ABUSE TRACKER

COUNCIL BLUFFS (IA)
The Daily Nonpareil

December 3, 2020

By Tim Johnson

An Iowa priest who served in southwest Iowa early in his career has been restricted by Des Moines Bishop William Joensen after an investigation found evidence of sexual misconduct.

The Rev. Robert “Bud” Grant, who has been on administrative leave since March, will return to ministry with restrictions and supervision, with the approval of the school and Davenport Bishop Thomas Zinkula. He is a faculty member at St. Ambrose University in Davenport and a sacramental minister at St. Andrew Parish in Bluegrass.

The investigation followed an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor during the early 1990s, according to a press release from the Catholic Diocese of Des Moines. Since the investigation began in March, Joensen and the diocesan Allegation Review Committee gathered and reviewed evidence, including the initial complaint, examined an investigative report produced by a third party and consulted with experts in church law. The state attorney general’s office and law enforcement in Polk, Pottawattamie and Scott Counties are aware of the allegation of behavior occurring in the early 1990s.

“The investigation clearly established that the allegation did not meet the criteria of sexual abuse of a minor as defined by church law at the time of the incident, because the complainant was above majority age,” the press release stated. “However, it was also established that Father Grant engaged in behavior in select instances in the early 1990s that violated the Sixth Commandment and his priestly promises.”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

DENVER (CO)
Office of the Attorney General

December 1, 2020

This Supplemental Report concludes 22 months of work investigating and reporting on a 70-year history of (1) Roman Catholic clergy child sexual abuse in Colorado and (2) the Colorado dioceses’ programs and systems for preventing it. Our investigation has produced a reckoning and accounting of the past and a presentation of lessons from which the Colorado dioceses can continue to improve its child-protection practices into the future.

Our Special Master’s Report on Roman Catholic Clergy Sexual Abuse of Children in Colorado from 1950 to 2019 (“First Report”) was issued on October 22, 2019. It can be found at https://coag.gov/app/uploads/2019/10/Special-Masters-Report_10.22.19_FINAL.pdf. That same month, Colorado’s 3 Roman Catholic dioceses launched the Independent Reconciliation and Reparations Program (“IRRP”). Over the ensuing 4 months, the IRRP solicited and reviewed claims from alleged child sex abuse victims of Roman Catholic clergy in Colorado, and it awarded financial compensation (paid by the relevant Colorado diocese) to those victims whose claims it deemed credible. During that period additional victims also made clergy child sex abuse reports directly to the Colorado Attorney General’s Office.

In July 2020, we were then engaged under a new agreement with the dioceses and the Colorado Attorney General’s Office to determine (1) whether those newly reported child sex abuse incidents are substantiated and (2) what Colorado’s 3 dioceses have and have not done to implement the 5-6 improvements to their child-protection systems that we recommended after we evaluated those systems in 2019.

The results of our review of all the newly reported allegations are as follows. All of these incidents occurred between 1951 and 1999:

– We substantiated 46 additional incidents of sexual abuse of children (37 boys and 9 girls) by 25 diocesan priests in Colorado. The majority of the children were between the ages of 10 and 14 when they were abused.

– 16 of those 25 priests were already identified in the First Report. 9 of those priests are newly identified in this Supplemental Report.

– 5 of the newly identified priests served in the Denver Archdiocese. They are Father Kenneth Funk, Father Daniel Kelleher, Father James Moreno, Father Gregory Smith, and Father Charles Woodrich.

– 4 of the newly identified priests served in the Pueblo Diocese. They are Monsignor Marvin Kapushion, Father Duane Repola, Father Carlos Trujillo, and Father Joseph Walsh.

– 23 of those children were sexually abused by 13 diocesan priests serving in the Denver Archdiocese.

– 23 of those children were sexually abused by 12 diocesan priests serving in the Pueblo Diocese …

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

DENVER (CO)
Independent Oversight Committee of the Colorado Independent Reconciliation and Reparations Program

December 1, 2020

Because of incidents of historic sexual abuse of minors by priests in the Catholic Church, for many decades the three dioceses in Colorado—the Archdiocese of Denver, the Diocese of Colorado Springs, and the Diocese of Pueblo (the “Colorado Dioceses”)—have had individual programs to help victim-survivors of that abuse. Since 2003, under the national Charter that governs all dioceses in the United States, the Colorado Dioceses have provided care and services to survivors of abuse by diocesan priests under a unified, national approach. Starting in 2008, the Archdiocese of Denver engaged a group of Colorado community leaders (a Colorado judge, the Lakewood Chief of Police, and a vocational rehabilitation specialist) to assist in settling claims of historic abuse. That group of independent professionals asked all survivors to come forward, evaluated their claims, and determined settlement amounts that the Archdiocese would pay to survivors who came forward.

The 2019 Independent Reconciliation and Reparations Program (“IRRP”) is another step in the continuing effort by the Catholic Church in Colorado to responsibly address this historic sexual abuse issue. In January of 2019, the Colorado Dioceses—led by Archbishop Aquila and supported by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser—openly shared their records to allow a full study of the issue of sexual abuse of minors. This work included the Attorney General and the Church hiring an independent investigator to evaluate the current policies and practices in place for protecting minors from abuse.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

DENVER (CO)
Denver Post

December 1, 2020

By Elise Schmelzer

Revelations about Father Charles Woodrich force reckoning among institutions named after priest

For four decades, Denverites invoked Father Woody’s name as they cared for tens of thousands of people without homes or food.

The local legend, formally known as Father Charles Woodrich, died in 1991, but his legacy remained in annual giveaways to the poor, in one of Denver’s largest homeless shelters, in programs administered by Denver’s Catholic university and in a day shelter for those who are hungry.

That legacy of Denver’s so-called “patron of the poor” was obliterated Tuesday when Woodrich was named as a child sex abuser in a report spearheaded by the Colorado Attorney General’s Office. Woodrich, according to the report, molested three boys between the ages of 12 and 16 in the 1970s and 1980s while he served as the pastor of Holy Ghost Parish in downtown Denver. The priest plied two of the boys with alcohol and asked another to pose in his underwear and took pictures of him, according to the report.

The revelation has forced a reckoning among the institutions that invoke his name in their work.

“He wasn’t the saint that everybody wants to make him out to be,” one of Woodrich’s victims told The Denver Post on Tuesday.

The man, contacted through his attorney and listed as Woodrich’s “Victim #1″ in the report, spoke on the condition he not be publicly identified, citing the stigma attached to the assault. The Denver Post does not name survivors of sexual assault without permission.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

PUEBLO (CO)
Pueblo Chieftain

December 1, 2020

By Robert Boczkiewicz

Denver – Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser released a report Tuesday listing new “substantiated” incidents of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests in the Pueblo Diocese.

All of the newly substantiated incidents occurred between 1951 and 1999, he said. Some of the priests were identified in the attorney general’s first report last year; four are newly identified.

The newly substantiated claims included in Tuesday’s supplemental report concluded 22 months of former U.S. Attorney Bob Troyer’s work investigating and reporting on a 70-year history of Catholic clergy child sexual abuse in Colorado and the Colorado dioceses’ programs and systems for preventing it. Troyer worked for Weiser on the child abuse investigation.

The priests identified in Tuesday’s report include Monsignor Marvin Kapushion, Gary Kennedy, Daniel Maio, John Martin, Duane Repola, Carlos Trujillo, Joseph Walsh, Lawrence Sievers, John Beno, Delbert Blong, Andrew Burke, and William Gleeson.

They served parishes, an orphanage and other Catholic facilities in Pueblo, Rye, La Junta, Walsenburg, Capulin, Grand Junction and Montrose.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

DENVER (CO)
Colorado Sun

December 1, 2020

By Jesse Paul and Jennifer Brown

A supplemental report on abuse in Colorado’s three Catholic dioceses includes allegations against Charles Woodrich, who founded a homeless shelter and was called Denver’s “patron saint of the poor”

Investigators digging into child sex abuse in Colorado’s three Catholic dioceses have identified an additional 46 victims dating back to 1950 and nine more abusive priests, including an iconic Denver advocate for the homeless and poor.

The new revelations were released Tuesday by the Colorado Attorney General’s Office in a 93-page supplemental report that marks the end of a 22-month investigation into the church covering the past seven decades.

The latest report includes allegations that a chaplain sexually abused children living in a Pueblo orphanage in the 1950s, and that a Denver priest whipped a child and fondled him during an estimated 1,000 instances of abuse over five years in the 1970s.

It also names Charles Woodrich, better known as Father Woody, a revered priest who founded a homeless shelter and was called Denver’s “patron saint of the poor.” Father Woody established Haven of Hope, where people who are homeless can go for hot meals and showers, and founded the Samaritan House, a homeless shelter in downtown Denver. He died in 1991.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service via Catholic Philly

December 1, 2020

By Francois Gloutnay

Montreal – For more than three decades, leaders of the Archdiocese of Montreal failed to properly treat the complaints and the red flags periodically raised about Father Brian Boucher, said a report prepared by retired Quebec Superior Court Judge Pepita G. Capriolo.

Instead, church authorities seemed intent on covering the priest’s behavior to protect his and the church’s reputation, she wrote.

In 2019, Boucher was sentenced to eight years in prison for sexual assault of two boys; he was laicized in 2020. But in her 283-page document on Boucher, Capriolo said numerous incidents were reported and called into question during his career. For nearly 40 years, these warnings were all ignored or deemed irrelevant, especially because they concerned adults and not minors.

Capriolo reported not only on sexual abuse, but also physical assault, threats, loss or destruction of secret documents, and even a burglary in the secret archives of the archdiocese. The former judge called the case a “debacle” for the Archdiocese of Montreal.

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PINELLAS PARK (FL)
Legal Examiner – Blog of Saunders and Walker Law Firm

December 1, 2020

By Joseph H. Saunders

I haven’t commented on the much anticipated publication of the McCarrick Report because it fails to offer conclusions. As an advocate for sexual abuse survivors for two decades, I looked forward to reading the Report and gaining insight into the McCarrick saga. However, I came away from the Report disappointed and underwhelmed.

It’s a lengthy piece (449 pages) that offers timelines and the names of key players involved in McCarrick’s rise and eventual downfall, but it offers no conclusions. The first responses to the Report noted that it was highly critical of the previous two popes (John Paul II and Benedict) while leaving Francis virtually unscathed. The later critiques of the McCarrick Report are more balanced and nuanced. They deal with the impact of the Report and its relation to the ongoing problem of sexual abuse of minors in the church.

One analysis in particular is helpful. It comes from a Catholic priest who has had experience dealing with sex abuse as a priest and in his former work as an investigator. Father John Lavers, a Canadian priest of the Diocese of Portsmouth in England, currently serves as the director of chaplaincy with Stella Maris (Apostleship of the Sea) in the United Kingdom. He led a 2012 investigation into allegations of homosexual behavior and activity at Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Connecticut that led to the removal of 13 seminarians, primarily from the Archdiocese of Hartford and Diocese of Paterson, New Jersey. Prior to becoming a priest, Father Lavers served in Canadian law enforcement and national security work.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

AUCKLAND (NEW ZEALAND)
New Zealand Herald

December 1, 2020

By Isaac Davison

A mother who was raped by a Catholic priest says the church investigated the abuse initially moved him to a different school rather than punishing him.

She later complained to police, who twice decided against pressing charges before finally securing a conviction after a review.

Ann-Marie Shelley, now aged 64, appeared before a royal commission of inquiry in Auckland this morning, which is holding hearings on abuse in faith-based institutions.

She was left at Hutt Hospital after her birth in 1955 and placed for adoption through Catholic Social Services.

In a harrowing statement, Shelley described how she was neglected or abused at nearly every stage of her life – at the hands of her adoptive parents, at primary school, at a social welfare home, in an unmarried parents’ home, by a priest, and in a Red Cross shelter.

While she was training to be a nurse at Hutt Hospital, she was raped by Peter Hercock, a school counsellor and chaplain at Sacred Heart College in Lower Hutt.

Hercock’s crimes have previously been reported, but Shelley today spoke for the first time in detail about the way the church handled her complaint. She was critical of church leaders who have since been promoted to prestigious roles in New Zealand.

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DENVER (CO)
Denver Post

December 1, 2020

By Elise Schmelzer

New report brings total number of known abusive priests in Colorado to 52, number of child victims to 212

For two years, Father James Moreno sexually assaulted a teenage boy dozens of times after they met at a Denver Catholic school — including in the rectory of the city’s most prominent church.

Moreno assaulted the boy more than 60 times between 1978 and 1980. He groomed him, gave him alcohol and marijuana, and raped him, according to a report released Tuesday by the Colorado Attorney General’s Office.

The abuse happened all over Denver: in the rooms of St. Andrew’s Preparatory Seminary High School, in Moreno’s car, in the boy’s home, in the rectory of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in the heart of Denver, one block from the state Capitol.

The teen, now grown, reported the abuse to authorities last year after the publication of a state-led investigation into child sex abuse perpetrated by Catholic priests in Colorado. Additional investigation into Colorado’s three Catholic dioceses found nine more priests who sexually abused children, including Moreno and a Denver priest and advocate for the poor known as Father Woody, along with 46 more victims of abusive priests — ending a nearly two-year investigation into the dioceses by state authorities.

The new incidences of abuse included in a supplemental report released Tuesday bring the total number of known abusive priests in Colorado to 52 and the total number of children they abused to 212, according to the independent investigator hired by the Colorado Attorney General’s Office and the diocese. The investigator, former U.S. Attorney Bob Troyer, released his initial findings in October 2019 but continued to investigate as more survivors came forward after the publication of his first report.

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ROME (ITALY)
Associated Press

November 30, 2020

By Nicole Winfield

The pope’s former treasurer, Cardinal George Pell, said Monday he feels a dismayed sense of vindication as the financial mismanagement he tried to uncover in the Holy See is now being exposed in a spiraling Vatican corruption investigation.

Pell made the comments to The Associated Press in his first interview since returning to Rome after his conviction-turned-acquittal on sexual abuse charges in his native Australia. Pell told the AP that he knew in 2014 when he took the treasury job that the Holy See’s finances were “a bit of a mess.”

“I never, never thought it would be as Technicolor as it proved,” Pell said from his living room armchair in his apartment just outside St. Peter’s Square. “I didn’t know that there was so much criminality involved.”

Pell spoke to the AP before the Dec. 15 release of the first volume of his jailhouse memoir, “Prison Journal,” chronicling the first five months of the 404 days he spent in solitary confinement in a Melbourne lockup.

Pell left his job as prefect of the Vatican’s economy ministry in 2017 to face charges that he sexually molested two 13-year-old choir boys in the sacristy of the Melbourne cathedral in 1996. After a first jury deadlocked, a second unanimously convicted him and he was sentenced to six years in prison. The conviction was upheld on appeal only to be thrown out by Australia’s High Court, which in April found there was reasonable doubt in the testimony of his lone accuser.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Times

November 30, 2020

By Nicole Winfield

Rome – Cardinal George Pell, who was convicted and then acquitted of sexual abuse in his native Australia, reflects on the nature of suffering, Pope Francis’ papacy and the humiliations of solitary confinement in his jailhouse memoir, according to an advance copy obtained by The Associated Press.

“Prison Journal,” which recounts the first five months of Pell’s 404 days in solitary lockup, also provides a play-by-play of Pell’s legal case and gives personal insights into one of the most divisive figures in the Catholic hierarchy today. To his supporters and even some detractors, Pell is a victim of a terrific perversion of justice; to his critics, he is the symbol of everything that has gone wrong with the Catholic Church’s wretched response to clergy sexual abuse.

Due out Dec. 15, the book likely won’t budge anyone from either camp, but it is a fascinating read nonetheless. It is at times a spiritual meditation, a defiant assertion of innocence and a morbidly voyeuristic view into the daily grind of prison life – all of it narrated by a man who for a time was one of the most powerful Catholic cardinals in the world.

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WOODLAND PARK (NJ)
Bergen Record via NorthJersey.com

December 1, 2020

By Abbott Koloff and Deena Yellin

[Includes a video introduction by Abbott Koloff and a spreadsheet of the accused with information on diocese, parish or school and town, and years of alleged abuse. See also a printable PDF of the spreadsheet.]

The lawsuits filed over the past 12 months in New Jersey alleging sex abuse by Catholic priests have been numerous — there are more than 230 of them — and varied.

One man said that when he was a teenage student and told the vice principal of a Catholic high school in Bergen County that he’d been abused by a religious brother, the administrator struck the student over the head with a 500-page book, warned him never to speak of it again and imposed a five-day suspension.

A woman said she and other members of her Girl Scout troop were repeatedly abused in the basement of a Hackensack church years ago by a priest who was subsequently moved from parish to parish, eventually arrested in Pennsylvania and charged with sexually abusing a young girl in the Harrisburg area. Four of the Pennsylvania girl’s sisters later said they also were abused.

A girl in southern New Jersey confided years ago to her brother that she had been raped by a priest, who had told her God directed him to have sex with her. The brother responded that he, too, had been abused — by the same priest.

The Record and NorthJersey.com has examined more than 230 sex abuse lawsuits filed in New Jersey against the state’s five Roman Catholic dioceses since Dec. 1, 2019, when the state suspended the civil statute of limitations for such cases. The filings name more than 150 clerics, including dozens not on the church’sown list of 188 credibly accused priests released last year, and trace allegations from the 1940s through the present.

The lawsuits represent more than 240 people who allege they were abused. The bulk of the allegations are from the 1970s and 1980s. About two dozen involve abuse of children who were 5 or 6 years old. While most of the accusers are men, at least 20 women are among the plaintiffs. Almost half of the priests named in the suits are deceased.

Hundreds of additional allegations have been filed with the New Jersey Independent Victim Compensation Program, which was established by the state’s five Catholic dioceses last year to compensate victims who agree not to pursue lawsuits.

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WOODLAND PARK (NJ)
Bergen Record via NorthJersey.com

November 30, 2020

By Deena Yellin and Abbott Koloff

A priest who until last year worked as the New York Giants team chaplain has been accused in a lawsuit filed last week of sexually assaulting a young girl as two nuns held her down at a Montclair parish decades ago.

The priest, William Dowd, had been removed from ministry almost 20 years ago, after two men accused him of sexually abusing them as children at the same Montclair parish — but he was reinstated in 2007 after being acquitted in a church trial.

One of those men filed a lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Newark last year accusing Dowd of abuse — a complaint that was settled last month with a payment to the plaintiff, according to the man’s lawyer, Greg Gianforcaro. He declined to specify the amount.

In the latest suit, filed Tuesday, a woman alleges that she was abused by two nuns at the Immaculate Conception parish school in 1969, when she was 8 years old. The woman says that two years later, in 1971, the two nuns took her to Dowd and held her down by her arms and legs while the priest raped her in the parish’s Madonna Hall.

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VATICAN CITY
Associated Press

November 29, 2020

By Frances D’Emilio

Pope Francis, joined by the church’s newest cardinals in Mass on Sunday, warned against mediocrity as well as seeking out “godfathers” to promote one’s own career.

Eleven of the 13 new cardinals sat near the central altar of St. Peter’s Basilica, where Francis on Saturday had bestowed upon them the red hats symbolizing they are now so-called princes of the church.

Two of the new cardinals couldn’t make it to Rome because of pandemic travel complications. The freshly-minted cardinals who did come to the Vatican wore protective masks and purple vestments, as the Church began the solemn liturgical season of Advent in the run-up to Christmas.

In his homily, Francis decried what he called “a dangerous kind of sleep: it is the slumber of mediocrity.” He added that Jesus “above all else detests lukewarm-ness.”

Being chosen to head Vatican departments or eventually becoming pope themselves could be in any of these new cardinals’ future. Cardinals often advise popes and pick the next pontiff by conferring among themselves and then meeting in secret conclave to select one of their own to lead the Roman Catholic Church and its roughly 1.3 billion rank-and-file faithful.

Francis has often warned against clericalism during his papacy, and he picked up on that theme in Sunday’s homily.

“If we are awaited in Heaven, why should we be caught up with earthly concerns? Why should we be anxious about money, fame, success, all of which will fade away?” the pope said.

Deviating from his prepared text, he added: “Why look for godfathers for promoting one’s career?”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

VATICAN CITY
Associated Press

November 29, 2020

By Frances D’Emilio

Pope Francis, joined by the church’s newest cardinals in Mass on Sunday, warned against mediocrity as well as seeking out “godfathers” to promote one’s own career.

Eleven of the 13 new cardinals sat near the central altar of St. Peter’s Basilica, where Francis on Saturday had bestowed upon them the red hats symbolizing they are now so-called princes of the church.

Two of the new cardinals couldn’t make it to Rome because of pandemic travel complications. The freshly-minted cardinals who did come to the Vatican wore protective masks and purple vestments, as the Church began the solemn liturgical season of Advent in the run-up to Christmas.

In his homily, Francis decried what he called “a dangerous kind of sleep: it is the slumber of mediocrity.” He added that Jesus “above all else detests lukewarm-ness.”

Being chosen to head Vatican departments or eventually becoming pope themselves could be in any of these new cardinals’ future. Cardinals often advise popes and pick the next pontiff by conferring among themselves and then meeting in secret conclave to select one of their own to lead the Roman Catholic Church and its roughly 1.3 billion rank-and-file faithful.

Francis has often warned against clericalism during his papacy, and he picked up on that theme in Sunday’s homily.

“If we are awaited in Heaven, why should we be caught up with earthly concerns? Why should we be anxious about money, fame, success, all of which will fade away?” the pope said.

Deviating from his prepared text, he added: “Why look for godfathers for promoting one’s career?”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

SALT LAKE CITY (UT)
KSL

November 29, 2020

By Annie Knox

What began as a routine visit to the deli aisle last year ended in a revelation for Guy Platt.

Platt spotted the Colosimo name on a pork sausage label and wondered if it belonged to a member of the family he recalled from childhood. But an online search turned up a series of mugshots and a more profound connection.

The man he said he remembers sexually abusing and threatening him five decades earlier hadn’t been a schoolmate’s father like he’d thought. Rather, he was a Roman Catholic priest later convicted of victimizing boys in Michigan and Oklahoma, and accused of similar conduct in Utah.

“I was having heart palpitations, those kind of feelings that you get when you’re angry and in shock and when you feel guilty,” Platt recalled in a recent interview.

As adults, Utah brothers Matthew and Ralph Colosimo came forward as victims of repeated abuse by James Rapp in the years following Platt’s own alleged encounters with the onetime cleric.

Platt is now suing the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City for damages of more than $300,000, contending the diocese knew Rapp was “wholly unfit to work around children” but allowed him to do so.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

November 29, 2020

https://buffalonews.com/opinion/editorial/the-editorial-board-attorney-general-shows-complicity-by-malone-in-shielding-accused-priests/article_50b8c190-30c8-11eb-9307-dfd64c22fc43.html

In 2019, a member of a Catholic parish’s pastoral council in Elma told The News that Bishop Richard J. Malone had “taken the blame here and the bullet for years of abuse, years of cover-up.” The state Attorney General’s Office’s investigative report on the Buffalo Diocese released this week suggests that Malone was not an innocent party, but an active participant in the diocese’s repeated instances of turning a blind eye to accusations of sexual misconduct against priests.

The long, devastating history of clergy sexual abuse of children in the diocese of some 600,000 Catholics stretches back decades, long before Malone was installed as bishop here. But as one of the case studies demonstrates in the court filing from Attorney General Letitia James, Malone was one of seven Buffalo bishops who covered up for Rev. Donald W. Becker, who was accused of molesting boys. The attorney general filed a civil suit this week against the diocese, Malone and former Auxiliary Bishop Edward M. Grosz.

Malone resisted calls to resign for more than a year before quitting in December 2019. (Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger took over as apostolic administrator.) The tipping point was the release of private audio recordings in which Malone discussed keeping quiet about an alleged sexual harassment by a priest of an adult seminarian and on another priest’s love letter to the seminarian.

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LYON (FRANCE)
EuroNews

November 30, 2020

Interview of Andrew Madden

[Includes three-minute video of the interview.]

Andrew Madden was an altar boy. He had always enjoyed going to the Church and wanted to become a priest. But aged 12, he was abused by Father Ivan Payne. That abuse lasted for several years.

In Ireland, he was the first victim of clerical child sex abuse to go public with his story in 1995.

As part of an Unreported Europe episode focusing on the survivors of Ireland’s child sex abuse scandal at the hands of Catholic priests, Euronews spoke to Madden his personal healing journey.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

NEW DEHLI (INDIA)
The Print

November 30, 2020

By Milind Ghatwai

[Includes copy of the Vatican decree.]

Fr Anand Muttungal claims he has received no communication from Vatican, and church authorities are running a campaign against him

Bhopal – A Catholic priest who used to be the public relations officer for the Bhopal archdiocese has been dismissed from priesthood for disobedience, abuse of power and sullying the image of the church.

While priests’ dismissals on charges of sexual misconduct are not uncommon, punishment is rarely dealt out on disobedience and abuse of power charges, as in the case of 48-year-old Fr Anand Muttungal. This is the first such instance in Madhya Pradesh.

Muttungal had served as the archdiocese’s PRO for eight years before being removed in 2013.

Archbishop of Bhopal Leo Cornelio said in a statement on 26 November: “…By an official decree, Pope Francis has dismissed Anand Muttungal, the former spokesperson of the Catholic church, from priesthood.”

The archbishop accused Muttungal of repeatedly disobeying church authorities, accusing its leaders in public, engaging in trading and business, and bringing “public scandals to the church and its community”.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
Kansas City Star

November 29, 2020

By Laura Bauer and Judy L. Thomas

Word spread inside Agape Boarding School last fall that a report had been made to Missouri’s abuse and neglect hotline and a social worker was on campus to investigate.

Lucas Francis, a student at the time, said he was told that someone had called the state to report that a group of boys was running laps on school grounds in below-freezing temperatures. Francis, one of the boys who said he was forced to run for hours in sleet and snow with only a light jacket on and no cap or gloves, was pulled aside to speak to the Children’s Division worker.

“I was pretty excited because I was finally going to be able to tell them what was going on,” said Francis, now 18, who left the school in March. “I was just going to let them know.”

Until, that is, he said he realized that he wouldn’t be talking to the Children’s Division worker alone. Also inside the parents’ lounge on the sprawling campus, in uniform and waiting for the interview, was Cedar County Sheriff’s Deputy Robert Graves.

Graves, not only a deputy but an Agape alum and long-time employee of the school. Son-in-law of the owner, James Clemensen. And brother-in-law of the school’s principal, Bryan Clemensen.

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

November 24, 2020

In the absence of radical reform to an organization now deluged with child sex abuse allegations, the Boy Scouts of America charter should be revoked.

The recent revelation that more than 95,000 claims of sexual abuse have been filed against the Boy Scouts of America has been all but lost in the news cycle dominated by President Trump’s refusal to concede his election defeat and the latest deadly surge of COVID-19 infections. But it should be a shock to the system of every American, given the staggering breadth of alleged abuse of children by those who took an oath to God and country to obey the law, help others, and live honest and moral lives.

As the organization seeks to restructure, settle those claims, and reemerge from this crisis to reclaim its place as a treasured American institution, it is also incumbent on members of Congress — and the Americans they represent — to ask: How did this happen, and should an organization that fostered such widespread abuse be allowed to survive at all?

In February, the Boy Scouts of America filed for bankruptcy in light of hundreds of lawsuits filed against it by people who allege sexual abuse over the course of decades. That triggered a reorganization in bankruptcy court to create a compensation fund to pay out settlements to abuse survivors who assert credible claims. Survivors were given a deadline of Nov. 16 to file claims, which brought tens of thousands more people forward. In a statement, the organization has said it is “devastated by the number of lives impacted by past abuse in Scouting and moved by the bravery of those who have come forward.”

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CHICAGO (IL)
Archdiocese of Chicago

November 28, 2020

By Cardinal Blase J. Cupich

Dear Saint Francis de Sales Parish and School Family,

With this letter, I write to share some difficult news about your pastor, Father David Ryan. In keeping with our child protection policies, I have asked Father Ryan to step aside from ministry following receipt by the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Archdiocesan Office for Child Abuse Investigations and Review of allegations of sexual abuse of minors approximately 25 years ago while he was assigned to Maryville Academy in Des Plaines. Allegations are claims that have not been proven as true or false. Therefore, guilt or innocence should not be assumed.

Father Ryan has been directed to live away from the parish while the matter is investigated, and he is fully cooperating with this direction. Father Jerome Jacob, pastor of Saint Mary of the Annunciation in Mundelein will serve as temporary administrator of Saint Francis de Sales Parish. Father Jacob, a seasoned pastor and Dean of the area will attend to the needs of the parish and school community.

Moreover, as is required by our child protection policies, the allegations were reported to the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) and the Cook County State’s Attorney. The persons making the allegations have been offered the services of our Victim Assistance Ministry and the archdiocese has begun its investigation of these matters.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

November 28, 2020

By Elyssa Cherney

The Archdiocese of Chicago says it is investigating allegations that a Lake Zurich priest sexually abused minors 25 years ago while he was assigned to Maryville Academy in Des Plaines.

The Rev. David Ryan, pastor at St. Francis de Sales Catholic Parish in Lake Zurich, was asked to live away from the parish during the investigation and “is fully cooperating with this directive,” the archdiocese said.

In a letter to the parish Saturday, Cardinal Blase J. Cupich wrote that he asked Ryan to “step away from ministry” after the archdiocese received the allegations. The archdiocese reported the allegations to the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services and the Cook County state’s attorney office, Cupich wrote.

A spokeswoman for the archdiocese declined to provide further details about the allegations, saying in an email, “We have nothing to add to what is in the letter.”

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CHICAGO (IL)
WGN

November 28, 2020

By Andy Koval and Brónagh Tumulty

[Includes a copy of Cardinal Cupich’s letter to parishioners.]

A suburban priest has been asked to step away from his parish following child sex abuse allegations stemming from when he was an executive at a youth academy.

Father David Ryan, a priest at St. Francis de Sales Parish and School in Lake Zurich, has been asked to step away by Cardinal Blase Cupich due to allegations of sexual abuse of minors approximately 25 years ago.

The allegations are tied to when he was an assistant executive director at Maryville Academy, located in Des Plaines. He reportedly became assistant executive director in 1985.

He was promoted to executive director in December of 2003, according to his biography on City Club of Chicago. City Club of Chicago lists him among their board of directors.

At the time, Maryville was serving 1,100 infants, children and youth with a staff of around 900, according to his biography.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Sun-Times

November 28, 2020

Ryan has been accused of sexually abusing minors about 25 years ago while he was assigned to Maryville Academy in Des Plaines, Cardinal Blase Cupich wrote in a letter to the St. Francis community.

Father David Ryan, pastor at St. Francis de Sales Parish and School in Lake Zurich, has been asked to step away from the parish while the Archdiocese of Chicago investigates decades-old sexual abuse allegations.

Ryan was accused of sexually abusing minors about 25 years ago while he was assigned to Maryville Academy in Des Plaines, Cardinal Blase Cupich wrote in a letter to the St. Francis community.

Father Ryan was directed to live away from the church, 135 S. Buesching Rd., while the matter is investigated, “and he is fully cooperating with this direction,” Cupich wrote.

The allegations were reported by the archdiocese to the Illinois Department of Children and Family services as well as the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, Cupich wrote.

Neither DCFS nor the state’s attorney’s office immediately responded to a request for comment.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

November 28, 2020

By Christopher White

https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/biden-and-cardinal-wilton-gregory-share-a-mandate-for-healing-divisions/2020/11/28/73150030-2f4e-11eb-96c2-aac3f162215d_story.html

When Pope Francis needed someone to help heal Catholics in the nation’s capital recovering from the latest round of clergy sex abuse that had engulfed now former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, he tapped Archbishop Wilton Gregory as its new leader in April 2019.

This January, when Joe Biden becomes only the second Catholic president in U.S. history, the politician who pledged to heal America amid a global pandemic, economic dislocation and a racial reckoning will have Gregory as his local pastor.

Both men have been put in their positions with a mandate for reconciliation and are united by a shared admiration for Pope Francis who on Saturday elevated Gregory to the Catholic Church’s College of Cardinals, making him the first African American to receive the honor.

Gregory’s new title is more than mere symbolism. While it will increase his collaboration with the pope and his profile among the U.S. Catholic hierarchy, it also presents him with a rare opportunity for partnership with Biden who has a more complicated relationship with Catholics and with the church than President John F. Kennedy did 60 years ago.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Guardian

November 28, 2020

By Mattha Busby

Ampleforth college says it will appeal against education secretary’s decision

The government has ordered one of England’s most prestigious Catholic boarding schools, Ampleforth college, to stop admitting new pupils as a result of “very serious” failings.

Scandal has surrounded the private school in recent years and an independent inquiry into child sexual abuse published a highly critical report in August 2018 that said “appalling sexual abuse [was] inflicted over decades on children as young as seven”.

Ampleforth’s abbot, Cuthbert Madden, was removed from the post that year following allegations that he indecently assaulted pupils. Madden has denied the claims.

His replacement, Deirdre Rowe, stood down as acting head after 10 months in the role following the release of a highly critical inspection report that found the school did not meet standards for safeguarding, leadership, behaviour, combating bullying and complaints handling.

The Department for Education (DfE) has now launched enforcement action against the 200-year-old institution in North Yorkshire after ruling it had failed to meet safeguarding and leadership standards following an emergency Ofsted inspection.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

November 29, 2020

By Norimitsu Onishi and Constant Méheut

The scandal surrounding the writer Gabriel Matzneff was not limited to his pedophilia. It also opened a window on the entrenched and clubby nature of many of France’s elite institutions.

Paris – One of France’s most prestigious literary awards, the Renaudot can change a writer’s career overnight. Prizewinners jump onto best-seller lists. Publishers earn bragging rights in a nation that places literature at the heart of its sense of grandeur and global standing.

A striking example is now a notorious one: Gabriel Matzneff, the writer whose career was revived with the award in 2013 before collapsing this year when a woman published a bombshell account of their sexual relationship when she was underage. He now faces a police investigation in a national scandal that has exposed how clubby Parisian elites long protected, celebrated and enabled his pedophilia.

Mr. Matzneff’s win was engineered by an elite fully aware of his pedophilia, which he had brazenly defended for decades. His powerful editor and friends sat on the jury. “We thought he was broke, he was sick, this will cheer him up,” said Frédéric Beigbeder, a confidant of Mr. Matzneff and a Renaudot juror since 2011.

The fallout from the Matzneff affair has rippled through France, dividing feminists and seemingly ending the career of a powerful deputy mayor of Paris. Yet the insular world that dominates French literary life remains largely unscathed, demonstrating just how entrenched and intractable it really is.

Proof of that is the Renaudot — all but one of the same jurors who honored Mr. Matzneff are expected to crown this year’s winners on Monday.

That the Renaudot, France’s second biggest literary prize, could wave away the Matzneff scandal underscores the self-perpetuating and impenetrable nature of many of France’s elite institutions.

Whether in top schools, companies, government administration or at the French Academy, control often rests with a small, established group — overwhelmingly older, white men — that rewards like-minded friends and effectively blocks newcomers.

In France’s literary prize system, jurors serve usually for life and themselves select new members. In a process rife with conflicts of interest that is rarely scrutinized, judges often select winners among friends, champion the work of a colleague and press on behalf of a romantic partner.

The process would never be tolerated in contests like Britain’s Booker Prize or the American Pulitzer, where juries change every year and judges recuse themselves over potential conflicts of interest.

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LYON (FRANCE)
EuroNews

November 28, 2020

[Includes 20-minute interview with interviews of survivors.]

Revelations of sexual abuse inside the Catholic church shook Ireland to its core. Unreported Europe speaks to those who survived the paedophile priests and examines if the church has truly taken responsibility for the scandal.

Our lives are not as normal as other people who haven’t been abused. The abuse has just changed our attitude to life, changed our attitude to people. – Martin Gallagher, Survivor

Ireland has one of the largest Catholic communities in Europe. The Church is rooted into the culture of the country, but when Pope Francis visited Dublin in 2018 his words divided the nation.

Since 2002, multiple reports and investigations have shed light on nearly 15,000 cases of sexual abuse committed in Ireland between 1970 and 1990.

The pontiff had come to apologise for those crimes carried out by members of the Church’s clergy. For many survivors, the visit and remorse that came with it was far too late.

You know, you only have to do a few Google searches to see loads of examples of popes and bishops saying ‘We didn’t know’. Like the rest of society, we didn’t understand such things were possible. They did. They lied. – Colm O’Gorman, Survivor

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ISLEWORTH (MIDDLESEX, ENGLAND)
Sky News

November 27, 2020

By Tim Bake

The school was previously criticised by an independent inquiry into child sexual abuse in 2018.

https://news.sky.com/story/ampleforth-college-36k-per-year-catholic-boarding-school-banned-from-taking-new-pupils-after-failings-12144433

A £36,000-a-year Catholic boarding school has been banned from admitting new students following “serious” failings on safeguarding and leadership standards.

Ampleforth College, which was previously criticised by an independent inquiry into child sexual abuse in 2018, was found to have “prioritised the monks and their own reputation over the protection of children”.

The Department for Education (DfE) sent a letter to the North Yorkshire school’s proprietor on Friday as part of an enforcement action.

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson told the school to stop accepting new pupils to “safeguard the education and well-being of children”.

The letter raised concerns from multiple inspection reports dating from 2016 onwards, and said the institution had failed to meet safeguarding and leadership standards.

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HONG KONG
Union of Catholic Asian News

November 27, 2020

Pope Francis dismisses Bhopal priest who once accused his archbishop and two priests of trying to poison him

Pope Francis has laicized an Indian Catholic priest for gross abuse of ecclesiastical power and office.

Announcing the Vatican decision, Archbishop Leo Cornelio of Bhopal said in a statement that “now, with regret and pain, I wish to formally communicate to everyone that by an official decree from our Supreme Pontiff Pope Francis, on Oct. 22, 2020, Anand Muttungal (Joseph M.T.) of the Archdiocese of Bhopal has been dismissed in poenam (as a penalty) from the clerical state and dispensed from all his clerical obligations, including that of celibacy.”

However, Muttungal, the former public relations officer of Bhopal Archdiocese, said he was unaware of his dismissal.

“I must say that to date I have had no communication from the Vatican,” he said, adding he was not aware of the offense attributed to him that led to his dismissal.

Referring to a criminal case he had filed against Archbishop Cornelio and two other priests from the archdiocese, he said that “… authorities have been trying to get me to withdraw the criminal cases going on against them.”

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BUFFALO (NY)
WBFO NPR

November 24, 2020

By Michael Mroziak

An advocate for clergy sex abuse victims who had actively called for the removal of Bishop Richard Malone is praising the New York State Attorney General for her lawsuit against the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo and its former top leadership.

Robert Hoatson, co-founder and president of Road to Recovery, appeared Tuesday in his usual chosen place for his Buffalo appearances, on the sidewalk across the street from the Catholic Center on Main Street. His podium displayed a sign declaring “Free At Last,” a commentary on behalf of victims.

“We’re free at last, we victims, we advocates, we are free at last because government officials have stepped in and have investigated and concluded that what occurred here was absolutely outrageous in this Diocese of Buffalo,” he said. “Not just with Bishop Malone or Bishop Grosz, or even Bishop Scharfenberger, but for decades and decades and decades before that.”

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IRONDALE (AL)
National Catholic Register

November 13, 2020

By Raymond Arroyo Interviewing Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò

The archbishop, whose explosive letter in August 2018 helped trigger the Vatican investigation into McCarrick’s misconduct, explains why he believes the report is gravely flawed.

More than any other person except for Theodore McCarrick himself, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò is responsible for triggering the 449-page Vatican report released this week that details what other Church leaders knew about the disgraced ex-cardinal’s decades-long pattern of sexual misconduct, and the actions they took or failed to take with respect to what they had learned.

As the report itself documents, the archbishop was the first senior Vatican figure to call concretely for action to be undertaken against McCarrick, at a time when Archbishop Viganò was serving as a senior official in the Secretariat of State. Then, after the archbishop was subsequently posted to Washington as the U.S. nuncio from 2011 to 2016, he was again involved with the Vatican’s handling of the McCarrick file.

And in August 2018, Archbishop Viganò released his initial 11-page “testimony” regarding McCarrick, in which he accused numerous Church leaders of turning a blind eye to McCarrick’s misconduct — including the explosive claim that he personally told Pope Francis about the transgressions following the Holy Father’s election in 2013, and that the Pope ignored this information and tapped McCarrick to carry out duties on the behalf of the Vatican. The firestorm sparked by Archbishop Viganò’s document resulted in the Holy Father’s formal authorization of an investigation of all relevant documentation related to the allegations against McCarrick, and how they were handled.

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IRONDALE (AL)
National Catholic Register

November 25, 2020

By Edward Pentin Interviewing Fr. John Lavers

Father John Lavers, who led a 2012 investigation into allegations of homosexual activity among seminarians at Holy Apostles Seminary, assesses the findings of the McCarrick Report

Vatican City – What are the strengths and weaknesses of the McCarrick Report, and what can be learned from it that could be applied to similar cases in the future?

Father John Lavers, a Canadian priest of the Diocese of Portsmouth in England, currently serves as the director of chaplaincy with Stella Maris (Apostleship of the Sea) in the United Kingdom. He led a 2012 investigation into allegations of homosexual behavior and activity at Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Connecticut that led to the removal of 13 seminarians, primarily from the Archdiocese of Hartford and Diocese of Paterson, New Jersey.

Father Lavers’ investigation also indicated that a homosexual “pipeline” had been created that funneled vulnerable Latin American candidates into some U.S. seminaries where they were sexually exploited, and subsequently ordained as actively homosexual priests in some American dioceses.

And on the basis of the evidence collected for the Holy Apostles investigation, Father Lavers concluded that it was Theodore McCarrick himself who was at the “epicenter” of this powerful influential network that has preyed on seminarians, and has advanced homosexually active clergy within the U.S. Church.

Prior to becoming a priest, Father Lavers served in Canadian law enforcement and national security work. In this interview with the Register, he explains the nature of the report, how it falls short, and what he believes the next steps should be.

Father Lavers, what has been your initial reaction to the McCarrick Report?

I think the expectation of the report may have been overstated, even over-expected by people. It’s a report that would not be classified as investigative, but more of a gathering of data and analysis — almost like how you would approach an academic function: looking at the documents that the Vatican archives would have, as well as other information that they would have pulled from the various dioceses of the United States. But it’s not an investigative report.

And when I use the term “investigative report,” I use it from the perspective of how professional law enforcement, and/or intelligence services, would do, say, an investigation into this and in following all the leads as well as following the evidence. This report does not do that.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service via Union of Catholic Asian News

November 27, 2020

By William Cone

Seminarians were surveyed anonymously about incidents of sexual misconduct at their schools of formation

Policy benchmarks developed from a study of sexual harassment and misconduct at seminaries and religious houses of formation in the United States are being promoted as a way to stem the abuses that came to light recently about former cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

The study was conducted in spring 2019 by the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, and the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University in Washington.

Seminarians were surveyed anonymously about incidents of sexual misconduct at their schools of formation. The study found that, even though sexual misconduct is uncommon, there is low awareness among students of protocols for reporting such infractions.

Following the study’s completion, a group of bishops, seminary rectors, faculty and lay consultants was formed to develop proactive policy guidelines. The policy benchmarks came from that McGrath Seminary Study Group.

“All of these people are very well respected in the field of seminary education and are regarded as reformers, I would say,” said John Cavadini, Notre Dame theology professor and director of the McGrath Institute for Church Life, who convened the study group earlier this year. Two of the group members are presidents of national associations of seminary rectors.

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TORONTO (ONTARIO, CANADA)
Catholic Register

November 26, 2020

In the weeks since the Vatican released its report regarding disgraced former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the blame game has been in full swing.

How is it possible, both critics and friends ask, that such a man as McCarrick could ever rise to the highest levels of the Church? It’s a good question, with not a lot of good answers.

The 460-page report does not lay blame on any one person or group. Instead, it has carefully followed the trail of facts and communiques inside and outside the Vatican regarding who knew what and when and how about the allegations of sexual misconduct against McCarrick. The issue of guilt isn’t addressed in the report; that had been decided by an investigation two years ago that found “credible” evidence against him. He was subsequently removed from the priesthood.

At the heart of the report compiled over two years is the Vatican’s response to the rumours and allegations that had been circulating about McCarrick for years. It’s clear the Vatican was guilty of turning a blind eye, ignoring warning signs and siding with the accused. The good news is that it has chosen not to keep its missteps hidden from public view.

Three popes are central to this story of course, because that’s where the buck stops. John Paul II fares the worst. He heard reports of McCarrick’s behaviour, ordered an investigation, but ultimately chose to believe his denials of wrongdoing, perhaps swayed by his own history in Poland of seeing people unjustly accused. Pope Benedict put restrictions on McCarrick that were largely ignored. Pope Francis was more proactive, ordering further investigation after more claims of abuse surfaced in 2018 and laicizing him last year. McCarrick is now 90 years old, whereabouts not publicly known, and there are no criminal charges filed against him.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
NPR

November 25, 2020

By Sylvia Poggioli

When St. John Paul II died in 2005 after nearly 27 years on the papal throne, his funeral drew millions to St. Peter’s Square. The crowd soon broke out into spontaneous chants of “Santo subito” — “make him a saint immediately.”

Days later, John Paul was put on the fast track, becoming a saint a record nine years after his death.

Now, many Catholics wonder whether that was too hasty. A recent report issued by the Vatican is casting a dark cloud over John Paul.

The report is the result of an investigation into Catholic leaders’ failings in allowing now-disgraced former American Cardinal Theodore McCarrick to rise up the church hierarchy. Its explosive revelations have started to tarnish the legacy of the Polish-born pope and globetrotting media star who is credited with triggering the fall of communism in Europe.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

November 20, 2020

By Tom Roberts

It has long been understood by those who take a measured and thoughtful assessment of his papacy that the story of St. Pope John Paul II was sent off to the printer long before it was ready.

The narrative had not had time to mature, to incorporate the layers of complexity that marks us as truly human, to account for contradictions and flaws. The McCarrick report is the most persuasive evidence to date that the appellation “The Great” was applied too soon. In that regard, the report also serves as warning not to rush to conclusions about the abuse crisis itself.

John Paul II, confronted with the most damaging scandal the church faced in centuries, ignored the disturbing warnings from victims and from bishops entrusted with the care of the flock and instead embraced the adulation and counsel of serial predators. In doing so, he became not a figure of the courage that he persistently demanded of others, but the highest profile example of a corrupt hierarchical culture responsible for perpetuation of the abuse disgrace.

The editors of this publication do a great service to the church, and to sexual abuse victims, by asking the U.S. bishops to put the brakes on the John Paul II cult. It is, indeed, time to rein in the cult that has grown up around a garish superhero version of a pope.

The greatest value of the recent report, however, is not in establishing the weight of blame for the McCarrick debacle, though that is significant. Its greatest value is establishing that for all of his legendary achievements on the international front, at home John Paul II was a rather pedestrian member of a culture that has deep underlying maladies that became manifest in the abuse crisis. What he did, which warrants condemnation today, was not extraordinary at the time. He did what was expected of one deeply invested in and rewarded by the culture. He protected it at all costs, ignoring credible and impassioned warnings about McCarrick and another of his favorites, Marciel Maciel Degollado, founder of the corrupt Legionaries of Christ. The costs have been globally destructive of the church’s credibility and authority.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

November 20, 2020

By Heidi Schlumpf

The McCarrick report, released Nov. 10, attempts to describe how former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick rose through the ranks of leadership in the church despite his abuse of children and vulnerable adults, mostly seminarians. The shorthand for its charge: “Who knew what, and when?”

Although primarily focused on popes, bishops and other church leaders, the report also briefly considers the role of journalists in exposing — or, in this case, not exposing — this particular story.

For those who did not read all 461 pages — and all 1,410 footnotes — I can tell you that the National Catholic Reporter is mentioned in four footnotes, referencing articles we have published about sexual abuse, including an interview with McCarrick, in Rome, by current Vatican correspondent Joshua McElwee in 2014.

Three of those footnoted articles were by NCR’s former Vatican correspondent John Allen, who is now editor of Crux, the now-independent Catholic news website initially launched as a project of The Boston Globe.

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SYDNEY (NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA)
Sydney Morning Herald

November 27, 2020

By Chip Le Grand

Pope Francis has been named as a defendant in a Victorian Supreme Court damages claim by three Aboriginal men who were sexually assaulted as young boys by paedophile priest Michael Glennon after the Vatican knew of his crimes against children but did not defrock him.

It is the first known case in Australia in which victims of clerical sexual abuse have sought to hold the world’s most senior Catholic personally responsible for his church’s failure to take decisive action against predators in its ranks.

The three plaintiffs, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, all claim to have experienced significant, ongoing impacts from their childhood abuse including drug addiction, homelessness and unemployment.

They are seeking compensation and exemplary or punitive damages against Pope Francis, the Archdiocese of Melbourne and Melbourne Archbishop Peter Comensoli for the inaction of their predecessors.

If successful it would represent the first time an Australian court has punished the church – as distinct from compensating victims of abuse – for its failure to protect children from paedophile priests.

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TORONTO (ONTARIO, CANADA)
CBC News

November 26, 2020

By Leah Hendry and Steve Rukavina

‘The sheep are not following the church blindly anymore,’ one former parishioner says

People who tried to warn Montreal’s Catholic Archdiocese about a pedophile priest say they’re sad, angry and overwhelmed by an explosive report outlining the church’s repeated failures to heed their warnings.

The Montreal archdiocese asked retired Quebec Superior Court justice Pepita Capriolo to investigate the church’s handling of allegations against former priest Brian Boucher, who was convicted in January 2019 of sexually abusing two young boys.

Capriolo’s report, released Wednesday, outlines the failures of top officials in the Montreal diocese to take action after repeated red flags about Boucher were raised.

“I have to tell you I’m overwhelmed by what Justice Capriolo has put together,” Kurt Reckziegel, a parishioner at Our Lady of the Annunciation Church in the Town of Mount Royal, said Thursday.

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ATLANTA (GA)
CNN

November 27, 2020

By Daniel Burke and Delia Gallagher

Rome – For the past week, Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Washington, DC, has been holed up in a Vatican guesthouse, receiving meals at his door.

On Saturday afternoon, if all goes as planned, Gregory will step out of his quarters and into history. During an installation ceremony planned for 4pm in Rome, Gregory will become the first African American cardinal in Catholic history.

Gregory will be one of 13 men — and the only American — elevated to the College of Cardinal during Saturday’s ceremony. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, two bishops will not be in Rome, another first in church history, according to Vatican News.

In keeping with the Pope’s concerns for Catholics who have been historically marginalized, the other soon-to-be cardinals include men from Rwanda, Brunei, Chile and the Philippines.

Gregory, 72, already the highest-ranking African-American Catholic in US history, told CNN this week that he has been praying, writing homilies and letters to well-wishers, and reflecting on his new role.

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BRISBANE (QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA)
Catholic Leader – Archdiocese of Brisbane

November 27, 2020

By Joe Higgins

In light of the McCarrick Report, detailing the abuse of disgraced ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Los Angeles auxiliary Bishop Robert Barron appeared on his Word on Fire podcast and praised a name familiar to Australians.

Host Brandon Vogt asked Bishop Barron about how to understand the abuse crisis from a historic lens and how saints had responded to similar crises in the past.

Bishop Barron mentioned the great reformers like St Francis of Assisi and St Ignatius Loyola, and said Australian St Mary MacKillop came to his mind “very powerfully”.

“She (St Mary MacKillop) brought this issue to light and she suffered enormously for it,” he said.

“(She was) facing a Church that was in many ways problematic and dysfunctional, but she brought this issue forward.”

Bishop Barron lamented how many Catholics fell into resentment with the Church over the abuse scandals and other scandals too.

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MONTREAL (QUEBEC, CANADA)
Archdiocese of Montreal

November 25, 2020

By Justice Pepita G. Capriolo

The author of this report was mandated by Archbishop Christian Lépine to investigate “who knew what when” in regard to Brian Boucher’s actions during his career within the Catholic Church and to formulate recommendations to the Archdiocese, with the view that such behaviours not be repeated.

To do so, the author searched for and analyzed in detail hundreds of documents and interviewed more than 60 witnesses. She received the assistance and support of Bishop Thomas Dowd, appointed by Archbishop Lépine as her liaison with the clergy, but she was not in any way directed or censored in her work. Indeed, the author had complete autonomous access to all documents, including those contained in the Secret Archives, which even Bishop Dowd could not consult. Furthermore, she was able to interview anyone whose testimony she judged useful.

The involvement of Brian Boucher in the Catholic Church covers a long period: from his time as a catechist in the mid-1980s to 2019, when he was convicted and sentenced on two counts of sexual assault of a minor. Throughout these years, his suitability as a seminarian and later as a priest was often questioned, but it was only in December of 2015 that a serious investigation began, leading to Boucher’s canonical and criminal trials. Brian Boucher is no longer a priest and is currently serving an eight-year sentence.

Until 2016, no one had come forward and claimed having been Boucher’s victim of sexual abuse while still a minor. No parent had ever brought such a charge against Boucher to the attention of his superiors. But this is no cause for premature exoneration of the Church authorities. Many people had complained about Boucher’s unacceptable behaviour over the years: he was rude, authoritarian, overly intense, intransigent, homophobic, racist, misogynist and verbally, and sometimes even physically, aggressive. These complaints were repeatedly reported to his superiors. Rumours about his untoward interest in young boys had been circulating since the 1980s and communicated to those in charge of the Grand Séminaire de Montréal as well as to the Archdiocese. These rumours later became more concrete: Boucher was observed having a very close and worrisome relationship with a young boy at the end of the 1990s. No concrete evidence of sex abuse was brought forth- but how often is this behaviour caught on camera? Despite the concerns raised over this relationship and brought to the attention of the authorities in ever-increasing detail, no investigation was undertaken at the time.

A contemporary unwanted sexual advance directed at an 18-year-old was dismissed and erased from the collective written memory of the Church. A later, heartbreaking abusive relationship with a 19-year-old student under Boucher’s tutelage when he was Chaplain of the Newman Centre became the tipping point … to send Boucher for psychological treatment!

The overly vague psychological evaluation of Boucher done by the Southdown Institute in 2003 had the disastrous effect of appearing to shield him from any suspicion of being a child molester, until Bishop Dowd began his investigation in December 2015, twelve years later. The reports containing the conclusions based on Southdown’s therapeutic approach also gave the impression that Boucher’s aggressive and inappropriate behaviour had been “fixed.”

Despite Southdown psychological reassurance, rumours persisted and another complaint about inappropriate behaviour with a minor was sent to the diocesan authorities and quickly dismissed in 2006. In 2011, a senior official of the Church wrote a lengthy, detailed summary of Boucher’s ongoing failings in order to stop his reappointment as pastor of a parish. The official left on extended sick leave and Boucher was reappointed.

Boucher was finally caught in his own lies: he claimed that, during his sabbatical studies in Washington, he had been the victim of sexual abuse by a much younger man, a fellow priest. Bishop Dowd investigated this claim and quickly realized, given the evidence he found, that Boucher had been the perpetrator and not the victim. Once a broader investigation was started, Bishop Dowd discovered the existence of at least two child victims.

Boucher’s deplorable story is told in detail over 150 pages of the report.

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MONTREAL (QUEBEC, CANADA)
Archdiocese of Montreal

November 25, 2020

https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/archdiocese-of-montreal-releases-independent-report-on-complaints-against-former-priest-brian-boucher-853098934.html

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Montreal has released the report of an independent investigation into its handling of complaints against former diocesan priest Brian Boucher. The 276-page report, authored by the Honourable Pepita G. Capriolo, retired Québec Superior Court Justice, was made public at a press conference today by Archbishop Christian Lépine with Justice Capriolo.

The Archbishop commissioned Justice Capriolo in November 2019 to investigate “who knew what when” regarding complaints made against Mr. Boucher, from his seminary days until 2019. The Archdiocese had initiated a canonical investigation into his behaviour four years earlier, in 2015.

“I had the support of the Archbishop. At no point did he or any other member of the diocese attempt to limit or restrict my investigations,” the retired justice said during the press conference. The author of the report was given independent access to hundreds of documents and interviewed everyone whose testimony she deemed relevant, which was more than 60 witnesses. The report concludes with 31 recommendations designed to ensure responsibility, transparency and accountability within the organization of the Archdiocese and thus mitigate a recurrence of similar abuses.

The report reveals that, in the course of Brian Boucher’s involvement with the Archdiocese, his suitability both as a seminarian and a priest were the subject of repeated complaints. It was only in 2015 that the diocese undertook a comprehensive investigation into his behaviour.

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MONTREAL (QUEBEC, CANADA)
Montreal Gazette via Strathroy Age Dispatch

November 25, 2020

By Paul Cherry

The culture of silence has ruled supreme within the Catholic Church for years, a former abuse victim says.

The disturbing details that emerged from Justice Pepita Capriolo’s report on how the Catholic Church ignored warning signs and adopted a culture of secrecy as Brian Boucher, now a convicted pedophile, made his way toward being ordained a priest sounded all too familiar to people who represent other victims of sexual abuse at the hands of priests in Quebec.

Boucher, now 58, was convicted last year of sexually assaulting two boys: one while working at Our Lady of the Annunciation Church in Town of Mount Royal, the other at St. John Brébeuf Parish in LaSalle.

Capriolo was asked to do an audit of the time Boucher spent in the Catholic Church and found warning signs were ignored before he was ordained.

“I think we can certainly talk about wilful blindness which was for the longest time the modus operandi of the Roman Catholic Church in Quebec and elsewhere in cases of abuse of children,” said Carlo Tarini, director of communication for the Comité des victimes des prêtres. The group has supported victims of abuse who have filed class-action suits against Catholic orders in the past.

“Certainly, the prevailing method of dealing with pedophile priests was to tell them they should pray to redeem their sins. Unfortunately, prayers have nothing to do with preventing pedophiles from abusing children, which is something the Church should have certainly known,” Tarini said.

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TORONTO (ONTARIO, CANADA)
The Globe and Mail from Canadian Press

November 25, 2020

By Sidhartha Banerjee

Montreal’s archdiocese did little to address complaints against a pedophile priest and seemed more interested in protecting his reputation than his victims, according to an independent review released Wednesday.

Former Quebec Superior Court justice Pepita G. Capriolo’s report highlighted numerous deficiencies in the church’s response to complaints against Brian Boucher. The priest was sentenced in March, 2019, to eight years in prison for abusing two boys.

“Secrecy is everywhere in this file,” Ms. Capriolo wrote in her report. “Secret archives, secret hiding places for sensitive documents and documents so secret they have been eliminated completely.”

Ms. Capriolo told a news conference Wednesday the church improperly handled complaints against Mr. Boucher from the 1980s to the end of 2015. “Yet Boucher’s inexcusable behaviour had been the subject of a slew of complaints from the very start of his career in the church.”

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TORONTO (ONTARIO, CANADA)
CBC News

November 25, 2020

By Benjamin Shingler

Catholic Church officials protected Brian Boucher’s reputation for years before he was arrested, report says

Montreal – A Montreal priest was able to sexually abuse two young boys and terrorize several others over a 20-year span because top officials in the Catholic Church ignored complaints about his behaviour and, in some cases, tried to keep serious allegations secret, according to a damning new report.

The priest, Brian Boucher, worked at 10 churches in Montreal during his career, which began in the early 1980s. He was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2019 after being found guilty in one case and pleading guilty in another.

After Boucher was sentenced, the church commissioned former Quebec Superior Court justice Pepita Capriolo to investigate how the crimes could have gone undetected for so long.

As she released her report on Wednesday, Capriolo placed blame on the upper echelons of Montreal’s Catholic Church. She said officials preferred to turn a blind eye rather than investigate mounting complaints about Boucher.

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BANGALORE (INDIA)
TheNewsMinute

November 26, 2020

The incident occurred on Tuesday in Devanahalli and the accused, Venkataramanappa, has been arrested.

A 62-year-old temple priest was arrested on Wednesday for allegedly raping a 10-year-old girl in Devanahalli, located in the northeast Bengaluru. The priest allegedly sexually assaulted the 10-year-old girl at his daughter’s residence. The incident was first reported by Deccan Herald. The accused has been identified as 62-year-old Venkataramanappa. According to the police, on Tuesday, he had gone to visit his daughter at around 4 pm in Devanahalli, when he saw the 10-year-old girl playing outside.

Deputy Commissioner of North East Bengaluru, CK Baba, said that at around 4.30 pm, Venkataramanappa allegedly lured the girl inside, into his daughter’s home, and is said to have sexually assaulted her. DCP Baba said that the girl and her family live in the neighbourhood and so she often plays in the area.

When the girl did not return home after a long time, her parents began looking for her. They went to the temple, located near the accused’s daughter’s home, and asked street vendors whether they had seen their daughter. A flower vendor allegedly informed the girl’s father that she had gone into the accused’s daughter’s house.

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NEW YORK (NY)
NBC News / Telemundo

November 25, 2020

By Belisa Morillo and Luis Antonio Hernández

One accuser said Manuel La Rosa-Lopez’ upcoming sentence gives him a sense of justice, as well as hope that the Catholic Church “will change the way it does things.”

A Houston-area priest has pleaded guilty to child indecency charges in a case that has put a focus on the archdiocese of Galveston-Houston and its failures over the handling of sexual abuse cases.

The Rev. Manuel La Rosa-Lopez, 62, pleaded guilty to two out of five charges of indecency with a child Nov. 17, as part of an agreement with the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office. He faces 10 years in prison in the case which deals with allegations that he molested two teens more than 20 years ago after gaining the trust of their families; his sentencing is Dec. 16.

La Rosa-Lopez avoided a possible 20-year sentence with the guilty plea.

“We offered him to plead guilty on two of the greater charges, which were second-degree felonies, indecency with a child,” Montgomery County chief prosecutor Nancy Hebert told Noticias Telemundo Investiga. “In exchange for that plea, we’re dismissing the other three charges.”

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DENVER (CO)
Catholic News Agency

November 25, 2020

By JD Flynn

A South Dakota priest has been sentenced to almost eight years in federal prison, after he was convicted of 65 felonies related to stealing donations from Catholic parishes. Ordered to pay more than $300,000 in restitution, the priest said he stole in part because he disagrees with Catholic doctrine on homosexuality.

The priest is also facing federal criminal charges related to child sexual abuse and possession of child pornography.

Fr. Marcin Garbacz, 42, was convicted in March of wire fraud, money laundering, and tax fraud — crimes he committed while serving as a chaplain and Catholic school teacher in the Diocese of Rapid City, between 2012 and 2018. Garbacz was ordained a priest in 2004.

Prosecutors said the priest stole more than $250,000 from parishes, spending some money on artwork, a piano, a Cadillac, liturgical items, and a $10,000 diamond ring.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
WPXI

November 25, 2020

By Rick Earle

After a Target 11 Investigation into the independent compensation fund established by the Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese to pay victims of clergy sex abuse, Investigator Rick Earle received more complaints about the diocese.

Several victims of clergy sex abuse reached out to Target 11 and expressed concern about a lack of response by the diocese. Three victims said they reached out to the diocese after the grand jury report on clergy sex abuse was released and they said they never got any response. The men, all of whom are in their 50′s and 60′s now, said there were abused by the same priest at a church in Lawrenceville. All three said they left their contact information with the diocese but never got a response.

Two of the victims did not want their names used, but both expressed frustration and concern with the process. A third victim decided to speak publicly about the alleged abuse and his efforts to contact the diocese.

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BONN (GERMANY)
Deutsche Welle

November 25, 2020

By Melina Grundmann

Karl Haucke was sexually abused by a priest for years. He and other survivors were promised an investigation. But the Catholic Church has decided not to publish the findings. To Haucke, this is a repeat of the abuse.

Standing on the banks of the Rhine river, practically in the shadows of Cologne’s cathedral, Karl Haucke says he has lost faith in the Catholic Church. His story begins in the early 1960s, when he was sent to boarding school in the West German capital at the time, Bonn. From the age of eleven, he was regularly abused by a priest for four years — at least once a week.

But the abuse was not just of a physical, sexual nature. The priest made him relate the stories during the weekly confession. “Confession includes penance. Depending on the abuser’s mood, he might say ‘I’ll come around to your bed tonight or tomorrow.’ Then it would start all over again.”

Back then, Haucke had no one to talk to about it and no way of figuring out what was being done to him. He was unaware that the same thing was happening to many of his fellow pupils. “We had no words to describe what was being done to us. Nor did we know what it meant. And it did not stop at physical pain. We had a clear sense of humiliation and being used,” says Karl Haucke.

As an adult, he had no concrete memory of the abuse. He turned into a workaholic, toiling for as many as fourteen hours a day without even knowing why. A racing heart and other symptoms of trauma had long since become familiar companions.

Then, Haucke suddenly realized what was going on. It was in 2010 when the news of the biggest sexual abuse scandal in the history of the Catholic Church broke in Germany and thousands of abuse cases in church institutions were gradually revealed.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

November 25, 2020

by Jason Berry

When Pope John Paul II made Theodore McCarrick a cardinal in 2001, the archbishop of Washington, D.C., was a silk-between-the-fingers fundraiser. A year later, when the pope summoned the U.S. cardinals to Rome to confront the abuse crisis, McCarrick took the lead at press conferences — a bold move, given his revelation to The Washington Post and CNN that accusations against him had been investigated and found false.

In the ensuing years, McCarrick traveled the globe as an unofficial church diplomat, and rumors spread that he had slept with seminarians while a bishop in Metuchen and Newark, New Jersey, using a beach house on the Jersey Shore. Rumors no journalist could pin down.

As the genial, glad-handing cardinal gained a high media profile, he seemed to be almost everywhere, even leading graveside prayers on TV at the funeral for Sen. Edward Kennedy.

And yet, as we now know from the 449-page Vatican report on McCarrick, two New Jersey dioceses had quietly paid settlements to victims by 2007. In 2018, after more lawsuits and survivors spoke out, a Vatican tribunal at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith found him guilty of moral crimes. Pope Francis approved McCarrick’s laicization, stripping him of priestly status, and ordered an investigation on how McCarrick had avoided detection for so long.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

November 25, 2020

By Mark Nacinovich

As U.S. dioceses continue to pay out big settlements for lawsuits, the church is facing another nettlesome problem stemming from the abuse scandal: Priests who say they were falsely accused are suing for defamation.

In August 2018, shortly after a Pennsylvania grand jury report listed more than 300 priests in six dioceses in the state who had been credibly accused of abusing more than 1,000 minors since 1947, Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson asked the three dioceses in his state to turn over files on church personnel credibly accused of sexual abuse since 1978.

Archbishop George Lucas of Omaha complied with that request, and in November 2018, the Omaha Archdiocese published a list of the names of 38 priests and deacons who had faced “substantiated claims” of abuse in the archdiocese.

The fallout from that list reverberates today. One of the priests whose name was on it — Fr. Andrew Syring — is suing the Omaha Archdiocese for defamation, counted among those priests who say they have been unfairly swept up in the church’s effort to repair its reputation and put the crisis behind it.

Lyle Koenig, Syring’s lawyer, said his client’s defamation suit is one of 20 to 25 similar cases in the country. By comparison, 7,002 priests were “credibly” or “not implausibly” accused of abuse in the U.S. between 1950 and June 30, 2018, according to BishopAccountability.org, which cited published information from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
Morning Call

November 24, 2020

By Peter Hall

The Allentown Diocese has paid nearly $16 million to victims of sexual abuse by members of the clergy, it reported Tuesday, as the program to compensate victims draws to a close.

The payments, totaling $15.85 million, were made to 96 abuse victims through the diocese’s Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program, according to a final report by an independent committee appointed to oversee the program.

Allentown was among seven Pennsylvania Catholic dioceses to establish compensation funds in the wake of a 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report that revealed efforts to hide decades of sexual abuse by hundreds of priests.

Administered by Washington, D.C., attorney Kenneth Feinberg, who is also overseeing compensation programs for abuse victims in other dioceses, Allentown’s program accepted applications from April to September 2019, receiving 106, the diocese reported.

Six of those applicants rejected offers totaling $1.18 million, three were deemed ineligible and one offer remains outstanding, the report says. The payments averaged about $165,000 per victim and came with a stipulation that those accepting them would not sue.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

November 25, 2020

By Tracy Wilkinson

Washington DC – Few of his parishioners were surprised when Washington, D.C., Archbishop Wilton Gregory took on President Trump.

Gregory isn’t known to speak out often about issues specifically facing Black Americans. But when he does, it is unambiguous and forceful — in words unusually strong for a man of the cloth.

*
In selecting Gregory, 72, Francis is rewarding a man who over the decades took courageous stands to end sexual abuse by clergy. They were positions that at times seemed to sideline his career, but that put him, his supporters say, on the right side of history and on a firm moral footing.

Like most Black people in the United States, Gregory was not born into the Catholic faith, growing up in a Protestant denomination. It was largely with the great migration of Black Americans from the South to the North in the first half of the 20th century that many turned to Catholicism, drawn partly by its educational opportunities and social work in urban areas.

As a child on the South Side of Chicago, the young Gregory so admired the nuns who taught him in the grade at his Catholic school that he decided he wanted to become a priest. He informed the school’s head father of this ambition, according to a story Gregory often relates. He was told: Well, maybe you should become a Catholic first.

And so he did, taking his first communion while in elementary school.

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DETROIT (MI)
Detroit News

November 24, 2020

By Mark Hicks

A priest recently removed from leading an Archdiocese of Detroit parish after church leaders said he was “overwhelmed with the responsibilities” is challenging the decision, claiming it was retaliation for his objections to another leader’s alleged sexual harassment and abuse

The Rev. Michael Suhy, who had been pastor at Our Lady of Good Counsel in Plymouth, was targeted because he “refused to be quiet,” his lawyer, Ron Thompson, told The Detroit News. “This is a cover-up. This is once again the Catholic Church trying to hide their misconduct.”

The Rev. Michael Suhy was pastor at Our Lady of Good Counsel Catholic Church in Plymouth.
Archdiocese officials dispute the claim, saying Suhy could no longer handle his duties.

“The discussions aimed at getting Fr. Suhy to step aside voluntarily for his good and the good of the parish started — with him — this past spring,” said Ned McGrath, a spokesman for the archdiocese, in an email Tuesday. “Ultimately and unfortunately, his intransigence triggered a canonical process for his removal.”

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service via Hawaii Catholic Herald

November 25, 2020

By Carol Glatz

Vatican City – The Vatican Secretariat of State’s report on Theodore E. McCarrick provides a glimpse into how a number of witnesses and victims of the former cardinal’s abuse sought numerous ways to alert church officials and were disturbingly aware their allegations might trigger repercussions.

Over its 460 pages, the report also reveals how much difference 30 years can make when it comes to flagging misconduct and abuse.

The report begins with a New York mother’s account of writing to every U.S. cardinal and the papal representative in the mid-1980s detailing McCarrick’s “dangerous” behavior toward her underage sons. Having left no address or legible name, her red-flag warnings went unheeded.

Decades later, in 2017, when the Archdiocese of New York received an allegation of the sexual abuse of minor by McCarrick in the early 1970s, the report showed how the archdiocese’s now mandatory reporting system and procedures resulted in McCarrick’s eventual dismissal first from the College of Cardinals and, later, from the priesthood.

But for decades in between, the victims and witnesses described in the report recount how they struggled to figure out if and how they should or could make their claims in essentially a no-man’s land for accusations.

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TORONTO (ONTARIO, CANADA)
Canadian Press via Global News

November 25, 2020

A review of the Catholic archdiocese of Montreal’s handling of complaints against a pedophile priest is to be released today.

The archdiocese enlisted former Quebec Superior Court justice Pepita Capriolo to examine the church’s response to complaints against former priest Brian Boucher.

Archbishop Christian Lépine is expected to speak about the report, tabled in September, at a news conference Wednesday.

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NEW YORK (NY)
America Magazine

November 24, 2020

By Michael J. O’Loughlin

Theodore E. McCarrick, middle row center, is seen with fellow seminarians in a close-up of the official portrait of the class of 1958 of St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, N.Y. (CNS photo/Gregory A. Shemitz)
When the former cardinal Theodore McCarrick was bishop of the diocese of Metuchen, N.J., he routinely asked seminarians to join him at his vacation home, visits that regularly included the bishop sharing a bed with young men. Any reasonable standards would characterize those episodes, in which a powerful authority figure even suggested sharing a bed with students, as instances of sexual harassment. Stories like these led to Mr. McCarrick’s downfall, as was laid out in a recent Vatican investigation into allegations of harassment and abuse.

But a group of theologians, bishops and administrative professionals say that, even decades after Mr. McCarrick’s abuse, seminaries and formation houses are still learning how best to equip their students to recognize and report inappropriate behavior. According to the working group, assembled by the University of Notre Dame theologian John Cavadini, seminary and formation house leaders should strive to implement five benchmarks when it comes to protecting faculty, staff and students. There is a need, the group agreed, for regular training on harassment policies, clarity around reporting and investigating, support for victims, periodic review of policies, and the ability to apply guidelines to specific conditions. Meeting these benchmarks would not only protect seminarians from abuse and harassment but could also shape the culture in parishes.

“It’s not just policy training but part of the seminarian’s human and pastoral formation. These seminarians are going to be priests, and we want them to go away from the seminary formed in the kind of culture that takes this seriously,” Mr. Cavadini, who directs the McGrath Institute for Church Life, told America.

According to research released last year from the McGrath Institute and the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, 6 percent of active Catholic seminarians surveyed in 2019 said they had been subject to sexual harassment, abuse or misconduct. Nine in 10 seminarians said they had not been subjected to sexual harassment, abuse or misconduct.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

November 23, 2020

By Thomas Reese

The discussion of the Vatican report on ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick by the U.S. bishops at their annual fall meeting was sad but predictable — sad because the bishops failed to communicate that they understood the report’s implications; predictable in that some bishops defended John Paul II against the report’s finding that the pontiff shared culpability in the McCarrick case.

The report, released Nov. 10, acknowledged that despite it being known that McCarrick was sleeping with seminarians, he was promoted to the Archdiocese of Washington and made a cardinal by Pope John Paul II.

It would have been better for the bishops to acknowledge the pope’s failure and argue that if he were alive today, he would be apologizing for his mistakes. In their 45-minute public discussion of the report, followed by 90 minutes of talking privately about it, they did neither.

Bishops are reluctant to criticize John Paul’s record of appointing and promoting bishops because most of them were appointed the same way by the same pope. To acknowledge his failures would open the possibility that they, too, were selected through a defective process that stressed loyalty over other factors.

“It can’t be a bad system; it selected me,” would be the attitude of most bishops.

Only Bishop Mark Brennan of Wheeling-Charleston suggested that the process should be improved. He proposed giving 30 to 60 days at the end of the process for people to comment on a candidate before his appointment was finalized. That way, he said, “We might avoid appointing someone to the episcopacy who did not deserve it.”

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BUFFALO (NY)
WBEN

November 24, 2020

“We are free at last because government officials have stepped in.”

Just one day after New York State Attorney General Letitia James announced a lawsuit against the Buffalo Diocese, alleging that diocesan leadership covered up credible claims of improper sexual conduct by priests, sex abuse victims advocate Robert Hoatson stood in front of the diocese proclaiming a victory for survivors.

“We victims, we advocates, we are free at last because government officials have stepped in and have investigated and concluded that what occurred here was absolutely outrageous,” said Hoatson. “This report from Attorney General Letitia James outlines what we have known for decades: that the church refuses to take accountability for its actions and to reform its actions because we’re still experiencing the same kind of behaviors.

“If you look at the statement that came out of Mr. Tucker last night, that came out of the diocese, they continue to use the same words,” Hoatson continued. “‘Oh, we have zero tolerance for anybody who sexually abuses a child here in the Diocese of Buffalo,’ but we know that is not true.”

Read the full diocese statement below:

“We will be reviewing this lawsuit just announced by the New York Attorney General and weighing the Diocese’s response. In the meantime, we wish to reiterate that there is zero tolerance for sexual abuse of a minor or of sexual harassment of an adult in the Diocese of Buffalo by any member of the clergy, employee or volunteer. The Diocese has put in place rigorous policies and protocols governing required behavior as well as a code of conduct which all clergy are expected to abide by. Moreover, the Diocese has committed to full cooperation with all civil authorities in both the reporting and investigation of alleged crimes and complaints.”

Attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who was made famous for representing victims and helping to expose the Boston Diocese in the early 2000’s, joined Hoatson’s press conference via phone, and he praised James for filing the lawsuit, saying steps like that are part of the healing process for victims.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WKBW

November 23, 2020

By Charlie Specht

AG says diocese ‘engaged in cover-up’ of priests

New York State Attorney General Letitia James on Monday sued the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo and former bishops Richard J. Malone and Edward M. Grosz for failing to protect children and for engaging in a decades-long cover-up of sexual abuse by diocesan priests.

New York’s top prosecutor also filed a motion that seeks to force a full public disclosure of predatory priests and their actions against those whom they were entrusted with spiritual care, and is seeking a court-appointed monitor that would ensure that interim Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger complies with sexual abuse policies and procedures.

The state is also seeking to bar both Malone and Grosz — who resigned their positions last year after a Vatican investigation — from serving in secular fiduciary roles in any nonprofits or charitable organizations in New York State.

“When trust is broken with spiritual leaders, it can lead to a crisis of faith,” James said in a news release. “For years, the Diocese of Buffalo and its leadership failed to protect children from sexual abuse. Instead, they chose to protect the very priests who were credibly accused of these atrocious acts. Individuals who are victims of abuse deserve to have their claims timely investigated and determined, and the Buffalo Diocese refused to give them that chance.”

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TORONTO (ONTARIO, CANADA)
CBC News

November 24, 2020

By Julia Page

A class-action lawsuit launched against a Catholic religious order in 2018 has grown from the initial 30 Innu claimants on Quebec’s Lower North Shore to 190 Indigenous and non-Indigenous people from across Quebec.

Allegations of sexual abuse by priests with the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate initially surfaced during the federal inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG).

Those allegations have now multiplied across several First Nations, where the clergy tried to “silence repeated sexual assaults it was well aware of,” according to court documents submitted to Quebec Superior Court, in the request for authorization for the class action.

[Photo caption: Several priests in this photo, taken in the 1980s in the Sept-Îles region, have been named in the class action suit against the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. (Submitted by Institut Tshakapesh)]

The inquiry’s stop in Mani-Utenam in November 2017, an Innu community near Sept-Îles, on Quebec’s North Shore, revealed decades of alleged abuse against Innu children and women living in Unamen Shipu and Pakua Shipu, on the province’s Lower North Shore.

Alexis Joveneau, a Belgian priest who arrived in the region in the 1950s, held a tight grip on the Innu communities where he worked, until his death in 1992.

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DETROIT (MI)
Detroit Free Press

November 24, 2020

By Niraj Warikoo

The Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit has removed the pastor of a large church in Plymouth, alleging he was not able to handle the responsibilities of the parish. But the pastor is claiming he was unfairly targeted for speaking out on what he says was a harassment case involving an employee of the Archdiocese.

The Rev. Michael Suhy, pastor at Our Lady of Good Counsel parish, was told last week that he was being removed from the church he led.

Auxiliary Bishop Gerard Battersby said in a statement: “One of Archbishop Vigneron’s conclusions was that Father Suhy has become overwhelmed with the responsibilities, burdens, and challenges of administrating a large and complex parish like Our Lady of Good Counsel Parish with its added dimension of having a school. Following the required consultations and fact-finding, the action taken on Nov. 17 was believed necessary for Father Suhy’s well-being, and also for the well-being of the parish, parishioners, and school.”

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
BBC

November 23, 2020

New York’s Attorney General has filed a lawsuit against the Buffalo Catholic Diocese, alleging its leaders protected priests accused of child sex abuse.

Attorney General Letita James said the diocese and two now-retired leaders failed to refer over two dozen accused priests to the Vatican for removal.

In response, the diocese pledged “full cooperation” with authorities.

It is the first suit to come from a state inquiry that began in 2018. Seven other dioceses are under investigation.

Announcing the lawsuit on Twitter, Ms James promised to bring those responsible to justice.

“While we will never be able to undo these horrific acts, we will do everything in our power to hold the Buffalo Diocese and its leadership accountable and ensure this never happens again.”

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ALBANY (NY)
Attorney General of the State of New York

November 23, 2020

https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2020/attorney-general-james-takes-action-against-catholic-diocese-buffalo-failing

Church Leadership Failed to Respond to Sexual Abuse Allegations,
Engaged in Cover-Up of Credible Claims of Improper Sexual Conduct by Priests

Buffalo – New York Attorney General Letitia James today filed a lawsuit against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo and former senior leaders, Bishop Emeritus Richard J. Malone and former Auxiliary Bishop Edward M. Grosz, for failing to follow mandated policies and procedures that would help to prevent the rampant sexual abuse of minors by priests within the Catholic Church. The Office of the Attorney General’s (OAG) two year-long investigation into the sexual abuse of children and vulnerable adults within the New York dioceses of the Catholic Church found that allegations of improper sexual conduct against diocesan priests in Buffalo were inadequately investigated, if at all, and were covered-up for years. Even though the diocese’s leadership found sexual abuse complaints to be credible, they sheltered the accused priests from public disclosure by deeming them as “unassignable,” and permitted them to retire or go on purported medical leave, rather than face referral to the Vatican for possible removal from the priesthood.

“When trust is broken with spiritual leaders, it can lead to a crisis of faith. For years, the Diocese of Buffalo and its leadership failed to protect children from sexual abuse,” said Attorney General James. “Instead, they chose to protect the very priests who were credibly accused of these atrocious acts. Individuals who are victims of abuse deserve to have their claims timely investigated and determined, and the Buffalo Diocese refused to give them that chance. While we will never be able to undo the wrongs of the past, I can guarantee that my office will do everything in its power to ensure trust, transparency, and accountability moving forward.”

*
In addition to today’s suit, Attorney General James filed a motion to allow for the disclosure of the accused priests’ names and alleged conduct outlined in the complaint. [See also the memorandum supporting the motion.]

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ALBANY (NY)
Attorney General of the State of New York

November 23, 2020

By Letitia James et al.

The Attorney General brings this lawsuit to obtain remedial and injunctive relief for the persistent violation of New York nonprofit law by the Diocese of Buffalo (the “Diocesan Corporation” or the “Diocese”). For nearly two decades, the Diocesan Corporation ignored standards established by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (“USCCB”) in June 2002 to address and prevent the sexual abuse of minors by U.S. clergy. In direct defiance of the USCCB’s public commitment to reform, the Diocesan Corporation, through the conduct of its senior leadership, evaded key provisions of these standards, ignoring requirements for the investigation and review of alleged clergy sexual abuse.

2. Complaints of sexual abuse against priests continued unabated at the Diocesan Corporation from 2002 forward. Rather than adequately investigate and formally review the allegations to determine if priests were qualified to maintain their clerical status, the Diocesan Corporation privately designated priests that it considered to have abused minors as “unassignable.” Some of these unassignable priests were removed from ministry or allowed to retire in anticipation or shortly after the adoption of the USCCB’s 2002 standards. The Diocese permitted these unassignable priests to remain incardinated without any meaningful supervision or monitoring. These tactics together amounted to a practice of non-compliance with the USCCB’s principles and procedures, and they operated to conceal the actual nature and scope of sexual abuse allegations in the Diocesan Corporation.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

November 23, 2020

By Jay Tokasz

https://buffalonews.com/news/local/ag-sues-buffalo-diocese-alleging-misuse-of-funds-in-covering-up-sex-abuse-cases/article_9c323614-2da9-11eb-aad2-7fc022a2ecae.html

New York Attorney General Letitia James on Monday sued the Buffalo Diocese, along with retired Bishop Richard J. Malone and retired Auxiliary Bishop Edward M. Grosz, alleging that diocese leaders protected more than two dozen priests accused of child sexual abuse by not referring their cases to the Vatican for potential removal from the priesthood.

The civil lawsuit filed in State Supreme Court in New York County accused Malone and Grosz of misusing charitable assets by supporting priests the diocese considered to have committed sexual abuse.

The lawsuit was accompanied by the release of a 218-page report on the attorney general’s two-year investigation into Catholic dioceses across the state, with a focus on allegations of a coverup of improper sexual conduct by diocesan priests in the Buffalo Diocese.

The investigation found that Buffalo Diocese leaders determined sex abuse complaints to be credible, but sheltered the accused priests from public disclosure by deeming them “unassignable” and allowed them to retire or go on medical leave, rather than face referral to the Vatican for laicization.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

November 23, 2020

By Liam Stack

The state Attorney General said in a lawsuit that two former top leaders helped shelter more than two dozen priests accused of harming children.

The New York attorney general’s office on Monday accused the Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo and three bishops connected to it of violating church policy and state law with their involvement in a yearslong cover-up of sexual abuse by priests.

The lawsuit is the first state legal action against the Catholic Church in New York since a new wave of abuse investigations began in 2018, and it is the culmination of just one of eight inquiries, one for each Catholic diocese in the state. The other seven inquiries are ongoing.

The lawsuit represents what prosecutors believe is a novel legal strategy: The state will attempt to use civil laws, in particular those governing religious charities and their fiduciaries, to sue a Catholic diocese for failing to follow church policies enacted in 2002, after a series of investigative reports by The Boston Globe thrust the sex abuse scandal into public view.

It also may also raise questions about religious liberty: in addition to restitution and changes in the way the diocese handles sexual abuse claims, the lawsuit seeks to ban two bishops from management roles in any charitable organization, which may draw pushback from those who believe this encroaches into church autonomy.

The office of the attorney general, Letitia James, said its investigation found that the diocese and its two former top leaders, Bishop Richard J. Malone and Auxiliary Bishop Edward M. Grosz, used bureaucratic maneuvers to shelter more than two dozen priests accused of harming children.

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GREENWOOD (MS)
Associated Press

November 21, 2020

The trial for a former Catholic Church friar accused of sex abuse at a Mississippi school has been postponed.

Paul West, a former member of the Franciscan religious order, was supposed to face trial on Tuesday for allegations that he sexually molested students in the 1990s at Greenwood’s St. Francis of Assisi School.

No new trial date was immediately set, Kelly Roberts, senior deputy clerk of the Leflore County Circuit Court, told The Greenwood Commonwealth.

West’s court-appointed lawyer, Wallie Stuckey, sought the continuance that was granted. Stuckey said he filed the request because he hadn’t received all the information he’s legally due from the state about the witnesses and evidence that will be presented to the jury.

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SAN ĠWANN (MALTA)
Malta Today

November 23, 2020

By Josanne Cassar

When it comes to young children who have been exposed to sex, we must also be concerned about what happens next and how this emotional trauma will colour their future

Two headlines this week have perturbed me considerably, not only because of the stories they refer to, but because it points to an alarming inability by some fellow members of the press to comprehend how important it is to report sex abuse stories using the right terminology.

This is not about being ‘politically correct’, which has become a hackneyed phrase, and is often being used with negative connotations, much in the same way we sneer at people for being ‘snowflakes’, i.e. overly sensitive and easily offended.

No, the issue here is that the way certain headlines are phrased, and the choice of language in the reporting, filters down to the public which is all too ready to blame the victims instead of the culprits.

iNewsmalta.com came out with this gem: “Raġel jistenna li jgħaddi ġuri dwar sess ma’ tifla ta’ 11-il sena” (Man expected to stand trial for having sex with 11-year-old girl”.

LovinMalta, not to be outdone, wrote this headline about the same story: “Preteen Rabat Girl Sexually Abused By 31-Year-Old ‘Family Friend’ She Met At A Party”.

An 11-year-old cannot “have sex” with a man because this is not some romance novel we are talking about here. How many times does it need to be emphasised that a minor cannot consent to sex and, without consent, it is statutory rape? When this government lowered the age of consent from 18 to 16, a decision I strongly disagreed with, I knew that it would only give licence to all sorts of predators to feel that they could get away with abusing children even more. At 16 we are not adults, and although physically our bodies tell us we are ready to have sex, emotionally and psychologically most cannot handle it, and it often leads to dysfunctional sexual relationships for life in girls who confuse lust and physical gratification for the need to be loved.

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MALAGA (SPAIN)
EuroWeekly News

November 23, 2020

By Matthew Roscoe

50-year-old Fr Donald Bellizzi was convicted on appeal of sexually abusing the then-teenage boy who had been entrusted into his care and the pope was given the recommendation by the Rome-based Conventual Franciscans Order, of which Bellizzi still belongs while in prison, to dismiss him.

Bellizzi, who was jailed for three-years, abused the poor boy from 2010, when he attended meetings to find out if he had the vocation to become a priest, in abuse that lasted until he was 16-years-old, when he was eventually able the stand up to the priest and report the abuse.

The Secretary-General of the Conventual Franciscans, Tomasz Szymczak, told Times of Malta when contacted that the matter was investigated and that the pope had been asked to dismiss the guilty friar.

“The General Curia is now presenting a request to the Holy Father to dismiss Friar Donald from the clerical state and from the religious order, in accordance with the regulations in force,” Szymczak said.

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ROCHESTER (NY)
WXXI

November 22, 2020

Leila Fadel, Host: In 2017, in the midst of the #MeToo movement, a rigidly conservative celebrity American Muslim preacher was caught in a sexting scandal. Nouman Ali Khan was accused of using his position to lure and groom women into sexual relationships under the guise of secret marriages, all while he was legally married to someone else. The scandal divided Muslim communities as some came to his defense and others called for him to be held accountable. He largely disappeared from public life.

Now, like a few other men accused of being sexual predators at the height of #MeToo, he appears to be attempting a comeback. Last week, Nouman Ali Khan was invited to speak on an all male-hosted podcast called “The Mad Mamluks,” and that was met with outrage from largely young Muslims questioning why anyone would give him a platform.

We called Alia Salem to hear her reaction. She’s the founder of FACE, which stands for Facing Abuse in Community Environments, a Dallas-based organization that investigates spiritual, sexual and financial abuse by Muslim leaders.

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AUCKLAND (NEW ZEALAND)
Radio New Zealand

November 22, 2020

By Jean Bell

Efforts by church organisations to temporarily keep the names of deceased perpetrators secret ahead of an Abuse in Care inquiry is hugely upsetting for survivors, an advocate for abuse survivors says.

Lawyers acting for the Catholic Church, the Salvation Army and the Anglican Church have asked the Royal Commission to temporarily keep the names of deceased perpetrators of abuse hidden from the public eye through an interim non-publication order.

The faith-based hearings start at the end of the month, following a lengthy hearing into redress for survivors of abuse while in state care between 1950 and 1999.

A central argument for the non-publication order is that there has not been sufficient time for natural justice and preparation before the hearing starts.

Murray Heasley, an advocate for Catholic Church abuse survivors, who was at the procedural hearing today, said it has caused massive disquiet among victims.

“For many of them it is between 20 and 60 years since this happened and this is for many of them, perhaps their last chance to seek some redress and some justice.”

He said it is incredible so many people had come forward.

“There is massive cultural reasons not to step up. Most people don’t – they remain silent. Now they’ve heard about these questions of redactions … and now this talk about dead people not being able to be mentioned is deeply alarming.”

The Catholic Church’s lawyer Sally McKenzie told chair Judge Coral Shaw the church was not seeking to cover up evidence.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Sojourners

November 18, 2020

By Rose Marie Berger

On the same day last week, two reports on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church made headlines.

The first report, released by the Vatican, is the so-called “McCarrick report.” It documents the rise of former (now-laicized, or removed from priestly office) Cardinal Theodore McCarrick to the highest levels of the Catholic Church, despite persistent warnings that he had sexually entrapped seminarians for decades and then abused his significant power and finances to buy silence. (The now-90-year-old McCarrick, the most senior church official ever laicized for sexual abuse, lives in an undisclosed location in the U.S.)

The second report was released by an independent commission in the U.K. It documents nearly 50 years of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic institutions in England and Wales and how Cardinal Vincent Nichols, current president of Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, consistently elevated protection of his own reputation over that of the children in the care of church workers — priests, brothers, and lay leaders.

What the reports have in common is long lists of sexual abuse victims and their broken families. The testimonies of survivors are instructive for the quality of their demand for justice and yet, to paraphrase Tolstoy, each unhappy survivor story “is unhappy in its own way.” Each story is unbearable in its details of the physical and psycho-spiritual torture and the chronic wounds that remain.

But in other respects, the two reports could not be more different.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
WHYY / PBS

November 18, 2020

Two area Catholic high schools will close at the end of this academic year, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced Wednesday.

The decision to shut John W. Hallahan Catholic Girls High School in Philadelphia and Bishop McDevitt High School in Wyncote, Montgomery County, comes as a result of their declining enrollment. The schools are operating at 36% and 40% of enrollment capacity, respectively.

*
The ongoing pandemic has taken a toll on Catholic school systems and dioceses across the country. In October, the Diocese of Camden became one of the latest to file for bankruptcy, citing revenue losses resulting from the pandemic as well as millions of dollars it paid out to clergy abuse victims.

In April, the Diocese of Camden also announced it was closing five South Jersey Catholic schools at the end of the academic year due to financial issues made worse by the pandemic.

The Philadelphia Archdiocese is no stranger to school closures as a cost-cutting measure. In 2012, four high schools and 49 elementary schools were shuttered due to widening budget deficits and dwindling student populations.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
Tablet

November 20, 2020

By Catherine Pepinster

Catholic bishops of England and Wales have admitted that their safeguarding work must change and have outlined how this will happen.

Their admission comes just days after a damning report from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse which lambasted its safeguarding structures and poor treatment of survivors and singled out Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Vincent Nichols for criticism.

At a press conference today, when the bishops unveiled their new safeguarding set-up, Cardinal Nichols said he had no intention of quitting.

Survivors had called for his immediate departure following the IICSA report but the cardinal said he would be staying put while the Church reorganises its safeguarding.

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DENVER (CO)
Catholic News Agency

November 20, 2020

Cardinal Vincent Nichols said Friday that he was committed to overseeing a major overhaul of safeguarding procedures in England and Wales following an independent report that sharply criticized his handling of abuse cases.

The Catholic Church in England and Wales announced sweeping changes to its child protection system Nov. 20, 10 days after the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) issued a scathing report on the Church.

In a personal statement shared with journalists at a press conference Friday, the cardinal said that the report had “brought together a picture of abuse inflicted in the Catholic Church over a period of 50 years.”

“It is a terrible picture,” he said. “I remain shocked and ashamed. It is a reality that hangs like a dark cloud over my heart and mind.”

He continued: “I say again: I am so sorry. I say this for many bishops who have gone before me over these 50 years. Many hearing this will feel that we let you down. Yes, we did let you down in many ways, in different times, in different places, for different reasons. I apologize again. I am so sorry for all that has happened over these years.”

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
Tablet

November 17, 2020

By Catherine Pepinster

An abuse survivor is to sue the Diocese of Westminster, including its archbishop, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, for personal injury because of the way she was treated when she asked to have access to her own safeguarding files. The claim is believed to be a highly unusual action.

The decision by A711 came as the bishops of England and Wales were due to meet on Wednesday for an all-day discussion on the highly critical report by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) on the Catholic Church, published last week. It said the Catholic Church had betrayed its moral purpose in its neglectful handling of abuse cases and the way it treated survivors. It singled out Cardinal Nichols in its report, saying that he showed “no acknowledgement of any personal responsibility to lead or influence change” and failed to be compassionate to victims.

Cardinal Nichols said in television news reports that he had tendered his resignation to Pope Francis who had asked him to stay on. But the resignation was caused by him reaching 75, the date for episcopal retirements, rather than the comments made about his handling of the abuse crisis.

According to A711, it was Cardinal Nichols’ response to the report that was “the last straw” for her and led to her decision to press for damages. “The fact that he resigned because he is 75 not because of the report has made me think there must be some sort of accountability, and I hope that’s what this action will bring about,” she said.

When A711 asked to see documents relating to her case of abuse, disparaging emails from Westminster diocesan staff were discovered and efforts to see further documents were blocked until recently. Requests to speak to the cardinal went unheeded until a newspaper reported on her case.

“I have catalogued a long list of problems about the way they have treated me over the last four years”, she said. “They retraumatised me. They can’t keep treating survivors like this”.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Times

November 21, 2020

By Peter MacDiarmid

An independent inquiry has criticised the Catholic leader’s handling of sexual allegations. Those who have suffered for years say he must go

In October 2016 a woman approached the Catholic Church to report the sexual abuse and rape she had suffered at the hands of a priest from the age of 15.

She knew it would take all her strength to relive what had happened. What she did not expect was to be “retraumatised” by the church.

Safeguarding officers for the diocese of Westminster, which handled her case, described the woman, now in her fifties, as “needy” and “manipulative” in internal emails.

She pleaded with Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the head of the diocese and the leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, to help her with her case. She was ignored. Requests for meetings fell on deaf ears for months. After submitting a formal request…

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KENOSHA (WI)
Kenosha News

November 22, 2020

By Arthur I. Cyr

https://www.kenoshanews.com/opinion/local_columnists/dr-art-cyr-pope-francis-leadership-underscores-global-influence-of-roman-catholic-church/article_51baa72c-9cff-5533-b9cb-be585accfc7f.html

“An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth …,” is a useful starting place for discussion of the influence of Pope Francis, who is proving to be a remarkably active and activist leader of the Roman Catholic Church. To modern readers, the Biblical quote (Exodus 21:24) may seem brutal, but the Old Testament sentiment actually represented revolutionary progress.

Ancient warfare involved unrestrained killing and pillaging. By contrast, this Hebrew law codified proportionality and limits. Historically and currently, the Vatican has played an important role in restraining and restricting warfare, building on this fundamental insight.

*
Shocking criminal sexual abuse by priests is a principal contemporary challenge. In 2015, a Vatican tribunal was established to review and judge cases of sexual abuse. Francis’ predecessor Pope Benedict XVI publicly acknowledged the criminal behavior, met with victims and apologized.

The world wars of the past century reconfirmed the Catholic Church’s emphasis on restraint in war. Contemporary Catholic analysis of ethics and military strategy is spearheaded by influential scholars such as J. Bryan Hehir, a senior priest and faculty member at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

During the Cold War, Fr. Hehir guided the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ influential report on use of nuclear weapons. Hehir also bluntly criticized his church for mishandling sex abuse crimes by priests.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
WPXI-TV

November 20, 2020

By: Rick Earle

The special fund created by the Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese to compensate victims of clergy sex abuse closed down in October, but some victims say the fund fell far short of what they expected.

Target 11′s Rick Earle spoke to several victims who said they feel like they’ve become victims again, not at the hands of priest, but the diocese. They believe that some of the settlement offers were “a slap in the face.”

“Quite frankly the program that Pittsburgh ran, of all the programs, was the most poorly funded,” said Ben Andreozzi, an attorney who represents approximately 30 victims from the Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese.

Andreozzi said about half of the victims he represents accepted settlements from the diocese. The other half declined the offers.

“We’re not talking about them thumbing their nose at millions of dollars. We’re talking about situations where people who have been raped are offered less than $20,000. I’m not suggesting that $20,000 isn’t a lot of money, but for somebody who has extensive needs for therapy, they lost out on job opportunities, they lost out on their education, the needs far exceed that of what they were offered, ” he said.

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NEW BEDFORD (MA)
Standard-Times / SouthCoastToday

November 21, 2020

By Kiernan Dunlop

A Ministerial Review Board has determined that allegations of sexual abuse of minors brought against a New Bedford Roman Catholic priest are credible and recommended he be permanently removed from priestly ministry, according to the Diocese of Fall River.

“Based upon my own review of the evidence and the thoughtful work of the Review Board, I have accepted the recommendations and met this week with Father [Daniel] Lacroix to inform him of this decision,” Bishop Edgar. M da Cunha said in a letter that was read to parishioners of Lacroix’s the weekend of November 14 – 15.

In 2019, Lacroix was named co-pastor at three North End Churches – St. Joseph-St. Therese, St. Mary, and Our Lady of Fatima Parishes. St. Mary, where Lacroix had been serving as a pastor since 2017, has an associated school, All Saints Catholic School, which serves preschool through Grade 8 students. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic St. Mary is the only church where Mass is currently being held out of the three parishes and the announcement about the diocese’s decision was made there, according to Director of Communications John Kearns.

A priest removed from ministry may not publicly celebrate a Mass or sacrament, preach, present himself as a priest or wear clerical clothing, participate in any meeting or gathering or engage in any form of ministry, and he may not reside in a rectory or any other parish or diocesan facility, according to Kearns.

Kearns did not say if Lacroix would receive any retirement benefits or a severance.

In November 2019, Lacroix was placed on administrative leave after an external review of the diocese’s personnel files revealed information related to alleged misconduct that is said to have occurred decades ago.

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ALBANY (DC)
WRGB 6 CBS

November 20, 2020

The Diocese of Albany has added a name to its list of offenders who have been accused of sex abuse.

The late Rev. Lawrence McTavey passed away nearly a year ago.

The diocesan review board hired an investigator to look into a long history of allegations against McTavey.

MORE: 33 new lawsuits filed against Albany Diocese, law firm now reports over 100 survivors

He was ordained in 1955 and served at churches in Stillwater, Troy, and Albany.

He retired in 2007 from St. Bernard’s in Cohoes.

Multiple abuse claims were filed against McTavey between 2002 and 2019 before his death.

The diocese asks anyone who may have been abused by McTavey to contact law enforcement or the diocese.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service via Crux

November 20, 2020

By Junno Arocho Esteves

At Vatican trial, seminary rector accuses victim of seeking payout

Rome – The former rector of a minor seminary located in the Vatican denied knowing about the alleged sexual abuse of a student, but instead alleged that the victim and his friend, who claimed he witnessed the abuse, were motivated by money.

Msgr. Enrico Radice, the former rector of the St. Pius X Pre-Seminary, took the stand Nov. 19, the third day of the Vatican criminal trial against him and Father Gabriele Martinelli.

Martinelli, 28, is accused of abusing a younger student from 2007 to 2012. Although he and his alleged victim were under the age of 18 when the abuse allegedly began, the court accused him of continuing to abuse the younger student when Martinelli was already 20.

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ROME (ITALY)
Associated Press

November 19, 2020

By Nicole Winfield

The Vatican cardinal sacked by Pope Francis amid a corruption investigation is suing an Italian news magazine, claiming that his ruined reputation has eliminated his chances of becoming pope and will undermine the legitimacy of any future papal election.

Cardinal Angelo Becciu is seeking 10 million euros ($11.9 million) in damages, to be given to charity, in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in the Sassari, Sardinia tribunal against L’Espresso magazine, the weekly affiliated with Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica.

The 74-page complaint raises questions about the conduct of Vatican criminal prosecutors, suggesting they leaked information to L’Espresso as they sought to build a corruption case around the Holy See’s 350 million-euro ($416 million) investment in a London real estate venture.

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BANGALORE (INDIA)
TheNewsMinute

November 21, 2020

By Sreedevi Jayarajan

The incident is said to have taken place in Kilimanoor back in 2018.

The Kerala police on Thursday arrested a man who allegedly disguised himself as a temple priest and sexually abused an 11-year-old girl in Thiruvananthapuram. The incident is said to have taken place in Kilimanoor back in 2018. The accused, 37-year-old Shyam is a native of Allapad panchayat in Kollam district. According to the police, the girl’s mother had knowledge of the abuse.

Speaking to TNM, officers at the Kilimanoor police station said that the accused had been working in a local temple in the area, under his fake name – Shan. He reportedly got acquainted with a woman in the neighbourhood and visited her regularly. The woman is the 11-year-old girl’s mother. “The accused and the mother also threatened the girl to not reveal the abuse to anybody. This is how reporting of the incident got delayed by two years,” an officer at the Kilimanoor Police Station told TNM.

The accused was finally arrested when the minor revealed the abuse to her father and the two filed a complaint in the station. The arrest was recorded on Thursday after he was charged under relevant sections of the POCSO Act (Protection of Children Against Sexual Offences). The accused has been remanded to judicial custody.

Reports also add that the accused had been duping people for years by working in Kerala temples under a fake name. He had also created fake identity cards and documents to make it more convincing. He also made fake documents in the name of a famous Namboothiri family in Edakulangara, according to reports. Several documents and multiple mobile SIM cards were seized from the accused. He was arrested by a team of officers from the Kilimanoor police station headed by Station House Officer (SHO) KB Manoj Kumar. He has remanded by the Attingal POCSO court.

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TRIQ I-INTORNJATUR (MALTA)
Times of Malta

November 20, 2020

By Matthew Xuereb

The decision needs to be taken by the Franciscan Order
.
The Vatican is yet to order the defrocking of a priest convicted of sexually abusing a 13-year-old boy who had been entrusted into his care.

The decision needs to be taken by the Franciscan Order which is based in Rome and which receives its orders from the Vatican. Meanwhile, Fr Donald Bellizzi is serving time in jail as a priest.

Bellizzi was convicted on appeal of sexually abusing the then teenage boy, who used to attend a special group for those who were keen on becoming priests.

The offences began in 2010 when the boy attended meetings to find out if he had the vocation to become a priest and lasted until he was 16 years old when he stood up to the priest and stopped the abuse.

Bellizzi, who is now almost 50 years old, had his three-year jail sentence confirmed on appeal.

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DENVER (CO)
Catholic News Agency

November 20, 2020

By Hannah Brockhaus

The Vatican court heard Thursday the questioning of one of the defendants in an ongoing trial of two Italian priests for abuse and cover-up allegedly committed in Vatican City from 2007 to 2012.

Fr. Enrico Radice, 72, has been charged with impeding investigations into an abuse allegation against Fr. Gabriele Martinelli, 28.

The abuse is alleged to have taken place at the St. Pius X pre-seminary located in the Vatican. The abuse allegations were first made public by the media in 2017.

Radice stated at the Nov. 19 hearing that he was never told about abuse by Martinelli by anyone, accusing the alleged victim and another alleged witness of making up the story for “economic interests.”

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
WWL 4 CBS

November 19, 2020

By David Hammer

https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/investigations/david-hammer/suspended-metairie-deacon-focus-of-criminal-child-rape-investigation-jpso-confirms/289-00f7b2a0-a4dc-450f-8fc0-39fcfea21a14

Deputies have not booked the deacon with any crime, and prosecutors have not filed charges.

A Catholic deacon from Metairie who was suspended from public ministry this summer is now under criminal investigation over accusations that he raped a pre-teen boy 20 years ago, according to a Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office report released this week.

The initial report on the case shows an unidentified man met with a personal violence investigator at the Sheriff’s Office detectives’ bureau on Oct. 21 and recounted how he had been sexually abused between January 2000 and December 2001, when he was less than 13 years old. He said the abuse occurred at a home on Hector Avenue in Metairie, at the hands of a man who is now 62.

Land records show that the home in question was owned at the time by Virgil Maxey “V.M.” Wheeler III, 62, a prominent New Orleans lawyer who was ordained a deacon in 2018 but was removed from ministry in August over unspecified abuse allegations dating back two decades.

The property on Hector, which Wheeler sold in 2019, is just two blocks from St. Francis Xavier Parish on Metairie Road, where Wheeler served as a deacon.

The police report doesn’t name Wheeler, but Sheriff’s Office Capt. Jason Rivarde on Thursday confirmed that Wheeler is the suspect referenced in the report.

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PASADENA (CA)
Courthouse News Service

November 19, 2020

By Amanda Pampuro

A former Catholic priest convicted of sexually abusing minors in the 1990s told a 10th Circuit panel Thursday that the jury that found him guilty was clearly predisposed to distrust him after listening to several other witnesses who said they saw him commit similar acts of abuse.

In October 2019, a jury convicted Arthur Perrault, then 81, of sexually abusing children at Santa Fe National Cemetery and Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, where he served as a chaplain in the 1990s.

Throughout the trial, several other victims came forward to testify that Perrault had abused them hundreds of times as young boys under the age of 12, while he served as a Catholic priest at St. Bernadette’s parish and Our Lady of Assumption in Albuquerque. The tales of abuse went back as far as 1966, when Perrault was teaching at St. Pius Catholic High School.

Perrault fled the country in 1992, as a New Mexico state attorney was preparing lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Santa Fe over the priest’s alleged crimes. Perrault was finally extradited from Morocco in 2018 to stand trial.

Following the trial, U.S. District judge Martha Vazquez, appointed by Bill Clinton, sentenced Perrault to 30 years in prison.

On Thursday, public defender Aric Grant Elsenheimer told a 10th Circuit panel Vazquez had erred in letting seven propensity witnesses testify.

“What if the court allowed five?” asked U.S. Circuit Judge Gregory Phillips, a Barack Obama appointee.

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LOUISVILLE (KY)
Courier Journal

November 19, 2020

By Jim Wayne

The astonishing news that the Louisville Metro Police Department and the Jefferson County Attorney’s Office concealed at least 738,000 records dealing with child sexual abuses in the Explorer Scouts program should raise the collective ire of everyone in our community.

The cover-up by public servants of any information about the incidents is, in effect, a collusion in crimes against our most precious, innocent citizens — our children.

As a licensed clinical social worker who treats victims of childhood sexual abuse, I can attest to the serious, long-term psychological impact of this horrendous trauma. The pain that for years finds its way into every crevice of a person’s life is indescribable.

In 2008, following the devastating news of abuse of thousands of children by Catholic priests, I worked with the adult victims of these crimes to successfully sponsor legislation to tighten reporting requirements, raise age limits, stiffen penalties and extend the statute limitation on child sexual abuse cases in Kentucky. Since the passage of the law, the number of prosecutions has grown and the level of awareness about transparency in these cases has increased.

This awareness, evidently, never penetrated the walls of our city administrations or the Jefferson County attorney’s office.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

November 19, 2020

Munich – The two abuse survivors who resigned as spokesmen of the victims’ advisory board in the Cologne Archdiocese have accused Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki of a “renewed abuse of abuse victims.”

The board had been “completely overrun” by Cardinal Woelki’s treatment of the Cologne abuse studies, Patrick Bauer told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper in comments published Nov. 19.

“We were meant to deliver the certificate: approved by the advisory board,” said Karl Haucke.

The German Catholic news agency KNA reported that at the end of October, the archdiocese had announced in a joint statement with the victims’ advisory board that the abuse report compiled by a Munich law firm would not be published due to alleged deficiencies, and that Cologne-based criminal law expert Björn Gercke would conduct a new investigation.

The Christ & World supplement of the newspaper Die Zeit cited the unpublished abuse report and said it accused former Cologne cardinals Joseph Höffner and Joachim Meisner of mistakes in handling an abuse case. There is also renewed public debate about the behavior of the Archbishop Stefan Hesse of Hamburg, former head of personnel of the Cologne Archdiocese.

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ALBUQUERQUE(NM)
KNUM

November 11, 2020

By Marisa DeMarco

[Note: Hannah Colton and her colleagues Ellen Berkovitch and Rita Daniels reported the 2018 series Dark Canyon: Sexual Abuse and Secrecy in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe.]

The KUNM community is heartbroken to say that News Director Hannah Colton died earlier this week at age 29.

She has been a brilliant news leader during the pandemic, guiding the team and editing stories about the virus, the calls to stop racist policing and the 2020 election.

She was passionate about equity and racial justice. She fought those fights in the field, in news content and on behalf of her staff.

Hannah loved being a reporter. She was a gifted storyteller. She was great at meeting people and talking with them, asking good questions and really listening to the answers.

She well-understood the urgency of this moment, and she gave it her whole heart, working around the clock to cover equity and education, the dangers of the virus for people who are incarcerated, protests and the pandemic’s impacts on people without shelter.

Hannah was originally from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She was committed to this region and told me she wanted to stay here, doing this work— even though after this pandemic is over, she could have gone anywhere she wanted as a reporter or newsroom leader.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
Baltimore Sun

November 18, 2020

By Phillip J. Brown

The McCarrick Report investigating sexual abuse by disgraced former Washington, D.C., cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, released this month by the Vatican, catalogs facts that cannot be ignored, denied or explained away. The harm inflicted by Mr. McCarrick over decades is a source of deep remorse and shame for the Catholic Church. Like most, I am bewildered that he was able to advance in the ranks while preying on victims even while serious accusations about him were known or credibly rumored.

Before priesthood, I served as assistant attorney general for Pardons, Parole and Probation in North Dakota. I reviewed the files of every inmate in the corrections system, which included every kind of sex crime. Later I served as guardian ad litem for the juvenile court, representing the interests of children, including those who had been sexually abused. As a priest and canon lawyer, I have been deeply involved in cases of clerical sexual abuse of children and young people. I have had a life-long commitment to the welfare and well-being of children and young adults — that they be protected from sexual predators especially. That life experience has informed my work as a canonist and now as a seminary official.

The greatest value of the McCarrick Report will be what we learn from it to ensure that nothing like this is able to happen again.

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EL PASO (TX)
KFOX

November 18, 2020

Las Cruces NM – Catholic officials in Rome have ordered an investigation into former Las Cruces Bishop, Oscar Cantu, over his handling of cases of clergy sexual abuse, according to the Catholic News Agency.

The investigation is being carried out under the provisions of Vos estis lux mundi, Pope Francis’ 2019 law for holding bishops accountable in the handling of sexual abuse cases.

Senior sources in the Vatican told CNA that the investigation was ordered by Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, in October and that the allegations concern Cantu’s handling of abuse and misconduct cases in his former diocese of Las Cruces, New Mexico. Cantu is now Bishop of San Jose, California.

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BOSTON (MA)
GBH

November 19, 2020

By Isaiah Thompson

More than a dozen Massachusetts Boy Scouts troops have been implicated among a flood of tens of thousands sexual abuse lawsuits filed nationwide against the Boy Scouts of America, according to a lawyer representing some of the alleged victims.

Boston Attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who prominently represented victims of abuse by Catholic clergy, tells GBH News that he is currently representing about 100 clients accusing the Boy Scouts of sexual abuse. Most of those clients, he says, are from Massachusetts; their allegations implicate an estimated dozen or more Boy Scouts troops from around the state.

“From Boston, to Springfield, to western Massachusetts … it’s spread out almost everywhere,” Garabedian said. “It was the culture, of abuse.”

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