ABUSE TRACKER

A former Catholic chaplain at Brandeis University who gained prominencewhen he called for Cardinal Bernard Law’s resignation two decades ago during the clergy abuse scandal in the Boston Archdiocese is being sued for the alleged sexual assault of a Brandeis student in a New York hotel room in December 2014, records show.

The Rev. Walter H. Cuenin, a retired priest living in Virginia, allegedly assaulted the 20-year-old student after the pair had traveled to Manhattan to attend a performance of the New York Philharmonic, according to a civil lawsuit the man’s lawyer, Mitchell Garabedian, filed last week in New York Supreme Court.

Cuenin, 79, said in a brief phone interview last week that he “did not abuse” the student, nor did he have any sort of sexual contact with him.

“No contact at all,” said Cuenin, who said he lives…

View Cache

A church leader in Okaloosa County, Florida has been arrested and is facing several counts of possession of child pornography after a months-long investigation.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) received a tip back in May 2024 from Microsoft about sexual images believed to contain children being uploaded online by a Bing Image Search user. The NCMEC passed this tip along to the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office, who shortly thereafter began their investigation.

Information obtained from the tip and other findings ultimately led law enforcement to a home on 8th Street in Shalimar, owned by 64-year-old Frank Gough II. Gough has served since 2010 as Friar of Resurrection Anglican Church, also in Shalimar.

A multi-agency search warrant was conducted on Thursday, January 9, at Gough’s home by units from Internet Crimes Against Children, the OCSO Drug Task Force, and Homeland Security Investigation. During the search, law enforcement…

View Cache

Home secretary announces plans to implement key demand from Jay inquiry in England

Professionals who work with children will face criminal sanctions if they fail to report claims of child sexual abuse under a law to be introduced this year, Yvette Cooper has told MPs.

The home secretary has promised to implement a key demand from Prof Alexis Jay’s child sexual abuse inquiry after Keir Starmer turned down demands from Elon Musk and Kemi Badenoch for a new investigation into paedophile gangs.

The introduction of mandatory reporting in England would be included in the crime and policing bill expected to be introduced to parliament in the spring, Cooper told parliament.

“We will make it mandatory to report abuse, and we will put the measures in the crime and policing bill that will be put before parliament this spring, making it an offence, with professional and criminal sanctions, to fail to report or cover…

View Cache

Earlier this week Bishop Dominique Rey of the Diocese of Fréjus-Toulon announced his resignation three years early at the request of Pope Francis following an apostolic visitation of his diocese.

The 72-year-old bishop, who has served in Fréjus-Toulon since 2000, has been at odds with Rome in recent years, largely over the restriction of the Traditional Latin Mass and discernment to the priesthood and religious life of individuals who adhere to the so-called “Old Rite.”

An initial visitation of the Fréjus-Toulon diocese was conducted in 2022, resulting in the postponement of the diocese’s priestly ordinations, originally scheduled for the June 29 feast of Saints Peter and Paul.

Subsequently, a full apostolic visitation of the diocese began in 2023, and Bishop François Touvet was named coadjutor of Fréjus-Toulon, a position typically assigned to someone set to take over the post of bishop once the sitting prelate dies or resigns, and assumed…

View Cache

A former teacher at a Catholic high school in western Ohio has pleaded guilty to sex-related charges involving a former student.

Michael McKenna, 62, of Enon, Ohio, pleaded guilty in Clark County Common Pleas Court to two counts of sexual battery, both third-degree felonies. He originally was charged with six counts, court records show.

An indictment shows McKenna is accused of committing the offenses between January 2017 and May 2018, when the victim was a student at Catholic Central High School in Springfield. McKenna, who was a social studies teacher and football coach, was fired in March after he was indicted.

McKenna could be sentenced to a maximum of 10 years in prison and fined up to $20,000. As part of his plea deal, he will be classified as a Tier III sex offender.

He is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 3.

View Cache

A former Oxnard priest was sentenced Thursday to a year in jail in connection with sex offenses against two youths in Los Angeles County but avoided state prison, officials said.

Rodolfo Martinez-Guevara pleaded no contest to sodomy with a person under age 16 and a lewd act with a child age 14 or 15, according to court records. The first offense applies when the perpetrator is over age 21 and the second if the perpetrator is at least 10 years older than the child.

Besides jail, he received a suspended term of three years in state prison and five years of formal probation and is required to undergo counseling for sexual compulsions for a year.

The 39-year-old man will serve the jail term concurrently with a one-year sentence in Ventura County for possession of child pornography, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. Legal officials in Los Angeles County…

View Cache

The only solution for the Southern Baptist Convention to solve its sexual abuse problem is to dismantle the denomination entirely, according to Boz Tchividjian, one of the nation’s best-known attorneys representing abuse survivors.

“They tried to put some Band-Aids on it, and they were more concerned about public perception than anything else. When a denomination cares more about public perception than a person, they’ve lost focus of who Jesus is and they’re not going to care about the abused people.”

This is true partially because of the way the SBC is organized — with autonomous churches — “but in addition to that there hasn’t been the focus of litigation on the SBC itself,” he said. “It’s mostly been litigation on SBC churches.

“I can tell you the day a court holds that the SBC itself can be held liable for the abuse that occurs within a church or within one of…

View Cache

The lead pastor of the multi-campus Hope Fellowship in Texas, John McKinzie, has announced the firing of one of the megachurch’s student pastors, Jerry Nickerson, after he voluntarily confessed to engaging in “inappropriate contact with a minor” 10 years ago.

Nickerson served as the student pastor of Hope Fellowship’s Frisco West Campus.

McKinzie made the announcement to church members in an email to members on Wednesday, and published by abuse survivor advocate Amy Smith on her website Watchkeep.

“On Monday, the Frisco West Student Pastor, Jerry Nickerson, voluntarily disclosed inappropriate contact with a minor from when he was an adult volunteer youth leader at a previous church 10 years ago,” McKinzie wrote.

“This incident occurred before his time at Hope Fellowship, and we had no prior knowledge of this situation or any allegations against him. It became known to us on Monday…

View Cache

A new biography reveals James Dean confided in Elizabeth Taylor about his childhood abuse by a priest

Los Angeles: So, there’s this new biography out about James Dean, and it’s got some pretty shocking stuff. Apparently, he opened up to Elizabeth Taylor about being abused by a priest when he was a kid.

They were filming “Giant” together, and during those late-night chats, Dean shared some heavy stuff. He told Taylor that his childhood minister, likely Reverend James DeWeerd, had molested him. It really hit him hard, and you can tell it affected him deeply.

But here’s the twist: as he talked more about his life, Taylor got the feeling he was also hinting at his sexuality. It’s like he was trying to share more than just the abuse; he was opening up about who he really was.

This isn’t the first time people have speculated about Dean’s sexuality or…

View Cache

A lawyer for abuse survivors has accused San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of “endangering kids” by allegedly refusing to release the names of credibly accused priests — charges the archdiocese strongly denies, citing its compliance with the church’s norms for handling clerical abuse.

Attorney Jeff Anderson held a Jan. 6 press conference outside the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco, claiming that Archbishop Cordileone had promised to issue such a list three years earlier, but had not done so.

Anderson — who represents several survivors associated with the Archdiocese of San Francisco’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, according to the archdiocese — said Archbishop Cordileone and his predecessors had “kept secret for decades” about “credibly accused offenders” and “predators.”

In a Jan. 6 statement provided to OSV News, the Archdiocese of San Francisco said, without naming Anderson directly, that the press conference had included “several unfounded personal…

View Cache

Abuse in care survivors are calling on the government to announce its long-awaited plans for redress.

Lead response Minister Erica Stanford last month announced a $150,000 payment for a small number of survivors tortured at the Lake Alice child and adolescent unit.

But survivors of abuse in other settings says the time has come for the government to announce meaningful redress for all survivors and victims.

Joan Bellingham suffered burns, memory loss and bouts of blindness as a result of more than 200 electric shocks given in the misguided hopes of curing her homosexuality.

She believed her abuse amounted to torture.

The time had come for the government to outline its plans for redress for abuse survivors, Bellingham said.

“It’s dragged on for long enough and I know there’s a lot of people out there who feel they can’t take much more,” she said.

“It really has come to the point…

View Cache

There are so many things to be said about the appointment of Cardinal McElroy to be the next Archbishop of Washington, DC that you could break those things down into different categories.

There is, first, the politics category. That is, politics seems to be the sole motivation for the appointment. According to the Pillar, Pope Francis initially resisted appointing McElroy but was persuaded to do so by Cardinal Cupich’s entirely political reasons for wanting McElroy in Washington.

Predictable consequences of the McElroy appointment to Washington: 1) He will be a prominent critic of the Trump administration. 2) He will be criticized himself in turn, because of his ties to “Uncle Ted” McCarrick. His criticism of the White House may or may not damage Trump. But the criticism of McElroy will undoubtedly damage the credibility of the Catholic hierarchy.

Exactly right. My impression is that the incoming Trump Administration is, if anything, greatly…

View Cache

Megyn Kelly is impressive when you consider that she’s been able to create an entire career just from being mad at stuff. She is like the Rumplestiltskin of irritation — turning cranky thoughts into gold — or a blond Andy Rooney with consequences. From the idea of Santa Claus being Black to fighting with Jane Fonda for the right to ask a woman about her plastic surgery, the archives are stuffed with the things that Kelly does not enjoy. (She did, however, like Real Housewife Luann de Lesseps’s Diana Ross blackface costume enough to defend it on air.)

Conclave, the Golden Globe-winning drama about the election of a new pope, just happens to be the latest thing Kelly hates.

“Just made the huge mistake of watching the much-celebrated Conclave & it is the most disgusting anti-Catholic film I have seen in a long time. Shame on Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci & John Lithgow for…

View Cache

Since Cardinal Robert W. McElroy’s Jan. 6 appointment to the Archdiocese of Washington, church watchers have interpreted the move as a papal endorsement of the prelate’s outspoken support for the poor and those on the margins, including those who identify as LGBTQ+, as well for the church’s teaching on immigration at the start of a presidential administration that has called for mass deportations.

While many celebrate his more progressive vision, Cardinal McElroy also has attracted vocal critics of the theological underpinnings of some of his arguments, including on reception of the Eucharist, leading a fellow bishop in 2023 to publicly question whether a cardinal defending such arguments might be guilty of heresy. He has also been accused of mishandling information related to clergy sexual abuse allegations.

Cardinal McElroy, however, does not shy away from controversy. Twenty years ago, then-Msgr. McElroy entered into the stormy national debate on what would become…

View Cache

A study by the University of Zurich in 2023 into sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church in Switzerland provided clear estimates of the scale of crimes committed within the institution, prompting church leaders to act. This week, SRF reported on measures the church plans to introduce to combat these crimes. One is psychological testing aimed at identifying potential perpetrators of abuse before they are recruited.

The tests aim to identify problematic personalities at an early stage of the recruitment process. Preparations began in June, and the psychologist who helped develop the system shared his insights with SRF.

In addition to verifiying whether an individual has the necessary personal and intellectual aptitude, the tests aim to identify behavioural risk factors. People who are very bossy or dominant, easily offended and who don’t tolerate differences or opinion can be problematic. An individual’s sexual development and the way they establish intimate relationships…

View Cache

A former Shelby Township priest was resentenced to seven to 15 years after the appeals court determined there was a technical error in the initial sentencing, according to the Michigan Attorney General’s Office.

Neil Kalina, who was a priest at St. Kiernan Catholic Church, was convicted of second-degree criminal sexual conduct in 2022. He was accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old in 1984. Kalina was arrested in 2019 in Littlerock, California.

He was one of 11 clergymen who were charged by Attorney General Dana Nessel’s clergy abuse investigation team.

In April 2024, the Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed Kalina’s conviction but ordered resentencing because “improper consideration of acquitted conduct had impacted the calculation of Kalina’s incarceration term,” according to a news release. The court remanded the case to the trial court for resentencing.

“While this case has been prolonged, I hope that after 40 years, the victim…

View Cache

A Kentucky worship leader associated with Ken Ham’s Creation Museum in northern Kentucky is in jail after confessing to sexually abusing a teenager for several years, the Boone County Sheriff’s Office said.

Michael Howard, 36, is charged with 40 counts first-degree sexual abuse and 40 counts of third-degree sodomy, according to the sheriff’s office. He remains held in the Boone County jail on $250,000 bail.

Howard “made admissions regarding his ‘three-to-four year’ relationship,” the sheriff’s office said. He is accused of abusing the male for four years, beginning in 2019 when the alleged victim was 15 years old and worked for Howard. The sheriff’s office said that’s when Howard began sending the then-teenager sexual messages.

Howard is listed on social media as part of TrueSong, the resident artist of the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter, founded by Answers in…

View Cache

A federal judge on Wednesday ended a lawsuit from a woman who alleged that priests of a religious order sexually abused her as a child during retreats in Maine in the 1950s.

The plaintiff, named as Jane Doe in court documents, brought the suit against the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate Eastern Province in 2022 claiming she suffers from severe mental and emotional injuries from the abuse.

Doe was 4 years old in 1955 when she was placed in the custody of St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Fall River, Massachusetts, where she remained until she was 8, according to court documents.

During that time, Doe said, the “Grey Nuns” of the orphanage and Oblates priests would bring Doe and other orphans to retreat homes in Augusta, Bucksport, and Bar Harbor, under the pretense of singing and dancing for the priests in religious performances. There priests performed sexual acts on the children….

View Cache

A lawyer for abuse survivors has accused San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of “endangering kids” by allegedly refusing to release the names of credibly accused priests — charges the archdiocese strongly denies, citing its compliance with the church’s norms for handling clerical abuse.

Attorney Jeff Anderson held a Jan. 6 press conference outside the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco, claiming that Archbishop Cordileone had promised to issue such a list three years earlier, but had not done so.

Anderson — who represents several survivors associated with the Archdiocese of San Francisco’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, according to the archdiocese — said Archbishop Cordileone and his predecessors had “kept secret for decades” about “credibly accused offenders” and “predators.”

In a Jan. 6 statement provided to OSV News, the Archdiocese of San Francisco said, without naming Anderson directly, that the press conference had included “several unfounded…

View Cache

Rep. Mikie Sherrill called POLITICO’s reporting “deeply disturbing” — and state lawmakers planned to discuss taking action.

Lawmakers and victim advocates are calling for Seton Hall University’s president to resign after POLITICO revealed he was named in an internal report on sexual abuse allegations more than five years ago. They also want the Catholic university to release the findings as a measure of transparency and accountability.

A 2019 memo detailing the internal investigation, viewed by POLITICO, did not accuse the new president, Monsignor Joseph Reilly, of abuse. But it said he knew of sexual abuse allegations that he did not report. Investigators recommended, pursuant to a responsive action plan the school’s governing body adopted, Reilly be removed as a seminary leader and member of university boards.

Instead, he took a yearlong sabbatical, returned as a vice provost and, in November, formally became…

View Cache

A former teacher at a Catholic high school in western Ohio has pleaded guilty to sex-related charges involving a former student.

Michael McKenna, 62, of Enon, Ohio, pleaded guilty in Clark County Common Pleas Court to two counts of sexual battery, both third-degree felonies. He originally was charged with six counts, court records show.

An indictment shows McKenna is accused of committing the offenses between January 2017 and May 2018, when the victim was a student at Catholic Central High School in Springfield. McKenna, who was a social studies teacher and football coach, was fired in March after he was indicted.

McKenna could be sentenced to a maximum of 10 years in prison and fined up to $20,000. As part of his plea deal, he will be classified as a Tier III sex offender.

He is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb….

View Cache

Mount Clemens, Mich. – A former Shelby Township priest has been resentenced for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old in 1984.

Neil Kalina was convicted of second-degree criminal sexual conduct in 2022 and was sentenced to 7-15 years behind bars. The Court of Appeals ordered a resentencing in 2024 due to a technical error, claiming the consideration of acquitted conduct had impacted the calculation of his sentencing.

On Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025, Kalina was resentenced to 7-15 years in prison.

Kalina was a priest at St. Kiernan Catholic Church in Shelby Township from 1982-85. He was arrested in California in 2019.

View Cache

Project stems from arguments made by survivor groups that many victims not covered by other inquiries

Victims of abuse within faith-based organisations and settings are being asked to tell their stories for a government-backed oral history project.

The study stems from broader discussions with survivor groups that argued there were many victims not covered by the major inquiry into institutional abuse or potential ones into mother and baby homes and the Magdalene Laundries.

While the focus beyond the institutions has tended towards the Catholic Church, its schools and parishes, the project organisers are reaching out across all faiths and settings, said Professor Tim Chapman, who will lead the study.

This includes any groups under the direction of a religious leader or organisation, Mr Chapman added. This may include the Loyal Orders, he said.

He cited the examples of two people he met recently, one a Catholic woman victimised in her…

View Cache

[See also the text of the complaint.]

A Boston-area Catholic priest who pushed for the ouster of the powerful Bernard Cardinal Law in a church abuse scandal now faces his own allegations of sexual misconduct, a new lawsuit claims.

Father Walter Cuenin is accused of forcing a 20-year-old male Brandeis University student to have oral sex with him in a Manhattan hotel room a decade ago on a trip to the Big Apple, the Manhattan legal filing said.

The priest rose to prominence more than two decades ago when he helped lead a group of nearly 60 Catholic pastors calling for Law’s resignation after a bombshell investigation exposed systemic coverup of widespread sexual abuse within the church.

“Father Cuenin apparently forgot to look in the mirror when he called upon disgraced Cardinal Bernard Law to resign amid the clergy sexual abuse crisis in Boston,” said Mitchell Garabedian, the lawyer for…

View Cache

[See also the text of the court decision.]

The Archdiocese of St. John’s has lost its legal effort to compel its insurance company to help cover some of its mammoth $105-million settlement with nearly 300 clergy sexual abuse survivors.

Justice Peter Brown of the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador ruled late last month that the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation of St. John’s (RCEC) did not divulge instances of sexual abuse when it applied for and renewed its policy with Guardian Insurance from 1980 to 1985. A failure to disclose invalidated the contract. 

Archbishop Peter Hundt informed The Catholic Register via email on Jan. 6 that the archdiocese is “presently reviewing the decision with our advisors.”

Time will tell what actions this court loss will engender. It has now been over three years since the archdiocese filed for bankruptcy in December 2021. This action was taken in response to the Newfoundland…

View Cache

With one notable exception, news stories on the death of Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul and Mary fame, did not fail to mention that he was a convicted sex offender. Only Reuters, the British news wire, failed to mention it. Initially, the American news wire, the Associated Press, failed to mention it as well, but it corrected itself in later editions. Reuters did not.

The media outlets that did the best job on reporting Yarrow’s abuse of a minor were Rolling Stone, the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.

Now some might say that it could be that Reuters has little interest in reporting on sexual abuse. But that is not the case. From May 2021 to December 2024, the British news agency ran nearly 300 stories on the Catholic Church and abuse, even though it was given very little to report on: most offending priests are either dead or have…

View Cache

Survivors of clergy sexual misconduct who have yet to file charges against the state’s largest religious denomination have until April 4 to seek compensation under the church’s push for Chapter 11 financial protection.

A U.S. bankruptcy judge has set an April 4 deadline for people to report past clergy sexual abuse if they want compensation as part of the Vermont Roman Catholic Diocese’s court efforts to reorganize its depleting finances.

The state’s largest religious denomination filed for Chapter 11 financial protection last fall after facing a new wave of lawsuits alleging priest misconduct as far back as 1950. Burlington-based Judge Heather Cooper considers the more than 30 claimants in those unresolved cases to be among the church’s biggest creditors. But to ensure the court isn’t missing anyone, Cooper has called for public notices that alert others about the proceedings.

“If you were sexually abused by any person connected with the diocese,…

View Cache

Coping has entered into its second decade in existence, having reached its tenth birthday on December 2024. 

In many ways, the project I set out with has failed, but why? Simply because the Pope has yet to speak about us, his priests’ children. Despite repeated attempts at encouraging openness on behalf of the Holy See toward us, we, their own children, remain, an embarrassment to them, and I, an irritant, to them. So in this regard, the church has failed us, their children, yet again. It seems they haven’t the courage to face us, referring to us as “mistakes” and “dirty laundry.”

In excess of 200,000 people have come to Coping since its inception and many positive things have happened across the 10 years including the establishment of the Irish guidelines, discovery of the secret Vatican guidelines for priests not to mention the countless people who have been helped out…

View Cache

New allegations emerged linking Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz to an abuse scandal when he was secretary to Cardinal Karol Wojtyła in the Archdiocese of Krakow in the 1970s.

Catholic commentators urged the Polish Church to set up an independent commission on historic sexual abuse by its clergy, after Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, the retired former secretary to John Paul II, was accused of complicity in a paedophile scandal.

“Years of neglect and obfuscation by its hierarchy in these matters have made the Church completely unreliable as an institution capable of cleansing itself,” said Tomasz Terlikowski, a journal editor and TV director.

“This case reminds us that nothing has been concluded, and that real shocks still lie ahead for the Polish Church as more bishops and priests are named, including those once considered icons.”

Terlikowski’s was among the many reacting to allegations linking Cardinal Dziwisz, 85, to sexual misconduct while he served under…

View Cache

Back in 2018 during the “Summer of Shame,” the successor to (Cardinal) McCarrick was Donald Wuerl. The latter claimed he knew nothing of McCarrick’s crimes crying to heaven, but many were skeptical, and with good reason. He initially denied knowledge, and then admitted he did, in fact, know.

After the Vatican assured us that they would speedily get to the bottom of the McCarrick scandal, a man aligned with McCarrick and his agenda was appointed in 2019: Wilton Gregory, shortly thereafter Cardinal.

The next year, the McCarrick report was released by the Vatican in 2020. Vatican News reported that Cardinal Wilton Gregory praised the report as a “step forward in accountability.” The defendants in the case were allowed investigate their own innocence. Turns out they were innocent!

So let’s review: the Vatican is exposed by Archbishop Viganò as corrupt with McCarrick. Then the Vatican appoints a new successor who praises the report…

View Cache

Attorneys representing alleged victims of sexual abuse by priests in the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego on Tuesday criticized Pope Francis’ appointment of Cardinal Robert W. McElroy.

The bishop of San Diego is set to become the new Archbishop of Washington, D.C.

McElroy, 70, will succeed retiring Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory in March. Until a new bishop is named, an administrator will oversee the San Diego diocese on an interim basis, local church officials said.

He was named bishop of San Diego in 2015 and elevated to cardinal in 2022.

Critics accused McElroy of being an institutional defender of sex abuse in the Catholic Church and said and his appointment will continue bringing scandal to the beleaguered D.C. archdiocese.

“Cardinal McElroy has been attacked by conservatives in the Catholic Church and the political right for his progressive views. This ignores the fact that he has been anything but progressive when…

View Cache

An ex-priest allegedly caught trying to procure a 14-year-old boy for sex online in a police sting a week before Christmas left court wearing an Akubra-style hat and face mask.

Guy Norman Hartcher, a 78-year-old retired Vincentian priest, was arrested outside a South Asian minimart in Pendle Hill in western Sydney in late December after allegedly sending indecent material to a police officer posing as a teen.

He’s also been accused of trying to procure sex from the fictitious 14-year-old.

The alleged crimes took place between December 16 and December 23 when he was arrested, according to court documents.

Hartcher left Burwood Local Court on Wednesday wearing a white face mask and dark hat after his first appearance.

His solicitor Greg Walsh did not oppose an adjournment sought by prosecutors and the matter will return to court on March 5.

Hartcher did not answer questions as he pushed his way through waiting…

View Cache

Critics argue that Cardinal McElroy has been an institutional defender of sex abuse in the Catholic Church

Attorneys representing alleged victims of sexual abuse by priests in the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego Tuesday criticized Pope Francis’ appointment of Cardinal Robert W. McElroy, bishop of San Diego, to become the new Archbishop of Washington, D.C.

McElroy, 70, will succeed retiring Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory in March. Until a new bishop is named, a Diocesan administrator will oversee the San Diego diocese on an interim basis, according to the Diocese of San Diego.

McElroy was named bishop of San Diego in 2015 and elevated to cardinal in 2022.

“I am grateful for the opportunity to serve the Catholic community in our nation’s capital and for the confidence His Holiness has placed in me, but I have truly loved the last ten years I’ve spent…

View Cache

Cardinal Robert McElroy, the bishop of San Diego who has enjoyed a meteoric rise through the hierarchy under Pope Francis, has been named the Archbishop of Washington, DC, succeeding Cardinal Wilton Gregory, whose resignation was accepted by the pope.

While any faithful Catholic will be dismayed by this news, it should come as no surprise. McElroy was always destined to leave San Diego for a more influential diocese. The very fact that the bishop of a suffragan diocese was made a Cardinal—while being under a metropolitan archbishop (Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez) who wasn’t himself a Cardinal—was unprecedented. He was clearly being groomed for greater pastures. The irony, however, is that McElroy’s appointment doesn’t increase McElroy’s influence as much as it diminishes the importance of the Archdiocese of Washington, DC.

Recall the recent history of this archdiocese. This century began with Theodore McCarrick being named the archbishop of Washington, DC in November…

View Cache

An influential Latino pastor in Arizona has been accused of hiding a camera in the women’s bathroom at his church and charged with felony voyeurism, according to Maricopa County Superior Court records.

Arturo Laguna Camas was arrested in Nov. 2024 and charged with four counts of unlawful recording, according to 12 News. He was later indicted on voyeurism charges, class 5 felonies, AZFamilyNews  reported.

Camas is the pastor of a small Latino immigrant church, the Casa de Adoracion, in Phoenix.

A message left for church officials after hours was not returned and the church’s Facebook page has been deactivated. The church is affiliated with the Disciples of Christ denomination.

Police reportedly were responding to a domestic violence call at a home on Nov. 11, 2024, when they learned that a camera had been found in…

View Cache

An investigation that started following a report from a student’s father, has led to a teacher being arrested on multiple charges.

The report to Montrose Police Department over on-going, inappropriate communications between a teacher and student at Colorado West Christian School was received December 31.

Lisa Thyre, 44, was arrested on January 3 on an arrest warrant following the investigation into the alleged activities between Thyre and a teenage student at the school.

Thyre was booked into the Montrose County Jail on the following felony charges and held on a $10,000 bond: Unlawful electronic sexual communications (persuade to meet); unlawful sexual communications (expose or touch); conspiracy to commit tampering with physical evidence; and tampering with physical evidence.

Police detectives are continuing their investigation to determine if there are additional witnesses, or information related to this case. Administrators with Colorado West Christian School are cooperating fully with law enforcement officials in…

View Cache

[This article is a substantially updated version of an article with the same title that we included in Abuse Tracker yesterday.]

McElroy, known for a pastoral approach to migrants and the LGBTQ+ community, will lead an archdiocese still bruised by a sexual abuse and mismanagement scandal.

The Vatican on Monday named one of the leading liberal prelates in the United States to run the prominent Washington-area archdiocese, sending to the nation’s capital, as a second Trump administration begins, a cleric known for a pastoral approach to migrants and for the “radical inclusion” of the LGBTQ+ community.

That approach came throughprominently as San Diego Cardinal Robert McElroy made his first appearance after the announcement. Speaking at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, the new archbishop delivered a message of unity and gratitude.

He thanked Pope Francis, celebrated African Americans as “so foundational” to his new archdiocese and addressed…

View Cache

Abuse survivors and their attorneys are pressuring the Archdiocese of San Francisco for more transparency, which remains the only Roman Catholic diocese in California that has not released an internal list of priests suspected of sexually abusing minors

Blasting Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone for his steadfast refusal to release a list of suspected abusers within the ranks of San Francisco clergy, abuse survivors and their attorneys publicly named living priests who they say abused them for years.

One of the priests, Reverend Lawrence Finegan, was named in a 2022 lawsuit filed by Sandra Oldfield, who alleges she was sexually abused as a teenager by Finegan. Oldfield is named as Jane Doe in the complaint but recently decided to go public with her story in hopes of pressuring the Archdiocese to be more transparent about decades of accusations of sexual abuse by priests.

Oldfield was joined by her attorneys, advocates, and other…

View Cache

New peer says issue of children and religious institutions is at centre of public debate

A Catholic expert on social care appointed a life peer in the New Year Honours believes “we have never listened properly to children.”

“That is the heart of the problem of abuse and much else,” Gerard Lemos, who is the Chair of English Heritage, told The Tablet.

Lemos launched his book Childhood and Contemporary Catholicism in November in Rome 24 hours before Justin Welby resigned as Archbishop of Canterbury after a crisis triggered by his mishandling of the abuser John Smyth,

“The issue of children and religious institutions is once more at the forefront of public debate,” said Lemos, who is Chair of National Savings & Investments (NS&I), and Chair of London Institute of Banking and Finance.

He told The Tablet: “Sometime after I enter the Lords in February parliament will debate assisted dying. On grounds of conscience and…

View Cache

A pair of priests who have been accused of molestation have since disappeared from the San Francisco Archdiocese’s list of priests in good standing. Attorneys representing people accusing the clergy of sexual abuse when they were children say they believe the priests were quietly removed from ministry in response to the allegations against them.

“I think they’re feeling heat,” said Jennifer Stein, an attorney representing one of the alleged victims who filed a lawsuit in 2022 accusing Rev. Lawrence J. Finegan of sexual abuse. “They’re feeling the pressure of having perpetrators on their good standing list with known allegations that have been public, and publicly available, for years, and in this case, for decades.”

Stein’s client, Sandra Oldfield, notified the archdiocese of the allegation around 1990, she said. She went to the police in 2002.

But Finegan’s name was on a list called “Priests and Deacons with Faculties (approved for…

View Cache

Pope Francis has tapped Cardinal Robert McElroy as the new archbishop of Washington, D.C., appointing one of his top U.S. allies, one of the American church’s most forceful defenders of migrants and a sharp critic of Donald Trump’s first administration just days before Trump takes office a second time.

McElroy of San Diego will succeed retiring Cardinal Wilton Gregory, 77, who has led the Washington Archdiocese since 2019, where he became the city’s first African American archbishop. In 2020, Francis elevated him to the College of Cardinals, making him the first Black U.S. cardinal. 

News of the appointment was first reported, including by the National Catholic Reporter, on Jan. 5. Official confirmation was published in the Vatican’s daily bulletin on Jan. 6.

Over the last decade, McElroy has become one of the most vocal champions of Pope Francis’ pastoral agenda among the U.S. hierarchy. He has frequently echoed…

View Cache

Pope Francis has appointed San Diego’s Cardinal Robert W. McElroy, 70, as the new archbishop of Washington. The Vatican announced the appointment at noon today, Jan. 6, the feast of the Epiphany.

Cardinal McElroy succeeds Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory, who has served as chief pastor of the Washington archdiocese since April 2019 and whose resignation the pope accepted two years after he reached the retirement age of 75. The cardinal turned 77 on Dec. 7, 2024.

Pope Francis’ decision to appoint Cardinal McElroy came as no surprise in Rome where he has long been seen as the U.S. bishop best qualified to lead the archdiocese in the nation’s capital at this delicate moment in the history of both the United States and the world. The migration question has become a major concern and wars are being waged in the Holy Land and Ukraine. The United States is deeply involved in…

View Cache

The appointment of Cardinal Robert McElroy as the eighth archbishop of Washington, D.C., demonstrates the degree to which Pope Francis understands the situation of the church in the U.S. The pope found the man best suited to meet this moment both in the life of the church and the life of the nation.

To the capital of a deeply polarized nation, the pope has sent the only U.S. bishop who could be considered a scholar of American political history and its intersection with Catholic theology. 

For a flavor of McElroy’s unique combination of intellectual and pastoral depth, consider this speech he gave at a migration conference held in the weeks after Trump’s victory in 2016. He said that “there is a profound sickness in the soul in American political life. This sickness tears at the fabric of our nation’s unity, undermining the core democratic consensus that is the…

View Cache

(OSV News) — Cardinal Robert W. McElroy of San Diego has been appointed the next archbishop of the Archdiocese of Washington, following Pope Francis’ acceptance of the resignation of Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory, the first African American cardinal, the Vatican announced Jan. 6.

The see city is home to the White House, Congress, Supreme Court and a multitude of embassies, nonprofits, think tanks and lobbying groups seeking to sway the levers of American power.

Canon law required Cardinal Gregory, 77, to submit his resignation to the pope when the cardinal turned 75, which was Dec. 7, 2022. The Vatican announced the news of Cardinal Gregory’s retirement and Cardinal McElroy’s appointment two weeks before the second inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump in Washington.

The 70-year-old Cardinal McElroy — a San Francisco native who pursued degrees at Harvard and Stanford before his 1980 priestly ordination — was appointed as bishop of the…

View Cache

LONDON, Jan 6 (Reuters) – Following is a chronology of major events during Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby‘s 11-year tenure as leader of the Church of England and spiritual head of the worldwide Anglican community. Welby, 69, resigned in November over an abuse scandal and was expected to wind up his duties by Monday.

2012

NOVEMBER – Welby, who was then the bishop of Durham, was named as the new Archbishop of Canterbury after Queen Elizabeth II, supreme governor of the Church, nominated him.

2013

MARCH – Welby’s enthronement at Canterbury Cathedral marked several firsts: one of the chaplains who led him to the cathedral was the first woman to hold the post, and he became the first archbishop to be enthroned by a female cleric.

JULY – Welby, a former oil executive, pledged to put now-defunct payday lender Wonga out of existence, throwing his support behind not-for-profit credit unions.

2014

FEBRUARY…

View Cache

LONDON (AP) — Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby ’s tenure officially ends Monday, two months after he resigned following an inquiry that found he failed to tell police about serial abuse by a volunteer at Christian summer camps as soon as he became aware of it.

Welby, the head of Church of England and spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion, will lay down his bishop’s crozier – a ceremonial long staff – in a symbolic act that marks the end of his ministry. Most of his official functions will be delegated to the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, as the church embarks on the lengthy process of selecting a new leader.

Welby had announced in November that he would resign after an independent investigation into the late John Smyth, a prominent attorney who the inquiry said sexually, psychologically and physically abused about 30 boys and young men in the United Kingdom…

View Cache

By the end of Monday, Justin Welby will have symbolically laid down his ceremonial staff and relinquished his role as Archbishop of Canterbury.

After spending little time in public since his resignation, Mr Welby is expected to spend his final day leading the Church of England privately at his London base of Lambeth Palace.

His duties will then mainly pass to the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, until a permanent successor is appointed, a process that is expected to take several months.

It comes as many important changes are being debated by the Church, including on safeguarding – the issue linked to Mr Welby’s resignation and one that has led to questions about Mr Cottrell.

On Monday, the feast of Epiphany in the Christian calendar, Mr Welby will attend two services at Lambeth Palace, a Eucharist at lunchtime and Evensong later in the day.

Though his office has not disclosed…

View Cache

Justin Welby is spending his final day as Archbishop of Canterbury, as he prepares to step down over failures in handling a Church of England abuse scandal.

Almost two months after announcing his resignation, he will officially quit the role today.

It follows an independent review which concluded barrister and Christian camp leader John Smyth – thought to have been the most prolific serial abuser to be associated with the Church – might have been brought to justice had Mr Welby formally reported him to police in 2013.

The Archbishop has made few public appearances since mid-November, and did not give the traditional Christmas Day sermon from Canterbury Cathedral.

While in his initial resignation statement on November 12 he said he was stepping down ‘in sorrow with all victims and survivors of abuse’, he had to issue an apology later that month following his final speech in the House of Lords.

On…

View Cache

The Vineyard Church in Duluth, Minnesota, and its parent organization, Vineyard USA, have been named in nine civil lawsuits alongside Jackson Gatlin, a former young adult and online community pastor at The Vineyard Church who accepted a plea deal in November for criminal sexual conduct with a child.

Gatlin, 36, was charged in 2023 with sexually abusing five teenage girls but pleaded guilty to only one count of sexual assault. On four other counts, he entered an Alford plea where he admitted there is sufficient evidence to find him guilty during a trial but maintained his innocence. He will likely spend at least 13 years in prison and have to register as a sex offender when his sentence is complete.

Also named in the civil lawsuits are Gatlin’s parents, Fox 21 reports. His father, Michael Gatlin, was a senior pastor at The Vineyard Church,…

View Cache

Lindsey Whiteside, a former youth minister with Getwell Church in Hernando, Mississippi, is now facing 30 years in prison after she was charged with having sex with an underage girl under her guardianship.

Church officials did not respond to calls for comment from The Christian Post on Friday, but court documents cited by Action News 5 allege that Whiteside, 26, knowingly had sex with the minor between May 14 and Nov. 6, 2024.

“We can confirm that the December Grand Jury of DeSoto County has indicted Lindsey Whiteside on the charge of sexual battery of a minor child by a person of trust or authority,” DeSoto County District Attorney Matthew Barton said in a statement. “Prior to this indictment, Lindsey Whiteside served as a youth ministry leader and basketball coach—positions that carry a profound responsibility to protect and guide others.”

Church members told Action…

View Cache

McElroy, known for a pastoral approach to migrants and the LGBTQ+ community, will lead an archdiocese still bruised by a sexual abuse and mismanagement scandal.

The Vatican named one of the United States’ leading liberal Catholic prelates Monday to run the prominent D.C.-area archdiocese, sending to the nation’s capital as a second Trump administration begins a cleric known for a pastoral approach to migrants and for the “radical inclusion” of the LGBTQ+ community.

San Diego Cardinal Robert McElroy, who has led a diocese that runs the length of California’s southern border with Mexico for a decade, will take over an archdiocese still bruised by a major sexual abuse and mismanagement scandal that broke in 2018.

McElroy, who holds a political science doctorate from Stanford University, is considered by some Catholics to be a leading intellectual closely aligned with Pope Francis — and, by others, too direct at times on secular…

View Cache

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis on Monday named Cardinal Robert McElroy of San Diego as the archbishop of Washington, tapping one of his most progressively like-minded allies to head the Catholic Church in the U.S. capital at the start of the second Trump Administration.

McElroy, 70, replaces Cardinal Wilton Gregory, who at 77 is two years beyond the normal retirement age for bishops.

The Vatican announced the appointment in a statement Monday.

Francis has long had his eye on McElroy, making him bishop of San Diego in 2015 and then elevating him as a cardinal in 2022.

McElroy has been one of a minority of U.S. bishops harshly criticizing the campaign to exclude Catholic politicians who support abortion rights from Communion, a campaign Francis has publicly criticized by insisting that bishops must be pastors, not politicians.

He has also questioned why the U.S. bishops’ conference, which has leaned conservative in its…

View Cache

The appointment of Robert W. McElroy is a signal of the pope’s priorities, two weeks before Donald J. Trump’s term begins.

Pope Francis on Monday named Cardinal Robert W. McElroy, bishop of San Diego, to be the next Roman Catholic archbishop of Washington, moving one of his most vocal allies on immigration to one of the most prominent posts in the American church.

The move, announced in the Vatican’s daily bulletin, comes at a critical moment two weeks before President-elect Donald J. Trump is inaugurated and sends a signal about Pope Francis’ priorities. Many powerful American Catholics, including Vice President-elect JD Vance, have aligned themselves with Mr. Trump’s efforts against immigration and abortion.

Cardinal McElroy, 70, is a longtime supporter of the pope’s pastoral agenda, and is known for regularly speaking out on the inclusion of migrants, women and L.G.B.T.Q. people in the Catholic church and in the United…

View Cache

Based on the story of Myriam, the Mexican nun who bravely denounced sexual abuse, Breaking the silence is a gift to our readers.

Although Breaking the Silence includes three previously published texts on sexual abuse from Los Ángeles Press, it also features two new chapters and an unpublished introduction.

Breaking the silence is a bilingual, English-Spanish electronic book reporting on Myriam’s case while summarizing information about one of the most specific forms of the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, the abuse of nuns by priests.

Back in September 2024, the legal team supporting a Mexican nun, a victim of repeated sexual abuse, provided me with the electronic case file detailing her harrowing experience, as it stood then. Reading the file was a profoundly distressing experience.

Although I had previously encountered judicial narratives linked to the clergy sexual abuse crisis, Myriam’s story shocked me deeply. The repeated abuse she endured—not by one but several…

View Cache

Appointing new archbishop of Canterbury likely to take months after Welby’s resignation over abuse scandal

Justin Welby will relinquish his role as archbishop of Canterbury at midnight on Monday, formally starting the firing gun in the search for a new de facto leader of the Church of England and the global Anglican church.

The process is expected to take months, with the name of the new archbishop unlikely to be announced until the autumn.

Welby quit over failures to take effective action against a sadistic serial abuser. An independent review concluded that John Smyth, an eminent barrister and Christian camp leader who abused as many as 130 boys and young men over five decades, might have been brought to justice had Welby formally reported him to police in 2013.

The unprecedented resignation of the most senior cleric in the C of E has plunged the church into a crisis, with no clear…

View Cache

The Kentucky Supreme Court has upheld the sentences of two Hopkinsville woman who were convicted in the abuse of children at the First United Methodist Church Daycare in 2018.

According to the Office of Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman, the abuse was first reported in 2018 with when 27-year-old Allison Simpson—who was the primary teacher in the daycare—would regularly throw children down onto the floor when she was upset with the child, and would ‘pat’ the child so roughly that it made co-workers believe she was beating them. They reported the instances to parents, who in turn contacted the Hopkinsville Police Department.

An investigation began, and after reviewing roughly 1,000 hours of footage, police arrested both Simpson at 57-year-old Nina Morgan, who also worked in the nursery. Ultimately, the two were convicted in 2022, with Simpson sentenced to serve a 20-year prison sentence and Morgan sentenced to one-year.

Both appealed…

View Cache

ACCORDING to his official website, the Most Revd and Rt Hon Stephen Cottrell, the ninety-eighth Archbishop of York and second-in-command of the Church of England, has a track record in evangelism. In 1998, as the Diocesan Missioner and Bishop’s Chaplain for Evangelism in the Diocese of Wakefield, he joined Springboard, which was the Archbishop of York and Canterbury’s team for evangelism. To connect with the unsaved masses, he adopted nearby Huddersfield Town as his football team, while maintaining loyalty to his original, southern favourite Spurs.

Evangelism is the endeavour through which Christians communicate the good news of God, namely his indiscriminate and everlasting love for humanity. It is the sort of endeavour which makes churches grow, something that the Church of England, whose declining attendance figures suggest extinction within forty years, desperately needs to get right. The Church, whose congregations are overwhelmingly elderly, needs to attract children and young people…

View Cache

An abuse survivors’ network has endorsed one survivor’s decision to reject his King’s Service Medal, citing the Government’s “failure” to do “justice by faith-based survivors”.

Mike Ledingham, 74, was named in the 2025 New Year Honours on Tuesday for services to survivors of abuse in care – one of several survivors recognised.

Ledingham, who primarily lives in Maketū, Bay of Plenty, announced on social media on Tuesday night he could not accept the honour.

He told NZME he rejected the appointment because he believed faith-based abuse survivors were being “sent back” to the institutions that abused them to ask for redress.

“I don’t think that’s right … Where is the integrity in sending victims back to their abuser or the abusing organisation to somehow get redress?”

In response to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into abuse in care, the Government is planning a new single redress system for survivors this year.

…

View Cache

Members of the Clergy of the Catholic Diocese of Man in Ivory Coast have expressed their regrets over the fallout with their Local Ordinary that resulted in the 27 December 2024 appointment of Jean-Pierre Cardinal Kutwa as Apostolic Administrator “Sede plena” of the Ivorian Episcopal See.

In a statement issued on December 31, the Catholic Priests acknowledge with “regrets” the “unfortunate situation” of Man Diocese following their fallout with Bishop Gaspard Béby Gnéba and reach out to the people of God in the Diocese for forgiveness.

The appointment of Cardinal Kutwa, the Archbishop emeritus of the Catholic Archdiocese of Abidjan in Ivory Coast, followed a fallout between Bishop Gnéba and his Clergy over the former’s directives to the faithful to denounce the latter’s infidelity to their Priestly vocation and ministry. 

“Any lay faithful who knows that a Priest is not faithful to his celibacy, that he has a wife or a child, that he has committed…

View Cache

A private Catholic school in San Diego is at risk of closing and parents are rallying to keep its doors open.

Saint Katharine Drexel Academy, a private Catholic school in San Diego, is at risk of closing at the end of the school year unless it raises $500,000 and increases enrollment by 30 students by the end of January. 

On Oct. 18, the Catholic Diocese of San Diego informed parents that the school could no longer cover its budget deficit, leaving the SKDA community scrambling to save their institution.

The school, which opened six years ago with 150 students, has seen a sharp decline in enrollment, now standing at just 95 students as of Christmas Break. 

“We certainly have less financial flexibility, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s an enrollment problem,” Kevin Eckery a spokesperson for the diocese said. 

While declining enrollment is the primary issue,…

View Cache

Allegations of sexual abuse against children within churches across the globe reveal a disturbing pattern that spans decades and continents. Reports from 18 countries have surfaced, highlighting thousands of cases where children, including boys, were victimized by clergy and other church officials. Many survivors do not come forward until later in life, often after the age of 50, when the opportunity for justice is limited due to the passage of time and the aging or death of the perpetrators.

Church institutions are often accused of suppressing these cases, silencing victims, and shielding accused clergy members. Instead of facing consequences, many accused priests are reassigned to different locations, where their actions often remain hidden from the public eye. In some cases, the institutions offer public apologies or financial settlements to address the fallout from scandals, but critics argue that these measures do little to prevent future abuse.

Historical data points to systemic abuse dating…

View Cache

Landmark ruling highlights disclosure in insurance claims

Guardian Insurance has secured a significant legal victory in a case involving the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. John’s, Newfoundland, with a court ruling that the insurer is not obligated to cover settlements for historical sexual abuse claims.

According to a report from the International Comparative Legal Guides (ICLG), the Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court declared a policy issued in the 1980s void due to the archdiocese’s failure to disclose known incidents of sexual abuse by clergy, which was deemed “fraudulent misrepresentation.”

The decision, issued by Justice Peter Browne in late December 2024, adds further financial strain to the archdiocese, which has been under bankruptcy protection since 2021. The church has been liquidating assets to meet $104 million in settlement obligations, managing to raise just $44 million to date.

Non-disclosure of abuse

Central to the court’s findings was evidence that the Roman Catholic…

View Cache

Hundreds of people who say they suffered physical or sexual abuse at two state-run reform schools in Florida are in line to receive tens of thousands of dollars in restitution from the state, after Florida lawmakers formally apologized for the horrors they endured as children more than 50 years ago.

At its peak in the Jim Crow 1960s, 500 boys were housed at what is now known as the Dozier School for Boys, most of them for minor offenses such as petty theft, truancy or running away from home. Orphaned and abandoned children were also sent to the school, which was open for more than a century.

In recent years, hundreds of men have come forward to recount brutal beatings, sexual assaults, deaths and disappearances at the notorious school in the panhandle town of Marianna. Nearly 100 boys died between 1900 and 1973 at Dozier, some of them from gunshot wounds or…

View Cache

During a classroom discussion, a teacher at Elms College asked students to assess the credibility of two sexual assault lawsuits filed against another student, the college and college administrators, according to amended complaints filed in federal court.

The lawsuits, filed in October 2024, were amended earlier this week. The amended complaints describe how the cases were discussed in a sociology class taught in November by Kathleen Angco-Vieweg, then an adjunct professor at the Chicopee, Massachusetts, college.

Angco-Vieweg passed out copies of the lawsuits and asked members of the class if they knew the identities of the students who allege they were sexually assaulted by student Cody McCann, according to the filings.

“The class then included a breakout session, where the class was broken up into groups, and the groups were ordered to read copies of the Complaint and discuss whether they believed the Plaintiff’s version of the events – whether…

View Cache

Guatemalan authorities rescued 160 children and adolescents from the fundamentalist Jewish sect Lev Tahor in southeastern Guatemala on Friday following allegations of child abuse, including rape, prosecutors said.

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT

The rescue operation in the agricultural municipality of Oratorio, 78 kilometers (48.47 miles) southeast of Guatemala City, highlights ongoing concerns over the controversial practices of the Lev Tahor sect, which has faced similar allegations in the past.

KEY QUOTE

“Based on the statements of the complainants, the evidence obtained, and the medical examinations, it was possible to establish that there are forms of human trafficking against these minors, such as forced marriage, abuse, and related crimes,” Nancy Paiz, a prosecutor at Guatemala’s Prosecutor’s Office Against Human Trafficking, said at a press conference.

CONTEXT

The Lev Tahor community, founded in 1988 in Israel, practice an austere form of Judaism with interpretations of Jewish law that includes long prayer sessions and…

View Cache

The law enforcement raid on Friday is the latest legal action against the group, which is often described as a cult.

Authorities in Guatemala raided the compound of Lev Tahor, an extremist Jewish sect, and removed 160 children and teenagers after allegations of abuse and human trafficking.

The law enforcement raid on Friday is the latest legal action against the group, which is often described as a cult. In 2022, two leaders of the sect were given 12 years in prison on charges of kidnapping children and exploiting them for sexual purposes. Earlier this year, three members of Lev Tahor were sentenced to more than 10 years in prison for child exploitation and kidnapping after abducting a pair of siblings ages 12 and 14.

Friday’s operation involved almost 480 Guatemalan government personnel, who entered the compound after several minors escaped and got in contact with authorities. The raid followed multiple unsuccessful attempts…

View Cache

A Sikh priestwho admitted sexually assaulting children in the 1980s has been jailed for more than 24 years.

The incidents took place in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, between 1983 and 1987, including at a gurdwara, a Sikh place of worship.

Makhan Singh Mauji, of North Priors Court, Northampton, was a Granthi – a ceremonial reader of the Guru Granth Sahib – who would “invade the lives” of his victims, police said.

The 71-year-old pleaded guilty to a string of sexual offences during a trial at Cambridge Crown Court, where he was sentenced on Friday.

Judge Hurst said Mauji had inflicted “deep emotional scars using a significant breach of trust”, and the sentence reflected the severity of his crimes.

The offences involved three victims who were aged between eight and 14 at the time.

He was sentenced for 11 counts of indecent assault, one count of attempted rape, and two counts of gross indecency…

View Cache

A Wichita Falls pastor convicted of child sex crimes has died while serving prison time.

A custodial death report from the Texas Attorney General’s Office confirms Ronnie Killingsworth died in custody at 12:20 a.m. Thursday.

He had been incarcerated in the Pack Unit in Navasota in Grimes County and was transported to the hospital for shortness of breath, according to the report filed Thursday afternoon. Killingsworth was later pronounced dead at the hospital with a preliminary cause of death of cardiac arrest and respiratory failure.

Killingsworth died a natural death, according to the report. Results are pending from an evaluation by a medical examiner or coroner to determine cause of death.

He was 79 years old and suffered from heart trouble, according to testimony in his trial.

Killingsworth, longtime pastor of Rephidim Church, was convicted in May of sexually abusing three underage girls who attended his church.

The trial in…

View Cache

Lindsey Whiteside, 26, is alleged to have sexually assaulted a child between May 14 and November 6, 2024, say officials

A former Mississippi youth pastor has been accused of sexually assaulting an underage girl, say officials.

Lindsey Whiteside, 26, from Starkville, was arrested on November 21 after she allegedly sexually assaulted a minor between May 14 and November 6, 2024, according to District Attorney Matthew Barton and DeSoto County Sheriff’s Office officials.

Whiteside was indicted on one count of felony sexual battery of a minor by a grand jury on December 13, reported ABC24.

In addition, it’s alleged that Whiteside engaged in the inappropriate relations while the child was under her guardianship, reported the outlet.

“We can confirm that the December Grand Jury of DeSoto County has indicted Lindsey Whiteside on the charge of sexual battery of a minor child by a person of trust or authority”, said DeSoto…

View Cache

Advocates are wondering what’s next after a set of bills that would have given sexual assault survivors in Michigan more time to come forward failed to pass the legislature before the end of the year.

The “Justice for Survivors” package, SB 1187 through 1192, would have extended the civil statute of limitations for sexual assault survivors, giving them more time to report after processing what happened.

The current statute of limitations for child sexual abuse survivors to bring civil action goes until their 28th birthday, or three years after realizing they were a victim of criminal sexual conduct. The bills would have extended it up to 10 years after the incident, seven years after a survivor realizes they were the victim of a crime or their 52nd birthday, whichever comes latest.Why survivors of sexual assault may take time to report

“For…

View Cache

A Catholic priest who formerly worked in Louisville and was confirmed to have molested five boys by the local Archdiocese in 2005 is facing new charges.

Joseph Mouser, 86, was arrested by Marion County Sheriff’s Department deputies Thursday morning on charges of first- and second-degree sodomy involving a child 12 or younger and first-degree child sexual abuse for the alleged occurrences that happened between 1989 and 1993.

Archdiocese records show that Mouser, one of 48 archdiocese priests and members of religious orders credibly accused of child sexual abuse, abused four boys when he was assigned to St. Helen Catholic Church from 1968 to 1972 and a fifth when he was at St. Francis of Assisi from 1973 to 1979. He was not charged criminally.

Mouser was previously ordered by the Vatican to stop functioning as a priest and asked to live a life of “prayer and penance” by the Holy See,…

View Cache

A priest who formerly worked in Louisville is facing charges of child sex abuse and this isn’t the first time he’s been accused.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — A priest who formerly worked in Louisville is facing charges of child sex abuse, and this isn’t the first time he’s been accused.

Joseph Mouser, 86, was removed from public ministry in 2002 and is facing new charges of child sodomy and sexual abuse. The alleged abuse happened 35 years ago.

Although the accusations against the 86-year-old are new, court records state the incidents happened between 1989 and 1991.

The victim was younger than 12.

Melanie Sakoda works as the support director for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

“Given the background of this particular priest, I don’t think there’s any question that he is capable of doing just this,” she said.

He was one of two dozen priests listed in…

View Cache

SARASOTA, Fla. (WWSB) – An arrest in April sent shockwaves throughout two communities that are separated by 1,400 miles.

An employee working at a Catholic district in Dubuque, Iowa, a town of about 60,000 people that borders both Wisconsin and Illinois, reported sexual abuse allegations from former altar boys to the Dubuque Police Department in May of 2023.

“They had somebody come and report to them what was going on and they brought it to our attention, which started the investigation,” says Luke Bock from the Dubuque Police Department.

That investigation led to 5 sexual abuse charges stemming from the 1980s being filed against Father Leo Riley, a priest who worked in Iowa until transferring to Florida in the early 2000s.

The Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office made the arrest at the priest’s home in Port Charlotte 11 months after the investigation started.

“A lot of the interviews that he conducted…

View Cache

Insurer will not pay out as judge rules failure to disclose sexual abuse claims constitutes fraudulent misrepresentation.

In a case which has its roots in the 1970s, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St John’s has been dealt a knockout blow in its efforts to compel its insurer to cover part of the settlement costs arising from historical sexual abuse cases. In one of the last judgments issued prior to the Christmas shutdown, the Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court ruled that an insurance policy issued by Guardian Insurance in the 1980s was void due to the non-disclosure of material information by the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation of St John’s (RCEC).

After a protracted trial, Justice Peter Browne found that the RCEC’s failure to disclose known incidents of sexual abuse by clergy when applying for and renewing its insurance policy constituted fraudulent misrepresentation, with the decision adding another layer of financial burden to…

View Cache

Thousands of children and vulnerable adults, in our state and throughout the world, have been molested in the last several decades by Catholic clergy and by other denominations.

Although 28 states already mandate clergy to report any form of child maltreatment, New York has yet to approve such an important protection.

So, if a clergy member in our state suspects that a child in the congregation has been abused, that clergyperson isn’t legally required to report it.

New Yorkers should contact their state senators and ask that they quickly pass the Child Abuse Reporting Expansion Act, Senate bill S3158, aka the CARE ACT. The Assembly approved the legislation last year. If approved by the Senate and signed by the governor, this legislation will require clergy in New York to be mandated reporters of abuse – as all other professionals in our state who are in contact with children and adults.

…

View Cache

Attorneys-general offices from Australia’s states and territories will meet next week to consider urgent legislative reforms after a contentious court decision that a Catholic diocese was not liable for the clerical abuse of a five-year-old boy.

The High Court ruled in November that the Ballarat diocese, in regional Victoria, could not be held responsible for misconduct by its former priest, Father Bryan Coffey, because he could not be legally considered an employee of the church.

The landmark decision has upended thousands of legal cases against religious orders nationwide, including more than 1800 civil claims currently before courts in Victoria.

The Ballarat diocese and its current bishop, Paul Bird, were initially sued in the Supreme Court of Victoria by a man who said he was sexually assaulted by Coffey at his parents’ home in Port Fairy, in south-west Victoria, in 1971.

The man, known in court documents as DP, has spoken…

View Cache

The former head of The Episcopal Church will have to apologize to the family of a bishop who was suspended under allegations of abusing his ex-wife and two sons.

Current Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe, who was installed last November, issued a letter on Monday announcing a resolution to a complaint against former Presiding Bishop Rev. Michael Curry and Bishop Todd Ousley, in his former capacity of intake officer for Title IV allegations against bishops, filed by the family of Bishop Prince Singh.

According to the complaint, Curry and Ousley failed to properly implement The Episcopal Church’s Title IV disciplinary canons when handling the allegations against Singh.

Curry “has agreed to write an apology to the complainants, who alleged that he did not appropriately oversee the allegations against Bishop Singh,” according to Rowe. In addition, Ousley “will also write an apology to the complainants” and will also “complete training…

View Cache

A Wisconsin judge last week ordered that a sexual assault case against disgraced former cardinal Theodore McCarrick will remain paused until the laicized clergyman dies. 

The criminal case against McCarrick in Wisconsin was suspended in January after a psychologist hired by the court found that the former prelate was not competent to stand trial. 

The misdemeanor sexual assault charges in the case relate to an incident that allegedly occurred in April 1977 near a house by Geneva Lake near Elkhorn.

Court records indicate that Walworth County Circuit Court Judge David Reddy on Dec. 27 said the trial will not resume before the 94-year-old passes away. McCarrick is reportedly suffering from dementia. 

Prosecutors told the court they were “not ready to dismiss this matter” and asked that the trial remain “in suspended status.” McCarrick’s attorney Jerome Buting countered that McCarrick’s “extreme deterioration” should lead the court…

View Cache

A Wisconsin judge ruled Friday that a sexual assault case against Theodore McCarrick will remain suspended for the remainder of McCarrick’s life, but that the charges against the former cardinal can not legally be dropped or the case dismissed.

Walworth County Judge David Reddy told McCarrick’s lawyers Dec. 27 that while he is not competent to grant their request to dismiss the case, it will remain in permanent suspension until McCarrick’s eventual death.

Earlier this year, Reddy suspended the criminal trial against McCarrick, 94, after a court-appointed psychologist found the former cardinal incompetent to participate in his own defense. The new ruling extended that suspension, meaning that McCarrick will not face a criminal judge during his lifetime.

At a hearing last week, which McCarrick did not attend, Reddy said that state laws on trial competency prohibit a judge from formally dismissing charges against a defendant found incompetent to stand trial.

…

View Cache

ELKHORN (WLUK) – The criminal sexual assault case against former Roman Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick will remain open but suspended until his death, as a judge ruled the case would not be dismissed.

McCarrick, the ex-archbishop of Washington, D.C., was defrocked by Pope Francis in 2019 after an internal Vatican investigation determined he sexually molested adults as well as children.

McCarrick, 94, was charged in Wisconsin in April 2023 with one count of fourth-degree sexual assault for an incident that occurred in April of 1977. The charge stems from a complaint which alleges McCarrick engaged in repeated sexual abuse of the victim over time, including the charged incident that involved the alleged fondling of the victim’s genitals while staying as a guest at a Geneva Lake residence.

McCarrick was found to be not competent to stand trial, meaning he couldn’t understand the court proceedings…

View Cache

Thursday, 2 January 2025, 11:40 am
Press Release: SNAP

New Zealand’s Catholic bishops issued a Pastoral Letter on 17 November 2024 after the Prime Minister delivered his apology to victims and survivors of abuse in care. However, survivors of Catholic Church clergy and religious abuse are bewildered by the claims made in that Letter.

One of the striking differences between the public apology given by the Prime Minister and the bishops’ Letter is that the Prime Minister was clear when he distinguished between “us” “you,” and “them,” says the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Instead, the bishops’ Letter was addressed to church attendees and focused mainly on the bishops’ alleged response to abuse.

General comments such as “we have met with many survivors” lacked proof. “How many is ‘many’? Two or three?” asked Barbara Taylor, a survivor-support worker for SNAP Aotearoa.

SNAP’s New Zealand…

View Cache

“Forgive us our trespasses: grant us your peace” is Pope Francis’ theme for the World Day of Peace, today, Jan. 1, 2025. His plea is for a year blessed by forgiveness — forgiveness between nations, forgiveness between individuals. His appeal is a challenge and an opportunity not just to give and receive forgiveness, but to better understand what forgiveness is — and what it is not. 

His timing couldn’t have been better, since forgiveness is increasingly questioned as a therapeutic goal and a Christian aspiration. In 2023, Presidential Medal of Freedom awardee Jesuit Fr. Greg Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries, won awards for his compellingly titled book Forgive Everyone Everything. At the same time, other voices have begged to differ. Forgiveness isn’t meant for everyone, they insist, and not everything can or should be forgiven. 

One such…

View Cache

A federal judge in New York refused to allow Rudy Giuliani to hide a list of witnesses he plans to call at next month’s trial over whether he will have to turn over his multimillion dollar Florida condominium to the two Georgia election workers he defamed to the tune of $148 million.

U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman said on Monday that Giuliani filed his witness list under seal on Dec. 23, despite the fact that the court had “neither directed nor permitted this list to be filed under seal.” The judge then ordered the clerk of the court to unseal the document on the court’s public docket.

The failure to abide by the court’s processes and procedures in the latest in a long line of mishaps on Giuliani’s end in the contentious…

View Cache

The courts have ruled against the Catholic Church in its quest to have its insurer return premiums paid as it withheld knowledge of allegations of sexual abuse by clergy members, including the notorious Father James Hickey.

Justice Peter Browne of the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador has ruled that information about the abuse was intentionally concealed or misrepresented to the insurer, Guardian. Had it been disclosed, Justice Browne concluded that any reasonable insurer would have declined the risk.

Justice Browne described the actions of the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation as a reckless dismissal of the truth of the allegations against clergy and that the church placed itself directly liable to the children who were sexually abused.

Guardian did pay out some of the earlier claims by the church but changed its position nearly 15 years ago when it voided the policy, releasing itself from further financial obligation.

Justice Browne…

View Cache

• Mike Ledingham has announced he will reject the King’s Service Medal he was awarded in the New Year’s Honours list.
• He announced his decision on social media on Tuesday night, explaining the decision came after much “soul-searching”.
• Ledingham and his brothers were abused by a priest and he has been an advocate for survivors for decades.

An abuse survivor who has spent 20 years campaigning for the redress and improvement of child safety in faith-based care settings has rejected the King’s Service Medal he was awarded in the 2025 New Year Honours list.

Mike Ledingham announced his decision on social media last night – explaining it had been made after “a lot of soul searching”.

The Te Puke man had been recognised for his services to survivors of abuse in care.

“Mr Mike Ledingham wrote The Catholic Boys (2019), which outlined the effects of the abuse experienced by him and…

View Cache

The complaint that Curry and Bishop Todd Ousley mishandled physical and emotional abuse allegations against a Michigan bishop was met with a pastoral response.

(RNS) — An Episcopal Church investigation into possible misconduct by former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry and Bishop Todd Ousley, a former Office of Pastoral Development official, concluded Monday (Dec. 30) with a pastoral response, according to an announcement from Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe.

Curry and Ousley were the subjects of a clergy misconduct complaint brought by the family of Bishop Prince Singh, the former bishop of the Dioceses of Eastern and Western Michigan. Singh’s sons told Curry in December 2022 that their father had physically and emotionally abused them, but Curry’s office did not launch an investigation into their case until the brothers went public with their allegations in June 2023. The Singh sons were later joined by their mother, who alleged that in February 2023,…

View Cache

Decrees issued by Bishop Michael W. Fisher to close or merge Catholic parishes in Western New York make it clear that the sale of parish properties could help fund a settlement in bankruptcy court of hundreds of sex abuse claims against the Buffalo Diocese.

Diocese officials have been reluctant to spell out publicly how they intend to raise enough money in settling nearly 900 claims that accuse diocese priests and employees of abusing minors decades ago.

[PHOTO: “Additionally, due to our need to amass a substantial sum of money to settle numerous civil claims in Federal Bankruptcy Court,” a decree from Bishop Michael Fisher (above) reads, “the possibility of alienating this property has also been suggested.” – Derek Gee, Buffalo News]

But language in Fisher’s decrees indicates some parishes may have been tabbed for merger so that the proceeds from the sale of their church buildings can be used toward…

View Cache

Each year, sometime shortly before Christmas, the Pope holds an audience with leaders of the Roman Curia. Traditionally this meeting has been described as an opportunity to exchange Christmas greetings, with the Pontiff offering some encouraging reflections on the work of the Holy See. Under Pope Francis the meeting has taken on a different tone. In some years he has told the top Vatican officials how their work could be improved; other years, the Pope’s talk has been a thorough scolding.

This year, on December 21, the Pope’s tone was not harsh, but his message was severe: a caution against gossip. No doubt that message is an important one, in the close quarters of the Vatican bureaucracy, where rumors fly at lightning speed. But at one point in his address, the Pope made a potentially troubling remark.

Breaking away from his prepared text (as he is wont to do), Pope Francis…

View Cache

The diocese is denying allegations that it poured tens of millions of dollars into a diocesan fund in order to avoid a payout to survivors of clergy sexual abuse.

The Diocese of Oakland is denying allegations that it poured tens of millions of dollars into a diocesan fund in order to avoid a payout to survivors of clergy sexual abuse.

A Dec. 11 filing by attorneys on behalf of a committee of abuse survivors, lodged in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, claims the diocese “perpetrated a fraudulent scheme to funnel substantial assets away from what would soon become its bankruptcy estate” into the coffers of a “non-debtor alter ego,” the Oakland Parochial Fund (OPF).

In the months leading up to its bankruptcy filings, the claim alleges, the diocese “entered into a series of synthetic management and services agreements” with the fund, after which it “transferred approximately $106 million in assets” to the…

View Cache

The year 2024 was marked by inspiring events for the Catholic Church—worldwide, such as the Synod, the reopening of Notre Dame, and the pope’s trip to Corsica. We take a look back at 12 of these major dates. ► Nicaragua: Bishop Rolando Alvarez freed and exiled to Rome alongside 18 other clergy

Bishop Rolando Alvarez of Matagalpa and a figure of opposition to the regime of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, was freed and exiled to the Vatican on January 14 alongside another bishop, 15 priests, and two seminarians. The Catholic Church was particularly targeted by the Sandinista government, which accuses it of treason due to the church’s support for the 2018 protesters. In 2024, the president of the bishops’ conference and about 50 clergy were banned from Nicaragua, while 1,500 NGOs, primarily religious, were shut down in the country.

► Medjugorje: The Vatican strengthens control Over messages from alleged visionaries…

View Cache

“Hecker the pecker checker.” That’s what one survivor called him. Roman Catholic priest Lawrence Hecker, of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, Louisiana, pled guilty to aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated crime against nature, and theft on December 3, 2024. He was sentenced to life in prison on December 18. He died on December 26, 2024.

Hecker was ordained a priest in 1958. Sexual assault allegations against him date back to the 1960s. Why did it take until 2024 to convict him?

This post explains that Hecker repeatedly assaulted children while remaining free from legal liability. Ramon Antonio Vargas of The Guardian, David Hammer of WWL, and Aubry Killion of WDSU provided detailed accounts of Hecker’s treatment by his archdiocese and by the courts of law throughout these difficult years. I am grateful for their stories.

1958-1960s

Hecker was ordained a priest in 1958 and quickly started molesting. One early victim was a preteen altar…

View Cache

Court finds Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation ‘intentionally and recklessly withheld knowledge of past and ongoing sexual abuse by its clergy’

The Roman Catholic archdiocese of St. John’s has lost its legal fight to have its insurance company cover some of the cost of its settlement with clergy abuse survivors.

After a trial in Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court in St. John’s that began a year ago, Justice Peter Browne determined Dec. 20 the failure of the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation of St. John’s (RCEC) to disclose the sexual abuse when it applied for and renewed its Guardian Insurance policy in the 1980s, rendered the policy invalid.Article content

The RCEC has been in bankruptcy protection for three years as it sells off properties and other assets to raise money to settle the claims of survivors of sexual abuse by Christian Brothers at Mount Cashel Orphanage and other Roman Catholic clergy, for which it…

View Cache

As a consequence of the attempts of Catholic leaders to downplay its scope, the sexual abuse crisis continues with little or no expectation of change.

Today’s piece summarizes what Los Angeles Press has published over 2024 about the clergy sexual abuse crisis at the Roman Catholic Church.

The sexual abuse crisis runs the risk of getting worse in a context less willing to pressure that and other churches in the United States, Latin America and elsewhere.

2025 will be year 42 of the clergy sexual abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church. Back in 2023, Los Angeles Press published a piece offering a summary of the crisis going back to the early 1980s, when Jason Berry first uncovered the sorrowful stories of abused kids and gaslighting clergymen in Roman Catholic dioceses in Louisiana, United States.

The last installment of that series, linked after this paragraph, offers an estimate of the number of current victims for more…

View Cache

The leadership of the Hungarian Catholic Church has recently presented a divided picture in its handling of internal sex scandals and child protection cases. While some bishops have taken decisive steps to investigate such cases, some church statements still avoid clear apologies.

Bishop András Veres emphasised in a coldly worded statement that collective prayer and fasting were more important than empathy for the victims. At the same time, several bishops, such as Zsolt Marton and László Varga, have called for reform of the Church, with open apologies and an emphasis on the importance of prevention.

Details of a case in Balatonfüred

Recently, the case of a nun working at St Benedict High School in Balatonfüred exemplified the possibility of transparency and accountability in the Church. According to Válasz Online, the nun, who belonged to the monastic branch of the Community of the Eight Beatitudes, had worked at the institution for…

View Cache

What you need to know:

• Justin Welby resigned as Archbishop of Canterbury after failing to report John Smyth’s horrific abuse of over 130 boys and men in Christian summer camps.
• The church’s conspiracy of silence enabled Smyth to continue his abuse while receiving financial support, highlighting institutional complicity.
• Religious institutions must take responsibility for preventing gender-based violence, establish early warning systems, and empower their followers to stand up against abuse of power.

The resignation of Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury (the ceremonial head of the Anglican Church), in the second week of November passed as a whimper yet the reason for his action is significant.

He was buckling to sustained pressure arising from the independent Makin Review, which concluded that barrister John Smyth, described as “the most prolific abuser associated with the Church of England”, could have been held accountable had the Archbishop alerted the authorities in 2013 of the former’s…

View Cache

The Bishop of Newcastle has criticised the Archbishop of York’s Christmas sermon, just weeks before he takes over as leader of the Church of England.

Stephen Cottrell’s remarks capped off a turbulent end to the year for the Church, following the release of a report which accused it of covering up sexual abuse.

That prompted the resignation of Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby after he was criticised for not doing enough to stop a prolific abuser.

With Mr Welby opting to break with years of tradition and miss this year’s Christmas services at Canterbury Cathedral, Mr Cottrell’s remarks were closely watched.

Helen-Ann Hartley, who as Bishop of Newcastle has been a vocal critic of Mr Cottrell, described his sermon as “empty words. I have no words more than that to describe their meaning.”

She has previously said he should resign as archbishop.

At York Minster on Christmas morning, the archbishop appeared…

View Cache

Christmas, a holiday promising peace, is turning out to be a tumultuous period for the Church of England as sexual abuse scandals threaten to derail the archbishop of York, the senior cleric charged with leading the church after the Nov. 11 resignation of Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Since then, George Carey, who held Welby’s seat from 1991 to 2002, has also agreed to no longer officiate as a priest after being accused of failing to deal with a priest accused of abuse, in the same case that has also led to demands for the resignation of  Stephen Cottrell, the archbishop of York.

The combined scandals have given momentum to those calling for the the church to give up some of its influence in the worldwide Anglican Communion and for its bishops to no longer hold seats in the House of Lords as the so-called Lords Spiritual.

…

View Cache

When Murray Jones launched the podcast Heaven’s Helpline, he had no idea he would receive responses across five continents. After a two-year investigation, he reflects on how the church has reacted, and the heartbreaking messages he’s received.

One month ago, the New Zealand Herald released the first episodes of the podcast Heaven’s Helpline − my six-part investigation into the Mormon church in New Zealand, and its mishandling of reports of physical and sexual abuse within its membership.

Since then, I’ve received more than 100 emails and responses from all over the world − Australia, the US, Canada, the UK, South Africa, Japan and beyond. The stories told in the series really seem to have struck a chord.

The thing is, we know abuse isn’t just a Mormon problem. It happens in all sorts of institutions, in all walks of life.

Just this month, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon officially apologised for decades of…

View Cache

Yes, of COURSE I remember Father Harris from my time at Mater Dei High School, 1974-8. You couldn’t miss him. He cut quite a swath across campus, elevated from charismatic religion teacher to principal by my senior year. “Father Hollywood” they called him, and “the surfing priest.” I remember him prancing around in short shorts and tee-shirt showing off his physique, bounding like a stag, always being followed around by the high school girls, knowing the latest popular songs and jokes. He reportedly came from Brea money, had his own place in Newport, and for a time there he drove a Corvette. I found him creepy and inappropriate, and I don’t think he liked me either, but I was in the minority – most of the other kids thought he was hell of cool, or, in the parlance of those times, “bitchin’.”

Some of my old school friends…

View Cache

So, at the end of 2023, I published my “Catholic Wish List” for 2024, laying out some hopes for the church that seemed, if not “easy,” then at least reasonable and doable for the truly motivated. Readers said they shared my hopes but believed I was indulging a pipe-dream.

Well, as 2024 closes, we see small signs of progress, here and there. A recent announcement that the Vatican will consider how to address “spiritual abuse,” particularly when “false mysticism” plays a part in the sexual abuse of vulnerable adults by clergy, will directly affect ongoing investigations concerning Jesuit Father Marko Rupnik and others. I’d wished for speedier investigations into such matters and men but the church is being necessarily thoughtful of the long term, here, which is a good thing.

Thoughtfulness is slow-going, though, and other parts of my “wish list” seem stuck in a stifling inertia of bureaucracy, material…

View Cache