ABUSE TRACKER

MUMBAI (INDIA)
La Croix

August 22, 2018

By Virginia Saldanha

Pope’s letter on sexual abuse is welcome but victims deserve stern measures to stop this evil

While the People of God across the globe thank Pope Francis for finally expressing himself in his Aug. 20 letter on the issue of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, many feel it brings little comfort.

Many pious platitudes have already been expressed toward survivors of abuse, but it has not brought about any change in their reality because many abusers continue to be clerics. Sadly, the pope’s letter does not say anything concrete about actions to make bishops accountable.

We have heard of commitments to put policies in place, but to date nothing seems to have worked.

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MISHAWAKA (IN)
South Bend Tribune

August 22, 2018

By Caleb Bauer

When Bishop Kevin Rhoades announced his plan to release names of priests in the Fort Wayne-South Bend Diocese accused of abuse, he said the revelations of rampant abuse in Pennsylvania weren’t the only factor in his decision.

He also credited a woman who had reported sexual abuse to the diocese — and had urged him to release the name of her abuser.

“I was so conflicted,” Rhoades said at a news conference Friday. “She was asking me to release the name. So to be honest, this whole issue of releasing names is something that even before the Pennsylvania grand jury report I’ve been considering.”

Carolyn Andrzejewski-Wilson watched the live broadcast of the news conference on her computer at her North Carolina home. She knew Rhoades was talking about her.

Almost two years ago, the former Mishawaka resident met with Rhoades to relay her story about abuse at the hands of the Rev. Elden Miller, a former priest at St. Joseph Church and Queen of Peace Church in Mishawaka.

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UNITED STATES
NPR

August 18, 2018

By Jennifer Ludden

Length: 7:22

TRANSCRIPT

How does the Catholic Church prepare its seminarians to deal with questions of sexual abuse and celibacy? NPR’s Jennifer Ludden talks to Paul Blaschko, who attended seminary from 2008 until 2011.

JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST:

This week, a grand jury report found hundreds of Catholic priests in Pennsylvania abused more than 1,000 children over a period of 70 years. The Vatican released a strongly worded statement condemning the behavior of the clergymen and the system that enabled them to act with impunity. But this is just the latest episode in a scandal that stretches across the U.S. and around the world. We wondered. How does the Roman Catholic Church prepare its men in seminary to deal with such cases of abuse? And what training does it provide on issues of celibacy, sexuality and ethics? Paul Blaschko attended the St. John Vianney College Seminary at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota from 2008 to 2011. He wrote about his experience there for the magazine Commonweal. I asked him about his first exposure to this type of training.

PAUL BLASCHKO: One of the workshops that was put on during my first year there was a workshop that was called the Freedom And Victory Workshop. It was put on by an outside organization. You know, we started off by having kind of an open mic, where seminarians were encouraged to get up in front of like a hundred of their peers and kind of detail past indiscretions and their sexual history or things that they currently struggled with sexually. And that sort of gave me the wrong vibe from the outset. But I became even more concerned when I attended one particular session. It was called Discerning Psycho-Spiritual Dynamics In Sexual Compulsion. And at the outset, we were given a list of the names of particular demons and the ways in which they were supposed to try to influence priests, in particular, to behave in sexually immoral ways. And things really got weird when we participated in this – what they called a group psycho-drama. And each of us were assigned the names of one of these demons. And we were supposed to, like, act out this role and tempt, like, one of the other role-playing seminarians into, you know, sexual immorality. And it was just very bizarre and kind of disturbing.

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WICHITA (KS)
KWCH

August 21, 2018

A Wichita priest issued his congregation a message of hope following recent abuse allegations against Catholic church leaders around the country.

“I ask for your forgiveness on behalf of the church to know my own sorrow and how I am sorry this has happened,” said Fr. Drew Heiman Sunday morning.

The priest at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church addressed a topic that many in the faith have shied away from.

“It is a great sadness because there have been priests, there have been bishops who have prevented people from coming to Jesus through these very abuses,” said Fr. Drew during his homily.

The church taped the sermon and posted it on its Facebook page.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
CNN

August 20, 2018

By Dakin Andone, Sarah Jorgensen and Polo Sandoval

St. Paul’s Cathedral in Pittsburgh was about half-full at 8 a.m. mass on Sunday morning when Rev. Kris Stubna stepped up to the altar to deliver his homily.

“These have been very painful and difficult days for all of us in the church,” Stubna said.
Stubna was addressing the elephant in the room: a grand jury report released earlier this week that accused more than 300 Catholic “predator priests” of abusing more than 1,000 children over the past 70 years in six Pennsylvania dioceses. The report’s findings contributed to a growing international scandal over sexual abuse in the church, with incidents reported in the United States, Ireland, Australia and Chile, among others.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Examiner

August 21, 2018

By Pete Kasperowicz

Former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., ripped the Catholic church on Tuesday for what he said was its weak response to a report that found priests in Pennsylvania were involved in the sexual abuse of at least 1,000 children.

“It is beyond disgusting, and the church’s response to it is deplorable on every level,” Santorum said on CNN.

“The fact that there has to be an outside probe like this from a grand jury to expose what the church should have exposed itself…” he said. “You talk about failing children … that it takes a government agency to do the job that the church should be doing from the very beginning, which is protecting its flock, and weeding itself out.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
NBC Philadelphia

August 20, 2018

By Alicia Victoria Lozano

For many Roman Catholics, separating their religious faith from the governing organization has been a daily practice long before a Pennsylvania grand jury documented decades of sexual abuse by hundreds of clergy members

A new generation of Catholics is stepping outside the church’s tainted shadow and creating a modern community that, they say, better reflects the world today.

This new generation of believers worship outside the confines of an antiquated and draconian institution that is out to protect itself, they say. This has been a daily practice for many long before a Pennsylvania grand jury report exposed decades of sexual abuse by hundreds of clergy members throughout the state.

“We’ve always had an antagonistic or non-relationship with the bishops,” Michael Rocks, president of Dignity Philadelphia, said. “We don’t trust them to police themselves.”

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BATON ROUGE (LA)
The Advocate

August 19, 2018

By Lea Skene

Less than a week after news of the latest Catholic Church sex abuse scandal, leaders of the Baton Rouge Diocese addressed what they described as “a spiritual crisis in our church.”

A Pennsylvania grand jury report released Tuesday — referencing more than 300 “predator priests” and more than 1,000 child victims within that state alone — found that church leaders covered up several decades of sexual abuse, often adhering to a series of common practices that reads “like a playbook for concealing the truth.”

“Our shame is intensified by the sometimes failure of church leadership to hold abusers accountable,” Bishop Emeritus Robert Muench said during Sunday morning Mass at St. Joseph Cathedral in downtown Baton Rouge. “These recent news reports have revealed a mishandling of reported allegations (and) a covering up of sinful actions. … Understandably there are concerns about how prolific such abuses have been throughout the (Catholic) Church throughout the years.”

Muench quoted Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, who pointed to “the failure of episcopal leadership” that left “scores of beloved children of God … to face an abuse of power alone.”

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UNITED STATES
The Associated Press

August 17, 2018

By David Crary

As the Catholic Church struggles with a new wave of clergy abuse cases, several prominent evangelical institutions have been rocked in recent weeks by their own sexual misconduct allegations against pastors and church leaders who exploited the trust they had gained from faithful churchgoers.

In many ways, the phenomenon at evangelical denominations is an offshoot of the #MeToo movement, as evidenced by the #ChurchToo hashtag accompanying accounts of church-related abuse that have been shared on Twitter.

The victims are coming forward to expose abuse in the Protestant evangelical world where some say the misdeeds have been just as pervasive, though less publicized, as the acts committed by Catholic clergy.

“I really believe churches need to enter into a season of lament, acknowledging decades of failure to understand, address and confront these horrors,” said Boz Tchividjian, a grandson of evangelist Billy Graham who heads GRACE, a ministry working to combat sexual abuse in churches.

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DUBLIN (IRELAND)
CRUX

August 21, 2018

By Inés San Martín

Swimming against the tide of promises to crack down on abuse and cover-up led by Pope Francis, a newly created Mexican cardinal said that some accusers should be “ashamed” to point their finger at clerics because many of them have skeletons in their own closets.

The victims of pedophilia who “accuse men of the Church should [be careful] because they have long tails that are easily stepped on,” said Cardinal Sergio Obeso Rivera.

The cardinal, emeritus Archbishop of Xalapa, in Veracruz, Mexico, spoke to journalists before a celebration he led in his former diocese.

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CHINA
South China Morning Post

August 20, 2018

By Robert Delaney

Robert Delaney says such a move wouldn’t excuse Beijing from its own human rights transgressions, but it might pressure the US to confront the culture of abuse and cover-up in its Catholic churches and most devout religious communities

The Chinese government is regularly subjected to charges of human rights abuses. The latest came earlier this month in the form of accusations by a UN human rights panel that 1 million ethnic Uygurs in China were being held in what resembles a “massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy”.

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China rejected the report’s findings last week, insisting that freedom of religion in Xinjiang is protected. The issue will not end here, though. Scrutiny of the way China treats Uygurs will continue, as it should, as will similar inquiries into the rights of Tibetans and other groups in the country that have challenged the central government.

But, last week, Beijing got a new counterargument against the US, if the foreign ministry chooses to use it against critics there, in the form of a 900-page report by a grand jury in Pennsylvania. The report unveiled the systematic abuse of more than 1,000 children by “predator priests” in the state over a period of 70 years.

At first glance, you might point out that judicial bodies in the US are publicising the abuse, and therefore conclude that America is doing the right thing.

But that conclusion would overlook several facts.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
The Baltimore Sun

August 22, 2018

By Yvonne Wenger and Christina Tkacik

A former longtime teacher at a Baltimore Catholic school is under investigation for the alleged sexual abuse of a minor in the mid-1980s, according to the Xaverian Brothers.

The lay order of brothers has removed Brother Robert Flaherty from ministry while an investigation by the State’s Attorney’s Office is ongoing, according to a statement by Brother Edward Driscoll, the congregation’s general superior. Flaherty was a teacher at Mount St. Joseph from 1972 to 1993 and from 2008 to 2010.

Flaherty was suspended last week from his teaching job at St. John’s Preparatory School in Danvers, Mass., where he worked from 1999 to 2007 and again beginning in 2010.

Xaverian Brothers sponsor both the Southwest Baltimore and Massachusetts school.

Detectives from the Baltimore police’s special investigation section opened an investigation in April into an allegation of abuse, according to police spokesman Detective Jeremy Silbert.

A spokeswoman for the Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office did not immediately provide comment.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

August 22, 2018

Clerical sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church have led some to feel they can no longer trust the church’s message, Archbishop Eamon Martin has said.

Mr Martin said the church faced a challenge in finding new ways of communicating “sincerely held perspectives” about the family.

The Archbishop of Armagh made the comments at the World Meeting of Families event in Dublin on Wednesday.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

August 22, 2018

Latest: The Archbishop of Dublin has said the number of children abused by priests in Ireland is “immense” and called for an easier judicial system for victims giving evidence in court.

Speaking on the second day of the World Meeting of Families (WMOF), Diarmuid Martin said the number of prosecutions of clerical abuse is “very low”.

It comes days after Pope Francis condemned the “atrocities” of child sex abuse and cover-ups by the clergy in an open letter.

The pontiff arrives in Ireland on Saturday as part of the WMOF event in Dublin, and will meet victims of clerical sex abuse during his visit.

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SALT LAKE CITY (UT)
Deseret News

August 20, 2018

By Kelsey Dallas

Amid ongoing fallout from a new report on sexual abuse by clergy, an embattled Catholic leader has cancelled plans to come to Utah next month.

Cardinal Roger Mahony, who led the Archdiocese of Los Angeles from 1985 to 2011, was previously accused of covering up sexual abuse allegations against more than 45 priests. He was supposed to appear at an annual fundraiser for the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City on Sept. 6.

“Please note, Cardinal (Mahony) will not be attending the annual Bishop’s Dinner for the Cathedral of the Madeleine,” the diocese announced Monday night on Twitter.

Catholics around the world are reeling from a grand jury report on clergy sexual abuse in Pennsylvania, which was released last week. It highlighted allegations by more than 1,000 victims, implicating around 300 priests and condemning others for being more interested in protecting the church’s reputation than children.

“With shame and repentance, we acknowledge as an ecclesial community that we were not where we should have been, that we did not act in a timely manner, realizing the magnitude and the gravity of the damage done to so many lives. We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them,” Pope Francis said in a statement released Monday.

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
WHYY

August 19, 2018

By Shai Ben-Yaacov

Several hundred parishioners filled the bright and colorful sanctuary at the Cathedral Church of St. Catharine of Siena in Allentown, Pennsylvania, for Sunday morning mass. It was a worship service like any other, until Monsignor Francis Schoenauer produced a small red folder, opened it, and started reading from a letter. The congregation was expecting this moment, and all eyes were on Schoenauer as he spoke the words of his superior, Allentown Bishop Alfred Schlert.

It was a scene that played out in churches across the Diocese of Allentown this weekend. Schlert’s letter, addressed directly to parishioners, is a response to the Pennsylvania grand jury report released Tuesday detailing years of alleged sexual abuse of children by hundreds of priests across six of the state’s eight dioceses, including Allentown.

The long-awaited report named 37 “predator priests” in the diocese, which put out its own list the same day including 15 additional names of priests “credibly accused of sexual abuse of a minor.”

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

August 21, 2018

By Mary E. Hunt

Clericalism is key issue, but problem lies within Catholicism’s foundation

Theodore McCarrick’s alleged flagrant and repeated abuse of power over those in his employ (not forgetting his abuse of a minor, but focusing on the workplace cases for the moment) raises the specter of clericalism and begs change.

Theologian Fr. Bryan Massingale agrees with Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich that a sense of entitlement prevailing among some ordained men could be conducive of exploitative behavior. Both agree that the issue is not whether the men are gay or straight (or, I would add, something beyond that binary), but that they have, by reason of their clerical status, access to privilege and power within the ecclesial community that can insulate them from accountability.

Massingale and Cupich cite clericalism as the problem. I concur to an extent, but I think the problem is deeper, indeed foundational, rooted in the very bifurcation of clergy and laity that grounds the Roman Catholic institution.

This clergy/lay, top-down structure conditions relationships and functions in the church. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says ordination “confers an indelible spiritual character” on a priest that “cannot be “repeated or conferred temporarily” and “mark[s] him permanently” (1583). A priest is seen as ontologically different from a layperson. His place in the hierarchical structure reflects this difference. His roles as a sacramental presider and as a decision-maker are contingent on it.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

August 21, 2018

By Jack Power

Vatican should adopt ‘best practice’ on abuse reporting to authorities, Taoiseach says

The Catholic Church should introduce mandatory reporting for clerical sex abuse, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said.

Speaking on Tuesday, Mr Varadkar said Pope Francis’ letter on Monday apologising to the victims of clerical abuse needed to “be followed up by actions”.

“Among the things that we have done in Ireland is to bring in mandatory reporting. As of last year it is mandatory for people to report child sex abuse, or sex abuse if they are aware of that,” he said.

“Perhaps that is something the church and other institutions might consider implementing? Just because it is not the law in every country does not mean it is not the right thing to do,” Mr Varadkar said.

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FORT WAYNE (IN)
Indianapolis Star

August 17, 2018

A Catholic bishop in Indiana announced Friday that he will release a list of names of priests in his territory who’ve been credibly accused of sex abuse following this week’s Pennsylvania report accusing more than 300 clergy of similar acts against 1,000 children.

The Rev. Kevin Rhoades, bishop of the Fort Wayne-South Bend Diocese, made the announcement in a news conference and called the decision a response to a Pennsylvania grand jury report released Tuesday.

“As we’ve seen in Pennsylvania, this report and the listing of abusers has prompted new victims to come forward,” according a transcript of Rhoades’ announcement Friday. “Whether it’s now or following the posting of our list, I want the people of Fort Wayne and South Bend to know this.”

The Pennsylvania report describes Rhoades, who was bishop of the Harrisburg, Pa., Diocese from 2004-2010, as resisting disclosure of abuse-allegation details against two now-deceased priests, though he alerted prosecutors and church officials to sexual abuse complaints against the pair.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

August 22, 2018

To the editor: The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church expressing “shame and sorrow” over sexual abuse by priests is similar to the expression of “thoughts and prayers” in response to mass killings. Significant actions are necessary, even if they will not erase the stain of the abuses that have occurred.

The church, like many other religious denominations, has a history of male privilege. It is past time for the church to demonstrate that males and females are viewed as equal and allow women to fulfill leadership positions at every level of the denomination, including the papacy.

This tangible action, while not diminishing the pain suffered by victims, would announce to the world that the Catholic hierarchy is willing to end a serious problem. Significant actions are necessary for progress.

Karl Strandberg, Long Beach

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PALMETTO (FL)
Miami Herald

August 21, 2018

By Jessica De Leon

Six of the more than 300 priests who a Pennsylvania grand jury said sexually abused more than 1,000 children had ties to the Diocese of Venice, according to the diocese. They include a priest who fathered a child with an underage girl, before working for six years at a parish in Palmetto.

The revelations came last week, following the release of a grand jury report concluding that more than 1,000 children, mostly boys, had been abused by priests in six Pennsylvania dioceses and that there was a systematic cover-up by church officials in efforts to avoid bad publicity and financial liability.

One of the priests with local ties, Rev. Robert Brague, was the assistant pastor at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Palmetto from 1991 to 1997. He had moved to Florida after impregnating a teenage girl in Pennsylvania, according to the grand jury report.

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PORTLAND (OR)
The Oregonian/OregonLive

August 21, 2018

By Elliot Njus

The leader of the Archdiocese of Portland on Monday said he was shocked and discouraged over recent revelations of child sex abuse by priests and the subsequent cover-ups by church leaders.

In his first public comments since a Pennsylvania grand jury report detailed decades of abuse at the hands of 300 Roman Catholic priests in that state, Archbishop Alexander K. Sample apologized for harm done to the victims of abuse and called the latest allegations evidence of an “institutional and spiritual” failure.

His written statement also addressed the July resignation of prominent former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who served as archbishop of Washington, D.C. McCarrick faces allegations of sexually abusing a child nearly five decades ago as a New York priest. McCarrick, the first cardinal in history to step down in connection with the unfolding sexual abuse scandal, denies the allegations.

Portland’s archdiocese was driven to bankruptcy in 2004 after settling more than 100 claims of abuse at the hands of clergy and facing dozens more. It was the first Catholic diocese to file for bankruptcy over child sex abuse claims.

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CONCORD (NH)
Concord Monitor

August 22, 2018

By Alyssa Dandrea

St. Paul’s School released Tuesday details of sexual misconduct allegations against 10 former faculty and staff – three who were previously unnamed – and interviews with 21 additional victims who have come forward in the past nine months.

The 42-page report released Tuesday evening is the second supplement to a larger report released by the Concord prep school since May 2017. The initial report substantiated claims against at least 13 former faculty members between 1948 and 1988, while the two supplemental reports include new names and additional allegations as recent as a decade ago.

The release of the new supplement comes just days after ex-St. Paul’s teacher David Pook was sentenced to four months in jail for conspiring with a former student to lie to a grand jury about their relationship. Pook, who taught at St. Paul’s from 2000-08, is one of the four former St. Paul’s employees not previously identified in the prior reports from Boston-based law firm Casner & Edwards.

Also identified is late Massachusetts congressman Gerry Studds, who is front and center in a civil lawsuit brought by two alumni against the school in May. Studds – who taught history, politics and government at St. Paul’s from 1965-69 – was censured in 1983 for sexual misconduct with a 17-year-old congressional page a decade earlier. Alumni have questioned since the May 2017 report why Studds was not named from the outset.

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VATICAN CITY
The Associated Press

August 22, 2018

By Nicole Winfield

Recent revelations of sexual misconduct and cover-up within the highest ranks of the U.S. Catholic Church have revived the sense of betrayal that devastated the American church’s credibility after the first wave of scandal hit in 2002.

But the United States is by no means alone: Cases of Catholic priests raping and molesting children, and of bishops covering up for them, have erupted on nearly every continent in recent years, with Pope Francis’ native Latin America the latest to explode.

Francis is expected to address the issue head-on this weekend when he visits Ireland, the first country to come to grips with the problem in the 1990s.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Radio Sputnik

August 22, 2018

Sex abuse in the church was long ignored, kept quiet or silenced.

This is what Pope Francis wrote in a letter to all Catholics.

In the letter, the Pope admitted that the church failed to recognize the scale of the damage.

His statement came in response to fresh reports of large-scale clerical sexual abuse of minors in Pennsylvania.

Radio Sputnik discussed this with David Clohessy, former executive director of SNAP – the Survivors Network of Those Abused By Priests.

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SPRINGFIELD (MO)
The Associated Press

August 20, 2018

A couple claims in a lawsuit that a former top lay official in the Springfield-Cape Girardeau Catholic diocese emotionally and sexually abused the woman, and the diocese did not intervene.

The lawsuit was filed last week against the diocese and Troy Casteel, the diocese’s former director of family ministry.

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ST. CLOUD (FL)
Orlando Sentinel

August 21, 2018

By David Harris

An employee at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church in St. Cloud was arrested Tuesday after he admitted to using the church’s WiFi to download child pornography, the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office said.

Mark Dewayne Cook was fired from his position as operations manager for the church and school, the Diocese of Orlando said in a statement. Cook responsible for the business administration of the church did not work directly with “vulnerable populations,” the statement said.

Church officials are cooperating with the investigation, said Carol Brinati, chief operating officer and chancellor for the diocese.

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BLUE SPRINGS (MO)
The Associated Press

August 21, 2018

The Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph says a longtime employee at a Blue Springs church embezzled $446,000 during the past several years.

The diocese said Tuesday the woman worked at St. Robert Bellarmine Catholic Church for decades but the embezzlement occurred over the last seven years. Diocese spokesman Jack Smith says the woman agreed to repay the money within 60 days after she was confronted last week. The diocese didn’t name the employee.

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MERRILLVILLE (IN)
The Associated Press

August 21, 2018

Police in northwest Indiana say an attack on a Catholic priest has been forwarded to the FBI as a possible hate crime because the assailant referred to reports of clergy sex abuse involving children.

Merrillville Detective Cmdr. Jeff Rice says the Rev. Basil John Hutsko was assaulted Monday morning at St. Michael Byzantine Catholic Church. Rice says the 64-year-old priest was taken to a hospital for treatment. His condition was unknown Tuesday.

Pope Francis issued a letter Monday condemning priestly sexual abuse and its cover-up. Also, a Pennsylvania grand jury last week reported about 300 priests abused at least 1,000 children over the past 70 years.

Hutsko isn’t named in the report.

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MERRILLVILLE (IN)
The Charlotte Observer

August 22, 2018

By Lisa Gutierrez

A Catholic priest in Indiana was attacked in his church Monday morning by a man he heard yelling, “This is for all the kids!” church officials said.

The Rev. Basil Hutsko was left unconscious for about 15 minutes after the attack at St. Michael Byzantine Church in Merrillville, Indiana, the Rev. Thomas Loya told WGN in Chicago.

Hutsko said “the attacker grabbed him, choked him and threw him to the ground and knocked him unconscious,” Loya told WGN. “He was wearing gloves. Father Basil does not know who it was, but while he was attacking him, he heard the attacker say, ‘This is for all the kids!’”

Loya said Hutsko believes that was a reference to the recently revealed findings of a two-year grand jury investigation that found Roman Catholic Church leaders in Pennsylvania covered up cases of child sex abuse by priests over several decades.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
The Washington Post

August 22, 2018

By Hugh Hewitt

The demands that Cardinal Donald Wuerl be dismissed as archbishop of Washington and resign from the Catholic Church’s College of Cardinals are proportionate in their degree of outrage with their degree of disappointment with the failed priest.

Thanks to a Pennsylvania grand jury, we now know of the evil that took place during his time as bishop of Pittsburgh. Wuerl’s diocese included the coverup of an alleged priest-run child porn ring, including priests who would reportedly mark victims for other predators via a gold cross. If that isn’t satanic, then the word defines nothing.

And Wuerl covered up that ring. And dozens of other cases. And he allowed predators to feel free to move around the country provided they didn’t endanger his career. Did Cardinal Theodore McCarrick support Wuerl as his successor in Washington confident of the latter’s ability to keep the ugliest sins under the carpet? It would not surprise.

Indeed, nothing surprises anymore. Those of us in the Catholic community who gave the church a second and even a third chance are disgusted. There was a 2002 “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People” put out by U.S. bishops. There was “A Report on the Crisis in the Catholic Church in the United States” put out in February 2004. Upon its release, the church-appointed lay review board that wrote the report held a big event at the National Press Club. I went. I wanted to hear in person that change had come.

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IRELAND
Washington Post

August 21, 2018

By Siobhan O’Gracy

No pope has visited Ireland since 1979, when millions of faithful Catholics came out to see Pope John Paul II. Around a million people turned out for a public papal Mass during that trip, and a 116-foot-tall steel cross was erected in Dublin’s Phoenix Park for the occasion.

Now, with Pope Francis scheduled to visit Ireland this weekend, some pranksters have built a different kind of massive structure to welcome him: a drive-through confessional close to the same park, where Francis will celebrate Mass this weekend.

Confession, or penance, is one of Catholicism’s most important acts, in which Catholics confidentially admit their sins to a priest to seek forgiveness. Paddy Power, an Irish bookmaker known for staging elaborate and sometimes controversial stunts, is trying to speed up the process of escaping eternal damnation with the drive-through confessions.

“Ireland has changed a lot since the last Pope’s visit – gay marriage is legal, we’ve repealed the Eighth Amendment, and even secretly cheered for England in the World Cup,” a spokesperson for Paddy Power told The Sun. “With decades worth of sins clocked up since then, we’re providing a convenient means to complete your contrition with your keys still in the ignition.”

A promotional video for the gaudy confession booth describes it as the “ultimate drive-in confession booth before the big man gets here.”

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AMPLEFORTH and DOWNSIDE (UK)
Independent Inquiry Child Sexual Abuse

August 2018

A report of the Inquiry Panel: Professor Alexis Jay OBE, Professor Sir Malcolm Evans KCMG OBE, Ivor Frank, and Drusilla Sharpling CBE

English Benedictine Congregation case study.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

August 21, 2018

By Bill Mitchell

Public act of penance and sorrow is necessary for healing and reform to begin, petitioners say

During a listening session after the 6 p.m. Mass on Sunday, our pastor, Paulist Fr. Michael McGarry, offered what seemed like a pretty radical suggestion.

Listing several possible reactions that Catholics might have to the latest outrages in the clergy sexual abuse scandal, he said he’d be especially heartbroken if people became so repulsed by the institution that they’d lose their focus on the teachings of Jesus.

“Follow your conscience,” he urged us. If you feel like you no longer want anything to do with the Catholic Church, he said, please find some way of staying connected to a gathering of followers of Jesus.

If that means joining the ranks of an Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, Evangelical or other Christian church, he urged us to go for it. “We’d miss you around here,” he added, “but just don’t give up following Jesus.”

He raised this idea not in “love it or leave it” fashion, but as a genuine alternative for disaffected Catholics tempted to walk away from participation in a church of any sort.

The thought has crossed my mind, and I appreciate Mike’s focus on what really matters.

But I find myself aligned, instead, with the conclusion that my wife, Carol, articulated as we made our way home from the hour-long listening session.

“I’m too stubborn to leave,” she said. “I’m just not going to let them take my church away from me.”

By “them,” of course, she was referring to the leaders of the Catholic Church in the United States, the 456 active and retired bishops who have so utterly failed to hold themselves accountable for the scandal that has brought the church to its knees.

We showed up at the listening session the day after signing the statement* hosted by Daily Theology calling on all U.S. bishops to submit their resignations to Pope Francis, just as all of Chile’s 34 bishops have done.

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BOSTON (MA)
WBUR

August 21, 2018

By Maria Garcia, Eve Zuckoff, and Paris Alston

Length: 21:24

Cardinal Sean O’Malley is apologizing for how his office handled a 2015 letter that raised concerns about sexual abuse by another American cardinal.

This follows Pope Francis’ letter Monday condemning sexual misconduct and coverups of abuse by clergy, in light of a scathing grand jury report detailing decades of abuse of more than 1,000 children by hundreds of priests in Pennsylvania.

But some Catholic theologians, educators, parishoners and leaders in the U.S. are going a step further: They’ve written a letter calling on all Catholic bishops in the U.S. to resign, which they plan to submit to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) tomorrow at midnight. So far, the letter has garnered more than 3,500 signatures.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic Life Ministries

Originally published February 19, 2017

By Robert Fontana

David Clohessy, the executive director of the Survivors Network of People Abused by Priests (SNAP), resigned from his position in December. He is pictured here presenting an award to me as the SNAP Lay Person of the Year, 2012. In January, David was named in a lawsuit which claims that, in exchange for “kickbacks,” he provided names of potential clients to attorneys who were suing the Catholic Church. David acknowledges accepting donations for SNAP from lawyers who have sued the Catholic Church, but he denies ever accepting any money for exchange of client information. Lori and I believe David.

We are sad to see David leave SNAP. Catholic leaders have NEVER VOLUNTARILY TOLD THE TRUTH about sex abuse in the church. The truth was pulled, pushed, and prodded out of them by survivors of sex abuse through public rallies, lawsuits, and media exposure.

David and the survivors community have been like the little shepherd boy with a slingshot and a stone, fighting the giant Goliath Catholic hierarchy, with its deep financial pockets, and a worldwide network of sympathetic government and civic leaders. In truth, David is one of the best friends the Catholic Church has because his work is calling the Church back to its foundational principles: to live by truth which sets one free, and to protect the weak and the vulnerable, especially children.

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UNITED STATES
Commercial Appeal

August 21, 2018

By Jennie Davidson Latta,

Editor’s Note: Jennie Davidson Latta, a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge and Catholic parishioner in Memphis, sent this letter to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. It is republished here with her permission.

Dear Bishops,

While I am encouraged by the plan announced by Cardinal DiNardo and the other bishops of the United States to address the latest scandals and crimes of the clergy of the United States, I believe that one key component is missing. What is needed is a public act of penance on the part of our bishops.

I have not joined the numerous theologians, teachers, and parents who have called for mass resignations. I fear that would be meaningless. Instead, I think that what is needed is a public penance service at which the bishops of the United States appear without miters, or croziers, or other symbols of office.

We have a rite for that purpose. We lay people are encouraged to use it at least twice each year. I think that it would do us all good to see our bishops kneeling, in sackcloth and ashes or their modern equivalent, beating their breasts, and loudly proclaiming, “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.”

This should be a corporate action to acknowledge the corporate and systemic nature of the sinfulness that allowed predators to be protected rather than children. I do not assume that every living bishop has individually participated in such a cover-up. But every living bishop has inherited the system of clericalism and cronyism that permitted it to happen.

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OGDEN (UT)
Standard-Examiner

August 22, 2018

By Mark Shields

I can testify from a lifetime of personal experience that practice does not really make perfect. Since the presidency of Harry Truman, during which I had the honor of being the youngest altar boy in St. Francis Xavier Parish to serve the standing-room-only midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, I have been a practicing and manifestly imperfect Catholic.

After the recent Pennsylvania grand jury report on sexual abuse, which tells of more than 1,000 victims enduring criminal cruelty at the hands of some 300 Catholic priests, I am consumed with anger toward my church. Of course, I am also sad, but I remain even more furious toward my church’s hierarchy and its rush not to console the anguish of and heal the wounds of the vulnerable victims but rather to lead a systematic cover-up of priests’ crimes against defenseless children to protect the institutional church from legal liability and deserved public outrage.

Mostly missing from the church’s reaction was human sympathy. Absent was any trace of Pope Francis’ call for the Roman Catholic Church to become a “field hospital after battle” to first take care of those suffering. The clerical leadership’s reaction was instead to turn the crimes and the crisis over to the lawyers and the public relations people, to retreat to a circle of silence. I am angry.

Such bad and indefensible decisions have repeatedly been made in secret rooms where the counsel and wisdom of parents, especially mothers, is neither sought nor welcome. By repeating this pattern of behavior first seen in the Boston Archdiocese in 2002, the hierarchy has provided persuasive ammunition to the church’s opponents and critics, neglected the hurting, and failed the faithful.

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HARRISBURG(PA)
The Associated Press

August 21, 2018

By Marc Levy

A Roman Catholic priest was charged on Tuesday with groping a 17-year-old girl and sending her nude images of himself, just a week after a grand jury reported the church had covered up decades of child molestation by priests across the state.

The charges of felony corruption of minors and misdemeanor indecent assault against 30-year-old Kevin Lonergan were not a result of the landmark grand jury investigation but stemmed from a complaint filed in June, after the grand jury had finished its work, authorities said.

This is at least the second case of possible priest abuse being investigated in the Allentown Diocese since the grand jury finished its report, which identified 301 “predator priests” in a half-dozen Pennsylvania dioceses, including 37 in Allentown, going back to the 1940s.

Authorities have charged just two priests as a result of the grand jury investigation, including a priest who has since pleaded guilty.

But because of time limits in state law on the prosecution of old cases, Attorney General Josh Shapiro said those two were the only priests named in the report that his office could charge. Some of those named were prosecuted years ago, and more than 100 are dead.

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UNITED STATES
TIME

August 20, 2018

By Gerard Mannion

Mannion is Amaturo Professor of Catholic Studies at Georgetown University and a senior research fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs.

For some time, many members of the Catholic Church may have believed that the worst of the clerical abuse crisis was in the past. This certainly has been the Church’s intent, at least in word. But now the spotlight has returned, with the grand jury report from six Pennsylvania dioceses, which found from 70 years of documents that over 300 priests abused more than 1,000 victims — in addition to scandals involving the former Cardinal Archbishop of Washington, D.C., in the U.K., Australia, Peru and Chile, and on the verge of papal visit to Ireland, which suffered some of the worst of the worldwide priestly abuse. The head of the United States’ bishops conference has appealed to the Vatican for external assistance in conducting a blanket investigation into the continued blight of the clerical abuse crisis across the U.S.

“We already know that one root cause is the failure of episcopal leadership,” Cardinal Daniel DiNardo stated. “The result was that scores of beloved children of God were abandoned to face an abuse of power alone. This is a moral catastrophe.” While DiNardo is right about the catastrophe, his solution does not go far enough.

Pope Francis set out to make tackling he abuse crisis one of his foremost priorities upon election in 2013, significantly breaking with his two immediate predecessors. Having previously advocated a policy of zero-tolerance to clerical abuse as archbishop in Buenos Aries, he continued with the same resolve as the Bishop of Rome and Supreme Pontiff across the world’s Catholics. He quickly established a papal commission in 2014 to explore the whole range of factors and issues pertaining to the abuse crisis and to establish policies to ensure it is a stain of social sin that is removed from the church as far as possible once and for all.

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CHADDS FORD (PA)
Media Patch

August 20, 2018

By Max Bennett

A longtime priest who served in Delco, the Main Line, and Philadelphia was deemed unfit for ministry after facing drug and theft charges.

A priest who ministered Delaware County has been found unsuitable for ministry after being accused of having drugs delivered to a Chadds Ford parish, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced Sunday.

Reverend Monsignor Gregory J. Parlante, 61, who most recently served at Saint Cornelius Parish in Chadds Ford and previously served in Radnor and Philadelphia, was placed on administrative leave in June 2017 after charges were filed in connection with the alleged drugs.

Parlante was charged in January 2017 with possession of a controlled substance; possession of drug paraphernalia; and felony theft by unlawful taking, according to court records.

The first two charges were dismissed after Parlante was accepted into the Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition program for the theft charge in July this year, according to court records.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

August 21, 2018

By Philip Pullella

Pope Francis will meet victims of clergy sexual abuse during his trip to Ireland this weekend, the Vatican said on Tuesday, as scandals in several countries mire the Catholic Church in its worst credibility crisis in more than 15 years.

Last week a grand jury in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania released the findings of the largest-ever investigation of sex abuse in the U.S. Church, finding that 301 priests in the state had sexually abused minors over the past 70 years.

The damning U.S. report, combined with scandals in Australia and Chile, have coalesced to form what one Vatican official called “a perfect storm” not seen since the first abuse crisis erupted in Boston in 2002.

On Monday, Francis wrote an unprecedented letter to all Catholics, asking each one of them to help root out “this culture of death” and vowing there would be no more cover-ups.

Spokesman Greg Burke told reporters at a briefing on the Aug. 25-26 trip that details of the meeting would not be announced until after it was over and it would be up to the victims if they wanted to speak afterwards.

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HOUSTON (TX)
Houston Chronicle

August 20, 2018

An international search for a Dallas priest accused of molesting three teenage boys is a stark reminder that Texas should be as concerned as other states about the child sexual abuse allegations that have shaken faith in the Catholic Church.

Father Edmundo Paredes, pastor for 27 years of St. Cecilia Catholic Church, was reported missing Sunday and suspected of fleeing to the Philippines, his native country. The Diocese of Dallas reportedly notified police in February that Paredes was suspected of abusing children, but did not let his parishioners know until Saturday.

Such delays have led to widespread condemnation of the Catholic Church’s handling of child sexual abuse allegations. A Pennsylvania grand jury report last week documented abuse by 300 priests of more than 1,000 victims over a period of 70 years in that state. Most of the abusers were allowed to remain in the ministry as priests.

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UNITED STATES
The Federalist

August 22, 2018

By Melissa Langsam Braunstein

Forgiveness is a powerful force. But without real change, it’s also meaningless, which is why standards are crucial.

Does everyone deserve a second chance? It’s a timely question. Jews worldwide have begun repenting in the run-up to the High Holidays. Catholics are grappling with another massive abuse scandal among the church’s leadership, and some powerful men dethroned by the Me Too movement have already begun working on their own comebacks.

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OAKLAND (CA)
Bloomberg

August 21, 2018

By Peter Blumberg

– Deal will also pay workers $11,000 for alleged pay disparities
– No one covered by accord objects to it, plaintiff lawyers say

The cost of Uber Technologies Inc.’s sexual harassment scandal is now itemized: 56 current and former employees who filed claims stand to collect an average of $33,928.57.

In addition, those workers and 431 other female and minority engineers covered by a 2017 class-action lawsuit will receive an average of just under $11,000 for alleged pay disparities, according to a final accounting in the settlement of the case that was submitted Monday to a federal judge in Oakland, California.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Market Business Insider

August 22, 2018

By Isobel Asher Hamilton

– Uber will pay an average settlement of just under $34,000 each to 56 current and former employees claiming sexual harassment.
– It will also pay 485 female and minority engineers as part of a class-action claiming discrimination for pay disparity an average of $11,000 each.
– This gives a total payout of roughly $7.2 million.

Uber will have to pay out huge sums of money in settling a sexual harassment case with 56 current and former employees, as well as to 485 female and minority engineers claiming discrimination.

Each of the 56 claimants will receive $33,928.57 on average , which works out to just under $1.9 million overall. In addition, the 56 are part of a wider class action consisting of 485 female and minority engineers claiming discrimination for pay disparity. Each of these claimants will receive an average of $11,000 each, giving a back-of-the-envelope estimate of just over $5.3 million. Totted up, this gives a total payout of roughly $7.2 million.

The average settlement figures were first reported by Bloomberg citing documents submitted to a federal judge in Oakland, California on Monday.

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
CNN

August 21, 2018

By Hollie Silverman and Chuck Johnston

District Attorney Jim Martin to announce charges

A Catholic priest in Pennsylvania has been charged with indecent assault and corruption of a minor involving a 17-year-old girl, Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin said Tuesday.

Father Kevin Lonergan, who served at the Cathedral of St. Catharine of Siena in Allentown, started sending sexual messages to the victim via Snapchat after meeting her at St. Francis of Assisi in Allentown, Martin said in a press conference.

Martin said Lonergan also hugged the girl while he was aroused and grabbed her buttocks, pulling her closer when she tried to pull away.

The victim told an adult at Central High School who contacted the diocese, Martin said. The diocese then told the district attorney’s office of the accusation.

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DETROIT (MI)
ChurchMilitant.com

August 19, 2018

By Stephen Wynne

More than 1,300 sign open letter urging bishops to resign over “conspiracy of silence” on sex abuse

Catholics from the University of Oxford, Cambridge, Notre Dame, Boston College, Fordham and a number of institutions are demanding the “collective resignation” of every bishop in the United States.

On August 15 — the Feast of the Assumption — Catholic theologians, educators, parishioners and lay leaders issued an open letter calling on the bishops to step down after decades of covering up clerical sex abuse.

Since Wednesday, the “Statement of Catholic Theologians, Educators, Parishioners, and Lay Leaders On Clergy Sexual Abuse in the United States” has collected more than 1,300 signatures, with representatives from major universities and institutions as well as hundreds of parishes and ministries across the United States.

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UNITED STATES
(DT) Daily Theology

August 17, 2018

This guest post is a prayer and letter written by Dr. Susan Reynolds, Assistant Professor of Catholic Studies at Emory University Candler School of Theology.

To add your signature to the 4400+ signatures below, visit:/Para agregar su firma, visite: https://goo.gl/forms/0LXLPMpzTo56M8G12. The opinions of the undersigned do not represent those of their institutions. Las opiniones del abajo firmante no representan las de sus instituciones.

Lea la carta en es español aquí.

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
FoxNews.com

August 21, 2018

By Elizabeth Zwirz

Pennsylvania authorities on Tuesday announced charges against a Roman Catholic priest who allegedly had “inappropriate sexual contact” with a teenage girl.

Kevin Lonergan, 30, was charged with one count each of corruption of minors and indecent assault, Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin announced.

The charges filed against Lonergan are not related to a grand jury’s report released last week, in which several hundred Roman Catholic priests in the state were accused of sexually abusing more than a thousand children.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
The Associated Press

August 21, 2018

A Roman Catholic university in Pennsylvania plans to remove the names of three bishops from campus buildings, saying it is acting in solidarity with victims of child sexual abuse following the release of a grand jury report accusing church leaders of helping cover up decades of abuse by priests.

The University of Scranton said late Monday that three bishops — Jerome D. Hannan, J. Carroll McCormick, and James C. Timlin — in the local diocese were found in last week’s Pennsylvania grand jury report to have covered up crimes by priests and put children in harm’s way.

Hannan served from 1954 until his death in 1965. McCormick served from 1966 until 1983 and died in 1996. Timlin served from 1984 until 2003 and is 91 years old.

A Scranton Diocese spokesman has said Timlin would not do interviews, but pointed to the diocese’s response to the report noting that Timlin instituted a uniform response policy for allegations of abuse and established an internal review board.

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UNITED STATES
The Week

August 22, 2018

By Rachel Lu

American Catholics are furious. The rage has been building all summer, ever since the news broke concerning the alleged sexual predations of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Then a Pennsylvania grand jury released evidence of appallingly widespread abuse across six Pennsylvania dioceses, spanning 70 years, bolstering the argument that bishops have functioned for years as enablers, covering things up and playing things down, as known offenders are moved to fresh locations where they can find new victims.

To some, the way forward seems obvious if not easy. The Church needs better bishops. Many Catholic laymen are calling for mass resignations, pointing out that there is a precedent for this. The objective, as some see it, should not be simply to weed out the obviously-guilty-and-corrupt from the episcopacy. Rather, we need to replace our petty bureaucratic functionaries with virtuous and inspired spiritual leaders. Some would like to see the bishops in more populist garb, abandoning their oversized desks and cushy armchairs to preach on street corners and work in soup kitchens.

The appeal of this vision is obvious. But to my mind, a spate of glossy photo spreads — bishops kissing babies, hugging convicts, posing with oversized ladles — is borderline grotesque. After so many years of hypocrisy and posturing, couldn’t we all use a break from that kind of performative piety? I’d be content with uninspired bureaucrat-bishops, so long as they were decent and competent. Unfortunately, even that is starting to seem like a pretty tall order.

If the Catholic laity wish to fix the Church, I recommend three things. First, demand the removal of predatory priests and corrupt bishops. Second, reduce your expectations for those clergy that remain. Third, pick up the slack yourselves.

Catholicism will always need some priests, because it is a sacramental faith. In the 21st century though, it’s mostly going to be the task of Catholic laity to preserve and perpetuate their faith for future generations. Ordained men cannot be expected to do it all, both because they are too compromised, and because they are too few.

Catholic bishops are deeply unsympathetic figures nowadays (for good reason), but we should still appreciate that the expectations placed on them can be fairly ridiculous. In the first place, American dioceses are way too big. In some, the bishop is officially responsible for the spiritual guidance of literally millions of souls. How much oversight can we really expect under those circumstances?

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

August 17, 2018

By Heidi Schlumpf

‘No genuine … healing and reform can begin’ without a demonstration of repentance, statement says

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 9:45 p.m. Central time with comments from Susan Reynolds and an update on the number of signers. Second update at 10:15 a.m. extends the time for signing the statement.

More than 3,000 theologians, educators and lay leaders have called for all U.S. bishops to submit their resignations to Pope Francis, much like Chile’s 34 bishops did in May after revelations of sexual abuse and corruption, as a public act of penance and a “willing abdication of earthly status.”

“Today, we call on the Catholic Bishops of the United States to prayerfully and genuinely consider submitting to Pope Francis their collective resignation as a public act of repentance and lamentation before God and God’s People,” said a statement, posted in English and Spanish on the Daily Theology blog on Friday.

“Only then might the wrenching work of healing begin,” it said.

The statement was released Friday, with 140 signers, in response to Tuesday’s release of a grand jury report that detailed seven decades of sexual abuse by clergy and cover-up by church leaders in six dioceses in Pennsylvania, as well as allegations earlier this summer that former archbishop of Washington, Theodore McCarrick, sexually abused two children and adult seminarians.

Those interested can sign the statement by midnight Wednesday, Aug. 22, when it, along with a cover letter, will be sent to the president and vice presidents of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), as well as to to the apostolic nuncio in Washington D.C. and to the Congregations of Bishops in Rome.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
ABC7

August 21, 2018

By Victoria Sanchez

A national support group for people abused by Catholic priests is calling for the immediate resignation of Cardinal Donald Wuerl.

The leader of the Washington Archdiocese is under immense scrutiny after he was named more than 200 times in a Pennsylvania grand jury report about sexual abuse and cover-up when he was the Bishop of Pittsburgh for 18 years. The report took two years, is close to 900 pages, identifies roughly 300 priests and found at least 1,000 abused children in six Pennsylvania dioceses.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) demanded change in the Catholic church as they stood in front of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on Tuesday morning. They want Wuerl to resign or for Pope Francis to strip him of his title.

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HOUSTON (TX)
Houston Chronicle

August 21, 2018

An international search for a Dallas priest accused of molesting three teenage boys is a reminder that Texas should be as concerned as other states about the child sexual abuse allegations that have shaken the Catholic Church.

Father Edmundo Paredes, pastor for 27 years of St. Cecilia Catholic Church, was reported missing Sunday and suspected of fleeing to the Philippines, his native country. The Diocese of Dallas reportedly notified police in February that Paredes was suspected of abusing children, but did not let his parishioners know until Saturday.

Such delays have led to widespread condemnation of the Catholic Church’s handling of child sexual abuse allegations. A Pennsylvania grand jury report last week documented abuse by 300 priests of more than 1,000 victims over a period of 70 years in that state. Most of the abusers were allowed to remain in the ministry as priests.

Pope Francis in a letter to Catholics expressed “shame” over the charges and vowed to punish priests guilty of crimes or covering them up: “We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them,” Francis wrote.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
PG VISUALS

August 21, 2018

A visual narrative.

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TOLEDO (OH)
The Toledo Blade

August 21, 2018

By and large, criminal complaints, affidavits and other documents prepared by law-enforcement agencies are poorly written.

They’re portentous, heavy on jargon and short on style, with one simple sentence following another monotonously. Even if rich in detail, getting through them can be a slog.

Not so the Pennsylvania grand jury report on sexual abuse of children in the Pittsburgh, Allentown, Erie, Greensburg, Harrisburg and Scranton dioceses. Echoing the format of a report another grand jury produced two years ago about sexual abuse in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese, the 884-page document released Aug. 14 grabs readers from the very first sentence:

“We, the members of this grand jury, need you to hear this.”

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation

August 22, 2018

By Danny Tran and James Oaten

Melbourne’s new Archbishop Peter Comensoli has told parishioners he is “strongly committed” to reporting sexual abuse within the Church, but also wants to “uphold the seal of confession”.

The comments come days after the Pope wrote an open letter to Catholics apologising for abuse within the church.

The letter, penned by the Supreme Pontiff and addressed to all Catholics, begged forgiveness for abandoning the vulnerable and protecting the powerful, and was written in response to devastating allegations of misconduct by the church in the United States.

“We showed no care for the little ones, we abandoned them,” Pope Francis wrote.

“The heart-wrenching pain of these victims, which cries out to heaven, was long ignored, kept quiet or silenced.”

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PITTSBURGHH (PA)
CNN/KXLF

August 18, 2018

A district attorney is lamenting his office’s inability to prosecute any sex abuse allegations against Catholic priests detailed in a Pennsylvania grand jury’s report this week.

In Tuesday’s report, the grand jury said internal documents from six Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania showed that more than 300 “predator priests” were credibly accused of sexually abusing more than 1,000 child victims since 1947.

Ninety-nine of the 300 priests were in the Pittsburgh Diocese, and about a third of those 99 were in Beaver County, northwest of Pittsburgh.

But because of a variety of factors — such as the statute of limitations expiring, or the accused or accusers having died — none of those roughly 30 Beaver County cases can be prosecuted, District Attorney David Lozier said.

Often, he said, the most his office can do for victims is offer solace.

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ERIE (PA)
YourErie.com

August 21, 2018

By Syeda Abbas

The Survivor’s Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) wants the Diocese of Erie to continue open communication regarding sexual abuse in the Catholic church.

At first, SNAP members waited across the street from the diocese offices to meet with the news media, but they were surprised to be invited onto church property, signaling to them that Bishop Lawrence Persico was more than willing to have an open discussion.

Judy Jones, SNAP Midwest Regional Leader, says, “well, I know that victims are very excited that the report was released. I got involved with SNAP 16 years ago; my brother was sexually abused by our long-time parish priest…”

Supporters and survivors held signs against sexual abuse. Survivors shared their stories about abuse and how it affected their lives.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Kansas City Star

August 21, 2018

Editorial Board

Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley and Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt must find a way to do something incredibly difficult and absolutely necessary. They must launch the kind of full-scale grand jury investigation into the systemic cover-up of child rape and other serious crimes by Catholic priests that their counterpart in Pennsylvania just completed.

Justice requires it. And no one else can do it.

Both Hawley’s office and Schmidt’s have said they don’t have jurisdiction but would help local prosecutors if asked.

We’ve noticed, though, that where there’s a will, there’s a loophole. And if local prosecutors do have to ask them to step in, then they should by all means do that.

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ERIE (PA)
GoErie

August 21, 2018

By Ed Palattella

Demonstrators with the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests showed up outside the offices of the Catholic Diocese of Erie. ‘I am quite surprised,’ organizer says of bishop’s visit.

Judy Jones has been organizing protests for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests for 16 years.

The St. Louis resident, who helps direct S.N.A.P.’s Midwest operations, has been turned away by bishops.

She has dropped off letters at their chanceries, or administrative offices.

She has gone up against diocesan representatives.

But she has never talked to a bishop, let alone met one.

That changed on Tuesday, when Jones and five other protesters with S.N.A.P. showed up in the parking lot at St. Mark Catholic Center, the chancery for the Catholic Diocese of Erie.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Kansas City Star

August 20, 2018

By Judy L. Thomas

Missouri and Kansas authorities need to launch grand jury-style investigations into clergy sexual abuse crimes and cover-ups in the Catholic church similar to the one conducted in Pennsylvania, a local attorney and abuse victims said Monday.

“When we received the grand jury investigation from Pennsylvania, it was shocking and it was saddening,” said Rebecca Randles, who has represented hundreds of victims in priest sexual abuse lawsuits. “And then I sat down to try to figure out, well, how many priests in the Kansas City area, the St. Louis area and KCK had been similarly abusive?”

The number, Randles said, was astounding.

“We have over 230 priests that we know of that have been sexually abusive in this area,” she said of her accounting of those who have been accused. “And our population centers are much smaller. So it details that there is an even greater issue in the Kansas City, St. Louis, Missouri areas and the Archdiocese of Kansas than what we’re seeing in the grand jury report out of Pennsylvania.”

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INDIA
The News Minute

July 29, 2018

Withdraw rape case, will give asylum Audio of Kerala Catholic priest threatening nun.

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INDIA
The Indian Express

July 31, 2018

By Shaju Philip

In the voice clip, Aerthayil was heard asking the nun, that if they are ready to withdraw the complaint, they would be allowed to move to a new convent, which would be constructed somewhere under the jurisdiction of Kanjirapally diocese.

Police on Monday registered a case against a senior priest for his alleged attempt to influence the nun who has accused Jalandhar bishop Franco Mulakkal of rape. The case was lodged on a direction of the judicial first class magistrate court in Pala after the audio clip of a purported conversation between Fr Aerthayil and a nun close to the complainant came out in the media.

Catholic congregation Carmelites of Mary Immaculate (CMI) too initiated disciplinary action against Aerthayil. Aerthayil, a former chairman of Catholic Church mouthpiece Deepika, was removed as head of the CMI monastery at Kurianad in Kottayam a day after a voice clip came out in the media.

In the voice clip, Aerthayil was heard asking the nun, who is staying with the complainant at their Kuravilangad convent in Kottayam, that if they are ready to withdraw the complaint, they would be allowed to move to a new convent, which would be constructed somewhere under the jurisdiction of Kanjirapally diocese. Aerthayil is also heard stating he was making a suggestion and the nuns should “think positively”.

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NEW JERSEY
NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

August 19, 2018

By Ted Sherman

The wide-ranging report from a Pennsylvania grand jury exposing the long-hidden secrets of predator priests is sparking calls for a similar accounting in New Jersey.

New Jersey’s Catholic bishops, in the wake of the report, said the disclosures “show a heartbreaking departure from our fundamental belief in the dignity and value of every child.”

At the same time, the head of the state’s largest Catholic diocese has announced it will hire an outside firm to conduct an audit of alleged child abuse cases, although Cardinal Joseph Tobin of the Archdiocese of Newark has not committed to a release of any findings.

Sen. Joseph Vitale, who has pushed for years to eliminate New Jersey’s limits on civil lawsuits involving child sex abuse complaints against priests, said it is time for the attorney general to act, calling on the state to conduct an investigation similar to that in Pennsylvania.

“This issue has not gone away and victims continue to suffer,” said the Middlesex County Democrat.

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ALLENTOWN (PA) and HARRISBURG (PA)
AP/WTXF

August 21 2018

A Roman Catholic priest was charged on Tuesday with groping a 17-year-old girl and sending her nude images of himself, just a week after a grand jury reported the church had covered up decades of child molestation by priests across the state.

The charges of felony corruption of minors and misdemeanor indecent assault against 30-year-old Kevin Lonergan were not a result of the landmark grand jury investigation but stemmed from a complaint filed in June, after the grand jury had finished its work, authorities said.

This is at least the second case of possible priest abuse being investigated in the Allentown Diocese since the grand jury finished its report, which identified 301 “predator priests” in a half-dozen Pennsylvania dioceses, including 37 in Allentown, going back to the 1940s.

“I think it’s horrible. I think it’s putting a dark cloud on the Catholic faith,” said parionisher Janel Herman reacting to the charges against Lonergan. “I probably wouldn’t trust my child alone with a priest. Not probably, I wouldn’t, unfortunately. But I do know of some good ones that are probably being tarnished because of it.”

The priest first met the 17-year-old girl before Mass at St. Francis of Assisi Church also in Allentown. Shortly after meeting her, Lonergan obtained her cell phone number from other members of the church. Investigators say Lonergan had used social media apps such as Snapchat to contact the victim.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
KWCH12

August 21, 2018

Kansas has now joined Missouri in saying the state Attorney General’s Office will not launch grand jury investigations into abuse within the Catholic Church. It was a grand jury report that revealed more than 300 priests in Pennsylvania abused more than 1,000 children.

The call to do so came from four victims of abuse from Kansas and Missouri along with their Kansas City attorney, Rebecca Randles.

“I’m now 62 years old and I still live with the pain of what happened to me when I was in grade school,” Tim Viviano said, getting emotional, at a news conference Monday recounting what happened to him years ago.

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TOPEKA (KS)
The Topeka Capital-Journal

August 21, 2018

By Katie Moore

In the wake of a call for a statewide investigation into sexual abuse by Catholic priests, Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt urged victims to contact the state’s victim assistance hotline.

The hotline can be reached at (800) 828-9745 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

“I admire and encourage those victims of childhood sexual abuse who continue to choose to come forward, sometimes after many years have passed,” Schmidt said in a statement. “The physical or sexual abuse of a child is a serious crime in Kansas.”

On Monday, attorney Rebecca Randles said her firm identified 238 priests accused of abuse from five dioceses in Kansas and Missouri. Joined by four survivors, Randles urged the attorney generals in Kansas and Missouri to convene large-scale investigations similar to the grand jury investigation in Pennsylvania which discovered more than 1,000 victims.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Associated Press

August 21, 2018

Priest sex abuse victims are demanding that Missouri and Kansas officials conduct a comprehensive investigation into clergy misconduct and cover-ups similar to the one that revealed widespread problems in Pennsylvania.

The Kansas City Star reports that Rebecca Randles, who has represented hundreds of victims in priest sexual abuse lawsuits, made the case for the investigation at a news conference Monday with four men who said they had been sexually abused.

Randles said the findings of the Pennsylvania investigation were “shocking” and led her to sit down to try to figure out how many priests in the Kansas City and St. Louis areas had been similarly abusive. She came up with 230 names. But she said only a handful of priests have been charged and one bishop punished.

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ST. LOUIS (MI)
KMOX Radio

August 20, 2018

By Mark Reardon

Sister Mary Jo Sobieck threw a perfect first pitch before a White Sox game over the weekend. She discusses her days playing softball and her love of the Cardinals. Pope Francis issues a letter to Catholics around the world condemning sex abuse and its cover up by the church. David Clohessy is the former executive director of SNAP – the Survivors Network of Those Abused By Priests. William Roth is the founder of the St. Louis Actors Studio. He discusses this year’s season at the Gaslight Theater.

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ROME
ABC News

August 21, 2018

By Phoebe Natanson

When Pope Francis travels to Ireland this weekend, he is likely to meet privately with sex abuse victims, a Vatican spokesman told reporters today.

As is the custom, information about the pope’s meetings with victims would not be revealed to the public until afterwards and only if the victims agree.

Without sharing any further details about the meetings, Vatican spokesperson Greg Burke said, “The important thing for the pope is to listen.”

Burke also said the pope will pray in silence for abuse victims in a chapel at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Dublin on Saturday.

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LEXINGTON (KY)
WKYT

August 20, 2018

By Emilie Arroyo

A disturbing grand jury report out of Pennsylvania is hitting close to home for the Diocese of Lexington. The recent report involves hundreds of priests, and more than 1,000 victims of alleged sexual abuse in the Catholic church.

The former leader of the Diocese of Lexington, Bishop Ronald Gainer, surfaced in the abuse findings, and is accused of asking the Vatican to protect two accused priests.

“The efforts to protect the institution were widespread,” explained Lexington Bishop John Stowe, who says he hasn’t had recent contact with his predecessor.

“No I have not had a chance to talk to Bishop Gainer,” said Stowe, “Our first concern is for the victims. We also go around with the shame of knowing that leadership in our church has failed to respond adequately to victims and allowed abuse to go on.”

However, Stowe has reached out to Lexington parishioners, condemning both the abuse and cover-ups that followed.

“Our church is bigger than just the sins of some of its members. So, we have to focus on the good that we’re doing and hear the cries of the victims, and respond to those as best as we can,” said Stowe.

That response, and ones like it from other church leaders in Kentucky, is falling short for some in the Catholic community, like members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. A leader with the Kentucky chapter tells WKYT that if the church wants to stop the abuse,
it has to change the language used to describe it.

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ATLANTA (GA)
CNN

August 21, 2018

By Susannah Cullinane and Madison Park

For more than three decades, the Catholic Church has been rocked by sex abuse scandals spanning the globe.

And for decades, the church has been accused of protecting itself rather than the victims of child sexual abuse.
Here are some major scandals and revelations involving the Catholic Church and allegations of abuse.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
KCUR

August 20, 2018

By Andrea Tudhope

A Kansas City attorney and abuse victims are calling on the attorneys general of Kansas and Missouri to launch investigations into clergy sexual abuse, similar to the grand jury investigation in Pennsylvania.

Attorney Rebecca Randles said she has hundreds of clients who allege they’ve been abused by a member of the Catholic Church.

It wasn’t until the grand jury report was released, revealing more than 1,000 young people had been abused by priests in Pennsylvania, that she took a step back to consider the breadth of the issue.

“I didn’t realize the magnitude of what’s happening here, to people in Kansas City. It’s astounding,” Randles said.

That’s why she is calling for statewide investigations into the alleged abuse, which she said — according the Archdiocese of St. Louis and a website documenting investigations filed — involves more than 200 current and former priests in Missouri and the Archdiocese of Kansas in Kansas City, Kansas.

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UNITED STATES
Elle

August 21, 2018

By Katie O’Malley

It is possible to be both alleged perpetrator and victim

Last night, the New York Times reported that actress and #MeToo campaigner Asia Argento recently settled claims that she sexually assaulted actor Jimmy Bennett in 2013, when he was a minor.

Last October, when sexual assault allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein hit international news headlines, Argento came out with her own claims of abuse by the film mogul.

In the weeks that followed, she joined a legion of male and female advocates of the #MeToo movement, which encouraged people to speak about their own experiences of assault and harassment.

Weinstein has ‘unequivocally denied’ any allegations of non-consensual sex.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
KCTV

August 20, 2018

By Nick Sloan

Following a grand jury report in Pennsylvania accusing more than 300 priests of sexually abusing more than a 1,000 children, there are calls for the attorney generals in Missouri and Kansas to launch into allegations of abuse by the Catholic Church.

Four men on Monday sat down in front of the TV cameras with representatives for the hundreds of people who say they’ve been sexually abused by priests.

Today the names of more than 200 accused priests in Kansas and Missouri were released, 45 of them are in the metro.

“As we’ve seen today with the events in Pennsylvania, there is a need for accountability and true reconciliation within the church,” said Scott Goodloe, victim of abuse.

Attorney Rebecca Randles said the revelation makes the case a “bigger scandal.”

“The numbers that we have compared to the population centers we have, make this probably an even bigger scandal,” she said.

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DUBLIN (IRELAND)
Reuters

August 20, 2018

By Padraic Halpin

Andrew Madden became the first victim of clerical child sex abuse in Ireland to speak out publicly in 1995 when he detailed how, as a 12-year-old altar boy, he suffered two-and-a-half years of abuse at the hands of his parish priest.

Over the next 15 years floods of similar stories followed as harrowing state investigations unearthed endemic sexual abuse and cover-up that rocked the church’s standing in the once staunchly Roman Catholic country.

When Pope Francis makes the first papal visit to Ireland in nearly 40 years this weekend, Madden, a Dubliner, will be a long way away.

“I did not want to be here and watch a load of people flag-waving after all this church has done. To see that institution being cheered on when there are so many unanswered questions, I would find it sickening,” said Madden, who will be in Rome when the Pope addresses an expected 500,000 people in Dublin on Sunday.

“I don’t have any expectations of the pope telling the truth about what the Vatican knew and its knowledge of all that was covered up. It has had plenty of time to respond appropriately to what’s happened in this country and elsewhere.”

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BOSTON (MA)
CBS Connecticut/WBZ News 11pm

August 20, 2018

Cardinal Sean O’Malley claims his secretary never handed him a letter claiming that now ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick had engaged in sexual misconduct with seminarians decades ago

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SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
BRIT + CO

August 20, 2018

By Kelli Korducki

The Italian actress and director Asia Argento had been one of the most prominent voices of the #MeToo movement since she came forward with rape allegations against Harvey Weinstein in October 2017. On Sunday night, the New York Times reported that the actress herself stands accused of sexually assaulting a young man when he was a 17-year-old minor. Argento has also reportedly signed off on a $380,000 payoff to prevent further legal action against her.

The allegations against Argento have surfaced just as a different kind of celebrity #MeToo scandal is making ripples across certain corners of the internet. On August 13, the New York Timesreported that New York University had conducted an 11-month investigation into a sexual harassment complaint by a male former graduate student against Avital Ronell, a female superstar professor of German and Comparative Literature. After the university concluded that Ronell was responsible, a group of extremely influential academics signed off on a letter to NYU in Ronell’s defense; one of the most powerful feminist scholars on earth, Judith Butler, was one of them.

The two incidents are unrelated, but they raise the same important question: What does #MeToo mean when the alleged perpetrators are women? And, to take that question to its logical follow-up, how can a feminist movement come to terms with predatory behavior on the part of women who claim to be feminists, themselves?

The answer might just lie in what the two women’s cases have in common, which happens to also be what all #MeToo stories have in common: Power.

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ATLANTA (GA)
National Public Radio

August 20, 2018

Length: 5:23

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Yesterday at St. Thomas More Catholic Church in suburban Atlanta, a priest spoke to his congregation about sexual abuse. Catholics are struggling with the details of a Pennsylvania grand jury report released last week. It outlined decades of sexual abuse in six dioceses by more than 300 priests involving more than 1,000 children. His words led to a remarkable exchange during the service yesterday. Susan Reynolds was in the pews at St. Thomas More. She’s also a professor of Catholic studies at Emory University’s School of Theology. Welcome.

SUSAN REYNOLDS: Thank you.

CHANG: So can you tell us – what was the priest saying about these revelations of widespread abuse by priests in Pennsylvania?

REYNOLDS: It was a powerful homily. You know, he began by saying, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. And he went on to say what the church needs is radical structural reform led by laypeople.

CHANG: And then what happened?

REYNOLDS: Well, he turned to sit down after he was finished – and like I said, it was a powerful homily – when, all of a sudden, in about the fifth row, a dad stood up. And for those of your listeners who are Catholic, you know that you don’t just (laughter) stand up during Mass.

CHANG: This is very rare, for someone to just speak unannounced in the (laughter) middle of Mass.

REYNOLDS: I’ve been to Catholic for 31 of my 31 years, and never have I ever seen anything like this. He was shaking. He was determined. He was terrified. His shirt was matted to his (laughter) back with sweat.

CHANG: Wow.

REYNOLDS: And he simply stood up and said, how? (Laughter) How do we do that? Tell us how.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Vox

August 21, 2018

By Daniel Hemel

Why many Catholic Church accusers are legally barred from bringing their case to court.

The release of a Pennsylvania grand jury report documenting the sexual abuse of more than 1,000 child victims by hundreds of Catholic priests has revived a long-running debate about statutes of limitations.

These statutes — which create time limits after which criminal prosecutions and civil lawsuits can no longer be initiated — prevent many of the Pennsylvania accusers from bringing their alleged abusers to court. It’s the same type of law that helped make it so hard for Bill Cosby’s accusers to take him to court when allegations of rape resurfaced a few years ago.

Statutes of limitations are common but controversial features of federal and state law. More than 40 states still have statutes of limitations that apply to some or all child sexual abuse crimes, and most states also apply limitations statutes to civil lawsuits.

Proponents of these laws argue that litigating a case based on events from the distant past runs the risk of lost evidence and faulty memories. Critics respond that these concerns can be adequately addressed without drawing arbitrary lines that shut victims out of court.

Pennsylvania law currently allows criminal prosecutions for child sexual abuse until the victim turns 50. Victims themselves can bring civil lawsuits (in which victims ask for compensation rather than for the perpetrator to be put in prison) until they turn 30. Calls for Pennsylvania and other states to reform these statutes have grown louder in the days since the grand jury report.

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VATICAN CITY
CBS News

August 20, 2018

By Jan Crawford

Pope Francis became the first pope to directly write to the world’s Catholics about the church’s sexual abuse scandal. In a letter published Monday, the pope said the church had abandoned its children, begged victims for forgiveness and said the church must spare no effort to root out predator priests.

The letter comes less than a week after revelations of decades of abuse in Pennsylvania and allegations that the current archbishop of Washington, D.C., was involved in a coverup.

“We showed no care for the little ones,” the pope wrote. “We abandoned them.”

Francis, however, stopped short of offering concrete steps to remove abusive priests or sanction those who took part in cover-ups.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl, now the archbishop of Washington, D.C., was accused in the report of shielding predator priests. As bishop of Pittsburgh for 18 years, he oversaw 32 of of the 99 accused. Wuerl spoke with CBS News the night before the report was released.

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VATICAN CITY
Agence France Presse

August 21, 2018

Irish abuse survivor Marie Collins said that the latest statement from the Vatican lacked a “plan of action”

“In recent days, a report was made public which detailed the experiences of at least a thousand survivors… the abuse of power and of conscience at the hands of priests,” the pope said in a letter made public by the Vatican.

“Even though it can be said that most of these cases belong to the past, nonetheless as time goes on we have come to know the pain of many of the victims,” he said.

“We have realised that these wounds never disappear and that they require us forcefully to condemn these atrocities and join forces in uprooting this culture of death,” he added.

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NEW YORK (NY)
CBS News

August 19, 2018

Sunday marked the first time many Catholics returned to church since a shocking new report about priest sex abuse came to light. Many churches in the Northeast held a “Mass of forgiveness,” including St. Patrick’s Cathedral, CBS New York reports.

Bishop Ronald Gainer with the Diocese of Harrisburg joined a list of Roman Catholic clergy to pray and ask for forgiveness. It came in reaction to a grand jury report last week in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania that alleged rampant sex abuse affecting more than 1,000 children by 300 priests in six dioceses over the past seven decades.

“In the name of our local church, I voice again my heartfelt sorrow and sincere apology to all survivors of clergy sexual abuse,” Gainer said.

Gainer, who is named in the report, is accused of reaching out to the Vatican to protect two of the priests accused of abuse.

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LINCOLN (NE)
The Associated Press

August 17, 2018

The Nebraska Attorney General’s Office and the Catholic Diocese of Lincoln are urging residents to report any allegations of abuse by clergy or others in authority.

Lincoln Bishop James Conley and the attorney general’s office said anyone who has experienced even an uncomfortable incident with a priest should report it to law enforcement or the diocese.

The move follows a Pennsylvania grand jury report released Tuesday accusing 300 priests of molesting more than 1,000 children. The grand jury also accused senior church officials of systematically covering up the complaints, according to the report.

The Lincoln Diocese recently announced it had investigated abuse allegations involving five priests, all of whom no longer work for the diocese. Two accused priests resigned, one was dismissed from his position, one retired and the fifth has been deceased for a decade.

Conley said the diocese is continuing to gather information on the allegations.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
The Washington Post

August 20, 2018

By Michelle Boorstein

In the week since a Pennsylvania grand jury reported on child sex abuse by Catholic priests, Cardinal Donald Wuerl’s reputation has taken a brutal hit.

Wuerl’s upcoming book has been canceled by the publisher, he abruptly pulled out of his role as keynote speaker at a major global meeting in Ireland, and officials are considering taking his name off a high school in his hometown of Pittsburgh, where Wuerl served as bishop for 18 years before becoming the archbishop of Washington in 2006. On Monday, a vandal got ahead of them – covering his name in red spray paint.

Wuerl, an outwardly mild priest and meticulous manager who picks every word carefully when he speaks, has become for the moment the face of a ballooning crisis in the Catholic Church. And unlike the quiet protests and longings for change of past decades, Catholics in 2018 are demanding accountability – and fast.

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BERKELEY (CA)
SFGate

August 20, 2018

By Cynthia Dizikes and Nanette Asimov

UC Berkeley has suspended a renowned architecture professor for three years without pay for sexually harassing a graduate student and abusing his power for personal gain, The Chronicle has learned.

Professor Nezar AlSayyad “engaged in a pattern of sexual harassment that created a hostile environment,” Vice Provost Benjamin Hermalin wrote last week to Eva Hagberg Fisher, a UC Berkeley graduate student and doctoral candidate.

AlSayyad, who was one of Hagberg Fisher’s advisers, also attempted to isolate her from other faculty members and establish himself as her most important supporter, “thereby using his power for personal gain,” Hermalin wrote, noting that campus Chancellor Carol Christ reviewed “voluminous evidence” and concluded the violations were serious.

Through his attorney, AlSayyad denied engaging in any misconduct.

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UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

August 21, 2018

By Joelle Casteix

It’s time for action.

You’ve read the PA Grand Jury Report and its sickening revelations.

You’ve watched child sex abuse scandals unfold in US Gymnastics, Penn State, The Boy Scouts of America, Hollywood, our public schools, and across beloved institutions we have trusted with the care of our children.

If you are a survivor, healing begins with movement. Taking that first step. DOING SOMETHING to make sure that what happened to you doesn’t happen to another child.

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UNITED STATES
CBS News

August 21, 2018

Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein is reacting to a report that Italian actress Asia Argento paid off a young actor who accused her of sexual assault. Argento was one of the first women to accuse Weinstein of sexual misconduct and has since become a prominent figure in the #MeToo movement.

In a New Yorker story last October, Argento accused Harvey Weinstein of rape when she was 21 years old. While none of the charges Weinstein is facing in court, including felony sexual assault, involve Argento, his attorney believes this latest development is a win for him in the court of public opinion

CBS News’ Jericka Duncan asked attorney Brafman how Weinstein reacted when he told him about the report that Argento was accused of sexual harassment.

“I don’t remember the first words. I remember the tenor of the conversation was almost relief,” Brafman said.

He says his client was not surprised by the New York Times article about Arento’s alleged payoff of the actor.

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DENVER (CO)
KDVR

August 20, 2018

Archbishop of Denver Samuel Aquila responded to the Grand Jury report of priest sex abuse in the Catholic Church in Pennsylvania over the weekend, and a tweet he sent on the issue is angering some.

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BOSTON (MA)
The Conversation

August 21, 2018

By Timothy D. Lytton

Last week, a Pennsylvania grand jury documented 70 years of concerted efforts by Catholic bishops in that state to conceal more than 1,000 cases of child sexual abuse by priests – including rape, sadomasochism and producing child pornography.

These revelations are shocking but not surprising given the history of the church’s sexual abuse scandal.

Since 1984, similar disclosures from around the country have made national headlines and brought shame to the church.

Yet the few criminal prosecutions of church officials for such cover-ups have either been dropped or resulted in small fines or, in one case, probation.

Civil lawsuits – legal claims brought by abuse victims for money damages – have consistently been the only effective way to make Catholic church officials publicly and concretely accountable for their decadeslong cover-up of unspeakable crimes. I argued this in my 2008 book, “Holding Bishops Accountable.” It is still true today.

But victims seeking justice for abuse that in many cases occurred decades ago face a significant legal impediment to mounting such lawsuits – statutes of limitation that limit the number of years that a victim has to file a lawsuit.

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UNITED STATES
AFP

August 20, 2018

Italian actress and sexual abuse campaigner Asia Argento is not under investigation over bombshell allegations that she had sex five years ago with an underage teen, police told AFP on Monday.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that Argento, a Harvey Weinstein accuser and leading figure in the #MeToo movement, had paid Jimmy Bennett $380,000 over the 2013 incident at a Los Angeles hotel.

The development prompted accusations of hypocrisy from Weinstein’s lawyer who said that the revelations undermined her claims against his client.

Bennett was 17 at the time of the alleged assault — a year younger than California’s age of consent. A spokeswoman for the LA County Sheriff’s Department said however the agency had “no open investigation.”

“Enquiries will be made. At this point, it’s just enquiring and gathering information, since we don’t have an active investigation,” Kimberly Alexander told AFP.

She said she was unaware if the department had contacted Bennett, now 22.

The actor and rock musician said Argento, 42, assaulted him in a California hotel room, according to the Times, which cited documents sent to the paper by an unidentified party.

Argento became a powerful voice for the #MeToo movement after accusing Weinstein of raping her when she was 21 in his hotel room in 1997 during the Cannes film festival.

Bennett’s legal action was launched a month after Argento’s accusations against Weinstein were made public, the Times said.

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NEW YORK
The Associated Press

August 20, 2018

Authorities said Monday that they are looking into sexual assault allegations by a young actor against Italian actress Asia Argento — one of the most prominent activists of the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s Capt. Darren Harris said investigators from his department will seek to talk to Jimmy Bennett or his representatives about the alleged incident at a Southern California hotel in 2013, when Bennett was 17.

The move comes in response to a New York Times story saying Argento, 42, settled a legal notice of intent to sue filed by Bennett, who is now 22, for $380,000 shortly after she said last October that movie mogul Harvey Weinstein raped her.

Argento and Bennett co-starred in a 2004 film called “The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things” in which Argento played Bennett’s prostitute mother.

Bennett says in the notice that he had sex with Argento in the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Marina del Rey, California, in 2013. The age of consent in California is 18.

The notice says the encounter traumatized Bennett and hurt his career, the Times reported.

Investigators have learned no police report was filed at the time, Harris said.

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UNITED STATES
Agence-France Presse

August 21, 2018

By Jastinder Khera

Italian actress and sexual abuse campaigner Asia Argento denied Tuesday having had a sexual relationship five years ago with an underage teen, calling the allegations part of “a long-standing persecution”.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that Argento, 42, a Harvey Weinstein accuser and leading figure in the #MeToo movement, had paid actor and rock musician Jimmy Bennett $380,000 over the alleged 2013 incident at a Los Angeles hotel.

Bennett was two months past his 17th birthday at the time of the alleged encounter, while Argento was 37. The legal age of consent in California is 18.

“I strongly deny and oppose the contents of the New York Times article… as circulated also in national and international news,” a statement issued by her agent said.

“I am deeply shocked and hurt by having read news that is absolutely false. I have never had any sexual relationship with Bennett,” it goes on.

Argento says that she was linked to Bennett “during several years by friendship only”.

The pair had acted together in the 2004 film “The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things”, in which Argento plays Bennett’s troubled mother.

Argento said the friendship “ended when, subsequent to my exposure in the Weinstein case, Bennett… unexpectedly made an exorbitant request of money from me”.

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ST. LOUIS (MI)
KSDK

August 20, 2018

By Rachel Menitoff

“What I’ve seen after three decades, is pope after pope after pope saying more sympathetic words about victims and expressing more remorse for the abuse, but never announcing real concrete steps to prevent this from happening.”

Pope Francis issued a letter to Catholics around the world Monday condemning the “crime” of priestly sexual abuse and its cover-up and demanding accountability, in response to new revelations in the United States of decades of misconduct by the Catholic Church.

David Clohessy has been the voice of countless victims of sexual abuse linked to the Catholic Church. After Monday’s message from the pope, he decided to share his personal story for the first time, and reveal how he felt about the pope’s message.

“I’ll bet you there was a tennis picture in here,” said Clohessy as he flipped through his high school yearbook.

The days of competitive tennis bring back fond memories. But, behind his year-book smile are years of repression.

“I was abused for a period of about four years,” explained Clohessy. “Age 11 or 12, through about 16, by a parish priest who ingratiated himself into our family.”

Clohessy said his priest would come over for regular family dinners.

“In that era, it was a real privilege and honor to have a priest take an interest in a family,” he said.

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DALLAS (TX)
WFAA-TV, Dallas-Fort Worth

August 20, 2018

A Dallas priest accused of molesting teens and taking at least $60,000 from his parish now is missing, Roman Catholic Church officials said.

At St. Cecilia Catholic Church, where the Rev. Edmundo Paredes had served for 27 years, parishioners said Sunday that he may have fled to his native Philippines where he has been taking annual vacations.

Bishop Edward Burns told parishioners over the weekend that the Dallas Diocese has hired two private investigators to try to track Paredes down.

“Now that we know of his criminal sexual acts, we want to get a handle on him,” Burns said.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
WPXI

August 20, 2018

The Pittsburgh Diocese is defending decisions to cut off payments for abuse victims going through counseling.

Frances Samber has spent the last eight years fighting to tell the story her brother never had the chance to share.

“Every victim who has suffered at the hands of the diocese needs their story told in the court of law,” Samber said.

Michael Unglo struggled for years after being sexually assaulted by his priest.

At one point, the diocese agreed to pay for counseling and treatment, but those payments came to an end in spring of 2010.

“We were actually alerted during a therapy session and it kind of sent him into a spiral,” Samber said.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

August 20, 2018

By Fr. Peter Daly

In late April of 2002, Pope John Paul II summoned all the American cardinals to Rome for an emergency meeting to discuss the “American problem” of the sexual abuse scandal. It was dominating news coverage in the United States, and the bishops’ meeting in Dallas that June would be covered live on national television. Nothing much happened in Rome. The pope addressed the cardinals. A statement full of platitudes about concern and condemnation was issued. But no real accountability.

When the cardinals returned home, only one, Theodore McCarrick, had the courage to make himself available to the press. I was impressed. At least he seemed to “get” the gravity of the situation. At least he was willing to take questions.

When McCarrick came back from Rome, he summoned all the priests of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., to a mandatory meeting at the Franciscan Monastery near the Catholic University of America in Washington. We were eager to go. It would be our first chance to discuss the clergy sexual abuse scandal with our archbishop. There were over 200 priests present.

The meeting lasted more than two hours. For the first hour, the press was present in the room. The cardinal made a long statement and took a few questions from the reporters. Then the press and the archdiocesan lay staff were ushered out. Only the priests remained in the room with the cardinal and our auxiliary bishops.

It was a typical hierarchical meeting. The cardinal and bishops sat up front. McCarrick came to a microphone and spent a long time discussing what would become known as the “Dallas charter” (Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People), which prescribed how priests were to be treated henceforth, when accused of sexual abuse of a minor. The charter would be discussed in the bishops’ meeting in Dallas, and McCarrick was on the committee drafting it. It set up review boards and child protection offices. It prescribed an “audit” to be carried out by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice* to determine the scope of the situation. There was a mechanism to handle accusations against priests and a “zero-tolerance” policy. But there was no oversight for bishops.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WGRZ

August 17, 2018

Will New York Follow Pennsylvania’s Lead

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