ABUSE TRACKER

An extraordinary claim appeared in a column by Matthew Syed in the Sunday Times yesterday, namely that up to a million Italian children have been abused by Italian priests since 1950. No-one can fail to have been shocked by such a figure, but from where does it originate? The answer is that it comes from a member of ‘The Abuse Network’ which is calling on the Church in Italy to investigate clerical sex abuse as has happened recently in France and Germany. Speaking to The Times, Francesco Zanardi (pictured above), himself an abuse victim and member of ‘The Abuse Network’, said: “I believe the number of victims could be as high as a million here”.

But what does he base that figure on? What he has done is extrapolate from a number that appears in the recent French report that was commissioned by the French hierarchy.

Based on a survey, that…

View Cache

In this age of small-group ministries, most pastors would know how to handle a crisis that affected significant numbers of believers in their pews.

“If you had 1 in 4 members of your congregation actively battling cancer, or 1 in 4 members … experiencing being widowed or losing a spouse, chances are that you would have some level of intentional ministry to those individuals,” said Rachael Denhollander at a recent Trinity Forum event focusing on how churches respond to sexual abuse. “Maybe you would have a support group or a Bible study for them. You would have meal trains to help provide for their physical needs.”

But many sexual abuse survivors hesitate to speak out, she said, because churches act as if they don’t exist. Thus, they have little reason to believe the sins and crimes committed against them will be handled in a way that offers safety and healing.

…

View Cache

We must now accept that such evil is not an aberration but part of a duality central to institutional religion

The most dangerous moment in any scandal is when anger shades into indifference, when revelations that once had the power to shock become so normalised that they scarcely register. I wonder if we have reached such a tipping point in one of the most disturbing stories of our age: the sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests.

If so, this should trouble us all.

On Wednesday a Vatican insider estimated that up to a million Italian children had been abused over seven decades. We do not know the true number because the clergy enjoy various immunities in Italy and the nation has never confronted, let alone fully investigated, the evil that has taken place within its borders. This should have led the news worldwide but scarcely merited a mention on…

View Cache

Religion should carry a health warning

I applaud Matthew Syed’s piece “A million children abused by Italian priests, and it barely makes the news” (Comment, last week). In my work as a psychotherapist, I witnessed the lifelong psychological damage experienced by survivors of abuse. It leads me to wonder: should all religious belief systems carry a mental health warning?
Tony Warren, Burgess Hill, West Sussex

Priests unfairly damned
The Catholic church is an easy target in countries with a long tradition of anti-Catholic bigotry such as Britain. A comprehensive survey of sexual abuse by priests in the US by John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York found that about 4 per cent were accused (but not all found guilty). That means 96 per cent had no accusations against them. This is comparable with many other organisations and churches.
Professor John Loughlin, fellow, Blackfriars Hall, Oxford

Fallibility must be acknowledged
It is difficult…

View Cache

A German court on Friday convicted a Catholic priest of sexual abuse of children in cases that spanned many years and sentenced him to 12 years in prison.

The Cologne state court also ordered the 70-year-old to pay three co-plaintiffs in the cases damages totaling 50,000 euros ($56,000), news agency dpa reported.

The priest was identified by local media only as Hans U.

According to the indictment, the case against the priest covered 118 counts and the youngest victim was a 9-year-old girl. The priest was taken into custody during the trial because more victims came forward and the court saw a danger of him reoffending.

The court heard that the suspect’s victims included a girl who complained of homesickness at a holiday camp and a girl to whom he was supposedly giving anger therapy.

The priest continued to have opportunities to be alone with children although the officials with…

View Cache

“We’re very let down by this open letter from Joe White,” said a 34-year-old Branson man who says he was abused by a former Kanakuk counselor now in state prison serving two life sentences.

Kanakuk camp near Branson went public late Friday with a new statement aiming to redefine its relationship with people who say they are survivors of sexual abuse that took place at the Christian summer camp.

For more than a decade, the camp has been under scrutiny for reports of sexual abuse. As the News-Leader reported in 2010, a charismatic former camp counselor, Peter Newman, pleaded guilty to sexually abusing boys and is now serving two life sentences in Missouri prisons, plus 30 years.

Eleven months ago, Kanakuk was again in the spotlight due to new reporting by journalists Nancy French and David French published by The Dispatch, a conservative-leaning news site. Much…

View Cache

Pennsylvania Bishop Daniel Gutiérrez issued the following message to his diocese on Feb. 25 outlining an investigation of child sex abuse claims against a New Jersey lay employee who previously had served for 20 years at a parish in Philadelphia. The employee, Thomas Whittemore, was terminated from parish ministry this week as the two dioceses’ investigation continues.

My Siblings in Christ,

It grieves me to tell you that several months ago, we were contacted by someone who reported that he had been sexually abused as a child by Mr. Thomas Whittemore during the time Mr. Whittemore served as the director of music at St. Peter’s Church, Pine St., Philadelphia. Mr. Whittemore was employed by St. Peter’s from 1984 to 2004 and employed from 1980 to 1983 at All Saints, Wynnewood. At the time we received the report, Mr. Whittemore was employed by a parish in the Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey.

We…

View Cache

The Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee has offered a public apology and a confidential monetary settlement to sexual abuse survivor Jennifer Lyell, who was mischaracterized by the denomination’s in-house news service when she decided to go public with her story in March 2019.

The committee, which acts on behalf of the SBC between its annual national meetings, announced the resolution during their Tuesday meeting in Nashville, the latest chapter in a saga that has raised questions about the handling of sexual abuse in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. In addition to a public apology, Lyell also received a financial settlement of an undisclosed amount, according to Gene R. Besen, the committee’s interim legal counsel.

Lyell publicly disclosed she was a sexual abuse survivor after learning the man she accused of abuse, a former Southern Baptist seminary professor, had recently returned to ministry. She said she came forward with her story…

View Cache

A youth church leader in north Alabama has been arrested after authorities said she sexually abused a 15-year-old high school student.

Allison Brianna Cookston Stone, 26, of Albertville, was arrested Wednesday and charged with second-degree sodomy and second-degree sexual abuse, Marshall County Sheriff Phil Sims said.

Stone is a youth leader at the Church of God of Union Assembly in Albertville, Sims told reporters Thursday.

“That’s a position of trust in our community,” the sheriff said, according to al.com.

Stone was released after posting $60,000 bond. It was unknown if she has an attorney who could comment on her behalf.

The alleged victim in the case was identified as a teenaged boy from Boaz High School.

Authorities believe the boy’s parents “were unaware of the sexual nature” of the relationship between him and Stone, Sims said. The alleged abuse had been going on “for some time,”…

View Cache

One of the oldest Roman Catholic dioceses in the U.S. is suing four insurance companies over claims that they haven’t fulfilled contracts to provide liability coverage for sexual abuse complaints.

The Archdiocese of Santa Fe filed the lawsuit this week as it deals with a bankruptcy case involving more than 400 people who allege they were victims of clergy sexual abuse. Some of the claims date back decades.

The archdiocese hopes to raise enough money, including through insurance payouts, to settle the bankruptcy case, which has stretched over more than three years and is on its third mediator.

At least one attorney sees the archdiocese’s lawsuit as a step toward a resolution in the case, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported.

The defendants named in the lawsuit are Great American Insurance Co., Arrowood Indemnity Co., St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Co. and United States Fire Insurance Co. Representatives of…

View Cache

Michael Vanderburgh is a lot of things. He is a husband, and a father. He’s a college graduate, and a former cop. He is the executive director of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in Dayton, Ohio. He is also a survivor of clerical sexual abuse when he was a child. 

Like a lot of survivors of abuse, Michael never told anyone what he went through at the hands of a priest and family friend. He first came forward in the aftermath of the Spotlight scandals which rocked the Church in the early 2000s.

Coming forward meant that Michael, like a lot of victim-survivors, had to come to terms with what he’d been through all over again. 

Michael thought the process of coming forward ended with his home Archdiocese of Cincinnati offering him $21,000 in compensation, while acknowledging that “no amount of money can sufficiently compensate a victim of…

View Cache

A German Catholic priest was sentenced to 12 years in prison for child sexual abuse, a German court said on Friday, the latest in a string of cases that have shaken the German Catholic Church.

The Cologne district court found the man, identified in court documents as Hans Ue., guilty in a total of 110 cases between 1993 and 2018, including 23 cases of serious sexual abuse of children.

The court ordered the defendant to pay compensation to three of the nine plaintiffs for their pain and suffering.

German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeiting said the youngest victim was 9 years old at the time of the crime, adding that three plaintiffs were nieces of the 70-year-old priest.

Court hearings in the case, underway since November last year, revealed additional potential victims and led to the priest’s detention in January, the Cologne court said.

The lawsuit is the latest case in a…

View Cache

A long-awaited public apology is to be offered by five Stormont ministers to victims of historical institutional abuse.

The compromise move comes as the offices of the First and deputy First Minister remain empty following the resignation of Paul Givan, which also forced Michelle O’Neill out of the role.

The public apology was recommended in the final report of the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry (HIAI), which was published five years ago.

Mr Givan and Ms O’Neill announced last month that the apology would be given in Parliament Buildings in Stormont on behalf of the powersharing executive on March 11.

However, since then the DUP has resigned the first minister role, in protest at the workings of the post-Brexit Northern Ireland Protocol, leading to doubt over whether the apology would go ahead.

It was confirmed on Thursday morning that the public apology will be offered by ministers Michelle McIlveen, Conor Murphy, Nichola…

View Cache

Survivors are calling for the remains of a Catholic priest to be exhumed from church grounds after they allege he sexually abused children.

The First Nation of Kahnawake south of Montreal will vote next month in a referendum on whether the remains of a Jesuit priest alleged to have committed sexual abuse should be exhumed and removed from the community.

Exhumation “was an idea proposed by community members, alleged victims and supporters,” Tonya Perron, one of the Mohawk Council’s elected chiefs, said in an interview this week.

“They proposed having him removed from the territory, and it started a dialogue in the community about his remains being here in the first place. We don’t have any precedent to go by.”

After the discovery last summer of what are believed to be 215 unmarked graves at a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C., several Kahnawake residents came forward with allegations that…

View Cache

Senators Melissa Agard (D-Madison) and Lena Taylor (D-Milwaukee), joined by Rep. Kristina Shelton (D-Green Bay), on Thursday, Feb. 24 released LRB-6112.

The bill requires members of clergy, like other professionals interacting with children, to report all instances of child abuse and neglect, including sexual abuse, of which they become aware in their professional capacity.

Peter Isley, Program Director of Nate’s Mission, joined Agard in support of the bill. Nate’s Mission is committed to “dismantling the structural mechanisms that allow abuse” within churches.

Agard and Isley released the following statements:

Agard: “For far too long, secrecy has clouded justice and healing for victims. It is time to put an end to keeping the known abuse of children in the shadows. This bill will hold accountable clergy and faith leaders who sexually abuse children, as well as those who have worked to hide this abuse. These are heinous crimes and an abuse…

View Cache

A disclosure by the Diocese of Bridgeport about Fr. George Maslar has us infuriated, but not surprised. A brave survivor, identified only as “Jane Doe,’” has stepped up and shared publicly about the abuse she suffered as a child at the hands of Fr. Maslar. The woman received a settlement from the Diocese last year, after notifying Church officials in Bridgeport in 2017 that she was assaulted by the priest in 1971 when she was just 15 years of age. She met the cleric when both attended prayer meetings at the Cathedral of Saint Augustine in Bridgeport.

The Diocese of Bridgeport said in response to the woman’s public disclosure of the abuse, “It is important to note that when the Diocese first became aware of the allegations in November 2017, it immediately reported them to the Connecticut State Department of Children and Family, Child Abuse and…

View Cache

Today’s sentencing of Fr. Jean Claude Jean-Philippe, CM,  a member of the Vincentian religious order, hopefully will bring closure to his victim, and we pray that she and her family, hurt by this betrayal of trust, can begin to heal. The Archdiocese of Miami deeply regrets the harm perpetrated by this priest which extends not only to the survivor of this assault and her family but to the parishioners, to priests of integrity, and to the entire community of faith. 

It is over twenty years since the leaders of the United States Catholic Church established a charter to protect children and those who are vulnerable. One hundred ninety-five dioceses in the country now have very clear and mandatory policies along with educational tools to maintain the safety of children and vulnerable adults. 

Along with proactive directives, the Archdiocese of Miami’s policy dictates immediately reporting allegations of abuse by clergy or…

View Cache

The woman claims she was abused by a priest while attending a church-run school in 1970

Editor’s note: This story contains graphic subject matter that may be upsetting to some

An Okanagan Indian Band member has sued the Catholic Church, alleging she was sexually assaulted by a priest more than 50 years ago at a Vernon elementary school that was run by the church.

The woman filed a statement of claim Feb. 22 in B.C. Supreme Court against the Roman Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Kamloops. According to the court documents, the woman does not know the identity of the priest who assaulted her but claims the diocese does. The priest is listed as defendant John Doe.

The statement of claim states that the woman attended St. James Catholic School from 1968 to 1972. She was allegedly molested in 1970.

“In or around the spring of 1970, when the…

View Cache

A federal judge found sufficient claims of fraud allegations exist against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg and ruled that attorneys representing sexual abuse survivors can seek a judgment to have an estimated $95 million in assets the Diocese transferred behind two different trusts moved to its bankruptcy estate.

According to the Feb. 17 ruling by Chief Bankruptcy Judge Henry W. Van Eck, the assets include $50 million in real estate like the Diocesan Campus, bishop’s residence and a retirement home for priests, all in Harrisburg, along with eight cemeteries including All Saints Cemetery in Elysburg and seven high schools including Our Lady of Lourdes Regional in Coal Township.

Also at risk of being returned to the bankruptcy estate is $45 million in furniture and appliances, cash and securities, religious artifacts and objects, vehicles, notes, records and books, according to filings with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District…

View Cache

The woman was a student at St. James School from 1968 to 1972 and was allegedly molested in 1970

Another lawsuit alleging sexual abuse has been filed against St. James Catholic Church in Vernon.

A member of the Okanagan Indian Band is claiming she was sexually abused at a church-run elementary school in Vernon when she was a child.

The woman filed a claim in B.C. Supreme Court Feb. 22 against the Roman Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Kamloops and John Doe.

Court document state the woman does not know the name of the priest who allegedly molested her, but claims his identity is known by the diocese.about:blank

According to court documents, the woman was a student at St. James School from 1968 to 1972 and was allegedly molested in 1970.

“In or around the spring of 1970, when the plaintiff was seven years old…

View Cache

he Roman Catholic Diocese of Knoxville and its bishop have been named in a lawsuit alleging that sexual abuse allegations against a former employee weren’t investigated properly.

The complaint filed Tuesday in Knox County Circuit Court details multiple allegations of sexual harassment and abuse that a then-employee of The Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus in Knoxville lodged against a then-assistant to Bishop Knoxville Bishop Richard Stika, news outlets reported.

The lawsuit claims that Stika overreached in his response to the abuse complaint. It says the diocese hired an outside consultant to investigate the claims, but the bishop replaced the initial investigator with someone who only interviewed the former assistant and not the employee who made the allegation, according to the lawsuit.

Stika was notified Tuesday evening of the lawsuit and attorneys are reviewing the claims, diocesan spokesperson Jim Wogan said in a statement.

“The diocese expects the…

View Cache

The number of 300,000+ mentioned in a 2021 report, now seems uncertain and is hotly debated. But the problems for the Catholic Church remains huge.

In October 2021, the Commission indépendante sur les abus sexuels dans l’Église (CIASE, Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the [Catholic] Church) released its report. The CIASE studied sexual abuse in a Catholic context rather than sexual abuse by the Catholic clergy only, as it also included abuse perpetrated by laypersons associated with Catholic institutions. Although the detail was overlooked by some foreign media, the CIASE was “independent” in the sense that the Catholic Church did not control its work and results, but it was appointed and funded by the French Catholic Bishops, not by the government or by any other secular institution.

The report concluded that between 1950 and 2020 the victims of sexual abuse in a Catholic context in France had been 330,000, of…

View Cache

Reports of clergy sex abuse in the Catholic Church have become so routine — and the scale of victimization and coverup so vast — that the effect is to dull the impact of each new revelation. It appears that over the course of decades, practically every higher-up in the institution knew, or should have known, what was going on.

Yet even the apparent sameness of so many disclosures and admissions, over so many years, should not blunt the importance of a recent report that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, as archbishop of the German cities of Munich and Freising from 1977 to 1982, failed to discipline abusive priests and enabled them to maintain their roles in ministry.

Similar allegations have been leveled, and often documented, regarding many bishops. But the German report, two years in the making, implicates a future pope, who at the time was known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

…

View Cache

Ellen Gable Hrkach explains how she has kept her faith even after learning that her father was a victim of abuse by a priest.

He heals the brokenhearted,  and binds up their wounds. (Psalm 147:3, Revised Catholic Edition)

 Almost four years ago, the revelations about the now-defrocked Theodore McCarrick and the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report were disturbing, especially to the most devout Catholics. Since then, many members of the Church have left in disgust. 

In the years that followed, revelations that homosexual networks exist within seminaries and dioceses have caused some Catholics to have a crisis of faith. Numerous seminarians have tried to alert higher-up prelates to no avail. It’s unacceptable that a bishop – or as in the case of McCarrick, a cardinal – would not only be complicit but also participate in the abuse. 

For every abuse reported, there are likely hundreds, perhaps thousands over the past 70-plus…

View Cache

An unnamed plaintiff is suing the Roman Catholic Diocese of Knoxville and its bishop, alleging the diocese did not properly investigate sexual abuse allegations against a former employee.

The complaint, filed Tuesday in Knox County Circuit Court, outlines in vivid detail several instances of sexual harassment and abuse the plaintiff said he suffered. It also makes several allegations about the bishop overreaching in an investigation of abuse claims, using information reported last year by a news agency. 

The plaintiff didn’t learn of the diocese’s “casually connected and conspiratorial efforts to conceal their involvement in his sexual abuse” until The Pillar, a Catholic news agency, published articles on the diocese early last year, the lawsuit alleges. 

Diocesan attorneys are currently reviewing the claims after Knoxville Bishop Richard Stika received notification of the lawsuit on Tuesday evening, diocesan spokesperson Jim Wogan said in a statement Wednesday.

 “The diocese expects the process to be fair and thorough…

View Cache

Analysis

A lawsuit filed Tuesday against Bishop Rick Stika and the Knoxville, Tennessee, diocese provides new details about allegations of both diocesan cover-up and a sexual assault committed by a former diocesan seminarian who remains close to the bishop. 

Both the alleged assault and ensuing administrative misconduct, including the removal of an investigator appointed to look into the matter, were first reported in 2021 by The Pillar. 

But while the suit brings to light more allegations against Stika, it also makes nearly certain that the Holy See will not be forthcoming about the results of its own investigation into the bishop, which began last year. 

At the crux of the Feb. 22 lawsuit are these allegations:

• Stika invited in 2018 to the diocese a Polish seminarian, Wojciech Sobczuk, who had been dismissed from the Society of Jesus after being accused of sexual misconduct at St. Cyril and Methodius Seminary in…

View Cache

The lawsuit was filed on Feb. 22 under the name of “John Doe.”

A lawsuit filed in Knox County alleges that the Catholic Diocese of Knoxville and its Bishop, Richard Stika, failed to stop the rape of an employee then attempted to cover the incident up.

The lawsuit was filed on Feb. 22 under the name of “John Doe” to protect the man’s privacy, according to the person’s lead counsel at Janet, Janet & Suggs, LLC. However, it is stated that the person filing the lawsuit was a former musician and dedicated Diocesan employee. According to the 46-page filing, the Diocese employed a seminarian who was reportedly a friend of the Bishop. The lawsuit claims the seminarian raped Doe on Feb. 5, 2019 at Doe’s home. After the incident, the filing states that the seminarian sent the plaintiff a written apology after the incident but continued to sexually harass him…

View Cache

On Tuesday, Feb. 22, the Diocese of Knoxville and Bishop Stika were named as defendants in a lawsuit filed in Knox County Circuit Court. Bishop Stika was notified of the filing Tuesday evening, and diocesan attorneys are reviewing the allegations. The diocese understands that the legal system works at a very deliberate pace, and with good reason. The diocese expects the process to be fair and thorough and looks forward to the opportunity to vigorously defend itself if this matter moves forward.  

View Cache

Regarding “Lawsuit accuses De Soto priest of sexual abuse at boys’ home” (Feb. 15): Since when did child molesters limit themselves to assaulting only children at their current place of employment? It seems to me that’s what officials at the St. Louis Catholic archdiocese believe.

In response to a new abuse and cover-up lawsuit against the Rev. Alexander Anderson, a church statement says that the charges are “demonstrably false.” Why? Because the church says Anderson “was not assigned to St. Joseph Home during the time the claimant was a resident.”

Is it impossible for a teacher to return to his former school and engage in unwanted sexual advances with children?

This type of denial — “I couldn’t have done it. I wasn’t even there at the time” — is commonly offered up by alleged abusers. But it obscures a simple reality: In mere seconds, a predator can hurt a child….

View Cache

[VIDEO]

A woman is coming forward with sexual abuse allegations against a former Bridgeport priest.

“Jane Doe” said Fr. George Maslar sexually abused her twice in his car in 1971 when she was around 15 years old.

“I never envisioned myself doing this,” the woman said during a press conference Wednesday. “I was too afraid. I felt ashamed as if it was my fault. Thinking about it made me physically sick.”

She said she met Maslar when both attended prayer meetings at the Cathedral of Saint Augustine in Bridgeport.

Last year, “Jane Doe” reached a five-figure settlement, even though the statute of limitations had expired. She’s calling for it to be extended.

“The legislature needs to understand it’s more the norm to say nothing for years because you blame yourself rather than to come forward sooner,” she said.”

“Jane Doe” said she hopes her speaking out encourages other victims to…

View Cache

Italian activists fighting sexual abuse by Catholic clergy decry the ‘conspiracy of silence’ between the Italian church and state.

Recent reports on the clerical sexual abuse scandals in France and Germany have put the spotlight once again on the Catholic Church in Italy, which has so far avoided confronting the history of abusive priests in the country.

Advocates for victims in Italy believe it’s time for the local church to allow a thorough investigation into claims of sexual abuse by priests but lament a “conspiracy of silence” between the Catholic institution and the Italian state.

“Italy has a big problem,” said Francesco Zanardi, founder of Rete L’Abuso, Italy’s largest network for victims of clergy abuse, in an interview with Religion News Service on Monday (Feb. 21).  

In Italy “the dynamic of stopping sexual abuse is entirely in the hands of the church,” he said, adding that “the state doesn’t interfere.”

Zanardi,…

View Cache

Despite fundraising challenges nationwide caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Catholic foundations continue to grow their role in helping the U.S. church with its fundraising needs, according to a recent study.

“Catholic Foundations in the U.S. Revisited,” released in late 2021, is the work of Walter Dillingham, a Catholic who serves as director of endowments and foundations at the Wilmington Trust, a New York City-based firm that specializes in helping nonprofits manage their finances.

This is Dillingham’s third look at the role of Catholic foundations nationwide, and this report highlights not only the role foundations play, but also which fundraising tools they find most effective and how they provide information about their work to current and prospective donors.

According to the report, more Catholic dioceses than ever before are establishing foundations to handle the bulk of their fundraising.

“Foundation assets continue to grow rapidly with $12 billion in long-term investments, and…

View Cache

Abuse of children at Marylands School in Christchurch was so rife it was described as a state-supported, church-run brothel for paedophiles. But so far the spotlight has focused on a handful of individual abusers. An inquiry this week tried to find out how deep the rot went.

Alan Nixon nearly had to burn a church down to get noticed.

After Nixon racked up 400 convictions including arson, vandalism and burglary, his lawyer eventually asked him why he had targeted church buildings.

Nixon told a story he had already told many times: He had been sexually and physically abused at a Catholic school, Marylands, in the 1970s. Any building with a steeple reminded him of the school in Halswell, Christchurch, which he attended from age 8 to 14.

He had told police the same story 30 years earlier after they caught him running away, but later found in their records that…

View Cache

As trial in the archdiocesan abuse case moves forward to determine whether assets of churches and schools should be included in the quest “to find an authentic and thorough resolution” for “real healing,” as one lawyer put it, all involved should be reminded why Guam’s case is different than any other.

In every other U.S. diocese which was similarly sued, the impetus for justice originated with lawyers, legislators or journalists. In Guam, lawyers, legislators and journalists had nothing to do with it.

In Guam, the impetus to rid our church of its decades of demons originated with what we shall call “the regular Catholics,” the Catholics in the pews.

The history of the law now being wielded to sue for real healing is this:

The regular Catholics called for the lifting of the statute of limitations in order to hold the bad guys accountable. A lawmaker later introduced a bill…

View Cache

Over the course of almost five decades and across two countries, the man who abused me and countless others — track coach and former Olympian Conrad Mainwaring — used his Olympic status to gain access to young male athletes in order to manipulate and abuse them. During Mainwaring’s time working at Syracuse University in the early 1980s, he abused me and many others under the deception of coaching and mentorship.

Because of New York State’s Child Victims Act (CVA), which was signed into law three years ago this month, I had legal recourse — but most of my fellow survivors do not.

I was a high school student at the time the abuse started and under the age of 18, which meant I was eligible to file a civil lawsuit thanks to the CVA’s lookback window. Most survivors of Mainwaring’s abuse were in college and…

View Cache

Under intense outside pressure, Catholic leaders in Spain approve “independent audit” on sexual abuse committed by clerics, but it is not intended to be an in-depth study

The Catholic bishops of Spain have finally caved-in to outside pressure to shed light on cases of Church-related sexual abuse, being among the last prelates in Europe to do so.

The Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE) announced on Monday that they approved the launch of an independent audit by the law firm Cremades & Calvo Sotelo to investigate cases of clergy sex abuse.

“The firm… will open an independent channel to receive possible complaints, review legal procedures to punish criminal practices and offer its collaboration to the authorities to help clarify the facts and establish a prevention system that meets social demands in this matter,” said a CEE statement.

Lack of transparency

But it is still not clear whether the episcopal conference will participate…

View Cache

It’s SO counter-intuitive. It’s SO hard to imagine.

How could Catholic officials – after decades of devastating, embarrassing and morale-destroying prosecutions, lawsuits and exposes – how could they NOT radically reform and prevent the widespread sexual abuse of boys and girls in the church? How could they NOT work overtime to fix this?

But they don’t, and here’s the latest head-scratching, mind-numbing proof (AND a reminder of why each of us has to do our part to safeguard kids in the church).

“Prominent French priest barred from ministry over abuse attends Vatican priesthood conference.” That’s the headline in the Feb. 18, 2022 National Catholic Reporter.

https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican/prominent-french-priest-barred-ministry-over-abuse-attends-vatican-priesthood

Let us briefly break it down for you.

He’s rabidly anti-gay.

He has said publicly – just a few years back – that the church hierarchy does NOT have an obligation to report abuse to police or prosecutors.

And he’s purportedly been removed…

View Cache

A Feb. 22 lawsuit against the Diocese of Knoxville, Tennessee, and its bishop, alleges that a former parish organist was raped and sexually harassed by a diocesan employee and seminarian, and that a diocesan investigation into his allegation was impeded by the bishop.

Bishop Rick Stika told The Pillar last year that he removed a diocesan investigator looking into the rape allegation, and that he “knew in [his] heart” the seminarian was innocent.

The suit also charges that Stika has claimed the seminarian, Wojciech Sobczuk, was himself sexually assaulted by the lawsuit’s plaintiff. The suit characterizes that claim as an “egregious” defamation of a rape victim.

“The lawsuit raises disturbing questions regarding the Diocese of Knoxville’s commitment to protecting its employees and the community from sexual abuse. It raises disturbing questions regarding the Diocese of Knoxville’s commitment to providing for the welfare and healing of victims of sexual abuse. And it raises…

View Cache

(FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FEBRUARY 23, 2022)

In a shocking lawsuit filed in the Knox County Circuit Court of Knoxville Tennessee on February 22, 2022, the Catholic Diocese of Knoxville and Bishop Richard Stika face six counts including defamation, negligence in supervision, and retention as well as negligence in the training of a diocesan seminarian. Also, in the list of counts is intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress.

The lawsuit describes the outrageous behavior of one of its seminarians, culminating in the rape of an employee of the diocese named John Doe for the purposes of this lawsuit. ‘The Pillar’ reported on the unrest in the diocese among both priests and the laity over many issues, including the retention of Sobczuk as a seminarian even after he was expelled from St. Meinrad Seminary, Rockport, Indiana, where three seminarians accused Sobczuk of sexual harassment…

View Cache

The church said it is aware of the lawsuit and “looks forward to the opportunity to vigorously defend itself.”

A civil lawsuit filed in Knox County Circuit Court Tuesday alleges a Knoxville seminarian raped a church musician, who then faced intimidation by Bishop Richard Stika into staying silent about the assault.

The musician, who was named as a John Doe in the suit, said a Polish priest-in-training came to his house after celebrating mass one evening in early February 2019. He tried to kiss Doe, performed unwanted oral sex on him and then raped him, the lawsuit said.

Weeks later, on Valentine’s day, Doe said the seminarian wrote him a card that said, in part, “Thank you for everything. And for what was wrong – I apologize with all my heart.” A photo of the card is attached in the lawsuit.

Doe said he contacted the Knoxville Police Department in…

View Cache

On the second day of the trial against Argentine Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta over sexual abuse, a priest testified that he had porn on his phone, while a psychologist of one of the alleged victims testified that the bishops’ behavior “scared and intimidated him.”

As the trial began Monday, Zanchetta, bishop emeritus of Orán, in northern Argentina, denied all charges of alleged sexual abuse. 

This is the civil trial against the prelate, who used to boast of his friendship with Pope Francis, with whom he worked at the Argentine bishops conference. Zanchetta was one of the first bishop appointments made by the Argentine pontiff, and led the Diocese of Oran from 2013 to 2017. Following his tenure in Oran, he went to Spain, where he received psychological treatment for undisclosed causes. Later, he was appointed by the pontiff to APSA, which oversees the Vatican’s property portfolio.

According to a statement from…

View Cache

BUENOS AIRES – An Argentine bishop requested massages from young men studying to be priests and stored pornographic photos on his phone, witnesses testified on Tuesday on the second day of the cleric’s trial for sex abuse.

The judiciary in Salta issued a statement summarizing the testimony on Tuesday, part of an unprecedented trial in Argentina that is the latest case of alleged sex abuse to rock the Roman Catholic church in one of its Latin American strongholds. The trial is being held behind closed doors.

Gustavo Zanchetta, the former bishop of Oran in the northern province of Salta, has been accused of sexually abusing seminarians, as well as abuse of power and financial mismanagement.

He denied the accusations on Monday, arguing he had “a good and healthy relationship” with all seminarians and that his accusers seek revenge. 

One of the three priests who lodged the first complaints against Zanchetta,…

View Cache

[VIDEO]

A North Carolina woman is sounding the alarm about abuse she says she endured inside a now-defunct Northeast Ohio home for children.

“I was there for four years of hell,” said Carolyn Mason.

Mason was 4 years old when she became a resident of Parmadale Children’s Village of St. Vincent DePaul in Parma, which was founded in 1925.

During a news conference in Westlake Tuesday, Mason, now 61, says she endured serious physical abuse at the hands of a nun who was her primary caregiver.

“I was upset for being there. She said we don’t waste food and I would throw up and she would feed it back to me, a spoon at a time,” Mason said.

She also alleged sexual abuse at the hands of a priest.

“Now they’re doing an investigation,” said Mason. “There’s two separate investigators, one for the priest abuse sodomy and…

View Cache

A Las Vegas, Nev., pastor accused of child sexual assault made his first appearance before a New Mexico judge Monday after being arrested Saturday in Albuquerque and jailed as a fugitive from justice.

Reynaldo Crespin, 59, conferred briefly with a public defender before waiving his right to fight an extradition to Nevada to face criminal charges.

Bernalillo County Metropolitan Judge Linda Rogers issued an order directing Nevada law enforcement officials to retrieve Crespin within 15 days. He’ll remain in jail until then, the judge said.

Crespin is the pastor of New Horizon Christian Church and Fellowship in Las Vegas, according to the church’s website. He co-founded the church in 2002.

He also had been a second grade teacher at a public elementary school in Clark County, Nev., for about five years before he “separated” from the the school district earlier this month, according to the CBS affiliate in Las Vegas.

…

View Cache

A man abused by members of a Catholic religious order at a residential school in Fife has been awarded record damages. Known only as AB, the man was a pupil at St Ninian’s in Falkland at the beginning of the 1980s. While there, he was physically and sexually assaulted by the Christian Brothers.

Damages have been set at £1.4 million, believed to be the largest ever secured in such a case. Although the total sum is derived from different sources, the single largest amount, at around £1 million, relates to lifetime lost earnings due to AB’s difficulties in maintaining employment given the psychological issues resulting from his abuse.

During his time at St Ninian’s, dating from February 1980 to April 1981, he was subject to forcible sexual assault and regularly beaten, as well as suffering other forms of abuse. Due to the weight of evidence his favour, AB was not…

View Cache

[This article appears in the Bishop Mulakkal trial feature series. View the full series.]

The verdict acquitting Bishop Franco Mulakkal in the much-awaited case of the sexual abuse of a religious sister has been disappointing to many of us, and has made us suspicious. I write this for many reasons; first, because I have journeyed with this case from a distance; and because I feel the need for speaking up in defense of our sisters, and sounding a wake-up call for us as women religious.

What has pained me more than anything else is that some women religious that I know have rejoiced about the verdict of acquittal of a bishop who was accused of nothing less than rape — and worst of all, he happens to be the patron of that local congregation. We all know now that…

View Cache

I first met Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1994 when I was researching my book “Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church.” I was getting ready to leave Rome and he was one of the last and most important interviews for the book. Because of illness, he had to cancel our first appointment and then graciously rescheduled me for a time when most Vatican officials were taking their siestas.

At the end of the interview, I asked for his blessing — something I only did with two other Vatican officials — because I sensed I was in the presence of a holy man.

But I also knew I was in the presence of a man who, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, had done irreparable harm to theological discussion in the church. There were scores of theologians who had been investigated and…

View Cache

Caving to pressure from abuse survivors, politicians and the media, the Spanish bishops announced on Tuesday that they will conduct a full, nation-wide investigation of clerical sexual abuse.

Cardinal Juan José Omella, president of the Spanish bishops’ conference, and lawyer Javier Cremades announced a twelve-month investigation with the necessary historical “breadth” which will include both dioceses and religious congregations.

This decision backtracks from what Omella said last month, when he announced there was no need to carry out such an investigation, because each diocese and religious congregation were doing so independently.

In the beginning of the investigation, 18 professionals will take part in the process. Although  reporters were told the commission will analyze cases linked to both the present and the past, it is unclear what historical periods will be included.

According to Omella, the investigation will be carried out in a way that allows the formation of a “credible…

View Cache

The head of the Spanish Catholic bishops’ conference said that the Church sees the comprehensive audit as a step forward in transparency and reparation to victims.

At the launch of an independent investigation into clerical sex-abuse cases in Spain, the head of the Spanish Catholic bishops’ conference said that the Church sees the comprehensive audit as a step forward in transparency and reparation to victims.

Cardinal Juan José Omella, the archbishop of Barcelona, apologized at a press conference on Feb. 22 on behalf of the Catholic Church in Spain to the victims “who have suffered and continue to suffer so much pain.”

“We are hurt by all the abuse, including that which has occurred in other institutions. This hurts us, and we would like these cases to be investigated as well,” Cardinal Omella said, according to ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner.

In commissioning the investigation, Cardinal Omella said that the…

View Cache

[This is a Google translation of an article that appeared 2/21/2022 in the Spanish newspaper El País. To see the original article, click here: La auditoría de los abusos encargada por la Iglesia investigará el encubrimiento y propondrá indemnizaciones]

A law firm will investigate pedophilia: “We have the task of going to the bottom so that the whole truth comes out.” It will have the collaboration of the German office that the Munich diocese hired and appointed Benedict XVI, and will follow its work model

The president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, Cardinal Juan José Omella, on January 14 during the meeting with the media to report on the ad limina meetings held with Pope Francis – Antonello Nusca

The investigation that the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE) has commissioned the law firm Cremades & Calvo Sotelo to independently investigate cases of pederasty in the Church in recent decades will…

View Cache

Un bufete de abogados indagará en la pederastia: “Tenemos el encargo de ir hasta el fondo para que aflore toda la verdad”. Contará con la colaboración del despacho alemán que contrató la diócesis de Múnich y señaló a Benedicto XVI, y seguirá su modelo de trabajo

La investigación que la Conferencia Episcopal Española (CEE) ha encargado al despacho de abogados Cremades & Calvo Sotelo para indagar de forma independiente en los casos de pederastia en la Iglesia de las últimas décadas abordará también el posible encubrimiento de estos delitos por la jerarquía eclesiástica y el pago de indemnizaciones, según aseguran a EL PAÍS fuentes cercanas al proceso. Del mismo modo, sostienen que el equipo de trabajo colaborará con cualquier investigación que se ponga en marcha desde las instituciones y le facilitará toda la información de que disponga. El objetivo de los obispos, aseguran las mismas fuentes, es que…

View Cache

Senior clergy divided on need for investigation

Spain’s Catholic Church has pledged to carry out an independent investigation into alleged cases of sexual abuse of children by members of the clergy, following claims by victims that it has attempted to cover up any wrongdoing.

The head of the church in Spain, Cardinal Juan José Omella, said the main objective of the inquiry, which would be the first of its kind in Spain, was to provide “help and compensation” to victims of abuse.

He said the Catholic Church “wants to assume its responsibilities by setting up a new tool that helps clarify the acts of the past and prevents them from reappearing in the future”.

The church has hired a law firm, Cremades & Calvo-Sotelo, to carry out the investigation, which will also see an advisory role for Westpfahl Spilker Wastl, a German firm which carried out a similar probe in Munich,…

View Cache

A Madrid-based law firm will conduct a year-long inquiry into past and present sexual abuse committed by Spain’s Roman Catholic clergy, members of religious orders, teachers and others associated with the church, the law firm and the head of the country’s bishops’ conference said Tuesday.

The public announcement marked a departure from the previous position of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, which for years rejected the idea of taking a comprehensive approach to investigating sex abuse. Some abuse survivors met the news with skepticism.

Cardinal Juan José Omella, the conference’s president, said the goal of the inquiry by law firm Cremades & Calvo Sotelo “is the help and reparation of the victims, establishing new and additional channels to collaborate and denounce in addition to those existing in over 40 offices established by the Church.”

The inquiry is intended to cover all abuse and is not limited to investigating only cases in…

View Cache

“I was trying to follow all the rules, but it was just hell.”

[VIDEO]

 A woman who was an orphan at the former Parmadale facility is speaking out, detailing allegations of physical and sexual abuse by nuns and priests that has caused her a lifetime of psychological damage. 

On Tuesday in Westlake, Carolyn Mason held a news conference and recalled several traumatic incidents that she alleges took place at Parmadale while living there from age 5 through 8. 

Among the stories shared by Mason:

• She claimed she was physically abused by a nun. Citing an example, Mason says when she got sick from eating, the nun made her eat her own vomit because they ‘don’t waste food.’
• Mason says she was a bed-wetter and if an incident happened, she was made to stand the entire night with her underwear over her head while the sheets were…

View Cache

On January 11, 2022, Cleveland’s WEWS-TV aired accounts by three women of the brutal physical abuse they suffered or witnessed as young children at Parmadale Children’s Village, a residential institution for orphans and children from troubled homes in Parma, Ohio. Carolyn Folyn Mason and another woman described being viciously beaten by a Sister Myra Wasikowski, CSA.

The report was merely the latest in two decades’ worth of abuse revelations at the now-closed facility.

When the Cleveland diocese opened Parmadale Children’s Village of St. Vincent de Paul in 1925, it was promoted as the nation’s first residential cottage plan in Catholic children’s homes. Parmadale was staffed for decades by the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine, based in Richfield OH, and eventually came under the auspices of the Catholic Charities of Cleveland.

In 2002, former residents began going public with allegations of sexual and physical abuse by the nuns, priests and lay…

View Cache

The priest at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in De Soto has been accused in a lawsuit of abusing a child two decades ago at a St. Louis boys’ home.

Christin Hornbeck says in the lawsuit that the Rev. Alexander Anderson fondled him in the late 1990s or early 2000s at St. Joseph’s Home for Boys, 4753 S. Grand Ave., in south St. Louis. The lawsuit was filed Feb. 10 in the St. Louis Circuit Court.

Hornbeck, who now lives in Georgia, was between the ages of 11 and 13 at the time of the alleged abuse, said his lawyer, Rebecca M. Randles of the Randles Mata law firm in Kansas City.

The Leader typically does not identify alleged victims of sexual abuse, but Hornbeck’s suit uses his name and his lawyer said Hornbeck does not object to being identified.

In the lawsuit, Hornbeck is seeking a jury trial and asks…

View Cache

For Immediate Release: February 18, 2022

We applaud Senator Morgan McGarvey and Representative Lisa Willner for their sponsorship, support, and shepherding of SB 153 and HB 464. We believe these bills are much-needed reform that would remove archaic barriers that have been placed in front of survivors of childhood sexual abuse and will allow them the opportunity to expose abusers and enablers in court. We know that giving survivors the opportunity to bring cases against their abusers helps create safer communities and hope that SB 153 and HB464 quickly move forward so that children in Kentucky are safer.

SB 153 and HB464 would remove the statute of limitations for civil actions arising from childhood sexual assault or abuse, giving those survivors who were abused as children the opportunity to receive justice for the crimes they experienced. Because the average age of a survivor of sexual abuse coming forward is 52,…

View Cache

Retired Argentine bishop Gustavo Oscar Zanchetta, seen as close to the Pope and with a history managing Vatican property, denies charges of sex abuse allegedly committed a decade ago.

A retired Argentine bishop seen as close to the Pope, and who worked as an advisor for management of Vatican property, on Monday denied charges of sex abuse allegedly committed a decade ago.

Gustavo Oscar Zanchetta, 57, appeared behind closed doors in the court of San Ramón de la Nueva Orán, where he was bishop from his appointment by Pope Francis in 2013 until his resignation in 2017.

Orán is some 1,700 km (1,050 miles) north of Buenos Aires in Salta Province.

Zanchetta, who travelled from the Vatican to attend the hearings, is charged with “simple sexual abuse continued and aggravated by being committed by a recognised minister of religious worship,” according to a statement from judicial officials in Salta.

A…

View Cache

The criminal trial of Bishop Oscar Zanchetta in Argentina is set to begin later this month, but the process is set to commence without requested case files from the archbishop’s canonical process at the Holy See.

Zanchhetta is accused of sexually abusing two former seminarians, and will face trial Feb. 21 in Oran, the northern Argentine city where he was diocesan bishop from 2013 until 2017.

Ahead of the trial, Zanchetta’s attorneys have subpoenaed the Vatican’s files on the bishop’s 2019 canonical trial at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The trial in Argentina, originally set to begin in October 2021, had been delayed while the court waited for those documents, according to local newspaper El Tribuno, 

Since they have not arrived, the trial’s judge has ordered the process begin this month.  

While Pope Francis has acknowledged authorizing the CDF process, the Vatican has released no details about…

View Cache

The trial of a Roman Catholic bishop accused of sexually abusing young men in northern Argentina began Monday with the cleric denying the claims, in the latest court case to highlight sex crimes that have roiled the global church in recent decades.

Pope Francis, the former archbishop of Buenos Aires and the first Latin American pontiff, has repeatedly apologized for past crimes by priests and pledged to end cover-ups while ensuring that priestly sexual abuse be “erased from the face of the earth”.

The latest Argentine case centers on accusations that Gustavo Zanchetta, who served as bishop of Oran in the northern province of Salta, preyed on young men studying for the priesthood at a seminary he founded in 2016.

Zanchetta denied the accusations on the first day of the trial, stressing that he had “a good and healthy relationship” with all seminarians, according to a statement from Salta’s judiciary.

…

View Cache

In addition to a comprehensive report, the investigation is expected to open an independent channel to receive potential complaints and recommend further preventative measures.

Spain’s Catholic bishops have commissioned a law firm to conduct an independent investigation of sex abuse committed by Church members.

The independent audit will be administered by the Cremades & Calvo-Sotelo law firm and is intended to create a “comprehensive report” of all clerical sex-abuse cases, ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, reported on Feb. 21.

The move follows an independent study commissioned by the Catholic Church in neighboring France that generated headlines worldwide, as well as a recent high-profile inquiry conducted by a law firm in the German Archdiocese of Munich and Freising. 

Cardinal Juan José Omella, the president of the Spanish bishops’ conference, will answer questions about the audit together with Javier Cremades, the president of the law firm, at a press conference on Feb. 22.

In addition…

View Cache

Spain’s Catholic Church said Monday a law firm would carry out an independent investigation into allegations of child abuse involving its clergy as political pressure grows to hold an inquiry.

The legal team will “open an independent channel” to receive complaints, review the legal procedures to punish criminal practices and help the authorities clarify the facts, the CEE Episcopal Conference, which groups Spain’s leading bishops, said in a statement.

The firm, Cremades & Calvo-Sotelo, would also “set up a protection system in line with society’s demands”, the statement said.

Church leaders will further address the matter at a news conference on Tuesday.

Until now, there has never been an official investigation into alleged abuse by members of the clergy, not by Spain’s government nor by the Spanish church itself.

The Church, which has only recognised 220 cases of abuse since 2001, has ruled out “a comprehensive investigation” into reports of…

View Cache

Phyllis Googoo is ready to share her story with Pope Francis. She’s been wrestling with her memories of Shubenacadie Indian Residential School for more than 60 years.

“We get better, us survivors,” she told The Catholic Register. “Among the AFN (Assembly of First Nations), we meet once in a while. Our stories are so sad. When we first met, it was mostly crying. It was hard.”

Googoo will have her chance to speak with Pope Francis March 31 as one of 13 First Nations delegates going to Rome. The Metis delegation will meet with Pope Francis March 28 and the Inuit later that same day. All the delegations together will have an audience with Pope Francis April 1. Each of the four meetings is scheduled for one hour.

Googoo knows she will have only five-to-10 minutes to speak her piece. She wants to be sure to leave space for other delegates who…

View Cache

How Catholics on the African continent are coming to grips with sexual abuse in the Church three years after a major summit that the pope held in Rome

It has been three years since Pope Francis summoned the presidents of all the world’s episcopal conferences to Rome for an unprecedented summit on the sexual abuse of minors in the Catholic Church.

The aim of the meeting – which took place February 21-24, 2019 – was to make the bishops understand the urgency of dealing with a crisis that is undermining the Church’s credibility.

At the time, some of the African Church leaders and their clergy did not do much about it, with some believing that this scourge was primarily a Western reality.

The very notion of sexual abuse did not seem to be understood by everyone.

A priest in Burkina Faso, for example, described sexual relations between a 15-year-old girl…

View Cache

The trial of a Roman Catholic bishop accused of sexually abusing young men in northern Argentina will start on Monday, in the latest court case to highlight allegations of sex crimes that have roiled the global church over the past few decades.

Pope Francis, the former archbishop of Buenos Aires and the first Latin American pontiff, has repeatedly apologized for past crimes by clerics and pledged to end cover-ups while ensuring that priestly sexual abuse be “erased from the face of the earth”.

The Argentine case centers on accusations that Gustavo Zanchetta, who served as bishop of Oran in the largely Catholic northern province of Salta, preyed on young men studying for the priesthood at a seminary he founded in 2016.

In late 2017, Zanchetta left Oran to work in the Vatican’s Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, a financial and accounting office that also manages church properties…

View Cache

The Church hierarchy has been signalling a new openness to change, but a plea from the Pope emeritus, following the release of a report on abuse, follows an old path.

In Germany, lately, powerful bishops have been speaking of prospects for change in Catholic life with a frankness not seen from the Church hierarchy anywhere else in a long time. When some hundred and twenty-five priests and other Church employees collectively “came out” as gay last month—with a manifesto faulting the Church’s “defamatory” teachings on sexuality and gender—Jean-Claude Hollerich, a Jesuit who is the archbishop of Luxembourg, told the German news outlet KNA that the foundation of Catholic teaching on homosexuality “is no longer true,” and called for a “fundamental revision of the doctrine.” Reinhard Marx, the archbishop of Munich and Freising—who last year spoke approvingly of the prospect of some form of Church blessings for same-sex-unions— View Cache

Secularization, sex-abuse scandals and the country’s culture wars are contributing to the decline

Warsaw – Julian Rembelski, 21, grew up in the Catholic Church, like most other Polish children, receiving First Communion and Confirmation and taking religion class in school. He says he enjoyed the sense of community he found in the church, particularly when taking part in volunteer activities such as distributing food and clothing to the poor.

But around the age of 17, Mr. Rembelski ceased to consider himself a Catholic, alienated by revelations of clerical sex abuse and what he says are the church’s efforts to impose its teachings against abortion, contraception and gay relationships on the rest of Polish society.

“I believe in God, but I don’t like what the church is doing now, because it’s doing politics and that’s not what the church is supposed to,” said Mr. Rembelski, now a student of…

View Cache

Business has been brisk this past week at the Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry.

The latest phase of the inquiry has looked at the historical wrongdoing that took place at the Marylands residential school and its co-located St Joseph’s orphanage in Christchurch, as well as the nearby Hebron Trust facility.

These residences were overseen by the Brothers Hospitaller of St John of God, a Catholic order known for its work with at-risk young people, including kids with learning disabilities – and rather too many of the 1680 reports of abuse against local Catholic clergy and workers from 1950 to the present day.

Like its state-run counterparts, the order’s local operation seems to have been established with benevolent intentions. The aim was to provide a refuge for youngsters not unlike the order’s own namesake Portuguese-born saint, who as a child was forced to live on the streets of Europe.

As…

View Cache

Archbishop Michael Jude Byrnes and former Archdiocesan Finance Council President Richard Untalan on Monday took the witness stand in a trial that would determine whether the assets of Catholic parishes and schools could also be used to pay hundreds of survivors of alleged clergy sexual assaults.

Byrnes acknowledged the position of the archdiocese that he, as archbishop of the Archdiocese of Agana, only holds the assets of schools and parishes in trust, for the benefit of schools and parishes. 

It was the second day of the marathon trial, which starts at 8 a.m. and ends at 3:30 p.m. daily over the next two weeks.

As archbishop, Byrnes said he signs off on parish and school spending exceeding $25,000.

Creditors’ committee counsel Edwin Caldie said because the archbishop himself described the Catholic Church on Guam as “one body,” then he administers the church for the benefit of the whole archdiocese.

The…

View Cache

Tony Anatrella, a former psychoanalyst with important connections in the Roman Curia, has been suspended from public ministry and speaking engagements since 2018

What would happen if a prominent Catholic priest who’s been suspended for sexually abusing seminarians were to show up at a major Vatican conference — on the future of the priesthood, no less?

Do you think the organizers would tell him to hit the road or invite him to stay for lunch at the pope’s residence?

No kidding. Something similar to this actually happened. Not years or decades ago. It happened this week.

The priest was Tony Anatrella, a cleric and former psychoanalyst who was suspended by the Archdiocese of Paris in July 2018 following years of accusations that numerous young men had brought to the attention of Church officials.

The 81-year-old priest was among the 400 or so participants who gathered in the spacious Paul VI Hall on Thursday…

View Cache

 Spanish prosecutors are investigating 68 cases of alleged sexual abuse of minors by Catholic church staff, the public prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday in the first release of official data about such cases.

Allegations of child abuse by Catholic clergy and of possible cover-ups by the church are only surfacing now in Spain, years after similar scandals rocked the Church in other countries such as the United States, Ireland and France.

The prosecutor’s office released a spreadsheet with the criminal cases launched in 17 Spanish regions into alleged sexual abuse of minors in congregations, schools and other religious institutions, but did not provide any details.

Suspected abuse of children has been in the spotlight in the country since El Pais newspaper reported two months ago it had found 1,200 cases reported between 1943 and 2018.

In January, the Spanish Bishops’ Conference said it would set up commissions at diocese level…

View Cache

The number of Catholics and of Catholic men and women who devote their lives to serving them continues to grow in Africa and Asia, Vatican statistics show, but pastoral ministry is still much more readily available to Catholics in Europe.

At the end of 2020, the number of Catholics in the world reached 1.36 billion, an increase of 16 million over the previous year, according to the Vatican’s Central Office of Church Statistics, which published a brief overview of the global numbers in early February.

While Catholics remained about 17.7% of the global population, their numbers grew in Africa by about 2.1% and in Asia by 1.8% while in Europe the increase was just 0.3%, said the summary, which was based on numbers reported Dec. 31, 2020.

And while just over 20% of the world’s Catholics live in Europe, 40% of the world’s priests minister there. The Americas have 48%…

View Cache

As the dust began to settle last year on the Vatican’s troubled $400 million dollar land deal in London, and as the colossal dimensions of the failure it represents became clear, Pope Francis was determined to put someone on trial, including his former chief of staff, Italian Cardinal Becciu, along with nine other defendants.

Yet, under the heading of “be careful what you wish for,” Francis could find that the primary person on trial ends up being not Becciu and the rest, but himself.

That, at least, seems to be the new tactic defense lawyers rolled out Friday, when a Vatican tribunal led by veteran Italian jurist Giuseppe Pignatone conducted its latest hearing in a process that’s been underway for seven months and still hasn’t gotten anywhere close to considering the actual charges.

Instead, the process has been bogged down with preliminary procedural issues. Initially, they had to do with…

View Cache

Opening an international conference on priesthood, Pope Francis insisted that those who are not close to God in prayer, close to their bishop and other priests and immersed in the lives of their people are simply “‘clerical functionaries’ or ‘professionals of the sacred.’”

“A priest needs to have a heart sufficiently ‘enlarged’ to expand and embrace the pain of the people entrusted to his care while, at the same time, like a sentinel, being able to proclaim the dawning of God’s grace revealed in that very pain,” the pope said Feb. 17 as he opened the conference in the Vatican audience hall.

With some 500 people attending in person and hundreds more online, the Feb. 17-19 symposium was organized by Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, and aimed at renewing a theological understanding of Catholic priesthood.

The cardinal told participants he understood how people could wonder…

View Cache

Editorial: The harshness of the attacks that were directed at Benedict XVI following the report’s publication is not justified by the actual evidence in the report, and seem strangely timed considering the recent German Synodal Way.

Clergy sexual abuse of minors is an appalling crime. It’s a scandal so grave that it has completely undermined the trust of many of the faithful in their Catholic leaders. It has also profoundly injured the Church’s capacity to undertake its fundamental evangelical mission of the salvation of souls.

That’s why it’s so disturbing to see this issue cynically commandeered by some progressive Catholics. The Church must continue to strive for authentic solutions to combat sexual abuse, support the victims of abuse, punish sexual abusers, and learn from prior mistakes. Instead, these Catholics exploit it as an instrument to advance agendas that contradict settled Church teachings — as in the case of the doctrinal…

View Cache

As a symposium in Rome considers the priesthood, we hear from the prefect who organized the event.

ardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, is leading a symposium titled Toward a Fundamental Theology of the Priesthood at the Vatican through February 19, 2022.

In the lead-up to this event, I.Media spoke with the Canadian cardinal about what is at stake for the Church today.

Why did you choose to hold a symposium on the priesthood today?

Cardinal Ouellet: The Church is currently in a synodal process that raises the question of the participation of the People of God in the whole life of the Church. In launching the Synod on Synodality, the Pope does not wish to conduct a survey of opinions in the Church, a parliamentary operation or a collection of ideas. He wants to reawaken the faith of the People of God.

After the Synod…

View Cache

Defense lawyers in the Vatican’s fraud and extortion trial on Friday accused Pope Francis of violating their clients’ human rights by issuing four secret, executive decrees that gave prosecutors free reign to investigate in ways that deprived the suspects of basic legal guarantees.

The lawyers argued that the resulting trial into the Vatican’s bungled 350 million euro investment in a London real estate deal is therefore illegitimate, and they again called for Tribunal President Giuesppe Pignatone to throw out the indictments. Pignatone is set to rule on their motions March 1.

The pope’s prosecutors have accused the Holy See’s longtime money manager, Italian brokers and lawyers involved in the London deal of fleecing the Vatican of tens of millions of euros, much of it donations from the faithful, and of then extorting 15 million euros from the Vatican to finally get full ownership of the property. The 10 suspects deny…

View Cache

After 200 unmarked graves were discovered last year in Canada at an Indian boarding school, the grim discovery prompted the U.S. government to launch a national investigation. CBN News traveled to Montana to explore this tragedy that’s become an issue on both sides of the border. 

“Kids are most important to have a good upbringing and to be safe,” said Wes Bremner.

But that wasn’t the case at times for Bremner, who is a member of the Blackfeet Nation. He attended the Cut Bank Boarding School in northwestern Montana. As a second grader in the ’60s, distance and harsh winters made it a necessity. His first day proved to be harsh.

“One of the matrons – he was a big, large man, a White man – he said, ‘Hey, little f’ers, behave!’ He said, ‘Knock it off!’ He said, ‘Do you want a horn?’” Bremner told CBN…

View Cache

Trevor Lavalais, principal and director of Legacy Christian Academy, a private school in Alamogordo, was arrested on Feb. 11 on six counts relating to sexual assault involving a child.

Lavalais, 33 of Alamogordo, was charged with one count of criminal sexual penetration of a minor, three counts of criminal sexual contact of a minor and two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, per court records.

On Feb. 9, a 12-year-old student at Legacy Christian Academy reported to a counselor that the principal made the child watch pornography, records show.

The counselor allegedly told the child that she would have to report the incident. The child did not want the incident reported, court records state.

Court records state that the child had been experiencing incidents with Lavalais beginning in August 2021.

On Feb. 9, the child allegedly told the counselor that in exchange for her not telling anyone that the child would…

View Cache

Kerala’s church community has split into a for-and-against divide.

Ask someone in Kerala’s Kuravilangad where the St. Francis Mission Home is, and they might not know. But mention the infamous former bishop Franco Mulakkal, and they nod for sure. In the four years since he was accused of rape by a nun, Kerala’s church community has split into a for-and-against divide — rife with politics, intrigue, and wild, whispered conspiracies.

And then came the shock judgment last month by a sessions court in Kottayam. The former bishop was pronounced not guilty.

The convent is like a formidable fortress at the end of a dirt road, tucked away in the middle of thick, quiet forest. All visitors are looked at with suspicion. The convent doors open briefly only to let in a man delivering tapioca, then slams shut. Outside, two policemen keep vigil. Information about guests must be relayed…

View Cache

A Vatican symposium on the priesthood, including discussions on sexual abuse, was embarrassed on Friday by the discovery that a French priest disciplined for alleged sexual abuse was among the attendees, witnesses said.

The priest was Father Tony Anatrella, 81, who was barred from public ministry in France in 2018 after a Church investigation found that he abused adult seminarians he was treating in so-called conversion therapy aimed at suppressing their homosexuality.

The Vatican declined to comment, but a Church source confirmed Anatrella’s presence after it was first reported by the French Catholic newspaper La Croix.

Anatrella was seen at the symposium by the La Croix reporter as well as a reporter for the French Catholic news agency I Media, one of whom spoke to him.

Anatrella, 81, could not be immediately reached and it was not immediately clear if he was still at the symposium on Friday afternoon after…

View Cache

In last week’s letter, Benedict XVI acknowledged the Church’s past errors in dealing with abuse.

Reactions in Germany to Pope Emeritus Benedict’s 8 February letter of apology for the handling of abuse cases in Munich during his 1977-82 time as archbishop have been mixed.

Benedict was accused in a report on the archdiocese released on 20 January of failing to take action in four cases of alleged sexual abuse. In an 82-page initial statement on the report, Benedict had denied in three places that he had taken part in an important meeting in January 1980. On 24 January, he admitted that, despite the earlier statements to the contrary, he had indeed taken part in the January 1980 meeting and apologised for the “editing” error.

In last week’s letter of 8 February Benedict acknowledged past failings of the Catholic Church in confronting clergy sexual abuse under his watch. “Each individual case of sexual abuse…

View Cache

The Vatican’s big fraud and extortion trial resumes Friday after exposing some unseemly realities of how the Holy See operates, with a new spy story taking center stage that is more befitting of a 007 thriller than the inner workings of a papacy.

According to written testimony obtained Thursday, one of Pope Francis’ top advisers brought in members of the Italian secret service to sweep his office for bugs and commissioned intelligence reports from them, completely bypassing the Vatican’s own police force in the process.

The reported actions of Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, the No. 2 in the Vatican secretariat of state, raise some fundamental questions about the security and sovereignty of the Vatican City State, since he purportedly invited foreign intelligence operatives into the Holy See’s inner sanctum, and then outsourced internal Vatican police spy work to them.

Peña Parra hasn’t been charged with any crime, though his subordinates…

View Cache

On the sidelines of Friday’s hearing, Cardinal Becciu gave a statement to the media about his financial giving to Spes Cooperative, the non-profit managed by his brother, denying that he intended to favor family members.

The Vatican’s internal financial watchdog has joined an ongoing Vatican trial as a civil party.

The addition of the Financial Information and Supervision Authority, or ASIF (formerly the AIF), to the civil action of the trial took place at a hearing on Feb. 18. The court session, which lasted more than four hours with breaks, was adjourned until Feb. 28.

The reason for ASIF’s inclusion as a plaintiff in the case will be heard at the end of the month, during the continuation of Friday’s hearing.

The financial information authority joins the civil parties of the Secretariat of State, the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), and the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See…

View Cache

Father Jean Claude Philippe, convicted of raping a parishioner in the rectory of his church in Homestead, did not apologize when it came time for his sentencing. Instead, he complained about his time in jail and said he was preaching the word of God to inmates behind bars. “The devil is powerful but won’t change me,” he said. “I won’t change my ways. I will continue in my path.” That path, a judge ruled on Thursday, will nevertheless continue in state prison for nearly eight years.

Circuit Judge Carmen Cabarga on Thursday sentenced Philippe, 67, to 94-and-a-half months in prison. It was the lowest permissible prison term under Florida’s sentencing guidelines for Philippe, who did not have any previous arrests or convictions. Cabarga did not explain her reasoning for the sentence, but rejected prosecutors’ call for a sentence of 15 years, the max allowed by law.

“The bottom line is…

View Cache

The recent accolades for Bishop Remi De Roo on his death at the age of 97 show a failure to truly examine his career and how he cared for the most vulnerable.

It was Bishop De Roo who gave faculties to Fr. Phil Jacobs, despite knowing that the priest had abused two young boys in Columbus, Ohio. Fr. Jacobs went on to abuse more boys in Victoria, British Columbia and was convicted for those crimes in September 2013.

In addition, in a Vancouver Sun article dated March 27, 1998, Bishop De Roo minimized the complaints of survivors at St. Michael’s Residential School against Bishop Hubert O’Connor, saying “I personally cannot see that what he had done was, strictly speaking, a criminal offence.” He went on to say that Bishop O’Connor was “overwhelmed by the bitterness and the slander.”…

View Cache

Pope Francis on Feb. 17 kicked off a much anticipated three-day Vatican conference on the future of the Catholic priesthood by upholding clerical celibacy as a “gift” that should be lived out through “healthy relationships.” 

“Celibacy is a gift that the Latin Church preserves, yet it is a gift that, to be lived as a means of sanctification, calls for healthy relationships, relationships of true esteem and true goodness that are deeply rooted in Christ,” Francis told some 400 Catholic bishops, priests and theologians attending the Feb. 17-19 conference in Rome. 

The pope’s remarks come at a time when some leading European bishops have signaled their willingness to relax the church’s celibacy requirements for priests. 

“I would also add that when priestly fraternity thrives and bonds of true friendship exist, it likewise becomes possible to experience with greater serenity the life of celibacy,” said the pope. “Without friends…

View Cache

Warning: This story contains references to sexual and physical abuse and may be upsetting for some readers.

Too much shame and guilt to speak out at the time.

The words of Hanz Freller, 47, to the inquiry into Abuse in Care and its investigation into the religious brothers of the Order of St John of God.

The Royal Commission is investigating historical abuse at the Marylands residential school in Christchurch, and the Hebron Trust, a home for at-risk youth, both run by the Order.

Freller was a resident at the Hebron Trust’s Pampuri home in Christchurch in the early 1990s from the age of 15.

It was overseen by the now notorious Brother Bernard McGrath.

Freller said McGrath befriended him, gave him privileges the other boys did not have and generally kept a close eye on him.

McGrath took a keen interest in him, often standing in the doorway of…

View Cache

Repeated claims that the St John of God order was “deeply shameful” of the abuse that occurred over decades at Marylands School in Christchurch have been labelled as hollow words by the survivors of the abuse.

In his closing statement before the royal commission of inquiry on Thursday, Dr Christopher Longhurst from the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) slammed claims by leaders of the Catholic Church that it welcomed the inquiry.

He pointed out that church leaders initially opposed that faith-based institutions be included in the inquiry.

“Simply stating that the church is shameful in 2022 after it was forced to become the subject of a royal commission, is entirely insufficient,” Longhurst said.

“Where was their shame decades ago when child victims and their parents first reported the abuse? Where was their shame when disgraced brothers were shipped overseas instead of facing justice? Where was their shame when some of their…

View Cache

Five officials at a Christian school in Texas have been arrested and charged with failing to report the alleged sexual assault of a ninth-grader that unfolded in the locker room during baseball practice, officials say. 

The faculty members, two coaches and three administrators at Midland Christian School, were arrested Wednesday and charged with failure to report with intent to conceal neglect or abuse.

The five were: Jared Lee, school superintendent; Dana Ellis, secondary school principal; Matthew Counts, secondary assistant principal; Gregory McClendon, athletic director and head football coach; and Barry Russell, baseball coach, according to an arrest affidavit obtained by NBC News.

Midland Police were notified on Jan. 28 about the possible sexual assault, according to the affidavit, and a forensic interview was scheduled with the victim on Feb. 11. 

The ninth grader was allegedly assaulted during baseball practice at Max H. Christensen Stadium on Jan. 20, the affidavit said.

…

View Cache

A U.S. bishops’ conference draft policy update on seminary formation does not incorporate a call to build a national screening database of applicants to seminaries and religious orders.

Advocates say a database could help flag problem seminary applicants before they are accepted, by tracking rejected applications from seminaries or religious orders, along with those applications deferred or withdrawn.

The database was proposed to the U.S. bishops’ conference by an Ohio seminary nearly six years ago, but there has been no apparent move toward adopting it. It has not been included in the USCCB’s draft for a sixth edition of the Program of Priestly Formation, the policy document which guides seminary admission and training in the U.S.

The recommendation came after the 2016 arrest of a seminarian studying at the Pontifical College Josephinum, for the Diocese of Steubenville, Ohio. 

Joel Wright, then 23, was arrested on Jan. 29, 2016, in San…

View Cache

Italy has so far resisted calls for an independent investigation into how the Roman Catholic church has handled these cases.

Catholic groups and abuse survivors on Tuesday called on the Roman Catholic Church in Italy, which has yet to reckon with the scourge of sexual abuse by priests, to create an independent commission to investigate how the crisis has been handled.

In a number of countries — including Australia, France, Ireland and the United States — the church has allowed some scrutiny of its actions. But so far, the church in Italy has resisted calls for an independent inquiry, even after Pope Francis in 2019 held a landmark meeting on clerical sexual abuse and called “for an all-out battle against the abuse of minors.”

“Italy is an anomaly,” said Francesco Zanardi, a clerical abuse survivor and president of Rete l’Abuso, the country’s most outspoken victims’ rights group, which has independently tracked more…

View Cache

Pope Francis dismissed progressive views favoring ‘the ideology of the moment’ and the conservative ‘rigidity’ that clings to the past, encouraging a third way.

With broad strokes and a balancing act, Pope Francis weighed in on the polarizing tensions in the Catholic Church concerning the future of the priesthood. While upholding priestly celibacy as “a gift,” the pope distanced himself from the “perversion” of rigidity while speaking at a Vatican conference on Thursday (Feb. 17).

As Catholic bishops and laypeople in Germany call for a reevaluation of official doctrine on priestly celibacy, female ordination and sexuality, conservatives look at the emerging discussions on the future of the priesthood with a mixture of practical and theological concern.

The sexual abuse crisis has crippled the church’s credibility worldwide and the number of men entering the priesthood continues to dwindle, contributing to what Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the head of the Vatican’s department overseeing bishops,…

View Cache

Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, who is presiding over a high-profile Vatican symposium on the theology of the priesthood, has spoken out on a range of hot-button issues related topic, including clericalism, the abuse crisis, and the call for women’s ordination.

As head of the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops, Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet has one of the most significant roles in the Catholic Church’s governing bureaucracy, as his office is charged with vetting candidates to lead dioceses across the globe.

Ouellet, 77, was first appointed to the congregation by Benedict XVI in 2010 and has stayed in his post far beyond the usual 5-year term for heads of Vatican departments.

Much of his tenure in the department has been marked by the clerical abuse scandals – including those involving bishops and even fellow cardinals, such as ex-priest and ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick – making his job of finding the right shepherds for…

View Cache

A prominent French priest barred from exercising public ministry due to abuse allegations is attending a major Vatican conference on the priesthood, organized, in part, to help the church turn a corner on abuse.

Msgr. Tony Anatrella, a psychotherapist who was once an Vatican adviser on matters regarding human sexuality, was banned from ministering as a priest by the former Archbishop of Paris, Michel Aupetit, in 2018. 

News of his attendance at the Feb. 17-19 Vatican conference was first reported by the French Catholic daily, La Croix, which also reported that the Vatican said the cleric, who retains his priestly faculties, was not invited and registered on his own accord.  

Anatrella’s presence at the conference was later confirmed to NCR by attendees at the event. NCR did not immediately receive a response from conference organizers to a query about Antatrella’s attendance.

…

View Cache

Prince Andrew and Virginia Giuffre have reached an out-of-court settlement in the civil sexual abuse claim filed in the US.

According to a letter submitted to the US District Court, written jointly by Giuffre’s lawyer David Boies and the Duke of York’s legal representatives, the two parties have “reached a settlement in principle”.

The out-of-court deal will mean Prince Andrew will not face a public trial over allegations that he sexually abused Giuffre when she was a teenager. The Duke of York has always strenuously denied the allegations. 

Instead, he will make a “substantial donation to Ms Giuffre’s charity in support of victims’ rights”, according to the letter. The prince intends to demonstrate his regret for his association with Jeffrey Epstein by supporting the “fight against the evils of sex trafficking, and by supporting its victims”.

What could he have faced?

The Duke of York was facing a civil trial in…

View Cache