ABUSE TRACKER

VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Robert Mickens | Dec. 22, 2014 A Roman Observer

ROME
It’s now all but official. Pope Francis and certain members of the Roman Curia’s old guard are openly at battle for the soul and future of the Catholic church. And their clash is over a sense of entitlement and privilege traditionally tied to a clericalist ethos and court mentality that has long held sway at the Vatican.

The Argentine pontiff pretty much confirmed that on Monday in his annual pre-Christmas meeting with the Curia’s top officials during which he denounced a long list of bad attitudes and behavior he believes are ailing the church’s central offices. (Read Joshua J. McElwee’s excellent report on the 15 illnesses that, according to Francis, are threatening the Curia’s spiritual and moral health.)

The 78-year-old pope delivered his screed to the cardinals and bishops — that’s exactly how many people inside and beyond the walls of the Vatican will read it — just a little more than 24 hours after France’s oldest national paper, Le Figaro, published a cover article in its Sunday magazine titled, “The Secret War Inside the Vatican: How Pope Francis is shaking up the Church.”

The conservative paper’s highly respected Vatican analyst, Jean-Marie Guénois, claimed in the article that the “climate inside [the Vatican] is not good.” He wrote that “fear reigns” among many officials and employees who do not like how the pope is dismantling traditional protocols and who are nervously waiting to see how his eventual structural reforms will affect them. Guénois quoted one of these officials as saying, “His way of governing is disconcerting.” …

Even though the Jesuit pope did not name names, it’s clear he believes some of these cardinals and bishops are inflicted with the “ailments” he listed — an exaggerated sense of self-importance, lust for power and control, lack of empathy for others, opposition to the movements of the Holy Spirit, careerism, and the “very serious evil” of leading a double life, which he labeled “existential schizophrenia”.

The officials, all wearing black cassocks with their red and violet skullcaps and sashes, sat stony-faced throughout the stinging address, which went on for slightly more than 30 minutes.

Uncharacteristically, the pope hardly looked up from his written text and made only a couple, very minor unscripted remarks. His delivery was slow and deliberate. The prelates politely, but unenthusiastically applauded at the end.

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VATICAN CITY
Sydney Morning Herald

December 23, 2014

Philip Pullella

Vatican City: The Vatican’s top administrators would have been expecting an exchange of pleasantries at their annual Christmas meeting with Pope Francis on Monday.

Instead, Francis chose the occasion to issue a stinging critique, telling the priests, bishops and cardinals who run the Curia, the central administration of the Roman Catholic Church, that careerism, scheming and greed had infected them with “spiritual Alzheimer’s”.

Francis, the first non-European pope in 1300 years, has refused many of the trappings of office and made plain his determination to bring the Church’s hierarchy closer to its 1.2 billion members. To that end, he has set out to reform the Italian-dominated Curia, whose power struggles and leaks were widely held responsible for Benedict XVI’s decision last year to become the first pope in six centuries to resign. …

“This is the ideological and religious manifesto of a radical reform of the Curia,” Carlo Marroni, a Vatican expert with the Italian daily Il Sole 24 Ore, said. “He doesn’t describe the details of the reform that we will most likely see next year, but he indicated the principles according to which the Church has to change, at least in the pope’s intentions.”

In his Christmas speeches, Benedict XVI, now pope emeritus, had often issued programmatic statements for the year to come, and talked about controversial issues like same-sex marriage. However, he had not used such a stern tone.

Last year, in his first Christmas speech to the Curia as pope, Francis warned his prelates against drifting “downwards towards mediocrity,” and urged them to be “conscientious objectors” to gossip.

In a meeting with the Vatican’s employees soon after his speech to the Curia, Francis repeated his plea for forgiveness, asking the laypeople who work for the Vatican to pardon his shortcomings and those of his collaborators, as well as some scandals that have hurt the church.

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VATICAN CITY
Oregonian

By The Associated Press

VATICAN CITY — To the Catholic Church’s “seven deadly sins,” Pope Francis has added the “15 ailments of the Curia.”

Francis issued a blistering indictment of the Vatican bureaucracy Monday, accusing the cardinals, bishops and priests who serve him of using their Vatican careers to grab power and wealth, of living “hypocritical” double lives and forgetting that they’re supposed to be joyful men of God.

Francis turned the traditional, genteel exchange of Christmas greetings into a public dressing down of the Curia, the central administration of the Holy See, which governs the 1.2-billion strong Catholic Church. He made clear that his plans for a radical reform of the structures of church power must be accompanied by an even more radical spiritual reform of the men involved. …

“This is a speech without historic precedent,” church historian Alberto Melloni, a contributor to Italian daily Corriere della Sera, said in a telephone interview. “If the pope uses this tone, it’s because he knows it’s necessary.”

Melloni noted that until Francis was elected, the Vatican bureaucracy largely answered to no one, saying “an entire generation of the Curia ran it as if they were pope.” St. John Paul II was too busy traveling the world, and later too sick, to pay attention to administrative details, and Benedict left the minutiae of running a government to his deputy, later determined to have been part of the problem.

The Rev. Robert Wister, a church historian at Seton Hall University, said Francis was essentially asking the Curia to undergo an examination of conscience, asking them to reflect on how they had sinned before God before going to confession.

“Perhaps he believes that only a severe rebuke can help turn things around,” he said.

The cardinals were not amused. Few smiled as Francis spoke, and at the end they offered only tepid applause to a speech that was so carefully prepared it had footnotes and Bibilical references. Francis greeted each one, but there was little Christmas cheer in the room.

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VATICAN CITY
Los Angeles Times

By TOM KINGTON

Pope Francis on Monday launched a stunning attack on the cardinals, bishops and priests who run the Vatican, accusing them of succumbing to greed, jealousy, hypocrisy, cowardice and “spiritual Alzheimer’s.”

In a pre-Christmas speech to the officials of the Roman Curia, Francis kept the season’s greeting to a minimum, choosing instead to ask prelates to make “a real examination of conscience.”

Francis then listed 15 “illnesses” he said they were prey to, including the “terrorism” of gossip, which he called a “cowardly” disease which could kill the reputation of a colleague “in cold blood.”

Top of the list was the fault of feeling “immortal, immune or even indispensable,” which Francis said could be remedied by a visit to a cemetery to see the graves of those who once felt immortal.

Francis also slammed prelates for showing off, accumulating wealth and leading double lives, which he said could lead to “existential schizophrenia.” …

“I have never seen a Christmas speech like this; this felt more like Lent,” said Maria Antonietta Calabro, a Vatican specialist at Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper. “Francis was elected to clean up the Curia and he is returning to this theme and strongly reasserting his authority.” …

Francis also attacked those who “discredit others, even in newspapers and magazines” to build their own power, even if they claim they are doing so “in the name of justice and transparency.”

Australian Cardinal George Pell, who was tasked by Francis with giving order to Vatican finances, recently wrote an article for a Roman Catholic publication claiming he had found millions of euros unaccounted for only to have Vatican officials deny funds were concealed.

“It looks like Francis is referring to Pell, which is ironic because Pell is his man,” said Calabro.

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VATICAN CITY
Bustle

LAUREN BARBATO

Pope Francis delivered his annual Christmas message on Monday, and it ended up being a lot less festive than expected. Instead of spreading some Christmas cheer, the pope harshly criticized Vatican bureaucracy. All Francis wants for Christmas is for everyone to stop gossiping — is that so much to ask for?

While addressing senior Vatican officials, which includes bishops and cardinals who serve the Holy See, Francis laid out their laundry list of sins — 15, to be exact. Some of the sins these Vatican officials have committed are the lust for power, feelings of superiority, and the “terrorism of gossip.” What a way to end the year.

Francis began by suggesting that the Vatican has been “exposed to sickness,” causing it to become an “ailing body” that has weakened the Catholic Church. The first sickness, the pontiff said, was “considering oneself ‘immortal’, ‘immune’ or ‘indispensable’.”

Francis continued:

A Curia that is not self-critical, that does not stay up-to-date, that does not seek to better itself, is an ailing body. … It is the sickness of the rich fool who thinks he will live for all eternity, and of those who transform themselves into masters and believe themselves superior to others, rather than at their service.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

* Aging Pope Francis cannot clean up the Catholic Church “mess” and its rigged leadership transition process, unless he moves now to restore the Church’s consensual management structure with its democratic accountability. It is basic “Management 101″. Changing the obsolete top down monarchical management structure, and curtailing the resulting and continuing priest child abuse and financial scandals, among others, cannot be avoided any longer! It appears to be “now or never” for Pope Francis and the Vatican.

* The first Catholics consensually managed their leaders; Catholics can and must do so again, as discussed below. Otherwise, the Vatican Titanic will continue to sink.

* Unless Pope Francis acts promptly, while he yet is still able, to make the worldwide Catholic 0.01% leadership accountable again to the Catholic 99.9% laity, he will likely fail.

* Now in his 79th year, Pope Francis has once again raised unexpectedly his mortality, volunteering that he will not “be around” in connection with Rome’s Olympic bid. He had also a few months ago publicly broached with reporters the prospect of his own death in “two or three years”, while also not ruling out retirement before then.

* Pope will be nearing his 80th year, when his all “celibate male” Final Synod of Bishops gives him in less than ten months their recommendations for Church reforms. It appears to be now or never for this pope to make a real difference in Church reform that is not just a temporary fix that can be readily reversed by his soon to be secretly selected successor, perhaps Cardinal Sodano’s protege, Cardinal Parolin.

* Pope Francis now has the full power to change the procedures for selecting bishops, including the Bishop of Rome (i.e., the Pope himself). He needs to begin now to change these procedures promptly, just as he created his Council of Cardinals out of thin air, it appears. Canon law is whatever a pope says it is, in the final analysis.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Belfast Telegraph

22 DECEMBER 2014

A campaigning MP has called for the reinvestigation of the suspicious deaths more than 20 years ago of two whistleblowers who he believes had significant information relating to organised child abuse.

And John Mann called on Home Secretary Theresa May to lift the restrictions of the Official Secrets Act in relation to historic abuse, which he believes are holding back former Special Branch police officers from coming forward with vital information relating to allegations of a child sex ring linked to powerful people in Westminster in the 1970s and 1980s.

Mr Mann’s comments came as a second Labour MP warned that the Government looks as though it does not “want to get to the truth” about historic child abuse after Mrs May indicated that a troubled inquiry panel commissioned to look into the issue could be disbanded and replaced.

Simon Danczuk said victims would be dismayed at the lack of progress in the probe, and could not help worrying that the litany of mistakes – including the resignation of two chairmen following claims about their perceived closeness to establishment figures – was “deliberate”.

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UNITED STATES
Think Progress

BY JOSH ISRAEL POSTED ON DECEMBER 22, 2014

In 1882, a group of Catholic men gathered together by New Haven, CT pastor Father Michael J. McGivney incorporated an organization to provide for the families of its deceased members. More than 125 years later, the Knights of Columbus boasts of more than 1.8 million members and of “donating more than $167.5 million to charitable needs and projects” in 2012. Among its members: presidential 2016 hopeful Jeb Bush (R), Speaker of the House John Boehner (R), and Justice Samuel Alito.

But while much of the Knights’ charitable efforts in recent years have supported purely altruistic causes such as the Special Olympics and Habitat for Humanity, millions of their charitable dollars have funded a very socially conservative ideological agenda: opposing abortion, LGBT rights, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, and pornography, while supporting public funding for religious organizations.

While legally independent from the Catholic Church, the Knights of Columbus entities call themselves the church’s “strong right arm.” The main national organization, a tax-exempt 501(c)(8) “Fraternal Benefit Society,” provides insurance-type benefits to its membership, much like a life insurance company. In 2012, the organization’s revenue and expenses exceeded $2 billion. While only Catholic men above the age of 18 are allowed to join, Catholic women are permitted to join a much smaller affiliated auxiliary organization called the Columbiettes.

The Knights also operate a legally-separate but affiliated charitable arm called the Knights of Columbus Charities Inc. That tax-exempt non-profit organization made about 57 percent of its annual grants in 2013 to efforts to “promote matters affective life family, marriage and similar priorities in building a culture of life.” More than $1 million of that went to support “Crisis Pregnancy Centers,” a network of facilities that dissuade women from choosing to terminate their pregnancies, often by sharing misinformation.

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Burke E. Strunsky
Prosecutor

Faith is a deeply personal experience, and I don’t say this as a politically correct sound bite. I truly believe that I’m lucky to live in a country that values the right of its citizens to freely practice religion if they so choose. However, as a criminal prosecutor, I am repeatedly faced with situations in which people forsake reason for faith or forsake faith for reason. It’s a false dilemma–a needless collision of choices. Too many make the tragic mistake of relying solely on their faith in cases of crimes, particularly child sexual abuse. Some religious groups might see these events as strictly a crisis of the soul when, in fact, concealing these atrocities only contributes to even deeper spiritual crises for the victims and their families. That’s why I make this plea to families of all faiths: Please do not rely exclusively on the guidance of your religious institutions to deal with the crime of child molestation. If people truly believe in God or a higher power, then they should open their minds and hearts to the possibility that, in addition to their capacity to believe, they also possess the ability to reason for a reason.

It’s impossible to pinpoint the first primordial whispers of faith or even the birth of religion–itself a communal kind of faith. Since the earliest man tilted his head to the cosmos and wondered, “Where does it all come from?” humanity has been searching for the meaning of life. Regardless of one’s personal beliefs, faith and religion appear to be distinctly human phenomena, pointing us in the same direction toward the same intangible reality of a higher purpose or an unexplainable force that guides and connects us. Thirteenth-century philosopher and theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote that in the search for truth, humans possess two unique sources of knowledge–reason (natural) and faith (supernatural)–and that the two were never meant to contradict one another but rather to work together.

Secrecy is essential to the crime of child molestation and when it encounters the sacred secrecy inherent to some religious organizations, an atmosphere is created in which the predator can thrive. Psychoanalyst Sue Grand has studied child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church and sums up the crisis from both psychological and religious perspectives: “Secrecy, concealment, denial, ambiguity, confusion: These are Satan’s fellow travelers, requiring elaborate interpersonal and intrapsychic collusion between perpetrators and bystanders. The operations of silence potentiate evil and remove all impediments from its path.”

Historically, the most prominent religious organizations involved in criminal and civil child sexual abuse cases included the Roman Catholic Church, the Jehovah’s Witnesses organization, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as the Mormon Church).This certainly doesn’t mean that people who belong to these groups are more likely to sexually abuse children than are, say, Methodists, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, or Hindus. Rather, it’s the manner in which these institutions have sometimes handled sexual molestation accusations that is problematic. It often leaves the pedophile free to roam and attack again.

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UNITED STATES
The Daily Beast

Jason Berry

The first Jesuit pope has endeared himself to people not so much through his religion but through his humane politics, which were forged in repressive Argentina.

In the 20 months since his bow from the balcony above St. Peter’s Square after the conclave, introducing himself as the bishop of Rome, Pope Francis has registered in poll after poll as the most popular person in the world.

“Barack Obama gets an average of 1,300 retweets on his account; Pope Francis gets twenty thousand,” wrote Alma Guillermoprieto in a June 23 profile of the pope for Matter, signaling another sign of this pope’s status.

Popes, presidents, the Dalai Lama, certain first ladies, and movie stars typically lead such surveys; but after decades of scandals over sexually abusive priests and financial corruption reaching into the Vatican Bank, the church’s reversal under Francis is a striking media narrative. For much of the popular tide behind him reflects another reality: his politics have an appeal that reaches far beyond the declining number of church-going Catholics. Not since 1989, when John Paul II bestrode the global stage as a catalyst in the collapse of the Soviet Empire, has a pope stirred such feelings of hope. John Paul was youthful in his sixties with a radiant charisma. Francis is well into his seventies, looks it, has a mild demeanor and soft speaking style; but his rhetoric is electrifying.

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CANADA
Nova News

Former Yarmouth priest granted full parole on November 2012 conviction for indecent assaults

YARMOUTH – A former Yarmouth County priest who was sentenced in November 2012 after pleading guilty to sexually abusing six young boys dating back to the mid 1960s to the earlier 1980s has been granted full parole.

Albert LeBlanc – who was 83 years old when he was sentenced in a Yarmouth courtroom to five-and-a-half years in prison – was granted full parole in early December.

The victims of his crimes have been made aware of the Parole Board of Canada’s decision.

As part of his parole conditions, LeBlanc must immediately report all intimate relationships and friendships with females and males who have parental responsibility for male children under the age of 18.

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VATICAN CITY
NPR

KRISHNADEV CALAMUR

Pope Francis has blasted the Vatican’s top bureaucrats at an annual Christmas gathering, accusing the cardinals, bishops and priests who run the Curia of “spiritual Alzheimer’s” and careerism.

“Sometimes, [officials of the Curia] feel themselves lords of the manor – superior to everyone and everything,” Francis told the Curia’s assembled members, according to Vatican Radio, which carried a report of the meeting titled “Pope Francis: Christmas greetings to Curia.”

The Curia is dominated by Italians who oversee the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics. Francis, an Argentine, is the first non-European to hold the papacy in more than a millennium. The former Cardinal had not worked in the Curia before his election, and has made reform of the Vatican a major part of his agenda.

“The Curia needs to change, to improve … a Curia that does not criticize itself, that does not bring itself up to date, that does not try to improve, is a sick body,” he said.

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VATICAN CITY
The Guardian (UK)

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Rome
Monday 22 December 2014

Pope Francis ended the year with a scathing critique of the church’s highest-ranking officials, including a list of 15 “ailments” that he said plagued the Vatican’s power-hungry bureaucracy.

The Argentinian pontiff used a traditional Christmas greeting to the cardinals, bishops and priests who run the Holy See to portray a church hierarchy that had lost its humanity at times, a body consumed by narcissism and excessive activity, where men who are meant to serve God with optimism instead presented a hardened, sterile face to the world.

The 78-year-old pope’s second Christmas speech since his election in 2013 was met by tepid applause among his Vatican audience, according to the Associated Press, and just a few smiling faces.

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VATICAN CITY
USA Today

Josephine McKenna , Religion News Service December 22, 2014

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Pope Francis launched a blistering attack on the Vatican bureaucracy Monday, outlining a “catalog of illnesses” that plague the church’s central administration, including “spiritual Alzheimer’s” and gossipy cliques.

The pope’s traditional Christmas greeting to the cardinals, bishops and priests who run the Holy See was less an exchange of warm wishes than a laundry list of what the pontiff called the “ailments of the Curia” that he wants to cure.

In a critique that left many of the assembled clerics clearly uncomfortable, the 15 ailments in Francis’ “catalog of illnesses” reflected the take-no-prisoners approach he promised when he was elected nearly two years ago as an outsider with little direct experience in Rome.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Dec. 22, 2014

ROME
Pope Francis on Monday used an annual pre-Christmas meeting with the cardinals and bishops of the Vatican bureaucracy — normally an exchange of good wishes and blessings — to issue a scathing critique of them, warning against 15 separate “diseases” in their work and attitudes.

Saying he wanted to prepare them all — including himself — to make “a real examination of conscience” before Christmas, Francis said while the Vatican bureaucracy was called to “always improve and grow in communion,” it was also prone to “disease, malfunction, and infirmity” like every human institution.

“I believe it will help us [to make] a ‘catalog’ of diseases … to help us prepare for the sacrament of reconciliation, which will be a good step for all of us to prepare for Christmas,” Francis said.

Many of the 15 diseases given by Francis were frank and blunt: a feeling of indispensability like a “rich fool”; of having a “spiritual Alzheimer’s” that makes a person dependent on the present; of living an “existential schizophrenia” of double lives that create “parallel worlds”; and a “terrorism of gossip” that sows discord and that amounts to “cold-blooded murder” of friends and colleagues.

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VERMONT
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, Dec. 22

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 )

We are deeply disappointed that Pope Francis has promoted Cardinal Bernard Law’s former mouthpiece. For years, time and time again, then Fr. Christopher Coyne repeated deceptive public relations spin about heinous child sex crimes and callous cover ups by Law and other Catholic officials.

[Burlington Free Press]

Ironically, on the same day that headlines tout a tongue-lashing of self-serving church bureaucrats by Pope Francis, the Vatican announces the promotion of an aide to perhaps America’s most self-serving church bureaucrat ever.

[Island Packet]

While a bishop in Indiana, we prodded Coyne to aggressively reach out to anyone who may have seen crimes by Fr. Francis Markey who was arrested by US marshals at his Indiana home in connection with the alleged rape of a 15-year-old boy twice, including the day of the boy’s father’s funeral.

As best we can tell, he ignored our request.

[SNAP]

And he did absolutely nothing in Boston or Indianapolis that gives us any hope he’ll be any better on children’s safety than his predecessor.

So we urge Vermont Catholics and citizens to be skeptical and vigilant and report known or suspected clergy sex crimes and cover ups to secular authorities, not church officials.

In many ways, Francis is very different than Benedict. When it comes to the abuse crisis, however, he really isn’t. Both popes promote church officials who ignored or concealed known or suspected clergy sex crimes, time and time and time again. Today’s announcement continues that depressing pattern.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 22 December 2014 (VIS) – This morning in the Clementine Hall the Holy Father held his annual meeting with the Roman Curia to exchange Christmas greetings with the members of its component dicasteries, councils, offices, tribunals and commissions. “It is good to think of the Roman Curia as a small model of the Church, that is, a body that seeks, seriously and on a daily basis, to be more alive, healthier, more harmonious and more united in itself and with Christ”.

“The Curia is always required to better itself and to grow in communion, sanctity and wisdom to fully accomplish its mission. However, like any body, it is exposed to sickness, malfunction and infirmity. … I would like to mention some of these illnesses that we encounter most frequently in our life in the Curia. They are illnesses and temptations that weaken our service to the Lord”, continued the Pontiff, who after inviting all those present to an examination of conscience to prepare themselves for Christmas, listed the most common Curial ailments:

The first is “the sickness of considering oneself ‘immortal’, ‘immune’ or ‘indispensable’, neglecting the necessary and habitual controls. A Curia that is not self-critical, that does not stay up-to-date, that does not seek to better itself, is an ailing body. … It is the sickness of the rich fool who thinks he will live for all eternity, and of those who transform themselves into masters and believe themselves superior to others, rather than at their service”.

The second is “’Martha-ism’, or excessive industriousness; the sickness of those who immerse themselves in work, inevitably neglecting ‘the better part’ of sitting at Jesus’ feet. Therefore, Jesus required his disciples to rest a little, as neglecting the necessary rest leads to stress and agitation. Rest, once one who has brought his or her mission to a close, is a necessary duty and must be taken seriously: in spending a little time with relatives and respecting the holidays as a time for spiritual and physical replenishment, it is necessary to learn the teaching of Ecclesiastes, that ‘there is a time for everything’”.

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UNITED KINGDOM
RT

Survivors of alleged Westminster child sex abuse have called on the government to replace the current inquiry with a more powerful body. Meanwhile, it has been revealed that the Home Secretary was considering disbanding the investigation entirely.

A letter written to Home Secretary Theresa May by survivors of child abuse urged that powers be given to a new inquiry which would have the authority to “compel witnesses to give evidence under oath.”

The letter, which was shown to the BBC, reportedly requested a “replacement of the current panel” and an increase in “statutory powers,” it was reported Sunday. Signed by an organization of survivors and professionals, the letters claimed that more powers would “increase confidence” in the inquiry.

“It is essential that those conducting the inquiry have appropriate experience, are free from strong links to prominent establishment figures or any other potential conflict of interest and have a proven track record of promoting survivors’ rights,” the letter said.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

[with audio]

22 December 2014

Dozens of child abuse survivors have urged the government to scrap an inquiry into historical abuse and replace it with a more powerful body.

In the letter to Home Secretary Theresa May, survivors, survivors’ groups and associated professionals call for a new inquiry with the power to “compel witnesses to give evidence under oath”.

Ian McFadyen is an abuse survivor and campaigner who signed the letter.

He told the BBC 5 live Breakfast that he felt the inquiry “must have teeth”.

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VATICAN CITY
euronews

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – The Vatican’s top administrators would have been expecting an exchange of pleasantries at their annual Christmas meeting with Pope Francis on Monday.

Instead, he chose the occasion to issue a stinging critique, telling the priests, bishops and cardinals who run the Curia, the central administration of the Roman Catholic Church, that careerism, scheming and greed had infected them with “spiritual Alzheimer’s”.

Francis, the first non-European pope in 1,300 years, has refused many of the trappings of office and made plain his determination to bring the Church’s hierarchy closer to its 1.2 billion members.

To that end, he has set out to reform the Italian-dominated Curia, whose power struggles and leaks were widely held responsible for Benedict XVI’s decision last year to become the first pope in six centuries to resign.

“The Curia needs to change, to improve … a Curia that does not criticise itself, that does not bring itself up to date, that does not try to improve, is a sick body,” he said in a sombre address.

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VATICAN CITY
BBC News

Pope Francis has sharply criticised the Vatican bureaucracy in a pre-Christmas address to cardinals, complaining of “spiritual Alzheimer’s” and “the terrorism of gossip”.

He said the Curia – the administrative pinnacle of the Roman Catholic Church – was suffering from 15 “ailments”, which he wanted cured in the New Year.

Pope Francis – the first Latin American pontiff – also criticised “those who look obsessively at their own image”.

He has demanded reform of the Curia.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Mittelbayerische

VON NIKOLAS PELKE, MZ

HEIDECK Die Gebetsbücher sind längst vergriffen, als die letzten Besucher in den Gottesdienst eilen. Die Stadtpfarrkirche ist besetzt bis auf den allerletzten Platz. Ein Blick in die Gesichter der Menschen an diesem Samstagabend zeigt: Die Katholiken in Heideck sind durch die Bank angespannt.

Wie wird der Pfarrer Tobias Göttle seiner Gemeinde im mittelfränkischen Landkreis Roth gegenübertreten? Nach all dem was passiert ist in den letzten 16 Monaten. Nach den schweren Vorwürfen des Kindesmissbrauchs und den Monaten in der Untersuchungshaft. Alle sind sie heute gekommen, um dabei zu sein, wenn der alte und neue Pfarrer ein paar Tage vor Weihnachten in den Kreis der Gemeinde zurückkehren soll. Darüber sprechen, wie sich das anfühlt, will vorher keiner. Was könne man schon sagen, wenn ein katholischer Geistlicher einen Jungen sexuell missbraucht haben soll? Die Öffentlichkeit sei allzu schnell bereit gewesen, den ungeheuerlichen Verdacht für bare Münze zu nehmen. Waren die katholischen Priester nicht genau aus diesem Grund zuletzt weltweit in die Schlagzeilen geraten? Auch in Heideck hat es Schlagzeilen gegeben. „Pfarrer hinter Gittern“ war nur eine davon.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Nordbayern

The Heidek parish priest was returned to service this past weekend after he was cleared of charges of sexual abuse of a minor. He was greeted with applause.]

HEIDECK – Dass in einem Gotteshaus Beifall aufbrandet, ist eher selten. Am Samstagabend jedoch gab es für den Heidecker Stadtpfarrer in der Kirche St. Johannes der Täufer reichlich Applaus, nachdem dieser die vergangenen Monate aus seiner Sicht hatte Revue passieren lassen, in denen er dem Verdacht des sexuellen Missbrauches eines Minderjährigen ausgesetzt und deswegen ein Vierteljahr in Untersuchungshaft war (wir berichteten mehrfach). Nachdem der Haftbefehl gegen ihn aufgehoben und die kirchenrechtliche Untersuchung abgeschlossen war, kehrte der Geistliche am Samstag an seine alte Wirkungsstätte zurück – in Begleitung des Eichstätter Bischofs Gregor Maria Hanke.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Radio Oberland

[Abuse Ettal Abbey: court date is set]

Montag, 22. Dezember 2014
Er soll zwischen den Jahren 2001 und 2005 mehr als 20 Kinder sexuell missbraucht haben – Jetzt steht der Gerichtstermin für den angeklagten Pater aus dem Kloster Ettal. Wie das Tagblatt mitteilt muss er sich zum ersten Mal am 22. Januar vor der Jugendstrafkammer des Münchner Landgerichts verantworten. Für die Verhandlungen sind sieben Tage angesetzt.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Bild

[A priest named only as George K. (56) has been accused of abusing children, including his godson. The vicar at Willich was in charge until 2008 of several municipalities in the Lower Rhine and is said to be accused of at least 23 cases of abuse.]

VON JOACHIM OFFERMANNS

Krefeld (NRW) – Er ist ein Mann Gottes: Doch Pfarrer Georg K. (56) wird beschuldigt, ihm anvertraute Kinder missbraucht zu haben. Selbst das eigene Patenkind war nicht vor ihm sicher.

Der Pfarrer aus Willich, der bis 2008 verschiedene Gemeinden am Niederrhein betreute, soll zwischen 2001 und 2006 das zunächst 11 Jahre alte Patenkind in mindestens 23 Fällen missbraucht haben.

Von dem nackten Kind soll er Fotos gemacht haben. In zwei Fällen, so die Anklage, hat er mit dem Kind vor den Übergriffen Marihuana geraucht. Außerdem soll er den damals 8 Jahre alten Bruder des Jungen dreimal missbraucht haben – so zum Beispiel bei einem gemeinsamen Sauna-Besuch.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Bundespresse REPORT 2014

Sexueller Missbrauch Minderjähriger durch katholische Geistliche in Deutschland | Fernau / Hellmann | Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft

[Sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy in Germany | Fernau / Hellmann | Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft]

Im vorliegenden Sammelband werden erstmals empirische Befunde zum sexuellen Missbrauch durch katholische Geistliche in Deutschland präsentiert. Die Datenbasis bilden zwei Betroffenenbefragungen, die vertiefende Erkenntnisse über Hintergründe, Besonderheiten und Folgen von innerkirchlichen Missbrauchserfahrungen liefern: eine quantitative Fragebogenerhebung sowie eine qualitative Interviewstudie.

Schwerpunkte der quantitativen Untersuchung sind die Analyse von zentralen Charakteristika der Taten sowie von psychosozialen Folgen, welche diese bei den Betroffenen auslösten. Ferner werden die Reaktionen der Behörden und der katholischen Kirche auf Offenbarungen von Betroffenen in den Blick genommen. Im Fokus der qualitativen Forschung steht die Rekonstruktion verschiedener biografischer Umgangsformen mit den Missbrauchserfahrungen. Dabei wird insbesondere der Rückgriff auf katholische Glaubensvorstellungen in der Auseinandersetzung mit der erlebten sexuellen Gewalt beleuchtet.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

An analysis of the speech to the Curia. The Pope does not introduce a new project from the top but the way of mercy that the Church has always recommended in order to cure the 15 ‘diseases’

GIANNI VALENTE
VATICAN CITY

In his traditional speech to the collaborators of the Roman Curia, a few days before Christmas, Pope Francis avoided customary evaluations of the past year and did not launch programmatic discussions or key words on which to realign the language and initiatives of the Vatican congregations. The Pope spoke to the heads of the Vatican congregations in the Curia about the life of the Curia and its ‘diseases’. His speech expounded a detailed, collective ‘examination of conscience’, recommended to cardinals, bishops and monsignors called to collaborate with him in the Vatican.

The Pope took on the role of spiritual father, educated at the school of St. Ignatius. He did not have any qualms about calling the pathologies, affecting his immediate surroundings, by their name. He did it with lucidity and ‘expertise’ of the object, frustrating once again the stereotype of the Latin-American alien who is not used to the ‘complexities’ of Rome and Europe, with which critics and neo-courtiers attempt to neutralise him. Pope Francis highlighted the root of the curial diseases, as well as providing an ample symptomatology and, above all, he suggested remedies. He started from the rediscovery of the nature of the Church as ‘Mystical Body’ of Christ, according to the consecrated form of Pius XII’s encyclicals ‘Mystici Corporis’.

The ‘Messiah complex’ is mostly responsible for these pathologies among ecclesiastics also in the Curia. This complex often takes over circles and ambitious ecclesiastics, used to putting the teaching about the necessity of grace on the backburner; a teaching already pronounced by Christ to his disciples. Pope Francis said that ‘it must be clear to us all that without Him we can do nothing’. Christmas, said Pope Francis to the officials of the Curia, is a favourable chance to rediscover this dynamic of grace told in the Gospel, because ‘it is also the festival of a light that is not welcomed by the “chosen people” but by the “poor and simple” who awaited the salvation of the Lord.’

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

Francis invites his collaborators to examine their conscience to confess their ‘sins’ in today’s speech. He mentions vainglory and feeling essential, as well as ‘spiritual Alzheimer’s’ and hoarding money and power. The Pope also speaks of closed circles and worldly profit, as well as the ‘terrorism of gossip’

ANDREA TORNIELLI
VATICAN CITY

15 diseases listed and explained, one by one in detail. In his second Christmas speech to the Roman Curia, Pope Francis identifies and explains 15 shades of sin, inviting everyone to ask for God’s forgiveness. The same God who ‘is born in poverty in a cave in Bethlehem to teach us the power of humility’, and was welcomed not by the “chosen” people but by the “poor and simple”. Pope Francis asks his collaborators to really examine their conscience in preparation for confession before Christmas.

Francis explains that these ‘diseases’ and ‘temptations’ do not only concern the Curia but ‘are naturally a danger to every Christian and every curia, community, congregation, parish, and ecclesiastic movement’. The Pope, however, clearly identifies these as present within the environment where he has been living for 21 months now.

The Pope said that ‘it would be good to think of the Roman Curia as a small model of the Church, that is as a “body” which earnestly attempts to be more alive, healthier, more harmonious and more united in itslef and in Christ every day”. The Curia, like the Church, cannot live ‘without having a vital, personal, authentic and solid relationship with Christ’. And a member of the Curia who does not draw from that every day will become a mere bureaucrat. He adds that ‘ we will talk about the list of diseases which, following the Fathers of the desert, will aid us in preparing for confession’.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis received the heads and other senior officials of the departments of the Roman Curia on Monday, in their traditional exchange of Christmas greetings. In remarks prepared for the occasion and delivered Monday morning, the Holy Father focused on the need for those who serve in the curia – especially those in positions of power and authority – to remember and cultivate an attitude and a spirit of service.

“Sometimes,” said Pope Francis, “[Officials of the Curia] feel themselves ‘lords of the manor’ [It. padroni] – superior to everyone and everything,” forgetting that the spirit, which should animate them in their lives of service to the universal Church, is one of humility and generosity, especially in view of the fact that none of us will live forever on this earth.

This “disease” of feeling “immortal” or “essential” – irreplaceable – was one of fifteen maladies, which Pope Francis identified during the course of his address: from a tendency to prefer Martha’s portion over Mary’s, to over-planning (and micromanaging), to wearing being a perpetual downer and wearing a “funeral face” all the day long.

“These and other maladies and temptations,” said Pope Francis, “are a danger for every Christian and for any administrative organization, community, congregation, parish, ecclesial movement, etc., and can strike at both the individual and the corporate level.”

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CITTA’ DEL VATICANO
Bolletino

[Francis: a Curia that is outdated, sclerotic or indifferent to others is an ailing body – Vatican Information Service]

La Curia Romana e il Corpo di Cristo

“Tu sei sopra i cherubini, tu che hai cambiato la miserabile condizione del mondo quando ti sei fatto come noi” (Sant’Atanasio).

Cari fratelli,

Al termine dell’Avvento ci incontriamo per i tradizionali saluti. Tra qualche giorno avremo la gioia di celebrare il Natale del Signore; l’evento di Dio che si fa uomo per salvare gli uomini; la manifestazione dell’amore di Dio che non si limita a darci qualcosa o a inviarci qualche messaggio o taluni messaggeri ma dona a noi sé stesso; il mistero di Dio che prende su di sé la nostra condizione umana e i nostri peccati per rivelarci la sua Vita divina, la sua grazia immensa e il suo perdono gratuito. E’ l’appuntamento con Dio che nasce nella povertà della grotta di Betlemme per insegnarci la potenza dell’umiltà. Infatti, il Natale è anche la festa della luce che non viene accolta dalla gente “eletta” ma dalla gente povera e semplice che aspettava la salvezza del Signore.

Innanzitutto, vorrei augurare a tutti voi – collaboratori, fratelli e sorelle, Rappresentanti pontifici sparsi per il mondo – e a tutti i vostri cari un santo Natale e un felice Anno Nuovo. Desidero ringraziarvi cordialmente, per il vostro impegno quotidiano al servizio della Santa Sede, della Chiesa Cattolica, delle Chiese particolari e del Successore di Pietro.

Essendo noi persone e non numeri o soltanto denominazioni, ricordo in maniera particolare coloro che, durante questo anno, hanno terminato il loro servizio per raggiunti limiti di età o per aver assunto altri ruoli oppure perché sono stati chiamati alla Casa del Padre. Anche a tutti loro e ai loro famigliari va il mio pensiero e gratitudine. …

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VATICAN CITY
The Guardian (Nigeria)

Monday, 22 December 2014 Written by AFP

POPE Francis lambasted the Vatican’s bureaucracy on Monday, saying some within the Church had a lust for power, were indifferent to others and suffered from “spiritual Alzheimer’s”.

The Argentine used a Christmas speech to cardinals, bishops and priests to list a catalogue of ailments plaguing some at the very top and urging a “cure”.

He said the Vatican was riven with “existential schizophrenia”, “social exhibitionism”, “spiritual Alzheimer’s” and a lust for power, all of which have led to an “orchestra that plays out of tune”.

He warned against greed, egoism and people who think they are ‘immortal’.

It is not the first time the 78-year-old has taken on the scandal-hit, intrigue-filled Curia, and called for them to renounce gossip and act responsibly.

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VATICAN CITY
Island Packet

BY NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press
December 22, 2014

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis issued a blistering critique Monday of the Vatican bureaucracy that serves him, denouncing how some people lust for power at all costs, live hypocritical double lives and suffer from “spiritual Alzheimer’s” that has made them forget they’re supposed to be joyful men of God.

Francis’ Christmas greeting to the cardinals, bishops and priests who run the Holy See was no joyful exchange of holiday good wishes. Rather, it was a sobering catalogue of 15 sins of the Curia that Francis said he hoped would be atoned for and cured in the New Year.

He had some zingers: How the “terrorism of gossip” can “kill the reputation of our colleagues and brothers in cold blood.” How cliques can “enslave their members and become a cancer that threatens the harmony of the body” and eventually kill it by “friendly fire.” About how some suffer from a “pathology of power” that makes them seek power at all costs, even if it means defaming or discrediting others publicly.

Francis, who is the first Latin American pope and never worked in the Italian-dominated Curia before he was elected, has not shied from complaining about the gossiping, careerism and bureaucratic power intrigues that afflict the Holy See. But as his reform agenda gathers steam, he seemed even more emboldened to highlight what ails the institution.

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GUAM
Radio New Zealand

A high-level Vatican official is to visit Guam’s Catholic community next month.

The Pacific Daily News reports that it is unclear whether the nature of the visit by Archbishop Savio Hon Tai-Fai is friendly or investigatory.

Guam’s Archdiocese of Agana says that Hon’s Guam trip is a “pastoral visit” that comes in the wake of Archbishop Anthony Apuron’s recent trip to see Pope Francis in Rome.

However, Hon is the secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, the Vatican office to whom some of Guam’s Catholics have sent letters in recent months, seeking an investigation into various controversies in the local archdiocese.

Representatives from different Guam parishes have formed a group called Concerned Catholics of Guam and plan to investigate the archdiocese’s handling of a sexual molestation allegation against Archbishop Apuron.

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GUAM
KUAM

by Krystal Paco

Guam – Controversy continues to plague the local Catholic Church as a new riff emerges, this time between Archbishop Anthony Apuron and Deacon Steve Martinez.

It was on December 17th Deacon Martinez tells KUAM he received a letter from Apuron giving him 24 hours to comply with a directive or face censure meaning he would be removed from his position as a deacon at the Agana Cathedral. That censure automatically went into effect the evening of the 18th.

According to the creator and main blogger at JungleWatch, Tim Rohr, Martinez was accused of exciting hatred and contempt against the church, inciting animosities and hatred against an ordinary and provoking subjects to disobedience as well as joining an association which is plotting against the church. But when asked for proof to substantiate the claims Rohr says “nothing”.

Then over the weekend according to Martinez he received another letter from the archbishop reversing his removal however that letter came with the warning that he could still be subject to censure until January 19th. Rohr says this means a gag order has been placed on Martinez. Martinez says that all of this stems from his involvement in the newly formed group the Concerned Catholics of Guam. You may recall that the CCOG was formed by a group of parishioners to investigate the recent controversies within the archdiocese.

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VERMONT
Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington

BURLINGTON – At 6 a.m. Vermont time today – 12 p.m. Noon at the Vatican – Pope Francis appointed The Most Reverend Christopher James Coyne (@bishopcoyne), until now Auxiliary Bishop of Indianapolis, as Tenth Bishop of Burlington.

A Boston native, Bishop Coyne will formally be installed as pastor of Vermont’s 118,000 Catholics on Thursday, January 29, 2015, at 2:00 PM, with a Solemn Mass of Installation in Saint Joseph Co-Cathedral. The Pope’s ambassador to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, will be in attendance as the Holy Father’s personal representative.

“I am grateful to Pope Francis for his confidence in me in appointing me to Burlington. Personally, I could not be happier to be assigned here and look forward to returning to my native New England,” Bishop Coyne said.

The Catholic Church’s first blogging priest to become a bishop on his appointment by then-Pope Benedict XVI in 2011, Coyne is an internationally cited leader in the Faith’s “digital revolution.” Having kept a dedicated daily presence on both Facebook and Twitter to a current 10,000 followers, as well as producing a regular podcast, the bishop’s outreach has been featured on NBC’s Today Show and in the nationally broadcast coverage of the Indianapolis 500, at which he delivered the pre-race Invocation for the last three years. In November 2014, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops elected Bishop Coyne as the next chairman of the national church’s communications efforts, a three-year mandate which begins in 2015.

The middle of seven children born to a postal worker and parish secretary in Woburn, Mass., after graduating from the University of Lowell and working two years as a full-time bartender, Bishop Coyne attended seminary for five years and was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Boston on June 7, 1986. While ministering in parishes for most of his years in Massachusetts, Bishop Chris additionally spent twelve years serving as a professor of liturgy at St. John’s Seminary, Brighton, and a number of years as the Archdiocesan Director of Worship and later Secretary for Communications.

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VERMONT
Burlington Free Press

MIKE DONOGHUE, Free Press Staff Writer December 22, 2014

Auxiliary Bishop Christopher J. Coyne of Indianapolis has been named the new Bishop for the statewide Roman Catholic Diocese in Vermont.

The 56 year-old Massachusetts native has been serving in Indiana for four years. Coyne, who was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Boston in June 1986, served in Massachusetts for much of his religious life.

In Vermont Bishop Coyne will oversee the state’s largest religion — about 120,000 Catholics spread among about 120 churches. There are 13 Catholic schools, including high schools in South Burlington and Rutland. The diocesan headquarters are on Joy Drive in South Burlington. …

Coyne became well-known in Massachusetts when the Boston archdiocese in 2002 appointed him the primary spokesman in the wake of numerous priest sex abuse cases and the resulting lawsuits and trials. He held that post for three years.

Vermont has had its share of priest sex abuse cases. When Matano arrived in 2005 he inherited many of the legal problems that stemmed from lack of action by his predecessors, primarily Bishop John A. Marshall, who served Vermont from 1971 to 1991.

Matano initially did not want to settle many of the sex abuse cases. After losing some costly civil trials, the diocese eventually agreed to a $17.65 million out-of-court payout in May 2010 to settle lawsuits with 26 victims alleging long-ago child molesting. The diocese also agreed to undisclosed amounts to settle three other cases that were on appeal to the Vermont Supreme Court.

Matano always said the money would not come from parish members and eventually the Burlington diocese began to sell some of its property in an effort to pay the settlement. The diocesan headquarters on North Avenue was eventually sold for $10 million in January 2011 to Burlington College. Camp Holy Cross in Colchester, a 26-acre parcel on Lake Champlain was sold for $4 million in January 2012. Camp Tara, a short distance away, had sold for $2.2 million in 2004.

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CANADA
The Irish Times

Jennifer Hough

Mon, Dec 22, 2014

When Valerie Andrews heard an interview last year on the CBC, Canada’s state broadcaster, with Irish adoption campaigner Philomena Lee, she thought “great, but why don’t you give us some airtime?”

“We are here, we are the Canadian Philomenas,” says Andrews, who has been fighting for years to have the story of Canada’s mother-and-baby homes unearthed and acknowledged.

Canada’s tale is all too familiar: pregnant single women incarcerated in religious homes, forced to attend church and carry out unpaid labour; babies removed after birth and illegally adopted, with no way of tracing them.

Testimonies, trickling out slowly from under layers of grief and shame, suggest what happened was just as extreme as what occurred in Ireland, contends Andrews, executive director of Origins Canada, an adoption rights group.

But the Canadian story is yet to have its breakthrough moment, one, perhaps like the Philomena movie, that pierces public consciousness in a way that makes the issue impossible to ignore.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Danuta Kozaki

The Salvation Army’s reputation has been severely damaged by evidence that children were abused in its homes in the past, research suggests.

In an annual index of the reputations of 40 of Australia’s largest charities, the Salvation Army fell from 10th last year to 27th this year.

The Charity Reputation Index, published by research consultants AMR, is based on a survey of the public and considers issues such as trust, leadership and governance.

Managing director Oliver Goodman said community perceptions of the Salvation Army were affected by the high-profile hearings of the Royal Commission into Institution Responses to Child Sexual Abuse earlier this year.

The inquiry heard evidence children were physically and sexually abused in the homes over many years.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

Dozens of child abuse survivors have urged the government to scrap an inquiry into historical abuse and replace it with a more powerful body.

The call comes after a leaked letter from Theresa May told inquiry members their panel might be disbanded.

Peter Saunders, from National Association for People Abused in Childhood, said the move would be supported by the majority of survivors.

Labour’s Simon Danczuk said the inquiry so far had been an “utter mess”.

Mr Danczuk, who exposed child sex abuse allegations against former Liberal MP Cyril Smith, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that survivors would be “dismayed” by the progress of the inquiry – which was set up in July and has started work, but has no chairman.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Channel 4

Dozens of child abuse survivors welcome Theresa May’s indication that the panel conducting an inquiry into historical abuse could be disbanded to make way for a more powerful body.

A letter, signed by more than 60 victims and representatives who wish to remain anonymous, calls for a statutory inquiry to be declared, a public announcement that the existing panel will be scrapped and replaced on a “transparent fit-for-purpose” basis and the appointment of an inquiry chair who has “demonstrable experience and ability in challenging the establishment”.

“It is important that the inquiry is centred on bringing perpetrators before the courts, holding those that have failed in their professional duty or covered up allegations or been obstructive to account and delivering justice for survivors,” the letter reads.

Home Secretary Theresa May’s first two choices to chair the inquiry have both stood down amid claims they were too closely linked to establishment figures.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail

Shambolic government inquiry into child sex abuse looks like a ‘deliberate’ cover up, says Labour MP

By TOM MCTAGUE, DEPUTY POLITICAL EDITOR FOR MAILONLINE

Theresa May’s shambolic handling of the government’s historic child abuse inquiry looks like a ‘deliberate’ attempt to stop victims getting to the truth, a Labour MP has claimed.

Simon Danczuk said survivors of abuse could be forced to take ‘direct action’ if the Home Secretary fails to get a grip.

The remarks, which sparked a furious backlash, come after Mrs May revealed that an independent panel set up to support the planned public inquiry could be disbanded.

Some victims’ groups welcomed the move despite warnings it could delay the inquiry for ‘yet more weeks and probably months’.

Mr Danczuk said victims would be dismayed at the lack of progress in the probe, and could not help worrying that the litany of mistakes was party of a wider cover up.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Andrew Sparrow, political correspondent
Monday 22 December 2014

A leading organisation representing child abuse victims has welcomed reports that Theresa May, the home secretary, may scrap the abuse inquiry panel so that it can be replaced with a more powerful body.

Peter Saunders, chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac), told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday that he did not know any abuse survivors who had confidence in the panel as it currently exists.

He was speaking after it emerged that more than 60 victims and their representatives had written to the Home Office supporting the call for the panel to be replaced with a statutory inquiry that has the power to call witnesses.

Having to wind up the panel and start again would be an embarrassment for May, who originally announced the inquiry in the summer. On Monday Simon Danczuk, the Labour MP who has played a leading role in campaigning for an inquiry, said the Home Office was making so many mistakes that he was starting to suspect it wanted to stop the inquiry getting to the truth.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Independent

LIZZIE DEARDEN Monday 22 December 2014

A Labour MP has said that continuing chaos surrounding the Westminster child abuse inquiry makes it look as though the Government does not “want to get to the truth”.

Simon Danczuk said victims would be dismayed at the lack of progress in the probe, and could not help worrying that the litany of mistakes was “deliberate”.

The Home Secretary has indicated that the troubled inquiry panel may be disbanded and replaced after calls from victims’ families to give it more powers, potentially causing further delay.

Fiona Woolf and Baroness Butler-Sloss have both stepped down from the role of inquiry chairman and a replacement has not yet been appointed.

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MARYLAND
The Baltimore Sun

By Susan Reimer
The Baltimore Sun

A Towson University student has added her name to a civil suit involving a Towson associate professor and rabbi accused of taking pictures and videos of women in a ritual bath.

The young woman, who asked that she be identified only by her first name to protect her privacy, was a student of Rabbi Barry Freundel when, she said, he encouraged her to participate in a mikvah as research for a term paper, even though she was not Jewish and had no wish to convert.

A mikvah is a cleansing ritual that is often a final step for a convert.

Stephanie said she believed as soon as the charges against Freundel were make public in October that she had been videotaped, too.

“I felt shock first. Total and complete shock,” she said in a telephone interview Sunday. “It took a while to feel everything else that comes with something like this.”

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INDIANA
The Daily Beast

M.L. Nestel

He preached against homosexuality on Sundays—and forced himself on young men during the week.
Pastor Gaylard Williams earned a good reputation among his evangelical ilk.

The Indiana holy man carried himself with humility, and on the pulpit Gaylard Williams played to his conservative congregants by coming out swinging against homosexuals.

The God-fearing 59-year-old was able to prove himself a servant of God to the elderly followers who filled the pews every Sunday at the Praise Cathedral Church of God in the small hamlet of Seymour, Indiana, to receive his heartfelt sermons.

And Williams presented himself as a dedicated husband for two decades to his wife, who also led the women ministry, and took pride as a father in having reared two upstanding sons.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Southwark News

22 December 2014 By Court Reporter

A controversial African preacher who claimed to be able to give infertile couples ‘miracle babies’ was cleared of raping a follower on Thursday.

Self-styled ‘Archbishop of Peckham’ Gilbert Deya, 61, vowed to continue in his mission to “preach the gospel of Jesus Christ” after the court cleared him of two counts of rape, two of sexual assault, attempted rape and assault by beating after nearly five hours of deliberations.

Deya said: “The court has today rightly ruled that I am an innocent man” after he stood accused of sexually assaulting one of his followers during an alleged campaign of abuse spanning nearly a decade.

The alleged victim came to Britain from Sierra Leone in 2003 and visited Deya’s church in Peckham in 2006.

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AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

Bethany Hiatt
December 22, 2014

The Christian Brothers have reopened 80 previously settled cases in the wake of royal commission hearings held earlier this year into sexual abuse at four WA orphanages.

In a written statement, the Christian Brothers said new settlements had been reached in 14 cases and mediation meetings had taken place recently in 20 cases in response to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The commission released a report on Friday which found that Christian Brothers leaders knew of allegations of sexual abuse of children at four WA orphanages and failed to manage the homes to prevent the systemic ill-treatment for decades.

Christian Brothers Oceania province leader Brother Peter Clinch said it had made significant progress on the commitment it made at the public hearings in April to re-examine cases that had been “settled on demonstrably unjust and unreasonably low terms”.

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INDIANA
The Journal Gazette

$1.9 million judgment against Catholic diocese

Rebecca S. Green The Journal Gazette

Almost every single thing for which Emily Herx asked the jury, she received.

Nearly $2 million in damages, and vindication, after the jury ruled that the Catholic Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend discriminated against the former language arts teacher at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic School when they fired her for undergoing in vitro fertilization.

The verdict came after about 51/2 hours of deliberation Friday afternoon, capping off a four-day jury trial before U.S. District Judge Robert Miller Jr. in the expansive federal courthouse just a few blocks from the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, the center of the diocese.

As she waited for the jury to come in, Herx sat ramrod straight in her chair at the table next to her attorney, Kathleen DeLaney, her face anything but calm as she clearly tried to control her breathing and anxiety.

Throughout the trial, she heard herself characterized by the defense as a potential drug abuser, an emotional basket case and as someone who committed a sin so grave and immoral that no circumstances could justify it.

But after the verdict was read, she seemed to uncoil with relief, crying and holding onto DeLaney in a long and tearful embrace.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

1. Exceptional “Grandma” figures, Hillary Clinton and Betty Clermont, are in different ways poised to challenge in 2015 the world’s most prominent “Grandpa” type figure, Pope Francis, as the Vatican priest child abuse and contraception ban controversies are set to boil over next year.

2. Betty Clermont is a retired grandmother armed only with a computer and Internet access. She is author of “The Neo-Catholics”. Her well researched recent reports relentlessly and exhaustively have shown the large gaps between Pope Francis’ deeds and words. Please see Betty Clermont’s exceptional, interesting and disturbing new report at:

3. [Daily Kos]

4. Hillary Clinton has been in Vatican struggles over women and children’s rights since at least her 1995 clash with Mary Ann Glendon, now apparently Pope Francis’ top female adviser, at the UN Beijing Conference on women’s rights. For a recent look back at Hillary Clinton’s 1995 efforts, please see , “20 Minutes That Changed The World: Hillary Clinton In Beijing.” and her 1995 address at Beijing at:

5. [Huffington Post]

6. [YouTube]

7. Betty Clermont also has exposed repeatedly the captive main stream media’s subtle and troubling role in creating the Francis Myth. She has illustrated extensively the appalling power of the nearly monopolistic main stream media, almost stealthily, to create an “accommodating” world religious leader in Francis to facilitate the obscene and dangerous trend towards worldwide income inequality. Where are the main stream media investigators on these matters? Why are so many of them so often outdistanced by a lone, but courageous, grandmother like Betty Clermont?

8. The main stream media’s papal omissions, however, may soon be reversed in 2015. Two world media stars are on course to collide in the “battle of the sexes”, senior style, in 2015.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

December 22, 2014

Angharad Owens-Strauss

One of Australia’s best-known welfare organisations, the Salvation Army, has dropped 17 places from last year in the 2014 AMR Charity Reputation Index, a yearly survey which measures the overall reputation of the country’s 40 largest charities .

The Salvation Army dropped from No.10 in 2013 to No.27 this year.

The results follows allegations of child sex abuse by Salvation Army staff that were the subject of a royal commission inquiry. More than 100 children came forward with reports of physical, sexual and indecent abuse.

In a February hearing of the royal commission, James Condon, leader of the Salvation Army’s Eastern Territory, said the charity’s reputation was no longer a priority.

“The priority is the survivor, not protection of the Salvation Army,” he said.

The National Heart Foundation of Australia dropped nine places in this year’s index.

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UNITED KINGDOM
ITV

The panel set up to run the public child sex abuse inquiry may be “disbanded” by Theresa May in the New Year, according to reports.

In a letter addressed to panel members, and leaked by investigative website Exaro News, the Home Secretary says she is considering three options which will give the inquiry full statutory powers – two of which would most likely require the panel being split up.

The three options outlined by May to secure the inquiry statutory powers, including the ability to compel witnesses to give evidence, are:

* the appointment of a new chairman who would then request statutory powers

* the setting up of a new inquiry panel under statutory terms

* holding the inquiry as a Royal Commission without the powers of a statutory inquiry

The Home Office said May was still considering all her options and nothing has yet been decided.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

By Tom Symonds
Home Affairs correspondent

The independent panel set up to support the planned public inquiry into historical child abuse could be disbanded, the BBC understands.

Home Secretary Theresa May has written to panel members saying three options to give the inquiry full statutory powers are being considered.

Only one option does not require the panel to be disbanded.

A Home Office spokesman said Mrs May wanted to balance making progress “with the need to get this right”.

The panel, which has started work, still has nobody to chair it after the first two nominations stood down.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

By David Barrett, Home Affairs Correspondent
21 Dec 2014

Theresa May, the Home Secretary, has indicated for the first time that she is prepared to go back to the drawing board over the controversial Government inquiry into historic child sex abuse.

Members of the official inquiry panel set up by the Home Office said they were “devastated” that ministers were poised to scrap the existing set-up in the New Year.

However, groups representing alleged victims of abuse welcomed the ​ development and said they hoped the new inquiry would have tougher powers, including the ability to force witnesses to give evidence.

In a letter to panel members Mrs May said she was considering a number of options, which would have “implications” for members.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Sky News

By Sean Dilley, Sky News Reporter

Survivors have welcomed reports, in a letter seen by Sky News, that Theresa May is planning to scrap the panel set up to investigate allegations of historical child sex abuse.

The letter, signed by more than 60 victims and representatives who wish to remain anonymous, lists a series of demands for the Home Secretary regarding the Child Sex Abuse Inquiry.

It calls for a statutory inquiry to be declared, a public announcement that the existing panel will be scrapped and replaced on a “transparent fit-for-purpose” and the appointment of an inquiry chair who has “demonstrable experience and ability in challenging the establishment”.

It reads: “Following the mistakes of the last six months, we consider your proposals as an opportunity to place the inquiry on to a firm footing whereby it can focus on dealing with organised and institutional abuse and cover ups at the highest levels.

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UNITED STATES
Daily Kos

SAT DEC 20, 2014

by Betty Clermont

“Americans will vote for Republicans even though they disagree with them on everything. [O]n the biggest issues facing Congress, they still agree with Democrats on … almost everything. That includes issues like raising the minimum wage, making the rich pay more in taxes, letting illegal immigrants stay in the United States, taking action to stem global warming, legalizing same sex marriage and fixing the Affordable Care Act rather than repealing it,” noted Zachary A. Goldfarb, policy editor at the Washington Post, after November’s elections.

By 2014, “the state of the nation has improved dramatically over the past four years. Unemployment is down to 5.9 percent and consumer confidence is back to levels not seen since before the deep recession which began in late 2007. The stock market is at record highs while the annual federal budget deficit is less than half of what it was when Barack Obama first took the oath of office,” explained Jon Perr who cited the above article by Goldfarb.

A majority of Americans don’t know this because the corporate media don’t report it.

“At its founding [in 1934], the Federal Communications Commission viewed the stations to which it granted licenses as ‘public trustees’ and required that they make every reasonable attempt to cover contrasting points of views. The Commission also required that stations perform public service in reporting on crucial issues in their communities. Soon after he became FCC Chairman under President Reagan, Michael Fowler stated his desire to do away with this Fairness Doctrine.”

“The devolution of the American press began when Ronald Reagan abolished the Fairness Doctrine. [Broadcasters] no longer have an obligation to serve the public interest. Their only obligation is to their shareholders,” stated Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. …

The following illustrates the appalling power of the corporate media to create a world leader and will hopefully generate a conversation, using this example, about how to overcome its lies and omissions. Information about Pope Francis withheld by the corporate media comes after the popular headline. …

Pope Francis Addresses Sex Abuse Scandal

Next to appointing and promoting a dozen or so churchmen with records as dismal as his own in protecting predator pedophiles, there is no better example of Pope Francis’ lack of resolve to protect children than his handling of his former nuncio to the Dominican Republic, Archbishop Josef Wesolowski. For more than 16 months after being informed of the accusations against his ambassador, the pope left Wesolowski with free access to more children. Additionally, Pope Francis has done everything possible to prevent Wesolowski from being prosecuted by Dominican officials.

A Catholic deacon, Francisco Javier Occi Reyes, was arrested by the police on June 24, 2013. The deacon “said at the time of his arrest he was ‘pimping’ a youngster for Wesolowski, who was allegedly waiting in his vehicle nearby….The minors interviewed [by the police] admitted to masturbating for, and of taking part in oral sex with the archbishop as he filmed them with a cell phone [in exchange for cash] while another witness affirmed seeing porno in his laptop at the Vatican embassy.”

Occi confessed to the allegations. “When no one came to bail him out, the deacon sent an anguished letter dated July 2 to Wesolowski… The deacon sent copies of the letter to Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus López Rodriguez, the head of the Church in the Dominican Republic, and to a Dominican bishop, Gregorio Nicanor Peña Rodríguez. The cardinal then carried the evidence to the Vatican, where he met directly with Pope Francis according to Dominican officials.”

Reported with the usual “Pope Francis gets tough on sex abuse” headlines, on July 11, 2013, the pontiff enacted a civil law making sexual violence and possession of child pornography punishable by up to 12 years in prison not only for those who live in Vatican City State, but also all employees, including the diplomatic corps, of the Holy See. Those accused of these crimes would be tried by the Cardinal Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura (Supreme Court) and two other judges of his choosing – providing a possible motive for the later dismissal of the independently-minded Cardinal Raymond Burke.

According to experts in international law, the Vatican could have waived diplomatic immunity for the ambassador. But in hindsight, it’s probable that Pope Francis wanted Wesolowski tried under his control.

Because the pope kept the information about Wesolowski secret, the general public knew nothing about the ambassador until a local TV broadcast on August 31, 2013. The result of a year-long investigation, the program contained testimony about Wesolowski’s crimes. Three days after the broadcast, a local bishop confirmed that Wesolowski had already been dismissed by the pope and that he had left the country only a few days earlier. There were accusations that the pope allowed Wesolowski to escape and his whereabouts remained unknown.

“For me it was a surprise to see Wesolowski walking along Via della Scrofa in Rome. The silence of the Church has injured the people of God,” tweeted Santo Domingo archdiocese Auxiliary Bishop Víctor Masalles on June 24, 2014. Another report stated “the former papal nuncio was living in a fairly upscale house for prelates called the Casa del Clero.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

Organisations which help victims of child sexual abuse have been awarded £2 million by the Government due to a massive surge in their workload.

The Home Office and the Ministry of Justice said charities and other groups had seen an increase in demand because of the Government’s high-profile inquiry into the issue, prompted by allegations of a Westminster paedophile conspiracy.

Organisations will be able to apply for a share of the fund if they are assisting people directly affected by issues covered in the inquiry.

Further cash was also announced for other groups assisting victims of sex abuse, brining the total to £7 million.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Mirror

Dec 20, 2014 By Nick Dorman, Alex Varley-Winter

The former Metrpoplitan Police officers have agreed to ­compile formal statements on what they knew of VIP child abuse operations being shut down

Ex-cops who claim VIP paedophile investigations were axed in a cover-up are to hand a dossier to Britain’s most senior police officer.

They have agreed to ­compile formal statements on what they knew of ­operations being shut down.

The file will be presented to Met Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe.

Last week we told how in messages on a members-only web forum for ex-officers, it was claimed probes which got close to explosing VIPs were “canned”.

Now we can reveal messages on the site detail the plan to compile a dossier for Sir Bernard and Home Secretary Theresa May’s Child Sex Abuse inquiry.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Exaro News

20 December 2014

By Alex Varley-Winter

Exaro today publishes postings on a private forum in which former officers from Scotland Yard discuss submitting statements on the cover-up of VIP paedophiles.

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UNITED STATES
Salon

PHIL ZUCKERMAN

What is going on? How do we explain this recent wave of secularization that is washing over so much of America?

The answer to these questions is actually much less theological or philosophical than one might think. It is simply not the case that in recent years tens of millions of Americans have suddenly started doubting the cosmological or ontological arguments for the existence of God, or that hundreds of thousands of other Americans have miraculously embraced the atheistic naturalism of Denis Diderot. Sure, this may be happening here and there, in this or that dorm room or on this or that Tumblr page. The best-sellers written by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris—as well as the irreverent impiety and flagrant mockery of religion by the likes of Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher, House, South Park, and Family Guy—have had some impact on American culture. As we have seen, a steady, incremental uptick of philosophical atheism and agnosticism is discernible in America in recent years. But the larger reality is that for the many millions of Americans who have joined the ranks of the nonreligious, the causes are most likely to be political and sociological in nature.

For starters, we can begin with the presence of the religious right, and the backlash it has engendered. Beginning in the 1980s, with the rise of such groups as the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition, the closeness of conservative Republicanism with evangelical Christianity has been increasingly tight and publicly overt. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, more and more politicians on the right embraced the conservative Christian agenda, and more and more outspoken conservative Christians allied themselves with the Republican Party. Examples abound, from Michele Bachmann to Ann Coulter, from Mike Huckabee to Pat Robertson, and from Rick Santorum to James Dobson. With an emphasis on seeking to make abortion illegal, fighting against gay rights (particularly gay marriage), supporting prayer in schools, advocating “abstinence only” sex education, opposing stem cell research, curtailing welfare spending, supporting Israel, opposing gun control, and celebrating the war on terrorism, conservative Christians have found a warm welcome within the Republican Party, which has been clear about its openness to the conservative Christian agenda. This was most pronounced during the eight years that George W. Bush was in the White House. …

A second factor that helps account for the recent rise of secularity in America is the devastation of, and reaction against, the Catholic Church’s pedophile priest scandal. For decades the higher-ups in the Catholic Church were reassigning known sexual predators to remote parishes rather than having them arrested and prosecuted. Those men in authority thus engaged in willful cover-ups, brash lawbreaking, and the aggressive slandering of accusers—and all with utter impunity. The extent of this criminality is hard to exaggerate: over six thousand priests have now been credibly implicated in some form of sex abuse, five hundred have been jailed, and more victims have been made known than one can imagine. After the extent of the crimes—the rapes and molestations as well as the cover-ups—became widely publicized, many Americans, and many Catholics specifically, were disgusted. Not only were the actual sexual crimes themselves morally abhorrent, but the degree to which those in positions of power sought to cover up these crimes and allow them to continue was truly shocking. The result has been clear: a lot of Catholics have become ex-Catholics. For example, consider the situation in New England. Between 2000 and 2010, the Catholic Church lost 28 percent of its members in New Hampshire and 33 percent of its members in Maine, and closed nearly seventy parishes—a quarter of the total number—throughout the Boston area. In 1990, 54 percent of Massachusetts residents identified as Catholic, but it was down to 39 percent in 2008. And according to an “American Values” survey from 2012, although nearly one-third of Americans report being raised Catholic, only 22 percent currently identify as such—a precipitous nationwide decline indeed.

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ALASKA
KNOM

By Jenn Ruckel, December 19, 2014

after more than a year without an official leader, the 18,000 Catholics in the 46 parishes of northern Alaska will now be led—for the first time in U.S. history—by an active duty military chaplain. Bishop Chad Zielinski was ordained in Fairbanks on Monday, and was welcomed by a host of priests, deacons, and parishioners from throughout the region.

The ceremony was a unique blend of Catholic and Native traditions, bringing people together all the way from North Pole to Barrow and Nome. While the diocese is still recovering from a dark chapter—more than 100 claims of sexual abuse at the hands priests and church volunteers—parishioners like Michael Welch say this is a time for healing, with the guidance and support of their new bishop.

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GUAM
Pacific Sunday News

Written by
Gaynor Dumat-ol Daleno
Pacific Sunday News

A high-level Vatican official is visiting Guam’s Catholic community next month, but whether the visit will be friendly, or investigatory, is in dispute.

“The Archdiocese of Agana is happy to welcome the pastoral visit of His Excellency, the Most Reverend Archbishop Savio Hon Tai-Fai,” the archdiocese stated Friday, in part, in a written statement to the media.

Hon is the secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, the Vatican office to whom some of Guam’s Catholics sent letters over the past several months, seeking an investigation of the various controversies in the local archdiocese.

The Archdiocese of Agana emphasized, by underlining in Friday’s media statement, that Hon’s Guam trip is a “pastoral visit.”

Hon’s visit, according to the archdiocese, comes “in the wake of Archbishop Anthony Apuron’s successful visit with Pope Francis last month in Rome.” …

More than a week ago, certain members of different parishes on Guam formed a nonprofit group called Concerned Catholics of Guam Inc., and announced the group plans to investigate the management of the local church, its financial books, and the archdiocese’s handling of a sexual molestation allegation against Apuron.

Apuron has called the allegation a “horrible calumny,” but declined to respond further to the allegation on the advice of his attorney because he’s planning a defamation lawsuit to defend the church.

The group’s president, Greg Perez, made a statement on Dec. 9 on why Concerned Catholics was formed. “A few of us would meet occasionally to discuss these stories about the archbishop, priests who have been allegedly blamed for mismanagement of funds or alleged disobedience and then removed from their parishes, the lack of transparency with the finances of the archdiocese, neglect of precious artifacts in the archdiocesan museum, among other issues,” Perez said.

Tim Rohr, a Guam resident who writes a blog on Catholic issues, called Jungle Watch, believes the nature of the Vatican official’s visit is investigatory. “The people who are coming — the nature of their office is investigation,” Rohr said.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail

Press Association

The troubled child abuse inquiry panel could be disbanded in order for a new, more powerful, body to take over, Theresa May has indicated.

The Home Secretary has written to the panel’s members setting out her plan for the inquiry to be given statutory powers, including the ability to compel witnesses to give evidence.

But the move has left members of the panel “devastated” that they could face being removed from the inquiry.

Mrs May told MPs last week that she wanted the inquiry – which is without a chairman following the resignation of two previous appointees – to be given extra powers.

That could mean waiting for a chairman to be appointed for the inquiry panel, who would then request statutory powers, or setting up a new inquiry panel under statutory terms.

The third option of a Royal Commission – as some want – would not have the powers of a statutory inquiry under the 2005 Inquiries Act and would be ”legally more risky”.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Nadia Khomami
Saturday 20 December 2014

Theresa May is to scrap the panel for the independent inquiry into child sex abuse, it has been reported.

The home secretary wrote to each member of the panel to tell them she is considering turning it into a statutory inquiry, or setting up a fresh statutory inquiry or a Royal Commission, according to the Exaro News website.

The letter, which followed a meeting between May and panel members on Monday to discuss the future of the inquiry, added that any statutory inquiry panel would be newly appointed, and that existing panel members can apply for positions on the new panel.

She put this decision down to concerns raised about the panel by abuse survivors. May wrote: “As I said on Monday, I am currently considering these three options and I appreciate this has implications for the members of the panel.

“I should like to make clear that I appointed each and every one of you for your experience, your professionalism and your undoubted commitment.

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GUAM
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on December 20, 2014

I hate watching sports … but I LOVE stories about sports.

The minutiae about how any particular game is played is usually lost on me. For me, going to a live sporting event is about the spectacle, not the stats or the rules.

But give me a documentary, movie, book, magazine article, or TV show about the PEOPLE in and behind the games, and I’m mesmerized. These stories draw me in because they are about ordinary people who do extraordinary things. These stories take place in a world—our world—where ANYTHING is possible. There are no victims and there is no pity. This is a world full of vision, enthusiasm, dreams, hope, love, and the value of tenacity.

Which brings me to a small island in the Western Pacific: Guam—an island full of ordinary people doing very extraordinary things. These people aren’t athletes—they are Catholics fighting to take back their church, their faith, and their reputations.

I went to Guam in 2010. Survivors on the island had asked me to come there and reach out to other survivors who felt like it was not safe to come forward and report. The Archbishop of Hagatna, Anthony Sablan Apuron—according to Catholics and critics—was perceived as a bully who scared and shamed victims into silence. So, for some sex abuse victims in the Archdiocese of Hagatna (the only diocese on Guam), coming forward and reporting abuse was tantamount to career and reputation suicide. For the rest, it was suicide.

So when Guam legislators passed a 2011 civil window that allowed sex abuse victims to come forward and use the civil courts to sue their abuser (but not the Archdiocese), victims didn’t come forward … it was just too risky.

Fast forward to 2014. This is where the story really begins. (Note: this story is SO complex and complicated, I know I’m going to miss some of the big points. But the story is still pretty darned juicy.)

Local Catholics, led by trail blazers such as Tim Rohr (a man Apuron had recruited to discredit me in 2010) and Fr. Matthew Blockley, decided that they had had enough. Apuron was pushing the Neocatechumenal Way, a lay movement within the church that according to John Allen, Jr., is “playing fast and loose with both Church teaching and the liturgical rules, fostering a cult of personality, and dividing parishes by insisting that members attend their own Saturday evening services rather than the usual Sunday Mass.”

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VATICAN CITY
AGI

(AGI) Vatican City, Dec. 20 – Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone is no longer Camerlengo of the Holy Church of Rome. Pope Francis has replaced him with Cardinal Jean Louis Tauran, the memorable Foreign Minister of Pope John Paul II and currently president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.

Bertoni turned 80 last Dec. 2 and therefore could not eventually participate in a Conclave. As Protodeacon, Cardinal Tauran announced the election of Pope Francis on March 13, 2013.

During the last few month, he closely collaborated with the Pontiff, especially in cleaning up the Vatican’s financial sector and the IOR Vatican bank in particular. Born in Bordeaux, Cardinal Tauran is now 71 years old.

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AUSTRALIA
Courier-Mail

RASHIDA YOSUFZAI AAP DECEMBER 19, 2014

A FORMER priest who was provided with a character reference by Tony Abbott while he stood trial for sexually abusing an altar boy had further complaints made against him.

A REPORT by the royal commission into child abuse said those complaints justified “serious reservations and concern” about the danger John Gerard Nestor posed to children and his suitability for ministry.

Nestor was a priest in the Wollongong diocese in NSW when he was charged and convicted of indecently assaulting a 15-year-old altar boy in 1996.

Mr Abbott, then a parliamentary secretary in the Howard government, described Nestor as a “beacon of humanity” in a character reference provided for his former seminary colleague.
Nestor was later acquitted on appeal.

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UNITED STATES
New York Times

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
DEC. 20, 2014

Six years ago, in the midst of the scandal over child abuse by rogue Catholic priests, the Vatican shocked many of the laity by ordering a sweeping investigation into the behavior and fidelity of the 50,000 American nuns who quietly labor in hospitals, prisons and outposts of the nation’s impoverished. The inquiry, ordered by the church under Pope Benedict XVI, seemed a deliberate distraction from the abuse scandal, and was tinged with male chauvinism.

Now, under the more egalitarian Pope Francis, the inquiry has been concluded with a generally positive report that mainly praises the sisters and their works in words of gratitude and encouragement.

The report should help counter the fear and discouragement that many sisters felt when Rome ordered the inquiry into the community life and finances of the nation’s 350 women’s religious orders. Far from discouraging the social justice ministries that nuns have pioneered, the report urged the sisters to continue their work taking on “the structural causes of poverty.” It even quoted Francis’s call for “a more incisive female presence in the church.” No means for achieving that were suggested, though the sisterhood was a bastion of good works during the harrowing scandal that saw hundreds of men dispatched from the priesthood.

Unfortunately, there is a second, more ill-advised inquiry still to be completed — into whether the national leadership of the nuns has taken on what a ranking prelate termed “a certain secular mentality” and “a certain feminist spirit.” The inquiry was begun under Benedict when Vatican officials expressed concern that teachings on homosexuality and the male-only priesthood might have been criticized at leadership conferences of American nuns.

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CONNECTICUT
Road to Recovery

[Note: This event has been postponed.]

Hartford, CT Archdiocese has been informed of clergy sexual abuse by a deceased Hartford, CT priest, Fr. Vincent A. Brown, but refuses to acknowledge and validate the sexual abuse claim of the victim, Charles Mc Gilton, and help him heal

Hartford, CT Archdiocese, despite knowing about sexual allegations against the late Fr. Vincent A. Brown, has not ordered a public golf tournament named after Fr. Vincent A. Brown to be re-named

Fr. Vincent A. Brown, formerly assigned to St. Mary’s Parish, Branford, repeatedly sexually abused a minor child, Charles Mc Gilton, when Fr. Vincent A. Brown was assigned to St. Lawrence Parish in West Haven, CT

What
A media event and leafleting to alert St. Mary’s Parish, Branford, CT, the greater Connecticut area, and the general public of the Hartford Archdiocese’s unwillingness to help a sexual abuse victim of a Hartford Archdiocesan priest, the late Fr. Vincent A. Brown.

When
Sunday morning and afternoon, December 21, 2014 after the 7:00 am Mass until the end of the 12:15 pm Mass (and all Masses in between). Press conference will be held at 11:30 AM.

Where
On the public sidewalk outside St. Mary’s Parish, 731 Main Street, Branford, CT, 203-488-1607

Who
Charles Mc Gilton, the sexual abuse victim of Fr. Vincent A. Brown, from West Haven, CT; Dr. Robert M. Hoatson, President of Road to Recovery, Inc. a non-profit charity that advocates for and assists victims of sexual abuse and their families; and other supporters.

Why
Charles Mc Gilton was a young boy when his family lived near and attended St. Lawrence Catholic Church in West Haven, CT. Charles Mc Gilton delivered newspapers to the rectory at St. Lawrence Church where Fr. Vincent A. Brown invited him in and repeatedly sexually abused him there. Fr. Vincent A. Brown also sexually abused Charles Mc Gilton in a local West Haven store where many of Fr. Vincent A. Brown’s parishioners and neighborhood friends gathered to eat and talk. Subsequently, Fr. Vincent A. Brown was transferred to St. Mary’s Parish in Branford, CT, where, today, a golf tournament, which raises thousands of dollars annually for the parish school, is named for Fr. Vincent A. Brown, held at a local elite country club, and supported by local Hartford media personalities, civic and Church leaders, and other celebrities. Demonstrators will call on the Hartford Archdiocese in the person of Archbishop Leonard Blair, the people of St. Mary’s Parish, Branford, and all people in the greater Hartford/New Haven region to acknowledge and validate Charles Mc Gilton’s allegations, apologize for the sexual abuse he endured, and provide him with the resources he needs to heal. Demonstrators will also demand that the name of Fr. Vincent A. Brown be removed from the annual St. Mary’s Parish Golf Tournament and any other honorary titles he holds.

Contacts
Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D., 862-368-2800
Attorney Mitchell Garabedian, Boston, MA, 617-523-6250

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ROME
Reuters

By Philip Pullella December 20, 2014

A branch of the Franciscan religious order that runs churches and convents in 110 countries says fraud by some of its monks has plunged it into grave financial difficulty.

The Italian news magazine Panorama reported in its latest edition that tens of millions of euros of funds from the Order of Friars Minor (OFM) had been invested in offshore shell companies.

Brother Michael Perry, head of the OFM, said an internal investigation had uncovered “a number of questionable financial activities that were conducted by friars entrusted with the care of the patrimony of the order”.

In a letter posted on the OFM website on Wednesday, Perry said the order was in “grave, and I underscore grave, financial difficulty, with a significant burden of debt”.

The letter, addressed to all friars, said the order’s general treasurer had resigned but gave no details.

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NEW YORK
The Atlantic

Nearly 50 years ago, a penniless monk arrived in Manhattan, where he began to build an unrivaled community of followers—and a reputation for sexual abuse. The ongoing accusations against him expose a dark corner of the Buddhist tradition.

Mark Oppenheimer
DECEMBER 18, 2014

I. “That was the beginning of the sangha”

Eido Shimano, a Zen Buddhist monk from Japan, arrived at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport on December 31, 1964, New Year’s Eve. He was 32 years old, and although he had just spent four years in Hawaii, part of the time as a university student, his English was poor. Besides his clothes, he brought with him only a small statue of the Buddha and a keisaku, the wooden stick a Zen teacher uses to thwack students whose posture sags during meditation. Before flying east, he had been offered temporary lodging by a couple who lived on Central Park West. Not long after he arrived—the very next day, according to some versions of the story—he began to build his sangha, his Zen community. He did this, at first, by walking the streets of New York. The followers just came.

“It was the middle of the 1960s, full of energy,” Shimano recalled when we met for lunch last year. “And all I did was simply walk Manhattan from top to the bottom. And in my Buddhist robe. And many people came. ‘What are you doing? Where are you going?’ So I said, ‘I am from Japan and doing zazen practice’”—Zen meditation. It was a kind of Buddhism, he told the curious New Yorkers. Now and again, somebody asked to tag along. Yes, Shimano told them. Of course. Before long, he had a small space to host meditation sessions, and all were invited. “Little by little, every single day, I walked entire Manhattan,” Shimano told me in his still-fractured English. “And every single day I picked up two or three people who were curious. And that was the beginning of the sangha.”

Within weeks, Shimano had an enthusiastic sangha of perhaps several dozen novices, who met daily for zazen. They rotated from one follower’s apartment to the next, learning to sit and meditate. One day a Canadian woman in her 60s, who had been sitting with Shimano every day, said she was returning to Canada, and she handed him an envelope. “I opened it, and there was a check for $10,000!” Shimano said. He used that money to rent a five-room apartment at 81st Street and West End Avenue. Very soon thereafter—this is still early 1965—a friend told him that he might try to affiliate his growing organization with the Zen Studies Society, which had been founded by D. T. Suzuki, the Columbia University instructor whose English-language books had helped popularize Buddhism in the United States. Suzuki had returned to Japan, and his society was now moribund. Shimano went to see the society’s lawyer, George Yamaoka. “I said to George, ‘I came here about the ZSS,’ and he said, ‘Would you like to join?’ ‘Yes!’ I just signed. And then he immediately resigned, and I became the only ZSS!”

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VATICAN CITY
Headlines from the Catholic World

Rome, Italy, Dec 19, 2014 / 03:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- “To communicate is to unify” is the first of the “Ten Words of Communication” that Fr. Federico Lombardi, director of the Holy See press office, described in a lecture given Nov. 24 at the Pontifical Salesian University in Rome.

Fr. Federico Lombardi was given an ‘honoris causa’ degree in social communication from the university, and in the lecture he held at ceremony he traced with passion the 25 years he has spent working in the Church’s communications, summing up all the teaching he had learned in Ten Commandments, which he called ‘Ten Messages.”

“There are people who think that conflict must be fed in order to make communication more dynamic. Let me stress that I am radically against this view; I hate and refuse this kind of communication. And this truly comes from my heart,” Fr. Lombardi said.

The first message is “communicating to unify,” and it is built on the background of the personal experience of Fr. Lombardi, who was appointed director of Vatican Radio in 1991, “on the day when the first bombs of the First Gulf War were lobbed.” …

Fr. Lombardi then spoke about his experience as director of the Holy See press office, and of how much his work had been tried, especially in the cases of the clergy sex abuse scandal and of Vatican finances.

On the side of sex abuse scandal, Fr. Lombardi reminded that “Benedict XVI had spoken several times about the path of purification of the Church regarding these horrible signs of the presence of evil within herself.”

“Being on the frontline as a communicator permits and requires one to be involved in a very deep way in this path, and to take part in it trying to pay with your own personal suffering a little contribution to the huge price the Church has to pay off it,” Fr. Lombardi confessed.

And he stressed that the Seventh Message is “being ready, in solidarity with the community of the Church, to pay the often painful price of growing up in truth.”

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INDIANA
WLKY

SEYMOUR, Ind. —A southern Indiana pastor accused of making sexual advances on a 27-year-old man near a lake is charged with battery.

Gaylard Williams, 59, is the pastor at the Praise Cathedral Church of God in Seymour.

On Tuesday morning, he appeared at the Jackson County Superior Court.

According to court documents, the victim told police that on Friday, Williams approached his vehicle that was parked at Cypress Lake.

He said that when he rolled down his window, Williams grabbed and squeezed his genitals, and then requested that he perform oral sex.

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INDIANA
The Raw Story

TRAVIS GETTYS
19 DEC 2014

A southern Indiana minister who preaches against homosexuality was accused of soliciting gay sex at a park.

Gaylard Williams, pastor of Praise Cathedral Church of God in Seymour, was charged with battery after a man said he grabbed his genitals last week at Cypress Lake.

A man parked at the lake Dec. 12 said the 59-year-old Williams asked him to roll down his vehicle window, then reached in and squeezed his genitals and offered to perform oral sex.

The man told the pastor he was “barking up the wrong tree” and acted like he was reaching for a gun.

He said Williams fled, but he wrote down his license plate number and called police.

Officers said Williams had gay adult material in his vehicle when they stopped him later.

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ALABAMA
WAFF

COLBERT COUNTY, AL (WAFF) –

A former Sheffield church leader facing sex abuse charges is scheduled to go to trial next month.

The Alabama Bureau of Investigation arrested Oliver Brazelle back in January.

He was working as the minister of music at First United Methodist Church when an investigation by the church found inappropriate behavior between Brazelle and three male victims.

Church leaders turned over their findings to police, who charged Brazelle with sodomy and sexual abuse.

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SOUTH CAROLINA
Aljazeera

December 19, 2014 4:45PM ET
by Claire Gordon @clairedon Google+

The blistering report on how Bob Jones University has handled sexual abuse reports is still warm off the presses and some victims are already skeptical that the university is willing to acknowledge the seriousness of what it exposed. They say BJU’s response reeks of damage control.

In its two-year independent investigation, the nonprofit Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment found that sex abuse victims on the Greenville, South Carolina, campus were often urged to find the sin behind their rapes, pushed to repent for any pleasure they might have experienced during their assaults, and encouraged to reach out to their abusers and express forgiveness or ask forgiveness from them. The university’s counselors were unlicensed and had no formal training in psychology.

Some students, the GRACE report found, were punished for reporting their abuse. Almost half said they were advised not to go the police. The 301-page dossier also paints a campus culture where sex abuse victims were made to feel like “damaged goods.” In the past year, America Tonight has interviewed five former Bob Jones students who reported their abuse to school officials and all say they have yet to recover from how BJU treated them.
Thumbnail image for Report: Bob Jones University shamed victims of sexual assault
Report: Bob Jones University shamed victims of sexual assault

For decades, Bob Jones University, a self-described fundamentalist Christian college, has urged sexual abuse victims not to go to the police and counseled them to repent for the blame it said they share, according to an extensive independent investigation published last week.

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CALIFORNIA
Highland Community News

On Monday, Dec. 15, 2014, at approximately 1 p.m., deputies from the Victorville Sheriff’s Station began investigating a report of unlawful sexual intercourse with a boy, now 17. The reporting party, the victim’s father, called the station to report that his son disclosed he had a year long sexual relationship with Joseph Kealoha, 26, a volunteer group leader at the High Desert Church in Victorville. Kealoha’s role was to mentor and assist adolescents in small study groups.

The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department’s Specialized Investigations Division, Crimes against Children Detail took over the investigation. Upon further investigation, detectives learned that the victim met Kealoha while attending High Desert Church, specifically during a youth beach trip in August of 2013. Shortly after meeting, Kealoha began a dating relationship with the minor which ultimately led to sex acts. According to statements provided by the victim, these acts occurred monthly throughout the duration of the relationship, which came to an end in September 2014.

In addition to Kealoha’s volunteer position at the High Desert Church, he is also employed as an instructional aid at Morgan Kincaid Preperatory School, as well as a program leader at Bradach Elementary School’s “Think Together” program, both schools being part of the Adelanto School District. Kealoha was subsequently relieved of his duties at the church and the schools.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Telegram & Gazette

By Samantha Allen TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

WORCESTER — Hours after President Barack Obama said Sony Pictures “made a mistake” by shelving “Interview,” Worcester-area filmmakers and movie lovers weighed in on the company’s decision to abandon releasing the film.

Andrea Ajemian, a filmmaker who has set several of her films in Worcester County and who is a Worcester native, said the decision by Sony to pull the film was “mind-blowing.” …

Worcester-based filmmaker George “Skip” Shea, along with Ms. Ajemeian, said he would like to see “The Interview” released online.

“In a lot of ways, Sony’s hands were tied because it appears the cinemas refused to show it and if they’re pulling distributions, then (the film’s producers) don’t have much leverage,” he said.

Mr. Shea noted that as a survivor of sexual abuse allegedly by priests, he has aired films with subject matter critical of the Roman Catholic Church. He’s now in production with his current film that also touches on the topic, titled “Trinity,” and says Sony’s call now sets a dangerous precedent.

“It’s very sad to me that regardless of the merit of the art (of ‘The Interview’) this has happened,” he said. “How often are we going to cave to this stuff?”

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CHICAGO (IL)
ABC 7

Friday, December 19, 2014

CHICAGO (WLS) — The ABC7 I-Team reports that the sex abuse investigation of a popular North Side priest has been closed and no charges will be filed.

Since April, Fr. Michael O’Connell of St. Alphonsus Church in Lakeview has been under investigation for allegedly abusing a boy while serving at a different church. O’Connell has always maintained his innocence.

The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests says it is disappointed and wants O’Connell suspended.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

KATHRYN POWLEY HERALD SUN DECEMBER 20, 2014

AN education official who worked at a UK council slammed for not protecting children from a plague of sexual exploitation has been sidelined from her Victorian job.

Dr Sonia Sharp has been serving as Victoria’s deputy secretary of early childhood and school education but has been moved to the Department of Health and Human Services while her recruitment is reviewed.

Education Minister James Merlino has previously said Dr Sharp should never have been hired – but now he is in government, he has stopped short of firing her.

From 2005-08 Dr Sharp was director of children’s services at Rotherham Borough Council, where an estimated 1400 children – some as young as 11 – were sexually exploited between 1997 and 2013.

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CALIFORNIA
Mercury News

Bay City News Service

POSTED: 12/19/2014

DALY CITY – A Daly City pastor at a church in San Francisco will face trial for one count of child molestation, a San Mateo superior court judge ruled Thursday.

Venije Singkoh, 70, pleaded not guilty to three counts of child molestation, said San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe. San Mateo Superior Court Judge Donald Ayoob ruled today that Singkoh would face only one count at trial.

Wagstaffe said the judge determined that two less serious allegations involving the pastor kissing young girls at the church on the cheek and one kiss on the lips didn’t fall under “lewd intent.”

Prosecutors said Singkoh is a pastor at the Indonesian Pentecostal Foursquare Church in San Francisco. On Feb. 7, a 9-year-old girl told her parents he molested her on multiple occasions over the past year by placing her on his lap and kissing her inappropriately.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

At his Christian Catholicism site, Jerry Slevin argues that Pope Francis is making “a huge papal mistake” and “exhibiting his papal fallibility” by passing over Father Thomas Doyle, one of the leading authorities on the Catholic abuse crisis, as Francis adds new members to his commisison on abuse. Jerry points to Tom Doyle’s extensive qualifications to serve the church on this papal commission:

Fr. Doyle is a Dominican priest with a doctorate in canon law and five separate master’s degrees. He sacrificed a rising career under Cardinal Laghi at the USA’s Vatican Embassy to become an outspoken advocate for Catholic Church priest sexual abuse victims. Since 1984, when he first became involved with the issue of sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy while serving at the Embassy, he has become an expert in the canonical and pastoral dimensions of this problem—working directly with victims, their families, accused priests, bishops, and other high-ranking Church officials.

Doyle has interviewed over 2,000 victims of clerical sexual abuse in the USA alone, and has been the only priest to testify in court in over 200 cases as to the legal liability of the Church. He has developed policies and procedures for dealing with cases of sexual abuse by the clergy for dioceses and religious orders in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

As an expert in this area, Doyle has delivered lectures and seminars for clergy and lay groups throughout the U.S. In 1989 he appeared as an expert witness before the legislature of Pennsylvania concerning that State’s child protective legislation. As an Air Force major stationed in Germany, and who also served as a military chaplain in Iraq, he holds 16 military awards and decorations for distinguished service.

Doyle currently serves as a consultant/court expert in clerical abuse cases throughout the U.S., Canada, Ireland, Israel and the United Kingdom. The Voice of the Faithful honored Doyle with their first Priest of Integrity Award in 2002. In recognition of his advocacy work for the victims of clerical sexual abuse, he has also received the Cavallo Award for Moral Courage (1992) and the Isaac Hecker Award from the Paulist Fathers (2003). In June of 2003 Doyle was also issued an official commendation from the Dominican Fathers for his “prophetic work in drawing attention to clergy sexual abuse and for advocating the rights of victims and abusers.”

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UNITED STATES
GlobalPost

Jason Berry

Trailed by bitter controversy, a six-year investigation of American nuns ended Tuesday with the release of a Vatican report that praised the religious sisters “for all that they contribute to the church’s evangelizing mission.”

The document released by Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life – a major Vatican office – drew on dozens of interviews in convents and religious houses which disproved allegations that caused Cardinal Franc Rodé, as prefect of the congregation in 2008, to order an investigation into “a certain secular mentality … and perhaps also a certain ‘feminist’ spirit,” as Rodé told Vatican Radio at the time.

One of the more conservative cardinals in the Vatican, Rodé was not at the Tuesday press conference at which his successor, Brazilian Cardinal João Braz de Aviz, struck a tone of harmony with the nuns.

Within the politics of the Roman Curia, Braz de Abriz has also emerged as an ally of Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), the American organization representing superiors of 80 percent of the orders of religious sisters. A separate Vatican office, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, had imposed an overseer, Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain, the vet the group’s speakers and publications.

“The Vatican realized they messed up this situation and they are trying to mend fences,” Sister Christine Schenk of Cleveland told The GroundTruth Project. …

As the investigation Rodé launched made news, Vatican officials saw the blowback in media coverage which cast the nuns, working on the margins with the poor, confronting cold male bureaucrats in Rome.

Rodé was an unstinting supporter of Father Marcial Maciel, a notorious pedophile and founder of the Legion of Christ, an order enmeshed in lawsuits in America for duplicitous fundraising. …

Cardinal Rodé, in an interview with this writer in his Vatican apartment two years ago, said that the call to investigate had come from Cardinal Bernard Law, who resigned as Boston archbishop in 2002 amid the abuse crisis, and soon found redemption in Rome as pastor of a great basilica. The other prelate behind the call, said Rodé, was Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore.

In 2003, Lori approved a $21 million abuse victims settlement involving several priests. Voice of the Faithful criticized him for allowing an accused monsignor to stay in his parish until he resigned, facing 2011 sex harassment allegations from a female church worker.

That double standard in leadership – bishops stained by scandal in the abuse cases, accusing nuns of bad faith – may be at its eclipse.

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ROME
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

ROME (AP) — The main Franciscan religious order in the Roman Catholic Church is in a financial crisis because of alleged wrongdoing from within and outside its ranks.

The head of the Order of Friars Minor said in a statement from Rome that questionable financial activities by some friars and outsiders have caused a grave situation that threatens the financial stability of the religious order.

The Rev. Michael Perry says the order’s financial oversight was either too weak or was compromised.

The general treasurer in the order’s administrative offices has resigned. The order has notified church and civil authorities and is reviewing its finances going back to 2003. Perry revealed the crisis in a statement posted Wednesday on the order’s website.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Business Journal

Rich Kirchen
Senior Reporter-
Milwaukee Business Journal

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee has reached a $2.3 million settlement with insurers in the archdiocese bankruptcy case, and half of that amount would go to a proposed settlement of allegations of clergy sexual abuse.

The latest settlement would bring to $5.15 million the total amount available to people who have sought compensation. The new settlement figure was included in a motion filed Wednesday and is subject to approval by U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Susan Kelley in Milwaukee.

“Our relentless pursuit of insurance carriers has brought $10 million into the (reorganization) plan,” archdiocese spokesman Jerry Topczewski told the Milwaukee Business Journal Friday.

Lloyd’s of London previously agreed to pay $8 million to the archdiocese with $4 million of that planned as payments to clergy abuse victims and $4 million to pay the administrative costs of the case. The new development involves a settlement with OneBeacon Insurance Co. and Stonewall Insurance Co.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel Dec. 19, 2014

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee has reached an agreement with its insurance companies for an additional $2.3 million, bringing to $10.3 million the amount its insurers will pay to help the archdiocese emerge from its nearly 4-year-old bankruptcy.

Under the terms of a motion filed in the bankruptcy this week, half of the $10.3 million would go to pay administrative costs — primarily legal fees that have now topped $16 million. Half would go into a trust for 128 of the bankruptcy’s creditors, men and women who were sexually abused by diocesan priests as children.

The settlement brings the amount available to those survivors to $5.15 million, from $4 million in the archdiocese’s original plan of reorganization.

Victims and their attorneys blasted the settlement as inadequate, and said they would object to the plan in court.

“All the insurance settlements here shut survivors out of the process and are taking money from survivors and putting it in the pockets of the bankruptcy attorneys,” said Michael Finnegan, whose St. Paul, Minn., firm represents most of the 575 men and women who have filed claims in the bankruptcy alleging they were molested by priests and others connected to the church.

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KENTUCKY
The Courier-Journal

Matthew Glowicki, The Courier-Journal December 19, 2014

A judge has denied the request of convicted child molester Rev. James Schook to be released from prison after serving six months of a 15-year sentence.

Schook, 67, was found guilty in April of molesting a 13-year-old alter boy in the 1970s. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison on three counts of sodomy and one count of indecent and immoral practices.

Jefferson Circuit Court Judge Mitch Perry denied the motion for shock probation ahead of a hearing scheduled for Friday.

“The Defendant shall remain in custody to serve out his sentence in accordance with the law,” Perry wrote in the order denying Schook’s request.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
National Catholic Reporter

Marie Rohde | Dec. 19, 2014

The Milwaukee archdiocese has asked a bankruptcy judge to approve a settlement with three insurance companies, a move that would more than double the $4 million the archdiocese has offered the survivors of clergy sexual abuse.

The archdiocese and the insurance companies — London Market, OneBeacon, and Stonewall — have been negotiating for more than four years and entered into mediation several times. According to the proposed agreement, the insurance companies will buy back policies for a total of $10.3 million. Half of the money will go to a fund for victims, and the other half will go toward legal fees that now amount to more than $18 million, some of which has already been paid.

The settlement agreement will not be finalized until approved by the bankruptcy judge, Susan V. Kelley, and is likely to be opposed by survivors who have filed claims, according to a lawyer and a survivor representative. Kelley could approve the agreement without the go-ahead, but it is unlikely, as no other diocesan or religious order bankruptcies have proceeded in the face of such opposition.

Jerry Topczewski, a spokesman for the Milwaukee archdiocese, said in a statement: “Because of the archdiocese’s relentless pursuit of a settlement with insurance carriers, it has brought more than $10 million into the plan of reorganization which benefits abuse survivors and it brings us another step closer to a resolution of the Chapter 11 proceeding.”

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ROME
Rorate Caeli

From the letter of the Franciscan Minister General, Brother Michael Perry, OFM:

In an effort to live as children of the light, the General Definitorium and I wish to bring to light a grave situation in which the General Curia of the Order now finds itself. The matter involves our financial stability and the patrimony of the Order. While our first concern has and remains verifying the nature, extent, and impact of what has occurred, we also recognize the significant role that external actors, people who are not members of the Order, have played in creating this grave situation.

In September 2014, the General Definitorium initiated a series of steps in order to conduct an internal inquiry into the financial dealings of the Office of the General Treasurer. A sub-commission within the General Definitorium was created to serve as an advisory group. Together we charted a course to collect reliable information, identify potential concerns, and examine all available documents in order to reach well-informed decisions about how best to proceed to guarantee the financial soundness of the Order in a manner consistent with our Franciscan values and way of life. We immediately sought advice from a highly regarded group of lawyers who continue to work for the Order. Competent ecclesiastical authorities also were informed of our concerns and have been updated on a regular basis. In addition, Provincials and Custodes in a number of the Franciscan Conferences also were provided with a brief, albeit incomplete, explanation of our situation and were requested to demonstrate their solidarity with the General Curia through prayer and in other significant ways. I regret that not all Provincials and Custodes were contacted. I ask of all Provincials and Custodes your understanding and for a financial contribution to help address the current situation, which involves also the repayment of significant debts. …

Right, “without the full knowledge” — of those who should have full knowledge… It is just so nice that the predecessor of the current Minister General for ten years (!), current Abp. José (“Call me Pepe”) Rodríguez Carballo, was made Secretary and the personal man of the Pope in the Congregation for Religious. The same man who has been a key player in the ongoing dismantling of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate.

Quite a promising start for the Year of Consecrated Life!

(Note: both in Italy and in many other places, large orders such as the Friars Minor also receive massive amounts of public funds, both through tax breaks and direct government contributions to their educational, healthcare, and charitable activities. Will authorities in Italy and elsewhere act accordingly considering the shady financial dealings of the past? As with the ongoing abuse scandal, will the intervention of Caesar be necessary to bring justice to this situation?)

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ROME
Catholic Herald (UK)

by Madeleine Teahan posted Friday, 19 Dec 2014

The Franciscans is facing a “grave situation” following an internal investigation into the state of its financial affairs.

In a letter to the order, first reported by Rorate Caeli , Brother Michael A Perry, Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor (OFM), said: “I wish to bring to light a grave situation in which the General Curia of the Order now finds itself. The matter involves our financial stability and the patrimony of the Order. While our first concern has and remains verifying the nature, extent, and impact of what has occurred, we also recognise the significant role that external actors, people who are not members of the Order, have played in creating this grave situation.”

Brother Perry said that one of the key findings of the investigation involves a “number of questionable financial activities that were conducted by friars entrusted with the care of the patrimony of the Order without the full knowledge or consent of the former and current General Definitorium.”

He continued by saying that as a result of this finding the order had involved the civil authorities. He said: “Because of the scope and magnitude of these activities, they have placed the financial stability of the General Curia at grave risk. These questionable activities also involve people who are not Franciscan but who appear to have played a central role. For these reasons, the General Definitorium, working in unanimity, has decided to call upon assistance from civil authorities to take up this matter.”

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service

By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Ineffective budgetary oversight and “questionable” financial activities have plunged the Order of Friars Minor into significant debt and an extremely serious financial situation, its minister general said.

Following an internal investigation into the order’s finances, U.S. Franciscan Father Michael Perry, the superior, announced to all members of the order that its general curia “finds itself in grave, and I underscore ‘grave,’ financial difficulty, with a significant burden of debt.”

He attributed the situation to unapproved financial activity by some friars as well as non-Franciscans and said the curia had retained lawyers and contacted civil authorities.

The announcement was published as an open letter on the order’s website Dec. 17. The announcement included a plea to Franciscan superiors around the world for “your understanding and for a financial contribution to help address the current situation, which involves also the repayment of significant debts.”

An investigation begun in September discovered that “the systems of financial oversight and control for the management of the patrimony of the order were either too weak or were compromised, thus limiting their effectiveness to guarantee responsible, transparent management,” Father Perry wrote.

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ROME
Deutsche Welle

The Order of Friars Minor (OFM), the Catholic Church’s most prominent brotherhood of Franciscan friars, has said dubious dealings have led the OFM into serious financial trouble. An investigation is underway.

In an open letter posted on the OFM website Brother Michael Perry, head of the OFM, revealed that the results of an internal investigation showed the order was in serious financial difficulty and deeply in debt. Shady dealings by some friars with fiduciary responsibilities had put the order’s finances at risk.

The Italian news magazine Panorama reported in its latest edition, under the headline “Franciscans at the cusp of bankruptcy” (Francescani sull’orlo della bancarotta), that tens of millions of euros of the OFM’s funds had been invested in offshore shell companies. Some of the money apparently went missing in connection with the purchase and renovation of a hotel in central Rome.

Perry’s letter, addressed to all the Order’s friars, said the order’s general treasurer, Giancarlo Lati, had resigned, but gave no details.

Perry’s letter identified “three important elements” as having emerged from the OFM’s internal investigation into the order’s finances.

“First, the General Curia finds itself in grave, and I underscore ‘grave’ financial difficulty, with a significant burden of debt,” Brother Perry wrote.

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ROME
The Guardian (UK)

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Rome
Friday 19 December 2014

The Franciscan order of monks has announced it is in grave financial difficulty after the discovery of a massive fraud.

An internal investigation begun four months ago has found that some monks who ran the Franciscans’ endowment engaged in “questionable financial activities” that have emptied the 800-year-old order’s coffers.

The Franciscans are a community within the Catholic church who follow St Francis of Assisi, who was known for advocating a life of poverty.

The order’s financial woes were disclosed in a rare open letter published this week by American monk, Michael Perry, the Franciscans’ minister general.

He painted a desperate picture of an order whose viability is in doubt and facing a “significant burden of debt” as a result of the deception. He also cast blame outside the church. “These questionable activities also involve people who are not Franciscan but who appear to have played a central role,” he said in the letter.

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ROME
Telegraph (UK)

By Nick Squires, Rome
19 Dec 2014

It was founded 800 years ago by St Francis of Assisi, whose name was taken by the current Pope, but the Franciscan order of friars has found itself mired in a financial scandal allegedly involving fraud and embezzlement of tens of millions of euros.

A branch of the Roman Catholic order had invested some of its money in offshore shell companies based in Switzerland, which had in turn been involved in arms and drugs trafficking, Italian media reported.

A three-month-long internal investigation has found extensive financial irregularities at the heart of the Rome-based order, which has around 14,000 members worldwide and owns churches and convents in more than 100 countries.

Michael Perry, the American head of the Order of Friars Minor, took the unusual step of writing an open letter to friars and monks to inform them that the historic order now finds itself in a “grave situation”, with millions of euros believed to be missing from its accounts.

He said the General Curia, the governing body of the order, “finds itself in grave, and I underscore ‘grave’, financial difficulty, with a significant burden of debt.”

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ROMA
Panorama

Ignazio Ingrao

Lo scandalo è scoppiato nel mese di ottobre e anche il Papa lo è venuto a sapere: la procura svizzera avrebbe sequestrato alcuni depositi della congregazione dei frati minori francescani, per decine di milioni di euro, perché investiti in società finite sotto inchiesta per traffici illeciti, si parla addirittura di armi e droga. Gli investimenti risalgono al periodo in cui era superiore dei frati minori José Rodriguez Carballo, oggi segretario della Congregazione per i religiosi. Sotto accusa l’ex economo generale, padre Giancarlo Lati, che è stato fatto dimettere, e alcuni consulenti. Il sequestro dei fondi, gli interessi passivi da pagare e la perdita di una parte del patrimonio per investimenti spericolati, hanno messo in ginocchio i frati tanto da costringere il nuovo ministro generale, padre Michael Perry a recarsi negli Stati Uniti e in altre province a chiedere una colletta per aiutare la Curia generalizia.

I frati hanno tentato per settimane di tenere segreto questo scandalo. Finché Panorama lo ha scoperto e ha chiesto ufficialmente a mons. Carballo, padre Perry e al nuovo economico, padre Silvio de la Fuente di commentare queste informazioni. Da tutti è arrivato un secco “no comment”, forse nella speranza che nulla ancora sarebbe trapelato all’esterno. Una volta appreso che sul numero di Panorama in edicola sarebbe stata diffusa la notizia, il ministro generale è stato costretto a riconoscere ufficialmente l’accaduto, con una lettera pubblica che è un’ammissione ufficiale del dissesto ma non può essere presa ad esempio di trasparenza. O quanto meno è un esempio di trasparenza “obbligata” dall’esterno.

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VATICAN CITY
Huffington Post

Religion News Service | By Josephine McKenna
Posted: 12/19/2014

VATICAN CITY (RNS) One of the largest Franciscan religious orders, founded on the humble teachings of St. Francis of Assisi more than 800 years ago, announced it is on the brink of bankruptcy after admitting some of its monks embezzled funds from its accounts.

The Italian news magazine Panorama on Friday (Dec. 19) reported that tens of millions of dollars were missing from the Order of Friars Minor and had been invested in offshore companies.

Panorama also claimed Swiss prosecutors had seized Franciscan accounts in Switzerland because the account holders had allegedly invested in illegal operations that could include arms and drug trafficking.

Brother Michael Perry, the American head of the order, said an internal inquiry was begun in September and revealed “a number of questionable financial activities that were conducted by friars entrusted with the care of the patrimony of the order.”

In a letter posted on the order’s website, Perry said the order was in “grave, and I underscore grave, financial difficulty, with a significant burden of debt.”

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

1. Pope Francis likes to quip about women as Adam’s ribs. a demeaning allusion to the Genesis myth about Eve’s origin. Two modern “Adam’s ribs”, more like Joan of Arc types, and some American Sisters, are striking back at the “Argentinian Adam”. There is some overdue justice here, as Pope Francis often seems to treat women still mostly as moronic breeding machines. Ironically, then, that it is courageous women like the brave whistle blowing canon lawyer and former Minneapolis Archdiocesan chancellor, Jennifer Haselberger, and Minnesota Public Radio’s (MPR) tenacious reporter, Madeleine Baran, that are functioning as modern Joan of Arc’s to lance the papal veil, or the Wizard of Oz’s curtain, pick your metaphor.

2. For Haselberger’s extraordinary affidavit that she recently refers to in new comments ”after my affidavit was released in July of 2014 “, please click on this link to read it — you will be stunned! This affidavit is one of the most searing single statements ever by a Catholic Church insider and canon lawyer, alleging a widespread cover-up of clergy sex misconduct in the Archdiocese of St. Paul/Minneapolis. She has made the most detailed claims yet, as a former insider no less, accusing archbishops and their top staff of lying to the public and of ignoring the U.S. bishops’ pledge to have no tolerance of priests who abuse.

3. And Madeleine Baran and her MPR team were just praised lavishly by Columbia University’s School of Journalism for MPR’s exhaustive coverage of the Minneapolis scandal that has earned them the very prestigious duPont Award with the following description:

4. MPR News: “Betrayed by Silence”

A heartbreaking, exhaustive investigation of sexual abuse and cover up in the Twin Cities Catholic Church

MPR News’ yearlong investigation exposed how leaders of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis continued to cover up abuse of children by priests, despite decades of assurances that the Catholic Church was safe. Reporters found that bishops provided secret payments to pedophiles, hid the names of abusers, failed to notify police of alleged sex crimes and didn’t warn parishioners of priests’ sexual misconduct. The report included everything from interactive databases of allegations against priests and where they served, and a display of internal church documents, to police records, court records, and victim settlement documents all showing extensive cover ups. MPR’s reporting has led to numerous actions to protect the public such as the opening of a criminal investigation of the archdiocese itself, resignations, forced retirements, leaves of absences, firings, and the release of names of abusive priests. The investigative team overcame the challenges rife in reporting this type of story: understanding the church’s complex structure and legal system; verifying old events and claims; the lack of documents available digitally; and the insular, private world of the priesthood.

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AUSTRALIA
Illawarra Mercury

By ANGELA THOMPSON Dec. 19, 2014

Wollongong Catholic Bishop Peter Ingham erred by not making public the reasons behind the 2008 defrocking of priest John Gerard Nestor, the Royal Commission into Child Sex Abuse has found.

In a damning set of nine findings handed down on Friday, the royal commission takes aim at the Catholic Church and some of its officials for not making notes of potentially incriminating internal meetings with Nestor, and for the five years it took for an internal appeal process to run its course.

The royal commission further found the decision by some clergy to have Nestor publicly participate in church services “undermined” the efforts of other priests to protect children.

Nestor was convicted of aggravated indecent assault in 1997, and acquitted seven months later.

He denied the central allegation in the case against him, that he slept on the same mattress as a 15-year-old altar boy.

He was defrocked by decree of the Pope in 2008, after further allegations surfaced and after long periods on administrative leave.

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POLSKA
Polski Radio

Śledztwo w sprawie podejrzanego o pedofilię Józefa Wesołowskiego zawieszone. Taką decyzję podjęła Prokuratura Okręgowa w Warszawie.

Powodem jest utrudniona współpraca ze śledczymi z Dominikany. Polski hierarcha pełnił tam funkcję nuncjusza apostolskiego. – Strona dominikańska nie odpowiedziała na wnioski polskiej prokuratury o pomoc prawną, nie mamy informacji kiedy zostaną one zrealizowane – wyjaśnia w rozmowie z Informacyjną Agencją Radiową Przemysław Nowak, rzecznik Prokuratury Okręgowej w Warszawie.
Dodał, że decyzja jedynie zawiesza bieg postępowania i nie rozstrzyga o jego istocie.

Od września – przez dwa miesiące – Józef Wesołowski przebywał w areszcie domowym w Watykanie. Na początku grudnia areszt się skończył i były nuncjusz może swobodnie poruszać się za Spiżową Bramą.

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POLAND
The News

19.12.2014

Poland’s public prosecutor suspended an investigation into statutory rape charges against Roman Catholic Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, the former papal nuncio to the Dominican Republic.

Blaming lack of cooperation from the law enforcement authorities in the Dominican Republic, where the alleged sex abuse of minors took place, the Warsaw prosecutors announced suspension of the investigation on Friday.

„The Dominican side failed to respond to the requests from the Polish prosecutors for legal help and we have no information when they will be met,” a spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office told Polish Radio.

The archbishop, who allegedly abused dozens of children during his spell as the nuncio, or the papal ambassador to the Dominican Republic, is currently under home arrest in the Vatican.

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UNITED STATES
Religion News Service – Rhymes with Religion

Boz Tchividjian | Dec 19, 2014

As we arrive on the doorstep of another Christmas and 2014 comes to a close, I have spent some time thinking about these past twelve months and what I have witnessed as many faith communities finally begin to understand and address the many difficult issues related to child sexual abuse. Each step forward brings a new set of challenges that I believe give us much to look forward to in 2015.
Here are just a very few examples:

A conservative Protestant denomination adopted one of the strongest public statements on child protection by any religious denomination or community. Passing the statement was only the beginning. The challenge forward will be whether these words will actually propel faith communities to action in transforming their understanding and approach to child sexual abuse. Much to look forward to in 2015.

A powerful documentary brought to light allegations of systematic abuse and neglect of children inside a large and well-known Christian community. Making this amazing film was only the beginning. The challenge forward will be whether faith communities will embrace these brave voices as agents of change in creating cultures that better protect little ones and have no tolerance for those who hurt them. Much to look forward to in 2015.

A well-known fundamentalist institution requested an independent Christian organization to investigate its responses to sexual abuse disclosures made by students. Not only did this school voluntarily initiate this investigation, but also it agreed for the results to be made public. By voluntarily engaging in this independent and transparent process, this institution has set an historical and Gospel-centered precedent for Christendom and the watching world. Inviting the investigation and publicizing its results is only the beginning. The challenge forward for this institution and every other community that professes to follow Jesus will be to learn how to better love and comfort the afflicted, while implementing changes that value, protect, and serve the vulnerable. Much to look forward to in 2015.

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