other way”’.

Dr Martin said it would be a “leaner embassy’’, adding that one had to look at the cost involved.

“I keep stressing that the Vatican is very important in today’s world,’’ he added.

He was speaking to journalists at the Pro Cathedral in Dublin today, before a liturgical reception for the new papal nuncio, Archbishop Charles J Brown.

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WILMINGTON (DE)
Roman Catholic Diocese of Wilmington

As part of the settlement between the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington, Inc. and survivors of clergy sexual abuse, certain non-monetary undertakings were agreed to. These include two mutually agreed upon lists of non-monetary stipulations.

• Non-Monetary Undertakings of the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington, Inc.
• Non-Monetary Provisions Relating to Documents

As stipulated in the documents, the Diocese of Wilmington is required to post on this website, “the names of all known diocesan clergy or lay employees regarding whom there are admitted, corroborated or otherwise substantiated allegations of sexual abuse, molestation and rape of minors.“ Here is that list:

• Paul Calamari*
• Edward B. Carley1
• Eugene F. Clarahan1
• Francis P. Cornely1
• Francis G. DeLuca2
• Douglas W. Dempster
• Henry J. Dreyer1
• Edward F. Dudzinski2
• Richard F. Gardiner1
• Peter J. Harney1
• William E. Irwin1
• John A. Lind1
• Leonard J. Mackiewicz1
• Kenneth J. Martin
• Joseph A. McGovern
• Walter D. Power1
• Francis J. Rodgers
• John A. Sarro
• Gerard C. Smit*
• Carmen D. Vignola1
• Charles W. Wiggins
• Harry D. Walker2

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WILMINGTON (DE)
BishopAccountability.org

Documents and Other Resources

As part of the Non-Monetary Undertakings and Stipulations in the settlement between the Diocese of Wilmington and survivors of clergy sexual abuse, the diocese committed to release documents relating to the sexual abuse of minors by priests in the diocese. Today BishopAccountability.org has begun to post the documents.

We start with selected documents from the Clarahan, DeLuca, Dudzinski, and Smit files. Today and into next week, we will post documents from other priest files, and additional documents from files that have already been sampled on this page. We will also provide important documents on the operations of the Diocese of Wilmington.

In the spirit of the non-monetary provisions, we are taking a cautious approach to the redaction of survivors’ names in the documents. However, if we have redacted a survivor’s name in the documents and he or she would prefer to be named, or if redactions need to be improved in other ways, please contact us, and we will make the adjustments.

Refresh this page often to see the latest additions.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
AllGov

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Monsignor William Lynn of the Philadelphia archdiocese is about to become the first Catholic official in the U.S. to stand trial for his actions during the child sex abuse scandal that rocked churches across the country.

With jury selection scheduled to begin February 21, Lynn is charged with endangering the welfare of young men who were allegedly raped by priests and with conspiracy to cover up the abuse.

Other senior Catholic officials have been criminally charged for allegedly covering up sex abuse claims, but Lynn is the first to go to trial.

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DETROIT (MI)
Detroit Free Press

By Patricia Montemurri
Free Press Staff Writer

Catholics attending weekend mass late this afternoon began to learn the fate of their parishes, as pastors announced decisions made by Archbishop Allen Vigneron to close or merge some parishes to deal with an escalating priest shortage, population shifts and financial shortfalls.

At Our Lady of Fatima parish in Oak Park, the Rev. Paul Chateau told parishioners at 4:30 p.m. mass that Vigneron decided that the Oak Park parish should merge with St. James in Ferndale by mid-2013. Even as a merged parish, it appears both churches could stay open as long as there is a pastor available, or until either one incurred an operating deficit. The directive also said the merged Our Lady of Fatima/St. James parish should also collaborate with nearby Our Lady of LaSalette in Berkley if need be for a further merger down the road.

All three churches, Vigneron said, need to submit a contingency plan that could include closing church buildings and selling the property, if “a current pastor is no longer available, if a replacement is not available or assigned, or when one of these parishes begins to experience a net operating deficit,” according to Vigneron’s directive.

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DETROIT (MI)
Click on Detroit

As many as 48 churches across southeast Michigan may be forced to close their doors for good.

Saturday night Local 4 learned of three parishes that will be affected.

According to parishioners in Ferndale, they were told by their priest that the plan is for St. James Church to merge or cluster with two other churches, one in Oak Park and one in Berkley within two years.

St. James has been a Ferndale landmark for almost a century, but between now and July parishioners must meet with members of Our Lady of Fatima in Oak Parkto decide where to attend mass and pick a new name, among other things.

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ADAMS (MA)
Berkshire Eagle

Saturday February 18, 2012
Berkshire Eagle Staff

ADAMS — After 1,150 days of occupying a Catholic church slated for closing, parishioners of St. Stanislaus Kostka Church are celebrating the pending reopening of the church as a place of worship.

The Rev. Daniel Boyle, priest at the Parish of Pope John Paul the Great, announced that St. Stan’s would be reopened as a mission, or satellite location, of Pope John Paul the Great. Its first Mass since closing will be at 8 a.m. on April 1, which is Palm Sunday, he said.

It is extremely rare that a closed Catholic church reopens. Upon its closing in 2008, parishioners occupied the church, keeping vigil day and night since then. Observers credit the 150 to 200 vigilers for safeguarding the structure and its artifacts. After the closing was announced, an appeal to the Vatican on behalf of the church’s parishioners was filed in September of 2008.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

ADAMS (MA)
The Republican

By Lori Stabile, The Republican

ADAMS – The bells rang Saturday at St. Stanislaus Kostka, which protesters have been occupying non-stop for more than three years, signaling the church’s reopening as a site for regular Catholic worship under a plan announced that day.

“We are thrilled,” parishioner Robin J. Loughman said. “It’s what we were hoping for and what we expected.”

Father Daniel Boyle, pastor of the Blessed John Paul the Great Parish community, made the announcement to the congregation on Saturday.

Boyle said that the diocese approved a plan he had submitted to reopen St. Stanislaus Church as a “chapel-mission” of the parish. His plan followed a Vatican decision to keep the church in religious use.

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AUSTRALIA/UNITED STATES
Haaretz (Israel)

Members of the Australian Jewish community say suspected child molesters ended up in the United States after community leaders failed to report them to law-enforcement authorities.

By Paul Berger

A child sex abuse scandal in Australia’s Jewish community has spilled into America, as a pending extradition, arrests in Australia and a slew of cover-up allegations put that community’s response to molestation under scrutiny.

Australian police are seeking to extradite convicted child molester David Kramer, currently in jail in Farmington, Mo., on suspicion of having abused children at a Chabad school in Melbourne during the 1990s.

Kramer, who was reportedly spirited out of Australia by one of Melbourne’s Chabad leaders following abuse allegations, is halfway through a seven-year prison sentence for sodomizing a 12-year-old boy in St. Louis.

According to members of the Australian community, he is not the only molester to end up in the United States after Australian community leaders failed to report them to legal authorities. Other molesters fled the country more recently as suspicion of abuse fell on them, community members say.

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IRELAND
RTE News

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has welcomed the new Papal Nuncio Archbishop Charles Brown to Ireland.

The Archbishop said the Archdiocese of Dublin wants to work with him to build a different, more humble, yet renewed church.

His made his comments in a sermon at the Pro Cathedral in Dublin this morning.

Archbishop Brown replaced Giuseppe Leanza in the wake of the report into child abuse in the Cloyne diocese.

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LOVELAND (CO)
Coloradoan

Written by
Robert Allen

Prosecutors are pursuing a charge of child pornography against a former Loveland church volunteer who’s already confessed to sexually assaulting a child.

Robert Ernest Kirchhoff, 54, remains in custody with $100,000 bond after District Judge Julie Field denied a reduction request Friday.

Kirchhoff, who volunteered with preteens at Resurrection Fellowship Church until the charges surfaced, is accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl he was babysitting after meeting her family through the church.

He admitted the crime to police and said before his arrest he had “no choice but to run,” Deputy District Attorney Greg Biggers said while arguing against bond reduction.

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CANADA
CBC News

The CBC’s The Fifth Estate has uncovered details in two past sexual abuse cases handled by Scouts Canada that were never reported to police.

Recently uncovered documents show that in 1978 scouting leaders in Brockville, Ont., suspected there “may be several undesirables who have been involved in Scouting and removed discreetly without their files being flagged.”

The news generated a large response from the CBC Community. Many voiced disappointment and condemnation of Scouts Canada’s conduct. We can’t reprint all of them, but here’s a selection: …

•”It’s not just about the Catholic church, the Anglican church or any church. It’s not just about the scouts, teachers, politicians or residential school operators. It’s really about adults in authority because of their position and adults in authority because of their size and personality. It includes both men and women…It’s everywhere in our society. It’s among the rich and the poor, different cultures, races, etc. We just don’t know about it until it hits the news…It’s a world problem much like and part of bullying. And the solutions….wish I knew, except to continue to discuss openly, educate and help the vulnerable become more powerful.”

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CANADA
Edmonton Journal

By Stephane Massinon, Calgary Herald February 18, 2012

CALGARY — The victims of a historic sexual assault perpetrated by the manager of a summer camp say they are disappointed with the sentence the abuser received and worry it will discourage victims of other historic cases from ever coming forward.

Mark Archibald, 56, was sentenced to 12 months of house arrest, then six months of abiding by a curfew, on Friday in Red Deer.

The Crown had sought a sentence of federal time of two years and an additional four or five months after Archibald pleaded guilty last year to the indecent assault of three teenage boys in the 1970s while running a Christian camp.

“Jake,” the complainant who wrote the letters containing the allegations against Archibald that got police involved last year, said he was hoping for jail time.

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CANADA
Vancouver Sun

By Stephane Massinon, Calgary Herald
February 18, 2012

It’s a story that’s haunted Jake for over 30 years.

And in April 2011, the 46-year-old Red Deer man took some paper to a quiet field near his Red Deer home and began to pen a letter to the Canadian Sunday School Mission and the Evangelical Free Church of Canada.

By his own admission, his life was in turmoil.

“My life was spinning out of control with personal is-sues,” Jake says. “I had a lot of problems with guilt, violence, shame.”

It was a story he once sought to suppress. In the late 1970s, at the age of 14, he was sexually molested by the manager of Camp Silversides, a Christian summer camp run by the Canadian Sunday School Mission.

His abuser, Mark Archibald, was in his mid-20s and Archibald was his pastor, his mentor and his friend when he sexually assaulted him at a Calgary motel.

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AUSTRALIA
WA Today

Cameron Houston
February 19, 2012

A SUPPORT group set up by the Catholic Church to counsel victims of clerical sexual abuse is being investigated over allegations of mistreatment and breaches of patient confidentiality.

At least seven victims of sexual assaults by Catholic priests are believed to have lodged formal complaints against staff of the group, Carelink, with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency.

Carelink was established by the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne as part of its Melbourne Response in 1996, which was the church’s internal structure to deal with hundreds of sexual assault cases across Victoria.

A letter seen by The Sunday Age confirms that Carelink is the subject of an investigation by the Psychology Board of Australia on behalf of the regulator.

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DELAWARE
The News Journal

[with video]

[View documents released by the diocese]

[Diocese of Wilmington’s accounting of abuser priests, as required by the terms of its bankruptcy settlement]

Written by
BETH MILLER and SEAN O’SULLIVAN
The News Journal

It was March 4, 2009, and the bishop’s right-hand man, Monsignor J. Thomas Cini, was sitting in a conference room in Bart Dalton’s Wilmington law office.

Cini, vicar general of the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington and pastor of St. Ann’s Catholic Church, was surrounded by lawyers, answering questions under oath about a priest who had sexually abused children while working as a teacher in two Catholic schools.

The priest in this case, Paul Daleo, was a Capuchin friar, not a diocesan priest. But he was under contract to teach in the diocese, and no priest can minister here without the bishop’s permission. So attorney John Manly was pressing Cini to learn what the diocese knew about Daleo before granting that permission.

Manly zeroed in on a controversy that arose in 1979, when Daleo was teaching sex-education courses at St. Edmond’s Academy and St. John the Beloved. “What in Father Paul’s résumé stands out at you as making him qualified to teach kids about sex?” Manly asked Cini.

“Well, he did a lot of it,” Cini replied.

“Well, you may think that’s funny,” Manly shot back. “I don’t, and I’m sure Mr. Conaty doesn’t.”

Matthias Conaty, sitting nearby, was in fourth grade at St. Edmond’s when Daleo first took an interest in him. For almost four years, Daleo raped and sexually assaulted him. Now a grown man with children of his own, Conaty was suing Daleo, the diocese, the school and the religious order.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Shaun Connolly

Saturday, February 18, 2012

GOD-hating, priest-baiting, loony leftie Eamon Gilmore secured a key plank of his evil secular masterplan to make us a nation of pagans by shutting down the Vatican embassy.

Except, of course, he didn’t. He made a perfectly sensible decision, but his big mistake was to lose control of the narrative surrounding it — which is always deadly dangerous in politics.

And so the agenda was driven, not by Gilmore, but by the religious right, who portrayed the move as a direct attack on their faith, and by hardcore liberals who saw it as a totemic victory against an old enemy.

Labour’s amateur-hour media presentation added to the confusion, with muddles over costings and when the Vatican was, or was not, added to the embassy hit list — so the overriding impression was left in many people’s minds that we have broken off diplomatic relations with the Vatican City State and are now at war with them.

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VATICAN CITY
The Atlantic Wire

Seth Abramovitch

Today was a joyful one at the Vatican, as 22 archbishops from around the world were elevated to the elite rank of cardinal — but behind the scenes, things are considerably less harmonious. In a mystery befitting a Dan Brown novel, a series of unflattering leaks have emerged from the Vatican in a relatively short period of time, Time magazine reports. The leaks are serious enough that Federico Lombardi, a spokesman for the Holy See, issued a statement comparing them to Wikileaks’ own targeting of the United States Government, implying they were being released by someone looking to harm the church’s reputation. “We must resist and not allow ourselves to be swallowed by the whirlpool of confusion, which is what those with bad intentions want,” Lombardi wrote.

The most damaging leaks emerged in late January, The Washington Post reports, when an Italian television program produced letters exchanged between the Holy See’s ambassador yo the U.S., Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who was overseeing the Vatican’s financial reforms committee until October 2011:

Naming names close to Bertone, they make allegations of crooked contracting and of a campaign of defamation against the [Vatican] secretary of state [Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone].

Bertone, the Pope’s second-in-command, was “appointed in 2006 run the day-to-day affairs of the Vatican while the pope focused on affairs of the spirit,” Time writes, but has “faced fierce opposition from the Vatican’s diplomatic staff, which has made little secret that it regards him as an outsider.” Bertone’s predecessor, Cardinal Angelo Sodana, refused to vacate his office for months after Bertone started the job, and the secretary of state has been accused of jockeying to put an Italian in line as the Pope’s successor.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

While one of the most important moments in the life of the church is officially beginning, and new protagonists are being discovered or confirmed as the next cardinals

Giacomo Galeazzi
Vatican City

“The Church is in need of deep conversion,” warns the Archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan. Significantly, the Pope has entrusted the introduction at the pre-consistory meeting to a bishop outside the ropes of the Curia. “Betrayal and falls: we must recognize our sins and purify ourselves,” agrees the Minister of Divine Worship, Antonio Canizares Llovera. “Those who publish confidential texts are unfaithful to their mission,” stigmatizes Joao Braz de Aviz, Head of Religious. “Vatileaks” (the secret papers on the IOR and the other intrigues, passed to the media) hangs on the Pope’s “Senate” gathered yesterday Pope behind closed doors. The “paper war” going on in the Curia has created tensions at the summit of the 133 cardinals convoked by Benedict XVI to address the most urgent problems of the Church.

The confidential letters of the ex-number two of the Governorate, Viganò (with allegations of corruption leveled against the Secretary of State), the confidential letter on the IOR and a memo on an alleged assassination attempt against the Pope are fueling the conflict of “shots fired by dossier” between the old management, closer to the Dean Sodano, and the current leadership, linked to Bertone. A strategy, including poison-pen letters, to pressure the Pope to change the 77-year-old Secretary of State. Benedict XVI expressed his hope that the Church would be spoken of for her faith and not for her scandals. But even the faith is passing through a phase of crisis, highlights the Minister of the New Evangelization, Rino Fisichella, while Dolan urges recognizing even in “places classified as materialistic (the mass media, entertainment, finance, art) an opening to the transcendent, the divine”.

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UNITED STATES
Male Survivor

Washington, DC, February 16, 2012 –(PR.com)– Reacting to Cardinal Edward Egan’s recent retraction of the apology he gave to survivors of sexual abuse committed by priests in his own diocese, Mikele Rauch, a member of the MaleSurvivor Weekend of Recovery team and author of Healing the Soul After Religious Abuse issued the following statement:

“The inability for Cardinal Egan to see the damage of his retraction is profoundly disturbing. What we know is that for the representatives of the church to shamelessly deny responsibility for what they have done as well as deny its impact on survivors, is itself a consequence of shame and hubris. The truth is, it is not up to the Church to say they have done enough. We stand with every survivor who has been silenced, denied, or blamed – and we understand how Cardinal Egan’s retraction is re-traumatizing to every survivor who has already suffered by the crimes done to them by members of the clergy. We support all male survivors who choose to stand in protest against any institution who denies responsibility in their failure to protect vulnerable victims.”

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Catholic Insider

We got word that the Boston Archdiocese is not going to answer our questions about the deceptive claim of a “balanced budget” in the 2011 Annual Report, and that will be the topic of an upcoming post. In the meantime, we thought we would take a closer look at the bloated payroll, which contributed to what the Annual Report shows is a $4.2M operating loss for 2011. We also look at the slow pace of action by the new Compensation Committee.

Number of People Earning More than $150K

According to the annual report for the 2011 fiscal year (page 83), the number of people making $150K or more in that fiscal year was 17. If you compare that to the 2006 Annual Report, before outgoing Chancellor Jim McDonough arrived, you will see there were just 2 people in the Chancery paid more than $150K. So the number of people making $150K or more per year has increased by more than 8X since 2006.

The total compensation paid to people making more than $150K has also increased by a factor of about 9X since 2006. In 2006, those two people paid over $150K per year were paid $393K in salaries. According to the 2011 Annual Report as well as information from other sources, the 17 people at the Pastoral Center making more than $150K today in aggregate are paid somewhere close to $3.5M a year in salaries. Just to reiterate, that is about 9 times more than was paid in 2006 in $150K+ salaries vs 2006.

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Mgr. Novell, the Iberian Peninsula’s youngest prelate, has decided to cut his monthly salary by 25%, thus reducing it from 1200 to 900 Euro. “This way we show our solidarity to those suffering from the crisis”

Mauro Pianta
Rome

It is likely some will accuse him of demagogy. But 42 year old Xavier Novell, Spain’s youngest bishop whose praises are often sung in women’s newspapers, is going ahead with his plan. “I am reducing my salary by 25%: from 1200 to 900 Euro a month. I am doing this to show my genuine solidarity to those who have been hit hard by the crisis.”

Catholic news agency ACI Prensa reported Mgr. Novell’s reasons for making this gesture: “Catholics cannot remain impassive in the face of need; we cannot we cannot act like the passers-by in the parable of the Good Samaritan and ignore this. Everyone – he stressed yesterday as he presented his pastoral document on the crisis – can do something. This crisis was caused by the fact that we all wanted to live beyond our means. We can only come out of this crisis if we work together: in the Diocese we have taken the first step by making this small sacrifice…”

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CALIFORNIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on February 17, 2012

While no amount of money can restore the childhood lost or innocence shattered as a result of childhood sex abuse, we are glad that Fr. Edward Fitz-Henry victim is able to walk away with some feeling of justice.

Since the diocese and the bishop’s hand-picked review board have both said this is a credible allegation, Fr. Fitz-Henry should be immediately put in a remote, secure, independent sex offender treatment center so kids will be safer. instead of sitting on their hands. We also urge Bishop Garcia to immediately visit every parish where this predator worked and beg other victims and witnesses to come forward.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 18 February 2012 (VIS) – Following are the names of the twenty-two new cardinals created by Pope Benedict XVI in this morning’s consistory, and the titular or diaconate churches he assigned to them:

Electors

– Cardinal Fernando Filoni, diaconate of Nostra Signora di Coromoto in San Giovanni di Dio.

– Cardinal Manuel Monteiro de Castro, diaconate of San Domenico di Guzman.

– Cardinal Santos Abril y Castello, diaconate of San Ponziano.

– Cardinal Antonio Maria Veglio, diaconate of San Cesareo in Palatio.

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WATERBURY (CT)
Republican-American

BY JONATHAN SHUGARTS REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN

WATERBURY — A former city priest at the center of a scandal that rocked the Sacred Heart/Sagrado Corazon Church has been paroled to Maryland, according to Department of Correction records.

The Rev. Kevin Gray convinced a parole board in October to release him from prison early before he had completed a three-year prison sentence for larceny.

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CALIFORNIA
Monterey Herald

By VIRGINIA HENNESSEY
Herald Salinas Bureau
montereyherald.com

A judge issued strict sanctions Friday against a fugitive priest in a lawsuit by his molestation victim.

Judge Lydia Villarreal ruled the Rev. Antonio Cortes will not be allowed to present evidence in his own defense, should he ever return to face the civil allegations.

Cortes, who pleaded no contest in March to more than a dozen charges involving the molestation of a 16-year-old parishioner, is believed to be in Mexico. He fled after being released from jail in December. A warrant was issued for his arrest for failing to report to his probation officer and register as a sex offender.

He could also face contempt-of-court charges.

Chris Lavorato, the victim’s attorney, said he was preparing a contempt motion against Cortes when he fled to Mexico. Lavorato, unable to serve that motion, went into court Friday to ask Villarreal to grant a default judgment against the priest or issue an “evidentiary sanction” prohibiting him from presenting defense evidence in the future.

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VATICAN CITY
Time

By Stephan FarisSaturday, Feb. 18, 2012

Maybe the Vatican is not so good at keeping secrets after all. In the past few weeks, the Holy See has sprung a series of leaks. Their contents range from allegations of corruption and cronyism in Rome, to internal criticism of a Vatican effort to tackle money laundering, to a bizarre letter speculating about an assassination attempt on Pope Benedict XVI.

Each leak would be embarrassing enough on its own. Together, they add up to a picture of disarray at the top tiers of the Catholic Church, even as the Vatican prepares to admit 22 more bishops to the College of Cardinals on Saturday, expanding the ranks of those who could one day become pope. “The real news isn’t the content of these documents,” says Andrea Tornielli, a long-time Vatican watcher. “It’s the fact that all these documents are coming out at the same time.”

Just who the leaks have in their sights is less than clear. In a statement posted Monday on the Vatican Radio’s website, the spokesman for the Holy See, Federico Lombardi, compared the rapid-fire disclosures to the Wikileaks revelations in the United States and seemed to imply that the documents were being released in order to discredit the church. “We must resist and not allow ourselves to be swallowed by the whirlpool of confusion, which is what those with bad intentions want,” Lombardi wrote.

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VATICAAN
ND (Nederland)

Aartsbisschop van Utrecht Wim Eijk wordt zaterdag in het Vaticaan tot kardinaal benoemd. Paus Benedictus XVI maakte Eijks promotie vorige maand bekend. Naast Eijk worden nog 21 andere kardinalen gecreëerd.

De ceremonie, het zogeheten consistorie, begint zaterdag met een gebedsviering. Hierbij krijgen alle kardinalen hun bonnet, de kenmerkende rode hoed, en een kardinalenring.

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VATICAAN
NOS (Nederland)

Door correspondent Andrea Vreede, in Rome

Vandaag is het een feestelijke dag in het Vaticaan. Voor de vierde keer sinds zijn verkiezing in 2005 houdt paus Benedictus XVI een consistorie. Dat is een speciale vergadering waarbij de paus nieuwe kardinalen benoemt. Of liever, creëert, zoals deze plechtige handeling officieel heet. Dit keer zijn het er 22.

Maar het feest wordt overschaduwd door een rel binnen het Vaticaan. Afgelopen week verschenen vertrouwelijke stukken uit de hoogste regionen van de Kerk in de pers. Het kijkje achter de anders zo gesloten deuren van het Vaticaan wordt al Vati-leaks genoemd in de pers.

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VATICAN CITY
AFP

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI led a solemn ceremony in Saint Peter’s Basilica on Saturday to induct 22 new cardinals into the prestigious college that will one day elect his successor.

The 84-year-old pope, who entered the vast basilica on a rolling platform wearing red and gold vestments, presented the new “princes of the Church” with scarlet-red birettas and gold rings during the consistory that Vatican observers say could increase the chances of the next pope being Italian.

The new cardinals “are asked to serve the Church with love and vigour, with the clarity and wisdom of masters, with the energy and moral force of pastors (and) with the faith and courage of martyrs,” the pope said.

Eighteen of the 22 newcomers are under 80, the cut-off age for cardinal electors.

Critics say the appointments show a strong bias towards Europe as out of the 125 “elector cardinals,” 67 are now from Europe, with just 22 from South America, 15 from North America, 11 from Africa and 10 from Asia and the Pacific.

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ROME
Toronto Star

Sandro Contenta
Staff Reporter

ROME—With a new ring and red hat, Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins becomes a prince of the Roman Catholic Church on Saturday, a cardinal in the elite group that will choose the next pope.

Collins expects a moving ceremony at St. Peter’s Basilica, where Pope Benedict XVI will “create” 22 new cardinals. But the down-to-earth cardinal-designate, who will now be known as “His Eminence,” also anticipates moments of unease.

“It’s a rather complex liturgical ceremony and I always feel a little bit lost in things like that,” Collins, 65, said in a recent interview with the Star. “But I’m sure there will be people who will tell you where to stand and what to do.”

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VATICAN CITY
NPR

by The Associated Press

February 18, 2012

Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday brought 22 new Catholic churchmen into the elite club of cardinals who will elect his successor, in a greatly simplified ceremony that took account of evidence the 84-year-old pontiff is slowing down.

Benedict presided over a ceremony in St. Peter’s Basilica to formally create the 22 cardinals, who include the archbishops of New York, Prague, Hong Kong and Toronto as well as the heads of several Vatican offices.

Preparations for the ceremony have been clouded by embarrassing leaks of internal documents alleging financial mismanagement in Vatican affairs, and reports in the Italian media of political jockeying among church officials who, sensing an increasingly weak pontiff, are already preparing for a conclave.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

Philip Pullella
Reuters

4:54 a.m. CST, February 18, 2012

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – – Pope Benedict, putting his mark on the Catholic Church’s future, on Saturday inducted 22 men into the exclusive club of cardinals who will one day elect one of their own to succeed him.

Among the most prominent in the group is New York’s Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who is already being touted by some Vatican experts as a possible future candidate to become the first American pope.

Benedict, who turns 85 in April and is showing signs of his age, elevated the men to the highest Church rank below him at a ceremony in St. Peter’s Basilica known as a consistory.

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CANADA
The Chronicle-Herald

February 18, 2012
By AARON BESWICK Truro Bureau

A former resident of Talbot House is asking the public to not pass judgment before knowing the facts of the complaint against Rev. Paul Abbass.

Greg Carter says that he saw no signs of inappropriate conduct by the Roman Catholic priest during his 18-month stay between late 2001 and 2003 at the recovery home for male drug addicts.

Abbass took a leave from his post as executive director of Talbot House on Feb. 3 and has been relieved of his duties with the Diocese of Antigonish after at least one complaint was filed with the Community Services Department.

“I worked there after my stay and kept in contact for three years afterward and had a fairly close relationship with Father Abbass,” said Carter in a phone interview from his Dartmouth home Friday.

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CANADA
Hamilton Spectator

WINNIPEG The chairman of Canada’s truth and reconciliation commission says removing more than 100,000 aboriginal children from their homes and placing them in residential schools was an act of genocide.

Justice Murray Sinclair says the United Nations defines genocide to include the removal of children based on race, then placing them with another race to indoctrinate them. He says Canada has been careful to ensure its residential school policy was not “caught up” in the UN’s definition.

“That’s why the minister of Indian Affairs can say this was not an act of genocide,” Sinclair told students at the University of Manitoba Friday. “But the reality is that to take children away and to place them with another group in society for the purpose of racial indoctrination was — and is — an act of genocide and it occurs all around the world.”

About 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Metis children were forced to attend the government schools over much of the last century. The last school closed outside Regina in 1996.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Washington Times

HOUSTON, February 17, 2012 – The serene exterior of Miramonte Elementary School in South Los Angeles provides a false facade hiding a house of horrors where child sex abuse was part of the curriculum. Authorities charged two teachers, Mark Berndt and Martin Springer, of sexually abusing the students placed under their care by unsuspecting parents.

Parents in this largely Latino neighborhood are consumed with outrage over the sacrifice of their children’s safety at the altar of silence. School officials knew for more than a year that authorities were investigating the activities of the two teachers, but told parents nothing. …

Background checks and references are a limited tool in screening out pedophiles, and counseling for victims will not “un-ring the bell” of childhood sexual molestation. Since the abuse scandal that rocked the Catholic Church hit the press, society has begun to slowly educate itself on the tragedy of childhood sexual abuse.

The Sandusky scandal has changed the tenor of that lesson into a crash course that has resonated around the world. Last year, the Dutch Catholic Church was gripped by scandal as allegations of childhood sexual abuse rocked its members. Each time abuse is revealed, the wall of silence begins to crumble more and humanity sails into uncharted waters, frantically searching for a map to navigate the horrible reality of childhood sexual abuse.

The teacher who molested me was someone who had mastered the art of both blending in and gaining the trust of a child. This monster-predator made sure no one would believe my allegations and when I did not meet his demands, he manipulated others, to punish me for acts I did not commit.

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CALIFORNIA
Morgan Hill Times

About a year after the allegations went public, the Diocese of Monterey has settled a lawsuit involving suspicions that a former Mission San Juan Bautista priest in 2005 sexually abused a then 14-year-old member of the Madonna Del Sasso parish in Salinas.

The diocese settled with the accuser for $500,000 in the civil case involving former Mission priest Father Edward Fitz-Henry, according to an announcement from the Diocese of Monterey. The accuser filed the civil lawsuit in February 2011.

Friday’s statement from the church organization pointed out that the settlement did not “admit any liability on the part of either Fr. Fitz-Henry or the Diocese” and that it releases both parties from further monetary liability. The settlement amount was negotiated between the two parties.

Fitz-Henry has denied the allegations and filed a cross claim against Monterey Bishop Richard Garcia alleging misconduct in the aftermath of the revelations last year. The diocese in its statement contended the bishop followed proper “procedures to protect children” as outlined in church documents.

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PLYMOUTH (MA)
Wicked Local Plymouth

By Rich Harbert
Wicked Local Plymouth

Posted Feb 17, 2012

PLYMOUTH —
Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha Church will survive its recent clergy sexual abuse turmoil, in large part, because of the man who stands accused, says the pastor charged with carrying on.

Rev. William Williams, pastor of St. Peter Church in downtown Plymouth, said this week that Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha parish will persevere without the Rev. James Braley because of the support systems and staff “Father Jim” put in place over the last 10 years.

Early this week, Williams was assigned to serve as administrator of the West Plymouth church in the wake of Braley’s sudden suspension. The Archdiocese of Boston placed Braley, the pastor of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha since 2001, on leave last Sunday as a result of an allegation of sexual abuse of a child in the early 1980s.

A spokesman for the Middlesex County District Attorney confirmed this week that the office received the referral about Braley and is reviewing the allegation. Braley was assigned to St. Peter Parish in Cambridge in Middlesex County from his ordination in 1975 until 1981.

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OMAHA (NE)
World-Herald

By Christopher Burbach
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

An allegation that an Omaha priest sexually abused a youth in the early 1990s will go to the Vatican for further investigation.

The Archdiocese of Omaha announced Friday that its investigation of the allegation against the Rev. Al Salanitro was complete and that it had “met the church’s minimum standard for a credible allegation.” That does not mean local church officials determined Salanitro, who has denied the allegation, was guilty; rather, that it met the standards for Vatican investigation that were set by the Catholic Church’s more stringent rules on handling sex abuse allegations.

The man, from Carter Lake, Iowa, accused Salanitro of sexually abusing him about 20 years ago while Salanitro was pastor at Omaha’s Holy Cross Catholic Church. Salanitro has said he never sexually abused any minor.

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CALIFORNIA
Santa Cruz Sentinel

By VIRGINIA HENNESSEY
Herald Salinas Bureaumontereyherald.com
Posted: 02/17/2012

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Monterey is being sued by one of its own priests for not defending him against claims of child molestation.

The Rev. Edward Fitz-Henry filed a cross-complaint against the diocese Wednesday after it paid $500,000 to a man who claimed he was molested by the priest when he was a minor in 2005.

Fitz-Henry was suspended from his role as a priest in January 2011. At the time, he was the popular pastor of Mission San Juan Bautista.

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CANADA
The Chronicle-Herald

February 18, 2012

By AARON BESWICK Truro Bureau

Cape Breton Regional Police confirmed Friday they are investigating a complaint against a staff member at the Talbot House rehabilitation centre in Frenchvale.

“Talbot House has raised some concerns with police regarding one of its employees,” said spokeswoman Desiree Vassallo.

“We are looking further into that information and will determine whether there’s anything that needs a criminal investigation.”

Rev. Paul Abbass took a leave from his post as executive director of Talbot House on Feb. 3 and has been relieved of his duties with the Diocese of Antigonish after at least one complaint was filed with the Community Services Department.

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CALIFORNIA
KION

SALINAS, Calif- The Diocese of Monterey says that it has settled a lawsuit against Fr. Edward Fitz-Henry. The Diocese paid $500,000 to settle the lawsuit but in the settlement they do not admit to any liability.

In the lawsuit the victim claims that he was the victim of Fitz-Henry between 2005 and 2007 when he was a parishioner at Madonna del Sasso parish. Because of the allegations, Bishop Garcia suspended Fr. Fitz-Henry from ministry and the church conducted an internal investigation.

While investigating the 2005 incident the church claims to have found out about an incident in 1992. In a statement the Diocese said that before the investigation it thought that the 1992 incident was just a “non-sexual boundary violation involving a minor.”

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CALIFORNIA
The Monterey County Herald

montereyherald.com
Posted: 02/17/2012

The Rev. Edward Fitz-Henry filed a cross claim against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Monterey on Wednesday after it paid $500,000 to a man who claimed he was molested by the priest when he was a minor in 2005.

Fitz-Henry was suspended from his role as a priest in January 2011. At the time, he was the popular pastor of Mission San Juan Bautista. “John R.J. Doe,” now in his early 20s, claimed the molestations occurred when he was an altar boy and choir member at Madonna del Sasso Church in Salinas.

Fitz-Henry’s attorney, Daniel de Vries, said the priest is suing because the diocese did not stand by him and defend him. Instead, de Vries said, he learned about the settlement after it had been made.

In a prepared statement released Friday, diocese spokesman Tom Riordan said Fitz-Henry was suing over actions the district made in keeping with the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People and other church documents.

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OMAHA (NE)
KETV

OMAHA, Neb. — The Omaha archdiocese said the results the investigation of an Omaha priest accused of sexually abusing a minor more than 20 years ago are being sent to the Vatican.

An advisory panel and Archbishop George Lucas determined that the evidence in the investigation of Rev. Al Salanitro met the church’s minimum standard for a credible allegation.

“The general rule is that all sexual abuse cases must be referred to the Holy See,” said Deacon Tim McNeil, the chancellor of the archdiocese. “The only exception would be when the allegation is manifestly false. In other words, if there is a semblance of truth to the allegation, Archbishop Lucas is obliged to seek the intervention of the Holy See.”

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NEBRASKA
WOWT

Case of the Rev. Al Salanitro goes to Rome

The investigation into sexual abuse allegations against an Omaha priest is moving forward. The Archdiocese announced Friday the allegations meet the minimum requirements to refer the case to the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith in Rome.

Reporter: WOWT
Email Address: sixonline@wowt.com

The investigation into sexual abuse allegations against an Omaha priest is moving forward. The Archdiocese announced Friday the allegations meet the minimum requirements to refer the case to the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith in Rome.

The Archdiocese of Omaha reported in December that a man claimed he’d been sexually abused as a minor by the Rev. Al Salanitro in the 1990s when the priest was associate pastor of Holy Cross Parish in Omaha.

The allegation was reported to Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine.

Deacon Tim McNeil, chancellor of the Archdiocese, said Archbishop George J. Lucas and the Archdiocesan Review Board, an 11-member volunteer board of childcare experts, law enforcement officials, attorneys, clergy and mental health professionals that advises Lucas on the protection of young people, concluded the evidence met the church’s minimum standard for a credible allegation.

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CANADA
Canada.com

By Heather Yundt, Postmedia News February 17, 2012

John MacEachern, 65, remembers when he read the news in the morning paper.

“I was sad,” he said Friday. “It drained the blood out of my head.”

On Thursday, the Diocese of Antigonish in Nova Scotia announced that Rev. Paul Abbass — a top priest in the diocese — would be taking a leave of absence following complaints filed against him at a Cape Breton drug-and-alcohol rehab centre for men.

MacEachern — a Catholic involved with the diocese — called this yet another storm for members of the diocese.

“It’s a group of people out to sea and they keep getting buffeted by storms,” he said. “People are adjusting to the storms as they get on, and then they settle in, and then another storm hits, and then they adjust again.”

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UNITED STATES
The Center for Constitutional Rights

Dolan’s Track Record Exemplifies Cover-up Practices Within Catholic Church Hierarchy

press@ccrjustice.org

February 17, 2012, New York – The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) strongly condemn Pope Benedict’s appointment of Archbishop Timothy Dolan to Cardinal of the Archdiocese of New York. Dolan’s mishandling of child sexual abuse cases is well-documented, from failing to report direct admissions by offending priests to actively lobbying against reforming statutes of limitations on child sexual abuse cases in Wisconsin. The archbishop’s track record is consistent with the Catholic Church’s record of covering up child sex abuse allegations.

On September 13, 2011, CCR and SNAP filed a complaint before the International Criminal Court charging that Vatican officials are responsible for policies and practices of cover-up that have enabled widespread and systemic rape and sexual violence against children and vulnerable adults. Together with the complaint, they submitted more than 20,000 pages of supporting materials consisting of findings and reports of commissions of inquiry and grand juries, testimonies, and other documentary evidence of sex crimes by Catholic clergy and of the policies and practices involved in the cover-ups.

Among the documents submitted in support of the complaint are letters between Dolan and then-Cardinal Ratzinger concerning Father Franklyn Becker. Becker was diagnosed as a pedophile as early as 1983 when serving in Milwaukee and, though the archdiocese of Milwaukee knew he continued to re-offend, Becker was nonetheless allowed to continue to work in several parishes. It was only when Becker was arrested in California in 2003 for the sexual assault of a child that Dolan wrote to Ratzinger requesting that Becker be defrocked. Ratzinger’s office replied that Dolan should inquire whether Becker would voluntarily request his own defrocking rather than be laicized involuntarily by the Vatican.

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ROME
CNN

By Eric Marrapodi, CNN Belief Blog Co-Editor

(CNN) – At the Vatican on Saturday, New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan will be elevated to the College of Cardinals. The move will further cement Dolan’s standing as America’s top Catholic.

“This is the most exclusive club in the Catholic Church,” said John Allen, CNN’s Vatican analyst, of Dolan’s elevation. As a cardinal, Dolan will join the ranks of those who will choose the next pope. The College of Cardinals was established in 1150. Its main role is to advise the current pope and pick his successor. The elevation alone brings speculation that Dolan himself could one day be elected to lead the global church.

“In many cases you also become, at least informally, a candidate to be the next pope, because the next pope will almost certainly come from the roughly 120 cardinals under the age of 80,” Allen said. Once a Cardinal reaches 80, he is no longer able to participate in the election of the pope or enter the secret conclave where cardinals gather when the time comes to select the next pope, typically upon the prior pope’s death.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

This weekend, His Eminence the Most Reverend Archbishop Cardinal-Elect Timothy Michael Dolan will be made a cardinal of the Roman Catholic church. A cardinal’s scarlet beanie is the highest honor a pope can confer on a member of the Roman Catholic church.

As His Most Reverend Eminence is honored in this most prestigious way, the group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests is issuing a press release asking journalists, the public, and Catholics to think twice about precisely whom and what we’re honoring when we applaud the awarding of a red beanie to Cardinal Timothy Michael Dolan. As SNAP notes,

1. His Eminence kept quiet nine months after child pornography was found last Valentine’s day on the computer of Lawrence Gordon, assistant principal of St. Michael’s Academy in the Bronx.
2. When Father Jaime Duenas of his diocese was arrested on child sex charges, not only did His Eminence fail to ask Catholics or others to do anything to assist the criminal investigation, but he also wrote a “mean-spirited statement” that he posted on his blog, attacking the teenaged victim making credible allegations against Father Duenas.

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CANADA
CBC

A former addiction worker says a former resident of Talbot House made the complaint against a Cape Breton priest.

For 17 years, Rev. Paul Abbass has been executive director of Talbot House, an addiction and treatment facility in Frenchvale, Nova Scotia.

He’s also been the spokesman for the Diocese of Antigonish.

Dave Mantin is a former New Brunswick addiction worker, who now runs the Surivors Network for those Abused by Priests.

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VATICAN CITY
Telegraph (United Kingdom)

The Pope will appoint 22 new cardinals in a lavish ceremony at the Vatican on Saturday, against a backdrop of leaks, back-stabbing and jostling for power in the Holy See.

By Nick Squires, Rome
6:24PM GMT 17 Feb 2012

The new appointees will join an elite group of cardinals who will have the task of electing the next Pope on the death of Benedict XVI, who turns 85 in April.

Seven of the new “princes of the church” are Italian, making the prospect of the German Pope being succeeded by an Italian pontiff more likely, Vatican observers said.

Their election will increase to 67 the number of “elector cardinals” who are from Europe, against 22 from Latin America, 21 from Africa and Asia and 15 from North America.

Of the European cardinals, 30 will be Italian.

The appointments come after a torrid few weeks for the Holy See, with claims of corruption and nepotism, questions over the transparency of the Vatican bank and murky reports of an assassination plot within the next 12 months against Benedict.

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VATICAN CITY
Washington Post

By Alessandro Speciale| Religion News Service, Updated: Friday, February 17

VATICAN CITY — It isn’t anywhere on the official agenda, but as Roman Catholic leaders meet in Rome this weekend, looming in the background will be a recent string of Vatican leaks that reveal a bitter power struggle among the hierarchy.

In recent weeks, several confidential memos and documents by senior Vatican officials have appeared in the Italian media. The leak is “unprecedented in recent history,” says Massimo Faggioli, a church historian at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn.

The scandal started in late January when an Italian television program showed letters written to Pope Benedict XVI by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the Vatican’s U.S. ambassador, asserting widespread corruption and waste in the Vatican procurement process. Vigano, who at the time was secretary general of the office that oversees Vatican City, begged Benedict not to send him to the United States. His removal would cause “disarray and discouragement” in those who shared his anti-corruption struggle, Vigano said.

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ROME
National Catholic Reporter

by John L Allen Jr on Feb. 17, 2012 NCR Today

ROME — Theologically all cardinals may be equal, but in terms of celebrity appeal, some are obviously more equal than others. Each consistory, when a pope inducts new members into the church’s most exclusive club, tends to have its own “rock star” – that one new cardinal who is head and shoulders above everyone else on the buzz meter.

In February 2001, when John Paul II created a whopping 42 new cardinals, that rock star was Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras, a handsome, young polyglot who seemed the new face of the church in Latin America. In March 2006, Benedict’s first consistory, it was Stanislaw Dziwisz of Poland, John Paul’s longtime personal secretary, because it felt like a celebration of the late pope’s life and legacy.

This time around, the rock star of the consistory is quite obviously Timothy Dolan of New York.

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UNITED STATES
Amazon

Joey Piscitelli

A Witch Wins Justice is an absolute page-turner! It is the true story of Joey Piscatelli and his unfortunate experiences being sexually molested by a priest, the principal of Salesian High School in Richmond, CA. Piscatelli’s case, unlike scores of others was actually tried by a jury in a civil proceeding in 2005. Piscatelli prevailed against all odds against Salesian High School and the Catholic Church. Piscatelli’s book is an inspiration to many who have similarly suffered. Piscatelli is truly a person who turned years of suffering into victory.

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MISSOURI/WISCONSIN
Berger’s Beat

February 17, 2012 10:06 am | Author: Jerry Berger
Cardinal-designate Tim Dolan of NYC – who gets his red hat tomorrow – will receive another, admittedly-lesser distinction in May – an honorary degree from Manhattan College. Meanwhile, a Minnesota attorney who has represented more clergy sex abuse victims than any other lawyer in the US, Jeff Andreson, says he plans to depose Dolan in a case involving some 200 youngsters who say they were molested by Fr. Lawrence Murphy at St. John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee between 1950 and 1974.

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CANADA
YouTube

Bishop Ronald Fabbro apologies to the sexual abuse victims of priests in the Diocese of London and about plans to prevent such abuse in the future.

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SALINAS (CA)
KSBW

SALINAS, Calif. –
The Catholic Diocese of Monterey announced Thursday that it has settled a lawsuit with a parishioner who made allegations of sexual abuse against a former priest, Father Edward Fitz-Henry.

In a letter addressed to all priests of the Monterey diocese and obtained by KSBW, the diocese counsel announced a $500,000 settlement with the priest’s accuser.

In the letter, the counsel said the diocese chose to settle the sex abuse case because “during the investigation into the 2005 allegation, the diocese learned information about a 1992 situation that we previously believed was a non-sexual boundary violation involving a minor.”

The letter goes on to explain that the Diocesan Independent Review Board believes the violation is a credible violation of the charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, and that the next step is for the diocese to send Fr. Fitz-Henry’s case to Rome in the next few weeks.

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CANADA
Winnipeg Sun

By Paul Turenne,Winnipeg Sun

First posted: Friday, February 17, 2012

A Winnipeg man has come forward claiming he was repeatedly sexually abused by a priest while he was a student at a North End Catholic school nearly 60 years ago.

The 64-year-old man, who cannot be named to protect his identity, filed a lawsuit with Manitoba’s Court of Queen’s Bench last week alleging that a priest at Holy Ghost School on Selkirk Avenue fondled and masturbated him two or three times per week in a basement bathroom at the school when he was in Grade 3 in the mid-1950s. The man alleges the priest tried several times to get him to do the same in return.

“The plaintiff would try to run away from (the priest) in order to avoid or stop the sexual assaults, but would be caught and hit by (the priest),” the suit alleges.

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VATICAN CITY
The New York Times

By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO

Published: February 17, 2012

VATICAN CITY — As the world’s Roman Catholics prepare for the addition of 22 new members to the College of Cardinals, the Vatican has become embroiled in an embarrassing scandal in which a number of leaked documents have drawn back the curtains on the church’s inner workings.

The internal Church squabbling, predictably dubbed “Vatileaks” by the Italian news media, became public about three weeks ago with the disclosure on television and in newspapers of confidential letters written by a top Vatican official who had denounced alleged corruption and financial mismanagement in Vatican City.

The widespread feeling among experts who follow the Vatican is that the letters were a volley in a battle among officials jousting for power in a papal court whose anointed leader, they say, is more concerned with theological questions than with the day- to-day affairs of state.

Every journalist who follows the Church has described the current controversy as part of “a clash between cardinals in the Curia,” even though the Vatican is denying it, said Paolo Rodari, who writes about the Vatican for two newspapers. The e-mails and letters and documents that have made their way into print “could not get out unless they came from someone inside,” he added.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

By
CATHY HAYES,
IrishCentral Staff Writer

Published Friday, February 17, 2012

Pope Benedict XVI hopes to “solidify and strengthen” relations between Ireland and the Hoy See according to the new Papal Nuncio to Ireland, Archbishop Charles J. Brown.

Archbishop Brown,a new York native, formally presented his credentials to the Irish President Michael D Higgins, on Thursday at the president’s resident in Áras an Uachtaráin.

By taking up office as the representative of Pope Benedict in Ireland, Brown replaces his predecessor Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza who was recalled to the Vatican in the wake of the findings of the Cloyne Report, into sex abuse in the Catholic Church.

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ROME
Regnum Christi

Cardinal Velasio De Paolis, c.s., Papal Delegate to the Legion of Christ and Regnum Christi, wrote to the consecrated members of the movement February 15. In his letter, he reviews the process of their renewal to date and progress in verifying the vocation to the Third Degree in the Regnum Christi Movement. He also outlines organizational changes designed to move the process forward.

(Translation of the original letter in Italian)

Rome, 15 February 2012

Dear consecrated men and women of Regnum Christi,

After completing his visitation, the Apostolic Visitator delivered his report in September of 2011. We thanked him and began to study it. He draws attention to many positive points, but also to a good number that need correction or improvement. In obedience to the task given us by the Holy See, we began to undertake the path of discernment. The outset was rather laborious, but as we moved forward the path became clearer.

We saw that we needed in the first place an “illuminative phase” that would help us to detect more clearly the path to follow. We therefore made the effort to meet, help and support each other in our desire to renew our adherence to the consecrated life in Regnum Christi. The meetings held for this purpose in Mexico and Brazil guided by Fr Ghirlanda, and here in Rome by me with the help of Fr Agostino Montan, were in everyone’s opinion highly positive. After these encounters we were convinced that our reflection on the vocation of consecrated life in Regnum Christi was on the right path; that your vocation is authentic, and there was a renewal of the commitment to preserve and persevere in it.

As we reflected on the lay consecrated vocation in Regnum Christi linked with the Legion of Christ, we found points of substantial agreement that reflect the lived experience of many of you over many years: we are in agreement on the lay consecrated vocation, we have seen that association is the path to pursue, we have also confirmed that consecrated life in Regnum Christi is linked to the charism of the Legion, in the perspective—which needs deeper examination—of a single ‘Charismatic Family’ in which Legionaries, consecrated lay men and women, and non-consecrated lay members share in different ways in the one charism. As well as these acquired points, we also singled out the means to cooperate with Legionary priests in this process, even if many points still remain to be clarified. We also realized that within our own communities we needed time for reflection. The desire to not rush the process and to give more space for reflection was also expressed. Both I and my collaborators also reached the same conclusion. We have therefore thought of extending the time of reflection and of re-examining some aspects of how our work is organized, the better to prepare the inner workings of the governance of the association of the consecrated men and women.

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VATICAN CITY
WSLS

By: NICOLE WINFIELD | Associated Press
Published: February 17, 2012

VATICAN CITY (AP) The pope’s envoy to the disgraced Legion of Christ religious order is scrambling to contain fallout from the resignation of the head of the Legion’s women’s branch and the decision of 30 members to split from the movement.

In a letter released Friday, Cardinal Velasio De Paolis urged those leaving not to “try to persuade or proselytize” others to come along with them, and confirmed that the exodus wasn’t just of rank and file members but included senior directors as well.

Pope Benedict XVI tapped De Paolis to take over the Legion in 2010 after a Vatican investigation determined that its founder, the Rev. Marciel Maciel, was a pedophile and fraud who had created a cult-like movement where members endured emotional, spiritual and psychological abuse. The revelations were particularly scandalous given that the Legion was one of the fastest-growing religious orders and that Maciel was revered in the Vatican for his ability to attract priests and money.

De Paolis has insisted that to survive, the Legion must reform itself from the inside out and he has refrained from imposing major changes from the outside. But he has faced criticism that he is moving too slowly, that the Legion’s problematic internal culture hasn’t changed, and that the same superiors who covered up Maciel’s crimes remain in positions of authority.

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IRELAND
Cormac MacConnell

At the time of writing on a bright spring morning, the word on the wires is that the Pope is considering coming to Ireland later this year for an upcoming Eucharistic Congress. He has been invited by the Irish hierarchy.

He is a very wise old man, and I’m sure that at the end of the day he will decide not to come. The time is not opportune at all.

How times change! The huge and emotive Eucharistic Congress of the last century was one of the most iconic events in the entire history of the new Irish nation.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by John L Allen Jr on Feb. 17, 2012 All Things Catholic

In the run-up to a consistory, Rome takes on the atmosphere of a college reunion. Church people from all over turn up, making it hard to walk down the street without bumping into someone you know. That’s been the case this week, ahead of Saturday’s consistory in which Pope Benedict XVI will create 22 new cardinals, including Americans Timothy Dolan and Edwin O’Brien.

This week, whenever such a chance encounter has occurred, conversation fairly quickly has turned to one question above all: What the hell is going on around here?

The basis for the question, of course, is the mushrooming Vatican leaks scandal, in which confidential documents are appearing in the papers almost on a daily basis, putting the Vatican in a highly unfavorable light. By now, there are almost too many to keep track, but big-ticket items have included:

•Letters written to the pope and to the Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, by the current papal ambassador in the United States, Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, complaining of corruption in Vatican finances and a campaign of defamation against him. At the time, he was the No. 2 official in the Vatican City State, and desperately trying to avoid being sent away.

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VATICAN CITY
BBC News

By David Willey
BBC News, Rome

Pope Benedict XVI will place red hats on the heads of 22 new cardinals on Saturday amid an atmosphere of scandal-mongering, rumour and media leaks from inside the Vatican.

The leaks concern alleged internal divisions and even malpractice among the senior bishops and cardinals at the heart of the Roman Catholic Church.

Most of the new cardinals will be granted the right to take part in the election of Pope Benedict’s successor.

It is the fourth Vatican Consistory since Benedict was elected Pope seven years ago, and is being held to bring the College of Cardinals to its full electoral quorum of 120, after deaths and age disqualifications depleted its numbers.

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VATICAN CITY
Washington Post

‘Vatileaks’ scandal, Vatican intrigue cast cloud over ceremony to create new cardinals

By Associated Press, Updated: Friday, February 17,

VATICAN CITY — A scandal over leaked Vatican documents and reports of political infighting, financial mismanagement and administrative chaos in its frescoed halls have cast a cloud over this weekend’s ceremony to create 22 new cardinals.

With Pope Benedict XVI slowing down as he nears his 85th birthday, Saturday’s ceremony has taken on the aura of a pre-conclave summit. Reports abound in the Italian media of cardinals and their supporters jockeying for prominence ahead of a future papal election, and of a Vatican bureaucracy in disarray as Benedict focuses his waning strength on other matters.

All that has weighed on Saturday’s consistory, where the 22 new princes of the church will get their red hats, or birette, and be formally welcomed into the elite men’s club that will elect Benedict’s successor. That ceremony will bring up to 125 the number of cardinals worldwide eligible to vote for the next pope.

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UNITED STATES
Ave Maria Press

My Peace I Give You
Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints

Author: Dawn Eden
Foreword by: Mother Agnes Mary Donovan, S.V.
Price: $16.95
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
Trim size: 5.5 x 8.5 inches
ISBN: 978-1-59471-290-6
Imprint: Ave Maria Press

On-sale date: April 9, 2012

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Nick Bramhill

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Catholic leaders have launched a stinging attack on organisers of the IFTAs for presenting an award to suspended RTÉ series Prime Time Investigates.

The investigative series has been temporarily axed to allow for a probe by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland into the defamation of Fr Kevin Reynolds in one of its programmes.

But a group representing Ireland’s priests say they are incensed that the under-fire series scooped a prestigious gong at last weekend’s IFTAs for an unrelated episode, which probed standards of care in nursing homes.

The Association of Catholic Priests also said it believes “Mission To Prey”, the programme in which Fr Reynolds was defamed, would actually have won the award for Best Current Affairs/News had the state broadcaster not been dragged to court in November.

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CALIFORNIA
San Francisco Chronicle

Will Kane

Thursday, February 16, 2012

A former Roman Catholic priest who was sentenced to 10 years behind bars in 2005 for molesting a girl in Daly City is facing possible deportation after being freed from prison this year.

Jose Superiaso, 57, a former priest at St. Andrew Church in Daly City, pleaded no contest in 2005 to lewd acts with a child under 14 and was sentenced to 10 years in state prison, with credit for the almost 2 1/2 years he spent in jail before his conviction, said Steve Wagstaffe, San Mateo County district attorney.

Superiaso was freed in January and was promptly taken into custody by federal authorities, who will ask a judge to deport him to his native Philippines, said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Superiaso is a lawful permanent resident of the United States but can be deported because he was convicted of a crime, Kice said.

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ITALY
The Independent (United Kingdom)
Michael Day
Milan

Friday 17 February 2012

After several years of scandal in which the Catholic Church has faced allegations of financial impropriety, paedophile priests and rumours of plots to kill the Pope, the Vatican is now facing a new €600m-a-year tax bill as Rome seeks to head off European Commission censure over controversial property tax breaks enjoyed by the Church.

As the EC heads closer to officially condemning the fiscal perks enjoyed by the Catholic Church and introduced by the Berlusconi administration, Prime Minister Mario Monti has written to the Competition Commissioner, Joaquin Almunia, saying that the Vatican will resume property tax, or Ici, payments.

Mr Almunia said in 2010 that the exemption amounted to state aid that might breach EU competition law. A parliamentary proposal by the Italian Radicals party last August to repeal the exemption, with a successful petition on Facebook, upped the pressure. A spokesman for Mr Almunia appeared to give the thumbs-up yesterday: “It is a proposal that constitutes a significant progress on the issue and I hope will be implemented,” he said.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

Consistory, Benedict XVI imposes the red hat on the new cardinals that will be entering the world’s most exclusive “club”: the cardinal electors who vote for the Pope

Andrea Tornielli
Vatican City

Saturday, February 18th, Benedict XVI will impose the red hat on 22 new “princes of the Church”, ready to defend the faith and the Pope “usque ad sanguinis effusionem”, which means: “unto the shedding of our blood”, symbolized by the red colour of their cassocks. Eighteen of the newly “created” (the appointment of cardinal is referred to in this manner because it depends on the free will of the Pope) will join the world’s most exclusive “club”, the group that will be responsible for voting for the Pope, while the remaining four, who are over 80, will receive the red biretta for merits acquired during their long service, but they cannot participate in a Conclave because they are beyond the age limit for cardinal electors.

Along with the red hat (the classic “three-cornered hat”, but without the tassel), the new cardinals will also receive from the Pope’s hands the note of appointment with the name of the Roman Church assigned to them – each cardinal receives one – together with the Cardinal ring. Until the last consistory, held in November 2010, the Pope presented the ring the day after the imposition of the biretta, during a Mass in St. Peter’s concelebrated with the new cardinals. The ritual has been revised and streamlined, and now newly elected cardinals will receive everything in one go, on Saturday morning.

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DETROIT (MI)
Detroit Free Press

By Patricia Montemurri
Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

There is a reason for excitement among some metro Detroit Catholics, as news regarding the pending church closures trickled out Thursday.

At least four historic churches in Detroit will be saved. And there are indications that the list of shuttered parishes will be fewer than the 48 originally recommended in November.

• Interactive map: A detailed look at Detroit’s Catholic churches

“We are rejoicing,” said Rhonda Gilbert, 67, of Detroit, a parishioner at St. Charles Borromeo near Belle Isle in Detroit. She learned from her pastor this week that the church, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, will remain open.

“We got our letter Wednesday,” said Gilbert, referring to letters Archbishop Allen Vigneron sent this week to pastors and 270,000 registered Catholic households detailing the fate of each of the 270 parishes across the six-county Archdiocese of Detroit.

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PHILIPPINES
GMA News

A senior prelate said the Philippine bishop who ordained the Filipino priest convicted of child molestation in the United States should initiate the dismissal process from the clerical state as penalty.

Retired Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz said the bishop of the diocese where Father Jose Superiaso, 57, was ordained should be the one to file charges against him.

Superiaso was ordained in the Archdiocese of Manila.

“The first move would have to come from his bishop in the Philippines, meaning to say his bishop will be the one with the authority to file charges against the priest for the imposition of penal sanctions,” Cruz said.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Stephen Rogers

Friday, February 17, 2012

His predecessor left under a cloud of controversy, so it was left to the new papal nuncio to Ireland to promise to do “everything in my power to solidify and strengthen the relations between the Holy See and Ireland”.

Archbishop Charles John Brown made the pledge as he presented his credentials to President Michael D Higgins.

Last July, the man he replaces, Archbishop Guiseppe Leanza, was recalled to Rome after the publication of the Cloyne Report into the Church’s handling of abuse claims against 19 clerics in the diocese. It accused the Vatican of being “entirely unhelpful” to Irish bishops in their attempts to put proper child safeguarding procedures in place. When the investigating commission wrote to Archbishop Leanza during its inquiry, he replied that he was “unable to assist” it.

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DEUTSCHLAND
SWR

Zum ersten Mal untersuchte ein Wissenschaftlerteam im Rahmen einer repräsentativen Studie, wie viele Bewohnerinnen von Behindertenheimen sexuell missbraucht wurden. Geistig behinderte Frauen wurden in speziell vereinfachter Sprache befragt. Sechs Prozent der Frauen mit geistiger Behinderung berichteten von sexueller Gewalt, die sie selbst in Heimen oder Einrichtungen erlebt hatten.

In absoluten Zahlen heißt das: mehrere tausend Frauen wurden in den Behindertenheimen und -Einrichtungen zu Missbrauchsopfern. Die Täter sind meist Bewohner aber eben auch Personal. Verantwortlich für den Schutz und die Sicherheit der Bewohnerinnen sind die Träger beziehungsweise die Betreuer. Oft wird den Betroffenen nicht geglaubt. Die Einrichtungen versuchen zudem alle Vorfälle unter der Decke zu halten. Eine Meldepflicht in Verdachtsfällen besteht nicht. Selten kommt es daher zu Anzeigen, fast nie zu Anklagen oder Verurteilungen

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CANADA
Halifax News Net

… It goes from worse to bad for the Catholic Church in Nova Scotia. A high ranking church member has been relieved of his duties while an inquiry is underway into accusations of sexual abuse and a complaint about access to medication. At the centre of this potential scandal is Reverend Paul Abbass, a man who’s face has become very familiar to Nova Scotians as a spokesman for the church after the Bishop Raymond Lahey scandal. Abbass was the longtime head of Talbot House, a Cape Breton addiction centre. Community Services is investigating. The RCMP’s also aware of the allegations.

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CANADA
Medicine Hat News

Friday, 17 February 2012

Michelle McQuigge, The Canadian Press

TORONTO – The picture on Thomas Collins’ desk depicts a 16th-century cardinal who fought to return the Catholic faith to its roots while managing one of the largest religious communities in his country.

The present-day Archbishop of Toronto now plans to look to that image for inspiration as he prepares to follow in his idol’s footsteps.

Collins, 65, is about to become the 16th Canadian to be elevated to the position of cardinal, an elite group of advisers handpicked by the Pope. Collins and 21 new appointees will don their red hats on Saturday at an official ceremony at the Vatican. …

The pontif personally appointed Collins to a team probing rampant allegations of sexual abuse in Ireland in 2010, Smith said, adding his friend was also pegged to serve on the Vatican communications council before his elevation to cardinal.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Wicked Local Braintree

By Bob Aicardi
Wicked Local Braintree

Braintree —

The Rev. James E. Braley, chaplain at Archbishop Williams High School in Braintree from 1981 to 1986 and pastor of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha Parish in Plymouth since 2001, has been placed on administrative leave as a result of an allegation of sexual abuse of a child.

In its Feb. 12 statement announcing the suspension, the Archdiocese of Boston said the claim concerns conduct alleged to have occurred in the early 1980s.

“The Archdiocese immediately notified law enforcement of the allegation and has initiated a preliminary investigation into the complaint,” the statement declared. “Father Braley will remain on administrative leave pending the outcome of the preliminary investigation. The decision to place Father Braley on administrative leave represents the Archdiocese’s commitment to the welfare of all parties and does not represent a determination of his guilt or innocence as it pertains to the investigation. The Archdiocese will work to resolve this case as expeditiously as possible and in a manner that is fair to all parties.”

Braley, through his lawyer, adamantly denied any wrongdoing and maintained his innocence. “Obviously he’s upset by these allegations,” Quincy attorney William Sullivan said. “He just is solid and strong that he did not do anything inappropriate.”

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CANADA
Toronto Star

By Rosie DiManno
Columnist

Dictators, who tend not to die peacefully in their beds, are among the few on this planet who can claim a job for life.

And then there’s the pope.

No challenge to his authority, no Catholic Spring, no curia putsch allowed there; can’t be dislodged for reasons of poor health, psychological trauma or colossally bad judgment in ministering to the world’s nearly 2 billion faithful.

Pontiffs are sitting pretty once elected by conclave. The last pope to resign was Gregory XII in 1415, a strategic maneuver to end the battle for the papacy (three vying) that was known as the Western schism. The Code of Canon Law contains no apparatus for yanking a Bishop of Rome who’s botched it.

While popes are not technically “infallible’’ — a misconception of nuance; they’re only “error-free’’ when performing in their official capacity to promulgate dogma on faith and morals — they can’t be given the sack for getting it spectacularly wrong because, in those matters that most directly affect us, they’re unimpeachably right. Got it?

Understanding arcane intricacies of canon law is as challenging as that whole Father-Son-Holy Ghost trinity thing, which is why most Catholics simply take it on faith. Faith, however, has never in modern memory been so fragile, so at risk, as under Benedict XVI, with alarming numbers abandoning the Church, at least in the West.

Benedict may be indubitably pious and unmatched as a scholar-pope but, on his watch, the Catholic Church has sunk into a morass of unprecedented scandal. The latest crisis — explosive documents obtained by an Italian investigative TV show in what’s been dubbed “Vatileaks’’ — arises from a three-way private correspondence, which included the pope, with an archbishop who blew the whistle on what he saw as a web of corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the Vatican, an alert that got the poor man transferred, from deputy governor of Vatican City to Vatican ambassador in Washington. The rippling accusations encompass everything from awarding of tenders for work to inside-connected contractors at ridiculously inflated prices to yet more questions being asked about the Vatican bank, 30 years after its predecessor (Banco Ambrosiano) collapsed amidst lurid allegations about money-laundering, freemasons, the Mafia and the mysterious death of its chairman — “God’s banker,” Roberto Calvi.

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STOCKTON (CA)
The Record

By Jennie Rodriguez-Moore
Record Staff Writer

February 17, 2012

STOCKTON – Attorneys for a 37-year-old man, who accuses a Lockeford priest of molesting him as a child, may argue in a civil trial that the Diocese of Stockton is liable and it somehow benefited from the reverend’s actions, a judge ruled Thursday.

But first the plaintiff’s attorneys must prove that the Rev. Michael Kelly, 62, sexually abused the altar boy during the 1980s while he served at Cathedral of the Annunciation in Stockton.

Kelly, now at St. Joachim Church in Lockeford, has served at various parishes throughout San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties.

San Joaquin County Superior Court Judge Bob McNatt heard motions this week to determine which facts will be admissible in the upcoming trial.

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WISCONSIN
The Northwestern

Written by
Mike Nichols

Unless you’re a king or a demigod or, as Mark Twain once wrote, somebody with a tapeworm, it’s usually a good idea to avoid referring to yourself with the pronoun “we.”

I’m not sure who Norbert Maday, a defrocked Illinois priest sitting in a courtroom in Oshkosh the other day, thought he was when he tried to explain away the things he did 25 years ago to two suburban Chicago boys on a retreat in Winnebago County.

“We’re just committing what we call a mortal sin and we’re sorry because of the weakness that, that we allowed, allows to do it,” he told a courtroom in garbled but, nevertheless, extremely revealing language.

Maday didn’t have a codefendant. His attorney, Ralph Sczygelski, said the former priest has some health issues but the lawyer didn’t mention worms. So I don’t think that explains the use of “we” either.

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