ABUSE TRACKER

THE “twin-track” replacement for the Clergy Discipline Measure (CDM) proposed by the Lambeth working group and due to be discussed at General Synod in a week’s time is missing a track, critics say.

The Vicar-General of York, the Rt Worshipful Peter Collier QC, chaired an independent working group on the CDM set up by the Ecclesiastical Law Society (News, 24 February; Comment, 11 December 2020). In an online article for the Church Times this week, he expresses appreciation of the acknowledgement done by the society (ELS) that is contained in the short paper produced for the Synod by the Lambeth Working Group, which was commissioned by the House of Bishops to find reforms and, latterly, a replacement for the discredited CDM.

But he writes: “I don’t understand how we can be said to have assisted to shape their proposals when they appear to have rejected the fundamental thrust of what we…

View Cache

The apostolic nunciature in Poland announced on March 29 that the Vatican had sanctioned Archbishop Głódź after a probe under the norms of Pope Francis’ 2019 motu proprio Vos estis lux mundi.

A Polish Catholic archbishop sanctioned by the Vatican has defended his election as a village mayor.

Archbishop Sławoj Leszek Głódź told Radio Zet on June 29 that his role as mayor of Piaski, in northeastern Poland, did not conflict with canon law. 

Canon 285 of the Code of Canon Law says that “clerics are forbidden to assume public offices which entail a participation in the exercise of civil power.”

But Archbishop Głódź, who holds a doctorate in Eastern Catholic canon law, insisted that the canon did not apply to his new role.

“This is not a government function,” he said.

Archbishop Głódź served the archdiocese of Gdańsk from 2008 to Aug. 13, 2020, when the pope accepted his resignation on his…

View Cache

A former Storm Lake priest and Fonda man affiliated with the Catholic church have been accused of sexually abusing young boys decades ago, according to an Iowa Attorney General’s report that commended the Sioux City Diocese for keeping an active list of “credibly accused” priests and clergy members.

The attorney general’s report released last week said Everett Apt of St. Mary’s Parish and an unidentified “non-clergy member who was involved in a Catholic organization” in Fonda were among its list of 31 alleged abusers. The allegations reportedly occurred in the 1940s and mid-1960s, which falls out of Iowa’s statute of limitations for criminal prosecution. 

The report said a woman told “several priests” in the 1980s about sexual abuse allegedly committed by Apt against her husband when he was in high school. Apt was already leveled with 10 credible allegations. The woman’s claims were made after Apt’s death.

The diocese withheld…

View Cache

A retired Buffalo priest who is accused of child sex abuse in two recent Child Victims Act lawsuits has been put on administrative leave.

Bishop Michael W. Fisher suspended Monsignor James G. Kelly from active ministry Wednesday after an unnamed plaintiff said in court papers that Kelly molested him from 1980 to 1982. The plaintiff was an 8-to 10-year-old student of the Diocesan Educational Center and attended church at St. Nicholas and St. Benedict the Moor at the time of the alleged abuse. The school and both parishes are now defunct.

The Buffalo Diocese is launching a monitoring program that will include monthly home visits and other restrictions for offending priests.

Kelly, 83, also was accused in a June 11 lawsuit by an unnamed plaintiff of engaging in unpermitted sexual contact with a minor from 2005 to 2007 while assigned to St. Margaret Church in North Buffalo.

Diocese officials said…

View Cache

OTTAWA — Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde says there are no guarantees an Indigenous delegation travelling to the Vatican will lead to Pope Francis apologizing in Canada for the Catholic Church’s role in residential schools — but they must try.

Bellegarde confirmed AFN representatives will join Metis and Inuit leaders making the trip in late December to seek a papal apology.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report into the residential school system released in 2015 called for the pope to come to Canada to apologize to survivors as well as their families and communities for the abuses faced by Indigenous children.

It asked for that to happen within one year of the report’s release and to be similar to the papal apology delivered to victims in Ireland that suffered different abuses through the Catholic Church.

Outrage over the lack of an apology has been reaching new…

View Cache

SASKATOON — When the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement (IRSSA) was signed in 2006, the Roman Catholic Church agreed to provide $25 million in compensation for historical wrongs – and the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN) says the church hasn’t done enough to reach that goal.

According to a release from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Saskatoon, those who signed the IRSSA committed to the following:

•  Payment of $29 million in cash, which was directed to programs and services und the supervision of First Nations organizations, and to the “Returning to Spirit’ program. The diocese of Saskatoon’s share of this amount was $25,000.
•  A “services-in-kind” commitment, whereby various community services and programs worth more than $25 million were organized by the various Catholic entities to be provided for Indigenous communities. The diocese of Saskatoon’s services-in-kind contribution to restorative ministry was valued at $43,000.
•  A final fundraising appeal that…

View Cache

A retired Buffalo priest, who still helps in parish ministry, has been placed on administrative leave after allegations of abuse were levied against 83-year-old Rev. Msgr. James G. Kelly.

The Catholic Diocese of Buffalo says a complaint was filed anonymously pursuant to the Child Victims Act by someone who claims they were abused as a child 15 years ago by Msgr. Kelly. The complaint wasn’t served directly to the diocese, it was discovered “during a recent search of publicly filed complaints.”

Msgr. Kelly denied committing any acts of abuse. The diocese notified the Erie County District Attorney’s office and contacted the plaintiff’s attorney after learning of the complaint. The matter has also been reported to their Independent Review Board — responsible for appointing an independent investigator. 

The diocese says they’re working to see if the victim is willing to participate in an investigation.

While waiting for a response from the…

View Cache

Pope Francis has 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 in the abuse and deaths of thousands of native children.

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops said Francis had invited the delegations to the Vatican and would meet separately with three groups — First Nations, Metis and Inuit — during their Dec. 17-20 visit. The pope will then preside over a final audience with all three groups Dec. 20, the conference said in a statement Tuesday.

The Vatican didn’t confirm the visit Wednesday, but the Holy See’s in-house news portal reported on the bishops’ statement. The Canadian bishops said the trip was contingent on the pandemic and that the delegations would include survivors of the residential schools, Indigenous elders and youths, as well as Indigenous leaders and Canadian bishops.

In recent weeks, investigators…

View Cache

A Canadian Indigenous group said Wednesday a search using ground-penetrating radar has found 182 human remains in unmarked graves at a site near a former Catholic Church-run residential school that housed Indigenous children taken from their families.

The latest discovery of graves near Cranbrook, British Columbia follows reports of similar findings at two other such church-run schools, one of more than 600 unmarked graves and another of 215 bodies. Cranbrook is 524 miles (843 kilometers) east of Vancouver.

The Lower Kootenay Band said in a news release that it began using the technology last year to search the site close to the former St. Eugene’s Mission School, which was operated by the Catholic Church from 1912 until the early 1970s. It said the search found the remains in unmarked graves, some about 3 feet (a meter) deep.

It’s believed the remains are those of people from the bands of the…

View Cache

Archbishop Jerome Listecki discusses his challenge to the Wisconsin attorney general’s request to reopen old sexual abuse cases.

Archbishop Jerome Listecki of Milwaukee is one of only a relative handful of clergy in the Catholic Church to hold canon law and civil law degrees. Putting his knowledge of the law to work, the archbishop of Milwaukee has challenged the Wisconsin attorney general’s request to review reports of clergy abuse in the state, seeing it as an infringement on the Church’s rights and a constitutional violation of religious freedom.  

Wisconsin attorney general Josh Kaul announced this past April that it was heading up an investigation into alleged sexual abuse in “the state’s Catholic dioceses and at least three religious orders.”. The review would begin with Wisconsin Department of Justice (WDOJ) requests for files and documents from Catholic dioceses and religious orders. 

Kaul’s review follows on similar reviews by his counterparts in other…

View Cache

The allegation was reported to Charleston Police Department on June 18, reports show.

The employee was identified by the diocese but his position was not noted. The Post and Courier is not naming the accused. 

“(The employee) was terminated after officials with the Diocese of Charleston learned of an allegation of sexual misconduct with a minor,” Aselage wrote on June 29.

Charleston police are investigating the allegation. No charges have been filed.

“The complainant, a security consultant for the Catholic Diocese, reported a fondling incident from the summer of 2016 that occurred at or near Blessed Sacrament and the victim’s home,” according to the incident report.

Follow Olivia Diaz on Twitter @oliviardiaz.

Olivia Diaz covers breaking news and public safety in the Charleston area. She spent the past four years in Richmond, Virginia, double majoring in journalism and global studies at the University of Richmond.

View Cache

Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has helped all Canadians and First Nations communities grapple with the sorrowful realities of their nation’s colonial past, particularly the gruesome legacy of its residential schools for Indigenous children. Those schools, many administered by Catholic religious orders and intended to be engines of assimilation, became centers of despair and brutality.

The recent discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves at two schools, and the likelihood that thousands more will be found at other residential school sites, have added to the anguish. But at least in Canada, a foundation for healing is being laid by the government-sponsored truth and reconciliation commission.

No similar process has started in the United States, though many of the same outrages likely occurred on this side of the border, in the system of more than 350 Native American boarding schools in the 19th century that were the model for the Canadian network….

View Cache

It is time to open the window to justice to give survivors their day in court, no matter when they were born. Other states have done it.

In an episode of “This is Us,” the show depicts a scene of a woman in labor in a 1960s delivery room. The camera toggles between the woman struggling through the final minutes of labor and the wall clock above her. The baby’s birthday is about to be determined — before midnight or after. Just two minutes before midnight, the baby is born. 

Earlier in the same episode, two young brothers are sitting at a bar watching television intensely as the Selective Service draft lottery pulls the birthday of one of the young men, the baby born in the other scene. That birthday, right before midnight, got assigned a single0digit draft number, which sent the young man to Vietnam and changed the…

View Cache

After the discovery of 751 unmarked graves at the site of a former school for Native children in Canada, it is time to investigate similar abuses in the US

There is so much mourning Native people have yet to do. The full magnitude of Native suffering has yet to be entirely understood, especially when it comes to the nightmarish legacies of American Indian boarding schools. The purpose of the schools was “civilization”, but, as I have written elsewhere, boarding schools served to provide access to Native land, by breaking up Native families and holding children hostage so their nations would cede more territory. And one of the primary benefactors of the boarding school system is the Catholic church, which is today the world’s largest non-governmental landowner, with roughly 177 million acres of property throughout the globe. Part of the evidence of how exactly the church acquired its wealth in North America…

View Cache

To contribute to a dialogue of healing and understanding following the Kamloops Indian Residential School announcement, The B.C. Catholic is sharing stories of individuals who have been working toward truth and reconciliation. We are publishing first-person accounts as well as interviews over a few weeks.

The news coming out of Kamloops has been very deflating for me. As a permanent deacon I have worked very hard in the communities I serve – Sts’ ailes and Seabird Island –  to promote the Church where First Nations people have distanced themselves from the Church.

It’s been difficult for me to encourage them to give the Church another chance. There are difficult questions, such as why the Church would be involved in such a thing, and how priests and nuns abused people while representing the Church. No one is here to help me answer those questions.

COVID has been tough on the ministry,…

View Cache

The latest progress report from the committee studying clerical sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Vancouver names five more clergymen involved in abuse settlements, lawsuits, or other cases.

The previously unpublished names are Father Roland Joncas, Brother Edward Patrick English, Father Frederick Robert Neilsen, Father Duncan George Goguillot, and Father William Crawford Mendenhall.

The cases of Joncas, English, and Goguillot involved allegations of abuse of a minor, while Mendenhall reportedly admitted to sexual misconduct with adult men. Information published about Neilsen doesn’t specify the age of those who came forward alleging sexual abuse, but says he served as a high school counsellor for five years.

Joncas and Goguillot are deceased and Neilson and Medenhall were removed from ministry or laicized. A lawsuit involving allegations against Goguillot is currently before the courts, while English was named as an accused in a class action lawsuit in 2021.

More details about the allegations and…

View Cache

Church authorities said they had received 368 reports of the sexual abuse, and almost half involved children under 15.

Poland’s Catholic Church, assailed by accusations that it for years ignored the sexual abuse of minors by clergy members, on Monday acknowledged that from July 2018 through the end of last year, it had received complaints of abuse against 368 boys and girls.

Pleading for “forgiveness” from “those wronged and all those shocked by the evil in the church,” the head of the Polish church, Archbishop Wojciech Polak, said the figures “do not express the full depth of the drama of sexual abuse of minors perpetrated by some clergymen.”

Nearly half the latest cases reported related to accusations of abuse against victims under age 15.

The timing of the figures’ release — just days after the Vatican said it was investigating accusations against a retired Polish cardinal of negligence on sexual…

View Cache

• Investigators treating fires in British Columbia as suspicious
• Anger over church’s historical role in forced assimilation

Two more Catholic churches on First Nations reserves in western Canada have been destroyed by fires that investigators are once again treating as suspicious.

Over the weekend, crews in southern British Columbia responded to early morning blazes at St Ann’s Church on Upper Similkameen Indian Band land, and the Chopaka Church on the lands of the Lower Similkameen Indian Band. Both churches, built from wood and more than 100 years old, were burned to the ground.

The fires come nearly a week after two other churches were destroyed , and amid growing anger over the church’s role in Canada’s campaign to forcibly assimilate Indigenous people.

In recent weeks, the country has been rocked by the discovery of nearly a thousand unmarked graves at the sites of church-run residential schools where Indigenous children were forcibly converted to Christianity and…

View Cache

Pennsylvania legislators and Gov. Tom Wolf all claimed some level of victory after the state budget passed the General Assembly late Friday night. 

Wolf, a Democrat, championed what he saw as wins for his party, especially the largest education funding increase in state history. 

But the $416 million state funding increase in public education was less than the $1.3 billion Wolf wanted, which he intended to pay for with a tax hike on high earners before federal stimulus money and bigger tax revenues flowed in.

When Republicans cheered the budget passage on their way out of Harrisburg, they were quick to say they blocked Wolf’s “huge tax burden.” 

But for all the political theater, lawmakers left the state capital with a lot of unfinished business.

Despite the lingering pandemic fallout and the challenges Pennsylvania faced before COVID-19, lawmakers did little to solve problems this session other than passing a budget. 

…

View Cache

Monsignor John Paddack, a former principal on Staten Island, faces a new allegation of sexual misconduct during his time at Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx.

The Advance/SILive.com previously reported on claims of sex-abuse levied against the priest while he served in administrative positions at Monsignor Farrell High School in Oakwood and St. Joseph by-the-Sea High School in Huguenot.

Overall, more than a dozen individuals have filed lawsuits accusing Monsignor Paddack of abuse at the cleric’s various assignments throughout the Archdiocese of New York since the 1980s.

Monsignor Paddack and former religious Brother Christopher Keogan are referred to as “serial pedophiles” in a lawsuit filed in Bronx Supreme Court on May 31 by the Herman Law Firm on behalf of an anonymous male victim.

The defendants in the case, brought under the state’s Child Victims Act, are the archdiocese and Cardinal Hayes…

View Cache

A former priest in Oakland County previously charged with sexually assaulting a minor is now facing two additional cases, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced Monday.

Gary Berthiaume, 80, was charged last year with one count of second-degree criminal sexual conduct – a 15-year felony.

A preliminary exam is set in that case for July 21 at 9 a.m. before Judge James Brady in Oakland County’s 47th District Court.

He was arraigned Friday on two additional cases.

All three cases stem from allegations of abuse in the 1970s involving three different victims who were between 13 and 15 years old at the time.

Berthiaume was a priest at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Wyandotte and later Our Lady of Sorrows in Farmington during that timeframe.

He now faces two counts of gross indecency – 5-year felonies or $2,500 – in Oakland’s 46th District Court.

In the 47th District Court, where he was charged…

View Cache

A former priest in Oakland County charged with sexually assaulting a minor decades ago now faces two more cases, the Michigan Attorney General’s office announced Monday.

The three cases against Gary Berthiaume stem from allegations in the 1970s involving victims who were between 13 and 15 at the time, investigators said in a statement.

Berthiaume, 80, was then a priest at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Wyandotte and later Our Lady of Sorrows in Farmington, according to the release.

Last year, he was charged with one count of second-degree criminal sexual conduct, a 15-year felony.

The victim was 14 and told authorities an assault took place in August 1977 at the Our Lady of Sorrows rectory in Farmington, officials have said.

A preliminary examination in that case is scheduled for 9 a.m. July 21 in Oakland County’s 47th District Court. 

On Friday, Berthiaume was arraigned in two other cases. 

He now faces two counts of gross indecency,…

View Cache

In its latest report released Monday on the sexual abuse of minors, Poland’s Catholic Church lists 292 clergymen who are alleged to have abused over 300 boys and girls from 1958 though 2020.

The cases were reported to church authorities from mid-2018 until the end of 2020. The reports came from the victims, their families, other clergymen, the media and from other sources.

At an online conference in Warsaw, the head of Poland’s Catholic Church, Archbishop Wojciech Polak, apologized to the victims and asked their forgiveness, echoing apologies he has made before.

According to church statistics gathered from all dioceses, 368 reports of abuse of people under the age of 18 were made to church authorities between July 1, 2018, and Dec. 31, 2020. They cover a period ranging from 1958 though 2020.

Of them, 144 cases have been confirmed or considered credible at an initial stage of an investigation…

View Cache

[Includes audio clips of the interview.]

The former Iowan who pushed the attorney general to investigate cases of priest abuse says the report just released by the A-G is another positive step forward.

Tim Lennon was living in Sioux City when he got involved in the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests or SNAP.

Lennon says things are much different now than they used to be.

He says this report and Iowa’s recent change in the law that lifts the statute of limitations on child sex abuse charges are examples of the progress made.

The four catholic bishops in Iowa released a statement saying the Attorney General’s report will be studied for suggestions on how the catholic church’s efforts might be improved.

Lennon says the church has not stepped up like others have.

Lennon says he was abused when he was 12, but it took until he was 63…

View Cache

Proving a case decades after the schools ceased to operate would be very difficult, experts say

Cowessess Chief Cadmus Delorme said he is treating the site of 751 unmarked graves at the former Marieval Indian Residential School “like a crime scene.”

Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN) Chief Bobby Cameron said the deaths of children at the school was “a crime against humanity.”

And yet, after the second discovery in less than a month of hundreds of previously unknown burials at former residential schools, there is no indication that criminal charges of any kind will be laid in connection to those deaths.

The Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) says those charges are not only warranted, but necessary if Canada wants to fulfil its pledge of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.

“If they have committed a crime, then they need to be held criminally responsible for those actions,” said Lynne Groulx, NWAC’s CEO.

The…

View Cache

On the grounds of the former Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan, where an estimated 751 unmarked graves have now been identified, Carol Lavallee remembers a skating rink.

At the time Lavallee, who was forced to attend the school at just six-years-old, had no idea the rink was situated above a burial site. It wasn’t until she was an adult that she heard rumours of unmarked graves on the school grounds.
“There was a barn there. There used to be a chicken coop, a pig sty, and a cattle corral was over those graves… why would any religion condone something like that,” Lavallee told CTV National News.

“The priest was in charge of the school, he knew there were bodies there…. There must be records of it.”

On Thursday, Cowessess First Nation, located 164 kilometres east of Regina, announced the discovery of the unmarked graves, found after radar scanning of the…

View Cache

An Indigenous group said the remains of as many as 751 people, mainly children, had been found in unmarked graves on the site of a former boarding school in Saskatchewan.

CALGARY, Alberta — For decades, the Indigenous children were taken from their families, sometimes by force, and housed in crowded, church-run boarding schools, where they were abused and prohibited from speaking their languages. Thousands vanished altogether.

Now, a new discovery offers chilling evidence that many of the missing children may have died at these schools: The remains of as many as 751 people, mainly Indigenous children, were found at the site of a former school in the province of Saskatchewan, an Indigenous group said on Thursday.

The burial site, the largest one to date, was uncovered only weeks after the remains of 215 children were found in unmarked graves on the grounds of another former church-run school for Indigenous students in…

View Cache

Bob Hilbig’s crisis of confidence in the Roman Catholic Church isn’t his first reckoning with the institution that shaped his childhood. It’s not even his second.https:

But the discovery over the past month of what’s believed to be nearly 1,000 bodies in unmarked graves at two former residential schools for Indigenous children could prove to be the last, he said, unless church officials take responsibility. article continues below 

“I’m really hopeful that there is some transparency and atonement to go around,” Hilbig said. “I’ll be analyzing…I’m going to be paying close attention to how they react.”

The disappointment that came with news of the residential school grave sites carried reminders of past personal letdowns, he said, including the 2005 appointment of ultra-conservative Pope Benedict XVI and the co-ordinated coverups of priests’ sexual abuse of children.

Given that recent history, the 35-year-old Hilbig said, along with what he already knew of the…

View Cache

Calgary’s Catholic bishop says the faith of some parishioners is being tested following the recent discoveries of unmarked graves at former residential schools.

For some Catholics attending mass in Calgary on Sunday, the church’s role in residential schools has weighed heavily on their hearts.

“It’s totally devastating, all the news, especially because we have kids too. I was so shocked,” said Rose Dela Cruz, who was attending mass at St. Mark Catholic Church in northeast Calgary.

Diocese of Calgary Bishop William McGrattan said he’s heard from some parishioners who have been feeling disenchanted.

“People feel disillusioned sometimes. They question why this took place and sometimes even the responses we offer are not necessarily adequate,” McGrattan said.

“But sometimes people aren’t necessarily understanding that as these come to light, our faith is tested.”

Earlier this month, in response to the unmarked graves found at a former residential school…

View Cache

For almost three decades, missionary Richard Daschbach ran an orphanage providing refuge for some of East Timor’s most needy children. He has since admitted to sexually abusing countless young girls – yet locals still support him.

Nona was born in a dirt-floor hut in a East Timor highland village, where hungry children grow up stunted and wise men see omens in the flight of birds. Her parents grew rice and corn in swidden gardens, but struggled to feed six children. At the age of 9, Nona decided on a solution: she would leave home to live at an orphanage called Topu Honis. It had brightly painted dormitories, neat vegetable gardens and a tiny church. “There was a playground with a slide and swings and the girls wore colourful, clean outfits. It seemed like a dream for a little girl,” she remembers.

Topu Honis sits in a mountain valley in Oecusse,…

View Cache

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

I have a Catholic friend who can’t receive Eucharist.

This isn’t because she’s a sinner; far from it. Rather it is because ever since the decadeslong, thought-it-was-over clergy sex abuse crisis reappeared in a horrific August 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report, she fears no priest is worthy of handling Jesus in Communion.

Her stance came to mind after the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ decision June 18 to draft a “teaching document” on the Eucharist.

The document’s outline, as reported in various media outlets, would emphasize church teachings on the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist and, according to Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades, “how participation in the Eucharist compels us to conversion.” Rhoades is chairman of the USCCB’s doctrine committee.

The controversial part is a subset of this conversion paragraph that addresses “Eucharistic consistency,” which is theological language…

View Cache

Have we ever grasped how to adequately atone for the sins of the Church and of the State in this country for the abuses suffered in industrial schools, day schools, symphysiotomy, and Magdalene laundries? Jess Casey finds out

“Redress; to remedy, or set right.” The history of modern Ireland is woven tightly with a litany of human rights violations, often referred to as ‘historical’ abuses as if they are confined, now, only to books.

These traumas are living, breathing memory.

We live amongst the legacy of abuse of power, most often inflicted on children, women, and unmarried mothers.

Redress should be an acknowledgment of victims’ pain, and for the loss of opportunity, they suffered as a result, as well as a symbol of reconciliation and a move towards righting an injustice of the past.

But have we ever grasped how to adequately atone for the sins of the Church and…

View Cache

Pencil Preaching for Sunday, June 27, 2021

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Wis 1:13-15; 2:23-24; Ps 30; 2 Cor 8:7-9, 13-15; Mark 5:21-43

It is hard to miss the theme of touch in today’s masterful Gospel. Mark nests one story about a woman with a blood issue inside another about Jesus raising a young girl from her deathbed. In both instances, legal and social taboos were broken. The woman with the blood flow would be faulted for contaminating the crowd by pushing her way through to touch Jesus’ cloak. The little girl was presumed dead and, therefore, touching her would have rendered Jesus unclean. 

Jesus’ freedom to touch the dead and lepers, dine with public sinners, allow women to anoint and kiss his feet, speak with a Samaritan woman in public and accept water from her at the well, were part of his mission as the Incarnate Word. Every healing…

View Cache

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests is urging community leaders to aggressively search for sexual abuse victims and to add 12 Marianist clergy members’ names to the Archdiocese of San Antonio’s list of those accused of committing it.

Self-described clergy abuse survivors and advocates with SNAP gathered Wednesday outside the archdiocese’s headquarters on Woodlawn Avenue to bring public attention to their demands, calling on Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller and St. Mary’s University President Thomas Mengler to take action.

The archbishop “must include these 12 new names on the archdiocese list and its website, parish announcements and newsletters,” SNAP officials said in a news release. “He should be speaking at every school, parish and retreat center in the San Antonio area where these Marianist priests worked. Mr. Mengler should write to (all) alumni who attended St. Mary’s University during the time these accused predators worked there.”

Only three credibly accused…

View Cache

The Vatican’s Polish embassy said on Saturday that the Holy See sent an envoy to Poland for more than a week to investigate reports of abuse from Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, a close confidant to Pope St. John Paul II.

The envoy was headed by retired Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, who along with his team, held numerous meetings and reviewed documents relating to the abuse allegations.

“The aim was to verify signals, also made in public, of negligence by Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz during his term as the archbishop of Krakow (2005-2016),” the Holy See embassy said in a statement.

At the conclusion of the investigation, Bagnasco will present his findings to high-ranking officials at the Vatican.

In 2012, the Rev. Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski, a Polish priest, gave Dziwsz a letter that contained evidence of a fellow priest sexually abusing a 12-year-old altar server. Initially, Dziwsz denied the letter and believed that there should…

View Cache

It’s about time!

That’s how we at Horowitz Law reacted to the news that a New York bishop is telling his credibly accused clerics “Either live under supervision or live without my financial support.”

A Buffalo TV station reports that a priest, deemed by Buffalo church and lay officials ‘credibly accused’ of abuse, is fighting his boss’ ultimatum.

We solidly side with the bishop. It’s about time a Catholic prelate uses his powers to keep suspected abusers away from kids.

For decades, bishops have recruited, educated, ordained, paid, supervised and transferred priests, even or especially those who do wrong. But when their wrongdoing surfaces, bishops often feign powerlessness over these same priests. When they do this, bishops usually blame the church’s internal, archaic, ‘canon laws.’

“Once a priest, always a priest,” the claim goes, so “Church policy is that we must keep Father on the payroll, no matter what he’s…

View Cache

Polish Cardinal investigated over tenure as Krakow archbishop up to 2016

The Vatican said Saturday it was investigating an influential aide to late pope John Paul II, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, following allegations of abuse cover-ups.

Its embassy to Poland said the Holy See had sent Italian Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco to Poland from June 17 to 26 to look into the matter.

The visit’s “goal was to verify reports, including those made public, of negligence on the part of Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz during his tenure as Krakow archbishop (2005-2016),” the Apostolic Nunciature, the official name for the embassy, said in a statement.

Dziwisz, now 82, worked alongside the Polish pontiff in the Vatican and later served as Archbishop of Krakow, before retiring in 2016. 

“Bagnasco reviewed documents and held a series of meetings and will report back to the Holy See regarding the visit,” the embassy added.

In November, Poland’s bishops…

View Cache

The Vatican’s embassy in Poland said Saturday that a Holy See envoy spent 10 days in the country checking reports of alleged negligence by a retired archbishop of Krakow who had served as personal secretary to the late Pope St. John Paul II.

The embassy said that during his June 17-26 visit, retired Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco held a number of meetings and reviewed documents.

“The aim was to verify signals, also made in public, of negligence by Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz during his term as the archbishop of Krakow (2005-2016),” the embassy statement said.

Bagnasco is to present his finding at the Vatican.

A priest in Poland, the Rev. Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski, says that in 2012 he personally gave Dziwisz a letter containing evidence of sex abuse by a priest of a 12-year-old altar boy. Dziwisz at first denied it and suggested the matter should be investigated, but later said the letter…

View Cache

In recent days, Pope Francis has described the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse crisis as a worldwide catastrophe. He urged that the Catholic Church end its “head-in-sand policy”, acknowledge its institutional hypocrisy, and “take responsibility for this history, both as individuals and as a community.” While much of that activity must, by definition, be backward-looking, forward-looking action that makes a decisive break with the past is just as important.

Is the recent overhaul of the Vatican’s Code of Canon law such an action? Pope Francis announced the changes to the 1983 Code of Canon as required “to allow Pastors to employ it as a more agile salvific and corrective tool, to be applied promptly and with pastoral charity to avoid more serious evils and to soothe the wounds caused by human weakness.” Code drafters explained the changes as facilitating the Catholic Church’s embrace of the routine administration of justice and rejecting the notions…

View Cache

Suspended priest Samuel Venne has been fighting back against the Diocese of Buffalo since 2018, when allegations first surfaced that he sexually abused children decades ago.

But the fight he is in now could cost him more than the seven-year suspension he received late last year for being what the diocese deemed as “credibly accused.”

Venne, 79, refuses to join the diocese’s monitoring program for priests it deems as “credibly accused.”

His reluctance to sign up could cost him his modest living and result in him living in his old van, his attorney told News 4 Investigates.

The problem is Venne has never been charged or convicted of any such crime, said Mike Taheri, the priest’s attorney.

He has neither been tried nor has he had the opportunity to testify and present evidence that raised questions about the decades-old allegations against him, including that Venne might be a…

View Cache

The Catholic clergy members who victimized Iowa children years ago cannot be criminally prosecuted despite the changes to the statute of limitations passed in May. 

The amended law eliminates the statute of limitations for child sex abuse— but not for those born before 1986. 

Under the old law, those sexually abused as children had 15 years after turning 18 to press charges.

The new law changed that expiration date, allowing survivors of child sex abuse born after 1986 to come forward and seek prosecution at any time.

The new law only affects the statute of limitations for criminal charges, not civil.

“We find enough corroborating evidence and have enough to file prosecutors can still do that, instead of saying, ‘I have enough evidence to file this, but I’ve been barred by that statute of limitations and therefore I can’t,’” explained Jessica Reynolds, executive director of the Iowa Counties Attorney…

View Cache

A Catholic priest in the Pittsburgh Diocese is facing criminal charges for allegedly molesting an 8-year-old boy at a Plum church in 1998.

According to a criminal complaint, the victim was just 8 when Rev. Robert Cedolia assaulted him at Our Lady of Joy.Advertisement

The victim told police the first incident occurred when he was training for first communion. The second incident happened two weeks later.

During the second alleged assault, the victim said Cedolia told him, “God sees all.”

“Just those words are so eerie to hear not only as a survivor myself but these are the methods predator priests will use,” said Michael McDonnell, spokesman for Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

Defense attorney Lisa Mantella said Cedolia “vehemently denies the accusations and he is completely innocent of the charges.”

A Pittsburgh diocese spokesperson said the diocese placed Cedolia on administrative leave after first getting word of…

View Cache

So the U.S.’s Catholic bishops will draft guidelines, for debate this November, on when the faithful should be denied the Eucharist.

Good.

After unhinged clergy helped incite January’s insurrection — which was awash in Christian symbols — by preaching partisan, profanity-laced poison, traitors urging or committing violence should not receive what we Catholics consider the body of Christ.

Oh, wait — the bishops aren’t targeting terrorists and those who goad them, but rather the president of the United States and other Catholic politicians who support abortion rights?

It would be tempting to channel an iconic Saturday Night Live character and say “never mind.” Actually, that response is appropriate in a way the bishops don’t intend: Never mind the antics of their conference’s kooky corner. Putting aside the Catholic right’s defective moral math (terminating a pregnancy=unforgivable; fascist violence against democracy=we can live with it), the episcopal right is blowing smoke, and not the kind from an…

View Cache

A disgraced Polish archbishop has been elected mayor of his hometown after being sanctioned by the Vatican for ignoring sexual abuse by his clergy, as two more bishops were disciplined for similar offenses.

In a statement, the Jaswila district council said Archbishop Slawoj Glodz, who headed the Gdansk Archdiocese until last August, had been elected administrator, of Piaski, adding that local officials had extended “heartfelt congratulations.”

However, Poland’s Catholic Wiez quarterly, which has campaigned against sexual abuse in the church, warned the “unprecedented move” would provoke “irritation and scandal in society.”

“Unfortunately, this isn’t the opening of a new TV comedy season, but part of our Polish ecclesial life,” Wiez commented June 24.

“As a doctor of canon law, Archbishop Glodz may well defend his decision from the letter of the law — but the letter isn’t everything. An additional issue is the disgust associated with yet another exposure of…

View Cache

Two men who said they were sexually molested decades ago by a notorious Catholic priest who was imprisoned for molesting other boys have agreed to a settlement of $880,000 from the Archdiocese of Chicago, attorneys announced Wednesday.

The men alleged Norbert Maday sexually abused them repeatedly starting when they were as young as 10 years old while they were alter boys and students at St. Bede the Venerable Elementary School on the city’s South Side, attorneys Jason Friedl and Martin Gould said.

Based on lawsuits, court cases and documents, the two were among at least 14 boys whom Maday molested at the six parishes where he was assigned from 1967 to 1986, the attorneys said, adding that they believe Maday died in recent years.

Archdiocese spokesman Manny Gonzalez declined to comment on the settlement.

Friedl and Gould said the agreement was reached before a lawsuit was even filed, representing a…

View Cache

The streaming channel Discovery+ has announced plans for a documentary series on Hillsong Church and its disgraced former pastor, Carl Lentz, according to a report Monday (June 21) from the entertainment news website Deadline.

But Discovery+ is not the only production company with an eye on the controversy-laden megachurch and its trendily tattooed former pastor. In February, Deadline also signaled that “Queer Eye” producer Scout Productions was working on a limited documentary series examining Hillsong. 

Both docuseries are planned in partnership with separate news organizations and based on their respective coverage of the ongoing scandals plaguing the church, founded in Australia by Brian Houston and his wife, Bobbie, in the 1980s. Now a multimedia company, it has 130 worship centers around the globe. 

Discovery+ will base its three-episode series, “Breaking Hillsong,” on a series of articles by Hannah Frishberg that appeared in the New York Post, covering primarily the downfall of…

View Cache

Men who were sexually abused as boys at a training school for Roman Catholic priests have welcomed a bishop’s “momentous” apology.

The group were pupils at St Peter Claver College in Mirfield, West Yorkshire, when they were molested in the 1960s and 70s.

At a meeting with the men, the Bishop of Leeds said their abusers were people they should have been able to trust.

One victim said the apology marked a changing attitude from the church.

St Peter Claver was a seminary run by a Roman Catholic mission, The Verona Fathers, now known as the Comboni Order.

Former students who experienced sexual abuse at the school said their complaints had been ignored for decades by the church.

‘A long journey’

One victim, Bede Mullen, said the abuse and the way the victims had been treated had a major impact on all of their lives, with the message up until…

View Cache

Holy See makes ill-fated, last-ditch attempt to alter proposed anti-homophobia law supported by most people in democratic Italy

Call it the Vatican or call it the Holy See.

 It hardly matters anymore because the difference and nuances between the two terms (or entities) are lost on most people. That includes the majority of Catholics.

Increasingly, it seems, people don’t care whether a distinction even exists.

Holy See and Vatican mean only one thing to most folks — headquarters of the Catholic Church or bureaucratic center of a two-millennia-old religious behemoth.

And that behemoth, as I argued last week, continues to experience an implosion that dates back to at least the Reformation. Certainly by the time of the Enlightenment in the 17th century, this implosion became an ongoing process.

As the ancien régime arrangement of “throne and altar” in Old Europe was giving way to democracy, the Church — especially the…

View Cache

The former Iowan who pushed the Attorney General to investigate cases of priest abuse says the report just released by the AG is another positive step forward.

Tim Lennon was living in Sioux City when he got involved in the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests or SNAP. “I think it’s the voice of survivors who have risen up. I was one of many who called for reform and change and investigation — because too many people had been harmed,” Lennon says.

Lennon says things are much different now than they used to be. “Twenty years ago every victim of sexual abuse, especially child sexual abuse, would come forward as an individual. Now we come forward as organizations, as a movement,” Lennon says. “And I think politicians, society, and culture have come to realize how much sexual abuse there is in society and has taken action.”

He says this report…

View Cache

Do you think the Catholic clergy sexual abuse and cover up crisis started in Boston in 2002? Think again.  It really started much earlier, in 1983 in fact, down in Louisiana.

And now – finally, thankfully – there’s a new Louisiana law that may benefit some of those very first clergy abuse survivors who stepped forward, long before the pubic had even heard the phrase ‘pedophile priest.’

Many of those brave pioneers were victims of Fr. Gilbert Gauthe, the first U.S. priest to generate nationwide headlines due to his stunning crimes against kids.

His victims started filing abuse reports in the early and mid-1980s, eventually leading to Fr. Gauthe’s 1985 conviction on charges of molesting at least 39 boys, mostly in the Lafayette diocese.

Imagine, for a moment, what they endured. Horrific childhood sexual trauma, inflicted by a so-called “man of God,” who represented Jesus, who could forgive their sins…

View Cache

The ghastly child abuse history of F. Barry Bossa follows what has unfortunately become an all too familiar pattern in the Catholic Church.  Both prior to and after F. Barry Bossa became a Catholic priest, he has been the subject of both criminal prosecution and numerous civil lawsuits in Massachusetts and New York for abusing children in his care at every assignment.  In fact, at one point in 2002, the Vatican even plucked him from his assignment at a parish in Yonkers in order to evade criminal and civil accountability to Bossa’s victims.  The Vatican’s removal was so abrupt, Bossa’s sister had to retrieve his belongings from his living quarters at his church in Yonkers.

What is not popular knowledge is that prior to becoming a Catholic priest, Barry Bossa was the Religious Education Coordinator at the Malone District School of Religion, which was associated with St. John Bosco parish in Malone, New York. …

View Cache

The case of a predatory paedophile priest, Malachy Finnegan, is back in the spotlight and the handling by the Catholic Church of his repeat offending being brought into sharp focus.

One of his victims says Finnegan was nothing short of a monster, one who abused him repeatedly, even after Mass.

Anthony Gribben has recently been awarded a six-figure sum in damages and is due to meet the head of the Catholic Church, Primate of All Ireland Archbishop Eamon Martin.

“The issue now for me is less Finnegan, but it’s about his peers and the system which allowed Finnegan’s behaviour to continue, to destroy other youngsters’ lives,” he told UTV.

“It was in their interests to cover it up and this essentially gave licence to Finnegan to continue his dirty deeds.” — Anthony Gribben

Mr Gribben was physically and sexually assaulted by Finnegan when he was a pupil at St Colman’s…

View Cache

FBI analysis on Catholic Church sexual abuse cover-up strategy

In 2018, the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime – the division within the bureau that provides profiles of violent criminals, among other things – reviewed much of the evidence the Pennsylvania Grand Jury received and concluded that its analysis of the material revealed something akin to “a playbook for concealing the truth.”

First, the church employed euphemisms for sexual assault, referring to the crime not as rape, but as “inappropriate contact” or “boundary issues,” center investigators said. In one case, the grand jury reported a priest’s repeated and violent sexual assaults of children were referred to as “his difficulties.”

The Church officials actually follow a ‘playbook for concealing the truth’ – Pennsylvania Grand Jury stated after investigating 70 years of child sex abuse by more than 300 Catholic priests in six dioceses across the state. 

The Pennsylvania Grand Jury report catalogs horrific…

View Cache

What would American evangelicalism look like if the southernization of American evangelicalism had never happened, and instead the evangelical fervor of the Second Great Awakening had continued in the North and produced an ongoing legacy of New England-centered global evangelism combined with advocacy for egalitarian-minded social justice?

This question has taken on increasing importance this week, after the Southern Baptist Convention narrowly averted a further lurch to the cultural right. In the leadup to the SBC’s annual meeting, it was easy perhaps for some to equate American evangelicalism mainly with Trump-voting, culturally conservative defenders of the Second Amendment and opponents of critical race theory. In the South and in southern-influenced regions of the country, there is no question that this particular brand of white evangelicalism has an outsized influence and colors national perceptions of the meaning of the word “evangelical.” But in the Northeast, there’s another version of home-grown evangelicalism…

View Cache

Deacon Aaron Kaiser, a pastoral associate for an office that managed youth camps and rallies, has been placed on administrative leave. The Rev. Patrick Sullivan will return to ministry work.

Just days after a priest in the Crookston Catholic Diocese was cleared of sexually abusing a minor, leadership announced a deacon who oversaw youth camps is under investigation for similar accusations.

Deacon Aaron Kaiser has been placed on administrative leave pending the probe into allegations of child sex abuse, according to a news release issued June 11. He has been removed from ministry.

“Also pending the investigation’s conclusion and in accordance with Canon Law, Deacon Kaiser is afforded the presumption of innocence and a right to his good reputation,” the release said. “To protect the integrity of the investigation, no further comments on the matter will be made at this time.”

The statement didn’t give details about the accusations, including…

View Cache

Roman Catholic priests who victimized Iowa children decades ago cannot be prosecuted despite a new law eliminating the statute of limitations for child sex abuse, the state attorney general says.

The law, signed by Gov. Kim Reynolds last month, does not apply to cases in which the statute of limitations has already expired, Attorney General Tom Miller’s office said in its report Wednesday that found the amount of abuse in the Catholic Church “overwhelming.”

That means victims of childhood abuse who are currently 33 and over will not be able to have their abusers prosecuted because they missed the deadline to report. They also can’t sue perpetrators and officials who concealed the abuse because the law didn’t change the civil statute of limitations.

At least nine retired or defrocked priests and one retired nun have recently been accused of decades-old abuse in Iowa and are…

View Cache

While the First Amendment protects “the free exercise” of religion, that does not shield the Springfield Diocese from claims that it tried to conceal sexual abuse by a late bishop, a Hampden Superior Court judge ruled this month.

As a result, a civil lawsuit filed in February ordinarily would proceed against the diocese and eight individual defendants, including the local church’s longtime lawyer and its former bishop, the Rev. Mitchell T. Rozanski.

But, the defendants say they plan to appeal the rejection of their motions to dismiss to the Massachusetts Appeals Court.

In her 13-page decision, Judge Karen L. Goodwin said the defense had misapplied case law in arguing that the complaint should be dismissed because civil courts lack jurisdiction over “doctrine, canon law, polity, discipline and ministerial relationships.”

In the suit, an unnamed Chicopee man says he repeatedly was raped by former Bishop Christopher J. Weldon…

View Cache

Surviving members of the Croteau family will hold a graveside memorial service Monday for Daniel “Danny” Croteau, the 13-year-old altar boy authorities determined was killed by his parish priest in 1972.

Hampden District Attorney Anthony D. Gulluni announced the service will be conducted at Hillcrest Cemetery near the headstone that has marked the boy’s final resting place for almost 50 years. The service will take place a month after the death of his alleged killer, defrocked Catholic priest Richard Lavigne.

Lavigne was his presumed killer, Gulluni has said. Croteau was bludgeoned in the head and found facedown floating in the Chicopee River on April 15, 1972 — a day after he went missing.

In recent months, Lavigne admitted to Massachusetts State Trooper Michael T. McNally that he was the last to see Croteau, struck him in the head with a rock and gave him “a good…

View Cache

[Photo above: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visits a memorial at the Eternal Flame on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Tuesday, June 1, 2021, that’s in recognition of discovery of children’s remains at the site of a former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP)]

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday he has urged Pope Francis to come to Canada to apologize for church-run boarding schools where hundreds of unmarked graves have been found, and he said Canadians are “horrified and ashamed” by their government’s longtime policy of forcing Indigenous children to attend such schools.

Indigenous leaders said this week that 600 or more remains were discovered at the Marieval Indian Residential School, which operated from 1899 to 1997 in the province of Saskatchewan. Last month, some 215 remains were reported at a similar school in British Columbia.

From the 19th century until the 1970s,…

View Cache

A CO Down man preyed on by paedophile priest Malachy Finegan has opened up on the experience he suffered just days after it emerged he is to receive a six-figure-sum in damages.

Tony Gribben launched legal action over physical and sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of the priest while a pupil at St Colman’s College in Newry, which he attended between 1970-1977.

Mr Gribben had taken legal action against the trustees of St Colman’s College and the Diocese of Dromore.

As part of a the settlement the 61-year-old will also receive a personal apology to be issued on behalf of Archbishop Eamon Martin, the leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland.

He is also due to meet the senior cleric in the coming weeks.

His solicitor, Kevin Winters, of KRW Law, said: “We have secured an apology and a meeting with the Archbishop in Tony’s case but for…

View Cache

The president of the German bishops’ conference said he personally assured Pope Francis that the Catholic Church in Germany does not want “to go its own way.”

Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg, president of the conference, met Francis privately at the Vatican June 24 and issued a statement afterward.

“Our conversation focused first on the situation of the church in Germany in light of the processing of sexual abuse cases and the difficult situation in several dioceses,” which have recently or are about to publish reports on the handling of abuse allegations, the bishop said. “Pope Francis is well aware of the situation of the church in Germany. He hopes that tensions can be overcome.”

Bätzing also said he “informed the pope in detail” about the status of the German church’s “Synodal Path” and “made it clear that the rumors that the church in Germany wants to go its own…

View Cache

The panel is made of victims of clerical sexual abuse so as to ensure that their voices are heard and learnt from

English and Welsh Catholic bishops have established a new survivor reference panel against abuse.

The Catholic Bishops of England and Wales (CBCEW) announced that this new initiative will replace the Survivor Advisory Panel (SAP) of the now decommissioned National Catholic Safeguarding Commission, which has been replaced by the Catholic Safeguarding Standards Agency (CSSA).

Previously, SAP provided the commission with advice on matters relevant to survivors and helped to highlight unidentified areas of concern to safeguarding professionals.

The new panel will support and inform the work of the CSSA by ensuring that the voice of victims and survivors of clerical abuse is heard and learnt from. The appointments to the new panel will be announced a later date.

This is part of the wide-ranging child protection reforms which…

View Cache

It is no secret that the globalists at the United Nations hate the Catholic Church. Since 1994, the Catholic League has lodged multiple complaints against these Catholic-bashers. This June, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has been rather active, targeting the Church twice.

Starting on June 4, so-called experts from OHCHR put out a statement condemning the Church for the mistreatment of indigenous children at residential schools in Canada. But this is not exclusively a Catholic problem. It is most especially a Canadian problem, and these tragedies are not unique to Catholic-run residential schools. Virtually every faith and institution in Canada is culpable. Yet, true to globalist Catholic-bashing form, OHCHR chooses to single out the Church.

Hot on the heels of this attack, on June 21, some of these same savants wasted no time to express further animosity toward the Church. In this instance, they called on the Holy…

View Cache

Recent developments at an unmarked gravesite near a former residential school in B.C. have prompted many questions about certain pieces of Canadian history and what work can be done to make amends.

Less than one month before word of this gravesite hit the news, the Jesuit Forum for Social Faith and Justice released a resource aiming to help guide some of those conversations. Listening to Indigenous Voices launched in English April 28 and French May 4.

“Many people deplore the lack of references to Indigenous Peoples in the history taught in Canadian schools. And still others are looking for ways to become true allies,” wrote Nicole O’Bomsawin, Abenaki activist and anthropologist, in the foreword.

She calls this new resource “an indispensable tool” for people who want to “make a difference today in building bridges across ignorance and racism.”

Listening to Indigenous Voices is a study guide created for small group or classroom study and includes…

View Cache

Two blockbusters dominated the American religion beat last week.

The Catholic bishops defied a nudge from Pope Francis’s Vatican and decided overwhelmingly to write a Communion policy that might target President Joe Biden and other pols for liberal abortion stances. And conservative establishment voters in a Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) presidential showdown narrowly defeated (for now) hard-right populists.

Standard news judgment automatically puts the spotlight on hot disputes in the nation’s two largest religious sectors — white evangelicalism and Catholicism. Meanwhile, week by week, year by year, the media consistently downplay the third-ranking religious category, “Mainline” Protestantism, which not so long ago exercised such vast cultural influence. (They also neglect fourth-ranking Black Protestantism.)

Two thoughtful new articles show intriguing ways to overcome sins of omission.

Mark Tooley of the conservative Institute on Religion & Democracy asks, at the Juicy Ecumenism weblog, why Mainline churches apparently suffer fewer sexual abuse…

View Cache

Prime Minister Trudeau said he was “terribly saddened” by the new discovery at the school about 87 miles from the provincial capital Regina

An indigenous group in Canada’s Saskatchewan province on Thursday said it had found the unmarked graves of 751 people at a now-defunct Catholic residential school, just weeks after a similar discovery rocked the country.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was “terribly saddened” by the new discovery at Marieval Indian Residential School about 87 miles (140 km) from the provincial capital Regina.

He told indigenous people that “the hurt and the trauma that you feel is Canada’s responsibility to bear.”

It is not clear how many of the remains detected belong to children, Cowessess First Nation Chief Cadmus Delorme told reporters.

He said the church that ran the school removed the headstones.

“We didn’t remove the headstones. Removing headstones is a crime in this country. We are…

View Cache

In the weeks following the discovery of the remains of 215 Indigenous children at a former residential school site in Kamloops, British Columbia, Toronto mom Mateja noticed her daughter had covered up a shelf of religious items in her bedroom. 

The 14-year-old had placed a sheet of blank paper over a cubby containing a cross, a rosary, a photo of the Virgin Mary, and a prayer book. 

“I said, ‘You know, if you don’t like that, you are not forced to keep that there,’” said Mateja, who does not want her last name used to protect her daughter’s privacy. 

Like her daughter, Mateja, 48, is struggling with her association with the church in light of the discovery of the graves under the Catholic-run Kamloops Indian Residential School. She said the church’s response has been inadequate and she will no longer attend mass. 

“I’m done,” said Mateja, a lifelong Catholic. “They…

View Cache

 [VIDEO]

A Mississauga, Ont. pastor has issued a public apology for comments he made about the “good that was done” in residential schools operated by the Catholic Church.

Pastor Owen Keenan of Merciful Redeemer Parish made the controversial remarks during a sermon as he referenced the discovery of unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school in British Columbia, where the remains of more than 200 children were found.

“Two thirds of the country is blaming the church, which we love, for the tragedies that occurred there,” Keenan said in a clip of the sermon posted to Reddit. “Now I presume that the same number would thank the church for the good that was done in those schools but of course that question was never asked and in fact we are not allowed to even say that good was done in those schools.”

Keenan has faced significant…

View Cache

The Cowessess First Nation will put a name to each of the hundreds of bodies found at the unmarked graves on the former Marieval Indian Residential School, vows Chief Cadmus Delorme.

“We will put a headstone and a grave to each of them,” Delorme said at a June 24 news conference to announce the discovery of hundreds of bodies on the southeast Saskatchewan First Nations’ lands.

The chief announced the discovery of up to 751 unmarked graves at the site of the Catholic residential school on its territory, the news coming almost a month after the discovery of 215 children’s bodies buried at another residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia.

The graves at Marieval — which Delorme said were not part of a mass grave — were discovered by ground-penetrating radar which the First Nation, with the help of Saskatchewan Polytechnic, had been using since earlier this month on the…

View Cache

WARNING: This story contains distressing details.

Vernon Mulvahill says he has lived with an anger at his core since he was seven or eight years old.

In the decades since, the Chilliwack truck driver’s rage has expressed itself through violence, heavy drinking and restlessness.

Mulvahill says he is tired of feeling ashamed for a wrong that was done to him as a child.

He is suing the Roman Catholic bishop of Vancouver and the archdiocese over sexual assault he claims happened at a summer camp in the late 70s.

In the process Mulvahill says, he is trying to fix himself.

“I’m 49 years old. I’ll be 50 in November. I’m a wreck trying to correct myself,” Mulvahill says by way of introduction during a telephone interview.

“I’m here to start my own healing path and try to correct a lot of the wrong I did throughout my life because of what happened to…

View Cache

[Click here to see a PDF of this news release.]

From Most Rev. Thomas R. Zinkula, Bishop of Diocese of Davenport:

Two years ago, the Attorney General of Iowa asked the state’s four Catholic dioceses to submit documents related to clergy sexual abuse. In the interest of transparency and accountability, each diocese complied with the Attorney General’s request.

I apologize for abuse by clergy that occurred in the past. In 2002, the bishops of the United States made significant and sweeping changes to the Church’s role in protecting children and vulnerable adults. As a result, we respond promptly and compassionately to victims, report the alleged abuse of minors to civil authorities, remove offenders following a review of allegations by lay experts in relevant fields, and submit to third-party annual audits.

Since 2003, the Diocese of Davenport has provided ongoing safe environment training sessions for adults and children. We also…

View Cache

The Rev. Robert “Bud” Grant, investigated in 2020 for sexual assault allegations, was discussed in a report released Wednesday by the Iowa Attorney General’s Office.

Attorney General Tom Miller conducted a more than two-year review of clergy sexual abuse in the state of Iowa, analyzing records involving about 70 Catholic priests and looking into 50 complaints of sexual abuse and misconduct reported to the attorney general.

The report outlines the process of the review and goes through the abuse policies in each of the four Iowa dioceses, concluding that while the Catholic Church in Iowa had a long, painful history of sexual abuse by priests and cover-up by their leadership, the Catholic Church has enacted many reforms over the last two decades.

“Sexual abuse took place over decades. The complaints, the victims, the duration of the abuse were overwhelming,” the report stated. “Our hearts go…

View Cache

[Photo above: Signs are pictured at a memorial outside the Residential School in Kamloops, British Columbia., Sunday, June, 13, 2021. The remains of 215 children were discovered buried near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School earlier this month. (Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press via AP)]

A First Nation in southern Saskatchewan said Wednesday that it has discovered hundreds of unmarked graves at the site of another former residential school for Indigenous children.

A statement from the Cowessess First Nation and the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous First Nations, which represents Saskatchewan’s First Nations, said that “the number of unmarked graves will be the most significantly substantial to date in Canada.”

Last month the remains of 215 children, some as young as 3 years old, were found buried on the site of what was once Canada’s largest Indigenous residential school near Kamloops, British Columbia.

Cowessess Chief Cadmus Delorme and Chief Bobby Cameron of…

View Cache

Late last month, the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation community announced its grim discovery of 215 graves at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. The news of so many children’s bodies, interred beneath the windswept grounds of an old Catholic facility, run for nearly 80 years by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, astounded white audiences and affirmed a horror that First Nations people have lived with for generations.

Between the 1880s and the 1990s, approximately 150,000 First Nations children were put into residential schools in Canada, mostly Catholic institutions. Thousands of those children, including the ones found at Kamloops, never returned home.

But the Kamloops graves are part of a history of Catholic missions to Native peoples that spans Canada and the United States. The horrors of the Kamloops School are also horrors of other North American Catholic institutions.

One horror of Kamloops, like…

View Cache

Although major steps have been taken to help achieve healing and reconciliation with survivors of clergy sexual abuse, much work remains ahead for the U.S. Catholic Church, the chairwoman of the National Review Board told the spring assembly of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Citing the progress that has occurred since 2002 when the abuse scandal exploded, Suzanne Healy said in a prerecorded address to the bishops that the church’s outreach efforts must continue to evolve as the needs of survivors are better understood.

“We must focus on the areas of healing and reconciliation, accountability, transparency and ongoing education for all involved in child and youth protection,” said Healy, who has chaired the NRB since June 2020.

“You, as bishops and eparchs, have made significant progress over the years. And sometimes we can imagine that it may feel like it is never enough. However, as the pain of child abuse is…

View Cache

The UN is concerned about the efforts of Catholic Church members to undermine efforts to improve the prosecution child sex abusers.

Four UN special rapporteurs have called on the Vatican to make it mandatory that church officials everywhere report abuse allegations to civil authorities.

While acknowledging Vatican-mandated reforms in the handling of clerical sexual abuse, The four human rights experts, volunteers who investigate and make recommendations on behalf of the UN Human Rights Council, also expressed concern about the “continued efforts of members of the Catholic Church to undermine legislative efforts to improve the prosecution of sexual abuse against children in national courts” and to lobby legislatures “to preserve the statute of limitations on these crimes”.

The report, sent to the Vatican in April and published on the website of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights today, was written by special rapporteurs working on the promotion of…

View Cache

Poland’s state commission for fighting sex abuse of minors said Thursday it has asked the Vatican for data on abuse by the clergy in Poland because Poland’s church is not providing the requested information.

Head of the commission Blazej Kmieciak said that some 30% of cases of abuse of persons aged under 15 that the commission is analyzing relate to the clergy.

He said, however, that despite written requests made earlier this year to regional leaders of Poland’s Catholic Church and of other churches, only one bishops’ court made its files available to the State Commission for Cases of Pedophilia.

“We are receiving no documents, no information from Poland’s Episcopate Conference that would allow for a substantive analysis of the cases that we need to clarify,” Kmieciak told a news conference.

As a result, the commission sent a letter to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith asking,…

View Cache

N special rapporteurs have criticised the Vatican over child sexual abuse in stronger terms than ever before, highlighting that there have been “tens of thousands of alleged victims” over “decades”.

This week the office of the UN high commissioner for human rights has released a letter which it sent to the Holy See in April (English translation available).

It details significant abuse in eight countries and highlights concerns over the Vatican’s “obstructionist practices”.

The letter expressed regret that there had been no response to a separate communication which the rapporteurs sent in 2019.

The latest letter has only been made public, as they had threatened, because it had not been replied to either.

‘Obstructionist practices’

The rapporteurs referred to “persistent allegations” that the Catholic Church had obstructed and failed to cooperate with domestic judicial proceedings, in order to “prevent” accountability for abusers and compensation for victims.

They urged the…

View Cache

The Diocese of Lafayette has received an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor by Deacon Shawn Jude Gautreaux, according to a news release. 

Following an initial inquiry, the Diocese has placed Gautreaux on administrative leave pending a further determination in the matter. 

The allegation received, according to the release, relates to a period of time many years before he was ordained a deacon. Further, the Diocese has reported the allegation to law enforcement authorities in St. Martin Parish. 

The Diocese reportedly is unaware of any other allegations involving Gautreaux at this time.

According to the release from the Diocese, staff is continuing to cooperate fully with law enforcement and anyone with any information on any cases of possible abuse is urged to come forward to local law enforcement authorities and to the Diocese.

In response, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) issued the following statement:

“It is what the Diocese of…

View Cache

Deacon Shawn Jude Gautreaux from St. Bernard Catholic Church in Breaux Bridge, LA, has been put on leave pending an investigation into allegations that he sexually abused a minor. According to the Diocese of Lafayette, the allegation against the Deacon comes from a period of time before his ordination. The Diocese also said that local law enforcement has been informed.

However, it is what the Diocese of Lafayette is not sharing that concerns us. We believe that full transparency requires more information about Deacon Gautreaux. What the accusations are, when he was ordained, what his assignments were and how long he worked at each, including St. Bernard Parish, is vital knowledge for the parish community and the public. Catholic officials should also visit every place where the Deacon was assigned and beg anyone with information or suspicions to notify the police immediately.

We hope the Diocese…

View Cache

“The cover-up was extensive,” the report says. “Again, Iowa is not different from the rest of the country.”

The Iowa Attorney General’s Office released a report Wednesday after reviewing 50 complaints of sexual abuse and misconduct involving around 70 Catholic priests.

“Sexual abuse took place over decades,” the report read. “The complaints, the victims, the duration of the abuse were overwhelming.”

Attorney General Tom Miller started looking into the issue in 2018 after the Pennsylvania attorney general released a similar report.

In 2019, the Des Moines and Sioux City dioceses released their first lists of credibly accused priests. The Davenport Diocese and Dubuque Archdiocese had also previously released these lists.

Since the attorney general’s office began the review, three names were added to the list for Sioux City, and one name was added for Davenport.

The 50…

View Cache

Roman Catholic priests sexually abused minors across Iowa for decades while church leaders covered it up, but reforms implemented in the last two decades have largely ended the problem, a three-year review by Iowa’s attorney general concluded.

A report issued by Attorney General Tom Miller said the number of complaints, victims and the duration of the abuse was “overwhelming” and the “cover-up was extensive,” similar to what has been found elsewhere in the U.S.

“The image and reputation of the church were put ahead of the enormous harm to young people,” the 30-page report found.

The review found that only five Iowa priests have been the subject of allegations since 2002, and that bishops who participated in concealing past problems are no longer in charge in Iowa.

Miller said key reforms implemented since 2002 are working. He praised the automatic reporting of all abuse allegations by church…

View Cache

In Iowa as in the rest of the country, the incidence and duration of sexual abuse by clergy “were overwhelming” and the cover-up “extensive” in earlier decades, a report by the Iowa Attorney General’s Office that was released Wednesday concludes.

A years-long investigation by the office reviewed nearly 50 complaints of sexual abuse against current and former Catholic priests and other officials, including 17 allegations that had never before been reported.

In a statement Wednesday, the bishops of Iowa’s four Catholic dioceses said the church “is committed to do all that is humanly possible to protect minors from the sin and crime of clergy sexual abuse, and to promote healing.” The bishops said the new report would be studied for ways to improve existing reporting and investigating procedures.

The state’s investigation was inspired by a sweeping and scathing report issued by the Pennsylvania Attorney General in 2018.

In…

View Cache

‘Our hearts go out to the victims of these acts,’ report says 

The Iowa Attorney General’s Office has completed a review of clergy abuse in Iowa. The office examined records involving about 70 Catholic priests and looked into 50 complaints of sexual abuse and misconduct reported to the attorney general.

“Sexual abuse took place over decades. The complaints, the victims, the duration of the abuse were overwhelming,” a report by the AG’s Office concluded. “Our hearts go out to the victims of these acts. The consequences are severe and lifelong.”

The report concludes that while the Catholic Church in Iowa had a long, painful history of abuse by priests and a cover-up by officials, the Dioceses have enacted many reforms over the last two decades. The Dioceses have become more responsive to victims of clergy abuse and each now reports all accusations to law enforcement authorities.  

Five priests in Iowa…

View Cache

When a bipartisan majority of state lawmakers voted in the final days of the legislative session to give survivors of past childhood sex abuse access to the justice system, a small group of people quietly celebrated the accomplishment: the former Colorado legislators who watched their similar effort go down in flames 15 years ago.

“I do applaud the people who really worked on it,” said Alice Madden, the House majority leader in 2006 and a Democrat from Boulder. “I’m sad there were not champions prior to this.”

At the time, Madden was one of the sponsors of an effort to abolish the civil statute of limitations — the time window in which victims could file a lawsuit — for child sexual abuse. Until the recent law change, survivors generally had six years after they turned 18 to sue their perpetrator and only two years to sue an institution. The…

View Cache

The Catholic Diocese of Kansas City – St. Joseph said that it does not duplicate publicly listed names of “credibly accused” priests, but victim advocates say that’s not enough.

A victim advocacy group says the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City – St. Joseph failed to include the names of nearly 20 priests in its list of “credibly accused” sexual abusers.

Members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests went to the diocese’s headquarters on Wednesday to write the names of the priests that were all at one point tied to Kansas City, Missouri.

The group said that while Bishop James V. Johnston Jr. had not included the priests on his list of accused clergy, they can be found on lists of institutions elsewhere.

Former SNAP executive director David Clohessy said it was important for the local diocese to include all of the names on its list.

…

View Cache

Key points:

• The review into the national redress scheme recommended significant changes to the application process
• Social Services Minister Anne Ruston said the government was taking immediate action on 25 of the 38 recommendations
• The government did not back a recommendation to change the standard of proof required for a claim

Elderly and terminally ill survivors of child sexual abuse will be able to access advance compensation payments of up to $10,000, after an inquiry found the scheme designed to support victims is a bureaucratic nightmare.

In its first two years of operation, the national redress scheme has been criticised as incredibly slow, overly complicated and traumatising for survivors forced to recount horrific tales of abuse in the hope of securing financial support.

A review commissioned by the federal government has been released by Social Services Minister Anne Ruston and agreed with many of those sentiments.

One of the recommendations by senior public…

View Cache

The Archdiocese of Berlin announced that it was temporarily suspending the work of its expert commission established to follow up on a legal report about sexual abuse in the archdiocese since 1946.

The archdiocese said June 22 that the commission is recommending that findings from the legal firm Redeker Sellner Dahs be reworked or that another legal firm be commissioned to investigate the abuse.

In a statement later that day, lawyers Sabine Wildfeuer and Peter-Andreas Brand of Redeker Sellner Dahs said they learned about the suspension of the archdiocesan Sexual Abuse Expert Commission through the media.

“No one has spoken to us about this, neither from the archdiocesan staff nor from the expert commission,” the letter said.

“Our mandate for a legal opinion has been fulfilled completely and properly. The report states in detail by whom and in what way cases of sexual abuse were covered up in the area…

View Cache

The Legionaries of Christ were supposed to be the great Catholic hope of Latin America, but their Mexican founder’s sexual crimes have permanently weakened the congregation

Father Marcial Maciel’s name no longer appears on any of its official documents.

But the Legion of Christ, the male religious congregation the late Mexican priest set up in 1941, is still deeply affected by the actions of its founder.

Maciel has been accused of some 60 rapes and other forms of corruption.

Most of his crimes came to light after his death in 2008. But they have plunged his congregation into a long crisis.

The Legion of Christ was once touted as the future of the Church in Mexico, the country with the world’s second-largest Catholic population.

But at the order’s most recent chapter, the Legionaries (as the group is more commonly known) spoke of a “vocational emergency, marked by a steady decline…

View Cache

In a letter made public today, four Independent human rights experts working with the United Nations want the Vatican do more to prevent violence and sexual abuse against children.  The experts cited the “persistent allegations of obstruction and lack of cooperation” from the Catholic Church. SNAP agrees wholeheartedly with them.

To us, it is excellent news that yet another highly respected group is calling on the Vatican to reform. Hopefully, the increased pressure from these international experts will force Church officials to make a difference for children and the vulnerable. We also applaud the UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner (OHCHR) for noting the tactics used by Catholic leadership in avoiding accountability and transparency. Most importantly, we fully agree with the UN experts who raised concerns about the Church’s efforts to thwart legislative efforts to make the prosecution of abusive clergy, brothers, and nuns easier, as intense…

View Cache

A man abused for years by a paedophile priest at a County Down school is to receive a six-figure sum in damages, the High Court has been told.

Tony Gribben, 61, sued the trustees and board of governors at St Colman’s College in Newry and the Diocese of Dromore.

He took the lawsuit over the sexual and physical assaults suffered at the hands of the late Father Malachy Finnegan.

The pay-out to Mr Gribben forms part of a settlement.

A personal apology will also be issued on behalf of the leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland under the terms of the agreement.

Outside the court, Mr Gribben said that for the apology to be meaningful, the Church must “acknowledge it was more concerned about protecting its reputation than safeguarding children from the actions of predatory paedophiles like Finnegan”.

“The diocese needs to be completely transparent in cooperating with a…

View Cache

Father Andrew Small from Liverpool was appointed on Tuesday as the new secretary of the pope’s commission for the protection of minors, succeeding American Monsignor Robert Oliver, who was removed from the position earlier this year.

“I am deeply honored to be called to serve the Holy Father and God’s people as secretary of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors,” said Small in a statement released by the commission when the appointment was announced.

“Safeguarding the youth of our Church and of our communities remains one of the most urgent priorities of the Church today,” he said. “I look forward to doing my part to help rebuild trust in a Church whose mission is to protect, support and love any and all, but especially those wounded by the Church’s ministers. The Lord will accompany us in the healing that lies ahead as we continue on this most important…

View Cache

The Diocese of Camden “grossly underreported” its assets in a bankruptcy filing in an effort to “disadvantage survivors of clergy abuse,” a lawyer charged Wednesday.

Attorney Jeff Anderson asserted Bishop Dennis Sullivan, the diocese’s leader, “has at least $774 million under his control.”

In contrast, he said, the diocese’s bankruptcy filing lists assets of almost $54 million and net assets after liabilities of $28.1 million.

“We’re here to sound the alarm,” said the St. Paul, Minnesota, attorney, who called the diocese’s financial accounting “a lie, a facade, a fiction.”

“They are hiding their assets and their true ability to pay (clergy sex abuse victims), the same way they’ve been hiding offenders and the role of top officials,” claimed Anderson.

The diocese rejected Anderson’s claims, saying it “continues to fully comply with all requirements” of U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

“Any claim to the contrary is purposefully inflammatory and does nothing to advance the cause…

View Cache

“Better late than never” is one cliché that comes to mind when hearing that the Archdiocese of Kansas City, Kansas has reversed itself by admitting a cleric that it previously cleared is actually a credibly accused abuser.

“We told you so” also comes to mind. The context of this cliché – that the church cannot honestly or possibly police itself – has been a concern of advocates for years and is sadly shown to be true with each new story about clergy abuse that comes out.

In this particular case, the red flag was that the accused cleric, Fr. William Haegelin, was laicized in 2004, just two years after the accusation. In the context of the Catholic Church, this kind of timeframe is speedy and sends the message that this cleric’s crimes were severe enough that the institutional church wanted to distance themselves from him as quickly…

View Cache

Voicing “deep sorrow for the suffering of victims and survivors of abuse,” the archdiocese said that former priest William Haegelin was in fact the subject of “a substantiated allegation of sexual abuse of a minor.

Crediting a sex abuse victim for his challenge of a review board’s ruling in 2002, the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas says an allegation that a now-laicized priest abused a minor was, in fact, able to be substantiated. 

“The archdiocese is particularly grateful for this survivor’s courage and strength in coming forward to challenge the decision,” the archdiocese said in a June 18 statement in the case involving former priest William Haegelin.

“Due to this persistence, we are now able to acknowledge more fully the harm to the survivor and to better assist and support their healing,” the archdiocese said. “Archbishop Naumann offers his sincere apology to the survivor, their family and community.”

Voicing…

View Cache

A viral video has in many ways exposed a practice of child abuse at some religious schools that clerics don’t want people to talk about.

A sexually explicit video involving a senior Muslim cleric that surfaced a few days back has reignited a debate on the seemingly rampant abuse that takes place in Pakistan’s religious schools known as madrassahs. 

Seventy-year-old Aziz ur Rehman, a scholar at one of the top Islamic institutions in Pakistan’s second largest city of Lahore, has confessed he forced a student to perform sexual acts in return for a promise to let him take an exam after he was caught cheating. Rehman is now in police custody. 

The case involving Rehman, who’s a Mufti, which means he’s among the highest echelons of the clergy, can become a test case for Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government on how to tackle a politically sensitive matter, experts said. 

“What…

View Cache