ABUSE TRACKER

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) is denouncing the Diocese of Charleston after allowing a priest to resume preaching duties after being accused of sexual exploitation.

Officials say that Father Wilbroad Mwape began preaching again at a Greenville church four months after being placed on temporary leave following a sexual exploitation allegation by a parishioner.

The accusation led to a lawsuit filed on August 4th with complaints of the priest abusing his position beginning at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Orangeburg and his relocation to Greenville.

SNAP says “he may again abuse those seeking help and trusting in their spiritual ‘leader’.” Fr. Mwape was able to resume his position six months after Pope Francis altered Catholic Church law to criminalize the sexual abuse of adults.

SNAP offers support to survivors of sexual abuse by clergypeople and requests for those who may have been harmed by Fr. Mwape…

View Cache

A Belfast man who says he was sexually abused at a children’s home run by a religious order is set to receive £75,000 in damages.

The payout represents settlement of the 66-year-old’s civil action against De La Salle Provincialate.

No admission of liability was made in the resolution confirmed at the High Court in Belfast.

The man who took the case cannot be named for legal reasons.

He claimed that Christian Brothers molested him at Rubane House in Kircubbin, Co Down in the late 1960s.

Proceedings centred on the alleged physical, sexual and emotional abuse he suffered after moving into the facilities at the age of 11.

Rubane House was among the homes examined by the Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) Inquiry chaired by the late Sir Anthony Hart.

An estimated 200 of its 1,050 former residents have made allegations of serious sexual or physical abuse.

A trial into the man’s…

View Cache

“This is an extremely important step forward in the BSA’s efforts to equitably compensate survivors,” the Boy Scouts said in a statement.

One of the Boy Scouts of America’s primary insurers, Chubb Ltd unit Century Indemnity Company, said on Monday it will contribute $800 million to a deal proposed by the youth organization to settle sexual abuse claims.

The money would be used to settle around 82,500 claims from people who say they were sexually abused as children by troop leaders.

The move brings the total pot of money available to resolve claims to more than $2.7 billion.

Under the Boy Scouts’ proposal, those who filed claims in the organization’s ongoing bankruptcy proceeding will receive settlements according to the severity of their cases and when the alleged abuse occurred.

Century’s contribution comes after more than a year of back-and-forth between the insurer and…

View Cache

Attorneys in the Boy Scouts of America bankruptcy case have reached a tentative settlement under which one of the organization’s largest insurers would contribute $800 million into a fund for victims of child sexual abuse.

The agreement announced Monday calls for Century Indemnity Co. and affiliated companies to contribute $800 million into the fund in return for being released from further liability for abuse claims. The payment would bring the amount of money in the proposed trust to more than $2.6 billion, which would be the largest sexual abuse settlement in U.S. history.

The settlement comes as more than 82,000 sexual abuse claimants face a Dec. 28 deadline to vote on a previously announced Boy Scouts reorganization plan.

That plan called for the Boys Scouts and its roughly 250 local councils to contribute up to $820 million in cash and property into a fund for victims. They also would assign…

View Cache

Three Massachusetts Catholic priests, including one from an Easton church, are barred from returning to ministry after the diocese found them each to be “credibly accused” of sexual abuse of a minor.

According to the Diocese of Fall River, the Rev. Richard E. Degagne was suspended after allegations surfaced in 2019. He was then the pastor of Immaculate Conception Parish in Easton.

The Rev. Edward J. Byington and the Rev. James F. Buckley were already retired and were not assigned to a parish when allegations surfaced during 2020, diocese officials said.

The Rev. Buckley was ordained in 1959, the Rev. Byington was ordained in 1970 and the Rev. Degagne was ordained in 1982. As a result of Monday’s decision, all three are prohibited from participating in church duties.

“They are not permitted to exercise any public ministry including the celebration of public Mass or of other sacraments. They may not…

View Cache

The Diocese of Fall River announced today that separate allegations of sexual abuse of a minor made against three suspended priests have been determined to be credible and that none would return to ministry.

Given these determinations, the names of Father James F. Buckley, Father Edward J. Byington, and Father Richard E. Degagne have been added to the list of “Credibly Accused” clergy on the Fall River Diocesan website.

The Diocese of Fall River previously announced the suspensions of all three priests. Father Degagne, then pastor of Immaculate Conception Parish in Easton, was suspended in 2019. Father Buckley and Father Byington were suspended in 2020. These two priests were already retired at the time and not assigned to a parish. All three priests have denied the allegations.

Before making any determination in these cases, the Diocese followed its protocols including notifying civil authorities, conducting its own investigations, and…

View Cache

Scandals over clerical abuse of minors have left the institution poorer and less influential

From when the Catholic Church’s sex-abuse crisis erupted in 2002 until his death more than three years later, St. John Paul II never met with a victim of clerical sexual abuse.

In contrast, Pope Francis has met numerous times with abuse victims and their advocates since his election in 2013. He plans next year to meet with representatives of indigenous people from Canada who are protesting the historical abuse of children at church-run residential schools there.

Those meetings are a sign of how the Catholic hierarchy has transformed its response to abuse scandals, which have left the church poorer and less influential in the countries where they have emerged.

“The leadership of the church has come to recognize that the church has to take ownership and responsibility for what happened,” said Francesco Cesareo,…

View Cache

The agreement reached with U.S.A. Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee will compensate more than 500 girls and women abused in the sport

Hundreds of female gymnasts who were sexually abused by Lawrence G. Nassar, the former team doctor of the national gymnastics team, have agreed to a $380 million settlement with U.S.A. Gymnastics and the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee, ending the latest dark chapter in one of the biggest molestation cases in sports history.

The settlement, announced on Monday during U.S.A. Gymnastics’ bankruptcy proceedings in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Indiana, is among the largest ever for a sexual abuse case. The funds would compensate more than 500 gymnasts — including Olympic gold medalists like Simone Biles, McKayla Maroney and Aly Raisman — who were abused by Nassar or someone else in the sport.

“No amount of money will ever repair the…

View Cache

This commentary is by Maura Labelle, a resident of Colchester.

An open letter to Rev. Christopher J. Coyne, the Roman Catholic bishop of Vermont:

Why are you waiting for me and other clergy abuse victims to die?

As children at St. Joseph’s Orphanage, we were physically, mentally and sexually abused. In December 2020, you said the following during an interview on the WCAX program “You Can Quote Me”: “I absolutely believe that children were abused at the orphanage. No one is contesting that at all.” 

You know that there was abuse, yet you do everything you can to avoid helping the abused.

In 2019, you said the following on Vermont Public Radio: “We don’t have any money; there’s no more insurance; we have very limited unrestricted funds.” If the church doesn’t have funds, it’s because of its own actions to hide the money. 

You know very well that your predecessor,…

View Cache

A judge has told lawyers for the New Hampshire Catholic Church and a right-wing Catholic news outlet to come to an agreement about how much information the church will disclose about one of its high-ranking priests.

Issued last week, the judge’s order sets some limits on how much information the Diocese of Manchester will have to provide about its canon law expert, the Very Rev. Georges F. de Laire.

Earlier this year, de Laire sued Michigan-based St. Michael’s Media, editor Gary Michael Voris and a reporter claiming defamation in several articles about the church’s dispute with a religious sect in Richmond. As the diocese’s judicial vicar and vicar for canonical affairs, de Laire figured prominently in the church’s handling of the sect, the St. Benedict Center.

St. Michael’s Media has subpoenaed the Diocese of Manchester seeking information about de Laire’s dealings with St. Benedict Center, his oversight of annulment cases…

View Cache

A committee for victims of clergy sex abuse has fired another salvo in a bankruptcy battle with the Diocese of Camden.

The committee on Friday asked a judge to remove restrictions on more than $63 million in diocesan funds.

The request, if approved by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Jerrold Poslusny Jr. in Camden, would make the money available to claims by the diocese’s creditors, including the sex-abuse survivors.

The judge also is considering a separate claim, made by the committee last month, that the diocese concealed assets of more than $20 million during its ongoing bankruptcy action. The diocese has rejected the allegation.

“The committee wants transparency and to date has not received that,” Brent Weisenberg, an attorney for the committee, asserted Monday.

A diocesan spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

The committee represents the interests of some 300 people claiming they were sexually abused by clergy members…

View Cache

The massive case brought against Boy Scouts of America (BSA) has proven favorable for victims where accountability is concerned. However, the breakdown of the financial compensation is a bit different.

According to USA Today, the 82,000 sexual abuse survivors will each receive less than $10,000 in compensation while the attorneys working the case have billed a staggering $1,725 an hour up to more than $200,000 for legal services and are projected to earn nearly $1 billion.

“The case is unprecedented for bankruptcy litigation related to sexual abuse in the number of survivors filing claims (82,000), the overall amount of proposed settlement funds ($1.8 billion) and now in the proportion going to fees for everyone from attorneys to financial advisers – even lobbyists tapped by the Scouts to ward off bankruptcy reforms,” USA Today writes.

BSA also offered estimations for the bills it will receive from its own…

View Cache

We believe in the separation of church and state because it requires religions to obey laws enacted by the state instead of allowing religions to hold everyone to their own religious laws.

This idea of separation is much disputed these days, as religions continue to gain more victories in the courts. The religious keep insisting they have a “right” to live by religion instead of the law. Whether it leads to theocracy or balkanization, the creeping fusion of church and state is disastrous for the public good.

Let’s be frank: religions need to obey the laws. No religion can provide a standard that governs everyone, religious and non-religious alike. Instead, the law is supposed to protect individuals from religion’s weaknesses and aggressions. The law provides a standard that protects everyone’s rights. We have worked to defend those civil rights and will continue to do so going forward. We believe that the…

View Cache

Trip to Rome by residential school survivors including First Nations leader Phil Fontaine delayed

While a long-awaited trip to visit Pope Francis at the Vatican was delayed due to concerns about the omicron variant, Phil Fontaine says he’s more determined than ever to make sure the apology he’s been fighting to hear for at least 31 years now will be made.

Fontaine is widely known as one one of the most prominent First Nations leaders in Canada as the former Assembly of First Nations national chief. 

While he has many other titles, it seems the one that drives him the most is that of residential school survivor.

This week, he and a delegation of other residential school survivors were supposed to leave for Rome to meet the Pope to ask, among other things, for an apology from the Catholic Church for its role in the harms caused during the residential school era to former students.

“I have a long history of…

View Cache

Clerics who sexually abuse minors can be canonically prosecuted even when they say they were not aware that a person with whom they had sexual contact was a minor, according to changes to canon law announced by the Vatican on Tuesday. 

The reform of the law, authorized by Pope Francis, follows cases in which clerics claimed they did not know the age of a minor with whom they had sexual contact, or believed them to be more than 18 years old.

The Holy See announced Dec. 7 reforms to Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela, the special law first issued by Pope St. John Paul II in 2001 and revised by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010. SST defines the Church’s graviora delicta, or major crimes against the faith and sacraments, for which the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has exclusive authority for prosecution and judgement. 

The Code of Canon Law recognizes as a…

View Cache

An ill-timed announcement and the pope’s baffling explanation of why he decided to remove the leader of one of Catholic Church’s most important dioceses

All he had to do was wait five days.

And then, after returning from what ended up being an extremely important December 2-6 visit to Cyprus and Greece, he could have easily made the official announcement.

Instead, Pope Francis shocked almost everyone when he decided to relieve Michel Aupetit from his duties as Archbishop of Paris on the very day the papal trip began.

It fell like a bombshell.

And because it dominated headlines throughout Europe and the world, it nearly torpedoed one of the pope’s main objectives for making the trip to the two Mediterranean countries — to prod leaders of the Old Continent into finally addressing their deplorable refusal (or inability) to forge a coherent and compassionate policy on immigration.

But worse than stepping…

View Cache

The revolting revelations just keep coming. This lawsuit brings to light another example of the Philly Archdiocese’s dangerous waiting game. Link to The Philadelphia Inquirer coverage here.

As of this publication date, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia currently lists Father Peter Foley as having full faculties on its’ clergy list. Philly priests depend upon the clergy list to ensure the good standing of priests who visit their parish to celebrate weddings or participate in other ministry.

In the article Ken Gavin, Archdiocese of Philadelphia Office of Communication, claims that Foley has not served in active ministry in “several years,” however his last listed assignment is 2002 – almost 20 years ago. Foley would have only been in his early 60’s at the time. Retirement from active ministry at that age was and still isn’t typical for a diocesan priest. It makes one wonder. And there’s no chance of…

View Cache

The Vatican financial scandal is about to enter its fourth year. Keeping all the names, dates, and details straight can be complicated.

You can read a brief history of the London property deal which kicked off the scandal here, and a who’s who of the people charged in the ongoing trial in Vatican City here.

That trial is set to resume next week. And even if you’ve been following it closely, the twists and turns are enough to confuse anyone.

So to help you get up to speed on what’s happened so far, here’s The Pillar’s Vatican Finance Scandal timeline, taking you back almost a decade, to when the whole thing was just a glint in some money manager’s eye: 

2014  New sheriff in town

Pope Francis appoints Australian Cardinal George Pell as the prefect of the Vatican’s new Secretariat for the Economy. Pell’s mandate is to bring transparency and accountability to curial finances,…

View Cache

A string of wealthy groups have not contributed a penny to the Scottish Government’s new £300million Redress Scotland scheme.

Charities linked to historic sex abuse have failed to cough up a penny for a new survivors’ fund – despite bringing in nearly half a billion pounds every year.

A Sunday Mail probe can reveal the string of wealthy groups who have not contributed to the Scottish Government’s new £300million Redress Scotland scheme.

Just one in five non-public organisations probed by the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry (SCAI) have so far offered funds.

Deputy First Minister John Swinney said he would pursue “responsible” child abuse organisations “with vigour”.

But concrete offers amount to just £13.8million.

The SCAI is investigating nine Catholic orders who ran 24 schools where abuse happened.

Six of them – The Christian Brothers, De La Salle Brothers, Sisters of Nazareth, defunct…

View Cache

Pope Francis raised the rarely discussed problem of nun abuse in the church during an address to members of the Vatican’s congregation for religious orders on Saturday, the Associated Press reports.

Why it matters: In the past, the Vatican has downplayed the abuses committed by mother superiors against nuns in the Catholic Church, the wire service notes.

Details: Francis said the book, “Veil of Silence: Abuse, Violence, Frustrations in Female Religious Life,” written by a reporter for the Holy See’s media, Salvatore Cernuzio, doesn’t detail “striking” cases of violence and abuse “but rather the everyday abuses that harm the strength of the vocation,” AP reports.

• The book, published last month in Italy, details 11 cases of current or former religious sisters who suffered abuse from their superiors. Some nuns were thrown out of the church, leaving them to question their faith, Cernuzio writes.
• Francis told members of the Vatican congregation…

View Cache

Pope Francis on Saturday drew attention to a problem that the Vatican has long sought to downplay: the abuses of power by mother superiors against nuns who, because of their vows of obedience, have little recourse but to obey.

During an audience with members of the Vatican’s congregation for religious orders, Francis cited a new investigative expose of the problem written by a reporter for the Holy See’s media, Salvatore Cernuzio.

Francis noted that the book, “Veil of Silence: Abuse, Violence, Frustrations in Female Religious Life,” doesn’t detail “striking” cases of violence and abuse “but rather the everyday abuses that harm the strength of the vocation.”

The book, published in Italy last month, contains 11 cases of current or former religious sisters who suffered abuses at the hands of their superiors. Most were psychological and spiritual abuses and often resulted in the women leaving or being thrown out of their…

View Cache

Seattle’s Catholic archdiocese has agreed to pay a Washington woman $725,000 as part of an early dispute resolution to her lawsuit alleging an unidentified employee sexually abused her at the Catholic school she attended more than 40 years ago.

The woman, identified by her initials, T.R., was an 8-year-old third grade student at the archdiocese’s private St. Louise Parish School in 1977 when an unidentified playground attendant started giving her candy and began sexually grooming her, the lawsuit said.

The employee, referred to only as “John Doe,” went on to repeatedly molest T.R. — abuse that was “foreseeable and preventable had Seattle Archdiocese acted on John Doe’s grooming behavior and removed him for his repeated sexual misconduct,” the suit contends.

“For years, she has tried to compartmentalize this, hoping it would go away,” Darrell Cochran, the woman’s attorney, told the Seattle Times. “But she realized no matter what she attained…

View Cache

A Savannah priest sexual abuse survivor will “not” be able to sue a South Carolina Catholic Diocese for the crimes he says happened to him 30 years ago in the Lowcountry.

Chris Templeton was abused by at least one priest in the Savannah diocese as a young man, the memory still harsh and vivid.

But he says this decision by a Lowcountry judge hurts almost as much.

District Judge David Norton granted a motion for summary judgment that dismisses Templeton’s claim and clears the Charleston Diocese of civil charges.

In 2018, former Catholic priest Wayland Brown admitted in court to abusing Templeton and Alan Ranta while they were students, and he was a priest at St James School in Savannah. Adding in court that he took the boys across the border to Hardeeville and raped them there as well.

Brown was charged and sentenced in 2018. He died in prison…

View Cache

Some abuse survivors believe the safety measures mandated by the settlement don’t go far enough

In June of 2018, the parents of 8-year-old Quinn, of St Louis, Mo., sent him on a four-night camping trip with his Cub Scout troop, believing he would be safe. (Quinn’s name has been changed in this article to protect his anonymity.)

He was not. Four months later, Quinn’s parents learned that his Cub Scout leader had been arrested and charged with sexually assaulting a child at his home.

Wondering whether Quinn had suffered the same terrifying fate, his dad asked him if the leader had ever touched him inappropriately. “He said, ‘Yes,’” says Quinn’s dad, who, at the time, did everything he could to hold back his own tears as his son wept in his arms. “It was heartbreaking for all of us.”

Now, Quinn and more than 82,000 other former scouts who allege…

View Cache

Two students who attended a Kentucky Catholic high school were charged Monday in connection with the alleged sexual assault of another student that was recorded on video earlier this year.

One of the boys was charged with sodomy-first degree and strangulation-first degree, while the other was charged with complicity sodomy-first degree and attempted strangulation-first degree, Louisville Metro Police Department spokeswoman Alicia Smiley said.

Both teens were students of Louisville’s all-boys St. Xavier High School when a video of the alleged assault surfaced in May. The video showed two teens sexually assault another male off-campus, NBC affiliated WAVE reported.

St. Xavier officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

In May, after the video surfaced, a school statement said the students had been disciplined, but did not disclose how.

“Saint Xavier High School condemns the actions of these few students. We have the highest standards…

View Cache

As an author and lecturer, Father Donald B. Cozzens, a Cleveland diocesan priest and former seminary rector, shared candid insights on the priesthood, challenging the Catholic Church to confront clericalism and renew its structure.

Despite criticism privately and publicly from fellow clergy, Father Cozzens maintained that it was his love of the priesthood that prompted his outspokenness for positive change.

Father Cozzens, 82, died Dec. 9. No cause of death was announced. Funeral arrangements were pending Dec. 10.

It was Father Cozzens’ book, “The Changing Face of the Priesthood,” published in 2000, that set the course for much of his life after he stepped down as president-rector of St. Mary Seminary and Graduate School of Theology in the Diocese of Cleveland a year later to focus on teaching and writing.

He spent more than 20 years tackling the issues he believed church officials needed to address including transparency in decision-making and welcoming women into a wide role…

View Cache

Seattle’s Catholic archdiocese has agreed to pay a Washington woman $725,000 as part of an early dispute resolution to her lawsuit alleging that an unidentified employee repeatedly sexually abused her at the Catholic school she attended in Bellevue more than four decades ago.

“Even though we filed the lawsuit, the archdiocese’s lawyers agreed to interview my client, and once they heard her and understood the nature of what happened, they didn’t have any doubt that this occurred,” said Darrell Cochran, the woman’s attorney. “They accepted it and moved forward to do the right thing.”

The woman, identified only by her initials, T.R., was an 8-year-old third grade student at the archdiocese’s private St. Louise Parish School in 1977 when an unidentified playground attendant started giving her candy, teaching her to kiss and otherwise began sexually grooming her, according to Cochran and the lawsuit, which was filed in April.

The employee,…

View Cache

Due to concerns over the rapid spread of the Omicron COVID-19 variant, a much-anticipated meeting between Pope Francis and about 30 Indigenous delegates is now being postponed.

Made up of Indigenous elders, residential school survivors, and youth, the group would have been headed to the Vatican later this month in hopes of securing an apology from the Pope for the Catholic Church’s involvement with Canada’s residential schools.

“Our shared commitment to walking together towards healing and reconciliation remains strong,” read a joint statement issued by the Canadian Bishops, Assembly of First Nations, Metis National Council, and Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami. Organizers note that the meeting is not being cancelled but postponed to “the earliest opportunity in 2022.”

Crystal Gail Fraser, a Gwichya Gwich’in assistant professor in history and native studies at the University of Alberta, said that while the news is unfortunate, it’s not surprising considering…

View Cache

Mahoney accused of sexual assault

More than 40 years after the alleged abuse took place, a priest has been removed from public ministry after his diocese determined the allegations may be true.

The independent Diocesan Review Board found a claim of alleged sexual abuse against a minor that was lodged against 86-year-old Peter Mahoney to be credible, the diocese announced Nov. 22. The alleged crimes took place between 1975 and 1978 while he was serving in Brooklyn.

The DRB’s determination does not mean the allegations are true and that Mahoney is guilty, only that the panel believes them to be credible.

“But that determination is enough to get the priest removed from service,” a spokesperson from the diocese told the Chronicle.

At the time of the DRB’s determination, Mahoney had been ministering to the Hispanic community at Saint Anne Catholic Church in Flushing and St. Nicholas of Tolentine in Jamaica,…

View Cache

A former priest of the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh was arrested this week for allegedly filming a teen in a bathroom stall.

Paul Spisak, 77, was arrested Wednesday on charges of photographic sexual acts involving a child or minor, possession of child pornography and invasion of privacy.

A 13-year-old boy saw Mr. Spisak filming him through a crack in a bathroom stall at the Target store in East Liberty, according to a criminal complaint. The boy told his father that he noticed Mr. Spisak filming him with his phone from the cracks in the adjacent stall while the teen was using the bathroom.

The boy’s father reported the incident to a Target security officer, who confronted Mr. Spisak, but the former priest denied the allegations.

The security guard called police, and an officer arrived as Mr. Spisak was attempting to flee the scene, the complaint says, with the boy’s father…

View Cache

In 1992, Anthony William Caruana faced two separate trials after students of Chevalier College in the Southern Highlands complained to police of his sexual abuse in 1989.

The Catholic priest, who was also a boarding master, rugby coach and band master at the school, had initially been charged with 11 offences against seven boys, but only two charges made it to trial.

With prosecutors at that time legally unable to link the two charges or show evidence to the juries of Caruana’s tendency to sexually abuse the boys under his care, he was acquitted.

Nearly 30 years later, his victims – now totalling 12, many of whom carry psychological scars not only from the abuse, but from being disbelieved – have finally seen justice.

Following a seven-week trial in the NSW District Court, Caruana was convicted in July of 22 counts of indecent assault and four counts of sexual intercourse with…

View Cache

Police and a former student of child abuser Anthony William Peter Caruana have described the pedophile priest’s jailing for 15 years as a good day.

The former Chevalier College teacher, now 80, attacked students in a swimming pool, a band storage room, dormitories, his office and on rugby pitches while working at the NSW Southern Highlands school from 1982 to 1989.

He was jailed on Friday for 26 offences against 12 boys.

The victims were aged 12 to 14 and often boarded at the school.

“It’s been 39 years in the coming and it’s a good day for all the victims,” Detective Senior Constable Brad Streeting told AAP.

“Justice for them has finally come and hopefully this will add to the closure for them.”

The sentiment was shared by Brendan King, who described Caruana as “an arrogant prick right to the end” who’d “lied and lied in the witness box”…

View Cache

[Via National Catholic Reporter]

Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, currently on sabbatical following criticism of his handling of clerical abuse cases in the Cologne Archdiocese, faces further pressure following the announcement that contracts he awarded to lawyers and communications consultants will be investigated under canon law.

The German Catholic news agency KNA reported that Bishop Rolf Steinhäuser, interim head of the archdiocese, said there were indications that neither the property council nor the cathedral chapter had been involved in the awarding of contracts, as would have been required under canon law. Woelki and Msgr. Markus Hofmann, archdiocesan vicar general, awarded the contracts, KNA reported.

After a meeting with the council and chapter, Steinhäuser immediately commissioned two independent canon lawyers to examine the matter and informed the Vatican, the archdiocese said Dec. 7.

Earlier this year, after revelations about the handling of abuse reports in the archdiocese, a Vatican investigation said Woelki…

View Cache

A meeting at the Vatican between Pope Francis and Canadian Indigenous people who were abused at church-run boarding schools has been postponed because of the new coronavirus variant.

National Chief RoseAnne Archibald of the Assembly of First Nations said Tuesday that the delegation had planned to travel to Rome next week and meet with the pope on Dec. 20, but the trip is being put off because of the omicron variant. Many of the First Nation delegates are elderly.

“Particularly for many elderly delegates as well as those who live in remote communities, the risk of infection and the fluid nature of the evolving global situation presents too great a threat at this time,” the Indigenous groups and Canadian Catholic bishops said in a joint statement.

From the 19th century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 Indigenous children in Canada were forced to attend state-funded Christian schools as an effort…

View Cache

The Swiss bishops’ conference and the nation’s conference of religious orders have commissioned an independent study of sexual abuse cases within the Catholic Church in the country during the second half of the 20th century.

In a statement released Dec. 6, the bishops’ conference said two history professors from the University of Zurich — Monika Dommann and Marietta Maier — will assemble and lead a team of researchers who will begin their work by March 2022.

“Many people have suffered greatly as a result of sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church in Switzerland,” the statement said. Undertaking “a scientific reexamination is first and foremost a duty to the victims, especially to learn lessons for the future.”

The announcement came after the October release of a report in France by an independent commission which estimated that more than 330,000 children had been abused by church personnel there since the 1950s.

In early November, the Portuguese bishops’ conference announced…

View Cache

Two months after the publication of the CIASE report on Sexual Abuse in the Church in France, Swiss bishops announce the establishment of an independent commission to investigate into historical cases of abuse committed in the Church in Switzerland.

Following the publication of the CIASE Report in France, the Catholic Church in Switzerland has decided conduct an independent investigation into sexual abuse committed by Church members in the country.

The Conferences of Swiss Bishops (CES) and of religious orders and other communities of consecrated life in Switzerland (KOVOS) together with Central Roman Catholic Conference of Switzerland (Rkz), which brings together 24 cantonal Catholic lay organizations, have entrusted the investigation to the University of Zurich. The study will look into historical cases of “sexual exploitation within the Roman Catholic Church in Switzerland from the second half of the twentieth century”, a press release reports.   The study will focus on…

View Cache

The leaders of the Catholic Church in Switzerland have commissioned a study into the Swiss church’s history of sexual exploitation since the mid-20th century.

The Swiss Bishops’ Conference and two other organisations announced on Monday that two University of Zurich history professors, Monika Dommann and Marietta Maier, would lead the study which is due to officially launch in March 2022.

“Countless people have endured deep suffering linked to sexual abuse in the context of the Roman Catholic Church,” the organisations said. “Work of scientific memory is owed first of all to the victims, but it will also provide lessons for the future.”

The one-year pilot project will give the researchers access to files and archives “where possible and authorized under canonical and state law”. 

A scientific committee appointed by the Swiss History Society will oversee the project to guarantee its independence.

In 2010, the Swiss Catholic Church finally…

View Cache

Pope Francis has urged caution in the “interpretation” of a damning report into child sexual abuse by French Catholic clergy, saying a “historical situation” must be viewed in context.

A landmark inquiry overseen by an independent commission confirmed in October extensive sexual abuse of minors by priests in France dating from the 1950s to 2020.

“When we do this kind of study, we must be attentive to the interpretation we make of it,” the 84-year-old pontiff told reporters on board his flight back from a trip to Greece.

“Abuse 100 years ago, 70 years ago, was brutality. But the way it was experienced is not the same as today,” he said.

“For example, in the case of abuse in the church, the attitude was to cover it up — an attitude that unfortunately still exists today in a large number of families.”

He added that the “historical situation” must be…

View Cache

Aboard papal flight, Francis also mentions plans for second meeting with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill

Less than a week after accepting the resignation of Paris Archbishop Michel Aupetit following reports of an “ambiguous” relationship with a woman, Pope Francis on Dec. 6 defended the recently ousted prelate, saying “we cannot condemn.”

Aupetit, 70, offered his resignation to Francis last month after allegations surfaced that he had a relationship with a woman in 2012, prior to being made a bishop. 

The pope said he had not accepted the archbishop’s resignation “on the altar of truth, but on the altar of hypocrisy.”

The Paris archbishop has maintained that his relationship with the woman in question was not intimate. 

“If we do not know,” Francis told journalists, “we cannot condemn. Who knows? Ugly, eh?”

Although Francis’ defended the embattled prelate in flight, the Vatican previously announced on Dec….

View Cache

Pope Francis has given formal approval to a series of updates and modifications that have been made over the years to the norms regarding clerical sexual abuse and other crimes reserved to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The newest version of the so-called “Norms on the delicts reserved to the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith” does not introduce any new crimes, but it does seek to improve the procedural norms regarding the penal process and to update those canons connected with the recently revised “Book VI: Penal Sanctions in the Church” that was to go into effect Dec. 8.

The document, published by the Vatican Dec. 7, changes and updates modifications St. John Paul II in 2001 and Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 made to the list of canonical delicts or crimes reserved to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the procedures for handling such cases.

Since then, many new measures have…

View Cache

Warning: This story contains graphic details of alleged sexual assault

A law firm representing men who say they were sexually assaulted by at least five priests when they were children is requesting authorization for a class action lawsuit against the entire Diocese of Amos, in Quebec’s Abitibi region.

The application, being presented in the Superior Court of the District of Abitibi on Tuesday, targets the Diocese of Amos and the Bishop of Amos for alleged crimes from 1940 to the present day.

The men say they were between the ages of seven and 14 at the time of the alleged assaults.

The plaintiff representing the class action is a 65-year-old man who cannot be identified. He alleges that he was sexually assaulted on several occasions when he was between seven and 11 years old.

The motion, led by Montreal law firm Arsenault Dufresne Wee, alleges that Father Paul-Émile Bilodeau, a…

View Cache

A legal advocacy group in Timor-Leste has called on people in the Catholic-majority country to show respect for the alleged sex abuse victims of former priest Richard Daschbach.

In a public statement on Dec. 6, Jurídico Social Consultoria (JU,S) which represents the complainants, said it is important “to recognize that the victims and their families, and the society as a whole, have endured immense pain and suffering as a consequence of the acts that led to this case.”

JU,S  has urged members of the public to use restraint while publishing statements “aimed at demeaning, intimidating and harassing our sisters for solely choosing to use the available legal procedure to demand redress for their rights.”  

JU,S said that its efforts to pursue the case posed many challenges. “These included messages of hatred and of a xenophobic nature, incitements of violence on social media and within the local community against JU,S…

View Cache

Almost 20 years ago, clergy abuse survivor Phil Saviano told the first Voice of the Faithful conference: “I am not faithful.” He said the repeated assaults he suffered from Fr. David Holley had led to losing his faith before he even went through puberty.

Yet, on Dec. 3, Saviano was buried in a rural cemetery of the Diocese of Worcester, after a funeral Mass at St. Denis Catholic Church in Douglas, Massachusetts.

It was the very church where Saviano had been sexually assaulted repeatedly as a boy by Holley. A familiar photo shows Phil in front of St. Denis – the church and the statue – in the late 1990s, wearing a Recovering Catholic T-shirt. What are we to make of Phil Saviano’s provocative final gesture?

Phil’s funeral Mass (the video is available here) was nothing like the healing Masses and ceremonies of…

View Cache

Billionaire businessman Andrew Forrest is poised to snap up prime farmland surrounding Australia’s only monastic town of New Norcia, 130 kilometres north of Perth in WA.

Key points:

• The historic townsite north of Perth is not part of the sale
• It’s the first time the land is being sold in 175 years
• The property is touted as some of the best farming land in the state

In a deal subject to approval by the Catholic Church, Mr Forrest’s Tattarang company is set to buy the 7,975 hectares of farmland surrounding the historic townsite that was established by Benedictine monks as part of an Aboriginal mission in 1847.

It will be the first time the land, near the banks of the Moore River, has changed hands since then.

The remaining small community of monks at New Norcia made the “difficult decision” earlier this year to sell the land to pay for historical sexual…

View Cache

The new Netflix documentary “Procession” follows six men who were sexually abused by Catholic priests from the Kansas City area. The film, made by University of Missouri Associate Professor Robert Greene, shows the survivors reclaiming power through drama therapy techniques.

The men attempt to heal from decades of pain by creating short films, some set at the very location the abuse happened. The scenes aren’t graphic, but symbolic of the power priests have.

All of the men agreed that child actor Terrick Trobough would play their younger selves. And the men themselves acted in the scenes as well.

“Just having actors come off the streets with no skin in the game wouldn’t help us raise this up to the level we’re trying to get [to],” one survivor Dan Laurine said.

The film takes viewers through the three-year process the men took to create the scenes, offering an intimate look at…

View Cache

On October 5, 2021, the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE), chaired by Jean-Marc Sauvé, published the report that the Conference of Bishops of France (CEF) and by the Conference of Men and Women Religious of France (COREFF) had commissioned it to produce.

The following is an analysis by Fr. Arnaud Sélégny (SSPX).

The sentence fell like a cleaver: the president announced that 216,000 minors had been victims of assault by ecclesiastical staff or consecrated persons – priests, deacons, men or women religious – a figure which would rise to 330,000 if the lay staff attached to the Church were taken into consideration. These numbers obviously went off like a bomb. They were relayed and taken as final and firmly established.

The report also presents a series of explanatory causes, from which it draws a list of 45 recommendations to implement the suggestions, and the reforms it advocates.

…

View Cache

Everybody likes Pope Francis. Except, it seems, U.S. Catholic bishops. 

On the other hand, no one seems to like the bishops — they damaged their own credibility with their 2002 “Dallas Charter” on clerical sex abuse, which sanctioned only priests and deacons but left bishops alone. 

It was former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, known then, as now, for his own predatory acts, who suggested eliminating bishops from the document. 

Once again, today, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops seems bereft of common sense. 

Forget the worldwide Synod on Synodality, a listening exercise ordered by Francis, who wants to hear from Catholics and non-Catholics alike about how the church can move forward in the current century. Many American bishops are content to ignore it: Only half of the U.S. bishops have even named someone to run the synod project in their dioceses.

That is, half of the U.S. bishops are…

View Cache

Newly named Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller says he wants to get to the bottom of why Ottawa abandoned its appeal of a ruling releasing the Catholic Church from its settlement obligations to residential school survivors.

“I am as puzzled as everyone,” he told The Canadian Press in a recent, wide-ranging interview.“

“I don’t know what there is to do yet.”

The ruling, handed down by a Saskatchewan judge in July 2015, found a deal had been struck between the federal government and a corporation of Catholic entities. That deal released the church groups from their remaining obligations within the $79-million worth of payments and in-kind services owed to survivors under the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, approved in 2006.

That included, for example, a “best efforts” fundraising campaign to generate $25 million, for which court only heard the groups raised around $3 million since the agreement took effect in 2007.

Today, the…

View Cache

Canada’s Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister says the federal government will soon release some of the residential school records it’s been criticized for withholding to a national archives centre.

Marc Miller also says there’s no evidence the Liberal cabinet, including former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, was told of a 2015 decision to drop a court case that freed the Catholic Church from compensating survivors.

“Knowing what we know today — it doesn’t seem right,” he told The Canadian Press in a recent interview.

In October, the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation said Ottawa had yet to provide key documents detailing the specific histories of each government-funded, church-run institution that made up the residential school system.

The statement came in response to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau telling Indigenous leaders in Kamloops, B.C., that the federal government had turned over all of the records in its possession, a claim the Winnipeg-based centre said wasn’t…

View Cache

When Robert Bender arrived at Brewster Hall in 1980, Conrad Mainwaring was the first person he met.

“He was the face of Syracuse University,” Bender said.

Mainwaring, who worked in a residence hall at the time, introduced himself while leading Bender and his mother up the stairs. When he learned that Bender was a gymnast, Mainwaring, a former Olympian who was studying and coaching at SU, became excited, Bender said.

In the following weeks, Mainwaring watched Bender practice at Archbold Gymnasium. He told stories about the Olympics. Eventually, Mainwaring sexually assaulted Bender.

But unlike the survivors who have sued SU for employing the man who abused them as children, Bender has no legal recourse. He is just six months older than some of the plaintiffs currently battling the university in court, but because Bender was 18 when Mainwaring began abusing him, he cannot sue.

Survivors, legislators and advocacy groups hope…

View Cache

It was one of the craziest stories of 2019, and now it’s one of the most infuriating stories of 2021.

I’m referring to the case of Angel Garcia, the former Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany deacon who last week was indicted on two felony counts related to the sexual abuse of children — acts that he allegedly committed when he should have been in state prison for sexually abusing his 6-year-old goddaughter years ago. 

It’s quite possible that the only reason Garcia was finally consigned to prison two years ago was because Cayla Harris, at the time a newly arrived Hearst Fellow at the Times Union, uncovered a monumental judicial-bureaucratic oversight while she was building a database of regional sexual offenders and their status. The project was part of her coverage of abuse cases launched under the state’s Child Victims Act law, which in August 2019 opened a one-year “lookback window”…

View Cache

The activist has died at age 69.

Phil Saviano never let go. From the time in the basement of St. Denis Church, when he was molested by a priest named David Holley, through the years of cover-ups and denials, through the belated—and ongoing—vindication of himself and thousands of other victims in the early 1990s, through a lifetime of deadly medical problems that began with an AIDS diagnosis in 1992 to the cancer that finally killed him over the weekend, Phil Saviano just would…not…let…go. He would not let go of the crimes coated with candle wax, their stench camouflaged by incense. He sunk his teeth into an institutional Roman Catholic Church that had turned into an international conspiracy to obstruct justice, and he hung on with the kind of strength of character that we little Catholic schoolchildren had been taught was the martyr’s true glory. The truth set him free, but…

View Cache

Since Gov. Murphy signed a 2019 law that suspended the statute of limitations for civil sex abuse lawsuits for two years, more than 1,200 cases were filed — two-thirds of them against clergy or a religious institution.

A window to justice opened, and the people who had spent years or decades harboring an unfathomable pain stepped through it.

But the deadline for those victims to file suit ended Tuesday, and examination of the available data makes this much clear: The suspension of the statute needs to be extended, and our lawmakers should consider waiving it entirely.

Victims of abuse need time to decide whether they can share their experience. That’s why the bill championed by Senator Joe Vitale was crucial, because the previous window for civil action in our state was preposterous: Victims had to bring civil suits before they turned 20 or within two years from the…

View Cache

A Cincinnati priest pleaded guilty Thursday to raping an altar boy in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a day before jury selection was set to begin in his trial.

The Rev. Geoff Drew showed no emotion in court as the victim, now a man in his 40s, as well as the man’s wife described the impact of Drew’s crimes.

“You killed me,” the man told Drew. “I’ve been through hell.”

The man’s wife said that for many years her husband believed he was to blame for what happened.

“That he had been too weak … or too kind or too trusting,” she said. “That he was unloved, and worst of all, that he was alone.”

As part of the plea agreement, Drew received a seven-year prison sentence, a sentence the victim had been consulted about, according to prosecutors.

Drew pleaded guilty to nine counts of rape for incidents that happened between 1988…

View Cache

Father Geoff Drew of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati was placed on administrative leave on July 23, 2019 as a result of a pattern of behaviors – such as boundary violations and texting a minor – in contradiction to the Decree on Child Protection. Subsequent to being placed on administrative leave, Father Drew was arrested and charged with nine counts of rape. These were new, previously unreported allegations dating back to the late 1980s, a decade before he entered the seminary to begin formation for the priesthood.

Information previously released about this matter can be found on the website of the archdiocese:

Fr. Geoff Drew Information

Given the guilty plea accepted today in court, the Archdiocese of Cincinnati will now seek the laicization of Father Geoff Drew with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Holy See.

“Father Geoff Drew will never again have a priestly assignment in…

View Cache

[See original article for links to videos]

A Cincinnati priest pleaded guilty Thursday to nine counts of raping a 10-year-old altar boy multiple times between 1988 and 1991 and was sentenced to seven years in prison.

That sentence, worked out in a plea deal with Hamilton County prosecutors on the eve of the start of his trial, is far less than he would have faced had he been convicted of all charges, up to 99 years.

Now, Father Geoff Drew, 59, will be released from prison in 2026. He received credit for time served at the county jail while awaiting trial, 27 months.

Drew is required to register as a Tier III sex offender for the rest of his life.

The priest wore a face covering in court, appeared to show no emotion and did not speak.

His attorney said on his behalf: “The defense expresses remorse over what happened.”

…

View Cache

A Catholic priest from Cincinnati pleaded guilty on Thursday to raping a 10-year-old altar decades ago, one day before the jury was to be selected for his trial.

The Rev. Geoff Drew, 59, was reportedly emotionless at his court appearance when he was directly addressed by his victim, now in his 40s.

“The truth is no amount of time will make up for the child that you murdered,” the victim told his abuser, according to Fox 19.

“Any chance of having intimacy, any chance to actually live, love, find joy, was stolen,” the victim said. “You made me unusable, undesirable, dirty and broken, but I trust in God that this is bigger than you. This is bigger than me. And this is in his authority to have vengeance. And one day you will have to stand in front of him.”

Drew was sentenced to seven years in…

View Cache

He played a pivotal role in helping The Boston Globe uncover the widespread scandal in the Catholic Church and was portrayed in the movie “Spotlight.”

Phil Saviano carried a terrible secret for much of his life — that in the early 1960s, when he was 11, he was sexually molested by his parish priest in Massachusetts.

Nearly 30 years later, suffering from AIDS and believing he would soon die, he decided to go public about the abuse and disclosed his experience to The Boston Globe. As it happened, Mr. Saviano lived, and he went on to play a pivotal role in bringing to light the widespread pedophile priest scandal coursing through the Roman Catholic Church.

He provided key information and guidance for a series of articles by The Globe’s Spotlight team, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2003. And his role…

View Cache

Just two years after his ordination in 2017, the Rev. Robert McWilliams was charged with a cascade of sexual assault and child pornography charges. He was sentenced to life imprisonment a few weeks ago, on Nov. 9, in a federal criminal court in Cleveland.

The McWilliams case came as an unhappy shock to Catholics in the Diocese of Cleveland and all over the United States who might have hoped that years of procedural changes and an enhanced screening process for seminarians would have put an end to the ordination of priests like Father McWilliams. The most recent report card from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection, released the same day as Father McWilliams’s sentencing, offered some reason for optimism. Although 4,228 allegations of sexual abuse by clergy surfaced between July 1, 2019, and June 30, 2020, only 22 came from individuals who are now minors; the…

View Cache

Guam’s Catholic Church has come up with a revised proposed payment of US$27.96 million to US$34.38 million to those who claimed they were raped or sexually molested by priests and other members of the clergy when they were minors, dating back to the 1950s.

That’s more than US$100,000 per clergy sex abuse survivor if the award is based on equal amounts, although the process is far from over.

Clergy sex abuse survivors and other claimants would need to vote to either accept or reject the plan from the Archdiocese of Agana.

The bankruptcy court’s confirmation of the plan is also needed. Once the plan is confirmed after a hearing, payments may begin about three months later.

The proposed compensation to abuse survivors is part of the Archdiocese of Agana’s First Amended Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Plan of reorganisation filed Thursday with the District Court of Guam.

The plan is meant to…

View Cache

Portugal is going forward with a commission to investigate possible cases of child sex abuse within the Catholic Church, as the lay head of the committee urged victims to come forward on Thursday.

The Independent Committee for the Study of Child Abuse in the Church has been set up by the Portuguese bishops’ conference and will be headed by a child psychiatrist, Pedro Strecht.

Alongside him will be a team of six professionals including psychiatrists, a former supreme court judge, and a social worker.

The team will begin working together from January next year, collecting testimonies from all of those who want to come forward and report the abuse they have suffered.

Strecht said he hopes victims will overcome their fear and reluctance and get in touch, even if the abuse happened decades ago. He promised anonymity for anyone who does.

“Encouraging victims to come forward requires a lot of…

View Cache

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Archbishop Michel Aupetit of Paris, who had offered to step down to avoid “becoming a source of divisions,” after an article in the Le Point weekly claimed he mismanaged his archdiocese and had an affair with a woman while he was vicar general.

The pope also named retired Archbishop Georges Pontier to temporarily lead the archdiocese as the apostolic administrator; the 78-year-old archbishop had served as apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese of Avignon from January to July after deep divisions and financial difficulties lead to the early retirement of Archbishop Jean-Pierre Marie Cattenoz.

The Vatican made the announcement Dec. 2.

Archbishop Aupetit, 70, had told France’s Catholic La Croix daily Nov. 26 he had submitted his resignation to the pope and awaited his answer, adding that his behavior toward the unnamed woman “may have been ambiguous,” but had not extended to “an intimate…

View Cache

Well, the Holy Father turned that one around right quickly. “That” is the resignation of the Archbishop of Paris, Michel Aupetit, which the Press Office of the Holy See on Thursday told the world Pope Francis has accepted. Francis had Aupetit’s letter late last month, just after Le Point published something between an exposé and an unflattering profile of the Parisian churchman, detailing his strongman governance of the French capital archdiocese and alleging an affair with a woman some years before he became a bishop.

Archbishop Aupetit denied his relationship with the woman was sexual, but called it a “mistake” in a statement and said he offered his resignation “to preserve the diocese from the division that suspicion and loss of trust are continuing to provoke.”

Other churchmen credibly accused of much worse wrongdoing have seen their offers of resignation languish for months and even years.

From Donald Cardinal Wuerl – who fudged…

View Cache

When I filed my story on the problems of the diocese of Paris, A Crisis of Governance in the French Church, for this week’s Tablet, I had little sense that Pope Francis would accept Archbishop Michel Aupetit’s resignation before the week was done. The news slipped out in the Vatican’s daily bollettino yesterday, while the Pope was on his way to Cyprus

Michel Aupetit was not the right man for Paris. He glaringly lacked the human, political and cultural skills to run the most important diocese in France. He alienated many of his priests; some saw him as an old-fashioned GP (he was one before coming a priest) with a “doctor knows best” attitude. The Vatican knew all this; Libération reports that the Papal Nuncio to France, Mgr Celestino Miglior, had been trying discreetly to move Aupetit for some time – perhaps to exfiltrate him to a position in the Roman curia.

Aupetit’s resignation…

View Cache

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Michel Aupetit from the position of Archbishop of Paris following reports that Aupetit had a consensual “intimate relationship” with a woman.

The move was announced in a statement from the Vatican Thursday after French magazine Le Point broke the news of the relationship on November 22.

Aupetit also released a statement after the Vatican announced its decision.

“I was, of course, greatly disturbed by the attacks I was subjected to,” reads the statement.

“I ask forgiveness of those whom I might have hurt and I assure you all of my deep friendship and my prayer, which will always be yours.

“The alleged relationship came to light due to a love email Aupetit sent to his secretary by mistake in 2012, when he was the Vicar-General of Paris, according to Le Point.

Despite admitting in the Le Point article that his…

View Cache

Pope Francis on Thursday accepted the resignation of the archbishop of Paris, who unexpectedly offered to step down last week after admitting to an “ambiguous” relationship with a woman in 2012.

Paris Archbishop Michel Aupetit said in a statement Thursday that he offered to step down “to preserve the diocese from the division that suspicion and loss of trust are continuing to provoke.”

The Vatican said in a statement that the pope accepted Aupetit’s offer, and named Monsignor Georges Pontier to serve temporarily in his place pending the pontiff’s appointment of a permanent new archbishop.

The resignation comes amid great upheaval in the French Catholic Church. A report in October estimated some 3,000 French priests had committed sexual abuse over the past 70 years. And last year, the pope accepted the resignation of French Roman Catholic Cardinal Philippe Barbarin in connection with the coverup of sexual abuse of dozens of boys by a…

View Cache

Gone too soon

Philip James Saviano

June 23, 1952 – November 28, 2021

Philip James Saviano passed away on November 28, 2021. His funeral service will be live streamed from St. Denis Catholic Church (located in Douglas, Massachusetts) on Friday, December 3, 2021 at 10:00 a.m. EST.

[Note: This Catholic funeral Mass will be said by Fr. Ron Coyne; see his homily on clergy abuse. Eulogies will be given toward the end of the Mass.

Phil Saviano, clergy abuse victim who refused to stay silent, dies at 69, by Bryan Marquard, Boston Globe

Phil Saviano, advocate for survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic priests, dies at 69, by Matt Schudel, Washington Post]

View Cache

A commission investigating allegations of historical child sexual abuse by members of the Portuguese Catholic church urged victims on Thursday to speak up and help them lift a veil of silence around the issue.

“We want (victims) to report, finally and without fear, what happened to them,” the head of the newly-created commission, psychiatrist Pedro Strecht, told a news conference during which he announced the team conducting the investigation.

Portugal’s Bishops Conference announced the creation of the body last month after a major investigation in France revealed that around 3,000 priests and religious officials sexually abused 200,000 children over the past 70 years. 

The Roman Catholic Church has been rocked by sexual abuse scandals around the world, often involving children, over the past 20 years.

“The Portuguese church is the first to want to shed light on this issue,” said Jose Ornelas, head of the Bishops’ Conference. “If I expect…

View Cache

A clergy sexual abuse case with ties to the Columban Fathers Mission House in Milton in the 1970s and 1980s was settled earlier this month with the plaintiff receiving a sum in the “high five figures,” according his attorney, Mitchell Garabedian.

The plaintiff, whose name is not listed in the complaint, said in the court case filed in Norfolk Superior Court on Nov. 3 that he was sexually abused by two priests working at St. Mark’s Parish in Dorchester starting in 1979 and 1980.

View Cache

Clergy sex abuse survivors and other creditors in the Archdiocese of Agana’s bankruptcy are proposing much higher payouts, including more real property asset transfers and insurance payments for the victims, compared to the church’s proposal of up to $34 million.

The creditors’ committee, for example, is looking at a minimum of $100 million in settlement payments from insurance firms: $45 million from the archdiocese’s insurers, and “not less than” $55 million from the Boy Scouts of America’s insurers.

When the archdiocese submitted its reorganization plan and disclosure statement Thursday, it anticipated getting only $13 million from its two insurers. 

The Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors on Tuesday filed its own archdiocese reorganization plan to get the church out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

A key part of the two competing plans is the cash, real property and other resources to help compensate some 270 individuals who claim they were raped, sexually…

View Cache

A once high-ranking Omaha priest, charged with stealing tens of thousands of dollars, is also now linked to several priests named in a recent state investigation detailing widespread sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. 

A once high-ranking Omaha priest, charged with stealing tens of thousands of dollars, is also now linked to several priests named in a recent state investigation detailing widespread sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. 

The report, released last month by Attorney General Doug Peterson indicates that Rev. Michael Gutgsell, when he was Chancellor of the Omaha Archdiocese from 1994 to 2003, knew about abuse allegations against three priests and all but ignored them.

The first case regarding the 73-year-old Gutgsell involves Rev. John Fiala who died in 2017.

[See our video report above]

According to the AG’s report, one of Fiala’s four victims met with Chancellor Gutgsell in 2002 and accused Fiala of sexually grooming him when he…

View Cache

[Note from BishopAccountability: Click on “Read original article” and scroll down to hear the 11-minute interview of BA co-director Anne Barrett Doyle about Phil. The interview opens with a wonderful clip from Phil’s remarks in accepting SNAP’s Pioneer Award in 2015. Here’s a link to the YouTube video of that powerful speech. The clip played by Boston Public Radio occurs at the 26:30 mark in Phil’s speech.]

Gov. Charlie Baker discussed why testing is not more widely available across the state, his efforts to create a single QR code showing proof of vaccination, and his dissatisfaction with the state legislature’s delay in spending the American Rescue Plan Act money. Baker is the governor of Massachusetts.

The Revs. Irene Monroe and Emmett G. Price III reacted to the conviction of Ahmaud Arbery’s murderers last week. Monroe is a syndicated religion columnist, the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail and…

View Cache

In the wake of a recent devastating report by a special commission in France investigating sexual abuse of minors by clergy, a new committee has been established by the religious men and women’s conference (the Conférence des Religieux et Religieuses de France or CORREF) to hear testimonials of victims of sexual abuse by religious men and women, including abuses suffered by adults and members of religious communities.

Many stories of abuses against nuns have been reported without action being taken. This new committee will allow any potential victim to state their case. Named “Commission Indépendante de Reconnaissance et de Réparation” (“Independent Commission for Recognition and Reparation,” or CRR) the new committee will collect testimonials of abuse. It will listen to victims of religious men and women, in the hope that a mediation could lead to an agreement between the parties. It will also look into what can be done in…

View Cache

New Jersey’s two-year window that made it easier for victims of child sexual abuse to file lawsuits is closing, and attorneys for some of the hundreds of plaintiffs say it could take years more for the cases against Catholic clerics and dioceses and other entities to be resolved.

Tuesday marked the deadline under the Child Victims Act signed by Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy in 2019, which gave victims who would otherwise have been barred by statute of limitations laws two years to file their claims.

Since Dec. 1, 2019, more than 1,200 lawsuits had been filed through the end of October. About two-thirds of those named religious entities, according to the state judiciary. Lawsuits against schools represent about 14% and about 9% name the Boy Scouts.

Attorneys who represent a total of several hundred plaintiffs said Tuesday they’ve received a flurry of inquiries in recent weeks as the deadline approached….

View Cache

A high school student gets assaulted. Their innocence is shattered; their life, forever changed.

School officials learn about the incident. They do worse than nothing; they cover it up, and even laugh about the matter. Their superiors look the other way. The enablers and abusers get protected; the survivor gets ostracized. And when critics cry foul, the institution plays the victim card.

Just another day at Mater Dei High School, the crown jewel of Catholic education in the Diocese of Orange.

Its powerhouse football team is making national news right now, and not just because the Monarchs are on the cusp of claiming their fourth national championship in five seasons. A lawsuit filed last month against Mater Dei and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange says a former football player suffered a broken nose, a traumatic brain injury and permanent scarring in a February hazing ritual called “Bodies” that amounted to…

View Cache

The departure of Aupetit creates a new challenge for the French Church.

The Pope has accepted the resignation of the Archbishop of Paris Michel Aupetit and has  appointed Mgr Georges Pontier as appostolic administrator.

The affair is a further blow to France’s Catholic Church, still dealing with a shocking report on clerical sexual abuse of minors.

Archbishop Aupetit had unexpectedly offered to resign last week over media reports about his brusque management style.

Discontent with the archbishop burst into the open when the centre-right newsweekly Le Point published a long inquiry into his controversial decisions and spoke of “his scathing ways, his singular lack of listening and empathy”.

It also reported a decade-old relationship with a woman, which Aupetit insists was not intimate and was reported to his superiors. 

The case has been a headache for Pope Francis, forced to decide whether to back a much-criticised bishop or find a new face…

View Cache

Pope Francis accepted the resignation of the archbishop of Paris. Michel Aupetit offered to step down over “ambiguous behavior” with a woman.

Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Michel Aupetit, the archbishop of Paris on Thursday over his “ambiguous” relationship with a woman, the Vatican and the French Bishops Conference said.

Aupetit offered his resignation after a report in Le Point magazine surfaced allegations that he had engaged in a consensual relationship with a woman, which he denied.

What has Aupetit said?

In a statement, Aupetit offered that he stepped down “to preserve the diocese from the division that suspicion and loss of trust are continuing to provoke.”

A spokeswoman for the diocese last week said Aupetit “had ambiguous behavior with a person he was very close to,” adding the relationship was neither sexual nor “a loving relationship.”

She said Aupetit’s resignation was “not a confession of guilt, but a humble…

View Cache

Members of a French Catholic academy have criticized the methodology of a landmark abuse report, prompting resignations from the group.

Eight representatives of the prestigious Académie catholique de France, which has around 250 members, questioned the conclusions of the final report published by the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE) on Oct. 5.

The academy members wrote a 15-page document that acknowledged the need for an independent study of clerical abuse. But they argued that CIASE departed “in a troubling way” from its mandate and cast doubt on its headline figures.

The almost 2,500-page CIASE report said that the number of children who suffered abuse by priests, deacons, monks, or nuns from 1950 to 2020 was estimated to be around 216,000.

It added that when abuse by other Church workers was also considered “the estimated number…

View Cache

The leader of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston on Tuesday praised the courage of Phil Saviano, a clergy sexual abuse survivor who played a key role in bringing the global scandal to light and who died Sunday at the age of 69.

“We are very sorry to hear of the passing of Phil Saviano and are consoled to know that his brother, Jim, accompanied him during his illness,” said Cardinal Seán O’Malley in a statement. “Phil was a landmark voice of courage for survivors and played a significant role in uncovering the darkness of clergy sexual abuse in the life of the Church.”

O’Malley said the relentless advocacy of Saviano, whose personal story and precise documentation of perpetrator priests helped inform The Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the abuse crisis, forced the church to reckon with its history of harming minors.

“Phil’s…

View Cache

Phil Saviano, who was abused by a Catholic parish priest when he was a child in the 1970s and who as an adult in 2002 helped shed light on clergy sex abuse of minors in the Archdiocese of Boston, died Nov. 28. He was 69.

Saviano died at his brother’s home in Douglas after a long battle with bladder cancer. His brother Jim Saviano was his caretaker in his final days.

Boston Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley in a Nov. 30 statement called him “a landmark voice of courage for survivors” who “played a significant role in uncovering the darkness of clergy sexual abuse in the life of the church.”

“We are very sorry to hear of the passing of Phil Saviano and are consoled to know that his brother Jim accompanied him during his illness,” the cardinal said.

“Phil’s strident advocacy and his role in the investigative reporting of clergy…

View Cache

The Springfield Diocese has added another name to the list of clergy who have been credibly accused of sex abuse.

The list continues to grow for clergy who have been accused of sex abuse within the Springfield Diocese. The Diocese said the late Father Joseph Quinlan was added to the list based on a credible finding by their review board. His name was added due to an alleged incident involving sexual abuse to a minor in 1974.

The late Fr. Joseph P. Quinlan added to list of credibly accused clergy by the Diocese of Springfield 

Quinlan now joins a list of more than 40 names after the Diocese began a new policy this past summer amid a scandal over rape allegations against late Bishop Christopher Weldon. Bishop William Byrne said the Diocese has been working to publish names who have a credible allegation of sexual abuse against them.

In…

View Cache

A former assistant pastor at a Catholic church in Northwest Washington who is serving a prison sentence for sexually abusing children was found guilty Monday in a separate case of sexually abusing an adult parishioner, officials said.

After a one-day trial in D.C. Superior Court and hearing a victim impact statement, Judge Juliet McKenna sentenced Urbano Vazquez, 49, to the maximum sentence of 180 days on one count of misdemeanor sexual abuse, officials said. That term will be served consecutively to a 15-year sentence that was imposed after Vazquezwas convicted in 2019 of four felony counts of child sexual abuse, according to a statement by the District’s U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves and Police Chief Robert J. Contee III.

Catholic priest found guilty of sexually abusing girls at his D.C. parish

The abuse of the woman occurred in April 2017 during a confession at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart…

View Cache

Robert Brennan has officially assumed the role as the eighth Bishop of Brooklyn, taking over the Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens from scandal-plagued Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, who has presided over the Diocese’s 1.3 million Catholics since 2003.

Brennan, 59, formally assumed the role at an installation ceremony, presided over by Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, and Archbishop Christophe Pierre, Apostolic Nuncio to the US, at the Co-Cathedral of St. Joseph in Prospect Heights. Brennan previously served as the Bishop of Columbus, Ohio since 2019.

“From the day that my appointment was announced at the end of September through today and going forward, I just experienced such an incredible welcome,” Brennan said at a press conference before the mass on Tuesday morning. “Back in September my heartstrings were tugging as I was leaving Columbus, but now that I’ve been here a couple days, I can’t wait to get started.”

DiMarzio…

View Cache

Indigenous people in Canada and the U.S. have been reckoning with the legacy of assimilationist boarding schools for years. Now non-Native people must too.

North america’s indigenous peoples carry a painful past.This truth was laid bare when the mass graves of hundreds of Native children who died while attending residential schools were discovered in Canada this summer. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, thousands of Native children in the United States and Canada were forced into assimilationist boarding schools that sought to strip them of their culture and heritage. Many died from disease, starvation, or physical abuse. Most were buried hastily, sometimes two or three small bodies to a grave. Outside the Native community, their deaths have been lost to obscurity, a painful chapter in a long-ago history, willfully forgotten. But try as they might, non-Native people cannot dodge the past.

Indigenous people on both sides of what Natives people call the…

View Cache

‘The Veil of Silence,’ a new book by Vatican reporter Salvatore Cernuzio, details the racism, abuse and discrimination faced by nuns in female Catholic congregations.

In a newly published book, a Vatican journalist details the mental and physical abuse, oppression and racism experienced by religious sisters. Their treatment is often considered one of the most hidden issues within the Catholic Church.

The book, “The Veil of Silence: Abuses, Violence and Frustrations in Female Religious Life,” is written by Salvatore Cernuzio, a Vatican reporter from Italy, after he began to hear the stories of abuse and belittlement that exist in many female religious congregations.

Cernuzio tells the story of 11 nuns from different backgrounds and from countries all over the world who experienced forms of abuse — verbal, physical and sexual — while in a religious congregation. The stories differ in terms of who perpetrated the abuse, the reactions of the…

View Cache

Catholic Academy blasts abuse report released last October, but the independent commission’s head, Jean-Marc Sauvé, defends his group’s work in an exclusive interview with “La Croix”

The president and seven other members of the Catholic Academy of France (l’Académie catholique de France) have sharply attacked the country’s Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE) for producing what they consider to be a skewed document that could be “ruinous” for institutional Catholicism.

In private letters to the president of French Bishops’ Conference (CEF) and the papal nuncio to France, which were leaked to the media, the Academy members say the CIASE report was wrong to impute the Church with systemic responsibility for sexual abuse.

The eight members of the Academy – including its president, Hugues Portelli, a French senator and current dean of social sciences and economics at the Institut Catholique of Paris – questioned certain juridical and theological…

View Cache

• Vatican journalist Salvatore Cernuzio revealed the torment endured by 11 nuns
• His book ‘Veil of Silence’ chronicles the sexual, physical and psychological abuse
• Some nuns say they have been molested by priests or subjected to brutal labour
• Others complained of overt racism and a culture of protectionism in the church 

A new book has revealed horrors endured by Catholic nuns with some blamed for ‘provoking’ a priest’s sexual abuse and others told they ‘must suffer for Jesus’ with back-breaking labour.  

‘Veil of Silence’ by Salvatore Cernuzio, a journalist for the Vatican’s online outlet, Vatican News, recounts the experiences of 11 nuns as part of an age-old system in which their Mother Superiors exacted cruel punishments and Catholic priests molested them.

‘They chose to protect the good name of the institution by sacrificing the victim,’ Cernuzio’s introduction reads. 

‘The abused nun is transferred, accused of seducing the priest, and the priest stays at…

View Cache

A priest who served the Diocese of Springfield from 1971 until his death in 1989 was added Monday to the list of those credibly accused of sexual abuse.

The diocese listed the name of Joseph P. Quinlan on its online directory of priests and other church personnel against whom an allegation of abuse — in this instance, it was sexual abuse of a minor — has been upheld by the Review Board.

The diocese says it updates that list quarterly.

Quinlan was ordained at age 43 and was a longtime director of Cathedral High School in Springfield. He served or lived in four parishes. He never was in charge of a parish in Berkshire County, according to the diocese, whose list of credibly accused priests, updated in June, included 33 from Berkshire County.

A 34th priest from Berkshire County, the late James Paul Menge, was added to the list in…

View Cache

Most drivers and pedestrians who travel a part of Washington Street in West New York are oblivious to what the man whose name graces the thoroughfare has been accused of doing.

At least four people have said Msgr. Eugene Fanelli abused them when he was pastor at Our Lady of Libera Roman Catholic Church and they were children in the West New York parish.

“The fact that a street was named after him is heinous,” said Jason Schack, who filed a lawsuit in November alleging that Fanelli abused him for seven years, beginning when he was 8. “The sign needs to come down.”

In early November, Schack rallied in West New York with a number of clergy abuse victims and advocates who urged officials in the Hudson County town to remove the sign, which was erected to honor the longtime priest of the Newark Archdiocese, who was made a monsignor in 1989.

This isn’t the first time a…

View Cache

The Diocese of Springfield has added another priest to their list of credibly accused clergy.

Officials said Monday that the late Father Joseph Quinlan was added to the list by the diocesan review board.  He was added to the list based on an allegation from 1974 involving a minor.

Quinlan was ordained in 1971 and held positions at St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in Palmer and Cathedral High School in Springfield.  He also served in residence at Our Lady of Sacred Heart Parish in Springfield, St. Joseph Parish in Springfield, and St. Joseph’s Mission in East Longmeadow.

The diocese noted that an allegation being found credible doesn’t indicate a finding of guilt and because Quinlan died in 1989, he could not respond to the allegation.  The diocesan review board carefully reviewed the allegation, which included a report by their investigative team, and found the allegation to be…

View Cache

[Includes news video featuring photos and clips of Phil, along with comments by Terry McKiernan and Ann Hagan Webb]

View Cache

Phil Saviano, a clergy sex abuse survivor and whistleblower who played a pivotal role in exposing decades of predatory assaults by Roman Catholic priests in the United States, has died. He was 69.

Saviano’s story figured prominently in the 2015 Oscar-winning film “Spotlight” about The Boston Globe’s investigation that revealed how scores of priests molested children and got away with it because church leaders covered it up. He died on Sunday after a battle with gallbladder cancer, said his brother and caregiver, Jim Saviano.

In late October, Phil Saviano announced on his Facebook page that he was starting hospice care at his brother’s home in Douglas, Massachusetts, where he died.

“Things have been dicey the last few weeks,” he wrote, asking followers to “give a listen to Judy Collins singing ‘Bird On A Wire’ and think of me.”

Saviano played a central role in illuminating the scandal, which led to…

View Cache