ABUSE TRACKER

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

A determined Sister Lucy is unwilling to give in to the Church’s coercion tactics. She remarked, “Other than my room, they have denied me access to all the other areas in the convent. They don’t talk to me. Still, I will continue my fight and I won’t be leaving this convent.”

Days after the dismissal of Sister Lucy Kalapura from the Franciscan Christ Congregation (FCC), an exclusive report by The Times of India revealed that she was removed by the Vatican over frivolous charges. Sister Lucy had supported the nun, who accused Bishop Franco Mulakkal in a rape case. And this drew the ire of the Apostolica Signatura, the highest judicial authority in the Catholic Church.

The former nun had joined the FCC at the tender age of 17. According to the Church, she has committed a long list of ‘crimes.’ It includes buying a car and publishing…

View Cache

The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston has added more priests to the list of credibly accused clergy.

The original list in 2019 named local priests who were credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors from 1950 to 2018.

The updated list now includes Manuel La Rosa Lopez who pleaded guilty to indecency with a child last December. La Rosa Lopez was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

His victims were teenagers at the Sacred Hearth Catholic Church in Conroe who waited 20 years for justice. Two of them sued The Vatican for $20 million.

The other three died decades ago, according to the Archdiocese. John Patrick Barry, C.S.B., Franz B. Lickteig, O.Carm. and William “Herb” Schreiner, C.S.B. were members of Religious Orders based outside of the Archdiocese but serving within its geographic boundaries.

A credible allegation is one which there is reason to believe is true, based on reasonably available information, in…

View Cache

Five individuals, among them a priest, have been arrested in Bengaluru for allegedly trying to get a 10-year-old girl sacrificed in order to ‘ward off evil spirits’ in a field, as per India Today. 

A case has been registered against them by the cops under the Karnataka Prevention and Eradication of Inhuman Evil Practices and Black Magic Bill, kidnapping and criminal intimidation as per The New Indian Express.

The report said it happened in Gandhi Grama near Nelamangala on June 14. The girl was a Class 4 student and lived with her grandma while her parents lived in Magadi. Both were labourers. 

In their complaint, the parents claimed that the neighbours Savithramma and Soumya took their daughter to a nearby field. She told them she was forced to wear a garland. 

The grandmother noticed she was missing and on hearing her screams, raised the alarm. She was rescued and narrated the incident…

View Cache

The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has said he will appeal a ruling by a magistrate’s Court in Kitui which freed a former Catholic priest who had been accused of attempting to kill a woman and a child he is alleged to have fathered.

Senior State Counsel Bonnie Okemwa said the office of the DPP disagrees with Kitui Chief Magistrate Stephen Mbungi’s judgment and will be moving to the High Court to lodge an appeal.

Fr Japheth Mwove Kimanzi, a former Catholic priest, was acquitted on Wednesday last week, prompting protests and loud wailing from the victim, who claimed that she had been denied justice.

Veronica Musali Mutua burst out crying inside the courtroom as soon as the trial magistrate delivered the judgment, saying that the trial court had sided with her persecutor.

Permanent disability

Mr Okemwa, who is the head of prosecutions in Kitui County, said the appeal will…

View Cache

The Lahore police reported that they had filed a complaint against Mufti Azizur Rahman after distressing video footage of the priest allegedly sexually abusing one of his students quickly went viral.

Local media reported that the victim has included in his complaint that he was barred from taking examinations at Wafaqul Madaris for three years because Mufti Rahman had accused him and another student of cheating.

Mufti Rahman allegedly told the victim that if he engages in sexual activity and pleases Mufti, he will help him with his exams, and the victim had no choice but to be sexually abused.

The distressing video, which went viral a few days ago, sparked outrage on social media, with many demanding that it should be prosecuted. Meanwhile, Mufti Rahman asserted his innocence in a video message claimed that the student in the video had drugged him and made him lose his wits.

Mufti…

View Cache

Craig Harrison’s attorney claimed that Harrison received a letter from Bishop Brennan from the Fresno Diocese threatening and defaming him.

Harrison resigned his post in the catholic church earlier this year, claiming he was not given the chance to defend himself to the diocese following allegations of sexual misconduct.

Now Kyle Humphrey, Harrison’s lawyer, claims the letter from Bishop Brennan accused Harrison of continuing to present himself as a catholic priest in his private businesses. Humphrey claimed the letter said, “essentially if monsignor did not agree to shut down his business and no longer work with his woman’s non-profit then they would put him on the list of credibly accused priest, something he is not on.”

Humphrey claims the bishop’s letter says that he creates a source of “confusion and scandal” for local Catholics.

We have not seen a copy of this letter for ourselves, despite asking Humphrey for the…

View Cache

Accused former priest Craig Harrison has been told by his previous boss at the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fresno to shut down his counseling business and stop serving in a nonprofit that ministers to women because such activities might sow confusion and scandal, according to a statement released Friday by Harrison’s attorneys.

The statement also said his lawyers have received word from the Catholic Church that Harrison will not be named on a soon-to-be released list of priests credibly accused of sexual improprieties.

The diocese’s chancellor declined to confirm either assertion, about the list or any attempt to call off Harrison’s spiritual consulting activities, and declined to address them. She said the list of accused priests is still being finalized.

“I will not make any comment about who’s on the list and who’s not on the list,” Chancellor Cheryl Sarkisian said.

Harrison has repeatedly denied he has ever had inappropriate…

View Cache

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis announced June 17 it has fulfilled its remaining $3 million obligation to clergy abuse survivors ahead of schedule in its $210 million bankruptcy settlement.

Archbishop Bernard A. Hebda said in a statement, “With funds drawn from unexpected estate gifts, and at the advice of the Archdiocesan Finance Council and Corporate Board [lay leaders who advise him on archdiocesan operations], the archdiocese has decided to accelerate its payment schedule, underscoring a heartfelt desire to assist the survivors as promptly as possible by fulfilling our financial obligation ahead of schedule.”

The archdiocese filed for bankruptcy protection in January 2015 in the wake of mounting claims of clergy sexual abuse dating back as far as the 1940s.

Ultimately, 453 claims were filed against the archdiocese during the claim-filing period, most of which were related to lawsuits brought against the archdiocese during a three-year-lifting of the statute…

View Cache

Pope Francis has named Oblate Fr. Andrew Small secretary “pro tempore” of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

Small, 53, had served two terms as national director for the Pontifical Mission Societies in the United States, and his successor there was named in April.

The Vatican June 22 announced Small’s appointment to the commission, which Pope Francis established in 2014. The body of experts, with input from survivors, is meant to make proposals and spearhead initiatives to improve safeguarding norms and procedures throughout the church. Its work is separate from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s investigation and canonical prosecution of clerics accused of abuse.

Small, who was born in Liverpool, England, but worked in the United States for many years and holds U.S. citizenship, succeeds Msgr. Robert Oliver, a priest of the Archdiocese of Boston.

The commission is headed by Boston Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley;…

View Cache

While acknowledging Vatican-mandated reforms in the handling of clerical sexual abuse, four U.N. special rapporteurs urged the Vatican to make it mandatory that church officials everywhere report abuse allegations to civil authorities.

The four human rights experts, volunteers who investigate and make recommendations on behalf of the U.N. 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 June 21, was written by special rapporteurs working on the promotion of truth, justice and reparation; on the sale and sexual exploitation of children; on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; and on the rights of persons…

View Cache

THERE is a compelling documentary on Netflix titled The Keepers. It begins with an unsolved murder mystery, a theme which has become rather popular for documentaries on streaming websites and elsewhere. The murder is of a nun back in 1969, who taught at a high school in Baltimore, US. After her disappearance one night, her body was found two months later but the perpetrators were never identified or found.

But within one episode, it is clear the series, and the story it was following, was so much bigger than the murder of a young nun, who taught English at a Catholic school. By the time the viewer clicks on the second episode it turns into a story of abuse carried out at the school by a priest; as the survivors tell of their experiences; it turns out that some of them had confided in the nun and there is circumstantial…

View Cache

Bishop Emmanuel Lafont, who resigned last October on his 75th birthday, has been accused by several young men of demanding sex for favors

Police in Cayenne, the capital of French Guiana, received a strange Sunday evening phone call last October 18th.

It was from Bishop Emmanuel Lafont, the Catholic spiritual leader of the some 295,000 inhabitants of this overseas French department located on the northeast coast of South America.

The bishop told the officers he had been physically threatened by a young undocumented immigrant who was living at the bishop’s residence.

A few minutes later, the police arrived on the scene and arrested a 27-year-old Haitian man whom we’ll call “José”.

Lafont reported him for “degradation and violent theft against a vulnerable person”.

The Cayenne prosecutor’s office opened a preliminary investigation the next day.

The bishop and the young man were questioned, but their versions of the incident and the…

View Cache

A group of U.N. “experts” is expected to issue a statement aimed at forcing the Holy See and the Catholic Church to surrender to abortion and gender ideology, under the guise of demanding that the Vatican takes all necessary steps to prevent abuse.

With the Human Rights Council’s latest session due to begin on June 21, experts from the U.N., including several special rapporteurs, are poised to publish a statement urging the Holy See to introduce all necessary measures to prevent sex abuse.

The statement, which goes beyond the capacities of the U.N. experts, has the hallmarks of an attempt to undermine Catholic doctrine by using the sex abuse scandals.

In February 2014, a report by the Committee of the U.N. Convention for the Rights of the Child waded into the Church’s teaching on human sexuality and canon law. In May 2014, a report from the Committee of the U.N. Convention against Torture…

View Cache

Catholic Archbishop Marcel Damphousse also calls for Pope Francis to apologize for harm caused

Ottawa-Cornwall Archbishop Marcel Damphousse issued a formal apology Monday to Indigenous people for the Catholic Church’s role in the residential school system.

He also called on Pope Francis, the global head of the church of approximately 1.3 billion people, to apologize, as well.

The apology is the latest expression of contrition from a Canadian Catholic leader since the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation announced the discovery of what are believed to be the unmarked burial sites of children’s remains adjacent to a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C. It follows similar apologies from the archbishops of Vancouver and Regina.

More than 150,000 Indigenous children were separated from their families and forced to attend residential schools across Canada between the 1880s and 1996, with many suffering physical, sexual and psychological abuse. Most of the schools were operated by Catholic denominations on behalf of the federal government.

“I extend…

View Cache

Fr Malachy Finnegan taught and worked at St Colman’s College, Co Down from 1967 to 1987

A man abused for years by a priest at a Co Down school is to receive a “six-figure sum” in damages, the high court in Belfast heard on Monday.

The pay-out to Tony Gribben forms part of a settlement reached in his lawsuit over the historic sexual and physical assaults he suffered at the hands of the late Fr Malachy Finnegan.

A personal apology will also be issued on behalf of the Catholic Primate, Archbishop Eamon Martin under the terms of agreement.

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

Outside court he said: “The diocese needs to be completely transparent in cooperating with a long overdue investigation on its failings.”

Mr Gribben claimed for negligence and failures to protect him…

View Cache

Anyone who was sexually abused by a Catholic priest has less than two weeks to file a claim before a deadline set in the Diocese of Camden’s bankruptcy case, attorneys said as they added nine new names to the list of accused priests.

The diocese — which includes parishes in Atlantic, Camden, Cape May, Cumberland, Gloucester and Salem counties — filed for bankruptcy last fall after church officials said its finances were overwhelmed by clergy sexual abuse settlements and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A bankruptcy judge set a June 30 deadline for those owed money to file claims against the diocese. That has prompted attorneys to call on anyone sexually abused by a clergy member tied to the Diocese of Camden to file a lawsuit quickly, or risk missing out on a settlement through the bankruptcy court.

“We need to sound the…

View Cache

UN human rights experts* urged the Holy See to take all necessary measures to stop and prevent the recurrence of violence and sexual abuse against children in Catholic institutions, and to ensure those responsible are held to account and reparations are paid to victims.

In a letter to the Holy See in April 2021, the experts expressed “utmost concern about the numerous allegations around the world of sexual abuse and violence committed by members of the Catholic Church against children, and about the measures adopted by the Catholic Church to protect alleged abusers, cover up crimes, obstruct accountability of alleged abusers, and evade reparations due to victims”.

The experts noted the persistent allegations of obstruction and lack of cooperation by the Catholic Church with domestic legal proceedings to prevent accountability of perpetrators and reparations to victims. They also noted the concordats and other agreements negotiated by the Holy See with States that limit…

View Cache

A group of UN human rights experts said Monday they had urged the Vatican to take steps to stop child sex abuse in Catholic institutions and prevent it from happening again.

The experts called on “the Holy See to take all necessary measures to stop and prevent the recurrence of violence and sexual abuse against children in Catholic institutions, and to ensure those responsible are held to account and reparations are paid to victims.”

The four special rapporteurs, who do not speak for the United Nations but report their findings to it, wrote to the Vatican in April.

The experts voiced their “utmost concern about the numerous allegations around the world of sexual abuse and violence committed by members of the Catholic Church against children,” according to the letter released Monday.

They also said they were worried about measures adopted by the church to “protect alleged abusers, cover up crimes,…

View Cache

Four human rights experts working with the United Nations are imploring the Vatican to be more proactive about stopping and preventing violence and sexual abuse of children.

The U.N. Human Rights Office cited “persistent allegations of obstruction and lack of cooperation” from the Catholic Church. The experts said in an April 7 letter made public on Monday that the church demonstrated a pattern of behavior “to protect alleged abusers, cover up crimes, obstruct accountability of alleged abusers, and evade reparations due to victims.”

The experts also alleged bids were made by select church members to undermine attempts to prosecute child sex offenders in national legislatures. They noted lobbying attempts to limit how long former child victims can report the crimes after becoming adults.

The experts said the violations had allegedly been committed over decades in many countries with tens of thousands of victims.

“We note with great concern the apparent pervasiveness…

View Cache

Independent human rights experts working with the United Nations have urged the Vatican to do more to stop and prevent violence and sexual abuse against children, citing “persistent allegations of obstruction and lack of cooperation” from the Catholic Church, the U.N. human rights office said.

The four experts, in a letter dated April 7 but only made public on Monday, faulted efforts by the church “to protect alleged abusers, cover up crimes, obstruct accountability of alleged abusers, and evade reparations due to victims.”

In general terms, the experts alleged bids were made by some church members to undercut efforts in national legislatures to prosecute child sex offenders, and cited lobbying attempts to limit how long former child victims can report the crimes after they become adults.

The experts said the violations had allegedly been committed over decades in many countries with tens of thousands of victims.

“We note with great…

View Cache

I was 22 years old and working as a sports reporter when I was raped by a Major League Baseball player.

I didn’t tell my best friend, my sister, my mother or my sports editor, who was a woman. For 18 years, I didn’t tell anyone.

I didn’t say it out loud to myself, write it down, speak his name or allow myself to think about it beyond wishing hard that it would not have happened. I spent years willing it to unhappen. Magical thinking became my truth.

That all changed in January, when I heard that the New York Mets’ general manager, Jared Porter, was fired for sending sexually explicit texts and photographs to a female reporter in 2016.

I hadn’t been a sports reporter in 11 years, but as I read accounts of other women’s experiences with sexual harassment, the full force of my own assault hit me. And with…

View Cache

“We were just like machines for them, they definitely dehumanised us.”

THE WAY SURVIVORS of mother and baby homes have been treated by the Catholic Church and successive governments in Ireland amounts to “abuse of the abused”, one woman has said.

Terri Harrison was among the survivors to give testimony to the Investigation Committee of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes.

Speaking to The Journal, Terri said that recalling the trauma she suffered when coerced into giving her son up for adoption, and her ongoing search for him, while giving evidence to the Commission was incredibly difficult.

Terri gave birth to a son, Niall, in the St Patrick’s institution on the Navan Road in Dublin in 1973. She [was] 18 years old at the time and wanted to keep her baby.

She moved to England and had planned to raise her child there but a religious organisation found…

View Cache

A former Catholic school music teacher will serve at least a decade in prison after pleading guilty to four counts of criminal sexual conduct.

It’s the harshest prison sentence so far in the Michigan Department of Attorney General’s ongoing clergy abuse investigation, according to a news release Friday.

Joseph – or Josef – Comperchio of Fort Myers, Florida, was first charged last September in connection to sexually abusing two children.

In those cases, he was charged with two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and four counts of second-degree criminal sexual contact.

Five new counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct involving two individuals were added this past October.

The charges stem from Comperchio’s time as the drama and music teacher at St. John Catholic School in Jackson in the 1970s.

He pleaded guilty Friday morning to three counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct and one count of first-degree criminal sexual…

View Cache

A former music teacher is facing 10 to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to sexual abuse charges dating to his tenure at a Jackson Catholic school in the 1970s. 

Joseph Comperchio pleaded guilty Friday in Jackson County Circuit Court to three counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct and one count of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, according to Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office. 

Nessel’s office in September charged Comperchio with six counts of criminal sexual conduct for sexually abusing two children and added five new counts in October related two individuals.

At the time of his arraignment, Comperchio was living in Fort Myers, Florida, but the charges stem from his work as a drama and music teacher at St. John Catholic School in Jackson in the 1970s, Nessel’s office said.

“We remain indebted to the survivors who have come forward in order to share their stories,” Nessel said in a statement. “Their…

View Cache

Critics of Murphy Commission findings about mother and baby homes have failed to note they were based on sworn testimonies

Donal O’Donnell, the incoming chief justice, has warned against the increasingly strident attacks being made on his fellow judges, who make an easy target for critics because they “cannot and do not answer back”.

Addressing a recent Bar Council conference, O’Donnell did not mention the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes, but he could have, because it has been under extraordinary attack ever since the publication of its report in January.

The commission was led by a retired judge, Yvonne Murphy, and she and her two fellow commissioners, Professor Mary Daly and Dr William Duncan, have been invited to appear before the Oireachtas committee on children to answer the charge that their report had “failed” former residents of the homes.

They have refused to do so. In a letter…

View Cache

With deep sorrow for the suffering of victims and survivors of abuse, the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas (“Archdiocese”) announces that William Haegelin, a priest who was removed from ministry in 2002 and laicized in 2004, has been the subject of a substantiated allegation of sexual abuse of a minor. Mr. Haegelin’s name had been listed among the Archdiocese’s Substantiated Clergy Offenders under the category “Previously Publicized Allegations Not Able to Be Substantiated” but is now listed under the category “Substantiated Allegations of Clergy Sexual Abuse of a Minor.”  The list may be found at www.archkck.org.    

William Haegelin was the subject of an investigation in 2002 that led to an inaccurate determination and announcement that he did not sexually abuse a minor.  The Archdiocese is particularly grateful for this survivor’s courage and strength in coming forward to challenge the decision to categorize Mr. Haegelin’s allegation as not able to…

View Cache

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas has substantiated a sexual abuse claim against a priest nearly two decades after clearing him.

The archdiocese announced in a statement published in Friday’s issue of its official newspaper, The Leaven, that it was with “deep sorrow for the suffering of victims and survivors of abuse” that it was reversing what it described as an “inaccurate” determination that The Rev. William Haegelin did not sexually abuse a minor.

Haegelin was placed on leave from St. Ann Church in the Kansas City suburb of Prairie Village, Kansas, in 2002 after the archdiocese received a letter accusing him of the inappropriate sexual relations in the 1980s. A review board determined later that year that there was a sexual relationship but that the accuser was 18 when it began, The Kansas City Star reports.

Haegelin released a…

View Cache

Gov. John Bel Edwards has signed legislation removing deadlines for Louisiana’s child sex abuse victims to pursue damages in civil court, delivering a victory to survivors of abuse at the hands of Catholic clergy.

The new law, taking effect Aug. 1, will create a three-year window where all unresolved child molestation claims can be pursued in civil court, according to The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate. Until now, child sex abuse victims had until their 28th birthday to initiate litigation over their abuse.

“The scars of childhood sexual abuse may stay with survivors long-term, and they deserve more time to report these devastating crimes,” Edwards spokesperson Christina Stephens said Monday in a statement announcing the bill signing.

The measure sponsored by New Orleans Rep. Jason Hughes, a Democrat, received final passage Thursday, the last day of the legislative session. During debate, Hughes cited research that showed the…

View Cache

New law creates three-year window for unresolved allegations – no matter how old

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards has signed a legislative bill removing legal deadlines for child sex abuse victims to sue for damages, awarding a major victory to survivors of the Roman Catholic Church’s clerical molestation scandal.

The law, which takes effect Aug. 1, creates a three-year window for all unresolved child molestation allegations – no matter how old – to be pursued in civil court.

“The scars of childhood sexual abuse may stay with survivors long term, and they deserve more time to report these devastating crimes,” Edwards spokesperson Christina Stephens said.

Sponsored by state Rep. Jason Hughes, D-New Orleans, House Bill 492 changes a 28-year-old law that gave Louisiana child sex molestation victims until their 28th birthday to initiate litigation. Hughes cited research showing that the average age for child sex abuse victims to come forward…

View Cache

A former Catholic school teacher has pleaded guilty to sexually abusing children during his tenure at a southern Michigan school in the 1970s.

Joseph Comperchio, 66, pleaded guilty Friday in Jackson County Circuit Court to three counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct and one count of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office announced.

Nessel’s office charged Comperchio in September with six counts of criminal sexual conduct for sexually abusing two children and added five new counts in October related to two other individuals.

At the time of his arraignment, Comperchio was living in Fort Myers, Florida, but the charges stem from his work as a drama and music teacher at St. John Catholic School in Jackson, where he taught between 1974-77. The victims said the assaults happened while he was a teacher.

“We remain indebted to the survivors who have come forward in order to share their…

View Cache

Charges against Joseph–or Josef–Comperchio, stem from his time as the drama and music teacher at St. John Catholic School in Jackson in the 1970s.

A former Catholic school music teacher will serve at least a decade in prison after pleading guilty to four counts of criminal sexual conduct, which will result in the harshest prison sentence thus far in the Michigan Department of Attorney General’s ongoing clergy abuse investigation.

Joseph – or Josef – Comperchio, of Fort Myers, Florida, was first charged last September for sexually abusing two children. In those cases, he was charged with two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and four counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct.

Then in October of last year, five new counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct involving two individuals were added.

The charges stem from Comperchio’s time as the drama and music teacher at St. John Catholic School in Jackson in the 1970s.

Friday morning,…

View Cache