ABUSE TRACKER

IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Wednesday, December 02, 2015

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

Children as young as 12, pregnant as a result of rape, were in Bessborough Mother and Baby Home into the 1980s.

Details from maternity registers, released under freedom of information, reveal between 1954 and 1987, young girls were pregnant in the institution.

The youngest child in the registers dates from 1968. The girl is listed as being just 12 and had been transferred from Bessborough to St Finbarr’s Hospital in Cork, where her child had been stillborn in January 1968, as a result of “ante-partum haemorrhage”.

However, the presence of children in Bessborough pregnant as a result of rape continued into the 1980s. For example, Maternity Record Book 40 lists a girl of 14 whose child was stillborn in 1982. The record simply states the child “premature 33wks, gasped and died”.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Wednesday, December 02, 2015

Conor Kane

A former priest who wrote to the Pope asking to be laicised because of his history of “abusing young boys” has been found guilty of indecently assaulting a secondary school student in the 1980s while the priest worked as a choirmaster and music teacher.

Henry Moloney, aged 77, of Kimmage Manor, Dublin, was found guilty last night, on the unanimous verdicts of a jury, of seven counts of indecent assault, all of which took place within one school year in the 1980s.

He will be sentenced on December 15, following the preparation of a victim impact report, and has been remanded on bail.

Moloney had pleaded not guilty to all charges.

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MINNESOTA
Duluth News Tribune

By Tom Olsen Today

A judge has denied a motion to dismiss the felony charges against a Hibbing priest accused of sexually abusing underage girls, setting the stage for the case to go to trial.

In an order filed Monday, 6th Judicial District Judge David Ackerson concluded that a jury should decide whether or not Brian Michael Lederer is guilty of seven sexual assault and child pornography charges.

“Considering all of the evidence in the light most favorable to the state’s position, the state has presented sufficient evidence to support a determination of probable cause to proceed to trial against the Defendant on all Counts,” Ackerson wrote in his five-page order.

With the filing of the order, not-guilty pleas were entered on Lederer’s behalf to all charges.

Lederer, 30, had challenged the sufficiency of evidence, which was based largely on the accounts of four girls who reported inappropriate touching by Lederer, who worked at Blessed Sacrament Parish and the Assumption Catholic School.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

AAP

Police wrongly decided a Melbourne priest who indecently assaulted a girl during confession had not committed an offence, an inquiry has heard.

Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Stephen Fontana said the 1990 investigation concluded there were “nil offences disclosed”.

“Quite clearly there was an indecency around it and to suggest that there was none, they suggested it wasn’t a sex offence, I disagreed with. I think the whole circumstance was surrounded with indecency,” Mr Fontana told the child abuse royal commission.

“I just didn’t agree with the original assessment that there was no offence.”

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INDIA
The Asian Age

A 52-year-old priest has been booked for allegedly sexually assaulting a minor boy on the premises of Christ the King church in Shivaji Nagar.

The accused has been identified as Fr Johnson Lawrence, who holds the post of a priest-in-charge at the church. On November 27, the 13-year-old victim accompanied by his parents attended the church proceedings in the evening.

After the mass ended, the boy, who was talking with his friends, stayed back on the church premises and did not leave along with his parents.

The police said after friends left the premises, the boy decided to sit on pews in the church for some time before leaving for his house, which located in the same area.

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MICHIGAN
The Detroit News

Candice Williams, The Detroit News December 1, 2015

Detroit — A priest who pleaded guilty to mail fraud in connection with stealing $573,000 from St. Thomas More Parish in Troy was sentenced Tuesday to 27 months in prison.

The sentence for Rev. Ed Belczak, handed down by U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Tarnow, was below sentencing guidelines and federal prosecutors’ request.

Before the sentencing, Belczak, 70, said he accepted full responsibility for his actions at St. Thomas More Parish where he was pastor for nearly 30 years.

“I was selfish,” he told the judge. “I stole money that did not belong to me.”

Belczak said he has dealt with depression and thoughts of suicide. As part of his sentence, Tarnow ordered him to undergo mental health counseling.

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UNITED STATES
TheMediaReport

David Pierre

Fabricated episodes. Character defamation. Devious storytelling. This is the definitive review of the new Hollywood movie Spotlight, which purports to chronicle the Boston Globe’s 2001-2002 investigation of the Catholic Church sex abuse story.

The heavily hyped Hollywood production – starring A-list actors Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo – professes to dramatize the paper’s pursuit of the troubling crimes committed by abusive priests in the Archdiocese of Boston.

However, after thoroughly studying the film, TheMediaReport.com’s Dave Pierre reports:

“Spotlight claims to be ‘based on actual events,’ but it does not bode well when the very first scene of the film is a complete fabrication.

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UNITED STATES
Chicago Now

In the New Testament, Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd. And he knows his sheep and his sheep know him. Like good sheep, they respond to the sound of his voice. They feel totally comfortable around him. More to the point, they feel safe and secure with him. He is their protector. His very presence gives them the assurance that everything is OK. This is the nature of the relationship between a shepherd and his flock.

Cardinal Bernard Law. Chicago Police Superintendent Gerald McCarthy. President Richard Nixon.

Each of these men, in their own way, were shepherds. Each of them rose to positions of great power and authority. But along with the power and authority came great responsibility. Their duty was, not unlike that of the Good Shepherd, to protect their “flock”, to make sure that each of the sheep entrusted to their care was safe and secure. Each of those men failed to live up to their responsibility. As a result, the people left in their protective custody, ended up experiencing fear, anxiety, tension, stress and betrayal.

Who can doubt we live in stressful times? There are threats both foreign and domestic, internal and external. If these threats are allowed to go unchecked, the very fabric of our society can come unraveled. That’s why any egregious shortcoming on the part of those appointed to act as our protectors is so traumatic. The failure of our leaders, whether religious or secular, represents and fundamental violation of the trust we placed in them.

What makes this betrayal so devastating is that, for the most part, the men I mentioned really didn’t do anything much themselves. No one has accused Cardinal Law of child abuse, for instance. Superintendent McCarthy didn’t shoot anyone, justified or otherwise. Richard Nixon didn’t break into the Watergate Apartment Complex. But each of them placed the defense of the reputation of an institution above their responsibility to those they were obligated to defend.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

December 2, 2015

Beau Donelly

A paedophile priest who forced a young girl against his erect penis and made her kiss him inside a confessional had committed no offences, according to Victoria Police at the time.

Assistant Commissioner Stephen Fontana said he was surprised police closed an investigation into Doveton parish priest Peter Searson in 1990 after a victim reported being indecently assaulted by him.

Police concluded there were “nil offences disclosed” after interviewing victim Julie Stewart, then aged 15.

“All Searson has done is sit the child on his knee and get the child to kiss him on the cheek,” the police report said. “Stewart stated that when she sat on his knee he dragged her up and onto his lap where she felt his erect penis rubbing on her back.”

Mr Fontana told the child abuse royal commission on Wednesday that on the evidence available at the time police should have concluded that at least an indecent assault had been committed.

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AUSTRALIA
The Mercury

PATRICK BILLINGS
Mercury

THE victim of a Tasmanian paedophile priest is urging other victims to report to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse ahead of a Hobart hearing next month.

The commission will hold a public hearing in Hobart into the Church of England Boys’ Society and the Anglican ­Dioceses of Tasmania, Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane.

The commission wants to hear from people who have information relevant to the hearing, including allegations involving Louis Daniels, Garth Hawkins, Robert Brandenberg, Simon Jacobs and John Elliott, against whom legal action has already been taken.

One of Hawkins’s victims, Steven Fisher was ­recently interviewed by the commission’s investigators.

He was ­as a teen abused for two years in what he describes as an interstate paedophile ring.

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MASSCHUSETTS
Harvard Law Today

By LEWIS RICE, December 1, 2015

The movie “Spotlight” focuses on the dogged pursuit by Boston Globe reporters to expose the Catholic Church’s cover-up of the sexual abuse of children by Boston priests. But there is much more to the story, as evidenced by a wide-ranging panel discussion of the movie last week at Harvard Law School that touched on legal issues, secrets and shame, and even a potential lawsuit against the filmmakers.

Sponsored by the Harvard Law School Library and the Dean of Students Office, the panel featured Josh Singer ’01, who co-wrote the screenplay with director Tom McCarthy; Mitchell Garabedian, who represented dozens of plaintiffs in suits against the church (and was depicted by Stanley Tucci in a prominent role in the movie); and HLS professors Jeannie Suk ’02 and Lawrence Lessig, with Professor Jonathan Zittrain ’95 moderating. In the audience were Ben Bradlee Jr. and Michael Rezendes, journalists from the Globe who were also depicted in the film, and who participated in the discussion.

Singer, whose previous credits include the television series “The West Wing” and the movie “The Fifth Estate,” described the process of creating “Spotlight,” which he began writing in 2012, and the copious research involved, including interviews with victims and Globe reporters. “We wanted to present reporting and the newsroom in a way that really hadn’t been done in many years, as accurately as possible,” he said. “We were pretty extreme in terms of hard work in trying to get the story right.”

After several clips from the movie were shown to the audience in Wasserstein Hall, Garabedian spoke of his interactions with the victims and how the cases helped validate their stories and heal some of the pain they continued to live with in adulthood. Before the victims spoke out and the Globe coverage galvanized attention around the issue, he said, “It was the worst-kept secret in Boston that these priests were molesting children. Everybody seemed to know but no one seemed to do anything about it.”

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MICHIGAN
Detroit Free Press

Patricia Montemurri, Detroit Free Press December 1, 2015

The Rev. Edward Belczak was sentenced Tuesday to 27 months in prison for stealing $573,000 from the St. Thomas More Catholic Church in Troy, where he had served as pastor for almost 30 years.

U.S. District Judge Arthur Tarnow handed down the sentence.

Belczak made a lengthy plea to the judge for mercy, citing scripture and also revealing that he had suicidal thoughts because of the public humiliation.

“I have stained the reputation of being a priest,” said Belczak.

Belczak, 70, pleaded guilty Sept. 1 to one count of mail fraud in connection with the embezzlement and is paying $573,000 in restitution. Prosecutors had asked for a 37-month prison sentence. But Belczak’s supporters had sent dozens of letters to the judge asking for leniency for the charismatic priest, whose popularity had contributed to growing St. Thomas into one of the largest, most prosperous parishes in the Archdiocese of Detroit. Belczak’s attorney, Jerome Sabbota, had asked that the priest be granted probation or home detention.

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IRELAND
National Catholic Reporter

Sarah Mac Donald | Dec. 1, 2015

The Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland is to write to the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops expressing its 1,000 members’ “grave disquiet” over the current selection process for bishops in the Irish church.

A resolution was carried unanimously at the association’s annual meeting in Athlone Nov. 24 which criticized the “lack of any credible process of consultation” with priests and people in recent years and the Vatican’s “preference for candidates drawn from a particular mindset.”

Over 100 members of the ACP who attended the meeting backed the statement which said the choice of candidates is “out of sync with the realities of life in Ireland today” and with the openness of Pope Francis to change and reform in the church.

The priests also expressed frustration with the “apparently haphazard policy of appointments to distant dioceses that pays little regard to the traditions and heritage of a diocese.” This policy has been operated by the church in the U.S. but has only really been implemented in the Irish church under the present papal nuncio, Archbishop Charles Brown.

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ISRAEL
Haaretz

Alona Ferber Dec 01, 2015

More than 1,000 ultra-Orthodox and Orthodox Jews from around the world gathered in Jerusalem this week to tackle some of their communities’ darkest taboos: sexual abuse and domestic violence. 

The three-day event they are attending, which began Monday, is the second annual conference on the subject spearheaded by the Israeli nonprofit Tahel, the Crisis Center for Religious Women and Children. Headlined “Shedding Light on the Darkness of Abuse,” the gathering offers five hands-on training tracks, including one specially tailored to rabbis and people who work at yeshivas.

That track – “Building Safe Synagogues and Yeshivas” – features sessions about high-profile abuse cases, defining offenders, abuse in marriage and other key subjects.

Tahel has organized pilot programs on these subjects in ultra-Orthodox and other institutions in Israel, Johannesburg, Sydney, Melbourne and London, director Debbie Gross told Haaretz. The idea is for this week’s trainees to implement what they learn back home, too.

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UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on December 1, 2015

I learned a valuable lesson from The Well-Armored Child. It doesn’t matter how important your message is if no one knows about it. So that’s why starting December 13, I will be giving away the Kindle version of THE POWER OF RESPONSIBILITY.

For the first week after its debut, you can read the book for nuthin’. And don’t worry, you don’t need to own a Kindle to read Kindle books—due to the global domination, er., I mean … universal nature of Amazon, you can read Kindle books anywhere.

Your computer and your tablet are Kindle readers. Even your smartphone can become an ebook reader …

if you are into reading books on a microscopic scale. You can also download copies for friends, neighbors, and people who need a strong push out of the trap of victimhood.

I learned that happiness and escaping victimhood (which for me was being a victim of sex abuse in the Catholic Church) boils down to six simple and easy decisions. And it’s only 58 pages.

Easy peasey.

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PHILIPPINES
Philippine Daily Inquirer

By: Jeannette I. Andrade, Tina G. Santos
@inquirerdotnet

Archbishop Socrates Villegas didn’t think Mayor Rodrigo Duterte’s expletive against Pope Francis was funny.

“When a revered and loved and admired man like Pope Francis is cursed by a political candidate and the audience laugh, I can only bow my head and grieve in great shame. My countrymen have gone to the dregs,” said the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP).

In an interview with reporters on Tuesday, Duterte warned the prelates against continuing tirades against him.

“I will destroy the Church and the present status of so many priests and what they are doing,” he said. “You priests, bishops, you condemn me and suggest I withdraw, but then I will start to open my mouth. There are so many secrets that we kept as children. Do not force (me to speak) because this religion is not so sacred.”

Victim

He said he was among the victims of child abuse by priests.

“If they want, they can start it and I’ll tell everything. From my years in Ateneo [de Davao] until we grew up, and it will make them sad, very sad,” he said. “They have secrets, I have secrets.” He stressed his comment on the Pope was “inadvertence.”

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher, article updated 24 November 2015

Since 1993, Broken Rites has been doing research about how Melbourne’s Catholic bishops harboured a number of sexually-abusive priests. In the mid-1990s, Broken Rites began exposing these priests. Now some of these priests, from the Broken Rites list, are being investigated by Australia’s national child-abuse Royal Commission during a four-weeks public hearing in Melbourne in November-December 2015. This article will point you to the original Broken Rites research about each of these priests.

Here are some of the names from the Broken Rites list (to read a Broken Rites article on each priest, you can click on any of the following names).

* Fr Peter Searson. For many years, the Melbourne church hierarchy knew that Searson was committing sexual offences against children in parish schools but it managed to protect him from police prosecution. Obstinately the church kept him in the ministry but eventually the hierarchy was forced to put Searson on “administrative leave” to protect the public image of the church.

* Fr Wilfred (Bill) Baker. Baker worked in parishes around Melbourne — and he committed sexual crimes against children while his superiors and colleagues looked the other way.

* Fr Nazareno Fasciale (pronounced Fah-SHAH-lay). Church leaders, including George Pell, participated in a glowing tribute to this priest, who was one of the worst paedophiles in the Melbourne diocese. In 1996, when Broken Rites exposed this (and other) church cover-ups, George Pell’s diocese went into damage control, hiring a public relations firm to announce the “Melbourne Response” (a forerunner of the church’s “Towards Healing” strategy).

* Fr Kevin O’Donnell. During O’Donnell’s life of crime, his superiors and colleagues looked the other way. In his final years, he even received public praise from one of his superiors, Bishop George Pell.

* Fr Ronald Pickering. The Melbourne church authorities protected Pickering for many years while he committed crimes against children in his parishes. Eventually he fled from Australia, evading justice. The Melbourne archdiocese then began sending retirement payments to Pickering at his new address in England but they didn’t give this address to the police.

* Fr David Daniel. The church authorities kept ignoring complaints about the crimes of this priest, but eventually some of these victims spoke to Victoria Police detectives — and the police then charged Father Daniel, thus ending the church’s cover-up.

* Fr Desmond Gannon. This is another example of how the church authorities protected a criminal priest for many years until some of his victims eventually spoke to Victoria Police detectives.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart admits he should have done more to protect children from a paedophile priest who hit an altar boy.

A complaint that Fr Peter Searson hit the boy around the head following mass went to Archbishop Hart, then the Melbourne archdiocese vicar-general, in October 1996.

He told Searson not to go near altar servers and referred the complaint to the Melbourne Response independent commissioner, who a few days later began to handle sex abuse complaints in the archdiocese.

Child abuse royal commission chair Justice Peter McClellan said having reviewed Searson’s file, Archbishop Hart would have realised it was not only altar servers who were in danger.

– See more at: http://www.skynews.com.au/news/national/2015/12/02/archbishop-admits–i-should-have-done-more.html#sthash.AlhyPe5q.dpuf

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ROME
The Guardian

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Rome

Tuesday 1 December 2015

Italy is facing a diplomatic collision with the Vatican over the church’s prosecution of two Italian journalists in a case that has been broadly condemned by press freedom groups.

A media watchdog that chronicles acts of intimidation against Italian journalists said Italy would have the legal right to reject any attempt by the Vatican to seek the extradition of the two journalists – Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi – if the pair are found guilty by a Vatican court of publishing classified and leaked documents.

The trial of the journalists and three former Vatican officials – who have been charged with leaking the documents – will continue next week after being adjourned on Monday. The journalists technically face up to eight years in jail if they are convicted.

“Italy very easily should and could refuse any extradition request because we have an article in our penal code that says such a request can be refused if the alleged ‘crime’ the person has been charged with is itself against the paramount principles of Italian law,” said Alberto Spampinato, a journalist and founder of the NGO Ossigeno per l’Informazione (Oxygen for information).

Another expert, Professor Giulio Illuminati of LUISS in Rome, said there was no legal framework for the Vatican to seek the journalists’ extradition because the Vatican does not have an extradition agreement with Italy. Illuminati also noted that Italy could question the fairness of the trial since the Vatican is not a signatory to the European convention on human rights.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Kirchen Zeitung

[Bishop Norbert Trelle has rejected the accusation that the Diocese of Hildesheim sought to thwart prosecutorial investigations in the case of sexual abuse of a young girl. He said the accusation is outrageious.]

Mit Nachdruck hat Bischof Norbert Trelle den Vorwurf zurückgewiesen, das Bistum Hildesheim habe staatsanwaltliche Untersuchungen im Falle des sexuellen Missbrauchs eines jungen Mädchens vereiteln wollen. Dieser Vorwurf sei ungeheuerlich, jeder Fall werde akribisch geprüft, sagte Trelle auf einer Pressekonferenz am Dienstag.

Am Montagabend hatte die ARD in der Reportage „Richter Gottes – die geheimen Prozesse der Kirche“ dem Bistum vorgeworfen, 2010 einen angezeigten Missbrauchsvorwurf zu spät an die Staatsanwaltschaft gegeben zu haben. Dabei ging es um den Geistlichen Peter Riedel, der im Zusammenhang mit den Missbräuchen im Canisus-Kolleg bundesweit für Schlagzeilen gesorgt hatte. In Hildesheim hatte er unter anderem den sozialen Mittagstisch in der Gemeinde Guter Hirt aufgebaut.

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DEUTSCHLAND
HNA

Göttingen/Hildesheim. Das katholische Bistum Hildesheim hat Vorwürfe zurückgewiesen, 2010 einen Missbrauchsvorwurf zu spät an die Staatsanwaltschaft weitergegeben zu haben. In einem WDR-Fernsehbericht von Montagabend waren diese Vorwürfe erhoben worden.

Konkret geht es um den vor fünf Jahren bekanntgewordenen Fall des heute 74 Jahre alten Jesuitenpaters Peter R., der auch als einer der Haupttäter am Berliner Canisius-Kolleg jahrelang sexuelle Übergriffe an Schülern vorgenommen haben soll.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Bistum Hildesheim

[The Diocese of Hildesheim is committed to the full investigation of the allegations in the Father R., who is accused of abuse]

Das Bistum Hildesheim setzt sich für die vollständige Aufklärung der Vorwürfe im Fall Pater R. ein. „Wir würden es begrüßen, wenn angesichts der jüngsten Entwicklung die Staatsanwaltschaft die Ermittlungen wieder aufnehmen würde“, sagt Bischof Norbert Trelle.

In der WDR-Reportage „Richter Gottes – Die geheimen Prozesse der Kirche“ wurde dem Bistum Hildesheim vorgeworfen, 2010 einen angezeigten Missbrauchsvorwurf zu spät an die Staatsanwaltschaft weitergegeben zu haben.

„Angesichts des tatsächlichen Ablaufs der Geschehnisse sind die Vorwürfe in keiner Weise haltbar“, erklärt der stellvertretende Generalvikar Weihbischof Heinz-Günter Bongartz. Nachdem die Erziehungsberechtigten im Namen des Opfers im November 2010 eindeutige Vorwürfe erhoben hatten, hat das Bistum unmittelbar die Missbrauchsanzeige zur Ermittlung an die Staatsanwaltschaft abgegeben. Das im März 2010 stattgefundene Gespräch in Begleitung der Lehrerin der 14-Jährigen hatte keine eindeutigen Hinweise auf sexuellen Missbrauch ergeben. Da sich das Mädchen gegenüber dem Missbrauchsbeauftragten aber eher verschlossen zeigte, wurde es ermutigt, mit Personen seines Vertrauens zu sprechen. „Damit wollten wir einen Anstoß geben und helfen, dass sich das Mädchen gegebenenfalls öffnen kann. Ein solches Vorgehen wird von vielen Opferverbänden ausdrücklich empfohlen“, erklärt der Weihbischof.

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UNITED STATES
The Concordian

Posted by: Elijah Bukreev

The Oscar race kicks off with Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight, an awards front-runner par excellence

Before a problem can be fixed, it must first be brought to light, which can be a painful process.

Sexual abuse of children by a number of Catholic priests was ongoing for decades, and it was only in 2001 that members of The Boston Globe’s investigative unit, the Spotlight Team, took on the Catholic Church to challenge a system that effectively covered up sex crimes and allowed sexual predators to walk free.

This investigation is the focus of Spotlight, a new film drama by Tom McCarthy which shares stories of abuse survivors while paying tribute to the journalists who fought hard to let these voices be heard.

The appointment of a new editor, Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber), signals a change at the paper. Baron is an outsider—a Jewish man from Miami in a predominantly Catholic city—which gives him a broader perspective. He sees a problem and decides to use any available resources to tackle it, even if it means suing the Catholic Church.

What starts with a single case of sexual abuse by a priest in Boston becomes an investigation into an actual epidemic, as numbers of perpetrators—and survivors—grow into the hundreds, and it becomes clear that lawyers and high-ranking clergy members were involved in a cover-up.

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UNITED STATES
WBUR

Tue, Dec 01, 2015
by Rich Barlow

For Catholics, “Spotlight” landed in theaters this holiday season like the proverbial coal in the Christmas stocking. Watching the recounting of The Boston Globe’s clergy pedophile investigation resurrected old feelings in this practicing Catholic. I seethed again at the men who committed these crimes and covered them up. (Full disclosure: In my past life, I was the Globe’s freelance religion columnist, and my wife until recently worked as a reporter for the paper.)

Yet the film is actually a Christmas gift. We Catholics bear special responsibility for pondering the lessons of the scandal, and special entitlement: Those were Catholic kids molested by priestly perverts. Some Catholics are drawing lessons from the movie that are obvious, even banal — appreciation for our free press and justice system, the need for “more, not less, holiness in the priesthood.” (I’m unaware of anyone calling for less holy priests.) I believe there’s a more fundamental and valuable wisdom to be gleaned from the movie. Catholics, split between theological traditionalists and liberals, must understand that, at least on this one, the liberals were right.

I don’t mean that traditionalists who support church teachings on priestly celibacy, non-ordination of women, and the sinfulness of homosexuality and artificial contraception are wrong (though I believe they are). It’s more uncomfortable for the traditionalists than that: Their very premise in upholding those teachings is flawed. The premise is that, when one has doubts about a moral pronouncement by the church, the hierarchy should get the benefit of the doubt. It shouldn’t.

The premise itself rests on two observations. First, this church above all others is hierarchical, with a disciplined, military-style chain of command; obedience should be part of a Catholic’s calling. Second, the church has been in the business of philosophical and ethical reflection for two millennia, producing some of history’s most formidable minds (Paul, Augustine, Aquinas), and this should count for something. And does, for those of us who, when weighing moral questions, include the church among the references we consult.

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ROME
ANSA

(ANSA) – Vatican, City, November 30 – Rome prosecutors have placed Vatileaks 2 defendant Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui and her husband Corrado Lanino under investigation for suspected irregularities in the sale of San Girolamo castle near the town of Narni, judicial sources said Monday. Chaouqui, a public relations expert, is currently on trial in the Vatican along with four others for allegedly leaking confidential documents. Chaouqui and her co-defendants, investigative journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, Monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda and his former assistant Nicola Maio, all attended Monday’s hearing.

Chaouqui, Balda and Maio are charged with leaking the confidential material and Nuzzi and Fittipaldi with using it in two recently published books – one titled Avarice, the other Merchants in the Temple – documenting Vatican waste and mismanagement and lavish spending by clergymen.

Balda, who is jailed in a Vatican prison, reportedly alleged in a written statement that he and Chaouqui were lovers and that he feared she may be a secret service agent.

“I don’t understand anything,” Chaouqui said on Monday.

“There’s no evidence against me”.

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ITALY
Vatican Insider

Four people have been arrested in anti-terrorism blitz in Italy and Kosovo. They had been promoting the jihadist ideology. Searches have been made in Brescia, Vicenza and Perugia

VATICAN INSIDER STAFF
ROME

“Remember that there will not be another pope after this one, this is the last”. The Kosovo citizens arrested today are said to have published threatening messages against the Pope. The incident emerged in the press conference held by investigators in the Italian city of Brescia. Investigators identified Imishiti Samet as being the point of reference. He was arrested in Kosovo and thought to be affiliated to Islamic State.

Investigations were launched after the group “Me ose, pa tu, Hilafeti eshte rikthy” was identified on Facebook. – which Imishiti Samet. Samet was a member of the group, which he used to spread propaganda to internauts in the Balkans and residents in Italy.

Samet’s Italian base was in an apartment in Chiari in the province of Brescia. The man’s brother, Imishiti Ismail was found here this morning and expelled.

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PHILIPPINES
Coconuts Manila

On Tue night, Dec 1, Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte — in a report on GMA News’ 24 Oras — revealed that a priest sexually abused him when he was a boy.

“Duterte, 70, made the allegation amid the flak that he had been receiving from members of the clergy for his use of an expletive when he discussed “traffic hell” during Pope Francis’ visit to the Philippines,” reports GMA News Online.

Duterte stated, “[Kami] sa Ateneo noon (We were at the Ateneo then) and I will tell you the abuses committed against the minors at that time including me and I will tell you my story. Kaming lahat dumaan kami (We all went through it).”

The report noted: “The PDP-Laban presidential candidate also reacted to Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines president Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas’ remarks on Duterte’s use of bad words.”

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VATICAN CITY
Irish Times

Paddy Agnew in Rome

Asked about the ongoing “Vatileaks 2” trial in the Vatican, Pope Francis on Monday joked that he was glad that 15th century femme fatale Lucrezia Borgia “is not around anymore”.

The pope was speaking during his customary post-visit press conference on the papal plane on the way back from a highly successful six-day trip to Africa during which he visited Kenya, Uganda and the Central African Republic.

Inevitably the most difficult questions faced by Pope Francis did not concern Africa but the so-called Vatileaks 2 trial in which five people stand accused of having stolen confidential Holy See documents.

In recent days the trial has made headlines because of revelations about the intimate relations between the two major defendants, Spanish monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda and Vatican lay consultant Francesca Chaoqui, who both served on COSEA, a short -term Vatican economic reform commission which operated in 2013 and 2014.

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TENNESSEE
Tennessean

Collin Czarnecki, cczarnecki@tennessean.com December 1, 2015

A local family has filed a lawsuit against a Brentwood church after their 3-year-old was sexually assaulted by a church volunteer.

According to a lawsuit filed Monday, the family’s 3-year-old son was raped by a male teenage volunteer in a bathroom of Fellowship Bible Church of Williamson County during church on August 24, 2014. The teenager pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual battery.

The family left their son at the Children’s Ministry while worshiping, but they weren’t aware of the sexual assault until the following weekend.

According to the lawsuit, the church allegedly urged the family to not pursue charges and asked them to attend another church campus.

It further states that the church “sought to hide the truth about the perpetrator pedophile and about the rape of (the 3-year-old) from other families.”

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TENNESSEE
News Channel 5

[with video]

BRENTWOOD, Tenn. – A local family has filed a lawsuit to hold a Williamson County church accountable after their 3-year-old was sexually assaulted at the church.

According to the lawsuit filed Monday, a teenage volunteer at Fellowship Bible Church of Williamson County raped the child in a church bathroom on August 24, 2014.

The family of the 3-year-old had been members of the church for 12 years. They were baptized and married at the church and saw the church as a second home.

On the day the sexual assault took place, the parents dropped off their two children at the Children’s Ministry for it’s care, but while there, the 3-year-old was taken into a bathroom by a teenage volunteer and sexually assaulted, but the family didn’t find out about the situation until the next weekend.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Spiked

LUKE GITTOS
LAW EDITOR

This huge inquiry into child abuse has nothing to do with truth.

Last week, more details were announced about the UK’s Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (aka the Goddard Inquiry). Justice Lowell Goddard, a member of the judiciary of New Zealand who was appointed chair of the inquiry in 2014, announced what the ‘first 12 investigations’ of the inquiry would focus on.

These initial investigations will cover, among other things, the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches and the local councils of Nottinghamshire, Rochdale and Lambeth. Goddard indicated that these investigations represented the ‘first phase’ of the inquiry’s work and were ‘by no means the total of the work we intend to conduct’. In fact, Goddard has indicated in the past that the remit of the inquiry will include both public and private institutions throughout the UK, with some investigations looking back over ‘many decades’. While Goddard herself gave assurances that the inquiry would conclude within five years, many think this is unrealistic — they estimate that it could take as long as 10 years.

The Goddard Inquiry was announced by home secretary Theresa May in 2014, in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal. It aims to expose institutions’ past failures and make recommendations for how to improve child-protection mechanisms in the present. Of course, Goddard is going to have to work hard to surpass the litany of child-protection measures that have been introduced in recent decades. CRB (now DBS) checks and a vast array of powers enabling the criminal courts to disbar people from working with children are just some features of the contemporary framework of anti-abuse law.

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ITALY
ANSA

(ANSA) – Rome, December 1 – Silvio Berluscon’s brother Paolo is under investigation by Rome prosecutors for suspected embezzlement in a Terni probe involving Vatileaks 2 defendant Francesca Chaouqui and her husband Corrado Lanino in connection with the sale of San Girolamo castle at Narni, judicial sources said Tuesday. According to Corriere della Sera, Chaouqui allegedly promised the younger Berlusconi to act on judicial requests to the Vatican regarding Silvio Berlusconi. Chaouqui is among five defendants in the Vatileaks 2 trial in the Vatican.

Earlier Tuesday a lawyer acting for Silvio Berlusconi denied newspaper reports that Chaouqui had contacted the former premier or Paolo in relation to the case.

“Premier Berlusconi has never had any contact with Francesca Chaouqui, or indications from anyone, of requests made by her,” Niccolò Ghedini said in a statement. “Besides, it would have been impossible to make demands since there is no possible link between Premier Berlusconi and ‘Vatican affairs’ or the Vatican bank,” he continued. In regards to Paolo Berlusconi, Ghedini acknowledged that he had met Chaouqui “occasionally” in social situations, but said the reports of contacts in relation to Vatileaks 2 were “unfounded”. Chaouqui, a PR expert, is on trial alongside investigative journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, Monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda and his former assistant Nicola Maio for allegedly leaking confidential Holy See documents.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 1 December 2015 (VIS) – The Holy Father has:

– accepted the resignation from the pastoral care of the diocese of Nueve de Julio, Argentina, presented by Bishop Martin de Elizalde, O.S.B., upon reaching the age limit. He is succeeded by Bishop Ariel Edgardo Torrado Mosconi, currently coadjutor of the same diocese.

– appointed Fr. J. Victor Alejandro Aguilar Ledesma and Fr. Herculano Medina Garfias as auxiliaries of the archdiocese of Morelia (area 18,000, population 2,612,300, Catholics 2,455,618, priests 565, religious 1,268), Mexico.

Bishop-elect Aguilar Ledesma was born in San Guillermo, Mexico in 1965 and was ordained a priest in 1989. He holds a licentiate in family pastoral ministry from the Pontifical Lateran University and has served in a number of pastoral roles, including parish vicar, chaplain of the Clarissian Sisters and diocesan coordinator of family pastoral ministry. He is currently parish priest, episcopal vicar, member of the college of consultors and professor at the major seminary of Morelia.

Bishop-elect Medina Garfias was born in Rincon de Cedenos, Mexico in 1967, and was ordained a priest in 1996. He holds a licentiate in social doctrine of the Church from the Padre Alberto Hurtado University in Santiago, Chile. He has served in a number of roles, including spiritual director and professor in the archdiocesan seminary and chaplain of various religious communities. He is currently bursar of the major seminary of Morelia.

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VATICAN CITY
Irish Times

Pope Francis, galvanised by a scandal over Vatican finances, has ordered the most powerful bodies in the city-state to launch an unprecedented audit of its wealth and crack down on runaway spending.

At the suggestion of his economic chief, Cardinal George Pell, Francis has set up a “Working-Party for the Economic Future” which brings together the Secretariat of State, or prime minister’s office, the Vatican Bank and other agencies. Francis has told the panel “to address the financial challenges and identify how more resources can be devoted to the many good works of the Church, especially supporting the poor and vulnerable,” Danny Casey, director of Pell’s office at the Secretariat for the Economy, said in an interview.

The pope’s initiatives come as five people stand trial in the Vatican over the leak of confidential documents in two books published last month that described corruption, mismanagement and wasteful spending by church officials. Those on trial deny wrongdoing. Francis, 78, has pushed for more openness and transparency in Vatican financial and economic agencies but he has faced resistance from the Rome bureaucracy.

Seek corruption

On the flight back to Rome on Monday after a visit to Africa, Francis told reporters that the so-called Vatileaks II scandal was an indication of the mess that he’s trying to sort out. The trial of two former Vatican employees alongside the books’ authors highlighted Church efforts “to seek out corruption, the things which aren’t right,” he said, according to a transcript provided by the Vatican. The working group, which held its first meeting last week, will study measures to cut costs and raise revenue as part of a long-term financial plan. “This will include comparing actual expenditure against budgets at a consolidated level, which is a new initiative,” Casey said.

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VATICAN CITY
International Business Times

By Lydia Tomkiw

Pope Francis has ordered an audit of the Catholic Church’s wealth in what is being described as an “unprecedented” look into wealth and high spending, Bloomberg reported Tuesday. A “Working-Party for the Economic Future” was established with the Secretariat of State, the Vatican’s Bank and other agencies to examine corruption and mismanagement.

The panel will “address the financial challenges and identify how more resources can be devoted to the many good works of the Church, especially supporting the poor and vulnerable,” said Danny Casey, a representative from the Secretariat for the Economy.

With advice from his economic chief Cardinal George Pell, the Pope established the working group. The audit comes at moment when five people are on trial for leaking documents about wasteful spending within the church in what has been dubbed the Vatileaks scandal. The three Vatican insiders and two Italian journalists on trial could face prison terms of up to eight years, AFP reported. All five people in the highly criticized trials have been charged with releasing documents “concerning the fundamental interests of the Vatican State.”

Speaking with reporters on a flight after his recent visits to Kenya, Uganda and the Central African Republic, Pope Francis said “an error was made” with the appointment of some Vatican employees, a press statement from the Vatican said. He also said he was not surprised by the leaked information because he was aware of corruption within the church.

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ROME
The Australian

TOM KINGTON
THE TIMES
DECEMBER 2, 2015

A Spanish priest and a PR woman who are on trial for leaking Vatican secrets are engaged in a war of words amid accusations of seduction, sex and spying for the Italian secret services.

Francesca Chaouqui, a PR ­expert who was asked by the Pope to join a committee to monitor Vatican sleaze, said she was suing Father Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, her former fellow committee member, after he reportedly claimed she pushed him into ­having sex and boasted that she was a spy.

“Everything he has stated is false and I have sued him for ­defamation,” Ms Chaouqui said. “I doubt Father Vallejo Balda would have slept with me because he does not go for women.”

Ms Chaouqui, Father Vallejo Balda and his former assistant, Nicola Maio, face up to eight years in prison if they are convicted by a Vatican court. They are ­accused of leaking information about Vatican waste and mismanagement to two Italian investigative journalists. Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, who published the leaks, are also on trial. A hearing was adjourned for a week yesterday after Ms Chaouqui, 33, appointed a new lawyer.

The Italian newspaper La ­Repubblica published a statement from Father Vallejo Balda, 54, yesterday in which he claimed Ms Chaouqui pressured him into handing confidential documents to the journalists and that she made sexual advances.

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ITALY
Il Fatto Quotidiano

[An Italian prelate thinks the current pope should die.]l

Monsignor Luigi Negri, intercettato il 28 ottobre scorso sul Frecciarossa partito da Roma-Termini, si è sfogato con il suo collaboratore dopo l’assegnazione di due diocesi per anni in mano a Comunione e liberazione a due preti di strada: “E’ uno scandalo. Decisione avvenuta nel disprezzo delle regole. Speriamo che la Madonna faccia il miracolo”. Raggiunto dal direttore della Nuova Ferrara non smentisce: “Qualcuno ha la registrazione?”

di Loris Mazzetti | 25 novembre 2015

“Speriamo che con Bergoglio la Madonna faccia il miracolo come aveva fatto con l’altro”. Il riferimento a papa Luciani è appena velato. La frase è dell’arcivescovo di Ferrara, Luigi Negri, alto prelato in profondo disaccordo con Francesco e punto di riferimento di Comunione e Liberazione.

Negri, allievo di don Giussani, è anche noto per aver contestato la magistratura quando incriminò Berlusconi per il caso Ruby. A chi allora gli fece notare che gran parte del mondo cattolico era indignato sulla vicenda delle Olgettine, rispose: “L’indignazione non è un atteggiamento cattolico”.

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ITALY
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor December 1, 2015

“Rebranding” is all the rage today in corporate communications, and one question gurus on the subject often find themselves pondering is the following: When you get a hot new CEO who succeeds in creating an appealing narrative, what happens to older stereotypes and prejudices about the brand?

If Pope Francis is any indication, what sometimes happens is that those stereotypes are re-tasked, to use another bit of corporate jargon, to support a new storyline of internal opposition to the boss.

This comes to mind in light of a controversy that’s broken out in Italy centering on Archbishop Luigi Negri of Ferrara-Comacchio, generally seen as a leader of the conservative wing of the Italian Church.

Last Wednesday, the Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano ran a front-page story based on what it described as eyewitness accounts of a conversation Negri was alleged to have had a month ago aboard a train to Rome with his priest-secretary.

In it, the 74-year-old prelate supposedly said he hopes the Madonna will work a miracle and cause Pope Francis to die, referring to the example of Pope John Paul I, who died after just 33 days. Allegedly, Negri also had some nasty things to say about recent bishops’ appointments by Francis in the Italian dioceses of Bologna and Palermo. (In both cases, the pontiff tapped men seen as center-left.)

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FRANCE
Pakistan Today

A Catholic priest will be sent to court after admitting he stole more than 700,000 Euros ($741,000) collected from churchgoers and buyers of holy candles over a quarter of a century, the French public prosecutor’s office said on Tuesday.

René Heuillet, 80, admitted pocketing proceeds of regular church collections between 1987 and retirement in early 2013, plus 100,000 Euros from votive candle sales, said a statement from the prosecutor’s office in Foix, in southwestern France.

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ITALY
ANSA

(ANSA) – Rome, December 1 – A lawyer acting for Silvio Berlusconi on Tuesday denied newspaper reports that Francesca Chaouqui, one of the five defendants in the so-called Vatileaks 2 trial, had contacted the former premier or his brother Paolo in relation to the case.

“President Berlusconi has never had any contact with Francesca Chaouqui, or indications from anyone, of requests made by her,” Niccolò Ghedini said in a statement. “Besides, it would have been impossible to make demands since there is no possible link between President Berlusconi and ‘Vatican affairs’ or the Vatican bank,” he continued.

In regards to Paolo Berlusconi, Ghedini acknowledged that he had met Chaouqui “occasionally” in social situations, but said the reports of contacts in relation to Vatileaks 2 were “unfounded”.

Chaouqui, a PR expert, is on trial alongside investigative journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, Monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda and his former assistant Nicola Maio for allegedly leaking confidential Holy See documents.

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VATICAN CITY
Bloomberg Business

December 1, 2015

John Follain

Pope Francis, galvanized by a scandal over Vatican finances, has ordered the most powerful bodies in the city-state to launch an unprecedented audit of its wealth and crack down on runaway spending.

At the suggestion of his economic chief, Cardinal George Pell, Francis has set up a “Working-Party for the Economic Future” which brings together the Secretariat of State, or prime minister’s office, the Vatican Bank and other agencies.

Francis has told the panel “to address the financial challenges and identify how more resources can be devoted to the many good works of the Church, especially supporting the poor and vulnerable,” Danny Casey, director of Pell’s office at the Secretariat for the Economy, said in an interview.

The pope’s initiatives come as five people stand trial in the Vatican over the leak of confidential documents in two books published last month that described corruption, mismanagement and wasteful spending by church officials. Those on trial deny wrongdoing.

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EL SALVADOR
Latin Correspondent

by Eana Maniebo | 1st December 2015

El Salvador’s Roman Catholic Church revealed that it suspended another priest for sexual abuse after a preliminary investigation.

The Archbishop of San Salvador Jose Luis Escobar announced on Sunday that Juan Francisco Galvez, a parish priest in the town of Rosario de Mora, was relieved of ecclesiastical duties after the conclusion of a preliminary investigation carried out in October 2015. Escobar said that Galvez victimized several people, but declined to give details on the victims’ identities.

Galvez denied the charges.

“I invite all those who have experienced sexual abuse from priests to come forward and directly approach me, Bishop Gregorio Chavez, or Monsignor Rafael Urrutia,” Escobar said.

He also reiterated the Catholic church’s zero tolerance towards sexual abuse.

Galvez’ case comes less than a week after the announcement of a high-profile priest’s suspension on charges of rape.

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MINNESOTA
Canonical Consultation

11/30/2015

Jennifer Haselberger

Recently, parishioners and others interested in the fate of St Peter Claver Catholic School, located in what used to be St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood, received some interesting news (see newsletter below; n.b. the newsletter is dated Fall 2014, but the content clearly indicates that it was issued in the Fall of 2015). The longtime pastor of the parish, Father Kevin McDonough, has apparently ceded operational control of the school with Father Charles Lachowitzer, formerly the Vicar General of Archbishop John Nienstedt, taking over as ‘canonical administrator’. Father McDonough, who has been heavily implicated in the sexual abuse scandal rocking the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, remains as pastor of St. Peter Claver parish and, presumably, Incarnation/Sagrado Corazon in Minneapolis.

If this news has you scratching your head, you are not alone. Since Father McDonough remains pastor (and therefore is the legal representative and decision maker for both the parish and school), Father Lachowitzer’s position as ‘canonical administrator’ is at best the result of a gentleman’s agreement and at worst a legal fiction. Moreover, while Lachowitzer certainly has experience with school administration, that experience is hardly without blemish. His last stint overseeing a Catholic school was at Faithful Shepherd in Eagan, where he supervised a mixed gender K-8 program along with the now-restricted Father Joseph Gallatin.

Still, you can’t fault the Archdiocese for taking steps to ensure that St. Peter Claver School is no longer subject to the creative administrative practices of Father McDonough. I have alluded in earlier posts to some of the more….interesting…means that the school has used to remain afloat, and the newsletter hints at others. And, there is certain irony to the fact that an administrator has been imposed upon Father McDonough, as that particular technique for dealing with a difficult situation was created by him as a means to deal with problem priests who he nonetheless felt should be permitted to serve in parishes (e.g. Father John Bussmann at the parishes that became Mary, Queen of Peace).

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Times-Tribune

BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Published: December 1, 2015

Iran’s imprisonment of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian for espionage is a farce, the sort of thing that the West has come to expect from Tehran in the corrupt theocracy’s perpetual quest for leverage.

But, unfortunately, persecution of journalists is not confined to the Middle East.

The Vatican has decided to prosecute two Italian journalists, Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, for their books on mismanagement of Vatican finances, internal resistance to Pope Francis’s reforms and other disclosures.

Since the reporters are Italian and the Vatican is a separate state within Italy, the reporters easily could have evaded arrest simply by staying outside the Vatican’s territory. They responded to the arrest summons to further expose Vatican corruption, even though each could face up to eight years in prison. The Vaticans’ conduct has been condemned by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Also facing trial are a Spanish monsignor and two Vatican staffers who allegedly leaked information to reporters. The case was supposed to begin Monday but was delayed to Dec. 7.

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites Australia researcher.

This Broken Rites article demonstrates how three Catholic Church leaders in Australia — Archbishop Francis Little, Archbishop George Pell and Archbishop Denis Hart — allowed a Melbourne priest (Father Barry Robinson) to continue ministering after he admitted having sex with a 16-year-old boy.

According to documents filed in a United States court, Father Robinson has admitted having sex with the boy on three occasions on church premises during a visit to the Boston diocese in the United States. Father Robinson left the United States in April 1994 before U.S. civil authorities could queston him about the matter.

Church leaders managed to keep the Boston matter a secret for the next ten years. The silence was broken in January 2004, when a U.S. legal firm instigated civil action against the Boston diocese on behalf of victims of Boston clergy. The legal firm had obtained discovery of church documents, which the firm filed in court, relating to the Boston diocese’s handling of clergy sexual abuse. Among the church documents (filed in court) was some material relating to Fr Barry Robinson. The church documents regarding Robinson were reported in an article in the Boston Globe newspaper on 14 January 2004.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

December 1, 2015

Beau Donelly
Reporter

Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart has admitted the Catholic Church buried complaints against clergy accused of sexually abusing children and misled parishioners by allowing paedophile priests to resign for health reasons.

On Tuesday the child abuse royal commission turned its focus to paedophile priests including Nazareno Fasciale, who retired four decades after allegations of child sex abuse against him were first referred to senior church officials.

Archbishop Hart agreed the church suppressed complaints to protect its reputation and that the response by senior officials in the Fasciale case was “totally unacceptable”.

Fasciale went overseas on extended leave after a 1954 complaint that he molested two sisters, and a 1960 complaint that he indecently assaulted a third girl.

He returned to Australia and became parish priest at Yarraville in 1973, but was sent for treatment by then Archbishop James Knox after concerns were raised about his conduct with young boys.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Register

BY EDWARD PENTIN 11/30/2015

VATICAN CITY — The world’s largest intergovernmental security organization, Italian media associations and members of the Italian legal profession have criticized a Vatican court for indicting two Italian journalists for publishing leaked confidential Vatican documents.

The Vatican is standing firm by its decision, and its lawyers insist it is not trampling on rights to freedom of speech.

But questions are being raised about consistency in the Vatican’s approach, as some other recent breaches in confidentiality among those in senior positions appear to have taken place in recent years with impunity.

Last Monday, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe called on the Vatican to withdraw criminal charges against two journalists, Emiliano Fittipaldi and Gianluigi Nuzzi, after they published the confidential information in two new books. “Journalists must be free to report on issues of public interest and to protect their confidential sources,” said Dunja Mijatovic, said the OSCE’s media freedom representative.

The Vienna-based organization, whose 57 member states include the Holy See, was formed during the Cold War to monitor conflicts, election observation and media rights.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

AAP

Jehovah’s Witnesses in Australia foster distrust of secular authorities and the church’s way of responding to child sex abuse falls short of best practice, it is open to the royal commission to find.

In a damning submission published on Tuesday, Angus Stewart SC, counsel to the child abuse commission, recommends 77 adverse findings against the fundamentalist church, which since 1950 has received 1066 allegations against its members and never reported any of them to police.

Mr Stewart’s recommendations arise out of a public hearing into the Jehovah’s Witnesses and its oversight body, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Australia, in July this year.

He said the Witnesses receive approximately three and four reports of allegations of child abuse a month.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

DECEMBER 1, 2015

Tessa Akerman
Reporter
Melbourne

Counsel assisting the child sex abuse royal commission has made damning submissions of 77 potential findings regarding the Jehovah’s Witness organisation.

They include that the policy of shunning those who leave the organisation is in conflict with the belief that Jehovah God is a compassionate god.

In submissions published today, Angus Stewart SC said the Jehovah’s Witness organisation receives three to four reports of allegations of child sexual abuse each month and since 1950 the Jehovah’s Witness organisation has received allegations of child sexual abuse against 1006 of its members relating to at least 1800 victims.

He submitted in that period, the organisation has not reported a single allegation to the police or other authorities, even though 579 of those against whom allegations were made confessed to having committed child sexual abuse.

He submitted it was open for the commission to find that it is the policy and practice of the Jehovah’s Witness organisation in Australia not to report allegations of child sexual abuse to the police or other authorities unless required by law to do so.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Catholic Herald

by Madeleine Teahan
posted Tuesday, 1 Dec 2015

The Catholic Church has welcomed the launch of an independent inquiry into child sex abuse in England and Wales and will also set up a council to assist with inquiries.

The national inquiry will examine 12 different institutions and locations, including the Anglican Church, Rochdale Council and Westminster and will be chaired by Judge Lowell Goddard.

Baroness Nuala O’Loan will chair the Church council assisting the national inquiry, with other representatives from the Catholics Bishops’ Conference and the Conference of Religious.

Baroness O’Loan said: “The role of the council is to facilitate and ensure the proper response to the Enquiry, which has the Church’s full support. We look forward to hearing their specific requests and will ensure full co-operation with their deliberations.”

The 12 establishments which will be investigated are Lambeth Council; Nottinghamshire councils; Rochdale Council; the Anglican Church; the Catholic Church; custodial institutions; residential schools; the internet; child exploitation by organised networks; children outside of the UK; reparations for victims and survivors and Westminster.

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Kevin Walsh
Creator: MyMediaDiary.com, Media Educator, Video Producer of “Digging Detroit”

Michael Keaton’s character, Walter “Robbie” Robinson, in the newly-released Spotlight, is seeking Boston Globe confirmation of the Archdiocese cover-up for 70 priests involved in child molestation. He passes the list to his longtime friend and attorney, “We all knew something was going on.”

His friend kicks him out of his house and then follows Robbie into the street and asks him why he didn’t do anything — if he knew something was going on.

Robbie pauses and can only say, “I don’t know.”

Spotlight ‘s portrayal of the 2001 investigation by the Globe’s Spotlight unit (Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams and Brian d’Arcy James) is an excellent snapshot of an entire city looking the other way. When a representative of a survivor’s group brings his box of evidence to the Globe office and is asked, “Why now? Why hasn’t this been a bigger story before?” he informs them that he had already sent the box years earlier. The collective head-hanging matches that after his earlier question, if they were Catholic (not practicing).

“I don’t know” accurately sums up America’s foggy morals as it addresses refugees, gun-violence and college sexual assault while struggling, perhaps, to re-grow its conscience.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

The Royal Commission will hold a public hearing commencing Wednesday 27 January 2016 at the Federal Court in Hobart.

The scope and purpose of the public hearing is to inquire into:

1. The experiences of survivors of child sexual abuse by lay people and/or clergy involved in or associated with the Church of England Boys’ Society.

2. The responses of the Church of England Boys’ Society and the Anglican Dioceses of Tasmania, Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane to allegations of child sexual abuse made against lay people and/or clergy involved in or associated with the Church of England Boys’ Society, including Louis Daniels, Garth Hawkins, Robert Brandenberg, Simon Jacobs and John Elliott.

3. The systems, policies and procedures in place within the Church of England Boys’ Society and the Anglican Dioceses of Tasmania, Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane in relation to:

— 1.youth camps and activities

— 2.raising and responding to concerns and complaints about child sexual abuse.

Any related matters.

Any person or institution who believes that they have a direct and substantial interest in the scope and purpose of the public hearing is invited to lodge a written application for leave to appear at the public hearing by 15 January 2016.

Applications for leave to appear should be made using the form available on the Royal Commission website.

Leave to appear will generally be granted when an applicant:

a. has been summoned to give evidence

b. is an institution, or is a representative of an institution, that is subject to the inquiry to be undertaken

c. may be the subject of an adverse allegation.

It is not essential for a person who will appear as a witness in a hearing to apply for leave to appear – witnesses may appear and give evidence without applying for leave.

The form should be lodged with the Royal Commission via:

Email: solicitor@childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au; or Mail: GPO Box 5283, Sydney NSW 2001.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

1 December, 2015

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has published the written submissions for the Jehovah’s Witnesses public hearing on its website.

The hearing, which commenced on 27 July this year in Sydney, inquired into Jehovah’s Witnesses and Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Australia Ltd.

It heard from survivors of child sexual abuse within the Jehovah’s Witnesses Church in Australia.

The submissions can be found on Case Study 29 page.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Australian Associated Press
Tuesday 1 December 2015

A damning submission to the royal commission on child sexual abuse has recommended 77 adverse findings against the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Australia.

It was open to the commission to find the church fostered distrust of secular authorities and its response to child sexual abuse fell short of best practice, counsel to the commission Angus Stewart QC found in his submission, published on Tuesday.

Since 1950 the church has received 1,066 allegations against its members and did not report any of them to police.

Stewart’s recommendations arise out of a public hearing into the Jehovah’s Witnesses and its oversight body, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Australia, in July.

He said the Witnesses received about three or four reports of allegations of child abuse a month.

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PERU
Catholic World Report

December 1, 2015

Lima, Peru, Dec 1, 2015 / 12:08 am (CNA).- The superior general of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae has announced the creation of an Ethics Commission for Justice and Reconciliation to assist and offer proposals amid investigations following accusations against its founder.

“In the last few weeks, we have seen with pain and shame the disclosure of credible accusations about the grave misconduct and abuse committed by Luis Fernando Figari and other members of the Sodalitium of Christian Life. These accusations need to be clarified,” said Alessandro Moroni Llabrés, superior general of the group, in a Nov. 25 statement.

“To ensure the highest level of rigor and impartiality in this task we have called together a group of professionals, recognized for their quality and independence, to be part of an Ethics Commission for Justice and Reconciliation. Its aim will be to review what has happened, offer the highest level of assistance possible for victims and to propose the necessary (actions).”

The new commission includes Manuel Sánchez-Palacios Paiva, former president of the National Jury of Elections and spokesman for the Peruvian Supreme Court; Rosario Fernández Figueroa, a lawyer and former president of the Peruvian Justice Council; Bishop Carlos Enrique García Camader of Lurin; Maíta García Trovato, a surgeon with a specialization in psychiatry, former general director of the Peruvian National Institute of Mental Health; and Miguel Humberto Aguirre, a journalist and director of content for the RPP Group.

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UNITED STATES
RTE (Ireland)

Best Film.

Spotlight also took the award for Best Screenplay (Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer), with its cast, which includes Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Stanley Tucci and Mark Ruffalo, sharing the previously announced Special Jury Prize for Best Ensemble.

The film tells the true story of US newspaper The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team and their work in exposing the global cover-up of clerical sexual abuse by the Catholic Church. Directed by Tom McCarthy (The Visitor, The Station Agent), Spotlight will be released in Irish cinemas on January 29.

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NEW JERSEY
Catholic Star Herald

From the Office of Child and Youth Protection

The children of South Jersey have always been and will always be among the primary concerns of the Diocese of Camden. Throughout our Catholic schools, religious education programs, and various diocesan and parish ministries, we remain committed and vigilant to protecting the children and youth that we serve.

Through the years, the diocese has actively engaged and improved our policies and procedures regarding the safety of all children. Efforts in this area were further strengthened by the publication of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People in 2002.

Using the charter as a guideline, the Diocese of Camden has been active in ensuring the safest possible environment for those entrusted to its care. Criminal history background checks based on the fingerprints of all those who have regular contact with children, child abuse prevention (CAP) training to both alert children to be watchful of potential abuse and adults to be on the lookout for it, and a Memorandum of Understanding with the New Jersey Attorney General to facilitate the immediate reporting of any abuse, are among the steps that have been taken to protect the young and the vulnerable.

Rod J. Herrera, a licensed clinical social worker and the director of the Office of Child and Youth Protection, has headed this office since it was established in 2004. “The protection of children is a group effort. It is not just this office, but parish safe environment coordinators, youth ministers, school principals and others, all working together with the guidance of this office to ensure the children entrusted to our care are safe,” he said.

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AUSTRALIA
International Business Times

By Ritwik Roy @ritwikroy
December 01 2015

The royal commission has heard that a “paralysis” plagued the Catholic Church’s response to abuse allegation for decades and that made innocent children vulnerable to the dangers from paedophile priests. Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart appeared before the child abuse royal commission and blamed top church officials including Archbishop Frank Little for the situation. However, he did not criticize his predecessor Cardinal George Pell.

According to The Sydney Morning Herald, Archbishop Hart described processes followed by Melbourne Archdiocese as a “complete failure” when it came to dealing with paedophile issues. He also described the allegations referred to Doveton parish Catholic education officials as “just a horror story.”

“What is now apparent to me is that there was knowledge and a failure to act. I have just been totally appalled by the extent and the depravity of the offenders and the suffering and ruination of lives of the survivors,” he said.

In another shocking revelation, the commission has heard that in 1968, paedophile priest Father Wilfred “Bill” Baker had no qualms disclosing heartlessly the confessions of a 13-year-old altar boy BTU. He was an assistant priest at St Mary’s Parish and chaplain of St Mary’s Boys School in St Kilda East. Baker disclosed the child’s confessions to notorious paedophile priest Ronald Pickering so that he was abused more by the latter, reports The Guardian.

“By mentioning it to Fr Pickering, Fr Baker clearly had no hesitation in breaking the seal of my confession to him and also Fr Pickering appeared to be agitated and was clearly concerned about this,” said BTU.

BTU revealed that the abuse made him tremendously confused as a child as he was always taught how holy priests are and how they are just next to God. However, whatever Father Pickering was doing to him was not at all in line with Christian teachings. BTU was abused by Pickering till the age of 23 which broke him completely.

In 1976, predator priest Baker started sexually abusing a 12-year-old BTO while his parents were asleep in another room. He ultimately told his mother, an assistant priest in 1978. Forty years later, BTO is overwhelmed to see that someone (the royal commission) cares.

In 1999, Baker was convicted for sexually abusing BTO and seven other boys between 1960 and 1979. Although BTO’s family received $35,000 as compensation from archdiocese’s Melbourne Response scheme, it made him feel dirty.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Danny Morgan

The Archbishop of Melbourne has admitted he should have done more to remove a violent priest who was alleged to have sexually abused children.

In 1996 Denis Hart received a complaint that Father Peter Searson, a parish priest, had hit a boy in the head.

Archbishop Hart told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that at the time, he would have checked Searson’s file and been aware of a long list of other complaints, including child sexual abuse.

However, he let Searson remain as parish priest in charge of a local primary school for another four months, only restricting his contact with altar boys.

Archbishop Hart told the hearing that in hindsight, more should have been done at the time.

Commission chair Justice Peter McClellan: You would have realised from the file it wasn’t just that group that was in danger, it was everyone?

Archbishop Denis Hart: I’d have to say that now, your honour, yes.

Justice McClellan: You didn’t realise that then?

Archbishop Hart: Well, I was relying very much on proper advice because there were a number of matters coming across the desk and I think I did what I thought at the time. On reflection, of course I’d have to say more should have been done.

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AUSTRALIA
SBS

AAP

The Catholic Church buried child sex abuse complaints and engaged in a cover-up to protect its reputation, Melbourne’s archbishop says.

Archbishop Denis Hart says the church missed numerous chances to stop predatory pedophile priests.

He says his predecessor Frank Little endangered children by failing to act on credible information about abuse by Fr Wilfred Baker, Fr Nazareno Fasciale and Fr Ronald Pickering.

“(Baker is) an utterly appalling case of terrible sexual abuse and an example, along with Fasciale and Pickering, of the archbishop failing to act on credible information about criminal abuse by a priest,” Archbishop Hart said.

Priests were moved to another parish after abuse complaints and parishioners were not told the real reason they left, the child abuse royal commission heard.

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BELGIE
KerkNet

[The New York Times has called on the Vatican prosecutor to drop all charges against two Italian journalists – Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fattipaldi.]

BRUSSEL (KerkNet/Catholic Herald) – De bekende Amerikaanse krant ‘New York Times’ heeft de openbare aanklager van het Vaticaan opgeroepen om alle klachten tegen de twee Italiaanse journalisten Gianluigi Nuzzi en Emiliano Fittipaldi, die allebei recent een boek publiceerden over de weerstand van sommige leden van de Romeinse Curie tegen de financiële hervormingen van paus Franciscus.

De krant benadrukt dat beiden worden vervolgd op basis van een wet uit 2013, die werd goedgekeurd om seksueel misbruik van minderjarigen en kinderporno te bestrijden. Emiliano Fittipaldi noemde het proces kafkaiaans. De Organisatie voor Veiligheid en Samenwerking in Europa (OVSE), evenals beroepsorganisaties van journalisten vroegen het Vaticaan om het proces tegen de journalisten stop te zetten.

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ILLINOIS
Daily Herald

Susan Sarkauskas

Members of two groups critical of the Catholic Church’s handling of sexual abuse by priests are calling for parishioners to withhold financial donations to an Aurora church.

And the man who sued that church, St. Rita of Cascia, under the name “John Doe” has revealed his identity. He is John Plaschke, who now lives in Maryland, and said he revealed himself to encourage other possible victims to come forward.

Plaschke’s suit, filed in September in Winnebago County, names the church, the Rockford Diocese and John Holdren, a priest at St. Rita of Cascia in the early 1970s.

In a phone interview, Plaschke said the recent news about sexual assault allegations against comedian Bill Cosby prompted him to investigate his own abuse. The shame and the fear of not being believed expressed by Cosby’s accusers resonated with Plaschke and brought out suppressed memories, he said. Plaschke said he filed the suit after being unsatisfied with the responses of the parish and the diocese to his questions.

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MINNESOTA
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on November 30, 2015

Newly released documents show how St. John’s Prep in Collegeville, MN is in direct violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and created a hostile environment where students can reasonably believe they are risk of sexual assault.

At least 10 sex-offending monks—who have only been publicly exposed due to child sex abuse civil lawsuits and criminal complaints— live at the monastic residence (noted in the photo of the school above) mere yards from the dorms of St. John’s Prep.

Students must pass the home where the offenders live to go to the cafeteria or attend church services. Because of the real risk these monks pose, students are unable to study, work, or perform in sport activities because out of genuine and real fear of sexual assault.

According to Campus Safety Magazine:

Sexual violence is viewed under the law as an extreme form of hostile environment/sexual harassment and must be addressed. When an institution “knows or reasonably should know” about a hostile environment, they are required “to take immediate action to eliminate the harassment, prevent its recurrence and address its effects.”

We aren’t talking about frat parties. We are talking about men who engaged in child sex trafficking in South East Asia, men who evaded charges of child sex abuse, men who took numerous children to cabins in order to sexually abuse them, men who sexually abused the high school and college students they counseled, and men who abused altar boys in their care.

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UNITED STATES
PopeCrimes& Vatican Evils.

Paris Arrow

The Jesuits are among the most notorious sexual predators on earth.

Jesuits are infamous members of the JP2 Army – John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army.

END Statute of Limitation for pedophilia

This “Jesuit sex crimes” from the Philippines prove that the statute of limitation must be removed for pedophilia and pederast sex crimes because it takes about three decades before victims can speak about their shameful past. Lucas, (not his real name) comes out only now at the age of 46 and he was sexually assaulted “hundreds of times” starting at the age of 15. It took him three decades to reveal his shameful past and in the Philippines, that shame belongs not to him alone – but to his entire family as well. Read our article, — New York Catholic bishops fight new Statute of Limitation bill for it would cause the church “catastrophic financial harm”.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

[live stream]

The Royal Commission will hold a public hearing in Melbourne from Tuesday 24 November 2015 commencing at 10:00am AEDT.

The public hearing will inquire into the response of the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne to allegations of child sexual abuse.

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CANADA
Windsor Star

TREVOR WILHELM, WINDSOR STAR

The bishop of the London diocese testified Monday that a priest charged with stealing claimed he was charging unauthorized wedding fees to play “hardball” with people wanting to use the church.

Bishop Ronald Fabbro took the witness stand as week two of the trial against Robert Couture began.

“He should not be including a fee for himself,” said Fabbro.

“This idea of playing hardball I thought was not a good pastoral approach.”

Robert Couture, the former pastor of Ste. Anne Parish in Tecumseh, is charged with theft over $5,000. A forensic accountant told court last week Couture stole between $170,000 and $234,000 from 2002 to 2010.

Fabbro said Monday he received a complaint in 2004 from the parents of a couple who got married at Ste. Anne. He said the complaint from the family, referred to in court as the Majors, was about fees that Couture required.

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CHILE
El Dinamo

[Bishop Barros said he learned of the abuses by Karadima from the press.]

Barros mostró su molestia por ser relacionado con los abusos de Karadima, recalcando que “he señalado en más de una ocasión que en este proceso se ha faltado gravemente a la verdad, y he visto en algunos medios de comunicación algunas alusiones al respecto, las que niego rotundamente”.

En el marco de la demanda civil que interpusieron tres de las víctimas de los abusos cometidos por Fernando Karadima en contra del Arzobispado de Santiago, el pasado 20 de noviembre prestó declaración el cuestionado obispo Juan Barros.

Es que Barros es sindicado por parte de los querellantes y de la comunidad de Osorno de ser uno de los encubridores de los delitos realizados por el ex párroco de El Bosque, lo cual ha sido negado en innumerables ocasiones por el prelado.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Junno Arocho Esteves Catholic News Service | Nov. 30, 2015

VATICAN CITY
A Vatican trial against two Italian journalists, a Spanish monsignor and two others was postponed for one week after the court allowed one of the defendants to change lawyers.

On what was to be the criminal trial’s first day of testimonies by the defendants Monday, the Vatican court granted a request by one of the accused to have a new lawyer and receive more time to prepare for the case.

The proceedings began with the presiding judge, Giuseppe Dalla Torre, stating the request by Francesca Chaouqui, a member of the former Pontifical Commission for Reference on the Organization of the Economic-Administrative Structure of the Holy See.

Dalla Torre, along with three other Vatican judges, deliberated for 10 minutes before granting her request and announcing the trial would resume Dec. 7.

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PAPAL PLANE
Star Tribune

By NICOLE WINFIELD and FRANCES D’EMILIO Associated Press NOVEMBER 30, 2015 —

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE — Pope Francis has acknowledged criticism that the Vatican’s trial over leaked documents has been rushed, saying the defendants and their lawyers must have time to mount a proper defense.

Francis spoke to reporters en route home from Africa after a Vatican judge on Tuesday adjourned the trial until Dec. 7 to give one of the defendants time to prepare after she engaged a new attorney late last week. Several of the suspects had complained that they hadn’t had time to find lawyers, much less study the case file before the trial began Nov. 24.

In a startling acknowlegment of his involvement in the process, Francis said he had wanted the trial to be finished before the Dec. 8 start of his Jubilee Year of Mercy.

“But I think this can’t be done now, because I want all the defense lawyers to have time to defend, that there is the freedom of defense,” he said.

Three members of a papal reform commission are accused of leaking documents to two reporters who published blockbuster books detailing Vatican waste, mismanagement and greed among some cardinals and bishops. The two reporters are also on trial for having published the material — accusations that have drawn scorn from media rights groups around the world.

The groups have urged the Vatican to drop the charges against reporters Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, who face eight years in prison if convicted.

Francis acknowledged that journalists have an important role to play in uncovering injustice and corruption.

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NEW YORK
The Sun (UK)

A KINKY priest has been kicked out of the church after he was caught on video engaging in a ‘cake-crushing’ fetish with his married goddaughter.

Footage shows The Rev. George Passias, 67, looking on as Ethel Bouzalas, 45, sat and stomped on pieces of banana bread – while wearing sexy lingerie.

Passias has been relieved of his priestly duties at St. Spyridon Church in New York after a unanimous vote, church officials tell the New York Post.

Bouzalas, 45, who was principal of the St. Spyridon Parochial School, is now five months’ pregnant — and she claims the horny holy man is the father, according to The National Herald, a Greek-American daily newspaper.

Bouzalas has alleged that Passias urged her to get an abortion, despite that being against the teachings of the Greek Orthodox church.

The priest has denied that claim.

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VATICAN CITY
Irish Times

A Vatican trial into the theft of confidential Holy See documents was postponed on Monday until December 7th, dashing church hopes of wrapping up the case before the start of the Roman Catholic Holy Year.

The trial of five defendants, including a senior Spanish priest and two Italian reporters, was due to hear the first testimony on Monday, with the court looking to reach verdicts before December 8th, when the Holy Year starts.

However, the panel of three judges agreed to adjourn the hearing because one of the accused, lay consultant Francesca Chaouqui, had changed her lawyer, who requested more time to prepare the defence.

Two defendants, journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, had books based on leaked documents published this month that depict a Vatican plagued by greed and graft and where Pope Francis faces stiff resistance to his reform agenda.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Spiegel

[Father R., considered a major abuser in the instances of sexual abuse at Caniusiu College in Berlin, but he never faced charged in criminal and civil law because the actions were said to be time-barred. It turns out that a girl raised in the church has made serious allegations against the priest which are not time-barred. It remains to be seen whether the priest will be charged.]

Von Peter Wensierski

Ein Mädchen meldet einen nicht verjährten Missbrauch, der in Verbindung mit dem Berliner Canisius-Kolleg steht. Doch die Kirche informiert erst zehn Monate später die Staatsanwaltschaft.

Pater R. gilt als ein Haupttäter im Fall des jahrelangen sexuellen Missbrauchs am Canisius-Kolleg in Berlin. Vor Gericht musste sich der katholische Geistliche jedoch nie verantworten, straf- und zivilrechtlich waren die Taten verjährt. Nun stellt sich heraus: Ein Mädchen erhob bei der Kirche auch schwere Vorwürfe gegen den Pater, die nicht verjährt waren. Doch das Bistum Hildesheim, bei dem sich die Jugendliche gemeldet hatte, verschleppte die Aufklärung, wie die WDR-Dokumentation “Richter Gottes” zeigt.

Das Mädchen hatte sich in Begleitung seiner Religionslehrerin im März 2010 an das Bistum gewandt und von einem Besuch bei dem Pater vier Jahre zuvor in Berlin erzählt. Erst habe der Geistliche mit ihr ein Straßenfest besucht und ihr eine Panflöte geschenkt. Dann gingen sie in seine kleine Wohnung und aßen gemeinsam Abendbrot. Später habe sie sich im selben Raum schlafen gelegt, schließlich sei der Pater mit ihrer Familie in Hildesheim befreundet gewesen. Sie war ihren Angaben zufolge noch nicht ganz eingeschlafen, da sei Pater R. wieder aufgestanden, habe sich auf sie gelegt und begonnen, sie zu küssen und zu befummeln.

Als das Mädchen dies berichtete, kannte die Bistumsleitung Pater R. schon bestens, nicht nur als mutmaßlichen Serientäter vom Berliner Canisius-Kolleg. Auch auf einer eigenen Pressekonferenz, nur vier Wochen zuvor, hatte das Bistum zwei andere Missbrauchsfälle von Pater R. im Bereich des eigenen Bistums zugegeben, denen man “leider nicht nachgegangen sei”.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Hannover Zeitung

Die katholische Kirche hat die Aufklärung der Straftaten des Haupttäters Pfarrer Peter R. im Missbrauchsskandal am Berliner Gymnasium Canisius Kolleg 2010 aktiv behindert. Das zeigt erstmals die ARD/WDR-Dokumentation “Richter Gottes” von Eva Müller aus der Sendereihe “Die Story im Ersten” am Montag, 30. November um 22.45 Uhr. Darin äußert sich der Täter zum ersten Mal öffentlich. Die Staatsanwaltschaft Berlin prüft nun die Aufnahme neuer Ermittlungen.

Anfang 2010 berichteten ehemalige Schüler von Pfarrer Peter R. am Berliner Gymnasium Canisius Kolleg, dass er sie nackt fotografiert, angefasst und zur Selbstbefriedigung genötigt habe. Sie lösten damit den Missbrauchsskandal der katholischen Kirche in Deutschland aus. Die Rede ist von mehr als 100 Opfern. Bereits im Februar 2010 meldete die Staatsanwaltschaft Berlin, dass Peter R.’s Taten verjährt seien und deshalb keine strafrechtlichen Konsequenzen hätten.

Vier Wochen später, Anfang März 2010, meldete sich jedoch im Bistum Hildesheim ein 14-jähriges Mädchen, das dort angibt, Peter R. habe auch sie bedrängt. Die Kirche veröffentlicht diese Meldung nicht, informiert die Familie der 14-Jährigen und die Behörden nicht, vernimmt aber den Täter selbst dazu und leitet durch den Hildesheimer Bischof Norbert Trelle eine interne, kirchenrechtliche Voruntersuchung zu diesem Fall ein. Zur selben Zeit sagt der damalige Vorsitzende der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz, Erzbischof Zollitsch, öffentlich eine umfassende, “ehrliche Aufklärung” und bessere Zusammenarbeit mit den staatlichen Behörden zu.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

AAP

Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart insists he has not tried to blame dead church figures for the archdiocese’s “terrible failure” to act on abuse complaints.

Archbishop Hart says his predecessors failed to act, but excluded 1996-2001 Melbourne archbishop Cardinal George Pell from his criticism.

Archbishop Hart says former archbishop Frank Little put children in danger by not acting on complaints about Fr Peter Searson, one of a succession of pedophile priests in the Doveton parish.

“It’s just a horror story,” Archbishop Hart said of Doveton.

“These things were being presented again and again and again, and nothing was happening.”

During his evidence to the child abuse royal commission, senior counsel Gail Furness SC said some of the criticisms were levelled primarily at Archbishop Little and one of his vicar-generals, Monsignor Gerald Cudmore.

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MISSOURI
Springfield News-Leader

Steve Pokin, spokin@news-leader.com November 30, 2015

On Thanksgiving I went to the Moxie Cinema and watched “Spotlight,” the best movie I’ve ever seen on journalism, including “All the President’s Men.”

The film, based on real events, has a strong local connection: Cardinal Bernard Francis Law, who is the villain.

The film chronicles the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer-Prize winning coverage of how the Boston Diocese protected pedophile priests and moved them from parish to parish. The man behind these decisions was Law, who became a Cardinal while archbishop of the Boston Diocese, the third largest in the nation.

Before going to Boston, Law, now 84, was bishop of the Springfield-Cape Girardeau Diocese from October 1973 to January 1984.

As a result of the Globe’s dogged reporting, Law became a sort of poster boy, representing how the Catholic Church initially covered up of the misdeeds of pedophile priests.

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UNITED STATES
Saint Peters Blog

By Tom Ohara – Nov 30, 2015

If you want to be simultaneously appalled and inspired, go see the movie “Spotlight.”

It’s about the Boston Globe’s 2001-2002 Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into the Boston archdiocese’s decades-long cover-up of child sex abuse by its priests and brothers.

The film is unusual because it portrays people doing actual journalism. There are no gaggles of goofballs with microphones shouting stupid questions in a hallway.

“Spotlight,” the name of the newspaper’s investigative team, shows that quality journalism is usually the result of a dogged slog.

One of the heroes is Marty Baron, a Tampa-born guy who as the Globe’s new editor in 2001 asked some unpleasant questions about the paper’s coverage of the scandal.

The investigative team found the disturbing answers: that the archdiocese knew about the extent of the abuse for decades and used its considerable money and power to cover it up.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

The group Concerned Catholics of Guam has argued that Archbishop Anthony Apuron gave control of the Yona seminary to the Neocatechumenal Way, but the church has released land documents to dispute that claim.

The archbishop of the Archdiocese of Agana, as the “corporation sole,” holds the title to the former Accion Hotel, which is currently being used as a seminary, according to a document released by the Archdiocese of Agana last weekend.

“The archbishop of Agana is the legal and sole owner of the Redemptoris Mater Seminary of Guam in Yona — (formerly) Hotel Accion property,” a statement from the archdiocese, approved by Msgr. David Quitugua, the archdiocesan vicar general, states. The statement was released in the Nov. 29 edition of the Umatuna Si Yu’os, the archdiocese’s newspaper.

The archdiocese released the property’s certificate of title, which was issued by the Department of Land Management on Oct. 30, 2015, following publicly expressed concerns from Concerned Catholics of Guam that Apuron may have signed a document that might have placed the property under the control of the leaders of the Neocatechumenal Way.

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VATICAN CITY
ANSA

(ANSA) – Vatican City, November 30 – The second hearing in the so-called Vatileaks 2 trial against five people for allegedly leaking confidential Holy See documents ended after less than 15 minutes on Monday after the court decided to grant five days to the new lawyer representing defendant Francesca Chaouqui to prepare her defence. “I don’t understand a thing, there’s no proof against me,” Chaouqui said after the hearing.

“In the next five days we must discover why I’m here,” the PR expert added. Chaouqui’s co-defendants, investigative journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, Monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda and his former assistant Nicola Maio, all attended Monday’s hearing. Chaouqui, Balda and Maio are charged with leaking the confidential material and Nuzzi and Fittipaldi of using it in books published recently documenting Vatican waste and mismanagement and lavish spending by clergymen.

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ROME
La Repubblica

di MARCO ANSALDO e CORRADO ZUNINO

ROMA – Nel memoriale che monsignor Lucio Vallejo Balda ha consegnato al primo avvocato (poi sostituito) l’8 novembre scorso c’è la confessione dei suoi rapporti, anche carnali, con Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui. Ci sono le sue convinzioni preoccupate: “Lei era dei servizi segreti, aveva dietro Bisignani”. E c’è il racconto di tutti gli amici importanti della pierre assurta a commissario delle finanze del Vaticano per volontà di Papa Bergoglio.

I GIORNI DELLA TENTAZIONE
“Io non potevo cedere… Avevo sempre il Papa davanti agli occhi che parlava della sacralità delle donne sposate e del matrimonio “, si tormenta monsignore. È il momento più drammatico della confessione a proposito del suo rapporto con la Chaouqui, uno dei commissari alle finanze della Santa Sede.

Sono trascorsi sei giorni dal suo arresto e monsignore detta il suo memoriale sulla diffusione delle carte segrete della Prefettura economica di cui era il segretario. “Repubblica” presenta questo documento mentre oggi, al processo sul caso Vatileaks, sia il monsignore spagnolo sia la pierre cosentina saranno interrogati dalla Corte. Sul tavolo, una prima importante decisione presa nei giorni scorsi: il rifiuto da parte della corte della richiesta avanzata dal legale d’ufficio di Balda (tutti gli imputati di questo processo presso la Santa Sede non hanno avvocati di fiducia) di sottoporre il suo assistito a una perizia psichiatrica.

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VATICAN CITY
Wichita Eagle

dpa

VATICAN CITY
A key hearing in the VatiLeaks 2 trial over leaks related to alleged financial scandals in the Vatican was Monday postponed by a week to give a new defense lawyer time to study the case.

Main suspects Monsignor Lucio Vallejo Balda and Francesca Chaouqui were to be questioned, but presiding judge Giuseppe Dalla Torre at the Vatican court rescheduled the hearing for Dec. 7 after Chaouqui showed up with a new counsel.

Laura Sgro replaced Agnese Camilli, who was a court-appointed lawyer, the Vatican said in a statement.

Vallejo Balda, a Spanish member of the conservative Catholic movement Opus Dei, and Chaouqui, an Italian public relations consultant, were members of a now-disbanded committee that advised Pope Francis on financial and administrative reforms.

They are accused, along with an aide of the monsignor, of passing on information to journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi.

Former friends Vallejo Balda and Chaouqui are now in the midst of a fierce spat.

In a written statement to the court, leaked to Italian newspaper La Repubblica on Monday, Vallejo Balda confesses to having had sex with Chaouqui.

He describes her as a dangerous social climber with friends in high places, including former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi.

Several Italian newspapers last week quoted confidential prosecution papers containing lewd and foul text messages between the two. Chaouqui claims they were edited to tarnish her reputation.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Bedford Today

Monday 30 November 2015

Two elderly men appeared at court this morning to answer historical allegations of abuse against boys while working at St Francis’ Children’s Home in Shefford.

James McCann, 79, and John Christopher Cahill, 73, appeared at Luton Magistrates Court where the allegations of abuse were put to them.

The court heard how both Mr McCann and Mr Cahill were lay members of staff at the home, which was run primarily by nuns and religious clerics.

Mr McCann was involved in the day-to-day care of boys at the home between 1966 and 1974. He has pleaded not guilty to 66 charges, 17 of them sexually-related, from 25 complainants.

The court was told much of the abuse claims related to physical harm, with Mr McCann accused of striking boys with sticks and leather belts, and clapping against both sides of their ears – causing intense pain.

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NEDERLAND
Meldpunt Seksueel Misbruik RKK

[The complaints committee for abuse victims in the Dutch Catholic Church expects to have all issues resolved by Sept. 1. A total of 211 cases are still pending and hearings were held this year for 31 alleged victims.]

De Klachtencommissie voor slachtoffers van seksueel misbruik in de R. K.- Kerk verwacht dat 1 september 2016 alle zaken zijn afgehandeld. Er zijn nog 211 zaken in behandeling. Voor 31 slachtoffers wordt nog dit jaar een zitting gehouden. Er zijn in de regel 6 zittingen per week.

Bij gegrond verklaring kunnen slachtoffers een beroep doen op compensatie. De Compensatiecommissie verwacht dat ongeveer 150 slachtoffers dat ook zullen doen. Eind 2016 zullen allen een uitspraak hebben ontvangen. Het werk van beide commissies zit er dan op. De hulpverlening aan slachtoffers gaat echter door. Die kunnen een beroep blijven doen op het aanbod van gespecialiseerde hulp van het Platform Hulpverlening voor slachtoffers van seksueel misbruik in de R. K.- Kerk.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 30 November 2015 (VIS) – The Holy Father has appointed:

– Msgr. Jure Bogdan as military ordinary for Croatia. The bishop-elect was born in Donji Dolac, Croatia in 1955 and was ordained a priest in 1980. He holds a doctorate in theology from the Pontifical Lateran University and has served in a number of pastoral roles in the archdiocese of Split-Makarska, Croatia, including parish vicar and spiritual father of the archdiocesan minor seminary. He is currently rector of the Pontifical Croatian College of St. Jerome in Rome. He succeeds Bishop Juraj Jezerinac, whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same military ordinariate upon reaching the age limit was accepted by the Holy Father.

– Fr. Vincent Kirabo as bishop of Hoima (area 17,200, population 2,084214, Catholics 1,075,812, priests 131, religious 130), Uganda. The bishop-elect was born in Kyanaisoke, Uganda in 1955 and was ordained a priest in 1979. He holds a master’s degree in education from the University of Portland, United States of America, and a licentiate in biblical theology from the Pontifical Urbanian University, Rome. He has served in a number of roles in the diocese of Hoima, including teacher and rector of the minor seminary, director of the diocesan commission for vocations, parish vicar, diocesan administrator for finance, parish priest, and teacher and bursar at the Uganda Martyrs National Minor Seminary Alokolum, Gulu. He is currently a teacher at the St. Mary’s National Major Seminary Ggaba, Kampala.

– Bishop Luis Albeiro Cortes Rendon of Velez, Colombia, as auxiliary of the diocese of Pereira (area 6,126, population 1,380,000, Catholics 1,041,000, priests 210, permanent deacons 36, religious 266), Colombia.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

DECEMBER 1, 2015

Dan Box
Crime reporter
Sydney

A second former principal at a ­remote Catholic boarding school in northern Queensland has been charged with sexual crimes ­involving young boys.

Terry Kingston, a member of the Christian Brothers religious order, will face court this week charged with the indecent treatment of seven boys in 1976-77 while he was the principal of St Teresa’s College in Abergowrie.

It comes after another former principal at the boarding school, many of whose pupils are from ­indigenous families living across the Northern Territory, Cape York and Torres Strait, was charged with sexual crimes against children and will face trial next year.

James Sampson Doran, who took over the leadership of St ­Teresa’s in 1989, has indicated in court that he will plead not guilty to more than 40 charges relating to the alleged abuse of 11 boys in NSW between 1973 to 1986.

The Australian previously ­revealed that at least seven former pupils at a second Catholic boarding school, St John’s College in Woodlawn near Lismore, northern NSW, have committed suicide amid allegations of historical sexual abuse by staff.

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UNITED STATES
Daily Times

By Phil Heron, Delaware County Daily Times
POSTED: 11/30/15

I saw the movie ‘Spotlight’ Saturday night.

If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a journalism movie. More specifically, a newspaper movie. It tells the story of how a team of reporters at the Boston Globe tackled the massive issue of abuse by priests in the Boston Archdiocese.

The movie made me proud of what I do. It also made me incredibly sad.

This is not a easy movie to watch, especially if you are Catholic. That would include me, a former altar boy. It does not paint the church – in particular the leaders of the Boston Archdiocese, in an especially good light.

I know a little bit about that. I have written at length about the same situation here in the Philadelphia archdiocese. In fact, Monsignor William Lynn, the highest church official ever charged and convicted in the church handling (some would say blatant cover-up) of church abuse. He was my pastor at St. Joe’s in Downingtown. Suffice it to say much of what I wrote was not especially well-received by my fellow parishioners.

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WASHINGTON
Q13 Fox

MARYSVILLE, Wash.—Members of St. Mary’s Catholic church in Marysville hit the pavement in protest outside of St. James Cathedral in Seattle on Sunday after learning their beloved priest was asked to leave their parish.

The Archdiocese of Seattle asked Father Dwight Lewis to leave St. Mary’s after finding financial and personnel practices that they called “significantly at odds” with church policies.

Some church members said they were kept in the dark and did not think Father Dwight did anything wrong.

“The diocese won’t meet with us and tell us why Father Dwight is gone. Why? What did he do?” said parishioner Scott Jenkins.

“They just do what they can do, without explaining to us. That’s so unfair. That’s number one. Number two, we want Father Dwight back. If they can’t really prove that he did something wrong, then why whisk him away?” said another parishioner.

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Herald

Joe Fitzgerald Monday, November 30, 2015

If you’ve been following the brouhaha over the way some characters were portrayed in “Spotlight,” Hollywood’s version of how the Globe covered the priestly scandal that rocked the Catholic Church here, it’s tempting to feel sympathetic to someone who feels he was made to look like a jerk in order to juice up the script.

But lost in all of this bickering over what was said years ago is the disservice that was done to faithful priests whose unwarranted disgrace was the collateral damage of a rush to judgment.

They knew what it was to see themselves unfairly wrapped in a blanket indictment that turned a basic American tenet upside down; if you wore a Roman collar you were presumed guilty, not innocent.

But how do you prove something didn’t happen?

“When I go into a CVS or supermarket now,” a parochial vicar still in his 30s confided here at the time, “people either look through me as if I don’t exist or I get a contemptuous stare. When that happens, I feel like telling them, ‘Look, I didn’t do it!’ It’s as if they want to take it out on you personally.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if these are the same people who say, ‘Now let’s not profile all Middle Eastern men because a few blew up the World Trade Center.’ Yet they look at every one of us and wonder what we’re all about.”

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NEW YORK
New York Post

By Chris Perez November 30, 2015

The kinky Washington Heights priest who was caught on video engaging in a “cake-crushing’’ fetish with a married church- school administrator has been defrocked, The Post has learned.

The Rev. George Passias, 67, was relieved of his priestly duties at St. Spyridon Church after a unanimous vote on Nov. 28 by the Greek Orthodox Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate during its monthly meeting in Istanbul, church officials said.

In addition, the entire executive board of St. Spyridon was ordered to step down Friday following the fallout over Passias’ pastry love affair with his goddaughter, Ethel Bouzalas, 45, who was principal of the St. Spyridon Parochial School.

Bishop Andonios Paropoulos, chancellor of the Greek Orthodox church in the United States, said the board was asked to step down “not because of any indication of any unethical or illegal actions on their part, but rather as part of an effort to appoint a new board, which will bring healing and reconciliation to a fragmented community, and to restore confidence in the leadership of the parish.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Australian Associated Press
Monday 30 November 2015

A priest “had no hesitation” in breaking the seal of confession to warn a fellow paedophile priest about an altar boy’s abuse complaint, the child abuse inquiry heard on Monday.

Victim BTU told Father Wilfred “Bill” Baker in a neighbouring Melbourne parish that Father Ronald Pickering was sexually abusing him in 1968. However, Baker was also a paedophile.

Baker spoke to the boy after the 13-year-old used confession to reveal what Pickering was doing to him.

BTU said: “The conversation was not about the abuse that I disclosed to him; instead what Fr Baker wanted to know was where I lived … I thought this was odd.”

It got back to Pickering. “By mentioning it to Fr Pickering, Fr Baker clearly had no hesitation in breaking the seal of my confession to him and also Fr Pickering appeared to be agitated and was clearly concerned about this.”

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VATICAN CITY
The Express Tribune

AFP

VATICAN CITY: The Vatican’s controversial trial of journalists and whistleblowers was put on hold on Monday as new claims about sex, lies and spies gave the scandal an intriguing twist.

The trial, in which three Vatican insiders and two Italian reporters face potential prison terms of up to eight years, was adjourned until next week after one of the accused asked for more time to prepare her defence.

Francesca Chaouqui, a PR expert accused of leaking classified documents to journalists, asked for five days to study the prosecution case against her and possibly introduce new evidence after replacing her court-appointed lawyer with her own defence counsel.

The prosecution did not object and the presiding judge said proceedings would resume on December 7, dashing the hopes of Vatican officials that the high-profile case might be wrapped up before the official start of a Catholic Jubilee year the following day.

It emerged Monday that Chaouqui’s co-accused, Spanish Monsignor Lucio Vallejo Balda, 54, wrote a statement six days after his arrest in which he admitted to having been sorely tempted to have an affair with Chaouqui, 33, and that he believed she was working for Italy’s secret services.

According to Italian daily La Repubblica, the statement was made on November 8 to a lawyer no longer working for Vallejo Balda.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

VATICAN CITY | BY ROBERTO MIGNUCCI

A Vatican trial into the theft of confidential Holy See documents was postponed on Monday until Dec. 7, dashing Church hopes of wrapping up the case before the start of the Roman Catholic Holy Year.

The trial of five defendants, including a senior Spanish priest and two Italian reporters, was due to hear the first testimony on Monday, with the court looking to reach verdicts before Dec. 8, when the Holy Year starts.

However, the panel of three judges agreed to adjourn the hearing because one of the accused, lay consultant Francesca Chaouqui, had changed her lawyer, who requested more time to prepare the defence.

Two defendants, journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, had books based on leaked documents published this month that depict a Vatican plagued by greed and graft and where Pope Francis faces stiff resistance to his reform agenda.

Vatican officials say the documents were handed to them by Chaouqui, Spanish Monsignor Angel Lucio Vallejo Balda and his assistant, Nicola Maio.

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UNITED STATES/CANADA
Pokrov

Author: Melanie Jula Sakoda
Date Published: 11/28/2015
Publication: Pokrov.org

Jillions Email

SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, received a response to their November 13th letter to the Synod of Bishops of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). SNAP had written to the Church officials asking them to make sure that the former head of the Archdiocese of Canada, Seraphim Storheim, was well supervised and kept off church payrolls.

Storheim was convicted of sexually abusing an 11 year old boy and served time for that offense. He was subsequently defrocked by his Synod and reduced to the rank of lay monk. However, the former archbishop continues to reside at an OCA monastery in Canada.

Archpriest John Jillions, the OCA Chancellor, informed SNAP that the new archbishop of Canada, Irenee Rochon, had developed a supervision plan for his predecessor. The chancellor also assured the victims’ group that the former archbishop would not visit any other parishes unless a supervision plan was in place.

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UNITED STATES
Pokrov

Author: Melanie Jula Sakoda
Date Published: 11/28/2015
Publication: Pokrov.org

McFeeters Letters

Archpriest Justin McFeeters, a priest in the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, was accused of inappropriate conduct toward a parishioner at Holy Ascension Church in Norman, Oklahoma. He was suspended from his priestly duties on October 21, 2015, pending an investigation into the written complaint. The allegations were found to be credible and McFeeters, who voluntarily waived his right to a spiritual court, was removed from the priesthood on October 23, 2015.

Copies of the letters informing the priest of his suspension and deposition are linked above.

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UNITED STATES
Pokrov

Author: Theodore Kalmoukos
Date Published: 11/28/2015
Publication: The National Herald

CONSTANTINOPLE – The Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate voted unanimously to defrock Protopresbyter George Passias at its regular monthly meeting in Constantinople on November 28.

Passias was returned to the status of layman due to the sexual scandal involving his close associate and god daughter Ethel Bouzalas.

The Holy and Sacred Synod validated the unanimous decision made by the Holy and Eparchial Synod of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America in early October.

The National Herald broke the Passias news on the website of its parent publication, the Greek language Ethnikos Kirix on Friday, October 2. The story was then picked up by the mainstream media, especially the New York Post.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

30 November, 2015

The Royal Commission’s public hearing into Brisbane Grammar and St Paul’s School (Case Study 34) will recommence in Melbourne on Monday 30 November 2015 at 4:30pm AEDT.

It is anticipated that the hearing will hear from one witness, Bernard Yorke, Former General Manager, Anglican Diocese of Brisbane.

The Royal Commission will be sitting in the Ceremonial Courtroom at the County Court of Victoria and will also video conference with Courtroom 36 on level 7 of the Brisbane Magistrates Court.

Please be advised that Mr Yorke will give evidence via video link from Queensland.

For more information on Case Study 34 please visit the Royal Commission’s website.

Date: Monday 30 November 2015
Hearing times: 4:30pm AEDT start

Location: Ceremonial Courtroom, County Court of Victoria, 250 William Street, Melbourne, Victoria.

The public hearing will be streamed live to the public on the Royal Commission’s website www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au

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AUSTRALIA
The Border Mail

By George Williams
Nov. 30, 2015

NSW and Victoria recently announced their support for compensation for the victims of child sexual abuse. If a national scheme is established, these states will contribute millions of dollars to cover the shortfall from the institutions responsible for the harm.

This support is welcome, and follows the recommendation of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that such a scheme is needed. Victims should not be left to pursue compensation through the courts.

In many cases, time limits will have expired, and abuse will be impossible to prove, because of the death or absence of witnesses. Court processes are also likely to increase the trauma suffered by victims.

They were treated as outsiders and second-class citizens in their own lands.

However, the terms of reference of the royal commission mean any compensation scheme will be limited. Many people hurt by other forms of state-sanctioned abuse will be left out in the cold. Indeed, the debate has exposed the reluctance of governments to provide redress to others deserving of compensation.

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AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

November 27, 2015

Madonna King

A crack team of Brisbane-based investigators is leading a global charge against child-sex criminals. Madonna King reports on how Task Force Argos is turning online predators into prey.

Inside Task Force Argos, Australia’s crack paedophile squad, Detective Sergeant Kath Ford, 37, is a seasoned investigator, charged with tracking down online predators preying on children. But inside the terminals of those she targets, she’s a 14-year-old schoolgirl – let’s call her Helen – skipping around the net, while her mother is working late. “I’d like to think it’s not me,” Ford says.

“I’m not engaging that person. It’s Helen. We take on that role, that persona.”

To make it real, Helen needs a whole back-story. She’s a Brisbane schoolgirl, living with her single mother, completing year 10, with loads of friends. Sometimes, Ford will be required to play a schoolboy, too, but always, to escape suspicion, her story needs to be iron-clad. “Are you a cop?” they invariably ask, before the talk turns sexual. That means Ford has to know Helen as well as herself, being able to nominate quickly everything from her marks in maths, to the names of her cousins, to what time her mother will be home. In a high-stakes game where children’s futures are at risk, the mother of two children aged five and eight needs to be a canny actor, where teenage music lyrics roll off the keyboard, along with sentences peppered by “amazeballs”, “LOL” and “OMG”.

“We don’t engage; we always wait to engage,” says Ford, who has also worked as an undercover officer in the Queensland Police Service’s prostitution taskforce. “We don’t throw ourselves out there.” But sooner, rather than later, the talk will turn to sex, and a request to meet from the other side of the screen.

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AUSTRALIA
Pedophiles Down Under

Fiona Barnett

Exposing Australia’s VIP Child Abuse Network

Welcome to this site which aims to give a voice to the many Australian victims of VIP child trafficking, ritual abuse and mind control. This site provides access to Fiona Barnett’s Candy Girl memoirs that will be gradually uploaded. It will offer links to the coming documentary of the same name. It also features testimonies by other Australian victims, relevant articles, and further resources.

An important function of this site is to share a rare wealth of information about the availability of support for Australians, and to expose the dangers hidden within the Australian mental health, counselling and so-called ‘christian’ ministry scenes. The first step to healing is to beware that perpetrators aren’t stupid – they place themselves in optimal positions for accessing and silencing desperate victims.

This site is hosted at great personal risk and expense. VIP pedophile rings are an incomparable force of social and legal influence. They are highly organised with access to seemingly limitless financial and human resources. Like any successful organisation, they employ public relations experts to protect their image and keep their criminal activities secret. They employ experts in human psychology who appreciate that people think in a pack mentally, and that the majority will shun an individual who is discredited, even on the basis of false information. The VIP pedophile rings also pay professionals to sit on computers, troll sites like this, and post comments that distract, influence, misinform and deter the public from belief and action.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Australian Associated Press
Monday 30 November 2015

The Catholic church failed to act on the “horror story” of paedophiles in its midst, Melbourne archbishop Denis Hart has told the royal commission.

“What is now apparent to me is that there was knowledge and a failure to act,” Hart told the child abuse royal commission.

“Reading the victims’ statements that I have in preparation for the commission, I have just been totally appalled by the extent and the depravity of the offenders and the suffering and ruination of lives of the survivors.”

Hart said there had been a terrible failure by the church resulting from the passivity or inactivity of his predecessors.

But he excluded Cardinal George Pell, the Melbourne archbishop from 1996 to 2001, from the criticism.

“As archbishop he instituted the Melbourne Response and really made big changes,” Hart said.

Hart criticised Frank Little, the Melbourne archbishop from 1974 to 1996, for his handling of abuse complaints. Hart said there was a complete failure of process in the Melbourne archdiocese’s handling of complaints in the Doveton parish, where a succession of paedophile priests were sent. He said that was down to Little and the vicar general at the time.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

November 30, 2015
Padraic Murphy
Herald Sun

CARDINAL George Pell was briefed about concerns a priest had shown a dead body to children but the pervert was not removed from the school, the Royal Commission in to child abuse has heard.

Inaction over that priest — who it later emerged was a pedophile — emerged as Archbishop Denis Hart gave evidence about an horrific period at Doveton Parish in the 1980s that saw a succession of pedophile priests in charge.

Archbishop Hart said he expected Cardinal George Pell – who at the time was the parish’s Auxiliary Bishop – to have been to act on the priest’s morbid behaviour.

“I would have expected he would have taken up the matter……I don’t know what he knew and I don’t know what he did,” Archbishop Hart said.

At one point in 1989, Cardinal Pell discussed a list of grievances about pedophile priest Peter Searson lodged by parentswhich said he had shown children a body in a casket and tortured animals in front of them.

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