ABUSE TRACKER

When President Joe Biden met Friday with Pope Francis at the Vatican, he presented the pontiff with a 100-year-old handspun cloak from a church in the nation’s capital with a long history and a liberal bent.

But it wasn’t the priestly attire that sent the strongest message. It was the box it came in, inscribed with a Bible verse that reads, in part, “… if any of you has a grievance against someone … [f]orgive as the Lord forgave you.”

It could be viewed as a tacit nod to the fight in which Biden, only the second Roman Catholic to be elected president, has found himself embroiled back home over the future of the faith to which he’s ascribed his whole life.

While the U.S. Catholic Church tries to find its footing after years of scandal and increasingly empty pews, a battle between the conservative and progressive wings…

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Ten years ago, we were forced to think the unthinkable. A man thousands of people idolized and revered was unmasked as one of the most depraved beings on the face of this planet.

On Nov. 5, 2011, Jerry Sandusky was arrested for raping young boys. Turns out Sandusky had been sexually abusing innocent children for years, while important people who knew, or should have known, looked the other way.

As PennLive and The Patriot News documented over this past decade, Sandusky’s power inside the Penn State system assured he would be both trusted and feared, and that he would have easy access to countless kids.

Mothers thought it an honor to have their boys connected to Jerry Sandusky and his Second Mile charity. What Penn State father wasn’t proud to stand with the assistant football coach?

The power of Sandusky’s position inside a powerhouse like…

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Joseph Gallatin, who was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis in 1997 and has been prohibited from public ministry since 2014, has been dispensed from the obligations of the clerical state, Archbishop Bernard Hebda announced in a statement Oct. 25.

Pope Francis recently granted the change in Gallatin’s status, which Gallatin requested, Archbishop Hebda said. “That means that the canonical status of Joseph Gallatin, who has not exercised public ministry since 2014, is that of a lay person,” he said. “He will no longer serve as a priest of the Archdiocese. I am hopeful that Pope Francis’ decision may alleviate some of the pain and prove beneficial for all involved.”

Gallatin was accused in 1998 of inappropriate contact with a minor. Three Archdiocesan Review Boards reviewed the matter, in 1998, 2002 and 2014. According to Archbishop Hebda’s statement, each board “concluded that there was not…

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A priest at St. Clare Parish in Lyndhurst resigned Oct. 6 after an independent investigation found he skinny-dipped with two adult men he knew from the seminary, according to the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland.

Father James Cosgrove, 35, resigned more than one year after the diocese first received a report detailing accusations against him. The diocese hired a private investigator Aug. 3, 2020, the same date it received the report, diocese spokesman Deacon Jim Armstrong told cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer.

The two men were once students in the seminary, a college for men training to become priests. The two were seminarians at the time the incidents occurred, Armstrong said.

Armstrong said the report did not involve any allegations of child sexual abuse. It also did not involve any accusations of sexual contact with adults, or of adults being solicited into sexual misconduct, he said.

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Abuse isn’t always physical.

Note: Some responses depict sexual abuse from partners and family members.

Spiritual or religious abuse is a form of abuse where intimate partners, congregants of places of worship, or family members use religion to justify their abusive behavior. Examples of that include preventing someone from worshipping the way they want to, using religious text to rationalize their hurtful actions, or even forcing someone to practice a certain way.

It isn’t a form of abuse that’s often talked about, so I asked the BuzzFeed Community to share their stories, and this is what they said:

1. “[Spiritual abuse is] being told your whole life something is wrong with you, to grow up and realize none of it was true. I always question people’s intentions when talking to me who are still in the church I grew up in because they often times are just trying to…

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The aim of the multi-million euro, three-year sweeping probe is to analyze the structural and systemic conditions that have facilitated abuse with the Protestant Church in Germany.

A group of independent researchers on Thursday presented details of a new investigation into sexual abuse in the church and its related charities. 

The aim of the study is to analyze “structures and systemic conditions within the EKD, that facilitate sexual violence and make it difficult to properly deal with the past.”

IPP researcher Detlev Zander stressed that their job was to “illuminate…the reasons these things happen,” but that the “work of restructuring” had to be done by the churhces alone.

What will the study involve?

Research firm IPP is leading part of the study, which began in December 2020 and is expected to run to 2023. The group was involved in the investigation into abuse in children’s homes and the Catholic convent Ettal.

IPP wrote on their…

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Uniontown, Pa. – A Fayette County priest has pleaded no contest to indecent assault in a case involving a then-11-year-old boy, the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office said Monday.

The plea by Andrew Kawecki, 65, will require him to register as a sex offender for 10 years under Megan’s Law, Attorney General Josh Shapiro said.

“I’m very happy with the outcome today. I would like to urge anybody who has been in the same situation as me to come forward,” the victim, now an adult, said during a news conference with the attorney general.

The AG’s office said the abuse started in 2004, when the victim was 11, and continued for three years at St. Cyril and Methodius Church in Fairchance.

Kawecki is scheduled for sentencing in January.

The Catholic Diocese of Greensburg said Kawecki was removed from ministry in 2019 after it received the allegation and notified law enforcement.

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Earlier this month, a report revealed more than 200,000 children have been victims of abuse at the hands of the French Catholic Church.

But local dioceses are saying the legacy of abuse exists in Saskatchewan, too.

Pam Walsh is a victim of clergy sexual abuse. She says it began in the 1960s, when she was a child, and continued for years. It happened in the home of a relative who was friends with a local priest and visited them frequently.

Walsh was also at the home regularly because of a tumultuous home life. Her relative was trying to give her some stability at their home.

She said she doesn’t like to talk about the abuse she endured.

“I don’t get into the details of it because it’s pretty horrific. It’s very shocking for people and very hard to talk about, but it has left dramatic scars on my life.” Walsh…

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“The Vatican has used its international reach and diplomatic ties to obstruct justice by protecting child rapists and war criminals from secular authorities …. The U.S. government, in recognizing the diplomatic status of the Vatican, is aiding this criminality.”

“The U.S. recognizes papal ambassadors, called ‘nuncios,’ granting immunity to these officials. The nuncios are taking advantage of that status.”

“The Vatican has explicitly relied on its diplomatic status to thwart lawsuits by American victims of priestly abuse and assault.”

“The Roman Catholic Church has no desire to cooperate with investigations into its finances and crimes.”

The above are just some of the reasons given why the Freedom From Religion Foundation objected to Pres. Joe Biden’s appointment of former Sen. Joseph Donnelly as Ambassador to the Holy See. In an eight-page open letter to Biden and Sect. of State Antony Blinken, the FFRF provides copious examples supporting the above statements to…

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Content Warning: This article discusses clerical sexual abuse. Please refer to the end of the article for on- and off-campus resources.

The Roman Catholic Church, as well as society at large, has a responsibility to create networks of support and foster empathy for survivors of clerical sexual abuse, panelists said at an Oct. 25 event. 

The virtual event, titled “Lifting Up the Voices of Female Survivors of Clergy Sexual Abuse,” invited four survivors of clerical sexual abuse to share their perspectives on preventing future abuse. The event was co-sponsored by the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs, the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought in Public Life, the Office of Mission and Ministry, the Georgetown Law Office of Mission and Ministry, the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University, and Awake Milwaukee. 

Survivors of sexual abuse need to know that their body’s traumatic response is a form of protection, according…

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Pope Francis has indicated a willingness to meet with Indigenous leaders in Canada who hold the Catholic Church responsible for decades of abuse of Indigenous children. The Croteau family in Springfield would appreciate a visit from the pontiff, too.

It is welcome news that Pope Francis will visit Canada as part of a reconciliation process for the Catholic Church’s role in the physical and sexual abuse of Indigenous children in residential schools run by the church.

The pope’s willingness to visit Canada comes months after hundreds of remains of Indigenous children were found on the sites of residential schools in British Columbia and Saskatchewan, and six years after the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada found that Indigenous children forced to live in residential homes were subjected to sexual and physical abuse that amounted to “cultural genocide.”

But as…

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The Diocese of Scranton says Pastor Loughney has been removed from ministry while the investigation continues.

Monroe County, Pa. — Pastor Gregory Loughney had been a priest at Most Holy Trinity Parish in Paradise Township near Cresco for at least a decade.

He’s now facing child sex charges after police say he made plans to meet up with who he thought were two teenage boys at this Wawa in Blakeslee on Friday night.

Instead, it was a self-proclaimed predator catcher from an online group called “570 Predator Catchers.” 

Police later arrested the priest.

“He’s also charged with a count of criminal use of a communication facility. Now the complainant has all the records or the communications back and forth, and our criminal investigators also have statements that they’ve taken,” said Chief Chris Wagner, Pocono Mountain Regional Police.

According to court papers, explicit messages were exchanged on a social media app….

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Pope Francis has agreed to visit Canada to help efforts at reconciliation with Indigenous peoples following shocking revelations of the Catholic Church’s role in the abuse and deaths of thousands of native children, the Vatican said on Wednesday.

In a brief statement, the Holy See’s press office said the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops invited the pope to make an apostolic journey to Canada “also in the context of the long-standing pastoral process of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.”

In return, Francis “has indicated his willingness to visit the country on a date to be settled in due course,” the statement said.

The pilgrimage could be the occasion for a papal apology that has been demanded by many in Canada.

Francis had already agreed to meet in December with Indigenous survivors of Canada’s notorious residential schools amid calls for a papal apology for the Catholic Church’s role. At that time, the…

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Pope Francis has agreed to visit Canada as part of the “process of reconciliation” with its indigenous peoples, the Vatican announced Wednesday, possibly setting the stage for a formal papal apology for the Church’s role in horrific abuses perpetrated against indigenous children at its residential schools, part of Canada’s wider reckoning with its painful colonial legacy.

KEY FACTS

According to the statement from the Vatican press office, the Pope “indicated his willingness” to visit Canada at an as-yet undetermined date after an invitation from the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops to take part in an “historic pilgrimage of healing and reconciliation.”

Last month the Canadian bishops apologized “unequivocally” for the “physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual, cultural, and sexual” abuses carried out by members of the Church at 140 residential schools attended by 150,000 indigenous children separated from their families between 1831 and 1998.

…

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As a national task force investigates how the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee dealt with allegations of clergy sexual abuse, a motion coming this week at the Missouri Baptist Convention’s annual meeting will propose a similar task force for Southern Baptists in the Show-Me State. Similar efforts could also emerge this fall in other state conventions.

Rev. Mike Leake, lead pastor of Calvary Church in Neosho, Missouri, shared a draft version of the MBC motion on his website on Thursday (Oct. 21). He added that the motion is coming after work with “a few other like-minded pastors throughout the state.” He introduced it in the blog post by noting, “It’s no secret that Southern Baptists have been in the news lately for all the wrong reasons.”

The motion will instruct the MBC president elected at the meeting — likely current President Jon Nelson — to “appoint a task force to examine…

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Attorneys for the survivors say the number is still too low, and that they were excluded from the settlement discussions between the diocese and its insurers.

The bankrupt Roman Catholic Diocese of Camden has offered $53 million for survivors of clergy sexual abuse — more than half of which is being paid by its insurers.

But attorneys for the survivors say the number isn’t adequate, and say they were excluded from the settlement discussions between the diocese and its insurers.

Earlier this month, the diocese asked a federal judge to approve a bankruptcy reorganization plan that would create a $26 million fund for at least320 survivors.

On Tuesday, the diocese said in a news release that after a 10-hour negotiation with a court-appointed mediator last week, its insurers have agreed to pay $27 million toward the fund, bringing the total offered to up to $53 million,…

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The state Department of Justice says they’ve received nearly 180 reports of abuse by faith leaders or of mishandling of abuse claims by religious organizations.

Attorney General Josh Kaul released an update Wednesday about the statewide investigation into clergy and faith leader abuse that his office launched in April.

The inquiry has been hindered by some Catholic dioceses not wanting to participate, with some leaders saying past cases of sexual abuse have already been reviewed by legal authorities.

As of July, the investigation had received more than 100 reports. On Wednesday, the DOJ provided some details about the additional 80 reports received since this summer.

In a press release Wednesday, Kaul said around 80 percent of the reports his office received were of abuse. The other 20 percent involved how a religious organization responded to reports of abuse.

The update said the reports of abuse have concerned clergy and leaders from multiple…

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The trusted religious authority figures who molested two people I hold dear have passed away. My friends and colleagues are Steve Theisen & Barbara Blaine. Their predators are Sr.  Josephine Schmitz and Fr. Chet Warren.

 Church officials kept quiet about these child molesters’ deaths (as they’ve done countless times before), even though publicizing them would surely have brought some measure of comfort to those who were hurt and assaulted by these predators.

Steve Theisen

Steve was the first person I can recall who spoke publicly about being sexually victimized as a boy by a nun. He was extraordinarily honest and moving, and my heart ached for him every time he shared his horrific childhood experiences.

For many years, Steve spearheaded SNAP’s frustrating efforts to squeeze even a modicum of compassion and action out of the nation’s largest organization of sisters, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.

(The painful details are…

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Cardinal Gerhard Müller has said the Holy See must intervene in the German synodal process to point out the distinction between the Catholic faith and some of the heretical ideas that are being promulgated in the country.

In particular, the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith pointed out that the “blessing of God is for matrimony between a man and a woman”. In Germany many priests have blessed same-sex unions.

Müller was speaking with Raymond Arroyo on EWTN’s The World Over on 21 October. With regard to the abuse crisis in the Church, he said the crisis had its origin in a failure on the part of individual priests to obey the Commandments, and was not a crisis of the priesthood per se.

With regard to the Pope’s description, in his 16 October video message to the World Meeting of Popular Movements, of the protesters over the killing…

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 A western Pennsylvania Roman Catholic priest pleaded no contest Monday to indecent assault that began when the victim was an 11-year-old altar boy.

Prosecutors said the Rev. Andrew Mark Kawecki, 66, of Greensburg will have to register as a sex offender for 10 years after entering the no contest plea before a Fayette County judge.

A message seeking comment was left for the defense attorney listed in the online docket as representing Kawecki.

Prosecutors said the sexual abuse began in 2004, occurring in a back room of the Saints Cyril and Methodius Church in Fairchance, Pennsylvania, among the 15 parishes within the Diocese of Greensburg where Kawecki has served since 1980.

He was removed from ministry and parishioners were notified after investigators received a tip about Kawecki in May 2019.

The attorney general’s office said after Kawecki was charged another victim made allegations of similar abuse but those claims were…

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The priest who pleaded no contest yesterday to sexually assaulting an altar boy in Fayette County once served in Indiana County, and his abuse occurred just after he served in this area.

66-year-old Andrew M. Kawecki led the Church of the Resurrection Parish in northern Indiana County from 2002 to 2004.  The parish includes churches in Ernest, Clymer, Glen Campbell, Heilwood, and Rossiter.

Kawecki’s no contest plea to a single count of indecent assault will require him to register as a sex offender for at least ten years,  He will be sentenced early in 2022.

Kawecki was charged in August of last year after the victim came forward and accused him of sexually abusing him in a back room at St. Cyril and Methodius Church in Fairchance between 2004 and 2007.  The boy was between the ages of 11 and 14 when the assaults began.  After the charges were filed,…

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The priest arrived at a Tobyhanna Wawa to have sex with two teenage boys, police said.

Instead, he was confronted by a self-avowed “predator catcher” — a man who’d posed as a 15-year-old boy in sexually explicit text messages to Gregory Loughney, priest at Most Holy Trinity Catholic parish in Cresco. 

“I made a mistake, and I need to report myself,” Loughney said in a call to police immediately after the confrontation. “I messed up.”

Pocono Mountain Regional Police arrested Loughney, 42, Friday evening on charges related to attempted sexual assault of minors. In interviews with officers, the priest described the intimate text relationship he shared with “Cyrus,” the person he believed was a teenage boy.

They met on a dating app and and began to share sexually explicit messages and photographs over text, Loughney said. He continued to pursue a relationship with Cyrus despite believing the boy was a minor, he told police.

“I went down the rabbit hole,” Loughney said.

Cyrus, whose…

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“I just had the worst confession ever. I confessed a sexual sin, something I haven’t confessed in a long time, and the priest … asked me if I was a toy,” Zuri Davis wrote on Twitter Oct. 17 about her experience of going to confession in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Davis described how the priest, whose name she still does not know, hounded her to ask if she was raped (an inappropriate and invasive question in this setting), and proceeded to tell her to take ownership of her role in the situation.

Within hours, Catholics from different walks of life shared in Davis’ anger about this situation and encouraged her to report the priest for spiritual abuse and misconduct. Davis’ story of the invasive priest and the sheer logistical difficulty she experienced trying to report a nameless priest behind a screen for misconduct sparked countless other Catholics to share…

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The Catholic Church has issued an apology after a retired priest was sentenced after being found guilty of abusing two children following a ‘trial of facts’.

Fr John J Murray had been due to stand trial for the abuse of two children, but was deemed medically unfit to take part in the proceedings due to dementia.

On Friday a court ordered further supervision arrangements.

The 80-year-old veteran priest had served as curate in St Matthew’s Parish in the Short Strand area of Belfast, where one of his victims had lived with her family.

The offences were said to have taken place between December 31 1976 and January 1 1983 in the parochial house of St Matthew’s.

Murray had gone to live in the Canary Islands but returned to Belfast in 2019 after the PSNI threatened to introduce extradition proceedings against him.

A few days later a carer guided him into…

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I promised you some joy this week. But bear with me – it’s all connected with why Catholics need to be different, and why personal sin and repentance is a key part of this.

Let’s use a horrible real-life example of what happens when people lose a sense of personal sin. Clergy sexual abuse was – and is – committed by priests with no sense of personal sin.

Instead, they created what psychologist Dr Omar Minwalla calls the ‘secret sexual basement’. When you read interviews with clergy sexual offenders, they aren’t sorry for what they did. They’re sorry for getting caught.

They abused the vulnerable and lied about it. They never mentioned it in Confession. They never admitted it to priestly colleagues at all unless they were co-offenders. Many spent decades denying accusations. When the accusations were proven, they denied that their actions were wrong. Once convicted, they denied that…

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Rev. Denis Tassé periodically served in Calgary between 2010 and 2013

A former Calgary priest has been convicted by a French court of sexually assaulting four minors, a statement from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Calgary said. 

Rev. Denis Tassé, who periodically served in Clear Water Academy and at the summer camps of Regnum Christi in Calgary, was convicted by the Criminal Court of Bordeaux, France, in the 2019 sexual assault of four teenage girls in France and Italy, a statement from the Legionaries of Christ, a Roman Catholic congregation of priests, said. 

The group said the assaults happened during pastoral group activities.

The Legionaries of Christ said in three of the cases Tassé placed his hand on the chests of the girls, and in the fourth case he placed his hand on her buttocks.

The group said on Oct. 8 Tassé was sentenced to a 10-month suspended prison sentence,…

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Work to appraise assets won’t be done until early 2022, archbishop says

The Archdiocese of St. John’s says it is continuing to work with victims and assess the values of its properties to compensate men who were sexually abused at the former Mount Cashel Orphanage.

In a letter read during masses on Saturday and Sunday, Archbishop Peter Hundt said the work is a complex and sensitive process that now includes about 130 claims from victims.

“There may be more victim claims coming forward and so we do not currently know what the final number of value of these claims will be,” Hundt said in the letter.

“This is a major piece of information that we will need to have before we can effectively determine how to bring resolution to all the claims.”

In 2018, the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador ruled the Archdiocese of St. John’s was not liable…

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Former Kition Bishop Chrysostomos was acquitted of rape charges on Friday after the Criminal Court found him not guilty of attacking a woman in 2011.

The 83-year-old former bishop was acquitted after the court found the woman’s testimony to be unreliable.

“I feel vindicated. Justice has prevailed,” Chrysostomos told the Cyprus News Agency.

The court ruled the prosecution’s case was based on the plaintiff’s testimony which had been found to contain “many contradictions, lies and erratic allegations in essential, main and key points.”

The former bishop was sent to trial for the rape that allegedly took place in April 2011 in his office in Larnaca when he was Bishop of Kition.

The woman alleged the bishop had offered her alcohol before raping her.

He faces another court procedure concerning an indecent assault of an underaged woman. The plaintiff was 16 at the time.

The cases against the former bishop…

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Organisation’s founder faced multiple allegations of sexual abuse before his death, but denies all wrongdoing and refuses to join the plan

Annette Stephens abandoned her children. Michelle Ring says she was given antiseptic lollies so she didn’t get a mouth infection after being sexually abused as a child. A father says his teenage daughter alleged abuse, and that she and others deserve to be heard.

Another person who says they have a wealth of knowledge about Kenja Communications says they are too afraid to speak publicly about it.

Kenja is now the only organisation still refusing to join the redress scheme set up in the wake of the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse. The scheme was set up in 2018 to hold institutions accountable for abuse, and to help survivors get financial compensation and an apology or “direct personal response”.

Kenja has been operating for decades,…

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A Catholic archdiocese can be sued for a priest’s alleged molestation of a young student even if the priest had no record of sexual abuse, a state appeals court has ruled in a Los Angeles case that could also affect dozens of pending Bay Area lawsuits.

A man identified only as John Doe said he was a 10-year-old catechism student in August 1988 when the Rev. John Higson assaulted him in a restroom of a church in Paramount, southeast of Los Angeles. He said Higson groped his genitals, forced him to perform oral sex, and told him, “Every boy does this in order to do their first Communion.”

Doe did not report the incident at the time and did not sue the Los Angeles Archdiocese until 2017. His lawyer, Anthony DeMarco, said Higson, ordained as a priest in 1980, was eventually removed from the priesthood after other allegations against him…

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The Catholic Church continues to lose followers in Europe, but numbers are booming in Africa and the Americas, according to figures released by the Vatican Thursday.

At the end of 2019, there were 1.34 billion Catholics worldwide, representing 17.74 percent of the global population, data from the Fides missionary agency show.

This is up 15.4 million on the year previously and an increase from 1.18 billion a decade before.

The number of followers in Europe fell by 292,000 over the course of 2019, to 285.6 million — some 39.6 percent of the population.

But Fides recorded another 8.3 million Catholics in Africa, a continent with rapid population growth, bringing the total up to 251.6 million — some 19.5 percent of the population.

There were another 5.4 million recorded in the Americas — home to Argentina-born Pope Francis — with a total of 647.2 million, or 63.8 percent of the population.

…

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Carlisle Cathedral is to support survivors of sexual abuse with a new installation.

A LOUDfence will be located in the cathedral grounds from November 1 to November 3, with people being invited to tie ribbons to it in support of survivors and victims of abuse.

The fence forms part of a Safeguarding Season which is currently being run by the cathedral. A working party including cathedral chapter members, diocesan officers and representatives of survivors have developed the series of events and services.

Antonia Sobocki, who organised the UK’s first LOUDfence event at St Peter’s, Kirkbampton, in 2020, and who is a member of the Safeguarding Season working party, originally suggested the LOUDfence installation at the cathedral.

Antonia said: “I recently posted pictures of the Carlisle LOUDfence page and my Twitter and Facebook pages went crazy. I have ribbon requests from all around the world. The founders of LOUDfence contacted me…

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Unless new behaviours are championed we will still be asking that question in 20 years

Years ago, on the RTÉ current affairs programme Questions and Answers, John Bowman asked me: “Breda O’Brien, why were the whistleblowers not believed?’

It was at the height of the scandals concerning the sexual abuse of children by members of the Catholic Church. The question has stuck in my mind ever since.

I thought about it again when reading Kitty Holland’s account of the alleged sexual abuse of at least 18 intellectually disabled residents by another resident in Ard Gréine, Donegal, a facility managed by the Health Service Executive. According to an as yet unpublished investigation, the alleged abuser, who was given the pseudonym “Brandon”, was engaging in public masturbation and sexual assault, including two alleged rapes.

It is unbelievable that this was allowed to continue from 2003 to 2016, with the full knowledge of staff…

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A Jamaican preacher and 41 of his congregants were arrested last week after two people were killed during an alleged “human sacrifice.”

Kevin O. Smith, a self-proclaimed “prophet,” and the church members were arrested for slitting the throats of 39-year-old office worker Tanecka Gardner and an unidentified man.  

Friends told the Jamaica Observer Gardner had been buying “essentials” in the weeks before her death, as Smith told his congregants that a flood was about to sweep in.

“Even recently, she has been stocking up on kerosene oil and cooking oil,” a friend told the Observer. “She told me that the pastor said that they must buy brown rice because something is going to happen.”

The day of the murders, Smith ordered parishioners to dress in white, wrap their cellphones in tin foil, leave the devices at home and head to the church, the Mirror reported.

…

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French report urges reform of Church’s sexual ethics

AS THE Roman Catholic Church’s synodal process gets under way worldwide, questions are being asked in Europe about the current campaign against clerical sex abuse, and the methods and motives associated with it.

In France, the report of an Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE) caused consternation in early October by revealing the extent of sex crimes (News, Leader Comment, 8 October), and sparked new controversy over the sustainability of traditional practices, from clerical celibacy to the seal of the confessional. The 2500-page document, co-ordinated by a former civil servant, Jean-Marc Sauvé, estimated that 330,000 children had been abused in France since 1950 by 3200 priests, RC teachers, and church staff.

Its 45 recommendations included a reform of the Church’s sexual ethics, the ordination of married men, and new rules to enable priests to inform police of sexual…

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Dear Editor:

On Friday, Oct. 8, President Biden appointed a member of my own party, Senator Joe Donnelly, as Ambassador to the Holy See.

As a 2020 Democratic Congressional primary candidate and a 62-year-old Lutheran pastor who at 17 years old was a novice Catholic monk, college seminarian prior to my appointment to the North American College at the Vatican to continue priestly studies, I have a little insight into this matter which escapes most folks.

I lived at the Vatican during the 1980-81 academic year. At that time, America did not have a Vatican ambassador with all its associated costs for building and staff. From the Embassy, it takes eight minutes by car to get to the North American College where I lived or to where the Pope lives, the Apostolic Palace. The U.S. Embassy to Italy and the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See are a four-minute walk…

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Pope Francis has convened a synod in Rome with the theme “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation and Mission.” In his opening address he called us as church to engage this synod as an opportunity “to become a listening church, to break out of our routine and pause from our pastoral concerns in order to stop and listen.”

This synodal process invites all the faithful and, in particular, our leaders within parishes, dioceses, hospitals, schools, universities and other church-related ministries to do some soul-searching. We must seize this moment to listen intently, especially to those who have been marginalized. We must listen to those among us who experience rejection, exclusion and unwelcome in their families, parishes and other Catholic spaces and contexts.

Listening is only the first step in this synodal process. Those who hold positions of leadership and power within the church, those who…

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The trial of a Cincinnati-area priest accused of raping a 10-year-old alter boy three decades ago is being delayed for the fourth time, his defense attorney’s office said Friday.

Father Geoff Drew’s trial was scheduled to start Monday morning before Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Leslie Ghiz.

Drew, 59, has pleaded not guilty to nine counts of rape and has been in jail at the Hamilton County Justice Center 26 month now.

He remains at the Hamilton County jail in lieu of $5 million bond and faces life in prison if convicted.

The latest delay comes at the request of Hamilton County prosecutors, according to defense attorney Brad Moermond’s office.

A new item on the court docket shows Monday’s hearing will be a “plea or trial setting” at 9 a.m. The trial was to start at 10 a.m. and it is still showing up on the court docket. It…

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Three former seminarians say Cleveland diocesan and seminary officials failed to respond appropriately, after a priest allegedly pressured them to take naked swims with him at a lake house and other locations, couching the invitations in both spiritual language and excessive alcohol consumption. 

One seminarian also said the priest took nude photos and videos of him without consent.

While the Cleveland diocese told The Pillar Thursdaythat the matter “does not involve any conduct that could be reasonably considered to be coercive [or] harassing,” one former seminarian called that response stunning.

The former seminarians say they were harassed and manipulated in 2019 by Cleveland priest Fr. James Cosgrove. They also allege that after they reported the misconduct and it was investigated, the priest still had access to seminarians, and a key to the seminary.

While the priest resigned from ministry this month, the former seminarians say that seminary and diocesan officials left other…

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USA Gymnastics and a survivors’ committee representing women who were sexually assaulted by former U.S. Olympic and national team physician Larry Nassar and Olympic and national team coaches have filed a proposed $400 million settlement agreement with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court Southern District of Indiana.

In what both sides view as a major breakthrough in the nearly three-year bankruptcy case, USA Gymnastics and the survivors’ agreement on the proposed $400,659,129 settlement as part of a reorganization plan follows a week of increasingly acrimonious discussions between USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee over the USOPC’s financial responsibilities in the case.

Recent discussions in the case have revealed an unlikely alliance between USA Gymnastics, the sport’s Indianapolis-based national governing body, and the survivors’ committee on one side, and the USOPC on the other.

Attorneys for the USOPC proposed a $340 million settlement last week and then upped that to…

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The murder accused claims he was sodomized twice and infected with a sexually transmitted disease

The 2019 murder of a Kenyan priest, Father Michael Maingi Kyengo, has taken a new twist with a suspect saying he killed the cleric over sexual assaults.

Michael Muthini Mutunga, 26, was among four people charged in November 2019. He denied killing the priest, but when the case came up for hearing in mid-October, he pleaded guilty. A fact-finding hearing for the case was held Oct. 21.

Father Kyengo, 43, a priest of the Diocese of Machakos, disappeared from his home in Matungulu, near Nairobi, in October 2019. A week later, he was found dead in a shallow grave in a seasonal riverbed in southeastern Kenya.

Mutunga’s lawyer said his client had acted in anger and grief after he was sodomized twice and infected with a sexually transmitted disease by the priest, according to The…

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As The Tablet reported earlier this week, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Westminster has now settled a damages claim by my client A711 arising from her mistreatment by members of the diocesan safeguarding team. The diocese and Cardinal Nichols had already been severely criticised for by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) over this case, one of several issues which prompted calls for the Cardinal’s resignation. 

A711’s claim appears to be the first legal action against the Catholic Church not for clerical sex abuse itself, but for its subsequent treatment of a survivor. Given the appalling behaviour by the Catholic Church towards survivors of clerical sex abuse over decades, this is in some ways surprising. However, A711’s experience was unusual in that the disparaging comments about her circulating within the diocesan safeguarding team became known to her via a subject access request, at which point her suspicions about their attitude…

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Archbishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort, head of the French episcopal conference, has agreed with Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin to calm tensions after meeting to discuss the shocking Sauvé report on clerical sexual abuse of minors. 

Both issued conciliatory statements after a meeting where the archbishop admitted his statement that the secret of confession stood above France’s secular laws was “clumsy”. The report said a priest should inform police if he learned through confession that a minor had been abused.

The report, by an independent commission led by retired civil servant Jean-Marc Sauvé, estimated that 216,000 minors had been abused by priests in France since 1950. Another 114,000 were estimated abused by lay Church workers, it said.

“The scale of violence and sexual assault on minors … requires the Church to re-read its practices in light of this reality. Work is therefore necessary to reconcile the nature of confession and the need…

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Stone claims that Moore cost him the SBC presidency.

An ongoing feud between a pair of former Southern Baptist leaders is headed to court.

Lawyers for Georgia pastor Mike Stone filed a complaint Monday (Oct. 18) in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee accusing former Southern Baptist ethicist Russell Moore of defamation, false light invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Stone, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist in Blackshear, Georgia, seeks at least $750,000 in damages.

The complaint centers on a pair of letters written by Moore, describing his conflicts with other Baptist leaders while he was serving as president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

In those letters, Moore claims that the Executive Committee exonerated a church that had covered up sexual abuse and that he was pressured to silence an abuse survivor who spoke at an ERLC conference on sexual…

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Pope Francis has shared a letter written by a clerical sexual abuse survivor with candidates preparing for the Catholic priesthood.

“For years I was mistreated by a priest who I should have called ‘little brother,’ and I was his ‘little sister,’” the letter writer said. “If we want to live the truth, we cannot close our eyes!”

Addressing priests, the abuse survivor wrote: “Please realize that you have received a huge gift. The gift of being an ‘alter Christus,’ of being the incarnation of Christ here in the world. People, and especially children, do not see a person in you, but Christ Jesus, in whom they trust without limits.”

“It is something HUGE and STRONG, but also very FRAGILE and VULNERABLE. PLEASE BE A GOOD PRIEST!” she said.

The letter, with the survivor’s name removed, was published on the website of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection…

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A federal bankruptcy judge has again blocked 36 people who say they were sexually abused from pressing ahead with Child Victims Act lawsuits against Catholic parishes and schools.

Chief Judge Carl L. Bucki of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Western District said in a written ruling this week that allowing the state litigation to move forward “would become an inherent distraction that promises to complicate negotiations” among the parties involved in the Diocese of Buffalo bankruptcy reorganization.

Bucki agreed with the diocese’s request to extend an injunction prohibiting litigation by 36 plaintiffs against parishes and schools until next August. He also ruled that the plaintiffs were free to continue litigating against individuals who may have abused.

The diocese’s lawyers had argued that if any CVA cases against parishes and schools advanced in the state courts, it would inevitably involve the diocese in costly litigation and drain assets that otherwise…

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THE Catholic Church in Glasgow has appealed to survivors of abuse within the church to get in touch and tell leaders “where they went wrong”. 

Bosses at the Archdiocese of Glasgow say they want to hear to hear from people with “first-hand experience” of how reports of abuse were dealt with and what “can be done” to improve the process in future. 

It will form part of a major independent review during the month of November which is being led by the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCEI). 

A spokesman for the Archdiocese said: “This is a genuine attempt to listen and learn.

“The Social Care Institute is a totally independent body which will conduct this month long audit. The Archdiocese will have no role except to help to publicise that the audit is taking place, and that the external team want to hear directly from abuse survivors.

“The Social Care…

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Change is coming slowly and painfully to an organization roiled by a sex abuse scandal that exposed the hypocrisy at its core.

The Southern Baptist Convention has spent much of the last year in turmoil. The organization — the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S., claiming about 14.1 million members — is trying to reckon with a horrifying history of sexual assaults. People at the organization’s highest levels are accused of personally committing and abetting some of them.

Change is coming slowly and painfully. Until last week, the denomination’s leadership had been at war with its constituent churches, which had demanded a full accounting of the abuse and what the leadership was doing to stamp it out. The convention’s chief executive officer, Ronnie Floyd, had sided with his powerful colleagues, who wanted to limit an investigation into the widespread misconduct that took place as Floyd and other conservatives…

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One of the three suspects in the murder of Father Michael Maingi Kyengo on October 8 at Makima in Embu county has admitted to killing the priest but attributed it to a forced sexual act.

Michael Muthini Mutunga who is charged alongside Kavivya Mwangangi and Solomon Mutava Wambua had earlier denied killing the priest when he was first charged in November 2019.

The three were charged with killing the Catholic priest on the night of October 8 and 9, 2019 at Makima location within Mbeere Sub-county.

When the matter came up for continued hearing, the accused told the court that he wished to change his plea.

Justice Lucy Njuguna convicted the accused and ordered a victim impact report before sentencing. “The accused is convicted on his own plea of guilty”.

In his mitigation submissions to the court, the 26-year-old through his advocate Guantai Kirimi said he acted out of anger and grief in committing the offense.

Kirimi pleaded…

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The Ernakulam Rural District Crime Branch arrested a priest who was accused of sexually abusing a minor girl.

The arrested is Sibi Varghese, 32, of Varapuzha. He was a co-vicar at a church in Kochi. He had been hiding in various States.

A team led by district Crime Branch DySP V. Rajeev made the arrest.

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A former Boy Scout sexual abuse survivor, who had stayed silent about his ordeal for nearly 50 years, says the $1.9 billion victims settlement reached by coalition lawyers is a “massive step forward.”

“Patrick,” who remains active in the Scouts, spoke with The Post under a pseudonym because he said he had not discussed his ordeal with anyone except his lawyer before.

“Nobody I know who is alive other than the people on this phone call know my story,” he said Tuesday, on a call with Coalition of Abused Scouts for Justice lawyer Adam Slater and a rep for the legal organization.

Patrick knew he wanted to join the BSA since his mother took him to see the movie “Follow Me, Boys!” when he was 6 years old.

He joined a Texas troop in the 1970s at age 11 and traveled to campgrounds near…

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The Lincoln Diocese has reassigned and placed restrictions on a pair of priests after an investigation into misconduct claims.

The reassigned priests are Scott Courtney, who faced allegations that he had sexual contact with a woman, and Thomas Dunavan, who was accused of sexual misconduct that dated back 20 years, The Lincoln Journal-Star reports.

Neither priest has been charged with a crime. But Courtney has been out of active ministry since September 2018, and Dunavan was placed on administrative leave in March 2019.

Bishop James Conley announced this month in a statement that Courtney was assigned to minister to prisons, nursing and retirement homes, and provide administrative assistance to the chancery, effective early next January, Courtney was last with the Sacred Heart parish in Roseland and the Assumption parish in Juniata.

Dunavan was assigned to provide administrative assistance to the chancery and help retired priests, effective…

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When Bishop Andrew Cozzens took the podium at his introductory press conference in the Diocese of Crookston Oct. 18, he was quick to acknowledge the dioceses checkered past of clerical sex abuse and stated clearly his intentions to help it heal.

“I am aware of some of the need for healing in the Diocese of Crookston and would really like to be a part of that,” Cozzens, currently an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis said. “I look forward especially to just listening to people’s experience and hearing what it’s been like here in the Diocese of Crookston the past several years.”

Cozzens’s appointment as the eighth bishop of Crookston was announced by the Vatican on Oct. 18, and he will be formally installed on December 6. The Diocese of Crookston serves the 14 northwest counties of Minnesota with more than 32,000 Catholics and 66 parishes.

…

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Perpetrators cannot live with the truth; victims cannot live without it.  

A recently released 2,500-page report from an independent Commission on Sexual Abuse led by Jean-Marc Sauvé revealed that since 1950, some 216,000 children, mostly boys, have been sexually abused by French Catholic clergy. Taking account of abuses committed by lay members of the Church, such as teachers at Catholic schools, the number rises to 330,000.

What’s behind the staggering number is that child sexual abuse in the French Catholic Church has evolved into a systemic crime. Out of a total of 115,000 priests and other clerics, as many as 3,200 have committed child sexual abuse, and this was probably an underestimation.

In France, God’s messengers are reduced to the devils, and the sacred place degenerated into a perverts club, no less. 

To whitewash itself, the Church has been covering up the crimes. “There was a whole bunch of negligence,…

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There Are Three Pending Cases In Process, But They Cannot Give Their Names So As Not To Interfere In The Investigation.

The spokesman for the Diocese of Campeche, Gerardo Casillas González; confirmed that they are aware of six cases of sexual abuse by clergy and faithful committed against minors and vulnerable people.

He pointed out that it is a crime and a very serious sin that must be punished both canonically and civilly, although he said he is aware that the damage will never be fully repaired.

In this way, the Diocese of Campeche admits that both clerics and religious or lay pastoral agents have committed sexual abuse against six minors and vulnerable people. The church is following up on these cases and the authorities are doing their investigative work.

Regarding the ecclesiastical process of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome, it has already…

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Segal Says Archdiocese Can Be Liable for Child Molestation Even if It Did Not Know of Priest’s Pedophilia

The Los Angeles Archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church was erroneously awarded summary judgment in an action against it based on sexual child molestation by a priest, the Court of Appeal for this district held yesterday, saying that liability can be found notwithstanding lack of knowledge of the propensities on the part of the particular priest who committed the misconduct.

Framing the issue, Justice John L. Segal of Div. Seven asked:

“Does a church have a duty to protect children from sexual abuse by clergy while the children are attending religious school or participating in other church-sponsored programs?”

He said that [b]ecause the answer to that question is ‘yes,’ we reverse the judgment entered after the trial court… answered that question ‘no’….”

The action was brought on Oct. 16, 2017, by John…

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Denny Doyle is concerned about the risk of brain injuries to children who play tackle football. And he worries that his beloved church will also pay a price

Denny Doyle is a committed Catholic and a lifelong football fan, and he saw little conflict between the two until his grandson was old enough to play the game. That’s when he began reading about the risks that tackle football posed to young boys, whose brains are particularly vulnerable to concussions. To Doyle’s relief, his grandson opted for flag football.

But Doyle, his eyes opened, saw a bigger problem: The Roman Catholic Church that he loved was putting tens of thousands of other boys at risk by sponsoring the Catholic Youth Organization, or C.Y.O., which runs tackle football leagues around the country.

A former lawyer, Doyle feared that the church could be sued if a player sustained a catastrophic brain injury on…

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A survivor of sexual abuse by a priest who was branded “needy” and “manipulative” by church safeguarding officials has been awarded a financial settlement after seeking redress for the trauma caused by the Church’s handling of her case. 

A priest began abusing the woman, known as A711, when she was 15. Subsequently she was raped. She sought compensation for what she described as being “retraumatised” after she discovered critical remarks about her in emails disclosed to her regarding her case. 

She had first come forward in 2016 and recounted her story to church officials of being abused and later raped by the priest. She received compensation from the Church for the abuse. But she decided to go ahead and make a further claim after the additional distress caused by the way in she was treated by Westminster diocese when she made inquiries regarding her case. 

This latest settlement is believed…

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A MAN abused by former priest Malachy Finegan is set to take legal action against the Catholic Church for a second time.

Sean Faloon was first targeted by Finegan as a 10-year-old altar boy.

The legal action comes after the existence of unpublished documents linked to his abuser emerged after a High Court legal action earlier this year.

From Hilltown in Co Down, Mr Faloon (41) has previously revealed how his abuse began with hugging and kissing after Mass.

Mr Faloon was later raped and abused over a seven year period from 1990 to 1997.

He said that the priest told him that if he ever told anyone about the abuse it would “ruin me for the rest of my life”.

Details came to light when Mr Faloon, who was aged 17 at the time, told his GP.

His family and police were later informed, however, a formal complaint was…

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A lawsuit alleging a now-deceased Catholic priest sexually abused an altar boy in the 1970s should go forward because the Archdiocese of Atlanta didn’t admit the crime until 2018, a lawyer for the unnamed plaintiff argued Tuesday.

But a lawyer representing Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church in Marietta asked the Georgia Supreme Court to uphold lower-court rulings that dismissed the suit because it was filed long after the statute of limitations had expired.

The lawsuit was brought after then-Archbishop of Atlanta Wilton Gregory issued a public apology for sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy.

“They said, ‘It’s necessary for us to come clean. There cannot be a healing process until we admit what happened,’ ” Michael Terry, the plaintiff’s lawyer, said Tuesday.

While the abuse occurred decades ago, the plaintiff had no way of knowing sexual abuse by members of the clergy was widespread, Terry said. The church didn’t fulfill…

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The CIASE commission’s report on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in France between 1950 and 2020 been released on October 5, 2021[1] and will have effects, at the moment difficult to be predicted, on the ecclesial discourse not only in France, but also at a global level. The commission’s chairman, Jean-Marc Sauvè, stated during the press conference that “we need to get rid of the idea that sexual violence in the Catholic Church has been completely eradicated and that the problem is behind us: no, the problem remains.” The report also mentions that sexual violence is “significantly” higher in church settings than in other social circles such as schools or summer camps, with the exception of the family, which is the place where the risk of sexual abuse remains the highest. Thus, there is still an urgent problem of prevention and repression of the phenomenon.

But the CIASE report is…

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How should the hierarchy respond to whistleblowers?

When four whistleblowing priests in Scotland went public over the sexual hypocrisy of Cardinal Keith O’Brien in 2013, it resulted in his being prevented from attending the conclave that elected Pope Francis and ultimately in his removal as leader of the Archdiocese of St. Andrews and Edinburgh. I was one of the whistleblowers. When we sought a meeting with O’Brien’s successor, I remember keenly his obviously rehearsed instruction to us: the Vatican’s view was, “We are done here.” In reality, the removal of the cardinal was the beginning, not the end, of what was to become an important change in the way Church authorities deal with the malfeasance of high-ranking members of the hierarchy, including previously untouchable cardinals. The Catholic Church in Scotland—and later in the United States with the Cardinal McCarrick case—felt the power of whistleblowing in action. But what, exactly, is…

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By now we have been depressed once more by headlines of abuse in the Catholic Church, this time in France, where the large number of cases (more than 200,000) blazoned across our newsfeeds. Pope Francis recently called the abuse in France a “moment of shame.”

But beyond that stomach-churning number, there are details in the report that merit wider consideration. Perhaps even more urgently, all Catholics should examine the 45 highly detailed recommendations made by the Sauvé Commission. These are contained in the 50-page report. Below, I translate the recommendations that stand out as especially important for wider consideration by Catholics outside of francophone contexts.

I pass over in silence recommendations that are sufficiently commonplace today — for example, criminal background checks). Additionally, I do not treat the typically “bureaucratic” recommendations that call for finessing canonical procedures, greater transparency in reporting data and greater coordination between officials in France. Finally,…

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A settlement for another sexual abuse victim of the late Father John J. Gallagher, who was assigned to St. Mary’s Church in Lawrence in the 1970s, was recently reached, said attorney Mitchell Garabedian.

Garabedian, of Boston, who is well known for representing sexual abuse victims of the Catholic church, said this the 15th claim he’s settled involving Gallagher, of the Augustinian Order. The claims involved 14 females and one male, he said.

The recent settlement was in the low six figures, Garabedian said.

“My courageous client, a female, was sexually abused by Father Gallagher on at least five different occasions from approximately 1973 to 1976. At the time of the sexual abuse, my client was on the basketball team affiliated with the Catholic Inter-Parochial Schools and Father Gallagher was the coach and also a priest at St. Mary’s Church,” Garabedian said.

According to Gallagher’s obituary, he died in 2006 at…

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A debate was held in the Knesset regarding sexual abuse of minors to mark the Day for the Battle Against Sexual Violence.

Some 90% of cases of sexual abuse of minors were not dealt with properly, a debate in the Knesset revealed on Tuesday. The debate was held by the Special Committee for the Rights of the Child in honor of the Day for the Battle Against Sexual Violence and revealed the statistics of sexual assault of minors.

Featured in the debate were 505 testimonies collected from Israeli men and women over the age of 18 who were sexually assaulted in their childhoods. The current ages of the victims ranged from 18 to 83, and the age range when they experienced assault ranged from zero to 18, with an average age of eight. Some 25% of the assaults began when the victims were under the age of five.

The statistics…

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Father Thomas Dunavan has been on administrative leave since March 2019 due to historical allegations of priestly misconduct. The matter was turned over to civil authorities. After commissioning an independent investigation, consultation with the Holy See, and hearing from the ministerial conduct board, restrictions have been imposed on Father Dunavan’s public ministry. Bishop James Conley has assigned Father Dunavan to provide administrative assistance to the Chancery and assist the retired priests of the Diocese of Lincoln effective Nov. 8, 2021.

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Father Scott Courtney has been out of active ministry since September 2018 due to allegations of priestly misconduct. The matter was turned over to civil authorities. After a professional evaluation and a period of personal renewal, and hearing from the ministerial conduct board, restrictions have been imposed on Father Courtney’s public ministry. Bishop James Conley has assigned Father Courtney to work in prison ministry, minister to nursing and retirement homes, and provide administrative assistance to the Chancery effective Jan. 10, 2022.

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The Lincoln Diocese recently reassigned a pair of priests — and restricted their public ministry —  after investigating claims of priestly misconduct.

In statements posted to the diocese website Oct. 8, Bishop James Conley announced:

* Scott Courtney was assigned to minister to prisons, nursing and retirement homes, and provide administrative assistance to the chancery, effective early next January.

Courtney has been out of active ministry since September 2018, after allegations he had sexual contact with a woman, the diocese reported at the time.

His reassignment and restrictions followed “a professional evaluation and a period of personal renewal, and hearing from the ministerial conduct board,” Conley said in his statement.

Courtney was last with the Sacred Heart parish in Roseland and the Assumption parish in Juniata.

* Thomas Dunavan was assigned to provide administrative assistance to the chancery and help retired priests, effective Nov. 8.

Dunavan was ordained in 1998 and has…

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A civil lawsuit filed against the Catholic Diocese of Brownsville that alleges church officials tried to protect a priest accused in the alleged sexual assault of two siblings continues to make its way through the legal system.

The lawsuit was filed nearly two months after the Diocese released a list containing the names of 12 priests accused of sexually assaulting children. The accused priest, Father Benedicto Ortiz, was one of the 12 named in the list released by the diocese in 2019.

According to the diocese, Ortiz died in 2011.

The lawsuit filed March 26, 2019 in Cameron County alleges that in 1982 Ortiz was a priest at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Brownsville, where the individuals – referred to as L.C. and D.S. – attended church. They were between the ages of 10 and 13 at the time Ortiz began to assault them, the lawsuit alleges.

According to…

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The chief of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) executive committee, Ronnie Floyd, resigned from the organization after an internal conflict from an ongoing sexual abuse investigation.

The committee, which manages denomination business when the full SBC isn’t in session, recently met to vote on waiving attorney-client privilege in an investigation regarding their handling of abuse allegations. Floyd agreed with legal counsel and advised the committee against removing that privilege.

The group voted to do so regardless, and Floyd said his resignation was a result of that decision.

“Due to my personal integrity and the leadership responsibility entrusted to me, I will not and cannot any longer fulfill the duties placed upon me as the leader of the executive, fiscal, and fiduciary entity of the SBC,” Floyd said in a Thursday evening letter sent to the executive committee members.

The decision to waive attorney-client privilege allows a third-party investigator, Guidepost Solutions…

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Andrew Cozzens says he learned many important lessons about how the Catholic church should respond to abuse by priests. He started his job as auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis just days before a sexual abuse investigation there became public.

Speaking at a press conference in Crookston, Minn., Monday to announce his new post as bishop of the Crookston diocese, Cozzens, 53, said he will bring those learnings to his work in Crookston.

“I’ve seen how difficult it can be to change the culture of the church so that we deal with [the] sexual abuse crisis correctly,” he said.

Cozzens will replace Bishop Michael Hoeppner who resigned earlier this year at the request of Pope Francis after an investigation into whether he covered up sexual abuse in the Crookston diocese.

Cozzens said this is a challenging time for the church, and he said abuse victims should be…

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The new bishop of the Crookston diocese said Monday he has learned important lessons about how the Roman Catholic church should respond to abuse by priests.

Bishop Andrew Cozzens replaced Bishop Michael Hoeppner, who resigned earlier this year at the request of Pope Francis after an investigation into whether he covered up sexual abuse in the Crookston diocese.

Cozzens, who started his previous job as auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis just days before a sexual abuse investigation there became public, said he’s seen how difficult it can be to change the culture of the church in order to deal with the sexual abuse crisis.

He added that it’s a challenging time for the church and abuse victims should be the church’s priority, Minnesota Public Radio News reported.

“Victims are in fact the people we should be most caring for in…

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‘You can’t libel the dead’ is burned into the consciousness of any serious journalist or writer. It provides much-needed comfort: however tactful you have to be about the living, once someone has died you can say what you like about them without getting sued.

Or can you? Seven years ago the European Court of Human Rights dropped a worrying throwaway remark that this might be unacceptable because allowing untrammelled comment about a deceased person might infringe the human rights of his family. Last week, in a disconcerting decision that seems to have gone entirely unreported in the media (you can read the official report here), that same court built on its earlier suggestion and at a stroke gave publishers a whole new worry.

In 1999 and 2002, a Slovak Catholic priest of unsavoury habits was convicted of the sexual…

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Keith Porteous Wood says France’s deference to the Catholic Church has obstructed justice for hundreds of thousands of abuse victims.

An inquiry commissioned by the Catholic Church into clerical abuse in France has just concluded that victims of both clerics and laity (teachers, for example) totalled around a third of a million since 1950.

In no country in the world has such a high figure been included in an official report. Nearly all victims were minors or vulnerable adults.

The commission, to its credit, held exhaustive hearings in every major town in France. But listening to so many harrowing testimonies took its toll. The president of the commission was not alone in needing psychological assistance.

At the public launch of the inquiry report, abuse survivor François Devaux told Church officials: “You are a disgrace to our humanity. In this hell there have been abominable mass crimes…betrayal of morality,…

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French Prime Minister Jean Castex met Pope Francis at the Vatican on Monday as the French Catholic Church battles a storm over clerical child sex abuse and the sanctity of confession.

Castex was visiting the Vatican and Rome for celebrations marking the centenary of the restoration of diplomatic relations between France and the Holy See.

The prime minister gave the pope, a keen soccer fan, an unusual gift: a Paris-Saint Germain jersey signed by the pontiff’s fellow Argentine Lionel Messi. He presented the glass-framed number 30 jersey following 35 minutes of private talks at the Vatican.

The long-planned trip to Rome, which includes talks with Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, follows the publication of a devastating report estimating that French Catholic clergy had abused 216,000 children since 1950.

Pope Francis, who has made battling the global scourge of clerical abuse a priority of his papacy, has expressed “my shame, our shame” at the findings,…

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An adult survivor of abuse by a priest appealed to the world’s seminarians to become good priests and to make sure the “bitter truth” always prevails, not silence about scandals and their cover-up.

“Please, do not sweep things under the carpet, because then they start to stink, putrefy, and the rug itself will rot away. … Let us realize that if we hide these facts, when we keep our mouths shut, we hide the filth and we thus become a collaborator,” said the survivor in a letter sent to Pope Francis and addressed to all seminarians.

To live in the truth is to follow the example of Jesus Christ, who never closed his eyes to sin or the sinner, but who “lived the truth with love … (who) indicated the sin and the sinner with bitter love,” the letter said.

The letter, written in Italian, had been sent to Pope Francis, who then requested it…

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France’s Catholic Church has asked for “forgiveness” after a devastating report this week laid bare the “systemic” sexual abuse of children by clergymen. But how and when will the tens of thousands of victims be compensated for the abuse they suffered?

The Catholic Church of France was left reeling on Tuesday after an independent commission revealed in a 2,500-page report that members of the clergy had sexually abused around 216,000 children since 1950 – and covered up the abuse with a “veil of silence”. 

According to the head of the inquiry, Jean-Marc Sauvé, the report by the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (ICSA) proved that “systemic abuse” has been at work within the Church.

The report said the number of victims rose to some 330,000 when taking into account abuses committed by lay members of the Church, such as teachers at Catholic schools.

As well as laying bare the…

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Following the news about allegations of sexual abuse brought against then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the publication of a Pennsylvania grand jury report during the summer of 2018, I joined many Catholic theologians in considering how I would address still another surge of news about clergy sexual abuse in my college classroom. As a theology professor at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Ind., one of the nation’s great Catholic women’s colleges, I sensed that my undergraduate students deserved intellectual accompaniment as they confronted an issue that distinctly affected them. To speak with women about sexual abuse of any sort presents a unique situation, because women experience sexual assault of all kinds at higher rates than men.

I also wanted to know what these young women would teach me—and the rest of the church—about living in a church marred by the scandal of sexual abuse by clergy. Now, two years later, I can…

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The priest and former chancellor of Omaha’s archdiocese told detectives he took money from a church and a retired priest because he was helping a homeless Omaha man.

The amount authorities say the Rev. Michael Gutgsell stole: nearly $280,000. The amount Gutgsell said he funneled to the homeless man from 2013 to 2021: $700,000. Gutgsell told authorities he emptied his own personal accounts before he took from the parish or the priest.

Asked why he gave the man that much, Gutgsell told detectives that the man, then 41, kept telling him he would pay him back “when he got the payout of his Social Security disability” funding, according to court documents.

Omaha attorney Joseph Naatz said Gutgsell got scammed, conned and taken advantage of because of his good nature.

“The common thinking is that there was some sort of drugs, gambling, sexual favors tied to this,” Naatz said. “But that’s…

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Cardinal Timothy Dolan praised his long-time friend and neighbor, Brooklyn’s outgoing Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, during an interview last week with the in-house media shop of the Diocese of Brooklyn.

Dolan told an interviewer that the “Diocese of Brooklyn continues to flourish, thanks to [DiMarzio’s] leadership.”

DiMarzio, who will retire from the Brooklyn diocese next month, was a “street priest,” Dolan explained, “which is one of the highest compliments you can give another priest.”

“You make it work by showing up. And Bishop DiMarzio would show up,” Dolan added. “He wouldn’t miss an A&P ribbon cutting.”

The cardinal described warmly his friendship with DiMarzio: “He’s got a laugh that can shake the Empire State Building. And I sort of set as my goal always to get him to laugh, and he loves it,” Dolan said.

He added that DiMarzio was “a good friend, you know…I really became close to him, and…

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He said he used funds from late priest’s estate to help homeless man after he ran out of his own money to give him.

An Omaha priest was arrested Friday morning accused of stealing from an incapacitated retired priest who had willed his estate to the Archdiocese of Omaha, saying he was giving the money to a homeless man.

The Rev. Michael F. Gutgsell was arrested at 7:35 a.m. Friday and taken to Douglas County Jail. He appeared in court Friday afternoon to face charges of theft and abuse, and was released on his own recognizance.

His preliminary hearing is set for Nov. 24.

Gutgsell’s attorney released a statement following Friday’s hearing:

“Since learning of an open criminal investigation, Fr. Michael Gutgsell has fully cooperated with law enforcement. Fr. Gutgsell made arrangements to turn himself in as required by statute immediately upon his knowledge and confirmation of an arrest warrant.

…

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For centuries, France has been called the eldest daughter of the Catholic Church. It seems that this time is over. The French church is engulfed in a major and perhaps fatal crisis due to the publication of a devastating report on 70 years of sexual abuse by both clerics and laypeople working for Catholic organizations.

There is general agreement that the church showed some courage in 2018 by asking Jean-Marc Sauvé, a former vice president of France’s administrative supreme court, to chair a committee of experts to investigate an unknown number of sexual crimes by church officials.

Yet the figures delivered by the committee after two years and a half of investigation are staggering: an estimated 330,000 abused children, mostly boys, and at least 3,000 predator clerics, most of whom are dead. (This does not include the number of lay abusers). And yet, as Antoine Garapon, one of…

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A Catholic woman who was sexually abused by a priest took legal action about ‘disgraceful’ emails by church staff dismissing her

A woman who was sexually abused by a priest from the age of 15 has been given a payout by the Catholic church after officials branded her “needy” and “manipulative”.

The victim came forward in 2016 and told safeguarding staff that she had been abused as a child and later raped. She received a settlement in 2018.

The woman, now in her fifties, has been awarded damages after filing a legal claim setting out how she was “re-traumatised” by the church’s handling of her allegations.

It is believed to be one of the first cases of its kind.

The payout, agreed last week, could pave the way for other victims of sexual abuse who feel let down and mistreated by the church to take legal action.

The woman said she…

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After the shocking report that French clerics sexually abused thousands of kids over the past 70 years, some are calling for the seal of secrecy on confession to be lifted.

When Father Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, the head of the French Bishops Conference, suggested that the Catholic Church lift the veil of secrecy on confessions as a way to combat clerical sex abuse this week, eyes rolled at the Vatican. The seal of secrecy on confessions is hundreds of years old and has survived intact through every major sex abuse scandal of the modern era and scores of popes—and any priest who breaks it is automatically excommunicated from the church.

Moulins-Beaufort made the comment on the heels of one of the worst sex abuse scandals to rock the church since Spotlight won an Oscar, with the revelation that thousands of Catholic nuns, priests and lay people abused more than 300,000 minors over a 70-year period….

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The following article was originally published in the Ohio Capital Journal and published on News5Cleveland.com under a content-sharing agreement.

Despite hearing public, firsthand accounts of sexual abuse from eight of at least 177 victims of Ohio State sports physician Dr. Richard Strauss, state Republican leaders indicated they never planned to pass introduced legislation that would allow his victims to hold the university accountable in court.

Both former House Speaker Larry Householder, R-Glenford, and current House Majority Leader Bill Seitz, R-Green Twp., said in recent statements they used the legislation and high-profile hearings to apply pressure on OSU to generate a larger out-of-court settlement for victims — not to guarantee anyone their right to a trial.

In interviews, five victims of Strauss’ abuse and several of their attorneys say they were never told of the purported strategy.

“Why f**k with victims in that way? That’s the most irresponsible thing…

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Two decades ago in Boston, the archdiocese fought efforts to uncover its complicity in the crimes of pedophile priests. In Paris, a church-led commission has done the opposite.

In 2002, this newspaper exposed the widespread and systematic sexual abuse of children by local Catholic priests and the equally systematic cover-up by the diocese’s bishops and cardinals. It was a brutal but vital shock. By illuminating this darkness, the Spotlight team made history and laid the foundations for similar investigations across the globe.

As if to mark the 20th anniversary of this event, a report commissioned by France’s Catholic Church was released to the public this month. The 2,500-page document — the work of the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE) — revealed that at least330,000 children had been sexually abused by more than 3,000 ordained and lay clergy in France between…

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French Prime Minister Jean Castex met Pope Francis at the Vatican Monday as the French Catholic Church battles a storm over clerical child sex abuse and the sanctity of confession.

The long-planned trip to Rome, which includes talks with Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, follows the publication of a devastating report estimating that French Catholic clergy had abused 216,000 children since 1950.

Pope Francis, who has made battling the global scourge of clerical abuse a priority of his papacy, expressed “my shame, our shame” at the findings, echoing a similar sentiment from French church leaders.

But a row broke out when Archbishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, the head of the Bishops’ Conference of France, said priests were not obliged to report sexual abuse if they heard about it during the Catholic ritual of confession, used to admit to sins.

His words were in line with Vatican guidelines updated last year, which call on clerics…

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On Friday the Pontifical Gregorian University’s newly-minted Institute of Anthropology, which replaces its famed Center for Child Protection, was formally inaugurated amid praise from abuse survivors and experts alike.

Unveiled earlier this year, the institute’s formal name is the Institute of Anthropology: Interdisciplinary Studies on Human Dignity and Care.

Overseen by German Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, former director of the Centre for Child Protection (CCP) and a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors (PCPM), the institute will take over the CCP’s work in conducting research and formation in the field of child protection, but it will do so with the heft of an entire degree-offering faculty at the Gregorian university, with its own academic staff.

Attendees of the Oct. 14 inauguration ceremony voiced hope that the new institute will expand and enhance safeguarding efforts for children and vulnerable people in the Church and beyond.

Speaking in…

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A Q&A with Cardinal Mauro Piacenza of the Vatican’s Apostolic Penitentiary

The release this month of a watershed report on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in France has sparked another debate over the secrecy of confession.

The Catholic Church declares that every priest who hears confessions is obliged, under the severest legal penalties, to keep absolute secrecy concerning everything learned in the context of sacramental confession. 

French law has long recognized the Church’s strict rules about the confidentiality of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, but the government is contemplating amending the law for confessors, as it has done with lawyers and other secular professionals, who are required to report child sexual abuse if they learn of it.  

In comments to the National Catholic Register on Wednesday, the spokeswoman for France’s bishops’ conference, Karine Dalle, clarified that the country’s Catholic leaders do not intend to compromise on the Church’s teaching that the…

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Bishops certainly have had bad weeks before. One thinks, for example, of the unfortunate late Cardinal Michele Giordano of Naples, who, when it was announced in 1999 that he was under investigation for a Ponzi scheme run by his brother with archdiocesan funds, gave an interview in which he insisted he couldn’t be complicit because he wasn’t smart enough to understand what was going on.

In the annals of such bad weeks, however, a special place now must be reserved for Archbishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort of Reims, France, who, in one seven-day span, has managed to infuriate both victims of clerical sexual abuse and faithful Catholics most inclined to defend the Church when it’s under attack.

After having apologized for his “clumsy” wording a week ago in which he appeared to assert that the seal of the confessional was above the laws of the French Republic, Archbishop de Moulins-Beaufort, president…

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What is sickening and repulsive is the deliberate cover-up of sexual abuse cases of Catholic priests by the Catholic Church as an institution.

The horrific data coming from an independent investigation conducted in France that concluded that an estimated 330,000 children were victims of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church in France during the previous 70 years did not shock me. It just further disgusted me.

The 2,500-page document that has been reported is pure horror and shame. As a journalist, I have been investigating and reporting on different sexual abuse cases of the Catholic Church globally. It disturbs me. As a man from the Christian faith, it makes me feel ashamed that even today, most of us Christians prefer to turn a blind eye to or talk in hushed tones on the seriousness of the immense damage some Catholic priests are doing to young children all over the world.

…

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[Via the Catholic Review of the Archdiocese of Baltimore.]

Church and government leaders in France are at odds over whether priests should be required to report the abuse of minors if they learn about it in the sacrament of confession.

Archbishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, president of the French bishops’ conference, and Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin met to discuss the issue Oct. 12, a week after the release of a report by an independent commission that estimated 330,000 children had been abused by Catholic priests or church employees in France since the 1950s.

At issue is whether French law takes precedence over the seal of confession, a sacred practice in which a confessor does not reveal what is told to him during a confession.

One of the recommendations in the commission’s report urged the church to “send a clear message from the church authorities to penitents taking confession and to the…

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[Via Eurasia Review]

he spokeswoman for France’s bishops’ conference clarified Wednesday that the country’s Catholic leaders do not intend to compromise on the Church’s teaching that the confessional seal is sacrosanct.

“One cannot change the canon law for France as it is international. A priest who today would violate the secrecy of the confession would be excommunicated,” Karine Dalle, the communications director of the French bishops’ conference (CEF), told Solène Tadié of the National Catholic Register on Oct. 13.

“This is what Archbishop Moulins-Beaufort wanted to say last week after the publication of the Sauvé report, when he said that the seal of confession was above the laws of the Republic,” Dalle explained.

“He spoke the truth, but this truth is not audible in France for those who are not Catholic, and not understandable in France in the midst of debates on so-called ‘religious separatism.’”

Moulins-Beaufort,…

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[See also the criminal affidavit complaint in the case.]

Rev. Michael Gutgsell jailed for abuse of a vulnerable adult, attempted theft

Rev Michael F. Gutgsell, the former chancellor of Omaha’s archdiocese, was arrested Friday on felony charges of Attempted Theft by Unlawful Taking, and Vulnerable Adult Abuse.

According to the criminal complaint filed Wednesday, Gutgsell is accused of attempting to take $154,732 worth of property from Rev. Theodore Richling, Jr.

Gutgsell was granted a signature bond after a brief apperance Friday afternoon in Douglas County court.

The abuse charge alleges over a period from October, 2018 to January, 2020 when Gutgsell allegedly liquidated the assets of Richling as Richling’s health deteriorated and he became incapacited.

In the affidavit, prosecutors laid-out Gutgsell’s explanation of what happened to that money and thousands more.

Gutgsell told investigators over a period of eight years, he paid a homeless man named Michael Barrett around…

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Columba City, Ind. – A Catholic priest accused of sexual abuse in a case involving two females made his initial appearance in Whitley County Superior Court Wednesday afternoon.

Whitley County Prosecutor DJ Sigler filed multiple felony charges last week against Father David Huneck who at the time of the alleged crimes was the pastor at  Saint Paul of the Cross Catholic Church in Columbia City. Huneck also served as chaplain of Bishop Dwenger High School in Fort Wayne. Court documents indicate Huneck knew the alleged victims from his affiliation with the high school.

During the hearing before Judge Douglas Fahl, Huneck said he understood the charges which include:

• Child Seduction-Defendant has a professional relationship with child and fondles child
• Sexual Battery–Victim compelled to submit by force or imminent threat
• Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor
• Furnishing Alcohol to a Minor-Basic offense for furnishing to a minor
• Two counts of battery

Judge Fahl…

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Eleven new abuse lawsuits were filed against the Catholic Church in New Jersey on Wednesday, including three naming former teachers at Bergen Catholic High School in Oradell and another against a now-deceased instructor at St. Joseph Regional High in Montvale.  

The suits were the latest amid hundreds of complaints filed in the two years since New Jersey lifted its statute of limitations on old sexual abuse claims. They come as the window for such cases is set to expire next month. 

“We are getting more and more calls now,” Phillipsburg attorney Greg Gianforcaro said at a news conference Wednesday, adding that he plans to file “dozens” more suits in the coming weeks. 

“Time is running out. November 30 is the close of the window. Anybody who wants to bring a case only has until then,” Gianforcaro said at a Wednesday press conference announcing the 11 lawsuits. 

Officials at…

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A judge today said a complaint from one boy’s dad was “swept under the carpet”

A priest’s sexual abuse of two altar boys was “covered up” by the Catholic Church, a judge said today.

Father Thomas MacCarte molested two children after letting them smoke cannabis and drink alcohol at Bishop Eton Monastery in Childwall.

Liverpool Crown Court heard the teenagers have since been plagued by anger, shame and “self-hatred”, and one tried to kill himself.

But when one boy’s dad complained to Bishop Eton’s then parish priest Ralph Heskett – now the Bishop of Hallam in Sheffield – MacCarte was moved to Scotland, rather than reported to the police.

MacCarte, now 70, was found guilty of three counts of indecent assault over the attacks in Merseyside three decades ago and today jailed for four years.

Judge Gary Woodhall today said: “Rather than take action or investigate what had happened, you were…

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Nearly three years after launching an investigation into clergy sexual abuse in the state’s Catholic dioceses, Kansas’ top law enforcement agency has received 215 tips and opened 122 cases, legislators learned this week.

Robert Jacobs, executive officer of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, provided an update to members of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Kansas Security during a meeting on law enforcement and security issues in the state.

Jacobs said the cases are the result of work by the KBI’s Catholic Clergy Taskforce that was established in 2019 at the request of the Attorney General’s Office.

“This task force was built based on calls that were coming in regarding abuse related to the Catholic Church and the dioceses,” he told the legislators, adding that investigators set up a phone line and an email address that people could use to report abuse.

“Since the inception, we’ve received 215 tips to those two…

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