ABUSE TRACKER

YOUNGSTOWN (OH)
The Vindicator

November 18, 2018

By Ed Runyan and Justin Dennis

Former area clergy recently exposed for alleged child-sex crimes continue to sow turmoil in Catholic parishes across the country, as well as in the lives of their accusers.

A member of Queen of the Holy Rosary Parish in Vienna Township says the announcement that its priest, the Rev. Denis G. Bouchard, is on administrative leave over allegations of inappropriate contact with a minor is causing conflict within the parish.

Also, a Catholic diocese in Phoenix, Ariz., recently dismissed one of its retired priests, Frank Zappitelli, who was previously removed from the Youngstown Diocese after sex-abuse allegations in the mid-1970s, and who then moved to Arizona in 1983.

And, 30 years after 43-year-old Scott Cunningham alleges former Youngstown priest Jose Vazques molested him in the St. Aloysius Parish rectory, he said he and his parents are still learning to cope with the trauma and guilt.

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[Prosecutor confirms Errázuriz will be summoned to testify in possible abuse cover-up]

CHILE
La Tercera

November 14, 2018

By Claudia Soto

De acuerdo a los antecedentes entregados por el fiscal regional de O’higgins, Sergio Moya, el cardenal será citado en su mayoría, por el caso del sacerdote Jorge Laplagne.

Luego de tomar la declaración del obispo emérito de Osorno, Juan Barros, el fiscal regional de 0’Higgins, Sergio Moya, anunció que el cardenal Francisco Javier Errázuriz, será citado a declarar en una fecha que aún no ha sido definida.

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[Network of clergy abuse survivors criticizes bishops’ statement on collaborating with prosecutors]

CHILE
El Mostrador

November 16, 2018

“¿No es obvio que todos estamos obligados, máxime cuando se trata de delitos sexuales y de abuso contra la infancia?”, cuestionaron. En la declaración calificaron de “aberrante” que se hable de la firma de un documento para colaborar con la justicia pues -aseguran- “nadie que está siendo investigado como ellos actualmente puede tener la desfachatez de aparecer firmando colaboraciones cuando se trata de su deber ciudadano. ¿O acaso desean acogerse a algún tipo de beneficio delatorio? ¿Dejarán de ser encubridores para convertirse en colaboradores de la policía?”.

La Red de Sobrevivientes de Abuso Eclesiástico en Chile criticó la declaración de la Conferencia Episcopal (CECh) de formalizar un acuerdo de cooperación con la Fiscalía para investigar los casos de abuso sexual cometidos por religiosos, apuntando a que es “innecesario aplaudir” que una institución declaré que colaborará con la justicia.

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[Whistleblowers criticize the apostolic administrator of Valparaiso for not considering them as “victims”]

SANTIAGO (CHILE)
Emol

November 16, 2018

Mauricio Pulgar y Sebastián del Río llegaron hasta la asamblea plenaria de la Conferencia Episcopal -que culminó hoy- y se reunieron con el obispo Fernando Ramos. Aseguraron que él tampoco los reconoció como abusados.

By Tomás Molina J.

Hasta la asamblea plenaria de la Conferencia Episcopal, desarrollada en La Florida, llegaron dos representantes de los denunciantes de abusos sexuales y de poder en la diócesis de Valparaíso, durante las administraciones de los obispos Santiago Silva y Gonzalo Duarte, respectivamente.

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[Chile’s Episcopal Conference will defend the presumption of innocence in the face of accusations against its presiding bishop]

CHILE
La Tercera

November 16, 2018

By Alejandra Jara

La Iglesia además rechazó la muerte del comunero mapuche Camilo Catrillanca ocurrida el miércoles: “Condenamos la violencia venga de donde venga, más si repercut en la dignidad de las personas”.

La Conferencia Episcopal concluyó este viernes la 117° Asamblea Plenaria que abordó, entre otros temas, la crisis que enfrenta la Iglesia por los casos de abusos sexuales contra niños, jóvenes y adultos.

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[“New and old:” the clash of styles at the bishops’ meeting]

CHILE
La Tercera

November 16, 2018

By María José Navarrete

La Conferencia Episcopal cierra hoy su 117° Asamblea Plenaria con la presencia de ocho administradores apostólicos. Su presidente, Santiago Silva, sigue en la mira.

Desde el reciente lunes 12 de noviembre hasta el mediodía de hoy, la Conferencia Episcopal de Chile (Cech) se reunió en su 117° Asamblea Plenaria, en el Centro Salesiano de Espiritualidad Lo Cañas, en La Florida, Santiago.

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[Chile’s Episcopal Conference ends its worst year without changing its hierarchy]

CHILE
La Tercera

November 16, 2018

By María José Navarrete

Obispos culminaron la 117 Asamblea Plenaria con casi el mismo comité permanente que comenzó 2018. Prelados anunciaron un importante proyecto de colaboración con la fiscalía para indagar casos de abuso.

No es ninguna novedad decir que 2018 fue un año de crisis para la Iglesia Católica chilena. En este período el Papa Francisco aceptó la renuncia de siete de los 32 obispos en ejercicio, mientras que las denuncias por abuso sexual por parte del clero, según el último informe de la Fiscalía -a octubre-, llegan a 124 causas vigentes, con 178 personas investigadas -entre ellas ocho obispos- y 222 víctimas.

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[Ex-priest Precht goes to Supreme Court to appeal rejection of protection appeal against Archdiocese]

CHILE
El Mostrador

November 16, 2018

El ex sacerdote acusa a la Iglesia de vulnerar sus garantías constitucionales en el marco de la investigación canónica que se está llevando en su contra, argumentando que esta le ordenó residir en Santiago mientras durara la indagatoria, lo que fue descartado de forma unánime por el tribunal de alzada.

La defensa del ex sacerdote Cristián Precht acudió hasta la Corte Suprema para apelar y dejar sin efecto el rechazo de la Corte de Apelaciones de Santiago al recurso de protección interpuesto contra el Arzobispado.

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[Chile’s Episcopal Conference keeps Santiago Silva as president despite accusations of cover-up]

CHILE
BioBioChile

November 16, 2018

By Matías Vega and Erik López

El secretario general de la Conferencia Episcopal, Fernando Ramos, aseguró que la Conferencia Episcopal discutió la condición en que se encuentra su presidente, Santiago Silva, quien es imputado por presunto encubrimiento de abusos sexuales.

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SAN DIEGO (CA)
San Diego Union-Tribune

November 18, 2018

By Peter Rowe

Mary Josweg is a 21st century Catholic, but she sounds an awful lot like the 16th century Protestant reformer Martin Luther.

“The church needs to get cleansed,” said Josweg, 69, a parishioner at St. Patrick’s in Carlsbad. “I believe in Jesus as the son of God and Creator of the world — I happen to be Catholic. But the organization that I belong to is totally corrupt.”

Josweg was among the thousands of Catholics who attended eight “listening sessions” convened by San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy in October and November. He got an earful.

“People are no longer following blindly,” said Harley Noel, 85, a parishioner at St. John’s in Encinitas. “Now, the heirarchy can’t — I hate to say pull the wool over people’s eyes, but it’s hard for them to run and hide.”

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IRONDALE (AL)
National Catholic Register

November 16, 2018

By Msgr. Charles Pope

The annual Fall Meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which took place in Baltimore earlier this week, was a disappointment on many levels. Yet there were also moments of light and strength coming from a good number of bishops. They spoke with clarity, acknowledging the seriousness of the crisis both in terms of the need to bring some semblance of justice to the victims and of the faltering credibility of the Church. Some even made the forbidden connection of the crisis to active homosexuals in the priesthood. Still others lamented the collective silence on sexual morality, wondering how many bishops and clergy do not believe what the Church teaches. (The interventions of these courageous bishops were reported in detail in the National Catholic Register here and here.)

Lamentably, the vote to encourage the Holy See to release all documents related to former Cardinal McCarrick’s alleged misconduct did not pass. The debate seemed to center on canonical issues and even wordsmithing. Nonetheless, the fact that more than 80 bishops were willing to issue even a mild-mannered insistence to Rome shows that many are finding a voice that is willing to confront when and where necessary.

The greatest disappointment was Pope Francis’ decision to suppress any vote or action on the abuse scandals by the U.S. bishops. Some bishops remarked that this decision indicates that Rome is serious about reform—a gratuitous claim. To many if not most of the faithful from whom I regularly hear, this seems yet another sad example of intransigence from Rome and the Pope. There is an almost complete tone-deafness in Rome; there seems to be bewilderment as to why these American “conservatives” are so worked up. Even worse, it appears that there is intentional resistance, obfuscation, and outright refusal to grant the legitimate requests of God’s faithful for a full and prompt investigation. These requests by the faithful are intended to ensure that tolerance of sin, violations of chastity, and clerical malfeasance will end. Victims deserve a prompt and thorough investigation and the faithful are right to insist that their clergy live up to the vows they take and observe the Sixth Commandment.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Commonweal Magazine

November 15, 2018

By Griffin Oleynick

On my last night in Rome covering the Synod on Young People, I got lost in a neighborhood adjacent to Vatican City. To return to my hotel, I had to circumambulate the mura vaticane—the massive walls first erected by Pope Leo IV in the ninth century and later reinforced by Pius IV in the sixteenth. I was struck not only by their height and thickness, but also by the kind of church they represent: fearful, defensive, and opaque. Farther along, though, it’s a different story, as the walls end abruptly at St. Peter’s Square. Here, Michelangelo’s twin elliptical colonnades gracefully cradle the open space like two outstretched arms. The architecture now signals a different kind of church, one that embraces visitors and pilgrims from all around the world. How appropriate, I thought. Just before leaving the Synod, I’d stumbled on the Vatican as a kind of visual metaphor for the Roman Catholic Church: an institution at times open and loving, but just as frequently impenetrable and unwelcoming.

The Synod officially concluded almost three weeks ago, with Pope Francis, delegates, and auditors all expressing mutual affection and gratitude for their time together. A cheerful atmosphere prevailed at the closing Mass held in St. Peter’s Basilica on October 28, where during his homily Francis thanked participants for their “witness” to unity and synodality. “We have worked in communion, with frankness and the desire to serve God’s people,” the pope said. Since then, delegates have explained that the Synod really isn’t over: the challenge now is bringing its collaborative spirit to dioceses and parishes all over the world. The road ahead won’t be easy. After returning to the United States in mid-October, I noticed a pointed lack of interest in (and even a certain skepticism toward) the proceedings—even from friends in the priesthood and religious life. How can the Synod overcome such indifference and realize its promise to revitalize the church for coming generations?

Whatever the Synod accomplishes in the next few months, its “first fruit”—the much anticipated Final Document—has failed to generate much enthusiasm. At more than twenty-seven thousand words, it’s both shorter and more concrete than the earlier Instrumentum laboris, but that hasn’t made it more widely read. Drafted in Italian by a small committee of delegates and approved on October 27 by a two-thirds vote in the hall, the Final Document still hasn’t been made available in English. Analysis on this side of the Atlantic has largely focused on the document’s third and final section (it’s dedicated to pressing problems and practical proposals, while the first two are theoretical). Critical reactions have emerged from different sides: progressive commentators have decried the exclusion of the term “LGBT,” calling it a “missed opportunity,” while conservatives have objected to passages on the topic of synodality. Some speculate that Po

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NEW YORK (NY)
Buffalo News

November 16, 2018

By Kathleen Janish

Bishop Richard J. Malone’s Nov. 5 press conference was unsatisfactory partly because he left most of the explanations and difficult questions to his lawyers. They repeatedly stated that most of the priest sex abuses occurred in the 1960s and 1970s before Malone’s arrival. While those abuses were a horrific betrayal, what happened since his arrival has angered many people.

Malone states he will not resign because a shepherd does not abandon his flock in a time of crisis. This is a crisis of his creation.

A good shepherd does not hide the names of predatory priests for five years and then release them only when pressured.

A good shepherd does not hide the whereabouts of the predators, thus worrying his flock about their safety.

A good shepherd does not let his flock learn from others that this was only a partial list, thus increasing their anger and anxiety, maximizing the pain of abuse victims, and putting good priests under a cloud of suspicion.

A good shepherd does not allow a staffer to present an unconvincing tale about the creation of a database to explain the delay in releasing further names.

A good shepherd protects his entire flock and does not hide the names and abuse charges of priests because they concern adults and not minors.

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AUSTRALIA
La Croix International

November 17, 2018

By Kieran Tapsell

The pontifical secret has been in the news lately because of comments by two of Pope Francis’ conservative critics. In his second statement on the McCarrick matter, Archbishop Viganó admitted to breaching the pontifical secret by revealing some of the allegations against the ex-cardinal.In a television interview, Cardinal Muller, the former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith cited the pontifical secret when declining to provide details of allegations of child sexual abuse against the late Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor. Muller alleges that Pope Francis ordered him to stop the investigation.Justin Glyn SJ in his article What Canon Law is For (Eureka Street 8 August 2018) writes: ‘Rules like the Pontifical secret, for instance, should be read in such a way as to protect the rights of the innocent and avoid false accusations but should not be used to obstruct justice for victims.’

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WILKES-BARRE (PA)
Citizens Voice

November 17, 2018

Parish priests have spent the months since a devastating Pennsylvania grand jury report in August apologizing to congregants for the conduct of the hierarchy and trying to reassure the faithful that the Catholic Church has launched an era of reform.

Amid that contrition and reassurance, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, generally, and former Scranton Bishop James C. Timlin, specifically, have displayed a stunning level of tone-deafness.

The grand jury report revealed up to 70 years of child sexual abuse by hundreds of priests is six dioceses statewide and, worse, inaction and coverups by bishops. All eight Pennsylvania dioceses now are under federal investigation.

Timlin is accused in the report of not doing enough to protect young people from predatory priests, including a case in which he allegedly shielded and transferred a priest who had raped a teenaged girl and facilitated her abortion.

In response, Bishop Joseph Bambera barred Timlin from representing the diocese.

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ROCKFORD (IL)
Rock River Times

November 17, 2018

By Jim Hagerty

A former Rockford priest at the center of chilling allegations and a 2006 lawsuit appears on a list of 15 priests accused of sexual abuse.

Former priest Theodore Feely, who Rockford resident Donald Bondick claimed in a five-count lawsuit molested him and other boys, is one of the 10 men on the list released by the Diocese of Rockford Wednesday that have since died.

The list is part of a letter by Bishop David Malloy​ includes six priests, one deacon and eight priests/brothers. The accusations range from 1925 to 1991.

According the 2006 lawsuit, Feely raped Bondick in 1969, when Bondick was 13.

“Feely repeatedly molested Plaintiff to develop various psychological coping mechanisms and symptoms of psychological distress, including depression, repression and dissociation,” the complaint reads. “As a result, Plaintiff was under a disability and has only recently been able to link his severe psychological and emotional problems with the acts perpetrated by Feely.”

Bondick’s lawyers claimed the Diocese failed to take any action regarding the abuse, which the suit alleged was consistent with a decades-long practice of failing to respond to credible allegations.”

“On numerous occasions since at least 1960 the Defendants received credible allegations of sexual abuse but failed to take the actions necessary to properly investigate the allegations,” the suit continued. “On information and belief, the Defendants engaged in a pattern and practice of pedophilic behavior, to protect its reputation and avoid the scandal that would result if parishioners and the public at large were aware of the incidents of pedophilia in the church community.”

The Diocese responded to the lawsuit in a Feb. 24, 2006, statement: “We steadfastly believe that lawsuits should be resolved in a court of law, so we have no intention of attempting to try this case in the media. However, the allegations in this complaint are so sensationalized, harassing and irrelevant, justice demands that we respond.

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JEFFERSON CITY (MO)
Jefferson City Catholic Diocese

November 16, 2018

Bishop W. Shawn McKnight

The November General Assembly of Bishops in Baltimore was a difficult but perhaps unavoidable experience for us to move forward as a Church. I was very disappointed to learn that the Holy See found it necessary to insist that the USCCB not take action at this time on the proposals presented by our conference leadership. My frustration, shared with many other people, is this: We have known about the scandal of Archbishop McCarrick since the end of June, and our Church must take immediate, decisive and substantive action in light of the deep wound the scandal has caused.

I am not so concerned about the time it is taking to punish the perpetrator. Pope Francis immediately required the Archbishop to resign from the College of Cardinals when Cardinal Dolan announced the New York review board found a credible and substantiated allegation of sexual abuse of a minor against him. I’m okay with the fact that further penalties (which could include McCarrick’s return to the lay state) will take more time for a complete canonical process. McCarrick isn’t going anywhere and he is already living a life of imposed prayer and penance.

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YAKIMA (WA)
Yakima Herald

November 17, 2018

By Robert Fontana

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, a gay man in a church that teaches homosexual behavior is sinful, has been exposed as a sexual predator who targeted males, mostly seminarians, and young boys.

According to Kenneth Woodward (former religious editor for Newsweek, Commonweal -11/9/18), McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, D.C., was not only protected by his high office but by a network of gay clerics that had secrets to keep. Woodward writes, “By network, I mean groups of gay priests, diocesan and religious, who encourage the sexual grooming of seminarians and young priests for decades, and who themselves lead double lives – breaking their vows of chastity while ministering to the laity and staffing the various bureaucracies of the church.”

These men hide behind a veneer of public ministry, celibacy and Catholic orthodoxy while living secret lives of sexual misbehavior, some of it criminal.

Readers of the Yakima Herald-Republic saw a glimpse of this in the story of Juan Jose Gonzalez Rios. Gonzalez, a former seminarian and retreat director, was arrested in the spring, 2008, for an outstanding warrant for accessing child porn. Charges were later dropped (“Former Seminarian Tells His Story,” Yakima Herald-Republic, 5/15/08). Gonzalez described how his pastor drew him into parish ministry, simultaneously introducing him to a public life of service and a private life of pornography, sex games, drinking, and gambling. This behavior continued as Gonzales entered the seminary and ended, according to Gonzalez, when the priest sexually assaulted him.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
WVUE TV

November 16, 2018

By Rob Masson

A local author who helped bring church sex abuse in Louisiana to light believes it’s time for the church to do more to police itself.

Jason Berry said the future of the church could hinge on change if the Justice Department launches a nationwide investigation.

The harm is immeasurable.

Twenty-six years after author Jason Berry first wrote about Catholic Church sex abuse in the Lafayette diocese, victims are still coming forward.

“I was the canary in the coal mine before people realized there was a coal mine,” said Berry, who wrote, “Lead Us Not Into Temptation.”

With the church paying out billions in settlements worldwide, church leaders grapple with reform. Berry said bishops may have made a mistake this week when they delayed – at the request of the Vatican – a vote on setting up a bishop oversight commission.

“The optics are not good for the Vatican, at the last minute, to intervene,” Berry said.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Post Gazette

November 16, 2018

By Peter Smith

The dozen lawsuits filed this week against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh represent the opening of a second front in the effort to overcome the statute of limitations and enable victims to sue over decades-old sexual abuse, even as a similar effort remains stalled in Harrisburg.

The plaintiffs allege that the diocese engaged in a systematic effort at fraud and concealment, which the victims couldn’t have known about when they were younger because it’s only now in the open, thanks to an August grand jury report.

As a result, they claim, the statute of limitations that normally would have closed the courtroom door to them long ago should be opened wide.

It’s an argument that their attorneys tried more than a decade ago without success. But this time they are banking on the statewide grand jury report released in August to reverse their fortunes.

“Upon reading the grand jury’s report, plaintiff learned the diocese was a location rampant with child molestation for decades,” reads language in one of the lawsuits, which is echoed in others.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
Catholic Review

November 16, 2018

By Christopher Gunty

While the U.S. bishops ended up taking no concrete action regarding the sexual abuse scandals in the church during their Nov. 12-14 meeting in Baltimore, Archbishop William E. Lori told the Catholic Review he would not wait for the U.S. bishops to approve a code of conduct for bishops to ensure that he and the archdiocese’s three auxiliary bishops would be held to the same standards as other clergy, seminarians, employees and volunteers.

“In almost every diocese, including the Archdiocese of Baltimore, there is a code of conduct, and so we are certainly bound … by that code of conduct,” he said. Furthermore, bishops are to be held accountable to what they pledged to do in the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People and their accompanying norms, approved by the U.S. bishops in 2002.

“In the charter and the norms, we set how we would handle cases, … we enunciated the standards of behavior that we expect of other clergy. In our statement of episcopal accountability back in 2002, we pledged that we would hold ourselves to everything that is in the charter,” he said.

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NJ.com
Associated Press

November 14; 2018

At a national assembly focused on the sex-abuse crisis, numerous U.S. Roman Catholic bishops called Wednesday for a formal repudiation of Theodore McCarrick, the ex-cardinal facing allegations of sexual misconduct over a long stretch of his career.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, nearing the close of its three-day meeting in Baltimore, has been striving to show a commitment to combating clergy sex-abuse even though the Vatican ordered it to delay votes on two key anti-abuse proposals.

While the abuse scandal has affected many dioceses nationwide, the bishops appeared to be most angered and embarrassed by McCarrick, who allegedly abused and harassed youths and seminarians over many years as he rose to be archbishop of Washington and a member of the College of Cardinals until his removal by Pope Francis in July.

McCarrick, the former head of the Archdiocese of Newark and the Diocese of Metuchen, is also accused of sexual misconduct with priests and seminarians during his time in New Jersey and New York. He is awaiting a church trial.

Several investigations, including one at the Vatican, are underway to determine who might have known about and covered up McCarrick’s alleged misconduct. The U.S. bishops expressed eagerness to learn details of the Vatican probe but defeated a motion pressing for access to information uncovered in that process.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

November 15, 2018

By Tom Roberts

Editor’s note: Executive editor Tom Roberts aims to help readers understand how recent news stories fit together. NCR Connections will provide guideposts and markers to help lead readers through key issues and stories. See previous posts here.

Is this an existential crisis?

The question, to which there was no crisp answer, came at the very end of an hour and a half of a panel discussion and Q&A session about the clergy sex abuse crisis, the “this” of the question.

We need you! Support independent Catholic journalism. Become an NCR Forward member for $5 a month.

“The Clergy Sex Abuse Crisis: How Did We Get Here?” was the topic of a briefing for media and NCR members (more on how to become an NCR member below or click here) held Sunday night in Baltimore before the start of the meeting there of the nation’s bishops.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Review of Books

November 22, 2018

By Alexander Stille

On August 25 Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò published an eleven-page letter in which he accused Pope Francis of ignoring and covering up evidence of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and called for his resignation. It was a declaration of civil war by the church’s conservative wing. Viganò is a former apostolic nuncio to the US, a prominent member of the Roman Curia—the central governing body of the Holy See—and one of the most skilled practitioners of brass-knuckle Vatican power politics. He was the central figure in the 2012 scandal that involved documents leaked by Pope Benedict XVI’s personal butler, including letters Viganò wrote about corruption in Vatican finances, and that contributed to Benedict’s startling decision to abdicate the following year. Angry at not having been made a cardinal and alarmed by Francis’s supposedly liberal tendencies, Viganò seems determined to take out the pope.

As a result of Viganò’s latest accusations and the release eleven days earlier of a Pennsylvania grand jury report that outlines in excruciating detail decades of sexual abuse of children by priests, as well as further revelations of sexual misconduct by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, D.C., Francis’s papacy is now in a deep, possibly fatal crisis. After two weeks of silence, Francis announced in mid-September that he would convene a large-scale gathering of the church’s bishops in February to discuss the protection of minors against sexual abuse by priests.

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ALTOONA (PA)
WTAJ TV

November 14, 2018

Senators returned to the state capitol today for one last session day.

But they were greeted by sexual abuse survivors pushing them to pass a bill on the statute of limitations.

Senators were only scheduled to vote on leadership positions today and not move any bills. Survivors were in the Senate halls throughout the day, hoping to change their minds.

“These pedophiles need to be outed. Victims need to have their day in court,” said Carolyn Fortney, victim’s advocate.

Five of the Fortney sisters were sexually abused by the same priest when they were growing up in the Harrisburg Diocese. On Wednesday, they stood in the halls of the capitol as Senators returned for their final day of session.

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RAPID CITY (SD)
Rapid City Journal

November 16, 2018

By Arielle Zionts

A priest who previously served in the Diocese of Rapid City pleaded not guilty Friday to two counts of having sexual contact with a child under the age of 16.

John Praveen, 38, served in the diocese before he was charged Oct. 2 and accused of sexually touching a 13-year-old girl over her clothes, according to court records and statements.

Before calling court to order, Judge Robert Mandel of the Seventh Circuit called a translation company to connect with a Telugu speaker who had been booked for the arraignment.

Praveen, who is from India, was originally set to be arraigned Nov. 6, but the hearing was rescheduled after Mandel wasn’t able to reach a translator.

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MANCHESTER (UK)
Catholic News Service

November 16, 2018

By Simon Caldwell

A Catholic archbishop publicly apologized to the victims of child abuse during a government-backed inquiry that shed light on allegations against priests over half a century.

Some of the allegations were made against Father John Tolkien, the son of JRR Tolkien, the best-selling author of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

Archbishop Bernard Longley of Birmingham, England, acknowledged failures of the church to protect children in his testimony Nov. 16 to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse in London. He assured the inquiry of his commitment to the protection of children and vulnerable adults.

The inquiry is investigating child abuse throughout various United Kingdom institutions and heard evidence of abuse in the Birmingham Archdiocese during a five-day hearing Nov. 12-16.

“I am deeply sorry. I

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

November 16, 2018

By Ken Briggs

How do you learn “clericalism”? As the Broadway show “South Pacific” said about human prejudice, “you’ve got to be carefully taught.”

It’s an attitude inculcated mostly in subtle ways, in little gestures and tainted language. It’s absorbed in behavior and habits considered normal rather than aberrant, accepted as a natural way of life.

The upheaval sparked by priests’ sex abuse and bishops’ cover-up has pointed to clericalism as a major factor. The phenomenon has long plagued Catholicism as a contrived power grab based on arrogance and superiority. Its audacious presumption was that ordination was God’s method of conveying higher status and authority on certain individuals, conferring rights to rule the church without the consent or advice of the laity. They alone were entitled to espouse what the church officially taught and exact sanctions for disobedience.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

November 16, 2018

The attorney general for New Jersey has ramped up their investigation into clergy sex abuse and has issued subpoenas to at least one of the state’s catholic dioceses. We applaud this move by Attorney General Gurbir Grewal.

The issuing of these subpoenas is a huge step forward for the investigation in New Jersey and one that will make a major difference in the effort to get to the bottom of the clergy sex abuse crisis. Subpoena power was a critical tool in Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s investigation into clergy sex abuse that revealed evidence of more than 1000 children abused by more than 300 priests. By following in the footsteps of AG Shapiro, it is clear that AG Grewal is taking this investigation seriously.

This move by AG Grewal could not come at a better time. At the end of the same week in which the Vatican prevented steps to hold bishops responsible for abuse cover-ups accountable, AG Grewal is using the power vested in him by the legal system to enforce accountability on his own. We hope that others attorneys general across the US will follow in AG Grewal’s footsteps, whether by ramping up their own investigations or taking steps to begin them in their own state.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

November 16, 2018

On Monday, the Vatican delayed a vote that would have let US bishops take small steps towards addressing the clergy sex abuse crisis. Despite that delay, some bishops around the country have already been taking positive steps in their own way.

Without permission from the Holy See or their colleagues in the USCCB, several US bishops have become leaders by example. In doing so, these bishops provide a counter-example to the myth that bishops cannot act on this crisis without Vatican approval. Three examples of bishops doing the right thing include:

Bishop Stephen Biegler of Cheyenne, Wyoming forcing an investigation – by both police and the Vatican – into his predecessor, Bishop Joseph Hart, and publicly called the abuse accusations against Hart “credible.”

Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston publicly criticizing Buffalo’s Bishop Richard Malone for his inaction on abuse while using his influence with the Pope to call for an investigation into Malone’s diocese

Bishop Shawn McKnight of Jefferson City, MO insisting that religious orders post lists of accused priests and disallowing order priests to work in his diocese if they refuse

Others are trying to do the right thing too, such as the handful of bishops from dioceses around the country who have taken the first step towards transparency by releasing and publicly posting lists of priests accused of abuse. We encourage these bishops to take the next step and urge independent investigations into their own diocese and the dioceses of their colleagues.

Yet there are some, such as Bishop Joseph Jugis of Charlotte, NC who are taking the Vatican’s move to delay Monday’s vote as confirmation that they should continue to obfuscate and push back on efforts to bring transparency to their dioceses. But as the men listed above have shown, bishops do have the power to do the right thing of their own accord.

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TOLEDO (OH)
The Blade

November 16, 2018

By Lauren Lindstrom and Nicki Gorny

Riley Kinn thought he was handling it.

Never mind the drinking, the substance abuse, the difficulty in interpersonal relationships that had intermittently plagued him since he was a teenager.

He’d been to therapy. He thought he’d managed to push down and push away the months of grooming and abuse by the Rev. Joseph Schmelzer, predatory behavior that he says culminated in sexual assault in the rectory of St. Wendelin Parish in 1980.

Then came 2015. Mr. Kinn took a new client for his information technology business — his childhood parish in Fostoria.

Once on site to run new wires for the internet and phone systems, he found himself drawn to the rectory bedroom. The memories flooded back. So did a fierce panic attack. He fled to his truck and took off.

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SCOTLAND
Daily Record

November 15, 2018

By Annie Brown

Lindsay Armstrong, 17, took her own life after being forced to hold up her underwear in court and read out the slogan ‘Little Devil’.

The mum of a rape victim who killed herself after a court case in which she was forced to hold up her underwear has backed protests over a similar scandal in Ireland.

This week, women shared pictures of their underwear on social media with the hashtag #ThisIsNotConsent after a 17-year-old girl’s “thong with a lace front” was cited as part of the defence against her allegation of rape.

The case, which has sparked demonstrations and worldwide condemnation mirrors the devastating experience of Lindsay Armstrong, 17, who wept as she was told to display her thong to the jury.

She was also told to read out the slogan on the front saying: “Little Devil”.

Lindsay, from New Cumnock in Ayrshire, took her life two weeks after the trial in 2001 found her 15-year-old attacker guilty of rape.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
The New York Times

November 12, 2018

By Laurie Goodstein

Facing a reignited crisis of credibility over child sexual abuse, the Roman Catholic bishops of the United States came to a meeting in Baltimore on Monday prepared to show that they could hold themselves accountable.

But in a last-minute surprise, the Vatican instructed the bishops to delay voting on a package of corrective measures until next year, when Pope Francis plans to hold a summit in Rome on the sexual abuse crisis for bishops from around the world.

Many of the more than 350 American bishops gathered in Baltimore appeared stunned when they learned of the change of plans in the first few minutes of the meeting.

They had come to Baltimore wanting to prove that they had heard their parishioners’ cries of despair and calls for change. Suddenly, the Vatican appeared to be standing in the way, dealing the bishops another public relations nightmare.

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FOSTORIA (OH)
The Blade

November 16, 2018

By Lauren Lindstrom and Nicki Gorny

Riley Kinn thought he was handling it.

Nevermind the drinking, the substance abuse, the difficulty in interpersonal relationships that had intermittently plagued him since he was a teenager.

He’d been to therapy. He thought he’d managed to push down and push away the months of grooming and abuse by the Rev. Joseph Schmelzer, predatory behavior that he says culminated in sexual assault in the rectory of St. Wendelin Parish in 1980.

Then came 2015. Mr. Kinn took a new client for his information technology business — his childhood parish in Fostoria.

Once on site to run new wires for the internet and phone systems, he found himself drawn to the rectory bedroom. The memories flooded back. So did a fierce panic attack. He fled to his truck and took off.

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NEW YORK (NY)
America Magazine

November 16, 2018

By Lea Karen Kivi

Much attention has been paid in recent years to the horrific sexual abuse of minors in the church, and rightly so. But many men and women who experienced sexual abuse by members of the clergy in adulthood have yet to receive compassionate acknowledgment of the harm they have suffered. Regardless of the age at which sexual abuse by clergy was experienced, churches of all denominations have a long distance to travel in setting up healing ministries for and with survivors.

I have great respect for the many Catholic priests who have blessed my journey of faith. I am grateful to my parish pastors, and to the Paulist, Franciscan, Jesuit and Basilian priests who have fed my faith and inspired me by their sacrificial service. Accepting a call to the priesthood at this point in history may be especially challenging, and I hope those currently in the priesthood or considering a call will persevere despite the revelations of wrongdoing in the church. This wrongdoing has always existed. The good news is that we now know about it, are talking about it and therefore can work to eliminate it. We must consider how to prevent abuse of women in the church, and how to make it easier for women (and men) to come forward should they themselves experience abuse by clergy in adulthood.

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TRENTON (NJ)
NJ.com

November 15, 2018

By Kelly Heyboer

New Jersey’s attorney general has begun issuing subpoenas to force the state’s Catholic dioceses to turn over records and files related to its clergy sexual abuse investigation, church officials said.

The Archdiocese of Newark, the state’s largest diocese that represents more than 1 million Catholics, was asked to turn over documents, said James Goodness, a spokesman for the archdiocese.

“The archdiocese has received a subpoena,” Goodness said Wednesday, declining to provide additional details. “We are cooperating with the AG task force.”

The subpoena to the Archdiocese of Newark is one part of what is expected to be a lengthy and wide-ranging investigation into potential priest sex abuse cases across all five dioceses and thousands of Catholic churches and schools.

New Jersey’s other four dioceses – Camden, Paterson, Trenton and Metuchen – are also expected to turn over documents. But none would confirm if they have received subpoenas yet.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

November 16, 2018

By Inés San Martín

Four former Chilean seminarians, all survivors of clerical sexual abuse, are coming forward at the end of the plenary meeting of the local bishops, demanding justice be done for those abused in the seminary of Valparaiso some 60 miles from Santiago.

The four are Mauricio Pulgar, Sebastian del Rio, Marcelo Soto and Marcelo Rodriguez. Father Eugenio de la Fuente, who met with Pope Francis earlier this year in Rome as part of a group of nine priests and laity abused in one form or another by former priest Fernando Karadima, also signed their public declaration and a letter to Bishop Pedro Ossandón.

Ossandón was appointed as apostolic administrator of the diocese of Valparaiso after Francis accepted the resignation, on June 11, of former Bishop Gonzalo Duarte.

Duarte, who was 75 at the time, has long been accused by the four survivors of not only cover-up but also of abuse of power and of conscience as well as sexual harassment.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
National Catholic Reporter

November 16, 2018

By Thomas Reese

As the U.S. bishops’ meeting in Baltimore ends Nov. 15, the most newsworthy happening is still Monday’s last-minute instruction from the Vatican to delay any vote on new procedures to sanction or otherwise deal with bishops who had either abused children or failed to remove abusive priests from ministry.

The instruction, in the form of a letter from the Congregation of Bishops in Rome, threw the gathering in Baltimore into chaos on its opening day.

The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, openly expressed his disappointment with the Vatican’s intervention. He and other bishops felt their house was burning down, and the Vatican was asking them to delay turning on the fire hoses.

Other bishops were secretly relieved. Some questioned the proposals for how to deal with abuse, which had been put together quickly in response to the Pennsylvania grand jury report and the scandal over ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Those who wanted the reforms to pass feared they would fail to get the necessary two-thirds vote for passage. Now both groups could buy time while blaming the Vatican for their inaction.

From any vantage, the Vatican intervention was extremely disappointing. It contradicts everything Francis has said about empowering bishops’ conferences and decentralizing decision-making in the church. It was also a public-relations disaster for the pope, who is already losing the confidence of Catholics on the abuse issue, according to a September poll from the Pew Research Center: Only 31 percent of Catholics thought the pope was doing a good or excellent job handling the sex abuse scandal, down from 55 percent three years ago.

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MUMBAI (INDIA)
Crux

November 16, 2018

By Nirmala Carvalho

Over 500 people held a demonstration demanding the cancellation of bail for Indian Bishop Frank Mulakkal, who has been accused of raping a nun on multiple occasions.

The Save Our Sisters (SoS) Action Council held the rally on Wednesday in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of the southern Indian state of Kerala.

Mulakkal was arrested on Sept. 21 after a months-long investigation into the accusations of a nun claiming he raped her 13 times between 2014 and 2016. The nun is a member of the Punjab-based Missionaries of Jesus congregation, but said the attacks happened in Kuravilangad, the location of one of the order’s convents in Kerala.

Mulakkal vehemently denies the charges, and claims the nun is retaliating because he initiated an investigation against her for an affair she allegedly had with a married man.

The bishop was released on bail on Oct. 15, despite the objections of the police and the family of the nun making the accusations.

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KEYSTONE CROSSROADS (PA)
WHYY Radio

November 16, 2018

By Bobby Allyn

Two people who have accused priests of molestation in Philadelphia have filed a lawsuit against the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference and all of the state’s dioceses demanding that additional church secrets be exposed.

The suit filed on Thursday in Common Pleas Court marks the latest civil action following this summer’s grand jury report implicating more than 300 so-called predator priests who allegedly abused minors and covered up decades of crime.

Plaintiff Daniel Hillanbrand, 48, a warehouse manager who now lives in North Carolina, said in the early 1980s he was abused in Philadelphia by Rev. James Dux, who has been accused of numerous instances of sexual misconduct by other minors.

The cases of Hillanbrand and the other plaintiff in the suit, LeeAnne Natali, 57, who says she was abused by a Philadelphia priest in the 1970s, were not involved in the scathing state grand jury report released in August because previous grand juries had already investigated clergy sex abuse in Philadelphia.

Both claims in the suit are too old under the law to be pursued for monetary damages, but lawyers for the plaintiffs say this legal challenge has a different aim: to reveal the names of additional clergy members involved in enabling abusers across the state.

“They’re all engaged in the same practice in concert and they are continuing to cause peril for minors,” said Minnesota-based lawyer Jeffrey Anderson, who is the lead attorney on the suit. “The grand jury report this summer named the problem, and we’re trying to do something about it to make communities safer.”

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BELLEVILLE (IL)
Belleville News Democrat

By Mary Cooley

November 15, 2018

The Vatican has asked U.S. Bishops to delay their votes on two items regarding clergy abuse to ensure worldwide consistency, Bishop Edward Braxton says.

The proposals in response to the sex-abuse crises were to be voted on at the United State Conference of Catholic Bishops, which Braxton is part of. Braxton provided a statement on Wednesday afternoon that “most of the bishops were surprised and disappointed” initially by the instruction to delay the votes.

However, he said, the delay will allow issues discovered or proposals made by Bishops in other countries to have the same approval and provide worldwide consistency in the Catholic Church.

“The reason for the Holy See’s request for the delay was not because of any expressed objection to the contents of these proposed documents,” Braxton said. “Rather, it was because the Holy Father wanted the Bishops of the United States to wait until after the February meeting that h

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MOBILE (AL)
Lagniappi Weekly

November 14, 2018

By Rob Holbert

So is the Archdiocese of Mobile finally coming clean about the history of sexual abuse of minors, or is the announcement last week that they will release the names of priests since who, since 1950, were removed from ministry due to such accusations just a way of avoiding the bigger issue?

The answer to that depends a lot on perspective and whether one believes the Catholic Church is really going to be totally transparent without being legally forced. The record thus far certainly would not lean favorably in the church’s direction.

Last week Archbishop Thomas J. Rodi announced the archdiocese will “publish the names of clergy and religious who were removed from ministry due to an accusation of abuse of a minor.” This will cover both Catholic dioceses in Alabama and Mississippi — four in total.

The only such accounting the Archdiocese of Mobile has offered up to this point was released in 2004 and included the names of 13 priests and admitted to 18 victims. It’s not yet known if more names will be added to the total from Mobile’s diocese, but presumably more new information may come from the other three.

Rodi’s announcement offered no timeframe for the release of the names and even seemed to temper any expectations a list would be produced soon.

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IRAQ
World Tribune

November 1, 2018

News that Yazidi sex slave survivor Nadia Murad has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war barely registered on the American media radar screen.

Murad was abducted in northern Iraq in August 2014, when Islamic State (ISIS) jihadists took over her village.

“At just 21 years old, she was kidnapped alongside an estimated 3,000 other Yazidi women and girls, traded as sex slaves from one ISIS fighter to another. She was forced to pray, dress up, and apply makeup in preparation for her rape, which was often committed by gangs,” Kelsey Harkness wrote for The Daily Signal on Oct. 12.

Murad said: “My hope is that all women who speak about their stories of sexual violence are heard and accepted, that their voices are heard so they feel safe.”

But, Harkness wrote, “Nadia’s story is falling on deaf ears. Because being ‘heard’ requires others to listen. Imagine the difference ‘feminists’ could make if, in addition to banging on the doors of the U.S. Supreme Court, they also took a few minutes to bang at the doors of the United Nations.”

“While any comparison between Nadia’s story and the accusations leveled against newly minted Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh would be completely unfair,” Harkness continued, “it is fair to wonder how news of uncorroborated allegations of gang rape brought by porn lawyer Michael Avenatti can overshadow a gang rape survivor-turned-women’s advocate being honored with the most prestigious award in the world.”

When her village was overrun by ISIS, Murad said the Yazidi people – a Kurdish and Arabic-speaking religious minority – were given two choices: Convert to Islam or die. Refusing to give in, Nadia said she watched men get massacred and family members march to their graves.

Thousands of Yazidis remain missing, including at least 1,300 women and children.

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ST. BONAVENTURE (NY)
Olean Times Herald

November 15, 2018

By Tom Dinki

St. Bonaventure University says that the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo should not have publicly named a deceased university friar as being credibly accused of child sexual abuse given diocesan criteria for identifying accused priests.

The Rev. Maurice Scheier, who worked at St. Bonaventure for nearly 60 years prior to his death in 1991, was among the 36 additional priests that the Buffalo Diocese announced last week had substantiated claims of child sex abuse made against them.

The Buffalo Diocese states on its website that the 36 priests identified Nov. 5 — as well as the original list of 42 priests released in March — do not include priests “who received a single allegation after their death.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

November 16, 2018

To the editor: Kudos for covering the mixed message from the Vatican, which wants to prevent sexual abuse by predator priests and bishops but delays action until all the bishops “throughout the world” can address the issue.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops wanted to take care of their own backyard and address this urgent issue, but the Vatican advocated delay. It’s too bad that some archbishop from Rome felt “offended” because the church leaders in the U.S. wanted to create a commission of laypeople to review complaints against bishops.

This archbishop’s attitude is a reflection of what Pope Francis denounced last month as the “scourge of clericalism.” Francis stated that clericalism “arises from an elitist and exclusivist vision of vocation, that interprets the ministry received as a power to be exercised rather than as a free and generous service to be given.”

Now is the time for the Vatican to practice what it preaches by establishing a lay commission to review complaints against bishops, because a church that does not listen cannot be credible.

Tom Kaminski, Manhattan Beach

To the editor: You criticize the Vatican and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for delaying action on abuse that you say is overdue. As a harsh critic of the church on these matters and others, I think the L.A. Times has failed to see that these problems are not exclusively American ones, but also world problems.

Pope Francis has called for a world bishops conference in three months to resolve this cancer within our holy church. This conference will consider the U.S. bishops’ proposal as well as opinions of bishops and laypeople around the world — as it should.

George Dufresne, La Habra

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FOSTORIA (OH)
The News-Messenger

November 16, 2018

By David Yonke

At their meeting in Baltimore this week, America’s Catholic bishops decided to delay a proposed vote on dealing with clerical sexual abuse.

The delay did not surprise Riley Kinn, a 51-year-old Fostoria man who said he has been trying for two years to talk to Toledo Bishop Daniel Thomas about allegations that a priest sexually abused him when he was a child.

“All I am asking is for Bishop Thomas to sit down with me for a short while and listen,” said Kinn. “This is bigger than just one child being victimized. They say they want other victims to come forward, but why would they come forward if no one in the church will even listen to them?”

Thomas oversees the Toledo Catholic Diocese, which has more than 320,000 members in 19 counties across Northwest Ohio including Sandusky and Ottawa counties.

Seeks review board meeting
In addition to seeking a meeting with Thomas, Kinn has repeatedly asked for an opportunity to present his case in person before the Diocesan Review Board, a panel that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops established in all American dioceses after the clerical sexual abuse scandal erupted in Boston in 2002 and then spread across the nation and world.

The review boards are tasked with evaluating allegations of abuse by priests and determining whether the charges are credible.

“I call them a few times every week and ask for a meeting,” Kinn said. “I leave messages saying the same thing on their voicemail and they never return my calls. I say, ‘I’d like you to call me back. I’d like to ask some questions. I’d like to meet with you or at least talk to you by telephone’. They never return my calls.”

The voicemail routine has almost become a joke, Kinn said with a shrug, but he is deadly serious about his allegations that a priest in the Toledo diocese, the Rev. Joseph Schmelzer, molested and raped him when Kinn was 13 years old.

Schmelzer was removed from public ministry on Feb. 19, 2007 by then-Toledo Bishop Leonard Blair, after the review board deemed that allegations of abuse made by other accusers were credible.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

November 15, 2018

By Paula Reed Ward

Twelve lawsuits filed Thursday in Allegheny County against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh include accusations of sexual abuse against four priests not previously named.

The four priests, who were not listed in the statewide investigating grand jury report released in August, are the Revs. Peter Pilarski, John Unger, George Leech and Joseph Feltz. They are not among those the Diocese of Pittsburgh lists on its website as having been credibly accused of abuse.

The complaints, filed in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court, name as defendants Pittsburgh Bishop David A. Zubik and Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl, who was formerly bishop in Pittsburgh. They allege that the church and officials there knew about abusive priests but did nothing to stop them.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

November 16, 2018

By Claire Giangravè

Italian bishops have concluded their Nov. 12-14 extraordinary assembly. New guidelines on the question of clerical sexual abuse were discussed and presented, with the creation of a National Advisory Center to aid bishops and the promise to make a “more radical evangelical choice” in terms of prevention.

“Woe to whoever touches children!” said Italian Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, President of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI), during a press conference Nov. 15, adding that clerical sexual abuse “is a problem that the Italian Church intends to resolve in radical terms.”

At Pope Francis’s request, the Italian episcopacy was asked to create new guidelines on clerical sexual abuse to be added to the already existing ones published in 2014 and focusing primarily on prevention, information and education.

Italian bishops were presented with the new guidelines, which were created by an ad hoc commission, and will take them back to their dioceses to evaluate them until the next episcopal gathering in May 2019.

The guidelines will not be made public until the bishops approve them by vote, though Bassetti said that he intends to bring some of its content to the February 21-24 summit of representatives from episcopal conferences from around the world that will focus solely on the clerical sexual abuse crisis.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
Wall Street Journal

November 15, 2018

By Mene Ukueberuwa

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops met urgently this week to address the most recent revelations of sex abuse by clergy. If public anger about past coverups wasn’t enough to spur church leaders into action, the pressure of more than a dozen state investigations presents an ultimatum, forcing bishops to prove they are able to police their own affairs. Yet on the eve of the conference in Baltimore, the Vatican forbade the bishops to adopt practical reforms. The move tears the U.S. church between the authority of Rome and the trust of its followers.

Two abuse stories have battered the American church since the summer: the uninhibited rise of a serial sexual predator, Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, and the Pennsylvania grand-jury report, which unveiled sex-crime accusations against more than 300 priests. The bishops’ lack of accountability connects the two stories. Equal among themselves under Catholic law, bishops can’t discipline each other without Vatican intervention. This enables them to cover up abuse in their own jurisdictions—and gives them an excuse to keep quiet about others.

Ahead of the conference, the bishops coalesced around two proposals to impose accountability. The first is a simple code of conduct extending to bishops the zero-tolerance policy for sex abuse enacted for priests in 2002. The second is an independent review board to investigate claims against bishops and refer credible cases directly to the Vatican. “Each bishop would have to agree to allow himself to be investigated by the committee,” San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone told me last week. He described the bishops’ shedding of immunity as “a covenantal sort of relationship” that would allow them to police each other better.

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PHOENIX (AZ)
3TV/CBS 5

November 15, 2018

By Nicole Crites

Accountability for sex abuse in the Catholic Church has really come to a head this week. Phoenix Bishop Thomas Olmsted and his national brother bishops were just about to vote on new proposals to end the crisis at a conference in Baltimore.

The Vatican stepped in and stopped the vote.

The church ambassador to the U.S. also suggested they do not need to work with any lay councils or law enforcement.

And Wednesday, Jesuits West just announced they are getting ready to release a new list of priests accused of sexual abuse going back to the 1950s here.

So what does that do to the progress we saw in transparency?

The Justice Department and 18 states are now investigating the Catholic church.

The Valley had one of the first task forces in the country and we got to sit down with their key witness.

Joe Ladensack helped take down a bishop and a half-dozen priests here in Phoenix 15 years ago.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
Washington Post

November 14, 2018

In the first meeting of U.S. bishops since a national sexual abuse crisis hit the Catholic Church in June, no name came up more than that of an ex-cardinal shut away in a remote Kansas friary: Theodore Mc­Carrick.

In debate and comments over the three-day conference in Baltimore, the now-resigned former Washington archbishop became a proxy for excessive clericalism, corruption and for those who see homosexuality as the core sin for which the church is being punished.

And then in the final hours on Wednesday, the bishops representing 196 American archdiocese and dioceses took a vote on a measure to simply “encourage” the Vatican to share documents related to its investigation of McCarrick.

It was shot down, 137 to 83.

And thus closed the gathering of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which opened dramatically with the Vatican’s insistence that the body delay a vote on reform measures until a major Vatican synod in the winter and wound down with an almost complete lack of the kind of contrition and decisive action parishioners have been demanding since summer.

Terry McKiernan, co-director of the research site and advocacy group BishopAccountability.org, said Wednesday evening that he hopes the “deference to the Vatican and the paralysis seen at this meeting raise the stakes for the U.S. bishops in the months ahead.”

“It’s even more urgent that they demonstrate some resolve and act,” rather than just wait docilely for the synod, he said.

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WASHINGTON (D.C.)
Washington Post

November 15, 2018

By Bill McCormick

On Sunday, the Vatican ordered U.S. bishops to stop considering proposals about how to respond when bishops are accused of sexual abuses. Those proposals were on this week’s agenda at the fall gathering of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Baltimore.

Why were the bishops considering action now? For several reasons. This summer, the Vatican removed retired Archbishop Theodore McCarrick from ministry after finding that allegations that he had sexually abused young men were credible. In August, the Pennsylvania attorney general released a grand jury report revealing extensive clerical sex abuse in the state, prompting several other state attorneys general to investigate church abuse records. The resulting public outcry put tremendous pressure on the bishops to act decisively.

What were the bishops going to do?

On Monday, the bishops planned to address a key gap in their response to clerical sex abuse: how to deal with allegations against bishops. The U.S. Roman Catholic Church had, in 2002, released a directive on best practices for reporting and responding to sex abuse, called the “Dallas Charter.” But it did not include rules for bishops.

The bishops’ Baltimore agenda, according to the Jesuit magazine America, included:

Approving new “Standards of Episcopal Conduct” for bishops, the creation of a new commission to handle allegations of abuse against bishops, and new protocols for bishops who are removed or who resign from office due to sexual misconduct with adults or minors.

Why did the Vatican halt the vote?

The many possible reasons all arise from the complicated dynamics of Catholic Church governance. For one, the church has come to see clerical sex abuse as a global issue, not a problem isolated in a few countries such as Ireland or the United States. The church has thus increasingly seen the need for a global solution. The Vatican might be hoping that a more united front will emerge from a February 2019 meeting of bishops that it has called on this issue.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
LifeSiteNews

November 14, 2018

A cardinal barred from public ministry since 2013 as a result of his systematic cover-up of sex abuse spoke at the U.S. Bishops’ General Assembly in Baltimore Tuesday, telling the bishops they “need to lead by witness.”

In remarks lasting a little more than five minutes during the open mic portion of the afternoon session (full remarks below), retired Archbishop Emeritus of Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger Mahony, 82, urged bishops to adopt what he called an “affective collegiality” where they would grow in devotion to and in association with one another.

“We are not bishops alone or separate. We belong to a college and we have a responsibility to the college,” he said, quoting St. Charles Borromeo. We must have “devotion to each other as members of the [USCCB] and the College of Bishops.”

Mahony, no friend to the pro-life cause, was censured in January 2013 by current Archbishop of Los Angeles Jose Gomez, two years after retiring in 2011. Gomez’s decision was motivated by a court order that forced the LA Archdiocese to release documents more than 12,000 pages long that proved Mahony, appointed in 1985, purposely concealed from the public his knowledge of priests who committed sex crimes with youth and then transferred them after they received counseling only to have them sexually abuse again and again.

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OGDENSBURG (NY)
Syracuse.com

November 15, 2018

By Julie McMahon

The Diocese of Ogdensburg this week released the names of priests accused of child sex abuse, joining a trend nationwide.

The diocese named 28 priests, 16 of whom have died. Officials said all of the living priests had been removed or left ministry.

Those named were the subject of a finding “of reasonable grounds” that they had engaged in sexual misconduct with a minor or vulnerable adult, according to the diocese.

The Ogdensburg diocese joins 75 other dioceses across the country that have released the names of abusive priests, according to a count by the law firm Anderson & Associates, which represents victims nationwide.

A quick Google search shows that new dioceses every day are releasing names.

That leaves 120 dioceses or archdioceses in the U.S. that have refused to list the identities of sexually abusive priests.

With Ogdensburg’s latest release, three dioceses in New York state continue to refuse to release the names.

In Syracuse, Bishop Robert Cunningham has said he will not release a list. Cunningham’s policy is to confirm the names once a victim makes it public.

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GAYLORD (MI)
Channel 9 & 10

November 15, 2018

By David Lyden, Jeff Blakeman

We’re diving deeper into the clergy sex abuse investigation across the state by taking a look at where some of those priests used to work.

We were the first to report that the Diocese of Gaylord had released a list of all the priests credibly accused of sexual misconduct involving minors.

That list includes ten priests but does not include a record of where they spent time.

Father Ronald Gronowski was serving as pastor of parishes in Lake City and Manton when he was removed from the ministry back in 2002.

It came after a 1995 allegation surfaced accusing Gronowski of sexual misconduct back in the 1970’s.

We also know Gronowski spent time in Indian River.

Father Jim Holtz was pastor in Fife Lake and Kalkaska when he was removed from ministry in 2002.

He’s accused of sexually abusing a minor while drunk in the 1980’s.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
Catholic News Service

November 15, 2018

By Mark Pattison

As the U.S. bishops, individually and collectively, pursue “best practices” in their dioceses and for the country on how to deal with another clerical sexual abuse scandal in their midst, Bishop Oscar Cantu of San Jose, California, said best practices are simply “what is best for victims.”

And, despite listening to victims of abuse tell their stories, determining what’s best may not be so clear cut.

“When the victim sees the name of their abuser on the list publicly, that helps them,” Bishop Cantu told Catholic News Service in a Nov. 14 interview following that day’s general session of the U.S. bishops’ meeting in Baltimore.

Further, when an abuse victim still holding on privately to the memory of past abuse sees the name of the abuser published in a list, “it emboldens them to come forward,” Bishop Cantu said.

Now, however, a new strain of thought has emerged that seeing the list of names, including that of a victim’s own abuser, is “another wounding. They’re retraumatized by listening to this horrible reality of abuse over and over,” he added. “It’s one of the things we’ve been told by professionals — so I assume that it’s correct — every time that we released a new list of names people feel retraumatized.”

This was one of the issues California’s bishops were wrestling with when the met jointly a couple of weeks prior to the U.S. bishops’ Nov. 12-14 meeting in Baltimore. “Can we agree on one single day for the release of names? It’s hard to do,” Bishop Cantu said.

In San Jose, he has released the names of credibly accused clergy. And “the list is live,” he said, meaning if a priest or deacon not already on the list is credibly accused, his name will be added.

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TAOS (NM)
Taos News

November 15, 2018

by Cody Hooks

Donald Naranjo had gone back to the seminary campus in Santa Fe only once since he was a teenager, but driving through the city, he still knew where to turn: make a right at the midcentury house with a double garage, go east about a mile, turn left.

Naranjo, now 70, was a sophomore in high school when he convinced his parents to let him heed a calling. He started his studies to be a priest at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Seminary on the eastern edge of the city near the foothills. For a kid from the Española Valley, a devoutly Catholic and mostly Hispanic community about an hour north of the seminary, it was the kind of choice that makes a family proud.

“If you wanted to seek a vocation in the church, it was wonderful,” Naranjo said. “You’d be right there next to God.”

Naranjo’s mom, sitting behind the wheel of the family’s Ford Falcon, dropped her son off at the seminary in August 1963.

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CHICAGO (IL)
WLS TV

November 14, 2018

By Chuck Goudie and Ross Weidner and Barb Markoff

A top official of a downstate diocese, who coordinates assistance to victims of priest sex abuse, on Wednesday castigated the Roman Catholic Church for the way misconduct cases are handled.

“At times it seems that protecting the institution is a higher goal than caring for victims” said Deacon Robert Sondag. “Bishops, you are ordained to lead the church. Years of prolonged mishandling of sexual abuse victims continues to plague the Catholic church. The checks and balances put in place in 2002 through the Dallas charter have been compromised” Deacon Sondag said.

Sondag, recently a diocesan chancellor as well, was speaking in Baltimore where the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops wrapped up its fall meeting.

“We are here today to call for a deeper reckoning and transparent reporting of the past and present mishandling of victims and their perpetrators” he said. “This can only be accomplished by the use of a truly independent auditor beholden to the good of the public, not to the Catholic Church as a client.”

His call for independent, outside administration of the church crisis is unusual for two reasons: it comes from a current diocesan employee and it was unfurled at the announcement of a new lawsuit against the bishop’s conference by six alleged victims of priest sexual abuse. The lawsuit alleges that church officials covered up the crimes of predator priests.

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DUBLIN (IRELAND)
The Irish Catholic

November 15, 2018

Following Monday’s shock announcement that the Vatican has requested the US Catholic Bishops to delay voting on new standards for bishop accountability, survivors of sexual abuse and bishop accountability activists decried the move as “totally unacceptable”.

Terence McKiernan, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, called the move a “pre-emptive strike” by the Vatican against US bishops as they seek to respond to the current crisis of sexual abuse and its cover-up “in a modest way”.

Peter Isley, a survivor of clerical sexual abuse who now works with the organisation Ending Clergy Abuse, said the decision from the Vatican effectively means: “We care more about our organisation and our princely titles and positions” than enacting measures of accountability.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is gathered in Baltimore this week for its General Assembly, in which they were expected to enact new standards of conduct and accountability for bishops engaged in sexual abuse or its cover-up. At the start of Monday’s meeting, however, USCCB president Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, announced that he had received a request on Sunday afternoon to postpone the vote until after a global summit on the crisis at the Vatican in February.

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BELLEVILLE (IL)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

“Sexually violent predator” worked in diocese

Few knew of his time in southern IL until recently

Two more accused abusers missing from church site

Catholic officials should hire outside firm to look through its files

This recommendation just made by church’s top abuse lay leader

WHAT

Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will disclose, for the first time, that a convicted child molesting cleric who was deemed “sexually violent” worked in Belleville.

They will also call on local Catholic officials to

–update the diocesan website and add names of all three publicly accused clerics who are missing, and

— use lay church members and an outside firm to review all abuse records to see if there are old cases that should be revisited and/or other proven, admitted or credibly accused child molesting clerics who are being hidden.

WHEN

Thursday, Nov. 15 at 2:00 p.m.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
End Clergy Abuse

November 14, 2018

The US bishops came to Baltimore this week assuring Catholics and the public that they would act with “intense urgency” to implement comprehensive and tough reforms to hold themselves accountable for the decades long cover up of child sex crimes across the United States.

Not only are they leaving Baltimore without implementing one concrete change, this afternoon they even voted down a feeble amendment to send to Pope Francis a short message “suggesting” that he should release the documents concerning Archbishop Theodore McCarrick.

McCarrick, once a Cardinal, had abused seminarians for decades and at least two minors. His conduct was known about by several of his brother bishops and senior Vatican officials. It is the most egregious case of cover up yet revealed in the American church. The bishop’s response to the McCarrick case, the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report, and other revelations that have been cascading down upon them already demonstrated their utter lack of credibility.

Now, they leave Baltimore telling us they cannot act on what they promised. That they have no actual authority over themselves or the actions they take in the United States.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Agency/EWTN News

November 15, 2018

The U.S. bishops’ conference and the Holy See face a class action lawsuit filed by six men who claim they were sexually abused by Catholic clergy during their childhoods. They are seeking financial damages as well as public contrition and reparation from the Church.

The 80-page suit filed Nov. 13 claims that the Vatican and the bishops knew about – and covered up for – the “endemic, systemic, rampant, and pervasive rape and sexual abuse” of the plaintiffs and others at the hands of active members of the clergy, religious orders, and other Church representatives.

The suit opens by invoking two passages of Scripture: “(B)ut people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed,” and: “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather, expose them.”

Rather than protect the plaintiffs, the lawsuit says Church leaders protected and – “incredibly” – promoted the offenders.

These kinds of “wrongful actions, inaction, omissions, cover-up, deception, and concealment” create a “conspiracy of silence to their financial and reputational benefit and to Plaintiffs’ and Class Members’ personal, mental, psychological, and financial detriment.” These actions are “ongoing and continuous” the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit was filed Tuesday at U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. by four attorneys representing six individuals who lived in six different states at the time the abuse occurred – Iowa, California, Mississippi, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. It does not specifically detail the cases of abuse reportedly suffered by the individuals.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Examiner

November 15, 2018

By Becket Adams

Pope Francis takes the cancer of clergy sexual abuse seriously, but not seriously enough to allow the U.S. bishops to move quickly to enact serious and much-needed reforms.

The American bishops appeared stunned this week after it was announced in Baltimore at the start of their annual meeting that the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops had ordered them to cancel a planned vote on measures to address the clerical sexual abuse scandal that has rocked the Roman Catholic Church.

The Vatican has instructed the U.S. bishops instead to hold off until the Church’s sexual abuse summit in Rome, which doesn’t convene until February 2019. Because what’s the rush?

“We have accepted it with disappointment,” said Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Houston, who heads the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. “We are not ourselves happy about this. We are working very well to move to action, and we’ll do it. We just have a bump in the road.”

“I remain hopeful that this additional consultation will ultimately improve our response to the crisis we face,” he added, trying his best to put some sort of positive spin on the decision.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
KDKA-TV

November 15, 2018

A law firm announced the suits were filed in 12 complaints that named the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, Bishop David Zubik and Cardinal Donald Wuerl as defendants.

The complaints name eight priests who were already named in the grand jury report along with three new individuals named by victims who have since come forward for the first time.

The priests accused in the new lawsuits include:
John Hoehl, at Quigley High School
Francis Siler, accused by two alleged victims at St. Catherine Parish and St. Margaret parish
William O’Malley, accused by two alleged victims at St. Canice Parish and St. Francis de Sales parish
George Zirwas, at St. Michael Parish
George Leech, at St. Bartholomew Parish
Edward Huff, at the parish of North American Martyrs
Raymond R. Rhoden, at St. Francis of Assisi parish
Ernest Paone, at Madonna of Jerusalem parish
John Unger, at Sacred Heart Elementary School
Peter Pilarski, at Resurrection parish
Lawrence O’Connell, accused by two alleged victims at St. Gabriel parish
Leech, Pilarski and Unger’s names were not disclosed in the grand jury report.

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
Morning Call

November 15, 2018

By Paul Muschick

I may be inviting a plague of locusts on my house by saying this. But the Vatican needs to get its act together on how the Catholic church will respond to the sex abuse crisis, or get out of the way of lower church leaders who are trying to do something.

The church had a chance this week to show a new commitment to dealing with clergy sexual abuse of children. But it blew it. Again.

There’s no doubt this time who was to blame — this blunder is on the Vatican.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops met in Baltimore from Monday through Wednesday. Their agenda included highly anticipated votes, in the works since September, to address the problem by improving accountability for themselves.

Proposals included creating a commission, to include lay experts, that would review complaints against bishops; enacting a new code of conduct for bishops; and finalizing how to permanently remove bishops who are found to be abusers.

Vatican asks US bishops not to vote on their proposals to tackle sexual abuse
Monday morning, those votes suddenly were called off.

The president of the conference, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Houston, told the gathered bishops that the pope did not want them to act on bishops’ accountability until he convened a worldwide summit of church leaders in Februa

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MILFORD (MA)
Milford Daily News

November 14, 2018

By Frank Mazzaglia

Some 4,000 Roman Catholics from across the United States gathered in Boston vowing to transform a church they claimed betrayed them by failing to protect children from sexual abuse. The date was July 20, 2002. It was the first national convention of The Voice of the Faithful, a lay reform group which originated from a church basement in Wellesley only five months earlier.

In theory, Voice of the Faithful presented three goals: 1. To support victims of abuse; 2. To support “priests of integrity”; and 3. To support structural change in the church. The core of the problem, according to noted cardiologist Dr. James E. Muller was “centralized power, with no voice of the faithful.” The idea was to bring together reform-minded and traditional Catholics and demand that laypeople have a voice on key issues.

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NASHVILLE (NC)
Religion News Service

November 14, 2018

By Yonat Shimron

Inside a squat cinderblock building on the grounds of Nash Correctional Institution, 24 inmates are hunched over white plastic tables listening to Professor James Dew explain how God is omnipotent and omniscient.

More than half of the men listening are serving life sentences for murder, armed robbery and other offenses. The rest have at least 12 years left to serve.

But Dew is not preaching to his audience as he paces the room posing questions about whether God can sin (No) or know people’s emotions (there’s disagreement, but most Christians say yes). He is teaching theology to prospective ministers.

The prisoners jotting notes, calling up documents on closed-circuit laptops or asking Dew questions of their own are earning four-year bachelor’s degrees in pastoral ministry from the College at Southeastern, the undergraduate school of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in nearby Wake Forest.

Dew’s class is part of a new niche in prison education: training inmates to become “field ministers” who serve as counselors for other inmates, lead prayers, assist prison chaplains and generally serve as a calming influence in prison yards.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
The Baltimore Sun

November 15, 2018

Baltimore Sun Editorial Board

If any truth emerged from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops meeting this week in Baltimore, it was surely Archbishop William E. Lori’s observation that the priest sex abuse scandal “ is going to be with us for a long, long time.” The church covered up the widespread abuse of children and adults by priests for a long, long time. It denied and deflected public outrage for a long, long time. And now, when a Pennsylvania grand jury report revealed the breadth of the abuse, and the fall of former Washington Archbishop Theodore McCarrick demonstrated that it extended to the top rungs of the Catholic hierarchy, the church is waiting longer to take even the most obvious of steps to restore its parishioners’ faith.

The crisis now facing the Catholic church is born not just of the abuse by priests but also of the willingness of the church’s leaders to step in to protect the clergy at the expense of the abused. Pope Francis’ call at the beginning of this meeting for the American bishops to delay any action until after a Vatican synod on the matter this winter thus looks not like a sign that the church is finally ready to address the matter at the highest level but that its old habits of deferring to clerical rather than civil or moral authority and papering over abuse remain intact. The church once moved abusive priests from parish to parish, now it is shuffling the fallout from meeting to meeting.

The bishops go back to their dioceses for a reckoning. They have faced pointed questions if not outright defections from the pews since the Pennsylvania and McCarrick scandals broke, and now they must own up to their impotence in addressing them. Before the meeting began, Archbishop Lori published an op-ed in The Sun in which he concluded that one of the factors that worsened the crisis was a “deep-seated culture of clericalism, which fostered unhealthy notions of entitlement and exclusivity, as well as the distorted view that the priestly state puts those who abused minors, as well as those who protected them, beyond reach of civil law and authority.” Yet when the opportunity came to demonstrate a break from that past, the bishops again folded in the face of clerical authority. They could not even muster a vote to encourage the Vatican to release documents related to the investigation of Mr. McCarrick.

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BOSTON (MA)
WGBH TV

November 14, 2018

By Mike Deehan

Attorney General Maura Healey has failed to respond — at least to date — to a call from Catholic advocacy groups that her office investigate the personnel records of all Massachusetts archdioceses in order to ensure that there is no evidence of accused abusive priests being shuttled between or among parishes.

It should be noted that there have not been renewed allegations of priestly abuse in Massachusetts. The Roman Catholic Church, however, is embroiled in a heated, almost global debate about how to respond to such charges which have become almost commonplace.

The political group Catholic Democrats and church accountability organization Voice of the Faithful want an investigation of the Worcester, Springfield and Fall River Dioceses, as well as an update to a 2003 investigation of the Boston Archdiocese.

Leaders of the lay groups say knowing which priests were paid for work in what parishes, and if any additional payments or pensions were given out, can shed light on whether accused priests were relocated after accusations of abuse.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
End Clergy Abuse

November 14, 2018

President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, began the week by announcing that per the Vatican, no vote would be taken on measures to reform the process of the investigation of allegations of sexual misconduct against bishops or the bishops’ negligence in responding to allegations.

The bishops are expected today to present concrete working proposals that describe how they intend to repair their irrevocably damaged credibility, now considerably worsened by their inaction so far this week.

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LONDON (UK)
The Sun

November 15, 2018

By Gerard du Cann

A FURIOUS father partially castrated a preacher he believed raped his nine-year-old daughter in South Africa, it is alleged.

Preacher Mase Malgas, 66, died after being attacked on September 30, a court was told.

Constable Lundi Nqwelo was called as a witness by the state prosecutors and testified that the defendant had been told by his ex-wife that their daughter had been raped by Malgas, The South African reported.

The father, ex-wife and a friend of the couple tracked down Malgas, who was based at St Philips Church in Gompo, and burst into his home intent on revenge, the court heard.

Nqwelo said the accused, who cannot be named as it would also reveal his daughter’s identity, then severely beat Malgas and attempted to sever the preacher’s penis.

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FORT WORTH (TX)
Ft. Worth Star Telegram

November 15, 2018

By Domingo Ramirez Jr.

A priest at All Saints Catholic Church has been removed after he was accused of grabbing a man’s genitals at a park in September, church officials and police said Thursday.

Father Genaro Mayorga Reyes told officers he did not touch the 43-year-old man at Marine Park on the morning of Sept. 25, according to police reports.

Bishop Michael F. Olson requested that Reyes be recalled to Mexico after learning of the incident, according to a statement released by the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth last week to members of All Saints. It was effective Nov. 5.

“Please pray for Father Genaro and please pray for members of the All Saints parish,” the statement said.

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MICHIGAN
Michigan.Live.com

November 15, 2018

By Justin P. Hicks

The Catholic Diocese of Gaylord has created an online list of priests and deacons who have been “credibly accused” of sexual abuse of a minor dating back to 1971.

As of Thursday, Nov. 15, the list featured 10 clergy. Eight of the priests are deceased. The two living priests — Ronald Gronowski and James Holtz — have been “permanently removed from public ministry.”

The release of the list comes amid a state investigation of sexual abuse by priests being led by the Michigan attorney general’s office. In August 2018, the state agency began investigating the handling of allegations dating back to 1950.

The diocese said it has previously released information about the allegations of sexual abuse of minors involving priests or deacons, but chose to publish and maintain the list because it “may be helpful to the healing process for victim-survivors,” and to continue efforts for increased transparency.

A “credible and substantiated allegation,” as used by the diocese, is an accusation that, after an investigation and review of available information, appears more likely true than not and has been accepted as credible by the bishop, according to the diocese.

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YORK (PA)
York Daily Record

November 15, 2018

By Brandie Kessler and Dylan Segelbaum

The Catholic church kicked him out. He is among 301 ‘predator priests’ named by a grand jury. But he still leads a Catholic church in York County.

Harry Spencer realized that he was home.

He’d grown uncomfortable with the direction of the Catholic Church, particularly since Vatican II. The doctrines had changed. The Mass had changed. So had all the traditions and rituals.

Then, about seven years ago, Spencer started going to what would become St. Michael the Archangel Roman Catholic Church in Lower Windsor Township. It offers a traditional Latin Mass. The Rev. Virgil Tetherow, also known as Father Gabriel, leads the church.

“I have never met a priest that I’ve felt more comfortable with in his religiosity and his ability to teach the religion of the Roman Catholic faith,” Spencer said. “I love my religion. And Father Tetherow is a true Catholic priest.”

But that is not what the Catholic church says.

In fact, Tetherow “is not recognized as a priest, is prohibited from presenting himself as clergy and is not associated with the Diocese of Harrisburg,” said Mike Barley, a spokesman for the diocese, who encouraged the faithful to not attend Tetherow’s services.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Religion News Service

November 15, 2018

By Christa Brown and David Clohessy

Ten years ago, SNAP was the butt of the most outrageous criticism in its three decades of work on behalf of clergy sex abuse survivors.

SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, was founded with a focus on Catholic clergy abuse. But as we expanded our efforts to other faiths, the worst name-calling came not from any Catholic official but from a Baptist official. Paige Patterson, a former Southern Baptist Convention president who, at the time, was head of a prominent Baptist seminary, labeled SNAP as “evil-doers” and said we were “just as reprehensible as sex criminals.”

It may seem odd to note the anniversary of such an odious aspersion, but at a time when survivor advocates have much to cheer about, it’s important that we not lose sight of how much work remains to be done in changing institutions and attitudes to make kids safer.

Too many survivors still face hostility when they attempt to confront religious leaders about clergy child molesters. The U.S. Justice Department has now launched an investigation into the sexual abuse of children and the cover-up of those crimes in the Catholic dioceses of Pennsylvania. And because the Justice Department put every diocese in the country on notice that they should preserve all documents relating to sexual abuse allegations, there appears the possibility of a broader investigation into Catholic abuses and cover-ups.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

November 14, 2018

By News Editorial Board

Victims of the child sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church were hoping for some action on reforms this week when the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops met in Baltimore.

They got thoughts and prayers instead.

The Vatican directed the U.S. bishops to delay their votes on two reform measures until a special council of bishops worldwide convenes on Feb. 8. Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston opened the conference on Monday with that announcement from Rome.

“We are not ourselves happy about this,” said DiNardo, adding he found the decision “quizzical.”

“We just have a bump in the road” on the way to reform, he said.

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BARTLESVILE (OK)
Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise

November 15, 2018

One doesn’t have to be Roman Catholic or even Christian to recognize the great good the Catholic Church has done. America would be worse off were it not its pro-life stance and numerous acts of charity.

But good works are sometimes diluted or even overwhelmed by evil works, and it is the evil works of pedophile priests that threaten to sully the good the church has done.

But what should trouble not only Catholics but non-Catholics too is the latest statement from the Vatican regarding the sexual abuse scandal, a scandal that has prompted many Catholics to leave the church and the faith altogether.

In a letter to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops meeting in Baltimore, the Vatican, as reported by U.S. News & World Report, requested that U.S. bishops “wait until after the Vatican-convened global meeting on sex abuse takes place in February” to take action on the sexual abuse issue plaguing the church. “The conference of bishops had expected to focus … on measures to combat abuse, including establishing a new code of conduct.”

Is it just a question of timing, or yet another attempt to avoid dealing with the crisis?

The church has long been reluctant to go to law enforcement about cases of sexual abuse by priests, choosing instead to have its own officials handle the cases themselves, or as was most often the case, suppress them, moving suspected clergy from parish to parish, threatening the safety of children, and thereby continuing a pattern of depravity and neglect.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

November 14, 2018

By Torsten Ove

A Cambria County man who says a Johnstown priest abused him when he was a child is among a group of plaintiffs who sued Catholic church leaders in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, claiming they covered up the actions of pedophile priests across the nation.

Shaun Dougherty, who lives in Westmont outside of Johnstown, is one of six men who brought the suit in federal court in the District of Columbia against the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Holy See in Vatican City.

The suit, which is seeking class action status on behalf of some 5,000 potential plaintiffs across the United States, alleges that church leaders protected priests who sexually abused children and moved them around from church to church.

In addition to Mr. Dougherty, the plaintiffs are from Arizona, Mississippi, Illinois, California and New Jersey and all claim to have suffered at the hands of predator priests.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

November 15, 2018

By Inés San Martín

A Chilean cardinal who has been at the center of the country’s clerical sexual abuse crisis acknowledged on Wednesday that he’s no longer a member of the council of nine cardinals, referred to as the C9, that advises the pope. In addition, a local prosecutor announced he’ll be summoning him under charges of covering up abusive priests.

Speaking with Radio Cooperativa, Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz said that having reached the five-year term he had been appointed to serve the pope in the C9, he had travelled to Rome to say goodbye to the pope and to “thank him for the job he entrusted us with.”

The Vatican’s press office didn’t answer Crux’s request for confirmation.

The C9 is a task force created by Pope Francis at the beginning of his pontificate to reform the government of the Church, known as the Roman Curia. Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston is the lone American on the commission.

On the same day Errazuriz made his announcement, the prosecutors’ office in Chile announced that they will be summoning the cardinal to testify on the alleged cover up of the actions of Father Jorge Laplagne, who’s been accused of sexually abusing minors.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

November 14, 2018

By Brian Roewe

After months of anticipation, Catholics hoping the U.S. bishops’ annual meeting would yield actionable steps on the sexual abuse crisis will have to settle, for now, for “a springboard.”

The three-day public portion of the fall general assembly concluded Wednesday with no final decisions or concrete steps, in part due to a Vatican request to delay any votes on proposals until after a February meeting in Rome among Pope Francis and the heads of bishops’ conferences from around the globe.

The request, delivered as the bishops began their proceedings Monday, came as a disappointment to many bishops who arrived eager to demonstrate their seriousness on the abuse issue, not to speak of the wider Catholic community and public watching to see if the church leaders would deliver on promises to address the matter with more than words.

In his concluding remarks, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, shared in the sentiment, though left room for some hope.

“Brothers, I opened the meeting expressing some disappointment. I end it with hope,” he said. “My hope is first of all grounded in Christ, who desires that the church be purified and that our efforts bear fruit.”

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation

November 14, 2018

By Rebecca Opie

The former chief executive and artistic director of the State Opera of South Australia will stand trial accused of multiple child sex offences.

Timothy Sexton, 58, pleaded not guilty in the Adelaide Magistrates Court to four child sex charges including maintaining an unlawful sexual relationship with a minor and indecent assault.

Prosecutors allege the offences were committed between 1988 and 1991 in South Australia.

Mr Sexton was the artistic director and chief executive of the State Opera from 2011.

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ERIE (PA)
GoErie

November 15, 2018

By Ed Palattella

Retired bishop of Erie commented at meeting of U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in Baltimore. He also called “unjust” a proposed hotline for bishop misconduct.

The Catholic Diocese of Erie has become a case in point in the divide over how Roman Catholic bishops in the United States want to address the clergy sex-abuse crisis.

The differences within the diocese — specifically, the differences between its current bishop and retired bishop — have been on display this week in Baltimore, at the fall meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Many bishops at the conference, such as Erie Catholic Bishop Lawrence Persico, have embraced calls for change. Others, such as Persico’s predecessor as bishop, Donald W. Trautman, who retired in 2012, have criticized some of the conference’s proposals, including those designed to monitor the bishops and their handling of abuse allegations.

Trautman was outspoken in his remarks on Tuesday, the second day of the conference, which ended Wednesday.

At a session for debate, Trautman raised questions about the accuracy of “every attorney general report.” The Pennsylvania attorney general’s August grand jury report on clergy abuse statewide found that, among other things, Trautman failed “to aggressively pursue” removal of an abusive priest.

And Trautman on Tuesday questioned the accuracy of a joint investigation by the Boston Globe and Philadelphia Inquirer, published two weeks ago, that reported that “more than 130 U.S. bishops — or nearly one-third of those still living — have been accused during their careers of failing to adequately respond to sexual misconduct in their dioceses.” The report did not name Trautman, who led the 13-county Erie Catholic Diocese from 1990 to 2012.

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[Abuse in Stift Klosterneuburg: criticism of report]

GERMANY
religion.orf.at

November 2018

Der Expertenbericht zu einem Missbrauchsfall aus dem Jahr 1993 im Stift Klosterneuburg, der am Samstag vorgelegt worden war, ist von der Initiative gegen Gewalt und sexuellen Missbrauch an Kindern und Jugendlichen kritisiert worden.

In einer Aussendung vom Montag wurde etwa festgehalten, dass Sachverhalte und Zeugenaussagen nicht intensiv genug geprüft worden seien. Johannes Heibel, der Vorsitzende der Initiative mit Sitz in Deutschland, kritisierte auch, dass die Expertengruppe es nicht für notwendig erachtetet habe, „alle von der Initiative benannten Zeugen einzuladen und persönlich anzuhören“. Zudem habe die Gruppe weder über einen erfahrenen Ermittler noch über einen Kirchenrechtler verfügt. Auch die Unabhängigkeit der Expertenrunde zog Heibel in Zweifel.

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[New abuse allegations against ex-Bishop Janssen]

GERMANY
NDR.de

November 13, 2018

Gegen den ehemaligen Hildesheimer Bischof Heinrich Maria Janssen (1907-1988) gibt es einen neuen Missbrauchsvorwurf. Dies teilte das Bistum Hildesheim mit. Der amtierende Hildesheimer Bischof Heiner Wilmer erklärte am Dienstag, dass sich jein heute 70-Jähriger bei ihm gemeldet habe. Der Mann habe angegeben, ab dem Jahr 1957 gleich von mehreren Kirchenmitarbeitern sexuell missbraucht worden zu sein, darunter auch dem damaligen Bischof Janssen. Es ist bereits der zweite Missbrauchsvorwurf gegen Janssen. Vor drei Jahren hatte ein früherer Messdiener von sexuellem Missbrauch durch Ex-Bischof Janssen berich

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BALTIMORE (MD)
The Baltimore Sun

November 15, 2018

By Jonathan M. Pitts

The nation’s conference of Catholic bishops announced Wednesday that it will return to Baltimore in June for an assembly as leaders grapple with a sex abuse crisis that has engulfed the church in the United States.

The move represents a change in plans for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which was to have held its week-long summer gathering next year in Santa Barbara, Calif.

The bishops’ fall meeting — held for years in Baltimore — traditionally centers on business and agenda-setting for the approximately 300 leaders of the nation’s nearly 200 dioceses. The June assembly, which is held in different locations each year, typically includes elements of a retreat.

Speaking between sessions Wednesday on the final day of the 2018 meeting at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront, Baltimore Archbishop William Lori said that with the clergy abuse crisis dominating church affairs, conference leaders decided to treat the June assembly as a business gathering as well, and Baltimore — site of the nation’s oldest diocese — has proved an excellent site for such meetings.

Msgr. J. Brian Bransfield, general secretary of the conference, told the bishops at the end of the day that the meeting will be June 11-19.

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[New charge against Hildesheim’s old bishop “The guy has to get out of the cathedral”]

GERMANY
Der Spiegel

November 14, 2018

By Peter Wensierski

“Der Kerl muss aus dem Dom raus”
Gegen den ehemaligen Hildesheimer Bischof Heinrich Maria Janssen sind neue Missbrauchsvorwürfe bekannt geworden. Ein früherer Ministrant sieht erschreckende Parallelen zu seinem eigenen Fall.

“Jetzt bricht alles wie ein Kartenhaus zusammen”, sagt ein ehemaliger Ministrant, der sich vor drei Jahren im “SPIEGEL” zu Wort gemeldet hatte, weil er als Junge vom Hildesheimer Bischof Heinrich Maria Janssen missbraucht worden sei. Der Betroffene hatte angegeben, dass der Bischof ihn in den Fünfziger- und Sechzigerjahren regelmäßig durch Masturbation, Oral- und Analverkehr missbraucht habe.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
The Catholic Thing

November 14, 2018

By Robert Royal

I’ve been on the road and much occupied the past two days; my first glance at the news about the Vatican’s request that our American bishops not vote on steps to resolve the abuse crisis came as I was boarding a plane. It’s been almost twenty-four hours since then, as I’m writing – and trying, on the move, to catch up with this odd development. Second thoughts may follow, but for now, I find it hard to believe that it’s not just a bad dream.

The Vatican knew for months that the bishops would deal with abuse at their regular Fall gathering. The pope asked them to cancel it and hold a spiritual retreat instead until the heads of bishops’ conferences from around the world meet in February. It’s hard to say with any degree of precision what Pope Francis fears might happen at such a gathering.

We’re hearing vague claims that decisions by the American bishops might conflict with canon law. But when has this papacy ever been held up by law – or wanted bishops everywhere in the world to follow universal rules – when it really wanted to get something done?

Whatever the fear, to wait until the very day the meeting opened to request no voting take place is almost without precedent. For many Americans, sad to say, the pope has probably just confirmed what he was forced to admit in Chile: he’s part of the problem. That no one convinced him this move would be a public relations nightmare – and would cause more trouble than a frank discussion and voting (which he could always massage later anyway) – is a sign of where we are in the Church now.

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NASHVILLE (TN)
WZTV

November 9, 2018

By Harriet Wallace

Mike Coode is 79 years old. The trauma of what he says happened to him starting at age 12 still haunts him.

“After that I was pretty nuts. I did crazy things because I felt guilty, like I needed to be punished. It hurts so bad. As I said, I was devastated,” said Mike Coode.

Coode, who is no longer a practicing Catholic, went to Catholic school and church in Nashville and says a priest molested him for more than 10 years. He claims the Diocese protects guilty priests and continues to do so.

“All we’ve ever wanted was the truth, and they won’t give it to us,” said Coode.

What the Nashville Diocese is giving up are the names of 13 priests accused of molesting kids. Nine are dead, two are in prison and two are no longer acting priests. Diocese spokesman Rick Musacchio says the Diocese is being transparent and doing right by the victims.

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SAN DIEGO (CA)
The San Diego Union-Tribune

November 14, 2018

By Peter Rowe

The Rev. James Burson, a Catholic priest now living in San Diego County, has been accused of molesting a Buffalo, N.Y., high school student in the 1970s.

Burson recently was added to the Diocese of Buffalo’s list of priests credibly accused of sexual misconduct. The alleged molestation involved a boy at Cardinal Dougherty High School in Buffalo in 1979.

Moving from Buffalo to San Diego around 1996, Burson initially worked as a chaplain at Alvarado, Grossmont and Kaiser hospitals. He also served as a priest at San Diego’s Blessed Sacrament parish until his retirement on July 1, 2009.

Then he moved to St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Carlsbad. As recently as Nov. 4, the parish bulletin listed him “in residence.” However, a Diocese of San Diego spokesman said that poor health caused him to enter a board and care facility last year.

At Cardinal Dougherty, “there were multiple incidents of abuse,” said Mike Reck, a lawyer in the Los Angeles office of Jeff Anderson & Associates. “There are probably survivors that need to know about this.”

The Diocese of San Diego has received no complaints about Burson, a diocesan spokesperson said.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Tablet

November 14, 2018

By Christopher Lamb

The 288-page book, published last week, and so far only available in Italian, draws on sources who worked with Viganò

“The truth emerges,” Ben Bradlee, the former editor of the Washington Post once said.

It’s a phrase that might usefully be applied to the testimony of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former papal ambassador to the United States, who in August called on Pope Francis to resign for allegedly ignoring sexual misconduct allegations against ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. In an explosive 11-page dossier of accusations, he claimed that the Pope had not only ignored formal sanctions that had been placed on McCarrick but had elevated him to a role as trusted adviser; he also made assertions about the pernicious influence of “homosexual currents” in the Vatican.

Since then, Archbishop Viganò has pulled back from his call for the Pope to resign, and has admitted there weren’t formal sanctions on Archbishop McCarrick, only private restrictions.

A new book, “Il Giorno del Giudizio” (“The Day of Judgment”), by two experienced Vatican journalists, Andrea Tornielli (whose interviews with Pope Francis were published in 2016 as “The Name of God is Mercy”) and Gianni Valente, helps to untangle Archbishop Viganò’s claims further, placing them into context and going some way to separating fact from fiction.

The 288-page book, published last week, and so far only available in Italian, draws on sources who worked with Viganò and from inside the Vatican. Although many details of the McCarrick case remain mysterious, this is a forensic and sober analysis that sheds new light on the career of the 88-year-old McCarrick, who was removed from public ministry and the College of Cardinals by Francis when a credible allegation he had abused a minor emerged. What “Il Giorno del Giudizio” tries to demonstrate is that attempts to turn the McCarrick saga into a “J’accuse” against Francis involves twisting facts to suit an agenda. Viganò, Tornielli and Valente claim, built a castle of accusations on grains of truth.

A new claim made in the book is that McCarrick’s sexual misconduct – which included inviting seminarians to share his bed at a beach house – was reported to the Vatican in 1999, a few months before Pope John Paul II appointed McCarrick Archbishop of Washington. Cardinal John O’Connor, Archbishop of New York, according to the authors’ sources, “wrote a heartfelt letter” to Rome in which he referred to “homosexual harassment” by McCarrick. “He declared that McCarrick was charismatic, very good at raising funds,” the book explains. “O’Connor remembered that he had recommended him in the past but that now, in conscience, he felt that he should not be chosen [for Washington].”

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TEXAS
Baptist Standard

November 13, 2018

By Scott Floyd

Previous articles considered the rate of childhood sexual abuse and how abuse impacts children and adults. Now, we ask what is the church’s role in ensuring protection to children and their families? To answer this question, we will consider a brief theology of care of children and then will look at how the church can provide effective protection for the safety of children.

What does Scripture say about care for children?

The Bible gives a clear pattern for how the world should work. In God’s design, children are to grow up in a safe environment where they can learn about God. Big people, like parents and adults who work with children, are to be loving and caring and to help little people grow up to be healthy, responsible adults who follow God with all their hearts.

Passages like Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and Psalm 78:5-8 tell of the importance of parents passing their faith along to their children. These children grow up and, in turn, pass their faith along to their children.

Mark 10:13-16 relates a time when Jesus was in Judea, well into his ministry. Individuals were bringing their children to Jesus. The disciples believed it was not the best use of Jesus’ ministry for him to spend time with children. They actually rebuked parents for bothering Jesus with their little ones.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
WVUE

November 13, 2018

By Kimberly Curth

There are disturbing allegations in a new lawsuit against the Catholic Church in New Orleans. Four men have come forward claiming they endured sexual and physical abuse at the orphanage and youth home, Madonna Manor and Hope Haven, when they were boys in the late 1970s and 80s.

The men are only identified as John Roes. They’re suing the Archdiocese of New Orleans, Catholic Charities and the Salesian Society.

One alleged victim says when he was 9, he was selected to be an altar boy for Masses that were performed at the Madonna Manor Chapel. And, “during numerous different occasions at these masses, the priests took John Roe I to the chapel sacristy where he would be raped by certain visiting priests.”

He also says he was sexually assaulted on a field trip to St. Joseph’s Abbey in Covington by an unknown cleric.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

November 13, 2018

By Pat Perriello

The NCR editorial staff did not mince words in its open letter to U.S. Catholic bishops. Its insistence that “it is over” is compelling.

Let me just highlight a few points that the editorial makes.

First, the editorial highlights the efforts church leaders made to hide the truth of the scandal from the faithful, the public and law enforcement.

The authors then go on to describe the pharisaical nature of our hierarchy. They have been “imbibing the excesses of power, authority and privilege that have accrued over centuries.”

It is also important to note just how big a deal the present crisis is. NCR says there is no precedent in U.S. church history and perhaps in global church history for what is facing the church right now. This is not about a debatable religious or dogmatic issue. It is a “rot at the heart of the culture entrusted with leadership of the Catholic community.”

While the editorial acknowledges that the church has done some good things that makes it a safer place today, it notes that these changes were essentially made only because the scandal became public. Thus, “you were moved to words of contrition because you were, once again, caught.”

These are strong words from the editorial staff of NCR. The staff is still looking to the hierarchy for a true personal examination, sincere desire for forgiveness, and a resolve to change. It demands ceding authority and ridding the clerical state of privilege and power.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

November 13, 2018

Child sexual abuse victims were treated like “third class citizens” and “a scourge” by a Roman Catholic Archdiocese, a survivor has claimed.

An inquiry is examining Birmingham Archdiocese’ response to allegations made against four priests including Father John Tolkien, son of novelist JRR Tolkien, who died in 2003.

Fr Tolkien allegedly forced a boy to kneel and pray with his trousers down.

The survivor said he was told he was chosen “for a very special position”.

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UNITED STATES
USA Today

November 14, 2018

By Melinda Henneberger

Catholic to her church: After a lifetime of stubborn adherence on my part and criminal behavior on yours, you have finally managed to drive me away.

For months, American Catholics had been asked to be patient just a little longer. We were promised that the church’s “summer of shame,” following only the latest revelations about the systemic cover-ups of clerical sex abuse, would finally be addressed this week in Baltimore at the biannual meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

This wouldn’t be just one more round of forced apologies, either, but would involve action — and maybe even a vote on a new standard of conduct for bishops, and an outside commission to review violations of it.

Only, to the astonishment of no one past the age of reason, that’s not going to happen after all.

Instead, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the bishops conference, who has himself shielded at least one predator, opened the meeting by announcing that the Vatican had insisted on delaying any action until after a February Vatican summit on the scandal.

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DENVER (CO)
The Associated Press

November 13, 2018

A Catholic priest from Denver accused of sexually abusing an adult seminary student was temporarily placed in a parish after officials learned of the allegations over a decade ago but later removed.

The Philadelphia Inquirer first reported on the case Monday after former seminarian Stephen Szutenbach went public partly because he is upset Rev. Kent Drotar wasn’t officially defrocked.

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AOTEAROA (NEW ZEALAND)
Maori Television

November 13, 2018

By Moana Makapelu Lee

The Anglican church is welcoming the government’s announcement to include faith-based institutions in its inquiry into historical abuse of children in state care. Northland Bishop Te Kitohi Pikaahu says the inquiry must not be limited to the state sector and churches must also be held accountable.

The Anglican church says the inquiry will provide a pathway to healing for the victims of abuse.

Bishop Pikaahu says, “This is inquiry is about resolution for men and women in state and church care.”

He says many children were placed into church care from 1940-1980 and an investigation would unveil the extent of abuse.

“The government are now listening. Churches must also be held to account for any wrongdoing against those in their care.”

In a letter to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in March, the Anglican church requested that churches be included in the inquiry but were turned down.

“I believe it’s because they were afraid of how far the extent of the issue went, but nothing will go amiss in this inquiry.”

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BALTIMORE (MD)
The Associated Press

November 13, 2018

By David McFadden and David Crary

A Roman Catholic bishop at a meeting of his U.S. colleagues has suggested a nonbinding vote to convey a sense of their aspirations regarding anti-abuse efforts.

Several Roman Catholic bishops on Tuesday urged colleagues at their national meeting to take some sort of action on the clergy sex abuse crisis despite a Vatican order to delay voting on key proposals.

Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, suggested a nonbinding vote to convey a sense of the bishops’ aspirations regarding anti-abuse efforts.

“We are not branch managers of the Vatican,” he said. “Our people are crying out for some action.”

Bishop George Murry of Youngstown, Ohio, echoed Paprocki’s call, saying parishioners and priests in his diocese are “very, very angry.”

The three-day assembly opened Monday with a surprise announcement by Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The Vatican, he said, was ordering the bishops to delay votes on two anti-abuse proposals until after a Vatican-convened global meeting on sex abuse in February.

DiNardo indicated there were two principal reasons for the Vatican order: to ensure that steps taken by the U.S. bishops would be in harmony with steps decided at the February meeting, and to provide more time for vetting aspects of the U.S. proposals that might conflict with church law.

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YOUNGSTOWN (OH)
The Vindicator

November 12, 2018

By Justin Dennis

A month before the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown named 34 clergymen associated with the diocese who have been credibly accused of sexually abusing a minor, it received one new allegation that is now under investigation.

The diocese last week also amended that list of accused to include one more name: One of the former friar’s accusers, who traveled with him as an altar boy in the mid-1980s, said the man forced himself on him when he was a pre-teen in St. Aloysius Parish in East Liverpool.

Simultaneously, a former Youngstown diocese priest, John F. Warner of Louisville, said he has worked to clear his name after the diocese’s Oct. 30 release, which exposed another disgraced priest with the exact same name.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
CNA/EWTN News

November 14, 2018

More than 20 bishops and cardinals offered passionate speeches during an open-floor discussion on the sex-abuse crisis at the U.S. bishops’ meeting in Baltimore on Tuesday afternoon.

More bishops wanted to speak, but due to time constraints, their comments were reserved for the next morning.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), opened the discussions with the announcement that he had created a “deliberately small” task force, comprised of himself and the former presidents of the USCCB.

The task force, which includes Cardinal DiNardo and Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop Joseph Kurtz and Archbishop Wilton Gregory, will work closely with the committees of the conference to examine instances of abuse and mishandling of abuse cases, and their work will culminate in a report presented at the next bishops’ meeting in June, Cardinal DiNardo said.

Afterward, Cardinal DiNardo opened the floor to any comments on the task force or the issue of the sex-abuse crisis at large.

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