ABUSE TRACKER

At the age of 94, retired Pope Benedict XVI said he knows he will soon stand before God’s judgment and he prayed that he would be forgiven for his shortcomings, including in handling allegations of clerical sexual abuse.

“Even though, as I look back on my long life, I can have great reason for fear and trembling, I am nonetheless of good cheer, for I trust firmly that the Lord is not only the just judge, but also the friend and brother who himself has already suffered for my shortcomings, and is thus also my advocate,” he said.

In response Feb. 8 to a recent report on sexual abuse cases in the German Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, Pope Benedict also confirmed that an error in the testimony written on his behalf had been an oversight and “was not intentionally willed and I hope may be excused.”

“To me it…

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COMMENTARY: The issue is not over, but there are many reasons for hope.

Clergy sex abuse in the Catholic Church is not “over.” I mean this in two ways. 

First, some clergy sexual abuse is undoubtedly still taking place. But more importantly, we haven’t really dealt with the situations we already have experienced. Investigating the allegations, sending the guilty to prison, Church officials making amends to the victims, including financial payments — all this is important. But we as the larger Church community need to face the larger fact: A problem like childhood sexual abuse has many layers. Each incident affects numerous people, including family members and the parish or school community. We aren’t “done,” we haven’t “solved” clergy sex abuse, until we deal with all these social, emotional, and spiritual issues, along with the legal and financial issues. 

Before I unpack all that, though, let’s recap some of the…

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To us, Benedict’s letter is admitting to one thing to cover up a thousand. It is the same pattern of abuse, institutional knowledge, and concealment. His apology is faint, especially to a victim population that could care less what Pope Emeritus has to say. Benedict is repeating words of apology that have fallen on deaf ears for decades. To no surprise, Benedict and his advisors wish to recreate a narrative in their favor. The truth is this, it is about protecting the church’s deteriorating image and financial flow to the hierarchy. True apologies are followed by true amends, a concept the church does not seem to be able to grasp.

Despite evidence from secular authorities that Pope Benedict shuffled pedophiles, the former pope cannot do the simple thing and offer full accounting and apology. The opportunity for cleansing the report out of Munich offered has been…

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Glenn Johnson says Wayne Hankey sexually assaulted him on university campus in late ’70s

Glenn Johnson will continue his fight for justice despite the death this weekend of the man he accuses of sexually assaulting him more than 40 years ago.

Wayne John Hankey, a former Anglican priest and longtime professor at the University of King’s College and Dalhousie University, died this weekend after a heart attack. He was 77.

Hankey was one month away from the first of three criminal trials, which involved charges of sexual assault, indecent assault and gross indecency for alleged incidents dating back to the 1970s and 80s.

Johnson has retained Wagners Law Firm to represent him in a civil lawsuit against the University of King’s College, the Anglican Church and possibly others.

He said he is still grappling with the “shocking” news of Hankey’s death.

“I’m really not sure how to feel. I certainly didn’t wish…

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Hankey was scheduled for 3 trials in 2022, the first in March

A former Halifax professor accused of multiple historical sexual offences has died, a month before his first trial was set to begin.

Wayne John Hankey, 77, was charged with sexual assault, gross indecency and indecent assault involving three male complainants for incidents between 1977 and 1988.

Hankey, a longtime professor at the University of King’s College and a former Anglican minister, had pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

In a statement on Sunday, King’s president Bill Lahey said the university had been made aware of Hankey’s death and extended condolences to his family.

“With this news has come some inquiry regarding the independent review process that was established by the university in February 2021. This review, which has always been separate from any criminal justice matters, will proceed,” Lahey said.

“King’s remains committed to learning from the…

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After a recent report into the handling of clerical abuse cases in the Archdiocese of Munich faulted him in four separate cases, retired pope Benedict XVI has denied allegations of wrongdoing, saying he was unaware of the abusive behavior at the time he was making decisions.

On Jan. 20 the Archdiocese of Munich, led by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger from 1977 to 1982, issued a highly anticipated report into its handling of clerical abuse cases, finding that 497 people had been abused in the Munich archdiocese from 1945 to 2019.

The report, conducted by the Westpfahl Spilker Wastl law firm, was commissioned by the archdiocese in February 2020 and identifies some 235 perpetrators of abuse, including 173 priests, 9 deacons, 5 pastoral workers, and 48 individuals in Catholic schools.

Benedict XVI, who briefly led the archdiocese before being named prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,…

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Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI on Tuesday expressed his “profound shame” to the victims of clerical abuse, and said he was pained by “errors” that occurred in various places across his career in the church. But he stopped short of acknowledging any specific personal responsibility after a church-commissioned German report accused him of mishandling four cases during his time running the archdiocese of Munich between 1977 and 1982.

“However great my fault may be today, the Lord forgives me, if I sincerely allow myself to be examined by him, and am really prepared to change,” the 94-year-old retired pope wrote.

At the same time Tuesday, a legal and academic team that had assisted Benedict offered a full-throated defense, saying that Benedict — known then as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — was never involved in any “cover-up of acts of abuse.” The canon lawyers and academics said the German investigation was…

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A victims advocate group is demanding that a major Roman Catholic publishing house stop selling two books that were written by priests who were “credibly accused” of sexually abusing children.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, better known as SNAP, said TAN Books is “profiting off of those who have abused children.”

“Is it worth the nearly 12 dollars per item to associate your brand with men who are known to have committed crimes against children?” SNAP asked in a letter dated last Wednesday to the North Carolina-based publisher. “Do you believe that you are better arbiters of the facts of the case than the Church officials and lay review boards who heard the details of the abuse?”

TAN Books, according to its website, was founded in 1967 and acquired by Saint Benedict Press in 2008.

The victims advocate group says the…

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I have, since the 1980s, heard my share of complaints from Catholic readers about news coverage of sexual abuse by clergy.

There are readers who get angry about this coverage, period. They want the topic to go away and see anti-Catholic bias in any coverage of the subject, even when the coverage is accurate and fair-minded.

However, other Catholic readers get mad when they see valid coverage that leaves the impression that sexual abuse is only an issue in the Church of Rome. Many of these readers (on the Catholic left or right) want to see accurate, informed coverage on this hellish topic, which would include some mention of the many, many cases that take place in secular settings (think public schools) and in other religious groups.

That’s the broader context for complaints that I heard about a recent New York Times story that ran with this dramatic double-decker…

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In the News podcast: Munich report finds former pope failed to act to prevent abuse

In January, an in-depth report into the Catholic archdiocese of Munich and Freising – a bulwark of German Catholicism – was published, revealing nearly 500 cases of clerical sexual abuse since 1945.

The report accused the now 94-year-old Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI of failing to stop the clerical child sex abuse. German investigators said it is “overwhelmingly likely” the former pope was aware of at least four abusing and paedophile priests during his time as archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982.

As membership of the Catholic Church in western Europe continues to fall, what will be the consequences of this latest scandal within an increasingly fractured church?

The Vatican already sees western Europe as a “dying market”, The Irish Times Berlin correspondent Derek Scally told In the News. “The idea is, which church should we be catering for? The…

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The temple priest who was arrested in an alleged gang-rape and murder case of a minor Dalit girl has claimed before a court that the victim’s father was present when she was cremated, but he had concealed it when his statement was recorded by police.

According to the chargesheet, she was suffocated to death during the sexual assault by Radhey Shyam and forcefully cremated by him and others. But the priest’s counsel claimed before additional sessions judge Ashutosh Kumar that that there was no evidence of murder, barring extra-judicial confessions.

“As per the postmortem report, the cause of death was electric shock.”

He also claimed that the eyewitnesses were planted. The chargesheet doesn’t have any word on from where they had seen the incident, he pointed out. “The witnesses have a history of criminal cases and are politicians,” he alleged.

He also claimed that the FIR was tampered with…

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‘Experience tells us that these commissions are more of a platform for clashes between political parties than a search for the truth,’ Bishop Luis Javier Argüello Garcia said.

Spain’s lower house, the Congress of Deputies, agreed Feb. 1 to debate the creation of a commission to investigate sexual abuse committed by members of the Catholic Church.

The request to create the commission was filed by Podemos, a left-wing party that is part of the governing coalition, as well as the Republican Left of Catalonia and EH Bildu, Catalan and Basque nationist parties that give confidence and supply to the government.

The People’s Party and Vox, which are in the opposition, voted against the commission and made a motion that all cases of the abuse of minors be investigated and not just those that have taken place in areas related to religious institutions. 

However, this motion was vetoed by Podemos and…

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Bishop Oster also raised the question of whether recent attacks on Benedict XVI indicated that the pope emeritus still presents a threat to a specific vision of the Church being advanced in Germany.

Benedict XVI never sought to cover up cases of sex abuse by clergy. That is the conviction of the German Bishop Stefan Oster.

In a reflection published on his website on Jan. 30, the bishop of Passau, southeastern Germany, defended the pope emeritus from accusations that he had deliberately concealed his attendance at a meeting in 1980, where it was agreed that a priest accused of abuse could be transferred to the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, then led by the future German pope.

Bishop Oster also raised the question of whether recent attacks on Benedict XVI indicated that the pope emeritus still presents a threat to a specific vision of the Church being advanced in Germany.

The…

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Over the past week, two leading European cardinals, both of whom enjoy broad favor with Pope Francis, have made public statements calling for a change in the Catholic Church’s current position on the issues of homosexuality and priestly celibacy.

In an interview published in Germany’s Catholic News Agency (KNA) earlier this week, Jesuit Cardinal Jean Claude Hollerich, Archbishop of Luxembourg, voiced his belief that the Church’s position viewing homosexual relationships is wrong.

“I believe that the sociological-scientific foundation of this teaching is no longer correct,” he said, saying the time has come to revise this position, and suggesting that Pope Francis’s own rhetoric on homosexuality could open the door for this change to take place.

Since the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Francis, who has also voiced concern over homosexuality in the priesthood, has taken a softer approach to the issue and has urged the Church to be more welcoming…

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The head of the German Bishops’ Conference expressed doubts Saturday that the planned return of Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki as archbishop of Cologne following a “spiritual timeout” will help the diocese overcome a crisis sparked by the church’s handling of sex abuse allegations.

Georg Baetzing, who chairs the Bishops’ Conference, expressed concerns “whether a real fresh start can happen there.”

“That’s needed to overcome the crisis that occurred there,” he added.

Pope Francis last year granted Woelki leave until early March after criticism over his decision not to publish an independent report into allegations of sexual abuse in the church.

Baetzing spoke at the end of a meeting of the synodal gathering of German Catholics, which also discussed reforms that could lead to women performing sacraments in the future.

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As far back as I can remember, I have been interested in spirituality. In my teenage years I spent a lot of time in various Buddhist and Christian monastic communities across Australia, practising and learning what I could.

But there was something about Jesus that struck me the most. Jesus was a compelling witness to an experience of the sacred that is deeply loving, wise and challenging; and Christians were kind, generous and well-grounded people, all the things I needed at the time.

In my early 20s I was sexually assaulted in a Christian community. My assailant had set themselves up as my spiritual mentor but was in fact grooming me. After numerous assaults, I fell into despair. My ability to trust and to form close, loving relationships was seriously compromised, as was my ability to connect to God from my heart and feelings.

These dark times included suicidal thoughts…

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Maybe those turning away from Quinn’s God are the victims of abuse, their families, friends, work colleagues, counsellors, nurses and doctors. Also the victims’ children, born years after the abuse. Is there anyone left in this country who hasn’t been touched by clerical sex abuse?

Maybe all those are the ones turning away. We’ll find out in the next census.

Caroline O’Toole, Waterford

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David Quinn lets Pope Benedict off very lightly with his criticism (“Scandals rock my faith in church, not Catholicism”, Comment, last week). He says, for example, that the former pope might not have handled German abuse allegations properly, but the accusation is that, as Cardinal Ratzinger, he did all in his power to cover up the scandal.

Quinn then compares Ratzinger with other public figures who have lied. Surely he should be held to a much higher standard than this.

Ratzinger’s diocese deliberately moved paedophile priests around, resulting in innumerable other children being sexually abused.

The harm that he caused is incalculable. Then, with this on his conscience, he allowed his name to be put forward and was elected pope, the moral compass of the Roman Catholic church. The hypocrisy of this leaves me speechless.

Richard Williams, Valentia Island

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Synodal conference also calls for pope to undertake a ‘reassessment of homosexuality’

Germany’s Catholic Church cleared another reform hurdle at the weekend when an overwhelming majority of clerical and lay representatives at a synodal conference backed greater gender equality and more lay involvement in the choice of bishops.

At their third “Synodal Path” meeting in Frankfurt, 215 church and lay delegates also backed a preliminary text calling on Pope Francis to undertake a “doctrinal specification and reassessment of homosexuality”.

Cardinal Reinhard Marx said the gathering had made clear that reform of church teachings was overdue to reflect the times.

“The catechism is not the Koran, it is always being changed,” said Dr Marx, archbishop of Munich.

Ahead of the meeting Dr Irme Stetter-Karp, president of the Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), the largest lay Catholic organisation, warned bishops that “it was time to finally get serious and agree changes”. At…

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Msgr. Philip Dowling ran down the stairs, shoes in hand. A horrified mother had just discovered him half-naked in her young daughter’s bedroom.. That was his first but not last escape from punishment. Years later, the victim and her sister, participated in the first Grand Jury Report into child sex abuse in the Philadelphia Archdiocese. In a disturbing 2005 interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, Dowling admits to abusing one sister, denies other allegations, and seems worried the Church will “find out.” Two sisters from another family also reported that Dowling abused them.

Due to the statute of limitations, he escaped the law. And now, even in death, he escapes the shadow his admitted abuse and clerical restrictions should have cast on his legacy.

MISLEADING & TONE-DEAF ANNOUNCEMENT

Dowling passed away last week. As is customary, the Vicar of Clergy, shared his funeral arrangements in an email sent to the priests and…

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Hankey was scheduled for 3 trials in 2022, the first in March

A former Halifax professor accused of multiple historical sexual offences has died, a month before his first trial was set to begin.

Wayne John Hankey, 77, was charged with sexual assault, gross indecency and indecent assault involving three male complainants for incidents between 1977 and 1988.

Hankey, a longtime professor at the University of King’s College and a former Anglican minister, had pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

In a statement on Sunday, King’s president Bill Lahey said the university had been made aware of Hankey’s death and extended condolences to his family.

“With this news has come some inquiry regarding the independent review process that was established by the university in February 2021. This review, which has always been separate from any criminal justice matters, will proceed,” Lahey said.

“King’s remains committed to learning from the…

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[BishopAccountability.org has cached the original PDF of this statement.]

The scale of reported alleged abuse within the Catholic Church in Aotearoa New Zealand has become known for the first time from extensive research undertaken by the Church at the request of the Royal Commission on Abuse in Care.

A total of 1680 reports of abuse were made by 1122 individuals against Catholic clergy, brothers, nuns, sisters and lay people from 1950 to the present, with 592 alleged abusers named. Almost half the reported abuse involved sexual harm. The 1960s and 1970s were the decades with the most abuse reported, with 75 per cent dated before 1990.

The results of this research have been requested by and provided to the Royal Commission. The definition of abuse used is the one used by the commission and includes reports of sexual, physical, emotional, psychological and neglect.

The research was undertaken by Te…

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[BishopAccountability.org has cached the original PDF of this report.]

As part of the process of its Information Gathering Project (IGP) and data requests from the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care (Commission), Te Rōpū Tautoko (Tautoko) has consolidated the information provided by Catholic entities into this fact sheet.

The work has involved many people over two years from many organisations.

The Commission has been provided this information and it is expected that they will be creating their own datasets and conclusions from it.

The IGP included three phases:

1. Seeking, in 2019, high level information from Catholic entities on institutions they were involved in, and documents held in relation to the period 1950-1999
2. Collating detailed information from Catholic entities on institutions considered in-scope for the Royal Commission. This work was undertaken in late 2019 and 2020.
3. In 2020 and 2021 requests were made to Catholic entities to provide…

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On Jan. 14, “clergy abuse victims asked the European Court of Human Rights to make a definitive ruling on whether the Vatican can continue to avoid being held liable for sexual abuse committed by Catholic priests by claiming state immunity … immunities afforded to a nation state while escaping the responsibilities that come with being a real nation, they argued,” the Associated Press reported.

“The 24 victims had stated the Vatican was indeed liable for their abuse because of the ‘structurally deficient’ way the Catholic hierarchy had handled cases of priests who raped and molested children for decades, covering up the crimes rather than reporting them,” explained the AP.

A week later, Pope Francis promised to provide justice to victims of clergy sexual abuse. “The Church, with God’s help, is carrying out the commitment with firm determination to do justice to the victims of abuse by its members,” the pope said without offering…

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Notes:

• Witness information and schedule: Information about survivors and other witnesses giving evidence at the hearing and a schedule can be found below this media release.
• COVID-19 hearing protocol: The health and safety of survivors, witnesses and the public are our utmost priority. Members of the public cannot attend the hearing in the current red traffic light setting, under the COVID-19 Protection Framework. The hearing will be livestreamed daily. We encourage the public to watch the livestream from 9 February, which can be found on the Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry website.

Survivors abused while in Catholic Church care, many who were disabled children and at-risk young people, will give evidence at an upcoming Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry public hearing.

The six and a half-day hearing begins on Wednesday 9 February in Tāmaki Makaurau.

The hearing will focus on abuse by religious brothers of the Hospitaller Order of St…

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Rachel Korberg is executive director of the Families and Workers Fund, president of the board at the Stonewall Community Foundation and a sexual abuse survivor.

He was the teacher at my high school everyone had a crush on: handsome, just a smidge too playful. He first approached me when I was 17 and standing in line for a roller coaster on a school field trip. Soon after, he asked me to come to his apartment, initiating several months of sexual contact.

As a teenager, I thought of this teacher as my boyfriend, even when his behavior got creepy, even when he said I shouldn’t tell anyone because it would threaten my career dreams. A permissive school environment contributed to my confusion. He told me that one of his colleagues referred to me as his “girlfriend,” and that he and other teachers talked about which students they would like to have sex…

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For the first time in its history, the New Zealand Catholic Church has released figures showing the scale of abuse committed by its priests and other religious officials.

But despite the 1680 cases of alleged abuse it has admitted to, survivors say the figure represents a “drop in the bucket” of the actual total – and estimate it could be as little as five per cent of the real number.

The data drop comes just a week before the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care begins a week-long hearing into one of the Church’s worst abuse cases, that of Marylands school in Christchurch.

The residential school, run by the Catholic St John of God order, accounts for 14 per cent of all the complaints received, and the three most prolific offenders – all with more than 15 recorded complaints – all worked at Marylands.

But Murray Heasley, spokesman…

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After a string of investigations exposing paedophile priests across the globe, it is time for Catholic-majority Italy to hold its own reckoning, a top advisor to the Vatican told AFP.

Hans Zollner, a German Jesuit priest on Pope Francis’s commission to protect minors, was speaking after the latest such probe, in Germany, accused former pope Benedict XVI of inaction on sexual abuse cases.

“There are cases of sexual abuse against minors in all parts of the world, in all sectors of society and also in the Church,” including in Italy, said Zollner.

“Three to 5% of priests around the world have been accused of abuse in the past 75 years,” he told AFP in a telephone interview late last week.

“We think the figures are comparable in Italy,” said Zollner, who is also director of Rome’s Anthropology Institute, based at the Pontifical Gregorian University, which deals with the prevention of…

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Network wants investigation to ‘determine global extent of cover-ups of clerical abuse’

The Catholic We Are Church International network of groups has called on Pope Francis to establish an independent legal investigation of the files at the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) “to determine the global extent of the cover-ups of clerical sex abuse cases”.

In a statement, it noted how “a decade ago in Ireland State judges investigating clerical abuse cases sought relevant files from the office of the Vatican’s CDF. The CDF refused to supply any files.”

The group referred to the recent “detailed Munich independent legal investigation” which “accused . . . [Emeritus] Pope Benedict XVl with failing to report four cases of clerical abuse [by priests] while he was archbishop of Munich”. It recalled how “in his statement . . . [to] this Munich report . . . [Benedict] did not tell the truth and…

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The Diocese of Camden has announced a plan to distribute $90 million to survivors of clergy sex abuse, well above its original offer of $10 million as part of a bankruptcy action.

But attorneys for sex-abuse survivors promptly rebuffed the proposal.

“It’s just woefully inadequate,” said Jeffrey Prol, an attorney for a committee representing more than 300 people with sex-abuse claims.

The two sides have clashed repeatedly over the amount of funds to be provided to sex-abuse survivors, with attorneys for claimants alleging the diocese has undervalued its assets to reduce its exposure.

The proposed fund, if approved in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, would be used to resolve some 300 claims, the diocese said in a statement Wednesday night.

The diocese would provide “the bulk” of the money, but its parishes “will also contribute a portion,” the statement said. It said the joint payment would total $60 million, but offered no…

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Prosecutors in Waushara County have filed the first criminal charge to result from the attorney general’s statewide investigation into clergy and faith leaders accused of sexual abuse.

Remington Jon Nystrom, 33, was charged with one count of first-degree sexual contact with a child under 13 in connection with an incident that occurred in 2009, according to information from the Department of Justice. 

Nystrom was a counselor at a Mount Morris camp in Waushara County when, police say, he inappropriately touched a sleeping 10-year-old, waking the child. 

Mount Morris is affiliated with the Moravian Church of America.

More: ‘This is criminal evidence’: Advocates deliver boxes of documents regarding clergy abuse to attorney general 

The victim had not previously reported the assault to either church or legal authorities, prior to reporting the abuse to the Attorney General’s Office, according to the Department of Justice.

“This case is possible because of…

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Nearly two-dozen students and their supporters at Mount St. Mary Catholic High School walked out of class Tuesday amid recently publicized allegations of sexual misconduct at the private school and complaints from some parents and alumni that administrators have been vague in their response and lacking in a detailed admission of institutional failures. 

The scandal has unfolded publicly since former Principal Talita DeNegri resigned in late December after an independent investigation revealed the school had failed to take action “consistent with its core beliefs and values” regarding allegations of sexual harassment and assault of a student, according to letters sent to donors, families and alumni by Board of Trustees Chairman Daniel Carsey.

More alleged victims spoke to The Oklahoman for a Jan. 23 article detailing their accusations, which include a male student masturbating in front of a female student, a female student forcibly moved into a…

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The Rev. Francis Santilli won’t exercise public ministry or live on church property pending the outcome of an investigation, the diocese said Thursday. He also resigned as pastor of St. Philip Parish.

Advocates for victims of abuse by priests are accusing the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence and Bishop Thomas Tobin of a “cover-up” after a Smithfield priest was placed on administrative leave this week over a child sex abuse allegation dating to 40 years ago.

The Rev. Francis Santilli, pastor of St. Philip Parish in Greenville, won’t exercise public ministry or live on church property pending the outcome of an investigation, the diocese said Thursday. He also resigned as pastor of St. Philip Parish.

But it wasn’t the first time Santilli had been accused of child sexual abuse, according to the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests and BishopAccountability.org. In fact,…

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This week wasn’t the first time that Catholic priest Frank Santilli, removed now as pastor at St. Philip’s Parish in Smithfield, had been accused of sexually abusing a minor. 

No one knows that more than Dennis Laprade, 52, of North Providence. 

In 2014, after learning through the news that another former altar boy like himself had made allegations against Santilli, he contacted the diocese to tell his story. 

He didn’t know how similar their accounts would be. 

In 2012, the other man told a church official that the priest had molested him “approximately 30 times” during the early 1980s.  

More:Smithfield priest on leave after sexual-assault allegation

The molestations allegedly occurred after morning Masses. The priest would put the boy on his lap, ask if he was ticklish and “push up against him with his groin,” according to a diocese letter sent to the Rhode Island State Police in April 2012. 

…

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Members of religious orders and other consecrated men and women take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience in the desire to live the Gospel in a more radical way.

It’s a way of life embraced as a path to holiness by helping members configure themselves more closely to Jesus in a stable state of life recognized by the church.

“They are ready to give up everything,” even their lives, and this readiness and dedication to follow Christ is “impressive” and “wonderful,” said Doris Reisinger, a German theologian. But “it’s so easily abused and exploited.”

Reisinger, a survivor of abuse inflicted when she was a consecrated member of Familia Spiritualis Opus, also known as The Spiritual Family “The Work,” is one of several people highlighting the need to protect the rights and dignity of consecrated women and men.

“People who live together, who promise poverty, chastity and obedience under the guidance…

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In a wide-ranging interview with America, Father Hans Zollner, the German Jesuit and one of the church’s top experts in the field of the safeguarding and protection of minors and vulnerable people from abuse, discussed the much-publicized report on how abuse cases were handled in the archdiocese of Munich and Freising, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s response to that report, the situation of the Catholic Church in Germany today, and what more Rome could do to help eliminate this plague from the church.

Father Zollner is the founding president of the Pontifical Gregorian University’s Center for Child Protection, which has now become the university’s Safeguarding Institute (IADC). He has been one of the few people in Rome willing to speak on the record about the Munich report, Benedict XVI and the church in Germany. I spoke with him in the institute’s office, at the Collegio Bellarmino, on Jan. 28.

The Munich Report

…

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The Archdiocese of Baltimore has suspended one of its Catholic priests amid allegations of sexual abuse dating back to the 1970s, while it investigates the claims.

On January 29, the Archdiocese issued a press release announcing that it has launched an investigation into allegations of clergy abuse by Reverend Samuel Lupico. While retired, Lupico has been working as an assistant at St. Mary of the Assumption in Govans, outside of Baltimore, and St. Pius X in Towson, Maryland.

The Archdiocese has suspended Lupico from his duties and suspended him from the ministry, pending the outcome of the investigation, which involve allegations that the priest sexually abused a minor in the 1970s. Lupico has denied the allegations, according to the press release issued by the Archdiocese.

The Archdiocese indicates it has reported the allegations to local law enforcement, and says it will assist in any investigation. But it has also…

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Spain’s parliament agreed to review a proposal by several political parties that have called for the establishment of commission to investigate sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church.

The proposal, which was presented Feb. 1 by the left-wing Podemos party, along with two other parties, could lead to a vote to form a commission to investigate the church’s handling of abuse allegations.

The two major conservative parties in Spain, including the Popular Party, opposed the proposal. According to the newspaper El País, Popular Party members said they do not oppose the formation of a commission but believe it should not limit its investigation solely to the Catholic Church.

The proposal for a commission came one day after the country’s prosecutor ordered its regional offices to compile information on ongoing investigations into clergy sexual abuse.

Although the Spanish bishops’ conference has vowed to investigate sex abuse cases in the country, it…

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The Rev. Canon Paul Wancura led a quiet, privileged life. But after his shocking death, a sexual abuse allegation followed.

Not much happens of note on Shelter Island, all 8,000 bucolic acres of it. Sandwiched between Long Island’s North and South Forks, it’s the kind of place where people seem to know one another, where car doors are often left unlocked and where, for some 20 years, the most bothersome problem has been Lyme disease-carrying blacklegged ticks.

But much of that changed in March 2018, when the Rev. Charles McCarron was asked to check in on another clergyman who had recently been commuting to a town on Long Island as a fill-in priest. He had failed to show up at church that day.

Father McCarron drove to the man’s white house with forest-green shutters in Silver Beach, a quiet Shelter Island neighborhood known for expensive second homes. When he pulled…

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It has been a humiliating week for Southern Baptists.

Earlier this week, as a Clemons Fellow with Baptist News Global, I reported on the release of a memorandum authored by a sexual abuse survivor that details stunning and sweeping allegations that the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee has mishandled specific instances of abuse, resisted meaningful institutional reform, and mistreated and intimidated survivors.

A mere 14 hours after BNG’s report on this memo was published, The Tennessean’s religion reporter, Liam Adams, released a 2,400-word story about SBC entities’ use of non-disclosure agreements. In 2019, one of these entities, International Mission Board, attempted to use an NDA to police the social media posts of an abuse survivor.

Putting aside my reporter hat for a moment, I’d like to tell you more about what’s going on behind the scenes with these stories.

Brown allegations

I am personally grateful to Christa Brown for allowing BNG to help tell…

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A former youth pastor has been arrested for an alleged inappropriate relationship with a 17-year-old girl.

Sean Patrick Masopust, 32 of Owatonna, was booked into the Steele County Jail on Tuesday and is charged with one count of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct.  Court documents state that Masopust had inappropriate contact with a youth group member at Northridge Church in the summer of 2018 when Masopust was 28 and the victim was 17.

Investigators say the relationship involved social media messages, nude photos, and some physical contact but no sexual intercourse.  The victim told law enforcement Masopust initiated the relationship and she just went along with it.

Court documents state the relationship ended in October 2018 and Masopust sent the victim a text message on her 18th birthday that said “I hope you can find it in the depths of your heart and soul to forgive me.  It was never my intention…

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There will be a trial this spring for one of two lawsuits that claim top officials with the Catholic Diocese of Brownsville protected a priest accused of child sexual assault.

The civil suits were filed about two months after the Diocese in 2019 released its list of priests who had been accused of sexually abusing children. The plaintiffs claim one of the 12 priests on the list, Father Benedicto Ortiz, continuously sexually abused two siblings.

The Brownsville Herald reports the abuse is alleged to have begun in 1982 while Ortiz served at Our Lady of Guadalupe in Brownsville, and continued when the Bishop at the time moved him to Saint Anne Mother of Mary in Pharr. State District Judge Gloria Rincones set May 16th as the date for one of the lawsuits to be heard.

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The Roman Catholic Diocese of Brownsville will face trial in May for the alleged sexual assault one priest inflicted on two children in the 1980s.

On Thursday, a Cameron County judge set a trial date of May 16 for a lawsuit between two unidentified people against the diocese.

The lawsuit was first filed in March 2019. The plaintiffs claim that Father Benedicto Ortiz sexually assaulted the two children from 1982 to 1985 while he was the priest of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Brownsville and St. Anne Mother of Mary in Pharr.

The victims claim Ortiz had the two children sleep with him five days a week at the rectory where the abuse occurred. The victim’s mother allowed the children to move in because she believed they were in a safe environment, according to the lawsuit.

According to the lawsuit, Ortiz would provide the children drugs, expose himself to the…

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A Strongsville priest who faced numerous child pornography charges and was sentenced to life in prison last November has died.

Robert D. McWilliams was serving out his sentence at Allenwood Federal Prison in Pennsylvania, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, McWilliams was found unresponsive around 12:50 a.m. and then transported to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead. He had been at the facility since Jan. 31.

“The Federal Bureau of Investigation was notified. No staff or other inmates were injured and at no time was the public in danger,” the FOB said.

Authorities didn’t say how McWilliams died.

In July 2021, McWilliams pleaded guilty to two counts of sex trafficking of a minor, three counts of sexual exploitation of a child, one count each of transportation of child pornography, receipt and distribution of visual depiction of…

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Robert McWilliams was serving a life sentence at the Allenwood federal prison in Pennsylvania. His death is being investigated as a suicide.

The former Cleveland priest sentenced last year on child abuse charges died today, the Union County, Pennsylvania, coroner told 3News Investigates.

Coroner Dominick Adamo said Robert McWilliams died at 2:18 a.m. at Evangelical Community Hospital in Lewisburg, Pa.

McWilliams was serving a life sentence at the Allenwood federal prison. His death is being investigated as a suicide. An autopsy will be performed Saturday.

Prison officials were not available for comment. 

The Diocese of Cleveland released the following statement to 3News: “We learned this afternoon of the passing of Robert McWilliams.  We place this and all difficult situations in the hands of God. We will continue to pray for the those hurt by his actions. May God be the source of their healing.”

The former priest pleaded guilty last year…

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Luca Morini, who allegedly spent church funds on parties and escorts, was exposed by an Italian TV show

An Italian former priest dubbed “Don Euro” by his parishioners because he kept pestering them for money has been jailed for extorting a former bishop.

Luca Morini served as a priest in the Tuscan village of Pontasserchio before being defrocked by the Vatican amid a series of scandals, culminating with a court in Massa Carrara sentencing him on Wednesday to seven and a half years in prison for extortion.

He was also convicted of assuming a false identity after masquerading as a judge when hiring male sex workers but acquitted on charges of extorting a nun, drug dealing and money laundering.

Morini was reportedly considered “a good-natured priest” when he first arrived in Pontasserchio, a village of about 2,600 inhabitants close to Pisa. But he soon earned the nickname Don Euro after…

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A former Mansfield St. Peter’s priest facing multiple federal charges related to sex trafficking has had his plea agreement deadline extended until May 16.

Defense attorneys for the Rev. Michael Zacharias, 53, requested and were granted the extension from a previous Jan. 12 plea deadline by Judge Jack Zouhary of U.S. District Court in Toledo.

Zacharias had served as associate pastor at Mansfield St. Peter’s Church from 2002-2007, according to a spokeswoman for the Toledo Catholic Diocese. 

The priest, who was placed on administrative leave in 2020 by Toledo Bishop Daniel Thomas, originally faced 10 sex-trafficking charges involving minors and adults, but the federal government agreed to dismiss five of those counts in August 2021 due to the alleged criminal acts being beyond the five-year statute of limitations, according to court documents.

Zacharias’ remaining charges include three counts of sex trafficking of a minor and two counts of sex trafficking of an adult.

…

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The third German Synodal Assembly spent hours discussing church issues and, by the end of its first day, adopted two texts that delegates hope will bring change and more democracy to the church. A vote on the election of bishops was delayed until the second day of the Feb. 3-5 meeting in Frankfurt.

All resolutions must be adopted by a two-thirds majority of all delegates present, plus two-thirds of all bishops must approve.

This was the third of five assemblies of the Synodal Path, organized to revitalize the church and restore trust following a September 2018 church-commissioned report that detailed thousands of cases of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy over six decades. Assembly delegates were under pressure to produce change.

During the day’s discussions, an emotional Benedictine Sister Philippa Rath told delegates: “Religious order people call me and ask if they can leave the church and still remain a member…

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Participants in the German Catholic Church’s “Synodal Way” voted on Friday in favor of a text calling for the ordination of women priests.

CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language news partner, reported that the text was passed by 174 votes in favor, 30 against, and 6 abstentions on Feb. 4 during a plenary session of the Synodal Way, a controversial multi-year process bringing together the country’s bishops and lay people.

The vote will be seen as a direct challenge to the Vatican, which has underlined that the Church has no power to ordain women as priests.

The document, entitled “Women in Ministries and Offices in the Church,” said: “It is not the participation of women in all Church ministries and offices that requires justification, but the exclusion of women from sacramental office.”

The vote came on the second day of a meeting of…

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The complaints, going back seven decades, attest to the pervasiveness of sexual and other abuse within the Catholic Church and are part of a worldwide reckoning.

Reports of abuse were filed against hundreds of clergy members and others in the Roman Catholic Church in New Zealand dating back to the 1950s, according to figures released this week to a royal commission, which for the first time capture the pervasiveness of abuse accusations in the church there.

Between 1950 and 2021, there were 1,680 allegations of abuse reported against diocesan clergy and members of Catholic religious orders or associations, according to data from Te Ropu Tautoko, a group coordinating between the commission — the highest form of investigation in New Zealand — and the Catholic Church.

The “sobering data” uncovered the scale of abuse within the Catholic Church, Katherine Anderson, a lawyer assisting the commission, said…

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Documents obtained by the ABC reveal the Vatican has ordered a fresh investigation into retired bishop Christopher Saunders under a protocol set up by Pope Francis to deal with sexual abuse cover-ups.

The correspondence, written by a senior manager within a Catholic Church agency, states that Archbishop of Brisbane Mark Coleridge has been appointed to conduct the Vos Estis Lux Mundi inquiry.

Pope Francis established the investigative protocol in 2019 to combat sexual abuse and increase the accountability for senior clerics like bishops.

An inquiry can be triggered by allegations of the sexual abuse of children or vulnerable adults, the possession of child abuse material, or the covering-up of sexual abuse allegations.

It is believed to be the first time it has been used in Australia.

‘Significant development’

Bishop Saunders resigned last year after a long police investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct was closed without charges being laid.

The allegations against…

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The French church is beginning to experience a degree of healing weeks after the release of an investigation into seven decades of the abuse of children by clergy. That is the assessment of Patrick Goujon, S.J., a professor at the Centre Sèvres (a Jesuit pre-collegiate school in Paris) and chief editor of Journal Recherches de Sciences Religieuse.

A victim himself of sexual assault by a priest, Father Goujon has been active with France’s conference of major superiors in disseminating the findings of the 2,500-page report, released in October after more than two years of research and investigation by the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church. According to the report, as many as 330,000 children had been abused by priests, religious and laypeople at church institutions in France since the 1950s.

A church in denial

The report landed on French Catholics like a bomb, Father Goujon said. French bishops…

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The bishop of Dodge City, Kansas, remains under criminal and canonical investigation, nearly a year after state authorities began looking into an allegation that the bishop sexually abused a minor. The bishop, who denies the allegation, stepped down from ministry when the allegation was announced. 

Ecclesiastical authorities charged with conducting a Vatican-directed investigation say the Church’s process is moving forward in conformity with canon law.

The Kansas Bureau of Investigation said Feb. 8, 2021 that the agency was investigating an allegation of abuse made against Bishop John Brungardt, who has been Bishop of Dodge City since 2010, and was before that a priest of the Diocese of Wichita. The agency did not indicate when Brungardt was alleged to have abused a minor.

A Feb. 8 statement from the Dodge City diocese said that Brungardt “denies the allegation and is fully cooperating with the ongoing investigation.”

In an unusual move for…

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A Smithfield priest has been placed on administrative leave as the Diocese of Providence investigates an alleged sexual abuse that reportedly happened four decades ago.

Rev. Francis Santilli was ordained as a priest in 1980 and has been a pastor at St. Philip Parish since July 2010.

The specifics surrounding the alleged sexual assault have not been made public, though the Diocese did confirm that the victim was a minor at the time.

Santilli has been ordered by the Diocese not to “exercise public ministry or reside on church property” pending the outcome of the investigation.

“Allegations of sexual abuse by clergy, even if they occurred decades ago, always must be taken seriously,” Bishop Thomas Tobin said. “I will be praying for all who are involved and affected by this difficult news.”

The Diocese has confirmed that Tobin has accepted Santilli’s resignation as pastor of St. Philip Parish. He has…

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The Diocese of Providence has placed a Smithfield priest on administrative leave following an allegation he sexually abused a minor sometime around 1979 or 1980, said a diocese spokesman Thursday. 

The Rev. Francis C. Santilli, pastor of St. Philip Parish in Greenville, has been banned from exercising public ministry or residing on church property pending the outcome of an investigation, the diocese said. 

The announcement Thursday came about after the diocese received an email complaint on Dec. 29 from a relative of someone claiming to have been abused by a priest in active ministry – without identifying the alleged victim, perpetrator, or circumstances, said diocese spokesman Michael F. Kieloch. 

The diocese opened an investigation and made attempts to contact the complainant, as well as communicated with the Rhode Island State Police.

The state police were able to contact and interview the alleged victim on Tuesday, said Kieloch. 

The diocese learned…

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A priest has been suspended from his duties while the Archdiocese of Baltimore investigates allegations that he sexually abused a minor in the 1970s, the archdiocese announced Sunday.

The archdiocese said Father Samuel Lupico was retired, but had been assisting at St. Mary of the Assumption in Baltimore and St. Pius X in Towson, The Baltimore Sun reported.

The alleged abuse took place in the mid-1970s, while Lupico served at St. Ann’s Catholic Church, the archdiocese said. He served there from 1974 to 1982. Lupico denies the allegations, the archdiocese said. The newspaper’s efforts to reach him were not successful.

The archdiocese said it hasn’t made a determination of credibility, but the announcement was made to solicit relevant information and fulfill its commitment to open communication.

Lupico served at a number of parishes dating back to the early 1970s, including St. Edward Catholic Church, Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church and Holy…

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This episode of Speakers Forum centers around three very different experiences of childhood sexual abuse. However, all three guests consider the responsibility of caregivers to prevent abuse and the difficulty of demanding justice decades after the crime.‘I wish I could have told him, scream, and then scream louder, I’m here, and we will bring this to an end.’ JOAN NOCKELS WILSON

Joan Nockels Wilson is a lawyer and writer based in Anchorage, Alaska. Her 2021 memoir, The Book of Timothy: My Brother, The Devil, and Me, recounts her attempt to find justice for her brother Tim Nockels. Tim was abused by a Catholic priest during their childhood in Chicago. Joan writes about their shared childhood, her life in Anchorage, and finally her travels to confront her brother’s abuser in Rome.

Tim Nockels is a financial advisor based in Chicago. He’s worked…

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• Spain carries out a parliamentary investigation into child sex abuse within the country’s church.
• Government spokeswoman Isabel Rodriguez says: “We’re going to do it, and we’re going to do it well.” 
• Victim of sex abuse says that he wishes (all the parties) would agree to do something properly.

Spain on Tuesday took its very first step towards a parliamentary investigation into child sex abuse within the country’s church, with the unprecedented move backed by a range of political parties.

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.

In 2018, El Pais newspaper began investigating abuse allegations and received details of 1,246 cases.

The Church in Spain, which has only recognised 220 cases over the past 20 years, has never held a comprehensive investigation, saying it has protocols in place to manage abuse allegations.

…

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Martins Enegbuma was convicted of sexual assaulting the woman, who is in her 20s, after a two-day trial at Edinburgh Sheriff Court.

A Catholic priest has been convicted of sexually assaulting a young parishioner while she visited him with her family on Christmas Day.

Martins Enegbuma carried out the attack on the victim, who is in her 20s, in a house he was living in next door to his Edinburgh church.

The 44-year-old subjected her to unwanted kisses, rubbed her foot, and ran his hands over her body.

The victim, along with her mother and another relative, had visited Enegbuma as they didn’t want him to be alone for Christmas and brought him food.

Enegbuma was living in the house beside Our Lady, Mother of the Church in the city’s Currie area.

He left the woman “distressed” after what was branded a “catalogue of…

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Another try at lifting the statute of limitations in child sexual abuse cases sits in limbo in the Legislature.

A bill introduced by Sen. Katy Duhigg, D-Albuquerque, would remove restrictions on how long a victim of such abuse has to file a lawsuit. Many experts say statutes that narrowly limit the time survivors of child abuse have to sue a perpetrator or an organization are unfair because it takes many victims years to acknowledge or come to terms with the abuse.

“This bill seeks to ensure that the trauma that survivors endure no longer outlives their ability to access the justice they deserve,” Duhigg wrote in an email Tuesday afternoon.

The Legislature’s webpage said the bill, which applies to civil and not criminal cases, has been referred to the Senate Committees Committee. Other efforts to alter the statute of limitations in these cases have been made as recently as 2019…

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Last week on the blog we described two new developments in the Catholic Church, which suggest that officials are beginning to acknowledge sexual abuse of adults by clergy and other church leaders. These include changes to the Code of Canon Law, which now recognizes that adults can be harmed by priests who abuse their authority. Additionally, lay people in leadership positions in the Church can now be punished under canon law for abusing minors or adults. 

The second piece of news is that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops voted in November to review the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, also known as the Dallas Charter, later this year. This is three years earlier than planned. Before the vote, three bishops went to the microphone to urge the committee reviewing the document to consider protections for adults. 

Curious to know…

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The principal of Brisbane’s Citipointe Christian College released a video message to parents late yesterday giving them a two-week extension to sign an enrolment contract that demands families denounce homosexuality and subscribe to traditional gender roles.

The contract was sent to families on Friday and has resulted in a backlash from some parents and politicians.

In the video message to parents, principal Brian Mulheran said he had listened to their concerns and wanted them to “make the right decisions for themselves”.

“The declaration of faith has been in place for the whole of last year,” Mr Mulheran said.

“We want families to consider this ethos so that they can make the right decisions for themselves.

Yesterday, a group of parents said they would file a complaint to the Human Rights Commission, arguing they were not consulted about the contract and that the college was discriminating against students on the basis of sexuality…

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When Dan started to explore his attraction to other boys as a teenager, the voices of his teachers and pastors at Citipointe Christian College in Brisbane swirled in his head. Time and again, they told him that sex existed only within a marriage between a man and a woman, and people like him would “go to hell”.

“As a 13-year-old, you feel that the adults in your world tell the truth and you own that truth. I knew that there must be something wrong with me. I thought I have to hide this now, I have to keep it a secret,” he told SBS News.

Confused and shamed as the years wore on, Dan confided in a pastor in Year 12 and was met with a “horrible reaction”.

“I was referred to one of the pastors of the church who put me through prayer counselling, but essentially it was conversion…

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Complaints alleging that two priests sexually abused children in the 1950s and 1970s have been deemed credible by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland.

One of the complaints focused on Renald Hallee, who served in Bangor and Fort Kent, who’s accused of abusing a high school student in the 1970s, the Bangor Daily News reported. Hallee left the priesthood in 1977 and retired in 2007 as a school teacher in Massachusetts.

The other involved Eugene Descombes, who allegedly abused a minor in the mid-1950s during a trip to Canada. He died in 1980, the newspaper said.

Bishop Robert Deeley this month accepted the recommendation of a diocese review board that advises him on allegations of clergy sexual abuse against children. It recommended that he declare the allegations against Hallee and Descombes to be substantiated.

A spokesperson for the diocese didn’t immediately respond Tuesday to a request…

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After the bishops’ conference of Spain (CEE) refused to launch an independent commission to look into historic clerical abuse cases, the government gave a green light for Congress to launch its own commission.

The left-wing Spanish government, led by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, has decided to play an active role in the investigation of abuse cases against minors within the Catholic Church. The decision comes days after a request made by the allies of this coalition government, including Unidas Podemos, for Congress to create the body.

Meanwhile, the State Prosecutor’s Office – headed by the former socialist minister Dolores Delgado – has initiated its own procedure. The 17 senior prosecutors of all the autonomous communities of Spain have been asked to forward within 10 days all the complaints and lawsuits that are being processed on sexual assaults and abuse of minors within any religious institution.

The government’s spokeswoman, Isabel Rodríguez,…

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After decades of neglect, victims of sexual abuse by the Spanish clergy say that they are finally seeing momentum building in their quest for real accountability and reparations.

On Tuesday, Spanish lawmakers took the first step toward opening a parliamentary inquiry on the issue, a move that victims hail as a potential game-changer.

Prosecutors are also stepping up efforts to dig deeper into existing and new allegations. And Spain’s left-to-center government is gauging whether to back the parliamentary probe or to launch another independent effort.

“It looks like as if public institutions have finally realized that the raping of children is of general interest, a grave violation of human rights and that the state should intervene,” said Miguel Hurtado, who has campaigned against impunity since disclosing his own account of being abused at a monastery in northeastern Spain.

“We can’t say we are happy until we see results, but this…

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A report released by the New Zealand bishops’ conference found allegations of abuse were made against 14% of diocesan clergy who have ministered in the country since 1950.

The report, published Feb. 1, said that “a total of 1,680 reports of abuse were made by 1,122 individuals against Catholic clergy, brothers, nuns, sisters and laypeople from 1950 to the present, with 592 alleged abusers named.”

“Almost half the reported abuse involved sexual harm,” the report said. “The 1960s and 1970s were the decades with the most abuse reported, with 75% dated before 1990.”

In a statement published after the release of the report, Cardinal John Dew, president of the New Zealand bishops’ conference, said the investigation’s findings were “horrifying and something we are deeply ashamed of.”

“As we continue to respond to the Royal Commission into Abuse and we build a safer church for everyone, I firmly hope that facts…

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New Zealand’s Catholic church has admitted that 14% of its diocesan clergy have been accused of abusing children and adults since 1950.

The church released the figures at the request of the royal commission on abuse in care, set up in 2018 by prime minister Jacinda Ardern, who said the country needed to confront “a dark chapter” in its history, and later expanded it to include churches and other faith-based institutions.

An interim report by the commission in December found up to a quarter of a million children, young people and vulnerable adults were physically and sexually abused in New Zealand’s faith-based and state care institutions from the 1960s to early 2000s.

Te Rōpū Tautoko, the group that coordinates church engagement with the royal commission, sought and examined records from the country’s six Catholic dioceses and from 43 Catholic religious congregations (also known as religious institutes, orders or associations). The research included records…

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Apologies should come from the Catholic liturgy, not be written by lawyers. When it comes to sin, in Catholic liturgy, there is no beating about the bush in the handling of clergy sex abuse.

Too many Catholic prelates believe that, when it comes to clergy sexual abuse, being in charge means never having to say you’re sorry.

For as long as the crisis has been going on, lawyers for bishops have advised many of them not to apologize, as this would be an admission of guilt that would come back as evidence when they were sued in court.

Some were too arrogant and cowardly to admit guilt.

Others refused to apologize because they believe they are blameless since they made decisions based on the advice they got from psychologists and canon lawyers who themselves were ignorant. Some even foolishly thought that acknowledging responsibility would somehow harm the church.

But whatever…

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Bishop Thomas Daly of Spokane, Washington, was a San Francisco priest assigned to Marin Catholic High School when the Vatican approved the 2002 Dallas Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, including a new “zero-tolerance” policy mandating the removal of  priests facing “credible” accusations of abuse.

For Bishop Daly, ordained in 1987 and appointed the bishop of Spokane in 2015, much of his ministry has been shaped and shadowed by the shocking revelations of clerical predation and episcopal cover-up that ignited the 2002 clergy-abuse crisis.

“My years as a high-school administrator taught me the importance of having procedures in place to protect young people,” Bishop Daly told the Register, noting that those lessons were reinforced when he served on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee for the Protection of Children & Young People. 

But after searing revelations of episcopal abuse brought down disgraced former-cardinal Theodore McCarrick in 2018,…

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[Includes brief video with photos of Paul Spisak and the Target store. See also the Spisak profile in the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report.]

A former priest who was named in the state’s grand jury report on clergy sexual abuse and charged with recording a young boy in a Target bathroom has died.

The Diocese of Pittsburgh said they were informed of 77-year-old Paul Spisak’s death Monday. The medical examiner said he died Sunday but did not list a cause of death.

Spisak was accused of recording a 13-year-old boy at the Target in East Liberty in December. When police searched his phone, investigators said they found photos of the victim and others using the bathroom.

Spisak was named in Pennsylvania’s scathing grand jury report in 2018 investigating church sex abuse. He was also arrested in 2006 after recording someone in the men’s bathroom at the South Hills Village mall…

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A Queens priest has been stripped of his clerical collar after a Catholic Church review board substantiated claims of misconduct, officials said Monday.

Not only was the Rev. John O’Connor forced to step down as pastor of St. Gregory the Great in Bellerose, he was completely removed from the ministry upon the recommendation of an independent panel investigating allegations in a lawsuit against O’Connor.

The board had been investigating claims made in a Child Victims Act lawsuit filed against O’Connor on Aug. 13, 2020. This probe turned up new evidence concerning a March 2000 accusation detailing “inappropriate internet communications with teenagers” while assigned at St. Athanasius Roman Catholic Church in Brooklyn, the board said.

O’Connor’s removal from the ministry means that he is no longer permitted to celebrate Mass publicly, cannot exercise any public ministerial duties and cannot live in an ecclesiastical residence.

His name will also be added to…

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f you or someone you know needs resources or support related to sexual violence, contact the Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault’s 24/7 hotline at 800-871-7741.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland has found recent complaints credible that allege two priests, including one who served in Bangor in the 1970s, sexually abused children in the 1950s and 1970s.

The diocese received the complaint against Renald Hallee, who served as a priest at St. John’s Catholic Church in Bangor between 1970 and 1973, in 2020. It alleged that he had sexually abused a high school student when he was a priest sometime in the 1970s. The diocese did not specify dates or location.  

Hallee served as a priest in Fort Kent after his time in Bangor.

The other complaint, which the diocese received in 2021, involved Eugene Descombes, a Canadian priest who died in 1980. It alleged that he sexually abused…

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A priest has been suspended from his duties while the Archdiocese of Baltimore investigates allegations that he sexually abused a minor in the 1970s, the archdiocese announced Sunday.

The archdiocese said Rev. Samuel Lupico was retired, but had been assisting at St. Mary of the Assumption in Baltimore and St. Pius X in Towson, The Baltimore Sun reported.

The alleged abuse took place in the mid-1970s, while Lupico served at St. Ann’s Catholic Church, the archdiocese said. He served there from 1974 to 1982. Lupico denies the allegations, the archdiocese said. The newspaper’s efforts to reach him were not successful.

The archdiocese said it hasn’t made a determination of credibility, but the announcement was made to solicit relevant information and fulfill its commitment to open communication.

Lupico served at a number of parishes dating back to the early 1970s, including St. Edward Catholic Church, Blessed Sacrament…

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An acclaimed religious children’s author was accused of abusing women and children. Then he killed himself, sending shock waves through the conservative community.

For the ultra-Orthodox public in Israel, he was a charismatic mix of soul healer, role model and media star.

So it came as a great shock when Chaim Walder, a celebrated and prolific author of children’s books, commentator and child and family counselor, was accused of sexual assault and abuse of women and children.

Coming months after the exposure of sexual abuse accusations against Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, another prominent, albeit less liked, figure in the ultra-Orthodox community, some have described the Walder affair as a #MeToo moment for Haredim, the Hebrew term for the ultra-Orthodox, which means those who tremble before God.

“It’s historic,” said Avigayil Heilbronn, an activist from a strict religious background who has long campaigned on behalf of ultra-Orthodox victims of sexual abuse…

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[Via nj.com]

Pope Francis has done more to reform the Roman Catholic church for a new age since Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. The ferocity of opposition in U.S. Catholic conservative circles validates this assessment.

Francis acknowledged his growing opposition in off-hand remarks aboard the papal plane on Sept. 4, 2019. ABC News reported Francis as saying it is “an honor if the Americans attack me.”

But for all he is doing, he draws a line about the ordination of women.

He has accepted the decision of Pope John Paul II who said, “I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that the judgment is to be definitely held by all the church’s faithful.”

That did not silence women’s ordination advocates in 1994, and there are even more voices clamoring for…

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Fr Tom Doyle was one of the first people to highlight the sexual abuse of children by priests in the 1980s

A priest who has campaigned on behalf of clerical sexual abuse victims for more than three decades has criticised the Catholic Church’s “toxic and erroneous teaching” on human sexuality.

Canon lawyer Fr Tom Doyle linked the crisis over the church’s mishandling of allegations of abuse to “a misconception of the clergy and bishops as the essence of the church” who are “essential for salvation”.

He warned there is “still plenty of pushback and resistance in the church” toward abuse victims, adding: “The good of the Church really means the good of the ecclesiastical aristocracy.”

Speaking at a webinar ‘Stolen Lives: Abuse & Corruption in the Catholic Church’, which was hosted by the lay reform group, Root & Branch Reform, he said: “It is not a few bad apples in…

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Another try at lifting the statute of limitations in child sexual abuse cases sits in limbo in the Legislature.

A bill introduced by Sen. Katy Duhigg, D-Albuquerque, would remove restrictions on how long a victim of such abuse has to file a lawsuit. Many experts say statutes that narrowly limit the time survivors of child abuse have to sue a perpetrator or an organization are unfair because it takes many victims years to acknowledge or come to terms with the abuse.

“This bill seeks to ensure that the trauma that survivors endure no longer outlives their ability to access the justice they deserve,” Duhigg wrote in an email Tuesday afternoon.

The Legislature’s webpage said the bill, which applies to civil and not criminal cases, has been referred to the Senate Committees Committee. Other efforts to alter the statute of limitations in these cases have been made as recently as 2019…

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The Catholic church is asking a Newfoundland and Labrador court to decide if millions of dollars raised through a local parish’s fundraiser could be used to pay survivors of physical and sexual abuse at a former orphanage in St. John’s.

The cash at stake — more than $5.7 million — was raised through a Chase the Ace lottery that saw tens of thousands of people regularly flood into the Goulds neighbourhood of St. John’s during the summer of 2017 for a chance at the jackpot.

The game was launched by the small parish of St. Kevin’s in hopes of raising enough money to fix the church’s front steps, said Kyle Rees, the parish’s lawyer. They never imagined they’d raise millions, attract national attention and then wind up embroiled in what Rees says is one of the most unusual cases he’s ever worked on.

“To our knowledge, this is a unique…

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Houston is charged with concealing alleged child abuse by his father.

Brian Houston, co-founder of the Hillsong megachurch and media empire, announced  that he is stepping aside as global senior pastor, telling worshipers via a pre-recorded video played during the Sunday morning service at Hillsong’s Sydney, Australia, headquarters that he would be taking a leave of absence from the church until the end of this year. 

Citing a decision by the Hillsong board and external legal counsel, Houston, standing with his wife and co-founder, Bobbie, said “best practice” dictates that he absent himself completely from church leadership as he faces trial for allegedly failing to report sexual abuse. The court proceedings, he said, are “likely to be drawn out and take up most of 2022.”

“It’s been an unexpected season, and we are thankful for you all and for the community we share,” Houston said on the video streamed toward…

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For Immediate Release
Saturday, January 29, 2022

(Baltimore, MD) – The Archdiocese of Baltimore is investigating an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor involving Reverend Samuel Lupico. Father Lupico is retired but had been assisting at St. Mary of the Assumption in Govans (Baltimore) and St. Pius X (Rodgers Forge).

Pursuant to Archdiocesan policy, the Archdiocese has removed Father Lupico’s faculties to function as a priest and suspended him from ministry, pending the results of a full investigation. Father Lupico denies the allegation.

Upon receiving the allegation, the Archdiocese immediately reported it to law enforcement. Archdiocesan policy requires the Archdiocese to cooperate with any investigation by law enforcement and also to conduct its own investigation.

After receiving permission to proceed from law enforcement authorities, the Archdiocese has now commenced its own investigation. In accordance with Archdiocesan policy, counseling assistance is available to those affected by child sexual abuse.

The abuse…

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The Archdiocese of Baltimore announced Sunday that it has suspended a priest from his duties while it investigates allegations that he sexually abused a minor in the 1970s.

Rev. Samuel Lupico was retired but had been assisting at St. Mary of the Assumption in North Baltimore’s Govans and St. Pius X in the Rodgers Forge neighborhood of Towson, the archdiocese said in a news release.

The alleged abuse took place in the mid-1970s, when Lupico was serving at St. Ann’s Catholic Church in Baltimore, according to the archdiocese. He served there from 1974 to 1982, the archdiocese said.

The archdiocese said Sunday that Lupico denies the allegations. The Baltimore Sun’s efforts to reach him Sunday afternoon were not successful.

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No other German bishop has dominated Catholic life in Germany as much in recent years as Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who announced he will stay on as archbishop of Munich and Freising despite a report faulting his leadership in handling abuse cases in the archdiocese.

The 68-year-old former president of the German bishops’ conference has been the face of Catholicism in Germany, an outspoken presence on sociopolitical issues, for the past two decades. But in recent years he has been dogged by rumors about his role in covering up or not acting fast enough in alleged sexual abuse cases in the dioceses he headed.

When he was named bishop of Trier in 2002, parishioners saw him as young and open-minded, easily approachable. His sermons in city’s fourth-century cathedral drew large crowds.

He was an outspoken critic of the culture of greed in modern capitalism and repeatedly pleaded with managers to subscribe…

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Ask and you shall receive.

A recent gathering at a rural Catholic church highlighted painful emotions rising to the surface as a Native American couple sought perspectives of people affected by Oklahoma Catholic boarding schools in the state between 1880 and 1965.

The “listening session” at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Konawa ended abruptly after several Native American women spoke about the troubled history of some of the boarding schools. The schools, they said, ultimately stripped many Native youths of their Indigenous identity in assimilation efforts that were often abusive.   

Deacon Roy Callison has been facilitating the sessions with his wife Susan. He said the gatherings, which are conducted by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City’s American Indian Catholic Outreach, have been informative and generally positive. 

“However, we have begun to get feedback from some people who emphasize the hurt they feel about their language and culture being restricted or taken from them at boarding schools,” he said…

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A new series of monologues shares the stories of former residents of St. Joseph’s Orphanage. Call Me by My Name is an online presentation of five monologues that emerged from the work of the St. Joseph’s Orphanage Restorative Inquiry Writers’ Group. It debuts tonight — Thursday, January 27 — at 7 p.m. on Zoom (register to attend).

Call Me by My Name features monologues based on the writings of Debi Gevry-Ellsworth, Sheila Grisard, Debbie Hazen, Katelin Hoffman and Michael Ryan, all of whom lived at St. Joseph’s. Instructor Carol Adinolfi supervises the group, which is part of  the St. Joseph’s Orphanage Restorative Inquiry. The Burlington Community Justice Center spearheaded that initiative in 2019 after a 2018 Buzzfeed news story reignited the investigation into the orphanage, which began decades earlier.

Director Eric Nightengale said by phone that the five pieces included in Call Me by My Name are extremely frank…

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In a virtual event, actors from film, television and theater come together to present monologues written by survivors

Many people who suffered abuse at St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Burlington are still working to cope with their trauma.

In a virtual event on Thursday night, a group of actors from film, television, and theater will be coming together to present monologues written by survivors. The event starts at 7 p.m. and registration is available through an online Zoom link.

In May of 2020, several survivors started sharing their stories in a writers group, which is part of the St. Joseph’s Orphanage Restorative Inquiry. The SJORI seeks to document the experiences of former residents.

For Katelin Hoffman, who allegedly suffered abuse at the orphanage when she was 13, the event is a way for her story — and those of many others —to be told.

“People can share how…

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However, the worldwide Catholic Church and the Vermont Catholic Diocese remain stuck in their burrow, shadow or no shadow, when it comes to the issue of clergy abuse of children. Even Benedict XVI, the pope emeritus, has had to retract his statements regarding his knowledge of child sexual abuse by priests under his watch as Archbishop of Munich, blaming his false words on an editing error. 

Does Benedict really expect us to believe that?

The Catholic Church, including Pope Francis and Bishop Christopher Coyne, could give abuse victims an early spring whether they see their shadows or not. Bishop Coyne, in particular, has chosen to ignore victims of past abuse, apparently in hopes that they will go away. We are not going to do that.

While I fully expect Bishop Coyne to remain in his burrow, and extend the lifelong winter for victims of abuse by clergy, I continue to…

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

The recent acquittal of a Catholic bishop in the historic nun rape case is seen as a litmus test of the Indian Catholic Church’s efforts to end clergy abuse.

The supporters of the acquitted prelate, Franco Mulakkal of Jalandhar, hail the verdict as the church’s victory against enemies they say have used the case to attack the church in general and its insistence on celibacy despite the laws of nature.

The accuser’s supporters and others view the acquittal as a deterrent for women religious to come forward and demand justice in cases of abuse by clergy.

The prosecution lawyers and the accuser’s supporters are preparing to appeal the acquittal in the high court of Kerala, a southwestern Indian state, alleging that the verdict was a “travesty of…

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Benedict XVI might not have handled German abuse allegations properly but the word of God is as strong as ever

When Brett Kavanaugh was nominated to be an associate justice of the US Supreme Court in 2018 by President Trump, he was accused by Christine Blasey Ford, a university lecturer, of sexually assaulting her when they were teenagers in the early 1980s.

The accusation dominated the Senate hearings that eventually confirmed his nomination. Whether you supported Kavanaugh or Ford depended on who you wanted to believe. Republicans sided with Kavanaugh, who was of course entitled to the presumption of innocence, while Democrats tended to take Ford at her word.

We all suffer from confirmation bias. We are drawn to evidence that confirms what we believe but tend to be sceptical about arguments that do the opposite.

In Germany, a 2,000-page report was published on January 20 that catalogues failures by the…

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A German report accused retired Pope Benedict XVI of mishandling several cases of sexual abuse in the 1970s and 1980s. Here are a few of our related articles on the Catholic Church’s crisis.

When Pope Benedict XVI resigned in 2013 – the first leader of the Catholic Church to do so in more than half a millennium – the sexual abuse crisis had already roiled the church for years.

During the conservative theologian’s papacy, the church revised canon law and announced new guidelines in an effort to respond to clergy abuse.

But a new report accuses Benedict of having mishandled at least four cases of sexual abuse when he was an archbishop in Munich, Germany, in the 1970s and 1980s. The investigation, which covers abuse in the diocese from 1945 to 2019, concluded that the former pope failed to properly act on claims or punish priests – claims Benedict has rejected.

The accusations against…

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Filmmaker Robert Greene knows well the burden of responsibility in making a documentary. It’s not just to the film itself, the audience or the storytelling. It’s the responsibility to the subjects in front of the camera. And in “Procession” the subjects were six men who decades ago were sexually abused by Roman Catholic priests and clergy.

“I don’t know that documentaries change the world, but I do know that they change the lives of the people on screen,” Greene said. “This is my seventh and I know how it can affect positively and negatively. If you have that knowledge, you have to build on it. You have to do something with that. And that’s what this project is.”

There were a lot of ideas that had been circling in Greene’s head by the time he saw a press conference on the news with four survivors and their lawyer in Kansas…

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A cardinal who had served as an aide to now-retired Pope Benedict XVI and was present for his meetings with survivors of clerical sexual abuse said he “never found in him any shadow or attempt to hide or minimize anything.”

The depths of human sin and depravity “distressed him intimately, and he sometimes remained silent for a long time — all the more so if these human miseries were the responsibility of men of the church,” said Cardinal Fernando Filoni, grand master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.

The cardinal distributed his “testimony” about Pope Benedict to the media Jan. 28, saying he wanted to present an eyewitness account of how Pope Benedict reacted to allegations of clerical sexual abuse and, especially, to the survivors of abuse in the wake of reports about the retire pope’s handling of cases when he was archbishop of Munich. A…

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Spain’s ruling coalition wants for historic clerical sexual abuses to be investigated in the country, and Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has said he will first meet with abuse victims.

“We’re going to talk and build,” said the head of the coalition government that rules Spain. “The human dimension of this problem is important.”

Three left-wing parties – Unidas Podemos, ERC and EH Bildu – presented a petition for the creation of a commission in Spain’s Congress to launch an investigation into the sexual abuses of minors committed within the Catholic Church.

The three parties presented the petition on Thursday, after calling these “abominable events” and saying that they consider the efforts carried out thus far by the Spanish Bishops’ Conference to be insufficient.

In a statement quoted by Europa Press, Jaume Asens, president of the parliamentary group of Unidas Podemos, explains that “these are abominable facts that not only question the…

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The Vatican said Friday it has signed a contract to sell a luxury London building that is at the heart of a fraud and embezzlement trial under way in the Vatican’s criminal tribunal, recovering more than it expected from the loss-making investment.

The Vatican’s economy ministry also revealed, in releasing the the Holy See’s budget for 2022, that 10% of the deposit has been received and the sale is expected to be concluded in June. The budget foresees a narrowing of the Holy See’s deficit to €33 million euros ($37 million) from €42 million euros last year.

The head of the ministry, the Rev. Juan Antonio Guerrero Alves, told Vatican media that the loss from the London building had already been accounted for in the Holy See’s balance sheets. No figures were given, including on the final sale price of the property, but Guerrero said it had sold for more…

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