ABUSE TRACKER

ALBUQUERQUE (NM)
The Albuquerque Journal

October 30, 2018

By Colleen Heild

Yet another lawsuit alleging Catholic priest abuse of an altar boy has been filed against the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, but the alleged abuser wasn’t on a list of credibly accused priests released by church authorities more than a year ago.

The alleged victim, who lives out of state, hadn’t disclosed the abuse that occurred in the 1970s in Peralta, south of Albuquerque, until he sought professional help this year for what seemed to be an unrelated issue, according to a recent lawsuit filed in state District Court in Albuquerque.

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

NEW ORLEANS (LA)
The New Orleans Advocate

October 30, 2018

By Ramon Antonio Vargas and Matt Sledge

Archbishop Gregory Aymond has said he will soon release the names of clergy who, in the last 50 years, were removed from ministry after accusations that they sexually abused minors were deemed credible. Many of the allegations surfaced publicly in recent years, particularly after 2002 when the sex-abuse scandal in Boston caused the Catholic church to reform how it dealt with victims.

Below are 16 priests and deacons who either admitted to the sex abuse allegations made against them, left the ministry on their own after being accused, or were removed from ministry. Based on information from media reports, other documents, and the website bishop-accountability.org, each appears to meet the criteria outlined by Aymond for inclusion on the list, though it’s possible that some may be excluded.

Any clergy accused of sexually abusing a minor could seek to clear his name through a secret church tribunal, a process whose outcome is hardly ever known.

In alphabetical order:

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

PITTSBURGH (PA)
The Legal Examiner

October 30, 2018

By Eric T. Chaffin

When a Pennsylvania grand jury investigated decades of alleged Catholic clergy abuse in Pennsylvania, they found records indicating that over 1,000 children had been sexually abused by over 300 “predator priests.” Unfortunately, most instances of abuse were too old to be prosecuted, but the jury did issue presentments against two priests that had been allegedly sexually assaulting children within the last decade.

Now, one of those priests has pled guilty to the sexual abuse of two boys. After the grand jury report came out, Rev. David Lee Poulson of Oil City was charged with abusing an altar boy and attempting to assault another boy at a hunting camp. The priest pled guilty to corruption of minors and child endangerment.

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

NEW ORLEANS (LA)
The New Orleans Advocate

October 30, 2018

By John Simerman

There may be names on the list that sicken New Orleans-area Catholics, exposing once-revered men of the cloth as child predators based on allegations that never saw daylight.

The sordid histories of about 16 other clerics should be familiar to many, though, having been revealed in previous eruptions of the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal by the diocese itself — or in spite of its silence.

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

SANTA CRUZ (CA)
Good Times

October 20, 2018

By Jennifer Wadsworth

As San Jose Bishop names names, some fear known abusers left out

It took decades for Joey Piscitelli to come forward with his story of abuse and another three years after that to take his accused rapist, Father Stephen Whelan, to court. But the Salesians of Don Bosco—the Catholic order that employed Whelan at a Bay Area all-boys high school where he was said to have assaulted Piscitelli from 1969 to 1971—treated the allegations as a joke.

In closing arguments during a 2006 jury trial, the Salesians compared Piscitelli to James Frey, the author who famously tried to pass off his novel A Million Little Pieces as a gritty addiction memoir. The defense produced a short video, which showed a mock book cover titled My Story of Abuse by Joey Piscitelli before flashing the word “fiction” in big, bold letters across the screen.

“They just made a mockery out of it,” Piscitelli, a 63-year-old East Bay resident, recalls. “Their lead attorney would laugh at me.”

Though he ultimately won two appeals and a $600,000 judgment, it wasn’t until a dozen years later—at 2 p.m. on Sept. 26—that he felt a measure of vindication.

That was the day last month when high-ranking officials from California Attorney General Xavier Becerra’s office, in response to a Sept. 8 letter from Piscitelli, summoned him, two fellow Bay Area members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests—known as SNAP—and two from bishop-accountability.org to a 20th-floor conference room in a secure building on Harrison Street in downtown Oakland.

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

YOUNGSTOWN (OH)
The Vindicator

30, 2018

Catholic leaders today released a list of names of 34 priests connected to the Youngstown diocese priests who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse.

The Most Rev. George Murry, the Youngstown diocese bishop, told media during a news conference today that the diocese regrets that what amounts to 3 percent of priests who acted “inappropriately.”

Murry said this morning it is important for the diocese to acknowledge and apologize to victims of sex abuse in the Catholic Church.

“We have to do something to ensure, always, that children are protected,” Bishop Murry said.

“Our promise to our people is that this doesn’t happen again. We’re putting this list out to clear the debt and be open and honest,” Bishop Murry said.

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

[Sexual Abuse in the Spanish Church: “The Diocese of Segorbe-Castellón silenced the abuses I suffered”]

ARTANA, SPAIN
El País

October 28, 2018

By Oriol Güell

El sacerdote fue cambiado de parroquia en secreto y se le prohibió regresar a Artana, aunque la víctima nunca fue informada

La parroquia de Artana (Castellón), con 2.000 habitantes y un profundo arraigo religioso, oculta una página negra de abusos que Manuel Vilar Herrero saca ahora a la luz. “Fui víctima del cura”, resume este hombre de 50 años. “Empezaba con caricias y besos en el cuello. Luego seguía tocándote el culo y los genitales. Notabas cómo se iba excitando. Acababa restregándose contra ti, sin desvestirse, hasta que eyaculaba entre pequeñas convulsiones”.

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

[Sexual Abuse in the Spanish Church: “He warned me that if I told, he would suspend me, send me to a boarding school”]

CADIZ, SPAIN
El País

October 28, 2018

By Joaquín Gil

Los Salesianos mantienen al sacerdote López Luna, investigado por abusar de un joven

Los Salesianos mantienen a un cura investigado por abusar en 2013 de un joven de 13 años. El sacerdote Francisco Javier López Luna dispone de un despacho en las oficinas del Centro Nacional de Pastoral Juvenil de esta congregación en el número 164 de la calle Alcalá de Madrid, según ha comprobado EL PAÍS.

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

[Sexual Abuse in the Spanish Church: “It’s always here, it’s always in my mind”]

SPAIN
El País

October 28, 2018

By Julio Núñez

Leopoldo Martín, de 80 años, narra los abusos que sufrió en un internado religioso hace más de 70 años

Más de 70 años después, Leopoldo Martín, madrileño de 80 años, aún recuerda las tres pesetas que le condenaron a vivir un año en un colegio de curas vallisoletano que le marcaría para siempre: abusos sexuales, maltrato físico y, debido a una mala alimentación, una enfermedad —el latirismo— que le ocasionó una pronunciada cojera de por vida. Por aquel entonces, mediados de los años cuarenta, la pobreza en la que vivía junto a su madre viuda y con cinco hijos llevó a Martín a vivir en un internado de Madrid. “Entré con siete años. Yo era el que me encargaba de hacerle todas las mañanas la cama al auxiliar”. Cierto día, cuenta, le pegaron una paliza porque de aquella habitación habían desaparecido tres pesetas. “Me pusieron el cuerpo morado y me dijeron: ‘Leopoldo, si mañana no aparecen las tres pesetas te matamos’. Yo me escapé, con tan mala suerte de que me pillaron y, como castigo, me mandaron a un internado en Valladolid”.

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

[Church victims break the silence: More than 100 people tell El País about clergy abuses that had been secret until now]

MADRID, SPAIN
El País

October 28, 2018

Más de un centenar de personas cuentan a EL PAÍS el relato de los abusos que sufrieron supuestamente a manos de curas y que hasta ahora permanecían ocultos

Más de un centenar de personas, supuestas víctimas de abusos sexuales en parroquias y colegios religiosos en distintas épocas —desde la década de los años cuarenta hasta los últimos años—, han trasladado por escrito a EL PAÍS su drama, oculto hasta ahora. Algunas de esas supuestas víctimas han dejado un testimonio grabado de su denuncia para este reportaje. “La impotencia, la rabia, la angustia y mi dolor siguen vivos”, cuenta una de las víctimas. “Yo era un ser extremadamente vulnerable. El profesor se pasó aquel verano metiéndonos mano a mí y a otros pocos alumnos suspensos. He compartido los recuerdos con mi familia y amigos…”, señala otro. “La rabia me dura 53 años después; sufrí los abusos de un cura, y sé que no fui el único”.

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

[Sexual Abuse in the Spanish Church: “He was director of the school and abused me in the secretariat”]

SALAMANCA, SPAIN
El País

October 28, 2018

By Íñigo Domínguez and Amaya Iríbar

Teresa Conde relata los abusos que sufrió siendo menor, durante dos años, de un religioso de los Trinitarios de Salamanca

Teresa Conde, una profesora de 52 años, tardó 25 en contárselo a sus padres, en 2007. Y le ha costado 11 más ponerlo por primera vez por escrito en el mensaje que ha enviado a este periódico, para denunciar los abusos sexuales que afirma haber sufrido, cuando era menor, por parte de un religioso de los Trinitarios de Salamanca. Ahora, tras una vida en terapia, pensando en el suicidio “todos los días de mi vida”, y cuando ya es capaz de contarlo, lo cuenta: asegura que el fraile Domingo Ciordia Azcona, que en 1980 tenía 45 años, abusó de ella durante más de dos años, desde que ella tenía 14 hasta los 16. De primero a tercero de BUP. El religioso acusado falleció en 2016 en un accidente de tráfico.

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

[Sexual Abuse in the Spanish Church: “The archbishop of Oviedo told me it was my word against his”]

MADRID, SPAIN
El País

October 28, 2018

By Julio Núñez

Una víctima de abusos sexuales por un sacerdote relata la pasividad de la Iglesia cuando denunció su caso

V.C., una víctima asturiana de 36 años, calló hasta 2015, cuando al fin se sintió preparada para denunciar al sacerdote que había abusado sexualmente de ella desde los seis hasta los 13 años en Villaviciosa (Asturias). De su puño y letra escribió una carta al arzobispo de Oviedo, Jesús Sanz Montes, donde le narraba los hechos y las terribles secuelas que le habían provocado. Cuando se reunió con él en la diócesis asturiana, Sanz, con la misiva en la mano, le comentó que no se podía hacer nada. “Me dijo que era mi palabra contra la suya, que le habían apartado unos años antes de mi denuncia por otros asuntos y que estaba bajo vigilancia”, relata ella. El obispo no la “invitó” a que lo denunciase ante la justicia, como marca desde 2010 el protocolo contra los abusos de la Conferencia Episcopal Española, y tampoco abrió un proceso eclesiástico contra dicho sacerdote.

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

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

October 30, 2018

The Diocese of Youngstown publicly named 31 priests that have been removed from their duties due to “credible” allegations of sexual abuse.

In a news release, Bishop George Murray clarified that a “credible” allegation is one “that, after a thorough investigation and review of available information, appears more likely true than not in the judgment of the Diocesan Review Board, and is accepted as credible by the bishop.” While we’re glad that church officials have taken this first step, we believe that they must take two other steps immediately to show that they are being fully open and honest about the extent of abuse in their diocese.

First, Bishop Murray and other officials in Ohio should urge an independent investigation by their attorney general to dig into diocesan records and do a full review of all personnel files and abuse records. Only independent law enforcement professionals can truly determine when an allegation is “credible” or not, especially given that we have seen church officials deem accusations not credible only to be proven horribly wrong later.

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

BUFFALO (NY)
WBFO Radio

October 30, 2018

By Michael Mroziak

The woman who formerly worked as the executive assistant to Roman Catholic Bishop Richard Malone stood on a sidewalk across the street from her former workplace Tuesday morning, explaining her decision to secretly share private diocesan documents regarding clergy linked to alleged sexual misconduct. It was Siobhan O’Connor’s first local appearance since her story aired on national news programs including CBS’s 60 Minutes.

O’Connor worked directly under Bishop Malone in the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo’s headquarters on Main Street from 2015 until August of this year, when she resigned her position. Before leaving her job, she had secretly gathered copies of confidential documents regarding the church’s sex abuse scandal and forwarded them to WKBW-TV investigative reporter Charlie Specht. She later appeared on 60 Minutes and interviewed with other national news outlets.

After being introduced in Buffalo by other speakers, including her attorney, O’Connor opened her own remarks with a prayer. She then pointed to her former employer’s offices across the street, noting that a fourth floor conference room window provided an unobstructed view of the corner where she was now standing. It’s the same corner where others, starting with Michael Whalen in February 2018, shared tales of sexual abuse by clergy.

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

[Rome receives records in case of Penquista priest investigated for rape]

CHILE
BIoBioChile

October 29, 2018

By Alejandra Soto

La Congregación de la Doctrina de la Fe en Roma recibió los antecedentes de la denuncia en contra del sacerdote penquista Hernán Enríquez, acusado por el delito de violación a un menor en 2002.

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

[Bishop Santiago Silva: “I have nothing to hide”]

CHILE
La Tercera

October 29, 2018

By Paola Moreno

El presidente de la Conferencia Episcopal declaró cinco horas ante la fiscalía de Rancagua.

Por más de cinco horas declaró este lunes, en calidad de imputado, el presidente de la Conferencia Episcopal, obispo Santiago Silva, por un eventual encubrimiento de delitos sexuales al interior de la Iglesia Católica.

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

LONDON (ONTARIO, CANADA)
The London Free Press

October 30, 2018

By Jonathan Juha

A Catholic affiliate of Western University is doubling its campus size, acquiring lands from the area diocese in London in a deal that will help to restore a nearby seminary and pay off debts including from clergy sex-absue lawsuits.

The deal will see King’s University College take over 7.3 hectares of land east of Waterloo Street and north of Huron Street near St. Peter’s Seminary, a large green space many area residents think of as parkland.

The land transfer from the Diocese of London, announced Monday, negates the prospect of commercial development on the land, which a school official said wouldn’t fit with the neighbourhood, in favour of future educational use and green space, a move the area’s city councillor applauded.

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

DETROIT (MI)
The Detroit News

October 29, 2018

By Chris Graveline

For the first time since 1988, Michigan voters will have the chance to elect an independent candidate for a statewide office. My name is Chris Graveline and I am running as a political moderate for a position that should be non-partisan, Michigan attorney general. Unlike the major party candidates, I can be truly independent since I have not sought nor will I accept any issue-advocacy PAC money or endorsements during this campaign.

The attorney general is Michigan’s top lawyer and its chief law enforcement officer. It is a position that demands fairness and impartiality. Unfortunately, both major parties have targeted the position of state attorney general around the country as a means to advance their policy arguments through lawsuit.

For example, Attorney General Bill Schuette repeatedly sued the Obama administration challenging its implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Similarly, the current Democratic nominee, Dana Nessel, has stated that she intends to “sue the Trump administration, all day, every day.” The parties want to transform this public office into their own law firm. This practice needs to end. There is too much work to do on behalf of Michigan’s citizens to allow it to continue.

Before initiating or joining a lawsuit on behalf of the people of Michigan, the attorney general should consider certain principles enunciated by Frank J. Kelley: (1) will the suit establish sound legal precedent; (2) will the suit affect many people and is not just of a localized interest; and (3) is the AG office legally authorized to get involved by statute or state constitution.

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

WENATCHEE (WA)
Fiber One

October 29, 2018

By Jefferson Robbins

A civil suit accusing the Mormon church of allowing Indian children to be sexually abused in church-managed foster care in Wenatchee was dismissed last week after the case fell dormant.

Chelan County Superior Court Judge Kristin Ferrera dismissed the case Friday on a motion from County Clerk Kim Morrison, who noted that no further motions had been filed since Coeur d’Alene attorney Craig Vernon brought the suit in August 2017. Such motions and dismissals are common if parties to a civil case do not pursue it in court.

The Chelan County case was the last of about a dozen filed by Vernon’s law firm on behalf of sexual abuse survivors, most from the Navajo Nation or the Crow Tribe of Montana, against the LDS Church over the last three years. Most have since settled or reached out-of-court agreements. Vernon could not be reached for comment Monday morning.

Vernon’s lawsuit claimed the victim, a Crow tribal member who was not identified by name, was abused in the care of a Wenatchee family that fostered her under the now-discontinued Indian Placement Program. That program, carried out by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, removed children from American Indian communities and placed them in the foster care of white Mormon families between the 1950s and the mid-1990s.

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

LITTLE ROCK (AR)
The Associated Press

October 25, 2018

The Catholic Diocese of Little Rock says it has received 26 more allegations of clergy abuse one month after the diocese released a list of clergy members who have had credible allegations against them of sexually abusing minors.

The Catholic Diocese of Little Rock says it has received 26 more allegations of clergy abuse one month after the diocese released a list of clergy members who have had credible allegations against them of sexually abusing minors.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports that Bishop Anthony B. Taylor announced the additional complaints in a letter to church members Tuesday. The diocese released a preliminary list in September that identified 12 priests accused of abuse who served in Arkansas.

Taylor wrote that most of the recent allegations were made against priests already listed in last month’s report. He says that none of the allegations were against “priests who are currently in active ministry in Arkansas.”

Taylor added that the new reports concern events that occurred before 2002.

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

PITTSBURGH (PA)
WTAJ

October 26, 2018

By John Clay

SNAP, the Survivors Network, representing victims of sex abuse at the hands of Catholic priests is interested in a Department of Justice investigation. They are particularly interested in the actions of Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh.

Here’s the release from SNAP:

Today it was learned that the U.S. Department of Justice has put every US diocese under notice to not destroy, discard, dispose of, delete, or alter any? documents related to the sexual abuse of children as they investigate ?possible violations of federal law.? The letter, addressed to Daniel Cardinal DiNardo, President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, is significant because it covers not only the state of Pennsylvania, where the D.O.J. has officially launched a federal probe, but across the entire U.S.

One Pennsylvania bishop likely at the center of the current federal investigation is Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh. Zubik has a long history in Pittsburgh. According to the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report, as Auxiliary Bishop and Vicar of Clergy under Archbishop Daniel Wuerl, Zubik was involved in covering up child sex abuse.

Zubik was promoted to bishop of the Green Bay diocese in 2003. While in Wisconsin, court records show that Zubik systematically destroyed nearly all criminal evidence of abuse and cover up from that diocese relating to at least 51 known sex offenders. In fact, Zubik?s reissued the order for the shredding the day before the Vatican announced he would leave Green Bay and return to run the Pittsburgh diocese in 2007. At the time SNAP issued a letter for a federal investigation of the document destruction.

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

YOUNGSTOWN (OH)
The Alliance Review

October 30, 2018

Bishop George V. Murry says 31 with roles in church accused; diocese includes churches, Catholic schools in Stark County.

Bishop George V. Murry of the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown released a list of priests who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse of a minor and reported to police. Since 1943, there have been 31 out of 1,026 priests or religious leaders accused of behaving inappropriately, Murry said during a news conference Tuesday.

“I am very sorry that the Church has failed to act aggressively to eliminate this evil,” Murry said in a statement from the diocese. “I humbly ask forgiveness from the victims and their families for the grave mistakes the Church has made.”

A credible accusation is one against a priest or deacon that, after thorough investigation and review of information, appears more likely true than not in the judgment of the Diocesan Review Board and is accepted as credible by the bishop.

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

NEW YORK (NY)
LifeSiteNews

October 29, 2018

By Dorothy Cummings McLean

The Jesuit-run publication America has carried an article by a professor-psychologist who claims that homosexuality is not the “root cause” of clerical sexual abuse. The photo accompanying the article contained an angel with a rainbow in the background.

Dr. Thomas G. Plante, a professor of psychology at the Jesuit Santa Clara University and an adjunct clinical professor of psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine, had his article published on October 22 in which he states that sexual orientation is “simply” not a factor in the clerical sex-abuse of minors.

“Many people believe that homosexuality is the root cause of sexual abuse by clergy in the Catholic Church since about 80 percent of the known victims have been male,” he wrote.

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

UNITED STATES
CBS News/60 Minutes

October 28, 2018

By Bill Whitaker

For the first time on television, the former executive assistant to Buffalo’s Bishop Richard Malone explains why she decided to speak out against the bishop for not taking action against priests accused of sexual abuse

The Roman Catholic Church is facing its biggest crisis in the United States since the Boston sex abuse scandal 16 years ago. 13 states are now investigating whether abuse was concealed by church leaders, including bishops who head each diocese. We have learned one place under scrutiny by federal investigators is Buffalo, New York. In August, information about dozens of accused priests was leaked from the diocesan secret archive. What it revealed, infuriated many of Buffalo’s 600,000 Catholics. Tonight, you will hear from a priest who will share his direct knowledge about what he has called a cover-up. But first, the anonymous whistleblower who uncovered proof that Bishop Richard Malone withheld the names of dozens of priests accused of abuse.

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

SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
SF Weekly

October 25, 2018

By Joe Kukura

The Catholic priest abuse scandal is back with a vengeance, as victims sue the Vatican and demand names in 3,400 sex abuse cases.

San Francisco has become the new front in childhood sexual abuse survivors taking on the Catholic Church. Two alleged victims filed a lawsuit against the Vatican on Wednesday, the Bay City News reports, demanding that the church “release the names of perpetrators and documents in 3,400 credible cases of childhood sexual abuse worldwide” which they claim the Vatican is sitting on and keeping secret.

None of the abuses alleged in this case took place in San Francisco, but a separate report from the same firm representing these victims does name 135 accused offenders in the Archdiocese of San Francisco.

Wednesday’s filing does allege numerous abuses at Catholic churches throughout the Bay Area. Plaintiff Kathleen Stonebraker says she was abused at St. Joseph’s Church in Pinole while she was between the ages of 11 and 13, the suit names an additional 18 priests accused of abuse in the Diocese of San Jose and a few other other alleged perpetrators in Santa Clara County.

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

WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

October 30, 2018

Discussion and voting on concrete measures to address the abuse crisis and a day of spiritual discernment and prayer will top the agenda for the U.S. bishops when they meet Nov. 12-14 for the fall general assembly in Baltimore.

Public sessions of the assembly also will be livestreamed, live tweeted and carried via satellite, according to an Oct. 29 news release from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The assembly will begin Nov. 12 with an address by Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, USCCB president, as well as remarks by Archbishop Christophe Pierre, papal nuncio to the United States.

The body of bishops will then adjourn to an on-site chapel for a full day of spiritual discernment and prayer. This will be followed by a Mass celebrated at the site of the assembly that evening.

In a letter sent Oct. 27 to all U.S. bishops, Cardinal DiNardo asked them to spend seven days before the meeting, from Nov. 5 to Nov. 11, in “intensified” prayer, fasting and reparation to prepare for their general assembly in Baltimore.

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

ERIE (PA)
WTAJ

October 29, 2018

By Emma Catalano

The Diocese of Erie released a public disclosure list Monday of people who will not be accepted as employees or volunteers by the Diocese of Erie.

Some of the names on the list may be recognizable as a result of a criminal conviction or other public report. Other names are being disclosed publicly for the first time. Some people on this list cannot be convicted of a crime because of the passage of time, legal technicalities, their present whereabouts or mental state, or other factors.

Every person named on this list was credibly accused of actions that, in the diocese’s judgment, disqualify that person from working with children. Such actions could include the use of child pornography, furnishing pornography to minors, corruption of minors, violating a child-protection policy, failure to prevent abuse that they knew to be happening, and, in some cases, direct physical sexual abuse or sexual assault of minors.

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

BUFFALO (NY)
WBFO

October 28, 2018

By Mark Scott

The Catholic Diocese of Buffalo will be in the national spotlight Sunday night when the CBS news program “60 Minutes” airs a segment on the response to the clergy abuse scandal here.

Siobhan O’Connor, former administrative aide to Bishop Richard Malone, will discuss her release of confidential documents related to the scandal.

“She spoke best when she said her heart is heavy as a whistleblower but her soul is at peace,” Seil said.

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

SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
Catholic SF

October 28, 2018

Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone talking to people after the listening session held Oct. 28 at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Belmont. The Archdiocese of San Francisco organized five listening sessions in the wake of the most recent clergy abuse scandals. (Photo by Nicholas Wolfram Smith/Catholic San Francisco)

November 1, 2018
Nicholas Wolfram Smith

Closing out a monthlong series of town hall-style discussions about clergy sex abuse, the Archdiocese of San Francisco held its final listening session Oct. 28 at Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish in Belmont. More than 100 people gathered to hear Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone review archdiocesan policies to safeguard children and talk to him about the abuse scandals inundating the church.

The concerns brought to the session, from homosexuality in the clergy to bishop accountability, highlighted local Catholics’ desire to avoid a repeat of the scandals affecting them now. Existential questions for the church, such as how to trust a hierarchy that has seemed to place institutional preservation over pastoral care, were also foremost on several people’s minds.

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

BURLINGTON (VT)
WCAX

October 29, 2018

The Burlington Catholic Diocese has launched a new website for victims of clergy abuse.

The announcement came Monday as part of an effort from the diocese to be transparent about how it handles, prevents and responds to child sex abuse.

The diocese calls the abuses of the past “inexcusable” and says it is committed to making sure those things never happen again.

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

VATICAN CITY
Religion News Service

October 29, 2018

By David Gibson

A global summit of Catholic bishops on Saturday issued a powerful call for the inclusion of women in decision-making roles in the church “at all levels” and sought to welcome gay people and commit the church to a historic shift on fighting clergy sexual abuse.

But in the wide-ranging final document, approved late Saturday after a series of votes by 249 cardinals and bishops, the synod on young people did not open the door to the ordination of women.

The document, based on deliberations over the past four weeks among bishops and young Catholics, used unusually strong language in advocating on behalf of women, saying integrating women fully into the Catholic Church was “a duty of justice.”

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

NEW ORLEANS (LA)
NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune

October 25, 2018

By Kim Chatelain

New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond believes the decision to release the names of clergy credibly accused of abusing minors will lead to a renewal of the Roman Catholic church, the Clarion Herald newspaper reported. Aymond’s statement was part of a question and answer feature published in the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of New Orleans.

The archbishop said that, ahead of his decision, he received calls and emails from both those who wanted the names released and those who felt the names should not be made public.

“After much prayer, I believe the just thing is to release the names,” Aymond said in the newspaper’s Q&A. “I was very much concerned that we would be able to do this accurately and completely. In prayer, it became very clear to me that this is the right thing to do in a spirit of justice and transparency.”

Aymond did not say when the names will be released, but noted it will be “sooner rather than later,” the Clarion Herald reported. He said a team of staff and outside legal professionals is currently reviewing files to compile the information that will be released.

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

HENRICO (VA)
Henrico Citizen

October 26, 2018

Va. Attorney General Mark Herring

Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring today launched the Virginia Clergy Abuse Hotline and www.VirginiaClergyHotline.com as part of an ongoing investigation into whether criminal sexual abuse of children may have occurred in Virginia’s Catholic dioceses, and whether leadership in the dioceses may have covered up or abetted any such crimes.

The hotline and online reporting form are being launched in the wake of the Pennsylvania grand jury report that documented decades of sexual abuse and cover-up by Catholic clergy in Pennsylvania.

“Like so many Americans, I read the grand jury report on clergy abuse in the Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania, and I felt sick,” Herring said. “It made me sick to see the extent of the damage done, the efforts to cover it up, and the complicity and enabling that went on by powerful people who should have known better and should have done more to protect vulnerable children.

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

ERIE (PA)
Go Erie

October 30, 2018

By Ed Palattella

Sisters of St. Joseph of Northwestern Pennsylvania on Monday said the late Sister Mary Carmel Skeabeck sexually abused a student at Villa Maria Academy in the late 1950s.

The Sisters of St. Joseph of Northwestern Pennsylvania have set up a hotline to take calls about child sexual abuse following Monday’s disclosure that a nun was found to have sexually abused a student at Villa Maria Academy in Erie in the late 1950s.

The hotline number is 814-452-8903. Callers can also be directed for counseling by calling the hotline, the sisters said.

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

UNITED STATES
ABC27

October 28, 2018

By Mark Hall

Several members of the Fortney family went on a 600 mile road trip on Saturday morning.

Lara Fortney-McKeever says that an emotional week sparked their travel plans.

“We met with senators face to face, and some said they would support Senate Bill 261 that would allow victims of sexual abuse to take their abusers to court, while others expressed concerns about the constitution,” said Fortney-McKeever. “So we decided that we had to do more.”

The State Senate didn’t bring SB 261 to a vote, so the Fortney sisters took the issue to several district offices of key senators outside of Pittsburg and State College.

Saundra Fortney-Colello says that most of the five offices that they visited were closed, so they did what they could to get their message across.

“We put five things on their doors, said Fortney-Colello, “We sent a message to them on Facebook, and talked to them directly.”

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

LITTLE ROCK (AR)
The Associated Press/5NEWS Web staff

October 26, 2018

The Catholic Diocese of Little Rock has received 26 more allegations of clergy abuse one month after the diocese released a list of clergy members who have had credible allegations against them of sexually abusing minors.

Bishop Anthony B. Taylor announced the additional complaints in a letter to church members Tuesday, the AP reports. The diocese released a preliminary list in September that identified 12 priests accused of abuse who served in Arkansas.

The Little Rock diocese’s internal review came in the wake of a grand jury report in August documenting seven decades of child sexual abuse by hundreds of Roman Catholic priests in Pennsylvania.

“I had hoped that the release of the names of those priests known to have abused minors might enable any as-yet-unknown victims to come forward to share their story and receive help, and this has in fact occurred,” Taylor wrote in the letter this week.

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

HARRISBURG (PA)
WHTM

October 27, 2018

Clergy sex abuse survivors are taking their push for lawmakers to pass a statute of limitation reform law on the road.

The Fortney sisters are from the Midstate. Five of them say their pastor in the Harrisburg Catholic Diocese sexual abused them when they were between the ages of 2-13.

On Saturday, they will be taking a road trip across the state. The family will visit the offices of state senators in their home district’s urging them to pass a statute of limitations reform bill that passed the state house.

Earlier this month, the state house passed Senate Bill 261. It would allow survivors of sexual abuse to file a civil suit until they are 50-years-old instead of 30.

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

CHICAGO (IL)
Tribune News Service

October 26, 2018

The historic seven-day spiritual retreat will be at Mundelein Seminary in suburban Chicago in January.

Pope Francis has called on Catholic bishops nationwide to gather for a historic seven-day spiritual retreat at Mundelein Seminary in suburban Chicago in January as church hierarchy grapple with the ongoing clergy sex abuse scandal.

As chancellor of the seminary, Archdiocese of Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich – now in Rome for a monthlong meeting of global church leaders – will serve as host of the gathering, which could include some 300 bishops from around the country.

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

YOUNGSTOWN (OH)
WFMJ

October 30, 2018

By Mike Gauntner

The Youngstown Diocese is making public a list of priests who have been removed from their ministries over credible allegations of sexual abuse.

At a 10 am Tuesday news conference, Bishop George Murry announced that of the more than 1,000 men who have been priests and other religious leaders in the five-county diocese since it was founded in 1943, 31 men have been found to have had credible inappropriate incidents.

Bishop Murry said former FBI agents investigated 73 complaints about alleged abuse in the Diocese.

The investigators make recommendations to the bishop and a board made of attorneys, Catholic and Lutheran pastors, representatives from Children Services and others

Clergy of the Diocese of Youngstown against whom credible, substantiated allegations of sexual abuse of a minor have been made:

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

YOUNGSTOWN (OH)
WYTV

October 29, 2018

Bishop George Murry said the diocese has received allegations from 76 victims

Bishop George Murry, of the Youngstown Catholic Diocese, held a press conference Tuesday, releasing a list of priests and clergy members who have been removed due to sexual abuse.

Leaders say they are doing everything they can to help victims of abuse at the hands of clergy who, at one time or another, served in the local diocese.

Since 1943, there have been 31 out of 1,026 priests and religious leaders accused of behaving inappropriately, Murry said.

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

YOUNGSTOWN (OH)
Salem News

October 30, 2018

Bishop George V. Murry, S.J., of the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown has announced the list of names of those who have served in the Diocese of Youngstown since its establishment in 1943 who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse of a minor and who have been reported to civil authorities.

“I am very sorry that the church has failed to act aggressively to eliminate this evil,” said Bishop Murry through a media release . “I humbly ask forgiveness from the victims and their families for the grave mistakes the church has made.”

For the purpose of this list a “credible accusation” against a priest or deacon who has served in the Diocese of Youngstown is an accusation that, after a thorough investigation and review of available information, appears more likely true than not in the judgment of the Diocesan Review Board, and is accepted as credible by the bishop.

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

ALTOONA (PA)
WNPV Radio

October 30, 2018

Lansdale_Catholic Attorney Richard Serbin filed a lawsuit in 1987 on behalf of two brothers who were sexually abused by a pedophile priest, but the case was not brought to trial until 1994 due to interference and indifference from church officials, police and prosecutors. Richard Serbin spoke with WNPV’s Darryl Berger on WNPV’s AM Edition Tuesday morning.

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

ROME (ITALY)
Crux

October 30, 2018

By John L. Allen Jr.

If you’re an American Catholic, or an Australian, Irish, German, Chilean, or from pretty much anyplace else scarred by clerical sexual abuse scandals, news that a global summit of Catholic bishops in 2018 could walk up to the brink of endorsing a “zero tolerance” policy, only to pull back at the last minute, may seem almost incomprehensible.

One key to understanding how it happened is grasping that many Catholic bishops don’t hail from such places – actually, a strong majority don’t – and they bring widely differing perspectives and sensitivities to the table.

Here’s the tick-tock of how we got here.

The Oct. 3-28 Synod of Bishops on young people, faith and vocational discernment opened against the backdrop of a tumultuous series of new chapters in the abuse saga, including the damning Pennsylvania grand jury report; the resignation of ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick; a controversy in Australia over eroding the seal of the confessional; laicizations, bishops’ resignations and fresh revelations in Chile; and, of course, the infamous letter from Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò accusing Pope Francis of knowing about McCarrick and covering it up.

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

ROME (ITALY)
Crux

October 30, 2018

By John L. Allen Jr. and Ines San Martin

As the dust settles after an Oct. 3-28 summit of bishops on young people, the faith and vocational discernment, many questions remain. Most are focused on the final document adopted by the bishops by an overwhelming margin last Saturday night – including who shaped it, what some of its language means, and the fact that it doesn’t contain an endorsement of a “zero tolerance” policy on sexual abuse.

Mexican Cardinal Carlos Aguiar Retes, appointed by Pope Francis to lead the Archdiocese of Mexico City at the end of last year, was on the 12-member drafting committee responsible for producing the 60-page document.

Speaking with Crux on Monday, Aguiar Retes said that even though he agrees with the policy of “zero tolerance” when it comes to priests or church personnel who abuse minors, the document, addressed to young adults, touches on many forms of abuse, including “authoritarianism, abuse of power, imposition, lack of empathy,” and others, for which the Church “doesn’t have a zero tolerance attitude.”

Aguiar Reyes says the phrase “zero tolerance” was also eliminated from this text because Francis has called a meeting for the presidents of bishops’ conferences around the world Feb. 21-24, and it will be up to that meeting to address it.

Aguiar Retes spoke with Crux on Monday, two days after the synod’s final document was voted on. What follows are excerpts of that conversation, which took place in Italian.

Crux: Seeing that we’ve reached the end of the synod, could we ask you for a balance of the experience?

Aguiar Retes: For me, I’ve said this before, and I’ve heard this from many bishops and cardinals, particularly from those who’ve participated in a synod before, for me this was the fifth, everyone says the same: this was the best synod among those we’ve participated in.

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

DUNKIRK (NY)
Observer

October 30, 2018

A sexual abuse survivor from the Diocese of Buffalo is hailing the “60 Minutes” report that aired Sunday night on the CBS network news magazine.

Matt Golden, who sued the Diocese of Buffalo in August claiming the diocese and Bishop Richard J. Malone created and exposed the public to dangerous predator priests and continue to do so through present day, said he was “not surprised” by what he saw in the segment.

Golden’s lawsuit claims the diocese continues to conspire and engage in efforts to conceal from the public and law enforcement, the identities of priests who have sexually abused minors and allow known child molesters, like the Rev. Dennis Riter who abused Matthew when he was a child, to live freely in the community without informing the public. To-date more than 80 priests have been accused of child sexual abuse in the Diocese of Buffalo.

Riter continues to serve Mass at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church in Dunkirk.

“Things will not change for the better in the Diocese of Buffalo unless all the Catholic Bishops in New York are forced to come clean and tell the truth,” Golden said. “This is why I brought suit against the Diocese of Buffalo and Bishop Malone, because they are protecting Fr. Riter, and how many others?”

The Diocese of Buffalo also offered a response to the “60 Minutes” segment. Here was the statement issued on Monday afternoon:

“Two stories aired on Sunday, October 28, regarding the Diocese. Many have sought our comment about both. Therefore, we issue this statement and will provide information in the days ahead that will add perspective to the stories. For now, we simply observe that the material reported in the stories was incomplete, out of context and in some cases plainly inaccurate.

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

ROME (ITALY)
Crux

October 30, 2018

By Elise Harris and John L. Allen Jr.

For Archbishop Peter Comensoli of Melbourne, Australia, the clerical sexual abuse crisis unfolding throughout global Catholicism hits especially close to home given the drama that’s unfolded in his country in recent years, including a Royal Commission report on the Church’s failures and criminal charges of “historic sexual offenses” against Cardinal George Pell.

With his background, it might have been a shock that during the recently-concluded Synod of Bishops on youth, which came on the heels of multiple revelations and allegations of abuse around the world, not all of his fellow prelates felt the same urgency, resulting in the omission of a firm apology and a collective commitment to a “zero-tolerance” policy in the gathering’s concluding document.

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

NEW YORK (NY)
Forbes

October 30, 2018

By Nicholas Malfitano

As the aftermath of the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office’s grand jury report into child sexual abuse committed statewide by members of the Roman Catholic Church continues, alleged victims have taken to suing the Church.

But a class action lawsuit – filed by Carlson Lynch of Pittsburgh, Berger Montague of Philadelphia and Nye Peabody of California – differs from others that have been filed since the grand jury report stated a staggering 1,000 children were sexually assaulted by hundreds of priests throughout the state.

This lawsuit does not seek damages. It could have been difficult to pursue a class action seeking damages with circumstances like these because it might have been hard to show each class member was harmed in a common way and owed a similar amount – requirements for the certification of a class.

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

UNITED KINGDOM
The Tablet

October 30, 2018

By Jonathan Luxmoore

The French Church has been plunged into soul-searching after a second young priest in a month committed suicide after being accused of sexually improper conduct.

Fr Pierre-Yves Fumery, 38, took his life on 20 October after being sent away for psychological treatment because of his close relations with a teenage girl. That was a month after Fr Jean-Baptiste Sebé, also 38, committed suicide after authorities examined accusations he had assaulted a young woman.

“This is a terrible shock, even if we knew he was going through a difficult time,” Bishop Jacques Blaquart told journalists after Fumery’s suicide.

His Orleans diocese now ranks among the best in France in dealing with the sexual abuse crisis; its previous bishop went on trial this week for not denouncing an abusive priest.

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

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
WITF

October 29, 2018

By Katie Meyer

With two weeks left until election day, the campaign arm of Pennsylvania’s Senate Democratic caucus has made a major ad buy in Philadelphia and its surrounding suburbs.

The topic is a high-profile bill related to child sexual abuse by priests that faltered in the state legislature.

Democrats say it’s a legitimate critique. Republicans say it’s an unfair blow. But both parties have the same question: will this make a notable difference in key Senate races?

The discord over Senate Bill 261 is long-simmering, but it came to a head in the final hours of the state legislature’s voting session when negotiations on the measure crashed and burned.

The bill, which would have made it easier for victims of child abuse to later sue their abusers, buckled under disagreements about a provision that would have opened a two-year window for lawsuits on old cases.

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

SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
National Catholic Register/CNA

October 25, 2018

By Jonah McKeown

More than 200 priests from the San Francisco Bay area are on the list. At least one California diocese has questioned the sources for the list.

A Minnesota-based law firm released a report Tuesday compiling the names of more than 200 priests from the San Francisco Bay area it says have been publicly accused of sexual abuse. At least one California diocese has questioned the sources for the list.

The law firm of Jeff Anderson & Associates filed a lawsuit Oct. 1 against all of California’s dioceses, along with the California Catholic Conference and the Archdiocese of Chicago, alleging a sexual-abuse cover-up.

The Oct. 23 report lists the names and parish assignments of 212 priests from the San Francisco Bay area. The report says it is an effort to compile “information already available to the public from various sources in the public media” and to raise awareness of the issue of clerical sexual abuse.

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

BUFFALO (NY)
Associated Press

Oct 30, 2018

The Diocese of Buffalo declined to address details of a television report where diocesan insiders called for the bishop’s resignation Monday, saying he hadn’t done enough when confronted with reports of clergy sexual misconduct.

In a statement, the diocese said it would add perspective “in the days ahead” while calling the material in the CBS 60 Minutes report “incomplete, out of context and in some cases plainly inaccurate.”

Sunday’s broadcast featured a former assistant to Bishop Richard Malone who secretly copied confidential files and gave them to the news magazine and Buffalo station WKBW-TV. It also featured a priest who advised Malone on legal matters saying he believed eight or nine active priests should have been removed from the ministry.

“A lot of cases probably should have gone to Rome at the time. They did not,” Father Robert Zilliox told 60 Minutes.

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

SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
California News Wire Services

October 25, 2018

The priest is now a registered sex offender living in Walnut Creek, according to the lawsuit.

Two sexual abuse survivors announced in San Francisco on Wednesday that they have sued the Vatican in federal court for allegedly failing to prevent and covering up the abuse of them and others as children by priests.

Kathleen Stonebraker of Pinole and James Keenan of Minnesota claim they were abused during their childhoods by Roman Catholic priests who were previously suspected or should have been suspected to be molesters but were allowed to remain in contact with young people.

Their lawsuit was filed in federal court in San Francisco on Tuesday. It accuses the Vatican, a sovereign nation officially known as the Holy See, of violating customary international human rights law, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

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

HARRISBURG (PA)
AP/KDKA

October 24, 2018

Survivors of child sexual abuse and others are ramping up pressure on Pennsylvania’s Republican senators to vote on a bill to would give victims a two-year window to file lawsuits that would otherwise be outdated.

More than 100 people rallied at the state Capitol Wednesday following the Senate’s GOP majority’s decision last week to leave Harrisburg without voting on the legislation.

Several speakers focused their frustration on the Senate’s top-ranking Republican, President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati of Jefferson County.

Existing state law gives victims until age 30 to sue over child sexual abuse.

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

ERIE (PA)
GoErie.com

October 30, 2018

By Ed Palattella

Original actions taken against the late Sr. Mary Carmel Skeabeck “appear to be insufficient by today’s standards,” according to Sisters of St. Joseph. Skeabeck was added to diocese’s list of accused on Monday.

The Sisters of St. Joseph of Northwestern Pennsylvania started investigating child sexual-abuse allegations against one of its deceased members in May.

A complaint from an abuse victim triggered the probe.

The findings led the Catholic Diocese of Erie on Monday to place the nun, Sr. Mary Carmel Skeabeck, who died in 2015, on the diocese’s growing list of priests and laypeople credibly accused of child sexual abuse and other misconduct with minors since the 1940s.

Skeabeck, the first nun to be placed on the diocese’s list, “sexually abused a student on numerous occasions in the late 1950s while teaching at Villa Maria Academy” in Erie, the Sisters of St. Joseph, citing its investigation, said on Monday.

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

FREMONT (CA)
Pacific Standard

October 26, 2018

By Emily Moon

A new report identifies 212 priests accused of sexual abuse in the Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose dioceses.

When Dan McNevin was nine years old, he served as an altar boy to Father James Clark in Corpus Christi Church in Fremont, California. There he worshipped alongside generations of his Irish Catholic family, attending mass and answering phones for the parish office. At first, says McNevin, now 60, Clark was “grooming him.” But soon the priest began to abuse him both physically and emotionally, undressing, touching, and assaulting him. He didn’t tell anyone, including his parents, for more than a decade. After three years, McNevin left the church forever; Clark did not.

Decades later, McNevin, then in his forties, confronted Clark’s superiors in the Oakland diocese, which governs all Catholic churches in the Alameda and Contra Costa counties, including Fremont. He says the area bishop told him the priest did not have a history of abuse, although he was a convicted sex offender, and denied shuffling him between posts (one way the Catholic church protects alleged abusers). McNevin believed the diocese—until he learned that the leaders of the same diocese had transferred a different offender 11 times. Then, in 2002, he met a survivor who had been molested by Clark five years after his own abuse. “I knew I got lied to,” he says. McNevin sued the Oakland diocese alongside several other victims, settling in 2005.

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

MINNEAPOLIS (MN)
MinnPost

October 25, 2018

By Brian Lambert

Says Jean Hopfensperger for the Strib, “Jim Keenan, a Twin Cities clergy abuse survivor, is one of two plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday against the Vatican, demanding it release its files on thousands of priests who have sexually abused children. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court-Northern District of California by St. Paul attorney Jeff Anderson, who argued the Vatican is the central repository for the names and histories of priests worldwide who have been engaged in misconduct, and is endangering others by not revealing their identities.”

Peter Cox of MPR reports, “First Avenue announced Wednesday that it has agreed to buy the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul from Minnesota Public Radio. Terms of the tentative deal were not disclosed. First Avenue owner Dayna Frank said the Minneapolis-based operator of music clubs was ‘excited about the opportunities for more events and performances in another iconic space in this community’. MPR CEO Jon McTaggart said in a statement Wednesday said the sale of the nearby theater would allow the company to better serve other audiences, but he expects part of the relationship to continue.”

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

SAN BERNARDINO (CA)
San Bernardino Sun

October 25, 2018

By Joe Nelson

A lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court alleges two brothers were molested by a priest at a Riverside parish in the 1990s.

Among the defendants named in the lawsuit are defrocked priest Carlos Rene Rodriguez, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Diocese of San Bernardino.

The lawsuit also alleges that for roughly 20 years, the Catholic Church was well aware of Rodriguez’s propensity for molesting young boys. Rodriguez even admitted to a priest that he molested one boy during a camping trip at the Grand Canyon in 1987, when he was associate pastor at St. Vincent de Paul of Los Angeles, but the priest failed to report Rodriguez to police, said Anthony M. DeMarco, the plaintiffs’ attorney.

When church officials became aware that the boy’s family planned to report Rodriguez to police, they transferred Rodriguez to a treatment facility for abusive priests in Maryland, DeMarco said.

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

ATLANTA (GA)
CNN

October 28, 2018

By Mirtha Donastorg

With just four words, Chris Templeton’s tears started flowing. For the first time in his life, he was hearing the priest who abused him more than three decades ago say, “Guilty, your honor. Guilty.”

On Tuesday, Wayland Brown, 76, pleaded guilty to nine charges of criminal sexual conduct of a minor for abusing two boys in the 1970s and 1980s. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

But the relief that Templeton, 44, said he had been “looking for since day one” almost never came.

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

[Sexual abuse should not be time-barred in Spain]

GERMANY
Frankfurter Allgemeine

October 30, 2018

Zwischen fünf und 15 Jahren beträgt die Verjährungsfrist für Sexualdelikte bislang. Doch viele Opfer sprechen erst nach Ablauf der Frist über die Taten. Jetzt soll sie abgeschafft werden.
Sexueller Missbrauch soll in Spanien künftig nicht mehr verjähren. Eine entsprechende Reform des Sexualstrafrechts gab Vizeregierungschefin Carmen Calvo nach einem Besuch im Vatikan bekannt, wie die Tageszeitung „El País“ am Dienstag berichtete. Die Politikerin habe die Änderung am Vortag in Rom mit Kardinalstaatssekretär Pietro Parolin abgesprochen.

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

FALL RIVER (MA)
The Arlington Catholic Herald

October 23, 2018

The following announcement from the Catholic Diocese of Fall River, Mass., available at fallriverdiocese.org, was shared with the Diocese of Arlington on Oct. 22, 2018. Father Michael Kuhn, Y.A., served as chaplain at Paul VI Catholic High School from 2004-2008, and as assistant chaplain at Marymount University from 2017 to the present.

Anyone with information regarding this allegation should contact the Manassas City Police Department’s Investigative Services Division at 703/257-8092. The Diocese encourages anyone who knows of any misconduct or abuse on the part of any cleric or employee of the Diocese to notify civil authorities, as well as to reach out to the diocesan Victim Assistance Coordinator at 703/ 841-2530.

The diocesan child protection policy is online at arlingtondiocese.org/child-protection/.

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

[Sexual Abuse Archdiocese of Cologne reports allegations against four priests]

GERMANY
KSTA

October 29, 2018

Im Zuge der umfassenden Aufarbeitung sexuellen Missbrauchs hat das Erzbistum Köln die staatlichen Behörden über vier weitere Verdachtsfälle informiert. Es gehe dabei um mutmaßliche Taten aus den 1970er und 1980er Jahren, teilte das Erzbistum mit. Zuständig seien die Staatsanwaltschaften Bonn, Düsseldorf und Koblenz. Zu prüfen sei unter anderem, ob die Vorwürfe noch strafrechtlich relevant oder inzwischen verjährt sind.

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

[Sexual abuse at Arthez d’Asson: the trial of the abbot and the bishop begins in Orleans]

FRANCE
La Republique des Pyrenees

October 30, 2018

25 ans après les faits qui se seraient déroulés lors d’un camp de scouts à Arthez d’Asson, le procès de l’abbé Pierre de Castelet, accusé d’actes de pédophilie sur mineur, démarre ce mardi à Orléans.

Vingt-cinq ans après les faits, l’abbé Pierre de Castelet, accusé d’actes de pédophilie sur mineurs, et l’ancien évêque d’Orléans, Mgr André Fort, poursuivi pour non-dénonciation, comparaissent ensemble ce mardi devant le tribunal correctionnel.

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

STEUBENVILLE (OH)
The Intellegencer

October 30, 2018

A priest who served multiple areas of East Ohio is suspended from the ministry after he admitted to sexual contact with and abuse of a minor, according to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Steubenville.

Bishop Jeffrey M. Monforton revoked all ministerial faculties from the Rev. Christopher Foxhoven, 45, and suspended him from priestly ministry on Saturday. The diocese said Monforton took the action as soon as he learned Foxhoven had admitted the offenses.

Foxhoven most recently served as pastor of St. Mary of the Hills Parish in Buchtel, Ohio, and of Holy Cross Parish in Glouster, Ohio. Glouster is located in Athens County, while Buchtel is situated in both Athens and Hocking counties. Published reports indicate that at other points during Foxhoven’s career, he served Catholics in Belmont, Jefferson, Harrison and Monroe counties. He is listed as the celebrant for funerals that occurred in the St. Clairsville area in 2006 and 2007. He also participated in religious rites in Amsterdam in Jefferson County in 2009 and in Wintersville in 2010.

Past newspaper reports list him as the parochial vicar of the Basilica of St. Mary in Marietta, Ohio, in 2013. A parochial vicar is a priest who serves as an agent of or assistant to the parish pastor. The pastor, from the Latin for shepherd, is the priest who is the main spiritual leader of a parish.

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

YAOUNDÉ (CAMEROON)
Crux

October 29, 2018

A “hijacking” of missionary schools by the government is to blame for the failing standards of moral education in Nigeria, according to the country’s Catholic bishops, in a meeting where they also discussed child protection policies in the Church.

Speaking Oct. 16 at the 3rd National Catholic Education Summit in Abuja, Archbishop Augustine Akubueze of Benin City said both schools and homes have failed in imparting the necessary values that should form the bedrock of a morally sound Nigeria.

Christian missionaries established the first schools in Nigeria, and in the 1940s over 90 percent of students educated in the country attended mission schools. Until 1970, the vast majority of Christians – concentrated in the south and east of the country – still attended religious schools.

The military government nationalized the school system after the 1967-1970 Biafran Civil War, when the southeastern part of the country attempted to secede.

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

PITTSBURGH (PA)
Tribune Review

October 29, 2018

By Michael DiVittorio

Catholic Diocese of Greensburg’s healing efforts continued Monday evening at St. Margaret Mary Parish in Lower Burrell.

Bishop Edward C. Malesic and other leaders heard from their flock in the third of seven scheduled “listening sessions” designed to help is 78 parishes move forward in wake of a decades-long, widespread sexual abuse scandal involving priests.

“The center of our church is not pedophilia,” Malesic said. “The center of our church is Jesus Christ.”

The two-hour session, moderated by the diocese’s Chief Communications Officer Jennifer Miele, at the church along Leechburg Road drew about 220 people from several churches.

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

NEW ORLEANS (LA)
The Times-Picayune

October 29, 2018

By Hanna Krueger and Kim Chatelain

Ex-deacon George Brignac, who was accused decades ago of raping an altar boy at the Holy Rosary School in a case that led to a more than $500,000 settlement from the Archdiocese of New Orleans, has been named in another lawsuit filed Monday (Oct. 29) that alleges he sexually molested another altar boy at the same school between 1977 and 1982.

The 17-page suit, filed in Orleans Parish Civil District Court, claims that Brignac sexually assaulted the unnamed plaintiff, who was between the ages of eight and 13 when the instances occurred, on multiple occasions while teaching at the Holy Rosary School in New Orleans.

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

BUFFALO (NY)
WBNG TV

October 29, 2018

The Diocese of Buffalo says a televised report featuring a whistleblower who criticized the bishop’s handling of clergy sexual misconduct was incomplete and out of context.

In a statement Monday, the diocese didn’t address specifics contained in Sunday’s “60 Minutes” report, in which a former assistant to Bishop Richard Malone said she acted out of concern for victims.

Siobhan (shuh-VAHN’) O’Connor secretly copied and shared confidential files with CBS and Buffalo’s WKBW-TV.

Sunday’s airing also featured a priest who said he believes eight or nine active priests should have been removed from ministry.

The diocese says it will add perspective in the future and is making changes to be more transparent and effective.

Malone has resisted calls to resign. He says the diocese is cooperating with state and federal investigations.

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

BUFFALO (NY)
WGRZ

October 29, 2018

By Steve Brown

When asked by 2 On Your Side about the future of the Buffalo Diocese, the pastor of St. Bernadette Church said he does not think the bishop can stay in his current role. The comments about Buffalo Bishop Richard Malone follow the scathing report on 60 Minutes that showcased the priest abuse scandal in the WNY diocese.

Father Paul Seil shared his thoughts on the issue with 2 On Your Side’s Steve Brown on Monday morning.

“I do not believe he (Bishop Malone) can be effective as a bishop any longer,” said Fr. Seil.

In the report that aired on CBS on Sunday, two whistleblowers within the diocese said the scandal is much bigger than the diocese is claiming.

Bishop Malone’s former executive secretary Siobhan O’Connor, told 60 minutes she knows of 118 priests listed in complaint reports. The diocese originally only released 42 names.

The priest of St. Mary’s Church in Swormville, Fr. Robert Zilliox, says there are “at least eight or nine” priests… who should have been removed from the ministry.

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

LANSING (MI)
Channel 25 News

October 29, 2018

By Jason Lorenz

A Catholic priest accused of sexual harassment has been removed from a Fenton church by the Catholic Diocese of Lansing.

According to the diocese, Rev. Mathew Joseph was removed from his position as parochial vicar for St. John the Evangelist Parish in Fenton due to several complaints against him.

One of those complaints included what the diocese called a “credible allegation of sexual harassment of an adult female.”

Joseph is a priest with the Missionary Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament in Kerala, India.

Following the complaints, he was sent back to his order in India.

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

BUFFALO (NY)
WIVB

October 29, 2018

By Jenn Schanz

60 Minutes aired a special report on the Buffalo Diocese Sunday night, interviewing the former executive assistant to Bishop Richard Malone turned whistleblower, Siobhan O’Connor.

The report cited several secret documents O’Connor had copied.

60 Minutes reports that according to those documents, under Bishop Malone the Diocese kept certain priests accused of child sexual abuse in ministry.

Days before the 60 Minutes piece aired, News 4 spoke exclusively to Malone, who declined an interview with 60 Minutes’ Bill Whitaker.

“When I arrived in the Diocese six years ago, one of the first questions I asked my senior team was, can I be certain that any priest with a substantiated allegation of abuse of a minor is off the job? Is out of ministry? And they said yes you can because they had been removed,” Malone told News 4 last week.

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

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

October 29, 2018

For the second time in a week, an Omaha priest has been accused of sexual misdeeds. Now, Nebraska Catholic officials should go further and actively seek out anyone who may have additional information concerning the allegations against these two clerics.

Yesterday, Archbishop George Lucas “permanently removed Fr. Donald Cleary from public ministry after the retired priest refused to contest an allegation that he sexually abused a minor in the mid-1980s.”

Last week, the Archdiocese of Omaha removed Father Francis Nigli after he had been accused of sexually assaulting a 21-year-old man in May. This was the second allegation against the priest.

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

YOUNGSTOWN (OH)
WKBN TV

Oct 29, 2018

Bishop George Murry, of the Youngstown Catholic Diocese, will be holding a press conference Tuesday where he will likely release a list of priests who have been removed due to sexual abuse.

The diocese said the subject matter of the press conference will be “The Protection of Children and Young People” but would not specify exactly what would be talked about.

In September, Murry said he would release a list of names within the next two months.

He said the diocese won’t stand in the way if any prosecutors in the six-county diocese want to investigate priests who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse.

Murry said some accusers don’t want to prosecute and some of the cases are past the 20-year statute of limitations.

Copyright 2018 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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

ERIE (PA)
Erie News Now

October 29, 2018

She is among five new names, which all include three laypersons who are all living and a deceased priest.

For the first time, the Diocese of Erie has added a woman to its list of those credibly accused of actions that it says disqualified them from working with children.

She is among five new names, which includes three laypersons who are all living and a deceased priest.

Four new names – two priests (one living, one deceased), one former priest (living) and one layperson (deceased) — have also been listed as under investigation.

The name of Msgr. Reszkowski, deceased, was moved from under investigation to among those credibly accused.

Father David Poulson, who pleaded guilty to corruption of minors and endangering the welfare of children Oct. 27, also has been moved to the list of those with credible allegations.

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

NEW ORLEANS (LA)
The Advocate

October 29, 2018

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

An ex-Catholic deacon accused of raping an 8-year-old altar boy decades ago in a case that prompted the Archdiocese of New Orleans to pay out a hefty financial settlement is at the center of a new lawsuit containing similar allegations involving another altar boy.

The unidentified plaintiff alleges that George Brignac “engaged in prohibited and unpermitted sexual contact” with him countless times from 1977 to 1982, when the plaintiff was between eight and 13 years old and Brignac taught at Holy Rosary School.

That same time frame and school were at the heart of a suit filed against Brignac earlier this year that the Archdiocese deemed credible and settled for more than $500,000.

The archdiocese on Monday didn’t comment on the new plaintiff – who is now about 49 – and his claims in a 17-page lawsuit filed Monday in Orleans Parish Civil District Court. But the archdiocese did say in a statement, “Our prayers are with all victims of sexual abuse.”

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

ST. PAUL (MN)
AndersonAdvocates.com

October 29, 2018

60 Minutes exposes the dangerous practices and protocols still employed by the Diocese of Buffalo

(Buffalo, New York) – Sexual abuse survivor Matt Golden sued the Diocese of Buffalo in August, claiming the Diocese of Buffalo and Bishop Richard J. Malone created and exposed the public to dangerous predator priests and continue to do so through present day. Golden’s lawsuit claims that the Diocese of Buffalo continues to conspire and engage in efforts to conceal from the public and law enforcement, the identities of priests who have sexually abused minors and allow known child molesters, like Fr. Dennis Riter who abused Matthew when he was a child, to live freely in the community without informing the public. To-date more than 80 priests have been accused of child sexual abuse in the Diocese of Buffalo.

Last night, 60 Minutes exposed the dangerous practices and protocols that continue to be employed in the Diocese of Buffalo and Bishop Richard Malone in handling cases of child sexual abuse. Former executive assistant to Bp. Malone, Siobhan O’Connor, current Buffalo priest and clergy sexual abuse survivor, Fr. Robert Zilliox, and Deacon Paul Snyder were interviewed about the sexual abuse scandal in the Diocese of Buffalo. According to Fr. Robert Zilliox, at least 8 or 9 priests who should have been removed from the priesthood, remain in the priesthood in Buffalo right now.

Statement from Plaintiff Matt Golden

“Thank you to this brave young woman who stood up to the biggest institution in the world without even thinking twice,” said Golden. “I am not surprised by what I saw last night. Things will not change for the better in the Diocese of Buffalo unless all the Catholic Bishops in New York are forced to come clean and tell the truth. This is why I brought suit against the Diocese of Buffalo and Bishop Malone, because they are protecting Fr. Riter, and how many others?”

Contact: Mike Reck: Cell: (714)742-6593; Office: (646)759-2551
Jeff Anderson: Cell: (612)817-8665; Office: (651)964-3523

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

[Cadem survey shows darkest moment for Catholic Church: support collapses to 14%]

CHILE
El Mostrador

October 29, 2018

Se trata del nivel más bajo de aprobación para la Iglesia católica chilena desde septiembre del 2015. Además, es 20 puntos menor que el respaldo que tenía durante la visita del Papa Francisco en enero pasado. De acuerdo al listado de Cadem, es la institución peor evaluada, incluso por debajo de los tribunales de justicia, el Congreso y la ex Nueva Mayoría (20%).

A un 14% se desplomó el apoyo en la opinión pública a la Iglesia católica chilena, de acuerdo a lo revelado por la encuesta Cadem difundida este lunes.

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

[Military Bishop interviewed in Rancagua prosecutor’s office in cover-up case]

CHILE
La Tercera

October 29, 2018

By Angélica Baeza and Paola Moreno

“Vengo a aportar todo lo que se requiere para poder hacer verdad en esta situación de la Iglesia que tanto nos acompleja y que tanto mal hace”, dijo Santiago Silva.

En dependencias de la Fiscalía de O’Higgins se encuentra declarando el presidente de la Conferencia Episcopal, Santiago Silva, en calidad de imputado por encubrimiento de abusos sexuales al interior de la Iglesia.

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

[Survey: Church approval reaches new low of 14%]

CHILE
La Tercera

October 29, 2018

By F. Aste

Por otra parte, el Presidente Sebastián Piñera retrocedió cuatro puntos en su aprobación, impactado principalmente por el precio de los combustibles.

De acuerdo a la última encuesta Cadem, la aprobación de la Iglesia Católica logró su peor nivel desde que comenzó a medirse en septiembre de 2015. Según el sondeo, el mes de octubre la institución alcanzó solo un 14% de aprobación y un 81% de los encuestados la desaprueba.

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

VATICAN CITY
Reuters

October 28, 2018

By Philip Pullella

Pope Francis, ending a month-long meeting on the theme of Catholic youth, told young people Sunday that in order to be good members of the Church they should not be obsessed with “doctrinal formulae” but blend its rules with social activism to help those in need.

Francis said a Mass for about 10,000 people in St. Peter’s Basilica to ceremoniously close the Synod of Bishops, officially titled “Young People, Faith and Discernment of Vocation” and attended by some 300 bishops, priests, nuns and lay participants.

The gathering’s final document, issued late on Saturday night, called for women to play a greater role in Church decision-making as a “duty of justice”, but appeared to water down language that would have been more welcoming to gays. [L8N1X70OS]

“I would like to say to the young people, in the name of all of us adults: forgive us if often we have not listened to you, if, instead of opening our hearts, we have filled your ears,” Francis said in a lighter part of the homily of the Mass, which he co-celebrated with dozens of the bishops who took part in the synod.

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

VATICAN CITY
Agence-France Presse

October 27, 2018

By Catherine Marciano and Ella Ide

Hailed as a chance for the Catholic Church to reconnect with today’s young, a month-long meeting at the Vatican ended with a whimper Saturday as bishops from across continents fail to see eye to eye.

The 267 prelates attending the meet had been tasked with finding a way to breathe fresh life into a centuries-old institution suffering from both a damaging global sex abuse crisis and widespread secularity in the West.

Pope Francis appeared to acknowledged the difficulties of presenting an attractive front, saying the church was being “persecuted” and “dirtied” by “continuous accusations” — a possible reference to his conservative critics.

He said the concluding document from the meeting, or synod, was “for all of us, me included”, and “must work in our hearts”.

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

VATICAN CITY
Agence France-Presse

October 29, 2018

By Catherine Marciano, Ella Ide

Pope Francis has vowed to end clerical sexual abuse, but bishops from Asia and Africa have shown a mixed response to a scandal some have termed a “Western problem”.

Church leaders from around the world attended the closing mass yesterday of a month-long meeting, or synod, which many had hoped would take the global struggle against paedophile priests up a notch.

As the talks began, Francis warned again that abuse and cover ups would not be tolerated.

But as US Cardinal Blase Joseph Cupich told the press, priestly sexual abuse was “not on the front burner of all countries”.

“The resistance of some bishops” to discuss a crisis which has hit countries from Germany to America and Chile limited talk time at the synod, US Archbishop of Philadelphia Charles Chaput told the Catholic News Service agency.

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

VATICAN CITY
Yahoo View

October 28, 2018

The bishops are also calling for greater youth involvement.

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

[Pope closes synod: Church becomes “polluted”]

GERMANY
Frankfurter Allgemeine (AP)

October 27, 2018

Papst Franziskus sieht derzeit eine Art Verfolgung der katholischen Kirche. «Im Moment klagt man uns sehr heftig an», sagte der Pontifex zum Abschluss der Bischofssynode im Vatikan. Diese Anklage werde auch zur Verfolgung. Die Kirche werde kontinuierlich angeprangert, um sie zu beschmutzen. Derzeit steht die katholische Kirche weltweit vor allem wegen Missbrauchsskandalen in der Kritik. Franziskus wurde von Erzbischof Carlo Maria Viganò beschuldigt, selbst Missbrauch zu vertuschen. Seitdem tobt ein Richtungsstreit in der katholischen Kirche.

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

PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

October 26, 2018

By Peter Smith

U.S. Attorney William McSwain of Philadelphia has asked all of the nation’s Catholic dioceses and similar institutions to preserve any records related to personnel and the sexual abuse of children.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops confirmed Friday receiving the Oct. 9 letter from Mr. McSwain, who heads the Department of Justice’s Eastern District of Pennsylvania, based in Philadelphia.

The letter asks the conference to preserve abuse-related documents and to ask all of the nation’s dioceses to do the same.

“We have transmitted the U.S. Attorney’s letter at his request and in the spirit of cooperation with law enforcement,” said a statement from the bishops conference Friday morning.

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

[Report: After abuse study, five authorities investigate investigation]

GERMANY
RWM

October 27, 2018

Nach der Veröffentlichung der Missbrauchsstudie für die katholische Kirche prüfen nach einem Bericht des „Spiegel“ (Samstag) fünf Staatsanwaltschaften Ermittlungen. Das habe eine Umfrage des Magazins bei Staatsanwaltschaften in allen 27 Bistümern ergeben. Dabei gehe es um den Verdacht von teils schwerem sexuellen Missbrauch, bisweilen bis ins Jahr 2016.

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

[Spiegel: According to abuse study, five authorities investigate]

HAMBURG (GERMANY)
Katholisch.de

October 27, 2018

Die Missbrauchsstudie sorgt für den Anfangsverdacht: Deshalb hat eine Gruppe Strafrechtler bei Staatsanwaltschaften im Bezirk jeder Diözese Anzeige gegen unbekannt erstattet. Als Reaktion ermitteln nur wenige Behörden. Dabei handelt es sich zum Teil um aktuelle Fälle.

Nach der Veröffentlichung der Missbrauchsstudie für die katholische Kirche prüfen nach einem Bericht des “Spiegel” (Samstag) fünf Staatsanwaltschaften Ermittlungen. Das habe eine Umfrage des Magazins bei Staatsanwaltschaften in allen 27 Bistümern ergeben. Dabei gehe es um den Verdacht von teils schwerem sexuellen Missbrauch, bisweilen bis ins Jahr 2016.

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

[Germany-wide criminal charges against sex offenders of the Catholic Church]

GERMANY
ifw

October 28, 2018

Sechs renommierte Juraprofessoren haben am 26. Oktober 2018 in Verbindung mit dem Institut für Weltanschauungsrecht (ifw) Strafanzeigen bei jenen Staatsanwaltschaften eingereicht, die für die 27 Diözesen in Deutschland zuständig sind. Anlass ist die Studie “Sexueller Missbrauch an Minderjährigen durch katholische Priester, Diakone und männliche Ordensangehörige im Bereich der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz”. In ihrer elfseitigen Begründung legen die Rechtsexperten dar, dass im Fall des katholischen Missbrauchsskandals ein zwingender Anlass zur Einleitung von “Ermittlungsmaßnahmen zur Überführung der Täter” besteht, “etwa für eine Durchsuchung von Archiven und die Beschlagnahme der vollständigen, nicht anonymisierten Akten.”

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

[Diocese of Regensburg between “lies and deceit” and prosecutorial investigations]

GERMANY
Regensburg Digital

October 29, 2018

By Robert Werner

Eines hat die Ende September veröffentlichte MHG-Studie deutlich gemacht: Sexueller Missbrauch durch katholische Geistliche ist nicht mit sündig gewordenen Einzelnen zu erklären. Die katholische Kirche sieht sich vielmehr mit grundsätzlichen Fragen zu ihren missbrauchsbegünstigenden und –vertuschenden Strukturen konfrontiert. Während in Regensburg die Staatsanwaltschaft in der Folge der Studie Vorermittlungen aufgenommen hat, soll ein Vertreter des Bischofs von „Lug und Trug“ gesprochen haben.

Betroffen und irgendwie einsichtig – so waren die ersten Reaktionen der deutschen Bischöfe auf die von ihnen in Auftrag gegebene MHG-Studie zu sexuellem Missbrauch durch Geistliche (die aus 38.156 Diözesenakten 1.670 Beschuldigte und 3.677 Betroffene ermittelte). In einer entsprechenden Presseerklärung etwa war die Rede von „schockierenden Ergebnissen“, einer „Verantwortung zu verstärktem Handeln“ und der „Pflicht, den Betroffenen Gerechtigkeit zuteil werden zu lassen.“ Angesichts des von der Studie auch aufgezeigten „institutionellen Versagens“ hieß es weiter: „Wir Bischöfe stellen uns dem Ernst der Stunde.“

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

IRONDALE (AL)
National Catholic Register

October 29, 2018

By Jennifer Roback Morse

In the fallout from the revelations of former-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s serial sexual predation, some have worried about an “anti-gay witch hunt.”

Recently, a headline in America magazine all but shouted, “Homosexuality is not a risk factor for sexual abuse of children.” Yet, the Pennsylvania grand jury report that came out in August found about 80% of the teenage victims of clerical sexual abuse were male, just as the John Jay Report found more than 10 years ago. This fact cries out for explanation. But many in the media and in the Church seem reluctant to focus on this obvious connection. We must come up with an explanation that is true to the known facts, without harming any innocent person.

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

MERCED (CA)
Merced Sun Star

October 29, 2018

By Yesenia Amara

Three priests, including one with a troubled history of allegedly seeking sex partners online and another accused of inappropriate behavior with a minor, are being investigated following complaints submitted to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fresno.

The priests are on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of their probes — although at least in one case the priest has been on leave for over two years, and the investigation hasn’t been completed.

Father Jean-Michael Lastiri and Father Ricardo Magdaleno were placed on paid administrative leave on Sept. 13 and Sept. 28, respectively, said Teresa Dominguez, chancellor for the Diocese of Fresno. A request to interview Bishop Armando X. Ochoa was declined.

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

BUFFALO (NY)
WKBW

October 28, 2018

By Charlie Specht

Without Siobhan O’Connor, the Diocese of Buffalo may have pulled off one of the greatest cover-ups in the history of the Catholic Church.

“I am a very ordinary person and I found myself in rather extraordinary circumstances and the way I look at it is, I was the right person in the right place at the right time, and God gave me the strength to do the right thing,” she said.

O’Connor served for three years as Buffalo Bishop Richard J. Malone’s personal secretary. She’s deeply religious and once studied to become a Catholic nun. But while working at Malone’s side, she began to see the ugly underbelly of how the diocese handled sexual abuse.

She went public earlier today as the key whistleblower and source in 7 Eyewitness News’ three-part investigation into Malone’s handling of sexual abuse, telling the legendary news program “60 Minutes” that she felt morally compelled to provide key documents describing a cover-up of allegations under Malone’s watch.

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

OMAHA (NB)
KMTV

October 28, 2018

A priest has been permanently removed from public ministry in the Omaha Archdiocese.

The move was announced Sunday.

Archbishop George Lucas removed Reverend Donald Cleary after the priest refused to contest allegations of sexual abuse. The allegations state Rev. Cleary abused a minor in the mid-1980s.

The complaint says the abuse happened in Wayne, Nebraska where Cleary served from 1986 to 1998.

Last week, the archdiocese was in an uproar when news of another priest, Father Francis Nigli, had been accused of sexually assaulting a 21-year-old man in May.

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

NEW YORK (NY)
Irish Central

October 29, 2018

By Tom Deignan

According to Google Maps, St. Joseph-St. Thomas parish is a five-minute drive, via Amboy Road, from Our Lady Star of the Sea, where all four of my children were baptized.

Tack on three minutes if you want to travel via Father Drumgoole Road, named for the Longford-born priest best known for housing and educating thousands of destitute Irish and other immigrant children on the once-rural South Shore of Staten Island.

It was another Irish-born, Staten Island priest who was in the news last week, Monsignor Charles Coen, who served as pastor of St. Joseph-St. Thomas in the 1970s and 1980s. Numerous media outlets reported Coen, now 85 and ill, had been accused of sexual assault by church investigators.

Coen has vehemently denied the charges.

“I am not only denying the charge, but it couldn’t possibly have happened,” Coen, now 85, told the Irish Voice last week. “One thousand percent, I didn’t do this. I never got a proper chance to defend myself from the Archdiocese.”

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

NEW YORK (NY)
America

October 27, 2018

By Michael J. O’Loughlin

A deacon at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Swormville, N.Y., for 15 years, Paul Snyder felt “complete shock” one night earlier this year when he learned from a local newscast that his longtime pastor was the subject of sexual harassment allegations made by three young adults.

The pastor, Rev. Robert Yetter, had been accused of making unwanted sexual advances toward at least two young men who had reached out to him for counsel and support.

A series of investigations by Buffalo television station WKBW showed that Bishop Richard Malone and other diocesan officials knew about the complaints but decided to allow the priest to retire without making the allegations public. For his part, Father Yetter had implied in an email that the diocese’s fundraising efforts would be harmed if the allegations were made public.

Mr. Snyder, a local businessman who formerly served on the boards of the local Catholic Charities agency and Christ the King Seminary, said his parish community had been told that Father Yetter had chosen to retire, with no mention that the priest had been accused of misconduct.

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

KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

By Michael Sean Winters

October 29, 2018

Two weeks from today, the bishops of the United States will gather in Baltimore for their most consequential meeting since Dallas in the summer of 2002, when the clergy sex abuse crisis at that time produced the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People and its zero tolerance approach to the sexual abuse of children. Are the bishops today, with the leadership they have, up to the task? And, what are those tasks?

The biggest difference between 2002 and today, and the first issue the bishops must confront, is whether or not they wish to remain Roman Catholics or if they will become Protestants. In 2002, it was unthinkable that a former apostolic nuncio, the personal representative of the pope to this country, would publish a long screed that ended by calling for the pope to resign. In 2002, it was unthinkable that a substantial number of bishops would issue statements attesting to their belief in that ex-nuncio’s integrity while not mentioning the pope at all or affirming their loyalty to the pope in the most meager of terms. In our Catholic ecclesiology, it is Christ who is the head of the church, but the pope is the visible sign of our unity as Catholics. Apart from Peter, there is no Catholic unity.

Some bishops were more fulsome in their support for Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò than others. “I can attest that [Viganò] is a man who served his mission with selfless dedication, who fulfilled well the Petrine mission entrusted to him by the Holy Father to ‘strengthen his brothers in the faith’,” enthused San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone. “Although I have no knowledge of the information that he reveals in his written testimony of August 22, 2018, so I cannot personally verify its truthfulness, I have always known and respected him as a man of truthfulness, faith and integrity,” gushed Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix, Arizona. Bishop Daniel Thomas of Toledo, Ohio was more weasely, stating, “Personally, this situation is made all the more gut-wrenching as I struggle to reconcile my knowledge of Archbishop Viganó, for whom I have a high regard, with my deepest love and respect for the office of the Holy Father.” The bishop loves the office, but not the pope himself? That is a level of dualism we haven’t seen since the 1950s.

Bishop Joseph Strickland had a letter ready to be read at all Masses in his diocese within hours of Viganò’s first attack on the pope, in which the bishop of Tyler, Texas said he found Viganò’s allegations “credible.” Was he part of the cabal that hatched and planned the dissemination of the Viganò statement, a cabal that we know included LifeSiteNews, Edward Pentin of the National Catholic Register, conservative Catholic blogger Marco Tosatti, and conservative Catholic plutocrat Tim Busch?

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

DUBLIN (IRELAND)
La Croix International

October 29,2018

Catholic Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin says he is surprised by the lack of understanding in Rome that the basis of the current clergy sex abuse crisis lies within its religious culture.

Speaking at the National Child Safeguarding Conference in Kilkenny Oct. 28 the archbishop also warned against “slippage into false confidence,” reported independent.ie.He pointed out that church leaders were too slow to open up to victims and survivors, or understand the role they could play in addressing abuse.

More work needs to be done to “bring healing to those who have suffered” he said.”The church all too slowly began to open up to them, not just as victims and survivors, but also with the realization without their participation and protagonism we would never understand and address the challenge,” he said.

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

ROME(ITALY)
Crux

October 29, 2018

By Christopher White

Ahead of next month’s high-stakes meeting of U.S. bishops, a number of Catholic women and men are petitioning for greater involvement of the laity in the Church’s response to the ongoing clerical sex abuse crisis.

In response to this summer’s wave of sex abuse revelations – from the downfall of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick to the Pennsylvania grand jury report and subsequently announced state and federal investigations – many Catholic prelates have said that the laity must be given a primary role in ensuring greater protection of minors and vulnerable adults.

Now, as the U.S. bishops prepare to meet in Baltimore from November 12-15, a number of groups are accepting that invitation.

One group, The Women Who Stayed, are channeling the tactics of the reformer Martin Luther and preparing “Five Theses” in order to offer their “two cents” to the conversation.

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

PROVIDENCE (RI)
GoLocalProv

October 29, 2018

The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, a national non-profit, has called on Democratic candidate for Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha to commit to investigating the Diocese of Providence.

Alliance for Safe Communities, a Rhode Island-based organization advocating for the victims of diocesan sexual abuse, says it has reached out to former U.S. Attorney Neronha regarding his unwillingness to commit to an investigation of the Catholic Diocese sex abuse scandal.

Now, in more than one dozen states across the country, attorney generals have launched investigations into the role of the respective dioceses and cover-up of abuse.

On Sunday night, CBS News magazine 60 Minutes unveiled how the clerical assistant to the Bishop of Buffalo in New York leaked thousands of documents unveiling a diocese cover-up.

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

NEW YORK (NY)
Commonweal

October 26, 2018

By David Castaldi, Joseph Finn, and Margaret Roylance

Attendees at the annual meeting of the Diocesan Fiscal Management Conference in Atlanta in 2015 (CNS photo/Michael Alexander, Georgia Bulletin)
Reports of sexual abuse and cover-ups within the church hierarchy have led to increased attention to the church’s secrecy around its finances. Until only recent decades, U.S. diocesan financial affairs were kept confidential and knowledge was compartmentalized; even some very highly placed diocesan officials were unaware of the settlements used to keep clerical sexual abuse under wraps. It was generally assumed that once contributions hit the collection basket, parishioners had no business knowing how the bishops used that money. What they would have learned is that the U.S. Catholic Church has spent $3.99 billion related to clerical-abuse settlements.

Before the Boston Globe’s 2002 “Spotlight” report, most Catholics in the pews thought that clerical abuse was rare. But presiding bishops knew differently: both from their personal experiences, and from the work of Fr. Thomas Doyle and others, who reported in the 1980s on the prevalence of abuse in the church. When Rev. Gilbert Gauthe admitted to abusing more than three hundred children in the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana, in 1986, or in 1993 when Rev. James Porter was sentenced to between eighteen and twenty years in prison for sexual abuse of children in Fall River, Massachusetts, there was minimal discussion of the role that church funds might have played in keeping those stories quiet.

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

IRONDALE (AL)
National Catholic Register

October 22, 2018

By Msgr. Charles Pope

As I finished reading Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s third letter, I had an immediate sense that I had just read something that is destined to be one of the great pastoral and literary moments of the Church’s history. There was an air of greatness about it that I cannot fully describe. I was stunned at its soteriological quality — at its stirring and yet stark reminder of our own judgment day. In effect he reminded us that this is more than a quibble over terminology or who wins on this or that point, or who is respectful enough of whom. This is about the salvation of souls, including our own. We almost never hear bishops or priests speak like this today!

Others will write adequately on the canonical, ecclesial and political aspects of Archbishop Viganò latest and very concise summary of the case. As most of you know, I have fully affirmed elsewhere that I find his allegations credible and that they should be fully investigated. But in this post I want to explore further the priestly qualities manifest in this third letter, qualities that are too often missing in action today.

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