ABUSE TRACKER

LANCASTER (PA)
Lancaster Online

September 4, 2018

The LNP Editorial Board

https://lancasteronline.com/opinion/editorials/grand-jury-report-on-child-sexual-abuse-in-pennsylvania-catholic/article_89b9f4f2-ad7e-11e8-9e5b-1730a796bb29.html

The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported last week that the grand jurors who investigated child sexual abuse in six Pennsylvania Roman Catholic dioceses want to see their full and unredacted report released to the public. The 20 grand jury members unanimously lodged “their objections to any attempts to ‘censor, alter, redact or amend’ the document,” those newspapers reported. Their two-year investigation revealed that 301 “predator priests” had sexually abused more than 1,000 children over seven decades in the dioceses of Harrisburg (which includes the parishes in Lancaster County), Greensburg, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Scranton and Erie.

This plea from the grand jurors who spent two harrowing years investigating child sexual abuse in six of eight Pennsylvania Catholic dioceses should be heeded.

In their court filing, as explained by the Inquirer and Post-Gazette, the jurors said they “examined an ‘overwhelming amount of evidence’ of abuse, including internal church documents that had been kept secret. They wrote that they solicited and received written or in-person testimony from bishops from all of the six dioceses. And, they said, they heard from victims — most of whom testified they had notified their pastors, bishops or dioceses about the abuse.”

Wrote the grand jury: “We listened as they poured out their hearts telling of the agony and torment they endured since being victimized. They had waited so long to be heard; they deserve to be heard and validated.”

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro also argues that the full, unredacted report should be made public. We think it should be, too.

There has been far too much secrecy already, as the grand jury report made plain.

We thank the grand jurors first of all for dedicating so much time to what must have been an excruciating assignment. Listening to so much anguish — so much “agony and torment” — had to be life-altering. How could it not?

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
Australian Associated Press via The Guardian

September 3, 2018

Sentence given to Gerard McNamara, 80, criticised as too lenient and ‘appalling’

An elderly Marist brother and former school principal, who sexually assaulted five boys in regional Victoria while giving them “sports massages”, will serve nine months in jail.

But a spokesman for child sex abuse victims has slammed the sentence handed down at Victoria county court in Melbourne on Monday as too lenient, calling it tokenistic and “appalling”.

Gerard McNamara, 80, molested the aspiring athletes at St Paul’s Catholic College in Traralgon between 1970 and 1975, including one boy he abused some 30 times.

As sports master and principal of the school, McNamara usually assaulted his victims on a massage bench in a sports shed after they had suffered injuries during athletics.

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.

[Prosecution updates registry of abuses in the church: 178 victims, 167 accused]

CHILE
BioBioChile

August 31, 2018

By Jonathan Flores

El Ministerio Público actualizó el catastro de casos investigados por la Fiscalía por presuntos delitos sexuales cometidos por miembros de la Iglesia Católica. Lo anterior, tras el primero anunciado el 23 de julio pasado, cuando presentaron cifras inéditas sobre los antecedentes y denuncias desde 1960 a la fecha.

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SCRANTON (PA)
Times-Tribune

By the Editorial Board

September 4, 2018

Scranton Bishop Joseph C. Bambera made too fine a distinction Friday when he emphasized that former Bishop James C. Timlin, whom he barred from formally representing the diocese, had not personally harmed any children.

As bishop for nearly 20 years and as a diocesan official for years before that, Timlin was aware of and had the capacity to stop the sexual abuse of children by multiple priests. But as detailed by the Aug. 14 statewide investigating grand jury report into such atrocities in six Pennsylvania Catholic dioceses, Timlin proved to be an enabler of abusers rather than a protector of children.

The report detailed, for example, that Timlin sought the reinstatement of and transferred to a different parish a priest who had assaulted and impregnated a teenager and arranged for her abortion.

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MOOSIC (PA)
WNEP

September 2, 2018

By Chelsea Strub

Scranton, Pa. – In the wake of a scathing grand jury report accusing–among others–59 priests in the Diocese of Scranton of sexual misconduct, Bishop Joseph Bambera has restricted former Bishop James Timlin, who is implicated in cover-ups in the report, from representing the church in public.

Timlin led the diocese for two decades.

As Mass let out at St. Paul’s Rectory in Scranton on Sunday, many parishioners we spoke with believe Bishop Bambera’s decision regarding former Bishop James Timlin is a step in the right direction.

Whether more should be done to strip Timlin of his benefits from the church, parishioners say that decision is up to officials in Rome.

“I think it’s smart to have him step aside right now for duties until they do further investigation,” said Maureen Manzano of Scranton.

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DENVER (CO)
Crux

September 3, 2018

By John L. Allen Jr.

Rome – Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago is clearly irked with a local TV station, NBC5, for allegedly editing a comment he made in a recent interview to suggest he and Pope Francis don’t regard the clerical sexual abuse crisis as a priority.

“He’s got to get on with other things,” Cupich said of Francis, “talking about the environment and protecting migrants and carrying on the work of the Church. We’re not going to go down a rabbit hole on this.”

In fact, Cupich insists, he was referring not to the abuse crisis in general but to the accusation made by a former papal ambassador in the U.S. that Francis was warned of sexual misconduct concerns about ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick in 2013 and ignored them. Cupich has already issued a statement to that effect, and he directed that it be read out at Chicago-area Masses on Sunday.

For sure, Cupich has a point, even if consuming Mass time for a spat with a TV station might be seen by some as a slight overreaction.

However, what shouldn’t be missed in the “Cardinal v. Media” sideshow is that there’s a real truth embedded in Cupich’s original statement, however misinterpreted it may have been: There is arguably no higher priority in Catholicism right now than dealing with the abuse crisis, but that doesn’t mean other important issues have gone on holiday while the Church sorts it all out.

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WHITE PLAINS (NY)
Journal News

September 4, 2018

By Jorge Fitz-Gibbon

Spring Valley – G.R. Pafumi’s office is at the rear of his house on an unassuming residential street, in a darkened room cluttered with books, legal documents and two computer monitors that provide much of the light.

From here, the Wall Street analyst who turned author lives out his new calling.

Pafumi, 68, is taking on the Roman Catholic Church, having spent five years compiling an extensive international public database of sex abuse by priests and clergy, and publishing his latest book on the scandal that has rocked the Vatican for years.

“What you’re looking at is the collapse of the Catholic Church in real time,” he said. “The church is now crumbling. The church is now trying to recapture its place in the world despite the fact that the world is turning against it.”

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WASHINGTON (DC)
NPR All Things Considered

September 3, 2018

By Sarah Boden

With audio]

Pittsburgh – When Ray Santori was 10, his mother died. His father had died the year before, so an aunt and uncle near Pittsburgh took him in.

Not long after that at Saint Bernadette Church in Monroeville, Pa., Santori met Father William Yockey, who according to the recent grand jury report, sexually assaulted him for about two years.

“I felt that, I mean, I sometimes couldn’t look people in the eye because they would know,” says Santori. “I felt that everybody knew that I was sexually abused.”

Santori says he started drinking and using drugs. He left the house before finishing high school. Since then, he’s been homeless and incarcerated for a time.

“The sexual abuse drove me into such a dark place that it was hard to get a grip on responsibly, reality, work, you know, saving money,” he says.

Today, Santori says he’s 26 months sober and makes a decent living as a carpenter. But economically, the 53-year-old is not in good shape. During more than three decades of addiction, Santori estimates he’s spent up to $2 million on drugs and alcohol.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

September 4, 2018

By Dan Herbeck

Christopher Szuflita says he still has painful memories of the day in 1970 when he tried to tell his pastor that he had been repeatedly molested by a priest at Fourteen Holy Helpers Church in West Seneca.

He said Monsignor Martin Ebner immediately told him and his father that day that his accusation against the Rev. Joseph Friel was a lie.

“The pastor became very irate, very upset and told me I was a liar. He said I was committing a sacrilegious sin by lying. He said I could be excommunicated from the church for telling such a lie,” Szuflita, now 66, recalled in an interview on Friday.

“He never conducted any kind of investigation. He never questioned anyone. He just told me, right then and there, off the cuff, that I was a liar,” recalled Szuflita, a former altar boy.

Forty-eight years later, the Buffalo Diocese in March identified for the first time 42 priests against whom it had determined credible allegations of child sexual abuse had been lodged. Friel’s name was on the list.

That admission was a bombshell for Szuflita, who in 1994 unsuccessfully sued the diocese in State Supreme Court, seeking $2 million in damages for the harm caused by Friel abusing him when he was 15 and 16 years old.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

September 3, 2018

By Antonio Olivo and Martin Weil

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/man-shouts-at-cardinal-wuerl-during-talk-here-after-sunday-ceremony/2018/09/03/bc720c76-af2d-11e8-a20b-5f4f84429666_story.html

A man stood and yelled “Shame on you” as Cardinal Donald Wuerl on Sunday addressed the sex abuse scandal rocking the Catholic Church and asked parishioners to pray for Pope Francis as he deals with the problem.

A video of the incident inside Annunciation Catholic Church in Northwest Washington shows the man, identified by CNN as Brian Garfield, walking angrily toward the exit after he could be heard yelling at Wuerl during a short speech in which the cardinal also asked parishioners to forgive his “errors in judgment” in handling sexual abuse allegations while he was a bishop in Pittsburgh.

Garfield, who could not be reached for comment Monday, told CNN that he is a lifelong Catholic and is angry about the findings of a grand jury report in Pennsylvania released last month that documented abuse by 300 priests over the course of 70 years.

The report focused attention on Wuerl’s mixed record of dealing with abusive priests when he was bishop of Pittsburgh for 18 years before becoming archbishop of the Washington archdiocese in 2006.

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SAN JOSE (CA)
Mercury News

September 3, 2018

By Matthias Gafni

Los Gatos – Tucked away in Pennsylvania‘s explosive August grand jury report on widespread sex abuse by Catholic priests is the previously untold story of Rev. Benedict Van der Putten, who as part of a traditionalist priest society in Los Gatos 18 years ago was said to have molested one teen girl and tried with another. Then he was whisked away to Europe.

The first Los Gatos abuse allegedly occurred around 2000 at the St. Aloysius Retreat in the wooded hills near the Lexington Reservoir, where priests from the Society of St. Pius X practice a conservative, pre-Vatican II brand of Catholicism with the Latin Mass. The society is not recognized by the Roman Catholic church and St. Aloysius is not overseen by the San Jose diocese.

Local authorities, acting on a tip from Placer County the following year, say they investigated the allegations but were unable to make a criminal case. There are no indications that St. Aloysius ever directly contacted police about Van der Putten.

Following the Los Gatos incidents, the society quickly sent Van der Putten to its international headquarters in Switzerland, and reported him to the Vatican, which later relayed the alleged misconduct to a Pennsylvania diocese where he was seeking reinstatement the following year. That was derailed after he allegedly confessed to molesting another teen in 2001. While he was in Europe, the society expelled him.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

September 3, 2018

By Judy Courtin and Chris Atmore

The redress scheme for child sex abuse victims is unjust and damaging

The lack of transparency around the guidelines used to award compensation to victims of sex abuse is repugnant

A man, sexually assaulted in the 1970s at Melbourne’s Trinity Grammar School, recently received $500,000 in compensation. This prompted the elite private school to opt into the national redress scheme for victims of institutional child sex abuse.

At face value, Trinity, along with other institutions joining the national scheme, has put the interests of victims and survivors of institutional child sex crimes, above and beyond its own.

But, this disguises a much more disquieting reality.

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BEAVER (PA)
WPXI-TV

September 2, 2018

[VIDEO]

A victim of sexual abuse by a Catholic priest made an emotional return to church Sunday morning.

Johnny Hewko testified in front of the grand jury that he was sexually abused at his church in Beaver for years.

“We need to take our churches back,” Hewko said.

The allegations date back to the late 1970s, when Hewko was an altar boy at Saints Peter and Paul Roman Catholic Church.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

September 3, 2018

By Jay Tokasz

The Buffalo Diocese has tightened security inside its Main Street headquarters, as officials try to unravel how a television reporter obtained secret clergy files.

In the aftermath of a leak of internal emails, memos and letters showing how Bishop Richard J. Malone handled sexual misconduct and inappropriate behavior allegations against two priests, the diocese posted security guards at the doors to the headquarters, changed locks, set up a video camera and brought in a computer expert to install encryption software on email accounts and examine information systems for weaknesses that would enable security breaches, according to multiple sources connected to the diocese. Even priests who enter the building are required to wear an identification badge.

Multiple sources have told The News that the documents used in three separate WKBW-TV reports since Aug. 22 included information that normally would be seen only by Malone and his innermost circle of confidants.

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WACO (TX)
Deadspin

August 28, 2018

By Patrick Redford

According to a report from PR Week, Baylor officials placed a mole within several support groups for sexual assault survivors as a way to control their messaging and keep the university from looking bad.

Baylor currently faces a Title IX lawsuit from 10 anonymous former students for their alleged serial mishandling of sexual assault cases over the past decade, and Baylor football players have been accused of committing 52 rapes over four years. Per PR Week, the school attempted to curtail the voices of sexual assault survivors by embedding an insider (identified as Matt Burchett, director of student activities at Baylor) into survivor groups and getting them to soften their stances.

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GIPPSLAND (AUSTRALIA)
ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

September 3, 2018

By Bridget Rollason

An 80-year-old Catholic brother who sexually abused boys while he was principal of a Gippsland school during the 1970s will serve nine months in jail, after previously receiving suspended sentences for other similar assaults.

Marist Brother Gerard McNamara pleaded guilty in July to seven charges of indecent assault, which took place while he was in charge of St Paul’s Secondary School in Traralgon.

McNamara was in his 30s when he abused the boys, aged between 12 and 15 years old, while giving them “sport massages” in a sports shed at the school, away from the main buildings.

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SCRANTON (PA)
Associated Press

August 31, 2018

By Michael Rubinkam

A Roman Catholic bishop in Pennsylvania says he has barred one of his predecessors from representing the diocese in public, citing his failure to protect children from abusive priests.

Scranton Bishop Joseph Bambera made the announcement Friday.

Bambera says former Bishop James Timlin is permanently barred from representing the diocese “at all public events, liturgical or otherwise.” He’s also referred Timlin’s case to the Vatican for possible further action.

A Pennsylvania grand jury faulted Timlin for his handling of clergy sexual abuse. Timlin led the Scranton diocese for nearly two decades until 2003.

The grand jury found that statewide, some 300 priests abused more than 1,000 children since the 1940s, and church leaders covered it up.

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VATICAN CITY
Associated Press

September 3, 2018

By Frances D’Emilio

Pope Francis on Monday recommended silence and prayer to counter those who “only seek scandal,” division and destruction in what appeared to be an indirect response to allegations that he had covered up for a U.S. cardinal embroiled in sex abuse scandals.

Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a former papal envoy in Washington, stunned the faithful last month by claiming Francis allegedly lifted unconfirmed Vatican sanctions against disgraced U.S. prelate Theodore McCarrick and demanding that the pope resign.

“With people lacking good will, with people who only seek scandal, who seek only division, who seek only destruction, even within the family — silence, prayer” is the path to take, Francis said in his homily during morning Mass at the Vatican hotel where he lives.

Hours after Vigano made the claim in a statement given to conservative Catholic news media, Francis had told journalists seeking his response that he “won’t say a word” about the claims by the disgruntled former diplomat.

In his homily Monday, Francis indicated he takes his cue from God on whether to speak out or not about Vigano’s allegations.

“May the Lord give us the grace to discern when we should speak and when we should stay silent,” Francis said. “This applies to every part of life: to work, at home, in society.”

“Truth is meek, truth is silent, truth isn’t noisy,” the pope said in his Mass remarks.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

September 2, 2018

By Liz Navratil

Over the course of 70 years, allegations of rape and sexual abuse levied against clergy members who worked in the Pittsburgh Diocese led to several million dollars in settlements and other bills, according to a review of the grand jury report released earlier this month.

The report lists $5.8 million in payments covering lawsuits, counseling for victims, Catholic school tuition for victims’ children and, in at least two cases, “sustenance” payments for priests who had been convicted of indecent assault or corrupting minors. The document does not always clarify whether the payments were covered by the Diocese of Pittsburgh, insurance or other entities. In at least one instance, the money seems to stem from abuse that began before the priest transferred into the Pittsburgh Diocese and continued afterward.

That $5.8 million is almost certainly an undercount. The report lists payments stemming from the actions of 29 clergy members in the Pittsburgh Diocese, but for 10 of them, it did not specify the amount paid out.

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NEW YORK
The Riverdale Press

September 2, 2018

A recent grand jury report in Pennsylvania singling out dozens of priests embroiled in the Catholic Church’s ongoing child abuse scandal has once again brought this painful topic to the forefront of our conversations.

And it should. It’s so easy to overlook abuse victims, primarily because we see them more as anonymous silhouettes than actual people. That’s terrible, because they are people, and they simply want to live their lives without having what happened to them as kids hanging over them more than it already does.

In the renewed discussions, however, many have taken the position that the forced celibacy by the church is the root cause. But that’s silly. To say the root of child abuse is the absence of much-desired intimate contact ignores all other cases of child abuse outside of the church. Many accused and convicted of such atrocities have had rather active sex lives, and to suggest that abstinence is a needed component that leads to child abuse ignores other evidence that’s out there.

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WASHINGTON D.C.
News4.com (NBC affiliate in Washington D.C.)

September 2, 2018

By Derrick Ward and Matthew Stabley

A man scolded the archbishop of Washington in church Sunday morning before storming out as the archbishop asked parishioners to keep Pope Francis in their prayers.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl installed a new pastor at Annunciation Catholic Church Sunday. Wuerl is facing a storm of criticism and calls for his resignation after becoming entangled in sexual abuse scandals in the church he has served with distinction since 1966.

“We need to hold close in our prayers and our loyalty our Holy Father Pope Francis,” Wuerl said in church Sunday. “Increasingly it’s clear that he is the object of considerable animosity.”

“Shame on you!” Brian Garfield then shouted before leaving the church.

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NEW YORK
The Post-Journal (Jamestown NY)

September 2, 2018

By Derek Smith

In addition to the governor’s race, New Yorkers will vote for a new attorney general in November. Democrats will choose their general election candidates in the September primary. Chief among our concerns should be the degree to which the candidates intend to pursue sexual abuse crimes and cover-ups by the Catholic Church.

If we have learned anything from the recent revelations in Pennsylvania, where the AG Josh Shapiro identified roughly 1,000 victims of child abuse, it’s that we cannot expect these sickening abuses of power and corruption to appear without aggressive investigation. Clearly we cannot rely on the crooked power-brokers in the Catholic Church to speak up. Our local authorities’ response was severely disheartening. District Attorney Swanson’s concern for the matter was uninspiring, claiming that a joint investigation with the Erie County office would be “of interest.” Perhaps systematic church sanctioned pedophilia deserves a higher classification in DA’s offices than “of interest.”

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

September 2, 2018

By Peter Smith

As advocates for victims of sexual abuse call for a chance to file lawsuits over long-ago abuse, some Catholic bishops and their legislative allies are promoting an alternative that’s been used in other states — setting up a victim’s compensation fund, with payments determined by a neutral third party.

Pennsylvania’s Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati proposed the fund as an alternative to the idea of creating a window in the statute of limitations, which he contended would violate the state constitution.

Erie Bishop Lawrence Persico said he backs the idea of a fund, and the dioceses of Pittsburgh, Greensburg and Harrisburg all issued statements saying they were open to it.

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GEORGIA
Gainesville Times

September 2, 2018

By Megan Reed

Local church leaders join in enforcing zero tolerance stance on violators

In light of reports of abuse in the Catholic Church, Georgia’s attorney general issued a statement Friday encouraging churches to be transparent and hold abusers accountable.

Christopher Carr said in the statement that he is concerned about reports of abuse and how the church has been responding, and as a Roman Catholic himself, the issue is both professional and personal for him.

“It does not matter whether sexual abuse occurs in the context of human trafficking, by a friend or family member, a teacher or a coach, a public employee, or, as here, by a priest or church official. It must not — and will not— be tolerated,” Carr said.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Catholic News Agency via Crux

September 2, 2018

By Kevin J. Jones

Catholics who are demoralized, angered, or scandalized by revelations about sex abuse must feel free to talk to clergy and other Catholics, and other Catholics must reach out to them, a priest of the Diocese of Pittsburgh has said.

“I would invite those who are wavering to be open about their concerns – their anger, their frustration, their questions – so that someone can respond to them,” Father Nicholas Vaskov, executive director of communications for the Pittsburgh diocese, told CNA.

“I would also encourage them to stay close to God in prayer so that he can hear their calls to him and respond with his compassion and love.”

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DENVER (CO)
Archdiocese of Denver

By Samuel J. Aquila, S.T.L., Archbishop of Denver

August 13, 2018

At its root, this is a spiritual crisis that requires fidelity, reparation, and reliance on Christ for the grace and path to true, lasting freedom.

En Español

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

This past week I was on my annual silent retreat and the accusations against Archbishop McCarrick were a part of my prayer. Faithful have written to me and have asked questions about the situation. Some have felt that the Lord has abandoned the Church. Other bishops have spoken out on this tragedy, and today I offer to you, the faithful of the archdiocese and my brother priests and deacons, the following reflections.

As noted by Cardinal DiNardo, president of the U.S. bishops conference, the revelations about Archbishop McCarrick have caused both bishops and the laity “anger, sadness, and shame.” Personally, I am deeply sorry that both laity and clergy have had to experience this type of betrayal. In response, I am asking every priest in the archdiocese to offer a Mass each month in reparation for the sins committed by cardinals, bishops, priests and deacons, and for all sins committed by clergy and lay people against the commandments of our Lord, as well as to pray for healing for the victims of sin. This Mass is to be announced publicly so the lay faithful can attend and offer prayers in reparation for these grave sins that have wounded so many and for their own sins.

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BOULDER (CO)
The Daily Camera

September 2, 2018

Top leaders of the Catholic church have a lot to answer for following recent back-to-back miserable stories — first that Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, had resigned over allegations that he sexually abused minors and adult seminarians and, second, that according to a grand jury report more than 300 priests had sexually abused 1,000 children over seven decades in Pennsylvania.

Clergy offered apologies and expressed disgust. You would expect that. But many of them ventured to assign blame — not solely to the perpetrators and those who enabled them but also to homosexuality. This calumny against gay people brings shame upon a church already teetering under the weight of massive humiliation.

In a letter he wrote in response to McCarrick’s resignation, Samuel J. Aquila, the archbishop of Denver, said that an aspect of the sex abuse crisis was that “too many, both clergy and lay, have listened more to the world than to Christ and the Church when it comes to human sexuality,” and that the church must teach that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” He continued: “The sexual revolution occurring in our culture, which essentially says, ‘Anything goes if adults consent to it,’ is not the way of God and only leads to where we are today.”

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WASHINGTON D.C.
CNN

September 2, 2018

By Daniel Burke, Rosa Flores and Kevin Conlon

As the embattled Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, addressed the Catholic Church’s clergy sexual abuse scandal on Sunday, one Catholic yelled “Shame on you!” while another turned her back on Wuerl in protest.

Wuerl, who faces accusations that he mishandled clergy sexual misconduct while he was a bishop in Pittsburgh, addressed Washington’s Annunciation Catholic Church, where the cardinal was installing a new pastor. In a short speech after the Mass, Wuerl asked the 200 or so people in the congregation to forgive his “errors in judgment” and “inadequacies.”

Wuerl also urged the parish to pray for and remain loyal to Pope Francis, as “increasingly it is clear that he is the object of considerable animosity.”

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NEW JERSEY
InsiderNJ.com

August 30, 2018

Senator Joseph Vitale (D-Middlesex) issued the following statement on the recent grand jury report in Pennsylvania on clerical sexual abuse of minors.

In the wake of the release of a damning Pennsylvania grand jury report on six Catholic dioceses finding that 300 priests over more than 60 years sexually abused more than 1,000 minors and reporting that priests in New Jersey were involved in some of these crimes and allowed to continue in their ministries and have access to vulnerable children, I have requested a meeting with Newark Cardinal Joseph Tobin to review the cases with full transparency.

These disturbing revelations come on the heels of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, former archbishop of Newark and former bishop of Metuchen, being removed from ministry by the Vatican because of credible accusations of sexual misconduct.

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NEW JERSEY
Newark Star-Ledger

September 2, 2018

By Mark Crawford, Guest Columnist

In recent weeks you have most likely learned that one of the most prominent Catholic Church officials, then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, faces a credible and substantiated allegation of sexually abusing a minor. Since then, others have come forward disclosing how he used his position and authority to sexually abuse seminarians, priests and at least one other child.

To make matters worse, we learned that several bishops knew of settlements made decades earlier. Secrecy and silence prevailed at the highest levels within our church. At the very least, our local bishops knew and remained quiet as McCarrick — the former head of the Archdiocese of Newark and the Diocese of Metuchen — ascended to one of the highest positions within the church. He was allowed to craft the very document that was intended to stop child sexual abuse by clergy.

Then we learned that the monks of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Mary’s — which operates one of New Jersey’s most prestigious schools, Delbarton in Morristown — issued a letter to parents this summer acknowledging the presence of 13 monks and one lay teacher who had been accused of abusing children in their care over the past 30 years. It was a staggering admission, almost incomprehensible in scope.

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DALLAS (TX)
Dallas News

September 2, 2018

By David Tarrant and Julieta Chiquillo

The disgraced priest Edmundo Paredes disappeared from Dallas six months ago.

He left behind a mystery much deeper than where he is today.

Paredes leaves questions about who he truly was, what he did to the people he was supposed to serve and what harm he caused, not only to his alleged victims but to a Catholic diocese in Dallas already stained by a sexual abuse scandal stretching back more than two decades.

The fear now is that the questions will never be fully and publicly answered. Police are not investigating the sexual abuse allegations that surfaced this year against the longtime pastor of St. Cecilia Catholic Church in north Oak Cliff. Paredes’ accusers are not talking — not to police and not to the media, anyway.

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PHILADELPHIA
Associated Press via WBAL-TV

September 2, 2018

The archbishop of Philadelphia has asked Pope Francis to cancel a bishops’ conference focusing on youth in the wake of the child sex abuse crisis roiling the Catholic Church.

A spokesman for the archdiocese confirmed Saturday that Archbishop Charles Chaput made the request by letter, but he declined further comment, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

The Youth Synod, which would include bishops from around the world, has been planned for two years and its website says it is to be focused on “young people, the faith and vocational discernment.” An international panel of young people is expected to join the council of bishops for the event.

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LINCOLN (NE)
Associated Press via FoxNews.com

September 2, 2018

By Grant Schulte

For more than a decade, a conservative Catholic diocese in Nebraska was the only church in the U.S. that refused to participate in annual reviews of sexual misconduct that were a key reform enacted in the wake of the 2002 Boston clergy abuse scandal.

As a new wave of abuse scandals rock the Roman Catholic church, critics say the Diocese of Lincoln is now paying the price for its unwillingness to change and lack of transparency.

Accusers have been coming forward in recent weeks with allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct by clergy in Nebraska, and the diocese is facing a potential criminal investigation and criticism that it mishandled abusive priests even as it should have been subjected to increased scrutiny after the Boston scandal.

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FRANCE
The Tablet

August 30, 2018

By Tom Heneghan

A French priest and canon law judge has publicly urged Cardinal Philippe Barbarin to step down as the Archbishop of Lyon over the sexual abuse scandal, saying that Francis’ “Letter to the People of God” had inspired him to speak out.

Within a week of the open letter by Fr Pierre Vignon, a judge of the Lyon ecclesiastical court since 1993, a petition supporting his call, which two victims’ rights activists had launched, had gathered more than 90,000 signatures.

Asked about the petition, Church spokesman Mgr Olivier Ribadeau Dumas said that all Catholics should combat sexual abuse, not just the bishops.

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JERSEY CITY (NJ)
Jersey Journal

September 2, 108

By Corey W. McDonald

He lived in the church and celebrated Mass. Members at the Our Lady of Czestochowa Church knew of him, but many had never spoken to the Rev. Gerard Sudol, who last week stepped away from the parish after new allegations of decades-old sexual abuse surfaced.

Church members were informed of the allegations and that he would no longer be a part of the parish during last week’s Mass.

“But for the most part he didn’t really have all that much to do here,” said a parishioner who requested anonymity. “I can’t say I knew him incredibly well.”

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
Saucon Source

September 1, 2018

By Josh Popichak

A Catholic priest who was defrocked three years ago allegedly sexually abused a 14-year-old girl while he was employed at a Fountain Hill parish in the 1980s, according to victim testimony contained in the 1356-page grand jury report about Pennsylvania’s “predator priests” issued by Attorney General Josh Shapiro last month.

James Gaffney, who today is in his early 60s, was ordained a priest on June 8, 1985, and around the same time began working as Assistant Pastor at St. Ursula’s, which is in the Diocese of Allentown.

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MINNEAPOLIS (MN)
Minneapolis Star Tribune

September 1, 2018

Reports of sex abuse leave faithful seeking answers.

Ask Cindy and Craig Vana about the state of the Catholic Church and the longtime worshipers will say this: We need to know more about some of the recent headlines before we know what to think, we need to stay with our faith, we need to pray.

The couple have spent 49 years, the length of their marriage, as members of the Church of St. Charles Borromeo in St. Anthony, and they take pride in its mission, its community of some 1,500 families, and in the stunning renovation completed four years ago of the neighborhood church’s altar and worship space.

But like other Catholics in recent days, they’ve learned of a damning report out of Pennsylvania of clergy sex abuse, one that was quickly followed by an Archbishop’s allegation that, in yet another sex scandal, high-ranking Vatican officials, including Pope Francis, were long aware of the victimization of seminarian students.

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LIMERICK (IRELAND)
Limerick Leader

September 1, 2018

By Fintan Walsh

The bishop of Limerick has called on members of the Catholic Church who are “hiding some dark secret” to report abuse to State and Church authorities.

Speaking at the annual retreat of the Syro-Malabar community from India at the Limerick Racecourse this Saturday, Bishop Brendan Leahy also called on members of public and victims to report abuse.

This is the fourth time in a number of weeks the Limerick bishop has acknowledged the abuse caused by the Catholic Church. He delivered two speeches in the lead up to Pope Francis’ visit, and this is now the second statement he has released this week, reflecting on the pontiff’s historic visit.

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SANTIAGO (CHILE)
Agence France-Presse via ABS-CBN News

September 1, 2018

By Paulina Abramovich

Scores of new cases of priestly sexual abuse of minors have come to light in Chile, public prosecutors said Friday, deepening a crisis in the country’s Catholic Church that has embroiled Pope Francis.

The country’s chief prosecutor’s office said the number of cases it was investigating had soared to 119 as more victims came forward.

A total of 167 bishops, priests, and lay members of the church are now under investigation for sexual crimes committed in the South American country since 1960.

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UNITED STATES
The Boston Globe

September 2, 2018

Time’s up for Pope Francis and the leaders of the Catholic Church.

Catholics everywhere — and anyone who cares about children — should demand that our criminal justice system start treating the Roman Catholic Church for what many victims believe it is: an international criminal conspiracy to cover up the rape of what in the United States alone might amount to 100,000 children.

Every attorney general in the country should use their subpoena powers to force the church hierarchy to give up their long-held secrets of clerical crimes. Every state legislature should eliminate the statute of limitations on sexual crimes against children. In every state, clergy should be mandated reporters of alleged sexual abuse.

Send in the feds, too. As recommended by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), amend the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) to allow federal prosecutors to hold church leaders criminally responsible for their roles in covering up sex crimes against children.

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UNITED STATES
The Boston Globe

September 1, 2018

By Mark Arsenault

The devastating grand jury report on Catholic clergy sex abuse in Pennsylvania has sent fresh tremors through Catholic communities across the country and prompted calls for a broader reckoning for a church that has failed to move past the abuse scandal that exploded into view in Boston in the early 2000s.

In the two weeks since the landmark report revealed decades of alleged abuse, survivors of clergy sex abuse have urged attorneys general in every state to launch similar investigations, to compel cooperation with the power of the subpoena.

Amid a furor that reached the Vatican, where Pope Francis has been accused of covering up alleged sexual abuse by the former archbishop of Washington, prosecutors in a number of states, including Missouri, Illinois, and New York, have said they are beginning or exploring new investigations.

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ROME (ITALY)
The New York Times

September 1, 2018

By Laurie Goodstein and Jason Horowitz

At a gala dinner in the luxury Pierre Hotel in Manhattan in 2012, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, Pope Benedict’s top diplomat in the United States, bestowed an award for missionary service on Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and praised him as “very much loved from us all.”

But if Archbishop Viganò is to be believed, he was keeping a troubling secret — a claim that is at the heart of a new scandal that has thrown the church into upheaval and led some conservatives to call for Pope Francis to resign.

The archbishop now says he was aware at the time of the gala that Cardinal McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, was under orders from Pope Benedict XVI to stop appearing in public on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church because he had sexually abused adult seminary students.

Archbishop Viganò did not explain why he agreed to publicly laud a cardinal under sanctions. But LifeSiteNews — a website run by conservative Catholics — quoted the archbishop on Friday as saying that he could not back out of the even

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MINNEAPOLIS
Business Wire – a company that disseminates full-text press releases

August 31, 2018

When a Duluth jury sided with a Catholic priest’s argument that he was entitled to receive damages after a former student at a Catholic high school falsely accused him of inappropriate sexual contact in the mid-1970s, it certainly broke with recent legal trends – and may have set a precedent, according to Mic Puklich, a partner at the Chanhassen, Minn.-based Neaton & Puklich law firm.

“A priest going on the offensive to clear his name from being falsely accused of sexual abuse – and winning in court. Now that’s rare, if not unprecedented,” says Mic Puklich, the Chanhassen, Minn. lawyer who represented the Rev. William Graham in the civil lawsuit he filed against his accuser. The jury delivered its verdict the evening of Thursday, Aug. 23 (Minnesota Sixth District Court, case file number 69-DU-CV-16-1636).

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GREENE COUNTY (PA)
The Herald-Standard [Greene County PA]

August 31, 2018

Three priests in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, including one serving in Greene County, were placed on administrative leave after allegations of sexual abuse of a minor were lodged against them.

The Rev. John Bauer, 71, was accused of sexual abuse of a minor in the 1980s, according to a release issued by Bishop David Zubik.

Officials said the allegation was received on Thursday, and noted that Bauer — and the other priests who have been removed — have denied wrongdoing.

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BEAVER COUNTY (PA)
The Times [Beaver County PA]

August 31, 2018

By Daveen Rae Kurutz

The Diocese of Pittsburgh has placed a retired priest who served at an Ambridge parish for nearly four years in the 1990s on administrative leave after a new allegation of sexual abuse was reported.

Diocesan officials announced Friday that three priests were placed on administrative leave following allegations of sexual abuse of a minor were received.

The Rev. John Bauer, 71, was serving in team ministry at several Greene County parishes before the diocese received a report of sexual abuse on Aug. 30. Officials said Bauer was accused of sexually abusing a minor in the early 1980s. Bauer was pastor at Good Samaritan Parish in Ambridge from June 1994 until February 1998 before taking an 11-month leave of absence.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

August 23, 2018

By Naka Nathaniel

Catholics should not keep on filling the pews every Sunday. It is wrong to support the church.

Atlanta – Last Sunday, I did something that no properly raised Catholic ever does. I stood up in the middle of Mass and called out the priest.

As the priest began his homily, I drew my 9-year-old son closer and asked him to pay close attention. Days before, a Pennsylvania grand jury had released a damning report detailing decades of horrific child sex abuse by clergymen and a church culture that covered it up.

The priest addressed the report. He said he was surprised that people showed up for that day’s service. He said the church had to change. Then he began to move on.

I couldn’t help myself. I stood up and yelled out: “Father!” He turned. I asked him, simply: “How?”

He responded that I should write to the nuncio, the pope’s representative in the United States. I told him that this was a bureaucratic answer.

Standing in front of the congregation, I pointed to my son and asked how could I ever let him make his first Communion.

As the priest answered, I became aware of the other families around me. I knew so many of them, and I was reminded of how I had always felt so at home at Mass. It always gave me such pride when my family would take up most of a pew in church.

Now I’m angry. I feel betrayed.

Susan Reynolds, a Catholic theologian from nearby Emory University, witnessed the exchange. She tweeted about it, and her recounting went viral.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

September 1, 2018

By Lisa Tarchak

Readers respond to a dad’s plea for members of the faith to demand the resignation of the entire clergy, including the pope.

A few weekends ago, Naka Nathaniel stood up during a Mass in Atlanta and confronted his priest about the Roman Catholic Church’s response to the Pennsylvania sexual abuse cover-up. In an Op-Ed essay last week, Mr. Nathaniel wrote about balancing his already complex relationship with Catholicism with his role as a father raising a 9-year-old son in the Catholic faith. He concluded that the church can no longer be reformed from within. “I’m mad at the church administration,” he wrote. But, he added, “I’m also angry at the congregation. I’m upset with the people who aren’t demanding that every member of the clergy resign.”

We published more than 900 responses to the essay, many raising the same issues as Mr. Nathaniel. A selection of comments, edited for length and clarity, is below.

Abusing the trust of the faithful

I long ago left the Catholic Church and I never felt the same level of comfort and pride that the author described in his relationship with Catholicism. Yet I was very moved by his obvious love for his church and all that it meant to him growing up. So I find myself even more angry and disgusted with the church, not only for the horrendous abuse of children with all the attendant psychological damage but also the significant trauma to believers who were not physically abused. A source of comfort to many has been forever sullied and it is hard to believe that the Catholic Church can be redeemed. Shame on the church for abusing children and shame on the church for abusing the trust of the faithful and destroying all that they held dear in their faith. — Judith C. McGovern, West Haven

Not all priests should be tarred by the same brush

“I’m upset with the people who aren’t demanding that every member of the clergy resign.” Really? And should they all resign, en masse, who will raise their hand to minister to the poor, the suffering? Who will devote their whole lives to this cause, as Catholic priests (and nuns) have done? Because there are more than 35,000 priests in this country alone, and the overwhelming majority are not criminals. I, too, am angry and disgusted by this horrific behavior, including the abhorrent moral transgression of the cover-up by officials. But I am asking that not all priests be tarred by the same brush. — Ed, Charlottesville, Va.

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YORK (PA)
York Daily Record

August 27, 2018

By Teresa Boeckel

As the Roman Catholic Church grapples with the recent Pennsylvania grand jury report detailing widespread clergy sexual abuse, it faces a critical question: What can be done to protect children?

The Diocese of Harrisburg has detailed a lengthy list of steps it’s taking, such as:

– Reporting every allegation of child sexual abuse to law enforcement for investigation
– Conducting multiple background checks on all employees and volunteers
– Teaching students how to stay safe through age-appropriate child abuse awareness programs.

It’s part of the Youth Protection Program, which is built upon the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Charter for the Protection of Youth and Young People. That charter was developed in 2002 to address child sexual abuse and prevention.

The Harrisburg diocese underwent an intensive, on-site audit last year as part of a nationwide audit, said Joseph Aponick, director of communications for the diocese. The independent agency found it to be in compliance.

Some experts, however, say that more needs to be done to address the problem. More oversight is needed, and lay people need to take a more active role in the church.

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

August 28, 2018

By Brian MacQuarrie

Weston – Jolted by the latest sexual abuse storm to hit the Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley addressed nearly 300 archdiocesan priests Tuesday in an emotional, closed-door meeting that left some grim-faced clerics shaking their heads as they left.

“It’s a sad day,” said one elderly priest, hurrying to his car after the meeting and waving off questions from a reporter.

The 90-minute meeting at St. Julia’s parish center followed a recent, explosive allegation from a top Vatican diplomat who, in a striking personal attack, said Pope Francis covered up reports of abuse and harassment of seminarians against Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington who resigned from the College of Cardinals last month.

O’Malley “encouraged us to be heroes” during this difficult time, said the Rev. Paul Soper, the cardinal’s secretary for evangelization, and to be mindful that the new developments “are tearing open the wounds of the survivors” of sexual abuse.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Inquirer

August 26, 2018

By Ronnie Polaneczky

Dear grand jury members,

Thank you for your 24-month investigation into childhood sex abuse by Catholic priests and the cover-up that perpetuated it for decades.

You must feel drained. But we still need you.

Please convene one more time to investigate why Pennsylvania legislators keep blocking bills that would give all victims of childhood sex abuse a shot at justice.

The actions of some politicians are as chilling as those of the bishops and lawyers who protected the Church’s assets instead of its children’s innocence.

They’re not trustworthy leaders. They’re co-conspirators in an obstruction of justice.

We need you to name names. To connect the dots between legislators and certain lobbyists who infest the state Capitol. To rake through emails, reconcile bank records, and tally campaign donations.

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LINCOLN (NE)
Lincoln Journal Star

August 24, 2018

By Margaret Reist

https://journalstar.com/news/local/education/letter-to-pius-x-families-prompted-by-church-abuse-allegations/article_397ab5c0-168e-5164-b9d3-e467bea18758.html

An email sent to Pius X High School parents outlining school safety procedures in light of an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse within the Catholic Diocese of Lincoln caused a small controversy of its own.

An email sent to Pius X parents Aug. 17 appeared to suggest that parents should report abuse claims to police or the child abuse hotline if they happen outside the school, but to church officials if it involves diocesan officials.

But Principal Tom Korta said that’s the opposite of what he meant to communicate, and after several parents questioned that portion of the email, he sent a clarification to families Tuesday.

He intended to urge parents to report all suspected abuse, regardless of where it occurred, he said.

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
The Morning Call

August 27, 2018

By Bill White

“Love Story” was a sappy movie, based on a sappy book, starring two bad actors.

Worse, it spawned a terrible catch phrase: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”

I think in love and everything else, we should take responsibility for our actions, including those that warrant apologies.

Unfortunately, we’ve seen too many examples of people and institutions that won’t take genuine responsibility for their bad behavior.

For example, I routinely find myself wanting to give advice to former Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski, who blamed everyone but himself for corruption at City Hall — and continues to do it, even after his conviction on 47 of 54 counts in his federal corruption trial.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Daily Southtown / Chicago Tribune

August 21, 2018

By Ted Slowik

A defensive mindset known as “protect the house” often seems to take hold when an institution feels threatened.

Last week’s release of a Pennsylvania grand jury report helps show that no institution went to greater lengths to protect the house than the Roman Catholic Church in that state.

“The main thing was not to help children, but to avoid ‘scandal,’” the grand jurors wrote. “It’s like a playbook for concealing the truth.”

In the 16 years since The Boston Globe and other newspapers exposed the Catholic Church’s appalling cover-up of sex crimes committed against children, other institutions have faced criticism for protecting the house.

In 2012, former FBI Director Louis Freeh released a report that found former leaders of Penn State University showed “total and consistent disregard” for child sex abuse victims and tried to cover up assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky’s sexual abuse of young boys.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

August 27, 2018

By Patrick M. O’Connell

Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich said Monday he was puzzled to be named in a scathing letter written by a former top Vatican diplomat who accused Pope Francis of covering up the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandals.

Carlo Maria Vigano, the retired Vatican ambassador to the United States, mentioned Cupich by name several times in the caustic 11-page letter released over the weekend in which he called on the pope to resign.

Vigano’s letter hinted at “a wicked pact” in alleging Cupich secured his appointment as Chicago’s archbishop in large part because of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington who resigned last month amid sexual abuse allegations. The letter was released to the National Catholic Register and other outlets, and posted online.

Cupich granted a brief interview at the archdiocese’s offices Monday, one of about a dozen he conducted in response to the letter. Asked if he believed Vigano was taking a shot at his credentials and qualifications, Cupich said he had a long record of accomplishments before he came to Chicago: “Let’s be honest. I’m not somebody who fell out of the sky.”

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BALTIMORE (MD)
Baltimore Sun

August 24, 2018

By Jean Marbella

The Pennsylvania grand jury report on child sex abuse in the Catholic Church implicated the former archbishop of Baltimore for covering up the abuse. It’s not the first time the city has dealt with scandals within the Catholic Church. Here’s a timeline of major incidents:

June 1995: John Merzbacher, a former teacher, is convicted of rape and child sex abuse of a student at Catholic Community Middle School in Locust Point in the 1970s. More than 100 other charges of 13 other former students were dropped after a judge sentenced Merzbacher to four consecutive life terms.

April 2002: A man tells the Archdiocese that he had been sexually abused by a former priest, Michael Spillane, in 1968. Spillane had admitted in 1992 that he had abused six boys, and had been stripped of his priestly faculties. A victim who had reported his abuse to the Archdiocese in 1991 told The Sun he had been an altar boy at a church in Ellicott City when Spillane began abusing him, and it continued when the priest became pastor of a church in Crofton.

September 2002: As multiple dioceses dealt with revelations of clergy sex abuse in their churches and schools, Cardinal William H. Keeler releases a list of dozens of priests and brothers who have been accused of sexual abuse over the years. He also discloses that the archdiocese had paid settlements to eight victims totaling $4.1 million in the past 20 years. (The church has since paid out even more.)

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

August 28, 2018

By Emily Cochrane and Amy Harmon

Washington – As the Archdiocese of Washington celebrated the opening of school with a special Mass on Tuesday, a group of teachers instead marked the occasion by calling for the removal of the capital’s embattled archbishop, Cardinal Donald Wuerl.

The cardinal is among several American Catholic leaders implicated in the growing sex abuse scandal enveloping the church. This month, Cardinal Wuerl’s name appeared in a Pennsylvania grand jury report, which cited cases when the cardinal, then the bishop of Pittsburgh, allowed abusive priests back into the ministry. Then over the weekend, Cardinal Wuerl was accused by a former Vatican diplomat of knowing about the sexual misconduct of his predecessor in the Washington diocese, Theodore E. McCarrick.

A statement that garnered about 50 signatures from Washington diocese teachers announced that they were boycotting the Mass on Tuesday, held at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, as “an act of solidarity against the injustices condoned by Cardinal Wuerl and the greater hierarchy of the Church.” They held a brief prayer service themselves outside the basilica to pray for the survivors and victims.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

August 18, 2018

By Patricia McCormick

The power of seeing one priest’s name on a list.

When I saw the name of the priest who molested me listed in the Pennsylvania grand jury’s report, I thought: I’m gonna be in big trouble. The abuse started when I was about 12 years old, so it’s not a surprise that the language that came to mind was straight out of that period of my life.

I scanned through the nearly 900 pages of the report that was released by the attorney general last week. It detailed abuse in six dioceses over 70 years, listing more than 300 abusive priests. The accounts were horrifying — young victims were given gold cross necklaces to signal to other predators that they were ‘optimal targets’ — and the documentation of what happened is surely a good thing.

But what stunned me was my second reaction: a perplexing disappointment that I still don’t know whether I was his only victim. Of course, I didn’t want others to have experienced what I did. But I did want some confirmation that his behavior was part of a pattern.

In the 1960s, Catholic priests were a special class of bachelors, fed pot roast dinners by a bucket brigade of parish women, so when Father Bradel came to our house in central Pennsylvania for the first of many regular visits, my mother got out the good china.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

August 27, 2018

By Elizabeth Dias and Laurie Goodstein

Washington – In a remarkable break from the usual decorum among the bishops, American Catholic leaders are in open conflict over the explosive allegations from a former Vatican diplomat that Pope Francis knew about, and ignored, accusations of sexual abuse against a now-disgraced American cleric.

Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, a Pope Francis appointee, said that the pope’s opponents were using the accusations by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò to advance a larger agenda.

“I do think it’s about limiting the days of this pope, and short of that, neutering his voice or casting ambiguity around him,” Cardinal Tobin said in a phone interview on Monday. “And it’s part of a larger upheaval both within and without the church.”

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

August 27, 2018

By Elizabeth Dias

As attorney general of Pennsylvania, Mr. Shapiro rooted out sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, prompting international calls for reform. Now, he talks about the anti-Semitism he faced, how the report shaped his own spirituality, and the possibility of a federal investigation.

Josh Shapiro had no idea about the secret grand jury investigation that was waiting on his desk when he was sworn in as attorney general of Pennsylvania last year.

But he pushed the nascent inquiry forward with the “full force” of his office, and this month that investigation — into the Catholic Church’s cover-up of sexual abuse of more than 1,000 children over decades — was finally revealed in a bombshell report, prompting outrage, anger and international calls for legal and spiritual reform.

“It just was the most purposeful thing, short of giving life to our four children, I’ve ever done in my life,” Mr. Shapiro said in a phone interview.

His investigation into Catholic clergy sexual abuse has certainly garnered the most public attention, but even before it Mr. Shapiro’s broader national profile had been rising. Just two weeks after he was sworn into office, he and other attorneys general fought President Trump’s first travel ban. In December, he got an injunction to halt Mr. Trump’s birth control rollback. Last month, he sued to stop Pennsylvanians from being able to download plans to print 3D guns.

Mr. Shapiro talked with The New York Times about the blockbuster report, the possibility of a federal grand jury investigation, how this case has influenced his own spirituality, and his political ambitions.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

August 26, 2018

By Jason Horowitz

Dublin – On the final day of Pope Francis’ mission to Ireland, as he issued wrenching apologies for clerical sex abuse scandals, a former top Vatican diplomat claimed in a letter published on Sunday that the pope himself had joined top Vatican officials in covering up the abuses and called for his resignation.

The letter, a bombshell written by Carlo Maria Viganò, the former top Vatican diplomat in the United States and a staunch critic of the pope’s, seemed timed to do more than simply derail Francis’ uphill efforts to win back the Irish faithful, who have turned away from the church in large numbers.

Its unsubstantiated allegations and personal attacks amounted to an extraordinary public declaration of war against Francis’ papacy at perhaps its most vulnerable moment, intended to unseat a pope whose predecessor, Benedict XVI, was the first pontiff to resign in nearly 600 years.

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NEW YORK (NY)
America Magazine

August 24, 2018

By Michael J. O’Loughlin

Bishop Richard J. Malone, a former auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Boston under Cardinal Bernard Law who now leads the Diocese of Buffalo, is facing accusations that he mishandled cases of sexual misconduct by priests in his diocese. According to reports published this week by the ABC affiliate WKBW, Bishop Malone returned to ministry a priest whose behavior at a Catholic high school raised the suspicion of parents and administrators. In another case, the bishop is accused of not taking seriously claims by young men that they had been subjected to unwanted sexual advances by another priest.

The reports come as the Diocese of Buffalo faces criticism that it has mishandled allegations of sexual misconduct by priests and as it weathers calls for an independent investigation into its practices. The diocese did not respond to requests for comment on the reports.

In March, it released a list of 42 priests who were credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors over decades, and it launched a financial settlement program for victims of abuse. Since then, about three dozen more priests have been accused of sexual misconduct, including some alleged to have abused or harassed adults.

On Aug. 22, Erie County District Attorney John J. Flynn confirmed that his office was consulting with New York’s attorney general about possibly conducting an investigation into how the Diocese of Buffalo has handled allegations of sexual abuse. New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood said last week that her office is open to an investigation.

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VERONA (NJ)
Insider NJ

August 30, 2018

By Senator Joseph Vitale

https://www.insidernj.com/press-release/senator-vitale-calls-attorney-general-grewal-empanel-grand-jury-investigate-sexual-misconduct-catholic-dioceses-new-jersey/

Senator Joseph Vitale (D-Middlesex) issued the following statement on the recent grand jury report in Pennsylvania on clerical sexual abuse of minors.

In the wake of the release of a damning Pennsylvania grand jury report on six Catholic dioceses finding that 300 priests over more than 60 years sexually abused more than 1,000 minors and reporting that priests in New Jersey were involved in some of these crimes and allowed to continue in their ministries and have access to vulnerable children, I have requested a meeting with Newark Cardinal Joseph Tobin to review the cases with full transparency.

These disturbing revelations come on the heels of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, former archbishop of Newark and former bishop of Metuchen, being removed from ministry by the Vatican because of credible accusations of sexual misconduct.

Today, I am also calling on state Attorney General Gurbir Grewal to empanel a grand jury, as was done in Pennsylvania, to confirm whether the generations of hidden sexual abuse uncovered in that state also occurred here. Given the wide scope of abuse found in Pennsylvania and the Vatican’s action against McCarrick, we must investigate now. Victims should not have to wait any longer for accountability and for justice. In addition, I ask that the Attorney General immediately set up a clergy abuse hotline where victims can safely and privately report abuse. This will help inform the Attorney General’s investigation and make sure victims know they are being heard in the short term.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

August 31, 2018

By Yadira Sanchez

http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/lake-county-news-sun/news/ct-lns-church-abuse-novea-prayers-mundelein-seminary-st-0901-story.html

In response to a Pennsylvania grand jury report last month that alleges decades of child sexual abuse by priests, Mundelein Seminary at the University of Saint Mary of the Lake officials announced Friday they will launch a nine-day novena prayer session at churches across the Chicago area, including in Mundelein and Waukegan.

Seminary officials released a statement listing dates between Sept. 7 and 15 for an initiative called the Novena for the Healing of Our Church “to unite Catholics in prayer and healing, justice and hope, in light of the ongoing crisis within the Catholic Church.”

Following the Pennsylvania jury report released in August, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said she wants to meet with local Catholic church leaders to ensure “a complete and accurate accounting” of the alleged child sex abuse by at least seven of the 300 Roman Catholic priests named in the report who have local ties to Illinois.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

August 28, 2018

By Jason Horowitz

Leer en español

Rome – At 9:30 a.m. last Wednesday, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò showed up at the Rome apartment of a conservative Vatican reporter with a simple clerical collar, a Rocky Mountains baseball cap and an explosive story to tell.

Archbishop Viganò, the former chief Vatican diplomat in the United States, spent the morning working shoulder to shoulder with the reporter at his dining room table on a 7,000-word letter that called for the resignation of Pope Francis, accusing him of covering up sexual abuse and giving comfort to a “homosexual current” in the Vatican.

The journalist, Marco Tosatti, said he had smoothed out the narrative. The enraged archbishop brought no evidence, he said, but he did supply the flair, condemning the homosexual networks inside the church that act “with the power of octopus tentacles” to “strangle innocent victims and priestly vocations.”

“The poetry is all his,” Mr. Tosatti said.

When the letter was finished, Archbishop Viganò took his leave, turning off his cellphone. Keeping his destination a secret because he was “worried for his own security,” Mr. Tosatti said, the archbishop then simply “disappeared.”

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

August 28, 2018

By Philip Pullella

Supporters of Pope Francis have rushed to his defense after a former top Vatican official launched an unprecedented attack on him, a move they say dangerously escalates a campaign to weaken his papacy by conservatives who condemn him as too liberal.

Francis’ supporters say the accusations in Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano’s 11-page public statement aim to pave the way for a conservative pope to succeed him who would reverse his openings to divorced and homosexual Catholics.

In the statement published at the weekend, Vigano, the former Vatican ambassador to Washington, called on Francis to resign on the grounds the pope knew for years about the sexual misconduct of an American cardinal and did nothing.

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DENVER (CO)
Crux

August 27, 2018

By John L. Allen Jr.

Dublin – As Pope Francis wrapped up a 32-hour visit to Ireland on Sunday, the cold, windy and rainy weather undoubtedly put a damper on turnout. Officials had expected around a half-million people to flock to Dublin’s Phoenix Park for the concluding Mass, for instance, but in the end the Vatican said 300,000 people turned out.

Yet as it turns out, the meteorological storms Francis faced paled in comparison to the metaphorical ones breaking on Sunday, in part related to his overall handling of the clerical sexual abuse crisis, but more specifically to an astonishing claim by a former papal ambassador in the U.S. that Francis had lifted restrictions imposed on Cardinal Theodore McCarrick under Pope emeritus Benedict XVI, despite being informed of misconduct concerns against McCarrick in June 2013.

Aboard the papal plane on Sunday, Francis basically challenged reporters to judge those accusations for themselves – the clear suggestion being that if they did so, the charges would crumble under their own weight.

Assuming journalists take the pontiff up on his offer, so far we have only the word of that former ambassador, Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, that he personally informed Francis on June 23, 2013, of the sanctions imposed on McCarrick by Benedict.

Over and over again on Sunday, I was pressed by colleagues and ordinary folk alike for an answer to one burning question: “How seriously should we take this?”

Here’s my bottom line response: Take it seriously, but with a large grain of salt.

One certainly can’t dismiss the charge out of hand, if for no other reason than never before has a former papal ambassador accused a sitting pope of complicity in what would amount, if true, to a criminal cover-up.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
Financial Times

August 31, 2018

By David Gardner and Hannah Roberts

Some call it a Catholic civil war, others a culture war. But, clerical decorum very much to one side, war it is.

Pope Francis, the Argentine prelate whose ascent to the chair of St Peter five years ago has given new life to the Roman Catholic Church, is facing a bitter backlash against his progressive papacy — amid a humbling crisis he has struggled to resolve over the sexual abuse of children by predator priests.

Conservatives have regrouped to fight Pope Francis’s relaxation of old doctrinal anathemas, which he sees as vital to the spiritual renewal of a two-millennia-old institution serving a notional 1.2bn Catholics around the world. Shortly after taking over from Pope Benedict XVI — who took the almost unheard of step of resigning in circumstances the Vatican has never explained — he said the Church had to find “a new balance” or it would collapse “like a house of cards”.

But now traditionalists are trying to stymie Francis’s reforms — and seek to weaponise outrage over clerical cover-ups of the rape of children to bring the pope down. As Francis’s supporters rally to defend him, the Church is being bespattered with scandal.

This new descent into the mud began last Sunday. Francis had just ended a 36-hour visit to Ireland, overshadowed by years of revelations of clerical sexual abuse the Vatican covered up and has failed to redress. The pope met with abuse victims and repeatedly expressed shame and contrition — to a shrunken turnout of the faithful that was a shadow of the vast crowds that greeted Pope John Paul II in 1979. A bombshell greeted Francis on his way home.

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ATLANTA (GA)
CNN

August 30, 2018

By Daniel Burke

Washington DC – Survivors of clergy sex abuse stood in front of the Vatican embassy in Washington on Thursday and urged two higher powers — the Pope and the US Department of Justice — to take concrete steps to prevent more abuses and hold abusers accountable.

“They have plenty of evidence,” said Peter Isely, spokesman for the group Ending Clergy Abuse. “Let’s launch this investigation. Let’s do it now.”

The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and Center for Constitutional Rights have also sent a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein demanding an “investigation and prosecution of high-level officials in the Catholic Church” for sexual crimes and cover-ups.

“It is long past time for the US Department of Justice to initiate a full-scale, nationwide investigation into the systemic rape and sexual violence, and cover-ups in the Catholic Church, and, where appropriate, bring criminal and/or civil proceedings against the hierarchy that enabled the violations,” the groups said in the letter.

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WOODLAND PARK (NJ)
The Record / NorthJersy.com

August 31, 2018

By Mike Kelly

In these days when we are learning about all manner of shocking secrets within the Catholic Church, here is one from Newark’s Cardinal Joseph Tobin.

When Tobin arrived in Newark nearly two years ago to lead the city’s sprawling Catholic archdiocese — one of America’s largest with roughly 1.3 million parishioners — no one bothered to tell him that church lawyers had secretly arranged to pay $180,000 to settle two claims of sexual abuse against one of his predecessors, Theodore McCarrick.

Tobin said he learned of the settlements just before they were revealed in media reports in June.

“It’s embarrassing,” Tobin told me in a phone interview the other day. “I was really shocked.”

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

August 30, 2018

By Peter Feuerherd

At event, Cardinal Tobin says he was previously unaware of allegations against McCarrick

Newark NJ – On the day after it was announced that his alleged assailant was relieved of parish duties, Fr. Desmond Rossi led an Aug. 29 prayer demonstration in front of the Sacred Heart Basilica Cathedral here, calling upon the church to reform in the aftermath of the sex abuse crisis.

Among the dozen or so attendees was Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, who told the group, “We have to smash the structures and culture that make abuse [in the church] possible.”

Rossi, a priest of the Diocese of Albany, New York, returned to the Newark Archdiocese to call for an overhaul of how the church deals with sex abuse. Last month he announced that he was sexually assaulted by two fellow seminarians in 1988 while serving in the archdiocese.

One of his alleged assailants is deceased; the other, Fr. James Weiner, was to be installed in September as pastor of St. Andrew Parish in Westwood, New Jersey, where he has been serving as administrator for the past eight months. While an archdiocesan review board concluded that the charges were credible but unsubstantiated, Tobin agreed to reopen the case and Weiner was relieved of his duties.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

August 29, 2018

By Steve Lopez

Former Catholic priest Richard Sipe, who died in La Jolla this month, was a vocal critic of clergy sexual abuse and subsequent cover-ups by the religious institution. (Nelvin C. Cepeda/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)

All through the Catholic Church molestation scandals that rocked Los Angeles and Orange Counties, I checked in regularly with an ex-priest named Richard Sipe.

From his home in La Jolla, Sipe would offer me scholarly breakdowns on what was happening in California and the rest of the world — on how an institution whose cross stands as a moral compass could harm children, scar them for life and dismiss their suffering in the interest of self-preservation.

Sipe would throw a light on that dark culture of hypocrisy, abuse and cover-ups, and tell me it extended all the way to Rome. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles run by Cardinal Roger Mahony was one of the worst examples of the church’s failings, in his opinion.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Tribune-Review

August 30, 2018

By Stephen Huba

Former and current parishioners of the Rev. Joseph E. Bonafed came to his defense Thursday, saying the public airing of sexual abuse allegations against him a day earlier amounted to a rush to judgment.

“This one I find really hard to believe,” said Chris DeCarlo-Parrendo of Murrysville. “This is just outrageous. He’s loved by so many.”

DeCarlo-Parrendo and her husband, John Parrendo, 57, are parishioners at St. Mary, Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Export, where Bonafed was pastor from 2012-17.

Although she is a lector at St. Mary, DeCarlo-Parrendo and her husband regularly attend St. Edward Parish in Herminie to hear Bonafed preach. Bonafed was assigned to St. Edward and Holy Family Parish, West Newton, in July 2017.

“Never, at any point, have I ever gotten the feeling that he was anything other than a holy priest,” she said.

Bonafed was removed from both pastoral assignments Wednesday, a day after the Diocese of Greensburg received a “credible allegation” against him. The diocese would only say that the allegation involved sexual abuse of a minor 28 years ago.

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YORK (PA)
York Daily Record

August 31, 2018

By Brandie Kessler

When Nancy Worley closed on a house on a rural road in Adams County, Pennsylvania, on Friday, July 13, she hoped she’d be able to renovate and get it on the market to rent in a matter of months.

A mother to three sons, Worley wanted to create a home suitable for a family, a place where her future tenants could live comfortably and peacefully.

That was a month before a Pennsylvania grand jury report into allegations of child sexual abuse in six Catholic dioceses would name one of Worley’s neighbors among the 301 priests accused of abuse.

But even two weeks after that priest’s name was published as part of the report, Worley still had no idea he lived across the street from her new property in Conewago Township, a rural area not far from Hanover and Gettysburg.

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SHARON (PA)
The Herald

August 31, 2018

By Melissa Klaric

Erie – After Pennsylvania Senate President Pro Temp Joe Scarnati’s recent call for compensation for victims of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, the Erie diocese is responding.

Bishop Lawrence Persico stated in a press release Thursday that he and the diocese have decided to set up a fund to compensate victims whose options for justice have been thwarted by the statute of limitations. He also calls for changes to how sex abuse cases are handled in the future.

The announcement comes in the wake of the 40th statewide grand jury report detailing widespread child sexual abuse by “predator priests” from the dioceses of Erie, Greensburg, Scranton, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg and Allentown.

But representatives of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), say the diocese’s proposal is not good enough. There should be punishments for the crimes committed in, and later, covered up by, the Catholic Church.

“The real message of Bishop Persico only deters public action,” said Judy Jones, Midwest regional leader of SNAP. “He maintained the cover-up for years and perpetuates the practice of cover-ups of previous bishops in Erie.”

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MECHANICSVILLE (PA)
PennLive

August 31, 2018

By Ron Southwick

While some lawmakers and Catholic dioceses have expressed support for creating a reparations fund for victims of clergy sex abuse, Gov. Tom Wolf contends that isn’t the best solution.

The governor said Friday that the Legislature should support the recommendations of the grand jury that investigated clergy sex abuse in six Catholic dioceses. The grand jury recommends abolishing the statute of limitations for child sex abuse cases and creating a window for victims to pursue lawsuits in civil court.

“The reforms laid out in the Grand Jury report would deliver what victims deserve,” Wolf said in a statement Friday. “In my view, a limited victims fund outside the judicial system would not.”

“The Church, as a moral authority with a long and important record of social justice, should agree,” Wolf continued. “We cannot shortchange these victims and we must set an example for the country – and the world – that Pennsylvania stands with victims.”

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SALT LAKE CITY (UT)
Salt Lake City Tribune

August 31, 2018

By Scott D. Pierce
·
The Ogden Police Department has opened an investigation after receiving a report alleging “nonspecific abuse” by a Catholic priest who was serving as pastor of St. Peter Parish in American Fork until he was placed on administrative leave.

Father David R. Gaeta served in Ogden between 1980 and 1985. He returned to Utah in 2017 and was serving as pastor at St. Peter Parish in American Fork until his administrative leave began on Aug. 24.

On Aug. 28, the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City’s Office of Safe Environment reported to Ogden police “that an adult male reported unspecific allegations of abuse” that occurred in 1981 or 1982 at St. Joseph’s Catholic High School in Ogden, said Lt. Tim Scott.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Kansas City Star

August 31, 2018

By Judy L. Thomas

Saying “transparency is imperative,” the leader of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas told area Catholics on Friday that an independent investigation into priest sex abuse is now underway.

“To ensure that we have an accurate historical knowledge of how the archdiocese has responded to allegations of misconduct, I have decided to engage an independent law firm with the expertise and staff to conduct a review of our priest personnel files going back to 1950,” Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann said in a lengthy column published Friday in The Leaven, the archdiocesan newspaper.

“Transparency is imperative with any substantiated allegations of sexual misconduct by any church leader, regardless if the victim is a minor or an adult.“

The archbishop’s announcement drew sharp criticism from survivors of priest sex abuse.

“The whole idea of an independent law firm investigation is problematic,” said Rebecca Randles, a Kansas City attorney who has represented hundreds of clergy sex abuse victims. “When push comes to shove, their client is the archdiocese.”

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KANSAS CITY (KS)
The Leaven (newspaper of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas)

August 31, 2018

By Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann

Recent weeks have been painful for all who love the church and our Catholic faith.

Catholics in the United States were rocked by the Aug. 14 Pennsylvania grand jury report revealing over a 70-year period that 300 priests in six Pennsylvania dioceses had been accused of sexual abuse of more than a thousand children or adolescents. The accounts of what the victims endured are gut-wrenching and, frankly, depict despicable crimes perpetrated by those who were called to be protectors of God’s people.

While these were not new incidents that had only been recently discovered, the impetus of the grand jury report was to investigate how church authorities (bishops) had responded to victims, what consequences were imposed on perpetrators, and the actions taken to protect people from future harm. Sadly, the report showed many bishops were woefully negligent in their responsibilities.

The grand jury report came just a few weeks after the announcement that the Archdiocese of New York judged credible and substantiated a recent allegation regarding the abuse of minors occurring many years prior by then-Father Theodore McCarrick, who became the cardinal archbishop of Washington. Even more troubling were the simultaneous revelations that settlements had been made with adult victims of McCarrick by the Diocese of Metuchen and the Archdiocese of Newark where he had served previously as the diocesan bishop. Most of the adult victims were seminarians and priests.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Action News 4

September 1, 2018

The Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh said Friday that it had placed three priests on leave following allegations of sexual abuse of a minor received in the wake of the state grand jury report on six Pennsylvania dioceses.

One of the priests is active, and two are retired. The diocese said all three have denied the allegations, which are now being handled by the District Attorney’s Office.

The diocese said the Rev. John Bauer has been serving in team ministry at St. Ann in Waynesburg, St. Hugh in Carmichaels, St. Ignatius of Antioch in Bobtown, Our Lady of Consolation in Nemacolin and St. Thomas in Clarksville.

Bauer is accused of sexual abuse of a minor in the early 1980s, the diocese said. The allegation was received Aug. 30. The grand jury report included another allegation of misconduct against him that was not substantiated as child sexual abuse.

The Rev. Bernard Costello, who completed his last assignment in 2011 as a temporary administrator at Mary, Mother of the Church in Charleroi, was accused of sexually abusing a minor in the mid-1960s. The diocese said the allegation was received Aug. 22 and was the first that it has received against him.

The Rev. Hugh Lang, who retired in 2006 as the pastor of Saint Therese of Lisieux in Munhall, was accused of sexually abusing a minor in 2001. The diocese said the allegation was received Aug. 27 and is also the first.

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JOLIET (IL)
Associated Press

September 1, 2018

By Herbert G. McCann

A suburban Chicago Catholic diocese has agreed to pay $1.4 million to settle a lawsuit filed by three men who say they were molested by their priest when they were boys.

The three men, who requested anonymity, say they were repeatedly abused by Father Leonard Mateo of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Joliet between 1980 and 1982. They were all under the age of 11. They made the allegations against Mateo in 2014.

Announcing the settlement Thursday, plaintiffs’ attorneys said Bishop Joseph Imesch admitted in a deposition that priests with credible sexual abuse allegations were allowed to continue ministry within the Diocese of Joliet without any warning to parishioners.

“This is a priest who was continuously moved from one parish to the next upon allegations of sexual misconduct, normalizing his sexual abuse of children and dispelling any notion it was wrong,” attorney Antonio M. Romanucci said.

The settlement reached in Will County Circuit Court will be distributed between the plaintiffs.

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McLEAN (VA)
USA Today

August 31, 2018

By Doug Stanglin

A Chicago-area Catholic diocese has agreed to pay $1.4 million to settle a lawsuit filed by three men who alleged they were sexually molested by their priest when they were boys.

The three unidentified men alleged they were repeatedly harmed by Father Leonard Mateo of the Joliet Diocese between 1980 and 1982, before age 11.

After initial complaints were raised by parents, Mateo suddenly was transferred to a parish in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, eventually landing in the Philippines where, the lawsuit says, church records show he died in 2004.

The three first raised their allegations against the priest in 2014.

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
The Morning Call

August 31, 2018

By David Cerulli

http://www.mcall.com/opinion/yourview/mc-opi-priest-sex-abuse-victim-cerulli-20180830-story.html

In the wake of the recent release of the Pennsylvania grand jury report on clergy sex abuse, it has become increasingly clear that victim-survivors must be given the opportunity to speak about their experiences if we as a society will have any chance of preventing this horror from happening over and over.

Abuse thrives in secrecy. It is time to end the secrecy and stop the abuse of children and the vulnerable.

To be sure, it is extremely difficult for survivors of sexual violence to overcome the shame and self-blame to speak about their abuse. It almost always takes years, and frequently decades, for victims of such violence to find their voices.

We as a society must not put unfair and unnecessary barriers in their way. To that end, we need to eliminate confidentiality agreements (also known as nondisclosure agreements) and eliminate the statute of limitations for crimes of sexual abuse.

My personal experience in the area of clergy sex abuse has come to the fore once again with the release of the grand jury report.

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

August 30, 2018

By Walter V. Robinson

Walter V. Robinson is editor-at-large of the Globe. He led the Spotlight Team’s investigation that uncovered the Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal.

[See also this column in the print edition.]

It is often said that for the Roman Catholic Church, rapid change can take decades. But who knew that law enforcement officials with subpoena power could be equally slow in recognizing their responsibility to bring into full light the hideous crimes by the church that have laid waste to the lives of tens of thousands of children?

Sixteen years later — too much later — it is now time for a full and final reckoning. In the wake of the Pennsylvania grand jury report, prosecutors in every state should finally find the backbone to force the church to tell the truth. The truth we can handle. It is the endless cover-up we must no longer abide.

Until recently, few could have credibly argued — as some are now trying — that Pope Francis and his point man on the sexual abuse scandal, Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, should resign. They were, after all, the two men in the Vatican who seemed committed to cauterizing the wounds from a scandal that spools endlessly along. But in light of recent allegations about how, or whether, they dealt with the serial sexual misdeeds of Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, their reputations, if not their jobs, are in jeopardy.

Since 2002, when the scandal first broke open, attorneys general in just four states — Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Maine, and Massachusetts — and a handful of local prosecutors have used subpoena power to force the church to turn over complete records of clerical crimes. In 46 states, there has been no full accounting: The cover-up continues uninterrupted. It now seems likely that the crimes of several thousand more priests remain hidden.

The recent evidence is nothing if not gut-wrenching. Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s grand jury scraped clean the records from six dioceses. Its report found that 301 priests had been credibly accused of sexually molesting more than 1,000 children and that — no surprise — the dioceses, all using the same playbook, kept it hidden for decades. It was the bishops who enabled and sometimes facilitated the abuse. I have interviewed scores of survivors of clerical abuse over the years, but reading the horrific details of sexual assault in the report left me choked up.

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NEW YORK (NY)
National Review

August 29, 2018

By John Sullivan

Francis himself is accused of participating in the cover-up of abuse by priests.

No one can have much to add to NRO’s coverage of the crisis in the Catholic Church. Michael Brendan Dougherty, Kathryn Lopez, and other colleagues have covered all the shocking events fully and with a kind of angry or hurt conscientiousness: the nature and extent of the sexual abuse; the quiet shuttling of pedophile priests from one parish to another; the legalistic bullying and manipulation of victims and their families; the placing of the Church’s political and financial interests above justice and charity; the fact that bishops showed greater concern, even tenderness, towards clerical abusers than towards those they abused; and the repeated assurances that these abuses were being corrected when in fact they were being concealed and smoothed over. These revelations have been deeply disturbing, and anyone predicting them a few years ago would have been dismissed — as indeed some critics of the bishops were dismissed — as dealing in fantasies of sexual perversion and blasphemy.

Despite the sensational nature of the revelations, however, we all had the eerie sense that there might be worse to come. And it came last weekend in the form of the statement by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former apostolic nuncio to the United States, on the Vatican’s handling of sexual misconduct by priests that implicated Pope Francis and other senior churchmen in the concealment of such abuses. Archbishop Viganò’s allegations are, for the moment, allegations. But they are extremely serious ones — either a malicious character assassination of the pope and other senior churchmen or a deeply shocking revelation of corruption and wickedness at the highest levels of Catholicism. They are also sufficiently detailed as to be open to either refutation or confirmation by the bishops and Vatican officials accused or exonerated in them. Unusually for criticisms of the Church, especially such grave ones, they have received some support from leading clerics in America, Rome, and elsewhere.

The pope himself was “ambushed” by questions from the media as he returned from his visit to Ireland. His response, leaving it to the journalists to judge the archbishop’s charges for themselves, was ambiguous. He may have felt that the charges were self-evidently false and malicious and that it was beneath his dignity to respond to them. But he cannot leave it there. There is no way that the Church can avoid dealing with them promptly, openly, and candidly.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
BBC News

August 31, 2018

The Catholic Church in Australia has formally rejected a landmark inquiry’s recommendation that priests should be forced to report sexual abuse disclosed during confession.

The five-year inquiry found tens of thousands of children had suffered abuse in Australian institutions. The Catholic Church had the most cases.

On Friday, Church leaders accepted most of the inquiry’s recommendations.

But their stance on confession may set up future conflict with governments.

The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference said breaking the seal of confession was “contrary to our faith and inimical to religious liberty”.

“We are committed to the safeguarding of children and vulnerable people while maintaining the seal,” it said in a statement.

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MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
The Age

August 30, 2018

By Ben Schneiders and Royce Millar

A 93-year-old woman publicly confronted the new Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne on Thursday with the harrowing story of how the clergy sexually abused her late daughter.

Eileen Piper, her face stricken with grief, presented Archbishop Peter Comensoli with a picture of her daughter Stephanie in her coffin after she took her own life in 1994. She was 32.

Twenty-four years later, Ms Piper says she is still seeking an apology from the Catholic Church.

Archbishop Comensoli, speaking at a Melbourne Press Club function on Thursday, walked from the stage to comfort the elderly Ms Piper, whose story was told by her lawyer Judy Courtin.

The church had not believed Stephanie’s allegations of rape and abuse at the hands of father Gerard Mulvale in suburban Syndal. He was later convicted of other sex crimes.

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SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA)
ABC News

August 31, 2018

By Paige Cockburn

[See also the response of the bishops’ conference and conference of superiors (this link brings you directly to the portion of the response relating to the seal of confession).]

Key points:
• Breaking the seal of confession would restrict religious liberty and not improve child safety, the Church says
• Voluntary celibacy for some clergy will also be examined
• The Church is considering making child sexual abuse a canonical crime, not a ‘moral failing’

The Catholic Church will not accept the royal commission’s recommendation to lift the seal of confession regarding child sex abuse, arguing it impinges on religious liberties.

Almost nine months after the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse handed down its findings, the Church has delivered its formal reply.

It said it would not change secrecy rules, meaning clergy do not have to report abuse revealed in the confessional.

“This is because it is contrary to our faith and inimical to religious liberty,” the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (ACBC) and Catholic Religious Australia (CRA) said in their response.

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McLEAN (VA)
USA Today

August 30, 2018

By Ed Mahon, York Daily Record

[Includes video: Lynne Abraham, the District Attorney in Philadelphia from 1991-2010, talks about her motivation behind exposing priests who abused children. By Jason Plotkin, York Daily Record.]

In wake of Pennsylvania’s sweeping and landmark investigation into Catholic clergy members’ sexual abuse of minors, some people want to see every Roman Catholic diocese in the country receive the same level of scrutiny.

One lawmaker has two reasons: Pennsylvania state Rep. Mark Rozzi, a Democrat from Muhlenburg Township, was abused by a priest in the Allentown Diocese when he was a child.

“I would love to see that happen,” Rozzi said of 50 states worth of investigations in an interview with WHYY-FM, Philadelphia, a day after Pennsylvania’s nearly 900-page grand jury report was released.

Members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests also have called for every state’s attorney general to follow Pennsylvania’s lead and launch formal investigations into how U.S. bishops deal with victims and predator priests.

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MELBOURNE (FL)
Florida Today

August 30, 2018

By John McCarthy

Parishioners at the Church of Our Saviour and residents of Cocoa Beach were stunned to learn the church’s new pastor had been removed following allegations that he molested a minor in Pennsylvania sometime before 2005.

The Diocese of Orlando, which includes Brevard County, announced Wednesday that it had “removed the priestly faculties” of the Rev. David Gillis after it had received notice from church officials in Pennsylvania that Gillis had been accused of sexual abuse of a minor there. A letter from the diocese said the allegations had “at least the semblance of truth.”

The Diocese of Allentown said it had provided information to local law enforcement.

Gillis was named pastor of Our Saviour earlier this year.

Brooks Rampersad of Cocoa Beach is one of the church’s parishioners who was shocked by the accusations.

“A number of people I know have been praying regarding the cover-ups in the ministry. I feel the sudden action in this case, on something that has been hidden for over a decade, is a good sign that changes are happening and God is listening to our prayers.”

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BUFFALO (NY)
The Associated Press

August 29, 2018

A former leader of the Catholic Church in Maine says he won’t resign as a bishop of the Diocese of Buffalo, New York, over his handling of sex abuse allegations.

Bishop Richard Malone said Sunday the “shepherd does not desert the flock” during difficult times. Malone was accused earlier this month of protecting priests in Buffalo suspected of sex abuse.

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ERIE (PA)
GoErie

August 30, 2018

By Ed Palattella

Bishop joins top Pa. state senator in supporting a fund rather than a two-year window that would allow victims to sue in court no matter how old the abuse.

Erie Catholic Bishop Lawrence Persico on Thursday endorsed the proposal of Pennsylvania’s top state senator that Catholic dioceses statewide set up compensation funds for victims of clergy sexual abuse.

Persico’s statement, like the proposal of state Senate Pro Tempore Joseph Scarnati, falls short of backing a key recommendation of the statewide grand jury that released its report on the abuse on Aug. 14 — that the GOP-controlled General Assembly approve a two-year window that would allow victims to sue no matter what the statute of limitations or how long ago the abuse occurred.

Persico “is prepared to establish and fund an appropriate program that provides necessary relief to victims,” the Catholic Diocese of Erie said in a statement.

“In my statement to victims on Aug. 14, I committed myself and this diocese to assist in healing for victims and for the wider community,” Persico said in the statement.

“It is time to take action. We must do what is within our power to provide justice to victims. Therefore, I have directed our lawyers to collaborate with the Pennsylvania Legislature to develop an acceptable and appropriate program to make restitution to victims.

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VENICE (FL)
Catholic News Agency

August 30, 2018

Jim Towey, president of Ave Maria University, said Wednesday that he unhesitatingly supports Pope Francis, in the wake of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s call for the pope’s resignation.

Archbishop Viganò, the emeritus apostolic nuncio to the US, alleged that Francis ignored sexual misconduct allegations against Archbishop Theodore McCarrick (who resigned from the cardinalate July 28), lifting sanctions on the former Archbishop of Washington which had been imposed by Benedict XVI.

Towey’s Aug. 29 statement “regarding the rift within the Church” characterized Archbishop Viganò’s testimony as part of a “rift between Pope Francis and some conservative members of the Church hierarchy”, the “battle lines” of which were drawn “five years ago shortly after the Pope ascended to the chair of Saint Peter.”

Towey quoted the pope’s 2018 apostolic exhortation Gaudete et exsultate, in which Pope Francis criticized “false prophets, who use religion for their own purposes, to promote their own psychological or intellectual theories. God infinitely transcends us; he is full of surprises.”

Affirming that God is full of surprises, the university president asserted that “the call for the Pope’s resignation by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò is not one of them. Neither is the challenge to the Pope’s authority by Raymond Cardinal Burke, an American prelate who has consistently opposed the direction Pope Francis has led the Church on certain matters.”

Towey also speculated that Cardinal Burke “may still be smarting” from his 2014 removal as prefect of the Apostolic Signatura.

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UNITED STATES
One Peter 5

August 28, 2018

By Steve Skojec

This report, originally published by Italian blogger, journalist, and author Aldo Maria Valli, tells the story of how Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, former apostolic nuncio to the United States, came to publish his now infamous report about the cover-up of clerical abuse in the highest echelons of the Church and a hint of what it has cost him.

As Valli reports near the end of his story, Viganò told him he had “already purchased an airplane ticket. He will leave the country. He cannot tell me where he is going. I am not to look for him. His old cell phone number will no longer work. We say goodbye for the last time.”

In a report for EWTN, Catholic journalist Edward Pentin confirms this, saying Viganò fears for his safety and that his life is in danger.

A former apostolic nuncio, widely respected for his professionalism and decency, forced to go into hiding at age 78 for simply telling the truth about his fellow apostolic successors. There is perhaps more wisdom in this than there appears to be at first glance. Viganò’s colleague, Monsignor Jean François Lantheaume, whose job it was to inform Cardinal McCarrick of the news that Pope Benedict XVI had levied sanctions against him because of his abuses, said earlier this week, after confirming the veracity of the Viganò report:

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HARRISBURG (PA)
The Speaking Out on Sex Abuse Podcast

August 30, 2018

By Shaun Dougherty

In 2012 Shaun Dougherty reported abuse he had suffered at the hands of a priest when he was between the ages of 11 and 13. An investigation opened and was handed over to the Attorney General’s office. The Altoona-Johnstown Diocese report, which included Shaun’s statements, was released in 2016 to the public. It spurred survivors from all over the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to report their abuse and ultimately led to the PA Grand Jury Investigation. This was the largest investigation into Catholic pedophile abuse in history. It uncovered over 350 pedophiles and over 1,000 victims.

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Washington (DC)
ECA Global

August 30. 2018

Global groups call on Pope to release church files on former cardinal McCarrick and others.

Groups condemn false conflation of sexual orientation and sexual violence in former Vatican ambassador’s letter as “wrong and dangerous”.

Clergy sex abuse survivors and human rights attorneys today are calling upon Pope Francis to order the release of all church files related to all allegations of sexual violence, including by former cardinal Theodore McCarrick. They are also demanding the Vatican condemn any suggestion by any church official that links the sexual abuse of children and vulnerable adults with the sexual orientation of either the victim or the offender.

“There is absolutely no link between sexual violence against children, minors and vulnerable adults and sexual orientation,” said Peter Isely, clergy sex abuse survivor and founding member of the global group Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA). “Making this false link is immoral, dangerous, and wrong,” continued Isely, a licensed clinical psychotherapist,who operated the only inpatient treatment center for survivors of sexual violence by clergy.

The call for release of church files was made by survivors and attorneys who lead three global groups concerned with the Catholic church abuse crisis: ECA, the Survivors Network of the those Abused by Priests (SNAP), and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). The news conference was outside the Vatican embassy, where documents that allegedly implicate the Pope in the cover-up of McCarrick’s offenses are thought to be filed, according to former Vatican ambassador Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò.

“The infighting between factions of the hierarchy does nothing to protect children around the world,” said Becky Ianni, board member of SNAP. “Any attempt by Viganò and others to use the abuse crisis and victims of clergy sexual abuse as leverage in the struggle for church power must stop.”

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HUNTINGTON (IN)
OSV Newsweekly

August 29, 2018

By Brian Fraga

Accusation and revelations around Church’s handling of abuse, cover-up take center stage

An earlier version of this story appeared here.

The already roiled landscape of the Catholic Church’s institutional response to clergy sexual abuse through the years ratcheted up again late Aug. 25 when, in a scathing 11-page written statement, the Vatican’s former ambassador to the United States accuses Pope Francis of ignoring concerns about Archbishop Theodore McCarrick and lifting sanctions against the former cardinal years before the public became aware of abuse allegations against him.

The letter was released while Pope Francis visited Ireland, which has also been rocked with its own abuse crisis. On Saturday, the pope addressed the crisis during a Mass at Phoenix Park in Dublin.

“Some members of the hierarchy didn’t own up to these painful situations and kept silence. We ask for forgiveness,” Pope Francis said.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The Cut

August 29, 2018

By Lisa Ryan

Last week, the New York Times reported that actress and #MeToo advocate Asia Argento made a deal to pay off a former co-star, Jimmy Bennett, who accused her of sexually assaulting him as a minor. Argento eventually denied the allegations, but texts purporting to contradict her denial were soon leaked. On Monday, actress and activist Rose McGowan revealed that the texts in question were between Argento and model Rain Dove, whom McGowan is currently dating. Now, Dove is speaking out about why they decided to release the text messages.

In a Wednesday morning statement, released to the Cut through a publicist, Dove confirmed that the text exchange was between them and Argento, and that they reported the messages to police. Dove said in the statement:

While the conflict may feel murky- the situation is cut and dry. An individual admitted to sexual engagement with a minor (according to the age stated by California) which is an illegal act that can qualify as statutory rape. As well as such they admitted to receiving continued nude images without reporting/blocking the account/written rejection/or action. When the individual made it clear that they were not going to be honest about their engagement, I turned in materials that may contribute towards an honest investigation. All victims deserve justice. Justice can rarely exist without honesty.

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ROME
The Telegraph

August 29, 2018

By Nick Squires

A Vatican whistle-blower who has accused Pope Francis of having covered up sexually abusive behaviour by an American cardinal stepped up his attack on Wednesday, speaking from a secret location.

Archbishop Carlo Mario Vigano, a former Vatican ambassador to the US, has plunged the Catholic Church into crisis with allegations that the pope failed to act against Theodore McCarrick, a US cardinal, who was accused of sexually abusing young priests over decades.

Cardinal McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, resigned in disgrace last month, becoming the first cardinal to step down since 1927.

Archbishop Vigano, 77, released an 11-page document detailing the allegations at the weekend and called on Francis to resign.

He then went underground amid reports that he feared for his safety.

After days of silence he gave an interview, from an undisclosed location, to an Italian journalist, renewing his criticism of Francis’ papacy.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
ABC7

August 27, 2018

By Victoria Sanchez

John Wojnowski was a daily fixture protesting in front of the Vatican embassy for two decades. Now the 75-year-old man makes the three- to four-hour trip to protest sexual abuse and cover-up just once or twice a week.

Wojnowski said he was molested by a priest in Italy when he was a 15-year-old boy. It was more than 30 years later and after he became a citizen, he wrote letters to bishops and the pope about his case. He did not hear back.

“They knew that I would write but I would be too ashamed to do anything else,” he said.

In 1997, he did do something else and made protesting his daily mission.

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LANSING (MI)
Yahoo Sports

August 30, 2018

By Liz Roscher

Michigan State University announced on Thursday that it has been cleared of any NCAA violations in its handling of the Larry Nassar sexual abuse scandal.

Bill Beekman, Michigan State’s new athletic director, was notified of the NCAA’s decision in a letter from Jonathan F. Duncan, the NCAA’s vice president of enforcement. In the letter, Duncan said the investigation “has not substantiated violations of NCAA legislation,” and “that it does not appear there is a need for further inquiry.” The NCAA’s investigation is over.

The NCAA also cleared Michigan State of any violations in a second investigation into how the university handled sexual assault allegations against basketball and football players.

The NCAA investigation began in January, when it sent a letter of inquiry to Mark Hollis, who was Michigan State’s athletic director at the time, asking for a response to any violations it had committed while handling the Nassar sexual assault case. Hollis resigned three days later, which happened to be the same day ESPN released a report on sexual assault allegations against football and basketball players at the university. The NCAA later started a separate investigation into how university handled those allegations.

Michigan State responded on March 23, saying that it didn’t believe it had violated any NCAA legislations. The NCAA ended up agreeing.

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