ABUSE TRACKER

Inquiry disclosed a disproportionately large number of allegations at these institutions

One of the most disturbing findings in the scoping inquiry report in religious-run schools, published on Tuesday, was that a quarter of the 2,395 abuse allegations made by survivors of 308 schools originated in just 17 special needs schools.

A total of 590 allegations involving 190 alleged abusers were made by victims from the 17 schools, a disproportionately large number among the total 884 accused from all 308 schools.

The single highest incidence of abuse reported to the inquiry concerning a single institution was at Lota, a special school run by the Brothers of Charity at Glanmire, Co Cork. There were 166 allegations of abuse made against 50 alleged abusers by people who were at the school.

Dr Margaret Kennedy, a consultant on disability, abuse and child protection who is familiar with…

View Cache

The subject always deserves consideration, but two recent articles on sex abuse within the church are worth discussion. The first, published by Crux, declares — sadly, to the surprise of no one — “Abuse crisis in the Catholic Church shows no signs of abating.” The second came via OSV News: Catholics in the Sicilian city of Enna are protesting a diocesan cover-up of abuses against minors, committed by a local priest while he was still a seminarian, between 2009 and 2013.

The Italian court found Father Guiseppe Rugolo guilty of “the sexual abuse of two young teenagers … fully aware that he could count on the support of the religious leadership,” adding that Bishop Rosario Gisana of the Diocese of Piazza Armerina was “well aware for many years of the reports made concerning the abuse suffered by [these victims].” Damningly, audio recordings entered into evidence at Rugolo’s trial revealed the…

View Cache

On a previous occasion, orders pledged half but costs spiralled and the State’s share rose

As the country comes to terms with the illumination of yet another dark chapter from its past, several decisions await the Government – or more likely, say insiders, the next one – which will be closely watched by abuse survivors but will also have far-reaching financial implications for the State.

Minister for Education Norma Foley has said that a group of senior officials will now consider the report and recommend how the Commission of Investigation should proceed. Senior sources involved in preliminary discussions on the issue say the senior officials’ group will also consider the nature and scope of any redress scheme that will see victims receive compensation payments. But while few dispute the necessity for a redress scheme, there is growing alarm across Government at the potential costs…

View Cache

A redress scheme for victims of sexual abuse in schools cannot wait until a full inquiry is completed, the Taoiseach Simon Harris said yesterday, suggesting an acceleration of compensation proposals which have not yet been agreed by Government.

While there is general agreement in Government that a redress scheme for victims will be necessary, there is growing concern at the potential costs which some senior figures fear could run into the billions.

Senior sources pointed out that the Government has not decided on a redress scheme and a senior officials group will have to make recommendations on the Commission of Investigation before any plan for compensating victims is agreed.

But the Taoiseach’s comments suggested impatience with a more cautious approach when he told reporters in Kyiv, Ukraine, that compensation for those abused in religious-run schools could not be “parked” until after a full statutory inquiry into the abuse…

View Cache

An Garda Síochána appeals to victims to come forward but says there may be limitations as to the action it can take in some cases

Statements expressing sorrow from religious orders who ran schools implicated in past child sexual abuse will be “hollow words” if they are not followed by commitments towards redress for survivors, Taoiseach Simon Harris has said.

Compensation and redress for those abused in religious-run schools could not be “parked” until after a full statutory inquiry into the abuse was completed, Mr Harris said.

An initial scoping report by Mary O’Toole SC, published this week, found a systemic culture of abuse in religious run day and boarding schools, uncovering thousands of cases where children were allegedly sexually abused by those in positions of power.

In response to the scoping report the Government has committed to establish a full Commission of Investigation into past…

View Cache

Survivors of child sexual abuse in Maryland on Wednesday demanded expediency from the state attorney general in its investigations of the Catholic dioceses of Washington and Wilmington, Delaware.

Members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, told reporters at a news conference that they hoped the Maryland Office of the Attorney General would release a report soon on child sexual abuse committed within the Archdiocese of Washington and the Diocese of Wilmington, both of which operate in several Maryland counties.

David Lorenz, Maryland director of SNAP, said he hoped the attorney general’s report on the abuse in those outposts of the Catholic Church would resemble the report that office released on abuse within the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Released last April, that document spanned more than 400 pages, detailing the abuse of more than 600 children by 156 clergy and others in the church, dating to the…

View Cache

Attorneys for Lawrence Hecker, charged with raping teen in 1975, urge judge to declare him incompetent to stand trial

The retired Catholic priest and self-acknowledged child molester Lawrence Hecker’s trial on rape and kidnapping charges – scheduled for 24 September – could be significantly delayed yet again after a medical report on the 92-year-old’s mental health has been filed in court.

A court-ordered psychiatric evaluation diagnosed Hecker with dementia, saying he has “good days and bad days”, according to a statement from his defense team. The defense attorneys Matthew McLaren and Eugene Redmann issued a statement Tuesday urging judge Benedict Willard to declare Hecker incompetent to stand trial.

Willard has not determined whether Hecker can be competently tried.

The report by the doctors Sarah Deland and Janet Johnson was filed in the court record on Tuesday but was not immediately available. McLaren and Redmann said the definitive dementia diagnosis “will…

View Cache

[Click on the following links to view the Report of the Scoping Inquiry into Historical Sexual Abuse in Day and Boarding Schools Run by Religious Orders, by Mary O’Toole, SC, June 2024, released September 3, 2024:

Title Page, Acknowledgements, Glossary, Table of Contents

Volume 1: Executive Summary – Introduction – What Survivors Have Told Us

Volume 2: The Extent of Allegations of Sexual Abuse in Irish Schools – The Context of Sexual Abuse in Irish Schools

Volume 3: Lessons of Past Inquiries into Child Abuse

Volume 4: The Current Child Protection Framework – Implementing Outcomes Sought by Survivors – Recommendations Based on Survivors’ Views

Volume 5: Appendices, including lists of total allegations and total accused persons organized by Religious Order Schools, Special Schools, Community Schools, and Christian Brothers Data.]

Almost 2,400 allegations of sexual abuse were recorded by 308 schools run by religious orders

The…

View Cache

An Irish state inquiry uncovered a “truly shocking” level of sexual abuse at religious schools, primarily those run by the Catholic Church, over nearly a century with 2,395 allegations, the government said on Tuesday.

The preliminary “scoping inquiry” found 884 alleged sexual abusers at more than 300 schools across the country between 1927 and 2013. Most of the cases occurred from the 1960s to the 1990s, the government said.

This step will be followed by a commission of investigation that is likely to find additional cases, Education Minister Norma Foley told a news conference.

“The level of abuse is shocking. It is truly shocking, and so is the number of alleged abusers,” Foley said.

The preliminary inquiry was based on records held by religious institutions and the testimony of victims. It is the latest in a series of reports in recent decades into allegations of abuse and mistreatment by priests and…

View Cache

Inquiry to follow preliminary investigation unearthing 2,400 allegations of historic abuse

The Irish government is to set up a statutory commission of inquiry into sexual abuse at schools run by Catholic religious orders after a preliminary investigation found almost 2,400 allegations of historic abuse.

The investigation, led by a leading barrister, Mary O’Toole, documented 844 alleged abusers in 308 schools run by 42 religious orders across the Republic of Ireland.

One hundred and thirty seven people who participated in her inquiry completed in-person interviews and 12 provided written submissions.

Most of those who took part were men in their 50s and 60s.

The Irish education minister, Norma Foley, described the report as a “harrowing document, containing some of the most appalling accounts of sexual abuse”.

The inquiry was launched in 2022 after an RTÉ radio documentary highlighted historic sexual abuse at the fee-paying Blackrock College, a Dublin school associated with…

View Cache

The representative body for Catholic orders across Ireland said it is “deeply sorry” that victims experienced abuse in religious-run schools.

The Association of Leaders of Missionaries and Religious in Ireland (AMRI) said it “welcomes” the publication of the Scoping Inquiry Report into historical sexual abuse in Catholic-run schools from 1927 to April 2023.

The report reviewed allegations of historical child sexual abuse, made against religious, lay staff, and clergy.

In a statement, a spokesperson for AMRI said: “We acknowledge the courage and bravery of the victims and survivors.

“We are deeply sorry that they experienced abuse in religious-run schools.

“We are acutely aware that sharing personal, sensitive, and traumatic experiences can cause additional pain and suffering.

“We recognise that we can never know the depth of the pain and suffering survivors have endured and continue to endure.

“AMRI actively worked with those of its members who are involved in running schools to facilitate…

View Cache

Father Naveed Thomas was removed from pastoral responsibilities following allegations of rape

A rape-accused Catholic priest, who was removed from pastoral duties in Pakistan, has been arrested on charges of criminal intimidation after he allegedly threatened to kill Bishop Indrias Rehmat of Faisalabad.

Father Naveed Thomas was arrested on Aug. 31 after additional district and sessions judge Amjad Ali Bajwa canceled his bail over a case filed by Adil Masih, a security guard at the Faisalabad Bishop’s House, on Aug. 14.

The priest was taken into custody from the court, said the Faisalabad Bishop’s House media coordinator Ijaz Bhatti.

On Aug. 9, when denied permission to enter the bishop’s house, Thomas became angry and “started hurling abuse at the bishop, took out a pistol and threatened to kill him,” Masih said the complaint filed at Rail Bazar police station in Faisalabad.

Thomas demanded about US$12,500 and later uploaded a…

View Cache

MorningStar Ministries president Rick Joyner said that “evidence is mounting” that the South Carolina prophetic ministry’s former president Chris Reed engaged in physical sexual misconduct in a statement to the ministry’s congregation Sunday.

“There’s a lot of evidence and it’s mounting that, yes, there was physical stuff that happened,” Joyner said. “Evidence is mounting, and I don’t know where it’s going to lead, but we’re not going to cover up anything.”

Joyner also admitted Sunday that he allowed Reed to be acting president of MorningStar during a “restoration” process for Reed’s 2021 misconduct with an adult student.

Also, on Saturday, Justin Perry, a former MorningStar pastor and leader, said in a public statement  that Reed became acting Morningstar president just a couple months after Morningstar’s board learned of Reed’s misconduct. Perry said that’s why he resigned from Morningstar in 2022, after 20 years of involvement with…

View Cache

The deeply Catholic country is struggling to come to terms with historic cases of child rape by Catholic clergy.

This week, Pope Francis embarked on an 11-day trip to Asia, which will include visits to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, and Singapore. For the past year, there have been rumors that he might add a visit to Vietnam following significant diplomatic efforts by the Vatican and Hanoi. The Communist Party of Vietnam has managed the not-too-difficult task of securing the Vatican’s silence over its repression of religionists, but it seems that Francis’ entourage deemed a trip to a communist state a little too much for the aging pope.

We’ll see if he confronts a far more difficult issue when he lands in Dili. In September 2022, Dutch journalist Tjiyske Lingsma published an article in De Groene Amsterdammer detailing how Nobel Peace Prize-winning East Timorese independence hero Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo…

View Cache

As part of his long trip to Asia and Oceania, Pope Francis will be visiting the small nation of East Timor from September 9 to 11 — the second visit of a pope to the territory, but the first since East Timor was formally recognized as independent in 2002. 

While small as a nation, East Timor is in fact the most Christian country in Asia, with around 90% of the population professing Catholicism (the Christian population of the Philippines is bigger in real terms, but lower in percentage), which could explain the pope’s trip. 

But a look at the recent history of the region shows that the connection between the Church and the East-Timorese goes much deeper than simple demographics.

In 1930 the population of East Timor was around 4% Catholic. By the 1970s, after the Church invested heavily in education and mission, that increased to about 30%. Then, in…

View Cache

[Click on the following links to view the Report of the Scoping Inquiry into Historical Sexual Abuse in Day and Boarding Schools Run by Religious Orders, by Mary O’Toole, SC, June 2024, released September 3, 2024:

Title Page, Acknowledgements, Glossary, Table of Contents

Volume 1: Executive Summary – Introduction – What Survivors Have Told Us

Volume 2: The Extent of Allegations of Sexual Abuse in Irish Schools – The Context of Sexual Abuse in Irish Schools

Volume 3: Lessons of Past Inquiries into Child Abuse

Volume 4: The Current Child Protection Framework – Implementing Outcomes Sought by Survivors – Recommendations Based on Survivors’ Views

Volume 5: Appendices, including lists of total allegations and total accused persons organized by Religious Order Schools, Special Schools, Community Schools, and Christian Brothers Data.]

The scoping inquiry into allegations of abuse at schools run by religious orders has…

View Cache

Minister for Education Norma Foley has announced that a Commission of Investigation is to be established, following a recommendation in the Report of the Scoping Inquiry set up to examine historical sexual abuse in day and boarding schools run by religious orders.

The Scoping Inquiry has been told of some 2,395 allegations of historical sexual abuse, involving 884 alleged abusers in 308 schools across all parts of the country between the years 1927 to 2013. Most of these allegations have been reported from the records of some 42 religious orders who currently or previously ran schools in Ireland.

The establishment of a State inquiry into historical sexual abuse is one of a number of recommendations made by Senior Counsel, Mary O’Toole in her report to the Minister.

The Scoping Inquiry organised a Survivor Engagement process where those who had experienced sexual abuse in day and boarding schools run by religious…

View Cache

There were almost 2,400 allegations of sexual abuse in more than 300 schools run by religious orders in Ireland, according to a report commissioned by the Irish government.

The Education Minister Norma Foley said it was the first time the scale of abuse had been disclosed, and it was “truly shocking”.

The Irish cabinet has agreed to establish a full statutory investigation, following the findings of the “scoping inquiry report”, which was published on Tuesday evening.

At a news conference, Ms Foley said the report found there were 884 alleged abusers in 42 orders which formerly ran schools or still do.

‘Real number of allegations likely to be more’

The primary source of data on allegations of sexual abuse was the religious orders and the schools themselves, the report said.

There were 2395 allegations of sexual abuse recorded in respect of 308 schools, though the report warns that the real…

View Cache

The Government has accepted the recommendation to establish a commission of inquiry while a redress scheme for survivors will also be required

The survivors of horrific sexual abuse at schools run by religious orders have made it clear what they want from the Government – a statutory inquiry and a redress scheme.

They left the decision as to exactly what shape the inquiry, and the scheme, should take to the scoping inquiry chaired by Mary O’Toole SC. Its report, published on Tuesday, said it was aware of 2,395 abuse allegation in 308 schools run by religious orders and fears that many more remain unreported. Some 182 survivors spoke in detail to the inquiry about what happened to them between the early 1960s and the early 1990s.They told of their strong belief that this could not have gone unnoticed by staff and other members of the…

View Cache

[Click on the following links to view the Irish Report of the Scoping Inquiry into Historical Sexual Abuse in Day and Boarding Schools Run by Religious Orders, by Mary O’Toole, SC, June 2024, released September 3, 2024:

Title Page, Acknowledgements, Glossary, Table of Contents

Volume 1: Executive Summary – Introduction – What Survivors Have Told Us

Volume 2: The Extent of Allegations of Sexual Abuse in Irish Schools – The Context of Sexual Abuse in Irish Schools

Volume 3: Lessons of Past Inquiries into Child Abuse

Volume 4: The Current Child Protection Framework – Implementing Outcomes Sought by Survivors – Recommendations Based on Survivors’ Views

Volume 5: Appendices

1. Survivor Engagement Guide to Potential Government Responses

2. About the Survivor Engagement Process

3. Survivor Engagement Participant Information Booklet

4. Report on Child Protection for the Scoping Inquiry by Dr. Helen Buckley

5. Report on…

View Cache

Work on preparations for the inquiry by officials, including legislation to be brought before the Oireachtas, will begin shortly

The Government has formally agreed to establish a statutory inquiry into the sexual abuse of children at day and boarding schools.

Work on preparations for the inquiry by officials, including legislation to be brought before the Oireachtas, will begin shortly and there is also expected to be extensive consultations with survivors of abuse.

The proposals were brought to the Government on Tuesday morning by Minister for Education Norma Foley following agreement among the three Coalition party leaders on Monday night.

It is understood that the Government intends to set up a Commission of Investigation, in line with the report’s recommendations. Discussions on the terms of reference will take place over the coming weeks, it is expected, but the recommendation from the scoping report is that all types of school should be…

View Cache

Dioceses that are currently in or heading toward financial bankruptcy have already suffered from decades of moral bankruptcy that led to these monetary woes.

Recently, a friend expressed his frustration with the Justice for Survivors Act signed in the California legislature in 2023. This Act ends the civil statute of limitations for minors who have experienced sexual abuse. While my friend vehemently agrees that abusers ought to get their reckoning, he took issue with the preponderance of claims related to clergy who were long deceased. The result of this preponderance is the necessity for several dioceses in California to file for bankruptcy, while more teeter on financial turmoil. In his mind, why should the Archdiocese of Los Angeles be under financial strain due to the actions of priests who passed away decades ago?

My friend posed an interesting topic for me to reflect on. Being a financial professional who has worked in…

View Cache

When people think about seminary formation, they may think primarily about classes in theology and philosophy – along with, perhaps, some basics in canon law, and practical classes like how to deliver a good homily.

But in the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis, there’s another element to seminary formation worth mentioning.

Three years ago, The Saint Paul Seminary introduced what it calls “process groups” as part of its propaedeutic year – the first year of seminary formation, which is dedicated to prayer rather than academics.

During the propaedeutic year, the seminarians do not take classes. They undergo an intense process of discernment, fasting from media and computers.

And at The Saint Paul Seminary, they also participate in process groups, consisting of about eight seminarians each, and which are focused on talking through challenges the men experience in their lives – including relationships and mental health, along with struggles in studies or…

View Cache

A statutory inquiry is to be set up in sexual abuse by Catholic clergy at some of the top schools in the country.

Blackrock College and Belvedere College have been rocked by admitted allegations of sexual abuse that was not tackled by management.

Cabinet decided today to establish the investigation, which is short of a a public inquiry.

A report is going out to survivors today, former teenage pupils who are now in their late 50s and 60s.

The terms of reference are to be drawn up for the inquiry which officials stressed will have strong powers, with representatives of the Spiritan order, which ran Blackrock, and the Jesuits, controlling Belvedere, expected to fully cooperate.

A scoping report that went to Cabinet made harrowing findings, sources said, with many other religious-run schools also the subject of allegations.

The scale of the alleged abuse opens a new front from Diocesan sexual…

View Cache

[Includes link to brief trailer with clips of statements by survivors David Schappelle, David Lorenz, and Eva Dittrich.]

Survivors, Advocates Join Legal Team Before September 10th Arguments

Summary

The consortium of Greater Baltimore law firms comprised of civil rights litigators from Jenner Law, Grant & Eisenhofer, and Baird Mandalas Brockstedt & Federico will hold a comprehensive litigation update-news conference on September 5th prior to the upcoming (September 10th) Maryland Supreme Court arguments on the constitutionality of the Child Victims Act of 2023 (CVA). Joined by several survivors-plaintiffs, advocates and the team will review the history of the legislation, and litigation (in state and federal courts), and the devastating impacts on generations of childhood sexual abuse survivors. They will also present the inaugural screening of “Survivors Stories: At the Crossroads of Justice,” a video featuring several leaders in the fight…

View Cache

A Slovakian priest who’s spent the last twenty years in Italy has announced that he’s leaving the priesthood in order to marry a woman with whom he said he’s “madly” in love, and with whom he’s expecting a child who’s been diagnosed with a serious heart condition.

The decision, which was announced Sunday by Bishop Marco Brunetti of the northern Italian diocese of Alba, who praised the “great transparency and sense of responsibility” of 44-year-old Father Tomas Hlavaty, who will now be formally removed from the priesthood and returned to the lay state.

The case has renewed debate over priestly celibacy, in part because, by all accounts, Hlavaty was a popular pastor whose departure has been publicly lamented by Catholics in the six small towns he served, including the mayor of one of those communities.

In an interview with La Repubblica, Italy’s most widely read daily newspaper, Hlavaty described the circumstances…

View Cache

Any journalist who’s ever worked a beat cultivates as many contacts as possible, but usually there’s that one source you rely on more than others – the figure whose intelligence, integrity and reputation mean that when the chips are down, it’s the voice you always want front and center.

For the first fifteen years or so of my career covering the Vatican, for me that go-to figure, especially on anything involving Catholic theology, was Jesuit Father Gerald O’Collins, who became not just a valued source but a good friend.

His Aug. 22 death at the age of 93, therefore, left me profoundly sad. More than that, it leaves the entire Catholic Church impoverished, at a time when his sanity, balance, and lack of rancor will be especially missed.

I first met O’Collins in the mid-1990s, when he was already two decades into his 33-year run on the theology faculty of…

View Cache

Father Frank D. Almade had just a smidge of the maverick about him.

A thought leader and pastor in the Catholic Church, he was focused less on giving sermons and more on taking up the mantle for the vulnerable, the hungry and for the alleged victims of sexual abuse by members of the Catholic clergy.

Since his ordination in 1978, Father Almade was best known for his social ministering, as a co-founder of the Jubilee Soup Kitchen in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, author of “Just Wages for Church Employees,” a book borne of his Ph.D. thesis, and as a board member at Catholic Charities for more than 35 years.

He had, as Pittsburgh Bishop David Zubik put it, “a unique ability to see things as they truly were.”

Before his retirement last summer, Father Almade served in many parishes over the years, overseeing mergers in places like St. John Fisher in…

View Cache

Many dioceses have failed to follow Jakarta archdiocese in implementing a protocol to protect vulnerable people

Catholic women activists want Pope Francis to address sexual violence within the Church during his four-day visit to Indonesia, where many dioceses have not implemented steps to deal with such crimes.

Pope Francis’ arrival in Indonesia on Sept. 3 should “strengthen the Church’s resolve on protecting women and children,” said Theresia Iswarini, a Catholic activist and the commissioner of the state-run National Commission on Anti-Violence Against Women.

During his pontificate, Francis initiated several policies to prevent sexual violence in the Church. However, many dioceses in Indonesia have failed to implement them, Iswarini noted during a discussion on “Voices of Catholic Women Activists Ahead of Pope Francis’ Arrival” on Aug. 30.

“They [dioceses] must immediately draft and implement protocols to boost the protection of women and children from sexual violence,” Iswarini demanded.

…

View Cache

Arnoldus Yansen thought for certain he was going to become a Catholic priest, just like his older brother, cousin and uncle.

He attended St. Peter Major Seminary, a bastion of priestly vocations located in the middle of a jungle on Flores, a predominantly Catholic island in Muslim-majority Indonesia. Known familiarly as Ritapiret Seminary, St. Peter Major has produced 13 bishops, more than 580 diocesan priests and 23 deacons in nearly 70 years of existence.

But Yansen won’t be among them. He tried to shake off what he thought were last-minute jitters before entering the priesthood. Instead, Yansen took off his clerical robes for good and joined the hundreds of prospective priests who resign or fail to take up Catholic vocations every year in Indonesia.

“I felt like I didn’t fit in anymore and that I would be able to do more if I left,” said Yansen, 26, who is now…

View Cache

… and it’s about more than Paige Patterson

The Texas Supreme Court erroneously released a massive trove of “highly confidential” documents that were filed in a sexual abuse case against Paige Patterson and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

The documents—some 10,000 pages that had been filed under seal—were visible on the court’s website for about three days, after which the court took steps to remove them from public view. I have not seen the actual documents, but have reviewed Baptist News Global’s stunning reporting on them.

Included in the documents were the psychiatric records of the alleged sexual assault survivor, a former seminary student who uses the pseudonym of Jane Roe, along with police reports of her alleged assaults, sealed testimony, and confidential communications implicating dozens of individuals with a relationship to the case.

Obviously, this was an egregious mistake on the court’s part. As someone who, decades ago, worked as an attorney…

View Cache

A Canadian bishop is facing a Vatican-ordered probe, on charges that he failed to act when informed about an allegation of sexual assault against once-popular media personality Fr. Thomas Rosica. 

Sources say that in March, a priest who was allegedly assaulted by Rosica filed a complaint charging that when he informed Bishop Ronald Fabbro that Rosica had sexually assaulted him, the bishop was unwilling to listen, and did not apparently address the allegations, or forward them to Rosica’s religious superior.

The complaint was filed through a system devised by Canada’s bishops to receive reports of sexual abuse or cover-up by bishops. The system was launched after Pope Francis promulgated in 2019 Vos estis lux mundi, a set of procedures designed to investigate allegations of episcopal sexual abuse or negligence in bishops’ duties regarding abuse.

The complaint was forwarded to the Archdiocese of Toronto, and according to sources close to the case,…

View Cache

Gateway Church in North Texas has reportedly lost nearly 20 percent of its weekend services attendance since founding pastor Robert Morris resigned two months ago amid accusations of sexually abusing a child.

The nondenominational megachurch based in the Dallas Fort-Worth suburb of Southlake on Wednesday told CNN’s Nicole Chavez that between 17 percent and 19 percent of its weekend services at nine locations in Texas and two others in Missouri and Wyoming. That means roughly 20,000 of the congregation’s 100,000 attendees stopped going to Sunday services.

Gateway critics shared the story on social media and accused the church of low-balling the estimate of lost attendees, and suggesting it might be closer to 30 percent. Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s Mac Engel this month reported the church has experienced an exodus of roughly half of its congregation in Southlake. Gateway…

View Cache

VATICAN CITY (AP) — If any evidence were needed to underscore that Pope Francis’ upcoming trip to Asia and Oceania is the longest, farthest and most challenging of his pontificate, it’s that he’s bringing along his secretaries to help him navigate the four-country program while keeping up with work back home.

Francis will clock 32,814 kilometers (20,390 miles) by air during his Sept. 2-13 visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, far surpassing any of his previous 44 foreign trips and notching one of the longest papal trips ever, both in terms of days on the road and distances traveled.

That’s no small feat for a pope who turns 88 in December, uses a wheelchair, lost part of a lung to a respiratory infection as a young man and had to cancel his last foreign trip at the last minute (to Dubai in November to participate in the U.N….

View Cache

A former senior Jesuit brother at prestigious Sydney Catholic school St Ignatius’ College Riverview has been jailed for the historical abuse of a student.

Laurence Leonard was found guilty in June of two counts of indecent assault against a 12-year-old pupil in 1974. He was aged 30 at the time.

The 80-year-old was last week sentenced to nine months’ prison with a three-month non-parole period, with Judge Ian Bourke condemning the “extremely serious breach of that trust and a grave abuse of his position of authority”.

According to a summary of facts outlined in NSW District Court documents, Leonard called the boy over to him while he was playing on the basketball courts during lunch or recess at the lower north shore school.

He said he would tuck his shirt in for him but then proceeded to assault the boy twice, causing him to feel “shocked and frozen”.

Once the…

View Cache

The Jehovah’s Witnesses must pay $48,000 in court costs to the Crown for a string of failed cases brought against the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care.

The Christian Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses Australasia sought a judicial review in 2023 in a bid to get out of being part of the inquiry.

The legal action was launched after three years of legal wrangling with the inquiry behind the scenes to avoid its scrutiny.

The bid was declined and the faith appealed the decision, but in April the Court of Appeal dismissed its argument.

The church has agreed to pay $32,321 in court costs to the Crown for the high court judicial review and $13,212 for the claim made to the Court of Appeal, according to Crown Law documents released to RNZ under the Official Information Act.

The faith has since applied for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court,…

View Cache

Sugarcane weaves together the history of St. Joseph’s Mission residential school in Williams Lake with the story of NoiseCat’s own family.

Sugarcane

When: Aug 23-27, 30, and Sept. 1

Where: VIFF Centre, 1181 Seymour St., Vancouver

Tickets & info: viff.org

A new made-in-B.C. documentary that The New York Times is calling a “must-see film about a terribly difficult subject” isn’t getting as wide a reception at home as it is in the U.S.

“In Canada, it seems like the cultural gatekeepers are tired of the residential school story and history,” said Julian Brave NoiseCat, co-director of the doc, Sugarcane.

“As much as our film can be a proxy for any of these sentiments, we’ve seen more engagement and excitement about our film in the U.S. It’s weird, but it goes back to why the discovery of potential unmarked graves in Canada was covered in the U.S. — it was…

View Cache

(OSV News) — A high-profile priest at the center of a Canadian sexual abuse lawsuit and his religious order have told the court that the plaintiff — a young priest at the time of the alleged abuse — should have his case first heard by the church, not the state.

A March 1 filing with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice — the documents for which OSV News has obtained — also alleges that Basilian Father Thomas Rosica, a Vatican media expert, founder of a prominent Canadian national Catholic television network and organizer of the 2002 Toronto World Youth Day, used his “positions of priest, teacher and guidance counselor” to “exert total control over … prey upon … and sexually abuse” a young Canadian priest for several months in 2000.

“It’s in the legal hands and I cannot comment,” Father Rosica told OSV News Aug. 30 when asked about the…

View Cache

Grieving clergy deserve grace, but even the grieving need to respect the dangers of spiritual power.

(RNS) — The new movie “Between the Temples,” billed as a black comedy, gets the comedy right — there are plenty of laughs along the way — while the “black” part comes with the movie’s examination of the completely destabilizing nature of grief. “Between the Temples” follows the supposed resurrection of Ben, a cantor at a synagogue in upstate New York, whose wife died a year before. After visiting a congregant who has had a stroke, Ben is asked whether he ever feels like his brain is having a heart attack, and he responds, “All the time.”

Under the spell of grief, Ben abandons his duties at the bimah, makes awkward small talk with the women his two moms set him up on dates with, falls down while running drunkenly and gets into fights in…

View Cache

Jail records show Vail bonded out of Metro Jail in July. His jury trial is set for October 28.

MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) – Court records show a jury trial has been set for Bradrick Vail, a Mobile-area pastor charged with rape, sodomy and sexual abuse.

In June, Vail pleaded not guilty to those charges.

Court documents show Vail was in court on Tuesday for a status hearing. Vail’s request to reset his jury trial to October 28 was granted.

In the meantime, jail records show Vail was released from Metro Jail on July 9 on a $445,000 bond. In May, police say an extensive sexual assault investigation showed Vail’s alleged victims were in Mobile and Prichard.

Investigators say several victims came forward and that Vail allegedly contacted some of them through a church in Mobile.

On Saturday, FOX10 News rode out to Vail’s…

View Cache

A youth pastor in North Carolina was charged with 30 counts of sexual battery after a “months-long” investigation involving teenagers, police said.

Detectives arrested James R. Murphey, a former church employee, at a home in High Point around 7:30 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 29, according to a news release from the city’s police department.

Throughout the investigation, which began in January, the High Point Police Department’s Special Victims Unit identified several individuals between the ages of 16 and 19 who were allegedly assaulted in 2023, police said.

Murphey, 44, who goes by his middle name Robert, was working at Oak View Baptist Church in High Point during this time, Chris Martin, the church’s safety director, told McClatchy News.

Murphey was a youth pastor at the church for almost 24 years, Martin said.

“He was in charge of all youth activities,” he said. “Bible Study on Wednesday night, youth…

View Cache

Nearly five years after the General Assembly passed landmark legislation allowing lawsuits for decades-old child sex abuse claims, North Carolina’s Supreme Court is set to consider challenges that have left hundreds of plaintiffs in legal limbo.

Dusty McKinney will be watching the scheduled Sept. 18 Supreme Court hearings, which will determine whether he and hundreds of others can sue people they accuse of abusing them and their employers.

McKinney and two other East Gaston High wrestlers filed a lawsuit against the Gaston County Board of Education. The board had received numerous complaints about wrestling coach Garry Scott Goins’ physical and sexual abuse, but dismissed them after minimal investigation, leaving other children vulnerable to his unsupervised access to them in the 1990s and 2000s, the lawsuit says.

McKinney reporting the abuse resulted in Goins being convicted in criminal court in 2014 of 17 related charges and sentenced to 34 years…

View Cache

Juneau’s Echo Ranch Bible Camp is among the places where a California man allegedly abused boys over the span of decades. Now, the people who say they were victims of Bradley Earl Reger are trying to hold the institutions where they say the abuse took place accountable. 

Reger was affiliated with Juneau’s Echo Ranch Bible camp for about 30 years. In the 1970s, the California resident volunteered as a nurse there. He also brought minors on trips to the camp from his home in California as recently as the early 2000s. Multiple men have accused Reger of abuse at the camp, under the guise of medical care.

Reger was already criminally indicted on federal sexual abuse charges last year. But a recent lawsuit, which names Echo Ranch’s owner, Avant Ministries, targets the organizations where he volunteered.

California resident Zack Winfrey, the lead plaintiff in the recent suit, attended Reger’s home church…

View Cache

U.S. Attorney Trini E. Ross announced today that Nathan L. Rogers, 40, of East Aurora, NY, who was convicted of attempted receipt of child pornography, was sentenced to serve 84 months in prison by Senior U.S. District Judge William M. Skretny.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul E. Bonanno, who handled the case, stated that in July 2019, at Darien Lake Park in Genesee County, NY, Rogers, a church youth pastor, set up iPhones in his camper to surreptitiously record, for the purposes of his own sexual gratification, nude images of a minor victim. Shortly after setting up the phones, Rogers invited the minor victim to change out of her bathing suit in his camper. She agreed and, as she changed, the iPhones recorded nude images. After changing, the minor victim noticed the phones recording her, she attempted to delete the videos, and then reported the incident to authorities. Responding law enforcement…

View Cache

A 61-year-old pastor at a Throop Avenue church has been charged with sexually assaulting a child.

Roby D. Cruz-Hernandez, of the Somerset section of Franklin, a pastor at Iglesia Pentecostal El Mesias, was arrested at his home and charged with sexual assault, a second-degree crime, and endangering the welfare of a child, a third-degree crime, Middlesex County Prosecutor Yolanda Ciccone and New Brunswick Police Chief Vincent Sabo announced.

On Aug. 28 Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office Detective Daniela Castro, who works in the Special Victims Unit, and New Brunswick Detective William Coleman began investigating allegations a juvenile had been sexually assaulted by Cruz-Hernandez, according to the prosecutor’s office.

The pastor was arrested following the investigation.

Anyone with information about the case is asked to contact Detective Castro at 732-745-3652 or Detective Coleman at 732-745-5222.

View Cache

In April, the Rev. Chris Marchand, an Anglican priest in Peoria, Illinois, launched “Wall of Silence,” a podcast about church abuse and cover-up in the Anglican Church in North America.

Two months later — at his bishop’s request — the podcast was abruptly suspended. “Yes, the Wall of Silence is being silenced,” Marchand wrote on Twitter.

The news came at a busy time for the denomination, which in June elected its next archbishop and voted on changes to its abuse protocols. For years, the young denomination has faced controversy for perceived shortcomings in its protocols on safeguarding for congregations and clergy and lay leader misconduct.

On Wednesday (Aug. 28), Marchand’s podcast resumed with a 13-minute episode explaining the project’s sudden return, without being able to fully explain where the calls to stop the podcast were coming from.

Though his bishop, Alberto Morales of the Diocese of Quincy, hasn’t granted him permission to resume…

View Cache

Local authorities have apprehended a 27-year-old priest in connection with the alleged sexual assault of a 13-year-old boy.

According to Assistant Commissioner Wan Azlan Wan Mamat, Chief of the Subang Jaya District Police, the arrest was made following a report filed by the victim on 12 August at approximately 10:09 PM.

The suspect was taken into custody the following day at a restaurant in Puchong.

“The complainant, a 13-year-old boy, alleged that he experienced physical and sexual harassment by the suspect in a room within a church located in Bandar Bukit Puchong,” stated AC Wan Azlan in an official release.

The case is currently being investigated under Section 14(a) of the Sexual Offences Against Children Act 2017.

The suspect has been remanded for four days, until 17 August, to assist with further investigations.

AC Wan Azlan has urged members of the public with any relevant information to contact the Subang…

View Cache

Chris Reed, CEO and president of the prophetic ministry MorningStar, resigned Tuesday, telling The Roys Report (TRR) it was because he’s “standing on the side of victims,” who are suing the ministry. But Wednesday, after TRR confronted him with allegations he pursued a woman sexually in 2021, Reed admitted sending the woman “terrible” sexual texts and kissing her.

Reed still maintains he resigned because of the lawsuit filed August 7 against MorningStar, alleging that the ministry mishandled child sex abuse by a former volunteer leader, Erickson Lee. The alleged abuse occurred before Reed became MorningStar CEO. And Reed said he doesn’t want to be “the face of” a ministry engaged in a legal battle.

However, in the wake of the resignation, TRR learned of the allegations of sexual misconduct in 2021 and was able to contact the woman involved. At the time of the misconduct, Reed, who’s married and has six children, was the…

View Cache

A progressive nun, she used a welcome address before Pope John Paul II in 1979 to call for equality in the ranks of the Roman Catholic Church.

Sister Theresa Kane, a Roman Catholic nun who called on her fellow sisters to push for ordination, and who led by example when, while introducing Pope John Paul II during his 1979 visit to the United States, she publicly challenged him to let women serve as priests, died on Aug. 22 in Watchung, N.J. She was 87.

A representative of her order, the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, confirmed her death, at a hospice facility, adding that she had been in failing health.

As the president of both the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella group representing American nuns, Sister Theresa was chosen to give a welcome address for Pope John Paul II…

View Cache

A group of Enna citizens, many of them practising Catholics, organised a silent protest in response to the Piazza Armerina diocese’s handling of the case of priest Giuseppe Rugolo, convicted of aggravated sexual assault on minors. The demonstration took place inside two churches in Enna, San Giuseppe and the sanctuary of Valverde, during celebrations officiated by two prelates involved in the affair, and outside the Piazza Armerina cathedral.

Faithful leave the church during the service

Giuseppe Rugolo, a priest of the diocese of Piazza Armerina, was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for aggravated sexual violence against minors. According to the grounds for the sentence, the diocese allegedly covered up the abuse, causing a wave of indignation among the faithful. The protesters, many of whom were present to attend mass, chose a particularly symbolic way of protest. When the priests arrived at the churches of St Joseph and…

View Cache

When a New Mexico bankruptcy judge ruled against a clergy sex abuse claimant earlier this summer in her legal dispute with the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, he may have issued more than a routine legal opinion and order.

Judge David Thuma’s decision may now serve as a cautionary warning to attorneys in other church bankruptcies — attorneys for both church entities and abuse claimants — about the challenges of enforcing provisions in reorganization plans and settlement agreements, especially the legal pitfalls posed by ambiguous language in those documents.

“The Court has reviewed the covenants, the confirmed plan, and related documents and has heard oral argument on the dispute,” Thuma explained in his opinion on June 21, which was accompanied by a court order denying a motion by Mela LaJeunesse, an abuse claimant.

LaJeunesse’s motion, filed by attorney Levi Monagle, was centered on a 142-word non-monetary covenant,…

View Cache

[In this 16-minute video of a broadcast on a St. Louis talk radio station, Jamie Allman describes his experience at the headquarters of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, where he worked as communications director during a brief 2004-2005 sabbatical from his career in radio.

Allman describes the internal politics among allies of Cardinal Rigali when now-Cardinal Burke succeeded Rigali as archbishop, and he goes public about two documents relating to Fr. Robert F. Johnston, who was recently named in a lawsuit. When Allman was working at the archdiocese, Johnston had admitted sodomizing a young boy, and Allman discovered that an internal document to which he had access showed that Johnston had worked at many more parishes than the archdiocese had publicly disclosed.

Allman then saw another document in which then-Msgr. Richard F. Stika, now the disgraced former Bishop of Knoxville, had directed that Johnston’s salary be increased from $1,000…

View Cache

Father Thomas Rosica faces a lawsuit alleging sexual assault of a young priest before World Youth Day 2002

A lawsuit launched in March has accused Father Thomas Rosica, the national director of World Youth Day 2002 in Toronto, of sexually assaulting a young priest in the lead-up to the event.

Father Rosica, who served as a communications liaison at the 2019 summit on sexual abuse convened by Pope Francis, maintains the allegations should be handled by a church — not secular — court.

The suit, according to the online news agency The Pillar, which broke the news on Aug. 28, alleges Father Rosica developed a mentoring relationship with the plaintiff, a newly ordained Canadian priest, in the 1990s. The priest was in graduate studies at the time and was invited to assist Father Rosica in preparing for World Youth Day, which drew an estimated 800,000 pilgrims to Toronto in the summer…

View Cache

The Diocese of Hong Kong is taking a significant step towards enhancing child protection mechanisms with the establishment of the Diocesan Safeguarding Minors and Vulnerable Persons Office – St. Goretti’s Centre, set to be operational in 2025.

HONG KONG: This initiative aligns with global Church efforts to fortify safeguards for children and vulnerable individuals, according to Sunday Examiner, the official news service of the Bishop of Hong Kong.

On August 25, the Diocesan Catechetical Centre hosted a training seminar at St. Jude’s parish in North Point, specifically designed for Sunday school teachers and catechists.

The training focused on creating a secure and supportive environment for children and vulnerable members of the community.

Fr. Dominic Lui Chi-man said the initiative adheres to both Hong Kong law and Church regulations to bolster current systems. “We invite you to join us as guardians of the children and the vulnerable,” he added.

The choice of St. Maria…

View Cache

Former Vatican media personality Basilian Father Thomas Rosica has been accused of sexually assaulting a priest in Canada.

Rosica, a member of the Congregation of St. Basi, rose to prominence running media operations during Pope St. John Paul II’s 2002 visit to Canada for World Youth Day 2002.

He later founded Salt+Light Television in 2003 and was appointed a consultor to the Pontifical Council for Social Communication in 2009. He was a Vatican spokesman during the 2013 Papal Conclave that elected Pope Francis and was a Vatican media advisor for the 2008 and 2018 Synods of Bishops.

The news website The Pillar reported a lawsuit filed in March in the Canadian province of Ontario said Rosica developed a mentoring relationship with a newly ordained Canadian priest in the late 1990s, while the priest was in graduate studies.

The story said Rosica also invited the young priest to assist in preparations for the…

View Cache

Catholics in the Southern Italian city of Enna, Sicily, protested the local church’s role in covering up sexual abuse after a court recently ruled that the diocesan bishop sought to protect a priest accused of having abused several minors as a seminarian.

Several local news outlets reported that a group of faithful walked out of a Mass Aug. 22 to protest the local church’s involvement in covering up abuses committed by Father Giuseppe Rugolo.

In a video sent to OSV News, over 20 people walked out as Msgr. Vincenzo Murgano, vicar general of the Diocese of Piazza Armerina, presided over a Mass at the Shrine of Our Lady of Valverde in Enna.

Standing outside the shrine in silence, the protestors held signs admonishing Msgr. Murgano, as well as local clergy, for their role in covering up abuse in the diocese. According to local media, a separate protest was also held…

View Cache

Well-known media figure Fr. Thomas Rosica has been accused of sexually assaulting a younger priest during the lead up to the Church’s 2002 World Youth Day in Toronto, Canada.

Rosica has denied any “improper conduct” with the priest, and urged a judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed against him, so that allegations can be addressed in a canonical court. Rosica’s faculties for priestly ministry were withdrawn in March, after the alleged victim filed suit against him.

Rosica was the principal organizer of the 2002 World Youth Day, a Vatican advisor and media attaché, and was a fixture in Catholic media and television for nearly two decades, before his prominence was stalled by 2019 reports of widespread plagiarism. The priest was also a high-profile participant in the Vatican’s 2019 global abuse summit, convened by Pope Francis, where he urged that the problem of clerical sexual abuse not be “ignored.”

—
According to…

View Cache

When the Vatican acknowledged in 2022 that the Nobel Peace Prize-winning, East Timorese independence hero Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo had sexually abused young boys, it appeared that the global clergy sexual abuse scandal that has compromised the Catholic Church’s credibility around the world had finally arrived in Asia’s newest country.

And yet, the church in East Timor today is stronger than ever, with most downplaying, doubting or dismissing the claims against Belo and those against a popular American missionary who confessed to molesting young girls. Many instead focus on their roles saving lives during the country’s bloody struggle against Indonesia for independence.

Pope Francis will come face to face with the Timorese faithful on his first trip to the country, a former Portuguese colony that makes up half of the island of Timor off the northern coast of Australia. But so far, there is no word if he will meet with…

View Cache

When Pope Francis makes his trip to Asia’s newest country, East Timor, it will make him the second pope to visit after John Paul in 1989, and the first since the country gained independence from Indonesia in 2002.

It also comes only two years after the Vatican acknowledged that the Nobel Peace Prize-winning, East Timorese independence hero Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo had sexually abused young boys, and three years after a popular American missionary was convicted of molesting young girls.

The two clergymen still enjoy widespread support among the overwhelming Catholic people of East Timor, for their staunch support of the country during its bloody struggle for independence.

An Associated Press visit to the capital, Dili, ahead of Francis’ visit, which starts Sept. 9, found that most people downplay, doubt, or dismiss the claims against the two.

Experts say that if Francis chooses to tackle the issue head-on and apologize to…

View Cache

After initially expressing hope that a Vatican investigation into his sister’s disappearance more than 40 years ago reflected “a desire of Pope Francis for the truth,” the brother of Emanuela Orlandi, the celebrated “Vatican girl” whose fate remains modern Italy’s most notorious unresolved mystery, is now voicing “no confidence” in the probe.

“I don’t have faith in the Vatican investigation,” Pietro Orlandi, the older brother of Emanuela, told a gathering in Sicily dedicated to combatting anti-female violence on August 24.

Instead, Orlandi said that his hopes now reside with two other parallel investigations of his sister’s case, one being conducted by Rome’s chief prosecutor and the other by a bipartisan panel of the Italian parliament.

“Hope for arriving at the truth is growing,” Orlandi said, despite his skepticism about the Vatican. “It’s important to talk about it in the schools, because I find in young people a sense of justice…

View Cache

A 13-year-old girl told police a priest hugged and kissed her on the lips while she was alone at St. George’s Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral.

Last March, a 13-year-old girl told police that a Saskatoon priest hugged and kissed her on the lips while she was alone in a room at St. George’s Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral in the city’s Pleasant Hill neighbourhood.

She said Father Janko Kolosnjaji then told her she had “beautiful eyes” as she walked away.

The girl, whose identity is protected by a mandatory publication ban, made her video-recorded police statement in Ukrainian on March 17, 2023. A court-approved translator is interpreting her statement during Kolosnjaji’s sexual assault trial, which began Monday in Saskatoon provincial court.

He is represented by defence lawyer Brian Pfefferle.

The girl, now 15, listened from a separate room in the courthouse as her statement was played in court. She told court everything she…

View Cache

A city court judge dismissed a sexual misconduct allegations case against Father David Tokarz.

Tokarz is a pastor at Our Savior Catholic Church in West Mobile, and he was arrested in April and charged with sexual misconduct and harassment.

According to the original complaint, the incident allegedly occurred in March on two separate occasions. The complaint alleges that sexual conduct with the victim by hugging her but when he released her from the hug he rubbed his hands on the side of her breasts and patted her breasts as well.

Tokarz’s attorney, Jeff Deen, said the victim requested for the case to be dismissed.

“She expressed some reasons,” Deen said. “And it was a very emotional experience for her, and she didn’t want to pursue it any further.”

WKRG News 5 reached out to the Archdiocese of Mobile for comment but has not heard back.

View Cache

Around 2,000 police raided a religious compound in the Philippines this weekend in search of Filipino televangelist Apollo Quiboloy, who has been accused of child sex trafficking, several local news stations reported.

The raid, which is ongoing and led to clashes between members of Quiboloy’s Kingdom of Jesus Christ Church (KOJC) and police, injured six officers, police stated on social media. Authorities say they will not stop until they have found Quiboloy.

Quiboloy is a self-proclaimed “Son of God” and spiritual advisor to former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte. His church also has a United States headquarters in Los Angeles. The church claims to have more than 6 million members in 200 countries, The Roys Report (TRR) previously reported.

The 74-year-old pastor is on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) most wanted list for multiple charges, including child sex trafficking, sex trafficking by force, bulk…

View Cache

A violent standoff between Philippine police and followers of a fugitive preacher wanted by both the FBI and local law enforcement on sexual abuse and human trafficking charges entered a fourth day on Tuesday as nearly 2,000 officers surrounded a sprawling church compound.

Pastor Apollo Carreon Quiboloy, a self-styled “appointed son of God” and founder of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ church, has been on the run for at least three years.

A 2021 US indictment accuses the 74-year-old preacher and his alleged accomplices of running a sex trafficking ring that coerced girls and young women to have sex with him under threats of “eternal damnation.”

Quiboloy, who has denied all the charges against him, is believed by Philippine police to be hiding inside a 30-hectare (75 acre) compound that includes a cathedral, a college, a bunker and a taxiway leading to Davao International Airport.

Police have been attempting to…

View Cache

ROME – Pope Francis on Friday met with an archbishop who belongs to a scandal-plagued lay group in Peru and who was recently removed from leadership of the Piura archdiocese as an ongoing Vatican investigation into his community moves forward.

According to an Aug. 23 Vatican bulletin, Pope Francis that morning met privately with Archbishop José Antonio Eguren Anselmi, who in April resigned as head of the Archdiocese of Piura at the age of 67, eight years shy of the usual retirement age for Catholic prelates.

The reasons for the pope’s meeting with Eguren were not disclosed, nor was it clear whether Eguren had been summoned, or whether he had asked for the meeting himself.

Eguren’s exit from Piura in April came amid ongoing allegations of land trafficking and financial corruption, and as part of a Vatican investigation into this community, the Sodalitium Christinae Vitae (SCV).

Founded by Peruvian layman Luis Fernando…

View Cache

More than 50% of women want Eamonn Casey’s remains disinterred from the Galway Cathedral crypt, a new poll has found.

And, after a litany of child sexual abuse allegations were revealed against the former Bishop of Galway, this figure rises to 60% of all those aged 55 and over who want him removed from his current resting place.

It is nearly a month since the Galway Diocese issued its last statement on whether the disgraced cleric will remain in the hallowed grounds of the cathedral crypt, following calls for him to be disinterred. It has since refused to comment further after outlining that time and space was needed for consultation, a position it has held since July 27.

Now, an Amárach poll commissioned by the Irish Daily Mail/DMG Media has found that overall, 49% of some 1,000 adults surveyed believe he should be disinterred, with 17% disagreeing, and 34% saying…

View Cache

TARRANT COUNTY — The North Texas megachurch embroiled in controversy over its founder’s alleged child sex abuse is facing another lawsuit involving accusations of abuse by a youth group member.

Gateway Church recently settled a 2020 lawsuit alleging child sex abuse.

The lawsuit filed Wednesday in Tarrant County accuses a member of the Gateway Church youth group of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl repeatedly on church grounds. The lawsuit alleges the assaults began in 2016.

According to the lawsuit filed by Julia Long, who was 13 years old at the time, she regularly attended youth group meetings at The King’s University in Southlake with roughly 200 other members ranging in age from 11 years old to 18 years old. One of those members was then 17-year-old Gabriel Snyder, according to the lawsuit.

In late 2016, the lawsuit alleges Snyder began grooming Long during youth group meetings, using…

View Cache

Vice President Kamala Harris bragged about her supposed passion for helping victims of sexual assault while speaking at the Democratic National Convention (DNC), ignoring her track record of failing to prosecute sexual abuse cases within the Catholic Church and even hiding “vital records on abuses that had occurred” when she was a San Francisco district attorney.

Addressing the crowd to formally accept her party’s presidential nomination on Thursday night, Harris reflected on a “pivotal moment” in her life that influenced her decision to become a prosecutor by bringing up the story of a peer who was victimized. 

Harris said that when she was in high school, she started to “notice something about my best friend Wanda.”

After Wanda supposedly confided in her that she was being abused by her stepfather, Harris claimed that she “immediately told her she had to come stay with us, and she did.”

“This is…

View Cache

A senior priest who was subject to five police investigations for sexual impropriety and assessed as a major risk to young men received a six-figure payoff from the Church of England to resign in 2022, the BBC reported on August 13. Church leaders say the case raises major questions about the adequacy of the church’s disciplinary system and clergy employment rules at a time when major reforms are planned.

The Rev. Canon Andrew Hindley, 65, known by some as “the Teflon priest,” served for 20 years in the Diocese of Blackburn, 15 of them as canon sacrist at Blackburn Cathedral in Lancashire, before stepping down, after receiving what the BBC has been told was a £240,000 ($370,000) payment.

Hindley insists that he posed no safeguarding risk, and was never charged with a crime. He also alleges that as an openly gay priest, he was subject to a homophobic…

View Cache

More than 10,000 pages of highly confidential and legally protected information from a sexual abuse victim’s case against Paige Patterson and Southwestern Seminary were published publicly online for about three days this weekend.

The apparent clerical error occurred as case materials in Jane Roe v. Leighton Paige Patterson and Southwestern Seminary were transferred from the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to the Texas Supreme Court. The Fifth Circuit has asked the Texas high court to rule on one particular issue in the case, which both Southwestern and Patterson have sought to have thrown out for lack of merit.

Four files containing a combined 10,000 pages of sealed information were left open for public view.

Visible information included the victim’s name, medical and psychiatric records, Social Security number, driver’s license number, banking information, address, phone number, email address, police reports of her alleged assaults, sealed testimony, and other personal identifying information and confidential…

View Cache

» Continue to this story on Nacional (Croatia) 

CWN Editor’s Note: A Croatian newsmagazine has reported that Archbishop Dražen Kutleša of Zagreb, the nation’s leading prelate, violated the norms of Vos Estis Lux Mundi (You Are the Light of the World), Pope Francis’s apostolic letter on addressing sexual abuse (2019, 2023).

Nacional reported that Archbishop Kutleša also violated the guidelines of Croatia’s episcopal conference.

Archbishop Kutleša, while archbishop of Split-Makarska (2022-23), “relocated priests accused of pedophilia and allowed them to continue to serve and be in contact with the faithful and altar boys,” according to the report.

Update (8/16/24): Nacional offered additional details of the cover-up allegations against Archbishop Kutleša in an August 16 article.The above note supplements, highlights, or corrects details in the original source (link above). 

About CWN news coverage.

View Cache

Geo, the name he prefers, sits in a coffee shop on a rainy afternoon as streetcars clang along outside. He is 64. He arrived at Madonna Manor, the Catholic orphanage he is now suing, in August of 1967, as a ward of Louisiana, age seven.

“My childhood was horrific,” he says matter-of-factly. “My father was an abusive alcoholic, my mother diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic. Madonna Manor was a place where dysfunctional parents dumped their children. My mom was subject to electroshock therapy and thorazine. She lost a baby. She had a psychotic breakdown and was placed in a mental hospital. The state took me over.”

Thin, bearded, redolent of nicotine, he holds a sketchbook of his works.

He enjoys the fellowship of a drawing class once a week, sketching figures of live models. Alcoholics Anonymous helps too, he says, adding: “I have been sober since May 30 and intend to…

View Cache

Phil Donahue was to talk show hosts as Fr. Andrew Greeley was to priests and Jason Berry is to print journalists: the first in his field to credibly address the Catholic Church’s then virtually unspoken problem of pedophile priests.

(At great risk, of course, the National Catholic Reporter was the first newspaper with a national circulation to write about abuses and cover-ups, before both Donahue and Greeley. The two men — and years later, many others — clearly read and were inspired by the NCR’s seminal work exposing this corruption.)

The internet wasn’t around back then and my memory isn’t flawless, so it’s possible that, technically speaking, other outlets may have discussed the abuse crisis even earlier than Donahue (perhaps an ultraconservative Wisconsin-based weekly called The Wanderer, for instance).

But none had anything like the reach and impact of “The Phil Donahue Show” (later shortened to…

View Cache

The annual SNAP conference highlighted the need for reforms to hold religious organizations accountable, including lifting statutes of limitations on child sexual abuse claims.

For more than 15 years, David Clohessy says, he fondly recalled all the camping, skiing, canoeing and hiking trips with his parish priest, Father John Whiteley.

Then while watching “Nuts” with his girlfriend (now his wife, Laura) — a movie in which the protagonist suffered sexual abuse as a child — it all came rushing back to Clohessy: waking to the priest lying on top of him, sexually molesting him, then turning over and drifting off to sleep.

Recalling the long-suppressed sexual abuse that he suffered over the course of four years as a child, Clohessy curled up into a fetal position and sobbed uncontrollably.

Since then, Clohessy, now 67, has cried almost every day over the abuse by the priest at St. Pius X, his…

View Cache

• Cases from Argentina, Australia, Ecuador, France, Mexico, and the United States prove how the Roman Catholic leaders foster the clergy sexual abuse crisis.English Edition
• These seven cases prove how the Roman Catholic Church upholds a system prone to clergy sexual abuse with little or no regard for its own members.
• These seven cases of clergy sexual abuse are not anecdotical. They are representative of how predators attack their victims and the strategies they follow to prey.

On Thursday, despite the deep economic crisis shaking Argentina, most of the media there published stories about Julio César Grassi, a Roman Catholic priest and the former leader of a foundation allegedly devoted to helping homeless and destitute children there.

Grassi had that day a hearing to seek either the full dismissal of his case or an advance release. A tribunal sentenced him in late 2009 to 15 years in jail. Given his high profile…

View Cache

Many years ago, I served as an adjunct professor of worship and preaching at a Baptist seminary. One day, as I prepared for an upcoming class, I went to a photocopy shop and begin copying large numbers of worship bulletins and sermons to give to my students.

An employee at the shop noticed the photocopied materials and asked me, “Are you a minister?”

“Yes, I am,” I replied.

He said, “Are you a Southern Baptist minister?”

“No,” I said, “but I used to be. I’ve recently joined the United Methodist Church.”

He looked at me for a moment with suspicious eyes and asked, “Are you divorced or are you gay?”

“Neither one,” I replied.

He said, “Then why did you change denominations?”

I’ve been asked that question many times over the years. The short answer is that I lost faith in the evangelical church. To that subject I’ll now turn.

Early doubts

In…

View Cache

The Government will “reflect” on “what action is next appropriate” into the alleged abuses of former Dr Michael Shine after his victims called for a public inquiry into what happened, Taoiseach Simon Harris has said.

In an interview with the Journal.ie, a number of men who were allegedly sexually assaulted by Dr Shine while children and teenagers said they want a public inquiry into the cases to be launched.

Michael Shine worked as a senior registrar and later a consultant at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, Co Louth between 1964 and 1995.

Now aged 93, he was found guilty of assaults against nine boys at two trials, in 2017 and 2019, before serving three years in prison.

More than 200 people have settled civil claims against the Medical Missionaries of Mary religious order that oversaw the running of the hospital at that time.

Responding to the calls for…

View Cache

The New Zealand Royal Commission’s final report condemns Catholic Church leaders for failing to address abuse and neglect, despite past promises of transparency. Their lack of accountability and evasion of responsibility suggests that the current bishops should reconsider their positions.

Based on the New Zealand Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care’s final report, Catholic Church leaders have brought great shame on the New Zealand Catholic Church. Their lack of accountability and transparency in responding to pervasive abuse merits serious condemnation.

The Commission found that “Catholic Church leaders have not been accountable or transparent to their congregations and the broader community about the nature and extent of abuse and neglect by their members.” (199) Given such a finding, perhaps it would be best for the local Church and New Zealand society if those church leaders—the bishops, tendered their resignations to the pope.

The Commission’s use of the words…

View Cache

Prosecutors in the trial of 14 people accused of killing an eight-year-old girl by withholding her diabetes medication have completed presenting evidence after nearly seven weeks of hearings.

Elizabeth Rose Struhs died on January 7, 2022 while lying comatose on a mattress on the floor of her family’s home in Toowoomba, west of Brisbane.

She had gone six days without her prescribed multiple daily injections of insulin for her type-1 diabetes, which left her suffering from vomiting and unquenchable thirst.

The defendants charged over Elizabeth’s death, including both her parents, are members of a small religious congregation known as ‘The Saints’.

All 14 defendants are self-represented and have refused to enter pleas.

Crown prosecutor Caroline Marco on Friday told Justice Martin Burns the prosecution had finished presenting its case to the judge-only Supreme Court trial that started early in July.

“The trial has reached the point where no more evidence…

View Cache

When a New Mexico bankruptcy judge ruled against a clergy sex abuse claimant earlier this summer in her legal dispute with the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, he may have issued more than a routine legal opinion and order.

Judge David Thuma’s decision may now serve as a cautionary warning to attorneys in other church bankruptcies — attorneys for both church entities and abuse claimants — about the challenges of enforcing provisions in reorganization plans and settlement agreements, especially the legal pitfalls posed by ambiguous language in those documents.

“The Court has reviewed the covenants, the confirmed plan, and related documents and has heard oral argument on the dispute,” Thuma explained in his opinion on June 21, which was accompanied by a court order denying a motion by Mela LaJeunesse, an abuse claimant.

LaJeunesse’s motion, filed by attorney Levi Monagle, was centered on a 142-word non-monetary covenant,…

View Cache

Four church leaders have stepped down since June, when senior pastor Robert Morris left over allegations he abused a 12-year-old girl while he was a married 21-year-old

Prominent members of Gateway Church continue to resign or step down following child sex abuse allegations against former senior pastor Robert Morris, who publicly admitted to having “inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady” 35 years ago.

Morris resigned from the Texas megachurch in June, four days after 54-year-old Cindy Clemishire went public with allegations that the pastor began molesting her when she was 12 and he was 21. Though he downplayed them, Morris acknowledged the allegations.

A month after Morris’ resignation, his son and daughter-in-law, James and Bridget Morris, stepped down as pastors of the Dallas-based church. And on Wednesday, the church’s leadership announced that executive pastor Kemtal Glasgow resigned due to an unspecified “moral issue” that “disqualifies him from serving.”

Here is…

View Cache

A Lake Catholic High School teacher is accused of having inappropriate relationships with students, according to the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland.

Scott Posey, the music director and former director of performing arts, was fired after an investigation into the allegations, the diocese said. He had been at the school for more than 20 years.

In a statement, the diocese said its examination began in January when it obtained information that Posey had inappropriate relationships with two students about 15 years ago.

Based on the allegations, a private investigator interviewed several former students and found one who reported that Posey “had, on a number of occasions around the same time period, engaged in inappropriate conduct with her that included touching of a sexual nature,” the diocese’s statement said.

The allegation was reported to law enforcement, and Lake Catholic placed Posey on administrative leave. At the conclusion…

View Cache

In this extract from his new book, the former Irish Times Religious Affairs Correspondent recounts the story of a victim of child sexual abuse

Darren McGavin is now a middle-aged man in his 50s. Our first meeting, in Dublin’s St Stephen’s Green shopping centre many years ago, was one of the few occasions in my life when I wept in public.

I belong, very much, to the “weep alone” brigade when it comes to emotional issues. But I couldn’t help it then, even though Darren and I, drinking our coffee, were surrounded by so many people at tables nearby. I kept seeing the small boy, not the man before me, being brutalised.

His recollection of incidents of sexual abuse by Fr Tony Walsh were vivid, detailed and told with the calm delivery of a man who had been over the ground many times. By then, having talked to many other…

View Cache

During his recent trip through Latin America, the prelate of Opus Dei, Monsignor Fernando Ocáriz, gave an interview to the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio, in which he spoke about various topics, such as the role of women, the reform ordered by Pope Francis, and a response to those who consider Opus Dei to be “conservative, powerful and secretive.”

“Everyone can have their own opinions and reasons for evaluating reality. If some people perceive it that way, it will be because there is something objective and/or subjective that can cause that impression,” said the third successor of St. Josemaría Escrivá as the head of Opus Dei.

“Making the Work [Opus Dei] better known is, in part, the task of each member: to live one’s own vocation in an authentic way. It is something great and wonderful, although I understand that a perspective of faith is required to understand it in depth,”…

View Cache

Scott Surette joins the National Review Board to shift the church’s focus from anger to healing and forgiveness

Scott Surette, a devout Catholic and longtime owner of a home inspection firm, is on a mission to help renew the church.

Yet for all his four decades of experience with construction and code compliance, he’s not looking to renovate buildings — instead, Surette is seeking to repair what Scripture calls the “living stones” that comprise the spiritual house of Jesus Christ.

And now, as one of several recent appointees to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ National Review Board, a lay-led advisory group on child and youth protection, Surette is “under contract,” so to speak, to make that happen.

The board is mandated by the USCCB “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People,” established in 2002 amid a torrent of emerging clerical abuse scandals. Commonly called the Dallas Charter,…

View Cache

An Episcopal Church bishop based in California has been accused of not properly enforcing disciplinary action against a pastor who allegedly failed to properly vet a sex offender.

Earlier this week, The Christian Post was directed to an Anglican Watch story from July 30 accusing Bishop Lucinda Ashby of the Episcopal Diocese of El Camino Real of mishandling a Title IV disciplinary complaint.

At issue, according to Anglican Watch, was an incident in which the Rev. Ruth Casipit-Paguio of Holy Family Episcopal Church of San Jose, failed to enforce “Safe Church requirements.”

“Casipit-Paguio reportedly didn’t bother to run background checks on church staff and volunteers during that time, a violation of diocesan policy. Possibly as a result, a known pedophile listed on a state sex offender registry attempted to become involved with the parish. That individual obtained keys to the church,” claimed Anglican Watch.

“When…

View Cache

Hundreds of police officers backed by riot squads raided a vast religious compound in a southern Philippine city Saturday in search of a local preacher accused of sexual abuse and human trafficking, police officials said.

A supporter of the group, called Kingdom of Jesus Christ, reportedly died due to a heart attack during the massive police raid that started at dawn in the group’s compound in Davao city, livestreamed online by a local TV network owned by the group, police said, adding that the death was not related to the police operations.

Officers brought equipment that could detect people behind cement walls. But by mid-afternoon, they found no sign of Apollo Quiboloy in the compound — some 30 hectares (75 acres) that includes a cathedral, a school, a living area, a hangar and a taxiway leading to Davao International Airport.

Quiboloy and his lawyer have denied the criminal allegations against him and…

View Cache

Lawyers tied up in the fight to land settlements for hundreds of alleged victims of Catholic clergy sex abuse hope that a move this week by a federal judge will speed things along.

$40 million has already been spent on attorneys’ fees, and a settlement for some 500 alleged victims is nowhere in sight.

Federal judge Meredith Grabill has hired an outside expert to move the process along.

The expert is a man named Mohsin Meghji, who works with a New York restructuring firm named M3, and his payment will be capped at $350,000, money which will further cut into church bankruptcy funds that so far have not found their way to any victims,

“This should’ve been done a long time ago like a lot of situations involved with the bankruptcy,” said claimant John Anderson, who heads up the National Association of Survivors of Childhood Abuse.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys like Frank…

View Cache

In short:

Paedophile Marist Brother will be released in less than three weeks, after being sentenced to only five months actual jail time.

Gerard McNamara was sentenced in the County Court in relation to the latest victim to come forward whom he sexually assaulted in 1995. 

What’s next?

He’ll be released in three weeks. 

Notorious Marist Brother paedophile Gerard McNamara will be released from Victoria’s Hopkins Correctional Centre within three weeks.

Known as ‘The Rat’ by students in the Gippsland Catholic high schools he taught in, prior to today McNamara had already been sentenced four times in relation to his offending.

He has served two separate periods of imprisonment, in 2019 and 2020.

All victims were sexually assaulted under the guise of massages for injuries, or pastoral care.

The 86-year-old appeared in the County Court via video link, wearing prison greens.

He closed his eyes, shaking his head as Judge…

View Cache

In short:

A former student of Champagnat College in north-east Victoria is taking legal action against the Marist Brothers, alleging he was sexually abused by music teacher William Allen in the early 1970s.

After leaving the school, Allen was re-employed by the Victorian Education Department, despite declaring a conviction for child abuse.

What’s next?

Allen, who died in 1985, will be among scores of abusive former teachers whose assaults on students will be examined during the Victorian government’s recently announced truth-telling process for state school abuse survivors.

A “psychopathic” paedophile teacher was employed in a Marist Brothers school despite a prior conviction for child sexual abuse and having previously been banished from the Victorian Education Department school system, a new lawsuit has revealed.

Warning: This story contains discussion of child sexual abuse and suicide.

William Alexander Allen, who had two stints as a Victorian government school teacher despite declaring a…

View Cache

Disgraced Hillsong founder Brian Houston and his wife, Bobbie, are asking for money for an online church venture. The longtime pastor says they’ve “got desperate needs” for a TV studio, while glossing over recent scandals and a government probe into past church spending.  

“This is actually a dream I’ve had for some time,” said Brian Houston in the launch video for Jesus Followers TV, which premiered on July 28. The website describes the ministry as an “online platform and church . . . a trustworthy voice of hope and inspiration in the days ahead.” 

Two years ago, Brian and Bobbie Houston resigned as global senior pastors of Hillsong Church based in Sydney, Australia, after an internal investigation revealed Brian had acted inappropriately toward two women. Hillsong’s board of directors stated that Houston had spent time alone in a hotel room with a woman, not his…

View Cache

A senior priest who was subject to five police investigations for sexual impropriety and assessed as a major risk to young men received a six-figure payoff from the Church of England to resign in 2022, the BBC reported on August 13. Church leaders say the case raises major questions about the adequacy of the church’s disciplinary system and clergy employment rules at a time when major reforms are planned.

The Rev. Canon Andrew Hindley, 65, known by some as “the Teflon priest,” served for 20 years in the Diocese of Blackburn, 15 of them as canon sacrist at Blackburn Cathedral in Lancashire, before stepping down, after receiving what the BBC has been told was a £240,000 ($370,000) payment.

Hindley insists that he posed no safeguarding risk, and was never charged with a crime. He also alleges that as an openly gay priest, he was subject to a homophobic plot by the…

View Cache

A former Michigan pastor is facing four new charges in an ongoing child sex abuse case. Michael Ronald Goble, formerly the pastor of the now-defunct Church of the Good Shepherd in Adrian, Michigan, was originally arrested in July and charged with two counts of criminal sexual conduct in the second degree.

In July, two victims were identified, both of whom were younger than age 13 at the time of the alleged abuse.

At the time of Goble’s arrest, police said that “more victims are believed to exist that have not yet been identified.”

The original charges were the result of accusations that Goble, 75, sexually abused two brothers on separate occasions as they helped him with yard work at his home. These incidents are alleged to have occurred in 2022 and earlier this year.

RELATED: Former Christian School Teacher Charged With Multiple Counts of Sexual Battery With a Student

Now…

View Cache

A former teacher at a Christian school in South Carolina is facing 12 counts of sexual battery with a student.

Norman Jermaine Roberson, 36, a former Fountain Inn Christian School music director, is accused of engaging in inappropriate relationships between April and November 2015, as reported by Fox Carolina. 

Fox Carolina reported Roberson allegedly had encounters with students in several South Carolina locations, including in Fountain Inn, Simpsonville, Greenville, and Greenville County.

According to Roberson’s LinkedIn profile, Roberson has also worked as a youth pastor at Word of Life Church in Simpsonville since Nov. 2019. A receptionist answering the church’s phone on Thursday said Roberson was no longer employed with the church and they were not allowed to provide additional information. 

Roberson also lists he was a mathematics teacher at Fountain Inn from March 2015 to June 2016….

View Cache

Growing up, spending time on the Canim Lake Band (Tsq̓éscen̓ First Nation) reserve with his extended family in British Columbia, Julian Brave NoiseCat would hear stories. They were horrifying, unspeakable stories about what happened to babies at St. Joseph’s Mission in Williams Lake, B.C., one of many residential schools that North American governments once forced Native children to attend for purposes of assimilation.

“I honestly dismissed those stories as sort of rez legends,” NoiseCat said, in a Zoom interview in mid-August. “It sounded too grisly to be true.” He learned much later that “not only were those stories true,” but he believes his father to be the only known survivor of a pattern of infanticide at the school. Their story is part of a history of abuse, at St. Joseph’s and numerous other Native boarding schools.

NoiseCat, a…

View Cache

As the future of six Catholic dioceses in New York remain clouded by bankruptcies brought on by thousands of lawsuits from people who say they were sexually abused as children by clergy, a statewide settlement that would tap into a multi-billion-dollar revenue source appears to be under consideration.

Such a “global” settlement – which would likely need to be approved by Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, the archbishop of New York, and possibly the state attorney general – could help resolve the bankruptcy proceedings that have frustrated aging survivors in Buffalo for more than four years because of their slow pace.  

Documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court that were obtained and analyzed by 2 On Your Side Investigates make clear that a statewide settlement with the use of proceeds from the $3.75 billion sale of Fidelis Care is on the table. The Catholic bishops of New York used proceeds from…

View Cache

Claims seminarian targeted him for nearly a decade

It represents the first Roman Catholic seminary founded in this country more than two centuries ago, but now, St. Mary’s Seminary has emerged as the latest institution to draw legal action for allegations of child sex abuse.

Tom Finnerty’s family sent him there back in the Seventies for religious tutoring where a seminarian named John Banko allegedly exploited him.

“It happened at a very young age,” said Finnerty, “I was six years old in first grade and it went on for years.”

Whether it was outside in St. Mary’s parking lot or inside his private quarters, the alleged abuse ramped up over time with Banko plying Finnerty with alcohol and eventually even transmitting a sexual disease.

“This is a seminary. This is where they taught people how to be compassionate to people that needed it, cause that was their job,” said Finnerty,…

View Cache

As the coordinator of restorative practices and survivor support for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Paula Kaempffer works one-on-one and in small groups with victims-survivors of clergy abuse.

Support for victims, Kaempffer said, is an important aspect in the healing process. As a victim of clergy sexual abuse herself, Kaempffer took the position hoping to bring healing to all those she could.

Kaempffer told “Practicing Catholic” radio show host Patrick Conley during an interview debuting at 9 p.m. Aug. 23 on Relevant Radio 1330 AM, “One statement that I hear said to victims-survivors over and over and over again by bishops, by priests, by parishioners, ‘Why can’t you just get over it?’ And my response to that is, ‘Don’t you think we would if we could?’ … It doesn’t go away. We never get over it. We get through it to a certain point in our lives, but…

View Cache

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Meredith Grabill said Tuesday she will appoint an independent expert to help determine whether the long-running Archdiocese of New Orleans bankruptcy can be settled, raising the stakes in a case that’s grown increasingly bitter between the church and the abuse survivors who have filed claims.

More than four years after the nation’s second-oldest diocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, Grabill raised the possibility for the first time that forging a settlement agreement to financially compensate abuse survivors — one that the church can afford and that survivors will approve — may not be possible.

“I need someone who can tell me if there is a path forward,” Grabill said during the hearing Tuesday. “There needs to be a path forward. If not, we need to cut our losses and look elsewhere for a solution.”

Grabill’s independent expert, who will add another layer of oversight…

View Cache

Parties in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy have asked to put off a previously scheduled hearing for the court to consider confirmation of the diocese’s plan of reorganization.

Plan confirmations by Bankruptcy Court judges are a final step in Chapter 11 cases before creditors can be paid. Creditors in the diocese case are more than 400 survivors of childhood sexual abuse by priests and other church officials.

Parties say they need time to revise the current reorganization plan to accommodate a June 27 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

How much plan revisions might further delay a conclusion to the now five-year-old case is not clear.

The diocese asked for court protection in 2019 a month after New York’s Child Victims Act took effect. The act opened a two-year window for such survivors to pursue abusers who otherwise would have been protected by a statute of limitations.  

The…

View Cache