ABUSE TRACKER

UNITED KINGDOM
Local Guardian

The trial of a priest accused of abusing boys in a children’s home in the 70s and 80s is due to start this morning without care home manager John Stingemore, who died two weeks ago.

Father Tony McSweeney, who was a friend of Mr Stingemore through scouts, denies four counts of indecent assault and four of taking or possessing indecent images of children.

He will stand trial alone at Southwark Crown Court today after the death of co-defendant Mr Stingemore in his Hastings flat on February 2.

Father McSweeney arrived at court today in a black suit, red tie and a white shirt with a walking stick. He has been given a hearing device for use for the trial which is expected to last two weeks.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
The Guardian

Vikram Dodd and Richard Norton-Taylor
Sunday 15 February 2015

MI5 is facing allegations it was complicit in the sexual abuse of children, the high court in Northern Ireland will hear on Tuesday.

Victims of the abuse are taking legal action to force a full independent inquiry with the power to compel witnesses to testify and the security service to hand over documents.

The case, in Belfast, is the first in court over the alleged cover-up of British state involvement at the Kincora children’s home in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. It is also the first of the recent sex abuse cases allegedly tying in the British state directly. Victims allege that the cover-up over Kincora has lasted decades.

The victims want the claims of state collusion investigated by an inquiry with full powers, such as the one set up into other sex abuse scandals chaired by the New Zealand judge Lowell Goddard.

Amnesty International branded Kincora “one of the biggest scandals of our age” and backed the victims’ calls for an inquiry with full powers: “There are longstanding claims that MI5 blocked one or more police investigations into Kincora in the 1970s in order to protect its own intelligence-gathering operation, a terrible indictment which raises the spectre of countless vulnerable boys having faced further years of brutal abuse.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

Royal Commission releases report on effectiveness of OOHC practices in preventing child sexual abuse

[the report]

16 February, 2015

The Royal Commission has released a report examining issues related to the effectiveness of practices in out-of-home care in preventing child sexual abuse within institutions.

Royal Commission CEO Phillip Reed said the report, prepared by the Parenting Research Centre and the University of Melbourne, makes valuable findings which will be used to shape the Royal Commission’s final recommendations.

“The Royal Commission was set up to investigate where systems have failed to protect children, a core area of our work is also recommending ways to improve them,” he said.

The report examines practices that help prevent child sexual abuse in out-of-home care, and the evidence around ways to reduce child-on-child sexual abuse, as well as abuse perpetrated by caregivers. However, it concludes that there are very few studies that have tested which practices or types of programs lead to decreased rates of sexual abuse of children.

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AUSTRALIA
J-Wire

February 16, 2015 by J-Wire Staff

Manny Waks was a victim of child sexual abuse whilst attending Melbourne’s Yeshivah College when it was under the supervision of the late Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Groner. He has accepted an apology from Rabbi Groner’s children.

Manny Waks writes:

A historic day both personally and for the community. I’ve just concluded a lengthy meeting with the family of the late Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Groner, former head of the Yeshivah Centre. All five of his children currently residing in Melbourne attended the meeting.

They acknowledged and apologised for the sexual abuse, the cover-ups and the intimidation that ensued.

They also apologised for not reaching out sooner (despite my attempts) and for not speaking out about the intimidation.

They requested that I convey this message to all the Yeshivah victims on behalf of the Groner family (not the Yeshivah Centre or Chabad). It was a very moving and honest meeting, and I’m so pleased that it proceeded.

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AUSTRALIA
J-Wire

February 16, 2015 by J-Wire Staff

Rabbi Shlomo Meir Shlomo Kluwgant has resigned his presidency of the Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia.

Following his appearance at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse
In an email Rabbi Kluwgant wrote:

“As you know I have served in leadership positions for over two decades, and as President of ORA since May last year. I am humbled by your faith me, and I have always considered it an honour and a privilege.

In light of what has transpired the Royal Commission I have decided to step down from my position as President of ORA, effective immediately.

I believe this decision to be in the best interest of victims who have contacted me and advised that my standing down would be helpful to them in their healing process.

I have always had the best interests of the individual and the community at heart, and my track record speaks for itself.

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AUSTRALIA
J-Wire

February 16, 2015 by J-Wire News Service

In the wake of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse hearings at which he gave evidence Rabbi Meir Shlomo Kluwgant today resigned as the General Manager of Cultural & Spiritual services at Jewish Care Victoria.

Jewish Care’s CEO Bill Appleby said: “I accepted Rabbi Kluwgant’s resignation following discussions about his ongoing employment including his testimony late last week to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The President of Jewish Care Victoria, Mike Debinski, and the Board, sought clarification following Rabbi Kluwgant’s appearance at the Royal Commission last Friday.

As a result of my discussions with Rabbi Kluwgant, where he expressed regret over the text message that was sent to Mr Zeddy Lawrence, Editor of The Australian Jewish News, Rabbi Kluwgant tendered his resignation, effective immediately.

I would like to thank Rabbi Kluwgant for his service over the last 26 years at Jewish Care Victoria.
Jewish Care Victoria has a strong record of supporting victims of abuse. In 2013 it established an independent scheme to investigate historical claims of child sexual abuse in children’s homes run by predecessor Jewish welfare organisations in the 1960s.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

SHANNON DEERY HERALD SUN FEBRUARY 16, 2015

AUSTRALIA’s most senior rabbi has stepped down just days after he admitted intimidating and vilifying victims of child sexual abuse.

Meir Shlomo Kluwgant this morning resigned as president of the Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia, less than 12 months after he was elevated to the role.

Now the Herald Sun can reveal Rabbi Kluwgant has also lost his position on Victoria Police’s Multi-Faith Advisory Committee, a position he has held since 2011.

The former long-serving police chaplain now has no ties to Victoria Police.

There is now mounting pressure for Rabbi Kluwgant to be stood down from his role with community services organisation Jewish Care.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

February 16, 2015

Jane Lee, Timna Jacks

Australia’s most senior rabbi has resigned days after revelations at a royal commission that he called the father of three child abuse victims a “lunatic”.

The senior vice-president of the Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia, Rabbi Yoram Ulman, confirmed to Fairfax Media that Rabbi Meir Shlomo Kluwgant had stepped down as president of the organisation on Monday morning. Rabbi Ulman said he could not comment further at this stage.

Rabbi Kluwgant has also resigned from all his duties and positions at the Rabbinical Council of Victoria. He has also resigned as general manager of cultural and spiritual services at Jewish Care Victoria, which is investigating historical claims of child sexual abuse in Jewish children’s homes from the 1960s.

A police spokeswoman said that as of Monday, Rabbi Kluwgant was no longer a member of Victoria Police’s multi-faith council. Earlier, spokesman Sergeant Kris Hamilton said Victoria Police was aware of the statements made at the Royal Commission and would meet with Rabbi Kluwgant to discuss his membership.

This follows calls for Rabbi Kluwgant to resign from all his public positions after appearing at the Royal Commission on Institutional Responses to Child Abuse on Friday, the final day of its hearing on Yeshivah Melbourne and Yeshiva Sydney’s response to child sexual abuse allegations against convicted offenders David Cyprys, David Kramer and Daniel Hayman.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By court reporter Peta Carlyon

Australia’s most senior rabbi, Meir Shlomo Kluwgant, has resigned as president of the Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia (ORA) after a damning stint in the witness box at the royal commission into child sexual abuse.

Rabbi Kluwgant gave evidence on Friday, and was forced to admit he had sent a text message to a newspaper editor calling the father of an abuse victim a “lunatic” who neglected his children.

The message referred to Zephaniah Waks, father of Yeshivah community whistleblower Manny Waks.

The admission was made after the Waks’ family lawyer confronted Rabbi Kluwgant.

At first Rabbi Kluwgant said he could not recall sending the text, but then admitted he sent it to the editor of the Australian Jewish News, Zeddy Lawrence, on February 3.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Melissa Davey
@MelissaLDavey
Sunday 15 February 2015

When he was 18 years old, Manny Waks turned his back on life within the Orthodox sect of Judaism known as Chabad. But the effects on his life remain profound.

Now 38, Waks is still unable to read a novel, so dictated was his childhood by religious texts. Until the age of 27, he believed rubbing his eyes with his fingers after waking up in the morning would cause him to go blind unless he carried out a religious washing ceremony first.

But the most damage has been caused by the repeated sexual abuse he suffered within the umbrella organisation for the movement in Australia, known as Yeshivah.

Waks grew up across the street from Melbourne’s Yeshivah Centre, where all of his schooling and extracurricular activities took place. He and his family were completely immersed within the Yeshivah community, and anything beyond its radius was foreign to them.

For the past fortnight, that secretive world has been comprehensively picked apart at the royal commission into institutional responses into child sexual abuse.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

Australia’s most senior rabbi – who called a pedophile victim’s father ‘a lunatic’ during the child abuse royal commission – has resigned.

Rabbi Meir Shlomo Kluwgant resigned as the General Manager of Cultural and Spiritual services at Jewish Care Victoria on Monday.

He also reportedly resigned his position as president of the Organisation of Rabbis Australia.

Rabbi Kluwgant had attacked Zephaniah Waks while he gave evidence about the abuse of his son Manny at the Yeshivah Centre in Melbourne.

Rabbi Kluwgant sent an SMS to a Jewish journalist while Mr Waks was giving evidence.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Melissa Davey
@MelissaLDavey
Sunday 15 February 2015

The most senior rabbi in Australia has resigned, days after appearing before the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse.

Rabbi Meir Shlomo Kluwgant, the president of the Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia, stepped down on Monday morning, the immediate past president, Rabbi Moshe Gutnick, confirmed.

Child sexual abuse victims said Kluwgant’s position was untenable after the commission heard on Friday that he had called the father of three sons who were sexually abused a “lunatic” who was guilty of “killing” the Orthodox Jewish Chabad community within which his sons had been violated.

Zephaniah Waks told the commission how he and his family were ostracised and bullied by religious leaders after speaking out about the abuse within Chabad’s Yeshivah centre headquarters in Melbourne.

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AUSTRALIA
J-Wire

February 16, 2015 by J-Wire News Service

Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, the educational arm of Chabad-Lubavitch in New York has issued a statement in the wake of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse hearing dealing with the Sydney Yeshiva and the Melbourne Yeshivah.

The statement reads:

“The Board of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, the educational arm of Chabad-Lubavitch, has been following Australia’s Royal Commission proceedings into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse. While we appreciate the need for patience as the process takes its due course, some of the testimony which was shared with the Commission is extremely alarming, and we feel compelled to comment even before the Commission issues its findings and recommendations.

We are appalled and deeply pained to learn of the allegations against individuals associated with some of the Chabad institutions in Australia. The information that has emerged is utterly disturbing, a profound violation of the non-negotiable principles implicit– and explicit–in any and every situation where the wellbeing of a child is entrusted to the care of an educational institution.

The first, foremost and overriding concern of every one of our educational institutions, and of each individual affiliated in any way with those institutions, is the protection—physical, emotional and psychological—of any and every child entrusted to it.

We are confident that the reports emanating from Australia are the rare and unfortunate exception to our institutions; however in light of the allegations now under investigation, we are reviewing procedures and protocol to see how these can be improved and enhanced for better implementation and enforcement. Indeed, given the devastating and long-lasting effects of child sex abuse now well-known, teachers, administrative and other school personnel who become aware of any incidents of such abuse, must act responsibly and report them to authorities without delay.

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ILLINOIS
Breitbart

by WARNER TODD HUSTON
15 Feb 2015

An Islamic leader in a Chicago suburb who has been hailed as the Muslim “Billy Graham” has been accused of sexual assault of an employee at the Institute of Islamic Education that he founded.

A female worker at an Islamic school in Elgin, Illinois–a western suburb of Chicago–has accused imam Mohammad Abdullah Saleem, 75, of building up a personal relationship for months leading up to her sexual abuse.

The 23-year-old employee charges that Saleem spent months slowly getting her to let her guard down before trying to force her into a sexual relationship. As an employee of a Muslim school, the woman was required to war a veil among males in the school. But the imam, she says, began his coercion by requesting that she lower her veil.

“It’s not something that gets done,” the woman told the media. “Men and women don’t even shake hands.”

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ILLINOIS
American Bazaar

AB Wire

WASHINGTON, DC: A popular and highly revered Imam of the South Asian community in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois, known as the ‘Billy Graham’ of the community, Mohammad Abdullah Saleem, 75, has been accused by a 23-year-old Indian American woman of forcibly sexually molesting her, and has been charged in a lawsuit against him brought by her.

Three other women have also since stepped forward to the police to claim that the Imam molested them when they were children, reported The New York Times.

The Times interviewed the victim as well as the Imam, and a mediator who had tried to patch up matters between the two, local Islamic scholar Omer Mozaffar. The Imam had eventually rendered an written apology to the unidentified Indian American woman.

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ILLINOIS
The New York Times

By MATT APUZZOFEB. 14, 2015

ELGIN, Ill. — She ordinarily did not wear a veil. But it was required at the Islamic school where she worked, and she remembers being surprised when the head of the school, a conservative imam, suggested that she remove it.

When the imam, Mohammad Abdullah Saleem, came into her office, she said, he would sometimes touch her cheek or put an arm around her shoulder. Mr. Saleem was revered in her close-knit community, and she did not object at first. But simply being alone together represented a forbidden intimacy, and looking back, she said those first gestures should have been more alarming.

“It’s not something that gets done,” the 23-year-old woman said recently. “Men and women don’t even shake hands.”

Over time, she said the touching became more aggressive, reaching a point that she did something almost unheard-of in her community. She told people: her family, a social worker, an Islamic scholar. Recently, she went to the police. As word spread of what she had told them, three other women came forward, telling detectives that as young girls they had been molested by Mr. Saleem.

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ILLINOIS
Arab News

KEVIN SULLIVAN | AP
Published — Monday 16 February 2015

WASHINGTON: Allegations of sexual abuse by the longtime president of a leading Chicago-area Islamic school have roiled the region’s Muslims and raised questions about the reporting of sexual abuse in a close-knit religious community.

The allegations that Abdullah Saleem of the Institute of Islamic Education in Elgin, a Chicago suburb, sexually abused an adult female school employee surfaced in December, when a leading Muslim scholar referred to them in a blog.

Elgin police confirmed on Saturday that they are conducting a criminal investigation into allegations of sexual abuse at the school, but spokesman Cmdr. Ana Lalley said she could provide no further details.

Saleem, who has been a respected Muslim leader in Chicago for decades, has not been charged with any crime.

Mohammed Kaiseruddin, chairman of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago, the region’s most influential Muslim umbrella group, said Saleem has resigned from his post and been replaced by his son. He said Saleem left for his native India after the allegations surfaced, and he did not know if he had returned.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

Hedley Thomas
National Chief Correspondent
Brisbane

RESIDENTS at a large aged-care home have been bashed, abused, starved and stripped of pain-relief morphine patches in a culture of neglect and concealment, insiders say.

Relatives and serving and former staff — several of whom were involved in a confidential internal probe — have provided alarming evidence of abuse and neglect at the Baptist-run Kepnock Grove home for the elderly in the ­regional town of Bundaberg, about 400km north of Brisbane.

The Australian has obtained key documents, including confid­ential legal advice, and interviewed insiders about standards of care, injuries and several deaths. They say there has been an attempt­ed cover-up since an initial low-key internal probe uncovered shocking cases at the home and suspicious deaths.

The claims of a cover-up have been rejected by Jon Campbell, the chief executive of Baptist Community Services (known as Carin­ity), who instructed solicitors to make a Supreme Court applic­ation for an injunction on Friday night, preventing The Weekend Australian from publishing its art­icles on Saturday.

But Mr Campbell has since ­acknowledged serious problems at the home and said he was “deeply sorry” about the standard of care. The statement said he “strongly rejects the claim of deaths attribut­able to bashings”. …

The church-owned group adopted a strategy to cover up the problems and manage fallout from any leaks to the media or regulators, according to insiders. The Australian has obtained “strictly confidential” internal documents of public relations messaging for executives to play down the home’s troubles to journalists.

The three-page legal advice ­received by Mr Campbell two months ago describes “a signif­icant number of very serious alleg­ations about mistreatment and mismanagement of both residents and staff”, and warns of “very serious compliance, liability and reputational risks”.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Echo

‘It was a cover up’: Woman sexually-abused by leading member of Jehovah’s Witness community speaks out

by Will Frampton

A WOMAN who was sexually abused as a child by her brother-in-law has blamed her old church for covering up the crime.

Helen Doe was abused by Barry Furlong, a former ministerial servant in the Kinson Jehovah’s Witness community and husband to her sister Kim, at a family gathering when she was 10 years old.

Furlong, then in his 30s, assaulted her and later told her that if she said anything she would not get into the ‘New Order’ – a term for Jesus’ supposed Second Coming.

Furlong, 69, has been jailed for five years and three months after being found guilty of sexually assaulting four different victims during the 1970s, 80s and 90s.

Mrs Doe, who has waived her right to anonymity, said she had told her parents about the abuse three years later, but rather than contacting police they had gone to the church elders who accused her of making it up.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

Mon, Feb 16, 2015

A quiet revolution has been taking place in the leadership of the Catholic Church in Ireland since Archbishop Charles Brown became papal nuncio three years ago. He has overseen the appointment of 10 new bishops to Ireland’s 26 dioceses, with potentially five more to come this year.

Included in the appointments made are two of the church’s four archbishops, one of them the new Catholic primate of All Ireland, Archbishop Eamon Martin, who at 53 is also one the youngest bishops on the island. The youngest is the new Bishop of Kildare & Leighlin Denis Nulty (51).

No papal nuncio before has overseen the appointment of so many bishops in such a short time. This has been down to retirements, resignations, and ill-health. But it is likely to have a major influence on the Irish church in the years to come.

Frontier: the pope at the Israel-West Bank wall. photograph: Mheisen Amareen/ReutersYear of Pope Francis: no wonder Iveagh House wanted to get back in on the action

February has seen the appointment of a new bishop and the installation of another one. Fr Alphonsus Cullinan (55), a priest of Limerick diocese, was appointed to succeed Bishop Emeritus of Waterford & Lismore William Lee, who retired on grounds of ill-health.

The new Archbishop of Cashel & Emly, Kieran O’Reilly(62), was installed in the post after moving from Killaloe diocese where he was bishop since August 2010.

Candidates

Neither was a priest of the diocese to which he has been appointed, representing a departure from the practice where a bishop generally came from among priests in the diocese.

There appears to be less emphasis nowadays on academic qualifications, as opposed to pastoral experience, in the selection of candidates.

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SCOTLAND
Edinburgh Evening News

by SANDRA DICK
Published on the 16 February 2015

THE photograph on Archbishop Leo Cushley’s mobile phone is of a man wrapped up warm against the February chill, more than half way up a Munro, blue sky overhead and a carpet of pure crisp snow underfoot.

Beyond him waits the summit of Ben Lawers, 4000ft above Loch Tay and the tenth highest Munro in Scotland, its white peak stretching up and up towards the heavens.

The scenery is, naturally, stunning. Just a smear of white fluffy cloud hovering in the brilliant sky. Nothing, surely, to worry about.

The man in the photograph is, explains Archbishop Leo Cushley with a smile, “the other me”.

His floor-skimming black robes, his red skull cap and the heavy silver cross around his neck exchanged for hiker’s boots and sweater, he looks like any other hardy Munro bagger. That it’s been ages since he last found time to head uphill had no impact – the legs, he grins, coped.

He has, of course, been far too busy for much hillwalking since he took over the archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh 18 months ago.

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OREGON
Catholic Sentinel

Ed Langlois
Of the Catholic Sentinel

Patsy Seeley, a 64-year-old artist from Beaverton, didn’t darken the doors of a church for decades. The reason: As a child in Tillamook more than 50 years ago, her priest sexually abused her.

It wasn’t until she heard about the welcoming pastoral team at Holy Trinity Parish near her home that Seeley hazarded a return. It was Lent, and she ended up going through her own process of suffering and redemption. She began sitting in the back of Holy Trinity and moved forward pew by pew until now she is in front.

Mass, which she had been avoiding, was the very thing that ridded her of shame and blame.

“It was a powerful experience of reconciliation,” Seeley says. “I had been through years of psychotherapy. I had psychological healing, but not spiritual healing.”

She met with then-Archbishop John Vlazny and he suggested a retreat called Grief to Grace. Seeley attended one of the weekends and her healing was so solidified that now she is an organizer.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

James O’Shea @irishcentral February 16,2015

Pope Francis is deeply unpopular with many conservatives in the Vatican, an Irish priest who campaigns for a more open church has stated.

Fr Tony Flannery (68) said German Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller is the leader of the anti-Francis group.

Muller heads up the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the group that has opposed any liberalizing moves.

“Müller is the leader of an anti-Francis faction in the Vatican in Rome,” he told the Marian Finucane show on RTE Radio.

“He would generally be seen as the leader of that. There is an enormous power struggle going on in the Vatican at the moment. There’s no doubt about that.

“A lot of people there who are very unhappy with the type of thing that Francis is doing…He [Francis] hasn’t as yet touched the power of the CDF, and the information I’m getting is that the CDF’s power is very much as it always was, and they are operating very much as they always have been,” he said.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia

February 15, 2015

Father Louis J. Kolenkiewicz has been placed on administrative leave by Archbishop Chaput in response to concerns regarding his suitability for ministry. These concerns do not involve allegations of illegal or inappropriate contact with a minor, but constitute alleged violations of The Standards of Ministerial Behavior and Boundaries.

Additionally, they do not relate to his most recent assignment at Saint Bede the Venerable Parish in Holland (Bucks County), where he is no longer residing, but instead to an issue that first arose in 2005 and that was fully reviewed by law enforcement then and again in 2011. Additional information concerning these same allegations has been received by the Archdiocese, requiring that the matter be reviewed again. In an abundance of caution, Father Kolenkiewicz has been placed on administrative leave.

While on administrative leave, he is not permitted to exercise public ministry, administer any of the Sacraments, or present himself publicly as a member of the clergy. Announcements regarding this matter were made at all weekend Masses at Father Kolenkiewicz’s most recent assignment and counselors were made available to parishioners.

Background Information

Following the 2011 Grand Jury Report, the Archdiocese conducted a broad review of clergy personnel files. As a result of that review, Father Kolenkiewicz was previously placed on administrative leave in September 2011 in response to possible concerns regarding his suitability for ministry at that time related to alleged violations of The Standards of Ministerial Behavior and Boundaries that dated to 2005. Announcements were made at the parish where he was then serving.

His file, like those of all priests placed on administrative leave as part of that review process, was shared with law enforcement and no criminal charges resulted. At that point, an internal investigation was conducted by the Archdiocesan Office of Investigations. The results of this process were submitted to the Archdiocesan Professional Responsibility Review Board (APRRB). The APRRB is comprised of twelve men and women, both Catholic and non-Catholic, with extensive professional backgrounds in the investigation and treatment of child sexual abuse. It functions as a confidential advisory committee to the Archbishop, which assesses allegations of sexual abuse as well as allegations of violations of The Standards of Ministerial Behavior and Boundaries. This body thoroughly reviewed the matter and provided a recommendation to the Archbishop, who made the decision to return Father Kolenkiewicz to active ministry in June 2014.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Philadelphia Inquirer

DYLAN PURCELL, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
POSTED: Sunday, February 15, 2015

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia has placed a Bucks County priest on administrative leave while it reviews allegations against him.

The Archdiocese said Sunday it placed Rev. Louis J. Kolenkiewicz, 47, on leave, “in an abundance of caution.”

Archbishop Chaput took the action in response to new information stemming from allegations that were investigated twice before, in 2005 and 2011.

The Archdiocese did not disclose the details of the allegations but said Kolenkiewicz is alleged to have violated ministry standards that spell out the boundaries of appropriate behavior for interacting with children and young people.

The allegations did not involve illegal or inappropriate contact with a minor, the Archdiocese said in a statement. …

David Clohessy, director of SNAP, a national advocacy group for victims of clergy sex abuse, says it can take numerous people to provide information before meaningful change occurs.

“Oftentimes, the priests who are reinstated tend to be very politically connected both inside and outside the church,” he said in an interview Sunday.

“It’s crucial that every single person with information or suspicions come forward, “he said. “Only vigilance protects kids.”

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ROME
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Feb. 15, 2015

Rome

Pope Francis should use his platform as the first pontiff to speak before a joint session of the U.S. Congress to talk about Catholic teaching regarding the unborn, an American cardinal has said.

Galveston-Houston Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, vice president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, said he hopes Francis will use his visit to the U.S. in September to primarily speak about issues facing the family.

“I think, knowing Pope Francis, he’s attuned to the poor and the immigrant,” said DiNardo. “But some people say that he hasn’t said as much about the unborn or about pro-life [issues].”

“But when he talks, he’s very strong on it,” he continued. “So I know he’s going to do that when he comes.”

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

In earlier remarks, I had observed that the real Pope Francis did finally stand up in mid-February secret meetings with over 160 Cardinals from around the world. Many of the Cardinals had elected him two years ago mainly to save their hide. The pope’s message at these secret meeting has been substantially confirmed in an interview after the meetings by the increasingly powerful Cardinal Daniel DiNardo from Houston (USA), home of the “Bush Family Patriarch” (former US President George H.W. Bush), and of the “Bush Family Brains” (former US Secretary of State James Baker), as well as “oil capital” of the USA. I had observed that for two years, the Jesuit pope has cunningly “fed” to the docile media and to diverse Catholic religious factions, who saw their own advancement opportunities and delusional dreams in Francis’ many contradictory and/or ambiguous, but also intentionally quotable, remarks.

I asked what do we know about Pope Francis after two years? I noted we knew much, including ten matters he strongly prefers:

-Preserving a secretive monarchy with “rubber stamp Cardinals”

-Keeping women barefoot&pregnant with no Pill or plastic surgery

-Pumping the Catholic birth rate to “outbreed the Muslim threat”

-Maintaining exclusive Vatican control of criminal bishops&priests

-Putting gay folks back in “the closet” with still “closeted” priests

-Maximizing German Church tax subsidies from divorced Catholics

-Electing a “right wing, low tax” US president, preferably Jeb Bush

-Pleasing China, oil rich nations and “low tax” billionaire donors

-Invading the Middle East to protect papal donors’ oil rich allies

-Making as next pope, Pietro Parolin, protege of pope’s ally Sodano

Now, many of these Francis priorities were clearly on display in the recent interview, that, most significantly, was conducted after the Cardinals’ several secret meetings with Pope Francis, of the rising US Cardinal DiNardo. A seasoned Vatican bureaucrat, DiNardo had been “formed” originally in the Pennsylvania “pedophile priest paradise”, of infamous Cardinals Rigali, Bevilacqua and Krol, along with the current and seemingly figurehead leader of US bishops, Archbishop Kurtz, another Pennsylvania cleric who operated at times under Bevilacqua’s influence. DiNardo reportedly had been Bevilacqua’s assistant Chancellor in Pittsburgh before his seven year Vatican “tour”. DiNardo has apparently recently replaced the politically inept Cardinal Dolan and the slithering survivor Cardinal O’Malley, as the pope’s top Cardinal on US political matters.

DiNardo’s interview reflects from all indications what Francis actually said to the Cardinals secretly — and not the pious platitudes Francis typically shovels to the public through conflicted papal promoters, like those at the Boston Globe’s CRUX website. Apparently, the real Globe investigative reporters, of earlier disgraced Cardinal Law & Pulitizer Prize fame, are mainly content to sit on their decade old laurels, and await in a few months the Hollywood version starring Michael Keaton in “Spotlight”. Ironically, Cardinal Law’s former canon lawyer, Fr. Robert Oliver, is running the pope’s farcical new sex abuse commission. So much for the Globe’s enduring journalistic impact!

Cardinal DiNardo, vice president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, indicated after the pope’s secret meetings in mid-February with 160 Cardinals from around the world, presumably with authoritarian Francis’ implicit approval, that he hopes Pope Francis will use his visit to the U.S. in September to speak primarily speak about issues facing “the family”. Di Nardo indicated that Pope Francis should use his Congressional platform, as the first supreme pontiff to speak before a joint session of the U.S. Congress, to talk about Catholic teaching regarding the unborn. The pope is managing his Church so well, it appears, he thinks he can preach to Congress. Chutzpah,no?

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CANADA
The Globe and Mail

DIRK MEISSNER
VICTORIA — The Canadian Press
Published Sunday, Feb. 15 2015

A crumbling, omnipresent red brick building has been a haunting presence for thousands of British Columbia aboriginal people who say they faced physical and sexual abuse at the site.

Many of those who attended see the planned demolition of St. Michael’s Indian Residential School as the removal of a cancer that has been eroding the remote Vancouver Island community of Alert Bay.

St. Michael’s, operated by the Anglican Church from 1930 to 1975, has been the focus of heart-wrenching community debate for decades. Residents and survivors have tried to decide whether to leave the ominous empty hulk of a building as an example of past wrongs, or knock it down and remove it from sight and, hopefully, memory.

The first church-run residential school in the Alert Bay area dates back to 1882.

A massive survivor ceremony hosted by the Namgis First Nation is scheduled for Wednesday on the school grounds to celebrate the demolition of St. Michael’s.

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AUSTRALIA
Roman Catholic Diocese of Maitland and Newcastle

A STATEMENT BY WILLIAM WRIGHT, BISHOP OF MAITLAND-NEWCASTLE ON THE
DIOCESE’S RESPONSE TO THE REPORT OF THE SPECIAL COMMISSION OF INQUIRY, THE
BISHOP’S INDEPENDENT ADVISORY PANEL, FR WILLIAM BURSTON AND MGR ALLAN HART

Introduction

I am finally in a position to report to the people of the diocese and to the public on theconclusions and advice of the Independent Advisory Panel. I established ‘the Panel’ to consider what action the diocese should take in regard to adverse findings made in the Cunneen Commission Report concerning Monsignor Allan Hart and Fr Bill Burston. I will also explain the actions I have taken in the light of the Panel’s advice.

The Cunneen Commission

The Cunneen Commission was established in response to growing public concern arising from repeated media stories of conspiracies to cover-up historic crimes of child sexual abuse in the diocese, conspiracies either among diocesan personnel or police or both.

I welcomed the establishment by public authority of a Commission with sweeping powers to gather evidence and compel witnesses. I saw it as a great opportunity to establish the facts of what had actually happened. I indicated that I and the diocese would cooperate fully with the Commission.

As I said at the announcement of the Cunneen and Royal Commissions, in the context of an
apology to victims,

It’s healthy to have to face up to what you have done; to confess the wrong, to stiffen up your resolve that these things must not happen again. There can be no great change while we hide the truth, and especially when we choose to hide it from ourselves. That’s true for individuals, and it’s true for institutions.

Public statement ‘Royal Commission will be healing for the Church’ 20 th November 2012

The Cunneen Commission published three of the four volumes of its Report on 30th May 2014.

Now, as then, I support and accept the Report’s findings, for myself and on behalf of the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle.

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AUSTRALIA
Roman Catholic Diocese of Maitland and Newcastle

[with video]

In July 2014, following the release of the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry report Bishop Bill Wright established an Independent advisory panel to provide advice in relation to the report, and more specifically to address adverse comments the report made against Mgr Allan Hart and Fr Bill Burston.

Including members drawn from both within and outside the diocese, the panel was established to consist of predominantly laity, with a gender balance and inclusive of a number of non-Catholics. As communicated in September 2014, following the announcement of the panel, one member deemed it appropriate to resign their position. This position was filled by a new panel member who also elected to keep their identity confidential.

Another member of the panel also chose to resign from their position, and due to time constraints in the panel formulating their recommendations to Bishop Bill this position was not replaced. As a result of this, the panel in its final form consisted of six members and due to the changes in members since formation, the final report was delayed.

The Independent advisory panel’s final report was presented to Bishop Bill on Tuesday 16th December 2014. After due consideration of this report and following ongoing liaison with legal representatives for both Mons Hart and Fr Burston, Bishop Bill has now approved the report for publication.

Statement from Bishop Bill Wright on the Diocese’s response to the Special Commission of Inquiry Report, the Independent advisory panel and Fr William Burston and Msgr Allan Hart

Download a written statement from from Bishop Bill Wright on the Diocese’s response to the Special Commission of Inquiry Report, the Independent advisory panel and Fr William Burston and Msgr Allan Hart.

Independent advisory panel reports

Formal advice – Fr William Burston
Formal advice – Mons Allan Hart

Supporting Information

Canonical advice – Prof Ian Waters
Fr William Burston – response to panel advice

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

The Maitland-Newcastle Catholic bishop says two Hunter priests, who have retired after being described as “unimpressive witnesses” at an inquiry, have done nothing illegal.

Bill Wright says he will publicly release today the independent panel’s report into the fate of Monsignor Alan Hart and Father William Burston.

Bishop Wright established the panel because of pressure from the 2013 Special Commission of Inquiry into alleged cover-ups of child sexual abuse.

Monsignor Alan Hart retired recently because of sickness.

The commissioner found the two men were “unsatisfactory witnesses” and Bishop Wright said he is satisfied with the panel’s recommendation to retire Father Burston.

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AUSTRALIA
J-Wire

February 16, 2015 by J-Wire Staff

The Board of Southern Sydney synagogue has issued a statement distancing itself from views expressed at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse…its spiritual leader Rabbi Yosef Feldman was amongst those who gave evidence.

The statement:

Yossi290“The Board of Management of Southern Sydney Synagogue is distressed by statements made during testimony given over the past 2 weeks at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The views expressed in some evidence were extremely troubling and regrettable. We reiterate that these views do not reflect the opinions of the Board of the Synagogue.

The Board confirms the position of the Southern Sydney Synagogue in relation to reporting child abuse. We confirm that according to both Halachic and secular law it is a positive obligation to report any such offences to the secular authorities without delay. We condemn any efforts to silence those who were victimised or their families. Victims and their families should be treated with the utmost compassion and care.

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GUAM
Marianas Variety

16 Feb 2015 By Jasmine Stole – jasmine@mvguam.com – Variety News Staff

HAGÅTÑA — Last week, the Concerned Catholics of Guam group wrote to Archbishop Anthony Apuron in connection with the upcoming annual archdiocesan appeal.

The group asked how the funds received in the annual archdiocesan appeal will be used.

The letter, dated Feb. 10, was also sent to Archbishop Martin Krebs, apostolic delegate to the Pacific Islands, and Archbishop Savio Hon Tai-Fai, secretary of Vatican Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.

In it, the CCOG lists six questions for the archbishop. According to the archdiocese website, the archdiocesan appeal is meant to assist the local Catholic Church’s seminarians “in their formation to the priesthood,” as well as help chaplains at Guam Memorial Hospital and at the Department of Youth Affairs and provide for priests’ emergency needs. In April 2013, the archdiocese reported over $74, 000 was collected in the annual appeal.

The CCOG wanted to know if these funds would be used to support seminarians not from Guam or the Northern Mariana Islands and how else the archdiocese intends to use the funds collected in the annual appeal.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

Dan Box
Crime Reporter
Sydney

TWO senior Catholic priests have stood down from the church after being criticised in a damning report from a state inquiry set up to examine the alleged cover-up of child abuse in the NSW Hunter Valley.

The men, former vicars-­general of the Catholic diocese of Maitland-Newcastle, retired after a church advisory panel upheld the findings of last year’s special commission of inquiry led by Margaret Cunneen SC.

Monsignor Allan Hart was found by the commission to have given “misleading” evidence in relation to his “central role” in the diocese’s handling of allegations against a serial child-abuser, Denis McAlinden, during the early 1990s.

He was also found to have known about the church’s decis­ion to send McAlinden to Eng­land after the allegations against him came to light. McAlinden, who sexually abused dozens of young girls, died in 2005 before he could be charged by police.

Reverend William Burston, who succeeded Monsignor Hart as vicar-general in 1996, was found by the commission to be “an unimpressive witness” who used the phrase “I can’t recall” or similar terms more than 60 times while on the witness stand.

His “complete absence of recollection in relation to many ­matters concerning McAlinden … was in stark contrast with his sharp and specific recollection of things that might be perceived as tending to explain his past conduct”, the commission found.

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UNITED STATES
Reveal: The Center for Investigative Reporting

By Trey Bundy / February 14, 2015

The leadership of the Jehovah’s Witnesses – one of the world’s most insular religions – for 25 years has instructed its elders to keep cases of child sexual abuse secret from law enforcement and members of their own congregations, according to an examination of thousands of pages of documents in recent cases.

The religion’s parent organization, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, issued the directives in at least 10 memos dating back to 1989. Although the memos were anonymously written, Watchtower officials have testified that the organization’s Governing Body approved them all.

The most recent letter, dated Nov. 6, 2014, instructed elders – the spiritual leaders of local congregations – to form confidential committees to handle potential criminal matters internally.

“In some cases, the elders will form a judicial committee to handle the alleged wrongdoing that may also constitute a violation of criminal law (e.g., murder, rape, child abuse, fraud, theft, assault),” the directive stipulates. “Generally, the elders should not delay the judicial committee process, but strict confidentiality must be maintained to avoid unnecessary entanglement with secular authorities who may be conducting a criminal investigation of the matter.”

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Yes, this week the real Pope Francis did finally stand up, even if only in secret in meetings with the Cardinals who elected him two years ago mainly to save their hide. For two years, he has craftily fed into the media and diverse Catholic religious factions, who delusionally saw their own opportunities and dreams in Francis’ contradictory and/or ambiguous, but also intentionally quotable, remarks. What do we now know after two years? We now know much about Francis, including ten matters he strongly prefers:

1. A secretive absolute monarchy with rubber stamp Cardinals,
2. Barefoot and pregnant women without plastic surgery,
3. Exclusive Vatican control over criminal bishops and priests,
4. Pumping up the Catholic birth rate to “outbreed” Muslims,
5. Putting gay folks back in “the closet” with the many priests there,
6. Maximizing German tax subsidies from divorced Catholics,
7. Electing a right wing US president, preferably Jeb Bush,
8. Pleasing China and “low tax” billionaire Vatican donors,
9. Invading the Middle East to protect oil interests, and
10. Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Sodano’s protege, as next pope.

Francis is accelerating the sinking of the Vatican Titanic. It is not too late, however, for Pope Francis yet to salvage the Vatican Titanic. As Pope Francis told the Spanish daily newspaper la Vanguardia, “At my age, I don’t have much to lose.” My own preference is for Pope Francis to exercise the papal equivalent of a “nuclear option” — he should declare unequivocally that no pope is or ever was personally infallible. There is no single statement or action that Francis could make or do to help save the Catholic Church more from the unaccountable “popolatry” that is destroying the Church than making that declaration ending permanently the myth of infallibility. And Francis must know it is true.

Church leaders seem fearful of any changes. Yet, many Catholics and others are finally pressing for permanent changes. They have by now seen Vatican misconduct up close and too often. They now also understand better that many of the Vatican’s frequently ambiguous, if not vague, basic biblical and historical sources supporting papal power have too often been overplayed, if not misused, in encyclicals and a Catechism, to justify selfishly supreme papal power .

Significantly, these permanent changes to a democratic Church structure, that the Catholic majority seeks in good conscience and good faith, differ ultimately from what many misguided clerics in the Vatican now want. As the “infallible Supreme Pontiff” for millions of Catholics, Pope Francis has the best papal opportunity in many years, if not centuries, to fix the broken Catholic Church. This may also be the final papal opportunity to clean up the “holy mess” before the collapse of the “house of cards” (Francis own phrase!).

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

Report of Case Study No. 6: The response of a primary school and the Toowoomba Catholic Education Office to the conduct of Gerard Byrnes

Gerard Byrnes

On 4 October 2010, Gerard Vincent Byrnes was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment, including a non-parole period of eight years, after he pleaded guilty to 44 child sexual abuse offences against 13 girls who were then aged between eight and 10 years. Mr Byrnes was a teacher and the girls he offended against were all students in his classes. The primary school at which the offences occurred cannot be named in this report because section 10 of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 1987 (Qld) prevents its publication.

Many of the offences committed by Mr Byrnes involved touching and fondling of various parts of the girls’ bodies, both on the outside of and underneath their school clothing. Ten of the offences were particularly serious and involved digital vaginal and anal rape. With the exception of two counts of indecent treatment that involved Mr Byrnes licking girls’ vaginas, all of the offences – including the digital rape offences – were committed during class time while the girls were either standing beside Mr Byrnes’s desk near the blackboard or sitting on Mr Byrnes’s lap behind his desk.

The school was a non-State school, and was one of 32 primary and secondary schools administered by the Catholic Education Office, Diocese of Toowoomba (TCEO).

In 2007, Mr Byrnes was one of two staff members at the school who had been appointed as student protection contacts by the principal, Mr Terence Hayes. Mr Hayes was principal at the time of Mr Byrnes’s offending. Student protection contacts had responsibility for assisting the principal to ensure that suspicions or disclosures of harm, including sexual abuse, were reported to police in accordance with the school’s applicable policies and procedures for student protection (set out in the school’s Student Protection and Risk Management Kit (student protection kit). The other person appointed as a student protection contact was Learning Support Teacher, Ms Catherine Long.1

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

[the report]

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has published the ‘Report of Case Study No. 6: The response of a primary school and the Toowoomba Catholic Education Office to the conduct of Gerard Byrnes.’

On 4 October 2010, Gerard Vincent Byrnes was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment, including a non-parole period of eight years, after he pleaded guilty to 44 child sexual abuse offences against 13 girls who were then aged between eight and 10 years. Mr Byrnes was a teacher and the girls he offended against were all students in his classes.

This report examines the response by the principal and other members of staff of a Catholic primary school in Toowoomba, Queensland, to allegations of child sexual abuse made against Mr Byrnes. It also looked at the response by officers of the Catholic Education Office, Diocese of Toowoomba (TCEO), to information supplied by the primary school principal regarding the allegations.

Toowoomba school

The Commissioners found that school Principal Terence Hayes did not comply with the procedures in the school’s applicable student protection kit in that he did not report the allegations of sexual abuse KQ made during the telephone conversation on 3 September 2007 and the meeting on 6 September 2007 to the police. The Commissioners found that Mr Hayes sought to avoid responsibility for reporting to the police these allegations of sexual abuse by maintaining the responsibility to do so was that of the TCEO.

Mr Hayes spoke to TCEO Senior Education Officers Christopher Fry and Ian Hunter but did not inform them that KH had alleged that Mr Byrnes had ‘put his hand up our skirts’. He did not inform Mr Fry and Mr Hunter that he suspected that Mr Byrnes had sexually abused KH.

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VATICAN CITY
John Thavis

Pope Francis today delivered an impassioned defense of what has become a leitmotif of his pontificate – the church of mercy that reaches out to the marginalized vs. the church of rules that closes itself into a “closed caste.”

The pope’s homily was addressed to a group of new cardinals gathered for Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica. But one had the impression that it was also aimed at in-house critics who have questioned some of Francis’ statements and who have warned against an over-emphasis on mercy at the expense of doctrinal truth.

The pope said the Gospel account of Jesus’ curing of the leper was, in a sense, a model for how the church must operate with compassion to “reintegrate the marginalized” – including fallen-away Catholics – even when it provokes criticism.

“Jesus does not think of the closed-minded who are scandalized even by a work of healing, scandalized by any kind of openness, by any action outside of their mental and spiritual boxes, by any caress or sign of tenderness which does not fit into their usual thinking and their ritual purity,” the pope said.

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AUSTRALIA
J-Wire

February 15, 2015 by J-Wire Staff

Rabbi Abraham Glick has resigned from his teaching position at Melbourne’s Yeshivah College.

Rabbi Glick gave evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse .
However, he remains spiritual head of the Yeshivah Centre’s Vaad Ruchni.

Rabbi Glick had been principal of the Yeshivah College between 1986 and 2007. Both David Kramer and David Cyprys, convicted child molesters, committed offences while working at College when Rabbi Glick was principal.

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ESPANA
Publico

[What power accumulated for Javier Martinez, archbishop of Granada, for Pope Francis not to depose him but to support him? The Holy Pontiff continues to support the controversial archbishop.]

Corazón de Olivetti

Comentar
¿Qué poder acumula el arzobispo de Granada, Javier Martínez, para que el Papa Francisco, lejos de destituirle, le respalde? El llamado Papa de los pobres acaba de nombrar cardenal a Ricardo Blázquez, el obispo de Valladolid y exégeta de los conservadores neocatecumenales de Kiko Argüello. Sin embargo, el Santo Pontífice sigue apoyando al controvertido arzobispo granadino que, hace un par de semanas, viajó al Vaticano maliciando su destitución y regresó con el compromiso de no bajarse de la cruz (sic). Así que seguirá sufriendo por el acoso mediático, por el hartazgo de muchos de sus propios feligreses y por el estupor de la sociedad española que no comprende como los aires de renovación de la Santa Sede siguen sin llegar a la tierra de María Santísima.

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UNITED STATES
dotCommonweal

Rita Ferrone February 14, 2015

In December, I wrote a post here at dotCommonweal about how Pope Francis’s leadership is having an impact on the bishops of Spain. The sex abuse scandal in Granada is one of the instances in which Pope Francis’s personal initiative has made a difference. The story continues today with an update in the New York Times.

As you may recall, one of the remarkable features of the case was that the Pope himself contacted the victim, identified at the time only by the name of “Daniel,” and followed up with him.

Francis phoned him, first on August 10, to apologize, a call in which he expressed great compassion for Daniel’s suffering and told him the process was underway to address the situation. Then, on October 10, he phoned a second time to urge him to ask that sanctions be enacted. Daniel then went to a public prosecutor. It appears that the Archbishop of Granada, Francisco Xavier Martínez Fernández, had dragged his feet, doing no more than suspending three priests, a decision he defended, saying the young man had asked him to do no more than this. It has since emerged that others are involved in the scandal in Granada. As many as a dozen priests (10% of the secular clergy of the diocese) may now be facing sanctions in what is the first major scandal of its kind in Spain.

El Diario predicted on December 1 that Archbishop Martinez of Granada would be out of his post after Christmas. His successor had “virtually been named,” the story said, and further claimed that Martinez himself was looking for a way to ease the transition, rather than leaving in disgrace. (He is a biblical studies scholar and said he would welcome an assignment in the Holy Land.)

Well, here we are in February and Martinez is still Archbishop of Granada. The New York Times takes up the story today, with a fresh summary and update on what’s happening with the case. The report reveals the real name of the plaintiff: David Ramírez Castillo, and tells more about the lawsuit. It does not offer much news on the church front. Nevertheless, this quote from a spokeswoman for the Granada Archdiocese caught my eye.

Last month, Granada’s archbishop met Pope Francis in Rome, prompting speculation that he would be asked to resign.

But Paqui Pallarés, a spokeswoman for the Granada diocese, said that the pope had instead urged the archbishop to “come down from the cross” and face up to problems within his diocese.

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VATICAN CITY
The Daily Beast

Barbie Latza Nadeau

VATICAN CITY—So which is it? Are Catholics supposed to heed Pope Francis’s advice not to “breed like rabbits” or are they to follow his missive, “The choice not to have children is selfish.” And is it ok to be gay, as the world thought he meant when he said, “If a person seeks God and has goodwill, then who am I to judge?” Or is still wrong in the eyes of the Catholic Church, as he implied on recent trip to the Philippines when he said, “The family is threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage, by relativism, by the culture of the ephemeral, by a lack of openness to life.” And we won’t even mention the pope’s widely-reported punch the other cheek or the assumed endorsement of spanking on the eve of the Vatican’s child abuse commission meeting.

The pope seems to be all over the page lately, contradicting himself at every turn as each headline writer regurgitates his quotes, altering them slightly like a global game of Telephone or Chinese Whispers, where the message gets more garbled each time it is repeated. Part of the problem is the fact that in two years at the helm of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis has opened the floodgates of communication in an institution that has been effectively cloistered for centuries.

While it is no exaggeration that a pope has never been so widely quoted by the secular press, it could also be said that a pope’s intentions have never been so widely misinterpreted. While it may seem like the pope is sending mixed signals, the truth may be that most of the press and non-Catholics are just projecting their own wishes and values on him. “The pope’s communication style is not formal, it is not super controlled and it is not super thought out,” Vatican expert John Thavis and author of the Vatican Diaries told The Daily Beast. “He shoots from the hip, which makes him marvelously spontaneous, but open to misreading.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
Sky News

The offical inquiry into alleged child sex abuse may be extended to investigate crimes committed as long ago as 1945, according to Justice Lowell Goddard.

The New Zealand judge took over the inquiry after two other senior figures were forced to step down over establishment links.

The investigation is expected to focus on allegations of alleged wrongdoing dating back to 1970, but Justice Goddard says this could be extended.

The 66-year-old told The Mail On Sunday that fixed cut-off points for inquiries are “artificial”.

“The terms of reference talk about going back to 1970, but there is a push from certain quarters to take it back to about 1945,” she said.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Independent

Inquiry into child sexual abuse by establishment figures could look at crimes as far back as 1945, says inquiry chair

The inquiry into child sex abuse by establishment figures may have to examine crimes committed as far back as 1945, the judge who is chairing it has said.

Lowell Goddard also indicated that the investigation may go back even further than the end of the Second World War, arguing that fixed cut-off points for probes of this nature tended to be “artificial”.

Justice Goddard is a judge in New Zealand and was appointed by the Home Secretary after two UK-based figured had to step down from the position due to establishment links.

Critics, including alleged abuse victims, said the links of previous chairs presented a conflict of interest.

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ROME
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor February 14, 2015

ROME — On Thursday last week I was on CNN discussing two recent statements by Pope Francis: one that Catholics don’t have to “breed like rabbits,” and the other that couples who choose not to have children are part of a “greedy generation.”

The host’s question was both simple and pointed: “Is it just me, or is the pope talking out of both sides of his mouth?”

In fairness, looking at the full context of those two lines dissolves most of the apparent contradiction. The pope’s message seems to be that large families are great, but no one is obligated to have one, and that the trick is to be open to whatever God has in store.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Herald

Sunday, February 15, 2015

By: Raymond L. Flynn

When Pope Francis was first elected to lead the Catholic Church, I believed the No. 1 issue he was facing was the Vatican’s finances — not just as an issue of fiscal solvency and accountability, but as a matter of restoring global confidence in the church leadership, and rebuilding a church that has been in crisis.

I advocated then for a thorough, independent audit of the Vatican’s books and said the results should be made public.

Well, now we know that the Vatican is sitting on $1.5 billion in assets it didn’t know it had, an amount far greater than it ever expected.

Australian Cardinal George Pell, the so-called Vatican financial czar, disclosed the windfall Friday, the initial findings of a one-year study that has concluded the Vatican has more than 
$3 billion in total assets.

The veil of secrecy about the Vatican Bank and its financial situation has been a neverending source of speculation, sensationalism and even scandal going back to World War II. Movies have been made, numerous books written and thousands of sensational expose-type articles have been written about secret accounts, as well as money laundering.

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UNITED STATES
Philly.com

POSTED: Sunday, February 15, 2015

God’s Bankers
By Gerald Posner
Simon & Schuster.

732 pp. $30.

Reviewed by
Michael D. Schaffer

The New Testament is pretty clear on the incompatibility of earthly riches and the Kingdom of Heaven. But if Gerald Posner is right, a lot of people involved with Vatican finances over the years have skipped those passages.

Posner – lawyer, journalist, and Pulitzer-winning author of 11 books – reviews the church’s long, complicated history with money, but his main focus is modern times.

His primary aim is the Institute for the Works of Religion, known as the Vatican Bank or IOR, its Italian acronym. Founded in 1942, IOR is supposed to serve the religious mission of the church, but in Posner’s telling, it has also served as an offshore bank, tainted by association with shady characters whose list of sins includes money laundering, tax evasion, fraud, even murder.

Pope Pius XII created IOR at the suggestion of the Vatican’s financial consultant, Bernardino Nogara, whose investment wizardry carried the Vatican through the Great Depression. Posner spends a lot of time on Pius XII, who was criticized for not taking a stronger stand against Nazi atrocities. “In World War II, Pius XII’s silence helped protect a complex web of interlocking business interests with the Third Reich that yielded significant profits for the Vatican,” Posner writes. He uses the word likely to describe this scenario. One hopes he is wrong.

Later on, the bank was tarred by association with rogue financiers Roberto Calvi and Michele Sindona and compromised by the ineptitude of Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, a high-ranking American official at the Vatican. In Posner’s telling, Marcinkus, who ran IOR from 1971 to 1989, got the job because Pope Paul VI liked him, and kept it thanks to the gratitude of Pope John Paul II, after Marcinkus sent $5 million in 1978 to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia to help clean up a scandal at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa near Doylestown.

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ROME
Crux

By Michael O’Loughlin
National reporter February 14, 2015

ROME — A US cardinal said he has some unanswered questions about the practicality of proposed reforms in the Roman Curia, the Vatican’s main administrative bureaucracy, although he praised efforts to clean up Vatican finances and to combat clergy sexual abuse.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, archbishop of Galveston-Houston, also told Crux in a wide-ranging interview on Saturday that he’s skeptical about proposals to allow divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive Communion.

That’s especially significant since DiNardo, vice president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, was recently elected by US bishops as one of four US delegates to an October Synod of Bishops at the Vatican, where that issue is expected to be debated.

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UNITED STATES
Al Jazeera America

February 15, 2015

by Stacey Patton @SPchronvitae

Pope Francis has officially lost his revolutionary cred. Known for his willingness to challenge church doctrine, to bring religion into the 21st century and to speak truth to power, he clearly hasn’t gotten an updated parenting manual. He appears to still be reading from a 17th-century edition that advised Europeans that children could be possessed by a devil that should be driven out with a rod of correction.

During a recent general weekly audience, the pope decided to offer some advice to the world’s parents. “One time, I heard a father in a meeting with married couples say, ‘I sometimes have to smack my children a bit, but never in the face, so as to not humiliate them,’” he told the audience. “How beautiful!”

He then praised the father’s actions, saying, “He knows the sense of dignity. He has to punish them but does it justly and moves on.”

Did somebody slip a mickey in the pontiff’s communal chalice?

There is nothing beautiful or dignified about physically assaulting a child. At its core, corporal punishment — legalized brutality — is about intentionally causing pain. It is a form of humiliation that denies children the right to bodily integrity and puts them at risk for a slew of negative behaviors. If Francis had stopped — or sent one of his many researchers to the Vatican Library — to look at more than 60 years of medical literature, he would realize the numerous harms that come from smacking a kid.

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UNITED STATES
PopeCrimes& Vatican Evils.

Paris Arrow

Pope Francis the Jesuit Master of Deceits has announced, “Now in September, God willing, I will canonize Junipero Serra in the United States. He was the evangelizer of the West in the United States.” First of all, it is not “God willing” but the “Devil willing” aka “Vatican Mammon Beast willing” aka “Opus Dei Beast PR Deceits Team willing” aka “Jesuits Masters of Deceits willing”.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Independent

JAMES HANNING Sunday 15 February 2015

A victim of abuse at a notorious boys’ home in Northern Ireland will seek this week to challenge the conduct of Whitehall’s ill-fated investigation into child abuse.

A former resident at the Kincora Boys’ Home in Belfast, supported by other victims, is applying for judicial review into the decision to exclude the home from the London-based inquiry, now chaired by Justice Lowell Goddard from New Zealand. At stake is whether current and former members of MI5 can be forced to give evidence.

Widespread allegations of abuse of residents – including claims that abuse was covered up and allowed to continue unchecked for years because police and the British security services were using the home to blackmail people – are the subject of a separate inquiry in Northern Ireland, the Historical and Institutional Abuse (HIA) inquiry, led by Sir Anthony Hart.

Critics of the HIA claim it lacks sufficient powers to get to the heart of the scandal, and want Kincora to be investigated by the Goddard inquiry. On Tuesday at the High Court in Belfast, lawyers representing a Kincora victim, Gary Hoy, will challenge the decision by the Secretary of State, Theresa Villiers, to leave the Kincora investigation under the control of the HIA. The lawyers want the decision judicially reviewed. The Government confirmed last week that it will oppose the application.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Mail on Sunday

By Exclusive Interview By Simon Walters, Political Editor For The Mail On Sunday

Justice Lowell Goddard clearly doesn’t believe in the old adage that bad news comes in threes.

If she did she would have run a mile when she was asked to take charge of the independent inquiry into historic child sex abuse.

The first two women picked by Home Secretary Theresa May, Baroness Elizabeth Butler-Sloss and Dame Fiona Woolf, had to stand down over their links with the Establishment.

But as Justice Goddard sits in her office in Millbank Tower, Westminster, she shrugs off the suggestion that the job is cursed.

‘It was unfortunate for the people concerned but not a poisoned chalice.’

Elegant New Zealander Goddard, 66, is descended on her father’s side from Renata Kawepo, chief of the Ngati Kahungunu Ki Heretaunga Maori iwi (tribe) in the mid-1800s.

Her forefather’s first name translates as Leonard Returns By Night, a quaint fusion of English and Maori. Although only one-sixteenth Maori, it shows in Goddard’s tall, athletic frame.

She was made a Dame last year, but talk of the Establishment is batted away. It doesn’t exist where she comes from, she maintains.

‘New Zealand is a classless society. We aren’t concerned who people’s great-grandfather was, it’s what they do themselves that’s important.

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AUSTRALIA
J-Wire

February 15, 2015 by Henry Benjamin

Rabbi Meir Shlomo Kluwgant, the current president of the Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia was quizzed at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse hearing in Melbourne on Friday about a text he sent in which he wrote about Zephaniah Waks “He is attacking Chabad”.

During his evidence, Rabbi Kluwgant said: I might have sent that yes” when quizzed about a text message relating to whistleblower Manny Waks’s father Zephaniah. He was asked if he had sent…

“Zephaniah is killing us. Zephaniah is attacking Chabad. He is a lunatic on the fringe, guilty of neglect of his own children.m Where was he when all this was happening? ” Rabbi Kluwgant responded: “I may have sent that, yes”

He told the Commission he is the immediate past president of the Rabbinical Council of Victoria and is currently general manager of cultural and spiritual services at Jewish Care Victoria and he works as a minister for the Chabad Institutions of Australia.

Quizzed on the Rabbinical Council of Victoria by Counsel assisting the Commission Maria Gerace, Rabbi Kluwgant told the Commission: “Initially it was set up to be a rather insular organisation as support for rabbis providing professional development and support. When I took on the role as president I expanded those so that it would be engaged with the broader community not just the Jewish community through a range of multi-faith and multicultural initiatives as well.”

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ILLINOIS
Belleville News-Democrat

BY GEORGE PAWLACZYK AND BETH HUNDSDORFER
News-Democrat

February 14, 2015

A lawsuit against a Catholic priest last assigned to Belleville has resulted in a court order by a Minnesota judge requiring the religious organization that operates the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows to turn over any records of alleged molestation of minors by clergy from 1949 to 1978.

The order affects offices of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate in all 50 states, which must turn over records of child abuse pertaining to any priest that occurred during the nearly three decade span. The Oblates at the Shrine have until March 27 to comply.

The inclusive dates are based on when the late Rev. James V. Fitzgerald was ordained and when he allegedly sexually abused two young brothers during a fishing trip in Minnesota.

Fitzgerald, known by his middle name of “Vincent,” worked at parishes in Minnesota and South Dakota until his assignment in 1994 at age 75 to the Shrine in Belleville. Until his death in 2009, Fitzgerald resided at St. Henry’s Oblate Residence, 200 N. 60th St., Belleville.

The Rev. James Brobst, Midwest Area councilor for the Oblates, said when Fitzgerald was in Belleville, he “did not have a ministry.” Brobst referred questions as to whether Shrine administrators knew at the time of Fitzgerald’s assignment to Belleville that he had been accused of child abuse to the religious order’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. The Rev. William Antone, the provincial who heads the order in the United States, could not be reached for comment.

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MINNESOTA
Canonical Consultation

02/14/2015

Jennifer Haselberger

As I mentioned in an earlier post, it is very possible that the path out of bankruptcy for the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis will include parishes and other institutions contributing to the financial compensation offered to victims of clergy sexual abuse. This could happen in several ways, including by parish insurance policies providing settlement money, parishes voluntarily agreeing to contribute to the final settlement, or with a judgment in support of an alter ego claim. The latter, as I have already mentioned, enables a court to treat separate corporations (such as the parish corporations or other related non-profits) as one legal entity with the Archdiocese, and to hold each liable for the debts of the other and to consolidate the assets of both.

Since that last posting, I have received many emails and comments regarding the alter ego argument. Most, frankly, take the position that the alter ego status is already established by the level of control exercised by the Archbishop over parishes and institutions. However, it is not that easy.

A lot of the control exercised by the Archbishop occurs in the areas of religious practice, such as the appointing of pastors, establishing regulations for the administration of the sacraments, and even dictating prayers and special collections for charitable purposes. A court is unlikely to consider these aspects of Archdiocesan control when determining whether the parish is an alter ego because of constitutional issues arising from the First Amendment. What will be of interest to the court is the extent to which the Archbishop’s authority over the temporal operations of the parishes and institutions exceeds that which is permitted by those corporations’ governing documents.

As I have already mentioned, the alter ego claim was posited by the Creditors Committee in the bankruptcy proceedings of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, but the Committee’s motion for an alter ego judgment and substantive consolidation failed. The Committee’s argument for the determination was ‘that the Parishes and the Debtor are part of a single enterprise, both financially and operationally, and that the Parishes are incapable of surviving as independent entities without the Debtor’s financial and operational support.’ The Committee also noted the overlap between the leadership of the Archdiocese and each Parish. Furthermore, while the Committee conceded that each of the Parishes was separately incorporated, it alleged that the Debtor and the Parishes do not adhere to typical corporate formalities and separateness.

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SPAIN
The New York Times

By RAPHAEL MINDER
FEB. 14, 2015

GRANADA, Spain — David Ramírez Castillo first met his parish priest, the Rev. Román Martínez, as a 7-year-old catechism student. Later, he became one of his altar boys. Step by step, Mr. Ramírez says, the priest convinced him that to deepen his faith he should spend more time with him and the other clergy members.

What started as afternoon visits after Mass turned into overnight stays and weekends away in a shared bed, including at the Summit, a private hilltop villa complete with a swimming pool, he says.

There, Mr. Ramírez, now 25 and still a Catholic, says he was repeatedly abused by Father Martínez or made to watch him and others, including several priests, perform sex over three years, starting in 2004 when he was 14. The priests deny the accusations, and a lawyer representing them called the charges “invented.”

Nevertheless, the case, which includes allegations of a sex ring and a cover-up involving as many as 10 priests — accusations supported by one other plaintiff as well as by several witnesses — has become one of the most serious sexual abuse scandals to emerge under Pope Francis.

It has also become a prime example of the more open and assertive approach to the issue of clergy sexual abuse that Pope Francis has taken as he shifts the tone in a Vatican long criticized for neglecting decades of abuses by priests in parishes around the world.

Though the Vatican’s record remains mixed in following up on the numerous sexual abuse cases that precede this one, Mr. Ramírez wrote the pope about his claims last August, he said. Just days later, the pope called him, encouraging him to pursue his complaints, and then personally ordered an investigation into the case, demanding complete transparency.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Pope Francis must end now the Vatican’s pervasive secrecy and media manipulation policies that he inherited from ex-Pope Benedict. Francis bravely confronted corrupt Vatican officials at Christmas. Now before Easter, Pope Francis must confront their longtime incompetent leader, ex-Pope Benedict, whose proxies still seek to stymie Francis’ reform efforts. Francis must now release the so-called Gay Lobby Report and make the ex-Pope’s butler available with impunity for media interviews. Francis will begin his 80th year in less than ten months and is running out of time. It is now or never.

Papal moral authority, the main source of modern papal power, will continue to decline as escalating governmental investigations and insider leaks from the ex-Pope’s proxies and others steadily erode worldwide trust in Catholic Church leaders. When criminal actions have occurred, as evidently they have at the Vatican, it is inevitable (and proper) that official refusals, to meet reasonable requests for access to relevant information and records, will be seen as hiding the truth.

The latest demand for reasonable archive access is from Jesuit educated Gerald Posner, author of the important new expose, “God’s Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican” , see at [Amazon]“. Posner’s latest plea for transparency about Holocaust victims’ related secret archives, almost three quarters of a century later, is now in the frequently conservative Los Angeles Times, “It’s high time for Pope Francis to open the Vatican Bank’s files” here,

[Los Angeles Times]

. As Francis faces continued opposition from the ex-Pope’s proxies, likely with the ex-Pope’s acquiescence if not encouragement, it is even more important to set the full record straight now, please see, ” ‘There is an ‘anti-Francis faction’ in Rome, says Irish priest” here,

[Irish Independent]

, and see also, “Pope Francis vs. Pope Benedict: Who is Infallible ? ” here,

[Christian Catholicism]

The overall implications and fatal flaw of Francis’ present approach are discussed in my remarks, “The Crisis Pope Francis Faces” here [Christian Catholicism] .

Reporters often object to their colleagues being bullied, as they should. Vatican bullying also impedes reporters’ digestion of persistent papal propaganda. Vatican reporting is already a tough enough assignment without “Jesuit bouncer tactics”. Yet, an Italian TV reporter who dared to ask, at the recent sex abuse commission’s farcical press conference about holding bishops accountable, why there were delays in the Vatican’s controlled criminal trial of Archbishop Wesolowski (who is accused of sexually abusing five youths in the Dominican Republic), had her microphone taken from her at the direction of Jesuit Fr. Lombardi, the pope’s spokesman, for daring to press the question. So much for accountability and transparency! Bullying always backfires, at least with the media. Fr. Lombardi should publicly apologize to the reporter, who was just doing her job, well and bravely at that! Lombardi cannot expect the “softball treatment” from all reporters that he too often gets, for example, from the Boston Globe’s John Allen or the National Catholic Reporter’s Josh McElwee.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Jennifer McShane
PUBLISHED 14/02/2015

An Irish priest has said that the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) is part of an “anti-Francis faction” opposed to Pope Francis”.

Speaking on Radio One today, Fr Tony Flannery (68) said CDF’s Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller was also the leader of an anti-Francis group or faction against the Pope in the Vatican.

“Müller is the leader of an anti-Francis faction in the Vatican in Rome,” the Galway cleric told the Miriam Finucane show.

“He would generally be seen as the leader of that. There is an enormous power struggle going on in the Vatican, at the moment, there’s no doubt about that,” the 68-year-old said.

“A lot of people there who are very unhappy with the type of thing that Francis is doing,” he said, adding that he was a fan of Francis and liked the way he was going about reforming the church.

Fr Flannery also said that the Pope was unable to touch the power of the CDF, who are still “very strong and powerful.” …

“At the height of the clerical sexual abuse cases in Ireland, I wrote in an article “The priesthood in Ireland now is not as Jesus intended,” he said.

He said that this led to him being “silenced” by Rome, but he chose to ignore that, but added that he cannot officially practice Ministry.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

[with audio]

(Vatican Radio) The Director of the Holy See’s Press Office, Father Federico Lombardi, says the decentralization of the Curia, the role of women and the ongoing economic and administrative reforms were among the main topics discussed by the cardinals at the Consistory on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning. Father Lombardi’s remarks came at a press briefing on the 2nd day of the cardinals’ discussions on reform of the Roman Curia.

Speaking to the journalists gathered at the Holy See’s Press Office, Father Lombardi said the discussions at the Extraordinary Consistory had proceeded in a “very calm and constructive” atmosphere and the last 24 hours had seen speeches by 40 cardinals on a broad range of topics. He confirmed that Pope Francis was present during the sessions but did not speak himself. Father Lombardi said one of the recurring themes during the discussions was the relationship between the roman Curia and the local Bishops Conferences and how to decentralize the Curia “in a spirit of subsidiarity.” In this context, he said speakers spoke of the need to decide which responsibilities should be handled by the Curia and which by the local Church but also of how the central role of the Curia is important in countries where the local churches are in “a situation of weakness.”

Turning to the role of lay people and women within the Vatican, Father Lombardi said a number of speakers expressed the hope of “an increasingly active role” for them, especially when it comes to the issue of women holding positions of leadership within the roman Curia.

Friday morning’s session was entirely given over to a wide-ranging discussion on the ongoing economic reforms being carried out by the newly-formed Secretariat for the Economy. Cardinal George Pell, the Secretariat’s head and three other speakers gave a presentation, supplemented by slides, on the current state of the Vatican’s finances. Father Lombardi said many of those present expressed appreciation for the new shape of the Holy See’s finances that is emerging thanks to these reforms. He said this reform process comes across as a fairly “convincing” one that is earning plaudits for its “transparency and competency.” Father Lombardi said Friday afternoon’s session was scheduled to include a presentation by U.S. Cardinal Patrick O’Malley reporting on the work of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

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MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio

Madeleine Baran Feb 13, 2015

The board of trustees and alumni association at Shattuck-St. Mary’s expressed “unqualified support” for the school’s president, Nick Stoneman, in a letter to alumni sent in response to an MPR News report that found Stoneman authorized a $12,500 confidential payment to a teacher caught with child pornography.

The letter said Stoneman acted swiftly to protect students, find out what happened and upheld “our legal and ethical responsibilities.”

MPR News reported last week that Stoneman had negotiated a confidential separation agreement with teacher Lynn Seibel in 2003 after the Faribault boarding school found child pornography on his work computer. Stoneman did not call police, and Seibel continued to work with minors in other states.

Police learned of the pornography in 2012 while investigating allegations that Seibel sexually abused students at Shattuck-St. Mary’s. In 2013, Seibel pleaded guilty to abusing six Shattuck-St. Mary’s students from 1999 to 2003.

Abby Carlstrom Humphrey, the chair of the board of trustees, and Maggie Osterbauer, the president of the alumni association, praised Stoneman’s leadership in the Feb. 9 letter to alumni.

“It is this very type of clear focus on doing the right thing that has led the Board of Trustees and Alumni Association to lend their unqualified support to Nick and his entire leadership team — a group of individuals eminently qualified, capable, and committed to bringing to life the mission of the School and providing compelling opportunities for the students it serves,” they wrote.

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AUSTRALIA
J-Wire

February 13, 2015 by Henry Benjamin

Rabbi Yaakov Glasman, president of the Rabbinical Council of Victoria between 2009 and 2012 when the RCV was seeking to shape community responses to the issue of child sexual abuse.

Rabbi Glasman agreed with Counsel assisting Commission Maria Gerace’s statement was that he understood that there might be “conflicting community attitudes to coming forward, to report abuse or to deal with the authorities”.

When asked if he was aware of the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities when educating in the area of child abuse or domestic abuse, Rabbi Glasman said their training was more in line with the teaching of jewish ethics but that he would pass on information of the Charter to the current president.

Rabbi Glasman told the Commission that he had children currently attending the Yeshiva Beth Rivkah College. He was asked if he had any concerns about the current policies or procedures in relation to Yeshivah Beth Rivkah College “would you allow your children to attend?” Rabbi Glasman responded: “Quite the contrary. If I had concerns my kids wouldn’t be there now.”

Rabbi Yakov Glasman responding to Tom Danos that he had been advised that his appearance at the Commission was not necessary but he had volunteered to do so.

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AUSTRALIA
Failed Messiah

Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

After hearing long hours of testimony – often very shocking testimony – from child sex abuse victims and their families, Chabad rabbis and officials including a top Chabad lay leader, the Australian Royal Commission investigating child sex abuse at Chabad institutions has concluded its hearings.

Some highlights:

• Rabbi Meir Shlomo Kluwgant, currently the head of the Organization of Rabbis of Australasia and police chaplain admitted telling a victim that the victim was wrong to have sent a politely worded email to the Chabad community that asked people to cooperate with police investigating the abuse and to contact the police directly if they had been victimized.

Kluwgant’s asserted reason for doing this was because he had acted as a broker, bringing together police and top Chabad rabbis to discuss the child sex abuse issue and work out a way forward in which those top rabbis would sign a letter calling on the community to cooperate with the police investigation and to report any child sex abuse to the police. Judaism, Kluwgant said, wants one clear voice sounded in unity – not several voices, even if those several voices are all saying the same thing. The man’s email – Kluwgant claims he did not know the man was victim until later – ruined that.

Kluwgant admitted the email was polite, well written and “brilliant” and Kluwgant said he did not disagree with its content in any way. The only issue, Kluwgant said, is that it was sent. But Kluwgant went on to say that if he had known the man was a child sex abuse victim, he (Kluwgant) would have signed the email letter with him.

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GUAM
Jungle Watch

ThoughtfulCatholic.com blogger, Chuck White, has written a letter to Archbishop Cordileone of San Francisco advising him that Fr. John Wadeson may have returned to San Francisco and be ministering secretly there. Read it here:

Dear Archbishop Cordileone

Below is a review of the Wadeson file.

11/15/2002 – Fr. John Wadeson, formerly a priest of the religious order Society of the Divine Word (Societas Verbi Divini – S.V.D.), otherwise known as Missionaries of the Divine Word, after being granted an indult of voluntary exclaustration (release from his order) is incardinated as a diocesan priest in the Archdiocese of Agana by Archbishop Anthony S. Apuron.

02/17/2004 – Fr. Wadeson’s name appears on a report by the Archdiocese of Agana which is published in the Los Angeles Times. The report notes that Fr. Wadeson was twice accused of sexually molesting minors between the years 1973 and 1977 when he was assigned to Verbum Dei High School in the Los Angeles diocese.

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 13 February 2015)

Christian Brother William John Obbens (also known as Brother “Dominic” Obbens), now aged 69 and living in Sydney, will face four charges of indecent assault of “persons under 16 under authority” when his case has another mention in court in March 2015. Police allege that the offences were committed on two boys, then aged 13 and 12, in the late 1980s, while Brother Obbens was a teacher at St Patrick’s Christian Brothers College in Goulburn, south-western New South Wales.

Obbens was arrested at his Sydney home on 11 December 2014 by detectives from Goulburn (in a special unit called Strike Force Charish). The investigators are Senior Detective Dave Turner and Senior Detective Michael Callegha. A leading officer in the Goulburn Detectives Office is Detective Sergeant Matt Woods.

This case had its first mention in Goulburn Local Court on 22 December 2014 when the prosecutors officially filed the charges against Brother Obbens relating to one boy. The court granted an adjournment, during which the prosecutors and the defence were to exchange some court documentation.

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 13 February 2015)

Christian Brother William Peter Standen (known as Brother “David” Standen), who has taught at Catholic schools in Sydney and regional New South Wales, will face a total of 31 child-sex charges when his case comes up for another mention in court in March 2015. The case had a mention in court on 11 February 2015 for a brief administrative process.

The police investigation is being conducted by a unit of detectives at Goulburn, southern NSW, where one of Brother Standen’s former schools (St Patrick’s College) was located.

According to court documents, Brother Standen is alleged to have assaulted 17 boys at this school between 1978 and 1981.

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VATICAN CITY
John Thavis

Most of the 20 new cardinals created today by Pope Francis never thought they’d be wearing the cardinal’s red hat. Most of them never wanted to be a cardinal.

And that, perhaps, is the most important defining quality of the pope’s choices, as he shifts the College of Cardinals away from careerists and toward pastors who, as true shepherds, “live with the smell of the sheep.”

Sure, geography is part of the pope’s plan. By choosing cardinals from such far-flung places as Tonga, Myanmar and Cape Verde, he is expanding the global mix in an institution that has been dominated for centuries by Europe.

The pope is also choosing prelates from small dioceses, places that have never had a cardinal before. I think this is a deliberate move to end the perception that cardinals should be the most powerful church leaders from the most populous and “important” archdioceses.

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MISSOURI
Columbia Tribune

By JANESE SILVEY

Friday, June 1, 2012
Updated: 10:19 am, Wed May 8, 2013

Harold Warren continues to prepare bodies for visitations and funerals even though he’s no longer licensed to do so, according to a lawsuit filed against his employer, Millard Family Chapels, late last week.

Rosetta “Darla” Fisher and Heidi Wick-Houser are suing the funeral home company for wrongful termination after both were fired Aug. 31.

Owner Reid Millard told them it was a business decision to eliminate the positions, although the lawsuit says the same jobs later were advertised as being open. Their attorney believes they were fired for complaining about Warren.

“There were two things they complained about — Harold Warren working there and operating without a license, and they were asked to do things that put their own license in jeopardy,” Columbia attorney George Smith said.

The lawsuit also accuses Kevin Clohessy — a former priest accused of clergy sexual abuse in 2003 — of not holding a license while performing duties. Instances recorded in the lawsuit span from April 2011 to August, but the petition says Clohessy managed the Columbia funeral home for more than a year before that. The Missouri Division of Professional Registration shows Clohessy was issued a funeral director license on June 15.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Radio New Zealand

The British Government is considering extending the scope of the child sexual abuse inquiry led by New Zealand’s Justice Lowell Goddard.

A Home Affairs Committee report says it should cover Scotland and Northern Ireland, rather than just England and Wales.

The BBC reports the independent inquiry was set up by the Home Secretary last year to consider whether public bodies and other institutions failed in their duty to protect children.

The inquiry will investigate whether “public bodies and other non-state institutions have taken seriously their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse in England and Wales”.

Justice Goddard said it would seek to “revisit past wrongs”, find out what happened and look at what is currently happening to ensure there is “not only redress but, most importantly, that children now and for the future are protected”.

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UNITED STATES
Los Angeles Times

Op-Ed

By GERALD POSNER

Pope Francis, who has worked hard to carve out a reputation as a reformer, is facing one of his most daunting challenges when it comes to the Catholic Church’s finances, particularly the Vatican Bank. Since World War II — when the bank was created as the equivalent of the Federal Reserve combined with a commercial bank — it has operated with few checks and balances. Over the decades, it has become embroiled in seemingly endless scandals that include questions about wartime profiteering with Nazis, gigantic business schemes and political slush funds.

The Vatican did not even have a law against money laundering until 2011. Some previous popes — including Paul VI in the 1960s and John Paul II in the 1980s — had promised upon their election to tame the church’s unruly finances. But they were inevitably defeated by entrenched powers inside Vatican City who pretended to embrace reforms while working surreptitiously to maintain the bank’s outlier status. The issue facing the church is whether Francis, riding a remarkable wave of international popularity and goodwill, can accomplish what frustrated his predecessors.

Since becoming pope in 2013, Francis has energetically tried to remake the bank into a transparent and accountable institution through decrees, key appointments and an overall reorganization. By tapping outsiders for important management and enforcement roles at the Vatican Bank, he has started to loosen the grip of old-guard clerics, mostly Italian, who have long wielded the city-state’s money power. And Francis’ appointment of a respected cardinal, George Pell of Australia, to oversee a new uber financial department, has received a mostly positive reception from Vatican watchers.

But has Francis done enough? Will the Vatican Bank move forward as a compliant member of the international financial community, or will it remain the equivalent of an offshore bank in the heart of Rome? It is too early to tell, in part because no one is certain how long Francis will be pope.

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VATICAN CITY
Daily Mail (UK)

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY, Feb 14 (Reuters) – Pope Francis on Saturday inducted new Roman Catholic cardinals to the group that will choose his successor, telling them their high rank was a call to be humble and work for justice.

Francis elevated 20 prelates, many of them from developing countries, at a ceremony in St. Peter’s Basilica. It was attended by former Pope Benedict XVI, making only his fifth public appearance at a church event since his resignation in 2013.

In his homily, Francis said being a cardinal “is not a kind of accessory, a decoration, like an honorary title”. He warned against being “puffed up with pride”, adding: “Nor are church dignitaries immune from this temptation.”

Cardinals are the pope’s highest ranking aides in Rome and around the world. Those under 80 can enter a secret conclave to elect the next pontiff after Francis’s death or resignation.

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SOUTH CAROLINA
The Post and Courier

Christina Elmore

A Baptist preacher who once owned a wayward boys home that closed its doors 30 years ago in Walterboro amid accusations of physical abuse and kidnapping has died.

Mack Ford, 82, of Louisiana, was found dead in his home around 8 p.m. Wednesday, The Times-Picayune of New Orleans reported. He appeared to have died from natural causes, according to the news outlet, though an autopsy was scheduled.

Ford’s name gained notoriety locally in 1984 after two children who ran from his New Bethany Baptist Church Home for Boys in Walterboro complained to authorities of the conditions there.

Colleton County sheriff’s deputies raided the facility in May of that year and found evidence of a jail-like cell, handcuffings, beatings and spankings with a plastic pipe that had been referred to as “the rod of correction,” authorities reported at the time.

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FLORIDA
WFTS

Edward Lawrence

A former priest convicted of molesting boys will walk out of prison Saturday to the shock of his victims.

Robert Schaeufele pleaded guilty in 2003.

“It’s like a bomb dropped at your feet,” said Chris McCafferty, one of his victims.

McCafferty put this day out of his mind because he thought it wouldn’t come for another 13 ½ years.

But a legal technicality will allow the former priest who admitted to sexually abusing McCafferty and other children will walk out of prison.

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CANADA
The Peterborough Examiner

By Kennedy Gordon, Peterborough Examiner
Friday, February 13, 2015

A former pastor was found guilty Friday of two sex-related charges involving a then-teenaged boy 25 years ago.

Mr. Justice Hugh O’Connell found Clifton Pelley guilty of sexual assault and gross indecency, but not guilty of three other charges involving a different man who alleged Pelley drugged him and sexually assaulted him as a teen.

O’Connell told the court he had no difficult believing the testimony of the victim, who said Pelley had taken him into a church office after a tri p to the U.S. In 1985 and told him he had the authority of the church and the police to inspect his genitals.

Pelley told the then-16-year-old that a girl had been impregnated on the trip and he had to look for a distinctive marking on the genitals of the boys of the church. The boy agreed and Pelley carried out the inspection.

“I did not find this to be scripted evidence. Rather, I found it to be very telling testimony … very truthful,” O’Connell said. “I completely accept that Mr. Pelley used the ruse of the pregnancy” to carry out the abuse.

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AUSTRALIA
J-Wire

February 13, 2015 by Henry Benjamin

The final day of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse saw Rabbi Zvi Telsner complete his evidence followed by appearances by Rabbi Klugwant, Rabbi Smukler

During the course of his testimony Rabbi Telsner expressed his view that gays and pedophiles could be cured.

The following is the evidence under questioning by Christine Hanscombe

CHRISTINE HANSCOMBE: Do you accept the proposition that pedophiles can be for want of a better word cured by counselling and spiritual guidance

RABBI ZVI TELSNER: There is a possibility. I am not an expert in the field. I suspect there may be a small percentage possibility. I can’t really say.

CHRISTINE HANSCOMBE: It would appear that Rabbi Groner held the view that some form of spiritual care might cure David Cyprys. Is that an issue that you know anything about Rabbi Groner considering.

RABBI ZVI TELSNER: You said about spiritual care. What do you mean about spiritual care?

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

By Michael O’Loughlin
National reporter February 13, 2015

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican’s ongoing efforts to reform its financial dealings were given a thumbs-up from the world’s cardinals in Rome today, a Vatican spokesman said.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi briefed reporters after a three-hour meeting of the College of Cardinals, during which the prelates were given an update by the pope’s point man on finances, Australian Cardinal George Pell, and three other leaders of the clean-up operation launched under Pope Francis.

The cardinals were appreciative of Pell’s work, Lombardi said.

“This type of reform helps the credibility of the Church, [and] there’s a sense that this spirit should also spread to dioceses,” he said.

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VATICAN CITY
Standard-Times

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Saturday promoted the No. 2 officer of the Swiss Guards to commander of the colorful, 500-year-old army, whose members take an oath to protect pontiffs.

The Vatican said that Lt. Col. Christoph Graf will now command the guardsmen, who stand vigilant during papal ceremonies.

Graf, who joined the Guards in 1987, takes the place of Col. Daniel Anrig, who had been commander since 2008.

Francis didn’t elaborate about why he asked Anrig to step down, except to say it was time for “renewal.” Anrig said in a recent interview that he didn’t ask why he was sent packing. There were reports that Anrig’s style, described as severe, didn’t sync with Francis’ informality. The pontiff, in an interview in December, denied that Anrig was removed because he was too rigid.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Agency

By Andrea Gagliarducci

Vatican City, Feb 13, 2015 / 02:18 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Reform was the watchword as cardinals met at the Vatican for briefings about the state of Vatican finances and about the work of a pontifical commission that protects minors.

Cardinal Christoph Schonborn of Vienna spoke with CNA about the extraordinary consistory of cardinals, reporting that “we are in the middle of a discussion, there are things to be refined, but there is a strong papal will to carry forward the reforms, and I can sense this among cardinals as well.”

Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Holy See Press Office, discussed the extraordinary consistory in a media briefing.

According to Fr. Lombardi, the extraordinary consistory took place “in a serene and constructive atmosphere.” The press office director said that 164 cardinals took part, including the 19 of 20 cardinals-to-be who will receive their red hats on Saturday.

He stressed that no decisions may be expected from it.

The extraordinary consistory was supposed to end the morning of Feb. 13, but a new session was added to allow Cardinal Sean O’Malley, president of the Pontifical Commission of Protection of Minors, to report about how the commission is shaping its statutes and outlining its future work.

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PUERTO RICO
ABC News

Associated Press

A priest in Puerto Rico has been charged with lewd acts in a case that authorities say involved a 14-year-old boy.

Police said Friday that 50-year-old Floyd Lenin McCoy was arrested and later released on $5,000 bond. He is scheduled to appear in court March 4 and has been ordered to wear an ankle monitor.

It was not immediately clear if he has a lawyer.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Mayaguez contacted prosecutors about the case and suspended McCoy from a church in the western town of Hormigueros. The island’s Justice Department says the alleged incidents occurred between 2013 and 2014.

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PUERTO RICO
Primera Hora

[Mayagüez. The Rev. Floyd McCoy, a suspended priest of the parish of La Monserrate in Hormigueros, arrived this morning to court to face charges of lewd acts. The District Attorney Mayagüez, Blanca Portela, presented today charges of lewd acts committed between 2013 and 2014 against a minor.]

Por Daileen Joan Rodríguez
02/13/2015

Mayagüez. El suspendido sacerdote Floyd McCoy de la parroquia La Monserrate en Hormigueros, llegó esta mañana al Tribunal de Primera Instancia, para enfrentar cargos por actos lascivos.

La fiscal del distrito de Mayagüez, Blanca Portela, presentaría hoy cargos por actos lascivos cometidos entre el 2013 al 2014 contra un menor de edad.

El sacerdote fue suspendido por orden del obispo Roberto Gonzalez en septiembre de 2014, cuando surgió la querella.

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VATICAN CITY
euronews

We speak to Sébastien Maillard, Vatican correspondent for the French newspaper la Croix, about the latest organisational reforms in the Roman Catholic Church civil service, the Curia.

Fabien Farge, euronews: “It’s been a busy week in the Vatican, two years after Pope Benedict’s shock abdication. His successor, Pope Francis, launched ambitious reforms of the Catholic Curia. Sébastien, where are we with this famous reform of the Curia, and why change it?”

Sébastien Maillard: “Before the Conclave at which Pope Francis was elected almost two years ago, in March 2013, all the cardinals assembled and agreed it was high time to tackle this reform. The pope has waited for real movement on it before reconvening the cardinals. At this stage, in the past few days, he’s been consulting them for advice about the reform they asked for, a sort of mandate they entrusted to him after his election.”

euronews: “That mandate is already under way. There has already been a reshaping of the economic and financial services, even a secretariat for the economy.”

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VATICAN CITY
Religion News Service

David Gibson | February 13, 2015

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Francis’ new cardinals, who will be formally installed on Saturday (Feb. 14), represent everything the pope says he wants for the future of Catholicism: a church that reaches out to the periphery and the margins, and one that represents those frontiers more than the central administration in Rome.

That’s why he picked cardinals for the first time ever from countries like Myanmar and Cape Verde, as well as one from the Pacific archipelago of Tonga, which has just 15,000 Catholics out of a population of 100,000 spread across 176 islands.

The 15 new cardinals who are of voting age — five new “honorary” cardinals are over 80 and ineligible to vote for the next pope — come from 14 countries and include prelates from Ethiopia, Panama, Thailand and Vietnam, and from places in Europe far removed from the traditional power dioceses of Old World Catholicism.

In fact, only one new cardinal comes from the Roman Curia, the Italian-dominated papal bureaucracy that Francis is struggling to tame in the wake of a series of scandals that revealed a deep dysfunction at Catholicism’s home office.

But will diversifying the College of Cardinals make it look more like the church’s global flock of 1.2 billion members? Or will it leave the electors so fragmented by geography, language and viewpoints that they won’t be able to serve as a counterweight to career churchmen in Rome?

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Saturday, Feb. 14

Statement by Mary Caplan of New York City, SNAP Leader, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 917 439 4187, mcaplan682@aol.com )

On Sunday, the hierarchy of the Catholic church becomes more inclusive than ever as prelates are promoted from several new nations. For the safety of kids, this could be problematic.

[Crux]

In our experience, very few church officials handle clergy sex crimes and cover ups well. Bishops in the developed world, however, have made minimal progress but only because they’ve been forced to act due to civil lawsuits, journalistic investigations, educated laity and well-funded, sophisticated law enforcement agencies. Sadly, these factors are less prevalent in the developing world.

In the developing world, there tend more religious order priests, closer ties between government and religion and a wider power and education gap between clerics and lay people. These are problematic factors too.

So bishops in those regions tend to be even less responsive and forthcoming about clergy sex crimes and cover ups. Put more bluntly, they tend to conceal clergy sex crimes more because they know they can get by with it more.

In the larger picture, adding more prelates from traditionally under-represented regions of the world may be just and healthy. But we fear it won’t make kids safer and may in fact make kids more vulnerable.

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WEST VIRGINIA
WCHS

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Charleston police said six people were arrested in a prostitution sting Thursday, including a county school superintendent and a pastor.

Police said Wetzel County Schools Superintendent Dennis Albright, 57, and Bradford Poe, 48, a minister in Proctorville, Ohio, were both arrested in the sting overnight Thursday. Albright and Poe are charged with engaging in prostitution.

Police said Albright told them he was in town to push a bill through the Legislature. Albright is a former Braxton County Schools superintendent.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC – The World Today

ELIZABETH JACKSON: At the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse the head rabbi of Melbourne’s Yeshivah Centre has denied preaching against victims reporting their abuse to police.

But Rabbi Zvi Telsner says he apologises if he caused any victim or their family pain.

Victims have told the royal commission that they and their families were ostracised by the Yeshivah leadership and community after reporting their abuse to police.

Our reporter Samantha Donovan is covering the royal commission in Melbourne and she joins us now.

Sam, what exactly did the rabbi say in these sermons?

SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Well, to explain the lead-up Elizabeth, in 2011 a furore erupted in Melbourne’s ultra-orthodox Jewish Yeshivah community when a victim of child sex abuse at Yeshivah College, Manny Waks, went public with allegations that several boys including himself had been abused at the school.

And he alleged to a newspaper that the Yeshivah leadership had covered it up and named Yeshivah’s head rabbi, Rabbi Groner, as having done nothing to remove a serial abuser from the school.

Manny Waks and another witness, AVB, have told the royal commission that they urged other victims to go to the police and that this angered Rabbi Groner’s brother-in-law, Zvi Telsner, who by this time had taken over as head rabbi after Rabbi Groner’s death.

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The Economist

Erasmus

A COUPLE of days ago, a senior African cleric was holding forth on the need to combine religious instruction with, in the broadest sense, sex education. Both at home and at school, declared Archbishop Henri Isingoma, boys must be taught about the higher purpose of sex as “the way God wanted to make the human race continue”. Another acute problem, he added, was “ignorance of the responsibilities of men towards women.” He was speaking in a webinar organised by a department of the global Anglican church, drawing in clergy and church workers from their own and other Christian confessions.

So…was this one more depressing display of the giant cultural gap between the liberal north and the traditional south, especially over sexuality, which is tearing apart the 80m-strong Anglican Communion, and many other religious bodies?

No, it was nothing of the kind, and that’s what made the discussion more worthwhile. The topic was “gender-based violence” which is a catchall term that describes both domestic cruelty and the still-greater horrors that take place on battlefields when soldiers run amok and commit rape. Victims of GBV are mainly female, but they also include men and boys. And the striking thing was that on this exceptionally grave subject, “conservatives” and “liberals” plainly find it useful to talk and cooperate, and the talk goes well beyond platitudes.

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor February 13, 2015

ROME — Pope Francis’ finance czar today informed fellow members of the College of Cardinals that the Vatican has more than $1.5 billion in assets it didn’t previously know it possessed, although that potential windfall has to be balanced against a projected deficit of almost $1 billion in its pension fund.

The discoveries mean that the Vatican’s total assets rise to more than $3 billion, roughly one-third more than previously reported.

The cardinals were also informed that the Vatican’s real estate holdings may be undervalued by a factor of four, meaning that the overall financial health of the Vatican may be considerably rosier than was previously believed.

The disclosures at the closed-door meeting by Australian Cardinal George Pell, installed as secretary for the economy a year ago, was part of a wide-ranging overview of efforts at financial reform under Francis presented today to cardinals from around the world.

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VATICAN CITY
Gazzetta del Sud

Vatican City, February 13 – As an extraordinary consistory of cardinals continued two days of meetings Friday at the Vatican, child sexual abuse was on the agenda with an update on a commission appointed by Pope Francis on the protection of minors, according to a Vatican press release. Cardinal Sean O’Malley, who heads the commission, gave a presentation to the College of Cardinals, said the director of the Holy See Press Office, Fr. Federico Lombardi. Reports on financial reforms in the Vatican, including at the scandal-plagued Vatican Bank, were also presented as the cardinals continue to work on changes to the Roman Curia. That is the central body though which the pontiff runs the Catholic Church. It has reportedly been hit by infighting in recent years and in December the Argentine pontiff warned that the quest for power risked infecting clergymen with “spiritual Alzheimer’s”. As Francis opened the extraordinary consistory on Thursday, he described its goal as being “always that of promoting greater harmony in the work of the various dicasteries and offices”. He added that “reform is not an end in itself, but a means to give a strong Christian witness; to promote a more effective evangelization; to promote a more fruitful ecumenical spirit; to encourage a more constructive dialogue with all”. Saturday an ordinary consistory will see 20 new cardinals created at the Vatican. The reform of the Curia is part of the Francis’s drive to overhaul Vatican structures after the Church’s image was tarnished by scandals regarding child-sex abuse, financial and media leaks during the papacy of his predecessor, Benedict XVI.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

The government is being urged to extend the scope of the child sexual abuse inquiry to cover the whole of the UK – rather than just England and Wales.

The investigation should cover Scotland and Northern Ireland, including claims of abuse at Kincora Boys’ Home in Belfast in the 1970s, a Home Affairs Committee report said.

The panel must seek to avoid “gaps” between the various inquiries, it said.

The Home Office said the report had been noted and was being considered.

The independent, panel-led inquiry was set up by Home Secretary Theresa May last year to consider whether public bodies and other institutions failed in their duty to protect children.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

BY NAOMI LONG – 13 FEBRUARY 2015

The new chair of the statutory inquiry into historic child abuse allegations this week told a Westminster committee she is willing to discuss including Kincora Boys’ Home as part of the investigation.

It has given new hope to the victims and survivors of the east Belfast home, following several setbacks to the original investigation caused by the resignation of its two previous chairs.

In spite of Home Secretary Theresa May’s statement to the House of Commons that her department’s investigation would be limited to England and Wales, Justice Lowell Goddard’s confirmation that she would raise it with the Home Secretary, if she felt it necessary, allows another opportunity to put Kincora on the agenda.

Kincora is already being probed by Sir Anthony Hart’s Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry. But I have previously gone on record to state how Kincora is uniquely different to other homes being investigated in Northern Ireland.

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SCOTLAND
Scotsman

SCOTTISH ministers have rejected proposals from MPs to extend the scope of a UK government-backed child sexual abuse inquiry to cover Scotland as well as England and Wales.

Westminster’s home affairs committee, said an independent, panel-led inquiry set up by Home Secretary Theresa May to examine abuse in England and Wales should also include Scotland and Northern Ireland to “avoid gaps” between investigations in different parts of the UK.

The Scottish Government has already announced its own plans for a statutory public inquiry to examine historical cases of abuse of children in care north of the border, where child protection is devolved to Holyrood.

Ministers today rejected the call from MPs to extend the influence and authority of the inquiry ordered by the Home Secretary, which a Scottish government spokeswoman said was a “primarily a matter for the UK Government”.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

In two weeks in February 2015 Pope Francis has uncovered finally, in secret meetings with Cardinals, his real plans and timetable, after two years of spinning the media and worldwide Catholics. Despite his disarming public smile and massive media efforts, the pope’s plans are basically a continuation of his two failed predecessors’ oppressive policies and teachings, only now under tighter papal control.

Holding bishops accountable for child abuse has this week been buried in a farcical “do nothing commission”, that is now even promoted by well intentioned but misguided abuse survivors. Money matters are being dealt with by disgraced Cardinal Pell, who proved by his brutal treatment of priest abuse survivors in Australia that he can be expected always to put the financial fortunes of the Catholic Church’s clerical leadership ahead of Jesus’ Gospel mandates.

Pope Francis is evidently stretching out making “formal infallible papal decisions”, including on divorced and gay Catholics, on women’s perpetual inequality, on confirming the contraception ban, et al., to help (1) US bishops and their low tax billionaire donors (with help from Cardinal Burke’s contrived and planned anti-gay marriage pitch to fundamentalist US voters) elect Jeb Bush as US president next year, and (2) then to help German bishops thereafter to save their $7 billion annual tax subsidy. This continuity of the essential elements of the last two pope’s disastrous policies is captured in “a thousand words” in a revealing photo, at the secret Cardinals’ meeting, of Pope Francis and Cardinal Sodano running the show as a team, see here,

[National Catholic Reporter]

The overall implications and fatal flaw of Francis’ plans are discussed in my remarks, “The Crisis Pope Francis Faces” here,

[Christian Catholicism]

Cardinal Sodano has been the most powerful Cardinal since the 1870 Vatican Council I first made popes “infallible”. Sodano’s longtime protege, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, is being groomed by “interim Pope Francis” to be the next pope, likely to occur soon after next year’s critical US elections since Francis’ friendly facade is needed to help get more US Latino voters to vote Republican.

Sodano was “de facto pope” during much of John Paul II’s reign. He treated the priest sex abuse scandal as an annoying distraction. Sodano’s Easter 2010 world televised address to Pope Benedict referred dismissively to the abuse scandal. Sodano arrogantly told the bewildered Benedict and the world that “… The People of God are with you and do not allow themselves to be impressed by the petty gossip of the moment, by the trials that sometimes assail the community of believers” . (emphasis mine). Has Cardinal Sodano really ever asked the People of God — his biggest mistake, no?

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MINNESOTA
St. Cloud Times

David Unze, dunze@stcloudtimes.com February 13, 2015

A prominent attorney representing clergy sex abuse victims this week released a list of 17 clergy from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis who have been accused of sexual abuse or misconduct with a minor. The men have been identified in notice of claims submitted to the Archdiocese and its insurance carriers, the first step toward a possible lawsuit. The 17 names have never before been made public. The same list that attorney Jeff Anderson released is also on the archdiocese’s website.

The priests on the lists are deceased, permanently out of public ministry, on leave from ministry or on restricted ministry while the claim is being investigated. The archdiocese also posted a larger list of men with substantiated claims of sexual abuse of a minor while assigned as clergy in the archdiocese. One name added to that list this week is Michael Bik, a former monk from St. John’s Abbey.

Bik’s name appeared previously on a list of abbey monks with substantiated allegations of abuse against them. Bik was permanently removed from ministry in 2002.

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NEW MEXICO
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, Feb. 13

Statement by Joelle Casteix of Newport Beach CA, western regional director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (949 322 7434, jcasteix@gmail.com)

When it comes to kids’ safety, there’s no excuse for incomplete or inaccurate information, especially when the potential threat involves alleged clergy sex crimes and cover ups.

So for public safety, Gallup Bishop James Wall should immediately

— honor his promise answers and answer questions about Fr. Ravi Kiran’s sudden departure from St. Anthony Mission months ago,
— add more proven, admitted and credibly accused predator priests to his diocesan list,
— reverse his decision and post photographs of the credibly accused abusers on church websites, and
— aggressively seek out others who saw, suspected or suffered clergy sex crimes and cover ups in Gallup and beg hem to call law enforcement.

Wall will claim his bankruptcy notices meet this request. He’s wrong. Bankruptcy notices are about a financial deadline. They’re not about prosecuting criminals. They’re not about keeping predators away from kids. They’re not about real justice, healing, prevention and truth telling.

Catholics and citizens need and deserve more honesty from Wall than he’s providing. Parishioners should donate elsewhere until their bishop

It’s important to be generous. But we hope New Mexico Catholics will give to organizations that prevent child sex crimes, not organizations that conceal them.

The claim by one of Wall’s public relations staffers (made to the Gallup Independent newspaper) that “Sometimes it takes a while to dig through the files” is both laughable and disingenuous. At some point, we predict, Suzanne Hammons, will look back with shame and regret that she made such a ridiculous and irresponsible claim and was part of a calculated decision to delay disclosing important information that could have helped keep innocent kids safe and helped wounded victims heal.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, Feb. 13

Statement by Peter Isely of Milwaukee, board member of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 414 429 7259, peterisely@yahoo.com )

Last week, Boston Cardinal O’Malley said the church needs new guidelines to discipline bishops who conceal abuse. He told journalists in Rome “When you don’t have a clear path to respond in cases of sexual abuse, people tend to improvise. And when they improvise, they make many mistakes.”

Two full years ago, O’Malley told the Boston Globe the very same thing: “. . .if you don’t have policies, you’ll be improvising, and when you improvise, you make a lot of mistakes,” he said.

[Boston Globe]

How many more children have been raped or sodomized by priests over those two years? How many bishops have concealed child sex crimes over those two years?

And guess when the first US pedophile priest made national headlines? It was 30 years ago, when Fr. Gilbert Gauthe was convicted of abusing as many as 39 young children.

[BishopAccountability.org]

We may seem impatient. Martin Luther King ends his famous Letter from the Birmingham Jail by begging his critics for forgiveness if he’s shown “unreasonable impatience.” But he begs God to forgive him if he has “a patience that makes me patient with anything less than brotherhood.”

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Soli Salgado | Feb. 13, 2015

At the Synod of Bishops on the family held at the Vatican in October 2014, several couples from around the world were invited to attend as representatives of the Catholic laity. One American couple, Alice and Jeff Heinzen, spoke about the beauty of family life and the advantages of natural family planning, a practice embraced in the church’s teachings.

But Deborah Rose-Milavec, executive director of FutureChurch, said, “While their voice and constituency should be represented, they should not be overrepresented. The purpose of the synod is to break new ground on these issues and to develop pastoral practices that reach out to Catholics who have not felt welcomed because they do not entirely conform to current teaching and practice.”

In an effort to “widen the circle” at the second synod on the family, scheduled for October 2015, reform groups FutureChurch, Voice of the Faithful and the American Catholic Council have drafted a petition calling for more diverse laity to be invited. Twenty other organizations have joined the cause. The letter, which launched Jan. 21, addresses Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, secretary general of the Synod of Bishops, and the bishops of the world. Organizers plan to deliver it March 4 by mail and email to the bishops, and hand-deliver a copy to Baldisseri at the Vatican.

The petition names groups of people that will be discussed according to the 2014 synod document, known as a lineamenta, and therefore should be included in the conversation:

* Divorced and remarried people;
* Cohabitating couples;
* Interfaith families;
* Impoverished families;
* Single parents;
* Families with lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender members;
* Same-sex couples;
* Families torn by the violence of war and abuse.

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SCOTLAND
Scottish Catholic Observer

The bishops of Scotland have met with a leading Vatican exert on prevention of clergy abuse of children as part of their efforts to learn from past cases and continue to develop best practice.

Mgr Robert Oliver travelled to Salamanca in Spain to address the bishops during an in-service session at the end of January. Bishop Joseph Toal of Motherwell said it was part of the bishop’s desire to ‘demonstrate to survivors a willingness to listen and an expression of understanding in the context of carefully prepared personal meetings.’

“The Catholic Church in Scotland is committed to learning from past mistakes, developing best practice and allowing external scrutiny of our work,” he said. “The priority principle must be assistance to the victims of abuse.”

Pope Francis appointed Mgr Oliver as the new secretary of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors last year. The Pope established the commission to advise him directly and to propose initiatives to encourage local responsibility within the Church.

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LOUISIANA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, Feb. 13

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314 566 9790, SNAPclohessy@aol.com , davidgclohessy@gmail.com )

A Baptist preacher who was accused of molesting kids and ran a controversial South Carolina childrens’ home has passed away.

Mack Ford opened and operated childrens homes in Louisiana and in Waltersboro, SC. He allegedly assaulted girls in Louisiana.

According to the New Orleans Picayune, “In both of those locations, abuse allegations resulted in criminal charges, though not against Ford.

In 1981, Longstreet school manager L.D. Rapier was arrested and charged with cruelty to children after four boys ran from the home and told authorities they’d been beaten. The charges were eventually dropped.

In 1984, South Carolina authorities closed the Waltersboro home after they found a 14-year-old sleeping in a windowless padlocked cell, where he had been for several days. Two employees there were charged with unlawful neglect of a child and kidnapping, and they eventually pleaded to a lesser charge of false imprisonment.”

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 13 February 2015 (VIS) – The Extraordinary Consistory of the College of Cardinals with Pope Francis did not complete its work this morning as expected. The meeting will continue during the afternoon, with an update on the work of the Commission for the Protection of Minors by its president, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, explained the director of the Holy See Press Office, Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J., during a press conference today.

Yesterday, Thursday, the meeting continued in a serene and constructive atmosphere, with interventions by a further 28 cardinals who offered different perspectives on the reform of the Curia, focusing on the relationship between the Curia and the local Churches, and underlining the importance of better serving the Church in the world. They spoke of “decentralisation”, and the theme of “subsidiarity” was recurrent. Further reflection was invited on what can be done better and where: or rather, in which cases it would be more useful for the Roman dicasteries to act, and when instead the involvement of the dioceses or the episcopal conferences would be more useful.

Other interventions were dedicated to the usefulness and importance of the central service of the Holy See, bearing in mind the experience in various countries where the local church is weak and may be subject to pressure, and is therefore supported by the work of the Vatican.

Coordination within the Curia was addressed not with a merely functional focus, but rather from the perspective of a sense of communion between the different dicasteries, of communication that creates union in the common mission. More specifically, the interministerial commissions were referred to as tools for achieving this objective and the importance of continuity in this dimension of coordination was noted.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Feb. 13, 2015 NCR Today

VATICAN CITY The Catholic cardinals meeting with Pope Francis to discuss reform of the Vatican are continuing their conversations and are not expected to make any formal votes approving or disapproving changes to the church bureaucracy, the Vatican said Friday.

Speaking in a briefing with the press, spokesman Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi again indicated that the process to reform the Vatican bureaucracy may take longer than originally expected.

The some 160 prelates in Rome to discuss the reform, the spokesman said, have talked about the need to have a “gradual path” where some changes to the bureaucracy, known as the Roman Curia, may happen before a new organizational chart explaining the role of all Vatican offices is completed.

The cardinals are meeting Thursday and Friday at the Vatican to discuss the process of reform, which seems to be languishing in debates over the purpose, scope and role of the Curia.

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